"You see, all you public schoolboys have a kind of freemasonry of
your own, and outsiders are looked on by you much as I look on
rabbits and all that isn't game. Ay, you may laugh, but it is so; and
your friends will throw their eyes askance at me, and never think on
my pedigree, which would beat theirs all to shivers, I'll be bound.
No; I'll have no one here at the Hall who will look down on a Hamley
of Hamley, even if he only knows how to make a cross instead of write
his name."
Then, of course, they must not visit at houses to whose sons the
Squire could not or would not return a like hospitality. On all these
points Mrs. Hamley had used her utmost influence without avail;
his prejudices were immoveable. As regarded his position as head
of the oldest family in three counties, his pride was invincible;
as regarded himself personally--ill at ease in the society of
his equals, deficient in manners, and in education--his morbid
sensitiveness was too sore and too self-conscious to be called
humility.
Take one instance from among many similar scenes of the state of
feeling between him and his eldest son, which, if it could not be
called active discord, showed at least passive estrangement.
It took place on an evening in the March succeeding Mrs. Hamley's
death. Roger was at Cambridge. Osborne had also been from home, and
he had not volunteered any information as to his absence. The Squire
believed that Osborne had been either at Cambridge with his brother,
or in London; he would have liked to hear where his son had been,
what he had been doing, and whom he had seen, purely as pieces of
news, and as some diversion from the domestic worries and cares which
were pressing him hard; but he was too proud to ask any questions,
and Osborne had not given him any details of his journey. This
silence had aggravated the Squire's internal dissatisfaction, and
he came home to dinner weary and sore-hearted a day or two after
Osborne's return. It was just six o'clock, and he went hastily into
his own little business-room on the ground-floor, and, after washing
his hands, came into the drawing-room feeling as if he were very
late, but the room was empty. He glanced at the clock over the
mantel-piece, as he tried to warm his hands at the fire. The fire had
been neglected, and had gone out during the day; it was now piled up
with half-dried wood, which sputtered and smoked instead of doing its
duty in blazing and warming the room, through which the keen wind was
cutting its way in all directions. The clock had stopped, no one had
remembered to wind it up, but by the squire's watch it was already
past dinner-time. The old butler put his head into the room, but,
seeing the squire alone, he was about to draw it back, and wait
for Mr. Osborne, before announcing dinner. He had hoped to do this
unperceived, but the squire caught him in the act.