Hetherington House stands in Beaufort Square, forming one side of that confessedly aristocratic quarter. The house stands back in melancholy "grounds" of dirty gravel, brown turf, and smutted trees, while the dwarf wall which forms the side of the square, and is indeed a sufficiently huge brick screen, fences off the commonalty, and prevents them from ever catching so much as a glimpse of the paradise within, save when the great gates are flung open for the entrance or exit of vehicles, or when the porter, so gorgeous and yet so simple, is sunning himself in the calm evening air at the small postern-door. The Countess of Hetherington likes this brick screen, and looks upon it as a necessary appanage of her rank. When visitors, having exhausted every topic of conversation possible to their great minds--a feat which is easily performed in the space of five minutes--and, beginning to fear the immediate advent of brain-softening if not of idiotcy, suddenly become possessed with a fresh idea after a lengthened contemplation of the wall in front of them, and with an air of desperation ask whether it does not make the house dull, Lady Hetherington says that, on the contrary, it is the only thing that renders the house habitable. She confesses that, during the time she is compelled to be in London, the sight of hack cabs, and policemen on their beat, and those kind of things, are not absolutely necessary to her existence, and as Sir Charles Dumfunk insists on her rooms facing the west, she is glad that the wall is there to act as a screen. Oh yes, she is perfectly aware that Lord Letterkenney had the screen of Purcell House pulled down and an open Italian façade erected in its place, the picture of which was in the illustrated papers; but as Lady Letterkenney until her marriage had lived in Ireland, and had probably never seen anything human except priests and pigs, the sight of civilised beings was doubtless an agreeable novelty to her. The same circumstances did not exist in her, Lady Hetherington's, case, and she decidedly liked the screen.
The Earl likes the screen also, but he never says anything about it, chiefly because no one over asks his opinion on any subject. He likes it because it is his, the Earl of Hetherington's, and he likes looking at it as he likes looking at the coronet on his plate, on his carriage-panels, and his horses' harness, at his family history as set forth by Burke and Debrett, and at the marginal illustrations of his coat-of-arms as given in those charming volumes, at his genealogical tree--a mysterious work of art which hangs in the library, looking something like an enlarged "sampler" worked by a school-girl, and from the contemplation of which he derives intense delight. It does not take a great deal to fill Lord Hetherington's soul with rapture. Down in Norfolk villages, in the neighbourhood of his ancestral home, and far away in scattered cottages on the side of green Welsh mountains, where the cross-tree rears its inopportune head in the midst of the lovely landscape, and where smoke and coal-dust permeate the soft delicious air, his lordship, as landlord and mine-holder, is spoken of with bated breath by tenants and workmen, and regarded as one of the hardest-headed, tightest-fisted men of business by stewards and agents. They do not see much, scarcely anything, of him, they say, and they don't need to, if he's to be judged by the letters he writes and the orders he sends. To screw up the rents and to lengthen the hours of labour was the purport of these letters, while their style was modelled on that used by the Saxon Franklin to his hog-hind, curt, overbearing, and offensive. Agents and stewards, recipients of these missives, say bitter words about Lord Hetherington in private, and tenants and workmen curse him secretly as they bow to his decree. To them he is a haughty, selfish, grinding aristocrat, without a thought for any one but himself; whereas in reality he is a chuckle-headed nobleman, with an inordinate idea of his position certainly, but kindly hearted, a slave to his wife, and with one great desire in life, a desire to distinguish himself somehow, no matter how.
He had tried politics. When a young man he had sat as Lord West for his county, and the first Conservative ministry which came into office after he had succeeded to his title, remembering the service which Lord West had done them in roaring, hooting, and yar-yaring in the House of Commons, repaid the obligation by appointing the newly fledged Earl of Hetherington to be the head of one of the inferior departments. Immensely delighted was his lordship at first; went down to the office daily, to the intense astonishment of the departmental private secretary, whose official labours had hitherto been confined to writing about four letters a day, took upon himself to question some of the suggestions which were made for his approval, carped at the handwriting of the clerks, and for at least a week thought he had at length found his proper place in the world, and had made an impression. But it did not last. The permanent heads of the department soon found him out, scratched through the external cuticle of pride and pomposity, and discovered the true obstinate dullard underneath. And then they humoured him, and led him by the nose as they had led many a better man before him, and he subsided into a nonentity, and then his party went out of office, and when they came in again they declined to reappoint Lord Hetherington, though he clamoured ever so loudly.
Social science was the field in which his lordship next disported himself, and prolix, pragmatical, and eccentric as are its professors generally, he managed to excel them all. Lord Hetherington had his theories on the utilisation of sewage and the treatment of criminals, on strikes and trades unions--the first of which he thought should be suppressed by the military, the second put down by Act of Parliament--and on the proper position of women; on which subject be certainly spoke with more than his usual spirit and fluency. But he was a bore upon all; and at length the social-science audiences, so tolerant of boredom, felt that they could stand him no longer, and coughed him down gently but firmly when he attempted to address them. Lord Hetherington then gave up social science in disgust, and let his noble mind lie fallow for a few months, during which time he employed himself in cutting his noble fingers with a turning-lathe which he caused to be erected in his mansion, and which amused him very much: until it suddenly occurred to him that the art of bookbinding was one in which his taste and talent might find a vent. So the room in which the now deserted turning-lathe stood was soon littered with scraps of leather and floating fragments of gilt-leaf; and there his lordship spent hours every day looking on at two men very hard at work in their shirt-sleeves, and occasionally handing them the tools they asked for: and thus he practised the art of book-binding. Every one said it was an odd thing for a man to take to, but every one knew that Lord Hetherington was an odd man; consequently no one was astonished, after the bound volumes had been duly exhibited to dining or calling friends, and had elicited the various outbursts of "Jove!" "Ah!" "Charming!" "Quite too nice!" and "Can't think how he does it, eh?" which politeness demanded--no one was astonished to hear that his lordship, panting for something fresh in which to distinguish himself, had found it in taxidermy, which was now absorbing all the energies of his noble mind. The receipt of a packet of humming-birds, presented by a poor relation in the navy, first turned Lord Hetherington's thoughts to this new pursuit; and he acted with such promptitude, that before the end of a week Mr. Byrne--small, shrunken, and high-shouldered--had taken the place at the bench erst occupied by the stalwart men in shirt-sleeves; but the smell of paste and gum had been supplanted by that of pungent chemicals, the floor was strewn with feathers and wool instead of leather and gilt-leaf, and his lordship, still looking on and handing tools to his companion, was stuffing birds very much in the same way as he had bound books.
It was a fine sight to see old Jack Byrne, "Bitter Byrne," the ultra-radical, the sourest-tongued orator of the Spartan Club, the ex-Chartist prisoner, waited on by gorgeous footmen in plush and silk stockings, fed on French dishes and dry sherry, and accepting it all as if he had been born to the situation.
"Why should I quarrel with my bread and butter, or what's a devilish deal better than bread and butter," he asked in the course of a long evening's ramble with Walter Joyce, "because it comes from a representative of the class I hate? I earn it, I work honestly and hard for my wage, and suppose I am to act up to the sham self-denial preached in some of the prints which batten on the great cause without understanding or caring for it--suppose I were to refuse the meal which my lord's politeness sends me, as some of your self-styled Gracchi or Patriots would wish, how much further should we have developed the plans, or by what the more should we have dealt a blow at the institution we are labouring to destroy? Not one jot My maxim, as I have told you before, is, use these people! Hate them if you will, despise them as you must, but use them!"
The old man's vehemence had a certain weight with Joyce, who, nevertheless, was not wholly convinced as to the propriety of his friend's position, and said, "You justify your conduct by Lord Hetherington's, then? You use each other?"
"Exactly! My Lord Hetherington in Parliament says, or would say if he were allowed the chance, but they know him too well for that, so he can only show by his votes and his proxies--proxies, by the Lord! isn't that a happy state of things when a minister can swamp any measure that he chooses by pulling from his pocket a few papers sent to him by a few brother peers, who care so little about the question in hand that they won't even leave their dinner-tables to come down and hear it discussed?--says that he loathes what he is pleased to call the lower classes, and considers them unworthy of being represented in the legislature. But then he wants to stuff birds, or rather to be known as a bird-stuffer of taste, and none of the House of Peers can help him there. So he makes inquiries, and is referred to me, and engages me, and we work together--neither abrogating our own sentiments. He uses my skill, I take his money, each has hisquid pro quo;and if the time were ever to come,--as it may come, Walter, mark my words--as itmustcome, for everything is tending towards it,--when the battle of the poor against the rich, the bees against the drones, is fought in this country, fought out, I mean, practically and not theoretically, we shall each of us, my Lord Hetherington and I, be found on our respective sides, without the slightest obligation from one to the other!"
Joyce had come to look forward to those evening walks with the old man as the pleasantest portion of the day. From nine till six he laboured conscientiously at the natural-history work which Mr. Byrne had procured for him, dull uninteresting work enough, but sufficiently fairly rewarded. Then he met his old friend at Bliffkins's, and after their frugal meal they set out for a long ramble through the streets. Byrne was full of information, which, in his worldly wise fashion, he imparted, tinged with social philosophy or dashed with an undercurrent of his own peculiar views. Of which an example. Walter Joyce had been standing for five minutes, silent, rapt in delight at his first view of the Parliament Houses as seen from Westminster Bridge. A bright moonlight night, soft, dreamy, even here, with a big yellow harvest moon coming up from the back, throwing the delicate tracery into splendid relief, and sending out the shadows thick and black; the old man looking on calmly, quietly chuckling at the irrepressible enthusiasm mantling over his young friend's cheeks and gleaming in his eyes.
"A fine place, lad?"
"Fine! splendid, superb!"
"Well, not to puttoofine a point upon it, we'll say fine. Ah, they may blackguard Barry as much as they like--and when it comes to calling names and flinging mud in print, mind you, I don't know anybody to beat your architect or your architect's friend--but there's not another man among 'em could have done anything like that! That's a proper dignified house for the Parliament of the People to sit in--when it comes!"
"But it does sit there, doesn't it!"
"It? What? The Parliament of the People? No, sir; that sits, if you would believe certain organs of the press, up a court in Fleet Street, where it discusses the affairs of the nation over screws of shag tobacco and pots of fourpenny ale. What sits there before us is the Croesus Club, a select assemblage of between six and seven hundred members, who drop down here to levy taxes and job generally in the interval between dinner and bed."
"Are they--are they there now?" asked Joyce eagerly, peering with outstretched neck at the building before him.
"Now? No, of course not, man! They're away at their own devices, nine-tenths of them breaking the laws which they helped to make, and all enjoying themselves, and wondering what the devil people find to grumble at!"
"One of the governors of the old school, down, down at Helmingham"--a large knot swelled in Joyce's throat as he said the word, and nearly choked him; never before had he felt the place so far away or the days spent there so long removed from his then life--"was a member of Parliament, I think. Lord Beachcroft. Did you ever hear of him?"
The old man smiled sardonically.
"Hear of him, man? There's not one of them that has made his mark, or that is likely to make his mark in any way, that I don't know by sight, or that I haven't heard speak. I know Lord Beachcroft well enough; he's a philanthropist, wants camphorated chalk tooth-powder for the paupers, and horse-exercise for the convicts. Registered among the noodles, ranks A1, weakly built, leaden-headed, and wants an experienced keeper!"
"That doctrine would have been taken as heresy at Helmingham! I know he came there once on our speech-day to deliver the prizes, and the boys all cheered him to the echo!"
"The boys! of course they did! The child is father to the man! I forgot, people don't read Wordsworth nowadays, but that's what he says, and he and Tennyson are the only poet-philosophers that have risen amongst us for many years; and boys shout, as men would, at the mere sight, at the mere taste of a lord! How they like to roll your 'lordship' round their mouths, and fear lest they should lose the slightest atom of its flavour! Not that the boys did wrong in cheering Lord Beachcroft! He's harmless enough, and well-meaning, I'm sure, and stands well up among the noodles. And it's better to stand anywhere amongst them than to be affiliated to the other party!"
"The other party? Who are they, Mr. Byrne?"
"The rogues, lad, the rogues! Rogues and noodles make up the blessed lot of senators sitting in your gimcrack palace, who vote away your birthright and mine, tax the sweat of millions, bow to Gold Stick and kiss Black Rod's coat-tails, send our fleets to defend Von Sourkraut's honour, or our soldiers to sicken of jungle fever in pursuit of the rebel Lollum Dha's adversaries! Parliament? Representatives of the people? Very much! My gallant friend, all pipeclay and padded breast, who won't hear of the army estimates being reduced; my learned friend, who brings all his forensic skill and all his power of tongue-fence, first learned in three-guinea briefs at the Old Bailey, and now educated up into such silvery eloquence, into play for the chance of a judgeship and a knighthood; the volatile Irish member, who subsides finally into the consulate of Zanzibar; the honourable member, who, having in his early youth swept out a shop at Loughboro', and arrived in London with eightpence, has accumulated millions, and is, of course, a strong Tory, with but two desires in life--to keep down 'the people,' and to obtain a card for his wife for the Premier's Saturday evenings--these are the representatives of the people for you! Rogues and noodles, noodles and rogues. Don't you like the picture?"
"I should hate it, if I believed in it, Mr. Byrne!" said Joyce, moving away, "but I don't! You won't think me rude or unkind, but--but I've been brought up in so widely different a faith. I've been taught to hold in such reverence all that I hear you deny, that----"
"Stick to it, lad! hold to it while you can!" said the old man kindly, laying his hand on his companion's arm. "My doctrines are strong meat for babes--too strong, I dare say--and you're but a toothless infant yet in these things, anyhow! So much the better for you. I recollect a story of some man who said he was never happy or well after he was told he had a liver! Go on as long as you can in pleasant ignorance of the fact that you have a political liver. Some day it will become torpid and sluggish, and then--then come and talk to old Dr. Byrne. Till then, he won't attempt to alarm you, depend upon it!"
Not very long to be deferred was the day in which the political patient was to come to the political physician for advice and for treatment.
Beaufort Square looked hideously dull as Lord Hetherington drove through it on his way to his home from the railway station a few days after the conversation above recorded, and the clanging of his own great gates as they shut behind him echoed and re-echoed through the vast deserted space. The gorgeous porter and all the regiment of domestics were down at Westhope, the family place in Norfolk, so the carriage-gates were opened by a middle-aged female with her head tied up for toothache, and Mrs. Mason, the housekeeper, with a female retinue, was waiting to receive his lordship on the steps. Always affable to old servants of the family, whose age, long service, and comfortable comely appearance do him credit, as he thinks, Lord Hetherington exchanges a few gracious words with Mrs. Mason, desires that Mr. Byrne shall be shown in to him so soon as he arrives, and makes his way across the great hall to the library. The shutters of his room have been opened, but there has been no time given for further preparations, and the big writing-table, the globes, and the bookcases are all swathed in ghostly holland drapery. The bust of the ninth earl, Lord Hetherington's father, has slipped its head out of its covering, and looks astonished and as if it had been suddenly called up in its nightclothes. My lord looks dismayed, as well he may, at the dreary room, but finds no more cheerful outlook from the window into the little square garden, where a few melancholy leaves are rotting in the dirty corners into which they have drifted, and where Mrs. Mason's grandson, unconscious of observation, is throwing stones at a cat. My lord rattles the loose silver in his trousers-pockets, and walks up to the fireplace and inspects his tongue in the looking-glass, whistles thoughtfully, sighs heavily, and is beginning to think he shall go mad, when Mrs. Mason opens the door and announces "Mr. Byrne."
"How do, Byrne?" says his lordship, much relieved. "Glad to see you--come up on purpose--want your help!"
Mr. Byrne returns his lordship's salutations, and quietly asks in what way he can be of use. His lordship is rather taken aback at being so suddenly brought to book, but says with some hesitation--
"Well, not exactly in your own way, Byrne; I don't think I shall do any more what-d'ye-call-ums, birds, any more--for the present, I mean, for the present. Her ladyship thought those last screens so good that it would be-useless to try to improve on them, and so she's given me--I mean I've got--another idea."
Mr. Byrne, with the faintest dawn of a cynical grin on his face, bows and waits.
"Fact is," pursues his lordship, "my place down at Westhope, full of most monstrously interesting records of our family from the time of--oh, the Crusaders and Guy Fawkes and the Pretender, and all that kind of thing; records, don't you know; old papers, and what they call documents, you know, and those kind of things. Well, I want to take all these things and make 'em into a sort of history of the family, you know, to write it and have it published, don't they call it? You know what I mean."
Mr. Byrne intimates that they do call it published, and that he apprehends his lordship's meaning completely.
"Well, then, Byrne," his lordship continues, "what I sent for you for is this. 'Tisn't in your line, I know, but I've found you clever, and all that kind of thing, and above your station. Oh, I mean it, I do indeed, and I want you to find me some person, respectable and educated and all that, who will just go through these papers, you know, and select the right bits, you know, and write them down, you know, and, in point of fact, just do--you know what I mean."
Mr. Byrne, with a radiant look which his face but seldom wore, averred that he not merely understood what was meant, but that he could recommend the very man whom his lordship required: a young man of excellent address, good education, and great industry.
"And he'll understand----?" asked Lord Hetherington hesitatingly, and with a curious look at Mr. Byrne.
"Everything," replied the old man. "Your lordship's book will be the most successful thing you've done."
"Then bring him to the Clarendon at twelve the day after to-morrow. As he's to live in the house, and that kind of thing, her ladyship must see him before he's engaged."
"I suppose I may congratulate you, my boy," said Byrne to Joyce a day or two afterwards, as they walked away from the Clarendon Hotel after their interview, "though you don't look much pleased about it."
"I am an ungrateful brute," said Walter; "I ought to have thanked you the instant the door closed; for it is entirely owing to you and your kindness that I have obtained this splendid chance. But----"
"But what?" said the old man kindly.
"Did you notice that woman's reception of me, and the way she spoke?"
"That woman? Oh, my Lady! H'm--she's not too polite to those she considers her inferiors."
"Polite? To me it was imperious, insolent, degrading! But I can put up with it!" And he added softly to himself, "For Marian's sake!"
Marian Ashurst had begun, soon after their parting, to feel that she had been somewhat too sanguine in her anticipations of the immediate success of Walter Joyce. Each little difficulty she had had to encounter in her own life until the old home was left behind had aided to depress her, to force her to understand that the battle of life was harder to fight than she had fancied it, and had brought to her mind a shapeless fear that she had mistaken, overvalued, the strength and efficacy of the weapons with which she must fight that battle. Walter's letters had not tended to lift her heart up from its depression. His nature was essentially candid; he had neither the skill nor the inclination to feign, and he had kept her exactly informed. On his return home after his interview with Lord and Lady Hetherington, Joyce found a letter awaiting him. It was from Marian, written to her lover from Mr. Creswell's house, and ran as follows:
"Woolgreaves, Wednesday.
"MY DEAREST WALTER,
"The project I told you of, in my last letter, has been carried out; mamma and I are settled for the present at Woolgreaves. How strange it seems! Everything has been done so suddenly when it came to the point, and Mr. Creswell and his nieces turned out so differently from what I expected. I did not look for their taking any notice of us, except in the commonplace way of people in their position to people in ours. I always had a notion that 'womankind' have but a small share in men's friendships. However, these people seem determined to make me out in the wrong, and though I do not give the young ladies credit for more than intelligent docility, making them understand that their best policy is to carry out their uncle's kind intentions--that they have more to gain by obedience in this respect than to lose by anything likely to be alienated from them in our direction--I must acknowledge that their docility is intelligent. They made the invitation most graciously, urged it most heartily, and are carrying out all it implied fully. You will have been surprised at mamma's finding the idea of being in any one's house endurable, under the circumstances, but she really likes it. Maude and Gertrude Creswell, who are the very opposites of me in everything, belong to the 'sweet-girl' species, and mamma has found out that she likes sweet girls. Poor mamma, she never had the chance of making the discovery before! I do believe it never occurred to her that her own daughter was not a 'sweet girl,' until she made the conquest of the hearts of these specimens. The truth is, also, that mamma feels, shemustfeel, every one must feel the material comfort of living as we are living here, in comparison with the makeshift wretchedness of the lodging into which we shall have to go, when our visit here comes to a conclusion, and still more, as athoroughly known and feltstandard of comparison, with the intense and oppressive sadness, and the perpetual necessity for watchfulness in the least expense, which have characterised our dear old house since our sad loss. She is not herself aware of the good which it has done her to come here, she does not perceive the change it has wrought in her, and it is well she should not, for I really think the simple, devoted, grieving soul would be hurt and angry with herself at the idea that anything should make any difference to her, that she should be 'roused.' How truly my dear father understood, how highly he prized her exquisite sensitiveness of feeling; he was just the man to hold it infinitely above all the strong-mindedness in the world! I am stronger minded, happily--I wonder if you like to know that I am, or whether you, too, prefer the weaker, the more womanly type, as people say, forgetting that most of the endurance, and a good deal of the work, in this world, is our 'womanly' inheritance, and that some of us, at least, do it with discredit. You don't want moralising, or philosophising, from me, though, dearest Walter, do you? You complain of my matter-of-fact letters as it is. I must not yield to my bad habit of talking to myself, rather than to you on paper.
"Well, then, we came to Woolgreaves, and found the heartiest of welcomes, and everything prepared for our comfort. As I don't think you know anything more of the place than could be learned from our summer-evening strolls about the grounds, when we always took such good care to keep well out of sight of the windows, I shall describe the house. You will like to know where and how I live, and to see in your fancy my surroundings. How glad I shall be when you, too, can send me a sketch of anything you can call 'home!' Of course, I don't mean that to apply to myself here; I never let any feeling of enjoyment really take possession of me because of its transitoriness; you know exactly in what sense I mean it, a certain feeling of comfort and quiet, of having to-morrow what you have had to-day, of seeing the same people and the same things around, which makes up the idea of home, though it must all vanish soon. I wonder if men get used to alterations in their modes of life so soon as women do? I fancy not. I know there is mamma, and I am sure a more easily pleased, less consciously selfish human being never existed (if her share in the comforts of home was disproportionate, it was my dear father's doing, not of her claiming), and yet she has been a week here, and all the luxury she lives in seems as natural to her, as indispensable as the easy-chair, the especially good tea, the daily glass of wine, the daintiest food which were allotted to her at home. I saw the girls exchange a look this morning when she said, 'I hope it won't rain, I shall miss my afternoon drive so much!' I wonder what the look meant? Perhaps it meant, 'Listen to that upstart! She never had a carriage of her own in her life, and because she has the use of ours for a few clays, she talks as if it were a necessary of life.' Perhaps--and I think they may be sufficiently genuinely sweet girls to make it possible--the look may have meant that they were glad to think they had it in their power to give her anything she enjoyed so much. I like it very much, too; there is more pleasure in driving about leisurely in a carriage which you have not to pay for than I imagined; but I should be sorry the girls knew I cared very much about it. I have not very much respect for their intellects, and silly heads are apt to take airs at the mere idea of being in a position to patronise. Decidedly the best room in the house is mamma's, and she likes it so much. I often see the thought in her face, 'If we could have given him all these comforts, we might have had him with us now.' And so we might, Walter, so we might. Just think of the great age some of the very rich and grand folks live to; I am sure I have seen it in the papers hundreds of times, seventy, eighty, ninety sometimes, just because theyarerich; rank has nothing to do with it beyond implying wealth, and if my father had been even a moderately rich man, if he had been anything but a poor man, he would have been alive to-day. We must try to be rich, my dearest Walter, and if that is impossible (and I fear it, I fear it much since I have been here, and Mr. Creswell has told me a good deal about how he made his money, and from all he says it seems indispensable to havesometo begin with, there is truth in the saying thatmoney makes money)--if that is impossible, at least we must not think of marrying while we are poor. I don't think anything can compensate to one's self for being poor, and I am quite sure nothing can compensate for seeing any one whom one loves exposed to the privations and the humiliations of poverty. I have thought so much of this, dearest Walter, I have been so doubtful whether you think of it seriously enough. It seems absurd for a woman to say to a man that she ponders the exigencies of life more wisely, and sees its truths more fully than he does; but I sometimes think women do so, and inourcase I think I estimate the trial and the struggle there is before us more according to their real weight and severity than you do, Walter, for you think of me only, whereas I think of you more than of myself, and asonewith myself. I have learned, since I came here, that to understand what poverty really means one must see the details of wealth. We have only a general idea of a fine house and grounds, a luxurious table and a lot of servants. The general idea seems very grand and attractive, but when one sees it all in working order, when one can find out the cost of each department, the price of every article, the scale on which it is all kept up, not for show, butfor every-day use,then the real meaning of wealth, the awful difficulty of attaining it, realise themselves to one's mind. The Creswell girls know nothing about the mechanism of their splendid home, not much about even their personal expenses. 'Uncle gives us a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and tells us we may send him in any reasonable number of bills besides,' Maude told me. And it is quite true. They keep no accounts. I checked her maid's book for Gertrude, warning her not to let her servant see her ignorance, and she says she does not think she ever had some of the things put down. Just think of that! No dyeing old dresses black for mourning for them, and turning rusty crape! Not that that sort of thing signifies--the calculation is on too large a scale for such small items--they only illustrate the whole story of poverty. The housekeeper and I are quite friendly. She has a notion that ladies ought to understand economy, and she is very civil. She has explained everything to me, and I find the sums which pass through her hands alone would be a fortune to us. There are twenty servants in the house and stables, and their 'hall' is a sight! When I think of the shabby dining-room in which my dear father used to receive his friends--great people, too, sometimes, but not latterly--I do feel that human life is a very unfair thing.
"The great wide hall, floored with marble, and ornamented with pictures, and lamps on pedestals, and stags'-heads, and all the things one sees in pictures of halls, is in the centre of the house, and has a dark carved-oak gallery all round it, on which numerous rooms open; but on the ground-floor there is a grand dining-room, and a smaller room where we breakfast, a billiard-room, a splendid library (all my father's books are in it now, and look nothing in the crowd), an ante-room where people wait who come on business to Mr. Creswell (all his business seems to consist in disposing surplus money to advantage), and at the back of all, opening on the most beautiful flower-garden you can conceive, an immense conservatory. This is a great pleasure to mamma; there are no painful associations withsuchflowers for her; my father never gave her such bouquets as Gertrude brings to the breakfast-table every morning and presents to her with a kiss, which her uncle seems to think particularly gracious and kind, for he always smiles at her.
"Indeed, he smiles a good deal at every one, for he is a very good-natured, amiable, and kindly man, and seems to think little of his wealth. I am sure he is dreadfully imposed upon--indeed, I have found out many instances of it. How happy he could makeusif he would! dare say he would not miss the money which would make us comfortable. But I must not think of such a thing. No one could afford to give so much as it would bewiseto marry on, and we never should be happy if we were not wise. I don't think Mr. Creswell has a trouble in the world, except his son Tom, and I am not sure that he is a trouble to him--for he doesn't talk much about himself--but I am quite sure he ought to be. The boy is as graceless, selfish, heartless a cub, I think, as ever lived. I remember your thinking him very troublesome and disobedient in school, and he certainly is not better at home, where he has many opportunities of gratifying his evil propensities not afforded him by school. He is very much afraid of me, short a time as I have been here, that is quite evident; and I am inclined to think one reason why Mr. Creswell likes my being here so much is the influence I exercise over Tom. Very likely he does not acknowledge that to himself as a reason, perhaps he does not even know it; but I can discern it, and also that it is a great relief to the girls. They are very kind to Tom, who worries their lives out, I am sure, when they are alone; but 'schoolmaster's daughter' was always an awful personage in the old days, and makes herselffeltnow very satisfactorily, though silently. I fancy Tom will turn out to be the crook in his father's lot when he grows up. He is an unmannerly, common creature, not to be civilised by all the comfort and luxury of home, or softened by all the gentleness and indulgence of his father. He is doing nothing just now; he did not choose to remain with papa's successor, and is running wild until he can be placed with a private tutor--some clergyman who takes only two or three pupils. Meantime, the coachman and the groom are his favourite associates, and the stable his resort of predilection.
"Do you remember the beech-copse just beyond Hillside Road? The windows of my room look out in that direction, far away, beyond the Woolgreaves grounds; I can see the tops of the trees, and the winding road beyond them. I go up to my room every evening, to see the sun set behind the hill there, and to think of the many times we walked there and talked of what was to be. Will it ever be, Walter? Were we not foolish boy and girl--foolish paupers? Ay, the word, hard, ugly, buttrue.When I look round this room I feel it, oh, so true! Mamma and I have a pretty sitting-room, and a bedroom each on opposite sides of it. Such rooms the very simplicity and exquisite freshness of their furniture and appointments are more significant of wealth, of the ease of household arrangement, and the perfection of household service, than any amount of rich upholstery. And then the drawing-rooms, and the girls' rooms, and the music-room, and the endless spare rooms--which, by-the-by, are rarely occupied; for so rich a man, and one with such a house, Mr. Creswell seems to me to have singularly little society. No one but the clergyman and his wife has been since we came. I thought it might be out of delicate consideration for us that Mr. Creswell might have signified a wish for especial privacy, but I find that is not the case. He said to me to-day that he feared we found Woolgreaves dull. I do not. I have too much to think of to be affected by anything of that kind; and as my thoughts are rarely of a cheerful order, I should not ingratiate myself by social agreeability. Our life is quietly luxurious. I adhere to my old habits of early rising; but I am the only person in the house who enjoys the beauty of the gardens and grounds in the sweet morning. We breakfast at ten, and mamma and the girls go out into the lawn or into the garden, and they chat to her and amuse her until luncheon. I usually pass the morning in the library, reading and writing, or talking with Mr. Creswell. It is very amusing and interesting to me to hear all about his career, how he made so much money, and how he administers it. I begin to understand it very well now. I don't think I should make a bad woman of business by any means, and I am sure everything of the kind would have a great interest for me, even apart from my desire for money, and my conviction that neither happiness nor repose is to be had in this world without it. The old gentleman seems surprised to find me interested and intelligent about what he calls such dry detail; but, just as books and pictures are interesting, though one may never hope to possess them, so money, though it does not belong to myself, and never can, interests me. Oh, my dearest Walter, if we had but a little, just a few hundreds of pounds, and Mr. Creswell could teach you how to employ it with advantage in some commercial undertaking! He began with little more than one thousand pounds, and now! But I might as well wish you had been born an archbishop. In the afternoon, there is our drive. What handsome houses we see, what fine places we pass by! How often I occupy myself with thinking what I should do if I only had them, and the money they represent! And how hard the sight of them makes the past appear! How little, falling toourshare, would make the future smiling and happy!
"The girls are not interesting companions to Mr. Creswell. He is fond of them, and very kind to them--in fact, lavishly generous--they never have an ungratified wish; but how can a man, whose whole life has been devoted to business, feel much companionship with young girls like them, who do not know what it means? Of course, they think and talk about their dead parents--at least, I suppose so--and their past lives, and neither subject has any charms for their uncle. They read--especially Maude--and, strange to say, they read solid books as well as novels; they excel in fancy-work, which I detest, probably because I can't do it, and could not afford to buy the materials if I understood the art; and they both play and sing. I have heard very little good music, and I am not a judge, except of what is pleasing to myself; but I think I am correct in rating Maude's musical abilities very highly. Her voice thrills me almost to pain, and to see my mother's quiet tears when Maude plays to her in the dim evening is to feel that the power of producing such salutary healing emotion is priceless indeed. What a pity it is I am not a good musician! Loving music as you love it, dearest Walter, it will be a privation to you--if ever that time we talked of comes, when we should have a decent home to share--that I shall not be able to make sweet music for you. They are not fond of me, but I did not think they would be, and I am not disappointed. I like them, but they are too young, too happy, andtoo richfor me not to envy them a little, and though love and jealousy may coexist, love and envy cannot.
"In all this long letter, my own Walter, I have said nothing ofyou. You understand why. Idarenot. I dare not give utterance to the discouragement which your last vague letter caused me, lest such discouragement should infect you, and by lowering your spirits weaken your efforts. Under these circumstances, and until I hear from you more decisively, I will say nothing, but strive and hope! On my side, there is little striving possible, and I dare not tell you how little hope.
"Your own
"MARIAN."
To the strong, loving, and loyal heart of Walter, a letter from Marian was a sacred treasure, a full, intense, solemn delight. She had thought the thoughts, written the words, touched the paper. When disappointment, distress, depression, and uncertainty accumulated upon him most ruthlessly, and bore him most heavily to the ground, he shook them from him at the bidding of a letter from her, and rose more than ever determined not to be beaten in the struggle which was to bring him such a reward. The calmness, the seeming coldness even of her letters did not annoy or disappoint him; theirs was the perfect love that did not need protestation--that was as well and as ill, as fully and as imperfectly, expressed by the simplest affirmation as by a score of endearing phrases. No letter of Marian's had ever failed to delight, to strengthen, to encourage Walter Joyce, until this one reached him.
He opened the envelope with an eager touch, his dark cheek flushed, and a tender smile shone in his eyes; he murmured a word of love as the closely written sheets met his impatient gaze.
"A long letter to-day, Marian, my darling. Did you guess how sadly I wanted it?"
But as Walter read the letter his countenance changed. He turned back, and read some portions twice over, then went on, and when he concluded it began again. But not with the iteration of a lover refreshing his first feeling of delight, seeking pet passages to dwell on afresh. There was no such pleasurable impulse in the moody re-reading of his letter. Walter frowned more than once while he read it, and struck the hand in which he held it monotonously against his knee when he had acquired the full unmistakable meaning of it.
His face had been sad and anxious when the letter reached him--he had reason for sadness and anxiety--but when he had read it for the last time, and thrust it into his breast-pocket, his face was more than sad and anxious--it was haggard, gloomy, and angry.
Mr. Creswell's only son, who was named after Mr. Creswell's only brother, by no means resembled his prototype either in appearance, manners, or disposition. For whereas Tom Creswell the elder had been a long, lean, washed-out-looking person, with long, wiry black hair, sallow complexion, hollow cheeks, and a faint dawn of a moustache (in his youth he had turned down his collars and modelled himself generally on Lord Byron, and throughout his life he was declared by his wife to be most aristocratic and romantic-looking), Tom Creswell the younger had a small, round, bullet head, with closely cropped sandy hair, eyes deeply sunken and but little visible, snub nose, wide mouth, and dimpled chin. Tom Creswell the elder rose at noon, and lay upon the sofa all day, composing verses, reading novels, or playing the flute. Tom Creswell the younger was up at five every morning, round through the stables, saw the horses properly fed, peered into every corn-bin ("Darng, now whey do thot? Darnged if un doesn't count cam-grains, I think," was the groom's muttered exclamation on this proceeding), ran his hand over the animals, and declared that they "didn't carry as much flesh as they might," with a look at the helpers which obviously meant that they starved the cattle and sold the oats. Then Tom the younger would go to the garden, where his greatest delight lay in counting the peaches and nectarines, and plums and apricots, nestling coyly against the old red south wall, in taking stock of the cucumbers and melons under their frames, and in ticking off the number of the bunches of grapes slowly ripening in the sickly heat of the vinery, while the Scotch head-gardener, a man whose natural hot-headedness was barely kept within bounds by the strictness of his religious opinions, would stand by looking on, outwardly placid, but inwardly burning to deliver himself of his sentiments in the Gaelic language. Tom Creswell the elder was always languid and ailing; as a boy he had worn a comforter, and a hare-skin on his chest, had taken cough-lozenges and jujubes, had been laughed at and called "Molly" and "Miss" by his schoolfellows, and had sighed and simpered away his existence. Tom Creswell the younger was strong as a Shetland pony, and hard as a tennis-ball, full of exuberant vitality which, not finding sufficient vent in ordinary schoolboy fun, in cricket, or hockey, or football, let itself off in cruelty, in teasing and stoning animals, in bullying smaller boys. Tom Creswell the elder was weak, selfish, idle, and conceited, but--you could not help allowing it--he was a gentleman. Tom Creswell the younger--you could not possibly deny it--was a blatant cad.
Not the least doubt of it. Everybody knew it, and most people owned it. Down in the village it was common talk. Mr. Creswell was wonderfully respected in Helmingham town, though the old people minded the day when he was thought little of. Helmingham is strictly Conservative, and when Mr. Creswell first settled himself at Woolgreaves, and commenced his restoration of the house, and was known to be spending large sums on the estate, and was seen to have horses and equipages very far outshining those of Sir Thomas Churchill of the Park, who was lord of the manor, and a county magnate of the very first order, the village folk could not understand a man of no particular birth or breeding, and whose money, it was well known, had been made in trade--which, to the Helmingham limited comprehension, meant across a counter in a shop, "just like Tom Boucher, the draper"--attaining such a position. They did not like the idea of being patronised by one whom they considered to be of their own order; and the foolish face which had been transmitted through ten generations, and the stupid head which had never had a wise idea or a kindly thought in it, received the homage which was denied to the clever man who had been the founder of his own fortune, and who was the best landlord and the kindest neighbour in the country round. But this prejudice soon wore away. The practical good sense which had gained for Mr. Creswell his position soon made itself felt among the Helmingham folk, and the "canny" ones soon grew as loud in his praise as they had been in his disparagement. Even Jack Forman, the ne'er-do-weel of the village, who was always sunning his fat form at alehouse-doors, and who had but few good words for any one, save for the most recent "stander" of beer, had been heard to declare outside that Mr. Creswell was the "raight soort," a phrase which, in Jack's limited vocabulary, stood for something highly complimentary. The young ladies, too, were exceedingly popular. They were pretty, of a downright English prettiness, expressed in hair and eyes and complexion, a prettiness commending itself at once to the uneducated English rustic taste, which is apt to find classical features "peaky," and romantic expression "fal-lal." They were girls about whom there was "no nonsense"--cheerful, bright, and homely. The feelings which congealed into cold politeness under the influence of Marian Ashurst's supposed "superiority" overflowed with womanly tenderness when their possessor was watching Widow Halton through the fever, or tending little Madge Mason's crippled limb. The blight faces of "the young ladies" were known for miles through the country round, and whenever sickness or distress crossed the threshold they were speedily followed by these ministering angels. If human prayers for others' welfare avail on high, Mr. Creswell and his nieces had them in scores.
But the Helmingham folk did not pray much for young Tom; on the contrary, their aspirations towards him were, it is to be feared, of a malignant kind. The warfare which always existed between the village folk and the Grammar-School boys was carried on without rancour. The farmers whose orchards were robbed, whose growing wheat was trampled down, whose ducks were dog-hunted, contented themselves with putting in an occasional appearance with a cart-whip, fully knowing, at the same time, the impossibility of catching their young and active tormentors, and with "darnging" the rising generation in general, and the youth then profiting by Sir Ranulph Clinton's generosity in particular. The village tradesmen whose windows were broken, when they discovered who were the offenders, laid on an additional item to their parents' account; when they could not bring the crime home to any boy in particular, laid on an additional item to Mr. Ashurst's account, and thus consoled themselves. Moreover, there was a general feeling that somehow, in a way that they could not and never attempted to explain, the school, since Mr. Ashurst had had it in hand, had been a credit to the place, and the canny folk, in their canniness, liked something which brought them credit and cost them nothing, and had friendly feelings to the masters and the boys.
But not to young Tom Creswell. They hated him, and they said so roundly. What was youthful merriment and mischief in other boys was, they averred, "bedevilment" in young Tom. Standing at their doors on fine summer evenings, the village folk would pause in their gossip to look after him as he cantered by on his chestnut pony--an animal which Banks, the farrier, declared to be as vicious and as cross-grained as its master. Eyes were averted as he passed, and no hat was raised in salutation; but that mattered little to the rider. He noticed it, of course, as he noticed everything in his hang-dog manner, with furtive glances under his eyebrows; and he thought that when he came into his kingdom--he often speculated upon that time--he would make these dogs pay for their insolence. Jack Forman was never drunk; no given amount of beer--and it was always given in Jack's case, as he never paid for it--could make him wholly intoxicated; but when he was in that state which he explained himself as having "an extry pint in him," Jack would stand up, holding on by the horse-trough in front of the Seven Stars, and shake his disengaged fist at young Tom riding past, and express his wish to wring young Tom's neck. Mr. Benthall, who had succeeded Mr. Ashurst as head-master of the school, was soon on excellent terms with Mr. Creswell, and thus had an opportunity of getting an insight into young Tom's character--an opportunity which rendered him profoundly thankful that that interesting youth was no longer numbered among his scholars, and caused him much wonderment as to how Trollope, who was the curate of a neighbouring parish, who had been chosen for young Tom's private tutor, could possibly get on with his pupil. Mr. Trollope, a mild, gentlemanly, retiring young man, with a bashful manner and a weak voice, found himself utterly unable to cope with the lout, who mocked at him before his face and mimicked him behind his back, and refused to be taught or guided by him in any way. So Mr. Trollope, after speaking to the lout's father, and finding but little good resulting therefrom, contented himself with setting exercises which were never done, and marking out lessons which were never learned, and bearing a vast amount of contumely and unpleasantness for the sake of a salary which was very regularly paid.
It must not be supposed that his son's strongly marked characteristics passed unobserved by Mr. Creswell, or that they failed to cause him an immensity of pain. The man's life had been so hard and earnest, so engrossing and so laborious, that he had only allowed himself two subjects for distraction, occasionally indulged in; one, regret for his wife; the other, hope in his son. As time passed away and he grew older, the first lessened and the other grew. His Jenny had been an angel on earth, he thought, and was now an angel in heaven, and the period was nearing, rapidly nearing, when, as he himself humbly hoped, he might be permitted to join her. Then his son would take his place, with no ladder to climb, no weary heart-burning and hard slaving to go through, but with the position achieved, the ball at his foot. In Mr. Creswell's own experience he had seen a score of men, whose fathers had been inferior to him in natural talent and business capacity, and in luck, which was not the least part of the affair, holding their own with the landed gentry whose ancestry had been "county people" for ages past, and playing at squires with as much grace and tact as if cotton-twist and coal-dust were things of which they might have heard, indeed, but with which they had never been brought into contact. It had been the dream of the old man's life that his son should be one of these. The first idea of the purchase of Woolgreaves, the lavish splendour with which the place had been rehabilitated and with which it was kept up, the still persistent holding on to business and superintending, though with but rare intervals, his own affairs, all sprang from this hope. The old gentleman's tastes were simple in the extreme. He hated grandeur, disliked society, had had far more than enough of business worries. There was plenty, more than plenty, for him and his nieces to live on in affluence, but it had been the dearest wish of his heart to leave his son a man of mark, and do it he would.
Did he really think so? Not in his inmost heart. The keen eyes which had been accustomed for so long to read human nature like a book refused to be hoodwinked; the keen sense used to sift and balance human motives refused to be paltered with; the logical powers which deduced effect from cause refused to be stifled or led astray. To no human being were Tom Creswell's moral deficiencies and shortcomings more patent than to his father; it is needless to say that to none were they the subject of such bitter anguish. Mr. Creswell knew that his son was a failure, and worse than a failure. If he had been merely stupid there would have been not much to grieve over. The lad would have been a disappointment--as how many lads are disappointments to fond parents!--and that was all. Hundreds, thousands of stupid young men filled their position in society with average success. Their money supported them, and they pulled through. He had hoped for something better than this for his son, but in the bitterness of his grief he allowed to himself that he would have been contented even with so much. But Mr. Creswell knew that his son was worse than stupid; that he was bad, low in his tastes and associations, sordid and servile in his heart, cunning, mean, and despicable. All the qualities which should have distinguished him--gentlemanly bearing, refined manners, cultivated tastes, generous impulses--all these he lacked: with a desire for sharp practice, hard-heartedness, rudeness towards those beneath him in the social scale, boorishness towards his equals, he was overflowing. Lout that he was, he had not even reverence for his father, had not even the decency to attempt to hide his badness, but paraded it in the open day before the eyes of all, with a kind of sullen pride. And that was to be the end of all Mr. Creswell's plotting and planning, all his hard work and high hopes? For this he had toiled, and slaved, and speculated? Many and many a bitter hour did the old man pass shut away in the seclusion of his library, thinking over the bright hopes which he had indulged in as regarded his son's career, and the way in which they had been slighted, the bright what might have been, the dim what was. Vainly the father would endeavour to argue with himself, that the boy was as yet but a boy; that when he became a man he would put away the things which were not childish indeed, for then would there have been more hope, but bad, and in the fulness of time develop into what had been expected of him. Mr. Creswell knew to the contrary. He had watched his son for years with too deep an interest not to have perceived that, as the years passed away, the light lines in the boy's character grew dim and faint, and the dark lines deepened in intensity. Year by year the boy became harder, coarser, more calculating, and more avaricious. As a child he had lent his pocket money out on usury to his schoolfellows, and now he talked to his father about investments and interest in a manner which would have pleased some parents and amused others, but which brought anything but pleasure to Mr. Creswell as he marked the keen hungry look in the boy's sunken eyes, and listened to his half-framed and abortive but always sordid plans.
Between father and son there was not the smallest bond of sympathy; that, Mr. Creswell had brought himself to confess. How many score times had he looked into the boy's face, hoping to see there some gleam of filial love, and had turned away bitterly disappointed! How often had he tried to engage the lad in topics of conversation which he imagined would have been congenial to him, and on which he might have suffered himself to be drawn out, but without the slightest success! The jovial miller who lived upon the Dee was not one whit less careless than Tom Creswell about the opinion which other folks entertained of him, so long as you did not interfere with any of his plans. Even the intended visit of Mrs. Ashurst and Marian to Woolgreaves elicited very little remark from him, although the girls imagined it might not be quite acceptable to him, and consulted together as to how the news should be broken to the domestic bashaw. After a great deal of cogitation and suggestion, it was decided that the best plan would be to take the tyrant at a favourable opportunity--at meal-time, for instance--and to approach the subject in a light and airy manner, as though it were of no great consequence, and was only mentioned for the sake of something to say. The plot thus conceived was duly carried out two days afterwards, on an occasion when, from the promptitude and agility with which he wielded his knife and fork, and the stertorous grunts and lip-smackings which accompanied his performance, it was rightly judged that Master Tom was enjoying his dinner with an extra relish. Mr. Creswell was absent--he seldom attended at the luncheon-table--and the girls interchanged a nod of intelligence, and prepared to commence the play. They had had but little occasion or opportunity for acting, and were consequently nervous to a degree.
"Did you see much of Mrs. Ashurst in--in poor Mr. Ashurst's time, at the school, Tom?" commenced Gertrude, with a good deal of hesitation and a profound study of her plate.
"No, no, not much--quite enough!" returned Tom, without raising his head.
"Why quite enough, Tom?" came in Maude to the rescue. "She is a most delightful woman, I'm sure."
"Most charming," threw in Gertrude, a little undecidedly, but still in support.
"Ah, very likely," said Tom. "We didn't see much of her--the day-boys, I mean; but Peacock and the other fellows who boarded at M. Ashurst's declared she used to water the beer, and never sent back half the fellows' towels and sheets when they left."
"How disgraceful! how disgusting!" burst out Maude. "Mrs. Ashurst is a perfect lady, and--oh, what wretches boys are!"
"Screech away! I don't mind," said the philosophic Tom. "Only what's up about this? What's the matter with old Mother Ashurst?"
"Nothing is the matter with Mrs. Ashurst, your father's friend, Tom," said Gertrude, trying a bit of dignity, and failing miserably therein, for Gertrude was a lovable, kissable, Dresden-china style of beauty, without a particle of dignity in her whole composition. "Mrs. Ashurst is your father's friend, sir, at least the widow of his old friend, and your father has asked her to come and stay here on a visit, and--and we all hope you'll be polite to her." It was seldom that Gertrude achieved such a long sentence, or delivered one with so much force. It was quite plain that Mrs. Ashurst was a favourite of hers.
"Oh," said Tom, "all right! Old Mother Ashurst's coming here on a visit, is she? All right!"
"And Miss Ashurst comes with her," said Maude.
"Oh, Lord!" cried Tom Creswell. "Miss Prim coming too! That'll be a clear saving of the governor's vinegar and olives all the time she's here. She's a nice creature, she is!"
And he screwed up his mouth with an air of excessive distaste.
"Well, at all events, she's going to be your father's guest, and we must all do our best to make the visit pleasant to them," said Gertrude, who, like most people who are most proud of what they do least well, thought she was playing dignity admirably.
"Oh, I don't care!" said Tom. "If the governor likes to have them here, and you two girls are so sweet upon them all of a sudden, I say, all right. Only look here--no interference with me in any way. The sight of me mustn't make the old lady break down and burst out blubbering, or anything of that sort, and no asking me how I'm getting on with my lessons, and that kind of thing. Stow that, mind!"
"You needn't trouble yourself, I think," said Maude; "it is scarcely likely that either Mrs. or Miss Ashurst will feel very keen interest in you or your pursuits."
And out of Maude's flashing eyes, and through Maude's tightly compressed lips, the sarcasm came cutting like a knife.
But when their visitors had been but a very short time established at Woolgreaves, it became evident not merely to Mr. Creswell, but to all in the house, that Master Tom had at last met with some one who could exercise influence over him, and that some one was Marian Ashurst. It was the treatment that did it. Tom had been alternately petted and punished, scolded and spoiled, but he had never been turned into ridicule before, and when Marian tried that treatment on him he succumbed at once. He confessed he had always thought that "he could not stand chaff," and now he knew it. Marian's badinage was, as might be supposed, of a somewhat grave and serious order. Tom's bluntness, uncouthness, avarice, and self-love were constantly betraying themselves in his conversation and conduct, and each of them offered an admirable target at which Marian fired telling shots. The girls were at first astonished and then delighted, as was Mr. Creswell, who had a faint hope that under the correction thus lightly administered his son might be brought to see how objectionable were certain of his views and proceedings. The lout himself did not like it at all. His impossibility of standing "chaff," or of answering it, rendered him for the first time a nonentity in the family circle; his voice, usually loud and strident, was hushed whenever Marian came into the room. The domestic atmosphere at Woolgreaves was far more pleasant than it had been for some time, and Mr. Creswell thought that the "sweet little girl" was not merely a "dead hand at a bargain," but that she possessed the brute-taming power in a manner hitherto undreamed of. Decidedly she was a very exceptional person, and more highly gifted than any one would suppose.
Tom hated her heartily, and chafed inwardly because he did not see his way to revenging himself on her. He had not the wit to reply when Marian turned him into ridicule, and he dared not answer her with mere rudeness; so he remained silent and sulky, brooding over his rage, and racking his brains to try and find a crack in his enemy's armour--a vulnerable place. He found it at last, but, characteristically, took no notice at the time, waiting for his opportunity. That came. One day, after luncheon, when her mother had gone up for a quiet nap, and the girls were practising duets in the music-room, Marian set out for a long walk across the hard, dry, frost-covered fields to the village; the air was brisk and bracing, and the girl was in better spirits than usual. She thoroughly appreciated the refined comforts and the luxurious living of Woolgreaves, and the conduct of the host and his nieces towards her had been so perfectly charming, that she had almost forgotten that her enjoyment of those luxuries was but temporary, and that very shortly she would have to face the world in a worse position than she had as yet occupied, and to fight the great battle of life, too, for her mother and herself. Often in the evening, as she sat in the drawing-room buried in the soft cushions of the sofa, dreamily listening to the music which the girls were playing, lazily watching her mother cosily seated in the chimney-corner, and old Mr. Creswell by her, quietly beating time to the tune, the firelight flickering over the furniture and appointments bespeaking wealth and comfort, she would fall into a kind of half-trance, in which she would believe that the great desire of her life had been accomplished, and that she was rich--placed far above the necessity of toil or the torture of penury. Nor was the dream ever entirely dispelled. The comfort and luxury were there, and as to the term of her enjoyment, how could that be prolonged? Her busy brain was filled with that idea this afternoon, and so deeply was she in thought, that she scarcely started at a loud crashing of branches close beside her, and only had time to draw back as Tom Creswell's chestnut mare, with Tom Creswell on her back, landed into the field beside her.
"Good heavens, Tom, how you startled me!" cried Marian; "and what's the matter with Kitty? She's covered with foam, and trembling all over!"
"I've been taking it out of the blunder-headed brute, that's all, Miss Ashurst," said the lout, with a vicious dig of his spurs into the mare's sides, which caused her to snort loudly and to rear on end.--"Ah, would you, you brute?--She's got it in her head that she won't jump to-day, and I'm showing her she will, and she must, if I choose.--Stand still, now, and get your wind, d'ye hear?" And he threw the reins on the mare's neck, and turned round in his saddle, facing Marian. "I'm glad I've met you, Miss Ashurst," he continued, with a very evil light in his sullen face, "for I've got something to say to you, and I'm just in the mood to say it now."
He looked so thoroughly vicious and despicable, that Marian's first feeling of alarm changed into disgust as she looked at him and said--
"What is it, Tom?--say on!"
"Oh, I intend to," said the lout, with a baleful grin. "I intend to say on, whether you like it or not. I've waited a precious long time, and I intend to speak now. Look here. You've had a fine turn at me, you have! Chaffin' me, and pokin' your fun at me, and shuttin' me up whenever I spoke. You're doosid clever, you are, and so sharp, and all that; and I'm such a fool, I am, but I've found out your game for all that!"
"My game, Tom! Do you know what you're talking about, and to whom you are talking?"
"Oh, don't I! That's just it. I'm talking to Miss Marian Ashurst, and Miss Marian Ashurst's game is moneymaking! Lord bless you, they know all about it down in the village--the Crokes, and the Whichers, and them, they're full of stories of you when you was a little girl, and they all know you're not changed now. But look here, keep it to yourself, or take it away from our place. Don't try it on here. It's quite enough to have those two girls saddled on the family, but they are relations, and that's some excuse. We don't want any more, mark that. My father's getting old now, and he's weak, and don't see things so clearly as he did, but I do. I see why your mother's got hold of those girls, and how you're trying to make yourself useful to the governor. I heard you offering to go through the Home-Farm accounts the other day."
"I offered because your--because---- Oh, Tom, how dare you! You wicked, wicked boy!"
"Oh yes, I know, very likely; but I won't let any one interfere with me. You thought you were going to settle yourself on us. I don't intend it. I'm a boy--all right; but I know how to get my own way, and I means to have it. This hot-tempered brute" (pointing to the pony) "has found that out, and you'll find it out, too, before I have done with you. That's all.--Get on, now!"
The pony sprang into the air as he gave her a savage cut with his whip, and he rode off, leaving Marian in an agony of shame and rage.