Part 47 (2/2)

”In about two hours his wife came back dressed to go. She said, 'I've packed my boxes. I shall send for them. The maids have packed theirs and they will send. I've sent them on to the station in front of me. There's only one more thing I want to say to you. You say this woman--' ('This woman, you know!' old Sabre said when he was telling me.) 'You say this woman has a claim on us?'

”He began, 'Mabel, I do. I--'

”She said, 'Do you want my answer to that? My answer is that perhaps she has a claim on _you!_'

”And she went.”

III

”Well, there you are, old man. There it is. That's the story. That's the end. That's the end of my story, but what the end of the story as Sabre's living it is going to be, takes--well, it lets in some pretty wide guessing. There he is, and there's the girl, and there's the baby; and he's what he says he is--what I told you: a social outcast, beyond the pale, ostracized, excommunicated. No one will have anything to do with him. They've cleared him out of the office, or as good as done so.

He says the man Twyning worked that. The man Twyning--that Judas Iscariot chap, you remember--is very thick with old Bright, the girl's father. Old Bright pretty naturally thinks his daughter has gone back to the man who is responsible for her ruin, and this Twyning person--who's a partner, by the way--wrote to Sabre and told him that, although he personally didn't believe it--'not for a moment, old man,' he wrote--still Sabre would appreciate the horrible scandal that had arisen, and would appreciate the fact that such a scandal could not be permitted in a firm like theirs with its high and holy Church connections. And so on. He said that he and Fortune had given the position their most earnest and sympathetic thought and prayers--and prayers, mark you--and that they'd come to the conclusion that the best thing to be done was for Sabre to resign.

”Sabre says he was knocked pretty well silly by this step. He says it was his first realisation of the att.i.tude that everybody was going to take up against him. He went off down and saw them, and you can imagine there was a bit of a scene. He said he was dashed if he'd resign. Why on earth should he resign? Was he to resign because he was doing in common humanity what no one else had the common humanity to do? That sort of thing. You can imagine it didn't cut much ice with that crowd. The upshot of it was that Twyning, speaking for the firm, and calling him about a thousand old mans and that sort of slush, told him that the position would be reconsidered when he ceased to have the girl in his house and that, in the interests of the firm, until he did that he must cease to attend the office.

”And then old Sabre said he began to find himself in exactly the same position with every one. Every door closed to him. No one having anything to do with him. Even an old chap next door, a particular friend of his called Fungus or Fargus or some such name--even this old bird's house and his society is forbidden him. Sabre says old Fungus, or whatever his name is, is all right, but it appears he's ruled by about two dozen ramping great daughters, and they won't let their father have anything to do with Sabre. No, he's shut right out, everywhere.

”And Sabre, mind you--this is Sabre's extraordinary point of view: he's not a bit furious with all these people. He's feeling his position most frightfully; it's eating the very heart out of him, but he's working up not the least trace of bitterness over it. He says they're all supporting an absolutely right and just convention, and that it's not their fault if the convention is so hideously cruel in its application.

He says the absolute justice and the frightful cruelty of conventions has always interested him, and that he remembers once putting up to a great friend of his as an example this very instance of society's att.i.tude towards an unmarried girl who gets into trouble,--never dreaming that one day he was going to find himself up against the full force of it. He said, 'If this poor girl, if any girl, didn't find the world against her and every door closed to her, just look where you'd be, Hapgood. You'd have morality absolutely gone by the h.o.a.rd. No, all these people are right, absolutely right--and all conventions are absolutely right--in their principle; it's their practice that's sometimes so terrible. And when it is, how can you turn round and rage?

I can't.'

”Well, I said to him what I say to you, old man. I said, 'Yes, that's all right, Sabre. That's true, though there're precious few would take it as moderately as you; but look here, where's this going to end?

Where's it going to land you? It's landed you pretty fiercely as it is.

Have you thought what it may develop into? What are you doing about it?'

”He said he was writing round, writing to advertisers and to societies and places, to find a place where the girl would be taken in to work and allowed to have her baby with her. He said there must be hundreds of kind-hearted people about the place who would do it; it was only a question of finding them. Well, as to that, kind hearts are more than coronets and all that kind of thing, but it strikes me they're a jolly side harder than coronets to find when it comes to a question of an unmarried mother _and_ her baby, _and_ when the kind hearts, being found, come to make inquiries and find that the person making application on the girl's behalf is the man she's apparently living with, _and_ the man with Sabre's extraordinary record in regard to the girl. I didn't say that to poor old Sabre. I hadn't the face to. But I say it to you. You're no doubt thinking it for yourself. All that chain of circ.u.mstances, eh? Went out of his way to get her her first job. Got her into his house. In a way responsible for her getting the sack. Child born just about when it must have been born after she'd been sacked.

Girl coming to him for help. Writing to his wife, 'If only you knew the truth.' Wife leaving him. Eh? It's pretty fierce, isn't it? And I don't believe he's got an idea of it. I don't believe he realises for a moment what an extraordinary coil it all is. G.o.d help him if he ever does....

He'll want it.

”No, I didn't say a word like that to him. I couldn't. The nearest I got to it was I said, 'Well, but time's getting on, you know, old man. It's a--a funny position on the face of it. What do you suppose your wife's thinking all this time?'

”He said his wife would be absolutely all right once he'd found a home for the girl and sent her away. He said his wife was always a bit sharp in her views of things, but that she'd be all right when it was all over.

”I said, 'H'm. Heard from her?'

”He had--once. He showed me the letter. Well, you know, old man, every fox knows what foxes smell like; and I smelt a dear brother solicitor's smell in that letter. Smelt it strong. Asking him to make a home possible for her to return to so they might resume their life together.

I recognised it. I've dictated dozens.

”I handed it back. I said, 'H'm' again. I said, 'H'm, you remember, old man, there was that remark of hers just as she was leaving you--that remark that perhaps the girl might have a claim on you. Remember that, don't you?'

”By Jove, I thought for a minute he was going to flare up and let me have it. But he laughed instead. Laughed as if I was a fool and said, 'Oh, good Lord, man, that's utterly ridiculous. That was only just my wife's way. My wife's got plenty of faults to find with me--but that kind of thing! Man alive, with all my faults, my wife knows me.'

”Perhaps--I say, my holy aunt, it's nearly two o'clock! Come on, I'm for bed. Perhaps his wife does know him. What I'm thinking is, does he know his wife? I'm a solicitor. I know what I'd say if she came to me.”

CHAPTER III

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