THE 
 
 TRIALS OF THE * BANTOGKS 
 
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 The Trials of the Bantocks
 
 By the same Author: 
 
 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BOY. 
 
 QUALES EGO. 
 
 THE WISE AND THE WAYWARD. 
 
 A Novel. 
 
 MINIATURES AND MOODS. 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS. 
 NOTES OF A STRUGGLING GENIUS.
 
 The Trials of the 
 Bantocks 
 
 BY 
 
 G. S. STREET 
 
 JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK 
 
 1900
 
 Copyright, iqoo 
 BY JOHN LANE 
 All rights reserved 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON . CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN struggling manhood, as in complacent 
 youth, I have always been fascinated by 
 the Bantock family. We are apt to gen- 
 eralise too freely from meagre experience, 
 and therefore I hesitate to say that all 
 youth is chiefly attracted by exterior 
 things. I had better admit, simply, that 
 my own was so, and the fact that every- 
 thing in the Bantock household was ad- 
 mirably correct appealed strongly to my 
 youthful sympathies. I say this in hu- 
 mility, not pretending that the excellent 
 qualities of mind and heart possessed by 
 all the Bantocks in their different ways, 
 qualities which I am come in maturer 
 years to understand and venerate, were 
 v
 
 PREFACE 
 
 apparent to my boyish vision. Their 
 town house was in an envied part of 
 London ; their country house was the 
 largest and most dignified of its part of a 
 large and dignified county ; their dinners 
 were sumptuous but always in good taste ; 
 their butler was wonderfully episcopal. 
 Their ancestry, to be sure, did not excite 
 one's imagination, but they went every- 
 where at the right time and in the most 
 comfortable fashion, and sometimes took 
 me with them. Mr. and Mrs. Bantock 
 alike had a large and unwavering dignity ; 
 Maud Bantock's dress she was seven- 
 teen at the time of which I am thinking 
 was always in the latest fashion and 
 sometimes dazzling ; Russell Bantock, my 
 contemporary, was a notable personage at 
 school and in all the best clubs of "the 
 House " in my unpretentious days at 
 Oxford ; even Tom, my junior by some 
 years, was always careful to do the right 
 thing in the right way. 
 vi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It was, as I have said, such exterior 
 things as these to the exclusion of what 
 is nobler and better still which fascinated 
 my youth, to my shame or not, as your 
 memory may determine. And even now, 
 when (as I think) the true goodness and 
 beauty of the Bantock life are apparent to 
 me, I am not uninfluenced by the former 
 considerations. In the hardship and anx- 
 iety which beset the life of one who writes 
 for bread, it is refreshing and comfortable 
 to turn aside to such a house as the Ban- 
 tocks'. There one feels that after all 
 there is something solid and permanent 
 in life. As I look down their flowered 
 dinner-table and note the gently-smiling, 
 untroubled faces, and glance aside to the 
 noiseless footmen and imperturbable but- 
 ler, I feel that, though my own attic crust 
 may haply vanish, so long as the Bantocks 
 live they will dine well. When, trudging 
 on weary feet along Piccadilly, I see Mrs. 
 Bantock leaning back in her soft, swift 
 vii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 carriage, and she smiles, faintly but per- 
 ceptibly, upon me, I feel quite rested. I 
 do not think that if I were reduced to 
 extreme indigence the Bantocks why 
 should they ? would offer to support 
 me, but somehow my acquaintance with 
 them gives me a vague sense of security 
 against fortune. Merely for this, if there 
 were ever a serious crusade against the 
 rich, I would fight to the death that the 
 Bantocks might continue to have all their 
 little comforts about them. I regret the 
 old days of the patron, and that Mr. 
 Bantock is not mine. He would not 
 read my books, perhaps, any more than 
 he does now, but to feel that my connec- 
 tion with him was something stable and 
 official would be an enduring joy. As 
 things are, if I failed to command a toler- 
 ably good-looking suit of clothes, and a 
 shirt that would stand exposure, the Ban- 
 tocks, though most kind, would, quite 
 excusably ah, horrible thought ! So, 
 viii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 you see, the exterior life of the Bantocks 
 fascinates me still, though I know now 
 how little that is in comparison with their 
 inward worth. And yet, sometimes is 
 it envy of their worldly blessings or a less 
 vile despair of emulating the noble quali- 
 ties that lie behind them ? sometimes 
 sometimes it is not altogether disagreeable 
 to reflect that the Bantocks, they too, 
 have their trials in life. 
 
 I have made a little collection of these 
 trials, as I have heard of them at different 
 times, and I propose to set them forth 
 with a double object. I wish that people 
 like myself poor, shifting, unsubstantial 
 people may observe that even beings 
 so solid and permanent as the Bantocks 
 are tried by fortune : it will be a great 
 consolation. I wish also that they, the 
 aforesaid poor and unconsidered, may see 
 and perpend with what fortitude the 
 Bantocks bear their trials, with what ease 
 they dismiss them : it will be a great 
 ix
 
 PREFACE 
 
 stimulus. And to make all things clearer, 
 I shall unfold, as I touch on each in- 
 dividually, the qualities of the Bantocks, 
 my friends. Skill may fail me, but never 
 sympathy.
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. MR. BANTOCK'S THORN i 
 
 II. THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS .... n 
 
 III. THE ORDEAL OF RUSSELL BANTOCK . . 27 
 
 IV. BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 42 
 
 V. THE PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 58 
 
 VI. TOM'S PROFESSION 74 
 
 VII. Moss 91 
 
 VIII. THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER . . . 108 
 
 IX. ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 124 
 
 X. THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 141 
 
 XI. MRS. BANTOCX'S PORTRAIT . . . . 158 
 
 XII. CONCLUDING WORDS 174
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE 
 BANTOCKS 
 
 MR. BANTOCK'S THORN 
 
 MR. CHARLES AUGUSTUS BANTOCK is the 
 senior partner in a flourishing and old- 
 established bank, and is in other ways a 
 person whom we all have a natural ten- 
 dency to admire and love. His father 
 was not a very rich man, and he started 
 life with barely eight hundred a year (he 
 has often told me), and the interest of his 
 maternal uncle, the head of the bank 
 already mentioned. This uncle died 
 when Mr. Bantock was forty years old, 
 and left him a fortune of twelve thousand 
 a year : he was already a partner in the 
 bank. He has been often heard to ex-
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 press his gratitude to Providence that he 
 did not inherit this money when he was a 
 young man, because it might have been 
 his ruin, and poor young men who hear 
 him are greatly encouraged by this to 
 make money, in the hope that they, too, 
 may inherit more. He speaks kindly to 
 such young men. " It's an uphill fight, 
 I know," he sometimes says. " I know 
 it ; I Ve been through the mill. When 
 I started life I had barely eight hundred a 
 year." I do not think it has ever oc- 
 curred to him that it is possible to have 
 less than that, and one shrinks from hurt- 
 ing his kindly feelings by telling him so. 
 
 Mr. Bantock is very different from the 
 man of business whom we find as typical 
 in the books of the last generation. He 
 is well educated, having taken a pass de- 
 gree at Oxford, and a keen sportsman, 
 generally going to see the Oxford and 
 Cambridge cricket match at Lord's, and 
 playing golf nearly every week when it is
 
 MR. BANTOCK'S THORN 
 
 fine. He is understood to have a hobby 
 of a serious nature. I think (but am not 
 sure) that it has something to do with 
 science. He never speaks of it, no doubt 
 from modesty. He is of medium height, 
 broad-shouldered and somewhat stout, 
 clean-shaven and benevolent of aspect ; he 
 dresses carefully, and has a magnificent 
 fur coat ; he is a good husband and father, 
 though he is rightly careful not to give 
 his younger children too much pocket- 
 money, lest they might be tempted to be 
 extravagant and run into debt ; he is pas- 
 sionately loyal to his sovereign. 
 
 Mr. Bantock's habits are extremely at- 
 tractive. He breakfasts always at nine, 
 and is in the City by eleven ; he seldom 
 leaves it before four o'clock, and allows 
 himself one hour only for lunch at his 
 City club. In the afternoon he plays 
 whist at his club in Pall Mall, for small 
 points, not to encourage gambling, and at 
 seven walks to his house in Grosvenor 
 3
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 Place for exercise. After dinner, in spite 
 of the brain-pressure of the day, he gen- 
 erally reads the evening paper, while 
 somebody plays the piano, or even occa- 
 sionally goes to the theatre with his wife 
 and daughters, thus doubling their enjoy- 
 ment of the entertainment. On Sundays 
 he invariably goes to church in the morn- 
 ing, being of opinion that even in town 
 it is a good example, and in the afternoon 
 he sits in his library, which is furnished 
 with all the standard works, and a collec- 
 tion of the Nineteenth Century, to which 
 so many well-known people contribute, 
 bound in dark green with red labels. I 
 cannot tell you what he reads, but when 
 Lord Tennyson died, I heard him say 
 that there were no real poets left. On 
 Sunday, too, if there is no dinner-party, 
 he goes to bed early in the evening. On 
 Saturday afternoons, when the weather is 
 fine, he goes to Wimbledon to play golf. 
 Yet even in this beautiful and useful
 
 MR. BANTOCK'S THORN 
 
 life there are trials ; and, in particular, I 
 remember a thorn in Mr. Bantock's side, 
 a man called Merry weather. Merry- 
 weather was Mr. Bantock's contem- 
 porary, and had been his form-mate at 
 Harrow. He used to tell, I believe, 
 some ridiculous story of his having saved 
 Mr. Bantock's life while bathing I say 
 ridiculous, because it is difficult to imagine 
 that even at that early age Mr. Bantock 
 was so imprudent as to risk the safety of 
 his person. However this may have been, 
 it was no justification for a man in Merry- 
 weather's position he had failed in life, 
 and was the secretary of an obscure and 
 precarious club of a sporting character 
 when he met Mr. Bantock in the street, 
 calling out, " Hullo, Bantock ! " I ques- 
 tion if there was another man in London, 
 not of an assured position in society, who 
 would have called Mr. Bantock " Ban- 
 tock." But Merryweather had no subtle 
 perceptions. He looked rakish, with his 
 5
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 hat on one side, and seemed entirely to 
 lack that reserve which is so rightly valued 
 a feature of the English character. He 
 laughed quite loudly in the street ; if he 
 argued with a cabman it was not in the 
 tone of quiet authority which you and I 
 use, but in the high-pitched voice of one 
 who loves a contest. He was altogether 
 unsuited to be Mr. Bantock's acquaint- 
 ance. But ten years ago, Mr. Bantock, 
 in a moment of thoughtless generosity, 
 asked him to dinner. I met him on that 
 occasion ; I was young at the time, but 
 even then my sympathetic instinct divined 
 the horror of the Bantock family. Merry- 
 weather was excited ; he laughed uproar- 
 iously ; he told foolish stories about people 
 I am sure Mrs. Bantock would not care 
 to meet. Nothing could stop him. Mrs. 
 Bantock looked at him ; Mr. Bantock 
 looked at him ; Russell Bantock looked 
 at him ; I looked at him ; Merryweather 
 went on. 
 
 6
 
 MR. BANTOCK'S THORN 
 
 Of course he was not asked again ; and, 
 indeed, never again passed the threshold 
 of Grosvenor Place. Both Mrs. Bantock 
 and Russell Bantock spoke seriously to 
 Mr. Bantock of the unwisdom of know- 
 ing him ; and Mr. Bantock, who, in spite 
 of his position, was a genuinely humble- 
 minded man, was guided in such matters 
 by his family. He tried to avoid Merry- 
 weather, but through timidity, his wife 
 hinted, but I know his kindness of heart 
 was the cause could not bring himself 
 absolutely to cut his unfortunate acquaint- 
 ance ; indeed, he would have found it ex- 
 tremely difficult to do so. 
 
 He was cruelly requited for his kind- 
 ness ; for Merryweather was continually 
 meeting him in Pall Mall and elsewhere, 
 greeting him with a noisy laugh, and 
 sometimes even slapping him on the 
 back. I have seen the victim of such a 
 shoulder-slapping ruffian turn round and 
 strike his assailant ; but Mr. Bantock 
 7
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 was too gentle for this. He would nod, 
 courteously but with finality, and pass on. 
 But Merry weather would not allow this ; 
 he would walk by his side telling him 
 atrocious stories, and as it were, involv- 
 ing Mr. Bantock in his unseemly jovial- 
 ity. Sometimes Mr. Bantock would take 
 refuge in a cab, thus missing the exercise 
 so necessary to his health. I have known 
 him arrive in Grosvenor Place quite un- 
 nerved. There was one terrible scene, 
 when Mr. and Mrs. Bantock, with Lord 
 and Lady Addleshaw, were dining at the 
 Savoy, previously to going to the play. 
 Merryweather passed their table, on his 
 way to a party of quite odd-looking 
 people (Mrs. Bantock told me), and 
 greeting Mr. Bantock loudly, as usual, 
 slapped him so violently on the back 
 that the glass of sherry he was in the act 
 of drinking was upset into his soup. It 
 must have been a dreadful moment ; Mrs. 
 Bantock cannot refer to it without emo- 
 8
 
 MR. BANTOCK'S THORN 
 
 tion. I am glad I was not there. On 
 another occasion, while Mr. and Mrs. 
 Bantock were walking in the Park, 
 Merryweather's large dog, recognising 
 in Mr. Bantock a person with whom 
 his master often spoke, raced up to 
 them, and (it was a very muddy day, I 
 regret to add) put his paws on Mr. Ban- 
 tock's white waistcoat. There were other 
 instances almost as distressing, but I can- 
 not bring myself to relate them. Enough 
 to say that for several years Merry weather 
 continued to be a thorn in Mr. Bantock's 
 blameless flesh. 
 
 But like all trials patiently endured, 
 this one came to an end. Merryweather 
 sank even lower, lost his appointment, 
 and had a serious illness. Then the true 
 nobility of a forgiving spirit shone forth in 
 the Bantocks. Mrs. Bantock gave me a 
 commission to buy a pound of grapes, and 
 to leave them at Merryweather's door 
 with her card. And when Merryweather 
 9
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 was well again, Mr. Bantock got him a 
 small post in a bank, connected with Mr. 
 Bantock's own, in the Colonies, and he 
 has troubled my friends no more. But 
 Mr. Bantock's dignity under the infliction 
 of Merry weather was one of the grandest 
 things I have ever seen. 
 
 10
 
 II 
 
 THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS 
 
 THERE is no one in the world towards 
 whom I have a more humble feeling of 
 reverence, I had almost said of self-abase- 
 ment, than I have towards Mrs. Bantock. 
 This is, I hope, chiefly due to my appre- 
 ciation of her extraordinary excellence. I 
 have known her for twelve years, and, so 
 far as my observation extends, she has 
 never done anything wrong, anything in 
 the slightest degree to be censured. Her 
 history, so far as I know it, is a calm suc- 
 cession of admirable incidents, a history 
 surely to be far more warmly admired 
 than those exciting and tumultuous lives 
 of which we sometimes hear. 
 
 Mrs. Bantock was the daughter of a 
 wealthy but not ennobled brewer, and in 
 ii
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 her youth she had all the advantages which 
 a dignified home and the most accom- 
 plished governesses and masters can 
 give. I have no doubt that she pos- 
 sesses all the accomplishments, intellect- 
 ual and artistic, which are suitable to a 
 lady, though of course at her age and in 
 her position there are few occasions for 
 their exercise. I have never known her at 
 a loss for an opinion on any social, polit- 
 ical, or literary question, even in regard to 
 matters which her many occupations have 
 prevented her investigating, and her opin- 
 ion may be always accepted as final 
 for my part, I never dream of disputing 
 it. She married Mr. Bantock when she 
 was twenty-five years old, bringing him a 
 fortune of five thousand a year, and has 
 been a devoted wife to him, so that he has 
 never had recourse to those anti-domestic 
 relaxations, such as gambling and going to 
 the less respectable places of amusement 
 in which even middle-aged men and men 
 
 12
 
 THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS 
 
 of position are sometimes known unhap- 
 pily to indulge. She has been an excel- 
 lent mother ; her sons have gone to the 
 best schools and colleges, and her daugh- 
 ters have had the best and most carefully 
 selected governesses. To her servants 
 and dependants she is a friend ; not, in- 
 deed, committing the false kindness of 
 overlooking faults, but being always ready 
 to assist them with wise counsel. She is 
 most charitable, being on the list of vice- 
 presidents of many excellent institutions, 
 some of them patronised by royalty itself. 
 But I should weary you, though not my- 
 self, if I recounted all her virtues. In a 
 word, she is a well-nigh perfect woman. 
 
 In my first acquaintance with her I 
 experienced a feeling of timidity which has 
 never quite worn off. It may have been 
 (I hope it was) partly due to the uncon- 
 scious recognition that she was a being 
 superior to myself. But it was without 
 doubt largely due to the majesty of her 
 13
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 appearance. Mrs. Bantock was tall, some- 
 what stout, and extremely dignified in her 
 carriage. In the years since I first met 
 her she has become stouter, and that has 
 added to her dignity. She was, I have 
 heard, a beautiful girl ; in her middle-age 
 she is handsome, and her features express 
 the so well employed habit of au- 
 thority. Certainly I was once afraid of 
 her in spite of her kindness ; I hesitated 
 to venture a remark in her presence, and 
 was confused when she addressed me. 
 To this day, when she holds out her 
 hand to me I feel presumptuous in shak- 
 ing it ; I feel that it would be more seemly 
 were I to kneel and touch it with my 
 forehead or something of that kind. I 
 admit that she patronises me ; I would 
 not have it otherwise ; it would seem al- 
 together wrong that Mrs. Bantock should 
 address me as an equal. There are many 
 people by whom a plain man must expect 
 to be patronised in modern England, such
 
 THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS 
 
 as novices in aristocratic society, Stock 
 Exchange Jews, and the lesser lights of 
 the stage, and I confess that such people 
 sometimes irritate me. But when Mrs. 
 Bantock patronises me I am merely 
 grateful. 
 
 In fact, my only complaint in this mat- 
 ter (not that I do complain) is that Mrs. 
 Bantock is too kind in noticing me. She 
 will sometimes catch my eye at a small 
 dinner-party at her house and drag me 
 out of a preferred obscurity to ask, " Are 
 you working hard ? " My reply is in- 
 audible, and she adds, " When you publish 
 another book you must send it to me." 
 (She is very kind in this particular, not 
 only accepting my books, but even ask- 
 ing me. for additional copies to give away.) 
 I murmur how glad I shall be to do so, 
 but by this time she is talking to some- 
 body else, and I sink relieved into ob- 
 scurity again. Such notice embarrasses 
 me. But her kindness is usually most 
 15
 
 THE TRIALS OF .THE BANTOCKS 
 
 tactful, and, especially, it often takes the 
 form of allowing me to be of service to 
 her in a humble way ; she knows, no 
 doubt, what gratification such service is 
 to me. Thus I sometimes receive a post- 
 card in the morning telling me to get 
 her tickets at some theatre. Now this is 
 really kind, because, of course, a footman 
 could get them quite as effectually as I ; 
 but Mrs. Bantock knows that I have 
 tried to write for the stage and am there- 
 fore interested in it, and knows also that 
 I am at a loss how to employ my time in 
 the morning. She has promised, by the 
 way, that if ever a play of mine is pro- 
 duced, she will accept a box on the first 
 night. 
 
 I could mention innumerable examples 
 of such kindness, but I must hasten, in 
 fulfilment of my promise, to relate an 
 instance of how even such a woman may 
 be tried, with its beautiful moral lesson 
 of how we should bear affliction. 
 16
 
 THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS 
 
 I was staying with the Bantocks in the 
 country, when there arrived a new gov- 
 erness for Ethel, a girl of thirteen. This 
 was Miss Clavering. She was a young 
 woman of twenty or so ; her appearance 
 was entirely unobjectionable, and, I am 
 told, her references were all that could be 
 desired. I would not malign her, in spite 
 of the pain she gave us all, and I there- 
 fore admit that she seemed to be accom- 
 plished, and was well-bred and amusing 
 in her conversation as a rule. She had 
 high spirits an excellent thing in its 
 proper place and Ethel, I am told, was 
 devoted to her. But on the very day of 
 her arrival she amazed and scandalised us. 
 She argued with Mrs. Bantock at lunch. 
 
 It happened that the conversation 
 turned on Thackeray Tom Bantock 
 was reading The Newcomes as a holiday 
 task and Mrs. Bantock observed that 
 he was too cynical. Whereupon Miss 
 Clavering leant forward in quite an ex- 
 2 17
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 cited way and said : " Oh, do you think 
 so? It always seemed to me he was 
 too sentimental." Mrs. Bantock has a 
 wonderfully equable temper ; she merely 
 said, with dignity : " It has always been 
 understood that he was a cynic." That 
 surely ought to have closed the discus- 
 sion, but Miss Clavering went on : " But 
 don't you think that what has been al- 
 ways understood is often wrong?" a 
 pretty sentiment for a governess ! As in 
 the case of Merryweather, we all looked 
 at Miss Clavering, and it was equally 
 useless. Mrs. Bantock, of course, ignored 
 her question. But the unfortunate young 
 woman began to give instances of Thack- 
 eray's sentimentalism, and appealed for 
 confirmation to me, thus placing me in 
 a very awkward position. Mrs. Bantock 
 at once turned to me. " You agree that 
 Thackeray was a cynic? " she said. Then, 
 of course, I could hesitate no longer, and 
 
 agreed cordially. That ended the dis- 
 18
 
 THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS 
 
 cussion, though Miss Clavering looked 
 quite contemptuously at me, a most 
 unwarrantable proceeding. 
 
 It is my experience of life that when 
 Thackeray and his cynicism have been 
 mentioned, Dickens and his vulgarity are 
 never far off, and, sure enough, at after- 
 noon tea they made their appearance. 
 Once more Mrs. Bantock and Miss Clav- 
 ering were in collision, the latter taking 
 up the position that to describe vulgar 
 people is not in itself vulgan This time 
 I voluntarily went to Mrs. Bantock's 
 assistance. My argument, I admit, was 
 sophistical, but I think the circumstances 
 justified it, and Mrs. Bantock rewarded 
 me with a smile. When Miss Clavering 
 had left the room Mrs. Bantock expressed 
 an inclination to tell her that it would be 
 more comfortable for her to dine in the 
 schoolroom, but Mr. Bantock, to my 
 surprise, interposed, and we expected 
 dinner with sinking hearts. 
 -9
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 It was quite terrible. The conversa- 
 tion turned on the stage, and Mrs. Ban- 
 tock said how glad she was that Ibsen 
 was over. In her opinion, she added, he 
 ought never to have been allowed. Im- 
 mediately Miss Clavering began to argue. 
 This time, however, she hedged which 
 was cowardly, I thought. " Of course," 
 she said, " I don't admire everything he 
 has written, but it seems to me impossible 
 to deny that he 's a great dramatist." 
 Mr. Bantock, who treated Miss Claver- 
 ing throughout with great good-humour, 
 contented himself with remarking that she 
 would think differently when she was 
 older ; but Mrs. Bantock, I could see, 
 was extremely annoyed. It so happened 
 that in talking apart to Miss Clavering 
 before dinner I had agreed with her on 
 this very point, and the dreadful girl at 
 once drew me under fire. My respect 
 for the Bantocks almost my sense of 
 duty impelled me to deny what I had 
 
 20
 
 THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS 
 
 before affirmed, but somehow I had not 
 the nerve to do so, and I echoed Miss 
 Clavering's opinion, though I am thank- 
 ful to say she must have found me a very 
 feeble ally. Mrs. Bantock stared at me, 
 and I literally trembled, spilling some 
 salt. Mr. Bantock said he had thought 
 that I was too sensible for that sort of 
 nonsense ; he showed me none of the 
 tolerance he had shown the ringleader in 
 the disturbance. When we said good- 
 night, Mrs. Bantock did not smile. 
 
 I tossed on my pillow all night, and 
 felt wretched and very nervous the next 
 day at lunch, when for the first time 
 I met Mrs. Bantock and our persecutor 
 again. But Mrs. Bantock made me 
 ashamed of my trepidation, so noble was 
 the calm fortitude she displayed. She ad- 
 dressed a remark or two to me, for which 
 I was inexpressibly thankful. She was, 
 however, most rightly cold towards Miss 
 Clavering, merely replying, " Indeed," 
 
 21
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 when spoken to by that irrepressible 
 young woman, who for her part showed 
 no contrition whatever, but chatted gaily 
 the whole time, chiefly to Mr. Bantock. 
 But lunch passed without an argument, 
 and we looked forward to the rest of the 
 day with cheerful hearts. We little knew 
 what was to happen that very afternoon. 
 
 It is impossible for a sane imagination 
 to conceive of Mrs. Bantock in any ridicu- 
 lous position whatever, but more espe- 
 cially in one physically ridiculous. Even 
 a position in which people differently con- 
 stituted would not be ridiculous, but 
 which, owing to her stateliness and im- 
 posing presence, would make Mrs. Ban- 
 tock appear less dignified than usual, is 
 quite unimaginable of her by a normal 
 mind. Some of the most terrible night- 
 mares I have ever had have been those 
 in which (my nerves, doubtless, being 
 morbid from overwork) I have dreamed 
 of Mrs. Bantock scrambling up a preci- 
 
 22
 
 THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS 
 
 pice, or even (horrible to relate!) swim- 
 ming in the sea, though of course properly 
 attired. Awake, and in my right mind, I 
 cannot see such distressing visions ex- 
 cept when I remember that terrible after- 
 noon. Miss Clavering was giving Ethel 
 a lesson in lawn-tennis, when Mr. and 
 Mrs. Bantock walked slowly past the 
 court behind Ethel and in front of Miss 
 Clavering. Russell Bantock and I were 
 sitting on a bank near. Anybody but 
 Miss Clavering would have stopped ; she 
 called out in a cheerful voice : " Please 
 don't come so near, I 'm teaching her to 
 take them off the end crease, and I 'm 
 afraid of hitting you ! " The next min- 
 ute it had happened. A ball, hit by Miss 
 Clavering, came full at Mrs. Bantock ; 
 she saw it coming, and, to avoid it, had to 
 duck her head and run for several steps. 
 I started to my feet, but on reflection 
 thought silent sympathy the better course 
 and sat down again. Miss Clavering ran 
 2 3
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 up to Mrs. Bantock apologising, as well 
 she might. Mrs. Bantock walked silently 
 to the house. You will hardly believe me 
 when I tell you that after a minute or two 
 Miss Clavering went calmly on with her 
 game. 
 
 I saw Mrs. Bantock later in the after- 
 noon, and she confessed that her nerves 
 had been much shaken, but assured me, 
 on my anxious enquiries, that she felt 
 recovered. And the heroic woman ap- 
 peared at dinner as though nothing had 
 happened. One would have thought that 
 now at length Miss Clavering would be 
 subdued. Not at all ! She argued again, 
 this time disagreeing with Mrs. Bantock's 
 
 O O 
 
 opinion of the growing want of respect 
 shown to their natural superiors by the 
 lower orders. Miss Clavering said they 
 could not be expected to admit that 
 everybody who happened to be rich was 
 their natural superior. I was more on 
 my guard that evening, and came to 
 24
 
 THE DREADFUL GOVERNESS 
 
 Mrs. Bantock's assistance with such suc- 
 cess that I am glad to say she smiled 
 quite kindly at me. But the strain was 
 telling on us all. 
 
 However, it was not to last long. The 
 next day Mrs. Bantock declared that her 
 digestion was upset by Miss Clavering's 
 unaccountable proceedings ; and Mr. Ban- 
 tock, knowing the terrible consequences 
 of such a calamity (which even impaired 
 Mrs. Bantock's usually perfect temper), 
 agreed that Miss Clavering muse go, and 
 on the fourth day from her arrival she 
 went. 
 
 I have tried to forgive her, and think 
 I have succeeded, even to the extent of 
 forgiving the cruel remark I heard she 
 had made since of me, that I was "a 
 cowardly parasite." But Mrs. Bantock's 
 forgiveness seemed to come without an 
 effort. A very few days afterwards she 
 began to joke in her inimitably witty 
 manner about Miss Clavering. " My 
 2 5
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 dear," she said to a friend, her neighbour, 
 Mrs. Lupin, " she contradicted every- 
 thing I said, and nearly killed me with a 
 lawn-tennis ball." And when, about a 
 year later, we heard that Miss Clavering 
 was engaged to be married to a young 
 baronet whose sister she had been teach- 
 ing, Mrs. Bantock wrote her a charming 
 letter of congratulation, and I believe 
 will be quite willing to go to her wed- 
 ding. Such is the charity possible to a 
 perfect woman ! 
 
 26
 
 Ill 
 
 THE ORDEAL OF RUSSELL 
 BANTOCK 
 
 I KNOW no more respectable young man, 
 no one more absolutely correct in every 
 relation of life, than Russell Bantock, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Bantock's eldest son. Even at 
 school this distinction of perfect propriety 
 belonged to him. He was not in the 
 
 O 
 
 cricket or the football eleven, nor was he 
 even in the sixth, but he attained to the 
 average in both spheres necessary to the re- 
 spect of masters and boys, and was never 
 in anything approaching a row. His 
 friends were among the most eminent 
 boys of our time ; but eminence in school 
 life was not by itself a passport to his 
 intimacy. If a boy was a hero in the 
 field, or a distinguished member of the 
 27
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 sixth, Russell Bantock was always affable 
 to him and counted him among his 
 friends, but he was never really intimate 
 with him unless he were assured that the 
 boy's social position " at home," as we 
 said, was quite what was to be wished. 
 He sometimes made mistakes as who 
 of us does not ? but he always did his 
 best to remedy them. I well remember 
 the tact and firmness with which he grad- 
 
 o 
 
 ually cooled towards a boy whom he had 
 believed to be the son of a Member of 
 the existing Cabinet, but whose father he 
 subsequently discovered was a mere lit- 
 erary hack who did not even belong to a 
 good club. The boy's casual mention of 
 Brixton as his home and a subsequent 
 consultation of a Court guide, found on our 
 house-master's study-table, had opened 
 Russell's eyes to the true state of the 
 case. 
 
 It may be supposed from what I have 
 said that I wish to imply too great an im- 
 38
 
 ORDEAL OF RUSSELL BANTOCK 
 
 portance for myself, since Russell Ban- 
 tock invited me to stay with him in the 
 holidays. That is not the case; I am sure 
 it was only a fortunate accident that pro- 
 cured me the honour which was to bring 
 with it so many agreeable consequences. 
 It happened at the time I was invited 
 that Russell was preparing for his matri- 
 culation at Oxford, and as I was two 
 forms higher up in the school and ac- 
 counted a fair scholar, I was able to be 
 of use in reading with him. I refer (in 
 modesty) my frequent intercourse with 
 the Bantocks to the same cause, in the 
 case of Russell's subsequent examinations 
 at Oxford and those of his younger 
 brother. Mrs. Bantock has assured me 
 that she considers me quite a valuable 
 friend of the family, and I am more than 
 repaid by this gracious acknowledgment 
 for any little exertions I may have under- 
 gone. I may also mention (again in 
 modesty and not to boast) that she has 
 29
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 been so kind as to employ me as a sort 
 of informal secretary in the clerical work 
 (for which, of course, she has no time) 
 consequent on her position in the chari- 
 table world. 
 
 But to return to a more important sub- 
 ject than my own accidental merit. At 
 Oxford, Russell Bantock's correctness was 
 even more admirable than at school, and 
 was attended with even greater success. 
 From the very first he was extremely ex- 
 clusive. This was perhaps rather a bold 
 step to take, but like most bold steps, 
 firmly and consistently made, it succeeded. 
 He rapidly became a member of the very 
 best clubs in his college, " the House," 
 and in the University at large. The more 
 general life of the place, which would have 
 brought him into contact with unselected 
 people, he did not affect. For example, 
 " the Union " was not in our time a 
 fashionable resort; I believe that to the 
 end of his time at Oxford, Russell pro- 
 30
 
 ORDEAL OF RUSSELL BANTOCK 
 
 fessed that he did not know where it was. 
 He did not care much for games, but he 
 was known to hunt occasionally, and so 
 escaped the odium which men who " did n't 
 do anything " incurred ; he succeeded, like 
 his father before him, in taking a pass de- 
 gree. He was never known to boast of 
 his money ; on the contrary, he was in 
 the habit, like his father, of confessing its 
 limits. " I 'm really not a rich man," he 
 used to say ; " my governor only allows 
 me seven hundred a year." His lunches 
 were excellent, but he always (and es- 
 pecially after his first year, and when his 
 position was thoroughly well established) 
 was careful to avoid lavishness. 
 
 When he left Oxford, Russell was 
 called to the Bar, not intending to prac- 
 tise, but because he thought it was due to 
 him to be a member of a learned profes- 
 sion. He then went into the Bank, and 
 was made a junior partner almost at once. 
 I know no young man about town who 
 3 1
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 leads a more careful life. He rides every 
 day before breakfast ; he plays billiards or 
 pool in preference to cards because the 
 former games involve a certain amount of 
 exercise ; he dances sometimes in the sea- 
 son (though only at very good houses), 
 but otherwise never stays up late or com- 
 mits any kind of excess, except on Satur- 
 day nights, Sunday being a day of rest. 
 His private income is at present only two 
 thousand a year, and in his opinion that 
 is an insufficient sum on which, in his 
 position, to marry ; in a few years it will 
 be considerably increased, and then, I 
 believe, he will add his influence to the 
 institution of matrimony ; in fact, I know 
 that he has already fixed on his future 
 house, though not yet on the lady. In 
 this matter he is wisely careful not to 
 commit himself, being aware that in the 
 course of a few years his inclinations 
 might change unless, indeed, a pecu- 
 liarly desirable person (in point of rank 
 32
 
 ORDEAL OF RUSSELL BANTOCK 
 
 or money) were to be attainable, in which 
 case he has told me in confidence that he 
 might hurry matters to an earlier issue. 
 I need hardly say that he belongs to two 
 irreproachable clubs. He has little time 
 for literary cultivation, but keeps up an 
 acquaintance with contemporary letters 
 by reading the reviews of new books in 
 The Times, and he has told me that he 
 would be quite charmed to meet a 
 few of the better-known writers of the 
 period, simply as writers, and not count- 
 ing those whose social position would 
 make them in any case people one likes 
 to know. In fact, Russell is an accom- 
 plished and admirable example of English 
 young manhood: he is business-like and 
 far-seeing, and, not disdaining the amuse- 
 ments natural to his years, he pursues 
 them with unvarying discretion. His 
 principles are simply beyond criticism. 
 
 Up to a few years ago, however, I had 
 never seen Russell Bantock put to stern 
 3 33
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 proof in the war with circumstance. It 
 happened at last, and since then I have 
 estimated his occasional friendship at its 
 right value. It was on a Sunday morn- 
 ing in June. I was due to lunch with 
 the Bantocks that day, and as I walked 
 up St. James's Street I saw Russell on 
 the steps of his club. I saw at once that 
 something had happened. He explained 
 in a few words; it was, indeed, a thing to 
 try the strongest patience. In that year 
 (I must premise) many men wore short 
 black jackets with tall hats, but, of course, 
 it was possible to wear bowler hats with 
 these jackets as an alternative. Well, it 
 seemed that some culpably careless mem- 
 ber of Russell's club had gone in there 
 with a bowler hat (pot hats they are also 
 called), and on going out had taken Rus- 
 sell's tall hat, leaving his pot hat behind 
 him. Now, Russell was wearing a frock- 
 coat. You see the tragedy at once. No 
 one knew whither the evil-doer was gone ; 
 34
 
 ORDEAL OF RUSSELL BANTOCK 
 
 in fact, no one was certain who it was. 
 Russell could not deliberately take an- 
 other member's tall hat. But it was im- 
 possible that he could wear a pot hat with 
 a frock-coat. To wear one at all on Sun- 
 day morning in the height of the season 
 in Piccadilly outraged every fibre of his 
 nature ; to wear it with a frock-coat was, 
 as I have said, impossible. But what was 
 to be done ? Russell thought of staying 
 at his club until another tall hat should 
 arrive from Grosvenor Place. I sug- 
 gested, however, that we might take a 
 cab, and he might go in it without a 
 hat ; people could suppose that he had 
 uncovered on account of the heat. After 
 some misgivings he consented to do this ; 
 we went down the steps of the club and 
 nodded to a cab. 
 
 At that moment (the stars in their 
 
 courses fighting against my much-tried 
 
 friend) Lord X. came up. Now, Russell 
 
 was slightly acquainted with him, and no 
 
 35
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 doubt would have been glad at any other 
 time to cement the friendship. Lord X. 
 is a very rich peer (the fourteenth earl of 
 his family, I believe), a great racing man, 
 very popular, and among other things on 
 the committee of a club for which at that 
 time Russell was standing. But Lord X. 
 is also very unconventional, not to say 
 eccentric, concerning things which seem 
 to him to be unimportant. I have no 
 doubt that if it were convenient to him 
 to walk down Piccadilly in knickerbock- 
 ers, no consideration of propriety would 
 prevent him. 
 
 " Oh, Bantock," he said, " you 're the 
 very man I wanted to meet." Russell, I 
 could see, was pleased by this address ; 
 how little do we foresee our troubles, even 
 the most prudent of us ! "I hear," con- 
 tinued Lord X., " that your father 's 
 thinking of taking a moor this year. I 
 think I can let him have Strathpellan." 
 
 " That will be capital," Russell said. 
 36
 
 ORDEAL OF RUSSELL BANTOCK 
 
 " Yes, but there are certain things to be 
 explained ; things he 'd better understand 
 before he thinks it over. I can just as 
 well tell you, and you can explain to 
 him." 
 
 " Certainly," said Russell ; " won't you 
 come in here ? " 
 
 "Afraid I haven't time," replied Lord 
 X., taking out his watch. " No ; I 'm 
 due at the Wellington lunching with a 
 man. There 's time to walk, though. 
 Look here ; are you going home ? Well, 
 let 's walk together," including me with a 
 glance, " and I '11 explain as we go." 
 
 "But," said Russell, " but I should 
 be delighted but I 've no hat." 
 
 He explained the hat tragedy. Lord 
 X. was certainly very dense ; he only said : 
 " Well, but the other chap's hat fits you, 
 I suppose, if yours fitted him. Bring that 
 hat," he called to a waiter, who was on 
 the top of the steps. We knew it fitted ; 
 it was by that, the tall hats having been 
 37
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 examined in vain, that we knew it was 
 left by the appropriator of Russell's. 
 
 The waiter brought it, and Russell put 
 it on with a bitter smile. 
 
 " That 's all right," said Lord X., with 
 heartless cheerfulness. " Come along." 
 
 " But I can't walk down Piccadilly in a 
 frock-coat and a pot hat," said Russell. 
 
 Lord X. laughed positively laughed. 
 
 " You young men are much too par- 
 ticular," he said ; " it will do you good. 
 What on earth does it matter ? Come 
 along." 
 
 Russell looked at me. I knew how 
 terrible a struggle must be going on 
 behind his mask so splendidly indiffer- 
 ent. At any other time he would have 
 liked very much to walk down Piccadilly 
 with Lord X. But now ! Think of it ! 
 It was Sunday morning, at the height of 
 the season, about half-past one. Picca- 
 dilly would be full of people coming out 
 of the Park. Think of Russell passing 
 38
 
 ORDEAL OF RUSSELL BANTOCK 
 
 Hyde Park Corner in a frock-coat and 
 pot hat ! I remembered in a flash how, 
 a little while since, he had decided to cut 
 a man he saw in Pall Mall who was wear- 
 ing a cutaway black coat (merely) with a 
 pot hat, even though it was pointed out to 
 him that the man was fresh from Australia, 
 and might not have known instinct 
 should have taught him, Russell said. 
 Imagine Russell's feelings now ! On the 
 one hand, the risk of annoying Lord X., 
 and possibly (his peculiar ideas considered) 
 of incurring his contempt ; on the other 
 hand, the certainty of an outrageous 
 appearance and the dread of misconstruc- 
 tion by his friends. The presence of X. 
 did in a way save the situation, but 
 everybody who knew Russell might not 
 know X. by sight, and it would be impos- 
 sible to explain to them all. A terrible 
 struggle ! 
 
 X. waited a minute, and then said in 
 a tone of most unjustifiable irritation : 
 39
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 " Oh, come along ! Or just as you 
 please." That decided Russell. He set 
 his face, and the fateful journey began. 
 Russell was for keeping on the Green 
 Park side of Piccadilly, but X. said : 
 " Let 's cross ; I like to see my friends." 
 So in obedience to this fatuous good- 
 humour we walked along by the clubs and 
 the houses, meeting a throng of people 
 coming from the Park. It seemed as 
 though the whole of Russell's acquaint- 
 ance was there to mock him. He had 
 continually to smile, as best he might, 
 and take off his abominable hat. Mean- 
 while, Lord X. pursued his vain chatter 
 about Strathpellan. I have always ad- 
 mired the Spartan boy who said nothing 
 of the fox that gnawed his vitals, but 
 what was he to Russell Bantock ? I 
 watched him ; his face was calm ; every 
 now and then he made an intelligible 
 reply to Lord X. But, of course, when 
 he had an opportunity, he stopped for a 
 40
 
 ORDEAL OF RUSSELL BANTOCK 
 
 moment to explain his distressing costume 
 to his friends. And even that slight miti- 
 gation was presently denied him. After 
 the third occasion Lord X., with almost 
 inconceivable brutality, exclaimed : "If 
 you mention that hat again I shall smash 
 it in ; I 'm sick of it." Russell bit his 
 lip, but took the brutal hint. Not a 
 word of reproach did he say, and he was 
 only twenty-six years old ! At last we 
 reached the Wellington it seemed a 
 week to me, to Russell it must have 
 seemed a year. Lord X.'s last remark 
 was : " You 'd better put that hat in a 
 glass case and tell the story to your grand- 
 children." It might have been a tardy 
 recognition of heroism, but I fear it was 
 but silly sarcasm. We hurried down 
 Grosvenor Place and the ordeal was over.
 
 IV 
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 THE Bantocks are singularly untroubled 
 by poor relations. I suppose they have 
 some ; in fact, I know of a few. But I 
 have never met them in Grosvenor Place. 
 Perhaps they are conscious of an inferior 
 refinement which would be too evident 
 there ; perhaps they have committed the 
 indiscretion of asking the Bantocks for 
 money. That offence, I know, would 
 not be forgiven. Mr. Bantock takes an 
 interest in the housing of the poor, and 
 in the various schemes, from time to time 
 suggested, by which the working classes 
 
 OO ' J D 
 
 might secure (by their own thrift) a pro- 
 vision for old age, and Mrs. Bantock (as 
 I have related) is a patroness of several 
 42
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 charitable institutions. But both are 
 vividly conscious of the evils of individ- 
 ual assistance to the needy, and aware that 
 such acts of seeming kindness are really 
 selfish and a wrong to the community at 
 large. I remember an occasion on which 
 an application for such assistance was dis- 
 cussed. Mr. Bantock was very firm. 
 " I have worked hard for my money," 
 he said Mrs. Bantock, with conjugal 
 tenderness and admiration, interposed : 
 "And you do still" "And I don't 
 see," he continued, " why other people 
 should get money without working for it 
 too." And Mrs. Bantock seemed in- 
 dignant at the idea that the results of 
 Mr. Bantock's toil should be diverted 
 from their proper application. I surmise, 
 then, that their poor relations may have 
 been so wrong-principled as to ask for 
 money it is an evil habit of poor rela- 
 tions otherwise I cannot account for 
 my not having met them. For, as I 
 43
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 shall presently show, the Bantocks are full 
 of the kindly feelings of kinsmanship. 
 
 Cousin Charlotte is a rich relation. 
 She is the daughter of Mrs. Bantock's 
 paternal uncle, who married a member 
 of an old and well-known family. Her 
 parents are now dead ; she is about fifty, 
 and unmarried, and has no brother or 
 sister. Through her mother she is re- 
 lated to a number of the people whose 
 family histories are such edifying and 
 agreeable reading in the peerages. The 
 Bantock feeling for kindred and expan- 
 siveness of heart embrace all these people 
 more or less. " So-and-so, who 's a sort 
 of cousin of ours, you know," is a phrase 
 one frequently hears in their house. In 
 fact, I happen to know that Mr. Bantock 
 has once or twice remitted in their favour 
 his principle of never lending money. 
 Cousin Charlotte spends June and July 
 in London, and August and September in 
 the country, at one house or another, in 
 44
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 England ; during the rest of the year 
 she dashes about the continent of Europe, 
 which I hope (if I may permit myself a 
 mild sarcasm) enjoys her society ; I do not 
 like her. And yet I must confess that she 
 has some excellent qualities ; she seems to 
 know everybody and to go anywhere ; her 
 conversation is often extremely clever ; 
 she is very well read, and has a remarkably 
 good taste in pictures and music. 
 
 But her faults ! I hardly know with 
 which to begin. The fact that the Ban- 
 tocks cultivate her assiduously is a won- 
 derful proof of their kindliness, and sense 
 of the sacredness of relationship, for she 
 never comes into their house without say- 
 ing some outrageous thing, and I have 
 seen Mrs. Bantock, usually so calm, flush 
 with annoyance at her speeches. That 
 is perhaps her greatest fault, her out- 
 rageous frankness. I cannot believe that 
 she means all she says ; it is enough that 
 she says it. One would almost suppose 
 45
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 (only it is too absurd) that she despises 
 the Bantocks, and thinks them prone to 
 selfishness or snobbishness the latter a 
 vulgarity of which, as Russell Bantock 
 says, nobody is guilty nowadays. She 
 laughs at Mrs. Bantock's charities, and 
 at Mr. Bantock's hard work ; she speaks 
 of Russell's invariable correctness as 
 though it were a sort of crime. On one 
 occasion she took an extraordinary liberty 
 with me. We were leaving the house to- 
 gether, and she said : " I often meet you 
 here. I suppose you like a free dinner." 
 I suppressed my annoyance, and replied 
 humorously that I did. " Well," she 
 said, " I should have thought you 'd 
 have found it cheaper to dine at your 
 club." I have not the least idea of what 
 she meant, but the interference with my 
 pecuniary affairs I thought most ill- 
 bred; my affection for the Bantocks 
 alone prevented me from saying some- 
 thing sarcastic to her. 
 46
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 But such personal offensiveness by no 
 means exhausts her conversational lapses. 
 The Bantocks are above all things re- 
 spectable, and naturally therefore prefer 
 to think that people of position, and es- 
 pecially those whom they have expressed 
 a desire to know, are respectable also. 
 Cousin Charlotte tramples on this excel- 
 lent feeling. Thus when Mrs. Bantock 
 expressed a kindly wish to meet Lady 
 Sunnington : " Like to know Peggy Sun- 
 nington, would you ? " Cousin Charlotte 
 roughly asked. " I don't think you 'd 
 better ; she 'd be a bad example to your 
 girls. She 's a rake, and a mercenary one 
 too. All the Fonthill women are." 
 There was a pause after this painful re- 
 mark, an injudicious pause, since it 
 gave Cousin Charlotte an opportunity of 
 launching into a lamentable account of 
 the Fonthills' indiscretions, to use no 
 harsher word. Another of her dreadful 
 characteristics is to talk crudely about 
 47
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 money, a thing the Bantocks (except for 
 some useful purpose) are always careful 
 to avoid it is so vulgar. She gives dis- 
 tressing accounts of the impecuniosity of 
 well-known people, seeming almost to 
 make the Bantocks' well-earned riches a 
 reproach to them. Another irritating 
 habit she has is to talk of her Bohemian 
 friends, of whom, I am sorry to say, she 
 seems to have a considerable number ; she 
 does this especially when other people are 
 dining at the same time, and when, of 
 course, the Bantocks would much prefer 
 that she should talk of her relations or 
 her really nice friends. Of course, as 
 Mrs. Bantock once said to me, these Bo- 
 hemians may be very clever and all that, 
 and some of them are perfectly respect- 
 able, and one meets them at the best 
 houses still, it is much nicer to talk 
 about one's own world, as it were, and 
 really Cousin Charlotte might give people 
 a false impression. And this reminds 
 48
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 me of another fault. Mrs. Bantock, in 
 her beautiful spirit of hospitality, has 
 sometimes suggested to Cousin Charlotte 
 that she might bring one of her friends to 
 dinner to make up a number, or for some 
 reason of that sort ; well, on these occa- 
 sions, Cousin Charlotte, instead of bring- 
 ing one of her really nice friends, almost 
 always brings some Bohemian person 
 whom the Bantocks have no desire what- 
 ever to know in private life. On one 
 occasion she brought to lunch a man who 
 gave public entertainments : I left the 
 house a few minutes after them they 
 walked away together and I passed 
 them at the corner of Park Lane, and I 
 am certain that Cousin Charlotte was try- 
 ing to persuade him to make the Ban- 
 tocks the subject of one of his sketches. 
 It may seem incredible that she could 
 have been so lost to all good feeling, 
 but I am certain of the fact. 
 
 To do Cousin Charlotte justice, she 
 4 49
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 occasionally affords proof that she is not 
 altogether insensible to the affection and 
 consideration shown to her by the Ban- 
 tocks. She is generous in a material 
 way. When Tom, whose career at 
 Christ Church was wilder than his brother 
 Russell's I mention this with regret, 
 but it was merely the defect, I am sure, of 
 his innocent light-heartedness, so charm- 
 ing in other ways when Tom left 
 Oxford considerably in debt, Cousin 
 Charlotte sent him a cheque for a sub- 
 stantial sum, and though there was a sus- 
 picion about it of a desire to encourage 
 him to be less correct than his brother, 
 his parents allowed him to accept it, grate- 
 fully. When Maud Bantock married, 
 Cousin Charlotte gave her some beautiful 
 jewels. Such tokens of a better nature 
 no doubt have weighed with the Ban- 
 tocks, for Cousin Charlotte has never 
 been dropped, but on the contrary is 
 always received with kindness. In this, 
 50
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 as in other matters, the Bantocks rise 
 superior to those feelings of vexation to 
 which lesser people succumb. 
 
 I may, perhaps, give a more adequate 
 idea than as yet I have given of Cousin 
 Charlotte's strange perversity of conversa- 
 tion by repeating what was said at dinner 
 one night, Cousin Charlotte and I being 
 the only guests, and Mr. and Mrs. Ban- 
 tock, Ethel, Russell, and Tom being 
 present. I have not described Cousin 
 Charlotte : she is tall and rather stout, 
 in fact, not unlike Mrs. Bantock, but with 
 far more animation, or rather with far less 
 dignity and stately repose. She is large- 
 featured, with what is called a Roman 
 nose ; she wears pince-nez ; her voice is 
 loud and somewhat harsh and excited, so 
 unlike Mrs. Bantock's quiet, authorita- 
 tive tones ; she gesticulates freely with her 
 hands, again unlike Mrs. Bantock, who 
 keeps hers, when not in use for eating 
 and drinking, folded in her lap. Alto- 
 Si
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 gether she is a disagreeable contrast, 
 except in figure, to that admirable woman. 
 Cousin Charlotte looked up from her 
 soup and said abruptly to Mrs. Bantock : 
 "How's that Home of yours you made 
 me subscribe to ? " 
 
 " It 's nearly all settled," Mrs. Bantock 
 said; "we debated to-day about the food." 
 " Oh, what did the debate turn on ? " 
 " Chiefly whether they should have 
 meat once or twice a day." 
 
 " And which side were you on ? " 
 " Oh, against their having it twice. 
 Quite unnecessary." 
 
 Cousin Charlotte laid down her spoon. 
 " Good heavens ! " she exclaimed with a 
 sort of foolish violence. " I can't imagine 
 how you have the what shall I call it ? 
 the power of abstraction. I daresay 
 you're right economically and all that 
 but how you can get over the contrast ! 
 You go down there after an immense 
 lunch " 
 
 52
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 "My dear Charlotte " 
 
 " I don't mean to be rude a very 
 good lunch, let us say. You go down in 
 a fat carriage " her epithets are gener- 
 ally irrelevant "with a grossly over-fed 
 coachman I Ve seen him and you 
 proceed to determine that forty poor old 
 women shall only have meat once a day. 
 I can't understand it." 
 
 Mrs. Bantock replied to this nonsense 
 with quiet dignity : " I fail to see what 
 connection my lunch and the coachman's 
 meals have with " 
 
 Cousin Charlotte interrupted her rudely : 
 " Of course you do. And economically 
 the connection is very indirect, no doubt. 
 But the fact that the contrast did n't strike 
 you " 
 
 Mr. Bantock came gallantly to the 
 rescue. " You 're a Socialist, Cousin 
 Charlotte," he said. She turned on him 
 angrily. " No, I 'm not. You don't see 
 my point. It 's simply that anybody can 
 53
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 have the calm assurance that's why I 
 never could go in for that sort of thing. 
 I only mean that Flora" Flora is Mrs. 
 Bantock's name "is a better philoso- 
 pher than I am : that 's all." 
 
 She smiled, I suppose in tardy apology, 
 and the subject I thought had dropped. 
 But presently Cousin Charlotte recurred 
 to it quite excitedly. She asked sud- 
 denly : " What do those poor souls get to 
 drink?" 
 
 " Water," replied Mrs. Bantock," sweet- 
 ened, if they prefer it, with a little lemon 
 cordial." 
 
 " Oh, that 's too bad," said Cousin 
 Charlotte, very rudely : " I don't think 
 you ought to have deserted beer ! " 
 
 There was a dreadful silence : I looked 
 hard at my plate. Then Mrs. Bantock, 
 laughing rather forcedly, but with extraor- 
 dinary good nature, asked : " How do 
 you mean desert beer ? " 
 
 The terrible woman explained right 
 54
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 out. But I must add in justice to her 
 that the servants were not in the room. 
 
 "Why, Flora," she said, "if it wasn't 
 for beer, where would you and I be ? 
 You owed your food, your clothes, and 
 your roof to it till you were twenty-five, 
 and you owe a quarter of your income 
 now. As for me, I owe the whole of 
 mine to it beer, bless it!" 
 
 Perhaps I ought to apologise for inflict- 
 ing such terrible vulgarity upon you ; it 
 may be too realistic. But imagine the 
 feelings of the Bantocks! I took a swift 
 glance round the table. Mrs. Bantock 
 sat flushed and silent; Mr. Bantock had 
 made an heroic effort to laugh ; Ethel 
 looked down at her plate ; Russell was 
 frankly disgusted. Only Tom laughed 
 naturally : he called out, " Good old beer ! " 
 At any other time I should have thought 
 the exclamation unworthy of him: at that 
 moment we all felt dimly that he had 
 saved the situation. A sort of laugh ran 
 .55
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 round the table, and I earned (I hope) 
 Mrs. Bantock's gratitude by changing the 
 subject to my own cost, for Cousin 
 Charlotte immediately began to contradict 
 me. 
 
 I rather despised the proneness of her 
 mind to a trivial detail, to which besides 
 she seemed to attribute an absurd senti- 
 ment. For at the end of dinner she sud- 
 denly went back to the beer question. 
 " Flora," she said, " if you '11 let those old 
 women have beer twice a day I '11 sub- 
 scribe another twenty pounds a year." 
 
 But Mrs. Bantock had been justly 
 annoyed. " Impossible," she said ; " beer 
 is quite unnecessary." The ridiculous 
 Cousin Charlotte positively began to 
 plead. " Do," she went on, " do. It 's 
 on my conscience. I shan't go to bed 
 happy unless you agree. I can't enjoy 
 eight thousand a year made out of beer 
 if I don't prove my faith in its virtues. 
 Look here, Flora, if you '11 let them have 
 56
 
 BAD COUSIN CHARLOTTE 
 
 the beer, I '11 give you this ring I picked 
 up in Venice." She drew off her finger 
 and passed to Mrs. Bantock a very beau- 
 tiful old ring. Mrs. Bantock was natu- 
 rally tired of the silly subject. " Oh, well," 
 she replied, "if you're so anxious as all 
 that " She put on the ring and 
 smiled kindly on Cousin Charlotte, as she 
 rose, in token of reconciliation. As I 
 held the door I admired her completely 
 restored equanimity. 
 
 Now this is a very mild instance of 
 Cousin Charlotte's outrageous behaviour. 
 I have heard her say far worse things 
 than her allusion to beer. But it may 
 serve to show to what annoyances the 
 Bantocks are exposed in their love of 
 kindred. With smiling faces they brave 
 such things about once a week for two 
 months every year. 
 
 57
 
 THE PREMATURITY OF HENRY 
 SOMERS 
 
 IT is an example of my friend Russell 
 Bantock's native generosity of mind that 
 as a boy he was never able to understand 
 that a gentleman could be without means. 
 As he grew older he had to realise that it 
 was sometimes the case, but he only came 
 to such a recognition by degrees. He 
 granted, at first, that a man who had a 
 title, or was son or nephew or first cousin 
 to one who had (I am stating the matter 
 roughly, but it came to that), might be a 
 gentleman and yet have no money. Later 
 on, he supposed that a man who was in- 
 dubitably a gentleman and yet without 
 money either had lost his money or had 
 not yet come into the money he was des- 
 58
 
 PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 
 
 tined to have. I have seen his face cloud 
 sometimes when his father has been relat- 
 ing the circumstance that he began life 
 with only eight hundred a year, but then 
 he remembered his father's present afflu- 
 ence (even in these dark days destined to 
 arrive) and his face cleared. But it is 
 only within quite a recent date, and under 
 protest, as it were, that he has been able 
 to admit that a gentleman possibly may 
 not have, have had, or be going to have, 
 money. And by " money " he means an 
 income sufficient, in his own beautiful 
 phrase, " to do things decently." I have 
 sometimes wondered if he made an excep- 
 tion of my own case ; I think, I trust, 
 that he did. 
 
 Since he has had to recognise the sad 
 fact of the conjunction of gentlemanhood 
 with poverty, he has been very bitter over 
 the neglect of certain people who (as gen- 
 tlemen, in Russell's generous theory) 
 ought to have money, somehow or other 
 59
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 to procure it. He is extremely angry 
 with the people who, in pursuit of some 
 alleged ambition of merit in art, write or 
 paint things which do not sell, when they 
 might (conceivably) make money by 
 painting or writing something else. He 
 is inclined to be sceptical about the said 
 ambition, and to think that what prevents 
 their money-getting is mere incapacity, 
 and, indeed, I agree with him that the 
 people who might, but do not, make 
 money in this high-principled country are 
 extremely few. But he is more angry 
 still with the people who marry on insuf- 
 ficient means on less, let us say, than 
 two thousand a year. To marry on a 
 thousand a year is, in Russell's opinion, 
 gross carelessness ; to marry on less than 
 that is an act of criminal folly. In his 
 own case, as I have mentioned, he thinks 
 two thousand a year altogether insufficient. 
 Imagine, therefore, his decorously ex- 
 pressed, but keenly-felt indignation when, 
 60
 
 PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 
 
 some few years ago, his sister Maud an- 
 nounced her promise to marry a man who 
 had only five hundred a year ! Mr. and 
 Mrs. Bantock were equally angry, no 
 doubt, but I think that with Russell the 
 wrong went home more bitterly. He 
 loved his sister. This cruel thing that 
 she contemplated was a crushing blow. 
 Everything that man could do but I 
 anticipate. I am able to give a complete 
 history of the affair from the beginning, 
 for both Mrs. Bantock and Russell con- 
 fided in me freely concerning the various 
 moves in the game if one can call such 
 a disastrous business a game valuing, 
 I hope, my complete sympathy with their 
 sorrow and appreciation of their wisdom. 
 Maud Bantock's fellow-conspirator in the 
 infamy it is best to call things by their 
 right names was a young man called 
 Henry Somers. He had been a con- 
 temporary and acquaintance of Russell 
 Bantock at Oxford, and to this fact owed 
 61
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 his introduction (so ill-requited!) to the 
 Bantock family. His parents died when 
 he was a boy, and left him an income of 
 five hundred a year. Now this was all 
 very well in his youth ; it enabled him to 
 be in a fairly good set at Oxford more 
 or less, in fact, in Russell's own. But as 
 an income on which to marry Maud Ban- 
 tock ! Yet he had no more, and 
 his only other asset was an Australian 
 uncle who might leave him money, but 
 would not promise to da so, and .declined 
 altogether to give him an allowance. He 
 had been called to the Bar, at the time 
 of his monstrous proposal, and professed 
 to be working hard in the chambers of an 
 eminent barrister ; but, of course, he could 
 not expect to get any considerable practice 
 for himself for some years. 
 
 On the other hand, Maud Bantock 
 
 could not expect any considerable sum 
 
 for dowry. In the first place, the Ban- 
 
 tocks lived nearly up to their income, and 
 
 62
 
 PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 
 
 Mrs. Bantock often said she did not know 
 in what way she could possibly economise, 
 consistently with their position. In the 
 second place, it was the ambition of both 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bantock, but more es- 
 pecially of Mrs. Bantock, that Russell 
 should take eventually a place in the world 
 worthy of his parentage and talents, and 
 for that nearly all the money they had 
 would be required ; in other words, he 
 was to inherit almost everything and to 
 found a family. There was, therefore, 
 little left for Tom, who was destined, at 
 that time, for the Church, and for the two 
 girls. It is true that if either of them 
 were to be sought in marriage by a very 
 rich man who insisted on a substantial 
 dowry, or by a man of really unexcep- 
 tionable position in society, her parents 
 would have stretched a point, as would 
 have been reasonable. But it was absurd 
 for Maud to think that they would go 
 out of their way to encourage such a 
 63
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 deplorable marriage as one with Henry 
 Somers. 
 
 However, that audacious suitor went 
 calmly to Mr. Bantock and expressed his 
 wishes. Mr. Bantock told him that his 
 income was altogether insufficient, and 
 advised him to talk it over with Mrs. 
 Bantock. He actually had the insolence 
 to go to her. At first, as she told me, 
 she could hardly believe her ears, and 
 then thought he must be joking, but he 
 assured her of his seriousness. Now, 
 Mrs. Bantock, generally most careful not 
 to hurt people's feelings, can be in a good 
 cause remarkably frank ; she told Somers 
 plainly that he was a fortune-hunter. He 
 did not take the rebuke in good part, but 
 forgot himself so far as to be quite rude to 
 Mrs. Bantock, and he made the idiotic 
 assertion that he preferred Maud not to 
 have a penny. Thereupon, Mrs. Ban- 
 tock for his own sake, as well as that of 
 everybody concerned, forbade him the 
 64
 
 PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 
 
 house. Somers uttered something very 
 like a defiance, and went off. That, as 
 it were, was the first act. 
 
 Russell was at once informed of the 
 disaster, and his sister not being present 
 for one of her very few faults was a 
 somewhat hasty temper freely expressed 
 his disgust with Henry Somers, who ought, 
 he said, to have known better ; but you 
 never, as he said also, know what these 
 middle-class people will do. I am not 
 sure in which sense he used the term 
 middle-class, but I supposed he discarded 
 the ordinary classification (by which he 
 and Somers would have been on a par) in 
 favour of a more subtile and genuine dis- 
 tinction : but I am digressing. Maud 
 Bantock was summoned, and directly, to 
 the consternation of Mrs. Bantock and 
 Russell, sided with Somers, and an- 
 nounced, with tears, her intention of marry- 
 ing Somers or remaining a spinster. That 
 was terrible: what was to be done? 
 5 6 5
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 At first, in his manly rage, Russell pro- 
 posed to horsewhip Somers, but reflected 
 that Somers would certainly make a vul- 
 gar fight of the proceeding, which would 
 have been annoying. He then decided, 
 much against the grain, to interview 
 Somers in a less violent manner, and 
 went for that purpose to the Temple, 
 where Somers lived. Russell described 
 the interview to me afterwards. He be- 
 gan by asking Somers if he were mad, 
 and Somers answered, brusquely and 
 rather rudely, that he was sane. Rus- 
 sell then enquired on what he proposed 
 that Maud and himself should live. He 
 replied on his five hundred a year until 
 he should make money at the Bar. Rus- 
 sell pointed out the impossibility of this 
 plan, and Somers replied that it was not 
 at all impossible ; they would live, he 
 said, in a little flat somewhere ; they 
 would have enough to eat, and even 
 for rational amusement, in a quiet way. 
 66
 
 PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 
 
 Russell told me he felt it useless to argue 
 
 o 
 
 with such imbecility, but he did ask Som- 
 ers how they could possibly entertain. 
 " Oh," was the foolish answer, " we shall 
 entertain one another and such of our 
 friends as are not dependent on a butler 
 for the entertainment." The folly of this 
 stung Russell to say that Somers was not 
 acting like a gentleman, whereupon Som- 
 ers, with inconceivable brutality, told him 
 to leave the room. 
 
 The next step, since Maud remained 
 obdurate, was that Mrs. Bantock wrote 
 to Somers to say that the best course 
 would be to wait for a year, during which 
 he was not to go to Grosvenor Place nor 
 correspond with Maud, and that then they 
 would see what could be done. Somers 
 was quite insensible to the generosity of 
 this proposal. He replied (without even 
 thanking Mrs. Bantock) that he would be 
 no better off at the end of a year, and saw 
 no reason for waiting. He added, in his 
 67
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 dull, prosaic, legal fashion, that Maud was 
 of age and could choose for herself. Mrs. 
 Bantock, Mr. Bantock, and Russell then 
 appealed to Maud's sense of duty, of pro- 
 priety, of piety, to wait a year. Finally 
 she consented to this, a concession which, 
 to some extent, restored one's injured con- 
 fidence in her. But I ought to say that 
 I believe her original foolishness was in- 
 spired by 'a quality good in itself, though 
 misplaced. I would not deny her share 
 of the Bantock virtues, though, perhaps, 
 she has shown less regard for me than the 
 others. Mrs. Bantock became cheerful 
 again ; she was convinced that time and 
 the wise exclusion would cure the poor 
 girl of her infatuation for one who, Mrs. 
 Bantock impressed upon her, was quite 
 unworthy in every way. And so ended 
 the second act of the comedy, if the word 
 can be used of occurrences so painful. 
 
 About this time bad Cousin Charlotte 
 arrived in town, and Mrs. Bantock ap- 
 68
 
 PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 
 
 pealed to her for sympathy. With her 
 usual perversity she at once declared her- 
 self on the side of Sorners, who, she chose 
 to say, seemed to be a sensible and spirited 
 young man. I heard a fragment of con- 
 versation which seemed to turn on the 
 matter as I entered the drawing-room after 
 dinner. Cousin Charlotte was speaking to 
 Maud. " And you consented to wait a 
 year ? " she was saying. " Ah, well then, 
 my dear, perhaps it 's as well you should 
 wait. If you 'd refused I 'd have helped 
 you : I won't now till the year 's up." 
 Mrs. Bantock looked very angry indeed 
 at this open encouragement of folly. I 
 will not repeat, though I cannot retract, 
 the word I used before. But Cousin 
 Charlotte's stay in town was that year 
 very short, and she did no particular 
 harm. She went and we breathed again. 
 Maud remained docile. 
 
 The third act came a month later. It 
 was a joyful and altogether satisfactory act. 
 69
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 But its opening was ominous. I had, 
 one afternoon, the pleasure of meeting 
 Mrs. Bantock at the house of a mutual 
 friend, and she kindly permitted me to 
 walk back with her, to carry some books 
 she had borrowed of her hostess. As we 
 neared the house in Grosvenor Place a 
 man was seen to descend the steps. He 
 came towards us : it was Henry Somers ! 
 We stopped instinctively, amazed. Mrs. 
 Bantock looked sternly at him. He came 
 up with a brazen smile, taking off his 
 hat. 
 
 " Mr. Somers ! " she exclaimed, " I 
 thought it was agreed have you act- 
 ually been to my house ? " 
 
 "Yes," he said, with horrible cheerful- 
 ness, I noticed at this point that he 
 was apparently excited about something. 
 "I was sorry to miss you. Miss 
 Bantock was out too." 
 
 " You asked for her ! " Mrs. Bantock 
 exclaimed in just indignation. " Mr. 
 70
 
 PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 
 
 Somers, this is contrary to every idea 
 that a gentleman " 
 
 " Yes, yes," he interrupted, " but I 
 thought you would n't mind for once. 
 The fact is, I came to say good-bye. I 
 can't wait this year ; so I came to release 
 Maud and say good-bye for ever, and all 
 that. I 'm going out of England to-mor- 
 row." Mrs. Bantock, who has a very 
 kindly nature, became more friendly, and 
 held out her hand. " Good-bye," she 
 said ; " you 'd better write to Maud and 
 explain ; it is for the best." 
 
 " By the way," said Somers, as he shook 
 hands with her, " I hope you '11 be inter- 
 ested to hear my uncle in Australia 's dead 
 and left me his money. It's between 
 seven and eight thousand a year. It's 
 quite true," he added, no doubt noticing 
 Mrs. Bantock's surprise ; " here 's the 
 cable." Mrs. Bantock read the tele- 
 gram and returned it to Somers. She 
 seemed hardly to know what to say. 
 71
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 He put it calmly in his pocket and be- 
 gan to move off. Then Mrs. Bantock, 
 thinking, I suppose, of her child's hap- 
 piness, spoke. " Stop," she said ; " come 
 in and talk to me. You can't mean " 
 
 " I 'm afraid I can't," the unconscionable 
 Somers answered : " I Ve an appointment. 
 I meant what I said." He smiled, took 
 off his hat, and before another word could 
 be said was walking away. 
 
 Mrs. Bantock walked on slowly to the 
 house ; she was slightly flushed, and did 
 not speak. She stopped at the steps. 
 " Go after him," she said ; " say I want 
 to speak to him. If he won't come, ask 
 him to come to dinner, say I particularly 
 wish it. That will show," she said to her- 
 self, but still aloud, "if he means it he 
 can't mean it." I rushed up Grosvenor 
 Place, overtook Somers, and gave my mes- 
 sage. He laughed, with a horrid sort of 
 sneer. " Oh, say I shall be delighted to 
 dine," he answered. 
 
 72
 
 PREMATURITY OF HENRY SOMERS 
 
 It seems that the little speech he had 
 made about saying good-bye was actually 
 his idea of a joke, a sort of " score," he 
 has been heard to say, over my friends. 
 It was almost inconceivably bad taste, but 
 Mrs. Bantock, for the sake of her child, 
 forgave him that, as she forgave him all 
 the pain his premature conduct had cost 
 her. His uncle was really dead, had 
 really left him the money. He married 
 Maud Bantock at the end of the season, 
 and I believe they are happy. Still, I 
 cannot help thinking that a man of his 
 eccentricity and cynicism (as shown in the 
 wretched five-hundred-a-year business) is 
 not a good son-in-law for Mrs. Bantock. 
 However, though he and Russell have 
 never been really reunited, she has never 
 
 since the afternoon I have described 
 
 uttered one word of complaint. 
 
 73
 
 VI 
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 PERHAPS the gravest trial I have to record 
 of my friends worse than Merry weather, 
 than Cousin Charlotte, even than Somers 
 in his five-hundred-a-year days was 
 occasioned by the extraordinary proceed- 
 ings of Tom Bantock on his leaving 
 Oxford a year ago. There is something, 
 if not in names generally, at least in those 
 by which people call their relations or in- 
 timate friends : it may be significant that 
 while Russell Bantock was never called 
 anything but Russell, his younger brother 
 was always known by the heartier but less 
 dignified name of Tom. There was cer- 
 tainly a great difference between the two 
 brothers. As a boy at school, Tom, 
 74
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 though sometimes in scrapes, seemed to 
 be quite correct in his general ideas and 
 behaviour, but, in the freer life of Oxford, 
 he quickly showed that he did not share 
 Russell's perfect prudence, and when he 
 came down for good it was found alas ! 
 that he could not emulate, nay, that he 
 even despised Russell's absolute correct- 
 ness in every sphere of life, in deport- 
 ment, in amusements, and in the choice 
 of acquaintances. I would not blame 
 Tom too severely ; he was cheerful, 
 high-spirited, and good-natured, and these 
 lighter virtues may to some extent be set 
 against the more sterling qualities of his 
 brother, whose preoccupation with cor- 
 rectness does, perhaps, result in a de- 
 meanour a trifle too severe. But at this 
 period poor Tom went very much too 
 far. 
 
 As I have related, it was the intention 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Bantock that Russell 
 should inherit nearly all his father's prop- 
 75
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 erty, and take an even higher position in 
 English life ; he was to go into Parlia- 
 ment later on, and it was hoped, by his 
 wealth and superior talent, would die the 
 first of a line of titled and securely settled 
 Bantocks. So that Tom could not ex- 
 pect more than a moderate allowance. 
 It was intended that he should go into 
 the Church : there was a living attached 
 to Mr. Bantock's estate in the country, 
 and it was hoped that Tom might rise to 
 be a Dean or a Canon, and in that way 
 contribute to the position of his family. 
 When he first went to Oxford, Tom 
 acquiesced in this really nice idea for his 
 future, though without much enthusiasm. 
 But then came that natural and excus- 
 able on the ground of his beautifully 
 joyous temperament but most unfor- 
 tunate period of wildness, most unfortu- 
 nate indeed for the plan entertained for 
 his future, since it resulted in his being 
 sent down for good at the end of his 
 76
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 second year. The difficulty was not, of 
 course, insuperable. After a decent in- 
 terval, and residence at a theological col- 
 lege, Tom might still have been ordained. 
 But a greater difficulty arose : Tom re- 
 fused to go into the Church. He said 
 that he was not fit for it, and had no 
 inclination for it whatever. 
 
 Everybody argued with him. Mr. 
 Bantock pointed out that in the Church 
 he would be comfortably provided for in 
 life ; Russell insisted on the necessity that 
 a man who is not rich should have a pro- 
 fession undeniably that of a gentleman ; 
 I think Mrs. Bantock enlarged on the 
 good he would be able to do. For my 
 part, I explained to him over and over 
 again that those who are wild in youth 
 often make the best clergymen. He 
 would listen to no argument, and mine he 
 even repelled with a contumely which I 
 am determined to forget. It had finally 
 to be acknowledged that, for Tom Ban- 
 77
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 tock, the Church was no longer in 
 question. 
 
 What was to be done ? Tom seemed 
 to have no idea on the subject at all. He 
 said that he would not mind reading for 
 the Bar, but Mr. Bantock was convinced 
 that he would never make money at that, 
 and, in any case, it must be a long 
 time before he could. The army was 
 possible by way of the militia, but that 
 was an expensive course, and one likely to 
 encourage Tom in what seemed to be 
 constitutional idleness I regret to say. 
 Russell objected to his going into the 
 Bank, foreseeing troubles and complica- 
 tions from his presence there ; besides, 
 there would be no room for another part- 
 ner, especially for one who brought in no 
 capital of his own. The Stock Exchange 
 was suggested, but nobody believed in 
 Tom's capacity to make money there. 
 And it was stated forcibly by Russell, in 
 an extremely wise argument, wise beyond 
 73
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 his years, that while commercial pursuits 
 were excellent for the younger sons of the 
 aristocracy, for the younger sons of those 
 whose position, however excellent, was in 
 a way based upon money, the profession, 
 as such, of a gentleman was imperative. 
 If only Tom could be made the secretary 
 of a statesman one with good social 
 connections or if an opening could be 
 found for him in the diplomatic service ! 
 But, alas ! no such opening presented 
 itself. 
 
 Meanwhile, Tom stayed at home doing 
 nothing, and, I regret to say, vexed the 
 peace of the Bantock family by sordid dis- 
 cussions about money. His habits were 
 extravagant. He did not spend, of course, 
 so much money as his brother, but he 
 spent it so foolishly so wickedly, as 
 Mrs. Bantock was obliged to tell him. 
 That is to say, he would give dinners to 
 people whom he professed to like, but 
 who could be of no use to him socially, at 
 79
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 all, and he would go and bet at race 
 meetings to which nobody went, nobody, 
 that is to say, except those who were inter- 
 ested in racing. Then, again, he would 
 disappear for a week or two, and it would 
 leak out that he had been hunting, a pur- 
 suit in which, it is true, he met some really 
 nice people, but which was not worth the 
 money he wasted on it. Of course, he soon 
 found himself in pecuniary difficulties. 
 
 I remember very well the painful scene 
 which ensued when this fact first became 
 known. As it has been related, Cousin 
 Charlotte, showing for once her better 
 nature, had paid Tom's debts when he 
 left Oxford ; since then he had received an 
 allowance which should have been ample 
 for his needs. Well, one morning I went 
 early to Grosvenor Place, Mrs. Bantock 
 having honoured me with a commission 
 to investigate some cases on the list of a 
 charitable society of which she was then 
 the energetic secretary. I called, in obe- 
 80
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 dience to a post-card, to take down the 
 names and addresses. I found Mrs. Ban- 
 tock, Russell, and Tom in the dining- 
 room, finishing breakfast, and was aware 
 at once that some discussion of an unpleas- 
 ant nature was in progress. As I entered 
 the room, Russell said : " We '11 discuss it 
 some other time," but Tom said, " Oh, 
 he does n't matter," a remark which 
 showed that after all Tom appreciated my 
 friendship, and the discussion went on. 
 It seemed that Mr. Bantock had received 
 that morning an intimation from a money- 
 lender that unless a certain sum over a 
 hundred pounds borrowed by Tom, 
 was paid at once, an action would be 
 brought against Tom. Mr. Bantock had 
 gone to the City before Tom was up, and 
 had deputed Mrs. Bantock and Russell to 
 speak seriously to him. The discussion 
 went on, and I report it verbally to show 
 what poor Mrs. Bantock and Russell had 
 to endure at this time. 
 6 8 1
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 " It is infamous," said Mrs. Bantock, 
 " after all we have gone through on your 
 account ! " 
 
 " Oh, you never went through any- 
 thing. Cousin Charlotte paid." 
 
 " If you insult me," Mrs. Bantock said 
 with dignity, " I must leave the room." 
 
 " Well, but look here/' the misguided 
 young man exclaimed, " it 's a beastly 
 shame. Russell has two thousand a year, 
 and I only have five pounds a week." 
 
 " My good fellow," Russell answered, 
 with admirable good-humour, " in the first 
 place I 'm your elder brother, and in the 
 second place I do some work." 
 
 " Oh, rot about elder brother," returned 
 the incorrigible Tom ; " you talk as though 
 the governor were a Duke. And as for 
 work, you don't do as much work in a 
 week as the cook does in a day, and that 's 
 more skilled work than yours into the 
 bargain. It 's beastly unfair." 
 
 Russell, of course, ignored this absurd 
 82
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 tirade, but Mrs. Bantock interposed on 
 his behalf. " Your brother," she said 
 severely to Tom, " spends his money 
 profitably ; you waste yours." Tom was 
 ready with a wickedly senseless retort. 
 " I know," he said contemptuously ; " he 
 spends his money in making a show 
 and ingratiating himself with people who 
 would n't care twopence about him if he 
 was poor. Russell 's a snob." Russell 
 could afford, of course, to ignore this 
 ridiculous charge which he had often, 
 quite unnecessarily, repudiated. But he 
 was naturally offended, and got up and 
 left the room. Mrs. Bantock continued 
 to speak gravely, but kindly, to Tom. 
 
 " You can't expect your father to pay 
 this," she said. " But, of course, some- 
 thing must be done. Perhaps your Cousin 
 Charlotte " Here Tom rudely inter- 
 rupted. " Why should she ? " he asked, 
 forgetting what kindness Cousin Charlotte 
 owed his family. " I simply can't ask 
 83
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 her. The governor must pay ; it 's 
 ridiculous to make all this fuss. You 
 can spare it easily, if it comes to that, 
 and I could have a decent allowance if 
 he did n't have all those confounded ser- 
 vants and carriages and rot." And then 
 he proceeded, to my consternation, to make 
 a personal attack on his mother, and, with 
 a strange, unconscious irony, strange even 
 in one so unfortunately distraught, he 
 chose the very point on which she proves 
 her superiority to a common, but dis- 
 astrous failing, that is, not giving way to 
 her native generosity and humouring peo- 
 ple's vices and extravagances, especially, 
 as an ordinary mother might, those of a 
 younger and less worthy son. " Why," 
 he said brutally I must really call it 
 so " if you gave me a quarter of the 
 money you spend on dress, as any other 
 mother would, I should be all right." 
 
 I expected that Mrs. Bantock would 
 crush him with a well-merited rebuke,
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 but I estimated her wonderful patience 
 too low. Instead she made a good-hu- 
 moured joke, and said, "I should like to 
 whip you ! " But Tom answered rudely: 
 " Do ; the exercise would do you good." 
 Mrs. Bantock rose and turned to me. 
 " Come to the drawing-room," she said, 
 " and I '11 give you that list. I can't stay 
 here to be insulted." But Tom inter- 
 posed. " All right," he said, " I '11 go." 
 He left the room, slamming the door. I 
 thought, when he was gone, that even 
 Mrs. Bantock might break down, after 
 all this brutality shown to her by one 
 she loved. But I was mistaken. She 
 turned at once to other matters and be- 
 gan with a remark which showed her 
 kindness to myself, an heroic courtesy 
 which added, if anything could, to my 
 admiration for her. "I'm afraid," she 
 said, " that Shoreditch is rather a long 
 way off. It 's so good of you to go for 
 me : I could n't find time myself. I 'ra 
 85
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 really quite grateful to you." And, if 
 she showed some acerbity, a little later 
 on, over my slowness in grasping all the 
 details of the charitable cases, as she dic- 
 tated the matters into which I was to 
 enquire, that, I am sure, was due to my 
 own stupidity, not to any loss of temper 
 in herself. 
 
 I learned afterwards that Mr. Bantock 
 paid the money-lender, but intimated to 
 Tom that he must find work on penalty 
 of losing his allowance. And then came 
 poor, mad Tom's crowning act of disre- 
 gard for the feelings of his family. 
 
 I was dining, a few weeks later, with 
 the Bantocks, who were alone. Dinner 
 was over, and everybody was content, 
 when Tom, who had been, I thought, 
 smiling to himself in an ominous manner 
 throughout dinner, exploded a horrible 
 bomb. " You '11 all be glad to hear," 
 he said, with almost diabolical calmness, 
 " that I Ve found some work. It 's got 
 86
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 to do with the only thing I really under- 
 stand, horses. A man I know, Rob- 
 inson, who 's a livery-stable keeper, has 
 given me a post as shower-off of horses. 
 That means I shall drive those kind of 
 skeleton waggonettes you see with car- 
 riage horses in them, and I shall try 
 the paces of horses he buys, and that 
 sort of thing. It's a very good thing 
 for me." 
 
 No one spoke. Tom leaned back in 
 his chair and sipped his port. Mrs. Ban- 
 tock broke the terrible silence. " Do you 
 know what you 're saying ? " she asked. 
 " Oh, yes," said Tom, " I never get 
 drunk here." Russell tried to open his 
 eyes with sarcasm. " Of course," he said, 
 " you think that a thing a gentleman can 
 do." It was quite thrown away. " Oh, 
 yes," said Tom, "it's honest work, or if 
 there's any cheating about it, that's the 
 boss's business. It won't disgrace my 
 long line of ancestry." Then Mr. Ban- 
 87
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 took found words to clothe his indignation. 
 " Do you mean to tell me," he asked, 
 " that you propose to be one of those 
 people driving those things I see about 
 the street ? Do you think I should rec- 
 ognise you ? " 
 
 " Don't trouble yourself," answered 
 Tom ; " in fact, I 'd rather you did n't 
 distract my attention from my horses." 
 " Tom ! " said Mrs. Bantock, almost tear- 
 fully, " you '11 break my heart with your 
 cruelty. Have you no regard for my 
 feelings ? " " Have you no regard for 
 your mother?" shouted Mr. Bantock: I 
 had never heard him shout before, and 
 admired his beautiful loyalty to his wife. 
 "Well," said Tom, "I did my best: I 
 waited till after dinner. But I don't see 
 why anybody should complain. You all 
 bully me to get work: now I've got it. 
 I defy you to prove it 's not as honourable 
 as being a clerk in an office." Mrs. Ban- 
 tock said : " You know we can never 
 88
 
 TOM'S PROFESSION 
 
 allow it." "Well," replied Tom, flip- 
 pantly, " make me your coachman instead. 
 I should do quite as well as that fool you Ve 
 got." Mrs. Bantock rose. " Once for 
 all, Tom," she said, "if I hear another 
 word of this, you leave the house." 
 
 We had a most uncomfortable ten 
 minutes when she was gone. I tried to 
 make a diversion, but nobody took any 
 notice of it. Russell said presently: "In 
 my opinion, Tom, it would be best if you 
 were to emigrate." And Tom burst out, 
 " You selfish brute ! If you say that again, 
 I '11 kick you." He rose and Russell 
 looked alarmed, not, of course, for him- 
 self, but for fear lest he might have to 
 chastise Tom. But Torn simply left the 
 room. I had never felt so uncomfortable 
 at the Bantocks' before, and I confess I 
 felt ill-disposed towards the author of the 
 distress, poor, mad fellow that he was. 
 He gave up his foolish idea the next day, 
 but with a bad grace, on threat of the 
 89
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 failure of all supplies. But his vocation 
 in life still remains a problem. Every 
 effort is being made to have him appointed 
 attache somewhere, but so far without 
 success. Even this great trial, however, 
 is borne by the Bantocks with outward 
 calm. If we all could imitate them ! 
 
 9 o
 
 VII 
 
 MOSS 
 
 I HOPE that, in my account of the Ban- 
 tock family, I have not given the impres- 
 sion that they value mere wealth, as such. 
 That would be a cruel slander. Of course, 
 for the beautiful life they lead a life of 
 which it is my ambition in some sort to 
 convey the atmosphere to you wealth 
 is necessary. But they would be the first 
 of all people to disclaim the vulgarity 
 which cares for mere money when it is 
 not united with refinement. I have heard 
 them speak with disdain of people, far 
 richer than themselves, who lack refine- 
 ment ; people who are not really nice at 
 all, and know nobody. Even for worldly 
 success, as Russell once pointed out to 
 9 1
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 me, " It 's not enough for a man to be 
 rich, he must have tact as well." Con- 
 sequently, as I have said, they contemn 
 even the very rich when their riches pro- 
 cure them nothing but vulgar pleasures. 
 
 A striking application of this admirable 
 principle was afforded by the case of a 
 man called Moss. Moss was of very 
 humble origin and of no literary educa- 
 tion. He had left England, I believe, in 
 the capacity of assistant to the cook on 
 board the steamer in which he sailed. 
 He had made a large fortune in Aus- 
 tralia : in the beginning, I have heard, 
 by opening a small eating-house in the 
 vicinity of some newly-discovered mines ; 
 then by importing thither champagne, of 
 his own manufacture, in enormous quanti- 
 ties; and, finally, by the acquisition of 
 mines and the formation of numerous 
 companies. At the time of this relation, 
 he was newly returned to his native coun- 
 try ; as illiterate and, I should think, even 
 92
 
 MOSS 
 
 more vulgar than when he left it, but im- 
 mensely rich and in a position to confer 
 favours on people by giving them early 
 information about his companies. For 
 example (I explain for fear you may be 
 ignorant of these matters), if Moss were 
 to inform you that, by applying at once, 
 you might acquire shares in a new com- 
 pany, and you did so, you were quite 
 certain to make a large profit by selling 
 them when he informed you that their 
 price was at its highest ; a brief period 
 after which they would decline in value 
 very considerably. I say that Moss was 
 in a position to confer these favours. I 
 am bound to add that he very seldom 
 conferred them, preferring to make all 
 the money himself, and that he not in- 
 frequently failed to give the selling-out 
 order until the shares had gone down 
 with a rush. Well, Russell met this 
 Moss man in the City, and formed a sort 
 of acquaintance with him ; he invited him 
 93
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 to dine at his club at the inferior of his 
 two clubs and at Grosvenor Place, and 
 shortly afterwards, when the Bantocks 
 were on the point of leaving town for 
 their country house (it was at the end 
 of the season), he suggested that Moss 
 should be asked down for a few days. 
 
 Immediately the true refinement of the 
 Bantocks appeared. Mrs. Bantock said 
 emphatically that Moss was a vulgar little 
 man and quite impossible. Mr. Bantock 
 and Russell at once agreed with her. 
 And this, in spite of the fact that Moss 
 had at least four millions of money ! 
 
 But, of course, it is one thing to be 
 conscious of a man's vulgarity, and quite 
 another to refuse to invite him to your 
 house. Russell adduced many arguments 
 why Mrs. Bantock should not refuse. 
 He believed that Moss might be induced 
 to grant the Bantocks some facilities in 
 the way of investments and some profit- 
 able business in connection with the Bank ; 
 94
 
 MOSS 
 
 and therefore, he said, they should be 
 grateful to the fellow even in advance. 
 It would be a kindly action to invite 
 Moss to the country at once, because, 
 being so lately arrived in England, he 
 knew almost nobody outside the City, 
 whereas he was not likely (such is the 
 sordid condition of English society) to 
 remain in that condition for long. It was 
 therefore essential, if they wished to be 
 really kind to him, to ask him at once, 
 before he was taken up by other people. 
 The invitation would certainly please 
 him ; he had never been in a country 
 house, at least since his early youth, when 
 he held a subordinate post in the stables 
 of one, and even then he never pene- 
 trated beyond the kitchen. This little 
 sally on Russell's part amused us all very 
 much, but his serious arguments con- 
 vinced his parents of the wisdom the 
 kindness, rather of his suggestion. 
 Mrs. Bantock consented to ask Mr, 
 95
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 Moss to the country. " There 's one 
 mercy," she said ; " the man has n't a 
 wife." But she went on to lament the 
 divorce of wealth from refinement. 
 " There ought to be a law," she said, 
 " against people like that having money 
 at all ! " Russell, however, was more tol- 
 erant, and remarked that Moss was not 
 such a very bad fellow, after all. " We 
 can't all be gentlemen," he added gen- 
 erously ; " Moss is quite a good-natured 
 little man." Indeed, when it had been 
 decided to invite him, it was generally 
 agreed that Moss had redeeming qualities, 
 and it seemed almost as though the Ban- 
 tocks wished to excuse their kindness 
 towards him ; but that, surely, called for 
 no justification. 
 
 I am bound to say that Cousin Char- 
 lotte seized on this little point (when she 
 heard of the invitation) and distorted the 
 Bantocks' motives with a perversity I 
 thought almost disgusting, and which, I 
 96
 
 MOSS 
 
 am sure, she cannot have meant seriously. 
 " Oh, what 's the use," she said brutally, 
 " of pretending you like him ? You 
 know you think him an objectionable 
 little beast, and you only ask him to get 
 what you can out of him." " How can 
 you say such things, Charlotte ? " Mrs. 
 Bantock interposed, justly offended. 
 " Oh, I don't blame you," Cousin Char- 
 lotte went on ; " everybody does it. It 's 
 very clever of you to be first in the field 
 and choose your time. In a few weeks, 
 he won't think anything of you ; he '11 
 know a lot of people with fat titles, and 
 won't look at you then. Why, even I 
 could be of more use to him than you. 
 Don't be alarmed ; I won't try to cut you 
 out. Yes ; it 's very clever of you. But 
 you ought to make sure of the quids pro 
 quo " she condescended to this vulgar 
 joke ! " Have you got an agreement in 
 black and white ? " (Of course nobody 
 answered this coarse question.) "You 
 7 97
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 should have. He 's sure to do you out 
 of it, if he can. It 's all a matter of busi- 
 ness ; everybody does this sort of thing 
 nowadays more 's the pity. I don't 
 blame you, my dear Flora ; only don't, 
 for Heaven's sake, talk cant about liking 
 the little brute." I think Cousin Char- 
 lotte's comments were almost the worst 
 part of the trial caused by Moss, but he 
 himself was a dreadful infliction. 
 
 I travelled down with him from Char- 
 ing Cross. Our cabs drew up at the 
 same moment. He was a little, fat, oily 
 man with beady eyes and a monstrous 
 nose ; about forty years old. He seemed 
 to have been lunching well, and was jovial 
 in manner. " Come along," he said ; " my 
 man '11 get the tickets. You don't mind 
 travelling first class ? " I wondered if he 
 would present me with my ticket, but when 
 I tendered the money to him, he accepted 
 it without demur. His conversation on 
 the journey was not agreeable. " Let 's 
 98
 
 MOSS 
 
 see," was one of his remarks, " you write 
 things, don't you ? What do you call it 
 author, are n't you ? " I did not no- 
 tice in him, by the way, as, indeed, I 
 have never noticed in anybody, that awe 
 of literary people with which the illiterate 
 are sometimes credited in books. I re- 
 plied that I was an author, in a sort of 
 way. " Is n't much in it, is there ? " he 
 asked. I did not quite understand what 
 he meant, but I answered that it was a 
 matter of opinion. " I mean, you don't 
 get much out of it, do you ? " he contin- 
 ued. " For example, how much a year 
 do you suppose you make ? " The sum 
 was so trifling that it seemed almost in- 
 decent to mention it to a millionaire. 
 However, I told him. " My stars ! " 
 he said ; " why, a bar-man in Gamboolie 
 makes more than that. Why on earth 
 don't you chuck it ? " I replied feebly 
 that I liked it, and he gave me a look of 
 undisguised contempt. During the rest 
 99
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 of the journey our conversation was fitful 
 and limited. 
 
 But Moss's spirits, depressed by his 
 temporary association with one so poor 
 as myself, revived when he saw Russell 
 at the station. They greeted each other 
 with great cordiality. Soon, however, 
 Russell needed all his self-control to 
 support Moss's garrulity and frankness, 
 and there was a moment when I thought 
 it would give way. We passed a pretty 
 country girl, and Moss leaned out of the 
 carriage to inspect her at greater advan- 
 tage. " That 's a nice piece," he said, 
 by the way, I make no attempt to re- 
 produce the peculiar offensiveness of his 
 accent and mispronunciation, " one of 
 your village belles, eh ? " "I 'm sure I 
 don't know," Russell answered shortly. 
 " Get out ! Ton know all right ; you 're 
 a judge," the dreadful man rejoined, and 
 gave a loathsome wink. Russell bit his 
 lip, but restrained himself admirably. I 
 100
 
 MOSS 
 
 confess that when we reached the house 
 Moss was more subdued. I think he 
 really had some feeling of proper awe for 
 Mrs. Bantock. Even during dinner he 
 was tolerably silent and respectful in his 
 manner towards her and Mr. Bantock, 
 and I really began to like him better. 
 
 His demoralisation began with the arri- 
 val of Cousin Charlotte, the next day. 
 My feeling that something painful would 
 happen did not deceive me. I heard her 
 talking to Mrs. Bantock before dinner, 
 Moss not having appeared. " The man 's 
 bored to death," said Cousin Charlotte. 
 " You must contrive to amuse him some- 
 how, or he won't do anything. I saw 
 him yawn to himself five times at tea- 
 time." " I 'm really so relieved," Mrs. 
 Bantock said ; " he 's so much quieter 
 than I expected much more subdued 
 than he was in London." " My dear 
 creature," returned Cousin Charlotte, 
 fancy calling Mrs. Bantock a creature ! 
 101
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 " I tell you he 's simply bored. I don't 
 suppose he 's a bit impressed by your 
 grand manner and all that, and when he 
 gets among people who play practical 
 jokes with him, he '11 hate the idea of you. 
 If he were enjoying himself, he 'd make a 
 noise. I shall draw him out." 
 
 Dinner that night was terrible. The 
 Bantocks had carefully abstained from 
 referring to Moss's past, especially the 
 early part of it ; Mrs. Bantock had said 
 she supposed that Australia was very in- 
 teresting, but that had been the only 
 reference to the topic ; the conversa- 
 tion had been about nice and interesting 
 people in England whom Moss ought to 
 know, but since he did not know them 
 at the time, his share had been small. 
 Cousin Charlotte changed that excellent 
 state of things altogether. She at once 
 began to question Moss about his early 
 days in Gamboolie, and the social habits 
 of the miners. By rapid degrees, Moss 
 
 102
 
 MOSS 
 
 became garrulous and even confidential. 
 Cousin Charlotte put him quite at his 
 ease by laughing and asking questions 
 in an interested manner, and, under her 
 encouragement, Moss grew louder and 
 louder, and more and more detailed. It 
 was most distressing. I do not deny 
 that Moss's stories were interesting ; on 
 the contrary, there was much human 
 character in them, and his racy manner 
 of relating them was not unamusing. 
 But they were not at all the kind of 
 stories that one likes to hear at the 
 Bantocks' : they were altogether out of 
 place. 
 
 But never for a moment did the Ban- 
 tocks relax their beautiful conception of 
 hospitality. I could see that neither 
 Mrs. Bantock nor Russell cared for 
 Moss's stories, which, indeed, were ab- 
 solutely unrefined, and when he was not 
 looking at them, they seemed weary and 
 even disgusted; as soon, however, as he 
 103
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 looked at them, they smiled brightly and 
 leaned forward with interest. Mr. Ban- 
 tock, as usual, said very little, but his 
 accustomed smile of benevolence never 
 failed. Moss went on and on. Some 
 of his stories were really coarse, and 
 sometimes I perceived, with a momen- 
 tary horror, that he was on the verge of 
 a word for which there could be no ex- 
 cuse ; however, he always saved himself 
 in that respect. " I know what 's due to 
 ladies," he said afterwards, with uncon- 
 scious irony. My fear that he might, at 
 any moment, go too far was a strain on 
 me, and several times I endeavoured to 
 change the conversation, when, to my 
 surprise, not only Cousin Charlotte, but 
 Mrs. Bantock refused to notice me ; it 
 was, no doubt, another instance of her 
 kindly tolerance of Moss. Indeed, so far 
 did she go in this direction that I heard 
 her say to Cousin Charlotte, outside the 
 door : " My dear Charlotte, I 'm very 
 104
 
 MOSS 
 
 much obliged to you ! " She even thanked 
 her persecutor ! 
 
 Cousin Charlotte departed two days 
 later, but Moss stayed for a week. I 
 thought, when she left, that he would re- 
 sume his more fitting demeanour. But 
 Moss, having got his head as it were, kept 
 it. He rattled away, cutting jokes, and 
 going so far as to chaff Mr. Bantock, who 
 bore it smilingly,'though he did not reply. 
 In fact, nobody could ever think of any- 
 thing appropriate to say to him except 
 Tom, and Tom, I am sorry to say, 
 descended to his level and returned him 
 joke for joke. He professed to like Moss, 
 but he treated him without any respect, 
 whereas the others were always care- 
 fully polite to him. Tom called Moss 
 " Ikey," which, I am told, is a sportive 
 variant of Isaac, Moss's Christian name. 
 Oddly enough, Tom was the only mem- 
 ber of the Bantock family for whom 
 Moss has subsequently professed any re- 
 105
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 gard. He has asked Tom to dinner 
 several times. 
 
 But to the other Bantocks he has 
 shown an extraordinary, almost a wicked, 
 ingratitude. It is true that he enabled 
 Mr. Bantock and Russell to make a few 
 thousand pounds in connection with a 
 Company, and that he sent Mrs. Bantock 
 a small nugget of gold. But that was a 
 very small return his opportunities con- 
 sidered for their kindness and hospi- 
 tality. Virtue is its own reward, but one 
 does expect (as Mrs. Bantock said to me 
 in confidence) some little gratitude from 
 people. Moss has been associating with 
 people who have titles and so forth as 
 Russell says, one hardly knows which to 
 despise the most, Moss's snobbishness or 
 their sordid encouragement of him and 
 he has completely dropped the Bantocks. 
 It is an absurd phrase to use of Moss, 
 but it expresses the fact. Nevertheless, 
 the Bantocks speak of him with very little 
 1 06
 
 MOSS 
 
 bitterness. Mrs. Bantock sometimes re- 
 fers with much humour to the trial of 
 having him in the house, and Russell says 
 it is foolish to be kind to cads like Moss. 
 That is all. 
 
 107
 
 VIII 
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 UNDER all her trials, only twice or -thrice 
 have I known Mrs. Bantock fail to retain 
 complete control of her naturally spirited, 
 but patiently schooled temper; only once 
 have I known her administer a physical 
 rebuke. It is a bitter memory of my life 
 that of this unique event I myself was the 
 unhappy cause. 
 
 In spite of Mrs. Bantock's beautifully 
 robust appearance, she has told me that 
 she does not enjoy absolutely perfect 
 health. She has to be extremely careful. 
 It is imperative that she should have nine 
 hours' sleep and a certain amount of gentle 
 exercise every day. And, above all, her 
 doctor insists that it is absolutely necessary 
 108
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 for her to have a generous and nourishing 
 diet. She is indifferent to material things 
 (as one would expect from her lofty prin- 
 ciples and spiritual nature), and she does 
 not care what she eats, but her doctor 
 gives emphatic orders that her food must 
 be elaborate, to tempt her appetite, and 
 perfectly cooked, and that she must take 
 it at strictly regular hours. Her tea and 
 toast at half-past eight, her substantial 
 breakfast at nine, her sandwiches at twelve, 
 her lunch of several courses at two, her 
 tea with something solid at five, her dinner 
 (one of the very best in London) at a quar- 
 ter to eight, and her light and wholesome 
 supper at eleven, are all part of a carefully 
 thought-out and rigorous treatment. As 
 a consequence, meals are a solemn occasion 
 in the Bantock family, and theirs is the 
 most punctual house I know. Mrs. Ban- 
 tock does not mind anticipating the due 
 time of a meal, as when she has to dine 
 earlier than usual to go to the theatre, but 
 109
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 to have one later than usual is injurious 
 and even dangerous to her system. So 
 far as it is possible, again, she has to avoid 
 dining, or even lunching, at houses where 
 it is not certain the food will be unexcep- 
 tionable. All this, as she assures me, is a 
 great nuisance to her ; she hates to be 
 troubled with such trifles, and would be 
 thankful enough for a crust and a glass of 
 water. The doctor, however, is adamant 
 on the subject. I have to make this mat- 
 ter clear, that the gravity of the lament- 
 able event I am going to record may be 
 properly appreciated. 
 
 The Bantocks took a house in Scotland 
 one summer, and hospitably asked me to 
 stay a fortnight with them. At that time 
 Ethel Bantock had a fancy to learn Latin, 
 and I was glad to be of some assistance to 
 her in the task. Well, one morning, I 
 was looking over an exercise she had writ- 
 ten, the other men being out fishing, when 
 Mrs. Bantock entered the library. She 
 no
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 said she had just remembered a promise 
 to go and lunch with Mrs. Dunlop, a 
 neighbour, and Ethel was to come with 
 her. Ethel begged to be excused ; she 
 had a headache, and disliked Mrs. Dun- 
 lop. Mrs. Bantock said somebody must 
 go ; she hated driving alone, and besidesj 
 the coachman being the only available 
 man-servant, somebody must go to open 
 gates. Ethel suggested that I should 
 go, and finally I had the honour to be 
 chosen. 
 
 Now, the Dunlops' place was a two 
 hours' drive away, over a sparsely 
 inhabited and rather desolate country. 
 Something had happened to the open car- 
 riage, and, the day being extremely hot, 
 we went in a one-horse waggonette, since 
 the brougham was too stuffy. There 
 were three of us, Mrs. Bantock, the coach- 
 man, and I. We started about twelve 
 o'clock, and all went well for half the dis- 
 tance. Mrs. Bantock had taken a novel 
 in
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 to read, but the road was too rough, and 
 she occasionally spoke to me ; she was in 
 a cheerful mood, and I enjoyed the drive 
 very much. But when we had gone for 
 about an hour, the horse fell suddenly 
 lame dead lame and could not go 
 on. Mrs. Bantock rated the coachman 
 soundly, as he deserved, and enquired 
 what was to be done. The coachman was 
 of opinion that the horse could not drag 
 the load, even at a walk, without injury 
 to itself, and it was a valuable animal. 
 Then, gradually, the whole horror of the 
 situation came upon us. It was a deso- 
 late country, as I have said. There was 
 not a house anywhere near. It was one 
 o'clock. For Mrs. Bantock to walk seven 
 or eight miles on a hot day was out of the 
 question. But before the coachman or 
 I could go back to the house, or on to 
 the Dunlops', procure a fresh conveyance, 
 bring it back, and Mrs. Bantock could be 
 brought finally to one or the other house, 
 
 112
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 it would be nearly four o'clock, half-past 
 three at the earliest, even if she were to 
 walk until she was met. And the doctor 
 had ordered her the idea of ordering 
 Mrs. Bantock seems a paradox, almost 
 indecent, but it is the usual phrase 
 never, on any account, to lunch a minute 
 later than two o'clock ! Mrs. Bantock 
 and I looked at each other : blank impo- 
 tence was on our faces. 
 
 " We shall starve ! " said Mrs. Bantock. 
 It was characteristic of her kindly nature 
 that she included me in the visitation, 
 though, in fact, my anxiety was entirely 
 on her account. The tragic sentence fell 
 passionately on the air ; I had no reply. 
 
 The coachman suggested that the best 
 course would be for him to lead the horse 
 and the waggonette back to the house, and 
 return as quickly as possible with the 
 pony-chaise. I think he was glad to go ; 
 Mrs. Bantock had rebuked him with some 
 severity. So he went, with orders that 
 
 8 113
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 lunch was to be kept, and I remained in 
 attendance on his mistress. It is remark- 
 able that she wasted no idle words in lam- 
 entation or regret ; with a face of calm 
 though bitter resolution she walked, her 
 novel in her hand, to the little wood which 
 was beside the road. Fortunately, the 
 root of a tree made a natural seat on 
 which, with the help of the carriage rug, it 
 was found possible to make her tolerably 
 comfortable. I sat on the ground at her 
 feet, and watched the waggonette till it had 
 passed out of sight down the hill. She 
 began to read in silence. I felt very 
 awkward, I confess ; consolation was im- 
 possible, and I could think of nothing to 
 say. But presently an idea occurred to 
 me, one of those flashes which light a 
 gloomy situation as the lightning a murky 
 landscape. I remembered that from 
 the road, some two miles back, I had 
 seen a prosperous-looking farmhouse. 
 Surely it would be possible to procure 
 114
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 some food there ! At once I mentioned 
 the idea to Mrs. Bantock. Her equa- 
 nimity had been greatly tried, and she 
 seemed to be angry with me for not hav- 
 ing thought of it before I know it was 
 a very stupid lapse on my part. How- 
 ever, " Go at once," she said ; " bring 
 any thing they Ve got that 's eatable. 
 Make haste ! " And then, with the 
 thoughtfulness for others which never 
 deserts her, she added: "I'm so glad 
 you '11 get some lunch, after all." Not a 
 thought for herself! 
 
 I started at a brisk walk, and she called 
 after me, " Hurry ! " in that authoritative 
 tone which no wise person ever resists. 
 I broke into a run down the hill. It was 
 a very hot day, the sun was quite malig- 
 nant, but, in my zeal, I think I must have 
 done those two miles and a half in half an 
 hour. I arrived at the farm, fatigued and 
 in a disgusting state of heat, and, after 
 some difficulty with a couple of sheep-
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 dogs, succeeded in knocking at the door. 
 Fortunately, the farmer's wife was at home, 
 and proved herself a kind and sympathetic 
 person. She was well provided with food. 
 There was a cold chicken in the house, 
 and of this she made some pleasant-look- 
 ing sandwiches ; she added two hard- 
 boiled eggs, some cut bread and butter, 
 and some shortbread. So far, excellent. 
 The question of drink raised a difficulty, 
 however. The doctor, I knew, had or- 
 dered Mrs. Bantock to drink champagne 
 at lunch, but, of course, that could not be 
 had. The farmer's wife had milk, beer, 
 and whiskey that was all. Finally, I 
 decided to take a bottle of milk and some 
 whiskey-and-water in a bottle, the latter 
 in case Mrs. Bantock, after the trouble 
 she had gone, and was going, through, 
 might wish for a stimulant, even of that 
 coarse kind, in the absence of any other. 
 The bottles were packed on the top of the 
 food in a little hamper, which was care- 
 116
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 fully tied with string, and, with an injunc- 
 tion from the farmer's wife to handle it 
 with caution, I set out on my return 
 journey. 
 
 It was not an agreeable journey. The 
 sun, as I have said, was blazing, the road 
 was dusty and chiefly up-hill, the hamper 
 was heavy and extremely awkward to 
 carry. I was stimulated by the thought 
 that, if I made great haste, Mrs. Bantock 
 might yet have some lunch not long after 
 her usual time, so I made what haste I 
 could, running whenever there was an in- 
 terval of down-hill, but I confess that in 
 my weakness I almost cursed the day 
 that I was born. For one moment I 
 was tempted to think that the trial was 
 mine rather than Mrs. Bantock's, but I 
 remembered, in shame, the greater deli- 
 cacy of her frame and the danger to her 
 system, and hurried on. Presently I en- 
 tertained the idiotic idea that I might 
 make a short cut across country, and 
 117
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 diverged from the road. Three misad- 
 ventures punished the folly. The first 
 was unimportant, a mere scare from 
 another couple of sheep-dogs. The 
 other two were more serious, and, in- 
 deed, one or both of them must have 
 caused the horrible catastrophe to which 
 my narrative is hurrying. I had to scale 
 a low stone wall ; I balanced the hamper 
 on the top, but, as I swung over, my foot 
 caught it, and it rolled with me to the 
 ground. Further on, I had to jump a 
 stream ; I slipped on the further side, and 
 fell headlong, the hamper striking against 
 a stone. Breathlessly, I picked it up, and 
 hurried on. I panted, I stumbled, but 
 on, on I hurried, regained the road, and 
 felt with joy I must be near the goal. 
 
 At length, covered with mud and dust 
 and perspiration, I reached the brow of the 
 hill, and was refreshed by the sight of 
 Mrs. Bantock, leaning back against the 
 tree and reading her novel ; she looked 
 118
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 very cool and comfortable. When she 
 saw me, she took off her gloves in pre- 
 paration for the lunch, and graciously 
 came a step or two to meet me. At 
 first, she rebuked my slowness, but her 
 vein of humour never deserts her, even in 
 the keenest trial, and when she saw my 
 dreadful state, flushed, fiery-red as I was, 
 and with my knickerbockers and stock- 
 ings a mass of oozy mud from the stream, 
 she laughed heartily and good-humouredly 
 at my plight. She asked me what I had 
 got ; and when I told her, " Oh, come," 
 she said, " that 's capital ! " and, again not 
 thinking of herself, she added : " I 'm so 
 glad I was afraid you 'd feel the want 
 of lunch you 're a splendid forager ! " 
 Gratified by the compliment, I placed the 
 hamper on the root of the tree, undid the 
 string, and opened the lid. 
 
 I can hardly bear to tell you what I 
 saw. So long as 1 live, waking or sleep- 
 ing, it will haunt me. Both bottles were 
 119
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 broken ; sandwiches, eggs, bread and but- 
 ter, shortbread, everything was saturated 
 with milk and whiskey-and-water. There 
 was a terrible silence. I did not dare to 
 look Mrs. Bantock in the face ; nervously 
 I watched her action as she took up a 
 sandwich, looked at it, smelt it, and threw 
 it back in the basket. She did not speak, 
 but in a moment I had received the se- 
 verest slap on the face and ear that I 
 remember. 
 
 What is a slap on the face ? It is 
 nothing, and surely an offender should 
 be glad if he may by so quickly ended 
 a punishment so purge his offence. Be- 
 sides, it argued some intimacy between us. 
 I am sure Mrs. Bantock would not have 
 slapped me if she had not regarded me as 
 a friend. But for a second my only idea 
 was the pain ; it hurt very much. The 
 remembrance flashed through my brain 
 that Mrs. Bantock, as a girl, had done 
 gymnastics ; her arm was strong ; she 
 
 I2O
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 wore many rings, and they, in particular, 
 hurt me. We stood in silence another 
 moment. I took a fleeting glance at 
 Mrs. Bantock ; she was slightly flushed, 
 and was looking again into the hamper. 
 The tension was terrible ; I almost wished 
 that she would slap .me again to break it. 
 Presently she spoke : " If it had only 
 been the milk ! I think I could have 
 eaten them. But whiskey didn't you 
 know that I loathe whiskey ? I suppose 
 you brought it for yourself." The re- 
 proach was a little cruel and unmerited, 
 but I did not dare to reply to it. I 
 stammered apologies for my carelessness. 
 Mrs. Bantock did not reply to them, but 
 presently, with an effort of which few men 
 and women would have been capable, she 
 recovered her philosophic calm. "Take 
 that thing away," she said. I removed 
 the hamper, and she sat down on the 
 root again, and resumed her novel. It 
 was wonderful to see such resignation. 
 
 121
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 But I was horribly nervous. I did not 
 dare to speak ; I did not know what to 
 do. I stood foolishly, and soon she 
 looked up and said : " You may as well 
 sit down." It was a kind thought; I sat 
 down on the grass. At that time I would 
 have given the world for something to 
 distract my thoughts; a popular novel 
 would have been a priceless boon. 
 Time passed on leaden feet. At length, 
 after what seemed a year, the pony-chaise 
 arrived, and Mrs. Bantock rose, still in 
 silence. There was room only for two 
 in it, and the coachman was wanted to 
 look after the lame horse at the house. 
 So I had to walk, Mrs. Bantock kindly 
 expressing regret at the circumstance. I 
 left the hamper cursing it, I am afraid, 
 in my heart at the farm on the way, 
 and reached the house about five o'clock, 
 footsore, and with a heart most sore as 
 well ; I did not know if I was still in 
 disgrace. 
 
 122
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF THE HAMPER 
 
 On this point, my friend, with her 
 angelic kindness, soon relieved me. I 
 ate some cold meat in the dining-room, 
 and, too sad to go into the drawing-room 
 where I heard voices, I went to the de- 
 serted library, and sat with my face buried 
 in my hands. Presently, some one en- 
 tered ; I looked up, and Mrs. Bantock 
 stood before me, smiling a sweet smile of 
 forgiveness. Her first words were kind 
 and reassuring. " I 'm afraid you must 
 be dreadfully tired after your walk," she 
 said. I said it was nothing, and renewed 
 my apologies about the hamper. So en- 
 tirely had she overcome her just resent- 
 ment that she laughed. " Of course,'' 
 she said, " I was in fun when I pretended 
 to be angry." With such admirable tact 
 she spared my feelings, and never once 
 did she allude to the hamper again. Hers 
 is the goodness which not only forgives, 
 but forgets. 
 
 123
 
 IX 
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 I THINK that Carlyle would have admired 
 Mr. Bantock very much. A strong, 
 silent man Carlyle would have called him. 
 In fact, Mr. Bantock very seldom says 
 anything. He is content to do his work 
 in the world, from eleven till four every 
 day, with only an hour's interval for lunch 
 excepting a week now and then, and 
 two months in the summer when he takes 
 his well-earned rest. Even in his re- 
 laxations, at whist or golf, he indulges 
 in no speech beyond an occasional ex- 
 clamation. He says little at his own 
 table, though he is sometimes prone, as 
 I have said with the object of encour- 
 aging poor men like myself to enlarge 
 124
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 on his early struggles. Some time ago, 
 however, fate compelled him frequently 
 to argue and, finally, to make something 
 like a speech. 
 
 I have mentioned that Ethel Bantock 
 was at one time desirous to learn Latin. 
 It was a sign of an enquiring mind, and 
 she displayed that quality in other direc- 
 tions. Now, an enquiring mind is an 
 excellent thing in its way, and I wish to 
 give Ethel every credit for hers, but it is 
 apt, in youth, before it is corrected by 
 knowledge and wisdom, to lead its pos- 
 sessor into false conclusions. I have also 
 mentioned that, at an earlier stage, she 
 was attracted by the terribly unconven- 
 tional Miss Clavering. This showed 
 candour and breadth of view, which, 
 again, are excellent characteristics when 
 properly directed, though always a little 
 dangerous. I have reminded you of these 
 things to soften the shock, if possible, 
 when I tell you that, at the age of six- 
 125
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 teen, Ethel declared herself a convinced 
 Socialist. She contrived to get and read 
 most pernicious books on the subject. 
 She delivered herself of theories about 
 wealth of which the logical upshot would 
 have been that the Bantocks should divest 
 themselves of theirs. She found out the 
 number of hours during which omnibus- 
 conductors and people of that sort work 
 every day, and reproached Russell, and, 
 by implication, her own father, for not 
 working so much. She hinted that poor 
 Tom, who did no work, ought to starve. 
 She found out what the cottagers in the 
 country had to eat, and instituted ridicu- 
 lous comparisons between that and the 
 food consumed in her own house. I 
 remember that she once, taking up the 
 menu, at dinner, complained indignantly 
 of there being eight courses. Unfortu- 
 nately for her, Mrs. Bantock was present, 
 and said at once that if she heard any 
 more of that, Ethel should be put on a 
 126
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 cottager's diet and not appear in the 
 dining-room, a threat which quenched 
 her zeal for equality in that direction. 
 Mrs. Bantock sensibly remarked that 
 cottagers neither needed nor could appre- 
 ciate such cooking as was absolutely 
 necessary for herself. 
 
 In her mother's presence, indeed, Ethel 
 did not dare to ventilate her theories. 
 She tried to do so only twice : once on 
 the occasion I have mentioned, and once 
 when she said she wished half the money 
 spent on her dress to be given to the 
 poor. On this latter occasion, Mrs. 
 Bantock told her to leave the room, since 
 she would not leave off arguing. But 
 one summer, when I was staying in the 
 country, Mrs. Bantock had to go away 
 for a week on an errand of kindness and 
 pity : to nurse her aunt, a very rich and 
 ( I am sure) a most excellent old lady. 
 Then Ethel had a clear field and made a 
 most unscrupulous use of it. Mr. Ban- 
 127
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 tock is devoted to his children, and, per- 
 haps, too tolerant of their very few and 
 transitory faults. He was quite unable 
 in this case to adopt his wife's kind but 
 unflinching firmness. He began to argue. 
 Now, this was a most unwise step, be- 
 cause, like many most sagacious minds, 
 Mr. Bantock's is somewhat slow in its 
 working, whereas Ethel is nimble-witted. 
 So that, although her arguments were 
 absurd, and Mr. Bantock's sound and 
 well established, Ethel invariably had the 
 last word and an illusory appearance of 
 victory. At first I endeavoured to assist 
 my host, but Ethel turned on me with 
 such rudeness I might almost say with 
 such savagery that I was reduced to 
 silence dignified, I trust. 
 
 " Oh, you I " she said, " you dare n't 
 call your soul your own. You 're a born 
 slave. So long as you 're comfortable, 
 you don't care what injustice is done in 
 the world." 
 
 128
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 " I beg your pardon," I said ; " I care 
 very much." 
 
 " Nonsense. You Ve no spirit at all. 
 Look at the way you fall flat on your face 
 when mother bullies you." 
 
 I said I thought it was a privilege to 
 be criticised by Mrs. Bantock. 
 
 " That 's humbug," she returned. 
 " You 'd say it was a privilege if she 
 were to box your ears." I remembered 
 the incident of the hamper and was silent. 
 It would have been useless to try to ex- 
 plain my point of view to Ethel. She 
 went on : " It 's because you 're cowardly 
 and lazy. You care for nothing but being 
 comfortable. Tou need n't talk. But 
 look here, father, don't you see " and 
 so on. Of course, after this I preferred 
 to intervene infrequently. Russell was 
 away on a visit. Tom gave his father 
 no assistance, and, in fact, seemed to en- 
 joy his perplexity. I am afraid that Mr. 
 Bantock, who usually liked his meals, 
 9 129
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 found them an absolute torment during 
 this week. 
 
 Ethel returned to the sordid subject of 
 food, and insisted on the inequality be- 
 tween that of the Bantocks and that of the 
 surrounding cottagers. In vain Mr. Ban- 
 tock pointed out that brain-workers re- 
 quired a more nourishing diet. Ethel 
 laughed this argument to scorn, even go- 
 ing so far as to hint a disbelief in her 
 family's brain-work. She went on to say 
 that if brain-work was the consideration, 
 then great geniuses ought to fare better 
 than bankers and brewers, whereas the re- 
 verse was notoriously the case. It seemed 
 to her to be shocking that people who 
 produced great works of art should be 
 so ill-paid. Literary people, too, were 
 shamefully treated. I rather agreed with 
 this last remark and sighed sympatheti- 
 cally ; but Ethel did not welcome my 
 sympathy. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " I don't mean you and 
 130
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 your silly, rotten writings ; I 'm sure you 
 get quite as much as they deserve. I 
 mean people who write really great things, 
 things that make the world better." 
 
 o 
 
 Mr. Bantock said that, to his certain 
 knowledge, a popular novelist who banked 
 with him made five thousand a year, and 
 he had heard of a woman who got a thou- 
 sand a year by writing an article on Fashion 
 once a week. Ethel was quite angry, and 
 said excitedly that she did not mean those 
 people either. " Milton," she said, " only 
 got ten pounds for c Paradise Lost/ " and 
 to the remark that Milton died a long 
 time ago, she replied that she did not be- 
 lieve he would have got much more now. 
 
 It was monstrous, she said, that great 
 
 * * & 
 
 poets should be in want while people like 
 themselves lived in luxury. Then Mr. 
 Bantock pulled himself together to reply. 
 " My dear child," he said mildly, "the 
 pecuniary recompense given by the com- 
 munity to anybody is in proportion to his
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 usefulness. Your great poets are all very 
 well, but they are not useful ; they don't 
 increase the prosperity of a country. I 
 have no objection to them, I assure you, 
 none whatever; but it is absurd to sup- 
 pose that they ought to be paid large in- 
 comes like people who do the work of the 
 world." 
 
 " Such as successful music-hall sing- 
 ers ? " Ethel forcibly interrupted. 
 
 Mr. Bantock continued with great pa- 
 tience: "It 's impossible to argue with you 
 if you make absurd interruptions. Of 
 course I mean people who are really ne- 
 cessary to the world. You see I 'm argu- 
 ing on your own lines. I say nothing of 
 the rights of property, without which the 
 world could not last for a single minute." 
 
 " Well, but take your case, father : 
 how are you necessary to the world ? " 
 
 " I take care of its money." 
 
 " Yes ; but ought you to get, for that, 
 twice as much in a week as a clever writer 
 132
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 would make in a year, a really clever 
 writer ? And three times as much a year 
 as a Cabinet Minister? not that I think 
 much of them." 
 
 " Well, part of our income is your 
 mother's." 
 
 " That 's beer," said Ethel, contemptu- 
 ously, forgetting altogether Waterloo and 
 Trafalgar. 
 
 " And a very good thing, too," Mr. 
 Bantock replied with good-humour. 
 
 " But mother does n't make the beer," 
 Ethel said, an irreverence of thought 
 which, I confess, shocked me. 
 
 "Ah, there," said Mr. Bantock, "you 
 touch on private property. I can't argue 
 that with you." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because it 's self-evident." 
 
 " I don't see it. Won't you argue it, 
 father ? " 
 
 "No," said Mr. Bantock, firmly, "I 
 will not."
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 Ethel looked as though she had won. 
 I confess I was inclined to blame Mr. 
 Bantock for allowing these discussions at 
 all ; it was an amiable weakness, but a 
 weakness still. They went on at least 
 twice a day, and since Ethel would not 
 let me speak, I found them tedious. But 
 Mr. Bantock never really put his foot 
 down until the evening before Mrs. Ban- 
 tock was to return. Ethel, no doubt 
 aware that her reign of argument would 
 be at an end the next day, had collected 
 all her forces for a field-day, and, as ill- 
 luck would have it, the morning's paper 
 gave her a superficially good ground for 
 manoeuvres. Some years before, Mr. 
 Bantock, with the open-handed generosity 
 natural to him, had advanced six hundred 
 pounds to the inventor (a young man 
 whom he wished to help) of a new kind 
 of soda-water bottle stopper, to work the 
 patent, on condition of receiving half the 
 profits of the venture. It had turned out
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 a great success, and for some time Mr. 
 Bantock had drawn between three and 
 four thousand a year from it The affair 
 was then turned into a company, and Mr. 
 Bantock, fearing that the invention might 
 at any time be superseded by another, 
 disposed of his interest in it for (I think) 
 thirty thousand pounds, a respectable 
 sum, but one which Mr. Bantock would 
 not have thought worth while mentioning 
 as a special cause for gratulation. But 
 that morning's paper contained the pros- 
 pectus of the new company. Ethel saw 
 it, and, remembering the invention, put 
 several apparently innocent questions to 
 her father at lunch, which he, pathetically 
 unsuspicious, answered frankly and in 
 good faith. Ethel seemed thoughtful, 
 and at dinner she opened fire. 
 
 "I don't quite understand, father," she 
 said, still with seeming innocence, " about 
 this company: you are to get thirty thou- 
 sand pounds, are n't you ? "
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 Mr. Bantock replied in the affirm- 
 ative, simply and even a little com- 
 placently. He little knew what was to 
 follow ! 
 
 " Why do you get that ? " 
 
 " Because I invested in the thing 
 originally." 
 
 " Let's see," said Ethel, quite imper- 
 tinently judicial, " that was six hundred 
 pounds, was n't it ? " 
 
 Mr. Bantock seemed to have a dim 
 idea of her drift, an application of some 
 absurd notion about unearned increment. 
 " Yes, that was it," he said, " but of 
 course I might have lost it all. It was a 
 speculation." 
 
 " Is that the same as gambling ? " Ethel 
 asked. 
 
 Mr. Bantock answered, with a little 
 natural irritation : " No, of course not ; 
 quite a different thing." 
 
 Ethel ejaculated : " Thirty thousand 
 pounds ! " 
 
 136
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 " Well," said her father, " if I had n't 
 advanced the six hundred, there 'd be no 
 money for anybody. You don't under- 
 stand. I ran the risk of losing it." 
 
 " But thirty thousand pounds ! Fifty 
 times as much as you put in, and all in 
 six years ! It does seem unfair. With- 
 out any work ! " 
 
 " My dear child, you don't understand 
 economical questions. Without brains 
 and directing powers, no amount of work 
 is any good " 
 
 " But you did n't direct your brains 
 didn't come in at all " 
 
 " My capital did, and that 's the same 
 thing the same thing precisely." 
 
 " Then the whole system 's wrong. I 
 call it infamous. If I were you, I could n't 
 touch this money." 
 
 At last Mr. Bantock's patience gave 
 way. He had borne much, but he could 
 bear no more. To hear his own child 
 attack the most sacred institutions of
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 human society, and to stigmatise his acci- 
 dentally profitable, but originally gener- 
 ous, action as infamous ! He was a 
 silent man, but now his duty com- 
 pelled him to make a little speech. 
 He raised his voice, almost shouted, in 
 fact. 
 
 " Be silent, Ethel ! Not one word 
 more ! I never heard such monstrous 
 ideas, never. If your dear mother had 
 been here, you would not have dared. 
 Where you get them from I can't im- 
 agine; if there are any books of that sort 
 in my house, they ought to be burnt. 
 As for what you say, I suppose argu- 
 ment 's wasted on you, but I '11 explain, 
 once for all. It 's such men as me, with 
 capital and foresight, who make progress 
 and prosperity possible. To deny it is 
 to be false to all the principles you have 
 ever been taught. The whole Constitu- 
 tion, the Monarchy itself, depend on it. 
 I will not hear another word. What you 
 138
 
 ETHEL'S SOCIALISM 
 
 say is simply contrary to Christianity. I 
 shall inform your mother of what you 
 say." 
 
 Ethel had looked down at her plate, 
 but when he had finished his admirable 
 little oration, she looked up and met my 
 eyes. I could not help being amused at 
 her discomfiture so necessary for her 
 good and was smiling, and I regret to 
 say she was angry for days and took every 
 opportunity of annoying me. Tom said, 
 " Hear, hear ! " after Mr. Bantock's re- 
 marks, flippantly, I could not help 
 thinking. 
 
 The next day, when Mrs. Bantock 
 returned, Ethel's socialistic books were 
 solemnly burnt in the library. It was an 
 impressive spectacle, and Mrs. Bantock's 
 observations were trenchant and memo- 
 rable. Ethel never openly talked social- 
 ism again, and Mr. Bantock was able to 
 return to his usual silence. He had 
 spoken, when duty compelled him, to the
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 point, and, having spoken, dismissed the 
 matter from his mind with the ease of 
 which strong natures, who do not speak, 
 but act, alone are capable. I wish Carlyle 
 had met him. 
 
 140
 
 X 
 
 THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 
 
 IT was a few days later in the same sum- 
 mer in which Mr. Bantock was so sorely 
 tried by Ethel's socialism, when a girl 
 friend of Ethel's, a " pal," as she rather 
 vulgarly called her, came to stay in the 
 house, and, at the same time, an Oxford 
 chum of Tom's. I was still staying there, 
 being useful, I am glad to say, in arrang- 
 ing the accounts and drawing up the an- 
 nual report of one of Mrs. Bantock's 
 excellent charities. Both friends were 
 young people of extremely good connec- 
 tions, and I am sure that Mrs. Bantock 
 was glad to make the house more lively 
 for her dear children. But, really, their 
 high spirits were excessive. They or- 
 141
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 ganised all sorts of games and romps, in 
 which Russell and I had occasionally to 
 join, though greatly disliking such amuse- 
 ments ; he, I think, even more than I, 
 even as his dignity is greater than mine. 
 For example, I remember with pain how 
 he was induced to sit on a bottle (laid on 
 its side) one evening, and endeavour to 
 light a candle while in that position. 
 Twice he rolled off on to the floor, 
 amid the unfeeling laughter of his tor- 
 mentors, and when, finally, he rose (not, 
 by the way, having accomplished the silly 
 feat), his face was white with passion, 
 though, with a noble effort, he sup- 
 pressed it. They suggested that Rus- 
 sell and I, in imitation of Tom and his 
 friend, should sit blindfold on the floor, 
 and hit at each other with rolled-up 
 newspapers, but this we absolutely re- 
 fused to do. They succeeded, however, 
 in persuading me to lie with my head 
 resting on the edge of a chair, and my 
 142
 
 THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 
 
 feet on another, and, so situated, to at- 
 tempt the useless task of drawing a chair 
 from underneath me and passing it back, 
 over my body, into its original position. 
 Of course, I fell heavily on the floor, and 
 everybody laughed as though it were 
 something amusing. I thought of the 
 phrase " butchered to make a Roman 
 holiday." 
 
 These things used to happen in the 
 drawing-room after dinner, and the com- 
 fort of the rest of us was sacrificed to the 
 hilarity of the abnormally vivacious quar- 
 tette, Tom and Ethel and their two 
 friends. Mrs. Bantock, who, I knew, 
 disapproved, was assured by Ethel's 
 friend that they always did these things 
 at the house of her mother, the first 
 cousin, by the way, of a duke, and so 
 it was decided not to interfere with the 
 child's home pleasures. But they were a 
 nuisance, to be frank, and I am sorry to 
 say that the disturbance did not end here.
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 Practical jokes were played on Russell 
 and me, and even on Mr. Bantock, to 
 the extent of causing Russell to forget 
 his habitual correctness and indulge in 
 profane language, and Mr. Bantock to 
 break through his accustomed silence. 
 Tobogganing on tea trays down the 
 stairs was a frequent incident, until it 
 was stopped by Mrs. Bantock's trip- 
 ping on a tray somebody left on a land- 
 ing, and very nearly I shudder to 
 recall it. There was no end to the 
 annoyances. 
 
 An unamiable characteristic of these 
 young people was that they were for 
 ever quarrelling. They were in fun, of 
 course ; still it was an ugly thing to pre- 
 tend, and the licence of invective they 
 permitted themselves was really shocking. 
 When they indulged in their really vulgar 
 adjectives and monstrous charges against 
 one another, Mrs. Bantock used to smile 
 and say, " Foolish children ! " but I am 
 1 44
 
 THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 
 
 sure she was distressed. They tried to 
 drag Russell into these quarrels, and even 
 went so far that he privately intimated to 
 Tom that the next time it happened he 
 would go away ; and Tom, corrupted, as 
 it were, by evil communications, told the 
 others, and Russell was treated with an 
 exaggerated reverence quite as bad as the 
 former flippancy. 
 
 But I pass over the minor inconven- 
 iences caused by the presence of these 
 young friends, and go on to the athletic 
 sports of which it was the direct cause. 
 
 When I went, one afternoon, into the 
 drawing-room, at tea-time, 1 was greeted 
 with a noisy question from Tom, " I say, 
 can you climb the greasy pole ? " My 
 head was a little dazed with adding up 
 figures all the afternoon, and for a mo- 
 ment I could not remember in what busi- 
 ness that disgusting implement was used. 
 " Silence gives consent," said Tom ; 
 "that's splendid; I expect you'll win 
 
 10 145
 
 the prize. Any good at an obstacle 
 race ? " I then learned that at the 
 Dessents', where Tom, Ethel, and their 
 friends had been lunching, there had 
 been discussed a project for some athletic 
 sports. Mrs. Bantock said she thought 
 it a nice idea. " I suppose the villagers 
 will run races," she said, "quite like the 
 olden times." " Oh, no," Tom answered, 
 " it 's for us. There 's the Dessents, 
 us, the Masters, the Duntons every- 
 body 's going to be asked. We shall have 
 big fields. The whole thing's going to 
 be done properly. Running, jumping, 
 obstacle races, the pole, donkey races, 
 without saddle and bridle, you know, 
 the whole thing. It was Frank's idea " 
 Frank was his friend " and the Des- 
 sents caught on splendidly. I said we 'd 
 do it here." " I'm afraid that would not 
 be convenient," Mrs. Bantock interjected. 
 " Oh, you need n't be alarmed ; the 
 Dessents insisted, and they Ve got a big- 
 146
 
 ger field than we have. They're going to 
 do it in style. Sir Edgar is going up to 
 town to-morrow to get the prizes. I say, 
 Russell, shall we practise donkey-riding 
 there is a donkey, isn't there? after 
 tea ? " And so forth. Nothing else but 
 these wretched sports was talked about 
 for the rest of the day. When I heard 
 that they were the idea of Tom's friend, 
 I had a gloomy foreboding that some in- 
 convenience or even disaster would ensue, 
 and the next day strengthened me in this 
 view. 
 
 Lady Dessent came over in the after- 
 noon. She is a little, vivacious woman, 
 and though her eldest child is nineteen, I 
 have seen her romp with young people 
 like one of themselves. She is very good- 
 natured, I believe, and is extremely popu- 
 lar in the county, both in her own class 
 and among the people, but I think Mrs. 
 Bantock does not like her, perhaps detect- 
 ing in her a want of reverence for the
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 really solemn things of life. She came 
 over, and at once began to talk about the 
 athletic sports with an enthusiasm which, 
 at her age, might surely have been re- 
 served for more important matters. " It 's 
 all arranged," she said gleefully, as though 
 it were a matter of profound congratula- 
 tion. " Edgar says he 's going to make a 
 job of it." Sir Edgar is her husband, a 
 physically strong, jovial, and sporting man, 
 lacking (I am bound to say) in decorum 
 among his friends. She went on : " He 's 
 already set the men to work putting up 
 hurdles, and given orders for the pole, and 
 now he 's gone to town to get the prizes. 
 We expect everybody to go in for every- 
 thing within limits, of course ; we can't 
 expect you to jump hurdles." She looked 
 at Mrs. Bantock as she spoke, and laughed, 
 quite unconscious of the utter want of 
 taste in the remark. But Mrs. Bantock 
 only smiled, and Lady Dessent went on : 
 " Edgar 's remembered some more races 
 148
 
 THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 
 
 and things since your children came over. 
 One 's the husband and wife race : did you 
 ever hear of it ? Well, the husband goes 
 down on the ground and the wife takes 
 hold of his ankles and then he goes along 
 on his hands as quickly as he can. Ed- 
 gar and I are going to practise to-morrow." 
 She had been looking at Mrs. Bantock, 
 and suddenly she turned away her head ; 
 her eyes met Tom's, who was looking at 
 her with a grin. Tom suddenly rose and 
 left the room. Lady Dessent was silent 
 for a few minutes, and the others talked. 
 Presently Ethel said, " Where 's Tom ? " 
 and went to find him, and she not return- 
 ing, Mrs. Bantock sent me to bring them 
 back, as some details of the sports were 
 being considered. 
 
 I was astonished when I reached the 
 hall. Ethel was leaning against a chest, 
 the tears running down her face, and Tom, 
 his handkerchief stuffed into his mouth, 
 was stamping furiously about the hall. I 
 149
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 stood amazed. Then Tom took out the 
 handkerchief, threw back his head, and 
 emitted a horrible shouting noise, which 
 no doubt was meant for laughter, but was 
 not at all the way in which nice people 
 laugh. " Oh, Lord ! " he cried. " Fancy 
 the governor going along on his hands and 
 the mater holding up his feet ! I should 
 die ! " His sister, I am sorry to say, 
 seemed to share his offensive merriment 
 to the point of speechlessness. It is dif- 
 ficult to excuse their conduct, but I fancy 
 the explanation is this : great reverence, 
 such as I am sure both Ethel and Tom 
 had for their parents, has been often found 
 (in the mediasval church, for example) to 
 be attended by periods of short, but ab- 
 solute, reaction. Perhaps to live always 
 with a man of such absolute propriety and 
 dignity as Mr. Bantock, and so perfect a 
 woman as Mrs. Bantock, does overstrain 
 the faculty of the mind for veneration, 
 and a temporary reaction sets in, though 
 150
 
 THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 
 
 I am certain I should never find it so in 
 my own case. But it was in every way a 
 painful spectacle. I told them briefly that 
 they were to go to the drawing-room. " I 
 say," said Tom, " for heaven's sake don't 
 tell what we were laughing at," and Ethel, 
 still apparently unable to speak, menaced 
 me foolishly with her clenched hand. I 
 replied coldly that I would not ; that, 
 indeed, I could see nothing amusing in 
 the suggestion, but my coldness had the 
 effect only of producing another ribald 
 explosion. Tom said he would not go 
 back. " If I looked at them, I should 
 yell ! " So Ethel returned with me alone. 
 When Lady Dessent went, Tom was in 
 the hall and said to her : " I say, Lady 
 Dessent, if we could persuade them " 
 He glanced back at the drawing-room, 
 indicating his parents, beyond doubt. 
 Lady Dessent positively laughed, and 
 I have never been able to like her 
 since.
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 Well, the day arrived. The young 
 people chattered about it all the morning 
 and at lunch, until the rest of us were 
 quite weary. In the afternoon, we all 
 drove over to the Dessents'. Russell, I 
 thought, looked a trifle uneasy, but Mr. 
 and Mrs. Bantock had no foreboding of 
 anything but a rather tedious amusement, 
 an unconsciousness which I remem- 
 bered afterwards as strangely pathetic. 
 There were seats all along one side 
 of the field, and everybody in the 
 neighbourhood was there. All the first 
 " events," running and jumping, were 
 comparatively innocuous : it was possi- 
 ble to leave off running after going a 
 short distance, and give up in humorous 
 despair, and one was soon out of the 
 jumping competitions. But the last half 
 of the programme was something like 
 torture. The obstacle race ! I got my- 
 self involved in the meshes of a hor- 
 rible net, while everybody mocked me, 
 152
 
 THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 
 
 as might savages some trapped enemy. 
 Poor Russell, who was in a suit of 
 nice clean flannels, came to grief over a 
 diabolical water-jump, and was splashed 
 from head to foot. I was thrown by 
 a donkey, and narrowly escaped the in- 
 furiated brute's hoofs, Tom having struck 
 it hard with a heartless disregard of 
 the dumb animal's feelings. There was 
 actually a greasy pole, and the chiv- 
 alrous Russell, unable to resist Lady Des- 
 sent's pleading, completed on it the ruin 
 of his flannels. 
 
 But these, after all, are minor matters. 
 The great catastrophe was caused by Mr. 
 Bantock's unexpected conduct. There 
 was a noble humility in the idea, at 
 which he ultimately arrived, that he 
 ought to throw himself heartily into 
 the spirit of these abominable sports. 
 For most of the time he had sat a 
 decorous spectator, but at last Lady 
 Dessent, by incessant entreaties and fem-
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 inine wiles, worked him into taking an 
 active part. You will think that noth- 
 ing short of temporary madness can ac- 
 count for his subsequent conduct, but 
 I am convinced that he was possessed 
 of an honest desire to please. His judg- 
 ment went wrong, and that is all ; we 
 are none of us infallible. Still, it was 
 a long time before my respect for Mr. 
 Bantock was absolutely restored. I ex- 
 perienced that cruel sorrow, the injury of 
 a cherished ideal. 
 
 The horrible " husband and wife " race 
 came on. I was standing near Mrs. 
 Bantock, and Mr. Bantock approached, 
 egged on by Lady Dessent. " Come, 
 Flora," he said, " it 's our turn ; let 's 
 show them we 're not too old to win a 
 prize." The scene seemed to whirl round, 
 and indistinctly I heard the almost par- 
 ricidal sound of Tom's and Ethel's 
 applause. Mrs. Bantock's astonished, 
 but resolute tones recalled me. " My
 
 THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 
 
 dear Charles," she said, " what do you 
 mean ? " " Oh, do come into it, Mrs. 
 Bantock," Lady Dessent interposed ; 
 " you must go in for something." Mrs. 
 Bantock firmly, but good-humouredly, 
 declined. Then a monstrous thing hap- 
 pened. Mr. Bantock positively caught 
 hold of her hands and raised her to her 
 feet. " Come on," he said. She an- 
 swered, still with wonderful control of 
 herself, tc If you insist on making an exhi- 
 bition of yourself, I '11 watch, but I won't 
 join you." And then, incautiously, per- 
 haps to dissuade him still, she walked with 
 him to the spot where the other com- 
 petitors were standing. The men lay 
 down in the grass, like reptiles, and 
 kicked up their legs for the women to 
 seize. Actually, Mr. Bantock you re- 
 member I have described him as a man 
 of great dignity, and somewhat stout 
 did the same. Then, at last, Mrs. Ban- 
 tock turned and walked back to her seat ;
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 her mien was noble, but what she must 
 have suffered ! 
 
 I hesitate to harrow your feelings 
 further, but I must mention the sack 
 race. Mr. Bantock, not dependent in 
 this on his wife's assistance, got into a 
 sack. Russell and I were not in this 
 " heat," and stood side by side watching 
 the proceedings, horribly fascinated. Mr. 
 Bantock distanced his competitors, and 
 was coming in first, when he fell. Surely 
 that was humiliation enough ? No : he 
 rolled over and over till he reached the 
 post. I glanced at Russell. He looked 
 sick with shame. . . . 
 
 The sports were over at last and we 
 drove home, Mr. Bantock still gay and 
 making much of a prize he had won in 
 the sack race degradation. I fancy that 
 Mrs. Bantock took an opportunity to ex- 
 plain to him how far he had lapsed from 
 the path of his habitual dignity, for he 
 was more silent than usual at dinner. 
 '56
 
 THE ATHLETIC SPORTS 
 
 Mrs. Bantock turned the conversation 
 away from the sports. But evidently she 
 bore no malice. To the end of their fatal 
 visit, she was kind and affectionate to 
 her children's friends.
 
 XI 
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 As a family, the Bantocks are not unin- 
 terested in matters of literature and art, 
 though they are of opinion that these 
 should be kept in their proper place, 
 subordinate to the real interests of life. 
 The word " art," by the way, connotes 
 in their conversation pictures and statues 
 only, and literature, everything printed 
 in the form of a book. Both Mr. and 
 Mrs. Bantock extend some patronage to 
 the latter; he is a student of the Times 
 and she reads a good many novels, pre- 
 ferring those of a romantic or sentimental 
 sort. They both have definite opinions 
 concerning the merits of various writers, 
 even (by divination, as it were) of writers 
 158
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 they have not read. Mr. Bantock takes 
 his views, more or less, from his favourite 
 journal, and Mrs. Bantock from hers, 
 which I will not name for fear of exciting 
 envy ; but they both argue that, after all, 
 the great public is the only judge, and its 
 judgment can be inferred only from the 
 prosperity or pecuniary failure of those 
 who seek it. It stands to reason, Mr. 
 Bantock says, that if a man understands 
 his business, he makes money by it, and, 
 remembering that literature is at its best a 
 poor trade, he has a considerable respect 
 for men who can make even three or four 
 thousand a year at it : he admits that in 
 a more profitable calling they might have 
 made substantial incomes. As for people 
 who are content to work hard for the 
 miserable sum which is the average re- 
 muneration of literature, he confesses that 
 he regards them with mistrust, but he 
 says generously that, after all, it is their 
 own affair.
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 These opinions considered, it may be 
 thought that literature would not have 
 troubled the peaceful lives of the Ban- 
 tocks. On the contrary, it has been, at 
 times, a veritable nuisance to them. 
 There was, for example, the case of 
 Ethel's dreadful books on socialism. But 
 they suffered more acutely at the time, a 
 few years ago, when there seemed to be 
 one can hardly believe it now quite 
 a craze for books which contained im- 
 proper incidents or allusions. It was 
 impossible to prevent these books pene- 
 trating into Grosvenor Place : the au- 
 thorities at the library, who might have 
 stopped them, were (in Mrs. Bantock's 
 opinion) extraordinarily lax. Her own 
 principle in the matter was comprehensive. 
 "Of course," she said, "there are dread- 
 ful people in the world, but no refined 
 person, certainly no woman, ought to 
 know anything about them." Conse- 
 quently, when, every now and then, in 
 160
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 reading some innocent-looking novel, she 
 came upon a passage contrary to all nice 
 feeling, she was very indignant. It hap- 
 pened once that her own child, Ethel, 
 brought her an embarrassing question sug- 
 gested by one of these books, only once 
 indeed, for Mrs. Bantock severely dis- 
 couraged Ethel's curiosity and forbade 
 her to read any book in future not 
 previously read by her mother. The 
 nuisance did not even stop at this point, 
 for occasionally people would have the 
 bad taste to argue about these books in 
 her presence. Cousin Charlotte was a 
 great offender in this way. "My dear 
 Flora," she said once, when Mrs. Ban- 
 tock had been expressing her grievance, 
 " I have n't read the book, I hardly 
 ever read English fiction : it can't even be 
 improper without being dull, but do 
 be fair to the poor woman : you can't 
 restrict writers to good people, they 're 
 not even half the world." Mrs. Bantock 
 ii 161
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 was not convinced by this argument. 
 " I see no necessity," she said, " to write 
 about people who are not nice." " Well, 
 but," Cousin Charlotte persisted 
 " Fielding and those authors ? " Mrs. 
 Bantock answered, " I have always under- 
 stood that one did n't read them because 
 they were coarse." " Poor dears ! " 
 Cousin Charlotte flippantly replied. 
 " But Thackeray and Dickens even 
 they occasionally mentioned a bad per- 
 son." Mrs. Bantock's consistency was 
 unshaken. "It would have been better 
 if they had not," she answered calmly : 
 " besides, they did it for a good motive." 
 " And how do you know this poor woman 
 did n't ? " " My dear Charlotte, that 's 
 absurd ; the woman is full of the most 
 dangerous ideas. It 's monstrous that 
 one should n't be able to take up a 
 book from the library without the risk 
 of being annoyed." I wish, by the way, 
 that the people who attack the excellent 
 162
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 Mr. Mudie for his occasional censorship 
 had heard Mrs. Bantock on the subject. 
 But these discussions and the cause of 
 them were a sore trial to her ; literature, 
 in fact, has had the impudence frequently 
 to annoy Mrs. Bantock, and since she is 
 intellectually typical (though superior to 
 most) of those people whom in this for- 
 tunate country it exists to please, I 
 think I have done well to point out the 
 offence. 
 
 The art of painting, I regret to say, has 
 annoyed the Bantocks in a more material 
 manner. Some twenty years ago, Mr. 
 Bantock made extensive purchases among 
 the works of those artists who were held 
 pre-eminent at the time, paying for them 
 considerable sums of money. He admired 
 the pictures, and admires them still. But, 
 of late years, they have so often met with 
 criticism from certain of his guests 
 Cousin Charlotte, of course, being again 
 unamiably conspicuous that he resolved, 
 163
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 a year or two ago, to sell them and buy 
 others on different advice. He sent 
 them to Christie's, and I am sorry to say 
 that hardly one of them reached a quarter 
 of the reserve price. This occasioned 
 some severe strictures from him on the 
 nature of art : it was infamous, he said, 
 that things bought in good faith should so 
 decline in price to put it bluntly, he 
 felt he had been swindled. Since then 
 he has entertained a grave mistrust of 
 artists. He has thought, at times, of buy- 
 ing an old master, but some of them he 
 has seen he held to be uninteresting, and 
 others Mrs. Bantock (speaking in confi- 
 dence) has pronounced vulgar. He en- 
 tirely declines to buy contemporary 
 pictures, for fear of such another mishap, 
 so that his original collection keeps its 
 place. 
 
 However, he did once make an excep- 
 tion, and generously determined to be a 
 patron of art. It was decided that Mrs. 
 164
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 Bantock's portrait should be painted and 
 exhibited in the Academy. The result 
 was extremely painful. I ventured to 
 recommend an artist of my acquaintance 
 for this important work, and Mrs. Ban- 
 tock, being assured by me that his terms 
 were moderate and that he was a gentle- 
 man, generously consented to sit to him. 
 
 From the very first, I deeply regret to 
 say, my friend approached his task in 
 an entirely improper spirit. After his 
 first interview with her he asked me what 
 I expected he could do with such a sub- 
 ject. I replied that I expected he would 
 do his admirable best to be equal to so 
 splendid an opportunity. He laughed 
 rudely, and made a most astounding 
 remark : " There 's no character noth- 
 ing." Mrs. Bantock with no character ! 
 I thought he must have been drinking, 
 but explained mildly that Mrs. Bantock 
 had the most perfect character of any 
 known to me. " My dear fellow," he said, 
 165
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 " that 's all very well, but that 's nothing 
 for a painter. Of course one can make a 
 picture out of self-satisfaction, and the 
 habit of ordering people about, but it is 
 not interesting work." He proceeded to 
 make most distressing comments on Mrs. 
 Bantock's personal appearance. " Sort 
 of commonplace good looks, plus fat," he 
 said. I rose at this brutal remark, and 
 moved towards the door, but his contemp- 
 tible remarks pursued me. "One could 
 get something out of the colour of the 
 hair, if she 'd wear it properly, and if 
 she 'd get a dress that gave a fellow a 
 chance, but of course she won't. I wish 
 to goodness I could get out of it if I 
 had n't promised in advance, confound 
 you, I would. She 's got a beastly imper- 
 tinent manner, too. Confound you ! " I 
 had given him an opportunity of distin- 
 guishing himself by painting the most 
 excellent woman in London, and this was 
 his gratitude ! Of course, a man who 
 166
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 approached his task in such a spirit as this 
 could not expect to give satisfaction. 
 
 After the first visit to his studio, Mrs. 
 Bantock refused to go there again: there 
 were studies in it which she objected to 
 on the ground of vulgarity, and he 
 declined to cover them up. It was there- 
 fore arranged that he should go to Gros- 
 venor Place for two hours, twice a week, 
 until the picture was done. An easel was 
 set up in the library, and I contrived 
 always to be there, my excuse was the 
 rearranging and cataloguing of Mr. Ban- 
 tock's books, because, since my experi- 
 ence of his extraordinary attitude, I was 
 afraid the artist might offend Mrs. Ban- 
 tock. The sittings were to me simply a 
 series of nightmares. At the first of them, 
 he had the temerity to criticise Mrs. Ban- 
 tock's attire, which she, blushing with indig- 
 nation, refused to alter. He then asked her 
 to take off her bonnet, and she declined. 
 It was, I knew, a bonnet she had just 
 167
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 bought and liked immensely, and she 
 wished it to be in the picture. He made 
 an uncalled-for gesture of despair, and 
 proceeded to pose her, and then again he 
 had the misfortune to hold different views 
 from his sitter's. He wanted her to smell 
 a rose an extremely tiring attitude 
 whereas she insisted on reading a book. 
 (He actually told me afterwards that the 
 action was monstrously inappropriate to 
 her face.) However, he got to work 
 at last, and all went well for ten min- 
 utes. But then Mrs. Bantock remem- 
 bered that she wished to speak to the 
 cook, and left the room. When she was 
 gone, he broke into a torrent of coarse 
 invective, and only stopped it as the door 
 opened. 
 
 I must admit that Mrs. Bantock was a 
 restless sitter. But he ought to have re- 
 membered that she held an important 
 position in society, and had a multitude of 
 calls on her time. It is true, as he com- 
 168
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 plained to me with unnecessary bitterness, 
 that she had frequently to give some direc- 
 tion to a servant, or to write a note which 
 was urgent, and that, four or five times, 
 people came to see her, and she went to 
 the drawing-room to interview them. But 
 all this did not justify his abominable lan- 
 guage to me. On several occasions I had 
 the greatest difficulty in persuading him 
 not to throw up the commission. I knew 
 that, after all her trouble, such a wicked 
 insult might easily make Mrs. Bantock 
 quite ill. 
 
 At the fourth sitting, she appeared in a 
 different bonnet. He told her that he 
 had already half painted in the other, and 
 would not take it out. She said, in her 
 sweetest and kindest manner, that she was 
 very sorry to give him extra trouble, but 
 that this was a bonnet she had just got 
 and liked far better than the other, and 
 she wished it particularly to be in the pic- 
 ture. He had the bad taste to argue 
 169
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 about it, but, of course, had finally to give 
 way. I forgot to mention that, after the 
 second sitting, she insisted on seeing what 
 progress he had made, and I could see 
 that she was disappointed. She made 
 some suggestions for alteration, which he 
 received courteously, but was obviously 
 determined not to adopt. After that, he 
 refused to let her see the picture he 
 used to take it away with him. 
 
 Well, at last it was so far finished that 
 he had taken it away to put the final 
 touches in at his studio. I received one 
 morning two notes. One was from him. 
 It said : " I have sent it to Grosvenor 
 Place. It is a good likeness, so far as 
 that goes, and I flatter myself it 's a decent 
 study of flesh. But it 's a cursed ugly 
 picture what could I do ? " The other 
 was from Mrs. Bantock : " Come round 
 at once and explain, if you can." That 
 was all. 
 
 With a heart sick with anxiety, I hur- 
 170
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 ried to Grosvenor Place. I was shown 
 into the library where I found Mrs. Ban- 
 tock standing near the picture, placed on 
 a sofa. She seemed to be strangely 
 moved. She gave me one look which 
 made me literally tremble, and said : 
 " Tell me frankly : did you plan this 
 outrage with that brute ? " 
 
 I looked at the picture. After all, I did 
 not think it so very bad. Something of 
 Mrs. Bantock's queenly demeanour had 
 not escaped the unfortunate I really 
 think not malicious artist. But I un- 
 derstood her emotion. The reading atti- 
 tude was unlucky. It emphasised Mrs. 
 Bantock's cheeks, which were naturally 
 full, so that they seemed, as it were, to 
 engulf her other features, and it made her 
 chin seem, as it were, more double than 
 usual. The contour of as much of her 
 figure as was shown was certainly very 
 full. In brief, Mrs. Bantock's majesty 
 was somehow resolved into mere stout- 
 171
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 ness, partly, no doubt, from the loss of 
 the authoritative expression of her eyes. 
 No ; it was not a good picture. 
 
 I pass over Mrs. Bantock's reproaches 
 to myself. Perhaps they were just, after 
 all, but I had not painted the picture my- 
 self. She would hear no excuses. I tried 
 to palliate the picture, and her only answer 
 was : " I shall send it back at once, and I 
 shall not let Charles pay him a single 
 penny. If he sends it to the Academy, 
 I shall prosecute him." 
 
 The latter question was easily settled : 
 he was quite willing that the picture 
 should not go to the Academy. But he 
 insisted on being paid. A terrible trouble 
 began. Mrs. Bantock took the matter 
 out of her husband's hands, and flatly 
 refused to pay, and I, who knew her, was 
 certain she would not be shaken. At last, 
 the artist had the brutality to threaten an 
 action at law. This was horrible. Such 
 a vulgar notoriety would almost kill Mrs. 
 172
 
 MRS. BANTOCK'S PORTRAIT 
 
 Bantock : it would certainly cause her to 
 cut me altogether. I spent sleepless 
 nights. He would not give way : he 
 said he had a wife and children, and could 
 not afford to humour people's meannesses ; 
 that was atrocious, because, of course, it 
 was the principle, not the money, for 
 which Mrs. Bantock cared. At last, by 
 her kindness, a solution was found. I 
 said I should very much like to buy the 
 picture, and she consented on condition 
 that T kept it in my attic and showed it 
 to nobody. Another difficulty, my want 
 of means, she also solved by advancing 
 me the money. I am still repaying her 
 by instalments. I pretended that the 
 payment was from her, and the dreadful 
 horror was over. 
 
 Can you wonder if Mrs. Bantock does 
 not greatly care for contemporary art ? 
 But me she has quite forgiven.
 
 XII 
 
 CONCLUDING WORDS 
 
 I HAVE related several examples of the 
 trials by which the peace of the beautiful 
 Bantock life is sometimes shaken. I 
 might relate others, but I think I have 
 done enough to show that those greatly 
 cherished friends of mine do not enjoy, 
 as might be superficially supposed, un- 
 broken ease and comfort. As I stated in 
 the beginning, my objects in writing have 
 been two : I have wished to console poor 
 people like myself by pointing out how 
 great is the mistake of supposing that 
 people like the Bantocks have not a fair 
 portion of human troubles, and I have 
 wished to stimulate the same poor people 
 to greater cheerfulness in endurance by
 
 CONCLUDING WORDS 
 
 showing them with what courage and 
 patience the Bantocks bear their afflictions. 
 So I bring my task to a conclusion, the 
 more readily that the trials of the Ban- 
 tocks, from affection and sympathy, have 
 been very painful to record. 
 
 It has occurred to me that somebody 
 may object that such trials as I have 
 described are not really severe, but are, on 
 the contrary, even trivial. I know that 
 such a person may exist : let me tell him 
 how great is his mistake. 
 
 It is true that the Bantocks are free 
 from the commoner and coarser of human 
 troubles. They can have no anxiety 
 about money, and can gratify any mate- 
 rial wish within very wide limits. As a 
 family, they are (with the exception of 
 Mrs. Bantock, who, as I have stated, has 
 to take very great care of herself) of 
 singularly robust health, and, of course, 
 such ailments as they may have, from 
 time to time, can be more efficaciously 
 175
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 treated by reason of their wealth than, for 
 example, my own. I sometimes dream 
 of a time when, by the improvement of 
 medical science, such people as the Ban- 
 tocks, having means to change their climate 
 at will and to adopt other expensive rem- 
 edies, may prolong their beautiful and 
 useful lives indefinitely. I might men- 
 tion other coarse troubles which they are 
 enabled to avoid or, at least, greatly to 
 assuage. But it is useless : I insist at 
 once, with more than one philosopher 
 before me, that it is the little things as 
 people think them that matter. If the 
 possible doubter to whom I have referred 
 denies that such inflictions as Cousin 
 Charlotte, or Moss, or the ruined hamper 
 are as severe, in reality, as the more 
 common and obvious woes he might 
 name, overwork, insufficient food, and 
 the like, I reply that he may never 
 have had leisure to feel such subtile dis- 
 turbances. A man who has to rough it 
 176
 
 CONCLUDING WORDS 
 
 and bear with ordinary anxieties has not 
 the finer nerves to be distressed by such 
 things ; let him, then, if he is ever inclined 
 to grudge the Bantocks their money, 
 remember the other side of the picture 
 and pity their sufferings. 
 
 The Bantocks themselves, however, do 
 not ask for pity. They are content to 
 bear their trials simply and bravely. I 
 sometimes think that they are too strong 
 even to pity themselves. Certainly they 
 seem, in a spirit of gentle modesty, to 
 rate their own sufferings less highly than 
 those of ordinary people. A proof is 
 that, while they will talk freely of the 
 former, they dislike very much to hear 
 the latter mentioned, their feelings are 
 too strongly touched. Thus, when some 
 incautious person mentions a case of ex- 
 treme poverty or illness, or other sad 
 distress, Mrs. Bantock interposes. " Oh, 
 don't talk of those horrid things," she 
 
 says ; " I can't get them out of my head." 
 12 I77
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 But while the Bantocks show this keen 
 pity for the common troubles from which 
 they are free, they are justly indignant 
 with people who incur such things by 
 their own imprudence. They cannot 
 easily forgive people who live beyond 
 their incomes ; they never live beyond 
 theirs. (I have shown how even Tom's 
 extravagances, the failing of over-gener- 
 ous youth, were not lightly considered by 
 his parents.) They cannot forgive debts. 
 I used at one time to relate to them expe- 
 riences of county-court officials, sent to col- 
 lect my own poor obligations, and the like, 
 and they used to laugh good-naturedly at 
 my humorous misfortunes, but, after a 
 time, Mrs. Bantock spoke sternly to me. 
 " It 's your own fault," she said. " You 
 ought not to have run into debt. My 
 husband tells me that, even in his poor 
 days," she alluded to the .800 a year 
 period, which lasted for two years " he 
 never owed a shilling." It occurred to 
 178
 
 CONCLUDING WORDS 
 
 me that, if I had had half Mr. Bantock's 
 income in his poor days, I should not 
 have owed a shilling, either, but I did not 
 doubt she was right, and bowed my head 
 meekly under the reproof. 
 
 But, with this exception, the Bantocks, 
 I am sure, are full of keen, if silent, sym- 
 pathy with the troubles of others. Not, 
 however, that they encourage weak de- 
 spair : they have the right, as bearing their 
 own misfortunes so bravely, to expect the 
 like of other people. " Crying does no 
 good," I have heard Mrs. Bantock say. 
 " Work is the only thing that will com- 
 fort you." To allege troubles as an excuse 
 for failure in work seems contempti- 
 ble to them. And, doubtless, they are 
 right : indomitable pluck and the refusal 
 to be beaten in life's battles are what 
 make men and women strong and suc- 
 cessful, and Mr. and Mrs. Bantock have 
 often enforced this truth with wise and 
 pithy precepts. They hold it almost 
 179
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 criminal to encourage people in the op- 
 posite direction by pauperising charity. 
 Mrs. Bantock has often given me much 
 helpful encouragement when some disap- 
 pointment has overtaken me. " Well, 
 try again ! " she says. " Work hard. 
 Look at my husband, how bravely he 
 goes on. You heard of that infamous 
 mine ? We all have to take a blow now 
 and then." The mine in question had 
 been expected largely to increase the 
 Bantocks' income, but Mr. Bantock only 
 just sold his shares in time to avoid loss ; 
 he made (he told me) only a few miser- 
 able thousands out of it. I was greatly 
 comforted by his noble example of patience. 
 But perhaps I have enlarged enough on 
 the Bantocks' virtues in misfortune. I 
 hope I may have brought home the les- 
 son which, in my humble way, I have 
 tried to teach. And I do not wish to 
 leave you with an impression of gloom 
 and sorrow. If the Bantocks have their 
 180
 
 CONCLUDING WORDS 
 
 troubles, they have also much of the 
 happiness and pleasure they so richly 
 deserve ; were it otherwise, one would 
 indeed despair of the world. They have 
 a share of good luck, also. Mr. Bantock's 
 investments are often extremely lucky, 
 and both he and Mrs. Bantock are often 
 the recipients of legacies from relations. 
 They grow richer every year, and every 
 year strengthens their position among 
 those whom England delights to honour. 
 It is not thank goodness ! mere titles 
 and such irrational accidents that are 
 valued nowadays, we have ceased to be 
 snobs, it is people with solid merits and 
 a solid stake in the country, like the Ban- 
 tocks, who nowadays are valued ; not 
 merely rich people, again, but people 
 with high principles and refined tastes. 
 The Bantocks are more exclusive as time 
 goes on ; they think rightly that it is 
 their duty not to waste their charming 
 qualities on the first comer. Mr. Bantock 
 181
 
 THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 has never cared, modest man that he is, 
 to undergo the fatigues of Parliament, but 
 Russell is to go into it at an early date, 
 and will, no doubt, become a power in 
 the land. There is talk of his being 
 engaged to a duke's daughter. 
 
 And amid the solemn circumstances 
 and high ambitions of their lives, the 
 Bantocks are not without those domestic 
 joys, those joys of kindly sympathy which 
 tend to make beautiful the homes of ordi- 
 nary people. The parents are happy in 
 the devotion of their children. Maud's 
 marriage has, indeed, taken her away, in 
 a sense, from her family, her husband, 
 Somers, being perhaps not fully conscious 
 of the privilege of the connection. But 
 Russell has never caused them a mo- 
 ment's uneasiness ; and if Tom and Ethel 
 are at present just a trifle intractable, they 
 will no doubt grow up in the image of 
 their parents and follow in their footsteps. 
 On Mrs. Bantock's last birthday Mr. 
 182
 
 CONCLUDING WORDS 
 
 Bantock gave her over a thousand pounds' 
 worth of diamonds, and she, on his, gave 
 him a new pair of carriage horses. Such 
 simple kindness they value more than mere 
 riches. Indeed, I must have written in- 
 adequately indeed if I have left you with 
 any impression that the Bantocks care 
 overmuch for money. They disproved 
 that in the affair of Moss, and, indeed, 
 they gaily depreciate their wealth and go 
 so far as humorously to declare that they 
 cannot afford this or that. Mrs. Bantock 
 is always pleased when seats are given her 
 for a theatre. 
 
 So I leave them in their troubles nobly 
 borne and in their simple, beautiful pleas- 
 ures. Valeant until they haply ask 
 me to dinner again. You join with me, 
 I know, in my heartfelt wish for the con- 
 tinuance of their well-deserved prosperity. 
 
 183
 
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 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FAC LITY 
 
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