Hugo, on the contrary, cultivated assiduously all who would notice him. What mattered it that the sheriff of the county invited Roger, before Hugo’s face, to dine at his house, and pointedly omitted Hugo? Hugo smiling met him next day, and asked cordially after her ladyship and her ladyship’s daughters, and rode by his lordship’s side for the space of a mile or more. What if there were talk about whether he should be permitted to attend the county ball? Hugo worked for an invitation hard, and went upon a very slim one, and bore amiably the cold looks of the people generally who were assembled. He was far more regularly handsome than Roger, infinitely accomplished, and made considerable headway with the other sex. Roger despised his half-brother for this way of getting on in the world, but he was at a loss how to explain his feelings in the matter.
By that time, Dicky Egremont was growing manward. He was as eager about learning as Roger was indifferent, and was likewise a great toast among the ladies, a tireless dancer, an expert fiddler, and had a voice in singing like the sweetest thrush that ever sang. His old grandfather being dead, and having no estate, Dicky, like his cousins, had liberty to follow his natural bent, and it led him wherever there was youth, gayety, and music. Roger, who could well afford it, made him a handsome allowance, of which Dicky made ducks and drakes. Much of it went on horses and dogs, but stray fiddlers, professional beggars, and occasionally the deserving poor got the best part of it. Unlike Roger, Dicky sorrowfully lamented that he was shut out, by the religion of his family, from a liberal education, and sometimes talked wildly of running away to St. Omer’s or Douai, or Clermont, where he could learn what was out of his reach at Oxford and Cambridge. But as these aspirations were usually followed by a screeching run after the hounds, or a roaring night at cards and dice, nobody took little Dicky very seriously. One March morning, however, after a convivial night of it, beginning with the county ball and ending in countless jorums of punch, Roger, on rising and going out, found Dicky with a solemn face, round and rosy though it might be, walking up and down the terrace.
“Halloa!” cried Roger, gayly, “I did not think to find thee sober this morning. The last I remember was the chorus we were having—”
“Roger,” said Dicky, going up to his cousin, and holding him by the lappel as he had done as a little lad. “This life is idle and sinful. I am going to France to be educated—to St. Omer’s; I am going, I tell you.”
Roger’s ringing laugh startled the lazy fish in the fish pond.
“You going to St Omer’s—such a promising little rake as you are?”
Dicky blushed scarlet, and then fell to smiling so that the dimples came out all over his round, rosy face. “I know,” he said presently, becoming preposterously grave, and blinking his eyes solemnly, “I have been a very wild, bad fellow, but I mean to reform—that I do, Cousin Roger.”
“Do, little Dicky,” cried Roger, beginning to laugh again, and throwing his arm around Dicky’s neck. “You’ll have to give over punch—”
“I had too much last night, God forgive me,” piously said Dicky, and then, Hugo suddenly appearing, Dicky stopped short, and the three young men went in to breakfast. Roger did not take Dicky any too seriously. He remembered that Dicky, as a boy, frequently announced his intention to be a priest, chiefly for the pleasure of hiding himself in the “priest’s hole” that mysterious place behind the mantel in the little yellow parlor, out of which Roger, as executioner, would haul him and proceed to decapitate him on the stone horse-block outside. And Dicky was very young, and extravagantly fond of fiddling and dancing; so Roger thought no more about the scheme until one day, about a week after that, when a letter was put in his hand. It was in Dicky’s handwriting, and ran thus:—
Dear Roger,—Do not be angry; I am on my way as fast as a good horse will carry me, to Torbay, where I shall take ship for France. Pray, Cousin Roger, do not be very angry. I have some money, and I have no one in the world to love or think of except you; and I want to have some college learning, and that is why I have gone. Dear Roger, you have been the best and truest friend I ever had, except my grandfather. You need not look for my fiddle. I could not take it with me, so I hid it in a place where some day I shall come after it. God bless you, Roger.