Perhaps this was more hopeful than his former good-humoured indifference, but it was with exceeding pain that Cheriton, before Easter came, began to perceive that though Alvar would let him please himself in any special instance, his hopes of exerting any general influence were vain, and that Alvar would resent the attempt even from him.
“Did you expect to make the leopard change his spots by the force of your will, Cherry?” said Mr Ellesmere to him, when some instance had brought this prominently forward. “You cannot do it, my boy, and excuse me for saying that I think you should not try.”
“I only wanted to help the leopard to accommodate his coat to our climate,” said Cherry, with rather a difficult smile.
“He must do that himself when stress of weather shows him the need. If he had married, such an influence as your mother’s might have come into his life; but, my dear boy, even that could not have sufficed, unless it had appealed to something higher.”
“I know,” said Cherry slowly. “I know what you mean about it. No man ought to stand dictation as to his duty, and we all lay down the law to each other. But I cannot break myself of feeling that matters here are my own concern.”
“I think that is a habit of mind common to a great many people hereabouts,” said Mr Ellesmere kindly; “and, after all, what I said was only meant as a warning.”
“Much needed! But I believe Alvar will find things out in time; and we none of its make half enough allowance for him.”
Jack came home for a few days at Easter, and there was a final discussion and arrangement of plans, which resulted after all in a general flitting. Alvar declared that Oakby was too dull without his brother, and that he should himself go to London for some time. No one could exactly find fault with this scheme, and if he had exerted himself hitherto to get his new duties in train, they would have welcomed it, as his resolute avoidance of the Seytons produced social difficulties, and Jack thought Cheriton’s London life so much of an experiment as to be glad that he should not have to carry it out entirely alone. But they both knew that without any difference that would strike outsiders, there was just the essential change from good to bad management, from care to neglect, in every matter with which the master of Oakby was concerned.
Nettie was to go to a London boarding-school for a year. This was the express desire of Mrs Lester, who thought this amount of “finishing” essential. Lady Cheriton was choosing the school, and the brothers of course consented, though Cheriton felt that it was like caging a wild bird, and Alvar remarked with much truth,—
“My sister is a woman; it is foolish to send her to school.”