Title:      Stretton
Author:     Henry Kingsley
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Title:      Stretton
Author:     Henry Kingsley




Chapter 1.


Does Nature sympathise with disaster? Of all poets' fancies, that is the
most foolish. Is "the wind to be howling in turret and tree" whenever
disaster, and sin, and terror are walking abroad? We should have fine
weather, I trow, were that the case.

The crystal purity of a perfect evening at the end of April was settling
down over the beautiful valley which lies between Shrewsbury and Ludlow;
on the one hand, the Longmynd rolled its great sheets of grouse-moor and
scarps of rock up, fold beyond fold; while, on the other, the sharp peak
of Caradoc took the evening, and smiled upon his distant brother, the
towering Plinlimmon; while Plinlimmon, in the West, with silver infant
Severn streaming down his bosom, watched the sinking sun after Caradoc
and Longmynd had lost it; and when it sank, blazed out from his summit a
signal to his brother watchers, and, wrapping himself in purple robes,
slept in majestic peace.

Down below in the valley, among the meadows, the lanes, and the fords,
it was nearly as peaceful and quiet as it was aloft on the
mountain-tops; and under the darkening shadows of the rapidly leafing
elms, you could hear, it was so still, the cows grazing and the trout
rising in the river. Day was yet alive in some region aloft in the air,
loftier than the summits of Plinlimmon or Caradoc, for the democratic
multitude of the stars had not been able as yet to show themselves
through the train of glorious memories which the abdicated king had left
behind him. The curfew came booming up the valley sleepily, and ceased.
It was a land lapped in order and tradition; good landlords, good
tenants, well-used labourers, if ever there were such in late years in
England. Surely a land of peace!

Who comes here, along the path, through the growing clover? Who is this
woman who walks swiftly, bareheaded under the dew? Who is this
strange-looking woman, with an Indian shawl half-fallen off her
shoulders, with clenched fists, one of which she at times beats on her
beautiful head? Can it be Mrs. Evans, of the Castle, or her ghost? Or is
it her in the flesh, and has she gone mad?

Such were the questions put to one another by a young pair of lovers,
who watched her from beneath a plantation where they were innocently
rambling. The young man said, "That is a queer sight for a fellow
courting," and the young woman said, "There was too much love-making
there, I doubt." And the young man said, "How about the banns next
Sunday?" And the young woman said, "Have your own way about it, and
don't plague me," which I suppose meant "Yes."

We must follow this awful, swift-walking figure of poor Mrs. Evans, and
watch her.

She was an exceedingly beautiful woman, in exact age forty-one, with
that imperial dome-like head, and splendid carriage of that same head,
which the Merionethsbire people say is a specialité of the Merediths,
though I have seen it elsewhere. If you had told her that she had Celtic
blood in her veins, she would probably have denied it; but she was
certainly behaving in a most Celtic manner now. Anything more un-Norman
than her behaviour now, cannot be conceived. The low, inarticulate
moans--the moans which mean so much more than speech--the wild, swift
walk, the gesticulation, the clenched fists, all told of Celtic
excitability; yet she was no Celt. It is only the old, stale story of
Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores. She was behaving like a Celt because she had
been brought up among them; but there was a depth of anger and fury in
her heart which must have come from the conquering race.

As she neared her husband's Castle, she grew more calm, adjusted her
shawl, and put her hair straight; for she feared him, gentle as he was.
He would have lain down so that she should walk over him; but he would
have been angry with her had he seen her in her late disorder. And she
had never seen his wrath but once, and that was towards his own son; and
she did not care to face it, for it was as deep and passionate as his
love. So she bound up her hair, left off clenching her fists, pulled her
shawl straight, and, stepping in by the flower-garden, let herself in by
the postern, and appeared before him, as he stalked up and down the
library.

"Is it over, darling of my heart?" he said.

"It is all over," she said, spreading her ten white fingers before her.

"And how is she?" he asked.

"She is dead!" answered Mrs. Evans.

"Dead! dead! dead!" she was going on hysterically, when he caught her in
his arms and kissed her into quiescence.

"Be quiet," he said; "there is trouble enough without more. What have we
done that God should afflict us like this? Is the child alive?"

"Yes; but it cannot live," replied Mrs. Evans. "It is a weak thing: but
God forgive us, there is no doubt about its father."

In the house of Evans, the qualities of valour in war, of faith to the
death with friends, and of strict probity towards the women of the
estate, were always considered to be hereditary--more especially the
last quality. The servants in the family were always taken from some
family resident in the 11,000 acres which made the estate. Such of them
as were traditionally supposed to require the quality of good looks, the
ladies'-maids and the pad-grooms, were always selected from three or
four families notorious for those qualities. Again, even in such a
strong family as the Evanses, nurses were often required, and were
selected always, if possible, from one of those three or four families:
so that, in fact, most of the servants, male and female, were actual
foster-brothers of some one member of the house. The idea of any wrong
was actually incredible; but it had come, and there was wild weeping
over it.

The prettiest girl of all these good-looking families had been the very
last admitted into the Castle, as companion and lady's-maid to that
splendid beauty, Eleanor Evans. Admitted, do I say? She had been
admitted when she was a wailing infant of a week old, as foster-sister
to the equally wailing Eleanor: for Mrs. Evans had not been so lucky as
usual, and had kept about a little too long. Elsie grew up almost as
much at Stretton as she did at her own cottage, and had been as free of
the Castle as was her foster-sister Eleanor.

Perhaps, because she had had only one nurse while Eleanor had two--who
can say?--she grew up very delicate and small, though very beautiful.
Eleanor (I was going to say Aunt Eleanor, but must not as yet) grew up
so physically strong that the wiser old ladies, after looking at her
through their spectacles, pronounced that she was very splendid, but
would get coarse. We shall see about that hereafter.

It was on the eve of Waterloo that the gentle little maid was fully
accredited for the first time to her full powers of being thoroughly
bullied by Eleanor. "Now, you little fool, I have got you, body and
bones," said Eleanor, when they went upstairs together, "and I'll make
you wish you were dead in a week;" which made the little maid laugh, and
yet cry; upon which Eleanor bent down over her and kissed her. "What is
the matter with you, you little idiot?" she said. "You want bullying,
and you shall be bullied. Come up, and take my hair down." And the
little maid did as she told her.

"Set all the doors open," said Eleanor, "that I may walk to the end of
the corridor and back. A dog would not sleep tonight. Oh, Charles!
brother of my heart, acquit thyself well! My father and mother are
praying for the heir of the house, but I--I, girl, cannot pray! Why are
you weeping, girl?"

"I was thinking of Master Charles and the battle, miss."

"What is he to you? How dare you cry while I am dry-eyed! Idiot! Good
Duke! Good Duke! Tarre! He should wait behind Soignies for Blucher; but
he knows. In front of Soignies there are open downs. Child, why do you
weep? Is it for your brothers, who have followed mine? I do not weep for
my brother--"

Yes, but she did though. Broke down all in one instant, while the words
were yet in her mouth. But it was soon over. She was soon after walking
up and down the corridor, with her hair down, speculating on the chances
of the war.

Late at night she came to her father and mother's bedroom. They had not
gone to bed, but sat waiting for news, which could not possibly come for
a week. "Mother," she said, "I can do nothing with my poor little maid.
She has got hysterical about her two brothers at the war, and keeps
accusing poor Charles, who, I am sure, never tempted them."

"What?" said Mrs. Evans, sharply.

"Keeps on accusing Charles in the most senseless manner. I am sure--"

"Go and sit with your father," said Mrs. Evans. "Engage his attention;
keep him amused. I'll see to the girl."

She went and saw to the girl; but took uncommonly good care that no one
else did. She was an hour with her. When she came back to her husband's
bedroom she found Eleanor sitting up, with a map of Belgium before her,
chatting comfortably, but solemnly, about the movements of the armies.

She had seen the girl, she said; and the girl was hysterical about her
brothers, and accused Charles of leading them to the war. The girl was
weak in her health, and would be always weak. The girl had always been a
fool, and apparently intended to remain one. The girl must have change
of air and scene. She had an aunt at Carlisle, who kept a stationer's
shop. The girl must go there for a time; for there was trouble enough
without her tantrums. Charles, with his furious headlong way of doing
things, was almost certainly killed, &c., &c., with a sly, kind eye on
her husband and her daughter.

They both were on her in a moment, at such a supposition. She, when she
saw that she had led them on the wrong scent, recovered her good temper,
and allowed them to beat her pillar to post, while they proved that the
allies would carry everything before them, and that nothing could happen
to Charles (except accidents of war, which are apt to be numerous). Yet,
complacent as she was, there were times when her hands caught together
and pulled one another, as though the right hand would have pulled the
fingers up by the roots. These were the times when she was saying to
herself, about her own darling son, "He had better die there! He had
better die there!"

For the rest nothing was to be noted in this lady's behaviour for the
present, save that the new lady's-maid was sent to Carlisle, that Mrs.
Evans seemed to take the news of Waterloo rather coolly, and that she
received her son, now Captain Evans, with extreme coolness on his return
from Waterloo, covered with wounds and glory.

She thought him guilty. Why should she say to him, "Honourable conduct
is of more avail than glory?" He was chilled and offended, for he felt
himself innocent.


What was he like at this time? For the present we must take his sister
Eleanor's account of him, who says that he was the very image of his
son, Roland,--which must be very satisfactory to the reader. The ladies
may like to know, however, by the same authority, that if my friend,
Eleanor, is right, and that Charles Evans was like his son Roland, that
he was also, by the same authority, extremely like Antinous.

Antinous Charles had been brought up with this poor, pretty little maid,
Elsie, and he had fallen in love with her, and she with him, which was
against the rules of the house of Evans, for she was foster-sister of
his sister. They loved like others. In what followed, Charles's own
mother was against him, and gave him up as a villain who had
transgressed the immutable traditions of the house. One of the girl's
brothers was killed at Waterloo, one came home with Charles, as his
regimental servant. Charles gave out that he was going to London; but
his silly servant came home to Stretton and vaguely let out the fact
that Captain Charles had not been to London at all, but had been to
Carlisle to see his sister, Elsie.

Mr. Evans's fury was terrible. He wrote in a friendly way to the colonel
of Charles's regiment, begging him, as an old friend, to recall Charles
instantly, and save him from what he feared was a very low intrigue. He
sent old Mrs. Gray, the girl's mother, off to Carlisle after her
daughter at once, bearing such a letter as made Charles avoid home in
returning to Chatham at the peremptory summons of his commanding
officer.

Let us say but little about it, as it is not among such painful scenes
as this that we shall have to walk together. Charles had not been very
long at Carlisle, but he had been too long it seemed. The unhappy girl
came home, and was confined in six months' time. She died that night,
but the child lingered on, and on.

Did Mrs. Evans wish that it should die? Who can say? Did she wish the
disgrace buried and ended? Who can say? I think, however, that she slept
none the worse after Mrs. Gray came to her and told her that the child
was dead.

It had been baptized, and so was buried and registered--the illegitimate
son of Elsie Gray; the sexton patted down the turf, and all the scandal
was over and done. Old James Evans said that Charles was now free for a
new start, and had better go to India on his roster, and had better not
come home first. And so a pale and rather wild-looking young captain
paraded his company on the main deck of the East India Company's ship,
The Veda, and sailed for India accordingly.

"Taking things rather coolly," you say. Why, no; but somewhat hotly: yet
submitting. This young fellow of a captain had violated every
traditional rule of his house, and felt guilty. Yet he was not without
sources of information. He dared not face his family in the state of
things as they were; and he dared not see the woman he loved best in the
world. He consoled himself and her by passionate, wild, foolish letters,
carefully transmitted, and carefully and tenderly answered, not only to
poor Elsie, but also to his sister Eleanor, whom we shall see again.
When unhappy affairs of this kind take place, there are apt to be
domestic scenes. I will give you one.

At breakfast, one bright May morning, some two months before the child
so soon to die was born, Eleanor had a letter, and was reading it. Her
mother looked at her father, and her father looked at her mother, and at
last her father, Squire James Evans, spoke:

"My dear Eleanor, you have a letter from your brother Charles. Will you
let me read it?"

"No, I won't," said Eleanor.

"Is that the way to speak to your father?" said Mrs. Evans.

"Yes," said Eleanor, "if he proposes to read letters which are not
directed to him. The letter is from Charles to me; if he had intended to
let my father see it, he would have directed it to him. He, on the other
hand, has directed it to me, and I mean to keep it to myself."

Mrs. Evans wept.

Squire Evans said, "This is well. My son has been a villain, and my
daughter backs him up."

"You do ill to call your son a villain, sir," replied Aunt Eleanor.
"Call him fool and coward; but you do ill, you two, to call him
villain." And so Aunt Eleanor, then, by the way, a very beautiful young
girl of eighteen, takes up her letter, and scornfully sweeps out of the
room, with her nose in the air. Fine times indeed!

Poor Elsie Gray was with her mother, as we said, and that devoted woman
had more than one trouble on her hands at a time. It turned out now that
young Robert Gray, the soldier-servant of Charles, had quietly, without
leave of his commandant, without the slightest means of supporting her,
married a pretty girl two parishes off, and now wrote coolly to his
mother from Chatham to announce the fact, and inform his mother that the
young lady would come to her for her confinement.

This child, as Mrs. Gray could tell, was born at the same time, or
nearly, as the other. And the soldier's child lived, while the child of
his master died. Little Gray grew up, and grew strong. And we shall have
to see a great deal of him in many positions. It was about three weeks
after Mrs. Evans came wringing her hands through the green lanes,
lamenting the dishonour of her husband's house and her own, that the
other little child wailed itself into silence, into peace, into death,
and was heard of no more.



Chapter 2.

Was Mrs. Evans sorry? Who can say? Those Merediths and Ap-Merediths, who
call themselves Celtic, yet are as Norse as they can look at you out of
their two eyes, have a singularly un-Celtic trick of concealing emotion.
Eleanor could not say whether her mother as sorry or glad,

It was not the custom, in families of that class, for the mother to
allude, even in the most distant way, to her daughters on any points
regarding marriage relations. Mrs. Evans broke through this rule once,
and when her daughter and she were alone, said, very quietly, "That
child of Gray's, the soldier, is growing strong and hearty. You are old
enough to understand that if things had gone right, that child would
have called you aunt. His father is the brother of the woman whom you
should have called sister, had it not been for the incalculable villainy
of Charles."

"Mother, leave Charles alone. I will not have Charles abused."

"A most maidenly, daughterly speech," said Mrs. Evans, scornfully.

"Mother, I mean all duty; but circumstances alter cases."

"This is well," said Mrs. Evans. "This is uncommonly well. There is some
old cross of the Evans blood coming out here. This is the Duchess of
N--'s blood, I doubt, which is now defying her own flesh and blood."

"Don't talk like that, mother."

"I will not," replied Mrs. Evans; "but allow me to tell you that if Lord
Homerton had heard you utter such atrocious sentiments, he would at once
cease his visits, and would not propose."

"Oh, he has proposed," said Eleanor. "He proposed yesterday."

"What did he say?" said Mrs. Evans, eagerly.

"Well," said Eleanor, coolly, "he merely, as I believe men do (and
dreadful fools they look when they do it), asked me if he might consider
himself engaged to be married to me."

"And what did you say?" asked Mrs. Evans.

"I said that I was at a loss to conceive what he had seen in my conduct
which induced him to take such an unwarrantable liberty."

"Good heavens!" said Mrs. Evans. "Then are you off with him?

"I never was on with him that I know of," said Eleanor. "He is a good
fellow, and I like him well; but I don't see why I should marry him. We
shouldn't get on. He is not religious, and does not care for his
estate."

"Your influence would have made him care for both his estate and his
religion," said Mrs. Evans.

"Not a bit of it," replied Eleanor. "George is a man, although we never
hit it off together."

"Is it hopeless?" said Mrs. Evans. "How did you dismiss him?"

"Well, I kissed him, and as he went out of the room, I gave him a pat on
the back, and I said, 'Go on, George; go off to Greenwood. There is a
girl there, worth fifty of me, who is dying for you. You would never
have made such a fool of yourself about me, if it had not been for our
two families.' And then he wanted to kiss me again, but I would not
stand that. And so he rode off to Greenwood, and I think you will find
that Laura Mostyn will be announced as Lady Homerton next week."

"You will never be married at this rate," said Mrs. Evans, biting her
lip.

"Never mean to make such a fool of myself," replied Eleanor.

"A woman must marry to get position and station," said Mrs. Evans,
looking keenly, and in a puzzled manner, on this radiant young beauty of
eighteen.

"I have both," said Eleanor. "I have the Pulverbatch Farm, and that will
bring me in £500 a year, and take up all my time. I tell you that
I don't choose to have any husband but one, and he is my brother
Charles. Let us drop this perfectly vain conversation and tell me what
you want done about this child."

Mrs. Evans was beaten by that inexorable, beautiful face. She said,
after a pause, "I wish you quietly to be godmother to it, and when I am
dead, to look to it. We have done evil enough to that family as it is."

"Is it to be brought up as a gentleman?" she asked.

"Certainly not," said her mother; "only respectably. I wish you would
undertake it for me, for the sight of the child and of the whole of that
family is distasteful to me."

Eleanor said, "Yes," wondering. But when she said yes she meant yes, and
she did what was desired of her.



Chapter 3.

The sudden and very lamentable death of Squire James Evans in the
hunting-field threw a gloom, not in the mere newspaper acceptation of
the term, but in reality, over that part of Shropshire, for nearly a
week. He was a most deservedly popular man, and what they wrote on his
tomb was every word of it true. He was a good son, a good husband, a
good father, a good landlord, a pious churchman, a firm friend, and he
died without one single enemy. One little fact was omitted from his
tombstone: he died without being reconciled to his son, at least
formally. There may have been a reconciliation at heart, and those low,
inarticulate moans, as he lay dying in his groom's arms in the ditch,
may have been the attempted expression of it; but the mouth was loose in
death before they were ever uttered.

Mrs. Evans was not long after him. She was aged and worried, and she
moped and brooded until she died. The old clergyman who attended her at
the last, left her at the very last with a dissatisfied and rather
puzzled face. Eleanor she would not see for the last four days.

Well, she died. And it took nearly six months to communicate to Squire
Charles his most sudden and unexpected succession. He came home at the
end of a year, and found Eleanor, his sister, in possession, keeping all
things square for him: receiving rents, bullying attorneys, walking up
and down among the farms, in a dress which was considered remarkable
even in those times, and attending to the wants of the tenants. She had
practically given one of the family livings away, quite illegally,
though the young curate to whom she gave it took possession as a matter
of course. On the other hand, she bad been rather tight with the tenants
on the subject of repairs; and, it is reported, used the word "humbug,"
just then coming into fashion, on more than one occasion. They tell an
idle tale, those Shropshire folks. They say that she and the steward
were standing together on the terrace, when Squire Charles rode up, on
his return from India; that the steward said, "Thank Heaven, he has come
at last!" And that Aunt Eleanor said, "I quite agree. Now you and he
take the estates in hand, for I am sick of it; and a nice mess you will
make of it together, you two."

They did nothing of the kind, however. The property did rather better
under the more liberal rule of Squire Charles than under the near and
close rule of his sister, Eleanor. Women are apt to be very near and
mean in business. They will give as few men will give, but they will
haggle about sixpence, while they are irritating a good tenant. Was not
the Antiquary, as near a man as another, upbraided by his usually
submissive womankind for "raising the price of fish on them"?

Eleanor the beautiful whiffed away from her brother's establishment at
once, leaving him to manage his somewhat irritated tenants, and retired
to her own farm at Pulverbatch. She marched off with her young child
Gray.

The scandal about Charles Evans and Elsie Gray was known to very few
persons, and was now almost forgotten even by those few: scarcely half a
dozen all told. As for the county, they had never heard of it, and even
if they had, would have taken small note of it, for there were plenty of
scandals of the same kind in any one their families. If it had got wind,
the more ill-natured of them would have been pleased at such a fiasco
occurring in such a saint-like family as the Evanses. But then it never
did get wind, and Charles Evans was welcomed to his ancestral halls by
the county generally, with lute, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all
manner of musical instruments. He lied a little, I doubt, at the very
first reception, for on being inquired of by the county, where was his
Eleanor, he replied that she was not well, and having been overpowered
by his sudden return, had gone home to her farm at Pulverbatch: whereas,
the truth was that she was perfectly well, and had told him the day
before that she was not in sufficient temper to meet all these idiots,
and walked off to Pulverbatch, promising to come back to him as soon as
he had got rid of his fools.


Yet they had had a pleasant meeting these two: worth giving perhaps. He
took her in his arms, and she wound her fingers in his hair. And he
said--

"Love all the same, sister?"

And she said: "Not all the same, but more."

"Has anybody been?" said the brother.

"I should like to see them," said the sister. "My dear, I must marry
you. No other arrangement is possible. Get rid of these fools, and find
yourself a good wife, and I will come back and marry the pair of you."

"But who is to marry you?" said the brother.

"You," said the sister.



Chapter 4.

It was a long time before Squire Charles married, but at last, when he
was five-and-thirty, he married a Miss Meredith, a very distant
connection to him by birth, who, as Eleanor said, had been kept by her
parents for him, till, like a brown Beurre pear, she was running a
chance of being mildewed. Eleanor came to the wedding and signalised
herself by utterly routing and defeating a Squire Overley, a most
estimable man, of great wealth even in Shropshire, who was seeking her
hand in marriage. She was very civil to him, but refused to speak of
anything except medical science and the management of nursing
sisterhoods. She beat that estimable young man, and saw that she had
done so. "Heigh ho!" she said, as she got into bed. "One more goose
choked, and another fool married. I'll be back with my pigs to-morrow.
Overley is a good fellow though, and I'll find him a good wife. I wonder
if Charley will let me have that sixty acres that Pilgrim wants to give
up. If he don't I must give up my pigs; for buy meal, I won't." And so
the great Shropshire beauty went to her bed and slept the sleep of the
just.

Charles's marriage was one of the most happy ones which ever took place,
either in Novel-land or Earth-land. Within a year Roland, whom I hope
you will get to like, was born; and Eleanor was asked to be godmother.
She, dating from Pulverbatch, replied that she hated boys, because they
were always wanting their ears boxed. She would undertake this part of a
godmother's business with the greatest pleasure, but as a conscientious
woman she could not, in this case. She had invested, for her, heavily in
old Berkshire pigs, which took up the main of her time, and as a boy's
ears always required to be boxed on the spot to produce the proper
effect, she doubted that she could not be always on the spot to box
them, so she declined, and bred pigs, not even coming to the
christening.

The next year was born Edward, whom I also hope that you will like. Once
more Eleanor was asked to be godmother; once more she refused, but she
came to the great christening party, as she did not to the first one. No
one, not even her own brother, knew if she was coming or not. A splendid
present of plate for the child had arrived from her, but she put in no
appearance until just before the second lesson. Then she swept in,
splendidly dressed in grey silk, and sat down among the poor folks by
the organ.

Old Major Venables said, afterwards, "That woman made a sensation; but
don't you think she meant to do it? I tell you that those Evanses mean
what they say, and do what they mean, and the deuce can't prevent them.
What the deuce Eleanor means, I can't say. But she'll do it."



Chapter 5.

It soon became evident what she meant to do. Although she protested
against any religious responsibility towards Edward, she nevertheless
undertook any amount of physical responsibility. She even determined to
assist at his education, to attend as far as she could to his diet, and
to define and develop his character, which latter part of her programme
she accomplished by allowing him to do exactly as he pleased, and giving
him everything he asked for. Mr. Evans told her that she would spoil the
child. "I want to spoil him," she said. "He wants spoiling. I intend to
gain an influence over him by that means, and use it for good. Our young
one is a very sensitive and affectionate young one, and must be treated
accordingly."

Meanwhile she had fairly done her duty, and her mother's behests towards
young Allan Gray, the soldier's son. She had quietly and
unostentatiously got him well educated at Ludlow, and at his own request
had apprenticed him to a jeweller's in Shrewsbury. She nearly considered
herself quit of him; and his distant connection with the family was
scarcely known by any one except herself, and almost forgotten even by
her.

Among the tastes early developed by Master Edward, under his aunt's
direction, was a liking for jewellery, for bright and glittering things.
One of the greatest pleasures of his life, for some little time, was
riding into Shrewsbury to shop with his aunt. Aunt Eleanor had given him
a watch and chain, and on this chain he had the fancy to hang brelogues;
fish, lizards, crosses, lockets, which you will. And this shop, where
young Gray--Aunt Eleanor's other protégé--was located, supplied things
of this kind, of Palais Royal manufacture, cheap, soon dimmed in rust,
soon cast aside. Young Evans soon got over this fancy of his for
glittering things, though he always retained his passion for gaudry; yet
his continual going into this shop, to get these twopenny Palais Royal
trifles, led to a result with which we have to do. It led to an
acquaintance between him and the youth, Gray, who was deputed to sell
them to him. And the youth Gray was as fond of glittering and gaudy
things as was Childe Evans. And so the youth and the young boy, setting
their heads together, "Ye'll no hinder them," as the Scotch say, from
getting uncommonly fond of one another. Roland always disliked him, as
far as his gentle nature could allow him to dislike any one. But at any
time, when Roland denounced young Gray as a sententious young Methodist,
Edward would plead so well with his deer-like eyes, that he would cause
Roland's objurgations to die away into silence.

Roland and Edward, when old enough, were sent to a school, which I will
call Gloucester, to avoid personality, reserving always for myself, in
case of action for damages, the right of fixing my own dates.

Our young jeweller's master moved from Shrewsbury to Gloucester a short
time before Roland and Edward went into school there together; and so
Edward and Allan Gray were once more brought together. The acquaintance
between Gray and Childe Evans got cemented there, not much to Roland's
pleasure. Edward bought no jewellery now, but got himself taken to
strange places of worship by this imperial-looking young jeweller's
apprentice, who could look at the splendid Roland as though he were an
Oliver (forgive me). Roland did not like it, any more than the Doctor.
The Doctor said that Roland should speak to Edward on the subject.
Roland, though only fourteen to his brother's thirteen, declined.

"It would bring a cloud between Eddy and myself," said the boy, "and I
intend that there shall be no cloud between Eddy and me till we die."

Of course, with a fool of fourteen like this, there was nothing to be
done. The Doctor pitched into Eddy. "It is not unknown to me, sir, that
you have been in the company of an apprentice of this town, not only to
a Dissenting place of worship, but also to the Papist chapel. It is the
greatest scandal which has occurred at this school since its foundation.
I shall write to your father."

"I wouldn't do that, sir," said poor little Eddy; "we were only looking
about for ourselves. And we don't like either the one thing or the
other."

"You like!" said the Doctor. "You like! Here, I'll sort your nonsense
pretty quick. What was last week's memoriter?"

"Non ebur neqne aurem," began the poor boy, "Mea renidet in--"

"Write it out twenty times, sir, and keep school," said the Doctor. "We
will have a finish and an end of all this."

Roland did his brother's task for him, and was furious against the
Doctor. But as Roland's fury against the Doctor will have to keep six
years, by which time it had become changed to love and reverence, I will
say little about it. Merely mentioning the fact that there was a third
member of the Evans family, a pretty little girl, I will leave the Evans
family--for what will be to you a few minutes--and describe another
Shropshire family.



Chapter 6.

Old Mordaunt, of Mordaunt Hall, used to say that his wife always had
twins. When this statement was examined, you found that Mrs. Mordaunt
had but two children--Johnny immediately after her marriage, and Jemmy
twelve months afterwards, yet when the petrified spectator asked,
in undisguised alarm, which was Johnny and which was Jemmy, the
problem used to be solved by saying that Johnny was the fatter. But,
then, neither of them was fat.

One--the elder--was broader, and less symmetrical than the younger one,
James, more commonly called Jimmit. During the holidays, part of which
young Edward Evans spent with his Aunt Eleanor, these two youths were
frequent guests at her house. She pronounced them to be entirely
similar, and utterly devoid of character. In which opinion she was not
wholly right.

The Evanses and the Mordaunts both went to Gloucester together, and, as
neighbours, saw a great deal of one another. Both families also had a
little girl, younger than either of the brothers, with whom, at present,
we have nothing to do--they were in the school-room still; and I have
been turned out of the school-room by the governess at lesson-time too
often to try and enter it again. By the by, are governesses so
dreadfully bullied and ill-treated as it is the custom to represent? For
my part, ever since I was six years' old until now, I have been almost
as afraid of them as I am of a schoolmaster, and have been used to see
them have pretty much their own way; but there are families, and
families, no doubt.

I must quit speculation to give a letter, which was written at the time
when these four lads were at ages ranging from seventeen to nineteen,
and were all going up to matriculate at St. Paul's College--at either
university you like. It came from the headmaster at Gloucester Grammer
School, himself a man from Trinity College, Cambridge, and was addressed
to the senior tutor at St. Paul's-his old friend and contemporary.


"Dear George,--You have asked me more than once to send you a boy or
two, and I have always hesitated because I have always disliked your
college, its ways, and its works. Now, however, that P-- E-- and O-- have
married off altogether on college livings, and have undertaken cures of
souls (their creed seeming to be that gentlemen's sons have no souls,
or, like the French marquis, will be saved by rent-roll); now that you
are first in command practically, I send you, my dear George, not one
boy, but a batch of four. And, take them all in all, they are the finest
batch of boys I have ever turned out.

"Let us speak plainly to one another, for we have never fairly done so.
The reason of our clinging so strenuously to university work was the
disappointment about Miss Evans. Well, we have never spoken of it
before. I only ask you to stick to it a little longer, if it is only to
see this batch of boys through.

"I don't know whether I am justified in sending them to you. You know,
my dear George, that your college has been under the management of your
old master and the three men who have retired to the cure of
agricultural labourers souls very fast, very disreputable, and most
extravagantly expensive. Nothing seems to have done well but the boat,
which, having less than a mile to row, has, by developing a blind,
furious ferocity, kept the head of the river. And in the schools you
have only had a few first-class men, all of your training, with second,
third, and fourth blanks.

"You say that you will mend all, and raise your tone. Of course you
will. If I don't die, like Arnold, over this teaching, I will send you
any number of boys in two years, when your influence has begun to work,
and when the influence of the three pastors so lately sent out from high
table and common room to catch agricultural sheep by the leg with their
crook (Heaven save the mark!) has died out. But at present I am dubious.
However, I have done it. Mind you the issue, as you will have to appear
before God.

"Now, I must tell you about these fellows, and must go through them. In
the aggregate, they are an extremely queer lot. They are extremely rude
and boisterous, as my boys generally are, though perfect gentlemen if
you put them on their mettle. They are absolutely innocent of the ways
of the world, and will, no doubt, get thoroughly laughed out of all that
by your young dandies, whom I, as a Cambridge man, most entirely detest.
To proceed about the aggregate of them, they are all very strong and
very rich. The total of their present income is considerably more than
you and I shall have the spending of when we have worked ourselves to
the gates of death, and they have taken to boat-racing--a thing I hate
and detest from the bottom of my soul, as being one of the most stupid
and most brutalizing of all our sports. I know, however, that you do not
think so. If there was any chance of their losing all their property
together, we might make something of them. As it is, you must back up my
efforts to make something of them. Nothing stands in their way but their
wealth.

"Now, I will begin with them individually, and I begin with Roland
Evans. Do you retain your old Platonic love for perfect physical beauty,
perfect innocence, and high intelligence, and ambition? If so, you had
better not see too much of my Aristides, Antinous Evans. The lad wonders
why I laugh when I look at him. I laugh with sheer honest pleasure at
his beauty. He is like the others, a boy of many prayers, but of few
fears. If he could get his influence felt in your deboshed old college,
he would do as much as you, old friend. But he is so gentle, and so
young, that I fear he will not do much for you at once.

"I pass to the elder Mordaunt. The elder Mordaunt is a wonderfully
strong, bull-headed lad, whose course at school has been perfectly
blameless, fulfilling every possible duty, but declining to show any
specialité except wonderful Latin prose. There is something under the
thick hide of him somewhere, for I have seen it looking at me from
behind that dark-brown eye of his a hundred times. Can you fetch it out?
I have not been able. I have often been inclined to throw the book at
the head of this young man, in return for his quiet contemplative stare;
but I have never done so. I flogged him once, because Sir Jasper
Meredith (a cripple) let off a musical box in chapel, and I thought it
was the elder Mordaunt. It was arranged between the Mordaunts and
Meredith that the elder Mordaunt was to take the thrashing, because
little Sir Jasper was not fit to take it. Sir Jasper Meredith came
crying to me afterwards, and told the whole business. I never had
occasion to flog the elder Mordaunt again. Be careful of this fellow,
George. I don't understand him. You may.

"I come now to the younger Mordaunt. And now I find that I have to tell
a little story. Young Mordaunt was an unimpressionable lad, quite
unnoticed by me, and nearly so by the lower masters, under whose hands
he was passing, who only made their reports on him to me for extreme
violence and fury. I have often had to flog this boy--you say what a
nice employment for an educated gentleman--cela va sans dire; and on one
occasion I held him ready for expulsion. It was the most terrible case
of bullying which had ever happened: four fifth-form boys, just ready
for the sixth, had set on a sixth-form boy, just about to leave us for
the army, and beaten him with single-sticks to that extent that he had
to be taken to the hospital, as it appeared, with his own consent, for
he made no complaint. The younger Mordaunt was one of the beaters, one
of the attacking party, and I was going to expel them all, until the
elder Mordaunt, backed by my brother, the master of the lower third,
explained the circumstances, upon which I did a somewhat different
thing. I held my tongue, and gave the beaten boy a chance for a new
life.

"The elder Mordaunt and the elder Evans, Roland, lately grandfathers of
the school, have always respected and honoured one another. But between
the young Mordaunt and the elder Evans there was for a long time a great
dislike. I have it from a former monitor, now Balliol scholar, that they
actually fought on three occasions. Of course they were no match; the
older Evans easily beat the younger Mordaunt, while the elder Mordaunt,
although an affectionate brother, positively declined to give his
younger brother even the use of his knee during these encounters.

"The reason of the reconciliation between these two was odd. The cause
of these encounters was the persistent bullying of the younger Evans,
who was the fag of the younger Mordaunt. I have always forbidden bathing
before the tenth of May, and have seldom been disobeyed. On one
occasion, however, the younger Mordaunt disobeyed me, and before the
winter's water was run off, determined to bathe in the weir, and having
told his intention to a few, started, taking his fag, little Eddie
Evans, to mind his clothes.

"It came to the ears of Roland Evans and old Mordaunt, who followed
quickly with some other six-form boys, and were happily in time. You, as
an Oxford man, know what lashers are: you knew the Gaisford and
Phillimore monument, set up to warn boys, if they could be warned, of
the deadly suck under the apron.

"Well, the younger Mordaunt stripped and headed into the furious boil.
He was in difficulties directly. Instead of being carried down into the
shallow below, he was taken under, and disappeared. He rose again, and
with infinite courage and coolness, swam into the slack water, and tried
to hold on by the Camp's heading. But it was slippery, and he was
carried again into the race, and turned over and ever.

"When old Evans and old Mordaunt came, angrily, on the scene, all they
saw was young Evans tearing the last of his clothes off. He knew his
brother's voice, and he cried out, 'Shut down the paddles; he has come
up again.' And then, forgetting cruelties which he had suffered, and
insults which he had wept over in secret, he cast his innocent little
body into the foaming dangerous lasher, and had his bitter enemy round
the waist in one moment, trying to keep his head above the drowning rush
of the water. Of course, Roland was in after them in a few seconds.

"Cool old Mordaunt, who should be a general, I think, had, while rapidly
undressing, let down the paddles. The pool was still now, too terribly
still, they tell me. The two elder lads, swimming high and looking for
their brothers, saw neither, until the handsome little head of Eddy
Evans rose from the water, and said, 'I had him here, this instant, and
he will be carried back by the wash.' Roland Evans, a splendid
shoulder-swimmer, was with his brother in a moment, and saw young
Mordaunt drowning on the gravel beneath him, spreading out his fine
limbs, like a Christopher's cross, with each of his ten fingers spread
out, taking leave of the world. Never seen it? Better not; it is ugly; I
have seen it several times, and don't like it. Well, the two Evanses had
him out on the shallow before his brother, a slow breast-swimmer, could
come up, and saved him. That is all my story.

"But it has changed this younger Mordaunt's life in some way. The great
temptation of our English boys is brutality and violence, and this
bathing accident has tamed him. The boy prayed more, as I gained from
his brother, and desired that thanks should be given in chapel for his
preservation, coupled (fancy that! to me) with the condition that the
names of the two Evanses should be mentioned with his. I refused to do
so: Heaven knows why! Whereupon the boy turned on me, and, face to face,
refused to have any thanks given at all. He said he would give his own
thanks.

"He is entirely tamed, if you can keep him en rapport with these two
Evanses. He will follow them anywhere, and do just as they tell him,
whether that be right or wrong. I never liked him, and I still think him
boyish in many ways, though innocent almost to childishness in the way
you wot of. He has brains, more brains than his brother. But he is a
disagreeable boy. He has a nasty way of sitting straight up and
frowning, and there is a petulant preciseness about him which I cannot
bear. Try being civil and kind to him--I have never been. You have more
power in that way as a Don than I have as a schoolmaster.

"Now I come to my last boy, young Evans. I won't say anything at all
about this boy: I leave him to you. If you can stand his pretty ways, I
can't.

"These boys will be a terrible plague to you. They make so much noise:
don't stop them in that if you can help it. My best boys are noisy and
outspoken. Coming from me, you need not doubt their scholarship: keep it
up. They are, to conclude, an innocent lot of lads, dreadfully rich, and
have taken up, I fear, with this most abominable boat-racing, which,
however, is not so bad as steeple-chasing.

"Now good-bye. I have sent you a team fit for Balliol in scholarship,
for Christchurch in breeding, and, I very much fear, for Brazenose in
boating. Why Providence should have placed so many of our public schools
near great rivers, where the stock gets steadily brutalised by that
insane amusement, I cannot conceive. Old religious foundations, you say,
always near rivers, then highways, and in the neighbourhood of fish for
fast days. Fiddle-de-dee! It all arises from the perversation
(misrepresentation) of the edicts of the first original council, in the
year 1, when it was agreed that everything was to be where it was
wanted. The only dissentient, you well remember, was the devil, who
moved, as an amendment, that there should be full liberty of conscience,
that every one should say the first thing which came into his head, and
everybody was to do as he pleased. The great first council rejected, if
you remember, this amendment with scorn; but we are acting on it now.
Let us take the benefit of the new opinions. Come over and talk
Swivellerism to me, and I will back myself to talk as much balderdash as
you. But don't talk any of it to my boys. I insult you, my dear George,
by the supposition.

"P.S.--A tall, handsome-looking young booby, from Eton, comes with them
from Shropshire. His father, calling here with the fathers of the other
boys, asked me to say a good word to you on his behalf. I would if I
could, but I don't know anything at all about him, except that he is to
be married to Miss Evans, by a family arrangement, before he is capable
of knowing his own mind. He has been brought up with the Evanses and the
Mordaunts, and therefore cannot be very bad. But you know my opinion of
Eton, and indeed of all public schools, except my own."



Chapter 7.

Furnished with this important epistle, the Dean of St. Paul's (college)
felt a natural curiosity to see the young men who had attracted so much
of the attention of undoubtedly the very best of the day, since the dies
infaustus when Arnold's old pupil came down to breakfast with fresh
questions, and heard that the master had called for his master, and that
he had arisen and followed him speedily.

The Dean was a dry man, and a man of humour. St. Paul's was, in those
times, a queer, wild place; it was partly "manned" by county gentlemen's
and county parsons' sons, from the counties of Gloucester, Worcester,
Shropshire, and partly from two grammar schools in Lancashire and the
West Riding of Yorkshire. The two sets of lads never spoke to one
another. The former set were always perfect gentlemen in their manners,
though not always in their morals: the latter were mainly gentlemen in
their morals, but never in their manners. It was vinegar upon nitre with
them, and the dry, shrewd, caustic Dean looked with great anticipation
of amusement for the curious "team" which the headmaster of Gloucester
had sent him up.

He had undertaken the Latin prose lecture of that somewhat scholarless
college, and had repeatedly said that it would bring him to an untimely
grave, but after a fellow-commoner translating "The Art of Mingling in
Society" in English of Addison, into Latin of his own, the Dean had
dropped the Latin prose lecture, and had taken to the Greek. "You are
safer in Greek," he said. "I am not good in Greek, and so I may live the
longer. But I couldn't stand the Latin any more."

So it was in the Greek prose lecture that the Dean expected his young
friends, with great curiosity. They were the first who came, very early,
and they came sidling and whispering into the room one after another,
and sat down in a row, each one saying as he went by, "Good morning,
sir," while the Dean stood and looked at them. Can one not see him now,
with his broad shoulders, and his keen eyes looking out from under his
wig?

They sat down in the chair opposite to him, and he had a good look at
them. The first who came in was Roland Evans, evidently leader among
them, a splendid upstanding young fellow, with short curling hair, who
carried his head like a stag. "A fine face and a good head," thought the
Dean. "I wonder what is inside it?" Next to him came his brother--a
small, slight, bright-looking lad, rather too pretty to please the
Dean's taste, but pleasant to see, with a wistful look in his clear
brown eyes, which the Dean did not disapprove of. Next came the elder of
the two Mordaunts, gigantic, somewhat stolid in appearance, looking as
the Dean thought with Falstaff, "land and beeves." Then came the younger
Mordaunt, gigantic also, and rather cross-looking, but with a good
square head; as he passed on, he gave one look at the Dean, and let him
know unmistakably that he considered him in the light of his natural
enemy. Last of all came the "booby" who was to marry Miss Evans, and
when the Dean looked on him, he thought at once: "The rest are a
puzzling lot, but there is no doubt about you; you carry your
turnpike-ticket in your hat; you are a good fellow, and so I think is
that Roland Evans."

But he was puzzlingly amused by them on one account: four out of the
five seemed strangely cast in the same mould. Here were two pairs of
brothers, and a fifth young man, and they were all cast in the same
mould, with the exception of the younger Evans, who seemed poetical. Had
this batch of lads come under his notice with any other recommendation
than that of the shrewd Doctor, he would have set them down for four
young louts of the landholding persuasion from the western counties, and
have thought no more about them; but his friend had sent them to him as
four of his picked boys, and Balliol would have opened her gates to
them; yet there they sat in a row before him, silent and apparently
stupid, occasionally sneaking their eyes up at his, as though to see
what he was like, but dropping them again directly. "Is there character
here?" the Dean asked himself. "K. should know; he said they were
boisterous and troublesome. They are quiet enough now."

The odd contrast between the apparently stupid insouciance of the
Englishman at one time, and his violent fury at another, seemed to be
hardly known to the Dean as yet: he got an illustration of it.

The other men, to the number of some thirty, dropped in, and the lecture
proceeded. Anything more saint-like than the behaviour of the Shropshire
five was never seen. The lecture consisted in turning "Spectator" into
Greek prose, and after half an hour, every one being ready, the Dean
called on Roland Evans, who stood up, and on being told that he might
sit down, was very much confused. He read out his few sentences of Greek
prose, and the Dean leant back in his chair.

"That is really splendid, Mr. Evans. I could not write such Greek
myself. Read it again, please, and listen to it, you others." Roland did
so.

"Do you all write Greek like this at Gloucester? This is refreshing.
Good Heavens! when I think of the trash my ears are dinned with. Here,
Mr. Mordaunt the elder, read your piece next: let me see if it runs in
families, or is common to the school."

Old Mordaunt--sitting, as we used to say at school, one place below
young Evans--did so, and his piece was very good.

"Now, young Mr. Evans, read yours."

It appeared that these youths were under the impression that they could
take places. They had come in and sat down in their old Gloucester class
form. Young Eddy Evans had in his piece a passage of Addison's or
Steele's in which occur the words, "pray do not deceive yourself on this
matter." Young Evans gave it "meplanasthe." Whereupon both the Mordaunts
rose to their feet, and cried with one voice, "I challenge."

Before the astonished Dean could say one word, the two brothers were at
it tooth and nail.

"I challenged first," said old Mordaunt.

"You did nothing of the kind," said the younger. "You read the fourth
chapter of Acts, and see what happened to Ananias and Sapphira."

"That's a pretty thing to say to your own brother," said old Mordaunt.

"Not a worse thing than trying to cut your own brother out of a place.
Why do you challenge?" said the younger brother.

"Because it's Greek Testament, and wrong in person," said the elder,
scornfully.

"Testament Greek is good enough--better than you could write. I
challenge on other grounds. Ask him, sir, what letter he puts before the
sigma."

The younger Evans, confused and directed by his evil genius, said
hurriedly, "Epsilon." The younger Mordaunt at once sank back in his
chair with the air of a man who had done a happy thing, and, addressing
the Dean, said--

"This, sir, is a specimen of the scholarship of the Doctor's house-boys.
If a commons-house boy had made such a mess, he would have been cobbed
by the school."

At which dreadful words wrath and fury were depicted on the faces of the
two Evanses, and of Maynard, who was engaged to their sister. Young
Evans rose, perfectly calm, and, addressing the Dean as "Dominus," said
that as the rules of English society prevented one boy from personally
asking any explanation from any other boy in class, and indeed, in any
place but the playground, whether he, the Dominus, would be so good as
to demand, in his character as Dominus, of Mordaunt minor, when he was
caned last, and what it was for. Whereupon Maynard, who had taken no
part as yet, cried out, "Go it, young Evans!"

"It was your brother who pressed the spring and set it going," said old
Mordaunt.

"It was nothing of the kind; and no one knows it better than yourself,"
said Roland Evans. "I never touched it; what did he want with it at
chapel?"

"I suppose he could take his musical snuff-box into chapel," said old
Mordaunt, now, after the preliminary skirmish, in close alliance with
his brother. "I suppose he had as good a right to bring his musical box
in as you had to bring in your Buttmann's Lexilogus."

"Well, you need not turn up old things like that," said Roland Evans.

"Then you leave my brother alone, and I'll leave you alone. As for you,
young Evans, you ought to have the Lexilogus banged about your stupid
young head, and you would have had three months ago."

The Dean had by this time partly recovered from the stupor into which he
had been plunged by this unexpected and violent storm. He found breath
enough to say, "Gentlemen, I must really request, and of necessity
insist, that this unseemly objurgation ceases at once." After a few
growls and sniffs the lecture proceeded. The Gloucester boys' Greek was
all nearly first-class, and then the Dean waded away into a slough of
miserable stuff, which was furnished to him three times a week by the
other men of his college.

A deaf fellow-commoner was blundering along through his piece, and the
Dean thought that everything was going right, when the younger Mordaunt,
who had been frowning and bristling for some time, finding his
recollected wrongs too great to be kept in any longer, suddenly broke
into articulate speech. To the unutterable terror and confusion of the
whole lecture, he said, in a loud voice:

"Those two Evanses double-banked young Perkins in the play-ground one
Saturday afternoon, when the fellows were bathing, and took his money
from him. And they took nineteen-pence-halfpenny, and all he ever got
back was a shilling and a sixpence, and the shilling was bad."

"It was the same shilling we took from him," cried Roland, "and your
fellows have double-banked ours a hundred times."

"What became of the three halfpence then?" said old Mordaunt.

"They spent it in Banbury tarts," said young Mordaunt.

"There were no coppers at all," said young Evans. "And you can't get one
Banbury tart under twopence. Now then, what do you think of that?"

The Dean again recovered himself.

"In the whole course of my experience I never saw anything like this,"
he said. "I insist on perfect silence. You five men will remain after
lecture. I insist on silence. Mr. Jones, go on."

"Now we shall all get lines, and liberty stopped," said young Mordaunt,
aloud, "and it was that young Evans began it."

"It was not," said young Evans, emphatically.

"Will you hold your tongue, sir," said the Dean, in a voice which they
knew they must listen to. And so the lecture went on and was finished.
When it was done, the five remained, and young Mordaunt whispered to old
Evans, "He won't flog the lot."

The Dean began on them: "Gentlemen, your Greek is excellent, but your
conduct has not been good. My friend warned me that you were boisterous.
I have no great objection to juvenile spirits--in fact, I like them; but
I must most emphatically insist that you will not quarrel in my lecture.
You no longer take rank as schoolboys: we give young men of your age
brevet rank as men. I must request that this does not happen again."

Old Mordaunt shoved young Mordaunt, who shoved young Evans, who shoved
Maynard, who shoved Roland Evans, by which he understood that he was to
be spokesman. His speech was so odd, so very simple, so very provincial,
so full of the argot of a provincial school, that the Dean scarcely
understood it. He said:

"Sir, we are very sorry to have offended you; for myself, I have always
been dead against barneying in class, for the mere purpose of spinning
out the pensum. I have also tried most consistently to make friends
between doctor's boys and common-house boys, principally, I will allow,
for the sake of the boats. But these jealousies do exist, sir, even
among friends, as we are: I am sure all true friends. But these
jealousies have existed for a long time, and are not likely to cease. I
will take it on myself to say, sir, that they shall be stopped in class;
and not carried into play-ground, and that we would rather, having begun
so unluckily, be punished by task instead of by stoppage of liberty."

The Dean impatiently paced the room, and scratched his wig. "What the
deuce," he said to himself, "am I to do with such boys as these? An Eton
or Harrow boy would know more of things at fourteen. Why does K. keep
his boys back like this? they are as innocent as children. I never saw
such a thing in my life; they fancy they are to be punished. Hang it
all, let me see how green they are. Mr. Evans, how old are you?"

"Nineteen, sir."

"You have behaved very badly. Suppose I was to cane one of you."

"We understood, sir," said Roland, "that we could not be caned after we
came here. If, however, you decide on that course, the only one you
could cane would be my brother. No boy is ever caned over eighteen, and
my brother is only seventeen."

"And it would be no use caning him!" exclaimed the irrepressible young
Mordaunt; "he has been caned a dozen times for laughing in chapel. And
last half I tried him to see whether he had got over it. I showed him a
halfpenny in Litany, and he went off, and was taken out, and caned."

"I would gladly, sir," said Roland, "take my brother's punishment on
myself; but being over eighteen, I cannot, and should, in fact, resist;
it would be almost cowardly, sir, to put the fault of all of us on my
brother."

"Do go to Bath, and keep me from Bedlam!" exclaimed the irritated Dean.

And they fled off, and apparently had a free fight on the stairs; for as
the Dean put it, sixteen out of the five seemed to tumble down instead
of walking down.

"This is K. all over," he said to himself, when they were gone; "this is
his system; sending his boys up here babies instead of men. I wish he
had sent them to Balliol,--I wish he had sent them to Jericho. I have no
stand-point with them. I can't get at them. They are a noble lot; but
they are five years too young. And this hotbed of sin! Come in!"



Chapter 8.

There seemed some difficulty about the person who knocked at the door
coming in, as indeed there was. There was a curious pegging sound, then
a gentle turning at the door-handle, and then a heavy fall. The Dean
dashed out, and found a little cripple lying on his back on the landing,
laughing.

"I shall do it once too often," said the cripple. "My servant puts me
into bed, but I direct my energies to tumbling out of it. I live in the
gate which is called Beautiful, and am happy there but St. John and St.
Paul are in Heaven, and have never said to me, 'What we have, we give
thee.' Will you help up a poor little cripple, and set him on his legs,
and give him his crutch, Dean? Be St. John to me, Dean?

"Sir Jasper Meredith!" exclaimed the Dean.

"I thought I should creep so nicely up, and I came one stair a time. And
I made fair weather of it until I tried to turn the handle, and then I
lost my balance, and fell on my back."

The Dean had never seen anything like this. He was a man of the
cloister, and had heard of human ills, and of baronets with 14,000
acres, and of cripples also. But to find a feeble cripple, with 14,000
acres, flat on his back before his own door, on the landing, was a
sensation for the good Dean. "And he is from Shropshire also," he
considered. "Shropshire will do for us in time."

He picked the little cripple up very carefully, and brought him in.
"What can I do for you, Meredith?" he said, gently.

"Give me leave to get my breath, my dear sir," began the little man.
"Thank ye. Oh! that's better. I can't get on anyhow. The doctors say
that it is my spine, and I say it's my legs, and I expect that I know as
much about it as they do. My legs have separate individualities; in
fact, I have named them differently--Libs and Auster--and they always
want to go in different directions, which brings me to grief--don't you
see? I suppose you have never noticed the same thing with regard to your
legs, for instance, have you?"

"No," said the Dean, glancing complacently at his well-formed legs. "I
never experienced anything of that kind--lately."

"No," said Meredith; "your legs do look like a pair. Now mine, you will
perceive, if you will do me the goodness to look at them, most
distinctly are not."

"You are certainly afflicted," said the kind Dean, "and I am sorry for
it."

"We will speak of that on some future occasion," said the little man. "I
am not at all sure that I am. Being afflicted in this manner, do you
see, brings you so many kind friends, and such sympathy, that I am not
sure that I would change it even to be Roland Evans. Well, that is not
what I came to speak about. I came on a matter of business, and I am
taking up your valuable time in talking of myself. Cripples will talk
about themselves, you know."

"My time is yours, Meredith," said the Dean, pleased by the kindly
little ways of the cripple.

"Now that is very kind of you. May I take a liberty? I have been a
petted boy, and am used to take liberties. May I hav one little sprig of
that Wustaria which is hanging your window with imperial purple? I half
live in flowers, Dean. They are the purest forms of mere physical beauty
which can be brought to me, and I cannot travel in search of beauty, you
know."

The Dean got him one at once, saying, "There is one form of physical
beauty which comes to you very often, I fancy--Roland Evans."

"Yes," said Meredith; "I believe that he is very beautiful. But I, for my
part, having known him so long, have lost the power of seeing that. If
he were a cripple, or a leper, it would make no difference to me."

"You like him, then?" said the Dean.

Meredith laughed quietly, and very absently, looking at the carpet.

"The brain is always affected in these spine diseases," said the Dean to
himself. "The poor little fellow is wool-gathering."

Then he added, emphatically, "We were speaking of Roland Evans, Sir
Jasper Meredith. You like him, do you not?"

In an instant one of the keenest, shrewdest faces he had ever seen was
turned up to his, and he stood astounded.

"Like him!" said the cripple. "Yes, I like him very much indeed. You
know that you yourself would like a noble young man like that (supposing
that you were a cripple, which you are not) who left habitually his own
amusements, in which he excelled, to attend to you; who could put you in
the best place to see his innings at cricket, and come running to you
after a race to tell you about it. You would like such a man as that,
would you not?"

The Dean, interested, said "Yes!"

"Ah! So I like him. And in a similar way, I like his sister, who is
Viola to Sebastian. And I like the whole lot of them--the two Mordaunts,
Maynard, and Eddy Evans. They are all good. I came here on a point with
regard to them. I am afraid they have been behaving very badly?"

"They have been quarrelling so dreadfully," said the Dean.

"They always do in class," said Meredith. "It is an old Gloucester dodge
for spinning out the work, if one of the set has not got up enough
lines."

"If that is the case," said the Dean, angrily, "I must request you to
tell your friends that I will not suffer it again."

"It will not happen again," said Meredith. "They thought--I declare they
did--that you would set them impositions. They are on their honour now."

"They are an extraordinary lot of greenhorns."

"They are," said Meredith, "with the exception of shrewd old Mordaunt. I
suppose you know that none of them have ever been to London?"

"I know nothing about them," said the Dean, "except that K. sent them
here. I never saw such an extraordinary lot of fellows in my life. But
you must tell them that I will not stand disturbances in lecture-time.
You said that you came here to speak to me about them."

"True," said Meredith. "I ought to have had notice to quit before. I
will do my business. The butler tells me that, as a fellow-commoner, I
must sit at the high table with you. Do relax your rule, and let me sit
at the Freshman's table, with the Evanses and the Mordaunts. They help
me in a hundred ways. Do let a poor cripple have his dinner among his
kind at the Freshman's table."

"Your request is granted, certainly," said the Dean, laughing. "But you
must tell your friends not to be so turbulent. We were told last night
that the younger Mordaunt and the younger Evans fought for a plate of
meat, which both claimed, and were fined by the senior man at the
table."

"My groom told me this morning," said Meredith, quietly, "that the Bible
clerk had sneaked. Young Evans certainly ordered the chicken, but then
young Mordaunt, as senior boy, considered that he had a right to change
dinners, not liking his mutton when he saw it. I am sorry that they
fought over it, but boys will fight over their victuals, you know. I
daresay you have done it yourself."

There rose suddenly on the mind of the Dean the ghost of a certain Bath
bun which he had struggled for at a certain lodge at a certain school
nearly twenty years before, and which had ended in a great fight in the
playground with a certain great general, who was just now engaged in the
reduction of Sebastopol. The Dean had the best of it, as did not the
general.

"But," said he, "they behave like schoolboys. They are ranked as men
here."

"They were schoolboys yesterday, and are schoolboys still," said
Meredith. "It rests with you to make them men. What sort of men you are
going to make of them is more in your line of business than mine. Lord
help you through it! for they are a rough lot. It rests with you to take
up Dr. K.'s work where he left off. He has sent them here in trust to
you."



Chapter 9.

Pulverbatch, one would think, was (at least in the old coaching days) as
far, intellectually speaking, from anywhere, as any place could be. It
was even out of the then road from Shrewsbury to Ludlow--one would have
thought a very quiet road--and was intensely sleepy.

The Grange, Miss Eleanor Evans' inalienable property, was a heavy old
Grange, with an actual moat, in which Miss Eleanor lived as a Mariana,
though with a difference. There were eight hundred acres of fat meadow
and corn-land around it, washed down from Caradoc, Lawley, and Longmynd;
every acre of which this strenuous lady held in her own hands.

When she took possession of it, after the lapse of a bad tenant's lease,
and announced her intention of farming it, her brother gave her a little
good advice.

"It is worth two pounds an acre, Nell, now that the Dower Farm has
fallen in, even after Dell has scourged it so. 1600l. a year--I'll find
you a good tenant."

"Thank you," she said, "but I am going to find a good tenant in myself."

"You will make a mess of it."

"Why?"

"Because you can't farm."

"Fiddle-de-dee," said Eleanor, "I have been bored to death with it all
my life; I ought to know something about it by this time. And, besides
women are much sharper than men. Any one can farm; don't tell me. I will
take my four thousand a year off that land, or I will know the reason
why."

"My dear Eleanor," said her brother, "I know you to be shrewd and
determined; I will allow that you have quite sufficient intellect to
manage the property."

"That is to say, as much intellect as Dell, who has 780 acres of yours.
Thank you, for I am very much obliged to you for comparing me with a
tipsy, muddled, uneducated old man like him. Go on," said Eleanor.

"You are angry, my dear," said her brother, "but you must remember that
farming is a second nature to him."

"What was his first?" she asked.

This was one of those pieces of pure nonsense which scatter men's
nonsense. Squire Charles picked himself up as well as he could, and said
somewhat heavily--

"Supposing that you could actually get this farm in order, and get
money's worth off it, you would be beaten at marketing."

"Why?" said Eleanor.

"Because, not being able to go to market yourself, you would have to
send your bailiff, who would cheat you."

"But I am not going to have any bailiff. And I am going to market my own
self."

"The farmers will be too much for you," said Charles.

"Will they?" she said; "they must have had a sudden accession of brains
then."

"Do you mean to tell me, Eleanor, that you are actually going into
Shrewsbury market with samples of oats?"

"Certainly."

"It will be thought very odd, and some will say improper."

"I know nothing about your last epithet. With regard to oddity, now look
round among the county families around us, and say whether or no there
is not a queer story among every one of them. There is an odd story in
our own family, Charles."

"You mean about me."

"I mean about you. But I want to finish about this farming business. I
am going to do it. I pay rent to myself; I have quite as much knowledge
of farming as Dell, and ten times his intellect; why should I not do
well?"

"You will be beaten in market," said Charles.

"You will see about that," said Eleanor.

She certainly was right, for she "gave her mind to it," and became one
of the best farmers and keenest marketers about. Her scourged land
recovered, as if by magic. She had good years and bad years, but she
made money and a good deal of it; as a diligent and clever person, with
no rent to pay, and over seven hundred acres of fine land, may do. As
time went on her brother saw that he was wrong, and he told her so; and
added, "And you seem to be very happy, Eleanor."

"I am as happy as the day is long," she said. "I have no time to be
otherwise. I am interested and amused all day long, in all weathers, and
I have perfect health, and no cares. Women are frequently very great
fools to marry."

"Yet it would be well to have another to care and work for," said
Charles.

"I have got Eddy; he is my son, and I know he will be extravagant, and
bring my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. I have spoilt him," she
added, laughing, "therefore I must work to meet his extravagance. As I
have brewed, so must I bake; I have made my bed and I must lie on it, as
regards him. I gave him a new watch last week."

"So I saw. I hope he did not ask for it?"

"Oh, no; he never asks for anything, only he looks so pretty when he is
pleased, and he likes bright and glittering things. I must work and save
for him."

"You will not save much with those new cottages," said her brother; "you
ought never to lay one brick on another till you see your way to a clear
7 per cent., exclusive of bad debts; and you will never see three
there."

"Say two and a half," said Eleanor; "but it pays me indirectly on my own
estate. I have my labourers on my own ground, close to their work. What
would you say of the wisdom of a slave-owner who made her niggers walk
three miles to the cotton grounds?"

You will raise the rates."

"I don't care. Oh! by the by, your head keeper has been asking me
whether he may rear some pheasants in my large spinney, and I have told
him that I should like to catch him at it. Your partridges I will
protect for you, but I won't have pheasants, rabbits, or hares; you have
plenty of ground of your own without bothering me."

Squire Charles laughed, and left her admiringly.

So she went on, busy, happy, quiet, contented, until I regret that it
becomes necessary to pick her up at the age of forty-four years, just at
the time when that extraordinary set of boys, which I have previously
described, had begun their most eccentric career at St. Paul's College.

The Grange at Pulverbatch was like so many Shropshire houses, a place
worthy a long summer-day's visit. It was a low stone house, shrouded in
and darkened by great dense groves of elms. Sooner than touch one bough
of which, Eleanor would have sold her watch; though she had very much
spoilt the scenery of the valley, by slashing into her hedge-row timber
elsewhere most unmercifully, and cutting down her hedges to the
famishing point. I am not antiquarian enough to say who built it or why
it was built, but Eleanor had chosen to get it into her head that it was
built by a small country gentleman, at the time, as she put it, "when
the greatest of all Englishmen for all time, Oliver Cromwell, ruled the
land, and had one Milton for his Poet Laureate." A mild antiquarian, on
one occasion, by way of making himself agreeable, told her in a mild
voice that her house was formerly a religious house, a cell of the
larger house of St. Lawrence at Stretton.

"It was nothing of the kind, sir," she answered, indignantly.

"I think you will find that I am right," said the mild man.

"I don't believe a word of it," said Eleanor. And the mild antiquarian
said no more.

"It was moated around on all sides, for defence," she said;
"Carp-ponds," said the antiquarian; and this moat was part of her belief
in the place.

There were carp in this moat, and although she was shrewd enough to
prefer the splendid trout which came out of the stream running through
her estate for her own eating, yet on state occasions she always, as a
great treat, gave her guests these abominable masses of dry bones out of
the moat. They were to her as a haggis or a sheep's head is to a
Scotchman. She used to send them to her neighbours, as rare compliments
and presents. Well, she had few prejudices, and those were very
innocent.

We shall see more of her kind, innocent, wise life as we go on: a little
more about her house, and herself, and she will be sufficiently fully
introduced.

I should think, from what I have observed, that almost the first
ambition of every clever woman was to have a room of her own, a place
where she was mistress, and could do as she pleased (surely some clever
woman has said this before, though I cannot recollect where, but it is
true). I have seen such rooms; I know at least two; and I guess that in
these maiden bowers, women, whether poor or rich, symbolise their own
souls, or the phases of them. I know a bower, hung with crude
oil-sketches and photographs of great pictures; again, I know another,
full of saints, angels, and crucifixes. I suppose that every woman would
have such a nest--alas! how few are able. Eleanor, however, had her
nest, which most decidedly symbolised her pursuits.

Eleanor's nest was what her brother called "the dining-room," but what
she would insist on calling, out of contradiction mainly, I think, "the
best parlour." It was a dark wainscoted room, with a large stone-jammed
bay-window at the end furthest from the door, in front of which her
great library table, with innumerable drawers, was placed, and by which
the only available light was let into this wonderfully uncomfortable
room. At this table she could look over her beloved moat, and write her
letters. Here she received her men, and her poor folks; and here she sat
one afternoon, soon after the boys had gone to St. Paul's, reading her
letters and answering them.

She was in her usual riding habit, and had been on foot or on horseback
since six o'clock in the morning. As the light from the only window fell
upon her face, you could see that, although her complexion might have
suffered (or been improved) by wind, weather, and hard work, there was
no doubt that she was still a singularly beautiful woman.

She had had all kinds of letters by that post, and she had read them,
and laid them aside for answer. Mr. Sutton, of Reading, informed Miss
Evans that he did not approve of such a large admixture of triticum in
the grass-seed intended for soil washed from lime-stone hills, but had
executed the order under Miss Evans's direction, and begged to inform
her that the "Student" parsnip, from Cirencester, was well worth a
trial. Barr and Sugden informed her that they would, if possible,
execute her small order for 5,000 snowdrops, but that a regular customer
had come down on them for 14,000, and they were at present uncertain. A
neighbouring miller wrote to say that if she would thrash out at once,
he would chance the four big ricks at 54 (to which she said, "I
daresay"); under all of which there was a letter from her lawyer,
telling her that the dispute about the old arrears, hanging on since
Dell's time, was settled against her; and several begging-letters.

These were put aside for answering: they caused her no thought. It was
the two she had just read which made her sit with her handsome head in
the light, and really think. Let us look over her shoulder. The first
was from young Allan Gray, the young man who was the son of the soldier
Gray, and who, by natural laws, was nephew of Charles and Eleanor Evans,
and cousin to Roland and Edward.

It ran thus:--

"MY DEAR MADAM,--I enclose you Mr. Secretary's Cowell's receipt for the
very noble donation to our poor little work. I know that the pleasure
you had in giving it is even higher than is ours in receiving it; I am
requested to thank you for it, madam, and I thank you accordingly. Mr.
Taunton, one of our best helpers, offered prayer for you to-night,
madam, in the general prayer and by name. This I know will be gratifying
to you."

("Well, and so it is," said Eleanor. "I am sure we all want it.'')

"I wish, madam, that you could come and pay us a visit here, say when
you come to the Cattle Show, at Christmas. I wish that such a shrewd and
yet kind heart as yours could see what actual good we are doing among
the misery and guilt around us.

"With deep reverence and gratitude, I remain, dear madam, your devoted
servant,

"ALLAN GRAY."


"Yes," said Eleanor, "you are a good boy, and a shrewd boy, and a
grateful boy; but I doubt I can't like you. You would be glad to be rid
of your obligations to me to-morrow. I ought to like you, but I can't."

She was a shrewd, hard woman, this Eleanor Evans; not given to show
sentiment, yet when she opened the next letter she kissed it, and said,
"My darling, now we will have you, after this Methodistical young prig.
All the flowers in May are not so sweet as you, but you might write
better, you know." The letter was from Eddy, and she read it with
concentrated attention, weighing every word, this sensible and keen
lady, going over the sentences three or four times to extract their
meaning (of which there was but little). Don't laugh at her; a love as
keen and pure as hers is not ridiculous. Perhaps Gray's letter was more
sensible, but this boy's nonsense was infinitely dearer to her.


"DEAR AUNT NELL,--You know that in one of our delightful, confidential
talks the other day, you, in laying down our mutual plans for the
future, said that one day I must get a good wife, and come and live with
you. You hinted that you would, in the case of such an event, make over
the main part of your personal property to me; only reserving to
yourself one single room. You remember the alacrity with which I fell
into the arrangement, and the extreme anxiety I have always shown to
carry out your wishes. Consequently, I have kept my weather-eye open for
above a fortnight, and after long and painful consideration, I am able
to declare myself suited for life.

"To a well-balanced mind, such as I believe mine to be (it is your
look-out if it is not), wealth, position, nay, even beauty itself, weigh
as nothing in the balance in a choice of this kind, in comparison with
solidity of character. Gain that and you gain everything. I have gained
it.

"Of course I should not think of moving definitely in such an important
matter as this without consulting you, my more than mother, to whom I
owe so much. By-the-bye, this last remark reminds me that I may as well
owe you a little more, while we are at it. Roland has boned all my money
because young Mordaunt and I gave half-a-sovereign a-piece to a young
man we found on the Trumpington road, with scarcely shoes to his feet,
just come out of Reading Hospital. So do send me some; make it a tenner,
if you can; as much more as you like. I am sure that you must have
thrashed out the three ricks by now, and must be in cash. Don't you hold
your corn back in the way you do, raising the market on the poor. You
thrash out, and send me a ten-pound note, and I'll bring you a present,
if there is any of it left.

"I suppose this will be the first intimation you will have had of our
splendid success. Roland has done such a thing which is simply
unequalled in history. To be continued in our next, provided you send
the money.

"Yours lovingly,

"EDWARD EVANS.

"P.S.--I bought a squirrel of a cad in the meadow, who said it was tame.
On calling it to our rooms, it bit me to the bone, and ran up the
chimney. This is a wicked and ungrateful world. I doubt I am already
night weary of it."


Aunt Eleanor put this letter aside, and answered young Gray's first.


"MY DEAR MR. GRAY,--I must beg that in any future communications to me,
you will omit mentioning any obligations which you conceive you still
owe to me. Such obligations certainly existed at one time, but they
exist no longer. I therefore request, sir, that they may be no longer
mentioned between us.

"At my mother's desire, I did all I possibly could for you. You on your
part have repaid me a thousand-fold, by turning out so well, and by
leading such a blameless, godly, and, I hope, prosperous life as you are
leading. What I did for you was from a sense of duty, and not on any
sentimental grounds, for you and I never liked one another, which you
know as well as I do, if you choose--(last three words erased).
Consequently, my dear sir, now you have risen to your present honourable
position, I must tell you that these continual protestations of
gratitude towards a woman you always disliked are not good ton.

"It seems strange that two people so utterly separated as we are by
every thought and every feeling should be engaged in the same work, that
of ameliorating the condition of the poor. But it is so. If you wish to
put me under obligations, you will show me how I can further assist you
in your very noble work, and further how I can, in ease of your
requiring pecuniary help yourself, assist you. I can admire you without
liking you; and I am told by Mr. Cowell, whom I knew before you did,
that you are decreasing your own income by these good works.

"ELEANOR EVANS."


When Allan Gray got this letter, he rose with set lips and walked up and
down the room. "A bitter, bitter, hard, cruel woman," he said; "an
insult in every tone of it. Well, if she can be bitter, I can be bitter
too;" and so he sat down and wrote:--

"MADAM,--I very much regret that a few expressions of personal
gratitude, which since your last letter are no longer felt, should have
caused you such very deep annoyance. The cause being removed the effect
will not reappear.

"With regard to my personal pecuniary matters, madam, they are in good
order. With regard to the Refuge, send as much money to us as you
possibly can. 'Sell all that thou hast,' if you like. With regard to our
personal relations, madam, I can only say, as a man who never told a
lie, that I respect and reverence you deeply.

"ALLAN GRAY."


"The fellow has got go, though," said Eleanor: "but a brimstone temper;
well, we are rid of him for a time. I will send them some money, and go
and see them."

Now we come to the answer to Eddy's letter, and the reply to that. A
bitter, hard woman, was she, Master Gray? Bitter to you: bitter to one
who showed her every day and all day that he disliked his obligations to
her, but not a bitter woman, though shrewd of tongue, towards the world.
Was she strong? certainly; as strong a woman as most. Was she weak? she
was weaker than water to some few; to a very few. She could fight and
beat her brother easily, and he was an "upstanding" man. Young Gray she
could beat as the dust under her feet; yet he was as self-contained and
as mentally powerful a young man as most; you will see that for
yourselves. Yet where she loved she was utterly powerless. And among
others, she loved Eddy: nay, she loved him the dearest of them all.

Her brother went about with her on the subject of spoiling Eddy. He
pointed out to her that her power over him was great, that her
responsibilities with regard to him were great, amid that she should not
let him have his own way.

"I can't help it," she said.

"You, so strong-minded and energetic," said her brother, "allow yourself
to be made a perfect fool of by that boy!"

"I tell you I can't help it," said Eleanor, somewhat emphatically.

"You should. You will spoil him," said her brother.

"I never spoilt you, at all events," flashed out Eleanor. And Squire
Charles, with certain schoolroom reminiscences in his mind, was obliged
to admit that she certainly never had.

Now, with the almost cruel, almost vulgar tone of the answer to young
Gray fresh in one's mind, let us turn to her answer to that bright
little nephew of hers, Eddy Evans, and see whether or no there were not
two sides to this woman:--

"DEAREST EDDY,--Your letter gives me the deepest interest. I
congratulate you sincerely, my dear, in having found a partner for life.
I go this afternoon to take the joyful intelligence to your father and
mother, who will, no doubt, be made as happy as I am. Pray give my
dearest love to your dear one, and say that I shall be happy to receive
her on a visit as soon as she chooses, and to present her to her new
father and mother-in-law.

"I think it of all things important that a person of a character so
frivolous and empty as yours, should early become imbued with a sense of
responsibility, and on those grounds I am delighted that you have taken
this important step.

"I have not thrashed-out yet; the steamer comes to-morrow; but I have
found an odd ten pounds. Do get out of that foolish habit of giving your
money away like a baby. You will probably hear from your father the day
after to-morrow on the subject of your grand alliance.

"Write to me, and tell me what Roland has done, what 'your great success'
is, and what share you had in it. I can quite understand that Roland has
done something unexampled in history, for I believe Roland to be capable
of anything; the only thing which puzzles me is that you should have had
any hand in it. Write and explain. I will do anything at any time, my
dear, to give you pleasure."

After a few pleasant days among her turnips and her beasts, during which
she was observed to have very often a smile of amusement on her face,
Aunt Eleanor got Eddy's reply:--

"DEAR AUNT,--If you are willing to do anything to give me pleasure, you
had better send another cheque for ten pounds (unless you like to make
it twenty), because that gave me the deepest pleasure, as it did also to
Jimmy Mordaunt. We have spent some of it in riot and dissipation, but
have still some of it in hand. You have no idea of the temptations of
this place, the facilities of credit, and the easiness with which young
men of my personal appearance and of my expectations can raise money
from the lenders at ruinous interest. If I sent a son here, the first
thing I should take care of would be that he was supplied with large
sums of ready money, and so kept from all risk of temptation. Believe me
that such is my experience.

"With regard to the young person of whom I spoke to you in my first
letter (I never spoke to her), I doubt if she will do. She is a barmaid
down the river. I don't think she will do; but, as you have told father,
I will keep my eye on her, with a view of keeping her hanging over his
head, and keeping him civil.

"We never were frivolous so long together before, aunt. Suppose we drop
it; but this place is a perfect atmosphere of chaff. I don't like it
half as well as the old place. There, between-whiles of racket and
horse-play, we were serious. Well, there is not much that is serious in
what I am going to tell you, except that old Roland has suddenly become
a kind of hero in the University. Roland is the first man who ever won
the University sculls in his first term, and my share in the victory was
running along the bank and howling at him.

"I need not remind you of the Doctor's objections to our having Robert
Coombes to Gloucester to teach us to row, and how his objections were
overcome by our father and Mr. Mordaunt; at all events, as far as money
went. The fruits of that teaching have come out now.

"The third day we were here, Roland and I went early in the day, before
the others were on the river, and Roland began trying sculling boats at
the principal place where they are let. He was a long time before he
found one to suit him, and kept going up and down in front of the
barges, trying one after another, and changing frequently, during which
time I noticed that he was attracting the attention of the people who
were standing by. At last he found one which he said he could feel, and
sent a waterman and myself to the tow-path side, at which time I
observed that the principal boat-proprietors, and at least a dozen other
people, had crossed, and were standing about, or walking slowly down the
tow-path.

"He kept us waiting for a long time, but at last he came raging down,
bare-legged and bare-headed, at a racing pace: and I said to myself, 'I
should like to see some of these University oars.' The waterman and I
got our elbows up and went after him, and, as we went, I heard muttered
exclamations of wonder and admiration. I felt as if I was the proprietor
of a show.

"He went down to the starting-post and rowed over, steered by the
waterman. As we neared the barges we found others running with us, and
Roland rowing more splendidly every minute. His last rapid rush home was
Imperial--with a large I.

"When he stopped, there was perfect silence among the boat-builders and
watermen. They were bent, as I have understood, on business, and were
none of them inclined to commit themselves. I said to the man--a most
respectable tradesman, as rich as you, I believe--who had let the boat
to us, 'My brother rows well for a Freshman.' He answered, 'I have not
time to build him a boat, sir, but would earnestly beg him to use the
one he is in, and not change.' I thought, of course, that he was afraid
of our going to his rival over the water, till that rival came to me,
and said: 'I should be glad of your custom, sir, but do urge your
brother to stay in that boat. I have no boat in which he could show his
form as well as in that. Beg him, sir, not to train down; it is only a
fortnight to the race.'

"I was utterly puzzled at all this, and looked for Roland. He had locked
his boat to a punt in front of the University barge, and was talking to
Jasper Meredith, who lay in it on cushions. I hailed them, and they took
me in. I told them what I had heard. Jasper answered:

"'I have been trying to persuade your brother from entering for the
boat-race,' said he to me. 'His answer is that he will not run against
these older men. I watched you two this morning, and crutched it down to
follow you, and see Roland row--a thing which delights me--and I have
few pleasures. And I have been here, and heard those cads making bets on
our own Roland; discussing the points in his body, as if he were a
horse--his legs, his arms, his chest, his thighs--nay more, his manner
of living, and his morality. All I can say is, that the whole business
was immeasurably indecent. Since the days of Commodus, there was never
such a thing done as for Roland to go down into the arena. It is a
pleasure to me to see him row, but if he had heard the expressions those
cads used about him, he would never row again as long as he lived.'

"'You are looking only at one side of the question,' said Roland. 'I
only match myself against another gentleman.'

"'Yes; but on what terms?' said Jasper. 'I heard one of them say, "If a
cove could only persuade him to train, what a pot of money a fellow
might put on." He did not say "fellow," but I spare your ears. And
Roland has dropped to this!'

"Roland, laughing, said: 'I am not sure that I am going to row, and I
don't think I am going to win. I only know that I am not going to bet.'
And he shot away and left us.

"But he rowed and he won. He had infinitely the worst side, and Jemmy
Mordaunt and I ran through the Meadows with punts over the ditches, to
steer him, The thing was easily done, Roland rowed his man--a Henley
winner--down, and after the first half mile, kept him working on his
wash. Although he had scrupulously practised in public, few believed in
him against the Henley winner, and the cheers were very slight. He came
into the University-barge, as did the other man, and they got locked
together. Roland said: 'We cannot all win, sir. I am sorry you have
lost, but I am glad I have won.' The other man said: 'I give you my
shoes, sir, and I think you will wear them well.' And then I took Roland
out of his boat, and put the waterman in, and we stood alone on the
barge.

"Not a soul knew us personally, and so not a soul would speak to us. We
wanted to get the cup, but did not know whom to ask about it. We were
not likely to speak to men who would not speak to us, and there we stood
like fools; Roland, in breeches, with his legs bare (for these
barbarians row in trousers). How long we should have stood, I cannot
say, but the President came, parting the throng, and made Roland's
acquaintance.

"His influence here is so great that it broke the ice at once. He had
actually called on us that morning, it seemed, which gave him the right
of introducing us. So one happy result of the race is that we, with our
charming manners, and our splendid personal appearance, have a new world
opened to us. I was not aware, until I went to other colleges, that our
college was a marked and disliked one; but it is. So much for Roland's
boat-race.

"On the Meadows we picked up Jasper Meredith, and, strangely enough, the
young man to whom I gave ten shillings, who is now one of his servants.
'For heaven's sake,' said Jasper, 'don't begin talking about the
boat-race. I am sorry he has won. Give me the address of this man, if
you know it. He is a friend of yours.' He wanted the address of Allan
Gray, for what purpose I did not ask him. Send it to him, for I have not
got it. He has moved."



Chapter 10.

See Aunt Eleanor's writing-table in the bay-window once more, with a
lady writing there--a lady, but not Aunt Eleanor. The light of the
window fell, this time, on the head of the most delicate little fairy
ever seen: on the head of the girl who had taken her aunt's place as the
great Evans beauty: on the head of Mildred Evans.

The cross which the handsome Evans had made with the still more
beautiful Meredith, had resulted in her, and she was very splendid
indeed; very small, very fragile, very blonde, in every attitude
graceful; yet not without a rather quick, decisive way of changing from
one perfectly unstudied pose to another.

Without shadow; all light as morning; light in hair, light in sapphire
eyes, light in her dress. She had dressed herself in white, and she had
got a red rose from the garden and put it in her hair, and she had got a
pink rose and put it in her bosom, and had put a geranium and rose in a
glass vase before her, and thus fortified, had sat down, at our
unsympathetic Aunt Eleanor's desk, to write her innocent little
love-letter, which the reader will be glad to be spared.

She had just finished when the door was opened widely, and in came Aunt
Eleanor, in a riding-habit, accompanied by a girl, also in a
riding-habit, who looked exceedingly like Aunt Eleanor's ghost.

A very tall girl, with a singularly upstanding carriage, and a
well-set-on head, covered with fine brown hair, combed back into a knot;
a very fine girl, very large and strong, but not in the least coarse.
Ethel Mordaunt, of whom her brothers used to say that she was the
greatest brick in England, whom Squire Charles was apt to pronounce a
trifle coarse at times, though never within his sister's hearing, and
whom Aunt Eleanor pronounced to be a perfect lady, far too good to marry
any one except Eddy.

This young lady, still holding her riding-skirt under her left arm,
threw her whip on the table, and said:

"You are the best judge, Miss Evans, being so much older and wiser than
I am; but even a girl just out of the schoolroom has an opinion, and my
opinion is that you allow your good-nature to be abused in countenancing
these two women."

"I don't encourage them. Mrs. Gray is most respectable."

"Is she?" said Miss Mordaunt. "Ah, I daresay she is. But I don't like
her, for all that. I don't like the way she talks to my brothers, for
instance, though perhaps my brothers may. She is both familiar and
slangy."

"I don't know what you mean," said Aunt Eleanor. "Her grandson and
herself were left in my care by my mother, and I have striven to do my
duty by them; and slangy is not a nice word, Ethel.''

"My brothers use it," said Ethel. "And then there is old Phillis Myrtle
again."

"Mrs. Myrtle has her faults," said Aunt Eleanor; "but these are matters
which you cannot understand."

"Papa says she is a tipsy old thing," said Miss Mordaunt. "Look here,
Miss Evans, see if here is not our sweet little bird, writing her
love-letter, and dressed up in flowers to do so. What an innocent little
love it is. Put it in strong, Milly, my love. Leave no doubt about the
state of your sentiments, my dear. Don't let him have the slightest
doubt of your mutual relations, and let me read it after."

"It is sealed up," said Mildred, turning round and laughing.

"What a pity!" said Miss Mordaunt. "I have seen a few of his, but I
never saw one of yours. I should like to see one, because I don't know
how I shall have to write to your brother Eddy, when he, driven to
exasperation by your aunt here, proposes to me. Do you ever write to
Eddy?"

"I am going to write now," said Mildred.

"Tell him that his aunt's heart is set on our union and that if he will
summon up the courage to propose, I will have him--conditionally. He
must add a cubit to his stature, to begin with; and there are other
conditions also. Will you write that for me? That, do you see, Miss
Evans, will crown your kind plan."

"I have no plan now," said Aunt Eleanor. And standing in her place, with
her riding-skirt tucked up under her left arm, she looked steadily at
Miss Mordaunt, standing in her place, also in the same attitude, and
also looking steadily at Aunt Eleanor. But as she returned Aunt
Eleanor's stare, the veins in the girl's throat began to swell and
throb, and a flush spread upwards over her face, until that face was
scarlet. At which time, Aunt Eleanor went up and patted her on the
shoulder, and said in her ear, "It was so with me once, my dear, long
ago, long ago; that is the reason why I never married."

The girl said nothing, but Mildred Evans, turning round from the table
said, suddenly:

"I have got a letter also from Roland."

The blood fled back from Ethel Mordaunt's face as fast as it had come,
and told the story full well--the story which Aunt Eleanor had nearly
guessed that afternoon, during their ride. An old story, and generally a
sad one, of childish friendship ripening into love on the woman's part,
but only into kindly, friendly indifference on the man's. "She loves
him," thought Aunt Eleanor, "and I shall never prate her out of it. No
one ever prated me out of it, even after I had her children on my knee.
God help the poor child!"

Ethel Mordaunt had as well-cut and well-carved a head on her shoulders
as had her brother James, whose carriage of his head had been before
alluded to. This head was very nearly down on Aunt Eleanor's shoulder,
but it was suddenly and imperiously drawn up again, and turned towards
the door; for a footman opened that door and said, "If you please,
ma'am, here is Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Myrtle."

Every fibre of Ethel Mordaunt's body became rigid as these two women
appeared. "Send beauty away," she said, almost imperiously, pointing
with her head, negro fashion, to Mildred Evans. "It is not fit that she
should breathe the atmosphere with these two."

Aunt Eleanor chuckled internally, but did not let her laughter show
outwardly. "Mildred," she said, "would you kindly be so good as to go
and see whether the--I mean, be so good as to go upstairs and look out
of the window and see if--but I cannot do it. Would you be so kind as to
take yourself out of the way, my dear?"

"I can understand that, Aunt," said Mildred, laughing, and slid out of
the room, with her precious letter in her band, making two pretty little
obeisances to Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Phillis Myrtle as she went out, which
those good ladies returned with deep reverences.

"Now you go too," said Aunt Eleanor.

"I am going to stop where I am," said Ethel Mordaunt.

"What is not fit company for her is not fit company for you."

"Nevertheless, I am going to stop where I am. I am clever, and wish to
study character."

"You will go if I tell you to go," said Aunt Eleanor.

"Of course; now have them in."

And they came in. Two very different-looking women, Mrs. Gray first. A
tall old woman, with the remains of a certain kind of aquiline beauty,
very upright in her carriage, and an expression in her face--a look of
cool, careless impudence, which might either take the form of
contemptuous badinage, or of utter scorn. She was very well dressed, and
in good material; but her whole appearance, striking as it was, was
utterly repugnant both to Eleanor and Miss Mordaunt, for different
reasons.

Phillis Myrtle was an entirely different person. A little, roundabout
old lady, with an apple face and a perpetual smile. To Eleanor she was
possibly more repugnant than Mrs. Gray.

It was natural that these two women should be utterly repugnant to her,
even if they had been the most estimable characters in the world. These
two women were the only two left who knew of, or cared to remember, her
brother Charles's escapade with Elsie Gray. It was a secret between
them, though it was never mentioned at all; neither of the three knew
how much the other knew. Who knew most, we shall see.

It was a life-long annoyance for a very high-souled woman, impatient of
control, to keep this secret with two such women; yet it had to be kept,
for these women had the power of annoying her brother seriously. Squire
Charles had done well by Mrs. Gray. She lived in a cottage rent-free,
and had a fixed allowance, but the cottage was Eleanor's, and the
allowance was paid by Eleanor's hand. Once, and once only, had the
Squire spoken to Mrs. Gray after his return from India, and that was to
say, "Mrs. Gray, our more recent intercourse was a very sad one; I think
that the wisest thing we can do is to forget one another." And Mrs. Gray
said, "Your honour shall be obeyed." Nothing more; and had accepted her
position quite quietly, merely curtseying to the Squire when they met.
Here she was now with old Phillis Myrtle, the nurse, staring fixedly and
boldly at Miss Mordaunt, as if she was weighing or appraising her, and
here was Miss Mordaunt looking out of window instead of returning her
gaze, and drumming with her horse-whip.

"I am afraid I have kept you waiting," began Eleanor.

"Not at all, miss; I have been accustomed to wait on gentlefolks all my
life, and my husband's family have been vassals to yours for centuries.
Coming from the manufacturing countries as I do, this vassalage seemed
strange at first, but I have got to it. The world uses you well, Miss
Eleanor, and I hope it will use you as well, Miss Mordaunt, when you are
as old as a Eleanor. Why, miss, you are three-and-forty; you must think
of marrying soon."

"I am sorry to say I am three-and-forty, my good Gray; and as for
thinking of marrying, I have thought of that all my life, and the more I
think of it the less I like it."

It was so good-humouredly said that Mrs. Gray smiled a gaunt smile, and
continued the conversation with Miss Mordaunt, who, by-the-bye, had not
said one word.

"You will poison Miss Mordaunt's mind against marriage, Miss Eleanor,"
she went on, audaciously. "Beauty like hers should not go unsued.
Mordaunts and Evanses must not fail in the land; beauty, worth, valour,
perfect openness, and perfect truth, are too good qualities to be lost
in the land; and where are they to be found unless among Mordaunts and
Evanses? Ah! We may see Miss Mordaunt mistress of Stretton yet."
Whereupon Miss Ethel, with her crest in the air, marched out of the
room, with her riding-habit under her arm, and a look of high, cool,
unutterable contempt on her face. "I will come back, Miss Evans, when
woman is gone," she said; but she might have gone upstairs without
bruising her clenched hand against the banisters:

"Mrs. Gray," said Eleanor, angrily, "you are taking great liberties."

"Only with a Mordaunt. I love it; I love to make one of those
snake-headed Mordaunts put their heads in the air, like an adder just
before he strikes; I do it with the boys. They are a red-handed old lot.
Why, that youngest one, Jimmy, her brother, nigh tortured your own
nephew, Edward, to death at school, that you know. Mad love and bitter
hate. I love to play with a Mordaunt. Ha! Ha!"

"I'll trouble you not to play with an Evans, if you please," said
Eleanor, calmly furious.

"No! no! not with a she-Evans. They get their stuff from the Mereditihs.
Do you remember your mother? Ah! to see her bare-headed, with her hands
held up over her head--well, don't look like that. She was a Meredith,
and so are you; your brother is an Evans. All the men-Evanses are soft;
you can do anything with 'em you like, except resist them when they
plead. Your brother took two of my sons to Waterloo, and only brought
back one. They would have gone to the devil after him--and then--why,
and then another man-Evans, your nephew Edward, kisses you, strokes your
hair, calls you his foolish old woman, and makes you, a woman of spirit,
do just as he pleases. And he will live to break your heart as his
father broke mine. You wait till you are old, and see him spending your
hard-earned money on them that will despise you. Wait till you see him
getting impatient for your death, and then remember my words."

Aunt Eleanor rose. "Now look here, Mrs. Gray, and have the goodness to
attend to me. I am not going to have this, or anything in the remotest
degree approaching to it, for one instant. Go out!"

"You had better hear my errand first."

"I will not speak to you. Go out!"

"You may get your servants to turn me out if you like," began Mrs. Gray.

"I shall not get my servants to do it; I shall do it myself in less than
half a minute," said Aunt Eleanor. And as she rose she looked so
extremely like doing it, that Mrs. Gray turned round, not one bit
abashed, and broke into a loud laugh.

"I'll go," she said; "and I'll hold my tongue, too. This woman will tell
you what we came about. There is no bad blood between us, Eleanor; I
like you the better for your anger." And she was gone.

"The old witch," said Aunt Eleanor, dropping back in her chair. "For her
to have dared--"

A low sigh, and a dropping, or rather dribbling, of honey-sweet words
reminded her that Phillis Myrtle was still seated in the easiest of
easy-chairs, rolling her head from one side to the other, and using her
pocket handkerchief.

"You may well say dared, my dear young lady," began Mrs. Myrtle:
"audacious as dear Mrs. Gray can be, I never thought she'd have burst
out on this day of all days in the year. And witch you may well say,
Miss Eleanor: witch she would be if she could, for I have watched her.
But it ain't biling things in a pipkin as makes a witch--no, my dear,
Lord forbid! If she has asked me for black spells once, she has asked me
a dozen times, and I replied to her, 'Mrs. Gray, I don't use them; I am
old, and I think of my soul!' And she has said to me, 'But, you fool,
you know them,' as heaven help me, I do. And I have set her off with
white spells, for bunions and king's evil. But now going for good and
all, and how her pious grandson will like it, I can't say.

"As I was saying, my dear young lady, she comes to me, and she says,
'You half-hearted witch,' she says, 'he will have you all the same, if
you won't give me a black spell. If you won't let me make acquaintance
with your master, at all events give me a white one.' And I said I would
do anything neighbourly, not against my conscience, only that I should
want a new crown-piece. Then she told me what she wanted. She says, in
her own words, 'I want a love-spell. That girl, Ethel Mordaunt, is in
love with young Roland Evans, for I have watched them, and he don't care
for her. And I want something to put in his wine, or his drink, to make
him love her; for there will be mischief afoot if he marries her before
they have studied one another's character. They will fight for the
mastery, and there will be your master to pay.' And I gave her some
dill-water, and she put it in his drink."

Eleanor groaned. The secret she had found out that day was known to this
terrible Mrs. Gray; and how many others?

"Therefore, my dear young lady, it is as well that she goes away. It is
indeed."

"Is she going away?"

"Her grandson has offered her a home in London, my dear young lady, and
she goes to him, and a nice mess they will make of it altogether."

"Did you two come here to tell me of this to-day?" asked Eleanor'

"Yes, my dear lady, partly. And partly to ask if I might have her
cottage. There is no one but us two knows anything, and no one but I and
yourself, and your dear mother, now in glory, and the Squire as knows a
certain part of the truth; and there is no one but my own self knows the
whole and entire truth. She thinks she does, but she don't. The Lord
help you, if she did."

"What do you mean by the whole truth, Mrs. Myrtle?" said Eleanor.

"Parcelling all together," said Mrs. Myrtle. "Not parts and parcels, but
the whole biling."

"Well," said Aunt Eleanor, rubbing her nose, "I suppose you had better
have the cottage rent-free. I need not mince matters with you. It is of
great importance that my brother's first marriage should not be talked
of----"

That silly old trot, Phillis Myrtle, was down on her knees before her in
an instant. "She don't know of that, my lady. Oh! for heaven's sake keep
it from her for ever."

"Does she believe my brother a villain, then?" said Eleanor, indignantly.

"Oh! let her believe so, my lady. Oh! for the sake of the mother that
bore you, and the brother you love, let her believe so. Listen to me, a
foolish old woman. Think of what her claims would be if she knew it; and
nobody knows that much but you and I--no one alive. Think, dear Miss
Eleanor, what would be the effect of bringing it up now--how Squire
Charles had made a shameful marriage in Scotland over the broomstick,
but legal. Think of what Madam Evans would say when she found it had
been kept from her. Think of the effect on the boys. Think of my darling
Roland, whom I nursed, how his head would be bowed; and think of your
poor little Eddy. Think of him, miss. Don't let that woman think there
was a marriage. You have concealed before. Go on concealing: it is no
new sin. Think of Eddy, miss."

"You plead well," said Aunt Eleanor. "I think you are an affectionate
woman, though you must own yourself to be a great fool. Will that woman,
Gray, speak, think you?"

"No, my lady; she is too proud; and she don't know all. I did not think
as you knew as much as you did. I thought you thought as she thought.
But I am the only one that knows all. Leave well alone, my lady."

"Leave ill alone, you mean. Well, I suppose I had better. You can have
the cottage."

"Well, aunt," said Mildred, coming in with her arm round Ethel's waist,
"are the two wretches gone?"

"Don't talk to me for a time, you two. Kiss, play, fall in love,
quarrel, do anything you like, but never give yourselves to a deceit. It
will grow out of a little lie, like the thin clouds of summer, darkening
and darkening, till it breaks, in ruin and confusion."



Chapter 11.

Stretton Castle lay on the north side of the valley, under Longmynd;
Mordaunt Royal lay upon the south side, nearly facing it, with Caradoc
at its back.

When the Evanses and the Mordaunts first came into that part of the
country, and began quarrelling, is lost in the mist of antiquity. All
down through the history of the county, however, you will find that the
Evanses and the Mordaunts did nothing but squabble, and now and then
intermarry, mainly for the purpose of patching up a worse quarrel than
usual. There was, however, such a furious hurly-burly about marriage
settlements, dower lands, appanages, and so forth, that the remedy had
been found to be worse than the disease, and had been tacitly abandoned.
These disputes had been settled with lance in the tilting-ground, with
rapier in the meadow, and with red tape in Chancery; but at last the old
jealousies and disputes had died out, and they were exceedingly good
friends. The last case of enmity between the houses was when James
Mordaunt so shamefully bullied Eddy Evans at Gloucester. Even that was
past and gone now.

In the great civil war, the then Evans declared for Parliament--and, of
course, the then Mordaunt for King. This was a very pretty quarrel
indeed, and the great statesman tried to utilize it not knowing, as the
Maynards and Merediths, or any Shropshire folks, could have told him,
that the Evanses and Mordaunts only quarrelled between themselves, and
that, in case of a Evans or a Mordaunt being assailed in any way by an
outsider (even a Maynard or a Meredith), the other family would at once
fly to the rescue, and defy creation. Consequently, during the
Revolution, the Evans of those times did nothing more than watch his
pestilent neighbour, Mordant; and during the Restoration, Mordaunt did
nothing more than go bail for his traitorous neighbour, Evans.
Obligations in this way were mutual; and what is more to the purpose,
they both kept their lands under their feet, their heads on their
shoulders, and what concerns us most, their houses over their heads.

So that now, as of old, Stretton stood a little up the hill--a long mass
of dark grey, blazing with roses, with an oak wood behind it, and sheets
of moorland rising behind; while before it, the deer-park steeped down,
like a cascade of green turf, into the valley, unaltered since the time
of Henry VII. For a similar reason, the dark red-brick, James the First
house of Mordaunt, buried among its dense elms and oaks, on the other
side of the valley, kept its form unaltered through all political
changes.

Either house, or either estate, were possessions which, to poor folks,
seem almost fabulous. Yet there are thousands as good, or much better,
to be seen anywhere. One of my neighbours, a commoner, has 20,000 a
year; another, just in sight, has 60,000; another, also a commoner,
within four miles, has just died worth 5,000,000. The figures, with
regard to the Evans and the Mordaunt properties, drop terribly from
these real, everyday sums. Mr. Mordaunt is reputed to have about 7,000
a year, and Squire Charles Evans 8,000. We have only to do with the
last estate, and I only mention figures to show that it was a very
desirable one for a moderate man. Though not by any means as good as the
New York Herald, and but little better than Mr. Ward Beecher's church,
it was worth fighting for.

There was a pleasant, orderly luxury about the place which was extremely
agreeable, and was rather wonderful to contemplate, when one considered
the beggarly income. It is perfectly certain that Charles Evans could
never have done what he did with his limited means, but for one thing:
he never went to London, except to lodgings, and Mrs. Evans did not
dress.

But he did everything else. To begin with, he sat in Parliament, for one
thing, three elections, which somewhat took the gloss off his income;
and then he sat a fourth at a greater expense than before--an expense
which made even him open his eyes, and brought in a furious remonstrance
from Eleanor. He sat, I say, a fourth time, for three weeks, after which
time he was unseated in a scandalous manner. There was no doubt at all
about it. Outraged Britannia held up her hands in sheer horror; and six
thousand odd of good money gone to the bad for nothing! After this,
Charles Evans retired into private life, cursing his attorney, consoling
himself with the fact that "the other fellow" had spent more money than
he had, and so let public affairs go to the deuce as they liked.

Consequently, although he kept the hounds at his own expense, his estate
was not injured in any way. Hounds can be kept very well for 2,000. a
year; and he kept them till he made the brilliant discovery that you
could get as much sport out of them if you let some one else keep them,
and only galloped after them yourself. So he gave up his hounds.

Then he bred race-horses, and, indeed, he won the Oaks, to Eleanor's
intense exasperation. "Now we are done for," she said: "this is the
finish and end of us at last." But she was deceived. Charles bred a
colt, such a colt as was never seen, and he, a consummate horseman,
taught one of his stable-boys to ride it, and he won the Two Thousand,
and Eleanor gave the house up for lost; but no. He came back to her the
next day, very quietly, and told her that he had sold his horse, with
its engagements, for 5000, and had netted 14,000. in bets. "You are
not going on then," she said. "No," he answered; "it is so slow."

Sailing-yachts eat nothing, and so his yachting cost him little. And now
that his Parliamentary career was done with and finished, his sole
dissipation was his yacht at Aberystwith. His was a most desirable
property, perfectly unencumbered, all ready for Roland, who seemed to be
worthy of it.

Most worthy. The good Doctor's estimate of his character was being
confirmed day by day. The Dean had gone out of his way to write to
Squire Evans about his two sons: they were both of them patterns (in
spite of a slight tendency to boisterousness), but Roland was a paragon.
The schools, and consequently the world, were at his feet--he might do
anything--there was never anything like him. Old Mordaunt wrote to his
father: "Roly Evans has won the University skulls, and has made a blazes
fine speech at the Union. I heard it. There ain't a man to hold a candle
to him here. He is getting petted and flattered; but I don't think they
will spoil him."

Jim Mordaunt also wrote to his sister. I hardly know why, but I feel as
if I was violating confidence in writing down what he wrote. It ran
thus:--

"He has done a thing five hundred times greater than winning the
university sculls--for my part I hate to see him rowing. The question
before the house was the Eastern war, and the ultra-Radicals were
against it; and Roland got on his legs, on the Liberal side, and did so
cast about his beautiful, furious words about national death and
national dishonour, that he carried the house with him. You should have
seen the way he raised his head and sent the well-thought-out syllogisms
rattling through his white teeth: it was a sight! Johnny says that his
logic was all fishy in the major term, and that his whole argument was
bosh; but you know Johnny. As for me, I would sooner bear Roland's
buncombe than any one else's common sense. So would you, my sister. They
are all flattering him, but they will never spoil him. I get up a fight
with him and his brother to-night. Pretending to cut Eddy's hair, while
I was flourishing the scissors I got the enclosed off his head. He is in
an awful wax with me, for he has missed his curl: he little dreams where
it has gone. Mind you never, under any circumstances, let him see it; he
would never forgive me."

So after their successful two first terms they all came back, full of
hope, health, and high spirits, to their two beautiful homes. I suspect
that of all the men in the world, a young English country gentleman, of
good name, of good repute, of tolerable intelligence, with good health,
and of innocent life, has more chance of happiness than any other. Most
human cares are impossible for him he has plenty to do, plenty to think
about, and his work is all laid ready to his hand. I cannot conceive of
any man of finer chances than a rich young squire--the world and its
temptations seem put out of the way in his case; yet he frequently makes
a fearful fiasco of it too.

There was no blot on the prospects of the young Mordaunts or the young
Evanses on the morning after their arrival home, any more than there was
a cloud in the June sky, which stretched overhead a sheet of glorious,
cloudless blue. All possibilities of any disturbing causes seemed
absolute nonsense. The chances were so infinitely in their favour. Money
was to be had for the picking up; they had talents, prospects, health,
high spirits; the world was theirs, in a way, if they cared to go into
it and succeed; or if they failed, here were two homes of ancient peace
ready for them to come back to. Misfortune, thanks to settled old order,
seemed in their cases to have become impossible.

The Mordaunts had come over to breakfast with the Evanses, and Maynard
was spending the first part of his vacation with them for the purpose of
being with his beloved Mildred Evans. Aunt Eleanor had come from
Pulverbatch to see her darling Eddy; and so they were all assembled in
the morning room at Stretton.

Aunt Eleanor was the first person who sauntered out through the open
window into the bright, blazing sun. The boys stayed behind eating more,
and yet more, of marmalade and honey, and the others sat because they
were contented, until at last Eddy cried out, "There is Aunt Eleanor
having a row with Deacon Macdingaway;" and, indeed, Aunt Eleanor's usual
expletive "Fiddle-de-dee," was plainly borne to the ears of the
assembled company.

"Let's go and hear the fun, you fellows," said the younger Mordaunt--a
proposition which, as it stood, was innocent enough, but might have been
carried out with less boisterousness. They need not all of them have
rushed to the window at once. Likewise, there was no necessity of a free
fight between Eddy Evans and young Mordaunt, which ended in Eddy being
cast on his back in the middle of a bed of geraniums, with young
Mordaunt atop of him. However, they soon were beside Aunt Eleanor,
determined to back her through thick and thin against Deacon
Macdingaway. With which heed the younger Mordaunt, on arriving at the
scene of action, by way of taking up a formidable position, said to
Macdingaway, "She did nothing of the kind."

Macdingaway was the head Scotch gardener, who, in an evil moment for
him, had confessed to one of these madcaps that he had held an office in
his church, after which they had christened him "Deacon." He turned on
young Mordaunt, and said, "Her ladyship threepit--"

"That I emphatically deny," struck in Eddy, who had got his breath.

"Her ladyship threepit that the roses should no have been budded till
the first week in July," said the inexorable Macdingaway; "and I took
the liberty to disagree with her."

"That alters the case altogether, of course," said Eddy.

"You are quite right, Deacon. Aunt, you have not got a leg to stand on,
you know. You had better leave him alone: he has much the best of the
argument. Here are the others: let us come to them."

As they went away from him, old Macdingaway shook his clever old head.
"A' folly together," he said. "If your father had na lived before ye,
where would ye be?"

All the others were now standing on the terrace. Squire Charles Evans, a
handsome man of fifty, in a short velvet coat, perfectly cut trousers
and well-made lace-up boots; very grey, with slight whiskers and
moustache. Squire Mordaunt, a full-necked, brown-faced thickset man,
without