Things were not going on any better at Hamley Hall. Nothing had
occurred to change the state of dissatisfied feeling into which the
Squire and his eldest son had respectively fallen; and the long
continuance merely of dissatisfaction is sure of itself to deepen
the feeling. Roger did all in his power to bring the father and son
together; but sometimes wondered if it would not have been better to
leave them alone; for they were falling into the habit of each making
him their confidant, and so defining emotions and opinions which
would have had less distinctness if they had been unexpressed. There
was little enough relief in the daily life at the Hall to help them
all to shake off the gloom; and it even told on the health of both
the Squire and Osborne. The Squire became thinner, his skin as well
as his clothes began to hang loose about him, and the freshness
of his colour turned to red streaks, till his cheeks looked like
Eardiston pippins, instead of resembling "a Katherine pear on the
side that's next the sun." Roger thought that his father sate indoors
and smoked in his study more than was good for him, but it had
become difficult to get him far afield; he was too much afraid of
coming across some sign of the discontinued drainage works, or being
irritated afresh by the sight of his depreciated timber. Osborne was
wrapt up in the idea of arranging his poems for the press, and so
working out his wish for independence. What with daily writing to
his wife--taking his letters himself to a distant post-office, and
receiving hers there--touching up his sonnets, &c., with fastidious
care--and occasionally giving himself the pleasure of a visit to the
Gibsons, and enjoying the society of the two pleasant girls there,
he found little time for being with his father. Indeed, Osborne was
too self-indulgent or "sensitive," as he termed it, to bear well
with the Squire's gloomy fits, or too frequent querulousness. The
consciousness of his secret, too, made Osborne uncomfortable in his
father's presence. It was very well for all parties that Roger was
not "sensitive," for, if he had been, there were times when it would
have been hard to bear little spurts of domestic tyranny, by which
his father strove to assert his power over both his sons. One of
these occurred very soon after the night of the Hollingford
charity-ball.
Roger had induced his father to come out with him; and the Squire
had, on his son's suggestion, taken with him his long unused spud.
The two had wandered far afield; perhaps the elder man had found the
unwonted length of exercise too much for him; for, as he approached
the house, on his return, he became what nurses call in children
"fractious," and ready to turn on his companion for every remark he
made. Roger understood the case by instinct, as it were, and bore it
all with his usual sweetness of temper. They entered the house by
the front door; it lay straight on their line of march. On the old
cracked yellow-marble slab, there lay a card with Lord Hollingford's
name on it, which Robinson, evidently on the watch for their return,
hastened out of his pantry to deliver to Roger.