Chapter IX: Uncle Trenchard

Stephen Trenchard paces his smooth gravel walk in the April sunshine, after tiffin, looking at the sparrows, and blackbirds, and thrushes disporting blithely on his velvet lawn, or hopping away into the shadow of evergreens--great masses of laurel and laurustinus, rhododendron and bay, which surround the smooth expanse of grass in a semicircular sweep.

Very perfect is the order of Mr. Trenchard’s garden--not a yellow leaf on the laurels, not a daisy peeping pertly, silver-white, from the lawn, not a branch that grows awry. In the kitchen-garden yonder, far away behind the shrubbery, the fan-shaped fruit-trees look like geometrical patterns on the yellow brick walls. The apples and pears are all wired into exactest growth, and not a twig is allowed its own way. Mr. Trenchard is in his garden by six o’clock every morning, and his severe eye interrogates the smallest sprig of groundsel, and rebukes the very slugs that vie with him in early rising. Mr. Trenchard is not a master to be trifled with, and his gardeners know it. For every shilling he expends he will have twelve pennyworth of labour--nay, thirteen or fourteen pennyworth if he can get it. Woe be to the wretch who tries to put him off with elevenpence halfpenny worth of industry!

‘I’ve had to work for my money,’ says Mr. Trenchard, ‘and I expect value for my money from other people.’

He walks briskly up and down, looking to the right and left with an eye bright and quick as a bird’s, a small black eye, which looks the blacker for its whitened lashes. He is of middle height, very thin, very yellow. He has sharply cut features; nose thin, pointed, and aggressive-looking; lips also thin, and of a disagreeable pallid hue; eyebrows iron-gray, thick and bushy; brow narrow; perceptive ridge strongly marked, upper head receding; hair thick, short, and iron-gray, like the eyebrows, brushed into two sharp points, like a terrier’s ears.

Mr. Trenchard wears nankeen waistcoat and trousers, very loose for his lean limbs, and a glossy black frock coat, also loose, a black satin scarf with a gold pin, and high shirt collars; a double gold eye-glass dangles on his breast, a glass which he wears for show rather than use, but which intensifies the severity of his countenance when he reproves his gardeners, or lectures his butler.

He is a man who has toiled early and late, until the other day, when he took it into his head to give up his counting-house to a junior partner, and come back to England and enjoy the evening of his life at his ease. He has been a man of one idea all his days, and the single object of his existence has been the accumulation of money. The process of money-making, the honour and homage which the world renders the reputed millionaire--these have been so sweet to him that the question of what he is to do with his wealth has rarely presented itself seriously to his mind.

On his sixty-ninth birthday he awoke suddenly to the consciousness that whatever personal enjoyment he meant to have out of his wealth must be obtained within the next ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Even with his vigorous constitution he could hardly hope to live beyond the age of eighty-five. Forty years in India must take something out of a man, be he never so temperate, and abstemiousness has been one of Stephen Trenchard’s virtues.

So at sixty-nine he said to himself, ‘It is time for me to go back to England; let the world see what a position I have made for myself, and take all the good I can out of life.’

His seventieth birthday has not yet arrived, and he has built for his soul a lordly treasure-house, or in other words, he has taken upon lease, decorated, and furnished Lancaster Lodge, one of the best houses in his father’s native town of Redcastle: he has hired servants, purchased carriages and horses, and begun a plain-sailing English gentleman’s life on a very liberal scale. The result so far has been eminently satisfactory. His house to him a kingdom is, he rules his servants, indoor and outdoor, with a rod of iron, and feels himself a potentate.

Very pleasant to him is the incense which Redcastle offers to his wealth. People whose fathers and grandfathers snubbed or ignored his father, the struggling solicitor, bow down and worship the Anglo-Indian Plutocrat. He accepts their adoration with supreme coolness, and a quiet arrogance which his admirers extol as innate aristocracy of mind.

It has pleased him to permit his niece Marion Faunthorpe to bask in the sunshine of his favour. She is not handsome enough to charm his eye, which is critical in the matter of feminine beauty, nor is she clever enough to amuse him; but she is rather a pretty thing to have about his house, and she does very well for a listener when he is in the humour to tell his prosy old stories of dead and gone Calcutta scandals. She knows how to hold her tongue when he is inclined to be silent, is solicitous for his small comforts, quiet as a mouse when he takes his after-dinner nap. She behaves gracefully at table, neither eats nor drinks too much, looks stylish when fashionably dressed, moves about the house quietly, and is not altogether deficient in tact. He is content, therefore, to tolerate her as a frequent guest, but does not appreciate her warmly enough to ask her to take up her permanent abode with him.

He has made many inquiries about Sibyl, and has been vexed by her non-appearance. The Stormonts, the Groshens, and other notabilities have praised the absent girl’s beauty, having found out all at once that a young person whose existence they never troubled themselves to acknowledge was the loveliest girl in Redcastle. ‘Quite the belle of the place, I assure you, Mr. Trenchard,’ says Mrs. Stormont.

‘Indeed,’ remarks Stephen Trenchard. ‘She was invited out very much, I suppose?’

‘Well, no, dear Mr. Trenchard, she was too young, you know--almost a child. And then your brother-in-law is so retiring. We could never have got him out of his shell.’

If there is one thing in that region of trifles outside the money market which Mr. Trenchard appreciates it is beauty in woman. Having heard his eldest niece so enthusiastically praised, he is particularly anxious to see her, ever so much the more anxious because her indifference has thwarted him.

‘She must be a queer kind of girl,’ he tells himself, ‘to hang back from a rich uncle, to prefer drudging as a governess to sponging upon me. Marion is glad enough to take all she can get, and would kneel down and kiss my shoe-string if I asked her. Her feelings are transparent enough. This other one must be something out of the common.’

A wonderful advantage this for Sibyl at starting; though it is an advantage she has gained accidentally.

The great lodge bell clangs out, while Mr. Trenchard paces up and down, and startles the respectable tranquillity of Above Bar with its clamour. He takes out his watch. Too early for a ceremonious visit. Mr. Trenchard walks round by the side windows of his large square mansion, and comes within view of the gate. Two ladies enter, both young and slim, both tall, but one rather shorter than the other. The taller gives a little eager cry and runs forward to him, the second advances more slowly.

‘Dear uncle Stephen,’ cries Marion, pursing up her lips to be kissed, an operation which uncle Stephen performs with a slightly reluctant air, ‘Sibyl has come home quite unexpectedly,’ Marion is always out of breath at the beginning of a visit, a pretty gushing way which some people call charming, ‘and I thought I might bring her--to--see you--dear uncle John.’

‘Thought you might bring her. Of course you might bring her. Haven’t I been asking to see her ever since Christmas? So that is Sibyl, is it?’ looking at the graceful figure lingering on the sunlit grass a few yards away from him. The bright face is flushed with palest rose, the dark full eyes are looking slily at him, the dark brown hair is burnished by the sun. A fair picture of peerless youth for crabbed age to admire.

‘So that is Sibyl! Yes, she is very lovely. Those sycophants haven’t exaggerated. Come here, my love, come to your old uncle. Naughty child, why did you stay away so long?’

He holds out his lean old arms, he folds her to his breast, he kisses her lovingly, paternally, as he has never yet kissed Marion, despite her affectionate blandishments.

‘Well, I never!’ Marion exclaims inwardly, standing a little aloof, and feeling that her reign is over.