Mervyn only raised his shoulders up to his ears in contempt, took up his candle, and wished Phœbe good night.
Poor Mervyn Fulmort! Discontent had been his life-long comrade. He detested his father’s occupation as galling to family pride, yet was greedy both of the profits and the management. He hated country business and country life, yet chafed at not having the control of his mother’s estate, and grumbled at all his father’s measures. ‘What should an old distiller know of landed property?’ In fact he saw the same difference between himself and his father as did the ungracious Plantagenet between the son of a Count and the son of a King: and for want of Provençal troubadours with whom to rebel, he supplied their place by the turf and the billiard-table. At present he was expiating some heavy debts by a forced residence with his parents, and unwilling attention to the office, a most distasteful position, which he never attempted to improve, and which permitted him both the tedium of idleness and complaints against all the employment to which he was necessitated.
The ill-managed brothers were just nearly enough of an age for rivalry, and had never loved one another even as children. Robert’s steadiness had been made a reproach to Mervyn, and his grave, rather surly character had never been conciliating. The independence left to the younger brother by their mother’s relative was grudged by the elder as an injury to himself, and it was one of the misfortunes of Beauchamp that the two sons had never been upon happy terms together. Indeed, save that Robert’s right principles and silent habits hindered him from readily giving or taking offence, there might have been positive outbreaks of a very unbrotherly nature.
CHAPTER II
Enough of science and of art,
Close up those barren leaves!
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.—Wordsworth
‘Half-past five, Miss Phœbe.’
‘Thank you;’ and before her eyes were open, Phœbe was on the floor.
Six was the regulation hour. Systematic education had discovered that half-an-hour was the maximum allowable for morning toilette, and at half-past six the young ladies must present themselves in the school-room.
The Bible, Prayer Book, and ‘Daily Meditations’ could have been seldom touched, had not Phœbe, ever since Robert had impressed on her the duty of such constant study, made an arrangement for gaining an extra half-hour. Cold mornings
and youthful sleepiness had received a daily defeat: and, mayhap, it was such a course of victory that made her frank eyes so blithesome, and her step so free and light.