“I don’t suppose he cares for a lively party like ours at this moment,” said the Curate: “I don’t take it as any sign of a want of affection for me.”
The Squire puffed forth a large sigh of trouble and vexation as he came from the window. “If I were to give in to trouble when it appears, what would become of our lively party, I wonder?” he said. “I’m getting an old man, Frank; but there’s not a young man in Christendom has more need to take care of himself, and preserve his health, than I have. I am very well, thank God, though I have had a touch of our Wentworth complaint—just one touch. My father had it ten years earlier in life, and lived to eighty, all the same; but that is an age I shall never see. Such worries as I have would kill any man. I’ve not spoken to anybody about it,” said the Squire, hastily, “but Jack is going a terrible pace just now. I’ve had a good deal of bother about bills and things. He gets worse every year; and what would become of the girls and the little children if the estate were to come into Jack’s hands, is a thought I don’t like to dwell upon, Frank. I suppose he never writes to you?”
“Not for years past,” said the Curate—“not since I was at Oxford. Where is he now?”
“Somewhere about town, I suppose,” said the aggrieved father, “or wherever the greatest scamps collect when they go out of town—that’s where he is. I could show you a little document or two, Frank—but now,” said the Squire, shutting up a drawer which he had unlocked and partly opened, “I won’t; you’ve enough on your mind with Gerald, and I told you I should be glad of your advice about Cuthbert and Guy.”
Upon which the father and son plunged into family affairs. Cuthbert and Guy were the youngest of the Squire’s middle family—a “lot” which included Frank and Charley and the three sisters, one of whom was married. The domestic relations of the Wentworths were complicated in this generation. Jack and Gerald were of the first marriage, a period in his history which Mr. Wentworth himself had partly forgotten; and the troop of children at present in the Hall nursery were quite beyond the powers of any grown-up brother to recognise or identify. It was vaguely understood that “the girls” knew all the small fry by head and name, but even the Squire himself was apt to get puzzled. With such a household, and with an heir impending over his head like Jack, it may be supposed that Mr. Wentworth’s anxiety to get his younger boys disposed of was great. Cuthbert and Guy were arrows in the hand of the giant, but he had his quiver so full that the best thing he could do was to draw his bow and shoot them away into as distant and as fresh a sphere as possible. They were sworn companions and allies, but they were not clever, Mr. Wentworth believed, and he was very glad to consult over New Zealand and Australia, and which was best, with their brother Frank.
“They are good boys,” said their father, “but they have not any brains to speak of—not like Gerald and you;—though, after all, I begin to be doubtful what’s the good of brains,” added the Squire, disconsolately, “if this is all that comes of them. After building so much on Gerald for years, and feeling that one might live to see him a bishop—but, however, there’s still you left; you’re all right, Frank?”
“Oh yes, I am all right,” said the Curate, with a sigh; “but neither Gerald nor I are the stuff that bishops are made of,” he added, laughing. “I hope you don’t dream of any such honour for me.”
But the Squire was too troubled in his mind for laughter. “Jack was always clever, too,” he said, dolefully, “and little good has come of that. I hope he won’t disgrace the family any more than he has done, in my time, Frank. You young fellows have all your life before you; but when a man comes to my age, and expects a little comfort, it’s hard to be dragged into the mire after his children. I did my duty by Jack too—I can say that for myself. He had the same training as Gerald had—the same tutor at the university—everything just the same. How do you account for that, sir, you that are a philosopher?” said Mr. Wentworth again, with a touch of irritation. “Own brothers both by father and mother; brought up in the same house, same school and college and everything; and all the time as different from each other as light and darkness. How do you account for that? Though, to be sure, here’s Gerald taken to bad ways too. It must have been some weakness by their mother’s side. Poor girl! she died too young to show it herself; but it’s come out in her children,” said the vexed Squire. “Though it’s a poor sort of thing to blame them that are gone,” he added, with penitence; and he got up and paced uneasily about the room. Who was there else to blame? Not himself, for he had done his duty by his boys. Mr. Wentworth never was disturbed in mind, without, as his family were well aware, becoming excited in temper too; and the unexpected nature of the new trouble had somehow added a keener touch of exasperation to his perennial dissatisfaction with his heir. “If Jack had been the man he ought to have been, his advice might have done some good—for a clergyman naturally sees things in a different light from a man of the world,” said the troubled father; and Frank perceived that he too
