“That certainly is a point of view which should not be lost sight of,” responded her ladyship. “But what is it in particular that you complain of in him?”
“Oh, I am not complaining—nothing of the kind. I should not feel myself justified in doing so. It is simply that I am disappointed.” Then placing a hand lightly on her arm, he added: “My great fear is that I shall never succeed in making a gentleman of him.”
“That would indeed be a misfortune. He would be the first Clare against whom such an allegation could be brought.”
“Knowing, as I did,” resumed Sir Gilbert, “(for, as far as I am aware, his mother hid nothing from me), the defects under which he laboured as regards his education and upbringing, I determined to have them remedied as far as it might be possible to do at this late time of day. Accordingly I arranged with the vicar of St. Michael’s, an old Cambridge man, to do what he could in the way of introducing Lewis to some, at least, of the great writers of antiquity. Of course I knew it was too late to do much unless the boy took kindly to the vicar’s teaching. I also engaged a man to give him riding lessons. Well, I waited till several weeks had gone by without making any inquiry as to the progress he was making. I did not want it to seem as if I were in anyway hurrying the boy. The other day, however, I made it my business to call both on the vicar and on Marsh, the livery-stable keeper. From both I heard the same story, reluctantly told, of incompetence and hopeless failure. ‘He’ll never look anything but a figure of fun on horseback, sir; he’s no more nerve than a mouse,’—was Marsh’s uncompromising verdict; and from the vicar I had no better a report. ‘I am grieved to say that it is simply a waste of time and money to endeavour to impart even a smattering of classical knowledge to Mr. Clare,’ was what he had to say to me.”
“That must be excessively disheartening for you,” remarked her ladyship in her most sympathetic tones.
“Disheartening indeed, Louisa; still, all that might be overlooked and forgiven him in consideration of his bringing up, but unfortunately he seems to have contracted a number of low tastes, and to be addicted to a class of company which cannot but tend to degrade him still further. Some men’s weaknesses and shortcomings are accidents of their lives and are more or less curable, others seem as if they had been bred in the system and cannot be eradicated. I greatly fear that my grandson’s failings belong to the latter category.”
“It grieves me greatly that you should have cause to say this of one who ought to be the comfort and stay of your declining years.”
“The necessity is indeed a grievous one; but it is a relief to have someone to unburden my mind to. It was not till the evening of the day before yesterday that sundry of Lewis’s shortcomings were brought under my notice, of which I had hitherto been purposely kept in ignorance. It appears that Trant, my butler, has a nephew who is billiard marker at the King’s Head hotel in Mapleford. The two had not seen each other for some months till they met the other day. Then the young man revealed to his uncle certain facts which the latter deemed it his duty at once to lay before me. It seems that on two or three afternoons in each week, presumably when his lessons are over at the vicarage, where he generally stays for luncheon, Lewis finds his way to the billiard room in question, which at that hour of the day is frequented by a number of idle and fast young men, where he poses as the grandson of Sir Gilbert Clare, and the great man of the company, treating all who care to drink at his expense, in other words, everybody who happens to be there. Nor is that all. One revelation led to another, and a little questioning on my part elicited the fact that, for some weeks past, Lewis has been in the habit, after he was supposed to have retired for the night, of stealing out of the house by one of the back entrances and making his way to the saddle-room, where he and Snell, a groom whom I took into my service about a year ago (for I keep a couple of horses still, although I make very little use of them), are in the habit of hobnobbing together over short pipes and whisky till long after midnight. Needless to say, Snell was packed off at a moment’s notice, although I hold that he was by far the less blameworthy of the two.”
“This is dreadful. Have you spoken to your grandson?”
“Not yet—not yet,” answered Sir Gilbert a little wearily, “I have, perhaps weakly, delayed doing so. It is not merely a question of what I ought to say to him; that is a very simple matter—but of what I ought to do, in short, of what steps it behoves me to take in order to break him of his wretched propensities at once and for ever. That he will make me all sorts of fine promises I do not doubt, but can I trust his promises? I am afraid not. At the time he may fully intend to keep them, but the moment temptation comes in his way they will be powerless to restrain him. Of late I have made it my business to study him. He puzzled me at first, but after Trant’s revelation—well, well!” He was silent and sat rubbing one hand slowly and softly within the other, a look of perplexity and distress clouding his grand old features. Then after a pause he added with an unwonted quaver in his voice: “He is my grandson and I cannot cast him adrift. To do so now, to relegate him to the position from which I raised him, would merely be to put a premium on his ruin.”