CHAPTER XXIII.

OSBORNE HAMLEY REVIEWS HIS POSITION.

Osborne had his solitary cup of coffee in the drawing-room. He was

very unhappy too, after his fashion. He stood on the hearth-rug

pondering over his situation. He was not exactly aware how hardly

his father was pressed for ready-money; the Squire had never spoken

to him on the subject without being angry; and many of his loose

contradictory statements--all of which, however contradictory they

might appear, had their basis in truth--were set down by his son

to the exaggeration of passion. But it was uncomfortable enough to

a young man of Osborne's age to feel himself continually hampered

for want of a five-pound note. The principal supplies for the

liberal--almost luxurious table at the Hall, came off the estate; so

that there was no appearance of poverty as far as the household went;

and as long as Osborne was content at home, he had everything he

could wish for; but he had a wife elsewhere--he wanted to see her

continually--and that necessitated journeys. She, poor thing! had to

be supported--where was the money for the journeys and for AimŽe's

modest wants to come from? That was the puzzle in Osborne's mind

just now. While he had been at college his allowance--heir of the

Hamleys--had been three hundred, while Roger had to be content with a

hundred less. The payment of these annual sums had given the Squire

a good deal of trouble; but he thought of it as a merely temporary

inconvenience; perhaps unreasonably thought so. Osborne was to

do great things; take high honours, get a fellowship, marry a

long-descended heiress, live in some of the many uninhabited rooms at

the Hall, and help the squire in the management of the estate that

would some time be his. Roger was to be a clergyman; steady, slow

Roger was just fitted for that, and when he declined entering the

Church, preferring a life of more activity and adventure, Roger was

to be--anything; he was useful and practical, and fit for all the

employments from which Osborne was shut out by his fastidiousness,

and his (pseudo) genius; so it was well he was an eldest son, for he

would never have done to struggle through the world; and as for his

settling down to a profession, it would be like cutting blocks with

a razor! And now here was Osborne, living at home, but longing to be

elsewhere; his allowance stopped in reality; indeed, the punctual

payment of it during the last year or two had been owing to his

mother's exertions; but nothing had been said about its present

cessation by either father or son; money matters were too sore a

subject between them. Every now and then the Squire threw him a

ten-pound note or so; but the sort of suppressed growl with which it

was given, and the entire uncertainty as to when he might receive

such gifts, rendered any calculation based upon their receipt

exceedingly vague and uncertain.

"What in the world can I do to secure an income?" thought Osborne, as

he stood on the hearth-rug, his back to a blazing fire, his cup of

coffee sent up in the rare old china that had belonged to the Hall

for generations; his dress finished, as dress of Osborne's could

hardly fail to be. One could hardly have thought that this elegant

young man, standing there in the midst of comfort that verged on

luxury, should have been turning over that one great problem in his

mind; but so it was. "What can I do to be sure of a present income?

Things cannot go on as they are. I should need support for two or

three years, even if I entered myself at the Temple, or Lincoln's

Inn. It would be impossible to live on my pay in the army; besides,

I should hate that profession. In fact, there are evils attending all

professions--I couldn't bring myself to become a member of any I've

ever heard of. Perhaps I'm more fitted to take 'orders' than anything

else; but to be compelled to write weekly sermons whether one had

anything to say or not, and, probably, doomed only to associate with

people below one in refinement and education! Yet poor AimŽe must

have money. I can't bear to compare our dinners here, overloaded with

joints and game and sweets, as Morgan will persist in sending them

up, with AimŽe's two little mutton-chops. Yet what would my father

say if he knew I'd married a Frenchwoman? In his present mood he'd

disinherit me, if that is possible; and he'd speak about her in a way

I couldn't stand. A Roman Catholic, too! Well, I don't repent it. I'd

do it again. Only if my mother had been in good health--if she could

have heard my story, and known AimŽe! As it is I must keep it secret;

but where to get money? Where to get money?"

Then he bethought him of his poems--would they sell, and bring him

in money? In spite of Milton, he thought they might; and he went to

fetch his MSS. out of his room. He sate down near the fire, trying to

study them with a critical eye, to represent public opinion as far as

he could. He had changed his style since the Mrs. Hemans' days. He

was essentially imitative in his poetic faculty; and of late he had

followed the lead of a popular writer of sonnets. He turned his poems

over: they were almost equivalent to an autobiographical passage in

his life. Arranging them in their order, they came as follows:--

"To AimŽe, Walking with a Little Child."

"To AimŽe, Singing at her Work."

"To AimŽe, Turning away from me while I told my Love."

"AimŽe's Confession."

"AimŽe in Despair."

"The Foreign Land in which my AimŽe dwells."

"The Wedding Ring."

"The Wife."

When he came to this last sonnet he put down his bundle of papers

and began to think. "The wife." Yes, and a French wife; and a

Roman Catholic wife--and a wife who might be said to have been in

service! And his father's hatred of the French, both collectively

and individually--collectively, as tumultuous brutal ruffians,

who murdered their king, and committed all kinds of bloody

atrocities--individually, as represented by "Boney," and the various

caricatures of "Johnny Crapaud" that had been in full circulation

about five-and-twenty years before this time, when the Squire had

been young and capable of receiving impressions. As for the form of

religion in which Mrs. Osborne Hamley had been brought up, it is

enough to say that Catholic emancipation had begun to be talked about

by some politicians, and that the sullen roar of the majority of

Englishmen, at the bare idea of it, was surging in the distance with

ominous threatenings; the very mention of such a measure before the

Squire was, as Osborne well knew, like shaking a red flag before a

bull.

And then he considered that if AimŽe had had the unspeakable, the

incomparable blessing of being born of English parents, in the very

heart of England--Warwickshire, for instance--and had never heard

of priests, or mass, or confession, or the Pope, or Guy Fawkes, but

had been born, baptized, and bred in the Church of England, without

having ever seen the outside of a dissenting meeting-house, or a

papist chapel--even with all these advantages, her having been a

(what was the equivalent for "bonne" in English? 'nursery-governess'

was a term hardly invented) nursery-maid, with wages paid down once a

quarter, liable to be dismissed at a month's warning, and having her

tea and sugar doled out to her, would be a shock to his father's old

ancestral pride that he would hardly ever get over.

"If he saw her!" thought Osborne. "If he could but see her!" But if

the Squire were to see AimŽe, he would also hear her speak her pretty

broken English--precious to her husband, as it was in it that she

had confessed brokenly with her English tongue, that she loved him

soundly with her French heart--and Squire Hamley piqued himself on

being a good hater of the French. "She would make such a loving,

sweet, docile little daughter to my father--she would go as near as

any one could towards filling up the blank void in this house, if he

would but have her; but he won't; he never would; and he sha'n't have

the opportunity of scouting her. Yet if I called her 'Lucy' in these

sonnets; and if they made a great effect--were praised in _Blackwood_

and the _Quarterly_--and all the world was agog to find out the

author; and I told him my secret--I could if I were successful--I

think then he would ask who Lucy was, and I could tell him all then.

If--how I hate 'ifs.' 'If me no ifs.' My life has been based on

'whens;' and first they have turned to 'ifs,' and then they have

vanished away. It was 'when Osborne gets honours,' and then 'if

Osborne,' and then a failure altogether. I said to AimŽe, 'when my

mother sees you,' and now it is 'if my father saw her,' with a very

faint prospect of its ever coming to pass." So he let the evening

hours flow on and disappear in reveries like these; winding up with

a sudden determination to try the fate of his poems with a publisher,

with the direct expectation of getting money for them, and an

ulterior fancy that, if successful, they might work wonders with his

father.

When Roger came home Osborne did not let a day pass before telling

his brother of his plans. He never did conceal anything long from

Roger; the feminine part of his character made him always desirous of

a confidant, and as sweet sympathy as he could extract. But Roger's

opinion had no effect on Osborne's actions; and Roger knew this full

well. So when Osborne began with--"I want your advice on a plan

I have got in my head," Roger replied: "Some one told me that the

Duke of Wellington's maxim was never to give advice unless he could

enforce its being carried into effect; now I can't do that; and you

know, old boy, you don't follow out my advice when you've got it."

"Not always, I know. Not when it doesn't agree with my own opinion.

You're thinking about this concealment of my marriage; but you're

not up in all the circumstances. You know how fully I meant to have

done it, if there hadn't been that row about my debts; and then my

mother's illness and death. And now you've no conception how my

father is changed--how irritable he has become! Wait till you've been

at home a week! Robinson, Morgan--it's the same with them all; but

worst of all with me."

"Poor fellow!" said Roger; "I thought he looked terribly changed:

shrunken, and his ruddiness of complexion altered."

"Why, he hardly takes half the exercise he used to do, so it's no

wonder. He has turned away all the men off the new works, which used

to be such an interest to him; and because the roan cob stumbled with

him one day, and nearly threw him, he won't ride it; and yet he won't

sell it and buy another, which would be the sensible plan; so there

are two old horses eating their heads off, while he is constantly

talking about money and expense. And that brings me to what I was

going to say. I'm desperately hard up for money, and so I've been

collecting my poems--weeding them well, you know--going over them

quite critically, in fact; and I want to know if you think Deighton

would publish them. You've a name in Cambridge, you know; and I

daresay he would look at them if you offered them to him."

"I can but try," said Roger; "but I'm afraid you won't get much by

them."

"I don't expect much. I'm a new man, and must make my name. I should

be content with a hundred. If I'd a hundred pounds I'd set myself to

do something. I might keep myself and AimŽe by my writings while I

studied for the bar; or, if the worst came to the worst, a hundred

pounds would take us to Australia."

"Australia! Why, Osborne, what could you do there? And leave my

father! I hope you'll never get your hundred pounds, if that's the

use you're to make of it! Why, you'd break the Squire's heart."

"It might have done once," said Osborne, gloomily, "but it wouldn't

now. He looks at me askance, and shies away from conversation with

me. Let me alone for noticing and feeling this kind of thing. It's

this very susceptibility to outward things that gives me what faculty

I have; and it seems to me as if my bread, and my wife's too, were to

depend upon it. You'll soon see for yourself the terms which I am on

with my father!"

Roger did soon see. His father had slipped into a habit of silence

at meal-times--a habit which Osborne, who was troubled and anxious

enough for his own part, had not striven to break. Father and son

sate together, and exchanged all the necessary speeches connected

with the occasion civilly enough; but it was a relief to them when

their intercourse was over, and they separated--the father to brood

over his sorrow and his disappointment, which were real and deep

enough, and the injury he had received from his boy, which was

exaggerated in his mind by his ignorance of the actual steps Osborne

had taken to raise money. If the money-lenders had calculated the

chances of his father's life or death in making their bargain,

Osborne himself had thought only of how soon and how easily he could

get the money requisite for clearing him from all imperious claims

at Cambridge, and for enabling him to follow AimŽe to her home in

Alsace, and for the subsequent marriage. As yet, Roger had never seen

his brother's wife; indeed, he had only been taken into Osborne's

full confidence after all was decided in which his advice could have

been useful. And now, in the enforced separation, Osborne's whole

thought, both the poetical and practical sides of his mind, ran

upon the little wife who was passing her lonely days in farmhouse

lodgings, wondering when her bridegroom husband would come to her

next. With such an engrossing subject, it was, perhaps, no wonder

that he unconsciously neglected his father; but it was none the less

sad at the time, and to be regretted in its consequences.

"I may come in and have a pipe with you, sir, mayn't I?" said Roger,

that first evening, pushing gently against the study-door, which his

father held only half open.

"You'll not like it," said the squire, still holding the door against

him, but speaking in a relenting tone. "The tobacco I use isn't what

young men like. Better go and have a cigar with Osborne."

"No. I want to sit with you, and I can stand pretty strong tobacco."

Roger pushed in, the resistance slowly giving way before him.

"It will make your clothes smell. You'll have to borrow Osborne's

scents to sweeten yourself," said the Squire, grimly, at the same

time pushing a short smart amber-mouthed pipe to his son.

"No; I'll have a churchwarden. Why, father, do you think I'm a baby

to put up with a doll's head like this?" looking at the carving upon

it.

The Squire was pleased in his heart, though he did not choose to

show it. He only said, "Osborne brought it me when he came back from

Germany. That's three years ago." And then for some time they smoked

in silence. But the voluntary companionship of his son was very

soothing to the Squire, though not a word might be said.

The next speech he made showed the direction of his thoughts; indeed,

his words were always a transparent medium through which the current

might be seen.

"A deal of a man's life comes and goes in three years--I've found

that out;" and he puffed away at his pipe again. While Roger was

turning over in his mind what answer to make to this truism, the

squire again stopped his smoking and spoke.

"I remember when there was all that fuss about the Prince of

Wales being made regent, I read somewhere--I daresay it was in a

newspaper--that kings and their heirs-apparent were always on bad

terms. Osborne was quite a little chap then: he used to go out riding

with me on White Surrey;--you won't remember the pony we called White

Surrey?"

"I remember it; but I thought it a tall horse in those days."

"Ah! that was because you were such a small lad, you know. I'd seven

horses in the stable then--not counting the farm-horses. I don't

recollect having a care then, except--_she_ was always delicate, you

know. But what a beautiful boy Osborne was! He was always dressed in

black velvet--it was a foppery, but it wasn't my doing, and it was

all right, I'm sure. He's a handsome fellow now, but the sunshine has

gone out of his face."

"He's a good deal troubled about this money, and the anxiety he has

given you," said Roger, rather taking his brother's feelings for

granted.

"Not he," said the Squire, taking the pipe out of his mouth, and

hitting the bowl so sharply against the hob that it broke in pieces.

"There! But never mind! I say, not he, Roger! He's none troubled

about the money. It's easy getting money from Jews if you're the

eldest son, and the heir. They just ask, 'How old is your father, and

has he had a stroke, or a fit?' and it's settled out of hand, and

then they come prowling about a place, and running down the timber

and land--Don't let us speak of him; it's no good, Roger. He and I

are out of tune, and it seems to me as if only God Almighty could

put us to rights. It's thinking of how he grieved _her_ at last that

makes me so bitter with him. And yet there's a deal of good in him!

and he's so quick and clever, if only he'd give his mind to things.

Now, you were always slow, Roger--all your masters used to say so."

Roger laughed a little--

"Yes; I'd many a nickname at school for my slowness," said he.

"Never mind!" said the Squire, consolingly. "I'm sure I don't. If you

were a clever fellow like Osborne yonder, you'd be all for caring for

books and writing, and you'd perhaps find it as dull as he does to

keep company with a bumpkin-squire Jones like me. Yet, I daresay,

they think a deal of you at Cambridge," said he, after a pause,

"since you've got this fine wranglership; I'd nearly forgotten

that--the news came at such a miserable time."

"Well, yes! They're always proud of the senior wrangler of the year

up at Cambridge. Next year I must abdicate."

The Squire sat and gazed into the embers, still holding his useless

pipe-stem. At last he said, in a low voice, as if scarcely aware he

had got a listener,--"I used to write to her when she was away in

London, and tell her the home news. But no letter will reach her now!

Nothing reaches her!"

Roger started up.

"Where's the tobacco-box, father? Let me fill you another pipe!"

and when he had done so, he stooped over his father and stroked his

cheek. The Squire shook his head.

"You've only just come home, lad. You don't know me, as I am

now-a-days! Ask Robinson--I won't have you asking Osborne, he ought

to keep it to himself--but any of the servants will tell you I'm not

like the same man for getting into passions with them. I used to

be reckoned a good master, but that's past now! Osborne was once a

little boy, and she was once alive--and I was once a good master--a

good master--yes! It's all past now."

He took up his pipe, and began to smoke afresh, and Roger, after a

silence of some minutes, began a long story about some Cambridge

man's misadventure on the hunting-field, telling it with such humour

that the Squire was beguiled into hearty laughing. When they rose to

go to bed his father said to Roger,--

"Well, we've had a pleasant evening--at least, I have. But perhaps

you haven't; for I'm but poor company now, I know."

"I don't know when I've passed a happier evening, father," said

Roger. And he spoke truly, though he did not trouble himself to find

out the cause of his happiness.