mass upon the individual had become so powerful as to
force the individual to react or perish it was absurd
to suppose that God had accomplished his creation once
and for all. With the resources of modern life such a
creation had become the prey of men. "The world's
mine oyster." Creation was not accomplished. It was
continuous and unceasing and in it every living thing
had its share, destroying and creating.

Jamie lost himself in a maze of metaphysical ideas,
striving to justify the ways of God to man and also to
enlarge his idea of God. As, however, he had a brain
that could not think for twenty minutes without taking
fire, he soon sought relief either in reading or in writing,
constructed nothing, and was left without any other
guide than his own honest humanity. That saved him
from the contempt into which in his more despairing
moments he was in danger of falling. Both his temper
and his humour were mellowed and he was left without
rancour. Thrigsby was itself again, more itself than
ever, for the lot of the poor was in no way alleviated and
a period of prosperity had set in to produce an un-
precedented expansion of trade. The famine had been
to the manufacturers, merchants, and shippers no more
than a bad year to a farmer. They had weathered it
somehow and must make up for it. Of deeper effects
there was no sign, though there was an increase of agi-
tation among the working people. Jamie had hoped for
a collapse but there was none. If anything there was
more frankness in the avarice of the business men and



DISASTER 515



less cant about the future of England and Thrigsby.
There was even less civic sense. Local politics were
of less importance and it was hardly a distinction to be a
member of the Town Council. The Mayor and Alder-
men were, if they were noticed at all, objects of ridicule.
Still, the gain in frankness was something. Decent peo-
ple could have a quiet life and keep themselves to them-
selves. That was all Jamie desired. He had been hurt
and bruised and felt too crippled to enter the scramble
again. He had painful hours with Catherine trying to
reconcile her to the idea of being poor. It was difficult
but he was so kind to her that she could not take excep-
tion and she could find no argument in favour of riches
that he was not able to demolish with a word or two.
His attitude towards her now was that she was the
wife of his bosom, the woman with whom through fair
weather and foul he would go hand in hand. They had
had their pleasure and their torment, there was now no
room for sentiment. She was the fellow-creature with
whom it was his fate to live and quarrel and kiss and
bring up children. She would always be a romantic
figure to him and for the rest there would be one long
struggle to keep life decent until the end. He had no
room in his life for folly and hoped that in time there
would be no room for it in hers either. In the mean-
time it was not for him to dictate to her what she should
or should not do. He gave her full freedom and so im-
pressed her that for a time she sobered down. They
were brought together also by a great grief. In the mid-
dle of their greatest perplexity they received the news
that Sophia, to whom they were both fondly attached,
had died suddenly. She had been delicate ever since her
return from Australia, and her life with John had been
a pilgrimage from place to place in search of a climate



516 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

that would suit her. Bournemouth had seemed to en-
courage her vitality, but she died there and John was
left with his two boys.

Margaret wished to go to him but it was generally
agreed that she was too old. Tibby offered herself but
the affair was settled by John's having a violent and bitter
quarrel with the Greigs over Sophia's estate in the course
of which he made himself so detestable and feeling ran
so high that there was a breach between the two families.
Tom gave up his house and withdrew to Cheadley Edge
and Mrs. Donald bundled Maggie out of her house.
Poor Maggie had given up all thought of fending for
herself and returned, bewildered and abashed, ashamed
and conscious, for the first time for years, of her wig, to
her mother's house. There she shut herself up in her
room and would see no one but Fanny, for whom she con-
ceived a great affection. John for the time being took
up his residence with Tom, the boys being turned into
Jamie's nursery.

So the family was united once more and Jamie with
a quizzical eye was able to measure its achievement,
solid, respectable, unadventurous : three quiet households,
established at the cost of what suffering and poverty to
others ! He and his brothers were three as upright, hon-
est men as you could find in England and two of them
were perfectly satisfied that no more could be asked of
them. Successful in their private lives they intended
henceforth to devote themselves to the public service,
that is to say, they proposed to do all in their power to
destroy the influence of the aristocracy and to enlarge
the sphere of men like themselves in order to increase the
wealth of the nation and to consolidate it by thrift. So
quiet, so peaceful, so ordered would the life of the coun-
try become that all other nations would emulate it and



DISASTER 517



there would be no more evil in the world, no part of it
would be closed to trade and its blessings and black,
brown, yellow, red and white men would be united in
honest botherhood, and they would all speak English.
It was a joy to Jamie to listen to his brothers talk-
ing, to watch them oozing with a quiet satisfaction and
to think of his own capital trickling away while he did
nothing. They had no idea of the state of his affairs.
They were secret with each other and though they knew
Jamie to be poor, they never imagined his poverty to be
such as to disgrace them. They regarded him as a little
mad. He had lost his head during the crisis, but they
supposed him to be shrewd enough to have made some
provision for himself. It was often on the tip of Jamie's
tongue to tell them, but he decided to put it off until he
was compelled by poverty to do so, trusting that it would
never happen. When it became necessary he would make
an effort. Until it became necessary he could not. He
was so happy in his freedom, or at least in his discovery
of the way to it through what he called living sympathy.
It was his passionate and absorbing pursuit to be with
all sorts and conditions of men. He would go first of
all to Tibby, with whom his sympathy would be roused to
a high pitch of activity, and then he would welcome any
company that came his way, taking a passionate and
impersonal interest in all that was said and done. It
seemed absurd and pathetic to him then that people's
lives should be so personal and egoistic. They were so
stiff and cramped that even in what was purely personal
they could express no force or keen vitality. About Tom
and John for instance there was a queer perfection which
made them seem almost automatic, very like animals
except that they had none of the sleek contentment of
animals and no high spirits. They had no interest out-



518 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

side the reduction of life to the terms of commerce and
they believed themselves to have succeeded.

The air of the melancholy widower suited John ad-
mirably. He was hushed and subdued. He took a little
house at Cheadley Edge to be near Tom. Maggie went
to be his housekeeper and took Fanny with her. Sophia
was canonised. The little house was a shrine to her
memory and Maggie's piety found full vent in being
priestess in it. For a time the little house became the
central point of the family's existence. Its members
were grouped round the memory of Sophia as the Greigs
had been grouped round the memory of old Angus. A
visit to John's house was a pilgrimage.

Jamie was depressed by it all without at first knowing
why. He recognised the assertion of the family prin-
ciple but could not acquiesce in it, for it was an offence
both to his vision and to his common-sense. It was
empty and meaningless, terrible indeed, for it meant that
the family could only hold together by living in the dead.

At last one Sunday when they were all gathered at
John's house he could endure it no more and blurted out
the lamentable state of his affairs, that he had been living
on his capital and in another few months would be re-
duced to penury and unable to contribue to his mother's
income. " 'Pon my honour," said Tom, "this is the last
straw! And what pray have you been doing all these
months?" "Nothing," replied Jamie. "Come, come,
this is no time for fooling. You are not a boy. You
must have realised how criminal it is to touch your capi-
tal." "I didn't see what else I could do." "You could
have worked." "That is just the point. I couldn't. I
wanted to think things out. " - "Rubbish. You have a
wife and children." "I supposed that, if the worst
came to the worst, the family would look after them."



DISASTER 519



-"Shameless!" cried Tom. "I think it will be shameful
if the family doesn't look after them." "And you pro-
pose to sit still and fill your great hulking body with the
bread of charity?" "I don't see what else I can do. I'm
finished. I don't know why, but I'm finished. I couldn't
even do a clerk's work well enough to be kept on after
a month's trial. You see, I don't believe in any single
branch of the whole business. I think we're all finished.
We've done harm enough in all conscience and the only
reparation we can make is to do nothing." "Disgusting
nonsense!" cried Tom, "and I for one shall not raise a
finger to help you. A man who can think and say such
things deserves to die in a ditch and to be buried as a
pauper. I think John agrees with me." He glared at
John. "I agree," said John, "in theory." "I have no
use for theory that is not in accordance with practice."-
"Then you ought to approve of me." said Jamie, "for
I hold exactly the same view." Tom rapped on the
table : "But would you hold the same views if you did
not know that your brothers were rich men?" "If we
were a poor family," replied Jamie, "I should go to bed
and let Catherine go out charing, but then, if we were
poor, we should not be plagued with all this nonsense
about the family. We should know that the family
could do no more for us than the nation and that there
was absolutely nothing to support us in time of trouble.
I have done my best for the family and I have failed
because I never realised that the family's idea of a good
life and mine were hopelessly at variance. I have to put
up with the consequences of my folly and the family
repudiates its responsibilities. Very well then. We need
not quarrel. I will go my own way. Come, Catherine."
"Stop!" said Tom, and "Stop," cried John. Mar-
garet, who had been reduced to tears, slipped from the



520 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

room. "If Sophia were here," said John, looking down
his nose, "she would put us all right. We had many
painful scenes somewhat resembling this with her family.
Sophia, who was an angel, could always find a solution."
"In this instance," said Jamie, "the only possible solu-
tion is mine. If you cannot stomach the idea of our
living from hand to mouth then leave us alone. You can
have the pleasure of abusing me as much as you like.
Either you share the goods of the family with those who
are unable to contribute to them or you must acknowl-
edge that the family is just a sham." "I do not ac-
knowledge anything of the kind. What I want to know
is what Catherine has to say to all this." Catherine drew
herself up with spirit and said : "I certainly do not intend
to live on charity. I don't understand what Jamie is
talking about and I am very angry with him, for I had
no idea that we were living on our capital, but if it is a
choice between him and you, then my place is by his
side." "That," said John, "is exactly what Sophia
would have said." "I think," remarked Agnes, who
had not till now uttered a word, "that Jamie is per-
fectly right." "Hold your tongue," snapped Tom. "I
am prepared to make you an offer, now, once and for all,
of three pounds a week, to be paid to Catherine."-
"Come along, Catherine," said Jamie. "There is nothing
more to be said." With that he took his wife by the arm
and dragged her out.

Outside Catherine's spirit left her and she began to
scold him: "Whatever shall we do? How could you
make such a terrible scene ? I declare I thought I should
have fainted. I was so ashamed. There was no need
for them to know. However poor we got we need never
have let them know, for you will easily find something
to do if you only look. You can't go on for ever doing



DISASTER 521



nothing." "I wish I could," said Jamie, "I would
rather do nothing than work, if work means making the
rich richer and the poor poorer." "What does it mat-
ter ?" said she. "There always have been rich and poor
and there always will be." "Very well," answered
Jamie, "we will be neither, for I see no other way out of
it. Only, it would not be fair to do that without letting
them know." "They will never forgive you," said she.
"Nor will I ever forgive them, or the Keiths or the
Greigs for what they have done." "But the children
must be educated." "At a pinch I can teach them my-
self. But I don't think the pinch will come, for I feel
that anything is possible, now that I have broken away
from all that nonsense about our being better than other
people and therefore entitled to impose vile conditions on
them. I can't begin my life all over again, but at least
I can keep clear of the old conspiracy and fraud and
do as little harm as possible."

However, when it came to working or starving he
found it impossible to be altogether clear. His only
opening was with the newspapers and they were inex-
tricably tied up with what he regarded as the swindle of
Thrigsby. If he maintained his extreme position and
demanded perfect honesty in all his dealings then he must
starve. It began to dawn on him that honesty was an
intellectual attribute, only to be won by hard striving,
and that it was unreasonable to expect it from men who
had to work ten hours a day. It was as absurd to ex-
pect that as to insist on emotional honesty from his wife.
That he had long ago abandoned. His love and hers
were different. His was ecstatic and eager to prove the
wonderful richness of human nature with its inexhausti-
ble stores of feeling. To nine-tenths of his emotions
Catherine was blind, so that they fell upon the air and



522 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

drifted away. They met no kindred emotions in her to
which they could be wedded. Her love was steadfast,
solid, asking only a genial welcome from his and, when
she had that, she was satisfied. She hardly needed more
than affection and had no emotional curiosity. For that
reason her adventures with Mrs. Halloran had soon
palled on her and she welcomed the compromise at which
her husband arrived. It meant the employment of a
multitude of subtle lies which hurt him, though he put
up with them when he saw that no other machinery
was possible. He had no reason to believe that with
another woman his position would have been any better.
The compromise in his marriage helped him to accept
the necessary compromise in his outward life and, when
he was offered a commission to go to the Southern States
to report on conditions and prospects there, he accepted
it. It meant assisting the traffic in cotton, which was
really a traffic in labour, but he did not see how he could
prevent that by refusing. If he rejected the offer he
might have to accept a worse and the prospect of travel
excited him. There was, or he thought there was, a
stirring of liberty in America, where men might be on
the point of discovering a means of extricating them-
selves from the meshes in which they were caught. He
was to be handsomely paid and Catherine was to have
an allowance during his absence. She was glad for him
to go, hoping that he might be happier for the change.
Also the commission was an important one and it was
well advertised by the newspaper. Jamie was forgiven
by his family and Agnes called on Catherine. Agnes
said: "Tom doesn't know I'm here. He is completely
baffled by Jamie, and says he has nine lives like a cat.
And really it is wonderful how nothing keeps him down.
I envy you, dear Catherine, for you must have a most



DISASTER 523



exciting life, though you must hate his going away.
Tom has an idea that Jamie will settle in America. "-
"I'm sure he won't," said Catherine, "he always says that
he belongs to Thrigsby and could not settle anywhere
else. He has changed lately, you know. He used to
carry on and rage against the place and the people."-
"Dear Catherine," said Agnes, "Tom is very obstinate
and in some things very foolish, but because our hus-
bands quarrel there is no reason why we should, and I
want you to promise me that if anything happens to
Jamie you will let me help you." "Thank you, Agnes,"
said Catherine. "As you say, there is no reason why
we should quarrel about things we do not understand.
There is trouble enough in the world without our mak-
ing more." "I mean," said Agnes, "that, as I have no
children of my own, I don't like being denied my share
in yours." "Dear Agnes," said Catherine, and the two
women kissed and made their peace.



CHAPTER XLI

A LETTER FROM LONDON



A MONTH or two before these critical events Mary
had returned to England from her travels. She
had made valuable acquaintances in Rome who had given
her good introductions to distinguished families in Lon-
don. There she was soon installed in the household of
a Canon of Westminster as governess. When she heard
of her loved brother's American project she wrote:

"DEAREST, I am overjoyed. At last you are finding
yourself doing work in which it is a joy to me to think
of you. And your letters lately have been such a happi-
ness to me, making me feel foolish ever to have been
disappointed in you. My youthful hopes of course de-
served disappointment : they were vulgar dreams of suc-
cess, acclamation, of your being, somehow, a conqueror.
They were on a level with my ambitions for myself a
glittering marriage, a salon, Madame de Stae'l. But now
that I am an old maid and a very happy one, our history
as it has been seems to me much more wonderful than
anything I could ever imagine, and far more romantic
than the most brilliant inventions. It is such fun to
know that you are a perfectly ordinary person and yet
that you contain the oddest dramas that ever were in the
history of the world. For after all, what matters to us

524



A LETTER FROM LONDON 525

all, both individually and collectively, is daily life. His-
tory is concerned with the absurd and rather theatrical
doings of a few people which, after all, have never
altered the fact that we do all of us live on from day
to day and only want to be left alone. Things happen
to us but the central fact remains. I mean that I, for
instance, as an old maid do certainly enjoy my life
as much as if I had married. It is another kind of
life, that is all, and neither better nor worse than the
other. My best friends are men, and I doubt if they
would be if I were married, though then, of course,
I should have other means of gaining human interests.
I am quite sure that love has a thousand meanings be-
sides the one that is usually attached to it and that that
meaning attaches to it a burden greater than it can
bear. It is monstrous that love should be excluded from
every other relationship than the conjugal. I suffer
from that exclusion here for my little pupils are simply
and most cruelly denied love. Their father is an Hon.
aa well as a Rev. and our childhood was a paradise com-
pared with what he thinks right for his boy and girl.
He seems to wish to make stoics of them and certainly
they have courage and self-reliance. 'Always tell the
truth except when you are afraid' is one of his maxims,
stated because the boy confessed that he was afraid of
the dark. And as the boy is afraid of his father and
will not admit it to himself he is growing into the most
wretched kind of liar. I talk to the children about you
and they love you. All their favourite stories have to
do with you, and they adore some of the absurd non-
sensical poems you used to write in your letters. I miss
your nonsense. I wonder if it will come back to you.
Perhaps your flight to America will do that for you,
though you will see many tragic sights there. Somehow



526 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

I always think of you now as a tragic person, and I
don't mind. I should have been heart-broken ten years
ago but was too foolish then to realise that there is no
tragedy without inward nobility. Somehow whatever
happens to you I am always able to rejoice in you. Per-
haps (awful thought) that has become a habit with me.
No, no, no. I will never let it be that. I have taken
you through all my experiences and you have not only
survived them all but have quickened them for me.
There! If you had never done anything else, you will
have done that. Measured by results, of course, that
does not look very much, for a governess, even with
three languages, is an insignificant person and is not
entitled to experience of any kind. I think the house-
maid is in a better position than I, for at least her posi-
tion is clear, while I have humiliation unmitigated. After
my free life abroad you can imagine how I chafe against
it. I am allowed to have nothing in common with any-
body in the house but the children. I should have
thought my travels would have interested the Hon. and
Rev., but no; he is not interested in the Germans, or the
Swiss or the Italians. The Germans eat sausages and
the Italians eat macaroni : that is all he knows about them
and he finds it disgusting. Rome means to him the
Roman Church. He never thinks of it as a city with
delightful people living in it. On the other .hand he
thinks of London as a place containing the Abbey and
Dean's Yard. All the rest has no justifiable existence.
At the same time he is an intelligent man, very simple
and good and kind, so long as everything is in its place.
The children are in their place, I in mine and he in his,
in iron authority above us. I greet over it but, against
my will, I admire it, for it is disconcertingly English.
I find it hard to explain the difference. In the home of



A LETTER FROM LONDON 527

freedom I am less free than I have ever been. In other
countries the whole point of discipline is to civilise the
emotions, but in England there are no emotions allowed
at all. The whole point of civilisation is lost sight of
altogether. Even the most charming and delightful
people have no communication with each other. Their
savage feelings are not tamed and controlled but crushed,
and the result is a profound melancholy and a dull heavi-
ness. Coming from happy and intelligent people to an
atmosphere of religion if a moral code is a religion
perhaps I am unjust. Perhaps, like you, I ought to ad-
mire the English character and delight in English oddity,
but we Scots have been educated for generations and
we can understand the Continental peoples better than
these islanders. We are able to have some glimmering
of the meaning of civilisation and will not attempt to live
civilised lives in barbarous conditions and with barbarous
aims. If we are forced to do so, as we are in our own
country, we take refuge in metaphysics, or, like some
whom I could name, in hypocrisy.

"There: my adventures are done, my life has taken
its shape : a little black-gowned governess whom nobody
heeds. I am content. Some day I shall retire and live
unheeded in those Blue Mountains of ours at which we
used to gaze so longingly. Little did we dream what
lay beyond them! Immediately beyond lay the Greigs:
farther on Thrigsby and farther still London. How
different from the free open world of our imaginations !
And yet, could we have imagined anything more wonder-
ful? Would you have anything different? I suppose
you would. But how? You would have people less
stupid than they are? The world would be a dreadful
place without its fools. You think the ugliness and
cruelty of Thrigsby unnecessary. How can you tell?



528 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER

You say yourself that you cannot leave the place. It
must therefore have some meaning for you, even if it is
only the meaning of raw energy. I may be wide of the
mark but I think there is in you a strain of the hope and
impulse that were felt in England in the great days of