Basil | Page 9

of his bed-room; no servant but his own valet was
permitted to enter it. Family portraits that hung there, were turned to
the walls, and portraits of French actresses and Italian singers were
stuck to the back of the canvasses. Then he displaced a beautiful little
ebony cabinet which had been in the family three hundred years; and
set up in its stead a Cyprian temple of his own, in miniature, with
crystal doors, behind which hung locks of hair, rings, notes written on
blush-coloured paper, and other love-tokens kept as sentimental relics.
His influence became all-pervading among us. He seemed to
communicate to the house the change that had taken place in himself,
from the reckless, racketty young Englishman to the super-exquisite
foreign dandy. It was as if the fiery, effervescent atmosphere of the
Boulevards of Paris had insolently penetrated into the old English
mansion, and ruffled and infected its quiet native air, to the remotest
corners of the place.

My father was even more dismayed than displeased by the alteration in
my brother's habits and manners--the eldest son was now farther from
his ideal of what an eldest son should be, than ever. As for friends and
neighbours, Ralph was heartily feared and disliked by them, before he
had been in the house a week. He had an ironically patient way of
listening to their conversation; an ironically respectful manner of
demolishing their old-fashioned opinions, and correcting their slightest
mistakes, which secretly aggravated them beyond endurance. It was
worse still, when my father, in despair, tried to tempt him into marriage,
as the one final chance of working his reform; and invited half the
marriageable young ladies of our acquaintance to the house, for his
especial benefit.
Ralph had never shown much fondness at home, for the refinements of
good female society. Abroad, he had lived as exclusively as he possibly
could, among women whose characters ranged downwards by
infinitesimal degrees, from the mysteriously doubtful to the notoriously
bad. The highly-bred, highly-refined, highly-accomplished young
English beauties had no charm for him. He detected at once the
domestic conspiracy of which he was destined to become the victim.
He often came up-stairs, at night, into my bed-room; and while he was
amusing himself by derisively kicking about my simple clothes and
simple toilette apparatus; while he was laughing in his old careless way
at my quiet habits and monotonous life, used to slip in, parenthetically,
all sorts of sarcasms about our young lady guests. To him, their
manners were horribly inanimate; their innocence, hypocrisy of
education. Pure complexions and regular features were very well, he
said, as far as they went; but when a girl could not walk properly, when
she shook hands with you with cold fingers, when having good eyes
she could not make a stimulating use of them, then it was time to
sentence the regular features and pure complexions to be taken back
forthwith to the nursery from which they came. For his part, he missed
the conversation of his witty Polish Countess, and longed for another
pancake-supper with his favourite grisettes.
The failure of my father's last experiment with Ralph soon became
apparent. Watchful and experienced mothers began to suspect that my

brother's method of flirtation was dangerous, and his style of waltzing
improper. One or two ultra-cautious parents, alarmed by the laxity of
his manners and opinions, removed their daughters out of harm's way,
by shortening their visits. The rest were spared any such necessity. My
father suddenly discovered that Ralph was devoting himself rather too
significantly to a young married woman who was staying in the house.
The same day he had a long private interview with my brother. What
passed between them, I know not; but it must have been something
serious. Ralph came out of my father's private study, very pale and very
silent; ordered his luggage to be packed directly; and the next morning
departed, with his French valet, and his multifarious French goods and
chattels, for the continent.
Another interval passed; and then we had another short visit from him.
He was still unaltered. My father's temper suffered under this second
disappointment. He became more fretful and silent; more apt to take
offence than had been his wont. I particularly mention the change thus
produced in his disposition, because that change was destined, at no
very distant period, to act fatally upon me.
On this last occasion, also, there was another serious disagreement
between father and son; and Ralph left England again in much the same
way that he had left it before.
Shortly after that second departure, we heard that he had altered his
manner of life. He had contracted, what would be termed in the
continental code of morals, a reformatory attachment to a woman older
than himself,