The Wise and the Wayward

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR Miniatures and Moods, 3s. net. Episodes, 3s. net. Quales Ego, 3s. 6d. net. The Autobiography of a Boy (5th Edition) 3s. 6d. net. BY G. S. STREET JOHN LANE: THE B0DLEY HEAD LONDON AND NEW YORK 8Knti.frs.tB Surras: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. A Conversation i II. Another Conversation 8 III. A Woman's Reflections 18 IV. A London Interior 27 V. The Start 36 VI. Nelly Ashton at Rowe 44 VII. An Afternoon in Town 60 VIII. Mr. Morrison 73 IX. A House Party at Rowe .... 89 X. An Unconscious Campaign .... 102 XI. " Life 's a Farce " 116 XI 1. Old Friends to the Rescue ... 131 XI 1 1. The End of a Lecture 142 XIV. In Fresher Air 149 XV. Folly 159 XVI. Mr. Morrison's Wrongs 170 XVII. The Chances of Explanations . . 185 XVIII. An End of Folly 198 XIX. Mending a Mistake 209 XX. A Happy Ending

Chapter I

A CONVERSATION Old Mrs. Ashton of Rowe and Mr. Wilmot, her oldest friend, sat and talked after dinner. They sat out of the range of the lamps, but the light of the big fireplace of the big drawing-room of Rowe House shone on Mrs. Ashton's little lace cap and neat white hair and delicate small face as she leaned thoughtfully over the blaze and held her hands to its warmth. She was always cold, and the little shiver visible whenever she moved a yard from a fire seemed consistent with the glance of indefinable inquietude which met an intimation of outside things — outside the quiet house where she read old letters and mused over the fire and thought on future happiness or devised present comfort for George Ashton, her son. She had been out in the cold in her time, and was come to think the warmth of the fire the thing most desirable for herself and for those who were dear to her, and she shivered when they vaunted the winter weather.

A gentle and appealing old lady, fragile, dignified, and loved. It was a pity, artistic effect considered, that Francis Wilmot was not her husband. He was the complement, in a favourable sense, of her sweet old age. He was tall, straight, and ruddy, and a natural grace alone saved the youthfulness of his sixty-eight years from aggressiveness. His hair, as white as his old friend's, was brushed back in a broad sweep from his forehead, and was an appropriate contrast with his thick eyebrows, still black, and his black keen eyes. He was clean-shaven. He stood with his back to the fire and tapped the hearth-rug with a small, shining pump. A virile, fine old man, who laughed at his own strong prejudices and never questioned them. As he looked down with a quiet, protective affection on the small old lady, he should have been her husband.

But her husband had been a subtle-minded fault-finder, a drunkard, and a wayward amorist, and had died A conversation 3 at fifty. It was something that Francis Wilmot was her oldest friend. They were talking of George Ashton's engagement to marry, announced to Mrs. Ashton on his arrival that afternoon. " Francis," the old lady said, " tell me; you don't like it?" "I? I think it's time he married. Thirty, is n't he? And a man with a place like this ought to marry." "Your place is larger." Mr. Wilmot looked kindly upon her and spoke gaily : — " And I have n't even had the sense of duty to marry ! A useless old idler ! " — The lady smiled softly at him and looked back at the fire. — " But I 'm a bad example; neglected every other duty too." " Except being the best landlord in your county and the best friend in the world."

"Oh, nonsense; I'm what the Socialists call an encumbrance to the community; never done a stroke of work — " " Francis, I want to talk about my boy." " With all my heart. You know what I think of him. With his father's brains and your disposition — I beg your pardon very humbly, Dorothy — with your brains — " "Francis, why do you evade me? You can say anything to me. I don't know these people ; I can't help feeling nervous. You must tell me what you know." " That is almost nothing. I used to know Canover slightly; I have seen his daughters; George has chosen a wonderfully pretty girl. You must n't think he has done anything foolish. It 's the idea of his caring for anybody more than you that makes you anxious — " "I think not. I am not a strong woman, perhaps, but I am not stupid or blind.

George has had fancies before — he never tells me, but I know. I don't deceive myself about his character. He 's the best son in the world, and an honourable man. But about women he is easily governed by the feelings that pass. The women who have attracted him have sometimes — I speak vaguely, you understand — some times not been those whom his judgment and his delicacy would choose. It may be so now. I must be unhappy till I know. It 's not parting with him — we must part in a way — I knew that must come. I have only prayed that his A CONVERSATION 5 wife will let me love her and not put barriers between my son and me. I am unhappy till I know he has chosen well. Tell me what you know, dear friend." " My dear, I should never forgive myself if I said anything to make mischief in the least de gree.

I will be absolutely frank with you. You know I think a great deal of George, and I have known him very well all his life. Naturally, then, I am not easily satisfied that his wife is good enough for him. I simply don't happen to know that Miss Canover is : that is really all." Mrs. Ashton smiled sadly. " Diplomatist ! What of Major Canover? " " Since he 's left the army he 's been doing something in the City. No, Dorothy, you 're a woman in a million. It 's best to tell you all I know; you 're safe to hear it somewhere. Can over is not a good fellow, though he 's pleasant enough. He 's been mixed up with things pretty near the wind, and there was one case which got into the law courts — the other people con cerned were a money-lender and a very young man. And he has not done well by his daugh ters.

Their mother died when they were chil dren, and since they've been out Canover has exploited them in a way, hawked them about, made them seem a sort of quasi-professional beauties. I 'm talking like a malicious old gossip, but these are facts everybody will tell you. They don't tell against the girl in the least I know nothing whatever against her. Perhaps some busybody will tell you she has had a few harm less flirtations : there 's nothing more. Very likely George is the first man she has really cared for. That and your influence — " The hater of scandal was a trifle out of breath. He looked troubled ; he had really spoken as he thought right, but wondered if he had said too much. Mrs. Ashton passed her hand across her eyes. "Poor girl!" she said. "But my boy — he is so sensitive." " Here he comes.

We were talking about you, George." George Ashton bent over his mother and kissed her as he passed to the fire. He was a little above the average in height, slight, thin featured, with large greyish-blue eyes and light brown hair, and a broad forehead. His look was frank, but not alert; one was not sure of an im pression : it might be of brains and taste, it mi°-ht A CONVERSATION 7 hardly be of vigour or determination. The effect was faintly ironical ; the little laugh with which he answered Mr. Wilmot was not merry ; there were slight lines at the corners of his mouth. " Of course you were. And about my marriage and happiness ever after. Mr. Wilmot has been telling you lots of charming things about Nell, I 'm sure, mother." " I only know her looks, my boy." " No ? " There was the faintest possible tinge of defiance in his voice.

" But you know the Ma jor? He said he knew you. H'm ! Poor Francis, you need n't be embarrassed. I don't swagger about the Major, but I suppose he '11 do the heavy father as well as another. I don't marry the family. But you will like Nell, mother." Mrs. Ashton went to her son and looked up into his eyes. " Yes, mother dear. I know the atmosphere she 's lived in is antipathetic to you, but she 's not part of it. She 's fond of gaiety and that sort of thing, of course, but it's never spoiled her. She has a straight, simple nature. Yes, mother, she 's a noble girl ; she is indeed." " Yes, dear," said Mrs. Ashton, while Francis Wilmot looked gravely at his shining pumps.

Chapter II Another Conversation The

Ashtons of Rowe were not a distinguished family. They had lived at Rowe some three hundred years — a tolerably long while for England — and had never fallen from their importance in their district of Hampshire. But no Ashton of Rowe survived in the memory of a grateful country as general, admiral, or states man, although a few were of some account in their day. They had had their definite place in the English society of their times, and you meet them now and again in memoirs and letters. None of them, however, had shone brightly in social life, and for some generations they had lived almost entirely at Rowe, entertaining their neighbours, but not filling their house with guests. Oddly, for two generations they had not been mighty sportsmen. George Ashton's father and grandfather, though both strong men, and active by fits and starts, had lived much in their library, a type of well-bred and fastidious students of literature, who would have been welcome at Strawberry Hill.

It must have been love of Rowe that made them its constant occupiers, and Rowe was meet to be loved. In all Hamp shire there was no more perfect expression of a gracious English life — a life dignified and some what retired, ordered and above ambition, artificial (doubtless) and soon to pass away. For mere wealth, the reward of struggle, and mere friendliness of manner, which may remain, pro duce no such atmosphere as that of Rowe. The house was Jacobean, formal and stately in its approach, but at the back, where were broad terraces and an abundance of flowers, inviting and sympathetic. The gardens merged soon in the glades and avenues of the park. A large hall, the large drawing-room opposite, two broad staircases at each end — imagine some favourite country house, and the at mosphere which many generations of right keeping may make for right imaginations.

Outside the park was the dower-house, an older building covered with creepers, empty, since it was an Ashton tradition not to let it, and George Ashton and his mother were people for whom such traditions have a value. Since leaving Oxford, George Ashton had spent most of his time at Rowe with his mother, and the rest of it in his rooms in London. In Lon don he was much as are most young men who like amusement and can afford to buy it. He belonged to a good club, dined out, danced occasionally in the season, and occasionally dived into what passes for Bohemia. Balliol had respected him, and, like his father and grand father, he was fond of books and contemporary letters in a quiet fashion — worth mentioning in regard to a taste which is now-a-days somewhat curiously noisy — and at Rowe was absorbed in them.

That he had escaped certain other of his father's tastes altogether, I cannot affirm. He was fond of wine, and amorous as well, but in both particulars he had improved on the paternal example, being neither scandalous nor a drunkard. Nor do I affirm that he was a useful member of society : I fear that my narrative has mostly to do with useless people. He had no profession, and did not really believe in the great work which, when written, should justify his existence. Yet he had a few stray virtues. Amusement had not spoiled his intellect, nor his intellect his manners. His devotion to his mother had involved no sacrifice of himself, but he loved her sincerely, and intimacy with her had opened and cherished a natural delicacy and good will to the world, which his life had sometimes jarred upon, but had left unspoiled.

Perhaps, however, it is more satisfactory to turn to his first cousin, John, his senior by a few years and, failing a son, his heir. For Jack Ashton was that thing most acceptable to men, and, let us hope, to heaven, a person in complete harmony with his environment, absolutely and unremittedly content. His wife had the same pre-eminence, and so, apart from the inevitable woes of babyhood, had their year-old boy. Husband and wife were fond of each other and of the baby, and the baby was as fond of them as could be expected. It is therefore my privi lege to introduce you to a happy home. Jack Ashton's father had married a woman of substantial fortune, and Jack Ashton followed his wise example. Having enjoyed himself thoroughly but wisely, he thought it well, at thirty-one, to double his income and make himself a permanent home by marrying the daughter (aged twenty-five) of a successful promoter of companies.

She in her way had enjoyed life as thoroughly and wisely, and also was aware of the common sense in the contract. He was strong and handsome, and attracted her ; she was handsome and healthy, and attracted him. Their tastes and their aims in life were very like. Solid pleasures appealed to them both, and especially the pleasure of pleasant eating, a taste of which the value for harmony cannot be exaggerated. They both were fond of riding and the open air. Both were easily amused ; no farce ever devised could have kept them from laughing. Both wished above all things to get all the pleasure their incomes could possibly procure; both were content with the fashion of the moment; both disliked and avoided eccen tricity. The blood of commercial success and practical wisdom was strong in both. Jack spent an occasional hour on the direction of one of his father-in-law's companies, and fenced for an hour a day.

Mildred spent an equal time on the affairs of their house and on her dresses. For the rest of the day they were a good deal in one another's company, eatin°-_ seeing their friends, going to the play. Away from London, they lived chiefly in other people's houses, where an efficient sportsman and a jolly and handsome woman were welcome. Occa sionally they pecked at Paris or Monte Carlo. I do not say theirs was a life of philanthropy or in the vanguard of progress. They were not remarkable for generosity or for loyalty to friends in adversity. Their culture was certainly not of an advanced type. But they were fond of and faithful to one another, and if we live in a state of society in which the home is the unit and the most important consideration, then Jack Ashton and Mildred his wife were almost perfect beings.

If we do not so live, there may be something to be said against them : that they were selfish or so, that they were narrow. But what does that matter? In due time the baby arrived, and put a crown on this glory of domes tic virtue. You are privileged to contemplate it at about half-past two in the afternoon, at its home in Eaton Place. Jack Ashton and his wife had finished lunch, a substantial and deliberately considered lunch, and were looking with slightly torpid affection on one another. Jack Ashton was dark, sleek, and handsome in (possibly) a somewhat bovine manner. He looked athletic and in good condition, perhaps half a stone or so above his weight. His wife was a very plump but straight and well-made young woman, dark also, with clear, regular, and intelligent features, not quite undistinguished in general effect, well but imposingly dressed, a little lavishly ringed.

A letter came for her, and she opened it and read. " Oh, dear ! Oh, Jack ! George Ashton 's go ing to marry ! " The two round faces were grave, and Jack stopped eating grapes in salute to the bad news. " There goes my chance ! " he said ; " but of course it was always likely. Damn, though." " Oh, I don't know. He used to shut himself up so at Rowe. Of course I never wished him any harm — still, you were the next — It is cruel — Oh, Jack, guess whom he 's going to marry ! " Her melancholy gave way to excite ment. "It's too extraordinary." "Who? He used to go about with Lady Tremayne. She 's married though. Who is it? " " You '11 never guess. Nelly Canover ! " "No! By Jove, though, what! Nelly Canover ! She '11 make Rowe sit up, though, won't she?" " I cut her only a month ago," said Mildred, reflectively, "when Lucy Skeffington wouldn't speak to her.

I thought it best on the whole, and now Mrs. Ashton writes calmly to say her son's going to marry her. It's ajar for her — George's mother — isn't it?" She laughed mirthfully, and comfortably added, " I always hated her." " Poor old lacly, she has n't been bad to you, Milly." " Oh, she presented me when we married, and gave me those stones. But she always seems to snub me. I can stand alone now. I wonder about those jewels of hers, though. They're not heirlooms, are they?" "No! why?" " Why, don't you see, she 's sure to quarrel with Nelly Canover, and why shouldn't she leave them to me? That would be something, if I can't be Mrs. Ashton of Rowe. Her money too — One can't tell." Jack Ashton was lost in the practical young woman's ready acceptance of the situation. The taste of it may have escaped him, or he may have recognised the beautiful confidence in himself which made it possible.

" But fancy George Ashton," she continued ; "what could have made him do it?" " Oh, she 's pretty enough when all 's said and done." "But a man who lives alone on his place nine months in the year — " "George is n't a saint, all the same. Besides, any man might fall in love with her." " How did he know her? " " I don't know; I remember now Skeffington told me he often met him there." " Do you think he knows all about her? " "George?" asked the sagacious Jack, "Oh, he must. After all, it 's only that she 's been mixed up with a few men who have n't the best reputation in the world. There 's nothing very definite against her." Mrs. Jack compressed her lips. " H'm ! " she said. " Well, I '11 go and call on the Cano vers this afternoon." " Will she like it after your cutting her? " " Oh, that was a mistake.

She can't do with out me, under the circumstances, and it's no use our being at feud with Rowe." "By Jove," her husband remarked, after a pause, " I should n't be surprised if she bolted at the church-door or something. She 's wild enough." Mildred smiled but shook her head. " She can't be such a fool. And with a man like George it's no use trying — anybody's trying — to break it off." She sighed as a resigned sufferer. "But they're sure to quarrel afterwards. Perhaps after all — " here Jack remembered his magnanimity and delicacy — "but hang it, it's not our business. We must try to make things comfortable, you know." " Ye — es," said his wife. She leaned her cheek on her hand and toyed with the grapes on her plate, meditating. Then brightly she rose and went across to her husband. " Well, old boy, we must cheer ourselves up.

We '11 dine out to-night. Most of the dinner will do for lunch to-morrow. We '11 dine some where together and go to a play." She patted her husband's cheek; he took the cigar from his mouth, and they kissed one another. Let us leave them in this position of domestic tenderness.

Chapter III

A woman's reflections iooo Lowndes Street, S. W. Tuesday. Dear George, — I congratulate you on attaining the wish of your heart and wish you every happiness with all mine. When shall I meet Miss Canover? Soon, I hope. I used to know her mother some centuries ago, and feel a very old, old woman. I go down to Beckley to hunt for a fortnight to-morrow, but hope when I return you will, when you are in town, bring Miss Canover to see your ancient friend. My best remembrances, please, to Mrs. Ashton, and Believe me, Ever sincerely yours, Clara Tremayne. It was a commonplace letter enough, but when Lady Tremayne had finished it, she paused to consider its fitness. She read it through twice, and then threw it down. She looked rather vacantly before her, then quickly folded and addressed it. As she rose from the small bureau in a corner of her long, twisted drawing room — it took advantage of the angle in a corner-house — and walked towards the fire, she seemed — as you would guess from her allusion to her old age — very young for her thirty-five years.

She was tall, slender, and her face, a little long in feature, was of a beauty that, for want of the right word, we call intellectual and spiritual. Though she walked erect and firmly, there was about her some suggestion of ethereal mystery. Whether, if you saw her hunting, and not, as now, in a sweeping tea gown, the suggestion would be gone or would be intensified, I cannot tell. But I think such women as Lady Tremayne (whom I cannot hope to describe) carry always in their air, even in their intimate speech, a reserve which the perceptive know to be inevitable, and the coarse-grained either do not see or cannot tolerate. One assumes breeding, of course: there is another reserve, which is an infallible criterion of something to be avoided. Lady Tremayne was a sportswoman, a woman of brains, a woman of the world.

When Jack Ashton, a casual acquaintance, met her, it never crossed his mind that she was less open to him than he to her; to Mildred Ashton she was detestable. She sat in a low chair before the fire, and mused on her life. It was not the life of a heroine or a martyr. She had not married Sir Maurice Tremayne, her senior by nearly twenty years, to save her father from ruin or to educate her younger brothers. She married him, when she was twenty-seven, because she liked him, because she was tired of her mode of life, because she hated poverty, because she knew her world and saw in the future life no marvellous potentialities for which to forego this apparent certainty. In a way she was fortunate. Sir Maurice Tremayne was a soldier, interested in his profession and in politics. His wife gave him all, with one exception, which he had wished for and expected ; to perform his part of the arrangement was no task to a courteous and even-tempered gentle man.

Her love of hunting, which he under stood, he gratified; her love of books, which he did not understand, he did not obstruct. But there assiduity ended. She had borne him no child, and he felt no overpowering admiration for her mind or body. It was better so perhaps; a grey life is better than a yellow life of jealous trials, or a black life of unacceptable and constant love-making; but grey Lady Tre mayne's life indubitably was. She had the keen but fleeting delight of hunting, she had the equable delight of a literary taste which cared nothing for fevered crazes. She was not a profoundly affectionate woman ; but she had power wto exercise and power to appreciate a delicate sympathy, and somehow there had come in her way little opportunity for either. Into this grey life had come George Ashton.

She had known him since her marriage, for Mrs. Ashton was an old friend of her husband, but it was only in the last two or three years that she had known him well. There are minds in these days to whom the mention of a man and a woman proves that a luckless story-teller implies some gross connection. They are minds which, as a poet has said, it is impossible to cleanse or to enlighten — one can but say they lie. There was no word or deed of George Ashton and Lady Tremayne concerning one an other which could have pained Sir Maurice, her lord. They were fast friends. Their attitudes to their fellows were sympathetically diverse, the woman's aloof, sorrowful, a little bitter, the man's kindly, a little contemptuous, and aloof. Neither had sown in tears, neither had reaped in joy. Each felt, not very vaguely, what was lacking in the other's content, and each min istered somewhat to the want, the one knowing surely, but not deeply regretting, that no ministry could be complete, the other knowing, sorrowfully perhaps, that some other woman, not she, might minister wholly.

Their talk was imper sonal, a little personally so sometimes. They went about together, to the opera, to theatres sometimes, to see pictures. She, a matron and his senior, came to call him by his Christian name. They sat in the park together; they sat together in Lady Tremayne's drawing-room. When they met in society, they talked with one another almost invariably, and of course some people talked about them — in the colourless modern manner which may mean nothing, or may mean that nothing matters. I am sure that George Ashton would have had no success had he tried to be more than a friend to Lady Tremayne. I am sure that she never suggested to herself a wish that he should try. I am not sure that, had he tried, there would not have been some pleasure in defeating him. He did not try. There are men of facile passions with whom, given mere possibility, intimacy and desire are always joined.

They are not of necessity coarse minded, for intimacy may precede; they are men of facile passions. There are other men with whom intimacy and desire are most often separate — they are not the true antithesis of the others, merely another kind of man — whom, to speak roughly, sense and spirit (or even, sometimes, the subtle and rare effects of sense) attract in different places. George Ashton was one of these : you may find a cause possibly, but with dubious science, in the sensi tiveness and delicacy of his mother and his father's exaggerated instinct. He had had more than one commonplace amour, and more than one subtle and searching and (as the world will have it) innocent intimacy with a woman. Clara Tremayne was the last of these. The friendship satisfied George Ashton. I am not sure that the friendship brought with it perfect peace and contentment to the mind of Clara Tremayne.

At last there happened a thing which had not happened before, George Ashton thought. He was in love with and desired to marry a girl whom his best perceptions and intuitions al lowed him to approve. This time, he told him self (I regret to say he had a habit, very shock ing to some people, of thinking about his emotions), these intuitions and perceptions were not in abeyance. It was true that Nelly Can over had lived a life he thought stupid and rather vulgar, and that there were moments when this fact was apparent in her conversation. But below all that lay a spirit which was frank and loyal, which he could unreservedly admire. So much he told himself, and he added that the delights and graces of her manner meant more — so much more! — than a beauty which of course was adorable. Yes ! she was perfect ; it was hopeless to analyse her.

Hers was a union — to recur to my own brief summary — of spirit and sense. He said as much in a more concrete way in his letter of announcement to Lady Tremayne, who of course was delighted by such a consummation. She knew all that the world in general knew of Nelly Canover, whom Mildred Ashton had cut, and she wrote the letter which began this chapter. She had a right to say she was George Ashton's friend. Clara Tremayne sat before the fire and mused on her life. The old life in Northamptonshire in her father's house, the hospitality, the sport, and the kindness, came back to her, and then the sorrow when the place had to be let, and the bitterness (to her mother as well) when her father, who loved his land more than his vanity, insisted on taking a small house near and being his own agent.