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The Land of The Lost

Chapter XX

page 175

Chapter XX.

They went out through the gate on to the road and along the grassy margin past the lights of the Post Office, where Roller could be seen in his shirt sleeves at work on the mail.

"He is a good business man," Wilfrid said absently as they passed. "Would you mind my smoking?"

"I like it," said Esther.

And Wilfrid got out a cigar.

"Esther," he said presently, "you may have noticed at your father's table this evening a big, fair young man with grey eyes."

"Mr. Clifford?" Esther asked.

"The same," said Wilfrid. "He is a mule."

"I hope that has done you good," she said as he paused. "I could tell by your faces that you had disagreed."

"Yes," he said, "I talked till my jaw ached. I showed him the folly of his conduct from every point of view; and I might have been a cow lowing for all the effect my remarks had on him. That is the sort of young man he is."

They walked along the dim road in silence, Esther waiting patiently, yet with curiosity, for what was coming.

"Money, Esther," Wilfrid began at last, "is the root 175 page 176of all evil, and that is one of the two true sayings of the world. I am going to relate to you the story of a man who made a fortune many years ago in New South Wales. He was from England originally, and his name was Hilton. Yes, you see the connection; he was Hugh's grandfather. He was not an educated man, but he had a strong will and unlimited capacity for hard work, and he achieved success. He married and had a child, a daughter, who subsequently became Mrs. Clifford, and Hugh's mother. His wife died, and many years afterwards he married again, and this time he had a son, whom he christened Cuthbert. His daughter did not get on very well with her stepmother—who was a very young woman, and had been an actress, I think—and coming to stay with some friends in New Zealand, she married, as I have told you, and passed out of the old man's life. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly," said Esther.

"Old Hilton," resumed Wilfrid, "was entirely taken up with his son and heir, and a lively young beggar he was, according to all accounts. Perhaps the crooked strain came in with the mother; perhaps the old man spoiled him: but he turned out bad, and became finally a continual trouble. You can guess the rest; it is in half the novels you read; it is as old as humanity. What the special act was is shrouded in mystery, but he left his father's house for good, and the old man took him out of his will. His story apparently closes there, for from that day to this he has not been heard of.

"As for old Hilton, he had one desire left, and one only—the desire to found a family. It had grown out of the reminiscences of his early life when he had been a page 177peasant on a great estate. It seemed that this desire might be gratified in the person of his son, but when that hope failed him he bethought him of his daughter and her family, and he settled all he had on her eldest son Hugh. About a year before he died—and now we come to the crux of the whole matter—he had his will revised, and this was the result. After a number of comparatively unimportant legacies he left the whole of his estate entailed upon Hugh and his heirs for ever, but to remain in trust until Hugh was twenty-five: that was the first provision. Failing Hugh and his heirs, he harked back to the son who had disgraced him, and left everything to him: that was the second provision. Failing Hugh and Cuthbert and their heirs, he entailed everything on his eldest surviving male heir: and that was the third provision. Do you follow me yet?"

"I think so," said Esther,

"Now Hugh's mother had three children—Hugh, Grace, and Reginald; so that practically the order of entitlement to the old man's estate is divided in the middle of the Clifford family by the inclusion of their uncle, Cuthbert Hilton."

"And he has come back, I suppose?" said Esther.

"Not he; his story is still a blank."

"Then where does the trouble come in?" she asked.

"It is to be found in the second of the two true sayings of the world," replied Wilfrid—"cherchez la femme." Old Hilton, you have seen, interested himself entirely in male heirs, but God made woman, and then the trouble began."

"And who is the woman?"

"Here is a convenient log," said Wilfrid, "let us sit down. The woman is Hugh's mother, and now my page 178story dwindles off into that pettiness which is nevertheless responsible for half the tragedies in life. I wonder whether I can give you an idea of the sort of person she is without leading you to draw entirely erroneous conclusions as to her general character. She is not a strong-minded woman, but on the other hand she is no fool. Perhaps it would be safest to regard her attitude in this affair as an isolated aberration, which does not react on her general conduct. I like her, we all like her, but—— Well, no doubt she loves her eldest son, but the weak spot in her heart is unquestionably for the other boy Reginald, and she has come to look on him in some curious way as a victim. She may not have meant much, possibly even she meant nothing at all, but there is no doubt Hugh was rendered wretched by her constant harping on the injustice which she considers was done to the younger boy by the terms of her father's will. It seemed nothing to her that Hugh was not responsible; that he didn't care twopence for the ten thousand a year that was to be his in a year or two; that he would split it up with his brother or anyone else to please her, if she so willed it; she just clung stolidly to the one fact, that Hugh was to get everything and Reginald nothing, and from that position nothing could shift her. Do I give you a dim idea of the sort of woman she is? Or have I failed and portrayed a monster?"

"Certainly not that, but let me hear the rest."

"Well, Hugh is a good fellow, but he is not very old or experienced, and at the beginning of life we are inclined to take little things seriously, and dropping water wears away stone, and constant nagging destroys the best tempers, and so the end came. There was no violent scene; it occurred one day at dinner, and it was page 179all said and done in less than a minute. Something she said touched him to the quick, and he got up and put his chair against the wall. 'Say no more, mother,' he said; 'I will never touch a penny of grandfather's money as long as I live.' The madness of her conduct came home to her then. I read it in her face, and though I was angry with her, I was sorry for her too. They found him an hour later packing his things, but they could not change his determination to go. Gracie tried him, Reggy tried him, I tried him, but it was no good. Then his father took him in hand and walked him up and down the lawn half the night, reasoning with him, expostulating, commanding—no effect. Hugh's father is one of those men—and, strangely enough, they are frequently, as in his case, men of great gifts—who are contented to take second place in their own households. He had never interfered between mother and son, I doubt if he was aware of half that took place even before his eyes, but he came out of his shell that night, and he fought the demon of temper in his boy as though his life depended on it. But no. The Hugh we knew was gone, and this was quite another creature. Nothing shifted him a hair's-breadth from his original determination, and when morning came he was gone."

Esther drew a long breath as Wilfrid concluded.

"Yes," he said, reading in the sound something of her feeling, "human nature is a strange thing. We are only on the world a short time, and we all alike desire to be happy, and we muddle our lives and are miserable. What do the great events matter? We rise to them with all our strength and pass them or perish. But the little things spring up all day long in our path and drive us here and there, and what should have been a broad, page 180smooth river is frittered away into rivulets and stagnant pools. But let me bring my story to an end and show you how it affects myself. If I have succeeded in conveying a true picture of the Clifford family, you will understand that Hugh could not drop out of it without leaving a gap. Everyone liked him and needed him; Grace worshipped him, and his departure affected both her spirits and her health. Illogically enough—but conduct is always illogical—I became the chief sufferer. I had hoped before this to have been married and settled, but marriage until her brother returns she will not hear of. When I became assured that this resolve was unalterable I set out in search of Hugh; I traced him up here and I found him, or rather you found him for me. But I might as well have let him be. Time has made absolutely no difference in his resolution; the old stubborn temperament of the Hiltons has worked itself an outlet, and there's an end of it."

"Does he say nothing?" asked Esther.

"Practically nothing. He is polite, confoundedly polite. He refuses to lose his temper and he listens with the most admirable patience; finally he yawns, still with the utmost politeness, and there you have him."

Esther laughed, "Then what is to be done?" she asked.

"My only hope now," said Wilfrid, "is in you."

"In me?" said Esther, surprised. "What could I do?"

"Much," he replied, "if you chose."

"But, Wilfrid, he is nearly a stranger to me; this is only the second time I have met him."

"Friendship," replied her cousin, "does not depend on time, but on feeling. One may be intimate with page 181some people in ten minutes, with others not in ten years."

"That is oracular, but hardly applicable. Two meetings do not make a friendship, and mere acquaintance would not warrant me in lecturing him on his private affairs."

"He has consented that the story should be told you; he has even expressed a desire that you should hear it. Probably he is afraid you might suspect worse; he cannot be surprised if you make it a subject for comment."

"What could I say?"

"You could show him the folly of his conduct."

"I am not certain that I see it," said Esther. "He may forgive his mother, possibly even his feeling is tenderer for her now than it was when they were together, but if that is so it is only an additional reason why he should remain away from her. I can understand such an idea influencing him."

"And yet you have only met him twice."

Esther was silent. "There is something," she said at length, "in what you said about ten minutes and ten years."

"There usually is something in my remarks," Wilfrid allowed.

Esther laughed absently. "The circumstances were so peculiar," she said; "it was like the walls between two houses falling down—one could see everything." She fell silent, and for a minute or two nothing was said.

"Of what are you thinking?" he asked at length.

"Of him," she replied readily; "of his resolution not to give in—isn't there something admirable in it?"

page 182

"Nothing that I can see," said Wilfrid. "The whole business is too childish, and it is inflicting pain on a number of very estimable people — myself among them."

"But as a principle," Esther urged, with a strange insistence, "it must be good to stand to one's guns—to promise a thing and hold fast to it at all cost; it must be good because—because——"

"Because?" he asked.

"Because it is so terribly difficult."

"I see," said Wilfrid, with sudden thoughtfulness.

"Shall we go back, Esther?" he asked presently.

Esther rose, and he drew her hand through his arm and held it, but he said nothing.

"You have not told me exactly how I am to help you, Wilfrid," she said after a little.

"No," he replied slowly; "nor have you told me how I may help you. Do you think I don't understand? That in my selfish puzzling over my own concerns I have no thought for yours? What is this great principle you have asked me to applaud? That one should stand to one's promises, good or evil, at any cost? To that I answer no, a thousand times."

Her arm tightened against his, but she gave no other sign of comprehension.

"We have been as brother and sister," he resumed, "all our lives. Do you forget the old home on the beach of the Bay of Islands, where the whalers drew in close to the shore? Is the old life, the old comradeship nothing to you, that now I must stand by and see you walk alone into the darkness and have no right to hinder you?"

"Wilfrid," she said huskily at last, "if there were any reason, any excuse that might make my conduct appear page 183less—outrageous (the word was a memory), who knows? But there is none, none. I have done this with my eyes open, and there is no escape."

"Good," he said cheerfully, as he stopped to unlatch the gate, "now we understand one another. It is enough for me that the wish to escape is there."