“Is that the case, Nelly?” asked Mrs. Eastwood.
Nelly felt to her dismay that a hot and angry blush—a blush not altogether of embarrassment, of something that felt like passion—covered her face. “I should be sorry to quote Ernest on any such subject,” she said, faltering yet eager. “He told me that there were stories current among men about Sir Alexis, that he was not a man to be brought into your house, into my company——”
(“What impertinence! one of my oldest friends!”) said Mrs. Eastwood, in a parenthesis.
“And then,” continued Nelly, “he turned round upon me, and laughed at my knowing such things, when I told you, mamma. He made me out to be a gossip, to be fond of disagreeable reports; he made me feel as if I had made it up; that is how men show their friendship for each other. Probably both Frederick and he would do the same about Mr. Vane.”
“Molyneux would be flattered by your opinion of him,” said Frederick, laughing; and had it not been for the lucky arrival of Dick and Jenny, I do not know how far the quarrel might have gone. Mrs. Eastwood, however, would not have “the boys” made parties to any discussion of this kind, and Frederick departed after a time to his office, where he was so very hard worked, poor fellow, and where he appeared between twelve and one o’clock, having settled his domestic affairs first, as became a Briton of the most “domesticated” race in the world.
During the interval which has passed without record in these pages, Dick, the much suffering and much labouring, had encountered a great event, and had got through it, I do not say triumphantly, but at least successfully. The examination—the great exam., which had exercised his mind and temper for years—had come and passed; and Dick had pulled through. There he was, still walking about with books in his pocket, still in the trammels of “a coach,” and still subject to other terrible and ghastly episodes of exam., which had (I think) to be repeated for two or three years before the full-blown competition wallah was sent to India. I do not remember to have encountered in society many young men of this tremendously educated class, and therefore I cannot tell if Dick may be considered as a fair specimen; but this I can say, that considering the amount of information which must have been crammed into his head, it was astonishing how lightly he wore it. He was profoundly careful not to shock and humiliate the uninstructed mass of his fellow-creatures by letting it appear when there was no occasion for such vanities; and, in short, Dick examined and passed, was as much like Dick unexamined and dubious as could be supposed. Jenny had undergone a greater change. He had left Eton and had matriculated at Balliol, and felt himself a greater man than it is given to mortal in any other stage of existence to feel himself. He had done even more than this; he had gained a scholarship, and was thus actually paying part of his own expenses, a fact which his mother could not sufficiently admire and wonder at, and which still had all the freshness of a family joke in the house. It was astonishing how the brows of the two women cleared, how the atmosphere lightened when these two boys (oh, boys, I beg your pardon—men) came in. No complication had yet arisen in their young lives. Jenny had hung his mother’s photograph over the mantelpiece in his college sitting-room, and boasted that she had as much sense as all the dons put together, though she knew no Greek. I wonder whether in the progress of the human intellect this kind of boy will long survive; but the very sight of Jenny’s face (though he was not handsome), and Dick’s big figure, with a book in its coat pocket, was good for sore hearts as well as eyes.
“We were talking about Mr. Vane,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a little furtive artfulness such as women use. She would not enter into any discussion of him with her boys, nor direct their attention to the stories “current among men.” She reverenced their youth more perhaps than, had she been anything but an ignorant woman, she would have thought it necessary to reverence it. Probably they both knew a great deal more than she did in that kind—or so at least all men inform women for their comfort; but still I think it was good for Dick and Jenny that their mother ignored all these “stories current,” &c. “We were talking,” she said, “about Mr. Vane. Frederick does not seem quite to like him——”
“I should think not. He isn’t the sort of fellow for Frederick to like,” said Dick. “He is not your superior sort of prig. He is jolly to everybody. I like him—gives himself no airs, and is never above saying he’s wrong when he’s wrong. Why just the other day—I told you, Jen—about the build of that yacht——”
“I like him,” said Jenny, “but I’m not a fair judge. He came down to Eton last fourth of June, and didn’t he just give me a tip! so I can’t speak; I’m bribed; but if I knew anything he wanted——”
“So that is your opinion,” said the mother, well pleased. “They say though,” she added mournfully, “that those men in the clubs——”