Probably nothing is less calculated to make a man feel at home in
another’s society than the knowledge that he owes him a debt which he
cannot pay. Custom enables a number of people to support this
awkwardness with tolerable equanimity, but I suspect that even the
habitual debtor feels a certain nameless uneasiness under his equable
shirt-front; while to a person whose boast has always been that
directness of gaze celebrated in the Village Blacksmith, to have to look
shiftily before the eye of a creditor must be peculiarly galling.
Something of this consciousness had become the daily burthen of poor
Lady Charmington with regard to her first-born son. Certainly nothing
was further from claiming damages than Sainty’s attitude, for it never
entered his head to hold his mother in any way responsible for his
accident. But in the long weeks in which he lay so uncomplainingly
bearing pain, and the inaction which to young creatures is worse than
pain, she could not look at him without a very distinct twinge of
remorse. She was even glad to see the once forbidden needlework cheating
the weary hours of some of their dulness. Once when he thanked her for
the withdrawal of the interdict on this pastime, her breath caught in
her throat like a sob.
‘You must find the time very heavy,’ she said, smoothing back the boy’s
hair with an unusually tender touch.
‘Oh no!’ Sainty said, ‘I don’t. I can’t help thinking what a good thing
it was it happened to me and not to Arthur. Think how _he_ would have
hated it. I’ve never minded keeping quiet. And then it’ll always be such
a good excuse for not doing things. Before, when people said “Why can’t
he be like other boys?” there wasn’t anything to say. Now you can say
“Well, you see, poor boy, he’s lame; he met with an accident.”’
He delivered this piece of consolation quite seriously, and with no
ironic intention, but it may be doubted if it cheered his mother as much
as he intended.
Poor Kirkpatrick, overwhelmed with remorse, had wished to give up his
public school mastership and devote himself to Sainty’s education, but
the sacrifice had not been accepted. Lady Charmington, who, in spite of
her hard head, was not without some very feminine weaknesses, could not
bear the sight of the young man who was incurably associated with the
most awful hour of her life.
In her compunction, she made an attempt at regaining the services of
Miss Meakins, but the governess had without difficulty obtained a
situation in the household of one of those gorgeously dressed little
dark women who drive about the north side of Hyde Park in such
well-appointed carriages. They are of Lancaster Gate to-day, but who
knows if to-morrow they may not be giving laws to fashion from a palace
in Park Lane? Miss Meakins, with the stamp of the aristocracy upon her,
was quite an important person in this opulent Tyburnian mansion and the
beautiful villa at Roehampton, with its velvet lawns and blazing
parterres.
‘Tell us about the little marquis and his brother, and the big park at
Belchamber, and the deer,’ her little charges would ask of her, as they
walked on Wimbledon Common. They had large eyes, and beautiful gentle
manners, and that look of ineffable world-weariness that is common to
the children of their race. Sainty would have been astonished to know
what an object of interest he was to these other children.
It must have been her uneasy desire for compensation that made Lady
Charmington give to a suggestion of her sister-in-law that she and her
‘fatherless boy’ should pay Belchamber a visit, a very different
reception from that which she would otherwise have accorded to it. Lady
Eva had lost the embarrassing Morland, and was inclined to return to her
native land and see what she could get out of her kinsfolk. She went
first to her mother, who received her very graciously, and was really
pleased to see her. Her daughter brought the duchess a whiff of her
beloved Paris, and entertained her immensely with anecdotes of a world
quite unlike that in which she herself had formerly figured. The younger
lady, finding her noble relatives in the Faubourg rather inclined to
cold-shoulder her, had gone in for being a sort of Muse, and surrounded
herself with all the youngest and most modern of the new school of poets
and painters. She wore indecent clothes, with a rope of turquoises round
her waist, and lay on a white bearskin, smoking a narghilé, while they
recited their verses to her. They spoke of her as ‘la petite Morland’
and ‘la belle Eve.’ Her portrait by a young American of genius had been
the great _clou_ of the salon, she told her astonished step-father. ‘It
really was _épatant_; he painted me at full length on the sofa in
straight perspective, my feet away from you, and my head hanging over
the end, so that my face looks out at you upside down. I have my
turquoises in my teeth, and the whole is lit by Chinese lanterns. It is
amazing _de vérité_, and will make his reputation.’
‘And what about yours?’ asked the duke, who thought he was rather a wit.
The duchess was much amused with this talk, and all went well, until she
and her daughter happened unfortunately to fix their affections on the
same young man, who was a good deal the junior of either, when a violent
quarrel ensued, and Sunborough House having become much too hot to hold
her, Lady Eva was seized with a sentimental desire to ‘show the home of
her childhood to her boy,’ and wrote intimating this wish to her
sister-in-law. Lady Charmington knew very little of the lady, beyond the
fact that she had made an unfortunate marriage and was now a widow with
an only son. The early surroundings of this boy must have been
deplorable; but while she trembled for the effect he might have upon
her sons, she licked her lips at the thought of the influence she might
be privileged to acquire over him. Lady Eva’s cleverly insinuated hint
that she did not find the atmosphere of her mother’s house congenial,
did much to open the doors of Belchamber to her; but perhaps her best
ally was the thought that his cousin might be a companion to Sainty
during Arthur’s absence. Sainty at least was not likely to get any harm
from unfortunate lads who had been brought up in an atmosphere of
papistry or atheism--the two words meant much the same to Lady
Charmington--and then who could tell what they might be able to do for
_him_!
Claude Morland was between two and three years older than Sainty and
extraordinarily grown up for his age. He was a handsome boy, but of
quite a different type of beauty from Arthur, who had the fair curls and
florid complexion of the Chambers family, whereas Claude had inherited
his colourless white skin, thick, straight black hair, and large dreamy
eyes from his French ancestors. He was not unlike what his grandmother
had been as a girl, but with a certain heaviness of make and feature
that came from his lamented father, and might easily become coarseness
as he grew older. He seemed to Sainty like some strongly scented
hothouse flower, white with a whiteness in which there was no purity,
and sweet with a strong sweetness that already suggested some subtle
hint of decay. As the flowers which his cousin recalled to him were
among the things he did not like, his first feeling towards him had been
one of vague repulsion; but to a naturally shy and silent person, any
one with Claude’s ready flow of talk and perfect self-possession must
prove attractive in the long-run. Then Claude had charming manners when
he chose. To Sainty, accustomed to Arthur’s scornful affection and
undisguised contempt, the little attentions and deferential politeness
of this older boy were bewildering, but strangely pleasant. Claude’s
smile was a caress, the grasp of his hand an embrace; in later years a
lady once said of him that she always felt as if he had said something
she ought to resent when he asked her how she did. But at thirteen this
latent sensuality only made him like some charming feline creature that
liked to be stroked and well fed, to lie in the sun and purr. A boy who
spoke French as easily as English, and German and Italian a little, and
read mysterious foreign books for pleasure, could not fail to be
impressive to a small home-grown cousin; while the discovery that this
gifted creature had never played cricket in his life, and, though an
excellent rider, had not the smallest wish to hunt, made him at once
sympathetic and puzzling.
‘Uncle Cor hunts,’ Sainty said, ‘and Arthur is dying to, as soon as ever
he is allowed. _I_ can’t, of course; but then I shall never ride any
more. But all the men I know hunt--our neighbours Mr. Hawley at Hawley
Park and Sir Watkin Potkin at the Grange, and everybody, even the
farmers, when they can afford to. I thought all men who rode wanted to
hunt as a matter of course.’
‘Well, _I_ don’t want to,’ Claude answered. ‘I like riding, and the
_manége_, and all that; a gentleman should of course be a good horseman.
But to get up early, and gallop all day across country after a wretched
little vermin, _merci cela ne me dit rien_.’
‘Ah! you’re sorry for the poor fox; I’m glad of that,’ said Sainty. ‘I
can’t help feeling it’s cruel. I think of all it must feel when it hears
the dogs getting nearer, and knows it is out of breath and can’t run
much farther. And yet very good men hunt, even clergymen. None of our
own clergy, because mother doesn’t approve of it; but some of those from
the other side of the county, who, I believe, are quite good men. I
asked Uncle Cor, who is very kind to animals, about it, but he said if
it were not for hunting, the foxes would all have been exterminated long
ago, and he didn’t suppose they’d have liked that any better.’
‘There is certainly something in that,’ replied his cousin gravely; ‘but
I’m afraid I wasn’t considering the matter from the fox’s point of view.
I hate getting tired, and wet, and muddy, and to kill a wretched little
yellow animal doesn’t seem worth so much fuss and trouble. _Voilà tout._
In France, if the foxes eat the poultry, they shoot them; it is much
more simple.’
‘Then what do you like to do in the way of exercise and games and that?’
asked Sainty.
‘I like the lawn tennis fairly well,’ said Claude. ‘It is not such a
good game as the real tennis, the _jeu de paume_. I have played that a
little, but not much; it was too expensive; but lawn tennis is very
well. That, and riding, and fencing have been my principal amusements.
But we have moved about so much; my mother is very restless. We have
never stayed anywhere long enough for me to settle down and really take
to anything seriously.’
‘And cricket?’ asked Sainty, almost under his breath; ‘have you never
played cricket?’
‘_Mon Dieu!_ no. A game that takes three days to play! Those stupid
stepsons of grandmamma took me to see a match at--what do you call
it?--“Lord’s,” when I was in London. It went on all day, and nothing
happened. I yawned myself hoarse. I can never do anything for more than
two hours at a time.’
Here was some one who was not apologetic or ashamed that he could not
play cricket, who spoke of it even with contempt, as of a pastime for
fools. Sainty was dumbfoundered. He wondered what Arthur would say to
such heresy. What Arthur did say when presently he came home, was that
his cousin was a ‘bounder,’ and ‘like a beastly foreigner.’ It was a
curious fact that though Claude acquired a considerable influence for
harm over Arthur, the latter always continued to speak slightingly of
him, and never really liked him; whereas Sainty, who was not influenced
by him in the least, and after the first discoveries of superficial
agreement, found that they differed essentially in their views on almost
every subject, cherished a sneaking regard for his cousin, which died
hard even when Claude had done his best to kill it. Arthur’s mind could
accept nothing that was not traditional; and this surprising outcome of
shady foreign watering-places and Parisian _ateliers_ lay altogether
outside of his traditions.
Their aunt was as much of a surprise to the boys as their cousin. Lady
Eva modified herself considerably, with a view to conciliating her pious
sister-in-law; but in spite of extra tuckers, the first sight of her
when dressed for dinner was a severe shock to Sainty, accustomed to the
modest _décolletages_ of the neighbouring clergywomen who dined from
time to time with Lady Charmington, and the little square of his
mother’s neck, which barely accommodated the large oblong locket of
black enamel, like a baby’s coffin, with which she decorated herself for
these festive occasions.
Luckily for Lady Eva, Lady Charmington was not of the intimate order of
women, and never invaded a guest’s bedroom, or she might have been a
little scandalised by the tone of some of the literature she found
there; but she would probably have been still more bewildered, as she
had kept up scarcely a bowing acquaintance with even ordinary French. ‘I
have read Madame Craven’s _Récit d’une Sœur_,’ she said, ‘but I read few
novels in any language; it does not seem to me very profitable. I was
once recommended Feuillet’s _Histoire de Sibylle_ as quite
unobjectionable, but I found it very papistical. It did _me_ no harm,
but I shouldn’t have given it to any young person to read in whom I was
interested.’
‘I don’t remember to have read either of the _romans_ you mention,’ said
her sister-in-law wearily.
The two women found it increasingly difficult to talk to each other;
neither of them seemed to take the faintest interest in anything which
occupied the other. Lady Eva dwelt much on the disadvantages of her
bringing-up, finding that a subject on which her hostess was much
inclined to be sympathetic, and also on her maternal anxieties about her
boy’s future. She and Claude laughed a great deal at the good lady
behind her back, and smoked a great many cigarettes together in the long
shrubbery, when Sainty was having his daily drive, and Lady Charmington
was busy about her farms. Arthur caught them at it one day, but was
bribed to silence by being lured into participation in the crime.
‘Tell me, Eva,’ said Lady Charmington, when the ladies were sitting
alone together, ‘you are not, I trust, a Catholic, are you?’
‘No; oh no!’ answered her sister-in-law, with perfect truth; though she
might have added that she had at one time been a very devout one, and
had since tried several other _cultes_, of which the last had been some
queer Parisian form of esoteric Buddhism. ‘Oh no! I have seen too much
of Romanism; I have lived abroad too much.’
Lady Charmington was delighted. ‘I have no doubt they tried to pervert
you,’ she said, fairly beaming on this martyr to the faith.
‘Tried!’ repeated Lady Eva with an eloquent gesture.
‘And your boy?’ continued Lady Charmington. ‘He must have been much
exposed in those countries. I trust you have managed to keep his faith
untouched?’
‘I have done my best,’ said Lady Eva meekly. ‘Poor boy! he has had to
knock about the world very young, and to see and hear much that he
should not. I have felt that he had only his poor weak mother to stand
between him and--and--well--all sorts of things. He has not had the
advantages of your dear boys, Sarah--a good home, and peaceful, virtuous
surroundings, nor such a good mother, I’m afraid.’ And Lady Eva cast
down her fine eyes, on the lids of which she had not been able to deny
herself a faint tinge of blue, on learning that Lord Corstorphine was
expected, though she had been trying not to paint at Belchamber. ‘You
know how my own youth was neglected,’ she added presently. ‘But I had
rather not talk of that. After all, the duchess is my mother, and in her
own way has meant to be kind to me, I think. Only, I have dreamt of
something very different for my Claude. Such influences as he finds here
are exactly what I have wished for him, and what I have all too seldom
been able to give him.’
‘Well, now we have got him here, we must try and keep him, and see what
we can do for him,’ said Lady Charmington, much gratified. ‘Have you
thought at all what you are going to do with him? You are not going back
to France?’
‘Oh no! I want to stay in England--_at home_’; and Lady Eva gazed
tenderly at her surroundings in a manner which hinted plainly that an
invitation to consider Belchamber in that light might not be unwelcome.
Lady Charmington, however, was in no hurry to give it, but she debated
in her own mind many plans for the benefit of her nephew. She got but
little encouragement from her brother, who by no means seemed inclined
to take a friendly view of these interlopers.
‘That’s a horrible woman,’ he remarked, with brutal frankness of the
‘belle Morland’; ‘and just the sort I should have thought you would have
hated, Sarah.’
‘I can’t honestly say I exactly like her, Cor,’ his sister answered;
‘but I’m sorry for her and for the boy. Think of her deplorable
bringing-up; think what a mother she has had, and what a husband! The
poor body seems to have some glimmerings of a desire for better things,
if she had any one to take her by the hand; and I must say it’s to her
credit to have kept by her faith, exposed as she has been to the darts
of the enemy. But what touches me most about her is that she evidently
wants to do well by her boy. She’s not a bad mother, whatever else she
may be; and, after all, she’s poor Char’s sister, you know.’
Lady Charmington very seldom delivered herself of so long a speech, and
still more rarely made any allusion to her dead husband. Corstorphine
was surprised and touched. Perhaps some likeness to her brother in Lady
Eva, some trick of speech, or expression that recalled him, had gone to
the not very accessible heart of her sister-in-law, and reinforced the
adroit flattery which had been offered to her pet prejudices. Perhaps
mother’s heart really spoke to mother’s heart in some language he did
not understand; the woman, with all her faults, might have a genuine
wish to do the best for her brat. He could have checked his sister’s
nascent inclination to befriend her husband’s kinsfolk with a word, but
it seemed an ungracious task. After all, Sarah was not too often in a
melting mood, and if she could do something for this wretched lad, whose
best chance was that he was fatherless, why should he seek to restrain
her?
‘I don’t like the boy either,’ he couldn’t help saying; ‘he’s a deal too
smooth and civil spoken. He’s no business to have such finished manners
at thirteen, and be such an accomplished little man of the world. But if
you think you can do anything to prevent his turning out such a
blackguard as his deceased parent, pray do; it’s a Christian act. All I
say is, consider whether he is likely to harm your own boys in any way.’
‘I’ve thought very much of that. Do you suppose it wasn’t my first
thought?’ his sister answered. ‘But one mustn’t let anxiety for one’s
own stand in the way of snatching a brand from the burning. Something
tells me this boy has not been sent here for nothing.’
‘Well,’ said Corstorphine, ‘and what particular form of charity do you
think he was sent for?’
Lady Charmington ignored the scoff. ‘I was thinking whether I mightn’t
offer to send him to Eton, if he could be got in,’ she said; ‘he won’t
be fourteen till November. I know his mother can’t afford it. Then he is
very gentle with Sainty, and the child seems to like him; and I thought
if later on Sir John thought Sainty could go to Eton, it might be a help
to him to have a cousin who had been there a year or two, and could look
after him a little. He can never be quite like other boys, you know.’
Corstorphine smiled grimly. It tickled his not unkindly cynicism to find
his pious sister had so human a thought for her own offspring nestled
under her zeal for her nephew’s soul.
‘Well, I agree,’ he said, ‘that the best chance the youth can have is to
see as little as possible of his mother and grandmother. Perhaps if he
gets well kicked at Eton, and you have him here mostly for his
holidays, he may not turn out so ill. It would take an 18-horse power
profligate to corrupt Sainty, it is true; but how about Arthur?’
‘Arthur doesn’t like Claude; he makes no secret of it; so I don’t think
he can do _him_ any harm. Besides, when the boys are at home I have them
so constantly under my own eye, I should know in a minute; and by the
time Arthur goes to Eton, Claude will be almost leaving.’
‘Or if he turns out badly, he may even have left,’ said Lord
Corstorphine.
So the matter was broached to Lady Eva, who, you may be sure, was
profuse in a mother’s blessings and tears. She was fond of her son in a
way, and honestly wanted the best that was to be had for him in life.
She had been ruefully reflecting that she would never be able to send
him to a good school, except at the cost of decided privations to
herself; and there was no doubt he would be dreadfully in her way in
London.
Lord Corstorphine proposed himself for a Sunday to a great friend among
the Eton masters, and found that his host, having an unexpected vacancy
for the next half, was delighted to do a good turn to any one in whom he
was interested. The duchess, when she heard what was on foot, suddenly
insisted on helping, and promised to pay half of her grandson’s
expenses; and though her contribution was frequently several terms in
arrear, she generally paid up in the end, unless she had been unusually
unlucky at cards.
So, though Lady Eva had failed to extract from her sister-in-law that
general invitation to regard Belchamber as her country-home, which she
had hoped for, she left for town with a comfortable feeling that her
visit had not been wasted. Claude was practically off her hands; he
would go to Eton at no expense to her, and spend most of his holidays at
Belchamber. ‘Dear Belchamber, where poor Char and I spent our happy
childhood, and of which I have always carried the picture in my heart,
through all my wanderings,’ she said to Lady Charmington the day before
her departure.
‘Indeed,’ said Sarah, with a little dry cough, ‘I always understood
from poor Char that he had hardly ever been here as a child. He said,
when we first came here in the old lord’s time, that he hoped his son
wouldn’t feel such a stranger here as he did, when he grew up.’
‘Ah well,’ said Lady Eva hurriedly, ‘my happiest times, almost the
_only_ happy ones of my neglected childhood were here, so I suppose they
bulk large in my memory. I have so little reason to remember most of my
youth with pleasure.’
‘You said, Aunt Eva,’ Arthur burst in, ‘vat you wemembered every corner
of ve place, blindfold, but you soon lost your way even in ve shrubbery,
and you thought One-tree Wood was the other side of the village.’
‘Ah, traitor!’ cried his aunt, playfully embracing him, ‘have you so
little gallantry as to try to convict a lady of making mistakes?’
‘You were a little rash, dear mamma,’ Claude said to her afterwards, ‘in
remembering your happy childhood at Belchamber so well, unless you took
a little more trouble to get up the subject.’ Claude for his part was
quite willing to go to Eton and try how he liked it. Almost the only
principle that had been early instilled into him was that it was always
worth while to accept anything expensive that could be enjoyed at
another person’s expense. It was rather absurd, no doubt, for so
finished a gentleman to go to school; but experience had taught him that
it was always quite easy to get sent away from educational
establishments, if one did not happen to like them; and what was the use
of his precocious knowledge of the world if it did not insure him an
easy victory over such simple people as schoolmasters and schoolboys? As
a matter of fact his astuteness did save him from paying the extreme
penalty for many peccadilloes that would have cut short the career of
less sophisticated youths under ‘Henry’s holy shade.’ His tutor’s
attitude towards him was a curious alternation of attraction and
distrust. But though never cordially liked by either boys or masters, he
was still there, as an overgrown youth in ‘lower division,’ when Sainty
hobbled into the school, a pale, gloomy little boy with an iron boot
and a stick, and was even keeping a precarious footing when Arthur
appeared a year later, and of course took the place by storm with his
frank and friendly manners, hatred of books, love of games, and
perfectly obvious and understandable type of beauty.
Whether Claude really did much for his cousins on their arrival at Eton
may be doubted, but he certainly managed to impress Sainty with the
belief that he had been of incalculable service to him. To Claude,
Sainty meant Belchamber with all its comforts, horses to ride, pheasants
to shoot, good food, luxurious quarters, and presents at Christmas;
things his shelterless childhood had taught him to consider in a way
that boys to whom they had always been matters of course could not
understand. It never occurred to Sainty that his cousin’s attentions
proceeded from anything but a naturally kind heart compassionating the
limitations of a cripple and an invalid. He soon learned to disapprove
of Claude, and to dread his influence over Arthur, and on several
occasions screwed himself up almost with torture to the point of
speaking very plainly to his senior, a thing especially difficult among
boys; and the indulgent good nature with which his strictures were
received, where they might easily have been resented, gave him an
uncomfortable sense of obligation towards one to whom his conscience
forced him to say such disagreeable things in return for uniform
kindness and affection.
‘Dear Sainty,’ Claude would say, ‘you do look so sweet when you’re angry
and solemn, for all the world like an old hen with all her feathers up
in defence of her chick. Of course I’m a wicked unprincipled hawk, but I
promise not to devour your bantling.’ He generally managed to refer
again to these conversations when Arthur was present, knowing that
nothing enraged the younger brother so much as the idea that Sainty, for
whom he always entertained the sublimest contempt, had dared to give
himself the airs of looking after him.
It early dawned on Sainty that a loving heart was not an unmixed
blessing, unless one had the gift of imposing one’s views on the object
of one’s affection. Had he not been fond of Claude, it would be nothing
to him that he disapproved of him; if he did not love Arthur, it would
not have been a daily grief to him to see so clearly what his brother
ought and ought not to do, while he was destitute of the smallest shred
of influence over his actions.
‘You know, dear,’ Claude said to him once, ‘there is nothing so easy as
to get rid of me. I am horribly _mal vu_ by the authorities. If tutor
hadn’t stuck up for me like a brick, I should have been sacked long ago;
he has told me pretty plainly that if there are any more rows he shall
say he thinks they had better take me away. A hint to him that I am
corrupting his pet lamb, and a word to your mother, and neither Eton nor
Belchamber will be troubled with me much longer.’
Such a speech hurt Sainty like a lash. ‘Don’t you see,’ he cried, ‘that
it is just the knowledge of what you say that makes it impossible for me
to do anything? I am helpless.’
See? Of course Claude saw; no one better. ‘Dear generous old boy!’ he
said, with one of his sudden pretty changes of manner, throwing an arm
lightly round his cousin’s shoulder; ‘who should know what an angel you
are, so well as your poor scamp of a cousin, who owes everything to
you?’
‘Don’t,’ Sainty said, wincing; ‘you do things you know I hate, and teach
Arthur to do them, and then you manage to make me feel a brute, and put
me in the wrong.’
Claude shrugged his shoulders, almost the last of his little foreign
tricks of manner that he had not lost at Eton. ‘You are impossible, dear
Saint,’ he said, and went his way, quite secure that what he had let
fall of the ease with which his cousin could get rid of him would
effectually tie his hands.
The day came, however, when without any intervention of a schoolfellow,
the measure of Claude Morland’s ill-fame overflowed, and the College of
the Blessed Mary numbered him no longer among her children.
That summer half was ‘long remembered’ at Eton (almost eighteen months)
for what Claude called a ‘great massacre of the innocents.’ We are not
concerned at this distance of time to inquire into the nature of this
old story. As usual, it was not the most guilty who were sent away;
there were angry mothers in many counties of England who declared their
darlings had been most unjustly used, and that ‘there was a boy called
Morland who was much worse than poor Tom, Dick, or Harry, who had only
had to leave at the end of the half, and with no blame attached to him.’
‘Claude was more or less mixed up in rather a painful affair,’ his tutor
wrote to Lord Corstorphine. ‘He did not know how much he was to blame,
but it would be best for the boy himself if his friends were to remove
him. Personally he liked him, but ...’; and Sainty tried hard not to
feel a certain relief at his cousin’s departure. He atoned for this
unchristian want of sympathy by making the best of the matter to his
mother and guardian, and begging that it should make no difference in
the culprit’s footing at Belchamber. What he never mentioned at home was
that Arthur had come very near being implicated, and that he, Sainty,
had strained his conscience to the utmost, in solemnly pledging his word
to his tutor for his brother’s innocence. Arthur accepted this as he did
everything else from Sainty. ‘What is vere to make a fuss about?’ he
said. ‘I’d have done as much for you, or for vat matter, for any over
chap who wasn’t my bwover. You jaw about your conscience, and not being
sure, and tell me to see what I’ve made you do. I don’t call that lying.
Of course, if a fellow’s asked point-blank if anover fellow’s done a
fing, he’s _got_ to say he hasn’t. Don’t be such a pwig.’
Sainty did not stay very long at Eton himself. In spite of constant
staying out, and much sick-leave, he really was not strong enough for
the life there; nor was it a great grief to him to go. He did not make
friends easily; his shy reserved manner, his studious habits, and
inability for athletics, not less than his austerely high standard of
ethics which his minor found so unnecessary, were not calculated to make
him popular with his schoolfellows; and he resented their familiar
abbreviation of his title into ‘Belcher.’ He stayed long enough to see
Arthur launched on a course of prosperity, and in a fair way to become a
‘swell,’ and then sang his _Nunc dimittis_. Arthur remained, alone of
the three, and flourished like a green bay-tree. He did just enough work
to get through his various examinations with a little cribbing, and
found plenty of people ready to do all the rest for him. He was quite
selfish, self-indulgent, easy-going, good-natured, and happy, and was as
popular with the masters as with the boys. The elastic code of schoolboy
honour fitted him like a glove, and he had the makings in him of a
first-rate cricketer.