None Other Gods by Robert Hugh Benson (debian ebook reader txt) 📖

love in a cottage?"

"Well, that would be one answer."

"Very well, then. That'll do, won't it? You can take it as said.... I'm going to see what's happening."

But as she went to the door there came footsteps and voices outside; and the next moment the door opened suddenly, and Lord Talgarth, followed by his son and the Rector, burst into the room.


(II)

I am very sorry to have to say it, but the thirteenth Earl of Talgarth was exactly like a man in a book--and not a very good book. His character was, so to speak, cut out of cardboard--stiff cardboard, and highly colored, with gilt edges showing here and there. He also, as has been said, resembled a nobleman on the stage of the Adelphi. He had a handsome inflamed face, with an aquiline nose and white eyebrows that moved up and down, and all the other things; he was stout and tall, suffered from the gout, and carried with him in the house a black stick with an india-rubber pad on the end. There were no shades about him at all. Construct a conventionally theatrical heavy father, of noble family, and you have Lord Talgarth to the life. There really are people like this in the world--of whom, too, one can prophesy, with tolerable certainty, how they will behave in any given situation.

Certainly, Lord Talgarth was behaving in character now. He had received meek Mr. Mackintosh's deferential telegram, occupying several sheets, informing him that his son had held an auction of all his belongings, and had proposed to take to the roads; asking, also, for instructions as to how to deal with him. And the hint of defiant obstinacy on the part of Frank--the fact, indeed, that he had taken his father at his word--had thrown that father into a yet more violent fit of passion. Jenny had heard him spluttering and exclamatory with anger as she came into the hall (the telegram had but that instant been put into his hands), and even now the footmen, still a little pale, were exchanging winks in the hall outside; while Clarkson, his valet, and the butler stood in high and subdued conference a little way off.

What Lord Talgarth would really have wished was that Frank should have written to him a submissive--even though a disobedient--letter, telling him that he could not forego his convictions, and preparing to assume the _role_ of a Christian martyr. For he could have sneered at this, and after suitable discipline forgiven its writer more or less. Of course, he had never intended for one instant that his threats should really be carried out; but the situation--to one of Lord Talgarth's temperament--demanded that the threats should be made, and that Frank should pretend to be crushed by them. That the boy should have behaved like this brought a reality of passion into the affair--disconcerting and infuriating--as if an actor should find his enemy on the stage was armed with a real sword. There was but one possibility left--which Lord Talgarth instinctively rather than consciously grasped at--namely, that an increased fury on his part should once more bring realities back again to a melodramatic level, and leave himself, as father, master both of the situation and of his most disconcerting son. Frank had behaved like this in minor matters once or twice before, and Lord Talgarth had always come off victor. After all, he commanded all the accessories.

* * * * *


When the speeches had been made--Frank cut off with a shilling, driven to the Colonies, brought back again, and finally starved to death at his father's gates--Lord Talgarth found himself in a chair, with Jenny seated opposite, and the rest of the company gone to dinner. He did not quite realize how it had all been brought about, nor by whose arrangement it was that a plate of soup and some fish were to come presently, and Jenny and he to dine together.

He pulled himself together a little, however, and began to use phrases again about his "graceless son," and "the young villain," and "not a penny of his." (He was, of course, genuinely angry; that must be understood.)

Then Jenny began to talk.

"I think, you know," she said quietly, "that you aren't going the right way to work. (It's very impertinent of me, isn't it?--but you did say just now you wanted to hear what I thought.)"

"Of course I do; of course I do. You're a sensible girl, my dear. I've always said that. But as for this young--"

"Well, let me say what I think. (Yes, put the soup down here, will you. Is that right, Lord Talgarth?)." She waited till the man was gone again and the old man had taken up his spoon. Then she took up her own. "Well, I think what you've done is exactly the thing to make Frank more obstinate than ever. You see, I know him very well. Now, if you'd only laughed at him and patted his head, so to speak, from the beginning, and told him you thought it an excellent thing for a boy of his character, who wants looking after--"

Lord Talgarth glared at her. He was still breathing rather heavily, and was making something of a noise over his soup.

"But how can I say that, when I think--"

"Oh! you can't say it now, of course; it's too late. No; that would never do. You must keep it up--only you mustn't be really angry. Why not try a little cold severity?"

She looked so charming and humorous that the old man began to melt a little. He glanced up at her once or twice under his heavy eyebrows.

"I wonder what you'll do," he said with a kind of gruffness, "when you find you've got to marry a pauper?"

"I shan't have to marry a pauper," said Jenny. "That wouldn't do either."

"Oh! you're counting on that eight hundred a year still, are you?"

Jenny allowed a little coldness to appear on her face. Rude banter was all very well, but it mustn't go too far. (Secretly she allowed to herself sometimes that this old man had elements of the cad in his character.)

"That's entirely my own affair," she said, "and Frank's."

Lord Talgarth blazed up a little.

"And the eight hundred a year is mine," he said.

Jenny laid down her spoon as the servant reappeared with the fish and the menu-card. He came very opportunely. And while her host was considering what he would eat next, she was pondering her next move.

Jenny, as has been said, was an exceedingly sensible girl. She had grown up in the Rectory, down at the park gates; and since her mother's death, three years previously, had managed her father's house, including her father, with great success. She had begun to extend her influence, for the last year or two, even over the formidable lord of the manor himself, and, as has been seen, was engaged to his son. Her judgment was usually very sound and very sane, and the two men, with the Rector, had been perfectly right just now in leaving the old man to her care for an hour or so. If anything could quiet him it would be this girl. She was quite fearless, quite dignified, and quite able to hold her own. And her father perceived that she rather enjoyed it.

When the man had gone out again, she resumed:

"Well, let's leave it," she said, "for a day or two. There's no hurry, and--"

"But I must answer this--this telegram," he growled. "What am I to say to the feller?"

"Tell him to follow his discretion, and that you have complete confidence--"

"But--"

"Yes; I know you haven't, really. But it'll do no harm, and it'll make him feel important."

"And what if the boy does take to the roads?"

"Let him," said Jenny coolly. "It won't kill him."

He looked up at her again in silence.

Jenny herself was very far from comfortable, though she was conscious of real pleasure, too, in the situation. She had seen this old man in a passion pretty often, but she had never seen him in a passion with any real excuse. No one ever thwarted him. He even decided where his doctor should send him for his cure, and in what month, and for how long. And she was not, therefore, quite certain what would happen, for she knew Frank well enough to be quite sure that he meant what he said. However, she reflected, the main thing at present was to smooth things down all round as far as possible. Then she could judge.

"Can't make out why you ever consented to marry such a chap at all!" he growled presently.

"Oh, well--" said Jenny.


(III)

It was a delicious evening, and the three men, after dinner, strolled out on to the broad terrace that ran, looking over the lake, straight up and down the long side of the house. They had not had the advantage, since the servants were in the room, of talking over the situation as they wished, and there was no knowing when Lord Talgarth and Jenny might emerge. So they sat down at a little stone table at the end furthest from the smoking-room, and Archie and Dick lit their cigarettes.

There is not a great deal to say about the Rector. The most effective fact about him was that he was the father of Jenny. It was a case, here, of "Averill following Averill": his father and grandfather, both second sons, as was the Rector himself, had held the living before him, and had performed the duties of it in the traditional and perfectly respectable way. This one was a quiet middle-aged man, clean-shaven except for two small whiskers. He wore a white tie, and a small gold stud was visible in the long slit of his white shirt-front. He was on very easy terms in this house, in an unintimate manner, and dined here once a fortnight or so, without saying or hearing anything of particular interest. He had been secretly delighted at his daughter's engagement, and had given his consent with gentle and reserved cordiality. He was a Tory, not exactly by choice, but simply--for the same reason as he was Church of England--because he was unable, in the fiber of him, to imagine anything else. Of course, Lord Talgarth was the principal personage in his world, simply because he was Lord Talgarth and owned practically the whole parish and two-thirds of the next. He regarded his daughter with the greatest respect, and left in her hands everything that he decently could. And, to do her justice, Jenny was a very benevolent, as well as capable, despot. In short, the Rector plays no great part in this drama beyond that of a discreet, and mostly silent, Greek chorus of unimpeachable character. He disapproved deeply, of course, of Frank's change of religion--but he disapproved with that same part of him that appreciated Lord Talgarth. It seemed to him that Catholicism, in his daughter's future husband, was a defect of the same kind as would be a wooden leg or an unpleasant habit of sniffing--a drawback, yet not insuperable. He would be considerably relieved if it could be cured.

* * *