ROBERT MEREDITH.
The twenty years which had rolled over the head of Robert Meredith,
the anxiously expected guest, since last we saw him, may be thus
briefly recapitulated. The school selected by James Dugdale for his
protégé's education was the now celebrated, but then little heard-of
Grammar-school of Lowebarre. Not that the _alumni_, as they delight to
call themselves, recognise their old place of education by any such
familiar name. To them it is and always will be the Fairfax-school;
they are "Fairfaxians," and the word Lowebarre is altogether ignored.
The _fons et origo_ of these academic groves, pleasantly situate in
the immediate vicinity of the metropolis, was one Sir Anthony Fairfax,
a worthy knight of the time of Queen Elizabeth, who, having lived his
life merrily, according to the fashion of the old English gentlemen of
those days, more especially in the matter of the consumption of sack
and the carrying out of the _droits de seigneurie_, thought it better
towards his latter days to endeavour to get up a few entries on the
other side of the ledger of his life, and found the easiest method in
the doing a deed of beneficence on a large scale. This was nothing
less than the foundation of a school at Lowebarre, where a portion of
his property was situate, for the education of forty boys, who were to
be gratuitously instructed in the learned languages, and morally and
religiously brought up. How the scheme worked in those dark ages it
is, of course, impossible to say.
But ten years before Robert Meredith was inducted into the _arcana_ of
the classics the Fairfax school was in a very low state indeed, and
the Fairfaxians themselves were no better than a set of roughs. The
head master, an old gentleman who had been classically educated,
indeed, but over whose head the rust of many years of farming had
accumulated, took little heed of his scholars, whose numbers
consequently dwindled half-year by half-year, and who, as they
neglected not only the arts but everything else but stone-throwing and
orchard-robbing had no manners to soften, and became brutal.
This state of affairs could not last. One of the governors or
trustees acting under the founder's will saw that not merely was the
muster-roll of the school diminishing, but its social _status_ was
almost gone. He called a meeting of his coadjutors, impressed upon
them the necessity of taking vigorous steps for getting rid of the
then head master, and of at once procuring the services of a man ready
to go with the times. Advertisements judiciously worded were sent to
all the newspapers, inviting candidates for the head-mastership of the
Fairfax school, and dilating in glowing terms on the advantages of
that position; but time passed, and the post yet remained open. Those
who presented themselves were too much of the stamp of the existing
holder of the situation to suit the enlarged views of the trustees,
and it was not until Mr. Warwick, the governor who had first suggested
the reform, busied himself personally in the matter, that the fitting
individual was secured.
The Rev. Charles Crampton, who, having taken a first-class in classics
and a second in mathematics, having been Fellow of his college and
tutor of some of the best men of their years, had finally succumbed to
the power of love, and subsided into a curacy of seventy-five pounds a
year, was Mr. Warwick's selection. He brought with him testimonials of
the highest character; but what weighed most with Mr. Warwick was the
earnest recommendation of James Dugdale, who had been Mr. Crampton's
college friend.
Poor Charles Crampton, when he sacrificed his fellowship for love, had
little notion that he would have to pass the remainder of his life in
grinding in a mill of boys. To study the Fathers, to prepare two or
three editions of his favourite classic authors, to play in a more
modern and refined manner the part of the parson in the "Deserted
Village," had been his hope. But though the old adage was not
followed, though when Poverty came in at the door (and she did come
speedily enough, not in her harshest fiercest aspect it is true, but
looking quite grimly enough to frighten an educated and refined
gentleman). Love did not fly out of the window, yet Charles Crampton
had suffered sufficiently from _turpis egestas_ to induce him at once
to accept the offer.
The salary of the Fairfax head-mastership, though not large,
quintupled his then income; the position held out to him was that of a
gentleman, and though he had not any wild ideas of the dignity and
responsibility of a school-mastership, the notion of having to battle
in aid of a failing cause pleased and invigorated him, more especially
when he reflected that, should he succeed, the _kudos_ of that success
would be all his own.
So the Reverend Charles Crampton was installed at Lowebarre, and the
wisdom of Mr. Warwick's selection was speedily proved. Men of position
and influence in the world, who had been Mr. Crampton's friends at
college; others, a little younger, to whom he had been tutor; and the
neighbouring gentry, when they found they had resident among them one
who was not merely a scholar and a man of parts, but by birth and
breeding one of themselves,--sent their sons to the Fairfax school,
and received Mr. and Mrs. Crampton with all politeness and attention.
By the time that Robert Meredith arrived at Lowebarre the school was
thoroughly well known; its scholars numbered nearly two hundred; its
"speech-days" were attended, as the local journals happily expressed
it, "by lords spiritual and temporal, the dignitaries of the Bar, the
Bench, and the Senate, and the flower of the aristocracy;" while,
source of Mr. Crampton's greatest pride, there stood on either side of
the Gothic window in the great school-hall, on a chocolate ground, in
gold letters, a list of the exhibitioners of the school, and of the
honours gained by Fairfaxians, at the two universities.
To a boy brought up amidst the incongruities of colonial life the
order and regularity of the Fairfax school possessed all the elements
of bewildering novelty. But with his habitual quietude and secret
observation Robert Meredith set himself to work to acquire an insight
into the characters both of his masters and his school-fellows, and
determined, according to his wont, to turn the result of his studies
to his own benefit.
The forty boys provided for by the beneficence of good old Sir Anthony
Fairfax--"foundation-boys," as they were called--were now, of course,
in a considerable minority in the school. They were for the most part
sons of residents in the immediate neighbourhood; but for the benefit
of those young gentlemen who came from afar, the head master received
boarders at his own house, and at another under his immediate control,
while certain of the under masters enjoyed similar privileges.
The number of young gentlemen received under Mr. Crampton's own roof
was rigidly limited to three; for Mrs. Crampton was a nervous little
woman, who shrunk from the sound of cantering bluchers, and whose
housekeeping talent was not of an extensive order. The triumvirate
paid highly, more highly than James Dugdale thought necessary; and
Hayes Meredith was of his opinion. The boy would have to rough it in
after life, he said,--"roughing it" was a traditional idea with
him,--and it would be useless to bring the lad up on velvet. So that
Robert found his quarters in Mr. Crampton's second boarding-house,
where forty or fifty lads, all the sons of gentlemen of modern
fortune, dwelt in more or less harmony out of school-hours, and were
presided over by Mr. Boldero, the mathematical master.
On his first entry into this herd of boys, Robert Meredith felt that
he could scarcely congratulate himself on his lines having fallen in
pleasant places. He had sufficient acuteness to foresee what the
lively youths amongst whom he was about to dwell would reckon as his
deficiencies, and consequently would select and enter upon at once to
his immediate opprobrium. That he was colonial, and not English born,
would be, he was aware, immediately resented with scorn by his
companions, and regarded as a reason for overwhelming him with
obloquy. It was, therefore, a fact to be kept most secret; but after
the lapse of a few days it was inadvertently revealed by the "chum" to
whom alone Robert had mentioned the circumstance. When once known it
afforded subject for the keenest sarcasm; "bushranger," "kangaroo,"
"ticket-of-leave," were among the choice epithets bestowed upon him.
It would not be either pleasant or profitable to linger over the story
of Robert Meredith's school-days. They have no interest for us beyond
this, that they developed his disposition, and insensibly influenced
all his after life. He regarded his schoolmates with scorn as
unbounded as it was studiously concealed, and he cultivated their
unsuspecting good-will with a success which rendered him in a short
time, in all points essential to his comfort, their master. He made
rapid progress in his studies, and kept before his mind with
steadiness which was certainly wonderful at his age--and, had it been
induced by a more elevated actuating motive, would have been most
admirable--the purpose with which he had come to England.
When the end of his schoolboy life drew near, and the much longed-for
University career was about to begin, Robert Meredith took leave of
Mr. Crampton with mutual assurances of good-will. If the conscientious
and reverend gentleman had been closely questioned with regard to his
sentiments concerning his clever colonial pupil, he must have
acknowledged that he admired rather than liked him. But there was no
one to dive into the secrets of his soul, and in the letter which Mr.
Crampton addressed to Mr. Dugdale on the occasion, he gave him, with
perfect truth, a highly favourable account of Robert Meredith, of
which one sentence really contained the pith. "He is conspicuous for
talent," wrote the reverend gentleman; "but I think even his abilities
are less marked than his tact, in which he surpasses any young man
whose character has come under my observation."
"So in argument, and so in life--tact is a great matter." Behold the
guiding spirit of Robert Meredith's career, even in its present
fledgling days. It was tact that made him eschew anything that might
look like "sapping," or rigidity of morals, as much as he eschewed
dissipation and actual fast life while at college. It was tact that
made his wine-parties, though the numbers invited were small, and the
liquids by no means so expensive as those furnished by many of his
acquaintances, the pleasantest in the university. It was tact that
took him now and then into the hunting-field, that made him a constant
attendant at Bullingdon and Cowley Marsh, where his bowling and
batting rendered him a welcome ally and a formidable opponent; and it
was tact which allotted him just that amount of work necessary for a
fair start in his future career.
Robert Meredith knew perfectly that in that future career at the bar
the honours gained at college would have little weight--that the
position to be gained would depend materially upon the talent and
industry brought to bear upon the dry study of the law itself, upon
the mastery of technical details; above all, upon the reading of that
greatest of problems, the human heart, and the motives influencing it.
To hold his own was all he aimed at while at college, and he did so;
but some of his friends, who knew what really lay in him, were
grievously disappointed when the lists were published, and it was
found that Robert Meredith had only gained a double second. George
Ritherdon grieved openly, and refused to be comforted even by his own
success, and by the acclamations which rang round the steady reading
set of Bodhamites when it was known that George Ritherdon's name stood
at the head of the first class.
The two friends were not to be separated--that was Ritherdon's
greatest consolation. Mr. Plowden, the great conveyancer of the Middle
Temple, had made arrangements to receive both of them to read with
him; and in the very dingy chambers occupied by that great professor
of the law they speedily found themselves installed. A man overgrown
with legal rust, and prematurely drowsy with a lifelong residence
within the "dusty purlieus of the law," was Mr. Plowden; but his name
was well known, his fame was thoroughly established; many of his
pupils were leading men at the bar; and the dry tomes which bore his
name as author were recognised text-books of the profession.
Moreover, James Dugdale had heard, from certain old college chums,
that underneath Mr. Plowden's legal crust there was to be found a keen
knowledge of human nature, and a certain power of will, which,
properly exercised, would be of the greatest assistance in moulding
and forming such a character as Robert Meredith's. It was, therefore,
with a comfortable sense of duty done that James Dugdale saw the young
man established in Mr. Plowden's chambers, and, from all he had heard,
he was by no means sorry that Robert was to have George Ritherdon as
his companion.
There are certain persons who seem to be specially designed and cut
out by nature for prosperity, and with whom, on the whole, it does not
seem to disagree. They bear the test well, they are not arrogant,
insolent, or apparently unfeeling, and they make more friends than
enemies. Such people find many true believers in them, to surround
them with a sincere and heartfelt worship, to regard all their good
fortune as their indisputable right, and resent any cross, crook, or
turning in it as an injustice on the part of Providence, or "some
one." We all know one person at least of this class, for whose "luck"
it is difficult to account, except as "luck," and of whom no one has
anything unfavourable to say, or the disposition to say it.
Robert Meredith was one of this favoured class of persons. He had the
good fortune to possess certain external gifts which go far towards
making a man popular, and under which it is always difficult,
especially to women, to believe that a cold heart is concealed. The
handsome lad had grown up into a handsomer man, and one chiefly
remarkable for his easy and graceful manners, which harmonised with an
elegant figure and a voice which had a very deceptive depth,
sweetness, and impressiveness of intonation about it.
The ardent admirer, the unswerving true believer in Meredith's case
was, as we have seen, George Ritherdon; and it would have been curious
and interesting to investigate the extent and importance of the
influence of this early contracted and steadily maintained friendship
on the lives of both men, and on the estimation in which Meredith was
held by the world outside that companionship.
He would have been very loth to believe that any particle of his
importance, a shade of warmth in the manner of his welcome anywhere,
an impulse of confidence in his ability, leading to his being employed
in cases above his apparent mark and standing, were the result of an
unexpressed belief in George Ritherdon, a tacit but very general
respect and admiration for the earnest, honest, irreproachable
integrity of the man, who was clever, indeed, as well as good, but so
much more exceptionally good than exceptionally clever, that the
latter quality was almost overlooked by his friends, who were numerous
and influential. Wherever George's influence could reach, wherever his
efforts could be made available, Meredith's interests were safe,
Meredith's ambition was aided.
Naturally of a frank and communicative disposition, liking sympathy
and the expression of it, fond of his home and his family, and ever
ready to be actively interested in all that concerned them, there was
not an incident in his history, direct or indirect, with which he
would not have made his "chum" acquainted on the least hint of
the "chum's" desiring to know it; and, in fact, Robert Meredith,
who had too much tact to permit his friend to perceive that his
communicativeness occasionally bored him, was in thorough possession
of his friend's history past and present.
But this was not reciprocal, except in a very superficial scale.
Robert Meredith was perhaps not intentionally reticent with George
Ritherdon, and it occurred very seldom to the latter to think his
friend reticent at all, but he was habitually cautious. The same
quality which had made him a taciturn observer in the house at
Chayleigh, able to conceal his dislike of Mr. Baldwin, and to
appreciate thoroughly without appearing to observe the tie which bound
James Dugdale to his old friend's daughter, now in his manhood enabled
him to win the regard of others, and to learn all about them, without
letting them either find out much about him, or offending them, or
inspiring them with distrust by cold and calculated reserve.
As a matter of fact, George Ritherdon knew very much less of his
friend than his friend knew of him, and of one portion of his life he
was in absolute ignorance. It was that which included his residence at
Chayleigh, and his subsequent relations with the families of Carteret
and Baldwin. George had heard the names in casual mention, and he knew
that when Meredith went for a fortnight or so to Scotland in the
"long" he went to a place called the Deane, where a retired officer of
artillery, named Haldane Carteret, lived, who kept a very good house,
and gave "men" some very capital shooting.
But George did not shoot; and had he been devoted to that manly
pursuit, he would never have thought it in the least unkind or
negligent in Meredith to have omitted to share his opportunities in
that way with him; he would never have thought about it at all indeed;
so the Deane was quite unknown territory, even speculatively, to this
good fellow. He knew nothing of the young heiress and her sister. No
stray photograph or missish letter, left about in the careless
disarray of bachelor's chambers, had ever excited George's curiosity,
or led to "chaff" on his part upon Meredith's predilection for
travelling north, whenever he could spare the time to travel at all,
upon his indifference to "the palms and temples of the south." George
was not an adept in the polite modern art of "chaff," and few men
could have been found to offer less occasion for its exercise than
Robert Meredith.
It had sometimes occurred to George to wonder why a man so popular
with women, so "rising" as Robert Meredith, a man who had undoubtedly,
in default of some untoward accident, a brilliant professional career
and all its concomitant social advantages before him, had not married;
but this was a matter on which he would not have considered that even
their close friendship would have justified him in putting any
questions to Meredith.
The _tu quoque_ which might have been Meredith's reply was of easy
explanation. George Ritherdon had had a disappointment in his youth,
and had never thought seriously about marriage since. The
disappointment had taken place in his early imprudent days, when no
connection, even distantly collateral, existed in his mind between
money and marriage, and he had long since arrived at the conviction
that, even if it did come into his head or heart to fall in love
again, he could not afford to marry, and therefore must, acting upon
the gentlemanly precepts which had always governed him, resist any
such inclination as dishonourable to himself and ungenerous towards
its object.
The world had "marched" to a very quick step indeed since the days of
George's almost boyhood, when the beautiful but penniless Camilla
Jackson had fascinated him "into fits" at a carpet dance in the
neighbourhood of his father's house, and he had forthwith set to work,
in the fervent realms of his imagination, to fit up, furnish, and
start a most desirable and charming little establishment, to be
presided over by that young lady in the delightful capacity of wife.
Of course the beautiful Camilla was always to be attired in the
choicest French millinery and the clearest white muslins. Laundresses'
bills had no place, nor had those of the _modiste_, in the
unsophisticated imagination of the young man, and breakages were as
far from his thoughts as babies.
George had lived and learned since then, and he dreamed no more
dreams now; he knew better. Unless some tremendous, wholly unexpected,
and extravagantly-unlikely piece of good luck should come in his
way--something about as probable as the adventures of Sindbad or
Prince Camaralzaman, in which case he would immediately look about for
an eligible young lady to take the larger share of it off his
unaccustomed hands--George would now never marry.
Camilla had disdained the white muslin and the millinery regardless of
the washing bill, of which indeed she had early been taught by an
exemplary and fearfully managing mother to be ceaselessly reminiscent;
and George not unfrequently saw her now in a carriage, the mere
varnish whereof told of wealth of perfectly aggressive amount, in a
carriage crammed with healthy, clean, rich-looking children, and
gorgeously arrayed in velvets and furs of great price.
That Meredith was not a marrying man was the conclusion at which
George Ritherdon arrived, when he discussed with himself the oddity of
the coincidence which threw them together, and speculated upon how
long the engagement would last.
In one respect the friends were very differently circumstanced. George
Ritherdon had "no end" of relations, cousins by the score, aunts and
uncles in liberal proportions. But Robert Meredith was a lonely man.
His colonial origin explained that. He had never sought to renew any
of the ties of family connection broken by his father when he left
England; he had found friends steady and serviceable, and he wisely
preferred contenting himself with them to cultivating dubiously
disposed relatives. Boy though he was, he made a correct hit in this.
"If they were likely to be any use to me, my father would have put me
in some kind of communication with them; he certainly would have
looked them up when he came home, which he never did."
Therefore Robert never troubled himself more about any of the family
connections on this side of the world, and, indeed, troubled himself
very little about those on the other. As time went by he was
accustomed to say to himself that he knew they were all getting on
well, and that was enough for him. Sometimes he wondered whether he
should ever see them again; whether, if he did not "see his way" here,
he might not go in for colonial practice; whether one or more of his
brothers, children when he saw them last, might not take the same
fancy which he had taken for seeing the old world. But nothing of all
this happened.
Robert Meredith had neared the end of his college career when
intelligence of his father's death reached him, and caused him
genuine, if temporary, suffering. His thoughts went back then to the
old home and the old times, and he did feel for a time a disinterested
wish that he had been with his mother--how she had loved him, how she
loved him still, through all those years of separation!--when this
calamity came upon her. The necessity for a large correspondence with
his brothers, and the feeling, always a terrible one in cases where a
long distance lies between persons affected by the same event, that
his father's death had taken place while he was quite unconscious of
it, and was already long past when he heard of it, touched chords
dulled if not silenced.
The account which he received of family affairs was prosperous: one of
his sisters was already married, the other would follow her example
after a due and decorous lapse of time. His brothers were to carry on
Hayes Meredith's business, in whose profits his father left him a
small share. Altogether, apart from feeling--and it was unusual for
Robert Meredith to find it difficult to keep any matter of
consideration apart from feeling--the position of affairs was
eminently satisfactory, and the young man, ambitious, industrious, and
self-reliant, felt that he and his were well treated by fate.
He felt the blank which his father's death created a good deal. He had
corresponded with him very regularly, and the freshness and vigour,
the plain practical sense and shrewdness of the older man's mind had
been pleasant and useful to the younger. He had not expected the
event, either. Hayes Meredith was a strong, hale, athletic man, and
his son had always thought of him as he had last seen him. No bad
accounts of his health had ever reached Robert, and he had never
thought of his father's death as a probable occurrence.
On the whole, this was the most remarkable event, and by many degrees
the most impressive, which had befallen in Meredith's life, and its
influence upon him was decidedly injurious. He had always been hard,
and from that time he became harder--not in appearance, nothing was
more characteristic of the young man than his easy and sympathetic
manner, but in reality he felt more solitary now that the one bond of
intellectual companionship between him and his home was broken, and
this solitude was not good for him. As for his mother, he was apt to
think of her as a very good woman in her way--an excellent woman
indeed. A man must be much worse than Robert Meredith before he ceases
to believe this of his own mother; but she knew nothing whatever of
the world--of the old world particularly--and could not be made to
understand it. He wrote to her--he never neglected doing so; but there
was more expression than truth of feeling in his letters, and the
mail-day was not a pleasant epoch.