Lewis Durant was the _ami de l’enfance_ of Arthur Curtis. He had always
been a little bigger, a little stronger, a little steadier, as he was a
little older than his friend. He was not a young man of family like
Arthur; and Lady Curtis, who was philosophical in her tendencies, had
pointed many a social criticism by the fact, laughingly commented upon,
that her son’s fagmaster at Eton, and Mentor in life, was the grandson
of the great saddler with whom Sir John and his predecessors had dealt
for ages. The Durants, who were French by origin, had made a great deal
of money in that business, and one of the sons had been made a
clergyman. This was the father of Lewis, who had been brought up
accordingly in as much luxury as his friend; but unfortunate
speculations on his father’s part had changed all that by this time, and
the young man was now fighting his way at the Bar, with very little to
keep up the warfare on, and none of those supports of good connection
which help the aristocratic poor to keep their heads above water. He had
a home in the depths of one of the Midland counties, where the
Rector--once able to hold his own with the best of his country
neighbours, and considered a very good sort of man--had fallen to the
ordinary parsonic level, without any standing ground beyond it, and not
much right to high consideration on that ground. For the Rev. Mr. Durant
was not a very good clergyman. It had not been the object of his life to
become so; but rather to obliterate from all minds by his luxurious
living, his carriages, his conservatories, his expenditure in every
way, that he was the son of the well-known saddler; as it has been that
saddler’s object to advance his son in life and make him a member of the
upper class by making him a clergyman. Everybody was quite conscious of
this while he was rich; but, naturally, everybody became still more
conscious of it when he became poor; and as his wealth had been his
chief standing ground, and he had not much worth or goodness, and no
activity, to gain him credit in his parish, the downfall was pretty
nearly complete. And the woman whom he had married had been no more than
a fit partner for such a man; so that when Lewis, their only child,
became old enough to think of home as anything more than a jolly place
to spend holidays in, the boy’s refined and delicate mind had suffered a
severe shock. How it was that he happened to possess a refined and
delicate mind is a totally different question, and one into which we
need not inquire; but the effect upon him of the ostentatious, showy,
lavish, and lazy wealth in the first instance, and of the useless,
slovenly, languid poverty which followed, was remarkable enough. A great
many things go by contraries in this perverse world, and nothing more
commonly than the habits of parents and children. In Scotland, it has
passed into a proverb that an active mother has an indolent daughter.
The insinuating and bland courtier has to struggle against the
abruptness or loutishness of his son, and even virtue has very often
moral weakness, if not worse, for its next descendant. In Lewis Durant’s
case the contradiction was a happy one. Disgusted by the aimless leisure
and nothingness of the paternal life, the young man flung himself into
work with a zeal and passion seldom to be found. He had no family
friends in the class he had been brought up in, and his personal friends
were of his own standing, themselves too young and inexperienced to help
others; but he had not cared for this; he had flung himself into the
work of his profession--the Bar--for which he had been trained as his
father had been trained for the Church, as the profession of a
gentleman, a trade not incompatible with the possession of a great deal
of money, and not requiring to be kept up by the happy man who was not
obliged to work for his bread. Perhaps the energy of the old saddler had
got into the veins of Lewis, transmuted into some kind of potable gold,
some elixir of force and life. If so, it had clearly “suffered a
sea-change into something rich and strange,” for there was no greed of
gold, no thirst for wealth in the young man’s mind. On the contrary, if
he had not known forcibly the many good things that money can do, and
which the absence of money prevents from getting done, Lewis would have
hated money, so associated was it with everything that had most galled
and humbled him. But money is not a thing to be scorned, and he had too
much sense and too much honesty to feign. He worked with a
concentration of force and steady effort which was intensified every
time he visited the aimlessness of his home. He had come from that home
now, and had left it, as he always did, impatient of rest, eager to
plunge again into the active warfare of life, to strain muscle and
sinew, and all the powers of mind and frame.
This was the man, who since they were boys, had been Arthur Curtis’s
chief friend. He himself was the only son of Sir John, a true rural
potentate, a man whose life was full of stolid dignity and duty, made
steady, and in a dull matter of fact manner, noble, by the proud sense
of obligation to his country, his son, and his dependents, such as long
descent and elevated position sometimes give. Sir John Curtis might
sometimes be ridiculous, but he was always respectable, making an aim at
his duty in a large, conscientious, stupid way, in which there was a
certain obtuse grandeur. He carried this into the smallest detail of
his life, and the result was, that he was held by most people to be
pompous, and admired by some as the chief source of serious comedy in
his neighbourhood. But his life was a blurred version, surrounded by all
kinds of imperfections of a noble ideal--a thing not always perceived by
his wife and his son, to whom however Sir John’s deficiencies, on the
other hand, were very plain. And Arthur, for the time at least, was
almost as contradictory of his father as Lewis was. He was light-minded
and heedless, idle, foolish yet clever, generous yet selfish; the kind
of young man who is always in scrapes, often in the wrong, yet rarely,
or never, unbeloved. He had been idle at the University, and had not
taken his degree--then had gone home for a time and had done nothing.
And now this last and most serious scrape of all had been brought on, as
it were, by the most virtuous resolution of his life. It was his
mother’s earnest desire that he should enter public life, in one way or
other; and Arthur himself had been dazzled by the chances of diplomacy,
an opening into which seemed before him, and had come now, in a sudden
fit of industry and virtue, to see if, by the help of a noted “coach,”
he could “pull through” his examinations, and get the University stamp,
though late, impressed upon him. There had been no particular reason why
he had not achieved that University stamp before. He was a tolerable
scholar, and had meant honours--but had not been industrious enough to
attain them, and had thrown up the milder standard in disgust. Thus he
had come to Underhayes, intending better than, perhaps, he had ever
steadfastly intended in his life; and lo! Nancy Bates was the result.
All this was in Durant’s mind, as, after a troubled night, he looked out
of his inn window in the morning upon a mellow sunshiny morning of true
October weather, a warm yellow haze in the air, which melted into the
ripe foliage below, and the mottled clouds above. The little town was
embosomed in trees. It was a little more than a village, a little less
than a town; and, perhaps, had become more of a suburb than either,
being within the radius of London, and coming nearer to that increasing
centre every day. The metropolis and the village had been long putting
forth arms of approach towards each other, and Underhayes had grown
gradually larger, and nearer year by year. There was still a village
green in the centre of the place; but the old houses had put on new
fronts, and got enlargements of various kinds, and had become the homes
of London people who went to town every morning, instead of the poorish,
but very genteel persons who used to inhabit them. This was a great gain
to the place, and made it swell and grow bigger and bigger; but at the
same time it was a loss and forfeiture of all the originality, and much
of the quiet beauty, and no little of the genial and graceful comfort
that had once dwelt around the green. Everybody was richer, larger,
vainer; and gorgeous entertainments were given, at which there was much
more expenditure but less friendliness than of old. The city men
considered themselves a great deal more intelligent, as they certainly
were more knowing, than the older inhabitants, the retired captains and
colonels, the widows and old maids, and solitary couples, who were now
dying out in the too active air of the place. But these relics of olden
days, at least, returned their scorn with interest, if they could not
compete with them in other ways. Half way between these two sections of
the community stood Mr. Eagles, the great “coach,” whose fame was in all
the schools and all the services. He lived in an old-fashioned house
with an old gate, the posts of which were surmounted by two great stone
balls, and which opened upon a bit of real avenue, and enclosed real
grounds, something more than a garden. It was a genuine old house, in
which a retired Cabinet Minister had once lived. It was true he had
built additions to it, but they were done in good taste, and strict
submission to the original style of the house, which was taken as a kind
of homage to the antique and Conservative class, by that class itself.
He had a large house, and he took pupils; but yet it was nothing like a
school, for the young men did not live with him--no one but young Mr.
Curtis, who was not to call a pupil, who was “reading” for his degree,
and who was a young man of excellent family and an acquisition to any
society. Arthur indeed, in his own person, was one of the chief
conciliatory circumstances which made the old inhabitants on the Green
tolerate and receive Mr. Eagles, whom the new inhabitants looked upon
with respect as a man who had made his way.
The little inn in which Durant had passed the night was opposite the
gateway with the stone balls. Underhayes was not enough of a place to
have a good inn. People who frequented inns had no object in going
there. It was not far enough from London, nor near enough; and there
were no exceptional attractions as in Kew or Richmond. Therefore, amid
all the changes and improvements, the Red Lion was just what it had
always been, a homely place with a sign-board standing out upon the edge
of the Green, and a bench, shaded by trees, where its homely customers
could sit and drink their beer. And on the other side of the Green stood
Mr. Eagle’s gate, breaking the high wall in which his house and its
grounds were enclosed, and from whence there burst, in autumn richness
of colour, over the wall, a rich border of trees.
Durant got up in much doubt and discomfort of mind after a restless
night. He went out into the soft breezy air, which was warm, yet not
quite free of the crispness of a first threatening of frost. Spruce men
were passing on all sides, well brushed and neat, with daintily rolled
umbrellas, with light great-coats, sometimes with a book, or a bundle of
letters to read in the train, going to business--all walking with air
alert that spoke of a definite aim, and the pre-occupation of something
to do--which did not interfere, however, with a genial readiness to
hear, or report the last piece of gossip. Many of them had choice
flowers in their coats, a touch of the poetry which means luxury rather
than taste, with which to sweeten the office and show the skill of their
respective gardeners. All this was new to Durant, who knew nothing about
the ways of the city, though he acknowledged with respect the air of
work and serious occupation, which called forth his sympathy, though it
did not take the form with which he was acquainted. He watched them
passing, going to the train; and then was conscious of the lull and
desertion of the Green:--the momentary pause, half of regret, half of
relief, at the departure of all this activity, and then the rising of
the second more tranquil wave of movement, the tradespeople’s carts and
messengers, the butcher and baker setting out on their rounds. How many
little worlds like this, each complete in its own conceit, were rushing
on and on, unconscious each of its neighbour! But he certainly had no
time for those _banales_ reflections, occupied as he was with painful
considerations as to whether he could still do anything, or say anything
to justify his mission here. What could he do or say? Arthur had left
him in high dudgeon--offended apparently beyond redemption. He was not
so much disturbed by this as he might have been; for he knew Arthur, and
that it was not in his nature to quarrel permanently, however angry he
might be for the moment. But the question was, whether he could do
anything independent of Arthur, upon whom he did not feel that his
influence for the present would be very weighty? He thought, with a
smile, of the recorded proceedings in a similar case, the steps taken by
the protectors of another Arthur--for where but in fiction can such
difficulties find their readiest parallel? But Durant had no standing
ground on which to emulate the masterly tactics of Major Pendennis,
though the example occurred to him seriously. No--the position of Arthur
Curtis had not been exaggerated, nor was there any glamour of false
light about the subject which he could dispel. He was very much puzzled,
very doubtful and anxious. He could not leave the place without
attempting something more--but what was he to do?
His thoughts were thus occupied when he saw the gates opposite to him
open hastily and some one come out--a small resolute man, with
peremptory short steps and a dogmatical bearing. Durant felt at once
that this was Mr. Eagles, and that he was coming towards him; and there
was an air of vexation still more decided than his own on the brow of
the famous tamer and trainer of “men.” He came across the Green at a
rapid pace.
“Mr. Durant, I presume? My name is Eagles,” he said. “I hope you have
brought some light with you on a most difficult subject. What is to be
done with this boy?”
“You mean Curtis?”
“Yes, I mean Curtis. Nothing in the least like it has ever happened
among my pupils before. I feel my establishment disgraced by
it--_disgraced_, Mr. Durant. So utterly abominable an example! I don’t
as a rule take charge of men’s morals or conduct, and I heartily repent
having received this one into my house. It was a silly thing for me to
do; but a fellow who had been at a public school and at the university,
who would have supposed he could have turned out such a fool?”
“Pardon me,” said Durant, reddening, “he may have been foolish, but he
is not a fool.”
“Oh, if you stand up for him! I thought you had come here, as is the
part of a friend, to endeavour to convince him of his folly.”
“It is not so easy. Is it not the very essence of folly to think itself
wiser than all its advisers?” said Durant with a sigh. “May I ask you
how you knew I was here.”
“Oh, he told me; there is a certain frankness about him. And I saw you
perambulating the Green, which is a thing unusual at this hour, and
guessed it must be you. I wish him to go.”
“To go! Curtis?”
“Yes, Curtis. I wish him to go. He is (of course) doing no good here,
and the story has oozed out, equally of course. How can I tell that some
other idiot may not be moved by his example, and put himself at the feet
of a sister? I shall get a bad name. I!--because your friend is a
sentimental idiot.”
“Patience!” said Durant, laughing in spite of himself. “I don’t see how
any one can blame you.”
“Nor I; but they will,” said Mr. Eagles. “Of all foolish and
unreasonable persons on the face of the earth, parents are the most
unreasonable. You must take your man away.”
“But he is not my man. I have no authority over him.”
“You are his friend, and you seem to have some sense, and you know his
father. This is my ultimatum--you must take your man away. I have no
time to say any more. Good morning, Mr. Durant. I like promptitude, and
I expect you to act at once upon what I say.”