CHAPTER XXX

Tibby was now approaching his last year at Oxford. He had moved out of

college, and was contemplating the Universe, or such portions of it as

concerned him, from his comfortable lodgings in Long Wall. He was not

concerned with much. When a young man is untroubled by passions and

sincerely indifferent to public opinion his outlook is necessarily

limited. Tibby wished neither to strengthen the position of the rich nor

to improve that of the poor, and so was well content to watch the elms

nodding behind the mildly embattled parapets of Magdalen. There are

worse lives. Though selfish, he was never cruel; though affected

in manner, he never posed. Like Margaret, he disdained the heroic

equipment, and it was only after many visits that men discovered

Schlegel to possess a character and a brain. He had done well in Mods,

much to the surprise of those who attended lectures and took proper

exercise, and was now glancing disdainfully at Chinese in case he

should some day consent to qualify as a Student Interpreter. To him thus

employed Helen entered. A telegram had preceded her.

He noticed, in a distant way, that his sister had altered.

As a rule he found her too pronounced, and had never come across this

look of appeal, pathetic yet dignified--the look of a sailor who has

lost everything at sea.

“I have come from Oniton,” she began. “There has been a great deal of

trouble there.”

“Who’s for lunch?” said Tibby, picking up the claret, which was warming

in the hearth. Helen sat down submissively at the table. “Why such an

early start?” he asked.

“Sunrise or something--when I could get away.”

“So I surmise. Why?”

“I don’t know what’s to be done, Tibby. I am very much upset at a piece

of news that concerns Meg, and do not want to face her, and I am not

going back to Wickham Place. I stopped here to tell you this.”

The landlady came in with the cutlets. Tibby put a marker in the leaves

of his Chinese Grammar and helped them. Oxford--the Oxford of the

vacation--dreamed and rustled outside, and indoors the little fire was

coated with grey where the sunshine touched it. Helen continued her odd

story.

“Give Meg my love and say that I want to be alone. I mean to go to

Munich or else Bonn.”

“Such a message is easily given,” said her brother.

“As regards Wickham Place and my share of the furniture, you and she are

to do exactly as you like. My own feeling is that everything may just as

well be sold. What does one want with dusty economic books, which have

made the world no better, or with mother’s hideous chiffoniers? I have

also another commission for you. I want you to deliver a letter.” She

got up. “I haven’t written it yet. Why shouldn’t I post it, though?” She

sat down again. “My head is rather wretched. I hope that none of your

friends are likely to come in.”

Tibby locked the door. His friends often found it in this condition.

Then he asked whether anything had gone wrong at Evie’s wedding.

“Not there,” said Helen, and burst into tears.

He had known her hysterical--it was one of her aspects with which he had

no concern--and yet these tears touched him as something unusual. They

were nearer the things that did concern him, such as music. He laid down

his knife and looked at her curiously. Then, as she continued to sob, he

went on with his lunch.

The time came for the second course, and she was still crying. Apple

Charlotte was to follow, which spoils by waiting. “Do you mind Mrs.

Martlett coming in?” he asked, “or shall I take it from her at the

door?”

“Could I bathe my eyes, Tibby?”

He took her to his bedroom, and introduced the pudding in her absence.

Having helped himself, he put it down to warm in the hearth. His hand

stretched towards the Grammar, and soon he was turning over the pages,

raising his eyebrows scornfully, perhaps at human nature, perhaps at

Chinese. To him thus employed Helen returned. She had pulled herself

together, but the grave appeal had not vanished from her eyes.

“Now for the explanation,” she said. “Why didn’t I begin with it? I

have found out something about Mr. Wilcox. He has behaved very wrongly

indeed, and ruined two people’s lives. It all came on me very suddenly

last night; I am very much upset, and I do not know what to do. Mrs.

Bast--”

“Oh, those people!”

Helen seemed silenced.

“Shall I lock the door again?”

“No thanks, Tibbikins. You’re being very good to me. I want to tell you

the story before I go abroad, you must do exactly what you like--treat

it as part of the furniture. Meg cannot have heard it yet, I think. But

I cannot face her and tell her that the man she is going to marry has

misconducted himself. I don’t even know whether she ought to be told.

Knowing as she does that I dislike him, she will suspect me, and think

that I want to ruin her match. I simply don’t know what to make of such

a thing. I trust your judgment. What would you do?”

“I gather he has had a mistress,” said Tibby.

Helen flushed with shame and anger. “And ruined two people’s lives. And

goes about saying that personal actions count for nothing, and there

always will be rich and poor. He met her when he was trying to get rich

out in Cyprus--I don’t wish to make him worse than he is, and no doubt

she was ready enough to meet him. But there it is. They met. He goes his

way and she goes hers. What do you suppose is the end of such women?”

He conceded that it was a bad business.

“They end in two ways: Either they sink till the lunatic asylums and the

workhouses are full of them, and cause Mr. Wilcox to write letters to

the papers complaining of our national degeneracy, or else they entrap a

boy into marriage before it is too late. She--I can’t blame her.”

“But this isn’t all,” she continued after a long pause, during which the

landlady served them with coffee. “I come now to the business that took

us to Oniton. We went all three. Acting on Mr. Wilcox’s advice, the man

throws up a secure situation and takes an insecure one, from which he is

dismissed. There are certain excuses, but in the main Mr. Wilcox is to

blame, as Meg herself admitted. It is only common justice that he should

employ the man himself. But he meets the woman, and, like the cur that

he is, he refuses, and tries to get rid of them. He makes Meg write.

Two notes came from her late that evening--one for me, one for Leonard,

dismissing him with barely a reason. I couldn’t understand. Then it

comes out that Mrs. Bast had spoken to Mr. Wilcox on the lawn while we

left her to get rooms, and was still speaking about him when Leonard

came back to her. This Leonard knew all along. He thought it natural he

should be ruined twice. Natural! Could you have contained yourself?”

“It is certainly a very bad business,” said Tibby.

His reply seemed to calm his sister. “I was afraid that I saw it out of

proportion. But you are right outside it, and you must know. In a day or

two--or perhaps a week--take whatever steps you think fit. I leave it in

your hands.”

She concluded her charge.

“The facts as they touch Meg are all before you,” she added; and Tibby

sighed and felt it rather hard that, because of his open mind, he should

be empanelled to serve as a juror. He had never been interested in human

beings, for which one must blame him, but he had had rather too much of

them at Wickham Place. Just as some people cease to attend when books

are mentioned, so Tibby’s attention wandered when “personal relations”

came under discussion. Ought Margaret to know what Helen knew the Basts

to know? Similar questions had vexed him from infancy, and at Oxford he

had learned to say that the importance of human beings has been vastly

overrated by specialists. The epigram, with its faint whiff of the

eighties, meant nothing. But he might have let it off now if his sister

had not been ceaselessly beautiful.

“You see, Helen--have a cigarette--I don’t see what I’m to do.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done. I dare say you are right. Let them

marry. There remains the question of compensation.”

“Do you want me to adjudicate that too? Had you not better consult an

expert?”

“This part is in confidence,” said Helen. “It has nothing to do with

Meg, and do not mention it to her. The compensation--I do not see who is

to pay it if I don’t, and I have already decided on the minimum sum.

As soon as possible I am placing it to your account, and when I am in

Germany you will pay it over for me. I shall never forget your kindness,

Tibbikins, if you do this.”

“What is the sum?”

“Five thousand.”

“Good God alive!” said Tibby, and went crimson.

“Now, what is the good of driblets? To go through life having done one

thing--to have raised one person from the abyss; not these puny gifts of

shillings and blankets--making the grey more grey. No doubt people will

think me extraordinary.”

“I don’t care an iota what people think!” cried he, heated to unusual

manliness of diction. “But it’s half what you have.”

“Not nearly half.” She spread out her hands over her soiled skirt. “I

have far too much, and we settled at Chelsea last spring that three

hundred a year is necessary to set a man on his feet. What I give will

bring in a hundred and fifty between two. It isn’t enough.” He could not

recover. He was not angry or even shocked, and he saw that Helen would

still have plenty to live on. But it amazed him to think what haycocks

people can make of their lives. His delicate intonations would not work,

and he could only blurt out that the five thousand pounds would mean a

great deal of bother for him personally.

“I didn’t expect you to understand me.”

“I? I understand nobody.”

“But you’ll do it?”

“Apparently.”

“I leave you two commissions, then. The first concerns Mr. Wilcox, and

you are to use your discretion. The second concerns the money, and is

to be mentioned to no one, and carried out literally. You will send a

hundred pounds on account to-morrow.”

He walked with her to the station, passing through those streets whose

serried beauty never bewildered him and never fatigued. The lovely

creature raised domes and spires into the cloudless blue, and only

the ganglion of vulgarity round Carfax showed how evanescent was the

phantom, how faint its claim to represent England. Helen, rehearsing her

commission, noticed nothing; the Basts were in her brain, and she retold

the crisis in a meditative way, which might have made other men curious.

She was seeing whether it would hold. He asked her once why she had

taken the Basts right into the heart of Evie’s wedding. She stopped like

a frightened animal and said, “Does that seem to you so odd?” Her eyes,

the hand laid on the mouth, quite haunted him, until they were absorbed

into the figure of St. Mary the Virgin, before whom he paused for a

moment on the walk home.

It is convenient to follow him in the discharge of his duties. Margaret

summoned him the next day. She was terrified at Helen’s flight, and he

had to say that she had called in at Oxford. Then she said: “Did she

seem worried at any rumour about Henry?” He answered, “Yes.” “I knew it

was that!” she exclaimed. “I’ll write to her.” Tibby was relieved.

He then sent the cheque to the address that Helen gave him, and stated

that he was instructed to forward later on five thousand pounds. An

answer came back very civil and quiet in tone--such an answer as Tibby

himself would have given. The cheque was returned, the legacy refused,

the writer being in no need of money. Tibby forwarded this to Helen,

adding in the fulness of his heart that Leonard Bast seemed somewhat a

monumental person after all. Helen’s reply was frantic. He was to

take no notice. He was to go down at once and say that she commanded

acceptance. He went. A scurf of books and china ornaments awaited him.

The Basts had just been evicted for not paying their rent, and had

wandered no one knew whither. Helen had begun bungling with her money by

this time, and had even sold out her shares in the Nottingham and Derby

Railway. For some weeks she did nothing. Then she reinvested, and, owing

to the good advice of her stockbrokers, became rather richer than she

had been before.