Читать книгу The Hillyars and the Burtons - Henry Kingsley - Страница 12

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ONE morning in September, Sir George Hillyar sat in his study, before his escritoire, very busy with his papers; and beside him was his lawyer, Mr. Compton.

Sir George was a singularly handsome, middle-aged gentleman, with a square ruddy face, very sleek close-cropped gray hair, looking very high--bred and amiable, save in two points. He had a short thick neck, like a bulldog, and a very obstinate-looking and rather large jaw. To give you his character in a few words, he was a just, kind man, of not very high intellect, in spite of his high cultivation; of intensely strong affections, and (whether it was the fault of his thick neck, or his broad jaw, I cannot say), as obstinate as a mule.

"Are you really going to renew, this lease, Sir George?" said Mr. Compton.

"Why, yes, I think so. I promised Erne I would."

"Will you excuse me, Sir George, if I ask, as your confidential friend of many years' standing, what the deuse my young friend Erne has to do with the matter?"

"Nothing in the world," said Sir George; "but they got hold of him when we were down there, and he got me to promise. Therefore I must, don't you see."

"No, I don't. This widow and her sons are ruining the farm; you propose to give them seven years longer to complete their work. How often have you laid it down as a rule, never to renew a lease to a widow; and here you are doing it, because that young gaby, Erne, has been practised on, and asks you."

"I know all that," said Sir George, "but I am quite determined."

"Very well, then," said Mr. Compton, rather nettled, "let's say no more. I know what that means."

"You see, Compton, I will not disappoint that boy in anything of this kind. I have kept him here alone with me, and allowed him to see scarce any one. You know why. And the boy has not seen enough of the outside world, and has no sympathies with his fellow-men whatever. And I will not baulk him in this. These are the first people he has shown an interest in, Compton, and he shan't be baulked."

"He would have shown an interest in plenty of people, if you would have let him," said the lawyer. "You have kept him mewed up here till he is fifteen, with no companion but his tutor, and your gray-headed household. The boy has scarcely spoken with a human being under fifty in his lifetime. Why don't you let him see young folks of his own age?"

"Why!" said Sir George angrily. "Have I two hearts to break that you ask me this? You know why, Compton. You know how that woman and her child broke my heart once. Do you want it broken again by this, the child of my old age, I may say,--the child of my angel Mary?"

"You will have your heart broken if you don't mind, Hillyar," said the lawyer. "I will speak out once and for all. If you keep that boy tied up here in this unnatural way, he will play the deuse some day or another. Upon my word, Hillyar, this fantigue of yours approaches lunacy. To keep a noble high-mettled boy like Erne cooped up among gray-headed grooms and foot-men, and never to allow him to see a round young face except in church. It is rank madness."

"I have had enough of young servants," said Sir George. "I will have no more Samuel Burtons, if you please."

"Who the deuse wants you to? Send the boy among lads in his own rank in life."

"I have done it once. They bore him. He don't like 'em."

"Because you don't let him choose them for himself."

"Let him have the chance of choosing, in his ignorance, such ruffians as young Mottesfont and young Peters, for instance," said Sir George, scornfully. "No more of that, thank you, either. You are a sage counsellor, upon my word, Compton. Let us change the subject."

"Upon my honor we had better," said the lawyer, "if I am to keep my temper. You are, without exception, the most wrong-headed man I ever saw. This I will say, that, as soon as Erne is released from this unnatural restraint, as he must be soon, he will make friends with the first young man, and fall in love with the first pretty face, he sees. You have given him no selection; and, by Jove, you have given him a better chance of going to the deuse than ever you did his half-brother."

Obstinate men are not always ill-tempered; Sir George Hillyar was not an ill-tempered man. His obstinacy arose as much perhaps from self-esteem, caused by his having been from his boyhood master of ten thousand a year, as from his bull-neck and broad jaw. He was perfectly good-tempered over this scolding of his kind old friend; he only said,--

"Now, Compton, you know me. I have thought over the matter more than you have. I am determined. Let us get on to business."

"Very well!" said the lawyer; "these papers you have signed; I had better take them to the office."

"Yes; put'em in your old japanned box, and put it on the third shelf from the top, between Viscount Saltire and the Earl of Ascot; not much in his box, is there, hey!"

"A deal there should n't be," said the lawyer. "Is there nothing else for me to put in the tin box of Sir George Hillyar, Bart. on the third shelf from the top?"

"No! hang it, no, Compton. I'll keep it here. I might alter it. Things might happen; and, when death looks in between the curtains, a man is apt to change his mind. I'll keep it here."

He pointed to the tall fantastically-carved escritoire at which he was sitting, and, tapping it, said once again, "I'll keep it here, Compton; I'll keep it here, old friend."

Sir George Hillyar's history is told in a very few words. His first marriage was a singularly unfortunate one. Lady Hillyar sold herself to him for his wealth, and afterwards revenged herself on him by leading him the life of a dog. She was an eviltempered woman, and her ill-temper improved by practice. They had one son, the Lieutenant Hillyar we have already seen in Australia, and whose history we have heard; whose only recollections of a mother must have been those of a restless dark woman who wrangled and wept perpetually. Sir George Hillyar's constitutional obstinacy did him but little good here; his calm inflexibility was more maddening to his fierce wild wife than the loudest objurgation would have been. One night, when little George was lying in his cradle, she kissed him and left the house; left it for utter ruin and disgrace; unfaithful more from temper than from passion.

In two years she died. She wore her fierce heart out at last in ceaseless reproaches on the man with whom she had fled, the man whom she had jilted that she might marry Sir George Hillyar. A dark wild story all through; which left its traces on the obstinate face of Sir George Hillyar, and on the character and life of his poor boy.

Dark suspicions arose in his mind about this boy. He never loved him, but he was inexorably just to him. His suspicions about him were utterly groundless; his common sense told him that, but he could not love him, for he had nearly learnt to hate his mother. He was more than ordinarily careful over his education, and his extra care led to the disasters we know of.

But there was a brief glimpse of sunshine in store for Sir George Hillyar. He was still a young, and, in spite of all appearances, a warm-hearted man. And he fell in love again.

He went down into Wiltshire to shoot over an outlying estate of his, which he seldom visited save for sporting purposes, keeping no establishment there, but lodging with his bailiff. And it so happened that the gamekeeper's daughter came down the long grass ride, between the fallowing hazel copse, under the October sun, to bring them lunch. And she was so divinely beautiful that he shot badly all the afternoon, and in the evening went to the keeper's lodge to ask questions about the pheasants, and saw her again. And she was so graceful, so good, and so modest, that in four days he asked her to marry him; and, if ever there was a happy marriage it was this; for truth is stranger than fiction, as many folks know.

They had one boy, whom they christened Erne, after an Irish family; and, when he was two years old, poor Lady Hillyar stayed out too late one evening on the lake, too soon after her second confinement. She caught cold, and died, leaving an infant who quickly followed her. And then Sir George transferred all the love of his heart to the boy Erne, who, as he grew, showed that he had inherited not only his mother's beauty, but all the yielding gentleness of her disposition.