About one o’clock in the morning, by a flickering fire of half-dead
embers, young men of twenty-five are very apt to grow confidential.
Now, it was one o’clock gone, by the marble timepiece on Edward
Hawthorn’s big mantel-shelf in King’s Bench Walk, Temple; and Edward
Hawthorn and Harry Noel were each of them just twenty-five; so it is
no matter for wonder at all that the conversation should just then
have begun to take a very confidential turn indeed, especially when
one remembers that they had both nearly finished their warm glass of
whisky toddy, and that it was one of those chilly April evenings when
you naturally cower close over the fire to keep your poor blood from
curdling bodily altogether within you.
‘It’s certainly very odd, Noel, that my father should always seem so
very anxious to keep me from going back to Trinidad, even for a mere
short visit.’
Harry Noel shook out the ashes from his pipe as he answered quietly:
‘Fathers are altogether the most unaccountable, incomprehensible,
mysterious, and unmanageable of creatures. For my own part, I’ve given
up attempting to fathom them altogether.’
Edward smiled half deprecatingly. ‘Ah, but you know, Noel,’ he went on
in a far more serious tone than his friend’s, ‘my father isn’t at all
like that; he’s never refused me money or anything else I’ve wanted;
he’s been the most liberal and the kindest of men to me; but for some
abstruse and inconceivable reason—I can’t imagine why—he’s always
opposed my going back home even to visit him.’
‘If Sir Walter would only act upon the same principle, my dear boy,
I can tell you confidentially I’d be simply too delighted. But he
always acts upon the exact contrary. He’s in favour of my coming down
to the Hall in the very dampest, dreariest, and dullest part of all
Lincolnshire, at the precise moment of time when I want myself to be
off to Scotland, deer-stalking or grouse-shooting; and he invariably
considers all my applications for extra coin as at least inopportune—as
the papers say—if not as absolutely extravagant, or even criminal. A
governor who deals lavishly while remaining permanently invisible on
the other side of the Atlantic, appears to me to combine all possible
and practical advantages.’
‘Ah, that’s all very well for you, Noel; you’ve got your father and
your family here in England with you, and you make light of the
privilege because you enjoy it. But it’s a very different thing
altogether when all your people are separated from you by half a
hemisphere, and you’ve never even so much as seen your own mother since
you were a little chap no bigger than that chair there. You’ll admit
at least that a fellow would naturally like now and again to see his
mother.’
‘His mother,’ Noel answered, dropping his voice a little with a sort of
instinctive reverential inflection. ‘Ah, that, now, is a very different
matter.’
‘Well, you see, my dear fellow, I’ve never seen either my father or my
mother since I was quite a small boy of eight years old or thereabouts.
I was sent home to Joyce’s school then, as you know; and after that,
I went to Rugby, and next to Cambridge; and I’ve almost entirely
forgotten by this time even what my father and mother look like. When
they sent me home those two photographs there, a few months back, I
assure you there wasn’t a feature in either face I could really and
truly recognise or remember.’
‘Precious handsome old gentleman your father, anyhow,’ Noel observed,
looking up carelessly at the large framed photograph above the
fireplace. ‘Seems the right sort too. Fine air of sterling coininess
also, I remark, about his gray hair and his full waistcoat and his
turn-down shirt-collar.’
‘O Noel, please; don’t talk that way!’
‘My dear fellow, it’s the course of nature. We fall as the leaves fall,
and new generations replace us and take our money. Good for the legacy
duty. Now, is your governor sugar or coffee?’
‘Sugar, I believe—in fact, I’m pretty sure of it. He often writes that
the canes are progressing, and talks about rattoons and centrifugals
and other things I don’t know the very names of. But I believe he has a
very good estate of his own somewhere or other at the north end of the
island.’
‘Why, of course, then, that’s the explanation of it—as safe as houses,
you may depend upon it. The old gentleman’s as rich as Crœsus. He makes
you a modest allowance over here, which you, who are an unassuming,
hard-working, Chitty-on-contract sort of fellow, consider very
handsome, but which is really not one quarter of what he ought to be
allowing you out of his probably princely income. You take my word for
it, Teddy, that’s the meaning of it. The old gentleman—he has a very
knowing look about his weather-eye in the photograph there—he thinks if
you were to go out there and see the estate and observe the wealth of
the Indies, and discover the way he makes the dollars fly, you’d ask
him immediately to double your allowance; and being a person of unusual
penetration—as I can see, with half a glance, from his picture—he
decides to keep you at the other end of the universe, so that you may
never discover what a perfect Rothschild he is, and go in for putting
the screw on.’
Edward Hawthorn smiled quietly. ‘It won’t do, my dear fellow,’ he said,
glancing up quickly at the handsome open face in the big photograph.
‘My father isn’t at all that sort of person, I feel certain, from his
letters. He’s doing all he can to advance me in life; and though he
hasn’t seen me for so long, I’m the one interest he really lives upon.
I certainly did think it very queer, after I’d taken my degree at
Cambridge and got the Arabic scholarship and so forth, that my father
didn’t want me to go out to the island. I naturally wanted to see my
old home and my father and mother, before settling down to my business
in life; and I wrote and told them so. But my father wrote back,
putting me off with all sorts of made-up excuses: it was the bad season
of the year; there was a great deal of yellow fever about; he was very
anxious I should get to work at once upon my law-reading; he wanted me
to be called to the bar as early as possible.’
‘And so, just to please the old gentleman, you left your Arabic, that
you were such a swell at, and set to work over Benjamin on Sales and
Pollock on Mortgages for the best years of your lifetime, when you
ought to have been shooting birds in Devonshire or yachting with me in
the _Princess of Thule_ off the west coast of Scotland. That’s not my
theory of the way fathers ought to be managed. I consented to become a
barrister, just to pacify Sir Walter for the moment; but my ideas of
barristering are a great deal more elastic and generous than yours are.
I’m quite satisfied with getting my name neatly painted over the door
of some other fellow’s convenient chambers.’
‘Yes, yes, of course you are. But then your case is very different. The
heir to an English baronetcy needn’t trouble himself about his future,
like us ordinary mortals; but if I didn’t work hard and get on and make
money, I shouldn’t ever be able to marry—at least during my father’s
lifetime.’
‘No more should I, my dear fellow. Absolutely impossible. A man can’t
marry on seven hundred a year, you see, can he?’
Edward laughed. ‘I could,’ he answered, ‘very easily. No doubt, you
couldn’t. But then you haven’t got anybody in your eye; while I, you
know, am anxious as soon as I can to marry Marian.’
‘Not got anybody in my eye!’ Harry Noel cried, leaning back in his
chair and opening his two hands symbolically in front of him with an
expansive gesture. ‘Oh, haven’t I. Why, there was a pretty little girl
I saw last Wednesday down at the Buckleburies—a Miss Dupuy, I think,
they called her—I positively believe, a countrywoman of yours, Edward,
from Trinidad; or was it Mauritius? one of those sugary-niggery places
or other, anyhow; and I assure you I fairly lost the miserable relics
of my heart to her at our first meeting. She’s going to be at the
boatrace to-morrow; and—yes, I’ll run down there in the dogcart, on the
chance of seeing her. Will you come with me?’
‘What o’clock?’
‘Eleven. A reasonable hour. You don’t catch me getting up at five
o’clock in the morning and making the historical Noel nose, which I so
proudly inherit, turn blue with cold and shivering at that time of the
day, even for the honour of the old ’varsity. Plenty of time to turn in
and get a comfortable snooze, and yet have breakfast decently before I
drive you down to-morrow morning in my new dogcart.’
‘All right. I’ll come with you, then.—Are you going out now? Just post
this letter for me, please, will you?’
Noel took it, and glanced at the address half unintentionally. ‘The
Hon. James Hawthorn,’ he said, reading it over in a thoughtless
mechanical way and in a sort of undertone soliloquy, ‘Agualta Estate,
Trinidad.—Why, I didn’t know, Teddy, this mysterious governor of yours
was actually a real live Honourable. What family does he belong to,
then?’
‘I don’t think Honourable means that out in the colonies, you know,’
Edward answered, stirring the embers into a final flicker. ‘I fancy
it’s only a cheap courtesy title given to people in the West Indies
who happen to be members of the Legislative Council.’ He paused for a
minute, still seated, and poking away nervously at the dying embers;
then he said in a more serious voice: ‘Do you know, Noel, there’s a
district judgeship in Trinidad going to be filled up at once by the
Colonial Office?’
‘Well, my dear boy; what of that? I know a promising young barrister of
the Inner Temple who isn’t going to be such an absurd fool as to take
the place, even if it’s offered to him.’
‘On the contrary, Harry, I’ve sent in an application myself for the
post this very evening.’
‘My dear Hawthorn, like Paul, you are beside yourself. Much learning
has made you mad, I solemnly assure you. The place isn’t worth your
taking.’
‘Nevertheless, if I can get it, Harry, I mean to take it.’
‘If you can get it! Fiddlesticks! If you can get a place as
crossing-sweeper! My good friend, this is simple madness. A young
man of your age, a boy, a mere child’—they were both the same age to
a month, but Harry Noel always assumed the airs of a father towards
his friend Hawthorn—‘why, it’s throwing up an absolute certainty; an
absolute certainty, and no mistake about it. You’re the best Arabic
scholar in England; it would be worth your while stopping here, if it
comes to that, for the sake of the Arabic Professorship alone, rather
than go and vegetate in Trinidad. If you take my advice, my dear
fellow, you’ll have nothing more to say to the precious business.’
‘Well, Harry, I have two reasons for wishing to take it. In the first
place, I want to marry Marian as early as possible; and I can’t marry
her until I can make myself a decent income. And in the second place,’
Edward went on, ‘I want to go out as soon as I can and see my father
and mother in Trinidad. If I get this district judgeship, I shall be
able to write and tell them positively I’m coming, and they won’t have
any excuse of any sort for putting a stopper on it any longer.’
‘In other words, in order to go and spy out the hidden wealth of the
old governor, you’re going to throw up the finest opening at the
English bar, and bind yourself down to a life of exile in a remote
corner of the Caribbean Sea. Well, my good friend, if you really do
it, all that I can say is simply this—you’ll prove yourself the most
consummate fool in all Christendom.’
‘Noel, I’ve made up my mind; I shall really go there.’
‘Then, my dear boy, allow me to tell you, as long as you live you’ll
never cease to regret it. I believe you’ll repent it, before you’re
done, in sackcloth and ashes.’
Edward stirred the dead fire nervously once more for a few seconds and
answered nothing.
‘Good-night, Hawthorn. You’ll be ready to start for the boatrace at ten
to-morrow?’
‘Good-night, Harry. I’ll be ready to start. Good-night, my dear fellow.’
Noel turned and left the room; but Edward Hawthorn stood still, with
his bedroom candle poised reflectively in one hand, looking long and
steadfastly with fixed eyes at his father’s and mother’s photographs
before him. ‘A grand-looking old man, my father, certainly,’ he said to
himself, scanning the fine broad brow and firm but tender mouth with
curious attention—‘a grand-looking old man, without a doubt, there’s no
denying it. But I wonder why on earth he doesn’t want me to go out to
Trinidad? And a beautiful, gentle, lovable old lady, if ever there was
one on this earth, my mother!’