The Four Philanthropists/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
I AM CALLED UPON TO PLAY THE OFFICIAL BROTHER
When I came back to the Temple I found Angel leaning forward in her chair with her hands stretched out to the fire and staring into it.
I pulled up my chair to the other side of the fire, sat down, and said cheerfully: "If once Miss Delamere gets started, there's no end to it. I think she has as abundant a flow of talk as anyone I know."
"Yes," said Angel.
"I hope it didn't bore you to extinction."
"No," said Angel.
"It is wearisome when people whose doings are matter for the theatrical chit-chat column tell you them with such a wealth of detail."
"Yes," said Angel.
"However, to such a pretty creature most things are forgiven."
"Yes," said Angel.
It seemed to me that she was taking but a lifeless part in the conversation, and as a rule she was so ready to discuss with the liveliest interest any new acquaintance we chanced to make.
"Are you feeling out of sorts?" I said with a sudden concern.
"No," said Angel.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," said Angel.
I looked at her carefully; but there was as little expression in her face as I have ever seen in it. Then she rose, and went quietly to her room.
I lighted a cigarette, and had nearly smoked it, when the explanation of her lack of interest in our visitor broke upon my mind: sisters always, or nearly always, disapprove of their brother's friends. I was somewhat vexed; it was the first womanly invasion of my freedom of which she had ever been guilty. However I dismissed the matter as a piece of inevitable girlishness; and presently I went to her door, and called to her that it was time she was dressing to go out and dine at the Cheshire Cheese. At dinner she seemed to have lost her wonted spirits; she talked little and listlessly; and again I asked her if she were feeling out of sorts. She said that she was not. But when we returned to the Temple after dinner, she said she was going to bed, and went. As I drove down to the club to play Bridge, I wondered if she could by any chance be sulking. Truly, she had not looked sulky once, and I had believed that form of temper to be foreign to her nature. But I wondered.
When I came to breakfast next morning, I suffered a shock of surprise very near horror: Angel's hair no longer hung down her back in the thick plait. It was done up, arranged about her head in the fashion of the hour.
I sank into my chair in a dismay I could not hide, crying "Good heavens! Have you been playing at that famous beanstalk? Have you grown up in the night?"
Angel blushed and frowned and sighed: "I—I—I am grown up," she stammered. "I shall be seventeen next month."
"But why—why didn't you give me some warning? Why didn't you do it a little at a time? It is too much to change from girlhood to womanhood in a night!"
"Yes: I do look like a woman—a grown woman—don't I?" she said; and her eyes were shining with pleasure.
"As if it were a matter for pride!" I said. "But there—it's my fault, I ought to have told you I didn't approve of grown women."
"I've only seen you with one—Miss Delamere yesterday—and you approved of her—quite," she said sedately.
"A mere concession to the demands of hospitality."
"Oh, no," said Angel with assurance.
"Besides, I'm used to her."
"Well, you will—" she said, and stopped short.
I fell upon my breakfast with no little irritation: the necessity of the readjustment of ideas, even when it breaks slowly and gently on the mind, is sufficiently tiresome; when it is suddenly thrust upon it with regard to a matter of prime importance, it is painful. It was to be no small readjustment, as I learned at once, for all through breakfast I had to look and look again at her, observing and weighing the change, getting my eyes used to it. To bind up the hair, or leave it hanging down seems a small enough matter; but in her case it had made a beautiful woman of a charming child. It had, too, strengthened her face in a way; it seemed to have given a greater breadth to her brow, and her candid eyes had a more steadfast look in them. I had to adapt myself to this change; and I had a dim prevision that it was going to modify our brotherly and sisterly relation. I resented it; for I was content with things as they were.
The change came surely enough, but slowly. I began to lose my brotherly frankness, to treat her with more deference. I think, now, that there was some springing to life of the essential basic antagonism between the man and the woman. Beside the change in our attitude to one another, there were changes in her, too; she began to spend more money, much more money, on her dress; and she was assuredly justified of her lavishness. But I could not understand the fits of restlessness or listless brooding from which she suffered now and again. Sometimes, too, I caught her regarding me with a questioning, searching look, and again I was puzzled. Also she showed a new curiosity and unexpected interest about my movements, and the carelessness of her indirect questions did not blind me to the real strength of her desire to know.
On the Thursday after her descent upon us I took Dolly Delamere out to dinner. I perceived with regret from the questions she asked about Angel that my assurance had not set her mind at rest about our relationship, that she was still haunted by a suspicion that we were not brother and sister. I was grieved by this stubborn incredulity.
As far as I could make out the suspicion recurred at regular intervals of half an hour; and once she said, "If I thought you were humbugging me, I'd never forgive you. I'd pay you out and that little chit, too."
I did not doubt her; and I knew dear Fortune too well to believe that she would not sooner or later be given the chance. I said with enthusiasm, "Would I dream of humbugging you?"
"You'd better not," she said with distressing firmness; and I made up my mind that I had certainly better not be found out in that enterprise.
Before I could ask, she turned and went down the stairs.—Page 298
Before we went to America we had seriously discussed that matter. Now, to my surprise, I found myself heartily thanking my stars that her Art was of this exacting nature: so great a change does a separation of eight months work in a naturally faithful heart.
However I said sadly. "It seems pretty hard on me."
"I don't know," she said, looking at me with doubtful eyes. "You're very clever, but you're a queer creature. As likely as not you'd expect your wife to be a regular old-fashioned, domesticated frump. Why—why I believe you're Philistine enough at heart to expect her to sacrifice her Art to her children."
"I should certainly expect them to come first," I said firmly.
"I thought so," said Dolly with faint contempt.
She seemed ready to let the discussion drop, and I let her drop it.
The next morning I observed for the first time Angel's new curiosity about my movements. She did not ask me outright; that would have been too much to expect from any woman, even from her. But she learned after I had whetted her curiosity a little more that I had taken Dolly out to dinner, and I saw that the knowledge gave her no pleasure. I resolved another time to leave her curiosity ungratified, though I could not for the life of me see that she could have any reasonable objection to my entertaining an old friend.
Now if the binding up of Angel's hair had made a change in our intercourse, it had made a far greater change in the attitude of Chelubai and Battiger to her. I saw them growing her infatuated slaves; and I saw her beginning to learn her power and use it. It was interesting to observe, but it gave me little pleasure; precocity is always tiresome. I am bound to say that she used it but little, more in the fashion of one making idle experiments than in any other way. She seemed ever careless of it. Yet I was vexed: I had grown used to a charming unspoilt child, and I did not want a beautiful woman, conscious and probably vain of her power. I began to see with an extreme regret that the home life which I had found so pleasant was breaking up.
I was therefore more irritated than surprised when one afternoon Chelubai sought me out in the library of the Warrickshire where I was reading alone, and with a serious air, and speaking hurriedly and in some confusion, said: "There's a thing I've been wanting to talk to you about. It isn't considered necessary in the States, and I believe it is only considered necessary in the best circles in England. But I like to do the correct thing." And he stopped and seemed to seek for words.
"Drive on, sonny," I said, speaking American to help him. "It sounds as if it were something unpleasant. But don't mind me."
"Oh, no; it isn't," he said quickly. "But as she's under age, I thought—I thought I would ask your permission to pay my addresses to your sister."
I ought to have known what was coming; but as it was I was taken somewhat aback. "Good heavens," I cried. "Pay your addresses to Angel. Why, she's a mere child! She—she's only just done her hair up." And for the moment I was filled with an extreme hostility to Chelubai.
"She's nearly seventeen," said Chelubai. "And I believe that the marriageable age as fixed by British law is a good deal less than that."
It was a fact to put forward! I stared at him, my mind working with inconceivable swiftness to find some reason which would put an end to the business for good and all.
Chelubai did not wait for me to find it, he went on, "It isn't only that I admire her immensely. But I have a feeling, in fact it's an absolute conviction that her destiny and mine have been linked together in previous existences. You know that we hold that a man meets the same woman again and again in different existences and always in some close relationship. Of course the relationship may differ. In one existence she may love him, in another he may love her, and in another they may love one another. Sometimes they are married, and sometimes they are not. Sometimes they bring one another happiness, sometimes unhappiness. I have made up my mind that your sister is the woman with whom my destiny is linked in this way."
"I'm afraid it's impossible," I said slowly.
"Impossible!" cried Chelubai. "But I assure you that the fact has been demonstrated: I have it on the best authority—from three of the most advanced theosophists of the Western inner circle."
"I don't mean your theory of interlinked destinies, which is probably enough," I said, "but impossible for me to consent to your paying your addresses to Angel."
"But why?" said Chelubai; and his face fell.
"Well, you are an excellent fellow, as no one knows better than I. But after all, you know, I can't very well consent to a philanthropic murderer paying his addresses to my sister, can I?"
"B-b-but," stammered Chelubai, to whom this point of view had plainly never suggested itself, "she's a philanthropist, too—she's one of us."
"Yes, I know she is, and I'm not at all sure that it's really good for her. But of course it's a very different matter with her. She's so much younger than we are. The pursuits of the young do not as a rule impart any lasting bent to the character. It is only a passing phase in her development."
"But I've never heard her make any objection to our removing people—rather the other way. I've always thought she was devoted to furthering the progress of the human race," said Chelubai.
"Of course she is. She has a good heart."
Chelubai thought for a minute; then he said, with almost poignant regret, "Well, I suppose I could quit philanthropy."
"That would make no difference," I said quickly.
"No difference?"
"Certainly not. You have been a murderer on strictly philanthropic lines."
"But as a matter of fact I've never murdered anyone," said Chelubai, brightening.
"No, but it's the principle—the principle I look at. Besides, with decent luck you will yet succeed in one of our philanthropic enterprises. Am I justified in trusting a young girl's happiness to the keeping of a murderer, even though he has been actuated by pure altruism?"
"You know me well enough to know that I should make her happiness my first consideration!" cried Chelubai.
"I know you would. But do look at the matter fairly. You are, after all, with all your altruism, a wealthy capitalist. Angel, if she had married you, would be a capitalist's wife. Sooner or later the capitalist temper is bound to assert itself, and what now appears to you the noblest philanthropy will appear merely criminal. In the ordinary course of married life you would have your little quarrels, and you'd forever be twitting one another with your respective murders. Would that make for connubial bliss, I ask you?"
"I think it's devilish hard that a man's philanthropic endeavor should be dragged into matters of sentiment," said Chelubai. "What's it got to do with them anyway?"
"They can't be separated; they can't, really," I said earnestly. "I look upon the practical philanthropist as a natural celibate. I could not consent to his paying his addresses to my sister."
"Then you refuse me your consent?" said Chelubai curtly.
"I do; and I'm sorry to do it, but I cannot overlook your unsuitable profession," I said with tempered firmness.
I saw that he was deeply hurt and about to break out bitterly upon me; but he checked himself, reflecting doubtless that I had right upon my side, and also that he would lose all chance of attaining his end if he resented my firmness to the point of quarrelling with me, "It's very hard," he said, "and I'm not sure that it's conscientiously friendly to let a little matter like this stand between me and my hopes of happiness."
"You see I'm unhappily placed between friendship and my sister's welfare."
Chelubai nodded: "But I don't see how you're going to get married yourself; you're in just the same position as I."
"Pardon me; nothing short of hanging can prevent me marrying anyone I want, for it's only being hanged that will stamp me as a practical philanthropist."
"You English are so unconscientious," said Chelubai reproachfully. Then his face cleared, and he went on more cheerfully: "But, after all, your sister won't always need your consent. She'll be of age and able to marry as she likes."
"That's true enough," I said. "And I can assure you that I shall be very glad to be free of the responsibility."