CONCERNING LADY DURWENT'S FAMILY.
I.
Lady Durwent was rather a large woman, of middle age, with a high
forehead unruffled by thought, and a clear skin unmarred by wrinkles.
She had a cheerfulness that obtruded itself, like a creditor, at
unpropitious moments; and her voice, though not displeasing, gave the
impression that it might become volcanic at any moment. She also
possessed a considerable theatrical instinct, with which she would
frequently manoeuvre to the centre of the stage, to find, as often as
not, that she had neglected the trifling matter of learning any lines.
She was the daughter of an ironmonger in the north of England, whose
father had been one of the last and most famous of a long line of
smugglers. It was perhaps the inherited love of adventure that
prompted the ironmonger, against his wife's violent protest, to invest
the savings of a lifetime in an obscure Canadian silver-mine. To the
surprise of every one (including its promoters), the mine produced
high-grade ore in such abundance that the ironmonger became a man of
means. Thereupon, at the instigation of his wife, they moved from
their little town into the city of York, where he purchased a large,
stuffily furnished house, sat on Boards, became a councillor, wore
evening-dress for dinner, and died a death of absolute respectability.
Before the final event he had the satisfaction of seeing his only child
Sybil married to Arthur, Lord Durwent. (The evening-clothes for dinner
were a direct result.) Lord Durwent was a well-behaved young man of
unimpeachable character and family, and he was sincerely attracted by
the agreeable expanse of lively femininity found in the fair Sybil.
After a wedding that left her mother a triumphant wreck and appreciably
hastened her father's demise, she was duly installed as the mistress of
Roselawn, the Durwent family seat, and its tributary farms. The
tenants gave her an address of welcome; her husband's mother gracefully
retired to a villa in Sussex; the rector called and expressed
gratification; the county families left their cards and inquired after
her father, the ironmonger.
Unfortunately the new Lady Durwent had the temperament neither of a
poet nor of a lady of the aristocracy. She failed to hear the tongues
in trees, and her dramatic sense was not satisfied with the little
stage of curtsying tenantry and of gentlefolk who abhorred the very
thought of anything theatrical in life.
On the other hand, her husband was a man who was unhappy except on his
estate. He thought along orthodox lines, and read with caution. He
loved his lawns, his gardens, his horses, and his habits. He was a
pillar of the church, and always read a portion of Scripture from the
reading-desk on Sunday mornings. His wife he treated with simple
courtesy as the woman who would give him an heir. If his mind had been
a little more sensitive, Lord Durwent would have realised that he was
asking a hurricane to be satisfied with the task of a zephyr.
They had a son.
The tenants presented him with a silver bowl; Lord Durwent presented
them with a garden fête; and the parents presented the boy with the
name of Malcolm.
Two years later there came a daughter.
The tenants gave her a silver plate; Lord Durwent gave them a garden
fête; and he and his wife gave the girl the name of Elise.
Three years later a second son appeared.
There was a presentation, followed by a garden fête and a christening.
The name was Richard.
In course of time the elder son grew to that mental stature when the
English parent feels the time is ripe to send him away to school. The
ironmonger's daughter had the idea that Malcolm, being her son, was
hers to mould.
'My dear,' said Lord Durwent, exerting his authority almost for the
first time, 'the boy is eight years of age, and no time must be lost in
preparing him for Eton and inculcating into him those qualities which
mark'----
'But,' cried his wife with theatrical unrestraint, 'why send him to
Eton? Why not wait until you see what he wants to be in the world?'
Lord Durwent's face bore a look of unperturbed calm. 'When he is old
enough, he must go to Eton, my dear, and acquire the qualities which
will enable him to take over Roselawn at my death'----
At this point Lady Durwent interrupted him with a tirade which, in
common with a good many domestic unpleasantries, was born of much that
was irrelevant, springing from sources not readily apparent. She
abused the public-school system of England, and sneered at the county
families which blessed the neighbourhood with their presence. She
reviled Lord Durwent's habits, principally because they _were_ habits,
and thought it was high time some Durwent grew up who wasn't just a
'sticky, stuffy, starched, and bored porpoise--yes, PORPOISE!' (shaking
her head as if to establish the metaphor against the whole of the
English aristocracy). In short, it was the spirit of the Ironmonger
castigating the Peerage, and at its conclusion Lady Durwent felt much
abused, and quite pleased with her own rhetoric.
Lord Durwent glanced for courage at an ancestor who looked
magnificently down at him over a ruffle. He adjusted his own cravat
and spoke in nicely modulated accents: 'Sybil, nothing can change me on
this point. In spite of what you say, it is my intention to keep to
the tradition of the Durwents, and that is that the occupant of
Roselawn'----
'What! am not I his mother?' cried the good woman, her hysteria having
much the same effect on Lord Durwent's smoothly developing monologue as
a heavy pail dropped by a stage-hand during Hamlet's soliloquy.
'Sybil,' said Lord Durwent sternly, 'it was arranged at Malcolm's birth
that he should go to Eton. I shall take him next Tuesday to a
preparatory school, and you must excuse me if I refuse to discuss the
matter further.'
Lady Durwent rushed from the room and clasped her eldest child in her
arms. That young gentleman, not knowing what had caused his mother's
grief, sympathetically opened his throat and bellowed lustily, thereby
shedding tears for positively the last time in his life.
When he returned for the holidays a few months later, he was an
excellent example of that precocity, the English schoolboy, who cloaks
a juvenile mind with the pose of sophistication, and by twelve years of
age achieves a code of thought and conduct that usually lasts him for
the rest of his life. In vain the mother strove for her place in the
sun; the rule of the masculine at Roselawn became adamant.
Life in the Durwent _ménage_ developed into a thing of laws and customs
dictated by the youthful despot, aided and abetted by his father. The
sacred rites of 'what isn't done' were established, and the mother
gradually found herself in the position of an outsider--a privileged
outsider, it is true, yet little more than the breeder of a
thoroughbred, admitted to the paddock to watch his horse run by its new
owner.
She vented her feelings in two or three tearful scenes, but she felt
that they lacked spontaneity, and didn't really put her heart into them.
During these struggles for her place in a Society that was probably
more completely masculine in domination than any in the world (with the
possible exception of that of the Turk), Lady Durwent was only dimly
aware that her daughter was developing a personality which presented a
much greater problem than that of the easily grooved Malcolm.
The girl's hair was like burnished copper, and her cheeks were lit by
two bits of scarlet that could be seen at a distance before her
features were discernible. Her eyes were of a gray-blue that changed
in shade with her swiftly varying moods. Her lower lip was full and
red, the upper one firm and repressed with the dull crimson of a fading
rose-petal. Her shapely arms and legs were restless, seemingly
impatient to break into some quickly moving dance. She was
extraordinarily alive. Vitality flashed from her with every gesture,
and her mind, a thing of caprice and whim, knew no boundaries but those
of imagination itself.
Puzzled and entirely unable to understand anything so instinctive, Lady
Durwent engaged a governess who was personally recommended by Lady
Chisworth, whose friend the Countess of Oxeter had told her that the
three daughters of the Duchess of Dulworth had all been entrusted to
her care.
In spite of this almost unexampled set of references, the governess was
completely unable to cope with Elise Durwent. She taught her (among
other things) decorum and French. Her pupil was openly irreverent
about the first; and when the governess, after the time-honoured
method, produced an endless vista of exceptions to the rule in French
grammar, the girl balked. She was willing to compromise on _Avoir_,
but mutinied outright at the ramifications of _Être_.
Seeing that the child was making poor progress, and as it was out of
the question to dismiss a governess who had been entrusted with the
three daughters of the Duchess of Dulworth, Lady Durwent sent for
reinforcement in the person of the organist of their church, and bade
him teach Elise the art of the piano. With the dull lack of vision
belonging to men of his type, he failed to recognise the spirit of
music lying in her breast, merely waiting the call to spring into life.
He knew that her home was one where music was unheard, and his method
of unfolding to the girl the most spiritual and fundamental of all the
arts was to give her SCALES. He was a kindly, well-intentioned fellow,
and would not willingly have hurt a sparrow; but he took a nature
doomed to suffer for lack of self-expression, and succeeded in walling
up the great river of music which might have given her what she lacked.
He hid the edifice and offered her scaffolding--then wondered.
II.
Elise was consistent in few things, but her love for Richard, the
youngest of the family, was of a depth and a mature tenderness that
never varied. Doomed to an insufficient will-power and an easy,
plastic nature that lent itself readily to the abbreviation 'Dick,' he
quickly succumbed to his fiery-tinted sister, and became a willing dupe
in all her escapades.
At her order he turned the hose on the head-gardener; when told to put
mucilage on the rector's chair at dinner, he merely asked for the pot.
On six different occasions she offered him soap, telling him it was
toffy, and each time he bit of it generously and without suspicion.
Every one else in the house represented law and order to him--Elise was
the spirit of outlawry, and he her slave. She taught him a dance of
her own invention entitled 'The Devil and the Maiden' (with a certain
inconsistency casting him as the maiden and herself as the Devil), and
frequently, when ordered to go to bed, they would descend to the
servants' quarters and perform it to the great delight of the family
retainers.
A favourite haunt of theirs was the stables, where they would persuade
the grooms to place them on their father's chargers; and they were
frequent visitors at feeding-time, taking a never-ending delight in the
gourmandism of the whinnying beasts, and finding particular joy in
acquiring the language and the mannerisms of the stablemen, which they
would reserve for, and solemnly use at, the next gathering of the
neighbouring gentry.
When Elise was ten and Dick seven, she read him highwaymen's tales
until his large blue eyes almost escaped from their sockets. It was at
the finish of one of these narratives of derring-do that she whispered
temptation into his ear, with the result that they bided their
opportunity, and, when the one groom on duty was asleep, repaired to
the stables armed with a loaded shot-gun. After herculean efforts they
succeeded in harnessing Lord Durwent's famous hunter with the saddle
back to front, the curb-bit choking the horse's throat, the brow-band
tightly strapped around the poor beast's nostrils, the surcingle
trailing in the dust.
With improvised masks over their faces, they mounted the steed and set
out for adventure, the horse seeming to comprehend its strange burden
and stepping as lightly as its tortures would permit, while the saddle
slid cheerfully about its back, threatening any moment to roll the
desperados on to the road.
They had just emerged from the estate into the public highway, when a
passing butcher's cart stopped their progress. The younger Durwent,
who had been mastering the art of retaining his seat while his steed
was in motion, was unprepared for its cessation, and promptly
overbalanced over the horse's shoulder, reaching the road head first,
and discharging a couple of pellets from the shotgun into a fleshy part
of the butcher-boy's anatomy.
The groom was dismissed; the butcher-boy received ten pounds; Richard
(when it was certain that concussion of the brain was not going to
materialise) was soundly whipped; and Elise was banished for
forty-eight hours to her room, issuing with a carefully concocted plan
to waylay the rector coming from church, steal the collection, and
purchase with the ill-gotten gains the sole proprietary interests in
the village sweet-shop.
There is little doubt but that the _coup_ would have been attempted had
not Lord Durwent decided that the influence of his sister was not good
for Dick, and sent him to a preparatory school at Bexhill-on-Sea, there
to imbibe sea-air and some little learning, and await his entrance into
Eton.
Robbed of her brother's stimulating loyalty, Elise relapsed into a
sulky obedience to her governess and her mother. To their puny vision
it seemed that her attitude towards them was one of haughty aloofness,
and everything possible was done to subdue her spirit. Being unable to
see that the child was lonely, and too proud to admit her craving for
sympathetic companionship, they tried to tame the thoroughbred as they
would a mule.
Only when Dick returned for holidays would her petulant moods vanish,
and in his company her old vitality sparkled like the noonday sun upon
the ocean's surface. And if her affection for him knew no variation,
his was no less true. The friendships and the adventures of school
were forgotten in the comradeship of his sister as, over the fields of
Roselawn or on the tennis-court, they would renew their childhood's
hours. He taught her to throw a fly for trout, and she initiated him
into the mysteries of answering the calls of birds in the woods.
Mounted on a couple of ponies, they became familiar figures at the
tenants' cottages, and though the spirit of outlawry mellowed with
advancing years, Lady Durwent never saw them start away from the house
without the uneasy feeling that there was more than a chance they would
get into some mischief before they returned.
In the meantime the elder son was bringing credit to his ancestors and
himself. His accent became a thing of perfection, nicely nuanced, and
entirely free of any emphasis or intensity that might rob it of its
placid suggestion of good-breeding. His attitude towards the servants
was one of pleasant dignity, and the tenantry all spoke of Master
Malcolm as a fine young gentleman who would make a worthy ruler of
Roselawn.
Between him and Richard there was little love lost. The elder boy
disapproved of his hoydenish sister, and sought at all times to shame
her tempestuous nature by insistence on decorum in their relations.
Richard, who invariably brought home adverse reports from school, could
find no fault in his colourful sister, and blindly espoused her cause
at all times.
On one occasion, when Malcolm had been more than usually censorious,
Dick challenged him to a fight. They adjourned to the seclusion of a
small plot of grass by a great oak, where the Etonian knocked Dick down
five times in succession, afterwards escorting him to the cook, who
placed raw beefsteak on his eyes.
It was characteristic of the worthy Richard that he bore his brother no
malice whatever for the punishment. He had proposed the fight,
conscious of the fact that he would be soundly beaten, but he was a bit
of a Quixote--and a lady's name was involved.
And no nurse ever tended a wounded hero more tenderly than the little
copper-haired creature of impulse who bathed the battered face of poor
Dick. Wilful and rebellious as she was, there was in Elise a deep well
of love for her brother that no other being could fathom. And it was
not his loyalty alone that had inspired it. Her solitary life had
quickened her perceptive powers, and intuitively she knew that, in the
years before him, her weak-willed, buoyant-natured brother would be
unable to meet the cross-currents of his destiny and maintain a steady
course.
But he thought it was because of his swollen eyes that she cried.