UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER
The Honourable Everard Romfrey came of a race of fighting earls,
toughest of men, whose high, stout, Western castle had weathered our
cyclone periods of history without changeing hands more than once, and
then but for a short year or two, as if to teach the original
possessors the wisdom of inclining to the stronger side. They had a
queen’s chamber in it, and a king’s; and they stood well up against the
charge of having dealt darkly with the king. He died among them—how has
not been told. We will not discuss the conjectures here. A savour of
North Sea foam and ballad pirates hangs about the early chronicles of
the family. Indications of an ancestry that had lived between the wave
and the cloud were discernible in their notions of right and wrong. But
a settlement on solid earth has its influences. They were chivalrous
knights bannerets, and leaders in the tented field, paying and taking
fair ransom for captures; and they were good landlords, good masters
blithely followed to the wars. Sing an old battle of Normandy, Picardy,
Gascony, and you celebrate deeds of theirs. At home they were vexatious
neighbours to a town of burghers claiming privileges: nor was it
unreasonable that the Earl should flout the pretensions of the town to
read things for themselves, documents, titleships, rights, and the
rest. As well might the flat plain boast of seeing as far as the
pillar. Earl and town fought the fight of Barons and Commons in
epitome. The Earl gave way; the Barons gave way. Mighty men may thrash
numbers for a time; in the end the numbers will be thrashed into the
art of beating their teachers. It is bad policy to fight the odds inch
by inch. Those primitive school masters of the million liked it, and
took their pleasure in that way. The Romfreys did not breed warriors
for a parade at Court; wars, though frequent, were not constant, and
they wanted occupation: they may even have felt that they were bound in
no common degree to the pursuit of an answer to what may be called the
parent question of humanity: Am I thy master, or thou mine? They put it
to lords of other castles, to town corporations, and sometimes brother
to brother: and notwithstanding that the answer often unseated and once
discastled them, they swam back to their places, as born warriors,
urged by a passion for land, are almost sure to do; are indeed quite
sure, so long as they multiply sturdily, and will never take no from
Fortune. A family passion for land, that survives a generation, is as
effective as genius in producing the object it conceives; and through
marriages and conflicts, the seizure of lands, and brides bearing land,
these sharp-feeding eagle-eyed earls of Romfrey spied few spots within
their top tower’s wide circle of the heavens not their own.
It is therefore manifest that they had the root qualities, the prime
active elements, of men in perfection, and notably that appetite to
flourish at the cost of the weaker, which is the blessed
exemplification of strength, and has been man’s cheerfulest
encouragement to fight on since his comparative subjugation (on the
whole, it seems complete) of the animal world. By-and-by the struggle
is transferred to higher ground, and we begin to perceive how much we
are indebted to the fighting spirit. Strength is the brute form of
truth. No conspicuously great man was born of the Romfreys, who were
better served by a succession of able sons. They sent undistinguished
able men to army and navy—lieutenants given to be critics of their
captains, but trustworthy for their work. In the later life of the
family, they preferred the provincial state of splendid squires to
Court and political honours. They were renowned shots, long-limbed
stalking sportsmen in field and bower, fast friends, intemperate
enemies, handsome to feminine eyes, resembling one another in build,
and mostly of the Northern colour, or betwixt the tints, with an
hereditary nose and mouth that cried Romfrey from faces thrice diluted
in cousinships.
The Hon. Everard (Stephen Denely Craven Romfrey), third son of the late
Earl, had some hopes of the title, and was in person a noticeable
gentleman, in mind a mediaeval baron, in politics a crotchety
unintelligible Whig. He inherited the estate of Holdesbury, on the
borders of Hampshire and Wilts, and espoused that of Steynham in
Sussex, where he generally resided. His favourite in the family had
been the Lady Emily, his eldest sister, who, contrary to the advice of
her other brothers and sisters, had yielded her hand to his not wealthy
friend, Colonel Richard Beauchamp. After the death of Nevil’s parents,
he adopted the boy, being himself childless, and a widower.
Childlessness was the affliction of the family. Everard, having no son,
could hardly hope that his brother the Earl, and Craven, Lord Avonley,
would have one, for he loved the prospect of the title. Yet, as there
were no cousins of the male branch extant, the lack of an heir was a
serious omission, and to become the Earl of Romfrey, and be the last
Earl of Romfrey, was a melancholy thought, however brilliant. So sinks
the sun: but he could not desire the end of a great day. At one time he
was a hot Parliamentarian, calling himself a Whig, called by the Whigs
a Radical, called by the Radicals a Tory, and very happy in fighting
them all round. This was during the decay of his party, before the
Liberals were defined. A Liberal deprived him of the seat he had held
for fifteen years, and the clearness of his understanding was obscured
by that black vision of popular ingratitude which afflicts the free
fighting man yet more than the malleable public servant. The latter has
a clerkly humility attached to him like a second nature, from his habit
of doing as others bid him: the former smacks a voluntarily sweating
forehead and throbbing wounds for witness of his claim upon your
palpable thankfulness. It is an insult to tell him that he fought for
his own satisfaction. Mr. Romfrey still called himself a Whig, though
it was Whig mean vengeance on account of his erratic vote and voice on
two or three occasions that denied him a peerage and a seat in haven.
Thither let your good sheep go, your echoes, your wag-tail dogs, your
wealthy pursy manufacturers! He decried the attractions of the sublimer
House, and laughed at the transparent Whiggery of his party in
replenishing it from the upper shoots of the commonalty: “Dragging it
down to prop it up! swamping it to keep it swimming!” he said.
He was nevertheless a vehement supporter of that House. He stood for
King, Lords, and Commons, in spite of his personal grievances, harping
the triad as vigorously as bard of old Britain. Commons he added out of
courtesy, or from usage or policy, or for emphasis, or for the sake of
the Constitutional number of the Estates of the realm, or it was
because he had an intuition of the folly of omitting them; the same, to
some extent, that builders have regarding bricks when they plan a
fabric. Thus, although King and Lords prove the existence of Commons in
days of the political deluge almost syllogistically, the example of not
including one of the Estates might be imitated, and Commons and King do
not necessitate the conception of an intermediate third, while Lords
and Commons suggest the decapitation of the leading figure. The united
three, however, no longer cast reflections on one another, and were an
assurance to this acute politician that his birds were safe. He
preserved game rigorously, and the deduction was the work of instinct
with him. To his mind the game-laws were the corner-stone of Law, and
of a man’s right to hold his own; and so delicately did he think the
country poised, that an attack on them threatened the structure of
justice. The three conjoined Estates were therefore his head
gamekeepers; their duty was to back him against the poacher, if they
would not see the country tumble. As to his under-gamekeepers, he was
their intimate and their friend, saying, with none of the misanthropy
which proclaims the virtues of the faithful dog to the confusion of
humankind, he liked their company better than that of his equals, and
learnt more from them. They also listened deferentially to their
instructor.
The conversation he delighted in most might have been going on in any
century since the Conquest. Grant him his not unreasonable argument
upon his property in game, he was a liberal landlord. No tenants were
forced to take his farms. He dragged none by the collar. He gave them
liberty to go to Australia, Canada, the Americas, if they liked. He
asked in return to have the liberty to shoot on his own grounds, and
rear the marks for his shot, treating the question of indemnification
as a gentleman should. Still there were grumbling tenants. He swarmed
with game, and, though he was liberal, his hares and his birds were
immensely destructive: computation could not fix the damage done by
them. Probably the farmers expected them not to eat. “There are two
parties to a bargain,” said Everard, “and one gets the worst of it. But
if he was never obliged to make it, where’s his right to complain?” Men
of sense rarely obtain satisfactory answers: they are provoked to
despise their kind. But the poacher was another kind of vermin than the
stupid tenant. Everard did him the honour to hate him, and twice in a
fray had he collared his ruffian, and subsequently sat in condemnation
of the wretch: for he who can attest a villany is best qualified to
punish it. Gangs from the metropolis found him too determined and alert
for their sport. It was the factiousness of here and there an unbroken
young scoundrelly colt poacher of the neighbourhood, a born thief, a
fellow damned in an inveterate taste for game, which gave him
annoyance. One night he took Master Nevil out with him, and they hunted
down a couple of sinners that showed fight against odds. Nevil
attempted to beg them off because of their boldness. “I don’t set my
traps for nothing,” said his uncle, silencing him. But the boy
reflected that his uncle was perpetually lamenting the cowed spirit of
the common English-formerly such fresh and merry men! He touched
Rosamund Culling’s heart with his description of their attitudes when
they stood resisting and bawling to the keepers, “Come on we’ll die for
it.” They did not die. Everard explained to the boy that he could have
killed them, and was contented to have sent them to gaol for a few
weeks. Nevil gaped at the empty magnanimity which his uncle presented
to him as a remarkably big morsel. At the age of fourteen he was
despatched to sea.
He went unwillingly; not so much from an objection to a naval life as
from a wish, incomprehensible to grown men and boys, and especially to
his cousin, Cecil Baskelett, that he might remain at school and learn.
“The fellow would like to be a parson!” Everard said in disgust. No
parson had ever been known of in the Romfrey family, or in the
Beauchamp. A legend of a parson that had been a tutor in one of the
Romfrey houses, and had talked and sung blandly to a damsel of the
blood—degenerate maid—to receive a handsome trouncing for his pains,
instead of the holy marriage-tie he aimed at, was the only connection
of the Romfreys with the parsonry, as Everard called them. He
attributed the boy’s feeling to the influence of his great-aunt
Beauchamp, who would, he said, infallibly have made a parson of him.
“I’d rather enlist for a soldier,” Nevil said, and he ceased to dream
of rebellion, and of his little property of a few thousand pounds in
the funds to aid him in it. He confessed to his dear friend Rosamund
Culling that he thought the parsons happy in having time to read
history. And oh, to feel for certain _which_ side was the wrong side in
our Civil War, so that one should not hesitate in choosing! Such
puzzles are never, he seemed to be aware, solved in a midshipman’s
mess. He hated bloodshed, and was guilty of the “cotton-spinners’
babble,” abhorred of Everard, in alluding to it. Rosamund liked him for
his humanity; but she, too, feared he was a slack Romfrey when she
heard him speak in precocious contempt of glory. Somewhere, somehow, he
had got hold of Manchester sarcasms concerning glory: a weedy word of
the newspapers had been sown in his bosom perhaps. He said: “I don’t
care to win glory; I know all about that; I’ve seen an old hat in the
Louvre.” And he would have had her to suppose that he had looked on the
campaigning head-cover of Napoleon simply as a shocking bad, bald,
brown-rubbed old _tricorne_ rather than as the nod of extinction to
thousands, the great orb of darkness, the still-trembling gloomy
quiver—the brain of the lightnings of battles.
Now this boy nursed no secret presumptuous belief that he was fitted
for the walks of the higher intellect; he was not having his impudent
boy’s fling at superiority over the superior, as here and there a
subtle-minded vain juvenile will; nor was he a parrot repeating a line
from some Lancastrian pamphlet. He really disliked war and the sword;
and scorning the prospect of an idle life, confessing that his
abilities barely adapted him for a sailor’s, he was opposed to the
career opened to him almost to the extreme of shrinking and terror. Or
that was the impression conveyed to a not unsympathetic hearer by his
forlorn efforts to make himself understood, which were like the
tappings of the stick of a blind man mystified by his sense of touch at
wrong corners. His bewilderment and speechlessness were a comic
display, tragic to him.
Just as his uncle Everard predicted, he came home from his first voyage
a pleasant sailor lad. His features, more than handsome to a woman, so
mobile they were, shone of sea and spirit, the chance lights of the
sea, and the spirit breathing out of it. As to war and bloodshed, a
man’s first thought must be his country, young Jacket remarked, and
_Ich dien_ was the best motto afloat. Rosamund noticed the peculiarity
of the books he selected for his private reading. They were not boys’
books, books of adventure and the like. His favourite author was one
writing of Heroes, in (so she esteemed it) a style resembling either
early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed;
a wind-in-the-orchard style, that tumbled down here and there an
appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster; sentences without commencements
running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a sea-wall,
learned dictionary words giving a hand to street-slang, and accents
falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; all the
pages in a breeze, the whole book producing a kind of electrical
agitation in the mind and the joints. This was its effect on the lady.
To her the incomprehensible was the abominable, for she had our
country’s high critical feeling; but he, while admitting that he could
not quite master it, liked it. He had dug the book out of a
bookseller’s shop in Malta, captivated by its title, and had, since the
day of his purchase, gone at it again and again, getting nibbles of
golden meaning by instalments, as with a solitary pick in a very dark
mine, until the illumination of an idea struck him that there was a
great deal more in the book than there was in himself. This was
sufficient to secure the devoted attachment of young Mr. Beauchamp.
Rosamund sighed with apprehension to think of his unlikeness to boys
and men among his countrymen in some things. Why should he hug a book
he owned he could not quite comprehend? He said he liked a bone in his
mouth; and it was natural wisdom, though unappreciated by women. A bone
in a boy’s mind for him to gnaw and worry, corrects the vagrancies and
promotes the healthy activities, whether there be marrow in it or not.
Supposing it furnishes only dramatic entertainment in that usually
vacant tenement, or powder-shell, it will be of service.
Nevil proposed to her that her next present should be the entire list
of his beloved Incomprehensible’s published works, and she promised,
and was not sorry to keep her promise dangling at the skirts of memory,
to drop away in time. For that fire-and-smoke writer dedicated volumes
to the praise of a regicide. Nice reading for her dear boy! Some weeks
after Nevil was off again, she abused herself for her half-hearted love
of him, and would have given him anything—the last word in favour of
the Country versus the royal Martyr, for example, had he insisted on
it. She gathered, bit by bit, that he had dashed at his big blustering
cousin Cecil to vindicate her good name. The direful youths fought in
the Steynham stables, overheard by the grooms. Everard received a fine
account of the tussle from these latter, and Rosamund, knowing him to
be of the order of gentlemen who, whatsoever their sins, will at all
costs protect a woman’s delicacy, and a dependant’s, man or woman, did
not fear to have her ears shocked in probing him on the subject.
Everard was led to say that Nevil’s cousins were bedevilled with
womanfolk.
From which Rosamund perceived that women had been at work; and if so,
it was upon the business of the scandal-monger; and if so, Nevil fought
his cousin to protect her good name from a babbler of the family
gossip.
She spoke to Stukely Culbrett, her dead husband’s friend, to whose
recommendation she was indebted for her place in Everard Romfrey’s
household.
“Nevil behaved like a knight, I hear.”
“Your beauty was disputed,” said he, “and Nevil knocked the blind man
down for not being able to see.”
She thought, “Not my beauty! Nevil struck his cousin on behalf of the
only fair thing I have left to me!”
This was a moment with her when many sensations rush together and form
a knot in sensitive natures. She had been very good-looking. She was
good-looking still, but she remembered the bloom of her looks in her
husband’s days (the tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman to write:
I am ashamed to find myself smiling while the poor lady weeps), she
remembered his praises, her pride; his death in battle, her anguish:
then, on her strange entry to this house, her bitter wish to be older;
and then, the oppressive calm of her recognition of her wish’s
fulfilment, the heavy drop to dead earth, when she could say, or
pretend to think she could say—I look old enough: will they tattle of
me now? Nevil’s championship of her good name brought her history
spinning about her head, and threw a finger of light on her real
position. In that she saw the slenderness of her hold on respect, as
well as felt her personal stainlessness. The boy warmed her chill
widowhood. It was written that her, second love should be of the
pattern of mother’s love. She loved him hungrily and jealously, always
in fear for him when he was absent, even anxiously when she had him
near. For some cause, born, one may fancy, of the hour of her love’s
conception, his image in her heart was steeped in tears. She was not,
happily, one of the women who betray strong feeling, and humour
preserved her from excesses of sentiment.