Chapter XV

It was a most awkward business. Ainley had a hemorrhage in the night, and for a week or two it seemed more than likely that Jim’s blow had set up the old mischief in his lungs.

The house divided itself equally for and against Jim. The quarrel had been most carefully hushed up, but, of course, everybody knew all about it.

Emily was certain that she was the direct cause. She had heard her name mentioned in the laurel bushes, besides, she had reason to know that she might be the cause of many quarrels.

The cook—all the servants were against Jim—thought it merely a cold-blooded design to murder the entire household, and that her turn would come next.

Nurse said it was all ‘them low papers of Mr. Bligh’s, enough to turn a cat’s stomach, lying about in the hall, all against the aristocracy and the clergy and what not.’

Pritchard refused to speak to Jim, even when directly addressed; he walked about on tiptoe scowling, and expected, without quite wishing, Ainley to die.

The rest of the household went out of its way to be nice to Jim. Ainley sent a message by Wivvle to say that he would have done just the same in Jim’s place, and that there was nothing for anybody to be in a wax about.

It was a sporting message, but it did not make Jim feel any more comfortable; even Wivvle’s, ‘My dear chap, _of course_ you had to fight him,’ lacked the ring of finality.

Jim did not feel as if he had any such comfortable compulsion behind him. There was no sense in half killing a man because he didn’t like you; and that was after all what he had done. He had acted in a passion, and the results of passion are irrelevant. They weighed on Jim’s mind with the intolerable weight of outraged common sense. When Wivvle tried to comfort him by saying that, of course, he had to defend his honour, Jim said he didn’t know what his honour was, and Wivvle whistled and walked out of the room.

Mr. Bligh was appalled; he felt like the possessor of a very nice plain bottle out of which by accident he had evoked a destructive genie. His sympathies would have been entirely with Jim if Ainley hadn’t been badly hurt, and entirely with Ainley if Jim hadn’t been the one to hurt him. Jim had not only struck a person, he had struck a theory; and it is a very grave thing to knock down the favourite theory of any fanatic.

Mr. Bligh, in the mood of an unrelenting if benevolent judge, sent for him to his study, but when he was confronted by Jim’s solid and silent figure he felt like a small trapped animal, and moved uneasily about the room fingering the corners of his book-shelves.

‘I don’t see how, it all came about,’ he murmured fretfully. ‘I must get to the bottom of it, Barton; I really must. We are speaking man to man, you know, and all that, but there are certain principles in a household like this which mustn’t be set at defiance.

‘Violence, now! I don’t believe in violence. Don’t you remember my mentioning that the first time I saw you? I’ve always said the French Revolution went a little too far—poor Marie Antoinette, now. Carlyle spoke very nicely of her—bluntly, of course, he didn’t like extravagant women—but she was a woman, even if she was a queen.

‘I’m all against monarchy, especially in Europe, when it can’t keep in its place. But the guillotine was too final; it was, really.

‘Now, tearing down the Hyde Park railing; it looks childish, but I see a certain persuasiveness in it, and you can put up railings again. But a man’s life, you know, Barton; that can’t be put together again! It’s destructiveness without elements of reconstruction; and Ainley is a delicate fellow, you know—he’s had lung trouble——’

‘I didn’t know it,’ said Jim sullenly. ‘They told me afterwards—they might have told me before—but they never told me anything—not that lot. They never spoke to me if they could help it. How was I to know he’d been ill—he looks twice the man that Pritchard is?’

‘Dear me! Dear me!’ said Mr. Bligh, distractedly running his hand through his red hair till it rose up like an inverted halo. ‘I never dreamed of all this moral isolation—most unhealthy and subversive in my own house, too—I thought we all seemed so happy and comfortable together, quite a little family party; and we live quite simply, you know—we’ve never had a man-servant, only the gardener, and he sleeps in his own cottage in the village.

‘It should have been brought to my notice sooner, you know. I could have stimulated companionship. Talked about mountain-climbing, for instance, after dinner—a little friendly repartee, once started!

‘You see, everything going on at such a pace behind my back is so bewildering, and this house has been noted for never having had an acrimonious dispute—“soft words and hard arguments”—somebody or other said that—Sydney Webb, perhaps—except that now, I come to think of it, he is more weighty than epigrammatic—perhaps it was Rosetti—no, no, his favourite phrase was “fundamental brainwork,”—remember that Jim. It seems to have been lacking somewhere, doesn’t it? And then you know, Barton, the essence of being a gentleman is consideration for others, isn’t it?’

‘I shouldn’t have thought so from being here,’ said Jim grimly. ‘I should have thought if it had an essence, it was making people different from yourself feel as uncomfortable as possible.’

‘Quite the contrary! Quite the contrary!’ said Mr. Bligh, coming up short against a medical dictionary which he had got out of the shelf with some difficulty and found even harder to replace. ‘And yet, of course, in a sense I see what you mean. We must allow for youth, you know, Barton—the arrogance of youth—mustn’t we?

‘I daresay Ainley and Pritchard hadn’t quite got to the root of the matter. Wivvle, now, Wivvle appreciated the position perfectly—but the other two are more naturally reactionary. They would have come round in time, though, I think, by a process of reasoning.

‘But violence, you see, Barton, doesn’t conciliate—it doesn’t really. Take the militant suffragettes, burning down golf-clubs; it can’t advance their cause, you know. I’m all for votes for women, of course, all labour men are; I see the childishness and selfishness of the arguments against them; but golf-clubs, you know, all the sacred feeling there is about a golf-club—well—it’s embittering—I play golf myself, but they don’t discriminate.

‘I daresay Pritchard feels a little embittered with you, and it’s that which gives him such a gloomy expression; or else he eats too much meat. I’ve put vegetarianism before him several times, but he doesn’t seem to take to it. But Ainley now; I understand he’s behaved splendidly about it all, poor chap—doesn’t blame you in any way.’

‘I don’t care whether he does or not,’ said Jim harshly. ‘It isn’t what anybody thinks that I care about. It wasn’t sense what I did, and I’ve laid him out for nothing. It’s that that goes against the grain with me.’

‘Ah! You’ve grasped that point,’ Mr. Bligh exclaimed with relief. ‘I thought I could persuade you to it. Force, now, it reacts on itself. In the end force destroys force. It may destroy a person capable of reason, but it can’t destroy reason, and it shouldn’t be used as any kind of substitute for the intellect; it shouldn’t, indeed.

‘Do I take it I can tell Ainley you apologise? Of course, it’s only a matter of form, but I understand you sent no answer to his message.’

‘What answer was I to send?’ asked Jim doubtfully. ‘No! I can’t say I do apologise. I’m sorry—you can tell him that if you like—that I’ve hurt him more than if he was the same as us, but he deserved to be hit all right. It isn’t him I’m sorry for, about that, it’s myself. I ought to have had more sense.’

‘Of course I’m glad I’ve convinced you of that,’ Mr. Bligh hastened to assure Jim, who had reached his own conclusion quite without any such assistance. ‘But there mustn’t be any grudges in the house. My wife is very anxious there shouldn’t be any grudges.

‘She tells me something about your wishing to be confirmed, too. Doesn’t that strike you as rather reactionary and extreme? Of course I quite understand you feel remorse. Your mind misgives you and looks about for a prop. All religions are a system of props. But remorse shouldn’t go too far. Better look the other way and start afresh.’

‘It’s not remorse I’m after,’ Jim explained with unrelenting firmness, ‘nor yet looking the other way; but if I can’t get on without religion I suppose I’ve got to have it, and I may as well try the church kind as any other.’

‘There’s something in what you say, of course,’ said Mr. Bligh, edging rapidly toward the door. Religion is a universal instinct; I’ve never denied that; it’s what’s kept the church going so long, you know—utilised by an opportunist priesthood, but it hasn’t moved, you know, not moved to speak of since the middle ages. Still, perhaps it may help you. After all, individuals evolve as slowly as nations, and this outbreak of yours, you know, now I come to think of it, though quite opposed to the feudal spirit, may have something late renaissance about it—mayn’t it?

‘At any rate, my dear boy, if you feel you need the church, take it. I shan’t interfere with your opinions; but take it gently—don’t let it carry you too far. I’ll tell Ainley you’re sorry. No! No! You needn’t explain again—I understand perfectly what you feel—and there’s Huxley now! On the shelf to the right, I think—or is it Robert Owen, or Karl Marx! No! Huxley—I should strongly recommend you to dip into Huxley; there’s something so bracing and antimedieval about him.

‘We’ve got to the bottom of it all now, haven’t we—and no grudges? I think I’ll just go and speak to Pritchard a moment about his gloom—it may have been those three sausages he ate for breakfast, followed up by ham. But, on the other hand, perhaps it’s something I ought to probe. Of course I’m very much against anything at all like the inquisition, you know—but the policy of “_laissez faire_”—I mustn’t drop too far into that, must I?’

Mr. Bligh left Jim with unmistakable relief. Jim never seemed to swallow what was being said to him easily, and his answers were often unexpected; but Pritchard was never unexpected; his answers were made in words of one syllable, and everything you said slipped off him like water off a duck’s back.