[3] Mr, now the Rev. S—— Fafner.
[4] The Master of St Katherine’s is nowhere more vividly portrayed than in a phrase of the late Duchess of Buckingham’s, in her book of reminiscences, ‘The Life Serene’ (Bischoffheim & Co., 31s nett, 3 vols., cr. 8vo, uncut, with 8 photogravures), vol. iii., p. 127, “He was what I call a good man.” There is a charming description of her grace’s visit to the University town. She passed the night at the Magpie.
CHAPTER II
It is never possible to assign to any one cause a great catastrophe. It is even difficult to pick out the strongest of the many threads which go to weave a destiny. It is, perhaps, because I knew him so well and was so shocked by his recent death, that I find this difficulty peculiarly apparent in the case of Mr Burden.
It is necessary, however, to make a beginning, and I would beg my readers to consider one of the earliest sources of that tragedy, the unfortunate entanglement into which his son, Cosmo, fell while yet an undergraduate. This entanglement had, indeed, the effect of earning Cosmo the lifelong friendship of such men as Mr Barnett and Mr Harbury, but it proved indirectly a deathblow to his father.
Hints and suspicions have magnified and distorted a story simple enough in itself, and one which in its bare truth throws no dishonour upon the young man whose whole life it has embittered. He may himself read these lines. He will (I am sure) think it no treason in his father’s friend, if I set down briefly and exactly facts, the misapprehension of which alone would injure him. Indeed, it is necessary that I should do so if a comprehension is to be had of what follows.
There lay about eight miles from the University a village of the name of Mallersham. Like Wynthorne, Gapton, Rupworth, Bilscombe, Gorle and many others, it is the most beautiful in England: its cottages and peasants have about them an indefinable air of security and content, and are the property of the Howley family.
Before the recent national invention of the bicycle, Mallersham was a place of resort for the wealthier undergraduates; it retains the character to this day, nor is the annual dinner of the Brummel Club held elsewhere than at the Malden Arms.
For, of course, Mallersham was originally Malden land, and the sign of the inn is a touching example of the deep roots which our English families strike into the soil. For though the Gayles, who sold the estate to the Howleys last year, had originally purchased it in 1857 from the Marlows, who were heirs by marriage of the Hindes, yet the Hindes themselves had bought it from the Kempes of Hoverton, whose early efforts in finance bring us directly through the Rinaldos to Geoffry Malden, the famous soldier husband of Maria Van Huren, the witty Dutch companion of William of Orange.
When Cosmo was at the University the Malden Arms was held as a tied house by a family of the name of Capes, whose only daughter, Hermione, grew to inspire Cosmo with an immature and temporary, but profound, affection.