“Very kind of you, Sir; but I’d rather not, on that subject, at least till I’m quite out of the way. I should not wish her to suppose that I could seek to return to my old position of obligation I must never cost her a farthing more.”
So William explained his feelings fully and very candidly, and Doctor Sprague listened, and looked pleased though grave; and, said he —
“You haven’t been writing for any of the magazines, or that sort of thing?”
“No, he had no resource of that kind. He had a good deal of loose manuscript, he confessed with a blush, but he had no introduction.
“Well, no,” said Doctor Sprague, “you’d probably have a long wait, too long for your purpose. You have, you know, a trifle of your own, about twenty-three pounds a year, isn’t it?” and he looked in the direction of his desk, where the memorandum was; “something thereabout, that I received for you. There’s a money order for eleven pounds and something in my desk since yesterday.”
“Don’t you think, Sir, that I should apply that little annuity to pay back all I can to my aunt, who has been so good to me?”
“Tut-tut, your aunt would not accept a guinea, and would mistake your motive; don’t talk of any such thing. Her past affection is a matter of kindly recollection. You could not reduce it to money — no, no; but on the whole I think you have resolved wisely. You must undertake, for a little, something in the way of tuition; I don’t mean here. You’re hardly well enough up in the business for that; but we’ll find out something here” and he tapped the Times, which lay open on the table beside him, “I dare say, to suit you — not a school, that would not do either — a tutor in a country house. You need not stay away more than six months, and you’ll have something to go on with then; and in the meantime you can send your manuscripts round, and try if you can’t get into some of the periodicals.
“It is very odd, Sir, but some months since I spoke of such a plan when I was at Gilroyd, and my aunt was positively horrified; she is full of fancies, you know and she told me that none of my family had ever done anything of the kind.”
“I don’t know about that; but I’ve done it, I can tell you, and better men than I,” said the doctor.
“I only mean that she made such a point of it; she would think I had done it expressly to vex her, or she might come wherever I was, and try to make me leave it.”
“So she might,” said the cleric, and laughed a little to himself, for he knew her, and fancied a scene, “but what can you do? I think you must, in fact, and the best way will be to tell her nothing about it. She has cut you, you know, for the present, and you need not, if you think it would vex her, go in your own name, do you see? We’ll call you Mr. Herbert, you’re descended maternally, you know, from Herberts; now — not for a moment, now, just hear me out: there shall be no deception, of course. I’ll tell them that for certain family reasons I have advised you to take that measure. I’ll take it all on myself, and say all I think of you, and know of you, and I saw, just now, in this very paper, something that I think would answer very nicely. Yes, yes, I’ll make it all quite straight and easy. But you must do as I say.”
The kind little gentleman was thinking that eccentric and fierce Miss Perfect might never forgive his engaging himself as a tutor, without at least that disguise, and he looked forward as he murmured varium et mutabile semper, to a much earlier redintegratio amoris than William dreamed of.
“It’s unlucky her having made a point of it. But what is the poor fellow to do? She must not, however, be offended more than we can help and that will show a wish, as far as was practicable, to consult her feelings.” Doctor Sprague looked along a column in the Times, and said he, after his scrutiny —
“I think there’s just one of these you’ll like — say which you prefer, and I’ll tell you if it’s the one I think.”
So William conned over the advertisements, and, in Aunt Dinah’s phrase, put on his considering cap, and having pondered a good while, “This one, I think?” he half decided and half inquired.
“The very thing!” said Dr. Sprague, cheerily. “One boy — country-house — just the thing; he’ll be in his bed early, you know, and you can take your books and write away till twelve at night; and now you had better drop them a line — or stay, I’ll do it; you can’t sign your name, you know.”
So, communications being opened, in a day or two it turned out that Doctor Sprague knew the gentleman who advertised. It was a very old and long interrupted acquaintance.
“He’s a quiet, kind fellow, and Kincton Hall, they say, a pretty place and old. I’ll write to Knox.”
The Knoxes of Kincton Hall William had heard Trevor occasionally mention, but tried in vain to recollect what he used to say of them; six months, however, was no great venture, and the experiment could hardly break down very badly in that time.
“Maubray, your cousin, has quarrelled with his father, you heard?” —
“No.”
“Oh, yes, just about the time when you left this — a few days ago. Young Maubray has some little property from his mother, and chooses to take his own way; and Sir Richard was here with me yesterday, very angry and violent, poor man, and vows (the doctor would not say “swears” which would have described the procedure more accurately) he’ll cut him off with a shilling; but that’s all moonshine. The estates are under settlement, and the young fellow knows it, and that’s at the bottom of his independence; and he’s gone abroad, I believe, to amuse himself: and he has been no credit to his college, from all I hear.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
KINCTON HALL.
IN the parlour of Kincton Hall the family were assembled at breakfast; Mrs. Kincton Knox dispensed tea and coffee in a queenlike way hardly called for, seeing that her husband, daughter, and little son, formed the entire party.
Mrs. Kincton Knox was what some people call a clever woman — that is she did nearly everything with an object, but somehow she had not succeeded. Mr. Kincton Knox was not deputy lieutenant or a member for his county. Her daughter Clara — with blue eyes and golden hair — a handsome girl, now leaning back in her chair and looking listlessly through the window across the table — was admitted confidentially to be near five-and-twenty, and was in fact past eight-and-twenty, and unmarried still. There was not that intimacy between the Croydon family and the Kincton Knoxes for which she had laboured so cleverly and industriously. She was not among the patronesses, and only one of the committee, of the great county ball, at which the Prince figured, and which, on the plea of illness, she had with proper dignity declined attending. She blamed her daughter, she blamed her husband, she blamed the envy and combination of neighbours, for her failures. There was nothing that the wit and industry of women could do she had not done. She was the best bred and most far-seeing woman in the country round, radiant with a grave sort of fascination, always in supreme command, never for a moment losing sight of her object, yet, great or small, somehow never compassing it — a Vanderdecken, thwarted invisibly, and her crew growing old around her. Was ever admirable woman so persecuted by fortune?
Perhaps if the accomplished Mrs. Kincton Knox had been some twenty years before bereft of her brilliant intellect and shut up in a remote madhouse, or consigned under an unexceptionable epitaph to the family vault in Smolderton Church, the afflicted family might have prospered; for Miss Clara was really pretty, and could draw and sing better than most well-married young ladies of her rank in life. And, though he was not very bright, no man was more inoffensive and genial than portly old Kincton Knox, if only she had permitted his popularity to grow, and had left him and his belongings a little to nature.
“Hollo! What are those fellows doing?” exclaimed Kincton Knox, attracted by a sound of chopping from, without. “Hollo! ho!” and with his arms extended, he made a rush at the window, which he threw up, shouting, “Hollo there! stop that.”
A man stood erect with an axe in his hand, by the trunk of one of the great walnut trees.
“What the
devil are you doing, Sir, cutting down my trees!” cried the old gentleman, his handsome face flushed with wrath, and his silver fork, with a bit of ham on the end of it, grasped fiercely in his left hand. “Who the devil ordered you, Sir, to — to how — pow — cut down my trees, Sir?”
“I’ve spoken to you till I’m tired, Kincton, about that tree; it buries us in perfect damp and darkness,” began the dignified lady in purple silk, and lace coif.
“Don’t you presume, Sir, to cut down a tree of mine without my orders; don’t you dare Sir; don’t — don’t attempt it, Sir, or it will be worse for you; take that hatchet away, Sir, and send Wall the gardener here this moment, Sir, to see what can be done, and I’ve a mind to send you about your business, and egad if I find you’ve injured the tree, I will too, Sir; send him this moment; get out of my sight, Sir.”
It was not more than once in two years that Mr. Kincton Knox broke out in this way, and only on extraordinary and sudden provocation. He returned to the table and sat down in his chair, having shut the windows with an unnecessary display of physical force. His countenance was red and lowering, and his eyes still staring and blinking rapidly, and his white waistcoat heaving, and even the brass buttons of his blue coat uneasy. You might have observed the tremulous shuffle of his fingers as his fist rested on the tablecloth, while he gazed through the window and muttered and puffed to the agitation of his chops.
Upon such unusual occasions Mrs. Kincton Knox was a little alarmed and even crestfallen. It was a sudden accession of mania in an animal usually perfectly docile, and therefore it was startling, and called not for chastisement so much as management.
“I may be pennitted to mention, now that there’s a little quiet, that it was I who ordered that tree to be removed — of course if it makes you violent to take it down, let it stand; let the house be darkened and the inhabitants take the ague. I’ve simply endeavoured to do what I thought right. I’m never thanked; I don’t expect thanks:
I hope I know my duty, and do it from higher motives.
But this I know, and you’ll see it when I’m in my grave, that if it were not for me, every single individual thing connected with you and yours would be in a state of the most inextricable neglect and confusion, and I may say ruin.”
“I object to the place being denuded. There is not much in that,” blustered Mr. Kincton Knox, plaintively.
He was now subsiding; and she, availing herself of this frame of mind, proceeded with even more force, and dignity, till interrupted by Miss Clara, who observed serenely —
“Mamma, that greedy little pig will choke himself with apricot-stones, if you allow him.”
Master Howard Seymour Knox — a stunted and bilious boy — scowled at Miss Clara, with muddy eyes, his mouth being too full for convenient articulation, and clutched his plate with both hands.
“My precious rosebud, be careful,” remonstrated his mamma with gentle fervour.
Stooping over his plate, a clatter of fruit-stones was heard upon it, and Master Howard ejaculated —
“You lie, you do, you tell-tale tit!”
“Oh! my love,” remonstrated Mrs. Kincton.
“Briggs shall box your ears for that, my fine fellow,” said Miss Clara.
“There’s another cram! I’d like to see her,” retorted the youth.
“Greedy little beast!” observed Clara.
“Clara, my love!” suggested her mamma.
“Not half so greedy as you. Who took the woodcock pie up to her bedroom? Ah-ha!” vociferated the young gentleman.
“Now I’ll do it myself!” exclaimed the languid young lady, rising with sudden energy.
“I’ll fling these in your ugly face, if you come near me,” cried he, jumping up, and behind his mamma’s chair, with a knife and fork in his right hand covered with Savory pie.
“I won’t have this; I won’t have it,” said Mrs, Kincton Knox with peremptory dignity. “Howard, be quiet, my love; Clara, sit down.”
“The imp! he’ll never stop till he murders some one,” exclaimed Miss Clara, with intense feeling, as she sat down with brilliant cheeks and flashing eyes. “Look at him, mamma; he’s saying ha-ha, and shaking his knife he struck at me, the little murderer; and the liar!”
“Clara, I insist,” interposed Mrs. Kincton Knox.
“Yes, I do believe he’s an actual devil,” persisted the young lady.
“I won’t have this,” continued the mater familias, peremptorily.
“Ha, ha!” whispered the imp obliquely, from the other side, wagging his head, and clutching his knife and fork, while he touched the points of the fork, with a horrid significance, with the fingertip of his disengaged hand.
Miss Clara raised her hand, and opened her mouth to exclaim; but at this moment the servant entered with the letters, and the current of conversation was diverted.
CHAPTER XXIV.
WILLIAM IS SUMMONED.
MRS. KINCTON KNOX had no less than seven notes and letters, her husband one, and Miss Clara two crossed manuscripts, which engrossed her speedily; and, possibly, these figures would have indicated pretty accurately their relative influence in the household.
The matron deigned no account of her letters to mortal and exacted from all others an habitual candour in this respect; and so much had it grown to be a matter of conscience with her husband, that I don’t think he could have slept in his bed if he had failed to submit any one such communication to her inspection.
Her own were now neatly arranged, one over the other, like the discarded cards in piquet, beside her plate.
“Well, my dear, what is it?” she said to her husband, accompanying the inquiry with a little motion, like a miniature beckoning, of her forefinger.
“Something about the Times — the tutor,” he began.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Kincton Knox, interrupting, with a warning nod and an awful look, and a glance at Master Howard, who was fortunately so busy in tying bits of paper, in imitation of a kite-tail, on the string of the window-blind, that he had heard nothing.
“Oh!” murmured Mr. Kincton Knox, prolonging the interjection softly — he was accustomed, with a guilty and abject submission, every now and then, to receive that sort of awful signal— “I did not know.” And he whistled a little through his round mouth, and looked a little frightened, and ashamed of his clumsiness, though he seldom knew in what exactly the danger consisted.
“Howard, my precious rosebud, I’ve told Rogers he may fire the pistol for you three times this morning; he says he has powder, and you may go now.”
So away ran Master Howard to plague Rogers the footman; and Mrs. Kincton Knox said with a nod, —
“ — Now.”
“Here,” said he mildly, pushing the letter towards her, “you’ll understand it better;” and she read aloud —
“MY DEAR SIR, — I venture to renew an old acquaintance at the instance of a young friend of mine, who has seen your advertisement in the Times for a tutor, and desires to accept that office. He is capitally qualified, as your advertisement says, ‘to prepare a boy of twelve for school.’ He is a fair scholar, and a gentleman, and for his character, I can undertake to answer almost as for my own. I feel pretty certain that you will like him. There is but one condition, to which I am sure you will not object.”
“He shan’t smoke or sit up all night, if that’s it,” said the lady loftily, by way of gloss.
“He and I agree,” she read on, “that he should be received under the name of William Herbert” This paragraph she read twice over very deliberately. “As I have pressed upon him, for reasons which, you will readily believe, are not dishonourable — what strikes me as a strong objection to his accepting the position you offer under his own name.”
“That’s very odd, it strikes me. Why shouldn’t he tell his name?” observed Mrs. Kincton Knox, with grim curiosity.
“I dare say he’s a low person, and his name is not pretty,” sneered Miss Clara, carelessly.
“Who is that Mr. Edmu
nd? — Edward Sprague?” inquired the matron.
Mr. Kincton Knox testified to his character.
“But, just stop a moment — it is very odd. Why should he be, if he is a fit person to be received at Kincton — why should he be ashamed of his name?” repeated Mrs. Kincton Knox, grandly.
“Perhaps it may be as well to let it drop,” suggested Kincton Knox, in the hope that he was anticipating his wife’s wishes. But that grave lady raised her nose at his remark, and turned away, not vouchsafing an answer.
“Of course; I don’t say it is not all quite proper; but say what you may, and take it how you please, it is a very odd condition.”
There was a pause here. Clara did not care enough to engage in the discussion, and old Kincton Knox rumpled his Times uneasily, not knowing whether he was called on for a solution, and not caring to hazard one, for he was seldom lucky.
“Well, and what do you propose to do?” demanded his wife, who thus sometimes cruelly forced the peaceable old gentleman into debate.
“Why,” said he, cautiously, “whatever you think best, my dear.”
“I’m not likely to receive much assistance from you, Mr, Kincton Knox. However, provided I’m not blamed for doing my best, and my servants stormed at for obeying me— “
Mr. Kincton Knox glanced unconsciously and penitently at the walnut tree.
I suppose, as something must be done, and nothing will be done otherwise, I may as well take this trouble and responsibility upon myself.”
“And what am I to say to Sprague?” murmured Mr. Kincton Knox.
“I suppose the young man had better come. Mr. Sprague, you say, is a proper person, and I suppose we may rely upon what he says; I hope so, I’m sure, and, if he does not answer, why he can go about his business.”
In due course, therefore, Mr. Kincton Knox’s reply, which he had previously read aloud to his wife, was despatched.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 317
