CHAPTER IX

THE GODDESS OF THE TENDER FEET

‘The goddess Calamity is delicate, and ... her feet are tender. Her feet are soft, he says, for she treads not upon the ground, but makes her path upon the heads of men.’

These words, or something like them, were floating dimly in Roger Camm’s mind, as he walked with Dr. Rowntree across the square to the house on the opposite side. His heart was full to bursting. Loving Michael as he did, better than any one in the world, he felt to the full the meaning of the summons he had received, to hear his friend’s decision. It is not for a light thing that a man turns out of doors the brother in whom he has all his life felt unqualified trust and confidence; it is not a casual acquaintance whom he summons to witness the deed, and so Roger felt. But while he quite appreciated this accident of the thing, the thing itself bewildered him even yet. It was one of those bizarre, jarring circumstances which come upon one like a clap of thunder from a cloudless sky, which one fails to take in properly on the first blush of them. Even yet, Roger could not feel at home with the recollection of Michael standing erect and stiff, the spirit of anger flaming from his eyes, deaf to every remonstrance, and casting scornful eyes upon Gilbert’s pitiful condition.

Neither he nor the doctor spoke till they were in the house again. It seemed that they had been but a short time away, for there was everything as Roger had left it, and the luncheon table set for them. This bald reality and commonplace of everyday life did not seem to put things into any more comprehensible shape; if possible, they heightened the strangeness and sadness of the situation. But standing together there, they (to use the vernacular) ‘found their tongues.’ Dr. Rowntree sat down in his easy-chair, and wiped his eyes with a large red bandana handkerchief, blew his nose violently, and said, in a voice which was yet full of tears—

‘Who would ha’ thought it, Roger? who would ha’ thought it?’

‘Well,’ said Roger, propping his broad back against the mantelpiece, and staring down at his boots, ‘not I, for one, and I think there will be precious few to jerk their heads and say, “I told you so,” this time. And yet I don’t feel half so much surprised as enraged, now that it is all out.’

‘He should not have flung away what was left him in that way,’ complained Dr. Rowntree. ‘He should have been cool.’

‘Cool, doctor! Now, come! would you have been cool? Were you cool, as it was?’

‘No, no, I know. But he ought to have kept cool. He should have carried it before a court of justice. They do set aside wills sometimes, that are flagrantly unjust; and I think they would, at any rate, have handed him over that two thousand to do as he liked with. I’m sure they would; it stands to reason. An elder son, with not a penny of cash left him, except, as you may say, at the discretion of his younger brother—monstrous, monstrous! As if he had been a spendthrift, or a ne’er-do-weel!’

‘If it were twenty thousand, it would make no difference,’ said Roger slowly, for he had been working the thing out in his mind. ‘I can see where it is. Do you suppose Michael could have got beside himself in that way, just because he was disappointed of money that he had expected? He thinks too little of it for that. If every penny had been left at his own disposal, I have very little doubt he would have left it entirely in Gilbert’s hands, for he thought all the world of his business capacities. It is the treachery, not the money. When I think how Gilbert has sneaked—sneaked, all through it——’ Roger stamped his foot. ‘It shows you ought never to trust any one, least of all your nearest relations. Where Michael trusts, he trusts with his whole heart, just in the same way that he loves. He trusted Gilbert and he trusted his father, and they have cheated and duped him like a couple of blacklegs. I hope Master Gilbert’s greed will avenge itself on his own head, and I wish a pest upon every penny of his ill-gotten inheritance. It isn’t the money only that Michael has lost; it’s his faith and his trust: it is his brother, that’s what it is. That isn’t a loss you get over in a moment, even if your brother dies; and Michael has lost Gilbert in a worse way than if he had been burying him to-day beside their father. That’s about it. He will never get over it, to be the same again.’

‘I’m afraid not—I’m afraid not.’

‘He would not be what he is if he could,’ said Roger.

‘How can one console him?’

‘Nohow. It isn’t to be done.’

‘What can I say to him, my poor lad?’

‘Nothing, if you’ll believe me. I can tell you I shall not speak of it. There are things no one ought to meddle with, unless they are opened out to one. I know why he sent for me—it was in order that he might not have to enter into the whole business again. He wanted it done with, sealed up, that I might know he had no brother any more. You can’t very well talk to a man of a relation he hasn’t got, and I shall keep my mouth shut.’

‘I will try,’ said Dr. Rowntree; ‘but if I see him looking very miserable, I don’t think I can keep quiet.’

‘You won’t see Michael looking miserable, I can tell you that. My time is up,’ added Roger, looking at his watch. ‘I must go back to my work.’

He left the house, with the thought just come into his mind, ‘After all, I shall have to speak to him. I don’t see how how I can stay in this shop any longer, after the treatment he has had.’

He turned into the office, but it was with difficulty that he succeeded in giving any attention to his work; for in his mind’s eye he had the image of Michael, seated alone in his desolation in that wretched room, where the wretched scene of the morning had taken place. It seemed to Roger that the worst blow had befallen Michael which by any possibility could overtake him—which idea serves sweetly to illustrate his own extreme ignorance of life, and of the protean forms which calamity and misfortune can assume; also of the marvellously elastic nature of the human creature, and of that part of it, be it brain, or heart, or soul, or whatsoever it may in reality be, which suffers.

Roger Camm, repeating to himself the half-forgotten Greek of his quotation about the goddess Calamity, never dreamed for a moment but that she had stayed her course. Surely her feet had pressed with sufficient weight upon the head which she had selected as her standpoint! Could his spiritual eye have pierced that veil, filmy, and yet dense, which envelops us as we move to and fro on this earth, and seen the guiding powers about Michael, he would have perceived still hovering amongst them a dark form with a woebegone countenance—her of the tender feet yet.

He returned to Dr. Rowntree’s from his work, and, having no heart to amuse himself in any way outside, sat with a book, to which he gave but a divided attention, wondering the while whether Michael would go to Magdalen that night, or wait till the morrow; and wondering likewise whether she would be of any use to him in the crisis.

‘Gilbert would be a better spec. for her now,’ said Roger bitterly, within himself. ‘Only, not to blacken him more than is absolutely necessary, he never had the faintest fancy for her. In fact, I don’t believe he would take her with fifty thousand down.’

Towards ten o’clock Michael came in, greeted them both with great composure, took his accustomed chair, lighted his pipe, and made some few observations to them before they all went to bed. He made not the slightest allusion to what had taken place in the morning, and Roger did not choose or wish to break upon this reserve: the little doctor did not dare. He found, what he had never suspected before, that his adopted son had the power of holding him at arm’s length, and while he could not but admire what seemed to him Michael’s strength and self-possession, he was not quite happy at finding it thus, as it were, used against himself. This dry-eyed composure, this something indescribable in voice and glance, were, thought the doctor, magnificent, but they did not invite to the sentimental reflections of which he was longing to disburden himself.

They separated at their usual hour, and no one complained the next morning of not having slept, though under Michael’s eyes there were ominous purple rings which told of his having enjoyed something less than perfect repose.

Roger got a few words alone with him before breakfast.

‘Michael, I want to speak to you. After what has happened, I don’t see how I can stay on at the factories. I don’t fancy being mixed up with those two, when you are my friend.’

Michael paused a moment. ‘I understand what you mean,’ said he. ‘_You_ are loyal, Roger, at any rate. But there is no need for you to feel like that. It is entirely between him and me, and not another soul in the world, if you know what I mean. I know what you feel, and I believe I should feel the same in your place; but can you make a sacrifice for my sake?’

‘I daresay I could, if I knew what it was.’

‘It is, just to remain where you are. I don’t want any one to notice it for me. I can notice things for myself—such things as I wish noticing.’

‘Oh, that settles the matter, of course,’ said Roger. ‘I shall stay—unless they sack me.’

At that moment a note was brought to Michael. He opened and read it very quickly, and then tossed it across to Roger.

‘Read it,’ said he. ‘You must see me through each stage of this, so that we need never have to mention it to each other again.’

Roger read it. It was from Gilbert, and the paper on which it was written was stamped, ‘Thorsgarth, Bradstane-upon-Tees.’

‘There are two precious rascals together under the same roof,’ was Roger’s unspoken comment before he began to read.

But his face changed as he perused the lines. The note was short, but strong in its very baldness and simplicity; as unlike Gilbert’s ordinary soft politeness as the inflexible decisiveness of Michael in the same matter had been unlike his usual conduct.

Gilbert asked Michael for an interview. ‘Though you have treated me like a dog,’ he said, ‘I will show you things so that they shall be right, if you will see me. I can make it straight, too, though you do not think so.’ After a few more phrases of a similar kind, he concluded—‘Do not be hasty in your reply. Think well before you refuse what I ask, for if you do, I shall never ask again. I can make it right, and the whole future of both of us may depend upon your answer.’

Roger read this twice over to himself, and looked at Michael, who had gone to his desk and was writing quickly. As soon as he had finished, he came again to Roger and handed him his letter, which ran—

‘I have received your note, and decline to see you or hold any communication with you. Your possessions are, I believe, at the Red Gables. I shall not be there to-morrow, and you will be at liberty to fetch away what you choose of your belongings. After that you cfannot be admitted there.

MICHAEL LANGSTROTH.’

‘Michael,’ said Roger, holding both these documents in his hand, and speaking very earnestly, ‘forgive me for even seeming to meddle in your affairs. Gilbert has a meaning under that note of his. Won’t you think twice before you send that answer to him?’

‘I did all the thinking about him that I shall ever give to him again, yesterday,’ said Michael, trenchantly. ‘Do you suppose I spent all yesterday shut up in that room without coming to some definite conclusions upon matters in general and in particular? That is the answer I mean him to have, and that is the answer I shall send him.’

Roger had been far more struck than he would have cared to confess, with Gilbert’s appeal. He felt as if confessing it would impeach his loyalty to his friend, and he was all Michael’s—heart and soul. But he was a man with a reasonable head too, and he could not thrust out the feeling, though he was angry with himself for having it, that Michael was unjust, even though the object of his injustice were so great a sinner as Gilbert. Yesterday, Roger had thought no punishment could be terrible enough for Gilbert and his ‘sneaking;’ now the punishment was beginning, and he found himself almost ready to plead for mercy for the criminal.

‘Michael,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘have you the right to do it?’

‘Yes, I have,’ replied Michael, his face growing terribly hard and set again. ‘Nothing that I do to him now can be wrong.’

Roger paused, looking at his friend. In his mind were the words, ‘until seventy times seven,’ but he had not the courage to utter them. In the abstract, and as a Christian precept and command, doubtless they were right, but Michael was his friend; Michael had been so fearfully, so stupendously wronged and cheated, and by his own brother. Was he to plead Gilbert’s cause to Michael? The idea seemed monstrous. Make it right? What could make right or alter that which he had done, cunningly and secretly, against the brother who had trusted him? ‘Put yourself in his place—in Michael’s place,’ said Roger to himself. ‘Michael must be right. And yet—what a cursed thing to have reared its head between two brothers!’

‘You will do what you—please’ (he was going to have said, ‘what you think right,’ but he instinctively felt that that would not have been the true expression). ‘I know I would give my right hand if it could be different.’

‘I know you would, but it never can and never will,’ said Michael, folding and sealing his letter; and within a quarter of an hour it was on its way to Thorsgarth.

‘Are you going far to-day?’ the doctor asked Michael at breakfast. He would have given a good deal if the young man would have professed himself unable to stir, and so would have given him an opening for sympathy and condolence. But the young man did nothing of the kind.

‘Yes,’ he answered at once; ‘a good way. I shall not be back to lunch. I shall get that at the Brydges. Then I have to go on to Cotherstone, but I shall be back to dinner; and then,’ he added, ‘I must really try to get to Balder Hall. It is ages since I was there.’