The Arbiter: A Novel

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  THE ARBITER

  A NOVEL

  BY

  LADY F. E. E. BELL

  AUTHOR OF THE "STORY OF URSULA," "MISS TOD AND THE PROPHETS,""FAIRY-TALE PLAYS," ETC., ETC.

  LONDONEDWARD ARNOLD37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND1901

  * * * * *

  THE ARBITER

  CHAPTER I

  "It is a great mistake," said Miss Martin emphatically, "for anysensible woman to show a husband she adores him."

  "Even her own, Aunt Anna?" said Lady Gore, with a contented smile whichAunt Anna felt to be ignoble.

  "Of course I meant her own," she said stiffly. "I should hardly havethought, Elinor, that after being married so many years you would havemade jokes of that sort."

  "That is just it," said Lady Gore, still annoyingly pleased withherself. "After adoring my husband for twenty-four years, it seems to methat I am an authority on the subject."

  "Well, it is a great mistake," repeated Miss Martin firmly, as she gotup, feeling that the repetition notably strengthened her position. "As Isaid before, no sensible woman should do it."

  Lady Gore began to feel a little annoyed. It is fatiguing to hear one'saunt say the same thing twice. The burden of conversation is unequallydistributed if one has to think of two answers to each one remark ofone's interlocutor.

  "And you are bringing up Rachel to do the same thing, you know," the oldlady went on, roused to fresh indignation at the thought of hergreat-niece, and she pulled her little cloth jacket down, and generallyshook herself together. Crabbed age and jackets should not livetogether. Age should be wrapped in the ample and tolerant cloak, hiderof frailties. It was not Aunt Anna's fault, however, if her garmentswere uncompromising and scanty of outline. Predestination reigns nowheremore strongly than in clothes, and it would have been inconceivable thateither Miss Martin's body or her mind should have assimilated theharmonious fluid adaptability of the draperies that framed andsurrounded Lady Gore as she lay on her couch.

  "I don't think it does her much harm," said Lady Gore, a good dealunderstating her conviction of her daughter's perfections.

  "That's as may be," said Miss Martin encouragingly. "Where is sheto-day, by the way?" she said, stopping on her way to the door.

  "For a wonder she is not at home," Lady Gore said. "She has gone to stayaway from me for the first time in her life; she is at Mrs. Feversham's,at Maidenhead, for the night."

  "How girls do gad nowadays, to be sure!" said Miss Martin.

  "I hardly think that can be said of Rachel," said Lady Gore.

  "Whether Rachel does or not, my dear Elinor, girls do gad--there is nodoubt about that. I'm sorry I have not seen William. He is too busy, Isuppose," with a slightly ironical intonation. "Goodbye!"

  "Can you find your way out?" said Lady Gore, ringing a hand-bell.

  "Oh dear, yes," said Miss Martin. "Goodbye," and out she went.

  Lady Gore leant back with a sigh of relief. A companion like Miss Martinmakes a most excellent foil to solitude, and after she had departed,Lady Gore lay for a while in a state of pleasant quiescence. Why, shewondered, even supposing she herself did think too well of her husband,should Miss Martin object? Why do onlookers appear to resent thespectacle of a too united family? There is, no doubt, somethingexasperating in an excess of indiscriminating kindliness. But it is anamiable fault after all; and, besides, more discrimination may sometimesbe required to discover the hidden good lurking in a fellow-creaturethan to perceive and deride his more obvious absurdities and defects. Itwould no doubt be a very great misfortune to see our belongings as theyappear to the world at large, and the fay who should "gie us thatgiftie" ought indeed to be banished from every christening. Let usconsole ourselves: she commonly is.

  But poor Miss Martin had no adoring belongings to shed the genial lightof affection on her doings, to give her even mistaken admiration,better than none at all. Life had dealt but bleakly with her; she hadalways been in the shadow: small wonder then if her nature was blightedand her view of life soured. Lady Gore smiled to herself, a littlewistfully perhaps, as she tried to put herself in Miss Martin'splace--of all mental operations one of the most difficult to achievesuccessfully. Lady Gore's sheer power of sympathy might enable her toget nearer to it than many people, but still she inevitably reckoned upthe balance, after the fashion of our kind, seeing only one side of thescale and not knowing what was in the other, and as she did so, itseemed to her still possible that Miss Martin might have the best of it,or at any rate might not fall so short of the best as at first appeared.For in spite of her age she still had the great inestimable boon ofhealth; she was well, she was independent, she could, when it seemedgood to her, get up and go out and join in the life of other people.While as for herself ... and again the feeling of impotent misery, ofrebellion against her own destiny, came over Lady Gore like a wave whosestrength she was powerless to resist. For since the rheumatic feverwhich five years ago had left her practically an incurable invalid, theeffort to accept her fate still needed to be constantly renewed; aneffort that had to be made alone, for the acceptance of such a fate bythose who surround the sufferer is generally made, more or less, oncefor all in a moment of emotion, and then gradually becomes part of thehabitual circumstance of daily life. Mercifully she did not realise allat once the thing that had happened to her. In the first days when shewas returning to health--she who up to the time of her illness had beenso full of life and energy--the mere pleasure in existence, the mere joyof the summer's day in which she could lie near an open window, look outon the world and the people in it, was enough; she was too languid towant to do more. Then her strength slowly returned, and with it thedesire to resume her ordinary life. But weeks passed in which she stillremained at the same stage, they lengthened into months, and brought hergradually a horrible misgiving. Then, at last, despairingly she facedthe truth, and knew that from all she had been in the habit of doing,from all that she had meant to do, she was cut off for ever. She beganto realise then, as people do who, unable to carry their treasures withthem, look over them despairingly before they cast them away one by one,all that her ambitions had been. She smiled bitterly to herself duringthe hours in which she lay there looking her fate in the face and tryingto encounter it with becoming courage, as she realised how, with morethan half of her life, at the best, behind her, she had up to thismoment been spending the rest of it still looking onward, still livingin the future. She had dreamt of the time when, helped by her, herhusband should go forward in his career, when, steered under herguidance, Rachel would go along the smiling path to happiness. And now,instead, she was to be to husband and daughter but the constant objectof care and solicitude and pity. Yes, pity--that was the worst of it."An invalid," she repeated to herself, and felt that at last she knewwhat that word meant that she had heard all her life, that she hadapplied unconcernedly to one fellow-creature or another withoutrealising all that it means of tragedy, of startled, growing dread,followed by hopeless and despairing acceptance. Then there came a daywhen, calling all her courage to her help, she made up her mind bravelyto begin life afresh, to sketch her destiny from another point of view,and yet to make a success of the picture. The battle had to be foughtout alone. Sir William, after the agony of thinking he was going to loseher, after the rapture of joy at knowing that the parting was not to beyet, had insensibly become accustomed, as one does become accustomed tothe trials of another, to the altered conditions of their lives, and itwas even unconsciously a sort of agreeable certainty that whatever theweather, whatever the claims of the day, she would every afternoon befound in the same place, never away, never occupied about the house,alway
s ready to listen, to sympathise. She had made up her mind thatsince now she was debarred from active participation in the lives of herhusband and daughter, she would by unceasing, strenuous daily effortkeep abreast of their daily interests, and be by her sympathy as much apart of their existence as though she had been, as before, theirconstant companion.

  The smallness of such a family circle may act in two ways: it may eithersend the members of it in different directions, or it may draw themtogether in an intense concentration of interests and sympathy. Thislatter was happily the condition of the Gores. The varying degrees oftheir strength and weaknesses had been so mercifully adjusted by destinythat each could find in the other some support--whether real or fancieddoes not matter. For illusions, if they last, form as good a workingbasis for life as reality, and in the Gore household, whether byimagination or not, the equipoise of life had been most skilfullyadjusted. The amount of shining phantasies that had interwoventhemselves into the woof of the family destiny had become so much a partof the real fabric that they were indistinguishable from it.

  As far as Sir William's career, if we may give it that name, wasconcerned, the calamity which had fallen upon his wife had in somestrange manner explained and justified it. The younger son of a countrygentleman of good family, he had, by the death of his elder brother,come into the title, the estate, and the sufficient means bequeathed byhis father. Elinor Calthorpe, the daughter of a neighbouring squire, hadbeen ever since her childhood on terms of intimate friendship with theGore boys; as far back as she could remember, William Gore, big, strong,full of life and spirits, a striking contrast to his delicate elderbrother, had been her ideal of everything that was manly and splendid:and when after his brother's death he asked her to marry him, she feltthat life had nothing more to offer. In that belief she had neverwavered. Sir William, by nature estimable and from circumstancesirreproachable, made an excellent husband; that is to say, that duringnearly a quarter of a century of marriage he had never wavered either inhis allegiance to his wife or in his undivided acceptance of herallegiance, and hers alone. She on her side had never once during allthose years realised that the light which shone round her idol came fromthe lamp she herself kept alive before the shrine, nor even that it washer more acute intelligence, blind in one direction only, whichsuggested the opinion or course of action that he quite unconsciouslyafterwards offered to the world as his own. It was she who infused intohis life every possibility beyond the obvious. It was her keenness, herardent interest in those possibilities, that urged him on. When shefinally persuaded him to stand for Parliament as member for their countytown, it was in a great measure her popularity that won him the seat.

  He was in the House without making any special mark for two years, witha comfortable sense, not clearly stated perhaps even to himself, thatthere was time before him. Men go long in harness in these days; someday for certain that mark would be made. Then his party went out, and inspite of another unsuccessful attempt in his own constituency, and thenin one further afield, he was left by the roadside, while the tide ofpolitics swept on. His wife consoled herself by thinking that at thenext opportunity he would surely get in. But when the opportunity came,she was so ill that he could not leave her, and the moment passed. Thenwhen they began to realise what her ultimate condition might be, and shewas recommended to take some special German waters which might work acure, he and Rachel went with her. Sir William, when the necessity ofgoing abroad first presented itself to him--a heroic necessity for theordinary stay-at-home Englishman--had felt the not unpleasant stimulus,the tightening of the threads of life, which the need for a givenunexpected course of action presents to the not very much occupiedperson. Then came those months away from his own country and his ownsurroundings--months in which he acquired the habit of reading anEnglish newspaper two days old and being quite satisfied with it, wheneverything else also had two days' less importance than it would athome, and gradually he tasted the delights of the detached onlooker whoneed do nothing but warn, criticise, prophesy, protest. With absolutesincerity to himself he attributed this attitude which Fate had assignedto him as entirely owing to his having had to leave England on hiswife's account. He had quite easily, quite calmly drifted into aconviction that for his wife's sake he had chivalrously renounced hischances of distinction. Lady Gore on her side--it was another bitternessadded to the rest--did not for a moment doubt that it was her conditionand the sacrifice that her husband had made of his life to her which hadruined his political career. And they both of them gradually succeededin forgetting that the alternative had not been a certainty. Theybelieved, they knew, they even said openly, that if it had not been forhis incessant attendance on her he would have gone into the House, hewould have taken office, and eventually have been one of the shapers ofhis country's destiny. The phraseology of their current talk to oneanother and to outsiders reflected this belief. "If I had continued inthe House," Sir William would say, with a manner and inflection whichconveyed that he had left it of his own free will and not attempted toreturn to it, "I should have----" or, "If I had taken office----" oreven sometimes, "If I were leading the Liberal party----" and no one,indeed, was in a position to affirm that these things might not havebeen. If a man's capacities are hinted at or even stated by himself tohis fellow-creatures with a certain amount of discretion, and if he doesnot court failure by putting them to the proof, it does not occur tomost people to contradict him, and the possible truth of thecontradiction soon sinks out of sight. So Sir William sat on the brinkof the river and watched the others plunging into the waves, diving,rising, breasting the current, and was agreeably supported by theconsciousness that if Fate had so ordained it, he himself would havebeen capable of performing all these feats just as creditably. No neednow to stifle a misgiving that in the old days would occasionallyobtrude itself into the glowing views of the future, that he waspossibly not of a stature to play the great parts for which he might becast. On the contrary, what now remained was the blessed peace broughtby renunciation, the calm renunciation of prospects that in the light ofceasing to try to attain them seemed absolutely certain. No one nowcould ever say that he had failed. He had been prevented bycircumstances from achieving any success of a definite and conspicuouskind, although the position he had attained, the consideration nearlyalways accorded to the ordinary prosperous middle-aged Englishman of theupper classes who has done nothing to forfeit his claim to it, and morethan all, the plenitude of assurance which he received of his desertsfrom his immediate surroundings, might well have been considered successenough. And on his return to England, after eighteen months ofwandering, although he was no longer in Parliament and had no actualvoice in deciding the politics of his country, it pleased him to thinkthat if he chose he could still take an active line, that he couldbelong to the volunteer army of orators who make speeches at otherpeople's elections and who write letters to the newspaper that the worldmay know their views on a given situation.

  At the time of which we speak political parties in England were tryingin vain to re-adjust an equable balance. Conservatives and Unionists,almost indistinguishable, were waving the Imperialist banner in theface of the world. The Liberals, once the advanced and subversive party,were now raising their voices in protest, tentatively advocating theclaims of what they considered the oppressed races. Derisive epithetswere hurled at them by their enemies; the Pro-Boers, the LittleEnglanders took the place of the Home Rulers of the past. Sir Williamwas by tradition a Liberal. Inspired by that tradition he wrote anarticle on the "Attitude of England," which appeared in a LiberalReview. Thrilled by the sight of his utterances in print, he determinedin his secret soul to expand that article into a book. The secret was ofcourse shared by his wife, who fervently believed in the yet unwrittenmasterpiece. The fact that in spite of the dearth of prominent men inhis party, of men who had in them the stuff of a leader, that party hadnot turned to Gore in its need, aroused no surprise, no misgiving, ineither his mind or that of his wife. It was simply in their eyes anotherstep in
that path of voluntary renunciation which he was treading forher sake.

  With this possible interpretation of all missed opportunities entirelytaken for granted, Sir William's existence flowed peacefully andprosperously on. It was with an agreeable consciousness of his dignityand prestige that he sat once or twice in the week at the board meetingsof one or two governing bodies to which he belonged. They figured in hisscheme of existence as his hours of work, the sterner, more seriousoccupation which justified his hours of leisure. The rest of thatleisure was spent in happy, congenial uniformity: a morning ride,followed by some time in his comfortable study, during which he might besupposed to be writing his book; an hour or two at his club; a game ortwo of chess, a pastime in which he excelled; and behind all this abeautiful background, the deep and enduring affection of his wife, whosecompanionship, and needs, and admiration for himself filled up all thevacant spaces in his life. He would, however, have been genuinelysurprised if he had realised that it was by a constant, deliberateintention that she succeeded in entertaining him, in amusing him, asmuch as she did her friends and acquaintances; if he had thought thatshe had made up her mind that never, while she had power to prevent it,should he come into his own house and find it dull. And he never did.