style="font-size:15px;"> 'Do – do, my dear fellow.' Athelstan shook hands and walked away. 'Now, there's a man, gentlemen, who might have done anything – anything he might have done. Rowed stroke to his boat. Threw up everything eight years ago and went away – nobody knew why. Sad to see so much promise wasted. Sad – sad. He hasn't even touched his drink. Then I must – myself.' And he did.
Observe that there is no such lamentation over the failure of a promising young man as from one who has also failed. For, by a merciful arrangement, the failure seldom suspects himself of having failed.
'Now, Mr. Checkley,' said the barrister, 'he's gone away and you needn't hide yourself any longer – and you can let me have my paper again.'
Mr. Checkley spoke no more that evening. He drank up his rum-and-water, and he went away mightily perturbed. That Athelstan Arundel had come back portended that something would happen. And like King Cole's prophet, he could not foretell the nature of the event.
CHAPTER IV
A REBELLIOUS CHILD
Elsie left her lover at the door. Most accepted suitors accompany their sweethearts into the very bosom of the family – the gynæceum – the parlour, as it used to be called. Not so George Austin. Since the engagement – the deplorable engagement – it was understood that he was not to presume upon entering the house. Romeo might as well have sent in his card to Juliet's mamma. In fact, that lady could not possibly regard the pretensions of Romeo more unfavourably than Mrs. Arundel did those of George Austin. This not on account of any family inequality, for his people were no more decidedly of the middle class than her own. That is to say, they numbered as many members who were presentable and quite as many who were not. Our great middle class is pretty well alike in this respect. In every household there are things which may be paraded and things tacenda: members unsuccessful, members disgraceful. All the world knows all the things which must be concealed: we all know that all the world knows them; but still we pretend that there are no such things, and so we maintain the family dignity. Nor could the widow object to George on account of his religious opinions, in which he dutifully followed his forefathers; or of his abilities, manners, morals, culture, accomplishments, or outward appearance, in all of which he was everything that could be expected of a young man who had his own fortune to make. A rich young man has no need of manners, morals, abilities, or accomplishments: a thing too often forgotten by satirists when they depict the children of Sir Midas Georgias and his tribe. The lady's objection was simply and most naturally that the young man had nothing and would probably never have anything: that he was a managing clerk without money to buy a partnership in a highly congested profession. To aggravate this objection, he stood in the way of two most desirable suitors who were supposed to be ready should Elsie give them any encouragement. They were a rich old man whose morals could no longer be questioned; and a rich young man whose morals would doubtless improve with marriage – if, that is, they wanted improvement, for on this delicate subject ladies find it difficult to get reliable information. And, again, the exalted position of the elder sister should have been an example and a beacon. Which of you, Mesdames, would look on with patience at such a sacrifice – a young and lovely daughter thrown away, with all her charms and all her chances, upon a man with two hundred pounds a year and no chance of anything much better? Think of it – two hundred pounds a year – for a gentlewoman!
There are some families – many families – with whom the worship of wealth is hereditary. The Arundels have been City people, married with other City people – in trade – for two hundred years and more: they are all members of City Companies: there have been Lord Mayors and Sheriffs among them: some of them – for they are now a clan – are rich: some are very rich; one or two are very, very rich: those who fail and go bankrupt quickly drop out of sight. All their traditions are of money-getting: they estimate success and worth and respect by the amount a man leaves behind – it is the good old tradition: they talk of money: they are not vulgar or loud or noisy or disagreeable in any way: but they openly and without disguise worship the great god Plutus and believe that he, and none other, is the God of the Christians. They have as much culture as other people, at least to outward show: they furnish their houses as artistically as other people: they buy pictures and books: but ideas do not touch them: if they read new ideas, they are not affected by them, however skilfully they may be put: they go to Church and hear the parable about Dives and they wonder how Dives could have been so hard-hearted. Then they go home and talk about money.
Elsie's father, a younger son of the richest branch of this family, started with a comfortable little fortune and a junior partnership. He was getting on very well indeed: he had begun to show the stuff of which he was made, a good, stout, tenacious kind of stuff, likely to last and to hold out; he was beginning to increase his fortune: he looked forward to a successful career: and he hoped to leave behind him, after many, many years, perhaps three-quarters of a million. He was only thirty-five years of age, yet he was struck down and had to go. His widow received little more than her husband's original fortune: it was small compared with what she might fairly have expected when she married, but it was large enough for her to live with her three children in Pembridge Gardens. What happened to the son, you know. He went away in a royal rage and had never been heard of since. The elder daughter, Hilda, when about two-and-twenty, as you also know, had the good fortune to attract the admiration of a widower of very considerable wealth, the brother of her guardian. He was forty years older than herself, but he was rich – nay, very rich indeed. Jute, I believe, on an extensive scale, was the cause of his great fortune. He was knighted on a certain great occasion when Warden of his Company, so that he offered his bride a title and precedence, as well as a great income, a mansion in Palace Gardens, a handsome settlement, carriages and horses, and everything else that the feminine heart can desire.
The widow, soon after her husband died, found the time extremely dull without the daily excitement of the City talk to which she had been accustomed. There was no one with whom she could discuss the money market. Now, all her life, she had been accustomed to talk of shares and stocks and investments and fluctuations and operations and buying in and selling out. She began, therefore, to watch the market on her own account. Then she began to operate: then she gave her whole time and all her thoughts to the business of studying, watching, reading, and forecasting. Of course, then, she lost her money and fell into difficulties. Nothing of the kind: she made money. There is always plenty of virtuous indignation ready for those foolish persons who dabble in stocks. They are gamblers; they always lose in the long run: we all know that; the copy-books tell us so. If two persons play heads and tails for sovereigns, do they both lose in the long run? If so, who wins? Where does the money go? Even a gambler need not always lose in the long run, as all gamblers know. La veuve Arundel was not in any sense a gambler. Nor was she a dabbler. She was a serious and calculating operator. She took up one branch of the great money market and confined her attentions to that branch, which she studied with so much care and assiduity that she became a professional; that is to say, she threw into the study all her energies, all her thoughts, and all her intellect. When a young man does this on the Stock Exchange he may expect to win. Mrs. Arundel was not an ordinary young man; she was a sharp and clever woman: by hard work she had learned all that can be learned, and had acquired some of that prescience which comes of knowledge – the prophet of the future is, after all, he who knows and can discuss the forces and the facts of the present: the Sibyl at the present day would be a journalist. She was clear-headed, quick to see and ready to act: she was of a quick temper as well as a quick perception: and she was resolute. Such qualities in most women make them absolute sovereigns in the household. Mrs. Arundel was not an absolute sovereign – partly because she thought little of her household, and partly because her children were distinguished by much the same qualities, and their subjection would have proved difficult if not impossible.
This was the last house in London where one might have expected to find a girl who was ready to despise wealth and to find her happiness in a condition of poverty. Elsie was completely out of harmony with all her own people. There is a good deal of opinion going about in favour of the simple life: many girls have become socialists in so far as they think the amassing
