As the years go on she becomes the mother of four boys and two girls. She engages the best nurses for them, and, later on, the best governesses and tutors. The children are taught their catechism on Sundays and are drilled as those of their class into having good outward manners and behaviour. They are given orders without explanations, which they are expected to obey unquestioningly, and they are duly punished when they are disobedient. They see their parents at stated hours each day, and are seemingly a well-regulated and satisfactory young brood.

The good woman and great lady’s time is naturally much occupied with social duties, and duties to her husband’s tenants, and to various charities and good works in which she is interested. She fulfils all these admirably, and is generally held in affection and respect. All the children have been treated exactly the same by her, although she knows that her husband has a dishonourable, gambling, scapegrace brother who has had to be sent to Australia, and that her husband himself has had tastes, the reverse of orthodox where his emotions were concerned, though happily he has not jeopardised the family fortunes as his brother would have done had he been head. All the children have been so well brought up and instructed in the tenets of the Church that she feels quite placid and sure that she has done all that could be expected of her, and is horribly surprised and distressed when disasters presently occur. She looks upon them as the will of God and fate, but feels in no way to blame personally.

A HATRED OF PREACHING

It had never struck her intelligence that boys with such heredity in them should have been specially influenced and directed from earliest youth towards ideas of the finest honour and proudest responsibility in keeping unblemished their ancient name; that all the stupidities and follies of gambling should have been pointed out to them; that the certain temptations which are bound to beset the path of those in their position should have been fully explained to them—all this done in a simple, common-sense fashion which would convince their understanding. She had never thought that it would be wise to make them clearly comprehend why they should try to resist bad habits and youthful lusts of the flesh—not so much from the point of view that such things are sins, as because science and experience have shown that the indulgence in them spoils health and brain and pleasure in manhood. Boys are creatures full of common sense, and their education in public schools broadens and helps their understanding of logical sequences, if only things are explained to them without mystery and too much spiritual emphasis being put upon them. They so hate being preached at! No young, growing person in normal animal health and spirits can be guided and coerced to resist the desires of the body solely by religious and moral teaching; he must have some definite reward and gain upon this earth held out to him as well; there must be some tangible reason for abstinence to convince his imagination and strengthen his will. And the gain he is offered if he resists certain temptations is that he will grow strong and powerful, and the better able, when his judgment is ripe enough to discriminate properly, to enjoy real pleasures later on. When the adolescent spiritual self begins to rule him, then the moral point can be more forcibly pressed home; but it is quite futile while he is at the growing animal stage.

Our good and highly placed mother of whom we are speaking has never thought of any of these laws of cause and effect, as applied to her own nearest and dearest, although she is accustomed to think out schemes for the betterment and development of her Girls’ Friendly societies, or for furthering her husband’s political interests in the country.

INHERITED CHARACTER

She sees good little well-behaved daughters coming down in “the children’s hour” and receives favourable reports from the governesses, and has no idea, or even any speculation about what strange and new thoughts and emotions may be commencing to germinate in their brains. Mildred has perhaps inherited her father’s volage nature where the other sex are concerned, and early shows tendencies which ought to be sympathetically checked and directed. Catherine has got a strong touch of Uncle Billy’s unscrupulousness, and is often deceitful and scheming, with a wonderful aptitude for the nursery dominoes and other games of chance. But both, taught by Fräulein or Mademoiselle—and that good old Nurse Timson!—only show their mother their sweetest side when in her company, and are meek, well-behaved little mice, influenced to be thus not from any moral conviction—because if that were so they would be good at all times as well—but swayed by the certain knowledge of personal physical gain if they make a good impression upon mother, and certain punishment and unpleasantness from the governesses if they do not. All goes along smoothly until the rising sap of nature begins to dominate their lives; then some outward and visible sign of their inherited tendencies begins to show, the force causing its expression being stronger for the time than any other thing.

One of the boys gambles, and goes to the Jews for money. The eldest son and heir, who has never had the wiles of women revealed and explained to him, or the temptations which are bound to be thrust upon him because of his great position in the world pointed out to him, succumbs to the fascinations and falls into the snares of a cunning chorus girl. Our good mother and great lady has steadily avoided even admitting that there can be sex questions in life, and has rigorously banished all possible discussion of them as not being a subject which should be talked of in any nice family. She has never given any especial teaching to arouse pride in his old name in her eldest son, or impressed the great responsibility there is in the worthy guardianship of the fine position God has endowed him with. He has just been allowed to drift with the rest, and, unwarned and unarmed, has fallen in the first fight with his physical emotions.

INSTINCTS UNCHECKED

A third son is apparently the darling of the gods; he is full of charm. But, fearing that the gambling propensities of his second brother should come out in him also, his parents keep him with special strictness and very short of money. The same absence of all explanations of the meaning of things has been his portion as well as that of his brothers and sisters. He has never been enlightened as to the possible workings of heredity, and shown how that as the vice of gambling is in the blood it will require special will-power to overcome it. None of these things has been pointed out to him, and so, being restive at restraint and worried for money, he soon slips into easy ways, and often allows women to help him in his difficulties. Uncle Billy’s instincts and his own father’s have combined in him. Both could have been checked and diverted into sane channels with loving foresight and knowledge and sympathy.