Mr. Creswell's only son, who was named after Mr. Creswell's only brother, by no means resembled his prototype either in appearance, manners, or disposition. For whereas Tom Creswell the elder had been a long, lean, washed-out-looking person, with long, wiry black hair, sallow complexion, hollow cheeks, and a faint dawn of a moustache (in his youth he had turned down his collars and modelled himself generally on Lord Byron, and throughout his life he was declared by his wife to be most aristocratic and romantic-looking), Tom Creswell the younger had a small, round, bullet head, with closely cropped sandy hair, eyes deeply sunken and but little visible, snub nose, wide mouth, and dimpled chin. Tom Creswell the elder rose at noon, and lay upon the sofa all day, composing verses, reading novels, or playing the flute. Tom Creswell the younger was up at five every morning, round through the stables, saw the horses properly fed, peered into every corn-bin ("Darng, now whey do thot? Darnged if un doesn't count cam-grains, I think," was the groom's muttered exclamation on this proceeding), ran his hand over the animals, and declared that they "didn't carry as much flesh as they might," with a look at the helpers which obviously meant that they starved the cattle and sold the oats. Then Tom the younger would go to the garden, where his greatest delight lay in counting the peaches and nectarines, and plums and apricots, nestling coyly against the old red south wall, in taking stock of the cucumbers and melons under their frames, and in ticking off the number of the bunches of grapes slowly ripening in the sickly heat of the vinery, while the Scotch head-gardener, a man whose natural hot-headedness was barely kept within bounds by the strictness of his religious opinions, would stand by looking on, outwardly placid, but inwardly burning to deliver himself of his sentiments in the Gaelic language. Tom Creswell the elder was always languid and ailing; as a boy he had worn a comforter, and a hare-skin on his chest, had taken cough-lozenges and jujubes, had been laughed at and called "Molly" and "Miss" by his schoolfellows, and had sighed and simpered away his existence. Tom Creswell the younger was strong as a Shetland pony, and hard as a tennis-ball, full of exuberant vitality which, not finding sufficient vent in ordinary schoolboy fun, in cricket, or hockey, or football, let itself off in cruelty, in teasing and stoning animals, in bullying smaller boys. Tom Creswell the elder was weak, selfish, idle, and conceited, but--you could not help allowing it--he was a gentleman. Tom Creswell the younger--you could not possibly deny it--was a blatant cad.

Not the least doubt of it. Everybody knew it, and most people owned it. Down in the village it was common talk. Mr. Creswell was wonderfully respected in Helmingham town, though the old people minded the day when he was thought little of. Helmingham is strictly Conservative, and when Mr. Creswell first settled himself at Woolgreaves, and commenced his restoration of the house, and was known to be spending large sums on the estate, and was seen to have horses and equipages very far outshining those of Sir Thomas Churchill of the Park, who was lord of the manor, and a county magnate of the very first order, the village folk could not understand a man of no particular birth or breeding, and whose money, it was well known, had been made in trade--which, to the Helmingham limited comprehension, meant across a counter in a shop, "just like Tom Boucher, the draper"--attaining such a position. They did not like the idea of being patronised by one whom they considered to be of their own order; and the foolish face which had been transmitted through ten generations, and the stupid head which had never had a wise idea or a kindly thought in it, received the homage which was denied to the clever man who had been the founder of his own fortune, and who was the best landlord and the kindest neighbour in the country round. But this prejudice soon wore away. The practical good sense which had gained for Mr. Creswell his position soon made itself felt among the Helmingham folk, and the "canny" ones soon grew as loud in his praise as they had been in his disparagement. Even Jack Forman, the ne'er-do-weel of the village, who was always sunning his fat form at alehouse-doors, and who had but few good words for any one, save for the most recent "stander" of beer, had been heard to declare outside that Mr. Creswell was the "raight soort," a phrase which, in Jack's limited vocabulary, stood for something highly complimentary. The young ladies, too, were exceedingly popular. They were pretty, of a downright English prettiness, expressed in hair and eyes and complexion, a prettiness commending itself at once to the uneducated English rustic taste, which is apt to find classical features "peaky," and romantic expression "fal-lal." They were girls about whom there was "no nonsense"--cheerful, bright, and homely. The feelings which congealed into cold politeness under the influence of Marian Ashurst's supposed "superiority" overflowed with womanly tenderness when their possessor was watching Widow Halton through the fever, or tending little Madge Mason's crippled limb. The blight faces of "the young ladies" were known for miles through the country round, and whenever sickness or distress crossed the threshold they were speedily followed by these ministering angels. If human prayers for others' welfare avail on high, Mr. Creswell and his nieces had them in scores.

But the Helmingham folk did not pray much for young Tom; on the contrary, their aspirations towards him were, it is to be feared, of a malignant kind. The warfare which always existed between the village folk and the Grammar-School boys was carried on without rancour. The farmers whose orchards were robbed, whose growing wheat was trampled down, whose ducks were dog-hunted, contented themselves with putting in an occasional appearance with a cart-whip, fully knowing, at the same time, the impossibility of catching their young and active tormentors, and with "darnging" the rising generation in general, and the youth then profiting by Sir Ranulph Clinton's generosity in particular. The village tradesmen whose windows were broken, when they discovered who were the offenders, laid on an additional item to their parents' account; when they could not bring the crime home to any boy in particular, laid on an additional item to Mr. Ashurst's account, and thus consoled themselves. Moreover, there was a general feeling that somehow, in a way that they could not and never attempted to explain, the school, since Mr. Ashurst had had it in hand, had been a credit to the place, and the canny folk, in their canniness, liked something which brought them credit and cost them nothing, and had friendly feelings to the masters and the boys.

But not to young Tom Creswell. They hated him, and they said so roundly. What was youthful merriment and mischief in other boys was, they averred, "bedevilment" in young Tom. Standing at their doors on fine summer evenings, the village folk would pause in their gossip to look after him as he cantered by on his chestnut pony--an animal which Banks, the farrier, declared to be as vicious and as cross-grained as its master. Eyes were averted as he passed, and no hat was raised in salutation; but that mattered little to the rider. He noticed it, of course, as he noticed everything in his hang-dog manner, with furtive glances under his eyebrows; and he thought that when he came into his kingdom--he often speculated upon that time--he would make these dogs pay for their insolence. Jack Forman was never drunk; no given amount of beer--and it was always given in Jack's case, as he never paid for it--could make him wholly intoxicated; but when he was in that state which he explained himself as having "an extry pint in him," Jack would stand up, holding on by the horse-trough in front of the Seven Stars, and shake his disengaged fist at young Tom riding past, and express his wish to wring young Tom's neck. Mr. Benthall, who had succeeded Mr. Ashurst as head-master of the school, was soon on excellent terms with Mr. Creswell, and thus had an opportunity of getting an insight into young Tom's character--an opportunity which rendered him profoundly thankful that that interesting youth was no longer numbered among his scholars, and caused him much wonderment as to how Trollope, who was the curate of a neighbouring parish, who had been chosen for young Tom's private tutor, could possibly get on with his pupil. Mr. Trollope, a mild, gentlemanly, retiring young man, with a bashful manner and a weak voice, found himself utterly unable to cope with the lout, who mocked at him before his face and mimicked him behind his back, and refused to be taught or guided by him in any way. So Mr. Trollope, after speaking to the lout's father, and finding but little good resulting therefrom, contented himself with setting exercises which were never done, and marking out lessons which were never learned, and bearing a vast amount of contumely and unpleasantness for the sake of a salary which was very regularly paid.

It must not be supposed that his son's strongly marked characteristics passed unobserved by Mr. Creswell, or that they failed to cause him an immensity of pain. The man's life had been so hard and earnest, so engrossing and so laborious, that he had only allowed himself two subjects for distraction, occasionally indulged in; one, regret for his wife; the other, hope in his son. As time passed away and he grew older, the first lessened and the other grew. His Jenny had been an angel on earth, he thought, and was now an angel in heaven, and the period was nearing, rapidly nearing, when, as he himself humbly hoped, he might be permitted to join her. Then his son would take his place, with no ladder to climb, no weary heart-burning and hard slaving to go through, but with the position achieved, the ball at his foot. In Mr. Creswell's own experience he had seen a score of men, whose fathers had been inferior to him in natural talent and business capacity, and in luck, which was not the least part of the affair, holding their own with the landed gentry whose ancestry had been "county people" for ages past, and playing at squires with as much grace and tact as if cotton-twist and coal-dust were things of which they might have heard, indeed, but with which they had never been brought into contact. It had been the dream of the old man's life that his son should be one of these. The first idea of the purchase of Woolgreaves, the lavish splendour with which the place had been rehabilitated and with which it was kept up, the still persistent holding on to business and superintending, though with but rare intervals, his own affairs, all sprang from this hope. The old gentleman's tastes were simple in the extreme. He hated grandeur, disliked society, had had far more than enough of business worries. There was plenty, more than plenty, for him and his nieces to live on in affluence, but it had been the dearest wish of his heart to leave his son a man of mark, and do it he would.

Did he really think so? Not in his inmost heart. The keen eyes which had been accustomed for so long to read human nature like a book refused to be hoodwinked; the keen sense used to sift and balance human motives refused to be paltered with; the logical powers which deduced effect from cause refused to be stifled or led astray. To no human being were Tom Creswell's moral deficiencies and shortcomings more patent than to his father; it is needless to say that to none were they the subject of such bitter anguish. Mr. Creswell knew that his son was a failure, and worse than a failure. If he had been merely stupid there would have been not much to grieve over. The lad would have been a disappointment--as how many lads are disappointments to fond parents!--and that was all. Hundreds, thousands of stupid young men filled their position in society with average success. Their money supported them, and they pulled through. He had hoped for something better than this for his son, but in the bitterness of his grief he allowed to himself that he would have been contented even with so much. But Mr. Creswell knew that his son was worse than stupid; that he was bad, low in his tastes and associations, sordid and servile in his heart, cunning, mean, and despicable. All the qualities which should have distinguished him--gentlemanly bearing, refined manners, cultivated tastes, generous impulses--all these he lacked: with a desire for sharp practice, hard-heartedness, rudeness towards those beneath him in the social scale, boorishness towards his equals, he was overflowing. Lout that he was, he had not even reverence for his father, had not even the decency to attempt to hide his badness, but paraded it in the open day before the eyes of all, with a kind of sullen pride. And that was to be the end of all Mr. Creswell's plotting and planning, all his hard work and high hopes? For this he had toiled, and slaved, and speculated? Many and many a bitter hour did the old man pass shut away in the seclusion of his library, thinking over the bright hopes which he had indulged in as regarded ............