Whatever might be the result of this visit, or if there should be no result of it, it stood as a source of completed gratification in itself. It seemed to have put the seal of success upon his career, and to have set him where he rightly belonged. It was not the sort of recognition that could have been gained by the possession of money, though in his case success in money-making had indirectly led up to it. His reflections were crossed by a momentary shadow at the remembrance of the mistake those two young men—or at least one of them—had made about him yesterday. Surely Lord Chippenham's son might have known that a merely new rich man would not have been made welcome at Wellsbury as he had been. There had been no one remotely resembling that breed among the guests of this party. Still, he had put that right, and it didn't really matter. He was perhaps aware in the background of his mind that exuberance was a note to be watchful of; his upbringing and the standards it had inculcated had made him careful to prune himself. He would not have been so careful if criticism from time to time had not shown him the necessity. Edmund, to whom as a young man he had looked up as the pattern of quiet, self-possessed good breeding, had criticized him on those grounds. He had never quite lost the feeling that Edmund was a finer type of gentleman than himself—until lately, when his own brilliant gifts had brought him into such prominence as Edmund would never attain to. Now he was a little impatient of that old feeling of slight inferiority to his brother, and whatever had survived of it seemed to have been wiped out by this visit to Wellsbury. Edmund would never have been invited to such a house unless it had happened to lie in his local zone of dignity as a landowner.
Sir William considered, in the glow of his satisfaction, as he was carried along between the hedgerows and the full-blossomed trees, the stock from which he had sprung and the altitudes to which he had arisen, which wanted some adjustment if he were to be proud of both, as his inclination was.
A family that went back two or three hundred years, and for most of the time as landowners in the same county, was something that only a small minority could claim. Yet the Eldridges had never really done anything that put them above the ruck of country squires. They had intermarried here and there with families of higher standing; they had kept their heads up in the world, and were in all the County Histories—as names, but little more. Their dignity had hardly extended beyond the head of the family for the time being. The younger sons were scarcely better off in that respect than the sons of other men, who could give them the right sort of education and start in life. He himself had begun life with no greater advantages than his contemporaries at school and university of birth not so good as his, and if he had not brought his own exceptional gifts into play he would have had just the position that his success at the Bar might have brought him, and no higher. Of course the altered circumstances brought about by the death of his brother's heir would have made a great difference to him, at least in prospect; but that loomed small now. But for the sentimental attachment which he felt towards the home of his fathers, he would not have cared much now to be Squire of Hayslope. It would not now be his chief claim to consideration, and if he had wished he could have bought himself a finer house than Hayslope and a larger property. Still, Hayslope did mean a good deal to him, and he was inclined to congratulate himself upon being content with the enlarged Hayslope Grange as his country house, and the consequent playing second fiddle to his brother, when he could so easily have been first somewhere else.
He spoke some of the thoughts which were running through his mind when he broke the silence to say to his wife: "I'm afraid poor old Edmund is having a thin time at Hayslope. Hard luck that the owner of a property like that should be pinched, as most of them are in these days, and we who used to think ourselves so much less fortunate should have got quite past them!"
She thought it nice of him to be thinking about his brother's difficulties at this time. She knew that he was exalted by the visit to Wellsbury, and the expectation of something to come out of it. He might have been thought to be full of his own affairs.
"I've had them a good deal on my mind," she said—"Edmund and Cynthia too, and the girls. But we can do something for them, can't we? I think I've been able to do something for Cynthia already, and without making her seem under an obligation."
"Oh, you can do things for Cynthia. But Edmund—he stands so on his dignity, you see. I think he's inclined to stand too much on his dignity, at least with me. After all, a country squire—I've come to be a good deal more than that, and I'm the one person whom he might accept help from."
"Does he really need help?"
"Oh, he can get along all right, of course. But it's a different life for him now. I suppose I couldn't expect him to accept money from me so that they could carry on in the way they did before the war. I'd give it him readily enough if he would, and be glad to. But there are ways in which I could help him—one in particular. But one must take him as he is. We must do what we can for Cynthia and the girls, and I shall always be on the lookout to do something for him if I can. I've got on and he's stood still—or gone back, rather. I don't want him to go back any further."