Deep down in their secret hearts all the Spuffler’s relations had felt that his permanent failure to get on in the world was a kind of disgrace to themselves. They resented it, but as a rule kept quiet about it “for the sake of poor Lavinia.” My aunt was always “poor Lavinia,” when mentioned by her family. Before: strangers, needless to say, they helped him to keep up his pretense of importance and spoke of him with respect. But the thought that a man who had intermarried with them, should have lowered his wife to the keeping of a boarding-house rankled. Even as a child I was conscious that my close attachment to my uncle Obad was regarded with disapprobation. He was the Ishmael of our tribe.
At first none of his relatives would believe in his mushroom prosperity. Perhaps, they did not want to believe in it; it would entail the sacrifice of life-long prejudices. They pooh-poohed it as the most extravagant example of his fantastic spuffling. On my return home for the summer holidays I very soon became aware of an atmosphere of half-humorous contempt whenever his name was mentioned. Once when I took up the cudgels for him, declaring that he was really a great man, the Snow Lady patted my hand gently, calling me “a blessed young optimist.” My father, who rarely lost his temper, told me I was speaking on a subject concerning which I was profoundly ignorant.
On a visit to Charity Grove I was grieved to find that even Aunt Lavinia was skeptical. Despite the jingling of money in my uncle’s pockets, she insisted on living in the old proud hand-to-mouth fashion, making the spending capacity of each penny go its furthest. Her house was still understaffed in the matter of servants—servants who could be procured at the lowest wages. She still did her shopping in the lower-class districts, where men cried their wares on the pavement beneath flaring naphtha-lamps and slatternly women elbowed your ribs and mauled everything with dirty hands before they purchased. Here housekeeping could be contrived on the smallest outlay of capital.
Uncle Obad might go to fashionable tailors; she clothed herself in black, because it wore longest and could be turned. She listened to his latest optimisms a little wearily with a sadly smiling countenance, as a mother might listen to the plans for walking of a child hopelessly crippled. She had heard him speak bravely so many, many times, and had been disappointed, that she had permanently made up her mind that she would have to go on earning the living for both of them all her life.
Yet she loved him as well as a woman could a man for whom she was only sorry; she was constantly on the watch to defend him from the disapprobation of the world. But she refused ever again to be beguiled into believing that he would take his place with other men. So, when he told her that they didn’t need to keep on the boarding-house, she scarcely halted long enough in her work to listen to him. And when he said that he could now afford her a hundred pounds for dress, she bent her head lower to hide a smile, for she didn’t want to wound him. And when he brought her home a diamond bracelet, she tried to find out where it had been purchased in order that she might return it on the quiet.
Gradually, however, she began to be persuaded that this time it wasn’t all bluster. The gallantry of his attitude towards herself was the unaccountable element. Not so long ago it had been she who was the man about the house, and he had been a kind of grown-up boy. Once she had allowed him to kiss her; now he kissed her masterfully as by right of conquest. He had become a man at last, after halting at the hobbledehoy stage for fifty years. He treated her boldly as a lover, striving to draw out her womanhood. He was making up the long arrears of affection which, up to this time, he had not felt himself worthy to display.
One evening in the garden he tore the bandage of doubt from her eyes. I was there when it happened. We were down in the paddock, the home of the fowls, where so many of our dreams had taken place. The gaunt London houses to the right of us were doing their best to shut out the sunset. Aunt Lavinia began to wonder how much the little hay-crop would fetch this year. She was disappointed because it had grown so thin, and there seemed no promise of rain.
“It doesn’t matter, my dear,” said my uncle cheerfully.
“Obad, how can you say that!”
He pressed up to her flushing like a boy, placing his arms about her and lifting her face. “Lavinia, are you never going to trust me?”
The sudden tenderness and reproach in his voice stabbed her heart into wakefulness. When she spoke, her words came like a cry: “Oh, Obad, how I wish I could believe it true this time!”
“But it is true, my dearest.”
I stole away, and did not see them again till an hour later when they wandered by me arm-in-arm through the wistful twilight. Within a week I knew that she had accepted his prosperity as a fact, for he gave her a blue silk dress and she wore it. But he had harder work in getting her to give up the boarding-house. His great argument was that Rapson advised it—it would advance their social standing. She fenced and hesitated, but finally promised on the condition that he was still succeeding in November.
I think it must have been the news of her surrender that sapped the last foundation of my father’s skepticism. At any rate, shortly after this, when my uncle by special invitation came over to Pope Lane, he was given one of my father’s best cigars as befitted a rich relative. The best glass and silver were put out. We all had unsoiled serviettes and observed uncomfortable company manners. In the afternoon he was carried off to my father’s study and remained there till long past the tea-hour.
Later my father told me the subject of their discussion.. By dint of hard saving he had put by two thousand pounds for planting me out in the world, part of which was to pay for my Oxford education. Having heard of that half-yearly twenty-per-cent dividend which the Ethiopian shares had paid and that they were still being issued privately, at par value, he was inclined to entrust his money to my uncle, if he could prove the investment sound. If the mines were as good as they appeared to be, he would get four hundred pounds a year in interest—which would make all the difference to our ease of life. There was another consultation; the next thing I knew the important step had been taken.
All our power of dreaming now broke loose. It became our favorite pastime to sit together and plan how we would spend the four hundred pounds.
“Why, it’s an income in itself,” my father would exclaim; “I shall be freed forever from the drudgery of hack-work.”
And the Snow Lady would say, “Now you’ll be able to turn your mind to the really important things of life—the big books which you’ve always hoped to write.”
And Ruthita would sidle up to him in her half-shy way, and rub her cheek against his face, saying nothing.
A wonderful kindliness nowadays entered into all our domestic relations. My father’s weary industry, which had sent us all tiptoeing about the house, began to relax. Even for him work lost something of its sacredness now that money was in sight. He no longer frowned and refused to look up if anyone trespassed into his study. On the contrary, he seemed glad of the excuse for laying aside his pen and discussing what place in the whole wide world we should choose, when we were free to live where we liked.
It should be somewhere in Italy—Florence, perhaps. For years it had been his unattainable dream to live among olive-groves of the Arno valley. We read up guide-books and histories about it. Soon we were quite familiar with the Pitti Palace, the Ponte Vecchio, and the view from the Viale dei Colli at sundown. These and many places with beautiful and large-sounding names, became the stock-in-trade of our conversation. And the brave, looked-down-on Spuffler was the faery-godmother who had made these dreams realities.
A tangible proof of the promised change in our financial status was experienced by myself on my return to school in a more liberal allowance of pocket-money. As yet it was only a promised change, for the half-yearly dividend would not be declared until January, and would not be paid till a month later.
What one might call “a reflected proof” came when we went over to spend Christmas with Uncle Obad at Chelsea.
Yes, Aunt Lavinia had succumbed to her good fortune. The Christian Boarding House had been abandoned and a fine old house had been rented, standing nearly at the corner of Cheyne Row, looking out across the river to Battersea.
On Christmas Eve my uncle’s carriage came to fetch us. That was a surprise in itself. It was his present to Aunt Lavinia, all brand new—a roomy brougham, with two gray horses, and a coachman in livery. From this it will be seen that he had not kept his bargain with himself, made that day at Richmond, to live only on his salary.
A slight fall of snow was on the ground; across London we drove, the merriest little family in all that shopping crowd. We had scarcely pulled up against the pavement and had our first peep of the fine big house, when the front-door flew open, letting out a flood of light which rippled to the carriage like a golden carpet unrolled across white satin.
There stood Uncle Obad, frock-coated and glorious, with Aunt Lavinia beside him, dressed all in lavender—not at all the prim, businesslike little woman, half widow, half hospital nurse, of my earliest recollection. She was as beaming and excited as a young girl, and greeted the Snow Lady by throwing her arms about her and whispering, &ldqu............