and it contains all the rest." "I don't think," replied
Jamie, "that you will find a single woman in the world
to agree with you." "Women," said John, "are not
concerned with the serious problems of life." "Moth-
er's fingers are simply itching to smack you," said Jamie
and at that even John laughed and Margaret joined
in, and at last the party felt at their ease. Sophia chat-
tered away, told stories of the children, described their
life in Australia in a house built of wood, their dismay
when they had the news of Murdoch's failure, and how
quietly John took it all, the excitement of the gold rush,
the long voyage home and their stay in the paradise
of Madeira. Jamie warmed to her. She seemed to
him the most delightful woman he had ever met, so
human and good, and because good, beautiful. She
was not at all exciting, but was immensely satisfying:
a little bovine, but she had what he had hardly
met in a woman before, absolute physical contentment.
Warmth came from her and it was clear that to her
marriage was a blessed state. That was to John's credit,
and from that Jamie began to appreciate his brother's
honesty and entire lack of pretension. John had
not changed so much as he had thought. Always blunt
and straightforward he had simply ignored everything
in his way that threatened to prevent his being so.

Later on when the brothers talked together Jamie



430 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

found that John had without a tremor discarded the idea
of the family, religion, every pretence of superiority
either as man or Englishman as hindrances to the prac-
tical genial happiness of his desire. He had become
an out-and-out Darwinian and to him man was but
an animal who could outwit all other animals and main-
tain himself in ease and security all his days, loving his
wife, his children and his occupation until, full of years
and blessings, he died and was forgotten. No immor-
tality for John : mortality was quite enough for him
and he only required that it should be decent and or-
derly. At first Jamie envied him and thought he had
found the way of peace, but before long he was in
revolt. John's way was intolerably dull and his ideal
of comfort seemed ludicrous. One little particle of
envy remained with him and the night before John's
departure for the Greigs' Jamie confided that if he
could find another woman like Sophia he would marry
her. "Oh!" said John, "but Sophias do not grow on
every bush."



CHAPTER XXXV

A LETTER FROM ROME



A LARGE package arrived from Italy. It con-
tained sketches of the Austrian Tyrol and the Alps
painted by Mary on the top of the diligence as she went
by easy stages from Berlin to Florence. She wrote :

"One thing only in your letters worries me, dearest
Jamie. They grow more and more theoretical, without
being abstract. You probably won't know what I mean.
I have already torn up seven letters to you. All the
time as I travelled I was obsessed by a feeling that you
were unhappy, but as your letters never contain any
hint of it I must conclude that it was hallucination on
my part. Yet it was very real. I sometimes have a
kind of fury that you are not with me. Seeing that
you are not married there seems no reason why you
should not be. There have been cases like that of a
brother and a sister finding more through each other
than they ever could have done through anybody else.
They are to each other like the arch in some of the pic-
tures here; through which one is shown a most lovely
landscape. I confess that what I see through you I
do not altogether like. I have been so long away from
home and perhaps I have lost touch with you and can
only see what you are willing to let me see. If I were



432 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

in touch with you, I should see more than you would
be aware of. I am not at all to be envied. You try
living among foreigners, away from those you love,
and living on letters. It is not far short of starvation.
I have had my days of real physical starvation, for I
have sometimes been miserably poor, but that is noth-
ing to it. Please realise that and write to me more
often, more humanly and less theoretically. What do
I care whether the family is dying in England and re-
ligion is going the way of all flesh and the English are
most dangerously exposed to evil? Mammon, Moloch,
Beelzebub, Ahriman and the rest of them may take
the lot of them and I sha'n't care. I can't love a na-
tion : and I can and do love you and very much care
whether you are or are not well, happy, contented in
mind and body, but most of all in mind, for you have a
mind and are the only member of the family who has,
but it is always worrying about other people's affairs.
That is, I know, because you are so sympathetic and
simply cannot help living in other people's lives, but
to do that you must not mind their being horrid. If
they are horrid it is because they like it, and neither
can nor want to be any better. Tom likes money. He
gets money. John likes comfort and he gets comfort.
Mother likes God and she gets God, and none of them
can understand anybody liking anything else but their
own particular little thing. I don't quite know what
you like but I am quite sure that you don't like it for
its own sake, but because it leads you on to liberty or
heaven or whatever you like to call it. If you could
be here you would understand yourself. I'm sending
you some of my badly drawn sketches so that you can
see for yourself. May they bring some light into your
dark, dirty Thrigsby! Italy means light! Goethe said



A LETTER FROM ROME 433

that or something like it. Italy means Garibaldi and
Mazzini, and the Risorgimento, which will mean in the
end politicians, but to have had two men like that is a
great deal, and I dislike England for being sentimental
about them. You can't think how funny England seems
at this distance, patronising a man like Garibaldi, as-
suring him that she is free and that she will be only
too glad if he can make Italy like her. And when the
English say that they are free then I think of you and
Thrigsby; great machines and tall chimneys belching
smoke ; and I compare that with the freedom that is al-
ready in the heart and mind of a man like Garibaldi. I
have been reading Carlyle and Ruskin and I know that
a country which has roused such burning indignation
cannot be free. But clearly the English believe them-
selves to be free and the odd thing is that they persuade
other countries that they are so. The men I meet here
believe it, and it was just the same in Germany. I
suppose they mean that we don't have soldiers clanking
and clattering about everywhere. I suppose it was an-
noying to have the Austrians in Milan, but I'm becom-
ing a cosmopolitan and don't think one kind of person
is better than another. So long as I have a crust of
bread and one spare gown and a roof over my head I
don't care where I am. If only everybody would agree
about that there wouldn't be any soldiers, for there
would be plenty of room for all of us and there would
be nothing to fight about. They say here that there is
going to be war in America. I can't imagine why.
Surely there is room for everybody there. But I sup-
pose the Americans, no more than the Europeans, don't
think as I do. I am like Goethe, a good European,
and I believe nothing matters but civilisation, and I
believe in that because it makes possible the kind of



434 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

life I -like. I expect the truth of the matter is that
most people dislike civilisation because it means re-
straint, and so this general dislike expresses itself in a
number of particular little dislikes, which gather into
something that is far more dangerous than hatred,
namely a superstitious jealousy. I think I agree with
you about the God-myth having become hopelessly in-
adequate under modern conditions and that the family
goes with it. It is all very difficult. Life does suddenly
seem to have become more difficult, but surely all the
better for that. I suppose there will always be myths
but the thing to avoid is the giving of authority to a
myth. One wants belief, for life must have a struc-
ture, but if evolution is true, as I think it is, then each
individual may be trusted to make his own structure
to convey and carry whatever it may be that he desires.
Selfishness makes structure impossible. That is why
ready-made structures are in the end always broken
down. With every man free to make his own structure,
selfishness would be gradually squeezed out. Evolution
has given a new meaning to liberty as to everything else
and I suppose none of us yet realises one-tenth of all
that it does mean. I think Darwin is far more the
saviour of England than ever Nelson was, for he has
saved her from herself, which was much more difficult
than saving her from Napoleon. I find, and I daresay
you do too, that evolution has given a new meaning to
poetry, and, oddly enough, also to the Bible, which I
have been reading again. It is quite wonderful but it
makes me feel ashamed of myself for I realise that I
have read the poets for their words and not for their
poetry. That is my chief comfort here. I have not
yet found any work to do, and am again poor, but living
with a lovely view over roofs to the dome of St. Peter's.



A LETTER FROM ROME 435

I have been ill : Roman fever. Therefore I cannot write
a long letter and the sketches must tell you all the won-
ders of my journey here. I shall stay until I can speak
Italian and have read Dante and then with two languages
and my school French I shall seek employment in Eng-
land. My heart is in Edinburgh, but I could not bear
to live there again. Please keep the sketches and when
you write send me some sort of picture or photograph of
yourself. Get Agnes to draw you. She has a real tal-
ent. I feel very sorry for her and Tom. It must be
most disappointing to them to have no children, and
especially hard with John's boys so fine and jolly. I
hope John's comfort will not stifle them but he is sen-
sible and will bring them up well. If you could see
the children here! You would be envious of Italian
women. At least I am. The Spirito Santo must have
had something to do with them. They say it is the
Spirito Santo when a priest is the father!"



CHAPTER XXXVI

MRS. ELIAS BROADBENT



FOR once in a way Jamie's expectations were ful-
filled and there was a great change brought about
by John's return, though it came rather from Sophia.
Indeed with John there was soon a breach. Jamie was
anxious that provision should be made for his mother's
old age and wished to draw up some scheme by which
the three of them should begin at once to contribute.
Tom had refused to have anything to do with it and
John, when he was sounded, shared Tom's view that as
long as Jamie lived with their mother it was his affair
and there was no need for further thought. Margaret
kept his house for him and was therefore entitled to a
home at his expense. Tom had even gone so far as to
hint that his elder brother was trying to shirk his re-
sponsibilities and he gave John a most lurid account of
Jamie's loose and extravagant private life. In that ac-
count Jamie figured as a minor Heliogabalus. Sophia,
however, knew better, and always defended her brother-
in-law, in whom she had the sympathy which John, in
spite of his many virtues as a husband, lacked. Jamie
could delight in her children even as she did. He could
understand that they were a part of herself, that the baby
was still an essential piece of her physical existence, that
she lived through them and was only the more herself

436



MRS. ELI AS BROADBENT 437

for it. He could be a child with the children (he had
learned that from Mrs. Leslie) and she found soon
that he was almost like another child to her, and could
be so without loss of dignity or hurt to his vanity. He
saw and allowed her own dignity as a woman practising
her womanhood and revelling in it without coquetry.
He could idealise her without making her inaccessible,
without diminishing her humanity, and for the first time
there was room in his world for woman, who had been
hitherto, so almost monastic had been his life, only an
exasperation and an obsession. She was entirely frank
with him as no woman had ever been, entirely with-
out that vain teasing which makes frankness impossible.
She accepted her husband's dictum that women have
nothing to do with the important problems of life be-
cause she was unaware of any problem. All her desires
had easily and naturally been satisfied and, since it had
been so easy and natural, other people's desires could
equally be satisfied. She had so much that it seemed to
her unreasonable and foolish to distract herself by wor-
rying because she had not something more, and because
she found something more in James, she did not, for
that, think ill of John. Indeed Jamie only made her
the more aware of what she had and more grateful for it.
She was sorry for him. The house seemed so empty
to her. It was just a house in which he ate and slept
and it was on the whole uncomfortable. It lacked all
the little graces that a woman who loved him could
have brought into it. She thought him very wonderful
and because he was that he needed such graces. There
was trouble with Tibby who did not at all like being told
that she must prepare a more dainty table and give more
attention to the cleanliness of the linen and provide a
greater variety of food. Sophia did not appreciate



438 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

Tibby's position in the household and criticised her work
with no regard for her feelings. As if Tibby did not
know exactly what Jamie liked and disliked ! However
she bottled up her feelings and only let them loose upon
the Portuguese with whom she had managed somehow
to break down the barrier of language. Tibby was
alarmed. It was clear to her that John and Tom were
better fed than Jamie, whose alliance with Sophia was
also disturbing. "Never once has he complained," said
Tibby. "And never would," returned Sophia. "I am
sure you do your best, but, believe me, I know what men
like." "What's meat to one is poison to another," pro-
tested Tibby. "Certainly, but there are little things
that they all like, and they make all the difference. It
is not so much in the cooking as in the serving, nor
so much in the cleaning as in the arranging." "It is
small use arranging for Jamie," said Tibby, "for an
untidier man there never was."

Sophia went away feeling that she would never rest
content until she had taken Jamie away from that house.
Margaret obviously wished it to be like a Scots manse,
bare and frugal, and Jamie was not a Scots minister,
but a hard-working man blessed or cursed with a rarely
sensitive nature. "He must marry," said Sophia. "It
is perfectly absurd that he is not married, and perfectly
wicked of those two women to keep their claws in him."

To think of a thing was for Sophia to do it. She
never went out without looking at every young woman
she met and wondering if she would do, regarding them
from every point of view, the natural, the physical, the
aesthetic, the practical. There was no nonsense about
Sophia: a wife must be pleasing, healthy, happy and
sensible. Jamie's wife must be young, amiable, and
strong: young, because he was in many ways too old,



MRS. ELI AS BROADBENT 439

amiable, because he had moods, strong, because he was
nervous, and with a nervous woman might produce un-
healthy and abnormal children, and children were ab-
solutely necessary for him. So eager was Sophia in this
search that she postponed her visit to the Greigs' three
times and at last sent John off without her, making as
an excuse that she had found a very good doctor who
wished to have her under his eye for some time longer
(she had had a very difficult time with the baby in
Madeira and had had no proper attendance, and there
were after-effects which might or might not be serious).
This doctor, Elias Broadbent, it transpired, had married
the mother of a school friend of Sophia's, Belle Wood,
and Belle, hearing of her, arranged a meeting and
brought with her her young sister, Catherine, a girl of
eighteen. No sooner did Sophia set eyes on Catherine
than she decided that here was the wife for Jamie. The
girl was beautiful: tall, fair, radiant with health and
of an obvious innocence and purity, placid and immobile.
She was neither awkward nor shy, but always at her
ease, if anything lazy because she was so certain of
giving pleasure with her beauty. Belle on the other hand
was a plump little chatterbox, full of wiles and flattery,
extremely vain and obviously a little anxious at being left
unmarried. She was consumed with interest in Sophia's
marriage, her children, her husband, her voyage to the
antipodes, but for all Belle's efforts, Sophia could not
keep her attention from the younger sister and she saw
then that Belle was afraid of this beautiful rival and
hated her. Belle was full of grievances and conveyed,
without actually saying it, the idea that she had been
greatly wronged. She had had many offers but just at
the time her mother had been preoccupied with catching
Dr. Broadbent, and no young man had had the temerity



440 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

to approach her. It was with an amazing skill that Belle
laid bare the whole story of her wrongs so that not a
word of it should be intelligible to Catherine. Sophia
felt that she was possessed of every detail. She was so
sympathetic and kindly that Belle invited her most pres-
singly to come and see her at home and to make the
acquaintance of her mother.

Mrs. Elias Broadbent was a formidable woman, large,
with a greedy mouth and hard eyes that shone like
polished pebbles. She was the daughter of an Arch-
deacon, a Northrop, and she let Sophia know within
five minutes that the Northrops had their seat in York-
shire and she had been married very young to Mr. Wood,
one of the Warwickshire Woods, and she had been left
a widow and had remained so for many years because
there were so few gentlemen in Thrigsby. She was
swollen with pride over her capture of Dr. Broadbent
who was one of the leading physicians of the town.
"And how interesting that you were at school with
Belle, Mrs. Lawrence." "Lawrie/' said Sophia. "The
Lawries are well known in Thrigsby, though not so well
known as my own family, the Greigs." Greig! The
name worked wonders. Mrs. Broadbent welcomed
Sophia as an equal. Her husband had attended Donald
Greig through a long and dangerous illness, and, as a
matter of fact, it had been through Angus Greig that the
doctor had made his reputation.

In her mother's presence Belle was no longer a chat-
terbox. She was almost as silent as Catherine, and it
was patent that the two young women had no kind of
interest for their mother, who was entirely absorbed in
her new life and rather resented her children as re-
minders that there had ever been any other. Tea was
brought in, with muffins and three varieties of rich



MRS. ELI AS BROADBENT 441

cake. Mrs. Broadbent ate three muffins and two slices
of cake and gave herself up to the pleasure of eating.
The younger women hardly touched a morsel, but sat
like ministrants while Mrs. Broadbent, almost like a
priestess, accomplished the ceremony of the meal.
"If this is tea," thought Sophia, "what must dinner be
like?" Then her mind began to play about Catherine,
for whom she felt vaguely sorry, to be so young, so
lovely and so cruelly neglected. Thinking of her in
connection with her purpose, Catherine seemed like a
ripe plum on a wall that would come off at a touch.

Sophia was always liked by women and she was urged
to come again. She explained that she was staying with
her mother-in-law and hoped Mrs. Broadbent would call.

A week later Mrs. Broadbent called and, with her,
Belle. It was on a Saturday and Jamie was in, having
brought Fanny to her periodical tea-party with Tibby
in the kitchen. Belle had made inquiries about Jamie
and had heard much to his credit and set herself to tickle
his vanity and to attract him. But he detested her co-
quetry and even more he hated Mrs. Broadbent who sat
with a hard wandering eye taking in the bare furniture
and heavily patronising Margaret, who fascinated her,
as a woman who had cherished her widowhood and
tended it most lovingly. The atmosphere awed Mrs.
Broadbent. She was sensitive to its aristocratic quality
and drank it in greedily. It was so acute a pleasure to
her that she almost ignored the food that was set before
her.

To Jamie the woman was a living offence and as
soon as he could he made excuses and escaped. He was
very angry with Sophia and reproached her bitterly.
Sophia replied: "She is not so bad as all that. She
simply doesn't matter. I asked her because I wanted



442 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

you to know the Doctor who is a really interesting man,
a man of science, who would be very good for you. And
he is interested in you, besides. I hoped she would bring
her younger daughter who is a great beauty, a lovely
creature and most unhappy, as you can imagine with a
mother like that." The mention of beauty in distress
caught Jamie's attention as it was intended that it
should. "If she is anything like her mother," he said,
"she cannot be beautiful and girls always grow like their
mothers in twenty years' time." "She is not at all like
her mother," answered Sophia, "and she is a perfect
angel, for, though she suffers a real martyrdom, she is
entirely unspoiled and needs nothing but friendship. If
she could meet your mother I am sure it would make all
the difference in the world to her."

The next move was that Sophia brought the Doctor
home with her one evening, with the result that he and
Jamie sat up until two in the morning, Jamie thrilled
with the pleasure of meeting a man of ideas and skilled
mind (though it made him feel hopelessly muddle-
headed) and the Doctor delighted to find a young and
eager mental curiosity prepared to discuss science with-
out reference to theology. The views of each were
complementary to those of the other and each felt that
at last he had met a thoroughly sensible man. Their
conversation was entirely abstract and impersonal and
very exciting so that Jamie was eager for more and
eagerly accepted an invitation to dine at the Doctor's
house on the following Tuesday.

He forgot to make a note of the exact time and arrived
half-an-hour early. The Doctor was out. Mrs. Broad-
bent was dressing and asked Belle to go down. Belle
knew that Jamie was hopeless for herself: also she dis-
liked any man who was impervious to her coquetry : and



MRS. ELIAS BROADBENT 443

she sent Catherine, a radiant vision in pale blue. She
introduced herself: "I'm the younger Miss Wood,"
she said. "My mother will be down soon." So this
was the beauty! Jamie was dazzled by her. His blood
went singing in his veins for the sheer joyous delight
of her. He held her hand for a full minute in the
oblivious happiness that he had in saluting her beauty,
in the pure freshness with which it filled him like the
air of a spring morning. "You must excuse me," she
said, "if I do not entertain you very well, but I have only
just begun to meet people and I do not know yet what
they talk about." "If they are friends," said he, "it
does not matter much what they talk about, and if they
are not friends they need not talk at all." She responded
instantly to the kindness in his voice and she accepted
the whole-hearted homage in his eyes. She was used
to homage, but of a furtive and unwilling kind. With
this went the whole nature of the man in absolute sim-
plicity. All the seeds of warm human love that had
been planted in him during his days with Sophia grew
up to flower, and Catherine became at once an image of
that love. Her beauty was worthy of it, spiritualised it,
rid it of the excessive comfort which in Sophia had
oppressed him. That gone, he was, on the instant, in
love. His whole force was concentrated on the girl and
he was entirely, deliciously happy and reckless, sensitive
to her innocence, instinctively careful lest anything in
his feelings should hurt her or rouse her too suddenly.
He rejoiced too in the chill of her modesty. O ! to melt
her, to waken her, to set her spirit free, to catch her
soul and never let it go. At once he was her wooer
most supple and most skilful, not dreaming of success
or failure, not caring what might come, but absorbed
wholly in his own immediate surrender, in the joy of



444 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

the wooing. It mattered nothing what he said to her.
The barest words formed a song, and her voice, her