Ronald.
When Ronald Kilsyth was little more than four years old his nurses
said he was "so odd;" a phrase which stuck by him through life. As a
child his oddity consisted in his curious gravity and preoccupation,
his insensibility to amusement, his dislike of companionship, his love
of solitude, his old-fashioned thoughts and manner and habits. He had
a dogged honesty which prevented him from using the smallest deception
in any way, which prevented him from ever prevaricating or telling
those small fibs which are made so much of in the child, but to which
he looks back as trivial sins indeed when compared with the duplicity
of his after-life,--which rendered him obnoxious even to the children
whom he met as playfellows in the square-garden, and who found it
impossible to get on with young Kilsyth on account of the rigidity of
his morals, displeasing to them even at their tender years. When a
delicious _guetapens_, made of string stretched from tree to tree, had
been, with great consumption of time and trouble, prepared for the
downfall of the old gardener; and when the youthful conspirators were
all laid up in ambush behind the Portugal laurels, waiting to see the
old man, plodding round with rake and leaf-basket in the early dusk of
the autumnal evening, fall headlong over the snare,--it was provoking
to see little Ronald Kilsyth, in his gray kilt, step out and go up to
the old man and show him the pitfall, and assist him in removing it.
The conspirators were highly incensed at this treachery, as they
called it, and would have sent Ronald then and there to Coventry,--not
that that would have distressed him much,--had it not been for his
magnanimity in refusing, even when under pressure, to give up the
names of those in the plot. But as in this, so in everything else; and
the little frequenters of the square soon found Ronald Kilsyth "too
good" for them, and were by no means anxious to secure his
companionship in their sports.
At Eton, whither he was sent so soon as he arrived at the proper age,
he very shortly obtained the same character. Pursuing the strict path
of duty,--industrious, punctual, and regular, with very fair
abilities, and scrupulously making the most of them,--he never lost an
opportunity and never made a friend. All that was good of him his
masters always said; but they stopped there; they never said anything
that was kind. In school they could not help respecting him; out of
school they would as soon have thought of making Ronald Kilsyth their
companion as of taking _Hind's Algebra_ for pleasant reading. And it
was the same with his schoolfellows. They talked of his steadiness and
of his hard-working with pride, as reflecting on themselves and the
whole school. They speculated as to what he would do in the future,
and how he would show that the stories that had been told about Eton
were all lies, don't you know? and how Kilsyth would go up to
Cambridge, and show them what the best public school--the only school
for English gentlemen, you know--could do; and _Floreat Etona_, and
all that kind of thing, old fellow. But Ronald Kilsyth, during the
whole of his Eton pupilage, never had a chum--never knew what it was
to share a confidence, add to a pleasure, or lighten a grief. Did he
feel this? Perhaps more acutely than could have been imagined; but
being, as he was, proud, shy, sensitive, and above all queer, he took
care that no one knew what his feelings were, or whether he had any at
all on the subject.
Queer! that was the word by which they called him at Eton, and
which, after all, expressed his disposition better than any other.
Strong-minded, clear-headed, generous, and brave, with an outer coating
of pride, shyness, reserve, and a mixture of all which passed current
for _hauteur_. With a strong contempt for nearly everything in which
his contemporaries found pleasure,--save in the excess of exercise, as
that he thoroughly understood and appreciated,--and with a wearying
desire to find pleasure for himself; with an impulse to exertion and
work, accountable to himself only on the score of duty, but having no
definite end or aim; with a restless longing to make his escape from
the thraldom of conventionality, and rush off and do something
somewhere far away from the haunts of men. With all the morbidness of
the hero of _Locksley Hall_, without the excuse of having been jilted,
and without any of the experience of that sweetly modulated cynic,
Ronald Kilsyth, obeying his father's wish, and thereby again following
the paths of duty, was gazetted to the Life-Guards--the exact position
for a young gentleman in his condition.
The donning of a scarlet tunic instead of a round jacket, and the
substitution of a helmet for a pot-hat, made very little difference in
Ronald. Several of his brother officers had known him personally at
Eton, so that the character he had obtained there preceded him,
inspiring a wholesome awe of him before he appeared on the scene; and
he had not been two days in barracks before he was voted a prig and a
bore. There was no sympathy between the dry, pedantic, rough young
Scotsman and those jolly genial youths. His hard, dry, handsome
clean-cut face, with its cold gray eyes, thin aquiline nose, and tight
lips, cast a gloom over the cheery mess-table around which they sat;
their jovial beaming smiles, and curling moustaches, and glittering
shirt-studs reflected in the silver _épergne_, with its outposts of
mounted sentries and its pleasant mingling of feasting and frays at the
Temple of Mars and the London Tavern. His grim presence robbed many a
pleasant story of its point, which indeed, in deference to him, had to
be softened down or given with bated breath. The young fellows--no
younger than him in years, but with, O, such an enormous gulf between
them as regards the real elasticity and charm of youth--were afraid of
him, and from fear sprung dislike. They had not much fear of their
elders, these youths of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous modesty.
They had a wholesome awe, tempering their hearty love, of Colonel
Jefferson; but less on account of the strictness of his discipline and
of a certain _noli-me-tangere_ expression towards those whom he did
not specially favour, than on account of his age; and as for the
jolly old Major, who had been in the regiment for ever so many
years,--for him they had neither fear nor respect; and when he was in
command--which befell him during the cheerful interval between July and
December--the lads did as they liked.
But they could not get on with Ronald Kilsyth; and though they
tolerated him quietly for the sake of his people, they never could be
induced to regard him with anything like the fraternal good fellowship
which they entertained towards each other. As it had been at Eton, so
it was at Knightsbridge, at Windsor, in Albany-street, in all those
charming quarters where the Household Cavalry spend their time for
their own and their country's advantage. Ronald Kilsyth was respected
by all, loved by none. Charley Jefferson himself, fascinated as he was
by Ronald's devotion to the mysteries of drill and by all the young
man's unswerving attention to his regimental duties--qualities which
weighed immensely with the martinet Colonel--had been heard to
confess, with a prolonged twirl at his grizzled moustache, that
"Kilsyth was a d--d hard nut to crack,"--an enigmatic remark which,
from so plain a speaker as the Colonel, meant volumes. The Major, whom
Ronald, under strong provocation, had once designated a "tipsy old
atheist," had, in the absence of his enemy and under the influence of
two-thirds of a bottle of brandy, retorted in terms which were held to
justify both Ronald's epithets; and the men had a very low opinion of
him, who at the time of writing was senior lieutenant of the regiment.
He had no sympathy with the men, no care for them; he would have liked
to have made them more domestic, less inclined for the public-house
and the music-hall; he would have subscribed to reading-rooms, to
institutes, to anything for their mental improvement; but he never
thought of giving them a kind word or an encouraging speech; and they
much preferred Cornet Bosky--who cursed them roundly for their
talking, for their silence, for their going too fast, for their going
too slow, for their anything in fact, on those horrible mornings when
he happened to be in charge of them exercising their horses, but who
off duty always had a kindly word, an open purse at their service--to
the senior Lieutenant, who never used a bad expression, and who, as
they confessed, was, after the Colonel, the best soldier in the
regiment.
It was like going into a different world to leave the smoky
atmosphere, the wild disorder and reckless confusion of most of the
other rooms in barracks, and go into Ronald Kilsyth's trim orderly
apartment. Instead of tables ringed with stains of long-since-emptied
tumblers, and littered with yellow-paper-covered French novels, torn
playbills, old gloves, letters, unpaid bills, opera-glasses, pipes,
shreds of tobacco, heaps of cigar-ash, rolls of comic songs, trophies
from knock'em-downs at race-courses, empty soda-water bottles,
scattered packs of cards, and suchlike examples of free living--to
find perfect order and decorum; the walls covered with movable
bookcases filled with valuable books, Raphael Morghen prints, proofs
before letters after the best modern artists, and charming bits of
water-colour sketches, instead of coloured daubs of French _écuyères_
and _lionnes_ of the Quartier Breda, photographs of Roman temple or
Pompeian excavation, and Venetian glass and delicate eggshell china,
and Chinese carving, and Indian beadwork. They used to look round at
these things in wonder, the other young fellows of the regiment, when
they penetrated into Ronald's room, and point to the pictures and ask
who "that queer old party was," and depreciate the furniture by
inquiring "what was that old rubbish?" They could not understand his
friends either; men asked to the mess by them or seen in their rooms
were generally well known in the Household Brigade, other officers in
the Blues or the Foot Regiments, or idlers and dawdlers with nothing
to do, men in the Treasury or Foreign Office, people whom they were
safe to meet in society at least every other night in the season. But
Ronald Kilsyth's guests were of a different stamp. Sometimes he
brought Wrencher the novelist or Scumble the Royal Academician to
dinner; and the fellows who knew the works of both made much of the
guests and did them due honour; but when occasionally they had to
receive Jack Flokes the journalist, who looked on washing as an
original sin, or Dick Tinto the painter, who regarded a dirty brown
velvet shooting-coat as the proper costume for the evening, or
Klavierspieler the pianist, a fat dirty German in spectacles, who made
a perfect Indian juggler of himself in trying to swallow his knife
during dinner--they were scarcely so much gratified. Innate
gentlemanliness and entire good-breeding made them receive the
gentlemen with every outward sign of hospitality; but afterwards,
round the solemn council fire in the little mess-room and midst deep
clouds of tobacco-smoke, they delivered a verdict anything but
complimentary either to guest or host.
What possessed him? That was what they could not understand. Nicest
people in the world, sir! father, dear delightful jolly old fellow,
give you his heart's blood if you wanted it--but you don't want
it, so gives the best glass ofessed claret in London; and at home--at
Kilsyth--'gad, you can't conceive it; no country-house to be named in
the same breath with it. Perfect shooting and all that kind of thing,
and thoroughly your own master, by Jove! do just as you like, I mean
to say, and have everything you want, don't you know! Lady Muriel
quite charming; holding her own, don't you know, with all the younger
women in point of attractiveness and that sort of thing, and yet
respected and looked up to, and the best mistress of a house possible.
And Miss Kilsyth, Madeleine, deuced nice little girl; very pretty, and
no nonsense about her; meant for some big fish! Well, yes, suppose so;
but meantime extremely pleasant and chatty, and sings nice little
songs and _valses_ splendidly, and all that kind of thing. That was
what they said of the Kilsyth _ménage_ in the Household Brigade, in
which pleasant joyous assemblage of gallant freethinkers it would have
been difficult to point out one who would not have been delighted at
an autumn visit to Kilsyth. Ah! what we believe and that we know! The
humorous articles of the comic writers, the humorous sketches of the
comic artists, lead us to think that the gentlemen officers of the
regiments specially accredited for London service are, in the main,
good-looking, handsome dolts, who pull their moustaches, eliminate the
"r's" from their speech, and are but the nearest removes from the
inmates of Hanwell Asylum. But a very small experience will serve to
remove this impression, and will lead one to know that the reading and
appreciation of character is nowhere more aptly read and more shrewdly
hit upon than in the barrack-rooms of Knightsbridge or the Regent's
Park.
People who knew, or thought they knew, Ronald Kilsyth, declared
that he was solitary and oysterlike, self-contained, and caring for no
one but himself. They were wrong. Ronald had strong home affections.
He loved and reverenced his father more than any one in the world. He
saw plainly enough the few shortcomings--the want of modern education,
the excessive love of sport, the natural indolence of his disposition,
and the intense desire to shirk all the responsibilities of his
position, and to shift the discharge of them on to some one else. But
equally he saw his father's warm-heartedness, honour, and chivalry;
his unselfishness, his disposition to look upon the bright side of all
that happened, his cheery _bonhomie_, and his unfailing good temper.
Lady Muriel he regarded with feelings of the highest respect--respect
which he had often tried to turn into affection, but had tried in
vain. With a woman's quickness, Lady Muriel had seen at a glance, on
her first entering the Kilsyth family, thamotivst her hardest task would be
to win over her stepson, and she had laid herself out for that victory
with really far more care and pains than she had taken to captivate
his father. With great natural shrewdness, quickened by worldly
experience, Lady Muriel very shortly made herself mistress of Ronald
Kilsyth's character, and laid her plans accordingly. Never was shaft
more truly shot, never was mine more ingeniously laid. Ronald Kilsyth,
boy as he was at the time of his father's second marriage, had
scarcely had three interviews with his stepmother before she found a
corroboration of the fact which had so often whispered itself in his
own bosom, that he, and he alone, was the guiding spirit of the
family; that he had knowledge and experience beyond his years; and
that if she, Lady Muriel, only got him, Ronald, to cooperate with
her, everything would be smooth, and between them the felicity and
well-being of all would be assured. It was a deft compliment, and it
succeeded. From that time forth Ronald Kilsyth was Lady Muriel's most
pliant instrument and doughtiest champion. In the circles in which
during the earlier phases of his succeeding life he found himself,
there were plenty to carp at his stepmother's conduct, to impugn her
motives,--worst of all, to drop side hints of her integrity; but to
all of these Ronald Kilsyth gave instant and immediate battle, never
allowing the smallest insinuation which reflected upon her to pass
unrebuked. He thought he knew his stepmother thoroughly: whether he
did or not time must show; but at all events he thought highly enough
of her to permit himself to be guided by her in some of the most
important steps in his career.
And what were his feelings with regard to Madeleine? If you wanted to
find the key to Ronald Kilsyth's character, it was there that you
should have looked for it. Ronald loved Madeleine with all the love
which such a heart as his was capable of feeling; but he watched over
her with a strictness such as no duenna ever yet dreamed of Years ago,
when they were very little children, there occurred an episode which
Miss O'Grady--who was then Kilsyth's governess, and now happily
married to Herr Ohm, a wine-merchant at Heidelberg--to this day
narrates with the greatest delight. It was in Hamilton Gardens, where
the Kilsyth children and a number of others were playing at _Les
Graces_--a pleasing diversion then popular with youth--and little Lord
Claud Barrington, in picking up and restoring her hoop to Madeleine,
had taken advantage of the opportunity to kiss her hand. Ronald
noticed the gallantry, and at once resented it, asking the youthful
libertine how he dared to take such a liberty. "Well, but she liketh
it!" said Lord Claud, ingenuously pointing to Madeleine, who was
sucking and biting the end of her hoop-stick, by no means ill-pleased.
"Very likely," said Ronald; "but these girls know nothing of such
matters. _I_ am my sister's guardian, and call upon you to apologise."
Lord Claud, humiliated, said he was "wewy thorry;" and the three,--he,
Ronald, and Madeleine,--had some bath-pipe and some cough-lozenges as
a banquet in honour of the reconciliation.
This odd watchfulness, never slumbering, always vigilant, perpetually
unjust, and generally _exigeant_, characterised Ronald's relations
with his sister up to the time of our story. When she first came out,
his mental torture was extraordinary; he, so long banished from
ball-rooms, accepted every invitation, and though he never danced,
would invariably remain in the dancing-room, ensconced behind a
pillar, lounging in a doorway, always in some position whence he could
command his sister's movements, and throughout the evening never
taking his eyes from her. His friends, or rather his acquaintances,
who at first watched his rapt attention without having the smallest
idea of its object, used to chaff him upon his devotion, and
interrogate him as to whether it was the tall person with the teeth,
the stout virgin with the shells in her hair, or the interesting party
with the shoulders, who had won his young affection. Ronald stood this
chaff well, confident in the fact that hitherto his sister had
performed her part in that grand and ludicrous mystery termed
"Society," and had escaped heart-whole. He began to realise the truth
of the axiom about the constant dropping of water. So long as
Madeleine had had sense to comprehend, he had instilled into her the
absolute necessity of consulting him before she even permitted herself
to have the smallest liking for any man. During the first two months
of her first season she had confessed to him twice: once in the case
of a middle-aged, well-preserved peer; and again when a thin,
black-bearded _attaché_ of the Brazilian embassy was in question.
Ronald's immediate and unmistakable veto had been sufficient in both
cases; and he was flattering himself that the rest of the season had
passed without any further call on his self-assumed judicial
functions.
Imagine, then, his state of mind at the receipt of Lady Muriel's
letter! The assault had been made, the mine had been sprung, the enemy
was in the citadel, and, worst of all, the enemy was masked and
disguised, and the guardian of the fortress did not know who was his
assailant, or what measures he should take to repel him!