There lived a young man at Tregarrick called Robert Haydon. His father
was not a native of the town, but had settled there early in life and
became the leading solicitor of the place. At the age of thirty-seven
he married the daughter of a county magistrate, and by this step
bettered his position considerably. By the time that Robert was born
his parents' standing was very satisfactory. They were living well
inside an income of £1,200 a year, had about £8,000 (consisting
of Mrs. Haydon's dowry and Mr. Haydon's bachelor savings) safely
invested, and were on visiting terms with several of the lesser county
families.
In other respects they were just as fortunate. They had a sincere
affection for each other, and coincident opinions on the proper
conduct of life. They were people into whose heads a misgiving seldom
or never penetrated. Their religious beliefs and the path of social
duty stood as plain before them as their front gate and as narrow as
the bridge which Mohammedans construct over hell. They loved Bob--who
of four children was their only son--and firmly intended to do their
best for him; and as they knew what was best for him, it followed
that Bob must conform. He was a light-coloured, docile boy, with a
pleasantly ingenuous face and an affectionate disposition; and he
loved his parents, and learned to lean on them.
They sent him in time to Marlborough, where he wrote Latin verses of
slightly unusual merit, and bowled with a break from the off which
meant that there lay a thin vein of genius somewhere inside of him.
When once collared, his bowling became futile; success made it deadly,
and on one occasion in a school match against the M.C.C. he did things
at Lord's which caused a thin gathering of spectators--the elderly
men who never miss a match--to stare at him very attentively as he
returned to the pavilion. They thought it worth while to ask, "Which
'Varsity was he bound for?"
Bob was bound for neither. He had to inherit, and consented to
inherit, his father's practice without question. His consuming desire
to go up to Oxford he hinted at once, and once only, in a conversation
with his father; but Mr. Haydon "did not care to expose his son to the
temptations which beset young men at the Universities"--this was
the very text--and preferred to keep him under his own eye in the
seclusion of Tregarrick.
To a young man who is being shielded from temptation in a small
provincial town there usually happens one of two things. Either he
takes to drink or to discreditable essays in love-making. It is to
Bob's credit that he did neither; a certain delicate sanity in the
fellow kept him from these methods of killing time. Instead, he spent
his evenings at home; listened to his parents' talk; accepted their
opinions on human conduct and affairs; and tumbled honourably into
love with his sisters' governess.
Ethel Ormiston, the governess, was about a year older than Bob, good
to look at, and the only being who understood what ailed Bob's soul
during this time. She was in prison herself, poor woman. Mrs. Haydon
asserted afterwards that Miss Ormiston had "deliberately set herself
to inveigle" the boy; but herein Mrs. Haydon was mistaken. As a matter
of fact Bob, having discovered someone obliging and intelligent enough
to listen, dinned the story of his aspirations into the girl's ear
with the persistent egoism of a hobbedehoy. It must be allowed,
however, that the counsel she gave him would have annoyed his parents
excessively.
"But I do sympathise with you," she said after listening to an
immoderately long and peevish harangue; "and I should advise you to
go to your father, as a first step, and ask to be paid a very small
salary for the work you do--enough to set up in lodgings alone. At
present you are pauperising yourself."
Bob did not quite understand--so she explained:
"You are twenty-one, and still receiving food and lodging from your
parents as a dole. At your age, if a man receives anything at all from
father or mother, he should be earning it as a right."
She spoke impatiently, and longed to add that he was also
impoverishing his intellect. She felt a touch of contempt for him; but
a touch of contempt may go with love, and, indeed, competent observers
have held that this mixture makes the very finest cement. Certain it
is that when Bob answered pathetically, "But I don't want to leave
this roof, I--I _can't_, Miss Ormiston, you know!" she missed her
opportunity of pointing out that this confession stultified every one
of his previous utterances. She began a sentence, indeed, but broke
off, with her grey eyes fixed on the ground; and when at length she
lifted them, Bob felt something take him by the throat. The few
words he proceeded to blurt out stunned him much as if a grenade had
exploded close at hand. But when Miss Ormiston burst into tears and
declared she must go upstairs at once and pack her box, he recovered,
and, looking about, found the aspect of the world bewilderingly
changed. There were valleys where hills had stood a moment before.
"I'll go at once and tell my father," he said, drawing a full breath
and looking like the man he was for the moment.
"And," sobbed Miss Ormiston, "I'll go at once and pack my box."
Herein she showed foresight, for as soon as Bob's interview with his
father was over, she was commanded to leave the premises in time to
catch the early train next morning.
Then the Haydon family sat down and talked to Bob.
They began by pooh-poohing the affair. Then, inconsequently, they
talked of disgrace, and of scratching his name out of the Family
Bible, and said they would rather follow him to his grave than see him
married to Miss Ormiston. Lastly, Mrs. Haydon asked Bob who had nursed
him, and taught him to walk, and read and know virtue when he saw it.
Bob, in the words of the poet, replied, "My mother." "Very well then,"
said Mrs. Haydon.
After forty-eight hours of this Bob wrote to Miss Ormiston, saying,
"My father's indignation is natural, and can only be conquered by
time. But I love you always."
Miss Ormiston replied, "Your father's indignation is natural, perhaps.
But if you love me, it might be conquered by something else," or words
to that effect. At any rate, her letter implied that as it was Bob,
and not his father, who proposed to make her a wife, it was on Bob,
and not on his father, that she laid the responsibility of fulfilling
the promise.
But Bob was weak as water. Love had given him one brief glimpse of the
real world: then his father and mother began to talk, and the covers
of the Family Bible closed like gates upon his prospect. At the end
of a week he wrote--"Nothing shall shake me, dear Ethel. Still, some
consideration is due to them; for I am their only son."
To this Ethel Ormiston sent no answer; but reflected "And what
consideration is due to me? for you are my only lover."
For a while Bob thought of enlisting, and then of earning an honest
wage as a farm-labourer; but rejected both notions, because his
training had not taught him that independence is better than
respectability--yea, than much broadcloth. It was not that he hankered
after the fleshpots, but that he had no conception of a world without
fleshpots. In the end his father came to him and said--
"Will you give up this girl?"