Chapter II: I Come of Age and to a Determination

Lord Skene was, as things go, a poor man--poor for an ex-judge, and poor for a nobleman. His estate was much embarrassed at the time when his lady started a resolution to nurse it. It was reduced then to the mansion and demesne of Evercreech, a fair enough property in its way, but largely neglected, and, in places, fallen to waste. I think that even her ladyship’s management could do little more than preserve it to the succession--a vain economy, it seemed; but the seed of woman is hope. Much before her time the house in Berkeley Square had been let away on a lengthy lease; and a family hotel must serve her and my lord on their periodic visits to town.

Evercreech had to serve _me_, summer and winter, the year round; and in those young, untroubled days it was enough. There was a plenitude of beauty, and romance, and antique quietude for my utmost needs. I never realised what I was, or what I signified, to the couple most concerned in my existence. I think it would have puzzled them as much to define me--whether for son, or servant, or ward. Perhaps my position nearest approached that of a _donzel_ in feudal times, attached to the service of some high relation as his apprentice in arms and chivalry, and broke to self-reliance by a discipline of self-help. Certainly I read of spoiling and mothers’ anxious love; but I never knew them out of books, which were from the first my joy and solace.

Save during my schooldays, I led a curiously solitary life. I was neither invited nor expected to take a part with his lordship in the daily interests of his condition. I did not dine at his table, nor ride with him with the hounds, nor shoot his sparse coverts, nor whip his unprofitable streams. He was very tolerant of me, and made me even a generous allowance, the most of which I hoarded indifferently, having no use of it but for books. I know that at this pregnant period of which I write I was the possessor of some hundreds of pounds, a veritable little treasure chest of gold, which had accumulated to me during the years of growth. May all my savings return such an account of interest as did these.

I had my meals with the steward, one Comely, a fellow as excellent as his name, but comically guarded in his attitude towards me, whether for respect or familiarity. I had liberty to take my piece from the gun-room, and spend any whole day, if I chose, in blazing away amongst the small game of the unpreserves. The stables, the library, the whole “run,” in short, of Evercreech were free to me on the queer unspoken condition of “sufferance.” I was always like a “poor relation” let to holiday in a great mansion during the absence of its owners.

Nor was I ever invited to a more familiar conduct by Lady Skene herself. Somehow, whatever the reason, I was alien to her trust and affections. I could have thought she looked upon me as an encumbrance indeed--even, from the date of the betterment of her fortunes, as a veritable changeling, who had no inherent right to her motherly consideration. Well, perhaps I had not.

Evercreech lay back from the highroad between Footover and Market Grazing in north-west Hampshire--a wild and haunted country, sharing itself between dense woods and lonely downs. There were enough of both contained within the estate to serve a young solitary spirit for its ample wilderness--for day-long wanderings, and fantastic chancings by stream and thicket, and pretty pastorals won out of high folds on hillsides, and all the sting and honey of romance. There one might walk or ride, a squire of the Grael, and taste a county’s venture in an acre. From farm to ruined byre, from box-hedged garden to the infinite wild tangle of hedgerows, from stately culture to nature in her poignant naked savagery, one might pass and play one’s fancy, quite secure from the banter of the prosaic. There were family legends, too, each one enough to make a transatlantic reputation. The two that most occur to me illustrate the terror and the sweetness of such old-time traditions. The first had its locale in Hags Lane, a lonely, deep-sunk furrow in the pastures, but after all libelled in its name; for hag or aggart in Hampshire means nothing less fragrant than hawthorn. But the figure associated with it was of odour to make spectral amends, being that of a man astride a great dark horse, which leapt the hedge in ghastly gloamings before the eyes of any chance pedestrian, and went tearing up the road on soundless hoofs. Story connected this apparition with a past lord of Skene, who, riding to wreak vengeance on a faithless spouse and her paramour, had manœuvred the guilty couple to their death over the edge of a chalk quarry, and thereafter had taken the disillusioned Sultan Schahriar for his model, though with the limited despotism that his more civilised age enjoined upon him, since the moral ruin of his victims must content him without their throttling. He was rather a rotten pippin on a tree of comfortable fruit; for the Skenes altogether had been an easy roguish race, hot-tongued but affectionate, and, when caught stumbling on a betrayal of virtue, generally ready to make the _amende honorable_. Accordingly, perhaps, they had shown a tendency to _mésalliances_, which had procured them, nevertheless, such a succession of vigorous heirs, as to extend their main line unbroken from times prehistoric. Yet, it seemed, at last, that Fate was to intervene for a diversion. But of that in a moment.

If that first legend smacks of midnight and hellebore, the second is to my mind a very dirge of rose petals. It relates how a sensitive little fellow of the race once lost his mother’s wedding-ring, and died of grief to witness her distress. Thereafter, then, his little ghost came haunting a particular bed in the garden--a flower-face caught fitfully among the leaves, or dropping, when one bent to pluck it, in a shower of creamy petals, like a white peony’s. So that the mother, weeping and pitiful, was moved at last to sow love-in-a-mist in the bed, as it were a net to catch that forlorn small ghost for its kissing and reassurance, and for the speaking to it in flower language of how mother did not mind her loss a bit. When lo! upon a shoot of the plant that sprung the following April was found, lifted from the soil wherein it had been lost, the ring, and the flower spectre haunted its pretty parterre no more. The fantastic superstition accorded well, I think, with the traditions of a house which had been notable as much for its rich maternity as for its fruits of over-kindness; and the “Baby’s garden”--as the mossy little pleasance, sacred to the long-vanished phantom, was called--spoke and speaks to me always of qualities better than wisdom.

Wise, excepting in the one instance of my stepfather the judge, the Skenes were not; but they never were lacking, I aver, in the essential poetry of humanity. It neutralised in them, even, the vulgarity of quite commonplace exteriors.

Time alone has the face which is an index to its nature. The best of men’s is but a mask. Round, florid, beaming, my stepfather’s was the face of a vintner. He might have drawn his pedigree from a beer engine, and advertised it, foaming froth, on a sign. None might have guessed from its features its age-long inheritance of gentle breeding.

He was a small man, dapper and a trifle horsey in his dress, but after an older fashion of collar and harness. He wore, typically, a shepherd’s-plaid tie, and his hat at an imperceptible angle. He always smelt fresh, and, somehow, of a genial shrewdness; and his manner towards me was a manner of kindly condescension. It was not until my school time was well over, and my days drifted into the purposelessness of an unattached loafer, that I became first conscious of an alteration in his attitude towards me. And the occasion which produced it was productive of a yet colder alienation from me on the part of Lady Skene, which was as significant of her nature as was his increased consideration for me of his.

One morning his lordship called me into his study. I stood before him, as I had often done before, vaguely on my guard between submission and independence, and he smiled on me, a little nervous and excited.

“How old are you, Gaskett--let’s see?” he said.

I answered: “I have come of age, sir.”

“Any plans for your future?”

“None.”

“Nothing thought of--no direction?”

“What could give them a direction here, sir?”

He looked at me a little, speculating.

“Perhaps we’ve let the question drift too long. Think it over and think it out. We must find a way to independence for you.”

“Thank you, sir. You could do me no greater kindness.”

“What d’ye mean?”

He glanced at me curiously.

“I know I’m here on sufferance, sir,” I said. “I know my presence is an open sore to Lady Skene. I’ve long been wanting to ask you something. I think I could find myself sooner, perhaps, if I were given elbow room. With all your liberality, I feel constrained in Evercreech. Let me have the lodge in the Caddle to fit up for myself and live in for the present, and until I’ve come to some decision.”

He stared a bit and laughed, and set to scraping his chin, his pale blue eyes measuring me.

“You shall have it certainly,” he said suddenly, “for your den, or hermitage, or what the devil you like. But it won’t do to cut the house connection, my boy. You must dine and bed at home. What makes you think you are not welcome here?”

“Not my stepfather, sir,” I said.

He turned to his papers, and dismissed me quickly; but called me back as I reached the door.

“After all,” he said, “perhaps you’re better out of the way just now.” His expression was extraordinarily complex. “Its coming to be the era of pap and flapdoodle--ridiculous, ain’t it, at this date--but----”

“Is that so, sir? I congratulate you.”

“Thank’ee, my boy. Don’t forget I’ve always liked you; and if circumstances--deuced aggravating things----” He broke off, humming, and, kicking up his dapper feet, looked at his boot tips.

“I’ll put some fellows in,” he said hurriedly, “and have the place made fit for you.”

“You’ve always been kind to me, sir,” I said gratefully. “I hope I sha’n’t trouble you much longer.”

I was going, but he stopped me again.

“Trouble be cursed!” he said. “You must understand that your happiness and welfare are my aim. You’re welcome to the lodge for ever, or so long as you’re convinced that they centre in that bogeyish hole. Only don’t let your fancy run on bitterness. Evercreech is your home.”

I was conscious of an expression in his face, between joy and mystification, as I left him. It was easy, I thought, to interpret it. Here, after all this interval, was an heir to Evercreech expected, and his lady’s long remissness atoned. The thoroughbred was stretching his neck for home; the encumbrance must clear himself from the course. “Sufferance,” having made the pace for “Welcome,” must withdraw in proper pride of his humble share in the event, and be content to eat his oats in abstraction. Double-distilled nonsense, of course; but a mother’s slight is poison, and that venom was in my blood. Not all the investigations of anatomists can connect the heart with the reason.