The Romance of His Life Part 17

The two pets had fled together. She had made the way of escape easy for her weaker brother.

It was early in May. There was the usual crush at the Academy. I elbowed my way through the crowd to look at Serjeant's majestic portrait of M.

Near it on the line hung the picture of the goldfish.

A long-haired student and a little boy were staring at it.

"Mummy," said the child, running to a beautifully dressed slender woman looking at the Serjeant, "I want a goldfish, too."

"Well, darling, you shall have one," she said, and, turning to the young man who accompanied her, she added, "You never saw a child so fond of animals as Cedric."

The Stars in their Courses

I was always somewhat amazed when I came to think of it, but I hardly ever did think of it, that my cousin, Jimmy Cross, should have married Gertrude Bingham. There seemed no reason for such a desperate step on his part. But if one is going to be taken aback by the alliances of one's friends and relations one would journey through life in a continual state of astonishment, and the marriage service especially exhorts the married "not to be afraid with any amazement," which shows that that is the natural emotion evoked by contemplation of the holy estate, and that it is our duty not to give way to it.

I said there seemed no reason for the lethargic Jimmy to take this step, especially as he had been married before, and had enjoyed a serene widowhood for some years. But what I forgot was that he never did take any step at all in either marriage. He just sat still.

The first time his Mother arranged everything, and the result, if dull, was not actually unpleasant.

The second time Gertrude Bingham took all the necessary steps with precision and determination. Now and then it certainly seemed as if he would take alarm and run away, but he did not. He remained seated.

It is as impossible for a man rooted in inertia to achieve a marriage which implies an effort, as it is for him to evade a marriage, the avoidance of which requires an effort. He remains rec.u.mbent both when he ought to pursue and when he ought to fly. He is the prey of energetic kidnappers.

Gertrude was a great astrologer and conversed in astrological terms, which I repeat, but which I don't pretend to understand. She told me (after the wedding) that when she discovered that Jimmy's moon in the house of marriage was semi-s.e.xtile to her Venus she had known from the first that their union was inevitable. I think Jimmy felt it so too, and that it was no use struggling. To put it mildly, she placed no obstacles in the way of this inevitable union, and it took place amid a general chorus of rather sarcastic approval from both families.

What a mother Gertrude would make to Joan, Jimmy's rather spoilt girl of twelve, what a wife to Jimmy himself, what an excellent influence in the parish, what an energetic addition to our sleepy neighbourhood. We were told we were going to be stirred up. I never met the second Mrs. Cross till Jimmy brought her down as a bride to call on me in my cottage near his park gates. She at once inspired me with all the terror which very well-dressed people with exactly the right hair and earrings always arouse in me. She was good-looking, upright, had perfect health and teeth and circulation, did breathing exercises, had always just finished the book of the moment, and was ready with an opinion on it, not a considered opinion--but an opinion. During her first call I discovered that she had, for many years, held strong views about the necessity of school life for only children, and was already on the look-out for a seminary for Joan.

"It is in her horoscope," she said to me, as we walked in my orchard garden, too much engrossed with Joan's future to notice my wonderful yellow lupins. "Her Mercury and ruling planet are in Aquarius, and that means the companions.h.i.+p of her own age. I shall not delay a day in finding the best school that England can produce."

I need hardly say that such an establishment protruded itself on to Mrs.

Cross's notice, with the greatest celerity, and thither the long-legged nail-biting, pimply, round-shouldered Joan repaired, and became a reformed character, with a clear complexion and a back almost as flat as her step-mother's.

"Wonderful woman," Jimmy used to say somewhat ruefully to me, sitting on the low stone wall which divides my little velvet lawn from my bit of woodland. "Gertrude has been the making of Joan."

"And of you, too, my dear Jimmy," I remarked.

He sighed.

It was perfectly true. She had been the making of him, just as she had been the making of the Manor garden, of the boot and shoe club, the boys' carving cla.s.s, the Confirmation candidates' reading cla.s.s, the mothers' working parties, the coal club, the Church members' lending library. The only misgiving that remained in one's mind after she had been the making of all these things was that it seemed a pity that they were all so obviously machine-made, turned out to pattern.

Personally, I should have preferred that they should have been treated less conventionally, or let alone. My own course and Jimmy's would, of course, have been to have left them alone. We left everything alone. But Gertrude always had a ready-made scheme for everything and everybody.

She even had a scheme of salvation into which the Deity was believed to be compressed. I did not mind much the industrious efforts she expended on Jimmy, who was now an inattentive Magistrate and member of the County Council, and wobbly chairman of his own Parish Council, writing an entirely illegible hand, which perhaps did not matter much as he never answered letters. But I felt acutely distressed when she reconstructed the rambling old Manor garden entirely. All its former pleasant characteristics were wrenched out of it. It was drawn and quartered, and then put together anew in compartments. It contained everything; a j.a.panese garden, a rock garden, a herb garden, a sunk garden, a wilderness, a rose garden, a pergola, three pergolas, just as the village now contained, a boot club, a coal club, a--but I think I have said that before.

In the course of time she presented Jimmy with two most remarkable children, at least she said they were remarkable: and from their horoscopes I gathered the boy would probably become a prime minister, and the girl a musical genius. We don't actually know yet what form their greatness will take, for as I write this they are still greedy, healthy children, who come out in plum-pudding rash regularly at Christmas.

I knew her well by the time the garden had been given its _coup de grace_, and I told her after I had been dragged all over it that she had a constructive mind. (I have never been a particularly truthful person, but my career as a liar dates from Jimmy's marriage with Gertrude.)

My remark pleased her. She smiled graciously and said, "Ah, I had not got Mars rising in Capricorn for nothing when I was born."

As we became more intimate she insisted on drawing out my horoscope, and after a week of intense mental activity produced a sort of cart wheel on paper at which I looked with respectful misgiving.

"I hope it does not say anything about my living anywhere except here,"

I said anxiously.

I had long had a fear at the back of my mind that she might need my cottage for some benevolent scheme. Jimmy, who had always been fond of me, had let it to me at a nominal rent in his easygoing widower days, because the mild climate suited my rheumatism, and my society suited him. Round the cottage had gradually sprung up what many, though not Gertrude, considered a beautiful garden.

"No travelling at all," she said, "no movement of any kind. And I am afraid, Anne, I can't hold out the slightest hope of a marriage for you."

"Since I turned forty I had begun to fear I might remain unwedded," I remarked.

"No sign of marriage," she said, exploring the cart wheel, "and there must have been considerable lethargy in the past when openings of this kind did occur. Your Venus seems for many years to have been in square to Neptune, and that would tend to make these chances slip away from you."

"I endeavoured to pounce on them," I said humbly. "My dear mother's advice to me as to matrimony was 'clutch while you can'--I a.s.sure you I left no stone unturned."

"In that case you probably turned the wrong ones," she said judicially.

"And I am sorry to tell you that I don't see any good fortune coming to you either, and rather bad health. In short, you will have a severe illness next spring. March especially will be a bad month for you. Your Moon will be going through Virgo, the sign of sickness."

It generally was. I don't mean my moon, but March. I rarely got through the winter without an attack of rheumatism at the end of it.

All in a moment, as it seemed to me, after a few springs and autumns and attacks of rheumatism, Gertrude's two children were leaving the nursery, and Joan was returning home from school to be introduced into society.

Gertrude began to look round for a governess who would also be a companion for Joan. I helped her to find one. It was a case of nepotism.

I recommended my own niece, Dulcibella, who had just returned from the completion of her education at Dresden. Dulcibella's impecunious parents had, of course, both died and left her to battle with life--and me, alone, her only heritage being a wild rose prettiness and dark eyes like an Alderney calf's.

She was well educated. I had been able to achieve that owing to the cheap rate at which I lived, thanks to Jimmy. But I had thoroughly made up my mind that I was not going to have her twirling her thumbs under my roof. She was close on eighteen, and must now earn her own living.

She was staying with me on a visit when Gertrude told me of her requirements. Gertrude's two stout children were at that moment sitting on the lawn blowing soap bubbles with Dulcibella. Jimmy had been engaged in the same pursuit as his offspring five minutes earlier, but had departed. Gertrude looked at the group critically.

"Your niece does not look strong," she said dubiously.

"She isn't."

"Or energetic."

"She's not."

"Is she really firm with children?"

"I should not think so, but you are a better judge of character than I am."

Conscience p.r.i.c.ked as I said the words, but I had become inured to its p.r.i.c.kings.

"I have, of course, studied human nature," she said slowly, still looking at the pretty group on the lawn.

I have not yet met a fellow creature who does not think he has studied human nature. Yet how few turn the pages of that open book. And out of that few the greatest number scan it upside down.