“That’s all your confounded modesty. A man of six feet four can afford to be modest. All this discontent of mine arises from intense self-appreciation. The fact is, I have something of the ridiculous sentimental schoolgirl notion of being ‘loved for myself alone,’ isn’t that the expression? And it chafes me to think, now that my people are forever worrying me to get married, that there is nothing about me but my money and my position to make a girl care for me. Absurd, isn’t it?—and rather bourgeois to cherish these conventional notions about marriage. But I have no doubt I shall live them down, and within the next year or so shall lead to the altar, at St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, or St. Margaret’s, Westminster, quite the conventional young English lady, fair-haired, gray-eyed, pink-skinned, with a waist squeezed into the smallest possible breathing compass, and a train of brocade carried by two dressed-up little boys, and from six to ten bridesmaids, all equally well-born and well-looking, who would all have been equally ready to marry my name and position if I had asked them, unless any other man with more to offer had made a higher bid for their valuable affections.”
He spoke in hard, level tones, but Hilary, who had been Lord Carthew’s chum at Oxford, and both knew and understood him, realized by the slight nervous twitching of the speaker’s eyes and eyebrows how much of truth and of genuine feeling lay under this pretence of cynical indifference.
Very few people thoroughly understood Claud Viscount Carthew. Great things had been expected of him during his University career, where he had distinguished himself by his brilliant acquirements as much as by his notable eccentricities. In politics he was theoretically a radical of radicals, but Hilary, one of the very few men of his time with whom he was really intimate, understood quite well the intensity of the pride which was masked under an affectation of socialistic doctrines. The Earl of Northborough, a powerful and prominent Conservative peer, trusted to time to cure his only son of his levelling tendencies, and was strongly desirous of seeing him married to some lady in his own rank of life, who might be trusted to tone down Lord Carthew’s idiosyncracies.
Whether owing or not to the sturdy and independent spirit brought into the family on the side of his mother, a Pennsylvania heiress of old Puritan stock, certain it was that Claud Bromley Viscount Carthew was utterly unlike any other heir to an earldom in England. He was singularly free from vices, and unfashionable enough to be strictly honorable in paying his debts. He held the unusual opinion that it was as necessary and important to pay a tailor for a coat as a friend for a gambling debt. He also worked as hard for his exams as though he intended to be a parson or a schoolmaster, or as though a couple of letters after his name could be of any material value to a man who would some day be worth fifty thousand a year. His theories on marriage were also archaic in the extreme, in the opinion of his equals. He was anxious not only to marry a woman he loved, but a woman who loved him, and until she appeared on the scene he had not the slightest desire to amuse himself in the society of less estimable sirens. Music-halls bored him, and he had too much respect for his own intelligence to cloud it by drink. In field sports and out-door exercises he did not shine, but he liked them, and he heartily admired physical courage, strength, and endurance. Hilary Pritchard, the son of a Yorkshire “gentleman farmer” of very moderate means, had first attracted Lord Carthew’s attention by the ease with which he excelled in running, jumping, leaping, and “putting the stone.” Young Pritchard was as bad at study as he was admirable in athletics, and Lord Carthew was filled with enthusiasm by the evidences in him of just those qualities which he himself lacked. The farmer’s son’s disposition was also a happy foil to that of the Earl of Northborough’s heir. Hilary’s was in no sense an introspective, analytical, or self-torturing mind. He enjoyed life thoroughly in a simple and manly fashion, took people in general as he found them, was cautious in his friendships, shrewd in his judgments, strong and rooted in his rare loves and hates, and for the rest, a most cheery and optimistic companion, of untiring physical strength and unfailing good humor.
For five years the two young men had been great friends; but a break was soon to come between them. It had been arranged in the Pritchard family that in the autumn of the year Hilary was to proceed to Canada, there to start farming on his own account on some land left to him by a relative. Almost at the same time the question of Lord Carthew’s marriage had been prominently discussed in the Earl of Northborough’s family circle, and Claud was well aware that his parents hoped to see it take place within the year, if only a suitable bride could be found.
In view of these coming changes, the two college chums had resolved in this springtime of the year to carry out an oft-proposed plan for a journey in Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire, of about three weeks’ duration, on horseback, and unattended, carrying what luggage they required in their knapsacks on their saddles.
Hilary Pritchard on “Black Bess,” and Lord Carthew on a chestnut cob, had therefore started some ten days previously from a country seat in the Isle of Wight, belonging to the latter’s father. They had had lovely weather, and a very enjoyable tour, but so far no adventures worth mentioning, and the only point which had particularly struck Lord Carthew was what he considered as the unnecessary deference and snobbish attentions paid to him by hotel servants and chance strangers, solely because he was a son to Lord Northborough.
After riding on without speaking a short time, Claud suddenly turned in his saddle, and addressed his friend with twinkling eyes, and a look of great satisfaction.
“Look here, Hilary!” he exclaimed, “you won’t believe me on this subject of the disgusting sycophancy shown toward a title? You won’t admit that everybody treats me much better than they do you? Very well. I have a proposal to make. We have planned out about a fortnight longer of wandering. For the remainder of the time we will change rôles. You shall be Lord Carthew, and I will be Hilary Pritchard.”
“Nonsense!”