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32
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SIR THOMAS AT HOME.
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Sir Thomas Underwood was welcomed home at the villa with a double amount of sympathy and glory,--that due to him for his victory being added to that which came to him on the score of his broken arm. A hero is never so much a hero among women as when he has been wounded in the battle. The very weakness which throws him into female hands imparts a moiety of his greatness to the women who for the while possess him, and creates a partnership in heroism, in which the feminine half delights to make the most of its own share. During the week at Percycross and throughout the journey Patience had had this half all to herself; and there had arisen to her considerable enjoyment from it as soon as she found that her father would probably be none the worse for his accident after a few weeks. She saw more of him now than she had done for years, and was able, after a fashion, to work her quiet, loving, female will with him, exacting from him an obedience to feminine sway such as had not been exercised on him since his wife's death. He himself had been humbled, passive, and happy. He had taken his gruel, grumbled with modesty, and consoled himself with constantly reflecting that he was member of Parliament for the borough of Percycross.
During their journey, although Patience was urgent in requiring from her father quiescence, lest he should injure himself by too much exertion, there were many words spoken both as to Clarissa and Mary Bonner. As to poor Clary, Sir Thomas was very decided that if there were any truth in the suspicion which had been now roused in his mind as to Ralph the heir, the thing must be put an end to at once. Ralph who had been the heir was now in possession of that mess of pottage for which he had sold his inheritance,--so said Sir Thomas to his daughter,--and would undoubtedly consume that, as he had consumed the other mess which should have lasted him till the inheritance was his own. And he told to Patience the whole story as to Polly Neefit,--the whole story, at least, as he had heard it. Ralph had declared to Sir Thomas, when discussing the expedience of his proposed marriage with the daughter of the breeches-maker, that he was attached to Polly Neefit. Sir Thomas had done all he could to dissuade the young man from a marriage which, in his eyes, was disgraceful; but he could not bring himself to look with favour on affections transferred so quickly from the breeches-maker's daughter to his own. There must be no question of a love affair between Clary and the foolish heir who had disinherited himself by his folly. All this was doubly painful to Patience. She suffered first for her sister, the violence of whose feelings were so well known to her, and so completely understood; and then on her own account she was obliged to endure the conviction that she was deceiving her father. Although she had allowed something of the truth to escape from her, she had not wilfully told her sister's secret. But looking at the matter from her father's point of view, and hearing all that her father now said, she was brought in guilty of hypocrisy in the court of her own conscience.
In that other matter as to Mary Bonner there was much more of pleasantness. There could be no possible reason why that other man, to whom Fortune was going to be so good, should not marry Mary Bonner, if Mary could bring herself to take him into her good graces. And of course she would. Such at least was Sir Thomas's opinion. How was it possible that a girl like Mary, who had nothing of her own, should fail to like a lover who had everything to recommend him,--good looks, good character, good temper, and good fortune. Patience did make some protest against this, for the sake of her sex. She didn't think, she said, that Mary had ever thought of Mr. Newton in that light. "There must be a beginning to such thoughts, of course," said Sir Thomas. Patience explained that she had nothing to say against Mr. Newton. It would all be very nice and proper, no doubt,--only perhaps Mary might not care for Mr. Newton. "Psha!" said Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas seemed to think that the one girl was as much bound to fall in love as the other was to abstain from so doing. Patience continued her protest,--but very mildly, because her father's arm was in a sling. Then there arose the question whether Mary should be told of the young man's letter. Patience thought that the young man should be allowed to come and speak for himself. Sir Thomas made no objection to the young man's coming. The young man might come when he pleased. But Sir Thomas thought it would be well that Mary should know what the young man had written. And so they reached home.
To be glorified by one worshipping daughter had been pleasant to the wounded hero, but to be glorified by two daughters and a niece was almost wearisome. On the first evening nothing was said about the love troubles or love prospects of the girls. Sir Thomas permitted to himself the enjoyment of his glory, with some few signs of impatience when the admiration became too strong. He told the whole story of his election, lying back among his cushions on the sofa, although Patience, with mild persistence, cautioned him against exertion.
"It is very bad that you should have your arm broken, papa," said Clarissa.
"It is a bore, my dear."
"Of course it is,--a dreadful bore. But as it is doing so well, I am so glad that you went down to Percycross. It is such a great thing that you should be in the House again. It does give so much colour to our lives here."
"I hope they were not colourless before."
"You know what I mean. It is so nice to feel that you are in Parliament."
"It is quite on the cards that I may lose the seat by petition."
"They never can be so cruel," said Mary.
"Cruelty!" said Sir Thomas laughing. "In politics men skin each other without the slightest feeling. I do not doubt that Mr. Westmacott would ruin me with the most perfect satisfaction, if by doing so he could bring the seat within his own reach again; and yet I believe Mr. Westmacott to be a kind-hearted, good sort of man. There is a theory among Englishmen that in politics no man need spare another. To wish that your opponent should fall dead upon the hustings is not an uncharitable wish at an election."
"Oh, papa!" exclaimed Patience.
"At any rate you are elected," said Clary.
"And threatened folk live long, uncle," said Mary Bonner.
"So they say, my dear. Well, Patience, don't look at me with so much reprobation in your eyes, and I will go to bed at once. Being here instead of at the Percy Standard does make one inclined to take a liberty."
"Oh, papa, it is such a delight to have you," said Clary, jumping up and kissing her father's forehead. All this was pleasant enough, and the first evening came to an end very happily.
The next morning Patience, when she was alone with her father, made a request to him with some urgency. "Papa," she said, "do not say anything to Clary about Ralph."
"Why not?"
"If there is anything in it, let it die out of itself."
"But is there?"
"How am I to say? Think of it, papa. If I knew it, I could hardly tell,--even you."
"Why not? If I am not to hear the truth from you who is to tell me?"
"Dear papa, don't be angry. There may be a truth which had better not be told. What we both want is that Clary shouldn't suffer. If you question her she will suffer. You may be sure of this,--that she will obey your wishes."
"How can she obey them, unless she knows them?"
"She shall know them," said Patience. But Sir Thomas would give no promise.
On that same day Sir Thomas sent for his niece into his room, and there read to her the letter which he had received from the Squire's son. It was now the last week of October,--that short blessed morsel of time which to the poor Squire at Newton was the happiest of his life. He was now cutting down trees and building farm-houses, and looking after his stud in all the glory of his success. Ralph had written his letter, and had received his answer,--and he also was successful and glorious. That fatal day on which the fox would not break from Barford Woods had not yet arrived. Mary Bonner heard the letter read, and listened to Sir Thomas's speech without a word, without a blush, and without a sign. Sir Thomas began his speech very well, but became rather misty towards the end, when he found himself unable to reduce Mary to a state of feminine confusion. "My dear," he began, "I have received a letter which I think it is my duty to read to you."
"A letter, uncle?"
"Yes, my dear. Sit down while I read it. I may as well tell you at once that it is a letter which has given me very great satisfaction. It is from a young gentleman;"--upon hearing this announcement Mary's face assumed a look of settled, collected strength, which never left it for a moment during the remainder of the interview,--"yes; from a young gentleman, and I may say that I never read a letter which I thought to be more honourable to the writer. It is from Mr. Ralph Newton,--not the Ralph with whom you have found us to be so intimate, but from the other who will some day be Mr. Newton of Newton Priory." Then Sir Thomas looked into his niece's face, hoping to see there something of the flutter of expectant triumph. But there was neither flutter nor triumph in Mary's countenance. He read the letter, sitting up in his bed, with his left arm in a sling, and then he handed it to her. "You had better look at it yourself, my dear." Mary took the letter, and sat as though she were reading it. It seemed to Sir Thomas that she was reading it with the cold accuracy of a cautious attorney;--but in truth her eyes did not follow a single word of the letter. There was neither flutter nor triumph in her face, or in the movement of her limbs, or in the quiet, almost motionless carriage of her body; but, nevertheless, the pulses of her heart beat so strongly, that had all depended on it she could not have read a word of the letter. "Well, my dear," said Sir Thomas, when he thought that ample time had been given for the perusal. Mary simply folded the paper together and returned it into his hands. "I have told him, as I was bound to do, my dear, that as far as I was concerned, I should be happy to receive him; but that for any other answer, I must refer him to you. Of course it will be for you to give him what answer your heart dictates. But I may say this,--and it is my duty to say it as your guardian and nearest relative;--the way in which he has put forward his request shows him to be a most honourable man; all that I have ever heard of him is in his favour; he is a gentleman every inch of him; and as for his prospects in life, they are such that they entitle him to address almost any lady in the land. Of course you will follow the dictates of your own heart, as I said; but I cannot myself fancy any greater good fortune that could come in the way of a young woman than the honest affections of such a man as this Ralph Newton." Then Sir Thomas paused for some reply, but Mary had none ready for him. "Of course I have no questions to ask," he said, and then again paused. But still Mary did not speak. "I dare say he will be here before long, and I hope that he may meet with a happy reception. I at least shall be glad to see him, for I hold him in great honour. And as I look upon marriage as the happiest lot for all women, and as I think that this would be a happy marriage, I do hope,--I do hope-- But as I said before, all that must be left to yourself. Mary, have you nothing to say?"
"I trust, uncle, you are not tired of me."
"Tired of you! Certainly not. I have not been with you since you have been here as much as I should have wished because,--indeed for various reasons. But we all like you, and nobody wants to get rid of you. But there is a way in which young ladies leave their own homes, which is generally thought to be matter of congratulation. But, as I said before, nobody shall press you."
"Dear uncle, I am so full of thanks to you for your kindness."
"But it is of course my duty as your guardian to tell you that in my opinion this gentleman is entitled to your esteem."
After that Mary left him without another word, and taking her hat and cloak as she passed through the hall went at once out into the garden. It was a fine autumn morning, almost with a touch of summer in it. We do not know here that special season which across the Atlantic is called the Indian summer,--that last glow of the year's warmth which always brings with it a half melancholy conviction of the year's decay,--which in itself is so delightful, would be so full of delight, were it not for the consciousness which it seems to contain of being the immediate precursor of winter with all its horrors. There is no sufficient constancy with us of the recurrence of such a season, to make any special name needful. But now and again there comes a day, when the winds of the equinox have lulled themselves, and the chill of October rains have left the earth, and the sun gives a genial, luxurious warmth, with no power to scorch, with strength only to comfort. But here, as elsewhere, this luxury is laden with melancholy, because it tells us of decay, and is the harbinger of death. This was such a day, and Mary Bonner, as she hurried into a shrubbery walk, where she could wander unseen, felt both the sadness and the softness of the season. There was a path which ran from the front gate of the villa grounds through shrubs and tall evergreens down to the river, and was continued along the river-bank up through the flower-garden to windows opening from the drawing-room. Here she walked alone for more than an hour, turning as she came to the river in order that she might not be seen from the house.
Mary Bonner, of whose character hitherto but little has been said, was, at any rate, an acute observer. Very soon after her first introduction to Ralph the heir,--Ralph who had for so many years been the intimate friend of the Underwood family,--she perceived something in the manner of that very attractive young man which conveyed to her a feeling that, if she so pleased, she might count him as an admirer of her own. She had heard then, as was natural, much of the brilliance of his prospects, and but little,--as was also natural,--of what he had done to mar them. And she also perceived, or fancied that she perceived, that her cousin Clary gave many of her thoughts to the heir. Now Mary Bonner understood the importance to herself of a prosperous marriage, as well as any girl ever did understand its great significance. She was an orphan, living in fact on the charity of her uncle. And she was aware that having come to her uncle's house when all the weakness and attractions of her childhood were passed, she could have no hold on him or his such as would have been hers had she grown to be a woman beneath his roof. There was a thoughtfulness too about her,--a thoughtfulness which some, perhaps, may call worldliness,--which made it impossible for her not to have her own condition constantly in her mind. In her father's lifetime she had been driven by his thoughtlessness and her own sterner nature to think of these things; and in the few months that had passed between her father's death and her acceptance in her uncle's house she had taught herself to regard the world as an arena in which she must fight a battle by her own strength with such weapons as God had given to her. God had, indeed, given to her many weapons, but she knew but of one. She did know that God had made her very beautiful. But she regarded her beauty after an unfeminine fashion,--as a thing of value, but as a chattel of which she could not bring herself to be proud. Might it be possible that she should win for herself by her beauty some position in the world less burdensome, more joyous than that of a governess, and less dependent than that of a daily recipient of her uncle's charity?
She had had lovers in the West Indies,--perhaps a score of them, but they had been nothing to her. Her father's house had been so constituted that it had been impossible for her to escape the very plainly spoken admiration of captains, lieutenants, and Colonial secretaries. In the West Indies gentlemen do speak so very plainly, on, or without, the smallest encouragement, that ladies accept such speaking much as they do in England the attention of a handkerchief lifted or an offer for a dance. It had all meant nothing to Mary Bonner, who from her earliest years of girlhood had been accustomed to captains, lieutenants, and even to midshipmen. But, through it all, she had grown up with serious thoughts, and something of a conviction that love-making was but an ugly amusement. As far as it had been possible she had kept herself aloof from it, and though run after for her beauty, had been unpopular as being a "proud, cold, meaningless minx." When her father died she would speak to no one; and then it had been settled among the captains, lieutenants, and Colonial secretaries that she was a proud, cold, meaningless minx. And with this character she left the island. Now there came to her, naturally I say, this question;--What lovers might she find in England, and, should she find lovers, how should she deal with them? There are among us many who tell us that no pure-minded girl should think of finding a lover,--should only deal with him, when he comes, as truth, and circumstances, and parental control may suggest to her. If there be girls so pure, it certainly seems that no human being expects to meet them. Such was not the purity of Mary Bonner,--if pure she was. She did think of some coming lover,--did hope that there might be for her some prosperity of life as the consequence of the love of some worthy man whom she, in return, might worship. And then there had come Ralph Newton the heir.
Now to Mary Bonner,--as also to Clarissa Underwood, and to Patience, and to old Mrs. Brownlow, and a great many others, Ralph the heir did not appear in quite those colours which he probably will in the reader's eyes. These ladies, and a great many other ladies and gentlemen who reckoned him among their acquaintance, were not accurately acquainted with his transactions with Messrs. Neefit, Moggs, and Horsball; nor were they thoroughly acquainted with the easy nature of our hero's changing convictions. To Clarissa he certainly was heroic; to Patience he was very dear; to old Mrs. Brownlow he was almost a demigod; to Mr. Poojean he was an object of envy. To Mary Bonner, as she first saw him, he was infinitely more fascinating than the captains and lieutenants of West Indian regiments, or than Colonial secretaries generally.
It was during that evening at Mrs. Brownlow's that Mary Bonner resolutely made up her mind that she would be as stiff and cold to Ralph the heir as the nature of their acquaintance would allow. She had seen Clarissa without watching, and, without thinking, she had resolved. Mr. Newton was handsome, well to do, of good address, and clever;--he was also attractive; but he should not be attractive for her. She would not, as her first episode in her English life, rob a cousin of a lover. And so her mind was made up, and no word was spoken to any one. She had no confidences. There was no one in whom she could confide. Indeed, there was no need for confidence. As she left Mrs. Brownlow's house on that evening she slipped her arm through that of Patience, and the happy Clarissa was left to walk home with Ralph the heir,--as the reader may perhaps remember.
Then that other Ralph had come, and she learned in half-pronounced ambiguous whispers what was the nature of his position in the world. She did not know,--at that time her cousins did not know,--how nearly successful were the efforts made to dispossess the heir of his inheritance in order that this other Newton might possess it. But she saw, or thought that she saw, that this was the gallanter man of the two. Then he came again, and then again, and she knew that her own beauty was of avail. She encouraged him not at all. It was not in her nature to give encouragement to a man's advances. It may, perhaps, be said of her that she had no power to do so. What was in her of the graciousness of feminine love, of the leaning, clinging, flattering softness of woman's nature, required some effort to extract, and had never hitherto been extracted. But within her own bosom she told herself that she thought that she could give it, if the asking for it were duly done. Then came the first tidings of his heirship, of his father's success,--and then, close upon the heels of those tidings, this heir's humbly expressed desire to be permitted to woo her. There was all the flutter of triumph in her bosom, as that letter was read to her, and yet there was no sign of it in her voice or in her countenance.
Nor could it have been seen had she been met walking in the shade of that shrubbery. And yet she was full of triumph. Here was the man to whom her heart had seemed to turn almost at first sight, as it had never turned to man before. She had deigned to think of him as of one she could love;--and he loved her. As she paced the walk it was also much to her that this man who was so generous in her eyes should have provided for him so noble a place in the world. She quite understood what it was to be the wife of such a one as the Squire of Newton. She had grieved for Clary's sake when she heard that the former heir should be heir no longer,--suspecting Clary's secret. But she could not so grieve as to be insensible of her own joy. And then there was something in the very manner in which the man approached her, which gratified her pride while it touched her heart. About that other Ralph there was a tone of sustained self-applause, which seemed to declare that he had only to claim any woman and to receive her. There was an old-fashioned mode of wooing of which she had read and dreamed, that implied a homage which she knew that she desired. This homage her Ralph was prepared to pay.
For an hour she paced the walk, not thinking, but enjoying what she knew. There was nothing in it requiring thought. He was to come, and till he should come there was nothing that she need either say or do. Till he should come she would do nothing and say nothing. Such was her determination when Clarissa's step was heard, and in a moment Clarissa's arm was round her waist. "Mary," she said, "you must come out with me. Come and walk with me. I am going to Mrs. Brownlow's. You must come."
"To walk there and back?" said Mary, smiling.
"We will return in an omnibus; but you must come. Oh, I have so much to say to you."
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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33
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"TELL ME AND I'LL TELL YOU."
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"Papa has told me all about it," were Clarissa's first words as soon as they were out of the gate on the road to Mrs. Brownlow's.
"All about what, Clary?"
"Oh you know;--or rather it was Patience told me, and then I asked papa. I am so glad."
Mary had as yet hardly had time to think whether the coming of this letter to her uncle would or would not be communicated to her cousins; but had she thought, she would have been almost sure that Sir Thomas would be more discreet. The whole matter was to her so important, so secret, almost so solemn, that she could hardly imagine that it should be discussed among the whole household. And yet she felt a strong longing within herself to be able to talk of it to some one. Of the two cousins Clary was certainly her favourite, and had she been forced to consult any one, she would have consulted Clary. But an absolute confidence in such a matter with a chosen friend, the more delightful it might appear, was on that very account the more difficult of attainment. It was an occasion for thought, for doubt, and almost for dismay; and now Clary rushed into it as though everything could be settled in a walk from Fulham to Parson's Green! "It is very good of you to be glad, Clary," said the other,--hardly knowing why she said this, and yet meaning it. If in truth Clary was glad, it was good of her. For this man to whom Clary was alluding had won from her own lover all his inheritance.
"I like him so much. You will let me talk about him; won't you?"
"Oh, yes," said Mary.
"Do; pray do. There are so many reasons why we should tell each other everything." This elicited no promise from Mary. "If I thought that you would care, I would tell you all."
"I care about everything that concerns you, Clary."
"But I didn't bring you out to talk about myself now. I want to tell you how much I like your Ralph Newton."
"But he isn't mine."
"Yes he is;--at any rate, if you like to have him. And of course you will like. Why should you not? He is everything that is nice and good;--and now he is to be the owner of all the property. What I want to tell you is this; I do not begrudge it to you."
Why should Clarissa begrudge or not begrudge the property? Mary understood it all, but nothing had been said entitling her to speak as though she understood it. "I don't think you would begrudge me anything that you thought good for me," said Mary.
"And I think that Mr. Ralph Newton,--this Mr. Ralph Newton, is very good for you. Nothing could be so good. In the first place would it not be very nice to have you mistress of Newton Priory? Only that shouldn't come properly first."
"And what should come first, Clary?"
"Oh,--of course that you should love him better than anything in the world. And you do,--don't you?"
"It is too sudden to say that yet, Clary."
"But I am sure you will. Don't you feel that you will? Come, Mary, you should tell me something."
"There is so little to tell."
"Then you are afraid of me. I wanted to tell you everything."
"I am not afraid of you. But, remember, it is hardly more than an hour ago since I first heard of Mr. Newton's wishes, and up to that moment nothing was further from my dreams."
"I was sure of it, ever so long ago," said Clarissa.
"Oh, Clary!"
"I was. I told Patience how it was to be. I saw it in his eyes. One does see these things. I knew it would be so; and I told Patience that we three would be three Mrs. Newtons. But that of course was nonsense."
"Nonsense, indeed."
"I mean about Patience."
"And what about yourself, Clary?" Clarissa made no answer, and yet she was burning to tell her own story. She was most anxious to tell her own story, but only on the condition of reciprocal confidence. The very nature of her story required that the confidence should be reciprocal. "You said that you wanted to tell me everything," said Mary.
"And so I do."
"You know how glad I shall be to hear."
"That is all very well, but,--" And then Clarissa paused.
"But what, dear?"
"You do mean to accept Mr. Newton?"
Now it was time for Mary to pause. "If I were to tell you my whole heart," she said, "I should be ashamed of what I was saying; and yet I do not know that there is any cause for shame."
"There can be none," said Clary. "I am sure of that."
"My acquaintance with Mr. Newton is very, very slight. I liked him,--oh, so much. I thought him to be high-spirited, manly, and a fine gentleman. I never saw any man who so much impressed me."
"Of course not," said Clarissa, making a gesture as though she would stop on the high road and clasp her hands together, in which, however, she was impeded by her parasol and her remembrance of her present position.
"But it is so much to say that one will love a man better than all the world, and go to him, and belong to him, and be his wife."
"Ah;--but if one does love him!"
"I can hardly believe that love can grow so quickly."
"Tell the truth, Mary; has it not grown?"
"Indeed I cannot say. There; you shall have the whole truth. When he comes to me,--and I suppose he will come."
"There isn't much doubt of that."
"If he does come--" "Well?"
"I hardly know what I shall say to him. I shall try to--to love him."
"Of course you will love him,--better than all the world."
"I know that he is paying me the greatest compliment that a man can pay to a woman. And there is no earthly reason why I should not be proud to accept all that he offers me. I have nothing of my own to bestow in return."
"But you are so beautiful."
Mary would make no pretence of denying this. It was true that that one great feminine possession did belong to her. "After all," she said, "how little does beauty signify! It attracts, but it can make no man happy. He has everything to give to a wife, and he ought to have much in return for what he gives."
"You don't mean that a girl should refuse a rich man because she has no fortune of her own?"
"No; not quite that. But she ought to think whether she can be of use to him."
"Of course you will be of use, my dear;--of the greatest use in the world. That's his affair, and he is the best judge of what will be of use. You will love him, and other men will envy him, and that will be everything. Oh dear, I do so hope he will come soon."
"And I,--I almost hope he will not. I shall be so afraid to see him. The first meeting will be so awful. I shall not dare to look him in the face."
"But it is all settled."
"No;--not settled, Clary."
"Yes; it is settled. And now I will tell you what I mean when I say I do not begrudge him to you. That is--; I do not know whether you will care to be told."
"I care very much, Clary. I should be very unhappy if you did begrudge me anything."
"Of course you know that our Ralph Newton, as we call him, ought to have been the heir."
"Oh, yes."
"I needn't explain it all; only,--only--" "Only he is everything to you. Is it that, Clary?"
"Yes; it is that. He is everything to me. I love him--. Oh, yes, I do love him! But, Mary, I am not such a happy girl as you are. Sometimes I think he hardly cares for me."
"But he has asked you to care for him?"
"Well;--I don't know. I think he has. He has told me, I know, that he loved me dearly,--better than any one."
"And what answer did you make to him, Clary?"
Clarissa had the whole scene on the lawn at Popham Villa so clearly impressed upon her memory, that an eternity of years, as she thought, could obliterate no one of its incidents and render doubtful no tone of his voice, no word that her lover had spoken. His conduct had at that time been so violent that she had answered him only with tears and protestations of undying anger. But her tears had been dried, and her anger had passed away;--while the love remained. Ralph, her Ralph, of course knew well enough that the tears were dry and the anger gone. She could understand that he would understand that. But the love which he had protested, if it were real love, would remain. And why should she doubt him? The very fact that he was so dear to her, made such doubts almost disgraceful. And yet there was so much cause for doubt. Patience doubted. She knew herself that she feared more than she hoped. She had resolved gallantly that she would be true to her own heart, even though by such truth she should be preparing for herself a life of disappointment. She had admitted the passion, and she would stand by it. In all her fears, too, she consoled herself by the reflection that her lover was hindered, not by want of earnestness or want of truth,--but by the state of his affairs. While he was still in debt, striving to save his inheritance, but tormented by the growing certainty that it must pass away from him, how could he give himself up to love-making and preparations for marriage? Clary made excuses for him which no one else would have made, and so managed to feed her hopes. "I made him no answer," she said at last.
"And yet you knew you loved him."
"Yes; I knew that. I can tell you, and I told Patience. But I could not tell him." She paused a moment thinking whether she could describe the whole scene; but she found that she could not do that. "I shall tell him, perhaps, when he comes again; that is, if he does come."
"If he loves you he will come."
"I don't know. He has all these troubles on him, and he will be very poor;--what will seem to him to be very poor. It would not be poor for me, but for him it would."
"Would that hinder him?"
"How can I say? There are so many things a girl cannot know. He may still be in debt, and then he has been brought up to want so much. But it will make no more difference in me. And now you will understand why I should tell you that I will never begrudge you your good fortune. If all should come right, you shall give us a little cottage near your grand house, and you will not despise us." Poor Clary, when she spoke of her possible future lord, and the little cottage on the Newton demesne, hardly understood the feelings with which a disinherited heir must regard the property which he has lost.
"Dear, dearest Clary," said Mary Bonner, pressing her cousin's arm.
They had now reached Mrs. Brownlow's house, and the old lady was delighted to receive them. Of course she began to discuss at once the great news. Sir Thomas had had his arm broken, and was now again a member of Parliament. Mrs. Brownlow was a thorough-going Tory, and was in an ecstasy of delight that her old friend should have been successful. The success seemed to be so much the greater in that the hero had suffered a broken bone. And then there were many questions to be asked? Would Sir Thomas again be Solicitor-General by right of his seat in Parliament? --for on such matters Mrs. Brownlow was rather hazy in her conceptions as to the working of the British Constitution. And would he live at home? Clarissa would not say that she and Patience expected such a result. All that she could suggest of comfort on this matter was that there would be now something of a fair cause for excusing their father's residence at his London chambers.
But there was a subject more enticing to the old lady even than Sir Thomas's triumphs; a subject as to which there could not be any triumph,--only dismay; but not, on that account, the less interesting. Ralph Newton had sold his inheritance. "I believe it is all settled," said Clarissa, demurely.
"Dear, dear, dear, dear!" groaned the old lady. And while she groaned Clarissa furtively cast a smile upon her cousin. "It is the saddest thing I ever knew," said Mrs. Brownlow. "And, after all, for a young man who never can be anybody, you know."
"Oh yes," said Clarissa, "he can be somebody."
"You know what I mean, my dear. I think it very shocking, and very wrong. Such a fine estate, too!"
"We all like Mr. Newton very much indeed," said Clarissa. "Papa thinks he is a most charming young man. I never knew papa taken with any one so much. And so do we all,--Patience and I,--and Mary."
"But, my dear," began Mrs. Brownlow,--Mrs. Brownlow had always thought that Ralph the heir would ultimately marry Clarissa Underwood, and that it was a manifest duty on his part to do so. She had fancied that Clarissa had expected it herself, and had believed that all the Underwoods would be broken-hearted at this transfer of the estate. "I don't think it can be right," said Mrs. Brownlow; "and I must say that it seems to me that old Mr. Newton ought to be ashamed of himself. Just because this young man happens to be, in a sort of a way, his own son, he is going to destroy the whole family. I think that it is very wicked." But she had not a word of censure for the heir who had consumed his mess of pottage.
"Wasn't she grand?" said Clary, as soon as they were out again upon the road. "She is such a dear old woman, but she doesn't understand anything. I couldn't help giving you a look when she was abusing our friend. When she knows it all, she'll have to make you such an apology."
"I hope she will not do that."
"She will if she does not forget all about it. She does forget things. There is one thing I don't agree with her in at all. I don't see any shame in your Ralph having the property; and, as to his being nobody, that is all nonsense. He would be somebody, wherever he went, if he had not an acre of property. He will be Mr. Newton, of Newton Priory, just as much as anybody else could be. He has never done anything wrong." To all which Mary Bonner had very little to say. She certainly was not prepared to blame the present Squire for having so managed his affairs as to be able to leave the estate to his own son.
The two girls were very energetic, and walked back the whole way to Popham Villa, regardless of a dozen omnibuses that passed them. "I told her all about our Ralph,--my Ralph,"--said Clary to her sister afterward. "I could not help telling her now."
"Dear Clary," said Patience, "I wish you could help thinking of it always."
"That's quite impossible," said Clarissa, cheerily.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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34
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ALONE IN THE HOUSE.
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Young Newton at last found himself alone in the house at Newton Priory after his father's death. He had sent George Morris away, becoming very stern in his demand to be left to his solitude as long as opposition was made to him. Gregory had come down to him from the parsonage, and had also been dismissed. "Your brother will be here probably to-day," said Ralph, "and then I will send for you."
"I am thinking more of you than of my brother, just now," answered the parson.
"Yes, I know,--and though I cannot talk to you, I know how good you are. I want to see nobody but him. I shall be better alone." Then Gregory had returned to the parsonage.
As soon as Ralph was alone he crept up to the room in which his father's body was lying, and stood silently by the bedside for above an hour. He was struggling to remember the loss he had had in the man, and to forget the loss in wealth and station. No father had ever been better to a son than his father had been to him. In every affair of life his happiness, his prosperity, and his future condition had given motives to his father's conduct. No lover ever worshipped a mistress more thoroughly than his father had idolised him. There had never been love to beat it, never solicitude more perfect and devoted. And yet, as he had been driven home that day, he had allowed his mind to revert to the property, and his regrets to settle themselves on his lost position. It should not be so any longer. He could not keep his mind from dwelling on the thing, but he would think of it as a trifle,--as of a thing which he could afford to lose without sorrow. Whereas he had also lost that which is of all things the most valuable and most impossible to replace,--a friend whose love was perfect.
But then there was another loss. He bitterly blamed himself for having written that letter to Sir Thomas Underwood, before he was actually in a position to do as he had proposed. It must all be unwritten now. Every resolution hitherto taken as to his future life must be abandoned. He must begin again, and plan a new life for himself. It had all come upon him so suddenly that he was utterly at a loss to think what he would do with himself or with his days. There was nothing for him but to go away, and be utterly without occupation, altogether without friends. Friends, indeed, he had,--dear, intimate, loving friends. Gregory Newton and George Morris were his friends. Every tenant on the Newton property was his friend. There was not a man riding with the hunt, worth having as a friend, who was not on friendly terms with him. But all these he must leave altogether. In whatever spot he might find for himself a future residence, that spot could not be at Peele Newton. After what had occurred he could not remain there, now that he was not the heir. And then, again, his thoughts came back from his lost father to his lost inheritance, and he was very wretched.
Between three and four o'clock he took his hat and walked out. He sauntered down along a small stream, which, after running through the gardens, bordered one of the coverts which came up near to the house. He took this path because he knew that he would be alone there, unseen. It had occurred to him already that it would be well that he should give orders to stop the works which his father had commenced, and there had been a moment in which he had almost told one of the servants in the house to do so. But he had felt ashamed at seeming to remember so small a thing. The owner would be there soon, probably in an hour or two, and could stop or could continue what he pleased. Then, as he thought of the ownership of the estate, he reflected that, as the sale had been in truth effected by his namesake, the money promised by his father would be legally due;--would not now be his money. As to the estate itself, that, of course, would go to his namesake as his father's heir. No will had been made leaving the estate to him, and his namesake would be the heir-at-law. Thus he would be utterly beggared. It was not that he actually believed that this would be the case; but his thoughts were morbid, and he took an unwholesome delight in picturing to himself circumstances in their blackest hue. Then he would strike the ground with his stick, in his wrath, because he thought of such things at all. How was it that he was base enough to think of them while the accident, which had robbed him of his father, was so recent?
As the dusk grew on, he emerged out of the copse into the park, and, crossing at the back of the home paddocks, came out upon the road near to Darvell's farm. He passed a few yards up the lane, till at a turn he could discern the dismantled house. As far as he could see through the gloom of the evening, there were no workmen near the place. Some one, he presumed, had given directions that nothing further should be done on a day so sad as this. He stood for awhile looking and listening, and then turned round to enter the park again.
It might be that the new squire was already at the house, and it would be thought that he ought not to be absent. The road from the station to the Priory was not that on which he was standing, and Ralph might have arrived without his knowledge. He wandered slowly back, but, before he could turn in at the park-gate, he was met by a man on the road. It was Mr. Walker, the farmer of Brownriggs, an old man over seventy, who had lived on the property all his life, succeeding his father in the same farm. Walker had known young Newton since he had first been brought to the Priory as a boy, and could speak to him with more freedom than perhaps any other tenant on the estate. "Oh, Mr. Ralph," he said, "this has been a dreary thing!" Ralph, for the first time since the accident, burst out into a flood of tears. "No wonder you take on, Mr. Ralph. He was a good father to you, and a fine gentleman, and one we all respected." Ralph still sobbed, but put his hand on the old man's arm and leaned upon him. "I hope, Mr. Ralph, that things was pretty well settled about the property." Ralph shook his head, but did not speak. "A bargain is a bargain, Mr. Ralph, and I suppose that this bargain was made. The lawyers would know that it had been made."
"It don't matter about that, Mr. Walker," said Ralph; "but the estate would go to my father's nephew as his heir." The farmer started as though he had been shot. "You will have another landlord, Mr. Walker. He can hardly be better than the one you have lost."
"Then, Mr. Ralph, you must bear it manly."
"I think that I can say that I will do that. It is not for the property that I am crying. I hope you don't think that of me, Mr. Walker."
[Illustration: "It is not for the property that I am crying."]
"No, no, no."
"I can bear that;--though it is hard the having to go away and live among strange people. I think I shall get a farm somewhere, and see if I can take a lesson from you. I don't know anything else that I can do."
"You could have the Mordykes, Mr. Ralph," said Mr. Walker, naming a holding on the Newton property as to which there were rumours that it would soon be vacant.
"No, Mr. Walker, it mustn't be here. I couldn't stand that. I must go away from this,--God knows where. I must go away from this, and I shall never see the old place again!"
"Bear it manly, Mr. Ralph," said the farmer.
"I think I shall, after a bit. Good evening, Mr. Walker. I expect my father's nephew every hour, and I ought to be up at the house when he comes. I shall see you again before I go."
"Yes, yes; that's for certain," said the farmer. They were both thinking of the day on which they would follow the old Squire to his grave in Newton Peele churchyard.
Ralph re-entered the park, and hurried across to the house as though he were afraid that he would be too late to receive the heir; but there had been no arrival, nor had there come any message from the other Ralph. Indeed up to this hour the news had not reached the present owner of Newton Priory. The telegram had been duly delivered at the Moonbeam, where the fortunate youth was staying; but he was hunting on this day, riding the new horse which he had bought from Mr. Pepper, and, up to this moment, did not know anything of that which chance had done for him. Nor did he get back to the Moonbeam till late at night, having made some engagement for dinner after the day's sport. It was not till noon on the following day, the Friday, that a message was received from him at the Priory, saying that he would at once hurry down to Hampshire.
Ralph sat down to dinner all alone. Let what will happen to break hearts and ruin fortunes, dinner comes as long as the means last for providing it. The old butler waited upon him in absolute silence, fearing to speak a word, lest the word at such a time should be ill-spoken. No doubt the old man was thinking of the probable expedience of his retiring upon his savings; feeling, however, that it became him to show, till the last, every respect to all who bore the honoured name of Newton. When the meat had been eaten, the old servant did say a word. "Won't you come round to the fire, Mr. Ralph?" and he placed comfortably before the hearth one of the heavy arm-chairs with which the corners of the broad fire-place were flanked. But Ralph only shook his head, and muttered some refusal. There he sat, square to the table, with the customary bottle of wine before him, leaning back with his hands in his pockets, thinking of his condition in life. The loneliness of the room, the loneliness of the house, were horrible to him. And yet he would not that his solitude should be interrupted. He had been so sitting, motionless, almost overcome by the gloom of the big dark room, for so long a period that he hardly knew whether it was night or not, when a note was brought to him from Gregory. "Dear Ralph,--Shall I not come down to you for an hour? --G. N." He read the note, and sent back a verbal message. "Tell Mr. Gregory that I had rather not." And so he sat motionless till the night had really come, till the old butler brought him his candlestick and absolutely bade him betake himself to bed. He had watched during the whole of the previous night, and now had slumbered in his chair from time to time. But his sleeping had been of that painful, wakeful nature which brings with it no refreshment. It had been full of dreams, in all of which there had been some grotesque reference to the property, but in none of them had there been any memory of the Squire's terrible death. And yet, as he woke and woke and woke again, it can hardly be said that the truth had come back upon him as a new blow. Through such dreams there seems to exist a double memory, and a second identity. The misery of his isolated position never for a moment left him; and yet there were repeated to him over and over again those bungling, ill-arranged, impossible pictures of trivial transactions about the place, which the slumber of a few seconds sufficed to create in his brain. "Mr. Ralph, you must go to bed;--you must indeed, sir," said the old butler, standing over him with a candle during one of these fitful dreamings.
"Yes, Grey;--yes, I will; directly. Put it down. Thank you. Don't mind sitting up," said Ralph, rousing himself in his chair.
"It's past twelve," Mr. Ralph.
"You can go to bed, you know, Grey."
"No, sir;--no. I'll see you to bed first. It'll be better so. Why, Mr. Ralph, the fire's all out, and you're sitting here perished. You wasn't in bed last night, and you ought to be there now. Come, Mr. Ralph."
Then Ralph rose from his chair and took the candlestick. It was true enough that he had better be in bed. As he shook himself, he felt that he had never been so cold in his life. And then as he moved there came upon him that terrible feeling that everything was amiss with him, that there was no consolation on any side. "That'll do, Grey; good night," he said, as the old man prepared to follow him up-stairs. But Grey was not to be shaken off. "I'll just see you to your room, Mr. Ralph." He wanted to accompany his young master past the door of that chamber in which was lying all that remained of the old master. But Ralph would open the door. "Not to-night, Mr. Ralph," said Grey. But Ralph persisted, and stood again by the bedside. "He would have given me his flesh and blood;--his very life," said Ralph to the butler. "I think no father ever so loved a son. And yet, what has it come to?" Then he stooped down, and put his lips to the cold clay-blue forehead.
"It ain't come to much surely," said old Grey to himself as he crept away to his own room; "and I don't suppose it do come to much mostly when folks go wrong."
Ralph was out again before breakfast, wandering up and down the banks of the stream where the wood hid him, and then he made up his mind that he would at once write again to Sir Thomas Underwood. He must immediately make it understood that that suggestion which he had made in his ill-assumed pride of position must be abandoned. He had nothing now to offer to that queenly princess worthy of the acceptance of any woman. He was a base-born son, about to be turned out of his father's house because of the disgrace of his birth. In the eye of the law he was nobody. The law allowed to him not even a name;--certainly allowed to him the possession of no relative; denied to him the possibility of any family tie. His father had succeeded within an ace of giving him that which would have created for him family ties, relatives, name and all. The old Squire had understood well how to supersede the law, and to make the harshness of man's enactments of no avail. Had the Squire quite succeeded, the son would have stood his ground, would have called himself Newton of Newton, and nobody would have dared to tell him that he was a nameless bastard. But now he could not even wait to be told. He must tell it himself, and must vanish. He had failed to understand it all while his father was struggling and was yet alive; but he understood it well now. So he came in to his breakfast, resolved that he would write that letter at once.
And then there were orders to be given;--hideous orders. And there was that hideous remembrance that legally he was entitled to give no orders. Gregory came down to him as he sat at breakfast, making his way into the parlour without excuse. "My brother cannot have been at home at either place," he said.
"Perhaps not," said Ralph. "I suppose not."
"The message will be sent after him, and you will hear to-day no doubt."
"I suppose I shall," said Ralph.
Then Gregory in a low voice made the suggestion in reference to which he had come across from the parsonage. "I think that perhaps I and Larkin had better go over to Basingstoke." Larkin was the steward. Ralph again burst out into tears, but he assented; and in this way those hideous orders were given.
As soon as Gregory was gone he took himself to his desk, and did write to Sir Thomas Underwood. His letter, which was perhaps somewhat too punctilious, ran as follows:-- Newton Priory, 4th November, 186--.
MY DEAR SIR,-- I do not know whether you will have heard before this of the accident which has made me fatherless. The day before yesterday my father was killed by a fall from his horse in the hunting-field. I should not have ventured to trouble you with a letter on this subject, nor should I myself have been disposed to write about it at present, were it not that I feel it to be an imperative duty to refer without delay to my last letter to you, and to your very flattering reply. When I wrote to you it was true that my father had made arrangements for purchasing on my behalf the reversion to the property. That it was so you doubtless were aware from your own personal knowledge of the affairs of Mr. Ralph Newton. Whether that sale was or was not legally completed I do not know. Probably not;--and in regard to my own interests it is to be hoped that it was not completed. But in any event the whole Newton property will pass to your late ward, as my father certainly made no such will as would convey it to me even if the sale were complete.
It is a sad time for explaining all this, when the body of my poor father is still lying unburied in the house, and when, as you may imagine, I am ill-fitted to think of matters of business; but, after what has passed between us, I conceive myself bound to explain to you that I wrote my last letter under a false impression, and that I can make no such claim to Miss Bonner's favour as I then set up. I am houseless and nameless, and for aught I yet know to the contrary, absolutely penniless. The blow has hit me very hard. I have lost my fortune, which I can bear; I have lost whatever chance I had of gaining your niece's hand, which I must learn to bear; and I have lost the kindest father a man ever had,--which is unbearable.
Yours very faithfully, RALPH NEWTON (so called).
If it be thought that there was something in the letter which should have been suppressed,--the allusion, for instance, to the possible but most improbable loss of his father's private means, and his morbid denial of his own right to a name which he had always borne, a right which no one would deny him,--it must be remembered that the circumstances of the hour bore very heavily on him, and that it was hardly possible that he should not nurse the grievance which afflicted him. Had he not been alone in these hours he might have carried himself more bravely. As it was, he struggled hard to carry himself well. If no one had ever been told how nearly successful the Squire had been in his struggle to gain the power of leaving the estate to his son, had there been nothing of the triumph of victory, he could have left the house in which he had lived and the position which he had filled almost without sorrow,--certainly without lamentation. In the midst of calamities caused by the loss of fortune, it is the knowledge of what the world will say that breaks us down;--not regret for those enjoyments which wealth can give, and which had been long anticipated.
At two o'clock on this day he got a telegram. "I will be at the parsonage this evening, and will come down at once." Ralph the heir, on his return home late at night, had heard the news, and early on the following morning had communicated with his brother and with his namesake. In the afternoon, after his return from Basingstoke, Gregory again came down to the house, desiring to know whether Ralph would prefer that the meeting should be at the Priory or at the parsonage, and on this occasion his cousin bore with him. "Why should not your brother come to his own house?" asked Ralph.
"I suppose he feels that he should not claim it as his own."
"That is nonsense. It is his own, and he knows it. Does he think that I am likely to raise any question against his right?"
"I do not suppose that my brother has ever looked at the matter in that light," said the parson. "He is the last man in the world to do so. For the present, at any rate, you are living here and he is not. In such an emergency, perhaps, he feels that it would be better that he should come to his brother than intrude here."
"It would be no intrusion. I should wish him to feel that I am prepared to yield to him instantly. Of course the house cannot be very pleasant for him as yet. He must suffer something of the misery of the occasion before he can enjoy his inheritance. But it will only be for a day or so."
"Dear Ralph," said the parson, "I think you somewhat wrong my brother."
"I endeavour not to do so. I think no ill of him, because I presume he should look for enjoyment from what is certainly his own. He and my father were not friends, and this, which has been to me so terrible a calamity in every way, cannot affect him with serious sorrow. I shall meet him as a friend; but I would sooner meet him here than at the parsonage."
It was at last settled that the two brothers should come down to the great house,--both Ralph the heir, and Gregory the parson; and that the three young men should remain there, at any rate, till the funeral was over. And when this was arranged, the two who had really been fast friends for so many years, were able to talk to each other in true friendship. The solitude which he had endured had been almost too much for the one who had been made so desolate; but at last, warmed by the comfort of companionship, he resumed his manhood, and was able to look his affairs in the face, free from the morbid feeling which had oppressed him. Gregory had his own things brought down from the parsonage, and in order that there might be no hesitation on his brother's part, sent a servant with a note to the station desiring his brother to come at once to the Priory. They resolved to wait dinner for him till after the arrival of a train leaving London at five P.M. By that train the heir came, and between seven and eight he entered the house which he had not seen since he was a boy, and which was now his own.
The receipt of the telegram at the Moonbeam had affected Ralph, who was now in truth the Squire, with absolute awe. He had returned late from a somewhat jovial dinner, in company with his friend Cox, who was indeed more jovial than was becoming. Ralph was not given to drinking more wine than he could carry decently; but his friend, who was determined to crowd as much enjoyment of life as was possible into the small time allowed him before his disappearance from the world that had known him, was noisy and rollicking. Perhaps it may be acknowledged in plain terms that he was tipsy. They both entered together the sitting-room which Ralph used, and Cox was already calling for brandy and water, when the telegram was handed to Newton. He read it twice before he understood it. His uncle dead! --suddenly dead! And the inheritance all his own! In doing him justice, however, we must admit that he did not at the time admit this to be the case. He did perceive that there must arise some question; but his first feeling, as regarded the property, was one of intense remorse that he should have sold his rights at a moment in which they would so soon have been realised in his own favour. But the awe which struck him was occasioned by the suddenness of the blow which had fallen upon his uncle. "What's up now, old fellow?" hiccupped Mr. Cox.
I wonder whether any polite reader, into whose hands this story may fall, may ever have possessed a drunken friend, and have been struck by some solemn incident at the moment in which his friend is exercising the privileges of intoxication. The effect is not pleasant, nor conducive of good-humour. Ralph turned away in disgust, and leaned upon the chimney-piece, trying to think of what had occurred to him. "What ish it, old chap? Shomebody wants shome tin? I'll stand to you, old fellow."
"Take him away," said Ralph. "He's drunk." Then, without waiting for further remonstrance from the good-natured but now indignant Cox, he went off to his own room.
On the following morning he started for London by an early train, and by noon was with his lawyer. Up to that moment he believed that he had lost his inheritance. When he sent those two telegrams to his brother and to his namesake, he hardly doubted but that the entire property now belonged to his uncle's son. The idea had never occurred to him that, even were the sale complete, he might still inherit the property as his uncle's heir-at-law,--and that he would do so unless his uncle had already bequeathed it to his son. But the attorney soon put him right. The sale had not been yet made. He, Ralph, had not signed a single legal document to that effect. He had done nothing which would have enabled his late uncle to make a will leaving the Newton estate to his son. "The letters which have been written are all waste-paper," said the lawyer. "Even if they were to be taken as binding as agreements for a covenant, they would operate against your cousin,--not in his favour. In such case you would demand the specified price and still inherit."
"That is out of the question," said the heir. "Quite out of the question," said the attorney. "No doubt Mr. Newton left a will, and under it his son will take whatever property the father had to leave."
And so Ralph the heir found himself to be the owner of it all just at the moment in which he thought that he had lost all chance of the inheritance as the result of his own folly. When he walked out of the lawyer's office he was almost wild with amazement. This was the prize to which he had been taught to look forward through all his boyish days, and all his early manhood;--but to look forward to it, as a thing that must be very distant, so distant as almost to be lost in the vagueness of the prospect. Probably his youth would have clean passed from him, and he would have entered upon the downhill course of what is called middle life before his inheritance would come to him. He had been unable to wait, and had wasted everything,--nearly everything; had, at any rate, ruined all his hopes before he was seven-and-twenty; and yet, now, at seven-and-twenty, it was, as his lawyer assured him, all his own. How nearly had he lost it all! How nearly had he married the breeches-maker's daughter! How close upon the rocks he had been. But now all was his own, and he was in truth Newton of Newton, with no embarrassments of any kind which could impose a feather's weight upon his back.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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35
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"SHE'LL ACCEPT YOU, OF COURSE."
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We will pass over the solemn sadness of the funeral at Newton and the subsequent reading of the old Squire's will. As to the latter, the will was as it had been made some six or seven years ago. The Squire had simply left all that he possessed to his illegitimate son Ralph Newton. There was no difficulty about the will. Nor was there any difficulty about the estate. The two lawyers came down to the funeral. Sir Thomas Underwood would have come but that he was prevented by the state of his arm. A statement showing all that had been done in the matter was prepared for him, but it was agreed on all sides that the sale had not been made, and that the legitimate heir must succeed to the property. No one was disposed to dispute the decision. The Squire's son had never for a moment supposed that he could claim the estate. Nor did Ralph the heir suppose for a moment that he could surrender it after the explanation which he had received from the lawyer in London.
The funeral was over, and the will had been read, and at the end of November the three young men were still living together in the great house at Newton. The heir had gone up to London once or twice, instigated by the necessity of the now not difficult task of raising a little ready money. He must at once pay off all his debts. He must especially pay that which he owed to Mr. Neefit; and he must do so with many expressions of his gratitude,--perhaps with some expressions of polite regret at the hardness of Polly's heart towards him. But he must do so certainly without any further entreaty that Polly's heart might be softened. Ah,--with what marvellous good fortune had he escaped from that pitfall! For how much had he not to be thankful to some favouring goddess who must surely have watched over him from his birth! From what shipwrecks had he not escaped! And now he was Squire of Newton, with wealth and all luxuries at command, hampered with no wife, oppressed by no debts, free from all cares. As he thought of his perfect freedom in these respects, he remembered his former resolution as to Mary Bonner. That resolution he would carry out. It would be well for him now to marry a wife, and of all the women he had ever seen Mary Bonner was certainly the most beautiful. With Newton all his own, with such a string of horses as he would soon possess, and with such a wife at the head of his table, whom need he envy, and how many were there who would not envy him?
Throughout November he allowed his horses to remain at the Moonbeam, being somewhat in doubt whether or no he would return to that fascinating hostelrie. He received one or two most respectful letters from Mr. Horsball, in which glowing accounts were given of the sport of the season, and the health of his horses, and offers made of most disinterested services. Rooms should be ready for him at a moment's notice if he liked at any time to run over for a week's hunting. It was quite evident that in the eyes of Mr. Horsball Newton of Newton was a great man. And there came congratulations from Mr. Cox, in which no allusion whatever was made to the Squire's somewhat uncivil conduct at their last meeting. Mr. Cox trusted that his dearest friend would come over and have another spell at the Moonbeam before he settled down for life;--and then hinted in language that was really delicate in the niceness of its expression, that if he, Cox, were but invited to spend a week or two at Newton Priory before he banished himself for life to Australia, he would be able to make his way over the briny deep with a light heart and an uncomplaining tongue. "You know, old fellow, how true I've always been to you," wrote Cox, in language of the purest friendship. "As true as steel,--to sausages in the morning and brandy and soda at night," said Ralph to himself as he read this.
He behaved with thorough kindness to his cousin. The three men lived together for a month, and their intercourse was as pleasant as was possible under the circumstances. Of course there was no hunting during this month at Newton. Nor indeed did the heir see a hound till December, although, as the reader is aware, he was not particularly bound to revere his uncle's memory. He made many overtures to his namesake. He would be only too happy if his cousin,--he always called the Squire's son his cousin,--would make Newton his home for the next twelvemonth. It was found that the Squire had left behind him something like forty thousand pounds, so that the son was by no means to be regarded as a poor man. It was his idea at present that he would purchase in some pleasant county as much land as he might farm himself, and there set up his staff for life. "And get about two-and-a-half per cent. for your money," said the heir, who was beginning to consider himself learned in such matters, and could talk of land as a very serious thing in the way of a possession.
"What else am I to do?" said the other. "Two-and-a-half per cent. with an occupation is better than five per cent. with none. I should make out the remainder, too, by farming the land myself. There is nothing else in the world that I could do."
As for remaining twelve months at Newton, that was of course out of the question. Nevertheless, when December came he was still living in the house, and had consented to remain there till Christmas should have passed. He had already heard of a farm in Norfolk. "The worst county for hunting in England," the heir had said. "Then I must try and live without hunting," said Ralph who was not the heir. During all this time not a horse was sent to the meet from the Newton stables. The owner of Newton was contented to see the animals exercised in the park, and to amuse himself by schooling them over hurdles, and by high jumping at the bar.
During the past month the young Squire had received various letters from Sir Thomas Underwood, and the other Ralph had received one. With Sir Thomas's caution, advice, and explanations to his former ward, the story has no immediate concern; but his letter to him who was to have been Mary Bonner's suitor may concern us more nearly. It was very short, and the reader shall have it entire.
Popham Villa, 10th November, 186--.
MY DEAR MR. NEWTON,-- I have delayed answering your letter for a day or two in order that it may not disturb you till the last sad ceremony be over. I do not presume to offer you consolation in your great sorrow. Such tenders should only be made by the nearest and the dearest. Perhaps you will permit me to say that what little I have seen of you and what further I have heard of you assure to you my most perfect sympathy.
On that other matter which gave occasion for your two letters to me I shall best perhaps discharge my duty by telling you that I showed them both to my niece; and that she feels, as do I, that they are both honourable to you, and of a nature to confer honour upon her. The change in your position, which I acknowledge to be most severe, undoubtedly releases you, as it would have released her,--had she been bound and chose to accept such release.
Whenever you may be in this neighbourhood we shall be happy to see you.
The state of my arm still prevents me from writing with ease.
Yours very faithfully, THOMAS UNDERWOOD.
Newton, when he received this letter, struggled hard to give to it its proper significance, but he could bring himself to no conclusion respecting it. Sir Thomas had acknowledged that he was released,--and that Mary Bonner would also have been released had she placed herself under any obligation; but Sir Thomas did not say a word from which his correspondent might gather whether in his present circumstances he might still be regarded as an acceptable suitor. The letter was most civil, most courteous, almost cordial in its expression of sympathy; but yet it did not contain a word of encouragement. It may be said that the suitor had himself so written to the lady's uncle, as to place himself out of the way of all further encouragement;--as to have put it beyond the power of his correspondent to write a word to him that should have in it any comfort. Certainly he had done so. He had clearly shown in his second letter that he had abandoned all idea of making the match as to which he had shown so much urgent desire in his first letter. He had explained that the marriage would now be impossible, and had spoken of himself as a ruined, broken man, all whose hopes were shipwrecked. Sir Thomas could hardly have told him in reply that Mary Bonner would still be pleased to see him. And yet Mary Bonner had almost said so. She had been very silent when the letter was read to her. The news of Mr. Newton's death had already reached the family at Popham Villa, and had struck them all with awe. How it might affect the property even Sir Thomas had not absolutely known at first; though he was not slow to make it understood that in all probability this terrible accident would be ruinous to the hopes which his niece had been justified in entertaining. At that hour Mary had spoken not a word;--nor could she be induced to speak respecting it either by Patience or Clarissa. Even to them she could not bring herself to say that if the man really loved her he would still come to her and say so. There was a feeling of awe upon her which made her mute, and stern, and altogether unplastic in the hands of her friends. It seemed even to Patience that Mary was struck by a stunning sorrow at the ruin which had come upon her lover's prospects. But it was not so at all. The thought wronged her utterly. What stunned her was this,--that she could not bring herself to express a passion for a man whom she had seen so seldom, with whom her conversation had been so slight, from whom personally she had received no overtures of attachment,--even though he were ruined. She could not bring herself to express such a passion;--but yet it was there. When Clarissa thought that she might obtain if not a word, at least a tear, Mary appeared to be dead to all feeling, though crushed by what she had lost. She was thinking the while whether it might be possible for such a one as her to send to the man and to tell him that that which had now occurred had of a sudden made him really dear to her. Thoughts of maiden boldness flitted across her mind, but she could not communicate them even to the girls who were her friends. Yet in silence and in solitude she resolved that the time should come in which she would be bold.
Then young Newton's second letter reached the house, and that also had been read to her. "He is quite right," said Sir Thomas. "Of course it releases both of you."
"There was nothing to release," said Mary, proudly.
"I mean to say that having made such a proposition as was contained in his first letter, he was bound to explain his altered position."
"I suppose so," said Mary.
"Of course he was. He had made his offer believing that he could make you mistress of Newton Priory,--and he had made it thinking that he himself could marry in that position. And he would have been in that position had not this most unforeseen and terrible calamity have occurred."
"I do not see that it makes any difference," said Mary, in a whisper.
"What do you mean, my dear?"
"I hardly know, uncle."
"Try to explain yourself, Mary."
"If I had accepted any man when he was rich, I should not go back when he was poor,--unless he wanted it." This also she said in a whisper.
"But you had not accepted him."
"No," said Mary, still in a whisper. Sir Thomas, who was perhaps not very good at such things, did not understand the working of her mind. But had she dared, she would have asked her uncle to tell Mr. Newton to come and see her. Sir Thomas, having some dim inkling of what perhaps might be the case, did add a paragraph to his letter in which he notified to his correspondent that a personal visit would be taken in good part.
By the end of the first week in December things were beginning to settle into shape at the Priory. The three young men were still living together at the great house, and the tenants on the estate had been taught to recognise the fact that Ralph, who had ever been the heir, was in truth the owner. Among the labourers and poorer classes there was no doubt much regret, and that regret was expressed. The tenants, though they all liked the Squire's son, were not upon the whole ill-pleased. It was in proper conformity with English habits and English feelings that the real heir should reign. Among the gentry the young Squire was made as welcome as the circumstances of the heir would admit. According to their way of thinking, personally popular as was the other man, it was clearly better that a legitimate descendant of the old family should be installed at Newton Priory. The old Squire's son rode well to hounds, and was loved by all; but nothing that all the world could do on his behalf would make him Newton of Newton. If only he would remain in the neighbourhood and take some place suited to his income, every house would be open to him. He would be received with no diminution of attachment or respect. Overtures of this nature were made to him. This house could be had for him, and that farm could be made comfortable. He might live among them as a general favourite; but he could not under any circumstances have been,--Newton of Newton. Nothing, however, was clearer to himself than this;--that as he could not remain in the county as the master of Newton Priory, he would not remain in the county at all.
As things settled down and took shape he began to feel that even in his present condition he might possibly make himself acceptable to such a girl as Mary Bonner. In respect of fortune there could be no reason whatever why he should not offer her his hand. He was in truth a rich man, whereas she had nothing, By birth he was nobody,--absolutely nobody; but then also would he have been nobody had all the lands of Newton belonged to him. When he had written that second letter, waiving all claim to Mary's hand because of the inferiority of his position, he was suffering from a morbid view which he had taken of his own affairs. He was telling himself then,--so assuring himself, though he did not in truth believe the assurance,--that he had lost not only the estate, but also his father's private fortune. At that moment he had been unstrung, demoralised, and unmanned,--so weak that a feather would have knocked him over. The blow had been so sudden, the solitude and gloom of the house so depressing, and his sorrow so crushing, that he was ready to acknowledge that there could be no hope for him in any direction. He had fed himself upon his own grief, till the idea of any future success in life was almost unpalatable to him. But things had mended with him now, and he would see whether there might not yet be joys for him in the world. He would first see whether there might not be that one great joy which he had promised to himself.
And then there came another blow. The young Squire had resolved that he would not hunt before Christmas in the Newton country. It was felt by him and by his brother that he should abstain from doing so out of respect to the memory of his uncle, and he had declared his purpose. Of course there was neither hunting nor shooting in these days for the other Ralph. But at the end of a month the young Squire began to feel that the days went rather slowly with him, and he remembered his stud at the Moonbeam. He consulted Gregory; and the parson, though he would fain have induced his brother to remain, could not say that there was any real objection to a trip to the B. and B's. Ralph would go there on the 10th of December, and be back at his own house before Christmas. When Christmas was over, the other Ralph was to leave Newton,--perhaps for ever.
The two Ralphs had become excellent friends, and when the one that was to go declared his intention of going with no intention of returning, the other pressed him warmly to think better of it, and to look upon the Priory at any rate as a second home. There were reasons why it could not be so, said the namesake; but in the close confidence of friendship which the giving and the declining of the offer generated came this further blow. They were standing together leaning upon a gate, and looking at the exhumation of certain vast roots, as to which the trees once belonging to them had been made to fall in consequence of the improvements going on at Darvell's farm. "I don't mind telling you," said Ralph the heir, "that I hope soon to have a mistress here."
"And who is she?"
"That would be mere telling;--would it not?"
"Clarissa Underwood?" asked the unsuspecting Ralph.
There did come some prick of conscience, some qualm, of an injury done, upon the young Squire as he made his answer. "No; not Clarissa;--though she is the dearest, sweetest girl that ever lived, and would make a better wife perhaps than the girl I think of."
"And who is the girl you think of?"
"She is to be found in the same house."
"You do not mean the elder sister?" said the unfortunate one. He had known well that his companion had not alluded to Patience Underwood; but in his agony he had suggested to himself that mode of escape.
"No; not Patience Underwood. Though, let me tell you, a man might do worse than marry Patience Underwood. I have always thought it a pity that Patience and Gregory would not make a match of it. He, however, would fall in love with Clary, and she has too much of the rake in her to give herself to a parson. I was thinking of Mary Bonner, who, to my mind, is the handsomest woman I ever saw in my life."
"I think she is," said Ralph, turning away his face.
"She hasn't a farthing, I fancy," continued the happy heir, "but I don't regard that now. A few months ago I had a mind to marry for money; but it isn't the sort of thing that any man should do. I have almost made up my mind to ask her. Indeed, when I tell you, I suppose I have quite made up my mind."
"She'll accept you,--of course."
"I can say nothing about that, you know. A man must take his chance. I can offer her a fine position, and a girl, I think, should have some regard to money when she marries, though a man should not. If there's nobody before me I should have a chance, I suppose."
His words were not boastful, but there was a tone of triumph in his voice. And why should he not triumph? thought the other Ralph. Of course he would triumph. He had everything to recommend him. And as for himself,--for him, the dispossessed one,--any particle of a claim which he might have secured by means of that former correspondence had been withdrawn by his own subsequent words. "I dare say she'll take you," he said, with his face still averted.
Ralph the heir did indeed think that he would be accepted, and he went on to discuss the circumstances of their future home, almost as though Mary Bonner were already employed in getting together her wedding garments. His companion said nothing further, and Ralph the heir did not discover that anything was amiss.
On the following day Ralph the heir went across the country to the Moonbeam in Buckinghamshire.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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36
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NEEFIT MEANS TO STICK TO IT.
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There was some business to be done as a matter of course before the young Squire could have all his affairs properly settled. There were debts to be paid, among which Mr. Neefit's stood certainly first. It was first in magnitude, and first in obligation; but it gave Ralph no manner of uneasiness. He had really done his best to get Polly to marry him, and, luckily for him,--by the direct interposition of some divine Providence, as it now seemed to Ralph,--Polly had twice refused him. It seemed to him, indeed, that divine Providence looked after him in a special way, breaking his uncle's neck in the very nick of time, and filling a breeches-maker's daughter's mind with so sound a sense of the propriety of things, as to induce her to decline the honour of being a millstone round his neck, when positively the offer was pressed upon her. As things stood there could be no difficulty with Mr. Neefit. The money would be paid, of course, with all adjuncts of accruing interest, and Mr. Neefit should go on making breeches for him to the end of the chapter. And for raising this money he had still a remnant of the old property which he could sell, so that he need not begin by laying an ounce of encumbrance on his paternal estates. He was very clear in his mind at this period of his life that there should never be any such encumbrance in his days. That remnant of property should be sold, and Neefit, Horsball, and others, should be paid. But it certainly did occur to him in regard to Neefit, that there had been that between them which made it expedient that the matter should be settled with some greater courtesy than would be shown by a simple transaction through his man of business. Therefore he wrote a few lines to Mr. Neefit on the day before he left the Priory,--a few lines which he thought to be very civil.
Newton, 9th December, 186--.
MY DEAR MR. NEEFIT,-- You have probably heard before this of the accident which has happened in my family. My uncle has been killed by a fall from his horse, and I have come into my property earlier than I expected. As soon as I could begin to attend to matters of business, I thought of my debt to you, and of all the obligation I owe you. I think the debt is £1,000; but whatever it is it can be paid now. The money will be ready early in the year, if that will do for you,--and I am very much obliged to you. Would you mind letting Mr. Carey know how much it is, interest and all. He is our family lawyer.
Remember me very kindly to Miss Polly. I hope she will always think of me as a friend. Would you tell Bawwah to put three pairs of breeches in hand for me,--leather.
Yours very truly, RALPH NEWTON.
The wrath of Mr. Neefit on receiving this letter at his shop in Conduit Street was almost divine. He had heard from Polly an account of that last interview at Ramsgate, and Polly had told her story as truly as she knew how to tell it. But the father had never for a moment allowed himself to conceive that therefore the thing was at an end, and had instructed Polly that she was not to look upon it in that light. He regarded his young customer as absolutely bound to him, and would not acknowledge to himself that such obligation could be annulled by Polly's girlish folly. And he did believe that young Newton intended to act, as he called it, "on the square." So believing, he was ready to make almost any sacrifice of himself; but that Newton should now go back, after having received his hard money, was to him a thing quite out of the question. He scolded Polly with some violence, and asked whether she wanted to marry such a lout as Moggs. Polly replied with spirit that she wouldn't marry any man till she found that she could love him, and that the man loved her. "Ain't he told you as he loves you ever so often?" said Neefit. "I know what I'm doing of, father," said Polly, "and I'm not going to be drove." Nevertheless Mr. Neefit had felt certain that if young Newton would still act upon the square, things would settle themselves rightly. There was the money due, and, as Neefit constantly said to himself, "money was a thing as was not to be got over."
Then had come upon the tradesman the tidings of the old Squire's death. They were read to him out of a newspaper by his shopman, Waddle. "I'm blessed if he ain't been and tumbled all at once into his uncle's shoes," said Waddle. The paragraph in question was one which appeared in a weekly newspaper some two days after the Squire's death. Neefit, who at the moment was turning over the pages of his ledger, came down from his desk and stood for about ten minutes in the middle of his shop, while the Herr ceased from his cutting, and Waddle read the paragraph over and over again. Neefit stood stock still, with his hands in his breeches pockets, and his great staring eyes fixed upon vacancy. "I'm blessed if it ain't true," said Waddle, convinced by the repetition of his own reading. News had previously reached the shop that the Squire had had a fall. Tidings as to troubles in the hunting-field were quick in reaching Mr. Neefit's shop;--but there had been no idea that the accident would prove to be fatal. Neefit, when he went home that night, told his wife and daughter. "That will be the last of young Newton," said Mrs. Neefit. "I'm d---- if it will!" said the breeches-maker. Polly maintained a discreet silence as to the heir, merely remarking that it was very sad for the old gentleman. Polly at that time was very full of admiration for Moggs,--in regard, that is, to the political character of her lover. Moggs had lost his election, but was about to petition.
Neefit was never called upon, in the way of his own trade, to make funereal garments. Men, when they are bereaved of their friends, do not ride in black breeches. But he had all a tailor's respect for a customer with a dead relation. He felt that it would not become him to make an application to the young Squire on a subject connected with marriage, till the tombstone over the old Squire should have been properly adjusted. He was a patient man, and could wait. And he was a man not good at writing letters. His customer and future son-in-law would turn up soon; or else, the expectant father-in-law might drop down upon him at the Moonbeam or elsewhere. As for a final escape, Polly Neefit's father hardly feared that any such attempt would be made. The young man had acted on the square, and had made his offer in good faith.
Such was Mr. Neefit's state of mind when he received the young Squire's letter. The letter almost knocked him down. There was a decision about it, a confidence that all was over between them except the necessary payment of the money, an absence of all doubt as to "Miss Polly," which he could not endure. And then that order for more breeches, included in the very same paragraph with Polly, was most injurious. It must be owned that the letter was a cruel, heart-rending, bad letter. For an hour or so it nearly broke Mr. Neefit's heart. But he resolved that he was not going to be done. The young Squire should marry his daughter, or the whole transaction should be published to the world. He would do such things and say such things that the young Squire should certainly not have a good time of it. He said not a word to Polly of the letter that night, but he did speak of the young Squire. "When that young man comes again, Miss Polly," he said, "I shall expect you to take him."
"I don't know anything about that, father," said Polly. "He's had his answer, and I'm thinking he won't ask for another." Upon this the breeches-maker looked at his daughter, but made no other reply.
During the two or three following days Neefit made some inquiries, and found that his customer was at the Moonbeam. It was now necessary that he should go to work at once, and, therefore, with many misgivings, he took Waddle into his confidence. He could not himself write such a letter as then must be written;--but Waddle was perfect at the writing of letters. Waddle shrugged his shoulders, and clearly did not believe that Polly would ever get the young Squire. Waddle indeed went so far as to hint that his master would be lucky in obtaining payment of his money,--but, nevertheless, he gave his mind to the writing of the letter. The letter was written as follows:-- Conduit Street, 14th December, 186--.
DEAR SIR,-- Yours of the 9th instant has come to hand, and I beg to say with compliments how shocked we were to hear of the Squire's accident. It was terribly sudden, and we all felt it very much; as in the way of our business we very often have to.
As to the money that can stand. Between friends such things needn't be mentioned. Any accommodation of that kind was and always will be ready when required. As to that other matter, a young gentleman like you won't think that a young lady is to be taken at her first word. A bargain is a bargain, and honourable is honourable, which nobody knows as well as you who was always disposed to be upon the square. Our Polly hasn't forgotten you,--and isn't going.
It should be acknowledged on Mr. Waddle's behalf, that that last assurance was inserted by the unassisted energy of Mr. Neefit himself.
We shall expect to see you without delay, here or at Hendon, as may best suit; but pray remember that things stand just as they was. Touching other matters, as needn't be named here, orders will be attended to as usual if given separate.
Yours very truly and obedient, THOMAS NEEFIT.
This letter duly reached the young Squire, and did not add to his happiness at the Moonbeam. That he should ever renew his offer to Polly Neefit was, he well knew, out of the question; but he could see before him an infinity of trouble should the breeches-maker be foolish enough to press him to do so. He had acted "on the square." In compliance with the bargain undoubtedly made by him, he had twice proposed to Polly, and had Polly accepted his offer on either of these occasions, there would,--he now acknowledged to himself,--have been very great difficulty in escaping from the difficulty. Polly had thought fit to refuse him, and of course he was free. But, nevertheless, there might be trouble in store for him. He had hardly begun to ask himself in what way this trouble might next show itself, when Neefit was at the Moonbeam. Three days after the receipt of his letter, when he rode into the Moonbeam yard on his return from hunting, there was Mr. Neefit waiting to receive him.
He certainly had not answered Mr. Neefit's letter, having told himself that he might best do so by a personal visit in Conduit Street; but now that Neefit was there, the personal intercourse did not seem to him to be so easy. He greeted the breeches-maker very warmly, while Pepper, Cox, and Mr. Horsball, with sundry grooms and helpers, stood by and admired. Something of Mr. Neefit's money, and of Polly's charms as connected with the young Squire, had already reached the Moonbeam by the tongue of Rumour; and now Mr. Neefit had been waiting for the last four hours in the little parlour within the Moonbeam bar. He had eaten his mutton chop, and drunk three or four glasses of gin and water, but had said nothing of his mission. Mrs. Horsball, however, had already whispered her suspicions to her husband's sister, a young lady of forty, who dispensed rum, gin, and brandy, with very long ringlets and very small glasses.
"You want to have a few words with me, old fellow," said Ralph to the breeches-maker, with a cheery laugh. It was a happy idea that of making them all around conceive that Neefit had come after his money. Only it was not successful. Men are not dunned so rigorously when they have just fallen into their fortunes. Neefit, hardly speaking above his breath, with that owlish, stolid look, which was always common to him except when he was measuring a man for a pair of breeches, acknowledged that he did. "Come along, old fellow," said Ralph, taking him by the arm. "But what'll you take to drink first?" Neefit shook his head, and accompanied Ralph into the house. Ralph had a private sitting-room of his own, so that there was no difficulty on that score. "What's all this about?" he said, standing with his back to the fire, and still holding Neefit by the arm. He did it very well, but he did not as yet know the depth of Neefit's obstinacy.
"What's it all about?" asked Neefit in disgust.
"Well; yes. Have you talked to Polly herself about this, old fellow?"
"No, I ain't; and I don't mean."
"Twice I went to her, and twice she refused me. Come, Neefit, be reasonable. A man can't be running after a girl all his life, when she won't have anything to say to him. I did all that a man could do; and upon my honour I was very fond of her. But, God bless my soul,--there must be an end to everything."
"There ain't to be no end to this, Mr. Newton."
"I'm to marry the girl whether she will or not?"
"Nohow," said Mr. Neefit, oracularly. "But when a young gentleman asks a young lady as whether she'll have him, she's not a-going to jump down his throat. You knows that, Mr. Newton. And as for money, did I ask for any settlement? I'd a' been ashamed to mention money. When are you a-coming to see our Polly, that's the question?"
"I shall come no more, Mr. Neefit."
"You won't?"
"Certainly not, Mr. Neefit. I've been twice rejected."
"And that's the kind of man you are; is it? You're one of them sort, are you?" Then he looked out of his saucer eyes upon the young Squire with a fishy ferocity, which was very unpleasant. It was quite evident that he meant war. "If that's your game, Mr. Newton, I'll be even with you."
"Mr. Neefit, I'll pay you anything that you say I owe you."
"Damn your money!" said the breeches-maker, walking out of the room. When he got down into the bar he told them all there that young Newton was engaged to his daughter, and that, by G----, he should marry her.
"Stick to that, Neefit," said Lieutenant Cox.
"I mean to stick to it," said Mr. Neefit. He then ordered another glass of gin and water, and was driven back to the station.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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37
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"HE MUST MARRY HER."
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On the day following that on which Mr. Neefit made his journey to the Moonbeam, Sir Thomas Underwood was at his chambers in London. It was now eight weeks since his bone had been broken, and though he still carried his arm in a sling, he declared of himself that he was able to go about as usual;--which assertion was taken at the villa as meaning that he was now able to live in Southampton Buildings without further assistance from women. When Patience reminded him, with tears in her eyes, that he could not as yet put on his own coat, he reminded her that Stemm was the most careful of men. Up to London he went with a full understanding that he was not at any rate to be expected home on that night. He had business on hand of great importance, which, as he declared, made his presence in town imperative. Mr. Trigger, from Percycross, was to be up with reference to the pestilent petition which had been presented against the return of Griffenbottom and himself. Moggs had petitioned on his own behalf, and two of the Liberals of the borough had also petitioned in the interest of Mr. Westmacott. The two Liberal parties who had quarrelled during the contest had now again joined forces in reference to the petition, and there was no doubt that the matter would go on before the judge. Mr. Trigger was coming up to London with reference to the defence. Sir Thomas gave Stemm to understand that Mr. Trigger would call at one o'clock.
Exactly at one o'clock the bell was rung at Sir Thomas's outside door, and Stemm was on the alert to give entrance to Mr. Trigger. When the door was opened who should present himself but our unfortunate friend Neefit. He humbly asked whether Sir Thomas was within, and received a reply which, as coming from Stemm, was courteous in the extreme. "Mr. Trigger, I suppose;--walk in, Mr. Trigger." Neefit, not at all understanding why he was called Trigger, did walk in. Stemm, opening the door of his master's sanctum, announced Mr. Trigger. Neefit advanced into the middle of the room. Sir Thomas, with some solicitude as to the adjustment of his arm, rose to greet his agent from Percy cross. "This isn't Mr. Trigger," said Sir Thomas. "He told me he was, anyhow," said Stemm, "I didn't tell you nothing of the kind," said Neefit. "But you come from Percycross?" said Sir Thomas. "No I don't; I comes from Conduit Street," said Neefit. "You must go away," said Stemm, leaving the door open, and advancing into the room as though to turn the enemy's flank.
But Neefit, having made good his point so far, did not intend to be dislodged without a struggle on his own part. "I've something to say to Sir Thomas about Mr. Newton, as I wants to say very particular." "You can't say it now," said Stemm. "Oh, but I can," said Neefit, "and it won't take three minutes." "Wouldn't another day do for it, as I am particularly busy now?" pleaded Sir Thomas. "Well, Sir Thomas;--to tell the truth, it wouldn't," said Mr. Neefit, standing his ground. Then there came another ring at the bell. "Ask Mr. Trigger to sit down in the other room for two minutes, Stemm," said Sir Thomas. And so Mr. Neefit had carried his point. "And now, sir," said Sir Thomas, "as I am particularly engaged, I will ask you to be as quick as possible."
"My name is Neefit," began the breeches-maker,--and then paused. Sir Thomas, who had heard the name from Ralph, but had forgotten it altogether, merely bowed his head. "I am the breeches-maker of Conduit Street," continued Mr. Neefit, with a proud conviction that he too had ascended so high in his calling as to be justified in presuming that he was known to mankind. Sir Thomas again bowed. Neefit went on with his story. "Mr. Newton is a-going to behave to me very bad."
"If he owes you money, he can pay you now," said Sir Thomas.
"He do owe me money;--a thousand pound he owe me."
"A thousand pounds for breeches!"
"No, Sir Thomas. It's most for money lent; but it's not along of that as I'd trouble you. I know how to get my money, or to put up with the loss if I don't. A thousand pound ain't here nor there,--not in what I've got to say. I wouldn't demean myself to ring at your bell, Sir Thomas;--not in the way of looking for a thousand pounds."
"In God's name, then, what is it? Pray be quick."
"He's going back from his word as he's promised to my daughter. That's what it is." As Neefit paused again, Sir Thomas remembered Ralph's proposition, made in his difficulties, as to marrying a tradesman's daughter for money, and at once fell to the conclusion that Mr. and Miss Neefit had been ill-used. "Sir Thomas," continued the breeches-maker, "I've been as good as a father to him. I gave him money when nobody else wouldn't."
"Do you mean that he has had money from you?"
"Yes; in course he has; ever so much. I paid for him a lot of money to 'Orsball, where he 'unts. Money! I should think so. Didn't I pay Moggs for him, the bootmaker? The very money as is rattling in his pocket now is my money."
"And he engaged himself to your daughter?"
"He engaged hisself to me to marry her. He won't say no otherwise himself. And he asked her twice. Why, Sir Thomas, he was all on the square about it till the old gentleman broke his neck. He hadn't nowhere else to go to for a shilling. But now the estate's come in like, he's for behaving dishonourable. He don't know me yet; that's what he don't. But I'll make him know me, Sir Thomas."
Then the door was opened, and Stemm's head appeared. "Mr. Trigger says as he's in the greatest possible haste, Sir Thomas." The reader, however, may as well be informed that this was pure invention on the part of Mr. Stemm.
Sir Thomas tore his hair and rubbed his face. He couldn't bid Neefit to call again, as he certainly did not desire to have a second visit. "What can I do for you, Mr. Neefit? I have no doubt the money will be paid, if owing. I will guarantee that for you."
"It ain't the money. I knows how to get my money."
"Then what can I do for you?"
"Make him go upon the square, Sir Thomas."
"How can I make him? He's twenty-six years old, and he's nothing to me. I don't think he should marry the young lady. He's not in her rank of life. If he has done her an injury, he must pay for it."
"Injury!" shouted Neefit, upon whose mind the word produced an unintended idea. "No, no! Our Polly ain't like that. By G----, I'd eat him, if it was that way! There ain't a duchess in the land as 'd 've guv' him his answer more ready than Polly had he ever spoke to her that way."
"If he has given rise to hopes which through him will be disappointed," said Sir Thomas, gravely, "he is bound to make what compensation may be in his power."
"Compensation be d----!" said Neefit. "He must marry her."
"I don't think he will do that."
"You didn't think he would take my money, I suppose; but he did. You didn't think he'd come and spend his Sundays out at my cottage, but he did. You didn't think as he'd come after our Polly down to Ramsgate, but he did. You didn't think as he'd give me his word to make her his wife, but he did." At every assertion that he made, the breeches-maker bobbed forward his bullet head, stretched open his eyes, and stuck out his under lip. During all this excited energy, he was not a man pleasant to the eye. "And now how is it to be, Sir Thomas? That's what I want to know."
"Mr. Newton is nothing to me, Mr. Neefit."
"Oh;--that's all. Nothing to you, ain't he? Wasn't he brought up by you just as a son like? And now he ain't nothing to you! Do you mean to say as he didn't ought to marry my girl?"
"I think he ought not to marry her."
"Not arter his promise?"
Sir Thomas was driven very hard, whereas had the sly old breeches-maker told all his story, there would have been no difficulty at all. "I think such a marriage would lead to the happiness of neither party. If an injury has been done,--as I fear may be too probable,--I will advise my young friend to make any reparation in his power--short of marriage. I can say nothing further, Mr. Neefit."
"And that's your idea of being on the square, Sir Thomas?"
"I can say nothing further, Mr. Neefit. As I have an appointment made, I must ask you to leave me." As Sir Thomas said this, his hand was upon the bell.
"Very well;--very well. As sure as my name's Neefit, he shall hear of me. And so shall you, Sir Thomas. Don't you be poking at me in that way, old fellow. I don't choose to be poked at." These last words were addressed to Stemm, who had entered the room, and was holding the door open for Mr. Neefit's exit with something more than the energy customary in speeding a parting guest. Mr. Neefit, however, did take his departure, and Sir Thomas joined Mr. Trigger in the other room.
We will not be present at that interview. Sir Thomas had been in a great hurry to get rid of Mr. Neefit, but it may be doubted whether he found Mr. Trigger much better company. Mr. Trigger's business chiefly consisted in asking Sir Thomas for a considerable sum of money, and in explaining to him that the petition would certainly cost a large sum beyond this,--unless the expenses could be saddled on Westmacott and Moggs, as to which result Mr. Trigger seemed to have considerable doubt. But perhaps the bitterest part of Mr. Trigger's communication consisted in the expression of his opinion that Mr. Griffenbottom should be held by Sir Thomas free from any expense as to the petition, on the ground that Griffenbottom, had he stood alone, would certainly have carried one of the seats without any fear of a petition. "I don't think I can undertake that, Mr. Trigger," said Sir Thomas. Mr. Trigger simply shrugged his shoulders.
Sir Thomas, when he was alone, was very uncomfortable. While at Percycross he had extracted from Patience an idea that Ralph the heir and Clarissa were attached to each other, and he had very strongly declared that he would not admit an engagement between them. At that time Ralph was supposed to have sold his inheritance, and did not stand well in Sir Thomas's eyes. Then had come the Squire's death and the altered position of his late ward. Sir Thomas would be injured, would be made subject to unjust reproach if it were thought of him that he would be willing to give his daughter to a young man simply because that young man owned an estate. He had no such sordid feeling in regard to his girls. But he did feel that all that had occurred at Newton had made a great difference. Ralph would now live at the Priory, and there would be enough even for his extravagance. Should the Squire of Newton ask him for his girl's hand with that girl's consent, he thought that he could hardly refuse it. How could he ask Clarissa to abandon so much seeming happiness because the man had failed to keep out of debt upon a small income? He could not do so. And then it came to pass that he was prepared to admit Ralph as a suitor to his child should Ralph renew his request to that effect. They had all loved the lad as a boy, and the property was wholly unencumbered. Of course he said nothing to Clarissa; but should Ralph come to him there could be but one answer. Such had been the state of his mind before Mr. Neefit's visit.
But the breeches-maker's tale had altered the aspect of things very greatly. Under no circumstances could Sir Thomas recommend the young Squire to marry the daughter of the man who had been with him; but if Ralph Newton had really engaged himself to this girl, and had done so with the purport of borrowing money from the father, that might be a reason why, notwithstanding the splendour of his prospects, he should not be admitted to further intimacy at the villa. To borrow money from one's tradesman was, in the eyes of Sir Thomas, about as inexcusable an offence as a young man could commit. He was too much disturbed in mind to go home on the following day, but on the Thursday he returned to the villa. The following Sunday would be Christmas Day.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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38
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FOR TWO REASONS.
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The young Squire, as soon as Neefit had left him in his own sitting-room at the Moonbeam, sat himself down and began to think over his affairs seriously. One thing was certain to him;--nothing on earth should induce him to offer his hand again to Polly Neefit. He had had a most miraculous escape, and assuredly would run no further risk in that direction. But though he had escaped, he could perceive that there was considerable trouble before him,--considerable trouble and perhaps some disgrace. It certainly could not be proved against him that he had broken any promise, as there had been no engagement; but it could be made public that he had twice offered himself to Polly, and could also be made public that he had borrowed the breeches-maker's money. He kept himself alone on that evening; and though he hunted on the following day, he was not found to be a lively companion either by Cox or Pepper. The lieutenant was talking about Neefit and Neefit's daughter all day: but Mr. Pepper, who was more discreet, declined to canvass the subject. "It's nothing to me who a man marries and who he don't," said Mr. Pepper. "What sort of horses he rides;--that's what I look at." During this day and the next Ralph did consider the state of his affairs very closely, and the conclusion he came to was this, that the sooner he could engage himself to marry Mary Bonner the better. If he were once engaged, the engagement would not then be broken off because of any previous folly with Miss Neefit; and, again, if he were once engaged to Mary Bonner, Neefit would see the absurdity of torturing him further in regard to Polly. On the Wednesday evening he went up to town, and on the Thursday morning he put himself into a cab and ordered the man to drive him to Popham Villa.
It was about noon when he started from town; and though he never hesitated,--did not pause for a moment after he had made up his mind as to the thing that he would do, still he felt many misgivings as he was driven down to Fulham. How should he begin his story to Mary Bonner, and how should he look Clary Underwood in the face? And yet he had not an idea that he was in truth going to behave badly to Clarissa. There had no doubt been a sort of tenderness in the feeling that had existed between them,--a something just a little warmer than brotherly regard. They had been thrown together and had liked each other. And as he was driven nearer to the villa, he remembered distinctly that he had kissed her on the lawn. But did any one suppose that a man was bound to marry the first girl he kissed,--or if not the first, then why the second, or the third? Clarissa could have no fair ground of complaint against him; and yet he was uneasy as he reflected that she too must know the purport of his present visit to the villa.
And he was not quite easy about Mary. The good things which he carried in his hand were so many that he did not conceive that Mary would refuse him; but yet he wished that the offer had been made, and had been accepted. Hitherto he had taken pleasure in his intercourse with young ladies, and had rather enjoyed the excitement of those moments which to some men are troublesome and even painful. When he had told Clarissa that she was dearer than any one else, he had been very happy while he was telling her. There had been nothing of embarrassment to him in the work of proposing to Polly Neefit. There may perhaps have been other passages in his life of the same nature, and he certainly had not feared them beforehand or been ashamed of them afterwards. But now he found himself endeavouring to think what words he would use to Mary Bonner, and in what attitude he would stand or sit as he used them. "The truth is," he said to himself, "a man should do these kind of things without premeditation." But not the less was he resolved, and at the gate he jumped out of his cab with a determination to have it over as soon as possible. He desired the cabman to wait for him at the nearest stables, remarking that he might be there for a few minutes, or for a few hours, and then turned to the gate. As he did so, he saw Sir Thomas walking from the direction of Fulham Bridge. Sir Thomas had come down by the railway on the other side of the river, and was now walking home. A sudden thought struck the young Squire. He would begin his work by telling his tale to Sir Thomas. There could be nothing so fitting as that he should obtain the uncle's leave to address the niece.
The two men greeted each other, and there were many things to be said. Sir Thomas had not seen his ward since the old Squire's death, and Ralph had not seen Sir Thomas since the election at Percycross and the accident of the broken arm. Sir Thomas was by far too reticent, too timid, and too reflective a man to begin at once whatever observations he might have to make ultimately in regard to Miss Polly Neefit. He was somewhat slow of speech, unless specially aroused, and had hardly received the congratulations of his young friend respecting the election, and expressed with some difficult decency his sorrow for the old Squire's death as combined with his satisfaction that the estate had not been sacrificed, when Ralph stopped him just as they had reached the front door, and, with much solemnity of manner, declared his wish to make a very particular private communication to Sir Thomas. "Certainly," said Sir Thomas, "certainly. Come into my room." But there was some delay before this privacy could be achieved, for in the hall they were met by the three girls, and of course there were many things to be said by them. Clarissa could hardly repress the flutter of her heart. When the reader last saw her flutter, and last heard her words as she spoke of her love to her cousin, she was taking an opportunity of declaring to Mary Bonner that she did not begrudge the brilliance of Mary's present prospects,--though the grand estate which made them brilliant was in a measure taken from her own hopes. And she had owned at the same time that she did not dare to feel confidence in her own love, because her lover would now be too poor in his own esteem to indulge himself with the luxury of a wife. All this Mary had accepted from her, certainly with no expression of triumph, but certainly with some triumph in her heart. Now this was entirely changed,--and here was her lover, with his fortune restored to him, once more beneath her father's roof! She gave him her hand the first of the three. She could not repress herself. He took it with a smile, and pressed it warmly. But he turned to Patience and took hers as rapidly as he was able. Then came Mary's turn. "I hope you also are glad to see me once again?" he said. Clarissa's heart sank within her as she heard the words. The appreciation of a woman in such matters is as fine as the nose of a hound, and is all but unintelligible to a man. "Oh, yes, Mr. Newton," said Mary smiling. "But if he asks her, she'll take him." No such words as these were formed even in Clarissa's mind; but after some fashion such was the ejaculation of her heart. Mary's "Oh, yes," had meant little enough, but could Mary withstand such chances if they were offered to her?
Sir Thomas led the way into his private room, and Ralph followed him. "You won't be long, papa," said Patience.
"I hope not," said Sir Thomas.
"Remember, Ralph, you will be keeping lunch waiting," said Patience.
Then the two men were alone. Sir Thomas's mind had recurred to Neefit at the first moment of Ralph's request. The young man was going to consult him as to the best mode of getting rid of that embarrassment. But in the hall another idea had come upon him. He was to be asked for his consent regarding Clarissa. As he seated himself in one chair and asked Ralph to take another, he had not quite made up his mind as to the answer he would give. There must at any rate be some delay. The reader will of course remember that Sir Thomas was persuaded that Ralph had engaged himself to marry Polly Neefit.
Ralph rushed boldly at his subject at once. "Sir Thomas," he said, "I am going to make a proposition, and I wish to ask you for your consent. I have made up my mind that the sooner I marry in my present condition the better." Sir Thomas smiled and assented. "And I want to know whether you will object to my asking Miss Bonner to be my wife."
"Miss Bonner!" said Sir Thomas, throwing up both his hands.
"Yes, sir;--is there any objection on your part?"
Sir Thomas hardly knew how to say whether there was or was not an objection on his part. In the first place he had made up his mind that the other Ralph was to marry Mary,--that he would do so in spite of that disclaimer which had been made in the first moment of the young man's disinheritance. He, Sir Thomas, however, could have no right to object on that score. Nor could he raise any objection on the score of Clarissa. It did seem to him that all the young people were at cross purposes, that Patience must have been very stupid and Clarissa most addlepated, or else that this Ralph was abominably false; but still, he could say nothing respecting that. No tale had reached his ears which made it even possible for him to refer to Clarissa. But yet he was dissatisfied with the man, and was disposed to show it. "Perhaps I ought to tell you," said Sir Thomas, "that a man calling himself Neefit was with me yesterday."
"Oh, yes; the breeches-maker."
"I believe he said that such was his trade. He assured me that you had borrowed large sums of money from him."
"I do owe him some money."
"A thousand pounds, I think he said."
"Certainly as much as that."
"Not for breeches,--which I suppose would be impossible, but for money advanced."
"Part one and part the other," said Ralph.
"And he went on to tell me that you were engaged,--to marry his daughter."
"That is untrue."
"Were you never engaged to her?"
"I was never engaged to her, Sir Thomas."
"And it was all a lie on the part of Mr. Neefit? Was there no foundation for it? You had told me yourself that you thought of such a marriage."
"There is nothing to justify him in saying that I was ever engaged to the young lady. The truth is that I did ask her and she,--refused me."
"You did ask her?"
"I did ask her," said Ralph.
"In earnest?"
"Well; yes;--certainly in earnest. At that time I thought it the only way to save the property. I need not tell you how wretched I was at the time. You will remember what you yourself had said to me. It is true that I asked her, and that I did so by agreement with her father. She refused me,--twice. She was so good, so sensible, and so true, that she knew she had better not make herself a party to such a bargain. Whatever you may think of my own conduct I shall not have behaved badly to Miss Neefit."
Sir Thomas did think very ill of Ralph's conduct, but he believed him. After a while the whole truth came out, as to the money lent and as to Neefit's schemes. It was of course understood by both of them that Ralph was required neither by honesty nor by honour to renew his offer. And then under such circumstances was he or was he not to be allowed to propose to Mary Bonner? At first Ralph had been much dismayed at having the Neefit mine sprung on him at such a moment; but he collected himself very quickly, and renewed his demand as to Mary. Sir Thomas could not mean to say that because he had been foolish in regard to Polly Neefit, that therefore he was to be debarred from marrying! Sir Thomas did not exactly say that; but, nevertheless, Sir Thomas showed his displeasure. "It seems," said he, "particularly easy to you to transfer your affections."
"My affection for Miss Neefit was not strong," said Ralph. "I did, and always shall, regard her as a most excellent young woman."
"She showed her sense in refusing you," said Sir Thomas.
"I think she did," said Ralph.
"And I doubt much whether my niece will not be equally--sensible."
"Ah,--I can say nothing as to that."
"Were she to hear this story of Miss Neefit I am sure she would refuse you."
"But you would not tell it to her,--as yet! If all goes well with me I will tell it to her some day. Come, Sir Thomas, you don't mean to be hard upon me at last. It cannot be that you should really regret that I have got out of that trouble."
"But I regret much that you should have borrowed a tradesman's money, and more that you should have offered to pay the debt by marrying his daughter." Through it all, however, there was a feeling present to Sir Thomas that he was, in truth, angry with the Squire of Newton, not so much for his misconduct in coming to propose to Mary so soon after the affair with Polly Neefit, but because he had not come to propose to Clarissa. And Sir Thomas knew that such a feeling, if it did really exist, must be overcome. Mary was entitled to her chance, and must make the best of it. He would not refuse his sanction to a marriage with his niece on account of Ralph's misconduct, when he would have sanctioned a marriage with his own daughter in spite of that misconduct. The conversation was ended by Sir Thomas leaving the room with a promise that Miss Bonner should be sent to fill his place. In five minutes Miss Bonner was there. She entered the room very slowly, with a countenance that was almost savage, and during the few minutes that she remained there she did not sit down.
"Sir Thomas has told you why I am here?" he said, advancing towards her, and taking her hand.
"No; that is;--no. He has not told me."
"Mary--" "Mr. Newton, my name is Miss Bonner."
"And must it between us be so cold as that?" He still had her by the hand, which she did not at the moment attempt to withdraw. "I have come to tell you, at the first moment that was possible to me after my uncle's death, that of all women in the world I love you the best."
Then she withdrew her hand. "Mr. Newton, I am sorry to hear you say so;--very sorry."
"Why should you be sorry? If you are unkind to me like this, there may be reason why I should be sorry. I shall, indeed, be very sorry. Since I first saw you, I have hoped that you would be my wife."
"I never can be your wife, Mr. Newton."
"Why not? Have I done anything to offend you? Being here as one of the family you must know enough of my affairs to feel sure,--that I have come to you the first moment that was possible. I did not dare to come when I thought that my position was one that was not worthy of you."
"It would have been the same at any time," said Mary.
"And why should you reject me,--like this; without a moment's thought?"
"For two reasons," said Mary, slowly, and then she paused, as though doubting whether she would continue her speech, or give the two reasons which now guided her. But he stood, looking into her face, waiting for them. "In the first place," she said, "I think you are untrue to another person." Then she paused again, as though asking herself whether that reason would not suffice. But she resolved that she would be bold, and give the other. "In the next place, my heart is not my own to give."
"Is it so?" asked Ralph.
"I have said as much as can be necessary,--perhaps more, and I would rather go now." Then she left the room with the same slow, stately step, and he saw her no more on that day.
Then in those short five minutes Sir Thomas had absolutely told her the whole story about Polly Neefit, and she had come to the conclusion that because in his trouble he had offered to marry a tradesman's daughter, therefore he was to be debarred from ever receiving the hand of a lady! That was the light in which he looked upon Mary's first announcement. As to the second announcement he was absolutely at a loss. There must probably, he thought, have been some engagement before she left Jamaica. Not the less on that account was it an act of unpardonable ill-nature on the part of Sir Thomas,--that telling of Polly Neefit's story to Mary Bonner at such a moment.
He was left alone for a few minutes after Mary's departure, and then Patience came to him. Would he stay for dinner? Even Patience was very cold to him. Sir Thomas was fatigued and was lying down, but would see him, of course, if he wished it. "And where is Clarissa?" asked Ralph. Patience said that Clarissa was not very well. She also was lying down. "I see what it is," said Ralph, turning upon her angrily. "You are, all of you, determined to quarrel with me because of my uncle's death."
"I do not see why that should make us quarrel," said Patience. "I do not know that any one has quarrelled with you."
Of course he would not wait for dinner, nor would he have any lunch. He walked out on to the lawn with something of a bluster in his step, and stood there for three or four minutes looking up at the house and speaking to Patience. A young man when he has been rejected by one of the young ladies of a family has rather a hard time of it till he gets away. "Well, Patience," he said at last, "make my farewells for me." And then he was gone.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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39
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HORSELEECHES.
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The honour of representing the borough of Percycross in Parliament was very great, and Sir Thomas, no doubt, did enjoy it after a fashion; but it was by no means an unalloyed pleasure. While he was still in bed with his broken arm at the Percy Standard, many applications for money had been made to him. This man wanted a sovereign, that man a five-pound-note, and some poor starving wretch a half-a-crown; and they all came to him with notes from Trigger, or messages from Spicer or Spiveycomb, to the effect that as the election was now over, the money ought to be given. The landlord of the Percy Standard was on such occasions very hard upon him. "It really will do good, Sir Thomas." "It is wanted, Sir Thomas." "It will make a good feeling in the town, Sir Thomas, and we don't know how soon we may have to go to work again." Sir Thomas was too weak in health to refuse. He gave the sovereigns, the five-pound-notes, and the half-crowns, and hurried back home as quickly as he was able.
But things were almost worse with him at home than at Percycross. The real horseleeches felt that they could hardly get a good hold of him while he was lying at the Percycross inn. Attacks by letter were, they well knew, more fatal than those made personally, and they waited. The first that came was from Mr. Pabsby. Mr. Pabsby had at last seen his way clear, and had voted for Underwood and Westmacott, absolutely throwing away his vote as far as the cause was concerned. But Mr. Pabsby had quarrelled with Griffenbottom, who once, when pressed hard for some favours, had answered the reverend gentleman somewhat roughly. "You may go and be ----," said Mr. Griffenbottom in his wrath, "and tell everybody in Percycross that I said so." Mr. Pabsby had smiled, had gone away, and had now voted for Mr. Westmacott. Mr. Pabsby was indeed a horseleech of the severest kind. There had been some outward show of reconciliation between Griffenbottom and Pabsby; but Pabsby had at last voted for Underwood and Westmacott. Sir Thomas had not been home two days before he received a letter from Mr. Pabsby. "It had been with infinite satisfaction,"--so Mr. Pabsby now said,--"that he had at length seen his way clearly, and found himself able to support his friend Sir Thomas. And he believed that he might take upon himself to say that when he once had seen his way clearly, he had put his shoulder to the wheel gallantly." In fact, it was to be inferred from the contents of Mr. Pabsby's letter that Sir Thomas's return had been due altogether to Mr. Pabsby's flock, who had, so said Mr. Pabsby, been guided in the matter altogether by his advice. Then he sent a list of his "hearers," who had voted for Sir Thomas. From this the slight change of subject needed to bring him to the new chapel which he was building, and his desire that Sir Thomas should head the subscription-list in so good a cause, was easy enough. It might be difficult to say in what Mr. Pabsby's strength lay, but it certainly was the case that the letter was so written as to defy neglect and almost to defy refusal. Such is the power of horseleeches. Sir Thomas sent Mr. Pabsby a cheque for twenty pounds, and received Mr. Pabsby's acknowledgment, thanking him for his "first" subscription. The thanks were not very cordial, and it was evident that Mr. Pabsby had expected a good deal more than twenty pounds in return for all that he had done.
Mr. Pabsby was simply the first. Before Christmas had come, it seemed to Sir Thomas that there was not a place of divine worship in the whole of Percycross that was not falling to the ground in ruins. He had not observed it when he was there, but now it appeared that funds were wanted for almost every such edifice in the borough. And the schools were in a most destitute condition. He was informed that the sitting member had always subscribed to all the schools, and that if he did not continue such subscription the children would literally be robbed of their education. One gentleman, whose name he did not even remember to have heard, simply suggested to him that he would, as a matter of course, continue to give "the £50" towards the general Christmas collection on behalf of the old women of the borough. The sitting members had given it time out of mind. Mr. Roodylands had a political project of his own, which in fact, if carried out, would amount to a prohibition on the import of French boots, and suggested that Sir Thomas should bring in a bill to that effect on the meeting of Parliament. If Sir Thomas would not object to the trouble of visiting Amiens, Lille, Beauvais, and three or four other French towns which Mr. Roodylands mentioned, he would be able to ascertain how much injury had been done to Percycross by the Cobden treaty. Mr. Spiveycomb had his own ideas about Italian rags,--Mr. Spiveycomb being in the paper line,--and wrote a very long letter to Sir Thomas, praying the member to make himself master of a subject so vitally important to the borough which he represented. Mr. Spicer also communicated to him the astounding fact that some high official connected with the army was undoubtedly misbehaving himself in regard to mustard for the troops. The mustard contracts were not open as they should be open. The mustard was all supplied by a London house, and Mr. Spicer was very anxious that Sir Thomas should move for a committee to inquire of the members of that London firm as to the manner in which the contracts were obtained by them. Mr. Spicer was disposed to think that this was the most important matter that would be brought forward in the next session of Parliament.
Mr. Pabsby had got his cheque before the other applications were received; but when they came in shoals, Sir Thomas thought that it might be well to refer them to Mr. Trigger for advice. Sir Thomas had not loved Griffenbottom during the election, and was not inclined to ask his colleague for counsel. Griffenbottom had obtained a name for liberality in Percycross, and had shown symptoms,--so thought Sir Thomas,--of an intention to use his reputation as a means of throwing off further burdens from his own shoulders. "I have spent a treasure in the borough. Let my colleague begin now." Words spoken by Mr. Griffenbottom in that strain had been repeated to Sir Thomas; and, after many such words, Sir Thomas could not go to Mr. Griffenbottom for advice as to what he should give, or refuse to give. He doubted whether better reliance could be placed on Mr. Trigger;--but to some one he must go for direction. Were he once to let it be known in Percycross that demands made would be satisfied, he might sign cheques to the extent of his whole fortune, during his first session. He did write to Mr. Trigger, enclosing the various Percycross applications; and Mr. Trigger duly replied to him. Mr. Trigger regretted that money had been given to Mr. Pabsby. Mr. Pabsby had been of no use, and could be of no use. Mr. Griffenbottom, who knew the borough better than any one else, had understood this well when on one occasion he had been "a little short" with Mr. Pabsby. Sir Thomas ought not to have sent that cheque to Mr. Pabsby. The sending it would do infinite harm, and cause dissensions in the borough, which might require a considerable expenditure to set right. As to the other clerical demands, it seemed to Sir Thomas that Mr. Trigger was of opinion that they should all be gratified. He had, in fact, sent his money to the only person in Percycross who ought not to have received money. The £50 for the old women was a matter of course, and would not be begrudged, as it was the only payment which was absolutely annual. In regard to the schools, Sir Thomas could do what he pleased; but the sitting members had always been liberal to the schools. Schools were things to which sitting members were, no doubt, expected to subscribe. As to the question of French boots, Mr. Trigger thought that there was something in it, and said that if Sir Thomas could devote his Christmas holidays to getting up the subject in Lille and Amiens, it would have a good effect in the borough, and show that he was in earnest. This might be the more desirable, as there was no knowing as yet what might be done about the petition. There no doubt was a strong feeling in the borough as to the Cobden treaty, and Sir Thomas would probably feel it to be his duty to get the question up. In regard to the mustard, Mr. Trigger suggested that though there was probably nothing in it, it might be as well to ask the Secretary at War a question or two on the subject. Mr. Spicer was, no doubt, a moving man in Percycross. Sir Thomas could at any rate promise that he would ask such questions, as Mr. Spicer certainly had friends who might be conducive to the withdrawal of the petition. Sir Thomas could at any rate put himself into correspondence with the War Office. Mr. Trigger also thought that Sir Thomas might judiciously study the subject of Italian rags, in reference to the great paper trade of the country. No doubt the manufacture of paper was a growing business at Percycross. Mr. Trigger returned all the applications, and ended his letter by hinting that the cheques might as well be sent at once. Mr. Trigger thought that "a little money about the borough," would do good at the present moment.
It need hardly be said that this view of things was not pleasant to the sitting member, who was still confined to his house at Fulham by an arm broken in the cause. Sir Thomas had at once sent the £50 towards the Christmas festivities for the poor of the borough, and had declared his purpose of considering the other matters. Then had come a further letter from Mr. Trigger, announcing his journey to London, and Mr. Trigger and Sir Thomas had their first meeting after the election, immediately upon Mr. Neefit's departure from the chambers. "And is it to be?" asked Stemm, as soon as he had closed the door behind Mr. Trigger's back.
"Is what to be?"
"Them petitions, Sir Thomas? Petitions costs a deal of money they tell me, Sir Thomas." Sir Thomas winced. "I suppose you must go on now as your hand is in," continued Stemm.
"I don't know that at all," said Sir Thomas.
"You'll find as you must. There ain't no way out of it;--not now as you are the sitting member."
"I am not going to ruin myself, Stemm, for the sake of a seat in Parliament."
"I don't know how that may be, Sir Thomas. I hope not, Sir Thomas. But I don't see how you're not to go on now, Sir Thomas. If it wasn't for petitions, one wouldn't mind."
"There must be petitions, of course; and if there be good cause for them, they should succeed."
"No doubt, Sir Thomas. They say the bribery at Percycross was tremenjous;--but I suppose it was on the other side."
"If it was on our side, Stemm, it was not so with my knowledge. I did all I could to prevent it. I spoke against it whenever I opened my mouth. I would not have given a shilling for a single vote, though it would have got me the election."
"But they were not all that way, Sir Thomas;--was they?"
"How can I tell? No;--I know that they were not. I fear they were not. I cannot say that money was given, but I fear it."
"You must go on now, Sir Thomas, any way," said Stemm with a groan that was not reassuring.
"I wish I had never heard the name of Percycross," said Sir Thomas.
"I dare say," replied Stemm.
"I went there determined to keep my hands clean."
"When one puts one's hand into other people's business, they won't come out clean," said the judicious Stemm. "But you must go on with it now, any way, Sir Thomas."
"I don't know what I shall do," said the unhappy member.
On the next morning there came another application from Percycross. The postmaster in that town had died suddenly, and the competitors for the situation, which was worth about £150 per annum, were very numerous. There was a certain Mr. O'Blather, only known in Percycross as cousin to one Mrs. Givantake, the wife of a liberal solicitor in the borough. Of Mr. O'Blather the worst that could be said was that at the age of forty he had no income on which to support himself. Mrs. Givantake was attached to her cousin, and Mr. Givantake had become sensible of a burden. That the vacant office was just the thing for him appeared at a glance to all his friends. Mrs. Givantake, in her energy on the subject, expressed an opinion that the whole Cabinet should be impeached if the just claims of Mr. O'Blather were not conceded. But it was felt that the justice of the claims would not prevail without personal interest. The liberal party was in power, and application, hot and instant, was made to Mr. Westmacott. Mr. Westmacott was happy enough to have his answer ready. The Treasury had nothing to do with the matter. It was a Post Office concern; and he, simply as the late liberal member, and last liberal candidate for the borough, was not entitled to intrude, even in a matter of patronage, upon the Postmaster-General, with whom he was not acquainted. But Mr. Westmacott was malicious as well as secure. He added a postscript to his letter, in which he said that he believed the present sitting member, Sir Thomas Underwood, was intimately acquainted with the noble lord who presided at the Post Office. There were various interests at Percycross moved, brought together, weighed against each other, and balanced to a grain, and finally dovetailed. If Sir Thomas Underwood would prevail on Lord ---- to appoint Mr. O'Blather to the vacant office, then all the Givantake influence at Percycross should be used towards the withdrawal of the petition. Such was the communication now made to Sir Thomas by a gentleman who signed his name as Peter Piper, and who professed himself authorised to act on behalf of Mr. Givantake. Sir Thomas's answer was as follows;-- Southampton Buildings, December 31, 186--.
SIR,-- I can have nothing to do with Mr. O'Blather and the post-office at Percycross.
I am, Your obedient servant, THOMAS UNDERWOOD.
MR. PETER PIPER, Post-office, Percycross.
Christmas had passed,--and had passed uncomfortably enough at Popham Villa, in which retreat neither of the three young ladies was at present very happy,--when Sir Thomas was invited by Mr. Trigger to take further steps with reference to the petitions. It was thought necessary that there should be a meeting in the conservative interest, and it was suggested that this meeting should take place in Sir Thomas's chambers. Mr. Trigger in making the proposition seemed to imply that a great favour was thereby conferred on Sir Thomas,--as that country is supposed to be most honoured which is selected as the meeting-ground for plenipotentiaries when some important international point requires to be settled. Sir Thomas could not see the arrangement in that light, and would have shuffled out of the honour had it been possible. But it was not possible. At this period of the year Mr. Griffenbottom had no house in town, and Mr. Trigger explained that it was inexpedient that such meetings should take place at hotels. There was no place so fitting as a lawyer's chambers. Sir Thomas, who regarded as a desecration the entrance of one such man as Mr. Trigger into his private room, and who was particularly anxious not to fall into any intimacy with Mr. Griffenbottom, was driven to consent, and at one o'clock on the 29th, Stemm was forced to admit the deputation. The deputation from Percycross consisted of Mr. Trigger, Mr. Spicer, and Mr. Pile; but with them came also the senior sitting member. At first they were all very grave, and Sir Thomas asked them, indiscreetly, whether they would take a glass of sherry. Pile and Spicer immediately acceded to this proposition, and sherry was perhaps efficacious in bringing about speedy conversation.
"Well, Underwood," said Mr. Griffenbottom, "it seems that after all we are to have these d---- petitions." Sir Thomas lifted his left foot on his right knee, and nursed his leg,--but said nothing. On one point he was resolved;--nothing on earth should induce him to call his colleague Griffenbottom.
"No doubt about that, Mr. Griffenbottom," said Mr. Pile, "--that is, unless we can make Westmacott right. T'other chap wouldn't be of much account."
"Mr. Pile, you're going a little too fast," said Trigger.
"No, I ain't," said Mr. Pile. But for the moment he allowed himself to be silenced.
"We don't like the looks of it at Percycross," said Mr. Spicer.
"And why don't we like the looks of it?" asked Sir Thomas.
"I don't know what your idea of pleasure is," said Mr. Griffenbottom, "but I don't take delight in spending money for nothing. I have spent enough, I can tell you, and I don't mean to spend much more. My seat was as safe as the Church."
"But they have petitioned against that as well as mine," said Sir Thomas.
"Yes;--they have. And now what's to be done?"
"I don't know whether Sir Thomas is willing to take the whole cost of the defence upon himself," said Mr. Trigger, pouring out for himself a second glass of sherry.
"No, I am not," said Sir Thomas. Whereupon there was a pause, during which Pile and Spicer also took second glasses of sherry. "Why should I pay the cost of defending Mr. Griffenbottom's seat?"
"Why should I pay it?" said Griffenbottom. "My seat was safe enough. The fact is, if money was paid,--as to which I know nothing,--it was paid to get the second seat. Everybody knows that. Why should any one have paid money for me? I was safe. I never have any difficulty; everybody knows that. I could come in for Percycross twenty times running, without buying a vote. Isn't that true, Trigger?"
"I believe you could, Mr. Griffenbottom."
"Of course I could. Look here, Underwood--" "I beg your pardon for one moment, Mr. Griffenbottom," said Sir Thomas. "Will you tell me, Mr. Trigger, whether votes were bought on my behalf?" Mr. Trigger smiled, and put his head on one side, but made no answer. "I wish I might be allowed to hear the truth," continued Sir Thomas. Whereupon Spicer grinned, and Mr. Pile looked as though he were about to be sick. How was it that a set of gentlemen, who generally knew their business so well as did the political leaders at Percycross, had got themselves into the same boat with a man silly enough to ask such a question as that?
"I shan't spend money," said Griffenbottom; "it's out of the question. They can't touch me. I've spent my money, and got my article. If others want the article, they must spend theirs."
Mr. Trigger thought it might be as well to change the subject for a moment, or, at any rate, to pass on to another clause of the same bill. "I was very sorry, Sir Thomas," said he, "that you wrote that letter to Mr. Givantake."
"I wrote no letter to Mr. Givantake. A man named Piper addressed me."
"Well, well, well; that's the same thing. It was Givantake, though of course he isn't going to sign his name to everything. If you could just have written a line to your friend the Postmaster-General, I really think we could have squared it all."
"I wouldn't have made a request so improper for all Percycross," said Sir Thomas.
"Patronage is open to everybody," suggested Mr. Griffenbottom.
"Those sort of favours are asked every day," said Trigger.
"We live in a free country," said Spicer.
"Givantake is a d---- scoundrel all the same," said Mr. Pile; "and as for his wife's Irish cousin, I should be very sorry to leave my letters in his hands."
"It wouldn't have come off, Mr. Pile," said Trigger, "but the request might have been made. If Sir Thomas will allow me to say as much, the request ought to have been made."
"I will allow nothing of the kind, Mr. Trigger," said Sir Thomas, with an assumption of personal dignity which caused everyone in the room to alter his position in his chair. "I understand these things are given by merit." Mr. Trigger smiled, and Mr. Griffenbottom laughed outright. "At any rate, they ought to be, and in this office I believe they are." Mr. Griffenbottom, who had had the bestowal of some local patronage, laughed again.
"The thing is over now, at any rate," said Mr. Trigger.
"I saw Givantake yesterday," said Spicer. "He won't stir a finger now."
"He never would have stirred a finger," said Mr. Pile; "and if he'd stirred both his fistesses, he wouldn't have done a ha'porth of good. Givantake, indeed! He be blowed!" There was a species of honesty about Mr. Pile which almost endeared him to Sir Thomas.
"Something must be settled," said Trigger.
"I thought you'd got a proposition to make," said Spicer.
"Well, Sir Thomas," began Mr. Trigger, as it were girding his loins for the task before him, "we think that your seat wouldn't stand the brunt. We've been putting two and two together and that's what we think." A very black cloud came over the brow of Sir Thomas Underwood, but at the moment he said nothing. "Of course it can be defended. If you choose to fight the battle you can defend it. It will cost about £1,500,--or perhaps a little more. That is, the two sides, for both will have to be paid." Mr. Trigger paused again, but still Sir Thomas said not a word. "Mr. Griffenbottom thinks that he should not be asked to take any part of this cost."
"Not a shilling," said Mr. Griffenbottom.
"Well," continued Mr. Trigger, "that being the case, of course we have got to see what will be our best plan of action. I suppose, Sir Thomas, you are not altogether indifferent about the money."
"By no means," said Sir Thomas.
"I don't know who is. Money is money all the world over."
"You may say that," put in Mr. Spicer.
"Just let me go on for a moment, Mr. Spicer, till I make this thing clear to Sir Thomas. That's how we stand at present. It will cost us,--that is to say you,--about £1,500, and we should do no good. I really don't think we should do any good. Here are these judges, and you know that new brooms sweep clean. I suppose we may allow that there was a little money spent somewhere. They do say now that a glass of beer would lose a seat."
Sir Thomas could not but remember all that he had said to prevent there being even a glass of beer, and the way in which he had been treated by all the party in that matter, because he had so endeavoured. But it was useless to refer to all that at the present moment. "It seems to me," he said, "that if one seat be vacated, both must be vacated."
"It doesn't follow at all," said Mr. Griffenbottom.
"Allow me just for a moment longer," continued Trigger, who rose from his seat as he came to the real gist of his speech. "A proposition has been made to us, Sir Thomas, and I am able to say that it is one which may be trusted. Of course our chief anxiety is for the party. You feel that, Sir Thomas, of course." Sir Thomas would not condescend to make any reply to this. "Now the Liberals will be content with one seat. If we go on it will lead to disfranchising the borough, and we none of us want that. It would be no satisfaction to you, Sir Thomas, to be the means of robbing the borough of its privilege after all that the borough has done for you."
"Go on, Mr. Trigger," said Sir Thomas.
"The Liberals only want one seat. If you'll undertake to accept the Hundreds, the petition will be withdrawn, and Mr. Westmacott will come forward again. In that case we shouldn't oppose. Now, Sir Thomas, you know what the borough thinks will be the best course for all of us to pursue."
Sir Thomas did know. We may say that he had known for some minutes past. He had perceived what was coming, and various recollections had floated across his mind. He especially remembered that £50 for the poor old women which Mr. Trigger only a week since had recommended that he should give,--and he remembered also that he had given it. He recollected the sum which he had already paid for his election expenses, as to which Mr. Trigger had been very careful to get the money before this new proposition was made. He remembered Mr. Pabsby and his cheque for £20. He remembered his broken arm, and that fortnight of labour and infinite vexation in the borough. He remembered all his hopes, and his girls' triumph. But he remembered also that he had told himself a dozen times since his return that he wished that he might rid himself altogether of Percycross and the seat in Parliament. Now a proposition that would have this effect was made to him.
"Well, Sir Thomas, what do you think of it?" asked Mr. Trigger.
Sir Thomas required the passing of a few moments that he might think of it, and yet there was a feeling strong at his heart telling him that it behoved him not even to seem to doubt. He was a man not deficient in spirit when roused as he now was roused. He knew that he was being ill used. From the first moment of his entering Percycross he had felt that the place was not fit for him, that it required a method of canvassing of which he was not only ignorant, but desirous to remain ignorant,--that at Percycross he would only be a catspaw in the hands of other men. He knew that he could not safely get into the same boat with Mr. Griffenbottom, or trust himself to the steering of such a coxswain as Mr. Trigger. He had found that there could be no sympathy between himself and any one of those who constituted his own party in the borough. And yet he had persevered. He had persevered because in such matters it is so difficult to choose the moment in which to recede. He had persevered,--and had attained a measure of success. As far as had been possible for him to do so, he had fought his battle with clean hands, and now he was member of Parliament for Percycross. Let what end there might come to this petition,--even though his seat should be taken from him,--he could be subjected to no personal disgrace. He could himself give evidence, the truth of which no judge in the land would doubt, as to the purity of his own intentions, and as to the struggle to be pure which he had made. And now they asked him to give way in order that Mr. Griffenbottom might keep his seat!
He felt that he and poor Moggs had been fools together. At this moment there came upon him a reflection that such men as he and Moggs were unable to open their mouths in such a borough as Percycross without having their teeth picked out of their jaws. He remembered well poor Moggs's legend, "Moggs, Purity, and the Rights of Labour;" and he remembered thinking at the time that neither Moggs nor he should have come to Percycross. And now he was told of all that the borough had done for him, and was requested to show his gratitude by giving up his seat,--in order that Griffenbottom might still be a member of Parliament, and that Percycross might not be disfranchised! Did he feel any gratitude to Percycross or any love to Mr. Griffenbottom? In his heart he desired that Mr. Griffenbottom might be made to retire into private life, and he knew that it would be well that the borough should be disfranchised.
These horrid men that sat around him,--how he hated them! He could get rid of them now, now and for ever, by acceding to the proposition made to him. And he thought that in doing so he could speak a few words which would be very agreeable to him in the speaking. And then all that Mr. Trigger had said about the £1,500 had been doubtless true. If he defended his seat money must be spent, and he did not know how far he might be able to compel Mr. Griffenbottom to share the expense. He was not so rich but what he was bound to think of the money, for his children's sake. And he did believe Mr. Trigger, when Mr. Trigger told him that the seat could not be saved.
Yet he could not bring himself to let these men have their way with him. To have to confess that he had been their tool went so much against the grain with him that anything seemed to him to be preferable to that. The passage across his brain of all these thoughts had not required many seconds, and his guests seemed to acknowledge by their silence that some little space of time should be allowed to him. Mr. Pile was leaning forward on his stick with his eyes fixed upon Sir Thomas's face. Mr. Spicer was amusing himself with a third glass of sherry. Mr. Griffenbottom had assumed a look of absolute indifference, and was sitting with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. Mr. Trigger, with a pleasant smile on his face, was leaning back in his chair with his hands in his trousers pockets. He had done his disagreeable job of work, and upon the whole he thought that he had done it well.
"I shall do nothing of the kind," said Sir Thomas at last.
"You'll be wrong, Sir Thomas," said Mr. Trigger.
"You'll disfranchise the borough," said Mr. Spicer.
"You'll not be able to keep your seat," said Mr. Trigger.
"And there'll be all the money to pay," said Mr. Spicer.
"Sir Thomas don't mind that," said Mr. Griffenbottom.
"As for paying the money, I do mind it very much," said Sir Thomas. "As for disfranchising the borough, I cannot say that I regard it in the least. As to your seat, Mr. Griffenbottom--" "My seat is quite safe," said the senior member.
"As to your seat, which I am well aware must be jeopardised if mine be in jeopardy, it would have been matter of more regret to me, had I experienced from you any similar sympathy for myself. As it is, it seems that each of us is to do the best he can for himself, and I shall do the best I can for myself. Good morning."
"What then do you mean to do?" said Mr. Trigger.
"On that matter I shall prefer to converse with my friends."
"You mean," said Mr. Trigger, "that you will put it into other hands."
"You have made a proposition to me, Mr. Trigger, and I have given you my answer. I have nothing else to say. What steps I may take I do not even know at present."
"You will let us hear from you," said Mr. Trigger.
"I cannot say that I will."
"This comes of bringing a gentleman learned in the law down into the borough," said Mr. Griffenbottom.
"Gentlemen, I must ask you to leave me," said Sir Thomas, rising from his chair and ringing the bell.
"Look here, Sir Thomas Underwood," said Mr. Griffenbottom. "This to me is a very important matter."
"And to me also," said Sir Thomas.
"I do not know anything about that. Like a good many others, you may like to have a seat in Parliament, and may like to get it without any trouble and without any money. I have sat for Percycross for many years, and have spent a treasure, and have worked myself off my legs. I don't know that I care much for anything except for keeping my place in the House. The House is everything to me,--meat and drink; employment and recreation; and I can tell you I'm not going to lose my seat if I can help it. You came in for the second chance, Sir Thomas; and a very good second chance it was if you'd just have allowed others who knew what they were about to manage matters for you. That chance is over now, and according to all rules that ever I heard of in such matters, you ought to surrender. Isn't that so, Mr. Trigger?"
"Certainly, Mr. Griffenbottom, according to my ideas," said Mr. Trigger.
"That's about it," said Mr. Spicer.
Sir Thomas was still standing. Indeed they were all standing now. "Mr. Griffenbottom," he said, "I have nothing further that I can say at the present moment. To the offer made to me by Mr. Trigger I at present positively decline to accede. I look upon that offer as unfriendly, and can therefore only wish you a good morning."
"Unfriendly," said Mr. Griffenbottom with a sneer.
"Good-bye, Sir Thomas," said Mr. Pile, putting out his hand. Sir Thomas shook hands with Mr. Pile cordially. "It's my opinion that he's right," said Mr. Pile. "I don't like his notions, but I do like his pluck. Good-bye, Sir Thomas." Then Mr. Pile led the way out of the room, and the others followed him.
"Oh!" said Stemm, as soon as he had shut the door behind their backs. "That's a deputation from Percycross, is it, Sir Thomas? You were saying as how you didn't quite approve of the Percycrossians." To this, however, Sir Thomas vouchsafed no reply.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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40
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WHAT SIR THOMAS THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
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Sir Thomas Underwood had been engaged upon a very great piece of work ever since he had been called to the Bar in the twenty-fifth year of his life. He had then devoted himself to the writing of a life of Lord Verulam, and had been at it ever since. But as yet he had not written a word. In early life, that is, up to his fortieth year, he had talked freely enough about his opus magnum to those of his compeers with whom he had been intimate; but of late Bacon's name had never been on his lips. Patience, at home, was aware of the name and nature of her father's occupation, but Clarissa had not yet learned to know that he who had been the great philosopher and little Lord Chancellor was not to be lightly mentioned. To Stemm the matter had become so serious, that in speaking of books, papers, and documents he would have recourse to any periphrasis rather than mention in his master's hearing the name of the fallen angel. And yet Sir Thomas was always talking to himself about Sir Francis Bacon, and was always writing his life.
There are men who never dream of great work, who never realise to themselves the need of work so great as to demand a lifetime, but who themselves never fail in accomplishing those second-class tasks with which they satisfy their own energies. Men these are who to the world are very useful. Some few there are, who seeing the beauty of a great work and believing in its accomplishment within the years allotted to man, are contented to struggle for success, and struggling, fail. Here and there comes one who struggles and succeeds. But the men are many who see the beauty, who adopt the task, who promise themselves the triumph, and then never struggle at all. The task is never abandoned; but days go by and weeks; and then months and years,--and nothing is done. The dream of youth becomes the doubt of middle life, and then the despair of age. In building a summer-house it is so easy to plant the first stick, but one does not know where to touch the sod when one begins to erect a castle. So it had been with Sir Thomas Underwood and his life of Bacon. It would not suffice to him to scrape together a few facts, to indulge in some fiction, to tell a few anecdotes, and then to call his book a biography. Here was a man who had risen higher and was reported to have fallen lower,--perhaps than any other son of Adam. With the finest intellect ever given to a man, with the purest philanthropy and the most enduring energy, he had become a by-word for greed and injustice. Sir Thomas had resolved that he would tell the tale as it had never yet been told, that he would unravel facts that had never seen the light, that he would let the world know of what nature really had been this man,--and that he would write a book that should live. He had never abandoned his purpose; and now at sixty years of age, his purpose remained with him, but not one line of his book was written.
And yet the task had divorced him in a measure from the world. He had not been an unsuccessful man in life. He had made money, and had risen nearly to the top of his profession. He had been in Parliament, and was even now a member. But yet he had been divorced from the world, and Bacon had done it. By Bacon he had justified to himself,--or rather had failed to justify to himself,--a seclusion from his family and from the world which had been intended for strenuous work, but had been devoted to dilettante idleness. And he had fallen into those mistakes which such habits and such pursuits are sure to engender. He thought much, but he thought nothing out, and was consequently at sixty still in doubt about almost everything. Whether Christ did or did not die to save sinners was a question with him so painfully obscure that he had been driven to obtain what comfort he might from not thinking of it. The assurance of belief certainly was not his to enjoy;--nor yet that absence from fear which may come from assured unbelief. And yet none who knew him could say that he was a bad man. He robbed no one. He never lied. He was not self-indulgent. He was affectionate. But he had spent his life in an intention to write the life of Lord Verulam, and not having done it, had missed the comfort of self-respect. He had intended to settle for himself a belief on subjects which are, of all, to all men the most important; and, having still postponed the work of inquiry, had never attained the security of a faith. He was for ever doubting, for ever intending, and for ever despising himself for his doubts and unaccomplished intentions. Now, at the age of sixty, he had thought to lessen these inward disturbances by returning to public life, and his most unsatisfactory alliance with Mr. Griffenbottom had been the result.
They who know the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man,--of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one,--will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber. The moment that he knew that he was alone he turned the lock of the door, and took from out a standing desk a whole heap of loose papers. These were the latest of his notes on the great Bacon subject. For though no line of the book had ever been written,--nor had his work even yet taken such form as to enable him to write a line,--nevertheless, he always had by him a large assemblage of documents, notes, queries, extracts innumerable, and references which in the course of years had become almost unintelligible to himself, upon which from time to time he would set himself to work. Whenever he was most wretched he would fly at his papers. When the qualms of his conscience became very severe, he would copy some passage from a dusty book, hardly in the belief that it might prove to be useful, but with half a hope that he might cheat himself into so believing. Now, in his misery, he declared that he would bind himself to his work and never leave it. There, if anywhere, might consolation be found.
With rapid hands he moved about the papers, and tried to fix his eyes upon the words. But how was he to fix his thoughts? He could not even begin not to think of those scoundrels who had so misused him. It was not a week since they had taken £50 from him for the poor of Percycross, and now they came to him with a simple statement that he was absolutely to be thrown over! He had already paid £900 for his election, and was well aware that the account was not closed. And he was a man who could not bear to speak about money, or to make any complaint as to money. Even though he was being so abominably misused, still he must pay any further claim that might be made on him in respect of the election that was past. Yes;--he must pay for those very purchased votes, for that bribery, as to which he had so loudly expressed his abhorrence, and by reason of which he was now to lose his seat with ignominy.
But the money was not the worst of it. There was a heavier sorrow than that arising from the loss of his money. He alone had been just throughout the contest at Percycross; he alone had been truthful, and he alone straightforward! And yet he alone must suffer! He began to believe that Griffenbottom would keep his seat. That he would certainly lose his own, he was quite convinced. He might lose it by undergoing an adverse petition, and paying ever so much more money,--or he might lose it in the manner that Mr. Trigger had so kindly suggested. In either way there would be disgrace, and contumely, and hours of the agony of self-reproach in store for him!
What excuse had he for placing himself in contact with such filth? Of what childishness had he not been the victim when he allowed himself to dream that he, a pure and scrupulous man, could go among such impurity as he had found at Percycross, and come out, still clean and yet triumphant? Then he thought of Griffenbottom as a member of Parliament, and of that Legislation and that Constitution to which Griffenbottoms were thought to be essentially necessary. That there are always many such men in the House he had always known. He had sat there and had seen them. He had stood shoulder to shoulder with them through many a division, and had thought about them,--acknowledging their use. But now that he was brought into personal contact with such an one, his very soul was aghast. The Griffenbottoms never do anything in politics. They are men of whom in the lump it may be surmised that they take up this or that side in politics, not from any instructed conviction, not from faith in measures or even in men, nor from adherence either through reason or prejudice to this or that set of political theories,--but simply because on this side or on that there is an opening. That gradually they do grow into some shape of conviction from the moulds in which they are made to live, must be believed of them; but these convictions are convictions as to divisions, convictions as to patronage, convictions as to success, convictions as to Parliamentary management; but not convictions as to the political needs of the people. So said Sir Thomas to himself as he sat thinking of the Griffenbottoms. In former days he had told himself that a pudding cannot be made without suet or dough, and that Griffenbottoms were necessary if only for the due adherence of the plums. Whatever most health-bestowing drug the patient may take would bestow anything but health were it taken undiluted. It was thus in former days Sir Thomas had apologised to himself for the Griffenbottoms in the House;--but no such apology satisfied him now. This log of a man, this lump of suet, this diluting quantity of most impure water,--'twas thus that Mr. Griffenbottom was spoken of by Sir Thomas to himself as he sat there with all the Bacon documents before him,--this politician, whose only real political feeling consisted in a positive love of corruption for itself, had not only absolutely got the better of him, who regarded himself at any rate as a man of mind and thought, but had used him as a puppet, and had compelled him to do dirty work. Oh,--that he should have been so lost to his own self-respect as to have allowed himself to be dragged through the dirt of Percycross!
But he must do something;--he must take some step. Mr. Griffenbottom had declared that he would put himself to no expense in defending the seat. Of course he, Sir Thomas, could do the same. He believed that it might be practicable for him to acknowledge the justice of the petition, to declare his belief that his own agents had betrayed him, and to acknowledge that his seat was indefensible. But, as he thought of it, he found that he was actually ignorant of the law in the matter. That he would make no such bargain as that suggested to him by Mr. Trigger,--of so much he thought that he was sure. At any rate he would do nothing that he himself knew to be dishonourable. He must consult his own attorney. That was the end of his self-deliberation,--that, and a conviction that under no circumstances could he retain his seat.
Then he struggled hard for an hour to keep his mind fixed on the subject of his great work. He had found an unknown memoir respecting Bacon, written by a German pen in the Latin language, published at Leipzig shortly after the date of Bacon's fall. He could translate that. It is always easiest for the mind to work in such emergencies, on some matter as to which no creative struggles are demanded from it.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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41
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A BROKEN HEART.
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It was very bad with Clarissa when Ralph Newton was closeted with Mary at Popham Villa. She had suspected what was about to take place, when Sir Thomas and Ralph went together into the room; but at that moment she said nothing. She endeavoured to seem to be cheerful, and attempted to joke with Mary. The three girls were sitting at the table on which lunch was spread,--a meal which no one was destined to eat at Popham Villa on that day,--and thus they remained till Sir Thomas joined them. "Mary," he had said, "Ralph Newton wishes to speak to you. You had better go to him."
"To me, uncle?"
"Yes, to you. You had better go to him."
"But I had rather not."
"Of course you must do as you please, but I would advise you to go to him." Then she had risen very slowly and had gone.
All of them had understood what it meant. To Clarissa the thing was as certain as though she already heard the words spoken. With Patience even there was no doubt. Sir Thomas, though he had told nothing, did not pretend that the truth was to be hidden. He looked at his younger daughter sorrowfully, and laid his hand upon her head caressingly. With her there was no longer the possibility of retaining any secret, hardly the remembrance that there was a secret to retain. "Oh, papa," she said;--"oh, papa!" and burst into tears.
"My dear," he said, "believe me that it is best that it should be so. He is unworthy." Patience said not a word, but was now holding Clarissa close to her bosom. "Tell Mary," continued Sir Thomas, "that I will see her when she is at liberty. Patience, you can ask Ralph whether it will suit him to stay for dinner. I am tired and will go up-stairs myself." And so the two girls were left together.
"Patty, take me away," said Clarissa. "I must never see him again,--never! --nor her."
"She will not accept him, Clary."
"Yes, she will. I know she will. She is a sly, artful creature. And I have been so good to her."
"No, Clary;--I think not;--but what does it matter? He is unworthy. He can be nothing to you now. Papa was right. He is unworthy."
"I care nothing for that. I only care for him. Oh, Patty, take me away. I could not bear to see them when they come out."
Then Patience took her sister up to their joint room, and laid the poor sufferer on the bed, and throwing herself on her knees beside the bed, wept over her sister and caressed her. That argument of Ralph's unworthiness was nothing to Clarissa. She did not consider herself to be so worthy but what she might forgive any sin, if only the chance of forgiving such sin were given to her. At this moment in her heart of hearts her anger was more against her rival than against the man. She had not yet taught herself to think of all his baseness to her,--had only as yet had time to think that that evil had come upon her which she had feared from the first moment of her cousin's arrival.
Presently Patience heard the door opened of the room down-stairs and heard Mary's slow step as she crossed the hall. She understood well that some one should be below, and with another single word of affection to her sister, she went down-stairs. "Well, Mary," she said, looking into her cousin's face.
"There is nothing particular to tell," said Mary, with a gentle smile.
"Of course we all knew what he wanted."
"Then of course you all knew what I should say to him."
"I knew," said Patience.
"I am sure that Clary knew," said Mary. "But he is all alone there, and will not know what to do with himself. Won't you go to him?"
"You will go up to Clary?" Mary nodded her head, and then Patience crossed the hall to liberate the rejected suitor. Mary stood for awhile thinking. She already knew from what Patience had said, that Clarissa had suspected her, and she felt that there should have been no such suspicion. Clarissa had not understood, but ought to have understood. For a moment she was angry, and was disposed to go to her own room. Then she remembered all her cousin's misery, and crept up-stairs to the door. She had come so softly, that though the door was hardly closed, nothing had been heard of her approach. "May I come in, dear?" she said very gently.
"Well, Mary; tell me all," said Clarissa.
"There is nothing to tell, Clary;--only this, that I fear Mr. Newton is not worthy of your love."
"He asked you to take him?"
"Never mind, dearest. We will not talk of that. Dear, dearest Clary, if I only could make you happy."
"But you have refused him?"
"Don't you know me better than to ask me? Don't you know where my heart is? We will carry our burdens together, dearest, and then they will be lighter."
"But he will come to you again;--that other one."
"Clary, dear; we will not think about it. There are things which should not be thought of. We will not talk of it, but we will love each other so dearly." Clarissa, now that she was assured that her evil fortune was not to be aggravated by any injury done to her by her cousin, allowed herself to be tranquillised if not comforted. There was indeed something in her position that did not admit of comfort. All the family knew the story of her unrequited love, and treated her with a compassion which, while its tenderness was pleasant to her, was still in itself an injury. A vain attachment in a woman's heart must ever be a weary load, because she can take no step of her own towards that consummation by which the burden may be converted into a joy. A man may be active, may press his suit even a tenth time, may do something towards achieving success. A woman can only be still and endure. But Clarissa had so managed her affairs that even that privilege of being still was hardly left to her. Her trouble was known to them all. She doubted whether even the servants in the house did not know the cause of her woe. How all this had come to pass she could not now remember. She had told Patience,--as though in compliance with some compact that each should ever tell the other all things. And then circumstances had arisen which made it so natural that she should be open and candid with Mary. The two Ralphs were to be their two lovers. That to her had been a delightful dream during the last few months. He, whose inheritance at that moment was supposed to have been gone, had, as Clarissa thought, in plainest language told his love to her. "Dear, dear Clary, you know I love you." The words to her sense had been so all-important, had meant so much, had seemed to be so final, that they hardly wanted further corroboration. Then, indeed, had come the great fault,--the fault which she had doubted whether she could ever pardon; and she, because of the heinousness of that offence, had been unable to answer the question that had been asked. But the offence, such as it was, had not lightened the solemnity of her assurance, as far as love went, that Ralph ought to be her own after the speaking of such words as he had spoken. There were those troubles about money, but yet she was entitled to regard him as her own. Then had come the written offer from the other Ralph to Mary,--the offer written in the moment of his believed prosperity; and it had been so natural that Clarissa should tell her cousin that as regarded the splendour of position there should be no jealousy between them. Clarissa did not herself think much of a lover who wrote letters instead of coming and speaking,--had perhaps an idea that open speech, even though offence might follow, was better than formal letters; but all that was Mary's affair. This very respectful Ralph was Mary's lover, and if Mary were satisfied, she would not quarrel with the well-behaved young man. She would not even quarrel with him because he was taking from her own Ralph the inheritance which for so many years had been believed to be his own. Thus in the plenitude of her affection and in the serenity of her heart she had told everything to her cousin. And now also her father knew it all. How this had come to pass she did not think to inquire. She suspected no harm from Patience. The thing had been so clear, that all the world might see it. Ralph, that false one, knew it also. Who could know it so well as he did? Had not those very words been spoken by him,--been repeated by him? Now she was as one stricken, where wounds could not be hidden.
On that day Ralph was driven back to town in his cab, in a rather disheartened condition, and no more was seen or heard of him for the present at Popham Villa. His late guardian had behaved very ill to him in telling Mary Bonner the story of Polly Neefit. That was his impression,--feeling sure that Mary had alluded to the unfortunate affair with the breeches-maker's daughter, of which she could have heard tidings only from Sir Thomas. As to Clarissa, he had not exactly forgotten the little affair on the lawn; but to his eyes that affair had been so small as to be almost overlooked amidst larger matters. Mary, he thought, had never looked so beautiful as she had done while refusing him. He did not mean to give her up. Her heart, she had told him, was not her own. He thought he had read of young ladies in similar conditions, of young ladies who had bestowed their hearts and had afterwards got them back again for the sake of making second bestowals. He was not sure but that such an object would lend a zest to life. There was his brother Gregory in love with Clarissa, and still true to her. He would be true to Mary, and would see whether, in spite of that far-away lover, he might not be more successful than his brother. At any rate he would not give her up,--and before he had gone to bed that night he had already concocted a letter to her in his brain, explaining the whole of that Neefit affair, and asking her whether a man should be condemned to misery for life because he had been led by misfortune into such a mistake as that. He dined very well at his club, and on the following morning went down to the Moonbeam by an early train, for that day's hunting. Thence he returned to Newton Priory in time for Christmas, and as he was driven up to his own house, through his own park, meeting one or two of his own tenants, and encountering now and then his own obsequious labourers, he was not an unhappy man in spite of Mary Bonner's cruel answer. It may be doubted whether his greatest trouble at this moment did not arise from his dread of Neefit. He had managed to stay long enough in London to give orders that Neefit's money should be immediately paid. He knew that Neefit could not harm him at law; but it would not be agreeable if the old man were to go about the country telling everyone that he, Ralph Newton of Newton, had twice offered to marry Polly. For the present we will leave him, although he is our hero, and will return to the girls at Popham Villa.
"It is all very well talking, Patience, but I don't mean to try to change," Clarissa said. This was after that visit of the Percycross deputation to Sir Thomas, and after Christmas. More than a week had now passed by since Ralph had rushed down to Fulham with his offer, and the new year had commenced. Sir Thomas had been at home for Christmas,--for the one day,--and had then returned to London. He had seen his attorney respecting the petition, who was again to see Mr. Griffenbottom's London attorney and Mr. Trigger. In the meantime Sir Thomas was to remain quiet for a few days. The petition was not to be tried till the end of February, and there was still time for deliberation. Sir Thomas just now very often took out that great heap of Baconian papers, but still not a word of the biography was written. He was, alas! still very far from writing the first word. "It is all very well, Patience, but I do not mean to try to change," said Clarissa.
Poor Patience could make no answer, dreadful as was to her such an assertion from a young woman. "There is a man who clearly does not want to marry you, who has declared in the plainest way that he does want to marry some one else, who has grossly deceived you, and who never means to think of you again; and yet you say that you will wilfully adhere to your regard for him!" Such would have been the speech which Patience would have made, had she openly expressed her thoughts. But Clarissa was ill, and weak, and wretched; and Patience could not bring herself to say a word that should distress her sister.
"If he came to me to-morrow, of course I should forgive him," Clarissa said again. These conversations were never commenced by Patience, who would rather have omitted any mention of that base young man. "Of course I should. Men do do those things. Men are not like women. They do all manner of things and everybody forgives them. I don't say anything about hoping. I don't hope for anything. I am not happy enough to hope. I shouldn't care if I knew I were going to die to-morrow. But there can be no change. If you want me to be a hypocrite, Patience, I will; but what will be the use? The truth will be the same."
The two girls let her have her way, never contradicted her, coaxed her, and tried to comfort her;--but it was in vain. At first she would not go out of the house, not even to church, and then she took to lying in bed. This lasted into the middle of January, and still Sir Thomas did not come home. He wrote frequently, short notes to Patience, sending money, making excuses, making promises, always expressing some word of hatred or disgust as to Percycross; but still he did not come. At last, when Clarissa declared that she preferred lying in bed to getting up, Patience went up to London and fetched her father home. It had gone so far with Sir Thomas now that he was unable even to attempt to defend himself. He humbly said that he was sorry that he had been away so long, and returned with Patience to the villa.
"My dear," said Sir Thomas, seating himself by Clarissa's bedside, "this is very bad."
"If I had known you were coming, papa, I would have got up."
"If you are not well, perhaps you are better here, dear."
"I don't think I am quite well, papa."
"What is it, my love?" Clarissa looked at him out of her large tear-laden eyes, but said nothing. "Patience says that you are not happy."
"I don't know that anybody is happy, papa."
"I wish that you were with all my heart, my child. Can your father do anything that will make you happy?"
"No, papa."
"Tell me, Clary. You do not mind my asking you questions?"
"No, papa."
"Patience tells me that you are still thinking of Ralph Newton."
"Of course I think of him."
"I think of him too;--but there are different ways of thinking. We have known him, all of us, a long time."
"Yes, papa."
"I wish with all my heart that we had never seen him. He is not worthy of our solicitude."
"You always liked him. I have heard you say you loved him dearly."
"I have said so, and I did love him. In a certain way I love him still."
"So do I, papa."
"But I know him to be unworthy. Even if he had come here to offer you his hand I doubt whether I could have permitted an engagement. Do you know that within the last two months he has twice offered to marry another young woman, and I doubt whether he is not at this moment engaged to her?"
"Another?" said poor Clarissa.
"Yes, and that without a pretence of affection on his part, simply because he wanted to get money from her father."
"Are you sure, papa?" asked Clarissa, who was not prepared to believe, and did not believe this enormity on the part of the man she loved.
"I am quite sure. The father came to me to complain of him, and I had the confession from Ralph's own lips, the very day that he came here with his insulting offer to Mary Bonner."
"Did you tell Mary?"
"No. I knew that it was unnecessary. There was no danger as to Mary. And who do you think this girl was? The daughter of a tailor, who had made some money. It was not that he cared for her, Clary;--no more than I do! Whether he meant to marry her or not I do not know."
"I'm sure he didn't, papa," said Clarissa, getting up in bed.
"And will that make it better? All that he wanted was the tradesman's money, and to get that he was willing either to deceive the girl, or to sell himself to her. I don't know which would have been the baser mode of traffic. Is that the conduct of a gentleman, Clary?"
Poor Clarissa was in terrible trouble. She hardly believed the story, which seemed to tell her of a degree of villany greater than ever her imagination had depicted to her;--and yet, if it were true, she would be driven to look for means of excusing it. The story as told was indeed hardly just to Ralph, who in the course of his transactions with Mr. Neefit had almost taught himself to believe that he could love Polly very well; but it was not in this direction that Clarissa looked for an apology for such conduct. "They say that men do all manner of things," she said, at last.
"I can only tell you this," said Sir Thomas very gravely, "what men may do I will not say, but no gentleman can ever have acted after this fashion. He has shown himself to be a scoundrel."
"Papa, papa; don't say that!" screamed Clarissa.
"My child, I can only tell you the truth. I know it is hard to bear. I would save you if I could; but it is better that you should know."
"Will he always be bad, papa?"
"Who can say, my dear? God forbid that I should be too severe upon him. But he has been so bad now that I am bound to tell you that you should drive him from your thoughts. When he told me, all smiling, that he had come down here to ask your cousin Mary to be his wife, I was almost minded to spurn him from the door. He can have no feeling himself of true attachment, and cannot know what it means in others. He is heartless,--and unprincipled."
"Oh, papa, spare him. It is done now."
"And you will forget him, dearest?"
"I will try, papa. But I think that I shall die. I would rather die. What is the good of living when nobody is to care for anybody, and people are so bad as that?"
"My Clarissa must not say that nobody cares for her. Has any person ever been false to you but he? Is not your sister true to you?"
"Yes, papa."
"And Mary?"
"Yes, papa." He was afraid to ask her whether he also had not been true to her? Even in that moment there arose in his mind a doubt, whether all this evil might not have been avoided, had he contented himself to live beneath the same roof with his children. He said nothing of himself, but she supplied the want. "I know you love me, papa, and have always been good to me. I did not mean that. But I never cared for any one but him,--in that way."
Sir Thomas, in dealing with the character of his late ward, had been somewhat too severe. It is difficult, perhaps, to say what amount of misconduct does constitute a scoundrel, or justifies the critic in saying that this or that man is not a gentleman. There be those who affirm that he who owes a debt for goods which he cannot pay is no gentleman, and tradesmen when they cannot get their money are no doubt sometimes inclined to hold that opinion. But the opinion is changed when the money comes at last,--especially if it comes with interest. Ralph had never owed a shilling which he did not intend to pay, and had not property to cover. That borrowing of money from Mr. Neefit was doubtless bad. No one would like to know that his son had borrowed money from his tailor. But it is the borrowing of the money that is bad, rather than the special dealing with the tradesman. And as to that affair with Polly, some excuse may be made. He had meant to be honest to Neefit, and he had meant to be true to Neefit's daughter. Even Sir Thomas, high-minded as he was, would hardly have passed so severe a sentence, had not the great sufferer in the matter been his own daughter.
But the words that he spoke were doubtless salutary to poor Clarissa. She never again said to Patience that she would not try to make a change, nor did she ever again declare that if Ralph came back again she would forgive him. On the day after the scene with her father she was up again, and she made an effort to employ herself about the house. On the next Sunday she went to church, and then they all knew that she was making the necessary struggle. Ralph's name was never mentioned, nor for a time was any allusion made to the family of the Newtons. "The worst of it, I think, is over," said Patience one day to Mary.
"The worst of it is over," said Mary; "but it is not all over. It is hard to forget when one has loved."
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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42
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NOT BROKEN-HEARTED.
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Christmas had come and gone at Newton Priory, and the late Squire's son had left the place,--protesting as he did so that he left it for ever. To him also life in that particular spot of earth was impossible, unless he could live there as the lord and master of all. Everybody throughout that and neighbouring parishes treated him not only with kindness, but with the warmest affection. The gentry, the farmers, and the labourers, all men who had known him in the hunting-field, in markets, on the bench, or at church, men, women and children, joined together in forming plans by means of which he could remain at Newton. The young Squire asked him to make the house his home, at any rate for the hunting season. The parson offered half the parsonage. His friend Morris, who was a bachelor, suggested a joint home and joint stables between them. But it was all of no avail. Had it not been for the success which had so nearly crowned the late Squire's efforts during the last six months, it might have been that his friends would have prevailed with him. But he had been too near being the master to be able to live at Newton in any other capacity. The tenants had been told that they were to be his tenants. The servants had been told that they were to be his servants. During a few short weeks, he had almost been master, so absolute had been the determination of the old Squire to show to all around him that his son, in spite of the blot upon the young man's birth, was now the heir in all things, and possessed of every privilege which would attach itself to an elder son. He himself while his father lived had taken these things calmly, had shown no elation, had even striven to moderate the vehemence of his father's efforts on his behalf;--but not the less had he been conscious of the value of what was being done for him. To be the promised future owner of the acres on which he had lived, of the coverts through which he had ridden, of every tree and bank which he had known from his boyhood, had been to him a source of gratified pride not the less strong because he had concealed it. The disappointment did hit him sorely. His dreams had been of Parliament, of power in the county, of pride of place, and popularity. He now found that they were to be no more than dreams;--but with this additional sorrow, that all around him knew that they had been dreamed. No;--he could not stay at Newton even for the sake of living with friends who loved him so dearly. He said little or nothing of this to any one. Not even to Gregory Newton or to his friend Morris did he tell much of his feeling. He was not proud of his dreamings, and it seemed to himself that his punishment was just. Nor could he speak to either of them or to any man of his past ambition, or of what hopes might remain to him in reference to Mary Bonner. The young Squire had gone forth with the express purpose of wooing her, had declared his purpose of doing so, and had returned to Newton at any rate without any ready tale of triumph on his tongue. What had been his fortune the rival would not ask; and while the two remained together at the priory no further word was spoken of Mary Bonner. He, Ralph the dispossessed one, while he believed himself to be the heir, had intended to bring her home as a fitting queen to share his throne. It might be that she would consent to be his without a throne to share; but in thinking of her he could not but remember what his ambition had been, and he could hardly bring himself now to offer to her that which was comparatively so little worth the having. To suppose that she should already "be fond of him," should already long for him as he longed for her, was contrary to his nature. Hitherto when he had been in her presence, he had stood there as a man whose position in life was almost contemptible; and though it would be unjust to him to say that he had hoped to win her by his acres, still he had felt that his father's success on his behalf might justify him in that which would otherwise be unjustifiable. For the present, however, he could take no steps in that direction. He could only suggest to himself what had already been her answer, or what at some future time might be the answer she would make to his rival. He had lost a father between whom and himself there had existed ties, not only of tender love, but of perfect friendship, and for awhile he must bewail his loss. That he could not bewail his lost father without thinking of his lost property, and of the bride that had never been won, was an agony to his soul.
He had found a farm down in Norfolk, near to Swaffham, which he could take for twelve months, with the option of purchase at the expiration of that time, and thither he betook himself. There were about four hundred acres, and the place was within his means. He did not think it likely that Mary Bonner would choose to come and live upon a Norfolk farm; and yet what other work in life was there for which he was fit? Early in January he went down to Beamingham Hall, as the place was called, and there we will leave him for the present, consoling himself with oil-cake, and endeavouring to take a pride in a long row of stall-fed cattle.
At this time the two brothers were living at Newton Priory. Ralph the heir had bought some of his uncle's horses, and had commenced hunting with the hounds around him; though he had not as yet withdrawn his stud from the Moonbeam. He was not altogether at his ease, as he had before the end of February received three or four letters from Neefit, all of them dictated by Waddle, in which his conduct was painted not in the most flattering colours. Neefit's money had been repaid, but Neefit would not understand that the young heir's obligations to him had by any means been acquitted by that very ordinary process. He had risked his money when payment was very doubtful, and now he intended to have something beyond cash in return for all that he had done. "There are debts of honour which a real gentleman feels himself more bound to pay than any bills," Waddle had written. And to such dogmatic teachings as these Neefit would always add something out of his own head. "There ain't nobody who shan't know all about it, unless you're on the square again." Ralph had written one reply since he had been at Newton, in which he explained at some length that it was impossible that he should renew his addresses to a young lady who had twice rejected them, and who had assured him that she did not love him. He professed the greatest respect for Miss Neefit, a respect which had, if possible, been heightened by her behaviour in this matter,--but it must now be understood that the whole affair was at an end. Neefit would not understand this, but Neefit's further letters, which had not been unfrequent, were left unanswered. Ralph had now told the whole story to his brother, and had written his one reply from Newton in conformity with his brother's advice. After that they both thought that no further rejoinder could be of any service.
The parsonage was for the time deserted, Gregory having for the present consented to share his brother's house. In spite of that little thorn in the flesh which Neefit was, Ralph was able to enjoy his life very thoroughly. He went on with all the improvements about the place which the Squire had commenced, and was active in making acquaintance with every one who lived upon his land. He was not without good instincts, and understood thoroughly that respectability had many more attractions than a character for evil living. He was, too, easily amenable to influence from those around him; and under Gregory's auspices, was constant at his parish church. He told himself at once that he had many duties to perform, and he attempted to perform them. He did not ask Lieutenant Cox or Captain Fooks to the Priory, and quite prepared himself for the character of Henry V. in miniature, as he walked about his park, and rode about his farms, and talked with the wealthier farmers on hunting mornings. He had a full conception of his own dignity, and some not altogether inaccurate idea of the manner in which it would become him to sustain it. He was, perhaps, a little too self-conscious, and over-inclined to suppose that people were regarding his conduct because he was Newton of Newton;--Newton of Newton with no blot on his shield, by right of his birth, and subject to no man's reproach.
He had failed grievously in one matter on which he had set his heart; but as to that he was, as the reader knows, resolved to try again. He had declared his passion to the other Ralph, but his rival had not made the confidence mutual. But hitherto he had said nothing on the subject to his brother. He had put it by, as it were, out of his mind for awhile, resolving that it should not trouble him immediately, in the middle of his new joys. It was a thing that would keep,--a thing, at any rate, that need not overshadow him night and morning. When Neefit continued to disturb him with threats of publicity in regard to Polly's wrongs, he did tell himself that in no way could he so effectually quiet Mr. Neefit as by marrying somebody else, and that he would, at some very early date, have recourse to this measure; but, in the meantime, he would enjoy himself without letting his unrequited passion lie too heavily as a burden on his heart. So he eat and drank, and rode and prayed, and sat with his brother magistrates on the bench, and never ceased to think of his good fortune, in that he had escaped from the troubles of his youth, unscathed and undegraded.
Then there came a further letter from Mr. Neefit, from which there arose some increase of confidence among the brothers. There was nothing special in this letter. These letters, indeed, were very like to each other, and, as had now come to be observed, were always received on a Tuesday morning. It was manifest to them that Neefit spent the leisure hours of his Sundays in meditating upon the hardness of his position; and that, as every Monday morning came, he caused a new letter to be written. On this particular Tuesday, Ralph had left home before the post had come, and did not get the breeches-maker's epistle till his return from hunting. He chucked it across the table to Gregory when he came down to dinner, and the parson read it. There was no new attack in it; and as the servant was in the room, nothing was then said about it. But after dinner the subject was discussed.
"I wish I knew how to stop the fellow's mouth," said the elder brother.
"I think I should get Carey to see him," suggested Gregory. "He would understand a lawyer when he was told that nothing could come of it but trouble to himself and his daughter."
"She has no hand in it, you know."
"But it must injure her."
"One would think so. But she is a girl whom nothing can injure. You can't imagine how good and how great she is;--great in her way, that is. She is as steady as a rock; and nobody who knows her will ever imagine her to be a party to her father's folly. She may pick and choose a husband any day she pleases. And the men about her won't mind this kind of thing as we should. No doubt all their friends joke him about it, but no one will think of blaming Polly."
"It can't do her any good," said Gregory.
"It cannot do her any harm. She has a strength of her own that even her father can't lessen."
"All the same, I wish there were an end of it."
"So do I, for my own sake," said Ralph. As he spoke he filled his glass, and passed the bottle, and then was silent for a few moments. "Neefit did help me," he continued, "and I don't want to speak against him; but he is the most pig-headed old fool that ever existed. Nothing will stop him but Polly's marriage, or mine."
"I suppose you will marry soon now. You ought to be married," said Gregory, in a melancholy tone, in which was told something of the disappointment of his own passion.
"Well;--yes. I believe I might as well tell you a little secret, Greg."
"I suppose I can guess it," said Gregory, with still a deeper sound of woe.
"I don't think you can. It is quite possible you may, however. You know Mary Bonner;--don't you?"
The cloud upon the parson's brow was at once lightened. "No," said he. "I have heard of her, of course."
"You have never seen Mary Bonner?"
"I have not been up in town since she came. What should take me up? And if I were there, I doubt whether I should go out to Fulham. What is the use of going?" But still, though he spoke thus, there was something less of melancholy in his voice than when he had first spoken. Ralph did not immediately go on with his story, and his brother now asked a question. "But what of Mary Bonner? Is she to be the future mistress of the Priory?"
"God only knows."
"But you mean to ask her?"
"I have asked her."
"And you are engaged?"
"By no means. I wish I were. You haven't seen her, but I suppose you have heard of her?"
"Ralph spoke of her,--and told me that she was very lovely."
"Upon my word, I don't think that even in a picture I ever saw anything approaching to her beauty. You've seen that thing at Dresden. She is more like that than anything I know. She seems almost too grand for a fellow to speak to, and yet she looks as if she didn't know it. I don't think she does know it." Gregory said not a word, but looked at his brother, listening. "But, by George there's a dignity about her, a sort of self-possession, a kind of noli me tangere, you understand, which makes a man almost afraid to come near her. She hasn't sixpence in the world."
"That needn't signify to you now."
"Not in the least. I only just mention it to explain. And her father was nobody in particular,--some old general who used to wear a cocked hat and keep the niggers down out in one of the colonies. She herself talked of coming home here to be a governess;--by Jove! yes, a governess. Well, to look at her, you'd think she was born a countess in her own right."
"Is she so proud?"
"No;--it's not that. I don't know what it is. It's the way her head is put on. Upon my word, to see her turn her neck is the grandest thing in the world. I never saw anything like it. I don't know that she's proud by nature,--though she has got a dash of that too. Don't you know there are some horses show their breeding at a glance? I don't suppose they feel it themselves; but there it is on them, like the Hall-mark on silver. I don't know whether you can understand a man being proud of his wife."
"Indeed I can."
"I don't mean of her personal qualities, but of the outside get up. Some men are proud of their wives' clothes, or their jewels, or their false hair. With Mary nothing of that sort could have any effect; but to see her step, or move her head, or lift her arm, is enough to make a man feel,--feel,--feel that she beats every other woman in the world by chalks."
"And she is to be mistress here?"
"Indeed she should,--to-morrow, if she'd come."
"You did ask her?"
"Yes,--I asked her."
"And what did she say?"
"Nothing that I cared to hear. She had just been told all this accursed story about Polly Neefit. I'll never forgive Sir Thomas,--never." The reader will be pleased to remember that Sir Thomas did not mention Miss Neefit's name, or any of the circumstances of the Neefit contract, to his niece.
"He could hardly have wished to set her against you."
"I don't know; but he must have told her. She threw it in my teeth that I ought to marry Polly."
"Then she did not accept you?"
"By George! no;--anything but that. She is one of those women who, as I fancy, never take a man at the first offer. It isn't that they mean to shilly and shally and make a fuss, but there's a sort of majesty about them which instinctively declines to yield itself. Unconsciously they feel something like offence at the suggestion that a man should think enough of himself to ask for such a possession. They come to it, after a time."
"And she will come to it, after a time?"
"I didn't mean to say that. I don't intend, however, to give it up." Ralph paused in his story, considering whether he would tell his brother what Mary had confessed to him as to her affection for some one else, but he resolved, at last, that he would say nothing of that. He had himself put less of confidence in that assertion than he did in her rebuke with reference to the other young woman to whom she chose to consider that he owed himself. It was his nature to think rather of what absolutely concerned himself, than of what related simply to her. "I shan't give her up. That's all I can say," he continued. "I'm not the sort of fellow to give things up readily." It did occur to Gregory at that moment that his brother had not shown much self-confidence on that question of giving up the property. "I'm pretty constant when I've set my mind on a thing. I'm not going to let any woman break my heart for me, but I shall stick to it."
He was not going to let any woman break his heart for him! Gregory, as he heard this, knew that his brother regarded him as a man whose heart was broken, and he could not help asking himself whether or not it was good for a man that he should be able to suffer as he suffered, because a woman was fair and yet not fair for him. That his own heart was broken,--broken after the fashion of which his brother was speaking,--he was driven to confess to himself. It was not that he should die, or that his existence would be one long continued hour of misery to him. He could eat and drink, and do his duty and enjoy his life. And yet his heart was broken. He could not piece it so that it should be fit for any other woman. He could not teach himself not to long for that one woman who would not love him. The romance of his life had formed itself there, and there it must remain. In all his solitary walks it was of her that he still thought. Of all the bright castles in the air which he still continued to build, she was ever the mistress. And yet he knew that she would never make him happy. He had absolutely resolved that he would not torment her by another request. But he gave himself no praise for his constancy, looking on himself as being somewhat weak in that he could not overcome his longing. When Ralph declared that he would not break his heart, but that, nevertheless, he would stick to the girl, Gregory envied him, not doubting of his success, and believing that it was to men of this calibre that success in love is generally given. "I hope with all my heart that you may win her," he said.
"I must run my chance like another. There's no 'Veni, vidi, vici,' about it, I can tell you; nor is it likely that there should be with such a girl as Mary Bonner. Fill your glass, old fellow. We needn't sit mumchance because we're thinking of our loves."
"I had thought,--" began Gregory very slowly.
"What did you think?"
"I had thought once that you were thinking of--Clarissa."
"What put that into your head?"
"If you had I should never have said a word, nor fancied any wrong. Of course she'll marry some one. And I don't know why I should ever wish that it should not be you."
"But what made you think of it?"
"Well; I did. It was just a word that Patience said in one of her letters."
"What sort of word?" asked Ralph, with much interest.
"It was nothing, you know. I just misunderstood her. When one is always thinking of a thing everything turns itself that way. I got it into my head that she meant to hint to me that as you and Clary were fond of each other, I ought to forget it all. I made up my mind that I would;--but it is so much easier to make up one's mind than to do it." There came a tear in each eye as he spoke, and he turned his face towards the fire that his brother might not see them. And there they remained hot and oppressive, because he would not raise his hand to rub them away.
"I wonder what it was she said," asked Ralph.
"Oh, nothing. Don't you know how a fellow has fancies?"
"There wasn't anything in it," said Ralph.
"Oh;--of course not."
"Patience might have imagined it," said Ralph. "That's just like such a sister as Patience."
"She's the best woman that ever lived," said Gregory.
"As good as gold," said Ralph. "I don't think, however, I shall very soon forgive Sir Thomas."
"I don't mind saying now that I am glad it is so," said Gregory; "though as regards Clary that seems to be cruel. But I don't think I could have come much here had she become your wife."
"Nothing shall ever separate us, Greg."
"I hope not;--but I don't know whether I could have done it. I almost think that I oughtn't to live where I should see her; and I did fear it at one time."
"She'll come to the parsonage yet, old fellow, if you'll stick to her," said Ralph.
"Never," said Gregory. Then that conversation was over.
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{
"id": "25579"
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43
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ONCE MORE.
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At the end of February Ralph declared his purpose of returning to the Moonbeam, for the rest of the hunting season. "I'm not going to be such an ass," he said to his brother, "as to keep two sets of horses going. I bought my uncle's because it seemed to suit just at the time; and there are the others at Horsball's, because I've not had time to settle down yet. I'll go over for March, and take a couple with me; and, at the end of it, I'll get rid of those I don't like. Then that'll be the end of the Moonbeam, as far as I am concerned." So he prepared to start, and on the evening before he went his brother declared that he would go as far as London with him. "That's all right," said Ralph, "but what's taking you up now?" The parson said that he wanted to get a few things, and to have his hair cut. He shouldn't stay above one night. Ralph asked no more questions, and the two brothers went up to London together.
We fear that Patience Underwood may not have been in all respects a discreet preserver of her sister's secrets. But then there is nothing more difficult of attainment than discretion in the preservation of such mysteries. To keep a friend's secret well the keeper of it should be firmly resolved to act upon it in no way,--not even for the advantage of the owner of it. If it be confided to you as a secret that your friend is about to make his maiden speech in the House, you should not even invite your acquaintances to be in their places,--not if secrecy be the first object. In all things the knowledge should be to you as though you had it not. Great love is hardly capable of such secrecy as this. In the fulness of her love Patience had allowed her father to learn the secret of poor Clary's heart; and in the fulness of her love she had endeavoured to make things smooth at Newton. She had not told the young clergyman that Clarissa had given to his brother that which she could not give to him; but, meaning to do a morsel of service to both of them, if that might be possible, she had said a word or two, with what effect the reader will have seen from the conversation given in the last chapter.
"She'll come to the parsonage yet," Ralph had said; and Gregory in one word had implied his assured conviction that any such coming was a thing not to be hoped for,--an event not even to be regarded as possible. Nevertheless, he made up his mind that he would go up to London,--to have his hair cut. In so making up his mind he did not for a moment believe that it could be of any use to him. He was not quite sure that when in London he would go to Popham Villa. He was quite sure that if he did go to Popham Villa he would make no further offer to Clarissa. He knew that his journey was foolish, simply the result of an uneasy, restless spirit,--that it would be better for him to remain in his parish and move about among the old women and bed-ridden men; but still he went. He would dine at his club, he said, and perhaps he might go down to Fulham on the following morning. And so the brothers parted. Ralph, as a man of property, with many weighty matters on hand, had, of course, much to do. He desired to inspect some agricultural implements, and a new carriage,--he had ever so many things to say to Carey, the lawyer, and wanted to order new harnesses for the horses. So he went to his club, and played whist all the afternoon.
Gregory, as soon as he had secured a bed at a quiet inn, walked off to Southampton Buildings. From the direct manner in which this was done, it might have been argued that he had come up to London with the purpose of seeing Sir Thomas; but it was not so. He turned his steps towards the place where Clary's father was generally to be found, because he knew not what else to do. As he went he told himself that he might as well leave it alone;--but still he went. Stemm at once told him, with a candour that was almost marvellous, that Sir Thomas was out of town. The hearing of the petition was going on at Percycross, and Sir Thomas was there, as a matter of course. Stemm seemed to think it rather odd that an educated man, such as was the Rev. Gregory Newton, should have been unaware that the petition against the late election at Percycross was being carried on at this moment. "We've got Serjeant Burnaby, and little Mr. Joram down, to make a fight of it," said Mr. Stemm; "but, as far as I can learn, they might just as well have remained up in town. It's only sending good money after bad." The young parson hardly expressed that interest in the matter which Stemm had expected, but turned away, thinking whether he had not better have his hair cut at once, and then go home.
But he did go to Popham Villa on the same afternoon, and,--such was his fortune,--he found Clarissa alone. Since her father had seen her in bed, and spoken to her of what he had called the folly of her love, she had not again given herself up to the life of a sick-room. She dressed herself and came down to breakfast of a morning, and then would sit with a needle in her hand till she took her book, and then with a book till she took her needle. She tried to work, and tried to read, and perhaps she did accomplish a little of each. And then, when Patience would tell her that exercise was necessary, she would put on her hat and creep out among the paths. She did make some kind of effort to get over the evil that had come upon her; but still no one could watch her and not know that she was a wounded deer. "Miss Clarissa is at home," said the servant, who well knew that the young clergyman was one of the rejected suitors. There had been hardly a secret in the house in reference to Gregory Newton's love. The two other young ladies, the girl said, had gone to London, but would be home to dinner. Then, with a beating heart, Gregory was ushered into the drawing-room. Clarissa was sitting near the window, with a novel in her lap, having placed herself there with the view of getting what was left of the light of the early spring evening; but she had not read a word for the last quarter of an hour. She was thinking of that word scoundrel, with which her father had spoken of the man she loved. Could it be that he was in truth so bad as that? And, if it were true, would she not take him, scoundrel as he was, if he would come to her? He might be a--scoundrel in that one thing, on that one occasion, and yet be good to her. He might repent his scoundrelism, and she certainly would forgive it. Of one thing she was quite sure;--he had not looked like a scoundrel when he had given her that assurance on the lawn! And so she thought of young men in general. It was very easy to call a young man a scoundrel, and yet to forgive him all his iniquities when it suited to do so. Young men might get in debt, and gamble, and make love wherever they pleased, and all at once,--and yet be forgiven. All these things were very bad. It might be just to call a man a scoundrel because he could not pay his debts, or because he made bets about horses. Young men did a great many things which would be horrid indeed were a girl to do them. Then one papa would call such a man a scoundrel, because he was not wanted to come to the house; while another papa would make him welcome, and give him the best of everything. Ralph Newton might be a scoundrel; but if so,--as Clarissa thought,--there were a great many good-looking scoundrels about in the world, as to whom their scoundrelism did very little to injure them in the esteem of all their friends. It was thus that Clarissa was thinking over her own affairs when Gregory Newton was shown into the room.
The greeting on both sides was at first formal and almost cold. Clary had given a little start of surprise, and had then subsided into a most demure mode of answering questions. Yes; papa was at Percycross. She did not know when he was expected back. Mary and Patience were in London. Yes;--she was at home all alone. No; she had not seen Ralph since his uncle's death. The question which elicited this answer had been asked without any design, and Clary endeavoured to make her reply without emotion. If she displayed any, Gregory, who had his own affairs upon his mind, did not see it. No;--they had not seen the other Mr. Newton as he passed through town. They had all understood that he had been very much disturbed by his father's horrible accident and death. Then Gregory paused in his questions, and Clarissa expressed a hope that there might be no more hunting in the world.
It was very hard work, this conversation, and Gregory was beginning to think that he had done no good by coming, when on a sudden he struck a chord from whence came a sound of music. "Ralph and I have been living together at the Priory," he said.
"Oh;--indeed; yes;--I think I heard Patience say that you were at the Priory."
"I suppose I shall not be telling any secret to you in talking about him and your cousin Mary?"
Clarissa felt that she was blushing up to her brow, but she made a great effort to compose herself. "Oh, no," she said, "we all know of it."
"I hope he may be successful," said Gregory.
"I do not know. I cannot tell."
"I never knew a man more thoroughly in love than he is."
"I don't believe it," said Clarissa.
"Not believe it! Indeed you may, Clary. I have never seen her, but from what he says of her I suppose her to be most beautiful."
"She is,--very beautiful." This was said with a strong emphasis.
"And why should you not believe it?"
"It will not be of the slightest use, Mr. Newton; and you may tell him so. Though I suppose it is impossible to make a man believe that."
"Are we both so unfortunate?" he asked.
The poor girl with her wounded love, and every feeling sore within her, had not intended to say anything that should be cruel or injurious to Gregory himself, and it was not till the words were out of her mouth that she herself perceived their effect. "Oh, Mr. Newton, I was only thinking of him," she said, innocently. "I only meant that Ralph is one of those who always think they are to have everything they want."
"I am not one of those, Clarissa. And yet I am one who seem never to be tired of asking for that which is not to be given to me. I said to myself when last I went from here that I would never ask again;--that I would never trouble you any more." She was sitting with the book in her hand, looking out into the gloom, and now she made no attempt to answer him. "And yet you see here I am," he continued. She was still silent, and her head was still turned away from him; but he could see that tears were streaming down her cheeks. "I have not the power not to come to you while yet there is a chance," he said. "I can live and work without you, but I can have no life of my own. When I first saw you I made a picture to myself of what my life might be, and I cannot get that moved from before my eyes. I am sorry, however, that my coming should make you weep."
"Oh, Mr. Newton, I am so wretched!" she said, turning round sharply upon him. For a moment she had thought that she would tell him everything, and then she checked herself, and remembered how ill-placed such a confidence would be.
"What should make you wretched, dearest?"
"I do not know. I cannot tell. I sometimes think the world is bad altogether, and that I had better die. People are so cruel and so hard, and things are so wrong. But you may tell your brother that he need not think of my cousin, Mary. Nothing ever would move her. H--sh--. Here they are. Do not say that I was crying."
He was introduced to the beauty, and as the lights came, Clarissa escaped. Yes;--she was indeed most lovely; but as he looked on her, Gregory felt that he agreed with Clarissa that nothing on earth would move her. He remained there for another half-hour; but Clarissa did not return, and then he went back to London.
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{
"id": "25579"
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44
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THE PETITION.
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The time for hearing the petition at Percycross had at length come, and the judge had gone down to that ancient borough. The day fixed was Monday, the 27th, and Parliament had then been sitting for three weeks. Mr. Griffenbottom had been as constant in his place as though there had been no sword hanging over his head; but Sir Thomas had not as yet even taken the oaths. He had made up his mind that he would not even enter the house while this bar against him as a legislator existed, and he had not as yet even been seen in the lobby. His daughters, his colleague, Mr. Trigger, and Stemm had all expostulated with him on the subject, assuring him that he should treat the petition with the greatest contempt, at any rate till it should have proved itself by its success to be a matter not contemptible; but to these counsellors he gave no ear, and when he went down to give his evidence before the judge at Percycross his seat had as yet availed him nothing.
Mr. Griffenbottom had declared that he would not pay a shilling towards the expense of the petition, maintaining that his own seat was safe, and that any peril incurred had been so incurred simply on behalf of Sir Thomas. Nothing, according to Mr. Griffenbottom's views, could be more unjust than to expect that he should take any part in the matter. Trigger, too, had endeavoured to impress this upon Sir Thomas more than once or twice. But this had been all in vain; and Sir Thomas, acting under the advice of his own attorney, had at last compelled Mr. Griffenbottom to take his share in the matter. Mr. Griffenbottom did not scruple to say that he was very ill-used, and to hint that any unfair practices which might possibly have prevailed during the last election at Percycross, had all been adopted on behalf of Sir Thomas, and in conformity with Sir Thomas's views. It will, therefore, be understood that the two members did not go down to the borough in the best humour with each other. Mr. Trigger still nominally acted for both; but it had been almost avowed that Sir Thomas was to be treated as a Jonah, if by such treatment any salvation might be had for the ship of which Griffenbottom was to be regarded as the captain.
Mr. Westmacott was also in Percycross,--and so was Moggs, reinstated in his old room at the Cordwainers' Arms. Moggs had not been summoned, nor was his presence there required for any purpose immediately connected with the inquiry to be made; but Purity and the Rights of Labour may always be advocated; and when better than at a moment in which the impurity of a borough is about to be made the subject of public condemnation? And Moggs, moreover, had now rankling in his bosom a second cause of enmity against the Tories of the borough. Since the election he had learned that his rival, Ralph Newton, was in some way connected with the sitting member, Sir Thomas, and he laid upon Sir Thomas's back the weight of his full displeasure in reference to the proposed marriage with Polly Neefit. He had heard that Polly had raised some difficulty,--had, indeed, rejected her aristocratic suitor, and was therefore not without hope; but he had been positively assured by Neefit himself that the match would be made, and was consequently armed with a double purpose in his desire to drive Sir Thomas ignominiously out of Percycross.
Sir Thomas had had more than one interview with Serjeant Burnaby and little Mr. Joram, than whom two more astute barristers in such matters were not to be found at that time practising,--though perhaps at that time the astuteness of the Serjeant was on the wane; while that of Jacky Joram, as he was familiarly called, was daily rising in repute. Sir Thomas himself, barrister and senior to these two gentlemen, had endeavoured to hold his own with them, and to impress on them the conviction that he had nothing to conceal; that he had personally endeavoured, as best he knew how, to avoid corruption, and that if there had been corruption on the part of his own agents, he was himself ready to be a party in proclaiming it. But he found himself to be absolutely ignored and put out of court by his own counsel. They were gentlemen with whom professionally he had had no intercourse, as he had practised at the Chancery, and they at the Common Law Bar. But he had been Solicitor-General, and was a bencher of his Inn, whereas Serjeant Burnaby was only a Serjeant, and Jacky Joram still wore a stuff gown. Nevertheless, he found himself to be "nowhere" in discussing with them the circumstances of the election. Even Joram, whom he seemed to remember having seen only the other day as an ugly shame-faced boy about the courts, treated him, not exactly with indignity, but with patronising good-nature, listening with an air of half-attention to what he said, and then not taking the slightest heed of a word of it. Who does not know this transparent pretence of courtesies, which of all discourtesies is the most offensive? "Ah, just so, Sir Thomas; just so. And now, Mr. Trigger, I suppose Mr. Puffer's account hasn't yet been settled." Any word from Mr. Trigger was of infinitely greater value with Mr. Joram than all Sir Thomas's protestations. Sir Thomas could not keep himself from remembering that Jacky Joram's father was a cheesemonger at Gloucester, who had married the widow of a Jew with a little money. Twenty times Sir Thomas made up his mind to retire from the business altogether; but he always found himself unable to do so. When he mentioned the idea, Griffenbottom flung up his hands in dismay at such treachery on the part of an ally,--such treachery and such cowardice! What! --had not he, Sir Thomas, forced him, Griffenbottom, into all this ruinous expenditure? And now to talk of throwing up the sponge! It was in vain that Sir Thomas explained that he had forced nobody into it. It was manifestly the case that he had refused to go on with it by himself, and on this Mr. Griffenbottom and Mr. Trigger insisted so often and with so much strength that Sir Thomas felt himself compelled to stand to his guns, bad as he believed those guns to be.
If Sir Thomas meant to retreat, why had he not retreated when a proposition to that effect was made to him at his own chambers? Of all the weak, vacillating, ill-conditioned men that Mr. Griffenbottom had ever been concerned with, Sir Thomas Underwood was the weakest, most vacillating, and most ill-conditioned. To have to sit in the same boat with such a man was the greatest misfortune that had ever befallen Mr. Griffenbottom in public life. Mr. Griffenbottom did not exactly say these hard things in the hearing of Sir Thomas, but he so said them that they became the common property of the Jorams, Triggers, Spiveycombs, and Spicers; and were repeated piecemeal to the unhappy second member.
He had secured for himself a separate sitting-room at the "Percy Standard," thinking that thus he would have the advantage of being alone; but every one connected with his party came in and out of his room as though it had been specially selected as a chamber for public purposes. Even Griffenbottom came into it to have interviews there with Trigger, although at the moment Griffenbottom and Sir Thomas were not considered to be on speaking terms. Griffenbottom in these matters seemed to have the hide of a rhinoceros. He had chosen to quarrel with Sir Thomas. He had declared that he would not speak to a colleague whose Parliamentary ideas and habits were so repulsive to him. He had said quite aloud, that Trigger had never made a greater mistake in his life than in bringing Sir Thomas to the borough, and that, let the petition go as it would, Sir Thomas should never be returned for the borough again. He had spoken all these things, almost in the hearing of Sir Thomas. And yet he would come to Sir Thomas's private room, and sit there half the morning with a cigar in his mouth! Mr. Pile would come in, and make most unpleasant speeches. Mr. Spicer called continually, with his own ideas about the borough. The thing could be still saved if enough money were spent. If Mr. Givantake were properly handled, and Mr. O'Blather duly provided for, the two witnesses upon whom the thing really hung would not be found in Percycross when called upon to-morrow. That was Mr. Spicer's idea; and he was very eager to communicate it to Serjeant Burnaby. Trigger, in his energy, told Mr. Spicer to go and be ----. All this occurred in Sir Thomas's private room. And then Mr. Pabsby was there constantly, till he at last was turned out by Trigger. In his agony, Sir Thomas asked for another sitting-room; but was informed that the house was full. The room intended for the two members was occupied by Griffenbottom; but nobody ever suggested that the party might meet there when Sir Thomas's vain request was made for further accommodation. Griffenbottom went on with his cigar, and Mr. Pile sat picking his teeth before the fire, and making unpleasant little speeches.
The judge, who had hurried into Percycross from another town, and who opened the commission on the Monday evening, did not really begin his work till the Tuesday morning. Jacky Joram had declared that the inquiry would last three days, he having pledged himself to be at another town early on the following Friday. Serjeant Burnaby, whose future services were not in such immediate demand, was of opinion that they would not get out of Percycross till Saturday night. Judge Crumbie, who was to try the case, and who had been trying similar cases ever since Christmas, was not due at his next town till the Monday; but it was understood by everybody that he intended if possible to spend his Saturday and Sunday in the bosom of his family. Trigger, however, had magnificent ideas. "I believe we shall carry them into the middle of next week," he said, "if they choose to go on with it." Trigger thoroughly enjoyed the petition; and even Griffenbottom, who was no longer troubled by gout, and was not now obliged to walk about the borough, did not seem to dislike it. But to poor Sir Thomas it was indeed a purgatory.
The sitting members were of course accused, both as regarded themselves and their agents, of every crime known in electioneering tactics. Votes had been personated. Votes had been bought. Votes had been obtained by undue influence on the part of masters and landlords, and there had been treating of the most pernicious and corrupt description. As to the personating of votes, that according to Mr. Trigger, had been merely introduced as a pleasant commencing fiction common in Parliamentary petitions. There had been nothing of the kind, and nobody supposed that there had, and it did not signify. Of undue influence,--what purists choose to call undue influence,--there had of course been plenty. It was not likely that masters paying thousands a year in wages were going to let these men vote against themselves. But this influence was so much a matter of course that it could not be proved to the injury of the sitting members. Such at least was Mr. Trigger's opinion. Mr. Spicer might have been a little imprudent with his men; but no case could be brought up in which a man had been injured. Undue influence at Percycross was--"gammon." So said Mr. Trigger, and Jacky Joram agreed with Mr. Trigger. Serjeant Burnaby rubbed his hands, and would give no opinion till he had heard the evidence. That votes had been bought during the day of the election there was no doubt on earth. On this matter great secrecy prevailed, and Sir Thomas could not get a word spoken in his own hearing. It was admitted, however, that votes had been bought. There were a dozen men, perhaps more than a dozen, who would prove that one Glump had paid them ten shillings a piece between one and two on the day of the election. There was a general belief that perhaps over a hundred had been bought at that rate. But Trigger was ready to swear that he did not know whence Glump had got the money, and Glump himself was,--nobody knew where Glump was, but strange whispers respecting Glump were floating about the borough. Trigger was disposed to believe that they, on their side, could prove that Glump had really been employed by Westmacott's people to vitiate the election. He was quite sure that nothing could connect Glump with him as an agent on behalf of Griffenbottom and Underwood. So Mr. Trigger asserted with the greatest confidence; but what was in the bottom of Mr. Trigger's mind on this subject no one pretended to know. As for Glump himself he was a man who would certainly take payment from anybody for any dirty work. It was the general impression through the borough that Glump had on this occasion been hired by Trigger, and Trigger certainly enjoyed the prestige which was thus conferred upon him.
As to the treating,--there could be no doubt about that. There had been treating. The idea of conducting an election at Percycross without beer seemed to be absurd to every male and female Percycrossian. Of course the publicans would open their taps and then send in their bills for beer to the electioneering agents. There was a prevailing feeling that any interference with so ancient a practice was not only un-English, but unjust also;--that it was beyond the power of Parliament to enforce any law so abominable and unnatural. Trigger was of opinion that though there had been a great deal of beer, no attempt would be made to prove that votes had been influenced by treating. There had been beer on both sides, and Trigger hoped sincerely that there might always be beer on both sides as long as Percycross was a borough.
Sir Thomas found that his chance of success was now spoken of in a tone very different from that which had been used when the matter was discussed in his own chamber. He had been then told that it was hardly possible that he should keep his seat;--and he had in fact been asked to resign it. Though sick enough of Percycross, this he would not do in the manner then proposed to him. Now he was encouraged in the fight;--but the encouragement was of a nature which gave him no hope, which robbed him even of the wish to have a hope. It was all dirt from beginning to end. Whatever might be the verdict of the judge,--from the judge the verdict was now to come,--he should still believe that nothing short of absolute disfranchisement would meet the merits of the case.
The accusation with regard to the personation of votes was abandoned,--Serjeant Burnaby expressing the most extreme disgust that any such charge should have been made without foundation,--although he himself at the borough which he had last left had brought forward the same charge on behalf of his then clients, and had abandoned it in the same way. Then the whole of the remaining hours of the Tuesday and half the Wednesday were passed in showing that Messrs. Spicer, Spiveycomb, and Roodylands had forced their own men to vote blue. Mr. Spicer had dismissed one man and Mr. Spiveycomb two men; but both these gentlemen swore that the men dismissed were not worth their salt, and had been sent adrift upon the world by no means on account of their politics. True: they had all voted for Moggs; but then they had done that simply to spite their late master. On the middle of Wednesday, when the matter of intimidation had been completed,--the result still lying in the bosom of Baron Crumbie,--Mr. Trigger thought that things were looking up. That was the report which he brought to Mr. Griffenbottom, who was smoking his midday cigar in Sir Thomas's arm-chair, while Sir Thomas was endeavouring to master the first book of Lord Verulam's later treatise "De dignitate scientiarum," seated in a cane-bottomed chair in a very small bed-room up-stairs.
By consent the question of treating came next. Heaven and earth were being moved to find Glump. When the proposition was made that the treating should come before the bribery Trigger stated in court that he was himself doing his very best to find the man. There might yet be a hope, though, alas, the hope was becoming slighter every hour. His own idea was that Glump had been sent away to Holland by,--well, he did not care to name the parties by whom he believed that Glump had been expatriated. However, there might be a chance. The counsel on the other side remarked that there might, indeed, be a chance. Baron Crumbie expressed a hope that Mr. Glump might make his appearance,--for the sake of the borough, which might otherwise fare badly; and then the great beer question was discussed for two entire days.
There was no doubt about the beer. Trigger, who was examined after some half-score of publicans, said openly that thirsty Conservative souls had been allowed to slake their drought at the joint expense of the Conservative party in the borough,--as thirsty Liberal souls had been encouraged to do on the other side. When reminded that any malpractice in that direction on the part of a beaten candidate could not affect the status of the elected members, he replied that all the beer consumed in Percycross during the election had not, to the best of his belief, affected a vote. The Percycrossians were not men to vote this way or that because of beer! He would not believe it even in regard to a Liberal Percycrossian. It might be so in other boroughs, but of other boroughs he knew absolutely nothing. Who paid for the beer? Mr. Trigger at once acknowledged that it was paid for out of the general funds provided for the election. Who provided those funds? There was not a small amount of fencing on this point, during the course of which Mr. Joram snapped very sharply and very frequently at the counsel on the other side,--hoping thereby somewhat to change the issue. But at last there came out these two facts, that there was a general fund, to which all Conservatives might subscribe, and that the only known subscribers to this fund were Mr. Griffenbottom, Sir Thomas Underwood, and old Mr. Pile, who had given a £10 note,--apparently with the view of proving that there was a fund. It was agreed on all hands that treating had been substantiated; but it was remarked by some that Baron Crumbie had not been hard upon treating in other boroughs. After all, the result would depend upon what the Baron thought about Mr. Glump. It might be that he would recommend further inquiry, under a special commission, into the practices of the borough, because of the Glump iniquities, and that he should, nevertheless, leave the seats to the sitting members. That seemed to be Mr. Trigger's belief on the evening of the Thursday, as he took his brandy and water in Sir Thomas's private sitting-room.
There is nothing in the world so brisk as the ways and manners of lawyers when in any great case they come to that portion of it which they know to be the real bone of the limb and kernel of the nut. The doctor is very brisk when after a dozen moderately dyspeptic patients he comes on some unfortunate gentleman whose gastric apparatus is gone altogether. The parson is very brisk when he reaches the minatory clause in his sermon. The minister is very brisk when he asks the House for a vote, telling his hoped-for followers that this special point is absolutely essential to his government. Unless he can carry this, he and all those hanging on to him must vacate their places. The horse-dealer is very brisk when, after four or five indifferent lots, he bids his man bring out from the stable the last thorough-bred that he bought, and the very best that he ever put his eye on. But the briskness of none of these is equal to the briskness of the barrister who has just got into his hands for cross-examination him whom we may call the centre witness of a great case. He plumes himself like a bullfinch going to sing. He spreads himself like a peacock on a lawn. He perks himself like a sparrow on a paling. He crows amidst his attorneys and all the satellites of the court like a cock among his hens. He puts his hands this way and that, settling even the sunbeams as they enter, lest a moat should disturb his intellect or dull the edge of his subtlety. There is a modesty in his eye, a quiescence in his lips, a repose in his limbs, under which lie half-concealed,--not at all concealed from those who have often watched him at his work,--the glance, the tone, the spring, which are to tear that unfortunate witness into pieces, without infringing any one of those conventional rules which have been laid down for the guidance of successful well-mannered barristers.
Serjeant Burnaby, though astute, was not specially brisk by nature; but on this Friday morning Mr. Joram was very brisk indeed. There was a certain Mr. Cavity, who had acted as agent for Westmacott, and who,--if anybody on the Westmacott side had been so guilty,--had been guilty in the matter of Glump's absence. Perhaps we should not do justice to Mr. Joram's acuteness were we to imagine him as believing that Glump was absent under other influence than that used on behalf of the conservative side; but there were subsidiary points on which Mr. Cavity might be made to tell tales. Of course there had been extensive bribery for years past in Percycross on the liberal as well as on the conservative side, and Mr. Joram thought that he could make Mr. Cavity tell a tale. And then, too, he could be very brisk in that affair of Glump. He was pretty nearly sure that Mr. Glump could not be connected by evidence with either of the sitting members or with any of their agents. He would prove that Glump was neutral ground, and that as such his services could not be traced to his friend, Mr. Trigger. Mr. Joram on this occasion was very brisk indeed.
A score of men were brought up, ignorant, half-dumb, heavy-browed men, all dressed in the amphibious garb of out-o'-door town labourers,--of whom there exists a class of hybrids between the rural labourer and the artizan,--each one of whom acknowledged that after noon on the election day he received ten shillings, with instructions to vote for Griffenbottom and Underwood. And they did vote for Griffenbottom and Underwood. At all elections in Percycross they had, as they now openly acknowledged, waited till about the same hour on the day of election, and then somebody had bought their votes for somebody. On this occasion the purchase had been made by Mr. Glump. There was a small empty house up a little alley in the town, to which there was a back door opening on a vacant space in the town known as Grinder's Green. They entered this house by one door, leaving it by the other, and as they passed through, Glump gave to each man half a sovereign with instructions, entering their names in a small book;--and then they went in a body and voted for Griffenbottom and Underwood. Each of the twenty knew nearly all the other twenty, but none of them knew any other men who had been paid by Glump. Of course none of them had the slightest knowledge of Glump's present abode. It was proved that at the last election Glump had acted for the Liberals; but it was also proved that at the election before he had been active in bribing for the Conservatives. Very many things were proved,--if a thing be proved when supported by testimony on oath. Trigger proved that twenty votes alone could have been of no service, and would not certainly have been purchased in a manner so detrimental. According to Trigger's views it was as clear as daylight that Glump had not been paid by them. When asked whether he would cause Mr. Glump to be repaid that sum of ten pounds, should Mr. Glump send in any bill to that effect, he simply stated that Mr. Glump would certainly send no such bill to him. He was then asked whether it might not be possible that the money should be repaid by Messrs. Griffenbottom and Underwood through his hands, reaching Glump again by means of a further middleman. Mr. Trigger acknowledged that were such a claim made upon him by any known agent of his party, he would endeavour to pass the ten pounds through the accounts, as he thought that there should be a certain feeling of honour in these things; but he did not for a moment think that any one acting with him would have dealings with Glump. On the Saturday morning, when the case was still going on, to the great detriment of Baron Grumble's domestic happiness, Glump had not yet been caught. It seemed that the man had no wife, no relative, no friend. The woman at whose house he lodged declared that he often went and came after this fashion. The respect with which Glump's name was mentioned, as his persistency in disobeying the law and his capability for intrigue were thus proved, was so great, that it was a pity he could not have been there to enjoy it. For the hour he was a great man in Percycross,--and the greater because Baron Crumbie did not cease to threaten him with terrible penalties.
Much other bribery was alleged, but none other was distinctly brought home to the agents of the sitting members. As to bringing bribery home to Mr. Griffenbottom himself;--that appeared to be out of the question. Nobody seemed even to wish to do that. The judge, as it appeared, did not contemplate any result so grave and terrible as that. There was a band of freemen of whom it was proved that they had all been treated with most excessive liberality by the corporation of the town; and it was proved, also, that a majority of the corporation were supporters of Mr. Griffenbottom. A large number of votes had been so secured. Such, at least, was the charge made by the petitioners. But this allegation Jacky Joram laughed to scorn. The corporation, of course, used the charities and privileges of the town as they thought right; and the men voted,--as they thought right. The only cases of bribery absolutely proved were those manipulated by Glump, and nothing had been adduced clearly connecting Glump and the Griffenbottomites. Mr. Trigger was in ecstasies; but Mr. Joram somewhat repressed him by referring to these oracular words which had fallen from the Baron in respect to the corporation. "A corporation may be guilty as well as an individual," the Baron had said. Jacky Joram had been very eager in assenting to the Baron, but in asserting at the same time that the bribery must be proved. "It won't be assumed, my lord, that a corporation has bribed because it has political sympathies." "It should have none," said the Baron. "Human nature is human nature, my lord,--even in corporations," said Jacky Joram. This took place just before luncheon,--which was made a solemn meal on all sides, as the judge had declared his intention of sitting till midnight, if necessary.
Immediately after the solemn meal Mr. Griffenbottom was examined. It had been the declared purpose of the other side to turn Mr. Griffenbottom inside out. Mr. Griffenbottom and his conduct had on various former occasions been the subject of parliamentary petitions under the old form; but on such occasions the chief delinquent himself was never examined. Now Mr. Griffenbottom would be made to tell all that he knew, not only of his present, but of his past, iniquities. And yet Mr. Griffenbottom told very little; and it certainly did seem to the bystanders, that even the opposing counsel, even the judge on the bench, abstained from their prey because he was a member of Parliament. It was notorious to all the world that Griffenbottom had debased the borough; had so used its venal tendencies as to make that systematic which had before been too frequent indeed, but yet not systematized; that he had trained the rising generation of Percycross politicians to believe in political corruption;--and yet he escaped that utter turning inside out of which men had spoken.
The borough had cost him a great deal of money certainly; but as far as he knew the money had been spent legally. It had at least always been his intention before an election was commenced that nothing illegal should be done. He had no doubt always afterwards paid sums of money the use of which he did not quite understand, and as to some of which he could not but fear that it had been doubtfully applied. The final accounts as to the last election had not reached him, but he did not expect to be charged with improper expenses. There no doubt would be something for beer, but that was unavoidable. As to Mr. Glump he knew literally nothing of the man,--nor had he wanted any such man's assistance. Twenty votes indeed! Let them look at his place upon the poll. There had been a time in the day when twenty votes this way or that might be necessary to Sir Thomas. He had been told that it was so. On the day of the election his own position on the poll had been so certain to him, that he should not have cared,--that is, for himself,--had he heard that Glump was buying votes against him. He considered it to be quite out of the question that Glump should have bought votes for him,--with any purpose of serving him. And so Mr. Griffenbottom escaped from the adverse counsel and from the judge.
There was very little in the examination of Sir Thomas Underwood to interest any one. No one really suspected him of corrupt practices. In all such cases the singular part of the matter is that everybody, those who are concerned and those who are not concerned, really know the whole truth which is to be investigated; and yet, that which everybody knows cannot be substantiated. There were not five men in court who were not certain that Griffenbottom was corrupt, and that Sir Thomas was not; that the borough was rotten as a six-months-old egg; that Glump had acted under one of Trigger's aides-de-camp; that intimidation was the law of the borough; and that beer was used so that men drunk might not fear that which sober they had not the courage to encounter. All this was known to everybody; and yet, up to the last, it was thought by many in Percycross that corruption, acknowledged, transparent, egregious corruption, would prevail even in the presence of a judge. Mr. Trigger believed it to the last.
But it was not so thought by the Jacky Jorams or by the Serjeant Burnabys. They made their final speeches,--the leading lawyer on each side, but they knew well what was coming. At half-past seven, for to so late an hour had the work been continued, the judge retired to get a cup of tea, and returned at eight to give his award. It was as follows:-- As to the personation of votes, there should have been no allegation made. In regard to the charge of intimidation it appeared that the system prevailed to such an extent as to make it clear to him that Percycross was unfit to return representatives to Parliament. In the matter of treating he was not quite prepared to say that had no other charge been made he should have declared this election void, but of that also there had been sufficient to make him feel it to be his duty to recommend to the Speaker of the House of Commons that further inquiry should be made as to the practices of the borough. And as to direct bribery, though he was not prepared to say that he could connect the agents of the members with what had been done,--and certainly he could not connect either of the two members themselves,--still, quite enough had been proved to make it imperative upon him to declare the election void. This he should do in his report to the Speaker, and should also advise that a commission be held with the view of ascertaining whether the privilege of returning members of Parliament should remain with the borough. With Griffenbottom he dealt as tenderly as he did with Sir Thomas, sending them both forth to the world, unseated indeed, but as innocent, injured men.
There was a night train up to London at 10 P.M., by which on that evening Sir Thomas Underwood travelled, shaking off from his feet as he entered the carriage the dust of that most iniquitous borough.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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45
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"NEVER GIVE A THING UP."
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Mr. Neefit's conduct during this period of disappointment was not exactly what it should to have been, either in the bosom of his family or among his dependents in Conduit Street. Herr Bawwah, over a pot of beer in the public-house opposite, suggested to Mr. Waddle that "the governor might be ----," in a manner that affected Mr. Waddle greatly. It was an eloquent and energetic expression of opinion,--almost an expression of a settled purpose as coming from the German as it did come; and Waddle was bound to admit that cause had been given. "Fritz," said Waddle pathetically, "don't think about it. You can't better the wages." Herr Bawwah looked up from his pot of beer and muttered a German oath. He had been told that he was beastly, skulking, pig-headed, obstinate, drunken, with some other perhaps stronger epithets which may be omitted,--and he had been told that he was a German. In that had lain the venom. There was the word that rankled. He had another pot of beer, and though it was then only twelve o'clock on a Monday morning Herr Bawwah swore that he was going to make a day of it, and that old Neefit might cut out the stuff for himself if he pleased. As they were now at the end of March, which is not a busy time of the year in Mr. Neefit's trade, the great artist's defalcation was of less immediate importance; but, as Waddle knew, the German was given both to beer and obstinacy when aroused to wrath; and what would become of the firm should the obstinacy continue?
"Where's that pig-headed German brute?" asked Mr. Neefit, when Mr. Waddle returned to the establishment. Mr. Waddle made no reply; and when Neefit repeated the question with a free use of the epithets previously omitted by us, Waddle still was dumb, leaning over his ledger as though in that there were matters so great as to absorb his powers of hearing. "The two of you may go and be ---- together!" said Mr. Neefit. If any order requiring immediate obedience were contained in this, Mr. Waddle disobeyed that order. He still bent himself over the ledger, and was dumb. Waddle had been trusted with his master's private view in the matter of the Newton marriage, and felt that on this account he owed a debt of forbearance to the unhappy father.
The breeches-maker was in truth very unhappy. He had accused his German assistant of obstinacy, but the German could hardly have been more obstinate than his master. Mr. Neefit had set his heart upon making his daughter Mrs. Newton, and had persisted in declaring that the marriage should be made to take place. The young man had once given him a promise, and should be compelled to keep the promise so given. And in these days Mr. Neefit seemed to have lost that discretion for which his friends had once given him credit. On the occasion of his visit to the Moonbeam early in the hunting season he had spoken out very freely among the sportsmen there assembled; and from that time all reticence respecting his daughter seemed to have been abandoned. He had paid the debts of this young man, who was now lord of wide domains, when the young man hadn't "a red copper in his pocket,"--so did Mr. Neefit explain the matter to his friends,--and he didn't intend that the young man should be off his bargain. "No;--he wasn't going to put up with that;--not if he knew it." All this he declared freely to his general acquaintance. He was very eloquent on the subject in a personal interview which he had with Mr. Moggs senior, in consequence of a visit made to Hendon by Mr. Moggs junior, during which he feared that Polly had shown some tendency towards yielding to the young politician. Mr. Moggs senior might take this for granted;--that if Moggs junior made himself master of Polly, it would be of Polly pure and simple, of Polly without a shilling of dowry. "He'll have to take her in her smock." That was the phrase in which Mr. Neefit was pleased to express his resolution. To all of which Mr. Moggs senior answered never a word. It was on returning from Mr. Moggs's establishment in Bond Street to his own in Conduit Street that Mr. Neefit made himself so very unpleasant to the unfortunate German. When Ontario put on his best clothes, and took himself out to Hendon on the previous Sunday, he did not probably calculate that, as one consequence of that visit, the Herr Bawwah would pass a whole week of intoxication in the little back parlour of the public-house near St. George's Church.
It may be imagined how very unpleasant all this must have been to Miss Neefit herself. Poor Polly indeed suffered many things; but she bore them with an admirable and a persistent courage. Indeed, she possessed a courage which greatly mitigated her sufferings. Let her father be as indiscreet as he might, he could not greatly lower her, as long as she herself was prudent. It was thus that Polly argued with herself. She knew her own value, and was not afraid that she should ever lack a lover when she wanted to find a husband. Of course it was not a nice thing to be thrown at a man's head, as her father was constantly throwing her at the head of young Newton; but such a man as she would give herself to at last would understand all that. Ontario Moggs, could she ever bring herself to accept Ontario, would not be less devoted to her because of her father's ill-arranged ambition. Polly could be obstinate too, but with her obstinacy there was combined a fund of feminine strength which, as we think, quite justified the devotion of Ontario Moggs.
Amidst all these troubles Mrs. Neefit also had a bad time of it; so bad a time that she was extremely anxious that Ontario should at once carry off the prize;--Ontario, or the gasfitter, or almost anybody. Neefit was taking to drink in the midst of all this confusion, and was making himself uncommonly unpleasant in the bosom of his family. On the Sunday,--the Sunday before the Monday on which the Herr decided that his wisest course of action would be to abstain from work and make a beast of himself, in order that he might spite his master,--Mr. Neefit had dined at one o'clock, and had insisted on his gin-and-water and pipe immediately after his dinner. Now Mr. Neefit, when he took too much, did not fall into the extreme sins which disgraced his foreman. He simply became very cross till he fell asleep, very heavy while sleeping, and more cross than ever when again awake. While he was asleep on this Sunday afternoon Ontario Moggs came down to Hendon dressed in his Sunday best. Mrs. Neefit whispered a word to him before he was left alone with Polly. "You be round with her, and run your chance about the money." "Mrs. Neefit," said Ontario, laying his hand upon his heart, "all the bullion in the Bank of England don't make a feather's weight in the balance." "You never was mercenary, Mr. Ontario," said the lady. "My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere," said Ontario. The expression may have been absurd, but the feeling was there.
Polly was not at all coy of her presence,--was not so, though she had been specially ordered by her father not to have anything to say to that long-legged, ugly fool. "Handsome is as handsome does," Polly had answered. Whereupon Mr. Neefit had shown his teeth and growled;--but Polly, though she loved her father, and after a fashion respected him, was not afraid of him; and now, when her mother left her alone with Ontario, she was free enough of her conversation. "Oh, Polly," he said, after a while, "you know why I'm here."
"Yes; I know," said Polly.
"I don't think you do care for that young gentleman."
"I'm not going to break my heart about him, Mr. Moggs."
"I'd try to be the death of him, if you did."
"That would be a right down tragedy, because then you'd be hung,--and so there'd be an end of us all. I don't think I'd do that, Mr. Moggs."
"Polly, I sometimes feel as though I didn't know what to do."
"Tell me the whole story of how you went on down at Percycross. I was so anxious you should get in."
"Were you now?"
"Right down sick at heart about it;--that I was. Don't you think we should all be proud to know a member of Parliament?"
"Oh; if that's all--" "I shouldn't think anything of Mr. Newton for being in Parliament. Whether he was in Parliament or out would be all the same. Of course he's a friend, and we like him very well; but his being in Parliament would be nothing. But if you were there--!"
"I don't know what's the difference," said Moggs despondently.
"Because you're one of us."
"Yes; I am," said Moggs, rising to his legs and preparing himself for an oration on the rights of labour. "I thank my God that I am no aristocrat." Then there came upon him a feeling that this was not a time convenient for political fervour. "But, I'll tell you something, Polly," he said, interrupting himself.
"Well;--tell me something, Mr. Moggs."
"I'd sooner have a kiss from you than be Prime Minister."
"Kisses mean so much, Mr. Moggs," said Polly.
"I mean them to mean much," said Ontario Moggs. Whereupon Polly, declining further converse on that delicate subject, and certainly not intending to grant the request made on the occasion, changed the subject.
"But you will get in still;--won't you, Mr. Moggs? They tell me that those other gentlemen ain't to be members any longer, because what they did was unfair. Oughtn't that to make you member?"
"I think it ought, if the law was right;--but it doesn't."
"Doesn't it now? But you'll try again;--won't you? Never give a thing up, Mr. Moggs, if you want it really." As the words left her lips she understood their meaning,--the meaning in which he must necessarily take them,--and she blushed up to her forehead. Then she laughed as she strove to recall the encouragement she had given him. "You know what I mean, Mr. Moggs. I don't mean any silly nonsense about being in love."
"If that is silly, I am the silliest man in London."
"I think you are sometimes;--so I tell you fairly."
In the meantime Mr. Neefit had woke from his slumbers. He was in his old arm-chair in the little back room, where they had dined, while Polly with her lover was in the front parlour. Mrs. Neefit was seated opposite to Mr. Neefit, with an open Bible in her lap, which had been as potent for sleep with her as had been the gin-and-water with her husband. Neefit suddenly jumped up and growled. "Where's Polly?" he demanded.
"She's in the parlour, I suppose," said Mrs. Neefit doubtingly.
"And who is with her?"
"Nobody as hadn't ought to be," said Mrs. Neefit.
"Who's there, I say?" But without waiting for an answer, he stalked into the front room. "It's no use in life your coming here," he said, addressing himself at once to Ontario; "not the least. She ain't for you. She's for somebody else. Why can't one word be as good as a thousand?" Moggs stood silent, looking sheepish and confounded. It was not that he was afraid of the father; but that he feared to offend the daughter should he address the father roughly. "If she goes against me she'll have to walk out of the house with just what she's got on her back."
"I should be quite contented," said Ontario.
"But I shouldn't;--so you may just cut it. Anybody who wants her without my leave must take her in her smock."
"Oh, father!" screamed Polly.
"That's what I mean,--so let's have done with it. What business have you coming to another man's house when you're not welcome? When I want you I'll send for you; and till I do you have my leave to stay away."
"Good-bye, Polly," said Ontario, offering the girl his hand.
"Good-bye, Mr. Moggs," said Polly; "and mind you get into Parliament. You stick to it, and you'll do it."
When she repeated this salutary advice, it must have been that she intended to apply to the double event. Moggs at any rate took it in that light. "I shall," said he, as he opened the door and walked triumphantly out of the house.
"Father," said Polly, as soon as they were alone, "you've behaved very bad to that young man."
"You be blowed," said Mr. Neefit.
"You have, then. You'll go on till you get me that talked about that I shall be ashamed to show myself. What's the good of me trying to behave, if you keep going on like that?"
"Why didn't you take that chap when he came after you down to Margate?"
"Because I didn't choose. I don't care enough for him; and it's all no use of you going on. I wouldn't have him if he came twenty times. I've made up my mind, so I tell you."
"You're a very grand young woman."
"I'm grand enough to have a will of my own about that. I'm not going to be made to marry any man, I know."
"And you mean to take that long-legged shoemaker's apprentice."
"He's not a shoemaker's apprentice any more than I'm a breeches-maker's apprentice." Polly was now quite in earnest, and in no mood for picking her words. "He is a bootmaker by his trade; and I've never said anything about taking him."
"You've given him a promise."
"No; I've not."
"And you'd better not, unless you want to walk out of this house with nothing but the rags on your back. Ain't I doing it all for you? Ain't I been sweating my life out these thirty years to make you a lady?" This was hard upon Polly, as she was not yet one-and-twenty.
"I don't want to be a lady; no more than I am just by myself, like. If I can't be a lady without being made one, I won't be a lady at all."
"You be blowed."
"There are different kinds of ladies, father. I want to be such a one as neither you nor mother shall ever have cause to say I didn't behave myself."
"You'd talk the figures off a milestone," said Mr. Neefit, as he returned to his arm-chair, to his gin-and-water, to his growlings, and before long to his slumbers. Throughout the whole evening he was very unpleasant in the bosom of his family,--which consisted on this occasion of his wife only, as Polly took the opportunity of going out to drink tea with a young lady friend. Neefit, when he heard this, suggested that Ontario was drinking tea at the same house, and would have pursued his daughter but for mingled protestations and menaces which his wife used for preventing such a violation of parental authority. "Moggs don't know from Adam where she is; and you never knowed her do anything of that kind. And you'll go about with your mad schemes and jealousies till you about ruin the poor girl; that's what you will. I won't have it. If you go, I'll go too, and I'll shame you. No; you shan't have your hat. Of course she'll be off some day, if you make the place that wretched that she can't live in it. I know I would,--with the fust man as'd ask me." By these objurgations, by a pertinacious refusal as to his hat, and a little yielding in the matter of gin-and-water, Mr. Neefit was at length persuaded to remain at home.
On the following morning he said nothing before he left home, but as soon as he had opened his letters and spoken a few sharp things to the two men in Conduit Street, he went off to Mr. Moggs senior. Of the interview between Mr. Neefit and Mr. Moggs senior sufficient has already been told. Then it was, after his return to his own shop, that he so behaved as to drive the German artist into downright mutiny and unlimited beer. Through the whole afternoon he snarled at Waddle; but Waddle sat silent, bending over the ledger. One question Waddle did answer.
"Where's that pig-headed German gone?" asked Mr. Neefit for the tenth time.
"I believe he's cutting his throat about this time," said Mr. Waddle.
"He may wait till I come and sew it up," said the breeches-maker.
All this time Mr. Neefit was very unhappy. He knew, as well as did Mr. Waddle or Polly, that he was misbehaving himself. He was by no means deficient in ideas of duty to his wife, to his daughter, and to his dependents. Polly was the apple of his eye; his one jewel;--in his estimation the best girl that ever lived. He admired her in all her moods, even though she would sometimes oppose his wishes with invincible obstinacy. He knew in his heart that were she to marry Ontario Moggs he would forgive her on the day of her marriage. He could not keep himself from forgiving her though she were to marry a chimney-sweep. But, as he thought, a great wrong was being done him. He could not bring himself to believe that Polly would not marry the young Squire, if the young Squire would only be true to his undertaking; and then he could not endure that the young Squire should escape from him, after having been, as it were, saved from ruin by his money, without paying for the accommodation in some shape. He had some inkling of an idea that in punishing Ralph by making public the whole transaction, he would be injuring his daughter as much as he injured Ralph. But the inkling did not sufficiently establish itself in his mind to cause him to desist. Ralph Newton ought to be made to repeat his offer before all the world; even though he should only repeat it to be again refused. The whole of that evening he sat brooding over it, so that he might come to some great resolution.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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46
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MR. NEEFIT AGAIN.
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The last few days in March and the first week in April were devoted by Ralph the heir to a final visit to the Moonbeam. He had resolved to finish the hunting season at his old quarters, and then to remove his stud to Newton. The distinction with which he was welcomed by everybody at the Moonbeam must have been very gratifying to him. Though he had made no response whatever to Lieutenant Cox's proposition as to a visit to Newton, that gentleman received him as a hero. Captain Fooks also had escaped from his regiment with the sole object of spending these last days with his dear old friend. Fred Pepper too was very polite, though it was not customary with Mr. Pepper to display friendship so enthusiastic as that which warmed the bosoms of the two military gentlemen. As to Mr. Horsball, one might have thought from his manner that he hoped to engage his customer to remain at the Moonbeam for the rest of his life. But it was not so. It was in Mr. Horsball's nature to be civil to a rich hunting country gentleman; and it was the fact also that Ralph had ever been popular with the world of the Moonbeam,--even at times when the spasmodic, and at length dilatory, mode of his payment must have become matter for thought to the master of the establishment. There was no doubt about the payments now, and Ralph's popularity was increased fourfold. Mrs. Horsball got out from some secluded nook a special bottle of orange-brandy in his favour,--which Lieutenant Cox would have consumed on the day of its opening, had not Mrs. Horsball with considerable acrimony declined to supply his orders. The sister with ringlets smiled and smirked whenever the young Squire went near the bar. The sister in ringlets was given to flirtations of this kind, would listen with sweetest complacency to compliments on her beauty, and would return them with interest. But she never encouraged this sort of intimacy with gentlemen who did not pay their bills, or with those whose dealings with the house were not of a profitable nature. The man who expected that Miss Horsball would smile upon him because he ordered a glass of sherry and bitters or half-a-pint of pale ale was very much mistaken; but the softness of her smiles for those who consumed the Moonbeam champagne was unbounded. Love and commerce with her ran together, and regulated each other in a manner that was exceedingly advantageous to her brother. If I were about to open such a house as the Moonbeam the first thing I should look for would be a discreet, pleasant-visaged lady to assist me in the bar department, not much under forty, with ringlets, having no particular leaning towards matrimony, who knew how to whisper little speeches while she made a bottle of cherry-brandy serve five-and-twenty turns at the least. She should be honest, patient, graceful, capable of great labour, grasping,--with that wonderful capability of being greedy for the benefit of another which belongs to women,--willing to accept plentiful meals and a power of saving £20 a year as sufficient remuneration for all hardships, with no more susceptibility than a milestone, and as indifferent to delicacy in language as a bargee. There are such women, and very valuable women they are in that trade. Such a one was Miss Horsball, and in these days the sweetest of her smiles were bestowed upon the young Squire.
Ralph Newton certainly liked it, though he assumed an air of laughing at it all. "One would think that old Hossy thought that I am going to go on with this kind of thing," he said one morning to Mr. Pepper as the two of them were standing about near the stable doors with pipes in their mouths. Old Hossy was the affectionate nickname by which Mr. Horsball was known among the hunting men of the B. B. Mr. Pepper and Ralph had already breakfasted, and were dressed for hunting except that they had not yet put on their scarlet coats. The meet was within three miles of their head-quarters; the captain and the lieutenant were taking advantage of the occasion by prolonged slumbers; and Ralph had passed the morning in discussing hunting matters with Mr. Pepper.
"He don't think that," said Mr. Pepper, taking a very convenient little implement out of his pocket, contrived for purposes of pipe-smoking accommodation. He stopped down his tobacco, and drew the smoke, and seemed by his manner to be giving his undivided attention to his pipe. But that was Mr. Pepper's manner. He was short in speech, but always spoke with a meaning.
"Of course he doesn't really," said Ralph. "I don't suppose I shall ever see the old house again after next week. You see when a man has a place of one's own, if there be hunting there, one is bound to take it; if there isn't, one can go elsewhere and pick and choose."
"Just so," said Mr. Pepper.
"I like this kind of thing amazingly, you know."
"It has its advantages."
"Oh dear, yes. There is no trouble, you know. Everything done for you. No servants to look after,--except just the fellow who brings you your breeches and rides your second horse." Mr. Pepper never had a second horse, or a man of his own to bring him his breeches, but the allusion did not on that account vex him. "And then you can do what you like a great deal more than you can in a house of your own."
"I should say so," remarked Mr. Pepper.
"I tell you what it is, Fred," continued Ralph, becoming very confidential. "I don't mind telling you, because you are a man who understands things. There isn't such a great pull after all in having a property of your own."
"I shouldn't mind trying it,--just for a year or so," said Mr. Pepper.
"I suppose not," said Ralph, chuckling in his triumph. "And yet there isn't so much in it. What does it amount to when it's all told? You keep horses for other fellows to ride, you buy wine for other fellows to drink, you build a house for other fellows to live in. You've a deal of business to do, and if you don't mind it you go very soon to the dogs. You have to work like a slave, and everybody gets a pull at you. The chances are you never have any ready money, and become as stingy as an old file. You have to get married because of the family, and the place, and all that kind of thing. Then you have to give dinners to every old fogy, male and female, within twenty miles of you, and before you know where you are you become an old fogy yourself. That's about what it is."
"You ought to know," said Mr. Pepper.
"I've been expecting it all my life,--of course. It was what I was born to, and everybody has been telling me what a lucky fellow I am since I can remember. Now I've got it, and I don't find it comes to so very much. I shall always look back upon the dear old Moonbeam, and the B. B., and Hossy's wonderful port wine with regret. It hasn't been very swell, you know, but it's been uncommonly cosy. Don't you think so?"
"You see I wasn't born to anything better," said Mr. Pepper.
Just at this moment Cox and Fooks came out of the house. They had not as yet breakfasted, but had thought that a mouthful of air in the stable-yard might enable them to get through their toast and red herrings with an amount of appetite which had not as yet been vouchsafed to them. Second and third editions of that wonderful port had been produced on the previous evening, and the two warriors had played their parts with it manfully. Fooks was bearing up bravely as he made his way across the yard; but Cox looked as though his friends ought to see to his making that journey to Australia very soon if they intended him to make it at all. "I'm blessed if you fellows haven't been and breakfasted," said Captain Fooks.
"That's about it," said the Squire.
"You must be uncommon fond of getting up early."
"Do you know who gets the worm?" asked Mr. Pepper.
"Oh, bother that," said Cox.
"There's nothing I hate so much as being told about that nasty worm," said Captain Fooks. "I don't want a worm."
"But the early birds do," said Mr. Pepper.
Captain Fooks was rather given to be cross of mornings. "I think, you know, that when fellows say over night they'll breakfast together, it isn't just the sort of thing for one or two to have all the things brought up at any unconscionable hour they please. Eh, Cox?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Cox. "I shall just have another go of soda and brandy with a devilled biscuit. That's all I want."
"Fooks had better go to bed again, and see if he can't get out the other side," said Ralph.
"Chaff doesn't mean anything," said Captain Fooks.
"That's as you take it," said Mr. Pepper.
"I shall take it just as I please," said Captain Fooks.
Just at this moment Mr. Horsball came up to them, touching his hat cheerily in sign of the commencement of the day. "You'll ride Mr. Pepper's little 'orse, I suppose, sir?" he said, addressing himself to the young Squire.
"Certainly,--I told Larking I would."
"Exactly, Mr. Newton. And Banker might as well go out as second."
"I said Brewer. Banker was out on Friday."
"That won't be no odds, Mr. Newton. The fact is. Brewer's legs is a little puffed."
"All right," said the Squire.
"Well, old Hossy," said Lieutenant Cox, summing up all his energy in an attempt at matutinal joviality as he slapped the landlord on the back, "how are things going with you?"
Mr. Horsball knew his customers, and did not like being slapped on the back with more than ordinary vigour by such a customer as Lieutenant Cox. "Pretty well, I thank you, Mr. Cox," said he. "I didn't take too much last night, and I eat my breakfast 'earty this morning."
"There is one for you, young man," said Captain Fooks. Whereupon the Squire laughed heartily. Mr. Horsball went on nodding his head, intending to signify his opinion that he had done his work thoroughly; Mr. Pepper, standing on one foot with the other raised on a horse-block, looked on without moving a muscle of his face. The lieutenant was disgusted, but was too weak in his inner man to be capable of instant raillery;--when, on a sudden, the whole aspect of things was changed by the appearance of Mr. Neefit in the yard.
"D----tion!" exclaimed our friend Ralph. The apparition had been so sudden that the Squire was unable to restrain himself. Mr. Neefit, as the reader will perhaps remember, had been at the Moonbeam before. He had written letters which had been answered, and then letters,--many letters,--to which no reply had been given. In respect of the Neefit arrangements Ralph Newton felt himself to be peculiarly ill-used by persecutions such as these, because he had honestly done his best to make Polly his wife. No doubt he acknowledged that fortune had favoured him almost miraculously, in first saving him from so injurious a marriage by the action of the young lady, and then at once bestowing upon him his estate. But the escape was the doing of fortune and Polly Neefit combined, and had not come of any intrigue on his own part. He was in a position,--so he thought,--absolutely to repudiate Neefit, and to throw himself upon facts for his protection;--but then it was undoubtedly the case that for a year or two Mr. Neefit could make his life a burden to him. He would have bought off Neefit at a considerable price, had Neefit been purchaseable. But Neefit was not in this matter greedy for himself. He wanted to make his daughter a lady, and he thought that this was the readiest way to accomplish that object. The Squire, in his unmeasurable disgust, uttered the curse aloud; but then, remembering himself, walked up to the breeches-maker with his extended hand. He had borrowed the man's money. "What's in the wind now, Mr. Neefit?" he said.
"What's in the wind, Captain? Oh, you know. When are you coming to see us at the cottage?"
"I don't think my coming would do any good. I'm not in favour with the ladies there." Ralph was aware that all the men standing round him had heard the story, and that nothing was to be gained by an immediate attempt at concealment. It behoved him, above all things, to be upon his metal, to put a good face upon it, and to be at any rate equal to the breeches-maker in presence of mind and that kind of courage which he himself would have called "cheek."
"My money was in favour with you, Captain, when you promised as how you would be on the square with me in regard to our Polly."
"Mr. Neefit," said Ralph, speaking in a low voice, but still clearly, so that all around him could hear him, "your daughter and I can never be more to each other than we are at present. She has decided that. But I value her character and good name too highly to allow even you to injure them by such a discussion in a stableyard." And, having said this, he walked away into the house.
"My Polly's character!" said the infuriated breeches-maker, turning round to the audience, and neglecting to follow his victim in his determination to vindicate his daughter. "If my girl's character don't stand higher nor his or any one's belonging to him I'll eat it!"
"Mr. Newton meant to speak in favour of the young lady, not against her," said Mr. Pepper.
"Then why don't he come out on the square? Now, gents, I'll tell you just the whole of it. He came down to my little box, where I, and my missus, and my girl lives quiet and decent, to borrow money;--and he borrowed it. He won't say as that wasn't so."
"And he's paid you the money back again," said Mr. Pepper.
"He have;--but just you listen. I know you, Mr. Pepper, and all about you; and do you listen. He have paid it back. But when he come there borrowing money, he saw my girl; and, says he,--'I've got to sell that 'eritance of mine for just what it 'll fetch.' 'That's bad, Captain,' says I. 'It is bad,' says he. Then says he again, 'Neefit, that girl of yours there is the sweetest girl as ever I put my eyes on.' And so she is,--as sweet as a rose, and as honest as the sun, and as good as gold. I says it as oughtn't; but she is. 'It's a pity, Neefit,' says he,' about the 'eritance; ain't it?' 'Captain,' says I,--I used to call him Captain 'cause he come down quite familiar like to eat his bit of salmon and drink his glass of wine. Laws,--he was glad enough to come then, mighty grand as he is now."
"I don't think he's grand at all," said Mr. Horsball.
"Well;--do you just listen, gents. 'Captain,' says I, 'that 'eritance of yourn mustn't be sold no how. I says so. What's the figure as is wanted?' Well; then he went on to say as how Polly was the sweetest girl he ever see;--and so we came to an understanding. He was to have what money he wanted at once, and then £20,000 down when he married Polly. He did have a thousand. And, now,--see what his little game is."
"But the young lady wouldn't have anything to say to him," suggested Captain Fooks, who, even for the sake of his breakfast, could not omit to hear the last of so interesting a conversation.
"Laws, Captain Fooks, to hear the likes of that from you, who is an officer and a gentleman by Act of Parliament! When you have anything sweet to say to a young woman, does she always jump down your throat the first go off?"
"If she don't come at the second time of asking I always go elsewhere," said Captain Fooks.
"Then it's my opinion you have a deal of travelling to do," said Mr. Neefit, "and don't get much at the end of it. It's because he's come in for his 'eritance, which he never would have had only for me, that he's demeaning himself this fashion. It ain't acting the gentleman; it ain't the thing; it's off the square. Only for me and my money there wouldn't be an acre his this blessed minute;--d----d if there would! I saved it for him, by my ready money,--just that I might see my Polly put into a station as she'd make more genteel than she found it. That's what she would;--she has that manners, not to talk of her being as pretty a girl as there is from here to,--to anywheres. He made me a promise, and he shall keep it. I'll worry the heart out of him else. Pay me back my money! Who cares for the money? I can tell guineas with him now, I'll be bound. I'll put it all in the papers,--I will. There ain't a soul shan't know it. I'll put the story of it into the pockets of every pair of breeches as leaves my shop. I'll send it to every M. F. H. in the kingdom."
"You'll about destroy your trade, old fellow," said Mr. Pepper.
"I don't care for the trade, Mr. Pepper. Why have I worked like a 'orse? It's only for my girl."
"I suppose she's not breaking her heart for him?" said Captain Fooks.
"What she's a doing with her heart ain't no business of yours, Captain Fooks. I'm her father, and I know what I'm about. I'll make that young man's life a burden to him, if 'e ain't on the square with my girl. You see if I don't. Mr. 'Orsball, I want a 'orse to go a 'unting on to-day. You lets 'em. Just tell your man to get me a 'orse. I'll pay for him."
"I didn't know you ever did anything in that way," said Mr. Horsball.
"I may begin if I please, I suppose. If I can't go no other way, I'll go on a donkey, and I'll tell every one that's out. Oh, 'e don't know me yet,--don't that young gent."
Mr. Neefit did not succeed in getting any animal out of Mr. Horsball's stables, nor did he make further attempt to carry his last threat into execution on that morning. Mr. Horsball now led the way into the house, while Mr. Pepper mounted his nag. Captain Fooks and Lieutenant Cox went in to their breakfast, and the unfortunate father followed them. It was now nearly eleven o'clock, and it was found that Ralph's horses had been taken round to the other door, and that he had already started. He said very little to any one during the day, though he was somewhat comforted by information conveyed to him by Mr. Horsball in the course of the afternoon that Mr. Neefit had returned to London. "You send your lawyer to him, Squire," said Mr. Horsball. "Lawyers cost a deal of money, but they do make things straight." This suggestion had also been made to him by his brother Gregory.
On the following day Ralph went up to London, and explained all the circumstances of the case to Mr. Carey. Mr. Carey undertook to do his best to straighten this very crooked episode in his client's life.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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47
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THE WAY WHICH SHOWS THAT THEY MEAN IT.
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If this kind of thing were to go on, life wouldn't be worth having. That was the feeling of Ralph, the squire of Newton, as he returned on that Saturday from London to the Moonbeam; and so far Mr. Neefit had been successful in carrying out his threat. Neefit had sworn that he would make the young man's life a burden to him, and the burden was already becoming unbearable. Mr. Carey had promised to do something. He would, at any rate, see the infatuated breeches-maker of Conduit Street. In the meantime he had suggested one remedy of which Ralph had thought before,--"If you were married to some one else he'd give it up," Mr. Carey had suggested. That no doubt was true.
Ralph completed his sojourn at the Moonbeam, leaving that place at the end of the first week in April, took a run down to his own place, and then settled himself up to London for the season. His brother Gregory had at this time returned to the parsonage at Newton; but there was an understanding that he was to come up to London and be his brother's guest for the first fortnight in May. Ralph the heir had taken larger rooms, and had a spare chamber. When Ralph had given this invitation, he had expressed his determination of devoting his spring in town to an assiduous courtship of Mary Bonner. At the moment in which he made that assertion down at Newton, the nuisance of the Neefit affair was less intolerable to him than it had since become. He had spoken cheerily of his future prospects, declaring himself to be violently in love with Mary, though he declared at the same time that he had no idea of breaking his heart for any young woman. That last assertion was probably true.
As for living in the great house at the Priory all alone, that he had declared to be impossible. Of course he would be at home for the hunting next winter; but he doubted whether he should be there much before that time, unless a certain coming event should make it necessary for him to go down and look after things. He thought it probable that he should take a run abroad in July; perhaps go to Norway for the fishing in June. He was already making arrangements with two other men for a move in August. He might be at home for partridge shooting about the middle of September, but he shouldn't "go into residence" at Newton before that. Thus he had spoken of it in describing his plans to his brother, putting great stress on his intention to devote the spring months to the lovely Mary. Gregory had seen nothing wrong in all this. Ralph was now a rich man, and was entitled to amuse himself. Gregory would have wished that his brother would at once make himself happy among his own tenants and dependents, but that, no doubt, would come soon. Ralph did spend two nights at Newton after the scene with Neefit in the Moonbeam yard,--just that he might see his nags safe in their new quarters,--and then went up to London. He was hardly yet strong in heart, because such a trouble as that which vexed him in regard to Polly does almost make a man's life a burden. Ralph was gifted with much aptitude for throwing his troubles behind, but he hardly was yet able to rid himself of this special trouble. That horrid tradesman was telling his story to everybody. Sir Thomas Underwood knew the story; and so, he thought, did Mary Bonner. Mary Bonner, in truth, did not know it; but she had thrown in Ralph's teeth, as an accusation against him, that he owed himself and his affections to another girl; and Ralph, utterly forgetful of Clarissa and that now long-distant scene on the lawn, had believed, and still did believe, that Mary had referred to Polly Neefit. On the 10th of April he established himself at his new rooms in Spring Gardens, and was careful in seeing that there was a comfortable little bed-room for his brother Greg. His uncle had now been dead just six months, but he felt as though he had been the owner of the Newton estate for years. If Mr. Carey could only settle for him that trouble with Mr. Neefit, how happy his life would be to him. He was very much in love with Mary Bonner, but his trouble with Mr. Neefit was of almost more importance to him than his love for Mary Bonner.
In the meantime the girls were living, as usual, at Popham Villa, and Sir Thomas was living, as usual, in Southampton Buildings. He and his colleague had been unseated, but it had already been decided by the House of Commons that no new writ should be at once issued, and that there should be a commission appointed to make extended inquiry at Percycross in reference to the contemplated disfranchisement of the borough. There could be no possible connexion between this inquiry and the expediency of Sir Thomas living at home; but, after some fashion, he reconciled further delay to his conscience by the fact that the Percycross election was not even yet quite settled. No doubt it would be necessary that he should again go to Percycross during the sitting of the Commission.
The reader will remember the interview between Gregory Newton and Clarissa, in which poor Clary had declared with so much emphasis her certainty that his brother's suit to Mary must be fruitless. This she had said, with artless energy, in no degree on her own behalf. She was hopeless now in that direction, and had at last taught herself to feel that the man was unworthy. The lesson had reached her, though she herself was ignorant not only of the manner of the teaching, but of the very fact that she had been taught. She had pleaded, more than once, that men did such things, and were yet held in favour and forgiven, let their iniquities have been what they might. She had hoped to move others by the doctrine; but gradually it had ceased to be operative, even on herself. She could not tell how it was that her passion faded and died away. It can hardly be said that it died away; but it became to herself grievous and a cause of soreness, instead of a joy and a triumph. She no longer said, even to herself, that he was to be excused. He had come there, and had made a mere plaything of her,--wilfully. There was no earnestness in him, no manliness, and hardly common honesty. A conviction that it was so had crept into her poor wounded heart, in spite of those repeated assertions which she had made to Patience as to the persistency of her own affection. First dismay and then wrath had come upon her when the man who ought to be her lover came to the very house in which she was living, and there offered his hand to another girl, almost in her very presence. Had the sin been committed elsewhere, and with any rival other than her own cousin, she might have still clung to that doctrine of forgiveness, because the sinner was a man, and because it is the way of the world to forgive men. But the insult had been too close for pardon; and now her wrath was slowly changing itself to contempt. Had Mary accepted the man's offer this phase of feeling would not have occurred. Clarissa would have hated the woman, but still might have loved the man. But Mary had treated him as a creature absolutely beneath her notice, had evidently despised him, and Mary's scorn communicated itself to Clarissa. The fact that Ralph was now Newton of Newton, absolutely in harbour after so many dangers of shipwreck, assisted her in this. "I would have been true to him, though he hadn't had a penny," she said to herself: "I would never have given him up though all the world had been against him." Debts, difficulties, an inheritance squandered, idle habits, even profligacy, should not have torn him from her heart, had he possessed the one virtue of meaning what he said when he told her that he loved her. She remembered the noble triumph she had felt when she declared to Mary that that other Ralph, who was to have been Mary's lover, was welcome to the fine property. Her sole ambition had been to be loved by this man; but the man had been incapable of loving her. She herself was pretty, and soft, bright on occasions, and graceful. She knew so much of herself; and she knew, also, that Mary was far prettier than herself, and more clever. This young man to whom she had devoted herself possessed no power of love for an individual,--no capability of so joining himself to another human being as to feel, that in spite of any superiority visible to the outside world, that one should be esteemed by him superior to all others,--because of his love. The young man had liked prettiness and softness and grace and feminine nicenesses; and seeing one who was prettier and more graceful,--all which poor Clary allowed, though she was not so sure about the softness and niceness,--had changed his aim without an effort! Ah, how different was poor Gregory!
She thought much of Gregory, reminding herself that as was her sorrow in regard to her own crushed hopes, so were his. His hopes, too, had been crushed, because she had been so obdurate to him. But she had never been false. She had never whispered a word of love to Gregory. It might be that his heart was as sore, but he had not been injured as she had been injured. She despised the owner of Newton Priory. She would scorn him should he come again to her and throw himself at her feet. But Gregory could not despise her. She had, indeed, preferred the bad to the good. There had been lack of judgment. But there had been on her side no lack of truth. Yes;--she had been wrong in her choice. Her judgment had been bad. And yet how glorious he had looked as he lay upon the lawn, hot from his rowing, all unbraced, brown and bold and joyous as a young god, as he bade her go and fetch him drink to slake his thirst! How proud, then, she had been to be ordered by him, as though their mutual intimacies and confidences and loves were sufficient, when they too were alone together, to justify a reversal of those social rules by which the man is ordered to wait upon the woman. There is nothing in the first flush of acknowledged love that is sweeter to the woman than this. All the men around her are her servants; but in regard to this man she may have the inexpressibly greater pleasure of serving him herself. Clarissa had now thought much of these things, and had endeavoured to define to herself what had been those gifts belonging to Ralph which had won from her her heart. He was not, in truth, handsomer than his brother Gregory, was certainly less clever, was selfish in small things from habit, whereas Gregory had no thought for his own comfort. It had all come from this,--that a black coat and a grave manner of life and serious pursuits had been less alluring to her than idleness and pleasure. It had suited her that her young god should be joyous, unbraced, brown, bold, and thirsty. She did not know Pope's famous line, but it all lay in that. She was innocent, pure, unknowing in the ways of vice, simple in her tastes, conscientious in her duties, and yet she was a rake at heart,--till at last sorrow and disappointment taught her that it is not enough that a man should lie loose upon the grass with graceful negligence and call for soda-water with a pleasant voice. Gregory wore black clothes, was sombre, and was a parson;--but, oh, what a thing it is that a man should be true at heart!
She said nothing of her changing feelings to Mary, or even to Patience. The household at this time was not very gay or joyous. Sir Thomas, after infinite vexation, had lost the seat of which they had all been proud. Mary Bonner's condition was not felt to be deplorable, as was that of poor Clary, and she certainly did not carry herself as a lovelorn maiden. Of Mary Bonner it may be said that no disappointment of that kind would affect her outward manner; nor would she in any strait of love be willing to make a confidence or to discuss her feelings. Whatever care of that kind might be present to her would be lightened, if not made altogether as nothing, by her conviction that such loads should be carried in silence, and without any visible sign to the world that the muscles are overtaxed. But it was known that the banished Ralph had, in the moment of his expected prosperity, declared his purpose of giving all that he had to give to this beauty, and it was believed that she would have accepted the gift. It had, therefore, come to pass that the name of neither Ralph could be mentioned at the cottage, and that life among these maidens was sober, sedate, and melancholy. At last there came a note from Sir Thomas to Patience. "I shall be home to dinner to-morrow. I found the enclosed from R. N. this morning. I suppose he must come. Affectionately, T. U." The enclosed note was as follows:--"Dear Sir Thomas, I called this morning, but old Stemm was as hard as granite. If you do not object I will run down to the villa to-morrow. If you are at home I will stay and dine. Yours ever, Ralph Newton."
The mind of Sir Thomas when he received this had been affected exactly as his words described. He had supposed that Ralph must come. He had learned to hold his late ward in low esteem. The man was now beyond all likelihood of want, and sailing with propitious winds; but Sir Thomas, had he been able to consult his own inclinations, would have had no more to do with him. And yet the young Squire had not done anything which, as Sir Thomas thought, would justify him in closing his doors against one to whom he had been bound in a manner peculiarly intimate. However, if his niece should choose at last to accept Ralph, the match would be very brilliant; and the uncle thought that it was not his duty to interfere between her and so great an advantage. Sir Thomas, in truth, did not as yet understand Mary Bonner,--knew very little of her character; but he did know that it was incumbent on him to give her some opportunity of taking her beauty to market. He wrote a line to Ralph, saying that he himself would dine at home on the day indicated.
"Impossible!" said Clary, when she was first told.
"You may be sure he's coming," said Patience.
"Then I shall go and spend the day with Mrs. Brownlow. I cannot stand it."
"My dear, he'll know why you are away."
"Let him know," said Clarissa. And she did as she said she would. When Sir Thomas came home at about four o'clock on the Thursday which Ralph had fixed,--Thursday, the fourteenth of April,--he found that Clarissa had flown. The fly was to be sent for her at ten, and it was calculated that by the time she returned, Ralph would certainly have taken his leave. Sir Thomas expressed neither anger nor satisfaction at this arrangement,--"Oh; she has gone to Mrs. Brownlow's, has she? Very well. I don't suppose it will make much difference to Ralph." "None in the least," said Patience, severely. "Nothing of that kind will make any difference to him." But at that time Ralph had been above an hour in the house.
We will now return to Ralph and his adventures. He had come up to London with the express object of pressing his suit upon Mary Bonner; but during his first day or two in London had busied himself rather with the affairs of his other love. He had been with Mr. Carey, and Mr. Carey had been with Mr. Neefit. "He is the maddest old man that I ever saw," said Mr. Carey. "When I suggested to him that you were willing to make any reasonable arrangement,--meaning a thousand pounds, or something of that kind,--I couldn't get him to understand me at all."
"I don't think he wants money," said Ralph. " 'Let him come down and eat a bit of dinner at the cottage,' said he, 'and we'll make it all square.' Then I offered him a thousand pounds down."
"What did he say?"
"Called to a fellow he had there with a knife in his hand, cutting leather, to turn me out of the shop. And the man would have done it, too, if I hadn't gone."
This was not promising, but on the following morning Ralph received a letter which put him into better heart. The letter was from Polly herself, and was written as follows:-- Alexandra Cottage, Hendon, April 10th, 186--.
MY DEAR SIR, Father has been going on with all that nonsense of his, and I think it most straightforward to write a letter to you at once, so that things may be understood and finished. Father has no right to be angry with you, anyway not about me. He says somebody has come and offered him money. I wish they hadn't, but perhaps you didn't send them. There's no good in father talking about you and me. Of course it was a great honour, and all that, but I'm not at all sure that anybody should try to get above themselves, not in the way of marrying. And the heart is everything. So I've told father. If ever I bestow mine, I think it will be to somebody in a way of business,--just like father. So I thought I would just write to say that there couldn't be anything between you and me, were it ever so; only that I was very much honoured by your coming down to Margate. I write this to you, because a very particular friend advises me, and I don't mind telling you at once,--it is Mr. Moggs. And I shall show it to father. That is, I have written it twice, and shall keep the other. It's a pity father should go on so, but he means it for the best. And as to anything in the way of money,--oh, Mr. Newton, he's a deal too proud for that.
Yours truly, MARYANNE NEEFIT.
As to which letter the little baggage was not altogether true in one respect. She did not keep a copy of the whole letter, but left out of that which she showed to her father the very material passage in which she referred to the advice of her particular friend, Mr. Moggs. Ralph, when he received this letter, felt really grateful to Polly, and wrote to her a pretty note, in which he acknowledged her kindness, and expressed his hope that she might always be as happy as she deserved to be. Then it was that he made up his mind to go down at once to Popham Villa, thinking that the Neefit nuisance was sufficiently abated to enable him to devote his time to a more pleasurable pursuit.
He reached the villa between three and four, and learned from the gardener's wife at the lodge that Sir Thomas had not as yet returned. He did not learn that Clarissa was away, and was not aware of that fact till they all sat down to dinner at seven o'clock. Much had been done and much endured before that time came. He sauntered slowly up the road, and looked about the grounds, hoping to find the young ladies there, as he had so often done during his summer visits; but there was no one to be seen, and he was obliged to knock at the door. He was shown into the drawing-room, and in a few minutes Patience came to him. There had been no arrangement between her and Mary as to the manner in which he should be received. Mary on a previous occasion had given him an answer, and really did believe that that would be sufficient. He was, according to her thinking, a light, inconstant man, who would hardly give himself the labour necessary for perseverance in any suit. Patience at once began to ask him after his brother and the doings at the Priory. He had been so intimate at the house, and so dear to them all, that in spite of the disapprobation with which he was now regarded by them, it was impossible that there should not be some outer kindness. "Ah," said he, "I do so look forward to the time when you will all be down there. I have been so often welcome at your house, that it will be my greatest pleasure to make you welcome there."
"We go so little from home," said Patience.
"But I am sure you will come to me. I know you would like to see Greg's parsonage and Greg's church."
"I should indeed."
"It is the prettiest church, I think, in England, and the park is very nice. The whole house wants a deal of doing to, but I shall set about it some day. I don't know a pleasanter neighbourhood anywhere." It would have been so natural that Patience should tell him that he wanted a mistress for such a home; but she could not say the words. She could not find the proper words, and soon left him, muttering something as to directions for her father's room.
He had been alone for twenty minutes when Mary came into the room. She knew that Patience was not there; and had retreated up-stairs. But there seemed to be a cowardice in such retreating, which displeased herself. She, at any rate, had no cause to be afraid of Mr. Newton. So she collected her thoughts, and arranged her gait, and went down, and addressed him with assumed indifference,--as though there had never been anything between them beyond simple acquaintance. "Uncle Thomas will be here soon, I suppose," she said.
"I hope he will give me half-an-hour first," Ralph answered. There was an ease and grace always present in his intercourse with women, and a power of saying that which he desired to say,--which perhaps arose from the slightness of his purposes and the want of reality in his character.
"We see so little of him that we hardly know his hours," said Mary. "Uncle Thomas is a sad truant from home."
"He always was, and I declare I think that Patience and Clary have been the better for it. They have learned things of which they would have known nothing had he been with them every morning and evening. I don't know any girls who are so sweet as they are. You know they have been like sisters to me."
"So I have been told."
"And when you came, it would have been like another sister coming; only--" "Only what?" said Mary, assuming purposely a savage look.
"That something else intervened."
"Of course it must be very different,--and it should be different. You have only known me a few months."
"I have known you enough to wish to know you more closely than anybody else for the rest of my life."
"Mr. Newton, I thought you had understood me before."
"So I did." This he said with an assumed tone of lachrymose complaint. "I did understand you,--thoroughly. I understood that I was rebuked, and rejected, and disdained. But a man, if he is in earnest, does not give over on that account. Indeed, there are things which he can't give over. You may tell a man that he shouldn't drink, or shouldn't gamble; but telling will do no good. When he has once begun, he'll go on with it."
"What does that mean?"
"That love is as strong a passion, at any rate, as drinking or gambling. You did tell me, and sent me away, and rebuked me because of that tradesman's daughter."
"What tradesman's daughter?" asked Mary. "I have spoken of no tradesman's daughter. I gave you ample reason why you should not address yourself to me."
"Of course there are ample reasons," said Ralph, looking into his hat, which he had taken from the table. "The one,--most ample of all, is that you do not care for me."
"I do not," said Mary resolutely.
"Exactly;--but that is a sort of reason which a man will do his best to conquer. Do not misunderstand me. I am not such a fool as to think that I can prevail in a day. I am not vain enough to think that I can prevail at all. But I can persist."
"It will not be of the slightest use; indeed, it cannot be allowed. I will not allow it. My uncle will not allow it."
"When you told me that I was untrue to another person--; I think that was your phrase."
"Very likely."
"I supposed you had heard that stupid story which had got round to my uncle,--about a Mr. Neefit's daughter."
"I had heard no stupid story."
"What then did you mean?"
Mary paused a moment, thinking whether it might still be possible that a good turn might be done for her cousin. That Clarissa had loved this man with her whole heart she had herself owned to Mary. That the man had professed his love for Clary, Clary had also let her know. And Clary's love had endured even after the blow it had received from Ralph's offer to her cousin. All this that cousin knew; but she did not know how that love had now turned to simple soreness. "I have heard nothing of the man's daughter," said Mary.
"Well then?"
"But I do know that before I came here at all you had striven to gain the affections of my cousin."
"Clarissa!"
"Yes; Clarissa. Is it not so?" Then she paused, and Ralph remembered the scene on the lawn. In very truth it had never been forgotten. There had always been present with him when he thought of Mary Bonner a sort of remembrance of the hour in which he had played the fool with dear Clary. He had kissed her. Well; yes; and with some girls kisses mean so much,--as Polly Neefit had said to her true lover. But then with others they mean just nothing. "If you want to find a wife in this house you had better ask her. It is certainly useless that you should ask me."
"Do you mean quite useless?" asked Ralph, beginning to be somewhat abashed.
"Absolutely useless. Did I not tell you something else,--something that I would not have hinted to you, had it not been that I desired to prevent the possibility of a renewal of anything so vain? But you think nothing of that! All that can be changed with you at a moment, if other things suit."
"That is meant to be severe, Miss Bonner, and I have not deserved it from you. What has brought me to you but that I admire you above all others?"
"You shouldn't admire me above others. Is a man to change as he likes because he sees a girl whose hair pleases him for the moment better than does hers to whom he has sworn to be true?" Ralph did not forget at this moment to whisper to himself for his own consolation, that he had never sworn to be true to Clarissa. And, indeed, he did feel, that though there had been a kiss, the scene on the lawn was being used unfairly to his prejudice. "I am afraid you are very fickle, Mr. Newton, and that your love is not worth much."
"I hope we may both live till you learn that you have wronged me."
"I hope so. If my opinion be worth anything with you, go back to her from whom you have allowed yourself to stray in your folly. To me you must not address yourself again. If you do, it will be an insult." Then she rose up, queenly in her beauty, and slowly left the room.
There must be an end of that. Such was Ralph's feeling as she left the room, in spite of those protestations of constancy and persistence which he had made to himself. "A fellow has to go on with it, and be refused half a dozen times by one of those proud ones," he had said; "but when they do knuckle under, they go in harness better than the others." It was thus that he had thought of Mary Bonner, but he did not so think of her now. No, indeed. There was an end of that. "There is a sort of way of doing it, which shows that they mean it." Such was his inward speech; and he did believe that Miss Bonner meant it. "By Jove, yes; if words and looks ever can mean anything." But how about Clarissa? If it was so, as Mary Bonner had told him, would it be the proper kind of thing for him to go back to Clarissa? His heart, too,--for he had a heart,--was very soft. He had always been fond of Clarissa, and would not, for worlds, that she should be unhappy. How pretty she was, and how soft, and how loving! And how proudly happy she would be to be driven about the Newton grounds by him as their mistress. Then he remembered what Gregory had said to him, and how he had encouraged Gregory to persevere. If anything of that kind were to happen, Gregory must put up with it. It was clear that Clarissa couldn't marry Gregory if she were in love with him. But how would he look Sir Thomas in the face? As he thought of this he laughed. Sir Thomas, however, would be glad enough to give his daughter, not to the heir but to the owner of Newton. Who could be that fellow whom Mary Bonner preferred to him--with all Newton to back his suit? Perhaps Mary Bonner did not know the meaning of being the mistress of Newton Priory.
After a while the servant came to show him to his chamber. Sir Thomas had come and had gone at once to his room. So he went up-stairs and dressed, expecting to see Clarissa when they all assembled before dinner. When he went down, Sir Thomas was there, and Mary, and Patience,--but not Clarissa. He had summoned back his courage and spoke jauntily to Sir Thomas. Then he turned to Patience and asked after her sister. "Clarissa is spending the day with Mrs. Brownlow," said Patience, "and will not be home till quite late."
"Oh, how unfortunate!" exclaimed Ralph. Taking all his difficulties into consideration, we must admit that he did not do it badly.
After dinner Sir Thomas sat longer over his wine than is at present usual, believing, perhaps, that the young ladies would not want to see much more of Ralph on the present occasion. The conversation was almost entirely devoted to the affairs of the late election, as to which Ralph was much interested and very indignant. "They cannot do you any harm, sir, by the investigation," he said.
"No; I don't think they can hurt me."
"And you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have been the means of exposing corruption, and of helping to turn such a man as Griffenbottom out of the House. Upon my word, I think it has been worth while."
"I am not sure that I would do it again at the same cost, and with the same object," said Sir Thomas.
Ralph did have a cup of tea given to him in the drawing-room, and then left the villa before Clarissa's fly had returned.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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48
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MR. MOGGS WALKS TOWARDS EDGEWARE.
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The judge's decision in Percycross as to the late election was no sooner known than fresh overtures were made to Ontario Moggs by the Young Men's Association. A letter of triumph was addressed to him at the Cheshire Cheese, in which he was informed that Intimidation and Corruption had been trodden under foot in the infamous person of Mr. Griffenbottom, and that Purity and the Rights of Labour were still the watchwords of that wholesome party in the borough which was determined to send Mr. Moggs to Parliament. Did not Mr. Moggs think it best that he should come down at once to the borough and look after his interests? Now Mr. Moggs junior, when he received this letter, had left the borough no more than three or four days since, having been summoned there as a witness during the trial of the petition;--and such continued attendance to the political interests of a small and otherwise uninteresting town, without the advantage of a seat in Parliament, was felt by Mr. Moggs senior to be a nuisance. The expense in all these matters fell of course upon the shoulders of the father. "I don't believe in them humbugs no longer," said Mr. Moggs senior. Moggs junior, who had felt the enthusiasm of the young men of Percycross, and who had more to get and less to lose than his father, did believe. Although he had been so lately at Percycross, he went down again, and again made speeches to the young men at the Mechanics' Institute. Nothing could be more triumphant than his speeches, nothing more pleasant than his popularity; but he could not fail to become aware, after a further sojourn of three days at Percycross, of two things. The first was this,--that if the borough were spared there would be a compromise between the leading men on the two sides, and Mr. Westmacott would be returned together with a young Griffenbottom. The second conviction forced upon him was that the borough would not be spared. There was no comfort for him at Percycross,--other than what arose from a pure political conscience. On the very morning on which he left, he besought his friends, the young men,--though they were about to be punished, degraded, and disfranchised for the sins of their elders, though it might never be allowed to them again to stir themselves for the political welfare of their own borough,--still to remember that Purity and the Rights of Labour were the two great wants of the world, and that no man could make an effort, however humble, in a good cause without doing something towards bringing nearer to him that millennium of political virtue which was so much wanted, and which would certainly come sooner or later. He was cheered to the echo, and almost carried down to the station on the shoulders of a chairman, or president, and a secretary; but he left Percycross with the conviction that that borough would never confer upon him the coveted honour of a seat in Parliament.
All this had happened early in March, previous to that Sunday on which Mr. Neefit behaved so rudely to him at the cottage. "I think as perhaps you'd better stick to business now a bit," said old Moggs. At that moment Ontario was sitting up at a high desk behind the ledger which he hated, and was sticking to business as well as he knew how to stick to it. "No more Cheshire Cheeses, if you please, young man," said the father. This was felt by the son to be unfair, cruel, and even corrupt. While the election was going on, as long as there was a hope of success at Percycross, Moggs senior had connived at the Cheshire Cheese, had said little or nothing about business, had even consented on one occasion to hear his son make a speech advocating the propriety of combination among workmen. "It ain't my way of thinking," Moggs senior had said; "but then, perhaps, I'm old." To have had a member of the firm in Parliament would have been glorious even to old Moggs, though he hardly knew in what the glory would have consisted. But as soon as he found that his hopes were vain, that the Cheshire Cheese had been no stepping-stone to such honour, and that his money had been spent for nothing, his mind reverted to its old form. Strikes became to him the work of the devil, and unions were once more the bane of trade.
"I suppose," said Ontario, looking up from his ledger, "if I work for my bread by day, I may do as I please with my evenings. At any rate I shall," he continued to say after pausing awhile. "It's best we should understand each other, father." Moggs senior growled. At a word his son would have been off from him, rushing about the country, striving to earn a crust as a political lecturer. Moggs knew his son well, and in truth loved him dearly. There was, too, a Miss Moggs at home, who would give her father no peace if Ontario were turned adrift. There is nothing in the world so cruel as the way in which sons use the natural affections of their fathers, obtaining from these very feelings a power of rebelling against authority! "You must go to the devil if you please, I suppose," said Moggs senior.
"I don't know why you say that. What do I do devilish?"
"Them Unions is devilish."
"I think they're Godlike," said Moggs junior. After that they were silent for a while, during which Moggs senior was cutting his nails with a shoemaker's knife by the fading light of the evening, and Moggs junior was summing up an account against a favoured aristocrat, who seemed to have worn a great many boots, but who was noticeable to Ontario, chiefly from the fact that he represented in Parliament the division of the county in which Percycross was situated. "I thought you was going to make it all straight by marrying that girl," said Moggs senior.
Here was a subject on which the father and the son were in unison;--and as to which the romantic heart of Miss Moggs, at home at Shepherd's Bush, always glowed with enthusiasm. That her brother was in love, was to her, of whom in truth it must be owned that she was very plain, the charm of her life. She was fond of poetry, and would read to her brother aloud the story of Juan and Haidee, and the melancholy condition of the lady who was loved by the veiled prophet. She sympathised with the false Queen's passion for Launcelot, and, being herself in truth an ugly old maid very far removed from things romantic, delighted in the affairs of the heart when they did not run smooth. "O Ontario," she would say, "be true to her;--if it's for twenty years." "So I will;--but I'd like to begin the twenty years by making her Mrs. Moggs," said Ontario. Now Mr. Moggs senior knew to a penny what money old Neefit could give his daughter, and placed not the slightest trust in that threat about the smock in which she stood upright. Polly would certainly get the better of her father as Ontario always got the better of him. Ontario made no immediate reply to his father, but he found himself getting all wrong among the boots and shoes which had been supplied to that aristocratic young member of Parliament. "You don't mean as it's all off?" asked Moggs senior.
"No; it isn't all off."
"Then why don't you go in at it?"
"Why don't I go in at it?" said Ontario, closing the book in hopeless confusion of mind and figures. "I'd give every pair of boots in this place, I'd give all the business, to get a kind word from her."
"Isn't she kind?"
"Kind;--yes, she's kind enough in a way. She's everything just what she ought to be. That's what she is. Don't you go on about it, father. I'm as much in earnest as you can be. I shan't give it up till she calls somebody else her husband; and then,--; why then I shall just cut it, and go off to uncle in Canada. I've got my mind made up about all that." And so he left the shop, somewhat uncourteously perhaps. But he had worked his way back into his father's good graces by his determination to stick to Neefit's girl. A young man ought to be allowed to attend trades' unions, or any other meetings, if he will marry a girl with twenty thousand pounds. That evening Ontario Moggs went to the Cheshire Cheese, and was greater than ever.
It has been already told how, on a Sunday subsequent to this, he managed to have himself almost closeted with Polly, and how he was working himself into her good graces, when he was disturbed by Mr. Neefit and turned out of the house. Polly's heart had been yielding during the whole of that interview. There had come upon her once a dream that it would be a fine thing to be the lady of Newton;--and the chance had been hers. But when she set herself to work to weigh it all, and to find out what it was that young Newton really wanted,--and what he ought to want, she shook off from herself that dream before it had done her any injury. She meant to be married certainly. As to that she had no doubt. But then Ontario Moggs was such a long-legged, awkward, ugly, shambling fellow, and Moggs as a name was certainly not euphonious. The gasfitter was handsome, and was called Yallolegs, which perhaps was better than Moggs. He had proposed to her more than once; but the gasfitter's face meant nothing, and the gasfitter himself hadn't much meaning in him. As to outside appearance, young Newton's was just what he ought to be,--but that was a dream which she had shaken off. Onty Moggs had some meaning in him, and was a man. If there was one thing, too, under the sun of which Polly was quite sure, it was this,--that Onty Moggs did really love her. She knew that in the heart, and mind, and eyes of Onty Moggs she possessed a divinity which made the ground she stood upon holy ground for him. Now that is a conviction very pleasant to a young woman.
Ontario was very near his victory on that Sunday. When he told her that he would compass the death of Ralph Newton if Ralph Newton was to cause her to break her heart, she believed that he would do it, and she felt obliged to him,--although she laughed at him. When he declared to her that he didn't know what to do because of his love, she was near to telling him what he might do. When he told her that he would sooner have a kiss from her than be Prime Minister, she believed him, and almost longed to make him happy. Then she had tripped, giving him encouragement which she did not intend,--and had retreated, telling him that he was silly. But as she said so she made up her mind that he should be perplexed not much longer. After all, in spite of his ugliness, and awkwardness, and long legs, this was to be her man. She recognised the fact, and was happy. It is so much for a girl to be sure that she is really loved! And there was no word which fell from Ontario's mouth which Polly did not believe. Ralph Newton's speeches were very pretty, but they conveyed no more than his intention to be civil. Ontario's speeches really brought home to her all that the words could mean. When he told her father that he was quite contented to take her just as she was, without a shilling, she knew that he would do so with the utmost joy. Then it was that she resolved that he should have her, and that for the future all doubtings, all flirtations, all coyness, should be over. She had been won, and she lowered her flag. "You stick to it, and you'll do it," she said;--and this time she meant it. "I shall," said Ontario;--and he walked all the way back to London, with his head among the clouds, disregarding Percycross utterly, forgetful of all the boots and aristocrats' accounts, regardless almost of the Cheshire Cheese, not even meditating a new speech in defence of the Rights of Labour. He believed that on that day he had gained the great victory. If so, life before him was one vista of triumph. That he himself was what the world calls romantic, he had no idea,--but he had lived now for months on the conviction that the only chance of personal happiness to himself was to come from the smiles and kindness and love of a certain human being whom he had chosen to beatify. To him Polly Neefit was divine, and round him also there would be a halo of divinity if this goddess would consent to say that she would become his wife.
It was impossible that many days should be allowed to pass before he made an effort to learn from her own lips, positively, the meaning of those last words which she had spoken to him. But there was a difficulty. Neefit had warned him from the house, and he felt unwilling to knock at the door of a man in that man's absence, who, if present, would have refused to him the privilege of admittance. That Mrs. Neefit would see him, and afford him opportunity of pleading his cause with Polly, he did not doubt;--but some idea that a man's house, being his castle, should not be invaded in the owner's absence, restrained him. That the man's daughter might be the dearer and the choicer, and the more sacred castle of the two, was true enough; but then Polly was a castle which, as Moggs thought, ought to belong to him rather than to her father. And so he resolved to waylay Polly.
His weekdays, from nine in the morning till seven in the evening, were at this time due to Booby and Moggs, and he was at present paying that debt religiously, under a conviction that his various absences at Percycross had been hard upon his father. For there was, in truth, no Booby. Moggs senior, and Moggs junior, constituted the whole firm;--in which, indeed, up to this moment Moggs junior had no recognised share,--and if one was absent, the other must be present. But Sunday was his own, and Polly Neefit always went to church. Nevertheless, on the first Sunday he failed. He failed, though he saw her, walking with two other ladies, and though, to the best of his judgment, she also saw him. On the second Sunday he was at Hendon from ten till three, hanging about in the lanes, sitting on gates, whiling away the time with a treatise on political economy which he had brought down in his pocket, thinking of Polly while he strove to confine his thoughts to the great subject of man's productive industry. Is there any law of Nature,--law of God, rather,--by which a man has a right to enough of food, enough of raiment, enough of shelter, and enough of recreation, if only he will work? But Polly's cheeks, and Polly's lips, the eager fire of Polly's eye as she would speak, and all the elastic beauty of Polly's gait as she would walk, drove the great question from his mind. Was he ever destined to hold Polly in his arms,--close, close to his breast? If not, then the laws of Nature and the laws of God, let them be what they might, would not have been sufficient to protect him from the cruellest wrong of all.
It was as she went to afternoon church that he hoped to intercept her. Morning church with many is a bond. Afternoon church is a virtue of supererogation,--practised often because there is nothing else to do. It would be out of the question that he should induce her to give up the morning service; but if he could only come upon her in the afternoon, a little out of sight of others, just as she would turn down a lane with which he was acquainted, near to a stile leading across the fields towards Edgeware, it might be possible that he should prevail. As the hour came near, he put the useless volume into his pocket, and stationed himself on the spot which he had selected. Almost at the first moment in which he had ventured to hope for her presence, Polly turned into the lane. It was six months after this occurrence that she confessed to him that she had thought it just possible that he might be there. "Of course you would be there,--you old goose; as if Jemima hadn't told me that you'd been about all day. But I never should have come, if I hadn't quite made up my mind." Then Ontario administered to her one of those bear's hugs which were wont to make Polly declare that he was an ogre. It was thus that Polly made her confession after the six months, as they were sitting very close to each other on some remote point of the cliffs down on the Kentish coast. At that time the castle had been altogether transferred out of the keeping of Mr. Neefit.
But Polly's conduct on this occasion was not at all of a nature to make it supposed that Jemima's eyes had been so sharp. "What, Mr. Moggs!" she said. "Dear me, what a place to find you in! Are you coming to church?"
"I want you just to take a turn with me for a few minutes, Polly."
"But I'm going to church."
"You can go to church afterwards;--that is, if you like. I can't come to the house now, and I have got something that I must say to you."
"Something that you must say to me!" And then Polly followed him over the stile.
They had walked the length of nearly two fields before Ontario had commenced to tell the tale which of necessity must be told; but Polly, though she must have known that her chances of getting back to church were becoming more and more remote, waited without impatience. "I want to know," he said, at last, "whether you can ever learn to love me."
"What's the use, Mr. Moggs?"
"It will be all the use in the world to me."
"Oh, no it won't. It can't signify so very much to anybody."
"Nothing, I sometimes think, can ever be of any use to me but that."
"As for learning to love a man,--I suppose I could love a man without any learning if I liked him."
"But you don't like me, Polly?"
"I never said I didn't like you. Father and mother always used to like you."
"But you, Polly?"
"Oh, I like you well enough. Don't, Mr. Moggs."
"But do you love me?" Then there was a pause, as they stood leaning upon a gateway. "Come, Polly; tell a fellow. Do you love me?"
"I don't know." Then there was another pause; but he was in a seventh heaven, with his arm round her waist. "I suppose I do; a little," whispered Polly.
"But better than anybody else?"
"You don't think I mean to have two lovers;--do you?"
"And I am to be your lover?"
"There's father, you know. I'm not going to be anybody's wife because he tells me; but I wouldn't like to vex him, if we could help it."
"But you'll never belong to any one else?"
"Never," said she solemnly.
"Then I've said what I've got to say, and I'm the happiest man in all the world, and you may go to church now if you like." But his arm was still tight round her waist.
"It's too late," said Polly, in a melancholy tone,--"and it's all your doing."
The walk was prolonged not quite to Edgeware; but so far that Mr. Neefit was called upon to remark that the parson was preaching a very long sermon. Mrs. Neefit, who perhaps had also had communication with Jemima, remarked that it was not to be expected, but that Polly should take a ramble with some of her friends. "Why can't she ramble where I want her to ramble?" said Mr. Neefit.
Many things were settled during that walk. Within five minutes of the time in which she had declared that it was too late for her to go to church, she had brought herself to talk to him with all the delightful confidence of a completed engagement. She made him understand at once that there was no longer any doubt. "A girl must have time to know," she said, when he half-reproached her with the delay. A girl wasn't like a man, she said, who could just make up his mind at once,--a girl had to wait and see. But she was quite sure of this,--that having once said the word she would never go back from it. She didn't quite know when she had first begun to love him, but she thought it was when she heard that he had made up his mind to stand for Percycross. It seemed to her to be such a fine thing,--his going to Percycross. "Then," said Ontario, gallantly, "Percycross has done ten times more for me than it would have done, had it simply made me a member of Parliament." Once, twice, and oftener he was made happier than he could have been had fortune made him a Prime Minister. For Polly, now that she had given her heart and promised her hand, would not coy her lips to the man she had chosen.
Many things were settled between them. Polly told her lover all her trouble about Ralph Newton, and it was now that she received that advice from her "very particular friend, Mr. Moggs," which she followed in writing to her late suitor. The letter was to be written and posted that afternoon, and then shown to her father. We know already that in making the copy for her father she omitted one clause,--having resolved that she would tell her mother of her engagement, and that her mother should communicate it to her father. As for naming any day for their marriage, "That was out of the question," she said. She did not wish to delay it; but all that she could do was to swear to her father that she would never marry anybody else. "And he'll believe me too," said Polly. As for eloping, she would not hear of it. "Just that he might have an excuse to give his money to somebody else," she said.
"I don't care for his money," protested Moggs.
"That's all very well; but money's a good thing in its way. I hate a man who'd sell himself; he's a mean fellow;--or a girl either. Money should never be first. But as for pitching it away just because you're in a hurry, I don't believe in that at all. I'm not going to be an old woman yet, and you may wait a few months very well." She walked with him direct up to the gate leading up to their own house,--so that all the world might see her, if all the world pleased; and then she bade him good-bye. "Some day before very long, no doubt," she said when, as he left her, he asked as to their next meeting.
And so Polly had engaged herself. I do not know that the matter seemed to her to be of so much importance as it does to many girls. It was a piece of business which had to be done some day, as she had well known for years past; and now that it was done, she was quite contented with the doing of it. But there was not much of that ecstasy in her bosom which was at the present moment sending Ontario Moggs bounding up to town, talking, as he went, to himself,--to the amazement of passers by, and assuring himself that he had triumphed like an Alexander or a Cæsar. She made some steady resolves to do her duty by him, and told herself again and again that nothing should ever move her now that she had decided. As for beauty in a man;--what did it signify? He was honest. As for awkwardness;--what did it matter? He was clever. And in regard to being a gentleman; she rather thought that she liked him better because he wasn't exactly what some people call a gentleman. Whatever sort of a home he would give her to live in, nobody would despise her in it because she was not grand enough for her place. She was by no means sure that a good deal of misery of that kind might not have fallen to her lot had she become the mistress of Newton Priory. "When the beggar woman became a queen, how the servants must have snubbed her," said Polly to herself.
That evening she showed her letter to her father. "You haven't sent it, you minx?" said he.
"Yes, father. It's in the iron box."
"What business had you to write to a young man?"
"Come, father. I had a business."
"I believe you want to break my heart," said old Neefit.
That evening her mother asked her what she had been doing that afternoon. "I just took a walk with Ontario Moggs," said Polly.
"Well?"
"And I've just engaged myself straight off, and you had better tell father. I mean to keep to it, mother, let anybody say anything. I wouldn't go back from my promise if they were to drag me. So father may as well know at once."
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{
"id": "25579"
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49
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AMONG THE PICTURES.
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Norfolk is a county by no means devoted to hunting, and Ralph Newton,--the disinherited Ralph as we may call him,--had been advised by some of his friends round Newton to pitch his tent elsewhere,--because of his love of that sport. "You'll get a bit of land just as cheap in the shires," Morris had said to him. "And, if I were you, I wouldn't go among a set of fellows who don't think of anything in the world except partridges." Mr. Morris, who was a very good fellow in his way, devoted a considerable portion of his mental and physical energies to the birth, rearing, education, preservation, and subsequent use of the fox,--thinking that in so doing he employed himself nobly as a country gentleman; but he thoroughly despised a county in which partridges were worshipped.
"They do preserve foxes," pleaded Ralph.
"One man does, and the next don't. You ought to know what that means. It's the most heart-breaking kind of thing in the world. I'd sooner be without foxes altogether, and ride to a drag;--I would indeed." This assertion Mr. Morris made in a sadly solemn tone, such as men use when they speak of some adversity which fate and fortune may be preparing for them. "I'd a deal rather die than bear it," says the melancholy friend; or,--"I'd much sooner put up with a crust in a corner." "I'd rather ride to a drag;--I would indeed," said Mr. Morris, with a shake of the head, and a low sigh. As for life without riding to hounds at all, Mr. Morris did not for a moment suppose that his friend contemplated such an existence.
But Ralph had made up his mind that, in going out into the world to do something, foxes should not be his first object. He had to seek a home certainly, but more important than his home was the work to which he should give himself; and, as he had once said, he knew nothing useful that he could do except till the land. So he went down into Norfolk among the intermittent fox preservers, and took Beamingham Hall.
Almost every place in Norfolk is a "ham," and almost every house is a hall. There was a parish of Beamingham, four miles from Swaffham, lying between Tillham, Soham, Reepham, and Grindham. It's down in all the maps. It's as flat as a pancake; it has a church with a magnificent square tower, and a new chancel; there is a resident parson, and there are four or five farmers in it; it is under the plough throughout, and is famous for its turnips; half the parish belongs to a big lord, who lives in the county, and who does preserve foxes, but not with all his heart; two other farms are owned by the yeomen who farm them,--men who have been brought up to shoot, and who hate the very name of hunting. Beamingham Hall was to be sold, and by the beginning of May Ralph Newton had bought it. Beamingham Little Wood belonged to the estate, and, as it contained about thirty acres, Ralph determined that he would endeavour to have a fox there.
By the middle of May he had been four months in his new home. The house itself was not bad. It was spacious; and the rooms, though low, were large. And it had been built with considerable idea of architectural beauty. The windows were all set in stone and mullioned,--long, low windows, very beautiful in form, which had till some fifteen years back been filled with a multitude of small diamond panes;--but now the diamond panes had given way to plate glass. There were three gables to the hall, all facing an old-fashioned large garden, in which the fruit trees came close up to the house, and that which perhaps ought to have been a lawn was almost an orchard. But there were trim gravel walks, and trim flower-beds, and a trim fish-pond, and a small walled kitchen-garden, with very old peaches, and very old apricots, and very old plums. The plums, however, were at present better than the peaches or the apricots. The fault of the house, as a modern residence, consisted in this,--that the farm-yard, with all its appurtenances, was very close to the back door. Ralph told himself when he first saw it that Mary Bonner would never consent to live in a house so placed.
For whom was such a house as Beamingham Hall originally built,--a house not grand enough for a squire's mansion, and too large for a farmer's homestead? Such houses throughout England are much more numerous than Englishmen think,--either still in good repair, as was Beamingham Hall, or going into decay under the lessened domestic wants of the present holders. It is especially so in the eastern counties, and may be taken as one proof among many that the broad-acred squire, with his throng of tenants, is comparatively a modern invention. The country gentleman of two hundred years ago farmed the land he held. As years have rolled on, the strong have swallowed the weak,--one strong man having eaten up half-a-dozen weak men. And so the squire has been made. Then the strong squire becomes a baronet and a lord,--till he lords it a little too much, and a Manchester warehouseman buys him out. The strength of the country probably lies in the fact that the change is ever being made, but is never made suddenly.
To Ralph the great objection to Beamingham Hall lay in that fear,--or rather certainty,--that it could not be made a fitting home for Mary Bonner. When he first decided on taking it, and even when he decided on buying it, he assured himself that Mary Bonner's taste might be quite indifferent to him. In the first place, he had himself written to her uncle to withdraw his claim as soon as he found that Newton would never belong to him; and then he had been told by the happy owner of Newton that Mary was still to be asked to share the throne of that principality. When so told he had said nothing of his own ambition, but had felt that there was another reason why he should leave Newton and its neighbourhood. For him, as a bachelor, Beamingham Hall would be only too good a house. He, as a farmer, did not mean to be ashamed of his own dunghill.
By the middle of May he had heard nothing either of his namesake or of Mary Bonner. He did correspond with Gregory Newton, and thus received tidings of the parish, of the church, of the horses,--and even of the foxes; but of the heir's matrimonial intentions he heard nothing. Gregory did write of his own visits to the metropolis, past and future, and Ralph knew that the young parson would again singe his wings in the flames that were burning at Popham Villa; but nothing was said of the heir. Through March and April that trouble respecting Polly Neefit was continued, and Gregory in his letter of course did not speak of the Neefits. At last May was come, and Ralph from Beamingham made up his mind that he also would go up to London. He had been hard at work during the last four months doing all those wonderfully attractive things with his new property which a man can do when he has money in his pocket,--knocking down hedges, planting young trees or preparing for the planting of them, buying stock, building or preparing to build sheds,--and the rest of it. There is hardly a pleasure in life equal to that of laying out money with a conviction that it will come back again. The conviction, alas, is so often ill founded,--but the pleasure is the same. In regard to the house itself he would do nothing, not even form a plan--as yet. It might be possible that some taste other than his own should be consulted.
In the second week in May he went up to London, having heard that Gregory would be there at the same time; and he at once found himself consorting with his namesake almost as much as with the parson. It was now a month since the heir had been dismissed from Popham Villa, and he had not since that date renewed his visit. Nor from that day to the present had he seen Sir Thomas. It cannot be said with exact truth that he was afraid of Sir Thomas or ashamed to see the girls. He had no idea that he had behaved badly to anybody; and, if he had, he was almost disposed to make amends for such sin by marrying Clarissa; but he felt that should he ultimately make up his mind in Clarissa's favour, a little time should elapse for the gradual cure of his former passion. No doubt he placed reliance on his position as a man of property, feeling that by his strength in that direction he would be pulled through all his little difficulties; but it was an unconscious reliance. He believed that he was perfectly free from what he himself would have called the dirt and littleness of purse-pride--or acre-pride, and would on some occasions assert that he really thought nothing of himself because he was Newton of Newton. And he meant to be true. Nevertheless, in the bottom of his heart, there was a confidence that he might do this and that because of his acres, and among the things which might be thus done, but which could not otherwise have been done, was this return to Clarissa after his little lapse in regard to Mary Bonner.
He was delighted to welcome Ralph from Norfolk to all the pleasures of the metropolis. Should he put down Ralph's name at the famous Carlton, of which he had lately become a member? Ralph already belonged to an old-fashioned club, of which his father had been long a member, and declined the new honour. As for balls, evening crushes, and large dinner-parties, our Norfolk Ralph thought himself to be unsuited for them just at present, because of his father's death. It was not for the nephew of the dead man to tell the son that eight months of mourning for a father was more than the world now required. He could only take the excuse, and suggest the play, and a little dinner at Richmond, and a small party to Maidenhead as compromises. "I don't know that there is any good in a fellow being so heavy in hand because his father is dead," the Squire said to his brother.
"They were so much to each other," pleaded Gregory in return. The Squire accepted the excuse, and offered his namesake a horse for the park. Would he make one of the party for the moors in August? The Squire asserted that he had room for another gun, without entailing any additional expense upon himself. This indeed was not strictly true, as it had been arranged that the cost should be paid per gun; but there was a vacancy still, and Ralph the heir, being quite willing to pay for his cousin, thought no harm to cover his generosity under a venial falsehood. The disinherited one, however, declined the offer, with many thanks. "There is nothing, old fellow, I wouldn't do for you, if I knew how," said the happy heir. Whereupon the Norfolk Ralph unconsciously resolved that he would accept nothing,--or as little as possible,--at the hands of the Squire.
All this happened during the three or four first days of his sojourn in London, in which, he hardly knew why, he had gone neither to the villa nor to Sir Thomas in Southampton Buildings. He meant to do so, but from day to day he put it off. As regarded the ladies at the villa the three young men now never spoke to each other respecting them. Gregory believed that his brother had failed, and so believing did not recur to the subject. Gregory himself had already been at Fulham once or twice since his arrival in town; but had nothing to say,--or at least did say nothing,--of what happened there. He intended to remain away from his parish for no more than the parson's normal thirteen days, and was by no means sure that he would make any further formal offer. When at the villa he found that Clarissa was sad and sober, and almost silent; and he knew that something was wrong. It hardly occurred to him to believe that after all he might perhaps cure the evil.
One morning, early, Gregory and Ralph from Norfolk were together at the Royal Academy. Although it was not yet ten when they entered the gallery, the rooms were already so crowded that it was difficult to get near the line, and almost impossible either to get into or to get out of a corner. Gregory had been there before, and knew the pictures. He also was supposed by his friends to understand something of the subject; whereas Ralph did not know a Cooke from a Hook, and possessed no more than a dim idea that Landseer painted all the wild beasts, and Millais all the little children. "That's a fine picture," he said, pointing up at an enormous portrait of the Master of the B. B., in a red coat, seated square on a seventeen-hand high horse, with his hat off, and the favourite hounds of his pack around him. "That's by Grant," said Gregory. "I don't know that I care for that kind of thing." "It's as like as it can stare," said Ralph, who appreciated the red coat, and the well-groomed horse, and the finely-shaped hounds. He backed a few steps to see the picture better, and found himself encroaching upon a lady's dress. He turned round and found that the lady was Mary Bonner. Together with her were both Clarissa and Patience Underwood.
The greetings between them all were pleasant, and the girls were unaffectedly pleased to find friends whom they knew well enough to accept as guides and monitors in the room. "Now we shall be told all about everything," said Clarissa, as the young parson shook hands first with her sister and then with her. "Do take us round to the best dozen, Mr. Newton. That's the way I like to begin." Her tone was completely different from what it had been down at the villa.
"That gentleman in the red coat is my cousin's favourite," said Gregory.
"I don't care a bit about that." said Clarissa.
"That's because you don't hunt," said Ralph.
"I wish I hunted," said Mary Bonner.
Mary, when she first saw the man, of whom she had once been told that he was to be her lover, and, when so told, had at least been proud that she was so chosen,--felt that she was blushing slightly; but she recovered herself instantly, and greeted him as though there had been no cause whatever for disturbance. He was struck almost dumb at seeing her, and it was her tranquillity which restored him to composure. After the first greetings were over he found himself walking by her side without any effort on her part to avoid him, while Gregory and the two sisters went on in advance. Poor Ralph had not a word to say about the pictures. "Have you been long in London?" she asked.
"Just four days."
"We heard that you were coming, and did think that perhaps you and your cousin might find a morning to come down and see us;--your cousin Gregory, I mean."
"Of course I shall come."
"My uncle will be so glad to see you;--only, you know, you can't always find him at home. And so will Patience. You are a great favourite with Patience. You have gone down to live in Norfolk,--haven't you?"
"Yes--in Norfolk."
"You have bought an estate there?"
"Just one farm that I look after myself. It's no estate, Miss Bonner;--just a farm-house, with barns and stables, and a horse-pond, and the rest of it." This was by no means a fair account of the place, but it suited him so to speak of it. "My days for having an estate were quickly brought to a close;--were they not?" This he said with a little laugh, and then hated himself for having spoken so foolishly.
"Does that make you unhappy, Mr. Newton?" she asked. He did not answer her at once, and she continued, "I should have thought that you were above being made unhappy by that."
"Such disappointments carry many things with them of which people outside see nothing."
"That is true, no doubt."
"A man may be separated from every friend he has in the world by such a change of circumstances."
"I had not thought of that. I beg your pardon," said she, looking into his face almost imploringly.
"And there may be worse than that," he said. Of course she knew what he meant, but he did not know how much she knew. "It is easy to say that a man should stand up against reverses,--but there are some reverses a man cannot bear without suffering." She had quite made up her mind that the one reverse of which she was thinking should be cured; but she could take no prominent step towards curing it yet. But that some step should be taken sooner or later she was resolved. It might be taken now, indeed, if he would only speak out. But she quite understood that he would not speak out now because that house down in Norfolk was no more than a farm. "But I didn't mean to trouble you with all that nonsense," he said.
"It doesn't trouble me at all. Of course you will tell us everything when you come to see us."
"There is very little to tell,--unless you care for cows and pigs, and sheep and horses."
"I do care for cows and pigs, and sheep and horses," she said.
"All the same, they are not pleasant subjects of conversation. A man may do as much good with a single farm as he can with a large estate; but he can't make his affairs as interesting to other people." There was present to his own mind the knowledge that he and his rich namesake were rivals in regard to the affections of this beautiful girl, and he could not avoid allusions to his own inferiority. And yet his own words, as soon as they were spoken and had sounded in his ear, were recognised by himself as being mean and pitiful,--as whining words, and sorry plaints against the trick which fortune had played him. He did not know how to tell her boldly that he lamented this change from the estate to the farm because he had hoped that she would share the one with him, and did not dare even to ask her to share the other. She understood it all, down to the look of displeasure which crossed his face as he felt the possible effect of his own speech. She understood it all, but she could not give him much help,--as yet. There might perhaps come a moment in which she could explain to him her own ideas about farms and estates, and the reasons in accordance with which these might be selected and those rejected. "Have you seen much of Ralph Newton lately?" asked the other Ralph.
"Of your cousin?"
"Yes;--only I do not call him so. I have no right to call him my cousin."
"No; We do not see much of him." This was said in a tone of voice which ought to have sufficed for curing any anxiety in Ralph's bosom respecting his rival. Had he not been sore and nervous, and, as it must be admitted, almost stupid in the matter, he could not but have gathered from that tone that his namesake was at least no favourite with Miss Bonner. "He used to be a great deal at Popham Villa," said Ralph.
"We do not see him often now. I fancy there has been some cause of displeasure between him and my uncle. His brother has been with us once or twice. I do like Mr. Gregory Newton."
"He is the best fellow that ever lived," exclaimed Ralph with energy.
"So much nicer than his brother," said Mary;--"though perhaps I ought not to say so to you."
This at any rate could not but be satisfactory to him. "I like them both," he said; "but I love Greg dearly. He and I have lived together like brothers for years, whereas it is only quite lately that I have known the other."
"It is only lately that I have known either;--but they seem to me to be so different. Is not that a wonderfully beautiful picture, Mr. Newton? Can't, you almost fancy yourself sitting down and throwing stones into the river, or dabbling your feet in it?"
"It is very pretty," said he, not caring a penny for the picture.
"Have you any river at Beamingham?"
"There's a muddy little brook that you could almost jump over. You wouldn't want to dabble in that."
"Has it got a name?"
"I think they call it the Wissey. It's not at all a river to be proud of,--except in the way of eels and water-rats."
"Is there nothing to be proud of at Beamingham?"
"There's the church tower;--that's all."
"A church tower is something;--but I meant as to Beamingham Hall."
"That word Hall misleads people," said Ralph. "It's a kind of upper-class farm-house with a lot of low rooms, and intricate passages, and chambers here and there, smelling of apples, and a huge kitchen, and an oven big enough for a small dinner-party."
"I should like the oven."
"And a laundry, and a dairy, and a cheese-house,--only we never make any cheese; and a horse-pond, and a dung-hill, and a cabbage-garden."
"Is that all you can say for your new purchase, Mr. Newton?"
"The house itself isn't ugly."
"Come;--that's better."
"And it might be made fairly comfortable, if there were any use in doing it."
"Of course there will be use."
"I don't know that there will," said Ralph. "Sometimes I think one thing, and sometimes another. One week I'm full of a scheme about a new garden and a conservatory, and a bow-window to the drawing-room; and then, the next week, I think that the two rooms I live in at present will be enough for me."
"Stick to the conservatory, Mr. Newton. But here are the girls, and I suppose it is about time for us to go."
"Mary, where have you been?" said Clarissa.
"Looking at landscapes," said Mary.
"Mr. Newton has shown us every picture worth seeing, and described everything, and we haven't had to look at the catalogue once. That's just what I like at the Academy. I don't know whether you've been as lucky."
"I've had a great deal described to me too," said Mary; "but I'm afraid we've forgotten the particular duty that brought us here." Then they parted, the two men promising that they would be at the villa before long, and the girls preparing themselves for their return home.
"That cousin of theirs is certainly very beautiful," said Gregory, after some short tribute to the merits of the two sisters.
"I think she is," said Ralph.
"I do not wonder that my brother has been struck with her."
"Nor do I." Then after a pause he continued; "She said something which made me think that she and your brother haven't quite hit it off together."
"I don't know that they have," said Gregory. "Ralph does change his mind sometimes. He hasn't said a word about her to me lately."
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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50
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ANOTHER FAILURE.
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The day after the meeting at the Academy, as Ralph, the young Squire, was sitting alone in his room over a late breakfast, a maid-servant belonging to the house opened the door and introduced Mr. Neefit. It was now the middle of May, and Ralph had seen nothing of the breeches-maker since the morning on which he had made his appearance in the yard of the Moonbeam. There had been messages, and Mr. Carey had been very busy endeavouring to persuade the father that he could benefit neither himself nor his daughter by persistence in so extravagant a scheme. Money had been offered to Mr. Neefit,--most unfortunately, and this offer had added to his wrongs. And he had been told by his wife that Polly had at last decided in regard to her own affections, and had accepted her old lover, Mr. Moggs. He had raved at Polly to her face. He had sworn at Moggs behind his back. He had called Mr. Carey very hard names;--and now he forced himself once more upon the presence of the young Squire. "Captain," he said, as soon as he had carefully closed the door behind him, "are you going to be upon the square?" Newton had given special orders that Neefit should not be admitted to his presence; but here he was, having made his way into the chamber in the temporary absence of the Squire's own servant.
"Mr. Neefit," said Newton, "I cannot allow this."
"Not allow it, Captain?"
"No;--I cannot. I will not be persecuted. I have received favours from you--" "Yes, you have, Captain."
"And I will do anything in reason to repay them."
"Will you come out and see our Polly?"
"No, I won't."
"You won't?"
"Certainly not. I don't believe your daughter wants to see me. She is engaged to another man." So much Mr. Carey had learned from Mrs. Neefit. "I have a great regard for your daughter, but I will not go to see her."
"Engaged to another man;--is she?"
"I am told so."
"Oh;--that's your little game, is it? And you won't see me when I call,--won't you? I won't stir out of this room unless you sends for the police, and so we'll get it all into one of the courts of law. I shall just like to see how you'll look when you're being cross-hackled by one of them learned gents. There'll be a question or two about the old breeches-maker as the Squire of Newton mayn't like to see in the papers the next morning. I shall take the liberty of ringing the bell and ordering a bit of dinner here, if you don't mind. I shan't go when the police comes without a deal of row, and then we shall have it all out in the courts."
This was monstrously absurd, but at the same time very annoying. Even though he should disregard that threat of being "cross-hackled by a learned gent," and of being afterwards made notorious in the newspapers,--which it must be confessed he did not find himself able to disregard,--still, independently of that feeling, he was very unwilling to call for brute force to remove Mr. Neefit from the arm-chair in which that worthy tradesman had seated himself. He had treated the man otherwise than as a tradesman. He had borrowed the man's money, and eaten the man's dinners; visited the man at Ramsgate, and twice offered his hand to the man's daughter. "You are very welcome to dine here," he said, "only I am sorry that I cannot dine here with you."
"I won't stir from the place for a week."
"That will be inconvenient," said Ralph, "Uncommon inconvenient I should say, to a gent like you,--especially as I shall tell everybody that I'm on a visit to my son-in-law."
"I meant to yourself,--and to the business."
"Never you mind the business, Captain. There'll be enough left to give my girl all the money I promised her, and I don't think I shall have to ask you to keep your father-in-law neither. Sending an attorney to offer me a thousand pounds! It's my belief I could buy you out yet, Captain, in regard to ready money."
"I daresay you could, Mr. Neefit."
"And I won't stir from here till you name a day to come and see me and my missus and Polly."
"This is sheer madness, Mr. Neefit."
"You think so;--do you, Captain? You'll find me madder nor you think for yet. I'm not agoing to be put upon by you, and nothing come of it. I'll have it out of you in money or marbles, as the saying is. Just order me a glass of sherry wine, will you? I'm a thirsty talking. When you came a visiting me, I always give you lashings of drink." This was so true that Ralph felt himself compelled to ring the bell, and order up some wine. "Soda and brandy let it be, Jack," said Mr. Neefit to Mr. Newton's own man. "It'll be more comfortable like between near relations."
"Soda-water and brandy for Mr. Neefit," said the young Squire, turning angrily to the man. "Mr. Neefit, you are perfectly welcome to as much brandy as you can drink, and my man will wait upon you while I'm away. Good morning." Whereupon Newton took up his hat and left the room. He had not passed into the little back room, in which he knew that the servant would be looking for soda-water, before he heard a sound as of smashed crockery, and he was convinced that Mr. Neefit was preparing himself for forcible eviction by breaking his ornaments. Let the ornaments go, and the mirror, and the clock on the chimney-piece, and the windows. It was a frightful nuisance, but anything would be better than sending for the police to take away Mr. Neefit. "Keep your eye on that man in the front room," said he, to his Swiss valet.
"On Mr. Neefit, saar?"
"Yes; on Mr. Neefit. He wants me to marry his daughter, and I can't oblige him. Let him have what he wants to eat and drink. Get rid of him if you can, but don't send for the police. He's smashing all the things, and you must save as many as you can." So saying, he hurried down the stairs and out of the house. But what was he to do next? If Mr. Neefit chose to carry out his threat by staying in the rooms, Mr. Neefit must be allowed to have his own way. If he chose to amuse himself by breaking the things, the things must be broken. If he got very drunk, he might probably be taken home in a cab, and deposited at the cottage at Hendon. But what should Ralph do at this moment? He sauntered sadly down St. James's Street with his hands in his trousers-pockets, and finding a crawling hansom at the palace-gate, he got into it and ordered the man to drive him down to Fulham. He had already made up his mind about "dear little Clary," and the thing might as well be done at once. None of the girls were at home. Miss Underwood and Miss Bonner had gone up to London to see Sir Thomas. Miss Clarissa was spending the day with Mrs. Brownlow. "That will just be right," said Ralph to himself, as he ordered the cabman to drive him to the old lady's house on the Brompton Road.
Mrs. Brownlow had ever been a great admirer of the young Squire, and did not admire him less now that he had come to his squireship. She had always hoped that Clary would marry the real heir, and was sounding his praises while Ralph was knocking at her door. "He is not half so fine a fellow as his brother," said Clarissa.
"You did not use to think so," said Mrs. Brownlow. Then the door was opened and Ralph was announced.
With his usual easy manner,--with that unabashed grace which Clarissa used to think so charming,--he soon explained that he had been to Fulham, and had had himself driven back to Bolsover House because Clarissa was there. Clarissa, as she heard this, felt the blood tingle in her cheeks. His manner now did not seem to her to be so full of grace. Was it not all selfishness? Mrs. Brownlow purred out her applause. It was not to be supposed that he came to see an old woman;--but his coming to see a young woman, with adequate intentions, was quite the proper thing for such a young man to do! They were just going to take lunch. Of course he would stop and lunch with them. He declared that he would like nothing better. Mrs. Brownlow rang the bell, and gave her little orders. Clarissa's thoughts referred quickly to various matters,--to the scene on the lawn, to a certain evening on which she had walked home with him from this very house, to the confessions which she had made to her sister, to her confidence with her cousin;--and then to the offer that had been made to Mary, now only a few weeks since. She looked at him, though she did not seem to be looking at him, and told herself that the man was nothing to her. He had caused her unutterable sorrow, with which her heart was still sore;--but he was nothing to her. She would eat her lunch with him, and endeavour to talk to him; but the less she might see of him henceforth the better. He was selfish, heartless, weak, and unworthy.
The lunch was eaten, and within three minutes afterwards, Mrs. Brownlow was away. As they were returning to the little parlour in which they had been sitting during the morning, she contrived to escape, and Ralph found himself alone with his "dear, darling little Clary." In spite of his graceful ease, the task before him was not without difficulty. Clarissa, of course, knew that he had proposed to Mary, and probably knew that he had proposed to Polly. But Mary had told him that Clarissa was devoted to him,--had told him at least that which amounted to almost as much. And then it was incumbent on him to do something that might put an end to the Neefit abomination. Clarissa would be contented to look back upon that episode with Mary Bonner, as a dream that meant nothing;--just as he himself was already learning to look at it. "Clary," he said, "I have hardly seen you to speak to you since the night we walked home together from this house."
"No, indeed, Mr. Newton," she said. Hitherto she had always called him Ralph. He did not observe the change, having too many things of his own to think of at the moment.
"How much has happened since that!"
"Very much, indeed, Mr. Newton."
"And yet it seems to be such a short time ago,--almost yesterday. My poor uncle was alive then."
"Yes, he was."
He did not seem to be getting any nearer to his object by these references to past events. "Clary," he said, "there are many things which I wish to have forgotten, and some perhaps which I would have forgiven."
"I suppose that is so with all of us," said Clarissa.
"Just so, though I don't know that any of us have ever been so absurdly foolish as I have,--throwing away what was of the greatest value in the world for the sake of something that seemed to be precious, just for a moment." It was very difficult, and he already began to feel that the nature of the girl was altered towards him. She had suddenly become hard, undemonstrative, and almost unkind. Hitherto he had always regarded her, without much conscious thought about it, as a soft, sweet, pleasant thing, that might at any moment be his for the asking. And Mary Bonner had told him that he ought to ask. Now he was willing to beseech her pardon, to be in very truth her lover, and to share with her all his prosperity. But she would give him no assistance in his difficulty. He was determined that she should speak, and, trusting to Mrs. Brownlow's absence, he sat still, waiting for her.
"I hope you have thrown away nothing that you ought to keep," she said at last. "It seems to me that you have got everything."
"No,--not as yet everything. I do not know whether I shall ever get that which I desire the most." Of course she understood him now; but she sat hard, and fixed, and stern,--so absolutely unlike the Clarissa whom he had known since they were hardly more than children together! "You know what I mean, Clarissa."
"No;--I do not," she said.
"I fear you mean that you cannot forgive me."
"I have nothing to forgive."
"Oh yes, you have; whether you will ever forgive me I cannot say. But there is much to forgive;--very much. Your cousin Mary for a short moment ran away with us all."
"She is welcome,--for me."
"What do you mean, Clarissa?"
"Just what I say. She is welcome for me. She has taken nothing that I prize. Indeed I do not think she has condescended to take anything,--anything of the sort you mean. Mary and I love each other dearly. There is no danger of our quarrelling."
"Come, Clary," he got up as he spoke, and stood over her, close to her shoulder, "you understand well enough what I mean. We have known each other so long, and I think we have loved each other so well, that you ought to say that you will forgive me. I have been foolish. I have been wrong. I have been false, if you will. Cannot you forgive me?"
Not for a moment was there a look of forgiveness in her eye, or a sign of pardon in the lines of her face. But in her heart there was a contest. Something of the old passion remained there, though it was no more than the soreness it had caused. For half a moment she thought whether it might not be as he would have it. But if so, how could she again look any of her friends in the face and admit that she had surrendered herself to so much unworthiness? How could she tell Patience, who was beginning to be full of renewed hope for Gregory? How could she confess such a weakness to her father? How could she stand up before Mary Bonner? And was it possible that she should really give herself, her whole life, and all her future hopes, to one so weak and worthless as this man? "There is nothing to forgive," she said, "but I certainly cannot forget."
"You know that I love you," he protested.
"Love me;--yes, with what sort of love? But it does not matter. There need be no further talk about it. Your love to me can be nothing."
"Clarissa!"
"And to you it will be quite as little. Your heart will never suffer much, Ralph. How long is it since you offered your hand to my cousin? Only that you are just a boy playing at love, this would be an insult." Then she saw her old friend through the window. "Mrs. Brownlow," she said, "Mr. Newton is going, and I am ready for our walk whenever you please."
"Think of it twice, Clarissa;--must this be the end of it?" pleaded Ralph.
"As far as I am concerned it must be the end of it. When I get home I shall probably find that you have already made an offer to Patience." Then he got up, took his hat, and having shaken hands cordially with Mrs. Brownlow through the window, went out to his hansom cab, which was earning sixpence a quarter of an hour out on the road, while he had been so absolutely wasting his quarter of an hour within the house.
"Has he said anything, my dear?" asked Mrs. Brownlow.
"He has said a great deal."
"Well, my dear?"
"He is an empty, vain, inconstant man."
"Is he, Clarissa?"
"And yet he is so good-humoured, and so gay, and so pleasant, that I do not see why he should not make a very good husband to some girl."
"What do you mean, Clarissa? You have not refused him?"
"I did not say he had offered;--did I?"
"But he has?"
"If he did,--then I refused him. He is good-natured; but he has no more heart than a log of wood. Don't talk about it any more, dear Mrs. Brownlow. I dare say we shall all be friends again before long, and he'll almost forget everything that he said this morning."
Throughout the afternoon she was gay and almost happy, and before she went home she had made up her mind that she would tell Patience, and then get rid of it from her thoughts for ever. Not to tell Patience would be a breach of faith between them, and would moreover render future sisterly intercourse between them very difficult. But had it been possible she would have avoided the expression of triumph without which it would be almost impossible for her to tell the story. Within her own bosom certainly there was some triumph. The man for whose love she had sighed and been sick had surrendered to her at last. The prize had been at her feet, but she had not chosen to lift it. "Poor Ralph," she said to herself; "he means to do as well as he can, but he is so feeble." She certainly would not tell Mary Bonner, nor would she say a word to her father. And when she should meet Ralph again,--as she did not doubt but that she would meet him shortly, she would be very careful to give no sign that she was thinking of his disgrace. He should still be called Ralph,--till he was a married man; and when it should come to pass that he was about to marry she would congratulate him with all the warmth of old friendship.
That night she did tell it all to Patience. "You don't mean," she said, "that I have not done right?"
"I am sure you have done quite right."
"Then why are you so sober about it, Patty?"
"Only if you do love him--! I would give my right hand, Clary, that you might have that which shall make you happy in life."
"If you were to give your right and left hand too, a marriage with Ralph Newton would not make me happy. Think of it, Patty;--to both of us within two months! He is just like a child. How could I ever have respected him, or believed in him? I could never have respected myself again. No, Patty, I did love him dearly. I fancied that life without him must all be a dreary blank. I made him into a god;--but his feet are of the poorest clay! Kiss me, dear, and congratulate me;--because I have escaped."
Her sister did kiss her and did congratulate her;--but still there was a something of regret in the sister's heart. Clarissa was, to her thinking, so fit to be the mistress of Newton Priory.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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51
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MUSIC HAS CHARMS.
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The Commission appointed to examine into the condition of the borough of Percycross cannot exactly be said to have made short work of it, for it sat daily for many consecutive weeks, and examined half the voters in the town; but it made sharp work, and reported to the Speaker of the House such a tale of continual corruption, that all the world knew that the borough would be disfranchised. The glory of Percycross was gone, and in regard to political influence it was to be treated as the cities of the plain, and blotted from off the face of existence. The learned gentlemen who formed the Commission had traced home to Mr. Griffenbottom's breeches-pockets large sums of money which had been expended in the borough for purposes of systematised corruption during the whole term of his connection with it;--and yet they were not very hard upon Mr. Griffenbottom personally in their report. He had spent the money no doubt, but had so spent it that at every election it appeared that he had not expected to spend it till the bills were sent to him. He frankly owned that the borough had been ruinous to him; had made a poor man of him,--but assured the Commission at the same time that all this had come from his continued innocence. As every new election came round, he had hoped that that would at least be pure, and had been urgent in his instructions to his agents to that effect. He had at last learned, he said, that he was not a sufficient Hercules to cleanse so foul a stable. All this created no animosity against him in Percycross during the sitting of the Commission. His old friends, the Triggers, and Piles, and Spiveycombs, clung to him as closely as ever. Every man in Percycross knew that the borough was gone, and there really seemed at last to be something of actual gratitude in their farewell behaviour to the man who had treated the place as it liked to be treated. As the end of it all, the borough was undoubtedly to be disfranchised, and Mr. Griffenbottom left it,--a ruined man, indeed, according to his own statement,--but still with his colours flying, and, to a certain extent, triumphantly. So we will leave him, trusting,--or perhaps rather hoping,--that the days of Mr. Griffenbottom are nearly at an end.
His colleague, Sir Thomas, on the occasion of his third visit to Percycross,--a visit which he was constrained to make, sorely against his will, in order that he might give his evidence before the Commission,--remained there but a very short time. But while there he made a clean breast of it. He had gone down to the borough with the most steadfast purpose to avoid corruption; and had done his best in that direction. But he had failed. There had been corruption, for which he had himself paid in part. There had been treating of the grossest kind. Money had been demanded from him since the election, as to the actual destination of which he was profoundly ignorant. He did not, however, doubt but that this money had been spent in the purchase of votes. Sir Thomas was supposed to have betrayed the borough in his evidence, and was hooted out of the town. On this occasion he only remained there one night, and left Percycross for ever, after giving his evidence.
This happened during the second week in May. On his return to London he did not go down to Fulham, but remained at his chambers in a most unhappy frame of mind. This renewed attempt of his to enter the world and to go among men that he might do a man's work, had resulted in the loss of a great many hundred pounds, in absolute failure, and, as he wrongly told himself, in personal disgrace. He was almost ashamed to show himself at his club, and did for two days absolutely have his dinner brought to him in his chambers from an eating-house.
"I'm sure you won't like that, Sir Thomas," Stemm had said to him, expostulating, and knowing very well the nature of his master's sufferings.
"I don't know that I like anything very much," said Sir Thomas.
"I wouldn't go and not show my face because of other people's roguery," rejoined Stemm, with cruel audacity. Sir Thomas looked at him, but did not answer a word, and Stemm fetched the food.
"Stemm," said Sir Thomas the same evening, "it's getting to be fine weather now."
"It's fine enough," said Stemm.
"Do you take your nieces down to Southend for an outing. Go down on Thursday and come back on Saturday. I shall be at home. There's a five-pound note for the expenses." Stemm slowly took the note, but grunted and grumbled. The girls were nuisances to him, and he didn't want to take them an outing. They wouldn't care to go before July, and he didn't care to go at all. "You can go when you please," said Sir Thomas. Stemm growled and grumbled, and at last left the room with the money.
The morning afterwards Sir Thomas was sitting alone in his room absolutely wretched. He had so managed his life that there seemed to be nothing left to him in it worth the having. He had raised himself to public repute by his intellect and industry, and had then, almost at once, allowed himself to be hustled out of the throng simply because others had been rougher than he,--because other men had pushed and shouldered while he had been quiet and unpretending. Then he had resolved to make up for this disappointment by work of another kind,--by work which would, after all, be more congenial to him. He would go back to the dream of his youth, to the labours of former days, and would in truth write his Life of Bacon. He had then surrounded himself with his papers, had gotten his books together and read up his old notes, had planned chapters and sections, and settled divisions, had drawn up headings, and revelled in those paraphernalia of work which are so dear to would-be working men;--and then nothing had come of it. Of what use was it that he went about ever with a volume in his pocket, and read a page or two as he sat over his wine? When sitting alone in his room he did read; but when reading he knew that he was not working. He went, as it were, round and round the thing, never touching it, till the labour which he longed to commence became so frightful to him that he did not dare to touch it. To do that thing was the settled purpose of his life, and yet, from day to day and from month to month, it became more impossible to him even to make a beginning. There is a misery in this which only they who have endured it can understand. There are idle men who rejoice in idleness. Their name is legion. Idleness, even when it is ruinous, is delightful to them. They revel in it, look forward to it, and almost take a pride in it. When it can be had without pecuniary detriment, it is to such men a thing absolutely good in itself. But such a one was not Sir Thomas Underwood. And there are men who love work, who revel in that, who attack it daily with renewed energy, almost wallowing in it, greedy of work, who go to it almost as the drunkard goes to his bottle, or the gambler to his gaming-table. These are not unhappy men, though they are perhaps apt to make those around them unhappy. But such a one was not Sir Thomas Underwood. And again there are men, fewer in number, who will work though they hate it, from sheer conscience and from conviction that idleness will not suit them or make them happy. Strong men these are;--but such a one certainly was not Sir Thomas Underwood. Then there are they who love the idea of work, but want the fibre needful for the doing it. It may be that such a one will earn his bread as Sir Thomas Underwood had earned his, not flinching from routine task or even from the healthy efforts necessary for subsistence. But there will ever be present to the mind of the ambitious man the idea of something to be done over and above the mere earning of his bread;--and the ambition may be very strong, though the fibre be lacking. Such a one will endure an agony protracted for years, always intending, never performing, self-accusing through every wakeful hour, self-accusing almost through every sleeping hour. The work to be done is close there by the hand, but the tools are loathed, and the paraphernalia of it become hateful. And yet it can never be put aside. It is to be grasped to-morrow, but on every morrow the grasping of it becomes more difficult, more impossible, more revolting. There is no peace, no happiness for such a man;--and such a one was Sir Thomas Underwood.
In this strait he had been tempted to make another effort in political life, and he had made it. There had been no difficulty in this,--only that the work itself had been so disagreeable, and that he had failed in it so egregiously. During his canvass, and in all his intercourse with the Griffenbottomites, he had told himself, falsely, how pleasant to him it would be to return to his books;--how much better for him would be a sedentary life, if he could only bring himself to do, or even attempt to do, the work which he had appointed for himself. Now he had returned to his solitude, had again dragged out his papers, his note-book, his memoranda, his dates, and yet he could not in truth get into his harness, put his neck to the collar, and attempt to drag the burden up the hill.
He was sitting alone in his room in this condition, with a book in his hand of no value to his great purpose, hating himself and wretched, when Stemm opened his door, ushering Patience and Mary Bonner into his room. "Ah, my dears," he said, "what has brought you up to London? I did not think of seeing you here." There was no expression of positive displeasure in his voice, but it was understood by them all, by the daughter, by the cousin, by old Stemm, and by Sir Thomas himself, that such a visit as this was always to be regarded more or less as an intrusion. However, he kissed them both, and handed them chairs, and was more than usually civil to them.
"We do so want to hear about Percycross, papa," said Patience.
"There is nothing to be told about Percycross."
"Are you to stand again, papa?"
"Nobody will ever stand for Percycross again. It will lose its members altogether. The thing is settled."
"And you have had all the trouble for nothing, uncle?" Mary asked.
"All for nothing,--and the expense. But that is a very common thing, and I have no ground of complaint beyond many others."
"It does seem so hard," said Patience.
"So very hard," said Mary. And then they were silent. They had not come without a purpose; but, as is common with young ladies, they kept their purpose for the end of the interview.
"Are you coming home, papa?" Patience asked.
"Well, yes; I won't settle any day now, because I am very busy just at present. But I shall be home soon,--very soon."
"I do so hope you'll stay some time with us, papa."
"My dear, you know--" And then he stopped, having been pounced upon so suddenly that he had not resolved what excuse he would for the moment put forward. "I've got my papers and things in such confusion here at present,--because of Percycross and the trouble I have had,--that I cannot leave them just now."
"But why not bring the papers with you, papa?"
"My dear, you know I can't."
Then there was another pause. "Papa, I think you ought," said Patience. "Indeed I do, for Clary's sake,--and ours." But even this was not the subject which had specially brought them on that morning to Southampton Buildings.
"What is there wrong with Clary?" asked Sir Thomas.
"There is nothing wrong," said Patience "What do you mean then?"
"I think it would be so much more comfortable for her that you should see things as they are going on."
"I declare I don't know what she means. Do you know what she means, Mary?"
"Clary has not been quite herself lately," said Mary.
"I suppose it's something about that scamp, Ralph Newton," said Sir Thomas.
"No, indeed, papa; I am sure she does not think of him now." On this very morning, as the reader may perhaps remember, the scamp had gone down to Fulham, and from Fulham back to Brompton, in search of Clarissa; but of the scamp's energy and renewed affections, Patience as yet knew nothing. "Gregory has been up in London and has been down at Fulham once or twice. We want him to come again before he goes back on Saturday, and we thought if you would come home on Thursday, we could ask him to dinner." Sir Thomas scratched his head, and fidgeted in his chair. "Their cousin is in London also," continued Patience.
"The other Ralph; he who has bought Beamingham Hall?"
"Yes, papa; we saw him at the Academy. I told him how happy you would be to see him at Fulham."
"Of course I should be glad to see him; that is, if I happened to be at home," said Sir Thomas.
"But I could not name a day without asking you, papa."
"He will have gone back by this time," said Sir Thomas.
"I think not, papa."
"And what do you say, Mary?"
"I have nothing to say at all, uncle. If Mr. Newton likes to come to the villa, I shall be glad to see him. Why should I not? He has done nothing to offend me." There was a slight smile on her face as she spoke, and the merest hint of a blush on her cheek.
"They tell me that Beamingham Hall isn't much of a place after all," said Sir Thomas.
"From what Mr. Newton says, it must be a very ugly place," said Mary, with still the same smile and the same hint of a blush;--"only I don't quite credit all he tells us."
"If there is anything settled you ought to tell me," said Sir Thomas.
"There is nothing settled, uncle, or in any way of being settled. It so happened that Mr. Newton did speak to me about his new house. There is nothing more."
"Nevertheless, papa, pray let us ask him to dinner on Thursday." It was for the purpose of making this request that Patience had come to Southampton Buildings, braving her father's displeasure. Sir Thomas scratched his head, and rubbed his face, and yielded. Of course he had no alternative but to yield, and yet he did it with a bad grace. Permission, however, was given, and it was understood that Patience would write to the two young men, Ralph of Beamingham Hall and the parson, asking them to dinner for the day but one following. "As the time is so short, I've written the notes ready," said Patience, producing them from her pocket. Then the bell was rung, and the two notes were confided to Stemm. Patience, as she was going, found a moment in which to be alone with her father, and to speak one more word to him. "Dear papa, it would be so much better for us that you should come and live at home. Think of those two, with nobody, as it were, to say a word for them." Sir Thomas groaned, and again scratched his head; but Patience left him before he had arranged his words for an answer.
When they were gone, Sir Thomas sat for hours in his chair without moving, making the while one or two faint attempts at the book before him, but in truth giving up his mind to contemplation of the past and to conjectures as to the future, burdened by heavy regrets, and with hopes too weak to afford him any solace. The last words which Patience had spoken rang in his ears,--"Think of those two, with nobody, as it were, to say a word for them." He did think of them, and of the speaker also, and knew that he had neglected his duty. He could understand that such a girl as his own Clarissa did require some one "to say a word for her," some stalwart arm to hold her up, some loving strength to support her, some counsel to direct her. Of course those three girls were as other girls, looking forward to matrimony as their future lot in life, and it would not be well that they should be left to choose or to be chosen, or left to reject and be rejected, without any aid from their remaining parent. He knew that he had been wrong, and he almost resolved that the chambers in Southampton Buildings should be altogether abandoned, and his books removed to Popham Villa.
But such men do not quite resolve. Before he could lay his hand upon the table and assure himself that the thing should be done, the volume had been taken up again, used for a few minutes, and then the man's mind had run away again to that vague contemplation which is so much easier than the forming of a steady purpose. It was one of those almost sultry days which do come to us occasionally amidst the ordinary inclemency of a London May, and he was sitting with his window open, though there was a fire in the grate. As he sat, dreaming rather than thinking, there came upon his ear the weak, wailing, puny sound of a distant melancholy flute. He had heard it often before, and had been roused by it to evil wishes, and sometimes even to evil words, against the musician. It was the effort of some youth in the direction of Staple's Inn to soothe with music the savageness of his own bosom. It was borne usually on the evening air, but on this occasion the idle swain had taken up his instrument within an hour or two of his early dinner. His melody was burdened with no peculiar tune, but consisted of a few low, wailing, melancholy notes, such as may be extracted from the reed by a breath and the slow raising and falling of the little finger, much, we believe, to the comfort of the player, but to the ineffable disgust of, too often, a large circle of hearers.
Sir Thomas was affected by the sound long before he was aware that he was listening to it. To-whew, to-whew; to-whew, to-whew; whew-to-to, whew-to-to, whew, to-whew. On the present occasion the variation was hardly carried beyond that; but so much was repeated with a persistency which at last seemed to burden the whole air round Southampton Buildings. The little thing might have been excluded by the closing of the window; but Sir Thomas, though he suffered, did not reflect for a while whence the suffering came. Who does not know how such sounds may serve to enhance the bitterness of remorse, to add a sorrow to the present thoughts, and to rob the future of its hopes?
There come upon us all as we grow up in years, hours in which it is impossible to keep down the conviction that everything is vanity, that the life past has been vain from folly, and that the life to come must be vain from impotence. It is the presence of thoughts such as these that needs the assurance of a heaven to save the thinker from madness or from suicide. It is when the feeling of this pervading vanity is strongest on him, that he who doubts of heaven most regrets his incapacity for belief. If there be nothing better than this on to the grave,--and nothing worse beyond the grave, why should I bear such fardels?
Sir Thomas, as he sat there listening and thinking, unable not to think and not to listen, found that the fardels were very heavy. What good had come to him of his life,--to him or to others? And what further good did he dare to promise to himself? Had it not all been vanity? Was it not all vain to him now at the present? Was not life becoming to him vainer and still vainer every day? He had promised himself once that books should be the solace of his age, and he was beginning to hate his books, because he knew that he did no more than trifle with them. He had found himself driven to attempt to escape from them back into public life; but had failed, and had been inexpressibly dismayed in the failure. While failing, he had promised himself that he would rush at his work on his return to privacy and to quiet; but he was still as the shivering coward, who stands upon the brink, and cannot plunge in among the bathers. And then there was sadness beyond this, and even deeper than this. Why should he have dared to arrange for himself a life different from the life of the ordinary men and women who lived around him? Why had he not contented himself with having his children around him; walking with them to church on Sunday morning, taking them to the theatre on Monday evening, and allowing them to read him to sleep after tea on the Tuesday? He had not done these things, was not doing them now, because he had ventured to think himself capable of something that would justify him in leaving the common circle. He had left it, but was not justified. He had been in Parliament, had been in office, and had tried to write a book. But he was not a legislator, was not a statesman, and was not an author. He was simply a weak, vain, wretched man, who, through false conceit, had been induced to neglect almost every duty of life! To-whew, to-whew, to-whew, to-whew! As the sounds filled his ears, such were the thoughts which lay heavy on his bosom. So idle as he had been in thinking, so inconclusive, so frail, so subject to gusts of wind, so incapable of following his subject to the end, why had he dared to leave that Sunday-keeping, church-going, domestic, decent life, which would have become one of so ordinary a calibre as himself? There are men who may doubt, who may weigh the evidence, who may venture to believe or disbelieve in compliance with their own reasoning faculties,--who may trust themselves to think it out; but he, too clearly, had not been, was not, and never would be one of these. To walk as he saw other men walking around him,--because he was one of the many; to believe that to be good which the teachers appointed for him declared to be good; to do prescribed duties without much personal inquiry into the causes which had made them duties; to listen patiently, and to be content without excitement; that was the mode of living for which he should have known himself to be fit. But he had not known it, and had strayed away, and had ventured to think that he could think,--and had been ambitious. And now he found himself stranded in the mud of personal condemnation,--and that so late in life, that there remained to him no hope of escape. Whew-to-to; whew-to-to; whew,--to-whew. "Stemm, why do you let that brute go on with his cursed flute?" Stemm at that moment had opened the door to suggest that as he usually dined at one, and as it was now past three, he would go out and get a bit of something to eat.
"He's always at it, sir," said Stemm, pausing for a moment before he alluded to his own wants.
"Why the deuce is he always at it? Why isn't he indited for a nuisance? Who's to do anything with such a noise as that going on for hours together? He has nearly driven me mad."
"It's young Wobble as has the back attic, No. 17, in the Inn," said Stemm.
"They ought to turn him out," said Sir Thomas.
"I rather like it myself," said Stemm. "It suits my disposition, sir." Then he made his little suggestion in regard to his own personal needs, and of course was blown up for not having come in two hours ago to remind Sir Thomas that it was dinner-time. "It's because I wouldn't disturb you when you has the Bacon papers out, Sir Thomas," said Stemm serenely. Sir Thomas winced and shook his head; but such scenes as this were too common to have much effect. "Stemm!" he called aloud, as soon as the old clerk had closed the door; "Stemm!" Whereupon Stemm reappeared. "Stemm, have some one here next week to pack all these books."
"Pack all the books, Sir Thomas!"
"Yes;--to pack all the books. There must be cases. Now, go and get your dinner."
"New cases, Sir Thomas!"
"That will do. Go and get your dinner." And yet his mind was not quite made up.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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52
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GUS EARDHAM.
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Whether Mr. Neefit broke Ralph Newton's little statuette,--a miniature copy in porcelain of the Apollo Belvidere, which stood in a corner of Ralph's room, and in the possession of which he took some pride,--from awkwardness in his wrath or of malice prepense, was never known. He told the servant that he had whisked it down with his coat tails; but Ralph always thought that the breeches-maker had intended to make a general ruin, but had been cowed by the noise of his first attack. He did, at any rate, abstain from breaking other things, and when the servant entered the room, condescended to make some careless apology. "A trifle like that ain't nothing between me and your master, Jack," said Mr. Neefit, after accounting for the accident by his coat-tails.
"I am not Jack," said the indignant valet, with a strong foreign accent. "I am named--Adolphe."
"Adolphe, are you? I don't think much of Adolphe for a name;--but it ain't no difference to me. Just pick up them bits; will you?"
The man turned a look of scorn on Mr. Neefit, and did pick up the bits. He intended to obey his master as far as might be possible, but was very unwilling to wait upon the breeches-maker. He felt that the order which had been given to him was very cruel. It was his duty,--and his pleasure to wait upon gentlemen; but this man he knew to be a tradesman who measured customers for hunting apparel in his own shop. It was hard upon him that his master should go and leave him to be insulted, ordered about, and trodden upon by a breeches-maker. "Get me a bit of steak, will you?" demanded Neefit;--"a bit of the rump, not too much done, with the gravy in it,--and an onion. What are you staring at? Didn't you hear what your master said to you?"
"Onion,--and romp-steak!"
"Yes; rump-steak and onion. I ain't going out of this till I've had a bit of grub. Your master knows all about it. I'm going to have more nor that out of him before I've done with him."
Neefit did at last succeed, and had his rump-steak and onion, together with more brandy and soda-water, eating and drinking as he sat in Ralph's beautiful new easy chair,--not very much to his own comfort. A steak at the Prince's Feathers in Conduit Street would have been very much more pleasant to him, and he would have preferred half-and-half in the pewter to brandy and soda-water;--but he felt a pride in using his power in a fashion that would be disgraceful to his host. When he had done his steak he pulled his pipe out of his pocket, and smoked. Against this Adolphe remonstrated stoutly, but quite in vain. "The Captain won't mind a little baccy-smoke out of my pipe," he said. "He always has his smoke comfortable when he comes down to me." At last, about four o'clock, he did go away, assuring Adolphe that he would repeat his visit very soon. "I means to see a deal of the Captain this season," he said. At last, however, he retreated, and Adolphe opened the door of the house for him without speaking a word. "Bye, bye," said Neefit. "I'll be here again before long."
Ralph on that afternoon came home to dress for dinner at about seven, in great fear lest Neefit should still be found in his rooms. "No, saar; he go away at last!" said Adolphe, with a melancholy shake of his head.
"Has he done much harm?"
"The Apollo gone! --and he had romp-steak,--and onions,--and a pipe. Vat vas I to do? I hope he vill never come again." And so also did Mr. Newton hope that Neefit would never come again.
He was going to dine with Lady Eardham, the wife of a Berkshire baronet, who had three fair daughters. At this period of his life he found the aristocracy of Berkshire and Hampshire to be very civil to him; and, indeed, the world at large was disposed to smile on him. But there was very much in his lot to make him unhappy. He had on that morning been utterly rejected by Clarissa Underwood. It may, perhaps, be true that he was not a man to break his heart because a girl rejected him. He was certainly one who could have sung the old song, "If she be not fair for me, what care I how fair she be." And yet Clarissa's conduct had distressed him, and had caused him to go about throughout the whole afternoon with his heart almost in his boots. He had felt her coldness to him much more severely than he had that of Mary Bonner. He had taught himself to look upon that little episode with Mary as though it had really meant nothing. She had just crossed the sky of his heaven like a meteor, and for a moment had disturbed its serenity. And Polly also had been to him a false light, leading him astray for awhile under exceptional, and, as he thought, quite pardonable circumstances. But dear little Clary had been his own peculiar star,--a star that was bound to have been true to him, even though he might have erred for a moment in his worship,--a star with a sweet, soft, enduring light, that he had always assured himself he might call his own when he pleased. And now this soft, sweet star had turned upon him and scorched him. "When I get home," she had said to him, "I shall find that you have already made an offer to Patience!" He certainly had not expected such scorn from her. And then he was so sure in his heart that if she would have accepted him, he would have been henceforth so true to her, so good to her! He would have had such magnanimous pleasure in showering upon her pretty little head all the good things at his disposal, that, for her own sake, the pity was great. When he had been five minutes in his cab, bowling back towards his club, he was almost minded to return and give her one more chance. She would just have suited him. And as for her,--would it not be a heaven on earth for her if she would only consent to forget that foolish, unmeaning little episode. Could Clary have forgotten the episode, and been content to care little or nothing for that easiness of feeling which made our Ralph what he was, she might, probably, have been happy as the mistress of the Priory. But she would not have forgotten, and would not have been content. She had made up her little heart stoutly that Ralph the heir should sit in it no longer, and it was well for him that he did not go back.
He went to his club instead,--not daring to go to his rooms. The insanity of Neefit was becoming to him a terrible bane. It was, too, a cruelty which he certainly had done nothing to deserve. He could lay his hand on his heart and assure himself that he had treated that mad, pig-headed tradesman well in all respects. He knew himself to be the last man to make a promise, and then to break it wilfully. He had certainly borrowed money of Neefit;--and at the probable cost of all his future happiness he had, with a nobleness which he could not himself sufficiently admire, done his very best to keep the hard terms which in his distress he had allowed to be imposed upon himself. He had been loyal, even to the breeches-maker;--and this was the return which was made to him!
What was he to do, should Neefit cling to his threat and remain permanently at his chambers? There were the police, and no doubt he could rid himself of his persecutor. But he understood well the barbarous power which some underbred, well-trained barrister would have of asking him questions which it would be so very disagreeable for him to answer! He lacked the courage to send for the police. Jacky Joram had just distinguished himself greatly, and nearly exterminated a young gentleman who had married one girl while he was engaged to another. Jacky Joram might ask him questions as to his little dinners at Alexandra Lodge, which it would nearly kill him to answer. He was very unhappy, and began to think that it might be as well that he should travel for twelve months. Neefit could not persecute him up the Nile, or among the Rocky Mountains. And perhaps Clary's ferocity would have left her were he to return after twelve months of glorious journeyings, still constant to his first affections. In the meantime he did not dare to go home till it would be absolutely necessary that he should dress for dinner.
In the billiard-room of his club he found Lord Polperrow,--the eldest son of the Marquis of Megavissey,--pretty Poll, as he was called by many young men, and by some young ladies, about town. Lord Polperrow had become his fast friend since the day on which his heirship was established, and now encountered him with friendly intimacy. "Halloa, Newton," said the young lord, "have you seen old Neefit lately?" There were eight or ten men in the room, and suddenly there was silence among the cues.
Ralph would have given his best horse to be able to laugh it off, but he found that he could not laugh. He became very hot, and knew that he was red in the face. "What about old Neefit?" he said.
"I've just come from Conduit Street, and he says that he has been dining with you. He swears that you are to marry his daughter."
"He be d----!" said Newton. It was a poor way of getting out of the scrape, and so Ralph felt.
"But what's the meaning of it all? He's telling everybody about London that you went down to stay with him at Margate."
"Neefit has gone mad lately," said Captain Fooks, with a good-natured determination to stand by his friend in misfortune.
"But how about the girl, Newton?" asked his lordship.
"You may have her yourself, Poll,--if she don't prefer a young shoemaker, to whom I believe she's engaged. She's very pretty, and has got a lot of money--which will suit you to a T." He tried to put a good face on it; but, nevertheless, he was very hot and red in the face.
"I'd put a stop to this if I were you," said another friend, confidentially and in a whisper. "He's not only telling everybody, but writing letters about it."
"Oh, I know," said Ralph. "How can I help what a madman does? It's a bore of course." Then he sauntered out again, feeling sure that his transactions with Mr. Neefit would form the subject of conversation in the club billiard-room for the next hour and a half. It would certainly become expedient that he should travel abroad.
He felt it to be quite a relief when he found that Mr. Neefit was not waiting for him at his chambers. "Adolphe," he said as soon as he was dressed, "that man must never be allowed to put his foot inside the door again."
"Ah;--the Apollo gone! And he did it express!"
"I don't mind the figure;--but he must never be allowed to enter the place again. I shall not stay up long, but while we are here you must not leave the place till six. He won't come in the evening." Then he put a sovereign into the man's hand, and went out to dine at Lady Eardham's.
Lady Eardham had three fair daughters, with pretty necks, and flaxen hair, and blue eyes, and pug noses, all wonderfully alike. They ranged from twenty-seven to twenty-one, there being sons between,--and it began to be desirable that they should be married. Since Ralph had been in town the Eardham mansion in Cavendish Square had been opened to him with almost maternal kindness. He had accepted the kindness; but being fully alive to the purposes of matronly intrigue, had had his little jokes in reference to the young ladies. He liked young ladies generally, but was well aware that a young man is not obliged to offer his hand and heart to every girl that is civil to him. He and the Eardham girls had been exceedingly intimate, but he had had no idea whatever of sharing Newton Priory with an Eardham. Now, however, in his misery he was glad to go to a house in which he would be received with an assured welcome.
Everybody smiled upon him. Sir George in these days was very cordial, greeting him with that genial esoteric warmth which is always felt by one English country gentleman with a large estate for another equally blessed. Six months ago, when it was believed that Ralph had sold his inheritance to his uncle, Sir George when he met the young man addressed him in a very different fashion. As he entered the room he felt the warmth of the welcoming. The girls, one and all, had ever so many things to say to him. They all hunted, and they all wanted him to look at horses for them. Lady Eardham was more matronly than ever, and at the same time was a little fussy. She would not leave him among the girls, and at last succeeded in getting him off into a corner of the back drawing-room. "Now, Mr. Newton," she said, "I am going to show you that I put the greatest confidence in you."
"So you may," said Ralph, wondering whether one of the girls was to be offered to him, out of hand. At the present moment he was so low in spirits that he would probably have taken either.
"I have had a letter," said Lady Eardham, whispering the words into his ear;--and then she paused. "Such a strange letter, and very abominable. I've shown it to no one,--not even to Sir George. I wouldn't let one of the girls see it for ever so much." Then there was another pause. "I don't believe a word of it, Mr. Newton; but I think it right to show it to you,--because it's about you."
"About me?" said Ralph, with his mind fixed at once upon Mr. Neefit.
"Yes, indeed;--and when I tell you it refers to my girls too, you will see how strong is my confidence in you. If either had been specially named, of course I could not have shown it." Then she handed him the letter, which poor Ralph read, as follows:-- MY LADY,--I'm told as Mr. Ralph Newton, of Newton Priory, is sweet upon one of your ladyship's daughters. I think it my duty to tell your ladyship he's engaged to marry my girl, Maryanne Neefit.
Yours most respectful, THOMAS NEEFIT, Breeches-Maker, Conduit Street.
"It's a lie," said Ralph.
"I'm sure it's a lie," said Lady Eardham, "only I thought it right to show it you."
Ralph took Gus Eardham down to dinner, and did his very best to make himself agreeable. Gus was the middle one of the three, and was certainly a fine girl. The Eardham girls would have no money; but Ralph was not a greedy man,--except when he was in great need. It must not be supposed, however, that on this occasion he made up his mind to marry Gus Eardham. But, as on previous occasions, he had been able to hold all the Eardhams in a kind of subjection to himself, feeling himself to be bigger than they,--as hitherto he had been conscious that he was bestowing and they receiving,--so now, in his present misfortune, did he recognise that Gus was a little bigger than himself, and that it was for her to give and for him to take. And Gus was able to talk to him as though she also entertained the same conviction. Gus was very kind to him, and he felt grateful to her.
Lady Eardham saw Gus alone in her bedroom that night. "I believe he's a very good young man," said Lady Eardham, "if he's managed rightly. And as for all this about the horrid man's daughter, it don't matter at all. He'd live it down in a month if he were married."
"I don't think anything about that, mamma. I dare say he's had his fun,--just like other men."
"Only, my dear, he's one of that sort that have to be fixed."
"It's so hard to fix them, mamma."
"It needn't be hard to fix him,--that is, if you'll only be steady. He's not sharp and hard and callous, like some of them. He doesn't mean any harm, and if he once speaks out, he isn't one that can't be kept to time. His manners are nice. I don't think the property is involved; but I'll find out from papa; and he's just the man to think his wife the pink of perfection." Lady Eardham had read our hero's character not inaccurately.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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53
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THE END OF POLLY NEEFIT.
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Rumours, well-supported rumours, as to the kind of life which Mr. Neefit was leading reached Alexandra Cottage, filling Mrs. Neefit's mind with dismay, and making Polly very angry indeed. He came home always somewhat the worse for drink, and would talk of punching the heads both of Mr. Newton and of Mr. Ontario Moggs. Waddle, who was very true to his master's interests, had taken an opportunity of seeing Mrs. Neefit, and of expressing a very distinct idea that the business was going to the mischief. Mrs. Neefit was of opinion that in this emergency the business should be sold, and that they might safely remove themselves to some distant country,--to Tunbridge, or perhaps to Ware. Polly, however, would not accede to her mother's views. The evil must, she thought, be cured at once. "If father goes on like this, I shall just walk straight out of the house, and marry Moggs at once," Polly said. "Father makes no account of my name, and so I must just look out for myself." She had not as yet communicated these intentions to Ontario, but she was quite sure that she would be supported in her views by him whenever she should choose to do so.
Once or twice Ontario came down to the cottage, and when he did so, Mr. Neefit was always told of the visit. "I ain't going to keep anything from father, mother," Polly would say. "If he chooses to misbehave, that isn't my fault. I mean to have Mr. Moggs, and it's only natural I should like to see him." Neefit, when informed of these visits, after swearing that Moggs junior was a sneaking scoundrel to come to his house in his absence, would call upon Moggs senior, and swear with many threats that his daughter should have nothing but what she stood up in. Moggs senior would stand quite silent, cutting the skin on his hand with his shoemaker's knife, and would simply bid the infuriated breeches-maker good morning, when he left the shop. But, in truth, Mr. Moggs senior had begun to doubt. "I'd leave it awhile, Onty, if I was you," he said. "May be, after all, he'll give her nothing."
"I'll take her the first day she'll come to me,--money or no money," said Moggs junior.
Foiled ambition had, in truth, driven the breeches-maker to madness. But there were moments in which he was softened, melancholy, and almost penitent. "Why didn't you have him when he come down to Margate," he said, with the tears running down his cheek, that very evening after eating his rump-steak in Mr. Newton's rooms. The soda-water and brandy, with a little gin-and-water after it, had reduced him to an almost maudlin condition, so that he was unable to support his parental authority.
"Because I didn't choose, father. It wasn't his fault. He spoke fair enough,--though I don't suppose he ever wanted it. Why should he?"
"You might have had him then. He'd 've never dared to go back. I'd a killed him if he had."
"What good would it have done, father? He'd never have loved me, and he'd have despised you and mother."
"I wouldn't 've minded that," said Mr. Neefit, wiping his eyes.
"But I should have minded. What should I have felt with a husband as wouldn't have wanted me ever to have my own father in his house? Would that have made me happy?"
"It 'd 've made me happy to know as you was there."
"No, father; there would have been no happiness in it. When I came to see what he was I knew I should never love him. He was just willing to take me because of his word;--and was I going to a man like that? No, father;--certainly not." The poor man was at that moment too far gone in his misery to argue the matter further, and he lay on the old sofa, very much at Polly's mercy. "Drop it, father," she said. "It wasn't to be, and it couldn't have been. You'd better say you'll drop it." But, sick and uncomfortable as he was on that evening, he couldn't be got to say that he would drop it.
Nor could he be got to drop it for some ten days after that;--but on a certain evening he had come home very uncomfortable from the effects of gin-and-water, and had been spoken to very sensibly both by his wife and daughter.
By seven on the following morning Ontario Moggs was sitting in the front parlour of the house at Hendon, and Polly Neefit was sitting with him. He had never been there at so early an hour before, and it was thought afterwards by both Mr. and Mrs. Neefit that his appearance, so unexpected by them, had not surprised their daughter Polly. Could it have been possible that she had sent a message to him after that little scene with her father? There he was, at any rate, and Polly was up to receive him. "Now, Onty, that'll do. I didn't want to talk nonsense, but just to settle something."
"But you'll tell a fellow that you're glad to see him?"
"No, I won't. I won't tell a fellow anything he doesn't know already. You and I have got to get married."
"Of course we have."
"But we want father's consent. I'm not going to have him made unhappy, if I can help it. He's that wretched sometimes at present that my heart is half killed about him."
"The things he says are monstrous," asserted Moggs, thinking of the protestation lately made by the breeches-maker in his own hearing, to the effect that Ralph Newton should yet be made to marry his daughter.
"All the same I've got to think about him. There's a dozen or so of men as would marry me, Mr. Moggs; but I can never have another father."
"I'll be the first of the dozen any way," said the gallant Ontario.
"That depends. However, mother says so, and if father 'll consent, I won't go against it. I'll go to him now, before he's up, and I'll tell him you're here. I'll bring him to his senses if I can. I don't know whatever made him think so much about gentlemen."
"He didn't learn it from you, Polly."
"Perhaps he did, after all; and if so, that's the more reason why I'd forgive him." So saying, Polly went up-stairs upon her mission. On the landing she met her mother, and made known the fact that Ontario was in the parlour. "Don't you go to him, mother;--not yet," said Polly. Whereby it may be presumed that Mrs. Neefit had been informed of Mr. Moggs's visit before Polly had gone to him.
Mr. Neefit was in bed, and his condition apparently was not a happy one. He was lying with his head between his hands, and was groaning, not loudly, but very bitterly. His mode of life for the last month had not been of a kind to make him comfortable, and his conscience, too, was ill at ease. He had been a hard-working man, who had loved respectability and been careful of his wife and child. He had been proud to think that nobody could say anything against him, and that he had always paid his way. Up to the time of this disastrous fit of ambition on Polly's behalf he had never made himself ridiculous, and had been a prosperous tradesman, well thought of by his customers. Suddenly he had become mad, but not so mad as to be unconscious of his own madness. The failure of his hopes, joined to the inexpressibly bitter feeling that in their joint transactions young Newton had received all that had been necessary to him, whereas he, Neefit, had got none of that for which he had bargained,--these together had so upset him that he had lost his balance, had travelled out of his usual grooves, and had made an ass of himself. He knew he had made an ass of himself,--and was hopelessly endeavouring to show himself to be less of an ass than people thought him, by some success in his violence. If he could only punish young Newton terribly, people would understand why he had done all this. But drink had been necessary to give him courage for his violence, and now as he lay miserable in bed, his courage was very low.
"Father," said Polly, "shall I give you a drink?" Neefit muttered something, and took the cold tea that was offered to him. It was cold tea, with just a spoonful of brandy in it to make it acceptable. "Father, there ought to be an end of all this;--oughtn't there?"
"I don't know about no ends. I'll be down on him yet."
"No you won't, father. And why should you? He has done nothing wrong to you or me. I wouldn't have him if it was ever so."
"It's all been your fault, Polly."
"Yes;--my fault; that I wouldn't be made what you call a lady; to be taken away, so that I'd never see any more of you and mother!" Then she put her hand gently on his shoulder. "I couldn't stand that, father."
"I'd make him let you come to us."
"A wife must obey her husband, father. Mother always obeyed you."
"No, she didn't. She's again me now."
"Besides, I don't want to be a lady," said Polly, seeing that she had better leave that question of marital obedience; "and I won't be a lady. I won't be better than you and mother."
"You've been brought up better."
"I'll show my breeding, then, by being true to you, and true to the man I love. What would you think of your girl, if she was to give her hand to a--gentleman, when she'd given her heart to a--shoemaker?"
"Oh, d---- the shoemaker!"
"No, father, I won't have it. What is there against Ontario? He's a fine-hearted fellow, as isn't greedy after money,--as 'd kiss the very ground I stand on he's that true to me, and is a tradesman as yourself. If we had a little place of our own, wouldn't Ontario be proud to have you there, and give you the best of everything; and wouldn't I wait upon you, just only trying to know beforehand every tittle as you'd like to have. And if there was to be babies, wouldn't they be brought up to love you. If I'd gone with that young man down to his fine place, do you think it would have been like that? How 'd I've felt when he was too proud to let his boy know as you was my father?" Neefit turned on his bed and groaned. He was too ill at ease as to his inner man to argue the subject from a high point of view, or to assert that he was content to be abased himself in order that his child and grandchildren might be raised in the world. "Father," said Polly, "you have always been kind to me. Be kind to me now."
"The young 'uns is always to have their own way," said Neefit.
"Hasn't my way been your way, father?"
"Not when you wouldn't take the Captain when he come to Margate."
"I didn't love him, father. Dear father, say the word. We haven't been happy lately;--have we, father?"
"I ain't been very 'appy," said Neefit, bursting out into sobs.
She put her face upon his brow and kissed it. "Father, let us be happy again. Ontario is down-stairs,--in the parlour now."
"Ontario Moggs in my parlour!" said Neefit, jumping up in bed.
"Yes, father; Ontario Moggs,--my husband, as will be; the man I honour and love; the man that will honour and love you; as true a fellow as ever made a young woman happy by taking her. Let me tell him that you will have him for a son." In truth, Neefit did not speak the word;--but when Polly left the room, which she presently did after a long embrace, Mr. Neefit was aware that his consent to the union would be conveyed to Ontario Moggs in less than five minutes.
"And now you can name the day," said Ontario.
"I cannot do any such thing," replied Polly; "and I think that quite enough has been settled for one morning. It's give an inch and take an ell with some folks."
Ontario waited for breakfast, and had an interview with his future father-in-law. It was an hour after the scene up-stairs before Mr. Neefit could descend, and when he did come down he was not very jovial at the breakfast-table. "It isn't what I like, Moggs," was the first word that he spoke when the young politician rose to grasp the hand of his future father-in-law.
"I hope you'll live to like it, Mr. Neefit," said Ontario, who, now that he was to have his way in regard to Polly, was prepared to disregard entirely any minor annoyances.
"I don't know how that may be. I think my girl might have done better. I told her so, and I just tell you the same. She might a' done a deal better, but women is always restive."
"We like to have our own way about our young men, father," said Polly, who was standing behind her father's chair.
"Bother young men," said the breeches-maker. After that the interview passed off, if not very pleasantly, at least smoothly,--and it was understood that Mr. Neefit was to abandon that system of persecution against Ralph Newton, to which his life had been devoted for the last few weeks.
After that there was a pretty little correspondence between Polly and Ralph, with which the story of Polly's maiden life may be presumed to be ended, and which shall be given to the reader, although by doing so the facts of our tale will be somewhat anticipated. Polly, with her father's permission, communicated the fact of her engagement to her former lover.
Hendon, Saturday.
DEAR SIR,-- Father thinks it best that I should tell you that I am engaged to marry Mr. Ontario Moggs,--whom you will remember. He is a most respectable tradesman, and stood once for a member of Parliament, and I think he will make me quite happy; and I'm quite sure that's what I'm fitted for.
Whether Polly meant that she was fitted to be made happy, or fitted to be the wife of a tradesman who stood for Parliament, did not appear quite clearly.
There have been things which we are very sorry for, and hope you'll forgive and forget. Father bids me say how sorry he is he broke a figure of a pretty little man in your room. He would get another, only he would not know where to go for it.
Wishing you always may be happy, believe me to remain, Yours most respectfully, MARYANNE NEEFIT.
Ralph's answer was dated about a fortnight afterwards;-- --, Cavendish Square, 1 June, 186--.
MY DEAR POLLY,-- I hope you will allow me to call you so now for the last time. I am, indeed, happy that you are going to be married. I believe Mr. Moggs to be a most excellent fellow. I hope I may often see him,--and sometimes you. He must allow you to accept a little present which I send you, and never be jealous if you wear it at your waist. The pretty little man that your father broke by accident in my rooms did not signify at all. Pray tell him so from me.
Believe me to be your very sincere friend, RALPH NEWTON.
I may as well tell you my own secret. I am going to be married, too. The young lady lives in this house, and her name is Augusta Eardham.
This letter was sent by messenger from Cavendish Square, with a very handsome watch and chain. A month afterwards, when he was preparing to leave London for Brayboro' Park, he received a little packet, with a note as follows;-- Linton, Devonshire, Wednesday.
DEAR MR. NEWTON,-- I am so much obliged for the watch, and so is Ontario, who will never be jealous, I'm sure. It is a most beautiful thing, and I shall value it, oh! so much. I am very glad you are going to be married, and should have answered before, only I wanted to finish making with my own hand a little chain which I send you. And I hope your sweetheart won't be jealous either. We looked her out in a book, and found she is the daughter of a great gentleman with a title. That is all just as it should be. Ontario sends his respects. We have come down here for the honeymoon.
I remain, yours very sincerely, MARYANNE MOGGS.
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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54
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MY MARY.
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Both the invitations sent by Patience Underwood were accepted, and Sir Thomas, on the day named, was at home to receive them. Nothing had as yet been done as to the constructing of those cases which he so suddenly ordered to be made for his books; and, indeed, Stemm had resolved to take the order as meaning nothing. It would not be for him to accelerate his master's departure from Southampton Buildings, and he knew enough of the man to be aware that he must have some very strong motive indeed before so great a change could be really made. When Sir Thomas left Southampton Buildings for Fulham, on the day named for the dinner, not a word further had been said about packing the books.
There was no company at the villa besides Sir Thomas, the three girls, and the two young men. As to Clarissa, Patience said not a word, even to her father,--that must still be left till time should further cure the wound that had been made;--but she did venture to suggest, in private with Sir Thomas, that it was a pity that he who was certainly the more worthy of the two Ralphs should not be made to understand that others did not think so much of the present inferiority of his position in the world as he seemed to think himself.
"You mean that Mary would take him?" asked Sir Thomas.
"Why should she not, if she likes him? He is very good."
"I can't tell him to offer to her, without telling him also that he would be accepted."
"No;--I suppose not," said Patience.
Nevertheless, Sir Thomas did speak to Ralph Newton before dinner,--stuttering and muttering, and only half finishing his sentence. "We had a correspondence once, Mr. Newton. I dare say you remember."
"I remember it very well, Sir Thomas."
"I only wanted to tell you;--you seem to think more about what has taken place,--I mean as to the property,--than we do;--that is, than I do."
"It has made a change."
"Yes; of course. But I don't know that a large place like Newton is sure to make a man happy. Perhaps you'd like to wash your hands before dinner." Gregory, in the meantime, was walking round the garden with Mary and Clarissa.
The dinner was very quiet, but pleasant and cheerful. Sir Thomas talked a good deal, and so did Patience. Mary also was at her ease, and able to do all that was required of her. Ralph certainly was not gay. He was seated next to Clarissa, and spoke a few words now and again; but he was arranging matters in his mind; and Patience, who was observing them all, knew that he was pre-occupied. Clarissa, who now and again would forget her sorrow and revert to her former self,--as she had done in the picture-gallery,--could not now, under the eye as it were of her father, her sister, and her old lover, forget her troubles. She knew what was expected of her; but she could not do it;--she could not do it at least as yet. Nevertheless, Patience, who was the engineer in the present crisis, was upon the whole contented with the way in which things were going.
The three girls sat with the gentlemen for a quarter of an hour after the decanters were put upon the table, and then withdrew. Sir Thomas immediately began to talk about Newton Priory, and to ask questions which might interest the parson without, as he thought, hurting the feelings of the disinherited Ralph. This went on for about five minutes, during which Gregory was very eloquent about his church and his people, when, suddenly, Ralph rose from his chair and withdrew. "Have I said anything that annoyed him?" asked Sir Thomas anxiously.
"It is not that, I think," said Gregory.
Ralph walked across the passage, opened the door of the drawing-room, in which the three girls were at work, walked up to the chair in which Mary Bonner was sitting, and said something in so low a voice that neither of the sisters heard him.
"Certainly I will," said Mary, rising from her chair. Patience glanced round, and could see that the colour, always present in her cousin's face, was heightened,--ever so little indeed; but still the tell-tale blush had told its tale. Ralph stood for a moment while Mary moved away to the door, and then followed her without speaking a word to the other girls, or bestowing a glance on either of them.
"He is going to propose to her," said Clarissa as soon as the door was shut.
"No one can be sure," said Patience.
"Only fancy,--asking a girl to go out of the room,--in that brave manner! I shouldn't have gone because I'm a coward; but it's just what Mary will like."
"Let me get my hat, Mr. Newton," said Mary, taking the opportunity to trip up-stairs, though her hat was hanging in the hall. When she was in her room she merely stood upright there, for half a minute, in the middle of the chamber, erect and stiff, with her arms and fingers stretched out, thinking how she would behave herself. Half a minute sufficed for her to find her clue, and then she came down as quickly as her feet would carry her. He had opened the front door, and was standing outside upon the gravel, and there she joined him.
"I had no other way but this of speaking to you," he said.
"I don't dislike coming out at all," she answered. Then there was silence for a moment or two as they walked along into the gloom of the shrubbery. "I suppose you are going down to Norfolk soon?" she said.
"I do not quite know. I thought of going to-morrow."
"So soon as that?"
"But I've got something that I want to settle. I think you must know what it is." Then he paused again, almost as though he expected her to confess that she did know. But Mary was well aware that it was not for her to say another word till he had fully explained in most open detail what it was that he desired to settle. "You know a good deal of my history, Miss Newton. When I thought that things were going well with me,--much better than I had ever allowed myself to expect in early days, I,--I,--became acquainted with you." Again he paused, but she had not a word to say. "I dare say you were not told, but I wrote to your uncle then, asking him whether I might have his consent to,--just to ask you to be my wife." Again he paused, but after that he hurried on, speaking the words as quickly as he could throw them forth from his mouth. "My father died, and of course that changed everything. I told your uncle that all ground for pretension that I might have had before was cut from under me. He knew the circumstances of my birth,--and I supposed that you would know it also."
Then she did speak. "Yes, I did," she said.
"Perhaps I was foolish to think that the property would make a difference. But the truth of it is, I have not got over the feeling, and shall never get over it. I love you with all my heart,--and though it be for no good, I must tell you so."
"The property can make no difference," she said. "You ought to have known that, Mr. Newton."
"Ah;--but it does. I tried to tell you the other day something of my present home."
"Yes;--I know you did;--and I remember it all."
"There is nothing more to be said;--only to ask you to share it with me."
She walked on with him in silence for a minute; but he said nothing more to press his suit, and certainly it was her turn to speak now. "I will share it with you," she said, pressing her arm upon his.
"My Mary!"
"Yes;--your Mary,--if you please." Then he took her in his arms, and pressed her to his bosom, and kissed her lips and forehead, and threw back her hat, and put his fingers among her hair. "Why did you say that the property would make a difference?" she asked, in a whisper. To this he made no answer, but walked on silently, with his arm round her waist, till they came out from among the trees, and stood upon the bank of the river. "There are people in the boats. You must put your arm down," she said.
"I wonder how you will like to be a farmer's wife?" he asked.
"I have not an idea."
"I fear so much that you'll find it rough and hard."
"But I have an idea about something." She took his hand, and looked up into his face as she continued. "I have an idea that I shall like to be your wife." He was in a seventh heaven of happiness, and would have stood there gazing on the river with her all night, if she would have allowed him. At last they walked back into the house together,--and into the room where the others were assembled, with very little outward show of embarrassment. Mary was the first to enter the room, and though she blushed she smiled also, and every one knew what had taken place. There was no secret or mystery, and in five minutes her cousins were congratulating her. "It's all settled for you now," said Clarissa laughing.
"Yes, it's all settled for me now, and I wouldn't have it unsettled for all the world."
While this was being said in the drawing-room,--being said even in the presence of poor Gregory, who could not but have felt how hard it was for him to behold such bliss, Sir Thomas and Ralph had withdrawn into the opposite room. Ralph began to apologise for his own misfortunes,--his misfortune in having lost the inheritance, his misfortune in being illegitimate; but Sir Thomas soon cut his apologies short. "You think a great deal more of it than she does, or than I do," said Sir Thomas.
"If she does not regard it, I will never think of it again," said Ralph. "My greatest glory in what had been promised me was in thinking that it might help to win her."
"You have won her without such help as that," said Sir Thomas, with his arm on the young man's shoulder.
There was another delicious hour in store for him as they sat over their late tea. "Do you still think of going to Norfolk to-morrow?" she said to him, with that composure which in her was so beautiful, and, at the same time, so expressive.
"By an early train in the morning."
"I thought that perhaps you might have stayed another day now."
"I thought that perhaps you might want me to come back again," said Ralph;--"and, if so, I could make arrangements;--perhaps for a week or ten days."
"Do come back," she said. "And do stay."
Ralph's triumph as he returned that evening to London received Gregory's fullest sympathy; but still it must have been hard to bear. Perhaps his cousin's parting words contained for him some comfort. "Give her a little time, and she will be yours yet. I shall find it all out from Mary, and you may be sure we shall help you."
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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55
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COOKHAM.
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We have been obliged to anticipate in some degree the course of our story by the necessity which weighed upon us of completing the history of Polly Neefit. In regard to her we will only further express an opinion,--in which we believe that we shall have the concurrence of our readers,--that Mr. Moggs junior had chosen well. Her story could not be adequately told without a revelation of that correspondence, which, while it has explained the friendly manner in which the Neefit-Newton embarrassments were at last brought to an end, has, at the same time, disclosed the future lot in life of our hero,--as far as a hero's lot in life may be said to depend on his marriage.
Mr. Neefit had been almost heart-broken, because he was not satisfied that his victim was really punished by any of those tortures which his imagination invented, and his energy executed. Even when the "pretty little man" was smashed, and was, in truth, smashed of malice prepense by a swinging blow from Neefit's umbrella, Neefit did not feel satisfied that he would thereby reach his victim's heart. He could project his own mind with sufficient force into the bosom of his enemy to understand that the onions and tobacco consumed in that luxurious chamber would cause annoyance;--but he desired more than annoyance;--he wanted to tear the very heart-strings of the young man who had, as he thought, so signally outwitted him. He did not believe that he was successful; but, in truth, he did make poor Ralph very unhappy. The heir felt himself to be wounded, and could not eat and drink, or walk and talk, or ride in the park, or play billiards at his club, in a manner befitting the owner of Newton Priory. He was so injured by Neefit that he became pervious to attacks which would otherwise have altogether failed in reaching him. Lady Eardham would never have prevailed against him as she did,--conquering by a quick repetition of small blows,--had not all his strength been annihilated for the time by the persecutions of the breeches-maker.
Lady Eardham whispered to him as he was taking his departure on the evening of the dinner in Cavendish Square. "Dear Mr. Newton,--just one word," she said, confidentially,--"that must be a very horrid man,"--alluding to Mr. Neefit.
"It's a horrid bore, you know, Lady Eardham."
"Just so;--and it makes me feel,--as though I didn't quite know whether something ought not to be done. Would you mind calling at eleven to-morrow? Of course I shan't tell Sir George,--unless you think he ought to be told." Ralph promised that he would call, though he felt at the moment that Lady Eardham was an interfering old fool. Why should she want to do anything; and why should she give even a hint as to telling Sir George? As he walked across Hanover Square and down Bond Street to his rooms he did assert to himself plainly that the "old harridan," as he called her, was at work for her second girl, and he shook his head and winked his eye as he thought of it. But, even in his solitude, he did not feel strong against Lady Eardham, and he moved along the pavement oppressed by a half-formed conviction that her ladyship would prevail against him. He did not, however, think that he had any particular objection to Gus Eardham. There was a deal of style about the girl, a merit in which either Clarissa or Mary would have been sadly deficient. And there could be no doubt in this,--that a man in his position ought to marry in his own class. The proper thing for him to do was to make the daughter of some country gentleman,--or of some nobleman, just as it might happen,--mistress of the Priory. Dear little Clary would hardly have known how to take her place properly down in Hampshire. And then he thought for a moment of Polly! Perhaps, after all, fate, fashion, and fortune managed marriage for young men better than they could manage it for themselves. What a life would his have been had he really married Polly Neefit! Though he did call Lady Eardham a harridan, he resolved that he would keep his promise for the following morning.
Lady Eardham when he arrived was mysterious, eulogistic, and beneficent. She was clearly of opinion that something should be done. "You know it is so horrid having these kind of things said." And yet she was almost equally strong in opinion that nothing could be done. "You know I wouldn't have my girl's name brought up for all the world;--though why the horrid wretch should have named her I cannot even guess." The horrid wretch had not, in truth, named any special her, though it suited Lady Eardham to presume that allusion had been made to that hope of the flock, that crowning glory of the Eardham family, that most graceful of the Graces, that Venus certain to be chosen by any Paris, her second daughter, Gus. She went on to explain that were she to tell the story to her son Marmaduke, her son Marmaduke would probably kill the breeches-maker. As Marmaduke Eardham was, of all young men about town, perhaps the most careless, the most indifferent, and the least ferocious, his mother was probably mistaken in her estimate of his resentful feelings. "As for Sir George, he would be for taking the law of the wretch for libel, and then we should be--! I don't know where we should be then; but my dear girl would die."
Of course there was nothing done. During the whole interview Lady Eardham continued to press Neefit's letter under her hand upon the table, as though it was of all documents the most precious. She handled it as though to tear it would be as bad as to tear an original document bearing the king's signature. Before the interview was over she had locked it up in her desk, as though there were something in it by which the whole Eardham race might be blessed or banned. And, though she spoke no such word, she certainly gave Ralph to understand that by this letter he, Ralph Newton, was in some mysterious manner so connected with the secrets, and the interests, and the sanctity of the Eardham family, that, whether such connection might be for weal or woe, the Newtons and the Eardhams could never altogether free themselves from the link. "Perhaps you had better come and dine with us in a family way to-morrow," said Lady Eardham, giving her invitation as though it must necessarily be tendered, and almost necessarily accepted. Ralph, not thanking her, but taking it in the same spirit, said that he would be there at half past seven. "Just ourselves," said Lady Eardham, in a melancholy tone, as though they two were doomed to eat family dinners together for ever after.
"I suppose the property is really his own?" said Lady Eardham to her husband that afternoon.
Sir George was a stout, plethoric gentleman, with a short temper and many troubles. Marmaduke was expensive, and Sir George himself had spent money when he was young. The girls, who knew that they had no fortunes, expected that everything should be done for them, at least during the period of their natural harvest,--and they were successful in having their expectations realised. They demanded that there should be horses to ride, servants to attend them, and dresses to wear; and they had horses, servants, and dresses. There were also younger children; and Sir George was quite as anxious as Lady Eardham that his daughters should become wives. "His own? --of course it's his own. Who else should it belong to?"
"There was something about that other young man."
"The bastard! It was the greatest sin that ever was thought of to palm such a fellow as that off on the county;--but it didn't come to anything."
"I'm told, too, he has been very extravagant. No doubt he did get money from the,--the tailor who wants to make him marry his daughter."
"A flea-bite," said Sir George. "Don't you bother about that." Thus authorised, Lady Eardham went to the work with a clear conscience and a good will.
On the next morning Ralph received by post an envelope from Sir Thomas Underwood containing a letter addressed to him from Mr. Neefit. "Sir,--Are you going to make your ward act honourable to me and my daughter? --Yours, respectful, THOMAS NEEFIT." The reader will understand that this was prior to Polly's triumph over her father. Ralph uttered a deep curse, and made up his mind that he must either throw himself entirely among the Eardhams, or else start at once for the Rocky Mountains. He dined in Cavendish Square that day, and again took Gus down to dinner.
"I'm very glad to see you here," said Sir George, when they two were alone together after the ladies had left them. Sir George, who had been pressed upon home service because of the necessity of the occasion, was anxious to get off to his club.
"You are very kind, Sir George," said Ralph.
"We shall be delighted to see you at Brayboro', if you'll come for a week in September and look at the girls' horses. They say you're quite a pundit about horseflesh."
"Oh, I don't know," said Ralph.
"You'll like to go up to the girls now, I dare say, and I've got an engagement." Then Sir George rang the bell for a cab, and Ralph went up-stairs to the girls. Emily had taken herself away; Josephine was playing bésique with her mother, and Gus was thus forced into conversation with the young man. "Bésique is so stupid," said Gus.
"Horribly stupid," said Ralph.
"And what do you like, Mr. Newton?"
"I like you," said Ralph. But he did not propose on that evening. Lady Eardham thought he ought to have done so, and was angry with him. It was becoming almost a matter of necessity with her that young men should not take much time. Emily was twenty-seven, and Josephine was a most difficult child to manage,--not pretty, but yet giving herself airs and expecting everything. She had refused a clergyman with a very good private fortune, greatly to her mother's sorrow. And Gus had already been the source of much weary labour. Four eldest sons had been brought to her feet and been allowed to slip away; and all, as Lady Eardham said, because Gus would "joke" with other young men, while the one man should have received all her pleasantry. Emily was quite of opinion that young Newton should by no means have been allotted to Gus. Lady Eardham, who had played bésique with an energy against which Josephine would have mutinied but that some promise was made as to Marshall and Snelgrove, could see from her little table that young Newton was neither abject nor triumphant in his manner. He had not received nor had he even asked when he got up to take his leave. Lady Eardham could have boxed his ears; but she smiled upon him ineffably, pressed his hand, and in the most natural way in the world alluded to some former allusion about riding and the park.
"I shan't ride to-morrow," said Gus, with her back turned to them.
"Do," said Ralph.
"No; I shan't."
"You see what she says, Lady Eardham," said Ralph.
"You promised you would before dinner, my dear," said Lady Eardham, "and you ought not to change your mind. If you'll be good-natured enough to come, two of them will go." Of course it was understood that he would come.
"Nothing on earth, mamma, shall ever induce me to play bésique again," said Josephine, yawning.
"It's not worse for you than for me," said the old lady sharply.
"But it isn't fair," said Josephine, who was supposed to be the clever one of the family. "I may have to play my bésique a quarter of a century hence."
"He's an insufferable puppy," said Emily, who had come into the room, and had been pretending to be reading.
"That's because he don't bark at your bidding, my dear," said Gus.
"It doesn't seem that he means to bark at yours," said the elder sister.
"If you go on like that, girls, I'll tell your papa, and we'll go to Brayboro' at once. It's too bad, and I won't bear it."
"What would you have me do?" said Gus, standing up for herself fiercely.
Gus did ride, and so did Josephine, and there was a servant with them of course. It had been Emily's turn,--there being two horses for the three girls; but Gus had declared that no good could come if Emily went;--and Emily's going had been stopped by parental authority. "You do as you're bid," said Sir George, "or you'll get the worst of it." Sir George suffered much from gout, and had obtained from the ill-temper which his pangs produced a mastery over his daughters which some fathers might have envied.
"You behaved badly to me last night, Mr. Newton," said Gus, on horseback. There was another young man riding with Josephine, so that the lovers were alone together.
"Behaved badly to you?"
"Yes, you did, and I felt it very much,--very much indeed."
"How did I behave badly?"
"If you do not know, I'm sure that I shall not tell you." Ralph did not know;--but he went home from his ride an unengaged man, and may perhaps have been thought to behave badly on that occasion also.
But Lady Eardham, though she was sometimes despondent and often cross, was gifted with perseverance. A picnic party up the river from Maidenhead to Cookham was got up for the 30th of May, and Ralph Newton of course was there. Just at that time the Neefit persecution was at its worst. Letters directed by various hands came to him daily, and in all of them he was asked when he meant to be on the square. He knew the meaning of that picnic as well as does the reader,--as well as did Lady Eardham; but it had come to that with him that he was willing to yield. It cannot exactly be said for him that out of all the feminine worth that he had seen, he himself had chosen Gus Eardham as being the most worthy,--or even that he had chosen her as being to him the most charming. But it was evident to him that he must get married, and why not to her as well as to another? She had style, plenty of style; and, as he told himself, style for a man in his position was more than anything else. It can hardly be said that he had made up his mind to offer to her before he started for Cookham,--though doubtless through all the remaining years of his life he would think that his mind had been so fixed,--but he had concluded, that if she were thrown at his head very hard, he might as well take her. "I don't think he ever does drink champagne," said Lady Eardham, talking it all over with Gus on the morning of the picnic.
At Cookham there is, or was, a punt,--perhaps there always will be one, kept there for such purposes;--and into this punt either Gus was tempted by Ralph, or Ralph by Gus. "My darling child, what are you doing?" shouted Lady Eardham from the bank.
"Mr. Newton says he can take me over," said Gus, standing up in the punt, shaking herself with a pretty tremor.
"Don't, Mr. Newton; pray don't!" cried Lady Eardham, with affected horror.
Lunch was over, or dinner, as it might be more properly called, and Ralph had taken a glass or two of champagne. He was a man whom no one had ever seen the "worse for wine;" but on this occasion that which might have made others drunk had made him bold. "I will not let you out, Gus, till you have promised me one thing," said Ralph.
"What is the one thing?"
"That you will go with me everywhere, always."
"You must let me out," said Gus.
"But will you promise?" Then Gus promised; and Lady Eardham, with true triumph in her voice, was able to tell her husband on the following morning that the cost of the picnic had not been thrown away.
On the next morning early Ralph was in the square. Neither when he went to bed at night, nor when he got up in the morning, did he regret what he had done. The marriage would be quite a proper marriage. Nobody could say that he had been mercenary, and he hated a mercenary feeling in marriages. Nobody could say that the match was beneath him, and all people were agreed that Augusta Eardham was a very fine girl. As to her style, there could be no doubt about it. There might be some little unpleasantness in communicating the fact to the Underwoods,--but that could be done by letter. After all, it would signify very little to him what Sir Thomas thought about him. Sir Thomas might think him feeble; but he himself knew very well that there had been no feebleness in it. His circumstances had been very peculiar, and he really believed that he had made the best of them. As Squire of Newton, he was doing quite the proper thing in marrying the daughter of a baronet out of the next county. With a light heart, a pleased face, and with very well got-up morning apparel, Ralph knocked the next morning at the door in Cavendish Square, and asked for Sir George Eardham. "I'll just run up-stairs for a second," said Ralph, when he was told that Sir George was in the small parlour.
He did run up-stairs, and in three minutes had been kissed by Lady Eardham and all her daughters. At this moment Gus was the "dearest child" and the "best love of a thing" with all of them. Even Emily remembered how pleasant it might be to have a room at Newton Priory, and then success always gives a new charm.
"Have you seen Sir George?" asked Lady Eardham.
"Not as yet;--they said he was there, but I had to come up and see her first, you know."
"Go down to him," said Lady Eardham, patting her prey on the back twice. "When you've daughters of your own, you'll expect to be consulted."
"She couldn't have done better, my dear fellow," said Sir George, with kind, genial cordiality. "She couldn't have done better, to my thinking, even with a peerage. I like you, and I like your family, and I like your property; and she's yours with all my heart. A better girl never lived."
"Thank you, Sir George."
"She has no money, you know."
"I don't care about money, Sir George."
"My dear boy, she's yours with all my heart; and I hope you'll make each other happy."
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{
"id": "25579"
}
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56
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RALPH NEWTON IS BOWLED AWAY.
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A day or two after his engagement, Ralph did write his letter to Sir Thomas, and found when the moment came that the task was difficult. But he wrote it. The thing had to be done, and there was nothing to be gained by postponing it.
---- Club, June 2, 186--.
MY DEAR SIR THOMAS,-- You will, I hope, be glad to hear that I am engaged to be married to Augusta Eardham, the second daughter of Sir George Eardham, of Brayboro' Park, in Berkshire. Of course you will know the name, and I rather think you were in the House when Sir George sat for Berkshire. Augusta has got no money, but I have not been placed under the disagreeable necessity of looking out for a rich wife. I believe we shall be married about the end of August. As the ceremony will take place down at Brayboro', I fear that I cannot expect that you or Patience and Clarissa should come so far. Pray tell them my news, with my best love.
Yours, most grateful for all your long kindness, RALPH NEWTON.
I am very sorry that you should have been troubled by letters from Mr. Neefit. The matter has been arranged at last.
The letter when done was very simple, but it took him some time, and much consideration. Should he or should he not allude to his former loves? It was certainly much easier to write his letter without any such allusion, and he did so.
About a week after this Sir Thomas went home to Fulham, and took the letter with him. "Clary," he said, taking his youngest daughter affectionately by the waist, when he found himself alone with her. "I've got a piece of news for you."
"For me, papa?"
"Well, for all of us. Somebody is going to be married. Who do you think it is?"
"Not Ralph Newton?" said Clarissa, with a little start.
"Yes, Ralph Newton."
"How quick he arranges things!" said Clarissa. There was some little emotion, just a quiver, and a quick rush of blood into her cheeks, which, however, left them just as quickly.
"Yes;--he is quick."
"Who is it, papa?"
"A very proper sort of person,--the daughter of a Berkshire baronet."
"But what is her name?"
"Augusta Eardham."
"Augusta Eardham. I hope he'll be happy, papa. We've known him a long time."
"I think he will be happy;--what people call happy. He is not gifted,--or cursed, as it may be,--with fine feelings, and is what perhaps may be called thick-skinned; but he will love his own wife and children. I don't think he will be a spendthrift now that he has plenty to spend, and he is not subject to what the world calls vices. I shouldn't wonder if he becomes a prosperous and most respectable country gentleman, and quite a model to his neighbours."
"It doesn't seem to matter much;--does it?" said Clarissa, when she told the story to Mary and Patience.
"What doesn't matter?" asked Mary.
"Whether a man cares for the girl he's going to marry, or doesn't care at all. Ralph Newton cannot care very much for Miss Eardham."
"I think it matters very much," said Mary.
"Perhaps, after all, he'll be just as fond of his wife, in a way, as though he had been making love to her,--oh, for years," said Clarissa. This was nearly all that was said at the villa, though, no doubt, poor Clary had many thoughts on the matter, in her solitary rambles along the river. That picture of the youth, as he lay upon the lawn, looking up into her eyes, and telling her that she was dear to him, could not easily be effaced from her memory. Sir Thomas before this had written his congratulations to Ralph. They had been very short, and in them no allusion had been made to the young ladies at Popham Villa.
In the meantime Ralph was as happy as the day was long, and delighted with his lot in life. For some weeks previous to his offer he had been aware that Lady Eardham had been angling for him as for a fish, that he had been as a prey to her and to her daughter, and that it behoved him to amuse himself without really taking the hook between his gills. He had taken the hook, and now had totally forgotten all those former notions of his in regard to a prey, and a fish, and a mercenary old harridan of a mother. He had no sooner been kissed all round by the women, and paternally blessed by Sir George, than he thought that he had exercised a sound judgment, and had with true wisdom arranged to ally himself with just the woman most fit to be his wife, and the future mistress of Newton Priory. He was proud, indeed, of his success, when he read the paragraph in the "Morning Post," announcing as a fact that the alliance had been arranged, and was again able to walk about among his comrades as one of those who make circumstances subject to them, rather than become subject to circumstances. His comrades, no doubt, saw the matter in another light. "By Jove," said Pretty Poll at his club, "there's Newton been and got caught by old Eardham after all. The girl has been running ten years, and been hawked about like a second-class race-horse."
"Yes, poor fellow," said Captain Fooks. "Neefit has done that for him. Ralph for a while was so knocked off his pins by the breeches-maker, that he didn't know where to look for shelter."
Whether marriages should be made in heaven or on earth, must be a matter of doubt to observers;--whether, that is, men and women are best married by chance, which I take to be the real fashion of heaven-made marriages; or should be brought into that close link and loving bondage to each other by thought, selection, and decision. That the heavenly mode prevails the oftenest there can hardly be a doubt. It takes years to make a friendship; but a marriage may be settled in a week,--in an hour. If you desire to go into partnership with a man in business, it is an essential necessity that you should know your partner; that he be honest,--or dishonest, if such be your own tendency,--industrious, instructed in the skill required, and of habits of life fit for the work to be done. But into partnerships for life,--of a kind much closer than any business partnership,--men rush without any preliminary inquiries. Some investigation and anxiety as to means there may be, though in this respect the ordinary parlance of the world endows men with more caution, or accuses them of more greed than they really possess. But in other respects everything is taken for granted. Let the woman, if possible, be pretty;--or if not pretty, let her have style. Let the man, if possible, not be a fool; or if a fool, let him not show his folly too plainly. As for knowledge of character, none is possessed, and none is wanted. The young people meet each other in their holiday dresses, on holiday occasions, amidst holiday pleasures,--and the thing is arranged. Such matches may be said to be heaven-made.
It is a fair question whether they do not answer better than those which have less of chance,--or less of heaven,--in their manufacture. If it be needful that a man and woman take five years to learn whether they will suit each other as husband and wife, and that then, at the end of the five years, they find that they will not suit, the freshness of the flower would be gone before it could be worn in the button-hole. There are some leaps which you must take in the dark, if you mean to jump at all. We can all understand well that a wise man should stand on the brink and hesitate; but we can understand also that a very wise man should declare to himself that with no possible amount of hesitation could certainty be achieved. Let him take the jump or not take it,--but let him not presume to think that he can so jump as to land himself in certain bliss. It is clearly God's intention that men and women should live together, and therefore let the leap in the dark be made.
No doubt there had been very much of heaven in Ralph Newton's last choice. It may be acknowledged that in lieu of choosing at all, he had left the matter altogether to heaven. Some attempt he had made at choosing,--in reference to Mary Bonner; but he had found the attempt simply to be troublesome and futile. He had spoken soft, loving words to Clarissa, because she herself had been soft and lovable. Nature had spoken,--as she does when the birds sing to each other. Then, again, while suffering under pecuniary distress he had endeavoured to make himself believe that Polly Neefit was just the wife for him. Then, amidst the glories of his emancipation from thraldom, he had seen Mary Bonner,--and had actually, after a fashion, made a choice for himself. His choice had brought upon him nothing but disgrace and trouble. Now he had succumbed at the bidding of heaven and Lady Eardham, and he was about to be provided with a wife exactly suited for him. It may be said at the same time that Augusta Eardham was equally lucky. She also had gotten all that she ought to have wanted, had she known what to want. They were both of them incapable of what men and women call love when they speak of love as a passion linked with romance. And in one sense they were cold-hearted. Neither of them was endowed with the privilege of pining because another person had perished. But each of them was able to love a mate, when assured that that mate must continue to be mate, unless separation should come by domestic earthquake. They had hearts enough for paternal and maternal duties, and would probably agree in thinking that any geese which Providence might send them were veritable swans. Bickerings there might be, but they would be bickerings without effect; and Ralph Newton, of Newton, would probably so live with this wife of his bosom, that they, too, might lie at last pleasantly together in the family vault, with the record of their homely virtues visible to the survivors of the parish on the same tombstone. The means by which each of them would have arrived at these blessings would not redound to the credit of either; but the blessings would be there, and it may be said of their marriage, as of many such marriages, that it was made in heaven, and was heavenly.
The marriage was to take place early in September, and the first week in August was passed by Sir George and Lady Eardham and their two younger daughters at Newton Priory. On the 14th Ralph was to be allowed to run down to the moors just for one week, and then he was to be back, passing between Newton and Brayboro', signing deeds and settlements, preparing for their wedding tour, and obedient in all things to Eardham influences. It did occur to him that it would be proper that he should go down to Fulham to see his old friends once before his marriage; but he felt that such a visit would be to himself very unpleasant, and therefore he assured himself, and moreover made himself believe, that, if he abstained from the visit, he would abstain because it would be unpleasant to them. He did abstain. But he did call at the chambers in Southampton Buildings; he called, however, at an hour in which he knew that Sir Thomas would not be visible, and made no second pressing request to Stemm for the privilege of entrance.
He had great pride in showing his house and park and estate to the Eardhams, and had some delicious rambles with his Augusta through the shrubberies and down by the little brook. Ralph had an enjoyment in the prettiness of nature, and Augusta was clever enough to simulate the feeling. He was a little annoyed, perhaps, when he found that the beauty of her morning dresses did not admit of her sitting upon the grass or leaning against gates, and once expressed an opinion that she need not be so particular about her gloves in this the hour of their billing and cooing. Augusta altogether declined to remove her gloves in a place swarming, as she said, with midges, or to undergo any kind of embrace while adorned with that sweetest of all hats, which had been purchased for his especial delight. But in other respects she was good humoured, and tried to please him. She learned the names of all his horses, and was beginning to remember those of his tenants. She smiled upon Gregory, and behaved with a pretty decorum when the young parson showed her his church. Altogether her behaviour was much better than might have been expected from the training to which she had been subjected during her seven seasons in London. Lord Polperrow wronged her greatly when he said that she had been "running" for ten years.
There was a little embarrassment in Ralph's first interview with Gregory. He had given his brother notice of his engagement by letter as soon as he had been accepted, feeling that any annoyance coming to him, might be lessened in that way. Unfortunately he had spoken to his brother in what he now felt to have been exaggerated terms of his passion for Mary Bonner, and he himself was aware that that malady had been quickly cured. "I suppose the news startled you?" he had said, with a forced laugh, as soon as he met his brother.
"Well;--yes, a little. I did not know that you were so intimate with them."
"The truth is, I had thought a deal about the matter, and I had come to see how essential it was for the interests of us all that I should marry into our own set. The moment I saw Augusta I felt that she was exactly the girl to make me happy. She is very handsome. Don't you think so?"
"Certainly."
"And then she has just the style which, after all, does go so far. There's nothing dowdy about her. A dowdy woman would have killed me. She attracted me from the first moment; and, by Jove, old fellow, I can assure you it was mutual. I am the happiest fellow alive, and I don't think there is anything I envy anybody." In all this Ralph believed that he was speaking the simple truth.
"I hope you'll be happy, with all my heart," said Gregory.
"I am sure I shall;--and so will you if you will ask that little puss once again. I believe in my heart she loves you." Gregory, though he had been informed of his brother's passion for Mary, had never been told of that other passion for Clarissa; and Ralph could therefore speak of ground for hope in that direction without uncomfortable twinges.
There did occur during this fortnight one or two little matters, just sufficiently laden with care to ruffle the rose-leaves of our hero's couch. Lady Eardham thought that both the dining-room and drawing-room should be re-furnished, that a bow-window should be thrown out to the breakfast-parlour, and that a raised conservatory should be constructed into which Augusta's own morning sitting-room up-stairs might be made to open. Ralph gave way about the furniture with a good grace, but he thought that the bow-window would disfigure the house, and suggested that the raised conservatory would cost money. Augusta thought the bow-window was the very thing for the house, and Lady Eardham knew as a fact that a similar conservatory,--the sweetest thing in the world,--which she had seen at Lord Rosebud's had cost almost absolutely nothing. And if anything was well-known in gardening it was this, that the erection of such conservatories was a positive saving in garden expenses. The men worked under cover during the rainy days, and the hot-water served for domestic as well as horticultural purposes. There was some debate and a little heat, and the matter was at last referred to Sir George. He voted against Ralph on both points, and the orders were given.
Then there was the more important question of the settlements. Of course there were to be settlements, in the arrangement of which Ralph was to give everything and to get nothing. With high-handed magnanimity he had declared that he wanted no money, and therefore the trifle which would have been adjudged to be due to Gus was retained to help her as yet less fortunate sisters. In truth Marmaduke at this time was so expensive that Sir George was obliged to be a little hard. Why, however, he should have demanded out of such a property as that of Newton a jointure of £4,000 a year, with a house to be found either in town or country as the widow might desire, on behalf of a penniless girl, no one acting in the Newton interest could understand, unless Sir George might have thought that the sum to be ultimately obtained might depend in some degree on that demanded. Had he known Mr. Carey he would probably not have subjected himself to the rebuke which he received.
Ralph, when the sum was first named to him by Sir George's lawyer, who came down purposely to Newton, looked very blank, and said that he had not anticipated any arrangement so destructive to the property. The lawyer pointed out that there was unfortunately no dowager's house provided; that the property would not be destroyed as the dower would only be an annuity; that ladies now were more liberally treated in this matter than formerly;--and that the suggestion was quite the usual thing. "You don't suppose I mean my daughter to be starved?" said Sir George, upon whom gout was then coming. Ralph plucked up spirit and answered him. "Nor do I intend that your daughter, sir, should be starved." "Dear Ralph, do be liberal to the dear girl," said Lady Eardham afterwards, caressing our hero in the solitude of her bed-room. Mr. Carey, however, arranged the whole matter very quickly. The dower must be £2,000, out of which the widow must find her own house. Sir George must be well aware, said Mr. Carey, that the demand made was preposterous. Sir George said one or two very nasty things; but the dower as fixed by Mr. Carey was accepted, and then everything smiled again.
When the Eardhams were leaving Newton the parting between Augusta and her lover was quite pretty. "Dear Gus," he said, "when next I am here, you will be my own, own wife," and he kissed her. "Dear Ralph," she said, "when next I am here, you will be my own, own husband," and kissed him; "but we have Como, and Florence, and Rome, and Naples to do before that;--and won't that be nice?"
"It will be very nice to be anywhere with you," said the lover.
"And mind you have your coat made just as I told you," said Augusta. So they parted.
Early in September they were married with great éclat at Brayboro', and Lady Eardham spared nothing on the occasion. It was her first maternal triumph, and all the country round was made to know of her success. The Newtons had been at Newton for--she did not know how many hundred years. In her zeal she declared that the estate had been in the same hands from long before the Conquest. "There's no title," she said to her intimate friend, Lady Wiggham, "but there's that which is better than a title. We're mushrooms to the Newtons, you know. We only came into Berkshire in the reign of Henry VIII." As the Wigghams had only come into Buckinghamshire in the reign of George IV., Lady Wiggham, had she known the facts, would probably have reminded her dear friend that the Eardhams had in truth first been heard of in those parts in the time of Queen Anne,--the original Eardham having made his money in following Marlborough's army. But Lady Wiggham had not studied the history of the county gentry. The wedding went off very well, and the bride and bridegroom were bowled away to the nearest station with four grey post-horses from Reading in a manner that was truly delightful to Lady Eardham's motherly feelings.
And with the same grey horses shall the happy bride and bridegroom be bowled out of our sight also. The writer of this story feels that some apology is due to his readers for having endeavoured to entertain them so long with the adventures of one of whom it certainly cannot be said that he was fit to be delineated as a hero. It is thought by many critics that in the pictures of imaginary life which novelists produce for the amusement, and possibly for the instruction of their readers, none should be put upon the canvas but the very good, who by their noble thoughts and deeds may lead others to nobility, or the very bad, who by their declared wickedness will make iniquity hideous. How can it be worth one's while, such critics will say,--the writer here speaks of all critical readers, and not of professional critics,--how can it be worth our while to waste our imaginations, our sympathies, and our time upon such a one as Ralph, the heir of the Newton property? The writer, acknowledging the force of these objections, and confessing that his young heroes of romance are but seldom heroic, makes his apology as follows.
The reader of a novel,--who has doubtless taken the volume up simply for amusement, and who would probably lay it down did he suspect that instruction, like a snake in the grass, like physic beneath the sugar, was to be imposed upon him,--requires from his author chiefly this, that he shall be amused by a narrative in which elevated sentiment prevails, and gratified by being made to feel that the elevated sentiments described are exactly his own. When the heroine is nobly true to her lover, to her friend, or to her duty, through all persecution, the girl who reads declares to herself that she also would have been a Jeannie Deans had Fate and Fortune given her an Effie as a sister. The bald-headed old lawyer,--for bald-headed old lawyers do read novels,--who interests himself in the high-minded, self-devoting chivalry of a Colonel Newcombe, believes he would have acted as did the Colonel had he been so tried. What youth in his imagination cannot be as brave, and as loving, though as hopeless in his love, as Harry Esmond? Alas, no one will wish to be as was Ralph Newton! But for one Harry Esmond, there are fifty Ralph Newtons,--five hundred and fifty of them; and the very youth whose bosom glows with admiration as he reads of Harry,--who exults in the idea that as Harry did, so would he have done,--lives as Ralph lived, is less noble, less persistent, less of a man even than was Ralph Newton.
It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceals his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there. No man or woman with a conscience,--no man or woman with intellect sufficient to produce amusement, can go on from year to year spinning stories without the desire of teaching; with no ambition of influencing readers for their good. Gentle readers, the physic is always beneath the sugar, hidden or unhidden. In writing novels we novelists preach to you from our pulpits, and are keenly anxious that our sermons shall not be inefficacious. Inefficacious they are not, unless they be too badly preached to obtain attention. Injurious they will be unless the lessons taught be good lessons.
What a world this would be if every man were a Harry Esmond, or every woman a Jeannie Deans! But then again, what a world if every woman were a Beckie Sharp and every man a Varney or a Barry Lyndon! Of Varneys and Harry Esmonds there are very few. Human nature, such as it is, does not often produce them. The portraits of such virtues and such vices serve no doubt to emulate and to deter. But are no other portraits necessary? Should we not be taught to see the men and women among whom we really live,--men and women such as we are ourselves,--in order that we should know what are the exact failings which oppress ourselves, and thus learn to hate, and if possible to avoid in life the faults of character which in life are hardly visible, but which in portraiture of life can be made to be so transparent.
Ralph Newton did nothing, gentle reader, which would have caused thee greatly to grieve for him, nothing certainly which would have caused thee to repudiate him, had he been thy brother. And gentlest, sweetest reader, had he come to thee as thy lover, with sufficient protest of love, and with all his history written in his hand, would that have caused thee to reject his suit? Had he been thy neighbour, thou well-to-do reader, with a house in the country, would he not have been welcome to thy table? Wouldst thou have avoided him at his club, thou reader from the West-end? Has he not settled himself respectably, thou grey-haired, novel-reading paterfamilias, thou materfamilias, with daughters of thine own to be married? In life would he have been held to have disgraced himself,--except in the very moment in which he seemed to be in danger? Nevertheless, the faults of a Ralph Newton, and not the vices of a Varney or a Barry Lyndon are the evils against which men should in these days be taught to guard themselves;--which women also should be made to hate. Such is the writer's apology for his very indifferent hero, Ralph the Heir.
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{
"id": "25579"
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57
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CLARISSA'S FATE.
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In the following October, while Newton of Newton and his bride were making themselves happy amidst the glories of Florence, she with her finery from Paris, and he with a newly-acquired taste for Michael Angelo and the fine arts generally, Gregory the parson again went up to London. He had, of course, "assisted" at his brother's marriage,--in which the heavy burden of the ceremony was imposed on the shoulders of a venerable dean, who was related to Lady Eardham,--and had since that time been all alone at his parsonage. Occasionally he had heard of the Underwoods from Ralph Newton of Beamingham, whose wedding had been postponed till Beamingham Hall had been made fit for its mistress; and from what he had heard Gregory was induced,--hardly to hope,--but to dream it to be possible that even yet he might prevail in love. An idea had grown upon him, springing from various sources, that Clarissa had not been indifferent to his brother, and that this feeling on her part had marred, and must continue to mar, his own happiness. He never believed that there had been fault on his brother's part; but still, if Clarissa had been so wounded,--he could hardly hope,--and perhaps should not even wish,--that she would consent to share with him his parsonage in the close neighbourhood of his brother's house. During all that September he told himself that the thing should be over, and he began to teach himself,--to try to teach himself,--that celibacy was the state in which a clergyman might best live and do his duty. But the lesson had not gone far with him before he shook himself, and determined that he would try yet once again. If there had been such a wound, why should not the wound be cured? Clarissa was at any rate true. She would not falsely promise him a heart, when it was beyond her power to give it. In October, therefore, he went again up to London.
The cases for packing the books had not even yet been made, and Sir Thomas was found in Southampton Buildings. The first words had, of course, reference to the absent Squire. The squire of one's parish, the head of one's family, and one's elder brother, when the three are united in the same personage, will become important to one, even though the personage himself be not heroic. Ralph had written home twice, and everything was prospering with him. Sir Thomas, who had become tired of his late ward, and who had thought worse of the Eardham marriage than the thing deserved, was indifferent to the joys of the Italian honeymoon. "They'll do very well, no doubt," said Sir Thomas. "I was delighted to learn that Augusta bore her journey so well," said Gregory. "Augustas always do bear their journeys well," said Sir Thomas; "though sometimes, I fancy, they find the days a little too long."
But his tone was very different when Gregory asked his leave to make one more attempt at Popham Villa. "I only hope you may succeed,--for her sake, as well as for your own," said Sir Thomas. But when he was asked as to the parson's chance of success, he declared that he could say nothing. "She is changed, I think, from what she used to be,--is more thoughtful, perhaps, and less giddy. It may be that such change will turn her towards you." "I would not have her changed in anything," said Gregory,--"except in her feelings towards myself."
He had been there twice or thrice before he found what he thought to be an opportunity fit for the work that he had on hand. And yet both Patience and Mary did for him and for her all that they knew how to do. But in such a matter it is so hard to act without seeming to act! She who can manoeuvre on such a field without displaying her manoeuvres is indeed a general! No man need ever attempt the execution of a task so delicate. Mary and Patience put their heads together, and resolved that they would say nothing. Nor did they manifestly take steps to leave the two alone together. It was a question with them, especially with Patience, whether the lover had not come too soon.
But Clarissa at last attacked her sister. "Patience," she said, "why do you not speak to me?"
"Not speak to you, Clary?"
"Not a word,--about that which is always on my mind. You have not mentioned Ralph Newton's name once since his marriage."
"I have thought it better not to mention it. Why should I mention it?"
"If you think that it would pain me, you are mistaken. It pains me more that you should think that I could not bear it. He was welcome to his wife."
"I know you wish him well, Clary."
"Well! Oh, yes, I wish him well. No doubt he will be happy with her. She is fit for him, and I was not. He did quite right."
"He is not half so good as his brother," said Patience.
"Certainly he is not so good as his brother. Men, of course, will be different. But it is not always the best man that one likes the best. It ought to be so, perhaps."
"I know which I like the best," said Patience. "Oh, Clary, if you could but bring yourself to love him."
"How is one to change like that? And I do not know that he cares for me now."
"Ah;--I think he cares for you."
"Why should he? Is a man to be sacrificed for always because a girl will not take him? His heart is changed. He takes care to show me so when he comes here. I am glad that it should be changed. Dear Patty, if papa would but come and live at home, I should want nothing else."
"I want something else," said Patience.
"I want nothing but that you should love me;--and that papa should be with us. But, Patty, do not make me feel that you are afraid to speak to me."
On the day following Gregory was again at Fulham, and he had come thither fully determined that he would now for the last time ask that question, on the answer to which, as it now seemed to him, all his future happiness must depend. He had told himself that he would shake off this too human longing for a sweet face to be ever present with him at his board, for a sweet heart to cherish him with its love, for a dear head to lie upon his bosom. But he had owned to himself that it could not be shaken off, and having so owned, was more sick than ever with desire. Mary and Clarissa were both out when he arrived, and he was closeted for a while with Patience. "How tired you must be of seeing me," he said.
"Tired of seeing you? Oh no!"
"I feel myself to be going about like a phantom, and I am ashamed of myself. My brother is successful and happy, and has all that he desires."
"He is easily satisfied," said Patience, with something of sarcasm in her voice.
"And my cousin Ralph is happy and triumphant. I ought not to pine, but in truth I am so weak that I am always pining. Tell me at once,--is there a chance for me?"
Did it occur to him to think that she to whom he was speaking, ever asked herself why it was not given to her to have even a hope of that joy for which he was craving? Did she ever pine because, when others were mating round her, flying off in pairs to their warm mutual nests, there came to her no such question of mating and flying off to love and happiness? If there was such pining, it was all inward, hidden from her friends so that their mirth should not be lessened by her want of mirth, not expressed either by her eye or mouth because she knew that on the expression of her face depended somewhat of the comfort of those who loved her. A homely brow, and plain features, and locks of hair that have not been combed by Love's attendant nymphs into soft and winning tresses, seems to tell us that Love is not wanted by the bosom that owns them. We teach ourselves to regard such a one, let her be ever so good, with ever so sweet temper, ever so generous in heart, ever so affectionate among her friends, as separated alike from the perils and the privileges of that passion without which they who are blessed or banned with beauty would regard life but as a charred and mutilated existence. It is as though we should believe that passion springs from the rind, which is fair or foul to the eye, and not in the heart, which is often fairest, freshest, and most free, when the skin is dark and the cheeks are rough. This young parson expected Patience to sympathise with him, to greet for him, to aid him if there might be aid, and to understand that for him the world would be blank and wretched unless he could get for himself a soft sweet mate to sing when he sang, and to wail when he wailed. The only mate that Patience had was this very girl that was to be thus taken from her. But she did sympathise with him, did greet for him, did give him all her aid. Knowing what she was herself and how God had formed her, she had learned to bury self absolutely and to take all her earthly joy from the joys of others. Shall it not come to pass that, hereafter, she too shall have a lover among the cherubim? "What can I say to you?" replied Patience to the young man's earnest entreaty. "If she were mine to give, I would give her to you instantly."
"Then you think there is no chance. If I thought that, why should I trouble her again?"
"I do not say so. Do you not know, Mr. Newton, that in such matters even sisters can hardly tell their thoughts to each other? How can they when they do not even know their own wishes?"
"She does not hate me then?"
"Hate you! no;--she does not hate you. But there are so many degrees between hating and that kind of love which you want from her! You may be sure of this, that she so esteems you that your persistence cannot lessen you in her regard."
He was still pleading his case with the elder sister,--very uselessly indeed, as he was aware; but having fallen on the subject of his love it was impossible for him to change it for any other,--when Clarissa came into the room swinging her hat in her hand. She had been over at Miss Spooner's house and was full of Miss Spooner's woes and complaints. As soon as she had shaken hands with her lover and spoken the few words of courtesy which the meeting demanded of her, she threw herself into the affairs of Miss Spooner as though they were of vital interest. "She is determined to be unhappy, Patty, and it is no use trying to make her not so. She says that Jane robs her, which I don't believe is true, and that Sarah has a lover,--and why shouldn't Sarah have a lover? But as for curing her grievances, it would be the cruellest thing in the world. She lives upon her grievances. Something has happened to the chimney-pot, and the landlord hasn't sent a mason. She is revelling in her chimney-pot."
"Poor dear Miss Spooner," said Patience, getting up and leaving the room as though it were her duty to look at once after her old friend in the midst of these troubles.
Clarissa had not intended this. "She's asleep now," said Clarissa. But Patience went all the same. It might be that Miss Spooner would require to be watched in her slumbers. When Patience was gone Gregory Newton got up from his seat and walked to the window. He stood there for what seemed to be an endless number of seconds before he returned, and Clarissa had time to determine that she would escape. "I told Mary that I would go to her," she said, "you won't mind being left alone for a few minutes, Mr. Newton."
"Do not go just now, Clarissa."
"Only that I said I would," she answered, pleading that she must keep a promise which she had never made.
"Mary can spare you,--and I cannot. Mary is staying with you, and I shall be gone,--almost immediately. I go back to Newton to-morrow, and who can say when I shall see you again?"
"You will be coming up to London, of course."
"I am here now at any rate," he said smiling, "and will take what advantage of it I can. It is the old story, Clarissa;--so old that I know you must be sick of it."
"If you think so, you should not tell it again."
"Do not be ill-natured to me. I don't know why it is but a man gets to be ashamed of himself, as though he were doing something mean and paltry, when he loves with persistence, as I do." Had it been possible that she should give him so much encouragement she would have told him that the mean man, and paltry, was he who could love or pretend to love with no capacity for persistency. She could not fail to draw a comparison between him and his brother, in which there was so much of meanness on the part of him who had at one time been as a god to her, and so much nobility in him to whom she was and ever had been as a goddess. "I suppose a man should take an answer and have done with it," he continued. "But how is a man to have done with it, when his heart remains the same?"
"A man should master his heart."
"I am, then, to understand that that which you have said so often before must be said again?" He had never knelt to her, and he did not kneel now; but he leaned over her so that she hardly knew whether he was on his knees or still seated on his chair. And she herself, though she answered him briskly,--almost with impertinence,--was so little mistress of herself that she knew not what she said. She would take him now,--if only she knew how to take him without disgracing herself in her own estimation. "Dear Clary, think of it. Try to love me. I need not tell you again how true is my love for you." He had hold of her hand, and she did not withdraw it, and he ought to have known that the battle was won. But he knew nothing. He hardly knew that her hand was in his. "Clary, you are all the world to me. Must I go back heart-laden, but empty-handed, with no comfort?"
"If you knew all!" she said, rising suddenly from her chair.
"All what?"
"If you knew all, you would not take me though I offered myself." He stood staring at her, not at all comprehending her words, and she perceived in the midst of her distress that it was needful that she should explain herself. "I have loved Ralph always;--yes, your brother."
"And he?"
"I will not accuse him in anything. He is married now, and it is past."
"And you can never love again?"
"Who would take such a heart as that? It would not be worth the giving or worth the taking. Oh--how I loved him!" Then he left her side, and went back to the window, while she sank back upon her chair, and, burying her face in her hands, gave way to tears and sobs. He stood there perhaps for a minute, and then returning to her, so gently that she did not hear him, he did kneel at her side. He knelt, and putting his hand upon her arm, he kissed the sleeve of her gown. "You had better go from me now," she said, amidst her sobs.
"I will never go from you again," he answered. "God's mercy can cure also that wound, and I will be his minister in healing it. Clarissa, I am so glad that you have told me all. Looking back I can understand it now. I once thought that it was so."
"Yes," she said, "yes; it was so."
Gradually one hand of hers fell into his, and though no word of acceptance had been spoken he knew that he was at last accepted. "My own Clary," he said. "I may call you my own?" There was no answer, but he knew that it was so. "Nothing shall be done to trouble you;--nothing shall be said to press you. You may be sure of this, if it be good to be loved,--that no woman was ever loved more tenderly than you are."
"I do know it," she said, through her tears.
Then he rose and stood again at the window, looking out upon the lawn and the river. She was still weeping, but he hardly heeded her tears. It was better for her that she should weep than restrain them. And, as to himself and his own feelings,--he tried to question himself, whether, in truth, was he less happy in this great possession, which he had at last gained, because his brother had for a while interfered with him in gaining it? That she would be as true to him now, as tender and as loving, as though Ralph had never crossed her path, he did not for a moment doubt. That she would be less sweet to him because her sweetness had been offered to another he would not admit to himself,--even though the question were asked. She would be all his own, and was she not the one thing in the world which he coveted? He did think that for such a one as his Clarissa he would be a better mate than would have been his brother, and he was sure that she herself would learn to know that it was so. He stood there long enough to resolve that this which had been told him should be no drawback upon his bliss. "Clary," he said, returning to her, "it is settled?" She made him no answer. "My darling, I am as happy now as though Ralph had never seen your sweet face, or heard your dear voice. Look up at me once." Slowly she looked up into his eyes, and then stood before him almost as a suppliant, and gave him her face to be kissed. So at last they became engaged as man and wife;--though it may be doubted whether she spoke another word before he left the room.
It was, however, quite understood that they were engaged; and, though he did not see Clarissa again, he received the congratulations both of Patience and Mary Bonner before he left the house; and that very night succeeded in hunting down Sir Thomas, so that he might tell the father that the daughter had at last consented to become his wife.
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{
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58
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CONCLUSION.
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Clarissa had found it hard to change the object of her love, so hard, that for a time she had been unwilling even to make the effort;--and she had been ashamed that those around her should think that she would make it; but when the thing was done, her second hero was dearer to her than ever had been the first. He at least was true. With him there was no need of doubt. His assurances were not conveyed in words so light that they might mean much or little. This second lover was a lover, indeed, who thought no pains too great to show her that she was ever growing in his heart of hearts. For a while,--for a week or two,--she restrained her tongue; but when once she had accustomed herself to the coaxing kindness of her sister and her cousin, then her eloquence was loosened, and Gregory Newton was a god indeed. In the course of time she got a very pretty note from Ralph, congratulating her, as he also had congratulated Polly, and expressing a fear that he might not be home in time to be present at the wedding. Augusta was so fond of Rome that they did not mean to leave it till the late spring. Then, after a while, there came to her, also, a watch and chain, twice as costly as those given to Polly,--which, however, no persuasion from Gregory would ever induce Clarissa to wear. In after time Ralph never noticed that the trinkets were not worn.
The winter at Popham Villa went on very much as other winters had gone, except that two of the girls living there were full of future hopes, and preparing for future cares, while the third occupied her heart and mind with the cares and hopes of the other two. Patience, however, had one other task in hand, a task upon the performance of which her future happiness much depended, and in respect to which she now ventured to hope for success. Wherever her future home might be, it would be terrible to her if her father would not consent to occupy it with her. It had been settled that both the marriages should take place early in April,--both on the same day, and, as a matter of course, the weddings would be celebrated at Fulham. Christmas had come and gone, and winter was going, before Sir Thomas had absolutely promised to renew that order for the making of the packing-cases for his books. "You won't go back, papa, after they are married," Patience said to her father, early in March.
"If I do it shall not be for long."
"Not for a day, papa! Surely you will not leave me alone? There will be plenty of room now. The air of Fulham will be better for your work than those stuffy, dark, dingy lawyers' chambers."
"My dear, all the work of my life that was worth doing was done in those stuffy, dingy rooms." That was all that Sir Thomas said, but the accusation conveyed to him by his daughter's words was very heavy. For years past he had sat intending to work, purposing to achieve a great task which he set for himself, and had done--almost nothing. Might it be yet possible that that purer air of which Patty spoke should produce new energy, and lead to better results? The promise of it did at least produce new resolutions. It was impossible, as Patience had said, that his child should be left to dwell alone, while yet she had a father living.
"Stemm," he said, "I told you to get some packing-cases made."
"Packing-cases, Sir Thomas?"
"Yes;--packing-cases for the books. It was months ago. Are they ready?"
"No, Sir Thomas. They ain't ready."
"Why not?"
"Well, Sir Thomas;--they ain't; that's all." Then the order was repeated in a manner so formal, as to make Stemm understand that it was intended for a fact. "You are going away from this; are you, Sir Thomas?"
"I believe that I shall give the chambers up altogether at midsummer. At any rate, I mean to have the books packed at once."
"Very well, Sir Thomas." Then there was a pause, during which Stemm did not leave the room. Nor did Sir Thomas dismiss him, feeling that there might well be other things which would require discussion. "And about me, Sir Thomas?" said Stemm.
"I have been thinking about that, Stemm."
"So have I, Sir Thomas,--more nor once."
"You can come to Fulham if you like,--only you must not scold the maids."
"Very well, Sir Thomas," said Stemm, with hardly any variation in his voice, but still with less of care upon his brow.
"Mind, I will not have you scolding them at the villa."
"Not unless they deserve it, Sir Thomas," said Stemm. Sir Thomas could say nothing further. For our own part we fear that the maidens at the villa will not be the better in conduct, as they certainly will not be more comfortable in their lives, in consequence of this change.
And the books were moved in large packing-cases, not one of which had yet been opened when the two brides returned to Popham Villa after their wedding tours, to see Patience just for a day before they were taken to their new homes. Nevertheless, let us hope that the change of air and of scene may tend to future diligence, and that the magnus opus may yet be achieved. We have heard of editions of Aristophanes, of Polybius, of the Iliad, of Ovid, and what not, which have ever been forthcoming under the hands of notable scholars, who have grown grey amidst the renewed promises which have been given. And some of these works have come forth, belying the prophecies of incredulous friends. Let us hope that the great Life of Bacon may yet be written.
* * * * * * Transcriber's note: Trollope was sometimes inconsistent with names of people or places. In the early pages of this novel the name of Mr. Neefit's home was Alexandrina Cottage. In the middle of the book it became Alexandria Cottage, and in later pages it was Alexandra Cottage. The names have been transcribed as they were in the original.
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{
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1
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OF THOSE THREE WHO CAME TO THE HOUSE OF THE RAVEN
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It has been told that there was once a young man of free kindred and whose name was Hallblithe: he was fair, strong, and not untried in battle; he was of the House of the Raven of old time.
This man loved an exceeding fair damsel called the Hostage, who was of the House of the Rose, wherein it was right and due that the men of the Raven should wed.
She loved him no less, and no man of the kindred gainsaid their love, and they were to be wedded on Midsummer Night.
But one day of early spring, when the days were yet short and the nights long, Hallblithe sat before the porch of the house smoothing an ash stave for his spear, and he heard the sound of horse-hoofs drawing nigh, and he looked up and saw folk riding toward the house, and so presently they rode through the garth gate; and there was no man but he about the house, so he rose up and went to meet them, and he saw that they were but three in company: they had weapons with them, and their horses were of the best; but they were no fellowship for a man to be afraid of; for two of them were old and feeble, and the third was dark and sad, and drooping of aspect: it seemed as if they had ridden far and fast, for their spurs were bloody and their horses all a-sweat.
Hallblithe hailed them kindly and said: "Ye are way-worn, and maybe ye have to ride further; so light down and come into the house, and take bite and sup, and hay and corn also for your horses; and then if ye needs must ride on your way, depart when ye are rested; or else if ye may, then abide here night-long, and go your ways to-morrow, and meantime that which is ours shall be yours, and all shall be free to you."
Then spake the oldest of the elders in a high piping voice and said: "Young man, we thank thee; but though the days of the springtide are waxing, the hours of our lives are waning; nor may we abide unless thou canst truly tell us that this is the Land of the Glittering Plain: and if that be so, then delay not, lead us to thy lord, and perhaps he will make us content."
Spake he who was somewhat less stricken in years than the first: "Thanks have thou! but we need something more than meat and drink, to wit the Land of Living Men. And Oh! but the time presses."
Spake the sad and sorry carle: "We seek the Land where the days are many: so many that he who hath forgotten how to laugh, may learn the craft again, and forget the days of Sorrow."
Then they all three cried aloud and said: "Is this the Land? Is this the Land?"
But Hallblithe wondered, and he laughed and said: "Wayfarers, look under the sun down the plain which lieth betwixt the mountains and the sea, and ye shall behold the meadows all gleaming with the spring lilies; yet do we not call this the Glittering Plain, but Cleveland by the Sea. Here men die when their hour comes, nor know I if the days of their life be long enough for the forgetting of sorrow; for I am young and not yet a yokefellow of sorrow; but this I know, that they are long enough for the doing of deeds that shall not die. And as for Lord, I know not this word, for here dwell we, the sons of the Raven, in good fellowship, with our wives that we have wedded, and our mothers who have borne us, and our sisters who serve us. Again I bid you light down off your horses, and eat and drink, and be merry; and depart when ye will, to seek what land ye will."
They scarce looked on him, but cried out together mournfully: "This is not the Land! This is not the Land!"
No more than that they said, but turned about their horses and rode out through the garth gate, and went clattering up the road that led to the pass of the mountains. But Hallblithe hearkened wondering, till the sound of their horse-hoofs died away, and then turned back to his work: and it was then two hours after high-noon.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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2
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EVIL TIDINGS COME TO HAND AT CLEVELAND
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Not long had he worked ere he heard the sound of horsehoofs once more, and he looked not up, but said to himself, "It is but the lads bringing back the teams from the acres, and riding fast and driving hard for joy of heart and in wantonness of youth."
But the sound grew nearer and he looked up and saw over the turf wall of the garth the flutter of white raiment; and he said: "Nay, it is the maidens coming back from the sea-shore and the gathering of wrack."
So he set himself the harder to his work, and laughed, all alone as he was, and said: "She is with them: now I will not look up again till they have ridden into the garth, and she has come from among them, and leapt off her horse, and cast her arms about my neck as her wont is; and it will rejoice her then to mock me with hard words and kind voice and longing heart; and I shall long for her and kiss her, and sweet shall the coming days seem to us: and the daughters of our folk shall look on and be kind and blithe with us."
Therewith rode the maidens into the garth, but he heard no sound of laughter or merriment amongst them, which was contrary to their wont; and his heart fell, and it was as if instead of the maidens' laughter the voices of those wayfarers came back upon the wind crying out, "Is this the Land? Is this the Land?"
Then he looked up hastily, and saw the maidens drawing near, ten of the House of the Raven, and three of the House of the Rose; and he beheld them that their faces were pale and woe-begone, and their raiment rent, and there was no joy in them. Hallblithe stood aghast while one who had gotten off her horse (and she was the daughter of his own mother) ran past him into the hall, looking not at him, as if she durst not: and another rode off swiftly to the horse-stalls. But the others, leaving their horses, drew round about him, and for a while none durst utter a word; and he stood gazing at them, with the spoke-shave in his hand, he also silent; for he saw that the Hostage was not with them, and he knew that now he was the yokefellow of sorrow.
At last he spoke gently and in a kind voice, and said: "Tell me, sisters, what evil hath befallen us, even if it be the death of a dear friend, and the thing that may not be amended."
Then spoke a fair woman of the Rose, whose name was Brightling, and said: "Hallblithe, it is not of death that we have to tell, but of sundering, which may yet be amended. We were on the sand of the sea nigh the Ship- stead and the Rollers of the Raven, and we were gathering the wrack and playing together; and we saw a round-ship nigh to shore lying with her sheet slack, and her sail beating the mast; but we deemed it to be none other than some bark of the Fish-biters, and thought no harm thereof, but went on running and playing amidst the little waves that fell on the sand, and the ripples that curled around our feet. At last there came a small boat from the side of the round-ship, and rowed in toward shore, and still we feared not, though we drew a little aback from the surf and let fall our gown-hems. But the crew of that boat beached her close to where we stood, and came hastily wading the surf towards us; and we saw that they were twelve weaponed men, great, and grim, and all clad in black raiment. Then indeed were we afraid, and we turned about and fled up the beach; but now it was too late, for the tide was at more than half ebb and long was the way over the sand to the place where we had left our horses tied among the tamarisk-bushes. Nevertheless we ran, and had gotten up to the pebble-beach before they ran in amongst us: and they caught us, and cast us down on to the hard stones.
"Then they made us sit in a row on a ridge of the pebbles; and we were sore afraid, yet more for defilement at their hands than for death; for they were evil-looking men exceeding foul of favour. Then said one of them: 'Which of all you maidens is the Hostage of the House of the Rose?'
"Then all we kept silence, for we would not betray her. But the evil man spake again: 'Choose ye then whether we shall take one, or all of you across the waters in our black ship.' Yet still we others spake not, till arose thy beloved, O Hallblithe, and said: "'Let it be one then, and not all; for I am the Hostage.' " 'How shalt thou make us sure thereof?' said the evil carle.
"She looked on him proudly and said: 'Because I say it.' " 'Wilt thou swear it?' said he. " 'Yea,' said she, 'I swear it by the token of the House wherein I shall wed; by the wings of the Fowl that seeketh the Field of Slaying.' " 'It is enough,' said the man, 'come thou with us. And ye maidens sit ye there, and move not till we have made way on our ship, unless ye would feel the point of the arrow. For ye are within bowshot of the ship, and we have shot weapons aboard.'
"So the Hostage departed with them, and she unweeping, but we wept sorely. And we saw the small boat come up to the side of the round-ship, and the Hostage going over the gunwale along with those evil men, and we heard the hale and how of the mariners as they drew up the anchor and sheeted home; and then the sweeps came out and the ship began to move over the sea. And one of those evil-minded men bent his bow and shot a shaft at us, but it fell far short of where we sat, and the laugh of those runagates came over the sands to us. So we crept up the beach trembling, and then rose to our feet and got to our horses, and rode hither speedily, and our hearts are broken for thy sorrow."
At that word came Hallblithe's own sister out from the hall; and she bore weapons with her, to wit Hallblithe's sword and shield and helm and hauberk. As for him he turned back silently to his work, and set the steel of the spear on the new ashen shaft, and took the hammer and smote the nail in, and laid the weapon on a round pebble that was thereby, and clenched the nail on the other side. Then he looked about, and saw that the other damsel had brought him his coal-black war-horse ready saddled and bridled; then he did on his armour, and girt his sword to his side and leapt into the saddle, and took his new-shafted spear in hand and shook the rein. But none of all those damsels durst say a word to him or ask him whither he went, for they feared his face, and the sorrow of his heart. So he got him out of the garth and turned toward the sea-shore, and they saw the glitter of his spear-point a minute over the turf-wall, and heard the clatter of his horse-hoofs as he galloped over the hard way; and thus he departed.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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3
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THE WARRIORS OF THE RAVEN SEARCH THE SEAS
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Then the women bethought them, and they spake a word or two together, and then they sundered and went one this way and one that, to gather together the warriors of the Raven who were a-field, or on the way, nigh unto the house, that they might follow Hallblithe down to the sea-shore and help him; after a while they came back again by one and two and three, bringing with them the wrathful young men; and when there was upward of a score gathered in the garth armed and horsed, they rode their ways to the sea, being minded to thrust a long-ship of the Ravens out over the Rollers into the sea, and follow the strong-thieves of the waters and bring a-back the Hostage, so that they might end the sorrow at once, and establish joy once more in the House of the Raven and the House of the Rose. But they had with them three lads of fifteen winters or thereabouts to lead their horses back home again, when they should have gone up on to the Horse of the Brine.
Thus then they departed, and the maidens stood in the garth-gate till they lost sight of them behind the sandhills, and then turned back sorrowfully into the house, and sat there talking low of their sorrow. And many a time they had to tell their tale anew, as folk came into the hall one after another from field and fell. But the young men came down to the sea, and found Hallblithe's black horse straying about amongst the tamarisk-bushes above the beach; and they looked thence over the sand, and saw neither Hallblithe nor any man: and they gazed out seaward, and saw neither ship nor sail on the barren brine. Then they went down on to the sand, and sundered their fellowship, and went half one way, half the other, betwixt the sandhills and the surf, where now the tide was flowing, till the nesses of the east and the west, the horns of the bay, stayed them. Then they met together again by the Rollers, when the sun was within an hour of setting. There and then they laid hand to that ship which is called the Seamew, and they ran her down over the Rollers into the waves, and leapt aboard and hoisted sail, and ran out the oars and put to sea; and a little wind was blowing seaward from the gates of the mountains behind them.
So they quartered the sea-plain, as the kestrel doth the water-meadows, till the night fell on them, and was cloudy, though whiles the wading moon shone out; and they had seen nothing, neither sail nor ship, nor aught else on the barren brine, save the washing of waves and the hovering of sea-fowl. So they lay-to outside the horns of the bay and awaited the dawning. And when morning was come they made way again, and searched the sea, and sailed to the out-skerries, and searched them with care; then they sailed into the main and fared hither and thither and up and down: and this they did for eight days, and in all that time they saw no ship nor sail, save three barks of the Fish-biters nigh to the Skerry which is called Mew-stone.
So they fared home to the Raven Bay, and laid their keel on the Rollers, and so went their ways sadly, home to the House of the Raven: and they deemed that for this time they could do no more in seeking their valiant kinsman and his fair damsel. And they were very sorry; for these two were well-beloved of all men. But since they might not amend it, they abode in peace, awaiting what the change of days might bring them.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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4
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NOW HALLBLITHE TAKETH THE SEA
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Now must it be told of Hallblithe that he rode fiercely down to the sea- shore, and from the top of the beach he gazed about him, and there below him was the Ship-stead and Rollers of his kindred, whereon lay the three long-ships, the Seamew, and the Osprey and the Erne. Heavy and huge they seemed to him as they lay there, black-sided, icy-cold with the washing of the March waves, their golden dragon-heads looking seaward wistfully. But first had he looked out into the offing, and it was only when he had let his eyes come back from where the sea and sky met, and they had beheld nothing but the waste of waters, that he beheld the Ship-stead closely; and therewith he saw where a little to the west of it lay a skiff, which the low wave of the tide lifted and let fall from time to time. It had a mast, and a black sail hoisted thereon and flapping with slackened sheet. A man sat in the boat clad in black raiment, and the sun smote a gleam from the helm on his head. Then Hallblithe leapt off his horse, and strode down the sands shouldering his spear; and when he came near to the man in the boat he poised his spear and shook it and cried out: "Man, art thou friend or foe?"
Said the man: "Thou art a fair young man: but there is grief in thy voice along with wrath. Cast not till thou hast heard me, and mayst deem whether I may do aught to heal thy grief."
"What mayst thou do?" said Hallblithe; "art thou not a robber of the sea, a harrier of the folks that dwell in peace?"
The man laughed: "Yea," said he, "my craft is thieving and carrying off the daughters of folk, so that we may have a ransom for them. Wilt thou come over the waters with me?"
Hallblithe said wrathfully: "Nay, rather, come thou ashore here! Thou seemest a big man, and belike shall be good of thine hands. Come and fight with me; and then he of us who is vanquished, if he be unslain, shall serve the other for a year, and then shalt thou do my business in the ransoming."
The man in the boat laughed again, and that so scornfully that he angered Hallblithe beyond measure: then he arose in the boat and stood on his feet swaying from side to side as he laughed. He was passing big, long- armed and big-headed, and long hair came from under his helm like the tail of a red horse; his eyes were grey and gleaming, and his mouth wide.
In a while he stayed his laughter and said: "O Warrior of the Raven, this were a simple game for thee to play; though it is not far from my mind, for fighting when I needs must win is no dull work. Look you, if I slay or vanquish thee, then all is said; and if by some chance stroke thou slayest me, then is thine only helper in this matter gone from thee. Now to be short, I bid thee come aboard to me if thou wouldst ever hear another word of thy damsel betrothed. And moreover this need not hinder thee to fight with me if thou hast a mind to it thereafter; for we shall soon come to a land big enough for two to stand on. Or if thou listest to fight in a boat rocking on the waves, I see not but there may be manhood in that also."
Now was the hot wrath somewhat run off Hallblithe, nor durst he lose any chance to hear a word of his beloved; so he said: "Big man, I will come aboard. But look thou to it, if thou hast a mind to bewray me; for the sons of the Raven die hard."
"Well," said the big man, "I have heard that their minstrels are of many words, and think that they have tales to tell. Come aboard and loiter not." Then Hallblithe waded the surf and lightly strode over the gunwale of the skiff and sat him down. The big man thrust out into the deep and haled home the sheet; but there was but little wind.
Then said Hallblithe: "Wilt thou have me row, for I wot not whitherward to steer?"
Said the red carle: "Maybe thou art not in a hurry; I am not: do as thou wilt." So Hallblithe took the oars and rowed mightily, while the alien steered, and they went swiftly and lightly over the sea, and the waves were little.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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5
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THEY COME UNTO THE ISLE OF RANSOM
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So the sun grew low, and it set; the stars and the moon shone a while and then it clouded over. Hallblithe still rowed and rested not, though he was weary; and the big man sat and steered, and held his peace. But when the night was grown old and it was not far from the dawn, the alien said: "Youngling of the Ravens, now shalt thou sleep and I will row."
Hallblithe was exceeding weary; so he gave the oars to the alien and lay down in the stern and slept. And in his sleep he dreamed that he was lying in the House of the Raven, and his sisters came to him and said, "Rise up now, Hallblithe! wilt thou be a sluggard on the day of thy wedding? Come thou with us to the House of the Rose that we may bear away the Hostage." Then he dreamed that they departed, and he arose and clad himself: but when he would have gone out of the hall, then was it no longer daylight, but moonlight, and he dreamed that he had dreamed: nevertheless he would have gone abroad, but might not find the door; so he said he would go out by a window; but the wall was high and smooth (quite other than in the House of the Raven, where were low windows all along one aisle), nor was there any way to come at them. But he dreamed that he was so abashed thereat, and had such a weakness on him, that he wept for pity of himself: and he went to his bed to lie down; and lo! there was no bed and no hall; nought but a heath, wild and wide, and empty under the moon. And still he wept in his dream, and his manhood seemed departed from him, and he heard a voice crying out, "Is this the Land? Is this the Land?"
Therewithal he awoke, and as his eyes cleared he beheld the big man rowing and the black sail flapping against the mast; for the wind had fallen dead and they were faring on over a long smooth swell of the sea. It was broad daylight, but round about them was a thick mist, which seemed none the less as if the sun were ready to shine through it.
As Hallblithe caught the red man's eye, he smiled and nodded on him and said: "Now has the time come for thee first to eat and then to row. But tell me what is that upon thy cheeks?"
Hallblithe, reddening somewhat, said: "The night dew hath fallen on me."
Quoth the sea-rover, "It is no shame for thee a youngling to remember thy betrothed in thy sleep, and to weep because thou lackest her. But now bestir thee, for it is later than thou mayest deem."
Therewith the big man drew in the oars and came to the afterpart of the boat, and drew meat and drink out of a locker thereby; and they ate and drank together, and Hallblithe grew strong and somewhat less downcast; and he went forward and gat the oars into his hands.
Then the big red man stood up and looked over his left shoulder and said: "Soon shall we have a breeze and bright weather."
Then he looked into the midmost of the sail and fell a-whistling such a tune as the fiddles play to dancing men and maids at Yule-tide, and his eyes gleamed and glittered therewithal, and exceeding big he looked. Then Hallblithe felt a little air on his cheek, and the mist grew thinner, and the sail began to fill with wind till the sheet tightened: then, lo! the mist rising from the face of the sea, and the sea's face rippling gaily under a bright sun. Then the wind increased, and the wall of mist departed and a few light clouds sped over the sky, and the sail swelled and the boat heeled over, and the seas fell white from the prow, and they sped fast over the face of the waters.
Then laughed the red-haired man, and said: "O croaker on the dead branch, now is the wind such that no rowing of thine may catch up with it: so in with the oars now, and turn about, and thou shalt see whitherward we are going."
Then Hallblithe turned about on the thwart and looked across the sea, and lo! before them the high cliffs and crags and mountains of a new land which seemed to be an isle, and they were deep blue under the sun, which now shone aloft in the mid heaven. He said nought at all, but sat looking and wondering what land it might be; but the big man said: "O tomb of warriors, is it not as if the blueness of the deep sea had heaved itself up aloft, and turned from coloured air into rock and stone, so wondrous blue it is? But that is because those crags and mountains are so far away, and as we draw nigher to them, thou shalt see them as they verily are, that they are coal-black; and yonder land is an isle, and is called the Isle of Ransom. Therein shall be the market for thee where thou mayst cheapen thy betrothed. There mayst thou take her by the hand and lead her away thence, when thou hast dealt with the chapman of maidens and hast pledged thee by the fowl of battle, and the edge of the fallow blade to pay that which he will have of thee."
As the big man spoke there was a mocking in his voice and his face and in his whole huge body, which made the sword of Hallblithe uneasy in his scabbard; but he refrained his wrath, and said: "Big man, the longer I look, the less I can think how we are to come up on to yonder island; for I can see nought but a huge cliff, and great mountains rising beyond it."
"Thou shalt the more wonder," said the alien, "the nigher thou drawest thereto; for it is not because we are far away that thou canst see no beach or strand, or sloping of the land seaward, but because there is nought of all these things. Yet fear not! am I not with thee? thou shalt come ashore on the Isle of Ransom."
Then Hallblithe held his peace, and the other spake not for a while, but gave a short laugh once or twice; and said at last in a big voice, "Little Carrion-biter, why dost thou not ask me of my name?"
Now Hallblithe was a tall man and a fell fighter; but he said: "Because I was thinking of other things and not of thee."
"Well," said the big man, in a voice still louder, "when I am at home men call me the Puny Fox."
Then Hallblithe said: "Art thou a Fox? It may well be that thou shalt beguile me as such beasts will but look to it, that if thou dost I shall know how to avenge me."
Then rose up the big man from the helm, and straddled wide in the boat, and cried out in a great roaring voice: "Crag-nester, I am one of seven brethren, and the smallest and weakest of them. Art thou not afraid?"
"No," said Hallblithe, "for the six others are not here. Wilt thou fight here in boat, O Fox?"
"Nay," said Fox, "rather we will drink a cup of wine together."
So he opened the locker again and drew out thence a great horn of some huge neat of the outlands, which was girthed and stopped with silver, and also a golden cup, and he filled the cup from the horn and gave it into Hallblithe's hand and said: "Drink, O black-fledged nestling! But call a health over the cup if thou wilt." So Hallblithe raised the cup aloft and cried: "Health to the House of the Raven and to them that love it! an ill day to its foemen!" Then he set his lips to the cup and drank; and that wine seemed to him better and stronger than any he had ever tasted. But when he had given the cup back again to Fox, that red one filled it again, and cried over it, "The Treasure of the Sea! and the King that dieth not!" Then he drank, and filled again for Hallblithe, and steered with his knees meanwhile; and thus they drank three cups each, and Fox smiled and was peaceful and said but little, but Hallblithe sat wondering how the world was changed for him since yesterday.
But now was the sky blown all clear of clouds and the wind piped shrill behind them, and the great waves rose and fell about them, and the sun glittered on them in many colours. Fast flew the boat before the wind as though it would never stop, and the day was waning, and the wind still rising; and now the Isle of Ransom uphove huge before them, and coal-black, and no beach and no haven was to be seen therein; and still they ran before the wind towards that black cliff-wall, against which the sea washed for ever, and no keel ever built by man might live for one moment 'twixt the surf and the cliff of that grim land. The sun grew low, and sank red under the sea, and that world of stone swallowed up half the heavens before them, for they were now come very nigh thereto; nor could Hallblithe see aught for it, but that they must be dashed against the cliff and perish in a moment of time.
Still the boat flew on; but now when the twilight was come, and they had just opened up along reach of the cliff that lay beyond a high ness, Hallblithe thought he saw down by the edge of the sea something darker than the face of the rock-wall, and he deemed it was a cave: they came a little nearer and he saw it was a great cave high enough to let a round- ship go in with all her sails set.
"Son of the Raven," quoth Fox, "hearken, for thy heart is not little. Yonder is the gate into the Isle of Ransom, and if thou wilt, thou mayst go through it. Yet it may be that if thou goest ashore on to the Isle something grievous shall befall thee, a trouble more than thou canst bear: a shame it may be. Now there are two choices for thee: either to go up on to the Isle and face all; or to die here by my hand having done nothing unmanly or shameful: What sayest thou?"
"Thou art of many words when time so presses, Fox," said Hallblithe. "Why should I not choose to go up on to the Island to deliver my trothplight maiden? For the rest, slay me if thou canst, if we come alive out of this cauldron of waters."
Said the big red man: "Look on then, and note Fox how he steereth, as it were through a needle's eye."
Now were they underneath the black shadow of the black cliff and amidst the twilight the surf was tossed about like white fire. In the lower heavens the stars were beginning to twinkle and the moon was bright and yellow, and aloft all was peaceful, for no cloud sullied the sky. One moment Hallblithe saw all this hanging above the turmoil of thundering water and dripping rock and the next he was in the darkness of the cave, the roaring wind and the waves still making thunder about him, though of a different voice from the harsh hubbub without. Then he heard Fox say: "Sit down now and take the oars, for presently shall we be at home at the landing place."
So Hallblithe took the oars and rowed, and as they went up the cave the sea fell, and the wind died out into the aimless gustiness of hollow places; and for a little while was all as dark as dark might be. Then Hallblithe saw that the darkness grew a little greyer, and he looked over his shoulder and saw a star of light before the bows of the boat, and Fox cried out: "Yea, it is like day; bright will the moon be for such as needs must be wayfaring to-night! Cease rowing, O Son of the coal-blue fowl, for there is way enough on her."
Then Hallblithe lay on his oars, and in a minute the bows smote the land; then he turned about and saw a steep stair of stone, and up the sloping shaft thereof the moonlit sky and the bright stars. Then Fox arose and came forward and leapt out of the boat and moored her to a big stone: then he leapt back again and said: "Bear a hand with the victuals; we must bring them out of the boat unless thou wilt sleep supperless, as I will not. For to-night must we be guests to ourselves, since it is far to the dwelling of my people, and the old man is said to be a skin-changer, a flit-by-night. And as to this cave, it is deemed to be nowise safe to sleep therein, unless the sleeper have a double share of luck. And thy luck, meseemeth, O Son of the Raven, is as now somewhat less than a single share. So to-night we shall sleep under the naked heaven."
Hallblithe yea-said this, and they took the meat and drink, such as they needed, from out the boat, and climbed the steep stair no little way, and so came out on to a plain place, which seemed to Hallblithe bare and waste so far as he saw it by the moonlight; for the twilight was gone now, and nought was left of the light of day save a glimmer in the west.
This Hallblithe deemed wonderful, that no less out on the open heath and brow of the land than in the shut-in cave, all that tumult of the wind had fallen, and the cloudless night was calm, and with a little air blowing from the south and the landward.
Therewithal was Fox done with his loud-voiced braggart mood, and spoke gently and peaceably like to a wayfarer, who hath business of his to look to as other men. Now he pointed to certain rocks or low crags that a little way off rose like a reef out of the treeless plain; then said he: "Shipmate, underneath yonder rocks is our resting-place for to-night; and I pray thee not to deem me churlish that I give thee no better harbour. But I have a charge over thee to bring thee safe thus far on thy quest; and thou wouldst find it hard to live among such housemates as thou wouldst find up yonder amongst our folks to-night. But to-morrow shalt thou come to speech with him who will deal with thee concerning the ransom."
"It is enough," said Hallblithe, "and I thank thee for thy leading: and as for thy rough and uncomely words which thou hast given me, I pardon thee for them: for I am none the worse of them: forsooth, if I had been, my sword would have had a voice in the matter."
"I am well content as it is, Son of the Raven," quoth Fox; "I have done my bidding and all is well."
"Tell me then who it is hath bidden thee bring me hither?"
"I may not tell thee," said Fox; "thou art here, be content, as I am."
And he spake no more till they had come to the reef aforesaid, which was some two furlongs from the place where they had come from out of the cave. There then they set forth their supper on the stones, and ate what they would, and drank of that good strong wine while the horn bare out. And now was Fox of few words, and when Hallblithe asked him concerning that land, he had little to say. And at last when Hallblithe asked him of that so perilous house and those who manned it, he said to him: "Son of the Raven, it avails not asking of these matters; for if I tell thee aught concerning them I shall tell thee lies. Once again let it be enough for thee that thou hast passed over the sea safely on thy quest; and a more perilous sea it is forsooth than thou deemest. But now let us have an end of vain words, and make our bed amidst these stones as best we may; for we should be stirring betimes in the morning." Hallblithe said little in answer, and they arrayed their sleeping places cunningly, as the hare doth her form, and like men well used to lying abroad.
Hallblithe was very weary and he soon fell asleep; and as he lay there, he dreamed a dream, or maybe saw a vision; whether he were asleep when he saw it, or between sleeping and waking, I know not. But this was his dream or his vision; that the Hostage was standing over him, and she as he had seen her but yesterday, bright-haired and ruddy-cheeked and white- skinned, kind of hand and soft of voice, and she said to him: "Hallblithe, look on me and hearken, for I have a message for thee." And he looked and longed for her, and his soul was ravished by the sweetness of his longing, and he would have leapt up and cast his arms about her, but sleep and the dream bound him, and he might not. Then the image smiled on him and said: "Nay, my love, lie still, for thou mayst not touch me: here is but the image of the body which thou desirest. Hearken then. I am in evil plight, in the hands of strong-thieves of the sea, nor know I what they will do with me, and I have no will to be shamed; to be sold for a price from one hand to another, yet to be bedded without a price, and to lie beside some foe-man of our folk, and he to cast his arms about me, will I, will I not: this is a hard case. Therefore to- morrow morning at daybreak while men sleep, I think to steal forth to the gunwale of the black ship and give myself to the gods, that they and not these runagates may be masters of my life and my soul, and may do with me as they will: for indeed they know that I may not bear the strange kinless house, and the love and caressing of the alien house-master, and the mocking and stripes of the alien house-mistress. Therefore let the Hoary One of the sea take me and look to my matters, and carry me to life or death, which-so he will. Thin now grows the night, but lie still a little yet, while I speak another word.
"Maybe we shall meet alive again, and maybe not: and if not, though we have never yet lain in one bed together, yet I would have thee remember me: yet not so that my image shall come between thee and thy speech-friend and bed-fellow of the kindred, that shall lie where I was to have lain. Yet again, if I live and thou livest, I have been told and have heard that by one way or other I am like to come to the Glittering Plain, and the Land of Living Men. O my beloved, if by any way thou mightest come thither also, and we might meet there, and we two alive, how good it were! Seek that land then, beloved! seek it, whether or no we once more behold the House of the Rose, or tread the floor of the Raven dwelling. And now must even this image of me sunder from thee. Farewell!"
Therewith was the dream done and the vision departed; and Hallblithe sat up full of anguish and longing; and he looked about him over the dreary land, and it was somewhat light and the sky was grown grey and cloudy, and he deemed that the dawn was come. So he leapt to his feet and stooped down over Fox, and took him by the shoulder, and shook him and said: "Faring-fellow, awake! the dawn is come, and we have much to do."
Fox sat up and growled like a dog, and rubbed his eyes and looked about him and said: "Thou hast waked me for nought: it is the false dawn of the moon that shineth now behind the clouds and casteth no shadow; it is but an hour after midnight. Go to sleep again, and let me be, else will I not be a guide to thee when the day comes." And he lay down and was asleep at once. Then Hallblithe went and lay down again full of sorrow: Yet so weary was he that he presently fell asleep, and dreamed no more.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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6
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OF A DWELLING OF MAN ON THE ISLE OF RANSOM
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When he awoke again the sun shone on him, and the morning was calm and windless. He sat up and looked about him, but could see no signs of Fox save the lair wherein he had lain. So he arose to his feet and sought for him about the crannies of the rocks, and found him not; and he shouted for him, and had no answer. Then he said, "Belike he has gone down to the boat to put a thing in, or take a thing out." So he went his ways to the stair down into the water-cave, and he called on Fox from the top of the stair, and had no answer.
So he went down that long stair with a misgiving in his heart, and when he came to the last step there was neither man nor boat, nor aught else save the water and the living rock. Then was he exceeding wroth, for he knew that he had been beguiled, and he was in an evil case, left alone on an Isle that he knew not, a waste and desolate land, where it seemed most like he should die of famine.
He wasted no breath or might now in crying out for Fox, or seeking him; for he said to himself: "I might well have known that he was false and a liar, whereas he could scarce refrain his joy at my folly and his guile. Now is it for me to strive for life against death."
Then he turned and went slowly up the stair, and came out on to the open face of that Isle, and he saw that it was waste indeed, and dreadful: a wilderness of black sand and stones and ice-borne rocks, with here and there a little grass growing in the hollows, and here and there a dreary mire where the white-tufted rushes shook in the wind, and here and there stretches of moss blended with red-blossomed sengreen; and otherwhere nought but the wind-bitten creeping willow clinging to the black sand, with a white bleached stick and a leaf or two, and again a stick and a leaf. In the offing looking landward were great mountains, some very great and snow-capped, some bare to the tops; and all that was far away, save the snow, was deep-blue in the sunny morning. But about him on the heath were scattered rocks like the reef beneath which he had slept the last night, and peaks, and hammers, and knolls of uncouth shapes.
Then he went to the edge of the cliffs and looked down on the sea which lay wrinkled and rippling on toward the shore far below him, and long he gazed thereon and all about, but could see neither ship nor sail, nor aught else save the washing of waves and the hovering of sea fowl.
Then he said: "Were it not well if I were to seek that house-master of whom Fox spake? Might he not flit me at least to the Land of the Glittering Plain? Woe is me! now am I of that woful company, and I also must needs cry out, Where is the land? Where is the land?"
Therewith he turned toward the reef above their lair, but as he went he thought and said: "Nay, but was not this Stead a lie like the rest of Fox's tale? and am I not alone in this sea-girt wilderness? Yea, and even that image of my Beloved which I saw in the dream, perchance that also was a mere beguiling; for now I see that the Puny Fox was in all ways wiser than is meet and comely." Yet again he said: "At least I will seek on, and find out whether there be another man dwelling on this hapless Isle, and then the worst of it will be battle with him, and death by point and edge rather than by hunger; or at the best we may become friends and fellows and deliver each other." Therewith he came to the reef, and with much ado climbed to the topmost of its rocks and looked down thence landward: and betwixt him and the mountains, and by seeming not very far off, he saw smoke arising: but no house he saw, nor any other token of a dwelling. So he came down from the stone and turned his back upon the sea and went toward that smoke with his sword in its sheath, and his spear over his shoulder. Rough and toilsome was the way: three little dales he crossed amidst the mountain necks, each one narrow and bare, with a stream of water amidst, running seaward, and whether in dale or on ridge, he went ever amidst sand and stones, and the weeds of the wilderness, and saw no man, or man-tended beast.
At last, after he had been four hours on the way, but had not gone very far, he topped a stony bent, and from the brow thereof beheld a wide valley grass-grown for the more part, with a river running through it, and sheep and kine and horses feeding up and down it. And amidst this dale by the stream-side, was a dwelling of men, a long hall and other houses about it builded of stone.
Then was Hallblithe glad, and he strode down the bent speedily, his war- gear clashing upon him: and as he came to the foot thereof and on to the grass of the dale, he got amongst the pasturing horses, and passed close by the horse-herd and a woman that was with him. They scowled at him as he went by, but meddled not with him in any way. Although they were giant-like of stature and fierce of face, they were not ill-favoured: they were red-haired, and the woman as white as cream where the sun had not burned her skin; they had no weapons that Hallblithe might see save the goad in the hand of the carle.
So Hallblithe passed on and came to the biggest house, the hall aforesaid: it was very long, and low as for its length, not over shapely of fashion, a mere gabled heap of stones. Low and strait was the door thereinto, and as Hallblithe entered stooping lowly, and the fire of the steel of his spear that he held before him was quenched in the mirk of the hall, he smiled and said to himself: "Now if there were one anigh who would not have me enter alive, and he with a weapon in his hand, soon were all the tale told." But he got into the hall unsmitten, and stood on the floor thereof, and spake: "The sele of the day to whomsoever is herein! Will any man speak to the new comer?"
But none answered or gave him greeting; and as his eyes got used to the dusk of the hall, he looked about him, and neither on the floor or the high seat nor in any ingle could he see a man; and there was silence there, save for the crackling of the flickering flame on the hearth amidmost, and the running of the rats behind the panelling of the walls.
On one side of the hall was a row of shut-beds, and Hallblithe deemed that there might be men therein; but since none had greeted him he refrained him from searching them for fear of a trap, and he thought, "I will abide amidst the floor, and if there be any that would deal with me, friend or foe, let him come hither to me."
So he fell to walking up and down the hall from buttery to dais, and his war-gear rattled upon him. At last as he walked he thought he heard a small thin peevish voice, which yet was too husky for the squeak of a rat. So he stayed his walk and stood still, and said: "Will any man speak to Hallblithe, a newcomer, and a stranger in this Stead?"
Then that small voice made a word and said: "Why paceth the fool up and down our hall, doing nothing, even as the Ravens flap croaking about the crags, abiding the war-mote and the clash of the fallow blades?"
Said Hallblithe, and his voice sounded big in the hall: "Who calleth Hallblithe a fool and mocketh at the sons of the Raven?"
Spake the voice: "Why cometh not the fool to the man that may not go to him?"
Then Hallblithe bent forward to hearken, and he deemed that the voice came from one of the shut-beds, so he leaned his spear against a pillar, and went into the shut-bed he had noted, and saw where there lay along in it a man exceeding old by seeming, sore wasted, with long hair as white as snow lying over the bed-clothes.
When the elder saw Hallblithe, he laughed a thin cracked laugh as if in mockery and said: "Hail newcomer! wilt thou eat?"
"Yea," said Hallblithe.
"Go thou into the buttery then," said the old carle, "and there shalt thou find on the cupboard cakes and curds and cheese: eat thy fill, and when thou hast done, look in the ingle, and thou shalt see a cask of mead exceeding good, and a stoup thereby, and two silver cups; fill the stoup and bring it hither with the cups; and then may we talk amidst of drinking, which is good for an old carle. Hasten thou! or I shall deem thee a double fool who will not fare to fetch his meat, though he be hungry."
Then Hallblithe laughed, and went down the hall into the buttery and found the meat, and ate his fill, and came away with the drink back to the Long-hoary man, who chuckled as he came and said: "Fill up now for thee and for me, and call a health to me and wish me somewhat."
"I wish thee luck," said Hallblithe, and drank. Said the elder: "And I wish thee more wits; is luck all that thou mayst wish me? What luck may an outworn elder have?"
"Well then," quoth Hallblithe, "what shall I wish thee? Wouldst thou have me wish thee youth?"
"Yea, certes," said the Long-hoary, "that and nought else."
"Youth then I wish thee, if it may avail thee aught," said Hallblithe, and he drank again therewith.
"Nay, nay," said the old carle peevishly, "take a third cup, and wish me youth with no idle words tacked thereto."
Said Hallblithe raising the cup: "Herewith I wish thee youth!" and he drank.
"Good is the wish," said the elder; "now ask thou the old carle whatso thou wilt."
Said Hallblithe: "What is this land called?"
"Son," said the other, "hast thou heard it called the Isle of Ransom?"
"Yea," said Hallblithe, "but what wilt thou call it?"
"By no other name," said the hoary carle.
"It is far from other lands?" said Hallblithe.
"Yea," said the carle, "when the light winds blow, and the ships sail slow."
"What do ye who live here?" said Hallblithe. "How do ye live, what work win ye?"
"We win diverse work," said the elder, "but the gainfullest is robbing men by the high hand."
"Is it ye who have stolen from me the Hostage of the Rose?" said Hallblithe.
Said the Long-hoary, "Maybe; I wot not; in diverse ways my kinsmen traffic, and they visit many lands. Why should they not have come to Cleveland also?"
"Is she in this Isle, thou old runagate?" said Hallblithe.
"She is not, thou young fool," said the elder. Then Hallblithe flushed red and spake: "Knowest thou the Puny Fox?"
"How should I not?" said the carle, "since he is the son of one of my sons."
"Dost thou call him a liar and a rogue?" said Hallblithe.
The elder laughed; "Else were I a fool," said he; "there are few bigger liars or bigger rogues than the Puny Fox!"
"Is he here in this Isle?" said Hallblithe; "may I see him?"
The old man laughed again, and said: "Nay, he is not here, unless he hath turned fool since yesterday: why should he abide thy sword, since he hath done what he would and brought thee hither?"
Then he laughed, as a hen cackles a long while, and then said: "What more wilt thou ask me?"
But Hallblithe was very wroth: "It availeth nought to ask," he said; "and now I am in two minds whether I shall slay thee or not."
"That were a meet deed for a Raven, but not for a man," said the carle, "and thou that hast wished me luck! Ask, ask!"
But Hallblithe was silent a long while. Then the carle said, "Another cup for the longer after youth!"
Hallblithe filled, and gave to him, and the old man drank and said: "Thou deemest us all liars in the Isle of Ransom because of thy beguiling by the Puny Fox: but therein thou errest. The Puny Fox is our chiefest liar, and doth for us the more part of such work as we need: therefore, why should we others lie. Ask, ask!"
"Well then," said Hallblithe, "why did the Puny Fox bewray me, and at whose bidding?"
Said the elder: "I know, but I will not tell thee. Is this a lie?"
"Nay, I deem it not," said Hallblithe: "But, tell me, is it verily true that my trothplight is not here, that I may ransom her?"
Said the Long-hoary: "I swear it by the Treasure of the Sea, that she is not here: the tale was but a lie of the Puny Fox."
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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7
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A FEAST IN THE ISLE OF RANSOM
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Hallblithe pondered his answer awhile with downcast eyes and said at last: "Have ye a mind to ransom me, now that I have walked into the trap?"
"There is no need to talk of ransom," said the elder; "thou mayst go out of this house when thou wilt, nor will any meddle with thee if thou strayest about the Isle, when I have set a mark on thee and given thee a token: nor wilt thou be hindered if thou hast a mind to leave the Isle, if thou canst find means thereto; moreover as long as thou art in the Isle, in this house mayst thou abide, eating and drinking and resting with us."
"How then may I leave this Isle?" said Hallblithe.
The elder laughed: "In a ship," said he.
"And when," said Hallblithe, "shall I find a ship that shall carry me?"
Said the old carle, "Whither wouldest thou my son?" Hallblithe was silent a while, thinking what answer he should make; then he said: "I would go to the land of the Glittering Plain."
"Son, a ship shall not be lacking thee for that voyage," said the elder. "Thou mayst go to-morrow morn. And I bid thee abide here to-night, and thy cheer shall not be ill. Yet if thou wilt believe my word, it will be well for thee to say as little as thou mayst to any man here, and that little as little proud as maybe: for our folk are short of temper and thou knowest there is no might against many. Indeed it is not unlike that they will not speak one word to thee, and if that be so, thou hast no need to open thy mouth to them. And now I will tell thee that it is good that thou hast chosen to go to the Glittering Plain. For if thou wert otherwise minded, I wot not how thou wouldest get thee a keel to carry thee, and the wings have not yet begun to sprout on thy shoulders, raven though thou be. Now I am glad that thou art going thy ways to the Glittering Plain to-morrow; for thou wilt be good company to me on the way: and I deem that thou wilt be no churl when thou art glad."
"What," said Hallblithe, "art thou wending thither, thou old man?"
"Yea," said he, "nor shall any other be on the ship save thou and I, and the mariners that waft us; and they forsooth shall not go aland there. Why should not I go, since there are men to bear me aboard?"
Said Hallblithe, "And when thou art come aland there, what wilt thou do?"
"Thou shalt see, my son," said the Long-hoary. "It may be that thy good wishes shall be of avail to me. But now since all this may only be if I live through this night, and since my heart hath been warmed by the good mead, and thy fellowship, and whereas I am somewhat sleepy, and it is long past noon, go forth into the hall, and leave me to sleep, that I may be as sound as eld will let me to-morrow. And as for thee, folk, both men and women, shall presently come into the hall, and I deem not that any shall meddle with thee; but if so be that any challenge thee, whatsoever may be his words, answer thou to him, 'THE HOUSE OF THE UNDYING,' and there will be an end of it. Only look thou to it that no naked steel cometh out of thy scabbard. Go now, and if thou wilt, go out of doors; yet art thou safer within doors and nigher unto me."
So Hallblithe went back into the main hall, and the sun had gotten round now, and was shining into the hall, through the clerestory windows, so that he saw clearly all that was therein. And he deemed the hall fairer within than without; and especially over the shut-beds were many stories carven in the panelling, and Hallblithe beheld them gladly. But of one thing he marvelled, that whereas he was in an island of the strong-thieves of the waters, and in their very home and chiefest habitation, there were no ships or seas pictured in that imagery, but fair groves and gardens, with flowery grass and fruited trees all about. And there were fair women abiding therein, and lovely young men, and warriors, and strange beasts and many marvels, and the ending of wrath and beginning of pleasure and the crowning of love. And amidst these was pictured oft and again a mighty king with a sword by his side and a crown on his head; and ever was he smiling and joyous, so that Hallblithe, when he looked on him, felt of better heart and smiled back on the carven image.
So while Hallblithe looked on these things, and pondered his case carefully, all alone as he was in that alien hall, he heard a noise without of talking and laughter, and presently the pattering of feet therewith, and then women came into the hall, a score or more, some young, some old, some fair enough, and some hard-featured and uncomely, but all above the stature of the women whom he had seen in his own land.
So he stood amidst the hall-floor and abided them; and they saw him and his shining war-gear, and ceased their talking and laughter, and drew round about him, and gazed at him; but none said aught till an old crone came forth from the ring, and said "Who art thou, standing under weapons in our hall?"
He knew not what to answer, and held his peace; and she spake again: "Whither wouldest thou, what seekest thou?"
Then answered Hallblithe: "THE HOUSE OF THE UNDYING."
None answered, and the other women all fell away from him at once, and went about their business hither and thither through the hall. But the old crone took him by the hand, and led him up to the dais, and set him next to the midmost high-seat. Then she made as if she would do off his war-gear, and he would not gainsay her, though he deemed that foes might be anear; for in sooth he trusted in the old carle that he would not bewray him, and moreover he deemed it would be unmanly not to take the risks of the guesting, according to the custom of that country.
So she took his armour and his weapons and bore them off to a shut-bed next to that wherein lay the ancient man, and she laid the gear within it, all save the spear, which she laid on the wall-pins above; and she made signs to him that therein he was to lie; but she spake no word to him. Then she brought him the hand-washing water in a basin of latten, and a goodly towel therewith, and when he had washed she went away from him, but not far.
This while the other women were busy about the hall; some swept the floor down, and when it was swept strawed thereon rushes and handfuls of wild thyme: some went into the buttery and bore forth the boards and the trestles: some went to the chests and brought out the rich hangings, the goodly bankers and dorsars, and did them on the walls: some bore in the stoups and horns and beakers, and some went their ways and came not back a while, for they were busied about the cooking. But whatever they did, none hailed him, or heeded him more than if he had been an image, as he sat there looking on. None save the old woman who brought him the fore- supper, to wit a great horn of mead, and cakes and dried fish.
So was the hall arrayed for the feast very fairly, and Hallblithe sat there while the sun westered and the house grew dim, and dark at last, and they lighted the candles up and down the hall. But a little after these were lit, a great horn was winded close without, and thereafter came the clatter of arms about the door, and exceeding tall weaponed men came in, one score and five, and strode two by two up to the foot of the dais, and stood there in a row. And Hallblithe deemed their war-gear exceeding good; they were all clad in ring-locked byrnies, and had steel helms on their heads with garlands of gold wrought about them and they bore spears in their hands, and white shields hung at their backs. Now came the women to them and unarmed them; and under their armour their raiment was black; but they had gold rings on their arms, and golden collars about their necks. So they strode up to the dais and took their places on the high-seat, not heeding Hallblithe any more than if he were an image of wood. Nevertheless that man sat next to him who was the chieftain of all and sat in the midmost high-seat; and he bore his sheathed sword in his hand and laid it on the board before him, and he was the only man of those chieftains who had a weapon.
But when these were set down there was again a noise without, and there came in a throng of men armed and unarmed who took their places on the end-long benches up and down the hall; with these came women also, who most of them sat amongst the men, but some busied them with the serving: all these men were great of stature, but none so big as the chieftains on the high-seat.
Now came the women in from the kitchen bearing the meat, whereof no little was flesh-meat, and all was of the best. Hallblithe was duly served like the others, but still none spake to him or even looked on him; though amongst themselves they spoke in big, rough voices so that the rafters of the hall rang again.
When they had eaten their fill the women filled round the cups and the horns to them, and those vessels were both great and goodly. But ere they fell to drinking uprose the chieftain who sat furthest from the midmost high-seat on the right and cried a health: "THE TREASURE OF THE SEA!" Then they all stood up and shouted, women as well as men, and emptied their horns and cups to that health. Then stood up the man furthest on the left and cried out, "Drink a health to the Undying King!" And again all men rose up and shouted ere they drank. Other healths they drank, as the "Cold Keel," the "Windworn Sail," the "Quivering Ash" and the "Furrowed Beach." And the wine and mead flowed like rivers in that hall of the Wild Men. As for Hallblithe, he drank what he would but stood not up, nor raised his cup to his lips when a health was drunk; for he knew not whether these men were his friends or his foes, and he deemed it would be little-minded to drink to their healths, lest he might be drinking death and confusion to his own kindred.
But when men had drunk a while, again a horn blew at the nether end of the hall, and straightway folk arose from the endlong tables, and took away the boards and trestles, and cleared the floor and stood against the wall; then the big chieftain beside Hallblithe arose and cried out: "Now let man dance with maid, and be we merry! Music, strike up!" Then flew the fiddle-bows and twanged the harps, and the carles and queens stood forth on the floor; and all the women were clad in black raiment, albeit embroidered with knots and wreaths of flowers. A while they danced and then suddenly the music fell, and they all went back to their places. Then the chieftain in the high-seat arose and took a horn from his side, and blew a great blast on it that filled the hall; then he cried in a loud voice: "Be we merry! Let the champions come forth!"
Men shouted gleefully thereat, and straightway ran into the hall from out the screens three tall men clad all in black armour with naked swords in their hands, and stood amidst the hall-floor, somewhat on one side, and clashed their swords on their shields and cried out: "Come forth ye Champions of the Raven!"
Then leapt Hallblithe from his seat and set his hand to his left side, but no sword was there; so he sat down again, remembering the warning of the Elder, and none heeded him.
Then there came into the hall slowly and mournfully three men-at-arms, clad and weaponed like the warriors of his folk, with the image of the Raven on their helms and shields. So Hallblithe refrained him, for besides that this seemed like to be a fair battle of three against three, he doubted some snare, and he determined to look on and abide.
So the champions fell to laying on strokes that were no child's play, though Hallblithe doubted if the edges bit, and it was but a little while before the Champions of the Raven fell one after another before the Wild Men, and folk drew them by the heels out into the buttery. Then arose great laughter and jeering, and exceeding wroth was Hallblithe; howbeit he refrained him because he remembered all he had to do. But the three Champions of the Sea strode round the hall, tossing up their swords and catching them as they fell, while the horns blew up behind them.
After a while the hall grew hushed, and the chieftain arose and cried: "Bring in now some sheaves of the harvest we win, we lads of the oar and the arrow!" Then was there a stir at the screen doors, and folk pressed forward to see, and, lo, there came forward a string of women, led in by two weaponed carles; and the women were a score in number, and they were barefoot and their hair hung loose and their gowns were ungirt, and they were chained together wrist to wrist; yet had they gold at arm and neck: there was silence in the hall when they stood amidst of the floor.
Then indeed Hallblithe could not refrain himself, and he leapt from his seat and on to the board, and over it, and ran down the hall, and came to those women and looked them in the face one by one, while no man spake in the hall. But the Hostage was not amongst them; nay forsooth, they none of them favoured of the daughters of his people, though they were comely and fair; so that again Hallblithe doubted if this were aught but a feast- hall play done to anger him; whereas there was but little grief in the faces of those damsels, and more than one of them smiled wantonly in his face as he looked on them.
So he turned about and went back to his seat, having said no word, and behind him arose much mocking and jeering; but it angered him little now; for he remembered the rede of the elder and how that he had done according to his bidding, so that he deemed the gain was his. So sprang up talk in the hall betwixt man and man, and folk drank about and were merry, till the chieftain arose again and smote the board with the flat of his sword, and cried out in a loud and angry voice, so that all could hear: "Now let there be music and minstrelsy ere we wend bedward!"
Therewith fell the hubbub of voices, and there came forth three men with great harps, and a fourth man with them, who was the minstrel; and the harpers smote their harps so that the roof rang therewith, and the noise, though it was great, was tuneable, and when they had played thus a little while, they abated their loudness somewhat, and the minstrel lifted his voice and sang: The land lies black With winter's lack, The wind blows cold Round field and fold; All folk are within, And but weaving they win. Where from finger to finger the shuttle flies fast, And the eyes of the singer look fain on the cast, As he singeth the story of summer undone And the barley sheaves hoary ripe under the sun.
Then the maidens stay The light-hung sley, And the shuttles bide By the blue web's side, While hand in hand With the carles they stand. But ere to the measure the fiddles strike up, And the elders yet treasure the last of the cup, There stand they a-hearkening the blast from the lift, And e'en night is a-darkening more under the drift.
There safe in the hall They bless the wall, And the roof o'er head, Of the valiant stead; And the hands they praise Of the olden days. Then through the storm's roaring the fiddles break out, And they think not of warring, but cast away doubt, And, man before maiden, their feet tread the floor, And their hearts are unladen of all that they bore.
But what winds are o'er-cold For the heart of the bold? What seas are o'er-high For the undoomed to die? Dark night and dread wind, But the haven we find. Then ashore mid the flurry of stone-washing surf! Cloud-hounds the moon worry, but light lies the turf; Lo the long dale before us! the lights at the end, Though the night darkens o'er us, bid whither to wend.
Who beateth the door By the foot-smitten floor? What guests are these From over the seas? Take shield and sword For their greeting-word. Lo, lo, the dance ended! Lo, midst of the hall The fallow blades blended! Lo, blood on the wall! Who liveth, who dieth? O men of the sea, For peace the folk crieth; our masters are ye.
Now the dale lies grey At the dawn of day; And fair feet pass O'er the wind-worn grass; And they turn back to gaze On the roof of old days. Come tread ye the oaken-floored hall of the sea! Be your hearts yet unbroken; so fair as ye be, That kings are abiding unwedded to gain The news of our riding the steeds of the main.
Much shouting and laughter arose at the song's end; and men sprang up and waved their swords above the cups, while Hallblithe sat scowling down on their merriment. Lastly arose the chieftain and called out loudly for the good-night cup, and it went round and all men drank. Then the horn blew for bed, and the chieftains went to their chambers, and the others went to the out-bowers or laid them down on the hall-floor, and in a little while none stood upright thereon. So Hallblithe arose, and went to the shut-bed appointed for him, and laid him down and slept dreamlessly till the morning.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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8
|
HALLBLITHE TAKETH SHIP AGAIN AWAY FROM THE ISLE OF RANSOM
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When he awoke, the sun shone into the hall by the windows above the buttery, and there were but few folk left therein. But so soon as Hallblithe was clad, the old woman came to him, and took him by the hand, and led him to the board, and signed to him to eat of what was thereon; and he did so; and by then he was done, came folk who went into the shut- bed where lay the Long-hoary, and they brought him forth bed and all and bare him out a-doors. Then the crone brought Hallblithe his arms and he did on byrny and helm, girt his sword to his side, took his spear in his hand and went out a-doors; and there close by the porch lay the Long-hoary upon a horse-litter. So Hallblithe came up to him and gave him the sele of the day: and the elder said: "Good morrow, son, I am glad to see thee. Did they try thee hard last night?"
And Hallblithe saw two of the carles that had borne out the elder, that they were talking together, and they looked on him and laughed mockingly; so he said to the elder: "Even fools may try a wise man, and so it befell last night. Yet, as thou seest, mumming hath not slain me."
Said the old man: "What thou sawest was not all mumming; it was done according to our customs; and well nigh all of it had been done, even hadst thou not been there. Nay, I will tell thee; at some of our feasts it is not lawful to eat either for the chieftains or the carles, till a champion hath given forth a challenge, and been answered and met, and the battle fought to an end. But ye men, what hindereth you to go to the horses' heads and speed on the road the chieftain who is no longer way- worthy?"
So they ran to the horses and set down the dale by the riverside, and just as Hallblithe was going to follow afoot, there came a swain from behind the house leading a red horse which he brought to Hallblithe as one who bids mount. So Hallblithe leapt into the saddle and at once caught up with the litter of the Long-hoary down along the river. They passed by no other house, save here and there a cot beside some fold or byre; they went easily, for the way was smooth by the river-side; so in less than two hours they came where the said river ran into the sea. There was no beach there, for the water was ten fathom deep close up to the lip of the land; but there was a great haven land-locked all but a narrow outgate betwixt the sheer black cliffs. Many a great ship might have lain in that haven; but as now there was but one lying there, a round-ship not very great, but exceeding trim and meet for the sea.
There without more ado the carles took the elder from the litter and bore him aboard, and Hallblithe followed him as if he had been so appointed. They laid the old man adown on the poop under a tilt of precious web, and so went aback by the way that they had come; and Hallblithe went and sat down beside the Long-hoary, who spake to him and said: "Seest thou, son, how easy it is for us twain to be shipped for the land whither we would go? But as easy as it is for thee to go thither whereas we are going, just so hard had it been for thee to go elsewhere. Moreover I must tell thee that though many an one of the Isle of Ransom desireth to go this voyage, there shall none else go, till the world is a year older, and he who shall go then shall be likest to me in all ways, both in eld and in feebleness, and in gibing speech, and all else; and now that I am gone, his name shall be the same as that whereby ye may call me to-day, and that is Grandfather. Art thou glad or sorry, Hallblithe?"
"Grandfather," said Hallblithe, "I can scarce tell thee: I move as one who hath no will to wend one way or other. Meseems I am drawn to go thither whereas we are going; therefore I deem that I shall find my beloved on the Glittering Plain: and whatever befalleth afterward, let it be as it will!"
"Tell me, my son," said the Grandfather, "how many women are there in the world?"
"How may I tell thee?" said Hallblithe.
"Well, then," said the elder, "how many exceeding fair women are there?"
Said Hallblithe, "Indeed I wot not."
"How many of such hast thou seen?" said the Grandfather.
"Many," said Hallblithe; "the daughters of my folk are fair, and there will be many other such amongst the aliens."
Then laughed the elder, and said: "Yet, my son, he who had been thy fellow since thy sundering from thy beloved, would have said that in thy deeming there is but one woman in the world; or at least one fair woman: is it not so?"
Then Hallblithe reddened at first, as though he were angry; then he said: "Yea, it is so."
Said the Grandfather in a musing way: "I wonder if before long I shall think of it as thou dost."
Then Hallblithe gazed at him marvelling, and studied to see wherein lay the gibe against himself; and the Grandfather beheld him, and laughed as well as he might, and said: "Son, son; didst thou not wish me youth?"
"Yea," said Hallblithe, "but what ails thee to laugh so? What is it I have said or done?"
"Nought, nought," said the elder, laughing still more, "only thou lookest so mazed. And who knoweth what thy wish may bring forth?"
Thereat was Hallblithe sore puzzled; but while he set himself to consider what the old carle might mean, uprose the hale and how of the mariners; they cast off the hawsers from the shore, ran out the sweeps, and drave the ship through the haven-gates. It was a bright sunny day; within, the green water was oily-smooth, without the rippling waves danced merrily under a light breeze, and Hallblithe deemed the wind to be fair; for the mariners shouted joyously and made all sail on the ship; and she lay over and sped through the waves, casting off the seas from her black bows. Soon were they clear of those swart cliffs, and it was but a little afterwards that the Isle of Ransom was grown deep blue behind them and far away.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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9
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THEY COME TO THE LAND OF THE GLITTERING PLAIN
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As in the hall, so in the ship, Hallblithe noted that the folk were merry and of many words one with another, while to him no man cast a word save the Grandfather. As to Hallblithe, though he wondered much what all this betokened, and what the land was whereto he was wending, he was no man to fear an unboded peril; and he said to himself that whatever else betid, he should meet the Hostage on the Glittering Plain; so his heart rose and he was of good cheer, and as the Grandfather had foretold, he was a merry faring-fellow to him. Many a gibe the old man cast at him, and whiles Hallblithe gave him back as good as he took, and whiles he laughed as the stroke went home and silenced him; and whiles he understood nought of what the elder said. So wore the day and still the wind held fair, though it was light; and the sun set in a sky nigh cloudless, and there was nowhere any forecast of peril. But when night was come, Hallblithe lay down on a fair bed, which was dight for him in the poop, and he soon fell asleep and dreamed not save such dreams as are but made up of bygone memories, and betoken nought, and are not remembered.
When he awoke, day lay broad on the sea, and the waves were little, the sky had but few clouds, the sun shone bright, and the air was warm and sweet-breathed.
He looked aside and saw the old man sitting up in his bed, as ghastly as a dead man dug up again: his bushy eyebrows were wrinkled over his bleared old eyes, the long white hair dangled forlorn from his gaunt head: yet was his face smiling and he looked as happy as the soul within him could make the half-dead body. He turned now to Hallblithe and said: "Thou art late awake: hadst thou been waking earlier, the sooner had thine heart been gladdened. Go forward now, and gaze thy fill and come and tell me thereof."
"Thou art happy, Grandfather," said Hallblithe, "what good tidings hath morn brought us?"
"The Land! the Land!" said the Long-hoary; "there are no longer tears in this old body, else should I be weeping for joy."
Said Hallblithe: "Art thou going to meet some one who shall make thee glad before thou diest, old man?"
"Some one?" said the elder; "what one? Are they not all gone? burned, and drowned, and slain and died abed? Some one, young man? Yea, forsooth some one indeed! Yea, the great warrior of the Wasters of the Shore; the Sea-eagle who bore the sword and the torch and the terror of the Ravagers over the coal-blue sea. It is myself, MYSELF that I shall find on the Land of the Glittering Plain, O young lover!"
Hallblithe looked on him wondering as he raised his wasted arms towards the bows of the ship pitching down the slope of the sunlit sea, or climbing up it. Then again the old man fell back on his bed and muttered: "What fool's work is this! that thou wilt draw me on to talk loud, and waste my body with lack of patience. I will talk with thee no more, lest my heart swell and break, and quench the little spark of life within me."
Then Hallblithe arose to his feet, and stood looking at him, wondering so much at his words, that for a while he forgat the land which they were nearing, though he had caught glimpses of it, as the bows of the round- ship fell downward into the hollow of the sea. The wind was but light, as hath been said, and the waves little under it, but there was still a smooth swell of the sea which came of breezes now dead, and the ship wallowed thereon and sailed but slowly.
In a while the old man opened his eyes again, and said in a low peevish voice: "Why standest thou staring at me? why hast thou not gone forward to look upon the land? True it is that ye Ravens are short of wits."
Said Hallblithe: "Be not wrath, chieftain; I was wondering at thy words, which are exceeding marvellous; tell me more of this land of the Glittering Plain."
Said the Grandfather: "Why should I tell it thee? ask of the mariners. They all know more than thou dost."
"Thou knowest," said Hallblithe, "that these men speak not to me, and take no more heed of me than if I were an image which they were carrying to sell to the next mighty man they may hap on. Or tell me, thou old man," said he fiercely, "is it perchance a thrall-market whereto they are bringing me? Have they sold her there, and will they sell me also in the same place, but into other hands."
"Tush!" said the Grandfather somewhat feebly, "this last word of thine is folly; there is no buying or selling in the land whereto we are bound. As to thine other word, that these men have no fellowship with thee, it is true: thou art my fellow and the fellow of none else aboard. Therefore if I feel might in me, maybe I will tell thee somewhat."
Then he raised his head a little and said: "The sun grows hot, the wind faileth us, and slow and slow are we sailing."
Even as he spoke there was a stir amidships, and Hallblithe looked and beheld the mariners handling the sweeps, and settling themselves on the rowing-benches. Said the elder: "There is noise amidships, what are they doing?"
The old man raised himself a little again, and cried out in his shrill voice: "Good lads! brave lads! Thus would we do in the old time when we drew anear some shore, and the beacons were sending up smoke by day, and flame benights; and the shore-abiders did on their helms and trembled. Thrust her through, lads! Thrust her along!" Then he fell back again, and said in a weak voice: "Make no more delay, guest, but go forward and look upon the land, and come back and tell me thereof, and then the tale may flow from me. Haste, haste!" So Hallblithe went down from the poop, and in to the waist, where now the rowers were bending to their oars, and crying out fiercely as they tugged at the quivering ash; and he clomb on to the forecastle and went forward right to the dragon-head, and gazed long upon the land, while the dashing of the oar-blades made the semblance of a gale about the ship's black sides. Then he came back again to the Sea-eagle, who said to him: "Son, what hast thou seen?"
"Right ahead lieth the land, and it is still a good way off. High rise the mountains there, but by seeming there is no snow on them; and though they be blue they are not blue like the mountains of the Isle of Ransom. Also it seemed to me as if fair slopes of woodland and meadow come down to the edge of the sea. But it is yet far away."
"Yea," said the elder, "is it so? Then will I not wear myself with making words for thee. I will rest rather, and gather might. Come again when an hour hath worn, and tell me what thou seest; and may happen then thou shalt have my tale!" And he laid him down therewith and seemed to be asleep at once. And Hallblithe might not amend it; so he waited patiently till the hour had worn, and then went forward again, and looked long and carefully, and came back and said to the Sea-eagle, "The hour is worn."
The old chieftain turned himself about and said "What hast thou seen?"
Said Hallblithe: "The mountains are pale and high, and below them are hills dark with wood, and betwixt them and the sea is a fair space of meadowland, and methought it was wide."
Said the old man: "Sawest thou a rocky skerry rising high out of the sea anigh the shore?"
"Nay," said Hallblithe, "if there be, it is all blended with the meadows and the hills."
Said the Sea-eagle: "Abide the wearing of another hour, and come and tell me again, and then I may have a gainful word for thee." And he fell asleep again. But Hallblithe abided, and when the hour was worn, he went forward and stood on the forecastle. And this was the third shift of the rowers, and the stoutest men in the ship now held the oars in their hands, and the ship shook through all her length and breadth as they drave her over the waters.
So Hallblithe came aft to the old man and found him asleep; so he took him by the shoulder, and shook him and said: "Awake, faring-fellow, for the land is a-nigh."
So the old man sat up and said: "What hast thou seen?"
Said Hallblithe: "I have seen the peaks and cliffs of the far-off mountains; and below them are hills green with grass and dark with woods, and thence stretch soft green meadows down to the sea-strand, which is fair and smooth, and yellow."
"Sawest thou the skerry?" said the Sea-eagle.
"Yea, I saw it," said Hallblithe, "and it rises sheer from out the sea about a mile from the yellow strand; but its rocks are black, like the rocks of the Isle of Ransom."
"Son," said the elder, "give me thine hands and raise me up a little." So Hallblithe took him and raised him up, so that he sat leaning against the pillows; and he looked not on Hallblithe, but on the bows of the ship, which now pitched but a little up and down, for the sea was laid quiet now. Then he cried in his shrill, piping voice: "It is the Land! It is the Land!"
But after a little while he turned to Hallblithe and spake: "Short is the tale to tell: thou hast wished me youth, and thy wish hath thriven; for to-day, ere the sun goes down, thou shalt see me as I was in the days when I reaped the harvest of the sea with sharp sword and hardy heart. For this is the land of the Undying King, who is our lord and our gift- giver; and to some he giveth the gift of youth renewed, and life that shall abide here the Gloom of the Gods. But none of us all may come to the Glittering Plain and the King Undying without turning the back for the last time on the Isle of Ransom: nor may any men of the Isle come hither save those who are of the House of the Sea-eagle, and few of those, save the chieftains of the House, such as are they who sat by thee on the high-seat that even. Of these once in a while is chosen one of us, who is old and spent and past battle, and is borne to this land and the gift of the Undying. Forsooth some of us have no will to take the gift, for they say they are liefer to go to where they shall meet more of our kindred than dwell on the Glittering Plain and the Acre of the Undying; but as for me I was ever an overbearing and masterful man, and meseemeth it is well that I meet as few of our kindred as may be: for they are a strifeful race."
Hereat Hallblithe marvelled exceedingly, and he said: "And what am I in all this story? Why am I come hither with thy furtherance?"
Said the Sea-eagle: "We had a charge from the Undying King concerning thee, that we should bring thee hither alive and well, if so be thou camest to the Isle of Ransom. For what cause we had the charge, I know not, nor do I greatly heed."
Said Hallblithe: "And shall I also have that gift of undying youth, and life while the world of men and gods endureth?"
"I must needs deem so," said the Sea-eagle, "so long as thou abidest on the Glittering Plain; and I see not how thou mayst ever escape thence."
Now Hallblithe heard him, how he said "escape," and thereat he was somewhat ill at ease, and stood and pondered a little. At last he said: "Is this then all that thou hast to tell me concerning the Glittering Plain?"
"By the Treasure of the Sea!" said the elder, "I know no more of it. The living shall learn. But I suppose that thou mayst seek thy troth-plight maiden there all thou wilt. Or thou mayst pray the Undying King to have her thither to thee. What know I? At least, it is like that there shall be no lack of fair women there: or else the promise of youth renewed is nought and vain. Shall this not be enough for thee?"
"Nay," said Hallblithe.
"What," said the elder, "must it be one woman only?"
"One only," said Hallblithe.
The old man laughed his thin mocking laugh, and said: "I will not assure thee but that the land of the Glittering Plain shall change all that for thee so soon as it touches the soles of thy feet."
Hallblithe looked at him steadily and smiled, and said: "Well is it then that I shall find the Hostage there; for then shall we be of one mind, either to sunder or to cleave together. It is well with me this day."
"And with me it shall be well ere long," said the Sea-eagle.
But now the rowers ceased rowing and lay on their oars, and the shipmen cast anchor; for they were but a bowshot from the shore, and the ship swung with the tide and lay side-long to the shore. Then said the Sea- eagle: "Look forth, shipmate, and tell me of the land."
And Hallblithe looked and said: "The yellow beach is sandy and shell-strewn, as I deem, and there is no great space of it betwixt the sea and the flowery grass; and a bowshot from the strand I see a little wood amidst which are fair trees blossoming."
"Seest thou any folk on the shore?" said the old man. "Yea," said Hallblithe, "close to the edge of the sea go four; and by seeming three are women, for their long gowns flutter in the wind. And one of these is clad in saffron colour, and another in white, and another in watchet; but the carle is clad in dark red; and their raiment is all glistening as with gold and gems; and by seeming they are looking at our ship as though they expected somewhat."
Said the Sea-eagle: "Why now do the shipmen tarry and have not made ready the skiff? Swillers and belly-gods they be; slothful swine that forget their chieftain."
But even as he spake came four of the shipmen, and without more ado took him up, bed and all, and bore him down into the waist of the ship, whereunder lay the skiff with four strong rowers lying on their oars. These men made no sign to Hallblithe, nor took any heed of him; but he caught up his spear, and followed them and stood by as they lowered the old man into the boat. Then he set his foot on the gunwale of the ship and leapt down lightly into the boat, and none hindered or helped him; and he stood upright in the boat, a goodly image of battle with the sun flashing back from his bright helm, his spear in his hand, his white shield at his back, and thereon the image of the Raven; but if he had been but a salt-boiling carle of the sea-side none would have heeded him less.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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10
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THEY HOLD CONVERSE WITH FOLK OF THE GLITTERING PLAIN
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Now the rowers lifted the ash-blades, and fell to rowing towards shore: and almost with the first of their strokes, the Sea-eagle moaned out: "Would we were there, oh, would we were there! Cold groweth eld about my heart. Raven's Son, thou art standing up; tell me if thou canst see what these folk of the land are doing, and if any others have come thither?"
Said Hallblithe: "There are none others come, but kine and horses are feeding down the meadows. As to what those four are doing, the women are putting off their shoon, and girding up their raiment, as if they would wade the water toward us; and the carle, who was barefoot before, wendeth straight towards the sea, and there he standeth, for very little are the waves become."
The old man answered nothing, and did but groan for lack of patience; but presently when the water was yet waist deep the rowers stayed the skiff, and two of them slipped over the gunwale into the sea, and between them all they took up the chieftain on his bed and got him forth from the boat and went toward the strand with him; and the landsfolk met them where the water was shallower, and took him from their hands and bore him forth on to the yellow sand, and laid him down out of reach of the creeping ripple of the tide. Hallblithe withal slipped lightly out of the boat and waded the water after them. But the shipmen rowed back again to their ship, and presently Hallblithe heard the hale and how, as they got up their anchor.
But when Hallblithe was come ashore, and was drawn near the folk of the land, the women looked at him askance, and they laughed and said: "Welcome to thee also, O young man!" And he beheld them, and saw that they were of the stature of the maidens of his own land; they were exceeding fair of skin and shapely of fashion, so that the nakedness of their limbs under their girded gowns, and all glistening with the sea, was most lovely and dainty to behold. But Hallblithe knelt by the Sea- eagle to note how he fared, and said: "How is it with thee, O chieftain?"
The old man answered not a word, and he seemed to be asleep, and Hallblithe deemed that his cheeks were ruddier and his skin less wasted and wrinkled than aforetime. Then spake one of those women: "Fear not, young man; he is well and will soon be better." Her voice was as sweet as a spring bird in the morning; she was white-skinned and dark-haired, and full sweetly fashioned; and she laughed on Hallblithe, but not mockingly; and her fellows also laughed, as though it was strange for him to be there. Then they did on their shoon again, and with the carle laid their hands to the bed whereon the old man lay, and lifted him up, and bore him forth on to the grass, turning their faces toward the flowery wood aforesaid; and they went a little way and then laid him down again and rested; and so on little by little, till they had brought him to the edge of the wood, and still he seemed to be asleep. Then the damsel who had spoken before, she with the dark hair, said to Hallblithe, "Although we have gazed on thee as if with wonder, this is not because we did not look to meet thee, but because thou art so fair and goodly a man: so abide thou here till we come back to thee from out of the wood."
Therewith she stroked his hand, and with her fellows lifted the old man once more, and they bore him out of sight into the thicket.
But Hallblithe went to and fro a dozen paces from the wood, and looked across the flowery meads and deemed he had never seen any so fair. And afar off toward the hills he saw a great roof arising, and thought he could see men also; and nigher to him were kine pasturing, and horses also, whereof some drew anear him and stretched out their necks and gazed at him; and they were goodly after their kind; and a fair stream of water came round the corner out of the wood and down the meadows to the sea; and Hallblithe went thereto and could see that there was but little ebb and flow of the tide on that shore; for the water of the stream was clear as glass, and the grass and flowers grew right down to its water; so he put off his helm and drank of the stream and washed his face and his hands therein, and then did on his helm again and turned back again toward the wood, feeling very strong and merry; and he looked out seaward and saw the Ship of the Isle of Ransom lessening fast; for a little land wind had arisen and they had spread their sails to it; and he laid down on the grass till the four folk of the country came out of the wood again, after they had been gone somewhat less than an hour, but the Sea- eagle was not with them: and Hallblithe rose up and turned to them, and the carle saluted him and departed, going straight toward that far-away roof he had seen; and the women were left with Hallblithe, and they looked at him and he at them as he stood leaning on his spear.
Then said the black-haired damsel: "True it is, O Spearman, that if we did not know of thee, our wonder would be great that a man so young and lucky-looking should have sought hither."
"I wot not why thou shouldest wonder," said Hallblithe; "I will tell thee presently wherefore I come hither. But tell me, is this the Land of the Glittering Plain?"
"Even so," said the damsel, "dost thou not see how the sun shineth on it? Just so it shineth in the season that other folks call winter."
"Some such marvel I thought to hear of," said he; "for I have been told that the land is marvellous; and fair though these meadows be, they are not marvellous to look on now: they are like other lands, though it maybe, fairer."
"That may be," she said; "we have nought but hearsay of other lands. If we ever knew them we have forgotten them."
Said Hallblithe, "Is this land called also the Acre of the Undying?"
As he spake the words the smile faded from the damsel's face; she and her fellows grew pale, and she said: "Hold thy peace of such words! They are not lawful for any man to utter here. Yet mayst thou call it the Land of the Living."
He said: "I crave pardon for the rash word."
Then they smiled again, and drew near to him, and caressed him with their hands, and looked on him lovingly; but he drew a little aback from them and said: "I have come hither seeking something which I have lost, the lack whereof grieveth me."
Quoth the damsel, drawing nearer to him again, "Mayst thou find it, thou lovely man, and whatsoever else thou desirest."
Then he said: "Hath a woman named the Hostage been brought hither of late days? A fair woman, bright-haired and grey-eyed, kind of countenance, soft of speech, yet outspoken and nought timorous; tall according to our stature, but very goodly of fashion; a woman of the House of the Rose, and my troth-plight maiden."
They looked on each other and shook their heads, and the black-haired damsel spake: "We know of no such a woman, nor of the kindred which thou namest."
Then his countenance fell, and became piteous with desire and grief, and he bent his brows upon them, for they seemed to him light-minded and careless, though they were lovely.
But they shrank from him trembling, and drew aback; for they had all been standing close to him, beholding him with love, and she who had spoken most had been holding his left hand fondly. But now she said: "Nay, look not on us so bitterly! If the woman be not in the land, this cometh not of our malice. Yet maybe she is here. For such as come hither keep not their old names, and soon forget them what they were. Thou shalt go with us to the King, and he shall do for thee what thou wilt; for he is exceeding mighty."
Then was Hallblithe appeased somewhat; and he said: "Are there many women in the land?"
"Yea, many," said that damsel.
"And many that are as fair as ye be?" said he. Then they laughed and were glad, and drew near to him again and took his hands and kissed them; and the black-haired damsel said: "Yea, yea, there be many as fair as we be, and some fairer," and she laughed.
"And that King of yours," said he, "how do ye name him?"
"He is the King," said the damsel.
"Hath he no other name?" said Hallblithe.
"We may not utter it," she said; "but thou shalt see him soon, that there is nought but good in him and mightiness."
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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11
|
THE SEA-EAGLE RENEWETH HIS LIFE
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But while they spake together thus, came a man from out of the wood very tall of stature, red-bearded and black-haired, ruddy-cheeked, full-limbed, most joyous of aspect; a man by seeming of five and thirty winters. He strode straight up to Hallblithe, and cast his arms about him, and kissed his cheek, as if he had been an old and dear friend newly come from over seas.
Hallblithe wondered and laughed, and said: "Who art thou that deemest me so dear?"
Said the man: "Short is thy memory, Son of the Raven, that thou in so little space hast forgotten thy shipmate and thy faring-fellow; who gave thee meat and drink and good rede in the Hall of the Ravagers." Therewith he laughed joyously and turned about to the three maidens and took them by the hands and kissed their lips, while they fawned upon him lovingly.
Then said Hallblithe: "Hast thou verily gotten thy youth again, which thou badest me wish thee?"
"Yea, in good sooth," said the red-bearded man; "I am the Sea-eagle of old days; and I have gotten my youth, and love therewithal, and somewhat to love moreover."
Therewith he turned to the fairest of the damsels, and she was white-skinned and fragrant as the lily, rose-cheeked and slender, and the wind played with the long locks of her golden hair, which hung down below her knees; so he cast his arms about her and strained her to his bosom, and kissed her face many times, and she nothing loth, but caressing him with lips and hand. But the other two damsels stood by smiling and joyous: and they clapped their hands together and kissed each other for joy of the new lover; and at last fell to dancing and skipping about them like young lambs in the meadows of Spring-tide. But amongst them all, stood up Hallblithe leaning on his spear with smiling lips and knitted brow; for he was pondering in his mind in what wise he might further his quest.
But after they had danced a while the Sea-eagle left his love that he had chosen and took a hand of either of the two damsels, and led them tripping up to Hallblithe, and cried out: "Choose thou, Raven's baby, which of these twain thou wilt have to thy mate; for scarcely shalt thou see better or fairer."
But Hallblithe looked on them proudly and sternly, and the black-haired damsel hung down her head before him and said softly: "Nay, nay, sea-warrior; this one is too lovely to be our mate. Sweeter love abides him, and lips more longed for."
Then stirred Hallblithe's heart within him and he said: "O Eagle of the Sea, thou hast thy youth again: what then wilt thou do with it? Wilt thou not weary for the moonlit main, and the washing of waves and the dashing of spray, and thy fellows all glistening with the brine? Where now shall be the alien shores before thee, and the landing for fame, and departure for the gain of goods? Wilt thou forget the ship's black side, and the dripping of the windward oars, as the squall falleth on when the sun hath arisen, and the sail tuggeth hard on the sheet, and the ship lieth over and the lads shout against the whistle of the wind? Has the spear fallen from thine hand, and hast thou buried the sword of thy fathers in the grave from which thy body hath escaped? What art thou, O Warrior, in the land of the alien and the King? Who shall heed thee or tell the tale of thy glory, which thou hast covered over with the hand of a light woman, whom thy kindred knoweth not, and who was not born in a house wherefrom it hath been appointed thee from of old to take the pleasure of woman? Whose thrall art thou now, thou lifter of the spoil, thou scarer of the freeborn? The bidding of what lord or King wilt thou do, O Chieftain, that thou mayst eat thy meat in the morning and lie soft in thy bed in the evening?"
"O Warrior of the Ravagers, here stand I, Hallblithe of the Raven, and I am come into an alien land beset with marvels to seek mine own, and find that which is dearest to mine heart; to wit, my troth-plight maiden the Hostage of the Rose, the fair woman who shall lie in my bed, and bear me children, and stand by me in field and fold, by thwart and gunwale, before the bow and the spear, by the flickering of the cooking-fire, and amidst the blaze of the burning hall, and beside the bale-fire of the warrior of the Raven. O Sea-eagle, my guester amongst the foemen, my fellow-farer and shipmate, say now once for all whether thou wilt help me in my quest, or fall off from me as a dastard?"
Again the maidens shrank before his clear and high-raised voice, and they trembled and grew pale.
But the Sea-eagle laughed from a countenance kind with joy, and said: "Child of the Raven, thy words are good and manly: but it availeth nought in this land, and I wot not how thou wilt fare, or why thou hast been sent amongst us. What wilt thou do? Hadst thou spoken these words to the Long-hoary, the Grandfather, yesterday, his ears would have been deaf to them; and now that thou speakest them to the Sea-eagle, this joyous man on the Glittering Plain, he cannot do according to them, for there is no other land than this which can hold him. Here he is strong and stark, and full of joy and love; but otherwhere he would be but a gibbering ghost drifting down the wind of night. Therefore in whatsoever thou mayst do within this land I will stand by thee and help thee; but not one inch beyond it may my foot go, whether it be down into the brine of the sea, or up into the clefts of the mountains which are the wall of this goodly land.
"Thou hast been my shipmate and I love thee, I am thy friend; but here in this land must needs be the love and the friendship. For no ghost can love thee, no ghost may help thee. And as to what thou sayest concerning the days gone past and our joys upon the tumbling sea, true it is that those days were good and lovely; but they are dead and gone like the lads who sat on the thwart beside us, and the maidens who took our hands in the hall to lead us to the chamber. Other days have come in their stead, and other friends shall cherish us. What then? Shall we wound the living to pleasure the dead, who cannot heed it? Shall we curse the Yuletide, and cast foul water on the Holy Hearth of the winter feast, because the summer once was fair and the days flit and the times change? Now let us be glad! For life liveth."
Therewith he turned about to his damsel and kissed her on the mouth. But Hallblithe's face was grown sad and stern, and he spake slowly and heavily: "So is it, shipmate, that whereas thou sayest that the days flit, for thee they shall flit no more; and the day may come for thee when thou shalt be weary, and know it, and long for the lost which thou hast forgotten. But hereof it availeth nought for me to speak any longer, for thine ears are deaf to these words, and thou wilt not hear them. Therefore I say no more save that I thank thee for thy help whatsoever it may be; and I will take it, for the day's work lieth before me, and I begin to think that it may be heavy enough."
The women yet looked downcast, and as if they would be gone out of earshot; but the Sea-eagle laughed as one who is well content, and said: "Thou thyself wilt make it hard for thyself after the wont of thy proud and haughty race; but for me nothing is hard any longer; neither thy scorn nor thy forebodings of evil. Be thou my friend as much as thou canst, and I will be thine wholly. Now ye women, whither will ye lead us? For I am ready to see any new thing ye will show us."
Said his damsel: "We will take you to the King, that your hearts may be the more gladdened. And as for thy friend the Spearman, O Sea-warrior, let not his heart be downcast. Who wotteth but that these two desires, the desire of his heart, and the desire of a heart for him, may not be one and the same desire, so that he shall be fully satisfied?" As she spoke she looked sidelong at Hallblithe, with shy and wheedling eyes; and he wondered at her word, and a new hope sprang up in his heart that he was presently to be brought face to face with the Hostage, and that this was that love, sweeter than their love, which abode in him, and his heart became lighter, and his visage cleared.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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12
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THEY LOOK ON THE KING OF THE GLITTERING PLAIN
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So now the women led them along up the stream, and Hallblithe went side by side by the Sea-eagle; but the women had become altogether merry again, and played and ran about them as gamesome as young goats; and they waded the shallows of the clear bright stream barefoot to wash their limbs of the sea-brine, and strayed about the meadows, plucking the flowers and making them wreaths and chaplets, which they did upon themselves and the Sea-eagle; but Hallblithe they touched not, for still they feared him. They went on as the stream led them up toward the hills, and ever were the meads about them as fair and flowery as might be. Folk they saw afar off, but fell in with none for a good while, saving a man and a maid clad lightly as for mid-summer days, who were wandering together lovingly and happily by the stream-side, and who gazed wonderingly on the stark Sea-eagle, and on Hallblithe with his glittering spear. The black-haired damsel greeted these twain and spake something to them, and they laughed merrily, and the man stooped down amongst the grasses and blossoms of the bank, and drew forth a basket, and spread dainty victuals on the grass under a willow-tree, and bade them be his guests that fair afternoon. So they sat down there above the glistering stream and ate and drank and were merry. Thereafter the new-comers and their way-leaders departed with kind words, and still set their faces towards the hills.
At last they saw before them a little wooded hill, and underneath it something red and shining, and other coloured things gleaming in the sun about it. Then said the Sea-eagle: "What have we yonder?"
Said his damsel: "That is the pavilion of the King; and about it are the tents and tilts of our folk who are of his fellowship: for oft he abideth in the fields with them, though he hath houses and halls as fair as the heart of man can conceive."
"Hath he no foemen to fear?" said the Sea-eagle.
"How should that be?" said the damsel. "If perchance any came into this land to bring war upon him, their battle-anger should depart when once the bliss of the Glittering Plain had entered into their souls, and they would ask for nought but leave to abide here and be happy. Yet I trow that if he had foemen he could crush them as easily as I set my foot on this daisy."
So as they went on they fell in with many folk, men and women, sporting and playing in the fields; and there was no semblance of eld on any of them, and no scar or blemish or feebleness of body or sadness of countenance; nor did any bear a weapon or any piece of armour. Now some of them gathered about the new-corners, and wondered at Hallblithe and his long spear and shining helm and dark grey byrny; but none asked concerning them, for all knew that they were folk new come to the bliss of the Glittering Plain. So they passed amidst these fair folk little hindered by them, and into Hallblithe's thoughts it came how joyous the fellowship of such should be and how his heart should be raised by the sight of them, if only his troth-plight maiden were by his side.
Thus then they came to the King's pavilion, where it stood in a bight of the meadow-land at the foot of the hill, with the wood about it on three sides. So fair a house Hallblithe deemed he had never seen; for it was wrought all over with histories and flowers, and with hems sewn with gold, and with orphreys of gold and pearl and gems.
There in the door of it sat the King of the Land in an ivory chair; he was clad in golden gown, girt with a girdle of gems, and had his crown on his head and his sword by his side. For this was the hour wherein he heard what any of his folk would say to him, and for that very end he sat there in the door of his tent, and folk were standing before him, and sitting and lying on the grass round about; and now one, now another, came up to him and spoke before him.
His face shone like a star; it was exceeding beauteous, and as kind as the even of May in the gardens of the happy, when the scent of the eglantine fills all the air. When he spoke his voice was so sweet that all hearts were ravished, and none might gainsay him.
But when Hallblithe set eyes on him, he knew at once that this was he whose carven image he had seen in the Hall of the Ravagers, and his heart beat fast, and he said to himself: "Hold up thine head now, O Son of the Raven, strengthen thine heart, and let no man or god cow thee. For how can thine heart change, which bade thee go to the house wherefrom it was due to thee to take the pleasure of woman, and there to pledge thy faith and troth to her that loveth thee most, and hankereth for thee day by day and hour by hour, so that great is the love that we twain have builded up."
Now they drew nigh, for folk fell back before them to the right and left, as before men who are new come and have much to do; so that there was nought between them and the face of the King. But he smiled upon them so that he cheered their hearts with the hope of fulfilment of their desires, and he said: "Welcome, children! Who be these whom ye have brought hither for the increase of our joy? Who is this tall, ruddy-faced, joyous man so meet for the bliss of the Glittering Plain? And who is this goodly and lovely young man, who beareth weapons amidst our peace, and whose face is sad and stern beneath the gleaming of his helm?"
Said the dark-haired damsel: "O King! O Gift-giver and assurer of joy! this tall one is he who was once oppressed by eld, and who hath come hither to thee from the Isle of Ransom, according to the custom of the land."
Said the King: "Tall man, it is well that thou art come. Now are thy days changed and thou yet alive. For thee battle is ended, and therewith the reward of battle, which the warrior remembereth not amidst the hard hand-play: peace hath begun, and thou needest not be careful for the endurance thereof: for in this land no man hath a lack which he may not satisfy without taking aught from any other. I deem not that thine heart may conceive a desire which I shall not fulfil for thee, or crave a gift which I shall not give thee."
Then the Sea-eagle laughed for joy, and turned his head this way and that, so that he might the better take to him the smiles of all those that stood around.
Then the King said to Hallblithe: "Thou also art welcome; I know thee who thou art: meseemeth great joy awaiteth thee, and I will fulfil thy desire to the uttermost."
Said Hallblithe: "O great King of a happy land, I ask of thee nought save that which none shall withhold from me uncursed."
"I will give it to thee," said the King, "and thou shalt bless me. But what is it which thou wouldst? What more canst thou have than the Gifts of the land?"
Said Hallblithe: "I came hither seeking no gifts, but to have mine own again; and that is the bodily love of my troth-plight maiden. They stole her from me, and me from her; for she loved me. I went down to the sea- side and found her not, nor the ship which had borne her away. I sailed from thence to the Isle of Ransom, for they told me that there I should buy her for a price; neither was her body there. But her image came to me in a dream of the night, and bade me seek to her hither. Therefore, O King, if she be here in the land, show me how I shall find her, and if she be not here, show me how I may depart to seek her otherwhere. This is all my asking."
Said the King: "Thy desire shall be satisfied; thou shalt have the woman who would have thee, and whom thou shouldst have."
Hallblithe was gladdened beyond measure by that word; and now did the King seem to him a comfort and a solace to every heart, even as he had deemed of his carven image in the Hall of the Ravagers; and he thanked him, and blessed him.
But the King bade him abide by him that night, and feast with him. "And on the morrow," said he, "thou shalt go thy ways to look on her whom thou oughtest to love."
Therewith was come the eventide and beginning of night, warm and fragrant and bright with the twinkling of stars, and they went into the King's pavilion, and there was the feast as fair and dainty as might be; and Hallblithe had meat from the King's own dish, and drink from his cup; but the meat had no savour to him and the drink no delight, because of the longing that possessed him.
And when the feast was done, the damsels led Hallblithe to his bed in a fair tent strewn with gold about his head like the starry night, and he lay down and slept for sheer weariness of body.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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13
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HALLBLITHE BEHOLDETH THE WOMAN WHO LOVETH HIM
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But on the morrow the men arose, and the Sea-eagle and his damsel came to Hallblithe; for the other two damsels were departed, and the Sea-eagle said to him: "Here am I well honoured and measurelessly happy; and I have a message for thee from the King."
"What is it?" said Hallblithe; but he deemed that he knew what it would be, and he reddened for the joy of his assured hope.
Said the Sea-eagle: "Joy to thee, O shipmate! I am to take thee to the place where thy beloved abideth, and there shalt thou see her, but not so as she can see thee; and thereafter shalt thou go to the King, that thou mayst tell him if she shall accomplish thy desire."
Then was Hallblithe glad beyond measure, and his heart danced within him, and he deemed it but meet that the others should be so joyous and blithe with him, for they led him along without any delay, and were glad at his rejoicing; and words failed him to tell of his gladness.
But as he went, the thoughts of his coming converse with his beloved curled sweetly round his heart, so that scarce anything had seemed so sweet to him before; and he fell a-pondering what they twain, he and the Hostage, should do when they came together again; whether they should abide on the Glittering Plain, or go back again to Cleveland by the Sea and dwell in the House of the Kindred; and for his part he yearned to behold the roof of his fathers and to tread the meadow which his scythe had swept, and the acres where his hook had smitten the wheat. But he said to himself, "I will wait till I hear her desire hereon."
Now they went into the wood at the back of the King's pavilion and through it, and so over the hill, and beyond it came into a land of hills and dales exceeding fair and lovely; and a river wound about the dales, lapping in turn the feet of one hill-side or the other; and in each dale (for they passed through two) was a goodly house of men, and tillage about it, and vineyards and orchards. They went all day till the sun was near setting, and were not weary, for they turned into the houses by the way when they would, and had good welcome and meat and drink and what they would of the folk that dwelt there. Thus anigh sunset they came into a dale fairer than either of the others, and nigh to the end where they had entered it was an exceeding goodly house. Then said the damsel: "We are nigh-hand to our journey's end; let us sit down on the grass by this river-side whilst I tell thee the tale which the King would have thee know."
So they sat down on the grass beside the brimming river, scant two bowshots from that fair house, and the damsel said, reading from a scroll which she drew from her bosom: "O Spearman, in yonder house dwelleth the woman foredoomed to love thee: if thou wouldst see her, go thitherward, following the path which turneth from the river-side by yonder oak-tree, and thou shalt presently come to a thicket of bay-trees at the edge of an apple-orchard, whose trees are blossoming; abide thou hidden by the bay-leaves, and thou shalt see maidens come into the orchard, and at last one fairer than all the others. This shall be thy love fore-doomed, and none other; and thou shalt know her by this token, that when she hath set her down on the grass beside the bay-tree, she shall say to her maidens 'Bring me now the book wherein is the image of my beloved, that I may solace myself with beholding it before the sun goes down and the night cometh.'"
Now Hallblithe was troubled when she read out these words, and he said: "What is this tale about a book? I know not of any book that lieth betwixt me and my beloved."
"O Spearman," said the damsel, "I may tell thee no more, because I know no more. But keep up thine heart! For dost thou know any more than I do what hath befallen thy beloved since thou wert sundered from her? and why should not this matter of the book be one of the things that hath befallen her? Go now with joy, and come again blessing us."
"Yea, go, faring-fellow," said the Sea-eagle, "and come back joyful, that we may all be merry together. And we will abide thee here."
Hallblithe foreboded evil, but he held his peace and went his ways down the path by the oak-tree; and they abode there by the water-side, and were very merry talking of this and that (but no whit of Hallblithe), and kissing and caressing each other; so that it seemed but a little while to them ere they saw Hallblithe coming back by the oak-tree. He went slowly, hanging his head like a man sore-burdened with grief: thus he came up to them, and stood there above them as they lay on the fragrant grass, and he saying no word and looking so sad and sorry, and withal so fell, that they feared his grief and his anger, and would fain have been away from him; so that they durst not ask him a question for a long while, and the sun sank below the hill while they abided thus.
Then all trembling the damsel spake to the Sea-eagle: "Speak to him, dear friend, else must I flee away, for I fear his silence."
Quoth the Sea-eagle: "Shipmate and friend, what hath betided? How art thou? May we hearken, and mayhappen amend it?"
Then Hallblithe cast himself adown on the grass and said: "I am accursed and beguiled; and I wander round and round in a tangle that I may not escape from. I am not far from deeming that this is a land of dreams made for my beguiling. Or has the earth become so full of lies, that there is no room amidst them for a true man to stand upon his feet and go his ways?"
Said the Sea-eagle: "Thou shalt tell us of what hath betid, and so ease the sorrow of thy soul if thou wilt. Or if thou wilt, thou shalt nurse thy sorrow in thine heart and tell no man. Do what thou wilt; am I not become thy friend?"
Said Hallblithe: "I will tell you twain the tidings, and thereafter ask me no more concerning them. Hearken. I went whereas ye bade me, and hid myself in the bay-tree thicket; and there came maidens into the blossoming orchard and made a resting-place with silken cushions close to where I was lurking, and stood about as though they were looking for some one to come. In a little time came two more maidens, and betwixt them one so much fairer than any there, that my heart sank within me: whereas I deemed because of her fairness that this would be the fore-doomed love whereof ye spake, and lo, she was in nought like to my troth-plight maiden, save that she was exceeding beauteous: nevertheless, heart-sick as I was, I determined to abide the token that ye told me of. So she lay down amidst those cushions, and I beheld her that she was sad of countenance; and she was so near to me that I could see the tears welling into her eyes, and running down her cheeks; so that I should have grieved sorely for her had I not been grieving so sorely for myself. For presently she sat up and said 'O maiden, bring me hither the book wherein is the image of my beloved, that I may behold it in this season of sunset wherein I first beheld it; that I may fill my heart with the sight thereof before the sun is gone and the dark night come.'
"Then indeed my heart died within me when I wotted that this was the love whereof the King spake, that he would give to me, and she not mine own beloved, yet I could not choose but abide and look on a while, and she being one that any man might love beyond measure. Now a maiden went away into the house and came back again with a book covered with gold set with gems; and the fair woman took it and opened it, and I was so near to her that I saw every leaf clearly as she turned the leaves. And in that book were pictures of many things, as flaming mountains, and castles of war, and ships upon the sea, but chiefly of fair women, and queens, and warriors and kings; and it was done in gold and azure and cinnabar and minium. So she turned the leaves, till she came to one whereon was pictured none other than myself, and over against me was the image of mine own beloved, the Hostage of the Rose, as if she were alive, so that the heart within me swelled with the sobbing which I must needs refrain, which grieved me like a sword-stroke. Shame also took hold of me as the fair woman spoke to my painted image, and I lying well-nigh within touch of her hand; but she said: 'O my beloved, why dost thou delay to come to me? For I deemed that this eve at least thou wouldst come, so many and strong as are the meshes of love which we have cast about thy feet. Oh come to-morrow at the least and latest, or what shall I do, and wherewith shall I quench the grief of my heart? Or else why am I the daughter of the Undying King, the Lord of the Treasure of the Sea? Why have they wrought new marvels for me, and compelled the Ravagers of the Coasts to serve me, and sent false dreams flitting on the wings of the night? Yea, why is the earth fair and fruitful, and the heavens kind above it, if thou comest not to-night, nor to-morrow, nor the day after? And I the daughter of the Undying, on whom the days shall grow and grow as the grains of sand which the wind heaps up above the sea-beach. And life shall grow huger and more hideous round about the lonely one, like the ling-worm laid upon the gold, that waxeth thereby, till it lies all around about the house of the queen entrapped, the moveless unending ring of the years that change not.'
"So she spake till the weeping ended her words, and I was all abashed with shame and pale with anguish. I stole quietly from my lair unheeded of any, save that one damsel said that a rabbit ran in the hedge, and another that a blackbird stirred in the thicket. Behold me, then, that my quest beginneth again amidst the tangle of lies whereinto I have been entrapped."
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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14
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HALLBLITHE HAS SPEECH WITH THE KING AGAIN
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He stood up when he had made an end, as a man ready for the road; but they lay there downcast and abashed, and had no words to answer him. For the Sea-eagle was sorry that his faring-fellow was hapless, and was sorry that he was sorry; and as for the damsel, she had not known but that she was leading the goodly Spearman to the fulfilment of his heart's desire. Albeit after a while she spake again and said: "Dear friends, day is gone and night is at hand; now to-night it were ill lodging at yonder house; and the next house on our backward road is over far for wayworn folk. But hard by through the thicket is a fair little wood-lawn, by the lip of a pool in the stream wherein we may bathe us to- morrow morning; and it is grassy and flowery and sheltered from all winds that blow, and I have victual enough in my wallet. Let us sup and rest there under the bare heaven, as oft is the wont of us in this land; and on the morrow early we will arise and get us back again to Wood-end, where yet the King abideth, and there shalt thou talk to him again, O Spearman."
Said Hallblithe: "Take me whither ye will; but now nought availeth. I am a captive in a land of lies, and here most like shall I live betrayed and die hapless."
"Hold thy peace, dear friend, of such words as those last," said she, "or I must needs flee from thee, for they hurt me sorely. Come now to this pleasant place."
She took him by the hand and looked kindly on him, and the Sea-eagle followed him, murmuring an old song of the harvest-field, and they went together by a path through a thicket of white-thorn till they came unto a grassy place. There then they sat them down, and ate and drank what they would, sitting by the lip of the pool till a waning moon was bright over their heads. And Hallblithe made no semblance of content; but the Sea- eagle and his damsel were grown merry again, and talked and sang together like autumn stares, with the kissing and caressing of lovers.
So at last those twain lay down amongst the flowers, and slept in each other's arms; but Hallblithe betook him to the brake a little aloof, and lay down, but slept not till morning was at hand, when slumber and confused dreams overtook him.
He was awaked from his sleep by the damsel, who came pushing through the thicket all fresh and rosy from the river, and roused him, and said: "Awake now, Spearman, that we may take our pleasure in the sun; for he is high in the heavens now, and all the land laughs beneath him."
Her eyes glittered as she spoke, and her limbs moved under her raiment as though she would presently fall to dancing for very joy. But Hallblithe arose wearily, and gave her back no smile in answer, but thrust through the thicket to the water, and washed the night from off him, and so came back to the twain as they sat dallying together over their breakfast. He would not sit down by them, but ate a morsel of bread as he stood, and said: "Tell me how I can soonest find the King: I bid you not lead me thither, but let me go my ways alone. For with me time presses, and with you meseemeth time is nought. Neither am I a meet fellow for the happy."
But the Sea-eagle sprang up, and swore with a great oath that he would nowise leave his shipmate in the lurch. And the damsel said: "Fair man, I had best go with thee; I shall not hinder thee, but further thee rather, so that thou shalt make one day's journey of two."
And she put forth her hand to him, and caressed him smiling, and fawned upon him, and he heeded it little, but hung not aback from them since they were ready for the road: so they set forth all three together.
They made such diligence on the backward road that the sun was not set by then they came to Wood-end; and there was the King sitting in the door of his pavilion. Thither went Hallblithe straight, and thrust through the throng, and stood before the King; who greeted him kindly, and was no less sweet of face than on that other day.
Hallblithe hailed him not, but said: "King, look on my anguish, and if thou art other than a king of dreams and lies, play no longer with me, but tell me straight out if thou knowest of my troth-plight maiden, whether she is in this land or not."
Then the King smiled on him and said: "True it is that I know of her; yet know I not whether she is in this land or not."
"King," said Hallblithe, "wilt thou bring us together and stay my heart's bleeding?"
Said the King: "I cannot, since I know not where she is."
"Why didst thou lie to me the other day?" said Hallblithe.
"I lied not," said the King; "I bade bring thee to the woman that loved thee, and whom thou shouldst love; and that is my daughter. And look thou! Even as I may not bring thee to thine earthly love, so couldst thou not make thyself manifest before my daughter, and become her deathless love. Is it not enough?"
He spake sternly for all that he smiled, and Hallblithe said: "O King, have pity on me!"
"Yea," said the King; "pity thee I do: but I will live despite thy sorrow; my pity of thee shall not slay me, or make thee happy. Even in such wise didst thou pity my daughter."
Said Hallblithe: "Thou art mighty, O King, and maybe the mightiest. Wilt thou not help me?"
"How can I help thee?" said the King, "thou who wilt not help thyself. Thou hast seen what thou shouldst do: do it then and be holpen."
Then said Hallblithe: "Wilt thou not slay me, O King, since thou wilt not do aught else?"
"Nay," said the King, "thy slaying wilt not serve me nor mine: I will neither help nor hinder. Thou art free to seek thy love wheresoever thou wilt in this my realm. Depart in peace!"
Hallblithe saw that the King was angry, though he smiled upon him; yet so coldly, that the face of him froze the very marrow of Hallblithe's bones: and he said within himself: "This King of lies shall not slay me, though mine anguish be hard to bear: for I am alive, and it may be that my love is in this land, and I may find her here, and how to reach another land I know not."
So he turned from before the face of the King as the sun was setting, and he went down the land southward betwixt the mountains and the sea, not heeding whether it were night or day; and he went on till it was long past midnight, and then for mere weariness laid him down under a tree, not knowing where he was, and fell asleep.
And in the morning he woke up to the bright sun, and found folk standing round about him, both men and women, and their sheep were anigh them, for they were shepherd folk. So when they saw that he was awake, they greeted him, and were blithe with him and made much of him: and they took him home to their house, and gave him to eat and to drink, and asked him what he would that they might serve him. And they seemed to him to be kind and simple folk, and though he loathed to speak the words, so sick at heart he was, yet he told them how he was seeking his troth-plight maiden, his earthly love, and asked them to say if they had seen any woman like her.
They heard him kindly and pitied him, and told him how they had heard of a woman in the land, who sought her beloved even as he sought his. And when he heard that, his heart leapt up, and he asked them to tell him more concerning this woman. Then they said that she dwelt in the hill- country in a goodly house, and had set her heart on a lovely man, whose image she had seen in a book, and that no man but this one would content her; and this, they said, was a sad and sorry matter, such as was unheard of hitherto in the land.
So when Hallblithe heard this, as heavily as his heart fell again, he changed not countenance, but thanked the kind folk and departed, and went on down the land betwixt the mountains and the sea, and before nightfall he had been into three more houses of folk, and asked there of all comers concerning a woman who was sundered from her beloved; and at none of them gat he any answer to make him less sorry than yesterday. At the last of the three he slept, and on the morrow early there was the work to begin again; and the next day was the same as the last, and the day after differed not from it. Thus he went on seeking his beloved betwixt the mountains and the plain, till the great rock-wall came down to the side of the sea and made an end of the Glittering Plain on that side. Then he turned about and went back by the way he had come, and up the country betwixt the mountains and the plain northward, until he had been into every house of folk in those parts and asked his question.
Then he went up into that fair country of the dales, and even anigh to where dwelt the King's Daughter, and otherwhere in the land and everywhere, quartering the realm of the Glittering Plain as the heron quarters the flooded meadow when the waters draw aback into the river. So that now all people knew him when he came, and they wondered at him; but when he came to any house for the third or fourth time, they wearied of him, and were glad when he departed.
Ever it was one of two answers that he had: either folk said to him, "There is no such woman; this land is happy, and nought but happy people dwell herein;" or else they told him of the woman who lived in sorrow, and was ever looking on a book, that she might bring to her the man whom she desired.
Whiles he wearied and longed for death, but would not die until there was no corner of the land unsearched. Whiles he shook off weariness, and went about his quest as a craftsman sets about his work in the morning. Whiles it irked him to see the soft and merry folk of the land, who had no skill to help him, and he longed for the house of his fathers and the men of the spear and the plough; and thought, "Oh, if I might but get me back, if it were but for an hour and to die there, to the meadows of the Raven, and the acres beneath the mountains of Cleveland by the Sea. Then at least should I learn some tale of what is or what hath been, howsoever evil the tidings were, and not be bandied about by lies for ever."
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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15
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YET HALLBLITHE SPEAKETH WITH THE KING
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So wore the days and the moons; and now were some six moons worn since first he came to the Glittering Plain; and he was come to Wood-end again, and heard and knew that the King was sitting once more in the door of his pavilion to hearken to the words of his people, and he said to himself: "I will speak yet again to this man, if indeed he be a man; yea, though he turn me into stone."
And he went up toward the pavilion; and on the way it came into his mind what the men of the kindred were doing that morning; and he had a vision of them as it were, and saw them yoking the oxen to the plough, and slowly going down the acres, as the shining iron drew the long furrow down the stubble-land, and the light haze hung about the elm-trees in the calm morning, and the smoke rose straight into the air from the roof of the kindred. And he said: "What is this? am I death-doomed this morning that this sight cometh so clearly upon me amidst the falseness of this unchanging land?"
Thus he came to the pavilion, and folk fell back before him to the right and the left, and he stood before the King, and said to him: "I cannot find her; she is not in thy land."
Then spake the King, smiling upon him, as erst: "What wilt thou then? Is it not time to rest?"
He said: "Yea, O King; but not in this land."
Said the King: "Where else than in this land wilt thou find rest? Without is battle and famine, longing unsatisfied, and heart-burning and fear; within it is plenty and peace and good will and pleasure without cease. Thy word hath no meaning to me."
Said Hallblithe: "Give me leave to depart, and I will bless thee."
"Is there nought else to do?" said the King.
"Nought else," said Hallblithe.
Therewith he felt that the King's face changed though he still smiled on him, and again he felt his heart grow cold before the King.
But the King spake and said: "I hinder not thy departure, nor will any of my folk. No hand will be raised against thee; there is no weapon in all the land, save the deedless sword by my side and the weapons which thou bearest."
Said Hallblithe: "Dost thou not owe me a joy in return for my beguiling?"
"Yea," said the King, "reach out thine hand to take it."
"One thing only may I take of thee," said Hallblithe; "my troth-plight maiden or else the speeding of my departure."
Then said the King, and his voice was terrible though yet he smiled: "I will not hinder; I will not help. Depart in peace!"
Then Hallblithe turned away dizzy and half fainting, and strayed down the field, scarce knowing where he was; and as he went he felt his sleeve plucked at, and turned about, and lo! he was face to face with the Sea- eagle, no less joyous than aforetime. He took Hallblithe in his arms and embraced him and kissed him, and said: "Well met, faring-fellow! Whither away?"
"Away out of this land of lies," said Hallblithe.
The Sea-eagle shook his head, and quoth he: "Art thou still seeking a dream? And thou so fair that thou puttest all other men to shame."
"I seek no dream," said Hallblithe, "but rather the end of dreams."
"Well," said the Sea-eagle, "we will not wrangle about it. But hearken. Hard by in a pleasant nook of the meadows have I set up my tent; and although it be not as big as the King's pavilion, yet is it fair enough. Wilt thou not come thither with me and rest thee to-night; and to-morrow we will talk of this matter?"
Now Hallblithe was weary and confused, and downhearted beyond his wont, and the friendly words of the Sea-eagle softened his heart, and he smiled on him and said: "I give thee thanks; I will come with thee: thou art kind, and hast done nought to me save good from the time when I first saw thee lying in thy bed in the Hall of the Ravagers. Dost thou remember the day?"
The Sea-eagle knitted his brow as one striving with a troublous memory, and said: "But dimly, friend, as if it had passed in an ugly dream: meseemeth my friendship with thee began when I came to thee from out of the wood, and saw thee standing with those three damsels; that I remember full well ye were fair to look on."
Hallblithe wondered at his words, but said no more about it, and they went together to a flowery nook nigh a stream of clear water where stood a silken tent, green like the grass which it stood on, and flecked with gold and goodly colours. Nigh it on the grass lay the Sea-eagle's damsel, ruddy-cheeked and sweet-lipped, as fair as aforetime. She turned about when she heard men coming, and when she saw Hallblithe a smile came into her face like the sun breaking out on a fair but clouded morning, and she went up to him and took him by the hands and kissed his cheek, and said: "Welcome, Spearman! welcome back! We have heard of thee in many places, and have been sorry that thou wert not glad, and now are we fain of thy returning. Shall not sweet life begin for thee from henceforward?"
Again was Hallblithe moved by her kind welcome; but he shook his head and spake: "Thou art kind, sister; yet if thou wouldst be kinder thou wilt show me a way whereby I may escape from this land. For abiding here has become irksome to me, and meseemeth that hope is yet alive without the Glittering Plain."
Her face fell as she answered: "Yea, and fear also, and worse, if aught be worse. But come, let us eat and drink in this fair place, and gather for thee a little joyance before thou departest, if thou needs must depart."
He smiled on her as one not ill-content, and laid himself down on the grass, while the twain busied themselves, and brought forth fair cushions and a gilded table, and laid dainty victual thereon and good wine.
So they ate and drank together, and the Sea-eagle and his mate became very joyous again, and Hallblithe bestirred himself not to be a mar-feast; for he said within himself: "I am departing, and after this time I shall see them no more; and they are kind and blithe with me, and have been aforetime; I will not make their merry hearts sore. For when I am gone I shall be remembered of them but a little while."
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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16
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THOSE THREE GO THEIR WAYS TO THE EDGE OF THE GLITTERING
PLAIN
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So the evening wore merrily; and they made Hallblithe lie in an ingle of the tent on a fair bed, and he was weary, and slept thereon like a child. But in the morning early they waked him; and while they were breaking their fast they began to speak to him of his departure, and asked him if he had an inkling of the way whereby he should get him gone, and he said: "If I escape it must needs be by way of the mountains that wall the land about till they come down to the sea. For on the sea is no ship and no haven; and well I wot that no man of the land durst or can ferry me over to the land of my kindred, or otherwhere without the Glittering Plain. Tell me therefore (and I ask no more of you), is there any rumour or memory of a way that cleaveth yonder mighty wall of rock to other lands?"
Said the damsel: "There is more than a memory or a rumour: there is a road through the mountains known to all men. For at whiles the earthly pilgrims come into the Glittering Plain thereby; and yet but seldom, so many are the griefs and perils which beset the wayfarers on that road. Whereof thou hadst far better bethink thee in time, and abide here and be happy with us and others who long sore to make thee happy."
"Nay," said Hallblithe, "there is nought to do but tell me of the way, and I will depart at once, blessing you."
Said the Sea-eagle: "More than that at least will we do. May I lose the bliss whereto I have attained, if I go not with thee to the very edge of the land of the Glittering Plain. Shall it not be so, sweetheart?"
"Yea, at least we may do that," said the damsel; and she hung her head as if she were ashamed, and said: "And that is all that thou wilt get from us at most."
Said Hallblithe: "It is enough, and I asked not so much."
Then the damsel busied herself, and set meat and drink in two wallets, and took one herself and gave the other to the Sea-eagle, and said: "We will be thy porters, O Spearman, and will give thee a full wallet from the last house by the Desert of Dread, for when thou hast entered therein, thou mayst well find victual hard to come by: and now let us linger no more since the road is dear to thee."
So they set forth on foot, for in that land men were slow to feel weariness; and turning about the hill of Wood-end, they passed by some broken country, and came at even to a house at the entrance of a long valley, with high and steeply-sloping sides, which seemed, as it were, to cleave the dale country wherein they had fared aforetime. At that house they slept well-guested by its folk, and the next morning took their way down the valley, and the folk of the house stood at the door to watch their departure; for they had told the wayfarers that they had fared but a little way thitherward and knew of no folk who had used that road.
So those three fared down the valley southward all day, ever mounting higher as they went. The way was pleasant and easy, for they went over fair, smooth, grassy lawns betwixt the hill-sides, beside a clear rattling stream that ran northward; at whiles were clumps of tall trees, oak for the most part, and at whiles thickets of thorn and eglantine and other such trees: so that they could rest well shaded when they would.
They passed by no house of men, nor came to any such in the even, but lay down to sleep in a thicket of thorn and eglantine, and rested well, and on the morrow they rose up betimes and went on their ways.
This second day as they went, the hill-sides on either hand grew lower, till at last they died out into a wide plain, beyond which in the southern offing the mountains rose huge and bare. This plain also was grassy and beset with trees and thickets here and there. Hereon they saw wild deer enough, as hart and buck, and roebuck and swine: withal a lion came out of a brake hard by them as they went, and stood gazing on them, so that Hallblithe looked to his weapons, and the Sea-eagle took up a big stone to fight with, being weaponless; but the damsel laughed, and tripped on her way lightly with girt-up gown, and the beast gave no more heed to them.
Easy and smooth was their way over this pleasant wilderness, and clear to see, though but little used, and before nightfall, after they had gone a long way, they came to a house. It was not large nor high, but was built very strongly and fairly of good ashlar: its door was shut, and on the jamb thereof hung a slug-horn. The damsel, who seemed to know what to do, set her mouth to the horn, and blew a blast; and in a little while the door was opened, and a big man clad in red scarlet stood therein: he had no weapons, but was somewhat surly of aspect: he spake not, but stood abiding the word: so the damsel took it up and said: "Art thou not the Warden of the Uttermost House?"
He said: "I am."
Said the damsel: "May we guest here to-night?"
He said: "The house lieth open to you with all that it hath of victual and plenishing: take what ye will, and use what ye will."
They thanked him; but he heeded not their thanks, and withdrew him from them. So they entered and found the table laid in a fair hall of stone carven and painted very goodly; so they ate and drank therein, and Hallblithe was of good heart, and the Sea-eagle and his mate were merry, though they looked softly and shyly on Hallblithe because of the sundering anigh; and they saw no man in the house save the man in scarlet, who went and came about his business, paying no heed to them. So when the night was deep they lay down in the shut-bed off the hall, and slept, and the hours were tidingless to them until they woke in the morning.
On the morrow they arose and broke their fast, and thereafter the damsel spake to the man in scarlet and said: "May we fill our wallets with victual for the way?"
Said the Warden: "There lieth the meat."
So they filled their wallets, while the man looked on; and they came to the door when they were ready, and he unlocked it to them, saying no word. But when they turned their faces towards the mountains he spake at last, and stayed them at the first step. Quoth he: "Whither away? Ye take the wrong road!"
Said Hallblithe: "Nay, for we go toward the mountains and the edge of the Glittering Plain."
"Ye shall do ill to go thither," said the Warden, "and I bid you forbear."
"O Warden of the Uttermost House, wherefore should we forbear?" said the Sea-eagle.
Said the scarlet man: "Because my charge is to further those who would go inward to the King, and to stay those who would go outward from the King."
"How then if we go outward despite thy bidding?" said the Sea-eagle, "wilt thou then hinder us perforce?"
"How may I," said the man, "since thy fellow hath weapons?"
"Go we forth, then," said the Sea-eagle.
"Yea," said the damsel, "we will go forth. And know, O Warden, that this weaponed man only is of mind to fare over the edge of the Glittering Plain; but we twain shall come back hither again, and fare inwards."
Said the Warden: "Nought is it to me what ye will do when you are past this house. Nor shall any man who goeth out of this garth toward the mountains ever come back inwards save he cometh in the company of new- corners to the Glittering Plain."
"Who shall hinder him?" said the Sea-eagle.
"The KING," said the Warden.
Then there was silence awhile, and the man said: "Now do as ye will." And therewith he turned back into the house and shut the door.
But the Sea-eagle and the damsel stood gazing on one another, and at Hallblithe; and the damsel was downcast and pale; but the Sea-eagle cried out: "Forward now, O Hallblithe, since thou willest it, and we will go with thee and share whatever may befall thee; yea, right up to the very edge of the Glittering Plain. And thou, O beloved, why dost thou delay? Why dost thou stand as if thy fair feet were grown to the grass?"
But the damsel gave a lamentable cry, and cast herself down on the ground, and knelt before the Sea-eagle, and took him by the knees, and said betwixt sobbing and weeping: "O my lord and love, I pray thee to forbear, and the Spearman, our friend, shall pardon us. For if thou goest, I shall never see thee more, since my heart will not serve me to go with thee. O forbear! I pray thee!"
And she grovelled on the earth before him; and the Sea-eagle waxed red, and would have spoken but Hallblithe cut his speech across, and said "Friends, be at peace! For this is the minute that sunders us. Get ye back at once to the heart of the Glittering Plain, and live there and be happy; and take my blessing and thanks for the love and help that ye have given me. For your going forward with me should destroy you and profit me nothing. It would be but as the host bringing his guests one field beyond his garth, when their goal is the ends of the earth; and if there were a lion in the path, why should he perish for courtesy's sake?"
Therewith he stooped down to the damsel, and lifted her up and kissed her face; and he cast his arms about the Sea-eagle and said to him: "Farewell, shipmate!"
Then the damsel gave him the wallet of victual, and bade him farewell, weeping sorely; and he looked kindly on them for a moment of time, and then turned away from them and fared on toward the mountains, striding with great strides, holding his head aloft. But they looked no more on him, having no will to eke their sorrow, but went their ways back again without delay.
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{
"id": "2565"
}
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17
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HALLBLITHE AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS
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So strode on Hallblithe; but when he had gone but a little way his head turned, and the earth and heavens wavered before him, so that he must needs sit down on a stone by the wayside, wondering what ailed him. Then he looked up at the mountains, which now seemed quite near to him at the plain's ending, and his weakness increased on him; and lo! as he looked, it was to him as if the crags rose up in the sky to meet him and overhang him, and as if the earth heaved up beneath him, and therewith he fell aback and lost all sense, so that he knew not what was become of the earth and the heavens and the passing of the minutes of his life.
When he came to himself he knew not whether he had lain so a great while or a little; he felt feeble, and for a while he lay scarce moving, and beholding nought, not even the sky above him. Presently he turned about and saw hard stone on either side, so he rose wearily and stood upon his feet, and knew that he was faint with hunger and thirst. Then he looked around him, and saw that he was in a narrow valley or cleft of the mountains amidst wan rocks, bare and waterless, where grew no blade of green; but he could see no further than the sides of that cleft, and he longed to be out of it that he might see whitherward to turn. Then he bethought him of his wallet, and set his hand to it and opened it, thinking to get victual thence; but lo! it was all spoilt and wasted. None the less, for all his feebleness, he turned and went toiling slowly along what seemed to be a path little trodden leading upward out of the cleft; and at last he reached the crest thereof, and sat him down on a rock on the other side; yet durst not raise his eyes awhile and look on the land, lest he should see death manifest therein. At last he looked, and saw that he was high up amongst the mountain-peaks: before him and on either hand was but a world of fallow stone rising ridge upon ridge like the waves of the wildest of the winter sea. The sun not far from its midmost shone down bright and hot on that wilderness; yet was there no sign that any man had ever been there since the beginning of the world, save that the path aforesaid seemed to lead onward down the stony slope.
This way and that way and all about he gazed, straining his eyes if perchance he might see any diversity in the stony waste; and at last betwixt two peaks of the rock-wall on his left hand he descried a streak of green mingling with the cold blue of the distance; and he thought in his heart that this was the last he should see of the Glittering Plain. Then he spake aloud in that desert, and said, though there was none to hear: "Now is my last hour come; and here is Hallblithe of the Raven perishing, with his deeds undone and his longing unfulfilled, and his bridal-bed acold for ever. Long may the House of the Raven abide and flourish, with many a man and maiden, valiant and fair and fruitful! O kindred, cast thy blessing on this man about to die here, doing none otherwise than ye would have him!"
He sat there a little while longer, and then he said to himself: "Death tarries; were it not well that I go to meet him, even as the cot-carle preventeth the mighty chieftain?"
Then he arose, and went painfully down the slope, steadying himself with the shaft of his gleaming spear; but all at once he stopped; for it seemed to him that he heard voices borne on the wind that blew up the mountain-side. But he shook his head and said: "Now forsooth beginneth the dream which shall last for ever; nowise am I beguiled by it." None the less he strove the more eagerly with the wind and the way and his feebleness; yet did the weakness wax on him, so that it was but a little while ere he faltered and reeled and fell down once more in a swoon.
When he came to himself again he was no longer alone: a man was kneeling down by him and holding up his head, while another before him, as he opened his eyes, put a cup of wine to his lips. So Hallblithe drank and was refreshed; and presently they gave him bread, and he ate, and his heart was strengthened, and the happiness of life returned to it, and he lay back, and slept sweetly for a season.
When he awoke from that slumber he found that he had gotten back much of his strength again, and he sat up and looked around him, and saw three men sitting anigh, armed and girt with swords, yet in evil array, and sore travel-worn. One of these was very old, with long white hair hanging down; and another, though he was not so much stricken in years, still looked an old man of over sixty winters. The third was a man some forty years old, but sad and sorry and drooping of aspect.
So when they saw him stirring, they all fixed their eyes upon him, and the oldest man said: "Welcome to him who erst had no tidings for us!" And the second said: "Tell us now thy tidings." But the third, the sorry man, cried out aloud, saying: "Where is the Land? Where is the Land?"
Said Hallblithe: "Meseemeth the land which ye seek is the land which I seek to flee from. And now I will not hide that meseemeth I have seen you before, and that was at Cleveland by the Sea when the days were happier."
Then they all three bowed their heads in yea-say, and spake: "'Where is the Land? Where is the Land?"
Then Hallblithe arose to his feet, and said: "Ye have healed me of the sickness of death, and I will do what I may to heal you of your sickness of sorrow. Come up the pass with me, and I will show you the land afar off."
Then they arose like young and brisk men, and he led them over the brow of the ridge into the little valley wherein he had first come to himself: there he showed them that glimpse of a green land betwixt the two peaks, which he had beheld e'en now; and they stood a while looking at it and weeping for joy.
Then spake the oldest of the seekers: "Show us the way to the land."
"Nay," said Hallblithe, "I may not; for when I would depart thence, I might not go by mine own will, but was borne out hither, I wot not how. For when I came to the edge of the land against the will of the King, he smote me, and then cast me out. Therefore since I may not help you, find ye the land for yourselves, and let me go blessing you, and come out of this desert by the way whereby ye entered it. For I have an errand in the world."
Spake the youngest of the seekers: "Now art thou become the yoke-fellow of Sorrow, and thou must wend, not whither thou wouldst, but whither she will: and she would have thee go forward toward life, not backward toward death."
Said the midmost seeker: "If we let thee go further into the wilderness thou shalt surely die: for hence to the peopled parts, and the City of Merchants, whence we come, is a month's journey: and there is neither meat nor drink, nor beast nor bird, nor any green thing all that way; and since we have found thee famishing, we may well deem that thou hast no victual. As to us we have but little; so that if it be much more than three days' journey to the Glittering Plain, we may well starve and die within sight of the Acre of the Undying. Nevertheless that little will we share with thee if thou wilt help us to find that good land; so that thou mayst yet put away Sorrow, and take Joy again to thy board and bed."
Hallblithe hung his head and answered nought; for he was confused by the meshes of ill-hap, and his soul grew sick with the bitterness of death. But the sad man spake again and said: "Thou hast an errand sayest thou? is it such as a dead man may do?"
Hallblithe pondered, and amidst the anguish of his despair was borne in on him a vision of the sea-waves lapping the side of a black ship, and a man therein: who but himself, set free to do his errand, and his heart was quickened within him, and he said: "I thank you, and I will wend back with you, since there is no road for me save back again into the trap."
The three seekers seemed glad thereat, and the second one said: "Though death is pursuing, and life lieth ahead, yet will we not hasten thee unduly. Time was when I was Captain of the Host, and learned how battles were lost by lack of rest. Therefore have thy sleep now, that thou mayst wax in strength for our helping."
Said Hallblithe: "I need not rest; I may not rest; I will not rest."
Said the sad man: "It is lawful for thee to rest. So say I, who was once a master of law."
Said the long-hoary elder: "And I command thee to rest; I who was once the king of a mighty folk."
In sooth Hallblithe was now exceeding weary; so he laid him down and slept sweetly in the stony wilderness amidst those three seekers, the old, the sad, and the very old.
When he awoke he felt well and strong again, and he leapt to his feet and looked about him, and saw the three seekers stirring, and he deemed by the sun that it was early morning. The sad man brought forth bread and water and wine, and they broke their fast; and when they had done he spake and said: "Abideth now in wallet and bottle but one more full meal for us, and then no more save a few crumbs and a drop or two of wine if we husband it well."
Said the second elder: "Get we to the road, then, and make haste. I have been seeking, and meseemeth, though the way be long, it is not utterly blind for us. Or look thou, Raven-son, is there not a path yonder that leadeth onward up to the brow of the ghyll again? and as I have seen, it leadeth on again down from the said brow."
Forsooth there was a track that led through the stony tangle of the wilderness; so they took to the road with a good heart, and went all day, and saw no living thing, and not a blade of grass or a trickle of water: nought save the wan rocks under the sun; and though they trusted in their road that it led them aright, they saw no other glimpse of the Glittering Plain, because there rose a great ridge like a wall on the north side, and they went as it were down along a trench of the rocks, albeit it was whiles broken across by ghylls, and knolls, and reefs.
So at sunset they rested and ate their victual, for they were very weary; and thereafter they lay down, and slept as soundly as if they were in the best of the halls of men. On the morrow betimes they arose soberly and went their ways with few words, and, as they deemed, the path still led them onward. And now the great ridge on the north rose steeper and steeper, and their crossing it seemed not to be thought of; but their half-blind track failed them not. They rested at even, and ate and drank what little they had left, save a mouthful or two of wine, and then went on again by the light of the moon, which was so bright that they still saw their way. And it happened to Hallblithe, as mostly it does with men very travel-worn, that he went on and on scarce remembering where he was, or who his fellows were, or that he had any fellows.
So at midnight they lay down in the wilderness again, hungry and weary. They rose at dawn and went forward with waning hope: for now the mountain ridge on the north was close to their path, rising up along a sheer wall of pale stone over which nothing might go save the fowl flying; so that at first on that morning they looked for nothing save to lay their bones in that grievous desert where no man should find them.
But, as beset with famine, they fared on heavily down the narrow track, there came a hoarse cry from Hallblithe's dry throat and it was as if his cry had been answered by another like to his; and the seekers turned and beheld him pointing to the cliff-side, and lo! half-way up the pale sun- litten crag stood two ravens in a cranny of the stone, flapping their wings and croaking, with thrusting forth and twisting of their heads; and presently they came floating on the thin pure air high up over the heads of the wayfarers, croaking for the pleasure of the meeting, as though they laughed thereat.
Then rose the heart of Hallblithe, and he smote his palms together, and fell to singing an old song of his people, amidst the rocks whereas few men had sung aforetime.
Whence are ye and whither, O fowl of our fathers? What field have ye looked on, what acres unshorn? What land have ye left where the battle-folk gathers, And the war-helms are white o'er the paths of the corn?
What tale do ye bear of the people uncraven, Where amidst the long hall-shadow sparkle the spears; Where aloft on the hall-ridge now flappeth the raven, And singeth the song of the nourishing years?
There gather the lads in the first of the morning, While white lies the battle-day's dew on the grass, And the kind steeds trot up to the horn's voice of warning, And the winds wake and whine in the dusk of the pass.
O fowl of our fathers, why now are ye resting? Come over the mountains and look on the foe. Full fair after fight won shall yet be your nesting; And your fledglings the sons of the kindred shall know.
Therewith he strode with his head upraised, and above him flew the ravens, croaking as if they answered his song in friendly fashion.
It was but a little after this that the path turned aside sharp toward the cliffs, and the seekers were abashed thereof, till Hallblithe running forward beheld a great cavern in the face of the cliff at the path's ending: so he turned and cried on his fellows, and they hastened up, and presently stood before that cavern's mouth with doubt and joy mingled in their minds; for now, mayhappen, they had reached the gate of the Glittering Plain, or mayhappen the gate of death.
The sad man hung his head and spake: "Doth not some new trap abide us? What do we here? is this aught save death?"
Spake the Elder of Elders: "Was not death on either hand e'en now, even as treason besetteth the king upon his throne?"
And the second said: "Yea, we were as the host which hath no road save through the multitude of foe-men."
But Hallblithe laughed and said: "Why do ye hang back, then? As for me, if death be here, soon is mine errand sped." Therewith he led the way into the dark of the cave, and the ravens hung about the crag overhead croaking, as the men left the light.
So was their way swallowed up in the cavern, and day and its time became nought to them; they went on and on, and became exceeding faint and weary, but rested not, for death was behind them. Whiles they deemed they heard waters running, and whiles the singing of fowl; and to Hallblithe it seemed that he heard his name called, so that he shouted back in answer; but all was still when the sound of his voice had died out.
At last, when they were pressing on again after a short while of resting, Hallblithe cried out that the cave was lightening: so they hastened onward, and the light grew till they could dimly see each other, and dimly they beheld the cave that it was both wide and high. Yet a little further, and their faces showed white to one another, and they could see the crannies of the rocks, and the bats hanging garlanded from the roof. So then they came to where the day streamed down bright on them from a break overhead, and lo! the sky and green leaves waving against it.
To those way-worn men it seemed hard to clamber out that way, and especially to the elders: so they went on a little further to see if there were aught better abiding them, but when they found the daylight failing them again, they turned back to the place of the break in the roof, lest they should waste their strength and perish in the bowels of the mountain. So with much ado they hove up Hallblithe till he got him first on to a ledge of the rocky wall, and so, what by strength, what by cunning, into the daylight through the rent in the roof. So when he was without he made a rope of his girdle and strips from his raiment, for he was ever a deft craftsman, and made a shift to heave up therewith the sad man, who was light and lithe of body; and then the two together dealt with the elders one after another, till they were all four on the face of the earth again.
The place whereto they had gotten was the side of a huge mountain, stony and steep, but set about with bushes, which seemed full fair to those wanderers amongst the rocks. This mountain-slope went down towards a fair green plain, which Hallblithe made no doubt was the outlying waste of the Glittering Plain: nay, he deemed that he could see afar off thereon the white walls of the Uttermost House. So much he told the seekers in few words; and then while they grovelled on the earth and wept for pure joy, whereas the sun was down and it was beginning to grow dusk, he went and looked around soberly to see if he might find water and any kind of victual; and presently a little down the hillside he came upon a place where a spring came gushing up out of the earth and ran down toward the plain; and about it was green grass growing plentifully, and a little thicket of bramble and wilding fruit-trees. So he drank of the water, and plucked him a few wilding apples somewhat better than crabs, and then went up the hill again and fetched the seekers to that mountain hostelry; and while they drank of the stream he plucked them apples and bramble- berries. For indeed they were as men out of their wits, and were dazed by the extremity of their jog, and as men long shut up in prison, to whom the world of men-folk hath become strange. Simple as the victual was, they were somewhat strengthened by it and by the plentiful water, and as night was now upon them, it was of no avail for them to go further: so they slept beneath the boughs of the thorn-bushes.
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{
"id": "2565"
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18
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HALLBLITHE DWELLETH IN THE WOOD ALONE
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But on the morrow they arose betimes, and broke their fast on that woodland victual, and then went speedily down the mountain-side; and Hallblithe saw by the clear morning light that it was indeed the Uttermost House which he had seen across the green waste. So he told the seekers; but they were silent and heeded nought, because of a fear that had come upon them, lest they should die before they came into that good land. At the foot of the mountain they came upon a river, deep but not wide, with low grassy banks, and Hallblithe, who was an exceeding strong swimmer, helped the seekers over without much ado; and there they stood upon the grass of that goodly waste.
Hallblithe looked on them to note if any change should come over them, and he deemed that already they were become stronger and of more avail. But he spake nought thereof, and strode on toward the Uttermost House, even as that other day he had stridden away from it.
Such diligence they made, that it was but little after noon when they came to the door thereof. Then Hallblithe took the horn and blew upon it, while his fellows stood by murmuring, "It is the Land! It is the Land!"
So came the Warden to the door, clad in red scarlet, and the elder went up to him and said: "Is this the Land?"
"What land?" said the Warden.
"Is it the Glittering Plain?" said the second of the seekers.
"Yea, forsooth," said the Warden. Said the sad man: "Will ye lead us to the King?
"Ye shall come to the King," said the Warden.
"When, oh when?" cried they out all three.
"The morrow of to-morrow, maybe," said the Warden.
"Oh! if to-morrow were but come!" they cried.
"It will come," said the red man; "enter ye the house, and eat and drink and rest you."
So they entered, and the Warden heeded Hallblithe nothing. They ate and drank and then went to their rest, and Hallblithe lay in a shut-bed off from the hall, but the Warden brought the seekers otherwhere, so that Hallblithe saw them not after he had gone to bed; but as for him he slept and forgot that aught was.
In the morning when he awoke he felt very strong and well-liking; and he beheld his limbs that they were clear of skin and sleek and fair; and he heard one hard by in the hall carolling and singing joyously. So he sprang from his bed with the wonder of sleep yet in him, and drew the curtains of the shut-bed and looked forth into the hall; and lo on the high-seat a man of thirty winters by seeming, tall, fair of fashion, with golden hair and eyes as grey as glass, proud and noble of aspect; and anigh him sat another man of like age to look on, a man strong and burly, with short curling brown hair and a red beard, and ruddy countenance, and the mien of a warrior. Also, up and down the hall, paced a man younger of aspect than these two, tall and slender, black-haired and dark-eyed, amorous of countenance; he it was who was singing a snatch of song as he went lightly on the hall pavement: a snatch like to this Fair is the world, now autumn's wearing, And the sluggard sun lies long abed; Sweet are the days, now winter's nearing, And all winds feign that the wind is dead.
Dumb is the hedge where the crabs hang yellow, Bright as the blossoms of the spring; Dumb is the close where the pears grow mellow, And none but the dauntless redbreasts sing.
Fair was the spring, but amidst his greening Grey were the days of the hidden sun; Fair was the summer, but overweening, So soon his o'er-sweet days were done.
Come then, love, for peace is upon us, Far off is failing, and far is fear, Here where the rest in the end hath won us, In the garnering tide of the happy year.
Come from the grey old house by the water, Where, far from the lips of the hungry sea, Green groweth the grass o'er the field of the slaughter, And all is a tale for thee and me.
So Hallblithe did on his raiment and went into the hall; and when those three saw him they smiled upon him kindly and greeted him; and the noble man at the board said: "Thanks have thou, O Warrior of the Raven, for thy help in our need: thy reward from us shall not be lacking."
Then the brown-haired man came up to him, and clapped him on the back and said to him: "Brisk man of the Raven, good is thy help at need; even so shall be mine to thee henceforward."
But the young man stepped up to him lightly, and cast his arms about him, and kissed him, and said: "O friend and fellow, who knoweth but I may one day help thee as thou hast holpen me? though thou art one who by seeming mayst well help thyself. And now mayst thou be as merry as I am to-day!"
Then they all three cried out joyously: "It is the Land! It is the Land!"
So Hallblithe knew that these men were the two elders and the sad man of yesterday, and that they had renewed their youth.
Joyously now did those men break their fast: nor did Hallblithe make any grim countenance, for he thought: "That which these dotards and drivellers have been mighty enough to find, shall I not be mighty enough to flee from?" Breakfast done, the seekers made little delay, so eager as they were to behold the King, and to have handsel of their new sweet life. So they got them ready to depart, and the once-captain said: "Art thou able to lead us to the King, O Raven-son, or must we seek another man to do so much for us?"
Said Hallblithe: "I am able to lead you so nigh unto Wood-end (where, as I deem, the King abideth) that ye shall not miss him."
Therewith they went to the door, and the Warden unlocked to them, and spake no word to them when they departed, though they thanked him kindly for the guesting.
When they were without the garth, the young man fell to running about the meadow plucking great handfuls of the rich flowers that grew about, singing and carolling the while. But he who had been king looked up and down and round about, and said at last: "Where be the horses and the men?"
But his fellow with the red beard said: "Raven-son, in this land when they journey, what do they as to riding or going afoot?"
Said Hallblithe: "Fair fellows, ye shall wot that in this land folk go afoot for the most part, both men and women; whereas they weary but little, and are in no haste."
Then the once-captain clapped the once-king on the shoulder, and said: "Hearken, lord, and delay no longer, but gird up thy gown, since here is no mare's son to help thee: for fair is to-day that lies before us, with many a new fair day beyond it."
So Hallblithe led the way inward, thinking of many things, yet but little of his fellows. Albeit they, and the younger man especially, were of many words; for this black-haired man had many questions to ask, chiefly concerning the women, what they were like to look on, and of what mood they were. Hallblithe answered thereto as long as he might, but at last he laughed and said: "Friend, forbear thy questions now; for meseemeth in a few hours thou shalt be as wise hereon as is the God of Love himself."
So they made diligence along the road, and all was tidingless till on the second day at even they came to the first house off the waste. There had they good welcome, and slept. But on the morrow when they arose, Hallblithe spake to the Seekers, and said: "Now are things much changed betwixt us since the time when we first met: for then I had all my desire, as I thought, and ye had but one desire, and well nigh lacked hope of its fulfilment. Whereas now the lack hath left you and come to me. Wherefore even as time agone ye might not abide even one night at the House of the Raven, so hard as your desire lay on you; even so it fareth with me to-day, that I am consumed with my desire, and I may not abide with you; lest that befall which befalleth betwixt the full man and the fasting. Wherefore now I bless you and depart."
They abounded in words of good-will to him, and the once-king said: "Abide with us, and we shall see to it that thou have all the dignities that a man may think of."
And the once-captain said: "Lo, here is mine hand that hath been mighty; never shalt thou lack it for the accomplishment of thine uttermost desire. Abide with us."
Lastly said the young man: "Abide with us, Son of the Raven! Set thine heart on a fair woman, yea even were it the fairest; and I will get her for thee, even were my desire set on her."
But he smiled on them, and shook his head, and said: "All hail to you! but mine errand is yet undone." And therewith he departed.
He skirted Wood-end and came not to it, but got him down to the side of the sea, not far from where he first came aland, but somewhat south of it. A fair oak-wood came down close to the beach of the sea; it was some four miles end-long and over-thwart. Thither Hallblithe betook him, and in a day or two got him wood-wright's tools from a house of men a little outside the wood, three miles from the sea-shore. Then he set to work and built him a little frame-house on a lawn of the wood beside a clear stream; for he was a very deft wood-wright. Withal he made him a bow and arrows, and shot what he would of the fowl and the deer for his livelihood; and folk from that house and otherwhence came to see him, and brought him bread and wine and spicery and other matters which he needed. And the days wore, and men got used to him, and loved him as if he had been a rare image which had been brought to that land for its adornment; and now they no longer called him the Spearman, but the Wood-lover. And as for him, he took all in patience, abiding what the lapse of days should bring forth.
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{
"id": "2565"
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The frowsy chambermaid of the "Red Lion" had just finished washing the front door steps. She rose from her stooping posture and, being of slovenly habit, flung the water from her pail straight out, without moving from where she stood. The smooth round arch of the falling water glistened for a moment in mid-air. John Gourlay, standing in front of his new house at the head of the brae, could hear the swash of it when it fell. The morning was of perfect stillness.
The hands of the clock across "the Square" were pointing to the hour of eight. They were yellow in the sun.
Blowsalinda, of the Red Lion, picked up the big bass that usually lay within the porch, and carrying it clumsily against her breast, moved off round the corner of the public-house, her petticoat gaping behind. Halfway she met the hostler, with whom she stopped in amorous dalliance. He said something to her, and she laughed loudly and vacantly. The silly _tee-hee_ echoed up the street.
A moment later a cloud of dust drifting round the corner, and floating white in the still air, showed that she was pounding the bass against the end of the house. All over the little town the women of Barbie were equally busy with their steps and door-mats. There was scarce a man to be seen either in the Square, at the top of which Gourlay stood, or in the long street descending from its near corner. The men were at work; the children had not yet appeared; the women were busy with their household cares.
The freshness of the air, the smoke rising thin and far above the red chimneys, the sunshine glistering on the roofs and gables, the rosy clearness of everything beneath the dawn--above all, the quietness and peace--made Barbie, usually so poor to see, a very pleasant place to look down at on a summer morning. At this hour there was an unfamiliar delicacy in the familiar scene, a freshness and purity of aspect--almost an unearthliness--as though you viewed it through a crystal dream. But it was not the beauty of the hour that kept Gourlay musing at his gate. He was dead to the fairness of the scene, even while the fact of its presence there before him wove most subtly with his mood. He smoked in silent enjoyment because on a morning such as this everything he saw was a delicate flattery to his pride. At the beginning of a new day, to look down on the petty burgh in which he was the greatest man filled all his being with a consciousness of importance. His sense of prosperity was soothing and pervasive; he felt it all round him like the pleasant air, as real as that and as subtle; bathing him, caressing. It was the most secret and intimate joy of his life to go out and smoke on summer mornings by his big gate, musing over Barbie ere he possessed it with his merchandise.
He had growled at the quarry carters for being late in setting out this morning (for, like most resolute dullards, he was sternly methodical), but in his heart he was secretly pleased. The needs of his business were so various that his men could rarely start at the same hour and in the same direction. To-day, however, because of the delay, all his carts would go streaming through the town together, and that brave pomp would be a slap in the face to his enemies. "I'll show them," he thought proudly. "Them" was the town-folk, and what he would show them was what a big man he was. For, like most scorners of the world's opinion, Gourlay was its slave, and showed his subjection to the popular estimate by his anxiety to flout it. He was not great enough for the carelessness of perfect scorn.
Through the big green gate behind him came the sound of carts being loaded for the day. A horse, weary of standing idle between the shafts, kicked ceaselessly and steadily against the ground with one impatient hinder foot, clink, clink, clink upon the paved yard. "Easy, damn ye; ye'll smash the bricks!" came a voice. Then there was the smart slap of an open hand on a sleek neck, a quick start, and the rattle of chains as the horse quivered to the blow.
"Run a white tarpaulin across the cheese, Jock, to keep them frae melting in the heat," came another voice. "And canny on the top there wi' thae big feet o' yours; d'ye think a cheese was made for _you_ to dance on wi' your mighty brogues?" Then the voice sank to the hoarse, warning whisper of impatience--loudish in anxiety, yet throaty from fear of being heard. "Hurry up, man--hurry up, or he'll be down on us like bleezes for being so late in getting off!"
Gourlay smiled grimly, and a black gleam shot from his eye as he glanced round to the gate and caught the words. His men did not know he could hear them.
The clock across the Square struck the hour, eight soft, slow strokes, that melted away in the beauty of the morning. Five minutes passed. Gourlay turned his head to listen, but no further sound came from the yard. He walked to the green gate, his slippers making no noise.
"Are ye sleeping, my pretty men?" he said softly.... "_Eih? _" The "_Eih_" leapt like a sword, with a slicing sharpness in its tone that made it a sinister contrast to the first sweet question to his "pretty men." " _Eih? _" he said again, and stared with open mouth and fierce, dark eyes.
"Hurry up, Peter," whispered the gaffer, "hurry up, for God sake. He has the black glower in his een."
"Ready, sir; ready now!" cried Peter Riney, running out to open the other half of the gate. Peter was a wizened little man, with a sandy fringe of beard beneath his chin, a wart on the end of his long, slanting-out nose, light blue eyes, and bushy eyebrows of a reddish gray. The bearded red brows, close above the pale blueness of his eyes, made them more vivid by contrast; they were like pools of blue light amid the brownness of his face. Peter always ran about his work with eager alacrity. A simple and willing old man, he affected the quick readiness of youth to atone for his insignificance.
"Hup, horse; hup then!" cried courageous Peter, walking backwards with curved body through the gate, and tugging at the reins of a horse the feet of which struck sparks from the paved ground as they stressed painfully on edge to get weigh on the great wagon behind. The cart rolled through, then another, and another, till twelve of them had passed. Gourlay stood aside to watch them. All the horses were brown; "he makes a point of that," the neighbours would have told you. As each horse passed the gate the driver left its head, and took his place by the wheel, cracking his whip, with many a "Hup, horse; yean, horse; woa, lad; steady!"
In a dull little country town the passing of a single cart is an event, and a gig is followed with the eye till it disappears. Anything is welcome that breaks the long monotony of the hours and suggests a topic for the evening's talk. "Any news?" a body will gravely inquire. "Ou ay," another will answer with equal gravity: "I saw Kennedy's gig going past in the forenoon." "Ay, man; where would _he_ be off till? He's owre often in his gig, I'm thinking." And then Kennedy and his affairs will last them till bedtime.
Thus the appearance of Gourlay's carts woke Barbie from its morning lethargy. The smith came out in his leather apron, shoving back, as he gazed, the grimy cap from his white-sweating brow; bowed old men stood in front of their doorways, leaning with one hand on short, trembling staffs, while the slaver slid unheeded along the cutties which the left hand held to their toothless mouths; white-mutched grannies were keeking past the jambs; an early urchin, standing wide-legged to stare, waved his cap and shouted, "Hooray!" --and all because John Gourlay's carts were setting off upon their morning rounds, a brave procession for a single town! Gourlay, standing great-shouldered in the middle of the road, took in every detail, devoured it grimly as a homage to his pride. "Ha, ha, ye dogs!" said the soul within him. Past the pillar of the Red Lion door he could see a white peep of the landlord's waistcoat--though the rest of the mountainous man was hidden deep within his porch. (On summer mornings the vast totality of the landlord was always inferential to the town from the tiny white peep of him revealed.) Even fat Simpson had waddled to the door to see the carts going past. It was fat Simpson--might the Universe blast his adipose--who had once tried to infringe Gourlay's monopoly as the sole carrier in Barbie. There had been a rush to him at first, but Gourlay set his teeth and drove him off the road, carrying stuff for nothing till Simpson had nothing to carry, so that the local wit suggested "a wee parcel in a big cart" as a new sign for his hotel. The twelve browns prancing past would be a pill to Simpson! There was no smile about Gourlay's mouth--a fiercer glower was the only sign of his pride--but it put a bloom on his morning, he felt, to see the suggestive round of Simpson's waistcoat, down yonder at the porch. Simpson, the swine! He had made short work o' _him_!
Ere the last of the carts had issued from the yard at the House with the Green Shutters the foremost was already near the Red Lion. Gourlay swore beneath his breath when Miss Toddle--described in the local records as "a spinster of independent means"--came fluttering out with a silly little parcel to accost one of the carriers. Did the auld fool mean to stop Andy Gow about _her_ petty affairs, and thus break the line of carts on the only morning they had ever been able to go down the brae together? But no. Andy tossed her parcel carelessly up among his other packages, and left her bawling instructions from the gutter, with a portentous shaking of her corkscrew curls. Gourlay's men took their cue from their master, and were contemptuous of Barbie, most unchivalrous scorners of its old maids.
Gourlay was pleased with Andy for snubbing Sandy Toddle's sister. When he and Elshie Hogg reached the Cross they would have to break off from the rest to complete their loads; but they had been down Main Street over night as usual picking up their commissions, and until they reached the Bend o' the Brae it was unlikely that any business should arrest them now. Gourlay hoped that it might be so; and he had his desire, for, with the exception of Miss Toddle, no customer appeared. The teams went slowly down the steep side of the Square in an unbroken line, and slowly down the street leading from its near corner. On the slope the horses were unable to go fast--being forced to stell themselves back against the heavy propulsion of the carts behind; and thus the procession endured for a length of time worthy its surpassing greatness. When it disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae the watching bodies disappeared too; the event of the day had passed, and vacancy resumed her reign. The street and the Square lay empty to the morning sun. Gourlay alone stood idly at his gate, lapped in his own satisfaction.
It had been a big morning, he felt. It was the first time for many a year that all his men, quarrymen and carriers, carters of cheese and carters of grain, had led their teams down the brae together in the full view of his rivals. "I hope they liked it!" he thought, and he nodded several times at the town beneath his feet, with a slow up-and-down motion of the head, like a man nodding grimly to his beaten enemy. It was as if he said, "See what I have done to ye!"
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{
"id": "25876"
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Only a man of Gourlay's brute force of character could have kept all the carrying trade of Barbie in his own hands. Even in these days of railways, nearly every parish has a pair of carriers at the least, journeying once or twice a week to the nearest town. In the days when Gourlay was the great man of Barbie, railways were only beginning to thrust themselves among the quiet hills, and the bulk of inland commerce was still being drawn by horses along the country roads. Yet Gourlay was the only carrier in the town. The wonder is diminished when we remember that it had been a decaying burgh for thirty years, and that its trade, at the best of times, was of meagre volume. Even so, it was astonishing that he should be the only carrier. If you asked the natives how he did it, "Ou," they said, "he makes the one hand wash the other, doan't ye know?" --meaning thereby that he had so many horses travelling on his own business, that he could afford to carry other people's goods at rates that must cripple his rivals.
"But that's very stupid, surely," said a visitor once, who thought of entering into competition. "It's cutting off his nose to spite his face! Why is he so anxious to be the only carrier in Barbie that he carries stuff for next to noathing the moment another man tries to work the roads? It's a daft-like thing to do!"
"To be sure is't, to be sure is't! Just the stupeedity o' spite! Oh, there are times when Gourlay makes little or noathing from the carrying; but then, ye see, it gies him a fine chance to annoy folk! If you ask him to bring ye ocht, 'Oh,' he growls, 'I'll see if it suits my own convenience.' And ye have to be content. He has made so much money of late that the pride of him's not to be endured."
It was not the insolence of sudden wealth, however, that made Gourlay haughty to his neighbours; it was a repressiveness natural to the man and a fierce contempt of their scoffing envy. But it was true that he had made large sums of money during recent years. From his father (who had risen in the world) he inherited a fine trade in cheese; also the carrying to Skeighan on the one side and Fleckie on the other. When he married Miss Richmond of Tenshillingland, he started as a corn broker with the snug dowry that she brought him. Then, greatly to his own benefit, he succeeded in establishing a valuable connection with Templandmuir.
It was partly by sheer impact of character that Gourlay obtained his ascendency over hearty and careless Templandmuir, and partly by a bluff joviality which he--so little cunning in other things--knew to affect among the petty lairds. The man you saw trying to be jocose with Templandmuir was a very different being from the autocrat who "downed" his fellows in the town. It was all "How are ye the day, Templandmuir?" and "How d'ye doo-oo, Mr. Gourlay?" and the immediate production of the big decanter.
More than ten years ago now Templandmuir gave this fine, dour upstanding friend of his a twelve-year tack of the Red Quarry, and that was the making of Gourlay. The quarry yielded the best building stone in a circuit of thirty miles, easy to work and hard against wind and weather. When the main line went north through Skeighan and Poltandie, there was a great deal of building on the far side, and Gourlay simply coined the money. He could not have exhausted the quarry had he tried--he would have had to howk down a hill--but he took thousands of loads from it for the Skeighan folk; and the commission he paid the laird on each was ridiculously small. He built wooden stables out on Templandmuir's estate--the Templar had seven hundred acres of hill land--and it was there the quarry horses generally stood. It was only rarely--once in two years, perhaps--that they came into the House with the Green Shutters. Last Saturday they had brought several loads of stuff for Gourlay's own use, and that is why they were present at the great procession on the Monday following.
It was their feeling that Gourlay's success was out of all proportion to his merits that made other great-men-in-a-small-way so bitter against him. They were an able lot, and scarce one but possessed fifty times his weight of brain. Yet he had the big way of doing, though most of them were well enough to pass. Had they not been aware of his stupidity, they would never have minded his triumphs in the countryside; but they felt it with a sense of personal defeat that he--the donkey, as they thought him--should scoop every chance that was going, and leave them, the long-headed ones, still muddling in their old concerns. They consoled themselves with sneers, he retorted with brutal scorn, and the feud kept increasing between them.
They were standing at the Cross, to enjoy their Saturday at e'en, when Gourlay's "quarriers"--as the quarry horses had been named--came through the town last week-end. There were groups of bodies in the streets, washed from toil to enjoy the quiet air; dandering slowly or gossiping at ease; and they all turned to watch the quarriers stepping bravely up, their heads tossing to the hill. The big-men-in-a-small-way glowered and said nothing.
"I wouldn't mind," said Sandy Toddle at last--"I wouldn't mind if he weren't such a demned ess!"
"Ess?" said the Deacon unpleasantly. He puckered his brow and blinked, pretending not to understand.
"Oh, a cuddy, ye know," said Toddle, colouring.
"Gourlay'th stupid enough," lisped the Deacon; "we all know that. But there'th one thing to be said on hith behalf. He's not such a 'demned ess' as to try and thpeak fancy English!"
When the Deacon was not afraid of a man he stabbed him straight; when he was afraid of him he stabbed him on the sly. He was annoyed by the passing of Gourlay's carts, and he took it out of Sandy Toddle.
"It's extr'ornar!" blurted the Provost (who was a man of brosy speech, large-mouthed and fat of utterance). "It's extr'ornar. Yass, it's extr'ornar! I mean the luck of that man--for gumption he has noan, noan whatever! But if the railway came hereaway I wager Gourlay would go down," he added, less in certainty of knowledge than as prophet of the thing desired. "I wager he'd go down, sirs."
"Likely enough," said Sandy Toddle; "he wouldn't be quick enough to jump at the new way of doing."
"Moar than that!" cried the Provost, spite sharpening his insight, "moar than that--he'd be owre dour to abandon the auld way. _I_'m talling ye. He would just be left entirely! It's only those, like myself, who approach him on the town's affairs that know the full extent of his stupeedity."
"Oh, he's a 'demned ess,'" said the Deacon, rubbing it into Toddle and Gourlay at the same time.
"A-ah, but then, ye see, he has the abeelity that comes from character," said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity that's of no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has no cleverness, but just gangs tramping on; and that's----" "The easiest beaten by a flank attack," said the Deacon, snubbing him.
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With the sudden start of a man roused from a daydream Gourlay turned from the green gate and entered the yard. Jock Gilmour, the "orra" man, was washing down the legs of a horse beside the trough. It was Gourlay's own cob, which he used for driving round the countryside. It was a black--Gourlay "made a point" of driving with a black. "The brown for sturdiness, the black for speed," he would say, making a maxim of his whim to give it the sanction of a higher law.
Gilmour was in a wild temper because he had been forced to get up at five o'clock in order to turn several hundred cheeses, to prevent them bulging out of shape owing to the heat, and so becoming cracked and spoiled. He did not raise his head at his master's approach. And his head being bent, the eye was attracted to a patent leather collar which he wore, glazed with black and red stripes. It is a collar much affected by ploughmen, because a dip in the horse-trough once a month suffices for its washing. Between the striped collar and his hair (as he stooped) the sunburnt redness of his neck struck the eye vividly--the cropped fair hairs on it showing whitish on the red skin.
The horse quivered as the cold water swashed about its legs, and turned playfully to bite its groom. Gilmour, still stooping, dug his elbow up beneath its ribs. The animal wheeled in anger, but Gilmour ran to its head with most manful blasphemy, and led it to the stable door. The off hind leg was still unwashed.
"Has the horse but the three legs?" said Gourlay suavely.
Gilmour brought the horse back to the trough, muttering sullenly.
"Were ye saying anything?" said Gourlay. " _Eih? _" Gilmour sulked out and said nothing; and his master smiled grimly at the sudden redness that swelled his neck and ears to the verge of bursting.
A boy, standing in his shirt and trousers at an open window of the house above, had looked down at the scene with craning interest--big-eyed. He had been alive to every turn and phase of it--the horse's quiver of delight and fear, his skittishness, the groom's ill-temper, and Gourlay's grinding will. Eh, but his father was a caution! How easy he had downed Jock Gilmour! The boy was afraid of his father himself, but he liked to see him send other folk to the right about. For he was John Gourlay, too. Hokey, but his father could down them!
Mr. Gourlay passed on to the inner yard, which was close to the scullery door. The paved little court, within its high wooden walls, was curiously fresh and clean. A cock-pigeon strutted round, puffing his gleaming breast and _rooketty-cooing_ in the sun. Large, clear drops fell slowly from the spout of a wooden pump, and splashed upon a flat stone. The place seemed to enfold the stillness. There was a sense of inclusion and peace.
There is a distinct pleasure to the eye in a quiet brick court where everything is fresh and prim; in sunny weather you can lounge in a room and watch it through an open door, in a kind of lazy dream. The boy, standing at the window above to let the fresh air blow round his neck, was alive to that pleasure; he was intensely conscious of the pigeon swelling in its bravery, of the clean yard, the dripping pump, and the great stillness. His father on the step beneath had a different pleasure in the sight. The fresh indolence of morning was round him too, but it was more than that that kept him gazing in idle happiness. He was delighting in the sense of his own property around him, the most substantial pleasure possible to man. His feeling, deep though it was, was quite vague and inarticulate. If you had asked Gourlay what he was thinking of he could not have told you, even if he had been willing to answer you civilly--which is most unlikely. Yet his whole being, physical and mental (physical, indeed, rather than mental), was surcharged with the feeling that the fine buildings around him were his, that he had won them by his own effort, and built them large and significant before the world. He was lapped in the thought of it.
All men are suffused with that quiet pride in looking at the houses and lands which they have won by their endeavours--in looking at the houses more than at the lands, for the house which a man has built seems to express his character and stand for him before the world, as a sign of his success. It is more personal than cold acres, stamped with an individuality. All men know that soothing pride in the contemplation of their own property. But in Gourlay's sense of property there was another element--an element peculiar to itself, which endowed it with its warmest glow. Conscious always that he was at a disadvantage among his cleverer neighbours, who could achieve a civic eminence denied to him, he felt nevertheless that there was one means, a material means, by which he could hold his own and reassert himself--by the bravery of his business, namely, and all the appointments thereof, among which his dwelling was the chief. That was why he had spent so much money on the house. That was why he had such keen delight in surveying it. Every time he looked at the place he had a sense of triumph over what he knew in his bones to be an adverse public opinion. There was anger in his pleasure, and the pleasure that is mixed with anger often gives the keenest thrill. It is the delight of triumph in spite of opposition. Gourlay's house was a material expression of that delight, stood for it in stone and lime.
It was not that he reasoned deliberately when he built the house. But every improvement that he made--and he was always spending money on improvements--had for its secret motive a more or less vague desire to score off his rivals. " _That_'ll be a slap in the face to the Provost!" he smiled, when he planted his great mound of shrubs. "There's noathing like _that_ about the Provost's! Ha, ha!"
Encased as he was in his hard and insensitive nature, he was not the man who in new surroundings would be quick to every whisper of opinion. But he had been born and bred in Barbie, and he knew his townsmen--oh yes, he knew them. He knew they laughed because he had no gift of the gab, and could never be Provost, or Bailie, or Elder, or even Chairman of the Gasworks! Oh, verra well, verra well; let Connal and Brodie and Allardyce have the talk, and manage the town's affairs (he was damned if they should manage his!) --he, for his part, preferred the substantial reality. He could never aspire to the provostship, but a man with a house like that, he was fain to think, could afford to do without it. Oh yes; he was of opinion he could do without it! It had run him short of cash to build the place so big and braw, but, Lord! it was worth it. There wasn't a man in the town who had such accommodation!
And so, gradually, his dwelling had come to be a passion of Gourlay's life. It was a by-word in the place that if ever his ghost was seen, it would be haunting the House with the Green Shutters. Deacon Allardyce, trying to make a phrase with him, once quoted the saying in his presence. "Likely enough!" said Gourlay. "It's only reasonable I should prefer my own house to you rabble in the graveyard!"
Both in appearance and position the house was a worthy counterpart of its owner. It was a substantial two-story dwelling, planted firm and gawcey on a little natural terrace that projected a considerable distance into the Square. At the foot of the steep little bank shelving to the terrace ran a stone wall, of no great height, and the iron railings it uplifted were no higher than the sward within. Thus the whole house was bare to the view from the ground up, nothing in front to screen its admirable qualities. From each corner, behind, flanking walls went out to the right and left, and hid the yard and the granaries. In front of these walls the dwelling seemed to thrust itself out for notice. It took the eye of a stranger the moment he entered the Square. "Whose place is that?" was his natural question. A house that challenges regard in that way should have a gallant bravery in its look; if its aspect be mean, its assertive position but directs the eye to its infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay himself, it drew and satisfied your eye as he did.
And its position, "cockit up there on the brae," made it the theme of constant remark--to men because of the tyrant who owned it, and to women because of the poor woman who mismanaged its affairs. " 'Deed, I don't wonder that gurly Gourlay, as they ca' him, has an ill temper," said the gossips gathered at the pump, with their big, bare arms akimbo; "whatever led him to marry that dishclout of a woman clean beats _me_! I never could make head nor tail o't!" As for the men, they twisted every item about Gourlay and his domicile into fresh matter of assailment. "What's the news?" asked one, returning from a long absence; to whom the smith, after smoking in silence for five minutes, said, "Gourlay has got new rones!" "Ha--ay, man, Gourlay has got new rones!" buzzed the visitor; and then their eyes, diminished in mirth, twinkled at each other from out their ruddy wrinkles, as if wit had volleyed between them. In short, the House with the Green Shutters was on every tongue--and with a scoff in the voice, if possible.
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Gourlay went swiftly to the kitchen from the inner yard. He had stood so long in silence on the step, and his coming was so noiseless, that he surprised a long, thin trollop of a woman, with a long, thin, scraggy neck, seated by the slatternly table, and busy with a frowsy paper-covered volume, over which her head was bent in intent perusal.
"At your novelles?" said he. "Ay, woman; will it be a good story?"
She rose in a nervous flutter when she saw him; yet needlessly shrill in her defence, because she was angry at detection.
"Ah, well!" she cried, in weary petulance, "it's an unco thing if a body's not to have a moment's rest after such a morning's darg! I just sat down wi' the book for a little, till John should come till his breakfast!"
"So?" said Gourlay. "God, ay!" he went on; "you're making a nice job of _him_. _He_'ll be a credit to the house. Oh, it's right, no doubt, that _you_ should neglect your work till _he_ consents to rise."
"Eh, the puir la-amb," she protested, dwelling on the vowels in fatuous, maternal love; "the bairn's wearied, man! He's ainything but strong, and the schooling's owre sore on him."
"Poor lamb, atweel," said Gourlay. "It was a muckle sheep that dropped him."
It was Gourlay's pride in his house that made him harsher to his wife than others, since her sluttishness was a constant offence to the order in which he loved to have his dear possessions. He, for his part, liked everything precise. His claw-toed hammer always hung by the head on a couple of nails close together near the big clock; his gun always lay across a pair of wooden pegs, projecting from the brown rafters, just above the hearth. His bigotry in trifles expressed his character. Strong men of a mean understanding often deliberately assume, and passionately defend, peculiarities of no importance, because they have nothing else to get a repute for. "No, no," said Gourlay; "you'll never see a brown cob in _my_ gig--I wouldn't take one in a present!" He was full of such fads, and nothing should persuade him to alter the crotchets, which, for want of something better, he made the marks of his dour character. He had worked them up as part of his personality, and his pride of personality was such that he would never consent to change them. Hence the burly and gurly man was prim as an old maid with regard to his belongings. Yet his wife was continually infringing the order on which he set his heart. If he went forward to the big clock to look for his hammer, it was sure to be gone--the two bright nails staring at him vacantly. "Oh," she would say, in weary complaint, "I just took it to break a wheen coals;" and he would find it in the coal-hole, greasy and grimy finger-marks engrained on the handle which he loved to keep so smooth and clean. Innumerable her offences of the kind. Independent of these, the sight of her general incompetence filled him with a seething rage, which found vent not in lengthy tirades but the smooth venom of his tongue. Let him keep the outside of the house never so spick and span, inside was awry with her untidiness. She was unworthy of the House with the Green Shutters--that was the gist of it. Every time he set eyes on the poor trollop, the fresh perception of her incompetence which the sudden sight of her flashed, as she trailed aimlessly about, seemed to fatten his rage and give a coarser birr to his tongue.
Mrs. Gourlay had only four people to look after--her husband, her two children, and Jock Gilmour, the orra man. And the wife of Drucken Wabster--who had to go charing because she was the wife of Drucken Wabster--came in every day, and all day long, to help her with the work. Yet the house was always in confusion. Mrs. Gourlay had asked for another servant, but Gourlay would not allow that; "one's enough," said he, and what he once laid down he never went back on. Mrs. Gourlay had to muddle along as best she could, and having no strength either of mind or body, she let things drift, and took refuge in reading silly fiction.
As Gourlay shoved his feet into his boots, and stamped to make them easy, he glowered at the kitchen from under his heavy brows with a huge disgust. The table was littered with unwashed dishes, and on the corner of it next him was a great black sloppy ring, showing where a wet saucepan had been laid upon the bare board. The sun streamed through the window in yellow heat right on to a pat of melting butter. There was a basin of dirty water beneath the table, with the dishcloth slopping over on the ground.
"It's a tidy house!" said he.
"Ach, well," she cried, "you and your kitchen-range! It was that that did it! The masons could have redd out the fireplace to make room for't in the afternoon before it comes hame. They could have done't brawly, but ye wouldna hear o't--oh no; ye bude to have the whole place gutted out yestreen. I had to boil everything on the parlour fire this morning; no wonder I'm a little tousy!"
The old-fashioned kitchen grate had been removed and the jambs had been widened on each side of the fireplace; it yawned empty and cold. A little rubble of mortar, newly dried, lay about the bottom of the square recess. The sight of the crude, unfamiliar scraps of dropped lime in the gaping place where warmth should have been, increased the discomfort of the kitchen.
"Oh, that's it!" said Gourlay. "I see! It was want of the fireplace that kept ye from washing the dishes that we used yestreen. That was terrible! However, ye'll have plenty of boiling water when I put in the grand new range for ye; there winna be its equal in the parish! We'll maybe have a clean house _than_."
Mrs. Gourlay leaned, with the outspread thumb and red raw knuckles of her right hand, on the sloppy table, and gazed away through the back window of the kitchen in a kind of mournful vacancy. Always when her first complaining defence had failed to turn aside her husband's tongue, her mind became a blank beneath his heavy sarcasms, and sought refuge by drifting far away. She would fix her eyes on the distance in dreary contemplation, and her mind would follow her eyes in a vacant and wistful regard. The preoccupation of her mournful gaze enabled her to meet her husband's sneers with a kind of numb, unheeding acquiescence. She scarcely heard them.
Her head hung a little to one side as if too heavy for her wilting neck. Her hair, of a dry, red brown, curved low on either side of her brow, in a thick, untidy mass, to her almost transparent ears. As she gazed in weary and dreary absorption her lips had fallen heavy and relaxed, in unison with her mood; and through her open mouth her breathing was quick, and short, and noiseless. She wore no stays, and her slack cotton blouse showed the flatness of her bosom, and the faint outlines of her withered and pendulous breasts hanging low within.
There was something tragic in her pose, as she stood, sad and abstracted, by the dirty table. She was scraggy helplessness, staring in sorrowful vacancy. But Gourlay eyed her with disgust. Why, by Heaven, even now her petticoat was gaping behind, worse than the sloven's at the Red Lion. She was a pr-r-retty wife for John Gourlay! The sight of her feebleness would have roused pity in some: Gourlay it moved to a steady and seething rage. As she stood helpless before him he stung her with crude, brief irony.
Yet he was not wilfully cruel; only a stupid man with a strong character, in which he took a dogged pride. Stupidity and pride provoked the brute in him. He was so dull--only dull is hardly the word for a man of his smouldering fire--he was so dour of wit that he could never hope to distinguish himself by anything in the shape of cleverness. Yet so resolute a man must make the strong personality of which he was proud tell in some way. How, then, should he assert his superiority and hold his own? Only by affecting a brutal scorn of everything said and done unless it was said and done by John Gourlay. His lack of understanding made his affectation of contempt the easier. A man can never sneer at a thing which he really understands. Gourlay, understanding nothing, was able to sneer at everything. "Hah! I don't understand that; it's damned nonsense!" --that was his attitude to life. If "that" had been an utterance of Shakespeare or Napoleon it would have made no difference to John Gourlay. It would have been damned nonsense just the same. And he would have told them so, if he had met them.
The man had made dogged scorn a principle of life to maintain himself at the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me, dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?" "Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"--these be words of potent irony when uttered with a certain birr. Long practice had made Gourlay an adept in their use. He never spoke to those he despised or disliked without "the birr." Not that he was voluble of speech; he wasn't clever enough for lengthy abuse. He said little and his voice was low, but every word from the hard, clean lips was a stab. And often his silence was more withering than any utterance. It struck life like a black frost.
In those early days, to be sure, Gourlay had less occasion for the use of his crude but potent irony, since the sense of his material well-being warmed him and made him less bitter to the world. To the substantial farmers and petty squires around he was civil, even hearty, in his manner--unless they offended him. For they belonged to the close corporation of "bien men," and his familiarity with them was a proof to the world of his greatness. Others, again, were far too far beneath him already for him to "down" them. He reserved his gibes for his immediate foes, the assertive bodies his rivals in the town--and for his wife, who was a constant eyesore. As for her, he had baited the poor woman so long that it had become a habit; he never spoke to her without a sneer. "Ay, where have _you_ been stravaiging to?" he would drawl; and if she answered meekly, "I was taking a dander to the linn owre-bye," "The Linn!" he would take her up; "ye had a heap to do to gang there; your Bible would fit you better on a bonny Sabbath afternune!" Or it might be: "What's that you're burying your nose in now?" and if she faltered, "It's the Bible," "Hi!" he would laugh, "you're turning godly in your auld age. Weel, I'm no saying but it's time."
"Where's Janet?" he demanded, stamping his boots once more, now he had them laced.
"Eh?" said his wife vaguely, turning her eyes from the window. "Wha-at?"
"Ye're not turning deaf, I hope. I was asking ye where Janet was."
"I sent her down to Scott's for a can o' milk," she answered him wearily.
"No doubt ye had to send _her_," said he. "What ails the lamb that ye couldna send _him_--eh?"
"Oh, she was about when I wanted the milk, and she volunteered to gang. Man, it seems I never do a thing to please ye! What harm will it do her to run for a drop milk?"
"Noan," he said gravely, "noan. And it's right, no doubt, that her brother should still be abed--oh, it's right that he should get the privilege--seeing he's the eldest!"
Mrs. Gourlay was what the Scotch call "browdened[1] on her boy." In spite of her slack grasp on life--perhaps, because of it--she clung with a tenacious fondness to him. He was all she had, for Janet was a thowless[2] thing, too like her mother for her mother to like her. And Gourlay had discovered that it was one way of getting at his wife to be hard upon the thing she loved. In his desire to nag and annoy her he adopted a manner of hardness and repression to his son--which became permanent. He was always "down" on John; the more so because Janet was his own favourite--perhaps, again, because her mother seemed to neglect her. Janet was a very unlovely child, with a long, tallowy face and a pimply brow, over which a stiff fringe of whitish hair came down almost to her staring eyes, the eyes themselves being large, pale blue, and saucer-like, with a great margin of unhealthy white. But Gourlay, though he never petted her, had a silent satisfaction in his daughter. He took her about with him in the gig, on Saturday afternoons, when he went to buy cheese and grain at the outlying farms. And he fed her rabbits when she had the fever. It was a curious sight to see the dour, silent man mixing oatmeal and wet tea-leaves in a saucer at the dirty kitchen table, and then marching off to the hutch, with the ridiculous dish in his hand, to feed his daughter's pets.
* * * * * A sudden yell of pain and alarm rang through the kitchen. It came from the outer yard.
When the boy, peering from the window above, saw his father disappear through the scullery door, he stole out. The coast was clear at last.
He passed through to the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of silent swagger. He felt superior. His pose was instinct with the feeling: "_My_ father is _your_ master, and ye daurna stand up till him." Children of masterful sires often display that attitude towards dependants. The feeling is not the less real for being subconscious.
Jock Gilmour was still seething with a dour anger because Gourlay's quiet will had ground him to the task. When John came out and stood there, he felt tempted to vent on him the spite he felt against his father. The subtle suggestion of criticism and superiority in the boy's pose intensified the wish. Not that Gilmour acted from deliberate malice; his irritation was instinctive. Our wrath against those whom we fear is generally wreaked upon those whom we don't.
John, with his hands in his pockets, strutted across the yard, still watching Gilmour with that silent, offensive look. He came into the path of the whalebone. "Get out, you smeowt!" cried Gilmour, and with a vicious shove of the brush he sent a shower of dirty drops spattering about the boy's bare legs.
"Hallo you! what are ye after?" bawled the boy. "Don't you try that on again, I'm telling ye. What are _you_, onyway? Ye're just a servant. Hay-ay-ay, my man, my faither's the boy for ye. _He_ can put ye in your place."
Gilmour made to go at him with the head of the whalebone besom. John stooped and picked up the wet lump of cloth with which Gilmour had been washing down the horse's legs.
"Would ye?" said Gilmour threateningly.
"Would I no?" said John, the wet lump poised for throwing, level with his shoulder.
But he did not throw it for all his defiant air. He hesitated. He would have liked to slash it into Gilmour's face, but a swift vision of what would happen if he did withheld his craving arm. His irresolution was patent in his face; in his eyes there were both a threat and a watchful fear. He kept the dirty cloth poised in mid-air.
"Drap the clout," said Gilmour.
"I'll no," said John.
Gilmour turned sideways and whizzed the head of the besom round so that its dirty spray rained in the boy's face and eyes. John let him have the wet lump slash in his mouth. Gilmour dropped the besom and hit him a sounding thwack on the ear. John hullabalooed. Murther and desperation!
Ere he had gathered breath for a second roar his mother was present in the yard. She was passionate in defence of her cub, and rage transformed her. Her tense frame vibrated in anger; you would scarce have recognized the weary trollop of the kitchen.
"What's the matter, Johnny dear?" she cried, with a fierce glance at Gilmour.
"Gilmour hut me!" he bellowed angrily.
"Ye muckle lump!" she cried shrilly, the two scraggy muscles of her neck standing out long and thin as she screamed; "ye muckle lump--to strike a defenceless wean! --Dinna greet, my lamb; I'll no let him meddle ye. --Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie _you_ the order to travel ere the day's muckle aulder. I'll have no servant about _my_ hoose to ill-use _my_ bairn."
She stopped, panting angrily for breath, and glared at her darling's enemy. " _Your_ servant!" cried Gilmour in contempt. "Ye're a nice-looking object to talk about servants." He pointed at her slovenly dress and burst into a blatant laugh: "Huh, huh, huh!"
Mr. Gourlay had followed more slowly from the kitchen, as befitted a man of his superior character. He heard the row well enough, but considered it beneath him to hasten to a petty squabble.
"What's this?" he demanded with a widening look. Gilmour scowled at the ground.
"This!" shrilled Mrs. Gourlay, who had recovered her breath again--"this! Look at him there, the muckle slabber," and she pointed to Gilmour, who was standing with a red-lowering, downcast face, "look at him! A man of that size to even himsell to a wean!"
"He deserved a' he got," said Gilmour sullenly. "His mother spoils him, at ony rate. And I'm damned if the best Gourlay that ever dirtied leather's gaun to trample owre _me_."
Gourlay jumped round with a quick start of the whole body. For a full minute he held Gilmour in the middle of his steady glower.
"Walk," he said, pointing to the gate.
"Oh, I'll walk," bawled Gilmour, screaming now that anger gave him courage. "Gie me time to get _my_ kist, and I'll walk mighty quick. And damned glad I'll be to get redd o' you and your hoose. The Hoose wi' the Green Shutters," he laughed, "hi, hi, hi! --the Hoose wi' the Green Shutters!"
Gourlay went slowly up to him, opening his eyes on him black and wide. "You swine!" he said, with quiet vehemence; "for damned little I would kill ye wi' a glower!"
Gilmour shrank from the blaze in his eyes.
"Oh, dinna be fee-ee-ared," said Gourlay quietly, "dinna be fee-ee-ared. I wouldn't dirty my hand on 'ee! But get your bit kist, and I'll see ye off the premises. Suspeecious characters are worth the watching."
"Suspeecious!" stuttered Gilmour, "suspeecious! Wh-wh-whan was I ever suspeecious? I'll have the law of ye for that. I'll make ye answer for your wor-rds."
"Imphm!" said Gourlay. "In the meantime, look slippy wi' that bit box o' yours. I don't like daft folk about _my_ hoose."
"There'll be dafter folk as me in your hoose yet," spluttered Gilmour angrily, as he turned away.
He went up to the garret where he slept and brought down his trunk. As he passed through the scullery, bowed beneath the clumsy burden on his left shoulder, John, recovered from his sobbing, mocked at him.
"Hay-ay-ay," he said, in throaty derision, "my faither's the boy for ye. Yon was the way to put ye down!"
FOOTNOTES: [1] _Browdened. _ A Scot devoted to his children is said to be "browdened on his bairns."
[2] _Thowless_, weak, useless.
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In every little Scotch community there is a distinct type known as "the bodie." "What does he do, that man?" you may ask, and the answer will be, "Really, I could hardly tell ye what he does--he's juist a bodie!" The "bodie" may be a gentleman of independent means (a hundred a year from the Funds), fussing about in spats and light check breeches; or he may be a jobbing gardener; but he is equally a "bodie." The chief occupation of his idle hours (and his hours are chiefly idle) is the discussion of his neighbour's affairs. He is generally an "auld residenter;" great, therefore, at the redding up of pedigrees. He can tell you exactly, for instance, how it is that young Pin-oe's taking geyly to the dram; for his grandfather, it seems, was a terrible man for the drink--ou, just terrible. Why, he went to bed with a full jar of whisky once, and when he left it he was dead, and it was empty. So, ye see, that's the reason o't.
The genus "bodie" is divided into two species--the "harmless bodies" and the "nesty bodies." The bodies of Barbie mostly belonged to the second variety. Johnny Coe and Tam Wylie and the baker were decent enough fellows in their way, but the others were the sons of scandal. Gourlay spoke of them as a "wheen damned auld wives." But Gourlay, to be sure, was not an impartial witness.
The Bend o' the Brae was the favourite stance of the bodies: here they forgathered every day to pass judgment on the town's affairs. And, indeed, the place had many things to recommend it. Among the chief it was within an easy distance of the Red Lion, farther up the street, to which it was really very convenient to adjourn nows and nans. Standing at the Bend o' the Brae, too, you could look along two roads to the left and right, or down upon the Cross beneath, and the three low streets that guttered away from it. Or you might turn and look up Main Street, and past the side of the Square, to the House with the Green Shutters, the highest in the town. The Bend o' the Brae, you will gather, was a fine post for observation. It had one drawback, true: if Gourlay turned to the right in his gig he disappeared in a moment, and you could never be sure where he was off to. But even that afforded matter for pleasing speculation which often lasted half an hour.
It was about nine o'clock when Gourlay and Gilmour quarrelled in the yard, and that was the hour when the bodies forgathered for their morning dram.
"Good-moarning, Mr. Wylie!" said the Provost.
When the Provost wished you good-morning, with a heavy civic eye, you felt sure it was going to be good.
"Mornin', Provost, mornin'! Fine weather for the fields," said Tam, casting a critical glance at the blue dome in which a soft, white-bosomed cloud floated high above the town. "If this weather hauds, it'll be a blessing for us poor farming bodies."
Tam was a wealthy old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he had been no better than a breaker of road-metal.
"Faith ay!" said the Provost, cunning and quick; "fodder should be cheap"--and he shot the covetous glimmer of a bargain-making eye at Mr. Wylie.
Tam drew himself up. He saw what was coming.
"We're needing some hay for the burgh horse," said the Provost. "Ye'll be willing to sell at fifty shillings the ton, since it's like to be so plentiful."
"Oh," said Tam solemnly, "that's on-possible! Gourlay's seeking the three pound! and where he leads we maun a' gang. Gourlay sets the tune, and Barbie dances till't." That was quite untrue so far as the speaker was concerned. It took a clever man to make Tam Wylie dance to his piping. But Thomas, the knave, knew that he could always take a rise out the Provost by cracking up the Gourlays, and that to do it now was the best way of fobbing him off about the hay.
"Gourlay!" muttered the Provost, in disgust. And Tam winked at the baker.
"Losh," said Sandy Toddle, "yonder's the Free Kirk minister going past the Cross! Where'll _he_ be off till at this hour of the day? He's not often up so soon."
"They say he sits late studying," said Johnny Coe.
"H'mph, studying!" grunted Tam Brodie, a big, heavy, wall-cheeked man, whose little, side-glancing eyes seemed always alert for scandal amid the massive insolence of his smooth face. "I see few signs of studying in _him_. He's noathing but a stink wi' a skin on't."
T. Brodie was a very important man, look you, and wrote "Leather Mercht." above his door, though he cobbled with his own hands. He was a staunch Conservative, and down on the Dissenters.
"What road'th he taking?" lisped Deacon Allardyce, craning past Brodie's big shoulder to get a look.
"He's stoppit to speak to Widow Wallace. What will he be saying to _her_?"
"She's a greedy bodie that Mrs. Wallace: I wouldna wonder but she's speiring him for bawbees."
"Will he take the Skeighan Road, I wonder?"
"Or the Fechars?"
"He's a great man for gathering gowans and other sic trash. He's maybe for a dander up the burn juist. They say he's a great botanical man."
"Ay," said Brodie, "paidling in a burn's the ploy for him. He's a weanly gowk."
"A-a-ah!" protested the baker, who was a Burnsomaniac, "there's waur than a walk by the bank o' a bonny burn. Ye ken what Mossgiel said:-- 'The Muse nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander, Adown some trottin' burn's meander, And no thick lang; Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder A heartfelt sang.'"
Poetical quotations, however, made the Provost uncomfortable. "Ay," he said dryly in his throat; "verra good, baker, verra good! --Who's yellow doag's that? I never saw the beast about the town before!"
"Nor me either. It's a perfect stranger!"
"It's like a herd's doag!"
"Man, you're right! That's just what it will be. The morn's Fleckie lamb fair, and some herd or other'll be in about the town."
"He'll be drinking in some public-house, I'se warrant, and the doag will have lost him."
"Imph, that'll be the way o't." "I'm demned if he hasn't taken the Skeighan Road!" said Sandy Toddle, who had kept his eye on the minister. Toddle's accent was a varying quality. When he remembered he had been a packman in England it was exceedingly fine. But he often forgot.
"The Skeighan Road! the Skeighan Road! Who'll he be going to see in that airt? Will it be Templandmuir?"
"Gosh, it canna be Templandmuir; he was there no later than yestreen!"
"Here's a man coming down the brae!" announced Johnny Coe, in a solemn voice, as if a man "coming down the brae" was something unusual. In a moment every head was turned to the hill.
"What's yon he's carrying on his shouther?" pondered Brodie.
"It looks like a boax," said the Provost slowly, bending every effort of eye and mind to discover what it really was. He was giving his profoundest cogitations to the "boax."
"It _is_ a boax! But who is it though? I canna make him out."
"Dod, I canna tell either; his head's so bent with his burden!"
At last the man, laying his "boax" on the ground, stood up to ease his spine, so that his face was visible.
"Losh, it's Jock Gilmour, the orra man at Gourlay's! What'll _he_ be doing out on the street at this hour of the day? I thocht he was always busy on the premises! Will Gourlay be sending him off with something to somebody? But no; that canna be. He would have sent it with the carts."
"I'll wager ye," cried Johnny Coe quickly, speaking more loudly than usual in the animation of discovery--"I'll wager ye Gourlay has quarrelled him and put him to the door!"
"Man, you're right! That'll just be it, that'll just be it! Ay, ay--faith ay--and yon'll be his kist he's carrying! Man, you're right, Mr. Coe; you have just put your finger on't. We'll hear news _this_ morning."
They edged forward to the middle of the road, the Provost in front, to meet Gilmour coming down.
"Ye've a heavy burden this morning, John," said the Provost graciously.
"No wonder, sir," said Gilmour, with big-eyed solemnity, and set down the chest; "it's no wonder, seeing that I'm carrying my a-all."
"Ay, man, John. How's that na?"
To be the centre of interest and the object of gracious condescension was balm to the wounded feelings of Gilmour. Gourlay had lowered him, but this reception restored him to his own good opinion. He was usually called "Jock" (except by his mother, to whom, of course, he was "oor Johnny"), but the best merchants in the town were addressing him as "John." It was a great occasion. Gilmour expanded in gossip beneath its influence benign.
He welcomed, too, this first and fine opportunity of venting his wrath on the Gourlays.
"Oh, I just telled Gourlay what I thocht of him, and took the door ahint me. I let him have it hot and hardy, I can tell ye. He'll no forget _me_ in a hurry"--Gilmour bawled angrily, and nodded his head significantly, and glared fiercely, to show what good cause he had given Gourlay to remember him--"he'll no forget _me_ for a month of Sundays."
"Ay, man, John, what did ye say till him?"
"Na, man, what did he say to you?"
"Wath he angry, Dyohn?"
"How did the thing begin?"
"Tell us, man, John."
"What was it a-all about, John?"
"Was Mrs. Gourlay there?"
Bewildered by this pelt of questions, Gilmour answered the last that hit his ear. "There, ay; faith, she was there. It was her was the cause o't." "D'ye tell me that, John? Man, you surprise me. I would have thocht the thowless trauchle[3] hadna the smeddum left to interfere."
"Oh, it was yon boy of hers. He's aye swaggerin' aboot, interferin' wi' folk at their wark--he follows his faither's example in that, for as the auld cock craws the young ane learns--and his mither's that daft aboot him that ye daurna give a look! He came in my road when I was sweeping out the close, and some o' the dirty jaups splashed about his shins. But was I to blame for that? --ye maun walk wide o' a whalebone besom if ye dinna want to be splashed. Afore I kenned where I was, he up wi' a dirty washing-clout and slashed me in the face wi't! I hit him a thud in the ear--as wha wadna? Out come his mither like a fury, skirling about _her_ hoose, and _her_ servants, and _her_ weans. 'Your servant!' says I--'your servant! You're a nice-looking trollop to talk aboot servants,' says I." "Did ye really, John?"
"Man, that wath bauld o' ye."
"And what did _she_ say?"
"Oh, she just kept skirling! And then, to be sure, Gourlay must come out and interfere! But I telled him to his face what I thocht of _him! _ 'The best Gourlay that ever dirtied leather,' says I, ''s no gaun to make dirt of me,' says I." "Ay, man, Dyohn!" lisped Deacon Allardyce, with bright and eagerly inquiring eyes. "And what did he thay to that na? _That_ wath a dig for him! I'the warrant he wath angry."
"Angry? He foamed at the mouth! But I up and says to him, 'I have had enough o' you,' says I, 'you and your Hoose wi' the Green Shutters,' says I. 'You're no fit to have a decent servant,' says I. 'Pay _me my_ wages, and I'll be redd o' ye,' says I. And wi' that I flang my kist on my shouther and slapped the gate ahint me."
"And _did_ he pay ye your wages?" Tam Wylie probed him slyly, with a sideward glimmer in his eye.
"Ah, well, no--not exactly," said Gilmour, drawing in. "But I'll get them right enough for a' that. He'll no get the better o' _me_." Having grounded unpleasantly on the question of the wages, he thought it best to be off ere the bloom was dashed from his importance, so he shouldered his chest and went. The bodies watched him down the street.
"He's a lying brose, that," said the baker. "We a' ken what Gourlay is. He would have flung Gilmour out by the scruff o' the neck if he had daured to set his tongue against him!"
"Faith, that's so," said Tam Wylie and Johnny Coe together.
But the others were divided between their perception of the fact and their wish to believe that Gourlay had received a thrust or two. At other times they would have been the first to scoff at Gilmour's swagger. Now their animus against Gourlay prompted them to back it up.
"Oh, I'm not so sure of tha-at, baker," cried the Provost, in the false, loud voice of a man defending a position which he knows to be unsound; "I'm no so sure of that at a-all. A-a-ah, mind ye," he drawled persuasively, "he's a hardy fallow, that Gilmour. I've no doubt he gied Gourlay a good dig or two. Let us howp they will do him good."
For many reasons intimate to the Scot's character, envious scandal is rampant in petty towns such as Barbie. To go back to the beginning, the Scot, as pundits will tell you, is an individualist. His religion alone is enough to make him so; for it is a scheme of personal salvation significantly described once by the Reverend Mr. Struthers of Barbie. "At the Day of Judgment, my frehnds," said Mr. Struthers--"at the Day of Judgment every herring must hang by his own tail!" Self-dependence was never more luridly expressed. History, climate, social conditions, and the national beverage have all combined (the pundits go on) to make the Scot an individualist, fighting for his own hand. The better for him if it be so; from that he gets the grit that tells.
From their individualism, however, comes inevitably a keen spirit of competition (the more so because Scotch democracy gives fine chances to compete), and from their keen spirit of competition comes, inevitably again, an envious belittlement of rivals. If a man's success offends your individuality, to say everything you can against him is a recognized weapon of the fight. It takes him down a bit, and (inversely) elevates his rival.
It is in a small place like Barbie that such malignity is most virulent, because in a small place like Barbie every man knows everything to his neighbour's detriment. He can redd up his rival's pedigree, for example, and lower his pride (if need be) by detailing the disgraces of his kin. "I have grand news the day!" a big-hearted Scot will exclaim (and when their hearts are big they are big to hypertrophy)--"I have grand news the day! Man, Jock Goudie has won the C.B."--"Jock Goudie"--an envious bodie will pucker as if he had never heard the name--"Jock Goudie? Wha's _he_ for a Goudie? Oh ay, let me see now. He's a brother o'--eh, a brother o'--eh" (tit-tit-titting on his brow)--"oh, just a brother o' Drucken Will Goudie o' Auchterwheeze! Oo-ooh, I ken _him_ fine. His grannie keepit a sweetie-shop in Strathbungo." There you have the "nesty" Scotsman.
Even if Gourlay had been a placable and inoffensive man, then, the malignants of the petty burgh (it was scarce bigger than a village) would have fastened on his character simply because he was above them. No man has a keener eye for behaviour than the Scot (especially when spite wings his intuition), and Gourlay's thickness of wit and pride of place would in any case have drawn their sneers. So, too, on lower grounds, would his wife's sluttishness. But his repressiveness added a hundredfold to their hate of him. That was the particular cause which, acting on their general tendency to belittle a too-successful rival, made their spite almost monstrous against him. Not a man among them but had felt the weight of his tongue--for edge it had none. He walked among them like the dirt below his feet. There was no give and take in the man; he could be verra jocose with the lairds, to be sure, but he never dropped in to the Red Lion for a crack and a dram with the town-folk; he just glowered as if he could devour them! And who was he, I should like to know? His grandfather had been noathing but a common carrier!
Hate was the greater on both sides because it was often impotent. Gourlay frequently suspected offence, and seethed because he had no idea how to meet it--except by driving slowly down the brae in his new gig and never letting on when the Provost called to him. That was a wipe in the eye for the Provost! The "bodies," on their part, could rarely get near enough Gourlay to pierce his armour; he kept them off him by his brutal dourness. For it was not only pride and arrogance, but a consciousness also that he was no match for them at their own game, that kept Gourlay away from their society. They were adepts at the under stroke, and they would have given him many a dig if he had only come amongst them. But, oh no, not he; he was the big man; he never gave a body a chance! Or if you did venture a bit jibe when you met him, he glowered you off the face of the earth with thae black een of his. Oh, how they longed to get at him! It was not the least of the evils caused by Gourlay's black pride that it perverted a dozen characters. The "bodies" of Barbie may have been decent enough men in their own way, but against him their malevolence was monstrous. It showed itself in an insane desire to seize on every scrap of gossip they might twist against him. That was why the Provost lowered municipal dignity to gossip in the street with a discharged servant. As the baker said afterwards, it was absurd for a man in his "poseetion." But it was done with the sole desire of hearing something that might tell against Gourlay. Even countesses, we are told, gossip with malicious maids about other countesses. Spite is a great leveller.
"Shall we adjourn?" said Brodie, when they had watched Jock Gilmour out of sight. He pointed across his shoulder to the Red Lion.
"Better noat just now," said the Provost, nodding in slow authority--"better noat just now! I'm very anxious to see Gourlay about yon matter we were speaking of, doan't ye understa-and? But I'm determined not to go to his house! On the other hand, if we go into the Red Lion the now, we may miss him on the street. We'll noat have loang to wait, though; he'll be down the town directly, to look at the horses he has at the gerse out the Fechars Road. But _I'm_ talling ye, I simply will noat go to his house--to put up with a wheen damned insults!" he puffed in angry recollection.
"To tell the truth," said Wylie, "I don't like to call upon Gourlay either. I'm aware of his eyes on my back when I slink beaten through his gate, and I feel that my hurdies are wanting in dignity!"
"Huh!" spluttered Brodie, "that never affects me. I come stunting out in a bleeze of wrath and slam the yett ahint me!"
"Oh, well," said the Deacon, "that'th one way of being dignified."
"I'm afraid," said Sandy Toddle, "that he won't be in a very good key to consider our request this morning, after his quarrel with Gilmour."
"No," said the Provost; "he'll be blazing angry! It's most unfoartunate. But we maun try to get his consent, be his temper what it will. It's a matter of importance to the town, doan't ye see, and if he refuses we simply can-noat proceed wi' the improvement."
"It was Gilmour's jibe at the House wi' the Green Shutters that would anger him the most, for it's the perfect god of his idolatry. Eh, sirs, he has wasted an awful money upon yon house!"
"Wasted's the word!" said Brodie, with a blatant laugh. "Wasted's the word! They say he has verra little lying cash! And I shouldna be surprised at all. For, ye see, Gibson the builder diddled him owre the building o't." "Oh, I'se warrant Cunning Johnny would get the better of an ass like Gourlay. But how in particular, Mr. Brodie? Have ye heard ainy details?"
"I've been on the track o' the thing for a while back, but it was only yestreen I had the proofs o't. It was Robin Wabster that telled me. He's a jouking bodie, Robin, and he was ahint a dike up the Skeighan Road when Gibson and Gourlay forgathered--they stoppit just forenenst him! Gourlay began to curse at the size of Gibson's bill, but Cunning Johnny kenned the way to get round him brawly. 'Mr. Gourlay,' says he, 'there's not a thing in your house that a man in your poseetion can afford to be without, and ye needn't expect the best house in Barbie for an oald song!' And Gourlay was pacified at once! It appeared frae their crack, however, that Gibson has diddled him tremendous. 'Verra well then,' Robin heard Gourlay cry, 'you must allow me a while ere I pay that!' I wager, for a' sae muckle as he's made of late, that his balance at the bank's a sma' yin."
"More thyow than thubstanth," said the Deacon.
"Well, I'm sure!" said the Provost, "he needn't have built such a gra-and house to put a slut of a wife like yon in!"
"I was surprised," said Sandy Toddle, "to hear about her firing up. I wouldn't have thought she had the spirit, or that Gourlay would have come to her support!"
"Oh," said the Provost, "it wasn't her he was thinking of! It was his own pride, the brute. He leads the woman the life of a doag. I'm surprised that he ever married her!"
"I ken fine how he married her," said Johnny Coe. "I was acquaint wi' her faither, auld Tenshillingland owre at Fechars--a grand farmer he was, wi' land o' his nain, and a gey pickle bawbees. It was the bawbees, and not the woman, that Gourlay went after! It was _her_ money, as ye ken, that set him on his feet, and made him such a big man. He never cared a preen for _her_, and then when she proved a dirty trollop, he couldna endure her look! That's what makes him so sore upon her now. And yet I mind her a braw lass, too," said Johnny the sentimentalist, "a braw lass she was," he mused, "wi' fine, brown glossy hair, I mind, and--ochonee! ochonee! --as daft as a yett in a windy day. She had a cousin, Jenny Wabster, that dwelt in Tenshillingland than, and mony a summer nicht up the Fechars Road, when ye smelled the honeysuckle in the gloaming, I have heard the two o' them tee-heeing owre the lads thegither, skirling in the dark and lauching to themselves. They were of the glaikit kind ye can always hear loang before ye see. Jock Allan (that has done so well in Embro) was a herd at Tenshillingland than, and he likit her, and I think she likit him; but Gourlay came wi' his gig and whisked her away. She doesna lauch sae muckle now, puir bodie! But a braw lass she----" "It's you maun speak to Gourlay, Deacon," said the Provost, brushing aside the reminiscent Coe.
"How can it be that, Provost? It'th _your_ place, surely. You're the head of the town!"
When Gourlay was to be approached there was always a competition for who should be hindmost.
"Yass, but you know perfectly well, Deacon, that I cannot thole the look of him. I simply cannot thole the look. And he knows it too. The thing'll gang smash at the outset--_I'm_ talling ye, now--it'll go smash at the outset if it's left to me. And than, ye see, you have a better way of approaching folk!"
"Ith that tho?" said the Deacon dryly. He shot a suspicious glance to see if the Provost was guying him.
"Oh, it must be left to you, Deacon," said the baker and Tam Wylie in a breath.
"Certainly, it maun be left to the Deacon," assented Johnny Coe, when he saw how the others were giving their opinion.
"Tho be it, then," snapped the Deacon.
"Here he comes," said Sandy Toddle.
Gourlay came down the street towards them, his chest big, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. He had the power of staring steadily at those whom he approached without the slightest sign of recognition or intelligence appearing in his eyes. As he marched down upon the bodies he fixed them with a wide-open glower that was devoid of every expression but courageous steadiness. It gave a kind of fierce vacancy to his look.
The Deacon limped forward on his thin shanks to the middle of the road.
"It'th a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," he simpered.
"There's noathing wrong with the morning," grunted Gourlay, as if there was something wrong with the Deacon.
"We wath wanting to thee ye on a very important matter, Mithter Gourlay," lisped the Deacon, smiling up at the big man's face, with his head on one side, and rubbing his fingers in front of him. "It'th a matter of the common good, you thee; and we all agreed that we should speak to _you_, ath the foremost merchant of the town!"
Allardyce meant his compliment to fetch Gourlay. But Gourlay knew his Allardyce, and was cautious. It was well to be on your guard when the Deacon was complimentary. When his language was most flowery there was sure to be a serpent hidden in it somewhere. He would lisp out an innocent remark and toddle away, and Gourlay would think nothing of the matter till a week afterwards, perhaps, when something would flash a light; then "Damn him, did he mean '_that_'?" he would seethe, starting back and staring at the "_that_" while his fingers strangled the air in place of the Deacon.
He glowered at the Deacon now till the Deacon blinked.
"You thee, Mr. Gourlay," Allardyce shuffled uneasily, "it'th for your own benefit just ath much ath ourth. We were thinking of you ath well ath of ourthelves! Oh yeth, oh yeth!"
"Ay, man!" said Gourlay, "that was kind of ye! I'll be the first man in Barbie to get ainy benefit from the fools that mismanage our affairs."
The gravel grated beneath the Provost's foot. The atmosphere was becoming electric, and the Deacon hastened to the point.
"You thee, there'th a fine natural supply of water--a perfect reservore the Provost sayth--on the brae-face just above _your_ garden, Mr. Gourlay. Now, it would be easy to lead that water down and alang through all the gardenth on the high side of Main Street--and, 'deed, it might feed a pump at the Cross, too, to supply the lower portionth o' the town. It would really be a grai-ait convenience. Every man on the high side o' Main Street would have a running spout at his own back door! If your garden didna run tho far back, Mr. Gourlay, and ye hadna tho muckle land about your place"--_that_ should fetch him, thought the Deacon--"if it werena for that, Mr. Gourlay, we could easily lead the water round to the other gardenth without interfering with your property. But, ath it ith, we simply can-noat move without ye. The water must come through your garden, if it comes at a-all."
"The most o' you important men live on the high side o' Main Street," birred Gourlay. "Is it the poor folk at the Cross, or your ain bits o' back doors that you're thinking o'?"
"Oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay!" protested Allardyce, head flung back, and palms in air, to keep the thought of self-interest away, "oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay! We're thinking of noathing but the common good, I do assure ye."
"Ay, man! You're dis-in-ter-ested!" said Gourlay, but he stumbled on the big word and spoiled the sneer. That angered him, and, "It's likely," he rapped out, "that I'll allow the land round _my_ house to be howked and trenched and made a mudhole of to oblige a wheen things like you!"
"Oh--oh, but think of the convenience to uth--eh--eh--I mean to the common good," said Allardyce.
"I howked wells for myself," snapped Gourlay. "Let others do the like."
"Oh, but we haven't all the enterprithe of you, Mr. Gourlay. You'll surely accommodate the town!"
"I'll see the town damned first," said Gourlay, and passed on his steady way.
FOOTNOTES: [3] _Trauchle_, a poor trollop who trails about; _smeddum_, grit.
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The bodies watched Gourlay in silence until he was out of earshot. Then, "It's monstrous!" the Provost broke out in solemn anger; "I declare it's perfectly monstrous! But I believe we could get Pow-ers to compel him. Yass; I believe we could get Pow-ers. I do believe we could get Pow-ers."
The Provost was fond of talking about "Pow-ers," because it implied that he was intimate with the great authorities who might delegate such "Pow-ers" to him. To talk of "Pow-ers," mysteriously, was a tribute to his own importance. He rolled the word on his tongue as if he enjoyed the sound of it.
On the Deacon's cheek bones two red spots flamed, round and big as a Scotch penny. His was the hurt silence of the baffled diplomatist, to whom a defeat means reflections on his own ability.
"Demn him!" he skirled, following the solid march of his enemy with fiery eyes.
Never before had his deaconship been heard to swear. Tam Wylie laughed at the shrill oath till his eyes were buried in his merry wrinkles, a suppressed snirt, a continuous gurgle in the throat and nose, in beaming survey the while of the withered old creature dancing in his rage. (It was all a good joke to Tam, because, living on the outskirts of the town, he had no spigot of his own to feed.) The Deacon turned the eyes of hate on him. Demn Wylie too--what was he laughing at!
"Oh, I dare thay you could have got round him!" he snapped.
"In my opinion, Allardyce," said the baker, "you mismanaged the whole affair. Yon wasna the way to approach him!"
"It'th a pity you didna try your hand, then, I'm sure! No doubt a clever man like _you_ would have worked wonderth!"
So the bodies wrangled among themselves. Somehow or other Gourlay had the knack of setting them by the ears. It was not till they hit on a common topic of their spite in railing at him that they became a band of brothers and a happy few.
"Whisht!" said Sandy Toddle suddenly; "here's his boy!"
John was coming towards them on his way to school. The bodies watched him as he passed, with the fixed look men turn on a boy of whose kinsmen they were talking even now. They affect a stony and deliberate regard, partly to include the newcomer in their critical survey of his family, and partly to banish from their own eyes any sign that they have just been running down his people. John, as quick as his mother to feel, knew in a moment they were watching _him_. He hung his head sheepishly and blushed, and the moment he was past he broke into a nervous trot, the bag of books bumping on his back as he ran.
"He's getting a big boy, that son of Gourlay's," said the Provost; "how oald will he be?"
"He's approaching twelve," said Johnny Coe, who made a point of being able to supply such news because it gained him consideration where he was otherwise unheeded. "He was born the day the brig on the Fleckie Road gaed down, in the year o' the great flood; and since the great flood it's twelve year come Lammas. Rab Tosh o' Fleckie's wife was heavy-footed at the time, and Doctor Munn had been a' nicht wi' her, and when he cam to Barbie Water in the morning it was roaring wide frae bank to brae; where the brig should have been there was naething but the swashing of the yellow waves. Munn had to drive a' the way round to the Fechars brig, and in parts o' the road the water was so deep that it lapped his horse's bellyband. A' this time Mrs. Gourlay was skirling in her pains and praying to God she micht dee. Gourlay had been a great crony o' Munn's, but he quarrelled him for being late; he had trysted him, ye see, for the occasion, and he had been twenty times at the yett to look for him. Ye ken how little he would stomach that; he was ready to brust wi' anger. Munn, mad for the want of sleep and wat to the bane, swüre back at him; and than Gourlay wadna let him near his wife! Ye mind what an awful day it was; the thunder roared as if the heavens were tumbling on the world, and the lichtnin sent the trees daudin on the roads, and folk hid below their beds and prayed--they thocht it was the Judgment! But Gourlay rammed his black stepper in the shafts, and drave like the devil o' hell to Skeighan Drone, where there was a young doctor. The lad was feared to come, but Gourlay swore by God that he should, and he garred him. In a' the countryside driving like his that day was never kenned or heard tell o'; they were back within the hour! I saw them gallop up Main Street; lichtnin struck the ground before them; the young doctor covered his face wi' his hands, and the horse nichered wi' fear and tried to wheel, but Gourlay stood up in the gig and lashed him on through the fire. It was thocht for lang that Mrs. Gourlay would die; and she was never the same woman after. Atweel, ay, sirs, Gourlay has that morning's work to blame for the poor wife he has now. Him and Munn never spoke to each other again, and Munn died within the twelvemonth--he got his death that morning on the Fleckie Road. But, for a' so pack's they had been, Gourlay never looked near him."
Coe had told his story with enjoying gusto, and had told it well--for Johnny, though constantly snubbed by his fellows, was in many ways the ablest of them all. His voice and manner drove it home. They knew, besides, he was telling what himself had seen. For they knew he was lying prostrate with fear in the open smiddy-shed from the time Gourlay went to Skeighan Drone to the time that he came back, and that he had seen him both come and go. They were silent for a while, impressed, in spite of themselves, by the vivid presentment of Gourlay's manhood on the day that had scared them all. The baker felt inclined to cry out on his cruelty for keeping his wife suffering to gratify his wrath; but the sudden picture of the man's courage changed that feeling to another of admiring awe: a man so defiant of the angry heavens might do anything. And so with the others; they hated Gourlay, but his bravery was a fact of nature which they could not disregard; they knew themselves smaller, and said nothing for a while. Tam Brodie, the most brutal among them, was the first to recover. Even he did not try to belittle at once, but he felt the subtle discomfort of the situation, and relieved it by bringing the conversation back to its usual channel.
"That was at the boy's birth, Mr. Coe?" said he.
"Ou ay, just the laddie. It was a' richt when the lassie came. It was Doctor Dandy brocht _her_ hame, for Munn was deid by that time, and Dandy had his place."
"What will Gourlay be going to make of him?" the Provost asked. "A doctor or a minister or wha-at?"
"Deil a fear of that," said Brodie; "he'll take him into the business! It's a' that he's fit for. He's an infernal dunce, just his father owre again, and the Dominie thrashes him remorseless! I hear my own weans speaking o't. Ou, it seems he's just a perfect numbskull!"
"Ye couldn't expect ainything else from a son of Gourlay," said the Provost.
Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the direction of their thoughts.
"A dram would be very acceptable now," murmured Sandy Toddle, rubbing his chin.
"Ou, we wouldna be the waur o't," said Tam Wylie.
"We would all be the better of a little drope," smirked the Deacon.
And they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram.
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John Gourlay the younger was late for school, in spite of the nervous trot he fell into when he shrank from the bodies' hard stare at him. There was nothing unusual about that; he was late for school every other day. To him it was a howling wilderness where he played a most appropriate _rôle_. If his father was not about he would hang round his mother till the last moment, rather than be off to old "Bleach-the-boys"--as the master had been christened by his scholars. "Mother, I have a pain in _my_ heid," he would whimper, and she would condole with him and tell him she would keep him at home with her--were it not for dread of her husband. She was quite sure he was ainything but strong, poor boy, and that the schooling was bad for him; for it was really remarkable how quickly the pain went if he was allowed to stay at home; why, he got better just directly! It was not often she dared to keep him from school, however; and if she did, she had to hide him from his father.
On school mornings the boy shrank from going out with a shrinking that was almost physical. When he stole through the green gate with his bag slithering at his hip (not braced between the shoulders like a birkie scholar's), he used to feel ruefully that he was in for it now--and the Lord alone knew what he would have to put up with ere he came home! And he always had the feeling of a freed slave when he passed the gate on his return, never failing to note with delight the clean smell of the yard after the stuffiness of school, sucking it in through glad nostrils, and thinking to himself, "O crickey, it's fine to be home!" On Friday nights, in particular, he used to feel so happy that, becoming arrogant, he would try his hand at bullying Jock Gilmour in imitation of his father. John's dislike of school, and fear of its trampling bravoes, attached him peculiarly to the House with the Green Shutters; there was his doting mother, and she gave him stories to read, and the place was so big that it was easy to avoid his father and have great times with the rabbits and the doos. He was as proud of the sonsy house as Gourlay himself, if for a different reason, and he used to boast of it to his comrades. And he never left it, then or after, without a foreboding.
As he crept along the School Road with a rueful face, he was alone, for Janet, who was cleverer than he, was always earlier at school. The absence of children in the sunny street lent to his depression. He felt forlorn; if there had been a chattering crowd marching along, he would have been much more at his ease.
Quite recently the school had been fitted up with varnished desks, and John, who inherited his mother's nervous senses with his father's lack of wit, was always intensely alive to the smell of the desks the moment he went in; and as his heart always sank when he went in, the smell became associated in his mind with that sinking of the heart--to feel it, no matter where, filled him with uneasiness. As he stole past the joiner's on that sunny morning, when wood was resinous and pungent of odour, he was suddenly conscious of a varnishy smell, and felt a misgiving without knowing why. It was years after, in Edinburgh, ere he knew the reason; he found that he never went past an upholsterer's shop, on a hot day in spring, without being conscious of a vague depression, and feeling like a boy slinking into school.
In spite of his forebodings, nothing more untoward befell him that morning than a cut over the cowering shoulders for being late, as he crept to the bottom of his class. He reached "leave," the ten minutes' run at twelve o'clock, without misadventure. Perhaps it was this unwonted good fortune that made him boastful when he crouched near the pump among his cronies, sitting on his hunkers with his back to the wall. Half a dozen boys were about him, and Swipey Broon was in front, making mud pellets in a trickle from the pump.
He began talking of the new range.
"Yah! Auld Gemmell needn't have let welp at me for being late this morning," he spluttered big-eyed, nodding his head in aggrieved and solemn protest. "It wasna _my_ faut! We're getting in a grand new range, and the whole of the kitchen fireplace has been gutted out to make room for't; and my mother couldna get my breakfast in time this morning, because, ye see, she had to boil everything in the parlour--and here, when she gaed ben the house, the parlour fire was out!
"It's to be a splendid range, the new one," he went on, with a conceited jerk of the head. "Peter Riney's bringin'd from Skeighan in the afternune. My father says there winna be its equal in the parish!"
The faces of the boys lowered uncomfortably. They felt it was a silly thing of Gourlay to blow his own trumpet in this way, but, being boys, they could not prick his conceit with a quick rejoinder. It is only grown-ups who can be ironical; physical violence is the boy's repartee. It had scarcely gone far enough for that yet, so they lowered in uncomfortable silence.
"We're aye getting new things up at our place," he went on. "I heard my father telling Gibson the builder he must have everything of the best! Mother says it'll all be mine some day. I'll have the fine times when I leave the schule--and that winna be long now, for I'm clean sick o't; I'll no bide a day longer than I need! I'm to go into the business, and then I'll have the times. I'll dash about the country in a gig wi' two dogs wallopping ahin'. I'll have the great life o't." "Ph-tt!" said Swipey Broon, and planted a gob of mud right in the middle of his brow.
"Hoh! hoh! hoh!" yelled the others. They hailed Swipey's action with delight because, to their minds, it exactly met the case. It was the one fit retort to his bouncing.
Beneath the wet plunk of the mud John started back, bumping his head against the wall behind him. The sticky pellet clung to his brow, and he brushed it angrily aside. The laughter of the others added to his wrath against Swipey.
"What are you after?" he bawled. "Don't try your tricks on me, Swipey Broon. Man, I could kill ye wi' a glower!"
In a twinkling Swipey's jacket was off, and he was dancing in his shirt sleeves, inviting Gourlay to come on and try't. "G'way, man," said John, his face as white as the wall; "g'way, man! Don't have _me_ getting up to ye, or I'll knock the fleas out of your duds!"
Now the father of Swipey--so called because he always swiped when batting at rounders--the father of Swipey was the rag and bone merchant of Barbie, and it was said (with what degree of truth I know not) that his home was verminous in consequence. John's taunt was calculated, therefore, to sting him to the quick.
The scion of the Broons, fired for the honour of his house, drove straight at the mouth of the insulter. But John jouked to the side, and Swipey skinned his knuckles on the wall.
For a moment he rocked to and fro, doubled up in pain, crying "_Ooh! _" with a rueful face, and squeezing his hand between his thighs to dull its sharper agonies. Then with redoubled wrath bold Swipey hurled him at the foe. He grabbed Gourlay's head, and shoving it down between his knees, proceeded to pommel his bent back, while John bellowed angrily (from between Swipey's legs), "Let me up, see!"
Swipey let him up. John came at him with whirling arms, but Swipey jouked and gave him one on the mouth that split his lip. In another moment Gourlay was grovelling on his hands and knees, and triumphant Swipey, astride his back, was bellowing "Hurroo!" --Swipey's father was an Irishman.
"Let him up, Broon!" cried Peter Wylie--"let him up, and meet each other square!"
"Oh, I'll let him up," cried Swipey, and leapt to his feet with magnificent pride. He danced round Gourlay with his fists sawing the air. "I could fight ten of him! --Come on, Gourlay!" he cried, "and I'll poultice the road wi' your brose."
John rose, glaring. But when Swipey rushed he turned and fled. The boys ran into the middle of the street, pointing after the coward and shouting, "Yeh! yeh! yeh!" with the infinite cruel derision of boyhood.
"Yeh! yeh! yeh!" the cries of execration and contempt pursued him as he ran.
* * * * * Ere he had gone a hundred yards he heard the shrill whistle with which Mr. Gemmell summoned his scholars from their play.
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All the children had gone into school. The street was lonely in the sudden stillness. The joiner slanted across the road, brushing shavings and sawdust from his white apron. There was no other sign of life in the sunshine. Only from the smiddy, far away, came at times the tink of an anvil.
John crept on up the street, keeping close to the wall. It seemed unnatural being there at that hour; everything had a quiet, unfamiliar look. The white walls of the houses reproached the truant with their silent faces.
A strong smell of wallflowers oozed through the hot air. John thought it a lonely smell, and ran to get away.
"Johnny dear, what's wrong wi' ye?" cried his mother, when he stole in through the scullery at last. "Are ye ill, dear?"
"I wanted to come hame," he said. It was no defence; it was the sad and simple expression of his wish.
"What for, my sweet?"
"I hate the school," he said bitterly; "I aye want to be at hame."
His mother saw his cut mouth.
"Johnny," she cried in concern, "what's the matter with your lip, dear? Has ainybody been meddling ye?"
"It was Swipey Broon," he said.
"Did ever a body hear?" she cried. "Things have come to a fine pass when decent weans canna go to the school without a wheen rag-folk yoking on them! But what can a body ettle? Scotland's not what it used to be! It's owrerun wi' the dirty Eerish!"
In her anger she did not see the sloppy dishclout on the scullery chair, on which she sank exhausted by her rage.
"Oh, but I let him have it," swaggered John. "I threatened to knock the fleas off him. The other boys were on _his_ side, or I would have walloped him."
"Atweel, they would a' be on his side," she cried. "But it's juist envy, Johnny. Never mind, dear; you'll soon be left the school, and there's not wan of them has the business that you have waiting ready to step intil."
"Mother," he pleaded, "let me bide here for the rest o' the day!"
"Oh, but your father, Johnny? If _he_ saw ye!"
"If you gie me some o' your novelles to look at, I'll go up to the garret and hide, and ye can ask Jenny no to tell."
She gave him a hunk of nuncheon and a bundle of her novelettes, and he stole up to an empty garret and squatted on the bare boards. The sun streamed through the skylight window and lay, an oblong patch, in the centre of the floor. John noted the head of a nail that stuck gleaming up. He could hear the pigeons _rooketty-cooing_ on the roof, and every now and then a slithering sound, as they lost their footing on the slates and went sliding downward to the rones. But for that, all was still, uncannily still. Once a zinc pail clanked in the yard, and he started with fear, wondering if that was his faither!
If young Gourlay had been the right kind of a boy he would have been in his glory, with books to read and a garret to read them in. For to snuggle close beneath the slates is as dear to the boy as the bard, if somewhat diverse their reasons for seclusion. Your garret is the true kingdom of the poet, neighbouring the stars; side-windows tether him to earth, but a skylight looks to the heavens. (That is why so many poets live in garrets, no doubt.) But it is the secrecy of a garret for him and his books that a boy loves; there he is lord of his imagination; there, when the impertinent world is hidden from his view, he rides with great Turpin at night beneath the glimmer of the moon. What boy of sense would read about Turpin in a mere respectable parlour? A hay-loft's the thing, where you can hide in a dusty corner, and watch through a chink the baffled minions of Bow Street, and hear Black Bess--good jade! --stamping in her secret stall, and be ready to descend when a friendly hostler cries, "Jericho!" But if there is no hay-loft at hand a mere garret will do very well. And so John should have been in his glory, as indeed for a while he was. But he showed his difference from the right kind of a boy by becoming lonely. He had inherited from his mother a silly kind of interest in silly books, but to him reading was a painful process, and he could never remember the plot. What he liked best (though he could not have told you about it) was a vivid physical picture. When the puffing steam of Black Bess's nostrils cleared away from the moonlit pool, and the white face of the dead man stared at Turpin through the water, John saw it and shivered, staring big-eyed at the staring horror. He was alive to it all; he heard the seep of the water through the mare's lips, and its hollow glug as it went down, and the creak of the saddle beneath Turpin's hip; he saw the smear of sweat roughening the hair on her slanting neck, and the great steaming breath she blew out when she rested from drinking, and then that awful face glaring from the pool. --Perhaps he was not so far from being the right kind of boy, after all, since that was the stuff that _he_ liked. He wished he had some Turpin with him now, for his mother's periodicals were all about men with impossibly broad shoulders and impossibly curved waists who asked Angelina if she loved them. Once, it is true, a somewhat too florid sentence touched him on the visual nerve: "Through a chink in the Venetian blind a long pencil of yellow light pierced the beautiful dimness of the room and pointed straight to the dainty bronze slipper peeping from under Angelina's gown; it became a slipper of vivid gold amid the gloom." John saw that and brightened, but the next moment they began to talk about love and he was at sea immediately. "Dagon them and their love!" quoth he.
To him, indeed, reading was never more than a means of escape from something else; he never thought of a book so long as there were things to see. Some things were different from others, it is true. Things of the outer world, where he swaggered among his fellows and was thrashed, or bungled his lessons and was thrashed again, imprinted themselves vividly on his mind, and he hated the impressions. When Swipey Broon was hot the sweat pores always glistened distinctly on the end of his mottled nose--John, as he thought angrily of Swipey this afternoon, saw the glistening sweat pores before him and wanted to bash them. The varnishy smell of the desks, the smell of the wallflowers at Mrs. Manzie's on the way to school, the smell of the school itself--to all these he was morbidly alive, and he loathed them. But he loved the impressions of his home. His mind was full of perceptions of which he was unconscious, till he found one of them recorded in a book, and that was the book for him. The curious physical always drew his mind to hate it or to love. In summer he would crawl into the bottom of an old hedge, among the black mould and the withered sticks, and watch a red-ended beetle creep slowly up a bit of wood till near the top, and fall suddenly down, and creep patiently again--this he would watch with curious interest and remember always. "Johnny," said his mother once, "what do you breenge into the bushes to watch those nasty things for?"
"They're queer," he said musingly.
Even if he _was_ a little dull wi' the book, she was sure he would come to something, for, eh, he was such a noticing boy.
But there was nothing to touch him in "The Wooing of Angeline;" he was moving in an alien world. It was a complicated plot, and, some of the numbers being lost, he was not sharp enough to catch the idea of the story. He read slowly and without interest. The sounds of the outer world reached him in his loneliness and annoyed him, because, while wondering what they were, he dared not look out to see. He heard the rattle of wheels entering the big yard; that would be Peter Riney back from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and then--oh, horror! --his father came up the stair. Would he come into the garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was sticking to his back.
The heavy steps came back to the landing.
"Whaur's _my_ gimlet?" yelled his father down the stair.
"Oh, I lost the corkscrew, and took it to open a bottle," cried his mother wearily. "Here it is, man, in the kitchen drawer." " _Hah! _" his father barked, and he knew he was infernal angry. If he should come in!
But he went tramping down the stair, and John, after waiting till his pulses were stilled, resumed his reading. He heard the masons in the kitchen, busy with the range, and he would have liked fine to watch them, but he dared not go down till after four. It was lonely up here by himself. A hot wind had sprung up, and it crooned through the keyhole drearily; "_oo-woo-oo_," it cried, and the sound drenched him in a vague depression. The splotch of yellow light had shifted round to the fireplace; Janet had kindled a fire there last winter, and the ashes had never been removed, and now the light lay, yellow and vivid, on a red clinker of coal and a charred piece of stick. A piece of glossy white paper had been flung in the untidy grate, and in the hollow curve of it a thin silt of black dust had gathered--the light showed it plainly. All these things the boy marked and was subtly aware of their unpleasantness. He was forced to read to escape the sense of them. But it was words, words, words, that he read; the subject mattered not at all. His head leaned heavy on his left hand and his mouth hung open, as his eye travelled dreamily along the lines. He succeeded in hypnotizing his brain at last, by the mere process of staring at the page.
At last he heard Janet in the lobby. That meant that school was over. He crept down the stair. " _You_ were playing the truant," said Janet, and she nodded her head in accusation. "I've a good mind to tell my faither."
"If ye wud----" he said, and shook his fist at her threateningly. She shrank away from him. They went into the kitchen together.
The range had been successfully installed, and Mr. Gourlay was showing it to Grant of Loranogie, the foremost farmer of the shire. Mrs. Gourlay, standing by the kitchen table, viewed her new possession with a faded simper of approval. She was pleased that Mr. Grant should see the grand new thing that they had gotten. She listened to the talk of the men with a faint smile about her weary lips, her eyes upon the sonsy range.
"Dod, it's a handsome piece of furniture," said Loranogie. "How did ye get it brought here, Mr. Gourlay?"
"I went to Glasgow and ordered it special. It came to Skeighan by the train, and my own beasts brought it owre. That fender's a feature," he added complacently; "it's onusual wi' a range."
The massive fender ran from end to end of the fireplace, projecting a little in front; its rim, a square bar of heavy steel, with bright, sharp edges.
"And that poker, too; man, there's a history wi' that. I made a point of the making o't. He was an ill-bred little whalp, the bodie in Glasgow. I happened to say till um I would like a poker-heid just the same size as the rim of the fender! 'What d'ye want wi' a heavy-heided poker?' says he; 'a' ye need's a bit sma' thing to rype the ribs wi'.' 'Is that so?' says I. 'How do _you_ ken what _I_ want?' I made short work o' _him! _ The poker-heid's the identical size o' the rim; I had it made to fit."
Loranogie thought it a silly thing of Gourlay to concern himself about a poker. But that was just like him, of course. The moment the body in Glasgow opposed his whim, Gourlay, he knew, would make a point o't.
The grain merchant took the bar of heavy metal in his hand. "Dod, it's an awful weapon," he said, meaning to be jocose. "You could murder a man wi't." "Deed you could," said Loranogie; "you could kill him wi' the one lick."
The elders, engaged with more important matters, paid no attention to the children, who had pushed between them to the front and were looking up at their faces, as they talked, with curious watching eyes. John, with his instinct to notice things, took the poker up when his father laid it down, to see if it was really the size of the rim. It was too heavy for him to raise by the handle; he had to lift it by the middle. Janet was at his elbow, watching him. "You could kill a man with that," he told her, importantly, though she had heard it for herself. Janet stared and shuddered. Then the boy laid the poker-head along the rim, fitting edge to edge with a nice precision.
"Mother," he cried, turning towards her in his interest, "mother, look here! It's exactly the same size!"
"Put it down, sir," said his father with a grim smile at Loranogie. "You'll be killing folk next."
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"Are ye packit, Peter?" said Gourlay.
"Yes, sir," said Peter Riney, running round to the other side of a cart, to fasten a horse's bellyband to the shaft. "Yes, sir, we're a' ready."
"Have the carriers a big load?"
"Andy has just a wheen parcels, but Elshie's as fu' as he can haud. And there's a gey pickle stuff waiting at the Cross."
The hot wind of yesterday had brought lightning through the night, and this morning there was the gentle drizzle that sometimes follows a heavy thunderstorm. Hints of the farther blue showed themselves in a lofty sky of delicate and drifting gray. The blackbirds and thrushes welcomed the cooler air with a gush of musical piping, as if the liquid tenderness of the morning had actually got into their throats and made them softer.
"You had better snoove away then," said Gourlay. "Donnerton's five mile ayont Fleckie, and by the time you deliver the meal there, and load the ironwork, it'll be late ere you get back. Snoove away, Peter; snoove away!"
Peter shuffled uneasily, and his pale blue eyes blinked at Gourlay from beneath their grizzled crow nests of red hair.
"Are we a' to start thegither, sir?" he hesitated. "D'ye mean--d'ye mean the carriers too?"
"Atweel, Peter!" said Gourlay. "What for no?"
Peter took a great old watch, with a yellow case, from his fob, and, "It wants a while o' aicht, sir," he volunteered.
"Ay, man, Peter, and what of that?" said Gourlay.
There was almost a twinkle in his eye. Peter Riney was the only human being with whom he was ever really at his ease. It is only when a mind feels secure in itself that it can laugh unconcernedly at others. Peter was so simple that in his presence Gourlay felt secure; and he used to banter him.
"The folk at the Cross winna expect the carriers till aicht, sir," said Peter, "and I doubt their stuff won't be ready."
"Ay, man, Peter," Gourlay joked lazily, as if Peter was a little boy. "Ay, man, Peter. You think the folk at the Cross winna be prepared?"
"No, sir," said Peter, opening his eyes very solemnly, "they winna be prepared."
"It'll do them good to hurry a little for once," growled Gourlay, humour yielding to spite at the thought of his enemies. "It'll do them good to hurry a little for once. Be off, the lot of ye!"
After ordering his carriers to start, to back down and postpone their departure, just to suit the convenience of his neighbours, would derogate from his own importance. His men might think he was afraid of Barbie.
He strolled out to the big gate and watched his teams going down the brae.
There were only four carts this morning because the two that had gone to Fechars yesterday with the cheese would not be back till the afternoon; and another had already turned west to Auchterwheeze, to bring slates for the flesher's new house. Of the four that went down the street two were the usual carriers' carts, the other two were off to Fleckie with meal, and Gourlay had started them the sooner since they were to bring back the ironwork which Templandmuir needed for his new improvements. Though the Templar had reformed greatly since he married his birkie wife, he was still far from having his place in proper order, and he had often to depend on Gourlay for the carrying of stuff which a man in his position should have had horses of his own to bring.
As Gourlay stood at his gate he pondered with heavy cunning how much he might charge Templandmuir for bringing the ironwork from Fleckie. He decided to charge him for the whole day, though half of it would be spent in taking his own meal to Donnerton. In that he was carrying out his usual policy--which was to make each side of his business help the other.
As he stood puzzling his wits over Templandmuir's account, his lips worked in and out, to assist the slow process of his brain. His eyes narrowed between peering lids, and their light seemed to turn inward as he fixed them abstractedly on a stone in the middle of the road. His head was tilted that he might keep his eyes upon the stone; and every now and then, as he mused, he rubbed his chin slowly between the thumb and fingers of his left hand. Entirely given up to the thought of Templandmuir's account, he failed to see the figure advancing up the street.
At last the scrunch of a boot on the wet road struck his ear. He turned with his best glower on the man who was approaching; more of the "Wha-the-bleezes-are-you?" look than ever in his eyes--because he had been caught unawares.
The stranger wore a light yellow overcoat, and he had been walking a long time in the rain apparently, for the shoulders of the coat were quite black with the wet, these black patches showing in strong contrast with the dryer, therefore yellower, front of it. Coat and jacket were both hanging slightly open, and between was seen the slight bulge of a dirty white waistcoat. The newcomer's trousers were turned high at the bottom, and the muddy spats he wore looked big and ungainly in consequence. In this appearance there was an air of dirty and pretentious well-to-do-ness. It was not shabby gentility. It was like the gross attempt at dress of your well-to-do publican who looks down on his soiled white waistcoat with complacent and approving eye.
"It's a fine morning, Mr. Gourlay," simpered the stranger. His air was that of a forward tenant who thinks it a great thing to pass remarks on the weather with his laird.
Gourlay cast a look at the dropping heavens.
"Is that _your_ opinion?" said he. "I fail to see't mysell."
It was not in Gourlay to see the beauty of that gray, wet dawn. A fine morning to him was one that burnt the back of your neck.
The stranger laughed: a little deprecating giggle. "I meant it was fine weather for the fields," he explained. He had meant nothing of the kind, of course; he had merely been talking at random in his wish to be civil to that important man, John Gourlay.
"Imphm," he pondered, looking round on the weather with a wise air; "imphm; it's fine weather for the fields."
"Are _you_ a farmer, then?" Gourlay nipped him, with his eye on the white waistcoat.
"Oh--oh, Mr. Gourlay! A farmer, no. Hi--hi! I'm not a farmer. I dare say, now, you have no mind of _me_?"
"No," said Gourlay, regarding him very gravely and steadily with his dark eyes. "I cannot say, sir, that I have the pleasure of remembering _you_."
"Man, I'm a son of auld John Wilson of Brigabee."
"Oh, auld Wilson, the mole-catcher!" said contemptuous Gourlay. "What's this they christened him now? 'Toddling Johnnie,' was it noat?"
Wilson coloured. But he sniggered to gloss over the awkwardness of the remark. A coward always sniggers when insulted, pretending that the insult is only a joke of his opponent, and therefore to be laughed aside. So he escapes the quarrel which he fears a show of displeasure might provoke.
But though Wilson was not a hardy man, it was not timidity only that caused his tame submission to Gourlay.
He had come back after an absence of fifteen years, with a good deal of money in his pocket, and he had a fond desire that he, the son of the mole-catcher, should get some recognition of his prosperity from the most important man in the locality. If Gourlay had said, with solemn and fat-lipped approval, "Man, I'm glad to see that you have done so well," he would have swelled with gratified pride. For it is often the favourable estimate of their own little village--"What they'll think of me at home"--that matters most to Scotsmen who go out to make their way in the world. No doubt that is why so many of them go home and cut a dash when they have made their fortunes; they want the cronies of their youth to see the big men they have become. Wilson was not exempt from that weakness. As far back as he remembered Gourlay had been the big man of Barbie; as a boy he had viewed him with admiring awe; to be received by him now, as one of the well-to-do, were a sweet recognition of his greatness. It was a fawning desire for that recognition that caused his smirking approach to the grain merchant. So strong was the desire that, though he coloured and felt awkward at the contemptuous reference to his father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy self-importance is so great that an insult rarely pierces it enough to divert them from their purpose. They walk through life wrapped comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit. Gourlay, though a dull man--perhaps because he was a dull man--suspected insult in a moment. But it rarely entered Wilson's brain (though he was cleverer than most) that the world could find anything to scoff at in such a fine fellow as James Wilson. A less ironic brute than Gourlay would never have pierced the thickness of his hide. It was because Gourlay succeeded in piercing it that morning that Wilson hated him for ever--with a hate the more bitter because he was rebuffed so seldom.
"Is business brisk?" he asked, irrepressible.
Business! Heavens, did ye hear him talking? What did Toddling Johnny's son know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him setting up his face there, and asking the best merchant in the town whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place, the conceited upstart, shoving himself forward like an equal!
For it was the assumption of equality implied by Wilson's manner that offended Gourlay--as if mole-catcher's son and monopolist were discussing, on equal terms, matters of interest to them both.
"Business!" he said gravely. "Well, I'm not well acquainted with your line, but I believe mole traps are cheap--if ye have any idea of taking up the oald trade."
Wilson's eyes flickered over him, hurt and dubious. His mouth opened--then shut--then he decided to speak after all. "Oh, I was thinking Barbie would be very quiet," said he, "compared wi' places where they have the railway. I was thinking it would need stirring up a bit."
"Oh, ye was thinking that, was ye?" birred Gourlay, with a stupid man's repetition of his jibe. "Well, I believe there's a grand opening in the moleskin line, so _there's_ a chance for ye. My quarrymen wear out their breeks in no time."
Wilson's face, which had swelled with red shame, went a dead white. "Good-morning!" he said, and started rapidly away with a vicious dig of his stick upon the wet road.
"Goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!" Gourlay birred after him; "goo-ood mor-r-ning, serr!" He felt he had been bright this morning. He had put the branks on Wilson!
Wilson was as furious at himself as at Gourlay. Why the devil had he said "Good-morning"? It had slipped out of him unawares, and Gourlay had taken it up with an ironic birr that rang in his ears now, poisoning his blood. He felt equal in fancy to a thousand Gourlays now--so strong was he in wrath against him. He had gone forward to pass pleasant remarks about the weather, and why should he noat? --he was no disgrace to Barbie, but a credit rather. It was not every working-man's son that came back with five hundred in the bank. And here Gourlay had treated him like a doag! Ah, well, he would maybe be upsides with Gourlay yet, so he might!
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"Such a rickle of furniture I never saw!" said the Provost.
"Whose is it?" said Brodie.
"Oh, have ye noat heard?" said the Head of the Town with eyebrows in air. "It beloangs to that fellow Wilson, doan't ye know? He's a son of oald Wilson, the mowdie-man of Brigabee. It seems we're to have him for a neighbour, or all's bye wi't. I declare I doan't know what this world's coming to!"
"Man, Provost," said Brodie, "d'ye tell me tha-at? I've been over at Fleckie for the last ten days--my brother Rab's dead and won away, as I dare say you have heard--oh yes, we must all go--so, ye see, I'm scarcely abreast o' the latest intelligence. What's Wilson doing here? I thought he had been a pawnbroker in Embro."
"Noat he! It's _whispered_ indeed, that he left Brigabee to go and help in a pawmbroker's, but it seems he married an Aberdeen lass and sattled there after a while, the manager of a store, I have been given to understa-and. He has taken oald Rab Jamieson's barn at the bottom of the Cross--for what purpose it beats even me to tell! And that's his furniture----" "I declare!" said the astonished Brodie. "He's a smart-looking boy that. Will that be a son of his?"
He pointed to a sharp-faced urchin of twelve who was busy carrying chairs round the corner of the barn, to the tiny house where Wilson meant to live. He was a red-haired boy with an upturned nose, dressed in shirt and knickerbockers only. The cross of his braces came comically near his neck--so short was the space of shirt between the top line of his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs, being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth instead of garters. He had no cap, and it was seen that his hair had a "cow-lick" in front; it slanted up from his brow, that is, in a sleek kind of tuft. There was a violent squint in one of his sharp gray eyes, so that it seemed to flash at the world across the bridge of his nose. He was so eager at his work that his clumsy-looking boots--they only _looked_ clumsy because the legs they were stuck to were so thin--skidded on the cobbles as he whipped round the barn with a chair inverted on his poll. When he came back for another chair, he sometimes wheepled a tune of his own making, in shrill, disconnected jerks, and sometimes wiped his nose on his sleeve. And the bodies watched him.
"Faith, he's keen," said the Provost.
"But what on earth has Wilson ta'en auld Jamieson's house and barn for? They have stude empty since I kenna whan," quoth Alexander Toddle, forgetting his English in surprise.
"They say he means to start a business! He's made some bawbees in Aiberdeen, they're telling me, and he thinks he'll set Barbie in a lowe wi't." "Ou, he means to work a perfect revolution," said Johnny Coe.
"In Barbie!" cried astounded Toddle.
"In Barbie e'en't," said the Provost.
"It would take a heap to revolutionize _hit_," said the baker, the ironic man.
"There's a chance in that hoose," Brodie burst out, ignoring the baker's gibe. "Dod, there's a chance, sirs. I wonder it never occurred to me before."
"Are ye thinking ye have missed a gude thing?" grinned the Deacon.
But Brodie's lips were working in the throes of commercial speculation, and he stared, heedless of the jibe. So Johnny Coe took up his sapient parable.
"Atweel," said he, "there's a chance, Mr. Brodie. That road round to the back's a handy thing. You could take a horse and cart brawly through an opening like that. And there's a gey bit ground at the back, too, when a body comes to think o't." "What line's he meaning to purshoo?" queried Brodie, whose mind, quickened by the chance he saw at No. 1 The Cross, was hot on the hunt of its possibilities.
"He's been very close about that," said the Provost. "I asked Johnny Gibson--it was him had the selling o't--but he couldn't give me ainy satisfaction. All he could say was that Wilson had bought it and paid it. 'But, losh,' said I, 'he maun 'a' lat peep what he wanted the place for!' But na; it seems he was owre auld-farrant for the like of that. 'We'll let the folk wonder for a while, Mr. Gibson,' he had said. 'The less we tell them, the keener they'll be to ken; and they'll advertise me for noathing by speiring one another what I'm up till.'"
"Cunning!" said Brodie, breathing the word low in expressive admiration.
"Demned cute!" said Sandy Toddle.
"Very thmart!" said the Deacon.
"But the place has been falling down since ever I have mind o't," said Sandy Toddle. "He's a very clever man if he makes anything out of _that_."
"Well, well," said the Provost, "we'll soon see what he's meaning to be at. Now that his furniture's in, he surely canna keep us in the dark much loanger!"
Their curiosity was soon appeased. Within a week they were privileged to read the notice here appended:-- "Mr. James Wilson begs to announce to the inhabitants of Barbie and surrounding neighbourhood that he has taken these commodious premises, No. 1 The Cross, which he intends to open shortly as a Grocery, Ironmongery, and General Provision Store. J. W. is apprised that such an Emporium has long been a felt want in the locality. To meet this want is J. W.'s intention. He will try to do so, not by making large profits on a small business, but by making small profits on a large business. Indeed, owing to his long acquaintance with the trade, Mr. Wilson will be able to supply all commodities at a very little over cost price. For J. W. will use those improved methods of business which have been confined hitherto to the larger centres of population. At his Emporium you will be able, as the saying goes, to buy everything from a needle to an anchor. Moreover, to meet the convenience of his customers, J. W. will deliver goods at your own doors, distributing them with his own carts either in the town of Barbie or at any convenient distance from the same. Being a native of the district, his business hopes to secure a due share of your esteemed patronage. Thanking you, in anticipation, for the favour of an early visit, "Believe me, Ladies and Gentlemen, "Yours faithfully, "JAMES WILSON."
Such was the poster with which "Barbie and surrounding neighbourhood" were besprinkled within a week of "J. W.'s" appearance on the scene. He was known as "J. W." ever after. To be known by your initials is sometimes a mark of affection, and sometimes a mark of disrespect. It was not a mark of affection in the case of our "J. W." When Donald Scott slapped him on the back and cried, "Hullo, J. W., how are the anchors selling?" Barbie had found a cue which it was not slow to make use of. Wilson even received letters addressed to "J. W., Anchor Merchant, No. 1 The Cross." Ours is a nippy locality.
But Wilson, cosy and cocky in his own good opinion, was impervious to the chilly winds of scorn. His posters, in big blue letters, were on the smiddy door and on the sides of every brig within a circuit of five miles; they were pasted, in smaller letters, red on the gateposts of every farm; and Robin Tam, the bellman, handed them about from door to door. The folk could talk of nothing else.
"Dod!" said the Provost, when he read the bill, "we've a new departure here! This is an unco splutter, as the oald sow said when she tumbled in the gutter."
"Ay," said Sandy Toddle, "a fuff in the pan, I'm thinking. He promises owre muckle to last long! He lauchs owre loud to be merry at the end o't. For the loudest bummler's no the best bee, as my father, honest man, used to tell the minister."
"Ah-ah, I'm no so sure o' that," said Tam Brodie. "I forgathered wi' Wilson on Wednesday last, and I tell ye, sirs, he's worth the watching. They'll need to stand on a baikie that put the branks on him. He has the considering eye in his head--yon lang far-away glimmer at a thing from out the end of the eyebrow. He turned it on mysell twa-three times, the cunning devil, trying to keek into me, to see if he could use me. And look at the chance he has! There's two stores in Barbie, to be sure. But Kinnikum's a dirty beast, and folk have a scunner at his goods; and Catherwood's a drucken swine, and his place but sairly guided. That's a great stroke o' policy, too, promising to deliver folk's goods on their own doorstep to them. There's a whole jing-bang of outlying clachans round Barbie that he'll get the trade of by a dodge like that. The like was never tried hereaway before. I wadna wonder but it works wonders."
It did.
It was partly policy and partly accident that brought Wilson back to Barbie. He had been managing a wealthy old merchant's store for a long time in Aberdeen, and he had been blithely looking forward to the goodwill of it, when jink, at the old man's death, in stepped a nephew, and ousted the poo-oor fellow. He had bawled shrilly, but to no purpose; he had to be travelling. When he rose to greatness in Barbie it was whispered that the nephew discovered he was feathering his own nest, and that this was the reason of his sharp dismissal. But perhaps we should credit that report to Barbie's disposition rather than to Wilson's misdemeanour.
Wilson might have set up for himself in the nippy northern town. But it is an instinct with men who have met with a rebuff in a place to shake its dust from their shoes, and be off to seek their fortunes in the larger world. We take a scunner at the place that has ill-used us. Wilson took a scunner at Aberdeen, and decided to leave it and look around him. Scotland was opening up, and there were bound to be heaps of chances for a man like him! "A man like me," was a frequent phrase of Wilson's retired and solitary speculation. "Ay," he said, emerging from one of his business reveries, "there's bound to be heaps o' chances for a man like me, if I only look about me."
He was "looking about him" in Glasgow when he forgathered with his cousin William--the borer he! After many "How are ye, Jims's" and mutual speirings over a "bit mouthful of yill"--so they phrased it; but that was a meiosis, for they drank five quarts--they fell to a serious discussion of the commercial possibilities of Scotland. The borer was of the opinion that the Braes of Barbie had a future yet, "for a' the gaffer was so keen on keeping his men in the dark about the coal."
Now Wilson knew (as what Scotsman does not?) that in the middle 'fifties coal-boring in Scotland was not the honourable profession that it now is. More than once, speculators procured lying reports that there were no minerals, and after landowners had been ruined by their abortive preliminary experiments, stepped in, bought the land, and boomed it. In one notorious case a family, now great in the public eye, bribed a laird's own borers to conceal the truth, and then buying the Golconda from its impoverished owner, laid the basis of a vast fortune.
"D'ye mean--to tell--_me_, Weelyum Wilson," said James, giving him his full name in the solemnity of the moment, "d'ye mean--to tell--_me_, sir"--here he sank his voice to a whisper--"that there's joukery-pawkery at work?"
"A declare to God A div," said Weelyum, with equal solemnity, and he nodded with alarmed sapience across his beer jug.
"You believe there's plenty of coal up Barbie Valley, and that they're keeping it dark in the meantime for some purpose of their own?"
"I do," said Weelyum.
"God!" said James, gripping the table with both hands in his excitement--"God, if that's so, what a chance there's in Barbie! It has been a dead town for twenty year, and twenty to the end o't. A verra little would buy the hauf o't. But property 'ull rise in value like a puddock stool at dark, serr, if the pits come round it! It will that. If I was only sure o' your suspeecion, Weelyum, I'd invest every bawbee I have in't. You're going home the night, are ye not?"
"I was just on my road to the station when I met ye," said Weelyum.
"Send me a scrape of your pen to-morrow, man, if what you see on getting back keeps you still in the same mind o't. And directly I get your letter I'll run down and look about me."
The letter was encouraging, and Wilson went forth to spy the land and initiate the plan of campaign. It was an important day for him. He entered on his feud with Gourlay, and bought Rab Jamieson's house and barn (with the field behind it) for a trifle. He had five hundred of his own, and he knew where more could be had for the asking.
Rab Jamieson's barn was a curious building to be stranded in the midst of Barbie. In quaint villages and little towns of England you sometimes see a mellow red-tiled barn, with its rich yard, close upon the street; it seems to have been hemmed in by the houses round, while dozing, so that it could not escape with the fields fleeing from the town. There it remains and gives a ripeness to the place, matching fitly with the great horse-chestnut yellowing before the door, and the old inn further down, mantled in its blood-red creepers. But that autumnal warmth and cosiness is rarely seen in the barer streets of the north. How Rab Jamieson's barn came to be stuck in Barbie nobody could tell. It was a gaunt, gray building with never a window, but a bole high in one corner for the sheaves, and a door low in another corner for auld Rab Jamieson. There was no mill inside, and the place had not been used for years. But the roof was good, and the walls stout and thick, and Wilson soon got to work on his new possession. He had seen all that could be made of the place the moment he clapped an eye on it, and he knew that he had found a good thing, even if the pits should never come near Barbie. The bole and door next the street were walled up, and a fine new door opened in the middle, flanked on either side by a great window. The interior was fitted up with a couple of counters and a wooden floor; and above the new wood ceiling there was a long loft for a storeroom, lighted by skylights in the roof. That loft above the rafters, thought the provident Wilson, will come in braw and handy for storing things, so it will. And there, hey presto! the transformation was achieved, and Wilson's Emporium stood before you. It was crammed with merchandise. On the white flapping slant of a couple of awnings, one over each window, you might read in black letters, "JAMES WILSON: EMPORIUM." The letters of "James Wilson" made a triumphal arch, to which "Emporium" was the base. It seemed symbolical.
Now, the shops of Barbie (the drunken man's shop and the dirty man's shop always excepted, of course) had usually been low-browed little places with faded black scrolls above the door, on which you might read in dim gilt letters (or it might be in white) "LICENS'D TO SELL TEA & TOBACCO."
"Licens'd" was on one corner of the ribboned scroll, "To Sell Tea &" occupied the flowing arch above, with "Tobacco" in the other corner. When you mounted two steps and opened the door, a bell of some kind went "_ping_" in the interior, and an old woman in a mutch, with big specs slipping down her nose, would come up a step from a dim little room behind, and wiping her sunken mouth with her apron--she had just left her tea--would say, "What's your wull the day, sir?" And if you said your "wull" was tobacco, she would answer, "Ou, sir, I dinna sell ocht now but the tape and sweeties." And then you went away, sadly.
With the exception of the dirty man's shop and the drunken man's shop, that kind of shop was the Barbie kind of shop. But Wilson changed all that. One side of the Emporium was crammed with pots, pans, pails, scythes, gardening implements, and saws, with a big barrel of paraffin partitioned off in a corner. The rafters on that side were bristling and hoary with brushes of all kinds dependent from the roof, so that the minister's wife (who was a six-footer) went off with a brush in her bonnet once. Behind the other counter were canisters in goodly rows, barrels of flour and bags of meal, and great yellow cheeses in the window. The rafters here were heavy with their wealth of hams, brown-skinned flitches of bacon interspersed with the white tight-corded home-cured--"Barbie's Best," as Wilson christened it. All along the back, in glass cases to keep them unsullied, were bales of cloth, layer on layer to the roof. It was a pleasure to go into the place, so big and bien was it, and to smell it on a frosty night set your teeth watering. There was always a big barrel of American apples just inside the door, and their homely fragrance wooed you from afar, the mellow savour cuddling round you half a mile off. Barbie boys had despised the provision trade, heretofore, as a mean and meagre occupation; but now the imagination of each gallant youth was fired and radiant--he meant to be a grocer.
Mrs. Wilson presided over the Emporium. Wilson had a treasure in his wife. She was Aberdeen born and bred, but her manner was the manner of the South and West. There is a broad difference of character between the peoples of East and West Scotland. The East throws a narrower and a nippier breed. In the West they take Burns for their exemplar, and affect the jovial and robustious--in some cases it is affectation only, and a mighty poor one at that. They claim to be bigger men and bigger fools than the Eastern billies. And the Eastern billies are very willing to yield one half of the contention.
Mrs. Wilson, though Eastie by nature, had the jovial manner that you find in Kyle; more jovial, indeed, than was common in nippy Barbie, which, in general character, seems to have been transplanted from some sand dune looking out upon the German Ocean. She was big of hip and bosom, with sloe-black hair and eyes, and a ruddy cheek, and when she flung back her head for the laugh her white teeth flashed splendid on the world. That laugh of hers became one of the well-known features of Barbie. "Lo'd-sake!" a startled visitor would cry, "whatna skirl's tha-at!" "Oh, dinna be alarmed," a native would comfort him, "it's only Wilson's wife lauchin at the Cross!"
Her manner had a hearty charm. She had a laugh and a joke for every customer, quick as a wink with her answer; her gibe was in you and out again before you knew you were wounded. Some, it is true, took exception to the loudness of her skirl--the Deacon, for instance, who "gave her a good one" the first time he went in for snuff. But "Tut!" quoth she; "a mim cat's never gude at the mice," and she lifted him out by the scruff of his neck, crying, "Run, mousie, or I'll catch ye!" On that day her popularity in Barbie was assured for ever. But she was as keen on the penny as a penurious weaver, for all her heartiness and laughing ways. She combined the commercial merits of the East and West. She could coax you to the buying like a Cumnock quean, and fleece you in the selling like the cadgers o' Kincardine. When Wilson was abroad on his affairs he had no need to be afraid that things were mismanaging at home. During his first year in Barbie Mrs. Wilson was his sole helper. She had the brawny arm of a giantess, and could toss a bag of meal like a baby; to see her twirl a big ham on the counter was to see a thing done as it should be. When Drucken Wabster came in and was offensive once, "Poo-oor fellow!" said she (with a wink to a customer), "I declare he's in a high fever," and she took him kicking to the pump and cooled him.
With a mate like that at the helm every sail of Wilson's craft was trimmed for prosperity. He began to "look about" him to increase the fleet.
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That the Scot is largely endowed with the commercial imagination his foes will be ready to acknowledge. Imagination may consecrate the world to a man, or it may merely be a visualizing faculty which sees that as already perfect which is still lying in the raw material. The Scot has the lower faculty in full degree; he has the forecasting leap of the mind which sees what to make of things--more, sees them made and in vivid operation. To him there is a railway through the desert where no railway exists, and mills along the quiet stream. And his _perfervidum ingenium_ is quick to attempt the realizing of his dreams. That is why he makes the best of colonists. Galt is his type--Galt, dreaming in boyhood of the fine water power a fellow could bring round the hill, from the stream where he went a-fishing (they have done it since), dreaming in manhood of the cities yet to rise amid Ontario's woods (they are there to witness to his foresight). Indeed, so flushed and riotous can the Scottish mind become over a commercial prospect that it sometimes sends native caution by the board, and a man's really fine idea becomes an empty balloon, to carry him off to the limbo of vanities. There is a megalomaniac in every parish of Scotland. Well, not so much as that; they're owre canny for that to be said of them. But in every district almost you may find a poor creature who for thirty years has cherished a great scheme by which he means to revolutionize the world's commerce, and amass a fortune in monstrous degree. He is generally to be seen shivering at the Cross, and (if you are a nippy man) you shout carelessly in going by, "Good-morning, Tamson; how's the scheme?" And he would be very willing to tell you, if only you would wait to listen. "Man," he will cry eagerly behind you, "if I only had anither wee wheel in my invention--she would do, the besom! I'll sune have her ready noo." Poor Tamson!
But these are the exceptions. Scotsmen, more than other men perhaps, have the three great essentials of commercial success--imagination to conceive schemes, common sense to correct them, and energy to push them through. Common sense, indeed, so far from being wanting, is in most cases too much in evidence, perhaps, crippling the soaring mind and robbing the idea of its early radiance; in quieter language, she makes the average Scotsman to be over-cautious. His combinations are rarely Napoleonic until he becomes an American. In his native dales he seldom ventures on a daring policy. And yet his forecasting mind is always detecting "possibeelities." So he contents himself by creeping cautiously from point to point, ignoring big, reckless schemes and using the safe and small, till he arrives at a florid opulence. He has expressed his love of _festina lente_ in business in a score of proverbs--"Bit-by-bit's the better horse, though big-by-big's the baulder;" "Ca' canny, or ye'll cowp;" "Many a little makes a mickle;" and "Creep before ye gang." This mingling of caution and imagination is the cause of his stable prosperity. And its characteristic is a sure progressiveness. That sure progressiveness was the characteristic of Wilson's prosperity in Barbie. In him, too, imagination and caution were equally developed. He was always foreseeing "chances" and using them, gripping the good and rejecting the dangerous (had he not gripped the chance of auld Rab Jamieson's barn? There was caution in that, for it was worth the money whatever happened; and there was imagination in the whole scheme, for he had a vision of Barbie as a populous centre and streets of houses in his holm). And every "chance" he seized led to a better one, till almost every "chance" in Barbie was engrossed by him alone. This is how he went to work. Note the "bit-by-bitness" of his great career.
When Mrs. Wilson was behind the counter, Wilson was out "distributing." He was not always out, of course--his volume of trade at first was not big enough for that; but in the mornings, and the long summer dusks, he made his way to the many outlying places of which Barbie was the centre. There, in one and the same visit, he distributed goods and collected orders for the future. Though his bill had spoken of "carts," as if he had several, that was only a bit of splurge on his part; his one conveyance at the first was a stout spring cart, with a good brown cob between the shafts. But with this he did such a trade as had never been known in Barbie. The Provost said it was "shtupendous."
When Wilson was jogging homeward in the balmy evenings of his first summer at Barbie, no eye had he for the large evening star, tremulous above the woods, or for the dreaming sprays against the yellow west. It wasn't his business; he had other things to mind. Yet Wilson was a dreamer too. His close, musing eye, peering at the dusky-brown nodge of his pony's hip through the gloom, saw not that, but visions of chances, opportunities, occasions. When the lights of Barbie twinkled before him in the dusk, he used to start from a pleasant dream of some commercial enterprise suggested by the country round. "Yon holm would make a fine bleaching green--pure water, fine air, labour cheap, and everything handy. Or the Lintie's Linn among the woods--water power running to waste yonder--surely something could be made of that." He would follow his idea through all its mazes and developments, oblivious of the passing miles. His delight in his visions was exactly the same as the author's delight in the figments of his brain. They were the same good company along the twilight roads. The author, happy with his thronging thoughts (when they are kind enough to throng), is no happier than Wilson was on nights like these.
He had not been a week on his rounds when he saw a "chance" waiting for development. When out "delivering" he used to visit the upland farms to buy butter and eggs for the Emporium. He got them cheaper so. But more eggs and butter could be had than were required in the neighbourhood of Barbie. Here was a chance for Wilson! He became a collector for merchants at a distance. Barbie, before it got the railway, had only a silly little market once a fortnight, which was a very poor outlet for stuff. Wilson provided a better one. Another thing played into his hands, too, in that connection. It is a cheese-making countryside about Barbie, and the less butter produced at a cheese-making place, the better for the cheese. Still, a good many pounds are often churned on the sly. What need the cheese merchant ken? it keepit the gudewife in bawbees frae week to week; and if she took a little cream frae the cheese now and than they werena a pin the waur o't, for she aye did it wi' decency and caution! Still, it is as well to dispose of this kind of butter quietly, to avoid gabble among ill-speakers. Wilson, slithering up the back road with his spring cart in the gloaming, was the man to dispose of it quietly. And he got it dirt cheap, of course, seeing it was a kind of contraband. All that he made in this way was not much to be sure--threepence a dozen on the eggs, perhaps, and fourpence on the pound of butter--still, you know, every little makes a mickle, and hained gear helps weel. [4] And more important than the immediate profit was the ultimate result. For Wilson in this way established with merchants, in far-off Fechars and Poltandie, a connection for the sale of country produce which meant a great deal to him in future, when he launched out as cheese-buyer in opposition to Gourlay.
It "occurred" to him also (things were always occurring to Wilson) that the "Scotch cuddy" business had as fine a chance in "Barbie and surrounding neighbourhood" as ever it had in North and Middle England. The "Scotch cuddy" is so called because he is a beast of burden, and not from the nature of his wits. He is a travelling packman, who infests communities of working-men, and disposes of his goods on the credit system, receiving payment in instalments. You go into a working-man's house (when he is away from home for preference), and laying a swatch of cloth across his wife's knee, "What do you think of that, mistress?" you inquire, watching the effect keenly. Instantly all her covetous heart is in her eye, and, thinks she to herself, "Oh, but John would look well in that at the kirk on Sunday!" She has no ready money, and would never have the cheek to go into a draper's and order the suit; but when she sees it lying there across her knee, she just cannot resist it. (And fine you knew that when you clinked it down before her!) Now that the goods are in the house, she cannot bear to let them out the door again. But she hints a scarcity of cash. "Tut, woman!" quoth you, bounteous and kind, "there's no obstacle in _that_! You can pay me in instalments!" How much would the instalments be, she inquires. "Oh, a mere trifle--half a crown a week, say." She hesitates and hankers. "John's Sunday coat's getting quite shabby, so it is, and Tam Macalister has a new suit, she was noticing--the Macalisters are always flaunting in their braws! And, there's that Paisley shawl for herself, too; eh, but they would be the canty pair, cocking down the road on Sunday in _that_ rig! they would take the licht frae Meg Macalister's een--thae Macalisters are always so en-vy-fu'!" Love, vanity, covetousness, present opportunity, are all at work upon the poor body. She succumbs. But the half-crown weekly payments have a habit of lengthening themselves out till the packman has made fifty per cent. by the business. And why not? a man must have some interest on his money! Then there's the risk of bad debts, too--that falls to be considered. But there was little risk of bad debts when Wilson took to cloth-distributing. For success in that game depends on pertinacity in pursuit of your victim, and Wilson was the man for that.
He was jogging home from Brigabee, where he had been distributing groceries at a score of wee houses, when there flashed on his mind a whole scheme for cloth-distribution on a large scale; for mining villages were clustering in about Barbie by this time, and he saw his way to a big thing.
He was thinking of Sandy Toddle, who had been a Scotch cuddy in the Midlands, and had retired to Barbie on a snug bit fortune--he was thinking of Sandy when the plan rose generous on his mind. He would soon have more horses than one on the road; why shouldn't they carry swatches of cloth as well as groceries? If he had responsible men under him, it would be their own interest, for a small commission on the profits, to see that payments were levied correctly every week. And those colliers were reckless with their cash, far readier to commit themselves to buying than the cannier country bodies round. Lord! there was money in the scheme. No sooner thought of than put in practice. Wilson gave up the cloth-peddling after five or six years--he had other fish to fry by that time--but while he was at it he made money hand over fist at the job.
But what boots it to tell of all his schemes? He had the lucky eye, and everything he looked on prospered.
Before he had been a week in Barbie he met Gourlay, just at the Bend o' the Brae, in full presence of the bodies. Remembering their first encounter, the grocer tried to outstare him; but Gourlay hardened his glower, and the grocer blinked. When the two passed, "I declare!" said the bodies, "did ye see yon? --they're not on speaking terms!" And they hotched with glee to think that Gourlay had another enemy.
Judge of their delight when they saw one day about a month later, just as Gourlay was passing up the street, Wilson come down it with a load of coals for a customer! For he was often out Auchterwheeze road in the early morning, and what was the use of an empty journey back again, especially as he had plenty of time in the middle of the day to attend to other folk's affairs? So here he was, started as a carrier, in full opposition to Gourlay.
"Did you see Gourlay's face?" chuckled the bodies when the cart went by. "Yon was a bash in the eye to him. Ha, ha! he's not to have it all his own way now!"
Wilson had slid into the carrying in the natural development of business. It was another of the possibilities which he saw and turned to his advantage. The two other chief grocers in the place, Cunningham the dirty and Calderwood the drunken, having no carts or horses of their own, were dependent on Gourlay for conveyance of their goods from Skeighan. But Wilson brought his own. Naturally, he was asked by his customers to bring a parcel now and then, and naturally, being the man he was, he made them pay for the privilege. With that for a start the rest was soon accomplished. Gourlay had to pay now for his years of insolence and tyranny; all who had irked beneath his domineering ways got their carrying done by Wilson. Ere long that prosperous gentleman had three carts on the road, and two men under him to help in his various affairs.
Carting was only one of several new developments in the business of J. W. When the navvies came in about the town and accommodation was ill to find, Wilson rigged up an old shed in the corner of his holm as a hostelry for ten of them--and they had to pay through the nose for their night's lodging. Their food they obtained from the Emporium, and thus the Wilsons bled them both ways. Then there was the scheme for supplying milk--another of the "possibeelities." Hitherto in winter, Barbie was dependent for its milk supply on heavy farm-carts that came lumbering down the street, about half-past seven in the morning, jangling bells to waken sleepy customers, and carrying lanterns that carved circles of fairy yellow out the raw air. But Mrs. Wilson got four cows, back-calvers who would be milking strong in December, and supplied milk to all the folk about the Cross.
She had a lass to help her in the house now, and the red-headed boy was always to be seen, jinking round corners like a weasel, running messages hot-foot, errand boy to the "bisness" in general. Yet, though everybody was busy and skelping at it, such a stress of work was accompanied with much disarray. Wilson's yard was the strangest contrast to Gourlay's. Gourlay's was a pleasure to the eye, everything of the best and everything in order, since the master's pride would not allow it to be other. But though Wilson's Emporium was clean, his back yard was littered with dirty straw, broken boxes, old barrels, stable refuse, and the sky-pointing shafts of carts, uptilted in between. When boxes and barrels were flung out of the Emporium they were generally allowed to lie on the dunghill until they were converted into firewood. "Mistress, you're a trifle mixed," said the Provost in grave reproof, when he went round to the back to see Wilson on a matter of business. But "Tut," cried Mrs. Wilson, as she threw down a plank, to make a path for him across a dub--"Tut," she laughed, "the clartier the cosier!" And it was as true as she said it. The thing went forward splendidly in spite of its confusion.
Though trade was brisker in Barbie than it had ever been before, Wilson had already done injury to Gourlay's business as general conveyor. But, hitherto, he had not infringed on the gurly one's other monopolies. His chance came at last.
He appeared on a market-day in front of the Red Lion, a piece of pinky brown paper in his hand. That was the first telegram ever seen in Barbie, and it had been brought by special messenger from Skeighan. It was short and to the point. It ran: "Will buy 300 stone cheese 8 shillings stone[5] delivery at once," and was signed by a merchant in Poltandie.
Gourlay was talking to old Tarmillan of Irrendavie, when Wilson pushed in and addressed Tarmillan, without a glance at the grain-merchant.
"Have you a kane o' cheese to sell, Irrendavie?" was his blithe salutation.
"I have," said Irrendavie, and he eyed him suspiciously. For what was Wilson speiring for? _He_ wasna a cheese-merchant.
"How much the stane are ye seeking for't?" said Wilson.
"I have just been asking Mr. Gourlay here for seven-and-six," said Irrendavie, "but he winna rise a penny on the seven!" " _I_'ll gi'e ye seven-and-six," said Wilson, and slapped his long thin flexible bank-book far too ostentatiously against the knuckles of his left hand.
"But--but," stammered Irrendavie, suspicious still, but melting at the offer, "_you_ have no means of storing cheese."
"Oh," said Wilson, getting in a fine one at Gourlay, "there's no drawback in that! The ways o' business have changed greatly since steam came close to our doors. It's nothing but vanity nowadays when a country merchant wastes money on a ramshackle of buildings for storing--there's no need for that if he only had brains to develop quick deliveries. Some folk, no doubt, like to build monuments to their own pride, but I'm not one of that kind; there's not enough sense in that to satisfy a man like me. My offer doesna hold, you understand, unless you deliver the cheese at Skeighan Station. Do you accept the condition?"
"Oh yes," said Irrendavie, "I'm willing to agree to that."
"C'way into the Red Lion then," said Wilson, "and we'll wet the bargain with a drink to make it hold the tighter!"
Then a strange thing happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked away from him and listened to Wilson's jibe, the thing snapped in his grip like a rotten twig. He stared down at the broken pieces for a while, as if wondering how they came there, then dashed them on the ground while Wilson stood smiling by. And then he strode--with a look on his face that made the folk fall away.
"He's hellish angry," they grinned to each other when their foe was gone, and laughed when they heard the cause of it. "Ha, ha, Wilson's the boy to diddle him!" And yet they looked queer when told that the famous stick had snapped in his grasp like a worm-eaten larch-twig. "Lord!" cried the baker in admiring awe, "did he break it with the ae chirt! It's been tried by scores of fellows for the last twenty years, and never a man of them was up till't! Lads, there's something splendid about Gourlay's wrath. What a man he is when the paw-sion grups him!"
"Thplendid, d'ye ca't?" said the Deacon. "He may thwing in a towe for his thplendid wrath yet."
From that day Wilson and Gourlay were a pair of gladiators for whom the people of Barbie made a ring. They pitted the protagonists against each other and hounded them on to rivalry by their comments and remarks, taking the side of the newcomer, less from partiality to him than from hatred of their ancient enemy. It was strange that a thing so impalpable as gossip should influence so strong a man as John Gourlay to his ruin. But it did. The bodies of Barbie became not only the chorus to Gourlay's tragedy, buzzing it abroad and discussing his downfall; they became also, merely by their maddening tattle, a villain of the piece and an active cause of the catastrophe. Their gossip seemed to materialize into a single entity, a something propelling, that spurred Gourlay on to the schemes that ruined him. He was not to be done, he said; he would show the dogs what he thought of them. And so he plunged headlong, while the wary Wilson watched him, smiling at the sight.
There was a pretty hell-broth brewing in the little town.
FOOTNOTES: [4] _Hained gear_, saved money.
[5] That is for the stone of fourteen pounds. At that time Scotch cheese was selling, _roughly_, at from fifty to sixty shillings the hundred-weight.
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"Ay, man, Templandmuir, it's you!" said Gourlay, coming forward with great heartiness. "Ay, man, and how are ye? C'way into the parlour!"
"Good-evening, Mr. Gourlay," said the Templar. His manner was curiously subdued.
Since his marriage there was a great change in the rubicund squireen. Hitherto he had lived in sluttish comfort on his own land, content with the little it brought in, and proud to be the friend of Gourlay, whom everybody feared. If it ever dawned on his befuddled mind that Gourlay turned the friendship to his own account, his vanity was flattered by the prestige he acquired because of it. Like many another robustious big toper, the Templar was a chicken at heart, and "to be in with Gourlay" lent him a consequence that covered his deficiency. "Yes, I'm sleepy," he would yawn in Skeighan Mart; "I had a sederunt yestreen wi' John Gourlay," and he would slap his boot with his riding-switch and feel like a hero. "I know how it is, I know how it is!" Provost Connal of Barbie used to cry; "Gourlay both courts and cowes him--first he courts and then he cowes--and the Templar hasn't the courage to break it off!" The Provost hit the mark.
But when the Templar married the miller's daughter of the Mill o' Blink (a sad come-down, said foolish neighbours, for a Halliday of Templandmuir) there was a sudden change about the laird. In our good Scots proverb, "A miller's daughter has a shrill voice," and the new leddy of Templandmuir ("a leddy she is!" said the frightened housekeeper) justified the proverb. Her voice went with the skirl of an east wind through the rat-riddled mansion of the Hallidays. She was nine-and-twenty, and a birkie woman of nine-and-twenty can make a good husband out of very unpromising material. The Templar wore a scared look in those days and went home betimes. His cronies knew the fun was over when they heard what happened to the great punchbowl--she made it a swine-trough. It was the heirloom of a hundred years, and as much as a man could carry with his arms out, a massive curio in stone; but to her husband's plaint about its degradation, "Oh," she cried, "it'll never know the difference! It's been used to swine!"
But she was not content with the cessation of the old; she was determined on bringing in the new. For a twelvemonth now she had urged her husband to be rid of Gourlay. The country was opening up, she said, and the quarry ought to be their own. A dozen times he had promised her to warn Gourlay that he must yield the quarry when his tack ran out at the end of the year, and a dozen times he had shrunk from the encounter.
"I'll write," he said feebly.
"Write!" said she, lowered in her pride to think her husband was a coward. "Write, indeed! Man, have ye no spunk? Think what he has made out o' ye! Think o' the money that has gone to him that should have come to you! You should be glad o' the chance to tell him o't. My certy, if I was you I wouldn't miss it for the world--just to let him know of his cheatry! Oh, it's very right that _I_"--she sounded the _I_ big and brave--"it's very right that _I_ should live in this tumbledown hole while _he_ builds a palace from your plunder! It's right that _I_ should put up with this"--she flung hands of contempt at her dwelling--"it's right that _I_ should put up with this, while yon trollop has a splendid mansion on the top o' the brae! And every bawbee of his fortune has come out of you--the fool makes nothing from his other business--he would have been a pauper if he hadn't met a softie like you that he could do what he liked with. Write, indeed! I have no patience with a wheen sumphs of men! Them do the work o' the world! They may wear the breeks, but the women wear the brains, I trow. I'll have it out with the black brute myself," screamed the hardy dame, "if you're feared of his glower. If you havena the pluck for it, _I_ have. Write, indeed! In you go to the meeting that oald ass of a Provost has convened, and don't show your face in Templandmuir till you have had it out with Gourlay!"
No wonder the Templar looked subdued.
When Gourlay came forward with his usual calculated heartiness, the laird remembered his wife and felt very uncomfortable. It was ill to round on a man who always imposed on him a hearty and hardy good-fellowship. Gourlay, greeting him so warmly, gave him no excuse for an outburst. In his dilemma he turned to the children, to postpone the evil hour.
"Ay, man, John!" he said heavily, "you're there!" Heavy Scotsmen are fond of telling folk that they are where they are. "You're there!" said Templandmuir.
"Ay," said John, the simpleton, "I'm here."
In the grime of the boy's face there were large white circles round the eyes, showing where his fists had rubbed off the tears through the day.
"How are you doing at the school?" said the Templar.
"Oh, he's an ass!" said Gourlay. "He takes after his mother in that! The lassie's more smart--she favours our side o' the house! Eh, Jenny?" he inquired, and tugged her pigtail, smiling down at her in grim fondness.
"Yes," nodded Janet, encouraged by the petting, "John's always at the bottom of the class. Jimmy Wilson's always at the top, and the dominie set him to teach John his 'counts the day--after he had thrashed him!"
She cried out at a sudden tug on her pigtail, and looked up, with tears in her eyes, to meet her father's scowl.
"You eediot!" said Gourlay, gazing at his son with a savage contempt, "have you no pride to let Wilson's son be your master?"
John slunk from the room.
"Bide where you are, Templandmuir," said Gourlay after a little. "I'll be back directly."
He went through to the kitchen and took a crystal jug from the dresser. He "made a point" of bringing the water for his whisky. "I like to pump it up _cold_," he used to say, "cold and cold, ye know, till there's a mist on the outside of the glass like the bloom on a plum, and then, by Goad, ye have the fine drinking! Oh no--ye needn't tell me, I wouldn't lip drink if the water wasna ice-cold." He never varied from the tipple he approved. In his long sederunts with Templandmuir he would slip out to the pump, before every brew, to get water of sufficient coldness.
To-night he would birl the bottle with Templandmuir as usual, till the fuddled laird should think himself a fine big fellow as being the intimate of John Gourlay--and then, sober as a judge himself, he would drive him home in the small hours. And when next they met, the pot-valiant squireen would chuckle proudly, "Faith, yon was a night." By a crude cunning of the kind Gourlay had maintained his ascendancy for years, and to-night he would maintain it still. He went out to the pump to fetch water with his own hands for their first libation.
But when he came back and set out the big decanter Templandmuir started to his feet.
"Noat to-night, Mr. Gourlay," he stammered--and his unusual flutter of refusal might have warned Gourlay--"noat to-night, if _you_ please; noat to-night, if _you_ please. As a matter of fact--eh--what I really came into the town for, doan't you see, was--eh--to attend the meeting the Provost has convened about the railway. You'll come down to the meeting, will ye noat?"
He wanted to get Gourlay away from the House with the Green Shutters. It would be easier to quarrel with him out of doors.
But Gourlay gaped at him across the table, his eyes big with surprise and disapproval.
"Huh!" he growled, "I wonder at a man like you giving your head to that! It's a wheen damned nonsense."
"Oh, I'm no so sure of that," drawled the Templar. "I think the railway means to come."
The whole country was agog about the new railway. The question agitating solemn minds was whether it should join the main line at Fechars, thirty miles ahead, or pass to the right, through Fleckie and Barbie, to a junction up at Skeighan Drone. Many were the reasons spluttered in vehement debate for one route or the other. "On the one side, ye see, Skeighan was a big place a'readys, and look what a centre it would be if it had three lines of rail running out and in! Eh, my, what a centre! Then there was Fleckie and Barbie--they would be the big towns! Up the valley, too, was the shortest road; it would be a daft-like thing to build thirty mile of rail, when fifteen was enough to establish the connection! And was it likely--I put it to ainy man of sense--was it likely the Coal Company wouldn't do everything in their power to get the railway up the valley, seeing that if it didn't come that airt they would need to build a line of their own?" --"Ah, but then, ye see, Fechars was a big place too, and there was lots of mineral up there as well! And though it was a longer road to Fechars and part of it lay across the moors, there were several wee towns that airt just waiting for a chance of growth! I can tell ye, sirs, this was going to be a close question!"
Such was the talk in pot-house and parlour, at kirk and mart and tryst and fair, and wherever potentates did gather and abound. The partisans on either side began to canvass the country in support of their contentions. They might have kept their breath to cool their porridge, for these matters, we know, are settled in the great Witenagemot. But petitions were prepared and meetings were convened. In those days Provost Connal of Barbie was in constant communion with the "Pow-ers." "Yass," he nodded gravely--only "nod" is a word too swift for the grave inclining of that mighty pow--"yass, ye know, the great thing in matters like this is to get at the Pow-ers, doan't you see? Oh yass, yass; we must get at the Pow-ers!" and he looked as if none but he were equal to the job. He even went to London (to interrogate the "Pow-ers"), and simple bodies, gathered at the Cross for their Saturday at e'en, told each other with bated breath that the Provost was away to the "seat of Goaver'ment to see about the railway." When he came back and shook his head, hope drained from his fellows and left them hollow in an empty world. But when he smacked his lips on receiving an important letter, the heavens were brightened and the landscapes smiled.
The Provost walked about the town nowadays with the air of a man on whose shoulders the weight of empires did depend. But for all his airs it was not the Head o' the Town who was the ablest advocate of the route up the Water of Barbie. It was that public-spirited citizen, Mr. James Wilson of the Cross! Wilson championed the cause of Barbie with an ardour that did infinite credit to his civic heart. For one thing, it was a grand way of recommending himself to his new townsfolk, as he told his wife, "and so increasing the circle of our present trade, don't ye understand?" --for another, he was as keen as the keenest that the railway should come and enhance the value of his property. "We must agitate," he cried, when Sandy Toddle murmured a doubt whether anything they could do would be of much avail. "It's not settled yet what road the line's to follow, and who knows but a trifle may turn the scale in our behalf? Local opinion ought to be expressed! They're sending a monster petition from the Fechars side; we'll send the Company a bigger one from ours! Look at Skeighan and Fleckie and Barbie--three towns at our back, and the new Coal Company forbye! A public opinion of that size ought to have a great weight--if put forward properly! We must agitate, sirs, we must agitate; we maun scour the country for names in our support. Look what a number of things there are to recommend _our_ route. It's the shortest, and there's no need for heavy cuttings such as are needed on the other side; the road's there a'ready--Barbie Water has cut it through the hills. It's the manifest design of Providence that there should be a line up Barbie Valley! What a position for't! --And, oh," thought Wilson, "what a site for building houses in my holm! --Let a meeting be convened at wunst!"
The meeting was convened, with Provost Connal in the chair and Wilson as general factotum.
"You'll come down to the meeting?" said Templandmuir to Gourlay.
Go to a meeting for which Wilson had sent out the bills! At another, Gourlay would have hurled his usual objurgation that he would see him condemned to eternal agonies ere he granted his request! But Templandmuir was different. Gourlay had always flattered this man (whom he inwardly despised) by a companionship which made proud the other. He had always yielded to Templandmuir in small things, for the sake of the quarry, which was a great thing. He yielded to him now.
"Verra well," he said shortly, and rose to get his hat.
When Gourlay put on his hat the shallow meanness of his brow was hid, and nothing was seen to impair his dark, strong gravity of face. He was a man you would have turned to look at as he marched in silence by the side of Templandmuir. Though taller than the laird, he looked shorter because of his enormous breadth. He had a chest like the heave of a hill. Templandmuir was afraid of him. And fretting at the necessity he felt to quarrel with a man of whom he was afraid, he had an unreasonable hatred of Gourlay, whose conduct made this quarrel necessary at the same time that his character made it to be feared; and he brooded on his growing rage that, with it for a stimulus, he might work his cowardly nature to the point of quarrelling. Conscious of the coming row, then, he felt awkward in the present, and was ignorant what to say. Gourlay was silent too. He felt it an insult to the House with the Green Shutters that the laird should refuse its proffered hospitality. He hated to be dragged to a meeting he despised. Never before was such irritation between them.
When they came to the hall where the meeting was convened, there were knots of bodies grouped about the floor. Wilson fluttered from group to group, an important man, with a roll of papers in his hand. Gourlay, quick for once in his dislike, took in every feature of the man he loathed.
Wilson was what the sentimental women of the neighbourhood called a "bonny man." His features were remarkably regular, and his complexion was remarkably fair. His brow was so delicate of hue that the blue veins running down his temples could be traced distinctly beneath the whiteness of the skin. Unluckily for him, he was so fair that in a strong light (as now beneath the gas) the suspicion of his unwashedness became a certainty--"as if he got a bit idle slaik now and than, and never a good rub," thought Gourlay in a clean disgust. Full lips showed themselves bright red in the middle between the two wings of a very blonde and very symmetrical moustache. The ugly feature of the face was the blue calculating eyes. They were tender round the lids, so that the white lashes stuck out in little peaks. And in conversation he had a habit of peering out of these eyes as if he were constantly spying for something to emerge that he might twist to his advantage. As he talked to a man close by and glimmered (not at the man beside him, but far away in the distance of his mind at some chance of gain suggested by the other's words) Gourlay heard him say musingly, "Imphm, imphm, imphm! there might be something _in_ that!" nodding his head and stroking his moustache as he uttered each meditative "imphm."
It was Wilson's unconscious revelation that his mind was busy with a commercial hint which he had stolen from his neighbour's talk. "The damned sneck-drawer!" thought Gourlay, enlightened by his hate; "he's sucking Tam Finlay's brains, to steal some idea for himsell!" And still as Wilson listened he murmured swiftly, "Imphm! I see, Mr. Finlay; imphm! imphm! imphm!" nodding his head and pulling his moustache and glimmering at his new "opportunity."
Our insight is often deepest into those we hate, because annoyance fixes our thought on them to probe. We cannot keep our minds off them. "Why do they do it?" we snarl, and wondering why, we find out their character. Gourlay was not an observant man, but every man is in any man somewhere, and hate to-night driving his mind into Wilson, helped him to read him like an open book. He recognized with a vague uneasiness--not with fear, for Gourlay did not know what it meant, but with uneasy anger--the superior cunning of his rival. Gourlay, a strong block of a man cut off from the world by impotence of speech, could never have got out of Finlay what Wilson drew from him in two minutes' easy conversation.
Wilson ignored Gourlay, but he was very blithe with Templandmuir, and inveigled him off to a corner. They talked together very briskly, and Wilson laughed once with uplifted head, glancing across at Gourlay as he laughed. Curse them, were they speaking of him?
The hall was crammed at last, and the important bodies took their seats upon the front benches. Gourlay refused to be seated with the rest, but stood near the platform, with his back to the wall, by the side of Templandmuir.
After what the Provost described "as a few preliminary remarks"--they lasted half an hour--he called on Mr. Wilson to address the meeting. Wilson descanted on the benefits that would accrue to Barbie if it got the railway, and on the needcessity for a "long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together"--a phrase which he repeated many times in the course of his address. He sat down at last amid thunders of applause.
"There's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech," said the Provost.
"Hear, hear!" said Gourlay, and the meeting was unkind enough to laugh.
"Order, order!" cried Wilson perkily.
"As I was saying when I was grossly interrupted," fumed the Provost, "there's no needcessity for me to make a loang speech. I had thoat we were a-all agreed on the desirabeelity of the rileway coming in our direction. I had thoat, after the able--I must say the very able--speech of Mr. Wilson, that there wasn't a man in this room so shtupid as to utter a word of dishapproval. I had thoat we might prosheed at woance to elect a deputation. I had thoat we would get the name of everybody here for the great petition we mean to send the Pow-ers. I had thoat it was all, so to shpeak, a foregone conclusion. But it seems I was mistaken, ladies and gentlemen--or rather, I oat to say gentlemen, for I believe there are no ladies present. Yass, it seems I was mistaken. It may be there are some who would like to keep Barbie going on in the oald way which they found so much to their advantage. It may be there are some who regret a change that will put an end to their chances of tyraneezin'. It may be there are some who know themselves so shtupid that they fear the new condeetions of trade the railway's bound to bring." --Here Wilson rose and whispered in his ear, and the people watched them, wondering what hint J. W. was passing to the Provost. The Provost leaned with pompous gravity toward his monitor, hand at ear to catch the treasured words. He nodded and resumed. --"Now, gentlemen, as Mr. Wilson said, this is a case that needs a loang pull, and a stroang pull, and a pull all together. We must be unanimous. It will _noat_ do to show ourselves divided among ourselves. Therefore I think we oat to have expressions of opinion from some of our leading townsmen. That will show how far we are unanimous. I had thoat there could be only one opinion, and that we might prosheed at once with the petition. But it seems I was wroang. It is best to inquire first exactly where we stand. So I call upon Mr. John Gourlay, who has been the foremost man in the town for mainy years--at least he used to be that--I call upon Mr. Gourlay as the first to express an opinion on the subjeck."
Wilson's hint to the Provost placed Gourlay in a fine dilemma. Stupid as he was, he was not so stupid as not to perceive the general advantage of the railway. If he approved it, however, he would seem to support Wilson and the Provost, whom he loathed. If he disapproved, his opposition would be set down to a selfish consideration for his own trade, and he would incur the anger of the meeting, which was all for the coming of the railway, Wilson had seized the chance to put him in a false position. He knew Gourlay could not put forty words together in public, and that in his dilemma he would blunder and give himself away.
Gourlay evaded the question.
"It would be better to convene a meeting," he bawled to the Provost, "to consider the state of some folk's back doors." --That was a nipper to Wilson! --"There's a stink at the Cross that's enough to kill a cuddy!"
"Evidently not," yelled Wilson, "since you're still alive!"
A roar went up against Gourlay. All he could do was to scowl before him, with hard-set mouth and gleaming eyes, while they bellowed him to scorn.
"I would like to hear what Templandmuir has to say on the subject," said Wilson, getting up. "But no doubt he'll follow his friend Mr. Gourlay."
"No, I don't follow Mr. Gourlay," bawled Templandmuir with unnecessary loudness. The reason of his vehemence was twofold. He was nettled (as Wilson meant he should) by the suggestion that he was nothing but Gourlay's henchman. And being eager to oppose Gourlay, yet a coward, he yelled to supply in noise what he lacked in resolution.
"I don't follow Mr. Gourlay at all," he roared; "I follow nobody but myself! Every man in the district's in support of this petition. It would be absurd to suppose anything else. I'll be glad to sign't among the first, and do everything I can in its support."
"Verra well," said the Provost; "it seems we're agreed after all. We'll get some of our foremost men to sign the petition at this end of the hall, and then it'll be placed in the anteroom for the rest to sign as they go out."
"Take it across to Gourlay," whispered Wilson to the two men who were carrying the enormous tome. They took it over to the grain merchant, and one of them handed him an inkhorn. He dashed it to the ground.
The meeting hissed like a cellarful of snakes. But Gourlay turned and glowered at them, and somehow the hisses died away. His was the high courage that feeds on hate, and welcomes rather than shrinks from its expression. He was smiling as he faced them.
"Let _me_ pass," he said, and shouldered his way to the door, the bystanders falling back to make room. Templandmuir followed him out.
"I'll walk to the head o' the brae," said the Templar.
He must have it out with Gourlay at once, or else go home to meet the anger of his wife. Having opposed Gourlay already, he felt that now was the time to break with him for good. Only a little was needed to complete the rupture. And he was the more impelled to declare himself to-night because he had just seen Gourlay discomfited, and was beginning to despise the man he had formerly admired. Why, the whole meeting had laughed at his expense! In quarrelling with Gourlay, moreover, he would have the whole locality behind him. He would range himself on the popular side. Every impulse of mind and body pushed him forward to the brink of speech; he would never get a better occasion to bring out his grievance.
They trudged together in a burning silence. Though nothing was said between them, each was in wrathful contact with the other's mind. Gourlay blamed everything that had happened on Templandmuir, who had dragged him to the meeting and deserted him. And Templandmuir was longing to begin about the quarry, but afraid to start.
That was why he began at last with false, unnecessary loudness. It was partly to encourage himself (as a bull bellows to increase his rage), and partly because his spite had been so long controlled. It burst the louder for its pent fury.
"Mr. Gourlay!" he bawled suddenly, when they came opposite the House with the Green Shutters, "I've had a crow to pick with you for more than a year."
It came on Gourlay with a flash that Templandmuir was slipping away from him. But he must answer him civilly for the sake of the quarry.
"Ay, man," he said quietly, "and what may that be?"
"I'll damned soon tell you what it is," said the Templar. "Yon was a monstrous overcharge for bringing my ironwork from Fleckie. I'll be damned if I put up with that!"
And yet it was only a trifle. He had put up with fifty worse impositions and never said a word. But when a man is bent on a quarrel any spark will do for an explosion.
"How do ye make that out?" said Gourlay, still very quietly, lest he should alienate the quarry laird.
"Damned fine do I make that out," yelled Templandmuir, and louder than ever was the yell. He was the brave man now, with his bellow to hearten him. "Damned fine do I make that out. You charged me for a whole day, though half o't was spent upon your own concerns. I'm tired o' you and your cheatry. You've made a braw penny out o' me in your time. But curse me if I endure it loanger. I give you notice this verra night that your tack o' the quarry must end at Martinmas."
He was off, glad to have it out and glad to escape the consequence, leaving Gourlay a cauldron of wrath in the darkness. It was not merely the material loss that maddened him. But for the first time in his life he had taken a rebuff without a word or a blow in return. In his desire to conciliate he had let Templandmuir get away unscathed. His blood rocked him where he stood.
He walked blindly to the kitchen door, never knowing how he reached it. It was locked--at this early hour! --and the simple inconvenience let loose the fury of his wrath. He struck the door with his clenched fist till the blood streamed on his knuckles.
It was Mrs. Gourlay who opened the door to him. She started back before his awful eyes.
"John!" she cried, "what's wrong wi' ye?"
The sight of the she-tatterdemalion there before him, whom he had endured so long and must endure for ever, was the crowning burden of his night. Damn her, why didn't she get out of the way? why did she stand there in her dirt and ask silly questions? He struck her on the bosom with his great fist, and sent her spinning on the dirty table.
She rose from among the broken dishes and came towards him, with slack lips and great startled eyes. "John," she panted, like a pitiful frightened child, "what have I been doing? ... Man, what did you hit me for?"
He gaped at her with hanging jaw. He knew he was a brute--knew she had done nothing to-night more than she had ever done--knew he had vented on her a wrath that should have burst on others. But his mind was at a stick; how could he explain--to _her_? He gaped and glowered for a speechless moment, then turned on his heel and went into the parlour, slamming the door till the windows rattled in their frames.
She stared after him a while in large-eyed stupor, then flung herself in her old nursing-chair by the fire, and spat blood in the ribs, hawking it up coarsely--we forget to be delicate in moments of supremer agony. And then she flung her apron over her head and rocked herself to and fro in the chair where she had nursed his children, wailing, "It's a pity o' me, it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"
The boy was in bed, but Janet had watched the scene with a white, scared face and tearful cries. She crept to her mother's side.
The sympathy of children with those who weep is innocently selfish. The sight of tears makes them uncomfortable, and they want them to cease, in the interests of their own happiness. If the outward signs of grief would only vanish, all would be well. They are not old enough to appreciate the inward agony.
So Janet tugged at the obscuring apron, and whimpered, "Don't greet, mother, don't greet. Woman, I dinna like to see ye greetin'."
But Mrs. Gourlay still rocked herself and wailed, "It's a pity o' me, it's a pity o' me! My God, ay, it's a geyan pity o' me!"
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{
"id": "25876"
}
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13
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"Is he in himsell?" asked Gibson the builder, coming into the Emporium.
Mrs. Wilson was alone in the shop. Since trade grew so brisk she had an assistant to help her, but he was out for his breakfast at present, and as it happened she was all alone.
"No," she said, "he's no in. We're terribly driven this twelvemonth back, since trade grew so thrang, and he's aye hunting business in some corner. He's out the now after a carrying affair. Was it ainything perticular?"
She looked at Gibson with a speculation in her eyes that almost verged on hostility. Wives of the lower classes who are active helpers in a husband's affairs often direct that look upon strangers who approach him in the way of business. For they are enemies whatever way you take them; come to be done by the husband or to do him--in either case, therefore, the object of a sharp curiosity. You may call on an educated man, either to fleece him or be fleeced, and his wife, though she knows all about it, will talk to you charmingly of trifles while you wait for him in her parlour. But a wife of the lower orders, active in her husband's affairs, has not been trained to dissemble so prettily; though her face be a mask, what she is wondering comes out in her eye. There was suspicion in the big round stare that Mrs. Wilson directed at the builder. What was _he_ spiering for "himsell" for? What could he be up to? Some end of his own, no doubt. Anxious curiosity forced her to inquire.
"Would I do instead?" she asked.
"Well, hardly," said Gibson, clawing his chin, and gazing at a corded round of "Barbie's Best" just above his head. "Dod, it's a fine ham that," he said, to turn the subject. "How are ye selling it the now?"
"Tenpence a pound retail, but ninepence only if ye take a whole one. Ye had better let me send you one, Mr. Gibson, now that winter's drawing on. It's a heartsome thing, the smell of frying ham on a frosty morning"--and her laugh went skelloching up the street.
"Well, ye see," said Gibson, with a grin, "I expect Mr. Wilson to present me with one when he hears the news that I have brought him."
"Aha!" said she, "it's something good, then," and she stuck her arms akimbo. --"James!" she shrilled, "James!" and the red-haired boy shot from the back premises.
"Run up to the Red Lion, and see if your father has finished his crack wi' Templandmuir. Tell him Mr. Gibson wants to see him on important business."
The boy squinted once at the visitor, and scooted, the red head of him foremost.
While Gibson waited and clawed his chin she examined him narrowly. Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention on his face.
He was a man with mean brown eyes. Brown eyes may be clear and limpid as a mountain pool, or they may have the fine black flash of anger and the jovial gleam, or they may be mean things--little and sly and oily. Gibson's had the depth of cunning, not the depth of character, and they glistened like the eyes of a lustful animal. He was a reddish man, with a fringe of sandy beard, and a perpetual grin which showed his yellow teeth, with green deposit round their roots. It was more than a grin--it was a _rictus_, semicircular from cheek to cheek; and the beady eyes, ever on the watch up above it, belied its false benevolence. He was not florid, yet that grin of his seemed to intensify his reddishness (perhaps because it brought out and made prominent his sandy valance and the ruddy round of his cheeks), so that the baker christened him long ago "the man with the sandy smile." "Cunning Johnny" was his other nickname. Wilson had recognized a match in him the moment he came to Barbie, and had resolved to act with him if he could, but never to act against him. They had made advances to each other--birds of a feather, in short.
The grocer came in hurriedly, white-waistcoated to-day, and a perceptibly bigger bulge in his belly than when we first saw him in Barbie, four years ago now.
"Good-morning, Mr. Gibson," he panted. "Is it private that ye wanted to see me on?"
"Verra private," said the sandy smiler.
"We'll go through to the house, then," said Wilson, and ushered his guest through the back premises. But the voice of his wife recalled him. "James!" she cried. "Here for a minute just," and he turned to her, leaving Gibson in the yard.
"Be careful what you're doing," she whispered in his ear. "It wasna for nothing they christened Gibson 'Cunning Johnny.' Keep the dirt out your een."
"There's no fear of that," he assured her pompously. It was a grand thing to have a wife like that, but her advice nettled him now just a little, because it seemed to imply a doubt of his efficiency--and that was quite onnecessar. He knew what he was doing. They would need to rise very early that got the better o' a man like him!
"You'll take a dram?" said Wilson, when they reached a pokey little room where the most conspicuous and dreary object was a large bare flowerpot of red earthenware, on a green woollen mat, in the middle of a round table. Out of the flowerpot rose gauntly a three-sticked frame, up which two lonely stalks of a climbing plant tried to scramble, but failed miserably to reach the top. The round little rickety table with the family album on one corner (placed at what Mrs. Wilson considered a beautiful artistic angle to the window), the tawdry cloth, the green mat, the shiny horsehair sofa, and the stuffy atmosphere, were all in perfect harmony of ugliness. A sampler on the wall informed the world that there was no place like home.
Wilson pushed the flowerpot to one side, and "You'll take a dram?" he said blithely.
"Oh ay," said Gibson with a grin; "I never refuse drink when I'm offered it for nothing."
"Hi! hi!" laughed Wilson at the little joke, and produced a cut decanter and a pair of glasses. He filled the glasses so brimming full that the drink ran over on the table.
"Canny, man, for God's sake canny!" cried Gibson, starting forward in alarm. "Don't ye see you're spilling the mercies?" He stooped his lips to the rim of his glass, and sipped, lest a drop of Scotia's nectar should escape him.
They faced each other, sitting. "Here's pith!" said Gibson. "Pith!" said the other in chorus, and they nodded to each other in amity, primed glasses up and ready. And then it was eyes heavenward and the little finger uppermost.
Gibson smacked his lips once and again when the fiery spirit tickled his uvula.
"Ha!" said he, "that's the stuff to put heart in a man."
"It's no bad whisky," said Wilson complacently.
Gibson wiped the sandy stubble round his mouth with the back of his hand, and considered for a moment. Then, leaning forward, he tapped Wilson's knee in whispering importance.
"Have you heard the news?" he murmured, with a watchful glimmer in his eyes.
"No!" cried Wilson, glowering, eager and alert. "Is't ocht in the business line? Is there a possibeelity for me in't?"
"Oh, there might," nodded Gibson, playing his man for a while.
"Ay, man!" cried Wilson briskly, and brought his chair an inch or two forward. Gibson grinned and watched him with his beady eyes. "What green teeth he has!" thought Wilson, who was not fastidious.
"The Coal Company are meaning to erect a village for five hundred miners a mile out the Fleckie Road, and they're running a branch line up the Lintie's Burn that'll need the building of a dozen brigs. I'm happy to say I have nabbed the contract for the building."
"Man, Mr. Gibson, d'ye tell me that! I'm proud to hear it, sir; I am that!" Wilson was hotching in his chair with eagerness. For what could Gibson be wanting with _him_ if it wasna to arrange about the carting? "Fill up your glass, Mr. Gibson, man; fill up your glass. You're drinking nothing at all. Let _me_ help you."
"Ay, but I havena the contract for the carting," said Gibson. "That's not mine to dispose of. They mean to keep it in their own hand."
Wilson's mouth forgot to shut, and his eyes were big and round as his mouth in staring disappointment. Was it this he was wasting his drink for?
"Where do I come in?" he asked blankly.
Gibson tossed off another glassful of the burning heartener of men, and leaned forward with his elbows on the table.
"D'ye ken Goudie, the Company's manager? He's worth making up to, I can tell ye. He has complete control of the business, and can airt you the road of a good thing. I made a point of helping him in everything, ever since he came to Barbie, and I'm glad to say that he hasna forgotten't. Man, it was through him I got the building contract; they never threw't open to the public. But they mean to contract separate for carting the material. That means that they'll need the length of a dozen horses on the road for a twelvemonth to come; for it's no only the building--they're launching out on a big scale, and there's lots of other things forbye. Now, Goudie's as close as a whin, and likes to keep everything dark till the proper time comes for sploring o't. Not a whisper has been heard so far about this village for the miners--there's a rumour, to be sure, about a wheen houses going up, but nothing _near_ the reality. And there's not a soul, either, that kens there's a big contract for carting to be had 'ceptna Goudie and mysell. But or a month's by they'll be advertising for estimates for a twelvemonth's carrying. I thocht a hint aforehand would be worth something to you, and that's the reason of my visit."
"I see," said Wilson briskly. "You're verra good, Mr. Gibson. You mean you'll give me an inkling in private of the other estimates sent in, and help to arrange mine according?"
"Na," said Gibson. "Goudie's owre close to let me ken. I'll speak a word in his ear on your behalf, to be sure, if you agree to the proposal I mean to put before you. But Gourlay's the man you need to keep your eye on. It's you or him for the contract--there's nobody else to compete wi' the two o' ye."
"Imphm, I see," said Wilson, and tugged his moustache in meditation. All expression died out of his face while his brain churned within. What Brodie had christened "the considering keek" was in his eyes; they were far away, and saw the distant village in process of erection; busy with its chances and occasions. Then an uneasy thought seemed to strike him and recall him to the man by his side. He stole a shifty glance at the sandy smiler.
"But I thought _you_ were a friend of Gourlay's," he said slowly.
"Friendship!" said Gibson. "We're speaking of business. And there's sma-all friendship atween me and Gourlay. He was nebby owre a bill I sent in the other day; and I'm getting tired of his bluster. Besides, there's little more to be made of him. Gourlay's bye wi't. But you're a rising man, Mr. Wilson, and I think that you and me might work thegither to our own advantage, don't ye see? Yes; just so; to the advantage of us both. Oom?"
"I hardly see what you're driving at," said Wilson.
"I'm driving at this," said Gibson. "If Gourlay kens you're against him for the contract, he'll cut his estimate down to a ruinous price, out o' sheer spite--yes, out o' sheer spite--rather than be licked by _you_ in public competition. And if he does that, Goudie and I may do what we like, but we canna help you. For it's the partners that decide the estimates sent in, d'ye see? Imphm, it's the partners. Goudie has noathing to do wi' that. And if Gourlay once gets round the partners, you'll be left out in the cold for a very loang time. Shivering, sir, shivering! You will that!"
"Dod, you're right. There's a danger of that. But I fail to see how we can prevent it."
"We can put Gourlay on a wrong scent," said Gibson.
"But how, though?"
Gibson met one question by another.
"What was the charge for a man and a horse and a day's carrying when ye first came hereaway?" he asked.
"Only four shillings a day," said Wilson promptly. "It has risen to six now," he added.
"Exactly," said Gibson; "and with the new works coming in about the town it'll rise to eight yet. I have it for a fact that the Company's willing to gie that. Now if you and me could procure a job for Gourlay at the lower rate, before the news o' this new industry gets scattered--a job that would require the whole of his plant, you understand, and prevent his competing for the Company's business--we would clear"--he clawed his chin to help his arithmetic--"we would clear three hundred and seventy-four pounds o' difference on the twelvemonth. At least _you_ would make that," he added, "but you would allow me a handsome commission of course--the odd hundred and seventy, say--for bringing the scheme before ye. I don't think there's ocht unreasonable in tha-at. For it's not the mere twelvemonth's work that's at stake, you understand; it's the valuable connection for the fee-yuture. Now, I have influence wi' Goudie; I can help you there. But if Gourlay gets in there's just a chance that you'll never be able to oust him."
"I see," said Wilson. "Before he knows what's coming, we're to provide work for Gourlay at the lower rate, both to put money in our own pocket and prevent him competing for the better business."
"You've summed it to the nines," said Gibson.
"Yes," said Wilson blankly, "but how on earth are _we_ to provide work for him?"
Gibson leaned forward a second time and tapped Wilson on the knee.
"Have you never considered what a chance for building there's in that holm of yours?" he asked. "You've a fortune there, lying undeveloped."
That was the point to which Cunning Johnny had been leading all the time. He cared as little for Wilson as for Gourlay; all he wanted was a contract for covering Wilson's holm with jerry-built houses, and a good commission on the year's carrying. It was for this he evolved the conspiracy to cripple Gourlay.
Wilson's thoughts went to and fro like the shuttle of a weaver. He blinked in rapidity of thinking, and stole shifty glances at his comrade. He tugged his moustache and said "Imphm" many times. Then his eyes went off in their long preoccupied stare, and the sound of the breath, coming heavy through his nostrils, was audible in the quiet room. Wilson was one of the men whom you hear thinking.
"I see," he said slowly. "You mean to bind Gourlay to cart building material to my holm at the present price of work. You'll bind him in general terms so that he canna suspect, till the time comes, who in particular he's to work for. In the meantime I'll be free to offer for the Company's business at the higher price."
"That's the size o't," said Gibson.
Wilson was staggered by the rapid combinations of the scheme. But Cunning Johnny had him in the toils. The plan he proposed stole about the grocer's every weakness, and tugged his inclinations to consent. It was very important, he considered, that he, and no other, should obtain this contract, which was both valuable in itself and an earnest of other business in the future. And Gibson's scheme got Gourlay, the only possible rival, out of the way. For it was not possible for Gourlay to put more than twelve horses on the road, and if he thought he had secured a good contract already, he would never dream of applying for another. Then, Wilson's malice was gratified by the thought that Gourlay, who hated him, should have to serve, as helper and underling, in a scheme for his aggrandizement. That would take down his pride for him! And the commercial imagination, so strong in Wilson, was inflamed by the vision of himself as a wealthy houseowner which Gibson put before him. Cunning Johnny knew all this when he broached the scheme--he foresaw the pull of it on Wilson's nature. Yet Wilson hesitated. He did not like to give himself to Gibson quite so rapidly.
"You go fast, Mr. Gibson," said he. "Faith, you go fast. This is a big affair, and needs to be looked at for a while."
"Fast!" cried Gibson. "Damn it, we have no time to waste. We maun act on the spur of the moment."
"I'll have to borrow money," said Wilson slowly; "and it's verra dear at the present time."
"It was never worth more in Barbie than it is at the present time. Man, don't ye see the chance you're neglecting? Don't ye see what it means? There's thousands lying at your back door if ye'll only reach to pick them up. Yes, thousands. Thousands, I'm telling ye--thousands!"
Wilson saw himself provost and plutocrat. Yet was he cautious. " _You_'ll do well by the scheme," he said tartly, "if you get the sole contract for building these premises of mine, and a fat commission on the carrying forbye."
"Can you carry the scheme without me?" said Gibson. "A word from me to Goudie means a heap." There was a veiled threat in the remark.
"Oh, we'll come to terms," said the other. "But how will you manage Gourlay?"
"Aha!" said Gibson, "I'll come in handy for that, you'll discover. There's been a backset in Barbie for the last year--things went owre quick at the start and were followed by a wee lull; but it's only for a time, sir--it's only for a time. Hows'ever, it and you thegither have damaged Gourlay: he's both short o' work and scarce o' cash, as I found to my cost when I asked him for my siller! So when I offer him a big contract for carting stones atween the quarry and the town foot, he'll swallow it without question. I'll insert a clause that he must deliver the stuff at such places as I direct within four hundred yards of the Cross, in ainy direction--for I've several jobs near the Cross, doan't ye see, and how's he to know that yours is one o' them? Man, it's easy to bamboozle an ass like Gourlay! Besides, he'll think my principals have trusted me to let the carrying to ainy one I like, and, as I let it to him, he'll fancy I'm on his side, doan't ye see? He'll never jalouse that I mean to diddle him. In the meantime we'll spread the news that you're meaning to build on a big scale upon your own land; we'll have the ground levelled, the foundations dug, and the drains and everything seen to. Now, it'll never occur to Gourlay, in the present slackness o' trade, that you would contract wi' another man to cart your material, and go hunting for other work yoursell. That'll throw him off the scent till the time comes to put his nose on't. When the Company advertise for estimates he canna compete wi' you, because he's pre-engaged to me; and he'll think you're out o't too, because you're busy wi' your own woark. You'll be free to nip the eight shillings. Then we'll force him to fulfill his bargain and cart for us at six."
"If he refuses?" said Wilson.
"I'll have the contract stamped and signed in the presence of witnesses," said Gibson. "Not that that's necessary, I believe, but a double knot's aye the safest."
Wilson looked at him with admiration.
"Gosh, Mr. Gibson," he cried, "you're a warmer! Ye deserve your name. Ye ken what the folk ca' you?"
"Oh yes," said Gibson complacently. "I'm quite proud o' the description."
"I've my ain craw to pick wi' Gourlay," he went on. "He was damned ill-bred yestreen when I asked him to settle my account, and talked about extortion. But bide a wee, bide a wee! I'll enjoy the look on his face when he sees himself forced to carry for you, at a rate lower than the market price."
When Gibson approached Gourlay on the following day he was full of laments about the poor state of trade.
"Ay," said he, "the grand railway they boasted o' hasna done muckle for the town!"
"Atwell ay," quoth Gourlay with pompous wisdom; "they'll maybe find, or a's by, that the auld way wasna the warst way. There was to be a great boom, as they ca't, but I see few signs o't." "I see few signs o't either," said Gibson, "it's the slackest time for the last twa years."
Gourlay grunted his assent.
"But I've a grand job for ye, for a' that," said Gibson, slapping his hands. "What do ye say to the feck of a year's carting tweesht the quarry and the town foot?"
"I might consider that," said Gourlay, "if the terms were good."
"Six shillins," said Gibson, and went on in solemn protest: "In the present state o' trade, doan't ye see, I couldna give a penny more." Gourlay, who had denounced the present state of trade even now, was prevented by his own words from asking for a penny more.
"At the town foot, you say?" he asked.
"I've several jobs thereaway," Gibson explained hurriedly, "and you must agree to deliver stuff ainy place I want it within four hundred yards o' the Cross. It's all one to you, of course," he went on, "seeing you're paid by the day."
"Oh, it's all one to me," said Gourlay.
Peter Riney and the new "orra" man were called in to witness the agreement. Cunning Johnny had made it as cunning as he could.
"We may as well put a stamp on't," said he. "A stamp costs little, and means a heap."
"You're damned particular the day," cried Gourlay in a sudden heat.
"Oh, nothing more than my usual, nothing more than my usual," said Gibson blandly. "Good-morning, Mr. Gourlay," and he made for the door, buttoning the charter of his dear revenge in the inside pocket of his coat. Gourlay ignored him.
When Gibson got out he turned to the House with the Green Shutters, and "Curse you!" said he; "you may refuse to answer me the day, but wait till this day eight weeks. You'll be roaring than."
On that day eight weeks Gourlay received a letter from Gibson requiring him to hold himself in readiness to deliver stone, lime, baulks of timber, and iron girders in Mr. Wilson's holm, in terms of his agreement, and in accordance with the orders to be given him from day to day. He was apprised that a couple of carts of lime and seven loads of stone were needed on the morrow.
He went down the street with grinding jaws, the letter crushed to a white pellet in his hand. It would have gone ill with Gibson had he met him. Gourlay could not tell why, or to what purpose, he marched on and on with forward staring eyes. He only knew vaguely that the anger drove him.
When he came to the Cross a long string of carts was filing from the Skeighan Road, and passing across to the street leading Fleckie-ward. He knew them to be Wilson's. The Deacon was there, of course, hobbling on his thin shanks, and cocking his eye to see everything that happened.
"What does this mean?" Gourlay asked him, though he loathed the Deacon.
"Oh, haven't ye heard?" quoth the Deacon blithely. "That's the stuff for the new mining village out the Fleckie Road. Wilson has nabbed the contract for the carting. They're saying it was Gibson's influence wi' Goudie that helped him to the getting o't." Amid his storm of anger at the trick, Gourlay was conscious of a sudden pity for himself, as for a man most unfairly worsted. He realized for a moment his own inefficiency as a business man, in conflict with cleverer rivals, and felt sorry to be thus handicapped by nature. Though wrath was uppermost, the other feeling was revealed, showing itself by a gulping in the throat and a rapid blinking of the eyes. The Deacon marked the signs of his chagrin.
"Man!" he reported to the bodies, "but Gourlay was cut to the quick. His face showed how gunkit he was. Oh, but he was chawed. I saw his breist give the great heave."
"Were ye no sorry?" cried the baker.
"Thorry, hi!" laughed the Deacon. "Oh, I was thorry, to be sure," he lisped, "but I didna thyow't. I'm glad to thay I've a grand control of my emotionth. Not like thum folk we know of," he added slyly, giving the baker a "good one."
All next day Gibson's masons waited for their building material in Wilson's holm. But none came. And all day seven of Gourlay's horses champed idly in their stalls.
Barbie had a weekly market now, and, as it happened, that was the day it fell on. At two in the afternoon Gourlay was standing on the gravel outside the Red Lion, trying to look wise over a sample of grain which a farmer had poured upon his great palm. Gibson approached with false voice and smile.
"Gosh, Mr. Gourlay!" he cried protestingly, "have ye forgotten whatna day it is? Ye havena gi'en my men a ton o' stuff to gang on wi'."
To the farmer's dismay his fine sample of grain was scattered on the gravel by a convulsive movement of Gourlay's arm. As Gourlay turned on his enemy, his face was frightfully distorted; all his brow seemed gathered in a knot above his nose, and he gaped on his words, yet ground them out like a labouring mill, each word solid as plug shot.
"I'll see Wil-son ... and Gib-son ... and every other man's son ... frying in hell," he said slowly, "ere a horse o' mine draws a stane o' Wilson's property. Be damned to ye, but there's your answer!"
Gibson's cunning deserted him for once. He put his hand on Gourlay's shoulder in pretended friendly remonstrance.
"Take your hand off my shouther!" said Gourlay, in a voice the tense quietness of which should have warned Gibson to forbear.
But he actually shook Gourlay with a feigned playfulness.
Next instant he was high in air; for a moment the hobnails in the soles of his boots gleamed vivid to the sun; then Gourlay sent him flying through the big window of the Red Lion, right on to the middle of the great table where the market-folk were drinking.
For a minute he lay stunned and bleeding among the broken crockery, in a circle of white faces and startled cries.
Gourlay's face appeared at the jagged rent, his eyes narrowed to fiercely gleaming points, a hard, triumphant devilry playing round his black lips. "You damned treacherous rat!" he cried, "that's the game John Gourlay can play wi' a thing like you."
Gibson rose from the ruin on the table and came bleeding to the window, his grin a _rictus_ of wrath, his green teeth wolfish with anger.
"By God, Gourlay," he screamed, "I'll make you pay for this; I'll fight you through a' the law courts in Breetain, but you'll implement your bond."
"Damn you for a measled swine! would you grunt at me?" cried Gourlay, and made to go at him through the window. Though he could not reach him, Gibson quailed at his look. He shook his fist in impotent wrath, and spat threats of justice through his green teeth.
"To hell wi' your law-wers!" cried Gourlay. "I'd throttle ye like the dog you are on the floor o' the House o' Lords."
But that day was to cost him dear. Ere six months passed he was cast in damages and costs for a breach of contract aggravated by assault. He appealed, of course. He was not to be done; he would show the dogs what he thought of them.
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{
"id": "25876"
}
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14
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In those days it came to pass that Wilson sent his son to the High School of Skeighan--even James, the red-haired one, with the squint in his eye. Whereupon Gourlay sent _his_ son to the High School of Skeighan too, of course, to be upsides with Wilson. If Wilson could afford to send his boy to a distant and expensive school, then, by the Lord, so could he! And it also came to pass that James, the son of James the grocer, took many prizes; but John, the son of John, took no prizes. Whereat there were ructions in the House of Gourlay.
Gourlay's resolve to be equal to Wilson in everything he did was his main reason for sending his son to the High School of Skeighan. That he saw his business decreasing daily was a reason too. Young Gourlay was a lad of fifteen now, undersized for his age at that time, though he soon shot up to be a swaggering youngster. He had been looking forward with delight to helping his father in the business--how grand it would be to drive about the country and see things! --and he had irked at being kept for so long under the tawse of old Bleach-the-boys. But if the business went on at this rate there would be little in it for the boy. Gourlay was not without a thought of his son's welfare when he packed him off to Skeighan. He would give him some book-lear, he said; let him make a kirk or a mill o't.
But John shrank, chicken-hearted, from the prospect. Was he still to drudge at books? Was he to go out among strangers whom he feared? His imagination set to work on what he heard of the High School of Skeighan, and made it a bugbear. They had to do mathematics; what could _he_ do wi' thae whigmaleeries? They had to recite Shakespeare in public; how could _he_ stand up and spout, before a whole jing-bang o' them?
"I don't want to gang," he whined.
"Want?" flamed his father. "What does it matter what _you_ want? Go you shall."
"I thocht I was to help in the business," whimpered John.
"Business!" sneered his father; "a fine help _you_ would be in business."
"Ay man, Johnnie," said his mother, maternal fondness coming out in support of her husband, "you should be glad your father can allow ye the opportunity. Eh, but it's a grand thing a gude education! You may rise to be a minister."
Her ambition could no further go. But Gourlay seemed to have formed a different opinion of the sacred calling. "It's a' he's fit for," he growled.
So John was put to the High School of Skeighan, travelling backwards and forwards night and morning by the train, after the railway had been opened. And he discovered, on trying it, that the life was not so bad as he had feared. He hated his lessons, true, and avoided them whenever he was able. But his father's pride and his mother's fondness saw that he was well dressed and with money in his pocket; and he began to grow important. Though Gourlay was no longer the only "big man" of Barbie, he was still one of the "big men," and a consciousness of the fact grew upon his son. When he passed his old classmates (apprentice grocers now, and carters and ploughboys) his febrile insolence led him to swagger and assume. And it was fine to mount the train at Barbie on the fresh, cool mornings, and be off past the gleaming rivers and the woods. Better still was the home-coming--to board the empty train at Skeighan when the afternoon sun came pleasant through the windows, to loll on the fat cushions and read the novelettes. He learned to smoke too, and that was a source of pride. When the train was full on market days he liked to get in among the jovial farmers, who encouraged his assumptions. Meanwhile Jimmy Wilson would be elsewhere in the train, busy with his lessons for the morrow; for Jimmy had to help in the Emporium of nights--his father kept him to the grindstone. Jimmy had no more real ability than young Gourlay, but infinitely more caution. He was one of the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their school days--and are fools for the remainder of their lives.
The bodies of Barbie, seeing young Gourlay at his pranks, speculated over his future, as Scottish bodies do about the future of every youngster in their ken.
"I wonder what that son o' Gourlay's 'ull come till," said Sandy Toddle, musing on him with the character-reading eye of the Scots peasant.
"To no good--you may be sure of that," said ex-Provost Connal. "He's a regular splurge! When Drunk Dan Kennedy passed him his flask in the train the other day he swigged it, just for the sake of showing off. And he's a coward, too, for all his swagger. He grew ill-bred when he swallowed the drink, and Dan, to frighten him, threatened to hang him from the window by the heels. He didn't mean it, to be sure; but young Gourlay grew white at the very idea o't--he shook like a dog in a wet sack. 'Oh,' he cried, shivering, 'how the ground would go flying past your eyes; how quick the wheel opposite ye would buzz--it would blind ye by its quickness; how the gray slag would flash below ye!' Those were his very words. He seemed to see the thing as if it were happening before his eyes, and stared like a fellow in hysteerics, till Dan was obliged to give him another drink. 'You would spue with the dizziness,' said he, and he actually bocked himsell."
Young Gourlay seemed bent on making good the prophecy of Barbie. Though his father was spending money he could ill afford on his education, he fooled away his time. His mind developed a little, no doubt, since it was no longer dazed by brutal and repeated floggings. In some of his classes he did fairly well, but others he loathed. It was the rule at Skeighan High School to change rooms every hour, the classes tramping from one to another through a big lobby. Gourlay got a habit of stealing off at such times--it was easy to slip out--and playing truant in the byways of Skeighan. He often made his way to the station, and loafed in the waiting room. He had gone there on a summer afternoon, to avoid his mathematics and read a novel, when a terrible thing befell him.
For a while he swaggered round the empty platform and smoked a cigarette. Milk-cans clanked in a shed mournfully. Gourlay had a congenital horror of eerie sounds--he was his mother's son for that--and he fled to the waiting room, to avoid the hollow clang. It was a June afternoon, of brooding heat, and a band of yellow sunshine was lying on the glazed table, showing every scratch in its surface. The place oppressed him; he was sorry he had come. But he plunged into his novel and forgot the world.
He started in fear when a voice addressed him. He looked up, and here it was only the baker--the baker smiling at him with his fine gray eyes, the baker with his reddish fringe of beard and his honest grin, which wrinkled up his face to his eyes in merry and kindly wrinkles. He had a wonderful hearty manner with a boy.
"Ay man, John, it's you," said the baker. "Dod, I'm just in time. The storm's at the burstin'!"
"Storm!" said Gourlay. He had a horror of lightning since the day of his birth.
"Ay, we're in for a pelter. What have you been doing that you didna see't?"
They went to the window. The fronting heavens were a black purple. The thunder, which had been growling in the distance, swept forward and roared above the town. The crash no longer rolled afar, but cracked close to the ear, hard, crepitant. Quick lightning stabbed the world in vicious and repeated hate. A blue-black moistness lay heavy on the cowering earth. The rain came--a few drops at first, sullen, as if loath to come, that splashed on the pavement wide as a crown piece; then a white rush of slanting spears. A great blob shot in through the window, open at the top, and spat wide on Gourlay's cheek. It was lukewarm. He started violently--that warmth on his cheek brought the terror so near.
The heavens were rent with a crash, and the earth seemed on fire. Gourlay screamed in terror.
The baker put his arm round him in kindly protection.
"Tuts, man, dinna be feared," he said. "You're John Gourlay's son, ye know. You ought to be a hardy man."
"Ay, but I'm no," chattered John, the truth coming out in his fear. "I just let on to be."
But the worst was soon over. Lightning, both sheeted and forked, was vivid as ever, but the thunder slunk growling away.
"The heavens are opening and shutting like a man's eye," said Gourlay. "Oh, it's a terrible thing the world!" and he covered his face with his hands.
A flash shot into a mounded wood far away. "It stabbed it like a dagger!" stared Gourlay.
"Look, look, did ye see yon? It came down in a broad flash--then jerked to the side--then ran down to a sharp point again. It was like the coulter of a plough."
Suddenly a blaze of lightning flamed wide, and a fork shot down its centre.
"That," said Gourlay, "was like a red crack in a white-hot furnace door."
"Man, you're a noticing boy," said the baker.
"Ay," said John, smiling in curious self-interest, "I notice things too much. They give me pictures in my mind. I'm feared of them, but I like to think them over when they're by."
Boys are slow of confidence to their elders, but Gourlay's terror and the baker's kindness moved him to speak. In a vague way he wanted to explain.
"I'm no feared of folk," he went on, with a faint return to his swagger. "But things get in on me. A body seems so wee compared with that"--he nodded to the warring heavens.
The baker did not understand. "Have you seen your faither?" he asked.
"My faither!" John gasped in terror. If his father should find him playing truant!
"Yes; did ye no ken he was in Skeighan? We come up thegither by the ten train, and are meaning to gang hame by this. I expect him every moment."
John turned to escape. In the doorway stood his father.
When Gourlay was in wrath he had a widening glower that enveloped the offender; yet his eye seemed to stab--a flash shot from its centre to transfix and pierce. Gaze at a tiger through the bars of his cage, and you will see the look. It widens and concentrates at once.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, with the wild-beast glower on his son.
"I--I--I----" John stammered and choked.
"What are you doing here?" said his father.
John's fingers worked before him; his eyes were large and aghast on his father; though his mouth hung open no words would come.
"How lang has he been here, baker?"
There was a curious regard between Gourlay and the baker. Gourlay spoke with a firm civility.
"Oh, just a wee whilie," said the baker.
"I see. You want to shield him. --You have been playing the truant, have 'ee? Am I to throw away gude money on _you_ for this to be the end o't?"
"Dinna be hard on him, John," pleaded the baker. "A boy's but a boy. Dinna thrash him."
"Me thrash him!" cried Gourlay. "I pay the High School of Skeighan to thrash him, and I'll take damned good care I get my money's worth. I don't mean to hire dowgs and bark for mysell."
He grabbed his son by the coat collar and swung him out the room. Down High Street he marched, carrying his cub by the scruff of the neck as you might carry a dirty puppy to an outhouse. John was black in the face; time and again in his wrath Gourlay swung him off the ground. Grocers coming to their doors, to scatter fresh yellow sawdust on the old, now trampled black and wet on the sills, stared sideways, chins up and mouths open, after the strange spectacle. But Gourlay splashed on amid the staring crowd, never looking to the right or left.
Opposite the Fiddler's Inn whom should they meet but Wilson! A snigger shot to his features at the sight. Gourlay swung the boy up; for a moment a wild impulse surged within him to club his rival with his own son.
He marched into the vestibule of the High School, the boy dangling from his great hand.
"Where's your gaffer?" he roared at the janitor.
"Gaffer?" blinked the janitor.
"Gaffer, dominie, whatever the damn you ca' him--the fellow that runs the business."
"The Headmaster!" said the janitor.
"Heidmaister, ay," said Gourlay in scorn, and went trampling after the janitor down a long wooden corridor. A door was flung open showing a classroom where the Headmaster was seated teaching Greek.
The sudden appearance of the great-chested figure in the door, with his fierce, gleaming eyes, and the rain-beads shining on his frieze coat, brought into the close academic air the sharp, strong gust of an outer world.
"I believe I pay _you_ to look after that boy," thundered Gourlay. "Is this the way you do your work?" And with the word he sent his son spinning along the floor like a curling-stone, till he rattled, a wet, huddled lump, against a row of chairs. John slunk bleeding behind the master.
"Really?" said MacCandlish, rising in protest.
"Don't 'really' me, sir! I pay _you_ to teach that boy, and you allow him to run idle in the streets. What have you to seh?"
"But what can I do?" bleated MacCandlish, with a white spread of deprecating hands.
The stronger man took the grit from his limbs.
"Do--do? Damn it, sir, am _I_ to be _your_ dominie? Am _I_ to teach _you_ your duty? Do! Flog him, flog him, flog him! If you don't send him hame wi' the welts on him as thick as that forefinger, I'll have a word to say to you-ou, Misterr MacCandlish!"
He was gone--they heard him go clumping along the corridor.
Thereafter young Gourlay had to stick to his books. And, as we know, the forced union of opposites breeds the greater disgust between them. However, his school days would soon be over, and meanwhile it was fine to pose on his journeys to and fro as Young Hopeful of the Green Shutters.
He was smoking at Skeighan Station on an afternoon, as the Barbie train was on the point of starting. He was staying on the platform till the last moment, in order to show the people how nicely he could bring the smoke down his nostrils--his "Prince of Wales's feathers" he called the great, curling puffs. As he dallied, a little aback from an open window, he heard a voice which he knew mentioning the Gourlays. It was Templandmuir who was speaking.
"I see that Gourlay has lost his final appeal in that lawsuit of his," said the Templar.
"D'ye tell me that?" said a strange voice. Then--"Gosh, he must have lost infernal!"
"Atweel has he that," said Templandmuir. "The costs must have been enormous, and then there's the damages. He would have been better to settle't and be done wi't, but his pride made him fight it to the hindmost! It has made touch the boddom of his purse, I'll wager ye. Weel, weel, it'll help to subdue his pride a bit, and muckle was the need o' that."
Young Gourlay was seized with a sudden fear. The prosperity of the House with the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut off from his anchorage.
"Mother, are _we_ ever likely to be ill off?" he asked his mother that evening.
She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow fondly. He was as tall as herself now.
"No, no, dear; what makes ye think that? Your father has always had a grand business, and I brought a hantle money to the house."
"Hokey!" said the youth, "when Ah'm in the business Ah'll have the times!"
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{
"id": "25876"
}
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15
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Gourlay was hard up for money. Every day of his life taught him that he was nowhere in the stress of modern competition. The grand days--only a few years back, but seeming half a century away, so much had happened in between--the grand days when he was the only big man in the locality, and carried everything with a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, and the lawsuit with Gibson had crippled him. It was well for him that property in Barbie had increased in value; the House with the Green Shutters was to prove the buttress of his fortune. Already he had borrowed considerably upon that security; he was now dressing to go to Skeighan and get more.
"Brodie, Gurney, and Yarrowby" of Glasgow were the lawyers who financed him, and he had to sign some papers at Goudie's office ere he touched the cash.
He was meaning to drive, of course; Gourlay was proud of his gig, and always kept a spanking roadster. "What a fine figure of a man!" you thought, as you saw him coming swiftly towards you, seated high on his driving cushion. That driving cushion was Gourlay's pedestal from which he looked down on Barbie for many a day.
A quick step, yet shambling, came along the lobby. There was a pause, as of one gathering heart for a venture; then a clumsy knock on the door.
"Come in," snapped Gourlay.
Peter Riney's queer little old face edged timorously into the room. He only opened the door the width of his face, and looked ready to bolt at a word.
"Tam's deid!" he blurted.
Gourlay gashed himself frightfully with his razor, and a big red blob stood out on his cheek.
"Deid!" he stared.
"Yes," stammered Peter. "He was right enough when Elshie gae him his feed this morning; but when I went in enow to put the harness on, he was lying deid in the loose-box. The batts--it's like."
For a moment Gourlay stared with the open mouth of an angry surprise, forgetting to take down his razor.
"Aweel, Peter," he said at last, and Peter went away.
The loss of his pony touched Gourlay to the quick. He had been stolid and dour in his other misfortunes, had taken them as they came, calmly; he was not the man to whine and cry out against the angry heavens. He had neither the weakness nor the width of nature to indulge in the luxury of self-pity. But the sudden death of his gallant roadster, his proud pacer through the streets of Barbie, touched him with a sense of quite personal loss and bereavement. Coming on the heels of his other calamities it seemed to make them more poignant, more sinister, prompting the question if misfortune would never have an end.
"Damn it, I have enough to thole," Gourlay muttered; "surely there was no need for this to happen." And when he looked in the mirror to fasten his stock, and saw the dark, strong, clean-shaven face, he stared at it for a moment, with a curious compassion for the man before him, as for one who was being hardly used. The hard lips could never have framed the words, but the vague feeling in his heart, as he looked at the dark vision, was: "It's a pity of you, sir."
He put on his coat rapidly, and went out to the stable. An instinct prompted him to lock the door.
He entered the loose-box. A shaft of golden light, aswarm with motes, slanted in the quietness. Tam lay on the straw, his head far out, his neck unnaturally long, his limbs sprawling, rigid. What a spanker Tam had been! What gallant drives they had had together! When he first put Tam between the shafts, five years ago, he had been driving his world before him, plenty of cash and a big way of doing. Now Tam was dead, and his master netted in a mesh of care.
"I was always gude to the beasts, at any rate," Gourlay muttered, as if pleading in his own defence.
For a long time he stared down at the sprawling carcass, musing. "Tam the powney," he said twice, nodding his head each time he said it; "Tam the powney," and he turned away.
How was he to get to Skeighan? He plunged at his watch. The ten o'clock train had already gone, the express did not stop at Barbie; if he waited till one o'clock he would be late for his appointment. There was a brake, true, which ran to Skeighan every Tuesday. It was a downcome, though, for a man who had been proud of driving behind his own horseflesh to pack in among a crowd of the Barbie sprats. And if he went by the brake, he would be sure to rub shoulders with his stinging and detested foes. It was a fine day; like enough the whole jing-bang of them would be going with the brake to Skeighan. Gourlay, who shrank from nothing, shrank from the winks that would be sure to pass when they saw him, the haughty, the aloof, forced to creep among them cheek for jowl. Then his angry pride rushed towering to his aid. Was John Gourlay to turn tail for a wheen o' the Barbie dirt? Damn the fear o't! It was a public conveyance; he had the same right to use it as the rest o' folk!
The place of departure for the brake was the "Black Bull," at the Cross, nearly opposite to Wilson's. There were winks and stares and elbow-nudgings when the folk hanging round saw Gourlay coming forward; but he paid no heed. Gourlay, in spite of his mad violence when roused, was a man at all other times of a grave and orderly demeanour. He never splurged. Even his bluster was not bluster, for he never threatened the thing which he had not it in him to do. He walked quietly into the empty brake, and took his seat in the right-hand corner at the top, close below the driver.
As he had expected, the Barbie bodies had mustered in strength for Skeighan. In a country brake it is the privilege of the important men to mount beside the driver, in order to take the air and show themselves off to an admiring world. On the dickey were ex-Provost Connal and Sandy Toddle, and between them the Deacon, tightly wedged. The Deacon was so thin (the bodie) that, though he was wedged closely, he could turn and address himself to Tam Brodie, who was seated next the door.
The fun began when the horses were crawling up the first brae.
The Deacon turned with a wink to Brodie, and dropping a glance on the crown of Gourlay's hat, "Tummuth," he lisped, "what a dirty place that ith!" pointing to a hovel by the wayside.
Brodie took the cue at once. His big face flushed with a malicious grin. "Ay," he bellowed; "the owner o' that maun be married to a dirty wife, I'm thinking!"
"It must be terrible," said the Deacon, "to be married to a dirty trollop."
"Terrible," laughed Brodie; "it's enough to give ainy man a gurly temper."
They had Gourlay on the hip at last. More than arrogance had kept him off from the bodies of the town; a consciousness also that he was not their match in malicious innuendo. The direct attack he could meet superbly, downing his opponent with a coarse birr of the tongue; to the veiled gibe he was a quivering hulk, to be prodded at your ease. And now the malignants were around him (while he could not get away)--talking _to_ each other, indeed, but _at_ him, while he must keep quiet in their midst.
At every brae they came to (and there were many braes) the bodies played their malicious game, shouting remarks along the brake, to each other's ears, to his comprehension.
The new house of Templandmuir was seen above the trees.
"What a splendid house Templandmuir has built!" cried the ex-Provost.
"Splendid!" echoed Brodie. "But a laird like the Templar has a right to a fine mansion such as that! He's no' like some merchants we ken o' who throw away money on a house for no other end but vanity. Many a man builds a grand house for a show-off, when he has verra little to support it. But the Templar's different. He has made a mint of money since he took the quarry in his own hand."
"He's verra thick wi' Wilson, I notice," piped the Deacon, turning with a grin and a gleaming droop of the eye on the head of his tormented enemy. The Deacon's face was alive and quick with the excitement of the game, his face flushed with an eager grin, his eyes glittering. Decent folk in the brake behind felt compunctious visitings when they saw him turn with the flushed grin and the gleaming squint on the head of his enduring victim. "Now for another stab!" they thought.
"You may well say that," shouted Brodie. "Wilson has procured the whole of the Templar's carterage. Oh, Wilson has become a power! Yon new houses of his must be bringing in a braw penny. --I'm thinking, Mr. Connal, that Wilson ought to be the Provost!"
"Strange!" cried the former Head of the Town, "that _you_ should have been thinking that! I've just been in the same mind o't. Wilson's by far and away the most progressive man we have. What a business he has built in two or three years!"
"He has that!" shouted Brodie. "He goes up the brae as fast as some other folk are going down't. And yet they tell me he got a verra poor welcome from some of us the first morning he appeared in Barbie!"
Gourlay gave no sign. Others would have shown, by the moist glisten of self-pity in the eye, or the scowl of wrath, how much they were moved; but Gourlay stared calmly before him, his chin resting on the head of his staff, resolute, immobile, like a stone head at gaze in the desert. Only the larger fullness of his fine nostril betrayed the hell of wrath seething within him. And when they alighted in Skeighan an observant boy said to his mother, "I saw the marks of his chirted teeth through his jaw."
But they were still far from Skeighan, and Gourlay had much to thole.
"Did ye hear," shouted Brodie, "that Wilson is sending his son to the College at Embro in October?"
"D'ye tell me that?" said the Provost. "What a successful lad that has been! He's a credit to moar than Wilson; he's a credit to the whole town."
"Ay," yelled Brodie; "the money wasna wasted on _him_! It must be a terrible thing when a man has a splurging ass for his son, that never got a prize!"
The Provost began to get nervous. Brodie was going too far. It was all very well for Brodie, who was at the far end of the wagonette and out of danger; but if he provoked an outbreak, Gourlay would think nothing of tearing Provost and Deacon from their perch and tossing them across the hedge.
"What does Wilson mean to make of his son?" he inquired--a civil enough question surely.
"Oh, a minister. That'll mean six or seven years at the University."
"Indeed!" said the Provost. "That'll cost an enormous siller!"
"Oh," yelled Brodie, "but Wilson can afford it! It's not everybody can! It's all verra well to send your son to Skeighan High School, but when it comes to sending him to College, it's time to think twice of what you're doing--especially if you've little money left to come and go on."
"Yeth," lisped the Deacon; "if a man canna afford to College his son, he had better put him in hith business--if he hath ainy business left to thpeak o', that ith!"
The brake swung on through merry cornfields where reapers were at work, past happy brooks flashing to the sun, through the solemn hush of ancient and mysterious woods, beneath the great white-moving clouds and blue spaces of the sky. And amid the suave enveloping greatness of the world the human pismires stung each other and were cruel, and full of hate and malice and a petty rage.
"Oh, damn it, enough of this!" said the baker at last.
"Enough of what?" blustered Brodie.
"Of you and your gibes," said the baker, with a wry mouth of disgust. "Damn it, man, leave folk alane!"
Gourlay turned to him quietly. "Thank you, baker," he said slowly. "But don't interfere on my behalf! John Gourla"--he dwelt on his name in ringing pride--"John Gourla can fight for his own hand--if so there need to be. And pay no heed to the thing before ye. The mair ye tramp on a dirt it spreads the wider!"
"Who was referring to _you_?" bellowed Brodie.
Gourlay looked over at him in the far corner of the brake, with the wide-open glower that made people blink. Brodie blinked rapidly, trying to stare fiercely the while.
"Maybe ye werena referring to me," said Gourlay slowly. "But if _I_ had been in your end o' the brake _ye_ would have been in hell or this!"
He had said enough. There was silence in the brake till it reached Skeighan. But the evil was done. Enough had been said to influence Gourlay to the most disastrous resolution of his life.
"Get yourself ready for the College in October," he ordered his son that evening.
"The College!" cried John aghast.
"Yes! Is there ainything in that to gape at?" snapped his father, in sudden irritation at the boy's amaze.
"But I don't want to gang!" John whimpered as before.
"Want! what does it matter what _you_ want? You should be damned glad of the chance! I mean to make ye a minister; they have plenty of money and little to do--a grand, easy life o't. MacCandlish tells me you're a stupid ass, but have some little gift of words. You have every qualification!"
"It's against _my_ will," John bawled angrily. " _Your_ will!" sneered his father.
To John the command was not only tyrannical, but treacherous. There had been nothing to warn him of a coming change, for Gourlay was too contemptuous of his wife and children to inform them how his business stood. John had been brought up to go into the business, and now, at the last moment, he was undeceived, and ordered off to a new life, from which every instinct of his being shrank afraid. He was cursed with an imagination in excess of his brains, and in the haze of the future he saw two pictures with uncanny vividness--himself in bleak lodgings raising his head from Virgil, to wonder what they were doing at home to-night; and, contrasted with that loneliness, the others, his cronies, laughing along the country roads beneath the glimmer of the stars. They would be having the fine ploys while he was mewed up in Edinburgh. Must he leave loved Barbie and the House with the Green Shutters? must he still drudge at books which he loathed? must he venture on a new life where everything terrified his mind?
"It's a shame!" he cried. "And I refuse to go. I don't want to leave Barbie! I'm feared of Edinburgh," and there he stopped in conscious impotence of speech. How could he explain his forebodings to a rock of a man like his father?
"No more o't!" roared Gourlay, flinging out his hand--"not another word! You go to College in October!"
"Ay, man, Johnny," said his mother, "think o' the future that's before ye!"
"Ay," howled the youth in silly anger, "it's like to be a braw future!"
"It's the best future you can have!" growled his father.
For while rivalry, born of hate, was the propelling influence in Gourlay's mind, other reasons whispered that the course suggested by hate was a good one on its merits. His judgment, such as it was, supported the impulse of his blood. It told him that the old business would be a poor heritage for his son, and that it would be well to look for another opening. The boy gave no sign of aggressive smartness to warrant a belief that he would ever pull the thing together. Better make him a minister. Surely there was enough money left about the house for tha-at! It was the best that could befall him.
Mrs. Gourlay, for her part, though sorry to lose her son, was so pleased at the thought of sending him to college, and making him a minister, that she ran on in foolish maternal gabble to the wife of Drucken Webster. Mrs. Webster informed the gossips, and they discussed the matter at the Cross.
"Dod," said Sandy Toddle, "Gourlay's better off than I supposed!"
"Huts!" said Brodie, "it's just a wheen bluff to blind folk!"
"It would fit him better," said the Doctor, "if he spent some money on his daughter. She ought to pass the winter in a warmer locality than Barbie. The lassie has a poor chest! I told Gourlay, but he only gave a grunt. And 'oh,' said Mrs. Gourlay, 'it would be a daft-like thing to send _her_ away, when John maun be weel provided for the College.' D'ye know, I'm beginning to think there's something seriously wrong with yon woman's health! She seemed anxious to consult me on her own account, but when I offered to sound her she wouldn't hear of it. 'Na,' she cried, 'I'll keep it to mysell!' and put her arm across her breast as if to keep me off. I do think she's hiding some complaint! Only a woman whose mind was weak with disease could have been so callous as yon about her lassie."
"Oh, her mind's weak enough," said Sandy Toddle. "It was always that! But it's only because Gourlay has tyraneezed her verra soul. I'm surprised, however, that _he_ should be careless of the girl. He was aye said to be browdened upon _her_."
"Men-folk are often like that about lassie-weans," said Johnny Coe. "They like well enough to pet them when they're wee, but when once they're big they never look the road they're on! They're a' very fine when they're pets, but they're no sae fine when they're pretty misses. And, to tell the truth, Janet Gourlay's ainything but pretty!"
Old Bleach-the-boys, the bitter dominie (who rarely left the studies in political economy which he found a solace for his thwarted powers), happened to be at the Cross that evening. A brooding and taciturn man, he said nothing till others had their say. Then he shook his head.
"They're making a great mistake," he said gravely, "they're making a great mistake! Yon boy's the last youngster on earth who should go to College."
"Ay, man, dominie, he's an infernal ass, is he noat?" they cried, and pressed for his judgment.
At last, partly in real pedantry, partly with humorous intent to puzzle them, he delivered his astounding mind.
"The fault of young Gourlay," quoth he, "is a sensory perceptiveness in gross excess of his intellectuality."
They blinked and tried to understand.
"Ay, man, dominie!" said Sandy Toddle. "That means he's an infernal cuddy, dominie! Does it na, dominie?"
But Bleach-the-boys had said enough. "Ay," he said dryly, "there's a wheen gey cuddies in Barbie!" and he went back to his stuffy little room to study "The Wealth of Nations."
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The scion of the house of Gourlay was a most untravelled sprig when his father packed him off to the University. Of the world beyond Skeighan he had no idea. Repression of his children's wishes to see something of the world was a feature of Gourlay's tyranny, less for the sake of the money which a trip might cost (though that counted for something in his refusal) than for the sake of asserting his authority. "Wants to gang to Fechars, indeed! Let him bide at home," he would growl; and at home the youngster had to bide. This had been the more irksome to John since most of his companions in the town were beginning to peer out, with their mammies and daddies to encourage them. To give their cubs a "cast o' the world" was a rule with the potentates of Barbie; once or twice a year young Hopeful was allowed to accompany his sire to Fechars or Poltandie, or--oh, rare joy! --to the city on the Clyde. To go farther, and get the length of Edinburgh, was dangerous, because you came back with a halo of glory round your head which banded your fellows together in a common attack on your pretensions. It was his lack of pretension to travel, however, that banded them against young Gourlay. "Gunk" and "chaw" are the Scots for a bitter and envious disappointment which shows itself in face and eyes. Young Gourlay could never conceal that envious look when he heard of a glory which he did not share; and the youngsters noted his weakness with the unerring precision of the urchin to mark simple difference of character. Now the boy presses fiendishly on an intimate discovery in the nature of his friends, both because it gives him a new and delightful feeling of power over them, and also because he has not learned charity from a sense of his deficiencies, the brave ruffian having none. He is always coming back to probe the raw place, and Barbie boys were always coming back to "do a gunk" and "play a chaw" on young Gourlay by boasting their knowledge of the world, winking at each other the while to observe his grinning anger. They were large on the wonders they had seen and the places they had been to, while he grew small (and they saw it) in envy of their superiority. Even Swipey Broon had a crow at him. For Swipey had journeyed in the company of his father to far-off Fechars, yea even to the groset-fair, and came back with an epic tale of his adventures. He had been in fifteen taverns, and one hotel (a temperance hotel, where old Brown bashed the proprietor for refusing to supply him gin); one Pepper's Ghost; one Wild Beasts' Show; one Exhibition of the Fattest Woman on the Earth; also in the precincts of one jail, where Mr. Patrick Brown was cruelly incarcerate for wiping the floor with the cold refuser of the gin. "Criffens! Fechars!" said Swipey for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for the benefit of young Gourlay--for Swipey, though his name was the base Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink home to his mother and say, "Yah, even Swipey Broon has been to Fechars, though my faither 'ull no allow _me_!" "Never mind, dear," she would soothe him; "when once you're in the business, you'll gang a'where. And nut wan o' them has sic a business to gang intill!"
But though he longed to go here and there for a day, that he might be able to boast of it at home, young Gourlay felt that leaving Barbie for good would be a cutting of his heart-strings. Each feature of it, town and landward, was a crony of old years. In a land like Barbie, of quick hill and dale, of tumbled wood and fell, each facet of nature has an individuality so separate and so strong that if you live with it a little it becomes your friend, and a memory so dear that you kiss the thought of it in absence. The fields are not similar as pancakes; they have their difference; each leaps to the eye with a remembered and peculiar charm. That is why the heart of the Scot dies in flat southern lands; he lives in a vacancy; at dawn there is no Ben Agray to nod recognition through the mists. And that is why, when he gets north of Carlisle, he shouts with glee as each remembered object sweeps on the sight: yonder's the Nith with a fisherman hip-deep jigging at his rod, and yonder's Corsoncon with the mist on his brow. It is less the totality of the place than the individual feature that pulls at the heart, and it was the individual feature that pulled at young Gourlay. With intellect little or none, he had a vast, sensational experience, and each aspect of Barbie was working in his blood and brain. Was there ever a Cross like Barbie Cross? Was there ever a burn like the Lintie? It was blithe and heartsome to go birling to Skeighan in the train; it was grand to jouk round Barbie on the nichts at e'en! Even people whom he did not know he could locate with warm sure feelings of superiority. If a poor workman slouched past him on the road, he set him down in his heart as one of that rotten crowd from the Weaver's Vennel or the Tinker's Wynd. Barbie was in subjection to the mind of the son of the important man. To dash about Barbie in a gig, with a big dog walloping behind, his coat-collar high about his ears, and the reek of a meerschaum pipe floating white and blue many yards behind him, jovial and sordid nonsense about home--that had been his ideal. His father, he thought angrily, had encouraged the ideal, and now he forbade it, like the brute he was. From the earth in which he was rooted so deeply his father tore him, to fling him on a world he had forbidden him to know. His heart presaged disaster.
Old Gourlay would have scorned the sentimentality of seeing him off from the station, and Mrs. Gourlay was too feckless to propose it for herself. Janet had offered to convoy him, but when the afternoon came she was down with a racking cold. He was alone as he strolled on the platform--a youth well-groomed and well-supplied, but for once in his life not a swaggerer, though the chance to swagger was unique. He was pointed out as "Young Gourlay off to the College." But he had no pleasure in the rôle, for his heart was in his boots.
He took the slow train to Skeighan, where he boarded the express. Few sensational experiences were unknown to his too-impressionable mind, and he knew the animation of railway travelling. Coming back from Skeighan in an empty compartment on nights of the past, he had sometimes shouted and stamped and banged the cushions till the dust flew, in mere joy of his rush through the air; the constant rattle, the quick-repeated noise, getting at his nerves, as they get at the nerves of savages and Englishmen on Bank Holidays. But any animation of the kind which he felt to-day was soon expelled by the slow uneasiness welling through his blood. He had no eager delight in the unknown country rushing past; it inspired him with fear. He thought with a feeble smile of what Mysie Monk said when they took her at the age of sixty (for the first time in her life) to the top of Milmannoch Hill. "Eh," said Mysie, looking round her in amaze--"eh, sirs, it's a lairge place the world when you see it all!" Gourlay smiled because he had the same thought, but feebly, because he was cowering at the bigness of the world. Folded nooks in the hills swept past, enclosing their lonely farms; then the open straths, where autumnal waters gave a pale gleam to the sky. Sodden moors stretched away in vast patient loneliness. Then a gray smear of rain blotted the world, penning him in with his dejection. He seemed to be rushing through unseen space, with no companion but his own foreboding. "Where are you going to?" asked his mind, and the wheels of the train repeated the question all the way to Edinburgh, jerking it out in two short lines and a long one: "Where are you going to? Where are you going to? Ha, ha, Mr. Gourlay, where are you going to?"
It was the same sensitiveness to physical impression which won him to Barbie that repelled him from the outer world. The scenes round Barbie, so vividly impressed, were his friends, because he had known them from his birth; he was a somebody in their midst and had mastered their familiarity; they were the ministers of his mind. Those other scenes were his foes, because, realizing them morbidly in relation to himself, he was cowed by their big indifference to him, and felt puny, a nobody before them. And he could not pass them like more manly and more callous minds; they came burdening in on him whether he would or no. Neither could he get above them. Except when lording it at Barbie, he had never a quick reaction of the mind on what he saw; it possessed him, not he it.
About twilight, when the rain had ceased, his train was brought up with a jerk between the stations. While the rattle and bang continued it seemed not unnatural to young Gourlay (though depressing) to be whirling through the darkening land; it went past like a panorama in a dream. But in the dead pause following the noise he thought it "queer" to be sitting here in the intense quietude and looking at a strange and unfamiliar scene--planted in its midst by a miracle of speed, and gazing at it closely through a window! Two ploughmen from the farmhouse near the line were unyoking at the end of the croft; he could hear the muddy noise ("splorroch" is the Scotch of it) made by the big hoofs on the squashy head-rig. "Bauldy" was the name of the shorter ploughman, so yelled to by his mate; and two of the horses were "Prince and Rab"--just like a pair in Loranogie's stable. In the curtainless window of the farmhouse shone a leaping flame--not the steady glow of a lamp, but the tossing brightness of a fire--and thought he to himself, "They're getting the porridge for the men!" He had a vision of the woman stirring in the meal, and of the homely interior in the dancing firelight. He wondered who the folk were, and would have liked to know them. Yes, it was "queer," he thought, that he who left Barbie only a few hours ago should be in intimate momentary touch with a place and people he had never seen before. The train seemed arrested by a spell that he might get his vivid impression.
When ensconced in his room that evening he had a brighter outlook on the world. With the curtains drawn, and the lights burning, its shabbiness was unrevealed. After the whirling strangeness of the day he was glad to be in a place that was his own; here at least was a corner of earth of which he was master; it reassured him. The firelight dancing on the tea things was pleasant and homely, and the enclosing cosiness shut out the black roaring world that threatened to engulf his personality. His spirits rose, ever ready to jump at a trifle.
The morrow, however, was the first of his lugubrious time.
If he had been an able man he might have found a place in his classes to console him. Many youngsters are conscious of a vast depression when entering the portals of a university; they feel themselves inadequate to cope with the wisdom of the ages garnered in the solid walls. They envy alike the smiling sureness of the genial charlatan (to whom professors are a set of fools), and the easy mastery of the man of brains. They have a cowering sense of their own inefficiency. But the feeling of uneasiness presently disappears. The first shivering dip is soon forgotten by the hearty breaster of the waves. But ere you breast the waves you must swim; and to swim through the sea of learning was more than heavy-headed Gourlay could accomplish. His mind, finding no solace in work, was left to prey upon itself.
If he had been the ass total and complete he might have loafed in the comfortable haze which surrounds the average intelligence, and cushions it against the world. But in Gourlay was a rawness of nerve, a sensitiveness to physical impression, which kept him fretting and stewing, and never allowed him to lapse on a sluggish indifference.
Though he could not understand things, he could not escape them; they thrust themselves forward on his notice. We hear of poor genius cursed with perceptions which it can't express; poor Gourlay was cursed with impressions which he couldn't intellectualize. With little power of thought, he had a vast power of observation; and as everything he observed in Edinburgh was offensive and depressing, he was constantly depressed--the more because he could not understand. At Barbie his life, though equally void of mental interest, was solaced by surroundings which he loved. In Edinburgh his surroundings were appalling to his timid mind. There was a greengrocer's shop at the corner of the street in which he lodged, and he never passed it without being conscious of its trodden and decaying leaves. They were enough to make his morning foul. The middle-aged woman, who had to handle carrots with her frozen fingers, was less wretched than he who saw her, and thought of her after he went by. A thousand such impressions came boring in upon his mind and made him squirm. He could not toss them aside like the callous and manly; he could not see them in their due relation, and think them unimportant, like the able; they were always recurring and suggesting woe. If he fled to his room, he was followed by his morbid sense of an unpleasant world. He conceived a rankling hatred of the four walls wherein he had to live. Heavy Biblical pictures, in frames of gleaming black like the splinters of a hearse, were hung against a dark ground. Every time Gourlay raised his head he scowled at them with eyes of gloom. It was curious that, hating his room, he was loath to go to bed. He got a habit of sitting till three in the morning, staring at the dead fire in sullen apathy.
He was sitting at nine o'clock one evening, wondering if there was no means of escape from the wretched life he had to lead, when he received a letter from Jock Allan, asking him to come and dine.
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{
"id": "25876"
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That dinner was a turning-point in young Gourlay's career. It is lucky that a letter describing it has fallen into the hands of the patient chronicler. It was sent by young Jimmy Wilson to his mother. As it gives an idea--which is slightly mistaken--of Jock Allan, and an idea--which is very unmistakable--of young Wilson, it is here presented in the place of pride. It were a pity not to give a human document of this kind all the honour in one's power.
"Dear mother," said the wee sma' Scoatchman--so the hearty Allan dubbed him--"dear mother, I just write to inform you that I've been out to a grand dinner at Jock Allan's. He met me on Princes Street, and made a great how-d'ye-do. 'Come out on Thursday night, and dine with me,' says he, in his big way. So here I went out to see him. I can tell you he's a warmer! I never saw a man eat so much in all my born days--but I suppose he would be having more on his table than usual to show off a bit, knowing us Barbie boys would be writing home about it all. And drink! D'ye know, he began with a whole half tumbler of whisky, and how many more he had I really should _not_ like to say! And he must be used to it, too, for it seemed to have no effect on him whatever. And then he smoked and smoked--two great big cigars after we had finished eating, and then 'Damn it,' says he--he's an awful man to swear--'damn it,' he says, 'there's no satisfaction in cigars; I must have a pipe,' and he actually smoked _four_ pipes before I came away! I noticed the cigars were called 'Estorellas--Best Quality,' and when I was in last Saturday night getting an ounce of shag at the wee shoppie round the corner, I asked the price of 'these Estorellas.' 'Ninepence a piece!' said the bodie. Just imagine Jock Allan smoking eighteen-pence, and not being satisfied! He's up in the world since he used to shaw turnips at Loranogie for sixpence a day! But he'll come down as quick if he keeps on at yon rate. He made a great phrase with me; but though it keeps down one's weekly bill to get a meal like yon--I declare I wasn't hungry for two days--for all that I'll go very little about him. He'll be the kind that borrows money very fast--one of those harum-scarum ones!"
Criticism like that is a boomerang that comes back to hit the emitting skull with a hint of its kindred woodenness. It reveals the writer more than the written of. Allan was a bigger man than you would gather from Wilson's account of his Gargantuan revelry. He had a genius for mathematics--a gift which crops up, like music, in the most unexpected corners--and from plough-boy and herd he had become an actuary in Auld Reekie. Wilson had no need to be afraid, the meagre fool, for his host could have bought him and sold him.
Allan had been in love with young Gourlay's mother when she herself was a gay young fliskie at Tenshillingland, but his little romance was soon ended when Gourlay came and whisked her away. But she remained the one romance of his life. Now in his gross and jovial middle age he idealized her in memory (a sentimentalist, of course--he was Scotch); he never saw her in her scraggy misery to be disillusioned; to him she was still the wee bit lairdie's dochter, a vision that had dawned on his wretched boyhood, a pleasant and pathetic memory. And for that reason he had a curious kindness to her boy. That was why he introduced him to his boon companions. He thought he was doing him a good turn.
It was true that Allan made a phrase with a withered wisp of humanity like young Wilson. Not that he failed to see through him, for he christened him "a dried washing-clout." But Allan, like most great-hearted Scots far from their native place, saw it through a veil of sentiment; harsher features that would have been ever-present to his mind if he had never left it disappeared from view, and left only the finer qualities bright within his memory. And idealizing the place he idealized its sons. To him they had a value not their own, just because they knew the brig and the burn and the brae, and had sat upon the school benches. He would have welcomed a dog from Barbie. It was from a like generous emotion that he greeted the bodies so warmly on his visits home--he thought they were as pleased to see him as he was to see them. But they imputed false motives to his hearty greetings. Even as they shook his hand the mean ones would think to themselves: "What does he mean by this now? What's he up till? No doubt he'll be wanting something off me!" They could not understand the gusto with which the returned exile cried, "Ay, man, Jock Tamson, and how are ye?" They thought such warmth must have a sinister intention. --A Scot revisiting his native place ought to walk very quietly. For the parish is sizing him up.
There were two things to be said against Allan, and two only--unless, of course, you consider drink an objection. Wit with him was less the moment's glittering flash than the anecdotal bang; it was a fine old crusted blend which he stored in the cellars of his mind to bring forth on suitable occasions, as cob-webby as his wine. And it tickled his vanity to have a crowd of admiring youngsters round him to whom he might retail his anecdotes, and play the brilliant _raconteur_. He had cronies of his own years, and he was lordly and jovial amongst them--yet he wanted another _entourage_. He was one of those middle-aged bachelors who like a train of youngsters behind them, whom they favour in return for homage. The wealthy man who had been a peasant lad delighted to act the jovial host to sons of petty magnates from his home. Batch after batch as they came up to College were drawn around him--partly because their homage pleased him, and partly because he loved anything whatever that came out of Barbie. There was no harm in Allan--though when his face was in repose you saw the look in his eye at times of a man defrauding his soul. A robustious young fellow of sense and brains would have found in this lover of books and a bottle not a bad comrade. But he was the worst of cronies for a weak swaggerer like Gourlay. For Gourlay, admiring the older man's jovial power, was led on to imitate his faults, to think them virtues and a credit; and he lacked the clear, cool head that kept Allan's faults from flying away with him.
At dinner that night there were several braw, braw lads of Barbie Water. There were Tarmillan the doctor (a son of Irrendavie), Logan the cashier, Tozer the Englishman, old Partan--a guileless and inquiring mind--and half a dozen students raw from the west. The students were of the kind that goes up to College with the hayseed sticking in its hair. Two are in a Colonial Cabinet now, two are in the poorhouse. So they go.
Tarmillan was the last to arrive. He came in sucking his thumb, into which he had driven a splinter while conducting an experiment.
"I've a morbid horror of lockjaw," he explained. "I never get a jag from a pin but I see myself in the shape of a hoop, semicircular, with my head on one end of a table, my heels on the other, and a doctor standing on my navel trying to reduce the curvature."
"Gosh!" said Partan, who was a literal fool, "is that the treatment they purshoo?"
"That's the treatment!" said Tarmillan, sizing up his man. "Oh, it's a queer thing lockjaw! I remember when I was gold-mining in Tibet, one of our carriers who died of lockjaw had such a circumbendibus in his body that we froze him and made him the hoop of a bucket to carry our water in. You see he was a thin bit man, and iron was scarce."
"Ay, man!" cried Partan, "you've been in Tibet?"
"Often," waved Tarmillan, "often! I used to go there every summer."
Partan, who liked to extend his geographical knowledge, would have talked of Tibet for the rest of the evening--and Tarmie would have told him news--but Allan broke in.
"How's the book, Tarmillan?" he inquired.
Tarmillan was engaged on a treatise which those who are competent to judge consider the best thing of its kind ever written.
"Oh, don't ask me," he writhed. "Man, it's an irksome thing to write, and to be asked about it makes you squirm. It's almost as offensive to ask a man when his book will be out as to ask a woman when she'll be delivered. I'm glad you invited me--to get away from the confounded thing. It's become a blasted tyrant. A big work's a mistake; it's a monster that devours the brain. I neglect my other work for that fellow of mine; he bags everything I think. I never light on a new thing, but 'Hullo!' I cry, 'here's an idea for the book!' If you are engaged on a big subject, all your thinking works into it or out of it."
"M'yes," said Logan; "but that's a swashing way of putting it."
"It's the danger of the aphorism," said Allan, "that it states too much in trying to be small. --Tozer, what do you think?"
"I never was engaged on a big subject," sniffed Tozer.
"We're aware o' that!" said Tarmillan.
Tozer went under, and Tarmillan had the table. Allan was proud of him.
"Courage is the great thing," said he. "It often succeeds by the mere show of it. It's the timid man that a dog bites. Run _at_ him and he runs."
He was speaking to himself rather than the table, admiring the courage that had snubbed Tozer with a word. But his musing remark rang a bell in young Gourlay. By Jove, he had thought that himself, so he had! He was a hollow thing, he knew, but a buckram pretence prevented the world from piercing to his hollowness. The son of his courageous sire (whom he equally admired and feared) had learned to play the game of bluff. A bold front was half the battle. He had worked out his little theory, and it was with a shock of pleasure the timid youngster heard great Allan give it forth. He burned to let him know that he had thought that too.
To the youngsters, fat of face and fluffy of its circling down, the talk was a banquet of the gods. For the first time in their lives they heard ideas (such as they were) flung round them royally. They yearned to show that they were thinkers too. And Gourlay was fired with the rest.
"I heard a very good one the other day from old Bauldy Johnston," said Allan, opening his usual wallet of stories when the dinner was in full swing. At a certain stage of the evening "I heard a good one" was the invariable keynote of his talk. If you displayed no wish to hear the "good one," he was huffed. "Bauldy was up in Edinburgh," he went on, "and I met him near the Scott Monument and took him to Lockhart's for a dram. You remember what a friend he used to be of old Will Overton. I wasn't aware, by-the-bye, that Will was dead till Bauldy told me. ' _He was a great fellow my friend Will_,' he rang out in yon deep voice of his. ' _The thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him_.' Man, it made a quiver go down my spine."
"Oh, Bauldy has been a kenned phrase-maker for the last forty year," said Tarmillan. "But every other Scots peasant has the gift. To hear Englishmen talk, you would think Carlyle was unique for the word that sends the picture home--they give the man the credit of his race. But I've heard fifty things better than 'willowy man' in the stable a-hame on a wat day in hairst--fifty things better--from men just sitting on the corn-kists and chowing beans."
"I know a better one than that," said Allan. Tarmillan had told no story, you observe, but Allan was so accustomed to saying "I know a better one than that," that it escaped him before he was aware. "I remember when Bauldy went off to Paris on the spree. He kept his mouth shut when he came back, for he was rather ashamed o' the outburst. But the bodies were keen to hear. 'What's the incense like in Notre Dame?' said Johnny Coe, with his een big. ' _Burning stink! _' said Bauldy."
"I can cap that with a better one still," said Tarmillan, who wasn't to be done by any man. "I was with Bauldy when he quarrelled Tam Gibb of Hoochan-doe. Hoochan-doe's a yelling ass, and he threatened Bauldy--oh, he would do this, and he would do that, and he would do the other thing. ' _Damn ye, would ye threaten me? _' cried Bauldy. ' _I'll gar your brains jaup red to the heavens! _' And I 'clare to God, sirs, a nervous man looked up to see if the clouds werena spattered with the gore!"
Tozer cleared a sarcastic windpipe.
"Why do you clear your throat like that?" said Tarmillan--"like a craw with the croup, on a bare branch against a gray sky in November! If I had a throat like yours, I'd cut it and be done wi't." "I wonder what's the cause of that extraordinary vividness in the speech of the Scotch peasantry?" said Allan--more to keep the blades from bickering than from any wish to know.
"It comes from a power of seeing things vividly inside your mind," said a voice, timorous and wheezy, away down the table.
What cockerel was this crowing?
They turned, and beheld the blushing Gourlay.
But Tarmillan and Tozer were at it again, and he was snubbed. Jimmy Wilson sniggered, and the other youngsters enjoyed his discomfiture. Huh! What right has _he_ to set up his pipe?
His shirt stuck to his back. He would have liked the ground to open and swallow him.
He gulped a huge swill of whisky to cover his vexation; and oh, the mighty difference! A sudden courage flooded his veins. He turned with a scowl on Wilson, and, "What the devil are _you_ sniggering at?" he growled. Logan, the only senior who marked the byplay, thought him a hardy young spunkie.
The moment the whisky had warmed the cockles of his heart Gourlay ceased to care a rap for the sniggerers. Drink deadened his nervous perception of the critics on his right and left, and set him free to follow his idea undisturbed. It was an idea he had long cherished--being one of the few that ever occurred to him. He rarely made phrases himself--though, curiously enough, his father often did without knowing it--the harsh grind of his character producing a flash. But Gourlay was aware of his uncanny gift of visualization--or of "seeing things in the inside of his head," as he called it--and vanity prompted the inference, that this was the faculty that sprang the metaphor. His theory was now clear and eloquent before him. He was realizing for the first time in his life (with a sudden joy in the discovery) the effect of whisky to unloose the brain; sentences went hurling through his brain with a fluency that thrilled. If he had the ear of the company, now he had the drink to hearten him, he would show Wilson and the rest that he wasn't such a blasted fool! In a room by himself he would have spouted to the empty air.
Some such point he had reached in the hurrying jumble of his thoughts when Allan addressed him.
Allan did not mean his guest to be snubbed. He was a gentleman at heart, not a cad like Tozer; and this boy was the son of a girl whose laugh he remembered in the gloamings at Tenshillingland.
"I beg your pardon, John," he said in heavy benevolence--he had reached that stage--"I beg your pardon. I'm afraid you was interrupted."
Gourlay felt his heart a lump in his throat, but he rushed into speech.
"Metaphor comes from the power of seeing things in the inside of your head," said the unconscious disciple of Aristotle--"seeing them so vivid that you see the likeness between them. When Bauldy Johnston said 'the thumb-mark of his Maker was wet in the clay of him,' he _saw_ the print of a thumb in wet clay, and he _saw_ the Almighty making a man out of mud, the way He used to do in the Garden of Eden lang syne. So Bauldy flashed the two ideas together, and the metaphor sprang! A man'll never make phrases unless he can see things in the middle of his brain. _I_ can see things in the middle of my brain," he went on cockily--"anything I want to! I don't need to shut my eyes either. They just come up before me."
"Man, you're young to have noticed these things, John," said Jock Allan. "I never reasoned it out before, but I'm sure you're in the right o't." He spoke more warmly than he felt, because Gourlay had flushed and panted and stammered (in spite of inspiring bold John Barleycorn) while airing his little theory, and Allan wanted to cover him. But Gourlay took it as a tribute to his towering mind. Oh, but he was the proud mannikin. "Pass the watter!" he said to Jimmy Wilson, and Jimmy passed it meekly.
Logan took a fancy to Gourlay on the spot. He was a slow, sly, cosy man, with a sideward laugh in his eye, a humid gleam. And because his blood was so genial and so slow, he liked to make up to brisk young fellows, whose wilder outbursts might amuse him. They quickened his sluggish blood. No bad fellow, and good-natured in his heavy way, he was what the Scotch call a "slug for the drink." A "slug for the drink" is a man who soaks and never succumbs. Logan was the more dangerous a crony on that account. Remaining sober while others grew drunk, he was always ready for another dram, always ready with an oily chuckle for the sploring nonsense of his satellites. He would see them home in the small hours, taking no mean advantage over them, never scorning them because they "couldn't carry it," only laughing at their daft vagaries. And next day he would gurgle, "So-and-so was screwed last night, and, man, if you had heard his talk!" Logan had enjoyed it. He hated to drink by himself, and liked a splurging youngster with whom to go the rounds.
He was attracted to Gourlay by the manly way he tossed his drink, and by the false fire it put into him. But he made no immediate advance. He sat smiling in creeshy benevolence, beaming on Gourlay but saying nothing. When the party was ended, however, he made up to him going through the door.
"I'm glad to have met you, Mr. Gourlay," said he. "Won't you come round to the Howff for a while?"
"The Howff?" said Gourlay.
"Yes," said Logan; "haven't ye heard o't? It's a snug bit house where some of the West Country billies forgather for a nicht at e'en. Oh, nothing to speak of, ye know--just a dram and a joke to pass the time now and then!"
"Aha!" laughed Gourlay, "there's worse than a drink, by Jove. It puts smeddum in your blood!"
Logan nipped the guard of his arm in heavy playfulness and led him to the Howff.
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{
"id": "25876"
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Young Gourlay had found a means of escaping from his foolish mind. By the beginning of his second session he was as able a toper as a publican could wish. The somewhat sordid joviality of Allan's ring, their wit-combats that were somewhat crude, appeared to him the very acme of social intercourse. To emulate Logan and Allan was his aim. But drink appealed to him in many ways besides. Now when his too apprehensive nerves were frightened by bugbears in his lonely room he could be off to the Howff and escape them. And drink inspired him with false courage to sustain his pose as a hardy rollicker. He had acquired a kind of prestige since the night of Allan's party, and two of the fellows whom he met there--Armstrong and Gillespie--became his friends at College and the Howff. He swaggered before them as he had swaggered at school both in Barbie and Skeighan, and now there was no Swipey Broon to cut him over the coxcomb. Armstrong and Gillespie--though they saw through him--let him run on, for he was not bad fun when he was splurging. He found, too, when with his cronies that drink unlocked his mind, and gave a free flow to his ideas. Nervous men are often impotent of speech from very excess of perception; they realize not merely what they mean to say, but with the nervous antennæ of their minds they feel the attitude of every auditor. Distracted by lateral perceptions from the point ahead, they blunder where blunter minds would go forward undismayed. That was the experience of young Gourlay. If he tried to talk freely when sober, he always grew confused. But drink deadened the outer rim of his perception and left it the clearer in the middle for its concentration. In plainer language, when he was drunk he was less afraid of being laughed at, and free of that fear he was a better speaker. He was driven to drink, then, by every weakness of his character. As nervous hypochondriac, as would-be swaggerer, as a dullard requiring stimulus, he found that drink, to use his own language, gave him "smeddum."
With his second year he began the study of philosophy, and that added to his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years. But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that had always been a horror to his mind, became more horrible beneath the stimulus of futile thought. But whisky was the mighty cure. He was the gentleman who gained notoriety on a memorable occasion by exclaiming, "Metaphysics be damned; let us drink!" Omar and other bards have expressed the same conclusion in more dulcet wise. But Gourlay's was equally sincere. How sincere is another question.
Curiously, an utterance of "Auld Tam," one of his professors, half confirmed him in his evil ways.
"I am speaking now," said Tam, "of the comfort of a true philosophy, less of its higher aspect than its comfort to the mind of man. Physically, each man is highest on the globe; intellectually, the philosopher alone dominates the world. To him are only two entities that matter--himself and the Eternal; or, if another, it is his fellow-man, whom serving he serves the ultimate of being. But he is master of the outer world. The mind, indeed, in its first blank outlook on life is terrified by the demoniac force of nature and the swarming misery of man; by the vast totality of things, the cold remoteness of the starry heavens, and the threat of the devouring seas. It is puny in their midst."
Gourlay woke up, and the sweat broke on him. Great Heaven, had Tam been through it too!
"At that stage," quoth the wise man, "the mind is dispersed in a thousand perceptions and a thousand fears; there is no central greatness in the soul. It is assailed by terrors which men sunk in the material never seem to feel. Phenomena, uninformed by thought, bewilder and depress."
"Just like me!" thought Gourlay, and listened with a thrilling interest because it was "just like him."
"But the labyrinth," said Tam, with a ring in his voice as of one who knew--"the labyrinth cannot appal the man who has found a clue to its windings. A mind that has attained to thought lives in itself, and the world becomes its slave. Its formerly distracted powers rally home; it is central, possessing, not possessed. The world no longer frightens, being understood. Its sinister features are accidents that will pass away, and they gradually cease to be observed. For real thinkers know the value of a wise indifference. And that is why they are often the most genial men; unworried by the transient, they can smile and wait, sure of their eternal aim. The man to whom the infinite beckons is not to be driven from his mystic quest by the ambush of a temporal fear; there is no fear--it has ceased to exist. That is the comfort of a true philosophy--if a man accepts it not merely mechanically, from another, but feels it in breath and blood and every atom of his being. With a warm surety in his heart, he is undaunted by the outer world. That, gentlemen, is what thought can do for a man."
"By Jove," thought Gourlay, "that's what whisky does for me!"
And that, on a lower level, was what whisky did. He had no conception of what Tam really meant; there were people, indeed, who used to think that Tam never knew what he meant himself. They were as little able as Gourlay to appreciate the mystic, through the radiant haze of whose mind thoughts loomed on you sudden and big, like mountain tops in a sunny mist, the grander for their dimness. But Gourlay, though he could not understand, felt the fortitude of whisky was somehow akin to the fortitude described. In the increased vitality it gave he was able to tread down the world. If he walked on a wretched day in a wretched street, when he happened to be sober, his mind was hither and yon in a thousand perceptions and a thousand fears, fastening to (and fastened to) each squalid thing around. But with whisky humming in his blood he paced onward in a happy dream. The wretched puddles by the way, the frowning rookeries where misery squalled, the melancholy noises of the street, were passed unheeded by. His distracted powers rallied home; he was concentrate, his own man again, the hero of his musing mind. For, like all weak men of a vivid fancy, he was constantly framing dramas of which he was the towering lord. The weakling who never "downed" men in reality was always "downing" them in thought. His imaginary triumphs consoled him for his actual rebuffs. As he walked in a tipsy dream, he was "standing up" to somebody, hurling his father's phrases at him, making short work of _him_! If imagination paled, the nearest tavern supplied a remedy, and flushed it to a radiant glow. Whereupon he had become the master of his world, and not its slave.
"Just imagine," he thought, "whisky doing for me what philosophy seems to do for Tam. It's a wonderful thing the drink!"
His second session wore on, and when near its close Tam gave out the subject for the Raeburn.
The Raeburn was a poor enough prize--a few books for an "essay in the picturesque;" but it had a peculiar interest for the folk of Barbie. Twenty years ago it was won four years in succession by men from the valley; and the unusual run of luck fixed it in their minds. Thereafter when an unsuccessful candidate returned to his home, he was sure to be asked very pointedly, "Who won the Raeburn the year?" to rub into him their perception that he at least had been a failure. A bodie would dander slowly up, saying, "Ay, man, ye've won hame!" Then, having mused awhile, would casually ask, "By-the-bye, who won the Raeburn the year? Oh, it was a Perthshire man! It used to come our airt, but we seem to have lost the knack o't! Oh yes, sir, Barbie bred writers in those days, but the breed seems to have decayed." Then he would murmur dreamily, as if talking to himself, "Jock Goudie was the last that got it hereaway. But _he_ was a clever chap."
The caustic bodie would dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing soul. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the "fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to give him a fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student is never met at the station with a brass band, whatever may happen in more emotional districts of the North, where it pleases them to shed the tear.
"An Arctic Night" was the inspiring theme which Tam set for the Raeburn.
"A very appropriate subject!" laughed the fellows; "quite in the style of his own lectures." For Tam, though wise and a humorist, had his prosy hours. He used to lecture on the fifteen characteristics of Lady Macbeth (so he parcelled the unhappy Queen), and he would announce quite gravely, "We will now approach the discussion of the eleventh feature of the lady."
Gourlay had a shot at the Raeburn. He could not bring a radiant fullness of mind to bear upon his task (it was not in him to bring), but his morbid fancy set to work of its own accord. He saw a lonely little town far off upon the verge of Lapland night, leagues and leagues across a darkling plain, dark itself and little and lonely in the gloomy splendour of a Northern sky. A ship put to sea, and Gourlay heard in his ears the skirl of the man who went overboard--struck dead by the icy water on his brow, which smote the brain like a tomahawk.
He put his hand to his own brow when he wrote that, and, "Yes," he cried eagerly, "it would be the _cold_ would kill the brain! Ooh-ooh, how it would go in!"
A world of ice groaned round him in the night; bergs ground on each other and were rent in pain; he heard the splash of great fragments tumbled in the deep, and felt the waves of their distant falling lift the vessel beneath him in the darkness. To the long desolate night came a desolate dawn, and eyes were dazed by the encircling whiteness; yet there flashed green slanting chasms in the ice, and towering pinnacles of sudden rose, lonely and far away. An unknown sea beat upon an unknown shore, and the ship drifted on the pathless waters, a white dead man at the helm.
"Yes, by Heaven," cried Gourlay, "I can see it all, I can see it all--that fellow standing at the helm, frozen white and as stiff's an icicle!"
Yet, do what he might, he was unable to fill more than half a dozen small pages. He hesitated whether he should send them in, and held them in his inky fingers, thinking he would burn them. He was full of pity for his own inability. "I wish I was a clever chap," he said mournfully.
"Ach, well, I'll try my luck," he muttered at last, "though Tam may guy me before the whole class for doing so little o't." The Professor, however (unlike the majority of Scottish professors), rated quality higher than quantity.
"I have learned a great deal myself," he announced on the last day of the session--"I have learned a great deal myself from the papers sent in on the subject of an 'Arctic Night.'"
"Hear, hear!" said an insolent student at the back.
"Where, where?" said the Professor; "stand up, sir!"
A gigantic Borderer rose blushing into view, and was greeted with howls of derision by his fellows. Tam eyed him, and he winced.
"You will apologize in my private room at the end of the hour," said Aquinas, as the students used to call him. "Learn that this is not a place to bray in."
The giant slunk down, trying to hide himself.
"Yes," said Tam, "I have learned what a poor sense of proportion some of you students seem to have. It was not to see who could write the most, but who could write the best, that I set the theme. One gentleman--he has been careful to give me his full name and address," twinkled Tam, and picking up a huge manuscript he read it from the outer page, "Mr. Alexander MacTavish of Benmacstronachan, near Auchnapeterhoolish, in the island of South Uist--has sent me in no less than a hundred and fifty-three closely-written pages! I dare say it's the size of the adjectives he uses that makes the thing so heavy," quoth Tam, and dropped it thudding on his desk. "Life is short, the art of the MacTavish long, and to tell the truth, gentlemen"--he gloomed at them humorously--"to tell the truth, I stuck in the middle o't!" (Roars of laughter, and a reproving voice, "Oh, ta pold MacTa-avish!" whereat there was pandemonium). MacTavish was heard to groan, "Oh, why tid I leave my home!" to which a voice responded in mocking antiphone, "Why tid you cross ta teep?" The noise they made was heard at Holyrood.
When the tumult and the shouting died, Tam resumed with a quiver in his voice, for "ta pold MacTavish" had tickled him too. "Now, gentlemen," he said, "I don't judge essays by their weight, though I'm told they sometimes pursue that method in Glasgow!"
(Groans for the rival University, cries of "Oh-oh-oh!" and a weary voice, "Please, sir, don't mention that place; it makes me feel quite ill.")
The Professor allayed the tumult with dissuasive palm.
"I believe," he said dryly, "you call that noise of yours 'the College Tramp;' in the Senatus we speak o't as 'the Cuddies' Trudge.' Now gentlemen, I'm not unwilling to allow a little noise on the last day of the session, but really you must behave more quietly. --So little does that method of judging essays commend itself to me, I may tell you, that the sketch which I consider the best barely runs to half a dozen short pages."
Young Gourlay's heart gave a leap within him; he felt it thudding on his ribs. The skin crept on him, and he breathed with quivering nostrils. Gillespie wondered why his breast heaved.
"It's a curious sketch," said the Professor. "It contains a serious blunder in grammar and several mistakes in spelling, but it shows, in some ways, a wonderful imagination."
"Ho, ho!" thought Gourlay.
"Of course there are various kinds of imagination," said Tam. "In its lowest form it merely recalls something which the eyes have already seen, and brings it vividly before the mind. A higher form pictures something which you never saw, but only conceived as a possible existence. Then there's the imagination which not only sees but hears--actually hears what a man would say on a given occasion, and entering into his blood, tells you exactly why he does it. The highest form is both creative and consecrative, if I may use the word, merging in diviner thought. It irradiates the world. Of that high power there is no evidence in the essay before me. To be sure there was little occasion for its use."
Young Gourlay's thermometer went down.
"Indeed," said Aquinas, "there's a curious want of bigness in the sketch--no large nobility of phrase. It is written in gaspy little sentences, and each sentence begins 'and'--'and'--'and,' like a schoolboy's narrative. It's as if a number of impressions had seized the writer's mind, which he jotted down hurriedly, lest they should escape him. But, just because it's so little wordy, it gets the effect of the thing--faith, sirs, it's right on to the end of it every time! The writing of some folk is nothing but a froth of words--lucky if it glistens without, like a blobber of iridescent foam. But in this sketch there's a perception at the back of every sentence. It displays, indeed, too nervous a sense of the external world."
"Name, name!" cried the students, who were being deliberately worked by Tam to a high pitch of curiosity.
"I would strongly impress on the writer," said the shepherd, heedless of his bleating sheep--"I would strongly impress on the writer to set himself down for a spell of real, hard, solid, and deliberate thought. That almost morbid perception, with philosophy to back it, might create an opulent and vivid mind. Without philosophy it would simply be a curse. With philosophy it would bring thought the material to work on. Without philosophy it would simply distract and irritate the mind."
"Name, name!" cried the fellows.
"The winner of the Raeburn," said Thomas Aquinas, "is Mr. John Gourlay."
* * * * * Gourlay and his friends made for the nearest public-house. The occasion, they thought, justified a drink. The others chaffed Gourlay about Tam's advice.
"You know, Jack," said Gillespie, mimicking the sage, "what you have got to do next summer is to set yourself down for a spell of real, hard, solid, and deliberate thought. That was Tam's advice, you know."
"Him and his advice!" said Gourlay.
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There were only four other passengers dropped by the eleven o'clock express at Skeighan station, and, as it happened, young Gourlay knew them all. They were petty merchants of the neighbourhood whom he had often seen about Barbie. The sight of their remembered faces as he stepped on to the platform gave him a delightful sense that he was nearing home. He had passed from the careless world where he was nobody at all to the familiar circle where he was a somebody, a mentioned man, and the son of a mentioned man--young Mr. Gourlay!
He had a feeling of superiority to the others, too, because they were mere local journeyers, while he had travelled all the way from mighty Edinburgh by the late express. He was returning from the outer world, while they were bits of bodies who had only been to Fechars. As Edinburgh was to Fechars so was he to them. Round him was the halo of distance and the mystery of night-travelling. He felt big.
"Have you a match, Robert?" he asked very graciously of Robin Gregg, one of the porters whom he knew. Getting his match, he lit a cigarette; and when it was lit, after one quick puff, turned it swiftly round to examine its burning end. "Rotten!" he said, and threw it away to light another. The porters were watching him, and he knew it. When the stationmaster appeared yawning from his office, as he was passing through the gate, and asked who it was, it flattered his vanity to hear Robin's answer, that it was "young Mr. Gourlay of Barbie, just back from the Univ-ai-rsity!"
He had been so hot for home that he had left Edinburgh at twilight, too eager to wait for the morrow. There was no train for Barbie at this hour of the night; and, of course, there was no gig to meet him. Even if he had sent word of his coming, "There's no need for travelling so late," old Gourlay would have growled; "let him shank it. We're in no hurry to have him home."
He set off briskly, eager to see his mother and tell her he had won the Raeburn. The consciousness of his achievement danced in his blood, and made the road light to his feet. His thoughts were not with the country round him, but entirely in the moment of his entrance, when he should proclaim his triumph, with proud enjoyment of his mother's pride. His fancy swept to his journey's end, and took his body after, so that the long way was as nothing, annihilate by the leap forward of his mind.
He was too vain, too full of himself and his petty triumph, to have room for the beauty of the night. The sky was one sea of lit cloud, foamy ridge upon ridge over all the heavens, and each wave was brimming with its own whiteness, seeming unborrowed of the moon. Through one peep-hole, and only one, shone a distant star, a faint white speck far away, dimmed by the nearer splendours of the sky. Sometimes the thinning edge of a cloud brightened in spume, and round the brightness came a circle of umber, making a window of fantastic glory for Dian the queen; there her white vision peeped for a moment on the world, and the next she was hid behind a fleecy veil, witching the heavens. Gourlay was alone with the wonder of the night. The light from above him was softened in a myriad boughs, no longer mere light and cold, but a spirit indwelling as their soul, and they were boughs no longer but a woven dream. He walked beneath a shadowed glory. But he was dead to it all. One only fact possessed him. He had won the Raeburn--he had won the Raeburn! The road flew beneath him.
Almost before he was aware, the mean gray streets of Barbie had clipped him round. He stopped, panting from the hurry of his walk, and looked at the quiet houses, all still among the gloom. He realized with a sudden pride that he alone was in conscious possession of the town. Barbie existed to no other mind. All the others were asleep; while he had a thrilling consciousness of them and of their future attitude to him, they did not know that he, the returning great one, was present in their midst. They all knew of the Raeburn, however, and ere long they would know that it was his. He was glad to hug his proud secret in presence of the sleeping town, of which he would be the talk to-morrow. How he would surprise them! He stood for a little, gloating in his own sensations. Then a desire to get home tugged him, and he scurried up the long brae.
He stole round the corner of the House with the Green Shutters. Roger, the collie, came at him with a bow-wow-wow. "Roger!" he whispered, and cuddled him, and the old loyalist fawned on him and licked his hand. The very smell of the dog was couthie in his nose.
The window of a bedroom went up with a crash.
"Now, then, who the devil are you?" came the voice of old Gourlay.
"It's me, faither," said John.
"Oh, it's you, is it? This is a fine time o' night to come home."
"Faither, I have--I have won the Raeburn!"
"It'll keep, my mannie, it'll keep"--and the window slammed.
Next moment it was up.
"Did young Wilson get onything?" came the eager cry.
"Nut him!" said John.
"Fine, man! Damned, sir, I'm proud o' ye!"
John went round the corner treading on air. For the first time in his life his father had praised him.
He peeped through a kink at the side of the kitchen blind, where its descent was arrested by a flowerpot in the corner of the window-sill. As he had expected, though it was long past midnight, his mother was not yet in bed. She was folding a white cloth over her bosom, and about her, on the backs of chairs, there were other such cloths, drying by the fire. He watched her curiously; once he seemed to hear a whimpering moan. When she buttoned her dress above the cloth, she gazed sadly at the dying embers--the look of one who has gained short respite from a task of painful tendance on the body, yet is conscious that the task and the pain are endless, and will have to be endured, to-morrow and to-morrow, till she dies. It was the fixed gaze of utter weariness and apathy. A sudden alarm for his mother made John cry her name.
She flew to the door, and in a moment had him in her arms. He told his news, and basked in her adoration.
She came close to him, and "John," she said in a smiling whisper, big-eyed, "John," she breathed, "would ye like a dram?" It was as if she was propounding a roguish plan in some dear conspiracy.
He laughed. "Well," he said, "seeing we have won the Raeburn, you and I, I think we might."
He heard her fumbling in the distant pantry. He smiled to himself as he listened to the clinking glass, and, "By Jove," said he, "a mother's a fine thing!"
"Where's Janet?" he asked when she returned. He wanted another worshipper.
"Oh, she gangs to bed the moment it's dark," his mother complained, like one aggrieved. "She's always saying that she's ill. I thocht when she grew up that she might be a wee help, but she's no use at all. And I'm sure, if a' was kenned, I have more to complain o' than she has. Atweel ay," she said, and stared at the embers.
It rarely occurs to young folk who have never left their homes that their parents may be dying soon; from infancy they have known them as established facts of nature like the streams and hills; they expect them to remain. But the young who have been away for six months are often struck by a tragic difference in their elders on returning home. To young Gourlay there was a curious difference in his mother. She was almost beautiful to-night. Her blue eyes were large and glittering, her ears waxen and delicate, and her brown hair swept low on her blue-veined temples. Above and below her lips there was a narrow margin of the purest white.
"Mother," he said anxiously, "you're not ill, are ye? What do ye need so many wee clouts for?"
She gasped and started. "They're just a wheen clouts I was sorting out," she faltered. "No, no, dear, there's noathing wrong wi' me."
"There's one sticking in your blouse," said he, and pointed to her slack breast.
She glanced nervously down and pushed it farther in.
"I dare say I put it there when I wasna thinking," she explained.
But she eyed him furtively to see if he were still looking.
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There is nothing worse for a weakling than a small success. The strong man tosses it beneath his feet as a step to rise higher on. He squeezes it into its proper place as a layer in the life he is building. If his memory dwells on it for a moment, it is only because of its valuable results, not because in itself it is a theme for vanity. And if he be higher than strong he values not it, but the exercise of getting it; viewing his actual achievement, he is apt to reflect, "Is this pitiful thing, then, all that I toiled for?" Finer natures often experience a keen depression and sense of littleness in the pause that follows a success. But the fool is so swollen by thought of his victory that he is unfit for all healthy work till somebody jags him and lets the gas out. He never forgets the great thing he fancies he did thirty years ago, and expects the world never to forget it either. The more of a weakling he is, and the more incapable of repeating his former triumph, the more he thinks of it; and the more he thinks of it the more it satisfies his meagre soul, and prevents him essaying another brave venture in the world. His petty achievement ruins him. The memory of it never leaves him, but swells to a huge balloon that lifts him off his feet and carries him heavens-high--till it lands him on a dunghill. Even from that proud eminence he oft cock-a-doodles his former triumph to the world. "Man, you wouldn't think to see me here that I once held a great position. Thirty year back I did a big thing. It was like this, ye see." And then follows a recital of his faded glories--generally ending with a hint that a drink would be very acceptable.
Even such a weakling was young Gourlay. His success in Edinburgh, petty as it was, turned his head, and became one of the many causes working to destroy him. All that summer at Barbie he swaggered and drank on the strength of it.
On the morning after his return he clothed himself in fine raiment (he was always well dressed till the end came), and sallied forth to dominate the town. As he swaggered past the Cross, smoking a cigarette, he seemed to be conscious that the very walls of the houses watched him with unusual eyes, as if even they felt that yon was John Gourlay whom they had known as a boy, proud wearer now of the academic wreath, the conquering hero returned to his home. So Gourlay figured them. He, the disconsidered, had shed a lustre on the ancient walls. They were tributaries to his new importance--somehow their attitude was different from what it had ever been before. It was only his self-conscious bigness, of course, that made even inanimate things seem the feeders of his greatness. As Gourlay, always alive to obscure emotions which he could never express in words, mused for a moment over the strange new feeling that had come to him, a gowsterous voice hailed him from the Black Bull door. He turned, and Peter Wylie, hearty and keen like his father, stood him a drink in honour of his victory, which was already buzzed about the town.
Drucken Wabster's wife had seen to that. "Ou," she cried, "his mother's daft about it, the silly auld thing; she can speak o' noathing else. Though Gourlay gies her very little to come and go on, she slipped him a whole sovereign this morning, to keep his pouch. Think o' that, kimmers; heard ye ever sic extravagance! I saw her doin'd wi' my own eyes. It's aince wud and aye waur[6] wi' her, I'm thinking. But the wastefu' wife's the waefu' widow, she should keep in mind. She's far owre browdened upon yon boy. I'm sure I howp good may come o't, but----" and with an ominous shake of the head she ended the Websterian harangue.
When Peter Wylie left him Gourlay lit a cigarette and stood at the Cross, waiting for the praises yet to be. The Deacon toddled forward on his thin shanks.
"Man Dyohn, you're won hame, I thee. Ay, man! And how are ye?"
Gourlay surveyed him with insolent, indolent eyes. "Oh, I'm all rai-ight, Deacon," he swaggered; "how are ye-ow?" and he sent a puff of tobacco smoke down through his nostrils.
"I declare!" said the Deacon. "I never thaw onybody thmoke like that before! That'll be one of the thingth ye learn at College, no doubt."
"Ya-as," yawned Gourlay; "it gives you the full flavour of the we-eed."
The Deacon glimmered over him with his eyes. "The weed," said he. "Jutht tho! Imphm. The weed."
Then worthy Mister Allardyce tried another opening. "But, dear me!" he cried, "I'm forgetting entirely. I must congratulate ye. Ye've been doing wonderth, they tell me, up in Embro."
"Just a little bit," swaggered Gourlay, right hand on outshot hip, left hand flaunting a cigarette in air most delicate, tobacco smoke curling from his lofty nose. He looked down his face at the Deacon. "Just a little bit, Mr. Allardyce, just a little bit. I tossed the thing off in a twinkling."
"Ay man, Dyohn," said the Deacon with great solicitude; "but you maunna work that brain o' yours too hard, though. A heid like yours doesna come through the hatter's hand ilka day o' the week; you mutht be careful not to put too great a thtrain on't. Ay, ay; often the best machine's the easiest broken and the warst to mend. You should take a rest and enjoy yourself. But there! what need I be telling _you_ that? A College-bred man like you kenth far better about it than a thilly auld country bodie! You'll be meaning to have a grand holiday and lots o' fun--a dram now and then, eh, and mony a rattle in the auld man's gig?"
At this assault on his weak place Gourlay threw away his important manner with the end of his cigarette. He could never maintain the lofty pose for more than five minutes at a time.
"You're _right_, Deacon," he said, nodding his head with splurging sincerity. "I mean to have a demned good holiday. One's glad to get back to the old place after six months in Edinburgh."
"Atweel," said the Deacon. "But, man, have you tried the new whisky at the Black Bull? --I thaw ye in wi' Pate Wylie. It'th extr'ornar gude--thaft as the thang o' a mavis on a nicht at e'en, and fiery as a Highland charge." --It was not in character for the Deacon to say such a thing, but whisky makes the meanest of Scots poetical. He elevates the manner to the matter, and attains the perfect style. --"But no doubt," the cunning old prier went on, with a smiling suavity in his voice--"but no doubt a man who knowth Edinburgh tho well as you will have a favourite blend of hith own. I notice that University men have a fine taste in thpirits."
"I generally prefer 'Kinblythmont's Cure,'" said Gourlay, with the air of a connoisseur. "But 'Anderson's Sting o' Delight' 's very good, and so's 'Balsillie's Brig o' the Mains.'"
"Ay," said the Deacon. "Ay, ay! 'Brig o' the Mains' ith what Jock Allan drinks. He'll pree noathing else. I dare thay you thee a great deal of him in Embro."
"Oh, every week," swaggered Gourlay. "We're always together, he and I." "Alwayth thegither!" said the Deacon.
It was not true that Allan and Gourlay were together at all times. Allan was kind to Jean Richmond's son (in his own ruinous way), but not to the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week. Gourlay was merely boasting--as young blades are apt to do of acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John failed to see that Allardyce was scooping him out like an oyster.
"Ay man," resumed the Deacon; "he's a hearty fellow, Jock. No doubt you have the great thprees?"
"Sprees!" gurgled Gourlay, and flung back his head with a laugh. "I should think we have. There was a great foy at Allan's the night before I left Edinburgh. Tarmillan was there--d'ye know, yon's the finest fellow I ever met in my life! --and Bauldy Logan--he's another great chap. Then there was Armstrong and Gillespie--great friends of mine, and damned clever fellows they are, too, I can tell you. Besides us three there were half a dozen more from the College. You should have heard the talk! And every man-jack was as drunk as a lord. The last thing I remember is some of us students dancing round a lamp-post while Logan whistled a jig."
Though Gourlay the elder hated the Deacon, he had never warned his son to avoid him. To have said "Allardyce is dangerous" would have been to pay the old malignant too great a compliment; it would have been beneath John Gourlay to admit that a thing like Allardyce could harm him and his. Young Gourlay, therefore, when once set agoing by the Deacon's deft management, blurted everything without a hanker. Even so, however, he felt that he had gone too far. He glanced anxiously at his companion. "Mum's the word about this, of course," he said with a wink. "It would never do for this to be known about the 'Green Shutters.'"
"Oh, I'm ath thound ath a bell, Dyohn, I'm ath thound ath a bell," said the Deacon. "Ay, man! You jutht bear out what I have alwayth underthood about the men o' brainth. They're the heartiest devilth after a'. Burns, that the baker raves so muckle o', was jutht another o' the thame--jutht another o' the thame. We'll be hearing o' you boys--Pate Wylie and you and a wheen mair--having rare ploys in Barbie through the thummer."
"Oh, we'll kick up a bit of a dust," Gourlay sniggered, well pleased. Had not the Deacon ranked him in the robustious great company of Burns! "I say, Deacon, come in and have a nip."
"There's your faither," grinned the Deacon.
"Eh? what?" cried Gourlay in alarm, and started round, to see his father and the Rev. Mr. Struthers advancing up the Fechars Road. "Eh--eh--Deacon--I--I'll see you again about the nip."
"Jutht tho," grinned the Deacon. "We'll postpone the drink to a more convenient opportunity."
He toddled away, having no desire that old Gourlay should find him talking to his son. If Gourlay suspected him of pulling the young fellow's leg, likely as not he would give an exhibition of his demned unpleasant manners.
Gourlay and the minister came straight towards the student. Of the Rev. Mr. Struthers it may be said with truth that he would have cut a remarkable figure in any society. He had big splay feet, short stout legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity that all the droppings of his spoon--which were many--were caught on the round of his black waistcoat, which always looked as if it had just been spattered by a gray shower. His eyebrows were bushy and white, and the hairs slanting up and out rendered the meagre brow even narrower than it was. His complexion, more especially in cold weather, was a dark crimson. The purply colour of his face was intensified by the pure whiteness of the side whiskers projecting stiffly by his ears, and in mid-week, when he was unshaven, his redness revealed more plainly, in turn, the short gleaming stubble that lay like rime on his chin. His eyes goggled, and his manner at all times was that of a staring and earnest self-importance. "Puffy Importance" was one of his nicknames.
Struthers was a man of lowly stock who, after a ten years' desperate battle with his heavy brains, succeeded at the long last of it in passing the examinations required for the ministry. The influence of a wealthy patron then presented him to Barbie. Because he had taken so long to get through the University himself, he constantly magnified the place in his conversation, partly to excuse his own slowness in getting through it, partly that the greater glory might redound on him who had conquered it at last, and issued from its portals a fat and prosperous alumnus. Stupid men who have mastered a system, not by intuition but by a plodding effort of slow years, always exaggerate its importance--did it not take them ten years to understand it? Whoso has passed the system, then, is to their minds one of a close corporation, of a select and intellectual few, and entitled to pose before the uninitiate. Because their stupidity made the thing difficult, their vanity leads them to exalt it. Woe to him that shall scoff at any detail! To Struthers the Senatus Academicus was an august assemblage worthy of the Roman Curia, and each petty academic rule was a law sacrosanct and holy. He was for ever talking of the "Univairsity." "Mind ye," he would say, "it takes a long time to understand even the workings of the Univairsity--the Senatus and such-like; it's not for every one to criticize." He implied, of course, that he had a right to criticize, having passed triumphant through the mighty test. This vanity of his was fed by a peculiar vanity of some Scots peasants, who like to discuss Divinity Halls, and so on, because to talk of these things shows that they too are intelligent men, and know the awful intellectual ordeal required of a "Meenister." When a peasant says, "He went through his Arts course in three years, and got a kirk the moment he was licensed," he wants you to see that he's a smart man himself, and knows what he's talking of. There were several men in Barbie who liked to talk in that way, and among them Puffy Importance, when graciously inclined, found ready listeners to his pompous blether about the "Univairsity." But what he liked best of all was to stop a newly-returned student in full view of the people, and talk learnedly of his courses--dear me, ay--of his courses, and his matriculations, and his lectures, and his graduations, and his thingumbobs. That was why he bore down upon our great essayist.
"Allow me to congratulate you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye have indeed. Ex-cellently well--ex-cellently well!"
Gourlay blushed and thanked him.
"Tell me now," said the cleric, "do you mean to take your Arts course in three years or four? A loang Arts course is a grand thing for a clairgyman. Even if he spends half a dozen years on't he won't be wasting his time!"
Gourlay glanced at his father. "I mean to try't in three," he said. His father had threatened him that he must get through his Arts in three years--without deigning, of course, to give any reason for the threat.
"We-ell," said Mr. Struthers, gazing down the Fechars Road, as if visioning great things, "it will require a strenuous and devoted application--a strenuous and devoted application--even from the man of abeelity you have shown yourself to be. Tell me now," he went on, "have ye heard ainything of the new Professor of Exegesis? D'ye know how he's doing?"
Young Gourlay knew nothing of the new Professor of Exegesis, but he answered, "Very well, I believe," at a venture.
"Oh, he's sure to do well, he's sure to do well! He's one of the best men we have in the Church. I have just finished his book on the Epheesians. It's most profound! It has taken me a whole year to master it." ("Garvie on the Ephesians" is a book of a hundred and eighty pages.) "And, by the way," said the parson, stooping to Scotch in his ministerial jocoseness, "how's auld Tam, in whose class you were a prize-winner? He was appointed to the professoriate the same year that I obtained my licence. I remember to have heard him deliver a lecture on German philosophy, and I thought it excellently good. But perhaps," he added, with solemn and pondering brows--"perhaps he was a little too fond of Hegel. Yess, I am inclined to think that he was a little too fond of Hegel." Mrs. Eccles, listening from the Black Bull door, wondered if Hegel was a drink.
"He's very popular," said young Gourlay.
"Oh, he's sure to be popular; he merits the very greatest popple-arity. And he would express himself as being excellently well pleased with your theme? What did he say of it, may I venture to inquire?"
Beneath the pressure of his father's presence young Gourlay did not dare to splurge. "He seemed to think there was something in it," he answered, modestly enough.
"Oh, he would be sure to think there was something in it," said the minister, staring, and wagging his pow. "Not a doubt of tha-at, not a doubt of tha-at! There must have been something in it to obtain the palm of victory in the face of such prodigious competeetion. It's the see-lect intellect of Scotland that goes to the Univairsity, and only the ee-lect of the see-lect win the palm. And it's an augury of great good for the future. Abeelity to write is a splendid thing for the Church. Good-bye, John, and allow me to express once moar my great satisfaction that a pareeshioner of mine is a la-ad of such brilliant promise!"
Though the elder Gourlay disconsidered the Church, and thought little of Mr. Struthers, he swelled with pride to think that the minister should stop his offspring in the Main Street of Barbie, to congratulate him on his prospects. They were close to the Emporium, and with the tail of his eye he could see Wilson peeping from the door and listening to every word. This would be a hair in Wilson's neck! There were no clerical compliments for _his_ son! The tables were turned at last.
His father had a generous impulse to John for the bright triumph he had won the Gourlays. He fumbled in his trouser pocket, and passed him a sovereign.
"I'm kind o' hard-up," he said, with grim jocosity, "but there's a pound to keep your pouch. No nonsense now!" he shot at the youth with a loaded eye. "That's just for use if you happen to be in company. A Gourlay maun spend as much as the rest o' folk."
"Yes, faither," said the youngster, and Gourlay went away.
That grimly-jocose reference to his poverty was a feature of Gourlay's talk now, when he spoke of money to his family. It excused the smallness of his doles, yet led them to believe that he was only joking--that he had plenty of money if he would only consent to shell it out. And that was what he wished them to believe. His pride would not allow him to confess, even to his nearest, that he was a failure in business, and hampered with financial trouble. Thus his manner of warning them to be careful had the very opposite effect. "He has heaps o' cash," thought the son, as he watched the father up the street; "there's no need for a fellow to be mean."
Flattered (as he fondly imagined) by the Deacon, flattered by the minister, tipped by his mother, tipped by his father, hail-fellow-well-met with Pate Wylie--Lord, but young Gourlay was the fine fellow! Symptoms of swell-head set in with alarming rapidity. He had a wild tendency to splurge. And, that he might show in a single afternoon all the crass stupidity of which he was capable, he immediately allowed himself a veiled insult towards the daughters of the ex-Provost. They were really nice girls, in spite of their parentage, and as they came down the street they glanced with shy kindness at the student from under their broad-brimmed hats. Gourlay raised his in answer to their nod. But the moment after, and in their hearing, he yelled blatantly to Swipey Broon to come on and have a drink of beer. Swipey was a sweep now, for Brown the ragman had added chimney-cleaning to his other occupations--plurality of professions, you observe, being one of the features of the life of Barbie. When Swipey turned out of the Fleckie Road he was as black as the ace of spades, a most disreputable phiz. And when Gourlay yelled his loud welcome to that grimy object, what he wanted to convey to the two girls was: "Ho, ho, my pretty misses, I'm on bowing terms with you, and yet when I might go up and speak to ye, I prefer to go off and drink with a sweep, d'ye see? That shows what I think o' ye!" All that summer John took an oblique revenge on those who had disconsidered the Gourlays, but would have liked to make up to him now when they thought he was going to do well--he took a paltry revenge by patently rejecting their advances and consorting instead, and in their presence, with the lowest of low company. Thus he vented a spite which he had long cherished against them for their former neglect of Janet and him. For though the Gourlay children had been welcome at well-to-do houses in the country, their father's unpopularity had cut them off from the social life of the town. When the Provost gave his grand spree on Hogmanay there was never an invitation for the Gourlay youngsters. The slight had rankled in the boy's mind. Now, however, some of the local bigwigs had an opinion (with very little to support it) that he was going to be a successful man, and they showed a disposition to be friendly. John, with a rankling memory of their former coldness, flouted every overture, by letting them see plainly that he preferred to their company that of Swipey Broon, Jock M'Craw, and every ragamuffin of the town. It was a kind of back-handed stroke at them. That was the paltry form which his father's pride took in him. He did not see that he was harming himself rather than his father's enemies. Harm himself he did, for you could not associate with Jock M'Craw and the like without drinking in every howff you came across.
When the bodies assembled next day for their "morning," the Deacon was able to inform them that young Gourlay was back from the College, dafter than ever, and that he had pulled his leg as far as he wanted it. "Oh," he said, "I played him like a kitten wi' a cork, and found out ainything and everything I wished. I dithcovered that he's in wi' Jock Allan and that crowd--I edged the conversation round on purpoth! Unless he wath blowing his trump--which I greatly doubt--they're as thick as thieveth. Ye ken what that meanth. He'll turn hith wee finger to the ceiling oftener than he puts hith forefinger to the pen, I'm thinking. It theemth he drinkth enormuth! He took a gey nip last thummer, and this thummer I wager he takes mair o't. He avowed his plain intention. 'I mean to kick up a bit of a dust,' thays he. Oh, but he's the splurge!"
"Ay, ay," said Sandy Toddle, "thae students are a gey squad--especially the young ministers."
"Ou," said Tam Wylie, "dinna be hard on the ministers. Ministers are just like the rest o' folk. They mind me o' last year's early tatties. They're grand when they're gude, but the feck o' them's frostit."
"Ay," said the Deacon, "and young Gourlay's frostit in the shaw already. I doubt it'll be a poor ingathering."
"Weel, weel," said Tam Wylie, "the mair's the pity o' that, Deacon."
"Oh, it'th a grai-ait pity," said the Deacon, and he bowed his body solemnly with outspread hands. "No doubt it'th a grai-ait pity!" and he wagged his head from side to side, the picture of a poignant woe.
"I saw him in the Black Bull yestreen," said Brodie, who had been silent hitherto in utter scorn of the lad they were speaking of--too disgusted to open his mouth. "He was standing drinks to a crowd that were puffing him up about that prize o' his."
"It's alwayth the numskull hath the most conceit," said the Deacon.
"And yet there must be something in him too, to get that prize," mused the ex-Provost.
"A little ability's a dangerous thing," said Johnny Coe, who could think at times. "To be safe you should be a genius winged and flying, or a crawling thing that never leaves the earth. It's the half-and-half that hell gapes for. And owre they flap."
But nobody understood him. "Drink and vanity'll soon make end of _him_," said Brodie curtly, and snubbed the philosopher.
Before the summer holiday was over (it lasts six months in Scotland) young Gourlay was a habit-and-repute tippler. His shrinking abhorrence from the scholastic life of Edinburgh flung him with all the greater abandon into the conviviality he had learned to know at home. His mother (who always seemed to sit up now, after Janet and Gourlay were in bed) often let him in during the small hours, and as he hurried past her in the lobby he would hold his breath lest she should smell it. "You're unco late, dear," she would say wearily, but no other reproach did she utter. "I was taking a walk," he would answer thickly; "there's a fine moon!" It was true that when his terrible depression seized him he was sometimes tempted to seek the rapture and peace of a moonlight walk upon the Fleckie Road. In his crude clay there was a vein of poetry: he could be alone in the country, and not lonely; had he lived in a green quiet place, he might have learned the solace of nature for the wounded when eve sheds her spiritual dews. But the mean pleasures to be found at the Cross satisfied his nature, and stopped him midway to that soothing beauty of the woods and streams which might have brought healing and a wise quiescence. His success--such as it was--had gained him a circle--such as it was--and the assertive nature proper to his father's son gave him a kind of lead amongst them. Yet even his henchmen saw through his swaggering. Swipey Broon turned on him one night, and threatened to split his mouth, and he went as white as the wall behind him.
Among his other follies, he assumed the pose of a man who could an he would--who had it in him to do great things, if he would only set about them. In this he was partly playing up to a foolish opinion of his more ignorant associates; it was they who suggested the pose to him. "Devilish clever!" he heard them whisper one night as he stood in the door of a tavern; "he could do it if he liked, only he's too fond o' the fun." Young Gourlay flushed where he stood in the darkness--flushed with pleasure at the criticism of his character which was, nevertheless, a compliment to his wits. He felt that he must play up at once to the character assigned him. "Ho, ho, my lads!" he cried, entering with, a splurge; "let's make a night o't. I should be working for my degree to-night, but I suppose I can get it easy enough when the time comes." "What did I tell ye?" said M'Craw, nudging an elbow; and Gourlay saw the nudge. Here at last he had found the sweet seduction of a proper pose--that of a _grand homme manqué_, of a man who would be a genius were it not for the excess of his qualities. Would he continue to appear a genius, then he must continue to display that excess which--so he wished them to believe--alone prevented his brilliant achievements. It was all a curious, vicious inversion. "You could do great things if you didn't drink," crooned the fools. "See how I drink," Gourlay seemed to answer; "that is why I don't do great things. But, mind you, I could do them were it not for this." Thus every glass he tossed off seemed to hint in a roundabout way at the glorious heights he might attain if he didn't drink it. His very roistering became a pose, and his vanity made him roister the more, to make the pose more convincing.
FOOTNOTES: [6] "_Aince wud and aye waur_," silly for once and silly for always.
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On a beautiful evening in September, when a new crescent moon was pointing through the saffron sky like the lit tip of a finger, the City Fathers had assembled at the corner of the Fleckie Road. Though the moon was peeping, the dying glory of the day was still upon the town. The white smoke rose straight and far in the golden mystery of the heavens, and a line of dark roofs, transfigured against the west, wooed the eye to musing. But though the bodies felt the fine evening bathe them in a sensuous content, as they smoked and dawdled, they gave never a thought to its beauty. For there had been a blitheness in the town that day, and every other man seemed to have been preeing the demijohn.
Drucken Wabster and Brown the ragman came round the corner, staggering.
"Young Gourlay's drunk!" blurted Wabster--and reeled himself as he spoke.
"Is he a wee fou?" said the Deacon eagerly.
"Wee be damned," said Wabster; "he's as fou as the Baltic Sea! If you wait here, you'll be sure to see him! He'll be round the corner directly."
"De-ar me, is he so bad as that?" said the ex-Provost, raising his hands in solemn reprobation. He raised his eyes to heaven at the same time, as if it pained them to look on a world that endured the burden of a young Gourlay. "In broad daylight, too!" he sighed. "De-ar me, has he come to this?"
"Yis, Pravast," hiccupped Brown, "he has! He's as phull of drink as a whelk-shell's phull of whelk. He's nearly as phull as meself--and begorra, that's mighty phull." He stared suddenly, scratching his head solemnly as if the fact had just occurred to him. Then he winked.
"You could set fire to his braith!" cried Wabster. "A match to his mouth would send him in a lowe."
"A living gas jet!" said Brown.
They staggered away, sometimes rubbing shoulders as they lurched together, sometimes with the road between them.
"I kenned young Gourlay was on the fuddle when I saw him swinging off this morning in his greatcoat," cried Sandy Toddle. "There was debauch in the flap o' the tails o't." "Man, have you noticed that too!" cried another eagerly. "He's aye warst wi' the coat on!"
"Clothes undoubtedly affect the character," said Johnny Coe. "It takes a gentleman to wear a lordly coat without swaggering."
"There's not a doubt o' tha-at!" approved the baker, who was merry with his day's carousal; "there's not a doubt o' tha-at! Claes affect the disposeetion. I mind when I was a young chap I had a grand pair o' breeks--Wull I ca'ed them--unco decent breeks they were, I mind, lang and swankie like a ploughman; and I aye thocht I was a tremendous honest and hamely fallow when I had them on! And I had a verra disreputable hat," he added--"Rab I christened him, for he was a perfect devil--and I never cocked him owre my lug on nichts at e'en but 'Baker!' he seemed to whisper, 'Baker! Let us go out and do a bash!' And we generally went."
"You're a wonderful man!" piped the Deacon.
"We may as well wait and see young Gourlay going by," said the ex-Provost. "He'll likely be a sad spectacle."
"Ith auld Gourlay on the thtreet the nicht?" cried the Deacon eagerly. "I wonder will he thee the youngster afore he gets hame! Eh, man"--he bent his knees with staring delight--"eh, man, if they would only meet forenenst uth! Hoo!"
"He's a regular waster," said Brodie. "When a silly young blood takes a fancy to a girl in a public-house he's always done for; I've observed it times without number. At first he lets on that he merely gangs in for a drink; what he really wants, however, is to see the girl. Even if he's no great toper to begin with, he must show himself fond o' the dram, as a means of getting to his jo. Then, before he kens where he is, the habit has gripped him. That's a gate mony a ane gangs."
"That's verra true, now that ye mention't," gravely assented the ex-Provost. His opinion of Brodie's sagacity, high already, was enhanced by the remark. "Indeed, that's verra true. But how does't apply to young Gourlay in particular, Thomas? Is _he_ after some damsel o' the gill-stoup?"
"Ou ay--he's ta'en a fancy to yon bit shilp in the bar-room o' the Red Lion. He's always hinging owre the counter talking till her, a cigarette dropping from his face, and a half-fu' tumbler at his elbow. When a young chap takes to hinging round bars, ae elbow on the counter and a hand on his other hip, I have verra bad brows o' him always--verra bad brows, indeed. Oh--oh, young Gourlay's just a goner! a goner, sirs--a goner!"
"Have ye heard about him at the Skeighan Fair?" said Sandy Toddle.
"No, man," said Brodie, bowing down and keeking at Toddle in his interest; "I hadna heard about tha-at! Is this a _new_ thing?"
"Oh, just at the fair; the other day, ye know!"
"Ay, man, Sandy!" said big Brodie, stooping down to Toddle to get near the news; "and what was it, Sandy?"
"Ou, just drinking, ye know, wi'--wi' Swipey Broon--and, eh, and that M'Craw, ye know--and Sandy Hull--and a wheen mair o' that kind--ye ken the kind; a verra bad lot!" said Sandy, and wagged a disapproving pow. "Here they all got as drunk as drunk could be, and started fighting wi' the colliers! Young Gourlay got a bloodied nose! Then nothing would serve him but he must drive back wi' young Pin-oe, who was even drunker than himsell. They drave at sic a rate that when they dashed from this side o' Skeighan Drone the stour o' their career was rising at the far end. They roared and sang till it was a perfect affront to God's day, and frae sidie to sidie they swung till the splash-brods were skreighing on the wheels. At a quick turn o' the road they wintled owre; and there they were, sitting on their doups in the atoms o' the gig, and glowering frae them! When young Gourlay slid hame at dark he was in such a state that his mother had to hide him frae the auld man. She had that, puir body! The twa women were obliged to carry the drunk lump to his bedroom--and yon lassie far ga'en in consumption, too, they tell me! Ou, he was in a perfectly awful condition--perfectly awful!"
"Ay, man," nodded Brodie. "I hadna heard o't. Curious that I didna hear o' that!"
"It was Drucken Wabster's wife that telled it. There's not a haet that happens at the Gourlays but she clypes. I speired her mysell, and she says young Gourlay has a black eye."
"Ay, ay; there'th thmall hope for the Gourlayth in _him_!" said the Deacon.
"How do _you_ ken?" cried the baker. "He's no the first youngster I've seen the wiseacres o' the world wagging their sagacious pows owre; and, eh, but he was _this_ waster! --according to their way of it--and, oh, but he was the _other_ waster! and, ochonee, but he was the _wild_ fellow. And a' the while they werena fit to be his doormat; for it was only the fire in the ruffian made him seem sae daft."
"True!" said the ex-Provost, "true! Still there's a decency in daftness. And there's no decency in young Gourlay. He's just a mouth! 'Start canny, and you'll steer weel,' my mother used to say; but he has started unco ill, and he'll steer to ruin."
"Dinna spae ill-fortune!" said the baker, "dinna spae ill-fortune! And never despise a youngster for a random start. It's the blood makes a breenge."
"Well, I like young men to be quiet," said Sandy Toddle. "I would rather have them a wee soft than rollickers."
"Not I!" said the baker. "If I had a son, I would rather an ill deil sat forenenst me at the table than parratch in a poke. Burns (God rest his banes!) struck the he'rt o't. Ye mind what he said o' Prince Geordie: 'Yet mony a ragged cowte's been known To mak a noble aiver; And ye may doucely fill a throne, For a' their clishmaclaver. There him at Agincourt wha shone. Few better were or braver; And yet wi' funny queer Sir John He was an unco shaver For mony a day.'
Dam't, but Burns is gude."
"Huts, man, dinna sweer sae muckle!" frowned the old Provost.
"Ou, there's waur than an oath now and than," said the baker. "Like spice in a bun it lends a briskness. But it needs the hearty manner wi't. The Deacon there couldna let blatter wi' a hearty oath to save his withered sowl. I kenned a trifle o' a fellow that got in among a jovial gang lang syne that used to sweer tremendous, and he bude to do the same the bit bodie; so he used to say '_Dim it! _' in a wee, sma voice that was clean rideec'lous. He was a lauchable dirt, that."
"What was his name?" said Sandy Toddle.
"Your ain," said the baker. (To tell the truth, he was gey fou.) "Alexander Toddle was his name: '_Dim it! _' he used to squeak, for he had been a Scotch cuddy in the Midlands, and whiles he used the English. ' _Dim it! _' said he. I like a man that says '_Dahm't._'" "Ay; but then, you thee, _you_'re an artitht in wordth," said the Deacon.
"Ye're an artist in spite," said the baker.
"Ah, well," said the ex-Provost, "Burns proved to be wrang in the end o't, and you'll maybe be the same. George the Fort' didna fill the throne verra doucely for a' their clishmaclaver, and I don't think young Gourlay'll fill the pulpit verra doucely for a' ours. For he's saftie and daftie baith, and that's the deidly combination. At least, that's my opinion," quoth he, and smacked his lips, the important man.
"Tyuts," said the baker, "folk should be kind to folk. There may be a possibeelity for the Gourlays in the youngster yet!"
He would have said more, but at that moment his sonsy big wife came out, with oh, such a roguish and kindly smile, and, "Tom, Tom," said she, "what are ye havering here for? C'way in, man, and have a dish o' tea wi' me!"
He glanced up at her with comic shrewdness from where he sat on his hunkers--for fine he saw through her--and "Ou ay," said he, "ye great muckle fat hotch o' a dacent bodie, ye--I'll gang in and have a dish o' tea wi' ye." And away went the fine fuddled fellow.
"She's a wise woman that," said the ex-Provost, looking after them. "She kenned no to flyte, and he went like a lamb."
"I believe he'th feared o' her," snapped the Deacon, "or he wudny-un went thae lamb-like!"
"Leave him alone!" said Johnny Coe, who had been drinking too. "He's the only kind heart in Barbie. And Gourlay's the only gentleman."
"Gentleman!" cried Sandy Toddle. "Lord save us! Auld Gourlay a gentleman!"
"Yes, gentleman!" said Johnny, to whom the drink gave a courage. "Brute, if ye like, but aristocrat frae scalp to heel. If he had brains, and a dacent wife, and a bigger field--oh, man," said Johnny, visioning the possibility, "Auld Gourla could conquer the world, if he swalled his neck till't." "It would be a big conquest that!" said the Deacon. --"Here comes his son, taking his ain share o' the earth, at ony rate."
Young Gourlay came staggering round the corner, "a little sprung" (as they phrase it in Barbie), but not so bad as they had hoped to see him. Webster and the ragman had exaggerated the condition of their fellow-toper. Probably their own oscillation lent itself to everything they saw. John zigzagged, it is true, but otherwise he was fairly steady on his pins. Unluckily, however, failing to see a stone before on the road, he tripped, and went sprawling on his hands and knees. A titter went.
"What the hell are you laughing at?" he snarled, leaping up, quick to feel the slight, blatant to resent it.
"Tyuts, man," Tam Wylie rebuked him in a careless scorn.
With a parting scowl he went swaggering up the street.
"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "that's the Gourlay possibeelity."
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"Aha, Deacon, my old cock, here you are!" The speaker smote the Deacon between his thin shoulder-blades till the hat leapt on his startled cranium. "No, not a lengthy stay--just down for a flying visit to see my little girl. Dem'd glad to get back to town again--Barbie's too quiet for my tastes. No life in the place, no life at all!"
The speaker was Davie Aird, draper and buck. "No life at all," he cried, as he shot down his cuffs with a jerk, and swung up and down the bar-room of the Red Lion. He was dressed in a long fawn overcoat reaching to his heels, with two big yellow buttons at the waist behind, in the most approved fashion of the horsy. He paused in his swaggering to survey the backs of his long white delicate hands, holding them side by side before him, as if to make sure they were the same size. He was letting the Deacon see his ring. Then pursing his chin down, with a fastidious and critical regard, he picked a long fair hair off his left coat sleeve. He held it high as he had seen them do on the stage of the Theatre Royal. "Sweet souvenir!" he cried, and kissed it, "most dear remembrance!"
The Deacon fed on the sight. The richness of his satiric perception was too great to permit of speech. He could only gloat and be dumb.
"Waiting for Jack Gourlay," Aird rattled again. "He's off to College again, and we're driving in his father's trap to meet the express at Skeighan Station. Wonder what's keeping the fellow. I like a man to be punctual. Business training, you see; yes, by Gad, two thousand parcels a week go out of our place, and all of 'em up to time! Ah, there he is," he added, as the harsh grind of wheels was heard on the gravel at the door. "Thank God, we'll soon be in civilization."
Young Gourlay entered, greatcoated and lordly, through the two halves of that easy-swinging door.
"Good!" he cried. "Just a minute, Aird, till I get my flask filled."
"My weapon's primed and ready," Aird ha-haed, and slapped the breast pocket of his coat.
John birled a bright sovereign on the counter, one of twenty old Gourlay had battered his brains to get together for the boy's expenses. The young fellow rattled the change into his trouser pocket like a master of millions.
The Deacon and another idler or two gathered about the steps in the darkness, to see that royal going off. Peter Riney's bunched-up little old figure could be seen on the front seat of the gig; Aird was already mounted behind. The mare (a worthy successor to Spanking Tam) pawed the gravel and fretted in impatience; her sharp ears, seen pricked against the gloom, worked to and fro. A widening cone of light shone out from the leftward lamp of the gig, full on a glistering laurel, which Simpson had growing by his porch. Each smooth leaf of the green bush gave back a separate gleam, vivid to the eye in that pouring yellowness. Gourlay stared at the bright evergreen, and forget for a moment where he was. His lips parted, and--as they saw in the light from the door--his look grew dreamy and far-away.
The truth was that all the impressions of a last day at home were bitten in on his brain as by acid, in the very middle of his swaggering gusto. That gusto was largely real, true, for it seemed a fine thing to go splurging off to College in a gig; but it was still more largely assumed, to combat the sorrow of departure. His heart was in his boots at the thought of going back to accursed Edinburgh--to those lodgings, those dreary, damnable lodgings. Thus his nature was reduced to its real elements in the hour of leaving home; it was only for a swift moment he forgot to splurge, but for that moment the cloak of his swaggering dropped away, and he was his naked self, morbidly alive to the impressions of the world, afraid of life, clinging to the familiar and the known. That was why he gazed with wistful eyes at that laurel clump, so vivid in the pouring rays. So vivid there, it stood for all the dear country round which was now hidden by the darkness; it centred his world among its leaves. It was a last picture of loved Barbie that was fastening on his mind. There would be fine gardens in Edinburgh, no doubt; but oh, that couthie laurel by the Red Lion door! It was his friend; he had known it always.
The spell lasted but a moment, one of those moments searching a man's nature to its depths, yet flitting like a lonely shadow on the autumn wheat. But Aird was already fidgeting. "Hurry up, Jack," he cried; "we'll need to pelt if we mean to get the train."
Gourlay started. In a moment he had slipped from one self to another, and was the blusterer once more. "Right!" he splurged. "Hover a blink till I light my cigar."
He was not in the habit of smoking cigars, but he had bought a packet on purpose, that he might light one before his admiring onlookers ere he went away. Nothing like cutting a dash.
He was seen puffing for a moment with indrawn cheeks, his head to one side, the flame of the flickering vesta lighting up his face, his hat pushed back till it rested on his collar, his fair hair hanging down his brow. Then he sprang to the driving seat and gathered up the reins. "Ta-ta, Deacon; see and behave yourself!" he flung across his shoulder, and they were off with a bound.
"Im-pidenth!" said the outraged Deacon.
Peter Riney was quite proud to have the honour of driving two such bucks to the station. It lent him a consequence; he would be able to say when he came back that he had been "awa wi' the young mester"--for Peter said "mester," and was laughed at by the Barbie wits who knew that "maister" was the proper English. The splurging twain rallied him and drew him out in talk, passed him their flasks at the Brownie's Brae, had him tee-heeing at their nonsense. It was a full-blooded night to the withered little man.
That was how young Gourlay left Barbie for what was to prove his last session at the University.
* * * * * All Gourlay's swankie chaps had gone with the going of his trade; only Peter Riney, the queer little oddity, remained. There was a loyal simplicity in Peter which never allowed him to question the Gourlays. He had been too long in their service to be of use to any other; while there was a hand's turn to be done about the House with the Green Shutters he was glad to have the chance of doing it. His respect for his surly tyrant was as great as ever; he took his pittance of a wage and was thankful. Above all he worshipped young Gourlay; to be in touch with a College-bred man was a reflected glory; even the escapades noised about the little town, to his gleeful ignorance, were the signs of a man of the world. Peter chuckled when he heard them talked of. "Terr'ble clever fallow, the young mester!" the bowed little man would say, sucking his pipe of an evening, "terr'ble clever fallow, the young mester; and hardy, too--infernal hardy!" Loyal Peter believed it.
But ere four months had gone Peter was discharged. It was on the day after Gourlay sold Black Sally, the mare, to get a little money to go on with.
It was a bright spring day, of enervating softness; a fosie day--a day when the pores of everything seemed opened. People's brains felt pulpy, and they sniffed as with winter's colds. Peter Riney was opening a pit of potatoes in the big garden, shovelling aside the foot-deep mould, and tearing off the inner covering of yellow straw--which seemed strange and unnatural, somehow, when suddenly revealed in its glistening dryness, beneath the moist dark earth. Little crumbles of mould trickled down, in among the flattened shining straws. In a tree near Peter two pigeons were gurgling and _rookety-cooing_, mating for the coming year. He fell to sorting out the potatoes, throwing the bad ones on a heap aside--"tattie-walin'," as they call it in the north. The enervating softness was at work on Peter's head, too, and from time to time, as he waled, he wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Gourlay watched him for a long time without speaking. Once or twice he moistened his lips, and cleared his throat, and frowned, as one who would broach unpleasant news. It was not like him to hesitate. But the old man, encased in senility, was ill to disturb; he was intent on nothing but the work before him; it was mechanical and soothing, and occupied his whole mind. Gourlay, so often the trampling brute without knowing it, felt it brutal to wound the faithful old creature dreaming at his toil. He would have found it much easier to discharge a younger and a keener man.
"Stop, Peter," he said at last; "I don't need you ainy more."
Peter rose stiffly from his knees and shook the mould with a pitiful gesture from his hands. His mouth was fallen slack, and showed a few yellow tusks.
"Eh?" he asked vaguely. The thought that he must leave the Gourlays could not penetrate his mind.
"I don't need you ainy more," said Gourlay again, and met his eye steadily.
"I'm gey auld," said Peter, still shaking his hands with that pitiful gesture, "but I only need a bite and a sup. Man, I'm willin' to tak onything."
"It's no that," said Gourlay sourly--"it's no that. But I'm giving up the business."
Peter said nothing, but gazed away down the garden, his sunken mouth forgetting to munch its straw, which dangled by his chin. "I'm an auld servant," he said at last, "and, mind ye," he flashed in pride, "I'm a true ane."
"Oh, you're a' that," Gourlay grunted; "you have been a good servant."
"It'll be the poorhouse, it's like," mused Peter. "Man, have ye noathing for us to do?" he asked pleadingly.
Gourlay's jaw clamped. "Noathing, Peter," he said sullenly, "noathing;" and slipped some money into Peter's heedless palm.
Peter stared stupidly down at the coins. He seemed dazed. "Ay, weel," he said; "I'll feenish the tatties, at ony rate."
"No, no, Peter," and Gourlay gripped him by the shoulder as he turned back to his work--"no, no; I have no right to keep you. Never mind about the money; you deserve something, going so suddenly after sic a long service. It's just a bit present to mind you o'--to mind you o'----" he broke suddenly and scowled across the garden.
Some men, when a feeling touches them, express their emotion in tears; others by an angry scowl--hating themselves inwardly, perhaps, for their weakness in being moved, hating, too, the occasion that has probed their weakness. It was because he felt parting with Peter so keenly that Gourlay behaved more sullenly than usual. Peter had been with Gourlay's father in his present master's boyhood, had always been faithful and submissive; in his humble way was nearer the grain merchant than any other man in Barbie. He was the only human being Gourlay had ever deigned to joke with, and that in itself won him an affection. More--the going of Peter meant the going of everything. It cut Gourlay to the quick. Therefore he scowled.
Without a word of thanks for the money, Peter knocked the mould off his heavy boots, striking one against the other clumsily, and shuffled away across the bare soil. But when he had gone twenty yards he stopped, and came back slowly. "Good-bye, sir," he said with a rueful smile, and held out his hand.
Gourlay gripped it. "Good-bye, Peter! good-bye; damn ye, man, good-bye!"
Peter wondered vaguely why he was sworn at. But he felt that it was not in anger. He still clung to his master's hand. "I've been fifty year wi' the Gourlays," said he. "Ay, ay; and this, it seems, is the end o't." "Oh, gang away!" cried Gourlay, "gang away, man!" And Peter went away.
Gourlay went out to the big green gate where he had often stood in his pride, and watched his old servant going down the street. Peter was so bowed that the back of his velveteen coat was halfway up his spine, and the bulging pockets at the corners were midway down his thighs. Gourlay had seen the fact a thousand times, but it never gripped him before. He stared till Peter disappeared round the Bend o' the Brae.
"Ay, ay," said he, "ay, ay. There goes the last o' them."
It was a final run of ill-luck that brought Gourlay to this desperate pass. When everything seemed to go against him he tried several speculations, with a gambler's hope that they might do well, and retrieve the situation. He abandoned the sensible direction of affairs, that is, and trusted entirely to chance, as men are apt to do when despairing. And chance betrayed him. He found himself of a sudden at the end of his resources.
Through all his troubles his one consolation was the fact that he had sent John to the University. That was something saved from the wreck, at any rate. More and more, as his other supports fell away, Gourlay attached himself to the future of his son. It became the sheet-anchor of his hopes. If he had remained a prosperous man, John's success would have been merely incidental, something to disconsider in speech, at least, however pleased he might have been at heart. But now it was the whole of life to him. For one thing, the son's success would justify the father's past and prevent it being quite useless; it would have produced a minister, a successful man, one of an esteemed profession. Again, that success would be a salve to Gourlay's wounded pride; the Gourlays would show Barbie they could flourish yet, in spite of their present downcome. Thus, in the collapse of his fortunes, the son grew all-important in the father's eyes. Nor did his own poverty seem to him a just bar to his son's prosperity. "I have put him through his Arts," thought Gourlay; "surely he can do the rest himsell. Lots of young chaps, when they warstle through their Arts, teach the sons of swells to get a little money to gang through Diveenity. My boy can surely do the like!" Again and again, as Gourlay felt himself slipping under in the world of Barbie, his hopes turned to John in Edinburgh. If that boy would only hurry up and get through, to make a hame for the lassie and the auld wife!
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Young Gourlay spent that winter in Edinburgh pretty much as he had spent the last. Last winter, however, it was simply a weak need for companionship that drew him to the Howff. This winter it was more: it was the need of a formed habit that must have its wonted satisfaction. He had a further impulse to conviviality now. It had become a habit that compelled him.
The diversions of some men are merely subsidiary to their lives, externals easy to be dropped; with others they usurp the man. They usurp a life when it is never happy away from them, when in the midst of other occupations absent pleasures rise vivid to the mind, with an irresistible call. Young Gourlay's too-seeing imagination, always visioning absent delights, combined with his weakness of will, never gripping to the work before him, to make him hate his lonely studies and long for the jolly company of his friends. He never opened his books of an evening but he thought to himself, "I wonder what they're doing at the Howff to-night?" At once he visualized the scene, imagined every detail, saw them in their jovial hours. And, seeing them so happy, he longed to be with them. On that night, long ago, when his father ordered him to College, his cowardly and too vivid mind thought of the ploys the fellows would be having along the Barbie roads, while he was mewed up in Edinburgh. He saw the Barbie rollickers in his mind's eye, and the student in his lonely rooms, and contrasted them mournfully. So now, every night, he saw the cosy companions in their Howff, and shivered at his own isolation. He felt a tugging at his heart to be off and join them. And his will was so weak that, nine times out of ten, he made no resistance to the impulse.
He had always a feeling of depression when he must sit down to his books. It was the start that gravelled him. He would look round his room and hate it, mutter "Damn it, I must work;" and then, with a heavy sigh, would seat himself before an outspread volume on the table, tugging the hair on a puckered forehead. Sometimes the depression left him, when he buckled to his work; as his mind became occupied with other things the vision of the Howff was expelled. Usually, however, the stiffness of his brains made the reading drag heavily, and he rarely attained the sufficing happiness of a student eager and engrossed. At the end of ten minutes he would be gaping across the table, and wondering what they were doing at the Howff. "Will Logan be singing 'Tam Glen'? Or is Gillespie fiddling Highland tunes, by Jing, with his elbow going it merrily? Lord! I would like to hear 'Miss Drummond o' Perth' or 'Gray Daylicht'--they might buck me up a bit. I'll just slip out for ten minutes, to see what they're doing, and be back directly." He came back at two in the morning, staggering.
On a bleak spring evening, near the end of February, young Gourlay had gone to the Howff, to escape the shuddering misery of the streets. It was that treacherous spring weather which blights. Only two days ago the air had been sluggish and balmy; now an easterly wind nipped the gray city, naked and bare. There was light enough, with the lengthening days, to see plainly the rawness of the world. There were cold yellow gleams in windows fronting a lonely west. Uncertain little puffs of wind came swirling round corners, and made dust and pieces of dirty white paper gyrate on the roads. Prosperous old gentlemen pacing home, rotund in their buttoned-up coats, had clear drops at the end of their noses. Sometimes they stopped--their trousers legs flapping behind them--and trumpeted loudly into red silk handkerchiefs. Young Gourlay had fled the streets. It was the kind of night that made him cower.
By eight o'clock, however, he was merry with the barley-bree, and making a butt of himself to amuse the company. He was not quick-witted enough to banter a comrade readily, nor hardy enough to essay it unprovoked; on the other hand, his swaggering love of notice impelled him to some form of talk that would attract attention. So he made a point of always coming with daft stories of things comic that befell him--at least, he said they did. But if his efforts were greeted with too loud a roar, implying not only appreciation of the stories, but also a contempt for the man who could tell them of himself, his sensitive vanity was immediately wounded, and he swelled with sulky anger. And the moment after he would splurge and bluster to reassert his dignity.
"I remember when I was a boy," he hiccupped, "I had a pet goose at home."
There was a titter at the queer beginning.
"I was to get the price of it for myself, and so when Christmas drew near I went to old MacFarlane, the poulterer in Skeighan. 'Will you buy a goose?' said I. 'Are ye for sale, my man?' was his answer."
Armstrong flung back his head and roared, prolonging the loud _ho-ho! _ through his big nose and open mouth long after the impulse to honest laughter was exhausted. He always laughed with false loudness, to indicate his own superiority, when he thought a man had been guilty of a public silliness. The laugh was meant to show the company how far above such folly was Mr. Armstrong.
Gourlay scowled. "Damn Armstrong!" he thought, "what did he yell like that for? Does he think I didn't see the point of the joke against myself? Would I have told it if I hadn't? This is what comes of being sensitive. I'm always too sensitive! I felt there was an awkward silence, and I told a story against myself to dispel it in fun, and this is what I get for't. Curse the big brute! he thinks I have given myself away. But I'll show him!"
He was already mellow, but he took another swig to hearten him, as was his habit.
"There's a damned sight too much yell about your laugh, Armstrong," he said, truly enough, getting a courage from his anger and the drink. "No gentleman laughs like that." "' _Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est_,'" said Tarmillan, who was on one of his rare visits to the Howff. He was too busy and too wise a man to frequent it greatly.
Armstrong blushed; and Gourlay grew big and brave, in the backing of the great Tarmillan. He took another swig on the strength of it. But his resentment was still surging. When Tarmillan went, and the three students were left by themselves, Gourlay continued to nag and bluster, for that blatant laugh of Armstrong's rankled in his mind.
"I saw Hepburn in the street to-day," said Gillespie, by way of a diversion.
"Who's Hepburn?" snapped Gourlay.
"Oh, don't you remember? He's the big Border chap who got into a row with auld Tam on the day you won your prize essay." (That should surely appease the fool, thought Gillespie.) "It was only for the fun of the thing Hepburn was at College, for he has lots of money; and, here, he never apologized to Tam! He said he would go down first."
"He was damned right," spluttered Gourlay. "Some of these profs. think too much of themselves. They wouldn't bully _me_! There's good stuff in the Gourlays," he went on with a meaning look at Armstrong; "they're not to be scoffed at. I would stand insolence from no man."
"Ay, man," said Armstrong, "would you face up to a professor?"
"Wouldn't I?" said the tipsy youth; "and to you, too, if you went too far."
He became so quarrelsome as the night went on that his comrades filled him up with drink, in the hope of deadening his ruffled sensibilities. It was, "Yes, yes, Jack; but never mind about that! Have another drink, just to show there's no ill-feeling among friends."
When they left the Howff they went to Gillespie's and drank more, and after that they roamed about the town. At two in the morning the other two brought Gourlay to his door. He was assuring Armstrong he was not a gentleman.
When he went to bed the fancied insult he had suffered swelled to monstrous proportions in his fevered brain. Did Armstrong despise him? The thought was poison! He lay in brooding anger, and his mind was fluent in wrathful harangues in some imaginary encounter of the future, in which he was a glorious victor. He flowed in eloquent scorn of Armstrong and his ways. If I could talk like this always, he thought, what a fellow I would be! He seemed gifted with uncanny insight into Armstrong's character. He noted every weakness in the rushing whirl of his thoughts, set them in order one by one, saw himself laying bare the man with savage glee when next they should encounter. He would whiten the big brute's face by showing he had probed him to the quick. Just let him laugh at me again, thought Gourlay, and I'll analyze each mean quirk of his dirty soul to him!
The drink was dying in him now, for the trio had walked for more than an hour through the open air when they left Gillespie's rooms. The stupefaction of alcohol was gone, leaving his brain morbidly alive. He was anxious to sleep, but drowsy dullness kept away. His mind began to visualize of its own accord, independent of his will; and, one after another, a crowd of pictures rose vivid in the darkness of his brain. He saw them as plainly as you see this page, but with a different clearness--for they seemed unnatural, belonging to a morbid world. Nor did one suggest the other; there was no connection between them; each came vivid of its own accord.
First it was an old pit-frame on a barren moor, gaunt, against the yellow west. Gourlay saw bars of iron, left when the pit was abandoned, reddened by the rain; and the mounds of rubbish, and the scattered bricks, and the rusty clinkers from the furnace, and the melancholy shining pools. A four-wheeled old trolley had lost two of its wheels, and was tilted at a slant, one square end of it resting on the ground.
"Why do I think of an old pit?" he thought angrily; "curse it! why can't I sleep?"
Next moment he was gazing at a ruined castle, its mouldering walls mounded atop with decaying rubble; from a loose crumb of mortar a long, thin film of the spider's weaving stretched bellying away to a tall weed waving on the crazy brink. Gourlay saw its glisten in the wind. He saw each crack in the wall, each stain of lichen; a myriad details stamped themselves together on his raw mind. Then a constant procession of figures passed across the inner curtain of his closed eyes. Each figure was cowled; but when it came directly opposite, it turned and looked at him with a white face. "Stop, stop!" cried his mind; "I don't want to think of you, I don't want to think of you, I don't want to think of you! Go away!" But as they came of themselves, so they went of themselves. He could not banish them.
He turned on his side, but a hundred other pictures pursued him. From an inland hollow he saw the great dawn flooding up from the sea, over a sharp line of cliff, wave after wave of brilliance surging up the heavens. The landward slope of the cliff was gray with dew. The inland hollow was full of little fields, divided by stone walls, and he could not have recalled the fields round Barbie with half their distinctness. For a moment they possessed his brain. Then an autumn wood rose on his vision. He was gazing down a vista of yellow leaves; a long, deep slanting cleft, framed in lit foliage. Leaves, leaves; everywhere yellow leaves, luminous, burning. He saw them falling through the lucid air. The scene was as vivid as fire to his brain, though of magic stillness. Then the foliage changed suddenly to great serpents twined about the boughs. Their colours were of monstrous beauty. They glistened as they moved.
He leapt in his bed with a throb of horror. Could this be the delirium of drink? But no; he had often had an experience like this when he was sleepless; he had the learned description of it pat and ready; it was only automatic visualization.
Damn! Why couldn't he sleep? He flung out of bed, uncorked a bottle with his teeth, tilted it up, and gulped the gurgling fire in the darkness. Ha! that was better.
His room was already gray with the coming dawn. He went to the window and opened it. The town was stirring uneasily in its morning sleep. Somewhere in the distance a train was shunting; _clank, clank, clank_ went the wagons. What an accursed sound! A dray went past the end of his street rumbling hollowly, and the rumble died drearily away. Then the footsteps of an early workman going to his toil were heard in the deserted thoroughfare. Gourlay looked down and saw him pass far beneath him on the glimmering pavement. He was whistling. Why did the fool whistle? What had he got to whistle about? It was unnatural that one man should go whistling to his work, when another had not been able to sleep the whole night long.
He took another vast glut of whisky, and the moment after was dead to the world.
He was awakened at eight o'clock by a monstrous hammering on his door. By the excessive loudness of the first knock he heard on returning to consciousness, he knew that his landlady had lost her temper in trying to get him up. Ere he could shout she had thumped again. He stared at the ceiling in sullen misery. The middle of his tongue was as dry as bark.
For his breakfast there were thick slabs of rancid bacon, from the top of which two yellow eggs had spewed themselves away among the cold gravy. His gorge rose at them. He nibbled a piece of dry bread and drained the teapot; then shouldering into his greatcoat, he tramped off to the University.
It was a wretched morning. The wind had veered once more, and a cold drizzle of rain was falling through a yellow fog. The reflections of the street lamps in the sloppy pavement went down through spiral gleams to an infinite depth of misery. Young Gourlay's brain was aching from his last night's debauch, and his body was weakened with the want both of sleep and food. The cold yellow mist chilled him to the bone. What a fool I was to get drunk last night, he thought. Why am I here? Why am I trudging through mud and misery to the University? What has it all got to do with me? Oh, what a fool I am, what a fool!
"Drown dull care," said the devil in his ear.
He took a sixpence from his trousers pocket, and looked down at the white bit of money in his hand till it was wet with the falling rain. Then he went into a flashy tavern, and, standing by a sloppy bar, drank sixpenny-worth of cheap whisky. It went to his head at once, owing to his want of food, and with a dull warm feeling in his body he lurched off to his first lecture for the day. His outlook on the world had changed. The fog was now a comfortable yellowness. "Freedom and whisky gang thegither: tak aff your dram," he quoted to his own mind. "That stuff did me good. Whisky's the boy to fettle you."
He was in his element the moment he entered the classroom. It was a bear garden. The most moral individual has his days of perversity when a malign fate compels him to show the worst he has in him. A Scottish university class--which is many most moral individuals--has a similar eruptive tendency when it gets into the hands of a weak professor. It will behave well enough for a fortnight, then a morning comes when nothing can control it. This was a morning of the kind. The lecturer, who was an able man but a weakling, had begun by apologizing for the condition of his voice, on the ground that he had a bad cold. Instantly every man in the class was blowing his nose. One fellow, of a most portentous snout, who could trumpet like an elephant, with a last triumphant snort sent his handkerchief across the room. When called to account for his conduct, "Really, sir," he said, "er-er-oom--bad cold!" Uprose a universal sneeze. Then the "roughing" began, to the tune of "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave"--which no man seemed to sing, but every man could hear. They were playing the tune with their feet.
The lecturer glared with white repugnance at his tormentors.
Young Gourlay flung himself heart and soul into the cruel baiting. It was partly from his usual love of showing off, partly from the drink still seething within him, but largely, also, as a reaction from his morning's misery. This was another way of drowning reflection. The morbidly gloomy one moment often shout madly on the next.
At last the lecturer plunged wildly at the door and flung it open. "Go!" he shrieked, and pointed in superb dismissal.
A hundred and fifty barbarians sat where they were, and laughed at him; and he must needs come back to the platform, with a baffled and vindictive glower.
He was just turning, as it chanced, when young Gourlay put his hands to his mouth and bellowed "_Cock-a-doodle-do_!"
Ere the roar could swell, the lecturer had leapt to the front of the rostrum with flaming eyes. "Mr. Gourlay," he screamed furiously--"you there, sir; you will apologize humbly to me for this outrage at the end of the hour."
There was a womanish shrillness in the scream, a kind of hysteria on the stretch, that (contrasted with his big threat) might have provoked them at other times to a roar of laughter. But there was a sincerity in his rage to-day that rose above its faults of manner; and an immediate silence took the room--the more impressive for the former noise. Every eye turned to Gourlay. He sat gaping at the lecturer.
If he had been swept to the anteroom there and then, he would have been cowed by the suddenness of his own change, from a loud tormentor in the company of others, to a silent culprit in a room alone. And apologies would have been ready to tumble out, while he was thus loosened by surprise and fear.
Unluckily he had time to think, and the longer he thought the more sullen he became. It was only an accident that led to his discovery, while the rest escaped; and that the others should escape, when they were just as much to blame as he was, was an injustice that made him furious. His anger was equally divided between the cursed mischance itself, the teacher who had "jumped" on him so suddenly, and the other rowdies who had escaped to laugh at his discomfiture; he had the same burning resentment to them all. When he thought of his chuckling fellow-students, they seemed to engross his rage; when he thought of the mishap, he damned it and nothing else; when he thought of the lecturer, he felt he had no rage to fling away upon others--the Snuffler took it all. As his mind shot backwards and forwards in an angry gloom, it suddenly encountered the image of his father. Not a professor of the lot, he reflected, could stand the look of black Gourlay. And he wouldn't knuckle under, either, so he wouldn't. He came of a hardy stock. He would show them! He wasn't going to lick dirt for any man. Let him punish all or none, for they had all been kicking up a row--why, big Cunningham had been braying like an ass only a minute before.
He spied Armstrong and Gillespie glinting across at him with a curious look: they were wondering whether he had courage enough to stand to his guns with a professor. He knew the meaning of the look, and resented it. He was on his mettle before them, it seemed. The fellow who had swaggered at the Howff last night about "what _he_ would do if a professor jumped on _him_," mustn't prove wanting in the present trial, beneath the eyes of those on whom he had imposed his blatancy.
When we think of what Gourlay did that day, we must remember that he was soaked in alcohol--not merely with his morning's potation, but with the dregs of previous carousals. And the dregs of drink, a thorough toper will tell you, never leave him. He is drunk on Monday with his Saturday's debauch. As "Drucken Wabster" of Barbie put it once, "When a body's hard up, his braith's a consolation." If that be so--and Wabster, remember, was an expert whose opinion on this matter is entitled to the highest credence--if that be so, it proves the strength and persistence of a thorough alcoholic impregnation, or, as Wabster called it, of "a good soak." In young Gourlay's case, at any rate, the impregnation was enduring and complete. He was like a rag steeped in fusel oil.
As the end of the hour drew near, he sank deeper in his dogged sullenness. When the class streamed from the large door on the right, he turned aside to the little anteroom on the left, with an insolent swing of the shoulders. He knew the fellows were watching him curiously--he felt their eyes upon his back. And, therefore, as he went through the little door, he stood for a moment on his right foot, and waggled his left, on a level with his hip behind, in a vulgar derision of them, the professor, and the whole situation. That was a fine taunt flung back at them!
There is nothing on earth more vindictive than a weakling. When he gets a chance he takes revenge for everything his past cowardice forced him to endure. The timid lecturer, angry at the poor figure he had cut on the platform, was glad to take it out of young Gourlay for the wrongdoing of the class. Gourlay was their scapegoat. The lecturer had no longer over a hundred men to deal with, but one lout only, sullen yet shrinking in the room before him. Instead of coming to the point at once, he played with his victim. It was less from intentional cruelty than from an instinctive desire to recover his lost feeling of superiority. The class was his master, but here was one of them he could cow at any rate.
"Well?" he asked, bringing his thin finger-tips together, and flinging one thigh across the other.
Gourlay shuffled his feet uneasily.
"Yes?" inquired the other, enjoying his discomfiture.
Gourlay lowered. "Whatna gate was this to gang on? Why couldn't he let a blatter out of his thin mouth, and ha' done wi't?"
"I'm waiting!" said the lecturer.
The words "I apologize" rose in Gourlay, but refused to pass his throat. No, he wouldn't, so he wouldn't! He would see the lecturer far enough, ere he gave an apology before it was expressly required.
"Oh, that's the line you go on, is it?" said the lecturer, nodding his head as if he had sized up a curious animal. "I see, I see! You add contumacy to insolence, do you? ... Imphm."
Gourlay was not quite sure what contumacy meant, and the uncertainty added to his anger.
"There were others making a noise besides me," he blurted. "I don't see why _I_ should be blamed for it all."
"Oh, you don't see why _you_ should be had up, indeed? I think we'll bring you to a different conclusion. Yes, I think so."
Gourlay, being forced to stand always on the one spot, felt himself swaying in a drunken stupor. He blinked at the lecturer like an angry owl--the blinking regard of a sodden mind, yet fiery with a spiteful rage. His wrath was rising and falling like a quick tide. He would have liked one moment to give a rein to the Gourlay temper, and let the lecturer have it hot and strong; the next, he was quivering in a cowardly horror of the desperate attempt he had so nearly made. Curse his tormentor! Why did he keep him here, when his head was aching so badly? Another taunt was enough to spring his drunken rage.
"I wonder what you think you came to College for?" said the lecturer. "I have been looking at your records in the class. They're the worst I ever saw. And you're not content with that, it seems. You add misbehaviour to gross stupidity."
"To hell wi' ye!" said Gourlay.
There was a feeling in the room as if the air was stunned. The silence throbbed.
The lecturer, who had risen, sat down suddenly as if going at the knees, and went white about the gills. Some men would have swept the ruffian with a burst of generous wrath, a few might have pitied in their anger; but this young Solomon was thin and acid, a vindictive rat. Unable to cow the insolent in present and full-blooded rage, he fell to thinking of the great machine he might set in motion to destroy him. As he sat there in silence, his eyes grew ferrety, and a sleek revenge peeped from the corners of his mouth. "I'll show him what I'll do to him for this!" is a translation of his thought. He was thinking, with great satisfaction to himself, of how the Senatus would deal with young Gourlay.
Gourlay grew weak with fear the moment the words escaped him. They had been a thunderclap to his own ears. He had been thinking them, but--as he pleaded far within him now--had never meant to utter them; they had been mere spume off the surge of cowardly wrath seething up within him, longing to burst, but afraid. It was the taunt of stupidity that fired his drunken vanity to blurt them forth.
The lecturer eyed him sideways where he shrank in fear. "You may go," he said at last. "I will report your conduct to the University."
* * * * * Gourlay was sitting alone in his room when he heard that he had been expelled. For many days he had drunk to deaden fear, but he was sober now, being newly out of bed. A dreary ray of sunshine came through the window, and fell on a wisp of flame blinking in the grate. As Gourlay sat, his eyes fixed dully on the faded ray, a flash of intuition laid his character bare to him. He read himself ruthlessly. It was not by conscious effort; insight was uncanny and apart from will. He saw that blatancy had joined with weakness, morbidity with want of brains; and that the results of these, converging to a point, had produced the present issue, his expulsion. His mind recognized how logical the issue was, assenting wearily as to a problem proved. Given those qualities, in those circumstances, what else could have happened? And such a weakling as he knew himself to be could never--he thought--make effort sufficient to alter his qualities. A sense of fatalism came over him, as of one doomed. He bowed his head, and let his arms fall by the sides of his chair, dropping them like a spent swimmer ready to sink. The sudden revelation of himself to himself had taken the heart out of him. "I'm a waster!" he said aghast. And then, at the sound of his own voice, a fear came over him, a fear of his own nature; and he started to his feet and strode feverishly, as if by mere locomotion, to escape from his clinging and inherent ill. It was as if he were trying to run away from himself.
He faced round at the mirror on his mantel, and looked at his own image with staring and startled eyes, his mouth open, the breath coming hard through his nostrils. "You're a gey ill ane," he said; "you're a gey ill ane! My God, where have you landed yourself?"
He went out to escape from his thoughts. Instinctively he turned to the Howff for consolation.
With the panic despair of the weak, he abandoned hope of his character at its first collapse, and plunged into a wild debauch, to avoid reflecting where it would lead him in the end. But he had a more definite reason for prolonging his bout in Edinburgh. He was afraid to go home and meet his father. He shrank, in visioning fear, before the dour face, loaded with scorn, that would swing round to meet him as he entered through the door. Though he swore every night in his cups that he would "square up to the Governor the morn, so he would!" always, when the cold light came, fear of the interview drove him to his cups again. His courage zigzagged, as it always did; one moment he towered in imagination, the next he grovelled in fear.
Sometimes, when he was fired with whisky, another element entered into his mood, no less big with destruction. It was all his father's fault for sending him to Edinburgh, and no matter what happened, it would serve the old fellow right! He had a kind of fierce satisfaction in his own ruin, because his ruin would show them at home what a mistake they had made in sending him to College. It was the old man's tyranny, in forcing him to College, that had brought all this on his miserable head. Well, he was damned glad, so he was, that they should be punished at home by their own foolish scheme--it had punished _him_ enough, for one. And then he would set his mouth insolent and hard, and drink the more fiercely, finding a consolation in the thought that his tyrannical father would suffer through his degradation too.
At last he must go home. He drifted to the station aimlessly; he had ceased to be self-determined. His compartment happened to be empty; so, free to behave as he liked, he yelled music-hall snatches in a tuneless voice, hammering with his feet on the wooden floor. The noise pleased his sodden mind, which had narrowed to a comfortable stupor--outside of which his troubles seemed to lie, as if they belonged not to him but to somebody else. With the same sodden interest he was staring through the window, at one of the little stations on the line, when a boy, pointing, said, "_Flat white nose! _" and Gourlay laughed uproariously, adding at the end, "He's a clever chield, that; my nose _would_ look flat and white against the pane." But this outbreak of mirth seemed to break in on his comfortable vagueness; it roused him by a kind of reaction to think of home, and of what his father would say. A minute after he had been laughing so madly, he was staring sullenly in front of him. Well, it didn't matter; it was all the old fellow's fault, and he wasn't going to stand any of his jaw. "None of your jaw, John Gourlay!" he said, nodding his head viciously, and thrusting out his clenched fist--"none of your jaw; d'ye hear?"
He crept into Barbie through the dusk. It had been market-day, and knots of people were still about the streets. Gourlay stole softly through the shadows, and turned his coat-collar high about his ears. He nearly ran into two men who were talking apart, and his heart stopped dead at their words.
"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said one of them; "it's quite impossible. I'm not unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take the risk."
John heard the mumble of his father's voice.
"Well," said the other reluctantly, "if ye get the baker and Tam Wylie for security? I'll be on the street for another half-hour."
"Another half-hour!" thought John with relief. He would not have to face his father the moment he went in. He would be able to get home before him. He crept on through the gloaming to the House with the Green Shutters.
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There had been fine cackling in Barbie as Gourlay's men dropped away from him one by one; and now it was worse than ever. When Jimmy Bain and Sandy Cross were dismissed last winter, "He canna last long now," mused the bodies; and then when even Riney got the sack, "Lord!" they cried, "this maun be the end o't." The downfall of Gourlay had an unholy fascination for his neighbours, and that not merely because of their dislike to the man. That was a whet to their curiosity, of course; but, over and above it, they seemed to be watching, with bated breath, for the final collapse of an edifice that was bound to fall. Simple expectation held them. It was a dramatic interest--of suspense, yet certainty--that had them in its grip. "He's _bound_ to come down," said Certainty. "Yes; but _when_, though?" cried Curiosity, all the more eager because of its instinct for the coming crash. And so they waited for the great catastrophe which they felt to be so near. It was as if they were watching the tragedy near at hand, and noting with keen interest every step in it that must lead to inevitable ruin. That invariably happens when a family tragedy is played out in the midst of a small community. Each step in it is discussed with a prying interest that is neither malevolent nor sympathetic, but simply curious. In this case it was chiefly malevolent--only because Gourlay had been such a brute to Barbie.
Though there were thus two reasons for public interest, the result was one and the same--a constant tittle-tattling. Particular spite and a more general curiosity brought the grain merchant's name on to every tongue. Not even in the gawcey days of its prosperity had the House with the Green Shutters been so much talked of.
"Pride _will_ have a downcome," said some, with a gleg look and a smack of the lip, trying to veil their personal malevolence in a common proverb. "He's simply in debt in every corner," goldered the keener spirits; "he never had a brain for business. He's had money for stuff he's unable to deliver! Not a day gangs by but the big blue envelopes are coming. How do I ken? say ye! How do I ken, indeed? Oh-ooh, I ken perfectly. Perfectly! It was Postie himsell that telled me."
Yet all this was merely guesswork. For Gourlay had hitherto gone away from Barbie for his moneys and accommodations, so that the bodies could only surmise; they had nothing definite to go on. And through it all the gurly old fellow kept a brave front to the world. He was thinking of retiring, he said, and gradually drawing in his business. This offhand and lordly, to hide the patent diminution of his trade.
"Hi-hi!" said the old Provost, with a cruel laugh, when he heard of Gourlay's remark--"drawing in his business, ay! It's like Lang Jean Lingleton's waist, I'm thinking. It's thin eneugh drawn a'readys!"
On the morning of the last market-day he was ever to see in Barbie, old Gourlay was standing at the green gate, when the postman came up with a smirk, and put a letter in his hand. He betrayed a wish to hover in gossip, while Gourlay opened his letter, but "Less lip!" said surly John, and the fellow went away.
Ere he had reached the corner, a gowl of anger and grief struck his ear, and he wheeled eagerly.
Gourlay was standing with open mouth and outstretched arm, staring at the letter in his clenched fist with a look of horror, as if it had stung him.
"My God!" he cried, "had _I_ not enough to thole?"
"Aha!" thought Postie, "yon letter Wilson got this morning was correct, then! His son had sent the true story. That letter o' Gourlay's had the Edinburgh postmark; somebody has sent him word about his son. --Lord! what a tit-bit for my rounds."
Mrs. Gourlay, who was washing dishes, looked up to see her husband standing in the kitchen door. His face frightened her. She had often seen the blaze in his eye, and often the dark scowl, but never this bloodless pallor in his cheek. Yet his eyes were flaming.
"Ay, ay," he birred, "a fine job you have made of him!"
"Oh, what is it?" she quavered, and the dish she was wiping clashed on the floor.
"That's it!" said he, "that's it! Breck the dishes next; breck the dishes! Everything seems gaun to smash. If ye keep on lang eneugh, ye'll put a bonny end till't or ye're bye wi't--the lot o' ye."
The taunt passed in the anxiety that stormed her.
"Tell me, see!" she cried, imperious in stress of appeal. "Oh, what is it, John?" She stretched out her thin, red hands, and clasped them tightly before her. "Is it from Embro? Is there ainything the matter with _my_ boy? Is there ainything the matter with _my_ boy?"
The hard eye surveyed her a while in grim contempt of her weakness. She was a fluttering thing in his grip. " _Every_ thing's the matter with _your_ boy," he sneered slowly, "_every_ thing's the matter with _your_ boy. And it's your fault too, damn you, for you always spoiled him!"
With sudden wrath he strode over to the famous range and threw the letter within the great fender.
"What is it?" he cried, wheeling round on his wife. "The son you were so wild about sending to College has been flung in disgrace from its door! That's what it is!" He swept from the house like a madman.
Mrs. Gourlay sank into her old nursing chair and wailed, "Oh, my wean, my wean; my dear, my poor dear!" She drew the letter from the ashes, but could not read it for her tears. The words "drunkenness" and "expulsion" swam before her eyes. The manner of his disgrace she did not care to hear; she only knew her first-born was in sorrow.
"Oh, my son, my son," she cried; "my laddie, my wee laddie!" She was thinking of the time when he trotted at her petticoat.
It was market-day, and Gourlay must face the town. There was interest due on a mortgage which he could not pay; he must swallow his pride and try to borrow it in Barbie. He thought of trying Johnny Coe, for Johnny was of yielding nature, and had never been unfriendly.
He turned, twenty yards from his gate, and looked at the House with the Green Shutters. He had often turned to look back with pride at the gawcey building on its terrace, but never as he looked to-day. All that his life meant was bound up in that house--it had been the pride of the Gourlays; now it was no longer his, and the Gourlays' pride was in the dust--their name a by-word. As Gourlay looked, a robin was perched on the quiet roof-tree, its breast vivid in the sun. One of his metaphors flashed at the sight. "Shame is sitting there too," he muttered, and added with a proud, angry snarl, "on the riggin' o' _my_ hoose!"
He had a triple wrath to his son. He had not only ruined his own life; he had destroyed his father's hope that by entering the ministry he might restore the Gourlay reputation. Above all, he had disgraced the House with the Green Shutters. That was the crown of his offending. Gourlay felt for the house of his pride even more than for himself--rather the house was himself; there was no division between them. He had built it bluff to represent him to the world. It was his character in stone and lime. He clung to it, as the dull, fierce mind, unable to live in thought, clings to a material source of pride. And John had disgraced it. Even if fortune took a turn for the better, Green Shutters would be laughed at the country over, as the home of a prodigal.
As he went by the Cross, Wilson (Provost this long while) broke off a conversation with Templandmuir, to yell, "It's gra-and weather, Mr. Gourlay!" The men had not spoken for years. So to shout at poor Gourlay in his black hour, from the pinnacle of civic greatness, was a fine stroke: it was gloating, it was rubbing in the contrast. The words were innocent, but that was nothing; whatever the remark, for a declared enemy to address Gourlay in his shame was an insult: that was why Wilson addressed him. There was something in the very loudness of his tones that cried plainly, "Aha, Gourlay! Your son has disgraced you, my man!" Gourlay glowered at the animal and plodded dourly. Ere he had gone ten yards a coarse laugh came bellowing behind him. They saw the colour surge up the back of his neck, to the roots of his hair.
He stopped. Was his son's disgrace known in Barbie already? He had hoped to get through the market-day without anybody knowing. But Wilson had a son in Edinburgh; he had written, it was like. The salutation, therefore, and the laugh, had both been uttered in derision. He wheeled, his face black with the passionate blood. His mouth yawed with anger. His voice had a moan of intensity.
"What are 'e laughing at?" he said, with a mastering quietness.... "Eh? ... Just tell me, please, what you're laughing at."
He was crouching for the grip, his hands out like a gorilla's. The quiet voice, from the yawing mouth, beneath the steady, flaming eyes, was deadly. There is something inhuman in a rage so still.
"Eh?" he said slowly, and the moan seemed to come from the midst of a vast intensity rather than a human being. It was the question that must grind an answer.
Wilson was wishing to all his gods that he had not insulted this awful man. He remembered what had happened to Gibson. This, he had heard, was the very voice with which Gourlay moaned, "Take your hand off _my_ shouther!" ere he hurled Gibson through the window of the Red Lion. Barbie might soon want a new Provost, if he ran in now.
But there is always one way of evading punishment for a veiled insult, and of adding to its sting by your evasion. Repudiate the remotest thought of the protester. Thus you enjoy your previous gibe, with the additional pleasure of making your victim seem a fool for thinking you referred to him. You not only insult him on the first count, but send him off with an additional hint that he isn't worth your notice. Wilson was an adept in the art.
"Man," he lied blandly, but his voice was quivering--"ma-a-an, I wasn't so much as giving ye a thoat! It's verra strange if I cannot pass a joke with my o-old friend Templandmuir without _you_ calling me to book. It's a free country, I shuppose! Ye weren't in my mind at a-all. I have more important matters to think of," he ventured to add, seeing he had baffled Gourlay.
For Gourlay was baffled. For a directer insult, an offensive gesture, one fierce word, he would have hammered the road with the Provost. But he was helpless before the bland, quivering lie. Maybe they werena referring to him; maybe they knew nothing of John in Edinburgh; maybe he had been foolishly suspeecious. A subtle yet baffling check was put upon his anger. Madman as he was in wrath, he never struck without direct provocation; there was none in this pulpy gentleness. And he was too dull of wit to get round the common ruse and find a means of getting at them.
He let loose a great breath through his nostrils, as if releasing a deadly force which he had pent within him, ready should he need to spring. His mouth opened again, and he gaped at them with a great, round, unseeing stare. Then he swung on his heel.
But wrath clung round him like a garment. His anger fed on its uncertainties. For that is the beauty of the Wilson method of insult: you leave the poison in your victim's blood, and he torments himself. "Was Wilson referring to _me_, after all?" he pondered slowly; and his body surged at the thought. "If he was, I have let him get away unkilled," and he clutched the hands whence Wilson had escaped. Suddenly a flashing thought stopped him dead in the middle of his walk, staring hornily before him. He had seen the point at last that a quicker man would have seized on at the first. Why had Wilson thrust his damned voice on him on this particular morning of all days in the year, if he was not gloating over some news which he had just heard about the Gourlays? It was as plain as daylight: his son had sent word from Edinburgh. That was why he brayed and ho-ho-hoed when Gourlay went by. Gourlay felt a great flutter of pulses against his collar; there was a pain in his throat, an ache of madness in his breast. He turned once more. But Wilson and the Templar had withdrawn discreetly to the Black Bull; the street wasna canny. Gourlay resumed his way, his being a dumb gowl of rage. His angry thought swept to John. Each insult, and fancied insult, he endured that day was another item in the long account of vengeance with his son. It was John who had brought all this flaming round his ears--John whose colleging he had lippened to so muckle. The staff on which he leaned had pierced him. By the eternal heavens he would tramp it into atoms. His legs felt John beneath them.
As the market grew busy, Gourlay was the aim of innumerable eyes. He would turn his head to find himself the object of a queer, considering look; then the eyes of the starer would flutter abashed, as though detected spying the forbidden. The most innocent look at him was poison. "Do they know?" was his constant thought; "have they heard the news? What's Loranogie looking at me like that for?"
Not a man ventured to address him about John--he had cowed them too long. One man, however, showed a wish to try. A pretended sympathy, from behind the veil of which you probe a man's anguish at your ease, is a favourite weapon of human beasts anxious to wound. The Deacon longed to try it on Gourlay. But his courage failed him. It was the only time he was ever worsted in malignity. Never a man went forth, bowed down with a recent shame, wounded and wincing from the public gaze, but that old rogue hirpled up to him, and lisped with false smoothness: "Thirce me, neebour, I'm thorry for ye! Thith ith a _terrible_ affair! It'th on everybody'th tongue. But ye have my thympathy, neebour, ye have tha-at--my warmetht thympathy." And all the while the shifty eyes above the lying mouth would peer and probe, to see if the soul within the other was writhing at his words.
Now, though everybody was spying at Gourlay in the market, all were giving him a wide berth; for they knew that he was dangerous. He was no longer the man whom they had baited on the way to Skeighan; then he had some control, now three years' calamities had fretted his temper to a raw wound. To flick it was perilous. Great was the surprise of the starers, therefore, when the idle old Deacon was seen to detach himself and hail the grain merchant. Gourlay wheeled, and waited with a levelled eye. All were agog at the sight--something would be sure to come o' this--here would be an encounter worth the speaking o'. But the Deacon, having toddled forward a bittock on his thin shanks, stopped half-roads, took snuff, trumpeted into his big red handkerchief, and then, feebly waving, "I'll thee ye again, Dyohn," clean turned tail and toddled back to his cronies.
A roar went up at his expense.
"God!" said Tam Wylie, "did ye see yon? Gourlay stopped him wi' a glower."
But the laugh was maddening to Gourlay. Its readiness, its volume, showed him that scores of folk had him in their minds, were watching him, considering his position, cognizant of where he stood. "They ken," he thought. "They were a' waiting to see what would happen. They wanted to watch how Gourlay tholed the mention o' his son's disgrace. I'm a kind o' show to them."
Johnny Coe, idle and well-to-pass, though he had no business of his own to attend to, was always present where business men assembled. It was a gra-and way of getting news. To-day, however, Gourlay could not find him. He went into the cattle mart to see if he was there. For two years now Barbie had a market for cattle, on the first Tuesday of the month.
The auctioneer, a jovial dog, was in the middle of his roaring game. A big red bullock, the coat of which made a rich colour in the ring, came bounding in, scared at its surroundings--staring one moment and the next careering.
"There's meat for you," said he of the hammer; "see how it runs! How much am I offered for _this_ fine bullock?" He sing-songed, always saying "_this_ fine bullock" in exactly the same tone of voice. "Thirteen pounds for _this_ fine bullock; thirteen-five; thirteen-ten; thirteen-ten for _this_ fine bullock; thirteen-ten; any further bids on thirteen-ten? why, it's worth that for the colour o't; thank ye, sir--thirteen-fifteen; fourteen pounds; fourteen pounds for _this_ fine bullock; see how the stot stots[7] about the ring; that joke should raise him another half-sovereign; ah, I knew it would--fourteen-five; fourteen-five for _this_ fine bullock; fourteen-ten; no more than fourteen-ten for _this_ fine bullock; going at fourteen-ten; gone--Irrendavie."
Now that he was in the circle, however, the mad, big, handsome beast refused to go out again. When the cattlemen would drive him to the yard, he snorted and galloped round, till he had to be driven from the ring with blows. When at last he bounded through the door, he flung up his heels with a bellow, and sent the sand of his arena showering on the people round.
"I seh!" roared Brodie in his coarsest voice, from the side of the ring opposite to Gourlay. "I seh, owctioner! That maun be a College-bred stot, from the way he behaves. He flung dirt at his masters, and had to be expelled."
"Put Brodie in the ring and rowp him!" cried Irrendavie. "He roars like a bill, at ony rate."
There was a laugh at Brodie, true; but it was at Gourlay that a hundred big red faces turned to look. He did not look at them, though. He sent his eyes across the ring at Brodie.
"Lord!" said Irrendavie, "it's weel for Brodie that the ring's acqueesh them! Gourlay'll murder somebody yet. Red hell lap out o' his e'en when he looked at Brodie."
Gourlay's suspicion that his son's disgrace was a matter of common knowledge had now become a certainty. Brodie's taunt showed that everybody knew it. He walked out of the building very quietly, pale but resolute; no meanness in his carriage, no cowering. He was an arresting figure of a man as he stood for a moment in the door and looked round for the man whom he was seeking. "Weel, weel," he was thinking, "I maun thole, I suppose. They were under _my_ feet for many a day, and they're taking their advantage now."
But though he could thole, his anger against John was none the less. It was because they had been under his feet for many a day that John's conduct was the more heinous. It was his son's conduct that gave Gourlay's enemies their first opportunity against him, that enabled them to turn the tables. They might sneer at his trollop of a wife, they might sneer at his want of mere cleverness; still he held his head high amongst them. They might suspect his poverty; but so far, for anything they knew, he might have thousands behind him. He owed not a man in Barbie. The appointments of Green Shutters were as brave as ever. The selling of his horses, the dismissal of his men, might mean the completion of a fortune, not its loss. Hitherto, then, he was invulnerable--so he reasoned. It was his son's disgrace that gave the men he had trodden under foot the first weapon they could use against him. That was why it was more damnable in Gourlay's eyes than the conduct of all the prodigals that ever lived. It had enabled his foes to get their knife into him at last, and they were turning the dagger in the wound. All owing to the boy on whom he had staked such hopes of keeping up the Gourlay name! His account with John was lengthening steadily.
Coe was nowhere to be seen. At last Gourlay made up his mind to go out and make inquiries at his house, out the Fleckie Road. It was a quiet, big house, standing by itself, and Gourlay was glad there was nobody to see him.
It was Miss Coe herself who answered his knock at the door.
She was a withered old shrew, with fifty times the spunk of Johnny. On her thin wrists and long hands there was always a pair of bright red mittens, only her finger-tips showing. Her far-sunken and toothless mouth was always working, with a sucking motion of the lips; and her round little knob of a sticking-out chin munched up and down when she spoke, a long, stiff whitish hair slanting out its middle. However much you wished to avoid doing so, you could not keep your eyes from staring at that solitary hair while she was addressing you. It worked up and down so, keeping time to every word she spoke.
"Is your brother in?" said Gourlay. He was too near reality in this sad pass of his to think of "mistering." "Is your brother in?" said he.
"No-a!" she shrilled--for Miss Coe answered questions with an old-maidish scream, as if the news she was giving must be a great surprise both to you and her. "No-a!" she skirled; "he's no-a in-a. Was it ainything particular?"
"No," said Gourlay heavily. "I--I just wanted to see him," and he trudged away.
Miss Coe looked after him for a moment ere she closed the door. "He's wanting to barrow money," she cried; "I'm nearly sure o't! I maun caution Johnny when he comes back frae Fleckie, afore he gangs east the toon. Gourlay could get him to do ocht! He always admired the brute--I'm sure I kenna why. Because he's siccan a silly body himsell, I suppose!"
It was after dark when Gourlay met Coe on the street. He drew him aside in the shadows, and asked for a loan of eighty pounds.
Johnny stammered a refusal. "Hauf the bawbees is mine," his sister had skirled, "and I daur ye to do ony siccan thing, John Coe!"
"It's only for a time," pleaded Gourlay; "and, by God," he flashed, "it's hell in _my_ throat to ask from any man."
"No, no, Mr. Gourlay," said Johnny, "it's quite impossible. I've always looked up to ye, and I'm not unwilling to oblige ye, but I cannot take the risk."
"Risk!" said Gourlay, and stared at the darkness. By hook or by crook he must raise the money to save the House with the Green Shutters. It was no use trying the bank; he had a letter from the banker in his desk, to tell him that his account was overdrawn. And yet if the interest were not paid at once, the lawyers in Glasgow would foreclose, and the Gourlays would be flung upon the street. His proud soul must eat dirt, if need be, for the sake of eighty pounds.
"If I get the baker or Tam Wylie to stand security," he asked, "would ye not oblige me? I think they would do it. I have always felt they respected me."
"Well," said Johnny slowly, fearing his sister's anger, "if ye get the baker and Tam Wylie for security. I'll be on the street for another half-hour."
A figure, muffled in a greatcoat, was seen stealing off through the shadows.
"God's curse on whoever that is," snarled Gourlay, "creeping up to listen to our talk!"
"I don't think so," said Johnny; "it seemed a young chap trying to hide himself."
Gourlay failed to get his securities. The baker, though a poor man, would have stood for him, if Tam Wylie would have joined; but Tam would not budge. He was as clean as gray granite, and as hard.
So Gourlay trudged home through the darkness, beaten at last, mad with shame and anger and foreboding.
The first thing he saw on entering the kitchen was his son--sitting muffled in his coat by the great fender.
FOOTNOTES: [7] _Stot_, a bullock; _to stot_, to bound.
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{
"id": "25876"
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Janet and her mother saw a quiver run through Gourlay as he stood and glowered from the threshold. He seemed of monstrous bulk and significance, filling the doorway in his silence.
The quiver that went through him was a sign of his contending angers, his will struggling with the tumult of wrath that threatened to spoil his revenge. To fell that huddled oaf with a blow would be a poor return for all he had endured because of him. He meant to sweat punishment out of him drop by drop, with slow and vicious enjoyment. But the sudden sight of that living disgrace to the Gourlays woke a wild desire to leap on him at once and glut his rage--a madness which only a will like his could control. He quivered with the effort to keep it in.
To bring a beaten and degraded look into a man's face, rend manhood out of him in fear, is a sight that makes decent men wince in pain; for it is an outrage on the decency of life, an offence to natural religion, a violation of the human sanctities. Yet Gourlay had done it once and again. I saw him "down" a man at the Cross once, a big man with a viking beard, dark brown, from which you would have looked for manliness. Gourlay, with stabbing eyes, threatened, and birred, and "downed" him, till he crept away with a face like chalk, and a hunted, furtive eye. Curiously it was his manly beard that made the look such a pain, for its contrasting colour showed the white face of the coward--and a coward had no right to such a beard. A grim and cruel smile went after him as he slunk away. " _Ha! _" barked Gourlay, in lordly and pursuing scorn, and the fellow leapt where he walked as the cry went through him. To break a man's spirit so, take that from him which he will never recover while he lives, send him slinking away _animo castrato_--for that is what it comes to--is a sinister outrage of the world. It is as bad as the rape of a woman, and ranks with the sin against the Holy Ghost--derives from it, indeed. Yet it was this outrage that Gourlay meant to work upon his son. He would work him down and down, this son of his, till he was less than a man, a frightened, furtive animal. Then, perhaps, he would give a loose to his other rage, unbuckle his belt, and thrash the grown man like a wriggling urchin on the floor.
As he stood glowering from the door Mrs. Gourlay rose, with an appealing cry of "_John! _" But Gourlay put his eye on her, and she sank into her chair, staring up at him in terror. The strings of the tawdry cap she wore seemed to choke her, and she unfastened them with nervous fingers, fumbling long beneath her lifted chin to get them loose. She did not remove the cap, but let the strings dangle by her jaw. The silly bits of cloth waggling and quivering, as she turned her head repeatedly from son to husband and from husband to son, added to her air of helplessness and inefficiency. Once she whispered with ghastly intensity, "_God have mercy! _" For a length of time there was a loaded silence.
Gourlay went up to the hearth, and looked down on his son from near at hand. John shrank down in his greatcoat. A reek of alcohol rose from around him. Janet whimpered.
But when Gourlay spoke it was with deadly quietude. The moan was in his voice. So great was his controlled wrath that he drew in great, shivering breastfuls of air between the words, as if for strength to utter them; and they quavered forth on it again. He seemed weakened by his own rage.
"Ay, man!" he breathed.... "Ye've won hame, I observe! ... Dee-ee-ar me! ... Im-phm!"
The contrast between the lowness of his voice and his steady, breathing anger that possessed the air (they felt it coming as on waves) was demoniac, appalling.
John could not speak; he was paralyzed by fear. To have this vast hostile force touch him, yet be still, struck him dumb. Why did his father not break out on him at once? What did he mean? What was he going to do? The jamb of the fireplace cut his right shoulder as he cowered into it, to get away as far as he could.
"I'm saying ... ye've won hame!" quivered Gourlay in a deadly slowness, and his eyes never left his son.
And still the son made no reply. In the silence the ticking of the big clock seemed to fill their world. They were conscious of nothing else. It smote the ear.
"Ay," John gulped at last from a throat that felt closing. The answer seemed dragged out of him by the insistent silence.
"Just so-a!" breathed his father, and his eyes opened in wide flame. He heaved with the great breath he drew.... "Im-phm!" he drawled.
He went through to the scullery at the back of the kitchen to wash his hands. Through the open door Janet and her mother--looking at each other with affrighted eyes--could hear him sneering at intervals, "Ay, man!" ... "Just that, now!" ... "Im-phm!" And again, "Ay, ay! ... Dee-ee-ar me!" in grim, falsetto irony.
When he came back to the kitchen he turned to Janet, and left his son in a suspended agony.
"Ay, woman, Jenny, ye're there!" he said, and nipped her ear as he passed over to his chair. "Were ye in Skeighan the day?"
"Ay, faither," she answered.
"And what did the Skeighan doctor say?"
She raised her large pale eyes to his with a strange look. Then her head sank low on her breast.
"Nothing!" she said at last.
"Nothing!" said he. "Nothing for nothing, then. I hope you didna pay him?"
"No, faither," she answered. "I hadna the bawbees."
"When did ye get back?" he asked.
"Just after--just after----" Her eyes flickered over to John, as if she were afraid of mentioning his name.
"Oh, just after this gentleman! But there's noathing strange in tha-at; you were always after him. You were born after him, and considered after him; he aye had the best o't.--I howp _you_ are in good health?" he sneered, turning to his son. "It would never do for a man to break down at the outset o' a great career! ... For ye _are_ at the outset o' a great career; are ye na?"
His speech was as soft as the foot of a tiger, and sheathed as rending a cruelty. There was no escaping the crouching stealth of it. If he had leapt with a roar, John's drunken fury might have lashed itself to rage. But the younger and weaker man was fascinated and helpless before the creeping approach of so monstrous a wrath.
"Eh?" asked Gourlay softly, when John made no reply; "I'm saying you're at the outset o' a great career; are ye no? Eh?"
Soft as his "Eh" was in utterance, it was insinuating, pursuing; it had to be answered.
"No," whimpered John.
"Well, well; you're maybe at the end o't! Have ye been studying hard?"
"Yes," lied John.
"That's right!" cried his father with great heartiness. "There's my brave fellow! Noathing like studying! ... And no doubt"--he leaned over suavely--"and no doubt ye've brought a wheen prizes home wi' ye as usual? Eh?"
There was no answer.
"Eh?"
"No," gulped the cowerer. " _Nae_ prizes!" cried Gourlay, and his eyebrows went up in a pretended surprise. " _Nae-ae_ prizes! Ay, man! Fow's that, na?"
Young Gourlay was being reduced to the condition of a beaten child, who, when his mother asks if he has been a bad boy, is made to sob "Yes" at her knee. "Have you been a good boy?" she asks--"No," he pants; and "Are you sorry for being a bad boy?" --"Yes," he sobs; and "Will you be a good boy now, then?" --"Yes," he almost shrieks, in his desire to be at one with his mother. Young Gourlay was being equally beaten from his own nature, equally battered under by another personality. Only he was not asked to be a good boy. He might gang to hell for anything auld Gourlay cared--when once he had bye with him.
Even as he degraded his son to this state of unnatural cowardice, Gourlay felt a vast disgust swell within him that a son of his should be such a coward. "Damn him!" he thought, glowering with big-eyed contempt at the huddled creature; "he hasna the pluck o' a pig! How can he stand talk like this without showing he's a man? When I was a child on the brisket, if a man had used me as I'm using him, I would have flung mysell at him. He's a pretty-looking object to carry the name o' John Gourla'! My God, what a ke-o of _my_ life I've made--that auld trollop for my wife, that sumph for my son, and that dying lassie for my dochter! Was it I that bred him? _That! _" He leapt to his feet in devilish merriment.
"Set out the spirits, Jenny!" he cried; "set out the spirits! My son and I must have a drink together--to celebrate the occeesion; ou ay," he sneered, drawling out the word with sharp, unfamiliar sound, "just to celebrate the occeesion!"
The wild humour that seized him was inevitable, born of a vicious effort to control a rage that was constantly increasing, fed by the sight of the offender. Every time he glanced across at the thing sitting there he was swept with fresh surges of fury and disgust. But his vicious constraint curbed them under, and refused them a natural expression. They sought an unnatural. Some vent they must have, and they found it in a score of wild devilries he began to practise on his son. Wrath fed and checked in one brings the hell on which man is built to the surface. Gourlay was transformed. He had a fluency of speech, a power of banter, a readiness of tongue, which he had never shown before. He was beyond himself. Have you heard the snarl with which a wild beast arrests the escaping prey which it has just let go in enjoying cruelty? Gourlay was that animal. For a moment he would cease to torture his son, feed his disgust with a glower; then the sight of him huddled there would wake a desire to stamp on him; but his will would not allow that, for it would spoil the sport he had set his mind on; and so he played with the victim which he would not kill.
"Set out the speerits, Jenny," he birred, when she wavered in fear. "What are ye shaking for? Set out the speerits--just to shelebrate the joyful occeesion, ye know--ay, ay, just to shelebrate the joyful occeesion!"
Janet brought a tray, with glasses, from the pantry. As she walked, the rims of the glasses shivered and tinkled against each other, from her trembling. Then she set a bottle on the table.
Gourlay sent it crashing to the floor. "A bottle!" he roared. "A bottle for huz twa! To hell wi' bottles! The jar, Jenny, the jar; set out the jar, lass, set out the jar. For we mean to make a night of it, this gentleman and me. Ay," he yawed with a vicious smile, "we'll make a night o't--we two. A night that Barbie'll remember loang!"
"Have ye skill o' drink?" he asked, turning to his son.
"No," wheezed John.
"No!" cried his father. "I thought ye learned everything at College! Your education's been neglected. But I'll teach ye a lesson or _this_ nicht's by. Ay, by God," he growled, "I'll teach ye a lesson."
Curb his temper as he might, his own behaviour was lashing it to frenzy. Through the moaning intensity peculiar to his vicious rage there leapt at times a wild-beast snarl. Every time they heard it, it cut the veins of his listeners with a start of fear--it leapt so suddenly.
"Ha'e, sir!" he cried.
John raised his dull, white face and looked across at the bumper which his father poured him. But he felt the limbs too weak beneath him to go and take it.
"Bide where ye are!" sneered his father, "bide where ye are! I'll wait on ye; I'll wait on ye. Man, I waited on ye the day that ye were bo-orn! The heavens were hammering the world as John Gourla' rode through the storm for a doctor to bring hame his heir. The world was feared, but _he_ wasna feared," he roared in Titanic pride, "_he_ wasna feared; no, by God, for he never met what scaured him! ... Ay, ay," he birred softly again, "ay, ay, ye were ushered loudly to the world, serr! Verra appropriate for a man who was destined to make such a name! ... Eh? ... Verra appropriate, serr; verra appropriate! And you'll be ushered just as loudly out o't. Oh, young Gourlay's death maun make a splurge, ye know--a splurge to attract folk's attention!"
John's shaking hand was wet with the spilled whisky.
"Take it off," sneered his father, boring into him with a vicious eye; "take it off, serr; take off your dram! Stop! Somebody wrote something about that--some poetry or other. Who was it?"
"I dinna ken," whimpered John.
"Don't tell lies now. You do ken. I heard you mention it to Loranogie. Come on now--who was it?"
"It was Burns," said John.
"Oh, it was Burns, was it? And what had Mr. Burns to say on the subject? Eh?" " 'Freedom and whisky gang thegither: tak aff your dram,'" stammered John.
"A verra wise remark," said Gourlay gravely. " 'Freedom and whisky gang thegither;'" he turned the quotation on his tongue, as if he were savouring a tit-bit. "That's verra good," he approved. "You're a great admirer of Burns, I hear. Eh?"
"Yes," said John.
"Do what he bids ye, then. Take off your dram! It'll show what a fine free fellow you are!"
It was a big, old-fashioned Scotch drinking-glass, containing more than half a gill of whisky, and John drained it to the bottom. To him it had been a deadly thing at first, coming thus from his father's hand. He had taken it into his own with a feeling of aversion that was strangely blended of disgust and fear. But the moment it touched his lips, desire leapt in his throat to get at it.
"Good!" roared his father in mock admiration. "God, ye have the thrapple! When I was your age that would have choked me. I must have a look at that throat o' yours. Stand up! ... _Stand up when I tall 'ee! _" John rose swaying to his feet. Months of constant tippling, culminating in a wild debauch, had shattered him. He stood in a reeling world. And the fear weakening his limbs changed his drunken stupor to a heart-heaving sickness. He swayed to and fro, with a cold sweat oozing from his chalky face.
"What's ado wi' the fellow?" cried Gourlay. "Oom? He's swinging like a saugh-wand. I must wa-alk round this and have a look!"
John's drunken submissiveness encouraged his father to new devilries. The ease with which he tortured him provoked him to more torture; he went on more and more viciously, as if he were conducting an experiment, to see how much the creature would bear before he turned. Gourlay was enjoying the glutting of his own wrath.
He turned his son round with a finger and thumb on his shoulder, in insolent inspection, as you turn an urchin round to see him in his new suit of clothes. Then he crouched before him, his face thrust close to the other, and peered into his eyes, his mouth distent with an infernal smile. "My boy, Johnny," he said sweetly, "my boy, Johnny," and patted him gently on the cheek. John raised dull eyes and looked into his father's. Far within him a great wrath was gathering through his fear. Another voice, another self, seemed to whimper, with dull iteration, "I'll _kill_ him; I'll _kill_ him; by God, I'll _kill_ him--if he doesna stop this--if he keeps on like this at me!" But his present and material self was paralyzed with fear.
"Open your mouth!" came the snarl--"_wider, damn ye! wider! _" "Im-phm!" said Gourlay, with a critical drawl, pulling John's chin about to see into him the deeper. "Im-phm! God, it's like a furnace! What's the Latin for throat?"
"Guttur," said John.
"Gutter," said his father. "A verra appropriate name! Yours stinks like a cesspool! What have you been doing till't? I'm afraid ye aren't in very good health, after a-all.... Eh? ... Mrs. Gourla', Mrs. Gourla'! He's in very bad case, this son of yours, Mrs. Gourla'! Fine I ken what he needs, though. --Set out the brandy, Jenny, set out the brandy," he roared; "whisky's not worth a damn for him! Stop; it was you gaed the last time--it's _your_ turn now, auld wife, it's _your_ turn now! Gang for the brandy to your twa John Gourla's. We're a pair for a woman to be proud of!"
He gazed after his wife as she tottered to the pantry.
"Your skirt's on the gape, auld wife," he sang; "your skirt's on the gape; as use-u-al," he drawled; "as use-u-al. It was always like that; and it always scunnered me, for I aye liked things tidy--though I never got them. However, I maunna compleen when ye bore sic a braw son to my name. He's a great consolation! Imphm, he is that--a great consolation!"
The brandy bottle slipped from the quivering fingers and was smashed to pieces on the floor.
"Hurrah!" yelled Gourlay.
He seemed rapt and carried by his own devilry. The wreck and ruin strewn about the floor consorted with the ruin of his fortunes; let all go smash--what was the use of caring? Now in his frenzy, he, ordinarily so careful, seemed to delight in the smashings and the breakings; they suited his despair.
He saw that his spirit of destruction frightened them, too, and that was another reason to indulge it.
"To hell with everything," he yelled, like a mock-bacchanal. " _We_'re the hearty fellows! We'll make a red night now we're at it!" And with that he took the heel of a bottle on his toe and sent it flying among the dishes on the dresser. A great plate fell, split in two.
"Poor fellow!" he whined, turning to his son; "poo-oor fellow! I fear he has lost his pheesic. For that was the last bottle o' brandy in my aucht; the last John Gourlay had, the last he'll ever buy. What am I to do wi' ye now? ... Eh? ... I must do something; it's coming to the bit now, sir."
As he stood in a heaving silence the sobbing of the two women was heard through the room. John was still swaying on the floor.
Sometimes Gourlay would run the full length of the kitchen, and stand there glowering on a stoop; then he would come crouching up to his son on a vicious little trot, pattering in rage, the broken glass crunching and grinding beneath his feet. At any moment he might spring.
"What do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?" he moaned.... "Eh? ... What do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?"
As he came grinning in rage his lips ran out to their full width, and the tense slit showed his teeth to their roots. The gums were white. The stricture of the lips had squeezed them bloodless.
He went back to the dresser once more and bent low beside it, glancing at his son across his left shoulder, with his head flung back sideways, his right fist clenched low and ready from a curve of the elbow. It swung heavy as a mallet by his thigh. Janet got to her knees and came shuffling across the floor on them, though her dress was tripping her, clasping her outstretched hands, and sobbing in appeal, "Faither, faither; O faither; for God's sake, faither!" She clung to him. He unclenched his fist and lifted her away. Then he came crouching and quivering across the floor slowly, a gleaming devilry in the eyes that devoured his son. His hands were like outstretched claws, and shivered with each shiver of the voice that moaned, through set teeth, "What do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now? ... What do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now? ... Ye damned sorrow and disgrace that ye are, what do ye think I mean to do wi' ye now?"
"Run, John!" screamed Mrs. Gourlay, leaping to her feet. With a hunted cry young Gourlay sprang to the door. So great had been the fixity of Gourlay's wrath, so tense had he been in one direction, as he moved slowly on his prey, that he could not leap to prevent him. As John plunged into the cool, soft darkness, his mother's "Thank God!" rang past him on the night.
His immediate feeling was of coolness and width and spaciousness, in contrast with the hot grinding hostility that had bored so closely in on him for the last hour. He felt the benignness of the darkened heavens. A tag of some forgotten poem he had read came back to his mind, and, "Come, kindly night, and cover me," he muttered, with shaking lips; and felt how true it was. My God, what a relief to be free of his father's eyes! They had held him till his mother's voice broke the spell. They seemed to burn him now.
What a fool he had been to face his father when empty both of food and drink! Every man was down-hearted when he was empty. If his mother had had time to get the tea, it would have been different; but the fire had been out when he went in. "He wouldn't have downed me so easy if I had had anything in me," he muttered, and his anger grew as he thought of all he had been made to suffer. For he was still the swaggerer. Now that the incubus of his father's tyranny no longer pressed on him directly, a great hate rose within him for the tyrant. He would go back and have it out when he was primed. "It's the only hame I have," he sobbed angrily to the darkness; "I have no other place to gang till! Yes, I'll go back and have it out with him when once I get something in me, so I will." It was no disgrace to suck courage from the bottle for that encounter with his father, for nobody could stand up to black Gourlay--nobody. Young Gourlay was yielding to a peculiar fatalism of minds diseased: all that affects them seems different from all that affects everybody else; they are even proud of their separate and peculiar doom. Young Gourlay not thought but felt it--he was different from everybody else. The heavens had cursed nobody else with such a terrible sire. It was no cowardice to fill yourself with drink before you faced him.
A drunkard will howl you an obscene chorus the moment after he has wept about his dead child. For a mind in the delirium of drink is no longer a coherent whole, but a heap of shattered bits, which it shows one after the other to the world. Hence the many transformations of that semi-madness, and their quick variety. Young Gourlay was showing them now. His had always been a wandering mind, deficient in application and control, and as he neared his final collapse it became more and more variable, the prey of each momentary thought. In a short five minutes of time he had been alive to the beauty of the darkness, cowering before the memory of his father's eyes, sobbing in self-pity and angry resolve, shaking in terror--indeed he was shaking now. But his vanity came uppermost. As he neared the Red Lion he stopped suddenly, and the darkness seemed on fire against his cheeks. He would have to face curious eyes, he reflected. It was from the Red Lion he and Aird had started so grandly in the autumn. It would never do to come slinking back like a whipped cur; he must carry it off bravely in case the usual busybodies should be gathered round the bar. So with his coat flapping lordly on either side of him, his hands deep in his trousers pockets, and his hat on the back of his head, he drove at the swing-doors with an outshot chest, and entered with a "breenge." But for all his swagger he must have had a face like death, for there was a cry among the idlers. A man breathed, "My God! What's the matter?" With shaking knees Gourlay advanced to the bar, and, "For God's sake, Aggie," he whispered, "give me a Kinblythmont!"
It went at a gulp.
"Another!" he gasped, like a man dying of thirst, whom his first sip maddens for more. "Another! Another!"
He had tossed the other down his burning throat when Deacon Allardyce came in.
He knew his man the moment he set eyes on him, but, standing at the door, he arched his hand above his brow, as you do in gazing at a dear unexpected friend, whom you pretend not to be quite sure of, so surprised and pleased are you to see him there.
"Ith it Dyohn?" he cried. "It _ith_ Dyohn!" And he toddled forward with outstretched hand. "Man Dyohn!" he said again, as if he could scarce believe the good news, and he waggled the other's hand up and down, with both his own clasped over it. "I'm proud to thee you, thir; I am that. And tho you're won hame, ay! Im-phm! And how are ye tummin on?"
"Oh, _I_'m all right, Deacon," said Gourlay with a silly laugh. "Have a wet?" The whisky had begun to warm him.
"A wha-at?" said the Deacon, blinking in a puzzled fashion with his bleary old eyes.
"A dram--a drink--a drop o' the Auld Kirk," said Gourlay, with a stertorous laugh down through his nostrils.
"Hi! hi!" laughed the Deacon in his best falsetto. "Ith that what ye call it up in Embro? A wet, ay! Ah, well, maybe I will take a little drope, theeing you're tho ready wi' your offer."
They drank together.
"Aggie, fill me a mutchkin when you're at it," said Gourlay to the pretty barmaid with the curly hair. He had spent many an hour with her last summer in the bar. The four big whiskies he had swallowed in the last half-hour were singing in him now, and he blinked at her drunkenly.
There was a scarlet ribbon on her dark curls, coquettish, vivid, and Gourlay stared at it dreamily, partly in a drunken daze, and partly because a striking colour always brought a musing and self-forgetting look within his eyes. All his life he used to stare at things dreamily, and come to himself with a start when spoken to. He forgot himself now.
"Aggie," he said, and put his hand out to hers clumsily where it rested on the counter--"Aggie, that ribbon's infernal bonny on your dark hair!"
She tossed her head, and perked away from him on her little high heels. Him, indeed! --the drunkard! She wanted none of his compliments!
There were half a dozen in the place by this time, and they all stared with greedy eyes. "That's young Gourlay--him that was _expelled_," was heard, the last an emphatic whisper, with round eyes of awe at the offence that must have merited such punishment. " _Expelled_, mind ye!" --with a round shake of the head. "Watch Allardyce. We'll see fun."
"What's this 'expelled' is, now?" said John Toodle, with a very considering look and tone in his uplifted face--"properly speaking, that is," he added, implying that of course he knew the word in its ordinary sense, but was not sure of it "properly speaking."
"Flung oot," said Drucken Wabster, speaking from the fullness of his own experience.
"Whisht!" said a third. "Here's Tam Brodie. Watch what _he_ does."
The entrance of Brodie spoiled sport for the Deacon. He had nothing of that malicious _finesse_ that made Allardyce a genius at nicking men on the raw. He went straight to his work, stabbing like an awl.
"Hal-lo!" he cried, pausing with contempt in the middle of the word, when he saw young Gourlay. "Hal-lo! _You_ here! --Brig o' the Mains, miss, if _you_ please. --Ay, man! God, you've been making a name up in Embro. I hear you stood up till him gey weel," and he winked openly to those around.
Young Gourlay's maddened nature broke at the insult. "Damn you," he screamed, "leave _me_ alone, will you? I have done nothing to _you_, have I?"
Brodie stared at him across his suspended whisky glass, an easy and assured contempt curling his lip. "Don't greet owre't, my bairn," said he, and even as he spoke John's glass shivered on his grinning teeth. Brodie leapt on him, lifted him, and sent him flying.
"That's a game of your father's, you damned dog," he roared. "But there's mair than him can play the game!"
"Canny, my freendth, canny!" piped Allardyce, who was vexed at a fine chance for his peculiar craft being spoiled by mere brutality of handling. All this was most inartistic. Brodie never had the fine stroke.
Gourlay picked himself bleeding from the floor, and holding a handkerchief to his mouth, plunged headlong from the room. He heard the derisive roar that came after him stop, strangled by the sharp swing-to of the door. But it seemed to echo in his burning ears as he strode madly on through the darkness. He uncorked his mutchkin and drank it like water. His swollen lip smarted at first, but he drank till it was a mere dead lump to his tongue, and he could not feel the whisky on the wound.
His mind at first was a burning whirl through drink and rage, with nothing determined and nothing definite. But thought began to shape itself. In a vast vague circle of consciousness his mind seemed to sit in the centre and think with preternatural clearness. Though all around was whirling and confused, drink had endowed some inner eye of the brain with unnatural swift vividness. Far within the humming circle of his mind he saw an instant and terrible revenge on Brodie, acted it, and lived it now. His desires were murderers, and he let them slip, gloating in the cruelties that hot fancy wreaked upon his enemy. Then he suddenly remembered his father. A rush of fiery blood seemed to drench all his body as he thought of what had passed between them. "But, by Heaven," he swore, as he threw away his empty bottle, "he won't use me like that another time; I have blood in me now." His maddened fancy began building a new scene, with the same actors, the same conditions, as the other, but an issue gloriously diverse. With vicious delight he heard his father use the same sneers, the same gibes, the same brutalities; then he turned suddenly and had him under foot, kicking, bludgeoning, stamping the life out. He would do it, by Heaven, he would do it! The memory of what had happened came fierily back, and made the pressing darkness burn. His wrath was brimming on the edge, ready to burst, and he felt proudly that it would no longer ebb in fear. Whisky had killed fear, and left a hysterical madman, all the more dangerous because he was so weak. Let his father try it on now; he was ready for him!
And his father was ready for him, for he knew what had happened at the inn. Mrs. Webster, on her nightly hunt for the man she had sworn to honour and obey, having drawn several public-houses blank, ran him to earth at last in the bar-room of the Red Lion. "Yes, yes, Kirsty," he cried, eager to prevent her tongue, "I know I'm a blagyird; but oh, the terrible thing that has happened!" He so possessed her with his graphic tale that he was allowed to go chuckling back to his potations, while she ran hot-foot to the Green Shutters.
"Eh, poo-oor Mrs. Gourlay; and oh, your poo-oor boy, too; and eh, that brute Tam Brodie----" Even as she came through the door the voluble clatter was shrilling out the big tidings, before she was aware of Gourlay's presence. She faltered beneath his black glower.
"Go on!" he said, and ground it out of her.
"The damned sumph!" he growled, "to let Brodie hammer him!" For a moment, it is true, his anger was divided, stood in equipoise, even dipped "Brodie-ward." "I've an account to sattle wi' _him_!" he thought grimly. "When _I_ get my claw on his neck, I'll teach him better than to hit a Gourlay! I wonder," he mused, with a pride in which was neither doubt nor wonder--"I wonder will he fling the father as he flang the son!" But that was the instinct of his blood, not enough to make him pardon John. On the contrary, here was a new offence of his offspring. On the morrow Barbie would be burning with another affront which he had put upon the name of Gourlay. He would waste no time when he came back, be he drunk or be he sober; he would strip the flesh off him.
"Jenny," he said, "bring me the step-ladder."
He would pass the time till the prodigal came back--and he was almost certain to come back, for where could he go in Barbie? --he would pass the time by trying to improve the appearance of the house. He had spent money on his house till the last, and even now had the instinct to embellish it. Not that it mattered to him now; still he could carry out a small improvement he had planned before. The kitchen was ceiled in dark timber, and on the rich brown rafters there were wooden pegs and bars, for the hanging of Gourlay's sticks and fishing-rods. His gun was up there, too, just above the hearth. It had occurred to him about a month ago, however, that a pair of curving steel rests, that would catch the glint from the fire, would look better beneath his gun than the dull pegs, where it now lay against a joist. He might as well pass the time by putting them up.
The bringing of the steps, light though they were, was too much for Janet's weak frame, and she stopped in a fit of coughing, clutching the ladder for support, while it shook to her spasms.
"Tuts, Jenny, this'll never do," said Gourlay, not unkindly. He took the ladder away from her and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Away to your bed, lass. You maunna sit so late."
But Janet was anxious for her brother, and wanted to sit up till he came home. She answered, "Yes," to her father, but idled discreetly, to consume the time.
"Where's my hammer?" snarled Gourlay.
"Is it no by the clock?" said his wife wearily. "Oh, I remember, I remember! I gied it to Mrs. Webster to break some brie-stone, to rub the front doorstep wi'. It'll be lying in the porch."
"Oh, ay, as usual," said Gourlay--"as usual."
"John!" she cried in alarm, "you don't mean to take down the gun, do ye?"
"Huts, you auld fule, what are you skirling for? D'ye think I mean to shoot the dog? Set back on your creepie and make less noise, will ye?"
Ere he had driven a nail in the rafter John came in, and sat down by the fire, taking up the great poker, as if to cover his nervousness. If Gourlay had been on the floor he would have grappled with him there and then. But the temptation to gloat over his victim from his present height was irresistible. He went up another step, and sat down on the very summit of the ladder, his feet resting on one of the lower rounds. The hammer he had been using was lying on his thigh, his hand clutched about its haft.
"Ay, man, you've been taking a bit walk, I hear."
John made no reply, but played with the poker. It was so huge, owing to Gourlay's whim, that when it slid through his fingers it came down on the muffled hearthstone with a thud like a pavior's hammer.
"I'm told you saw the Deacon on your rounds? Did he compliment you on your return?"
At the quiet sneer a lightning-flash showed John that Allardyce had quizzed him too. For a moment he was conscious of a vast self-pity. "Damn them, they're all down on me," he thought. Then a vindictive rage against them all took hold of him, tense, quivering.
"Did you see Thomas Brodie when ye were out?" came the suave inquiry.
"I saw him," said John, raising fierce eyes to his father's. He was proud of the sudden firmness in his voice. There was no fear in it, no quivering. He was beyond caring what happened to the world or him.
"Oh, you saw him," roared Gourlay, as his anger leapt to meet the anger of his son. "And what did he say to you, may I speir? ... Or maybe I should speir what he did.... Eh?" he grinned.
"By God, I'll kill ye," screamed John, springing to his feet, with the poker in his hand. The hammer went whizzing past his ear. Mrs. Gourlay screamed and tried to rise from her chair, her eyes goggling in terror. As Gourlay leapt, John brought the huge poker with a crash on the descending brow. The fiercest joy of his life was the dirl that went up his arm as the steel thrilled to its own hard impact on the bone. Gourlay thudded on the fender, his brow crashing on the rim.
At the blow there had been a cry as of animals from the two women. There followed an eternity of silence, it seemed, and a haze about the place; yet not a haze, for everything was intensely clear; only it belonged to another world. One terrible fact had changed the Universe. The air was different now--it was full of murder. Everything in the room had a new significance, a sinister meaning. The effect was that of an unholy spell.
As through a dream Mrs. Gourlay's voice was heard crying on her God.
John stood there, suddenly weak in his limbs, and stared, as if petrified, at the red poker in his hand. A little wisp of grizzled hair stuck to the square of it, severed, as by scissors, between the sharp edge and the bone. It was the sight of that bit of hair that roused him from his stupor--it seemed so monstrous and horrible, sticking all by itself to the poker. "I didna strike him so hard," he pleaded, staring vaguely, "I didna strike him so hard." Now that the frenzy had left him, he failed to realize the force of his own blow. Then with a horrid fear on him, "Get up, faither," he entreated; "get up, faither! O man, you micht get up!"
Janet, who had bent above the fallen man, raised an ashen face to her brother, and whispered hoarsely, "His heart has stopped, John; you have killed him!"
Steps were heard coming through the scullery. In the fear of discovery Mrs. Gourlay shook off the apathy that held her paralyzed. She sprang up, snatched the poker from her son, and thrust it in the embers.
"Run, John; run for the doctor," she screamed. --"O Mrs. Webster, Mrs. Webster, I'm glad to see ye. Mr. Gourlay fell from the top o' the ladder, and smashed his brow on the muckle fender."
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{
"id": "25876"
}
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26
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None
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"Mother!" came the startled whisper, "mother! O woman, waken and speak to me!"
No comforting answer came from the darkness to tell of a human being close at hand; the girl, intently listening, was alone with her fear. All was silent in the room, and the terror deepened. Then the far-off sound in the house was heard once more.
"Mother--mother, what's that?"
"What is it, Janet?" came a feebly complaining voice; "what's wrong wi' ye, lassie?"
Janet and her mother were sleeping in the big bedroom, Janet in the place that had been her father's. He had been buried through the day, the second day after his murder. Mrs. Gourlay had shown a feverish anxiety to get the corpse out the house as soon as possible; and there had been nothing to prevent it. "Oh," said Doctor Dandy to the gossips, "it would have killed any man to fall from such a height on to the sharp edge of yon fender. No; he was not quite dead when I got to him. He opened his eyes on me, once--a terrible look--and then life went out of him with a great quiver."
Ere Janet could answer her mother she was seized with a racking cough, and her hoarse bark sounded hollow in the silence. At last she sat up and gasped fearfully, "I thocht--I thocht I heard something moving!"
"It would be the wind," plained her mother; "it would just be the wind. John's asleep this strucken hour and mair. I sat by his bed for a lang while, and he prigged and prayed for a dose o' the whisky ere he won away. He wouldna let go my hand till he slept, puir fallow. There's an unco fear on him--an unco fear. But try and fa' owre," she soothed her daughter. "That would just be the wind ye heard."
"There's nae wind!" said Janet.
The stair creaked. The two women clung to each other, gripping tight fingers, and their hearts throbbed like big separate beings in their breasts. There was a rustle, as of something coming; then the door opened, and John flitted to the bedside with a candle in his hand. Above his nightshirt his bloodless face looked gray.
"Mother," he panted, "there's something in my room!"
"What is it, John?" said his mother, in surprise and fear.
"I--I thocht it was himsell! O mother, I'm feared, I'm feared! O mother, I'm _feared_!" He sang the words in a hysterical chant, his voice rising at the end.
The door of the bedroom clicked. It was not a slamming sound, only the door went to gently, as if some one closed it. John dropped the candle from his shaking hand, and was left standing in the living darkness. " _Save me! _" he screamed, and leaped into the bed, burrowing down between the women till his head was covered by the bedclothes. He trembled so violently that the bed shook beneath them.
"Let me bide wi' ye!" he pleaded, with chattering jaws; "oh, let me bide wi' ye! I daurna gang back to that room by mysell again."
His mother put her thin arm round him. "Yes, dear," she said; "you may bide wi' us. Janet and me wouldna let anything harm you." She placed her hand on his brow caressingly. His hair was damp with a cold sweat. He reeked of alcohol.
Some one went through the Square playing a concertina. That sound of the careless world came strangely in upon their lonely tragedy. By contrast the cheerful, silly noise out there seemed to intensify their darkness and isolation here. Occasional far-off shouts were heard from roisterers going home.
Mrs. Gourlay lay staring at the darkness with intent eyes. What horror might assail her she did not know, but she was ready to meet it for the sake of John. "Ye brought it on yoursell," she breathed once, as if defying an unseen accuser.
It was hours ere he slept, but at last a heavy sough told her he had found oblivion. "He's won owre," she murmured thankfully. At times he muttered in his sleep, and at times Janet coughed hoarsely at his ear.
"Janet, dinna hoast sae loud, woman! You'll waken your brother."
Janet was silent. Then she choked--trying to stifle another cough.
"Woman," said her mother complainingly, "that's surely an unco hoast ye hae!"
"Ay," said Janet, "it's a gey hoast."
Next morning Postie came clattering through the paved yard in his tackety boots, and handed in a blue envelope at the back door with a business-like air, his ferrety eyes searching Mrs. Gourlay's face as she took the letter from his hand. But she betrayed nothing to his curiosity, since she knew nothing of her husband's affairs, and had no fear, therefore, of what the letter might portend. She received the missive with a vacant unconcern. It was addressed to "John Gourlay, Esquire." She turned it over in a silly puzzlement, and, "Janet!" she cried, "what am I to do wi' this?"
She shrank from opening a letter addressed to her dead tyrant, unless she had Janet by her side. It was so many years since he had allowed her to take an active interest in their common life (indeed he never had) that she was as helpless as a child.
"It's to faither," said Janet. "Shall I waken John?"
"No; puir fellow, let him sleep," said his mother. "I stole in to look at him enow, and his face was unco wan lying down on the pillow. I'll open the letter mysell; though, as your faither used to tell me, I never had a heid for business."
She broke the seal, and Janet, looking over her shoulder, read aloud to her slower mind:-- "GLASGOW, _March 12, 18--. _ "SIR,--We desire once more to call your attention to the fact that the arrears of interest on the mortgage of your house have not been paid. Our client is unwilling to proceed to extremities, but unless you make some arrangement within a week, he will be forced to take the necessary steps to safeguard his interests. --Yours faithfully, BRODIE, GURNEY, & YARROWBY."
Mrs. Gourlay sank into a chair, and the letter slipped from her upturned palm, lying slack upon her knee.
"Janet," she said, appealingly, "what's this that has come on us? Does the house we live in, the House with the Green Shutters, not belong to us ainy more? Tell me, lassie. What does it mean?"
"I don't ken," whispered Janet, with big eyes. "Did faither never tell ye of the bond?"
"He never telled me about anything," cried Mrs. Gourlay, with a sudden passion. "I was aye the one to be keepit in the dark--to be keepit in the dark and sore hadden doon. Oh, are we left destitute, Janet--and us was aye sae muckle thocht o'! And me, too, that's come of decent folk, and brought him a gey pickle bawbees--am I to be on the parish in my auld age? Oh, _my_ faither, _my_ faither!"
Her mind flashed back to the jocose and well-to-do father who had been but a blurred thought to her for twenty years. That his daughter should come to a pass like this was enough to make him turn in his grave. Janet was astonished by her sudden passion in feebleness. Even the murder of her husband had been met by her weak mind with a dazed resignation. For her natural horror at the deed was swallowed by her anxiety to shield the murderer; and she experienced a vague relief--felt but not considered--at being freed from the incubus of Gourlay's tyranny. It seemed, too, as if she was incapable of feeling anything poignantly, deadened now by these quick calamities. But that _she_, that Tenshillingland's daughter, should come to be an object of common charity, touched some hidden nerve of pride, and made her writhe in agony.
"It mayna be sae bad," Janet tried to comfort her.
"Waken John," said her mother feverishly--"waken John, and we'll gang through his faither's desk. There may be something gude amang his papers. There may be something gude!" she gabbled nervously; "yes, there may be something gude! In the desk--in the desk--there may be something gude in the desk!"
John staggered into the kitchen five minutes later. Halfway to the table where his mother sat he reeled and fell over on a chair, where he lay with an ashen face, his eyes mere slits in his head, the upturned whites showing through. They brought him whisky, and he drank and was recovered. And then they went through to the parlour, and opened the great desk that stood in the corner. It was the first time they had ever dared to raise its lid. John took up a letter lying loosely on the top of the other papers, and after a hasty glance, "This settles it!" said he. It was the note from Gourlay's banker, warning him that his account was overdrawn.
"God help us!" cried Mrs. Gourlay, and Janet began to whimper. John slipped out of the room. He was still in his stocking-feet, and the women, dazed by this sudden and appalling news, were scarcely aware of his departure.
He passed through the kitchen, and stood on the step of the back door, looking out on the quiet little paved yard. Everything there was remarkably still and bright. It was an early spring that year, and the hot March sun beat down on him, paining his bleared and puffy eyes. The contrast between his own lump of a body, drink-dazed, dull-throbbing, and the warm, bright day came in on him with a sudden sinking of the heart, a sense of degradation and personal abasement. He realized, however obscurely, that he was an eyesore in nature, a blotch on the surface of the world, an offence to the sweet-breathing heavens. And that bright silence was so strange and still; he could have screamed to escape it.
The slow ticking of the kitchen clock seemed to beat upon his raw brain. Damn the thing, why didn't it stop--with its monotonous tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack? He could feel it inside his head, where it seemed to strike innumerable little blows on a strained chord it was bent on snapping.
He tiptoed back to the kitchen on noiseless feet, and cocking his ear to listen, he heard the murmur of women's voices in the parlour. There was a look of slyness and cunning in his face, and his eyes glittered with desire. The whisky was still on the table. He seized the bottle greedily, and tilting it up, let the raw liquid gurgle into him like cooling water. It seemed to flood his parched being with a new vitality.
"Oh, I doubt we'll be gey ill off!" he heard his mother whine, and at that reminder of her nearness he checked the great, satisfied breath he had begun to blow. He set the bottle on the table, bringing the glass noiselessly down upon the wood, with a tense, unnatural precision possible only to drink-steadied nerves--a steadiness like the humming top's whirled to its fastest. Then he sped silently through the courtyard and locked himself into the stable, chuckling in drunken triumph as he turned the key. He pitched forward on a litter of dirty straw, and in a moment sleep came over his mind in a huge wave of darkness.
An hour later he woke from a terrible dream, flinging his arms up to ward off a face that had been pressing on his own. Were the eyes that had burned his brain still glaring above him? He looked about him in drunken wonder. From a sky-window a shaft of golden light came slanting into the loose-box, living with yellow motes in the dimness. The world seemed dead; he was alone in the silent building, and from without there was no sound. Then a panic terror flashed on his mind that those eyes had actually been here--and were here with him still--where he was locked up with them alone. He strained his eyeballs in a horrified stare at vacancy. Then he shut them in terror, for why did he look? If he looked, the eyes might burn on him out of nothingness. The innocent air had become his enemy--pregnant with unseen terrors to glare at him. To breathe it stifled him; each draught of it was full of menace. With a shrill cry he dashed at the door, and felt in the clutch of his ghostly enemy when he failed to open it at once, breaking his nails on the baffling lock. He mowed and chattered and stamped, and tore at the lock, frustrate in fear. At last he was free! He broke into the kitchen, where his mother sat weeping. She raised her eyes to see a dishevelled thing, with bits of straw scattered on his clothes and hair.
"Mother!" he screamed, "mother!" and stopped suddenly, his starting eyes seeming to follow something in the room.
"What are ye glowering at, John?" she wailed.
"Thae damned een," he said slowly, "they're burning my soul! Look, look!" he cried, clutching her thin wrist; "see, there, there--coming round by the dresser! A-ah!" he screamed, in hoarse execration. "Would ye, then?" and he hurled a great jug from the table at the pursuing unseen.
The jug struck the yellow face of the clock, and the glass jangled on the floor.
Mrs. Gourlay raised her arms, like a gaunt sibyl, and spoke to her Maker, quietly, as if He were a man before her in the room. "Ruin and murder," she said slowly, "and madness; and death at my nipple like a child! When will Ye be satisfied?"
Drucken Wabster's wife spread the news, of course, and that night it went humming through the town that young Gourlay had the horrors, and was throwing tumblers at his mother!
"Puir body!" said the baker, in the long-drawn tones of an infinite compassion--"puir body!"
"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "he'll be wanting to put an end to _her_ next, after killing his faither."
"Killing his faither?" said the baker, with a quick look. "What do you mean?"
"Mean? Ou, I just mean what the doctor says! Gourlay was that mad at the drucken young swine that he got the 'plexies, fell aff the ladder, and felled himsell deid! That's what I mean, no less!" said Toddle, nettled at the sharp question.
"Ay, man! That accounts for't," said Tam Wylie. "It did seem queer Gourlay's dying the verra nicht the prodigal cam hame. He was a heavy man too; he would come down with an infernal thud. It seems uncanny, though, it seems uncanny."
"Strange!" murmured another; and they looked at each other in silent wonder.
"But will this be true, think ye?" said Brodie--"about the horrors, I mean. _Did_ he throw the tumbler at his mother?"
"Lord, it's true!" said Sandy Toddle. "I gaed into the kitchen on purpose to make sure o' the matter with my own eyes. I let on I wanted to borrow auld Gourlay's keyhole saw. I can tell ye he had a' his orders--his tool-chest's the finest I ever saw in my life! I mean to bid for some o' yon when the rowp comes. Weel, as I was saying, I let on I wanted the wee saw, and went into the kitchen one end's errand. The tumbler (Johnny Coe says it was a bottle, however; but I'm no avised o' that--I speired Webster's wife, and I think my details are correct)--the tumbler went flying past his mother, and smashed the face o' the eight-day. It happened about the mid-hour o' the day. The clock had stoppit, I observed, at three and a half minutes to the twelve."
"Hi!" cried the Deacon, "it'th a pity auld Gourlay wathna alive thith day!"
"Faith, ay," cried Wylie. " _He_ would have sorted him; _he_ would have trimmed the young ruffian!"
"No doubt," said the Deacon gravely--"no doubt. But it wath scarcely that I wath thinking of. Yah!" he grinned, "thith would have been a thlap in the face till him!"
Wylie looked at him for a while with a white scunner in his face. He wore the musing and disgusted look of a man whose wounded mind retires within itself to brood over a sight of unnatural cruelty. The Deacon grew uncomfortable beneath his sideward, estimating eye.
"Deacon Allardyce, your heart's black-rotten," he said at last.
The Deacon blinked and was silent. Tam had summed him up. There was no appeal.
* * * * * "John dear," said his mother that evening, "we'll take the big sofa into our bedroom, and make up a grand bed for ye, and then we'll be company to one another. Eh, dear?" she pleaded. "Winna that be a fine way? When you have Janet and me beside you, you winna be feared o' ainything coming near you. You should gang to bed early, dear. A sleep would restore your mind."
"I don't mean to go to bed," he said slowly. He spoke staringly, with the same fixity in his voice and gaze. There was neither rise nor fall in his voice, only a dull level of intensity.
"You don't mean to go to bed, John! What for, dear? Man, a sleep would calm your mind for ye."
"Na-a-a!" he smiled, and shook his head like a cunning madman who had detected her trying to get round him. "Na-a-a! No sleep for me--no sleep for me! I'm feared I would see the red een," he whispered, "the red een, coming at me out o' the darkness, the darkness"--he nodded, staring at her and breathing the word--"the darkness, the darkness! The darkness is the warst, mother," he added, in his natural voice, leaning forward as if he explained some simple, curious thing of every day. "The darkness is the warst, you know. I've seen them in the broad licht; but in the lobby," he whispered hoarsely--"in the lobby when it was dark--in the lobby they were terrible. Just twa een, and they aye keep thegither, though they're aye moving. That's why I canna pin them. And it's because I ken they're aye watching me, watching me, watching me that I get so feared. They're red," he nodded and whispered--"they're red--they're red." His mouth gaped in horror, and he stared as if he saw them now.
He had boasted long ago of being able to see things inside his head; in his drunken hysteria he was to see them always. The vision he beheld against the darkness of his mind projected itself and glared at him. He was pursued by a spectre in his own brain, and for that reason there was no escape. Wherever he went it followed him.
"O man John," wailed his mother, "what are ye feared for your faither's een for? He wouldna persecute his boy."
"Would he no?" he said slowly. "You ken yoursell that he never liked me! And naebody could stand his glower. Oh, he was a terrible man, _my_ faither! You could feel the passion in him when he stood still. He could throw himsell at ye without moving. And he's throwing himsell at _me_ frae beyond the grave."
Mrs. Gourlay beat her desperate hands. Her feeble remonstrance was a snowflake on a hill to the dull intensity of this conviction. So colossal was it that it gripped herself, and she glanced dreadfully across her shoulder. But in spite of her fears she must plead with him to save.
"Johnnie dear," she wept passionately, "there's no een! It's just the drink gars you think sae."
"No," he said dully; "the drink's my refuge. It's a kind thing, drink--it helps a body."
"But, John, nobody believes in these things nowadays. It's just fancy in you. I wonder at a college-bred man like you giving heed to a wheen nonsense!"
"Ye ken yoursell it was a byword in the place that he would haunt the House with the Green Shutters."
"God help me!" cried Mrs. Gourlay; "what am I to do?"
She piled up a great fire in the parlour, and the three poor creatures gathered round it for the night. (They were afraid to sit in the kitchen of an evening, for even the silent furniture seemed to talk of the murder it had witnessed.) John was on a carpet stool by his mother's feet, his head resting on her knee.
They heard the rattle of Wilson's brake as it swung over the townhead from Auchterwheeze, and the laughter of its jovial crew. They heard the town clock chiming the lonesome passage of the hours. A dog was barking in the street.
Gradually all other sounds died away.
"Mother," said John, "lay your hand alang my shouther, touching my neck. I want to be sure that you're near me."
"I'll do that, my bairn," said his mother. And soon he was asleep.
Janet was reading a novel. The children had their mother's silly gift--a gift of the weak-minded, of forgetting their own duties and their own sorrows in a vacant interest which they found in books. She had wrapped a piece of coarse red flannel round her head to comfort a swollen jaw, and her face appeared from within like a tallowy oval.
"I didna get that story finished," said Mrs. Gourlay vacantly, staring at the fire open-mouthed, her mutch-strings dangling. It was the remark of a stricken mind that speaks vacantly of anything. "Does Herbert Montgomery marry Sir James's niece?"
"No," said Janet; "he's killed at the war. It's a gey pity of him, isn't it? --Oh, what's that?"
It was John talking in his sleep.
"I have killed my faither," he said slowly, pausing long between every phrase--"I have killed my faither ... I have killed my faither. And he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me." It was the voice of a thing, not a man. It swelled and dwelt on the "follow," as if the horror of the pursuit made it moan. "He's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me ... he's foll-owing me. A face like a dark mist--and een like hell. Oh, they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me ... they're foll-owing me!" His voice seemed to come from an infinite distance. It was like a lost soul moaning in a solitude.
The dog was barking in the street. A cry of the night came from far away.
That voice was as if a corpse opened its lips and told of horrors beyond the grave. It brought the other world into the homely room, and made it all demoniac. The women felt the presence of the unknown. It was their own flesh and blood that spoke the words, and by their own quiet hearth. But hell seemed with them in the room.
Mrs. Gourlay drew back from John's head on her lap, as from something monstrous and unholy. But he moaned in deprivation, craving her support, and she edged nearer to supply his need. Possessed with a devil or no, he was her son.
"Mother!" gasped Janet suddenly, the white circles of her eyes staring from the red flannel, her voice hoarse with a new fear--"mother, suppose--suppose he said that before anybody else!"
"Don't mention't," cried her mother with sudden passion. "How daur ye? how daur ye? My God!" she broke down and wept, "they would hang him, so they would! They would hang _my_ boy--they would take and hang _my_ boy!"
They stared at each other wildly. John slept, his head twisted over on his mother's knee, his eyes sunken, his mouth wide open.
"Mother," Janet whispered, "you must send him away."
"I have only three pounds in the world," said Mrs. Gourlay; and she put her hand to her breast where it was, but winced as if a pain had bitten her.
"Send him away wi't," said Janet. "The furniture may bring something. And you and me can aye thole."
In the morning Mrs. Gourlay brought two greasy notes to the table, and placed them in her son's slack hand. He was saner now; he had slept off his drunken madness through the night.
"John," she said, in pitiful appeal, "you maunna stay here, laddie. Ye'll gie up the drink when you're away--will ye na? --and then thae een ye're sae feared of'll no trouble you ony mair. Gang to Glasgow and see the lawyer folk about the bond. And, John dear," she pleaded, "if there's nothing left for us, you'll try to work for Janet and me, will ye no? You've a grand education, and you'll surely get a place as a teacher or something; I'm sure you would make a grand teacher. Ye wouldna like to think of your mother trailing every week to the like of Wilson for an awmous, streeking out her auld hand for charity. The folk would stand in their doors to look at me, man--they would that--they would cry ben to each other to come oot and see Gourlay's wife gaun slinkin' doon the brae. Doon the brae it would be," she repeated, "doon the brae it would be"--and her mind drifted away on the sorrowful future which her fear made so vivid and real. It was only John's going that roused her.
Thomas Brodie, glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road to the station.
"Where's _he_ off to now?" he muttered. "There's something at the boddom o' this, if a body could find it out!"
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{
"id": "25876"
}
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27
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When John had gone his mother roused herself to a feverish industry. Even in the early days of her strength she had never been so busy in her home. But her work was aimless and to no purpose. When tidying she would take a cup without its saucer from the table, and set off with it through the room, but stopping suddenly in the middle of the floor, would fall into a muse with the dish in her hand; coming to herself long afterwards to ask vaguely, "What's this cup for? ... Janet, lassie, what was it I was doing?" Her energy, and its frustration, had the same reason. The burden on her mind constantly impelled her to do something to escape from it, and the same burden paralyzed her mind in everything she did. So with another of her vacant whims. Every morning she rose at an unearthly hour, to fish out of old closets rag-bags bellied big with the odds and ends of thirty years' assemblage. "I'll make a patchwork quilt o' thir!" she explained, with a foolish, eager smile; and she spent hours snatching up rags and vainly trying to match them. But the quilt made no progress. She would look at a patch for a while, with her head on one side, and pat it all over with restless hands; then she would turn it round, to see if it would look better that way, only to tear it off when it was half sewn, to try another and yet another. Often she would forget the work on her lap, and stare across the room, open-mouthed, her fingers plucking at her withered throat. Janet became afraid of her mother.
Once she saw her smiling to herself, when she thought nobody was watching her--an uncanny smile as of one who hugged a secret to her breast--a secret that, eluding others, would enable its holder to elude them too.
"What can _she_ have to laugh at?" Janet wondered.
At times the haze that seemed gathering round Mrs. Gourlay's mind would be dispelled by sudden rushes of fear, when she would whimper lest her son be hanged, or herself come on the parish in her old age. But that was rarely. Her brain was mercifully dulled, and her days were passed in a restless vacancy.
She was sitting with the rags scattered round her when John walked in on the evening of the third day. There were rags everywhere--on the table, and all about the kitchen; she sat in their midst like a witch among the autumn leaves. When she looked towards his entrance the smell of drink was wafted from the door.
"John!" she panted, in surprise--"John, did ye not go to Glasgow, boy?"
"Ay," he said slowly, "I gaed to Glasgow."
"And the bond, John--did ye speir about the bond?"
"Ay," he said, "I speired about the bond. The whole house is sunk in't."
"Oh!" she gasped, and the whole world seemed to go from beneath her, so weak did she feel through her limbs.
"John," she said, after a while, "did ye no try to get something to do, that you might help me and Janet now we're helpless?"
"No," he said; "for the een wouldna let me. Nicht and day they follow me a'where--nicht and day."
"Are they following ye yet, John?" she whispered, leaning forward seriously. She did not try to disabuse him now; she accepted what he said. Her mind was on a level with his own. "Are they following ye yet?" she asked, with large eyes of sympathy and awe.
"Ay, and waur than ever too. They're getting redder and redder. It's not a dull red," he said, with a faint return of his old interest in the curious physical; "it's a gleaming red. They lowe. A' last nicht they wouldna let me sleep. There was nae gas in my room, and when the candle went out I could see them everywhere. When I looked to one corner o' the room, they were there; and when I looked to another corner, they were there too--glowering at me; glowering at me in the darkness; glowering at me. Ye mind what a glower he had! I hid from them ablow the claes; but they followed me--they were burning in my brain. So I gaed oot and stood by a lamp-post for company. But a constable moved me on; he said I was drunk because I muttered to mysell. But I wasna drunk then, mother; I wa-as _not_. So I walkit on, and on, and on the whole nicht; but I aye keepit to the lamp-posts for company. And than when the public-houses opened I gaed in and drank and drank. I didna like the drink, for whisky has no taste to me now. But it helps ye to forget.
"Mother," he went on complainingly, "is it no queer that a pair of een should follow a man? Just a pair of een! It never happened to onybody but me," he said dully--"never to onybody but me."
His mother was panting open-mouthed, as if she choked for air, both hands clutching at her bosom. "Ay," she whispered, "it's queer;" and kept on gasping at intervals with staring eyes, "It's gey queer; it's gey queer; it's gey queer."
She took up the needle once more and tried to sew; but her hand was trembling so violently that she pricked the left forefinger which upheld her work. She was content thereafter to make loose stabs at the cloth, with a result that she made great stitches which drew her seam together in a pucker. Vacantly she tried to smooth them out, stroking them over with her hand, constantly stroking and to no purpose. John watched the aimless work with dull and heavy eyes.
For a while there was silence in the kitchen. Janet was coughing in the room above.
"There's just ae thing'll end it!" said John. "Mother, give me three shillings."
It was not a request, and not a demand; it was the dull statement of a need. Yet the need appeared so relentless, uttered in the set fixity of his impassive voice, that she could not gainsay it. She felt that this was not merely her son making a demand; it was a compulsion on him greater than himself.
"There's the money!" she said, clinking it down on the table, and flashed a resentful smile at him, close upon the brink of tears.
She had a fleeting anger. It was scarcely at him, though; it was at the fate that drove him. Nor was it for herself, for her own mood was, "Well, well; let it gang." But she had a sense of unfairness, and a flicker of quite impersonal resentment, that fate should wring the last few shillings from a poor being. It wasna fair. She had the emotion of it; and it spoke in the strange look at her son, and in the smiling flush with the tears behind it. Then she sank into apathy.
John took up the money and went out, heedless of his mother where she sat by the table; he had a doom on him, and could see nothing that did not lie within his path. Nor did she take any note of his going; she was callous. The tie between them was being annulled by misery. She was ceasing to be his mother, he to be her son; they were not younger and older, they were the equal victims of necessity. Fate set each of them apart to dree a separate weird.
In a house of long years of misery the weak become callous to their dearest's agony. The hard, strong characters are kindest in the end; they will help while their hearts are breaking. But the weak fall asunder at the last. It was not that Mrs. Gourlay was thinking of herself rather than of him. She was stunned by fate--as was he--and could think of nothing.
Ten minutes later John came out of the Black Bull with a bottle of whisky.
It was a mellow evening, one of those evenings when Barbie, the mean and dull, is transfigured to a gem-like purity, and catches a radiance. There was a dreaming sky above the town, and its light less came to the earth than was on it, shining in every path with a gracious immanence. John came on through the glow with his burden undisguised, wrapped in a tissue paper which showed its outlines. He stared right before him like a man walking in his sleep, and never once looked to either side. At word of his coming the doors were filled with mutches and bald heads, keeking by the jambs to get a look. Many were indecent in their haste, not waiting till he passed ere they peeped--which was their usual way. Some even stood away out in front of their doors to glower at him advancing, turning slowly with him as he passed, and glowering behind him as he went. They saw they might do so with impunity; that he did not see them, but walked like a man in a dream. He passed up the street and through the Square, beneath a hundred eyes, the sun shining softly round him. Every eye followed till he disappeared through his own door.
He went through the kitchen, where his mother sat, carrying the bottle openly, and entered the parlour without speaking. He came back and asked her for the corkscrew, but when she said "Eh?" with a vague wildness in her manner, and did not seem to understand, he went and got it for himself. She continued making stabs at her cloth and smoothing out the puckers in her seam.
John was heard moving in the parlour. There was the sharp _plunk_ of a cork being drawn, followed by a clink of glass. And then came a heavy thud like a fall.
To Mrs. Gourlay the sounds meant nothing; she heard them with her ear, not her mind. The world around her had retreated to a hazy distance, so that it had no meaning. She would have gazed vaguely at a shell about to burst beside her.
In the evening, Janet, who had been in bed all the afternoon, came down and lit the lamp for her mother. It was a large lamp which Gourlay had bought, and it shed a rich light through the room.
"I heard John come in," she said, turning wearily round; "but I was too ill to come down and ask what had happened. Where is he?"
"John?" questioned her mother--"John? ... Ou ay," she panted, vaguely recalling, "ou ay. I think--I think ... he gaed ben the parlour."
"The parlour!" cried Janet; "but he must be in the dark! And he canna thole the darkness!"
"John!" she cried, going to the parlour door, "John!"
There was a silence of the grave.
She lit a candle, and went into the room. And then she gave a squeal like a rabbit in a dog's jaws.
Mrs. Gourlay dragged her gaunt limbs wearily across the floor. By the wavering light, which shook in Janet's hand, she saw her son lying dead across the sofa. The whisky-bottle on the table was half empty, and of a smaller bottle beside it he had drunk a third. He had taken all that whisky that he might deaden his mind to the horror of swallowing the poison. His legs had slipped to the floor when he died, but his body was lying back across the couch, his mouth open, his eyes staring horridly up. They were not the eyes of the quiet dead, but bulged in frozen fear, as if his father's eyes had watched him from aloft while he died.
"There's twa thirds of the poison left," commented Mrs. Gourlay.
"Mother!" Janet screamed, and shook her. "Mother, John's deid! John's deid! Don't ye see John's deid?"
"Ay, he's deid," said Mrs. Gourlay, staring. "He winna be hanged now!"
"Mother!" cried Janet, desperate before this apathy, "what shall we do? what shall we do? Shall I run and bring the neebours?"
"The neebours!" said Mrs. Gourlay, rousing herself wildly--"the neebours! What have _we_ to do with the neebours? We are by ourselves--the Gourlays whom God has cursed; we can have no neebours. Come ben the house, and I'll tell ye something," she whispered wildly. "Ay," she nodded, smiling with mad significance, "I'll tell ye something ... I'll tell ye something," and she dragged Janet to the kitchen.
Janet's heart was rent for her brother, but the frenzy on her mother killed sorrow with a new fear.
"Janet!" smiled Mrs. Gourlay, with insane soft interest, "Janet! D'ye mind yon nicht langsyne when your faither came in wi' a terrible look in his een and struck me in the breist? Ay," she whispered hoarsely, staring at the fire, "he struck me in the breist. But I didna ken what it was for, Janet.... No," she shook her head, "he never telled me what it was for."
"Ay, mother," whispered Janet, "I have mind o't." "Weel, an abscess o' some kind formed--I kenna weel what it was, but it gathered and broke, and gathered and broke, till my breist's near eaten awa wi't. Look!" she cried, tearing open her bosom, and Janet's head flung back in horror and disgust.
"O mother!" she panted, "was it that that the wee clouts were for?"
"Ay, it was that," said her mother. "Mony a clout I had to wash, and mony a nicht I sat lonely by mysell, plaistering my withered breist. But I never let onybody ken," she added with pride; "na-a-a, I never let onybody ken. When your faither nipped me wi' his tongue it nipped me wi' its pain, and, woman, it consoled me. 'Ay, ay,' I used to think; 'gibe awa, gibe awa; but I hae a freend in my breist that'll end it some day.' I likit to keep it to mysell. When it bit me it seemed to whisper I had a freend that nane o' them kenned o'--a freend that would deliver me! The mair he badgered me, the closer I hugged it; and when my he'rt was br'akin I enjoyed the pain o't." "O my poor, poor mother!" cried Janet with a bursting sob, her eyes raining hot tears. Her very body seemed to feel compassion; it quivered and crept near, as though it would brood over her mother and protect her. She raised the poor hand and kissed it, and fondled it between her own.
But her mother had forgotten the world in one of her wild lapses, and was staring fixedly.
"I'll no lang be a burden to onybody," she said to herself. "It should sune be wearing to a heid now. But I thought of something the day John gaed away; ay, I thought of something," she said vaguely. "Janet, what was it I was thinking of?"
"I dinna ken," whispered Janet.
"I was thinking of something," her mother mused. Her voice all through was a far-off voice, remote from understanding. "Yes, I remember. Ye're young, Jenny, and you learned the dressmaking; do ye think ye could sew, or something, to keep a bit garret owre my heid till I dee? Ay, it was that I was thinking of; though it doesna matter much now--eh, Jenny? I'll no bother you for verra lang. But I'll no gang on the parish," she said in a passionless voice, "I'll no gang on the parish. I'm Miss Richmond o' Tenshillingland."
She had no interest in her own suggestion. It was an idea that had flitted through her mind before, which came back to her now in feeble recollection. She seemed not to wait for an answer, to have forgotten what she said.
"O mother," cried Janet, "there's a curse on us all! I would work my fingers raw for ye if I could, but I canna," she screamed, "I canna, I canna! My lungs are bye wi't. On Tuesday in Skeighan the doctor telled me I would soon be deid; he didna say't, but fine I saw what he was hinting. He advised me to gang to Ventnor in the Isle o' Wight," she added wanly; "as if I could gang to the Isle of Wight. I cam hame trembling, and wanted to tell ye; but when I cam in ye were ta'en up wi' John, and, 'O lassie,' said you, 'dinna bother me wi' your complaints enow.' I was hurt at that, and 'Well, well,' I thocht, 'if she doesna want to hear, I'll no tell her.' I was huffed at ye. And then my faither came in, and ye ken what happened. I hadna the heart to speak o't after that; I didna seem to care. I ken what it is to nurse daith in my breist wi' pride, too, mother," she went on. "Ye never cared verra much for me; it was John was your favourite. I used to be angry because you neglected my illness, and I never telled you how heavily I hoasted blood. 'She'll be sorry for this when I'm deid,' I used to think; and I hoped you would be. I had a kind of pride in saying nothing. But, O mother, I didna ken _you_ were just the same; I didna ken _you_ were just the same." She looked. Her mother was not listening.
Suddenly Mrs. Gourlay screamed with wild laughter, and, laughing, eyed with mirthless merriment the look of horror with which Janet was regarding her. "Ha, ha, ha!" she screamed, "it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays! Ha, ha, ha! it's to be a clean sweep o' the Gourlays!"
There is nothing uglier in life than a woman's cruel laugh; but Mrs. Gourlay's laugh was more than cruel, it was demoniac--the skirl of a human being carried by misery beyond the confines of humanity. Janet stared at her in speechless fear.
"Mother," she whispered at last, "what are we to do?"
"There's twa-thirds of the poison left," said Mrs. Gourlay.
"Mother!" cried Janet.
"Gourlay's dochter may gang on the parish if she likes, but his wife never will. _You_ may hoast yourself to death in a garret in the poorhouse, but _I_'ll follow my boy."
The sudden picture of her own lonely death as a pauper among strangers, when her mother and brother should be gone, was so appalling to Janet that to die with her mother seemed pleasanter. She could not bear to be left alone.
"Mother," she cried in a frenzy, "I'll keep ye company!"
"Let us read a chapter," said Mrs. Gourlay.
She took down the big Bible, and "the thirteent' chapter o' First Corinthians," she announced in a loud voice, as if giving it out from the pulpit, "the thirteent'--o' the First Corinthians:"-- "_'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. _ "_'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.' _" Mrs. Gourlay's manner had changed: she was in the high exaltation of madness. Callous she still appeared, so possessed by her general doom that she had no sense of its particular woes. But she was listless no more. Willing her death, she seemed to borrow its greatness and become one with the law that punished her. Arrogating the Almighty's function to expedite her doom, she was the equal of the Most High. It was her feebleness that made her great. Because in her feebleness she yielded entirely to the fate that swept her on, she was imbued with its demoniac power. " _'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,_ "_'Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;_ "_'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;_ "_'Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. _ "_'Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. _ "_'For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. _ "_'But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.' _" Her voice rose high and shrill as she read the great verses. Her large blue eyes shone with ecstasy. Janet looked at her in fear. This was more than her mother speaking; it was more than human; it was a voice from beyond the world. Alone, the timid girl would have shrunk from death, but her mother's inspiration held her. " _'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.' _" Janet had been listening with such strained attention that the "Amen" rang out of her loud and involuntary, like an answer to a compelling Deity. She had clung to this reading as the one thing left to her before death, and out of her nature thus strained to listen the "Amen" came, as sped by an inner will. She scarcely knew that she said it.
They rose, and the scrunt of Janet's chair on the floor, when she pushed it behind her, sent a thrilling shiver through her body, so tense was her mood. They stood with their hands on their chair backs, and looked at each other, in a curious palsy of the will. The first step to the parlour door would commit them to the deed; to take it was to take the poison, and they paused, feeling its significance. To move was to give themselves to the irrevocable. When they stirred at length they felt as if the ultimate crisis had been passed; there could be no return. Mrs. Gourlay had Janet by the wrist.
She turned and looked at her daughter, and for one fleeting moment she ceased to be above humanity.
"Janet," she said wistfully, "_I_ have had a heap to thole! Maybe the Lord Jesus Christ'll no' be owre sair on me."
"O mother!" Janet screamed, yielding to her terror when her mother weakened. "O mother, I'm feared! I'm feared! O mother, I'm feared!"
"Come!" said her mother; "come!" and drew her by the wrist. They went into the parlour.
* * * * * The post was a square-built, bandy-legged little man, with a bristle of grizzled hair about his twisted mouth, perpetually cocking up an ill-bred face in the sight of Heaven. Physically and morally he had in him something both of the Scotch terrier and the London sparrow--the shagginess of the one, the cocked eye of the other; the one's snarling temper, the other's assured impudence. In Gourlay's day he had never got by the gateway of the yard, much as he had wanted to come further. Gourlay had an eye for a thing like him. "Damn the gurly brute!" Postie complained once; "when I passed a pleasand remark about the weather the other morning, he just looked at me and blew the reek of his pipe in my face. And that was his only answer!"
Now that Gourlay was gone, however, Postie clattered through the yard every morning, right up to the back door.
"A heap o' correspondence _thir_ mornin's!" he would simper, his greedy little eye trying to glean revelations from the women's faces as they took the letters from his hand.
On the morning after young Gourlay came home for the last time, Postie was pelting along with his quick thudding step near the head of the Square, when whom should he meet but Sandy Toddle, still unwashed and yawning from his bed. It was early, and the streets were empty, except where in the distance the bent figure of an old man was seen hirpling off to his work, first twisting round stiffly to cock his eye right and left at the sky, to forecast the weather for the day.
From the chimneys the fair white spirlies of reek were rising in the pure air. The Gourlays did not seem to be stirring yet; there was no smoke above their roof-tree to show that there was life within.
Postie jerked his thumb across his shoulder at the House with the Green Shutters.
"There'll be chynges there the day," he said, chirruping.
"Wha-at!" Toddle breathed in a hoarse whisper of astonishment, "sequesteration?" and he stared, big-eyed, with his brows arched.
"Something o' that kind," said the post carelessly. "I'm no' weel acquaint wi' the law-wers' lingo."
"Will't be true, think ye?" said Sandy.
"God, it's true," said the post. "I had it frae Jock Hutchison, the clerk in Skeighan Goudie's. He got fou yestreen on the road to Barbie and blabbed it--he'll lose his job, yon chap, if he doesna keep his mouth shut. True! ay, it's true! There's damn the doubt o' that."
Toddle corrugated his mouth to whistle. He turned and stared at the House with the Green Shutters, gawcey and substantial on its terrace, beneath the tremulous beauty of the dawn. There was a glorious sunrise.
"God!" he said, "what a downcome for that hoose!"
"Is it no'?" chuckled Postie.
"Whose account is it on?" said Toddle.
"Oh, I don't ken," said Postie carelessly. "He had creditors a' owre the country. I was ay bringing the big blue envelopes from different airts. Don't mention this, now," he added, his finger up, his eye significant; "it shouldn't be known at a-all." He was unwilling that Toddle should get an unfair start, and spoil his own market for the news. " _Nut_ me!" Toddle assured him grandly, shaking his head as who should conduct of that kind a thousand miles off--"_nut_ me, Post! I'll no breathe it to a living soul."
The post clattered in to Mrs. Gourlay's back door. He had a heavy under-stamped letter on which there was threepence to pay. He might pick up an item or two while she was getting him the bawbees.
He knocked, but there was no answer.
"The sluts!" said he, with a humph of disgust; "they're still on their backs, it seems."
He knocked again. The sound of his knuckles on the door rang out hollowly, as if there was nothing but emptiness within. While he waited he turned on the step and looked idly at the courtyard. The inwalled little place was curiously still.
At last in his impatience he turned the handle, when to his surprise the door opened, and let him enter.
The leaves of a Bible fluttered in the fresh wind from the door. A large lamp was burning on the table. Its big yellow flame was unnatural in the sunshine.
"H'mph!" said Postie, tossing his chin in disgust, "little wonder everything gaed to wreck and ruin in this house! The slovens have left the lamp burning the whole nicht lang. But less licht'll serve them now, I'm thinking!"
A few dead ashes were sticking from the lower bars of the range. Postie crossed to the fireplace and looked down at the fender. That bright spot would be the place, now, where auld Gourlay killed himself. The women must have rubbed it so bright in trying to get out the blood. It was an uncanny thing to keep in the house that. He stared at the fatal spot till he grew eerie in the strange stillness.
"Guidwife!" he cried, "Jennet! Don't ye hear?"
They did not hear, it seemed.
"God!" said he, "they sleep sound after all their misfortunes!"
At last--partly in impatience, and partly from a wish to pry--he opened the door of the parlour. " _Oh, my God! _" he screamed, leaping back, and with his bulky bag got stuck in the kitchen door, in his desperate hurry to be gone.
He ran round to the Square in front, and down to Sandy Toddle, who was informing a bunch of unshaven bodies that the Gourlays were "sequestered."
"Oh, my God, Post, what have you seen, to bring that look to your eyes? What have you seen, man? Speak, for God's sake! What is it?"
The post gasped and stammered; then "Ooh!" he shivered in horror, and covered his eyes, at a sudden picture in his brain.
"Speak!" said a man solemnly.
"They have--they have--they have a' killed themselves," stammered the postman, pointing to the Gourlays.
Their loins were loosened beneath them. The scrape of their feet on the road, as they turned to stare, sounded monstrous in the silence. No man dared to speak. They gazed with blanched faces at the House with the Green Shutters, sitting dark there and terrible beneath the radiant arch of the dawn.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
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EARLY in the September of the year 1651 the afternoon sun was shining pleasantly into the dining-hall of Forest Lea House. The sunshine came through a large bay-window, glazed in diamonds, and with long branches of a vine trailing across it, but in parts the glass had been broken and had never been mended. The walls were wainscoted with dark oak, as well as the floor, which shone bright with rubbing, and stag’s antlers projected from them, on which hung a sword in its sheath, one or two odd gauntlets, an old-fashioned helmet, a gun, some bows and arrows, and two of the broad shady hats then in use, one with a drooping black feather, the other plainer and a good deal the worse for wear, both of a small size, as if belonging to a young boy.
An oaken screen crossed the hall, close to the front door, and there was a large open fireplace, a settle on each side under the great yawning chimney, where however at present no fire was burning. Before it was a long dining-table covered towards the upper end with a delicately white cloth, on which stood, however, a few trenchers, plain drinking-horns, and a large old-fashioned black-jack, that is to say, a pitcher formed of leather. An armchair was at the head of the table, and heavy oaken benches along the side.
A little boy of six years old sat astride on the end of one of the benches, round which he had thrown a bridle of plaited rushes, and, with a switch in his other hand, was springing himself up and down, calling out, “Come, Eleanor, come, Lucy; come and ride on a pillion behind me to Worcester, to see King Charles and brother Edmund.”
“I’ll come, I am coming!” cried Eleanor, a little girl about a year older, her hair put tightly away under a plain round cap, and she was soon perched sideways behind her brother.
“Oh, fie, Mistress Eleanor; why, you would not ride to the wars?” This was said by a woman of about four or five-and-twenty, tall, thin and spare, with a high colour, sharp black eyes, and a waist which the long stiff stays, laced in front, had pinched in till it was not much bigger than a wasp’s, while her quilted green petticoat, standing out full below it, showed a very trim pair of ankles encased in scarlet stockings, and a pair of bony red arms came forth from the full short sleeves of a sort of white jacket, gathered in at the waist. She was clattering backwards and forwards, removing the dinner things, and talking to the children as she did so in a sharp shrill tone: “Such a racket as you make, to be sure, and how you can have the heart to do so I can’t guess, not I, considering what may be doing this very moment.”
“Oh, but Walter says they will all come back again, brother Edmund, and Diggory, and all,” said little Eleanor, “and then we shall be merry.”
“Yes,” said Lucy, who, though two years older, wore the same prim round cap and long frock as her little sister, “then we shall have Edmund here again. You can’t remember him at all, Eleanor and Charlie, for we have not seen him these six years!”
“No,” said Deborah, the maid. “Ah! these be weary wars, what won’t let a gentleman live at home in peace, nor his poor servants, who have no call to them.”
“For shame, Deb!” cried Lucy; “are not you the King’s own subject?”
But Deborah maundered on, “It is all very well for gentlefolks, but now it had all got quiet again, ’tis mortal hard it should be stirred up afresh, and a poor soul marched off, he don’t know where, to fight with he don’t know who, for he don’t know what.”
“He ought to know what!” exclaimed Lucy, growing very angry. “I tell you, Deb, I only wish I was a man! I would take the great two-handled sword, and fight in the very front rank for our Church and our King! You would soon see what a brave cavalier’s daughter—son I mean,” said Lucy, getting into a puzzle, “could do.”
The more eager Lucy grew, the more unhappy Deborah was, and putting her apron to her eyes, she said in a dismal voice, “Ah! ’tis little poor Diggory wots of kings and cavaliers!”
What Lucy’s indignation would have led her to say next can never be known, for at this moment in bounced a tall slim boy of thirteen, his long curling locks streaming tangled behind him. “Hollo!” he shouted, “what is the matter now? Dainty Deborah in the dumps? Cheer up, my lass! I’ll warrant that doughty Diggory is discreet enough to encounter no more bullets than he can reasonably avoid!”
This made Deborah throw down her apron and reply, with a toss of the head, “None of your nonsense, Master Walter, unless you would have me speak to my lady. Cry for Diggory, indeed!”
“She was really crying for him, Walter,” interposed Lucy.
“Mistress Lucy!” exclaimed Deborah, angrily, “the life I lead among you is enough—” “Not enough to teach you good temper,” said Walter. “Do you want a little more?”
“I wish someone was here to teach you good manners,” answered the tormented Deborah. “As if it was not enough for one poor girl to have the work of ten servants on her hands, here must you be mock, mock, jeer, jeer, worrit, worrit, all day long! I had rather be a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliamentary army.”
This Deborah always said when she was out of temper, and it therefore made Walter and Lucy laugh the more; but in the midst of their merriment in came a girl of sixteen or seventeen, tall and graceful. Her head was bare, her hair fastened in a knot behind, and in little curls round her face; she had an open bodice of green silk, and a white dress under it, very plain and neat; her step was quick and active, but her large dark eyes had a grave thoughtful look, as if she was one who would naturally have loved to sit still and think, better than to bustle about and be busy. Eleanor ran up to her at once, complaining that Walter was teasing Deborah shamefully. She was going to speak, but Deborah cut her short.
“No Mistress Rose, I will not have even you excuse him, I’ll go and tell my lady how a poor faithful wench is served;” and away she flounced, followed by Rose.
“Will she tell mamma?” asked little Charlie.
“Oh no, Rose will pacify her,” said Lucy.
“I am sure I wish she would tell,” said Eleanor, a much graver little person than Lucy; “Walter is too bad.”
“It is only to save Diggory the trouble of taking a crabstick to her when he returns from the wars,” said Walter. “Heigh ho!” and he threw himself on the bench, and drummed on the table. “I wish I was there! I wonder what is doing at Worcester this minute!”
“When will brother Edmund come?” asked Charlie for about the hundredth time.
“When the battle is fought, and the battle is won, and King Charles enjoys his own again! Hurrah!” shouted Walter, jumping up, and beginning to sing— “For forty years our royal throne Has been his father’s and his own.”
Lucy joined in with— “Nor is there anyone but he With right can there a sharer be.”
“How can you make such a noise?” said Eleanor, stopping her ears, by which she provoked Walter to go on roaring into them, while he pulled down her hand— “For who better may The right sceptre sway Than he whose right it is to reign; Then look for no peace, For the war will never cease Till the King enjoys his own again.”
As he came to the last line, Rose returning exclaimed, “Oh, hush, Lucy. Pray don’t, Walter!”
“Ha! Rose turned Roundhead?” cried Walter. “You don’t deserve to hear the good news from Worcester.”
“O, what?” cried the girls, eagerly.
“When it comes,” said Walter, delighted to have taken in Rose herself; but Rose, going up to him gently, implored him to be quiet, and listen to her.
“All this noisy rejoicing grieves our mother,” said she. “If you could but have seen her yesterday evening, when she heard your loyal songs. She sighed, and said, ‘Poor fellow, how high his hopes are!’ and then she talked of our father and that evening before the fight at Naseby.”
Walter looked grave and said, “I remember! My father lifted me on the table to drink King Charles’s health, and Prince Rupert—I remember his scarlet mantle and white plume—patted my head, and called me his little cavalier.”
“We sat apart with mother,” said Rose, “and heard the loud cheers and songs till we were half frightened at the noise.”
“I can’t recollect all that,” said Lucy.
“At least you ought not to forget how our dear father came in with Edmund, and kissed us, and bade mother keep up a good heart. Don’t you remember that, Lucy?”
“I do,” said Walter; “it was the last time we ever saw him.”
And Walter sat on the table, resting one foot on the bench, while the other dangled down, and leaning his elbow on his knee and his head on his hand; Rose sat on the bench close by him, with Charlie on her lap, and the two little girls pressing close against her, all earnest to hear from her the story of the great fight of Naseby, where they had all been in a farmhouse about a mile from the field of battle.
“I don’t forget how the cannon roared all day,” said Lucy.
“Ah! that dismal day!” said Rose. “Then by came our troopers, blood-stained and disorderly, riding so fast that scarcely one waited to tell my mother that the day was lost and she had better fly. But not a step did she stir from the gate, where she stood with you, Charlie, in her arms; she only asked of each as he passed if he had seen my father or Edmund, and ever her cheek grew whiter and whiter. At last came a Parliament officer on horseback—it was Mr. Enderby, who had been a college mate of my father’s, and he told us that my dear father was wounded, and had sent him to fetch her.”
“But I never knew where Edmund was then,” said Eleanor. “No one ever told me.”
“Edmund lifted up my father when he fell,” said Walter, “and was trying to bind his wound; but when Colonel Enderby’s troop was close upon them, my father charged him upon his duty to fly, saying that he should fall into the hands of an old friend, and it was Edmund’s duty to save himself to fight for the King another time.”
“So Edmund followed Prince Rupert?” said Eleanor.
“Yes,” said Lucy; “you know my father once saved Prince Rupert’s life in the skirmish where his horse was killed, so for his sake the Prince made Edmund his page, and has had him with him in all his voyages and wanderings. But go on about our father, Rose. Did we go to see him?”
“No; Mr. Enderby said he was too far off, so he left a trooper to guard us, and my mother only took her little babe with her. Don’t you remember, Walter, how Eleanor screamed after her, as she rode away on the colonel’s horse; and how we could not comfort the little ones, till they had cried themselves to sleep, poor little things? And in the morning she came back, and told us our dear father was dead! O Walter, how can we look back to that day, and rejoice in a new war? How can you wonder her heart should sink at sounds of joy which have so often ended in tears?”
Walter twisted about and muttered, but he could not resist his sister’s earnest face and tearful eyes, and said something about not making so much noise in the house.
“There’s my own dear brother,” said Rose. “And you won’t tease Deborah?”
“That is too much, Rose. It is all the sport I have, to see the faces she makes when I plague her about Diggory. Besides, it serves her right for having such a temper.”
“She has not a good temper, poor thing!” said Rose; “but if you would only think how true and honest she is, how hard she toils, and how ill she fares, and yet how steadily she holds to us, you would surely not plague and torment her.”
Rose was interrupted by a great outcry, and in rushed Deborah, screaming out, “Lack-a-day! Mistress Rose! O Master Walter! what will become of us? The fight is lost, the King fled, and a whole regiment of red-coats burning and plundering the whole country. Our throats will be cut, every one of them!”
“You’ll have a chance of being a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army,” said Walter, who even then could not miss a piece of mischief.
“Joking now, Master Walter!” cried Deborah, very much shocked. “That is what I call downright sinful. I hope you’ll be made a mark of yourself, that I do.”
The children were running off to tell their mother, when Rose stopped them, and desired to know how Deborah had heard the tidings. It was from two little children from the village who had come to bring a present of some pigeons to my lady. Rose went herself to examine the children, but she could only learn that a packman had come into the village and brought the report that the King had been defeated, and had fled from the field. They knew no more, and Walter pronouncing it to be all a cock-and-bull story of some rascally prick-eared pedlar, declared he would go down to the village and enquire into the rights of it.
These were the saddest times of English history, when the wrong cause had been permitted for a time to triumph, and the true and rightful side was persecuted; and among those who endured affliction for the sake of their Church and their King, none suffered more, or more patiently, than Lady Woodley, or, as she was called in the old English fashion, Dame Mary Woodley, of Forest Lea.
When first the war broke out she was living happily in her pleasant home with her husband and children; but when King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, all this comfort and happiness had to be given up. Sir Walter Woodley joined the royal army, and it soon became unsafe for his wife and children to remain at home, so that they were forced to go about with him, and suffer all the hardships of the sieges and battles. Lady Woodley was never strong, and her health was very much hurt by all she went through; she was almost always unwell, and if Rose, though then quite a child, had not shown care and sense beyond her years for the little ones, it would be hard to say what would have become of them.
Yet all she endured while dragging about her little babies through the country, with bad or insufficient food, uncomfortable lodgings, pain, weariness and anxiety, would have been as nothing but for the heavy sorrows that came upon her also. First she lost her only brother, Edmund Mowbray, and in the battle of Naseby her husband was killed; besides which there were the sorrows of the whole nation in seeing the King sold, insulted, misused, and finally slain, by his own subjects. After Sir Walter’s death, Lady Woodley went home with her five younger children to her father’s house at Forest Lea; for her husband’s estate, Edmund’s own inheritance, had been seized and sequestrated by the rebels. She was the heiress of Forest Lea since the loss of her brother, but the old Mr. Mowbray, her father, had given almost all his wealth for the royal cause, and had been oppressed by the exactions of the rebels, so that he had nothing to leave his daughter but the desolate old house and a few bare acres of land. For the shelter, however, Lady Woodley was very thankful; and there she lived with her children and a faithful servant, Deborah, whose family had always served the Mowbrays, and who would not desert their daughter now.
The neighbours in the village loved, and were sorry for, their lady, and used to send her little presents; there was a large garden in which Diggory Stokes, who had also served her father, raised vegetables for her use; the cow wandered in the deserted park, and so they contrived to find food; while all the work of the house was done by Rose and Deborah. Rose was her mother’s great comfort, nursing her, cheering her, taking care of the little ones, teaching them, working for them, and making light of all her exertions. Everyone in the village loved Rose Woodley, for everyone had in some way been helped or cheered by her. Her mother was only sometimes afraid she worked too hard, and would try her strength too much; but she was always bright and cheerful, and when the day’s work was done no one was more gay and lively and ready for play with the little ones.
Rose had more trial than anyone knew with Deborah. Deborah was as faithful as possible, and bore a great deal for the sake of her mistress, worked hard day and night, had little to eat and no wages, yet lived on with them rather than forsake her dear lady and the children. One thing, however, Deborah would not do, and that was to learn to rule her tongue and her temper. She did not know, nor do many excellent servants, how much trial and discomfort she gave to those she loved so earnestly, by her constant bursting out into hasty words whenever she was vexed—her grumbling about whatever she disliked, and her ill-judged scolding of the children. Servants in those days were allowed to speak more freely to their masters and mistresses than at present, so that Deborah had more opportunity of making such speeches, and it was Rose’s continual work to try to keep her temper from being fretted, or Lady Woodley from being teased with her complaints. Rose was very forbearing, and but for this there would have been little peace in the house.
Walter was thirteen, an age when it is not easy to keep boys in order, unless they will do so for themselves. Though a brave generous boy, he was often unruly and inconsiderate, apt not to obey, and to do what he knew to be unkind or wrong, just for the sake of present amusement. He was thus his mother’s great anxiety, for she knew that she was not fit either to teach or to restrain him, and she feared that his present wild disobedient ways might hurt his character for ever, and lead to dispositions which would in time swallow up all the good about him, and make him what he would now tremble to think of.
She used to talk of her anxieties to Doctor Bathurst, the good old clergyman who had been driven away from his parish, but used to come in secret to help, teach, and use his ministry for the faithful ones of his flock. He would tell her that while she did her best for her son, she must trust the rest to his FATHER above, and she might do so hopefully, since it had been in His own cause that the boy had been made fatherless. Then he would speak to Walter, showing him how wrong and how cruel were his overbearing, disobedient ways. Walter was grieved, and resolved to improve and become steadier, that he might be a comfort and blessing to his mother; but in his love of fun and mischief he was apt to forget himself, and then drove away what might have been in time repentance and improvement, by fancying he did no harm. Teasing Deborah served her right, he would tell himself, she was so ill-tempered and foolish; Diggory was a clod, and would do nothing without scolding; it was a good joke to tease Charlie; Eleanor was a vexatious little thing, and he would not be ordered by her; so he went his own way, and taught the merry chattering Lucy to be very nearly as bad as himself, neglected his duties, set a bad example, tormented a faithful servant, and seriously distressed his mother. Give him some great cause, he thought, and he would be the first and the best, bring back the King, protect his mother and sisters, and perform glorious deeds, such as would make his name be remembered for ever. Then it would be seen what he was worth; in the meantime he lived a dull life, with nothing to do, and he must have some fun. It did not signify if he was not particular about little things, they were women’s affairs, and all very well for Rose, but when some really important matter came, that would be his time for distinguishing himself.
In the meantime Charles II. had been invited to Scotland, and had brought with him, as an attendant, Edmund Woodley, the eldest son. As soon as he was known to have entered England, some of the loyal gentlemen of the neighbourhood of Forest Lea went to join the King, and among their followers went Farmer Ewins, who had fought bravely in the former war under Edmund Mowbray, several other of the men of the village, and lastly, Diggory Stokes, Lady Woodley’s serving man, who had lately shown symptoms of discontent with his place, and fancied that as a soldier he might fare better, make his fortune, and come home prosperously to marry his sweetheart, Deborah.
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WALTER ran down to the village at full speed. He first bent his steps towards the “Half-Moon,” the little public-house, where news was sure to be met with. As he came towards it, however, he heard the loud sound of a man’s voice going steadily on as if with some discourse. “Some preachment,” said he to himself: “they’ve got a thorough-going Roundhead, I can hear his twang through his nose! Shall I go in or not?”
While he was asking himself this question, an old peasant in a round frock came towards him.
“Hollo, Will!” shouted Walter, “what prick-eared rogue have you got there?”
“Hush, hush, Master Walter!” said the old man, taking off his hat very respectfully. “Best take care what you say, there be plenty of red-coats about. There’s one of them now preaching away in marvellous pied words. It is downright shocking to hear the Bible hollaed out after that sort, so I came away. Don’t you go nigh him, sir, ’specially with your hat set on in that—” “Never mind my hat,” said Walter, impatiently, “it is no business of yours, and I’ll wear it as I please in spite of old Noll and all his crew.”
For his forefathers’ sake, and for the love of his mother and sister, the good village people bore with Walter’s haughtiness and discourtesy far more than was good for him, and the old man did not show how much he was hurt by his rough reception of his good advice. Walter was not reminded that he ought to rise up before the hoary head, and reverence the old man, and went on hastily, “But tell me, Will, what do you hear of the battle?”
“The battle, sir! why, they say it is lost. That’s what the fellow there is preaching about.”
“And where was it? Did you hear? Don’t you know?”
“Don’t be so hasty, don’t ye, sir!” said the old slow-spoken man, growing confused. “Where was it? At some town—some town, they said, but I don’t know rightly the name of it.”
“And the King? Who was it? Not Cromwell? Had Lord Derby joined?” cried Walter, hurrying on his questions so as to puzzle and confuse the old man more and more, till at last he grew angry at getting no explanation, and vowed it was no use to talk to such an old fool. At that moment a sound as of feet and horses came along the road. “’Tis the soldiers!” said Walter.
“Ay, sir, best get out of sight.”
Walter thought so too, and, springing over a hedge, ran off into a neighbouring wood, resolving to take a turn, and come back by the longer way to the house, so as to avoid the road. He walked across the wood, looking up at the ripening nuts, and now and then springing up to reach one, telling himself all the time that it was untrue, and that the King could not, and should not be defeated. The wood grew less thick after a time, and ended in low brushwood, upon an open common. Just as Walter was coming to this place, he saw an unusual sight: a man and a horse crossing the down. Slowly and wearily they came, the horse drooping its head and stumbling in its pace, as though worn out with fatigue, but he saw that it was a war-horse, and the saddle and other equipments were such as he well remembered in the royal army long ago. The rider wore buff coat, cuirass, gauntlets guarded with steel, sword, and pistols, and Walter’s first impulse was to avoid him; but on giving a second glance, he changed his mind, for though there was neither scarf, plume, nor any badge of party, the long locks, the set of the hat, and the general air of the soldier were not those of a rebel. He must be a cavalier, but, alas! far unlike the triumphant cavaliers whom Walter had hoped to receive, for he was covered with dust and blood, as if he had fought and ridden hard. Walter sprung forward to meet him, and saw that he was a young man, with dark eyes and hair, looking very pale and exhausted, and both he and his horse seemed hardly able to stir a step further.
“Young sir,” said the stranger, “what place is this? Am I near Forest Lea?”
A flash of joy crossed Walter. “Edmund! are you Edmund?” he exclaimed, colouring deeply, and looking up in his face with one quick glance, then casting down his eyes.
“And you are little Walter,” returned the cavalier, instantly dismounting, and flinging his arm around his brother; “why, what a fine fellow you are grown! How are my mother and all?”
“Well, quite well!” cried Walter, in a transport of joy. “Oh! how happy she will be! Come, make haste home!”
“Alas! I dare not as yet. I must not enter the house till nightfall, or I should bring danger on you all. Are there any troopers near?”
“Yes, the village is full of the rascals. But what has happened? It is not true that—” He could not bear to say the rest.
“Too true!” said Edmund, leading his tired horse within the shelter of the bushes. “It is all over with us!”
“The battle lost!” said Walter, in a stifled tone; and in all the bitterness of the first disappointment of his youth, he turned away, overcome by a gush of tears and sobs, stamping as he walked up and down, partly with the intensity of his grief, partly with shame at being seen by his brother, in tears.
“Had you set your heart on it so much?” said Edmund, kindly, pleased to see his young brother so ardent a loyalist. “Poor fellow! But at least the King was safe when I parted from him. Come, cheer up, Walter, the right will be uppermost some day or other.”
“But, oh, that battle! I had so longed to see old Noll get his deserts,” said Walter, “I made so sure. But how did it happen, Edmund?”
“I cannot tell you all now, Walter. You must find me some covert where I can be till night fall. The rebels are hot in pursuit of all the fugitives. I have ridden from Worcester by byroads day and night, and I am fairly spent. I must be off to France or Holland as soon as may be, for my life is not safe a moment here. Cromwell is bitterer than ever against all honest men, but I could not help coming this way, I so much longed to see my mother and all of you.”
“You are not wounded?” said Walter, anxiously.
“Nothing to speak of, only a sword-cut on my shoulder, by which I have lost more blood than convenient for such a journey.”
“Here, I’ll lead your horse; lean on me,” said Walter, alarmed at the faint, weary voice in which his brother spoke after the first excitement of the recognition. “I’ll show you what Lucy and I call our bower, where no one ever comes but ourselves. There you can rest till night.”
“And poor Bayard?” said Edmund.
“I think I could put him into the out-house in the field next to the copse, hide his trappings here, and get him provender from Ewins’s farm. Will that do?”
“Excellently. Poor Ewins! —that is a sad story. He fell, fighting bravely by my side, cut down in Sidbury Street in the last charge. Alas! these are evil days!”
“And Diggory Stokes, our own knave?”
“I know nothing of him after the first onset. Rogues and cowards enough were there. Think, Walter, of seeing his Majesty strive in vain to rally them, when the day might yet have been saved, and the traitors hung down their heads, and stood like blocks while he called on them rather to shoot him dead than let him live to see such a day!”
“Oh, had I but been there, to turn them all to shame!”
“There were a few, Walter; Lord Cleveland, Hamilton, Careless, Giffard, and a few more of us, charged down Sidbury Street, and broke into the ranks of the rebels, while the King had time to make off by S. Martin’s Gate. Oh, how I longed for a few more! But the King was saved so far; Careless, Giffard, and I came up with him again, and we parted at nightfall. Lord Derby’s counsel was that he should seek shelter at Boscobel, and he was to disguise himself, and go thither under Giffard’s guidance. Heaven guard him, whatever becomes of us!”
“Amen!” said Walter, earnestly. “And here we are. Here is Lucy’s bank of turf, and my throne, and here we will wait till the sun is down.”
It was a beautiful green slope, covered with soft grass, short thyme, and cushion-like moss, and overshadowed by a thick, dark yew-tree, shut in by brushwood on all sides, and forming just such a retreat as children love to call their own. Edmund threw himself down at full length on it, laid aside his hat, and passed his hand across his weary forehead. “How quiet!” said he; “but, hark! is that the bubbling of water?” he added, raising himself eagerly.
“Yes, here,” said Walter, showing him where, a little further off on the same slope, a little clear spring rose in a natural basin of red earth, fringed along the top with fresh green mosses.
“Delicious!” said the tired soldier, kneeling over the spring, scooping it up in his hand to drink, opening his collar, and bathing hands and face in the clear cool fountain, till his long black hair hung straight, saturated with wet.
“Now, Bayard, it is your turn,” and he patted the good steed as it sucked up the refreshing water, and Walter proceeded to release it from saddle and bridle. Edmund, meanwhile, stretched himself out on the mossy bank, asked a few questions about his mother, Rose, and the other children, but was too tired to say much, and presently fell sound asleep, while Walter sat by watching him, grieving for the battle lost, but proud and important in being the guardian of his brother’s safety, and delighting himself with the thought of bringing him home at night.
More was happening at home than Walter guessed. The time of his absence seemed very long, more especially when the twilight began to close in, and Lady Woodley began to fear that he might, with his rashness, have involved himself in some quarrel with the troopers in the village. Lady Woodley and her children had closed around the wood fire which had been lighted on the hearth at the approach of evening, and Rose was trying by the bad light to continue her darning of stockings, when a loud hasty knocking was heard at the door, and all, in a general vague impression of dread, started and drew together.
“Oh my lady!” cried Deborah, “don’t bid me go to the door, I could not if you offered me fifty gold caroluses! I had rather stand up to be a mark—” “Then I will,” said Rose, advancing.
“No, no, Mistress Rose,” said Deborah, running forward. “Don’t I know what is fit for the like of you? You go opening the door to rogues and vagabonds, indeed!” and with these words she undrew the bolts and opened the door.
“Is this the way you keep us waiting?” said an impatient voice; and a tall youth, handsomely accoutred, advanced authoritatively into the room. “Prepare to—” but as he saw himself alone with women and children, and his eyes fell on the pale face, mourning dress, and graceful air of the lady of the house, he changed his tone, removed his hat, and said, “Your pardon, madam, I came to ask a night’s lodging for my father, who has been thrown from his horse, and badly bruised.”
“I cannot refuse you, sir,” said Lady Woodley, who instantly perceived that this was an officer of the Parliamentary force, and was only thankful to see that he was a gentleman, and enforced with courtesy a request which was in effect a command.
The youth turned and went out, while Lady Woodley hastily directed her daughters and servant. “Deborah, set the blue chamber in order; Rose, take the key of the oak press, Eleanor will help you to take out the holland sheets. Lucy, run down to old Margery, and bid her kill a couple of fowls for supper.”
As the girls obeyed there entered at the front door the young officer and a soldier, supporting between them an elderly man in the dress of an officer of rank. Lady Woodley, ready of course to give her help to any person who had suffered an injury, came forward to set a chair, and at the same moment she exclaimed, in a tone of recognition, “Mr. Enderby! I am grieved to see you so much hurt.”
“My Lady Woodley,” he returned, recognising her at the same time, as he seated himself in the chair, “I am sorry thus to have broken in on your ladyship, but my son, Sylvester, would have me halt here.”
“This gentleman is your son, then?” and a courteous greeting passed between Lady Woodley and young Sylvester Enderby, after which she again enquired after his father’s accident.
“No great matter,” was the reply; “a blow on the head, and a twist of the knee, that is all. Thanks to a stumbling horse, wearied out with work, I have little mind to—the pursuit of this poor young man.”
“Not the King?” exclaimed Lady Woodley, breathless with alarm.
It was with no apparent satisfaction that the rebel colonel replied, “Even so, madam. Cromwell’s fortune has not forsaken him; he has driven the Scots and their allies out of Worcester.”
Lady Woodley was too much accustomed to evil tidings to be as much overcome by them as her young son had been; she only turned somewhat paler, and asked, “The King lives?”
“He was last seen on Worcester bridge. Troops are sent to every port whence he might attempt an escape.”
“May the GOD of his father protect him,” said the lady, fervently. “And my son?” she added, faintly, scarcely daring to ask the question.
“Safe, I hope,” replied the colonel. “I saw him, and I could have thought him my dear old friend himself, as he joined Charles in his last desperate attempt to rally his forces, and then charged down Sidbury Street with a few bold spirits who were resolved to cover their master’s retreat. He is not among the slain; he was not a prisoner when I left the headquarters. I trust he may have escaped, for Cromwell is fearfully incensed against your party.”
Colonel Enderby was interrupted by Lucy’s running in calling out, “Mother, mother! there are no fowls but Partlet and the sitting hen, and the old cock, and I won’t have my dear old Partlet killed to be eaten by wicked Roundheads.”
“Come here, my little lady,” said the colonel, holding out his hand, amused by her vehemence.
“I won’t speak to a Roundhead,” returned Lucy, with a droll air of petulance, pleased at being courted.
Her mother spoke gravely. “You forget yourself, Lucy. This is Mr. Enderby, a friend of your dear father.”
Lucy’s cheeks glowed, and she looked down as she gave her hand to the colonel; but as he spoke kindly to her, her forward spirit revived, and she returned to the charge.
“You won’t have Partlet killed?”
Her mother would have silenced her, but the colonel smiled and said, “No, no, little lady; I would rather go without supper than let one feather of Dame Partlet be touched.”
“Nay, you need not do that either, sir,” said the little chatter-box, confidentially, “for we are to have a pie made of little Jenny’s pigeons; and I’ll tell you what, sir, no one makes raised crust half so well as sister Rose.”
Lady Woodley was not sorry to stop the current of her little girl’s communications by despatching her on another message, and asking Colonel Enderby whether he would not prefer taking a little rest in his room before supper-time, offering, at the same time all the remedies for bruises and wounds that every good housekeeper of the time was sure to possess.
She had a real regard for Mr. Enderby, who had been a great friend of her husband before the unhappy divisions of the period arrayed them on opposite sides, and even then, though true friendship could not last, a kindly feeling had always existed.
Mr. Enderby was a conscientious man, but those were difficult times; and he had regarded loyalty to the King less than what he considered the rights of the people. He had been an admirer of Hampden and his principles, and had taken up arms on the same side, becoming a rebel on political, not on religious, grounds. When, as time went on, the evils of the rebellion developed themselves more fully, he was already high in command, and so involved with his own party that he had not the resolution requisite for a change of course and renunciation of his associates. He would willingly have come to terms with the King, and was earnest in the attempt at the time of the conferences at Hampden Court. He strongly disapproved of the usurpation of power by the army, and was struck with horror, grief, and dismay, at the execution of King Charles; but still he would not, or fancied that he could not, separate himself from the cause of the Parliament, and continued in their service, following Cromwell to Scotland, and fighting at Worcester on the rebel side, disliking Cromwell all the time, and with a certain inclination to the young King, and desire to see the old constitution restored.
He was just one of those men who cause such great evil by giving a sort of respectability to the wrong cause, “following a multitude to do evil,” and doubtless bringing a fearful responsibility on their own heads; yet with many good qualities and excellent principles, that make those on the right side have a certain esteem for them, and grieve to see them thus perverted.
Lady Woodley, who knew him well, though sorry to have a rebel in her house at such a time, was sure that in him she had a kind and considerate guest, who would do his utmost to protect her and her children.
On his side, Colonel Enderby was much grieved and shocked at the pale, altered looks of the fair young bride he remembered, as well as the evidences of poverty throughout her house, and perhaps he had a secret wish that he was as well assured as his friend, Sir Walter, that his blood had been shed for the maintenance of the right.
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ROSE WOODLEY ran up and down indefatigably, preparing everything for the accommodation of the guests, smoothing down Deborah’s petulance, and keeping her mother from over-exertion or anxiety. Much contrivance was indeed required, for besides the colonel and his son, two soldiers had to be lodged, and four horses, which, to the consternation of old Margery, seemed likely to devour the cow’s winter store of hay, while the troopers grumbled at the desolate, half-ruined, empty stables, and at the want of corn.
Rose had to look to everything; to provide blankets from the bed of the two little girls, send Eleanor to sleep with her mother, and take Lucy to her own room; despatch them on messages to the nearest cottage to borrow some eggs, and to gather vegetables in the garden, whilst she herself made the pigeon pie with the standing crust, much wishing that the soldiers were out of the way. It was a pretty thing to see her in her white apron, with her neat dexterous fingers, and nimble quiet step, doing everything in so short a time, and so well, without the least bustle.
She was at length in the hall, laying the white home-spun, home-bleached cloth, and setting the trenchers (all the Mowbray plate had long ago gone in the King’s service), wondering anxiously, meantime, what could have become of Walter, with many secret and painful misgivings, though she had been striving to persuade her mother that he was only absent on some freak of his own.
Presently the door which led to the garden was opened, and to her great joy Walter put his head into the room.
“O Walter,” she exclaimed, “the battle is lost! but Edmund and the King have both escaped.”
“Say you so?” said Walter, smiling. “Here is a gentleman who can give you some news of Edmund.”
At the same moment Rose saw her beloved eldest brother enter the room. It would be hard to say which was her first thought, joy or dismay—she had no time to ask herself. Quick as lightning she darted to the door leading to the staircase, bolted it, threw the bar across the fastening of the front entrance, and then, flying to her brother, clung fast round his neck, kissed him on each cheek, and felt his ardent kiss on her brow, as she exclaimed in a frightened whisper, “You must not stay here: there are troopers in the house!”
“Troopers! —quartered on us?” cried Walter.
Rose hastily explained, trembling lest anyone should attempt to enter. Walter paced up and down in despair, vowing that it was a trick to get a spy into the house. Edmund sat down in the large arm-chair with a calm resolute look, saying, “I must surrender, then. Neither I nor my horse can go further without rest. I will yield as a prisoner of war, and well that it is to a man of honour.”
“Oh no, no!” cried Rose: “he says Cromwell treats his prisoners as rebels. It would be certain death!”
“What news of the King?” asked Edmund, anxiously.
“Not seen since the flight? but—” “And Lord Derby, Wilmot—” “I cannot tell, I heard no names,” said Rose, “only that the enemy’s cruelties are worse than ever.”
Walter stood with his back against the table, gazing at his brother and sister in mute consternation.
“I know!” cried Rose, suddenly: “the out-house in the upper field. No one ever goes up into the loft but ourselves. You know, Walter, where Eleanor found the kittens. Go thither, I will bring Edmund food at night. Oh, consent, Edmund!”
“It will do! it will do!” cried Walter.
“Very well, it may spare my mother,” said Edmund; and as footsteps and voices were heard on the stairs, the two brothers hurried off without another word, while Rose, trying to conceal her agitation, undid the door, and admitted her two little sisters, who were asking if they had not heard Walter’s voice.
She scarcely attended to them, but, bounding upstairs to her mother’s room, flung her arms round her neck, and poured into her ear her precious secret. The tremour, the joy, the fears, the tears, the throbbings of the heart, and earnest prayers, may well be imagined, crowded by the mother and daughter into those few minutes. The plan was quickly arranged. They feared to trust even Deborah; so that the only way that they could provide the food that Edmund so much needed was by Rose and Walter attempting to save all they could at supper, and Rose could steal out when everyone was gone to rest, and carry it to him. Lady Woodley was bent on herself going to her son that night; but Rose prevailed on her to lay aside the intention, as it would have been fatal, in her weak state of health, for her to expose herself to the chills of an autumn night, and, what was with her a much more conclusive reason, Rose was much more likely to be able to slip out unobserved. Rose had an opportunity of explaining all this to Walter, and imploring him to be cautious, before the colonel and his son came down, and the whole party assembled round the supper-table.
Lady Woodley had the eggs and bacon before her; Walter insisted on undertaking the carving of the pigeon-pie, and looked considerably affronted when young Sylvester Enderby offered to take the office, as a more experienced carver. Poor Rose, how her heart beat at every word and look, and how hard she strove to seem perfectly at her ease and unconscious! Walter was in a fume of anxiety and vexation, and could hardly control himself so far as to speak civilly to either of the guests, so that he was no less a cause of fear to his mother and sister than the children, who were unconscious how much depended on discretion.
Young Sylvester Enderby was a fine young man of eighteen, very good-natured, and not at all like a Puritan in appearance or manner. He had hardly yet begun to think for himself, and was merely obeying his father in joining the army with him, without questioning whether it was the right cause or not. He was a kind elder brother at home, and here he was ready to be pleased with the children of the house.
Lucy was a high-spirited talkative child, very little used to seeing strangers, and perhaps hardly reined in enough, for her poor mother’s weak health had interfered with strict discipline; and as this evening Walter and Rose were both grave and serious under their anxieties, Lucy was less restrained even than usual.
She was a pretty creature, with bright blue eyes, and an arch expression, all the droller under her prim round cap; and Sylvester was a good deal amused with her pert bold little nods and airs. He paid a good deal of attention to her, and she in return grew more forward and chattering. It is what little girls will sometimes do under the pleasure and excitement of the notice of gentlemen, and it makes their friends very uneasy, since the only excuse they can have is in being _very little_, and it shows a most undesirable want of self-command and love of attention.
In addition to this feeling, Lady Woodley dreaded every word that was spoken, lest it should lead to suspicion, for though she was sure Mr. Enderby would not willingly apprehend her son, yet she could not tell what he might consider his duty to his employers; besides, there were the two soldiers to observe and report, and the discovery that Edmund was at hand might lead to frightful consequences. She tried to converse composedly with him on his family and the old neighbourhood where they had both lived, often interrupting herself to send a look or word of warning to the lower end of the table; but Lucy and Charles were too wild to see or heed her, and grew more and more unrestrained, till at last, to the dismay of her mother, brother, and sister, Charles’ voice was heard so loud as to attract everyone’s notice, in a shout of wonder and complaint, “Mother, mother, look! Rose has gobbled up a whole pigeon to her own share!”
Rose could not keep herself from blushing violently, as she whispered reprovingly that he must not be rude. Lucy did not mend the matter by saying with an impertinent nod, “Rose does not like to be found out.”
“Children,” said Lady Woodley, gravely, “I shall send you away if you do not behave discreetly.”
“But, mother, Rose is greedy,” said Lucy.
“Hold your tongues, little mischief makers!” burst out Walter, who had been boiling over with anxiety and indignation the whole time.
“Walter is cross now,” said Lucy, pleased to have produced a sensation, and to have shocked Eleanor, who sat all the time as good, demure, and grave, as if she had been forty years old.
“Pray excuse these children,” said Lady Woodley, trying to hide her anxiety under cover of displeasure at them; “no doubt Mrs. Enderby keeps much better order at home. Lucy, Charles, silence at once. Walter, is there no wine?”
“If there is, it is too good for rebels,” muttered Walter to himself, as he rose. “Light me, Deborah, and I’ll see.”
“La! Master Walter,” whispered Deborah, “you know there is nothing but the dregs of the old cask of Malmsey, that was drunk up at the old squire’s burying.”
“Hush, hush, Deb,” returned the boy; “fill it up with water, and it will be quite good enough for those who won’t drink the King’s health.”
Deborah gave a half-puzzled smile. “Ye’re a madcap, Master Walter! But sure, Sir, the spirit of a wolf must have possessed Mistress Rose—she that eats no supper at all, in general! D’ye think it is wearying about Master Edmund that gives her a craving?”
It might be dangerous, but Walter was so much diverted, that he could not help saying, “I have no doubt it is on his account.”
“I know,” said Deborah, “that I get so faint at heart that I am forced to be taking something all day long to keep about at all!”
By this time they were re-entering the hall, when there was a sound from the kitchen as of someone calling. Deborah instantly turned, screaming out joyfully, “Bless me! is it you?” and though out of sight, her voice was still heard in its high notes of joy. “You good-for-nothing rogue! are you turned up again like a bad tester, staring into the kitchen like a great oaf, as you be?”
There was a general laugh, and Eleanor said, “That must be Diggory.”
“A poor country clown,” said Lady Woodley, “whom we sent to join my son’s troop. I hope he is in no danger.”
“Oh no,” said Mr. Enderby; “he has only to return to his plough.”
“Hollo there!” shouted Walter. “Come in, Diggory, and show yourself.”
In came Diggory, an awkward thick-set fellow, with a shock head of hair, high leathern gaiters, and a buff belt over his rough leathern jerkin. There he stood, pulling his forelock, and looking sheepish.
“Come in, Diggory,” said his mistress; “I am glad to see you safe. You need not be afraid of these gentlemen. Where are the rest?”
“Slain, every man of them, an’t please your ladyship.”
“And your master, Mr. Woodley?”
“Down, too, an’t please your ladyship.”
Lucy screamed aloud; Eleanor ran to her mother, and hid her face in her lap; Charles sat staring, with great round frightened eyes. Very distressing it was to be obliged to leave the poor children in such grief and alarm, when it was plain all the time that Diggory was an arrant coward, who had fancied more deaths and dangers than were real, and was describing more than he had even thought he beheld, in order to make himself into a hero instead of a runaway. Moreover, Lady Woodley and Rose had to put on a show of grief, lest they should betray that they were better informed; and they were in agonies lest Walter’s fury at the falsehoods should be as apparent to their guests as it was to themselves.
“Are you sure of what you say, Diggory?” said Lady Woodley.
“Sure as that I stand here, my lady. There was sword and shot and smoke all round. I stood it all till Farmer Ewins was cut down a-one-side of me, ma’am, and Master Edmund, more’s the pity, with his brains scattered here and there on the banks of the river.”
There was another cry among the children, and Walter made such a violent gesture, that Rose, covering her face with her handkerchief, whispered to him, “Walter dear, take care.” Walter relieved his mind by returning, “Oh that I could cudgel the rogue soundly!”
At the same time Colonel Enderby turned to their mother, saying, “Take comfort, madam, this fellow’s tale carries discredit on the face of it. Let me examine him, with your permission. Where did you last see your master?”
“I know none of your places, sir,” answered Diggory, sullenly.
Colonel Enderby spoke sternly and peremptorily. “In the town, or in the fields? Answer me that, sirrah. In the field on the bank of the river?”
“Ay.”
“There you left your ranks, you rogue; that was the way you lost sight of your master!” said the colonel. Then, turning to Lady Woodley, as Diggory slunk off, “Your ladyship need not be alarmed. An hour after the encounter, in which he pretends to have seen your son slain, I saw him in full health and soundness.”
“A cowardly villain!” cried Walter, delighted to let out some of his indignation. “I knew he was not speaking a word of truth.”
The children cheered up in a moment; but Lady Woodley was not sorry to make this agitating scene an excuse for retiring with all her children. Lucy and Eleanor were quite comforted, and convinced that Edmund must be safe; but poor little Charlie had been so dreadfully frightened by the horrors of Diggory’s description, that after Rose had put him to bed he kept on starting up in his sleep, half waking, and sobbing about brother Edmund’s brains.
Rose was obliged to go to him and soothe him. She longed to assure the poor little fellow that dear Edmund was perfectly safe, well, and near at hand; but the secret was too important to be trusted to one so young, so she could only coax and comfort him, and tell him they all thought it was not true, and Edmund would come back again.
“Sister,” said Charlie, “may I say my prayers again for him?”
“Yes, do, dear Charlie,” said Rose; “and say a prayer for King Charles too, that he may be safe from the wicked man.”
So little Charlie knelt by Rose, with his hands joined, and his little bare legs folded together, and said his prayer: and did not his sister’s heart go with him? Then she kissed him, covered him up warmly, and repeated to him in her soft voice the ninety-first Psalm: “Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
By the time it was ended, the little boy was fast asleep, and the faithful loyal girl felt her failing heart cheered and strengthened for whatever might be before her, sure that she, her mother, her brother, and her King, were under the shadow of the Almighty wings.
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{
"id": "2606"
}
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IN a very strong fit of restlessness did little Mistress Lucy Woodley go to bed in Rose’s room that night. She was quite comforted on Edmund’s account, for she had discernment enough to see that her mother and sister did not believe Diggory’s dreadful narration; and she had been so unsettled and excited by Mr. Sylvester Enderby’s notice, and by the way in which she had allowed her high spirits to get the better of her discretion, as well as by the sudden change from terror to joy, that when first she went to Rose’s room she could not attend to her prayers, and next she could not go to sleep.
Perhaps the being in a different apartment from usual, and the missing her accustomed sleeping companion, Eleanor, had something to do with it, for little Eleanor had a gravity and steadiness about her that was very apt to compose and quiet her in her idlest moods. To-night she lay broad awake, tumbling about on the very hard mattress, stuffed with chaff, wondering how Rose could bear to sleep on it, trying to guess how there could be room for both when her sister came to bed, and nevertheless in a great fidget for her to come. She listened to the howling and moaning of the wind, the creaking of the doors, and the rattling of the boards with which Rose had stopped up the broken panes of her lattice; she rolled from side to side, fancied odd shapes in the dark, and grew so restless and anxious for Rose’s coming that she was just ready to jump out of bed and go in the passage to call her when Rose came into the room.
“O Rose, what a time you have been!”
It was no satisfaction to Rose to find the curious little chatter-box so wide awake at this very inconvenient time, but she did not lose her patience, and answered that she had been first with Charlie, and then with their mother.
“And now I hope you are coming to bed. I can’t go to sleep without you.”
“Oh, but indeed you must, Lucy dear, for I shall not be ready this long time. Look, here is a great rent in Walter’s coat, which I must mend, or he won’t be fit to be seen to-morrow.”
“What shall we have for dinner to-morrow, Rose? What made you eat so much supper to-night?”
“I’ll tell you what, Lucy, I am not going to talk to you, or you will lie awake all night, and that will be very bad for you. I shall put my candle out of your sight, and say some Psalms, but I cannot talk.”
So Rose began, and, wakeful as Lucy was, she found the low sweet tones lulled her a little. But she did not like this; she had a perverse intention of staying awake till Rose got into bed, so instead of attending to the holy words, she pinched herself, and pulled herself, and kept her eyes staring open, gazing at the flickering shadows cast by the dim home-made rush candle.
She went to sleep for a moment, then started into wakefulness again; Rose had ceased to repeat her Psalms aloud, but was still at her needlework; another doze, another waking. There was some hope of Rose now, for she was kneeling down to say her prayers. Lucy thought they lasted very long, and at her next waking she was just in time to hear the latch of the door closing, and find herself left in darkness. Rose was not in bed, did not answer when she called. Oh, she must be gone to take Walter’s coat back to his room. But surely she might have done that in one moment; and how long she was staying! Lucy could bear it no longer, or rather she did not try to bear it, for she was an impetuous, self-willed child, without much control over herself. She jumped out of bed, and stole to the door. A light was just disappearing on the ceiling, as if someone was carrying a candle down stairs; what could it mean? Lucy scampered, pit-pat, with her bare feet along the passage, and came to the top of the stairs in time to peep over and discover Rose silently opening the door of the hall, a large dark cloak hung over her arm, and her head and neck covered by her black silk hood and a thick woollen kerchief, as if she was going out.
Lucy’s curiosity knew no bounds. She would not call, for fear she should be sent back to bed, but she was determined to see what her sister could possibly be about. Down the cold stone steps pattered she, and luckily, as she thought, Rose, probably to avoid noise, had only shut to the door, so that the little inquisitive maiden had a chink to peep through, and beheld Rose at a certain oaken corner-cupboard, whence she took out a napkin, and in it she folded what Lucy recognised as the very same three-cornered segment of pie-crust, containing the pigeon that she had last night been accused of devouring. She placed it in a basket, and then proceeded to take a lantern from the cupboard, put in her rushlight, and, thus prepared, advanced to the garden-door, softly opened it, and disappeared.
Lucy, in an extremity of amazement, came forward. The wind howled in moaning gusts, and the rain dashed against the windows; Lucy was chilly and frightened. The fire was not out, and gave a dim light, and she crept towards the window, but a sudden terror came over her; she dashed back, looked again, heard another gust of wind, fell into another panic, rushed back to the stairs, and never stopped till she had tumbled into bed, her teeth chattering, shivering from head to foot with fright and cold, rolled herself up tight in the bed-clothes, and, after suffering excessively from terror and chill, fell sound asleep without seeing her sister return.
Causeless fears pursue those who are not in the right path, and turn from what alone can give them confidence. A sense of protection supports those who walk in innocence, though their way may seem surrounded with perils; and thus, while Lucy trembled in an agony of fright in her warm bed, Rose walked forth with a firm and fearless step through the dark gusty night, heedless of the rain that pattered round her, and the wild wind that snatched at her cloak and gown, and flapped her hood into her eyes.
She was not afraid of fancied terrors, and real perils and anxieties were at this moment lost in the bounding of her young heart at the thought of seeing, touching, speaking to her brother, her dear Edmund. She had been eleven years old when they last had parted, the morning of the battle of Naseby, and he was five years older; but they had always been very happy and fond companions and playfellows as long as she could remember, and she alone had been on anything like an equality with him, or missed him with a feeling of personal loss, that had been increased by the death of her elder sister, Mary.
Quickly, and concealing her light as much as possible, she walked down the damp ash-strewn paths of the kitchen-garden, and came out into the overgrown and neglected shrubbery, or pleasance, where the long wet-laden shoots came beating in her face, and now and then seeming to hold her back, and strange rustlings were heard that would have frightened a maiden of a less stout and earnest heart. Her anxiety was lest she should be confused by the unwonted aspect of things in the dark, and miss the path; and very, very long did it seem, while her light would only show her leaves glistening with wet. At last she gained a clearer space, the border of a field: something dark rose before her, she knew the outline of the shed, and entered the lower part. It was meant for a cart-shed, with a loft above for hay or straw; but the cart had been lost or broken, and there was only a heap of rubbish in the corner, by which the children were wont to climb up to inspect their kittens. Here Rose was for a moment startled by a glare close to her of what looked like two fiery lamps in the darkness, but the next instant a long, low, growling sound explained it, and the tabby stripes of the cat quickly darted across her lantern’s range of light. She heard a slight rustling above, and ventured to call, in a low whisper, “Edmund.”
“Is that you, Walter?” and as Rose proceeded to mount the pile of rubbish, his pale and haggard face looked down at her.
“What? Rose herself! I did not think you would have come on such a night as this. Can you come up? Shall I help you?”
“Thank you. Take the lantern first—take care. There. Now the basket and the cloak.” And this done, with Edmund’s hand, Rose scrambled up into the loft. It was only the height of the roof, and there was not room, even in the middle, to stand upright; the rain soaked through the old thatch, the floor was of rough boards, and there was but very little of the hay that had served as a bed for the kittens.
“O Edmund, this is a wretched place!” exclaimed Rose, as, crouching by his side, one hand in his, and the other round his neck, she gazed around.
“Better than a prison,” he answered. “I only wish I knew that others were in as good a one. And you—why, Rose, how you are altered; you are my young lady now! And how does my dear mother?”
“Pretty well. I could hardly prevail on her not to come here to-night; but it would have been too much, she is so weak, and takes cold so soon. But, Edmund, how pale you are, how weary! Have you slept? I fear not, on these hard boards—your wound, too.”
“It hardly deserves such a dignified name as a wound,” said Edmund. “I am more hungry than aught else; I could have slept but for hunger, and now”—as he spoke he was opening the basket—“I shall be lodged better, I fear, than a king, with that famous cloak. What a notable piece of pasty! Well done, Rose! Are you housewife? Store of candles, too. This is noble!”
“How hungry you must be! How long is it since you have eaten?”
“Grey sent his servant into a village to buy some bread and cheese; we divided it when we parted, and it lasted me until this morning. Since then I have fasted.”
“Dear brother, I wish I could do more for you; but till Mr. Enderby goes, I cannot, for the soldiers are about the kitchen, and our maid, Deborah, talks too much to be trustworthy, though she is thoroughly faithful.”
“This is excellent fare,” said Edmund, eating with great relish. “And now tell me of yourselves. My mother is feeble and unwell, you say?”
“Never strong, but tolerably well at present.”
“So Walter said. By the way, Walter is a fine spirited fellow. I should like to have him with me if we take another African voyage.”
“He would like nothing better, poor fellow. But what strange things you have seen and done since we met! How little we thought that morning that it would be six years before we should sit side by side again! And Prince Rupert is kind to you?”
“He treats me like a son or brother: never was man kinder,” said Edmund, warmly. “But the children? I must see them before I depart. Little Lucy, is she as bold and pert as she was as a young child?”
“Little changed,” said Rose, smiling, and telling her brother the adventures at the dinner.
As cheerfully as might be they talked till Edmund had finished his meal, and then Rose begged him to let her examine and bind up the wound. It was a sword-cut on the right shoulder, and, though not very deep, had become stiff and painful from neglect, and had soaked his sleeve deeply with blood. Rose’s dexterous fingers applied the salve and linen she had brought, and she promised that at her next visit she would bring him some clean clothes, which was what he said he most wished for. Then she arranged the large horseman’s cloak, the hay, and his own mantle, so well as to form, he said, the most luxurious resting place he had seen since he left Dunbar; and rolled up in this he lay, his head supported on his hand, talking earnestly with her on the measures next to be taken for his safety, and on the state of the family. He must be hidden there till the chase was a little slackened, and then escape, by Bosham or some other port, to the royal fleet, which was hovering on the coast. Money, however—how was he to get a passage without it?
“The Prince, at parting—heaven knows he has little enough himself—gave me twenty gold crowns, which he said was my share of prize-money for our captures,” said Edmund, “but this is the last of them.”
“And I don’t know how we can get any,” said Rose. “We never see money. Our tenants, if they pay at all, pay in kind—a side of bacon, or a sack of corn; they are very good, poor people, and love our mother heartily, I do believe. I wish I knew what was to be done.”
“Time will show,” said Edmund. “I have been in as bad a case as this ere now, and it is something to be near you all again. So you like this place, do you? As well as our own home?”
Rose shook her head, and tears sprang into her eyes. “Oh no, Edmund; I try to think it home, and the children feel it so, but it is not like Woodley. Do you remember the dear old oak-tree, with the branches that came down so low, where you used to swing Mary and me?”
“And the high branch where I used to watch for my father coming home from the justice-meeting. And the meadow where the hounds killed the fox that had baffled them so long! Do you hear anything of the place now, Rose?”
“Mr. Enderby told us something,” said Rose, sadly. “You know who has got it, Edmund?”
“Who?
“That Master Priggins, who was once justices’ clerk.”
“Ha!” cried Edmund. “That pettifogging scrivener in my father’s house! —in my ancestors’ house! A rogue that ought to have been branded a dozen years ago! I could have stood anything but that! Pretty work he is making there, I suppose! Go on, Rose.”
“O Edmund, you know it is but what the King himself has to bear.”
“Neighbour’s fare! as you say,” replied Edmund, with a short dry laugh. “Poverty and wandering I could bear; peril is what any brave man naturally seeks; the acres that have been ours for centuries could not go in a better cause; but to hear of a rascal such as that in my father’s place is enough to drive one mad with rage! Come, what has he been doing? How has he used the poor people?”
“He turned out old Davy and Madge at once from keeping the house, but Mr. Enderby took them in, and gave them a cottage.”
“I wonder what unlucky fate possessed that Enderby to take the wrong side! Well?”
“He could not tell us much of the place, for he cannot endure Master Priggins, and Master Sylvester laughs at his Puritanical manner; but he says—O Edmund—that the fish-ponds are filled up—those dear old fish-ponds where the water-lilies used to blow, and you once pulled me out of the water.”
“Ay, ay! we shall not know it again if ever our turn comes, and we enjoy our own again. But it is of no use to think about such matters.”
“No; we must be thankful that we have a home at all, and are not like so many, who are actually come to beggary, like poor Mrs. Forde. You remember her, our old clergyman’s widow. He died on board ship, and she was sent for by her cousin, who promised her a home; but she had no money, and was forced to walk all the way, with her two little boys, getting a lodging at night from any loyal family who would shelter her for the love of heaven. My mother wept when she saw how sadly she was changed; we kept her with us a week to rest her, and when she went she had our last gold carolus, little guessing, poor soul, that it was our last. Then, when she was gone, my mother called us all round her, and gave thanks that she could still give us shelter and daily bread.”
“There is a Judge above!” exclaimed Edmund; “yet sometimes it is hard to believe, when we see such a state of things here below!”
“Dr. Bathurst tells us to think it will all be right in the other world, even if we do have to see the evil prosper here,” said Rose, gravely. “The sufferings will all turn to glory, just as they did with our blessed King, out of sight.”
Edmund sat thoughtful. “If our people abroad would but hope and trust and bear as you do here, Rose. But I had best not talk of these things, only your patience makes me feel how deficient in it we are, who have not a tithe to bear of what you have at home. Are you moving to go? Must you?”
“I fear so, dear brother; the light seems to be beginning to dawn, and if Lucy wakes and misses me—Is your shoulder comfortable?”
“I was never more comfortable in my life. My loving duty to my dear mother. Farewell, you, sweet Rose.”
“Farewell, dear Edmund. Perhaps Walter may manage to visit you, but do not reckon on it.”
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{
"id": "2606"
}
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THE vigils of the night had been as unwonted for Lucy as for her sister, and she slept soundly till Rose was already up and dressed. Her first reflection was on the strange sights she had seen, followed by a doubt whether they were real, or only a dream; but she was certain it was no such thing; she recollected too well the chill of the stone to her feet, and the sound of the blasts of wind. She wondered over it, wished to make out the cause, but decided that she should only be scolded for peeping, and she had better keep her own counsel.
That Lucy should keep silence when she thought she knew more than other people was, however, by no means to be expected; and though she would say not a word to her mother or Rose, of whom she was afraid, she was quite ready to make the most of her knowledge with Eleanor.
When she came down stairs she found Walter, with his elbows on the table and his book before him, learning the task which his mother required of him every day; Eleanor had just come in with her lapfull of the still lingering flowers, and called her to help to make them up into nosegays.
Lucy came and sat down by her on the floor, but paid little attention to the flowers, so intent was she on showing her knowledge.
“Ah! you don’t know what I have seen.”
“I dare say it is only some nonsense,” said Eleanor, gravely, for she was rather apt to plume herself on being steadier than her elder sister.
“It is no nonsense,” said Lucy. “I know what I know.”
Before Eleanor had time to answer this speech, the mystery of which was enhanced by a knowing little nod of the head, young Mr. Enderby made his appearance in the hall, with a civil good-morning to Walter, which the boy hardly deigned to acknowledge by a gruff reply and little nod, and then going on to the little girls, renewed with them yesterday’s war of words. “Weaving posies, little ladies?”
“Not for rebels,” replied Lucy, pertly.
“May I not have one poor daisy?”
“Not one; the daisy is a royal flower.”
“If I take one?”
“Rebels take what they can’t get fairly,” said Lucy, with the smartness of a forward child; and Sylvester, laughing heartily, continued, “What would General Cromwell say to such a nest of little malignants?”
“That is an ugly name,” said Eleanor.
“Quite as pretty as Roundhead.”
“Yes, but we don’t deserve it.”
“Not when you make that pretty face so sour?”
“Ah!” interposed Lucy, “she is sour because I won’t tell her my secret of the pie.”
“Oh, what?” said Eleanor.
“Now I have you!” cried Lucy, delighted. “I know what became of the pigeon pie.”
In extreme alarm and anger, Walter turned round as he caught these words. “Lucy, naughty child!” he began, in a voice of thunder; then, recollecting the danger of exciting further suspicion, he stammered, “what—what—what—are you doing here? Go along to mother.”
Lucy rubbed her fingers into her eyes, and answered sharply, in a pettish tone, that she was doing no harm. Eleanor, in amazement, asked what could be the matter.
“Intolerable!” exclaimed Walter. “So many girls always in the way?”
Sylvester Enderby could not help smiling, as he asked, “Is that all you have to complain of?”
“I could complain of something much worse,” muttered Walter. “Get away, Lucy?”
“I won’t at your bidding, sir.”
To Walter’s great relief, Rose entered at that moment, and all was smooth and quiet; Lucy became silent, and the conversation was kept up in safe terms between Rose and the young officer. The colonel, it appeared, was so much better that he intended to leave Forest Lea that very day; and it was not long before he came down, and presently afterwards Lady Woodley, looking very pale and exhausted, for her anxieties had kept her awake all night.
After a breakfast on bread, cheese, rashers of bacon, and beer, the horses were brought to the door, and the colonel took his leave of Lady Woodley, thanking her much for her hospitality.
“I wish it had been better worth accepting,” said she.
“I wish it had, though not for my own sake,” said the colonel. “I wish you would allow me to attempt something in your favour. One thing, perhaps, you will deign to accept. Every royalist house, especially those belonging to persons engaged at Worcester, is liable to be searched, and to have soldiers quartered on them, to prevent fugitives from being harboured there. I will send Sylvester at once to obtain a protection for you, which may prevent you from being thus disturbed.”
“That will be a kindness, indeed,” said Lady Woodley, hardly able to restrain the eagerness with which she heard the offer made, that gave the best hope of saving her son. She was not certain that the colonel had not some suspicion of the true state of the case, and would not take notice, unwilling to ruin the son of his friend, and at the same time reluctant to fail in his duty to his employers.
He soon departed; Mistress Lucy’s farewell to Sylvester being thus: “Good-bye, Mr. Roundhead, rebel, crop-eared traitor.” At which Sylvester and his father turned and laughed, and their two soldiers looked very much astonished.
Lady Woodley called Lucy at once, and spoke to her seriously on her forwardness and impertinence. “I could tell you, Lucy, that it is not like a young lady, but I must tell you more, it is not like a young Christian maiden. Do you remember the text that I gave you to learn a little while ago—the ornament fit for a woman?”
Lucy hung her head, and with tears filling her eyes, as her mother prompted her continually, repeated the text in a low mumbling voice, half crying: “Whose adorning, let it not be the putting on of gold, or the plaiting of hair, or the putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of GOD of great price.”
“And does my little Lucy think she showed that ornament when she pushed herself forward to talk idle nonsense, and make herself be looked at and taken notice of?”
Lucy put her finger in her mouth; she did not like to be scolded, as she called it, gentle as her mother was, and she would not open her mind to take in the kind reproof.
Lady Woodley took the old black-covered Bible, and finding two of the verses in S. James about the government of the tongue, desired Lucy to learn them by heart before she went out of the house; and the little girl sat down with them in the window-seat, in a cross impatient mood, very unfit for learning those sacred words. “She had done no harm,” she thought; “she could not help it if the young gentleman would talk to her!”
So there she sat, with the Bible in her lap, alone, for Lady Woodley was so harassed and unwell, in consequence of her anxieties, that Rose had persuaded her to go and lie down on her bed, since it would be better for her not to try to see Edmund till the promised protection had arrived, lest suspicion should be excited. Rose was busy about her household affairs; Eleanor, a handy little person, was helping her; and Walter and Charles were gone out to gather apples for a pudding which she had promised them.
Lucy much wished to be with them; and after a long brooding over her ill-temper, it began to wear out, not to be conquered, but to depart of itself; she thought she might as well learn her lesson and have done with it; so by way of getting rid of the task, not of profiting by the warning it conveyed, she hurried through the two verses ending with—“Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth!”
As soon as she could say them perfectly, she raced upstairs, and into her mother’s room, gave her the book, and repeated them at her fastest pace. Poor Lady Woodley was too weary and languid to exert herself to speak to the little girl about her unsuitable manner, or to try to bring the lesson home to her; she dismissed her, only saying, “I hope, my dear, you will remember this,” and away ran Lucy, first to the orchard in search of her brothers, and not finding them there, round and round the garden and pleasance. Edmund, in his hiding-place, heard the voice calling “Walter! Charlie!” and peeping out, caught a glimpse of a little figure, her long frock tucked over her arm, and long locks of dark hair blowing out from under her small, round, white cap. What a pleasure it was to him to have that one view of his little sister!
At last, tired with her search, Lucy returned to the house, and there found Deborah ironing at the long table in the hall, and crooning away her one dismal song of “Barbara Allen’s cruelty.”
“So you can sing again, Deb,” she began, “now the Roundheads are gone and Diggory come back?”
“Little girls should not meddle with what does not concern them,” answered Deborah.
“You need not call me a little girl,” said Lucy. “I am almost eleven years old; and I know a secret, a real secret.”
“A secret, Mistress Lucy? Who would tell their secrets to the like of you?” said Deborah, contemptuously.
“No one told me; I found it out for myself!” cried Lucy, in high exultation. “I know what became of the pigeon pie that we thought Rose ate up!”
“Eh? Mistress Lucy!” exclaimed Deborah, pausing in her ironing, full of curiosity.
Lucy was delighted to detail the whole of what she had observed.
“Well!” cried Deborah, “if ever I heard tell the like! That slip of a thing out in all the blackness of the night! I should be afraid of my life of the ghosts and hobgoblins. Oh! I had rather be set up for a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army, than set one foot out of doors after dark!”
As Deborah spoke, Walter came into the hall. He saw that Lucy had observed something, and was anxious every time she opened her lips. This made him rough and sharp with her, and he instantly exclaimed, “How now, Lucy, still gossipping?”
“You are so cross, I can’t speak a word for you,” said Lucy, fretfully, walking out of the room, while Walter, in his usual imperious way, began to shout for Diggory and his boots. “Diggory, knave!”
“Anon, sir!” answered the dogged voice.
“Bring them, I say, you laggard!”
“Coming, sir, coming.”
“Coming, are you, you snail?” cried Walter, impatiently. “Your heels are tardier now than they were at Worcester!”
“A man can’t do more nor he can do, sir,” said Diggory, sullenly, as he plodded into the hall.
“Answering again, lubber?” said Walter. “Is this what you call cleaned? You are not fit for your own shoe-blacking trade! Get along with you!” and he threw the boots at Diggory in a passion. “I must wear them, though, as they are, or wait all day. Bring them to me again.”
Walter had some idle notion in his head that it was Puritanical to speak courteously to servants, and despising Diggory for his cowardice and stupidity, he was especially overbearing with him, and went on rating him all the time he was putting on his boots, to go out and try to catch some fish for the morrow’s dinner, which was likely to be but scanty. As soon as he was gone, Diggory, who had listened in sulky silence, began to utter his complaints.
“Chicken-heart, moon-calf, awkward lubber, those be the best words a poor fellow gets. I can tell Master Walter that these are no times for gentlefolks to be hectoring, especially when they haven’t a penny to pay wages with.”
“You learnt that in the wars, Diggory,” said Deborah, turning round, for, grumble as she might herself, she could not bear to have a word said by anyone else against her lady’s family, and loved to scold her sweetheart, Diggory. “Never mind Master Walter. If he has not a penny in his pocket, and the very green coat to his back is cut out of his grandmother’s farthingale, more’s the pity. How should he show he is a gentleman but by hectoring a bit now and then, ’specially to such a rogue as thou, coming back when thy betters are lost. That is always the way, as I found when I lost my real silver crown, and kept my trumpery Parliament bit.”
“Ah, Deb!” pleaded Diggory, “thou knowst not what danger is! I thought thou wouldst never have set eyes on poor Diggory again.”
“Much harm would that have been,” retorted Mrs. Deb, tossing her head. “D’ye think I’d have broke my heart? That I’ll never do for a runaway.”
“’Twas time to run when poor Farmer Ewins was cut down, holloaing for quarter, and Master Edmund’s brains lying strewn about on the ground, for all the world like a calf’s.”
“’Tis your own brains be like a calf’s,” said Deborah. “I’d bargain to eat all of Master Edmund’s brains you ever saw.”
“He’s as dead as a red herring.”
“I say he is as life-like as you or I.” “I say I saw him stretched out, covered with blood, and a sword-cut on his head big enough to be the death of twenty men.”
“Didn’t that colonel man, as they call him, see him alive and merry long after? It’s my belief that Master Edmund is not a dozen miles off.”
“Master Edmund! hey, Deb? I’ll never believe that, after what I’ve seen at Worcester.”
“Then pray why does Mistress Rose save a whole pigeon out of the pie, hide it in her lap, and steal out of the house with it at midnight? Either Master Edmund is in hiding, or some other poor gentleman from the wars, and I verily believe it is Master Edmund himself; so a fig for his brains or yours, and there’s for you, for a false-tongued runaway! Coming, mistress, coming!” and away ran Deborah at a call from Rose.
Now Deborah was faithful to the backbone, and would have given all she had in the world, almost her life itself, for her lady and the children; she was a good and honest woman in the main, but tongue and temper were two things that she had never learnt to restrain, and she had given her love to the first person by whom it was sought, without consideration whether he was worthy of affection or not. That Diggory was a sullen, ill-conditioned, selfish fellow, was evident to everyone else; but he had paid court to Deborah, and therefore the foolish woman had allowed herself to be taken with him, see perfections in him, promise to become his wife, and confide in him.
When Deborah left the hall, Diggory returned to his former employment of chopping wood, and began to consider very intently for him.
He had really believed, at the moment of his panic-terror, that he saw Edmund Woodley fall, and had at once taken flight, without attempting to afford him any assistance. The story of the brains had, of course, been invented on the spur of the moment, by way of excusing his flight, and he was obliged to persist in the falsehood he had once uttered, though he was not by any means certain that it had been his master whom he saw killed, especially after hearing Colonel Enderby’s testimony. And now there came alluringly before him the promise of the reward offered for the discovery of the fugitive cavaliers, the idea of being able to rent and stock poor Ewins’s farm, and setting up there with Deborah. It was money easily come by, he thought, and he would like to be revenged on Master Walter, and show him that the lubber and moon-calf could do some harm, after all. A relenting came across him as he thought of his lady and Mistress Rose, though he had no personal regard for Edmund, who had never lived at Forest Lea; and his stolid mind was too much enclosed in selfishness to admit much feeling for anyone. Besides, it might not be Master Edmund; he was probably killed; it might be one of the lords in the battle, or even the King himself, and that would be worth £1,000. Master Cantwell called them all tyrants and sons of Belial, and what not; and though Dr. Bathurst said differently, who was to know what was right? Dr. Bathurst had had his day, and this was Cantwell’s turn. There was a comedown now of feathered hats, and point collars, and curled hair; and leathern jerkin should have its day. And as for being an informer, he would keep his own counsel; at any rate, the reward he would have. It was scarcely likely to be a hanging matter, after all; and if the gentleman, whoever he might be, did chance to be taken, he would get off scot free, no harm done to him. “Diggory Stokes, you’re a made man!” he finished, throwing his bill-hook from him.
Ah! Lucy, Lucy, you little thought of the harm your curiosity and chattering had done, as you saw Diggory stealing along the side of the wood, in the direction leading to Chichester!
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IN the afternoon Lady Woodley was so much better as to be able to come downstairs, and all the party sat round the fire in the twilight. Walter was just come in from his fishing, bringing a basket of fine trout; Eleanor and Charles were admiring their beautiful red spots, Lucy wondering what made him so late, while he cast a significant look at his eldest sister, showing her that he had been making a visit to Edmund.
At that moment a loud authoritative knocking was heard at the door; Walter shouted to Diggory to open it, and was answered by Deborah’s shrill scream from the kitchen, “He’s not here, sir; I’ve not seen him since you threw your boots at him, sir.”
Another thundering knock brought Deborah to open the door; and what was the dismay of the mother and children as there entered six tall men, their buff coats, steeple-crowned hats, plain collars, and thick calf-skin boots, marking them as Parliamentary soldiers. With a shriek of terror the little ones clung round their mother, while he who, by his orange scarf, was evidently the commanding officer, standing in the middle of the hall, with his hat on, announced, in a Puritanical tone, “We are here by order of his Excellency, General Cromwell, to search for and apprehend the body of the desperate malignant Edmund Woodley, last seen in arms against the Most High Court of Parliament. Likewise to arrest the person of Dame Mary Woodley, widow, suspected of harbouring and concealing traitors:” and he advanced to lay his hand upon her. Walter, in an impulse of passion, rushed forward, and aimed a blow at him with the butt-end of the fishing-rod; but it was the work of a moment to seize the boy and tie his hands, while his mother earnestly implored the soldier to have pity on him, and excuse his thoughtless haste to protect her.
The officer sat down in the arm-chair, and without replying to Lady Woodley, ordered a soldier to bring the boy before him, and spoke thus:—“Hear me, son of an ungodly seed. So merciful are the lessons of the light that thou contemnest, that I will even yet overlook and forgive the violence wherewith thou didst threaten my life, so thou wilt turn again, and confess where thou hast hidden the bloody-minded traitor.”
“This house harbours no traitor,” answered Walter, undauntedly.
“If thou art too hardened to confess,” continued the officer, frowning, and speaking slowly and sternly, as he kept his eyes steadily fixed on Walter, “if thou wilt not reveal his hiding-place, I lead thee hence to abide the penalty of attempted murder.”
“I am quite ready,” answered Walter, returning frown for frown, and not betraying how his heart throbbed.
The officer signed to the soldier, who roughly dragged him aside by the cord that tied his hands, cutting them severely, though he disdained to show any sign of pain.
“Young maiden,” continued the rebel, turning to Rose, “what sayest thou? Wilt thou see thy brother led away to death, when the breath of thy mouth might save him?”
Poor Rose turned as pale as death, but her answer was steady: “I will say nothing.”
“Little ones, then,” said the officer, fiercely, “speak, or you shall taste the rod. Do you know where your brother is?”
“No—no,” sobbed Lucy; and her mother added, “They know nothing, sir.”
“It is loss of time to stand parleying with women and children,” said the officer, rising. “Here,” to one of his men, “keep the door. Let none quit the chamber, and mark the children’s talk. The rest with me. Where is the fellow that brought the tidings?”
Diggory, who had slunk out of sight, was pushed forward by two of the soldiers, and at the same time there was a loud scream from Deborah. “Oh! Diggory, is it you? Oh! my Lady, my Lady, forgive me! I meant no harm! Oh! who would have thought it?” And in an agony of distress, she threw her apron over her face, and, sinking on the bench, rocked herself to and fro, sobbing violently.
In the meantime, the officer and his men, all but the sentinel, had left the room to search for the fugitive, leaving Lady Woodley sitting exhausted and terrified in her chair, the little ones clinging around her, Walter standing opposite, with his hands bound; Rose stood by him, her arm round his neck, proud of his firmness, but in dreadful terror for him, and in such suspense for Edmund, that her whole being seemed absorbed in agonised prayer. Deborah’s sobs, and the children’s frightened weeping, were all the sounds that could be heard; Rose was obliged to attempt to soothe them, but her first kind word to Deborah produced a fresh burst of violent weeping, and then a loud lamentation: “Oh! the rogue—the rogue. If I could have dreamt it!”
“What has she done?” exclaimed Walter, impatiently. “Come, stop your crying. What have you done, Deb?”
“I thought—Oh! if I had known what was in the villain!” continued Deborah, “I’d sooner have bit out my tongue than have said one word to him about the pigeon pie.”
“Pigeon pie!” repeated Rose.
Lucy now gave a cry, for she was, with all her faults, a truth-telling child. “Mother! mother! I told Deb about the pigeon pie! Oh, what have I done? Was it for Edmund? Is Edmund here?”
And to increase the danger and perplexity, the other two children exclaimed together, “Is Edmund here?”
“Hush, hush, my dears, be quiet; I cannot answer you now,” whispered Lady Woodley, trying to silence them by caresses, and looking with terror at the rigid, stern guard, who, instead of remaining at the door where he had been posted, had come close up to them, and sat himself down at the end of the table, as if to catch every word they uttered.
Eleanor and Charles obeyed their mother’s command that they should be silent; Rose took Lucy on her lap, let her rest her head on her shoulder, and whispered to her that she should hear and tell all another time, but she must be quiet now, and listen. Deborah kept her apron over her face, and Walter, leaning his shoulder against the wall, stood gazing at them all; and while he was intently watching for every sound that could enable him to judge whether the search was successful or not, at the same time his heart was beating and his head swimming at the threat of the rebel. Was he to die? To be taken away from that bright world, from sunshine, youth, and health, from his mother, and all of them, and be laid, a stiff mangled corpse, in some cold, dark, unregarded grave; his pulses, that beat so fast, all still and silent—senseless, motionless, like the birds he had killed? And that was not all: that other world! To enter on what would last for ever and ever and ever, on a state which he had never dwelt on or realised to himself, filled him with a blank, shuddering awe; and next came a worse, a sickening thought: if his feeling for the bliss of heaven was almost distaste, could he be fit for it? could he dare to hope for it? It was his Judge Whom he was about to meet, and he had been impatient and weary of Bible and Catechism, and Dr. Bathurst’s teaching; he had been inattentive and careless at his prayers; he had been disobedient and unruly, violent, and unkind! Such a horror and agony came over the poor boy, so exceeding a dread of death, that he was ready at that moment to struggle to do anything to save himself; but there came the recollection that the price of his rescue must be the betrayal of Edmund. He would almost have spoken at that instant; the next he sickened at the thought. Never, never—he could not, would not; better not live at all than be a traitor! He was too confused and anxious to pray, for he had not taught himself to fix his attention in quiet moments. He would not speak before the rebel soldier; but only looked with an earnest gaze at his sister, who, as their eyes met, understood all it conveyed.
His mother, after the first moment’s fright, had reassured herself somewhat on his account; he was so mere a boy that it was not likely that Algernon Sydney, who then commanded at Chichester, would put him to death; a short imprisonment was the worst that was likely to befall him; and though that was enough to fill her with terror and anxiety, it could at that moment be scarcely regarded in comparison with her fears for her eldest son.
A long time passed away, so long, that they began to hope that the enemies might be baffled in their search, in spite of Diggory’s intimate knowledge of every nook and corner. They had been once to the shrubbery, and had been heard tramping back to the stable, where they were welcome to search as long as they chose, then to the barn-yard, all over the house from garret to cellar. Was it over? Joy! joy! But the feet were heard turning back to the pleasance, as though to recommence the search, and ten minutes after the steps came nearer. The rebel officer entered the hall first, but, alas! behind him came, guarded by two soldiers, Edmund Woodley himself, his step firm, his head erect, and his hands unbound. His mother sank back in her chair, and he, going straight up to her, knelt on one knee before her, saying, “Mother, dear mother, your blessing. Let me see your face again.”
She threw her arms round his neck, “My son! and is it thus we meet?”
“We only meet as we parted,” he answered firmly and cheerfully. “Still sufferers in the same good cause; still, I trust, with the same willing hearts.”
“Come, sir,” said the officer, “I must see you safely bestowed for the night.”
“One moment, gentlemen,” entreated Lady Woodley. “It is six years since I saw my son, and this may be our last meeting.” She led him to the light, and looked earnestly up into his face, saying, with a smile, which had in it much of pride and pleasure, as well as sadness, “How you are altered, Edmund! See, Rose, how brown he is, and how much darker his hair has grown; and does not his moustache make him just like your father?”
“And my little sisters,” said Edmund. “Ha! Lucy, I know your little round face.”
“Oh,” sobbed Lucy, “is it my fault? Can you pardon me? The pigeon pie!”
“What does she mean?” asked Edmund, turning to Rose.
“I saw you take it out at night, Rose,” said poor Lucy. “I told Deb!”
“And poor Deborah,” added Rose, “from the same thoughtlessness repeated her chatter to Diggory, who has betrayed us.”
“The cowardly villain,” cried Walter, who had come forward to the group round his brother.
“Hush, Walter,” said Edmund. “But what do I see? Your hands bound? You a prisoner?”
“Poor Walter was rash enough to attempt resistance,” said his mother.
“So, sir,” said Edmund, turning to the rebel captain, “you attach great importance to the struggles of a boy of thirteen!”
“A blow with the butt-end of a fishing-rod is no joke from boy or man,” answered the officer.
“When last I served in England,” continued the cavalier, “Cromwell’s Ironsides did not take notice of children with fishing-rods. You can have no warrant, no order, or whatever you pretend to act by, against him.”
“Why—no, sir; but—however, the young gentleman has had a lesson, and I do not care if I do loose his hands. Here, unfasten him. But I cannot permit him to be at large while you are in the house.”
“Very well, then, perhaps you will allow him to share my chamber. We have been separated for so many years, and it may be our last meeting.”
“So let it be. Since you are pleased to be conformable, sir, I am willing to oblige you,” answered the rebel, whose whole demeanour had curiously changed in the presence of one of such soldierly and gentleman-like bearing as Edmund, prisoner though he was. “Now, madam, to your own chamber. You will all meet to-morrow.”
“Good-night, mother,” said Edmund. “Sleep well; think this is but a dream, and only remember that your eldest son is in your own house.”
“Good-night, my brave boy,” said Lady Woodley, as she embraced him ardently. “A comfort, indeed, I have in knowing that with your father’s face you have his steadfast, loving, unselfish heart. We meet to-morrow. GOD’S blessing be upon you, my boy.”
And tenderly embracing the children she left the hall, followed by a soldier, who was to guard her door, and allow no one to enter. Edmund next kissed his sisters and little Charles, affectionately wishing them good-night, and assuring the sobbing Lucy of his pardon. Rose whispered to him to say something to comfort Deborah, who continued to weep piteously.
“Deborah,” he said, “I must thank you for your long faithful service to my mother in her poverty and distress. I am sure you knew not that you were doing me any harm.”
“Oh, sir,” cried poor Deborah, “Oh don’t speak so kind! I had rather stand up to be a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army than be where I am now.”
Edmund did not hear half what she said, for he and Walter were obliged to hasten upstairs to the chamber which was to be their prison for the night. Rose, at the same time, led away the children, poor little Charles almost asleep in the midst of the confusion.
Deborah’s troubles were not over yet; the captain called for supper, and seeing Walter’s basket of fish, ordered her to prepare them at once for him. Afraid to refuse, she took them down to the kitchen, and proceeded to her cookery, weeping and lamenting all the time.
“Oh, the sweet generous-hearted young gentleman! That I should have been the death of such as he, and he thanking me for my poor services! ’Tis little I could do, with my crooked temper, that plagues all I love the very best, and my long tongue! Oh that it had been bitten out at the root! I wish—I wish I was a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army this minute! And Diggory, the rogue! Oh, after having known him all my life, who would have thought of his turning informer? Why was not he killed in the great fight? It would have broke my heart less.”
And having set her fish to boil, Deborah sank on the chair, her apron over her head, and proceeded to rock herself backwards and forwards as before. She was startled by a touch, and a lumpish voice, attempted to be softened into an insinuating tone. “I say, Deb, don’t take on.”
She sprung up as if an adder had stung her, and jumped away from him. “Ha! is it you? Dost dare to speak to an honest girl?”
“Come, come, don’t be fractious, my pretty one,” said Diggory, in the amiable tones that had once gained her heart.
But now her retort was in a still sharper, more angry key. “Your’n, indeed! I’d rather stand up to be a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army, as poor Master Edmund is like to be, all along of you. O Diggory Stokes,” she added ruefully, “I’d not have believed it of you, if my own father had sworn it.”
“Hush, hush, Deb!” said Diggory, rather sheepishly, “they’ve done hanging the folk.”
“Don’t be for putting me off with such trash,” she returned, more passionately; “you’ve murdered him as much as if you had cut his throat, and pretty nigh Master Walter into the bargain; and you’ve broke my lady’s heart, you, as was born on her land and fed with her bread. And now you think to make up to me, do you?”
“Wasn’t it all along of you I did it? For your sake?”
“Well, and what would you be pleased to say next?” cried Deb, her voice rising in shrillness with her indignation.
“Patience, Deb,” said Diggory, showing a heavy leathern bag. “No more toiling in this ruinous old hall, with scanty scraps, hard words, and no wages; but a tidy little homestead, pig, cow, and horse, your own. See here, Deb,” and he held up a piece of money.
“Silver!” she exclaimed.
“Ay, ay,” said Diggory, grinning, and jingling the bag, “and there be plenty more where that came from.”
“It is the price of Master Edmund’s blood.”
“Don’t ye say that now, Deb; ’tis all for you!” he answered, thinking he was prevailing because she was less violent, too stupid to perceive the difference between her real indignation and perpetual scolding.
“So you still have the face to tell me so!” she burst out, still more vehemently. “I tell you, I’d rather serve my lady and Mistress Rose, if they had not a crust to give me, than roll in gold with a rogue like you. Get along with you, and best get out of the county, for not a boy in Dorset but will cry shame on you.”
“But Deb, Deb,” he still pleaded.
“You will have it, then!” And dealing him a hearty box on the ear, away ran Deborah. Down fell bag, money, and all, and Diggory stood gaping and astounded for a moment, then proceeded to grope after the coins on his hands and knees.
Suddenly a voice exclaimed, “How now, knave, stealing thy mistress’s goods?” and a tall, grim, steeple-hatted figure, armed with a formidable halberd, stood over him.
“Good master corporal,” he began, trembling; but the soldier would not hear him.
“Away with thee, son of iniquity or I will straightway lay mine halberd about thine ears. I bethink me that I saw thee at the fight of Worcester, on the part of the man Charles Stuart.” Here Diggory judged it prudent to slink away through the back door. “And so,” continued the Puritan corporal, as he swept the silver into his pouch, “and so the gains of iniquity fall into the hands of the righteous!”
In the meantime Edmund and Walter had been conducted up stairs to Walter’s bed-room, and there locked in, a sentinel standing outside the door. No sooner were they there than Walter swung himself round with a gesture of rage and despair. “The villains! the rogues! To be betrayed by such a wretch, who has eaten our bread all his life. O Edmund, Edmund!”
“It is a most unusual, as well as an unhappy chance,” returned Edmund. “Hitherto it has generally happened that servants have given remarkable proofs of fidelity. Of course this fellow can have no attachment for me; but I should have thought my mother’s gentle kindness must have won the love of all who came near her, both for herself and all belonging to her.”
A recollection crossed Walter: he stood for a few moments in silence, then suddenly exclaimed, “The surly rascal! I verily believe it was all spite at me, for—” “For—” repeated Edmund.
“For rating him as he deserved,” answered Walter. “I wish I had given it to him more soundly, traitor as he is. No, no, after all,” added he, hesitating, “perhaps if I had been civiller—” “I should guess you to be a little too prompt of tongue,” said Edmund, smiling.
“It is what my mother is always blaming me for,” said Walter; “but really, now, Edmund, doesn’t it savour of the crop-ear to be picking one’s words to every rogue in one’s way?”
“Nay, Walter, you should not ask me that question, just coming from France. There we hold that the best token, in our poverty, that we are cavaliers and gentlemen, is to be courteous to all, high and low. You should see our young King’s frank bright courtesy; and as to the little King Louis, he is the very pink of civility to every old _poissarde_ in the streets.”
Walter coloured a little, and looked confused; then repeated, as if consoling himself, “He is a sullen, spiteful, good-for-nothing rogue, whom hanging is too good for.”
“Don’t let us spend our whole night in abusing him,” said Edmund; “I want to make the most of you, Walter, for this our last sight of each other.”
“O, Edmund! you don’t mean—they shall not—you shall escape. Oh! is there no way out of this room?” cried Walter, running round it like one distracted, and bouncing against the wainscot, as if he would shake it down.
“Hush! this is of no use, Walter,” said his brother. “The window is, I see, too high from the ground, and there is no escape.”
Walter stood regarding him with blank dismay.
“For one thing I am thankful to them,” continued Edmund; “I thought they might have shot me down before my mother’s door, and so filled the place with horror for her ever after. Now they have given me time for preparation, and she will grow accustomed to the thought of losing me.”
“Then you think there is no hope? O Edmund!”
“I see none. Sydney is unlikely to spare a friend of Prince Rupert’s.”
Walter squeezed his hands fast together. “And how—how can you? Don’t think me cowardly, Edmund, for that I will never be; never—” “Never, I am sure,” repeated Edmund.
“But when that base Puritan threatened me just now—perhaps it was foolish to believe him—I could answer him freely enough; but when I thought of dying, then—” “You have not stood face to face with death so often as I have, Walter,” said Edmund; “nor have you led so wandering and weary a life.”
“I thought I could lead any sort of life rather than die,” said Walter.
“Yes, our flesh will shrink and tremble at the thought of the Judge we must meet,” said Edmund; “but He is a gracious Judge, and He knows that it is rather than turn from our duty that we are exposed to death. We may have a good hope, sinners as we are in His sight, that He will grant us His mercy, and be with us when the time comes. But it is late, Walter, we ought to rest, to fit ourselves for what may come to-morrow.”
Edmund knelt in prayer, his young brother feeling meantime both sorrowful and humiliated, loving Edmund and admiring him heartily, following what he had said, grieving and rebelling at the fate prepared for him, and at the same time sensible of shame at having so far fallen short of all he had hoped to feel and to prove himself in the time of trial. He had been of very little use to Edmund; his rash interference had only done harm, and added to his mother’s distress; he had been nothing but a boy throughout, and instead of being a brave champion, he had been in such an agony of terror at an empty threat, that if the rebel captain had been in the room, he might almost, at one moment, have betrayed his brother. Poor Walter! how he felt what it was never to have learnt self-control!
The brothers arranged themselves for the night without undressing, both occupying Walter’s bed. They were both too anxious and excited to sleep, and Walter sat up after a time, listening more calmly to Edmund, who was giving him last messages for Prince Rupert and his other friends, should Walter ever meet them, and putting much in his charge, as now likely to become heir of Woodley Hall and Forest Lea, warning him earnestly to protect his mother and sisters, and be loyal to his King, avoiding all compromise with the enemies of the Church.
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FOREST LEA that night was a house of sorrow: the mother and two sons were prisoners in their separate rooms, and the anxieties for the future were dreadful. Rose longed to see and help her mother, dreading the effect of such misery, to be borne in loneliness, by the weak frame, shattered by so many previous sufferings. How was she to undergo all that might yet be in store for her—imprisonment, ill-treatment, above all, the loss of her eldest son? For there was little hope for Edmund. As a friend and follower of Prince Rupert, he was a marked man; and besides, Algernon Sydney, the commander of the nearest body of forces, was known to be a good deal under the influence of the present owner of Woodley, who was likely to be glad to see the rightful heir removed from his path.
Rose perceived all this, and her heart failed her, but she had no time to pause on the thought. The children must be soothed and put to bed, and a hard matter it was to comfort poor little Lucy, perhaps the most of all to be pitied. She relieved herself by pouring out the whole confession to Rose, crying bitterly, while Eleanor hurried on distressing questions whether they would take mamma away, and what they would do to Edmund. Now it came back to Lucy, “O if I had but minded what mamma said about keeping my tongue in order; but now it is too late!”
Rose, after doing her best to comfort them, and listening as near to her mother’s door as she dared, to hear if she were weeping, went to her own room. It adjoined Walter’s, though the doors did not open into the same passage; and she shut that which closed in the long gallery, where her room and that of her sisters were, so that the Roundhead sentry might not be able to look down it.
As soon as she was in her own room, she threw herself on her knees, and prayed fervently for help and support in their dire distress. In the stillness, as she knelt, she heard an interchange of voices, which she knew must be those of her brothers in the next room. She went nearer to that side, and heard them more distinctly. She was even able to distinguish when Edmund spoke, and when Walter broke forth in impatient exclamations. A sudden thought struck her. She might be able to join in the conversation. There had once been a door between the two rooms, but it had long since been stopped up, and the recess of the doorway was occupied by a great oaken cupboard, in which were preserved all the old stores of rich farthingales of brocade, and velvet mantles, which had been heirlooms from one Dame of Mowbray to another, till poverty had caused them to be cut up and adapted into garments for the little Woodleys.
Rose looked anxiously at the carved doors of the old wardrobe. Had she the key? She felt in her pouch. Yes, she had not given it back to her mother since taking out the sheets for Mr. Enderby. She unlocked the folding doors, and, pushing aside some of the piles of old garments, saw a narrow line of light between the boards, and heard the tones almost as clearly as if she was in the same room.
Eager to tell Edmund how near she was, she stretched herself out, almost crept between the shelves, leant her head against the board on the opposite side, and was about to speak, when she found that it yielded in some degree to her touch. A gleam of hope darted across her, she drew back, fetched her light, tried with her hand, and found that the back of the cupboard was in fact a door, secured on her side by a wooden bolt, which there was no difficulty in undoing. Another push, and the door yielded below, but only so as to show that there must be another fastening above. Rose clambered up the shelves, and sought. Here it was! It was one of the secret communications that were by no means uncommon in old halls in those times of insecurity. Edmund might yet be saved! Trembling with the excess of her delight in her new-found hope, she forced out the second bolt, and pushed again. The door gave way, the light widened upon her, and she saw into the room! Edmund was lying on the bed, Walter sitting at his feet.
Both started as what had seemed to be part of the wainscoted wall opened, but Edmund prevented Walter’s exclamation by a sign to be silent, and the next moment Rose’s face was seen squeezing between the shelves.
“Edmund! Can you get through here?” she exclaimed in a low eager whisper.
Edmund was immediately by her side, kissing the flushed anxious forehead: “My gallant Rose!” he said.
“Oh, thank heaven! thank heaven! now you may be safe!” continued Rose, still in the same whisper. “I never knew this was a door till this moment. Heaven sent the discovery on purpose for your safety! Hush, Walter! Oh remember the soldier outside!” as Walter was about to break out into tumultuous tokens of gladness. “But can you get through, Edmund? Or perhaps we might move out some of the shelves.”
“That is easily done,” said Edmund; “but I know not. Even if I should escape, it would be only to fall into the hands of some fresh troop of enemies, and I cannot go and leave my mother to their mercy.”
“You could do nothing to save her,” said Rose, “and all that they may do to her would scarcely hurt her if she thought you were safe. O Edmund! think of her joy in finding you were escaped! the misery of her anxiety now!”
“Yet to leave her thus! You had not told me half the change in her! I know not how to go!” said Edmund.
“You must, you must!” said Rose and Walter, both at once. And Rose added, “Your death would kill her, I do believe!”
“Well, then; but I do not see my way even when I have squeezed between your shelves, my little sister. Every port is beset, and our hiding places here can no longer serve me.”
“Listen,” said Rose, “this is what my mother and I had planned before. The old clergyman of this parish, Dr. Bathurst, lives in a little house at Bosham, with his daughter, and maintains himself by teaching the wealthier boys of the town. Now, if you could ride to him to-night, he would be most glad to serve you, both as a cavalier, and for my mother’s sake. He would find some place of concealment, and watch for the time when you may attempt to cross the Channel.”
Edmund considered, and made her repeat her explanation. “Yes, that might answer,” he said at length; “I take you for my general, sweet Rose. But how am I to find your good doctor?”
“I think,” said Rose, after considering a little while, “that I had better go with you. I could ride behind you on your horse, if the rebels have not found him, and I know the town, and Dr. Bathurst’s lodging. I only cannot think what is to be done about Walter.”
“Never mind me,” said Walter, “they cannot hurt me.”
“Not if you will be prudent, and not provoke them,” said Edmund.
“Oh, I know!” cried Rose; “wear my gown and hood! these men have only seen us by candle-light, and will never find you out if you will only be careful.”
“I wear girl’s trumpery!” exclaimed Walter, in such indignation that Edmund smiled, saying, “If Rose’s wit went with her gown, you might be glad of it.”
“She is a good girl enough,” said Walter, “but as to my putting on her petticoat trash, that’s all nonsense.”
“Hear me this once, dear Walter,” pleaded Rose. “If there is a pursuit, and they fancy you and Edmund are gone together, it will quite mislead them to hear only of a groom riding before a young lady.”
“There is something in that,” said Walter, “but a pretty sort of lady I shall make!”
“Then you consent? Thank you, dear Walter. Now, will you help me into your room, and I’ll put two rolls of clothes to bed, that the captain may find his prisoners fast asleep to-morrow morning.”
Walter could hardly help laughing aloud with delight at the notion of the disappointment of the rebels. The next thing was to consider of Edmund’s equipment; Rose turned over her ancient hoards in vain, everything that was not too remarkable had been used for the needs of the family, and he must go in his present blood-stained buff coat, hoping to enter Bosham too early in the morning for gossips to be astir. Then she dressed Walter in her own clothes, not without his making many faces of disgust, especially when she fastened his long curled love-locks in a knot behind, tried to train little curls over the sides of his face, and drew her black silk hood forward so as to shade it. They were nearly of the same height and complexion, and Edmund pronounced that Walter made a very pretty girl, so like Rose that he should hardly have known them apart, which seemed to vex the boy more than all.
There had been a sort of merriment while this was doing, but when it was over, and the moment came when the brother and sister must set off, there was lingering, sorrow, and reluctance. Edmund felt severely the leaving his mother in the midst of peril, brought upon her for his sake, and his one brief sight of his home had made him cling the closer to it, and stirred up in double force the affections for mother, brothers, and sisters, which, though never extinct, had been comparatively dormant while he was engaged in stirring scenes abroad. Now that he had once more seen the gentle loving countenance of his mother, and felt her tender, tearful caress, known that noble-minded Rose, and had a glimpse of those pretty little sisters, there was such a yearning for them through his whole being, that it seemed to him as if he might as well die as continue to be cast up and down the world far from them.
Rose felt as if she was abandoning her mother by going from home at such a time, when perhaps she should find on her return that she had been carried away to prison. She could not bear to think of being missed on such a morning that was likely to ensue, but she well knew that the greatest good she could do would be to effect the rescue of her brother, and she could not hesitate a moment. She crowded charge after charge upon Walter, with many a message for her mother, promise to return as soon as possible, and entreaty for pardon for leaving her in such a strait; and Edmund added numerous like parting greetings, with counsel and entreaties that she would ask for Colonel Enderby’s interference, which might probably avail to save her from further imprisonment and sequestration.
“Good-bye, Walter. In three or four years, if matters are not righted before that, perhaps, if you can come to me, I may find employment for you in Prince Rupert’s fleet, or the Duke of York’s troop.”
“O Edmund, thanks! that would be—” Walter had not time to finish, for Rose kissed him, left her love and duty to her mother with him, bade him remember he was a lady, and then holding Edmund by the hand, both with their shoes off, stole softly down the stairs in the dark.
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AFTER pacing up and down Rose’s room till he was tired, Walter sat down to rest, for Rose had especially forbidden him to lie down, lest he should derange his hair. He grew very sleepy, and at last, with his arms crossed on the table, and his forehead resting on them, fell sound asleep, and did not awaken till it was broad daylight, and calls of “Rose! Rose!” were heard outside the locked door.
He was just going to call out that Rose was not here, when he luckily recollected that he was Rose, pulled his hood forward, and opened the door.
He was instantly surrounded by the three children, who, poor little things, feeling extremely forlorn and desolate without their mother, all gathered round him, Lucy and Eleanor seizing each a hand, and Charles clinging to the skirts of his dress. He by no means understood this; and Rose was so used to it, as to have forgotten he would not like it. “How you crowd?” he exclaimed.
“Mistress Rose,” began Deborah, coming half way up stairs—Lucy let go his hand, but Charles instantly grasped it, and he felt as if he could not move. “Don’t be troublesome, children,” said he, trying to shake them off; “can’t you come near one without pulling off one’s hands?”
“Mistress!” continued Deborah; but as he forgot he was addressed, and did not immediately attend, she exclaimed, “Oh, she won’t even look at me! I thought she had forgiven me.”
“Forgiven you!” said he, starting. “Stuff and nonsense; what’s all this about? You were a fool, that’s all.”
Deborah stared at this most unwonted address on the part of her young lady; and Lucy, a sudden light breaking on her, smiled at Eleanor, and held up her finger. Deborah proceeded with her inquiry: “Mistress Rose, shall I take some breakfast to my lady, and the young gentlemen, poor souls?”
“Yes, of course,” he answered. “No, wait a bit. Only to my mother, I mean, just at present.”
“And the soldiers,” continued Deborah—“they’re roaring for breakfast; what shall I give them?”
“A halter,” he had almost said, but he caught himself up in time, and answered, “What you can—bread, beef, beer—” “Bread! beef! beer!” almost shrieked Deborah, “when she knows the colonel man had the last of our beer; beef we have not seen for two Christmases, and bread, there’s barely enough for my lady and the children, till we bake.”
“Well, whatever there is, then,” said Walter, anxious to get rid of her.
“I could fry some bacon,” pursued Deborah, “only I don’t know whether to cut the new flitch so soon; and there be some cabbages in the garden. Should I fry or boil them, Mistress Rose? The bottom is out of the frying-pan, and the tinker is not come this way.”
The tinker was too much for poor Walter’s patience, and flinging away from her, he exclaimed, “Mercy on me, woman, you’ll plague the life out of me!”
Poor Deborah stood aghast. “Mistress Rose! what is it? you look wildly, I declare, and your hood is all I don’t know how. Shall I set it right?”
“Mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine!” cried Walter.
“Alack! alack!” lamented Deborah, as she hastily retreated down stairs, Charlie running after her. “Mistress Rose is gone clean demented with trouble, and that is the worst that has befallen this poor house yet.”
“There!” said Lucy, as soon as she was gone; “I have held my tongue this time. O Walter, you don’t do it a bit like Rose!”
“Where is Rose!” said Eleanor. “How did you get out?”
“Well!” said Walter, “it is hard that, whatever we do, women and babies are mixed up with it. I must trust you since you have found me out, but mind, Lucy, not one word or look that can lead anyone to guess what I am telling you. Edmund is safe out of this house, Rose is gone with him—’tis safest not to say where.”
“But is not she coming back?” asked Eleanor.
“Oh yes, very soon—to-day, or to-morrow perhaps. So I am Rose till she comes back, and little did I guess what I was undertaking! I never was properly thankful till now that I was not born a woman!”
“Oh don’t stride along so, or they will find you out,” exclaimed Eleanor.
“And don’t mince and amble, that is worse!” added Lucy. “Oh you will make me laugh in spite of everything.”
“Pshaw! I shall shut myself into my—her room, and see nobody!” said Walter; “you must keep Charlie off, Lucy, and don’t let Deb drive me distracted. I dare say, if necessary, I can fool it enough for the rebels, who never spoke to a gentlewoman in their lives.”
“But only tell me, how did you get out?” said Lucy.
“Little Miss Curiosity must rest without knowing,” said Walter, shutting the door in her face.
“Now, don’t be curious, dear Lucy,” said Eleanor, taking her hand. “We shall know in time.”
“I will not, I am not,” said Lucy, magnanimously. “We will not say one single word, Eleanor, and I will not look as if I knew anything. Come down, and we will see if we can do any of Rose’s work, for we must be very useful, you know; I wish I might tell poor Deb that Edmund is safe.”
Walter was wise in secluding himself in his disguise. He remained undisturbed for some time, while Deborah’s unassisted genius was exerted to provide the rebels with breakfast. The first interruption was from Eleanor, who knocked at the door, beginning to call “Walter,” and then hastily turning it into “Rose!” He opened, and she said, with tears in her eyes, “O Walter, Walter, the wicked men are really going to take dear mother away to prison. She is come down with her cloak and hood on, and is asking for you—Rose I mean—to wish good-bye. Will you come?”
“Yes,” said Walter; “and Edmund—” “They were just sending up to call him,” said Eleanor; “they will find it out in—” Eleanor’s speech was cut short by a tremendous uproar in the next room. “Ha! How? Where are they? How now? Escaped!” with many confused exclamations, and much trampling of heavy boots. Eleanor stood frightened, Walter clapped his hands, cut a very unfeminine caper, clenched his fist, and shook it at the wall, and exclaimed in an exulting whisper, “Ha! ha! my fine fellows! You may look long enough for him!” then ran downstairs at full speed, and entered the hall. His mother, dressed for a journey, stood by the table; a glance of hope and joy lighting on her pale features, but her swollen eyelids telling of a night of tears and sleeplessness. Lucy and Charles were by her side, the front door open, and the horses were being led up and down before it. Walter and Eleanor hurried up to her, but before they had time to speak, the rebel captain dashed into the room, exclaiming, “Thou treacherous woman, thou shalt abye this! Here! mount, pursue, the nearest road to the coast. Smite them rather than let them escape. The malignant nursling of the blood-thirsty Palatine at large again! Follow, and overtake, I say!”
“Which way, sir?” demanded the corporal.
“The nearest to the coast. Two ride to Chichester, two to Gosport. Or here! Where is that maiden, young in years, but old in wiles? Ah, there! come hither, maiden. Wilt thou purchase grace for thy mother by telling which way the prisoners are fled? I know thy wiles, and will visit them on thee and on thy father’s house, unless thou dost somewhat to merit forgiveness.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Walter, swelling with passion.
“Do not feign, maiden. Thy heart is rejoicing that the enemies of the righteous are escaped.”
“You are not wrong there, sir,” said Walter.
“I tell thee,” said the captain, sternly, “thy joy shall be turned to mourning. Thou shalt see thy mother thrown into a dungeon, and thou and thy sisters shall beg your bread, unless—” Walter could not endure these empty threats, and exclaimed, “You know you have no power to do this. Is this what you call manliness to use such threats to a poor girl in your power? Out upon you!”
“Ha!” said the rebel, considerably surprised at the young lady’s manner of replying. “Is it thus the malignants breed up their daughters, in insolence as well as deceit?”
The last word made Walter entirely forget his assumed character, and striking at the captain with all his force, he exclaimed, “Take that, for giving the lie to a gentleman.”
“How now?” cried the rebel, seizing his arm. Walter struggled, the hood fell back. “’Tis the boy! Ha! deceived again! Here! search the house instantly, every corner. I will not be balked a second time.”
He rushed out of the room, while Walter, rending off the hood, threw himself into his mother’s arms, exclaiming, “O mother dear, I bore it as long as I could.”
“My dear rash boy!” said she. “But is he safe? No, do not say where. Thanks, thanks to heaven. Now I am ready for anything!” and so indeed her face proved.
“All owing to Rose, mother; she will soon be back again, she—but I’ll say no more, for fear. He left love—duty—Rose left all sorts of greetings, that I will tell you by and by. Ha! do you hear them lumbering about the house? They fancy he is hid there! Yes, you are welcome—” “Hush! hush, Walter! the longer they look the more time he will gain,” whispered his mother. “Oh this is joy indeed!”
“Mamma, I found out Walter, and said not one word,” interposed Lucy; but there was no more opportunity for converse permitted, for the captain returned, and ordered the whole party into the custody of a soldier, who was not to lose sight of any of them till the search was completed.
After putting the whole house in disorder, and seeking in vain through the grounds, the captain himself, and one of his men, went off to scour the neighbouring country, and examine every village on the coast.
Lady Woodley and her three younger children were in the meantime locked into her room, while the soldier left in charge was ordered not to let Walter for a moment out of his sight; and both she and Walter were warned that they were to be carried the next morning to Chichester, to answer for having aided and abetted the escape of the notorious traitor, Edmund Woodley.
It was plain that he really meant it, but hope for Edmund made Lady Woodley cheerful about all she might have to undergo; and even trust that the poor little ones she was obliged to leave behind, might be safe with Rose and Deborah. Her great fear was lest the rebels should search the villages before Edmund had time to escape.
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CAUTIOUSLY stealing down stairs, Rose first, to spy where the rebels might be, the brother and sister reached the kitchen, where Rose provided Edmund with a grey cloak, once belonging to a former serving-man, and after a short search in an old press, brought out various equipments, saddle, belt, and skirt, with which her mother had once been wont to ride pillion-fashion. These they carried to the outhouse where Edmund’s horse had been hidden; and when all was set in order by the light of the lantern, Rose thought that her brother looked more like a groom and less like a cavalier than she had once dared to hope. They mounted, and on they rode, across the downs, through narrow lanes, past farm houses, dreading that each yelping dog might rouse his master to report which way they were gone. It was not till day had dawned, and the eastern sky was red with the approaching sun, that they came down the narrow lane that led to the little town of Bosham, a low flat place, sloping very gradually to the water. Here Rose left her brother, advising him to keep close under the hedge, while she softly opened a little gate, and entered a garden, long and narrow, with carefully cultivated flowers and vegetables. At the end was a low cottage; and going up to the door, Rose knocked gently. The door was presently cautiously opened by a girl a few years older, very plainly dressed, as if busy in household work. She started with surprise, then held out her hand, which Rose pressed affectionately, as she said, “Dear Anne, will you tell your father that I should be very glad to speak to him?”
“I will call him,” said Anne; “he is just rising. What is— But I will not delay.”
“Oh no, do not, thank you, I cannot tell you now.” Rose was left by Anne Bathurst standing in a small cleanly-sanded kitchen, with a few wooden chairs neatly ranged, some trenchers and pewter dishes against the wall, and nothing like decoration except a beau-pot, as Anne would have called it, filled with flowers. Here the good doctor and his daughter lived, and tried to eke out a scanty maintenance by teaching a little school.
After what was really a very short interval, but which seemed to Rose a very long one, Dr. Bathurst, a thin, spare, middle-aged man, with a small black velvet cap over his grey hair, came down the creaking rough wooden stairs. “My dear child,” he asked, “in what can I help you? Your mother is well, I trust.”
“Oh yes, sir!” said Rose; and with reliance and hope, as if she had been speaking to a father, she explained their distress and perplexity, then stood in silence while the good doctor, a slow thinker, considered.
“First, to hide him,” he said; “he may not be here, for this—the old parson’s house—will be the very first spot they will search. But we will try. You rode, you say, Mistress Rose; where is your horse?”
“Ah! there is one difficulty,” said Rose, “Edmund is holding him now; but where shall we leave him?”
“Let us come first to see the young gentleman,” said Dr. Bathurst; and they walked together to the lane where Edmund was waiting, the doctor explaining by the way that he placed his chief dependence on Harry Fletcher, a fisherman, thoroughly brave, trustworthy, and loyal, who had at one time been a sailor, and had seen, and been spoken to by King Charles himself. He lived in a little lonely hut about half a mile distant; he was unmarried, and would have been quite alone, but that he had taken a young nephew, whose father had been killed on the Royalist side, to live with him, and to be brought up to his fishing business.
Edmund and Rose both agreed that there could be no better hope of escape than in trusting to this good man; and as no time was to be lost, they parted for the present, Rose returning to the cottage to spend the day with Anne Bathurst, and the clergyman walking with the young cavalier to the place where the fisherman lived. They led the horse with them for some distance, then tied him to a gate, a little out of sight, and went on to the hut, which stood, built of the shingle of the beach, just beyond the highest reach of the tide, with the boat beside it, and the nets spread out to dry.
Before there was time to knock, the door was opened by Harry Fletcher himself, his open sunburnt face showing honesty and good faith in every feature. He put his hand respectfully to his woollen cap, and said, with a sort of smile, as he looked at Edmund, “I see what work you have for me, your reverence.”
“You are right, Harry,” said Dr. Bathurst; “this is one of the gentlemen that fought for his Majesty at Worcester, and if we cannot get him safe out of the country, with heaven’s blessing, he is as good as a dead man.”
“Come in, sir,” said Fletcher, “you had best not be seen. There’s no one here but little Dick, and I’ll answer for him.”
They came in, and Dr. Bathurst explained Edmund’s circumstances. The honest fellow looked a little perplexed, but after a moment said, “Well, I’ll do what in me lies, sir; but ’tis a long way across.”
“I should tell you, my good man,” said Edmund, “that I have nothing to repay you with for all the trouble and danger to which you may be exposing yourself on my behalf. Nothing but my horse, which would only be bringing suspicion on you.”
“As to that, your honour,” replied Harry, “I’d never think of waiting for pay in a matter of life and death. I am glad if I can help off a gentleman that has been on the King’s side.”
So the plan was arranged. Edmund was to be disguised in the fisherman’s clothes, spend the day at his hut, and at night, if the weather served, Fletcher would row him out to sea, assisted by the little boy, in hopes of falling in with a French vessel; or, if not, they must pull across to Havre or Dieppe. The doctor promised to bring Rose at ten o’clock to meet him on the beach and bid him farewell. As to the horse, Fletcher sent the little boy to turn it out on the neighbouring down, and hide the saddle.
All this arranged, Dr. Bathurst returned to his school; and Rose, dressed in Anne’s plainest clothes, rested on her bed as long as her anxiety would allow her, then came down and helped in her household work. It was well that Rose was thus employed, for in the afternoon they had a great fright. Two soldiers came knocking violently at the door, exhibiting an order to search for the escaped prisoner. Rose recognised two of the party who had been at Forest Lea; but happily they had not seen enough of her to know her in the coarse blue stuff petticoat that she now wore. One of them asked who she was, and Anne readily replied, “Oh, a friend who is helping me;” after which they paid her no further attention.
Her anxiety for Edmund was of course at its height during this search, and it was not till the evening that she could gain any intelligence. Edmund’s danger had indeed been great. Harry Fletcher saw the rebels coming in time to prepare. He advised his guest not to remain in the house, as if he wished to avoid observation, but to come out, as if afraid of nothing. His cavalier dress had been carefully destroyed or concealed; he wore the fisherman’s rough clothes, and had even sacrificed his long dark hair, covering his head with one of Harry’s red woollen caps. He was altogether so different in appearance from what he had been yesterday, that he ventured forward, and leant whistling against the side of the boat, while Harry parleyed with the soldiers. Perhaps they suspected Harry a little, for they insisted on searching his hut, and as they were coming out, one of them began to tell him of the penalties that fishermen would incur by favouring the escape of the Royalists. Harry did not lose countenance, but went on hammering at his boat as if he cared not at all, till observing that one of the soldiers was looking hard at Edmund, he called out, “I say, Ned, what’s the use of loitering there, listening to what’s no concern of yours? Fetch the oar out of yon shed. I never lit on such a lazy comrade in my life.”
This seemed to turn away all suspicion, the soldiers left them, and no further mischance occurred. At night, just as the young moon was setting, the boat was brought out, and Harry, with little Dick and a comrade whom he engaged could be trusted, prepared their oars. At the same time, Dr. Bathurst and Rose came silently to meet them along the shingly beach. Rose hardly knew her brother in his fisherman’s garb. The time was short, and their hearts were too full for many words, as that little party stood together in the light of the crescent moon, the sea sounding with a low constant ripple, spread out in the grey hazy blue distance, and here and there the crests of the nearer waves swelling up and catching the moonlight.
Edmund and his sister held their hands tightly clasped, loving each other, if possible, better than ever. He now and then repeated some loving greeting which she was to bear home; and she tried to restrain her tears, at the separation she was forced to rejoice in, a parting which gave no augury of meeting again, the renewal of an exile from which there was no present hope of return. Harry looked at Dr. Bathurst to intimate it was time to be gone. The clergyman came close to the brother and sister, and instead of speaking his own words, used these:— “Turn our captivity, O LORD, as the rivers in the south.”
“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
“He that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him.”
“Amen,” answered Edmund and Rose; and they loosened their hold of each other with hearts less sore. Then Edmund bared his head, and knelt down, and the good clergyman called down a blessing from heaven on him; Harry, the faithful man who was going to risk himself for him, did the same, and received the same blessing. There were no more words, the boat pushed off, and the splash of the oars resounded regularly.
Rose’s tears came thick, fast, blinding, and she sat down on a block of wood and wept long and bitterly; then she rose up, and in answer to Dr. Bathurst’s cheering words, she said, “Yes, I do thank GOD with all my heart!”
That night Rose slept at Dr. Bathurst’s, and early in the morning was rejoiced by the tidings which Harry Fletcher sent little Dick to carry to the cottage. The voyage had been prosperous, they had fallen in with a French vessel, and Mr. Edmund Woodley had been safely received on board.
She was very anxious to return home; and as it was Saturday, and therefore a holiday at the school, Dr. Bathurst undertook to go with her and spend the Sunday at Forest Lea. One of the farmers of Bosham helped them some little way with his harvest cart, but the rest of the journey had to be performed on foot. It was not till noon that they came out upon the high road between Chichester and Forest Lea; and they had not been upon it more than ten minutes, before the sound of horses’ tread was heard, as if coming from Chichester. Looking round, they saw a gentleman riding fast, followed by a soldier also on horseback. There was something in his air that Rose recognised, and as he came nearer she perceived it was Sylvester Enderby. He was much amazed, when, at the same moment, he perceived it was Mistress Rose Woodley, and stopping his horse, and taking off his hat, with great respect both towards her and the clergyman, he hoped all the family were well in health.
“Yes, yes, I believe so, thank you,” replied Rose, looking anxiously at him.
“I am on my way to Forest Lea,” he said. “I bring the order my father hoped to obtain from General Cromwell.”
“The Protection! Oh, thanks! ten thousand thanks!” cried Rose. “Oh! it may save—But hasten on, pray hasten on, sir. The soldiers are already at home; I feared she might be already a prisoner at Chichester. Pray go on and restrain them by your authority. Don’t ask me to explain—you will understand all when you are there.”
She prevailed on him to go on, while she, with Dr. Bathurst, more slowly proceeded up the chalky road which led to the summit of the green hill or down, covered with short grass, which commanded a view of all the country round, and whence they would turn off upon the down leading to Forest Lea. Just as they came to the top, Rose cast an anxious glance in the direction of her home, and gave a little cry. Sylvester Enderby and his attendant could be seen speeding down the green slope of the hill; but at some distance further on, was a little troop of horsemen, coming from the direction of Forest Lea, the sun now and then flashing on a steel cap or on the point of a pike. Fast rode on Sylvester, nearer and nearer came the troop; Rose almost fancied she could discern on one of the horses something muffled in black that could be no other than her mother. How she longed for wings to fly to meet her and cheer her heart with the assurance of Edmund’s safety! How she longed to be on Sylvester’s horse, as she saw the distance between him and the party fast diminishing! At length he was close to it, he had mingled with it; and at the same time Dr. Bathurst and Rose had to mount a slightly rising ground, which for a time entirely obscured their view. When at length they had reached the summit of this eminence, the party were standing still, as if in parley; there was presently a movement, a parting, Rose clasped her hands in earnestness. The main body continued their course to Chichester, a few remained stationary. How many? One, two, three—yes, four, or was it five? and among them the black figure she had watched so anxiously! “She is safe, she is safe!” cried Rose. “Oh, GOD has been so very good to us, I wish I could thank Him enough!”
Leaving the smoother slope to avoid encountering the baffled rebels, Dr. Bathurst and Rose descended the steep, the good man exerting himself that her eagerness might not be disappointed. Down they went, sliding on the slippery green banks, helping themselves with the doctor’s trusty staff, taking a short run at the lowest and steepest part of each, creeping down the rude steps, or rather foot-holes, cut out by the shepherd-boys in the more perpendicular descents, and fairly sliding or running down the shorter ones. They saw their friends waiting for them; and a lesser figure than the rest hastened towards them, scaling the steep slopes with a good will, precipitancy, and wild hurrahs of exultation, that would not let them doubt it was Walter, before they could see his form distinctly, or hear his words. Rose ran headlong down the last green slope, and was saved from falling by fairly rushing into his arms.
“Is he safe? I need not ask!” exclaimed Walter.
“Safe! in a French vessel. And mother?”
“Safe! well! happy! You saw, you heard! Hurrah! The crop-ears are sent to the right about; the captain has done mother and me the favour to forgive us, as a Christian, all that has passed, he says. We are all going home again as fast as we can, young Enderby and all, to chase out the two rogues that are quartered on us to afflict poor Deb and the little ones.”
By this time Dr. Bathurst had descended, more cautiously, and Walter went to greet him, and repeat his news. Together they proceeded to meet the rest; and who can tell the tearful happiness when Rose and her mother were once more pressed in each other’s arms!
“My noble girl! under Providence you have saved him!” whispered Lady Woodley.
The next evening, in secrecy, with the shutters shut, and the light screened, the true pastor of Forest Lea gathered the faithful ones of his flock for a service in the old hall. There knelt many a humble, loyal, trustful peasant; there was the widowed Dame Ewins, trying to be comforted, as they told her she ought; there was the lady herself, at once sorrowful and yet earnestly thankful; there was Sylvester Enderby, hearing and following the prayers he had been used to in his early childhood, with a growing feeling that here lay the right and the truth; there was Deborah, weeping, grieving over her own fault, and almost heart-broken at the failure of him on whom she had set her warm affections, yet perhaps in a way made wiser, and taught to trust no longer to a broken reed, but to look for better things; there were Walter and Lucy, both humbled and subdued, repenting in earnest of the misbehaviour each of them had been guilty of. Walter did not show his contrition much in manner, but it was real, and he proved it by many a struggle with his self-willed overbearing temper. It was a real resolution that he took now, and in a spirit of humility, which made him glad to pray that what was past might be forgiven, and that he might be helped for the future. That was the first time Walter had ever kept up his attention through the whole service, but it all came home to him now.
Each of that little congregation had their own sorrow of heart, their own prayer and thanksgiving, to pour out in secret; but all could join in one thank-offering for the safety of the heir of that house; all joined in one prayer for the rescue of their hunted King, and for the restoration of their oppressed and afflicted Church.
* * * * * Nine years had passed away, and Forest Lea still stood among the stumps of its cut-down trees; but one fair long day in early June there was much that was changed in its aspect. The park was carefully mown and swept; the shrubs were trained back; the broken windows were repaired; and within the hall the appearance of everything was still more strikingly cheerful, as the setting sun looked smilingly in at the western window. Green boughs filled the hearth, and were suspended round the walls; fresh branches of young oak leaves, tasselled with the pale green catkins; the helmets and gauntlets hanging on the wall were each adorned with a spray, and polished to the brightest; the chairs and benches were ranged round the long table, covered with a spotless cloth, and bearing in the middle a large bowl filled with oak boughs, roses, lilac, honey-suckle, and all the pride of the garden.
At the head of the table sat, less pale, and her face beaming with deep, quiet, heartfelt joy, Lady Woodley herself; and near her were Dr. Bathurst and his happy daughter, who in a few days more were to resume their abode in his own parsonage. Opposite to her was a dark soldierly sun-burnt man, on whose countenance toil, weather, and privation had set their traces, but whose every tone and smile told of the ecstasy of being once more at home.
Merry faces were at each side of the table; Walter, grown up into a tall noble-looking youth of two-and-twenty, particularly courteous and gracious in demeanour, and most affectionate to his mother; Charles, a gentle sedate boy of fifteen, so much given to books and gravity, that his sisters called him their little scholar; Rose, with the same sweet thoughtful face, active step, and helpful hand, that she had always possessed, but very pale, and more pensive and grave than became a time of rejoicing, as if the cares and toils of her youth had taken away her light heart, and had given her a soft subdued melancholy that was always the same. She was cheerful when others were cast down and overwhelmed; but when they were gay, she, though not sorrowful, seemed almost grave, in spite of her sweet smiles and ready sympathy. Yet Rose was very happy, no less happy than Eleanor, with her fair, lovely, laughing face, or— “But where is Lucy?” Edmund asked, as he saw her chair vacant.
“Lucy?” said Rose; “she will come in a moment. She is going to bring in the dish you especially ordered, and which Deborah wonders at.”
“Good, faithful Deborah!” said Edmund. “Did she never find a second love?”
“Oh no, never,” said Eleanor. “She says she has seen enough of men in her time.”
“She is grown sharper than ever,” said Walter, “now she is Mistress Housekeeper Deborah; I shall pity the poor maidens under her.”
“She will always be kind in the main,” rejoined Rose.
“And did you ever hear what became of that precious sweetheart of hers?” asked Edmund.
“Hanged for sheep stealing,” replied Walter, “according to the report of Sylvester Enderby. But hush, for enter—” There entered Lucy, smiling and blushing, her dark hair decorated with the spray of oak, and her hands supporting a great pewter dish, in which stood a noble pie, of pale-brown, well-baked crust, garnished with many a pair of little claws, showing what were the contents. She set it down in the middle of the table, just opposite to Walter. The grace was said, the supper began, and great was the merriment when Walter, raising a whole pigeon on his fork, begged to know if Rose had appetite enough for it, and if she still possessed the spirit of a wolf. “And,” said he, as they finished, “now Rose will never gainsay me more when I sing— “For forty years our Royal throne Has been his father’s and his own, Nor is there anyone but he With right can there a sharer be. For who better may The right sceptre sway, Than he whose right it is to reign? Then look for no peace, For the war will never cease Till the King enjoys his own again.
“Then far upon the distant hill My hope has cast her anchor still, Until I saw the peaceful dove Bring home the branch I dearly love. And there did I wait Till the waters abate That did surround my swimming brain; For rejoice could never I Till I heard the joyful cry That the King enjoys his own again!”
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{
"id": "2606"
}
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1
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WHAT I CONSIDER TO HAVE BEEN THE BEGINNING OF MY YOUTH
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I have said that my friendship with Dimitri opened up for me a new view of my life and of its aim and relations. The essence of that view lay in the conviction that the destiny of man is to strive for moral improvement, and that such improvement is at once easy, possible, and lasting. Hitherto, however, I had found pleasure only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a moral, active future, while all the time my life had been continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking course, and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend Dimitri (“my own marvellous Mitia,” as I used to call him to myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another still pleased my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched. Nevertheless there came a moment when those thoughts swept into my head with a sudden freshness and force of moral revelation which left me aghast at the amount of time which I had been wasting, and made me feel as though I must at once--that very second--apply those thoughts to life, with the firm intention of never again changing them.
It is from that moment that I date the beginning of my youth.
I was then nearly sixteen. Tutors still attended to give me lessons, St. Jerome still acted as general supervisor of my education, and, willy-nilly, I was being prepared for the University. In addition to my studies, my occupations included certain vague dreamings and ponderings, a number of gymnastic exercises to make myself the finest athlete in the world, a good deal of aimless, thoughtless wandering through the rooms of the house (but more especially along the maidservants’ corridor), and much looking at myself in the mirror. From the latter, however, I always turned away with a vague feeling of depression, almost of repulsion. Not only did I feel sure that my exterior was ugly, but I could derive no comfort from any of the usual consolations under such circumstances. I could not say, for instance, that I had at least an expressive, clever, or refined face, for there was nothing whatever expressive about it. Its features were of the most humdrum, dull, and unbecoming type, with small grey eyes which seemed to me, whenever I regarded them in the mirror, to be stupid rather than clever. Of manly bearing I possessed even less, since, although I was not exactly small of stature, and had, moreover, plenty of strength for my years, every feature in my face was of the meek, sleepy-looking, indefinite type. Even refinement was lacking in it, since, on the contrary, it precisely resembled that of a simple-looking moujik, while I also had the same big hands and feet as he. At the time, all this seemed to me very shameful.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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2
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SPRINGTIME
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Easter of the year when I entered the University fell late in April, so that the examinations were fixed for St. Thomas’s Week, [Easter week.] and I had to spend Good Friday in fasting and finally getting myself ready for the ordeal.
Following upon wet snow (the kind of stuff which Karl Ivanitch used to describe as “a child following, its father”), the weather had for three days been bright and mild and still. Not a clot of snow was now to be seen in the streets, and the dirty slush had given place to wet, shining pavements and coursing rivulets. The last icicles on the roofs were fast melting in the sunshine, buds were swelling on the trees in the little garden, the path leading across the courtyard to the stables was soft instead of being a frozen ridge of mud, and mossy grass was showing green between the stones around the entrance-steps. It was just that particular time in spring when the season exercises the strongest influence upon the human soul--when clear sunlight illuminates everything, yet sheds no warmth, when rivulets run trickling under one’s feet, when the air is charged with an odorous freshness, and when the bright blue sky is streaked with long, transparent clouds.
For some reason or another the influence of this early stage in the birth of spring always seems to me more perceptible and more impressive in a great town than in the country. One sees less, but one feels more. I was standing near the window--through the double frames of which the morning sun was throwing its mote-flecked beams upon the floor of what seemed to me my intolerably wearisome schoolroom--and working out a long algebraical equation on the blackboard. In one hand I was holding a ragged, long-suffering “Algebra” and in the other a small piece of chalk which had already besmeared my hands, my face, and the elbows of my jacket. Nicola, clad in an apron, and with his sleeves rolled up, was picking out the putty from the window-frames with a pair of nippers, and unfastening the screws. The window looked out upon the little garden. At length his occupation and the noise which he was making over it arrested my attention. At the moment I was in a very cross, dissatisfied frame of mind, for nothing seemed to be going right with me. I had made a mistake at the very beginning of my algebra, and so should have to work it out again; twice I had let the chalk drop. I was conscious that my hands and face were whitened all over; the sponge had rolled away into a corner; and the noise of Nicola’s operations was fast getting on my nerves. I had a feeling as though I wanted to fly into a temper and grumble at some one, so I threw down chalk and “Algebra” alike, and began to pace the room. Then suddenly I remembered that to-day we were to go to confession, and that therefore I must refrain from doing anything wrong. Next, with equal suddenness I relapsed into an extraordinarily goodhumoured frame of mind, and walked across to Nicola.
“Let me help you, Nicola,” I said, trying to speak as pleasantly as I possibly could. The idea that I was performing a meritorious action in thus suppressing my ill-temper and offering to help him increased my good-humour all the more.
By this time the putty had been chipped out, and the screws removed, yet, though Nicola pulled with might and main at the cross-piece, the window-frame refused to budge.
“If it comes out as soon as he and I begin to pull at it together,” I thought, “it will be rather a shame, as then I shall have nothing more of the kind to do to-day.”
Suddenly the frame yielded a little at one side, and came out.
“Where shall I put it?” I said.
“Let ME see to it, if you please,” replied Nicola, evidently surprised as well as, seemingly, not over-pleased at my zeal. “We must not leave it here, but carry it away to the lumber-room, where I keep all the frames stored and numbered.”
“Oh, but I can manage it,” I said as I lifted it up. I verily believe that if the lumber-room had been a couple of versts away, and the frame twice as heavy as it was, I should have been the more pleased. I felt as though I wanted to tire myself out in performing this service for Nicola. When I returned to the room the bricks and screws had been replaced on the windowsill, and Nicola was sweeping the debris, as well as a few torpid flies, out of the open window. The fresh, fragrant air was rushing into and filling all the room, while with it came also the dull murmur of the city and the twittering of sparrows in the garden. Everything was in brilliant light, the room looked cheerful, and a gentle spring breeze was stirring Nicola’s hair and the leaves of my “Algebra.” Approaching the window, I sat down upon the sill, turned my eyes downwards towards the garden, and fell into a brown study.
Something new to me, something extraordinarily potent and unfamiliar, had suddenly invaded my soul. The wet ground on which, here and there, a few yellowish stalks and blades of bright-green grass were to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous air and radiant sunlight--all spoke to me, clearly and unmistakably, of something new and beautiful, of something which, though I cannot repeat it here as it was then expressed to me, I will try to reproduce so far as I understood it. Everything spoke to me of beauty, happiness, and virtue--as three things which were both easy and possible for me--and said that no one of them could exist without the other two, since beauty, happiness, and virtue were one. “How did I never come to understand that before?” I cried to myself. “How did I ever manage to be so wicked? Oh, but how good, how happy, I could be--nay, I WILL be--in the future! At once, at once--yes, this very minute--I will become another being, and begin to live differently!” For all that, I continued sitting on the window-sill, continued merely dreaming, and doing nothing. Have you ever, on a summer’s day, gone to bed in dull, rainy weather, and, waking just at sunset, opened your eyes and seen through the square space of the window--the space where the linen blind is blowing up and down, and beating its rod upon the window-sill--the rain-soaked, shadowy, purple vista of an avenue of lime-trees, with a damp garden path lit up by the clear, slanting beams of the sun, and then suddenly heard the joyous sounds of bird life in the garden, and seen insects flying to and fro at the open window, and glittering in the sunlight, and smelt the fragrance of the rain-washed air, and thought to yourself, “Am I not ashamed to be lying in bed on such an evening as this?” and, leaping joyously to your feet, gone out into the garden and revelled in all that welter of life? If you have, then you can imagine for yourself the overpowering sensation which was then possessing me.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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3
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DREAMS
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“To-day I will make my confession and purge myself of every sin,” I thought to myself. “Nor will I ever commit another one.” At this point I recalled all the peccadilloes which most troubled my conscience. “I will go to church regularly every Sunday, as well as read the Gospel at the close of every hour throughout the day. What is more, I will set aside, out of the cheque which I shall receive each month after I have gone to the University, two-and-a-half roubles” (a tenth of my monthly allowance) “for people who are poor but not exactly beggars, yet without letting any one know anything about it. Yes, I will begin to look out for people like that--orphans or old women--at once, yet never tell a soul what I am doing for them.
“Also, I will have a room here of my very own (St. Jerome’s, probably), and look after it myself, and keep it perfectly clean. I will never let any one do anything for me, for every one is just a human being like myself. Likewise I will walk every day, not drive, to the University. Even if some one gives me a drozhki [Russian phaeton.] I will sell it, and devote the money to the poor. Everything I will do exactly and always” (what that “always” meant I could not possibly have said, but at least I had a vivid consciousness of its connoting some kind of prudent, moral, and irreproachable life). “I will get up all my lectures thoroughly, and go over all the subjects beforehand, so that at the end of my first course I may come out top and write a thesis. During my second course also I will get up everything beforehand, so that I may soon be transferred to the third course, and at eighteen come out top in the examinations, and receive two gold medals, and go on to be Master of Arts, and Doctor, and the first scholar in Europe. Yes, in all Europe I mean to be the first scholar. --Well, what next?” I asked myself at this point. Suddenly it struck me that dreams of this sort were a form of pride--a sin which I should have to confess to the priest that very evening, so I returned to the original thread of my meditations. “When getting up my lectures I will go to the Vorobievi Gori, [Sparrow Hills--a public park near Moscow.] and choose some spot under a tree, and read my lectures over there. Sometimes I will take with me something to eat--cheese or a pie from Pedotti’s, or something of the kind. After that I will sleep a little, and then read some good book or other, or else draw pictures or play on some instrument (certainly I must learn to play the flute). Perhaps SHE too will be walking on the Vorobievi Gori, and will approach me one day and say, ‘Who are you?’ and I shall look at her, oh, so sadly, and say that I am the son of a priest, and that I am happy only when I am there alone, quite alone. Then she will give me her hand, and say something to me, and sit down beside me. So every day we shall go to the same spot, and be friends together, and I shall kiss her. But no! That would not be right! On the contrary, from this day forward I never mean to look at a woman again. Never, never again do I mean to walk with a girl, nor even to go near one if I can help it. Yet, of course, in three years’ time, when I have come of age, I shall marry. Also, I mean to take as much exercise as ever I can, and to do gymnastics every day, so that, when I have turned twenty-five, I shall be stronger even than Rappo. On my first day’s training I mean to hold out half a pood [The Pood = 40 Russian pounds.] at arm’s length for five minutes, and the next day twenty-one pounds, and the third day twenty-two pounds, and so on, until at last I can hold out four poods in each hand, and be stronger even than a porter. Then, if ever any one should try to insult me or should begin to speak disrespectfully of HER, I shall take him so, by the front of his coat, and lift him up an arshin [The arshin = 2 feet 3 inches.] or two with one hand, and just hold him there, so that he may feel my strength and cease from his conduct. Yet that too would not be right. No, no, it would not matter; I should not hurt him, merely show him that I--” Let no one blame me because the dreams of my youth were as foolish as those of my childhood and boyhood. I am sure that, even if it be my fate to live to extreme old age and to continue my story with the years, I, an old man of seventy, shall be found dreaming dreams just as impossible and childish as those I am dreaming now. I shall be dreaming of some lovely Maria who loves me, the toothless old man, as she might love a Mazeppa; of some imbecile son who, through some extraordinary chance, has suddenly become a minister of state; of my suddenly receiving a windfall of a million of roubles. I am sure that there exists no human being, no human age, to whom or to which that gracious, consolatory power of dreaming is totally a stranger. Yet, save for the one general feature of magic and impossibility, the dreams of each human being, of each age of man, have their own distinguishing characteristics. At the period upon which I look as having marked the close of my boyhood and the beginning of my youth, four leading sentiments formed the basis of my dreams. The first of those sentiments was love for HER--for an imaginary woman whom I always pictured the same in my dreams, and whom I somehow expected to meet some day and somewhere. This she of mine had a little of Sonetchka in her, a little of Masha as Masha could look when she stood washing linen over the clothes-tub, and a little of a certain woman with pearls round her fair white neck whom I had once seen long, long ago at a theatre, in a box below our own. My second sentiment was a craving for love. I wanted every one to know me and to love me. I wanted to be able to utter my name--Nicola Irtenieff--and at once to see every one thunderstruck at it, and come crowding round me and thanking me for something or another, I hardly knew what. My third sentiment was the expectation of some extraordinary, glorious happiness that was impending--some happiness so strong and assured as to verge upon ecstasy. Indeed, so firmly persuaded was I that very, very soon some unexpected chance would suddenly make me the richest and most famous man in the world that I lived in constant, tremulous expectation of this magic good fortune befalling me. I was always thinking to myself that “IT is beginning,” and that I should go on thereafter to attain everything that a man could wish for. Consequently, I was for ever hurrying from place to place, in the belief that “IT” must be “beginning” just where I happened not to be. Lastly, my fourth and principal sentiment of all was abhorrence of myself, mingled with regret--yet a regret so blended with the certain expectation of happiness to which I have referred that it had in it nothing of sorrow. It seemed to me that it would be so easy and natural for me to tear myself away from my past and to remake it--to forget all that had been, and to begin my life, with all its relations, anew--that the past never troubled me, never clung to me at all. I even found a certain pleasure in detesting the past, and in seeing it in a darker light than the true one. This note of regret and of a curious longing for perfection were the chief mental impressions which I gathered from that new stage of my growth--impressions which imparted new principles to my view of myself, of men, and of God’s world. O good and consoling voice, which in later days, in sorrowful days when my soul yielded silently to the sway of life’s falseness and depravity, so often raised a sudden, bold protest against all iniquity, as well as mercilessly exposed the past, commanded, nay, compelled, me to love only the pure vista of the present, and promised me all that was fair and happy in the future! O good and consoling voice! Surely the day will never come when you are silent?
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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4
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OUR FAMILY CIRCLE
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PAPA was seldom at home that spring. Yet, whenever he was so, he seemed extraordinarily cheerful as he either strummed his favourite pieces on the piano or looked roguishly at us and made jokes about us all, not excluding even Mimi. For instance, he would say that the Tsarevitch himself had seen Mimi at the rink, and fallen so much in love with her that he had presented a petition to the Synod for divorce; or else that I had been granted an appointment as secretary to the Austrian ambassador--a piece of news which he imparted to us with a perfectly grave face. Next, he would frighten Katenka with some spiders (of which she was very much afraid), engage in an animated conversation with our friends Dubkoff and Nechludoff, and tell us and our guests, over and over again, his plans for the year. Although these plans changed almost from day to day, and were for ever contradicting one another, they seemed so attractive that we were always glad to listen to them, and Lubotshka, in particular, would glue her eyes to his face, so as not to lose a single word. One day his plan would be that he should leave my brother and myself at the University, and go and live with Lubotshka in Italy for two years. Next, the plan would be that he should buy an estate on the south coast of the Crimea, and take us for an annual visit there; next, that we should migrate en masse to St. Petersburg; and so forth. Yet, in addition to this unusual cheerfulness of his, another change had come over him of late--a change which greatly surprised me. This was that he had had some fashionable clothes made--an olive-coloured frockcoat, smart trousers with straps at the sides, and a long wadded greatcoat which fitted him to perfection. Often, too, there was a delightful smell of scent about him when he came home from a party--more especially when he had been to see a lady of whom Mimi never spoke but with a sigh and a face that seemed to say: “Poor orphans! How dreadful! It is a good thing that SHE is gone now!” and so on, and so on. From Nicola (for Papa never spoke to us of his gambling) I had learnt that he (Papa) had been very fortunate in play that winter, and so had won an extraordinary amount of money, all of which he had placed in the bank after vowing that he would play no more that spring. Evidently, it was his fear of being unable to resist again doing so that was rendering him anxious to leave for the country as soon as possible. Indeed, he ended by deciding not to wait until I had entered the University, but to take the girls to Petrovskoe immediately after Easter, and to leave Woloda and myself to follow them at a later season.
All that winter, until the opening of spring, Woloda had been inseparable from Dubkoff, while at the same time the pair of them had cooled greatly towards Dimitri. Their chief amusements (so I gathered from conversations overheard) were continual drinking of champagne, sledge-driving past the windows of a lady with whom both of them appeared to be in love, and dancing with her--not at children’s parties, either, but at real balls! It was this last fact which, despite our love for one another, placed a vast gulf between Woloda and myself. We felt that the distance between a boy still taking lessons under a tutor and a man who danced at real, grown-up balls was too great to allow of their exchanging mutual ideas. Katenka, too, seemed grown-up now, and read innumerable novels; so that the idea that she would some day be getting married no longer seemed to me a joke. Yet, though she and Woloda were thus grown-up, they never made friends with one another, but, on the contrary, seemed to cherish a mutual contempt. In general, when Katenka was at home alone, nothing but novels amused her, and they but slightly; but as soon as ever a visitor of the opposite sex called, she at once grew lively and amiable, and used her eyes for saying things which I could not then understand. It was only later, when she one day informed me in conversation that the only thing a girl was allowed to indulge in was coquetry--coquetry of the eyes, I mean--that I understood those strange contortions of her features which to every one else had seemed a matter for no surprise at all. Lubotshka also had begun to wear what was almost a long dress--a dress which almost concealed her goose-shaped feet; yet she still remained as ready a weeper as ever. She dreamed now of marrying, not a hussar, but a singer or an instrumentalist, and accordingly applied herself to her music with greater diligence than ever. St. Jerome, who knew that he was going to remain with us only until my examinations were over, and so had obtained for himself a new post in the family of some count or another, now looked with contempt upon the members of our household. He stayed indoors very little, took to smoking cigarettes (then all the rage), and was for ever whistling lively tunes on the edge of a card. Mimi daily grew more and more despondent, as though, now that we were beginning to grow up, she looked for nothing good from any one or anything.
When, on the day of which I am speaking, I went in to luncheon I found only Mimi, Katenka, Lubotshka, and St. Jerome in the dining-room. Papa was away, and Woloda in his own room, doing some preparation work for his examinations in company with a party of his comrades: wherefore he had requested that lunch should be sent to him there. Of late, Mimi had usually taken the head of the table, and as none of us had any respect for her, luncheon had lost most of its refinement and charm. That is to say, the meal was no longer what it had been in Mamma’s or our grandmother’s time, namely, a kind of rite which brought all the family together at a given hour and divided the day into two halves. We allowed ourselves to come in as late as the second course, to drink wine in tumblers (St. Jerome himself set us the example), to roll about on our chairs, to depart without saying grace, and so on. In fact, luncheon had ceased to be a family ceremony. In the old days at Petrovskoe, every one had been used to wash and dress for the meal, and then to repair to the drawing-room as the appointed hour (two o’clock) drew near, and pass the time of waiting in lively conversation. Just as the clock in the servants’ hall was beginning to whirr before striking the hour, Foka would enter with noiseless footsteps, and, throwing his napkin over his arm and assuming a dignified, rather severe expression, would say in loud, measured tones: “Luncheon is ready!” Thereupon, with pleased, cheerful faces, we would form a procession--the elders going first and the juniors following, and, with much rustling of starched petticoats and subdued creaking of boots and shoes--would proceed to the dining-room, where, still talking in undertones, the company would seat themselves in their accustomed places. Or, again, at Moscow, we would all of us be standing before the table ready-laid in the hall, talking quietly among ourselves as we waited for our grandmother, whom the butler, Gabriel, had gone to acquaint with the fact that luncheon was ready. Suddenly the door would open, there would come the faint swish of a dress and the sound of footsteps, and our grandmother--dressed in a mob-cap trimmed with a quaint old lilac bow, and wearing either a smile or a severe expression on her face according as the state of her health inclined her--would issue from her room. Gabriel would hasten to precede her to her arm-chair, the other chairs would make a scraping sound, and, with a feeling as though a cold shiver (the precursor of appetite) were running down one’s back, one would seize upon one’s damp, starched napkin, nibble a morsel or two of bread, and, rubbing one’s hands softly under the table, gaze with eager, radiant impatience at the steaming plates of soup which the butler was beginning to dispense in order of ranks and ages or according to the favour of our grandmother.
On the present occasion, however, I was conscious of neither excitement nor pleasure when I went in to luncheon. Even the mingled chatter of Mimi, the girls, and St. Jerome about the horrible boots of our Russian tutor, the pleated dresses worn by the young Princesses Kornakoff, and so forth (chatter which at any other time would have filled me with a sincerity of contempt which I should have been at no pains to conceal--at all events so far as Lubotshka and Katenka were concerned), failed to shake the benevolent frame of mind into which I had fallen. I was unusually good-humoured that day, and listened to everything with a smile and a studied air of kindness. Even when I asked for the kvas I did so politely, while I lost not a moment in agreeing with St. Jerome when he told me that it was undoubtedly more correct to say “Je peux” than “Je puis.” Yet, I must confess to a certain disappointment at finding that no one paid any particular attention to my politeness and good-humour. After luncheon, Lubotshka showed me a paper on which she had written down a list of her sins: upon which I observed that, although the idea was excellent so far as it went, it would be still better for her to write down her sins on her SOUL--“a very different matter.”
“Why is it ‘a very different matter’?” asked Lubotshka.
“Never mind: that is all right; you do not understand me,” and I went upstairs to my room, telling St. Jerome that I was going to work, but in reality purposing to occupy the hour and a half before confession time in writing down a list of my daily tasks and duties which should last me all my life, together with a statement of my life’s aim, and the rules by which I meant unswervingly to be guided.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
|
5
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MY RULES
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I TOOK some sheets of paper, and tried, first of all, to make a list of my tasks and duties for the coming year. The paper needed ruling, but, as I could not find the ruler, I had to use a Latin dictionary instead. The result was that, when I had drawn the pen along the edge of the dictionary and removed the latter, I found that, in place of a line, I had only made an oblong smudge on the paper, since the dictionary was not long enough to reach across it, and the pen had slipped round the soft, yielding corner of the book. Thereupon I took another piece of paper, and, by carefully manipulating the dictionary, contrived to rule what at least RESEMBLED lines. Dividing my duties into three sections--my duties to myself, my duties to my neighbour, and my duties to God--I started to indite a list of the first of those sections, but they seemed to me so numerous, and therefore requiring to be divided into so many species and subdivisions, that I thought I had better first of all write down the heading of “Rules of My Life” before proceeding to their detailed inscription. Accordingly, I proceeded to write “Rules of My Life” on the outside of the six sheets of paper which I had made into a sort of folio, but the words came out in such a crooked and uneven scrawl that for long I sat debating the question, “Shall I write them again?” --for long, sat in agonised contemplation of the ragged handwriting and disfigured title-page. Why was it that all the beauty and clarity which my soul then contained came out so misshapenly on paper (as in life itself) just when I was wishing to apply those qualities to what I was thinking at the moment?
“The priest is here, so please come downstairs and hear his directions,” said Nicola as he entered.
Hurriedly concealing my folio under the table-cloth, I looked at myself in the mirror, combed my hair upwards (I imagined this to give me a pensive air), and descended to the divannaia, [Room with divans, or ante-room] where the table stood covered with a cloth and had an ikon and candles placed upon it. Papa entered just as I did, but by another door: whereupon the priest--a grey-headed old monk with a severe, elderly face--blessed him, and Papa kissed his small, squat, wizened hand. I did the same.
“Go and call Woldemar,” said Papa. “Where is he? Wait a minute, though. Perhaps he is preparing for the Communion at the University?”
“No, he is with the Prince,” said Katenka, and glanced at Lubotshka. Suddenly the latter blushed for some reason or another, and then frowned. Finally, pretending that she was not well, she left the room, and I followed her. In the drawing-room she halted, and began to pencil something fresh on her paper of peccadilloes.
“Well, what new sin have you gone and committed?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she replied with another blush. All at once we heard Dimitri’s voice raised in the hall as he took his leave of Woloda.
“It seems to me you are always experiencing some new temptation,” said Katenka, who had entered the room behind us, and now stood looking at Lubotshka.
What was the matter with my sister I could not conceive, but she was now so agitated that the tears were starting from her eyes. Finally her confusion grew uncontrollable, and vented itself in rage against both herself and Katenka, who appeared to be teasing her.
“Any one can see that you are a FOREIGNER!” she cried (nothing offended Katenka so much as to be called by that term, which is why Lubotshka used it). “Just because I have the secret of which you know,” she went on, with anger ringing through her tone, “you purposely go and upset me! Please do understand that it is no joking matter.”
“Do you know what she has gone and written on her paper, Nicolinka?” cried Katenka, much infuriated by the term “foreigner.” “She has written down that--” “Oh, I never could have believed that you could be so cruel!” exclaimed Lubotshka, now bursting into open sobbing as she moved away from us. “You chose that moment on purpose! You spend your whole time in trying to make me sin! I’ll never go to YOU again for sympathy and advice!”
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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6
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CONFESSION
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With these and other disjointed impressions in my mind, I returned to the divannaia. As soon as every one had reassembled, the priest rose and prepared to read the prayer before confession. The instant that the silence was broken by the stern, expressive voice of the monk as he recited the prayer--and more especially when he addressed to us the words: “Reveal thou all thy sins without shame, concealment, or extenuation, and let thy soul be cleansed before God: for if thou concealest aught, then great will be thy sin”--the same sensation of reverent awe came over me as I had felt during the morning. I even took a certain pleasure in recognising this condition of mine, and strove to preserve it, not only by restraining all other thoughts from entering my brain, but also by consciously exerting myself to feel no other sensation than this same one of reverence.
Papa was the first to go to confession. He remained a long, long time in the room which had belonged to our grandmother, and during that time the rest of us kept silence in the divannaia, or only whispered to one another on the subject of who should precede whom. At length, the voice of the priest again reading the prayer sounded from the doorway, and then Papa’s footsteps. The door creaked as he came out, coughing and holding one shoulder higher than the other, in his usual way, and for the moment he did not look at any of us.
“YOU go now, Luba,” he said presently, as he gave her cheek a mischievous pinch. “Mind you tell him everything. You are my greatest sinner, you know.”
Lubotshka went red and pale by turns, took her memorandum paper out of her apron, replaced it, and finally moved away towards the doorway with her head sunk between her shoulders as though she expected to receive a blow upon it from above. She was not long gone, and when she returned her shoulders were shaking with sobs.
At length--next after the excellent Katenka (who came out of the doorway with a smile on her face)--my turn arrived. I entered the dimly-lighted room with the same vague feeling of awe, the same conscious eagerness to arouse that feeling more and more in my soul, that had possessed me up to the present moment. The priest, standing in front of a reading-desk, slowly turned his face to me.
I was not more than five minutes in the room, but came out from it happy and (so I persuaded myself) entirely cleansed--a new, a morally reborn individual. Despite the fact that the old surroundings of my life now struck me as unfamiliar (even though the rooms, the furniture, and my own figure--would to heavens that I could have changed my outer man for the better in the same way that I believed myself to have changed my inner I--were the same as before), I remained in that comfortable attitude of mine until the very moment of bedtime.
Yet, no sooner had I begun to grow drowsy with the conning over of my sins than in a flash I recollected a particularly shameful sin which I had suppressed at confession time. Instantly the words of the prayer before confession came back to my memory and began sounding in my ears. My peace was gone for ever. “For if thou concealest aught, then great will be thy sin.” Each time that the phrase recurred to me I saw myself a sinner for whom no punishment was adequate. Long did I toss from side to side as I considered my position, while expecting every moment to be visited with the divine wrath--to be struck with sudden death, perhaps! --an insupportable thought! Then suddenly the reassuring thought occurred to me: “Why should I not drive out to the monastery when the morning comes, and see the priest again, and make a second confession?” Thereafter I grew calmer.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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7
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THE EXPEDITION TO THE MONASTERY
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Several times that night I woke in terror at the thought that I might be oversleeping myself, and by six o’clock was out of bed, although the dawn was hardly peeping in at the window. I put on my clothes and boots (all of which were lying tumbled and unbrushed beside the bed, since Nicola, of course had not been in yet to tidy them up), and, without a prayer said or my face washed, emerged, for the first time in my life, into the street ALONE.
Over the way, behind the green roof of a large building, the dim, cold dawn was beginning to blush red. The keen frost of the spring morning which had stiffened the pools and mud and made them crackle under my feet now nipped my face and hands also. Not a cab was to be seen, though I had counted upon one to make the journey out and home the quicker. Only a file of waggons was rumbling along the Arbat Prospect, and a couple of bricklayers talking noisily together as they strode along the pavement. However, after walking a verst or so I began to meet men and women taking baskets to market or going with empty barrels to fetch the day’s water supply; until at length, at the cross streets near the Arbat Gate, where a pieman had set up his stall and a baker was just opening his shop, I espied an old cabman shaking himself after indulging in a nap on the box of his be-scratched old blue-painted, hobble-de-hoy wreck of a drozhki. He seemed barely awake as he asked twenty copecks as the fare to the monastery and back, but came to himself a moment afterwards, just as I was about to get in, and, touching up his horse with the spare end of the reins, started to drive off and leave me. “My horse wants feeding,” he growled, “I can’t take you, barin. [Sir]” With some difficulty and a promise of FORTY copecks I persuaded him to stop. He eyed me narrowly as he pulled up, but nevertheless said: “Very well. Get in, barin.” I must confess that I had some qualms lest he should drive me to a quiet corner somewhere, and then rob me, but I caught hold of the collar of his ragged driving-coat, close to where his wrinkled neck showed sadly lean above his hunched-up back, and climbed on to the blue-painted, curved, rickety scat. As we set off along Vozdvizhenka Street, I noticed that the back of the drozhki was covered with a strip of the same greenish material as that of which his coat was made. For some reason or another this reassured me, and I no longer felt nervous of being taken to a quiet spot and robbed.
The sun had risen to a good height, and was gilding the cupolas of the churches, when we arrived at the monastery. In the shade the frost had not yet given, but in the open roadway muddy rivulets of water were coursing along, and it was through fast-thawing mire that the horse went clip-clopping his way. Alighting, and entering the monastery grounds, I inquired of the first monk whom I met where I could find the priest whom I was seeking.
“His cell is over there,” replied the monk as he stopped a moment and pointed towards a little building up to which a flight of steps led.
“I respectfully thank you,” I said, and then fell to wondering what all the monks (who at that moment began to come filing out of the church) must be thinking of me as they glanced in my direction. I was neither a grown-up nor a child, while my face was unwashed, my hair unbrushed, my clothes tumbled, and my boots unblacked and muddy. To what class of persons were the brethren assigning me--for they stared at me hard enough? Nevertheless I proceeded in the direction which the young priest had pointed out to me.
An old man with bushy grey eyebrows and a black cassock met me on the narrow path to the cells, and asked me what I wanted. For a brief moment I felt inclined to say “Nothing,” and then run back to the drozhki and drive away home; but, for all its beetling brows, the face of the old man inspired confidence, and I merely said that I wished to see the priest (whom I named).
“Very well, young sir; I will take you to him,” said the old man as he turned round. Clearly he had guessed my errand at a stroke. “The father is at matins at this moment, but he will soon be back,” and, opening a door, the old man led me through a neat hall and corridor, all lined with clean matting, to a cell.
“Please to wait here,” he added, and then, with a kind, reassuring glance, departed.
The little room in which I found myself was of the smallest possible dimensions, but extremely neat and clean. Its furniture only consisted of a small table (covered with a cloth, and placed between two equally small casement-windows, in which stood two pots of geraniums), a stand of ikons, with a lamp suspended in front of them, a bench, and two chairs. In one corner hung a wall clock, with little flowers painted on its dial, and brass weights to its chains, while upon two nails driven into a screen (which, fastened to the ceiling with whitewashed pegs, probably concealed the bed) hung a couple of cassocks. The windows looked out upon a whitewashed wall, about two arshins distant, and in the space between them there grew a small lilac-bush.
Not a sound penetrated from without, and in the stillness the measured, friendly stroke of the clock’s pendulum seemed to beat quite loudly. The instant that I found myself alone in this calm retreat all other thoughts and recollections left my head as completely as though they had never been there, and I subsided into an inexpressibly pleasing kind of torpor. The rusty alpaca cassocks with their frayed linings, the worn black leather bindings of the books with their metal clasps, the dull-green plants with their carefully watered leaves and soil, and, above all, the abrupt, regular beat of the pendulum, all spoke to me intimately of some new life hitherto unknown to me--a life of unity and prayer, of calm, restful happiness.
“The months, the years, may pass,” I thought to myself, “but he remains alone--always at peace, always knowing that his conscience is pure before God, that his prayer will be heard by Him.” For fully half an hour I sat on that chair, trying not to move, not even to breathe loudly, for fear I should mar the harmony of the sounds which were telling me so much, and ever the pendulum continued to beat the same--now a little louder to the right, now a little softer to the left.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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8
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THE SECOND CONFESSION
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Suddenly the sound of the priest’s footsteps roused me from this reverie.
“Good morning to you,” he said as he smoothed his grey hair with his hand. “What can I do for you?”
I besought him to give me his blessing, and then kissed his small, wizened hand with great fervour. After I had explained to him my errand he said nothing, but moved away towards the ikons, and began to read the exhortation: whereupon I overcame my shame, and told him all that was in my heart. Finally he laid his hands upon my head, and pronounced in his even, resonant voice the words: “My son, may the blessing of Our Heavenly Father be upon thee, and may He always preserve thee in faithfulness, loving-kindness, and meekness. Amen.”
I was entirely happy. Tears of joy coursed down my face as I kissed the hem of his cassock and then raised my head again. The face of the priest expressed perfect tranquillity. So keenly did I feel the joy of reconciliation that, fearing in any way to dispel it, I took hasty leave of him, and, without looking to one side of me or the other (in order that my attention might not be distracted), left the grounds and re-entered the rickety, battered drozhki. Yet the joltings of the vehicle and the variety of objects which flitted past my eyes soon dissipated that feeling, and I became filled with nothing but the idea that the priest must have thought me the finest-spirited young man he had ever met, or ever would meet, in the whole of his life. Indeed, I reflected, there could not be many such as myself--of that I felt sure, and the conviction produced in me the kind of complacency which craves for self-communication to another. I had a great desire to unbosom myself to some one, and as there was no one else to speak to, I addressed myself to the cabman.
“Was I very long gone?” I asked him.
“No, not very long,” he replied. He seemed to have grown more cheerful under the influence of the sunshine. “Yet now it is a good while past my horse’s feeding-time. You see, I am a night cabman.”
“Well, I only seemed to myself to be about a minute,” I went on. “Do you know what I went there for?” I added, changing my seat to the well of the drozhki, so as to be nearer the driver.
“What business is it of mine? I drive a fare where he tells me to go,” he replied.
“Yes, but, all the same, what do you think I went there for?” I persisted.
“I expect some one you know is going to be buried there, so you went to see about a plot for the grave.”
“No, no, my friend. Still, DO you know what I went there for?”
“No, of course I cannot tell, barin,” he repeated.
His voice seemed to me so kind that I decided to edify him by relating the cause of my expedition, and even telling him of the feeling which I had experienced.
“Shall I tell you?” I said. “Well, you see,”--and I told him all, as well as inflicted upon him a description of my fine sentiments. To this day I blush at the recollection.
“Well, well!” said the cabman non-committally, and for a long while afterwards he remained silent and motionless, except that at intervals he adjusted the skirt of his coat each time that it was jerked from beneath his leg by the joltings of his huge boot on the drozhki’s step. I felt sure that he must be thinking of me even as the priest had done. That is to say, that he must be thinking that no such fine-spirited young man existed in the world as I. Suddenly he shot at me: “I tell you what, barin. You ought to keep God’s affairs to yourself.”
“What?” I said.
“Those affairs of yours--they are God’s business,” he repeated, mumbling the words with his toothless lips.
“No, he has not understood me,” I thought to myself, and said no more to him till we reached home.
Although it was not my original sense of reconciliation and reverence, but only a sort of complacency at having experienced such a sense, that lasted in me during the drive home (and that, too, despite the distraction of the crowds of people who now thronged the sunlit streets in every direction), I had no sooner reached home than even my spurious complacency was shattered, for I found that I had not the forty copecks wherewith to pay the cabman! To the butler, Gabriel, I already owed a small debt, and he refused to lend me any more. Seeing me twice run across the courtyard in quest of the money, the cabman must have divined the reason, for, leaping from his drozhki, he--notwithstanding that he had seemed so kind--began to bawl aloud (with an evident desire to punch my head) that people who do not pay for their cab-rides are swindlers.
None of my family were yet out of bed, so that, except for the servants, there was no one from whom to borrow the forty copecks. At length, on my most sacred, sacred word of honour to repay (a word to which, as I could see from his face, he did not altogether trust), Basil so far yielded to his fondness for me and his remembrance of the many services I had done him as to pay the cabman. Thus all my beautiful feelings ended in smoke. When I went upstairs to dress for church and go to Communion with the rest I found that my new clothes had not yet come home, and so I could not wear them. Then I sinned headlong. Donning my other suit, I went to Communion in a sad state of mental perturbation, and filled with complete distrust of all my finer impulses.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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9
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HOW I PREPARED MYSELF FOR THE EXAMINATIONS
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On the Thursday in Easter week Papa, my sister, Katenka, and Mimi went away into the country, and no one remained in my grandmother’s great house but Woloda, St. Jerome, and myself. The frame of mind which I had experienced on the day of my confession and during my subsequent expedition to the monastery had now completely passed away, and left behind it only a dim, though pleasing, memory which daily became more and more submerged by the impressions of this emancipated existence.
The folio endorsed “Rules of My Life” lay concealed beneath a pile of school-books. Although the idea of the possibility of framing rules, for every occasion in my life and always letting myself be guided by them still pleased me (since it appeared an idea at once simple and magnificent, and I was determined to make practical application of it), I seemed somehow to have forgotten to put it into practice at once, and kept deferring doing so until such and such a moment. At the same time, I took pleasure in the thought that every idea which now entered my head could be allotted precisely to one or other of my three sections of tasks and duties--those for or to God, those for or to my neighbour, and those for or to myself. “I can always refer everything to them,” I said to myself, “as well as the many, many other ideas which occur to me on one subject or another.” Yet at this period I often asked myself, “Was I better and more truthful when I only believed in the power of the human intellect, or am I more so now, when I am losing the faculty of developing that power, and am in doubt both as to its potency and as to its importance?” To this I could return no positive answer.
The sense of freedom, combined with the spring-like feeling of vague expectation to which I have referred already, so unsettled me that I could not keep myself in hand--could make none but the sorriest of preparations for my University ordeal. Thus I was busy in the schoolroom one morning, and fully aware that I must work hard, seeing that to-morrow was the day of my examination in a subject of which I had the two whole questions still to read up; yet no sooner had a breath of spring come wafted through the window than I felt as though there were something quite different that I wished to recall to my memory. My hands laid down my book, my feet began to move of themselves, and to set me walking up and down the room, and my head felt as though some one had suddenly touched in it a little spring and set some machine in motion--so easily and swiftly and naturally did all sorts of pleasing fancies of which I could catch no more than the radiancy begin coursing through it. Thus one hour, two hours, elapsed unperceived. Even if I sat down determinedly to my book, and managed to concentrate my whole attention upon what I was reading, suddenly there would sound in the corridor the footsteps of a woman and the rustle of her dress. Instantly everything would escape my mind, and I would find it impossible to remain still any longer, however much I knew that the woman could only be either Gasha or my grandmother’s old sewing-maid moving about in the corridor. “Yet suppose it should be SHE all at once?” I would say to myself. “Suppose IT is beginning now, and I were to lose it?” and, darting out into the corridor, I would find, each time, that it was only Gasha. Yet for long enough afterwards I could not recall my attention to my studies. A little spring had been touched in my head, and a strange mental ferment started afresh. Again, that evening I was sitting alone beside a tallow candle in my room. Suddenly I looked up for a moment--to snuff the candle, or to straighten myself in my chair--and at once became aware of nothing but the darkness in the corners and the blank of the open doorway. Then, I also became conscious how still the house was, and felt as though I could do nothing else than go on listening to that stillness, and gazing into the black square of that open doorway, and gradually sinking into a brown study as I sat there without moving. At intervals, however, I would get up, and go downstairs, and begin wandering through the empty rooms. Once I sat a long while in the small drawing-room as I listened to Gasha playing “The Nightingale” (with two fingers) on the piano in the large drawing-room, where a solitary candle burned. Later, when the moon was bright, I felt obliged to get out of bed and to lean out of the window, so that I might gaze into the garden, and at the lighted roof of the Shaposnikoff mansion, the straight tower of our parish church, and the dark shadows of the fence and the lilac-bush where they lay black upon the path. So long did I remain there that, when I at length returned to bed, it was ten o’clock in the morning before I could open my eyes again.
In short, had it not been for the tutors who came to give me lessons, as well as for St. Jerome (who at intervals, and very grudgingly, applied a spur to my self-conceit) and, most of all, for the desire to figure as “clever” in the eyes of my friend Nechludoff (who looked upon distinctions in University examinations as a matter of first-rate importance)--had it not been for all these things, I say, the spring and my new freedom would have combined to make me forget everything I had ever learnt, and so to go through the examinations to no purpose whatsoever.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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10
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THE EXAMINATION IN HISTORY
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ON the 16th of April I entered, for the first time, and under the wing of St. Jerome, the great hall of the University. I had driven there with St. Jerome in our smart phaeton and wearing the first frockcoat of my life, while the whole of my other clothes--even down to my socks and linen--were new and of a grander sort. When a Swiss waiter relieved me of my greatcoat, and I stood before him in all the beauty of my attire, I felt almost sorry to dazzle him so. Yet I had no sooner entered the bright, carpeted, crowded hall, and caught sight of hundreds of other young men in gymnasium [The Russian gymnasium = the English grammar or secondary school.] uniforms or frockcoats (of whom but a few threw me an indifferent glance), as well as, at the far end, of some solemn-looking professors who were seated on chairs or walking carelessly about among some tables, than I at once became disabused of the notion that I should attract the general attention, while the expression of my face, which at home, and even in the vestibule of the University buildings, had denoted only a kind of vague regret that I should have to present so important and distinguished an appearance, became exchanged for an expression of the most acute nervousness and dejection. However, I soon picked up again when I perceived sitting at one of the desks a very badly, untidily dressed gentleman who, though not really old, was almost entirely grey. He was occupying a seat quite at the back of the hall and a little apart from the rest, so I hastened to sit down beside him, and then fell to looking at the candidates for examination, and to forming conclusions about them. Many different figures and faces were there to be seen there; yet, in my opinion, they all seemed to divide themselves into three classes. First of all, there were youths like myself, attending for examination in the company of their parents or tutors. Among such I could see the youngest Iwin (accompanied by Frost) and Ilinka Grap (accompanied by his old father). All youths of this class wore the early beginnings of beards, sported prominent linen, sat quietly in their places, and never opened the books and notebooks which they had brought with them, but gazed at the professors and examination tables with ill-concealed nervousness. The second class of candidates were young men in gymnasium uniforms. Several of them had attained to the dignity of shaving, and most of them knew one another. They talked loudly, called the professors by their names and surnames, occupied themselves in getting their subjects ready, exchanged notebooks, climbed over desks, fetched themselves pies and sandwiches from the vestibule, and ate them then and there merely lowering their heads to the level of a desk for propriety’s sake. Lastly, the third class of candidates (which seemed a small one) consisted of oldish men--some of them in frock coats, but the majority in jackets, and with no linen to be seen. These preserved a serious demeanour, sat by themselves, and had a very dingy look. The man who had afforded me consolation by being worse dressed than myself belonged to this class. Leaning forward upon his elbows, and running his fingers through his grey, dishevelled hair as he read some book or another, he had thrown me only a momentary glance--and that not a very friendly one--from a pair of glittering eyes. Then, as I sat down, he had frowned grimly, and stuck a shiny elbow out to prevent me from coming any nearer. On the other hand, the gymnasium men were over-sociable, and I felt rather afraid of their proximity. One of them did not hesitate to thrust a book into my hands, saying, “Give that to that fellow over there, will you?” while another of them exclaimed as he pushed past me, “By your leave, young fellow!” and a third made use of my shoulder as a prop when he wanted to scramble over a desk. All this seemed to me a little rough and unpleasant, for I looked upon myself as immensely superior to such fellows, and considered that they ought not to treat me with such familiarity. At length, the names began to be called out. The gymnasium men walked out boldly, answered their questions (apparently) well, and came back looking cheerful. My own class of candidates were much more diffident, as well as appeared to answer worse. Of the oldish men, some answered well, and some very poorly. When the name “Semenoff” was called out my neighbour with the grey hair and glittering eyes jostled me roughly, stepped over my legs, and went up to one of the examiners’ tables. It was plain from the aspect of the professors that he answered well and with assurance, yet, on returning to his place, he did not wait to see where he was placed on the list, but quietly collected his notebooks and departed. Several times I shuddered at the sound of the voice calling out the names, but my turn did not come in exact alphabetical order, though already names had begun to be called beginning with “I.” “Ikonin and Tenieff!” suddenly shouted some one from the professors’ end of the hall.
“Go on, Ikonin! You are being called,” said a tall, red-faced gymnasium student near me. “But who is this BARtenieff or MORtenieff or somebody? I don’t know him.”
“It must be you,” whispered St. Jerome loudly in my ear.
“MY name is IRtenieff,” I said to the red-faced student. “Do you think that was the name they were calling out?”
“Yes. Why on earth don’t you go up?” he replied. “Lord, what a dandy!” he added under his breath, yet not so quietly but that I failed to hear the words as they came wafted to me from below the desk. In front of me walked Ikonin--a tall young man of about twenty-five, who was one of those whom I had classed as oldish men. He wore a tight brown frockcoat and a blue satin tie, and had wisps of flaxen hair carefully brushed over his collar in the peasant style. His appearance had already caught my attention when we were sitting among the desks, and had given me an impression that he was not bad-looking. Also I had noticed that he was very talkative. Yet what struck me most about his physiognomy was a tuft, of queer red hairs which he had under his chin, as well as, still more, a strange habit of continually unbuttoning his waistcoat and scratching his chest under his shirt.
Behind the table to which we were summoned sat three Professors, none of whom acknowledged our salutations. A youngish professor was shuffling a bundle of tickets like a pack of cards; another one, with a star on his frockcoat, was gazing hard at a gymnasium student, who was repeating something at great speed about Charles the Great, and adding to each of his sentences the word nakonetz [= the English colloquialism “you know.”] while a third one--an old man in spectacles--proceeded to bend his head down as we approached, and, peering at us through his glasses, pointed silently to the tickets. I felt his glance go over both myself and Ikonin, and also felt sure that something about us had displeased him (perhaps it was Ikonin’s red hairs), for, after taking another look at the pair of us, he motioned impatiently to us to be quick in taking our tickets. I felt vexed and offended--firstly, because none of the professors had responded to our bows, and, secondly, because they evidently coupled me with Ikonin under the one denomination of “candidates,” and so were condemning me in advance on account of Ikonin’s red hairs. I took my ticket boldly and made ready to answer, but the professor’s eye passed over my head and alighted upon Ikonin. Accordingly, I occupied myself in reading my ticket. The questions printed on it were all familiar to me, so, as I silently awaited my turn, I gazed at what was passing near me, Ikonin seemed in no way diffident--rather the reverse, for, in reaching for his ticket, he threw his body half-way across the table. Then he gave his long hair a shake, and rapidly conned over what was written on his ticket. I think he had just opened his mouth to answer when the professor with the star dismissed the gymnasium student with a word of commendation, and then turned and looked at Ikonin. At once the latter seemed taken back, and stopped short. For about two minutes there was a dead silence.
“Well?” said the professor in the spectacles.
Once more Ikonin opened his mouth, and once more remained silent.
“Come! You are not the only one to be examined. Do you mean to answer or do you not?” said the youngish professor, but Ikonin did not even look at him. He was gazing fixedly at his ticket and uttered not a single word. The professor in the spectacles scanned him through his glasses, then over them, then without them (for, indeed, he had time to take them off, to wipe their lenses carefully, and to replace them). Still not a word from Ikonin. All at once, however, a smile spread itself over his face, and he gave his long hair another shake. Next he reached across the table, laid down his ticket, looked at each of the professors in turn and then at myself, and finally, wheeling round on his heels, made a gesture with his hand and returned to the desks. The professors stared blankly at one another.
“Bless the fellow!” said the youngish professor. “What an original!”
It was now my turn to move towards the table, but the professors went on talking in undertones among themselves, as though they were unaware of my presence. At the moment, I felt firmly persuaded that the three of them were engrossed solely with the question of whether I should merely PASS the examination or whether I should pass it WELL, and that it was only swagger which made them pretend that they did not care either way, and behave as though they had not seen me.
When at length the professor in the spectacles turned to me with an air of indifference, and invited me to answer, I felt hurt, as I looked at him, to think that he should have so undeceived me: wherefore I answered brokenly at first. In time, however, things came easier to my tongue, and, inasmuch as all the questions bore upon Russian history (which I knew thoroughly), I ended with eclat, and even went so far, in my desire to convince the professors that I was not Ikonin and that they must not in anyway confound me with him, as to offer to draw a second ticket. The professor in the spectacles, however, merely nodded his head, said “That will do,” and marked something in his register. On returning to the desks, I at once learnt from the gymnasium men (who somehow seemed to know everything) that I had been placed fifth.
|
{
"id": "2637"
}
|
11
|
MY EXAMINATION IN MATHEMATICS
|
AT the subsequent examinations, I made several new acquaintances in addition to the Graps (whom I considered unworthy of my notice) and Iwin (who for some reason or other avoided me). With some of these new friends I grew quite intimate, and even Ikonin plucked up sufficient courage to inform me, when we next met, that he would have to undergo re-examination in history--the reason for his failure this time being that the professor of that faculty had never forgiven him for last year’s examination, and had, indeed, “almost killed” him for it. Semenoff (who was destined for the same faculty as myself--the faculty of mathematics) avoided every one up to the very close of the examinations. Always leaning forward upon his elbows and running his fingers through his grey hair, he sat silent and alone. Nevertheless, when called up for examination in mathematics (he had no companion to accompany him), he came out second. The first place was taken by a student from the first gymnasium--a tall, dark, lanky, pale-faced fellow who wore a black folded cravat and had his cheeks and forehead dotted all over with pimples. His hands were shapely and slender, but their nails were so bitten to the quick that the finger-ends looked as though they had been tied round with strips of thread. All this seemed to me splendid, and wholly becoming to a student of the first gymnasium. He spoke to every one, and we all made friends with him. To me in particular his walk, his every movement, his lips, his dark eyes, all seemed to have in them something extraordinary and magnetic.
On the day of the mathematical examination I arrived earlier than usual at the hall. I knew the syllabus well, yet there were two questions in the algebra which my tutor had managed to pass over, and which were therefore quite unknown to me. If I remember rightly, they were the Theory of Combinations and Newton’s Binomial. I seated myself on one of the back benches and pored over the two questions, but, inasmuch as I was not accustomed to working in a noisy room, and had even less time for preparation than I had anticipated, I soon found it difficult to take in all that I was reading.
“Here he is. This way, Nechludoff,” said Woloda’s familiar voice behind me.
I turned and saw my brother and Dimitri--their gowns unbuttoned, and their hands waving a greeting to me--threading their way through the desks. A moment’s glance would have sufficed to show any one that they were second-course students--persons to whom the University was as a second home. The mere look of their open gowns expressed at once disdain for the “mere candidate” and a knowledge that the “mere candidate’s” soul was filled with envy and admiration of them. I was charmed to think that every one near me could now see that I knew two real second-course students: wherefore I hastened to meet them half-way.
Woloda, of course, could not help vaunting his superiority a little.
“Hullo, you smug!” he said. “Haven’t you been examined yet?”
“No.”
“Well, what are you reading? Aren’t you sufficiently primed?”
“Yes, except in two questions. I don’t understand them at all.”
“Eh, what?” --and Woloda straightway began to expound to me Newton’s Binomial, but so rapidly and unintelligibly that, suddenly reading in my eyes certain misgivings as to the soundness of his knowledge, he glanced also at Dimitri’s face. Clearly, he saw the same misgivings there, for he blushed hotly, though still continuing his involved explanations.
“No; hold on, Woloda, and let me try and do it,” put in Dimitri at length, with a glance at the professors’ corner as he seated himself beside me.
I could see that my friend was in the best of humours. This was always the case with him when he was satisfied with himself, and was one of the things in him which I liked best. Inasmuch as he knew mathematics well and could speak clearly, he hammered the question so thoroughly into my head that I can remember it to this day. Hardly had he finished when St. Jerome said to me in a loud whisper, “A vous, Nicolas,” and I followed Ikonin out from among the desks without having had an opportunity of going through the OTHER question of which I was ignorant. At the table which we now approached were seated two professors, while before the blackboard stood a gymnasium student, who was working some formula aloud, and knocking bits off the end of the chalk with his too vigorous strokes. He even continued writing after one of the Professors had said to him “Enough!” and bidden us draw our tickets. “Suppose I get the Theory of Combinations?” I thought to myself as my tremulous fingers took a ticket from among a bundle wrapped in torn paper. Ikonin, for his part, reached across the table with the same assurance, and the same sidelong movement of his whole body, as he had done at the previous examination. Taking the topmost ticket without troubling to make further selection, he just glanced at it, and then frowned angrily.
“I always draw this kind of thing,” he muttered.
I looked at mine. Horrors! It was the Theory of Combinations!
“What have you got?” whispered Ikonin at this point.
I showed him.
“Oh, I know that,” he said.
“Will you make an exchange, then?”
“No. Besides, it would be all the same for me if I did,” he contrived to whisper just as the professor called us up to the blackboard. “I don’t feel up to anything to-day.”
“Then everything is lost!” I thought to myself. Instead of the brilliant result which I had anticipated I should be for ever covered with shame--more so even than Ikonin! Suddenly, under the very eyes of the professor, Ikonin turned to me, snatched my ticket out of my hands, and handed me his own. I looked at his ticket. It was Newton’s Binomial!
The professor was a youngish man, with a pleasant, clever expression of face--an effect chiefly due to the prominence of the lower part of his forehead.
“What? Are you exchanging tickets, gentlemen?” he said.
“No. He only gave me his to look at, professor,” answered Ikonin--and, sure enough, the word “professor” was the last word that he uttered there. Once again, he stepped backwards towards me from the table, once again he looked at each of the professors in turn and then at myself, once again he smiled faintly, and once again he shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, “It is no use, my good sirs.” Then he returned to the desks. Subsequently, I learnt that this was the third year he had vainly attempted to matriculate.
I answered my question well, for I had just read it up; and the professor, kindly informing me that I had done even better than was required, placed me fifth.
|
{
"id": "2637"
}
|
12
|
MY EXAMINATION IN LATIN
|
All went well until my examination in Latin. So far, a gymnasium student stood first on the list, Semenoff second, and myself third. On the strength of it I had begun to swagger a little, and to think that, for all my youth, I was not to be despised.
From the first day of the examinations, I had heard every one speak with awe of the Professor of Latin, who appeared to be some sort of a wild beast who battened on the financial ruin of young men (of those, that is to say, who paid their own fees) and spoke only in the Greek and Latin tongues. However, St. Jerome, who had coached me in Latin, spoke encouragingly, and I myself thought that, since I could translate Cicero and certain parts of Horace without the aid of a lexicon, I should do no worse than the rest. Yet things proved otherwise. All the morning the air had been full of rumours concerning the tribulations of candidates who had gone up before me: rumours of how one young fellow had been accorded a nought, another one a single mark only, a third one greeted with abuse and threatened with expulsion, and so forth. Only Semenoff and the first gymnasium student had, as usual, gone up quietly, and returned to their seats with five marks credited to their names. Already I felt a prescience of disaster when Ikonin and myself found ourselves summoned to the little table at which the terrible professor sat in solitary grandeur.
The terrible professor turned out to be a little thin, bilious-looking man with hair long and greasy and a face expressive of extraordinary sullenness. Handing Ikonin a copy of Cicero’s Orations, he bid him translate. To my great astonishment Ikonin not only read off some of the Latin, but even managed to construe a few lines to the professor’s prompting. At the same time, conscious of my superiority over such a feeble companion, I could not help smiling a little, and even looking rather contemptuous, when it came to a question of analysis, and Ikonin, as on previous occasions, plunged into a silence which promised never to end. I had hoped to please the professor by that knowing, slightly sarcastic smile of mine, but, as a matter of fact, I contrived to do quite the contrary.
“Evidently you know better than he, since you are laughing,” he said to me in bad Russian. “Well, we shall see. Tell me the answer, then.”
Later I learnt that the professor was Ikonin’s guardian, and that Ikonin actually lived with him. I lost no time in answering the question in syntax which had been put to Ikonin, but the professor only pulled a long face and turned away from me.
“Well, your turn will come presently, and then we shall see how much you know,” he remarked, without looking at me, but proceeding to explain to Ikonin the point on which he had questioned him.
“That will do,” he added, and I saw him put down four marks to Ikonin in his register. “Come!” I thought to myself. “He cannot be so strict after all.”
When Ikonin had taken his departure the professor spent fully five minutes--five minutes which seemed to me five hours--in setting his books and tickets in order, in blowing his nose, in adjusting and sprawling about on his chair, in gazing down the hall, and in looking here, there, and everywhere--in doing everything, in fact, except once letting his eye rest upon me. Yet even that amount of dissimulation did not seem to satisfy him, for he next opened a book, and pretended to read it, for all the world as though I were not there at all. I moved a little nearer him, and gave a cough.
“Ah, yes! You too, of course! Well, translate me something,” he remarked, handing me a book of some kind. “But no; you had better take this,” and, turning over the leaves of a Horace, he indicated to me a passage which I should never have imagined possible of translation.
“I have not prepared this,” I said.
“Oh! Then you only wish to answer things which you have got by heart, do you? Indeed? No, no; translate me that.”
I started to grope for the meaning of the passage, but each questioning look which I threw at the professor was met by a shake of the head, a profound sigh, and an exclamation of “No, no!” Finally he banged the book to with such a snap that he caught his finger between the covers. Angrily releasing it, he handed me a ticket containing questions in grammar, and, flinging himself back in his chair, maintained a menacing silence. I should have tried to answer the questions had not the expression of his face so clogged my tongue that nothing seemed to come from it right.
“No, no! That’s not it at all!” he suddenly exclaimed in his horrible accent as he altered his posture to one of leaning forward upon the table and playing with the gold signet-ring which was nearly slipping from the little finger of his left hand. “That is not the way to prepare for serious study, my good sir. Fellows like yourself think that, once they have a gown and a blue collar to their backs, they have reached the summit of all things and become students. No, no, my dear sir. A subject needs to be studied FUNDAMENTALLY,” and so on, and so on.
During this speech (which was uttered with a clipped sort of intonation) I went on staring dully at his lowered eyelids. Beginning with a fear lest I should lose my place as third on the list, I went on to fear lest I should pass at all. Next, these feelings became reinforced by a sense of injustice, injured self-respect, and unmerited humiliation, while the contempt which I felt for the professor as some one not quite (according to my ideas) “comme il faut”--a fact which I deduced from the shortness, strength, and roundness of his nails--flared up in me more and more and turned all my other feelings to sheer animosity. Happening, presently, to glance at me, and to note my quivering lips and tear-filled eyes, he seemed to interpret my agitation as a desire to be accorded my marks and dismissed: wherefore, with an air of relenting, he said (in the presence of another professor who had just approached): “Very well; I will accord you a ‘pass’” (which signified two marks), “although you do not deserve it. I do so simply out of consideration for your youth, and in the hope that, when you begin your University career, you will learn to be less light-minded.”
The concluding phrase, uttered in the hearing of the other professor (who at once turned his eyes upon me, as though remarking, “There! You see, young man!”) completed my discomfiture. For a moment, a mist swam before my eyes--a mist in which the terrible professor seemed to be far away, as he sat at his table while for an instant a wild idea danced through my brain. “What if I DID do such a thing?” I thought to myself. “What would come of it?” However, I did not do the thing in question, but, on the contrary, made a bow of peculiar reverence to each of the professors, and with a slight smile on my face--presumably the same smile as that with which I had derided Ikonin--turned away from the table.
This piece of unfairness affected me so powerfully at the time that, had I been a free agent, I should have attended for no more examinations. My ambition was gone (since now I could not possibly be third), and I therefore let the other examinations pass without any exertion, or even agitation, on my part. In the general list I still stood fourth, but that failed to interest me, since I had reasoned things out to myself, and come to the conclusion that to try for first place was stupid--even “bad form:” that, in fact, it was better to pass neither very well nor very badly, as Woloda had done. This attitude I decided to maintain throughout the whole of my University career, notwithstanding that it was the first point on which my opinion had differed from that of my friend Dimitri.
Yet, to tell the truth, my thoughts were already turning towards a uniform, a “mortar-board,” and the possession of a drozhki of my own, a room of my own, and, above all, freedom of my own. And certainly the prospect had its charm.
|
{
"id": "2637"
}
|
13
|
I BECOME GROWN-UP
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When, on May 8th, I returned home from the final, the divinity, examination, I found my acquaintance, the foreman from Rozonoff’s, awaiting me. He had called once before to fit me for my gown, as well as for a tunic of glossy black cloth (the lapels of which were, on that occasion, only sketched in chalk), but to-day he had come to bring me the clothes in their finished state, with their gilt buttons wrapped in tissue paper.
Donning the garments, and finding them splendid (notwithstanding that St. Jerome assured me that the back of the tunic wrinkled badly), I went downstairs with a complacent smile which I was powerless to banish from my face, and sought Woloda, trying the while to affect unconsciousness of the admiring looks of the servants, who came darting out of the hall and corridor to gaze upon me with ravished eyes. Gabriel, the butler, overtook me in the salle, and, after congratulating me with much empressement, handed me, according to instructions from my father, four bank-notes, as well as informed me that Papa had also given orders that, from that day forth, the groom Kuzma, the phaeton, and the bay horse Krassavchik were to be entirely at my disposal. I was so overjoyed at this not altogether expected good-fortune that I could no longer feign indifference in Gabriel’s presence, but, flustered and panting, said the first thing which came into my head (“Krassavchik is a splendid trotter,” I think it was). Then, catching sight of the various heads protruding from the doors of the hall and corridor, I felt that I could bear no more, and set off running at full speed across the salle, dressed as I was in the new tunic, with its shining gilt buttons. Just as I burst into Woloda’s room, I heard behind me the voices of Dubkoff and Nechludoff, who had come to congratulate me, as well as to propose a dinner somewhere and the drinking of much champagne in honour of my matriculation. Dimitri informed me that, though he did not care for champagne, he would nevertheless join us that evening and drink my health, while Dubkoff remarked that I looked almost like a colonel, and Woloda omitted to congratulate me at all, merely saying in an acid way that he supposed we should now--i.e. in two days time--be off into the country. The truth was that Woloda, though pleased at my matriculation, did not altogether like my becoming as grown-up as himself. St. Jerome, who also joined us at this moment, said in a very pompous manner that his duties were now ended, and that, although he did not know whether they had been well done or ill, at least he had done his best, and must depart to-morrow to his Count’s. In replying to their various remarks I could feel, in spite of myself, a pleased, agreeable, faintly self-sufficient smile playing over my countenance, as well as could remark that that smile, communicated itself to those to whom I was speaking.
So here was I without a tutor, yet with my own private drozhki, my name printed on the list of students, a sword and belt of my own, and a chance of an occasional salute from officials! In short, I was grownup and, I suppose, happy.
Finally, we arranged to go out and dine at five o’clock, but since Woloda presently went off to Dubkoff’s, and Dimitri disappeared in his usual fashion (saying that there was something he MUST do before dinner), I was left with two whole hours still at my disposal. For a time I walked through the rooms of the house, and looked at myself in all the mirrors--firstly with the tunic buttoned, then with it unbuttoned, and lastly with only the top button fastened. Each time it looked splendid. Eventually, though anxious not to show any excess of delight, I found myself unable to refrain from crossing over to the coach-house and stables to gaze at Krassovchik, Kuzma, and the drozhki. Then I returned and once more began my tour of the rooms, where I looked at myself in all the mirrors as before, and counted my money over in my pocket--my face smiling happily the while. Yet not an hour had elapsed before I began to feel slightly ennuye--to feel a shade of regret that no one was present to see me in my splendid position. I began to long for life and movement, and so sent out orders for the drozhki to be got ready, since I had made up my mind to drive to the Kuznetski Bridge and make some purchases.
In this connection I recalled how, after matriculating, Woloda had gone and bought himself a lithograph of horses by Victor Adam and some pipes and tobacco: wherefore I felt that I too must do the same. Amid glances showered upon me from every side, and with the sunlight reflected from my buttons, cap-badge, and sword, I drove to the Kuznetski Bridge, where, halting at a Picture shop, I entered it with my eyes looking to every side. It was not precisely horses by Adam which I meant to buy, since I did not wish to be accused of too closely imitating Woloda; wherefore, out of shame for causing the obsequious shopmen such agitation as I appeared to do, I made a hasty selection, and pitched upon a water-colour of a woman’s head which I saw displayed in the window--price twenty roubles. Yet no sooner had I paid the twenty roubles over the counter than my heart smote me for having put two such beautifully dressed shop-assistants to so much trouble for such a trifle. Moreover, I fancied that they were regarding me with some disdain. Accordingly, in my desire to show them what manner of man I was, I turned my attention to a silver trifle which I saw displayed in a show-case, and, recognising that it was a porte-crayon (price eighteen roubles), requested that it should forthwith be wrapped in paper for me. Next, the money paid, and the information acquired that splendid pipes and tobacco were to be obtained in an adjacent emporium, I bowed to the two shopmen politely, and issued into the street with the picture under my arm. At the shop next door (which had painted on its sign-board a negro smoking a cigar) I bought (likewise out of a desire to imitate no one) some Turkish tobacco, a Stamboul hookah, and two pipes. On coming out of the shop, I had just entered the drozhki when I caught sight of Semenoff, who was walking hurriedly along the pavement with his head bent down. Vexed that he should not have recognised me, I called out to him pretty loudly, “Hold on a minute!” and, whipping up the drozhki, soon overtook him.
“How do you do?” I said.
“My respects to you,” he replied, but without stopping.
“Why are you not in your University uniform?” I next inquired.
At this he stopped short with a frown, and parted his white teeth as though the sun were hurting his eyes. The next moment, however, he threw a glance of studied indifference at my drozhki and uniform, and continued on his way.
From the Kuznetski Bridge, I drove to a confectioner’s in Tverskaia Street, and, much as I should have liked it to be supposed that it was the newspapers which most interested me, I had no choice but to begin falling upon tartlet after tartlet. In fact, for all my bashfulness before a gentleman who kept regarding me with some curiosity from behind a newspaper, I ate with great swiftness a tartlet of each of the eight different sorts which the confectioner kept.
On reaching home, I experienced a slight touch of stomach-ache, but paid no attention to it, and set to work to inspect my purchases. Of these, the picture so much displeased me that, instead of having it framed and hung in my room, as Woloda had done with his, I took pains to hide it behind a chest of drawers, where no one could see it. Likewise, though I also found the porte-crayon distasteful, I was able, as I laid it on my table, to comfort myself with the thought that it was at least a SILVER article--so much capital, as it were--and likely to be very useful to a student. As for the smoking things, I decided to put them into use at once, and try their capabilities.
Unsealing the four packages, and carefully filling the Stamboul pipe with some fine-cut, reddish-yellow Turkish tobacco, I applied a hot cinder to it, and, taking the mouthpiece between my first and second fingers (a position of the hand which greatly caught my fancy), started to inhale the smoke.
The smell of the tobacco seemed delightful, yet something burnt my mouth and caught me by the breath. Nevertheless, I hardened my heart, and continued to draw abundant fumes into my interior. Then I tried blowing rings and retaining the smoke. Soon the room became filled with blue vapours, while the pipe started to crackle and the tobacco to fly out in sparks. Presently, also, I began to feel a smarting in my mouth and a giddiness in my head. Accordingly, I was on the point of stopping and going to look at myself and my pipe in the mirror, when, to my surprise, I found myself staggering about. The room was whirling round and round, and as I peered into the mirror (which I reached only with some difficulty) I perceived that my face was as white as a sheet. Hardly had I thrown myself down upon a sofa when such nausea and faintness swept over me that, making up my mind that the pipe had proved my death, I expected every moment to expire. Terribly frightened, I tried to call out for some one to come and help me, and to send for the doctor.
However, this panic of mine did not last long, for I soon understood what the matter with me was, and remained lying on the sofa with a racking headache and my limbs relaxed as I stared dully at the stamp on the package of tobacco, the Pipe-tube coiled on the floor, and the odds and ends of tobacco and confectioner’s tartlets which were littered about. “Truly,” I thought to myself in my dejection and disillusionment, “I cannot be quite grown-up if I cannot smoke as other fellows do, and should be fated never to hold a chibouk between my first and second fingers, or to inhale and puff smoke through a flaxen moustache!”
When Dimitri called for me at five o’clock, he found me in this unpleasant predicament. After drinking a glass of water, however, I felt nearly recovered, and ready to go with him.
“So much for your trying to smoke!” said he as he gazed at the remnants of my debauch. “It is a silly thing to do, and waste of money as well. I long ago promised myself never to smoke. But come along; we have to call for Dubkoff.”
|
{
"id": "2637"
}
|
14
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HOW WOLODA AND DUBKOFF AMUSED THEMSELVES
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THE moment that Dimitri entered my room I perceived from his face, manner of walking, and the signs which, in him, denoted ill-humour--a blinking of the eyes and a grim holding of his head to one side, as though to straighten his collar--that he was in the coldly-correct frame of mind which was his when he felt dissatisfied with himself. It was a frame of mind, too, which always produced a chilling effect upon my feelings towards him. Of late I had begun to observe and appraise my friend’s character a little more, but our friendship had in no way suffered from that, since it was still too young and strong for me to be able to look upon Dimitri as anything but perfect, no matter in what light I regarded him. In him there were two personalities, both of which I thought beautiful. One, which I loved devotedly, was kind, mild, forgiving, gay, and conscious of being those various things. When he was in this frame of mind his whole exterior, the very tone of his voice, his every movement, appeared to say: “I am kind and good-natured, and rejoice in being so, and every one can see that I so rejoice.” The other of his two personalities--one which I had only just begun to apprehend, and before the majesty of which I bowed in spirit--was that of a man who was cold, stern to himself and to others, proud, religious to the point of fanaticism, and pedantically moral. At the present moment he was, as I say, this second personality.
With that frankness which constituted a necessary condition of our relations I told him, as soon as we entered the drozhki, how much it depressed and hurt me to see him, on this my fete-day in a frame of mind so irksome and disagreeable to me.
“What has upset you so?” I asked him. “Will you not tell me?”
“My dear Nicolas,” was his slow reply as he gave his head a nervous twitch to one side and blinked his eyes, “since I have given you my word never to conceal anything from you, you have no reason to suspect me of secretiveness. One cannot always be in exactly the same mood, and if I seem at all put out, that is all there is to say about it.”
“What a marvellously open, honourable character his is!” I thought to myself, and dropped the subject.
We drove the rest of the way to Dubkoff’s in silence. Dubkoff’s flat was an unusually fine one--or, at all events, so it seemed to me. Everywhere were rugs, pictures, gardenias, striped hangings, photographs, and curved settees, while on the walls hung guns, pistols, pouches, and the mounted heads of wild beasts. It was the appearance of this apartment which made me aware whom, it was that Woloda had imitated in the scheme of his own sitting-room. We found Dubkoff and Woloda engaged in cards, while seated also at the table, and watching the game with close attention, was a gentleman whom I did not know, but who appeared to be of no great importance, judging by the modesty of his attitude. Dubkoff himself was in a silk dressing-gown and soft slippers, while Woloda--seated opposite him on a divan--was in his shirtsleeves, as well as (to judge by his flushed face and the impatient, cursory glance which he gave us for a second as he looked up from the cards) much taken up with the game. On seeing me, he reddened still more.
“Well, it is for you to deal,” he remarked to Dubkoff. In an instant I divined that he did not altogether relish my becoming acquainted with the fact that he gambled. Yet his expression had nothing in it of confusion--only a look which seemed to me to say: “Yes, I play cards, and if you are surprised at that, it is only because you are so young. There is nothing wrong about it--it is a necessity at our age.” Yes, I at once divined and understood that.
Instead of dealing, however, Dubkoff rose and shook hands with us; after which he bade us both be seated, and then offered us pipes, which we declined.
“Here is our DIPLOMAT, then--the hero of the day!” he said to me, “Good Lord! how you look like a colonel!”
“H-m!” I muttered in reply, though once more feeling a complacent smile overspread my countenance.
I stood in that awe of Dubkoff which a sixteen-year-old boy naturally feels for a twenty-seven-year-old man of whom his elders say that he is a very clever young man who can dance well and speak French, and who, though secretly despising one’s youth, endeavours to conceal the fact. Yet, despite my respect for him, I somehow found it difficult and uncomfortable, throughout my acquaintanceship with him, to look him in the eyes, I have since remarked that there are three kinds of men whom I cannot face easily, namely those who are much better than myself, those who are much worse, and those between whom and myself there is a mutual determination not to mention some particular thing of which we are both aware. Dubkoff may have been a much better fellow than myself, or he may have been a much worse; but the point was that he lied very frequently without recognising the fact that I was aware of his doing so, yet had determined not to mention it.
“Let us play another round,” said Woloda, hunching one shoulder after the manner of Papa, and reshuffling the cards.
“How persistent you are!” said Dubkoff. “We can play all we want to afterwards. Well, one more round, then.”
During the play, I looked at their hands. Woloda’s hands were large and red, whilst in the crook of the thumb and the way in which the other fingers curved themselves round the cards as he held them they so exactly resembled Papa’s that now and then I could not help thinking that Woloda purposely held the cards thus so as to look the more like a grownup. Yet the next moment, looking at his face, I could see that he had not a thought in his mind beyond the game. Dubkoff’s hands, on the contrary, were small, puffy, and inclined to clench themselves, as well as extremely neat and small-fingered. They were just the kind of hands which generally display rings, and which are most to be seen on persons who are both inclined to use them and fond of objets de vertu.
Woloda must have lost, for the gentleman who was watching the play remarked that Vladimir Petrovitch had terribly bad luck, while Dubkoff reached for a note book, wrote something in it, and then, showing Woloda what he had written, said: “Is that right?”
“Yes.” said Woloda, glancing with feigned carelessness at the note book. “Now let us go.”
Woloda took Dubkoff, and I gave Dimitri a lift in my drozhki.
“What were they playing at?” I inquired of Dimitri.
“At piquet. It is a stupid game. In fact, all such games are stupid.”
“And were they playing for much?”
“No, not very much, but more than they ought to.”
“Do you ever play yourself?”
“No; I swore never to do so; but Dubkoff will play with any one he can get hold of.”
“He ought not to do that,” I remarked. “So Woloda does not play so well as he does?”
“Perhaps Dubkoff ought not to, as you say, yet there is nothing especially bad about it all. He likes playing, and plays well, but he is a good fellow all the same.”
“I had no idea of this,” I said.
“We must not think ill of him,” concluded Dimitri, “since he is a simply splendid fellow. I like him very much, and always shall like him, in spite of his weakness.”
For some reason or another the idea occurred to me that, just BECAUSE Dimitri stuck up so stoutly for Dubkoff, he neither liked nor respected him in reality, but was determined, out of stubbornness and a desire not to be accused of inconstancy, never to own to the fact. He was one of those people who love their friends their life long, not so much because those friends remain always dear to them, as because, having once--possibly mistakenly--liked a person, they look upon it as dishonourable to cease ever to do so.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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15
|
I AM FETED AT DINNER
|
Dubkoff and Woloda knew every one at the restaurant by name, and every one, from the waiters to the proprietor, paid them great respect. No time was lost in allotting us a private room, where a bottle of iced champagne-upon which I tried to look with as much indifference as I could--stood ready waiting for us, and where we were served with a most wonderful repast selected by Dubkoff from the French menu. The meal went off most gaily and agreeably, notwithstanding that Dubkoff, as usual, told us blood-curdling tales of doubtful veracity (among others, a tale of how his grandmother once shot dead three robbers who were attacking her--a recital at which I blushed, closed my eyes, and turned away from the narrator), and that Woloda reddened visibly whenever I opened my mouth to speak--which was the more uncalled for on his part, seeing that never once, so far as I can remember, did I say anything shameful. After we had been given champagne, every one congratulated me, and I drank “hands across” with Dimitri and Dubkoff, and wished them joy. Since, however, I did not know to whom the bottle of champagne belonged (it was explained to me later that it was common property), I considered that, in return, I ought to treat my friends out of the money which I had never ceased to finger in my pocket. Accordingly, I stealthily extracted a ten-rouble note, and, beckoning the waiter to my side, handed him the money, and told him in a whisper (yet not so softly but that every one could hear me, seeing that every one was staring at me in dead silence) to “bring, if you please, a half-bottle of champagne.” At this Woloda reddened again, and began to fidget so violently, and to gaze upon myself and every one else with such a distracted air, that I felt sure I had somehow put my foot in it. However, the half-bottle came, and we drank it with great gusto. After that, things went on merrily. Dubkoff continued his unending fairy tales, while Woloda also told funny stories--and told them well, too--in a way I should never have credited him: so that our laughter rang long and loud. Their best efforts lay in imitation, and in variants of a certain well-known saw. “Have you ever been abroad?” one would say to the other, for instance. “No,” the one interrogated would reply, “but my brother plays the fiddle.” Such perfection had the pair attained in this species of comic absurdity that they could answer any question by its means, while they would also endeavour to unite two absolutely unconnected matters without a previous question having been asked at all, yet say everything with a perfectly serious face and produce a most comic effect. I too began to try to be funny, but as soon as ever I spoke they either looked at me askance or did not look at me until I had finished: so that my anecdotes fell flat. Yet, though Dubkoff always remarked, “Our DIPLOMAT is lying, brother,” I felt so exhilarated with the champagne and the company of my elders that the remark scarcely touched me. Only Dimitri, though he drank level with the rest of us, continued in the same severe, serious frame of mind--a fact which put a certain check upon the general hilarity.
“Now, look here, gentlemen,” said Dubkoff at last. “After dinner we ought to take the DIPLOMAT in hand. How would it be for him to go with us to see Auntie? There we could put him through his paces.”
“Ah, but Nechludoff will not go there,” objected Woloda.
“O unbearable, insupportable man of quiet habits that you are!” cried Dubkoff, turning to Dimitri. “Yet come with us, and you shall see what an excellent lady my dear Auntie is.”
“I will neither go myself nor let him go,” replied Dimitri.
“Let whom go? The DIPLOMAT? Why, you yourself saw how he brightened up at the very mention of Auntie.”
“It is not so much that I WILL NOT LET HIM go,” continued Dimitri, rising and beginning to pace the room without looking at me, “as that I neither wish him nor advise him to go. He is not a child now, and if he must go he can go alone--without you. Surely you are ashamed of this, Dubkoff? --ashamed of always wanting others to do all the wrong things that you yourself do?”
“But what is there so very wrong in my inviting you all to come and take a cup of tea with my Aunt?” said Dubkoff, with a wink at Woloda. “If you don’t like us going, it is your affair; yet we are going all the same. Are you coming, Woloda?”
“Yes, yes,” assented Woloda. “We can go there, and then return to my rooms and continue our piquet.”
“Do you want to go with them or not?” said Dimitri, approaching me.
“No,” I replied, at the same time making room for him to sit down beside me on the divan. “I did not wish to go in any case, and since you advise me not to, nothing on earth will make me go now. Yet,” I added a moment later, “I cannot honestly say that I have NO desire to go. All I say is that I am glad I am not going.”
“That is right,” he said. “Live your own life, and do not dance to any one’s piping. That is the better way.”
This little tiff not only failed to mar our hilarity, but even increased it. Dimitri suddenly reverted to the kindly mood which I loved best--so great (as I afterwards remarked on more than one occasion) was the influence which the consciousness of having done a good deed exercised upon him. At the present moment the source of his satisfaction was the fact that he had stopped my expedition to “Auntie’s.” He grew extraordinarily gay, called for another bottle of champagne (which was against his rules), invited some one who was a perfect stranger into our room, plied him with wine, sang “Gaudeamus igitur,” requested every one to join him in the chorus, and proposed that we should and rink at the Sokolniki. [Mews.]
“Let us enjoy ourselves to-night,” he said with a laugh. “It is in honour of his matriculation that you now see me getting drunk for the first time in my life.”
Yet somehow this merriment sat ill upon him. He was like some good-natured father or tutor who is pleased with his young charges, and lets himself go for their amusement, yet at the same time tries to show them that one can enjoy oneself decently and in an honourable manner. However, his unexpected gaiety had an infectious influence upon myself and my companions, and the more so because each of us had now drunk about half a bottle of champagne.
It was in this pleasing frame of mind that I went out into the main salon to smoke a cigarette which Dubkoff had given me. In rising I noticed that my head seemed to swim a little, and that my legs and arms retained their natural positions only when I bent my thoughts determinedly upon them. At other moments my legs would deviate from the straight line, and my arms describe strange gestures. I concentrated my whole attention upon the members in question, forced my hands first to raise themselves and button my tunic, and then to smooth my hair (though they ruffled my locks in doing so), and lastly commanded my legs to march me to the door--a function which they duly performed, though at one time with too much reluctance, and at another with too much ABANDON (the left leg, in particular, coming to a halt every moment on tiptoe). Some one called out to me, “Where are you going to? They will bring you a cigar-light directly,” but I guessed the voice to be Woloda’s, and, feeling satisfied, somehow, that I had succeeded in divining the fact, merely smiled airily in reply, and continued on my way.
|
{
"id": "2637"
}
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16
|
THE QUARREL
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In the main salon I perceived sitting at a small table a short, squat gentleman of the professional type. He had a red moustache, and was engaged in eating something or another, while by his side sat a tall, clean-shaven individual with whom he was carrying on a conversation in French. Somehow the aspect of these two persons displeased me; yet I decided, for all that, to light my cigarette at the candelabrum which was standing before them. Looking from side to side, to avoid meeting their gaze, I approached the table, and applied my cigarette to the flame. When it was fairly alight, I involuntarily threw a glance at the gentleman who was eating, and found his grey eyes fixed upon me with an expression of intense displeasure. Just as I was turning away his red moustache moved a little, and he said in French: “I do not like people to smoke when I am dining, my good sir.”
I murmured something inaudible.
“No, I do not like it at all,” he went on sternly, and with a glance at his clean-shaven companion, as though inviting him to admire the way in which he was about to deal with me. “I do not like it, my good sir, nor do I like people who have the impudence to puff their smoke up one’s very nose.”
By this time I had gathered that it was myself he was scolding, and at first felt as though I had been altogether in the wrong.
“I did not mean to inconvenience you,” I said.
“Well, if you did not suppose you were being impertinent, at least I did! You are a cad, young sir!” he shouted in reply.
“But what right have you to shout at me like that?” I exclaimed, feeling that it was now HE that was insulting ME, and growing angry accordingly.
“This much right,” he replied, “that I never allow myself to be overlooked by any one, and that I always teach young fellows like yourself their manners. What is your name, young sir, and where do you live?”
At this I felt so hurt that my teeth chattered, and I felt as though I were choking. Yet all the while I was conscious of being in the wrong, and so, instead of offering any further rudeness to the offended one, humbly told him my name and address.
“And MY name, young sir,” he returned, “is Kolpikoff, and I will trouble you to be more polite to me in future. --However, You will hear from me again” (“vous aurez de mes nouvelles”--the conversation had been carried on wholly in French), was his concluding remark.
To this I replied, “I shall be delighted,” with an infusion of as much hauteur as I could muster into my tone. Then, turning on my heel, I returned with my cigarette--which had meanwhile gone out--to our own room.
I said nothing, either to my brother or my friends, about what had happened (and the more so because they were at that moment engaged in a dispute of their own), but sat down in a corner to think over the strange affair. The words, “You are a cad, young sir,” vexed me more and more the longer that they sounded in my ears. My tipsiness was gone now, and, in considering my conduct during the dispute, the uncomfortable thought came over me that I had behaved like a coward.
“Yet what right had he to attack me?” I reflected. “Why did he not simply intimate to me that I was annoying him? After all, it may have been he that was in the wrong. Why, too, when he called me a young cad, did I not say to him, ‘A cad, my good sir, is one who takes offence’? Or why did I not simply tell him to hold his tongue? That would have been the better course. Or why did I not challenge him to a duel? No, I did none of those things, but swallowed his insults like a wretched coward.”
Still the words, “You are a cad, young sir,” kept sounding in my ears with maddening iteration. “I cannot leave things as they are,” I at length decided as I rose to my feet with the fixed intention of returning to the gentleman and saying something outrageous to him--perhaps, also, of breaking the candelabrum over his head if occasion offered. Yet, though I considered the advisability of this last measure with some pleasure, it was not without a good deal of trepidation that I re-entered the main salon. As luck would have it, M. Kolpikoff was no longer there, but only a waiter engaged in clearing the table. For a moment I felt like telling the waiter the whole story, and explaining to him my innocence in the matter, but for some reason or another I thought better of it, and once more returned, in the same hazy condition of mind, to our own room.
“What has become of our DIPLOMAT?” Dubkoff was just saying. “Upon him now hang the fortunes of Europe.”
“Oh, leave me alone,” I said, turning moodily away. Then, as I paced the room, something made me begin to think that Dubkoff was not altogether a good fellow. “There is nothing very much to admire in his eternal jokes and his nickname of ‘DIPLOMAT,’” I reflected. “All he thinks about is to win money from Woloda and to go and see his ‘Auntie.’ There is nothing very nice in all that. Besides, everything he says has a touch of blackguardism in it, and he is forever trying to make people laugh. In my opinion he is simply stupid when he is not absolutely a brute.” I spent about five minutes in these reflections, and felt my enmity towards Dubkoff continually increasing. For his part, he took no notice of me, and that angered me the more. I actually felt vexed with Woloda and Dimitri because they went on talking to him.
“I tell you what, gentlemen: the DIPLOMAT ought to be christened,” said Dubkoff suddenly, with a glance and a smile which seemed to me derisive, and even treacherous. “Yet, O Lord, what a poor specimen he is!”
“You yourself ought to be christened, and you yourself are a sorry specimen!” I retorted with an evil smile, and actually forgetting to address him as “thou.” [In Russian as in French, the second person singular is the form of speech used between intimate friends.]
This reply evidently surprised Dubkoff, but he turned away good-humouredly, and went on talking to Woloda and Dimitri. I tried to edge myself into the conversation, but, since I felt that I could not keep it up, I soon returned to my corner, and remained there until we left.
When the bill had been paid and wraps were being put on, Dubkoff turned to Dimitri and said: “Whither are Orestes and Pedalion going now? Home, I suppose, to talk about love. Well, let US go and see my dear Auntie. That will be far more entertaining than your sour company.”
“How dare you speak like that, and laugh at us?” I burst out as I approached him with clenched fists. “How dare you laugh at feelings which you do not understand? I will not have you do it! Hold your tongue!” At this point I had to hold my own, for I did not know what to say next, and was, moreover, out of breath with excitement. At first Dubkoff was taken aback, but presently he tried to laugh it off, and to take it as a joke. Finally I was surprised to see him look crestfallen, and lower his eyes.
“I NEVER laugh at you or your feelings. It is merely my way of speaking,” he said evasively.
“Indeed?” I cried; yet the next moment I felt ashamed of myself and sorry for him, since his flushed, downcast face had in it no other expression than one of genuine pain.
“What is the matter with you?” said Woloda and Dimitri simultaneously. “No one was trying to insult you.”
“Yes, he DID try to insult me!” I replied.
“What an extraordinary fellow your brother is!” said Dubkoff to Woloda. At that moment he was passing out of the door, and could not have heard what I said. Possibly I should have flung myself after him and offered him further insult, had it not been that just at that moment the waiter who had witnessed my encounter with Kolpikoff handed me my greatcoat, and I at once quietened down--merely making such a pretence of having had a difference with Dimitri as was necessary to make my sudden appeasement appear nothing extraordinary. Next day, when I met Dubkoff at Woloda’s, the quarrel was not raked up, yet he and I still addressed each other as “you,” and found it harder than ever to look one another in the face.
The remembrance of my scene with Kolpikoff--who, by the way, never sent me “de ses nouvelles,” either the following day or any day afterwards--remained for years a keen and unpleasant memory. Even so much as five years after it had happened I would begin fidgeting and muttering to myself whenever I remembered the unavenged insult, and was fain to comfort myself with the satisfaction of recollecting the sort of young fellow I had shown myself to be in my subsequent affair with Dubkoff. In fact, it was only later still that I began to regard the matter in another light, and both to recall with comic appreciation my passage of arms with Kolpikoff, and to regret the undeserved affront which I had offered my good friend Dubkoff.
When, at a later hour on the evening of the dinner, I told Dimitri of my affair with Kolpikoff, whose exterior I described in detail, he was astounded.
“That is the very man!” he cried. “Don’t you know that this precious Kolpikoff is a known scamp and sharper, as well as, above all things, a coward, and that he was expelled from his regiment by his brother officers because, having had his face slapped, he would not fight? But how came you to let him get away?” he added, with a kindly smile and glance. “Surely he could not have said more to you than he did when he called you a cad?”
“No,” I admitted with a blush.
“Well, it was not right, but there is no great harm done,” said Dimitri consolingly.
Long afterwards, when thinking the matter over at leisure, I suddenly came to the conclusion that it was quite possible that Kolpikoff took the opportunity of vicariously wiping off upon me the slap in the face which he had once received, just as I myself took the opportunity of vicariously wiping off upon the innocent Dubkoff the epithet “cad” which Kolpikoff had just applied to me.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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17
|
I GET READY TO PAY SOME CALLS
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On awaking next morning my first thoughts were of the affair with Kolpikoff. Once again I muttered to myself and stamped about the room, but there was no help for it. To-day was the last day that I was to spend in Moscow, and it was to be spent, by Papa’s orders, in my paying a round of calls which he had written out for me on a piece of paper--his first solicitude on our account being not so much for our morals or our education as for our due observance of the convenances. On the piece of paper was written in his swift, broken hand-writing: “(1) Prince Ivan Ivanovitch WITHOUT FAIL; (2) the Iwins WITHOUT FAIL; (3) Prince Michael; (4) the Princess Nechludoff and Madame Valakhina if you wish.” Of course I was also to call upon my guardian, upon the rector, and upon the professors.
These last-mentioned calls, however, Dimitri advised me not to pay: saying that it was not only unnecessary to do so, but not the thing. However, there were the other visits to be got through. It was the first two on the list--those marked as to be paid “WITHOUT FAIL”--that most alarmed me. Prince Ivan Ivanovitch was a commander-in-chief, as well as old, wealthy, and a bachelor. Consequently, I foresaw that vis-a-vis conversation between him and myself--myself a sixteen-year-old student! --was not likely to be interesting. As for the Iwins, they too were rich--the father being a departmental official of high rank who had only on one occasion called at our house during my grandmother’s time. Since her death, I had remarked that the younger Iwin had fought shy of us, and seemed to give himself airs. The elder of the pair, I had heard, had now finished his course in jurisprudence, and gone to hold a post in St. Petersburg, while his brother Sergius (the former object of my worship) was also in St. Petersburg, as a great fat cadet in the Corps of Pages.
When I was a young man, not only did I dislike intercourse with people who thought themselves above me, but such intercourse was, for me, an unbearable torture, owing partly to my constant dread of being snubbed, and partly to my straining every faculty of my intellect to prove to such people my independence. Yet, even if I failed to fulfil the latter part of my father’s instructions, I felt that I must carry out the former. I paced my room and eyed my clothes ready disposed on chairs--the tunic, the sword, and the cap. Just as I was about to set forth, old Grap called to congratulate me, bringing with him Ilinka. Grap pere was a Russianised German and an intolerably effusive, sycophantic old man who was more often than not tipsy. As a rule, he visited us only when he wanted to ask for something, and although Papa sometimes entertained him in his study, old Grap never came to dinner with us. With his subserviency and begging propensities went such a faculty of good-humour and a power of making himself at home that every one looked upon his attachment to us as a great honour. For my part, however, I never liked him, and felt ashamed when he was speaking.
I was much put out by the arrival of these visitors, and made no effort to conceal the fact. Upon Ilinka I had been so used to look down, and he so used to recognise my right to do so, that it displeased me to think that he was now as much a matriculated student as myself. In some way he appeared to me to have made a POINT of attaining that equality. I greeted the pair coldly, and, without offering them any refreshment (since it went against the grain to do so, and I thought they could ask for anything, if they wanted it, without my first inviting them to state their requirements), gave orders for the drozhki to be got ready. Ilinka was a good-natured, extremely moral, and far from stupid young fellow; yet, for all that, what people call a person of moods. That is to say, for no apparent reason he was for ever in some PRONOUNCED frame of mind--now lachrymose, now frivolous, now touchy on the very smallest point. At the present moment he appeared to be in the last-named mood. He kept looking from his father to myself without speaking, except when directly addressed, at which times he smiled the self-deprecatory, forced smile under which he was accustomed to conceal his feelings, and more especially that feeling of shame for his father which he must have experienced in our house.
“So, Nicolas Petrovitch,” the old man said to me, following me everywhere about the room as I went through the operation of dressing, while all the while his fat fingers kept turning over and over a silver snuff-box with which my grandmother had once presented me, “as soon as ever I heard from my son that you had passed your examinations so well (though of course your abilities are well-known to everyone), I at once came to congratulate you, my dear boy. Why, I have carried you on my shoulders before now, and God knows that I love you as though you were my own son. My Ilinka too has always been fond of you, and feels quite at home with you.”
Meanwhile the said Ilinka remained sitting silently by the window, apparently absorbed in contemplation of my three-cornered cap, and every now and then angrily muttering something in an undertone.
“Now, I also wanted to ask you, Nicolas Petrovitch.” His father went on, “whether my son did well in the examinations? He tells me that he is going to be in the same faculty as yourself, and that therefore you will be able to keep an eye on him, and advise him, and so on.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose he passed well,” I replied, with a glance at Ilinka, who, conscious of my gaze, reddened violently and ceased to move his lips about. “And might he spend the day with you?” was the father’s next request, which he made with a deprecatory smile, as though he stood in actual awe of me, yet always keeping so close to me, wherever I moved, that the fumes of the drink and tobacco in which he had been indulging were constantly perceptible to my nostrils. I felt greatly vexed at his placing me in such a false position towards his son, as well as at his distracting my attention from what was, to me, a highly important operation--namely, the operation of dressing; while, over and above all, I was annoyed by the smell of liquor with which he followed me about. Accordingly, I said very coldly that I could not have the pleasure of Ilinka’s company that day, since I should be out.
“Ah! I suppose you are going to see your sister?” put in Ilinka with a smile, but without looking at me. “Well, I too have business to attend to.” At this I felt even more put out, as well as pricked with compunction; so, to soften my refusal a little, I hastened to say that the reason why I should not be at home that day was that I had to call upon the PRINCE Ivan Ivanovitch, the PRINCESS Kornakoff, and the Monsieur Iwin who held such an influential post, as well as, probably, to dine with the PRINCESS Nechludoff (for I thought that, on learning what important folk I was in the habit of mixing with, the Graps would no longer think it worth while to pretend to me). However, just as they were leaving, I invited Ilinka to come and see me another day; but he only murmured something unintelligible, and it was plain that he meant never to set foot in the house again.
When they had departed, I set off on my round of calls. Woloda, whom I had asked that morning to come with me, in order that I might not feel quite so shy as when altogether alone, had declined on the ground that for two brothers to be seen driving in one drozhki would appear so horribly “proper.”
|
{
"id": "2637"
}
|
18
|
THE VALAKHIN FAMILY
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Accordingly I set off alone. My first call on the route lay at the Valakhin mansion. It was now three years since I had seen Sonetchka, and my love for her had long become a thing of the past, yet there still lingered in my heart a sort of clear, touching recollection of our bygone childish affection. At intervals, also, during those three years, I had found myself recalling her memory with such force and vividness that I had actually shed tears, and imagined myself to be in love with her again, but those occasions had not lasted more than a few minutes at a time, and had been long in recurring.
I knew that Sonetchka and her mother had been abroad--that, in fact, they had been so for the last two years. Also, I had heard that they had been in a carriage accident, and that Sonetchka’s face had been so badly cut with the broken glass that her beauty was marred. As I drove to their house, I kept recalling the old Sonetchka to my mind, and wondering what she would look like when I met her. Somehow I imagined that, after her two years’ sojourn abroad, she would look very tall, with a beautiful waist, and, though sedate and imposing, extremely attractive. Somehow, also, my imagination refused to picture her with her face disfigured with scars, but, on the contrary, since I had read somewhere of a lover who remained true to his adored one in spite of her disfigurement with smallpox, strove to imagine that I was in love with Sonetchka, for the purpose of priding myself on holding to my troth in spite of her scars--Yet, as a matter of fact, I was not really in love with her during that drive, but having once stirred up in myself old MEMORIES of love, felt PREPARED to fall into that condition, and the more so because, of late, my conscience had often been pricking me for having discarded so many of my old flames.
The Valakhins lived in a neat little wooden mansion approached by a courtyard. I gained admittance by ringing a bell (then a rarity in Moscow), and was received by a mincing, smartly-attired page. He either could not or made no attempt to inform me whether there was any one at home, but, leaving me alone in the dark hall, ran off down a still darker corridor. For a long time I waited in solitude in this gloomy place, out of which, in addition to the front door and the corridor, there only opened a door which at the moment was closed. Rather surprised at the dismal appearance of the house, I came to the conclusion that the reason was that its inmates were still abroad. After five minutes, however, the door leading into the salon was opened by the page boy, who then conducted me into a neat, but not richly furnished, drawing-room, where presently I was joined by Sonetchka.
She was now seventeen years old, and very small and thin, as well as of an unhealthy pallor of face. No scars at all were visible, however, and the beautiful, prominent eyes and bright, cheerful smile were the same as I had known and loved in my childhood. I had not expected her to look at all like this, and therefore could not at once lavish upon her the sentiment which I had been preparing on the way. She gave me her hand in the English fashion (which was then as much a novelty as a door-bell), and, bestowing upon mine a frank squeeze, sat down on the sofa by my side.
“Ah! how glad I am to see you, my dear Nicolas!” she said as she looked me in the face with an expression of pleasure so sincere that in the words “my dear Nicolas” I caught the purely friendly rather than the patronising note. To my surprise she seemed to me simpler, kinder, and more sisterly after her foreign tour than she had been before it. True, I could now see that she had two small scars between her nose and temples, but her wonderful eyes and smile fitted in exactly with my recollections, and shone as of old.
“But how greatly you have changed!” she went on. “You are quite grown-up now. And I-I-well, what do you think of me?”
“I should never have known you,” I replied, despite the fact that at the moment I was thinking that I should have known her anywhere and always.
“Why? Am I grown so ugly?” she inquired with a movement of her head.
“Oh, no, decidedly not!” I hastened to reply. “But you have grown taller and older. As for being uglier, why, you are even-- “Yes, yes; never mind. Do you remember our dances and games, and St. Jerome, and Madame Dorat?” (As a matter of fact, I could not recollect any Madame Dorat, but saw that Sonetchka was being led away by the joy of her childish recollections, and mixing them up a little). “Ah! what a lovely time it was!” she went on--and once more there shone before me the same eyes and smile as I had always carried in my memory. While she had been speaking, I had been thinking over my position at the present moment, and had come to the conclusion that I was in love with her. The instant, however, that I arrived at that result my careless, happy mood vanished, a mist seemed to arise before me which concealed even her eyes and smile, and, blushing hotly, I became tongue-tied and ill-at-ease.
“But times are different now,” she went on with a sigh and a little lifting of her eyebrows. “Everything seems worse than it used to be, and ourselves too. Is it not so, Nicolas?”
I could return her no answer, but sat silently looking at her.
“Where are those Iwins and Kornakoffs now? Do you remember them?” she continued, looking, I think, with some curiosity at my blushing, downcast countenance. “What splendid times we used to have!”
Still I could not answer her.
The next moment, I was relieved from this awkward position by the entry of old Madame Valakhin into the room. Rising, I bowed, and straightway recovered my faculty of speech. On the other hand, an extraordinary change now took place in Sonetchka. All her gaiety and bonhomie disappeared, her smile became quite a different one, and, except for the point of her shortness of stature, she became just the lady from abroad whom I had expected to find in her. Yet for this change there was no apparent reason, since her mother smiled every whit as pleasantly, and expressed in her every movement just the same benignity, as of old. Seating herself in her arm-chair, the old lady signed to me to come and sit beside her; after which she said something to her daughter in English, and Sonetchka left the room--a fact which still further helped to relieve me. Madame then inquired after my father and brother, and passed on to speak of her great bereavement--the loss of her husband. Presently, however, she seemed to become sensible of the fact that I was not helping much in the conversation, for she gave me a look as much as to say: “If, now, my dear boy, you were to get up, to take your leave, and to depart, it would be well.” But a curious circumstance had overtaken me. While she had been speaking of her bereavement, I had recalled to myself, not only the fact that I was in love, but the probability that the mother knew of it: whereupon such a fit of bashfulness had come upon me that I felt powerless to put any member of my body to its legitimate use. I knew that if I were to rise and walk I should have to think where to plant each foot, what to do with my head, what with my hands, and so on. In a word, I foresaw that I should be very much as I had been on the night when I partook too freely of champagne, and therefore, since I felt uncertain of being able to manage myself if I DID rise, I ended by feeling UNABLE to rise. Meanwhile, I should say, Sonetchka had returned to the room with her work, and seated herself in a far corner--a corner whence, as I was nevertheless sensible, she could observe me. Madame must have felt some surprise as she gazed at my crimson face and noted my complete immobility, but I decided that it was better to continue sitting in that absurd position than to risk something unpleasant by getting up and walking. Thus I sat on and on, in the hope that some unforeseen chance would deliver me from my predicament. That unforeseen chance at length presented itself in the person of an unforeseen young man, who entered the room with an air of being one of the household, and bowed to me politely as he did so: whereupon Madame rose, excused herself to me for having to speak with her “homme d’affaires,” and finally gave me a glance which said: “Well, if you DO mean to go on sitting there for ever, at least I can’t drive you away.” Accordingly, with a great effort I also rose, but, finding it impossible to do any leave-taking, moved away towards the door, followed by the pitying glances of mother and daughter. All at once I stumbled over a chair, although it was lying quite out of my route: the reason for my stumbling being that my whole attention was centred upon not tripping over the carpet. Driving through the fresh air, however--where at first I muttered and fidgeted about so much that Kuzma, my coachman, asked me what was the matter--I soon found this feeling pass away, and began to meditate quietly concerning my love for Sonetchka and her relations with her mother, which had appeared to me rather strange. When, afterwards, I told my father that mother and daughter had not seemed on the best of terms with one another, he said: “Yes, Madame leads the poor girl an awful life with her meanness. Yet,” added my father with a greater display of feeling than a man might naturally conceive for a mere relative, “she used to be such an original, dear, charming woman! I cannot think what has made her change so much. By the way, you didn’t notice a secretary fellow about, did you? Fancy a Russian lady having an affaire with a secretary!”
“Yes, I saw him,” I replied.
“And was he at least good-looking?”
“No, not at all.”
“It is extraordinary!” concluded Papa, with a cough and an irritable hoist of his shoulder.
“Well, I am in love!” was my secret thought to myself as I drove along in my drozhki.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
|
19
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THE KORNAKOFFS
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MY second call on the route lay at the Kornakoffs’, who lived on the first floor of a large mansion facing the Arbat. The staircase of the building looked extremely neat and orderly, yet in no way luxurious--being lined only with drugget pinned down with highly-polished brass rods. Nowhere were there any flowers or mirrors to be seen. The salon, too, with its polished floor, which I traversed on my way to the drawing-room, was decorated in the same cold, severe, unostentatious style. Everything in it looked bright and solid, but not new, and pictures, flower-stands, and articles of bric-a-brac were wholly absent. In the drawing-room I found some of the young princesses seated, but seated with the sort of correct, “company” air about them which gave one the impression that they sat like that only when guests were expected.
“Mamma will be here presently,” the eldest of them said to me as she seated herself by my side. For the next quarter of an hour, this young lady entertained me with such an easy flow of small-talk that the conversation never flagged a moment. Yet somehow she made so patent the fact that she was just entertaining me that I felt not altogether pleased. Amongst other things, she told me that their brother Stephen (whom they called Etienne, and who had been two years at the College of Cadets) had now received his commission. Whenever she spoke of him, and more particularly when she told me that he had flouted his mother’s wishes by entering the Hussars, she assumed a nervous air, and immediately her sisters, sitting there in silence, also assumed a nervous air. When, again, she spoke of my grandmother’s death, she assumed a MOURNFUL air, and immediately the others all did the same. Finally, when she recalled how I had once struck St. Jerome and been expelled from the room, she laughed and showed her bad teeth, and immediately all the other princesses laughed and showed their bad teeth too.
Next, the Princess-Mother herself entered--a little dried-up woman, with a wandering glance and a habit of always looking at somebody else when she was addressing one. Taking my hand, she raised her own to my lips for me to kiss it--which otherwise, not supposing it to be necessary, I should not have done.
“How pleased I am to see you!” she said with her usual clearness of articulation as she gazed at her daughters. “And how like your mother you look! Does he not, Lise?”
Lise assented, though I knew for a fact that I did not resemble my mother in the least.
“And what a grown-up you have become! My Etienne, you will remember, is your second cousin. No, not second cousin--what is it, Lise? My mother was Barbara Dimitrievna, daughter of Dimitri Nicolaevitch, and your grandmother was Natalia Nicolaevna.”
“Then he is our THIRD cousin, Mamma,” said the eldest girl.
“Oh, how you always confuse me!” was her mother’s angry reply. “Not third cousin, but COUSIN GERMAN--that is your relationship to Etienne. He is an officer now. Did you know it? It is not well that he should have his own way too much. You young men need keeping in hand, or--! Well, you are not vexed because your old aunt tells you the plain truth? I always kept Etienne strictly in hand, for I found it necessary to do so.”
“Yes, that is how our relationship stands,” she went on. “Prince Ivan Ivanovitch is my uncle, and your late mother’s uncle also. Consequently I must have been your mother’s first cousin--no, second cousin. Yes, that is it. Tell me, have you been to call on Prince Ivan yet?”
I said no, but that I was just going to.
“Ah, is it possible?” she cried. “Why, you ought to have paid him the first call of all! Surely you know that he stands to you in the position of a father? He has no children of his own, and his only heirs are yourself and my children. You ought to pay him all possible deference, both because of his age, and because of his position in the world, and because of everything else. I know that you young fellows of the present day think nothing of relationships and are not fond of old men, yet do you listen to me, your old aunt, for I am fond of you, and was fond of your mother, and had a great--a very great-liking and respect for your grandmother. You must not fail to call upon him on any account.”
I said that I would certainly go, and since my present call seemed to me to have lasted long enough, I rose, and was about to depart, but she restrained me.
“No, wait a minute,” she cried. “Where is your father, Lise? Go and tell him to come here. He will be so glad to see you,” she added, turning to me.
Two minutes later Prince Michael entered. He was a short, thick-set gentleman, very slovenly dressed and ill-shaven, yet wearing such an air of indifference that he looked almost a fool. He was not in the least glad to see me--at all events he did not intimate that he was; but the Princess (who appeared to stand in considerable awe of him) hastened to say: “Is not Woldemar here” (she seemed to have forgotten my name) “exactly like his mother?” and she gave her husband a glance which forced him to guess what she wanted. Accordingly he approached me with his usual passionless, half-discontented expression, and held out to me an unshaven cheek to kiss.
“Why, you are not dressed yet, though you have to go out soon!” was the Princess’s next remark to him in the angry tone which she habitually employed in conversation with her domestics. “It will only mean your offending some one again, and trying to set people against you.”
“In a moment, in a moment, mother,” said Prince Michael, and departed. I also made my bows and departed.
This was the first time I had heard of our being related to Prince Ivan Ivanovitch, and the news struck me unpleasantly.
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{
"id": "2637"
}
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