The Eldest Son

"Nina," said the Squire, "I'm most infernally worried." He was sitting in his wife's morning-room, in a low chair by the fire. In front of him was a table set for tea for one-himself. There were buttered toast and dry toast and preserves, a massive silver teapot, milk jug, cream jug, and sugar basin, a breakfast cup of China tea, and two boiled eggs, one of which he was attacking, sitting forward in his chair with his legs bent.

He had come in from hunting a few minutes before, at about six o'clock, and it was his habit thus to consume viands which most men of his age and bulk might have been afraid of, as likely to spoil their dinner. But he was an active man, in spite of his fifty-nine years and his tendency to put on flesh, and it would have taken more than a tea that was almost a meal to reduce his appetite for dinner at eight, after a day in the saddle and a lunch off sandwiches and a flask of sherry. When his tea was over he would indulge himself in half an hour's nap, with the Times open at the leader page on his knee, and go up to dress, feeling every inch of him a sportsman and an English country gentleman.

His tea was generally brought to him in his library. This evening a footman had followed him into that room immediately upon his entering the house, as usual, had unbuckled his spurs, pulled off his boots for him, and put on in their place a pair of velvet slippers worked in silk, which had been warming in front of the fire. Only when his coat was wet or much splashed with mud did the Squire change that. He considered smoking-jackets rather effeminate, and slippers, on ordinary occasions, "sloppy." It was only in his dressing-room or on these evenings after hunting that he wore them. Otherwise, if he had to change his boots during the daytime he put on another pair. He was particular on little points like this. All his rules were kept precisely, by himself and those about him.

This evening he had told the footman, and the butler who had followed him into the room with the tray, that he would have his tea in Mrs. Clinton's room, and he had marched across the hall with a firm and decisive step, in his red coat and buckskin breeches, between which and his hand-knitted heather-mixture socks showed a white expanse of under-drawers round a muscular calf.

Mrs. Clinton sat opposite to him in another low chair, at work on a woollen waistcoat. He always wore waistcoats made by her, thick for the winter, light for the summer, and she knitted his socks for him, of which he required a large number, for he hated them to be darned. He liked to see her working for him like this. He was a rich man, but a woman ought to work with her hands for her husband, whether he was rich or poor. It was her wifely duty, and incidentally it kept her out of mischief. Mrs. Clinton, at the age of fifty-four, with her smooth yellow-grey hair and her quiet and composed face, did not look as if she would be up to serious mischief, even if this and other restrictions were removed from her. She looked up when her husband addressed her, and marked the furrow between his heavy eyebrows. Then she looked down again at her work and waited for him to unbosom himself further.

"How old is Dick?" asked the Squire, leaning forward to put a spoonful of yolk of egg into his mouth with one hand, while he shielded his grey beard with the other.

She knew then the subject upon which he had expressed himself as infernally worried, for he was not accustomed to keep the first stirrings of discontent to himself.

"He was thirty-four last April," she said.

"Thirty-four," he repeated. "Yes; and I was twenty-four when I married you. That's early. I shouldn't advise any young man to marry at that age, unless, perhaps, he was the only one to keep a name going-as I was, of course-at least in my immediate family. But thirty-four! It's really time Dick thought about it. He's the eldest son. It's his duty. And as far as I can see he never gives the matter a thought. Eh?"

"As far as I can see he is not thinking about it," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Well, if I couldn't see you couldn't see. I say it is time that he did begin thinking about it. I'm getting on now-good for another twenty years, I should hope, but I want to see the succession assured. Walter is the only one of the boys that's married, and he's only got two girls. Of course, he may have a son-they're coming pretty quick-but I've never got over that doctoring business. I shouldn't like the heir of Kencote to be brought up in a place like Melbury Park, and I say so freely-to you."

This was the echo of an old disturbance. The Squire's third son had refused to take Orders, with a view of occupying the family living, but had studied medicine, and was now practising in a suburb of London, and not one of the most genteel suburbs either. That furrow always appeared faintly in the Squire's brow when he was forced to mention the distasteful words Melbury Park.

"I think it would be a good thing if Dick were to marry," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Good thing? Of course it would be a good thing. That's just what I'm saying. There's Humphrey; he doesn't look much like marrying, either. In fact, if he doesn't pick up a wife with a pot of money, I'd rather he didn't. He spends quite enough as it is. I've no opinion of that London life, except for a bit when a man's young and before he settles down. Dick has been in the Guards now for-what?-twelve years. I never meant that he should take up soldiering as a profession. Just a few years spent with a good regiment-as I had myself, in the Blues-that's all right for a young fellow who has a good property to succeed to. But an eldest son ought to settle down, on the property, and get married, and have sons to succeed him."

"Dick comes here a good deal," said Mrs. Clinton, "and he takes an interest in the property."

"Well, I should hope he did," responded the Squire. "The property will belong to him when my time's over. What do you mean?"

"I only mean that Dick is not wrapped up in London life and all that goes with it, as Humphrey seems to be."

"Oh, Humphrey! I've no patience with Humphrey. If Kencote isn't good enough for him let him stay away. Only I won't pay any more bills for him. He has a good allowance and he must keep within it. I've told him so. Now if I'd put him into the army, instead of the Foreign Office, he might have stuck to it and made a profession of it. I wish I had-into a working regiment. It would have done him all the good in the world. However, I don't want to talk about Humphrey. I don't expect an heir to come from him; and Frank is too young to marry yet. Besides-a sailor! It's better for him to marry later. Dick ought to marry, and there's an end of it. And when he comes down to-morrow I shall tell him so."

Mrs. Clinton made no immediate reply, but after a pause, during which the Squire came to the end of his eggs and began to attack the buttered toast, she said, "I have to tell you something, Edward, which I am afraid will disturb you."

"Besides," pursued the Squire in his loud, resolute voice, "there's the dower-house standing empty now. If Dick were to get married soon I need not bother about finding a tenant for it. I don't want to let it; it's too near here. If we got people there we didn't like it would be an infernal nuisance. Eh, Nina? What were you saying?"

"I am sorry to say," said Mrs. Clinton, "that Miss Bird is going to leave us."

The Squire was just about to put a piece of toast into his mouth, which was half open for its reception. It remained half open while he looked at his wife, the toast arrested halfway. "Miss Bird! Leave us!" he exclaimed when he had found his voice. He could hardly have been more astounded if his wife had announced that she was going to leave him, and indeed Miss Bird had lived at Kencote nearly as long as Mrs. Clinton, and had initiated into the mysteries of learning all the young Clintons, from Dick, who was now thirty-four, down to the twins, Joan and Nancy, who were fifteen.

"She has talked about it for some time," said Mrs. Clinton. "She has felt that the children were getting beyond her, and ought to have better teaching than she can give them."

"Oh, stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed the Squire. "I don't want the children turned into blue-stockings. I'm quite satisfied with what Miss Bird is doing for them, and if she wants telling so, for goodness' sake tell her, and let's have no more of such rubbish. Miss Bird indeed! Who's she to upset the whole house?"

"I am afraid she has determined to go, Edward," said Mrs. Clinton in her equable voice. "Her invalid sister, you know, has lost her husband, and there is no one else to look after her."

The Squire grunted. "Well, if that's the reason," he said, rather grudgingly, "I suppose we can't complain, although it's a most infernal nuisance. I've got used to Miss Bird. She's a silly old creature in some respects, but she's faithful and honest. Now we shall have to get used to somebody else. Really, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. Life is hardly worth living with all these worries. One never seems to get a moment's peace. I'm going into my room now, Nina, to read the paper for a bit."

"I should like to talk to you for a few minutes longer about the children," said Mrs. Clinton. "As a change has to be made, I want to make a thorough one. It is quite true that they are beyond Miss Bird, even if she could have stayed. I should like to send them to a good school for two or three years, and then to France or Germany for a year."

The Squire bent his brows in an amazed frown. "What on earth can you be thinking of, Nina?" he exclaimed. "France or Germany? Nice healthy English girls-teach 'em to eat frogs and horse-sausage-pick up a lot of affected nonsense! You can put that idea out of your head at once."

Mrs. Clinton's calm face flushed. "There is no need to talk of that for two or three years," she said. "I should like them now-when Miss Bird leaves us-to go to a really good school in England, where they can learn something."

"Learn something? What do you mean-learn something? Haven't they been learning something all their lives-at least since Miss Bird began to teach them? What does a girl want to learn, except how to read and write a good hand and add up accounts? I don't want any spectacled, short-haired, flat-chested females in my house, thank you. The children are very well as they are. They're naughty sometimes, I've no doubt, but they're good girls on the whole. Girls ought to be brought up at home under their mother's eye. I can't think what you want to send them away from you for, Nina. It isn't like you. I should have thought you would have missed them. I know I should, and they're not going to school."

"I should miss them very much," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Very well, then, let them stop at home. It's quite simple."

Mrs. Clinton was silent, bending her head over her work.

"You would miss them and I should miss them," pursued the Squire, after a pause. "No, there's no sense in it."

There was another pause, and then the Squire asked, "Why do you want to send them to school?"

Mrs. Clinton laid down her work and looked at him. "I should be satisfied," she said, "if they could get the teaching they ought to have at home. Perhaps I should prefer it. But it would mean a first-class governess living here, and--"

"Well, there's no objection to that," interrupted the Squire. "I dare say old Miss Bird is a little out of date. Get a good governess by all means; only not a blue-stocking, mind you."

Mrs. Clinton smiled. "I'm afraid she would have to be what you would call a blue-stocking," she said. "But she needn't show it. Clever girls don't wear spectacles and short hair necessarily nowadays."

"Oh, don't they?" said the Squire good-humouredly. He was leaning back in his chair now, looking at the fire. "How are you going to set about getting one?"

"I should ask Emmeline to help me." Emmeline was Lady Birkett, the wife of Mrs. Clinton's brother, the judge.

"Not a bad idea," said the Squire. "But I won't have any of your suffragettes. Herbert is a very good fellow, but he's a most pestilent Radical."

"You would let me offer a good salary, I suppose."

"What do we pay Miss Bird?"

"Only thirty pounds a year. She has never asked for more."

"She's a good old creature. I'm sorry for her sister. Is she well off, do you know?"

"I'm afraid very badly off."

"Then how will they get on? I suppose Miss Bird has saved a bit. She's had no expenses here except her clothes for many years."

"She told me she had saved about four hundred pounds."

"Has she? Out of thirty pounds a year! It's extraordinary. Still, that won't give her much, capitalised, poor old creature. I'll tell you what, Nina, I'll talk it over with Dick and see if we can't fix up a little annuity for her. She's served us well and faithfully all these years, and we ought to do something for her."

"Oh, Edward, I am so glad," said Mrs. Clinton. "I hoped you might see your way to helping her. She will be so very grateful."

The Squire lifted himself out of his chair. "Oh yes, we'll do something or other," he said. "Well, get another governess then, Nina, and pay her-what do you want to pay her?-forty?"

Mrs. Clinton hesitated a moment. "I want to get the best I can," she said. "I want to pay her eighty at least."

The Squire, in his moods of good humour, was proof against all annoyance over other people's follies. He laughed. "Oh, I should make it a hundred if I were you," he said.

"When the boys had Mr. Blake in their holidays," said Mrs. Clinton, "he had five pounds a week, and only had to teach them for an hour a day."

"That's a very different thing," said the Squire. "Blake was a University man and a gentleman. You have to pay a private tutor well."

"I want to get a lady," said Mrs. Clinton, "and I should like one who had been to a University."

"Oh, my dear girl," said the Squire, moving off down the room, "have it your own way and pay her what you like. Now is there anything else I can do for you before I go and write a few letters?"

"You are very kind, Edward, in letting me have my way about this. There is one more thing. If the children went to school they would have extra lessons for music and drawing or anything else that they might show talent in. Joan and Nancy have both got talent. I want to be able to have masters for them, from Bathgate-or perhaps even from London-for anything special that their governess cannot teach them."

The Squire was at the door. "Well, upon my word!" he said, nodding his head at her. Then he went out of the room.