“Come when you like. Good-bye.”
The carriage turned the corner. The crowd burst into a cheer: one, two, three, and then another one: and then three more cheers louder than the first three, and the horses were on the verge of bolting for the rest of the way to Cheriton.
Theodore Dalbrook rode slowly away from the village festivities, rode away from the clang of the joy-bells, and the sound of rustic triple bob majors. It would be night before he reached Dorchester; but there was a moon, and he knew every yard of high road, every grassy ride across the wide barren heath between Cheriton and the old Roman city. He knew the road and he knew his horse, which was as good of its kind as there was to be found in the county of Dorset. He was not a rich man, and he had to work hard for his living, but he was the son of a well-to-do father, and he never stinted the price of the horse that carried him, and which was something more to Theodore Dalbrook than most men’s horses are to them. It was his own familiar friend, companion, and solace. A man might have understood as much only to see him lean over the cob’s neck, and pat him, as he did to-night, riding slowly up the hill that leads from Cheriton to the wild ridge of heath above Branksea Island.
Theodore Dalbrook, junior partner in the firm of Dalbrook & Son, Cornhill, Dorchester, was a more distant relative of Juanita’s than the sandy first-cousin in the auctioneer’s office whom Lord Cheriton had once hated as the only alternative to a charitable endowment. The sandy youth was the only son of Lord Cheriton’s elder brother, long since dead. Theodore was the grandson of a certain Matthew Dalbrook, a second cousin of Lord Cheriton’s, and once upon a time the wealthiest and most important member of the Dalbrook family. The humble-minded couple in the crockery shop had looked up to Matthew Dalbrook, solicitor, with a handsome old house in Cornhill, a smart gig, a stud of three fine horses, and half the county people for his clients. To the plain folks behind the counter, who dined at one and supped on cold meat and pickles and Dutch cheese at nine of the clock, Mr. Dalbrook, the lawyer, was a great man. They were moved by his condescension when he dropped in to the five-o’clock tea, and talked over old family reminiscences, the farmhouse on the Weymouth Road, which was the cradle of their race, and where they had all known good days while the old people were alive, and while the homestead was a family rendezvous. That he should deign to take tea and water-cresses in the little parlour behind the shop, he who had a drawing-room almost as big as a church, and a man-servant in plain clothes to wait upon him at his six-o’clock dinner, was a touching act of humility in their eyes. When their younger boy brought home prizes and certificates of all kinds from the grammar school, it was from Matthew they sought advice, modestly, and with the apprehension of being deemed over-ambitious.
“I’m afraid he’s too much of a scholar for the business,” said the mother, shyly, looking fondly at her tall, overgrown son, pallid with rapid growth and overmuch Greek and Latin.
“Of course he is; that boy is too good to sell pots and pans. You must send him to the University, Jim.”
Jim, the father, looked despondently at James, the son. The University meant something awful in the crockery merchant’s mind: a vast expenditure of money; dreadful hazards to religion and morals; friendships with dukes and marquises, whose influence would alienate the boy from his parents, and render him scornful of the snug back-parlour, with his grandfather’s portrait over the mantelpiece, painted in oils by a gifted townsman, who had once had a picture very nearly hung in the Royal Academy.
“I couldn’t afford to send him to college,” he said.
“Oh, but you must afford it. I must help you, if you and Sarah haven’t got enough in an old stocking anywhere—as I dare say you have. My boys are at the University, and they didn’t do half as well at the grammar school as your boy has done. He must go to Cambridge, he must be entered at Trinity Hall, and if he works hard and keeps steady he needn’t cost you a fortune. You would work, eh, James?”
“Wouldn’t I just, that’s all,” James replied with emphasis.