Part 3

He had always hugged secrets to himself ever since he could remember, secrets that it would have seemed to him the deepest shame that any one should surprise. Once on a summer's evening, when he had been lying in his little cot by his mother's bed, whiling away the long daylight hour by telling himself a most absorbing story, which at that time he was going through from night to night, he had become so worked up by it that he carried on the dialogue in a clear audible voice. A warning knock came upon the bedroom door, and that particular story was cut short never to be resumed. It was the time when his mother and grandmother were dining, and his nurse and all the other servants were down below. He had not thought that it was possible that he could have been overheard. He had been acting a garden story. The characters were the Garden, the flowers and himself. The Garden was a very kind and gracious lady who led him, a little boy called Arnold, with black straight hair--he preferred that sort to his own fair curls--to one flower after another, and told him whether they had been good or naughty. The flowers were mostly children, but a few, such as geraniums and fuchsias, were grown up. The geraniums never took any notice of him, and he did not like them on that account, but looked the other way when they were rebuked. This fortunately happened but seldom, as they usually behaved with propriety, though stiff and obstinate in character. The roses he often pleaded for, because they were so beautiful. Vanity was their besetting sin, and the Garden often had to tell them--in language much the same as that used by the Vicar in church--that they were no more in her sight than the humblest and poorest flowers. But he could not bear to see their beautiful petals scattered, which happened as a punishment if they had flaunted themselves beyond hope of forgiveness. It was coming to be his idea, as the story progressed, that some day he would make a strong appeal to the Garden to abolish this punishment altogether. Then no flowers would ever die, but only go to sleep in the winter, and he would be the great hero of the flowers, with hair blacker and straighter than ever, and whenever he went among them they would bow and curtsey to him, but nobody would see them doing it except himself.

On this June evening it was a tall Madonna lily for whom he was pleading in such an impassioned manner. Lilies were very lovely girls, not quite children and not quite grown-up. He had a sentimental affection for them. He would see them incline towards one another as he came near, and hear, or rather make them whisper to one another: "Here is that dear little boy. How good he is! And isn't his hair dark and smooth! I should like to kiss him." (Had he said that aloud, just before the knock came? He would never be able to look the world in the face again if that speech had been heard.) The Garden had accused the lily of leaving her sisters and the place where she belonged to go and talk to a groom in the stables. She might have been kicked by a horse. An example must be made. No little treats, no sugar on her bread and butter, no favourite stories told her, for a week. The lily had cried, and said she had meant no harm, and wouldn't do it again. He had adjured her not to cry, in very moving terms, which it made him hot all over to imagine overheard, and the lily had said, in no apparent connection with the question under discussion, but in a loud and clear voice: "Arnold is brave and strong; he can run faster than all other boys in the world."

It was just then that the knock came. He was unhappy about it for days, and looked in the faces of all the servants to see if there was any sign of the derision he must have brought upon himself, but could find none, and presently comforted himself with the idea that it was Santa Claus who had knocked at the door; but he dropped the drama of the flowers, and afterwards only whispered the speaking parts of other dramas.

It was not from any lack of love for those about him that he kept his soul's adventures to himself. Of sympathy with them he might instinctively have felt a lack, but he loved everybody with whom he had to do, and everybody loved him. His mother was nearest to him, though his grandmother was felt to be the head of all things and of all people. His mother showed jealousy towards her, but not in her presence. The child divined this, and responded to her craving for his caresses when he was alone with her by little endearments which were very sweet to her. "You and me together, Mummy," he would whisper, snuggling up to her, and stroke her face and kiss her, in a way that he never did when his grandmother was there. He must have divined too that he was the centre of existence for his grandmother, but she never petted him or invited his caresses, though her face showed pleasure when he leant against her knee and prattled to her, which he did without any fear, and as if it was natural that they two should have much to say to one another.

During his earliest days his mother often wept stormily, and there was great antagonism between her and the old nurse, who had also nursed his father. But when he was five years old the nurse suddenly went away, and his mother's weepings, which had saddened and sometimes frightened him, as she clutched him to her and rocked to and fro over him, ceased, so that he presently forgot them. She did much for him herself that the nurse had done before, with the help of a girl from the village, who became a close friend of his, though not in a way to cause his mother jealousy.

Eliza was slow and rather stupid, but she could tell half a dozen stories. She told them in stilted fashion, and never varied the manner, and hardly the words, of her telling. If she did so, he would correct her. By and by she became rather like a dull priest intoning a liturgy, known so well that there was no call to attend to the meeting. He could see after all that himself, and wanted no variations or emotion of hers to get between him and the pictures that her monotonous drone projected on the curtain of his brain. He was the hero of all the stories himself, and carried them far beyond the bounds of the liturgy. As Jack the Giant-killer, he engaged with foes unknown to fairy lore. As the Beast he drew such interest from his mastery over other beasts that his transformation into a Prince with straight black hair was always being postponed, and was finally dropped out of his own story altogether, together with Beauty, who had become somewhat of a meddler with things that she couldn't be expected to understand. He was Cinderella in the story of that time, because of riding in the coach made out of a pumpkin, and the mice turned into horses, but never felt at home in the character until he turned the story round and gave the leading part to the Prince, with Cinderella's adventures adapted to male habits and dignity.

With Eliza in attendance he sometimes played for hours together in the garden, and he could get away from her if he was careful never to be right out of her sight or hearing. It was then that the drama of the garden and the flowers began, but when it came to an end he returned to the fairy stories.

His mother told him stories too at his earnest pleading. But they were never the same twice running and had little point for him. He much preferred Eliza's rigid version of the classical stories, and the others were all about beautiful girls who married very handsome, noble, rich men, but the men never did anything except love the girls to distraction and give them beautiful presents. There was no ground for his imagination to work on, except in the matter of the presents, and of these he demanded ever growing catalogues, suggesting many additions of his own, so that if his mother remembered these and kept to them, there was some interest to be got out of her stories, but not enough to vie with that of Eliza's repertoire.

His grandmother had no stories, but when he was a little older she told him about his ancestors, who had done a good deal of fighting at one time or another throughout the centuries, which gave him plenty of material. He knew that she got her information from books in the library, and he was encouraged to persevere with his letters so that he would be able to read those books for himself. He gained from her the impression that his family was above other families, and that in some way which he didn't quite understand, seeing that he was subject to her, and to his mother, and even to Eliza, its superiority was also his in a special measure. He must never do anything that would lessen it. He must not be too familiar with servants, and especially with grooms in the stable. He would hang his head at this, for it was the weak point in his behaviour. He was apt to be beguiled by the society of grooms in the stable, to the extent even of using expressions unallowable in the society of his equals. But though he was to bear himself high, he was to deal kindly with those at the same time beneath him and around him; and he was to look upon Royd all his life as the place to which he belonged. He would go away from it sometimes when he was older, but he must never be away for long, and never get to like being away. This was what young men did sometimes, and it was not good for them. It was not right.

Such exordiums as these, varied in manner but never in principle, continued throughout his childhood, and had a strong effect upon him. A child has a natural preoccupation with the question of right and wrong and it fitted in with all that Harry had learnt for himself that it was right for him to be at Royd and would be wrong for him to be away. He could not imagine any other place that would suit him better, or indeed nearly so well. His mother would sometimes talk to him, when he grew older, of the lights and the movement and the heartening crowds of London. She would do it half furtively, and he understood, without being told, that he must keep the fact of her doing so at all from his grandmother. But he had no wish to talk about it. The picture did not please him. He gained the impression of London as a dirty noisy place, and Royd shone all the more brightly in comparison with it. His mother never mentioned the theatre.

She talked to him sometimes about his father. He had been a soldier--a very brave soldier--like all the rest of the Brents. Harry would be a soldier himself some day, but she prayed that he would not have to go out and fight. He would wear a beautiful red coat with a sash and a sword, and a noble bearskin on his head. There was a photograph of his father, not in this uniform, but in service kit, taken just after his marriage. It showed a good-looking young man, amiable but weak. It was the only photograph of him that Mrs. Brent had in her room. Lady Brent had many photographs of him, but this one was not among them. As a child he had been very like Harry. Lady-Brent seldom mentioned him, and to her daughter-in-law never. Harry knew after a time, as children come to know such things, that she had loved him very dearly. She had all those reminders of his childhood and youth about her. His mother had only the one. She had known him for a few weeks. All the rest of his life had belonged to his own mother, and she was shut out of it. Her references to him, indeed, were hardly more than perfunctory. The poor bewildered little lady had loved him, and looked to him, perhaps, to translate her to a more glamorous life. The life of dignity was hers, but without him, and sometimes it lay very heavy upon her. But she had her child. Nothing mattered much as long as she was allowed to love him and to keep his love.

A French nursery governess came when Harry was five years old, Eliza, who showed great jealousy of her, not unmixed with contempt for her absurd speech and foreign ways, being also retained. She was a gentle little thing, and, when she had got over her homesickness, bright and gay. She loved the child dearly, and he was soon prattling to her in her own language, piping little French songs, and repeating verses with his hands behind his back and his head on one side, to the great pride of his mother and grandmother. Mrs. Brent made a surreptitious friend of Mademoiselle, and even went so far as to take lessons of her in French. Lady Brent spoke French with an accent "_tout a fait distingue_." Mademoiselle had observed that this was the mark of "_la vraie grande dame Anglaise_" and perhaps Mrs. Brent imagined that the accomplishment would bring her more into line. But it was irksome to sit down to grammar and exercises, and somehow she "never could get her tongue round the queer sounds." It was easier to help Mademoiselle on with her English, and soon they had their heads together constantly, comparing notes about the life of Blois and the life of London, which was so gay and so different from this life of the chateau, so magnificent but so dull and so always the same. But Harry was not to know that either of them felt like that about it, and the little French girl had enough of the spirit of romance in her to judge his surroundings of castle and park, and wide tract of country over which by and by he was to rule, as fitting to him. It was, after all, the bourgeois life that she and Mrs. Brent pined for, the one in France, the other in England. She recognized that, but when she intimated as much to Mrs. Brent that lady was up in arms at once, and the intimacy between them nearly came to an end. Let it be understood that the life she had known in London was very different from the life Mademoiselle had known in a provincial French city. Hers had been the life of the great lady, in London as well as at Royd, and it was that part of the great lady's life that she missed. Perhaps Mademoiselle, in her ignorance of English customs, believed it, perhaps she didn't; but she adopted the required basis of conversation, and the friendship continued. Mrs. Brent took little trouble to assert her gentility, when once it was accepted, and spoke often of her family, who lived in Kentish Town, where she had been so happy, in a way that must have given Mademoiselle some curious ideas of the ways of the British aristocracy, supposing her to have believed in the claim set up.

But all this passed over the child's head. Mademoiselle had stories to tell him of the old nobility of Touraine, which she was clever enough to connect in his mind with the stories his grandmother told him of his own knightly forbears. It was from that life he had sprung. The ancient glories of the French chateaux were allied to those of his noble English castle. The romance and chivalry were the same. Lady Brent approved very highly of Mademoiselle, and when she went back to France after two years, to fulfil the marriage contract that her parents had made for her, gave her a present which added substantially to her _dot_.

Then Mr. Wilbraham came, and Harry began his education in earnest.

Lady Brent had gone up to London to find a successor for Mademoiselle. She was to be a highly educated Englishwoman, who was to give place to a tutor in three or four years' time. Harry was not to go to school; he was to spend the whole of his boyhood at Royd, but he was to be taught all the things that boys of his class learnt, except the things that Lady Brent didn't want him to learn--including that precocious knowledge of the world which had entangled his father, and in effect brought Mrs. Brent into the family.

Lady Brent brought Mr. Wilbraham back with her, and never explained why she had changed her plan. In some things she made a confidante of her daughter-in-law; in others she acted as if she had no more to say in her child's upbringing than Eliza. And Mrs. Brent never thought of asking her for an explanation of anything if she volunteered none.

Mr. Wilbraham was then a dejected young man of four or five and twenty. He volunteered no explanation of his substitution for the lady of high education either; nor, indeed, of his past history. It was a long time before Mrs. Brent, who liked to find out things about people, and especially anything that indicated their social status, knew that his father had been a clergyman, and that he expected some day to be a clergyman himself. And that was all that she did know, until he had been at Royd for years, and seemed likely to be there for ever; for gradually he dropped talking about taking orders. She had an idea that there was some secret between him and Lady Brent, but the idea died away as time went on, and at last he told her, quite casually, that he had gained his post at Royd through a Scholastic Agency. Lady Brent had gone there for a tutor, and she had engaged him. That was all. It did not explain why she had changed her mind; but by that time her change of mind had been almost forgotten. Mr. Wilbraham was an integral part of life at Royd Castle.

Harry liked him from the first. He was a good teacher, and there was never any trouble about lessons. Outside lesson time he was not expected to be on duty, and when the boy grew older their companionship was entirely friendly and unofficial. Mr. Wilbraham introduced Harry to all the rich lore of Greek mythology. Here was matter for romance, indeed! Royd became peopled with nymphs and dryads and satyrs, and fabulous but undreaded monsters. Harry knew that Diana hunted the deer in the park when the moon shone; he often heard Pan fluting in the woods, and centaurs galloping over the turf. When he was taken over to Rington Cove, six miles away, he saw the rock upon which the mermaids sat and combed their hair, and on the yellow sands the print of the nereid's dancing feet. It was all very real to him, and Mr. Wilbraham never even smiled at his fancies. That was one of the reasons why he liked him.

*CHAPTER IV*

*FAIRIES*

Harry lay quite still under a great tree, his chin propped on his hands, his eyes fixed upon a spot in the glade where he knew there was a fairy ring, upon which he was sure that if he gazed long enough with his eyes clear and his brain free, he would see the gossamer fairies dancing. His couch of beech-mast was dry under him, and not a breath of air stirred the warmth that had settled there during a sunny day, though cool fingers seemed to be touching his cheeks now and then, as of the spirit of the young spring. He was happy and at peace with himself, and his happiness grew as the long minutes passed over him. His world was whole and good all around him. His life contained no regrets and no unfulfilled desires, except this one of learning the secret of his happiness, which touched him as the fingers of the still April night were touching him, to more alertness, not to any trouble or disturbance of mind. Besides, the secret was coming to him at last. He must believe that, or it would not come. And he did believe it. He no more doubted that he would see the fairies under to-night's moon than he doubted of his body, lying there motionless. Indeed, his spirit was more alive than his body, which was in a strange state of quiescence, so that it was not difficult to keep perfectly still for as long as it should be necessary, and no discomfort arose from his immobility.

If Lady Brent was sometimes criticized, as she was, for keeping the boy away from the intercourse that prepared other boys of his age and rank for playing their part in the world, and the criticism had reached her ears, she need have done no more than point to him as he was at the threshold of his manhood, for justification. Shut up in a great house, with two women and a lazy tame-cat of a man; never seeing anybody outside from one year's end to another; no young people about him; no chance even of playing a game with other boys--those were the accusations, brought by Mrs. Fearon, for instance, wife of the Rector of Poldaven, seven miles away, who had sons and daughters round about Harry's age, would have liked them to be in constant companionship with him, and was virulent against Lady Brent, because she would have no such companionship in any degree whatsoever. The boy would grow up a regular milksop. He couldn't always be kept shut up at Royd, and when he did go out into the world the foolish woman would see what a mistake she had made. His own father had made a pretty mess of it, and his early death was no doubt a blessing in disguise. Harry would have even less experience to guide him. It would be a wonder if he did not kick over the traces entirely, and bring actual disgrace upon his name.

Thus Mrs. Fearon, not too happy in the way her own sons were turning out, though they had had all the advantages that Harry lacked, and at her wits' end to cope with the discontent of her elder daughters.

Poldaven Rectory was the only house of any size within a seven-mile radius of Royd except Poldaven Castle, which was hardly ever inhabited. One summer, when Harry was about eight years old, Lady Avalon brought her young family there, and settled them with nurses and governess, while she herself made occasional appearances to see how they were getting on. There was going and coming during that summer between Royd and Poldaven. Harry would be taken there to play with the little Pawles, and a carriage full of them would appear every now and then to spend a long day at Royd. Of all the large family, there was only one with whom he found himself in accord. The little Lords were noisy and grasping, the little Ladies dull and mincing. But one of the girls, Sidney, of exactly the same age as himself, was different from the rest. The two children would go off together, and when out of sight of nurses and governess Sidney became quite natural and they would talk and play games entirely happy in one another's company until they were discovered by the rest, and the disputes would begin again, and the eternal cleavage between male and female. Lady Avalon happened to be there, they were encouraged to be together and she and Lady Brent would have their heads close as they watched them. A sweet little couple, hand in hand--the boy so straight and handsome, the girl so pretty and naturally gay. There was match-making going on, and the nurses were in it too, and left them alone together, and often prevented the other children from seeking them out.