CHAPTER II.

APPREHENSIONS.

The fine old house, Eagles' Nest, lay buried in snow. It was Christmas-tide, and Christmas weather. All the Raynor family had assembled within its walls: with the exception of Dr. Raynor and his daughter Edina. Charles had come home from keeping his first term at Oxford; Alfred from school; Frank Raynor and his wife had returned from their sojourn abroad.

All these past months, during which we have lost sight of them, Frank and Daisy had been on the Continent. Almost immediately after their departure from Trennach, Frank, through his medical friend, Crisp, was introduced to a lady who was going to Switzerland with her only son; a sickly lad of fifteen, in whom the doctors at home had hardly been able to keep life. This lady, Mrs. Berkeley, proposed to Frank to travel with them as medical attendant on her son, and she had not the least objection to Frank's wife being of the party. So preliminaries were settled, and they started. Frank considered it a most opportune chance to have fallen to him while waiting for the missing money to turn up.

But the engagement did not last long. Hardly had they settled in Switzerland when the lad died, and Mrs. Berkeley returned to England. Frank stayed on where he was. The place and the sojourn were alike pleasant; and, as he remarked to his wife, who knew but he might pick up a practice there, amongst the many English residents of the town, or those who flocked to it as birds of passage? Daisy was just as delighted to remain as he: they had funds in hand, and could afford to throw care to the winds. Even had care declared itself: which it did not. The young are sanguine, rarely gifted with much forethought. Frank and his wife especially lacked it. A few odds and ends of practice did drop into Frank, just a small case or so, at long intervals: and they remained stationary for some time in perfect complacency. But when Christmas approached, and Frank found that his five hundred pounds would not hold out for ever, and that the idea of a practice in the Swiss town was a mere castle in the air, he took his wife home again. By invitation, they went at once to Eagles' Nest.

Christmas-Day passed merrily, and some of the days immediately succeeding to it. On New-Year's Day they were invited to an entertainment at Sir Philip Stane's; Major and Mrs. Raynor, Charles and Alice; a later invitation having come in for Frank and his wife. William Stane was a frequent visitor at Eagles' Nest whenever he was sojourning at his father's; and, though he had not yet spoken, few could doubt that the chief object to draw him there was Alice Raynor.

Yes. Sunshine and merry-making, profusion and reckless expenditure reigned within the doors of Eagles' Nest; but little except poverty, distress and dissatisfaction existed beyond its gates. Mrs. Atkinson had ever been liberal in her care of the estate; the land had been enriched and thoroughly well kept; the small tenants and labourers were cared for. One thing she had not done so thoroughly as she might: and that was, improving the dwellings of the labourers. Repairs she had made from time to time; but the places were really beyond repair. Each tenement wanted one of two things: to be thoroughly renewed and to have an additional sleeping-room added; or else to be entirely rebuilt. During the last year of Mrs. Atkinson's life, she seemed to awaken suddenly to the necessity of doing something. Perhaps with the approach of death--which will often open our eyes to many things they remained closed to before--she saw the supineness she had been guilty of. Street the lawyer was hastily summoned to Eagles' Nest: he was ordered to procure plans and estimates for new dwellings. A long row of cottages, some thirty in number, was hastily begun. Whilst the builders were commencing their work, Mrs. Atkinson died. With nearly her last breath she charged Mr. Street to see that the new houses were completed, and that the old ones were also repaired and made healthy.

Mr. Street could only hand over the charge to the inheritor of the estate, Major Raynor. The reader may remember that the major spoke of it to Edina. The lawyer could not do more than that, or carry out Mrs. Atkinson's wishes in any other way. And the major did nothing. His will might have been good enough to carry out the changes, but he had not the means. So much money was required for his own wants and those of his family, that he had none to spare for other people. The ready-money he came into had chiefly gone in paying back-debts: until these debts stared him in the face in black and white, he had not thought that he owed a tithe of them. It is a very common experience. So the new dwellings were summarily stopped, and remained as they were--so many skeletons: and the tumbledown cottages, wanting space, drainage, whitewash, and everything else that could render them decent and healthy, grew worse day by day, and became an eyesore to spectators and the talk of the neighbourhood.

Not only did _they_ suffer from the major's want of money and foresight; many other necessities were crying out in like manner: these are only given as a specimen. Above all, he was doing no good to the land, spending nothing to enrich it, and sparing necessary and ordinary labour. Perhaps had Major Raynor understood the cultivation and requirements of land, he might have made an effort to improve his own: as it was, it deteriorated day by day.

This state of things had caused a certain antagonism to set in between Eagles' Nest and its dependents. The labourers and their families grumbled; the major, conscious of the state of affairs, and feeling some slight shame in consequence, but knowing at the same time that he was powerless to remedy it, shunned them. When complainers came to the house he would very rarely see them. A warm-hearted man, he could not bear to hear them. Mrs. Raynor and the elder children, understanding matters very imperfectly, naturally espoused the major's cause, and looked upon the small tenants as a barbarous, insubordinate set of wretches, next door to insurgents. When the poor wives or children fell ill, no succour was sent to them from Eagles' Nest. With this estrangement reigning, Mrs. Raynor did not attempt to help: not from coldness of heart, but that she considered they did not deserve help, and, moreover, thought it would be flung back on her if she offered it.

_There_ was where the shoe pinched the poor. The insufficient dwellings they were used to; though indeed with every winter and every summer they grew worse than ever; but they were not accustomed to utter, contemptuous neglect, as they looked upon it, in times of need. Mrs. Atkinson had always been a generous mistress: when sickness or sorrow or distress in times of little work set in, her hand and purse were ever open. Coals in severe weather, Christmas cheer, warm garments for the scantily clad, broth for the sick; she had furnished all: and it was the entire withdrawal of this aid that was so much felt now. The winter was unusually severe: it frequently is so after a very hot summer; labour was scarce, food was dear: and a great deal of illness prevailed. So that you perceive all things were not so flourishing in and about Eagle's Nest as they might have been, and Major Raynor's bed was not entirely one of rose-leaves.

But, unpleasant things that are out of sight, are, it is said, for the most part out of mind--Mr. Blase Pellet told us so much a chapter or two ago--and the discomfort out-of-doors did not disturb the geniality within. At Eagles' Nest, the days floated on in a round of enjoyment; they seemed to be one continuous course of pleasure that would never end. Daisy Raynor had never been so happy in all her life: Eagles' Nest, she said, was perfection.

The music and wax-lights, the flowers and evergreens rendered the rooms at Sir Philip Stane's a scene of enchantment. At least it seemed so to Alice Raynor as she entered upon it. William Stane stood near the door, and caught her hand as she and Charles were following their father and mother.

"The first dance is mine, remember, Alice," he whispered. And her pretty cheeks flushed and a half-conscious smile parted her lips, as she passed on to Lady Stane.

Lady Stane, a stout and kindly woman in emerald green, received her kindly. She suspected that this young lady might some day become her daughter-in-law, and she looked at her more critically than she had ever looked before. Alice could bear the inspection to-night. Her new white dress was beautiful; her face was charming, her manner modest and graceful. "The most lady-like girl in the room," mentally decided Lady Stane, "and no doubt will have a fair fortune. William might do worse."

William Stane thought he might do very much worse. Without doubt he was truly attached to Alice. Not perhaps in the wild and ardent manner that some lovers own to: all natures are not capable of that: but he did love her, her only, and he hoped that when he married it was she who would be his wife. He was not ready to marry at present. He was progressing in his profession, but with the proverbial slowness that is said to attend the advancement of barristers: and he did not wish to speak just yet. Meanwhile he was quite content to make love tacitly; and he felt sure that his intentions were understood.

His elder brother was not present this evening, and it fell to William to take his place, and dispense his favours pretty equally amongst the guests. But every moment that he could snatch for Alice, was given to her; in every dance that he could possibly spare her, she was his partner.

"Have you enjoyed the evening, Alice?" he asked in a whisper, as he was taking her to the carriage at three o'clock in the morning.

"I never enjoyed an evening half so much," was the shyly-breathed answer. And Mr. William Stane took possession of her hand as she spoke, and kept it to the last.

If this light-hearted carelessness never came to an end! If freedom from trouble could only last for ever! Pleasure first, says some wise old saw, pain afterwards. With the dawn came the pain to Eagles' Nest.

Amongst the letters delivered to Major Raynor--who, for a wonder, had risen betimes that morning, and was turning places over in his study in search of the lost bonds--was one from Oxford. It enclosed a very heavy bill for wine supplied to his son Charles: heavy, considering Mr. Charles's years and the duration of his one sojourn at the University. The major stared at it, with his spectacles, and without his spectacles; he looked at the heading, he gazed at the foot; and finally when he had mastered it he went into a passion, and ordered Charles before him. So peremptory was the summons, that Charles appeared in haste, half dressed. His outburst, when he found out what the matter was, quite equalled his father's.

"I'm sure I thought you must be on fire down here, sir," said he. "What confounded sneaks they are, to apply to you! I can't understand their doing it."

"Sneaks be shot!" cried the wrathful major. "Do you owe all this, or don't you? That's the question."

"Why, the letter was addressed to _me!_" exclaimed Charles, who had been examining the envelope. "I must say, sir, you might allow me to open my own letters."

But the major was guiltless of any want of faith. The mistake was the butler's. He had inadvertently placed the letter amongst his master's letters, and the major opened it without glancing at the address.

"What does it signify, do you suppose, whether I opened it or you?" demanded the major. "Not that I did it intentionally. I should have to know of it: _you_ can't pay this."

"They can wait," said Charles.

"Wait! Do you mean to confess that you have had all this wine?" retorted the major, irascible for once. "Why, you must be growing into--into what I don't care to name!"

"You can't suppose that I drank it, sir. The other undergrads give wine parties, and I have to do the same. They drink the wine; I don't."

"That is, you drink it amongst you," roared the major; "and a nice disreputable lot you must all be. I understood that young men went to college to study; not to drink, and run up bills. What else do you owe? Is this all?"

Charles hesitated in answering. An untruth he would not tell. The major saw what the hesitation meant, and it alarmed him. When we become frightened our wrath cools down. The major dropped into a chair, and lost his fierceness and his voice together.

"Charley," said he in very subdued tones, "I have not the money to pay with. You know I haven't. If it's much, it will ruin me."

"But it is not much, father," returned Charles, his own anger disarmed and contrition taking its place. "There may be one or two more trifling bills; nothing to speak of."

"What on earth made you run them up?"

"I'm sure I don't know; and I am very sorry for it," said Charles. "These things accumulate in the most extraordinary manner. When you fancy that you owe only a few shillings at some place or another, it turns out to be pounds. You have no idea what it is, father!"

"Have I not!" returned the major, significantly. "It is because I have rather too much idea of the insidious way in which debt creeps upon one, that I should like to see you keep out of its toils. Charley, my boy, I have been staving off liabilities all my life, and haven't worried myself in doing it; but it is beginning to tell upon me now. My constitution's changing. I suppose I must be growing fidgety."

"Well, don't let this worry you, father. It's not so very much."

"Much or little, it must be paid. I don't want my son to get into bad odour at college; or have 'debtor' attached to his name. You are young for that, Mr. Charles."

Charles remained silent. The major was evidently in blissful ignorance of the latitude of opinion current amongst Oxonians.

"Go back and dress yourself, Charles; and get your breakfast over; and then, just sit down and make out a list of what it is you owe, and I'll see what can be done."

Now in the course of this same morning it chanced that Frank Raynor took occasion to speak to his uncle about money matters, as connected with his own prospects, which he had not previously entered upon during his present stay. The major was pacing his study in a gloomy mood when Frank entered.

"You look tired, Uncle Francis. Just as though you had been dancing all night."

"I leave that to you younger men," returned the major, drawing his easy-chair to the fire. "As to being tired, Frank, I am so; though I have not danced."

"Tired of what, uncle?"

"Of everything, I think. Sit down, lad."

"I want to speak to you, Uncle Francis, concerning myself and my plans," said Frank, taking a seat near the fire. "It is time I settled down to something."

"Is it?" was the answer. The major's thoughts were elsewhere.

"Why, yes; don't you think it is, sir? The question is, what is it to be? With regard to the bonds for that missing money, uncle? They have not turned up, I conclude?"

"They have not turned up, my boy, or the money either. If they had, you'd have been the first to hear of it. I have been searching for them this very morning."

"What is your true opinion about the money, Uncle Francis?" resumed Frank, after a pause. "Will it ever be found?"

"Yes, Frank, I think it will. I feel assured that the money is lying somewhere--and that it will come to the surface sooner or later. I should be sorry to think otherwise; for, goodness knows, I need it badly enough."

A piece of blazing wood fell off the grate. Frank caught the tongs, and put it up again.

"And I wish it could be found for your sake, also, Frank. You want your share of it, you know."

"Why, you see, Uncle Francis, without money I don't know what to be at. If I were single, I'd engage myself out as assistant to-morrow; but for my wife's sake I wish to take a better position than that."

"Naturally you do, Frank, And so you ought."

"It would be easy enough if I had the money in hand; or if I could with any certainty say when I should have it."

"It's sure to come," said the major. "Quite sure."

"Well, I hope so. The difficulty is--when?"

"You must wait a bit longer, my boy. It may turn up any day. To-night, even: to-morrow morning. Never a day passes but I go ferreting into some corner or other of the old house, thinking I may put my hand upon the papers. They are lying in it somewhere, I know, overlooked."

"But I don't see my way clear to wait. Not to wait long. We must have a roof over our heads, and means to keep it up----"

"Why, you have a roof over your heads," interrupted the major. "Can't you stay here?"

"I should not like to stay too long," avowed Frank in his candour. "It would be abusing your hospitality."

"Abusing a fiddlestick!" cried the major, staring at Frank. "What's come to you? Is the house not large enough?--and plenty to eat in it? I'm sure you may stay here for ever; and the longer you stay the more welcome you'll be. We like to have you."

"Thank you greatly, Uncle Francis."

"Daisy does not want to go away; she's as happy as the day's long," continued the major. "Just make yourselves comfortable here, Frank, my boy, until the money turns up and I can hand you over some of it."

"Thank you again, uncle," said Frank, accepting the hospitality in the free-hearted spirit that it was offered. "For a little while at any rate we will stay with you; but I hope before long to be doing something and to get into a home of my own. I can run up to town once or twice a week and be looking out."

"Of course you can."

"Had you been a rich man, Uncle Francis, I would have asked you to lend me a thousand pounds, or so, to set me up until the nest-egg is found; but I know you have not got it to lend."

"Got it to lend!" echoed the major in dismayed astonishment. "Why, Frank, my boy, I want to borrow such a sum myself. I wish to my heart I knew where to pick it up. Here's Charles must have money now: has come home from Oxford with a pack of debts at his back!"

"Charles has!" exclaimed Frank in surprise.

"And would like to make me believe that all the rest of the young fellows there run up the same bills! every man Jack of 'em! No, no, Master Charley: you don't get me to take _that_ in. Young men can be steady at college as well as at home if they choose to be. Charley's just one that's led any way. He is young, you see, Frank: and he is thrown there, I expect, amongst a few rich blades to whom money is no object, and must needs do as they do. The result is, he has made I don't know what liabilities, and I must pay them. Oh, it's all worry and bother together!"

Not intentionally, but by chance, Frank, on quitting his uncle, came upon Charles. Looking into a room in search of his wife, there sat Charley at a table, pen, ink and paper before him, setting down his debts, as far as he could judge of and recollect them. Frank went in and closed the door.

Charles let off a little of his superfluous discomfort in abuse of the people who had presumed to trouble him with the wine bill. Frank sat down, and drew the paper towards him.

"I had no idea it could be as much as that, Frank," was the rueful avowal. "And I wish with all my heart their wine parties and their fast living had been at the bottom of the sea!"

"_Is_ it as much, Charley?"

"To tell the truth, I am afraid it's more," said Charles, with candour. "I've only made a guess at the other amounts, and I know I have not put down too much. That tailor is an awful man for sticking it on: as all the rest of the crew are, for the matter of that. I was trying to recollect how many times I've had horses and traps and things; and I can't."

"Does Uncle Francis know it comes to all this?"

"No. And I don't care to let him know. Things seem to worry him so much now. I do wish that lost money could be found!"

"Just what your father and I have been wishing," cried Frank. "Look here, Charley. I have a little left out of my five hundred pounds. You shall have half of it: just between ourselves, you know: and then the sum my uncle must find will not look so formidable to him. Nay, no thanks, lad: would you not all do as much for me--and more? And we are going to stay on here for a time--and that will save expenses."

It was simply impossible for Frank Raynor to see a difficulty of this kind, or indeed of any kind, and not help to relieve it if he had help in his power. That he would himself very speedily require the money he was now giving away, was only too probable: but he was content to forget that in Charley's need.

The one individual person in all the house that Charles would have kept from the knowledge of his folly--and in his repentance he looked upon it as folly most extreme--was his mother. He loved her dearly; and he had the grace to be ashamed, for her sake, of what he had done, and to hope that she would never know it. A most fallacious hope, as he was soon to find, for Major Raynor had taken the news up to her with open mouth.

She was sitting on the low sofa in her dressing-room that evening at dusk, when Charles went in. The firelight played on her face, showing its look of utter weariness, and the traces of tears.

"What's the matter, mother?" he asked, sitting down beside her and taking her hand. "Are you ill?"

"Not ill, Charley," she answered. "Only tired and--and out of sorts."

"What has tired you? Last night, I suppose. But you have been resting all day."

"Not last night particularly. So much fast living does not suit me."

"Fast living!" exclaimed Charles in wondering accents. "Is it the gravies?--or the plum-puddings?"

Mrs. Raynor could not forbear a smile. "I was not thinking of the table, Charles; the gravies and the puddings; but of our fast, artificial existence. We seem to have no rest at all. It is always excitement; nothing but excitement. We went out last night; we go out to dinner to-morrow night; people come here the next night. Every day that we are at home there is something; if it's not luncheon and afternoon-tea, it's dinner; and if it's not dinner, it's supper. I have to think of it all; the entertainments and the dress, and everything; and to go out when you go; and--and I feel it is getting rather too much for me."

"Then lie up, mother, for a few days," advised Charles, affectionately. "Keep by your own fire, and turn things over to Alice and the servants. You will soon be all right again."

Mrs. Raynor did not answer. She held Charles's hand in her own, and was looking steadfastly at the flickering blaze. A silence ensued. Charles lost himself in a train of thought.

"What about this trouble of yours, Charley?"

It was a very unpleasant awakening for him. Of all things, this is what he had wanted to keep from her. His ingenuous face--and it was an ingenuous face in spite of the wine bills--flushed deeply with annoyance.

"It's what you need not have heard about, mother. I came away from Oxford without paying a few pounds I owe there; that's all. There need be no fuss about it."

"I hear of wine bills, and horses, and things of that kind. Oh, my dear, _need_ you have entered into that fast sort of life?"

"Others enter into it," said Charley.

"It is not so much the cost that troubles me," added Mrs. Raynor, in loving tones; "that can be met somehow. It is----" She stopped as if wanting words.

"It is what, mother?"

"Charley, my dear, what I think of is this--that you may be falling into the world's evil ways. It is so easy to do it; you young lads are so inexperienced and confiding; you think all is fair that looks fair; that no poison lurks in what has a specious surface. And oh, my boy, you know that there is a world after this world; and if you were to fall too deeply into the ways of _this_, to get to love it, to be unable to do without it, you might never gain the other. Some young lads that have fallen away from God have not cared to find Him again; never have found Him.

"There has been no harm," said Charley. "And I assure you I don't often miss chapel."

"Charley, dear, there's a verse in Ecclesiastes that I often think of," she resumed in low sweet tones. "All mothers think of it, I fancy, when their sons begin to go out in the world."

"In Ecclesiastes?" repeated Charley.

"The verse that Edina illuminated for us once, when she was staying at Spring Lawn. It was her doing it, I think, that helped to impress it so much on my memory."

"I remember it, mother mine." And the words ran through Charley's thoughts as he spoke.

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment."