“Yes, by all means from our mother.”
“Think how strange it is when I leave Harrowby this time, I don’t know whether I shall ever be permitted to come here again.”
“At least, while you are here you are the favored son. Yes, Neville, mother loves you better than anything on earth and father is more in sympathy with you than with me because he loves military life. I am not thinking so much of you as I am of them. Great God, what a deathblow they must receive!” Richard turned and went into the next room.
Neville walked to the window and looked out upon the sweet, familiar landscape now all red and gold in the declining afternoon. He peopled it with all the events of his boyhood and youth and through all was a vision of Angela in her little white frock—the spoiled darling of the family. Mrs. Tremaine was a good disciplinarian and her own three sons were brought up under wholesome restraint, but Angela, being fatherless, motherless, and penniless, had been treated with an indulgence which would have ruined an ordinary nature. Neville remembered with a smile that on the few occasions when Mrs. Tremaine had undertaken to administer some mild punishment to the child, Colonel Tremaine had always frowned and called Mrs. Tremaine “Sophia” during the rest of the day. And when Archie and Angela had got into mischief together, justice was sternly meted out to Archie while Angela was always let off with a promise to be good in the future. But under this excess of kindness Angela had developed as a peach ripens on the sunny side of a wall. Neville glanced through the open door and saw Richard, still in his riding clothes, sitting before the fire with his feet stretched out to the blaze. He was reflecting upon the blow which was to fall at Harrowby. Neville went into his brother’s room and, leaning against the mantelpiece, said: “When I go away, take care of Angela for me.”
“I had forgotten all about Angela,” answered Richard frankly. “I was thinking of our father and mother.”
“You must think also of Angela; she will have her share of pain—that is, if she stands by me.”
Neither had noticed how the time had passed or that the early twilight of winter had fallen upon them until Peter, Richard’s boy, suddenly burst into the room and cried out, “Good Gord A’might’, Marse Richard, de company is comin’ an’ Unc’ Hector he done knocked ober an’ broke one o’ ole Marse’ bes’ decanters, an’ Missis say fur de Lord’s sake to come in ’long to her right ’way.”
The company had come indeed, and by the time Richard and Neville had scrambled through their dressing, the whole party was assembled in the drawing-room—a fine large apartment with many mirrors and a grand piano as large as a small house. The guests were the usual types of country gentry; the men, full-blooded, hard-riding, and sometimes hard-drinking, but full of an Old World courtesy and grace; the women, gentle, soft-voiced, with a certain provincial grace. Mrs. Tremaine, in a brown brocade with fine old lace and a lace headdress which was admired and envied by Angela, wore an air of serene triumph as the mothers of sons always wear. As the young men came in and greeted their guests, Neville was overwhelmed with kindly welcome. He came from the great outside world which was strange to most of these people, whose travels rarely extended beyond Baltimore in one direction and the White Sulphur Springs in another. Standing close to Mrs. Tremaine was Mrs. Charteris, her friend and schoolmate, the richest widow in five counties, with one only son, a boy not yet eighteen years of age. Neville greeted her with fine courtesy and Richard with charming impudence, and kissing her on the cheek, inquired when her wedding would come off with Mr. Brand, the rector of Petworth Church. As this affair had been going on for at least twenty years and Mr. Brand had made no perceptible headway, it had become a county joke.
“I declare the impudence of the young men of the present day is perfectly intolerable,” cried Mrs. Charteris, delighted with Richard’s presumption. “There’s Mr. Brand now, just coming in. Go and ask him.”
The rector, who was at that time shaking hands with Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, was the tallest and by all odds the handsomest man in the room, with a voice of melodious thunder, and it may be added that Mr. Brand was commonly considered the most chicken-hearted of his species. He escaped from Colonel Tremaine’s bowing and scraping and elaborate welcome to march over to his inamorata, Mrs. Charteris, who, like the rest of her sex, enjoyed tormenting a lover and promptly hit upon the subject most painful to the rector’s feelings.