SWORD AND GOWN.
AT various periods of his tranquil career the Rev. Clement Dulcimer
had found it convenient to add to his income by taking a private
pupil or two. He could not have endured what he called a herd of
young men, meaning half a dozen, but he rather liked to have a
couple of intelligent young fellows following him about through the
dawdling progress of his out-of-door life, or hanging upon his words
in the comfortable quietude of his study. He was an excellent master
for classics and theology--mathematics he frankly abhorred--and
he taught conscientiously in his own unconventional way. The men
he coached generally came out well; but in after life there was a
tinge of eccentricity in them--a strain imparted by Clement Dulcimer
unawares--and which in one or two cases took the unhappy form of
latitudinarianism. Spinoza on the brain, some people called it.
The two pupils who had stayed longest at the Vicarage, and occupied the
most important position in the minds of the Vicar and his wife, were
Kenrick Culverhouse and his first cousin Cyril. Old Sir Kenrick and
the Vicar had been at Oxford together, and it seemed the most natural
thing that the baronet should send his only son and his orphan nephew
to his old chum, more especially as he could nowhere else educate
them so well or so cheaply. Culverhouse Castle was a fine historical
place in Hampshire, which tourists went out of their way to see, but
which the late Sir Kenrick did not regard with any enthusiasm. He had
been more or less under a cloud of money difficulties ever since he
could remember, and preferred lodgings in St. James’s to his feudal
birthplace. The moat was all very well, and so was the massive old
keep, on the top of which the gardener had made a kitchen-garden for
gooseberries and strawberry beds; but Sir Kenrick liked Jermyn Street
and the clubs a great deal better; and, if a man must have a castle,
the King’s Bench, in which he had spent some of the liveliest days
of his youth, was much pleasanter to his mind than Culverhouse. Lady
Culverhouse was fond of the castle, no doubt--or at any rate she stayed
there, and it was a tradition in the family that no other air suited
her, and that she was quite rooted to the spot; a tradition which
was all the more firmly established because nobody had ever proposed
taking her anywhere else. Old Sir Kenrick and his wife had gone to
join the family ashes in the vault under Culverhouse Church, and young
Sir Kenrick reigned in his father’s stead. All the quicksilver in the
Culverhouse veins seemed to have run out with the last baronet. Young
Kenrick was steady and thoughtful, and the mortgages weighed upon his
spirits like a nightmare. He was always thinking what the estate would
be if those mortgages could but be paid off.
It seemed to him an Eldorado. But there were only he and his cousin and
heir presumptive to accomplish this great work. And how were two young
men, moderately gifted, to earn fifty thousand pounds between them?
‘Unless one of us were to break out into a Walter Scott, or discover a
new motive power to supersede steam, I don’t see how it’s to be done,’
Kenrick said to Mrs. Dulcimer, in one of his confidential talks with
that good-natured lady, who knew all that he could tell her about the
mortgages and the property. ‘The army won’t do it--and the church
won’t do it--and the law wouldn’t do it under thirty years’ work.
Engineering might do it, perhaps, if we could blossom into Brunels, and
get contracts for railways and things; but, you see, neither of us has
a turn for engineering.’
‘You ought both to marry heiresses,’ suggested Mrs. Dulcimer.
‘Oh no, that’s horrid. We couldn’t do that,’ cried Kenrick. ‘That’s too
contemptible.’
This was how Kenrick had talked at seventeen, when he was in his state
of tutelage. He was more reticent about himself and his prospects now,
at nine-and-twenty, but Mrs. Dulcimer had forgotten nothing, and when
Kenrick looked grave, she always thought he was brooding upon the
mortgages.
‘I know that the dearest wish of his heart is to redeem the family
position,’ she said, and this was what set her thinking about a
marriage between Sir Kenrick and old Mr. Harefield’s only daughter and
heiress.
Cyril had gone into the church. He loved his profession for its own
sake, and thought very little of the loaves and fishes. He would like
to be a bishop, no doubt, when his time came; but it was for the sake
of having a great influence and doing things in his own way, not for
social status or income, that he would have desired a mitre. Doing
things in his own way--that was Cyril’s idea of a perfect life. To make
his church beautiful, according to his idea of beauty, to have good
music, and a strict adherence to the rubrics in Edward the Sixth’s
Prayer-book, to infuse something of the poetry of old traditions into
the prosaic expression of a reformed faith--to train his flock in his
own way of thinking--to create for himself an enthusiastic and fervent
congregation. These were the things which Cyril Culverhouse believed he
had been sent into the world to do--rather than to help his cousin to
pay off the mortgages, which mattered very little, so long as poor Ken
had money enough to live upon.
Kenrick had chosen the army for his profession. A military career
offered a poor prospect of paying off the mortgages, but it was at
least a gentleman-like line of life, and the four or five hundred a
year which could be squeezed out of the burdened estate enabled Kenrick
to live like a gentleman among his brother officers. Honour and wealth
might come to him together, perhaps, in the distant future; and when
he was growing old, and had lost the zest of life, he might be able
to do something for Culverhouse Castle. Cyril would be a bishop, most
likely, by that time, and they would sit over their port and filberts
in the wainscoted parlour at Culverhouse, wagging their grey heads
deprecatingly at the shortcomings of the rising generation, condemning
new guns and novel doctrines, new lights of all kinds in camp or temple.
Kenrick had served in India, and was home on leave. He was very fond
of his cousin, for they had been brought up together, and nothing
could be pleasanter to him than to spend his holiday fishing and
shooting, reading or idling round about Little Yafford. He had liked
the neighbourhood as a lad. He loved it now for the sake of those
boyish days which were so delightful to look back upon--all the lights
in the picture remembered, all the shadows forgotten. He had an almost
filial affection for Mr. and Mrs. Dulcimer--and the hills and moors and
wandering streams of Yorkshire had a charm for him which was second
only to his delight in his native Hampshire.
The two young men were sitting by Cyril’s hearth on this autumn
evening, talking confidentially over pipe and cigar. They had spent the
day apart, Kenrick tramping over the moors with his gun, Cyril engaged
in his parish work.
They were talking of Christian Harefield, the owner of the Water House,
one of the most important places in Little Yafford, after the Park, and
the father of that Beatrix whom Mrs. Dulcimer was so anxious to dispose
of matrimonially.
‘One of the most disagreeable men I ever met in my life,’ said Kenrick.
‘Miss Harefield was driving him in her basket pony carriage--he looked
about as suitable an occupant of a pony carriage as Mephistopheles for
a go-cart--and I met them at the bottom of the hill, going up that
wild road to the moor. I wonder whether he was going to gather the
samolus, left-handed and fasting, or to cut mistletoe with a golden
sickle? Upon my word, he looked as grim and ancient as a Druid. Beatrix
stopped the pony when she saw me, and introduced me to her father.
“This is Sir Kenrick Culverhouse, papa,” she said, whereat the Druid
grunted. “Are you going far up the hill?” I asked, with the originality
which distinguishes these casual conversations; “I’m afraid it will be
dark before you come back.” “Oh, we don’t mind that,” she said, “Puck
and I know our way so well.” So they went up into the thickening mist,
and I saw no more of them. I dare say they are up there still. Do you
know if the old gentleman is quite right in his mind?’
‘Yes, his mind is clear enough, so far as I have been able to discover;
he is eccentric.’
‘And grumpy.’
‘Of a gloomy turn, no doubt. He goes nowhere, and receives no one,
except Mr. Scratchell, his lawyer and agent. He seems like a man whose
whole nature has been soured by a great sorrow. People say that his
wife’s death broke his heart.’
‘One would hardly suppose such a being could ever have had a wife--much
less that he could have been fond of her. When did the lady die?’
‘Don’t you remember? She died while we were at the Vicarage--about
eleven years ago. There was a good deal of talk about it at the time.
Mr. Harefield and his wife were travelling in Italy. Beatrix and her
governess were with them--she was a child then, you know,--and Mrs.
Harefield died very suddenly--after a few hours’ illness. It was a case
of Asiatic cholera, I believe. People who know Mr. Harefield, or rather
who knew him before that time--for he holds himself aloof from every
one now--say that he has been a changed man since the shock of his
wife’s death.’
‘A melancholy story,’ said Kenrick. ‘I forgive him the discourteous
grunt which was his sole recognition of my existence. Poor Beatrix! A
sad beginning for her life.’
‘Yes,’ answered Cyril, with warm interest. ‘Motherless so early--with
so strange and gloomy a father. You cannot wonder that she is somewhat
different from other girls.’
‘Somewhat different from other girls,’ echoed Kenrick. ‘She is a queen
compared with other girls. That is the difference. She is worth twenty
other girls--a hundred--for she has a character of her own.’
Cyril looked at him curiously.
“‘Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley!’” he exclaimed, ‘You are not often so
enthusiastic, Ken.’
‘Because I seldom see anything to praise--in a woman. Don’t be
frightened, Cyril. I do admire Beatrix, but only as I admire anything
else in nature that is noble and rare; and I know that you admire her
with quite another kind of admiration, though you have not honoured me
by communicating your ideas upon the subject.’
Cyril knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the old-fashioned hob, and
said not a word until he had filled it again, slowly and thoughtfully.
Clement Dulcimer was right when he called Cyril the handsomer of
the two cousins. His pale clear-cut face was essentially noble. Yet
it was by no means essentially attractive. That steadfast look and
unchangeable gravity were unpleasing to many; but, on the other hand,
Cyril’s rare smile was beautiful in all eyes. It was the sudden light
of mind brightening the whole countenance; not a mechanical contraction
of the lips revealing a fine set of teeth, and wrinkling the eyelids
agreeably. It was a smile that meant sympathy, regard, beneficence--a
smile that comforted and cheered. The miserable among his flock knew it
well; society saw it seldom.
Cyril’s eyes were gray, and had that steady look which passes for
severity; his nose was slightly aquiline, his mouth beautiful, his brow
broad and high, with hair of neutral brown cut close to the well-shaped
head, and curling crisply--hair like a gladiator’s, said Kenrick, who
rather prided himself upon the lighter auburn of his own locks, as
he also did upon the finer line of his nose, which inclined to the
Grecian, and accorded with his low straight brow and expressionless
eyes, whose pupils seemed to have no more life and colour than the
sculptor’s dint in the marble orb.
Kenrick had what is called an aristocratic look, and rather flattered
himself upon those evidences of blue blood supposed to exist in an
attenuated but open nostril, a tapering hand, and an arched instep.
These peculiarities, he imagined, declared as plainly as Domesday Book
or title-deeds that the Culverhouses were great people on the other
side of the Channel before they honoured England by coming across the
sea with Norman William to appropriate some portion of it.
‘She is a noble creature,’ said Cyril, with conviction, when he had
pressed the last shred of latakia into the well-filled bowl, ‘but
she is Christian Harefield’s only child; and he is rich enough and
suspicious enough to impute mercenary motives to any poor man who
ventured to fall in love with his daughter.’
‘Fathers have flinty hearts,’ retorted Kenrick, lightly. ‘That’s an old
saying, but sons and daughters generally contrive to follow their own
inclinations in spite of paternal flintiness. I feel very sure that
Beatrix will choose for herself, and marry the man she loves. She is
just the kind of girl to dash herself blindly against the torrent of
paternal wrath. It would be a grand thing for you, Cyril. You could
have the Culverhouse living--a poor benefice, but on your native
soil--and live at the Castle. I doubt if I shall ever be able to occupy
it properly,’ he added, with a regretful sigh.
‘I would take her without a sixpence, and work for her and cherish
her all the days of my life,’ said Cyril, in a deep-toned voice that
trembled with strong feeling, ‘but I cannot teach her to rebel against
her father. “Honour thy father and thy mother.” She hears me read that
sublime command every other Sunday, and am I to be the first to teach
her to set it at nought?’
‘How do you know that the old Druid would object to you?’
‘I do not know as much directly, but Beatrix tells me that he will
oppose any choice of hers.’
‘Obnoxious ancient Briton! Well, Cyril, all I can say is, if I were in
love with a girl, I should think no more of her father than Romeo did
of old Capulet, and I should sink the fifth commandment till after I’d
married her--and then she could honour her father with a cock robin and
holly bush card at Christmas, or a pair of muffettees on New Year’s
Day, or a sugar egg at Easter.’