THE time of Tom’s holidays was rather a holiday also for Beaufort, who, having got a certain amount of amusement out of the notebooks and their record of school-life, was beginning to be bored by himself, and to think, under his breath, what a little prig and ass he had been in his boyish days, and how astounding it was that Carry should take it all in with such undoubting faith. He was a little of a philosopher in his idle way, and Carry began to be a sometimes disconcerting but often amusing problem to him. He laughed softly sometimes when he was by himself to see how seriously she took him, and how much his youthful superiority impressed her. It had not been in his intention when he unearthed the notebooks to increase, as he had certainly done, her admiration, and, consequently, her expectations of himself. He had hoped, if anything, to beguile her a little from the pursuit of results, to make her less in earnest about the great work on which she had set her heart. But his expedient had not succeeded. She was more than ever bent upon the fulfilling of that early promise which was so beautiful and so wonderful in her eyes. Beaufort was half flattered, half vexed by this result. It is hard to resent a woman’s admiration even if it is of something which is no longer yourself. It softened his heart, but it embarrassed him more than ever, as it made her more and more sure. He took advantage of Tom with a little secret chuckle to himself behind backs. Tom amused this philosopher too. He liked to draw him out, to watch the movements of character in him, even to speculate what kind of a man it had been that had produced this child. He must be like his father, Beaufort said to himself, without any sentiment even of animosity towards Carry’s husband. Certainly he had got the better of that man. He had obliterated Torrance, as it were, from the face of the earth; but he had no such feeling as Carry had about Torrance’s life and Torrance’s money. He took it all much more calmly than she could do, not even thinking of the curiousness of the succession which made him owe all his comfort and happiness to Torrance. Tom, however, was the subject of various speculations in his stepfather’s mind. If this was what the little Torrance was modified by Lindores, what must the original have been? And what would this one turn to? an ordinary country gentleman, no better or worse than his neighbours, or what? A vague sense in his mind that there might be future trouble to Carry in the child’s development moved him mildly—for the distance between childhood and manhood seems long looking forward to it, though so short when we look back: and any such danger must be far in the future. It was rather as a droll little problem, which it was amusing to study, that Mr. Beaufort looked at Tom; but for that reason, and to free himself a little from the ever-increasing pressure of his wife’s solicitude in respect to his work and eager anticipation of something from him, he took during the holidays the greatest interest in the boy, going out with him, sometimes riding, sometimes driving, sometimes to the meet, where Tom’s eagerness was scarcely to be restrained. Mr. Beaufort himself did not hunt. He was not an ungraceful horseman for a moderate and mild canter; but if he had ever been possessed of sufficient energy to follow the hounds, that energy had long left him. He did not dislike, however, to ride to the meet or drive his wife over, Tom accompanying them upon his pony. Lady Car thought it was nothing less than devotion to her son which induced him to depart from his studious seclusion on account of the boy. She was very grateful to her husband, yet deprecated gently. ‘You are so very, very good to Tom: but I cannot bear to think of all the sacrifices you are making for him, Edward, wasting your time which is so much too valuable to be thrown away upon a little boy.’
‘I wish my time was more valuable, to show you how willingly I would give it up for anything belonging to you, Carry, not to say for your boy.’
‘Oh thanks, thanks, dear Edward; but I can’t have you burdened with Tom.’
‘I like it,’ he said. ‘I like—boys.’ It was almost too much for him to say that he liked this particular boy. ‘And Tom interests me very much,’ he added. Carry looked at him with a wistful curiosity. A gleam of colour passed over her face. Was it possible that Tom was interesting to such a man as Edward Beaufort? She felt guilty to ask herself that question. She had been afraid that Tom was not very interesting, not a child to attract any one much who did not belong to him. To be sure the child did belong to him, in a sort of a way.
‘So you like school, Tom,’ said Beaufort, looking down from his tall horse at the little fellow on his pony, strenuously keeping up with him. Had Beaufort been a more athletic person, he would have appreciated more the boy’s determination not to be left a step behind.
‘Well,’ said Tom, reflectively, ‘I like it, and I don’t like it. I think lessons are great rot.’
‘Oh, do you?’ said his tall companion.
‘Don’t you, Beau? They don’t teach anything a fellow wants. What’s the good of Latin, let alone Greek? They’re what you call dead languages, and we don’t want what’s dead. When you’ve got to make your living by them it’s different, like Hall’s sons that are going to be the schoolmasters when he dies.’
‘Did you think of all that by yourself, Tom?’
‘No,’ said the boy after a stare of a moment, and some hesitation. ‘It wasn’t me, it was Harrison major. His father’s very rich, and he’s in trade. And Harrison says what’s the good of these things. You never want them. They’re only an excuse for sending in heavy bills, Harrison says.’
‘He must be a great authority,’ said Mr. Beaufort gravely.
‘He knows a deal,’ said Tom reassured, for he had some doubts whether Harrison major’s opinions would have been received with the deference they deserved. ‘He’s the biggest fellow in the school, though he’s not very swell in learning. But he doesn’t mind. He says fellows that are to have plenty of money don’t want it.’
‘That’s a frequent opinion of people in trade,’ said Beaufort. ‘I would not put too much faith in it if I were you.’
‘Eh?’ cried Tom, opening his big light eyes under his dark brows more widely than ever, and staring up into his stepfather’s face.
‘You will have plenty of money, I suppose?’ said Beaufort calmly.
‘Oh, don’t you know? I’ll be one of the richest fellows in Scotland,’ cried the boy.
‘Who told you that, Tom?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I know it, that’s all. It was perhaps only nurse,’ he added with reluctance; ‘but she’s been to my place, and she knows all about it. You can ask her if you haven’t heard.’
‘So you have got a place besides being so rich?’ Beaufort said, in calm interrogation, without surprise.
Tom was very much embarrassed by this questioning. He stared at his stepfather more than ever. ‘Hasn’t mother told you? I thought she told you everything.’
‘So did I. But all this about your place I never heard. Let’s have the rest of it, Tom.’
‘Oh, I don’t know that there’s much more,’ said the boy. ‘It’s a great big place with a high tower, and a flag flying when I’m at home—like the Queen—and acres upon acres in the park. It was my father’s, don’t you know? and now it’s mine.’
‘How old are you, Master Tom?’
‘Eleven in April,’ said Tom, promptly.
‘Then it will be ten years before you have anything to say to your place, as you call it. I’ve seen your place, Tom. It is not so very much of a place; as for a flag, you know we might mount a flag at Easton if we liked and nobody would mind.’
Tom’s black brows had gathered, and his eyes looked with that fierceness mingled with fear which belongs to childhood, into his stepfather’s face. He was very wroth to have his pretensions thus made light of, but the habitual faith of his age alarmed him with a sense that it might be true.
‘We’ll mount one this afternoon,’ his tormentor said; ‘it will be fun for you and me taking it down when your mother goes out for her drive, and hoisting it again when she comes back. She deserves a flag better than you do, don’t you think? Almost as well as the Queen. The only danger is that the country people might take Easton for the Beaufort Arms, and want to come in and drink beer. What do you think?’
‘I say, Beau, are you in real earnest about a flag?’
‘To be sure. I don’t know what you have on yours at the Towers, but we have a famous blazon on the Beaufort side. We’ll get a square of silk from your mother, and paint it as soon as we go in. I forget what your arms are, Tom?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the boy, humbly. ‘I never heard anything about them. I didn’t know you had arms on a flag.’
‘Ah!’ said Beaufort, ‘you see there are a great many things you don’t know yet. And about matters that concern gentlemen, I wouldn’t advise you either to take nurse’s opinion or that of your young man whose father is in trade.’
Tom rode along by his stepfather’s side in silence for some time. He felt much taken down—crushed by a superiority which he could not resist, yet very unwilling to yield. There was always the uncomfortable conviction in his mind that what Beaufort said must be true, mingled with the uneasy feeling that Beau might be chaffing all the time, a combination confusing for every simple mind. Tom was not at all willing to give in. He felt instinctively that a flag at Easton would turn his own grandeur, which he believed in so devoutly, into ridicule: for Easton was not much more than a villa, in the suburbs of a little town. At the same time he could not but feel that to haul it up and down when his mother went out or came in would be fun; and the painting of the flag with a general muddle of paints and means of barbouillage in general still greater fun, and the most delightful way of spending the afternoon.
‘I say, Beau,’ he asked, after a long interval, ‘what’s in your arms, as you call them? I should like to know.’
Beaufort laughed. ‘You must not ask what’s in them, but what they are, Tom. A fellow of your pretensions ought to know. Fancy a chatelain in ignorance of such a matter!’
‘What’s a chatelain? You are only laughing at me,’ cried the boy, with lowering eyebrows. ‘It’s a thing mother wears at her side, all hanging with silver chains.’
‘It’s the master of a place—like what you suppose yours to be. My arms are rather too grand for a simple gentleman to bear. We quarter the shields of France and England,’ said Beaufort, gravely, forgetting who his companion was for the moment. Then he laughed again. ‘You see, Tom, though I have not a castle, I have a flag almost as grand as the Queen’s.’
All this was rather humbling to poor Tom’s pride, and confusing to his intellect, but he came home full of the plan of painting and putting up this wonderful flag. There was an old flagstaff somewhere, which had been used for the decorations of some school feast. Beaufort, much amused, instructed his small assistant to paint this in alternate strips of blue and white. ‘The colours of the bordure, you know, Tom.’ ‘Oh, are they?’ cried Tom, determined to pretend to understand. And Lady Car found him in the early afternoon, in a shed appropriated to carpentering behind the house, delightfully occupied about his task, and with patches of blue and white all over him from shoe to chin.
‘What are you doing, Tom?’ she cried. Janet following stood transfixed with her eyes widening every moment—half with wonder, half with envy. What she would have given to paint the staff and herself in imitation of Tom!
‘It’s the colours of the bordure,’ said the boy. ‘I’m doing it for Beau.’
‘The colours of what?’ Lady Car was as ignorant of heraldry as Tom himself.
‘Have we got a bordure? and what’s our colours? and I want to know what are the arms, mother. I mean my arms: for I suppose,’ he said, pausing in his work to look at her, ‘yours are just Beau’s now?’
‘What does the boy mean?’ said Carry. ‘Janet, you must not go too near him; you will spoil your frock. Tom, your jacket will never be fit to be seen again.’
‘I don’t care for my jacket. Mother, look here. Beau’s going to put up a flag for you like the Queen, and I’m doing the stick. But I want to know about my own shield, and my colours; and if I’ve got a bordure, and if we’re in quarters, or what. I want to know about the flag at the Towers.’
Lady Car made a step backward as if she had received a blow. ‘There was no flag at the Towers—I mean there were no arms upon it.—There were no—who put such nonsense into your head, Tom?’
‘It’s not nonsense. Beau told me—he’s going to give me a lesson how to do it. He knows all about it. He says it’s no use asking nurse or Harrison major whose father is in trade. It’s only gentlemen that have this sort of thing. Mother, have I got a bordure?’
‘Mozer,’ said little Janet, ‘please buy him a bordure.’
Poor Carry was not fond of any allusion to her former home. She was glad to laugh at the little girl’s petition—though with a tremor that was half hysterical. ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she said. ‘I will buy him anything that he wants, that is good for him, but oh, dear, what a mess he is in! Your lines are not straight, and you are all over paint. Jan, come away from that painted boy.’
‘Oh, mozer, let me stay!’ cried Janet, possessing herself of a stray brush.
It was perhaps those black brows of theirs that gave them such an air of determination. Carry did not feel herself able to cope with the two little creatures who looked at her with their father’s eyes. She had to yield oftener than was good for them or than she felt to be becoming. She took her usual expedient of hurrying in to her husband to consult him as to what it was best to do. He was in his library, and she had no doubt he was hard at work. It was generally with some little difficulty and after some delay that on ordinary occasions he had to be gently beguiled into his own sacred room after luncheon: but he had gone to-day at once with an alacrity which made Carry sure he had some new ideas to put down. And her heart was light and full of satisfaction. He was seated at his table leaning over it, so busy that he did not hear the door open, and she paused there for a moment, happiness expanding her breast, and a smile of tender pleasure on her face. She would not interrupt him when he was busy with any trivial matter of hers. She stood and watched him with the purest satisfaction. Then she stole in quietly, not to interrupt him, only to look over his shoulder, to give him perhaps a kiss of thanks for being so busy. Poor Carry! what she found when she approached was that Beaufort’s head was bent with every appearance of profound interest over an emblazoned book, from which he was drawing on a larger scale, upon a big sheet of paper, the Beaufort arms. She breathed forth an ‘Oh!’ of sickening disappointment; and he turned his head.
‘Is it you, Carry? Look here. I have got a new toy.’
‘So I perceive,’ she said. It was all she could do to keep the tears from showing in her eyes; but he would not have seen them, having turned back to his work again.
‘A moral purpose is a feeble thing,’ he said over his compasses and pencils. ‘I began it as a lesson to Tom, to take him down a bit; but I find it quite interesting enough on its own account. Look here. We are going to rig you up a flag, as Tom says, like the Queen.’
Poor Carry! How her tender heart went up and down like a shuttlecock, as she stood with her hand on the back of his chair. Her eyes full of bitter tears of disappointment; the thought that it was out of interest in Tom and love for her that this futile occupation had been taken up, melted her altogether. How could she allow, even in her own mind, a shadow of blame to rest on one so tender and so good? She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and patted it softly, like the mother of a foolish, delightful child.
‘Dear Edward, I almost grudge that you should think of so many things for me,’ she said.
‘My dear, it was not primarily for you, but as a lesson to Tom,’ he said, fixing the leg of his compasses firmly in the paper. ‘You must take him to—his place as he calls it, Carry. But I confess that for the moment I had forgotten my object. To give a moral lesson is a fine thing; but it’s nothing to the invention of a new toy.’