“Square be d⸺!” There was a great deal in the lesson there enunciated which demanded consideration. Hitherto the Major had fought his battles with a certain adherence to squareness. If his angles had not all been perfect angles, still there had always been an attempt at geometrical accuracy. He might now and again have told a lie about a horse—but who that deals in horses has not done that? He had been alive to the value of underhand information from racing-stables, but who won’t use a tip if he can get it? He had lied about the expense of his hounds, in order to enhance the subscription of his members. Those were things which everybody did in his line. But Green had meant something beyond this.
As far as he could see out in the world at large, nobody was square. You had to keep your mouth shut, or your teeth would be stolen out of it. He didn’t look into a paper without seeing that on all sides of him men had abandoned the idea of squareness. Chairmen, directors, members of Parliament, ambassadors—all the world, as he told himself—were trying to get on by their wits. He didn’t see why he should be more square than anybody else. Why hadn’t Silverbridge taken him down to Scotland for the grouse?
XXXVII
Grex
Far away from all known places, in the northern limit of the Craven district, on the borders of Westmorland but in Yorkshire, there stands a large, rambling, most picturesque old house called Grex. The people around call it the Castle, but it is not a castle. It is an old brick building supposed to have been erected in the days of James the First, having oriel windows, twisted chimneys, long galleries, gable ends, a quadrangle of which the house surrounds three sides, terraces, sundials, and fishponds. But it is so sadly out of repair as to be altogether unfit for the residence of a gentleman and his family. It stands not in a park, for the land about it is divided into paddocks by low stone walls, but in the midst of lovely scenery, the ground rising all round it in low irregular hills or fells, and close to it, a quarter of a mile from the back of the house, there is a small dark lake, not serenely lovely as are some of the lakes in Westmorland, but attractive by the darkness of its waters and the gloom of the woods around it.
This is the country seat of Earl Grex—which however he had not visited for some years. Gradually the place had got into such a condition that his absence is not surprising. An owner of Grex, with large means at his disposal and with a taste for the picturesque to gratify—one who could afford to pay for memories and who was willing to pay dearly for such luxuries, might no doubt restore Grex. But the Earl had neither the money nor the taste.
Lord Grex had latterly never gone near the place, nor was his son Lord Percival fond of looking upon the ruin of his property. But Lady Mabel loved it with a fond love. With all her lightness of spirit she was prone to memories, prone to melancholy, prone at times almost to seek the gratification of sorrow. Year after year when the London season was over she would come down to Grex and spend a week or two amidst its desolation. She was now going on to a seat in Scotland belonging to Mrs. Montacute Jones called Killancodlem; but she was in the meanwhile passing a desolate fortnight at Grex in company with Miss Cassewary. The gardens were let—and being let of course were not kept in further order than as profit might require. The man who rented them lived in the big house with his wife, and they on such occasions as this would cook and wait upon Lady Mabel.
Lady Mabel was at the home of her ancestors, and the faithful Miss Cass was with her. But at the moment and at the spot at which the reader shall see her, Miss Cass was not with her. She was sitting on a rock about twelve feet above the lake looking upon the black water; and on another rock a few feet from her was seated Frank Tregear. “No,” she said, “you should not have come. Nothing can justify it. Of course as you are here I could not refuse to come out with you. To make a fuss about it would be the worst of all. But you should not have come.”
“Why not? Whom does it hurt? It is a pleasure to me. If it be the reverse to you, I will go.”
“Men are so unmanly. They take such mean advantages. You know it is a pleasure to me to see you.”
“I had hoped so.”
“But it is a pleasure I ought not to have—at least not here.”
“That is what I do not understand,” said he. “In London, where the Earl could bark at me if he happened to find me, I could see the inconvenience of it. But here, where there is nobody but Miss Cass—”
“There are a great many others. There are the rooks, and stones, and old women;—all of which have ears.”
“But of what is there to be ashamed? There is nothing in the world to me so pleasant as the companionship of my friends.”
“Then go after Silverbridge.”
“I mean to do so;—but I am taking you by the way.”
“It is all unmanly,” she said, rising from her stone; “you know that it is so. Friends! Do you mean to say that it would make no difference whether you were here with me or with Miss Cass?”
“The greatest difference in the world.”
“Because she is an old woman and
