ought to be paid according to their capacity for happi-
ness." '"O dear," she said, "if you're going to worry
about what ought to be I give you up. You really must
take care or you'll turn into a G.G. or gloomy grizzler."
She insisted on seeing Margaret and then for the first
time she was depressed. Margaret was perfectly charm-
ing to her and showed herself genuinely pleased at her
success. She had read her newspapers and knew that
416 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
Thrigsby was proud of Henry Acomb. But Selina sim-
ply could find nothing to say. Reminiscences were soon
exhausted and then conversation ended. The two women
respected each other, but they had nothing in common.
Neither's charity could include the other. Jamie felt
the division but could do nothing to break it down, noth-
ing to interpret them to each other though he loved and
honoured both.
Selina frankly confessed her embarrassment to him.
"It's no good," she said. "It simply stifled me. All the
time I could not help thinking how like she is to my
father, though she is entirely different and a saint. She
is a saint and I am the world and the flesh, and I am
not and never shall be a family woman. If ever my
children begin to talk about 'the Acombs' I shall turn
them out at once to learn that there are other people in
the world." "That is all very well for you," said Jamie.
"You have the world at your feet, but other people are
ambitious and have no means of gratifying it, because
they are neither charming, nor clever, nor witty."- "You
have theories for everything," said Selina, a little tartly,
because she had really suffered and now resented time
wasted on suffering. "I can't understand people want-
ing to be anything but lovable." "That also is impos-
sible for most people." "Of course it is," cried she,
"because they won't love and, if you don't take care, it
will be quite impossible for you. You will grow into
a saint and a martyr and I shall hate you."
It would be quite useless, he saw, to explain to her
that his mother also had loved. Selina's love was easy
and maternal, hardly more than a part of her abounding
physical well-being. She was very wonderful but he was
devoutly thankful that he had escaped having her for
a mate. For her part she shuddered when she thought
JOHN'S RETURN 417
that she might have had to live with him in such a house
as that, regular, ordered, neat, tidy, overcrowded and
drab. "I don't wonder the man's running to seed," she
said to Henry as she described the tea with Margaret.
"When I think of the handsome proud boy he was it
makes me savage. To think of a man like that living
with his mother. She might be an angel from heaven
but she could never satisfy the devil in him, and that's
what a man wants, isn't it, darling?" Henry scratched
his head: "Yes," he said, "upon me soul, women are
savages and it is just as well." "O, Henry," she said,
"never a day passes but I thank God for not giving you
any brains." Henry looked dubious over that and again
he scratched his head. "The immortal bard had brains."
"Yes," said Selina, breathlessly and indignantly, "and
we know what he was." "What was he?" '"Well, he
was in love with a man." "Oh!" said Henry. "Is that
what brains does for you?" "It is," replied Selina, "and
brains with Jamie Lawrie is neither more nor less than
a disease." "But you like him?" "Of course I like
him. He makes you want to take him in your arms and
comfort him and stop the world from hurting him. I
can't think why no one does it." "You had your chance,"
said Henry, in whom there were still some seeds of jeal-
ousy. "And after all the world hurts me even if I haven't
any brains." "Hum!" said Selina. "You are much
more likely to hurt the world than to let it hurt you and
that's why I love you. But Jamie lets it hurt him
through other people, which seems to me to be asking
for trouble." Henry was incapable of understanding
that and the conversation languished. Selina seized the
opportunity to arrange that Mr. Wilcox should be taken
back to London, and it was agreed upon.
Negotiations were subsequently opened for taking
418 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
Fanny also but her mother flatly refused. The idea
of London frightened her. It was a wicked place, full
of marauding men and governments, press-gangs, luxu-
rious and wicked marquises and earls. It had cost her
much effort to be convinced of Mr. Lawrie's virtue. Mr.
Lawrie had pledged himself to secure the safety and
advancement of her girl, and further than that she could
not go. In her heart of hearts she absolutely distrusted
Selina and did not believe a word she said, though she
was quite ready to accept a substantial gift of money.
"She's a good girl," said Mrs. Shaw, "and good girls
is rare. And if a woman has such a blessing in the
house she ought to stick to it. Who am I to look a
gift from above in the mouth, with rent to pay and
butcher's meat at the price it is? Take your blessings,
I say. The poor don't 'ave too many and there's no
call for them to go gathering mushrooms in the streets.
I wouldn't let a girl of mine go to London, not if it was
to be set on the golden throne itself. And besides that
she's a growing girl yet and her troubles are yet to come."
Selina was a shrewd judge of womankind and knew when
to hold her peace. She sighed, for she saw that it would
go hardly with Fanny, having such a mother to stand in
her way and deny her right to anything better than she
herself had known.
Selina was glad to leave Thrigsby. It made her sad.
She missed the dignity and ease of London, where she
could be entirely happy with success and money and
friendliness on every side of her. She was glad to
leave Jamie too. He seemed to her, though this she did
not tell him, very typical of Thrigsby, labouring, labour-
ing, straining in the darkness, while love and laughter
and all sweet things passed him by.
On the other hand she left him feeling that he had
JOHN'S RETURN 419
had a bright holiday, all the more delightful for the
element of flirtation there had been in all his conversa-
tion with her, and he plunged back the more eagerly
into his ordinary life. And as Selina became more
remote from him she did seem just a joke, delicious for
the moment, but unessential. She stood for nothing but
evanescence. He could no more symbolise her than he
could a sunbeam in a shower of rain. He soon found
that the idea of her was not necessary to him, not half
so necessary as the idea of any member of his family
or the idea of Tibby, which was always hovering, un-
heeded, behind his thoughts. All the same Selina had
left him conscious of his unmated condition, and he
had been subtly aware of her scorn of him as a man in
full maturity living with his mother. His vanity re-
sented it and by way of protest he set about making
his relation with his mother a more delightful and satis-
fying one and strove to break up the habits which en-
couraged their daily indifference to each other. He
talked to her of the books he was reading, of the doings
of his day in town, of her doings and of her friends
(she had a small but very loyal and admiring circle)
even of Tom's virtues, and of John's future. Eve-
ning after evening he sat and read the Bible to her and
tried to induce her to appreciate its finest passages as
literature; but she would not have the Bible criticised,
nor one passage set above another. Still less would she
listen to him when he tried to examine its philosophy of
life. It was not to her a philosophy but an authority.
However, her taste was good and her favourite book was
Job, which she much preferred to the histories. "If
you'd only let me read Shakespeare to you," said Jamie
one evening, "you would find Hamlet very like the Book
of Job, though much better." "There can be no com-
420 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
parison," said Margaret. '"Indeed, yes. The Bible is
the book of the Jews. Shakespeare is the book of the
English. They are very much alike except that the
English have discovered humour as a relief from their
destiny." "Don't talk nonsense," said Margaret with a
click of her knitting-needles. "Shakespeare is only poet-
ry. Read me the twenty-third chapter of Isaiah, the
miserable overthrow of Tyre." And he read:
" 'The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish;
for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no enter-
ing in: from the land of Chittim it is revealed to them.
" 'Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle ; thou whom the
merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have re-
plenished.
" 'And by great waters the seed of Sihor, the harvest
of the river, is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations.
' 'Be thou ashamed, O Zidon ; for the sea hath spoken,
even the strength of the sea, saying, I travail not, nor
bring forth children, neither do I nourish up young men,
nor bring up virgins.
' 'As at the report concerning Egypt, so shall they be
sorely pained at the report of Tyre.
' 'Pass ye over to Tarshish ; howl, ye inhabitants of
the isle.
' 'Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is cf an-
cient days? her own feet shall carry her afar off to
sojourn.
' 'Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the
crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traf-
fickers are the honourable of the earth ?' '
Here he broke off to say : "I can't make much sense
of it, but that last verse sounds like Thrigsby." "Go
on," said Margaret. He finished the chapter, and then
JOHN'S RETURN 421
repeated the last two verses: "This," he said, "is proph-
ecy:
" 'And it shall come to pass, after the end of seventy
years, that the Lord will visit Tyre, and she shall turn
to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the
kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth.
" 'And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness
to the Lord: it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for
her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the
Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.' '
"Reading Thrigsby for Tyre," he said, "I am only
sorry that we have to wait seventy years." "Prophecy,"
said Margaret, "is not to be taken literally. It is to
turn our thoughts from worldly things. Many of your
father's sermons were on the twenty-third chapter of
Isaiah." "Have you got any of them?" he asked.
"About fifteen. He used generally to preach extempore."
"I'd like to see them. The reference to food and
clothing seems to me worldly enough, but perhaps as I
am only a bank clerk it is difficult for me to escape all
worldly thoughts. Tyre and Sidon were real places, you
know, mother, and I think they must have been very
like South Lancashire, without the smoke." "They may
have been real places," said Margaret, "but they are
used in the book to express blemishes upon the soul.
The book, your father used to say, is the story of the
soul."- -"But it is not a true story," said he, "for there
is not a smile in it from beginning to end." "Neither,"
replied she, "in the history of the soul upon earth is there
anything so pleasant as a smile. It is one long expiation
for the knowledge of good and evil, as we are told in
the book of Genesis. We are happy for a little while as
children, but that is soon taken from us and we have to
bear our lot." "I deny absolutely," said he, "that I
422 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
was happy as a child, and I was never happier in my
life than I am now." "But then you were not an ordi-
nary child. You were a source of great anxiety to me."
"And I daresay that is why I never believed in a good
without evil. I always did prefer poetry to prophecy and
always shall." Margaret sighed: "Well, I have done
my best for you, Jamie. You must dree your own
weird. It is not given to any of us to know what the
Bible means, but it does make clear to us our own wick-
edness." "I suppose so," said he, "but it makes even
clearer the wickedness of other people. I shall be glad
to hear what my father had to say on the subject and
I should like to read him to the assembled family when
John returns." "That will be soon now," said Mar-
garet. "They have been delayed because Sophia is going
to have another baby and they do not wish to risk its
being born at sea. She is not at all well and John is
very anxious about her." "I sometimes wonder, if the
world is so doomed to sinfulness, why we ever bring more
people into it." "That also is our curse." "O, come,
mother, the angel appeared to Abraham and assured him
that his seed should be as the sands of the sea-shore and
he was quite pleased about it, and you have fought like
a tigress for your own five." "There are consolations,"
said Margaret, "and the New Testament has made a
great difference."
That sent Jamie to the New Testament and with this
and his father's sermons he spent some weeks until the
news came of John's return to England and landing at
Plymouth. The New Testament certainly did something
to relieve the stoic pessimism of the Old, which no one
but the Jews could have endured, but it produced con-
fusion. It gave relief but only at the cost of sacrifice.
There was still the same belief in the impossibility of
JOHN'S RETURN 423
happiness after childhood and the same rigorous ex-
clusion of the ordinary mechanism of life as a means
to happiness. It seemed to Jamie that the Reverened T.
Lawrie, his father, had avoided the exclusion by escap-
ing into a private little poetic joy of his own which he
had vainly tried to express in the conventional termin-
ology and the legend of the religion he professed. There
were passages concerning flowers and mountains and
running water which were purely poetic in feeling and
entirely free of the taint of the religion which forbade
all immediate joy and under pretence of redressing mean-
ness and ugliness and brutality sanctioned them. It was
quite clear to Jamie that his father's faith had been en-
tirely different from its letter and far removed from
Margaret's, who looked for and accepted the ugliness
in all things and really believed that her sufferings would
be rewarded hereafter. The Rev. T. Lawrie on the
other hand had his sufferings immediately rewarded but
never succeeded in sharing his reward with another liv-
ing soul. His sermons were a strange combination of
conventional damnations and blastings and natural ec-
stasy. As he read them Jamie understood himself better
and other people rather less, inasmuch as he began to
find excuses for them. It was simply that he was no
longer frightened of his ideas, and could abstract them
and did not need to use people as symbols for them.
Many of his obsessions faded and he was more open
to common affection.
He was very eager to see John again. Quite unrea-
sonably he hoped for great things from him, who had
been over the wide world, and had travelled in far lands
where the sun shone unimaginably for weeks together
and peaches were so common that they were given to
the pigs for food. John was to be in some sort a proof
424 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
that Thrigsby was wrong. This idea had come from
Tom, who had been greatly upset by his younger broth-
er's success, not as success but as an assertion that there
was money elsewhere than in Thrigsby and that there
were other praiseworthy means of becoming rich than
by being a Thrigsby merchant. This it was impossible
for Tom to admit. He despised two things : aristocracy
and speculation. It was wrong in his eyes to be born
rich or to acquire riches suddenly, for wealth was to him
evidence of character. A poor man was a man who had
something radically wrong with him, but a duke or a
speculator could be rich and yet possessed of nothing
but luck or cunning. To Jamie such ideas were repulsive
and he looked to John for refutation of them. He imag-
ined John returning like a nabob, splendidly generous
and putting to shame the screwing and scraping and
hoarding that went on in Thrigsby with its prematurely
elderly gentlemen all bent on proving their character by
their banking accounts. What made the situation par-
ticularly acute was that Tom had docked half the allow-
ance he had made to his mother on the score of growing
expense and with the excuse that the household was really
Jamie's, who as a single man could well afford it.
John arrived and Jamie met him at the station, but
did not recognise him. Sophia had altered very little.
She had two boys, Angus and David, and a Portuguese
nurse, picked up in Madeira, who carried a baby in her
arms. A tubby little man was standing near them. He
had a beard and wore broadcloth and looked like a
Thrigsbeian tradesman waiting for his wife. This was
John. He recognised his brother and came forward.
Jamie stared at him and could not conceal his disappoint-
ment. This was another and a lesser Tom. Where was
the adventurer, the nabob, the rare traveller ? And when
JOHN'S RETURN 425
John spoke it was with a Scotch accent more pronounced
than would be heard upon the lips of any Scot in his
native land. "Ye've no' cheenged, Jamie," he said.
"You've grown fat !" said Jamie, almost in a tone of hor-
ror. "I should have known you anywhere," said Sophia.
"This is Angus and this is David, and this is Maria. She
doesn't speak a word of English and I don't know a
word of Portuguese but she simply would not be parted
from baby. She was just like a piece of luggage. She
belonged to us and had to be packed." "But I had to
pay her passage just as much as if she'd been English,"
said John. Luggage, Maria and the children were sent
off in one fly and Jamie and his relatives followed in an-
other. John seemed actually to be pleased to be back
in Thrigsby and remarked changes and remembered
shops and landmarks. "A bit different to our first com-
ing to Thrigsby," he said. "There was nothing in the
old place but you then; at least, for me." '"Then you
can imagine what it was like for me," said Jamie, "com-
ing here with nothing at all in front of me. I'm still
looking for it." He liked John for saying that. It
was a taste of the old John and a little palliated the
shock that he had had in seeing his brother come back
as though it were only from the sea-side. However
that relief was taken from him for John said : "You
little thought then that I should be the rolling stone
of the family. But sometimes it's the rolling stone that
gathers the moss, eh, Sophia?" And Sophia said: "I
don't suppose your mother will look for any. She won't
care so long as you roll back to her."
Indeed when they reached home they found Margaret
strangely excited but having herself under tight control.
She was arrayed in her best and had tea ready. She
received John's kisses almost absently. Her eyes were
426 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
for her grandchildren, the two sturdy little Lawries and
the plump brown baby. The boys had been instructed
to bob to their grandmamma as lords bob to the Queen.
Margaret was delighted with them and Jamie felt an-
noyed with John for not taking a more obvious pride
in his sons. After all, they were his real treasure and
Margaret's instinct, as usual, was perfectly right.
Sophia was blissfully happy, but John looked rather
morose as though this was not quite what he had ex-
pected. He stood gazing round the room, taking in its
contents, and his eyes were rather contemptuous. Maria
stood dandling the baby with a wide grin on her ma-
hogany-coloured face, and her strong white teeth flash-
ing. Margaret spoke to her and she broke into a torrent
of Portuguese. "O!" said Margaret, "I hope she is
not a papist." "There are no Protestants in Madeira,"
said Sophia apologetically.
The children were removed, Tibby taking charge of
them and Maria. "Of course," said Margaret, "you will
send her back as soon as you are settled here." "I don't
think you'll get her to go until the baby can walk," said
Jamie. Sophia cried : "Why, Jamie, what do you know
about it?" -"Not much," he said, "but I fancy I know
something about Maria." "More than I do," John threw
in. "I only know that she is an infernal nuisance and
eats as much as an elephant." "Do they have elephants
in Australia?" asked Margaret, by way of making con-
versation easier. "Of course they don't," answered
John. "That's India. In Australia they have emus, kan-
garoos, wallabies and black swans and no other wild
animals. It is a beastly place and I don't wish to talk
about it." "But we expected you to talk, John. We
stay-at-homes have nothing to tell, except what I have
already told you in my letters. You heard about Tom
JOHN'S RETURN 427
and Agnes and really nothing much else has happened.
We want to hear what you intend to do." "That de-
pends on Sophia," said John. "She's a regular Greig
and can't bear to be parted from her family and wants
me to build near them. We have promised to go up
there next week to stay and see what can be done about
it." "Next week?" asked Margaret a little querulously.
"I hoped you would make a longer stay than that." <
John's eyes roved disapprovingly round the room. It
was obvious that he had no intention of staying. "I
want to settle down," he said. "The sooner the better.
I've been thinking out in Australia and it is obvious to
me that England has to look for her future to the mid-
dle classes, at least to those members of it who are rich
enough to have leisure without the false position which
ruins the aristocracy. If I am well enough I should
like to stand for parliament. If I am not I shall devote
myself to the study of politics. I am convinced that
unless the middle classes take the trouble to understand
politics there will be a revolution. Palmerston's policy
has been the ruination of the country and we are taking
on more than we can safely deal with. What England
wants is safety and the only safe people in it are the
middle classes. It is high time we had a Prime Minister
without a title." Margaret and Jamie exchanged be-
wildered glances. Had the family produced a bore?
That was the uneasy suspicion that flashed across Jamie's
mind. If sun and peaches produced that effect, better
the smoke and gloom of Thrigsby. John went on:
"Bright was always my man, you know. Cobden and
Bright set the country on the right road and it is simply
disastrous that the aristocracy are still allowed to have
any say in the government." "What I want to know
is," said Jamie, "do kangaroos really carry their young
428 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
in a pouch and is it true that they can be taught to box?"
Sophia gave a wild giggle. "Not that I ever heard
of," said John solemnly, "but they kick like a French-
man. And that's another thing that I cannot abide,
this toadying to Louis Napoleon. I should have thought
Europe had had enough of that family/' "Who is
Louis Napoleon?" asked Jamie, and John gasped,
stared, appreciated the snub and was angrily silent.
"Sophia dear," said Margaret, "do tell me if you are
glad to be back in England." "Glad is not the word for
it. You can't imagine what it means to come back and
see green fields and hedges and a soft blue sky full of
wonderful great clouds. You need to have been in a
place where the sky is hot and hard and for months
on end there is never any rain. Everything else seems
hard and uncomfortable. It can't be home where there
is no softness and gentleness." John interrupted this
charming lyrical praise of England. "What strikes me
about England," he said, "is that she is asleep." "You
won't think that if you try to do business with an Eng-
lishman," said Jamie. "I have no intention of doing
business," retorted John, "and my experience of peo-
ple is that they are quite capable of doing business in
their sleep; that is, without being awake to the serious
problems of life." At this point Margaret seemed to
realise that this was not the John of her dreams and
expectations. She had looked for a long-lost son to
come back grateful, burdened with experiences and riches
to the bosom of the family which had sent him forth. It
was slowly being borne in upon her that John had not
a thought in his head for the family. She might have
known that. Had it been otherwise, he could not have
given his children a popish nurse. With less dismay
and more excitement Jamie had become aware of the
JOHN'S RETURN 429
same thing. John was not a bore, he was a phenome-
non. After all, why should he expect John to regard
the family with more respect than himself, to whom
it no longer existed as at once the condition and the
object of life? He could not altogether ignore it as John
seemed to do. '"What are the serious problems of life?"
he asked. "The development of a democratic govern-
ment without the tyranny of the mob. That is the first