Dawn | Page 6

income, and secondly, by his marriage late in middle life
with Miss Bland, the heiress of the neighbouring Isleworth estates, that
stretched over some two thousand acres of land.
This lady, who was Philip's mother, did not live long to enjoy her
wealth and station. Her husband never spoke a rough word to her, and
yet it is no exaggeration to say that she died of fear of him. The
marriage had been one of convenience, not of affection; indeed poor
Anna Bland had secretly admired the curate at Isleworth, and hated Mr.
Caresfoot and his glittering eye. But she married him for all that, to feel
that till she died that glance was always playing round her like a rapier
in the hands of a skilled fencer. And very soon she did die, Mr.
Caresfoot receiving her last words and wishes with the same exquisite
and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remark she had
made to him in the course of their married life. Having satisfactorily
eyed Mrs. Caresfoot off into a better world, her husband gave up all

idea of further matrimonial ventures, and set himself to heap up riches.
But a little before his wife's death, and just after his son's birth, an
event had occurred in the family that had disturbed him not a little.
His father had left two sons, himself and a brother, many years his
junior. Now this brother was very dear to Mr. Caresfoot; his affection
for him was the one weak point in his armour; nor was it rendered any
the less sincere, but rather the more touching, by the fact that its object
was little better than half-witted. It is therefore easy to imagine his
distress and anger when he heard that a woman who had till shortly
before been kitchen-maid at the Abbey House, and was now living in
the village, had been confined of a son which she fixed upon his
brother, whose wife she declared herself to be. Investigation only
brought out the truth of the story; his weak-minded brother had been
entrapped into a glaring mesalliance.
But Mr. Caresfoot proved himself equal to the occasion. So soon as his
"sister-in-law," as it pleased him to call her sardonically, had
sufficiently recovered, he called upon her. What took place at the visit
never transpired, but next day Mrs. E. Caresfoot left her native place
never to return, the child remaining with the father, or rather with the
uncle. That boy was George. At the time when this story opens both his
parents were dead: his father from illness resulting from entire failure
of brain power, the mother from drink.
Whether it was that he considered the circumstance of the lad's birth
entitled him to peculiar consideration, or that he transferred to him the
affection he bore his father, the result was that his nephew was quite as
dear if not even dearer to Mr. Caresfoot than his own son. Not,
however, that he allowed his preference to be apparent, save in the
negative way that he was blind to faults in George that he was
sufficiently quick to note in Philip. To observers this partiality seemed
the more strange when they thought upon Philip's bonny face and form,
and then noted how the weak-brained father and coarse-blooded mother
had left their mark in George's thick lips, small, restless eyes, pallid
complexion, and loose-jointed form.
When Philip shook off his cousin's grasp and vanished towards the lake,

he did so with bitter wrath and hatred in his heart, for he saw but too
clearly that he had deeply injured himself in his father's estimation, and,
what was more, he felt that so much as he had sunk his side of the
balance, by so much he had raised up that of George. He was
inculpated; a Bellamy came upon the scene to save George, and, what
was worse, an untruthful Bellamy; he was the aggressor, and George
the meek in spirit with the soft answer that turneth away wrath. It was
intolerable; he hated his father, he hated George. There was no justice
in the world, and he had not wit to play rogue with such a one as his
cousin. Appearances were always against him; he hated everybody.
And then he began to think that there was in the very next parish
somebody whom he did not hate, but who, on the contrary, interested
him, and was always ready to listen to his troubles, and he also became
aware of the fact that whilst his mind had been thinking his legs had
been walking, and that he was very near the abode of that
person--almost at its gates, in short. He paused and looked at his watch;
it had stopped at half-past eleven, the one blow