Edward Forster - The Longest Journey

"I wondered if you're right about the hundred pounds," said Ansell gravely. "It is pleasant to be proud, but it is unpleasant to die in the night through not having any tobacco."

"But I'm not proud. Look how I've taken your pouch! The hundred pounds was—well, can't you see yourself, it was quite different? It was, so to speak, inconvenient for me to take the hundred pounds. Or look again how I took a shilling from a boy who earns nine bob a-week! Proves pretty conclusively I'm not proud."

Ansell saw it was useless to argue. He perceived, beneath the slatternly use of words, the man, buttoned up in them, just as his body was buttoned up in a shoddy suit,—and he wondered more than ever that such a man should know the Elliots. He looked at the face, which was frank, proud, and beautiful, if truth is beauty. Of mercy or tact such a face knew little. It might be coarse, but it had in it nothing vulgar or wantonly cruel. "May I read these papers?" he said.

"Of course. Oh yes; didn't I say? I'm Rickie's half-brother, come here to tell him the news. He doesn't know. There it is, put shortly for you. I was saying, though, that I bolted in the dark, slept in the rifle-butts above Salisbury, the sheds where they keep the cardboard men, you know, never locked up as they ought to be. I turned the whole place upside down to teach them."

"Here is your packet again," said Ansell. "Thank you. How interesting!" He rose from the seat and turned towards Dunwood House. He looked at the bow-windows, the cheap picturesque gables, the terracotta dragons clawing a dirty sky. He listened to the clink of plates and to the voice of Mr. Pembroke taking one of his innumerable roll-calls. He looked at the bed of lobelias. How interesting! What else was there to say?

"One must be the son of some one," remarked Stephen. And that was all he had to say. To him those names on the moistened paper were mere antiquities. He was neither proud of them nor ashamed. A man must have parents, or he cannot enter the delightful world. A man, if he has a brother, may reasonably visit him, for they may have interests in common. He continued his narrative, how in the night he had heard the clocks, how at daybreak, instead of entering the city, he had struck eastward to save money,—while Ansell still looked at the house and found that all his imagination and knowledge could lead him no farther than this: how interesting!

"—And what do you think of that for a holy horror?"

"For a what?" said Ansell, his thoughts far away.

"This man I am telling you about, who gave me a lift towards Andover, who said I was a blot on God's earth."

One o'clock struck. It was strange that neither of them had had any summons from the house.

"He said I ought to be ashamed of myself. He said, 'I'll not be the means of bringing shame to an honest gentleman and lady.' I told him not to be a fool. I said I knew what I was about. Rickie and Agnes are properly educated, which leads people to look at things straight, and not go screaming about blots. A man like me, with just a little reading at odd hours—I've got so far, and Rickie has been through Cambridge."

"And Mrs. Elliot?"

"Oh, she won't mind, and I told the man so; but he kept on saying, 'I'll not be the means of bringing shame to an honest gentleman and lady,' until I got out of his rotten cart." His eye watched the man a Nonconformist, driving away over God's earth. "I caught the train by running. I got to Waterloo at—"

Here the parlour-maid fluttered towards them, Would Mr. Wonham come in? Mrs. Elliot would be glad to see him now.

"Mrs. Elliot?" cried Ansell. "Not Mr. Elliot?"

"It's all the same," said Stephen, and moved towards the house.

"You see, I only left my name. They don't know why I've come."

"Perhaps Mr. Elliot sees me meanwhile?"

The parlour-maid looked blank. Mr. Elliot had not said so. He had been with Mrs. Elliot and Mr. Pembroke in the study. Now the gentlemen had gone upstairs.

"All right, I can wait." After all, Rickie was treating him as he had treated Rickie, as one in the grave, to whom it is futile to make any loving motion. Gone upstairs—to brush his hair for dinner! The irony of the situation appealed to him strongly. It reminded him of the Greek Drama, where the actors know so little and the spectators so much.

"But, by the bye," he called after Stephen, "I think I ought to tell you—don't—"

"What is it?"

"Don't—" Then he was silent. He had been tempted to explain everything, to tell the fellow how things stood, that he must avoid this if he wanted to attain that; that he must break the news to Rickie gently; that he must have at least one battle royal with Agnes. But it was contrary to his own spirit to coach people: he held the human soul to be a very delicate thing, which can receive eternal damage from a little patronage. Stephen must go into the house simply as himself, for thus alone would he remain there.

"I ought to knock my pipe out? Was that it?" "By no means. Go in, your pipe and you."

He hesitated, torn between propriety and desire. Then he followed the parlour-maid into the house smoking. As he entered the dinner-bell rang, and there was the sound of rushing feet, which died away into shuffling and silence. Through the window of the boys' dining-hall came the colourless voice of Rickie—"'Benedictus benedicat.'"

Ansell prepared himself to witness the second act of the drama; forgetting that all this world, and not part of it, is a stage.

The parlour-maid took Mr. Wonham to the study. He had been in the drawing-room before, but had got bored, and so had strolled out into the garden. Now he was in better spirits, as a man ought to be who has knocked down a man. As he passed through the hall he sparred at the teak monkey, and hung his cap on the bust of Hermes. And he greeted Mrs. Elliot with a pleasant clap of laughter. "Oh, I've come with the most tremendous news!" he cried.

She bowed, but did not shake hands, which rather surprised him. But he never troubled over "details." He seldom watched people, and never thought that they were watching him. Nor could he guess how much it meant to her that he should enter her presence smoking. Had she not said once at Cadover, "Oh, please smoke; I love the smell of a pipe"?

"Would you sit down? Exactly there, please." She placed him at a large table, opposite an inkpot and a pad of blotting-paper.

"Will you tell your 'tremendous news' to me? My brother and my husband are giving the boys their dinner."

"Ah!" said Stephen, who had had neither time nor money for breakfast in London.

"I told them not to wait for me."

So he came to the point at once. He trusted this handsome woman. His strength and his youth called to hers, expecting no prudish response. "It's very odd. It is that I'm Rickie's brother. I've just found out. I've come to tell you all."

"Yes?"

He felt in his pocket for the papers. "Half-brother I ought to have said."

"Yes?"

"I'm illegitimate. Legally speaking, that is, I've been turned out of Cadover. I haven't a penny. I—"

"There is no occasion to inflict the details." Her face, which had been an even brown, began to flush slowly in the centre of the cheeks. The colour spread till all that he saw of her was suffused, and she turned away. He thought he had shocked her, and so did she. Neither knew that the body can be insincere and express not the emotions we feel but those that we should like to feel. In reality she was quite calm, and her dislike of him had nothing emotional in it as yet.

"You see—" he began. He was determined to tell the fidgety story, for the sooner it was over the sooner they would have something to eat. Delicacy he lacked, and his sympathies were limited. But such as they were, they rang true: he put no decorous phantom between him and his desires.