UNCLE TRENCHARD.
Stephen Trenchard paces his smooth gravel walk in the April sunshine,
after tiffin, looking at the sparrows, and blackbirds, and thrushes
disporting blithely on his velvet lawn, or hopping away into the
shadow of evergreens--great masses of laurel and laurustinus,
rhododendron and bay, which surround the smooth expanse of grass in a
semicircular sweep.
Very perfect is the order of Mr. Trenchard’s garden--not a yellow
leaf on the laurels, not a daisy peeping pertly, silver-white, from
the lawn, not a branch that grows awry. In the kitchen-garden yonder,
far away behind the shrubbery, the fan-shaped fruit-trees look like
geometrical patterns on the yellow brick walls. The apples and pears
are all wired into exactest growth, and not a twig is allowed its own
way. Mr. Trenchard is in his garden by six o’clock every morning,
and his severe eye interrogates the smallest sprig of groundsel,
and rebukes the very slugs that vie with him in early rising. Mr.
Trenchard is not a master to be trifled with, and his gardeners know
it. For every shilling he expends he will have twelve pennyworth of
labour--nay, thirteen or fourteen pennyworth if he can get it. Woe
be to the wretch who tries to put him off with elevenpence halfpenny
worth of industry!
‘I’ve had to work for my money,’ says Mr. Trenchard, ‘and I expect
value for my money from other people.’
He walks briskly up and down, looking to the right and left with an
eye bright and quick as a bird’s, a small black eye, which looks the
blacker for its whitened lashes. He is of middle height, very thin,
very yellow. He has sharply cut features; nose thin, pointed, and
aggressive-looking; lips also thin, and of a disagreeable pallid
hue; eyebrows iron-gray, thick and bushy; brow narrow; perceptive
ridge strongly marked, upper head receding; hair thick, short, and
iron-gray, like the eyebrows, brushed into two sharp points, like a
terrier’s ears.
Mr. Trenchard wears nankeen waistcoat and trousers, very loose
for his lean limbs, and a glossy black frock coat, also loose, a
black satin scarf with a gold pin, and high shirt collars; a double
gold eye-glass dangles on his breast, a glass which he wears for
show rather than use, but which intensifies the severity of his
countenance when he reproves his gardeners, or lectures his butler.
He is a man who has toiled early and late, until the other day, when
he took it into his head to give up his counting-house to a junior
partner, and come back to England and enjoy the evening of his life
at his ease. He has been a man of one idea all his days, and the
single object of his existence has been the accumulation of money.
The process of money-making, the honour and homage which the world
renders the reputed millionaire--these have been so sweet to him that
the question of what he is to do with his wealth has rarely presented
itself seriously to his mind.
On his sixty-ninth birthday he awoke suddenly to the consciousness
that whatever personal enjoyment he meant to have out of his wealth
must be obtained within the next ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Even
with his vigorous constitution he could hardly hope to live beyond
the age of eighty-five. Forty years in India must take something out
of a man, be he never so temperate, and abstemiousness has been one
of Stephen Trenchard’s virtues.
So at sixty-nine he said to himself, ‘It is time for me to go back to
England; let the world see what a position I have made for myself,
and take all the good I can out of life.’
His seventieth birthday has not yet arrived, and he has built for
his soul a lordly treasure-house, or in other words, he has taken
upon lease, decorated, and furnished Lancaster Lodge, one of the
best houses in his father’s native town of Redcastle: he has hired
servants, purchased carriages and horses, and begun a plain-sailing
English gentleman’s life on a very liberal scale. The result so far
has been eminently satisfactory. His house to him a kingdom is, he
rules his servants, indoor and outdoor, with a rod of iron, and feels
himself a potentate.
Very pleasant to him is the incense which Redcastle offers to his
wealth. People whose fathers and grandfathers snubbed or ignored
his father, the struggling solicitor, bow down and worship the
Anglo-Indian Plutocrat. He accepts their adoration with supreme
coolness, and a quiet arrogance which his admirers extol as innate
aristocracy of mind.
It has pleased him to permit his niece Marion Faunthorpe to bask in
the sunshine of his favour. She is not handsome enough to charm his
eye, which is critical in the matter of feminine beauty, nor is she
clever enough to amuse him; but she is rather a pretty thing to have
about his house, and she does very well for a listener when he is in
the humour to tell his prosy old stories of dead and gone Calcutta
scandals. She knows how to hold her tongue when he is inclined to
be silent, is solicitous for his small comforts, quiet as a mouse
when he takes his after-dinner nap. She behaves gracefully at table,
neither eats nor drinks too much, looks stylish when fashionably
dressed, moves about the house quietly, and is not altogether
deficient in tact. He is content, therefore, to tolerate her as a
frequent guest, but does not appreciate her warmly enough to ask her
to take up her permanent abode with him.
He has made many inquiries about Sibyl, and has been vexed by her
non-appearance. The Stormonts, the Groshens, and other notabilities
have praised the absent girl’s beauty, having found out all at once
that a young person whose existence they never troubled themselves to
acknowledge was the loveliest girl in Redcastle. ‘Quite the belle of
the place, I assure you, Mr. Trenchard,’ says Mrs. Stormont.
‘Indeed,’ remarks Stephen Trenchard. ‘She was invited out very much,
I suppose?’
‘Well, no, dear Mr. Trenchard, she was too young, you know--almost a
child. And then your brother-in-law is so retiring. We could never
have got him out of his shell.’
If there is one thing in that region of trifles outside the money
market which Mr. Trenchard appreciates it is beauty in woman.
Having heard his eldest niece so enthusiastically praised, he is
particularly anxious to see her, ever so much the more anxious
because her indifference has thwarted him.
‘She must be a queer kind of girl,’ he tells himself, ‘to hang back
from a rich uncle, to prefer drudging as a governess to sponging
upon me. Marion is glad enough to take all she can get, and would
kneel down and kiss my shoe-string if I asked her. Her feelings are
transparent enough. This other one must be something out of the
common.’
A wonderful advantage this for Sibyl at starting; though it is an
advantage she has gained accidentally.
The great lodge bell clangs out, while Mr. Trenchard paces up and
down, and startles the respectable tranquillity of Above Bar with its
clamour. He takes out his watch. Too early for a ceremonious visit.
Mr. Trenchard walks round by the side windows of his large square
mansion, and comes within view of the gate. Two ladies enter, both
young and slim, both tall, but one rather shorter than the other. The
taller gives a little eager cry and runs forward to him, the second
advances more slowly.
‘Dear uncle Stephen,’ cries Marion, pursing up her lips to be kissed,
an operation which uncle Stephen performs with a slightly reluctant
air, ‘Sibyl has come home quite unexpectedly,’ Marion is always out
of breath at the beginning of a visit, a pretty gushing way which
some people call charming, ‘and I thought I might bring her--to--see
you--dear uncle John.’
‘Thought you might bring her. Of course you might bring her. Haven’t
I been asking to see her ever since Christmas? So that is Sibyl, is
it?’ looking at the graceful figure lingering on the sunlit grass a
few yards away from him. The bright face is flushed with palest rose,
the dark full eyes are looking slily at him, the dark brown hair is
burnished by the sun. A fair picture of peerless youth for crabbed
age to admire.
‘So that is Sibyl! Yes, she is very lovely. Those sycophants haven’t
exaggerated. Come here, my love, come to your old uncle. Naughty
child, why did you stay away so long?’
He holds out his lean old arms, he folds her to his breast, he kisses
her lovingly, paternally, as he has never yet kissed Marion, despite
her affectionate blandishments.
‘Well, I never!’ Marion exclaims inwardly, standing a little aloof,
and feeling that her reign is over.