‘You see, all you public schoolboys have a kind of freemasonry of your own, and outsiders are looked on by you much as I look on rabbits and all that isn’t game. Aye, you may laugh, but it is so; and your friends will throw their eyes askance at me, and never think on my pedigree, which would beat theirs all to shivers, I’ll be bound. No; I’ll have no one here at the Hall who will look down on a Hamley of Hamley, even if he only knows how to make a cross instead of write his name.’
Then, of course, they must not visit at houses to whose sons the squire could not or would not return a like hospitality. On all these points Mrs. Hamley had used her utmost influence without avail; his prejudices were immovable. As regarded his position as head of the oldest family in three counties, his pride was invincible; as regarded himself personally—ill at ease in the society of his equals, deficient in manners, and in education—his morbid sensitiveness was too sore and too self-conscious to be called humility.
Take one instance from among many similar scenes of the state of feeling between the squire and his eldest son, which, if it could not be called active discord, showed at least passive estrangement.
It took place on an evening in the March succeeding Mrs. Hamley’s death. Roger was at Cambridge. Osborne had also been from home, and he had not volunteered any information as to his absence. The squire believed that Osborne had been either in Cambridge with his brother, or in London; he would have liked to hear where his son had been, what he had been doing, and whom he had seen, precisely as pieces of news, and as some diversion from the domestic worries and cares which were pressing him hard; but he was too proud to ask any questions, and Osborne had not given him any details of his journey. This silence had aggravated the squire’s internal dissatisfaction, and he came home to dinner weary and sore-hearted a day or two after Osborne’s return. It was just six o’clock, and he went hastily into his own little business-room on the ground-floor, and, after washing his hands, came into the drawing-room feeling as if he were very late, but the room was empty. He glanced at the clock over the mantelpiece, as he tried to warm his hands at the fire. The fire had been neglected, and had gone out during the day; it was now piled up with half-dried wood, which sputtered and smoked instead of doing its duty in blazing and warming the room, through which the keen wind was cutting its way in all directions. The clock had stopped, no one had remembered to wind it up, but by the squire’s watch it was already past dinner-time. The old butler put his head into the room, but, seeing the squire alone, he was about to draw it back, and wait for Mr. Osborne, before announcing dinner. He had hoped to do this unperceived, but the squire caught him in the act.
‘Why isn’t dinner ready?’ he called out sharply. ‘It’s ten minutes past six. And pray, why are you using this wood? It’s impossible to get oneself warm by such a fire as this.’
‘I believe, sir, that Thomas ________ ’
‘Don’t talk to me of Thomas. Send dinner in directly.’
About five minutes elapsed, spent by the hungry squire in all sorts of impatient ways—attacking Thomas, who came in to look after the fire; knocking the logs about, scattering out sparks, but considerably lessening the chances of warmth; touching up the candles, which appeared to him to give light unusually insufficient for the large cold room. While he was doing this, Osborne came in dressed in full evening dress. He always moved slowly; and this, to begin with, irritated the squire. Then an uncomfortable consciousness of a black coat, drab trousers, checked cotton cravat, and splashed boots, forced itself upon him as he saw Osborne’s point-device costume. He chose to consider it affectation and finery in Osborne, and was on the point of bursting out with some remark, when the butler, who had watched Osborne downstairs before making the announcement, came in to say dinner was ready.
‘It surely isn’t six o’clock?’ said Osborne, pulling out his dainty little watch. He was scarcely more unaware than it of the storm that was brewing.
‘Six o’clock! It’s more than a quarter past,’ growled out his father.
‘I fancy your watch must be wrong, sir. I set mine by the Horse Guardsbj only two days ago.’
Now, impugning that old steady, turnip-shaped watch of the squire’s was one of the insults which, as it could not reasonably be resented, was not to be forgiven. That watch had been given him by his father when watches were watches long ago. It had given the law to house-clocks, stable-clocks, kitchen-clocks—nay, even to Hamley Church dock in its day; and was it now, in its respectable old age, to be looked down upon by a little whipper-snapper of a French watch which could go into a man’s waistcoat pocket, instead of having to be extricated, with due efforts, like a respectable watch of size and position, from a fob in the waist-band. No, not if the whipper-snapper were backed by all the Horse Guards that ever were, with the Life Guards to boot. Poor Osborne might have known better than to cast this slur on his father’s flesh and blood; for so dear did he hold his watch!
‘My watch is like myself,’ said the squire, girning,’bk as the Scotch say—‘plain, but steady-going. At any rate, it gives the law in my house. The King may go by the Horse Guards’ if he likes.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Osborne, really anxious to keep the peace, ‘I went by my watch, which is certainly right by London time; and I’d no idea you were waiting for me; otherwise I could have dressed much quicker.’
‘I should think so,’ said the squire, looking sarcastically at his son’s attire.‘When I was a young man I should have been ashamed to have spent as much time at my looking-glass as if I’d been a girl. I could make myself as smart as anyone when I was going to a dance, or to a party where I was likely to meet pretty girls; but I should have laughed myself to scorn if I’d stood fiddle-faddling at a glass, smirking at my own likeness, all for my own pleasure.’
Osborne reddened, and was on the point of letting fly some caustic remark on his father’s dress at the present moment; but he contented himself with saying, in a low voice—
‘My mother always expected us all to dress for dinner. I got into the habit of doing it to please her, and I keep it up now.’ Indeed he had a certain kind of feeling of loyalty to her memory in keeping up all the little domestic habits and customs she had instituted or preferred. But the contrast which the squire thought was implied by Osborne’s remark, put him beside himself.
‘And I, too, try to attend to her wishes. I do; and in more important things. I did when she was alive; and I do so now.’
‘I never said you did not,’ said Osborne, astonished at his father’s passionate words and manner.
‘Yes, you did, sir. You meant it. I could see by your looks. I saw you look at my morning coat. At any rate, I never neglected any wish of hers in her lifetime. If she’d wished me to go to school again and learn my A, B, C, I would. By——I would; and I wouldn’t have gone playing, and lounging away my time, for fear of vexing and disappointing her. Yet some folks older than schoolboys——
The squire choked here; but though the words would not come his passion did not diminish. ‘I’ll not have you casting up your mother’s wishes to me, sir. You, who went near to break her heart at last!’
Osborne was strongly tempted to get up and leave the room. Perhaps it would have been better if he had; it might then have brought about an explanation, and a reconciliation between father and son. But he thought he did well in sitting still and appearing to take no notice. This indifference to what he was saying appeared to annoy the squire still more, and he kept on grumbling and talking to himself till Osborne, unable to bear it any longer, said, very quietly, but very bitterly—
‘I am only a cause of irritation to you, and home is no longer home to me, but a place in which I am to be controlled in trifles, and scolded about trifles as if I were a child. Put me in a way of making a living for myself—that much your oldest son has a right to ask of you—I will then leave this house, and you shall be no longer vexed by my dress, or my want of punctuality’
‘You make your reques
t pretty much as another son did long ago: “Give me the portion that falleth to me.”bl But I don’t think what he did with his money is much encouragement for me to——’ Then the thought of how little he could give his son his ‘portion,’ or any part of it, stopped the squire.
Osborne took up the speech.
‘I’m as ready as any man to earn my living; only the preparation for any profession will cost money, and money I haven’t got.’
‘No more have I,’ said the squire shortly.
‘What is to be done then?’ said Osborne, only half believing his father’s words.
‘Why, you must learn to stop at home, and not take expensive journeys; and you must reduce your tailor’s bill. I don’t ask you to help me in the management of the land—you’re far too fine a gentleman for that; but if you can’t earn money, at least you needn’t spend it.’
‘I’ve told you I’m willing enough to earn money,’ cried Osborne, passionately at last. ‘But how am I to do it? You really are very unreasonable, sir.’
‘Am I?’ said the squire—cooling in manner, though not in temper, as Osborne grew warm. ‘But I don’t set up for being reasonable; men who have to pay away money that they haven’t got for their extravagant sons aren’t likely to be reasonable. There’s two things you’ve gone and done which put me beside myself, when I think of them; you’ve turned out next door to a dunce at college, when your poor mother thought so much of you—and when you might have pleased and gratified her so if you chose—and, well! I won’t say what the other thing is.’
‘Tell me, sir,’ said Osborne, almost breathless with the idea that his father had discovered his secret marriage; but the father was thinking of the money-lenders, who were calculating how soon Osborne would come into the estate.
‘No!’ said the squire. ‘I know what I know; and I’m not going to tell you how I know it. Only, I’ll just say this—your friends no more know a piece of good timber when they see it than you or I know how you could earn five pounds if it was to keep you from starving. Now, there’s Roger—we none of us made an ado about him; but he’ll have his fellowship now, I’ll warrant him, and be a bishop, or a chancellor, or something, before we’ve found out he’s clever—we’ve been so much taken up thinking about you. I don’t know what’s come over me to speak of “we”—“we” in this way,’ said he, suddenly dropping his voice—a change of voice as sad as sad could be. ‘I ought to say “I”; it will be “I” for evermore in this world.’
He got up and left the room in quick haste, knocking over his chair, and not stopping to pick it up. Osborne, who was sitting and shading his eyes with his hand, as he had been doing for some time, looked up at the noise, and then rose as quickly and hurried after his father, only in time to hear the study-door locked on the inside the moment he reached it.
Osborne returned into the dining-room chagrined and sorrowful. But he was always sensitive to any omission of the usual observances, which might excite remark; and even with his heavy heart he was careful to pick up the fallen chair, and restore it to its place near the bottom of the table; and afterwards so to disturb the dishes as to make it appear that they had been touched, before ringing for Robinson. When the latter came in, followed by Thomas, Osborne thought it necessary to say to him that his father was not well, and had gone into the study; and that he himself wanted no dessert, but would have a cup of coffee in the drawing-room. The old butler sent Thomas out of the room, and came up confidentially to Osborne.
‘I thought master wasn’t justly himself, Mr. Osborne, before dinner. And, therefore, I made excuses for him—I did. He spoke to Thomas about the fire, sir, which is a thing I could in nowise put up with, unless by reason of sickness, which I am always ready to make allowances for.’
‘Why shouldn’t my father speak to Thomas?’ said Osborne. ‘But, perhaps, he spoke angrily, I dare say; for I’m sure he’s not well.’
‘No, Mr. Osborne, it wasn’t that. I myself am given to anger; and I’m blessed with as good health as any man in my years. Besides, anger is a good thing for Thomas. He needs a deal of it. But it should come from the right quarter—and that is me, myself, Mr. Osborne. I know my place, and I know my rights and duties as well as any butler that lives. And it’s my duty to scold Thomas, and not master’s. Master ought to have said, “Robinson! you must speak to Thomas about letting out the fire,” and I’d ha’ given it him well—as I shall do now, for that matter. But as I said before, I make excuses for master, as being in mental distress and bodily ill-health; so I’ve brought myself round not to give warning, as I should ha’ done, for certain, under happier circumstances.’
Wives and Daughters Page 36
