[Illustration:
THE
CORNHILL
MAGAZINE
No. 241
NEW SERIES
Price
ONE SHILLING
Net
No. 679
JULY
1916.
LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE.]
[_All rights, including the right of publishing Translations of
Articles in this Magazine, are reserved._]
_Registered for Transmission to Canada and Newfoundland by
Magazine Post._
* * * * *
BY SPECIAL [Illustration] APPOINTMENT
ARTISTS’ COLOURMEN TO THEIR MAJESTIES THE KING AND QUEEN AND TO H.M.
QUEEN ALEXANDRA.
WINSOR & NEWTON, LIMITED,
=MANUFACTURERS OF ARTISTS’ OIL AND WATER COLOURS of the FINEST QUALITY.=
=THE ‘SCHOLARS’’ BOX of ARTISTS’ MOIST WATER COLOURS.=
Designed to provide an inexpensive box of Artists’ Colours with a range
of tint and covering power approximately equal to the ordinary Students’
Box.
‘_In developing the faculty of observation in children, Drawing and
Colour Work is most essential. The Drawing and Colour materials should
always be of good quality, and suitable for the purpose for which they
are intended._’
Scholars’ Box of Artists’ Water Colours =Price 3s. net.=
Containing 8 Pans and 2 Brushes.
Refills for Scholars’ Box =Series 1, 2s. 6d.; Series 2, 4s.;=
=Series 3, 6s.; Series 4, 8s. per doz. net.=
Offices RATHBONE PLACE, LONDON, W.
* * * * *
The Best Magazine for the Homes and Schools of the Empire.
The Review of Reviews
ILLUSTRATED. MONTHLY. PRICE =1/-=
‘It will be generally conceded,’ says the _Wolverhampton Chronicle_,
‘that this old-established periodical is making a successful attempt to
give its readers, war-time notwithstanding, the best possible value.
The Progress of the World is written by the Editor (E. W. Stead), and
comprises a rapid and incisive survey of the principal happenings in
various parts of the globe.’
A COMPREHENSIVE SELECTION OF CARTOONS FROM THE WORLD’S PRESS, A SURVEY
OF FOREIGN OPINION ON THE WAR, TOGETHER WITH THE ENEMY’S VIEWS, WILL BE
FOUND IN THE PAGES OF _THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS_.
The magazine can be obtained from Booksellers and Newsagents all over the
country; single copies, 1/-. It can be sent post free for twelve months
to any address for 14/6; Canada, 13/6.
Subscription Orders, enclosing Cheque or Post Office Orders, should
be sent to the Manager, ‘REVIEW OF REVIEWS’ Office, Bank Buildings,
Kingsway, London, W.C.
THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.
JULY 1916.
_THE TUTOR’S STORY._
BY THE LATE CHARLES KINGSLEY, REVISED AND COMPLETED BY HIS DAUGHTER,
LUCAS MALET.
Copyright by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. in the United States of America.
CHAPTER XXIII.
It was the beginning of the Lent term. I had stayed up during the
vacation, my College being also my home. And during that vacation a
weight of loneliness descended upon me. This was wrong, since had I
not very much to be thankful for? My position was a secure, and, from
the university standpoint, an even brilliant one. I liked my work. It
interested me. Yet, in some aspects, this university life seemed to me
narrow. It pained me to see old faces depart, and new ones enter who knew
naught of me. Other men halted here, but for a while, on their life’s
journey, moving forward to meet the larger issues, to seek ‘fresh woods
and pastures new.’ And I remained—as one, held up by accident, remains at
some half-way house, seeing the stream of traffic and of wayfarers sweep
for ever forward along the great crowded highroad, and pass him by.
If I had not had that break in my university course, if I had not
spent those two years at Hover in a society and amid interests and
occupations—pleasures, let me put it roundly—foreign to my own social
sphere, Cambridge, and all Cambridge stood for, would not probably have
palled upon me. But I had beheld wider horizons; beheld them, moreover,
through the windows of an enchanted castle. Thus memory cast its shadow
over the present, making me—it was faithless, ungrateful, I had nearly
said, sinful—dissatisfied and sad.
However, being in good health, I was not too sad to eat a good dinner;
and so, one fine day at the beginning of term, when the bell rang for
hall, I crossed the quadrangle and went in—or went rather to the door,
and there stopped short. For, face to face, I met none other than Mr.
Halidane, in all the glory of a freshman’s brand-new gown.
‘Ah! Mr. Brownlow,’ he exclaimed, with his blandest and most beaming
smile, ‘it is indeed a gracious dispensation to meet you, sir, an old and
valued friend, on my first day within these hallowed and venerable walls.
I feared you might not have come up yet. Allow me to congratulate you
upon your distinctions, your degree, your fellowship. With what gladness
have I heard of them, have I welcomed the news of your successful
progress. I trust you are duly thankful to an over-ruling providence!’
‘I trust I am,’ quoth I.
I believed the man to be a hypocrite. He had done me all the harm he
could. Yet, what with my loneliness, what with my memories of that
enchanted castle, I could not but be moved at this unexpected meeting
with him. I choked down my disgust, my resentment for the dirty tricks
he had played me, and shaking him by the hand asked what had brought him
here.
‘The generosity of my pious patron,’ he answered, casting up his eyes
devoutly. ‘Ah! what do I not owe—under providence—to that true ornament
of his exalted station! Through his condescending liberality I am enabled
to fulfil the wish long nearest my heart; and by taking, as I humbly
hope in due time, Holy Orders, to enter upon a more extended sphere of
Christian and national usefulness.’
I abstained from asking how he had suddenly discovered the Church of
England suited his religious convictions and abilities better than the
sect of the ‘Saints indeed,’ and contented myself, not without a beating
heart, by enquiring after Lord Longmoor and all at Hover.
I got answers; but none that I wanted. The Earl was perfection; the
Countess perfection; even for Colonel Esdaile he had three or four
superlatives. The Countess, he trusted, had been lately brought to the
knowledge of the truth. The Colonel only needed to be brought to it—and
he was showing many hopeful signs—to be more than mortal man.—It was
evidently his cue to approve highly of Hover and all dwellers therein.
And when, with almost a faltering voice, I asked news of my dear boy, he
broke out into fresh superlatives; from amid the rank growth of which I
could only discover that Lord Hartover was a very dashing and popular
young man about town, and that it served Mr. Halidane’s purpose to
approve—or seem to approve—of his being such.
‘The pomps and vanities of this wicked world, you know, my dear
Brownlow,’—the fellow began to drop the ‘Mr.’ now—‘the pomps and
vanities—but we must make allowances for youth—and those to whom little
is given, you know, of them will little be required.’
‘Little given!’ thought I with a shudder, as I contrasted Halidane’s
words with my own old lessons.—God grant that this fellow may not have
had the opportunity of undoing all the good which I had done! I made the
boy believe once that very much had been given him.—But I said nothing.
Why waste words where the conversation will never go deeper than words?
So we went in to hall together; and, what was more, came out together,
for it was plainly Mr. Halidane’s plan to quarter himself upon me,
physically and morally—physically, in that he came up into my rooms
and sat down therein, his countenance falling when he perceived that I
brought out no wine.
‘You are a Nazarite still?’ he said at last, after looking uneasily
several times towards door and cupboard.
‘I am, indeed,’ I replied, amused at his inability to keep his own
counsel.
‘Ah—well. All the more freedom, then, for the wine of the Spirit. I trust
that we shall have gracious converse together often, my dear Brownlow,
and edify one another with talk of that which belongs to our souls’
health as we wander through this wilderness of tears.’
I replied by asking, I fear a little slyly, after Lord Longmoor’s book on
prophecy.
‘As was to be expected—a success,’ he replied—‘a magnificent success,
though I say so. Not perhaps in the number of copies sold. But what is
worldly fame, and how can we expect the carnal man to favour spiritual
things? Not, again, from a pecuniary point of view. But what is filthy
lucre? His lordship’s philanthropy has enabled him, so to speak, to
make the book a present, a free gift to the elect. No, not in such
material gains as Christians will leave to the unsanctified, to a Scott
or a Byron, does success lie; but in the cause of the Gospel. And, if
humble I have been instrumental to that success, either in assisting
his lordship’s deeper intellect, as the mouse might the lion, or in
having the book properly pushed in certain Gospel quarters where I have
a little unworthy influence—’ (Unworthy indeed, I doubt not, thought
I!)—‘why, then—have I not my reward—I say, have I not my reward?’
I thought he certainly had. For being aware he wrote the whole book
himself, and tacked his patron’s name to it, I began to suspect shrewdly
he had been franked at College as hush-money, the book being a dead
failure.
And so I told the good old Master next day, who slapped his thigh and
chuckled, and then scolded me for an impudent truth-speaking fellow who
would come to ruin by his honesty.
I assured him that I should tell no one but him, having discovered at
Hover that the wisdom of the serpent was compatible with the innocence
of the dove, and that I expected to need both in my dealing with Mr.
Halidane.
‘Why, I understood that he was an intimate friend of yours. He told me
that your being here was one of the main reasons for his choosing this
College. He entreated humbly to be allowed rooms as near you as possible.
So—as he came with the highest recommendations from Lord Longmoor—we have
put him just over your head!’
I groaned audibly.
‘What’s the matter? He is not given to playing skittles, or practising
the fiddle at midnight, is he?’
‘Heavens, no!’
But I groaned again, at the thought of having Halidane tied to me, riding
me pick-a-back as the Old Man of the Sea did Sindbad, for three years to
come. In explanation I told the Master a good deal of what I knew. About
Nellie, however, I still said not one word.
The Master smiled mischievously.
‘I suspect the object of his sudden conversion from sectarianism is one
of my lord’s fat livings. You may see him a bishop yet, Brownlow, for
a poor opinion of his own merits will never stand in the way of his
promotion.—Well, I will keep my eye on this promising convert to the
Church of England as by Law Established, meanwhile—and you may do the
same if you like.’
I did like—the more so because I found him, again and again, drawing
round to the subject of Mr. Braithwaite and of Nellie. He slipped
away smoothly enough when he saw I avoided the matter, complimenting
me greasily upon my delicacy and discretion. I was torn two ways—by
longing to hear something of both father and daughter, and repulsion
that this man should soil the name of her whom I loved by so much as
daring to pronounce it. But of all living creatures lovers are the most
self-contradictory, fearing the thing they desire, desiring that which
they fear.
At last one day, when he had invaded my rooms after hall, he said
something which forced me to talk about Hover with him. He had been
praising, in his fulsome fashion, Mademoiselle Fédore among the rest.
She too, it appeared, was under gracious influences, aware of her soul’s
danger and all but converted—the very dogs and cats of the house were
qualifying for salvation, I believe, in his suddenly charitable eyes. He
finished up with—‘And how nobly the poor thing behaved, too, when that
villain Marsigli absconded.’
‘Marsigli absconded?’ I exclaimed, in great surprise.
‘Of course—I thought you knew⸺’
‘I know nothing of what happens at Hover now,’ I said, foolishly allowing
bitterness to get the better of caution.
‘No—you don’t tell me so!—Really, very strange,’ and he eyed me sharply.
‘But the facts are simple and lamentable enough. This villain, this
viper, the trusted and pampered servant—for far too much kindness had
been lavished upon him by my lord and lady, as upon all—yes, all—my
unworthy self included.—How refreshing, how inspiring is condescension
in the great!—This pampered menial, I say—ah I what a thing is human
nature when unregenerate!—as was to be expected—for what after all, my
dear Brownlow, can you hope from a Papist?—disappeared one fine morning,
and with him jewels and plate—plate belonging to our sainted friend and
patron, in whose service the viper had fattened so long, to the amount of
four thousand pounds.’
I listened in deepening interest.
‘This is serious,’ I said. ‘Has any of the property been traced and
recovered?’
‘Not one brass farthing’s worth.’
‘And is there no clue?’
‘None, alas! save what Mademoiselle Fédore gave. With wonderful subtlety
and instinct—Ah! that it were further quickened by divine grace!—she
pieced together little incidents, little trifling indications, which
enabled the police to track the miscreant as far as Liverpool. But, after
that, no trace. They concluded he must have sailed for America, where he
is doubtless even now wantoning, amid the licentious democracy of the
West, upon the plunder of the saints.’
He buried his face in his hands and appeared to weep.
I remained silent, greatly perturbed in mind. For there flashed across
me those words of Warcop’s, spoken on the morning of my departure,
when I sat with him in his sanctum, dedicated to the mysteries of the
stud-farm and the chase: ‘By times they—Marsigli and Mamzell—are as thick
as thieves. By times they fight like cat and dog or’—with a knowing
look—‘like man and wife.’ There flashed across me, too, a strange speech
of Fédore’s I had overheard, as I walked along one of the innumerable
dimly lighted passages at Hover, one night, on my way from the library,
where I had worked late, to my own study. To whom she spoke I did not
know, for a door was hastily closed immediately I passed, though not
hastily enough to prevent my hearing a man’s voice answer.—‘Ah! you great
stupid,’ she had said. ‘Why not what these English call feather your
own nest? I have no patience with you when, if you pleased, you could
so easily be rich.’—The episode made an unpleasant impression upon me
at the time, but had almost faded from my mind. Now in the light of my
conversation with Halidane it sprung into vivid relief.
The loss of a few thousand pounds’ worth of jewels and plate was a small
matter. But that Mademoiselle Fédore should remain in the household
as Marsigli’s accomplice—and that she was his accomplice I suspected
gravely—perhaps to regain her power over the boy, was intolerable. As
to her assisting the police by pointing out the probable route of the
delinquent, what easier than to do so with a view to putting them on a
false scent?
‘This is indeed ugly news,’ I said at last. ‘I wonder if the Master
knows.’
‘Why not? It was reported in the papers at the time.’
‘Ah! and I was absorbed in my work and missed it. How unfortunate!’
‘Do you think you know anything, then?’ he said greedily, with sharp
interest.
But the question I did not answer, perceiving he was curiously anxious to
be taken into my confidence.