[CHAPTER IV.]
A STRIFE FOR THE MASTERY.
"Fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow;
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes."
SHAKESPEARE.
SYBELLA's exercise of authority over Cyril had reached the limit of her tether. The pull had been too strong, inducing a new resistance which, once started, was not likely to die down.
From childhood, the home training of the young baronet had been, in effect, "Do as you like; follow your own inclinations—" with the sole exceptions implied by the care of his health, and the choice of his friends. He was to nurse and coddle his body; he was to like those people whom Sybella liked; which two exceptions might involve the occasional crossing of his inclinations; but in all other respects he was to gratify himself.
Such a mode of training would naturally, would almost of necessity, recoil in time upon the trainer. Arbitrary exceptions to a general rule of self-pleasing are not likely to stand.
Boyish as Cyril looked, he was seventeen, a lad of innate character, of rapidly-developing force and intellect. Some degree of nervous weakness existed still, hampering the capabilities of mind and body, but the weakness was being fast mastered, as the bracing influences of a good school gradually counteracted the enervating influences of home.
Hitherto his natural gentleness of disposition, with a good-natured readiness to yield on small points—a readiness more often masculine than feminine—had prevented struggles; but the state of things could not last thus indefinitely. Sooner or later, as Mrs. Kennedy would have said, the tadpole is sure to part with its tail.
The change was not likely to begin on Miss Devereux's side. A mother is usually far quicker than a father to realise that her children, especially her boys, are growing up; and she more seldom makes the blunder of keeping on childish restrictions too long. But Miss Devereux was not a mother, was not even a woman of natural motherliness. She was only a fidgety and nervous single lady, very ignorant of life, still more ignorant of human nature; and she was quite unable to realise that her spoilt darling was big enough to stand alone. She was just as eager to cosset, to pet, and to control, with the lad of seventeen as she had been with the child of ten. Since the change would not begin on her side, it had to begin on Cyril's side; and this mode too often means an accompanying struggle.
No doubt the change had been long brewing. Things do not come about in this world without previous preparation. When a lightning spark flashes from cloud to cloud, it does so with startling suddenness yet the electrical condition of the clouds has implied a gradual working-up to the point of discharge. When nations burst into open war, a period of grumbling and growling has been gone through previously. What the newspapers describe as "strained relations" between two kingdoms had been for some time the condition of affairs between aunt and nephew; only nobody knew it except themselves, and perhaps not even themselves.