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Spring Days

G >> George Moore >> Spring Days




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.'"

"What did she say to that?"

"She was just going out to walk with her pugs. Angel began to--you
know, and for the moment she could think of nothing else; when the
little beast had finished I had forgotten the thread of my argument.
However, I spoke to her about Grace; and she promised that she
shouldn't meet the fellow again. I can't think of his name, I get lost
in the different names, and they are all so alike I scarcely know one
from the other. I have had nothing but trouble since your poor mother
died. Your sisters give me a great deal of trouble, and you have given
me a great deal of trouble. We couldn't get on in business together on
account of your infernal slowness. No man is more for keeping his
accounts and letters straight than I, but your exactitude drives me
mad; it drives me mad; there you are at it again. I should like to
know what you are copying into that diary. One would think you were
writing an article for the _Times_, from the care with which you're
drawing out every letter; 'pon my word it isn't writing at all, it's
painting. You can't write for a pair of boots without taking a copy of
the letter, entering it into this book, and entering it into that book;
'pon my word it is maddening."

Willy laughed. "Each person has his own way of doing business; I don't
see how it interferes with you, or what difference it makes to you, if
I spend three minutes or three days writing a letter."

"Perhaps not, perhaps not; but I am terribly upset about Grace," said
Mr. Brookes, and he walked slowly across the room and stood looking at
his Bouguereau; "she'll get over it, but in any case she'll miss her
chance of marrying Berkins; that is what distresses me. The man stinks
of money. I hear that he has been appointed manager of a colliery,
that alone will bring him another thousand a year. His business is
going up, he must be worth now between seven and eight thousand a
year. And he began as an office boy, he hadn't a penny piece, made it
all himself."

"So I should think; a purse-proud ass!"

"Never mind, his eight thousand is as good an eight thousand as any in
the land, better than a great many. I wouldn't give a snap of my
fingers for your broken-down landowners; Berkins has always made
excellent investments, and I hear he is now getting as much as fifteen
per cent. for money invested."

Willy had been to Oxford, and the arrogance and pomposity of this
purse-proud man shocked his sense of decorum. Berkins's vulgarity was
more offensive than that of Mr. Brookes. Mr. Brookes was a simple,
middle-class man, who had made money straightforwardly and honestly,
and he had cultivated his natural taste for pictures to the limit of
his capacities and opportunities. Berkins, however, had been born a
gentleman, but had had to shift for himself, even when a lad, and he
had caught at all chances; he was more sophisticated, he was a
gentleman in a state of retrograde, and was in all points inferior to
him whom he crossed in his descent. Berkins had bought a small place,
a villa with some hundred acres attached to it, on the other side of
Preston Park. There he had erected glass houses, and bred a few
pheasants in the corner of a field, and it surprised him to find that
the county families took no notice of him. Mr. Brookes had
sympathised, but the young people laughed at him and Willy had told a
story how he had been to shoot at ----, and when a partridge got up
right in front of his gun, Berkins turned round and shot it,
exclaiming: "That's the way to bring them down!"

And now whenever his name was mentioned, Willy thought of this
incident, so very typical did it seem to him of the man, and he liked
to twit his father with it. But Mr. Brookes could not be brought to
see the joke, and he fell back on the plausible and insidious argument
that, notwithstanding his manners, Berkins was worth eight thousand a
year.

"And very few girls get the chance of catching eight thousand a year;
and she'll miss it, she'll miss it if she doesn't take care."

"You talk of it as if it were an absolute certainty; you don't know
that Berkins wants to marry Grace; he hasn't been here for the last
month."

"Mr. Berkins is not like the young good-for-nothings your sisters
waste their time with, he is a man of means, of eight thousand a year;
you don't expect him to come round here every evening to tea, and to
play tennis, and to walk in the moonlight and talk nonsense. Berkins
is a man of means, he is a man who can make a settlement."

"Has he spoken to you on the subject, then?"

"No, Mr. Berkins is a man of tact, however you may laugh at him for
having shot your partridge. He spoke to your Aunt Mary, or rather she
spoke to him. Ah, clever woman, your Aunt Mary, wonderful manner,
wonderful will, when she wants a thing done it must be done. Your poor
mother--I mean no disparagement--but I must say she couldn't compare
with her for determination; Sally reminds me of her, but Sally's
determination is misdirected, deplorably misdirected; it is directed
against me, entirely against me. She must be made submissive; when I
spoke to Aunt Mary about her, she said her spirit must be broken; and
if she were here she'd break it. If she were here things would be very
different, your sisters wouldn't be flirting with all the little
clerks in the Southdown Road; but I am alone. I have no one to turn
to."

"You were telling me that Berkins had spoken to Aunt Mary about
Grace."

"Your Aunt Mary spoke to Berkins about Grace; she told him he ought to
be thinking of marrying; that he wanted a wife. Then the conversation
turned on my daughters, and Mary no doubt mentioned that at my death
they would all have large fortunes."

"Ah, so it is the money that Berkins is after."

"Money comes first. If a man can make a settlement he will naturally
demand a--that is to say he will naturally look forward, he will
consider what her prospects are; not her immediate prospects, that
would be mercenary, but her future prospects."

Willy smiled. "And what did Berkins say?"

"He said he wanted to marry, and he spoke of Grace; he said he admired
her. I shouldn't be surprised if we saw him at church to-day."

"Are you going to ask him to lunch?"

"Certainly, if he's there." Then, after a long silence, Mr. Brookes
said: "He'll come in here to smoke. Of course you'll leave us alone.
Do you mind leaving out your cigars?"

"I have only half a box left; I think really you might keep some in
the house to supply your own guests with. You always object if I
interfere with your things."

"I am out of my best cigars--it is so hard to remember. He won't smoke
more than one."

"I'll put one in the cigar case then."

"You had better fill it; it will look so bad if there is only one; he
won't take it."

"He'll take all he can get; he took my bird, I know that!"

"This is a matter of great importance."

"To you and to Grace, not to me," said Willy, and with very bad grace
he unlocked a drawer, and placed a box of cigars on the table.

"Thank you. Now what time is it? Half-past ten. By Jove! we must be
thinking of starting; I suppose you aren't coming?"

"I am afraid I've too much to do this morning."

The young ladies appeared in new dresses, and with prayer-books in
their hands. Mr. Brookes took his hat and umbrella, and Willy watched
them depart with undisguised satisfaction. "Now I shall be able to get
through some work," he said, untying a large bundle of letters. He
wrote a page in his diary, tied up the letters, diary, and notebook in
brown paper, and, with a sigh, admitting that he did not feel up to
much work to-day, he took up the envelopes that had contained his
letters and began tearing off the stamps, and he did this very
attentively as if he did not trust his dry thick fingers. Somebody had
told him that ten thousand old stamps were worth--he had forgotten the
price of old stamps, and wondering he dozed off. When he awoke he
cried: "Half-past twelve, they must be on their way back; I wonder if
Berkins is with them!" And he strolled out on the gravel.

A few spring flowers marked the brown earth about the trees, and a
beautiful magnolia, white as a bride, shed its shell-like petals in an
angle beneath a window; the gold of the berberis glowed at the end of
the path; and the greenery was blithe as a girl in clear muslin and
ribbons. The blackbirds chattered and ran, and in turn flew to the pan
of water placed for them, and drank, lifting their heads with
exquisite motion. The trees rustled in the cold wind; the sky was
white along the embankment, where an engine moved slowly up and down
the line.

Willy was sensible that the scene was pleasant and pretty, and
remembering he was fond of birds, he thrust his hands deeper in his
pockets and walked slowly down the drive, his toes well turned out. "I
wonder if they met Berkins at church?" was the question he put to
himself gravely. "What a cad he is! No wonder the county people fight
shy of us; a fellow like that is enough to close their doors against
us for ever. My father pooh-poohs everything but riches; he positively
flies in their faces, so what can I do? I don't care to ask my Oxford
friends down here; one never knows how he will receive them. He can
talk of nothing but his business. Had I a free hand, had I not been so
hampered, we might have known all the best county families, even
theduke."

The latch of the gate clicked, and Mr. Brookes and his family
appeared. Maggie and Sally walked on the right and left of their
father; Grace came on behind with Berkins, and it seemed to Willy that
the city magnate bore himself with something even more than his usual
dignity. At first sight he suggested that anomalous creature--a
footman with a beard; and the slow, deliberate enunciation marked him
as one accustomed to speak in public. His manner of sitting at a table
suggested letters and dictation of letters, his manner of moving his
glasses on his nose accounts, and at no moment would it have been
surprising to see him place his strong finger at the bottom of a line
of figures, and begin "Gentlemen," etc.

During lunch, Sally and Maggie spoke in undertones; they glanced
occasionally at Grace, who sat by and received Berkins's bald remarks
with deference. The girls trembled with excitement; they had pressed
and extorted from Grace a hurried statement of what had happened.
Berkins had proposed to her, he had told her he had never seen any one
except her whom he would care to make his wife. What had she said? She
didn't know. She couldn't really remember. She had been taken so
suddenly, she was so upset, that she hadn't known what to say. She
thought she had said something about the honour--but she really had
not had time to say much, for at that moment they were at the gate.
Did she intend to accept him? She didn't know; she could not make up
her mind. It was a terrible thing to throw over poor Jack; she didn't
think she could do it--no matter what father might say. However, she
knew he would never give his consent, so it was no use thinking,

"I hope she won't begin to cry," whispered Sally, who had followed
Maggie to the sideboard.

"Father looks as if he were going to cry," replied Maggie, moving the
decanters and pretending to look for a glass.

Seven thousand a year, ten thousand a year! Would Grace have him? What
would father settle on her? The sum he settled on her he must settle
on them when they married. As Berkins's wife Grace would have
servants, jewels, rich dresses, and a house in London, and they
thought of the advantage this marriage would be to them.

The knives clattered; cheese and celery were being eaten. Mr. Brookes
had drunk several glasses of port, and was on the verge of tears.
Berkins's high shoulders and large voice dominated the dining-table;
he was decidedly more than usually impressed by his own worth, and the
worth of the money of which he was the representative. Willy chewed
his cheese; there were many wrinkles about his eyes--deep lines
turning towards the ears; and when he lifted his tumbler one noticed
the little nails, almost worn away, of his lean hands.

At last Mr. Brookes said: "I daresay you would like a cigar, Berkins--
will you come into the billiard-room?"

Berkins inclined to this suggestion. Willy, who had not quite
finished, remained at table. The girls watched each other, and as soon
as the elderly men turned their backs they fled upstairs to their
rooms.

"Will you try one of these?" said Mr. Brookes, offering a box of
choice havannas.

"Thank you. My tobacconist--I must ask you to visit his shop--receives
just a few cases of a very special cigar; I have at least two-thirds
of them, sometimes more; when you dine with me I'll give you one. This
is Chartreuse, I think. My wine merchant knows a man whose cousin is
one of the monks. Now the monks set aside the very cream of the
liqueur, if I may so speak, for themselves. This liqueur cannot be
bought in the open market. You may go up to London prepared to write a
cheque for any figure you may like to name, and I will defy you to buy
a bottle. I never have any other. It is really quite delicious. I
daresay I could get you some."

Mr. Brookes expressed thanks for the amiable offer, and both men
smoked on in silence.

"Do you play billiards?"

"No. Do you?"

"No."

Inwardly they congratulated themselves. Presently Mr. Brookes said: "I
hear you have been staying with my sister, Mrs. Haltom. You were
shooting there, were you not?"

"Yes, they were kind enough to ask me. Very nice shooting they have,
too."

"I hear that you have gone in for rearing pheasants."

"Yes; we shot a hundred brace last year."

The conversation dropped, and in an impressive silence both men
wondered what they had better say to lead honourably up to the subject
they had come to speak on.

"Is your house your own design? Did you build it entirely yourself?
Iforget. I ought to know; you told me all about it when I dined with
you."

"There was a house there, but I altered it considerably after my own
idea, and not a bad idea, I flatter myself. I spent a good deal of
money in laying out the grounds, putting up conservatories, and so
forth."

"You are a single man?"

"For a single man the house is, of course, too large; but I do not
intend to remain always single, and--and now, Mr. Brookes, as we are
on the subject, I had better tell you that I have asked Miss Brookes
to be my wife."

Mr. Brookes grasped at the first words. "I am sure I am very pleased
to hear it, Mr. Berkins, and I hope the answer was a favourable one."

"Miss Brookes is a modest girl. She has been well brought up, as a
girl who is, I hope, to be my wife should be, and she was naturally a
little overcome. I did not exactly catch what she said, and I didn't
like to press her for an immediate answer. But suppose we assume for
the moment that Miss Brookes's reply will be a favourable one--I have,
I confess, much faith in her good sense--we might consider the
business side."

Notwithstanding his admiration of a man who had made three thousand a
year more than he had succeeded in doing, Mr. Brookes could not but
feel irritated at Berkins, who, with increasing gravity, continued to
assume all things to his own advantage. It had not occurred to him to
consider that Grace might refuse him. Why should she refuse him? She
could not hope to do better. She appeared to him as a very nice girl
indeed, one entirely fitted for the position for which he intended
her. He understood that all girls, at least those in society, were
innocent and virtuous; he understood that when they married they made
faithful and dutiful wives; and he had chosen her not because he had
fallen in love, nor yet because he had noticed she was likely to make
a better wife than her sisters, but because she was the eldest. Even
so he would be twenty years his wife's senior, and he had chosen to
marry one of the Brookes girls because he knew them and saw them
constantly; because he knew that at their father's death his fortune
would be divided between them. Grace was, therefore, an heiress in
perspective. The prospect was agreeable, but he foresaw that it would
be put forward as an excuse for fixing the sum of marriage settlements
as low as possible. It would, however, be difficult for Brookes to
settle less on his daughter than he, Berkins, was willing to settle on
his wife; so partly in the hopes of forcing Mr. Brookes, and partly
because of the pleasure it gave him to speak of himself, he continued
talking of his position and possessions.

"In dealing with me," he said, "you are dealing, as you know, Mr.
Brookes, with a man of means, a man who can afford to do the thing
properly; you will not misunderstand me--you remember you told me that
you had great difficulty in keeping the little folk who live here out
of your house."

"The neighbourhood has never been the same since they put up that row
of villas. A lot of indigent fortune-hunters, they know my girls will
have large fortunes at my death, so they come sneaking round the place
like so many wolves."

"I can readily sympathise with you; one doesn't make money to keep
idle young fellows in the luxuries of life."

"That is what I say."

"But you aren't sufficiently firm, Mr. Brookes; had you been brought
up in the hard school that I was you would be more firm; firmness is
everything. You married early, I couldn't afford to do that. At
sixteen I had to shift for myself. I was three years a clerk at two
pounds a week, and not many chances to rise come in the way of a clerk
at two pounds a week; he must be pretty sharp, and if he doesn't seize
the little chance when it comes, he will remain a little clerk all his
life. It is the first steps that are difficult, the rest are nothing.
You don't know what the first steps are; I do. Once you've made a
thousand pounds you can swim along a bit, but the first hundred, I
shall never forget it! Afterwards it is just the same; the proportions
are changed, that is all. The first twenty thousand is very uphill
work, the second is on the flat, the third is going downhill--it
brings itself along."

"A very good simile indeed. There's no doubt that it is money that
makes money. When you have none you cannot make it. It is like corn;
give a man a handful, and he must be a fool if he can't fill his barn.
The beginnings are hard; none knows that better than I. But for the
last ten years I've been doing fairly well."

"I had never intended to get married, but when money really begins to
accumulate it pushes you along. It is curious how money takes you
along. It is like a tide. You first begin thinking of a little place
in the country where you can stay from Saturday till Monday. The
little place grows; it is extraordinary how it grows. You find you
want flowers, and you put up a glass house; then you begin to get
interested in orchids or roses, and you put up two, maybe half a dozen
glass houses. Suddenly you find the rabbits are breeding in the
hedgerows, and you go out yonder ferretting, but the coachman does not
know how to manage the ferrets, and you start a keeper. The keeper
says one morning, 'It wouldn't require much to get up a stock of
pheasants in that little wood.' You say, 'Very well;' and there you
are before you know it, with glass houses, rabbit-shooting, and a
pheasant preserve. You have friends to stay with you for the shooting,
you get talked about in the clubs, people ask why you aren't married--
the place where the wife ought to be stares you in the face: a man of
money, of real money, must get married. The friends who come and stay
with you suggest a little dance, you think it would be very pleasant;
but you know no one in the neighbourhood, the county people won't
visit you, so the thing comes about, and you are head over heels in
settlements before you know where you are."

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