eldest son. He was always making us presents: now, of all sorts of Indian toys; now, of costly articles of jewellery; now, he would stand us in the corners of the room while he flung guineas to us. We were to keep all we could catch, and he would swear at us, and threaten to thrash us well, if we missed any. He was well known at Grilling Abbots, and popular there—and no wonder; his purse was at everybody's service; and although his manner was formidable, he did many kindnesses to the people about, and they couldn't help liking him even while they feared him. Indeed, he died during one of his visits to the Grange, and was buried in the family mausoleum—unfeignedly regretted, I do believe.
"You may remember of old that I had the reputation of being a spoilt child—and there was good reason for it—I was over-indulged; my slightest whims were humoured. My father and my uncle joined in this; and especially if my inclination took the form of a precocious manliness. My first ten-pound note was earned by my taking my pony over a gate in very reckless fashion, nearly breaking my neck and the pony's too. But the two old gentlemen were loud in their applause; my uncle especially. I was encouraged to be daring, madcap, domineering. They only laughed at me when my temper, upon some petty provocation, broke all bounds, and left me storming with passion. I was never checked, never prompted to place restraint upon myself. You may remember what trouble this brought upon me at school—the incessant squabbles and difficulties and fights I was ever in. Of course all this would have been ordered otherwise had my mother's life been spared; but, as you know, she was taken from us not long after Stephen's birth.
"Though upon this subject my father and my uncle were agreed, there were others upon which they differed greatly. My uncle's visits to the Grange, though they were renewed year by year, generally terminated abruptly and unpleasantly. Some trivial difference of opinion would at last grow into an open quarrel, and the Colonel would suddenly take his departure, vowing that he would never again set foot within the Grange. This happened frequently; but he returned at a stated period to pay another visit. In fact, the brothers agreed better at a distance; they had been too long apart to know really much of each other; they knew not how to make allowance for each other's peculiarities of disposition and frame of mind and habits of thought. Their intimacy had no better foundation than the fact of their relationship; it was not made real and natural by the existence of friendship between them. They met because they were brothers—but for that fact there was nothing to bring them together; and it was not sufficient to form a ground for permanent union, especially as it was backed up by no kind of liking or sympathy. Probably each thought the other unreasonably prejudiced and overbearing and angry upon small provocation, and my father, as the head of the house, may have been inclined to claim a recognition of his position to a greater extent than the Colonel, who had achieved his own fortune in his own way, owing little to his family, was disposed to allow. So they only tolerated each other; their fraternity hardly merited a more flattering description.
"One day—I forget the reason, if indeed I ever knew it—their periodical quarrel was more than usually violent and prolonged. My uncle left the Grange in a furious rage. I was accustomed to his angry departures, but I never remember one so stormy as this had been. And he took a long time to soften. The period for his return to us approached, but he showed little symptom of yielding. At last my father wrote formally to him requesting his usual visit. The Colonel replied courteously but firmly. He regretted that he should be compelled for the present to deny himself the pleasure of visiting his relations at the Grange; circumstances over which unfortunately he had no control demanded his presence in London. My father was seriously annoyed at this; however, he commanded himself sufficiently to enable him to write again to the Colonel, pressing him in the kindest way to return to the Grange. The Colonel again made answer in terms something similar to his first letter, but concluding with a request that, in his inability to visit the country, my father would permit that I should spend some weeks in Harley Street. With this evidence of his brother's good-will my father was obliged to be content. The terms of the compromise were accepted. I visited London in lieu of my uncle's return to the Grange.
"Looking back upon one's life, how many causes for regret there are arising out of circumstances apparently of a wholly accidental character How many times I have sorrowed over that chance visit to London, that residence of some months in my uncle's house in Harley Street! For to that I seem to have cause to attribute all the troubles of my existence.
"You may conceive that my uncle was not a very well chosen monitor for a young man on his entrance into life. He had lived abroad very much; had acquired habits of thought much at variance with convention: had a contempt for the usages of society, especially if they came in contact at all with his manner of life, his tastes, and pursuits; and, worse than this, he entertained certain convictions which came down to him possibly from a past age, from a less refined system of civilisation. He clung to old-world ideas upon knowledge of the world; comprehending in that, as an important part, knowledge of sin. Many before him have held a like opinion. He thought it desirable that youth should study both good and evil. That virtue, if it was to be attained at all, should be attained by wading through vice; as if it were necessary to drain wickedness to the dregs in order to know the taste of it. I feel a sort of shame in seeming to find an excuse for myself in blaming an old man who is dead, and who, whatever his faults, was certainly in intention kind to me. He never knew, I believe, the harm he was doing me; he never guessed the terrible harvest it would be mine to reap for all the seed he was then sowing. Let me dismiss the subject as briefly as I may. My visits to London—then commenced and frequently repeated afterwards—were of great misfortune to me, if only because they aggravated all