Spring Days

Chapter 3

“Don’t let us go into the animal question. The constant smell of dogs is unpleasant, but I could put up with it—what I can’t stand are her acquaintances in the Southdown Road, and when I think that we should not have known any of them if it hadn’t been for her! Indirectly—I do not say directly—she is the cause of all my difficulties. It was at her house Sally met young Meason; it was at her house Grace met that young officer for whom she is crying her eyes out; and it was at her house—yes, I hadn’t thought of it before—it was at her house that Willy met that swindler who induced him to put two thousand pounds into the Bond Street shop. The Southdown Road might have remained here for the next five hundred years, and we should have known nothing of it had it not been for Mrs. Horlock; if she likes to know these people let her know them, but why force them upon us? It was only the other day she was talking to me about calling on some new friends of hers who have come to live there. I dare say it is the custom to call on every one at Calcutta, but I say that Calcutta etiquette is not Southwick etiquette, and I don’t care how many Viceroys called upon her, I will not know the Southdown Road.”

The enunciation of this last sentence was deliberate and impassioned. Mr. Brookes walked twice across the room; then he stood, his hands crossed behind his back, looking at his admired Goodall. His anger melted, and he mused on the price he had paid, and the price he thought it was now worth. Fearing he would return to the Southdown Road trouble, Maggie said: “I am afraid we shall be obliged to get rid of the new cook. She is Irish. Just before you came in I found her in the stable-yard threatening to break Holt’s head with a pair of dreadful old boots.”

“I don’t want to hear about the cook. The money you spend in housekeeping is enormous. Since your poor mother died I haven’t had a day’s peace. If it isn’t one thing it is another. You are fit for nothing but pleasure and flirtation; there isn’t a young man in the place or within ten miles you haven’t flirted with. I am often ashamed to look them in the face at the station. It is past seven; why isn’t dinner ready?”

“Sally told the cook to put the dinner back half an hour.”

“Sally told the cook to put my dinner back half an hour!”

Mr. Brookes’s face grew livid. The end of all things was at hand; his dinner had been put back half an hour! This was a climax in the affairs of his life, which for the moment he failed to grasp or estimate. Was a father ever cursed with such daughters as his? He had been in the City all day working for them; he did not marry because he wished to leave them his money, and this was the return they made to him. His dinner had been put back half an hour! Passion sustained him for a while; but he gave way, and, pulling out a silk handkerchief, he sank into a chair.

“Don’t cry, father, don’t cry. Sally is thoughtless; she didn’t mean it.”

Mr. Brookes wept for a few minutes; Maggie strove to soothe him; he waved her away, he wiped his eyes and in a voice broken with anguish, “Ah, well,” he said, “I suppose it will be all the same a hundred years hence.” In moments of extreme trouble he sought refuge in such philosophy, but now it seemed inadequate and superficial, and Maggie had begun to fear the violence of the storm she had brewed. She did not mind stimulating ill-feeling, but she did not wish Sally to provoke her father recklessly.

The possibility of his marrying again and having a second family was the one restraining influence Mr. Brookes still retained over his daughters, so Maggie, who was always keenly alive to the remotest consequences of her actions, took care that his home never became quite unbearable to him; and when Sally entered the room, dark and brilliant in red velvet, and in no way disposed to admit she had been guilty of heinous wrong in countermanding the dinner, Maggie attempted a gentle pouring of oil on the waters. But waving aside her sister’s gentle interposition, she said: “You mustn’t think of yourself only, father. I admit I told the cook to put back the dinner a few minutes. What then?”

“You did it that you might finish your conversation with young Meason,” said Mr. Brookes, but his words were weak, it being doubtful if even Meason could add to the original offence, so culminating and final did it seem to him.

“Maggie didn’t tell you that last week she met him on the sea road, and walked with him into Portslade.”

“Father, father, I beg of you, now, don’t cry; think of the servants.”

And it was in such unity of mind and feeling that this family sat down to dinner in the great dining-room, rich with all comforts and adorned with pictures by Frith and Goodall. Sally, who unfortunately knew no fear, talked defiantly; she addressed herself principally to her brother, and she questioned him persistently, although the replies she received were generally monosyllabic. As he chewed his meat with reflection and precaution, broke his bread with deliberate and well-defined movements, and filled his mouth with carefully chosen pieces, he gradually ventured to decide that he would not speak to his father that evening of the scheme he had been hatching for some months. It was one of his strictest rules not to think while eating, so it may be said that it was against his will that he arrived at this conclusion. Willy suffered from indigestion, and he knew that any exercise of the brain was most prejudicial at meal times.

After dinner Mr. Brookes and his son retired to the billiard-room to smoke.

“Your sisters are a great trouble to me—a very great anxiety. Since your poor mother died I’ve had no peace, none whatever. Poor Julia, she’s gone; I shall never see her again.”

Willy made no answer. He was debating; he was still uncertain whether the present time could be considered a favourable one to introduce his scheme to his father’s notice, and he had made up his mind that it was, when he was interrupted by Mr. Brookes, who had again lapsed into one of his semi-soliloquies.

“Your sisters give me a great deal of trouble, a very great deal of anxiety. I am all alone. I have no one to help me since the death of your poor mother.”

“My sisters are fitted for nothing but pleasure,” Willy replied severely.

II

Mr. Brookes went to London every day by the five minutes to ten; Willy walked into Brighton. There he had been for some time striving to found an agency for artificial manures, and in the twilight of a small office he brooded over the different means of making money that were open to him. The young ladies worked or played as it struck their fancy. Sally admitted that she infinitely preferred walking round the garden with a young man to doing wool-work in the drawing-room. Maggie shared this taste, although she did not make bold profession of it. Grace was the gentlest of the sisters, and had passed unnoticed until she had fallen in love with a penniless officer, and tortured her father with tears and haggard cheeks because he refused to supply her with money to keep a husband. The doctor had ordered her iron; she had been sent to London for a change, but neither remedy was of much avail, and when she returned home pale and melancholy she had not taken the keys from Maggie, but had allowed her to usurp her place inthe house. Sally was supposed to look after the conservatories, but beyond her own special flowers she left everything to the gardeners.

On Sundays Mr. Brookes walked through the long drawing-rooms aimlessly. Sometimes he would stop before one of his pictures. “There, that’s a good picture, I paid a lot of money for it, I paid too much, mustn’t do so again.” Passing his daughters, sometimes without speaking, he then stopped before one of the big chimney-pieces, and, pulling out his large silk pocket handkerchief, dusted the massive clocks and candlesticks.

In the billiard-room, at a table drawn up close to the coke fire, Willy slowly and with much care made pencil notes, which he slowly and with great solemnity copied into his diary.

“Your sisters are a great source of trouble to me, a source of deep anxiety,” said Mr. Brookes, and he flicked the rearing legs of a bronze horse with his handkerchief.

“My sisters are only fit for pleasure,” said Willy and he finished the tail of the y, passed the blotting paper over, and prepared to begin a fresh paragraph.

“I am afraid Grace is scarcely any better; she will not leave her room. I hear she is crying. It is too ridiculous, too ridiculous. What she can see in that man I can’t think; he is only a man of pleasure. I’ve told her so, but somehow she can’t get to see why I will not settle money upon her—money that I made myself, by hard work, judicious investments.”

“That’s a smack at the shop,” thought Willy, as he placed his full stop.

“I’ll not settle my money upon her,” said Mr. Brookes, as he resumed his dusting; “and for what? to keep an idle fellow in idleness. No, I’ll not do it. She’ll get over it—ah, it will be all the same a hundred years hence. But tell me, have you noticed—no, you notice nothing—”

“Yes, I do; what do you want me to say, that she is looking very ill? I can’t help it if she is. I’ve quite enough troubles of my own without thinking of other people’s. I’m sure I am very sorry. I wish she’d never met the fellow.”

“That’s what I say, I wish she’d never met the fellow, and she never would had it not been for that horrible Southdown Road. Southwick has never been the same since those villas were put up.”

“I know nothing about them; I won’t know them. I don’t go to the Horlocks because I may meet people there I don’t want to know. If you hadn’t allowed the girls to go there, she never would have met him.”

“But we had to call on the Horlocks. Every Viceroy that ever came to India called upon her, and they’re excellent people—titled people come down from London to see them: but I daresay their banking accounts wouldn’t bear looking into. She walks about the green with the chemist’s wife, and has the people of the baths to dinner. Mostextraordinary woman. I like her, I enjoy her society; but I can’t follow her in her opinions. She says that only men are bad; that all animals are good; that it is only men who make them bad. Her views on hydrophobia are most astonishing. She says it is a mild and easy death, and sees no reason why the authorities should attempt to stamp it out. She quite frightened me with the story she told me of a mad dog that died in her arms. But that by the way. The point is not now whether she is right to feed mice in her bedroom instead of getting rid of them, but whether we should call on people we don’t want to know because she asks us to do so. I say we should not. When she spoke to me the other day about the lady whose mother was a housemaid, I said, ‘My dear Mrs. Horlock, it is very well for you to call on those people. I approve of, I admire magnanimity; but what you can do I cannot do. You have no daughters to bring out; every Viceroy that ever came to India called on you, your position in the world is assured, your friends will not think the less of you no matter how intimately you know the chemist’s wife, but you could not do these things if you had daughters to bring out.’”