THE PRODIGALS
MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
THE PRODIGALS
_AND THEIR INHERITANCE_
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF
“CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD” “THE WIZARD’S SON”
ETC. ETC.
Complete
Methuen & Co.
36 ESSEX STREET, LONDON, W.C.
1894
THE PRODIGALS
CHAPTER I
“Is it to-night he is coming, Winnie?”
“Yes, father. I have sent the dog-cart to the station.”
“It was unnecessary, quite unnecessary. What has he to do with dog-carts
or any luxury? He should have been left to find his way as best he
could. It is not many dog-carts he will find waiting at his beck and
call. That sort of indulgence, it is only putting nonsense in his head,
and making him think I don’t mean what I say.”
“But, father”--
“Don’t father me. Why don’t you speak like other girls in your
position? You have always been brought up to be a lady; you ought to use
the same words that ladies use. And mind you, Winifred, don’t make any
mistake, I mean what I say. Tom can talk, none better, but he will not
get over me; I have washed my hands of him. So long as I thought these
boys were going to do me credit I spared nothing on them; but now that I
know better--Don’t let him try to get over me, for it is no use.”
“Oh, papa, he is still so young; he has done nothing very bad, only
foolishness, only what you used to say all young men did.”
“Things are come to a pretty pass,” said the father, “when girls like
you, who call themselves modest girls, take up the defence of a
blackguard like Tom.”
“He is not a blackguard,” cried the girl colouring to her hair.
“You are an authority on the subject, I suppose? But perhaps I know a
little better. He and his brother have taken me in--me, a man that never
was taken in in my life before! but now I wash my hands of them both.
There’s the money for his journey and the letter to Stafford. No--on
second thoughts I’ll not give him the money for his journey; he’d stay
in London and spend it, and then think there was more where that came
from. Write down the office of the Cable Line in Liverpool--he’ll get
his ticket there.”
“But you’ll see him, papa?”
“Why should I see him? I know what would happen--you and he together
would fling yourselves at my feet, or some of that nonsense. Yes, you’re
right--on the whole, I think I will see him, and then you’ll know once
for all how little is to be looked for from me.”
“Oh, papa! you do yourself injustice; your heart is kinder than you
think,” cried Winifred, with tears.
Mr. Chester got up and walked from one end to the other of the long
room. It was lighted up as if for a great entertainment, though the
father and daughter were alone in it. He drew aside the curtains at the
farther end and looked out into the night.
“Raining,” he said. “He would have liked a fly from the station much
better than the dog-cart. These puppies with their spoiled
constitutions, they can’t support a shower. I am kinder than I think, am
I? Don’t let Tom presume on that. If I’m better than I think myself, I’m
a deal worse than you think me. And he’s cut me to the heart, he’s cut
me to the heart!” This was said with a little vehemence which looked
like feeling. He resumed, a few minutes after: “What a fine thing it
seemed for a man like me, that began in a small way, to have two sons to
be educated with the best, just as good as dukes, that would know how to
make a figure in the world and do me credit. Credit! two broken-down
young profligates, two cads that have never held up their heads, never
made friends, never done anything but spend money all their lives! What
have I done that this should happen to me? Your mother was but a poor
creature, and her family no great things; but that my boys, my sons,
should take after the Robinsons and not after me! Hold your tongue and
let me speak. It should be a warning to you whom you marry; for, mind
you, it’s not only your husband he’ll be, but the father of your
children, taking after him, perhaps, to wring your heart.” He had been
walking about the room all this time, growing more and more vehement.
Now he flung himself heavily into his chair. “Yes,” he said, “it will be
better that I should see him. He’ll know then, once for all, how much he
has to expect from me.”
“Papa,” cried Winifred, drying her eyes, “if my mother had lived”--
“If she had lived!” he said, with a tone in which it was difficult to
distinguish whether regret or contempt most predominated. Perhaps it was
because he was taken by surprise that there was any conflict of feeling.
“We should have had some fine scenes in that case,” he added, with a
laugh. “She would have stuck to the boys through thick and thin; and
perhaps you would have been more on my side, Winnie; they say the girls
go with their father. True enough, you are the only one that takes after
me.”
“Oh, papa! George is the image of you.”
He got up again from his chair as if stung by some intolerable touch.
“Hold your tongue, child!” he said hoarsely; then, seating himself with
a forced laugh, “Kin in face, sworn enemies in everything else,” he
said.
The room in which this conversation went on was large but not lofty,
occupying the whole width of the house, which was an old country house
of the composite character, so usual in England, where generation after
generation adds and remodels to its fancy. It had been two rooms
according to the natural construction of the house, and the separation
between the two was marked by two pillars, one at either side, of
marble, which had been brought from some ruinous Italian palace, and
were as much out of place as could be conceived in their present
situation. The room, in general, bore the same contradictory character;
florid ornament and gilt work of the most _baroque_ character
alternating with articles of the latest fashion, and with pieces of
antiquity such as have become the test of taste in recent years. Mr.
Chester preferred cost above all other qualifications in the decoration
of his house, and his magnificence was bought dearly at the expense not
only of much money, but of every rule of harmony. He did not himself
mind this. It need scarcely be added that he was not the natural
proprietor of the manor-house which he had thus made gorgeous. He was a
man of great ambition who had made his fortune in trade, and whom the
desire, so universal and often so tragically foolish, though so natural,
of founding a family, had seized in a somewhat unusual way. His two sons
had received “the best education”; that is, they had been sent to a
public school and afterwards to Oxford in the most approved way. They
had not been used to much literature nor to a very refined atmosphere
at home, and it is possible that the very ordinary blood of the
Robinsons, their mother’s family, had more influence in their
constitutions than that fluid which their father thought of so much more
excellent quality, which came to them from the Chester fountain.
The Chesters had been pushing men for at least two generations. From the
fact that their name was the same as that of their native place, it was
uncharitably reported that Mr. Chester’s grandfather had been a
foundling picked up in the streets. But as he figured in the pedigree
which hung in the hall as George Chester, Esq., of the Cloisters,
Chester, strangers at least had no right to lend an ear to any such
tale, nor to inquire whether, as report said, it was as a lay clerk that
he had found a place in that venerable locality. William Chester, the
link between this mythical personage and Mr. Chester of Bedloe Manor,
had begun the family fortunes in Liverpool half a century before, and
his son, whose education was that of a choir boy in Chester Cathedral,
as his father’s had been, established upon that foundation a solid and,
indeed, large fortune, which he had fondly hoped by means of George and
Tom to hand down to a whole prosperous family of Chesters, transformed
into landowners, great proprietors, perhaps--who could tell?--Lord
Chancellors and Prime Ministers. The disappointment which comes upon
such a man when his children, instead of doing him honour, turn out the
proverbial spendthrifts and consumers of the newly-made fortune, does
not meet with any great degree of sympathy in the world. A tacit “serve
him right” is in the minds of most people. Much righteous indignation
has been expended upon a very different matter, upon the ambition even
of such a man as Scott to found a family: the moralist has been almost
glad that it came to nothing, that the children of the great man were
nobodies, that his hope was a mere dream. And how much more when the man
had, like George Chester, nothing but his money and a certain strenuous
determination and force of character to recommend him!
But the disappointment was not less bitter to the new man than if he had
been a monarch mourning over a degenerate son. Neither George nor Tom
did anything but get into scrapes at the University. They had no heads
for books, and they had the habit of rash expenditure, of
self-indulgence, of considering themselves masters of everything that
could be bought. Mr. Chester would have taken their extravagance in
perfectly good part, he would have winked at their peccadilloes and
forgiven everything had they done him credit as he said: nor was he
very particular as to the nature of the credit; had either manifested
any capacity for taking university prizes, or a good degree, that,
though he would have understood it little, would have delighted him. Had
they rowed in the eight or played in the eleven, he would have been
doubly proud of the distinction. Failing those legitimate paths to
honour, had they brought a rabble of the young aristocracy to Bedloe,
had they gone visiting to great houses, had they found a place even
among the train of any young duke or conspicuous person, he was so
easily pleased that he would have been content. But they did none of
these things. George, with the beautiful voice, of which his father was
not proud, since it awakened memories of hereditary talent which he did
not wish to keep before men’s minds, had not used this gift as a way of
making entrance into select circles, but roared it out in undergraduate
parties made up of clergymen’s sons, of young schoolmasters, of people,
as he said bitterly, no better, nay, not so good as himself; and made
friends with the lower class of the musical people, the lay clerks at
the Cathedral, the people who gave local concerts. He was quite ready to
join them, to sing with them, to take his pleasure among them, with a
return to all the old habits of the singing men at Chester, which was
bitterness to the father’s soul. It scarcely made it any worse that
George fell into ways of dissipation and went wrong as well. _That_ his
father, perhaps, might have forgiven him had it been done in better
company; but as it was, the sin was unpardonable. When news came to
Bedloe that George was about to marry a poor organist’s daughter, the
proceedings Mr. Chester took were very summary; he stopped his son’s
allowance instantly, provided him with a clerkship at Sydney, and sent
him off to the end of the world, requesting only that he might see him
no more.
Then Tom became his hope. Tom had aspirations higher than George’s, but
he went, if possible, more hopelessly astray. Tom had, or seemed to
have, something more of fancy and imagination than belonged to the rest
of his family. He was the clever one, bound, or so at least his father
hoped, to make a figure in the world; but he was idle, he was sarcastic
and hot-tempered, he quarrelled with everybody whom he ought to have
conciliated, and supported the company only of those who flattered and
agreed with him, and helped him to gratify his various tastes and
inclinations, which were not virtuous. If George had fallen among the
lower class of professionals, Tom’s company was, his father declared,
composed of the out-scourings of the earth. And when the inevitable
moment came in which Tom was plucked (or ploughed, as the word varies),
his father’s bitter disappointment and disgust came to the same result
as in his brother’s case. The civil letter in which his tutor lamented
Tom’s foolishness exasperated Mr. Chester almost to madness. No doubt he
had bragged in his day of his two boys who were to carry all before
them, and his humiliation was all the more hard to bear. He was
uncompromising and remorseless in the revenge he took. According to his
code, he who failed was the most criminal of mankind. Whatever a man
might do, so long as he attained something, if it were no more than
notoriety, there were hopes of him; but failure was insupportable to the
man of business--the self-made, and self-sustaining.
It was with a pang that he gave up the idea of all possibility as
regarded his sons; but he did so with the same decision and promptitude
with which he would have rejected a bad investment. He had still a
child, who was, indeed, one of the inferior sex, a mere girl, not for a
moment to be considered in the same light as a son, had the sons been
worthy, but something to fall back upon when they failed. Winifred, so
long as the boys were in the foreground of their father’s life, had cost
him little trouble. She had been so fortunate as to be provided with a
good governess when her mother died; and, unnoticed, unthought of, had
grown up into fair and graceful womanhood--in mind and manners the child
of the poor gentlewoman who had trained her, and who still remained in
the house as her companion and friend. Insensibly it had become apparent
to Mr. Chester that Winnie was the one member of his family who was not
a failure. The society around, the people whom he reverenced as county
people, but despised as not so rich as himself, received her with
genuine regard and friendship, even when they received himself with but
formal civility. As for George and Tom, not even their prospective
wealth during their time of favour had commended them to the county
neighbours, whose pride Mr. Chester cursed, yet regarded with
superstitious admiration. Winifred had broken through the stiffness of
these exclusive circles, but no one else; and even while he fumed over
the downfall of Tom, he had begun to console himself with the success of
Winnie. At the recent county ball she had been, if not the beauty, at
least the favourite of the evening. Lord Eden himself had complimented
her father upon her looks. He had tasted the sweetness of social success
for the first time by her means. All was not then lost. He condemned
Tom, as he had condemned George, by attainder and confiscation of all
his rights; and Winifred was elected to the post of heir and
representative of the Chesters. Perhaps the decision gave the father
himself a pang. It was coming down in the world. A man with his sons
about him has something of which to be glorious--but a mere girl! At the
best it was a humiliation. But in default of anything better it was
still a mode of triumph, after all. It secured his revenge upon the
worthless boys who had done nothing for his name, and a place among
those who recognised in Winnie, if not in any other member of the
family, their equal in one way, their superior in another.
He was a man of rapid conclusions, and he had made up his mind on this
point on the evening of the day on which he had heard of Tom’s
disgrace--for disgrace he had felt it to be, accepting no consolation
from the fact that many young men not thereafter to be despised met
with the same fate. He would not allow his son to return home, but had
his fate intimated to him at once by the solicitor whom Mr. Chester
chose to employ in business of this sort. It was to New Zealand this
time that the unfortunate was to be sent. His passage-money and fifty
pounds, and a desk in an office when he reached his destination--this
was the fate of the unhappy youth, fresh from all indulgences and
follies. No hope even was held out to him of ever retrieving his lost
position; and Tom knew with what remorseless decision George had already
been cut off. Perhaps he had not lamented as he might have done his
brother’s punishment, which left such admirable prospects to himself,
but it left no doubt on his mind as to his own fate. He had asked, what
George had not had the courage to ask, that he might come home and take
farewell of his sister, at least. And this had been granted to him. If
any forlorn hope was in his mind of being able to touch the heart of his
father, it was a very forlorn hope indeed, and one which he scarcely
ventured to whisper even to himself.
He had arrived at the country station which was nearest Bedloe while his
father and sister were talking of him, and had been received by the
groom with that somewhat ostentatious sympathy and regard for his
comfort with which servants are wont to show a consciousness of the
situation. The groom was very anxious that Mr. Tom should be protected
from the rain, the soft, continuous drizzle of a spring night. “I’ve
brought your waterproof, sir; the roads is heavy, and we’ll be a long
time getting home”--
“Never mind the waterproof,” said Tom; “I like the rain.”
“It’s cooling, sir; but after a while, when you’re soaked through--if
you get a chill, sir?”
“It don’t matter much,” said Tom. “How are they all at home?”
“Pretty nicely,” said the man, “though Mrs. Pierce do say that she don’t
like master’s looks, and Miss Winifred is that pale except when she
flushes up”--
“How’s Bayleaf?” This was Tom’s hunter which he never mounted, yet felt
a certain property in all the same.
“Nothing to brag of, sir. That poor animal, he’s like a Christian. He
knows as well when there’s something up”--
“You had better drive on,” said Tom. “How dark it is!”
“It’s all the rain, sir, like as if the skies themselves--But we’re glad
as the equinoctials is over, and you’ll have a good season for your
voyage. Shall you see Mr. George, sir, where you are going?”
At this Tom laughed, with a most unmirthful outburst. “No,” he said;
“that’s the fun of the thing--he in one country and I in another. It’s
all very nicely settled for us.”
“Let’s hope, sir,” said the man, “that when things get a little more
civilised there will be a railway or something. We should all like to
send our respects and duty to Mr. George.”
To this Tom made no reply. He was not in a very cheerful mood, nor did
this conversation tend to elevate his spirits. There was nothing
adventurous in his disposition. The distant voyage, the new world, the
banishment from all those haunts in which he could find his favourite
enjoyments, with an occasional compunction, indeed, but nothing strong
enough to disturb the tenor of his way, were terrible anticipations to
him. Some lurking hope there was still in his mind that his fate was
impossible; that such a catastrophe could not really be about to happen;
that his father would relent at the sight of him or at Winnie’s prayers.
It did not enter into Tom’s thoughts that Winnie would ever forsake him.
The thought of her own advantage would not move her. He was aware that,
in the question of George, it had more or less moved himself, and that
he had not, perhaps, thrown all that energy into his intercession for
his brother which he hoped and believed Winnie would employ for himself.
But then he had feared to irritate his father, who would bear more from
Winnie than from any one. At this moment, while he drove shivering
through the rain,--shivering with nervous depression rather than with
cold, for the evening was mild enough,--he had no doubt that she was
doing her best for him. And was it possible that his father could hold
out, that he could see the last of his sons go away to the ends of the
earth without emotion? The very groom was sorry for him, Bayleaf was
drooping in sympathy, the skies themselves weeping over his fate. When
the fate is our own, it is wonderful how natural it seems that heaven
and earth should be moved for us. In George’s case he had seen the other
side of the question. In his own the pity of it was far the most
powerful. His mind was almost overwhelmed by the prospect before him,
but as he drove along in the rain, with the groom’s compassionate voice
by his side in the dark, expressing now and then a respectful and veiled
sympathy, there flickered before Tom’s eyes a faint little light of
hope. Surely, surely, this, though it had happened to his brother, could
not happen to him? Surely the father’s heart was not hard enough, or
fate terrible enough, to inflict such a punishment upon _him_? Others,
perhaps, might deserve it, might be able to bear it; but he--how could
he bear it? Tom said to himself that in his case it was impossible, and
could not be.