Our friend had some inkling of this himself, and felt that many of the less important affairs of his life were neglected because he was so true to the one great object of his existence. He had wisely endeavoured to prevent wrack and ruin among the affairs of Spoon Hall—and had thoroughly succeeded by joining his cousin Ned with himself in the administration of his estate—but there were things which Ned with all his zeal and all his cleverness could not do for him. He was conscious that had he been as remiss in the matter of hunting, as that hard-riding but otherwise idle young scamp, Gerard Maule, he might have succeeded much better than he had hitherto done with Adelaide Palliser. “Hanging about and philandering, that’s what they want,” he said to his cousin Ned.
“I suppose it is,” said Ned. “I was fond of a girl once myself, and I hung about a good deal. But we hadn’t sixpence between us.”
“That was Polly Maxwell. I remember. You behaved very badly then.”
“Very badly, Tom; about as bad as a man could behave—and she was as bad. I loved her with all my heart, and I told her so. And she told me the same. There never was anything worse. We had just nothing between us, and nobody to give us anything.”
“It doesn’t pay; does it, Ned, that kind of thing?”
“It doesn’t pay at all. I wouldn’t give her up—nor she me. She was about as pretty a girl as I remember to have seen.”
“I suppose you were a decent-looking fellow in those days yourself. They say so, but I never quite believed it.”
“There wasn’t much in that,” said Ned. “Girls don’t want a man to be good-looking, but that he should speak up and not be afraid of them. There were lots of fellows came after her. You remember Blinks, of the Carabineers. He was full of money, and he asked her three times. She is an old maid to this day, and is living as companion to some crusty crochetty countess.”
“I think you did behave badly, Ned. Why didn’t you set her free?”
“Of course, I behaved badly. And why didn’t she set me free, if you come to that? I might have found a female Blinks of my own—only for her. I wonder whether it will come against us when we die, and whether we shall be brought up together to receive punishment.”
“Not if you repent, I suppose,” said Tom Spooner, very seriously.
“I sometimes ask myself whether she has repented. I made her swear that she’d never give me up. She might have broken her word a score of times, and I wish she had.”
“I think she was a fool, Ned.”
“Of course she was a fool. She knows that now, I dare say. And perhaps she has repented. Do you mean to try it again with that girl at Harrington Hall?”
Mr. Thomas Spooner did mean to try it again with the girl at Harrington Hall. He had never quite trusted the note which he had got from his friend Chiltern, and had made up his mind that, to say the least of it, there had been very little friendship shown in the letter. Had Chiltern meant to have stood to him “like a brick,” as he ought to have stood by his right hand man in the Brake country, at any rate a fair chance might have been given him. “Where the devil would he be in such a country as this without me,”—Tom had said to his cousin—“not knowing a soul, and with all the shooting men against him? I might have had the hounds myself—and might have ’em now if I cared to take them. It’s not standing by a fellow as he ought to do. He writes to me, by George, just as he might do to some fellow who never had a fox about his place.”
“I suppose he didn’t put the two things together,” said Ned Spooner.
“I hate a fellow that can’t put two things together. If I stand to you you’ve a right to stand to me. That’s what you mean by putting two things together. I mean to have another shy at her. She has quarrelled with that fellow Maule altogether. I’ve learned that from the gardener’s girl at Harrington.”
Yes—he would make another attempt. All history, all romance, all poetry and all prose, taught him that perseverance in love was generally crowned with success—that true love rarely was crowned with success except by perseverance. Such a simple little tale of boy’s passion as that told him by his cousin had no attraction for him. A wife would hardly be worth having, and worth keeping, so won. And all proverbs were on his side. “None but the brave deserve the fair,” said his cousin. “I shall stick to it,” said Tom Spooner. “Labor omnia vincit,” said his cousin. But what should be his next step? Gerard Maule had been sent away with a flea in his ear—so, at least, Mr. Spooner asserted, and expressed an undoubting opinion that this imperative dismissal
