Part 46 (1/2)

Robert was lying on a long couch improvised for him in the corner of his study. The time was that warm hour of the afternoon when the birds are quiet and even the flies buzz drowsily. Bees in the piebald petunias that grew straggling and sweet above the sill of the open window, dozed long in each sticky chalice. Alec was taking off his boots in the lobby, and in reply to the condescending invitation he muttered some graceless words concerning his grandmother, but he came into the room and sat with his elbows on the table. He had an idea of what might be said, and felt the awkwardness of it.

”That fellow Bates,” he observed, ”is devouring your book-case indiscriminately. He seems to be in the sort of fever that needs distraction every moment. I asked him what he'd have to read, and he said the next five on the shelf--he's read the first ten.”

”It's not of Bates I wish to speak; I want to know what you've decided to do. Are you going to stick to your father's trade, or take to some other?”

Robert held one arm above his head, with his fingers through the leaves of the book he had been reading. He tried to speak in a casual way, but they both had a disagreeable consciousness that the occasion was momentous. Alec's mind a.s.sumed the cautious att.i.tude of a schoolboy whispering ”_Cave_”. He supposed that the other hoped now to achieve by gentleness what he had been unable to achieve by storm.

”Of course,” he answered, ”I won't set up here if you'd rather be quit of me. I'll go as far as British Columbia, if that's necessary to make you comfortable.”

”By that I understand that in these ten months your mind has not altered.”

”No; but as I say, I won't bother you.”

”Have you reconsidered the question, or have you stuck to it because you said you would?”

”I have reconsidered it.”

”You feel quite satisfied that, as far as you are concerned, this is the right thing to do?”

”Yes.”

”Well then, as far as I am concerned, I don't want to drive you to the other side of the continent. You can take advantage of the opening here if you want to.”

Alec looked down at the things on the table. He felt the embarra.s.sment of detecting his brother in some private religious exercise; nothing, he thought, but an excess of self-denial could have brought this about; yet he was gratified.

”Look here! You'd better not say that--I might take you at your word.”

”Consider that settled. You set up shop, and I will take a fraternal interest in the number of animals you kill, and always tell you with conscientious care when the beef you supply to me is tough. And in the meantime, tell me, like a good fellow, why you stick to this thing. When you flung from me last time you gave me no explanation of what you thought.”

”At least,” cried Alec, wrath rising at the memory of that quarrel, ”I gave you a fair hearing, and knew what you thought.”

When anger began he looked his brother full in the face, thus noticing how thin that face was, too thin for a man in the prime of life, and the eye was too bright. As the brief feeling of annoyance subsided, the habitual charm of the elder man's smile made him continue to look at him.

”And yet,” continued Robert, ”two wrongs do not make a right. That I am a sn.o.b does not excuse you for taking up any line of life short of the n.o.blest within your reach.”

The other again warned himself against hidden danger. ”You're such a confoundedly fascinating fellow, with your smiles and your suppressed religion, I don't wonder the girls run after you. But you are a Jesuit--I never called you a sn.o.b--you're giving yourself names to fetch me round to see things your way.”

It was an outburst, half of admiring affection, half of angry obstinacy, and the elder brother received it without resentment, albeit a little absently. He was thinking that if Alec held out, ”the girls” would not run after him much more. But then he thought that there was one among them who would not think less, who perhaps might think more of him, for this sacrifice. He had not made it for her; it might never be his lot to make any sacrifice for her; yet she perhaps would understand this one and applaud it. The thought brought a sudden light to his face, and Alec watched the light and had no clue by which to understand it. He began, however, defending himself.

”Look here! You suggest I should take the n.o.blest course, as if I had never thought of that before. I'm not lower in the scale of creation than you, and I've had the same bringing up. I've never done anything great, but I've tried not to do the other thing. I felt I should be a sneak when I left school if I disappointed father for the sake of being something fine, and I feel I should be a sneak now if I turned--”

”You acted like the dear fellow I always knew you were in the first instance, but why is it the same now? It's not for his sake, surely, for, for all you know, from where he is now, the sight of you going on with that work may not give him pleasure, but pain.”

”No; I went into it to please him, but now he's gone that's ended.”

”Then it's _not_ the same now. Why do you say you'd feel like a sneak if you changed? There is, I think, no G.o.ddess or patron saint of the trade, who would be personally offended at your desertion.”

”You don't understand at all. I'm sick--just sick, of seeing men trying to find something grand enough to do, instead of trying to do the first thing they can grandly.”

”I haven't noticed that men are so set on rising.”