Tristram of Blent | Page 9

ON GUARD
Harry Tristram was just on twenty-three; to others, and to himself too
perhaps (if a man himself can attain any clear view), he seemed older.
Even the externals of his youth had differed from the common run.
Sent to school like other boys, he had come home from Harrow one
Easter for the usual short holiday. He had never returned; he had not
gone to the University; he had been abroad a good deal, travelling and
studying, but always in his mother's company. It was known that she
was in bad health; it was assumed that either she was very exacting or
he very devoted, since to separate him from her appeared impossible.
Yet those who observed them together saw no imperiousness on her
part and no excess of sentiment on his. Friendliness based on a
thorough sympathy of mind was his attitude if his demeanor revealed it
truly; while Lady Tristram was to her son as she was to all the world at
this time, a creature of feelings now half cold and of moods that
reflected palely the intense impulses of her youth. But a few years over
forty, she grew faded and faint in mind, it seemed, as well as in body,

and was no longer a merry comrade to the boy who never left her. Yet
he did not wish to leave her. To her, indeed, he was not a boy, and
nobody about the place regarded him as other than a man. He had been
actually and effectively master of the house for years, just as he was
master of his own doings, of his friendships, recreations, and pursuits.
And he had managed all well, except that he was not thought to be very
happy or to get much enjoyment from his life. That was just an idea he
gave of himself, and gave involuntarily--in spite of taking his fair share
in the amusements of the neighborhood, and holding his own well in its
sports and athletics. But he was considered cold and very reserved. Had
Mina Zabriska remembered this use of "reserve," perhaps she would
have employed the word instead of "wariness." Or perhaps, if his
acquaintances had looked more keenly, they would have come over to
Mina's side and found her term the more accurate. She spoke from a
fresher and sharper impression of him.
His childhood at least had been happy, while Lady Tristram was still
the bewilderingly delightful companion who had got into so much hot
water and made so many people eager to get in after her. Joy lasted
with her as long as health did, and her health began to fail only when
her son approached fifteen. Another thing happened about then, which
formed the prelude to the most vivid scene in the boy's life. Lady
Tristram was not habitually a religious woman; that temper of mind
was too abstract for her; she moved among emotions and images, and
had small dealings with meditation or spiritual conceptions. But
happening to be in a mood that laid her open to the influence, she heard
in London one day a sermon preached by a young man famous at the
time, a great searcher of fashionable hearts. She drove straight from the
church (it was a Friday morning) to Paddington and took the first train
home. Harry was there--back from school for his holiday--and she
found him in the smoking-room, weighing a fish which he had caught
in the pool that the Blent forms above the weir. There and then she fell
on her knees on the floor and poured forth to him the story of that
Odyssey of hers which had shocked London society and is touched
upon in Mr Cholderton's Journal. He listened amazed, embarrassed,
puzzled up to a point; a boy's normal awkwardness was raised to its
highest pitch; he did not want to hear his mother call herself a wicked

woman; and anyhow it was a long while ago, and he did not understand
it all very well. The woman lifted her eyes and looked at him; she was
caught by the luxury of confession, of humiliation, of offering her back
to the whip. She told him he was not her heir--that he would not be
Tristram of Blent. For a moment she laid her head on the floor at his
feet. She heard no sound from him, and presently looked up at him
again. His embarrassment had gone; he was standing rigidly still, his
eyes gazing out toward the river, his forehead wrinkled in a frown. He
was thinking. She went on kneeling there, saying no more, staring at
her son. It was characteristic of her that she did not risk diminishing the
effectiveness of the scene, or the tragedy of her avowal, by explaining
the perverse