Chapter V

The Annarlys lived at Hurstbury, a suburb some little way from London. They had lived there a long while, and occupied the comfortable position that the well-to-do with handsome daughters come to occupy in the course of time in the older and more distant suburbs. There were three daughters: Constance, the eldest; Rosalind second, not long engaged to be married; and Mabel, only recently free of the schoolroom. There were two brothers younger than Mabel, but neither was at home just now: Giles was back at school after the summer holidays, and Jack, a year or two his senior, had remained in France for some final studies when the family came through on their way home from Switzerland.

They had not been home long by the first Sunday in October, but they had already settled to their usual ways and occupations. Rosalind, as her custom was, spent the afternoon in company with her fiancé, Dick Wharton, in the small room at the back of the house. In the drawing-room Mrs. Annarly, a slender and still young-looking woman, wrote letters. She wrote at a small table, protesting mildly at the inconvenience, but doing nothing else to oust Mabel, who, at her mother’s escritoire, wrote hockey notices with her mother’s favourite pen on her mother’s paper. Mabel at that time was much addicted to hockey; later in the year she added dancing and skating to her enthusiasms. She was a healthy young animal, with a young animal’s unconsciousness of its body and, sometimes, other people’s bodies too. Constance, the eldest sister, was really the most like her mother: one saw a strong facial resemblance as she sat now reading; and there was some resemblance in character, too, though she was more definite and cleverer, or, perhaps, better educated and more highly developed than was customary for girls in her mother’s day. What was customary, and the nice, right, and proper thing to do, was what Constance would intuitively do in all the circumstances of life, almost without knowing there was an alternative—there was no alternative to her.

To the mother and daughters there entered that Sunday afternoon Michael, just come from Soho.

They were surprised to see him, for he did not often come home; and, usually, when he did, remembered to telegraph first. Still, that he should appear thus was not unprecedented, and Mabel merely looked up from her notices as he entered and nodded an informal welcome, while Constance smiled a pleasant greeting.

“My dear boy!” Mrs. Annarly exclaimed, “why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”

“He didn’t know himself, I expect, mother,” Constance said; “busy people never do seem to forecast their movements long in advance; indeed, nobody does now, do they?”

Michael said he supposed not, and when Mrs. Annarly said she hoped he was going to stay some few days, answered that he expected so. Both answers were, perhaps, a little automatic, though no one noticed: conversation never really lagged where Constance and Mrs. Annarly were, because the one had a well-bred way of filling pauses, and the other frequently asked a second question before her first had been answered, so providing the person addressed with a choice of two to answer.

She did this when she inquired about Michael’s journey. “Did you travel all the way to-day?” she asked, and then went on to speak of the inconvenience of Sunday travelling, and to inquire if he had not found the trains very slow.

He answered some part of the composite question, and then inquired for his father.

Mr. Annarly was in the dining-room taking a nap, but it was near his time for waking. He usually woke some half hour before tea-time, and either walked round the garden, or went to his long-disused workshop, according to the weather and time of year.

Michael would go to him.

He was not gainsaid. He seldom was at home in these days, though it had not always been so. Far from it; he was essentially not one of them, and all had been aware of the fact, and let him be aware of it in the past. The present privileges and indulgences dated from the time of his success, and were owing to the fact that shortcomings are excusable in a brilliant and overtired brainworker, which are not in an unimportant and struggling engineer. He left the drawing-room now, and went to look for his father, a full ten minutes earlier than anyone else would have been allowed to do it.

For a little after he left, the mother and eldest daughter made a few desultory remarks about his return and about the probable length of his stay; then Constance returned to her book and Mrs. Annarly to her letter. When she had finished it she began another; but she did not finish that. Before long she put down her pen, and went to see if the servants had Michael’s room ready. Constance did not approve of going to see if the servants had done things; in her household it would never have been necessary. But she did not say so, she seldom said unpleasant things; she merely glanced up as her mother left the room.

Mabel, who had finished her last notice, saw the look, and smiled a little. “Poor old mater,” she said, “she’s always on the fidget.”

Constance did not reply; her habit of not saying unpleasant things was continued behind people’s backs as well as before their faces.

The younger sister, meeting with no response, yawned, stretched herself, and sauntered down the room to the further window, which looked out towards the back. For a minute she stood without speaking, then suddenly she leaned forward with interest.

“Hulloah!” she exclaimed. “What can be the matter with the governor?”

Constance glanced up. “What?” she said.

“He’s standing outside the workshop,” Mabel reported, “talking hard, and with no hat on! He must be excited about something! I suppose Michael’s there, though I can’t see him. There—now he’s going in; father, I mean. I wish he’d turn; I can’t see his face to see if it’s good or bad business. I wonder what’s up?”

“Perhaps nothing,” Constance suggested in her unruffled way, and returned to her book.

But a little later, when the gong brought the father and son, as well as the lovers, to tea, she was obliged to admit that Mabel might be right; something, apparently, had occurred, something unpleasant. Michael himself betrayed nothing in look or manner (all that was past for him; he was down at the bottom now, on the level, and he had got his bearings, to a certain extent). He behaved much as usual; perhaps a little more courteously, quicker to see others’ wants, less ready to take service as a matter of course, and showing some patient interest in the remarks Dick ventured on subjects which he, good fellow, believed most deserving of the attention of his brother-in-law elect.

After tea, Dick had to go home: some relation of weight was spending the week-end with his family, and it was thought politic that he should devote Sunday evening to his company. So, after a rather lingering farewell, he departed. Rosalind saw him off, and did not hasten his departure; she thought it very dull that he should go. When he was gone she came back to the drawing-room. The housemaid had just taken away the tea-things, leaving Constance and Mabel alone.

“Well, what did I tell you?” Mabel was saying as Rosalind entered. “There is something up; father’s in a regular taking.”

“What a nuisance,” Rosalind said. “I hope he’ll get over it soon; I want a cheque for my trousseau, and a big one.”

She went to the glass over the mantelpiece and arranged her necklet, debating, one might fancy from her expression, the comparative becomingness of green and blue, or some kindred subject interesting to a fair beauty. But Constance’s voice made her look over her shoulder.

“Yes, I am afraid you are right,” the eldest sister said; “it does look as if something has happened to upset father: I am afraid Michael must have told him some bad news.”

“Michael?” Rosalind exclaimed. “What a shame! He has no business to come here and upset the poor old boy, especially just now when I want him to be in an extra good temper for my trousseau cheque.”

“I do wonder what it is,” Mabel speculated, frankly consumed with curiosity: “I guess mother’s hearing about it now. She’s sure to tell us as soon as she comes back; I wish she’d hurry up.”

She had not long to wait. Before a great while Mrs. Annarly came in, and, as her daughters had foreseen, immediately told all she knew. She invariably did tell them all she knew, heard, or thought, quite without realising that sometimes it was a breach of confidence to do so. What she had to tell now was not confidential; nor was it very clear either. She had but a vague idea herself of what had really occurred to Michael: what she told her daughters was mixed and obscure and hardly enough to justify the sense of disaster in her tone and manner.

“Is that all?” Mabel said. “Michael has just got himself into a bother with the Galhardy people; nothing more than that?”

“All!” Mrs. Annarly said. “I don’t know how much more you want! I am sure it is bad enough: they have dismissed him, discharged him, whatever you call it.”

“I dare say it won’t turn out to be so bad as it sounds,” Rosalind looked up from a fashion paper to say comfortably. “I dare say it will soon blow over. Sit down and tell us all about it, mother dear. Mab, pull that chair up for her.”

Mrs. Annarly sat down, though not much encouraged by the reassuring words. Rosalind’s reassuring words did not always carry weight, she rather taking after the people in the Bible who found solace for their momentary discomfort at a disturbing sight in saying, “Be ye clothed and fed,” whether or no there was much chance of the agreeable consummation taking place.

“I really don’t understand about it,” Mrs. Annarly said. “I saw the letter from the Galhardy people, and it seemed final: but perhaps you are right; perhaps they mean to reconsider it later on.” (She had done similar things herself in domestic difficulties.) “But even if they do, I don’t see how Michael is to be any real use to Giles.”

Giles, it had been recently decided, was to follow his stepbrother’s profession—for which he had little taste—largely on account of the influence that brother should have been able to exert on his behalf. The recent affair at Galhardy’s would make a considerable difference; in all probability make the idea of Giles entering the engineering profession unwise, if not out of the question altogether.

“Your father has definitely refused Giles,” Mrs. Annarly complained, now referring, not to her son, but to her bachelor brother, that son’s godfather, who, before the recent plan, had been looked to place his nephew advantageously in the City.

“I suppose he can get back?” Mabel suggested. “The governor, I mean; he can get back with Uncle G., if he wants to?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Annarly said. “It was about the time of the Budget: he was so angry that he declared he would never speak to him again. So was Giles. I am sure I don’t know what is to be done.” She was a little obscure, but very distressed. She dabbed her eyes once or twice before she went on.

“Your father seems to think very seriously of what Michael has done. I am quite certain he does not for a moment think he will ever be able to go back; neither does Michael himself. Your father says he may think himself lucky to get off without prosecution——”

“Prosecution?”

All three sisters sat up startled. It was something which had not occurred to them, and which struck sharply. Prosecution, trial, reports in the newspapers; friends and acquaintances reading, recognising the name, looking or expressing sympathy; servants even talking about it, and other people—the people one did not know—chattering and possibly enjoying the scandal!

“How awful!” Constance exclaimed. “It won’t, it surely won’t come to that!”

“Just when we are beginning to think about my wedding,” Rosalind cried. “What would the Whartons say!”

“Michael would have to emigrate afterwards,” Mabel said decidedly; “there’d be nothing else for it, and it would be bad enough then in all conscience.”

They spent a very distressing evening together, talking over the affair and all likely and unlikely contingencies arising therefrom. Each in turn suggested fresh possibilities and followed them and their consequences into depressing ramifications, as remote as the question whether Mary, the parlour-maid, would stop, if Michael came to live at home, and so made one more in family; and the unpleasantness of explaining his return to the select, and slightly curious, bridge club which Constance had recently joined.

They did not, however, say anything of this to Michael when they met him at the supper-table. The Annarlys dined in the middle of the day on Sundays, and had cold supper at eight; a rather depressing meal usually, partly because the one servant remaining in, having spent the evening in repose, had not sufficiently woke up to set the table properly; and partly because the family, having had too little to do and too much of each other’s society, were rather poor company by that time. This particular Sunday supper was worse than usual. It is true no one mentioned the matter in everyone’s mind, but spoke, when they did speak, of indifferent topics, as if strangers had been present. But there was a feeling of gloom, which, while being general, somehow seemed to centre round Michael and point him out as being the cause of it. No one was sorry when the meal was over, no one was sorry when it was bedtime; they went to bed rather earlier than usual, Rosalind went almost directly after supper.

* * * * *

Hurstbury was one of those places where, during the waking hours of five and a half days of the week, practically no men are to be seen. The doctor, the clergyman, and the policeman were occasionally to be met with in pursuit of their several avocations, but one regards them more as local institutions than mere men: tradesmen, coachmen, and gardeners might also be discovered, if sought for in their proper places, but they, again, seem rather fixtures or accessories. Men proper, that is, belonging to the women who lived in the houses fronting the well-kept roads, were invisible for those hours of the five and a half days. They were not to be seen issuing from the houses to go to the shops, even the tobacconist’s or newspaper shop; they were not to be met on the roads, or even on the nearest golf course. Except for a week or two in holiday time, when schoolboys and college boys came home, the visible male population of the place consisted in the daytime of infants, invalids, and the aged; the rest having all gone to the City. An able-bodied man, unless a corner loafer, who was at large in Hurstbury during the hours of the working day, seemed almost misplaced, and quite as much an object of observation as one who has strayed into a baby-linen shop.

There are houses, there were in Hurstbury, where something the same feeling reigns; where a man, between the ages of, say, twenty and sixty, seems a little out of place in the daytime, excepting, of course, holidays. The Annarlys’ house was like that. Directly after breakfast, Mr. Annarly left for the City, and Mrs. Annarly went to superintend the management of her household. Constance went to her desk to write letters, cast up accounts, and give attention to the affairs of the various societies, charitable and otherwise, in which she was interested. Mabel arranged the flowers and took the dogs for a run, and Rosalind, having walked to the station with her father, if the day was fine, retired to manicure her nails or practise, if she was in the mood to sing. There was no place for a man in any of these occupations, and nothing for him to do. Later, Mrs. Annarly might turn out a cupboard, or mend a stocking; Constance might go to the shops or on some errand, social or charitable; Rosalind might go to the dressmaker’s, and Mabel might spend an hour pottering in the conservatory or gossiping with a girl friend. Again there was no room for a man, and nothing for him to do. In the afternoon the mother and daughters visited or were visited, played hockey or bridge, read or did fancy work, according to age and tastes. One way and another time was fully occupied until Mr. Annarly, with the other able-bodied male inhabitants of the place, came back from the City.

It was to Hurstbury, and to this house there, that Michael came home that October. Not but what he was made welcome; he was, or, at least, not unwelcome. The mother and daughters were really very nice to him considering how his downfall necessarily touched them; how the collapse of his future entailed the collapse of that planned for Giles; how his loss of income lessened the amount his father felt able to spend on them; and how their position and prestige were slightly, and might be seriously, affected by what had deprived him of his. They were, in spite of all, quite nice, saying little about the situation, and behaving, so far as possible, as if nothing had happened; but they naturally could not make ordinary days holidays, or alter the whole routine and tenor of already full lives on his account. And as it was likely he might be at home some time, they naturally expected him to conform to the ways of the household; to be punctual at meals, not to smoke in the house before lunch, to use only such sitting-rooms as were customarily used, and to discreetly disappear if friends, social engagements, or other of their affairs occupied the rooms.

They did not mention any of these things; they took it as a matter of course that he would do them. And he did them. On the whole, as Mrs. Annarly said, they really got through the first month better than she expected.