THE OLD OR THE NEW?
Thirty years before the date of my story, Braxton Murray and Alan Prescott were college friends. Braxton was a gentleman commoner of Christchurch; Alan, a scholar of Wadham. Braxton had four hundred a-year allowance from his father, and the direct succession to one of the richest estates in Kent. Alan had his scholarship, seventy pounds a-year exhibition from a country foundation-school, and another fifty allowed him by his uncle. The disparity between the positions of the two young men was vast, but they were thoroughly attached to each other; and when Braxton had succeeded his father, and the old vicar of Havering died, Braxton Murray sent for Alan Prescott, then doing duty as a curate and usher in a suburban school, and presented him with the vicarage of Havering. That was a happy time in both their lives; the income of the Vicar was small, certainly, but so was the parish, and the duties were light; and having only himself, his wife, and a son and daughter to provide for, and being constantly in the receipt of presents from his friend and patron, the Rev. Alan Prescott did very well indeed. Situate in the heart of Kent, no prettier spot than Havering can be found; and Brooklands, the squire's place, is the gem of the county. In the bay-window of the old dining-room, overhanging the fertile valley through which the Medway lies like a thread of silver, the two men would sit drinking their claret, discussing old university chums or topics of the day, and pausing occasionally to look at the gambols of the Vicar's son, Jim, and the Squire's only daughter, Emily, who were the merriest of little lovers. But as years went by, and the Vicar's family steadily increased,--first by twin girls, then by a bouncing boy, and finally by a little crippled girl,--and as, each year, expenses grew heavier, Alan Prescott was somewhat put to it to obtain the necessary connexion of those two ends, the means of bringing which together puzzles so many of us all our lives; and when the governors of the foundation-school where he had been usher, remembering his abilities, wrote to offer him the vacant headmastership, he was too poor to refuse it. Duff borough, a big, staring, gaunt, manufacturing town, perched on one of the bleakest of the northern hills, was a bad exchange for beaming little Havering, with its smiling orchards and glorious hop-gardens; and the society of the purse-proud, cold, stuck-up calico-men was heartbreaking after the ease and warmth of Braxton Murray's companionship. But Alan Prescott felt the spurs of need, and buckled to his work like a man. An active correspondence was kept up between him and the Squire of Havering; and occasionally,--once in the course of four or five years, perhaps,--he had spent a week at Brooklands; but it was too expensive to remove his family; and consequently, until that evening in Saxe-Coburg Square James Prescott had not seen Emily Murray since they were children together, playing out in the old dining-room at Brooklands.
Emily Murray had been a pretty child; had become a beautiful girl. There was no doubt about her; one look into those honest brown eyes would have convinced you that she was thorough. A plump rosy-rounded bud of woman; a thoroughly English girl, void of affectation, conceit, and trickery; clean, clear, honest, wholesome, and loving. As she talked to James Prescott of the old days at Havering, she spoke out freely, referring to bygone gambols and fun with frank laughter and many a humorous reminiscence; and when she suggested his joining their riding-party the next day, she looked him straight in the face without the smallest shadow of entanglement or guile. To her own brother her manner had not been different, Prescott thought, as, after they had parted, he recalled every word, every glance; and he wished for a moment that there had been something different in it, a trifle more tenderness, a hand-pressure, a sly upward glance, or--and then he flung such nonsense behind him, and was delighted to remember the warmth of her recognition, the cheeriness of her chat. She was nothing to him, of course; his doom was fixed; he had loved, and--and yet how pretty she was! how perfectly gloved! how charmingly dressed! what a pleasure it was to feel that you were talking to a lady! to know that no slanginess would offend the eye, no questionable argot grate upon the ear; to feel that--and then Mr. Prescott remembered how the idol of his soul had called him "Jim," ay, and "old buffer;" how she had smoked cigars, and used maledictions towards refractory animals; how there had been all kinds of odd discussions about all kinds of odd people before her; and how he had seen men take wine without stint, and smoke cigars in her face, and wear their bats before her, without the smallest self-restraint. And, smoking a final pipe before turning into bed, Mr. Prescott pondered on these things long and earnestly.
Mr. Prescott found a warm welcome awaiting him. Mrs. Wilmslow had been impressed with his manners and appearance, and old Mr. Murray had a yearning for the friend of his youth, and longed to receive that friend's son with open arms. A hale pleasant gentleman, Mr. Murray, with that wonderful cleanliness which is never seen out of England, with polished bald head fringed with iron-gray hair, ruddy complexion, keen little blue eyes, and brilliant teeth. He wore a slipper on his right foot, but hobbled forward, nevertheless, and gave the young man a hearty shake of the hand.
"Glad to see you, Jim! Little Jim you were; but, by Jove! I should not like to carry you on my back now, as I have done many a time. Very glad to see you! Old times come again, by George! Trace every feature of your face, and can almost see Magdalen tower behind your back--you're so like your father. How's the Vicar, eh? I'll drag him out of that infernal spinning-jenny place yet, and give him a breather across the home-copse at Havering before next season's over."
Prescott said that his father was well and jolly, but scarcely up to shooting now, he had had so little practice lately.
"So much the more reason we should give it him, then! He used to be a crack shot; one of the few men I've seen shoot a brace of woodcock right and left! And walk! by George, he'd walk me into--has he had any gout?"
"Not yet, sir;--a threatening last year."
"Bravo!" roared the old gentleman; "I've got some 20-port that shall bring that threatening to real effect, if he'll only drink enough of it. And to think that Pussy should have found you out!"
"Pussy?" said Mr. Prescott.