a week before the christmas holidays a boy named gould came up to crawley and said, “i wish you would come and stay with me a week or so this christmas at my father’s place in suffolk, nugget towers. the best of the shooting is over, the partridges being very wild by now, and it is not a pheasant country, as there are no woods to speak of. but there are a good many snipe down towards the river, so you had better bring your gun. besides we will have a day’s partridge driving, for there are plenty, if you could only get at them. and there is a pack of foxhounds that meets about ten miles off once a week at least, and some harriers close by. i generally go out with the harriers. we can give you a mount; you do not ride above twelve stone i should say, do you?”
“no, i should think not, but i have not been weighed lately,” replied crawley. “you are very kind, i am sure, but does your father know? perhaps he has made arrangements to fill his house.”
“oh no! it is all right. my father does not bother his head about such things; he is perpetually going to london, and thinking of business. but my mother and sisters want you to come, and have told me to ask you.”
“i am much obliged to them, they are very good. and i should like it very much,” said crawley, somewhat more hesitatingly than it was his wont to speak.
for this invitation was rather a hot coal on his head. gould had courted his acquaintance and he had rather snubbed him, not liking him particularly. he was rich, which mattered to nobody, but he gave himself airs on the strength of it, and that did. there are few things more irritating than to hear anyone perpetually bragging of his money, and if you happen to be poor yourself i do not think that it helps you to sit and listen more patiently. and then gould was an injudicious flatterer; he made the flattered fellow uncomfortable. it is a nice thing, flattery, and causes one to feel good all over, if it is delicately applied with a camel’s-hair brush, as it were. but gould laid it on with a trowel. he only courted success; if anyone were down he would be the first to spurn him.
now, crawley was undoubtedly the boy held in greatest estimation in the school: captain and treasurer of the cricket and football clubs, good-looking, pleasant in manners, open, generous, clever at lessons, he was a special favourite with masters and boys, and therefore gould burnt his incense before him. for to be crawley’s chum was to gain a certain amount of consideration in the school, and gould did not mind shining with a reflected light. he was not like saurin in that respect, whose egotism saved him at least from being a toad-eater. gould was vain enough, but his vanity was of a different kind. but hitherto all his efforts had been in vain, and crawley had rather snubbed him. this had not prevented gould from talking about him, exaggerating his merits, and bragging about his intimacy with him at home. it was always “my friend crawley and i” did this, that, and the other. so that mrs gould wrote to him one day asking whether he would not like his inseparable to come and stay with him during the holidays; and clarissa gould added a postscript to the effect that as he was so clever he would be of great use to them in their private theatricals.
crawley was one boy amongst a rather large family of girls; the father was dead, and the mother, though able to live in ordinary comfort, was far from rich. she could not indulge in carriages and horses, or men-servants, for example, and she lived near london for the sake of her daughters’ education. so that crawley had never had an opportunity of gaining proficiency in those sports which cannot be indulged in without a good deal of expenditure, and he looked upon hunting and shooting as sublime delights far out of his reach at present, though perhaps he might attain to them by working very hard, some day. his ambition was to enter the army, not that he thought drill any particular fun, or desired the destruction of his fellow-creatures, or ever indulged in dreams of medals, bars, triumphal arches, and the thanks of parliament, but simply because he might get to india, stick pigs, and shoot tigers. shooting! hunting! gould’s words made his nerves tingle from head to foot with excitement. and he had thought the fellow who now offered him a taste of such pleasures a muff, a bore, a sycophant, and done his best to avoid him! how wrong it is to have prejudices!
“well, then, when will you come?” asked gould.
“as soon as it is convenient to have me after christmas,” replied crawley. “i must spend the christmas week at home, you know; but then i am free. i should tell you, though, that i cannot shoot or ride a little bit. i have never had any practice, and you will find me an awful duffer.”
“all right; fellows always say that.”
“yes, i know they do sometimes, in mock modesty. but in my case it’s a fact, and i warn you, that i may not spoil your fun.”
“my dear fellow,” said gould, “you could not do that unless your want of skill were catching. i should be glad if i could put you up to a wrinkle or two.”
“on those terms, then, i shall be very glad to come.”
“that is all right.”
what a happy stroke for gould! he had come to call crawley “my dear fellow” already.
the idea of his new friend putting him up to a “wrinkle or two” rather tickled crawley. gould was so poor a performer at cricket, fives, lawn-tennis, football everything which required a ready hand, a quick eye, and firm nerves—that crawley could not imagine his beating him even with the advantage of previous knowledge. yet he had not exaggerated his own deficiencies. bring his gun, indeed! the only gun he had to bring was a single-barrelled muzzle-loader which had belonged to his father. with this he had shot water-rats, sparrows, and, on one occasion when they were very numerous, fieldfares; but not flying—he had never attempted that. no; he had stalked his small bird till he got within thirty yards of the bough where it was perched, and taken a steady pot-shot. as for riding, when a very little boy during his father’s lifetime he had had a pony; and two or three times since, when staying at watering-places in the summer, he had mounted a hired hack. so that his ideas of sport were gathered entirely from books and pictures, to which, when they treated of that subject, he was devotedly attached. what happy hours he had spent poring over jorrock’s hunts, mr sponge’s sporting tour, and the works of the old shekarry! when he went to a picture-gallery he was listless until he came upon some representation of moving adventure by flood or field, and then the rest of the party could hardly drag him away. he had a little collection of coloured prints in his room at home, gathered at various times, and highly esteemed by him, which conveyed a somewhat exaggerated idea of equine powers. for in one a horse was clearing a stream about the width of the thames at reading, and in another an animal of probably the same breed was flying a solid stone wall quite ten feet high. now he was to have a little taste of these often-dreamed-of joys, and the idea absorbed his thoughts and made him restless at night.
to do him justice, he did not think about it on first meeting his mother and sisters when he went home; but on the second day of his return the invitation and all it promised came back to him, and he broached the matter to mrs crawley at breakfast-time. “please, mother, i have had an invitation to spend a week with a school-fellow after christmas.”
“oh, and who is he?” asked mrs crawley.
“a chap named gould; they are awfully rich people—just the sort i ought to know, you know. they live in suffolk at a place called nugget towers.”
“and what sort of boy is he? because, of course, vincent, we must ask him here in the summer in return.”
“well, he is always very civil to me, and i don’t know any harm of him; but he is not good at games and that, and not much fun to talk to—so i have never been quite so thick with him as he wished. that makes it all the more civil of him. he must have talked about me at home, for his mother sent the invitation.”
“well, vincent, i am glad you spoke of it at once, for we must make haste to look over your linen, which generally comes home in a terrible state. you had better go to-day to the tailor and get measured for your dress clothes; but you were to have had them for christmas any way, so that will be nothing extra.”
for crawley, it must be mentioned, had arrived at an age and height when a tail-coat was a necessary garment if he went anywhere of an evening.
“no, mother,” he said, “except a pair of porpoise-hide boots and some leggings; and could i have a gun, do you think? there will be some shooting, you know.”
“a gun, vincent! will not the one you have already do?”
“oh, no, mother—it is so old and out of date, i should be laughed at. i might just as well take an arquebus or a crossbow.”
“is not a gun a very expensive thing?”
“why, you may make it so, of course; but i don’t want that. i have been studying the field, and i can get a good central-fire breech-loader for £10.”
“ten pounds is a good deal,” said mrs crawley thoughtfully; “but i suppose you must have a gun if you want one. only remember, vincent, that i am not rich, and your education and other expenses are very heavy. and there are your sisters to be thought of—what with their dresses and their music, drawing and dancing, i have to be very careful.”
“oh, of course, mother,” said crawley, going round and kissing her; “what a dear you are!”
and his heart smote him as he thought of certain “ticks” he owed at school, and had not yet had the courage to confess to. for vincent crawley, though he had many good qualities, was by no means perfect. he was rather spoiled by indulgence at home and popularity at school, and thought a good deal too much of himself for one thing, and for another he was inclined to be thoughtless and extravagant in money matters. it is excellent to be generous with money which is absolutely our own; but to seek to get the credit for generosity at other people’s expense is quite another, and not at all an admirable thing. crawley knew this in theory, but practically, if he wanted anything and could get it, he had it; and if a friend had a longing for ices, strawberry mess, oyster-patties, or any other school luxury, he would treat him, running up a score if he had not the cash in his pocket to pay with. and if there was generosity in this impulse, i fear that there was ostentation too. it added to his popularity, and popularity had become as the air he breathed. for the only real test of generosity is self-denial. if you go without something you really want in order to oblige someone else, that is genuine, admirable, and somewhat rare. but if you have everything you want and forego nothing whatever by conferring a favour, you may show good nature, careless indifference to the value of money, or a pleasant sense of patronage, but not necessarily true generosity. that may be the spirit which dictates your conduct, but the act does not prove it.
now, in crawley’s case, his mother was the only one who had to exercise self-denial. but he never thought of that. he prided himself on being a very generous fellow, and so he was by nature, but not so much so as he took credit for, and he was growing more selfish than otherwise; which was a pity. he went up to london, and was measured for his dress clothes, and got his boots and gaiters, and then sought out and found the gun-shop, mentioned in the field, and instead of pretending to be knowing about firearms, wisely told the shopman why he came to him, and that he trusted him entirely, being quite unable to judge for himself, which made the man take particular pains to select him a good one, and show him how to judge if the stock suited him; namely, by fixing his eyes on an object, and bringing the gun sharply up to his shoulder. then closing the left eye, and looking along the barrel with the right, to see whether the sight was on the object. if he had to raise or lower the muzzle to obtain that result, it was obvious that it did not come up right for him. at length he got one which suited him exactly, and he was shown the mechanism by which the breeches were opened and closed, and learned how to take it to pieces, put it together again, clean it, and oil it.
finally he bought it, together with a hundred cartridges, fifty being loaded with snipe-shot, and fifty with number five; all on the gunmaker’s recommendation, to whom he explained the kind of shooting he expected to have. he would not let it be sent home for him, but took it off himself.
“you only hold it straight, sir, and i’ll guarantee the gun will kill well enough,” said the maker as he left.
what a charm there is in a new bat, a new gun, a new fly-rod, a new racket; how one longs for an opportunity to try it! really it is often a consolation to me to think that very rich people lose all that. when everything is so easily obtained, nothing is of any value. crawley at any rate was delighted with his new possession. he took it to pieces and put it together again for the benefit of every member of the family, besides a good many times for his own private delectation, and practised aiming drill and position drill by the hour together, without knowing that there were any such military exercises.
the frost set in again, however, a week before christmas, and when the ice bore, he had to leave his new toy alone, for besides practising himself, his sisters required tuition in the art of skating. and you must not think that he found the time hang heavy to the day of his departure; he was too fresh home, and of too genial a disposition for that, besides which it was christmas time. but he did look forward with pleasurable excitement to his visit, for all that.
the day came at length, and he started for barnsbury, snugly ensconsed in a first-class carriage, with wraps, and comic papers, and a story by manville fenn with a thrilling picture on the cover, and his beloved gun in the rack over his head. his mother had suggested travelling second-class, but he durst not, for fear someone should meet him at the station. he was right in that expectation, for when the train stopped at barnsbury he saw gould and a man in livery waiting for him on the platform.
“all right! how are you, old fellow?” said gould, shaking him by the hand. “how good of you to come! no hunting in such a frost as this, so i thought i would drive over myself.”
crawley said something civil, and the groom touched his hat and asked what luggage he had, taking his gun-case from him as he spoke.
“it will be brought after us in the tax-cart,” said gould, “which has come over too. i hate a lot of luggage in the trap i am driving, don’t you? leave it to william and come along; it will be all right;” and he led the way out of the station, where there was a dog-cart with another liveried servant on the seat, and a handsome nag in the shafts, waiting at the door.
the man jumped down and touched his hat; crawley got in; gould gathered up the reins, sat beside him, and started, the man springing up behind as they moved off, and balancing himself, with folded arms, as smart and natty as you please.
crawley wondered more and more that he had never perceived any superiority in gould; surely he must be very blind.
“it is only half-an-hour’s drive, behind an animal like this,” said his new friend. “the frost is giving, so we may have a run with the harriers in a few days. in the meantime there are a good many snipe. we will have a crack at them to-morrow morning, if you like.”
“i should like very much,” replied crawley.
the country they were driving through was not very picturesque, as it wanted wood, a strange want for suffolk; but they soon came to a lodge with a gate, opened for them by a curtseying woman, and admitting them to a park where there were trees, and fine ones, though standing about by themselves, not grouped together. they spun along through this up to a large white house with a colonnade in front, and a terrace, with urns for flowers and statues all along it, looking bare and cheerless enough at this time of year. but the hall made amends when they entered it, for it was warm, luxurious, and bright enough for a sitting-room. two footmen in plush and with slightly powdered hair inhabited it, and one of them helped crawley to get rid of his wraps, and then gould led the way to the drawing-room, where mrs gould and three daughters were drinking tea and eating muffins and things, for fear they should have too good appetites for dinner, i suppose, and introduced him.
crawley shook several hands and accepted a cup of tea, and sat down on a very low and very soft seat, which he could have passed the night in luxuriously if beds had run short, and felt as awkward as you please. he always was shy in ladies’ society. not in that of his sisters, of course; he patronised them and made them fag for him. it was certainly their own fault if they did not like it, for they had taught him. but they did like it, he being one of his sort, and not often at home, and in return he waltzed with them, which was a bore, and gave them easy service at lawn-tennis, which made him slow, and was generally an amiable young turk.
but the misses gould did not look like being fagged, rather the reverse. they were all grown up, at least to look at, though one was not yet “out.” clarissa, the next, a girl of eighteen, came and sat down by him and talked to him, for which he felt very grateful, for he was beginning to wish the floor to open and let him through. at first, indeed, she talked of things he knew nothing about: balls, and levées, and the four-in-hand club, and the orleans. but finding the service was too severe, and he could not send the ball back, she asked if he was fond of the theatre, and as he was, very, and had been to one a few nights before, he became more like himself, and showed some animation in his description of the piece he had seen, and the performers.
at this juncture a quiet-looking man out of livery came softly into the room, and asked him deferentially for his keys, as his luggage had arrived. seizing the idea that he proposed to unpack for him, an operation he disliked, he gladly gave them up, wondering whether these rich people ever did anything for themselves at all.
“i see that you are great upon acting,” said miss clarissa when the valet was gone, “and i am so glad! for we are getting up some private theatricals; you will take a part?”
“why,” said crawley in some dismay, “i never yet tried to act myself; i am afraid i should spoil everything.”
“oh no! we have heard all about you from my brother, you know; you have a good memory, have you not?”
“i believe so; i have never found much difficulty in learning by heart.”
“that is one good thing to begin with; we will soon see if you can act at all. some of our friends are coming over to-morrow for rehearsal. we have agreed to try st. cupid, or dorothy’s fortune, and we want a ‘bellefleur.’ you will take the part, will you not? i am to be ‘dorothy budd.’ you will not have so very much to do. do you know the play?”
“no, unfortunately, and i—” crawley began, meaning to back out; but miss clarissa cut him short.
“no matter,” she said, “i will fetch you a copy,” and she got up and returned presently with a little book. “you had better read it all through, and mark your parts with the tags. the tags, you know, are the last sentences of the speaker before you, to which you have to reply. you can learn some while you are dressing for dinner; that is a capital time. and i will give you a hint or two this evening in the billiard-room. you don’t mind?”
what could crawley say? he did mind, not bargaining for learning lessons in the holidays; but he could not show himself so uncivil a boor as to refuse. so he promised to do his best, and when the gong sounded, took his little book up into the bedroom with him.
