“_The recognition of his rights therefore, the justice he requires of
our hands or our thoughts, is the recognition of that which the person,
in his inmost nature, really is; and as sympathy alone can discover that
which really is in matters of feeling and thought, true justice is in
its essence a finer knowledge through love._”
“_Appreciations,_” Walter Pater.
|Six years after that memorable August day, Ralph and Evereld might
have been seen on the tennis ground attached to the pretty house near
Redvale, which Sir Matthew was pleased to call his “little country
cottage.”
It was decidedly one of those cottages of gentility which once caused
the devil to grin. But in spite of that it was a very charming place.
Its windows commanded an exquisite view over the hills and woods of one
of the southern counties, and its gardens were the admiration of the
whole neighbourhood. The tennis-lawn lay to the left of the house in
a cosy nook of its own, and there was no one to see the vigorous game
which the two were playing. This was a pity, for the play was skilful
and dainty to watch, and the players themselves were worth looking at.
Ralph, who had been a remarkably small boy, was never likely, as
Geraghty expressed it, to be “six foot long and broad,” but he had
developed into a well-proportioned, healthy-looking fellow, and still
retained his open, boyish face, expressive brown eyes, and thick, wavy
brown hair. Evereld was even less changed, she was still very small and
young for her age; and although she was fast approaching her eighteenth
birthday she wore the sort of nondescript dress which girls often wear
during their last year in the schoolroom, her skirt revealing a pair of
pretty ankles, and her hair still hanging down her back.
The contest was an exciting one, but it ended in a victory for Ralph,
whose greater strength usually conquered.
“I am heavily handicapped,” said Evereld, throwing up her racket with a
laugh. “We’ll borrow the vicar’s cassock and the Lord Chancellor’s wig
and you shall play a set in them and see if I don’t beat you then!”
“Come and rest,” said Ralph, strolling towards the little shady arbour
at the side of the lawn. “The sun is grilling.”
“You would find it worse if you had all this weight to endure,” said
Evereld, shaking back the cloud of nut-brown hair which hung over her
shoulders. “I shall take to plaiting it up, then at least one would be
cool.”
“No, don’t!” protested Ralph. “You’ll never look half as nice
afterwards. And besides, when girls do up their hair they always leave
off being natural and get grown-up and horrid, and can’t talk sense to a
fellow.”
“My hair has nothing to do with being natural,” said Evereld, fanning
herself with a big fern. “How could I help being natural with you, when
we have been together all this long time? How I do wish I were a boy and
might have gone in for the Indian Civil, too. By-the-by, Ralph, is that
to-day’s paper? Is there any news about your exam?”
“They sent the wrong paper,” said Ralph taking it up. “See, it’s last
night’s _Evening Standard_ instead of this morning’s; they have been
taking a nap down at the bookstall. I wonder if there really is anything
in at last. It seems hard lines to keep us on tenterhooks from the 1st
June till August.”
“I don’t believe you have worried about it. Your head was full of those
private theatricals the moment the exam. was over. How well they went
off! I never saw Sir Matthew so nice to you. He really did for once
appreciate you.”
“That was because other people praised me” said Ralph. “He would never
have said one word of his own accord. You’ll never find him committing
himself before he knows whether he will be swimming with the stream.”
“Ralph, do you know I think you are growing rather hard. I hate to hear
you say things like that about Sir Matthew. If Fraulein were here she
would have a hundred instances of his kindness to tell us.”
“Yes she would,” owned Ralph. “She has been our good angel all these
years. Worse luck to that old professor who married her and left us to
ourselves. Why, Evereld, just look at it in that way. What should
you and I have been like if all this time we had only had the sort of
indifferent cold charity which the Mactavishes have given us? Oh, I know
there has been money spent on me: do you think I have ever been allowed
to forget that for a moment? But Sir Matthew spoils with one hand the
good he does with the other. Thank heaven, I shall soon be on my own
hook. I wonder what life out in India will be like--and what the chances
of getting any cricket are?”
Evereld fell to talking of happy reminiscences of Simla, and they were
planning all manner of impossible arrangements for the future, in which
they fondly imagined their present brotherly and sisterly relations
would be maintained, when Bridget suddenly appeared upon the scene.
“Miss Evereld,” she exclaimed, “you’d best be coming in to change your
frock, my dear. Sir Matthew has come down without any warning from
London. He’s in the library, Mr. Ralph and they did tell me he was
askin’ for you. Geraghty he just passed me the word that he thought Sir
Matthew was troubled in his mind about some little matter.”
Ralph flushed.
“You see now,” he exclaimed, turning to Evereld, “if I haven’t gone and
failed in that wretched exam! What on earth shall I do if I have?”
“Why, you will go in for it again next year,” said Evereld
philosophically. “But who says you have failed? It may be nothing to
do with the exam. Besides, you know that your coach and Professor
Rosenwald and Fraulein--I mean Frau Rosenwald--all thought you were
safe to pass.”
“I know I had worked hard,” said Ralph. “Well, let me go and hear the
worst at once.”
“Don’t despair so soon. As for me, I believe you have passed, and that
it is only some business matter that’s worrying Sir Matthew. Good
luck to you. Don’t stay long in the library. I shall be dressed in ten
minutes.”
She waved her hand gaily and ran upstairs, while Ralph, with a great
dread hanging over him, went to the library.
With other people he was invariably cheerful and talkative, but with Sir
Matthew he was never his best self. To begin with, he was always ill
at ease, and by a sort of fate he seemed destined to say and do exactly
what would annoy his patron. If he was silent, Sir Matthew was in the
habit of rating him for his dulness. If he laughed and talked, he was
ordered not to make so much noise. If he hazarded an opinion he was sure
to meet with a snub, and at all times and seasons he was hedged in by
significant reminders that he was eating the bread of charity. It was
well for him that he had seen comparatively little of the Mactavishes,
thanks to his life at Winchester and to his friendship with Evereld and
her governess; but he had seen enough to do him considerable harm and
to plant seeds of pride, and hardness, and distrust of humanity in his
heart.
Sir Matthew was sitting at his bureau. He glanced up as the door opened,
bestowed a curt nod upon Ralph and went on writing in silence.
“They told me you were inquiring for me,” said Ralph nervously, noting
at once the storm signals in Sir Matthew’s face.
“I did send for you,” said the master of the house grimly, as he signed
his name with two flourishing M’s, and methodically folded, directed and
stamped his dispatch.
Ralph, horribly chafed by the manner of his reception and by the
suspense, turned to the window and took up a newspaper which was lying
near it.
“Put that down,” thundered Sir Matthew, as though he had been ordering a
child of four years old.
“Sir?” said Ralph, in angry astonishment.
“Do you think I don’t understand your game,” said Sir Matthew. “You
are pretending to look for news of your examination when all the time
you perfectly well know that you have failed.”
“Failed!” cried Ralph turning pale, and realising how little he had
believed in failure when he had talked of the possibility with Evereld.
“Who says I have failed? Where are the lists?”
He snatched at the paper again, neither heeding Sir Matthew’s orders nor
his scoffing laugh. Here was the list of the successful candidates, and
with eager eyes he looked down it. The name of Denmead was not there.
Sir Matthew silently watched his expression of bewildered despair, but
though it would have appealed to some men it did not appeal to him.
“Now that the newspaper corroborates what I told you, perhaps you
believe my word,” he said sarcastically.
“I beg your pardon,” said
Ralph, “I did not mean to doubt you--but the shock------”
“Now my good fellow, you may as well be silent, the less said about a
shock the better; you know perfectly well that you never deserved to
pass that examination. You had idled away your time over cricket and
theatricals, and now you have to face the consequences.”
“You are the first person to say that,” said Ralph, resentfully. “They
all told me I had an excellent chance and was well prepared.”
“The examiners, however, thought differently,” said Sir Matthew; “your
work was miserable. I have this very day been making special inquiries
into the matter, that I may not judge you unfairly. You have not only
failed, but failed ignominiously. Don’t fidget about while I am talking
to you; sit down and listen to me for I have much to say.”
Ralph forced himself to obey in silence.
“I am perfectly well aware,” resumed Sir Matthew, “that nowadays young
men think nothing of failing, that they go in for an examination time
after time with light hearts while their unfortunate fathers have to pay
the piper. You were not in a position to behave in that fashion. And
you would have shown, I think, a finer sense of honour if you had worked
well.”
“I did work,” said Ralph emphatically. “If you------”
Sir Matthew raised his long hand and waved it downwards in a silencing
manner that was peculiarly his own.
“I say nothing,” he continued, in his cool, measured tone, “as to what
I might have expected after the large sum I have thrown away on your
schooling at Winchester; I say nothing as to the three months in Germany
and the special coach I provided for you; I say nothing of the manner
in which I took you at once into my own house when there was no one to
stand by you; I say nothing as to the fatherly care I have bestowed on
you all these----”
He broke off abruptly, for Ralph, with the look of one goaded past
bearing, had sprung to his feet.
“No,” he cried passionately, “at least that word you shall not use:
there was never anything fatherly about you. All those other things that
you cast in my teeth though you say you won’t mention them--they are
true enough, and I have tried to be grateful--I--” he half choked in
the desperate struggle between his pride and a certain sense of courtesy
which still clung to him--“I will try always to be grateful.” He strode
across the room to the window, panting for air. A chuckle escaped Sir
Matthew.
“You were always a good hand at acting,” he remarked, “but I shall be
obliged if you will come down from your high horse and remember that I
am talking about a business arrangement. Don’t waste my time, but listen
to what I have to say to you.”
Ralph paced back again to the hearthrug and stood there, looking
steadily down at his patron. It somehow seemed as if in those few
moments he had passed from boyhood altogether, even Sir Matthew noted
the change in his look and bearing. “The only thing,” he resumed, “in
which I ever saw you really exert yourself was in that play at the
end of the season. I quite admit that you learnt the part of _Charles
Surface_ at very short notice and that you acted it far better than
any amateur I ever had the pain of watching. But to play a part in ‘The
School for Scandal’ is one thing, and to be fit to play your part in
life is another. You will never, I am convinced, be sharp enough for the
Indian Civil Service, I shall not permit you to go in again for it next
year. I have already wasted too much upon you and shall not throw good
money after bad. That’s always a mistake.”
Ralph could not calmly stand by and hear his whole future overturned
without a word; he broke in eagerly, perhaps rashly. “Yet many have
failed the first time and afterwards turned out well,” he pleaded. “The
standard of age, too, is likely to be raised they say. I would work my
hardest. If you will let me try again----” But once more Sir Matthew
gave that expressive downward wave of the hand.
“No,” he said peremptorily, “You have had your chance and lost it.
Still, I am loth to turn my back altogether on an old friend’s son, and
for my own satisfaction I offer you one more opportunity. I will make a
parson of you. Do you remember that snug little vicarage up in the north
of England where last year we went to call on a Mr. Crosbie? Years
ago the Mactavishes owned the living; it had been in the family for
generations. My father at a time when he was pressed for money sold it
to old Crosbie. I have long wished to have the property again, and only
to-day Crosbie happened to be in town and I got him to promise me that
if I bought the living he would undertake to retire in four years. You had
better not tell it in Gath, for of course the promise to retire is a
strictly private matter, but for the rest it’s all legal enough. Next
month you will be twenty. In four years you could be ordained priest,
and I will undertake to see you through your training and to put you
into this living. It’s three hundred and a house; you could be happy
enough up there, and for your father’s sake I am willing to do as much
as that for you.”
There was something so artificial in those last words that Ralph, whose
anger had been rising every moment, now broke forth indignantly.
“Is it for his sake that you put before me a temptation of this sort?
You surely know--you must know--that my father would never have accepted
a living obtained in that way. Had you offered it him, and had it been
worth ten times the money, he would not have touched it with a pair of
tongs. Why, the thing is rank simony!”
“You receive offers of help in a somewhat curious fashion, young man,”
said Sir Matthew with a sneer. “But in spite of that I still think you
are very well cut out for a parson. Your dramatic instincts and your
good voice would fit you well enough for the Church, and you are already
able, I perceive, to preach to your elders and betters.”
Ralph winced at the sarcasm, but he caught hold of the weak point in his
opponent’s argument.
“No,” he said, emphatically, “I am not fit for the work of a clergyman.
The only thing that can fit a man for that is a distinct call from God.
You are tempting me to go in for the loaves and fishes, and you dare
to say that you do this for my father’s sake--my father, who would have
starved first!”
“Perhaps he would,” said Sir Matthew coldly. “He was, as all his friends
knew, an unpractical fool. You needn’t look as if you could kill me. He
had excellent abilities but no power of pushing his way, and he left you
a beggar in consequence, proving, according to scripture, that as he had
neglected to secure future provision for his family he had denied the
faith and was worse than an infidel. Now, to return to business; are you
going to accept this offer of mine, or do you intend to be a pig-headed
idiot, and affect to be calling a mere matter of business simony?”
Ralph’s eyes lighted up.
“I mean,” he said quietly, “to be true to my father’s ideals.”
Sir Matthew broke into a discordant laugh.
“Did his precious ideals feed you and clothe you and send you to
Winchester? Don’t you know by his own confession that he had mismanaged
his affairs?”
“I know,” said Ralph indignantly, “that, whatever his faults, he was at
least an honest man.”
He had meant no insinuation whatever, but the words galled his companion
terribly. Sir Matthew rose to his feet in a towering passion.
“You impertinent, ungrateful fellow, do you dare to insult me in my own
house? Go, sir, get out of my sight! I have had enough of you. Let us
see now how your ideals will support you! Leave my house and never set
foot in it again!”
Ralph, too angry and sore to realise all that the words meant, turned
without a word and left the library.