in such an impassioned manner. Lilies were very lovely girls, not quite
children and not quite grown-up. He had a sentimental affection for
them. He would see them incline towards one another as he came near,
and hear, or rather make them whisper to one another: "Here is that dear
little boy. How good he is! And isn't his hair dark and smooth! I
should like to kiss him." (Had he said that aloud, just before the
knock came? He would never be able to look the world in the face again
if that speech had been heard.) The Garden had accused the lily of
leaving her sisters and the place where she belonged to go and talk to a
groom in the stables. She might have been kicked by a horse. An
example must be made. No little treats, no sugar on her bread and
butter, no favourite stories told her, for a week. The lily had cried,
and said she had meant no harm, and wouldn't do it again. He had
adjured her not to cry, in very moving terms, which it made him hot all
over to imagine overheard, and the lily had said, in no apparent
connection with the question under discussion, but in a loud and clear
voice: "Arnold is brave and strong; he can run faster than all other
boys in the world."
It was just then that the knock came. He was unhappy about it for days,
and looked in the faces of all the servants to see if there was any sign
of the derision he must have brought upon himself, but could find none,
and presently comforted himself with the idea that it was Santa Claus
who had knocked at the door; but he dropped the drama of the flowers,
and afterwards only whispered the speaking parts of other dramas.
It was not from any lack of love for those about him that he kept his
soul's adventures to himself. Of sympathy with them he might
instinctively have felt a lack, but he loved everybody with whom he had
to do, and everybody loved him. His mother was nearest to him, though
his grandmother was felt to be the head of all things and of all people.
His mother showed jealousy towards her, but not in her presence. The
child divined this, and responded to her craving for his caresses when
he was alone with her by little endearments which were very sweet to
her. "You and me together, Mummy," he would whisper, snuggling up to
her, and stroke her face and kiss her, in a way that he never did when
his grandmother was there. He must have divined too that he was the
centre of existence for his grandmother, but she never petted him or
invited his caresses, though her face showed pleasure when he leant
against her knee and prattled to her, which he did without any fear, and
as if it was natural that they two should have much to say to one
another.
During his earliest days his mother often wept stormily, and there was
great antagonism between her and the old nurse, who had also nursed his
father. But when he was five years old the nurse suddenly went away,
and his mother's weepings, which had saddened and sometimes frightened
him, as she clutched him to her and rocked to and fro over him, ceased,
so that he presently forgot them. She did much for him herself that the
nurse had done before, with the help of a girl from the village, who
became a close friend of his, though not in a way to cause his mother
jealousy.
Eliza was slow and rather stupid, but she could tell half a dozen
stories. She told them in stilted fashion, and never varied the manner,
and hardly the words, of her telling. If she did so, he would correct
her. By and by she became rather like a dull priest intoning a liturgy,
known so well that there was no call to attend to the meeting. He could
see after all that himself, and wanted no variations or emotion of hers
to get between him and the pictures that her monotonous drone projected
on the curtain of his brain. He was the hero of all the stories
himself, and carried them far beyond the bounds of the liturgy. As Jack
the Giant-killer, he engaged with foes unknown to fairy lore. As the
Beast he drew such interest from his mastery over other beasts that his
transformation into a Prince with straight black hair was always being
postponed, and was finally dropped out of his own story altogether,
together with Beauty, who had become somewhat of a meddler with things
that she couldn't be expected to understand. He was Cinderella in the
story of that time, because of riding in the coach made out of a
pumpkin, and the mice turned into horses, but never felt at home in the
character until he turned the story round and gave the leading part to
the Prince, with Cinderella's adventures adapted to male habits and
dignity.
With Eliza in attendance he sometimes played for hours together in the
garden, and he could get away from her if he was careful never to be
right out of her sight or hearing. It was then that the drama of the
garden and the flowers began, but when it came to an end he returned to
the fairy stories.
His mother told him stories too at his earnest pleading. But they were
never the same twice running and had little point for him. He much
preferred Eliza's rigid version of the classical stories, and the others
were all about beautiful girls who married very handsome, noble, rich
men, but the men never did anything except love the girls to distraction
and give them beautiful presents. There was no ground for his
imagination to work on, except in the matter of the presents, and of
these he demanded ever growing catalogues, suggesting many additions of
his own, so that if his mother remembered these and kept to them, there
was some interest to be got out of her stories, but not enough to vie
with that of Eliza's repertoire.
His grandmother had no stories, but when he was a little older she told
him about his ancestors, who had done a good deal of fighting at one
time or another throughout the centuries, which gave him plenty of
material. He knew that she got her information from books in the
library, and he was encouraged to persevere with his letters so that he
would be able to read those books for himself. He gained from her the
impression that his family was above other families, and that in some
way which he didn't quite understand, seeing that he was subject to her,
and to his mother, and even to Eliza, its superiority was also his in a
special measure. He must never do anything that would lessen it. He
must not be too familiar with servants, and especially with grooms in
the stable. He would hang his head at this, for it was the weak point
in his behaviour. He was apt to be beguiled by the society of grooms in
the stable, to the extent even of using expressions unallowable in the
society of his equals. But though he was to bear himself high, he was
to deal kindly with those at the same time beneath him and around him;
and he was to look upon Royd all his life as the place to which he
belonged. He would go away from it sometimes when he was older, but he
must never be away for long, and never get to like being away. This was
what young men did sometimes, and it was not good for them. It was not
right.
Such exordiums as these, varied in manner but never in principle,
continued throughout his childhood, and had a strong effect upon him. A
child has a natural preoccupation with the question of right and wrong
and it fitted in with all that Harry had learnt for himself that it was
right for him to be at Royd and would be wrong for him to be away. He
could not imagine any other place that would suit him better, or indeed
nearly so well. His mother would sometimes talk to him, when he grew
older, of the lights and the movement and the heartening crowds of
London. She would do it half furtively, and he understood, without
being told, that he must keep the fact of her doing so at all from his
grandmother. But he had no wish to talk about it. The picture did not
please him. He gained the impression of London as a dirty noisy place,
and Royd shone all the more brightly in comparison with it. His mother
never mentioned the theatre.
She talked to him sometimes about his father. He had been a soldier--a
very brave soldier--like all the rest of the Brents. Harry would be a
soldier himself some day, but she prayed that he would not have to go
out and fight. He would wear a beautiful red coat with a sash and a
sword, and a noble bearskin on his head. There was a photograph of his
father, not in this uniform, but in service kit, taken just after his
marriage. It showed a good-looking young man, amiable but weak. It was
the only photograph of him that Mrs. Brent had in her room. Lady Brent
had many photographs of him, but this one was not among them. As a
child he had been very like Harry. Lady-Brent seldom mentioned him, and
to her daughter-in-law never. Harry knew after a time, as children come
to know such things, that she had loved him very dearly. She had all
those reminders of his childhood and youth about her. His mother had
only the one. She had known him for a few weeks. All the rest of his
life had belonged to his own mother, and she was shut out of it. Her
references to him, indeed, were hardly more than perfunctory. The poor
bewildered little lady had loved him, and looked to him, perhaps, to
translate her to a more glamorous life. The life of dignity was hers,
but without him, and sometimes it lay very heavy upon her. But she had
her child. Nothing mattered much as long as she was allowed to love him
and to keep his love.
A French nursery governess came when Harry was five years old, Eliza,
who showed great jealousy of her, not unmixed with contempt for her
absurd speech and foreign ways, being also retained. She was a gentle
little thing, and, when she had got over her homesickness, bright and
gay. She loved the child dearly, and he was soon prattling to her in
her own language, piping little French songs, and repeating verses with
his hands behind his back and his head on one side, to the great pride
of his mother and grandmother. Mrs. Brent made a surreptitious friend
of Mademoiselle, and even went so far as to take lessons of her in
French. Lady Brent spoke French with an accent "_tout a fait
distingue_." Mademoiselle had observed that this was the mark of "_la
vraie grande dame Anglaise_" and perhaps Mrs. Brent imagined that the
accomplishment would bring her more into line. But it was irksome to
sit down to grammar and exercises, and somehow she "never could get her
tongue round the queer sounds." It was easier to help Mademoiselle on
with her English, and soon they had their heads together constantly,
comparing notes about the life of Blois and the life of London, which
was so gay and so different from this life of the chateau, so
magnificent but so dull and so always the same. But Harry was not to
know that either of them felt like that about it, and the little French
girl had enough of the spirit of romance in her to judge his
surroundings of castle and park, and wide tract of country over which by
and by he was to rule, as fitting to him. It was, after all, the
bourgeois life that she and Mrs. Brent pined for, the one in France, the
other in England. She recognized that, but when she intimated as much
to Mrs. Brent that lady was up in arms at once, and the intimacy between
them nearly came to an end. Let it be understood that the life she had
known in London was very different from the life Mademoiselle had known
in a provincial French city. Hers had been the life of the great lady,
in London as well as at Royd, and it was that part of the great lady's
life that she missed. Perhaps Mademoiselle, in her ignorance of English
customs, believed it, perhaps she didn't; but she adopted the required
basis of conversation, and the friendship continued. Mrs. Brent took
little trouble to assert her gentility, when once it was accepted, and
spoke often of her family, who lived in Kentish Town, where she had been
so happy, in a way that must have given Mademoiselle some curious ideas
of the ways of the British aristocracy, supposing her to have believed
in the claim set up.
But all this passed over the child's head. Mademoiselle had stories to
tell him of the old nobility of Touraine, which she was clever enough to
connect in his mind with the stories his grandmother told him of his own
knightly forbears. It was from that life he had sprung. The ancient
glories of the French chateaux were allied to those of his noble English
castle. The romance and chivalry were the same. Lady Brent approved
very highly of Mademoiselle, and when she went back to France after two
years, to fulfil the marriage contract that her parents had made for
her, gave her a present which added substantially to her _dot_.
Then Mr. Wilbraham came, and Harry began his education in earnest.
Lady Brent had gone up to London to find a successor for Mademoiselle.
She was to be a highly educated Englishwoman, who was to give place to a
tutor in three or four years' time. Harry was not to go to school; he
was to spend the whole of his boyhood at Royd, but he was to be taught
all the things that boys of his class learnt, except the things that
Lady Brent didn't want him to learn--including that precocious knowledge
of the world which had entangled his father, and in effect brought Mrs.
Brent into the family.
Lady Brent brought Mr. Wilbraham back with her, and never explained why
she had changed her plan. In some things she made a confidante of her
daughter-in-law; in others she acted as if she had no more to say in her
child's upbringing than Eliza. And Mrs. Brent never thought of asking
her for an explanation of anything if she volunteered none.
Mr. Wilbraham was then a dejected young man of four or five and twenty.
He volunteered no explanation of his substitution for the lady of high
education either; nor, indeed, of his past history. It was a long time
before Mrs. Brent, who liked to find out things about people, and
especially anything that indicated their social status, knew that his
father had been a clergyman, and that he expected some day to be a
clergyman himself. And that was all that she did know, until he had been
at Royd for years, and seemed likely to be there for ever; for gradually
he dropped talking about taking orders. She had an idea that there was
some secret between him and Lady Brent, but the idea died away as time
went on, and at last he told her, quite casually, that he had gained his
post at Royd through a Scholastic Agency. Lady Brent had gone there for
a tutor, and she had engaged him. That was all. It did not explain why
she had changed her mind; but by that time her change of mind had been
almost forgotten. Mr. Wilbraham was an integral part of life at Royd
Castle.
Harry liked him from the first. He was a good teacher, and there was
never any trouble about lessons. Outside lesson time he was not expected
to be on duty, and when the boy grew older their companionship was
entirely friendly and unofficial. Mr. Wilbraham introduced Harry to all
the rich lore of Greek mythology. Here was matter for romance, indeed!
Royd became peopled with nymphs and dryads and satyrs, and fabulous but
undreaded monsters. Harry knew that Diana hunted the deer in the park
when the moon shone; he often heard Pan fluting in the woods, and
centaurs galloping over the turf. When he was taken over to Rington
Cove, six miles away, he saw the rock upon which the mermaids sat and
combed their hair, and on the yellow sands the print of the nereid's
dancing feet. It was all very real to him, and Mr. Wilbraham never even
smiled at his fancies. That was one of the reasons why he liked him.
*CHAPTER IV*
*FAIRIES*
Harry lay quite still under a great tree, his chin propped on his hands,
his eyes fixed upon a spot in the glade where he knew there was a fairy
ring, upon which he was sure that if he gazed long enough with his eyes
clear and his brain free, he would see the gossamer fairies dancing.
His couch of beech-mast was dry under him, and not a breath of air
stirred the warmth that had settled there during a sunny day, though
cool fingers seemed to be touching his cheeks now and then, as of the
spirit of the young spring. He was happy and at peace with himself, and
his happiness grew as the long minutes passed over him. His world was
whole and good all around him. His life contained no regrets and no
unfulfilled desires, except this one of learning the secret of his
happiness, which touched him as the fingers of the still April night
were touching him, to more alertness, not to any trouble or disturbance
of mind. Besides, the secret was coming to him at last. He must
believe that, or it would not come. And he did believe it. He no more
doubted that he would see the fairies under to-night's moon than he
doubted of his body, lying there motionless. Indeed, his spirit was
more alive than his body, which was in a strange state of quiescence, so
that it was not difficult to keep perfectly still for as long as it
should be necessary, and no discomfort arose from his immobility.
If Lady Brent was sometimes criticized, as she was, for keeping the boy
away from the intercourse that prepared other boys of his age and rank
for playing their part in the world, and the criticism had reached her
ears, she need have done no more than point to him as he was at the
threshold of his manhood, for justification. Shut up in a great house,
with two women and a lazy tame-cat of a man; never seeing anybody
outside from one year's end to another; no young people about him; no
chance even of playing a game with other boys--those were the
accusations, brought by Mrs. Fearon, for instance, wife of the Rector of
Poldaven, seven miles away, who had sons and daughters round about
Harry's age, would have liked them to be in constant companionship with
him, and was virulent against Lady Brent, because she would have no such
companionship in any degree whatsoever. The boy would grow up a regular
milksop. He couldn't always be kept shut up at Royd, and when he did go
out into the world the foolish woman would see what a mistake she had
made. His own father had made a pretty mess of it, and his early death
was no doubt a blessing in disguise. Harry would have even less
experience to guide him. It would be a wonder if he did not kick over
the traces entirely, and bring actual disgrace upon his name.
Thus Mrs. Fearon, not too happy in the way her own sons were turning
out, though they had had all the advantages that Harry lacked, and at
her wits' end to cope with the discontent of her elder daughters.
Poldaven Rectory was the only house of any size within a seven-mile
radius of Royd except Poldaven Castle, which was hardly ever inhabited.
One summer, when Harry was about eight years old, Lady Avalon brought
her young family there, and settled them with nurses and governess,
while she herself made occasional appearances to see how they were
getting on. There was going and coming during that summer between Royd
and Poldaven. Harry would be taken there to play with the little
Pawles, and a carriage full of them would appear every now and then to
spend a long day at Royd. Of all the large family, there was only one
with whom he found himself in accord. The little Lords were noisy and
grasping, the little Ladies dull and mincing. But one of the girls,
Sidney, of exactly the same age as himself, was different from the rest.
The two children would go off together, and when out of sight of nurses
and governess Sidney became quite natural and they would talk and play
games entirely happy in one another's company until they were discovered
by the rest, and the disputes would begin again, and the eternal
cleavage between male and female. Lady Avalon happened to be there,
they were encouraged to be together and she and Lady Brent would have
their heads close as they watched them. A sweet little couple, hand in
hand--the boy so straight and handsome, the girl so pretty and naturally
gay. There was match-making going on, and the nurses were in it too,
and left them alone together, and often prevented the other children
from seeking them out.
When the Pawle children went away after their secluded summer, Harry and
Sidney kissed gravely, under command of the head-nurse, who called them
"little sweet'earts." But the kiss meant nothing to Harry, since he had
been told to proffer it. He would rather have kissed Lady Ursula, a
large-eyed pink and flaxen damsel of twelve, for whom he had an
admiration, though she never had much to say to him, and there was no
interest in her companionship as there was in Sidney's. He missed Sidney
when they went away, but not for long, and by this time he had almost
forgotten her. For Poldaven Castle had remained empty ever since that
summer, and if Lady Brent had formed any premature matrimonial plans for
her grandson she seemed to have forgotten them, for she scarcely ever
mentioned the names of her one-time neighbours, and never that of Sidney
Pawle, except once when the news of Lady Ursula's marriage was in all
the papers. Then she said that Ursula was a beautiful girl, but Sidney
had always been her favourite. Harry looked at the picture of bride and
bridesmaids. He remembered how he had admired Ursula's beauty, and she
was beautiful now, but he hardly recognized her; grown-up, she seemed a
generation older. Sidney was recognizable in the photograph; she was
not yet grown up. But she looked different too, in her silken finery.
Lady Avalon must have been economizing in her children's clothes during
that summer at Poldaven, for the girls had never been dressed in
anything more elaborate than linen and rough straw. Somehow this
bridesmaid Sidney was different from his old playmate. He could not
imagine her playing the Princess to his rescuing knight, as she had done
once or twice when they had got quite away by themselves; or indeed his
letting her into any of that kind of secret, now. He put the paper away
and forgot her afresh.
Harry played no outdoor games in his boyhood, except the games he made
up for himself. But he was a horseman from his earliest years. Lady
Brent encouraged it, when he was once old enough to go to the stables
without fear of danger. He had first a tiny little Shetland, then a
forest-bred pony, and a horse when he was big enough to ride one. He
roamed all over the country, happy to be by himself and indulge his
daydreams. His handsome young face and slim supple boy's figure were
known far and wide. He had friends among farmers and cottage people,
but the few of his own class who lived in that sparsely populated
country he was inclined to avoid. They thought it was by his
grandmother's direction, but though it suited her that he should do so,
it was in truth from a kind of shyness that he kept away from them. His
isolation was beginning to bear fruit. The boys of his own age whom he
occasionally came across seemed to have nothing in common with him, nor
he with them. The girls eyed him curiously, if admiringly, and he had
nothing to talk to them about. He was happier by himself, or with his
horse and his dogs. But he was never really by himself. He could always
conjure up brave knights and gentle ladies to ride with him through the
woods or by the sea, if he wanted company. There was a whole world of
varied characters about him, from the highest to the lowest, and his
imagination did not stop at mortal companionship; he walked with gods
and heroes as often as with men and women.
No one about him suspected this inner life of his, as real to him as his
outer life, and still more important. To his mother and grandmother he
was a bright active boy, with the outdoor tastes of a boy, who slept
soundly, ate enormously, and behaved himself just as a well brought-up
boy should. To his tutor he was a pleasant companion during the hours
they spent together, and one who did credit to his teaching. Wilbraham
had his scholarly tastes and perceptions. He would have hated the
drudgery of teaching an ordinary boy who made heavy work of his lessons,
but this boy took an interest in them. It is true that there were
surprising gaps in the course of study that they followed. Greek and
Latin, and English and French literature took up very nearly all their
time and attention. Wilbraham looked forward with some apprehension to
the time when he should have to tell Lady Brent that in order to prepare
Harry for any examination extra cramming would be necessary by somebody
else in the subjects that he had neglected. But at sixteen the boy was
a fair classical scholar, and his range of reading was wider than that
of many University honours men.