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“The grace of friendship—mind and heart,

Linked with their fellow heart and mind;

The gains of science, gifts of art;

The sense of oneness with our kind;

The thirst to know and understand—

A large and liberal discontent:

These are the goods in life’s rich hand,

The things that are more excellent.”

William Watson.

The moment the door had closed behind the boy Sir Matthew’s anger cooled. For the time it had been genuine, for quite unintentionally Ralph had used words which stung him as no others could have done. There were two things in the world that the company promoter sincerely cared about—successful speculation, and his reputation as a philanthropist. His adoption of Ralph had been almost entirely a speculation, one of the specious bits of kindness which he had intended to redound to his own honour and glory. Having once undertaken the lad’s education he could not for his own credit’s sake turn back, but from the very first he had shrewdly guessed that it would prove a bad investment, and Ralph had been a thorn in his side. To begin with, the boy was in face curiously like his father, and Sir Matthew had some lingering remains of affection for his old friend, even though in his heart he despised him for not being more of a man of the world. He had not lived the life of a company promoter without having grown perfectly callous to the sufferings of his victims, but yet the conscience that was not dead but dormant within him had been faintly stirred at Whinhaven when he realised that the Rector’s ruin had been his work. Partly to salve his conscience, but chiefly because the world would applaud the action, he had adopted Ralph. The boy, however, had not taken kindly to the part assigned him. He never showed off well before visitors, never learnt to pose as a grateful recipient of unmerited kindness. On the contrary, Sir Matthew always had an uncomfortable feeling that Ralph saw through him, and knew him to be a humbug. As a matter of fact, the taunting allusions he had just made to Mr. Denmead’s mistakes and errors of judgment had driven his hearer far from all recollection of Sir Matthew’s actions or character; Ralph had thought only of that inward picture stamped indelibly upon his brain of the high-minded and scrupulously honourable father, who somehow seemed to him more of a living reality as he spoke than the angry, self-important patron confronting him.

“He was at least an honest man!” The words had intended no reflection on Sir Matthew, but they had gone straight to the company promoter’s one vulnerable spot, and for the moment had sharply pained him. Incensed at the perception that this fellow might hurt his jealously guarded reputation,—that reputation for benevolence which was part of his stock-in-trade, he had burst forth into angry denunciation, and in one indignant sentence had severed all connection between them.

He took out a memorandum book now, and made an entry in it with much deliberation, then sat for some time wrapped in thought, gnawing absently at his pencil case, a trick which he had acquired, and of which the dinted surface of the silver bore tokens.

“One may trust a Denmead to be honourable,” he reflected with a curious sense of satisfaction. “The boy will never mention that little private arrangement as to Crosbie’s retiring in four years. I have bought the living and now the question is how can I use it best to further my own ends? After all, it’s just as well that this fool has refused it. I can use it as a bait for some one else, and I’m quit of Ralph for ever. Though the boy is so like his father in face there’s much more go in him than there ever was in poor Denmead. He has a bit of the sturdy pluck and energy of his little Welsh mother. Pshaw! I needn’t trouble about him. He’s the sort that will swim and not sink, and a little course of starvation will bring him down from his impossible heights and teach him that he must do as other men do.”

With that he rose and left the library in search of his wife, and having chatted pleasantly enough with her at afternoon tea, he casually alluded to Ralph’s departure.

“What!” said Lady Mactavish, “Is he going out to India, do you mean.”

“Not that I know of,” said Sir Matthew with a laugh. “He has failed ignominiously in his examination, and has been most insufferably impertinent to me. I have given him his congé, and he will trouble us no more.”

“The ungrateful boy!” said Lady Mactavish indignantly, “after all that you have done for him too.”

“He has behaved very badly,” said Sir Matthew; “and I think, my dear, we are well quit of him. I shall not see him again, but you had better just say good-bye to him, and by-the-by, I think you might give him a couple of five-pound notes; I should be sorry to launch him into the world without a penny in his pockets. It might make people think that I had been harsh with him.” Ralph had gone straight up to the schoolroom in search of Evereld, but something had delayed her and he found the place deserted. Throwing himself down on the window-seat, he let the soft west wind cool his flushed face and tried to think calmly over the interview with Sir Matthew. The attack on his father had angered him as nothing else could have done, and it was over this rather than over his own future that he mused. The sound of Evereld’s voice singing in the passage roused him, but before she had reached the schoolroom, the red baize door leading from the other part of the house creaked on its hinges, and Lady Mactavish appeared upon the scene.

“I was looking for you, Ralph,” she said, entering the room in front of Evereld. “I learn, to my great annoyance, that you have failed in your examination, failed ignominiously. It is quite clear to us all that you have not been working properly.”

“But every one says that the Indian Civil is such a dreadfully stiff exam,” said Evereld, “and he did work very hard in Germany; they all said so.”

“Don’t interrupt me, my dear,” said Lady Mactavish. “It is not a matter you can understand. After all that Sir Matthew has done for you. Ralph, I think at least you might have behaved properly to him. He tells me that you were so impertinent that he has been forced to order you out of the house.”

“I had no intention of being rude,” said Ralph, standing before her with much the same expression of impatience, curbed by a sense of obligation with which he had always taken her fault-finding.

“I am quite aware that your intentions are always, according to your own account, immaculate,” she said scathingly, “but, unfortunately, your words and actions don’t correspond with them. You have behaved abominably to the man who has fed, and clothed, and housed you all these years, a man who has wasted hundreds of pounds on your schooling.”

“Believe me, I do not forget what he has done for me,” said Ralph eagerly. “I am grateful for it. But he used words of my father which were cruel, words which no son could patiently have listened to.”

“Nothing can excuse the way you have behaved,” said Lady Mactavish, “so say no more about it. What are your plans?”

“I have made none,” said Ralph, “except to go by the six o’clock train.”

“Where are you going?”

“To London,” he replied.

Lady Mactavish glanced at him a little uneasily. She could not without prickings of conscience think of turning this boy adrift.

“Sir Matthew, with his usual kindness and generosity, asked me to give you these,” she said, holding out the bank notes. “Though you have so much disappointed and pained him, he will not let you be sent away without money.”

But Ralph drew back; there was a look in his eyes which half frightened Evereld.

“Thank you,” he said, “but I cannot take them; after what passed just now in the library it is out of the question.”

Lady Mactavish looked uncomfortable. “You have been so shielded and cared for that you don’t realise what the world is. You will certainly be getting into trouble. I desire you to take these.”

“I am sorry to refuse you anything,” he said with studied politeness. “But you ask what is impossible.”

“Your pride is perfectly ridiculous,” she said, turning away with a look of annoyance. “However, I shall retain these notes for you, and when you have realised your foolishness, you can write and ask me for them.”

Something in her tone, touched Ralph. It seemed to him that perhaps after all she had taken some little thought for his well-being, and that behind her grumbling, ungracious manner, there was more real heart than he had dreamed.

“Will you not let me say good-bye to you?” he said. “You must not think I am ungrateful for the home you have given me all these years.”

She took leave of him more kindly than he had expected, after which he turned thoughtfully back into the schoolroom, where he found poor Evereld sobbing her heart out.

“Oh, don’t cry,” he said as if the sight of her tears had added the last straw to his burden. “It can’t be helped, Evereld, and after all, had I got through my exam. I should have been going abroad before so very long. And you are going to school for a year. There will be no end of friends for you there.”

“They won’t be like you,” sobbed Evereld, “You are just like my brother now. Oh, how I wish we were really brother and sister, then they couldn’t turn you out like this.”

“I wish we were,” said Ralph with a sigh, as he realised how utterly he had now cut himself off from intercourse with her.

“All we can do, I suppose, is to hear of each other through the Professor and Frau Rosenwald. They will never let me write to you at school. It’s not as if I were your brother really or even your cousin. They’re awfully strict at schools about that.”

“Well,” said Evereld, resolutely drying her eyes, “We can write in the holidays, and in a little more than three years’ time I can do just exactly what I like. Promise, Ralph, that you will come to me when I am one and twenty. Promise me faithfully.”

“I promise,” he said. But as he spoke it seemed to him that by that time a thousand things might have happened to divide them. He had a perception somehow that, once broken, that brotherly and sisterly intimacy could never again be the same thing. Later on, Evereld knew that it was indeed at an end, but for the moment his promise cheered her, and she set herself to work to make the most of the present. “Come,” she said, “tea is getting cold, and you must eat all you can, for who knows where you will dine. Oh, Ralph! what do you mean to do? Where shall you go in London?”

“I think I shall go first to my father’s solicitor, old Mr. Marriott. He was kind to me when I left Whinhaven, and he will know the whole truth about things, and will perhaps advise me.”

“Shall you go in for the Indian Civil again?”

“I don’t think so, for most likely all that part is true enough. I must have failed badly; I never was any good at exams. No, I have a great idea of trying my luck on the stage. That was always my wish since the day when my father took me to see Washington. We often laughed over the plan and discussed it, and he had none of that horror of the stage which so many parsons profess to have.”

“That would be delightful,—a thousand times better than going to India! And perhaps we shall go to see you act. And oh! perhaps you’ll get to know Macneillie!”

“I have no idea where Macneillie has gone to,” said Ralph. “He has not played in London for the last six years; somebody told me he had started a Company of his own in the provinces. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to find out, and write to him. Unless our hero-worship threw a very deceptive halo round him, he must be an awfully kind-hearted man. Come! drink to my good fortune, and then like an angel just help me to sort out my things. Tea, and this notion of yours about Macneillie make me feel like a giant refreshed. After all, it will be jolly enough to be on one’s own hook after eating the bitter bread of charity all this time.”

“Yet I rather wish you had taken those hank notes,” said Evereld. “How much money have you, Ralph, to start with?”

He felt in one pocket and produced a florin. “That will take me to London,” he said. He felt in another and produced half a sovereign, “on that I can live for a week,” he remarked.

“And after that?” said Evereld.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“There are night refuges I believe, where for a penny one can lie in a box and warm oneself with a leather coverlet. And failing these, there is always the Park, where you can enjoy part of a bench without any charge at all.”

“Ralph, I’m not going to allow it,” said Evereld, her firm little mouth assuming its most resolute expression. “Do you think I should have let Dick go away to starve upon twelve shillings while I was lapped in luxury? I took you for my brother, the very first night you came, and I’m not going to give you up, whatever you say.” She unlocked her desk and took out four sovereigns. “This is all I have left of my allowance; I wish it were bank notes like the ones you refused. But you can’t refuse mine, Ralph.”

He hesitated. “I don’t think I ought to take them,” he said.

“Why not?”

“The world would be shocked. What right have I to your money?”

“Every right, since we belong to each other. And as to the world it has nothing whatever to do with the matter. Don’t waste time, Ralph. Please take it for my sake.”

He could not resist the blue eyes brimming with tears, but let her place the money in his hand and gave her a brotherly hug. Then they hastily began to collect his possessions, talking bravely of the future, and many times alluding to their old hero Macneillie.

In the meantime in Geraghty’s pantry two other friends were colloguing; Bridget having learnt the fate that was to befall her young gentleman was opening her heart to her elderly fiancé.

“It’s turnin’ of him out that they’re after,” she said indignantly, “And him a fine handsome boy and knowin’ just nothin’ of the world. Sure thin, Geraghty, it’s a sin, it’s just a mortal sin, and him without connictions, let alone relations.”

“Where will he be goin’?” asked Geraghty thoughtfully.

“I heard them say he was goin’ to London, and you know what that will be meanin’ when a boy’s got neither money nor friends to keep him in the right way. It breaks me heart to think of it.”

“Well, maybe I’d better be tellin’ him of Dan Doolan’s house at Vauxhall. He’d be with good dacent folk there and they’d not be askin’ a high rint. Here, give me that tray. I’ll fetch down the schoolroom cups for ye, and that’ll give me a chance to speak with him.”

Geraghty had always been a favourite in the schoolroom, and Ralph turned to the old fellow now with a hearty appreciation of his kindly thoughtfulness.

“We shall all miss you, Mr. Ralph,” he said. “And if I might make so bold as to be giving you the ricommindation of some rooms in London, where they tell me you’re going, I think you’d find them respectable, which is more than can be said for many places. The house belongs to Dan Doolan, that’s my sister’s husband’s uncle, he and his wife are very dacent folk and they would do their utmost for you and give you a warm welcome.”

“Trust the Irish for that,” said Ralph, “I’m very much obliged to you, Geraghty, for I hadn’t an idea where to look for lodgings. Come, Evereld, now you will feel much happier about me.”

He took down the address, and then, with the help of Geraghty and Bridget and Evereld, the packing was finished and the moment of leave-taking arrived. The butler had carried down the last portmanteau, Bridget had invoked blessings on his head and gone away wiping her eyes with her apron, and the two friends were left in the quiet schoolroom.

“Remember your promise,” said Evereld earnestly.

“I will remember,” said Ralph. “And after all it is likely enough that we shall meet before that. Courage, dear! Don’t fret. The time will soon pass.”

“Here is a book for you to read in the train,” she added, afraid to say much, lest she should break down. “You must have a Dickens to comfort you, and this will be the best, for the wind is very much in the east to-day, as dear old Mr. Jarndyce would have said.”

She gave him her own copy of “Bleak House” and Ralph, with a choking sensation in his throat, bent down and kissed the sweet rosy face that was still so childlike. After that, without another word, he left the house, and Evereld, running to her bedroom, watched him until he had disappeared in the distance, then, throwing herself on the bed, cried as though her heart would break.