The house of Merrilees

Contents

CHAPTER

I. — The Cottage at Highgate .

II. — Cambridge Days.

Chapter I

Some years ago there came to the pleasant suburb of Highgate, to a little cottage at the end of the lime grove, by the church, a young woman and her infant son. Her name was Mrs. Greenfield, and although she was young in years, the lines in her face, and the grey threads showing through her brown hair, seemed to tell of troubles endured before she had lighted on this peaceful haven for herself and her child. Whatever those troubles may have been, her life now ran a tranquil course, and was lightened by her love for her little son and pride in his achievements. In his years of early childhood no hand but hers tended him, and she gave him his first lessons, finding him quick to learn and a very glutton for books. He soon reached the limits of her modest attainments, and was sent at a very early age to the old school at the top of the hill.

This was a great day for little Georget He proudly refused all escort, set out by himself to take his first plunge into life, and came running all the way home at half past twelve o'clock, an excited little knickerbockered figure, to find his mother waiting at the gate for him, to whom he poured out all the thronging events of the morning, from the nine o'clock service in the chapel, " full of boys, mother, some with moustaches, and all the masters in their gowns, and the clergyman who read the prayers with a red thing on his back, not a black and white one like the vicar/' through his short examination by the awful headmaster, who had smiled at his littleness and put his hand on his head, to the culminating event of his ending up three places from the top of the form instead of at the very bottom.

Thereafter followed years of work and quiet contentment. The cottage had a shady little garden in front and another behind. Its rooms were very cosy. In the winter evenings, when the two sat together in the parlour, with the lamp

ii on the ikble, George at 'his lessons and his mother at her needlework,. tbey^niighi have been far away from the noise antiVsftr/DfVfchk-^&t .city i« * -Everything was quiet, within and without, and Mrs. Greenfield would put down her work and gaze at the boy, with his curly head bent over his books, absorbed in his preparations for the morrow. Whatever trouble she had undergone in her early days it soon became plain, to her intense thankfulness, that this beautiful child of her heart, with his graceful, chivalrous ways, his clever brain and his balanced orderly outlook on life, would cause her none. There was unbroken love and confidence in the little cottage and a home life of constant companionship, upon which George ever after looked back with the tenderest feelings of gratitude.

Her early troubles Mrs. Greenfield hid from the child, but he divined something of them when he was old enough to ask her why she never spoke to him of his father. She became troubled, caught at her breast, and told him if he wanted to please her he must never speak to her on that subject again. " I was very unhappy before you were born," she said, " but I shall never be unhappy again if you grow up into a good man and never forget to love me." "

And little George, with lasses and sobbed out words of love, climbed on to her lap and threw his arms round her neck and comforted her as only little children can comfort a woman, and not for years after troubled her with further questions.

There was one periodical visitor to the cottage whom George never liked. This was a Mr. Richards, a gloomy, taciturn man, who showed him none of the little kindnesses which take a child's heart. He grew to learn that Mr. Richards was in some sort the dispenser of his mother's income, although she told him as soon as he was old enough to understand that her income was her own, and not dependent on the goodwill of anybody. He supposed Mr. Richards to have been a friend of his father's, although his father was never alluded to between them ; and he liked him none the better on that account. When George had embarked on his school career, Mr. Richards on his occasional visits would feign a vast interest in the progress of his studies, but the boy, with the penetration and impatient scorn of youth, detected soon enough that he had no real knowledge of the subjects on which he crossexamined him. His mother had none either, but then she made no pretences, and he would talk fully to her of all things he was interested in, sure, at any rate, of her sympathy, while under the heavy hand of Mr. Richards he would retire into himself and refuse to be drawn either into discussion or self -revelation. He noticed also by-andby that his mother looked forward to this man's visits with shrinking, and did not recover her usual tranquillity of spirit for some days afterwards. So he would look upon Mr. Richards with a dark and unfriendly eye when he appeared, and afterwards promise himself a time when he should be old enough to suggest to him that he should appear no more.

And so when Mrs. Greenfield told him one day, soon after he had begun to go to school, that poor Mr. Richards had lost his wife, George, so far from expressing pity for that gentleman, was inclined to the opinion, which, however, he did not impart to his mother, that it served him right. But when she went on to tell him that Mr. Richards had a little baby girl, that he had asked her if she would take care of her at Highgate, and that she had consented, George's feelings of giief and dismay were too keen to keep to himself. He threw himself into his mother's arms and implored her with tears and howls to preserve the inviolable sanctity of their home.

Mrs. Greenfield was touched by the child's fears and distress, but she told him that she should always love him best, and that if he loved his home and his mother he ought to be all the readier to share them with a poor little child who had neither.

George, perceiving the weak points in this argument, replied in effect that he could not spare any of his own mother, and that if the house in which Mr. Richards lived could not fitly be termed a home, which he could well believe, the baby girl was not old enough to know any better, and could not possibly object to it as much as he himself undoubtedly should if he were so unfortunate as to find himself in her place. It was a very unhappy little boy, instead of a very eager one, who went back to school that afternoon, and a very unhappy face that he carried about at home until the arrival of Mr. Richards with the baby girl in question two days afterwards put an end to his misery.

The baby girl was a sweet little gipsy of eighteen months.

Her name was Peggy. George could see no beauty in her as long as her father remained in the house, and behaved very much like a big puppy whose^nose has been put out of joint by a very little one. But no sooner had Mr. Richards departed than he threw himself literally at her feet, and remained there metaphorically thenceforward. The joys of the quiet little household were doubled by the advent of this black-eyed, rosy, dimpled, audacious, tyrannical, naughty, kissable, merry, and altogether fascinating Peggy. George adored her from the bottom of his big heart, and she ruled him with a rod of iron. He would run home after school to be with her for five minutes, instead of tearing down to the playing-field as fast as his legs could carry him, and for the first time in his career he had some difficulty in settling down to his lessons in the evening, and never did so with an undivided mind until the mysteries of Peggy's evening toilet were accomplished, and she was put to bed in her little cot in Mrs. Greenfield's room. She introduced the element of childish naughtiness into the cottage, which had hitherto been singularly free from such an experience, and George found it impossible to judge whether she was most entrancing when she put her small foot down and insisted upon having her own way, or when, having been baulked in that decision, and the inevitable storm having burst and then passed away in showers of tears, she kissed and made friends again in adorable penitence. Mrs. Greenfield might have felt some twinges of jealousy over the whole-hearted devotion shown by the boy to the tiny child, but that it made no difference in his affection for herself. His heart was big enough to embrace them both.

Peggy, as she grew older, showed scant feelings of filial respect towards her father during his somewhat rare visits. She was so much the daughter of Mrs. Greenfield, and the sister of George, that a father whom she saw twice or at most three or four times a year could hardly expect much warmth of feeling from her. Nor did Mr. Richards show any great affection for the child. He never asked that she should visit him at his home, but seemed content to leave her entirely to Mrs. Greenfield's care. He took some interest in her education, however, and before she was eleven insisted upon her being packed off to a boarding school at Brighton.

George was at *this time seventeen, and had somewhat asserted his authority over her. It made a great gap in his life when Peggy was carried off by her father in floods of tears at the beginning of the summer term. For a few days he was the most disconsolate of mortals, but the interests of his school work and of the approaching cricket season presently consoled him, and there were the holidays to look forward to, and the annual month at the sea-side. At the time George left Highgate to go to Cambridge Peggy was nearly thirteen. The discipline of school had somewhat lessened her tyrannical habits, and the relations of the pair were now reversed, George taking the lead and Peggy following him with sisterly admiration. For they were in all respects as brother and sister.

After George had decided in consultation with the authorities of the school to try for a Trinity scholarship, there was a curious contention between him and Mr. Richards, Mrs. Greenfield taking an unwilling part.

Mr. Richards had arrived at the cottage on an unexpected visit just before George was due at Cambridge for the scholarship examination. To the boy's utter amazement he made a strong objection to the course proposed. " I have been told," he said, " that Trinity is the college where rich men's sons go. Why do you fix on that one ? You will get mixed up with a lot of idlers who do nothing but spend money and waste their time, and you will learn to play instead of work, and very likely to get into debt."

George had some difficulty in keeping a naturally hasty temper from asserting itself . "There are some six hundred undergraduates at Trinity," he said. " I daresay some of them are as you say, but they won't be my friends. I shall be a scholar, and, of course, work will be my chief object."

M So you say now," interrupted Mr. Richards.

" And so I shall say in a. year's time if I get this scholarship," returned George, hotly, " and in two and three years' time. Trinity is the most learned college, as well as the largest, and if I can belong to it, I will."

" You had better leave it alone," said Mr. Richards, shortly, " and try somewhere else. You are the son of a poor woman, and I know what it is when a young man gets among a set of idlers."

George could not trust himself to answer, and left the room. He went up to his bedroom, and spent a bitter half -hour by himself. At the end of that time his mother joined him.

" George, dear, can't you do as Mr. Richards advises you, and try at some other college ? " she asked.

George turned to her. ' What, you against me too, mother ? " he exclaimed, in a voice that showed how sore he felt.

"No, darling, never that/' she replied gently, " but he has had experience, and he is very much set against it."

" Experience ! " echoed George, throwing out his hands. " What is his experience worth in such a matter as this ? I can see what he is well enough. A successful business man, no doubt, who has made himself what he is. What standing does that give him that his advice should be taken against that of the Head, and all my friends among the masters who are taking such a kind interest in my future ? And what do his objections amount to ? " he went on rapidly. " Just this, that because at the best of all the colleges there are some men who are there to amuse themselves amongst all those who go there to learn, I can't be trusted to keep my head and stick to my work. Do you know me as little as that, mother ? "

u No, dear, no," replied Mrs. Greenfield. " But cannot you take just as high honours at another college, where the men are more of your own position in life ? He says you can."

" He seems to know a lot about it," said George, bitterly. " Mother, why should I give up the honour of taking a part in such great traditions, if I can earn it, for the sake of another man's whims — a man who has no authority over me ? Why, one of the greatest scholars Trinity has produced was the son of a blacksmith, and one of her greatest masters was the son of a carpenter. Have I shown myself so weak in character that I can't live in a place where there are some rich men without giving up all my hopes and ambitions for the sake of aping their ways ? I care nothing about Mr. Richards's mistrust of me, but it is hard to find that you share it, mother."

" Dear George, you know that I have no mistrust of you," said Mrs. Greenfield. " But I have learnt to-day something that I did not know before. There is a sum of money set aside for your education if you should go to the University after you leave school. You are to have £150 a year as long as you remain at Oxford or Cambridge, and after that, whatever is left out of a thousand pounds is to be given to you to help you towards any occupation you may wish to take up. It would help you very much, but it is within Mr. Richards's power to grant it or withhold it, and if you do not follow out his wishes he may not see fit to let you have it."

" I will go and talk to him about that," said George, impulsively, and he ran out of the room. Mrs. Greenfield sat down by the window and left the boy to fight his own battle.

George, with his head raised, entered the parlour, where Mr. Richards sat by the round table.

" My mother has just told me, sir," he said, " that you are able to grant me some money to help me through the University. Will you answer me one question ? Was that money left by my father for that purpose ? "

Mr. Richards looked at him from behind half-closed eyelids.

" Yes," he said.

" It won't come from you personally ? "

" But you have the power of granting it or withholding it as you see fit ? "

" Yes, that is so."

" And if I do not give up my intention of trying to get into the college I have chosen you will withhold it?"

" I don't say that definitely. But I should consider the matter very carefully."

" You may do as you please about it, sir," said George, hotly. " I can do without the money. Our decision — my mother's and mine — was taken under advice from men who understand these things, and understand me and my circumstances, without reference to it. If I get a scholarship and the school exhibition — with those and the money my mother can allow me — I shall have enough to live upon ; not in the same way as the men you seem to have heard about ; but I am going to Cambridge to work, and not to play, and I shall have as much as I want."

Mr. Richards looked at the boy standing before him, flushed and excited, but full of resolve and self-confidence. A careful observer might have noticed a certain admiration in his gaze, but to George it exhibited nothing but baffled obstinacy.

" Then you have decided to take your own way and ignore my advice/' he said.

" I don't think you are the man to advise me upon such a question/' said George, boldly, the dislike that had grown during his boyhood showing itself in his words and tone. < Mr. Richards shifted his position. " That's as may be, young man," he said. " You shall have my decision after I have learnt the result of this examination. Now, with your leave, I will go and eat my lunch, and I should like to talk to your mother alone till it is time to go and catch my train."

George's resentment flamed up. " Why do you try and set my mother against me ? " he cried. " We have talked over all this, and she will be as proud of my success, if I do succeed, as I shall be myself. We don't ask your help. Who are you ? What power have you got that you should come between my mother and me ? "

Mr. Richards brushed past him. " I shan't come between you," he said, abruptly. " You can do as you please ; " and with that he left the room.

George remained in the little parlour until Mr. Richards had left the house, without coming in again or calling for him to say good-bye. He stood at the window, looking out into the garden, seeing nothing, drumming on the glass with the tassel of the blind. Thoughts that he had never had before passed through his mind, impalpable suspicions, bitter resentments. His hopes for the future and his happy confidence in the integrity of his purpose were darkened. The world was still a fair place to live and work in, but a cloud of mistrust had obscured its brightness. His mind was full of impatience and scorn, and blighting fears of he knew not what. It was the blackest half-hour he had ever known.

When the door had been heard to close behind the man who had been talking in secret to his mother, while he stood there alone and unhappy, Mrs. Greenfield came into the room. " Mother," he cried, turning to face her, " tell me who this man is and what hold he has upon you that you are so anxious to please him and to take his advice." 5 Mrs. Greenfield stopped in amazement. She had come into the room with an air of contentment and a face free from care. Her expression changed, and she sank into a chair, her hand to her heart.

" There is some secret/' said George. " I know there is. Your whole appearance changes When I ask you about him. What is he to you, that you and he should conspire together against me ? "

A faint colour came into Mrs. Greenfield's pale cheeks. " You have no right to say that, George," she said. She spoke in a tone that George had never 'heard her use before. " There is no conspiracy against you. Do you think I would conspire against my son ? You are making a great deal out of a very little. In this very matter that has been discussed this morning, Mr. Richards has offered his advice and you have rejected it. I am glad you did so, because I think there is no foundation for his fears. How could he have a hold over you, or over me, a9 you say, when you, a boy of eighteen, are allowed to have the last word on a matter like that ? "

George looked at her, half convinced. " Then what has he been talking about that I must not hear ? " he asked.

" We spoke of the money that he has in trust for you," replied Mrs. Greenfield, "and about my income, of which he is also the trustee, and about other things."

" Other things ! " echoed George, his suspicions renewed. " What other things, mother ? "

" That I cannot tell you," answered Mrs. Greenfield. " They have to do with my life before you were born, and of that I will never tell you of my own free will."

She spoke with no little vehemence for so mild-mannered a woman.

" How does this man come by his authority over us, mother? " asked George, returning to the suspicions that filled his mind. '< He can let me have this money or not as he wishes. He says it was left me by my father. Is that true ? Has he got control of your money beyond administering it for you ? "

" George, my dear," said his mother, quietly, " you must not throw doubt on what Mr. Richards tells you. My money is my own, and he has no power over it, or over me. The thousand pounds will come to you at some time, whatever may be decided with regard to Trinity College. He has the power of withholding it now, but not altogether.

It is intended to give you a start in life. He is acting as he thinks best, and he is not your enemy as you seem to regard him."

Answer me one question, mother," said George. " Do you like and trust this man ? "

" I trust him implicitly." ,

" Do you like him ? "

" No," she said, quietly.

Chapter II

George won his scholarship, and within a week heard from Mr. Richards that a sum of £150, a year would be paid him until he had taken his degree, when the balance that remained out of a thousand pounds would be handed over to him. Mr. Richards also wished him success in his career, and made no further mention of the rich idlers who had bulked so large in his conceptions of the society of Trinity College.

The climax of George's years of school life came on his last Speech Day, when, as a young man of nearly nineteen, for two years past captain of the School, he sat blushing in the big school-room, while the headmaster announced to the assembled company his success in winning a Major Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the first exhibition from the school itself. It had been a good year in the matter of prizes and scholarships for Highgate School. Other names were read out along with George's, but none so often as his. He went up to the dais again and again, and carried away a small library of calf-bound books, and each time he went up he was more vociferously applauded than before, for his schoolfellows appreciated the honours he had gained and would gain for them, and he had carried out his bat for 120 in the match against the M.C.C. the day before. The ladies in the big school-room looked upon him graciously, for he was a handsome fellow, dark and tall, and well set up, and he accepted his honours, and the plaudits that accompanied them, with a modest composure which sat very well on him.

And in the very place in the back of the room where George as a very small boy had first imbibed learning eleven years before, sat his mother, looking on at his triumph with brimming eyes. She knew no one immediately around her, and when the old bishop who was giving away the prizes made a speech, in which he spoke of the pleasure it had given him to come back to his old school and to see its traditions so worthily maintained on all hands, and he might say brilliantly maintained in the case of his young friend the captain of the school (a ringing outburst of cheers and clapping, with difficulty quelled by the headmaster), Mrs. Greenfield broke down and cried softly into her handkerchief tears of pride and pleasure.

And after the speeches were over George broke away as soon as might be from the guests amongst whom duty took him at the headmaster's house, and ran home just as if he were a little boy still, to the cottage, where he talked over the events of the day, of his whole school life, and of the new life that was opening out before him, to the most sympathetic listener in the world, until the clock striking one reminded them that it was long past their bed time. Amongst other surroundings in afteryears his boyhood, now closing, remained to George as a happy memory, for he had known the full sweetness of home life.

George's career at Cambridge was marked by the success which had been prophesied for him during his school days. His success, in fact, was complete and triumphant. He won almost every prize and distinction that came within the course of reading he had adopted, and finished up alone in the first division of the first class of the Classical Tripos. In his third year he got into the University Cricket Eleven, and made his appearance at Lord's in the match against Oxford. Mr. Richards, when this news came to his ears, might perhaps have recalled his early warning against regarding Cambridge as a place to play and not to work in. And, indeed, a place in the University Eleven does make demands both on the purse and on the time of an undergraduate who attains to it. But as regards the former, George's prizes and the sum of money which was paid into his account once a quarter by Mr. Richards himself, made him far better off than the average undergraduate, even at Trinity, and, as far as his work went, his First Class had never been in doubt, it being the general opinion that he could have taken it in his second year, had he been so disposed. He had gone through a thoroughly good grounding at Highgate School, under the teaching of the headmaster, himself a fine scholar, and he had read diligently and continuously at Cambridge. There had scarcely been a working day in his life, either at school or at college, on which he could look back as wasted, as against so many days and weeks and months that most men of his age can count as lost.

On a deliberate determination he widened his interests during his third year, and lessened his hours of reading for his Tripos work. He spoke often at the Union, and attained in due course the president's chair. He was an extreme Radical in those early days. He was accustomed to speak of himself as a man of the people, and the contrast between his finely cut face, his graceful and noble bearing, and the refinement of his speech on the one hand, and his asserted claim to lowly birth on the other, was not a little curious. In the generous republic of youth, birth, high or low, is of little account, and no more popular man than George Greenfield walked the streets and courts of Cambridge during those happy undergraduate days.

In his fourth year he left the paths of classical learning and read for the History Tripos. He was told that his Fellowship was in danger, but he had wider aims than the cloistered scholastic career, and was even in those early days casting a diffident eye towards Parliament. And when the time came he sat for his Fellowship, as the phrase goes, and duly won it.

During the four years of his University career it may be supposed that George was not without occasional selfsearchings on the subject of Mr. Richards and his connection with his own and his mother's history. His life was so brimful of eagerness and interest, and his home, when he visited it, so quiet, so happy, so normal in every way, that the questions he sometimes put to himself troubled his mind at rare intervals, and even then assumed no great importance.

But there were times when he asked himself from whence he had sprung ; what kind of a man was the father of whom he v/as forbidden to speak ; what bad thing had he done that his gentle mother could not bear to Lear him mentioned without fear and shrinking ; who was the darkbrowed arrogant man who wielded such strange yet limited power over the fortunes of' their little household and his own career ; what connection had he with the tale of shame which had clouded his mother's early life ; and would the mystery of that tale and all that hung on it ever pass the lips of the two who alone possessed the key to it, and be revealed to him ?