“MR. LEWIS CLARE”
Twice in each week, on Sunday and Wednesday, Giovanna dined at the
Chase. It was a standing invitation which included Mrs. Tew, while
Everard Lisle made a frequent fifth at the table. Luigi was there as a
matter of course.
With his acknowledgment of his grandson and his daughter-in-law a fresh
element had been imported into Sir Gilbert’s life; but settled habits
had too strong a hold upon him, and the groove in which he habitually
moved had been trodden by him for too many years to allow of much
deviation on his part, even under circumstances so exceptional as those
the evolution of which we have thus far followed.
The fact of Luigi being now domiciled at the Chase in no way influenced
or affected the position of Everard Lisle. Seeing that his grandson
could neither play chess nor backgammon, Sir Gilbert was still as much
dependent on Lisle as before for his after-dinner game, which seemed to
have now become one of the settled institutions of his life.
If between Everard and Luigi there was no particular show of
cordiality, as there certainly was not, there was at least a veneer of
friendliness which, as is so often the case, served as a very fair
substitute for the real article. Indeed, Lisle on his part had no
desire to be on other than friendly terms with his employer’s grandson;
but Luigi would gladly have given a helping hand, could he have seen
his way to do so, in causing the other to be sent about his business;
or have taken steps to poison his grandfather’s mind against him, had
he not felt that the game was too dangerous a one to be entered upon
while his own footing at the Chase had about it such elements of
instability. That he was secretly jealous of Everard’s influence over
Sir Gilbert and of the latter’s undisguised liking for him, hardly
needs to be recorded; but he had wit enough to allow nothing of it to
be seen on the surface; besides which, both his time and his thoughts
were just then occupied with matters which concerned him far more
nearly.
As may, or may not, be borne in mind by the reader, Sir Gilbert, at a
certain memorable interview, intimated that, in his opinion, it was not
too late for Luigi to apply himself to the acquisition of certain of
those accomplishments which he, the Baronet, held to be essential to
the education of a gentleman. Thus it came to pass that Luigi had not
been more than a week at the Chase before he found himself put into the
hands of the Rev. Eldred Merton, the vicar of St. Michael’s, who had
been known in his time as a successful “coach,” with a view of having
at least a smattering of classical lore instilled into him.
Then for Luigi began a period of purgatory, such as in his after-life
he never looked back to without a shudder. He was utterly devoid of
linguistic gifts, in any case as far as the dead languages were
concerned, and before long he became the despair of his tutor; who,
however, would not acknowledge himself beaten, for one reason, perhaps,
because, being a married man with a numerous family, Sir Gilbert’s
guineas were very acceptable to him. So, four mornings in each week saw
Luigi at the vicarage, and when his two hours’ lesson had come to an
end, it would have been hard to say whether pupil or tutor was the more
rejoiced of the two.
But there was another series of lessons which Luigi was compelled by
his grandfather to undergo, and which to him were a source of torture
almost as keen, although different in kind, as that caused him by his
classical studies. The lessons in question were those necessitated by
the art of learning to ride. As it happened, Luigi had never been on
horseback in his life, nor would he ever of his own free will have
aspired to that “bad eminence.” Both morally and physically he was an
arrant coward, and, from his point of view, everyone who bestrode a
horse ran a certain amount of risk to life and limb, which, for his
part, he would very gladly have eschewed had it been in his power to do
so. But his grandfather’s orders were imperative, and there was nothing
for him but to obey with the best grace possible. So, there being no
such thing as a riding-school at Mapleford, Mr. Marsh from the
livery-stables came over to the Chase on three afternoons in each week
“in order to put the young squire through his paces,” as he termed it.
Never, as later on he openly avowed, had he had a pupil who made such
slow progress and did him so little credit. “He’s a regular funker,
that’s what he is,” he would tell his wife in confidence. “He has no
more pluck than a chicken. Not a bit like his father used to be at his
age. Why, before Master Alec was eighteen, there was hardly a fence or
a gate in the county that he hadn’t topped. This chap will never top
one as long as he lives.”
Truth to tell, Luigi never succeeded in getting the better of the
nervousness which invariably assailed him the moment he found himself
astride a horse’s back. After he had taken his twentieth lesson his
timidity was as extreme as when he took his first. He was a coward by
nature, and it was impossible for him to be anything else.
Being the kind of young man he was, that he should be terribly bored by
the limitations of his life at the Chase goes without saying. To begin
with, he hated the country. He missed his London acquaintances and the
free-and-easy life to which he had been used in the metropolis. Then
again, as the days and weeks went by, he never quite succeeded in
feeling at his ease when in the presence of Sir Gilbert, nor even of
demeaning himself as if he were. When they were together, it seemed as
though he were unable to rid himself of a vivid sense of the guilty
part he was playing, such as rarely troubled his easy-going conscience
at other times. His manner was timid and nervous; indeed, whenever the
Baronet betrayed an extra touch of irritability, it might almost be
termed servile. He had somewhat the air of a cur who is conscious that
the lash may come down on him at any moment.
But, by-and-by, when he perceived that it was possible to do so without
much risk of detection, he began, on two or three afternoons a week, to
find his way to the _King’s Head_ at Mapleford (being always careful to
get back to the Chase in time for dinner), where was a billiard-room
which was frequented by all the fast young men of the little town.
There Luigi felt himself thoroughly at home; there his only happy hours
were spent. He could handle a cue with some degree of proficiency, and,
as the grandson of Sir Gilbert Clare and the prospective owner of
Withington Chase, he took a certain social precedence over the other
frequenters of the room. For the first time in his life he found
himself flattered and made much of, and the sensation was an eminently
agreeable one. But such company cannot be indulged in without a certain
amount of expense, and it was a necessity of the position which had
been so ungrudgingly accorded him that Luigi should spend his money
with an air of careless liberality which was far from being native to
him. Thus it fell out that what remained of the baronet’s fifty pounds,
after Captain Verinder had borrowed five of it, and he had equipped
himself with a limited supply of those articles which the latter
assured him were absolutely indispensable to his new position, began,
when once he had taken to frequenting the _King’s Head_, to melt away
in a quite alarming fashion. As a consequence, he was presently
compelled to apply to Giovanna for a loan of ten pounds, which,
however, she refused to let him have till he had given her his solemn
promise to repay her out of Sir Gilbert’s next cheque.
At this time Luigi saw very little of Captain Verinder, or rather, the
latter saw very little of him, although he more than once sent word
through Giovanna that if it were not convenient for his nephew to meet
him at Maylings, he had but to name his own time and place and the
Captain would not fail to be there. But Luigi was never without an
excuse of some kind for not making an appointment, and, indeed,
exhibited a quite unaccountable reluctance to indulge in the pleasure
of a _tête-a-tête_ with his uncle. What he told himself was, that he
was his own master now, at least as far as Verinder was concerned, and
wasn’t going to let himself be “preached at” by anybody: and that the
Captain would preach at him, as he termed it, whenever they should come
together, he felt fully assured. Besides, he had already discovered
that his respected relative was possessed of a quite abnormal faculty
for borrowing money, and having himself such a limited supply of that
commodity, he was affectionately unwilling to subject his uncle to the
pain of a refusal.
“Ungrateful hound!” exclaimed the Captain one day in a rage to
Giovanna. “Does he dream, after all I have done for him, that he is at
liberty to cast me off like an old glove? I will teach him a different
lesson from that before he is much older.”