In the Close of Durdlebury, greenswarded, silent, sentinelled by
immemorial elms that guard the dignified Gothic dwellings of the
cathedral dignitaries, was James Marmaduke Trevor born. His father, a
man of private fortune, was Canon of Durdlebury. For many years he
lived in the most commodious canonical house in the Close with his
sisters Sophia and Sarah. In the course of time a new Dean, Dr.
Conover, was appointed to Durdlebury, and, restless innovator that he
was, underpinned the North Transept and split up Canon Trevor's home
by marrying Sophia. Then Sarah, bitten by the madness, committed
abrupt matrimony with the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, Rector of
Durdlebury. Canon Trevor, many years older than his sisters, remained
for some months in bewildered loneliness, until one day he found
himself standing in front of the cathedral altar with Miss Mathilda
Jessup, while the Bishop pronounced over them words diabolically
strange yet ecclesiastically familiar. Miss Jessup, thus transformed
into Mrs. Trevor, was a mature and comfortable maiden lady of ample
means, the only and orphan daughter of a late Bishop of Durdlebury.
Never had there been such a marrying and giving in marriage in the
cathedral circle. Children were born in Decanal, Rectorial and
Canonical homes. First a son to the Manningtrees, whom they named
Oliver. Then a daughter to the Conovers. Then a son, named James
Marmaduke, after the late Bishop Jessup, was born to the Trevors. The
profane say that Canon Trevor, a profound patristic theologian and an
enthusiastic palaeontologist, couldn't make head or tail of it all,
and, unable to decide whether James Marmaduke should be attributed to
Tertullian or the Neolithic period, expired in an agony of dubiety. At
any rate, the poor man died. The widow, of necessity, moved from the
Close, in order to make way for the new Canon, and betook herself with
her babe to Denby Hall, the comfortable house on the outskirts of the
town in which she had dwelt before her marriage.

The saturated essence of Durdlebury ran in Marmaduke's blood: an
honourable essence, a proud essence; an essence of all that is
statically beautiful and dignified in English life; but an essence
which, without admixture of wilder and more fluid elements, is apt to
run thick and clog the arteries. Marmaduke was coddled from his birth.
The Dean, then a breezy, energetic man, protested. Sarah Manningtree
protested. But when the Dean's eldest born died of