Part 25 (1/2)
Polkington raised a quieting hand; she did not wish to offend her brother.
He was not offended; he only spoke his mind rather plainly to them all, which, though it did no harm, did little good either; they were too old in their sins to profit by that now. After some more unpleasant talk all round, the family conclave broke up; Mr. Frazer came home, and every one went to bed.
Mr. Ponsonby had Julia's tiny room; there was nowhere else for him, seeing Violet and her husband had the one she and her youngest sister shared in their maiden days. Julia had to content herself with the drawing-room sofa; it was a very uncomfortable sofa, and the blankets kept slipping off so she did not sleep a great deal; but that did not matter much; she had the more time to think things over. Dawn found her sitting at the table wrapped in her blanket, writing by the light of one of the piano candles; she glanced up as the first cold light struggled in, and her face was very grave, it looked old, too, and tired, with the weariness which accompanies renunciation, quite as often as does peace or a sense of beat.i.tude. She looked at the paper before her, a completely worked-out table of expenditure, a sort of statement of ways and means--the means being 50 a year. It could be done; she knew that during the night when the plan took shape in her mind; she had proved it to herself more than half-an-hour ago by figures--but there was no margin. It could only be done by renouncing that upon which she had set her heart; she could not work out the scheme and pay the debt of honour to Rawson-Clew. The legacy had at first seemed a heaven-sent gift for that purpose, but now, like the blue daffodil, it seemed that it could not be used to pay the debt.
That was not to be paid by a heaven-sent gift any more than by a devil-helped theft; slow, honest work and patient saving might pay it in years, but nothing else it seemed. She put her elbows on the table and propped her chin on her locked hands looking down at the unanswerable figures, but they still told her the same hard truth.
”I might save it in time; I could do without this--and this,” she told herself. It is so easy to do without oneself when one's mind is set on some purpose, but one has no right to expect others to do without, too--the whole thing would be no good if the others had to; she knew that. No, the debt could not be paid this way; she had no right to do it; it was her own fancy, her hobby, perhaps. No one demanded that it should be paid; law did not compel it; Rawson-Clew did not expect it; her father considered that it no longer existed; it was to please herself and herself alone that she would pay it, and her pleasure must wait.
Possibly she did not reason quite all this; she only knew that she could not do what she had set her heart on doing with the first of Aunt Jane's money, and the renunciation cost her much, and gave her no satisfaction at all. But the matter once decided, she put it at the back of her mind, and by breakfast time she was her usual self; to tell the truth, she was looking forward to a skirmish with Uncle William, and that cheered her.
After breakfast she led Mr. Ponsonby to the drawing-room, and he came not altogether unprepared for objections; he had half feared them last night.
”Uncle William,” she said. ”I have been thinking over your plan, and I don't think I quite like it.”
”I dare say not,” her uncle answered; ”I can believe it; but that's neither here nor there, as I said last night, beggars can't be choosers.”
Julia did not, as Violet had, resent this; she was the one member of the family who was not a beggar, and she knew perfectly well she could be a chooser. She sat down. ”Perhaps I had better say just what I mean,” she said pleasantly; ”I am not going to do it.”
”Not going to?” Mr. Ponsonby repeated indignantly. ”Don't talk nonsense; you have got to, there's nothing else open to you; I'm not going to keep you all, feed, clothe and house you, and pay your debts into the bargain!”
”No,” said Julia; ”no, naturally not; I did not think of that.”
”What did you think of, then?” her uncle demanded; he remembered that she had the nominal disposal of her own money, and though her objections were ridiculous, even impertinent in the family circ.u.mstances, they might be awkward. ”What do you object to? I suppose you don't like the idea of paying debts; none of you seem to.”
”No,” Julia answered; ”it isn't that; of course the debts must be paid in the way you say, it is the only way.”
”I am glad you think so,” the banker said sarcastically; ”though I may as well tell you, young lady, that it would still be done even without your approval. What is it you don't like, spending your money for other people?”
Julia smiled a little. ”We may as well call it that,” she said; ”I don't like the boarding-house investment.”
”What do you like? Seeing your parents go to the poorhouse? That's what will happen.”
”No, they can come and live with me. I have got a large cottage, a garden, a field, and 50 a year. If we keep pigs and poultry, and grow things in the garden we can live in the cottage on the 50 a year till the debts are all paid off; after that, of course, we should have enough to be pretty comfortable. We need not keep a servant there, or regard appearances or humbug--it would be very cheap.”
”And nasty,” her uncle added. He was not impressed with the wisdom of this scheme; indeed he did not seriously contemplate it as possible.
”You are talking nonsense,” he said; ”absurd, childish nonsense; you don't know anything about it; you have no idea what life in a cottage means; the drudgery of cooking and scrubbing and so on; the doing without society and the things you are used to; as for pigs and gardening, why, you don't know how to dig a hole or grow a cabbage!”
But he was not quite right; Julia had learnt something about drudgery in Holland, something about growing things, at least in theory, and so much about doing without the society to which she was used at home that she had absolutely no desire for it left. She made as much of this plan to Mr. Ponsonby as was possible and desirable; enough, at all events, to convince him that she had thought out her plan in every detail and was very bent on it.
”I suppose the utter selfishness of this idea of yours has not struck you,” he said at last. ”You may think you would like this kind of life, though you wouldn't if you tried it, but how about your mother?”
”She won't like it,” Julia admitted; ”but then, on the other hand, there is father. I suppose you know he has taken to drink lately and at all times gambled as much as he could. What do you think would become of him in a boarding-house in some fas.h.i.+onable place, with nothing to do, and any amount of opportunity?”
Mr. Ponsonby did not feel able or willing to discuss the Captain's delinquencies with his daughter; his only answer was, ”What will become of your mother keeping pigs and poultry and living in an isolated cottage? It would be social extinction for her.”
”The boarding-house would be moral extinction for father.”
Mr. Ponsonby grew impatient. ”I suppose you think,” he said irritably, ”that you have reduced it to this--the sacrifice of one parent or the other. You have no business to think about such things; but if you had, to which do you owe the most duty? Who has done the most for you?”
”Well,” Julia answered slowly, ”I'm not sure I am considering duty only; people who don't pay their debts are not always great at duty, you know. Perhaps it is really inclination with me. Father is fonder of me than mother is; I have never been much of a social success.
Mother did not find me such good material to work upon, so naturally she rather dropped me for the ones who were good material. I admire mother the more, but I am sorrier for father, because he can't take care of himself, and has no consolation left; it serves him right, of course, but it must be very uncomfortable all the same. Do you see?”