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 a hair on his face, in grey breeches and gaiters, with a grey
shooting coat. He was a very bucolic-looking man, this Squire Mordaunt,
but he had a shrewd deep-set eye under his heavy eyebrows too. He stood
looking at the group as they approached, with his head thrust forward,
and his hands holding a whip (for he had ridden over) behind his back,
and he was the first who spoke.

"What new trouble has my friend Miss Evans been getting into?" he asked,
in a rather grating voice. "She seems to be borne back in triumph from
some new victory by these four foolish boys."

"Nothing but a dispute with my dear friend and admirer, Macdingaway,
George Mordaunt," she replied, with her head in the air; "nothing worse
than that this time."

"I am glad of that," said Squire Mordaunt. "Edward, you can come out of
your aunt's pocket. My dear Miss Evans, once more, will you let me have
that right of way through your two orchards for watering my horses at
Gweline Farm?"

"No, I won't," said Aunt Eleanor, with a dangerous look in her face.
Stroking Edward's bare curls, who, although he was not in her pocket,
was certainly leaning idly against her. "No, I won't."

"But why not, my dear Miss Evans?" said Squire Mordaunt.

"Because you ask me, and because you ask me with that look in your face.
I would sooner let every gipsy on the country-side camp there than let
one of your dogs through, if you look at me like that, and ask me like
that, now then! What do you think of that, for instance?"

The other boys had heard nothing of this; but Mrs. Evans, who was en
passant a pretty woman, and Mrs. Mordaunt, who was not pretty, but
clever, interposed.

"Surely," said Mrs. Mordaunt, "I shall have to quote Dame Quickly on you
two some day. You cannot serve heaven well, that you never come together
without quarrelling. Do be quiet."

"A wilful woman must have her way," said Squire Mordaunt.

"And indeed she must," said Aunt Eleanor; "you never said a truer word
than that. I am going after the boys."

Young Maynard and Mildred Evans had marched off, and were courting
somewhere or another; there remained only the four boys and Ethel
Mordaunt, who were standing together, and apparently all talking at
once. The Mordaunts, with the exception of Mrs. Mordaunt had ridden
over, and so Ethel Mordaunt was in her riding-habit, though bare-headed.
Aunt Eleanor, as she approached them, heard that the four boys were
discussing what they would do with themselves on this happy summer's
day, and saw that Ethel was listening to them: she, also in her
riding-habit, and bare-headed, stooped, and pretended to weed one of
Macdingaway's well-weeded flower-beds.

"I vote," said young Eddy, "that we ride into Shrewsbury, have ices, and
see the boats go. And we might buy a piece of salmon, and Jimmy Mordaunt
might bring it home in his pocket."

"I wouldn't be a fool if I was in your place," said the younger
Mordaunt. "You have had plenty of opportunities of eating yourself blind
at the University; and I am sure we have had boating enough."

"Let us go fishing," said the elder Mordaunt. "What do you say, Roland?"

"It is too bright for fishing, Johnny," said Roland; "I'll tell you what
I should be inclined to propose. Let us take Rory, our old Irish
pointer, and ride away over the Longmynd and see what grouse there are.
What do you think, Ethel?"

"I think that would be very pleasant," said Ethel. "It is certainly an
improvement on Eddy's proposal of eating ices in Shrewsbury, and also an
improvement on Johnny's equally idiotic idea of going fishing. I am for
it," said Young Mordaunt.

"Do you think, Johnny," said Ethel to her elder brother--"do you think
that I might come?"

"No," shouted young Mordaunt; "we don't want a parcel of girls with us."

Young Mordaunt had said this in sheer recklessness, expecting that his
sister, as her wont was, would have given in to him. He was rather
astonished, and very much ashamed, when his imperial sister turned
gently to him and said:

"I won't be much in your way, Jimmy. I can ride as far and as fast as
any of you. And you too have been a weary while away; let me see
something of you now. Let me come, Jimmy."

"I believe," said young Mordaunt, impetuously, "that I am the greatest
brute on earth; of course you are to come. I shouldn't go if you didn't.
Come on, you fellows, and let us get the horses." And away they all went
towards the stables.

And Ethel following, passed Aunt Eleanor, pretending to weed a
flower-bed, and Aunt Eleanor said:

"So you are bent on going with him then?"

And Ethel said, "I can't help it. One long summer's day beside him is
not much to ask out of eternity."

Aunt Eleanor said, "You are binding a burden for your back which you
will find hard to carry before you have done with it. I know, and your
father knows too: though he might have kept his tongue between his teeth
this blessed day. Are you bent on going?"

"Oh yes, Miss Evans. Let me go!"

"I am not stopping you. Which way are you going to ride?"

"Over Longmynd, to look at the grouse."

"And so on to Maynard Barton to lunch," rejoined Aunt Eleanor. "Go by
all means."

"They said nothing of Maynard Barton," said Ethel. "We shall hardly get
so far."

"You foolish child," said Aunt Eleanor. "Why, if you had set out this
day to ride over Caradoc or Lawley, if you had set out to ride to the
top of the Wrekin, your destination would have been the same. Roland can
make these boys go where he chooses, and sometime in the day you would
have found yourselves by some excuse at Maynard Barton, and would have
found Roland talking to Mary Maynard. Will you go now, you fool?"

"Yes! yes! It is twelve miles to Maynard Barton, and twelve miles is
something. It would have been something to you once, Miss Evans."

"Heaven knows it would!" said Aunt Eleanor. "Well, my dear, when it is
all over, and you want to eat your own heart in peace and quietness,
come to the old woman at Pulverbatch, and begin a new life with her. You
won't die over it, you know----you have too much chest, and are too
active in your habits; but if you think you are going to get out of this
without deep pain and misery, you are mistaken. See, they are calling
for you. Run, my dear--and put the knife in delicately under your fifth
rib."

She did not hear the last sentence; but running up to the door, found
her mother with her hat ready for her, and immediately afterwards,
having received a tremendous kiss of reconciliation from her brother
Jim, was pitched on her horse by him, and they all went away through the
lanes towards the mountain.

The horses were of course good, and they all rode well (according to the
English standard--a ridiculously low one compared to South America).
They could, however, ride better than French people, and their horses
were well trained and quiet: so they enjoyed themselves.

They were soon through the lanes, and out on the heather. Roland Evans
and John Mordaunt rode in front, and the old pointer was sent out before
them. Behind them rode abreast Eddy, Jim Mordaunt, and his sister Ethel,
who were more than once cautioned by the two elders in front about
making so much noise; for Eddy and Jim were furious and fantastic in
their horse-play, and Ethel laughed loud and long at them. "They seem
jolly behind there, those three," said John Mordaunt.

"Very jolly. Keep quiet there: we shall have the birds up," said Roland.

"Quiet there, Ethel," said the elder Mordaunt, calling back to them.

The old dog had pointed five times on the slope of the Longmynd, and had
been whistled away. "There are at least four packs here," said Roland.

"And we are not half over the south side," said stolid old John
Mordaunt. "We shall spot at least four or five packs more on this south
side: send the dog on."

"I should like to try the north side," said Roland. "Have you any
objection?"

"Not in the least," said the elder Mordaunt. "You mean towards Maynard
Barton? I have not the slightest objection to going there or anywhere,
so long as one understands where one is going. Northward ho! you three
jawers. We are going to eat among the bilberry slopes towards Maynard
Barton. Ethel, you mind the blind ruts. We will lunch with old Mother
Maynard, d'ye hear?"

"Are you going to Maynard Barton to lunch?" asked Roland.

"We had better, I think," said time eider Mordaunt. "We shall know how
things stand."

"I don't understand you," said Roland.

"I don't think you do," said John Mordaunt.

"Twelve miles out of all eternity," she said, and here was her reward.
Not one single word from him during time whole ride; nothing but the
tomfooleries of her brother and Eddy Evans. And at last, when they found
themselves dismounting in front of the low, dark-red façade of nearly
the oldest and perhaps the most prosperous of Shropshire houses, only
this for twelve miles' ride. Mary Maynard, wonderful pretty, and silly
almost to idiocy; and Roland bending over this doll, this fool, with his
really fine genius flashing from his eyes.

Old Mrs. Maynard was the very mother you would have selected out of a
dozen, as the mother of the strong, good-humoured, good-looking giant
who was at that moment daundering about with Mildred Evans at Stretton.
If you had to compare her to flower it would be to a cabbage-rose,
extremely beautiful, but rather stout--a rose which budded well, but
which opened coarsely. Compare her to a bird, she was a pouter pigeon,
full-breasted, fussy, affectionate, and never for one instant silent.
She was a widow, and intensely interested in love-making, as she was
also in eating and drinking. She was in her flower-garden when our party
appeared, and having given one glance at them, went swiftly indoors, and
gave tremendous orders for lunch.

The elder Mordaunt, who had by far the oldest head on his shoulders of
all our party, in spite of his blockish look, noticed that this good
dame, whom he know very well indeed, was a little distraught and not
quite herself. He had reason to think that he might as well watch
matters this day; and he watched her.

Mary Maynard was out in the porch to receive them, and when they had
dismounted, and were all standing about on the terrace, talking to one
another, Mrs. Maynard rejoined them. Roland had gone at once to Mary
Maynard, and they two were apart, laughing together; and John Mordaunt,
watching keenly, noticed that Mrs. Maynard on her arrival darted a
sudden, quick, impatient, and yet puzzled look at Roland and Mary, but
the next moment was all smiles. He wondered deeply, did this young man.
"Hang it!" he said to himself; "the old girl ought to be satisfied with
that."

"Now, this is good of you," began Mrs. Maynard. "The very first day too:
to come over all this way to see me. I need not ask where Robert is; I
am sure he is where I wish him to be. Tell Mildred to send him over as
soon as she can; a mother must wait under such circumstances--must she
not, John Mordaunt? Roland, you have never paid your compliments to me.
Come here and pay them---are these your university manners? Mary, go in
and see that they are getting lunch. Roland, I was saying" (she was
not), "that it was so good of you to come over and bring Ethel with you
the very first day."

"My brothers gave me leave to come," said Ethel, quietly.

"To be sure, to be sure," said Mrs. Maynard. "So kind of your brothers
to bring you over the very first day. Well, well, come in, and we will
see what there is to eat. Roland, give Ethel your arm."

"Thank you, I am not lame," said Ethel.

"Well, well! Lame! no indeed! Lame, she says; that is good; conceive a
Mordaunt lame--no, no! Or an Evans either, for that matter. Come into
the drawing-room--it is rather dark coming out of the sun. I keep the
sun out of the room to spare the carpet; for Robert will be bringing
your sister here some day, Roland, and I must quit. Take care of the
footstools, Ethel. Roland, she will break her neck; guide her."

"I can see as well as Roland," said Ethel; and they all sat down in the
darkened drawing-room.

If it was difficult to keep Eddy Evans and Jim Mordaunt quiet in the
class or lecture, it was hopelessly impossible to keep them quiet,
without legal supervision, after a twelve miles' ride, when they were
both petulantly expective of their victuals. They fell out
instantaneously, and cast away the scabbard; and Ethel sat and laughed
at them.

Eddy deliberated where he should sit down, and while he remained
standing Jim Mordaunt remained standing also, with his eyes fixed upon
him; of which fact Eddy was not unconscious. At last he said, looking at
a sofa, "I shall sit here." Whereupon James Mordaunt bore down swiftly
on that same sofa, saying, "I am going to sit there." A tremendous
single combat ensued, during which James Mordaunt, who was as strong as
a bull, managed to take away Eddy Evans' watch, chain, and money, and
transfer them to his own pocket. After which he sat quietly down in a
chair by his sister, and called her attention to the pictures.

Eddy was beginning his plaint. "I have been robbed in your house by a
ruffian, Mrs. Maynard, while my brother sat and looked on," when he
stopped, and every one started, Mrs. Maynard included; for a quiet voice
out of a dark corner said--

"The boy, Mordaunt minor, will restore the property to Evans minor, and
will write out the first book of Euclid." Whereupon the elder Mordaunt
said to himself, "So that's her game: well, I have no objection, I am
sure." And Mrs. Maynard said, somewhat querulously in spite of herself,
"My dear Sir Jasper Meredith, how you frightened me! I thought you were
gone."

"Gone, when I was ordered off? Why, no," said Sir Jasper Meredith. "I
wanted to stay and see my friends. I shan't go without my lunch now.
Roland or Johnny Mordaunt, or any of you but Jimmy and Eddy, give my
poor bones a hoist into the dining-room, for there is the butler
announcing the vivers."

There was a general outcry of recognition, for he was a great favourite;
and the bull-headed elder Mordaunt took him on one arm, and carrying his
crutches in the other, carried him into the dining-room, and set him
down between himself and his sister; James and Eddy skirmished in, Eddy,
half begging, half fighting for the recovery of his property, and the
rear was brought up by Roland and Mary, who sat side by side.

Not a soul spoke to Mrs. Maynard except in the way of politeness:
matters were gone out of her hands, for good or for evil. Such of the
company as glanced towards Roland and Mary might see that he was bending
his face towards hers, and talking so low that no one could catch what
he said, and that she was answering him by very few sentences, each of
which was accompanied by a bland, vacant giggle. Eddy and James Mordaunt
misconducted themselves as usual, James saying that Eddy was over-eating
himself, and Eddy saying that James was drinking too much wine. The
spectacle of these two fresh, innocent lads, with their babyish
horse-play of taking the food off one another's plates, might have been
amusing at another time, but was passed without notice now. There were
several anxious hearts at that table, and possibly the widow Maynard's
was the most anxious of all; though, indeed, Ox Mordaunt, looking across
Sir Jasper Meredith to his beautiful sister, was in his way anxious too.
For Ethel, there was no anxiety shown in her face. When her bright clear
eye was not looking down in pity and admiration on Sir Jasper Meredith,
it was raised to her brother's honest broad head, and he could look back
to her--well, as she asked her brother to look at her.

And with one of these glances of affection from brother to sister,
across that unconscious cripple, Sir Jasper Meredith's head, there went
this unspoken sentiment, "he can't be such a fool." Apparently,
however, he was; for Mary Maynard and Roland were whispering and
giggling down at the lower end of the table, and Dame Maynard's brow
grew darker and darker.

The only reasonable conversation at that table was that between John and
Ethel Mordaunt, and Sir Jasper Meredith; the little baronet, lying, a
heap of deformed bones, at the bottom of his chair, just able to feed
himself, and no more, with the ox-like Mordaunt on one side, and the
beautiful Ethel on the other; he considered himself in good company, and
said so.

"There seems to be a strength comes into my bones when I sit between you
two," he said. "I wish you hadn't got any money, you two."

"Why so?" said Ethel.

"Because then I could give you my money to sit alongside of me and talk
to me, as you are doing now."

"But we will do that without your money," said Mordaunt, "and our
conversation is not worth much."

"You are not clever, you two; but then you are so good. I should like my
Roland to be with me too, for he is handsome, and you are not handsome,
you know. At least you are handsome, Miss Mordaunt, are you not?"

"Don't you think so?" said Ethel.

"I don't know, bless you," said Sir Jasper, "I am too blind to see you.
I can see Roland's beauty when he is bareheaded by the shape of his
head, and I cannot see your head for your hair."

"You are not so blind as you pretend to be," said John Mordaunt.

"Indeed I am. I can see nothing in quiescence; I can see things in
motion well enough, and I am getting stronger in my sight. I like to see
Roland row, though I abuse him for doing so."

"I think you are quite right," said old Mordaunt; "I back you up there.
But this blindness of yours, there is a little affectation about it, is
there not?"

"Well, perhaps a little," said Sir Jasper, laughing. "There are none so
deaf as those who won't hear, and none so blind as those who won't see.
And I won't see the girl who is giggling down there, charm her mother
never so wisely."

"What! it is as I thought, then?" said John Mordaunt.

"I don't know what you thought," said the little cripple. "I know that
the estates come entirely into Robert Maynard's on his coming of age,
and that the widow Maynard, his mother, has only a fortune of 1000 a
year, and that she and her son do not hit it off very well. I know,
moreover, Miss Mordaunt, that Mrs. Maynard is so fond of good living and
of a good establishment that she would sell her daughter to an
articulate skeleton like myself to secure it; do you see?"

"I see perfectly," said Ethel, in the coolest way in the world. "But
surely the Evans' connection, which seems to be progressing so
favourably there, will suit all parties."

"It will suit all parties but one. Of course it is evident that Roland
is desperately smitten with Mary Maynard; and it is equally obvious
(although you may be disinclined to believe it) that she has sufficient
mind of her own to prefer Beauty to the Beast. The only person that the
Roland-Mary connection would not suit would be the old woman."

"He is a precious good catch for her," said John Mordaunt.

"Yes, but he is not such a good catch as me," said Sir Jasper.
"Roland!--I have hardly patience at his impudence in daring to compete
with me in a matter like this!--Roland has no qualifications comparable
to mine. His father will live thirty years longer; mine is dead. In ease
of Mary's marrying Roland, which seems, after to-day, certain, Mrs.
Maynard will only have an elder son's house to retire to; in case of
Mary's marrying me, she would have a house of 14,000 acres to retire to,
and no one to stand in the way of her management but her own daughter,
who is as clay in her hand, and a miserable cripple like myself, who
cannot get up-stairs without his valet."

"Mary Maynard must have a will of her own," said Ethel, "or would
scarcely go on with Roland as she is doing, without her mother's
consent."

"She is only allowed to do so to-day," said Sir Jasper, "because I,
steadily declining to come to book, Roland is kept string to the old
woman's bow. That old woman her daughter to the Cham of Tartary, and the
girl would never wince at the bargain. Look at her with Roland now."

"She seems quite devoted to him indeed, and he to her. How ways are?"

"Very pretty indeed," said Sir Jasper. "You mean her pretty little way
of turning her head up into his face when he speaks to her?"

Ethel said, "Yes."

"Ah, it is very pretty. I engaged a new groom the other day, and he was
brought in to see his new master, and I saw the look on that young man's
face when he first set eyes on this ruined heap of humanity, which his
fellow-creatures call Sir Jasper Meredith. I saw repugnance in his
honest, uneducated eyes, a repugnance which I have removed since. Yet,
Miss Mordaunt, that pretty girl, now using her pretty ways to Roland,
has been all this morning using them to the very same heap of disordered
bones which is sitting beside you, and which shocked a coarse groom!"

"You don't shock us. We love you. And, therefore, why need you have
shocked her?" said Ethel. And the elder Mordaunt said, "Right, Ethel!
Well said!"

Said Sir Jasper, airily, "There is not much to shock in her. However,
you two hear me to the end. The old woman will have Roland if she can't
get me, and she is not going to get me. And now, mark me: I will die in
the workhouse (which, with my wealth, is improbable; or in the hospital,
which is extremely probable, in case of my attempting the crossings at
Hyde Park Corner, or at Farringdon Street, indeed I have made myself a
life-governor of both institutions, with a view to such a contingency),
but Twill never let Roland's life--a life of such unexampled promise--be
ruined by marrying that girl."

Could he hear Ethel's heart? Professor T-- tells us that a slight
nervous twitch in one of his legs was enough to puzzle a party of
spiritualists. If the good professor's legs are subject to such terrible
nervous manifestations as Ethel Mordaunt's heart, we should be inclined
to ask him, as a man we cannot do without, to give up his Alpine
excursions. Her heart thumped, and beat, and throbbed in a way to puzzle
any number of spiritualists; but the heap of bones lying in the chair
beside her never heard it, and her face never betrayed it.

She said, very quietly, "Get me some of those cherries, Johnny; not the
May-Dukes, but the Morellas; I like sour cherries. My dear Sir Jasper,
if you would kindly take the trouble, at some leisure moment, to put it
to yourself what extreme nonsense you have been talking, I think that
your death-bed, whether it be St. George's or Guy's, will be all the
easier."

"As how, then, Beatrice?" said Sir Jasper; "give me some of your
cherries, or tell him to get me some more. No; I want yours; your
brother has picked out the best for you, and I want them. Hand them
over."

"I will give them to you; but it is not very polite of you to want
them," said Ethel.

"I am not going to be polite," said Sir Jasper. "Disabuse your mind of
the idea. I want your cherries. What were you going to ask me?"

"I was going to point out to you the nonsense you have been talking. You
say that you will prevent this match from taking place, which is utterly
foolish and wrong; and as a matter of curiosity, I should like to know
what business it is of yours, and what means you are going to employ?"

"My reasons against the match are that I don't choose it to take place;
and my means are--well, they are so numerous that I could not even give
a catalogue raisonnée of them. But I won't have Roland's life destroyed
by marrying that chit of a girl."

"How are you to stop it?" said John Mordaunt. "It is gone too far for
you, I doubt. Look at them now."

"Well, it is a strong flirtation," said Sir Jasper; "but I won't have
it. At times I have thought of marrying the old woman myself (she would
have me fast enough), and keeping the girl as an old maid for her to
bully. At another time I have thought of opening Roland's eyes; but then
he is decidedly in love with her, and would resent anything I said of
her. At another time I have thought that if he had not been an idiot he
would have fallen in love with--with some one else. However, that is all
over: there they go. Look at them. Confound--but it shan't be for all
that."

"Looks as if it was all over," said bull-headed old Mordaunt; "does it
not, Ethel?"

"It seems so," she said, quietly and naturally. "They have got their
heads close together there in the garden, haven't they? Let us get up
and go."

How much do cripples, and blind people, and deaf and dumb people, and
people who are cut off from the ordinary means of human intercourse see
or feel more than we do--who can say? Sir Jasper Meredith, lying there
in his ruin, had some dim idea that there was something in the nature of
a cloud, and the only way which he knew of dispersing a cloud was by the
old Shrewsbury trick of nonsense.

There might have been a little cloud in her eyes: there might have been
a slight tendency to expanding her bust, and casting her head back like
a snake about to strike, which, according to Mrs. Gray, was a spécialité
of the Mordaunts. Sir Jasper Meredith could not say why, but he felt it
necessary, and more than that, imperatively necessary, that some one
should talk nonsense to her. "She looks a deal too old for her age," he
said to himself. "She does not like that arrangement. Let me make her
laugh. It is impossible that she can care for Roland, and yet she is
angry at this."

Ethel had risen, with her beautiful square head on one side, and her
riding-habit gathered under her left arm, and had said, "It is time we
went home." When Sir Jasper said, "My dear Miss Mordaunt, will you sit
down again, for I wish to speak on a matter of business, and your
brother being present, no time can be so good as this?"

Ethel sat down at once, and her brother ate cakes.

"I wanted to ask you, Miss Mordaunt," said Sir Jasper, "whether you
would like to marry me, and become Lady Meredith?"

Ethel looked at him for one moment, but took time at her answer. She was
puzzled for an instant, but she saw that he meant to please and amuse
her, and she met him.

"You might do worse," she said, bending her beautiful face towards the
heap of bones, "and again you might do better; you might marry Mrs.
Maynard, or her daughter. Give me your qualifications."

"Twenty thousand a year," said Sir Jasper.

"Nineteen thousand five hundred too much," said Ethel. "I shall marry a
parish doctor, learn nursing, and get something to do. At any rate, I
will not have a word to say to you. And besides, sir, you are false and
faithless, for you love another. No, sir."

Merely a wild random shot of nonsense, kindly meant; but she saw that
her arrow had hit, and had gone deep. No one saw the slight spasm which
passed over Sir Jasper's face as she said these words, and she held her
tongue honourably.

"Mrs. Maynard," she said aloud, "Sir Jasper Meredith has just made me a
proposal of marriage, which I have refused in the most peremptory
manner. I really think that after such a dreadful ordeal as this, I
ought to go to my mother--you always do go to your mother in a case of
this kind, do you not? Assist me with your experience."

The experience of Mrs. Maynard was so different from that of this frank,
bold, honest girl, that she really had nothing to say. As for her having
sufficient humour to see that the whole thing was a joke between two
people who had been children together, and were mere brother and sister,
that was not in her. She did not doubt that the thing had taken place,
and that she saw before her a girl who had refused a man with twenty
thousand a year, and coal under his property, and he a cripple, which
was such an immense advantage. She was simply dumfounded. She rang the
bell, and ordered round the horses, and Sir Jasper took occasion to
order his pony-carriage.

It was very awkward. No one spoke for a long time, until Sir Jasper, in
a wicked croak, said, "Think twice over your decision, Miss Mordaunt.
You will never get such another offer in your life. Just think an
instant. Twenty thousand a year and a cripple! Think of that, a helpless
cripple! Why, bless you, Miss Mordaunt, you are entirely unable to see
the wonderful advantages which you are refusing. You have only to take
away my crutch, and you are absolute mistress. You could cut up my
deer-park for the coal that is underneath it, and double your income,
while I lay powerless on the sofa."

"It is of no use," said Ethel; and they all crowded out.

Young Evans and young Mordaunt could not, of course, mount without riot
and confusion; but at last they were all fairly under way. Ethel had
been put on her horse by her elder brother, and had ridden forward with
young Evans and young Mordaunt--ostensibly to pacify their great
quarrel, in reality to aggravate it; for in her heart she loved nonsense
and fun, as did Aunt Eleanor. James Mordaunt entirely refused to give up
Edward Evans' watch and chain, although he had restored his money. On
being appealed to by his sister to give up the watch, he replied that
there were certain cases in which the ordinary laws of social morality
were held in abeyance, and that this was one. He had thought the matter
through, and had concluded to retain the watch, more particularly as it
was a better one than his own.

Old Mordaunt said to Roland Evans, "Well, old boy, I congratulate you."

"On what grounds, Johanne mi?" said Roland.

"On your engagement with Miss Maynard," said the ox.

"Are you mad?" asked Roland.

"Are you?" said old Mordaunt. "You can't be a humbug; you may be an ass.
Are you not engaged to her?"

"Certainly not," said Roland. "What could have put that into your head?"

"What put it into your head to keep it so close to hers, old fellow?"
said old Mordaunt.

"I was only talking about her brother, who is to be married to my
sister. There is nothing between us. The girl is a fool. Why, your
sister Ethel is worth fifty of her."

"So I think myself," said old Mordaunt.

"But I don't want to be engaged to any one. I shall never marry, bless
you."

"Then I would let that be understood," said old Mordaunt. "The girls say
you are good-looking. I don't see it myself, but they say so. And if you
keep your head so close to Mary Maynard's as you did to-day, you ought
to mean something."

"You are a perfect fool, Johnny," said Roland. "To prove what a perfect
fool you are, I will go and do the same thing with your own sister. I
suppose that I am not suspected there? Perhaps you would like to get up
a scandal between Eddy and Aunt Eleanor. I leave you to your thoughts."

He went forward and detached Ethel from the squabbling lads. He rode
beside her all the way home, and he led her away from the others. He
called the old pointer to him, and on the north side of Longmynd he took
her down a little glen, alone. The old dog stood, and Roland, laying his
hand on Ethel's, guided her horse gently in front of the dog, until he
showed her the old grouse, swelled out with indignation, in the heather,
and the chicks running after her, "peet! peet! peet!" "Is it not a
pretty sight?" he said, with his hand still on hers, looking into her
face.

It was a very pretty sight indeed, that beautifully imperial head, with
the large speculative eyes. He did not mean that. He was speaking of the
grouse-poults.

"It is a very pretty sight," she said. "We had better go home now we
have seen it."

"I am sure that it was a pretty sight," said Roland, "for the beauty of
it is reflected on your face. Good gracious! don't tell your brother
that I said that, or he will be wanting to make out that I am in love
with you next. He has accused me of being engaged to Mary Maynard this
blessed day. After that he is capable of saying anything."

"Then there is no truth about this between you and Mary Maynard?"

"No more than there is between you and me," said Roland. "Why, she is
practically my sister."

Ethel might have wished it otherwise, but she was quite contented on the
whole. So on the long summer afternoon she rode beside the man she
loved, her loveless lover, through the heather--idle, foolish, aimless.

Come elsewhere with me, if you please. We have had nearly enough of
these silly, ornamental people for the present. Let us see how another
life or two, with the most important bearing on these summer
butterflies, are wearing on. Keep, please, in your mind, the picture of
beautiful Ethel, and the beautiful Roland; she loving him beyond
everything created; he not loving her better than his pretty brother
Eddy, or young Jim Mordaunt. Leave those two sitting on their horses,
whose knees were bathed in the summer heather, and come away with me
elsewhere--into the squalor of London.



Chapter 12.

This life of the rich English country gentleman would seem wonderfully
beautiful. In a well-set, well-ordered, well-trained house of this kind,
you get almost all the things which are supposed by ordinary people to
make life valuable. To begin with, you get rules of life and conduct, in
which you believe, and which are easy to follow: the following of which
(such as going to church in the morning and being as respectable as
another generally) gives you the prestige of being a respectable person.
Next you get an entourage of accumulated beauty and accumulated
tradition. No one ever knows of the accumulated art-treasures in any old
country house, until a sleepy and tangle-headed housemaid burns it down.
There you have enough to eat and drink; all of the best. There you have
air, light, exercise. The beauty of horses, the beauty of dogs, the
beauty of your grass-lands in spring and of your corn-lands in summer.
The beauty of your budding oaks in May, when the soft note of the
wood-pigeon tones down the slightly vulgar and too vivid green, and the
beauty of intertwining beech-twigs in winter, when the woodcock rises
like some swift, dim, noiseless ghost, and you have to concentrate your
whole intellect--all that is in you--into that second when you press
your trigger, and the pretty innocent bird lies dead, with out-stretched
wings, on the dead leaves before you.

Then, again, there was a greater beauty and a greater charm than any of
these things in a highly-toned English country-gentleman's house. I mean
the relations with servants; the relations between master and man,
between mistress and maid. One would be inclined to think that no
relations could be much more pleasant than those between a good master
and a good servant. These things, like much else, have passed away; one
only alludes to this relation in saying that the lives of such lads as
the Evanses and the Mordaunts are more to be envied, in many ways, than
those of any lads in Europe.

Now we will leave these Evanses and Mordaunts, and go to Camden Town.

That great outcome of one side of British genius is one of the first
things which an intelligent foreigner should be taken to see. As an
example of the national genius displayed in architecture, I conceive
that it is unequalled in Europe, and also in America; and in this
opinion I am confirmed, after consultation, by intelligent travellers,
who go with me in saying that it is absolutely unique. There is a depth
of vulgarity about it with which the Nevskoi Prospect and the Hausmann
Boulevards compete but feebly. The Russian and the Frenchman have each
made an effort at soulless, characterless vulgarity, but they have
failed because they have brought in the element of size or bigness, the
only thing which saves Niagara from being one of the ugliest cascades in
the world. Now, in Camden Town we have surpassed ourselves. We have had
the daring greatness to be little, mean, and low. We have banished all
possibility of a man's expressing his character in the shape of his
house: that is nothing--have not mere French prefects done the same? But
we have done more. Over hundreds of acres we have adopted a style
of house-building which is, I believe, actually unique in the
history of the world. The will and genius of a nation often--nay,
generally--expresses itself in architecture. Nineveh, Paris, San
Francisco, St. Petersburg, Pitt Street, Sydney, the Pyramids, are all
cases in point. With regard to Axum, of the Ethiopians, and Caracorum,
of the Tartars, one has little reliable information, but I have no doubt
that they would bear this out, and assist one in rendering the theory
arguable, that the genius of a nation generally expresses itself in its
houses.

It would be unwise to commit one's-self. With Chatsworth and Buckingham
Palace before us, it could not be asserted that the very curious taste
for gregarious vulgarity of opinion among the least vulgar, and really
the most independent people in the world, has culminated at Camden Town.
It is possible to say that, if Arminius were to see Camden Town he would
remark, "Here is the genius of the English nation in bricks and mortar.
Stone don't pay. You can't get at best more than four per cent. out of
fair Ashlar, and you ought never to build under seven."

Yet there are about one million people, of good education, who live in
these Philistine ghettos in London, and never grumble. Is there any
reader who does not know some family living in one of these artistically
abominable terraces--some family shut up, with not too much money, in a
hideous brick box--a family which, in spite of its inartistic
surroundings, exhibits every form of gentleness and goodness? Any reader
who does not know such a family is exceptionally unfortunate.

Some, whose souls are elsewhere, never think of its being inartistic and
squalid. Others, the people who habitually eat their hearts, beat
against such a prison like caged tigers. Until his grandmother came to
him, young Gray never thought of finding fault with the decent, quiet
little home he had prepared for her. When she came, he wished she had
never come, for he saw at once that she disliked him, and only knew
afresh that he disliked her; and now that she had come, she took good
care to prove to him, not only that she disliked him, but that she hated
Camden Town; and what was still more unfortunate, utterly hated his ways
and his works. A glance at him would not be amiss.

I have heard this gentlest, tenderest, and least cruel of men compared
to a bloodhound in face, because of a certain solemn and majestic
carriage of the head, and a lofty, uplooking, speculative habit of the
eyes, which the bloodhound has among dogs, above all other dogs. In
mind, Gray certainly resembled the bloodhounds: in this, at least, being
nearly the gentlest amid kindest of created beings; here the fancied
resemblance ceases. The bloodhound is the stupidest of dogs. Allan Gray
had a very noble intellect.

I have described that wild, fierce boy (for he was little else), James
Mordaunt, as carrying his head well; Allan Gray carried his as high as
ever did James Mordaunt. They both carried them like men ready to
strike; and when you consider that, from the utter dissimilarity of
their education, their utter divergence in every possible line of
thought, these two youths might have had to strike one another, one
would have prayed that they should be kept asunder. They were strangely
brought together.

In stature, he was singularly tall and well made, though very slight.
Even at his present age of thirty, be looked like forty--like a made
man. In manner he was extremely precise; silent and courteous; in dress
excessively neat.

Seeking about, scarcely guided at all, for a rule of life, he had found
a certain very eminent clergyman among the Dissenters who had given him
one which suited him so well, that he never departed from it. An entire
faith in the verbal inspiration of the Bible; a resolute habit of
self-examination and prayer; and an intense desire to do his whole duty
towards every one in this world: these were his rules of life, and he
followed them well, while Aunt Eleanor disliked him, and called him
prig. Though, while she laughed, she said that the world would get on no
worse for a few more of the same stamp.

His temper was naturally very quick indeed, but he soon discovered this
and tamed it--you will never see it exhibited. The good and noble man
who had done so much for him had an intense dislike of art in all forms,
and his teaching in this respect had fallen on congenial soil in the
case of Allan Gray. What with being naturally short-sighted, and what
with having a very intense and practical mind, he was absolutely unable
to understand the very word. Religiously, objects of art were strictly
forbidden by the second commandment; practically, they were a dead and
totally unprofitable loss of money, which might be given to all kinds of
good works. He admired his little home in Camden Town as being neat and
respectable, and as representing a great deal of sheer hard work and of
trust from his employers. In the jewellery which passed under his hands
he had taste--but not of his own. As we know, some boys, too stupid to
learn their Euclid, actually learn it by heart, and pass examination in
that singular way; so Allan Gray had actually learnt by rote what was in
good taste and in bad, and was more looked up to as an authority in that
matter than any one in the shop.

Such a man brought to such a home his wild old fury of a grandmother;
and in his honest, kindly loyalty, laid the whole of his hardly earned
home at her feet.

For the first week they got on very well together indeed. He returned
promptly from his business, and gave up his whole time to settling her
and making her comfortable. It was at the end of the very first week,
however, that the first jar occurred.

"As you are now comfortably settled, grandmother," he said at breakfast,
"I need not come home so early. Indeed, I shall not be home before
eleven."

She merely shrugged her shoulders; but he saw that she did not like it.
"I shall go to bed early," she said. "I don't care for looking out on
the gas-lamps."

"Can you not read, grandmother?"

"I have not got anything to read. I have read the newspaper, and I have
nothing to read besides."

"Have you read the book I gave you?"

"No. It is a religious book, which ought to be read by a religious
woman, which I most decidedly am not, and don't mean to be. I'll go to
bed and think of the fine old times."

I think all women can be kind when they have given deep pain, even to a
man they dislike. She saw such a look of hopeless pain in Allan Gray's
face as he left the room to go to his business that she called him back.

"There, you silly lad," she said, "don't mind what I say. You meant
kindly by bringing me here, and we shall do very well. I came because I
thought it would be a change, and I love change; and, heaven help me, I
have got it; it is duller than the other place. Let us bear with one
another, boy. I have money, and in a few years it will be yours."

"You do not think I want your money, grandmother? I had not the wildest
idea you had any."

"Go to your work," she said, imperiously; and he went.

When he was gone, she said, "I knew that he did not know that I had any.
He is quite honest. I wish I had not come. Brick walls for Caradoc; a
Methodist, or a pretended one, for my garden of beauties. Allan's
Puritan crop and mutton-chop whiskers for Roland's curly bead and Eddy's
pretty eyes. Well, I am freer here."

Such was the life to which Allan Gray was condemned. Was it an
unbeautiful or an unhappy one? I think that you will say that it was
not. That it was a singular contrast to the very beautiful life of the
Mordaunts, the Evanses and the Maynards, is most true. Camden Town is
not Caradoc, nor Saffron Hill Longmynd; any more than Allan Gray, the
toiler, was Roland Evans, handsome and strong, the favourite among
favourites of fortune. Yet they were both happy men in their way. Both
lived in the future; the one in a future of anticipated triumph; but
Allan Gray's future went further than Roland's as yet. Allan's future
went deep and far into the next world; his quiet fanaticism was as
potent a means of taking him out of himself, as were Roland's dreams of
triumphs in the Schools or the Senate. Roland's surroundings were as
graceful and as beautiful as those of a Greek. Allan Gray could dispense
with them, nay, was even glad to do so, for he called them in his quaint
language, "a snare." A man who is perfectly assured that in thirty years
he will be walking in the City of the New Jerusalem, as described in the
21st of the Revelation, is not likely to care much about the inartistic
squalor of Camden Town, even if he could appreciate it, which Allan Gray
could not. The costermonger, against whose barrow this solemn young
gentleman walked sometimes, and to whom this solemn "young swell"
apologised, did not know that the tall young gentleman was thinking with
his whole soul over the beatific vision. The Romish priest for whom
Allan sent when he found that a soul was craving, on the verge of death,
for the old offices which had given comfort before, little thought that
the young man with the face like a bloodhound, who had so courteously
handed over the dying man to him, went home to pray that the Scarlet
Abomination might cease out of the land.

A most perfect fanatic--a man who was unable to appreciate any form of
artistic beauty--a man given up to a business which be hated and
despised; and yet who had a flower-garden too; a garden also in which he
could see his flowers grow. They were apt to wither and die, certainly;
but he had heard that of all flower-gardens.

On this day, when he had first left his grandmother alone, he went first
to his place of business, the jeweller's, and dashed at once into the
books. The partners came to him once or twice on business, and he gave
back their kindly smiles of courtesy and trust as frankly and as
honestly as any man could. So he worked away at the dull figures, which
were not dull to him, for he had his purpose, until nearly three o'clock
in the day, and then uneasily began to hear the carriages pass. "I must
go into Vanity Fair soon, I doubt," he said to himself.

He was quite right. A youth came in and said, "If you please, Mr. Gray,
Mr. Henry wants you." And Allan, with a sigh, arose and followed.

Mr. Henry was the youngest partner, Allan's old friend: he managed to
brush past him. "Allan, my dear," he said, "to the rescue! Father and
uncle are both engaged, and here is the Duchess of Cheshire wanting
loose opals and sapphires for setting."

"C. 16 and Q. 19," said Allan, in a whisper, and passed on, with his
head in the air, for his interview with the Duchess, looking uncommonly
like an ideal duke himself. What were principalities and powers to him!

"The stones will be here at once, your grace," he said, calmly. "One of
the house has gone for them. May I take the liberty of inquiring whether
it is your grace's intention to set the stones together?"

The Duchess said, "I had a design of doing so. I wanted to give my
daughter, Lady Alice Barty, a necklace for her wedding. I thought they
would look pure and innocent," said the natural woman. "I mean, I
thought it would be in good taste," said the artificial one.

Allan bowed, and said, "They will be here directly, your grace." He was
back for one instant among the sapphire, the sardonyx, the jasper, and
the chalcedony of the New Jerusalem but he had two existences: he was
quite ready for her when she said--

"Do you think it will do?"

Now the Duchess of Cheshire was, in her old age, a very religious woman
of a certain sect; and a very open-handed woman also, as more than one
prophetical expounder of the Revelations well knew. Allan Gray knew it,
but would have died sooner than trade on it: nevertheless, he gave this
singularly odd answer, which, coming from a shop-manager to a Duchess,
must have rather astounded her grace.

"It would scarcely do, your grace, as the taste of the world goes. And,
as a general rule, you present to a young lady, on her real entrance
into the world, something symbolical."

"Yes," said time old lady; "but sapphire represents the blue of heaven,
and the cloud of onyx the troubles on earth." For she had got rambling,
too, and was thinking of the time when her son Charley was killed in the
duel, and of other disasters since, and forgot that the solemn, imperial
gentleman before her was only a shop "manager."

"In the New Jerusalem, your grace," said the shopman, quietly, "which we
will pray that the Lady Alice may enter, the gates were twelve pearls:
why should not her ladyship have a twelvefold collier of large pearls,
with the jewels interspersed? That would be really symbolical, I should
fancy, under your grace's approbation, and at least Christian."

The astonished old lady could only say, "Faut de mieu--would the colours
be in good taste?"

"They would be in St. John's taste," said Allan, with that curious
confidence and audacity which few other sects possess now, and remained
silent.

"It is a beautiful idea," said the old lady. "Your house is famous for
its good taste. I think I will say yes; I like your idea very much; you
are evidently a good young man. Plan out the necklace for me." And she
retired to her carriage, and talked all the evening, and for many
evenings, of the wonderful young man at Morton's. And Lady Alice Barty
wore that necklace on her wedding-day.

Meanwhile, Henry had been waiting with the sapphires and the opals, and
seeing the Duchess depart, thought that they had missed an order. "Why,
the old lady is gone," he said.

"Have you any exceptionally large pearls?" asked Allan. "What a pity it
is that we should have let the Googerat necklace go! I would give
anything for those pearls now."

"Hang it! you can have them if you want them. There was no cash
produced. She is burst up, and they are in the safe now."

"That is well. Keep the twelve best. I suppose you never heard of
Chrysopras?"

"Never," said the partner.

"We must try Giallo Antico," said Allan. "Get me these other stones, and
don't disturb me, if you can help it. I will go and design this
necklace; it is a large order for our house. Send the artist to me. 'And
the street of the city was of pure gold, as it were transparent
glass,'--that is, white enamel over gold. Send me the artist."

So the ultra-Protestant actually set to work to symbolise in his trade,
in a gold necklace, the very thing which puzzles and awes the most
advanced Christians. He was disturbed, if aught could disturb him.

Just before the shop's closing, he was called out again. This time he
had to attend to a different kind of people. An evil man was buying
jewels for a young girl, and the girl had had jewels bought for her
before, and knew their value, and was so particular that Gray had to be
called in again. He stood before these two quite quietly, and served
them well, and gave them his advice, knowing that he was serving his
employers. There were plenty of precedents in the Old Testament, which
he read most, but fewer in the New, which he read least. Those two were
as nothing to him. A hog comes to your gate, and you throw it an apple;
the hog is nothing to you, and they were less than nothing to him.

"Now," he said to the three partners, as soon as the shop was shut, "I
am going to walk in my garden."

"Does your garden take much to keep up, Gray?" said the senior partner.

"Well, it would cost more than I could afford, sir, if it were properly
kept up."

"Now how much, for instance," said the senior partner--"to keep it going
properly, you know--do you think it would cost to keep your garden in
order?"

"The whole garden?" asked Allan; "I have only a share of it."

"Say the whole garden, then," said the senior partner.

"Well," said Allan, "I could do something with 400,000 a year, if I
had the management of it. As it is, I do what I can."

"We were going to increase your salary," said the senior partner,
laughing, "by 100l. a year, but I suppose that would not be much for
your garden?"

"Very little," said Allan; and then, remembering himself, added, "you
are very kind to me. I thank you deeply. I will make good use of the
money which you entrust to me from God."



Chapter 13.

"Allan Gray was walking swiftly away, with his face towards his
flower-garden, when he heard himself hailed, and pausing, was overtaken
by the junior partner.

"Here is a young gentleman wants you," he said; "he has been waiting at
the shop-door ever so long, and having given you up, came into the shop.
I ran after you."

"A young gentleman?"

"A regular young swell. He says that he knows you would speak to him if
you saw him."

Allan Gray, coming into the shop, saw a slight, deer-eyed youth before
him, who held out his hand and said, "Allan, you have not forgotten me."

It was Eddy Evans. The few demonstrations of kindly feeling which
Englishmen allow themselves were over in a moment. Their eyes did the
rest, and then Eddy and Allan were alone in the street together.

"You had not forgotten me?" said Eddy.

"Was it likely that I could forget you? Did I not think you had
forgotten me?" said Allan Gray.

"See then," said Eddy, with both his hands clasped over Allan's arm, and
his face turned up into the solemn face of the other, "how unfair you
can be. Have I not deserted all pleasure, as they call it, to come here
for the higher and more real pleasure of seeing you?"

Allan said nothing, but he somehow noticed Eddy's hands, which were
clasped over his left arm. Eddy's hands were very small, and he had on
the most beautifully made lemon-coloured kid gloves.

These attracted Allan's attention so much, that he took one of Eddy's
hands in his, and held it there, and passed his brown fingers up and
down the seams, and said, "What pretty gloves!" For he loved the lad as
much as he could love any one, and he permitted his love to demonstrate
itself so far.

"I doubt you are an old brute," said Edward. "You are not a bit glad to
see me."

"I am very happy," said Allan.

"Yes, but you don't show it," said Eddy. "I am happy to see you again,
but I don't look like a--Memnon. I want to spend the evening with you.
Where are you going?"

"I will go anywhere with you," said Allan. "Where are you going?"

"I was going to dine at the Bedford with the others, and then we were
going to the play, and then we were going to Cremorne. But I gave it all
up to come to you, and you don't care for me."

"I care for you more than for any living being, Edward," said Allan.

"Hush, man, I know you do," said Edward. "Have I not come to you? have I
not proved that I, also, care for you--after Roland?"

"Friendships will settle in a few years," said Allan. "We will see how
this sentimental fondness for one another will settle itself. Which is a
great problem."

"Not such a great problem as this," said Edward. "Where are you going to
take me?"

"I was going to my flower-garden. Will you come? Dare you come?"

"I dare anything. I am an Evans, and I would sooner go to Newgate with
you than to Vauxhall with another. I will come."

"Then we will go. How did you come to London?"

"Our fathers gave us money to come and see the town, and we have come to
see it; Roland, and Johnny, and Jimmy Mordaunt, and I. And we have been
to St. Paul's, which is 404 feet in height; and to the Monument, which
is 202; and to the Tower, which was built by Augustus the Stark, King of
Saxony; and I found it very slow, for tastes vary. Indeed, Jim Mordaunt
quarrelled violently with his brother on the same subject on the very
summit and top of the dome of St. Paul's, Jimmy declaring that any one
could have built it if he had had the money, and Johnny accusing his
brother of trying to be fine. I got sick of all this giddy dissipation,
and asked Roland for liberty. So he took away my money, and let me come
to you."

"Why did he take away your money?" asked Allan.

"He always does. I give it away when people ask me for it, and so does
Jim Mordaunt. John Mordaunt used to take his brother's money away until
he got too big. Jim won't stand it now, and fights."

"You don't fight Roland, then?"

"No, Roland does as he likes. Nobody ever could resist Roland, you know.
Besides, he leaves me some. I have five shillings or more now."

"How old are you, Edward Evans?"

"Seventeen."

"You are very childish and simple. I doubt if we had better go where we
are going--yet, we will go. Are you too great a child to share my
pleasure? Why should I ask you? Let us come?"

The bright evening summer's daylight fell full and strong upon the
squalor of the streets through which they passed; streets which became
more squalid, mean, and ugly as they passed along. In the darkness of
the winter's evening their wretchedness is hidden; under the summer sun
it is patent. Eddy chattered at first, but less and less as the streets
got narrower and more dirty, and at the top of Saffron Hill he was quite
silent.

For the people were so wild, so strange, and so very fierce. They
scolded one another so much, and when they were civil to one another,
their language was hard and wild; and to Eddy, listening with his keen
little ears, it seemed that their conversation turned on two things
only, money and drink.

"I don't like this place," said Eddy, very emphatically; "it is a bad
place. I like pretty places and pretty things. What are those bells?

"The big one?"

"Yes; the one like Tom."

"That is the bell of the Roman Catholics; they have established
themselves here."

"Do they do good?"

"Every one who works for Christ does good," said Allan Gray, the extreme
Protestant. "Of course, they do good. They work among these Irish, whom
they have, for their own purposes, kept sitting in outer darkness, and
they do well. And they'd need."

"What is the little sharp bell?" said Eddy, getting interested.

"That is the Puseyite church," said Allan, with a smile.

"We tried that together, you know, at Shrewsbury."

"I liked it," said Eddy; "you did not. Do they do good?"

"No end," answered Allan. "I get into trouble for saying so, though."

"Do you Low Church and Dissenters do good, Allan?"

"We think so; you must come and see. Stay here a moment; there is a row.
Keep quiet."

The narrow steep lane before them was crowded with people of the very
lowest order, all talking in that dreadful, hoarse, London voice, which,
I confess, I have never heard elsewhere. As Allan and Eddy had been
looking down that lane, they had seen it swarming with "roughs," male
and female, intermingling, growling, and swearing; but now there was an
incident. Ask the next policeman, or read your newspaper, before you say
that I exaggerate here.

From the door of one of the houses came stumbling, impelled by some blow
from behind, a woman, bareheaded and mad, who recovered her balance in
the middle of the street, and confronted the door from which she had
come. Her fierce, bruised face, her demoniac fury, and her horrible wild
words, made Eddy tremble and cling close to Allan. In another moment a
man had dashed out of the door and confronted the woman, who was at bay,
and the cowardly crowd parted. It was an Irish row, and they were man
and wife. No one had a right to interfere.

Then began once more the fierce, wild objurgation, rising to a scream on
the part of the woman and a roar on the part of the man, until there was
an instant's silence, as he went at her. Then inarticulate curses, worse
than the worst roar of any wild beast, as he seized her by the hair,
cast her heavily down, and began kicking her on the head.

Not a soul of all the soulless cowards around interfered. They were
Irish; the man was a dangerous character; and, moreover, they were man
and wife. Not one soul interfered. Allan Gray uttered an oath which was
strange to his vocabulary, and made a dash forward against the crowd;
but there was one more nimble than he.

While he was stopped disputing by three or four heavy costermongers--vho
had the strongest objection to any interference, on any grounds, between
a man and his "missis," Eddy, with that rapid dexterity which is gained
at football and cricket, had parted the crowd--nay, had done more. He
had delivered his two little fists straight into the eyes of the Irish
gentleman, and was apparently prepared to do so once more.

It is impossible to say how the matter would have ended, for the woman
had risen, and dazed and stunned as she was by her husband's kicks on
the head, had her wits enough about her to see that this youth before
her husband was the youth who had saved her life by giving her husband
two black eyes. She therefore found it necessary, according to the creed
of her class, to entirely eradicate and destroy that youth. Having
thrown a few flowers of speech at our poor Eddy, she made a resolute
advance towards him, and in another moment it would have fared badly
with him--when Allan Gray, having been recognised by some among the
crowd, there was a cry raised of "Teacher! Teacher!" and he was allowed
to pass. With singular misfortune, he arrived just in time to get
between Eddy and the infuriated Irishwoman. Eddy, who was expecting
another attack from the husband, watched Allan Gray, and knew more about
him than he had ever known before. Deep down in the man there was a
strain of humour, utterly unsuspected by himself, but detected at once
by headlong Eddy, who knew the article when he saw it, if ever a lad
did.

The woman raged at him, with her ten nails spread out, blind in her
wrath. Gray with great dexterity caught her two wrists in his hands, and
said, quietly, "Now, my dear, good soul, do just think how very much at
random you are acting."

"Where's the young man as hit him?" she said, slightly struggling. "Give
me that young man!" And then she proceeded to describe what she intended
to do to that ornamental young undergraduate who had saved her from the
brutality of her husband, with a degree of detail which cannot be
reproduced here. Her object, it seems, was Eddy's lungs--she called them
his "lights "--and garnished her speech with adjectives and participles.
Her argument took the form of what a sporting paper might call
"reiterated asseveration." She struggled a very little, for the poor
thing was faint, and Allan Gray soon dropped her hands.

"Ah!" she said, "you're a teacher, I doubt; I didn't see you. But," with
sudden vivacity, "I'll have out the liver of any chap that lays hands on
my man! If they was a teacher's I would; if they was yours I would. He
has been a good husband to me out of liquor, and I'll stand by him
against-----." Aposeipesis is the best thing here.

"What a very foolish woman you will find yourself, if you once have
sufficient resolution to bring your mind to bear upon it, you know,"
said Gray, with the most perfect temper. "You should bring your mind to
bear on questions of this kind, and should not take action in this rapid
and illogical manner. You should think the question out."

"Where is the young man as interfered between me and my man? I'll have
that young man's life, I will!" she went on, with that hoarse, thick,
London voice, which most of us, alas! know.

"Now just think how foolishly you are talking," said Allan Gray. "You
would have been killed if he had not interfered, you know;" and the
whole business was suddenly finished by a maudlin and tearful
reconciliation between the man and his wife, not much less disgusting
than the quarrel; after which, Eddy and Allan Gray walked on together.

"I don't think much of your flower-garden as yet," said Eddy; "these
people are worse and more brutal than the country people."

"They have a hundred times more individuality of character," said Gray,
shortly; and Eddy, puzzled with the length of his words, passed into a
whitewashed passage, at the end of which were stone stairs.

Eddy thought first of gaols, then of workhouses, then of hospitals, as
they passed up flight after flight of stairs; but at last Gray opened a
door, and there was a warm whiff of hot humanity, and an universal buzz
of teaching and learning voices, and he thought at once of the old
class-room at Gloucester.

"Where shall I go?" said he, to Allan Gray.

"Where God directs you," said Gray. "I must attend to my class; God will
see after you. This is my flower-garden."

A strange one. About three hundred present in a whitewashed room, of all
ages, and nearly all degrees, divided into classes. Gray having deserted
him, Eddy the ornamental did what most shy English lads do when they
find themselves in a social difficulty, took off his hat, and sat down
in the first place he could find.

And what a queer place it was, and yet such a very familiar one. A young
gentleman, in spectacles, was instructing a class of boys in Scripture
history, and Eddy slipped in, on to the end of the form, as a kind of
ornamental head-boy, used to the situation, and dropped from the skies.
The instant he sat down on that bench the old school-fear was upon him,
and the spectacled young gentleman of his own age was his dreaded
master. That young gentleman looked at him through his spectacles, and
Eddy trembled. But he had sat down at the head of the class, and was
committed to anything. The young gentleman looked very much as if he
would like to go through a Biblical pedigree or so with him, and Eddy
devoutly hoped that he wouldn't.

Looking at his fellow-pupils, Eddy saw that there were eight of them,
and that these sons of the conquerors of India had developed their
genius in the direction of dirt. Yet there was a striking similarity to
the old Shrewsbury classes in the way they behaved. The furious,
irrepressible boisterousness, of which the Dean of St. Paul's
complained, was rampant enough here.

As Eddy sat and looked, he saw this. Two boys, utterly tired out, had
gone to sleep one against the other. A very brisk boy, who was very
creditably answering the Biblical questions of the spectacled young
gentleman, perceived these two boys. After looking steadily at the young
gentleman and at Eddy, to take them into his confidence, this boy,
instead of answering his question, advanced across the floor, and taking
the nose of the smaller of the sleeping boys between his finger and
thumb, half wrung it off his face; after which, he went back to his
place with the air of a boy who had done a dexterous thing, and
continued to answer Biblical questions in a way.

The young gentleman in the spectacles took no notice; and as for Eddy,
it seemed to him that he was back again at a school, mastered by
monitors. He was wondering whether or not he could "take down" the
present teacher, or whether he could be taken down himself and
everlastingly disgraced by the dirty boy who had pulled the sleeping
boy's nose, when a trifling miscarriage on the part of this very lively
boy got him relieved from his hideous thrall. The young gentleman in the
spectacles, doing good work, if ever a man did it, sacrificing time,
pleasure, age, and not a little health also, in his self-imposed task of
civilising these boys, had found nothing better to teach them than
obscure and very doubtful questions of theology. He saw Eddy, with his
dark-blue necktie, an Oxford man; a congenital Puseyite, as he had been
taught to believe, though Eddy was nothing of the kind. He therefore
thought that he would air his boys' theology before Eddy, and send him
back discomfited. The end was disaster.

"With regard to the true fold," he said; "who are the true fold?"

"All faithful people," said the lively boy who had pulled the other
boy's nose.

"And for whom do we pray in this collect, that they may be brought into
the fold?"

The boy meant to say, for he was a sharp boy, and remembered, "All Jews,
Turks, infidels, and heretics." What he did say was, "All Jews, turkeys,
fiddlers, and architects." After which Eddy fled.

There was at the end of the room, next the door, a class which had no
teacher at all; Eddy, in sauntering past it, and looking very curiously
at it, as he did at the others, was descried by them, and, so to speak,
hailed.

"Will you come here, sir? We have not got any one," said a
bright-looking lad about his own age, who rose from the teacher's chair
with a Bible in his hand, and confronted Eddy who could but come, very
frightened, with all his rings, and pins, and gewgaws; he sat down, took
the Bible, and stared round him stupidly.

"I don't know anything about teaching," he began, finding it was
necessary to say something, "But I know the Acts in Greek, and I have
been used to class and lecture. Where are we?"

The bright-looking lad's eyes somewhat attracted his, and he addressed
him.

"We are on the voyage of St. Paul, sir," said the bright youth. And a
voice at Eddy's other elbow said, "And we've been arguing. I maintain
that St. Paul would have to tramp it from Gaeta to Rome after they got
ashore there. And most burning and bustin' hot it is, as I well knows,
having tramped it myself; and nothing to see when you get there. Not to
be compared to the Broadway, or, for that matter, Sydney, or, if you
strains a p'int, Rio, or, if you strains another p'int, Ratcliffe
Highway. I never see nothing at Rome equally to what you may see at
Calcutta. That's the place. Why, old Jummagy Bummagy (Jamnsetjee
Jejeebhoy) hangs out a hundred times better than the old Pope. Blow
him."

Eddy looked in his wonder to the bright lad, who understood him at once,
and said--

"Sailor, sir."

Eddy looked suddenly at the sailor--a man with close-cropped grey hair,
and a red-brown face, with a rather obstinate expression; and as he did
so he shut up his Bible, and the others shut up their Bibles. For, as
the sailor said that night when he got into bed, they had been making
uncommon bad weather of it.

"I want to ask you people a few questions," said Eddy. "I think you are
better able to instruct me than I you. Will you tell me this--I hardly
know where to begin, but this, if it is not impertinent--what have you
got to live on?"

The heads went at once together to the centre of the class, listening.
Some one--of course, it is nobody's business--had better look at those
heads now and then, at a leisure moment. They are generally dirty,
suggesting blue precipitate; yet there are eyes in them out of which the
devil can look. The heads all drew together to hear what their
spokesman, the bright young man, was to say to this pretty lad, with the
200l. worth of jewellery on him. I doubt more than one in that class
could appraise Eddy pretty accurately--at Fagin prices.

"Well, sir," said the bright young man, "we ain't any of us got none on
it at all. We are all in here off the tramp."

"Have you been tramping?" asked Eddy, interested.

"Tramping round for work; yes, sir."

"How very pleasant!" said Eddy. "Why on earth did you come here? Do you
mean to say that you went on from one place to another, without caring
where you slept, in this beautiful summer weather? I should like that
immensely."

"You see, sir, that we had nothing."

"I always thought," said Eddy, "that you had barrows of cherries, or
grindstones, or vans with brass knockers, when you went on the tramp. I
always thought it looked so pleasant."

"We hadn't got no money," said the sailor.

"I have not got any, either," said Eddy, wishing to awaken a
fellow-feeling somehow, but feeling very much at sea. "My eldest brother
has taken away my money, because he was afraid I should make a fool of
myself; and my brother is a very talented young man, with a singularly
good judgment."

The sailor, who was getting sleepy again, assented to this proposition
more emphatically than good manners would warrant in other circles. He
was decidedly of a mind with Roland.

One of the other Eutychians here suddenly became animated as though by a
miracle, and said, in that hoarse Cockney voice which no one whom I have
ever heard, except Mr. Maccabe, can imitate, "If the young governor's
brother were a near hand with the dibs, as his were, Lord knows, yet the
young governor might probably have such a thing as the price of a pint
of beer about him, which he'd never miss," and was continuing his
argument when the sailor awakened himself thoroughly, and said in a
voice which, though hoarse like the Cockney's, was not slovenly as his
was, but emphatic enough to be heard ten feet off in the wildest gale
which ever blew round the Horn--

"Shut up!"

Eddy, a little frightened, looked at the bright young man, who raised
his eyebrows and put up his finger. For the old sailor was going to
speak; and it was evident to Eddy that this young man, for whom he was
getting a stronger and stronger interest, put value on the old fellow's
opinions.

"Your brother was right in a-taking your money away from you. I can see
as you've heaps on it, mor'n what most folks 'ud git through with. But
you'll never have enough. You'll give it all away, as I give mine; or
you'll lend it, or you'll drop it in the lee-scuppers in a gale of wind.
Why, if you was paid a hundred and forty pound down, as I've known done,
on the capstan-head in Hudson's Bay, for the run home, and that ship was
drove into Rio through one of these racing skippers racking every stick
out of her, you'd knock every penny of it down in a week. Your brother
must be an uncommon sensible young man for taking your money away from
you the minute you come ashore. I should like to see him. I wish I had a
brother as would have took mine."

"But, sir," said Eddy, puzzled and startled, turning over the leaves of
the Bible, "if you haven't got any money, we might give you some of
ours."

"What 'ud be the good, with two such as you and me? I've had heaps on it
at times, well earned mostly: though I picked up a digger once in
Francisco, which digger is on my conscience now I'm down in my luck:
fourteen hundred dollars at Eucre in three sittings, and I shipping down
right or left bower on the ground, as the hand served. Lord forgive me!
He won't try to pick up a British sailor again in a hurry," went on the
old man, with a flash of the old Adam. "But the money done me no good,
no more than yours will. I give the main of it away, and I knocked down
the rest; and then I loafed round, because I wouldn't ship for fear of
another rush, and I were very bad off, young sir, until Bill Taylor
come."

The bright young man whispered, "Let him go on, sir; he knows heaps of
things."

Eddy, with his Bible now wide open, and his eyes more open than his
Bible, asked--

"What did Mr. Taylor do for you, if you please?"

"He convinced me of sin," said the old sailor. "And I have never lost
the conviction. I can't help going on a-doing on it at times; but then,
don't you see, I'm convinced of it; and that's nigh half-way; for Bill
Taylor said so, and there was nobody ever like he."

At this point a loud voice from the platform said, with somewhat of a
whine, Eddy thought, "My brethren, I will now address you on the fourth
chapter of the Ephesians;" and at the same moment he felt a touch upon
his shoulder. It was Allan Gray."

"Arise, and let us go hence," he said. And Eddy arose.

But the class arose also, and came round him, and pressed on him. And
the bright young man, who was spokesman, said, "Come to us again;" and
all their eyes brightened when they said after him, "Come to us again."

And Eddy said, hurriedly, "I will try; I think that we might do one
another good." And to the young man he said, "Tell me your name, and
come to me at Ashley's Hotel to-morrow morning." And the young man gave
him his name; and his name was Joseph Holmes.



Chapter 14.

Allan Gray, taking Eddy, departed somewhat swiftly by a side-door, just
as the expounder of the evening had laid down his argument, which was
that the whole human race was naturally doomed to a fate utterly too
horrible for description, or even contemplation; that the Deity had in
all time and eternity known the fate of each individual; and that there
were certain symptoms by which you might know whether or not the Deity
had beforehand, apparently for no reason, condemned you to eternal fire
or everlasting bliss. Allan Gray and Eddy had heard this much before
Allan got Eddy away from his new friends.

When they were in the street, Allan Gray said, "Well, it is cooler here.
That fellow would have it hot enough for us, if he had his way."

"But I thought you were the same way of thinking yourself," said Eddy.

"Don't begin that sort of thing, pray don't," said Allan, with extreme
irritation. "What earthly business can it be to you what my religious
opinions really are?"

"I am very sorry," said Eddy; "I did not mean to make you angry; please
don't be angry; no one is ever angry with me, you know."

Allan's touch on Eddy's shoulder quite reassured him. That little
gentleman knew the look of an eye, and the touch of a hand, as well as
most.

"My dear soul," said Allan, "who could be angry with you? I am only
angry to you. You are one of the very people expressly made to be angry
to."

"Well, be angry to me then," said Eddy. "What is the matter? Are you
cross with the fellow who was preaching, for instance?"

"Yes. God is not a vindictive fiend."

"F-- was chassèed for saying the same things in the very same words,"
said Eddy.

"Let them try it with me," said Gray, in a low snarling voice. "Is
Samson to sit for ever in the Temple of the Philistines? Let them
provoke me to get my two arms round the pillars, and the house shall
come down upon their heads, and on mine too. I tell you, young Evans,
that God is not as they paint Him."

And Eddy said, "You went about searching for formulas, you know; and you
have taken up these. If they don't suit you, change them."

"Have you no faith left then?" said Allan.

"Yes; I think so. But ask me when I lie dying, and I'll tell you better
about it."

"Sixty years hence," said Gray. "How is your Aunt Eleanor?"

"Very bad," said Eddy, a boy again.

"What is the matter with her?" said Gray.

"The same that was the matter with the young lady in 'Pickwick'--want of
taste. She don't like you."

"Does she dislike me very much?" asked Gray.

"Most specially and particularly," said Eddy. "Whatever your doubts on
religious subjects may be, you may make your mind easy about that."

"Don't be flippant," said Gray.

"I am not," said Eddy. "I am speaking to facts. My aunt hates you like
poison."

"What does she say against me?"

"She says you are such an abominable prig. And so you are, you know."

Many do not understand English badinage. When it seems coarsest and most
offensive, it frequently only proves that the men who are using it are
the best friends in the world. This last remark of Eddy's made Allan
Gray laugh, and put him in good humour.

This good humour was so obviously shown on the face of Allan Gray that
Eddy shot his bolt, and then with his keen, kindly, steady little eye,
watched to see whether or no it had hit.

"Come home with me to the hotel and see Roland."

"Oh dear, no!" was the reply.

"Well then, don't," was Eddy's not undexterous answer.

After walking a little time, Allan Gray said, "I hate meeting
gentlemen."

"Which is the reason why you were sorry to see me. Go on."

"But I am not sure, whether or no, it would not be better for me to meet
your brother."

"Why?" said Eddy.

"Well, I can't exactly say."

"Well then, come on, and don't be an ass."

"Mind," said Allan Gray, "he is to be civil."

"Was he ever anything else?" said Eddy.

"He will not have returned from the playhouse," said Allan Gray.

"He is thundering away at his logic by now," said Eddy, "so come."

And so the rivals met. Eddy, in writing to his Aunt Eleanor, pointed out
to her that both on the father's and on the mother's side he had come of
families famous--not to say notorious--for good manners. But he frankly
confessed to his aunt that he had never seen any such politeness
exhibited as was exhibited in the interview between Roland and Allan.
"Allan's manners," he said, "were perfect (for there is nothing in the
least degree Brummagem about Allan), but Roland beat him."

Roland, the scholar and the athlete, had his square-sided, snake-like
head bent over his books when the two came in. He was sitting in his
shirt-sleeves, and he caught sight of his brother first, and Allan saw
him drop his pen, and noticed that the two brown hands turned themselves
with their palms uppermost, and spread themselves out to meet those of
the brother. Allan, standing in the shade, saw this; but saw more. He
saw a bright light in Roland's face for one instant, which he knew, but
which I have a difficulty in describing. The eyebrows were elevated and
the mouth was slightly parted, and from between the parted lips the soul
said: "My darling! My darling! where have you been?"

Allan looked into the soul of Roland for one instant. It was enough for
him. Not now for one instant dreaming of the great question which was to
arise between them, he remembered those words, and envied Roland nothing
but his pretty little brother.

"And which, indeed," said Eddy, "I am not going to tell you where I have
been. Here is Allan Gray come to see you."

The bright expression on Roland's face was changed at once. Allan Gray
only saw before him a very tall, handsome young man, with a short,
curling head of hair, who rose and greeted him with the smile of
courtesy--a very different smile from that with which he had greeted his
brother Eddy.

"I am sincerely pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gray," said
Roland. "At one time I confess I was extremely jealous of the influence
you had over my brother Edward. I am jealous no longer. I hear nothing
but good of you. I think that you have done what I have not--conceived a
line of life for yourself, and that you are following it out. I
understand that you are given to good works."

This was so frankly said, and evidently so frankly meant, that even that
king of prigs, Robespierre, could not have resisted it. Allan Gray had
no such intention.

"You receive me frankly, and like a true gentleman," he said. "With
regard to your jealousy of me, it is nothing; with regard to my having
made a scheme of life, it is the I did so--you, so young, can wait; with
regard to my good works, some of us must turn to, or the house will be
afire."

"You will sit down and be comfortable, now that you have come, won't
you?" said Roland. "What are these good works of yours, and how can I
assist at them?"

"The work at which I am assisting," said Allan, "is the old work of
civilisation. We are trying, through one form of Christianity, to
civilise the people upon Saffron Hill. The way you can assist at it is
by giving me money."

"That is easily done, and shall be done," said Roland.

"Thank you," said Allan; "send the money to me. What we, who are
working, want is money. The Puseyites at the top of the Hill want it;
the Papists are beating us by having more than we have. 'Money! money!'
is our cry. I have not got any; send me some. What are you going to do
with yourself? Soldier?"

There is an implied compliment, to most young men, in being accused of
going into the army. We are a nation which is never at peace. The gates
of Janus are never open with our people. We are always spreading the
English language somewhere. The great American army, recruited from
20,000,000, beat down an army recruited by 8,000,000. The English army,
after a death-throe with Russia, crushed out a rebellious army backed by
a population of 150,000,000. Therefore Alphonse, Arminius, and Silas,
don't you get villipending the British army. Is such a lad as Roland
Evans to be thought a fool because he blushed scarlet when Allan Gray
called him soldier? And, indeed, he looked like it. It was a compliment.
We may have had our Walcheren, or indeed our Chillianwallah. But, my
good Alphonse, brother of my heart! we have never had our Passage of the
Beresina (we will give Eylan as a French victory). Arminius, my dear
fellow, there was a battle of Jena once. Silas, my dear, did you ever
hear of Bull Run? No! all young fellows of spirit have a pride in being
thought British soldiers in esse or in posse, and Roland liked Allan
Gray for his suggestion; for Roland had fought most of the battles of
modern Europe, and indeed some which have not been fought yet; for
example, the battle of Nieder Lahnstein, where you, being (do you see) a
Frenchman, turned your Prussian left, dash at the heights behind
Ehrenbreitstein, take them, and have the whole of the Rhine Provinces at
your feet, don't you see, with the command of the Rhine. Roland would
have undertaken to do that little business for you to-morrow, just as
willingly as he would have undertaken to bring about a coalition between
the older Whigs and the Radicals, both doctrinaire and uneducated, for
he was a boy of schemes. And this young man, Gray, was a young man of
perception. Roland warmed to him, which was well for him.

"I should like to be a soldier," he said; "for I am strong, courageous,
and clear-headed in danger; but I fear I am condemned to Parliament."

"I wish I was," said Allan, "I would get some things done, I know, if I
was."

"That's just it," said Roland; "you wouldn't do anything of the kind.
You can do nothing of the things you want to do. Where would Free Trade
have been now, if it had not been for a combination of perfectly
incalculable accidents? Peel for one accident; the Irish famine for
another."

"You go too fast," said Gray. "Who told you that Free Trade was a good
thing, except in particular cases? I allow that free trade in corn is
good, as it feeds the people; but Free Trade in other matters is murder
to us in this over-populated country. When we get a nearly pure
democracy, we shall have protection to native industry back again--hot
and heavy. A pure democracy will never stand Free Trade. When did they
ever do so?"

"I don't remember," said Roland.

"I fancy not," said Gray. "Your American and your Canadian laugh it to
scorn. There is such a queer 'petitio principii' about it in the first
term (correct me if I am wrong, for I have not been to Oxford and learnt
boat-racing), which seems to me to condemn it. We practically find that
we can compete (having a very rich and compact country) with every
nation on earth on advantageous terms. Therefore, Free Trade is as good
for other nations as it is for us. And so we send our dear Cobden to
tell other nations what he entirely believes--that a franc is as good as
a shilling. Some nations believe him; some don't. The Americans don't,
and they are a trading people too."

"But you are attacking the very principle of Free Trade," said Roland;
"why, the very Tories have given it up."

"There spoke a Whig," said Allan Gray, laughing the while. "Won't think
for himself; will only think for his party. What are you going to do
when you get into Parliament?"

"Precious little, I suspect," said Roland, laughing also. "It takes half
a dozen first-rate men, and accidents to back them, to get anything
done. And I am not a first-rate man, and my accidents are inseparable,
and become qualities. For instance, I have too much money."

"Give some of it to us then," said Allan Gray.

"I will. Depend on me; you and I shall be good friends in time. Now what
would you do, if you were in Parliament? How would you get matters
done?"

"I should go on making myself a nuisance, like the importunate widow,
until they were done; look at--. Look at him, and a fool too, all said
and done."

These two rather splendid young men were drawing nearer and nearer to
one another. They were not very unlike in character, though cycles apart
in thought. Roland moved closer to Allan, and said, "What things would
you have done, for instance?"

"Why," said Allan, "I would have the poor cared for better; and with
regard to the public schools--"

He had, in reality, spoken some tolerably reasonable sentences about the
public schools, but for dramatic purposes we will not repeat them. There
was a violent objurgation outside the door, and then a violent crash
against it. The Public Schools were upon him, to the utter puzzlement of
poor Allan Gray. "Why were such fools brought into the world?" he asked
himself at first. And then, when the rough prettiness of their
horse-play had made him laugh, he said, "What are they good for?" Let
the boy Arbuthnot answer him that question, with the flag shaping itself
on to his dead limbs! India is a great fact, my dear Allan Gray, even in
these times of big things; and these boys helped to get it for you. And
although the 180,000,000 can't accept Christianity, yet we have made
them accept railways. Our boys are working your work, Allan Gray, and
pretty near half of them have died in the service. Don't abuse the boys;
they are not bad fellows when you know them.

For here they come in their fury--their quaint, petulant fury, which
accounts for all kinds of battles; let us say from Agincourt to Magdala
(popular, but incorrect). In comes Jimmy Mordaunt, blind with wrath,
hotly full of his grievance; in comes Johnny Mordaunt, making as much
noise as his brother. The old story--the elder brother has dexterously,
in pretending to get change, grabbed all the younger one's money, and
considers it as prize of war, refusing to give it up. The brothers Evans
take violent sides in the dispute, and a row royal ensues.

It seemed so strange to Gray to see Roland taking part in such boys'
play. It lasted some time; doubtless, like Tom Pinch's organ, to the
great delight of the gentleman downstairs and the gentleman overhead;
and when it was over, Allan Gray was gone.



Chapter 15.

I think that Roland was secretly angry with the elder Mordaunt as to his
good-humouredly bringing him to beck about Mary Maynard. Miss Mordaunt
was much too fine a young lady to have any mistakes made about her of
any sort or kind. He would have been profoundly delighted that Roland
should marry his sister, and would be very glad to see his friend happy
with Mary Maynard. Only John Mordaunt, by far the shrewdest of the five
boys, was determined that he should make up his mind.

Roland and Ethel had been brought up together, and had always called one
another by their Christian names, and as Roland would have said, were as
brother and sister. So would not Ethel have said. Ethel's secret was
known to two people, and guessed by a third.

Miss Evans had seen it, and had tried rough excision, as we saw; that
awful Mrs. Gray had guessed it, and had bullied Phillis Myrtle to give
her a philter, which would have only a temporary effect, and would go
off, as she hoped, after they were married, causing neglect en Roland's
part, and cause the red-handed, wild, rude Mordaunt clan to become her
daughter's avengers on the Evans family for what she had suffered at
their hands. Such was the amiable old lady's scheme at one time, before
she retired to London. She was gene.

One more, as you may remember, knew Ethel's secret,--her brother Jim.
Jim used, when a youngster--indeed, right up to the time of the bathing
accident--to bully every one he could get to stand it, and, among
others, of course, his sister. Both of them high-spirited, rough, and
strong, they used to have terrible battles, for she would resist in
defence of her property, and resist fiercely too, though he was too
strong for her. His father had thrashed him for it, his brother thrashed
him with a cricket-stump for it; but the boy only lay quite quiet and
silent on the grass while the blows descended, until Johnny, with a loud
oath, threw the stump far and wide; and then the boy got up and let out
his sister's fancy fowls into the farmyard--a horrid kind of revenge,
which he could enjoy silently in her bitter disappointment at the shows.
On the whole I think that when she was about twelve years old she fairly
and honestly hated her brother James.

That there is a natural brotherly love I know; that it may, under
certain rare circumstances, be changed into a far other feeling, I have
seen.

An actual cessation of hostilities took place, as a matter of course,
when they were about fourteen, which was succeeded by indifference.

After Roland had saved Jim's life, there was, as the Doctor saw, a
marked change in the latter. At home they were surprised at him. Though
by no means less boisterous, his boisterousness had lost all its
cruelty; and though he was far too close-mouthed to say anything to his
sister, yet she noticed an alteration in him beginning--nay, it had
scarcely begun when it was over. Before he had been home a week, John
was profoundly astonished at Jim bursting into the room where Ethel and
he were, and saying, "I took your whip over to Shrewsbury, and waited
while it was done; and I asked for the cheesecakes, and he had not get
any of them," and bouncing out again. Still more, a week after, did his
father and mother notice Jim and Ethel, with their heads together,
walking rapidly and talking eagerly, going over the hill
rabbit-shooting.

Of course, Jim talked a great deal now about Roland; and why should not
she talk of what pleased him? This talk went on and on until it grew to
badinage on the part of James, which she sometimes resented. There was
no secret between them at all, only they never, either of them, spoke of
Roland when others were present, save very slightly. And one day, James,
in a mad mood, cut off a lock of Roland's hair, and sent it to his
sister in a letter. She scolded him, but she kept it.

So the cloudless vacation went on--not one appearance of change. Nothing
happened, save one, of the slightest importance, and that was only known
to three people.

The Shrewsbury people must have a regatta, and Squire Evans and Squire
Mordaunt being asked rather early for subscriptions, and being acted on
by their boys, sent very large ones, arousing the wrath of their
political opponents and the emulation of their neighbours. Sir Jeremy
Hicks and Sir Topham Shiner topped them at once, and the committee found
themselves with half as much money again as they wanted. There was only
one thing to be done: make a greater thing of it--a four-oared race for
£5 cups, and a pair-oared race for similar cups, open to all
England.

Our young men had never thought of rowing, thinking there was nothing
worthy of their skill, until the news of this came. It came first to the
Evanses at breakfast, and Roland and Eddy were across the valley to the
Mordaunts in ten minutes. They would row, of course, now it was no
longer provincial: but old Maynard? Roland volunteered at once, before
anything could be done, to ride across Longmynd to the Barton and see;
and, in spite of Jim's prophecy, returned with Maynard to lunch, rather
fat, but looking like rowing too.

Squire Charles Evans took the most intense interest in it. Devoted to
every kind of sport, he had never seen any of this, now promising to be
the most popular of all. He'd bear all the expense; he'd give them a
handsome present all round if they won; he'd give a dinner to the
tenantry: there was nothing he would not do. That evening Eddy was
despatched to Oxford for a boat, with orders to see it home, and they
discussed their plans.

These fellows had been carefully taught to row together for five years,
and now had developed into four heavy men, perfectly accustomed to one
another. They had rowed together often at the University also, but had
only tried their strength in some college fours, which, of course, they
won easily. They rowed thus: James, bow; John, second; Ox Maynard,
third; and Roland, stroke. Eddy, coxswain (9st. 4lbs.); James Mordaunt,
the lightest rower, 11st. 2lbs.

They found they went as well together as ever. After the first burst,
they turned and looked at one another, and said, "That will do." The
only question was, "Who was coming?"

They never went near Shrewsbury. They found a piece of the Severn, lower
down and nearer Stretton, which was even better than the course. To this
place every day went the drag, the Squire driving, with the crew and
divers occasional gatherings; once Sir Jasper Meredith, who sneered at
the whole thing, generally Mildred, or a servant or two. Aunt Eleanor
and Ethel used to ride over, and trot along the tow-path, and the young
men rowed none the slower for that. Several times, while rowing
about--for they spent most of the day there--Roland made Mildred get in
and steer, and once, to her awe and delight, with her hair broken down
and streaming like a flag, they took her raging all over the course at
full speed. This was on a particular occasion when Eddy had to be
elsewhere.

It was reported that two crews had come to Shrewsbury, and it was
necessary that Eddy should go and look after them, and returned with a
face blank with dismay. "This won't do, fellows," he said; "there's the
London Rowing Club there."

"One of their scratch crews come pot-hunting," said Jim.

Eddy mentioned four names which made Roland whistle loud and long--some
of the best names in the club. It was even so. Four club-oars were going
to retire into real life this season, and being four old friends,
thought they would see the last of it handsomely; and so, going on from
regatta to regatta, from Barnes upwards, now found themselves at
Shrewsbury in an amused state of mind.

"I think we can manage the Manchester crew," said the London coxswain,
laughing.

"There's a local crew of bumpkins training down the river," said number
two. "Do you know what they are like?"

"No! but I know their stroke's name, 'Evans'--did you ever hear of him?"

"A youth to Henley and to fame unknown! Can't say I do."

"I'll tell you, then," said stroke. "Evans is the man who won his
university sculls by beating Hexam easily, and Hexam is the man who won
the diamond sculls by beating you."

It was number two's turn to whistle new. "I wonder what sort of stuff he
is sitting behind," he pondered.

"Pretty good, you may depend upon it," said stroke. "I wish we were
fitter. Fancy getting picked up in a place like this! I shall emigrate
if we are."

The Londoners easily beat the Manchester men; and soon after came down
to join issue with their "dark" opponents, whose captain was the great
sculler Evans, the young man who had beaten the last winner of the
diamond sculls. They saw the Shropshire boat swinging up towards them,
and they did not like it. Stroke said, between his teeth, to coxswain,
"Picked up, by Jove!"

Our lads had not the least idea of winning against these well-known
London names; and looked on them all, particularly stroke, as a
countryman looks at Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Disraeli; for, not having been
to Henley, they had never seen these mighty Londoners. And, indeed, they
were worth looking at; set men, of about three or four-and-twenty,
bearded, brown, with brown ribbed arms--it looked, size excepted, like
David against the Philistine.

Roland guessed pretty well what the London tactics would be, and he was
right. When the word was given, the Londoner went away like a whirlwind,
with the hope of getting far enough before them to wash them--that is to
say, to keep the other boat riding uneasily in their wash, taking off
one-third of their pace, and so win by sheer desperate rowing. Roland,
on his part, was determined that this should not happen, and, with his
experience, was away so quick after the Londoner that he never really
cleared the Shropshire boat. For three quarters of a mile the struggle
went on in this way, and then condition began to tell: Roland began to
gain. Eddy did not see it at first; and when he did, he whispered the
fact to Roland, who never changed his stroke. Aunt Eleanor, who was
riding on the tow-path with her brother, gave a somewhat unfeminine
shout when she saw her beloved Eddy's boat steadily pass that of the
London coxswain. The Squire who rode with her, was in the wildest state
of excitement.

A quarter of a mile from the post, the Shropshire boat had drawn fairly
clear, and a little further the Londoners made one of those splendid
efforts for which they are so famous; coming on with a rush, they
completely headed the Shropshire boat, and the Squire's heart was in his
mouth--he thought it was all over. But not so, Roland: crying out
"Gloucester," he, for the first time, quickened his stroke, which was
well responded to, and after a furious struggle (the Londoners rowing
magnificently to the last), pushed the boat in half a length ahead.

Shrewsbury reared aloud in the fulness of its joy. Here was a boatful of
their own lads, Evanses, Mordaunts, and Maynards, which had beaten in
fair fight five of the pick of London's rowing chivalry. They might well
roar, and indeed they did; and in the middle of their roaring, the
Squire laid his hand upon his sister's arm, and said, "Follow me,
Eleanor, quick."

There was a narrow lane up to the hotel, and they pushed their horses up
it. The yard was deserted, save by an ostler or two. Sliding off his
horse, and followed quickly by Aunt Eleanor, who thought he looked
strange, he went into a little parlour, and having shut the door,
fainted away on a sofa.

She rang the bell, and did what she could for him. When the man came,
she said "Doctor! quick! Don't make a fool of yourself and tell any one.
Doctor, I tell you."

Before the Doctor came he had got sensible again, but was a little
stupid and wandering. Eleanor took occasion to ask the Doctor what it
was, and was it the sun?

He said, "No, my dear Miss Evans. I had better trust you with the
secret, but I would keep it from him: it is his heart."

So ended the Shrewsbury regatta, with these consequences, at least. The
coachman drove the drag home, and the Squire thought he would sit
inside, being tired; it was nothing. They rioted and shouted all the way
home; and Mildred, sitting between Jim and her lover, was inexpressibly
happy, and Eddy outshone himself. Ethel Mordaunt rode with Aunt Eleanor,
and cast many a look up at the party on the drag, as though she would be
glad to be there herself. But the Squire sat alone inside, dull in the
reaction after the morning's terrible excitement, and thinking of many
things past; and Aunt Eleanor rode along, very dull too, and wondering
whether she had done right in promising to keep his illness from his
wife.

He got perfectly well the next day, and no one was the wiser. But on the
12th he made excuses: the day was hot, the birds were well-grown and
wild, he would find them at luncheon at the Cairn and chance a shot
there, but Roland must take his gun in the morning.

This refusal of his to shoot seemed very much to impress Squire
Mordaunt. They had shot together on the 12th for so many years now, that
he knew there was a reason. Very often during the day he looked very
pensively and curiously at Roland, and seemed a little guilty when
discovered. He talked often to Roland, but in a constrained manner, as
though leading up to a purpose, which Roland, who was as quick as
lightning, saw in an instant.

What a singular delusion that is, talking up to an object, of leading
the conversation towards your question! The feeblest intellect can
detect the manoeuvre, and the feebler the intellect the more cautious
and reticent does it become, from the mere instinct of self-preservation.
Again, used towards a tolerably good intellect, this need of gaining an
answer produces irritation of the highest kind; it is an insult to the
understanding. But perhaps what the Americans call the "highest old
sport," in the way of conversation, is to hear an inferior intellect
using this dodge towards a higher one.

It was soon evident to Roland that Squire Mordaunt was trying to lead up
to something, but he could not find out what.

"Well shot, boy," old Mordaunt would say. "Ah, you should shoot well;
you come of shooting stock. I suppose in your time, when it comes, you
will keep up the old head of grouse, hey?"

"I don't like to anticipate that time, sir."

"Quite right! quite right!"

Then again, "We will take the south side of this glen, Roland. Knee-deep
in fern, lad. Every acre would grow corn. Shall you, now, break any up?"

"I am very well as I am, sir. I have never thought of such things."

"You should. Suppose you had a lawsuit over your father's will, now,
with Eddy. And there's Mildred's fortune--very large, I can tell you;
and then there's your mother's jointure, very large. You won't be so
very rich, I can tell you."

"I shall have enough for my wants," said Roland; "and to tell you the
truth, Mr. Mordaunt, my father has been such a kind and gentle friend
and companion to me, that I shan't care much about taking possession."

"Very meritorious. You are a good fellow, Roland; I hope my boys are of
the same opinion."

Roland could not make out his object at all, and had to be yet more
puzzled.

"Bless me!" said Squire Mordaunt once again during the afternoon; "what
tearaway young fellows you are now-a-days. Why, there's young Redman:
his mother has lost all her jointure in railway shares, and he has given
her up the estate for life, and gone to Canada to make a fortune there."

"Happy fellow," said Roland. "I envy him. I'd a hundred times sooner
have the making of a fortune than the spending of one."

Mr. Mordaunt pressed him no more, and meeting Squire Evans at lunch,
they all talked and shot together, and Squire Mordaunt having dined with
them, walked pensively home under the harvest moon, and went straight to
his study, and sat down in front of his escritoire with a candle.

"The boy," he mused, "will do well anywhere, if all goes against him. If
all goes with him, however, he will be a poorish man. The defence of the
Langley estate against the Bourden Langley claim took six years' rents.
Whew! let us look at it again."

He took out a letter. Let us look at it--

"Sir,--As a friend of the Evans family myself, I wish to inform you, as
another friend of the family, of this very singular fact:--At the death
of the present Mr. Charles Evans, the succession to the estates will be
disputed.

"I know nothing, and can advise nothing. I only know that they are not
going to move during the life of the present Squire and, moreover, that
they have a great deal of confidence.

"Yours,

"Nemo."

"I don't like the look of it," said old Mordaunt. "These people have
money behind them and a good case, to judge from our friend Nemo's
letter. I shall ride over to old Eleanor."



Chapter 16.

See broad and big Squire Mordaunt pensively riding, on a great brown
horse, into the gate at Pulverbatch, under the dark elms, past the
fish-ponds, up to Aunt Eleanor's front door. See his own daughter
running out in her riding-habit to greet him, and making him bend down
from his saddle for a "regular good hug." A pleasant sight!

"Why, puss," said her father, "I missed you at breakfast."

"I rode over here. She is necessary to me at times. She does me good."

"Stick to her, my girl. There are few like her. Where is she?"

"Out in the yard;" and having given up his horse, he followed his
daughter until they came to the gate of a splendid, deep-littered
straw-yard, of great extent, hemmed in on all sides by various
buildings, and on one side by a vast barn, as big as some cathedrals,
from the open doors of which came a pleasant sound of thrashing.

Advancing slowly across the centre of the litter, in a short gown, with
her back well in, and her head well up, a basket on her arm, came Miss
Evans, heading a wedge-shaped procession. In front of her skimmed and
hopped innumerable pigeons, about her feet and immediately behind her
were the fowls--the hens "pawking" and gandering, the little ones losing
their mothers in the crowd, and peeting shrilly when trodden on by the
bigger ones; the cocks solemn and gallant. Then about forty little black
Fisher Hobbes' pigs, shrieking wildly, and changing places until they
looked like four hundred; then a dozen porkers, two calves, and four
hrumphing old sows bringing up the rear. With this following, she
approached the gate, and saluted Mordaunt--"Well, George, and so you
have found your way here once more?"

"I should come here more, if you did not scold me so."

"That's nonsense. I only scold you when you provoke me. How are you, old
friend?"

And so, pleasantly chatting, these three went the tour of the farmyard,
looking at all its wonderful order, thrift, and abundance. In the
"woman's kingdom," which some say is coming, I, projecting my soul into
the future, prophecy that a very great number of "disenthralled" women
will become farmers, and, moreover, the very best of farmers. Even as
they are now, with such education as they are allowed to scrape
together, a vast number of women have every qualification which goes to
make up a good farmer. Thrift, diligence, and attention to details are
three qualifications which few, even now, will deny to the majority of
women, and those three qualifications are one half the battle. Let them
be instructed in the science of the matter, and that is not such a very
difficult thing, and the instinct of order and management, so much
higher in ordinary women than in ordinary men, will do the rest. Why are
we always wanting (by advertisement) a "Lady Superintendent" for some
institution or another? Why cannot a "limited hotel" get on without a
"Lady Manager"? Look at the duties of a great nobleman's housekeeper;
and then tell me that a well-trained, clear-headed woman could not make
a better farmer than one half of the ill-educated, narrow-minded men who
have got the land. Why, one of the best-managed farms, some 14,000
acres--mind you, in Victoria--was kept by two old maiden ladies: and for
that matter, Eleanor Evans is no ideal personage.

"I wish I could make my farm pay like this," said Squire Mordaunt,
pensively. "I lost a thousand pounds the last two years. If it was not
for my wife keeping things so well in hand in the housekeeping, I should
be pinched to keep the boys at the University."

"Why don't you give the farm up to her, then?" asked Eleanor; "then you
might go on with your fox-hunting, and your game-preserving, and your
politics, and your magistrate's work, with an easy mind. A farm takes a
man's or woman's whole time and energy, and here you put ten irons in
the fire, leaving the poor farm till the last, and then come crying to
me because you lose money over it. Come in."

They went into Eleanor's long, dark room, and she put down her hat and
her egg-basket, and taking a particular pencil from a particular place
on her desk, began writing a date on each of the eggs, as she handed
them to her aide-de-camp, Ethel, who meanwhile had opened a long
drawer--one of a dozen in an old oak press; the drawers were half filled
with oats, and in these oats Ethel carefully placed every egg, in the
succession in which it was handed to her.

"There," Eleanor said, when it was done; "I suppose you are too fine a
gentleman to do that?"

Mordaunt confessed it.

"I thought as much," said Eleanor, triumphantly, "and you talk of
farming! Why, by this simple detail, and by never trusting the eggs into
my servants' hands, I average ten chicks out of every sitting of
thirteen; and, in spite of your bothering foxes, which I, not having had
my warnings attended to, mean most persistently to trap, I made 97
last year out of my fowls alone, clear profit. What does your pork which
you eat cost you?"

"I never made any exact calculation," said Squire Mordaunt, drily. "I
got up to 8s. a pound once, and then I dropped it. I want to speak to
you."

"Then, Ethel, my love, go and get the garden report together for me, as
your father is going to waste my time. (Ethel went out.) I am sick and
tired of you men. I don't know what you were brought into the world for.
And then, if things go wrong, it is always us. Now, what is the matter?"

"You did not always think so of men, dear Eleanor," said Squire
Mordaunt.

"And don't now, my dear George. Ah, it is a long while since that. Where
is your brother?"

"In India still."

"Ah, well! George, remember that no one but you and I know that only
tender passage in my life. Keep my secret."

"It is not much of a one, Eleanor. He made you think that he loved when
he did not. And you talk of it being the only tender passage in your
life! Why, your life is a piece of music made up of tender passages. But
here, I am uneasy, and I have come to you as having the clearest head in
your family. Read this," and he put before her the anonymous letter.

She read it twice very carefully, and then she folded it up, and said:
"This is very serious and very annoying, indeed."

"Have you any idea what it means?"

"Oh, yes! I know well enough what it means. It means twenty thousand
pounds worth of law, and very likely a sequestration of the estate
pendente lite. You were called to the bar once--that is good law
language, is it not?"

"I have forgotten my law," said Mordaunt, "but that don't seem to ring
true somehow. However, I understand what you mean, which I probably
should not if you stated it correctly. What is it all about?"

"Oh, it is the old Cecil Evans's claim on the estate, dormant now for
forty years. It was last made when our father came into the estate. His
father died without a will, and our father inherited; and then up gets
one Cecil Evans and claims to inherit as eldest legitimate son. He
abandoned his suit after a short time, publishing everywhere that it was
only from want of funds. Indeed, I remember to have heard it said that
many thought him ill-used. He went to Australia, where they have made
mints of money, and are now far richer than we are; and now they are
going to spend some of it in trying to turn us out."

"Have they a good claim?"

"Good enough to cost a deal of money. But it was always said that we had
papers which would checkmate them. Old Somes, our solicitor, is alive
still. Let us communicate with him; he knows all about it."

"Shall we tell Charles?"

"Certainly not, unless they move before his death. I have my reasons for
not telling Charles."

"They should be good ones."

"They are good ones. I tell you it would kill him in a week," said
Eleanor.

"Has he been ill?"

"Yes! Between ourselves, he had a very dangerous attack the day of that
silly regatta. Let us go to old Somes."

"Well, we will agree to it," said Mordaunt. "What was the name of the
man who--you know what I mean--before my brother?"

"Georgy Rolston," said Aunt Eleanor, frankly. "I wonder what has become
of him, for instance."

"He is Dean of St. Paul's," said Mordaunt; "the very man who is looking
after our boys."



Chapter 17.

All things must end, even a long vacation; and the yellowing leaves
began to tell of separation. But what are changes under such
circumstances as we find here, with youth, health and wealth? only
changes from one form of pleasure to another. The mothers and the
sisters, saddened at the parting, listened to the young men's talk; it
consisted only in anticipations of pleasures even greater than those of
home. They were glad enough to get away, as they had been glad enough to
come.

With regard to young James Mordaunt, however, it was very difficult to
see whether he was glad or sorry at the change. He spoke with intense
pleasure of his return to the University, and of the various things they
would do, yet he was distraught, melancholy, and by no means himself:
and no explanation could be offered of the change in him, except that he
had fallen in Love with somebody.

Since Roland had been spoken to on these matters by the downright
Mordaunt, his conduct had been most discreet; he had never flirted with
Mary Maynard--when any one was by; and as for Ethel Mordaunt, he had
treated her like his sister, only with more profound consideration.

They had all left their college in early summer, full of anticipations
of home; and now they returned to the college, full of anticipations of
an agreeable change from the perpetual sunshine weather of home; and the
change after all was a failure to them. The great, first attraction of
one of the old English Universities, is the entire and perfect freedom
from restraint during the time when the youth is as much a schoolboy as
ever. On the return after the first long vacation, this is almost always
gone, and the individuality of the man begins to show. The man is not
merely a cricketing, or boating, or tart-eating schoolboy; not merely
the gregarious creature of whom you can scarcely find five separate
types in a school of five hundred; he begins to show what individuality
there is in him; begins, when thrown on himself, to show what he is
likely to be in the future.

The most empty and frivolous of lads; the lad who has spent his first
year in doing all that he has been forbidden to do, drinking and smoking
more than is good for him, ordering things which he does not want, but
which must be paid for, finds out this; for no human soul was ever
satisfied with new waistcoats and fresh jewellery for long. He gathers
these choice flowers still, but the bloom and scent are gone, and he
merely goes on doing it because he has begun; and becomes, in his third
year, if he lasts as long, a miserable and unhappy spectacle, entering
on the ministry of a church which requires a clear head and a held heart
for her service, a blasé, heedless man, often deeply in debt, sighing
regretfully, up to the latest moment before that Trinity Sunday which is
to alter his life for ever, for the fleshpots of Egypt. With him we have
little to do; these lads of ours had little in common with him, yet they
felt that the University was not as it had been.

There was certainly some little pleasure at meeting such few friends as
they had; but this did not last long. The river, which they all loved,
was not the same, with its broken reeds and muddy banks, as it was in
bright June. They took their four down, and rowed as splendidly as ever;
but it was in a perfunctory way, and Roland was a little cross at the
observation which they attracted, and demanded of Eddy the innocent,
whether they could not go down the river like others without being
watched. The four-oared races were rowed that term, which made Roland
the more petulant; and the first day, seeing certain men prepared to run
up with them, he rowed like fury over three-quarters of the course, and
then eased, turned, and rowed down again, giving these gentleman their
run for their trouble. The University was a failure as far as boating
went. "What rot it is!" he said in the barge. "I could find four
watermen here on the shore, who could give us a hundred yards, and row
round us."

"You are beginning to find that out," said Sir Jasper Meredith, laughing
at him. "Didn't I always tell you so? You are a fine fellow, Roland; but
you have neither the pluck nor the dexterity to sweep a chimney."

"I'll bet your life I'll sweep any chimney in the University I can get
into," replied Roland, in a loud voice.

"Leave him alone, Meredith," said old Mordaunt, "or he'll do it. He has
got out of bed the wrong side, and will make a fool of himself in any
way you will name, if you will only defy him."

"True, 0 king," said Roland, laughing, in good humour. "Well, what shall
we do till bell?"

Jimmy Mordaunt, in a stolid sententious manner, looking nowhere, with
his head in the air, suggested that they should go up street together,
have ices, and look at trouser-patterns for Sunday morning. "We used to
like it well enough four months ago," he said; "of course we should like
it now."

Sir Jasper Meredith laughed, winked, and said, "He has read you the
lesson, that young bull. Take hold of me, will you, and carry me
somewhere out of this. Are you going to take me over the plank, old
Mordaunt? Well, old Mordaunt, and what do you say to it all?"

Old Mordaunt was far too wise to say anything. He grinned, however, as
he deposited Meredith with his servant. Nothing more.

There was a ghost of a revival of the old days among them that night.
They were quietly together in the Evans' rooms, when it occurred to
James Mordaunt to take strong objections to Eddy Evans' recent conduct,
on many grounds. There was no new specific charge at once, but a number;
and James put it that he was getting objectionable in many ways. That he
was steering badly, talked loudly in the street, ate too much and too
fast, slopped his drink about at dinner, talked while he was chewing,
and scraped his plate with his knife. This, of course, as was usual,
ended in denials and recriminations, in which Eddy used language towards
James which of course ended in a fight, or to speak more truly, in a
blind, aimless, innocent romp between the two lads. Unluckily, however,
even the old fun fell worse than dead, for Eddy, having laughed all the
wind out of him, as he afterwards explained, fell rather heavily under
James Mordaunt, and made his head bleed. They did not fall so light as
in the old times. Poor Edward would have cried if he had been still a
boy; but it was their last romp together.

Old Mordaunt had started a pipe, the first of the set who did so, and
puffing it, he said, "You two must give up skylarking. You are getting
too old and too strong. All that has passed away. Eh, Roland?"

They put down their names for the Greek prose lecture, because the Dean
still had it, but only for his sake. The Dean's eyes brightened when
they came in, and they brightened up also when they saw their good
friend.

But it was all as dead as ditch-water. Maynard, the ox-like, who never
said anything, but went his ways through the world without exciting
himself (saving when he quickened his perfectly rowed oar to the motion
of Roland's back) now was the brightest of them all. Their old world had
become dead to them. Before him a new, bright, and most beautiful world
was about to open. The Dean knew why, and was not surprised; but he was
surprised that this good, handsome, not over clever lad should shine so
brightly beside the four others, so much brighter and cleverer than he.
"The mere fact of a lad's going to be married next Christmas," said the
Dean to himself, "need not make all that difference. There is something
wrong in these Gloucester boys."

Maynard had never been a great favourite of the Dean's. He had thought
him lumpish and rather stupid, though his scholarship was high for that
college. The Dean had very little society in his college, being by far
the best man there, and the tattle of the common-room was distasteful to
him. Consequently he spent far too much of his time in his own rooms
among his books.

But books will not last a man always. The eye gets physically wearied of
print in time, and when that happens, a man should have society among
his own equals. In his own college the Dean had none. His old friends
were dropping one by one from the University, and the few who were left
were changed in many ways, and the Dean was a lonely man. So it came
about that in the dull, long nights, when the college was asleep, he had
got into an unfortunate habit of summing up his own case against
destiny. A most unhealthy habit indeed.

Here was his case against destiny. He was the son of a poor clergyman,
but a splendid scholar. His father had carried everything before him in
the way of University honours, and had then thrown everything--his
fellowship, his chances of promotion--in every way to the dogs, by
marrying a young lady to whom he was promised, and by declining on a
small curacy, where his scholarship was a mere incumbrance. He had then
got a small living, and had just lived long enough to get his boy (the
Dean) nominated to a good public foundation. After which he died,
leaving his wife with 100l. a year of her own, and 1500l. on a life
insurance policy.

This 1500l. was devoted to the Dean's education: money seldom went
further. At school the boy carried everything before him, spending as
little as possible, and spending nothing without consultation with his
mother. "I must be a great man," he said to her. "I have abilities for
it; and I must show among boys and men as a gentleman, and not as a
scrub. If you will trust me, mother, I will invest this money at cent.
per cent." And she trusted him; and was he not now enjoying an income of
700l. a year from a capital of 1500? He did all he had ever said he
would do, and his mother lived in wealth, happiness, and pride; talking
of her son, the Dean, among the gossips, as though he were Dean of
Durham, and waiting calmly for the time, now soon to come, when he would
be head of his house, and Vice Chancellor, walking, in scarlet cloth and
velvet, among princes, warriors, scholars of all nations, with six
silver maces before him, conferring honours upon them all. Good lady!
her heart swelled with an unutterable pride, as she in her imagination
rehearsed her behaviour as mother of the Vice-Chancellor, when all the
sages from the east and from the west, from Berlin to Harvard, should be
taking their honours from the hands of her son.

Could he destroy it all by telling her that he was a miserable and
disappointed man; that he had missed his aim in life; that the world she
thought so great was so unutterably small to him; that his deanery of
the college was merely in his eyes the situation of an over-paid
bear-leader; that the position of proctor, in which she had rejoiced so
much, was an office utterly loathsome and degrading to him, which he had
fulfilled so ill and so unwillingly, that he was cheered to the echo by
all the worst of the undergraduates at the end of his term; and that his
name was even now remembered as that of the "good proctor"? Could he
tell her that there were times now when he recalled what he had meant to
be, which made him say to himself in his bitterness that he would as
soon be carried through the streets as Guy Fawkes, as walk through them
as Vice-Chancellor? No; he could not tell all this to her, or to any
one; though as the evening which followed the first day of the term
closed in, these thoughts came crowding on him as thick as ever--nay,
thicker. He would not face the long night alone. He rang his bell, and
sent his servant to request Mr. Maynard to sup with him at nine o'clock.

Then he set all his doors open, and walked up and down through all his
rooms, from one end to the other, still putting his case against the
world. How came it that he was tied here by the leg, an inevitable head
of a house, an equally inevitable Vice-Chancellor in his turn, while the
great world, in which he could have shone, went spinning on and leaving
him and his ideas behind? Could he have escaped, the very name of his
college would have been a drag and a shame to him in those days. And his
holy orders, forced on him by the rules of his house--there was a bar.
His head grew hot as he thought of that, as it always did; for the Dean
had opinions which he kept to himself, but which even the breadth of the
National Church could scarcely hold. And he was an honest man. If he had
ten thousand a year to-morrow, Parliament was closed to him. He put that
thought under his feet and stamped on it.

"Get," said a very pleasant voice, "a bishopric. With your political
power, not so very difficult." And he said to himself, "That was very
neatly put, my dear friend in black. Fancy if it was to come to that!"
And as he said it, he grew pale and trembled. And then he went into his
innermost chamber and knelt before a chair; but he had scarcely knelt a
minute before he cast the chair from him, and began his walk again,
singing what he was apt to sing a little too often when his scepticism
was strongest, and his consequent cynicism greatest--

"There was turning of keys and creaking of locks. And he took forth a
bait from the iron box. Many the cunning sportsman tried, Many he flung
with a frown aside, Jewels of lustre, robes of price, Tomes of heresy,
loaded dice. At length was a perfume of sulphur and nitre, As he came,
at last, to a Bishop's Mitre."

"Well, it has not come to that yet. Let me forget! If I had only had ten
thousand pounds, and if she had not been a fool,--God bless her!--it
might have been different. Let us prepare for this young bridegroom."

A bitter, cynical tongue had the good Dean, well known in lecture, in
common-room, and in senate-house: a man who had made many enemies by his
stinging, quiet sarcasm. Some of those enemies would have given money to
have seen him now, forty-five years of age, and in a wig, gathering
flowers out of his little terrace-garden by candle-light, and bringing
them in, and laying them on the table, sorting them out and putting them
in a vase. Poor old Dean!

His next act was much more Don-like, and less sentimental. He took his
bunch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked his escritoire, and from a
second place in it took another key. And even while holding that key in
his hand, he did another strange thing, not to be believed by
senate-house or hebdomadal board. Pulling aside a pile of neatly
docketed papers,--which were, indeed, so many lamentable efforts of
Greek prose, all to be waded wearily through in the course of the
week,--he took out an old bundle of letters tied together, in the tie of
which was stuck an old rose. Going to the table, he took the best fresh
geranium he could find, and put it in beside the rose, and laying down
the letters beside the Greek exercises, scratched his head in deep
thought, and in doing so scratched his wig off.

It fell impartially, like the rain, on the Greek exercises, the letters,
the rose and geranium, and looked up at him, as only a wig can look.
With an air of vivacious effrontery, as though it would say, "You and I
are fine fellows; but must pull together; we are nothing apart." The
Dean scratched his bare head, and said, with a sigh, "Ah! it is too late
for all that now."

The sudden entry of his servant caused him to lock up his escritoire
very rapidly, and to lock his wig inside, with his love-letters and the
other witnesses of his folly. Turning to scold his servant, he caught
sight of himself in the glass, and scolded not. He undid the escritoire,
and taking out his wig, put it on in the presence of his servant, and
going with his key to his most sacred wine-bin, took out a very
particular bottle of wine, saying to himself, "This will unloose his
tongue, at all events."

In came supper--a most delicate, light little supper, for the good Dean
had learnt in his seclusion to know the pleasures of good eating, and
had, indeed, sent two of the young men in the kitchen, at various times
and at his own expense, to his London club for instruction. In came
Maynard, beautifully dressed, looking splendid, with a geranium in his
button-hole. The servant was sent away, the oak sported, and Maynard,
the simple, was left undefended, to be pumped by this wily old Dean.

"You won't find any beer here, Maynard," said the Dean. "These vivers
are too good to be washed down by that infernal compound of malt, hops,
and raw beef, which is good for nothing but to irritate the temper, and
the consumption of which accounts for so much of our national history.
You will find a bottle of White Hermitage beside you: don't be afraid of
it. I have my half-pint of Beaune, as you see. A young stomach like
yours should be able to stand hashed vension (not Magdalen, my dear
youth, but Arundel) and Hermitage."

Maynard made some respectful reply, and they supped like gods; and when
thoroughly refreshed, moved to the fire, with their wine between them.

"And so," said the Dean, "you are to marry Miss Evans at Christmas."

Maynard's sober tongue was thoroughly loosened by drinking White
Hermitage as though it were beer, and he thought the Dean an uncommonly
friendly, gentlemanly fellow, and very handsome too.

He replied, without the least sheepishness, that such was the case, and
received the Dean's congratulations with respectful dignity.

"If you will allow me, we will drink to the bride-elect," said the Dean.
And down the throat of the innocent Maynard went another quarter of a
pint of the White Hermitage.

"A handsome family," said the Dean. "At least judging from Roland, I
should say so. Eddy is ugly, certainly; but one might almost predicate
of him that his inseparable accident would be pretty sisters."

"You think Eddy ugly, sir?"

"Decidedly, I should say. A weak, silly, frivolous little being, but
very amiable."

"I assure you, sir," said Maynard of the loosened tongue "that you are
quite mistaken. Eddy has quite as much go in him as Roland."

The Dean laughed, and put the question by. "The Evanses are very rich,
are they not? You get wealth as well as beauty and wit by this match, I
hear."

"No," said Maynard. "I have a large property. She only has five thousand
at present."

"Indeed! By-the-bye, did I dream it, or is there not some of the Evans'
property alienated?"

"Not that I am aware of," said Maynard. "I settle two farms on her for
pin-money. In case of my death, she has everything, barring my mother's
jointure and my sister Mary's little fortune. There never has been any
question of money. Why should there?"

"Of course not," said the Dean. "I am clumsy in my inquiries. I wanted
to know whether there was not some of the Stretton property
alienated--on Miss Evans, I mean."

"Aunt Eleanor!" said Maynard.

"Exactly," said the Dean, settling himself. "The very person. Fill your
glass, and tell me all about her. I knew something about these Evanses
in old, old times, and I remember this Miss Evans. She has taken to
woman's rights, farms her own land, goes shooting, and goes to market,
does she not? She was pretty at one time---what is she like new?"

"Aunt Eleanor," said Maynard, solemnly "is one of the most beautiful
women you ever saw in your life, sir; and if there is an angel on earth,
it is she."

"Pity she did not marry," said the Dean, whistling.

"There never walked a man in shoes good enough for her, sir; and that is
why she did not marry. As for her estates, which she certainly farms,
they would be defined by Mr. Hallam as an appanage to her mother's
right, in no way influencing the succession, or in any way at the mercy
of the main hereditary branch. They are at her own disposal."

"Hang Mr. Hallam!" said the Dean, fearing that Maynard had drunk so much
Hermitage that he would get sententious instead of communicative. "Why
did she not marry?"

"You may ask my mother that story, sir," said Maynard.

"Come, you know it," said the Dean; "and you may as well tell it. Do you
ever smoke a cigar?"

There was no hesitation in Maynard's confidence after this.

"Miss Evans," he said, "had once a proposal from a man whom she greatly
esteemed, and to whom my mother says she had shown the most marked
partiality. To the great astonishment of her most intimate friends, she
refused him so emphatically that he retired, and was seen in that part
of the country no more."

"Ay, indeed!" said the Dean, "a poor-spirited fellow. Well, and did she
ever give any reasons for her unreasonable conduct?"

"They became apparent to a few; although she esteemed the first man,
there was one she esteemed more; in fact, she refused the first man in
favour of another."

"And is yet unmarried"

"Yes; the man was a soldier, and had shown her great attention; but the
one word was never spoken by him, and he went away and married another.
It was disappointment and a feeling of humiliation in having given away
her heart and not having it accepted, which prevented her from ever
marrying."

"Still handsome," said the Dean, thoughtfully.

"Still beautiful," said Maynard; and took his leave.

The Dean, sitting before the fire, said, "She had better have had me
before I had to wear a wig; but it is too late now." And there was no
one to care what the Dean said, so he took off his wig and went to bed.

Nothing is easier than to go to bed; but few things, at times, are more
difficult than going to sleep. The Dean found that out. As soon as he
was in the dark he began thinking. If I were to write down all what he
thought about, you would certainly not read it. I can only give you the
results.

"Eleanor still handsome, and I a bald old man in a wig: though I am only
her age, when all is said and done. I have a good mind to go down and
see her; but, perhaps, I had better send my wig, to let her see how
things stand. She has taken to all kind of things, why the dickens
hasn't she taken to socialism? Then she might turn her estates into a
Phalanstery, and I would join her with my money, get her to marry me,
and burst it all up triumphantly. After such nonsense as that, I know I
must be going to sleep."

But he was not. After a full hour he was broad awake enough to say,
"What did I ever do to K-- that he should have sent these outrageous
young Bedlamites to me, and so arouse my interest in her again? There
will be mischief among these boys. K--licked them into shape; he would
lick any boy into shape I ever saw. But boys have any ugly trick of
growing into men; as they are. And one single pretty woman would play
the deuce among the lot of them."

Finding that this consideration did not make him more sleepy, the good
Dean arose, and putting on his wig and some clothes, buckled to at the
Greek prose exercises: which had the desired effect. For he fell asleep
over them, and nearly burnt down the college, but only in reality burnt
his wig.

As he had not got a lock of hair on his head to send as a specimen of
the colour, the leading barber of that town sent him the closest match
he could: a bright red wig, made for a gentleman commoner of scrofulous
tendency, of St. Vitus' College, who had had his head shaved for
delirium tremens; the only wig without grey let into it which the barber
had in stock. The Dean took it and wore it, to the delight of the
undergraduates; for a red wig was better than a grey one.

"If my confounded hair had stayed on my head," he thought, "things would
have been different. I am only her age." And so be made himself
ridiculous by wearing the red wig. If any one else had done it, he would
have murdered them with sarcasm. But no man knows what an ass he is when
he is in love.



Chapter 18.

A very long foreseen confusion now occurs in this story. If the kind
reader has been patient enough to notice the fact, he will perceive that
not one of the people whom I have tried to present to him in an amiable
light had been doing anything at all. The energetic Gray, the most
active among our characters, hitherto had been only vegetating. There
had come no question between him and the world. Aunt Eleanor's chief
glory was in her plan of sowing white rock stubble turnips, and arguing
with Mr. Martin Sutton, of Reading. As for the boys, they had been doing
rather less than nothing. Sir Jasper Meredith having now attained his
majority, had built some cottages, but finding a return of scarcely one
per cent., had gone off into doctrinaire radicalism, and had screeched
his commonplaces of supply and demand into the ear of a sympathising
vestry, who said that they always knew that no Meredith was the man to
raise the rates on them. But none of them had done anything.

The whole lot of them would have slept through life, and awakened
wondering in eternity, had it not been for a bouleversement in affairs,
which brought out the character of all.

We must follow our boys first. In spite of the cynical croaking of Sir
Jasper Meredith, these boys held together, with Roland as their captain.
In those old times men could row and read at the same time. Witness an
Oxford eight at Putney, in 1852, with two first-class men in her. Now we
have changed all that; it matters not, I am only speaking of the past.
In the four-oared races of the October term, Brasenose, with the
splendid fury which seems to be a specialité of that college, rowed down
every crew in succession, until they were thrown, in the last terrible
heat, against St. Paul's, maimed by our five boys. Brasenose, with the
Berkshire shore, raged away ahead, in the style which few men can
approach. But when the Gut was passed, the steady steam-engine style of
the Gloucester boys began to tell. Eddy Evans, sitting like a little
Memnon in the stern, merely nodded to his brother to quicken the stroke.
Roland did so, and was answered by the crew as one man. The magnificent
rage of Brasenose was as nothing. Opposite the Cherwell, Eddy tickled
his boat over in front of them, and washed them, and there was an end of
the old régime; no more University boating for them. One or two of them
in after times, and in subdued voices, disputed whether they had got
more harm than good out of it. At all events, there was an end and
finish of it.

Three days afterwards the Moderation lot were out, and Roland and the
elder Mordaunt figured in the first class.

The very next Thursday, at the Union, Lord Eustace Vanderbilt made his
great Radical speech, in which he demonstrated, to the satisfaction of
the majority, that Christianity and democracy were identical; that the
only true formulas of Christianity were to be found in the traditions of
the Church; and that, therefore, the only true democracy would be found
in the formulas of the High Church party. Lord Eustace was clever, and
had a vast deal to say for his theory; as well as any one else has who
takes it up. But the instant he sat down, Roland was up and at his
throat. Old Mordaunt, who was sitting beside him, growled out to him,
from time to time, "to draw it mild," but Roland scorned him.

"Priestcraft and democracy!" he cried. "Who is he that publishes the
banns of that adulterous marriage? Who is this man who sits there with
brazen forehead, and talks this blasphemy? The great grandson of the
favourite of William the Third, who would have struck his degraded
successor to the earth if he had heard his atrocious sentiments. (Order,
order.) It was well to cry order; it was a most excellent and admirable
thing to cry order, when an honest English country gentleman denounced a
renegade Dutchman, pampered as his family had been, and rewarded as his
family had been, for turning to and talking mere Sacheverellism, or
worse." Roland also was at a loss to conceive what this young nobleman
expected to gain by it, and took about half an hour in trying to find
out: during which he tore the Constitution to tatters; gave his opinion
of the Church pretty strongly; and called the house to witness the state
of things we had been brought to: which, with a rapidly civilising
population of nearly two hundred millions, the possession of the
principal naval keys of all seas, and a surplus of three millions, was
scarcely an easy matter.

Then finding, like most young speakers, that he was wide of his subject,
he harked back to it as well as he could. "What did the noble lord want?
what did the noble lord mean? If the noble lord meant that the only form
of pure democracy was Christianity directed by priests, he would fight
that noble lord to the last drop of his blood. If, on the other hand,
the noble lord meant merely that pure primitive Christianity meant pure
democracy, he would take the noble lord to his bosom." Then he rambled
on, missing his central point oftener than he hit it, and ended by doing
what all inexperienced speakers do, twaddling off into a thin end of
nothing at all. One of the greatest and most important accomplishments
required for public speaking, is to know when to leave off. To speak for
an hour on a proposition, to keep your audience interested all the time,
and then to round up your speech with your original proposition,
claiming to have proved it, is not an easy thing. The only recipe for
doing so which I know of, is to believe in your proposition, and speak
the truth.

Old Mordaunt then rose, and deprecated personalities; denounced the
habit of reducing on argument from the general to the particular; and
committed himself to the statement that there were few men in the world
whose hearts were more entirely in accord, on the whole, than those of
his friend Roland Evans, and the noble lord opposite. "He did not happen
himself," he said, "to agree with either of the honourable members,
because he happened to be a Tory. He was very sorry for it; but Tory he
was. Lord Eustace Vanderbilt would observe that his family had been
Tories centuries before any Dutchman had heard the word Whig. He
supposed it was bred in the bone, and would come out in the flesh. Still
he had the highest honour for his friend Roland Evans, and for his
family. Had it not been for the Evans' family, he (Mordaunt), could
never have appeared there. At the time when the noble lord's
(Vanderbilt's) family were cowering like whipped hounds under the lash
of the Spaniard, his (Mordaunt's) family had been busy at every kind of
Popish sedition; in which be gloried. The Evans' family, having
persistently taken the winning side, that of Protestantism, had always
brought the Mordaunt family through, and he would stick to them now. He
stuck to his friend Roland, by saying that his language was indecent and
indiscreet, even towards a mere mushroom Dutch interloper, and that he
could not have meant what he said." After which he sat down suddenly,
and preserved an ox-like silence.

Such an astounding breach of all possible good manners paralysed the
assembly. As for old Mordaunt, he had done what he wanted--roused
Roland, and he sat quite still. "I want to see how he will get out of a
scrape," he said to the little wizened form of a man who nestled beside
him. "He insulted the man, and I have driven the insult home."

Lord Eustace Vanderbilt and Roland were on their legs at the same time;
both white with wrath. The President hammered for order, and they obeyed
him; before either had spoken a thin, cracked little voice, piercing
shrill, was heard, and the Union, turning towards it, saw that it
proceeded from Sir Jasper Meredith.

"Sir," he cried, "I rise--if such an unhappy and miserably formed
eidolon as I can be said to rise--to order. Sir, it would be foolish in
you to deny the fact, that two of our best men have quarrelled
personally, and have interchanged insults. I beg you to give me time for
speech, sir--I beg you and the assembly to forgive any want of
consecutiveness in my argument; for if you, Mr. Fitzgerald, were the
shattered wreck which I am, your sentences would not run so smooth, and
your logic would not be so perfect. I cry for your pardon, sir, and I
cry for theirs. Please listen to me, you two: though I shake and tremble
with fear at speaking in public. You two mean the same thing; why
quarrel over details and personalities? I beg you to make friends. The
hot words which you have said to one another will fester to all
eternity, if you do not recall them. Forget and forgive, you two. Forget
and forgive everything, and go on hand in hand towards the amelioration
of our country. You two, in your youth, strength, and beauty, look at
me, staggering meanly here before you. I have forgiven the wicked old
past, which has brought me to this. Forgive you, in like manner, and
cast no words abroad about Cavalier and Roundhead, about Defoe and
Sacheverell. Agree!"

Said old Mordaunt, "He is a worse speaker than I am; and I am bad
enough." Yet, no. That strange little cripple, bad and illogical as his
speech was, touched the heart of the assembled boys. His splendid head,
superimposed on the shambling heap of bones, was striking enough; his
rugged, almost inconsecutive, speech did the rest. When he cowered back,
and lay once more on old Mordaunt's shoulder, the house was clamorous
for a reconciliation between Roland and Lord Eustace Vanderbilt.

It was solemnly made. Roland and Lord Eustace shook hands, and Sir
Jasper Meredith shrunk close to the shoulder of old Mordaunt, saying,
"You did right to rouse him. But we shall never know the best of him; he
has too much money."



Chapter 19.

So began the end of the old règime. That was the very last glimpse that
our boys had of a British university. They had been educated as rich
boys are educated at a public school and at a university. The time comes
now when, by a series of accidents, they were cast into the world. Will
you bear with me while I sum up their qualifications for fighting that
same world?

Roland. With regard to Roland's rowing, there has never been, I believe,
but one opinion. It was unapproachable. Roland rowed before the new art
of "catching" the water at the beginning of your stroke, and rowing so
many strokes a minute, came in fashion. Roland rowed like Coombes, his
master; diligently observing the rule to "catch" nothing, but to
imitate, as far as possible, the motion of a steam-engine. Roland, with
his Maynard and his Mordaunt between him, and Eddy steering, won
everything. I only mention his rowing powers first, as a tribute to the
genius of the age. I have now to descend to the unimportant fact of his
scholarship.

I suppose I ought to apologise for doing anything so vulgar, or so
commonplace. Yet we are a practical people, and the French say a
money-loving people. Roland's education had cost the change out of 1500
already. He had been the favourite boy of one of the most successful
masters of modern times. He so far differed from the ordinary public
schoolboy of these times, that he could have got into Balliol, or taken
his degree when he left school. It was not necessary for his father to
spend 200l. on a coach, before he could pass his matriculation, and
another hundred before he could pass his "little go." He was a very
favourable specimen. He could have competed with the head boys from
Cheltenham or Marlborough, just then coming into existence, in classics.
The question is--what did he know?

He could do a better piece of Greek prose than, probably, any man in the
House of Commons, in the Chamber of Deputies, or in Congress. His Greek
prose was so good that there were scarcely two dozen men in England who
could correct it. He could translate any Greek book, let it be what it
would, elegantly and correctly. Erasmus and his friends, or Milton, were
scarcely better classics at his age. He was a young lion. In the vivá
voce part of his examination, a middle-aged Moderator, fresh from the
country, got frightened at him, and sought safety in flight. Roland,
standing on the other side of that dreadful table in these divinity
schools, there and then, under the most beautifully decorated roof in
England, corrected and shut up that Moderator.

Then his "science." He could reel you off the limits of human knowledge.
He could pick you out the few queer places in his Aldrich, and pour out
the vials of his contempt over the "logic" of the late Archbishop of
Dublin. At the Union he had got on his legs, and utterly demolished the
"science" of Emerson, showing that he had not mastered the mere grammar
of his art.

Then in divinity. He would as lief read you his Bible in Greek as in
English, and had made numerous emendations in Pickering's notes. His
essay on the miraculous draught of fishes, in which he clearly proved
that they were Thymalli and not Cyprinidae (in which he was quite
wrong), was printed. And he could say half the articles by heart,
including the somewhat difficult one on Predestination, which James
Mordaunt called the article on Pedestrianism.

I have now come to the end of my hero's accomplishments. He was destined
for Parliament, and would have educated himself there, and done well
there. I acknowledge that he had learnt how to learn, and that when the
world had shown him what it was necessary to know, that he would have
learned it. But let me tell you what he did not know.

He knew nothing of the history of his own country. He could tell you of
commonplaces about a Spartan Hegemony, but the Fox and North coalition
was news to him. Before the catastrophe came, he had scarcely, from the
most ordinary sources, put himself in possession of the most ordinary
facts in English history.

About physical science he was absolutely and perfectly ignorant. For
this we can scarcely blame him. Mr. Lewes, and another, whom family
reasons prevent my naming, had not then brought science to our doors.
Darwin and Huxley were watching the wonders of God in the deep sea, and
had not got epitomised. Mrs. Sabine had not translated the Cosmos, which
brings us to the fact that Roland was entirely unable to read the Cosmos
in the original German. Not to mince matters, that he was practically
ignorant of every modern language. He might have gone on the grand tour,
and have come back not much wiser than he went. The bright, agreeable
Frenchman, with his bright half false ideas (always, however, containing
a half truth), and the slow, wise German, were alike dumb dogs to him.
Outside this small over-populated island of ours, the world was a dead
black blank to him: those very admirable fellows, Fritz and Alphonse,
having no language to speak to him but that of the eyes. If you turn on
me and say that Fritz and Alphonse might have taken the trouble to learn
the language of Shakespeare, I can only retort that they did not and
will not. I also ask you whether, after the above summing-up of Roland's
accomplishments, Squire Evans got his money's worth (1500l.) for his
money? I say that he did not.

Suppose Roland stripped of his wealth, what was he fit for? For my own
part, I shall soon get near to believing that the Cornell "University"
in the United States, or the Oxford, or still more, the Cambridge of
Chaucer, is the host in the world. And now, when we have broken through
tradition in every way, just conceive what we might make of our young
men on the "Cornell" principle, with the Oxford and Cambridge revenues.
But our purpose is to write a story, and this is past it. Let me come
back to my proposition. Roland, after 1500l. of expenditure, was little
fit to cope with the world, as far as education had helped him.

In one moment, see what the Oxford and Cambridge of Chaucer were, not as
bearing in any trifling opinions of mine, but in showing for the mere
sake of five minutes' amusement, how each university has kept its
character through so many centuries, at all events, in the public mind.
What are the popular opinions about Cambridge now? The ideal Cambridge
man is plodding, thrifty, quiet, diligent, solemn, wise. The ideal
Oxford man is fantastic, noisy, extravagant, and given to practical
jokes. Most of the "Joe Millers" for many years are laid at the door of
"Oxford students." Just compare the ideal Oxford man of the day with the
ideal Oxford man of Chaucer, as compared with his Cambridge man, and see
how true it comes after so many centuries. Compare Allan and John, the
Cambridge lads, who carried the wheat to Trumpington, with Hendy
Nicholas and Soloman, the Oxford lads; and Allan also was a Scotchman
(we have had a senior wrangler or so from that kingdom of late years, I
believe); and was there ever such an Oxford man as Soloman? His love for
gaudry, his love for private theatricals, with an easy part and a fine
dress. That inimitable Chaucer makes him act Herod. "Nothing to say and
a fine dress--Tory Oxford all ever," says a cynical Cambridge friend.

And of the others, what can be said? they were but little more prepared
for the world than he. Had they been put to the test of competitive
examination, they would have been found fit for nothing but ushers in
schools or curates. Clive or Hastings were not more ignorant, or more
helpless before they underwent that great competitive sink-or-swim
examination, which is called The World.



Chapter 20.

As the time for the great wedding, which once again was to unite the
rather often united houses of Evans and Maynard, drew near, some of
those connected with the preparations noticed that there would be two
rather conspicuous absentees. Young James Mordaunt had suddenly
discovered that his whole heart was set on trying for the Engineers,
and, failing that, getting into the Artillery; and in a letter to his
father, urged the necessity of going to Bonn to study at once.

The request was so very sudden and odd, that Squire Mordaunt wrote to
his eldest son to consult him about the matter, and to beg to him to see
if Jim was in earnest. The result was, that the two brothers were
closeted together, and the elder Mordaunt looked very grave and vexed
when they parted. John Mordaunt wrote to his father very curtly, to say
that he thought it would be much better if James was allowed to go to
Bonn at Christmas instead of coming home. He could give no reasons, he
said, but he had got his brother's leave to put the case before Roland
Evans, and Roland Evans had agreed with him. Squire Mordaunt gave his
consent wonderingly; and Eddy Evans noticed that from this time his
brother Roland and John Mordaunt treated James Mordaunt with a rather
solemn kindness and respect, which they had never exhibited before.

There was no skylarking and folly now. Jim was the most solemn and
miserable of the group. He got up a fiction that his health was bad, and
that there was something the matter with his heart; poor boy! there was.
Something past mending.

Eddy fell in popularity this autumn. Seeing every one (except Maynard)
very low in their minds, he would play the fool to cheer them up; but no
one wanted the fool played, and all the old babyish balderdash fell
dead. For fun is a good enough thing in its way, and in its time, and is
very like the flower called "Gazanea," or "Dame d'onze heures," a
flower which under the morning's cold, is no flower at all, but an ugly
bud; but which, under the eleven o'clock sun, spreads out into a golden
corona studded with pearls. Who knows it better than a storyteller?
There has been fun of a sort in this story. How different it must look
to a man without a care, and to a critic, reading the story in a
perfunctory manner. I know a man who was highly complimented once, by
probably the best judge of humour in England, on a passage in his novel.
That identical passage was ticketed the very next week in one of the
leading reviews, by the best critic we have, as pointless and degrading
balderdash. What had pleased the one had utterly disgusted the other,
yet they were both fine judges. Thackeray, master of humour, says
distinctly that what some think a mass of rather ugly stupidity, is the
most amusing book ever written; and, under any circumstances, jokes fall
dead sometimes. No wonder that Eddy's babyish folly fell dead on the
ears of men so deeply anxious as Roland Evans and the elder Mordaunt.

For a very ugly thing had happened. I have, I hope, not concealed from
you the character of the younger Mordaunt. You remember the frightful
bullying of poor little Eddy Evans by him, and have known that there was
a wild beast vein in him somewhere. Say, if you like, that the Evanses
and the Mordaunts had been crossed too often, and were beginning to show
the true symptoms of the decadence of a family by a stupid, blind
petulance in the males. Draw a parallel with racehorses, if you like.
Blue Mantle or D'Estournel for instance. Account for it as you will, the
fact remains the same. That splendid young man, James Mordaunt, tamed
now for five years by fear of death and by gratitude to Roland, had
broken out again. He had fallen in love, it seems, with Mildred Evans;
and to Roland and to his brother John he talked of murder and suicide in
the maddest manner.

To such steady-going stage-coaches as John Mordaunt and Roland Evans
this was simply horrible. They, in their utter ignorance of physics,
thought that this excitability of brain was permanent. It terrified them
more than it need have done. How could they guess or know that the mad
ferocity of the latest European cross of blood frequently went Berserk
at the time of the most rapid physical development? Who was there to
tell them that the Prussian duellist student, as soon as he moves his
chair to his bureau, becomes the most quiet of men, a little haughty,
perhaps, but a good fellow; or that that brown-faced gentleman who asks
your opinion on a point in croquet, has been mad once, and elbow-deep in
Indian blood? Had they ever seen a private of Pelissier's Algerian
division boiling beans and giving a baby bonbons? No. These lads knew
nothing of these things. But poor James was pronounced mad, and was sent
to Bonn.

Sir Jasper Meredith might have come, but his conduct was as crooked as
his limbs. Mr. Evans asked him, and he wrote to Roland to refuse. He
wrote, I am sorry to say, a very petulant and impertinent letter. "I
shall not come," he said. "New matters have come to a point, I am not
sure that I am pleased. Your sister has had little or no choice in this
matter. Who can be sure that she would have chosen Robert Maynard at all
if she had had any one else to choose? I hate this kind of marriage
beyond measure. Before either of them know their own minds, they bind
themselves to live for at least fifty years together, barring accidents.
It is not at all a wise arrangement, and I am going to stay with Jimmy
at Bonn."

Roland showed this letter, in a state of white fury, to John Mordaunt.
"The ill-tempered little fellow," he said, "to write me such a letter as
that: I have it in my heart to beat him."

"He is a cranky little chap," said ox Mordaunt. "And it is no business
of his, which makes his letter a piece of cool impertinence, which you
ought certainly to resent. But I don't know. No man in this world ever
speaks decidedly, unless there is some grain of truth in what he says. I
ain't positive of many things, but I'm positive of that. Why, the very
telegrams themselves begin, 'It is asserted,' or something of that sort,
to let you down easy. Meredith is positive in this matter as far as he
dare be. I doubt he knows something."

"Do you mean to say that you agree with Meredith?" asked Roland.

"No," said Mordaunt, "not exactly. But I wish the engagement had been a
longer one: that is all. When little Meredith says that they don't know
their own minds, I agree with him. It is a boy-and-girl match, and may
turn out well or ill. It is all a toss up."

"The women of our family always make good wives," said Roland.

"Your family?" said old Mordaunt. "You are like ourselves, crossed with
half the blood in Shropshire, and, like ourselves, you have produced no
great sire who could leave his mark in the family, like the horse
Tadmor, for generations. You Evanses, certainly, don't breed true. Look
at Eddy. He is no more your brother than I am. And the bride, she is not
your sister, she is Eddy's. Don't talk to me about your family. Is your
family capable of fierce rabid vindictiveness?"

"Certainly not," said Roland. "Look at our history."

"You haven't got any history," said old Mordaunt. "You have never
produced a distinguished man before yourself. So your family is
incapable of vindictive ferocity? Why, man, that vagabond poor brother
of mine, Jim, used to leather and pound Eddy, and I have thrashed him
for it; and whilst I have been thrashing my brother, I have been glad
that your little kitten of a brother had not had a knife in his hand
when my brother was bullying him. And Mildred is his sister, not yours."

"You put matters rather coarsely, old fellow," said Roland.

"I am a brute, I doubt. Where you got your refinement from, in the
atmosphere of this valley, I can't think. It is suffocating me. To wind
up all in a downright manner, I hope everything will go right. Bob
Maynard is a good fellow, not without brains; but upon my soul I wish
they both had more time to look about them. In the name of heaven, what
is there to prevent him, when he gets into the world, finding a woman he
likes better than your sister? That would be death to her."

"Then love will last unto death," said Roland.

"How do you know that? Who told you that? You have had a fancy for more
than one woman, have you not?"

"Certainly not," said Roland, promptly; "I never had a fancy for any
woman in my life. By-the-bye, do you mean little Mary Maynard? Well, I
like her about as well as I do your brother Jim."

There was something contemptuous in old Mordaunt's voice, when he
growled out, "Then you are more lucky than most men. For my own part, I
am not made of the same stuff that you are. I can sum up three girls
that I would have gone to the devil for in the last three years. But I
have changed, and hurt no one. Suppose Bob Maynard was to change?"

"He can't change after he is married," said Roland.

"No, you are right there," said old Mordaunt; "that is just the very
thing he can't do."

"Well, don't go on," said Roland; and so old Mordaunt left off.

It was strange to Roland that this very wedding, a splendid affair
altogether--a marriage which united two considerable estates, and which
brought youth, beauty, and wealth together in such a singular
manner--was objected to by the very people he thought would approve of
it most. The vague, bucolic old Mordaunt had scarcely finished his
illogical lowings over it, and had not yet reached his father's house
across the valley in the dark, nay, even had walked into the
trout-stream, and was still swearing, when Aunt Eleanor came into the
room where Roland was sitting, and told him, as a piece of good news,
that Mildred was quite quiet now.

"What the devil has the girl got to be unquiet about?"

"I don't know," said Aunt Eleanor, who, in spite of her farming and
shooting, was as thorough a woman as ever walked. That is to say, when
anything happened she would accuse the nearest man of it on the spot,
and leave him to get out of the scrape the best way he could. "I don't
know what she has to be unquiet about, but she is perfectly quiet now,
and seems inclined to sleep."

"Have you been worrying her in any way?"

"I haven't said a word to her. What do you mean?"

"I'd sleep her," said the exasperated Roland. "Why, she is going to
marry the man of her own choice to-morrow. She must be an idiot."

"We are all idiots, we women," said Aunt Eleanor. "We know it, my dear.
That is the worst of it. Mildred is an idiot. But she has been in a
state of strong nervous excitement all day, and is comparatively quiet
now."

"But you did not make such a fool of yourself when you were married,
Aunt."

"My dear, I never was married," said Aunt Eleanor, quietly; "your memory
is going with study, my dear."

This so took the wind out of Roland's sails that he had to start on a
fresh tack.

"Aunt Eleanor, I beg your pardon. But I want to ask you something; would
you postpone this marriage if you could? Old Mordaunt has been gandering
here, and has just gone home in the dark, swearing. Now, would you
postpone this marriage if you could?"

"Yes," said Aunt Eleanor. "Good-night."

So she went to bed. And Roland, who, in his unapproachable purism, is
about as good a hero as a bean-stalk or a punt-pole, sat before the fire
and wondered why the deuce people couldn't marry one another without all
this botheration.



Chapter 21.

The elder Mordaunt, having fallen into the trout-stream and done his
share of swearing in getting out of it, blundered on to his father's
house, and, getting over the hedge, saw that the party which his father
had had to dinner, and which party he had avoided, had not yet
dispersed. He therefore went in through the servants' hall.

It was full of all kinds of people, coachmen, footmen, and grooms; and
he was wet through. He had thought that he might have got warm there,
and possibly supper, served by his own servants; but the strange faces
made him pass on, and he went up to bed sulky and silent.

It would have done him no harm to have heard the comments which were
made on him by the domestic servants (as far as I know them, a kind,
gentle, and affectionate set of people) when he was gone. They had
nothing to say of him but what was good. For the elder Mordaunt was
universally respected and liked. He went upstairs, however, and hurried
into bed in the dark.

He had not slept long before he was awakened; there was a light in the
room, and looking up he saw his sister standing beside his bed.

It is very rare indeed to see great and very youthful beauty dressed in
such textures as are usually reserved for married women. Ethel Mordaunt
dressed so; it was part of her imitation of Miss Evans. She was dressed
in very dark maroon-coloured velvet, with bare neck and arms, and not
one single jewel, save one dull amethyst, on her bosom. The effect of
the splendidly moulded arms and bust, with the freshness and brilliant
colour of extreme youth upon them--a freshness and colour which soon
goes, like the bloom upon a grape--was startling and dazzling beyond
measure, in contrast to the dark velvet. The sight of a blooming girl,
beautiful beyond most, but dressed in velvet, is so rare, that my
readers would find it hard to realise, and it would certainly be a very
expensive whim to do so; it would cost twenty pounds; yet you may do it,
as far as colour is concerned, for nothing. Get a bud (mind, a bud) of
that inimitable rose called "Jaune D'Espray," and wrap it, say, in a
leaf of the variegated arrowroot, and you will gain an idea of the
effect of young flesh against velvet; but see that there is no dewdrop
upon it, for that would represent a jewel, and with its coarse,
mathematical humdrum prismatics, would catch your eye and spoil the
picture.

Old Mordaunt, in any other case, would have seen all this, perhaps; but
then, it was only his sister; he asked her what the deuce she wanted,
and whether a fellow was to be bullyragged out of his very bed?

"Don't be cross, dear," said Ethel, sitting down on the bed.

Old Mordaunt said, "If you will hook it, and leave me to sleep, I won't
be cross; if you sit there, I will. Go to bed, will you? Why the deuce
can't you go to bed? You wouldn't like it if I were to hunt you up in
the middle of the night, and break your rest. I should hear of that at
breakfast, I daresay. Just you hook it, my lady. Come."

"I want to talk to you, John."

"I know you do. And I know what you want to talk about. And I know how
you will wrap it up, and bring it out piece by piece. And I know your
obstinacy (you call it determination--I don't). And I know that you'll
sit there till the morning until it's done, as girls all do it, by
piecemeal insinuations. There I'll do it all for you, like Dickens's
brickmaker did for the district visitor. How is Mildred? Mildred is
making a fool of herself, in every possible way. This match is of her
choosing, and she now is making a silly fuss as if she was averse to it.
How does Bob Maynard take it? He knows nothing of it. If he did, the
assembled women would steadily and stoutly lie the whole thing away from
him, and she would lie the loudest. What is Roland doing? he is doing
nothing; yet everything but the one thing I wish he would do. What is
Eddy doing? he is giggling. What is Aunt Eleanor doing? jawing and
scuffling, and trying to make noise enough to make people believe there
is nothing wrong. What are you doing? keeping me awake, and so just you
hook it, or I'll make you."

"Don't be cross, Johnny."

"You said that before, and if anything exasperates a man more than
another, it is being told not to lose his temper. That is a thorough
example of female tact, or woman's wisdom; go to bed."

"I will go," said the good Ethel; "but I'll say something before I go
which will prevent you from sleeping this night, my dear old man."

John Mordaunt sat up in his bed at once. He saw that she was in earnest.
"If you have really anything to tell me, my old, good sister, I will lie
awake all night. You are not angry with me?"

"Do you remember any one who was ever angry with you, Johnny?" she said,
drawing nearer to him.

"No one except the Doctor at school," said John Mordaunt. "Speak up, old
girl."

"I will. Johnny, do you know this, that women are bad hands at keeping
secrets?"

"Mary Hewitt's story of the Snail and the Sawyer taught me that, when I
was eight years old," said John.

"Very like," said Ethel. "But I can tell you that a woman can keep her
own secret through fire and water, to the rack, to the stake. But a
woman cannot always undertake the miserable burden of another's secret."

"Have you a secret of your own then, sister?"

"Ay, and mean to keep it too, my brother. But I have another secret; the
secret about Mildred and Jim. And you must know, brother, I trust you
beyond all men. Brother, there is nobody like you."

"And I was cross to you because you woke me!" said John, taking her
hand. "Sister, let me tell you at once; this secret is known to us; I
mean to Roland and myself. Jim has gone to Bonn, and will get over it.
It was all madness. She knows nothing of it. All madness."

"You are the madman, dear brother, if you think so. What do you know of
this most miserable business? Trust me, and tell me categorically."

"I'll tell you all that Roland and I know," he said, very quietly. "Jim
was always very difficult, you knew, and hard to deal with. You know of
his brutality to Eddy at school, and of his being picked out of the
water, nearly dead, by Roland and Eddy. After that his life seemed to
change, for he is a queer boy, Ethel; you cannot always calculate on
him; and he devoted himself to these Evanses in his wild way. They could
do anything they liked with him. And in the end of the last long
vacation, Bob Maynard took things rather too comfortably with Mildred
Evans, and left her too much with James. And Jim fell in love with her.
He was in love with her brothers before. And Jim--our poor, good
Jim-----who is a trump, old girl, is sent to Bonn. And it is all over,
and she never will know anything about it. That is all."

"Is it?" said Ethel, by this time as pale as a ghost. "Then, brother,
you don't know anything about his having spoken to her. You don't--"

It was John Mordaunt's turn to turn pale now. "Leave the room for a
minute, Ethel," he said. "I must get up over this."

She was scarcely outside the door, when he called her in; he was sitting
half dressed in a chair. "Finish this, old girl," he said. "Let's have
it out. So Jim, poor old Jim, he spoke to her, did he? And she cut him
up with scorn, and sent him right-about to the deuce?

"Why, no, she didn't," said Ethel.

"Think what you are saying, old girl; just think what you are saying."

"Good heaven! Johnny, do you think that I haven't thought? I tell you
that she has changed her mind--I tell you that she would go to the
world's end for Jim."

"How do you know?"

"From both of them. Jim told me first, before you all went to that
weary, silly Oxford. And she told me the day before yesterday. And if it
matures, I am to be her bridesmaid tomorrow."

John Mordaunt began walking quickly up and down the room.

The first thing he said was, "Why, Ethel, there never was but one soul
between us five, since we grew up, till now. Why, from Eddy with the
rudder lines, to Jimmy in the bow, there was but one soul among us. And
to see the old four-oar burst up like this! I am not a sentimental man,
but I don't feel as if I could stand it. I'd cry, if I knew how, but I
never did."

"The question is," said Ethel, "what can we do?

"In what way?" said John, stopping in his walk.

"Generally," said Ethel.

"There she goes," said John; "that is her woman's wisdom all over. What
do you mean?"

"I mean," said Ethel, "what can we do?"

"Pish!" said John Mordaunt; "do you want to stop the marriage, or don't
you? Speak out and give your opinion. What is it?"

"That is just exactly what I don't know myself," said Ethel. "I trusted
to your well-known sound common sense to tell me what to do."

"And I'll be hanged if I know," said John Mordaunt.

"Could we prevent it if we tried?" said Ethel.

"I don't think we could," said John.

"Then suppose Jimmy was to stay at Bonn, and we were to keep our own
counsel?"

"It might be better," said John.

"It could hardly be mended," said Ethel. "On my honour, she is very fond
of Robert Maynard, and if you will stay away, and Robert will be kind to
her--and when was he not kind?--she will forget Jim, as I might in long
ages forget Roland, if he was kept away from me. Keep them apart, and
they may forget one another."

"It is impossible," said John Mordaunt: "the thing has gone too far.
They are to be married to-morrow, and if we try to stop it, we have not
a leg to stand on. Let it be. Trust to God, and let us keep our own
secrets. Now go to bed."

She left him. She little dreamed, in the heat of her speech, that she
had betrayed her own secret to her elder brother. She did not remember
her words, but he did. He knew now, as Miss Evans had known before, that
her whole heart was given to Roland.

If John Mordaunt was one thing more than another, he was a gentleman. I
have seen gentlemen with various degrees of education, and in various
dresses. Sometimes in a blue coat and brass buttons, as a county
magistrate. (Did you, my dear reader, ever see a country gentleman in a
blue coat and brass buttons? I never saw but one, and he has been dead
these ten years--it is only the literary way of putting it.) I have seen
gentlemen in all kinds of disguises. Among the first rank of the
gentlemen whom I know, I should be inclined to rank a duke's son who is
a sailor; a dissenting farmer; a High Church curate; and a nondescript
sort of ballaster on the Thames. If I ever betted, I would give long
odds that none of these four would do a dishonest action, or would say
one word, unless speaking to a principle, which would wound any one
else. I suppose that such a person is a gentleman.

One specialité of a gentleman is not to betray secrets. John Mordaunt
kept his sister's secret with regard to Roland tight between his teeth.
She had forgotten that she had betrayed it, and he never reminded her.
It was a dead secret.

A dead secret between those two, sacredly kept. It was no secret between
poor wild James and her; but she would have been horrified if she had
thought that her elder brother knew of it. He was a man, and
might--might--what? Form an opinion on it, and make some sort of
movement. Aunt Eleanor had found it out, and she was as the idols of
Abou Simbel. She had told it to the bird, her dog, and her brother Jim,
and one was as likely to betray her as the other; for poor Jim had a
dumb, brutish fidelity about him, which the fear of death could not make
him violate; and Jim had once, in one of his childish skirmishes, cut a
curl from Roland's head. And where was that curl now, I wonder?

That objectionable woman, Myrtle, used to do the dressmaking in old
times, but she was in London, staying with Mrs. Gray, and she was
succeeded by a tipsy old trot, called Booth, who had been kept hard at
work in the housekeeper's room under Myrtle, in the old times, but who
now was allowed to take her work home, in consequence of having had an
apoplectic seizure or two on the premises, and the doctor having warned
Squire Mordaunt of the extreme inconvenience of an inquest on the
premises, which he, as coroner, was capable to speak of. This old lady
had got some of Ethel's fal-lals still in hand, things necessary for the
wedding to-morrow; and Ethel knew she would come, sooner or later, being
a resolute and trustworthy woman when in liquor, though not much good at
other times (which were few); and so she sat waiting for her, until all
but a few servants were gone to bed. Trying to think that it would all
be for the best, and not making very good weather of it.

The dogs which are necessary to a country gentleman's existence heralded
Mrs. Booth's approach. She was one of those women that dogs could not
bear, and so all those which were loose skirmished about her heels, and
those which were chained up howled in anguish, because they could not
get at her. Not a dog touched her; they might howl, and yell, and bark,
but not a dog came very close to that woman. Well, one, but he was like
the Urquhart-Rabelais breed, junior and inexperienced. A black-and-tan
terrier puppy, not much bigger than your fist, aroused from his slumbers
by the noise, hurled himself at her, as if it was Balaclava, and he was
the Six Hundred. She sent him by a dexterous kick in among the others,
who fell upon him and hunted him back to his mother. After which, she
was shown up, very flushed, to Ethel's presence.

"You are very late, Mrs. Booth."

"Yes, miss. I stayed to supper with Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Myrtle."

"Why, Mrs. Myrtle is in London."

"Saving your presence, miss, was. Mrs. Myrtle has come down for the
wedding, and Mrs. Gray has come with her."



Chapter 22.

The wedding-day rose frosty and bright. There had been a little sheet of
snow in the night, which had laid a shawl of lace over the dark, purple
velvet of Longmynd, made the clear summit of Caradoc shine like a silver
crystal, and, apparently, had affected Aunt Eleanor's temper.

I would not invade the sanctity of a maiden lady's bedroom further than
by saying that if Aunt Eleanor's bed did not stand against the wall, she
certainly had got out of it the wrong side; for the first thing she said
to her own face in the looking-glass was, "A parcel of fools!"

Then she set to work ringing her bell, which at first produced no result
whatever. This pleased her immensely; for when you are in an ill-temper,
nothing is so delightful as to find an excuse for it. While she was
ringing, her maids were engaging in a lively and acrimonious debate as
to whose duty it was to get up at this exceptionally early hour of the
morning. Aunt Eleanor's personal attendant declined on the grounds of
precedent---her lady had never rung her up so early before; the ringing,
she argued, was for the housemaids to get up and make the house tidy in
decent time, instead of lying routing there. The housemaid declined to
take this view of the matter, but made a coalition with the body-servant
on the subject of cook, who was at once bawled awake and told that
Missis wanted her at once. Cook, looking out from among the sheets,
listened to the case of the allied powers, told them briefly that that
sort of thing wouldn't do with her, and at once went fast asleep again
with a rapidity amid dexterity acquired by long practice--acquired in
many hot kitchens; leaving the allied powers paralysed, and for the time
silent.

But there was a little scrubbing-maid from the workhouse (consequently
petted by Aunt Eleanor before all people in the house) who lay in a bed
in the corner, sleeping harder than even cook, who appeared to the
allied powers available. Here another hitch occurred: there was a
general debate as to who should get out of bed and wake her. The powers
all round having declined seriatum to move in this matter without an
alliance, offensive and defensive, being signed all round, the weakest
power, the lady's maid, whose case was not so good as the others,
proposed that she should be "pelted up." Which, with some modifications,
was done. Prussia and Austria threw shoes and other things at her until
she woke, and then England and France told her there was nothing to be
afraid of, so, at the last, poor little Denmark put on her petticoat,
and went to face the terrible Aunt Eleanor single-handed.

Aunt Eleanor ordered little Denmark to bed again, in the most emphatic
manner, daring her to get up for the next two hours, after which, in her
camisole, she went up to the maids' bedroom.

Here I draw the veil. They say that cook slept through it all, and
snored the while; but we know what rumour is. Any one can snore. It is
pretty certain, however, that more housewifery went on in Pulverbatch
Grange in the next hour than had gone on in any previous hour. Squire
Mordaunt used to say that Eleanor's maids would knock out the walls of
the Grange with the points of their scrubbing-brushes. It escaped this
ordeal, however, and so will probably continue to shelter the head of
the grey-haired old woman who sits there now, until she is carried to
Stretton churchyard with the others.

With breakfast came three most unexpected visitors. Eddy, with John and
Ethel Mordaunt. She was astonished, and she said, "Why, what do you
three want here?"

Old John Mordaunt answered; for Eddy, who was to have spoken, hung fire.

"Why, we like you better than anybody else, Miss Evans, and we thought
that you would like to see us this morning. So we walked across to
breakfast."

Aunt Eleanor was perfectly silent for an instant. Her face was perfectly
quiet, but Ethel, who saw everything, saw her fine bust heave once or
twice. All she said was, "This is very kind of you, my dears--come in."

They went in; and Aunt Eleanor began bustling about among her lazy maids
to get them something for breakfast. They said, all three, that they did
not want anything particular for them. Ethel put in as a riding remark,
that there would be plenty of breakfast presently, and that it would be
a pity to spoil their appetites. On this theme Eddy enlarged, as it
seemed to have struck him as a new idea, and he looked at Ethel with
great admiration.

He, an authority in matters of eating and drinking, gave it as his
opinion that it would be a pity to have much now.

"Lord bless me!" said Aunt Eleanor. "Do let me pass some of the trouble
off in my own way. It is not every day that one gets into such a stupid
botheration as this. Be quiet, Eddy."

"You consider this matter as a botheration, then, Miss Evans?" said old
Mordaunt.

"Of course I do. What do you think of it, then?" said Aunt Eleanor.

"A most happy match, surely. There is wealth, beauty, and affection."

"That means that they are both good-looking, have enough to live on, and
like one another, John Mordaunt," said Aunt Eleanor. "You and I are both
good-looking, we are richer than they are, and, unless I am deceived,
are very fond of one another; and a pretty pair we should make.
Fiddle-de-dee!"

There was nothing to do but to laugh. "I don't say that they won't be as
happy as any other two fools who marry when they can't help it. What
aggravates me is that they could help it. How any woman who could exist
without being married could ever go and get married, I can't think. Look
at me."

They did so---and an uncommonly handsome lady she was. But it was rather
confusing that she did not go on with her argument, but conceived that a
mere contemplation of her person finished it. Eddy had to take up the
conversation, and a nice mess he made of it--as usual.

"But you could have been married if you liked, aunt." Which was just
putting the argument upside down. "I am sure you could."

"Fifty times," said Aunt Eleanor. Which, by the way, was not true.
"Then, why didn't you?" said Eddy, to the confusion of counsel. "It
would have been much better for you. Your husband might have drunk, or
made away with your money; and then you would have had some of those
trials in life which you are always recommending to me. It might have
purified and elevated your character, you know. I am only quoting your
own words."

Aunt Eleanor took no notice of Eddy's nonsense; she never did. Towards
the world Miss Evans was shrewd and caustic; towards that pretty, kindly
youth, she was, as folks said, a fool.

Whatever he did was right. She had given her heart to him, and he repaid
her with its blood. She passed him over now, and went on with her
argument, looking straight at Ethel.

"That sister of yours, John Mordaunt, she will be wanting to get married
some of these days."

"There is nobody good enough for Ethel," said John Mordaunt.

"Ex-actly," said Aunt Eleanor; "but you mark my words, she will want to
go marrying somebody. And nobody is good enough for her."

"I think that 'nobody' is," said old Mordaunt.

"Yes, but 'nobody' don't see it. And nobody is a foolish prig, and he
won't do half as well in the world as he thinks. And so pretty, old
Ethel, come and get ready, for it is quite time. If nobody is a donkey,
somebody is a goose, as somebody else was before her. Eddy, go and see
after the carriage;" and Eddy went.

"There goes the best of you all," said Aunt Eleanor. "There is no one
like him. Don't tell me."

"I am not going to tell you, Miss Evans," said old Mordaunt. "I quite
agree with you. There is no one like Eddy. He is the only perfectly
unselfish person I ever saw."

"I'll not have him go to India," said Aunt Eleanor. "I'll make him
exchange if his regiment is ordered there." Whereby Ethel and John
gathered that Miss Evans destined Eddy for the military service.

"Well, my dears," said Aunt Eleanor; "perhaps we had better start to see
these two married, if we mean to go at all. Where is Roland?"

He had gone over to Maynard's Barton, it seemed, to fetch the
bridegroom, whereat Aunt Eleanor said, "Humph."

They drove gaily away, in Aunt Eleanor's carriage, along the frosty
roads; and it was really impossible to resist the weather, and they got
cheerful. Eddy said that he wished they had a flag; that it was a great
mistake not having a flag; Aunt Eleanor looked so fine that she wanted a
flag to set her off. And, certainly, that lady was remarkably fine
indeed, and showed the more splendid because the others had not got on
their wedding-dresses; priceless grey silk, and priceless white lace
composed her dress. She looked uncommonly like the landscape. Her beauty
was perfectly unimpaired; and looking at her, that strange stolid young
man, John Mordaunt, said, with perfect respect and perfect coolness,
that the bride would not be the handsomest woman there that day.

"Do you mean Ethel or me?" said Aunt Eleanor.

"You," said John Mordaunt.

Aunt Eleanor was immensely gratified. "I believe I am very handsome,"
she said. "I think so, and I am a tolerable judge, I believe. You may
say that again young man, if you choose. You are a young man of
discretion and discernment, and say what you mean. It is a pity that I
am old enough to be your mother, or you and I might have made a match of
it, and I would have licked you into shape, and made a gentleman of you;
as it is you must stay as you are. I suppose you will want to marry some
day, and I will give you your wedding present. If the young lady to whom
you give your attentions ever tells you that she don't like having her
beauty admired, break off the match instantly, for she is a humbug."

Johnny Mordaunt laughed, silently, between his big shoulders, and said
that Ethel was the girl for him--a sentiment of which Aunt Eleanor
approved most highly.

The four very quaint people were very late. The bride and bridegroom
were there, Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Maynard were there, Roland was there, in
puce-coloured pantaloons, looking noble, and talking to Mary Maynard,
the bridesmaid, in a way which looked very like an immediate repetition
of this insane folly, said Aunt Eleanor to herself; every one was there,
except Squire Charles Evans. The younger party had to tear upstairs to
dress themselves, and while they were doing so, Aunt Eleanor sailed
about and made herself agreeable, more particularly to Mrs. Maynard, a
woman she utterly detested.

"You must be a happy woman, Mrs. Maynard," she said, "to see your son so
well married." Mrs. Maynard wept: it is the rôle on such occasions.

"What is the woman crying about?" thought Aunt Eleanor; "she ought to be
in a state of frantic hilarity, and no doubt is." And then went on
aloud, "I wouldn't cry if I was in your place, Mrs. Maynard. It is all
stuff and nonsense and fiddle-de-dee, crying, you know. I certainly
should cry if my boy, Eddy, was going to be married, because I should
lose the sweetest companion I ever had in my life. But you and your son
have never been on the best of terms, in spite of his very sweet and
gentle nature, and so I should have thought that you would be glad, at
all events, that all matters of dispute were ended between you by his
marriage."

Mrs. Maynard said that Aunt Eleanor did not know what a mother's
feelings were: a remark which would have silenced most maiden ladies, in
whom the Jewish superstition is ingrained with their first education. It
had no effect on Aunt Eleanor.

"Not know a mother's feelings! I should rather think I did, if anybody
did. Why, you never cared half as much for that boy of yours as I do for
Eddy. He never was the delight of your eyes and your heart, as Eddy is
to me. Bah! you and your mother's feelings, indeed!"

I solemnly aver that Aunt Eleanor, against her will, began this
conversation with the sole and entire view of being agreeable to Mrs.
Maynard; and she finished in this way. I don't defend her in the least.
I never knew any one who could be more agreeable than she could, or a
mere finished lady, when she chose to be. But the greatest fault in her
character was that when she despised anybody heartily, she could not
help showing it. She tried, but she could not. Some may say that this
did her honour. I think not; but will not argue further than saying,
that if all people were like Aunt Eleanor, society would become
impossible. You can't live on quinine.

Moving from her, with a view of getting civil again, she encountered
Squire Mordaunt, who said, "Hallo, Eleanor! what have you been doing to
the Crocodile?"

"More than I meant."

"You always do," said Squire Mordaunt, testily. "Hang it all, Eleanor,
why can't you be civil?"

"Well, don't begin, George. Where is Charles?"

"Charles is ill. I don't think he will show," said Squire Mordaunt.

"Not very ill?" said Aunt Eleanor.

"Oh, no. Now, come, old girl--get back to that woman, Maynard, and be
civil to her." And Aunt Eleanor went at once. Perhaps you may have
remarked that there are some men, by no means strong or clever, to whom
the most independent women will listen at once. Squire Mordaunt was one
of them.

But we must hold their conversation over till after the pageant, for
there was no time for it before. Ethel, dressed for second bridesmaid,
sailed into the room; dressed in full panoply, bouquet in hand, with her
head in the air, looking so imperially beautiful that Mrs. Maynard went
into raptures about her to Aunt Eleanor, and sailing straight up to
little Mary Maynard, who was undergoing a strong flirtation from Roland,
touched her on the shoulder, and said--

"Now, Mary, if we are to be married to-day, we must take away our bride.
Roland, if you are going to make another match with Mary, say so,
because if you are not, you had better see after your man." For, you
see, the school of Aunt Eleanor had had some effect on Miss Ethel; and I
am far from saying that as things are, Aunt Eleanor's school is a good
one for a young lady. We must take things as we find them.

However, they went to church and got married, and the bride seemed very
happy and proud, and the bride and bridegroom came back in the same
carriage; and all was rejoicing at Stretton, save the little fact that
master was too ill to join in the festivities, but lay in bed. It did
not much matter to any of them. "Pa is ill," said Eddy. Roland, who went
and sat with his father, did not look grave. The doctor came down to
breakfast, and was very merry: telling the company that Squire Charles'
ailment was nothing. But the concentrated eyes of Aunt Eleanor and Ethel
caught those of John Mordaunt, across the piled table. And when his eyes
answered theirs, he shook his head. And Ethel and Eleanor knew that
Asrael was coming from the bridal chamber. But although these two could
talk too much at times, they could hold their tongues like another.


Who are here, in the name of goodness, under the leafless poplars,
watching the crashing, hissing ice?

A mass of wasted bones, calling itself a man--calling itself Sir Jasper
Meredith. A splendid, rather cruel-looking young man, with a
fiercely-erected head, like that of an adder, who called himself James
Mordaunt. They sat together, this winter afternoon, looking out of the
convent window, at Nonnenworth, of all places in Europe.

"We can't go back to-night, Jimmy," said Sir Jasper Meredith.

"No, the boatman would not take us," said poor, wild Jim; "it is all
over by now, I suppose."

"Yes, it has been over this two hours," said Sir Jasper. "She is married
by now. Why don't you groan, why don't you fling yourself into the river
among that ice--eh?"

"I don't come of a groaning family," said the younger Mordaunt.
"Besides, she is Roley's sister, and Bob Maynard is a good fellow, and
she is better with him than with me, Jasper. I am only a brute."

"You are a very gentle one then--I never had a more gentle friend, even
in Roland."

"Yes. I have been tamed by Roland and Eddy, and by you, my old brick.
But the brute is in me still. By ----, old man, when I think of what is
happening to-day" (I can go no further--the young man was mad)-"and she
not loving him--I could commit crime. I could, by the Lord Harry. But he
is a good fellow, never a better. All I say is, I see my way to crime."

"I have committed it, Jimmy," said Sir Jasper Meredith, coolly. "Move
me, will you?--my hip seems going right through the sofa on to the
floor. I have committed crime."

"As how, then. What crime?"

"Swindling or conspiracy, I think. Do you ever think of any body else
besides yourself, by any chance? Do you ever think of Roland?"

"I only love his sister through him."

"Would you like to see him married to Mary Maynard?"

"That miserable little fool! How dare she! Jasper, my whole heart was
set on his marrying my sister, and on my marrying his. There are
mysteries which you, in your refined nature, do not see, but which I,
more brutal possibly than you, can see. For Roland, I want my sister
Ethel. For myself, I wanted Mildred. Then the accord of our two lives
would have been perfect. People think, Dr. K-- thinks, Aunt Eleanor
thinks, that my love is for Eddy. It is not so; it is for Roland. I
would have married his sister, but that is over; over this very day. At
least he may marry mine."

"Perhaps he will," said Sir Jasper.

"No chance," said poor Jim. "He is taken with Mary Maynard, his brother,
you know. Ethel is the only woman fit for him. Shall I tell you a
secret, Jasper?"

"Yes," said Sir Jasper, "provided it is not that your sister Ethel is in
love with him, and that he don't care twopence for her."

"But that was the secret."

"Sweet innocent, as if we did not know it! How about Mary Maynard?
Roland was inclined to make a fool of himself in that quarter, but I
have violated the laws of my country and bowled him out. Ethel shall
have a fair chance."

"What have you done?"

"A most rascally thing. Mrs. Maynard wanted me sadly, as I told your
brother and Ethel, at lunch, at Maynard's Barton. The old woman of
Maynard's Barton has been trying to get me for a son-in-law. Now I have
not responded. The girl is a fool, and her mother another. I have tried
to save Roland from many things--for instance, from that wretched
boat-racing; but never worked so hard as I have now to save him from
this miserable match with this fool of a girl. I have tried mother and
daughter, and have found them both willing, either for me or for him.
And now I have sent a letter to the mother, most incautiously worded,
which will make her tell Roland that his chance is over there."

"Have you proposed for the girl?" said Jimmy.

"No. Only bowled Roland out. I could not stand by and see him marry such
a fool as that. I want your sister to have a chance. If the old woman is
down upon me--well, the old woman will be down upon me. But unless
Roland makes a very great fool of himself, he has little chance at
Maynard's Barton. Will you carry me to bed? and if you will take the
advice of a heap of bones--go yourself."

James carried Sir Jasper to bed; but he did not follow the advice of
that funny little baronet, to go to bed himself. On the contrary, he
stood in the door-way of Nonnenworth till a hate hour, listening to the
cold, cruel ice, as it hissed and crashed down the Rhine, looking up
from time to time at the empty, bare arch of Rolandseck, above and
beyond it. At Rolandseck, of all places in Europe.

Now we must return to the marriage-feast. Every privileged man,
according to the old country custom, saluted the bride; and then, by a
still older custom, the groomsmen saluted the bridesmaids. Roland,
holding out his gloved hand, took Ethel's gloved hand, and calmly and
coldly saluted her on her cheek. She was as calm and as cold as he was
until he, still holding her hand, said, "God bless you, dearest Ethel;
you will do the same for my bride as you have done for my sister." And
Ethel, gallant girl as she was, bravely patted his hand and said,
"Indeed, dear Roland, I will. May I congratulate you?" And he said, "I
think so." Then he kissed Mary Maynard, who made a fuss and the kissing
being all done, they went home, and fell to eating and drinking.

Ethel told Aunt Eleanor what Roland had said, and Aunt Eleanor at once,
as Ethel expressed it, retired on her temper. "My temper," she used to
tell Ethel, "is by far the most valuable of all my possessions. I make
50 per cent. by my farm; but then I make 200 per cent. by the credit of
having a temper, which, as you know, my dear, is not a very bad one."
And, indeed, the good lady was right. She always got her own way in
everything; not because she had the credit of having a bad temper, but
an uncertain one. You never knew exactly what form her temper would
take. There were three moods to it. Firstly, she would occasionally
break out and scold, in which mood her caustic, well-trained tongue
would carry all before it; secondly, if it suited her, she would remain
stony dumb--a phase which generally exasperated every one, except Squire
Mordaunt and Ethel, into fury and subsequent submission; thirdly and
lastly, she had a phase of temper which beat every one but John Mordaunt
(nothing ever beat him). "I don't mind Miss Evans's temper one bit,"
said Ethel once, to her father and mother, "till she gets polite. Then I
can't stand it." Miss Evans was not polite on this occasion. She had
fallen back on the mood of stony dumbness, and she watched Mrs. Maynard,
Mary, and Roland.

Being allowed, however, by those accustomed to know her, to be out of
temper, she got her own way, and disarranged the whole table until she
had got Ethel on one side of her, and John Mordaunt on the other; with a
view, as she explained to them vaguely, of keeping her eye on the
crocodile. Ethel and John supplied her with vivers, which she took like
a calm woman of the world, but still maintaining a stony silence, until
John, having given her something she liked, she said, "You are very good
to me, my dear."

John said, "Pray don't, Miss Evans."

"Don't what?" she said, sharply.

"Don't be polite to us. We haven't done anything."

"My dears, I was not thinking of being polite to you two. I'd be polite
to that woman if the table did not divide us," she continued, rubbing
her nose with a spoon, thoughtfully. "I can't make that woman out a
bit."

"Send Eddy round to ask her what she is up to," said John Mordaunt.

"Just exactly the very thing I was thinking of myself. I have a good
mind to send Eddy round to her with my message, and stop his allowance
till he comes back with her answer."

"What would the message be, Miss Evans--how would it run?" asked John
Mordaunt, laughing, frankly, in her face.

"Something like this," she said, beginning on her jelly. "You old trot;
you most scheming Cleopatra, inundation old crocodile, listen to me.
What do you mean by puzzling me? I can't make you out. What are you at?
What do you mean? You have been angling and fishing for him, and you
have caught him. Therefore, my fine madam, what makes you look as black
as thunder, and what is the reason that your idiotic little daughter
will scarcely speak to him, and evidently wants to go to her room, and
cry her eyes out? Explain this, crocodile, and send back the explanation
by Eddy, or I'll come round for it myself."

"I don't think she would like that," said John Mordaunt.

"I don't think she would," said Aunt Eleanor.

"Let us watch them," said John Mordaunt. "I can't make her out."

Ethel had not heard one word of the latter part of the conversation. She
was talking to a young squire, on the other side of her, whom she liked,
but whom she had to bully out of the folly of making love to her. Aunt
Eleanor and John Mordaunt ate and watched for a little time, but saw
only what Aunt Eleanor had rather vividly described--Roland undoubtedly
making love, and both mother and daughter repelling it.

John Mordaunt, after a time, became aware that one of the faces on his
right was so far thrust forward as to engage his attention; looking that
way, he saw that it was his father's. He at once drew back, and pulled
Aunt Eleanor's sleeve. "The governor is looking at us," he said, and by
watching Aunt Eleanor, he learned a lesson in carriage.

With her cold, calm eyelids sunk upon her eyes, she bent a little
forward, and by a slight turn of her head, which no one could notice
unless he had been watching her intensely, let Squire Mordaunt know that
she understood him. Nothing more was necessary. The ladies, shortly
afterwards, left the table, and some one made a speech. Eddy came and
sat by John Mordaunt, and wondered why he was so thoughtful. John
Mordaunt was revolving these things. Had his governor ever been in love
with Aunt Eleanor? If not, how did they understand one another so well?
If he had ever been in love with her, why the dickens didn't he marry
her? And if he had, what effect would it have had on his, John
Mordaunt's, prospects? Which last thing was a matter too big for him?

Roland was gone, and he thought he would go after him; why, he scarcely
knew. Eddy was busy taking the best flowers from the vases, poor little
man, and tying them up into tiny bouquets, "One for each of the girls,"
he said; "they would be withered by to-morrow if they were left; and
each of them is a drop of blood out of Macdingaway's heart." John
Mordaunt, a ruminative animal, left the assembled squires and parsons
over their wine and their arguments, and went out towards the
conservatory. He will tell you to this day that the last thing he ever
heard of the old time was his dear father's hoarse, loud voice, saying,
"I deny it, sir. Those who speak of the agricultural labourers in those
terms are mere Cockneys."

He went into the conservatory, and there he met a group which showed him
that the day was not to be all holiday.

Roland. Seen by him for the first time in furious anger, with his hands
behind his back; tall, splendid, imperious; just at this moment,
terrible to stolid, good John Mordaunt; Mrs. Maynard, as white as a
sheet, but with her pretty face set in feline determination; and Mary
Maynard in tears, with her face in her pocket-handkerchief.

It was Roland's turn to speak. "I ask you once more, madam, if this
young lady's answer is dictated by you or not?"

"You asked her when I was not by, and she gave you her answer," said
Mrs. Maynard, full of pluck, though gasping for breath. "You must take
it, sir."

"Have I never been encouraged to speak to her as I spoke just now?" said
Roland.

"Never for one instant," said Mrs. Maynard, most promptly, growing paler
and paler, but, to do the woman justice, exhibiting enormous courage.
"Perhaps you will deny that I nearly turned you out of my house at the
beginning of last summer. You would wish to deny that?"

"But since?" said Roland.

"Let us have a finish and end of it, sir. My son has married a beggar
to-day, my daughter shall not marry another tomorrow."

"Madam," said Roland, "I cannot conceive what you mean."

"You should not have made me lose my temper," said Mrs. Maynard; "but it
is gone, and much with it. You cannot understand. By this sweet marriage
of to-day, I am turned out of Maynard's Barton. I have but little
provision, and I want provision, for I am getting old. I want provision
in my daughter's house, now that my son has cast me out."

"Madam, you have five hundred a year," blundered John Mordaunt.

"Oh, you are there, are you?" said Mrs. Maynard; "there are not any more
of you, are there? Yes, John Mordaunt, I have five hundred a year, which
would make the whole of Master Roland's income, under certain
circumstances. By the way, you being there, and having some sort of
ox-like memory in you somewhere, will please to remember this--that this
young lady's refusal was dictated by me: and that we wish you a very
good afternoon."

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Maynard," said Roland; "you have only confirmed me
in a half-formed plan. Mary, darling, good-by. She won't have it, you
see. Mary, my little darling, come here. I could appeal to your brother
on any day but this; but I won't. Mary, your mother is too much for you.
Come here, pretty little love, and let me kiss you."

And Mary came, and lay in his arms for one short minute, for she was as
fond of him as it was in her nature to be fond of anything. And her
mother let her, possibly because John Mordaunt faced her suddenly to the
right-about, so that the parting should be secret. He said, afterwards,
that he would have pitched her into the flower-pots if she had offered
to look on. Mrs. Maynard had a shrewd idea that this fate would befall
herself, and so she kept quite quiet; but when her little fool of a
daughter was released, and came back to her, she let her spite fly out.
Coarsely, but quite to the purpose.

"Now," she said to Roland, "you fool, you can go and hang after Ethel;
you blind idiot."

"This is exactly what I mean to do, madam," said Roland. "Good-by, my
little Mary; good-by, my little darling."

So the two young men went to the drawing-room, and John Mordaunt said,
"I can't make you out. I never thought you were a tender, sentimental
fellow until now."

"I can't make myself out," said Roland; "in what follows, remember me at
my best: it is not much to ask."

They were in time to see off the bride and bridegroom, and when they
were gone, Roland got together Aunt Eleanor, Ethel, and John Mordaunt,
and told them the whole story of his having proposed to Mary Maynard,
and of his refusal.

Fiddlers came, and they danced. Roland danced with Ethel, and told her
about his misfortune, and talked strange and odd talk to her,
principally on this theme, "that classes could not understand one
another till they thoroughly intermixed," which suited Ethel's
Radicalism wonderfully. And Roland danced as he rowed, in a masterly
way. Aunt Eleanor came down, after sitting a time with her brother, and
sniffed at them. She reported her brother as much better, and had
herself dissuaded him from coming down stairs. Mrs. Evans came down
after a time, and sat smiling at the dancers.

But at midnight a cry arose, "The bridegroom cometh, go ye forth to meet
him." It began by a feeble wail of a frightened nurse in the topmost
corridor of the house, and it ended in the silence of the ball-room,
suddenly hushed. Squire Charles was dead, and Roland was lord!



Chapter 23.

His death was very sudden. The nurse had heard the very slightest
movement in his bed, and coming to him had found him quite dead. When
the house was still as death itself, Roland went all alone and looked on
death for the first time. It had the effect it usually has; it saddened
and ennobled him.

In older, wilder times, the sight of death was nothing; it is but little
now in war. But in our carefully guarded domestic life, the sight of
death, still more the first sight of death, has its full value. To
appreciate, for the first time, the great fact of all, that some day or
another the body most familiar to us will be stiff and cold, and never
move again, but perish into the earth, is an era in a man's life. To
recognise for the first time the inevitable; to feel that the face can
never smile more which laughed at our jest but yesterday; to realise the
wonderful change of all changes, makes most men think for a time. The
feeling goes off after a few times, but the first time generally has its
full effect. On Roland, full of strange schemes in that little-uttering
head of his, it had actually more than its proper effect,

He had asked John Mordaunt to stay by him, and that leal soul had
stayed. He knew where Roland was going when he took a candle from the
table, and he knew where he had been when Roland came silently back, and
set down the candle once more; but there was something in Roland's
appearance which displeased John Mordaunt.

Roland certainly looked as handsome as ever; his personal gifts in this
matter have been dwelt on before, possibly too often. But it seemed to
honest John Mordaunt that the face was thinner, more pinched, and more
narrow than he had ever seen it before, as though it had caught some
reflection from the narrow, pinched face of the dead man who had put all
worldly things behind him. John Mordaunt was disquieted. He was not a
silent man when he thought it his duty to speak, and when he spoke (as
we have seen before) he spoke to the purpose.

"Roland, old boy," he said, quietly, "though every one who has known you
has liked you, yet I know, year after year, more entirely that no one
has ever understood you; and I understand you less than ever at this
moment."

"As how, Horatio?" said Roland, very quietly.

"A good name, Hamlet," said John Mordaunt; "that means confidence. Come,
I will go about with you. You are sorry--you are desperate sorry, old
man! Why don't you cry? You can cry, you know."

"Yes; I cried when I lost the Greek prize. I can cry for selfish
vexation and wounded vanity, but I can't cry now. You would hardly
expect a fellow who has dropped into eight thousand a year to bellow
over it, would you?"

"That won't do, Roland. Don't lie."

"I suppose not," said Roland. "I suppose, if you thought that I meant
what I said, you would have seen the last of me."

"As you did not mean it, I will say, yes."

"Well, you will see the last of me soon; for I am off out of this."

Not one word would John Mordaunt speak--not one assisting suggestion
would he make. "He is going to tell me some folly, and he will do it
better if he is left alone." So that young man remained silent.

"I am sick of the whole business," said Roland; "of the whole business
from beginning to end, and I am going to put an end to it. You shan't
sit there like an image, Johnny; you shall answer me. Am I a reticent
young man?"

"Most eminently so," said John Mordaunt, with a steady, ox-like face
turned on him. "If you come to that, a deal too much so. I never could
make you out: there is a cobweb in your brain somewhere, which I never
could find. What foot do you halt on?"

"Am I a discreet young man?" asked Roland; "discreet among women, I
mean; for I am a most bitter ass."

The thought of what was upstairs prevented John Mordaunt from laughing;
but he said--

"Your discretion is so notorious, that it has lost you friends."

"Suppose, then," said Roland, "that I were to tell you that I had made a
most thundering and irretrievable fool of myself about a woman."

"I should not believe it. Oh, you meant that little doll you proposed to
to-day, and who refused you at her mother's orders. I only say you are
well out of it. I am sorry to say so much of the sister of an old
boat-mate married this unhappy night; but I do my duty. Is that all?"

"No; I don't refer to her. I mean something about another woman."

"Then I am the last man to hear it, old fellow," said John Mordaunt. "I
cannot tell you why, but I am the last man to listen to your
confessions. I respect your grief profoundly, but I cannot help asking
you how, with another affair on hand, you could have been drawn into a
proposal, even to that feeble fool Mary Maynard?"

"I have not got one word to say for myself," said Roland, eagerly. "I
have not got one single, solitary word to say for myself. Do you mark
what I say, Johnny?"

"I mark it."

"What have I been in the happy little innocent party of boys from
Gloucester, who have rowed together, swum together, learnt together, and
squabbled together?"

"What have you been!" cried old Mordaunt: "the tie which has bound us
together--our solemn, silent, glorious old Roland. Have we ever wavered
in faith to you that you should distrust us? If you have erred, Roland,
who are we to denounce you? Why, if that brother of mine, Jim, were to
waver in his allegiance to you, I don't know what I would do with him--I
don't, upon my word."

"So you think of me, John Mordaunt; but your friendship misleads you. I
have been only a purist and a prig."

"Come," said John Mordaunt, "we are not at the Union, you know. Take a
bit of advice from a fool. If you have done any girl wrong, do her what
right you can; marry her. Coming from me, of all men, that is honest
counsel, Roland. Two wrongs don't make a right, any more than two and
two make five. Now, listen to me, old fellow. Consult your Aunt Eleanor,
and see if she does not confirm me. I am fearfully sorry about it,
because I had dreamt that some day we might have been more like brothers
than we are; and I cannot believe this even now. Why, Jim or I, or
Ethel, would have gone to the stake for your honour. If you say it is
so, it is: but it is a bitter thing for me to hear. Don't let Ethel hear
of it, Roland," he added, suddenly. "Don't let her guess that you are
false and dishonoured."

Roland actually laughed. "You are all abroad, old man; you are scarcely
wise in advising me to marry a woman who has proved herself unworthy of
marriage. Do you believe that I would have kissed your sister to-day if
I were dishonoured with another woman? With regard to your argument of
two and two always making four, some Cambridge men declare that when
numbers get into their higher powers, two and two do not make four, but
five; which causes them to deduce an argument against the immortality of
the soul."

"By what process, in the name of goodness?" said John, buckling on his
armour of Oxford precisionism in a moment.

"I am sure I don't know," said Roland. "The benighted souls don't learn
their logic, you know. They confine their attention to mathematics, of
which we know nothing."

John Mordaunt was pleased at the turn the conversation had taken. He
might amuse Roland; and Roland looked dangerous.

"They and their mathematics! Well and good. Give me my logic. Give me
one immovable axiom; say like one of Euclid's, 'A straight line is the
shortest way you can go from Jerusalem to Jericho;' or, 'A point is no
bigger than a footless stocking without any leg.' Give me an axiom like
that, and let me work it down logically. Why, theology all depends on
the original soundness of the proposition."

"Of what proposition?" asked Roland.

John Mordaunt gave him one--one in which most believe. But when Roland
said, "Is that an axiom, then, and does all theology rest on that?"
Mordaunt saw, with the deepest concern, that it was an axiom no longer
with Roland.

"His faith is gone," he thought; "and he will never get on without one.
At least, I don't know. Some do, and some don't. I thought he was what
the provost called 'sound.' I am all abroad about him now. Where is the
row? Is it in his politics? Let me see."

"I say, Roland, you had better go to bed."

"I can't sleep. Let us talk. Do you mind?"

"I will talk till cockcrow to please you and myself. I wish we were at
Balaclava now--at least, one of the four of us."

"I wish one of us was, meaning myself," said Roland.

"I wish we all four were, with Eddy steering. We would take the old four
in past Fort Constantine, and they should never hit us till we ran her
ashore in the Careening harbour."

"Don't talk nonsense, old friend. All that is past. Still I should have
liked to have had my hand in this business. I'll have it in the next, if
it is only to carry a pair of colours. They should have swarmed into
Sebastopol at once, man--the British alone, I mean--and have let the
French cut off the Russian retreat at Perekop. But what can you hope
from a miserable country like this, which last swept away its cobwebs in
its last real revolution two hundred years age? the blessed and ever
glorious French Revolution swept most cobwebs out of French eyes. They
at least can produce generals--our old-world system cannot."

"India, old man!" said John Mordaunt. "Don't be foolish."

"India, I grant you," said Roland. "Would you kindly give me the list of
our more famous generals in that province, now employed in the Crimea?"

This was certainly a "hit" for John Mordaunt; but he returned to the
charge. "You don't speak up for the French Revolution, old fellow?"

Roland said, "I do. It is the finest thing that ever happened in Europe.
Some of them went further than I should be inclined to go now. Marat
erred in intense love of his species; Robespierre erred in his
puritanism; Danton in wordy ferocity. Carrier should never have been
sent to Nantes; he committed errors there, and was a drunkard. Camille
Desmoulins was a perfect fool; but we exist by these men's deeds, and
yet we spit when we mention them"

"But, Roland," said John Mordaunt, "all this infernal nonsense about St.
Just--"

"I did not mention him at all," said Roland, "you mentioned him; it was
you who brought the name of that Antinous of the Revolution into the
discussion. I suppose you will charge his beauty against him next. His
hand is red; but was David's pure? Marat slew; but what did Joshua?"

"What is the meaning of this fantastic balderdash, Roland?"

"I don't know. I am sick of my life, and for no reason--at least, for no
reason which these wretched Philistines can give me. I have always had
everything which could make life beautiful since I was a child, and I am
sick of it. What is before me? The schools? Bah! A double-first and the
compliments due to the honour of my college. And then to drop back on my
position as a country gentleman? I tell you that I am utterly sick of,
and that I utterly loathe, my whole future career. From this moment I
give it up. For me to drop back on to Oxford honours and turnips--I'll
have none of it. Vive la Revolution! I am for India."

"Ho!" said old Mordaunt. "You are going to neglect the estate which God
has given into your hands, to go a swashbucklering among half-armed
natives are you?"

"I suppose that is about it, put it your way," said Roland.

"And about Marat now?" said John Mordaunt. "I think you said that he
proposed his thirty thousand assassinations on the ground of his intense
love for his species?"

Roland said, "You are travelling out of the record, Johnny; you don't
know everything. I will lie down here and go to sleep."

And he went to sleep, and honest John Mordaunt watched him, and said,
from time to time, "Poor lad! and so he has broken out just like James.
You never know what is in them. It is the Norse blood. I wonder when
this unreasoning Berserk strain in it will be bred out, and we shall
have peace! It only comes in now when the world gets between them and
their women. But fancy Roland going Berserk! I would never have dreamt
of that."



Chapter 24.

The funeral was over a week, and Roland was in possession de jure, not
de facto, for Roland was in London, and had not left his address.

This was extremely tiresome; because all sorts of things had to be done
which could not be done without him: the will had to be proved, among
other things, for which Roland was necessary. Mrs. Evans being in a
state of imbecile grief, was of no use whatever. The family solicitor
took the will over to Aunt Eleanor, at Pulverbatch, and asked her advice
as to what they were to do, no answer being procurable from Roland. Aunt
Eleanor told them it was no business of hers, and wanted to know what
they would take after their drive. Roland's actions were becoming very
eccentric. The solicitors asked, "Could she give them Roland's address?"
and she answered, "Lord bless you, no." And the solicitors departed.

Aunt Eleanor had her trusty ally, Ethel Mordaunt, with her, and she told
to her a deal more than she told to the solicitors.

These two, so singularly alike in character, but so far removed from one
another in years, sat before the fire, in Eleanor Evans's room, at
Pulverbatch, and Ethel knew that Aunt Eleanor was going to tell
something, because she was so very cross.

No woman ever lived who could keep a secret better than Aunt Eleanor.
She loved it; but the effect of her parting with it was to make her very
cross. A lady who gives away a diamond is apt to be cross after she has
done so, and even before. Ethel knew that she was going to hear
something the moment that Aunt Eleanor said--

"Get some wine and water, child, and let us go to bed. Don't sit there
looking so ridiculously handsome. What have you done with your beauty,
child? It is a gift. Have you done anything with it? if so what?"

"Much the same as you have done with yours, Miss Evans," answered Ethel.
"Nothing."

"That is pert; don't be pert. Eddy is pert; but I allow him liberties
which I should never dream of allowing to you. Did you ever get it into
your head that you were a great fool?"

"I have thought so for a long time; and have thought that, in spite of
all you have said to me, you encouraged me more in my folly than any one
else."

"Are you going to give up your folly?"

"No, Miss Evans. There are some follies which we cannot give up. I
suppose that you are the only one who knows anything of mine. You have
never betrayed me?"

"Child, child! you have betrayed yourself a hundred times. Child, where
is the curl of his, which poor Jim cut from his head, and sent to you in
a letter? Where is that curl?"

"It is in my desk. Has Jim betrayed me?"

"No, my dear; only you told me the whole business yourself, you know.
You really should remember. Do you love him still?"

"Yes, Miss Evans."

"I don't believe he cares twopence for you, you know," said Aunt
Eleanor. "If I thought he did, I'd say so; but I don't think it, and so
I won't say it; and you are well out of it. Lord help that man's wife,
if she didn't do what he told her!"

"Roland is very gentle," said Ethel.

"Yes, my dear; but he has a terrible quality, that of silence. He can
hold his tongue for days and days together; and that quality will madden
a high-spirited woman into either utter submission or furious rebellion;
it is a toss-up which."

"Is that so?" said Ethel, only half understanding her.

"Yes, it is so," said Aunt Eleanor, sharply; "you can't understand, of
course. No one ever believed you could; but Eddy can. He told me of it
first; Eddy says that when they are in for one of those idiotic
boat-races, he never knows Roland's tactics until they are off, and then
he forbids Eddy to speak, unless under orders. And again, here is a
letter from a leading Oxford Don about him: 'Dearest Eleanor,'
n'importe, that is all façon de parler, you know. 'Your Eddy is--' much
he knows Eddy! 'your Roland is more incomprehensible than when K-- sent
him up: there is some twist in his brain, with all his reticence and
discretion.' So there is in Allan Gray's," added Aunt Eleanor, rubbing
her nose with the letter.

"Do you correspond with the Dean of St. Paul's?" asked Ethel.

"Yes, miss, I do," said Aunt Eleanor; "and he was in love with me once,
and I am in love with him now. What do you think of that, for instance?"

Ethel had nothing to say on this subject; but for want of something to
say, she said that she seemed, from Aunt Eleanor's description, to have
had a happy escape from Roland.

"I don't know about that," said Aunt Eleanor; "no man is worth a hang if
he has not a cobweb in his brain which makes him do something. Roland
has, and you have not. I doubt whether you are worthy of Roland, do you
know?"

"Has the Dean of St. Paul's a cobweb in his brain, Miss Evans?" asked
Ethel.

"He is an old man, and I am an old woman, and we are not going to
marry," said Aunt Eleanor. "Don't be pert, and exchange shots, and I
will tell you something. Roland is mad. Roland is madder than all the
hatters at Lincoln and Bennett's; he is in one of his moods--one of
those moods in which he has won his boat-races. Ethel, the succession to
the property will be disputed, and he won't even send his address to his
solicitors."

"His succession disputed!" said Ethel.

"Ay," said Miss Evans, "and warmly too. Your father has been with me
to-day, and has accused me of lying, which I never did. I told him, what
I believed to be the truth at the time, that the claim was the old
claim, and that there was no danger from it. He does not like the look
of matters at all, and he says that, unless we can move Roland from his
donkey mood, everything will go seriously wrong. And the solicitors have
been here with the provisions of his father's will. Why, I have
denounced them as idiotic for this ten years, and he promised to alter
them, but he has not done so. Your father, Mordaunt, says the estate
won't carry the lawyer's expenses, if Roland don't move. It will be the
greatest succession case ever known."

"But who claims Roland's estates?" asked Ethel.

"One Allan Gray," said Aunt Eleanor, rubbing her nose.

"Allan Gray!" said Ethel, "I never heard of him. And who are the
witnesses to his claim?"

"I am sorry to say that I am one," said Miss Evans. "Old Mother Gray and
Myrtle are others. The case is strong. Your father says it is a lie from
beginning to end--but your father is your father."

"Will Roland be left a beggar?" asked Ethel.

"I don't know about beggars," said Miss Evans. "He won't have any
money."

"What a splendid thing that will be for him!" said Ethel. "Why, it will
be the making of him."

"Wants making, does he?" said Aunt Eleanor. "Well, perhaps he does; as
for being a beggar, he don't come of a begging sort. He shan't want
money though, even if I have to rob Eddy. But Eddy shall give it to him.
I don't approve of Roland, myself, I allow. And not for all the Rolands
on earth shall Eddy be one penny the poorer. I will work more into pigs,
my dear, if things go wrong with Roland. I hate pigs, but they pay. I
will work into the pig business to make it up to Eddy, if things go
wrong with Roland. Eddy shan't suffer in any way."

"How you love Eddy!" said Ethel in a wondering way.

"You must love something, and I love him," said Aunt Eleanor, suddenly.
"I have stores of suppressed love in my heart, and I have given all that
I could spare from the Dean of St. Paul's, and from you, and from your
brother, John Mordaunt, to Eddy. And I promise you that there is
precious little left for you three to divide among you."

And so there comes before one, dimly seen in the distance, the figure of
a woman who cast herself groaning against a wall, and then fell in a
heap in the corner.



Chapter 25.

That Roland behaved like a fool I do not deny. Had he made such a fool
of himself at thirty, he would not have been worth writing about. But he
was only twenty-one.

In looking for a precedent for his remarkable conduct, just look at your
own conduct when you were twenty-one. Did you not do things then that
you would not do now? Did you not do generous and carelessly foolish
things which you would not do now? Why, I who speak, know well a man
with an estate of eight thousand a-year--a shrewd, sensible fellow
enough in most things, yet a man who is not given to spend money on
himself, who has crippled himself for the best part of his life by an
act of careless, fantastic generosity, wilder in one way than Roland's.
In the Australian madness of 1852, how many men do I know who, sick of
things here, gave up safe positions in England out of the pure old
English spirit of adventure? How many? As many as were Mrs. Nickleby's
lovers.

I am only contending for the fact that I could give the names of at
least a dozen men who at an early age made as great fools of themselves
as Roland. I am not excusing him; I am excusing myself from a charge of
improbability. Roland was a very extraordinary young man. If he had not
been, we would not have told this story, but another.

He was sick of it all. He had looked at it all, and it seemed that there
was not one spark of truth in it, from beginning to end. His qualities
were, a sharp, clear brain, a powerful, well-ordered body, and a
never-ceasing longing for excitement and power over his fellows. As
silent and as beautiful as a fox, but with all the large-heartedness of
the dog--the animal who cannot be taught class distinctions. He had been
often excited by his father's army stories; they had warmed an
enthusiasm which needed no warming; and he had tried to reduce them to
practice by boat-racing. When be won the University sculls he thought
himself as fine a fellow as any who fought at Waterloo. But all this was
insufficient for him, and his future was fairly before him now. He hated
it. And the man who had made him hate it worse than any one, was little
Sir Jasper Meredith.

It was not in one, or in two, or in three dozen conversations, that that
shrewd little cripple contrived to disgust Roland with his future
career. Nevertheless he was the man who had the principal hand in doing
it. Don't dedicate your son to any particular career, if there is any go
in him at all. I once saw a boy of twelve come into a room full of
ladies, and I heard his mother say, "There comes another young
clergyman." Whereupon the ladies rejoiced and fal-lalled; but from that
moment the boy's fate was sealed: he would die sooner than be a parson.
I am only speaking of a fact which I think typical. English and American
lads of mettle and use will not allow themselves to be disposed of
without their own will. Lads without mettle will allow this liberty to
be taken with them--which accounts for a particular kind of curate; and
furthermore, to carry out the argument, for a particular kind of
barrister, the caricatured Buzfuz.

Sir Jasper Meredith had a very strong love, an almost feminine love, for
Roland. Roland was in a way his god. The little man could make no
physical effort, and had a large brain, and so he used to lie and dream.
And he used to lie and dream of all he would do if he were Roland; and,
moreover, what he would not do if he were Roland. And he came to the
conclusion that Roland was wasting his energies by this ridiculous
boat-racing, and put the matter before him several dozens of times which
was one matter; but he proposed Roland's career for him, which was quite
another.

"My career!" said Roland to him. "A brave one for a man like me! Jasper,
you are silly. Schools, you say. I could do well there--and then? Look
at" (supply the name for yourself). "Landlord? Why, any one could be
that. Magistrate? Man, my temper is not sufficiently good, and my
prejudices are too strong. I should convict every poacher, and let off
every thief. Chairman of quarter sessions? My dear man, I should say to
the grand jury, 'Get your idiotic business over as you can, and let us
get out of this.' And to the petty jury, 'You boxful of thundering
idiots, if you sit there in a row after your last verdict, I'll shy
something at you;' and that wouldn't do, you know. I don't rank the
intelligence of my countrymen high. Then again, Jasper, as member of
Parliament, I am a loose bird with my money; out four thousand pounds,
you know. If the dear old dad would tell us what he spent, it would be
nigh twelve thousand pounds. You did not know your father, did you?"

"No," said Sir Jasper.

"Nor mother? Then you don't know what it is."

"You mean their death?"

"No, I don't."

"You come into eight thousand a year now," said Sir Jasper.

"And I'd have given it up to keep him alive," said Roland. "There was no
company like my father's. He was a true-born Radical."

By which it maybe seen that at this time Roland was as good a Radical as
the rest of us. Mr. Disraeli was no better Radical than Roland. Mr.
Bright was Conservative compared to him. He had asked himself the
question which all young men of any go ask themselves. "What is it all
about? What does it mean?" And he had answered to himself that it was
all words, and did not mean anything.

And moreover, he had been disappointed in love, which made a great
difference. Men who have met with disappointment in that line, tell us
that it plays the mischief with a fellow. Or to put it in loose
scientific language (which is always the best method), that it
superinduces a phase of the Epithumia, always underlying, and to some
extent influencing, the action of the Thumos, and in an extreme case
that of the Logos. This being an extreme case, Roland's Logos was
actually affected. His Thumos, or simply intellectual part, told him
that Mary Maynard was a fool, and that he was another. His Epithumia, or
sentimental part, told him that he was very fond of her, and that he
would make a fool of himself for her; and so his Logos was affected, and
he set to work to do so; and succeeded.

One is very sorry about poor Roland's Logos getting affected in this
manner. It merely means that he lost his temper and made an ass of
himself. The only thing I wish to call your attention to, is, that men
like Roland, when they lose their temper, are a long while before they
find it again. Perhaps reasonable beings will understand Roland's
position better by my saying this. He had succeeded in everything, and
now was thrown overboard by a girl whom he half despised, but
sentimentally loved. And thus he made a fool of himself. I need not tell
you that he made a very discreet, decorous, high-minded,
self-sacrificing fool of himself; made himself as great a fool as
Bayard, Sidney, or Willoughby. I only want you to believe that his folly
is probable.



Chapter 26.

Eastward! The dear old man of Waterloo was dead, and his voice was to be
heard no more for ever by the son who loved him so well.

Was he sorry? He was deeply sorry; but beneath his sorrow there was a
depth of gladness immeasurable. Roland was his own master; no one had
the right to advise and direct him now. A son of freedom was now free,
and felt the blood moving in his veins. His step was taken, and he was
going to dispense with all vain babble which might defeat the carrying
out of his object. Is he the first fool that has cast all to the winds
for a fancy? Did not one poor boy, Hastings, slink into a dishonoured
grave only yesterday? But from the ruin of no such quest as Roland's.

Roland was in London, and had not yet been home. At ten o'clock one
morning he was shown into a somewhat dingy anteroom, where there were
many strange men waiting, almost all in uniform, few of whom seemed to
know one another, but who were all lounging about, and looking out of
window.

They seemed very restless and idle, and were mostly in complexion
blonde. Roland sat modestly down at the door and looked at them. He said
to himself, "They are a class; they want individuality." As a general
remark this was certainly true. Still there were exceptions. He selected
one in an instant from among these men (every one drawn from life), so
soon to be gathered in the harvest of death. Roland said the other day
that he must be a born general to have selected that man as a good
officer the first moment he saw him.

He was a small man, with rather a long nose, and very keen grey
eyes--eyes out of which looked diligence and persistent duty. Roland
looked on him first because he was unlike the usual style of British
officers, and Roland thought that, had he not been in uniform, he would
have looked mean. Two or three friends of his got him to strip to the
waist a few years afterwards; he did not look mean then, with
twenty-eight sword-cuts on him, and probably the best-won Victoria Cross
ever given hanging on his coat when he put it on again. This man stood
to be slashed almost to death because he would not leave a common
soldier. The next man who took his eye was a gigantic cavalry officer,
with 300l. worth of fripperies upon him, who stood in the middle of the
room, and had found two men whom he knew. This officer gave intense
delight to Roland. At last he had seen a Plunger. And this Plunger
actually said "Haw!" before, as Roland put it, he went into the major
term of his syllogism. He was the only officer whom Roland ever met who
used that strange interjection. My experience, smaller than Roland's,
confirms this. I have an heard an officer say, "Hum! Haw! Damme!" on the
stage. But (save this one) not off it.

This tremendously great man stood talking in the middle of the room to
two other officers. There must have been some argument before the time
Roland came in, for the first he heard of it was the cavalry officer
re-opening the previous case by saying--

"Haw!"

"Now I shall hear a real Plunger," said Roland, and he listened
intently.

"Haw! You put it so," said the Plunger. "I on my part put it in this
manner. I saw that man (married, you understand) walking with a common
woman in the streets: and I did my best to get him kicked out. And I got
him kicked out."

"But, as father of the regiment, you should have given him more
hearing," said a meek little officer who was talking to him.

"Sir, as father of the regiment, I got him kicked out. I would have
kicked my own son out of doors for such a thing, had one of my sons been
capable of it. I am not merely father of my officers, I am father of my
men. And my men would neither follow us nor respect us, if we saw such
things done and made no sign."

"It was a little irregular, was it not?"

"Yes, sir," said the great Plunger. "I doubt it was. I doubt that the
irregularity of that court-martial means (to me) a fine of ten thousand
pounds. They will take the regiment from me, but my men will remember
that I only tried to prevent their being commanded by a scoundrel."

"But it was irregular," said the little officer.

"It was," said the dragoon, "and I must pay the piper. If he had not
been married, I would never have said a word. But it is as it is. I
won't demoralise the regiment by having married officers degrading their
order in this way. I am not clever, like you, sir, but I see that unless
some moral tone is kept up among the married officers, our regiment, any
regiment, will go to the devil. Let Mike O'Dowd take my boys into action
next time. He is a better man than ever I was."

And Roland said--"I like this. This will do. These are men." Roland had
brought his silly boat-racing to a strange school. If he had wanted to
attend to his interests, he had better have been far away. If he had
wanted to join himself to the heart of a great nation, in her deadliest,
darkest hour, he was in the right place.

He sat near the door all alone, and watched. A slight, very handsome man
came, and found the great cavalry officer. This man also was noticeable,
very noticeable, indeed in a military way, for he had seen an
objectionable Russian battery, which was playing mischief with our
people, and some one said that it ought to be taken; and the young man
said that he would take it if three would follow him. And three followed
him, but he missed them, and thought they had gone back; and so leaped
into the battery alone, shooting right and left with his revolver,
believing that the bonny broad acres were gone to his brother for
evermore. But no. His men were with him, and the good young gentleman
wears his cross at his button-hole to this day.

"What a pretty fellow you are!" thought Roland, who was a prettier
fellow than he. "I like this." Roland, looking more closely, came to the
conclusion that the V.C. was as pretty a fellow as he had ever seen.
Only there came in a prettier one.

A tall and solemn young man, with a black beard, a very deliberate young
man, who knew his own mind. The young man, seeing before him a perfect
flower garden of scarlet and gold, geranium and calceolaria, turned to
Roland, sitting near the door, and bending down his well-turned head,
said--

"Are you the clerk?"

"No," said Roland, behind his hand; "I am come here by appointment,
after my commission."

"Ho!" said Lord S--. "You and I can sit together then. Is it a full
dress levée?"

"I believe that it is," said Roland.

"You don't seem to know who I am," said Lord S--.

"I was waiting to see whether you would remember who I was, my lord,"
Roland answered, coolly.

Lord S-- looked more closely, and said-"Why, you are Evans, of Paul's.
You don't mean to say that you have left the University! 'What dost thou
from Gottenberg, old friend?' I thought you were going to stick to the
paternal acres, and go through the real course of training for
Parliament."

"I am sick of it all," said Roland, "and I am going into the army."

"I am sick of it, also," said the young lord, very gravely "but I am
going to stay at home and try to mend it. How very foolish the young
lady must be."

"What young lady?" said Roland, blushing deeply.

"The young lady who has caused you to take such a singular resolution."

"Do you know then--" said Roland.

"Not a word," said Lord S--; "only when I see a young fellow of talent
and chances entering the army, I guess there is a young lady at the
bottom of it."

Roland was perfectly aghast at this wonderful instance of shrewdness. He
did not know, country bumpkin as he was, that Lord S-- had known more of
the world when he was fourteen than Roland did when he was twenty. He
had absolutely nothing to say. Lord S--said, "Who is the other man?"

Roland, fairly off his balance with wonder, said, without
hesitation--"Sir Jasper Meredith."

"Why, he's not a marrying man! This is the doing of the young lady's
mother, I fear. Why, before I left Oxford, I have seen you carrying that
little, venomous-tongued heap of bones about in your arms. Yes; this is
the mother's work."

Roland was more aghast than ever, and Lord S-- intensely enjoyed his
confusion.

"This sort of thing often happens with our people," said Lord S--; "but
why Jessamy is to run away and 'list, because Jimmy's mother has
manoeuvred for another thousand a year or so, I cannot see. Don't do it;
don't 'list. We want fellows like you. Yon know how I hate your extreme
democracy; I have no chance of showing you how I love you."

There was nothing in Roland which could make him resist this brave man,
and he said, standing up and speaking in a whisper, "I have made a fool
of myself elsewhere."

"I hope not," said Lord S--, coldly.

"I mean in this way," said Roland, eagerly: "I begin to think
that--that--things might have been different in another quarter. Do you
see?"

Lord S-- nodded, and the look in his eyes--he was a bridegroom of two
months' standing--encouraged Roland to say more.

"If I can win honours," said Roland, whispering to him. "I will bring
them back and lay them at her feet. I will say to her, 'Ethel, I never
understood you'-"

"And all that," said Lord S--. "I think you really had better 'list for
a time. But it is very strange; I asked Fitzgerald about you, and he
told me that you were so self-contained and so silent. How is it that
you have let out so much to me about your private affairs--to a man you
have hardly seen?"

Roland was wondering to himself, and was trying to answer, when a clerk
came out of the inner room, and coming up to Lord S--, said, "The
minister waits Lord S--'s pleasure."

Lord S-- went off at once, and had nearly got to the inner door, when he
turned and came quickly back to Roland.

"Do you want infantry or cavalry?" he whispered, hurriedly.

"I want service," said Roland.

"There is no chance of service. The Crimea is only a breakdown;
glorious! but still a break-down. You can't get service. We shall not
meddle again in European affairs. You can't get service. Guards?"

"India," said Roland.

"You might get a chance of seeing service there, certainly," said Lord
S--; and he paused, although the great man was waiting.

"If it fell about that the darkest midnight, of the darkest night which
ever fell upon a nation, fell on this nation, would you? Yes, you
would--would the 140th do? they are an old-fashioned regiment, and still
wear cowry shells on their trappings."

"Any regiment which will show me service, S--," said Roland.

"And Ethel?" Lord S-- whispered to him, and went his way to the inner
room.

And Roland was left to his own thoughts; but not for long. For he was,
for the first time, among a section of the men who help to govern our
Empire of nearly 200,000,000 of souls. He was naturally interested; he
was soon more interested.

"Now I'll swear it on the Stone of Blarney," said a smallish, handsome
man--Norse-Celt, if it mattered; "I swear it on the very Stone of
Blarney itself that you're wrong. 'Tis West is to have the recrooten in
Dhublin, and East is to have the Eightieth."

The cavalry-colonel, to whom this was addressed, said, first of all,
"Haw!" (I have mentioned before that he was the only officer I ever met
who did.) And when he had said "Haw!" he said, "That is a mistake; East
should have had the recruiting, and West the colonelcy."

The short man said, "Bedad, it is all betux and betune--six of one, and
half a dozen of the other. Kiss the Blarney Stone, colonel; it is
yourself that has never kissed that same."

"Why on earth are you talking Irish to-night, R--!" said a very solemn
and quiet voice; and Roland, looking up, saw that a blonde,
quiet-looking man, of about forty, was looking over the shoulder of the
short, handsome man who was talking Irish.

"Only keeping my tongue in," said the short man. "I am forced to talk
all languages, as you know. West has got the recruiting at Dublin; and
if they had given it to a man who could talk Irish, as I can, we should
have a thousand more recruits every year."

"True enough for you," said the last comer, N--.

Said the cavalry-colonel: "Haw! My fellows would always have followed
me, to the devil. I can't talk Irish to them, though. I'd learn it if I
could. I like the men, and the men like me. There are half a dozen men
in my regiment who won't get on decently without a flogging; and there's
two officers in my regiment that I should dearly like to flog. But I
can't, by the rules of the service. However, all said and done, I can
take my regiment into action without any chance of a shot from behind."

Roland had sat staring his eyes out during all this; but now he saw what
he had always wished to see--a really great man.

He was a great man in more senses than one, for he was six foot two,
over-topping the cavalry-colonel. And he knew everybody intimately--at
least, everybody except Roland, and he bowed even to him. "I'll know
everybody some day," said Roland. But meanwhile he admired. The clerk
showed Roland's friend, Lord S--, out of the minister's private room,
and the tall newcomer caught that young man, and said to him, "I want to
see the minister at once," and he waited among the others.

Roland's Oxford friend, Lord S--, came straight to him. He said, laying
his hand on Roland's shoulder, "Have you changed your mind?"

"No, my lord. I do not come of a family who change their minds easily."

"Ethel? Will she change her mind?"

"It wants no changing," said Roland.

"Then you must go," said Lord S--. "May God go with you! But, Evans, in
the dark, dim night which is coming (O God, may morning come after it),
think of this. Think of what we might make India if we kept her, and
think of what she would be if we lost her. If you are to die, die for
keeping India till we have civilised her. You will find it all straight
in there. I have come to him on one petition, and I have given over my
own and urged yours." And so Lord S-- departed, and was seen no more.

Roland stepped through a softly-shutting door, and was in the presence
of the minister, a pale and very thoughtful-looking man, of about forty,
deeply sunk in an easy-chair; he was reading a letter, which he held in
his hand, and he turned his face from it to Roland, saying--"So you wish
to leave your books for the army, do you? A strange resolution. Your
friend, who has just left me, has given a most brilliant account of your
prospects."

"I am tired of England," said Roland. "I fear I am a spoilt child."

"Well, sir, we are not the party to grumble, at all events. You are late
in applying, but in consideration of your father's services, we will do
everything we possibly can for you. You may consider the matter as
settled."

And so he came out, looking brighter about the eyes, taller and grander
than when he went in. And there met him the enormously tall man, with a
very gentle, quiet, and clever face, who said to him, "Is the minister
disengaged, sir?"

And Roland, knowing who he was, and feeling the pride that any honest
lad feels for serving those who have proved themselves really true and
great servants of the State, said, "I will ask the clerk, my lord."

"I thought you were the clerk," said his lordship, laughing. "Pray
forgive me! But the clerks are getting to look so like soldiers since
they have taken to the moustache, that one is puzzled. I see the Colonel
Heavy has plunged into the Audience Chamber. Are you in the army?"

"I almost dare say so, my lord," said Roland.

Lord X----sighed. "Are you going as food for powder? You are old for the
army, are you not?"

"My father was a Waterloo man, and the minister has promised me a
commission. He was Captain Evans, of the 140th."

"Was he in the House?"

"For two Parliaments," said Roland, "in old times."

"Yes, yes; was he Evans of Tyn-y-Bald, or Evans of Llandavid, or Evans
of Eglwystafid?"

"Neither, my lord; he was the Evans of Stretton."

"Ay, ay; I see, I see. A Shropshire Evans. I thought you were a Welsh
Evans. Yes, yes! Your father married a daughter of old Cecil Meredith,
who rattled on Catholic Emancipation. The present man, I am told, is a
cripple. Yes, your grandfather Meredith was a silent member; in fact, I
never heard him open his mouth. Mum, Meredith, yes. And so your father
is dead. Dear, dear! how men drop. You have come into the whole of
Stretton, then?"

"Yes, my lord," said Roland, aghast.

"Well, manage your property. It will take you all your time. You have
actually more acres than I have; but I find it hard to do my duty as I
would wish it done. Why are you going into the army? Why don't you
attend to your property, and come into Parliament? You can't manage your
property if you go into the army. I suppose," added he, laughing, "that
Miss Mordaunt wants to see you in a fine coat? Go into the yeomanry. You
will look quite as fine in her eyes. Stay, I must go; here is the
colonel coming out. Mind, lastly, always to keep to your father's
principles; be an honest Whig, as he was, and you will come to no grief.
Good-by."

Roland left the room lost in wonder. Here was a man, whom he had seen
once or twice, in holiday visits to the House of Commons, recently
ennobled for great service; a man whom Roland conceived to be among the
kings of men. And this man knew more about himself than he did--Roland
had never dreamt that this man had ever heard of him in his life; but he
knew everything. Why, he was only wrong on one single thing; he had made
a mistake about Ethel Mordaunt, using her name when he meant Mary
Maynard. It was a miracle to Roland. What earthly interest could this
great man have in him and his affairs?

The reason was not very far to seek, if Roland had known anything at all
of the world. His father had "dropped," and he (Roland) was the head of
a house with very considerable territorial influence. If Roland had only
known the fact, his quiet, and, as he thought, foolish neighbour, the
great Whig, Sir Spium Goggleston, had been looking out of his spectacles
at Roland for a long time, and had been reporting on him. He had found
out the secret of Squire Charles's heart at the boat-race at Shrewsbury.
He got the happiest reports of Roland's furious Radicalism at Oxford. He
had looked up Mrs. Maynard, who being strongly for Mary's union with Sir
Jasper Meredith, had lied nobly, and told him that Roland would marry
Ethel. He had looked up Aunt Eleanor, who hated him and had kept him
waiting in a cold room for half an hour, and then violently scolded him
on account of a sitting of Crevecoeur eggs, which she had bought from
Lady Goggleston, for which Aunt Eleanor had paid five shillings, but
which had been so shamefully jolted in transmission that none of them
came out. (In fact, Aunt Eleanor expressed her determination to county
court Lady Goggleston for the money; but don't mention this.) Sir Spium
left that house, it might be said, naked and wounded. Still Aunt
Eleanor, in her temper, had assisted him with regard to his report at
head-quarters. She had said, in the argument about the eggs, several
things which she might just as well have left alone. Goggleston had
introduced Mary Maynard's name; and Aunt Eleanor, in repudiating her,
had unhappily introduced Ethel's. For which she could have bitten her
tongue out.

So Goggleston, by hook and by crook, had reported this about Roland. A
splendid unencumbered property, tenants well treated, who would work
like sheep for the Whigs. Carries with him the families of Maynard, the
head of which house has just married his sister; and Mordaunt, to the
eldest young lady of which house he is engaged to be married. Roland was
a most important young man. He never dreamt it; but with a possible
dissolution he was.

A Liberal Whip knows all about you, if you are of any importance. But a
Tory Whip knows all about you and your friends too, if you have any.

That, one would suspect, is one of the secrets of the Conservative
organisation which has beaten us, here and there, just lately. If Sir
Spium Goggleston had sent his wife instead of going himself, she would
probably have found out the relations between Roland and Ethel. One
effect of which would have been that Roland, while he was walking
towards Allan Gray's lodgings, would not have been wondering why the
great old Whig had made such an abominable mistake as to connect his
name with Ethel's.

But the streets were empty, and he whistled as he went.



Chapter 27.

When Roland knocked at the door of Allan Gray, he had forgotten all
about the great men he had seen, and all the things they had said. For
he had received a very curious letter from Allan Gray, and he was
thinking over it. The door was opened by Mrs. Gray, whom Roland knew. He
was very polite to her, and he passed into the parlour on the right,
where Allan Gray was sitting in state with papers on the table before
him.

Allan Gray, less trained than Roland, bowed solemnly, and brought him to
the fire. "Indeed, and it is cold to-night," said Roland. "A fire is a
good thing, and in this instance it amounts to a personal obligation."

Allan Gray could not make head or tail of this beginning. He bowed
stiffly, and said--

"I had not anticipated the honour of this interview."

"Lord love the man, you said you would not object, and now I have come
you say that you had not anticipated,----and so on,--" said Roland.
"Why, if any two men in England want a great talk together to-night, it
is you and I."

"I thought my case was so strong that you would scarcely dare to meet me
except by deputy."

"Lord love the man, again. What is his case? As for daring, I tell you
point-blank, that I dare do anything, save wrong."

Allan Gray had never seen coolness of this kind before. He said--

"You received my letter, sir?"

"Yes," said Roland. "It seems that you are going to dispute my
succession to Stretton Castle. I can't ask you on what grounds, because,
don't you see, that would be unfair and ungentlemanly on my part. I can
only say that, from all I have ever heard of you from Eddy, you are much
fitter to have it than I am. I have the will to do good, you have the
way. Why on earth should we talk about the matter?"

"I wished to talk business," said Allan Gray, utterly puzzled.

"What on earth would become of the lawyers if we talked our own business
over?" said Roland. "Here am I, gazetted on next Tuesday. My dear man,
how can I talk business with you? If you had got a new and very glorious
career before you, would you want to talk on business which had much
better be left to your lawyer?"

"I would really be more in earnest about it, sir," said Allan Gray.

"I will be perfectly in earnest about it," said Roland, "Tell me, once
again, what is the matter? We will begin de novo."

"I am going to dispute your claim to the inheritance."

"Stretton?"

"Exactly. My case is complete, and is a very strong one. What is yours?"

"I have not the wildest idea," said Roland, laughing.

Allan Gray was actually angry. "I never believed you frivolous," he
said, sternly, "and this is frivolity, sir. If it is intended as an
insult to me, I despise it."

Roland was on the high horse at once. "My good friend," he said, "you
have called me frivolous. Now it is well known that whatever I may be, I
am not that."

"You are treating a great question very frivolously, sir."

"I don't know anything about its being a great question," said Roland.
"It is possible enough that you may be heir to the property which I at
present consider mine: the succession has been disputed before now. I am
not in the least degree frivolous when I laugh at the idea of discussing
with you a question which, before it is finished, will be discussed by
the best legal heads in the land. You have instructed your attorneys, I
suppose? I shall at once instruct mine. And from that moment, my dear
Mr. Gray, the lowest messenger in the courts of law will have no more
influence over the case than you or I."

This obvious piece of common sense rather staggered Allan Gray, but he
said--

"I intend to direct my lawyers."

"Mine," said Roland, "are, I am happy to say, not fools enough to allow
of any interference whatever. Are you trained to the law?"

"No."

"Nor I either," said Roland. "It is against my interest, but I will give
you this piece of advice. You leave your lawyers alone. Come to India
with me, and let them fight it out. Only don't let us quarrel. Yours is
the old Cecil claim. Have you got any money?"

"No," said Allan, quite unable to cope with Roland's extreme coolness.

"Then your solicitors can scarcely be respectable men, for this is a
great speculation. We knew of it before, you know, and we can turn it at
every point. Who are your men?"

Allan Gray mentioned a house, "most undeniable," as the horsey men say.
Even Roland knew their names as those of leading and most respectable
men.

"By Jove!" he said. "Have they taken up the Cecil claim?"

"I know of no Cecil claim," said Allan Gray. "My claim comes from this
simple fact: I have the most unimpeachable evidence that I am your elder
brother by your father's previous marriage. Of that there is no earthly
doubt whatever. The names of my attorneys will guarantee that. Their
respectability, on the one hand, and their well-known cautiousness on
the other, would be guarantee that they would not take up the case of a
penniless jeweller's journeyman on speculation unless they believed it.
I am, I believe, perfectly sure of that part of my case."

"My elder brother!" said Roland.

"Undoubtedly so," said Allan Gray; "and, what is more, your legitimate
elder brother."

"I cannot believe that part of it," said Roland, after a minute's
thought. "My father must have known whether he was married to your
mother or whether he was not; and to accuse him of neglecting or not
acknowledging a legitimate son, is to insult his memory. I assure you,
in the most temperate manner, that you are miles wrong in your estimate
of my father's character if you consider him capable of such a thing."

"He never knew of my existence," said Allan. "A fraud was practised on
him by a foolish woman who loved him--"

"Well, that is all a matter for the lawyers," said Roland. "You need not
show your hand to me, of all people. We will fight it out fair and
square, lawyer to lawyer. I don't see any reason for any personal
rancour between us. I want to know nothing at all--"

Roland, who had been sitting hitherto, rose at this moment, and walked
hurriedly up and down the room. Allan Gray spoke three times to him
before he answered, and then his answer seemed to be scarcely to the
purpose.

"I want to ask you one question, and one only, as from one gentleman to
another. I assure you that it is only on sentimental grounds, and can do
you no harm at all. In the list of the witnesses which you have to call
is there one Mrs. Maynard, of Maynard's Barton?"

"There is?" said Allan Gray.

"Hah! thank you. That will account. I will ask no more questions. Well,
if you can prove yourself to be my elder brother, I shall not be ashamed
of you. Do your duty by the tenantry. I shall be sorry to lose my money,
but probably you will do your duty by those few sheep in the wilderness
better than I could have done--for I am sick of England. I will be a
bigger man than you, even if you gain your point. Well, good-by, and the
worst of luck to you in this matter, and the best in all others."

"I cannot conceive that you understand the great gravity of your
position, sir," said Allan Gray. "Have you read your father's will?"

"You mean, do I know your strong point? Yes, I am a very clever and
shrewd person, with a very high education; not unused to debate either.
And from the beginning of this conversation I perceived the awful hold
which the wording of my father's will gives you, if you can only prove
your identity and legitimacy. The will runs, 'To my eldest son,' never
mentioning my name. I saw that point a little time ago."

"Upon my honour, sir, I did not give you credit for such shrewdness,"
said Allan Gray, honestly.

Roland drew his head up and laughed nearly silently at him. "You mean
that you thought you could match your intellect with mine. Poor dear! I
can show you a few other points to amuse you if you will. Eddy is
provided for by his aunt, and so my father has omitted his name
altogether. My sister is mentioned as 'My only daughter,' so you can't
hurt her. Goodnight; and as a parting piece of advice, never word your
own will if you make a dozen."

And so Roland departed, leaving Allan Gray lost in wonder at his
recklessness and bonhomie.

Gray, having lived a narrow, money-seeking life all his time, could not
understand Roland's recklessness at all; and, after long thought, came
to the conclusion that Roland thought that he was perfectly safe, and
that hence came his easy bearing.

But it was quite otherwise. To Roland, who was a shrewd, clear-headed
fellow, matters looked extremely ugly. What on earth was there to
prevent his father having married in a secret way before? It was quite
likely. Many men had done so. If Gray could prove that, the foolish
wording of his father's will would point at once to Allan Gray as his
father's heir. And--

He determined to knock up Mr. Somes, the head of the London branch of
his Shrewsbury lawyers, and speak to him about it. Mr. Somes was over
his dessert, and alone, and Roland, after a few preliminary civilities,
opened the matter to that gentleman.

Mr. Somes, a young man about thirty, with long whiskers, looking very
much like a cavalry officer without moustaches, fixed his shrewd, bold
eye on Roland at once, and begged Roland to tell him what he thought of
the matter.

Roland gave him the news which has been stated above, and added, "I
think very seriously of this business."

Mr. Somes nodded. "Do you know anything of this young Perkin Warbeck?"
he added. "I only know that he is a young man of the very highest
character," said Roland. "He is a great friend of my brother's. He is, I
believe, admirable in every relation of life. I know enough of him to
say that if he did not fully believe in his own claim, all the tortures
of the Inquisition would not have made him advance it."

"It is an ugly business, Mr. Roland," said Mr. Somes. "It may go well
with us, and it may go ill. I feel it my duty to tell you so. What are
his proofs?"

"I have not the slightest idea," said Roland. "Mrs. Maynard knows
something, and that is all I know about the matter."

"Mrs. Maynard of the Barton? Yes, a client of ours. We have half
Shropshire for our clients in consequence of our Shrewsbury connexion,
you know. The mother of the future Mrs. Evans," he added, smiling and
bowing.

"Why, no, Mr. Somes," said Roland; "that is off; and a good thing too,
for I am going to India."

Somes showed no astonishment. He wanted to know something more.

"We will hear about India another time, Mr. Evans. So. Mrs. Maynard is
one of his witnesses, and there's nothing between you and Miss Maynard?
I suppose there is another gentleman in the field, handsomer than you
are, although we Shropshire people used to consider you not
bad-looking?"

"I believe, Somes, that poor Jasper Meredith is 'au mieux' there. But what
does it matter to me now?"

Somes gave a sudden start, but Roland did not notice it. Very shortly
after, Roland went away, and young Somes, filling himself some claret,
took a letter from his pocket-book, and read as follows:--

"Bonn.

"DEAR SOMES,--I have made such a thundering ass of myself, and have not a
soul to advise me. I am coming at once to England.

"I have so far committed myself in writing to Miss Maynard, that her
mother makes her write to me every day, and writes herself three times
a-week, calling me by my Christian name: what on earth shall I do?

"I have no one to advise with but you. You have always been as much of a
friend as a man of business. Do advise me, &c.

"JASPER MEREDITH."



Chapter 28.

Ethel was more than ever with Miss Evans in these times, and these two
got more and more attached to one another. Ethel, watching her friend,
saw that she was more and more distraught and anxious as time went on.

"I am going to have Eddy home," she said one morning, abruptly. "He must
do something for himself, for goodness knows how many I may have on my
hands soon; and the army is not so expensive as Oxford, and so he had
better be seen after. Ho! I suppose you know that Roland has got his
commission, and passed his examination easily."

Ethel was very much surprised.

"Ah! you may well stare, indeed. A nice mess we have made of it among
us. I am sure I don't know whatever we shall do. I suppose you have not
heard that Sir Jasper Meredith is engaged to Mary Maynard?"

"Impossible!" cried Ethel.

"True, young lady, for all that. Mrs. Maynard announces it everywhere,
most openly. Well," she continued, rubbing her nose. "I am sorry for the
little cripple, but it has saved our Roland, at all events. Now,
perhaps, he will believe people when they tell him. I don't myself know
what the man's intellect is made of, not to see through such a woman as
that. In some senses he had better go where he is going; he leaves no
fool behind to watch his interests."

"Will he go abroad with his regiment, then, Miss Evans?"

"Lord bless you, didn't you know? He is going to India for years and
years." And when, with kindly shaking hand, she had administered the
blow, she was silent, leaving the girl quite to herself.

Ethel was silent also. At one time she breathed a little quicker, and
there was a fluttering in her breath, but it soon stopped. Aunt Eleanor
took no notice for a little while, and then went on with affected
petulance.

"Of course he must go and fight somewhere. None of our family would have
their health if they were not fighting somebody. I am always fighting
the Board of Guardians, or the farmers, or Deacon Macdingaway, or you,
or Eddy, or some of you. The dear fellow who is gone fought at Waterloo
and in India. It is all very well for his mother to say that it is
ridiculous. I don't see it. He could make himself a rich man and a
famous one by going to India, whereas he could do no possible good in
regard to this lawsuit by staying here. I think it the best thing."

"The lawsuit!" said Ethel. "What lawsuit?"

"Law, child, they are going to dispute his succession, or something of
that sort; but I'll sort 'em. That deceitful old trot?"

"What deceitful old trot?" asked Ethel, in wonder.

"Phillis Myrtle. That woman has deceived every one, and now she has let
it all out in her drink to Mrs. Gray. I am not going to talk one word
more about the matter. Your brother Jimmy is coming home to pass his
examination for the army, at Chelsea Hospital of all places, as if he
was a wooden-legged pensioner, given to drink and language. I suppose
you will say that you didn't know that next?"

"Indeed, I did not, Miss Evans."

"I knew she would," said Aunt Eleanor, with scornful triumph. "The next
thing she will say is, that she does not know that Roland is coming here
to this house, this very night, to dine and sleep, and to say good-by to
us all--that will be the next thing she will say, mark my words."

"Indeed it will, Miss Evans," said Ethel.

"I knew it," said Aunt Eleanor, "I knew she would say that. However,
child, it is true, and as it is too late for you to go home, you had
better stay and make the best of it."

And now, for the first time, Aunt Eleanor looked at Ethel, and
discovered that Ethel had turned, and was looking very steadily at her
without speaking.

"Yes," said Aunt Eleanor, quite coolly, "you are perfectly correct in
your supposition. I arranged this meeting here tonight, and so you may
keep your eyes to yourself, child. I thought proper to do so, and I did
it: I never give any further reasons for my conduct than that. I first
of all communicated with Jimmy to know when he was coming, and I got him
to promise to be here to-night. Then I sent and ordered Eddy home; in
fact, he is at his father's house now. Then I ordered your brother John
to step across; and lastly, I sent for Roland. And so they will all be
here to dinner; and I am going to scold the cook and spoil the dinner
for a quarter of an hour, and then I am going to dress. If you say a
word, I will be civil to you. Go." And Ethel went without a word, and
there was silence in the house.

Not for long. A wild storm, which had been for some time progressing
towards Pulverbatch Grange, now broke open the door, and held high riot
in her peaceful hall. Aunt Eleanor heard it as she was putting on her
brooch; and as she listened, her face grew fixed and worn-looking. And
she did a strange thing.

She knelt down at her dressing-table and prayed--prayed earnestly, until
the first passionate spirit of her prayer had gone by the mere iteration
of the words. Then, like a good Christian, she rose from her knees,
strengthened, resigned, but perfectly self-possessed and determined; and
with her head in the air, went down the staircase saying, "My bonny
boys!"

Her bonny boys were misconducting themselves in the most outrageous
manner. Jim Mordaunt had gone straight to Stretton Castle, and had
driven over with Roland and Eddy in a dog-cart. They had arranged that
Roland should sit behind with the groom, and that Eddy should drive, to
which James had agreed with a calmness which to Roland foreboded
disaster. He had proposed to drive, but was at once objurgated by Eddy
and James, as departing from his given word; and so they had departed,
Eddy driving. But in the first dangerous lane, Jim Mordaunt discovered
that he wanted to drive, and fought Eddy for the reins. Eddy resisted,
and Roland found it necessary to interfere mildly, and to send the
groom, who was convulsed with laughter, to the plunging horse's head.
After long recriminations, James was allowed to drive, and made the
horse run away (fictitiously) in the darkest of dark places; and by
scientific handling of his whip, knocked Eddy's hat off, and pretended
that he could not pull his horse up to recover it. Petruchio at his
maddest was not so mad as James was that night; and so, when Aunt
Eleanor came softly stepping down the staircase, with her candle
glittering on her diamonds, she found Eddy with his curls in disorder,
and the rain-drops glittering upon them, scolding James and appealing to
Roland; James sedately exculpating himself, representing the whole
matter as an unavoidable accident; and Roland standing by laughing, and
saying at intervals, "You fools! you fools!"

They did not see her till she said, "Well, young men, have you been
having some fun?"

Their good-humoured, kindly riot was stilled in an instant as they came
towards her. She was a strange lady this, yet one who could give a
reason for her actions, too. She passed Eddy and Roland, and going
straight to James Mordaunt, and kissing him on the forehead, whispered
to him, "God bless you, my boy: you are not the first, and you won't be
the last." And then leaving him suddenly, she shook hands with Roland,
looking at him steadily. After this she turned to Eddy, and said, "Where
is your hat, sir?"

"He knocked it off on purpose," said Eddy.

"Why, bless the boy, his hair is all wet," said Aunt Eleanor, making an
excuse to pass her hand over the curls of this "carum caput." "Go and
dry it, sir, upstairs. No, don't; you will not hurt. Come into the
parlour."

But as they were going the door was opened by one of the men, and a
gruff voice asked, "Is my brother here?" And James went back; for it was
his brother, and they made their greeting alone.

"How goes it, Jimmy?" said the elder.

"No better, old man," said the younger.

"That's bad, old chap," said the elder. "Keep a light heart, and you'll
soon forget it. By-the-bye, the bay mare has come down with Tom, in
Bennington Lane, and is knocked all to bits. I always said she was too
straight in the shoulder. The Governor must have squinted when he bought
her. Is Ethel here?"

"No, Johnny. Why?"

"Because she ain't at home, that is all. I suppose she is somewhere."
And so they went into that room which Miss Evans was pleased to call her
parlour.

The dinner-table was laid at the lower end, and they clustered round the
great fireplace at the upper or drawing-room end, and talked pleasantly
and quietly together. There was no more noise now; the last sparkle of
the old fun was ever. A great parting was coming, and the shadow of it
was upon them. Aunt Eleanor made Roland come and sit beside her, and as
she talked to him about his resolution of going to India, and of this
wonderful lawsuit, she not only managed to turn himself and her self
away from the fire towards the door at the lower end of the long room,
but also, in the heat of her assurance that she would manage for his
interests in the best way, contrived to get hold of his hand. As she
held it, the door opened, and some one came with a candle in her hand,
throwing the light upon her face. At which time Aunt Eleanor found
herself clasped tightly on the wrist by Roland; and said, very quietly:
"You might have found that out before. You may well pinch me black and
blue, indeed. Yes, indeed, you may well. I won't scold you because you
are going to India. But if you ever have time to think, think what a
fool you have been over that matter."

"It is too late, aunt."

"Why, you don't suppose, do you, that such a girl as that is likely to
allow herself to be played fast and loose with, as you have played fast
and loose with her; and to be insulted by a chit of a Mary Maynard, as
you have insulted her; and to be 'Etheled' as you have 'Etheled' her;
and then listen to a word you have got to say without--without--boxing
your stupid ears. You don't suppose that, do you? I don't. Look at her."

And, indeed, she was well worth looking at, holding her brother James's
shoulders, and looking into his eyes with gentle, tender curiosity: for
Ethel was as well worth looking at as any young lady in the good county
of Shropshire that day.

"Roland," she said, stepping forward and smiling on him, "and so you are
going to India: mercy on us, how lonely we shall all be, and how the
times will have changed! I shall stay with Miss Evans altogether, if she
will have me now."

She was quite self-possessed, much more so than was he; and as he sat
beside her, and talked to her all that evening, he thought more and more
what a fool he had been.



Chapter 29.

Roland had been in bed some three hours, when he was awakened in the
dead of night by a horse's hoofs on the gravel; and while he was still
lying wondering, a servant entered half-dressed, with a light, and put a
telegram in his hand.

"The Colonel of the 140th Dragoons to Cornet Evans:--You will instantly
join head-quarters, and make every preparation for sailing at once,
Cornet Marlow having met with a severe accident. No delay can be
permitted."

His first astonishment over, he bade the servant dress himself and help
pack, while he went off to rouse Eddy. Eddy at once determined to go
with him, and see the very last of him, and they spent the night in
packing, having determined only to tell their mother what had happened
in the morning, and then only half the truth.

It was very strange, moving about the darkened house with lights in the
dead of night, and coming, under such strange circumstances, on old
familiar objects, now to be parted from perhaps for ever. This had been
his only home, and yet he parted with it almost without a sigh, as he
parted with servant, horse, dog, almost all. The fire of life was
burning high and clear with him; there was no present and no past for
him, only a glorious future.

The parting from his mother was not difficult, for indeed he told her
only that he was summoned to the head-quarters of his regiment. Not
another soul save the servants did he see, but had driven off in the
carriage long before any of the Mordaunts were astir. He looked across
the valley at their house in the fresh morning air, and the house was
closed, and no smoke was coming from the chimneys. Much was to pass
before he saw them again.

He was very silent, but very gentle and kind in the train. During the
whole of the long day's journey to Chatham, he talked only in a
wondering, eager way about the future: where they would send him; how he
should get his necessaries together in so short a time, and how
delightful it would be. The moment they got to Chatham, he reported
himself to the Colonel, who seemed pleased at his diligence, and
complimented him.

The Colonel looked at Roland with intense curiosity as he did so, and
Roland looked intently on the Colonel. He was a tall, long man, with a
lean, brown face, and two bright, hazel eyes looking out from under
grizzled eyebrows; also a pair of grizzled moustaches, not curled, which
scarcely concealed the determined pout of the lower lip. A very
pleasant-looking man when in good humour, as he was now. His name,
Colonel Cordery.

"I hear all kinds of fine things of you, sir. I hope you will like us.
We have the name of being one of the most agreeable regiments in the
army. If you will fit in with us, we shall fit in with you. We are a
little old-fashioned and quiet, and you will find it dull after Oxford,
I fear; but we have not got a single snob in the regiment, which is a
great thing."

"You are very fortunate, sir," said Roland, by way of saying something.

"It is more good management than good fortune, though," said the
Colonel, thoughtfully. "You see, we have a way of getting rid of snobs;
we all get so thundering polite and genteel (not gentleman-like, we are
always that) that they can't stand us, and exchange. That is the way we
manage. We are rather surprised at your joining our regiment. I should
have thought that you would at least have tried for the Engineers, or,
missing that, the Artillery. However, I have such a letter from Lord
S--about you, that you will be one of us at once. You will find us not
very high in literary acquirements; we could all construe our Caesar's
Commentaries, but not many could do so now. But you will find this a
regiment which knows its duty. You will find the officers personally
knowing the men, and the men respecting the officers. How strange that a
man with your prospects should become a dragoon! Well, that is no
business of mine. You will find us good fellows, ready to welcome you
heartily."

"I fear I shall have short time to learn my duty, sir," said Roland.

"We will teach it you, theoretically, on board ship, as they do musketry
at Hythe--never allow a man powder and ball till he is a perfect shot.
Ha! ha! A man whose father has kept hounds, and who has himself get a
first in Moderations at Oxford, need not fear cavalry drill. You will
come to mess to-night?

"Certainly, sir. I will step round and tell my brother, and dress."

"Bring your brother. And look here--you have five days' leave; you must
go back to London for your outfit; who are your agents?"

"C---, I believe, sir."

"Well, they will see to you. I will introduce you to-night. Go along and
dress."

In a short time the men began to dawdle into the mess-room one by one,
and to talk shop to one another. And if you hear the officers of any
regiment talking about their duty, get your son into that regiment by
hook or by crook, for it is a good one. The Colonel and his boy (the
Colonel was a widower, and the boy was in the Engineers, doing well),
came in; and the Colonel sat down before the fire, very thoughtfully;
and discovering his sword, took it off and put it in the coal-scuttle,
from which it was dexterously removed by a subaltern. The Colonel was in
a brown study, and the other men talked low.

At last he said, spreading his hands abroad, before the fire, "Well!
well! he knows his own affairs best; but it is a most astonishing timing
to me."

Those round him understood him at once. One of them said, "Will the new
Cornet do, Colonel?"

"Oh yes, he'll do fast enough. But why on earth did the Minister and the
Horse Guards and Lord S-- send him to us?"

"Because," said his son, "they knew, all three of them, that my father's
regiment was the best-governed and best-ordered regiment in the
service."

"Well, it is a good regiment. Hush! Here they are; he and his brother,"
and he rose.

The mess had got it into their heads that they should see a pale, bent
man, over-worn by studies, and a pasty-faced youth from Oxford--his
brother. Soldiers can judge of men, and they were taken by surprise.

Again, among men who have undergone a certain class-training, there is
an unwritten law by which one gentleman can often recognise another at
first sight. The first sight is very often wrong. One may find a
finished gentleman in training and in heart, under the disguise of an
outward-looking cad, and you may find a thorough-going cad under the
disguise of a gentleman. But with regard to Roland and Eddy there was no
mistake; and once more they were taken by surprise. Their experience of
Oxford men had not been uniformly happy--in fact otherwise; but here
were, at first sight, two traditional Oxford men.

Roland came in first--grand, imperial, perfectly cool, and perfectly
conciliatory--in height reaching the Colonel, in personal appearance far
surpassing any man in the room. The unspoken verdict upon him was, "He
will do." And as Aunt Eleanor might have said--"I should think he
would." He met with a warm and genial reception from this jolly
regiment, and was from the first moment a success. But by no means such
a success as Eddy. Eddy came in with his great eyes staring, and his
mouth slightly parted in sheer curiosity. He was introduced to one and
to the other, and he made the requisite bow; but the look of whimsical
curiosity was still in his face, when Roland, the Colonel, and the
Adjutant were deep in confabulation, and when most of the junior
officers had gathered round him.

For Aunt Eleanor was right. There was something singularly attractive
about this lad. The poor boy had a way of looking very handsome when he
admired anything, and of not throwing any expression into his face when
he was disgusted at anything. He was admiring now, and they gathered
round him. Also he was pleasantly ready with his tongue. Lieutenant
Spiller began the conversation.

"Are you going into the army, Mr. Evans?"

"Yes," said Eddy; "but into the infantry. You see, my aunt is afraid of
my falling into dissipated ways if I join the cavalry. Now, does your
experience bear her out, for instance?"

"Certainly not in this regiment," said Spiller, laughing; "but your aunt
is in the main right."

"She generally is," said Eddy. "I wish you could make a vacancy for me;
I should like to go with Roland."

"Marlow only made the vacancy for him by breaking his leg in two
places," said Captain Markham.

"Then I must decline in the infantry," said Eddy, and they all went to
dinner.

There was contention about Eddy. Roland was made to sit by the Colonel
to be talked to, but with regard to Eddy there was contention. "Come
here, Evans," said one. "His place is here," said another. Eddy was
perfectly cool. He said, "I will sit where you like, for you all seem
very nice. Don't spoil me for the infantry, that is all; I am not used
to be spoilt at home."

The dinner was plain, but eaten with a good appetite. They had all been
hard at work that morning. Roland and the Colonel talked much together,
and when warmed with his meat and drink (in moderation), the Colonel,
like an honest man, grew confidential.

"To tell you the very real truth, Evans," he said, "I was not best
pleased at your coming here at all first."

"I am sorry for that, sir; I will try to remove your causes of
objection."

"They are removed already, I think. We don't, as a rule, want scholars
in our regiment; they are apt to be bumptious, and we can't stand
bumptious men. Now you don't seem in the least degree bumptious."

"I assure you I am not, sir."

"No! no! Quite so. I dare say you will do us a deal of good; freshen us
up a bit, eh? I suppose you read the Saturday Review now?"

Roland confessed he did.

"Beastly paper, but very clever, is it not?"

Roland said that at the University it was considered able.

"Yes, you are very rich, are you not?"

Roland said, "I ought to have some six or seven thousand a year."

"Are you extravagant?

"No, quite otherwise," said Roland.

"Because I want to point this out to you. You are by very far the
richest man in this regiment, and we are the quietest and cheapest
cavalry regiment in the service. Consider, Evans, what wicked thing you
would do were you to bring on habits of competitive ostentation in our
pleasant little family. We are not Solomons; I have fools under me, who,
poor boys, would resent your ostentation, and hate you for it in the
first instance, and then try to emulate it--to their ruin, ay, and to
the ruin of the regiment. We are a happy little family, Evans; don't you
make it an unhappy one by idleness and extravagance."

"Before heaven, sir," said Roland, "I only desire to learn my duty from
you."

The Major, a lean man, with a hungry face, pinched in sharply under the
cheek bones, and wandering, speculative eyes, here answered--

"The young man has spoken well. Works are well. What is your faith?"

"My dear Brocklebank," said the Colonel, "is not this rather soon?"

Major Brocklebank never noticed him. "Have you gone through the fire of
ill-concealed Papistry, at Oxford, young man, and have you come out
without a scorch? It is impossible. I fear you are a High Churchman."

"I am very much afraid I was what you would call a High Churchman," said
Roland, rather frightened at having to confess faith in strange company,
but perfectly resolute. "And I am afraid--I mean I hope---I mean I
intend to remain as much of one as I can; and since this confession has
been forced upon me, I may as well tell the whole truth at once, and say
that in politics am an extreme Radical."

"Come out and see the men, Evans," said the Colonel. And Roland rose and
went after him, pleased and proud at being commanded by a better man
than himself. When he got into the barrack-square, under the clouded
moon, he discovered that the Colonel was convulsed with laughter.

"Old Brocklebank and you!" he said, when he found his voice. "Why, old
Brocklebank is a Dissenter and a Radical, and you are a Puseyite and a
Radical. We shall have some fun out of you. Only mind, Evans," he said,
seriously, "don't, by your prior scholarship, make Brocklebank
ridiculous. He has proved himself a very splendid officer; you have
still to prove yourself that. And he has done more to purify our mess
from loose talk than ever I did. They daren't before him. Come and see
your men."

"I thought a cavalry regiment was very different from this, sir," said
Roland.

"There is no regiment like ours, sir," said the Colonel. "Brocklebank
and I have made it what it is. By heaven, sir, I wish you could have
seen it before our time. Well."

They walked in silence for a few moments, and the Colonel said, "Will
you see your men first, or your horses?"

And Roland said, "The men."

"I am glad of that. What I want to impress on my subalterns is that they
should know their men and should gain their confidence. We will see your
troop, No. 2. Pause for a moment, Evans, before you look at these men
and boys, and think."

"Give the key-note," said Roland.

"I will. These men whom you are about to see will, sooner or later, be
given into your charge for life or death, for good or evil. They are
ill-educated; they are recruited from the very worst class; not one of
them but recruited under a cloud of debt, of despair, or of ruined love
for women: or possibly worse. Now, mind, sooner or later there will come
a dim, dark hour for you and for them--an hour of disaster and retreat.
And in that hour, Evans, they will cry to you for brains, for dexterity,
for courage, for conduct knowing that their lives are in your hand. Are
you prepared for this responsibility? We cannot supplement our
battalions by conscription, like the Continental nations. Will you
undertake the government of these few?"

"I will try to learn from you, sir," said Roland, for this evening was
different from what he had expected; and, indeed, seeing that the
darkest of dark hours was approaching, it was not at all unnatural.

The Colonel opened a door and passed in, Roland following him.

It was a long, low barrack-room, with beds, now turned down on each
side, and tables along the midst. There were about forty men in the
room.

The most of them had not gone to bed, but some had, for it was getting
late, and as they were to sail so soon, discipline was a little relaxed.
Every man rose when he saw the Colonel, and the Colonel bade them sit
down again.

They were sitting in their shirts and trousers, playing at draughts, at
chess, at cards, mainly "all fours," along the centre tables. They knew
the Colonel's humour, and went on with their games, as though he were
not present. Round each parti of chess, cards, or draughts, there were
many lookers-on, noisy enough before the Colonel had come in, but silent
now.

"These are your fellows," said the Colonel, in a whisper; "look at
them." And Roland did so.

Sleepy? yes. Thoughtless? yes. Largely curious about the Colonel's
visit? yes. Utterly uncurious about him, Roland? Yes again. Strange
lads! many of them handsome, many ugly; but not a hopeless oarsman among
them, so Roland put it. Sleepy and idle, yet looking, by some bright
trick of the eye, indescribable, as though they could row, if taught;
or, indeed, fight on occasion.

"I only came here to-night, men," said the Colonel, raising his voice,
"to introduce your new Cornet to you. Cornet Marlow being invalided, he
will go with you to Calcutta, you know."

Every eye was turned on Roland One young man sat up in bed, and kicked
another young man in the next bed, who would wake; whereupon the other
young man groped under the bed for his boots to shy at the first young
man; and was proceeding, with expletives, to ask whether eight hours'
stable-guard was not enough, when he was stiffened by the sight of the
Colonel, and went fast asleep; for bed is a sanctuary which is utterly
inviolable in free countries against all powers.

"These men are in bed before bugle," said the Colonel to a corporal.

"They have been at work on board all day, sir," said the corporal.

"What men are in the sick-ward?" said the Colonel.

"Only one, Job Hartop."

"You have seen your men in health, Evans; come with me and see another
side of it."

Job Hartop was in an ill case; in fact, the world was over and past for
Job Hartop. The surgeon was there, and said the depression brought on by
chronic inflammation of the lungs was so great that he could not rally.
The nurse was there, and she said that he was sinking fast, and would
rattle soon: the Chaplain was there, and said that his spiritual state
was satisfactory, but that there was something on his mind. The Chaplain
added that he was going to give him the Communion. Would they stay?

Roland said "Yes," directly. The Colonel said a few words about
preparation, but added, "We may have short shrift, some of us, one day.
I will stay too."

They spoke in whispers, as we do when one is dying. The priest made
ready the elements, and then they aroused the dying lad who had been
laid, with his face deep in his pillow, turned way from them.

Such a strange, beautiful, flushed face turned towards them. You would
scarcely have believed at first that death was there; but when you
looked at the parted lips, with the dry white tongue behind them, you
saw him. The battle could not last much longer.

The Colonel put the Chaplain aside for a moment. "Hartop," he said, "you
are near your end, and we are going to take the Sacrament together; is
there anything I can do for you?"

The lad said, "No, sir, I thank you kindly."

"Is there no message to your relations,--to father or to mother?"

"No, sir, thank you. They are well shute of me."

"Is there no message to any one else now, dearer than either father or
mother?" said the Colonel, quietly.

The young man paused, and then said, slowly--

"Yes. Her name is here, in this letter, under the pillow. And I want her
to be told this. If I'd ever thought she cared for me, I'd never have
gone after the other girl. But I didn't see it. And I never cared for
the other one. And the other one, her mother wouldn't let her have me,
and so I 'listed and come to this. I should like her to be told that,
sir, if it could be managed. Who is that young gentleman?"

"That is Mr. Roland Evans, our new Cornet."

"Perhaps he will take that message for one of his own troop," said the
dying man. "Stick to your troop, sir, and your troop will stick to you.
What was that song that daft Geordie Cameron used to sing, the time we
were quartered with the 72nd at Carlisle?

"Never mind songs now, my poor lad," said the Colonel.

"Ay, but--but I do mind. I am giving the young gentleman the message to
take to her. I know."

"'Won't you come back to me, Douglas, Douglas?'"

"No!"

"'And I'll lay my heart on your dead heart, Douglas.'"

"That's near it, but not all."

"'Mine eyes were blinded, your words were few.'"

"That is it! That is the message, Cornet. Now shrive me, and let me
die."

And the Chaplain began the Communion Service, and they all partook. And
the young man had eaten the bread and drunk the wine, but when the
Chaplain, experienced in all kinds of death on many fields, came to the
passage, "Glory be to God on high," he substituted another, "0 Lord,
receive the soul of this Thy servant"; and the Colonel and Roland,
looking on the bed, saw that the young man was dead.

Such was Roland's first introduction to this strange little British
army, which has to hold the world on its back like the tortoise. When
they were out in the square together, he asked the Colonel, "Who was
be?"

"I have no idea," said the Colonel. "He was one of those young men who
come to us from no one knows whither; for what no one knows why; and
make our best soldiers for particular purposes."

"For what purposes?" said Roland.

"For desperate purposes." said the Colonel. "That stamp of man is
utterly careless of life. There is one day in my life I do not care to
speak about--the day of Chillianwallah. And on that day I saw hope if we
could get a message across to B--, under heavy fire. And I sent a
trooper, a gentleman, a man with secret, with it. But he was cut over,
and his secret with him. George Peyt wasted two years before he took the
title of Lord Avonswood, and Lady Flora Barty has turned Roman Catholic.
That is all I have heard, and I don't believe one word of it."

"Then in cavalry regiments you have your romances," said Roland.

"Lord bless you!" said the Colonel. "Why did you give up your career for
us?"

This was dangerous ground.

"What do you suppose makes young men enlist then, Colonel?"

"Women, women, women," said the Colonel, emphatically. "If the women
will only make such fools of themselves as they generally do, we can
recruit the British army without a conscription. Why, the British army
would never have had my services, but for that very cause. Nor yours
either, my good lad."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Roland.

"And I beg yours also. Don't tell me. Ho, by the way, I would have told
you. You are not junior Cornet. There is actually one who knows less
about his duty than you do. I only knew it to-day."

"He must he rather inexperienced," said Roland.

"Well," said the Colonel, "he has been studying in Germany; and I dare
say knows German tactics. I don't say that he is a bad man, because, if
he were, he would not have been sent to me. But I hate jobbery."

"Yes, sir."

"And this is a thundering piece of jobbery. The worst I have ever heard
of, or dreamt of. I am not going into details. I am no reformer; I
believe we could get on pretty well as we are, if they would let us
alone. But this is too strong."

"Indeed, sir."

"Yes, and indeed," said the Colonel. "Markham's aunt is dead, and
Markham naturally don't want to go to India; so he sells out. And lo and
behold, a schoolboy is gazetted to us--I assure you, a mere
schoolboy--from sheer political interest. I was never spoken to about
the matter. I only was officially informed of the fact. They may do such
things now, but they won't do them ten years hence. It is shameful.
Bully him, Evans. I know he must be a Turk."

"Has he passed Chelsea, sir?"

"Oh yes; he is one of your kind, a scholar; I believe that he is a
University man. The whole job has been done in a fortnight; it appears
that no regiment but ours would do for him, and his father is a
considerable man in his county, and so the bear is sent to us to be
licked into shape."

"What is his name, sir?"

"James Mordaunt," said the Colonel.

"That bear wants no licking, Colonel. Jim has followed me."

"You know him, then?"

"Yes, sir. I know one of the finest fellows who ever walked--in his
way--in your way; by Jove, sir, you have strengthened the regiment by
ten men."

"And who is the lady in this case?" said the Colonel.

"I fear it is my sister," said Roland, quite off his guard. In a moment
afterwards, he was praying the Colonel to forget, not to have heard, to
ignore, his last speech. And the Colonel said, quietly, "My dear young
man, I am the best colonel of cavalry, socially speaking, in the army.
Is it likely that I could say one word?"

Yes, Jim, by simple sulky ferocity, and threats of (as he put it) making
a greater beast of himself than he had ever done before; and what was
more powerful still, by threatening to enlist in Roland's troop, had
carried the day; and if ever one man was backed up by another, he was
backed up by Sir Jasper Meredith.

Squire Mordaunt didn't see his way, so he said. He did not like to ask
the Minister. It was an unusual and singular thing. It would be a sheer
job; and if he wanted anything afterwards he should be ashamed to ask it
of the Whigs. Sir Jasper screeched and hobbled round him for an hour.

"What is the good of talking like that?" he asked, shrilly (Aunt Eleanor
once said that he was Pope without his powers of versification). "You
have ratted, my dear sir: for heaven's sake take your money like an
honest man. You can't possibly rat again, you know, under five or six
years; and you may be dead before then, for you are ageing fast. Realise
your rat while they remember it, and provide for Jim."

"Don't be impudent, Jasper," said Squire Mordaunt; "you have an ugly
tongue: keep it between your tooth, boy. If you call providing for Jim
putting him in a cavalry regiment, I don't."

"Then keep him at home," cried Sir Jasper, not one whit abashed; "keep
him at home in idleness and sulkiness, away from Roland, and the Lord
help you."

"It is no business of yours," said Squire Mordaunt.

"Not a bit," said Sir Jasper; "that is the point of it. If it any
business of mine, I should take a side. As it is, I take none; but I
know and can see things which you can't. If you send him with Roland he
will do. If you don't, take the consequences."

"And if he gets killed there?" said Squire Mordaunt, at a loss for an
argument--

"Then you will have no further trouble with him," said Sir Jasper;
"which would be a relief to my mind if I were his father."



Chapter 30.

Roland, assisted by Eddy, rather enjoyed himself for the next a days;
nay, I suspect, enjoyed himself very much indeed. C-'s people had the
dressing of him; and loving their art, as artists should, gave up their
souls to the decoration of the handsomest young officer they had had in
hand for a long time. Their trade is one which rises into an art; and
they carefully decorated Roland for the feast of vultures.

Nature directed them, I suppose. Game cocks only fight in their grandest
plumage. War and marriage must be done in fine clothes, by all accounts.
And Roland, kept posturing about before cheval glasses, as his
fripperies were tried on, rather wished once or twice that Ethel could
have seen him. Thus, one thing suggests the other, and vice versa. One
can go no further in one's simile.

But Roland, in trying on his gaudy trappings, found out something of
which he was not aware. He vilipended some of the most (as it seemed to
him) ridiculous extravagances of his uniform. His horse's trappings were
laced with money cowries. "How ridiculous is this," said Roland to the
tailor; "this is barbarous nonsense."

The tailor brought him his best sword, and put a horse's headpiece on a
block. "Will you be kind enough, sir, to see if you can cut down to the
leather through those cowries?" And Roland declined, laughing, for he
looked at the cowries, and looked at the sword, and came to the
conclusion that the pure silica of the cowries would beat the sword. "I
never saw that before," he said. "I thought there was no meaning in it.
I suppose you will tell me next that there is a reason for my wearing a
cascade of crimson horse-hair down my back." And as he said so, he put
on his helmet and postured before the glass.

"There is a very good reason for that, sir," said the little tailor.

"You would find a reason for anything," said Roland.

"Well, sir," said the tailor, "allow me to put on your helmet; you take
your sword and slash away at the back of my neck through the horse-hair.
I am game."

"Well, I never thought of that," said Roland.

"You a'n't in the army tailoring, you see, sir. Sir, what the outsiders
call gewgaw and fripperies, all have a meaning and intention. Our army
is an old one, and has not been badly managed on the whole. Our army,
you see, sir, we having no conscription, has always been a small one,
over-matched and over-worked. Consequently, our army developed the
greatest defensive powers of any. And our officers are rich and
extravagant. Consequently they have ornamented their defences. But there
a'n't a gewgaw or a button in the British army which don't tell of some
old fight when the thing was found to be necessary. Some are obsolete,
some have run into sheer gawdry. But they all mean something. The extra
hussar jacket, for instance, defends the rein-arm, leaving the sword-arm
free. That a'n't obsolete yet, sir."

"I never saw this before," said Roland: "but with these new rifled
muskets cavalry will become obsolete altogether."

"Well, sir," said the tailor, "these arms of precision will for a time
play the devil with the cavalry tailors; but you will always require
cavalry for pursuit, sir, and we must revert to old ideas."

"As how then?" asked Roland.

"Armour, sir; aluminium. The specific gravity is small; in hardness it
can nearly compare with rhodium, and it dresses up very nice indeed with
scarlet and gold, or with blue and silver. Here, for instance, sir, is a
cuirass of the Cent Gardes; you may hang it on your little finger. Our
house is prepared to go into aluminium to any extent, if we only knew
which way the Horse Guards were going to move in the way of cavalry. A
gentleman with your strong Parliamentary interest, three seats, dear me,
so they say, might tell us what they were going to do. And I am sure we
shall be grateful. That was a sudden thing, sir, your poor pa's death."

"It was sudden," said Roland.

"And you going to India, too, so soon," said the tailor; "without even
the will proved; so some say. If you happen to want any cash, sir, our
house is in the habit of advancing cash to young gentlemen of your
expectations. Our terms are five per cent., and we would sooner take
your interest than another's."

Roland, in his gawdries, turned from the glass, and said--

"My father dealt with your house for many years, and he always said that
they had treated him well: I mean in a friendly way. He always spoke
affectionately about you. Now I tell you point blank that I am not in a
position to borrow money. There is law in our house, and Lord only knows
where law may end. My Aunt Eleanor will pay for this outfit. Beyond that
I can guarantee you nothing."

"Lord bless you, sir," said the little man, "you mean about the disputed
succession. All humbug from beginning to end. The plot of two foolish
old women. We know, sir. We haven't been your father's bankers for so
long as not to know his affairs. Our opinion is expressed, too, when I
tell you that you can draw on us for any amount you choose. Though why
not stay in England and fight it out, I can't see."

"I am sick of England," said Roland.

"Quite so, sir. Many are. I am. But Miss Evans will see it through for
you better than you could yourself. We have a deal of these sort of
matters on our hands. I don't know what would become of our trade if it
wasn't for the young ladies not knowing their own minds. Well, sir, they
think the better of you for it, which is a comfort. Here is your young
lady's brother in the shop at this moment."

"What young lady's brother?" said Roland, aghast.

"Miss Mordaunt's brother," said the little tailor, "Mr. James Mordaunt:
Cornet Mordaunt. May he come in? He has been cross about his tunic, and
wants to see it on in the glass."

Roland called out: "Jim, come in here;" and added also "Go out, and
leave us alone," which the army tailor did.

Roland was grand, in full cavalry uniform; James was only dressed in
ordinary clothes. Still it would have been difficult to say which was
the grander out of the pair. They both had that knack of carrying their
heads erect, and neither of them was sentimental, though each had a deal
of sentiment to dispose of.

The relations between these two young men were as deeply sentimental as
ever were these between Frenchmen or Germans. They knew that there was a
sort of sentimental love between them; Roland had found out that he was
in love with Ethel; and James, poor boy, knew too well that he was in
love with Mildred. But they were both ashamed of it; and met like
mutually convicted vagabonds. There was no "effusion" in their meeting.

"Well, young Mordaunt," said Roland, "what do you think of this?"
meaning his (Roland's) personal appearance in his cavalry uniform.

"I shall be quite as fine as you, old Evans," said James, "when I get my
clothes. Are you cross with me?"

"No, I am not cross with you. No, I don't know that I am cross with you.
Stay, Jim, don't let us be fools. I am so very glad that you are going
with us. I wish you had been a hundred miles off, old chap, but I am
glad you are coming with us."

"Why do you taunt me? I have done no wrong."

"Nor I," said Roland. "Come, Jim, let us be friends, and go through it
all together. It might have been otherwise, but it was not to be. Let
you and I tackle to this regiment, and do our best."

"I never wavered in my loyalty to you, since you saved my life," said
Jim. "Tell me what to do, and I will do it. I am brave, strong, and
affectionate, but I am a fool; you must tell me, and I will do it."

"We will go hand in hand, my boy," said Roland. "There will only be you
and I out of the whole boat together. The old four is now reduced to a
pair. You must row bow to me."

It was their way of swearing everlasting friendship, unsentimental, but
quite effectual. There was no more "tall talk" after this, until the
very last.

"How do I look, James?" said Roland. "Am I fine? Are you frightened at
me?"

"Not a bit," said James. "What would be the good of me if I was? I grant
that, as a spectacle, you would be imposing on horseback. But I don't
see the use of you. You seem to me to be purely ornamental. Let me fig
out; I was always better-looking than you, and may play the rôle of a
dismounted dragoon better than you."

So they figged him out; "But he did not look one whit better," said
Roland; and at last, tired of posturing in armour which they had not
proved, they walked away together arm-in-arm; and from that moment the
two were never separated any more, neither in quarters, nor in march,
until the midnight march at Belpore.

They walked round and they picked up Eddy, who was prepared with any
amount of nonsense, which they let him talk as he would, feeling a
little solemn themselves. Then they went to the play, and saw Charles
Kean in the "Corsican Brothers," and Eddy, in silly way, pretended that
he was frightened. Then they had oysters and porter, and went soberly
home, just as the boy Arbuthnot might have done before he sailed for the
Crimea. Eton, Harrow, the plough-tail, the working bench; then all the
sudden fury of war. Such was the history of most young soldiers in those
days.

On the morrow the three met again, and went to Chatham. The regiment was
paraded, and Eddy saw Roland and James, on their new horses, all a-blaze
with scarlet, blue, and gold, with gilt helmets, and cascades of crimson
horsehair falling down their backs---a great sight. They did not partake
in the parade, but sat on their horses by the Colonel, not yet knowing
their places; but Eddy and others thought them the two finest young
fellows in the whole regiment.

Motion of any kind was delightful to Eddy. The motion of next the two
days was singularly delightful to him. The business of a great transport
is always pleasant; surely that of a great cavalry transport is the most
pleasant of all.

Eddy, awakening from late slumbers, found that Roland and James had been
gone long before, and going down to where the ship lay, found them in
neat undress uniforms, hard at the work which they had selected for
themselves.

The ship lay by the wharf, and the horses were being led on board, not
slung, the Adjutant superintending. Early as it was, our two lads seemed
to have got themselves recognised as knowing, at least, some part of
their work, for their voices were loud and their remarks were emphatic.

"That is an ugly, straight-shouldered brute," said Roland, to a farrier;
"fifteen pounds and half a crown back."

"He'll go in a crowd, sir. Rear rank horse."

"Scarcely pay his passage," said Roland. "Here's another. Jim, look at
this hammer-headed one."

"I'm looking at him," said Jim. And, indeed, so was every one else. He
was a horse with a head like a carpenter's hammer; a horse with a
shoulder back to his croup, well ribbed up, with splendid gaskins, long
fetlocks, and enormous feet--a splendid cavalry horse, but with the
temper of D'Estournel. This horse refused to go on board on any terms
whatever.

No man could live near his heels--human existence was an impossibility
in his rear, and a weariness in his van; for pull you never so hard at
his halter, the beast would not move at all. There was a hammer-headed
brutality about him which nothing could affect for an instant. The
British army was puzzled.

"Put the bridle on him," cried Roland; and a trooper brought a bridle,
and did so; the horse submitting in a way which astonished those who did
not know his tactics. "Now, Jim," said Roland, "up you go" and before
any one had time to speak, Roland had given Jim a leg up, and Jim was
sitting bare-backed on the dangerous brute. "Keep clear," said Roland,
as he took the bridle, and began heading the horse towards the gangway.

The horse, finding a man on his back, began going, and went until he
found the boards under his feet; then came the tug of war, and every one
held his breath.

The fury of the brute came all of a sudden. For an instant he planted
out his fore-feet, and was quiescent; then Roland said, "Heels, Jim!"
and James rammed his heels in. For the next twenty-five seconds there
was a struggle, which no one who saw it forgot. The brute reared, but
Roland was hanging by his head, with both reins gripped under his chin;
he kicked furiously, but James was on his back laughing. He backed until
his heels were over the green sea-water, fifteen feet below, but he was
kicked forward again by James; biting, squealing, striking with his
fore-feet at Roland, he made a whole life of terror to the bystanders,
over the slippery plank; but our two boys had him on deck before many
had time to utter an interjection, and stood beside him laughing.

The Adjutant complimented them in very strong language, and the men
admired them from that moment. Roland took no notice of the matter;
James only said, "We have many Irish horses in Shropshire; I shall be
delighted at any time to ride or break any horse which every one else is
afraid of. But I am nothing to Evans."

"There is another ticklish subject there," said the Adjutant.

"I see," said James, "a nervous chestnut. Is that you, Eddy? I say, old
man, ride that chestnut aboard for them."

Eddy, unnoticed till now, turned to a trooper, and said, "Leg up,
please," and they put him on the fidgety chestnut, much admiring the
pretty little plucky dandy.

"Horse! horse!" said Eddy, when he was on its back, "how can we be fond
of you if you do these things? On you go, now. Come, old man," he said,
patting the horse's neck; "let us go aboard."

Trembling with terror, the kindly timid brute went forward step by step.
On the plank he paused, and there was the silence of sheer terror among
the bystanders; but Eddy, by patting and gentle talk, got him ever; and
there was a cheer from the men.

"A fine little fellow," said the men. They saw him again in other
circumstances.

It was noticeable that Roland and James, though asking the commonest
questions about their duty, were recognised as first-rate pacers by
every rank. They were reckless and cool--they were proud and familiar.
No man would have hesitated to ask a favour of either of them; and, at
the same time, no one would have dared to take a liberty. The men
thought that in the long, dull, garrison work in India, these two bold
lads would stand their friends; and the officers thought they would be
good companions. They were appealed to already, in spite of their
ignorance of duty. The officers had heard that they were men who could
have done anything they chose at the University; and the men had heard,
possibly through the gossip of the regimental servants, of their
physical accomplishments, which reports they had now seen singularly
confirmed. They had made a very good start with their regiment.

Both of them were lads who put their hand to anything which they found
ready to it; and they worked hard at this shipment of horses for two
days. At the end of that time they were all aboard, and Roland, Eddy,
and James were talking between deck, stroking the noses of such horses
as would let them, and congratulating one another on the successful
issue of their effort.

In the narrow passage left between the larboard and starboard horses'
heads, the narrow passage amidship, there were only two young men on
stable-guard, who sat on deck, with their arms round their knees; they
were nobody at all, and so James Mordaunt thought that there could be no
harm in making a row with Eddy.

"Here is a horse with a pink nose," said Eddy; "they are all beasts,
these pink-nosed horses. 'Pink nose, seedy toes.' That is rhyme and
reason too."

"I don't think you know much about the matter," said James Mordaunt.

"Well, I never knew a horse with a pink nose that could keep his shoes
on," said Eddy. "And no more did you. I know as much about horses as you
do."

"That is very possible," said James, "but you bring in your little
sciolisms in such an offensive manner that it is difficult to avoid
thrashing you; so difficult that I cannot avoid it. In fact I am going
to do it now."

"James, my dear James, remember where you are," said Roland.

"I will not be always lectured by you," said James. "Edward, come here."

Edward not coming, James fell suddenly on him, and they fell over the
stable-guard, who was intensely amused and delighted by the whole
proceeding. Roland interfered, saying, "James, do remember the men, and
the fact that you hold Her Majesty's commission. For heaven's sake,
don't play the fool like this."

Eddy, meanwhile, finding James too strong for him, had got loose, ran up
the companion stairs, and nearly brought down some one who was
descending by the run. After a few defiances and challenges to James, he
went on deck, without seeing for a moment who it was he had so nearly
knocked down.

Allan Gray, unused to shipboard, descended clumsily. He had been in many
queer places, but this was the very oddest. A long, well-lighted
passage, with rows of horses' heads on each side. Confronting him were
two young men, one of whom he hated, the other of whom he dreaded and
respected.

James Mordaunt he hated with his whole heart. Worthless, empty,
frivolous, cruel, were the best words Dissenter and Radical had for him.
With Roland it was far otherwise. He respected and dreaded Roland. He
had wit enough to see that Roland had not only ten times his brains, but
had had ten times his education, and had made use of it. And Roland was
behaving so strangely and so recklessly, that he was persuaded that
Roland had some reserved power. The North American Indians give free
pass to a lunatic, on the grounds that he knows his business better than
they do. Such respect was paid to this reckless young Roland by young
Allan Gray.

It was inconceivable to him. Roland, as any one knew, might have taken
the highest honours at the University, might sit in Parliament, might be
the best man his family had ever produced. Lord S-- had talked to Allan
Gray about Roland at Field Lane, praising him to the skies, and
lamenting his High Church proclivities. Yet what did the puzzled Allan
Gray see, coming as he thought to save this young man?

Roland, the possible prime minister, in blue trousers, with a scarlet
stripe down them; with a blue fatigue-jacket buttoned with one button at
the throat, but open below, showing his white shirt. Bareheaded, for the
between deck was hot; with his hands in his pockets, swaying himself to
and fro, as the ship rolled. For the message had come from the sea, and
the ship was afloat. This was what Allan Gray saw.

And, in addition, the proud, clean-cut, cruel, inexorable head of James
Mordaunt, similarly attired, looking over Roland's shoulder. The good
Allan Gray had meant to say all sorts of kindly things, but this was
forced out of him.

"Is this what your talents and education have brought you to, Mr.
Roland?"

"Yes," said Roland. "I am going to be a good centurian; a thundering
good one, too. Eh, Jim?"

"I am sorry you should throw your talents away in such a fashion," said
Allan Gray.

"My dear soul, some one must do it, or what would become of those who
stay at home and groan? We render your existence possible."

"It is hard to see such talents as yours thrown away in slaughtering
your fellow-creatures," said Allan Gray.

"That would apply to Cromwell as well as to me," said Roland.

"Cromwell fought for the Lord," said Allan Gray.

"I fight for civilisation and the spread of the Christian religion, old
man," said Roland. "Come, you have something more than this to say to
me. Let us go on deck; we must always be friends, mind, come what will."

"I am here as a friend," said Allan Gray, as soon as they were on deck.
"I am come to remonstrate with you about going abroad just now, when
this suit is pending between us. My case is terribly strong, and I could
gladly have a compromise. You, with your territorial traditions, might
do great good at Stretton. I know nothing of the management of an
estate. I beg you to pause, if you can. It need never come to law if you
will behave reasonably. I want money from the estate for my claim, but
not for myself, only for religious purposes. I swear to you for nothing
else. You shall stay at Stretton, and I will never move. I would never
have moved if it were not for my poor. Roland, I beg you pause and
think."

"I have paused and thought," said Roland, very quietly. "There is no
personal quarrel between you and me. Let the matter go which way it
will. I only go to claim a share in what is inconceivably the greatest
inheritance of modern times, the government of 180,000,000 in India.
What are our few sheep, under Longmynd, compared to them? Go to, man, I
have longer views than you. You, if you live, may gain a small property
in Shropshire; I shall be satrap of the greatest empire which the world
has ever seen. Would you not change with me, Allan?"

The wind was screaming and booming through the rigging, and the lights
were dim and blurred on shore. The tide was hissing down to the sea,
while the great ship was heaving slightly as though impatient to be
gone. Close by, sentries in ramparts and fortifications were walking to
and fro, sometimes challenging--throbs of the heart of the greatest
empire in the world. Gray listened and said--

"Roland, you are undertaking responsibilities which I should not have
dared to undertake. God prosper you; to move you from your purpose would
be ridiculous, I know. I will say no more. I shall establish my claim,
but I think you and yours will be none the worse for my doing so. Yet,
is there no one who could plead better than I I?"

"Not a soul," said Roland. "Go away. Don't say a word more; he is
listening. Go away, and God go with you." And Gray went.

"What did that mad fellow with thee?" said Jim, coming up with his hands
in his pockets.

"Well, he did not do anything," said Roland; "but he showed me
something."

"For instance?" said Jimmy.

"Well, he showed me a fanatic," said Roland.

"Only that. I'm that. What is he fanatic about?"

"Good," said Roland. "We must try to be as good as that man, and know
the world and our duty as soldiers; and when we are killed in some petty
squabble in India, Jim, our brother officers will say 'they were
thundering prigs, but not bad fellows, take them all in all.' So you see
your dinner of glory, my child."

"Well, we will eat it together, Roland," said Jim.

On the bright spring morning Roland stood on the deck with a telegram in
his hand, which he had read, and which he laughed at--

"Miss Evans, Shrewsbury, to Cornet Evans, transport 'Vigilant,'
Chatham.--It will all go against us. Come back at any risk, and
compromise. Ethel thinks as I do. She wants you to come back very much
indeed."

"I will come back to you, darling," said Roland to himself. "I'll come
back to you. We will come back to our Ethel some day, Jim?"

"Possibly," said Jim. "There are Eddy and Allan Gray. Good-by, you two."

And, indeed, it was good-by for some of them. The screw began throbbing,
and the ship moved resolutely down the river. Allan Gray and Eddy saw
Roland and James standing on the bridge as they rounded the point, and
then they lost sight of them but not for ever--not for ever; they met
again.

Poor little Eddy, gallant little heart, broke down and cried on his old
friend's shoulder. Gray cheered him up, as well as he could; but Gray's
precious oils (good fellow as he was) were apt to break heads, and did
not mend Eddy's heart.

"There she goes!" said Gray, at last.

There she went! A cobweb of rigging aloft, and two great white funnels,
pouring out volcanoes of black smoke; seen above the sand-hills and the
straight lines of the fortifications. So she went, throbbing her way
down the great river, with Roland and Jim on board, towards the heaving
Channel; towards the restless ocean; towards the vultures' feast in the
far Easterly lands.

And Allan Gray took off Eddy to Field Lane, just to cheer him up with a
little dissipation.



Chapter 31.

"So that is all over and done," said Aunt Eleanor.

"What is over and done, Miss Evans?" asked Ethel.

"Roland."

"Is he over and done?"

"Yes, there is an end and finish of the boy, body and bones. He is gone
to his death: and there were elements about him, too. I am sorry that he
should die so young, unpitied and alone; but it was mainly his fault,
and hers."

"Who is she?" asked Ethel.

"Never you mind. I suppose they bury them decently in Bengal; no suttee,
or anything of that kind."

"My dear Miss Evans, you are speaking at random."

"My poor brother, Roland's father, saw the thing done, at all events.
The woman gets on the top of the faggots drunk, and they smother her
with straw and burn her up; which, on the whole, seems to me the best
arrangement for all parties. A woman who would make such a fool of
herself entirely deserves it."

"But that only refers to widows," said Ethel.

"I am talking of Roland's widow," said Miss Evans. "Of course he will
marry a black woman now; and she will naturally want to burn herself. I
should myself. A nice mess you have all made of it among you."

Ethel sat perfectly quiet. "Don't talk to me!" said Aunt Eleanor, and
Ethel did as she was bid.

For Aunt Eleanor was busy in the great room at Pulverbatch with her
farming accounts. And Ethel was sitting and sewing very patiently and
very quietly. "Bother the things!" said Miss Evans.

"Which?" said Ethel.

"Well, if you choose to be epigrammatical, Ethel, I will tell you.
Everything. There!"

"What in particular?"

"Allan Gray."

"Certainly; and again?"

"Eddy."

"What folly has he been doing now? He might obey you, I should fancy."

"He wants to go to India. His regiment is ordered there almost at the
moment he joined, and he won't exchange. Now, I made a solemn compact
with him when I paid for his commission that he was to stay with me. And
he is going to break his word."

"I am very glad to hear that," said Ethel.

"Why, then, Miss Mordaunt?" asked Miss Evans.

"Because you had no right to extract such a promise from such a child;
and he is perfectly right in refusing to be bound by it."

"I have done everything for him, Ethel. The love and devotion I have
shown that boy has been more than any mother's. No boy ever had such
tender indulgences poured on his head as I have poured on his. And oh,
that he should fly in my face! That is bitter!"

"Shall you do well with your pigs this year, Miss Evans?" said Ethel,
quietly.

"Don't be bitter and hard with me, Ethel. I have no friend but you."

"I have no friend but you, yet you whetted your wits on me just now. You
were cruel to me just now. And what is your love to mine?"

"I am very sorry. I am a poor old woman, I doubt, and not good-tempered.
Don't be hard on me. Say you think that Eddy has been wicked in going."

"I don't see that he has. For me, I begin to respect the child. Do you
mean to say that he refuses to exchange without any prompting?"

"Not without prompting," said Miss Evans. "Allan Gray has set him
against me. Allan Gray, whom I brought up, has turned against me, and
has persuaded Eddy to rebel."

"I don't know what you mean by rebelling," said Ethel. "You put Eddy
into the army at your expense, but you never bartered the boy's honour.
If Gray has persuaded him to keep what my bonny Jim calls his
sacramentum militaire, I can only say that it is the best thing I have
ever heard of him."

"You look on with complacency, then, at Eddy's being killed."

"I shall be very sorry for the child," said Ethel. "But you must
remember that I have a brother there, and also many people go to India
who are not killed."

"I wanted him to stay at home," said Aunt Eleanor, showing her
imbecility on the only point on which she was capable of showing
it--Eddy.

"Well, and Allan Gray did not choose him to stay at home, rightly it
seems to me. When he has gone to India Allan Gray is to be our lord and
master, and we have only to submit."

"Ah! you may laugh, who love no one; but for me, I am an old woman, and
love Eddy."

"Heaven save you, Miss Evans, from ever being as heartsick as I am, and
forgive you the words just spoken. Here is Eddy. You say I love no one,
do you? That was a cruel and bitter thing to say, Miss Evans. You lose
your better nature when you say such things as that. I will not bear it
from you, Miss Evans. I will go to John and my father. They can love me,
at all events."

And so both these very good souls began to cry, both resolute in their
causeless quarrel, just as Eddy came into the room, and said, "Hallo!
you two, I am off out of this by next week."

Ethel scornfully withdrew herself into a window. She did not hate Eddy,
but, putting him always beside his brother, she despised him. Aunt
Eleanor wept.

"Have you been quarrelling, you two?" asked Eddy. "There is no good in
that. I used to quarrel with Jim until that bathing business. For me, I
am going to quarrel with no one in future except Her Majesty's enemies."

He said it in mere fun; but looking at them again, he saw that they had
really been quarrelling. He looked right and left for a moment, and
thought; then he went up to Ethel, stood beside her, and took her hand.

"Ethel! my glorious Ethel! Will you think for one moment how dear you
are to me, through James, and, if I dare say it, through Roland! I am
going away after Roland and James, into that dim East from which many
never return. Come, Ethel, sister of my heart, let me tell them that you
and old aunt were good friends. Come! make it up. Aunty! aunty! aunty!
whom will you have when I am gone?"

Ethel sat quite still. She meant no permanent quarrel, and was quite
prepared to let Miss Evans walk ever her body. Yet she waited and
listened; for Miss Evans had been uncommonly reticent lately, and Ethel
was determined to know as much as she could. She took Eddy's hand,
however, and kissed it, saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers."

Aunt Eleanor resorted to tears, and bemoaned the general ingratitude of
the age. She did this categorically, stating her case against the world.
The next time Mr. Gladstone, or it may be Mr. Disraeli, goes out, they
will do exactly the same thing. At this moment, it is possible that we
may hear the same sort of thing from Mr. Johnson before this is
published. What Mr. Johnson may say I cannot tell. Aunt Eleanor's ease
was simply this:--

Her brother had been a good brother to her, but had been indiscreet, and
she had kept his indiscretions perfectly quiet. And now every one was
turning against her. She had faced her own father and mother, in the
Waterloo time, when accusations were brought against him, and when she
was the only soul who knew that he had married that ridiculous child.
She had fought her brother's battle, and then her brother had been hard
on her about her way of going to market for herself. She had fought
George Mordaunt's battle, and his daughter Ethel had turned on her. She
had fought the Dean of St. Paul's battle (how she did not say), and he
never came near her. She had been a good friend to every one who had
known her. She had been a good landlady, good sister, good aunt, good
everything; but every one had thrown her overboard. Allan Gray, for
instance. Take him. She had no idea of his perfectly ridiculous
pretensions; but had been more than a mother to him. He had got hold of
this Phillis Myrtle story, and was turning against her. To Eddy, that
black-hearted boy, she would say nothing at all. He was past that. She
had believed at one time that Ethel would be her friend, but now Ethel
had turned. She wished she was dead. She was proceeding to say that she
had a reputation for common sense, but there was no one near enough to
her to appreciate it, and was becoming blinded with tears, when she
found that Ethel and Eddy were kneeling before her, with their hands in
one another's.

"What are you doing, you very ungrateful creatures?" she said.

"Please, aunt," said Eddy, "we are kneeling to ask you not to be silly."

"Well, I won't if you don't drive me to it, my pretty ones. But you will
if you don't take care. Have I been very silly?"

"Extremely so," said Eddy. "Come, aunty, what is the matter? What has
put you beside yourself like this? Why do you quarrel with us two?"

"Law, it is all Allan Gray," she said. "Get up, do."

"Have you forgiven us?" said Eddy.

"No," said Aunt Eleanor. "You are a couple of fools; and I hate fools."

"Why am I a fool, Miss Evans?" said Ethel.

"Because you might have managed better. I have no patience. Why, bless
you, time was when, if I had given encouragement----"

"To the Dean of St. Paul's?" said Ethel.

"Don't be ridiculous, I beg of you," said Aunt Eleanor.

"Why am I a fool, aunty?" said Eddy.

"Because you won't exchange. Because you will go to India."

"Then I will not go, if you command me, aunt," said Eddy, sighing, and
looking at her. "I owe all I have in the world to you; and if you
command me, I will stay at home. For you, aunt, I will desert
all--Roland, Jim, honour, career; you have only to say, stay, and I will
exchange. Aunt, say that word 'exchange,' and I will do it. Roland and
Jim shall not stand in the way if you say it. Come!"

Aunt Eleanor rose and leant against the wall, hiding her face. Her
sublime agony was so terrible to the young people that they were hushed
and dumb. She turned after a time, and she said--

"Eddy, my own, my best-beloved, go. Ethel, stay with the poor old woman.
I shall have no one but you."

"You have told me to go, aunt," said Eddy, very cool, but a little pale.

"I will tell you again if you will. My brother was at Waterloo."

"Then I will go," said Eddy. "But I will stay now if you will unsay your
words."

She held her peace.



Chapter 32.

"What is Allan Gray like, Miss Evans?" asked Ethel.

"Well," said Aunt Eleanor, "you will see him directly for yourself, for
he is coming here in a quarter of an hour."

"Then I will fly," said Ethel.

"Indeed and you just exactly won't," said Miss Evans. "I will not be
left alone with him, I assure you. I might be tempted to say something
unbecoming my position to him. And he is a very good fellow, when all is
said and done--a deal better than some of us."

"But I also might say something to hurt his feelings," said Ethel. "I am
exasperated with him also. Is he handsome?"

"He is amazingly handsome," she replied; "as handsome as Roley Poley, in
his way. You shall see for yourself, for here he is coming across the
moat. Tell James to show him straight in, and stand behind my chair."
And so the good lady faced towards the door; and Allan Gray entering,
for the first time saw Ethel Mordaunt.

Aunt Eleanor saw a sudden startled flush in Allan Gray's face as he
caught sight of Ethel's splendid beauty, and she said to herself, "Here
is all mischief to pay. Bother the fellow! what did he want coming here
for? He is going to fall in love with her. And so you shall, my fine
master!" she went on in thought, in a moment more. "I'll plague you for
this business. I have got you, my young master. I'll have the plaguing
of you. Ah! look at and blush; you may well. I will be cat, shall I?
Ho!"

And, to the unutterable astonishment of Ethel and Allan Gray, she said
suddenly to the latter--

"How d'ye do, Mouse?"

Ethel bent down. "Why do you call him that?"

"What?" she asked.

"Why, mouse."

"I beg your pardon," said Miss Evans, slightly disturbed.

"I meant to say, 'How d'ye do, Mr. Gray?' I am very sorry to see you. I
always was, you know. You and I don't owe one another anything, and
don't like one another. You have heard of Miss Ethel Mordaunt?"

Allan Gray said that he had had that honour.

"Well, now you have the honour of seeing her. That is she behind my
chair, looking at you, and thinking--what are you thinking of, Ethel?"

"I am thinking that unless you offer Mr. Gray a chair, I shall go and
get him one."

"Excellent; witty, in faith. My dear Gray, sit down. I am not at all
glad to see you, as I told you before--and yet I don't know, Allan, when
all is said and done. I am getting old, and the faces I love best are
going into the East, to be seen no more. It may come that I may be so
utterly alone in my old age that your face may become dear to me. You
are going to try to dispossess my Roland, but you believe in your case.
Let it be; we will fight that, you and I. But you love my Eddy, and that
is a bond between us. Do you know that your Eddy is going to India?"

"I am glad to hear it, Miss Evans; but I am surprised that you should
let him go."

"Honour orders him there. My boy shall never exchange to avoid service,
though it may tear my heart out. Come, Allan, you never would; I know
you well enough for that."

"I--no," said Gray; "but Eddy is so different in your eyes. He has seen
no sorrow and no sin. You will not spare him then? Mine has been a most
unhappy life; and God knows I have risked it often enough."

"And indeed you have," said Aunt Eleanor, roundly. "Ethel, my dear, our
boys will have the chance of charging half a dozen times into
desperately ranked masses of our enemies, and perishing gloriously or
winning fame which lives in men's months. Mr. Gray faces death, not once
in a way in the fury of battle, but every day, in fever-plagued courts
and alleys. Ask Letheby what he has got to say about Mr. Gray's work in
the cholera, and then you will understand that when the Victoria Cross
is allowed to civilians for valour, Allan Gray will have five or six of
them."

"So I should be disposed to think, from his personal appearance," said
Ethel, as coolly as if she was admiring a handsome sideboard.

Even Aunt Eleanor started for an instant, and looked round at her. Ethel
was leaning over the back of the chair, and looking fixedly and with
every symptom of admiration on Allan Gray. Aunt Eleanor had not at that
moment time to reflect that when such a pure and noble woman as Ethel
has utterly given her heart to one man, as Ethel had to Roland, she
would allow herself freedom of speech in all innocence towards other
men, a freedom of speech she never would have dreamt of had she been
fancy-free.

Aunt Eleanor was quite puzzled for the time, but she went on, speaking
very quickly--

"Are you come to see me about any law?"

"No, madam," said Allan Gray. "I only came to pay my respects to the
lady to whom I owe everything in the world--to yourself. You say we do
not like one another, Miss Evans. I have often heard you say that
before. But allow me to say that the dislike is entirely on your side."

"Well, I believe it is," said Miss Evans. "It exists, however, and
perhaps I have sufficient dislike to keep us both going. For I don't
like you, you know, and I never did. I'll tell you what is the best
thing you can do, if you don't mind. Spend the day with me, and stop to
dinner."

"I would if I thought I could remove some prejudices from your mind,"
said Gray.

"Lord bless the man you'll never do that with me. I am all prejudice
from beginning to end. Most women are. My dear young man, everybody's
creed is a mere mass of prejudice--Whig, Tory, Democrat. The only party
in this country which will never see power are the doctrinaire Radicals,
the only unprejudiced party. And if they do get in, a nice mess they
will make of it."

"You do not believe in academic Girondisms," said Gray, smiling.

"Not a bit. I tried it forty years ago, when I was beginning to get old,
and it won't do at all. Be a Radical or a Tory at once. But come, Allan,
as an old enemy, stay with us to-day and dine; and I will see if I can
get evidence from you and upset your ridiculous lawsuit. Come."

"As an old and obliged friend, I will," said Allan Gray, "with the
greatest pleasure. Remember, I have never sat down to table with a lady
in my life. What time do you dine, Miss Evans?"

"Miss Evans dines at one," said Ethel, very quietly. "She calls it
lunch. Shall I stay and dine with you, Miss Evans, because I am going
with Johnny riding at three?"

"If you please, dear," said Aunt Eleanor, feeling rather guilty, and a
little frightened. "Yes, do stay. Let us go for a walk on the farm. It
is a great farm, Allan Gray. It is one of the greatest farms in the
county. It is all to be Eddy's, and a nice mess he will make of it. Few
people, I should be inclined to say, have greater capabilities of making
a great mess of a farm than Eddy. What is your opinion?"

"I should be inclined to agree with you," said Gray. "But he will
scarcely venture to farm it himself. So he might get a good tenant, you
see."

"Might! Yes, he might. But he would choose the first smooth-spoken goose
who offered for it. However, he will get his throat cut in India, and so
it does not much matter."

So they walked and talked till dinner-time, and then they dined
together. Miss Evans's talk was sharp, sarcastic, nearly boisterous, all
the time. She was in terror of what she was doing. And immediately after
dinner Allan Gray went off, and Aunt Eleanor knew that she had gained
her object. Allan Gray was entangled with Ethel.

Ethel went across the valley home; and she went home with a vengeance.
She caused visitors to come to Miss Evans that very evening--no less
than three of them. Aunt Eleanor seldom had worse times than that
evening.



Chapter 33.

She sat by herself before the window, and as soon as she knew it was
quite too late, she began reflecting what an awful thing she had done in
a moment of spiteful triumph. It looked pleasant at first. But it looked
more terrible as the afternoon went on, and she sat and pondered over
it.

The first thing she said was, "Now, young man, I have got a rod for your
back. You know nothing, I fancy, of her feeling for Roland. The time
will come, however, when you will. I do not like you at all, when all is
said and done; and I have let you sit at table with a lady. You quiet
men, when you do get hit with a woman, will go further after her than
any others. And you are hit. It may not have been wise, but I am not
always wise. If you come here, thrusting your claims in on county
families, you must take the penalties. You can't blame me. If you win
this suit, as they say you will, you would be forced to know ladies. I
have only introduced you to one; and you seem to have taken your
choice."

Such was the illogical nonsense with which this excellent woman strove
to excuse herself from the only silly and spiteful action I shall have
to record of her at all. She was too sensible to believe in her own
logic for long. She began to look at her action from another point of
view.

"If he does turn out to be heir after all, and Roland only halfbrother,
I have done a very silly thing, I doubt. I wish I had not done it now.
But he must have seen her some time or another in that case, and so it
would have been just the same unless he had thought of ranging himself
with some one else. In which case it might have been different. Why,
here is George Mordaunt."

It was that ponderous squire indeed, who gave his horse to a man, opened
the door of the Grange, came straight into her room, and, leaning
against the chimney-piece, confronting her, said, "Eleanor! Eleanor!"

"What is the matter, now?" she asked, sharply.

"You might have thought of our two poor boys upon the wide sea, of
Roland and James--good lads as ever walked, good lads--before you
recognised that scoundrel publicly, and introduced him to, and let him
sit at meat with, my daughter."

"What scoundrel?"

"Allan Gray."

"He is no scoundrel. I brought him up. He is a very good fellow."

"Well, then, that watchmaker's apprentice. I don't wish Ethel to sit at
table with watchmakers' apprentices, Eleanor."

"Jeweller," said Aunt Eleanor, rubbing her nose and looking straight at
him.

"Or jewellers' either, then," said Squire Mordaunt. "Eleanor my dear old
friend, why did you do such a thing?"

"Spite, mainly," said Aunt Eleanor.

"Against whom?"

"Against him. I wanted him to fall in love with Ethel, and he has done
it. Now, then, what do you think of that?"

Squire Mordaunt stamped his foot. "Eleanor, are you mad?"

"I was when I did that. I fancy I am a little less mad now."

"It is time you were. It is not the least use talking to you. You are in
one of those strange downright moods, which I never saw any woman in
before or since; when you will make a fool of yourself, and confess it
in the most exasperating way. How dare you do such a thing? How dare you
even show my daughter to an impostor like him? Ethel comes here no
more."

"You won't tell HER?" said Aunt Eleanor, thoughtfully, with head on her
hand.

"How could I dare?" said Squire Mordaunt. "Do you think I am mad? But
she comes here no more. Do you know that the fellow may succeed in his
suit, and that he is very handsome? Do you know that Ethel might lose
her heart to him?"

"Do you suppose, George," said Aunt Eleanor, quietly, "that if I had not
known Ethel's character perfectly, and had not been aware that her heart
was irretrievably gone already, I would have done such a thing? I tell
you that I did it to plague the man."

"I wish you would plague him with some one else than my daughter. What
is this that I hear about Ethel's heart being gone? To whom has she
given it then?"

"To Roland."

"Good Heavens! He seems to have taken the matter rather lightly. I
thought that he was almost engaged to Miss Maynard."

"Sit down, George."

George sat down.

"No one knew where Ethel had given her heart but myself and James."

"My James?"

"Yes; and James had given his heart elsewhere."

"My poor Jim! Do you know where?"

"To Mildred Evans--Mildred Maynard."

"Well, I pretty nearly knew that. That is nothing."

"I don't know about that," said Aunt Eleanor.

"These details are nothing to me. I want to know why you had young Gray
here. If it is as you say, you have made him a rival of Roland. Does
Roland care for Ethel?"

"Ay, he loves her now."

"Confounded young prig! I hope he will eat his heart out. Like his
impudence, not to say so before going to India."

"I am not sure that he did not. But see, George; you knew Mrs. Maynard,
of the Barton, well enough to know that she lives in mischief."

"Well?"

"She has made mischief between Bob Maynard and his wife about your boy.
Poor furious Jim wrote her a letter from sea; and she cried over it--not
once, nor twice, but three or four times. And the old--Lady contrived
that she should be crying over it about the fifth time, when her husband
came and demanded it from her; and she had to give it up."

"What was her object?"

"To make that stupid ox, Maynard, jealous, and keep herself and Mary in
the house; moreover, to make Maynard savage with Sir Jasper Meredith,
and keep him to book."

"What has that child been doing?"

"Well, he has proposed to Mary, and been accepted, and now he wants to
cry off."

"Proposed to Mary?"

"Yes, he did it to save Roland, and the old woman is keeping him to
book; and we shall have much fun out of it, Are you satisfied with my
explanation?"

"Not a bit," said Squire Mordaunt. "You have only confused counsel,
nigra loligine. Only until you chassè Gray, Ethel sees you no more."

"Well, well! I agree. Come, are you angry still?"

"I think, Eleanor, that you have done a thing I should have conceived
you utterly incapable of. You have admitted into your house the
pretender to your nephew's fortune, and have introduced him to my
daughter, as you yourself confess, with a view to his being attracted by
her. If there was a woman in England, I could have trusted you. But this
is outrageous!"

"I know, I know. I am nearly out of my mind over my Eddy. George, don't
give me up. George, be my friend. I will do what you tell me--Heavens!
here is my sister-in-law, full speed! George, stay by me."

There was, indeed, Mrs. Evans. Nimbly the widow dashed up to the Grange
in her pony-carriage, and in half a minute after came swiftly into the
room, and without any preparation of any sort or kind whatever,
denounced her:

"It was not enough, Eleanor Evans, that you kept my husband's guilty
secret for so many years--you pretending to a saint-like godliness of
life. It was not enough that you persistently and systematically set
Ethel Mordaunt against my Roland, until he was driven to his death in
India. It was not enough that your changing your intention of not
marrying again renewed old overtures to the Dean of St. Paul's,
relinquished by him years ago, and repenting of your intentions towards
my Eddy, sent him abroad after his unhappy brother: this was not
enough--no--"

"I should have thought that was enough for anybody," said Aunt Eleanor.
"What is the next thing?"

"You must receive the illegitimate rival of my son in your house, pet
him, and give him lunch. I wish to see no more of you, Eleanor. You are
a bad, false woman; and if Charles rises from his grave, I hope he will
knock at your door!" With which singular conclusion Mrs. Evans departed
swiftly: Eleanor saying not one word.

"Little pots are soon hot," said George Mordaunt.

"Not one solitary word," said Aunt Eleanor.

"You seem to be in the way of catching it," said Squire Mordaunt.

"I shall catch it worse than this before all is over. Sit still. Don't
desert me."



Chapter 34.

"Here comes John," said Miss Evans. "I suppose he will begin on me
next."

"I will stop his; you have had quite enough of it. But I say, Eleanor,
you'll let us have that right of way, won't you? Come?"

"No, I won't," said Miss Evans. "I'll nail my colours to the mast about
it. I'll tell you what I'll do with you--I will let you have it the very
day that Eddy comes home from India."

"That's a bargain, you obstinate woman. Mind that."

"Come in," said Miss Evans, and accordingly in came John Mordaunt, grown
even since we first knew him in size, good-nature, good-humour, and
quiet shrewdness.

"Have you been catching it, Miss Evans?" he said, laughing.

"Rather," she said. "Mrs. Evans has been here and cast me off for ever,
and your father has damaged my feelings to that extent that I feel ten
years older than I did ten hours ago. But we have made it up, your
father and I."

"Has he got the right of way?" asked John Mordaunt.

"No, and he just exactly has not," said Miss Evans. "He has asked for
it."

"Hey, sir--hey, sir," said John Mordaunt. "Have you been taking
advantage of a British lady in distress, sir? Oh, father, this was most
mean."

"I have as good as got it, though," said Squire Mordaunt, triumphantly.
"I am to have it the day Eddy comes home."

"Well, don't talk of it any more. Stay here and be comfortable. I wish
you would talk to me about the claim."

"I should like to talk it through with you, very much indeed. Let us do
so. I have found out the crux of the whole business," said Mordaunt. "I
want you to tell me every word that you know."

"I will gladly do so," said Miss Evans.

"John, my boy, just step down and do exactly as I told you," said Squire
Mordaunt; "be very civil and kind to her, and bring her up here. Give
her a glass of wine, or gin, or brimstone, or something in Miss Evans's
servants' hall to keep her tongue going till we are ready for her. Don't
let her get too drunk, or she may get pot-valiant.".

"Well, this is a singular order in a lone woman's house," said Miss
Evans.

"It is. You shall see why, my dear Eleanor. Now tell us the whole
business, from beginning to end."

"You know you thought I deceived you when you got that anonymous letter,
and I told you that it was the old Cecil Evans' claim."

"Yes, yes, I beg your pardon. I want to see how much you know about this
Allan Gray."

Aunt Eleanor got up and walked slowly up and down, very slowly, with her
hands folded behind her back, and began speaking slowly and
methodically.

"It was the eve of Waterloo," said Aunt Eleanor, "that my new maid came
to me: a girl we had brought up almost in the family; my own
foster-sister indeed. I was like many other British women, mad at that
time, and I set all the doors open and strode up and down the room
ejaculating, for I did not mind making a fool of myself before her. I
was rampaging; you know my way; when I turned round and saw that my
sister-in-law was crying hysterically."

"Your what, did you say?"

"My sister-in-law, my brother Charles's wife, then acting for me as my
lady's-maid."

"Then it is true," said Squire Mordaunt.

"All that is true," said Miss Evans.

"The devil!" said Mordaunt.

"Don't interrupt. Late that night I found I could do nothing with her.
My mother went to her, found out the truth, and I never saw her again. I
had no conception of what was the matter, but I knew afterwards that she
and he were in love, in the honourable way customary in our family and
in yours.

"My mother sent the girl to Carlisle, for she had relations there, and
it was far enough off. My mother believed Charles was guilty. He was
not; he behaved nobly. He knew that no consent could possibly be gained
from his parents to such an alliance. He knew that he had gained the
girl's love; and so when he came home from Waterloo he went straight to
Carlisle and married her; after which he wrote to me and told me all the
truth, binding me to secrecy.

"The secret was not mine, but his, and I kept it. I told him that he had
acted like a man and a gentleman, but also like a fool and a coward. You
can't think how often I told him that last piece of my mind."

"Very often indeed, I doubt not," said Mordaunt.

"Don't be absurd, I beg. My father found out from a very foolish servant
of Charles's, who was the girl's brother, that Charles was at Carlisle
with her. He was furious. You know the horror our houses have of such
matters. Charles was recalled by his colonel, and ordered to Chatham,
still keeping his secret. In six months the poor girl was confined, and
Charles was a widower. He was ordered to India, thinking it still well
to say nothing, in spite of my remonstrances. He knew the horror my
father had of Scotch marriages, and he left the child to take its
chance, with only myself with a knowledge of the truth, and one more."

"Phyllis Myrtle?" said Squire Mordaunt.

"I see you know more than I thought," said Aunt Eleanor.

"I am very much afraid that I know everything, Eleanor. But I must know
more from you. Did the girl's mother, this old hag Gray, know about this
marriage?"

"Certainly not. How is it possible? Would she not have made her claims
if she had? But to proceed, my dear George; this child of Charles's
died, legitimate or illegitimate, it does not matter much now. I saw it
dead with my own eyes."

"Exactly. Now we come to the soldier Gray. Tell us about him."

"Well, he got married to a girl in Donnington just about the time that
his master married his sister at Carlisle, and his wife was sent home to
his mother for her confinement. The child which was born there was Allan
Gray, whom I brought up, by my mother's request, as being legitimately I
knew, illegitimately as she thought, my own nephew."

Squire Mordaunt uttered a terrible oath. Remember that swearing had
hardly gone out even twelve years ago among old-fashioned people. He
said his oath, apologised, and then went on, very quietly, and very much
ashamed of himself.

"My dear Eleanor, I beg your pardon. I am very sorry indeed. But answer
me a few questions. You say that you saw poor Charles's baby lying
dead?"

"I did."

"Can you remember it? I want to know particularly."

"Yes. I am not likely to forget; for, George," she said, laying her hand
on his arm, and bursting suddenly out crying, "it was the first time I
ever looked on death. Oh, Eddy, Eddy, Eddy! I shall never see you lying
dead, my darling. Why did I let him go? Why did I let him go?"

Squire Mordaunt walked to the window for a little time, and then came
quietly back and kissed her. "Come, old girl, never mind Eddy. I have
sent a boy, and you have sent a boy. Be quiet, we shall want all our
wits about us directly. I want to know about that baby of Charles's
which you saw lying dead. Was it dressed?"

"No, it was naked, with a cloth over it, and they raised the cloth, and
I cried a great deal; and I looked at it closely, for it was very
beautiful, George."

"Now you are going to begin to whimper again," said Mordaunt, "and I
won't have it. Was there any mark on it?"

"Not one that I noticed."

"No wart, no wen, no mark of any kind by which you could swear?"

"Not one, poor little thing."

"Then we will drop it, and go on to business. Do you know what they have
done?"

"No."

"Changed foxes--I should say babies; that is it."

"Good Heavens! give me time, George. What do you mean?"

"Who showed you that baby, and under what circumstances?"

"Mrs. Myrtle sent for me, or was it Mrs. Gray? It was one of them--I
know our secret began then--and asked me to come down, and I went. And
Mrs. Myrtle told me that my brother's wife was dead. I think it was so.
I am not certain. And I asked to look at it, or they asked me, and I saw
it, and I cried."

"That baby you saw was the soldier Gray's child, and not Charles's at
all. The heir of Stretton is Allan Gray, or, as they venture to call
him, Charles Evans. And these two old trots have some strong proof of it
also, or the solicitor's house which they are employing would not look
at their case for five minutes. Hi, Johnny, bring in Mrs. Phillis
Myrtle."



Chapter 35.

John Mordaunt had so far fulfilled his father's injunctions as to bring
Mrs. Myrtle in sufficiently sober for business. Yet Mrs. Myrtle was
dimly conscious of requiring some sort of apology for coming at all, or
for coming as she was; or for having done what she had done; or for
venturing to exist at all, that she appeared before Miss Evans and
Squire Mordaunt in a deeply apologetic frame of mind. Dickens would have
made something out of her: she has too few salient points for a slighter
hand at caricature. Possibly John Mordaunt described one phase of her
character better than any of us, by saying that she was a persistently
complacent liar. This was, however, only one phase in her character. She
had Quicklyisms other than that, some of which we cannot deal with; one
certainly which we may. For example; she was a perfect and absolute
mistress of the art of sotting. Her knowledge of drinks was enormous and
varied. Her experience of different kinds of strong waters was
absolutely gigantic, yet to a certain extent limited. She would never on
any account touch a strange drink, such as champagne or Eau des Carmes.
Offer her gin; she would take as much as she wanted; offer her
Chambertin, a more innocent liquor, she would stoutly refuse. She knew
exactly how tipsy she wanted to be, and she regarded Chambertin, green
Chartreuse, champagne, as unknown liquors, not to be trusted. She
disliked being sober, but she dreaded being drunk. She had too much to
tell.

She is one of those women of whom doctors can tell you. A woman of
infinite good nature and immeasurable wickedness. Mrs. Gray was no
better than she should be--a bold, coarse, handsome, grey-headed woman,
with a rude, wild tongue. A woman not of the best character. Put Phillis
Myrtle beside her, a gentle, good-natured, apple-faced little woman;
nay, an affectionate little woman towards young people; which was the
better of the two? Mrs. Gray immeasurably. She had saved more young
girls from evil than even Phillis Myrtle had succeeded in ruining.

Squire Mordaunt, an old, trained, diligent county magistrate, knowing
the world in which he lived, by having it brought before him in its
lowest aspect, knew this woman, and recoiled from her. He looked at Aunt
Eleanor, and she recoiled also. "Be gentle and civil to this old hag,
Eleanor," he said, in a whisper, leaning over her chair. "I will," said
Aunt Eleanor, "but you make her tell. Stand where you are."

So Squire Mordaunt, leaning over Aunt Eleanor's chair, with the power of
whispering in her ear without being heard, brought out Mrs. Myrtle's
story in her own manner.

"Sit down, Mrs. Myrtle. Will you have a glass of wine, Mrs. Myrtle?"

"Thank your honour's handsome face, no."

"Had enough, eh?"

"Quite enough, thank you, sir."

"You won't get any at all in prison, you know," said Squire Mordaunt.

"I am equally aware of the fact, sir," said Mrs. Myrtle, coolly. "But I
don't mean to go there, if it is the same to you."

"Conspiracy is a dangerous thing, Mrs. Myrtle."

"As a general rule it is. But when such a lady as Miss Evans has to go
into the dock with an old woman like me, I naturally feels comfortable."

"What do you mean?"

"I only mean that Miss Evans knew as much as I did; and that where I go
she shall go, if I am treated uncivil."

"That is false," said Aunt Eleanor.

"It is good enough to swear to if I was drove to turn Queen's evidence,"
said Mrs. Myrtle. "Conspiracy indeed! You told all you knew, didn't you,
Miss Evans?"

"Woman! woman!" said Aunt Eleanor, "this will not serve you."

"It will unless I am treated civil," said old Myrtle, crying. "I came
here from the best of motives, and Squire Mordaunt (you are a sweet
saint, a'n't you, to talk so to an old woman who remembers you when you
were a boy) he begins on me about conspiracy."

"Well, and so you are going to be civil and tell us all you know, Mrs.
Myrtle?" said Aunt Eleanor.

"Certainly, Miss," she said. And so she did.



Chapter 36.

"Lucky beggar, he has got married, and hung his hat up."

That hanging up of the hat was in old times the façon de parler by which
naval and military men made one to understand that Captain or Major
So-and-so was utterly and entirely free from all earthly cares of any
sort whatever. Listen to them at the Naval, Military, Marine, Militia,
Volunteer, West Coast of Africa Club in Pall Mall. "Where is Joe
Buggins?" said Captain Kimberton, R.N.

"Lucky beggar," says Captain Bob Singleton, R.N. "He has hung up his
hat, got married, and gone ashore for good."

"Has she money?" said Kimberton.

"400l. a year," says Singleton.

"Dash it, some men are always in luck," says Kimberton. "Well, I shall
be afloat till I die."

Says Toodle, of the 944th West India Regiment, to Teedle, of Her
Majesty's 80th, "I made a mess of it in leaving the best regiment in the
service. Boodle is over my head now, I doubt."

"Boodle has hung up his hat," says Teedle (or used to say). "Boodle has
married a widow with 500l. a year, the least penny, and has cut the
service."

"Lucky beggar!" says Toodle, and thinks that Boodle has arrived at the
summit of all human happiness.

Now it so happens that I have lived alongside of both Buggins and Boodle
in my time, alongside of these men who have left their professions to be
married, and all I can say is, that Buggins would give ten years of his
life to be on the West Coast of Africa, and Boodle would give twenty to
have been in Abyssinia.

These men had served so long that they began to know how to serve; and
then they found themselves in a position to marry. And they fell in love
with two girls with money. And the paterfamilias of the period, finding
that they could make no great settlements, demanded of them that they
should insure their lives, and give up their profession.

I can point out a case now, of a girl without a farthing being engaged
to a man who might have done well at the bar, and who was solely
dependent on his father. She insisted that he should give up his
profession, and he, being in love, did so. Those two lives are as good
as lost. But to return to Buggins and Boodle.

A great many women who marry men in the services stipulate that the men
should "hang up their hats," and cease to be men. Should turn into
spaniels, to dangle after their wives' heels to balls and croquet
parties. Now this is an intolerable thing, although the virtuous and
unattackable paterfamilias encourages it. Look at the common sense of
the matter. Fancy locking up two entirely idle people together for their
lives. Can love stand it? I fancy not. Man and wife will go to the
world's end, or farther, for one another any day of the week, as the end
of the world well sees, provided the wife sees that the husband is
working, and the husband sees that the wife is minding. A couple such as
that will pull through great things. But to lock up two young people
alone, apparently for ever, she frivolous and silly, he capable of
better things, but bound either by his wife or his father-in-law to
forego them; this, I say, is dangerous.

To go in for another moment about Buggins and Boodle. Contrast the lives
which these two excellent officers might have lived, with the lives
which they were forced to lead, in consequence of the foolish English
notion, that marriage is to be a perpetual honeymoon, with, after a
time, babies superadded.

Take Buggins's case. Buggins was a man extremely valuable to his
profession. A man passed in steam, which all were not in those days. A
man who saw among the first, that naval tactics would more than ever
consist in rapidly turning on an individual enemy, that the nation which
could best imitate the old Elizabethan tactics must win. A speaker of
five languages, a geologist, a botanist; a man whose credit for personal
amiability could fill a ship in a week, while others stood empty for
months, or never filled at all. A man of pure and godly life, and a man
who could keep his head, as he had proved once or twice, under the most
desperate circumstances. A man in a dozen. Where was he? With Lyons?
With Peel? Not at all. Wasting all his power and knowledge at the heels
of his wife; because his wife's family had stipulated that he should not
leave the United Kingdom.

Take Mrs. Buggins again. She was one of the first to pray and beseech
that it should be rendered impossible for dear Joe to go to those horrid
wars. It was rendered impossible. When she got a little less silly, she
began to see that she had married a ghost and a dead man. A ghost of a
dead man, who scarcely cared to read the telegrams to her. A ghost of a
useless man, who would come suddenly in with the Times in his hand, and
say, gloomily, "Lyons has taken the 'Agamemnon' in under Constantine,
with the 'Retribution' on the larboard side. The Russians have cut away
the mainmast of the 'Retribution.' Edmund Lyons has done no good with
all his bravery. Wood against stone. I wish I was there."

And then, seeing that he was pacing up and down the room, eating his
heart out, she would show him baby, and jump baby up and down till the
poor little thing was sick. That was her remedy for a man whose comrades
were dying round Sebastopol.

Look again at Boodle, if you will have the goodness. The private in the
British army is not much given to sentimentalities towards his officer;
as a general rule he values one officer much the same as another.
Privates don't discuss their officers much. Corporals and sergeants do.
Yet Boodle, when he left his regiment to marry the rich widow, was
followed by the lamentations of all the privates in his company. They
would have followed him to the ends of the earth, and farther. But the
good widow said she was not going to ride on a baggage-waggon, and that
he must give up his profession. They get on very well, because the
amiability and pluck which attracted the widow were just the same
qualities which attracted and bound the private soldiers. But Boodle was
sick of his life.

It could scarcely be pleasant for a well-preserved widow to find her
young husband walking wildly up and down the house, saying, "If I had
been there at my place this would not have happened."

"What is the matter now?" says Mrs. Boodle.

"Willoughby has been forced to fire the magazine at Delhi. My God! my
poor friend! If I could only have died with him instead of rotting here
in inaction."

And Mrs. Boodle has not even a baby to dance before him; and when he is
forty she will be fifty-two, paint she never so wisely. And she brought
him 600l. a year. And as a general he would have had 1200l. I don't like
to go into the old age of the Boodles.

But Moral. My dear young lady, whenever you marry, make your husband
work. The more he works, the better for him; and for you also. Don't get
too easily into the delusion that "dear George is overworked." Overwork
means very often "Club" (and you should set your face against all clubs,
save the Athenaeum and the Garrick). Overwork means very often sheer
laziness. Think of the numbers of fine fellows hungering for work up and
down England, but who cannot get it--in the Church for want of
opportunity, in the army for want of money, in literature for the one
fatal fault, the want of felicity of expression. If your husband in any
way finds work to his hand, I beg you as a special favour, in return for
any little pleasure I have given you, keep him at it. No man ever worked
himself to death yet, except Pitt, and his four bottles of port wine a
day had much more to do with it than the sheer work.

846,000,000 first and last.

A low remark you say. Well, but we extinguished France and left her a
third-rate Power for ever, with her navy quite destroyed. The Spaniards
know nothing at all of our immortal Peninsular Campaign, though they did
make the Duke of Wellington grandee of the first order. But about young
Maynard, who had nothing to do with Pitt's war, or the wars which
succeeded on Pitt's policy. We had possibly better speak of him soon.

He had not much chance of being overworked, though he was paying his
share of the annual 26,000,000. Mrs. Maynard had insisted, and had got
her daughter-in-law to back her in her request, that Maynard should
leave the University, leave his proposed career at the bar, and come and
live at home. And the good-natured fellow, pressed by his bride's tender
coaxings, his mother's persistent clatter, and his sister's repetitions
of his mother's arguments, had consented.

There had always been an understanding between mother and son, that the
mother should leave the house when the son was married. This was well
enough, and Mrs. Maynard had always spoken of it as a foregone
conclusion. She had more than once taken Mildred over the house, shown
her the store-closets, asked if she might carry away this or that trifle
with her, when she went; and so on. But when they were married and had
settled down in their home, and had looked about them for a month or so,
they made the remark that Mrs. Maynard was not gone, and had made no
particular preparations for going. Likewise a still greater discovery,
that there was not any place for her to go to at least no place in
particular.

They never said one word about this at all, but submitted as quietly and
as dutifully as possible. They talked about it in bed sometimes, but
very slightly. It was no annoyance to them. Old Mrs. Maynard took care
that it should not be.

She had given up her comfortable rooms on the ground-floor, and moved
into three little rooms on the third, carrying Mary with her. They were
good enough, she said, for them, during the short time they were to
stay. Maynard and his wife remonstrated with her, and begged her to make
herself quite comfortable. But she was quite resolute. The
understanding, she said, had always been that she was to leave the house
when her son was married, and she only begged house-room and victuals
till she could get a home of her own. Nay, this high-spirited lady
begged Mildred to let her pay her own and Mary's board, which made
Mildred cry.

"That is an artful old toad," said young Mordaunt to his father one
evening.

"What is the last move?" said the Squire.

"Why, she has bought a waggon-load of furniture at Old Dempster's sale,
and she has brought it home to the Barton, and has begged the Big One as
a special favour to let her store it there for a week or so before she
goes."

"Law," said Aunt Eleanor, "why, the very bugs in the bedsteads will be
dead for want of their natural food before she ever sleeps in one of
them. And they live long, don't they, Ethel?"

"I call them ladybirds, Miss Evans," said Ethel.

"Ah! but then I call them bugs, don't you see," said Miss Evans, "which
is quite a different matter. You might call them what you liked, so long
as some of them got hold of her and dragged her out of her bed on to the
key-cold floor on a frosty night. The old trot, she won't go."

"Well, it is not any business of ours, Eleanor," said Squire Mordaunt.

"I never said it was," said Miss Evans, "but I mean to talk about it for
all that, and so I don't deceive you. Fiddle-de-dee; everybody talks
over my affairs and over Eddy's, and I shall talk over everybody else's.
I suppose you never mention your neighbours' affairs, eh?"

"Well, I do sometimes," said Squire Mordaunt.

"You never talk about anything else," said Aunt Eleanor.

"For me, I love it. It is the only real amusement one has in the
country, or in town either. For example, George Mordaunt, and in return
for your delicately expressed advice that I should mind my own business,
look here,--that woman is an artful old trot, and she will stay on
there, if she lives in the shoe-hole (I wish she did), to keep the ear
of her son, the Durham Ox, and make him bring Sir Jasper Meredith to
book, and marry Mary. When she has done that she will go, not before."

"Where will she go then?" asked Ethel.

"To Sir Jasper Meredith," said Aunt Eleanor, "and I wish him joy of her.
Now I have been talking sense so long that I wish some of you would open
your mouths. I don't mind nonsense in season; but I'd give fifty pounds
to the man who would set that house afire while that old trot was safe
in the top story."

With this exaggerated statement of her sentiments, Miss Evans concluded.
Let us look with less prejudiced eyes on the real state of things.

Of all mothers-in-law, living in the same house with their daughters,
Mrs. Maynard was the most perfectly discreet. Eleanor Evans, who had the
sense of ten ordinary men, saw why she stayed there--too keep her son's
ear.

A very common character in fiction is the rich mother, who schemes and
lies to get her daughter well married. She is generally held up to
ridicule and scorn. She should not scheme and lie, of course, but what
is the poor woman doing after all? only providing for her own flesh and
blood, and very probably pushing with a great deal of actual money to
get her girl well placed. The scheming dowager of comedy seems to me the
most unreal character of all. In a vast majority of instances a mother
only wishes to see her daughter well married, for pure love for her
daughter, and for no selfish reason whatever. What benefit does a woman
in high society get by marrying her daughter to a nobleman instead of
another? Very little. She has the entrée to all houses to which people
go: she can gain nothing there. She has as much money as she wants, and
will have to part with some of it when her daughter marries. Now it
seems to me, and to others also who know better, that the aims of a
mother in making frantic efforts to secure a husband for her daughter
are almost always sentimental, and rarely actually mercenary.

I like to sec a good honest woman trying to get a rich, good-humoured
lad as a husband for her girl, at an expense of a couple of thousand
pounds or so to herself. I think that she is doing her duty. I would
give her every possible assistance. I would go so far as to take her
into the tent or the supper-room, and give her chicken and wine, and say
to her: "You silly old woman, why did you drive fifteen miles with your
horses well tired last night, at Mrs. X--'s ball, in order that Eliza
might meet Ferdinand (let us be genteel) there? You hunt him about too
much. I have been round to the stable-yard just now, to get some
friend's coachman to put my wife's pony to, and the very grooms are
talking about it; and all the grooms and footmen in the county are
there; the coachmen and butlers are in the servants' hall, and they will
all laugh at you for the way you are hunting this rich lad, who really
loves your daughter, but whom you, with the best intentions, are doing
your best to disgust."

That is the way I should talk to her, but then, you see, she wouldn't
stand it.

Mrs. Maynard was no such mother as I have spoken about above; her
objects were purely selfish. She cared little for an establishment for
her daughter, provided she had no share in it. In fact, Mrs. Evans told
her so, and Mrs. Maynard would not stand it for an instant.

Creeping up to her great scheme of confounding Sir Jasper Meredith, this
good lady crept through many dirty ways. That most wonderful and
powerful fiction, "Melmoth," is written to show, or to try to show, that
no human being, under any circumstances, will make a compact with the
Evil One and barter away his salvation. The author proves it, or tries
to prove it, by putting various groups of people into situations which
it is horror to read, and nightmare to remember, always with the offer
before them. He thinks that he has proved his thesis by making none of
them do it, even in the most frightful extremity. Of course the idea of
the book is great balderdash, though it is written with a literary skill
which makes one remember it after many years. Of course no one ever gets
the chance of selling himself to the devil; and the writer of that book
has fortified his argument by making his characters almost
preternaturally good: yet, had he taken characters of a lower order, I
doubt if ho would have proved his case so well. There are some people
who would do it. Do I mean Mrs Maynard? Of course not; no gentleman
would so far forget himself as to say such a thing about a lady.

Still she would go a long way. Look at the splendid object before her.

She, with her ox-like son, had been mistress and manager of a noble
house,--a house of plenty and of influence for many years. She was
called on to give up this, and she knew that she must give it up, sooner
or later. She was utterly vain, selfish, and extremely fond of good
living; loving also power as well as Chaucer's lady did in a story which
is far too cool to name here. All this was slipping away from her. Her
son, though good-natured among men, was a very determined bully among
women; and being a good fellow enough, did not at all approve of all his
mother's ways and words.

In calculating the chances of the comet of 1858 hitting the earth and
burning us, the most sensational of the astronomers told us that if it
had come x2-n something nearer to us, we should have been disagreeably
warm. In calculating chance in the same manner one may say, confining
oneself to arithmetic, and leaving mathematics alone as dangerous, that
it was .333 against the tiny residuum which goes up to make 1000,
that if the devil had appeared to Mrs. Maynard at this time she would
have traded.

For look at what this worthless woman had before her. On the one hand an
entire loss of what she loved dearest,--power, prestige, and
good-living; and on the other hand the chance of being absolute and
perfect mistress of Lawley Castle, the place of Sir Jasper Meredith,
with an almost incalculable number of thousand pounds a year. The woman
was dishonest moreover. She calculated that if she could bring Sir
Jasper Meredith to book, and rule at Lawley for say six or seven years,
she could "feather her nest." Meredith, good lad, was the best landlord
going, for he let his farmers do as they liked, on the sole condition
that the wages of the labourers should not fall below 13s. The farmers
would growl at that sometimes; but Sir Jasper, that honest little heap
of bones, one day, in a fantastic mood, got one of his gamekeepers to
get him a crow, and he nailed it up outside his porch. And he got the
village painter to come and paint under it the words of Anne of
Brittany:--"Qui qu'on grogne ainsi sera. C'est mon plaisir." And when a
farmer growled, Sir Jasper would take him out and show him the crow, and
translate the French to him. And that farmer would go away and tell his
acquaintances that there weren't a more resolute bit of stuff within
sight of the Wrekin than that little cripple up at Lawley.

One farm only had fallen in since Sir Jasper's majority. There were
fifty applicants for it. Young Brereton got it, at a lower bid than some
others. Young Brereton met Aunt Eleanor at market at Shrewsbury, and she
sold him some seed oats.

"Mind you cash up this day week, you know," said Aunt Eleanor. "I shall
be here."

"Yes, Miss. I have a kind landlord to start life with."

"Law, you may revel in plenty, man, and die rich, if you give him his
own way. You leave his poor alone, and treat them well, and he will do
well by you. You just oppress Christ's poor, and he'll smash you. Good
morning. Don't forgot the cash this day week."

Such was Aunt Eleanor's judgment about Sir Jasper Meredith. Mrs.
Maynard's was far otherwise.

The man, if you could call him one, had to be carried about by valets
and grooms. He had brains and education, they said; but what were brains
and education to a miserable anatomy like him? He was not a marriageable
man at all. If it were not for his money, he would not be worth looking
after. He could not live. Mary would do as she told her. It was one of
the most splendid chances over seen. She, Mrs. Maynard, would be lady of
Lawley to her dying day, for the title being extinct, she could easily
make that heap of bones make over the whole property to her daughter,
Lady