Part 24 (1/2)
Faversham replied again that he had done nothing, and was as much puzzled as anybody.
”My mother was afraid you would be anything but comfortable,” said Tatham. ”She knows this gentleman of old. But she didn't know your powers of soothing the savage breast! However, you have only to say the word, and we shall be delighted to take you in for as long as you like.”
”Oh, I must stay here now,” said Faversham decidedly. ”One couldn't be ungrateful for what has been done. But my best thanks to Lady Tatham all the same. I hope I may get over to see her some day.”
”You must, of course. Dixon tells me there is a carriage coming--perhaps a motor; why not!”
A flush rose in Faversham's pale cheek.
”Mr. Melrose talked of hiring one yesterday,” he said, unwillingly. ”How far are you?”
They fell into talk about Duddon and the neighbourhood, avoiding any further discussion of Melrose. Then Faversham described his accident, and spoke warmly of Undershaw, an occupation in which Tatham heartily joined.
”I owe my life to him,” said Faversham; adding with sudden sharpness, ”I suppose I must count it an advantage!”
”That would be the common way of looking at it!” laughed Tatham. ”What are you doing just now?”
”Nothing in particular. I am one of the large tribe of briefless barristers. I suppose I've never given enough of my mind to it. The fact is I don't like the law--never have. I've tried other things--fatal, of course!--but they haven't come off, or at least only very moderately.
But, as you may suppose--I'm not exactly penniless. I have a few resources--just enough to live on--without a wife.”
Tatham felt a little awkward. Faversham's tone was already that of a man to some extent disappointed and embittered.
”You had always so much more brains than the rest of us,” he said cordially. ”You'll be all right.”
”It's not brains that matter nowadays--it's money. What do you get by brains? A civil service appointment--and a pension of seven hundred a year. What's the good of slaving for that?”
Faversham turned to his companion with a smile, in which however there was no good-humour. It made Tatham disagreeably conscious of his own wealth.
”Well, of course, there are the prizes--”
”A few. So few that they don't count. A man may grind for years, and get pa.s.sed over or forgotten--just by a shave--at the end. I've seen that happen often. Or you get on swimmingly for a while, and everybody supposes you're going to romp in; and then something crops up you never thought of. Some boss takes a dislike to you--or you make a mistake, and cut your own throat. And there you are--pulled!”
Tatham was silent a moment, his blunt features expressing some bewilderment. Then he said--awkwardly:
”So you don't really know what you're going to take up?”
Faversham lit another cigarette.
”Oh, well, I have some friends--and some ideas. If I once get a foothold, a beginning--I daresay I could make money like other people. Every idiot one meets seems to be doing it.”
”Do you want to go into politics--or something of that kind?”
”I want to remain my own master, and do the things I want to do--and not the things I must do,” laughed Faversham. ”That seems to me the dividing line in life--whether you are under another man's orders or your own. And broadly speaking it's the line between poverty and money. But you don't know much about it, old fellow!” He looked round with a laugh.
Tatham screwed up his blue eyes, not finding reply very easy, and not certain that he liked the ”old fellow,” though their college familiarity justified it. He changed the subject, and they fell into some gossip about Oxford acquaintances and recollections, which kept the conversation going.
But at the end of it the two men were each secretly conscious that the other jarred upon him; and in spite of the tacit appeal made by Faversham's physical weakness and evident depression to Tatham's boundless good-nature, there had arisen between them at the end an incipient antagonism which a touch might develop. Faversham appeared to the younger man as querulous, discontented, and rather sordidly ambitious; while the smiling optimism of a youth on whom Fortune had showered every conceivable gift--money, position, and influence--without the smallest effort on his own part, rang false or foolish in the ears of his companion. Tatham, cut off from the county, agricultural, or sporting subjects in which he was most at home, fumbled a good deal in his efforts to adjust himself; while Faversham found it no use to talk of travel, art, or music to one who, in spite of an artistic and literary mother and wonderful possessions, had himself neither literary nor artistic faculty, and in the prevailing manner of the English country gentleman, had always found the pleasures of England so many and superior that there was no need whatever to cross the Channel in pursuit of others. Both were soon bored; and Tatham would have hurried his departure, but for the hope of Lydia. With that to fortify him, however, he sat on.
And at last she came. Mrs. Penfold, it will easily be imagined, entered upon the scene, in a state of bewildered ravishment.