Читать книгу Joan and Peter - H. G. Wells - Страница 38

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“You got your rights like anybody, m’lady,” said Unwin.

It was that phrase put it into Lady Charlotte’s head to consult her solicitor. He opened new vistas to her imagination.

Lady Charlotte’s solicitor was a lean, long, faded blond of forty-five or so. He was the descendant of five generations of Lincoln’s Inn solicitors, a Low Churchman, a man of notoriously pure life, and very artful indeed. He talked in a thin, high tenor voice, and was given to nibbling his thumbnail and wincing with his eyes as he talked. His thumbnail produced gaps of indistinctness in his speech.

“Powers of a guardian, m’lady. Defends upon whafower want exercise over thinfant.”

“I do wish you’d keep your thumb out of your mouth,” said Lady Charlotte.

“Sorry,” said Mr. Grimes, wincing and trying painfully to rearrange his arm. “Still, I’d like to know—position.”

“There are three other guardians.”

“Generous allowance,” said Mr. Grimes. “Do you all act?”

“One of us is lost in the Wilds of Africa. The others I want to consult you about. They do not seem to me to be fit and proper persons to be entrusted with the care of young children, and they do not seem disposed to afford me a proper share in the direction of affairs.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Grimes, replacing his thumb. “Sees t’point t’Chacery.”

Lady Charlotte disregarded this comment. She wished to describe Aunts Phyllis and Phœbe in her own words.

“They are quite extraordinary young women—not by any stretch of language to be called Ladies. They dress in that way—like the pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery.”

“Æsthetic?”

“I could find a harsher word for it. They smoke. Not a nice thing for children to see. I suspect them strongly of vegetarianism. From something one of them said. In which case the children will not be properly nourished. And they speak quite openly of socialism in front of their charges. Neither of the poor little creatures had been bought a scrap of mourning. Not a scrap. I doubt if they have even been made to understand that their parents are dead. But that is only the beginning. I am totally unable to ascertain whether either of the poor mites has been christened. Apparently they have not....”

Mr. Grimes withdrew his thumb for a moment. “You are perfectly within yer rights—insisting—knowing”—thumb replaced—“all thlese things.”

“Exactly. And in having my say in their general upbringing.”

“How far do they prevent that?”

“Oh; they get in my way. They send the children out whenever they feel I am coming. They do not listen to me and accept any suggestions I make. Oh!—sniff at it.”

“And you want to make ’em?”

“I want to do my duty by those two children, Mr. Grimes. It is a charge that has been laid upon me.”

Mr. Grimes reflected, rubbing his thumb thoughtfully along the front of his teeth.

“They are getting no religious instruction whatever,” said Lady Charlotte. “None.”

“Hot was the ’ligion father?” said Mr. Grimes suddenly.

Lady Charlotte was not to be deterred by a silly and inopportune question. She just paused for an instant and reddened. “He was a member of the Church of England,” she said.

“Even if he wasn’t,” said Mr. Grimes understandingly, but with thumb still in place, “Ligion necessary t’welfare. Case of Besant Chil’n zample. Thlis is Klistian country.”

“I sometimes doubt it,” said Lady Charlotte.

“Legally,” said Mr. Grimes.

“If the law did its duty!”

“You don’t wanner goatallaw fewcan ’void it?” asked Mr. Grimes, grasping his job.

Lady Charlotte assumed an expression of pained protest, and lifted one black-gloved hand. Mr. Grimes hastily withdrew his thumbnail from his mouth. “I am saying, Lady Charlotte, that what you want to do is to assert your authority, if possible, without legal proceedings.”

He was trying to get the whole situation clear in his mind before he tendered any exact advice. Most children who are quarrelled over in this way gravitate very rapidly into the care of the Lord Chancellor; to that no doubt these children would come; but Lady Charlotte was a prosperous lady with a lot of fight in her and a knack of illegality, and before these children became Wards in Chancery she might, under suitable provocation, run up a very considerable little bill for expenses and special advice in extracting her from such holes as she got herself into. It is an unjust libel upon solicitors that they tempt their clients into litigation. So far is this unjust that the great majority will spare neither time nor expense in getting a case settled out of court.

Nor did Lady Charlotte want to litigate. Courts are uncertain, irritating places. She just wanted to get hold of her two wards, and to deal with them in such a way as to inflict the maximum of annoyance and humiliation upon those queer Stubland aunts. And to save the children from socialism, secularism, Catholicism, and all the wandering wolves of opinion that lie in wait for the improperly trained.

But also she went in fear of Oswald. Oswald was one of the few human beings of whom she went in awe. He was always rude and overbearing with her. From the very first moment when he had seen her as his uncle’s new wife, he had realized in a flash of boyish intuition that if he did not get in with an insult first, he would be her victim. So his first words to her had been an apparently involuntary “O God!” Then he had pretended to dissemble his contempt with a cold politeness. Those were the days of his good looks; he was as tall and big as he was ever to be, and she had expected a “little midshipmite,” whom she would treat like a child, and possibly even send early to bed. From the first she was at a disadvantage. He had a material hold on her too, now. He was his uncle’s heir and her Trustee; and she had the belief of all Victorian women in the unlimited power of Trustees to abuse their trust unless they are abjectly propitiated. He used to come and stay in her house as if it was already his own; the servants would take their orders from him. She was assuring Grimes as she had assured the Stubland aunts that he was on her side; “The Sydenhams are all sound churchmen.” But even as she said this she saw his grim, one-sided face and its one hard intent eye pinning her. “Acting without authority again, my good aunt,” he would say. “You’ll get yourself into trouble yet.”

That was one of his invariable stabs whenever he came to see her. Always he would ask, sooner or later, in that first meeting:

“Any one bagged you for libel yet? No! Or insulting behaviour? Some one will get you sooner or later.”

“Anything that I say about people,” she would reply with dignity, “is True, Oswald.”

“They’ll double the damages if you stick that out.”...

And she saw him now standing beside the irritating, necessary Grimes, sardonically ready to take part against her, prepared even to give those abominable aunts an unendurable triumph over her....

“I want no vulgar litigation,” she said. “Everything ought to be done as quietly as possible. There is no need to ventilate the family affairs of the Sydenhams, and particularly when I tell you that one of the children is——” She hesitated. “Irregular.”

The thumb went back, and Mr. Grimes’ face assumed a diplomatic innocence. “Whascalled a love-shild?”

“Exactly,” said Lady Charlotte, with a nod that forbade all research for paternity. If Joan were assumed to be of Stubland origin, so much the better for Lady Charlotte’s case. “Everything must be done quietly and privately,” she said.

“Sactly,” said Mr. Grimes, and was reminded of his thumb by her eye. He coughed, put his arm down, and sat up in his chair. “They have possession of the children?” he said.

“Should I be here?” she appealed.

“Ah! That gives the key of the situation.... Would they litigate?”

“Why should they?”

“If by chance you got possession?”

“That would be difficult.”

“But not impossible? Perhaps something could be managed. With my assistance. Once or twice before I have had cases that turned on the custody of minors. Custody, like possession, is nine points of the law. Then they would have to come into court.”

“We want nobody to come into court.”

“Exactly, m’lady. I am pointing out to you how improbable it is that they will do so. I am gauging their disinclination.”

The attitude of Mr. Grimes relaxed unconsciously until once more the teeth and thumbnail were at their little play again.

He continued with thoughtful eyes upon his client’s expression. “Possibly they wouldn’t li’e ’nquiry into character.”

“Oh, do take that thumb away!” cried Lady Charlotte. “And don’t lounge.”

“I’m sorry, m’lady,” said Mr. Grimes, sitting up. “I was saying, practically, do we know of any little irregularities, anything—I won’t say actually immoral, but indiscreet, in these two ladies’ lives? Anything they wouldn’t like to have publicly discussed. In the case of most people there’s a Something. Few people will readily and cheerfully face a discussion of Character. Even quite innocent people.”

“They’re certainly very lax—very. They smoke. Inordinately. I saw the cigarette stains on their fingers. And unless I am very much mistaken, one of them—well”—Lady Charlotte leant forward towards him with an air of scandalous condescension—“she wears no stays at all, Mr. Grimes—none at all! No! She’s a very queer young woman indeed in my opinion.”

“M’m!... No visitors to the house—no gentlemen, for example—who might seem a little dubious?”

Lady Charlotte did not know. “I will get my maid to make enquiries—discreetly. We certainly ought to know that.”

“The elder one writes poetry,” she threw out.

“We must see to that, too. If we can procure some of that. Nowadays there is quite a quantity—of very indiscreet poetry. Many people do not realize the use that might be made of it against them. And even if the poetry is not indiscreet, it creates a prejudice....”

He proceeded to unfold his suggestions. Lady Charlotte must subdue herself for a while to a reassuring demeanour towards the aunts at The Ingle-Nook. She must gain the confidence of the children. “And of the children’s maid!” he said acutely. “She’s rather an important factor.”

“She’s a very impertinent young woman,” said Lady Charlotte.

“But you must reassure her for a time, Lady Charlotte, if the children are to come to you—ultimately.”

“I can make the sacrifice,” the lady said; “if you think it is my duty.”

Meanwhile Mr. Grimes would write a letter, a temperate letter, yet “just a little stiff in tone,” pointing out the legal and enforceable right of his client to see and have free communication with the children, and to be consulted about their affairs, and trusting that the Misses Stubland would see their way to accord these privileges without further evasion.