The Turnbulls

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “But what you do in America you will do for yourself, with no assistance from me. Thousands have gone there with much less than one hundred pounds. It is almost a fortune.”

  He paused. John’s expression was dark and twisted, rebellious and frantic. James appeared not too affected by this. He looked steadfastly into his son’s eyes, though his heart ached for his own ruthlessness.

  “I have given you two thousand pounds a year for your own, here at home, Johnnie. That was intolerably stupid of me. You know nothing of money. But, in America, you will learn. You will stand or fall by your own strength or the lack of it. In some way I know that you will stand.”

  “You are booting me out, then?” asked John, brokenly.

  “Certainly not. I am giving you an opportunity to be a man, Johnnie.”

  He continued: “You have always been irresponsible, lawless and stupid, Johnnie. I blame myself for this, in part. You have played too long with your toys. It is time to put them away.”

  But John was not listening. He was gazing slowly and despairingly about the dark and quiet sitting-room, like one who has been condemned to hopeless exile. How he had hated this room, this house! But now it became a haven, warm, fragrant with home, secure and safe. From this house, this room, he was to be thrown into danger and uncertainty and struggle. He could never return. The future seemed like a bleak and bitter plain to him, with frightful stony mountains in the distance, with empty winds about him, and one with him whom he loathed and detested. He had contemplated this exile with longing, only yesterday. But it had been joyous and adventurous exile, with Eugenia.

  As he thought of his cousin, his heart divided on a blazing pang of pain, and tears rushed into his eyes for the first time. He turned aside his head to hide them from his father, but James had seen.

  He could not endure his son’s suffering. He had inflicted this upon him. But there was nothing he could do, for Johnnie’s own sake.

  “And now, Johnnie,” he said, very quietly, “you will bathe and dress, and then go to Eugenia, and tell her.”

  John started up, as if struck. “No!” he cried, wildly. “I can’t do that, father! I will write her—I’ll—!” His voice broke. He wrung his big hands together.

  But James was inexorable. “Johnnie, you must do this, believe me. It will be painful. That cannot be helped. A letter is a coward’s way. Only cowards write the things which they dare not say, or shrink from saying.”

  He lifted his hand. “Go, Johnnie,” he said, very gently. “And send in the girl to me. You need not return until you have spoken to Eugenia.”

  CHAPTER 6

  James Turnbull awaited the entry of his son’s wife. He who had lived so long in calm detachment, experienced an enormous pain in his head and his heart, a long and throbbing aching like an abscess. Did emotions, smothered and repelled and choked, wait in ambush in a man’s soul for the hour of resurgence? Then was a man unfortified against them, and completely undone by them.

  Nevertheless, his manner was quiet and stern as he waited. He had turned his chair from the fire and was facing the door. There was no sign on his face or in his manner of the exhaustion and anguish he was suffering. Only his thin frail hands were clenched on the arms of the chair, and his bright gray eyes, full and brilliant, were unusually vivid in that narrow and ascetic countenance. The fire was burning strongly behind him, and so the girl who entered so timidly, and with so much hysterical and defiant fear, could not discern his body or his form in the chair, and saw only those eyes and those white tense hands in the vague lamplight. They appeared disembodied and affrighting to her, and there rose a low whimper in her throat.

  James gazed at her, and he thought: It is only a terrified child.

  Poor young creature, and very pretty, too, in a coarse and common way. He saw that she was tall, and of a luscious figure, for all her youth. Her round face was pale, but her full loose mouth was red, as though she had a fever. The round blue disks of eyes were strained and hunted, their natural protruding quality enhanced. He saw that her taste was not at all bad, and he, who considered an error in taste worse than an error in morals, was pleased. She wore a tiny jacket of black wool over her black bombazine skirt and bodice. At the collar there was a thin white line of linen, grotesquely nunlike under that bold if frightened child’s face. A little black bonnet crowned a tumbling mass of auburn curls, which spilled down upon her shoulders, and the white ribbons were tied with pathetic coquetry under her dimpled chin. Her hands, which he suspected of vulgar size and coarseness, were thrust into a diminutive muff of some coarse black fur.

  Terrified though she was, she tried to assume a bold and defiant air, and held her head high. Yes, she was quite handsome, poor child. Moreover, to James’ sudden and mysterious relief, he detected vitality in her, strength and audacity. Her strength was an animal’s strength, sanguine and hot, quite unlike that of Eugenia’s which was steely, cool and intellectual. Stupid, yes, most deplorably stupid. The big pouting lips were somewhat gross, and too highly coloured. The tilted nose might almost be a snout, the nostrils large and distended. In better times, those smooth cheeks would be flooded with coarse colour, a milkmaid’s colour. In ten years, she would be fat and florid. Not unlike Martha MacNeill, thought James. At this thought, he smiled slightly. And those big empty blue eyes were as shallow as water in a glass. If there was a soul behind all that health and strength, it was a little unformed soul, still in embryo. He doubted that she would ever be disturbed by even its smallest movement or pulsing.

  He had seen a thousand such girls in the fields, in the little villages, clacking along in their clogs, their coarse cotton skirts draped high over thick ankles, their bright hair frowsy, their red hands swinging pails of milk as they came homeward in the sunset. He almost heard again their loud boisterous laughter.

  Yet, he was not too unhappy. This vitality matched John’s virility, this coarseness his own violence, this health his own health. He had long been uneasy over the betrothal of John and Eugenia. Would that intellectual bloodlessness, that calm aristocracy, be enough for the strength and recklessness of John Turnbull? Would it not at the end chill and destroy him? It was unfortunate, of course, that at the end it was a milk-maid, a Lancastershire lass, with whom John had become entangled. But, at the end, again, might it not be better? James could not conceive of a Eugenia in America. America was for the John Turnbulls. And the Lilybelles.

  Nevertheless, for all his philosophizing, he felt a great sickness and sinking. He assured himself that it was a snob’s illness, the sneer of the bloodless at the sight of the noisy sanguine. His aristocratic mind shrank from the girl. And now he knew that it had shrunk from his own son.

  The girl stood far from him. She was trembling. Those bright gray eyes, so formidable and bloodless, terrified her more and more. She curtsied, over and over. She caught her lower lip with her little white teeth. In a moment, John discerned, she would burst out into tearful howls.

  “Come here, child,” he said, very softly, and gently, and with a lift of his hand indicated the chair in which John had sat, very near to him.

  His voice, coming out of that bodiless gloom, and accompanying his eyes, frightened the girl still more. She burst into tears. They ran over her quivering cheeks, lay in the corners of her slack red mouth. She crept nearer to him, not daring to look away from him; as if he was a horrifying spectre. Her curtsying became more frenzied as she approached him. All the events of the last hours, and the entry into his enormous grand house, overpowered her. She sank upon the chair, and then perched on its edge, weeping, wiping away her tears with the muff.

  James waited. He was full of pity for her, and more than a little sad amusement. Delicate of perception as he was, he guessed her bewildered and frightened thoughts. A Lancastershire farm lass suddenly precipitated into the house of gentry, unwanted and terrified! He knew that her sense of propriety was more outraged than his could ever be. It was strange that it was the lower classes who were the most insist
ent upon class. It was a fetish with them. Democracy came from the aristocrats. But it was the poor, the rootless, the oppressed and the harried, who upheld the false traditions of nobility. It was they who were the inherent enemies of democracy, who would oppose it, at the last, with all the oxlike obstinacy of their natures. Perhaps they had more common sense, therefore, than the aristocrat, who maintained that all men were equal. The masses had more wit. The leaders of revolutions were born to aristocracy, ease and power. They believed that the masses desired ease and power also, and burned with indignation that these were denied to them. Hence, revolutions led by nobles, by the privileged.

  But in destroying the privileges of the naturally superior, the leaders destroyed the simple faith of the masses in government; they destroyed their belief that there were some born, by the Grace of God, to direct and rule them. This created in them a vast confusion and resentment. Hence, chaos. The masses demanded superiors to respect.

  So, James knew that the girl’s propriety had been outraged. She had been victimized, she believed. James subtly guessed that she had vaguely believed that John, because of his manner and loudness and recklessness, was no gentleman at all. Probably only a prosperous grocer’s son, or the son of a successful fishmonger or hatter, of a little better station than herself, but of her own class. Her awakening had confused and disorganized her. And so her defiance, and her terror, and her bubbling indignation.

  As she sat there, wiping away her tears unashamedly with her muff, and whimpering, her indignation gave her a pathetic dignity. James waited for a long time.

  Then he said, still very gently: “It is Lilybelle, isn’t it? John mentioned your name.”

  She flung up her head, and her tear-stained face flushed. “Lilybelle Botts, if it please you, sir.” Her voice was coarse and common. James, in spite of himself, winced.

  Suddenly, she loudly burst into incoherent speech. It was not her fault. Mr. Turnbull must understand that. She was a girl as knew her station in life. She had been brought up proper, to mind her betters. She had been taught to keep a civil tongue in her head, and keep her place. It was not her fault!

  “Begin from the start, and tell me,” said James, feeling a sudden warm sympathy for this girl and her outraged propriety.

  She whimpered, gulped and sobbed, her hands clenched in her muff. But her eyes regarded James with that terrified defiance, humility and simple dignity. Her mother was a respectable woman, with no nonsense about her, and she, Lilybelle, had been brought up proper, and had gone to church regular like, and could do plain sewing and cooking. (Poor young creature, thought James, with some urgent tenderness.) And then her aunt had brought her to London, to help her in the inn. She had respectable ways, had Lilybelle, and her aunt knew this. Everything had gone well, until yesterday.

  The girl’s sobs increased. Her face was darkly flushed. Her voice became heavy and hoarse, as she stammered out the rest of the story.

  The young gentlemen were very noisy, it seems. Lilybelle thought they must be drunk. She did not know. Her father, who had died when she was a little girl, had been known to take his beer proper on occasion, but he had never been drunk. He had been a respectable tenant farmer, and knew his place. So, Lilybelle had never before had any experience with drunkenness. He, Mr. John Turnbull, had been more boisterous and noisy than any of the others. He had been quite bold, like. The girl coloured more violently than ever, and dropped her eyes. Then, her inherent propriety asserted itself, and she jumped to her feet. Her instinct told her she should not sit in the presence of this great gentleman.

  James, respecting her propriety, did not ask her to seat herself again.

  She continued, incoherently. All at once John had approached her, and had seized her arm across the counter. He was accompanied by another young gentleman, very handsome and pale and laughing. (That would be Bollister, thought James, grimly.) John, drunk and shouting, had insisted that she marry him, and at once. Uncle Tim had tried to interfere. John had swept him aside with one flicking movement of his big arm. He had lifted the girl from behind the counter. It had all been very confusing. He had quite overpowered her. Before she knew it, she had on her bonnet and tippet, and there was a carriage. She was literally thrown into the carriage, and John had crawled in after her, with the other young gentleman. Another carriage was called, and other young gentlemen followed. She had been terribly frightened, but excited. John seemed so handsome and masterful. She had no idea who he was—

  A special licence had been procured, and they had been married by a magistrate in a dark little office. Then, the whole procession had gone to a strange flat in London. By this time, James discerned, the girl had been stupefied with excitement and fright.

  Now the girl was silent. But her face was heavily flushed, and she had dropped her eyes. James delicately refrained from questioning her further.

  After some long moments, she resumed again, haltingly. She had slept a little, while John snored in his drunkenness beside her. She had awakened, to tears and despair. After awhile, he awoke, and seeing her there, and questioning her, had cursed her with wild fury and rage. He had wept, and struck her.

  She turned her round face aside, and indicated a dark bruise along her chin. James’ quiet brows drew together, and his lips narrowed to a thin line. But he said nothing, though there was a steadfast spark, now, in his gray eyes.

  But Lilybelle apparently regarded the bruise as of no significance, and was not offended by James’ silence. In truth, there was even a small pride in her display of the bruise.

  John had risen, had dressed in black and sultry speechlessness, and then had abruptly informed the girl that she was to accompany him to his father, who would “see to it that this bloody nonsense was ended immediately.” And now, here she was.

  James studied that pretty and stupid young face with an almost passionate intensity. His lack of contact with humanity had sharpened, rather than dulled, his most subtle perceptions. He knew that this girl, though stupid and illiterate, had the cunning and shrewdness of her class in full measure, as well as its brutal common sense. He finally glanced down at his transparent clasped fingers and spoke gently:

  “And so, Lilybelle, what do you think is the best thing to do?”

  He had expected her to hesitate, but she spoke in her loud and forthright voice with a look of surprise: “Do, sir? But Mr. John said you would do it!”

  James reflected wryly: So, the young scoundrel came home with his tail between his legs, believing I would extricate him from this abominable mess at once.

  He said: “But, Lilybelle, you are a young person of some intelligence. I would prefer to know what you desire.”

  His manner had some kind deprecation in it, and so she became bold and even somewhat disdainful, as though he had lowered himself to her level, either in weakness or in his own confession of inferiority to her. She preened a little, and said in a mincing tone: “I am a respectable girl, Mr. Turnbull, as was never in any trouble before. I’m not one to go where I’m not wanted. So, I’ll go my way and Mr. John can go his own way. Best that all this be forgotten.”

  James frowned meditatively. He said, with some sharpness: “But, my dear, you are now a married woman. You could not return to your home—”

  She tossed her head so that the auburn curls bounced. “I’ve got my marriage lines, sir. You or no one else can take them from me.” Feeling superior now to this senile old gentleman who showed her such consideration and respect, (probably recognizing that she was not one to be toyed with or fooled) she sat down again, arched her neck, bridled, and surveyed him with fierce and triumphant defiance.

  James was kind-hearted, for few occasions had risen in his life for ruthlessness. He thought to himself: One cannot be too benevolent with this class. They take advantage. This thought distressed him, for it was no part of his nature to exert himself vigorously. He saw that he must do this now.

  He leaned towards the girl and spoke with cold authority: “Ah, so you have you
r ‘marriage lines.’ That is enough for you, perhaps? You would go home to your mother, with your ‘marriage lines’ and forget all this?”

  She was taken aback, more by his tone, than his words. But her slow wits gathered themselves together finally. She tried to summon her earlier defiance, and spoke sulkily:

  “I thought as you would make it worth my while—.” And then she cringed.

  “Worth your while how?”

  She was silent.

  “You mean, you thought I could buy you off? How old are you, Lilybelle?”

  She whimpered: “Fifteen, next March, sir.”

  Fifteen, then. James lay back in his chair and looked at her as coldly as he would survey an animal. She was no child, this, either by reason of age or by class. They knew how to take advantage, this class. They were predatory and cunning, for all their servility and respectfulness. At the end, the superior encountered the obstinacy of the inferior, and were confounded. He felt an outraged anger. He saw much, now. Johnnie had been a fool. But he had been helped in his folly by this girl. He, James, doubted very much that she had been forced into this marriage, as she had implied. Yes, he had her cunning to deal with, and deal with it he would.

  “You shall not have a penny from me, Lilybelle,” he said, calmly, and even with a smile.

  She stared at him. She retreated a step, as if in sudden fear.

  “No,” he continued, “you shall not return to your home with a fist full of money, Lilybelle. I can extricate my son, if I wish. I can prove that he was not responsible for this marriage, that he was tricked into it. Do you know what penalty the law exacts from a woman who humbugs a man into marriage with her? You are a clever girl. Think of this for a moment.”