He had been unable to resist the temptation of asking the news, because he sincerely hoped that the old man was about to draw his last breath, and because there seemed to him to be something attractively ironical in the action. He even expected that Mr. Craik would understand that the inquiry was made from motives of hatred rather than of sympathy, and imagined with pleasure that the thought might inflict a sting and embitter his last moments. There was nothing contrary to George’s feelings in that, though he would have flushed with shame at the idea that he was to be misunderstood and that what was intended for an insult was to be rewarded with a splendid fortune.
Very possibly, too, there was a feeling of opposition concerned in his act, for which he himself could not have accounted. He was not fond of advice, and Constance Fearing had seemed very anxious that he should not do what he had done. Being still very young, it seemed absurd to him that a young girl whom he scarcely knew and had only seen twice should interfere with his free will.
This contrariety was wholly unreasoning, and if he had tried to understand it, he would have failed in the attempt. He would certainly not have attributed it to the beginning of a serious affection, for he was not old enough to know how often love’s early growth is hidden by what we take wrongly for an antagonism of feeling.
However all these things may be explained, George Wood felt that he was in a humour quite new to him, when he rang at Tom Craik’s door. He was elated without knowing why, and yet he was full of viciously combative instincts. His heart beat with a pleasant alacrity, and his mind was unusually clear. He would have said that he was happy, and yet his happiness was by no means of the kind which makes men at peace with their surroundings or gentle toward those with whom they have to do. There was something overbearing in it, that agreed with his natural temper and that found satisfaction in what was meant for an act of unkindness.
He found his father reading before the fire. The old gentleman read, as he did everything else, with the air of a man who is performing a serious duty. He sat in a high-backed chair with wooden arms, his glasses carefully adjusted upon his nose, his head held high, his lips set in a look of determination, his long hands holding the heavy volume in the air before his sight and expressive in their solid grasp of a fixed and unalterable purpose. George paused on the threshold, wondering for the thousandth time that so much resolution of character as was visible in the least of his father’s actions, should have produced so little practical result in the struggles of a long life.
“Won’t you shut that door, George?” said Jonah Wood, not looking away from his book nor moving a muscle.
George did as he was requested and came slowly forward. He stood still for a moment before the fireplace, spreading his hands to the blaze.
“Tom Craik is dying,” he said at last, looking at his father’s face.
There was an almost imperceptible quiver in the strong hands that held the book. A very slight colour rose in the massive grey face. But that was all. The eyes remained fixed on the page, and the angle at which the volume was supported did not change.
“Well,” said the mechanical voice, “we must all die some day.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE WORLD WAS very much surprised when it was informed that Thomas Craik was not dead after all. During several weeks he lay in the utmost danger, and it was little short of a miracle that he was kept alive — one of those miracles which are sometimes performed upon the rich by physicians in luck. While he was ill George, who was disappointed to find that there was so much life in his enemy, made frequent inquiries at the house, a fact of which Mr. Craik took note, setting it down to the young man’s credit. Nor did it escape the keen old man that his sister Totty’s expression grew less hopeful, as he himself grew better, and that her fits of spasmodic and effusive rejoicing over his recovery were succeeded by periods of abstraction during which she seemed to be gazing regretfully upon some slowly receding vision of happiness.
Mrs. Sherrington Trimm was indeed not to be envied. In the first place all immediate prospect of inheriting her brother’s fortune was removed by his unexpected convalescence; and, secondly, she had a suspicion that in the midst of his illness he had made some change in the disposition of his wealth. It would be hard to say how this belief had formed itself in her mind, for her husband was a man of honour and had scrupulously obeyed Craik’s injunction to be silent in regard to the will. He found this the more easy, because what he liked least in his wife’s character was her love of money. Having only one child, he deemed his own and Totty’s fortunes more than sufficient, and he feared lest if she were suddenly enriched beyond her neighbours, she might launch into the career of a leader of society and take up a position very far from agreeable to his own more modest tastes. Sherry Trimm was an eminently sensible as well as an eminently honourable man. He possessed a very keen sense of the ridiculous, and he knew how easily a woman like Totty could be made the subject of ridicule, if she had her own way, and if she suddenly were placed in circumstances where the question of expenditure need never be taken into consideration. She had rarely lost an opportunity of telling him what she should do if she were enormously rich, and it was not hard to see that she confidently expected to possess such riches as would enable her to carry out what Sherry called her threats.
On the other hand Mr. Trimm’s sense of honour was satisfied by his brother-in-law’s new will. There is a great deal more of that sort of manly, honourable feeling among Americans than is dreamed of in European philosophy. Europe calls us a nation of business men, but it generally forgets that we are not a nation of shopkeepers, and that if we esteem a merchant as highly as a soldier or a lawyer it is because we know by experience that the hands which handle money can be kept as clean as those that draw the sword or hold the pen. In strong races the man ennobles the occupation, the occupation does not degrade the man. If Thomas Craik was dishonest, Jonah Wood and Sherrington Trimm were both as upright gentlemen as any in the whole world. It was not in Jonah Wood’s power to recover what had been taken from him by operations that were only just within the pale of the law, because laws have not yet been made for such cases; nor was it Sherrington Trimm’s vocation to play upon Tom Craik’s conscience in the interests of semi-poetic justice. But Trimm was honourable enough and disinterested enough to rejoice at the prospect of seeing stolen money restored to its possessor instead of being emptied into his wife’s purse, and he was manly enough to have felt the same satisfaction in the act, if his own circumstances had been far less flourishing.
But Totty thought very differently of all these things. She had in her much of her brother’s nature, and the love of money, which being interpreted into American means essentially the love of what money can give, dominated her character, and poisoned the pleasant qualities with which she was undoubtedly endowed. She had, as a natural concomitant, the keenest instinct about money and the quarter from which it was to be expected. Something was wrong in her financial atmosphere, and she felt the diminution of pressure as quickly and as certainly as a good barometer indicates the approaching south wind when the weather is still clear and bright. It was of no use to question her husband, and she knew her brother well enough to be aware that he would conceal his purpose to the last. But there was an element of anxiety and doubt in her life which she had not known before. Tom Craik saw that much in her face and suspected that it was the result of his recovery. He did not regret what he had done and he made up his mind to abide by it.
Meanwhile George Wood varied the dreariness of his hardworking life by seeing as much as possible of the Fearings. He went to the house in Washington Square as often as he dared, and before long his visits had assumed a regularity which was noticeable, to say the least of it. If he had still felt any doubt as to what was passing in his own heart at the end of the first month, he felt none whatever as the spring advanced. He was in love with Constance, and he knew it. The young girl was aware of the fact also, as was her sister, who looked on with evident disapprov
al.
“Why do you not send the man away?” Grace asked, one evening when they were alone.
“Why should I?” inquired Constance, changing colour a little though her voice was quiet.
“Because you are flirting with him, and no good can come of it,” Grace answered bluntly.
“Flirting? I?” The elder girl raised her eyebrows in innocent surprise. The idea was evidently new to her, and by no means agreeable.
“Yes, flirting. What else can you call it, I would like to know? He comes to see you — oh yes, you cannot deny it. It is certainly not for me. He knows I am engaged, and besides, I think he knows that I do not like him. Very well — he comes to see you, then. You receive him, you smile, you talk, you take an interest in everything he does — I heard you giving him advice the other day. Is not that flirting? He is in love with you, or pretends to be, which is the same thing, and you encourage him.”
“Pretends to be? Why should he pretend?” Constance asked the questions rather dreamily, as though she had put them to herself before and more than half knew the answer. Grace laughed a little.
“Because you are eminently worth while,” she replied. “Do you suppose that if you were as poor as he is, he would come so often?”
“That is not very good-natured,” observed Constance, taking up her book again. There was very little surprise in her tone, however, and Grace was glad to note the fact. Her sister was less simple than she had supposed.
“Good nature!” she exclaimed. “What has good nature to do with it? Do you think Mr. Wood comes here out of good nature? He wants to marry you, my dear. He cannot, and therefore you ought to send him away.”
“If I loved him, I would marry him.”
“But you do not. And, besides, the thing is absurd! A man with no position of any sort — none of any sort, I assure you — without fortune, and what is much worse, without any profession.”
“Literature is a profession.”
“Oh, literature — yes. Of course it is. But those miserable little criticisms he writes are not literature. Why does he not write a book, or even join a newspaper and be a journalist?”
“Perhaps he will. I am always telling him that he should. And as for position, he is a gentleman, whether he chooses to go into society or not. His father was a New Englander, I believe — but I have heard poor papa say very nice things about him — and his mother was a Winton and a cousin of Mrs. Trimm’s. There is nothing better than that, I suppose.”
“Yes — that odious Totty!” exclaimed Grace in a tone of unmeasured contempt. “She brought him here in the hope that one of us would take a fancy to him and help her poor relation out of his difficulties. Besides, she is the silliest, shallowest little woman I ever knew!”
“I daresay. I am not fond of her. But you are unjust to Mr. Wood. He is very talented, and he works very hard — —”
“At what? At those wretched little paragraphs? I could write a dozen of them in an hour!”
“I could not. One has to read the books first, you know.”
“Well — say two hours, then. I am sure I could write a dozen in two hours. Such stuff, my dear! You are dazzled by his conversation. He does talk fairly well, when he pleases. I admit that.”
“I am glad you leave him something,” said Constance. “As for my marrying him, that is a very different matter. I have not the slightest idea of doing that. To be quite honest, the idea has crossed my mind that he might wish it — —”
“And yet you let him come?”
“Yes. I cannot tell him not to come here, and I like him too much to be unkind to him — to be cold and rude for the sake of sending him away. If he ever speaks of it, it will be time to tell him what I think. If he does not, it does him no harm — nor me either, as far as I can see.”
“I do not know. It seems to me that to encourage a man and then drop him when he can hold his tongue no longer is the reverse of human kindness.”
“And it seems to me, my dear, that you are beginning to argue from another side of the question. I did not understand that it was out of consideration for Mr. Wood — —”
“No, it was not,” Grace admitted with a laugh. “I am cruel enough to wish that you would be unkind to him without waiting for him to offer himself. You are a very inscrutable person, Conny! I wish I could find out what you really think.”
Constance made no answer, but smiled gently at her sister as she took up her book for the second time. She began to read as though she did not care to continue the conversation, and Grace made no effort to renew it. She understood enough of Constance’s character to be sure that she could never understand it thoroughly, and she relinquished the attempt to ascertain the real state of things. If Constance had vouchsafed any reply, she would have said that she was in considerable perplexity concerning her own thoughts. For the present, however, her doubts gave her very little trouble. She possessed one of those calm characters which never force their owners to be in a hurry about a decision, and she was now, as always, quite willing to wait and see what course her inclinations would take.
Calmness of this sort is often the result of an inborn distrust of motives in oneself and in others, combined with an almost total absence of impatience. The idea that it is in general better to wait than to act, gets the upper hand of the whole nature and keeps it, perhaps throughout life, perhaps only until some strong and disturbing passion breaks down the fabric of indolent prejudice which surrounds such minds. Constance had thought of most of the points which her sister had brought up against George Wood, and was not at all surprised to hear Grace speak as she had spoken. On the contrary she felt a sort of mental pride in having herself discerned all the objections which stood in the way of her loving George. None of them had appeared to be insurmountable, because none of them were in reality quite just. She was willing to admit that her fortune might be what most attracted him, but she had no proof of the fact, and having doubted him, she was quite as much inclined to doubt her own judgment of him. His social position was not satisfactory, as Grace had said, but she had come to the conclusion that this was due to his distaste for society, especially since she had heard many persons of her acquaintance express their regret that the two Woods could not forget old scores. His literary performances were assuredly not of the first order, and she felt an odd sort of shame for him, when she thought of the poor little paragraphs he turned out in the papers, and compared the work with his conversation. But George had often explained to her that he was obliged to write his notices in a certain way, and that he occupied his spare time in producing matter of a very different description. In fact there were answers to every one of Grace’s objections and Constance had already framed for herself the replies she was prepared to give her sister.
Her principal difficulty lay in another direction. Was the very decided liking she felt for George Wood the beginning of love, or was it not? That it was not love at the present time she was convinced, for her instinct told her truly that if she had loved him, she could not have discussed him so calmly. What she defined as her liking was, however, already so pronounced that she could see no objection to allowing it to turn into something warmer and stronger if it would, provided she were able to convince herself of George’s sincerity. Her fortune was certainly in the way. What man in such circumstances, she asked herself, could be indifferent to the prospect of such a luxurious independence as was hers to confer upon him she married? She wished that some concatenation of events might deprive her of her wealth for a time long enough to admit of her trying the great experiment, on condition that it might be restored to her so soon as the question was decided in one way or the other. Nevertheless she believed that if she really loved him, she could forget to doubt the simplicity of his affection.
George, on his part, was not less sensitive upon the same point. His hatred of all sordid considerations was such that he feared lest his intentions might be misinterpreted wherever there was a question of money. On the other hand, he was becoming
aware that his intercourse with Constance Fearing could not continue much longer upon its present footing. There existed no pretext of relationship to justify the intimacy that had sprung out of his visits, and even in a society in which the greatest latitude is often allowed to young and marriageable women, his assiduity could not fail to attract attention. The fact that the two young girls had a companion in the person of an elderly lady distantly connected with them did not materially help matters. She was a faded, timid, retiring woman who was rarely seen, and who, indeed, took pains to keep herself out of the way when there were any visitors, fearing always to intrude where she might not be wanted. George had seen her once or twice but was convinced that she did not know him by sight. He knew, however, that his frequent visits had been the subject of remark among the young girls’ numerous acquaintance, for his cousin Totty had told him so with evident satisfaction, and he guessed from Grace’s behaviour, that she at least would be glad to see no more of him. What Grace had told her sister, however, was strictly true. Constance encouraged him. George was neither tactless nor fatuous, and if Constance had shown that his presence was distasteful to her, he would have kept away, and cured himself of his half-developed attachment as best he could.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 497