Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family

Part 1, Chapter XXIV.
“A Row.”

“Where are you going, Frank?”

“Don’t know; perhaps as far as Lewby. John Berry said he would be glad to show me round his farm.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Cyril, with a meaning look.

“Well, what do you mean by ‘Oh’?” said Frank, roughly.

“Nothing at all, my dear boy – nothing at all,” said Cyril.

“I never grin like an idiot at you when you are going over to Kilby, do I?”

“Oh, no: not at all. It’s all right, I suppose,” laughed Cyril. “But, I say, hadn’t you better be off amongst the blacks? You have grown rather uncivilised lately.”

“Mind your own business,” growled Frank Mallow. “I say!”

“Well?”

“That blackguard regularly frightened Ju. She hasn’t looked the same girl since.”

“No,” said Cyril. “Pity the shooting season’s over.”

“Why?”

“We might have peppered the blackguard by accident if he had shown himself here again.”

“Master would like to see you, sir, in my mistress’s room,” said the butler, entering the study where the young men were smoking.

“Oh, all right, I’ll come,” said Cyril, impatiently. “Hang it, Frank, if you were half a brother you’d go halves with me, and take me back to your place. I’m sick of this life. There’s a lecture about something, I suppose.”

“Caning, I should think,” said Frank, with a sneering laugh. “There, go and get it over; and look here, I’ll give up Lewby to-day, and drive over with you to Gatley. Let’s get a game at billiards and dine with Artingale. It’s no use to have a lord after your sister if you don’t make use of him.”

“All right. No. I’ve an engagement to-night.”

“Go and keep it then, and be hanged. I shall go to Lewby,” growled Frank.

“Blackberrying?” sneered Cyril. “I say, mind you don’t ‘Rue’ going.”

“If you say that again, Cil, I’ll get up and kick you,” growled Frank. “Every fellow isn’t such a blackguard as you.”

“Oh no,” laughed Cyril, “especially not dear brother Frank. There, I’m off.”

“You’re a beauty, Cil!” growled Frank, and he lit a fresh cigar. “Share! Go halves with me! Ha, ha, ha! I dare say he would. How people do believe in stories of the gold mines. I wonder whether anything is to be made out of that poet fool.”

“Want to talk to me, father?” said Cyril, entering the room where his mother lay upon the couch, with a terrible look of anxiety upon her pallid face. “Oh, let’s see; will my smoking worry you, mamma?”

“Always so thoughtful for me,” said the fond mother to herself. Then aloud —

“I don’t mind it, Cyril, but I don’t think your father – ”

She stopped short, for the Rector interrupted her, sternly.

“Is an invalid lady’s room a suitable place for smoking pipes, Cyril?”

“Don’t see that it matters what the place is so long as the invalid don’t mind. But there, don’t make a bother about it,” he cried, tapping the burning tobacco out on to the hob; “I can wait until I go down again.”

“Shall we go down, papa?” said Julia, rising with Cynthia from where they sat in the window.

“No, my dears; you must hear what I am going to say, so you may as well hear it now.”

“Oh, no, Eli,” moaned the invalid.

“Very well, my dears, you had better go,” said the Rector, and he led his daughters to the door, which he opened and closed after them with quiet dignity.

“Row on!” muttered Cyril. “Well, ma, dear, how are you?”

“Not – not quite so well, Cyril,” she said, fondly; and her voice trembled, as she dreaded a scene. “Will you come and sit down here by me?” she added, pointing to a chair.

“Yes, I may as well,” he said, laughingly, “and you can take care of me, for I see somebody means mischief.”

The Rector bit his lips, for his was a painful task. He wished to utter a severe reprimand, and to appeal to the young man’s sense of right and wrong, while here at the outset was the mother bird spreading her protecting wing before her errant chick, and ready, the Rector saw, to stand up boldly in his defence.

“Let me punch up your pillow for you, dear,” said Cyril, bending over the couch, and raising the slight frame of the sick woman, whose arms closed softly round the young man’s neck, while he beat and turned the soft down pillow, lowering the invalid gently back into her former place, and kissing her tenderly upon the brow.

“That’s better,” he said. “I hate a hot pillow, and it’s so comfortable when it’s turned.”

Mrs Mallow clung fondly to her son for a few moments, smiling gratefully in his face; and the Rector sighed and again bit his lip as he saw how moment by moment his task was growing more difficult.

“If he would only study her feelings in the broader things of life,” he said to himself; and he took a turn or two impatiently about the room.

“Now, governor, I’m ready,” said Cyril, facing round suddenly, his mother holding his hand between hers. “What’s the last thing I’ve done amiss?”

“Heaven knows,” cried the Rector, startling his wife by the way in which he suddenly flashed into anger. “The last thing that I have to complain of is that I cannot trust my own son.”

“Ah, you mean with money, father,” said the young man, lightly. “Well, it does go rather fast.”

“I mean my son’s word,” said the Rector, quickly. “Cyril, last night you told me a lie.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” cried the mother, quickly. “It is some mistake, dear. Cyril would not tell you what was not true.”

The Rector, after years of patience, was so thoroughly out of temper with the discovery of that day that he retorted hotly —

“A lie – I say he told me a deliberate lie.”

“Nonsense!” said the young man. “People tell lies when they are afraid to tell the truth. I’m not afraid to tell you anything.”

“You told me last night, sir, that you had been down in the town with Frank, whereas I find this morning that you had been at Kilby Farm.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Cyril. “Why, what a discovery, father. You asked me where I had been, and I told you – ‘down the town.’ So I had. You did not ask me whether I had been anywhere else, or I might have added, to the Churchwarden’s.”

“And pray why did you go there, sir?” cried the Rector.

“Come, father, don’t talk to me as if I were a naughty little boy about to be sent to bed without his supper.”

“Pray be calm, dear,” cried Mrs Mallow. “Cyril gives a very good explanation. Surely it was natural that he should walk over to Kilby.”

“I say why did you go over there, sir?”

“To smoke a pipe with old Portlock, if you must know, and have a glass of his home brewed ale. It’s dull enough here with the girls.”

“It is false, sir,” cried the Rector, excitedly.

“Well,” said Cyril, coolly, “you may not find it dull, but I do.”

“I say, sir, it is false that you merely went there to drink and smoke.”

“Very well, father,” said Cyril, in the most nonchalant way, as he lay back in his chair and played with his mother’s rings. “Perhaps you know, then, why I went.”

“Oh, hush, Cyril, my boy,” panted the invalid. “Eli, my dear, pray be calm. This hurts me – hurts me more than I can tell you.”

“I am sorry, my dear, very sorry,” cried the Rector, excitedly; “but it must be stopped. I cannot allow matters to go on as they do. It is terrible. I feel at every turn as if I were being disgraced. I shiver as I go down the town or make a call, for fear that I should have to encounter some fresh disgrace brought upon us by our own boys.”

“What’s the matter with the governor, ma, dear?” said the young man, mockingly. “Has Frank been up to some fresh games?”

“Oh, hush, my dear boy,” cried the poor woman, imploringly.

“I’ll be as quiet as I can, dear,” replied Cyril; “but there are bounds to everything. I am not a child.”

“No, sir, but you act like one – like a disobedient child,” cried his father. “No matter what is done for you, back you come home to idle and lounge away your existence. The idea of the nobility of labour never seems to have dawned in your mind.”

“Never,” replied Cyril, calmly. “Nobility of labour, indeed! Why, father, what’s the good of quoting stuff like that to me out of one of your old sermons?”

“You are utterly wasting your life, sir.”

“Not I, father,” retorted Cyril. “I am rather enjoying it. Let those work who are obliged. Why should I make myself a slave? I like my existence very well as it is, and don’t mean to bother.”

“It is disgraceful,” cried the Rector, whose usually bland face was now fierce with anger.

“Don’t see it. I don’t spend much, nor yet get into debt. You’ve got plenty of money, so why should I trouble myself about work?”

“I’d forgive that,” cried the Rector – “I’d forgive your idleness, but when I find that you cannot be trusted, I am compelled to speak.”

“But, my dear,” remonstrated the invalid, “what has poor Cyril done? He did not like the wretched slavery out in the colony, and he could not content himself with the drudgery of a clerk’s desk. Do not be so severe. Be patient, and he will succeed like Frank has done.”

“What has he done?” cried the Rector. “What is he doing but leading such a life as must disgrace us all.”

“Nonsense, father!” cried the young man. “It is no nonsense, sir. Months ago I spoke to you about your conduct, but it has been in vain. People in all directions are noticing your behaviour towards Miss Portlock. Just, too, when your sisters are about to make excellent matches.”

“Miss Portlock!” cried Mrs Mallow, starting. “Oh, Cyril!”

Cyril acted like an animal brought to bay. He began to fight. While there was a chance of his father not being aware of his proceedings, he fenced and parried. Now he spoke out sharply —

“Well, what do people say about my behaviour with Miss Portlock? She’s a very nice ladylike girl, well educated, and sweet and clever, and if I like to chat with her, I shall.”

“Oh, Cyril!” cried his mother again; and then she added, “Is this true?”

“True? Is what true? That I have been to Kilby sometimes to have a chat with Sage Portlock? Of course it is. Why not?”

“You own to it, then?” said his father. “Own to it, if you like to call it so, sir. And now, pray, where is the harm?”

Mrs Mallow withdrew her hand from her son’s grasp, and looked in his face with a terribly pained expression, for, with all her gentleness of disposition, the sense of caste was in her very strongly; and with all his failings, she had looked upon Cyril as a noble representative of the mingled blood of the old family Mallows and the Heskeths from whom she sprang.

“I am to understand, then,” said the Rector, “that you propose honouring us with a daughter chosen from the people here.”

“I don’t say yes, and I don’t say no,” replied Cyril, cavalierly. “I think I have heard you say often that Sage was a very nice girl.”

“Sage?”

“Yes, Sage. I think you had the pleasure of baptising her by her herbaceous name, so you ought to know.”

The Rector exchanged glances with his wife, whose face wore a very pitiable look.

“I have – yes – certainly – often said that Miss Portlock was a very good, sensible girl,” he said at last.

“Well, then, what more do you want, sir? I suppose you expect a man to think about such things at some time in his life?”

“But have you proposed for her hand?” said his mother, faintly.

“Proposed for her hand? Nonsense, mamma. People of their class don’t understand things in that light.”

This was a false move, and the Rector took advantage of the slip.

“People of that class, sir? Then you acknowledge that you are degrading yourself by these proceedings.”

“Oh, I don’t know about degrading myself, sir. You know what they say. If a lady marries her groom she descends to his level. If a man marries his cook he raises her to his.”

“But does Mr Portlock – my Churchwarden – know of your intentions?”

“How can he,” said Cyril, coolly, “when I have none?”

“But Mrs Portlock believes that you are paying your attentions to her niece.”

“Yes, I s’pose so,” he replied. “Terribly silly woman.”

“Oh, Cyril, Cyril,” said his mother, “this is very, very shocking.”

“Stuff and nonsense, mamma. Why, what a tremendous fuss about a little bit of flirtation with a pretty little schoolmistress. You nearly had her sister for a daughter-in-law when Frank was after her.”

“Frank saw the folly of his proceedings, and grew sensible,” said the Rector.

“Oh, did he!” muttered Cyril.

“The word flirtation, Cyril,” said the Rector firmly, “is a disgrace to our civilisation, and one that ought certainly to be heard from no decent lips.”

“Matter of opinion, of course,” said Cyril; and he placed his hands under his head and stared straight out of the window, while the Rector and his wife exchanged glances.

“Cyril,” said the former at last, after a struggle to keep down his anger, “I will not quarrel with you.”

“That’s right, governor. I hate quarrelling.”

“But while you are under my roof I must be obeyed.”

“Don’t think any man has a more obedient son,” replied Cyril.

“The time, however, has now come when some plan must be devised for you to make a fresh start in life upon your own account.”

“’Pon my word, father, I don’t see it. I’m very comfortable as I am.”

“But I am not, sir,” replied his father, firmly. “For years past it has been thrown in my teeth that I am rightly named Eli. You know why. It is time, now, sir, that we took care not to be ashamed of the enemy in the gate.”

“Please don’t preach, father,” said the young man, in a tone of protestation.

The Rector paid no attention to his words, but went on —

“Let me ask you first,” he said, “one question.”

“Go on,” said the young man, for his father had stopped.

“Has Miss Portlock accepted your attentions?”

There was a pause here. “I say, Cyril, has Miss Portlock accepted your attentions?”

“Matter of confidence,” replied the young man. “Question I would rather not answer.”

“Then she has not,” said the Rector, quickly, “and I am very, very glad.”

“Why, father?”

“Because, as I have told you before, she is receiving the attentions of Mr Luke Ross.”

“Oh, nonsense!” cried Cyril, flushing. “That’s all off now.”

“I heard something of the kind; but what do you mean? Have they quarrelled?”

“Oh, no. Old Portlock wouldn’t have it: and quite right, too. Girl like that to be engaged to such a clod!”

“Cyril,” said his father, angrily, “I would to heaven that I had as good a son.”

“Complimentary to your boys, sir. Let’s see, he threw you over very shabbily about the school, didn’t he?”

“He declined the post, certainly.”

“Then even Mr Luke Ross is not perfect, sir.”

“I am not going to criticise his conduct over that matter, sir, beyond saying that he had no doubt good reasons for declining the post. On further consideration I think he was right, for unless he felt his heart to be in his work, he would have been wrong to venture upon binding himself to the school.”

“Most worthy young man, I’ve no doubt,” said Cyril, with a sneer.

“A young man for whom I entertain a great respect,” retorted the Rector.

“One of those highly respectable young men who push their way on in the world,” sneered Cyril.

“And often become great with the poorest of means for pushing their way,” said the Rector, “while those well started miserably fail.”

“Oh, yes; I know ’em,” said Cyril. “One reads of them in the nice books. Bah! I haven’t patience with the prigs; and as for this Luke Ross,” he cried, with the colour burning as two spots in his cheeks, “I look upon him as one of the most contemptible cads under the sun. You talk of wishing that you had such a son, father! Why the fellow is utterly beneath our notice.”

“Why?” said his father, in a sharp, incisive tone.

“Why?” replied Cyril. “Because he is.”

“A pitiful reply,” said the Rector, angrily. “Can you give me a better reason for your dislike to Luke Ross?”

“Not I. He is not worth it.”

“Then I’ll give you one,” replied the Rector. “The true one, Cyril, though it cuts me to the heart to have to speak so to my son, and before the mother who has worshipped him from his birth.”

“Oh, Eli, pray, pray spare me this,” cried Mrs Mallow, supplicatingly.

“No,” he said, “I have been silent too long – I have given way too much. It is time I spoke out with no uncertain sound. Cyril, you hate this man because he is your rival in the affections of a good, true girl. Your anger has taught me so far, and I rejoice thereat. Your suit has been without success. You teach me, too, that you would stop at nothing, even blackening your rival’s character, to gain your ends; but this must not be. I look upon Sage Portlock as in my charge, and I tell you, once and for all, that you must stop this disgraceful pursuit. I say that it shall not go on.”

“And how will you stop it, sir?” cried Cyril, springing to his feet, while the mother lay back with clasped hands.

“I don’t know yet, but stop it I will,” cried Mr Mallow. “You shall disgrace your mother and sisters no longer – insult Miss Portlock no more by your pursuit.”

“Insult her?”

“Yes, sir, insult her. She is too good and pure-hearted a girl for her affections to be tampered with by such a heartless fellow as you.”

“Eli, Eli,” moaned Mrs Mallow, but her cry was unnoticed by the angry men.

“Tampered with! Heartless! Bah! You do not know what you are saying.”

“I know, my son, that the time has come for me to strike. You must leave here, and at once. Sage Portlock is not for you. If you do not know your position in life and your duty to your class, you must be taught.”

“Then hear me now,” cried the young man, defiantly. “Luke Ross is no rival of mine, for he has never won Sage Portlock’s heart. That belongs to me; and as to duty, caste, and the like, let them go to the devil. Have her I will, in spite of you all, and – ”

“Silence, sir!” cried the Rector, beside himself with passion – the rage kept down for years; and he caught his son by the throat. “Man grown – no, you are a boy – a child, whom I ought to soundly thrash for your disobedience and shame. Son? you are no son of mine.”

“Loose me, father,” cried the young man. “I will not bear this. Loose me, I tell you.”

Father and son had forgotten themselves, and in those brief moments of their struggle a strange blindness had come over them. They swayed to and fro, a little table covered with china was overset with a crash, and, at last, getting one hand free, Cyril clenched his fist and struck out fiercely, just as a wild and piercing scream rang through the room.

Part 1, Chapter XXV.
Where Cyril Went

Mrs Mallow’s cry of horror as, after struggling for the first time for many years into an upright posture, she fell back, fainting, had the effect of bringing father and son back to their senses. Another second and Cyril’s clenched hand would have struck down the author of his birth; but at that cry his arm fell to his side, and he stood there trembling with excitement as the Rector quitted his hold, and flung himself upon his knees by the couch.

He rose again on the instant to obtain water and the pungent salts which were close at hand, striving with all the skill born of so many years’ attendance in a sick room to restore the stricken woman to her senses.

Frank had already left the house, but the cry brought Julia and Cynthia into the room.

“Oh, mamma, mamma!” wailed Julia, and she too busied herself in trying to revive the stricken woman.

Not so Cynthia, who took in the situation at a glance, and burst into a passion of sobs, which she checked directly, and with flushed face and flashing eyes she crossed to her brother.

“This is your doing,” she cried; “you will kill mamma before you’ve done; and Harry might have been here and heard all this. Cyril, I hate you; you’re as wicked as Frank;” and to her brother’s utter astonishment she struck him sharply in the face.

“Little fool!” he growled fiercely, as he caught her by the wrist, but only to fling her off with a contemptuous laugh. He made no motion to help, but stood with frowning brow and bitter vindictive eye watching his parents alternately; but though he went to and fro many times, and passed close to his son, the Rector never once looked at him, seeming quite to ignore his presence there.

Constant efforts had their due effect at last, for the unhappy mother uttered a low wailing cry, and then, as her senses returned and she realised her position, she began to sob bitterly, clinging to her husband as he knelt by her, bending his face down upon her hands as he held them tightly in his own.

From where Cyril stood he could see his father’s face, that it was deadly pale, and that his lips were moving rapidly as if in prayer, and thus all stayed for some little time, till the laboured sobbing of the invalid died off into an occasional catching sigh.

At last she unclosed her eyes, to fix them appealingly upon her son, her lips moving, though no audible words followed; but the look of appeal and the direction of her pathetically expressive eyes told her wishes as she glanced from Cyril to the carpet beside her couch – told plainly enough her wishes, and the young man read them aright – that he should come there and kneel down at his father’s side.

“Not I,” he muttered. “The old madman! How dare he raise his hand to me like that!”

He thrust his hands in his pockets and remained there with a look mingled of contempt and pity upon his face as he watched the prostrate figure of his father, while, as his mother’s appealing eyes were directed to him again and again, he merely replied to the dumbly-uttered prayer by an impatient shake of the head.

At last the Rector raised his eyes, and as he met his wife’s agonised look, he smiled gently, and then bent over her and kissed her brow.

“It is passed, my love,” he whispered. “God forgive me, I did not think I could have sunk so low.”

Julia passed her arm round her sister, and drew her to the window, to lay her head upon her shoulder and weep silently and long.

“Cyril,” said the Rector, in a broken voice, as he rose and stood before his son, “you have tried me hard, but I have done wrong. My temper gained the better of me, and I have been praying for strength to keep us both from such a terrible scene again. Come down with me to the study, and let us talk of the future like sentient men. God forgive me, my boy; I must have been mad.”

He held out his trembling hands, and Cyril saw that he was evidently labouring under great emotion, as he absolutely humiliated himself before his son, his every look seeming to ask the young man’s forgiveness for that which was past. But Cyril’s anger was, if not hotter, more lasting than his father’s, and rejecting the offer of peace between them, he swung round upon his heels and strode out of the room.

For a few minutes there was absolute silence, as mother and father gazed at the door through which the son had passed. Then, with a piteous sob, Mrs Mallow exclaimed —

“Oh, Eli, Eli, what have we done?”

“Commenced the reaping of the crop of weeds that are springing up in our sons’ neglected soil. Laura, I have tried to be a good father to our boys, but my weakness seems to stare me now in the face. I have been fond and indulgent, and now, Heaven help me, I have been weaker than ever in trying to amend the past by an outbreak of foolish violence.”

“Go to him; ask him to come back,” sobbed the mother.

“Did I not humble myself to him enough?” said the Rector, with a pathetic look at his wife.

“Yes, yes, you did,” she wailed; “but this is all so dreadful. Eli, it will break my heart.”

“And yet I ought to be strong and stern now, sweet wife,” he said tenderly. “Authority has long been thrown to the winds. Had I not better strive hard to gather up the reins and curb his headlong course?”

“It will break my heart,” the unhappy woman sobbed. “It is so dreadful – so horrible to me, love. Eli, husband – my patient, loving husband, bring him back to me or I shall die.”

“I will fetch him back, Laura,” said the Rector, softly, as he bent down once more and kissed the cold, white forehead of his wife.

Then, rising with a sigh, he softly moved towards the door, turning once to smile at the troubled face he left behind.

As he turned, the suffering woman held out her arms, and he walked back quietly to sink upon his knees by her side.

“Pray,” she said, softly. “Pray for help and guidance in this storm.” And once more there was silence in the room.

“He is our boy,” whispered Mrs Mallow, as the Rector rose. “Be patient with him, Eli, and all will yet be well. Indeed, indeed, he is good and true of heart. See how tenderly he waits on me.”

“Just for a minute, now and then,” the Rector thought; “and only when it does not clash with some selfish object of his own.” And then he fell to thinking of his own years upon years of constant watchfulness and care, and smiled sadly as he saw how that at times the little far outshone the great.

But nothing in his countenance betokened aught but the tenderest sympathy and love for her he was leaving behind, as, once more going to the door, the Rector passed through, and descended to his study, leaving Mrs Mallow weeping in her daughters’ arms.

Here he shut himself in for a few minutes, and rapidly paced the floor, holding his hands the while to his rugged brow.

“It is too much – it is too much!” he groaned, panting with the great emotion to which his soul was prey. “If it was not for my girls! If it was not for my girls!”

Then he threw himself into his chair, and sat leaning forward with his fingers seeming to be driven into the soft padding of the arms, which he clutched with fierce vehemence.

But by degrees the gust of passion passed over, leaving him calm and cool as, once more rising, he smoothed his countenance, and went out of the room in search of Cyril.

He was not in the dining-room, nor yet in the little room where he was in the habit of sitting to read and smoke, while the state of the garden was not such as to induce him to wander there.

The Rector went up softly to his son’s room, but without finding him; and at last he went into the dining-room and rang the bell.

“Where is Mr Cyril?” the Rector asked.

“He went out about half-an-hour ago, sir.”

“With Mr Frank?”

“No, sir; Mr Frank went out before that.”

“Did he say what time he would be back?”

“No, sir; but Williams came in just now, sir, with Lord Artingale’s mare for Miss Cynthia.”

“Yes?”

“And said he met Mr Cyril in the lane leading to Kilby Farm.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, sir; and he was walking up and down as if he expected somebody to come.”