Chapter XIV: Widening Ways

Next day, when the Rev. Charles was putting all his skill into underhand twisters for the overthrow of Jack, who, to Jim's great exasperation, had got the hang of them and was driving them all over the shore, and Gracie was dancing with wild exhortation to her brother to get him out, as it was her innings next--she stopped suddenly with a shout and started off towards the sand-hills. And the others, turning to see what had taken her, found the Knoyle party threading its way among the devious gullies, and presently they all came cantering through the loose sand to the flats.

"Morning, Mr. Eager; we've come for a game. Will you have us?" cried Sir George exuberantly.

"Rather! It's just what we wanted. You'll play, sir?"

"That's what I came for. Renew my youth, and all that kind of thing! See to the horses, Bob. Eh, what?"--at sight of the lad's eager face--"Like to take a hand too? Well, see If you can tether 'em--away from those bents. Bents won't do them any good. Now then, how shall we play?"

"Oh, Carne versus Knoyle," said Eager. "All to field, and Margaret goes in for both sides."

Knoyle beat Carne that time, thanks to George and Bob. Sir George "renewed his youth, and all that kind of thing." And young Ralph Harben entered vigorous protest every time he was put out, and argued the points till George punched his head for him.

After the game the boys were allowed to take the stiffness out of the ponies' legs. And altogether--as the first of many similar ones--that was a memorable day.

Eager rejoiced greatly in the success of his planning, for the close contact with these other bright and restless spirits had a wonderful effect on his boys. They toned down and they toned up, and it seemed to him that he could trace improvement in them each day.

He had his doubts now and again of the effects of young Harben on his own two. The lad was difficult and had evidently been much spoiled at home. Eager quietly did his best to remedy his more visible defects, and George Herapath seconded him with bodily chastisement whenever occasion offered.

Eager and Sir George were sitting resting in the side of a sand-hill one day, and watching the younger folk at a game in which Ralph was perpetually disputatious odd-man-out. It seemed impossible for him to get through any game without some wrangle.

Eager made some quiet comment on the matter and Sir George said:

"Yes, he's difficult. He's the only child, and his mother spoiled him sadly. When she died his father sent him to a second-rate school, and this is the result. But I hope he'll pull round. We must do what we can for him. Harben is in treaty for the Scarsdale place just beyond Wynsloe, so you'll be able to keep an eye on the boy. Your two are marvels. I never see them squabbling."

"Oh, they never squabble. They just fight it out, and no temper in it. They're really capital boxers, and they're coming on in their fencing."

"You'll make men of those two yet."

"I'll do my best."

"And if the old man dies? What will happen then?"

"God knows. It's as hard a nut as I ever came across."

"That infernal old woman up at Carrie could crack it if she would, I suppose?"

"I have no doubt; but she won't speak. And I'm afraid no one would believe her if she did."

"Deuced rough on the old man!" And Sir George lapsed into musing, and watched the riddles of Carne as they sped to and fro, as active as panthers and as careless as monkeys of the trouble they represented.

One day when they were all hard at it, Gracie suddenly sped from her post, as her manner was, heedless of the shouts of the rest, darted in among the hummocks, and came back dragging the not very reluctant Kettle Rimmer and insisted on her joining the game. And Kattie, nothing loth, succeeded in cloaking her lack of knowledge with such untiring energy that she proved a welcome recruit and was forthwith pressed into the company. For where numbers are few and more are needed, trifling distinctions of class lose their value. She was very quick and bright, too, and soon picked up the rules of the games; and when she was not flying after balls she was watching Margaret and Gracie with worshipful observant eyes, and assimilating from them a new code of manners for her own private use.

Gracie's usual behaviour in games, indeed, was that of a pea on a hot shovel. But Margaret, no whit behind her in her zeal for the business on hand, bore herself with something more of the dignity and decorum of a young lady in her fifteenth year--except just on occasion, when, at a tight pinch, everything went overboard and she flung herself into things with the abandon of Gracie and Kattie combined.

Eager watched her with great appreciation. He could divine the coming woman in the occasional sweet seriousness of the charming face, and rejoiced in her as he did in all beautiful things.

And George Herapath, with much of his father in him, was always a tower of good-humoured common sense and abounding energy. He backed up Eager's efforts in every direction, licked Harben or the tiger-cubs conscientiously, as often as occasion arose, and brought to their play the experience and tone of the public schoolboy up to date. He was at Harrow, and his house was closed on account of an outbreak of scarlet fever, which all except the higher powers counted mighty luck and all to the good.

They soon dropped into the way of all bathing together of a morning, before starting their game--all except Sir George, whose sea-bathing days were over, and who preferred cantering over the sands with them, all racing alongside like a pack of many-coloured hounds, shouting aloud in the wild glee of the moment, splashing through the shimmering pools in rainbow showers, tumbling headlong into the tideway, and then in dogged silence breasting fearlessly out to sea, while Sir George rode his big bay into the water after them as far as his discretion would permit.

And at times they sped far afield over the countryside, when, if Jack and Jim were hares, they were never caught, and if they were hounds they picked up an almost invisible scent in a way that did credit to their powers and to Mr. Fenimore Cooper. They might be beaten at cricket or hockey, whose finer rules they were always transgressing, but in this wider play none could come near them.

It took the new-comers a very long time to distinguish between them; and even when they thought they had got them fixed at last, they were as often wrong as right, for the boys delighted to puzzle them, and even went the length of refusing to answer to their right names and assuming one another's with that sole end in view.

"They beat me," laughed Sir George, more than once. "I never know t'other from which, and when I'm quite sure of 'em I'm always wrong."

"They do it on purpose," said Gracie. "They're little rascals, but they're as different as different to me. I can't see any likeness in them, except that they're both rather bad at times--but nothing to what they used to be, I assure you, Sir George."

"Well, well I Perhaps I'll get to know them in time, my dear; and meanwhile you just wink at me when they're making game of the old man."

"I will," said Gracie solemnly. "But they don't really mean any harm, you know. It's just their fun."

From his upper windows in the house of Carne that other old man watched them also, with scowling face and twisted heart. The sands were running--running--running, and he was no nearer the solution of his life's puzzle than he had been ten years ago. Farther away if anything, for babies die more easily than lusty, tight-knit, sun-tanned boys who never knew an ailment, and grew stronger every day.

But there were keener eyes still, sharpened by a vast craving love for the wakening souls committed to his care, watching them all the time, and eager for every sign of growth and development. Love blinds, they say, and so it may to that which it does not wish to see. But Love is a mighty revealer, too, and Doubt and Dislike attain no revelations but the shadows of themselves.

Charles Eager studied those boys with many times the eagerness and acumen that he had ever brought to his books. Here was a living enigma, and he found it fascinating. But the weeks grew into months, and he found himself not one step nearer its solution.

In all their moods and humours, in their outstanding virtues and their no less prominent defects, they were one. They had grown up in the equal practice of qualities drawn, on the one side at all events, from the same source.

Bodily fear seemed quite outside their ken. They lacked the imagination which pictures possible consequences behind the deed. If they wanted to do a thing, they did not stop to consider what might come of it, but just did it. The consequences when they came were accepted as matters of course.

They were generous to a fault. They would, indeed, fight between themselves for the most trifling possessions, but it was from sheer love of fighting. They never kept for the mere sake of having, and most of their belongings they held in common--jointly against the world as they had known it. And this feeling of being two against outsiders had undoubtedly fostered the communal feeling. As their circle widened and others were admitted into it, the feeling extended to them. They possessed little, but what they had all were welcome to.

And they were by nature eminently truthful. To their grandfather or Mr. Kennet they might on occasion assume masks which belied their feelings, but that was in the nature of a ruse to mislead an enemy who by gross injustice had forced them into unnatural ways. To them it was no more acting a lie than is the broken fluttering of a bird which thereby draws the trespasser from its nest. They were in a state of perpetual war with the higher powers, and to them all things were fair.

Their faults were the natural complements of these better things. They were headstrong, reckless, careless, hot-tempered--defects, after all, which as a rule entail more trouble on their owners than on others, and are therefore regarded by the world with a lenient eye.

For many months Eager found no shade of difference in their development. They had started level, and they progressed in equal degree, and progressed marvellously. The virgin soil brought forth an abundant harvest. But then, in spite of all, it was good soil, and ready for the seed.

The grim old man at Carne sent now and again for Eager, and received him always, snuff-box in hand, with a cynical, "Well, Mr. Eager, no progress?"

"Progress, Sir Denzil? Heaps! We are advancing by leaps and bounds. We are doing splendidly."

"You've still got the two of them, I see,"--as though they were puppies Eager was trying to dispose of.

"Still got the two, sir, and I couldn't tell you which is the better of them. There are the makings of fine men in both."

"Then you're just where you were as to which is which?"

"Just where you have been these ten years, sir."

"You have seen more of them in ten weeks than I've seen in ten years."

"They are developing every day, but so far they run neck to neck. But, candidly, Sir Denzil, I scarcely know what signs one could take as any decisive indication of their descent. Heredity is a ticklish thing to draw any certain inference from. It plays odd tricks, as you know."

"I had hoped somewhat from those swimming lessons----" and he snuffed regretfully.

Eager laughed joyously at his disappointment.

"Why, they swam like ducks the very first day. You really have no idea what fine lads they are, sir. They are lads to be proud of."

"Ay--if there was but one."

"It's a thousand pities we can't find the right way out of the muddle without thinking of such things."

"We cannot," said the old man grimly.