MRS. LENNOX’S house was not a great country-house like Highcourt. It was within a mile of Clifton, a pretty house, set in pretty grounds, with a few fields about it, and space enough to permit of a sufficient but modest establishment; horses and dogs, and pets in any number to satisfy the children. Reginald, indeed, when he came home for the holidays, somewhat scoffed at the limited household, and declared that there was scarcely room to breathe. For the young master of Highcourt everything was small and shabby, but as his holidays were broken by visits to the houses of his schoolfellows, where young Mr. Trevanion of Highcourt had many things in his favor, and as he thus managed to get as much shooting and hunting and other delights as a schoolboy can indulge in, he was, on the whole, gracious enough to Aunt Sophy and Rosalind, and their limited ways. The extraordinary changes that followed his father’s death had produced a curious effect upon the boy; there had been, indeed, a moment of impulse in which he had declared his intention of standing by his mother, but a fuller understanding of all that was involved had summarily checked this. The youthful imagination, when roused by the thought of wealth and importance, is as insatiable in these points as it is when inflamed by the thirst for pleasure, and it is, perhaps, more difficult to give up or consent to modify greatness which you have never had, but have hoped for, than to give up an actual possession. Reginald had felt this importance as his father’s heir so much, that the idea of depriving himself of it for the sake of his mother brought a sudden damp and chill all over his energies. He was silent when he heard what a sacrifice was necessary, even though it was a sacrifice in imagination only, the reality being unknown to him. And from that moment the thing remarkable in him was that he had never mentioned his mother’s name.
With the other children this effect had at the end of the year been almost equally attained, but by degrees; they had ceased to refer to her as they had ceased to refer to their father. Both parents seemed to have died together to these little ones. The one, like the other, faded as the dead do out of their personal sphere, and ceased to have any place in their life. They said Rosalind now, when they used to say mamma. But with Reginald the effect was different—young though he was, in his schoolboy sphere he had a certain knowledge of the world. He knew that it was something intolerable when a fellow’s family was in everybody’s mouth, and his mother was discussed and talked of, and there was a sort of half-fury against her in his mind for subjecting him to this. The pangs which a proud boy feels in such circumstances are difficult to fathom, for their force is aggravated by the fact that he never betrays them. The result was that he never mentioned her, never asked a question, put on a mien of steel when anything was said which so much as suggested her existence, and from the moment of his departure from Highcourt ignored altogether the name and possibility of a mother. He was angry with the very name.
Sophy was the only one who caused a little embarrassment now and then by her recollections of the past life of Highcourt and the household there. But Sophy was not favorable to her mother, which is a strange thing to say, and had no lingering tenderness to smother; she even went so far now and then as to launch a jibe at Rosalind on the subject of mamma. As for the little ones, they already remembered her no more. The Elms, which was the suburban title of Mrs. Lennox’s small domain, became the natural centre of their little lives, and they forgot the greater and more spacious house in which they were born. And now that the second year was nearly accomplished since the catastrophe happened, natural gayety and consolation had come back. Rosalind went out to such festivities as offered. She spent a few weeks in London, and saw a little of society. The cloud had rolled away from her young horizon, leaving only a dimness and mist of softened tears. And the Elms was, in its way, a little centre of society. Aunt Sophy was very hospitable. She liked the pleasant commotion of life around her, and she was pleased to feel the stir of existence which the presence of a girl brings to such a house. Rosalind was not a beauty so remarkable as to draw admirers and suitors from every quarter of the compass. These are rare in life, though we are grateful to meet so many of them in novels; but she was extremely pleasant to look upon, fair and sweet as so many English girls are, with a face full of feeling, and enough of understanding and poetry to give it something of an ideal charm. And though it was, as we have said, the wonder of her life that she had never, like young ladies in novels, had a lover, yet she was not without admiration nor without suitors, quite enough to maintain her self-respect and position in the world.
One of these was the young Hamerton who was a visitor at Highcourt at the opening of this history. He was the son of another county family of the Highcourt neighborhood; not the eldest son, indeed, but still not altogether to be ranked among the detrimentals, since he was to have his mother’s money, a very respectable fortune. And he was by way of being a barrister, although not so unthoughtful of the claims of others as to compete for briefs with men who had more occasion for them. He had come to Clifton for the hunting, not, perhaps, without a consciousness of Rosalind’s vicinity. He had not shown at all during the troubles at Highcourt or for some time after, being too much disturbed and alarmed by his own discovery to approach the sorrowful family. But by degrees this feeling wore off, and a girl who was under Mrs. Lennox’s wing, and who, after all, was not “really the daughter” of the erring woman, would have been most unjustly treated had she been allowed to suffer in consequence of the mystery attached to Madam Trevanion and her disappearance from the world. Mrs. Lennox had known Roland Hamerton’s father as well as Rosalind knew himself. The families had grown up together, calling each other by their Christian names, on that preliminary brother-and-sister footing which is so apt with opportunity to grow into something closer. And Roland had always thought Rosalind the prettiest girl about. When he got over the shock of the Highcourt mystery his heart had come back to her with a bound. And if he came to Clifton for the hunting instead of to any other centre, it was with a pleasant recollection that the Elms was within walking distance, and that there he was always likely to find agreeable occupation for “off” days. On such occasions, and even on days which were not “off” days, he would come, sometimes to luncheon, sometimes in the afternoon, with the very frequent consequence of sending off a message to Clifton for “his things,” and staying all night. He was adopted, in short, as a sort of son or nephew of the house.
It is undeniable that a visitor of this sort (or even more than one) is an addition to the cheerfulness of a house in the country. It may, perhaps, be dangerous to his own peace of mind, or even, if he is frivolous, to the comfort of a daughter of the same, but so long as he is on these easy terms, with no definite understanding one way or the other, he is a pleasant addition. The least amiable of men is obliging and pleasant in such circumstances. He is on his promotion. His raison d’être is his power of making himself agreeable. When he comes to have a definite position as an accepted lover, everything is changed again, and he may be as much in the way as he once was handy and desirable; but in his first stage he is always an addition, especially when the household is chiefly composed of women. Hamerton fell into this pleasant place with even more ease than usual. He was already so familiar with them all, that everything was natural in the arrangement. And Mrs. Lennox, there was no doubt, wished the young man well. It would not be a brilliant match, but it would be “quite satisfactory.” Had young Lord Elmore come a-wooing instead of Roland, that would have been, no doubt, more exciting. But Lord Elmore paid his homage in another direction, and his antecedents were not quite so good as Hamerton’s, who was one of those young men who have never given their parents an anxiety—a qualification which, it is needless to say, was dear above every other to Aunt Sophy’s heart.
He was seated with them in the drawing-room at the Elms on an afternoon of November. It had been a day pleasant enough for the time of year, but not for hunting men—a clear frosty day, with ice in all the ditches, and the ground hard and resounding; a day when it is delightful to walk, though not to ride. Rosalind had met him strolling towards the house when she was out for her afternoon walk. Perhaps he was not so sorry for himself as he professed to the ladies. “I shall bore you to death,” he said; “I shall always be coming, for I see now we are in for a ten days’ frost, which is the most dolorous prospect—at least, it would be if I had not the Elms to fall back upon.” He made this prognostication of evil with a beaming face.
“You seem on the whole to take it cheerfully,” Mrs. Lennox said.
“Yes, with the Elms to fall back upon; I should not take it cheerfully otherwise.”
“But you were here on Saturday, Roland, when the meet was at Barley Wood, and everybody was out,” cried little Sophy. “I don’t think you are half a hunting man. I shouldn’t miss a day if it were me; nor Reginald wouldn’t,” she added, with much indifference to grammar.
“It is all the fault of the Elms,” the young man said, with a laugh.
“I don’t know what you find at the Elms. Reginald says we are so dull here. I think so too—nothing but women; and you that have got two or three clubs and can go where you like.”
“You shall go to the clubs, Sophy, instead of me.”
“That is what I should like,” said Miss Sophy. “Everybody says men are cleverer than women, and I am very fond of good talk. I like to hear you talk of horses and things; and of betting a pot on Bucephalus—”
“Sophy! where did you hear such language? You must be sent back to the nursery,” cried Mrs. Lennox, “if you go on like that.”
“Well,” said Sophy, “Reginald had a lot on Bucephalus: he told me so. He says it’s dreadful fun. You are kept in such a state till the last moment, not knowing which is to win. Sometimes the favorite is simply nowhere, and if you happen to have drawn a dark horse—”
“Sophy! I can’t allow such language.”
“And the favorite has been cooked, don’t you know, or come to grief in the stable,” cried Sophy, breathless, determined to have it out, “then you win a pot of money! It was Reginald told me all that. I don’t know myself, more’s the pity; and because I am a girl I don’t suppose I shall ever know,” the little reprobate said, regretfully.
“Dear me, I never thought those things were permitted at Eton,” said Mrs. Lennox. “I always thought boys were safe there. Afterwards, one knows, not a moment can be calculated upon. That is what is so nice about you, Roland; you never went into anything of that kind. I wish so much, if you are here at Christmas, you would give Reginald a little advice.”
“I don’t much believe in advice, Mrs. Lennox. Besides, I’m not so immaculate as you think me; I’ve had in my day a pot on something or other, as Sophy says—”
“Sophy must not say those sort of things,” said her aunt. “Rosalind, give us some tea. It is quite cold enough to make the fire most agreeable and the tea a great comfort. And if you have betted you have seen the folly of it, and you could advise him all the better. That is always the worst with boys when they have women to deal with. They think we know nothing. Whether it is because we have not education, or because we have not votes, or what, I can’t tell. But Reginald for one does not pay the least attention. He thinks he knows ever so much better than I do. And John is abroad; he doesn’t care very much for John either. He calls him an old fogy; he says the present generation knows better than the last. Did you ever hear such impertinence? And he is only seventeen. I like two lumps of sugar, Rosalind. But I thought at Eton they ought to be safe.”
“I suppose you are going home for Christmas, Roland? Shall you all be at home? Alice and her baby, and every one of you?” Rosalind breathed softly a little sigh. “I don’t like Christmas,” she said; “it is all very well so long as you are quite young, but when you begin to get scattered and broken up—”
“My dear, I am far from being quite young, and I hope I have been scattered as much as anybody, and had every sort of thing to put up with, but I never grow too old or too dull for Christmas.”
“Ah, Aunt Sophy, you! But then you are not like anybody else; you take things so sweetly, even Rex and his impertinence.”
“Christmas is pleasant enough,” said young Hamerton. “We are not so much scattered but that we can all get back, and I like it well enough. But,” he added, “if one was wanted elsewhere, or could be of use, I am not such a fanatic for home but that I could cut it once in a way, if there was anything, don’t you know, Mrs. Lennox, that one would call a duty; like licking a young cub into shape, or helping a—people you are fond of.” He blushed and laughed, in the genial, confusing glow of the fire, and cast a glance at Rosalind to see whether she noted his offer, and understood the motive of it. “People one is fond of;” did she think that meant Aunt Sophy? There was a pleasant mingling of obscurity and light even when the cheerful flame leaped up and illuminated the room: something in its leaping and uncertainty made a delightful shelter. You might almost stare at the people you were fond of without being betrayed as the cold daylight betrays you; and as for the heat which he felt suffuse his countenance, that was altogether unmarked in the genial glow of the cheerful fire.