Then he knew that it behoved him to set some altered course of life before him.He could not shoot his rival or knock him over the head, nor could he carry off his girl, as used to be done in rougher times.There was nothing now for a man in such a catastrophe as this but submission.But he might submit and shake off his burden, or submit and carry it hopelessly.He told himself that he would do the latter.She had been his goddess, and he would not now worship at another shrine.And then ideas came into his head,--hot hopes, or purposes, or a belief even in any possibility,--but vague ideas, mere castles in the air, that a time might come in which it might be in his power to serve her, and to prove to her beyond doubting what had been the nature of his love.Like others of his family, he thought ill of Lopez, believing the man to be an adventurer, one who would too probably fall into misfortune, however high he might now seem to hold his head.He was certainly a man not standing on the solid basis of land, or of the Three Per Cents,--those solidities to which such as the Whartons and the Fletchers are wont to trust.No doubt, should there be such fall, the man's wife would have other help than that of her rejected lover.She had a father, brother, and cousins, who would also be there to aid her.The idea was, therefore, but a castle in the air.And yet it was dear to him.
At any rate he resolved that he would live for it, and that the woman should still be his goddess, though she was the wife of another man, and might now perhaps never even be seen by him.
Then came upon him, immediately almost after their marriage, the necessity of writing to her.The task was one which, of course, he did not perform lightly.
He never said a word of this to anybody else;--but his brother understood it all, and in a somewhat silent fashion fully sympathized with him.John could not talk to him about love, or mark passages of poetry for him to read, or deal with him at all romantically; but he could take care that his brother had the best horses to ride, and the warmest corner out shooting, and that everything in the house could be done for his brother's comfort.As the squire looked and spoke at Longbarns, others looked and spoke,--so that everybody knew than Mr Arthur was to be contradicted in nothing.Had he, just at this period, ordered a tree in the park cut down, it would, I think, have been cut down, without reference to the master! But, perhaps, John's power was most felt in the way in which he repressed the expressions of his mother's high indignation.'Mean slut!,' she once said, speaking of Emily in her elder son's hearing.For the girl, to her thinking, had been mean and had been a slut.She had not known,--so Mrs Fletcher thought,--what birth and blood required of her.
'Mother,' John Fletcher had said, 'you would break Arthur's heart if he heard you speak of her in that way, and I am sure you would drive him from Longbarns.Keep it to yourself.' The old woman had shaken her head angrily, but she had endeavoured to do as she had been bid.
'Isn't your brother riding that horse a little rashly?' Reginald Cosgrave said to John Fletcher in the hunting field one day.
'I didn't observe,' said John; 'but whatever horse he's on he always rides rashly.' Arthur was mounted on a long, raking thorough-bred black animal, which he had bought himself about a month ago, and which, having been run at steeplechase, rushed at every fence as though he was going to swallow it.His brother had begged him to put some rough-rider up till the horse could be got to go quietly, but Arthur had persevered.And during the whole of this day the squire had been in a tremor, lest there should be some accident.
'He used to have a little more judgement, I think,' said Cosgrave.'He went at that double just now as hard as the brute could tear.If the horse hadn't done it all, where would he have been?'
'In the further ditch, I suppose.But you see the horse did it all.'
This was all very well as an answer to Reginald Cosgrave,--to whom it was not necessary that Fletcher should explain the circumstances.But the squire had known as well as Cosgrave that his brother had been riding rashly, and he had understood the reason why.'I don't think a man ought to break his neck,' he said, 'because he can't get everything that he wishes.' The two brothers were standing then together before the fire in the squire's own room, having just come in from hunting.
'Who is going to break his neck?'
'They tell me you tried to-day.'
'Because I was riding a pulling horse.I'll back him to be the biggest leaper and the quickest horse in Hertfordshire.'
'I dare say,--though for the matter of that the chances are very much against it.But a man shouldn't ride so as to have those things said of him.'
'What is a fellow to do if he can't ride a horse?'
'Get off him.'
'That's nonsense, John.'
'No, it's not.You know what I mean very well.If I were to lose half my property tomorrow, don't you think it would cut me up a good deal?'
'It would me, I know.'
'But what would you think of me if I howled about it?'
'Do I howl?'asked Arthur angrily.
'Every man howls who is driven out of is ordinary course by any trouble.A man howls if he goes about frowning always.'
'Do I frown?'
'Or laughing.'
'Do I laugh?'
'Or galloping over the country like a mad devil who wants to get rid of his debts by breaking his neck.Aeqam mememto--You remember all that, don't you?'
'I remember it, but it isn't so easy to do, is it?'
'Try.There are other things to be done in life except getting married.You are going into Parliament.'
'I don't know that.'
'Gresham tells me there isn't a doubt about it.Think of that.
Fix your mind upon it.Don't take it only as an accident, but as the thing you're to live for.If you'll do that,--if you'll manage that there shall be something to be done in Parliament which only you can do, you won't ride a runaway horse as you did that brute to-day.' Arthur looked up into his brother's face almost weeping.'We expect much of you, you know.I'm not a man to do anything except be a good steward for the family property, and keep the old house from falling down.You're a clever fellow,--so that between us, if we both do our duty, the Fletchers may still thrive in the land.My house shall be your house, and my wife your wife, and my children your children.And then the honour you win shall be my honour.Hold up your head,--and sell the beast.' Arthur Fletcher squeezed his brother's hand and went away to dress.