Directly I reached the house, I ran swiftly up the stairs, then hurried into the little workroom overlooking the garden.
“Heavens!” Hilda exclaimed. “Must you always rush into a room like a lunatic?”
“Listen! Listen, I’ve something to tell you—something important. I’ve been talking to Dr. Gandy. You don’t have to worry about staying on here.”
“Why not?”
“The doctor says father may die at any time—and he does not think mother would long survive him.”
The garment she was sewing fell to the floor, then she rose slowly.
“Is that why the specialist came last week?”
“Yes.”
Then, to my astonishment, she sank into the chair and began to sob.
“But I thought you wanted to be free, Hilda!”
“Not like that . . . not like that! It’s—terrible!” There was a long silence.
At last she said:
And you could stand there, and tell me that—just as if it had nothing to do with you!”
“You don’t understand! You don’t understand anything! What d’you want me to do? Lie? Didn’t I tell you, a day or two ago, that I was thankful the holidays were over? D’you think I’d want to live here? I know they’ve said I can go to Paris when I leave school, but you can’t count on a thing they say nowadays. If you go, they’ll want me to stay.”
She said nothing, so I raced on:
“I’m not going to pretend, I want to be free. I’ve work to do which I must do. And, anyway, what do they care about me nowadays?”
Her silence irritated me, so I almost shouted:
“Well, what—do—they? All they want is to mope together, month after month, year after year! I should go off my head if I stayed here alone with them.”
“You were fond of them—once.”
“And they were fond of me—once.”
“So you want them to die?”
“I—do—not—want—them—to—die! Can’t you see that I’m afraid of becoming like them—that I’m terrified of becoming like them? If I were here alone with them, I should become as queer as they are. Don’t sit there, staring at me! D’you understand a word I’m saying?”
“Yes, but——”
She broke off, gazed up at me with an odd expression, then said:
“You’ll have a strange life.”
“I dare say. But it will be mine. And that’s all I care about.”’
She said nothing and I left her. . . .
My parents died in December, 1917. A year later, the war ended and I left school.
I was eighteen—and I was free.
“You must interrupt, Max, if I say anything you don’t understand. I am your guardian, as well as your lawyer, and I want to help you if I can.”
Then, having patted my knee, John Gurney looked round his office which was on the second floor of an old house near Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Although he was nearly sixty, his cherubic features and ivory-white hair suggested almost Pickwickian benevolence, but this impression was somewhat undermined by encountering the direct glance of his enigmatic grey eyes. As a boy, I had often come to this room with my father, but, on every occasion, Gurney had consistently ignored me, so it seemed strange to be here in the exalted rôle of client.
“You know the old saying, Max, about de mortuis, but facts are facts—and the dominant fact is that your father behaved very unwisely during the latter part of his life. Very unwisely indeed!”
He went on to explain that my father had never had any money sense and that, during the war, he had tried to retrieve his financial position by speculation, with the customary result. It had been useless to argue with him because he was like a man in a trance. Still, it was only fair to say that my mother’s illness during so many years had been a considerable and recurrent drain on his dwindling resources.
“When death duties, debts and legacies are paid—and when your expenses during the next few years have been met—there will not be a lot left.”
He paused, then added:
“Don’t think I am criticising your father. I am not. I will give you one example—one of many—of his total lack of perspective in money matters. When he signed his will here, three years ago, in this room, he must have known perfectly well that he could not provide for you as adequately as you had every right to expect. Knowing that, what did he do? Left a handsome legacy to a domestic servant named Hilda.”
“I’m glad of that! Awfully glad!”
Gurney raised his hands, as if to protect himself from the shafts of folly.
“You don’t understand,” I went on. “My parents owed no end to Hilda. She put off her marriage twice rather than leave them.”
“Yes, yes! I am sure she did. I only wish your father had had the business acumen of Miss Hilda. But never mind that now. The point is, Max, that owing to your uncle’s death in the war, you are alone in the world. Till you come of age, I am your guardian—so I have a moral responsibility regarding you as well as a legal one.”
Then, abandoning his professional manner with dramatic abruptness, he leaned forward and said with genuine feeling:
“If I don’t say certain things to you, Max, no one else will. And the first thing I want to do is to warn you.”
“Warn me!”
“Yes. I know it was decided long ago that you should go to Paris to study when you left school. Well, I am bound to tell you that I think that was a most unwise decision.”
Before I could speak, he went on:
“I do not say you are not gifted. You may be greatly gifted—but that does not affect the issue, as I see it.”
He paused, then continued:
“I shall have to speak very plainly. Your parents were far from normal. Your childhood and boyhood—till you went to school—were far from normal. All your early experience was exceptional—and the effects of early experience remain operative through the whole of a man’s life. Now, I do not want to remind you of unpleasant things which, fortunately, belong to the past, but it remains a fact that you were an extremely sensitive child. Your father was deeply disturbed by the discovery that you walked in your sleep, although, naturally, he made light of it—to you—at the time.”
After a prolonged pause, he added:
“What you need, Max, is balance—stability. Will you find either, living an artist’s life in Paris? You will not be rich, but you will be financially independent for some years. You are imaginative—impressionable. You will, therefore, respond to your environment—to the inducements and temptations of your environment. You are what a friend of mine calls the ‘psychic type.’ It’s written all over you. So you’ll have more than one world to deal with. You will say that your work is everything to you. But artists are not always inspired and, when their vision deserts them, they are capable of follies unknown to the ordinary man. It is necessary to read only a few biographies to discover that fact. And I have read a great many biographies.”
Again I tried to speak, but he stopped me.
“Let me have my say. You’ll go your own way—I know that—but it doesn’t absolve me from saying what I think is necessary to be said. Besides, in one way, I have the right to speak as I am doing. I was fond of your mother long before she married. So fond of her, that I remained a bachelor. For that reason, if for none other, I want to help you if I can. Now, I’ve no doubt that what is called happiness seems a very pedestrian thing to you. When your mother believed, and had every reason to believe, that she was on the threshold of a brilliant career, happiness—ordinary human happiness—seemed a very pedestrian thing to her. But she changed her opinion when the chance of it vanished for ever.”