“Too much of an Englishman!” Mr. Kingsford cried, when this conversation was reported to him. “I am afraid your old lady is an old fool, Mary. How could he be too much of an Englishman? Am I out of place here? Does not the greater breeding include the less?” he said, with his grand air. His wife did not always quite follow his meaning, but she always believed in it as something that merited understanding; and she was quite as deeply convinced as if she had understood. And accordingly the house was let to Colonel Barrington, who had not a “place” of his own, though his elder brother had, and the Kingsfords “went South” to their rectory, with which John’s mother in particular was mightily pleased. It was in a far richer country than that which surrounded Dalrulzian—a land flowing with milk and cheese, if not honey—full of foliage and flowers. Mrs. Kingsford, having been accustomed only to Scotland, was very much elated with the luxuriant beauty of the place. She spoke of “England” as the travelled speak of Italy—as if this climate of ours, which we abuse so much, was paradise. She thought “the English” so frank, so open, so demonstrative. To live in “the South” seemed the height of happiness to her. Innocent primitive Scotch gentlewomen are prone to talk in this way. Mr. Kingsford, who knew better, and who himself liked to compare notes with people who winter in Italy, did what he could to check her exuberance, but she was too simple to understand why.
John, her son, did not share her feelings at first. John was generally confused and disturbed in his mind by all that had happened. He had not got over his wonder at the marriage, when he was carried off to this new and alien home. He did not say much. There was little opening by which he could communicate his feelings. He could not disapprove, being too young; and now that Mr. Kingsford was always there, the boy had no longer the opportunity to influence his mother as, young as he was, he had hitherto done—“tyrannise over his mother,” some people called it. All that was over. Much puzzled, the boy was dropped back into a properly subordinate position, which no doubt was much better for him; but it was a great change. To do him justice, he was never insubordinate; but he looked at his mother’s husband with eyes out of which the perplexity never died. There was a permanent confusion ever after in his sense of domestic relationships, and the duty he owed to his seniors and superiors; for he never quite knew how it was that Mr. Kingsford had become the master of his fate, though a certain innate pride, as well as his love of his mother, taught him to accept the yoke which he could not throw off. Mr. Kingsford was determined to do his duty by John. He vowed when he gave the somewhat reluctant, proud little Scotsman—feeling himself at eleven too old to be kissed—a solemn embrace, that he would do the boy “every justice.” He should have the best education, the most careful guardianship; and Mr. Kingsford kept his word. He gave the boy an ideal education from his own point of view. He sent him to Eton, and, when the due time came, to Oxford, and considered his advantage in every way; and it is needless to say, that as John grew up, the sensation of incongruity, the wonder that was in his mind as to this sudden interference with all the natural arrangements of his life, died away. It came to be a natural thing to him that Mr. Kingsford should have charge of his affairs. And he went home to the rectory for the holidays to find now and then a new baby, but all in the quiet natural way of use and wont, with no longer anything that struck him as strange in his relationships. And yet he was put out of the natural current of his life. Boy as he was, he thought sometimes, not only of special corners in the woods, and turns of the stream, where he nibbled as a boy at the big sports, which are the life of men in the country—but above all, of the house, the landscape, the great sweep of land and sky, of which, when he shut his eyes, he could always conjure up a vague vision. He thought of it with a sort of grudge that it was not within his reach—keen at first, but afterwards very faint and slight, as the boy’s sentiments died away in those of the man.
Meanwhile it was an excellent arrangement, who could doubt, for John’s interest—instead of keeping up the place, to have a rent for it; and he had the most excellent man of business, who nursed his estate like a favourite child; so that when his minority was over, and Colonel Barrington’s lease out, John Erskine was in a more favourable position than anyone of his name had been for some generations. The estate was small. When his father died, exclusive of Mrs. Erskine’s jointure, there was not much more than a thousand a-year to come out of it; and on fifteen hundred a-year his father had thought himself very well off, and a happy man. In the meantime, there had been accumulations which added considerably to this income, almost making up the sum which Mrs. Kingsford enjoyed for her life. And John had always been treated at the rectory as a golden youth, happily exempted from all the
