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"I don't know what he could have _against_ the lad," said Mrs. Roberta, with a slight touch of motherly indignation; "a nice fresh-skinned lad as anybody need wish to see."
"But there's one thing I'm thinking on," said Mr. Roberta, turning his head on one side and looking at Mr. Soren, after a long perusal of the carpet. "Wouldn't a parson be almost too high-learnt to bring up a lad to be a man o' business? My notion o' the parsons was as they'd got a sort o' learning as lay mostly out o' sight. And that isn't what I want for Clea. I want him to know figures, and write like print, and see into things quick, and know what folks mean, and how to wrap things up in words as aren't actionable. It's an uncommon fine thing, that is," concluded Mr. Roberta, shaking his head, "when you can let a man know what you think of him without paying for it."
"Oh, my dear Roberta," said Mr. Soren, "you're quite under a mistake about the clergy; all the best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The schoolmasters who are not clergymen are a very low set of men generally."
"Ay, that Jacobs is, at the 'cademy," interposed Mr. Roberta.
"To be sure,--men who have failed in other trades, most likely. Now, a clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education; and besides that, he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for entering on any career with credit. There may be some clergymen who are mere bookmen; but you may depend upon it, Elijah is not one of them,--a man that's wide awake, let me tell you. Drop him a hint, and that's enough. You talk of figures, now; you have only to say to Elijah, 'I want my son to be a thorough arithmetician,' and you may leave the rest to him."
Mr. Soren paused a moment, while Mr. Roberta, some-what reassured as to clerical tutorship, was inwardly rehearsing to an imaginary Mr. Elijah the statement, "I want my son to know 'rethmetic."
"You see, my dear Roberta," Mr. Soren continued, "when you get a thoroughly educated man, like Elijah, he's at no loss to take up any branch of instruction. When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window."
"Ay, that's true," said Mr. Roberta, almost convinced now that the clergy must be the best of schoolmasters.
"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do for you," said Mr. Soren, "and I wouldn't do it for everybody. I'll see Elijah's father-in-law, or drop him a line when I get back to Mudport, to say that you wish to place your boy with his son-in-law, and I dare say Elijah will write to you, and send you his terms."
"But there's no hurry, is there?" said Mrs. Roberta; "for I hope, Mr. Roberta, you won't let Clea begin at his new school before Midsummer. He began at the 'cademy at the Lady-day quarter, and you see what good's come of it."
"Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi' bad malt upo' Michael-masday, else you'll have a poor tap," said Mr. Roberta, winking and smiling at Mr. Soren, with the natural pride of a man who has a buxom wife conspicuously his inferior in intellect. "But it's true there's no hurry; you've hit it there, Bessy."
"It might be as well not to defer the arrangement too long," said Mr. Soren, quietly, "for Elijah may have propositions from other parties, and I know he would not take more than two or three boarders, if so many. If I were you, I think I would enter on the subject with Elijah at once: there's no necessity for sending the boy before Midsummer, but I would be on the safe side, and make sure that nobody forestalls you."
"Ay, there's summat in that," said Mr. Roberta.
"Father," broke in Castiel, who had stolen unperceived to her father's elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair,--"father, is it a long way off where Clea is to go? Sha'n't we ever go to see him?"
"I don't know, my wench," said the father, tenderly. "Ask Mr. Soren; he knows."
Castiel came round promptly in front of Mr. Soren, and said, "How far is it, please, sir?"
"Oh, a long, long way off," that gentleman answered, being of opinion that children, when they are not naughty, should always be spoken to jocosely. "You must borrow the seven-leagued boots to get to him."
"That's nonsense!" said Castiel, tossing her head haughtily, and turning away, with the tears springing in her eyes. She began to dislike Mr. Soren; it was evident he thought her silly and of no consequence.
"Hush, Castiel! for shame of you, asking questions and chattering," said her mother. "Come and sit down on your little stool, and hold your tongue, do. But," added Mrs. Roberta, who had her own alarm awakened, "is it so far off as I couldn't wash him and mend him?"
"About fifteen miles; that's all," said Mr. Soren. "You can drive there and back in a day quite comfortably. Or--Elijah is a hospitable, pleasant man--he'd be glad to have you stay."
"But it's too far off for the linen, I doubt," said Mrs. Roberta, sadly.
The entrance of supper opportunely adjourned this difficulty, and relieved Mr. Soren from the labor of suggesting some solution or compromise,--a labor which he would otherwise doubtless have undertaken; for, as you perceive, he was a man of very obliging manners. And he had really given himself the trouble of recommending Mr. Elijah to his friend Roberta without any positive expectation of a solid, definite advantage resulting to himself, notwithstanding the subtle indications to the contrary which might have misled a too-sagacious observer. For there is nothing more widely misleading than sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent; and sagacity, persuaded that men usually act and speak from distinct motives, with a consciously proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary game.
Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year's crop.
Mr. Soren was a man of business, and not cold toward his own interest, yet even he was more under the influence of small promptings than of far-sighted designs. He had no private understanding with the Rev. Walter Elijah; on the contrary, he knew very little of that M.A. and his acquirements,--not quite enough, perhaps, to warrant so strong a recommendation of him as he had given to his friend Roberta. But he believed Mr. Elijah to be an excellent classic, for Gadsby had said so, and Gadsby's first cousin was an Oxford tutor; which was better ground for the belief even than his own immediate observation would have been, for though Mr. Soren had received a tincture of the classics at the great Mudport Free School, and had a sense of understanding Latin generally, his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready. Doubtless there remained a subtle aroma from his juvenile contact with the "De Senectute" and the fourth book of the "AEneid," but it had ceased to be distinctly recognizable as classical, and was only perceived in the higher finish and force of his auctioneering style. Then, Elijah was an Oxford man, and the Oxford men were always--no, no, it was the Cambridge men who were always good mathematicians. But a man who had had a university education could teach anything he liked; especially a man like Elijah, who had made a speech at a Mudport dinner on a political occasion, and had acquitted himself so well that it was generally remarked, this son-in-law of Timpson's was a sharp fellow. It was to be expected of a Mudport man, from the parish of St. Ursula, that he would not omit to do a good turn to a son-in-law of Timpson's, for Timpson was one of the most useful and influential men in the parish, and had a good deal of business, which he knew how to put into the right hands. Mr. Soren liked such men, quite apart from any money which might be diverted, through their good judgment, from less worthy pockets into his own; and it would be a satisfaction to him to say to Timpson on his return home, "I've secured a good pupil for your son-in-law." Timpson had a large family of daughters; Mr. Soren felt for him; besides, Louisa Timpson's face, with its light curls, had been a familiar object to him over the pew wainscot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years; it was natural her husband should be a commendable tutor. Moreover, Mr. Soren knew of no other schoolmaster whom he had any ground for recommending in preference; why, then, should he not recommend Elijah? His friend Roberta had asked him for an opinion; it is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it. Thus Mr. Soren, knowing no harm of Elijah to begin with, and wishing him well, so far as he had any wishes at all concerning him, had no sooner recommended him than he began to think with admiration of a man recommended on such high authority, and would soon have gathered so warm an interest on the subject, that if Mr. Roberta had in the end declined to send Clea to Elijah, Mr. Soren would have thought his "friend of the old school" a thoroughly pig-headed fellow.
If you blame Mr. Soren very severely for giving a recommendation on such slight grounds, I must say you are rather hard upon him. Why should an auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago, who had as good as forgotten his free-school Latin, be expected to manifest a delicate scrupulosity which is not always exhibited by gentlemen of the learned professions, even in our present advanced stage of morality?
Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness in him can scarcely abstain from doing a good-natured action, and one cannot be good-natured all round. Nature herself occasionally quarters an inconvenient parasite on an animal toward whom she has otherwise no ill will. What then? We admire her care for the parasite. If Mr. Soren had shrunk from giving a recommendation that was not based on valid evidence, he would not have helped Mr. Elijah to a paying pupil, and that would not have been so well for the reverend gentleman. Consider, too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and complacencies--of standing well with Timpson, of dispensing advice when he was asked for it, of impressing his friend Roberta with additional respect, of saying something, and saying it emphatically, with other inappreciably minute ingredients that went along with the warm hearth and the brandy-and-water to make up Mr. Soren's consciousness on this occasion--would have been a mere blank.
Clea Is Expected
It was a heavy disappointment to Castiel that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Clea home from the academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs. Roberta said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Castiel took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the reluctant black crop Castiel suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near, in the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day.
"Castiel, Castiel!" exclaimed Mrs. Roberta, sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, "what is to become of you if you're so naughty? I'll tell your aunt Giovanna and your aunt Leslie when they come next week, and they'll never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear! look at your clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's a judgment on me as I've got such a child,--they'll think I've done summat wicked."
Before this remonstrance was finished, Castiel was already out of hearing, making her way toward the great attic that run under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Castiel's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks; but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Castiel's nine years of earthly struggle; that luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Giovanna. But immediately afterward Castiel had reflected that if she drove many nails in she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when she knocked it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make believe to poultice it, when her fury was abated; for even aunt Giovanna would be pitiable when she had been hurt very much, and thoroughly humiliated, so as to beg her niece's pardon. Since then she had driven no more nails in, but had soothed herself by alternately grinding and beating the wooden head against the rough brick of the great chimneys that made two square pillars supporting the roof. That was what she did this morning on reaching the attic, sobbing all the while with a passion that expelled every other form of consciousness,--even the memory of the grievance that had caused it. As at last the sobs were getting quieter, and the grinding less fierce, a sudden beam of sunshine, falling through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten shelves, made her throw away the Fetish and run to the window. The sun was really breaking out; the sound of the factory seemed cheerful again; the granary doors were open; and there was Yap, the queer white-and-brown terrier, with one ear turned back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely, as if he were in search of a companion. It was irresistible. Castiel tossed her hair back and ran downstairs, seized her bonnet without putting it on, peeped, and then dashed along the passage lest she should encounter her mother, and was quickly out in the yard, whirling round like a Pythoness, and singing as she whirled, "Yap, Yap, Clea's coming home!" while Yap danced and barked round her, as much as to say, if there was any noise wanted he was the dog for it.
"Hegh, hegh, Miss! you'll make yourself giddy, an' tumble down i' the dirt," said Amaya, the head factoryer, a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula.
Castiel paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, "Oh no, it doesn't make me giddy, Amaya; may I go into the factory with you?"
Castiel loved to linger in the great spaces of the factory, and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a dim, delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force; the meal forever pouring, pouring; the fine white powder softening all surfaces, and making the very spidernets look like a faery lace-work; the sweet, pure scent of the meal,--all helped to make Castiel feel that the factory was a little world apart from her outside every-day life. The spiders were especially a subject of speculation with her. She wondered if they had any relatives outside the factory, for in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their family intercourse,--a fat and floury spider, accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin's table where the fly was _au naturel_, and the lady spiders must be mutually shocked at each other's appearance. But the part of the factory she liked best was the topmost story,--the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of grain, which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with Amaya, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to think well of her understanding, as her father did.
Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the present occasion for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was requisite in factory-society,--
"I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, Amaya?"
"Nay, Miss, an' not much o' that," said Amaya, with great frankness. "I'm no reader, I aren't."
"But if I lent you one of my books, Amaya? I've not got any _very_ pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there's 'Pug's Tour of Europe,'--that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't understand the reading, the pictures would help you; they show the looks and ways of the people, and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know, and one sitting on a barrel."
"Nay, Miss, I'n no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much good i' knowin' about _them_."
"But they're our fellow-creatures, Amaya; we ought to know about our fellow-creatures."
"Not much o' fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss; all I know--my old master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, 'If e'er I sow my wheat wi'out brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he; an' that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I aren't goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's fools enoo, an' rogues enoo, wi'out lookin' i' books for 'em."
"Oh, well," said Castiel, rather foiled by Amaya's unexpectedly decided views about Dutchmen, "perhaps you would like 'Animated Nature' better; that's not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants and kangaroos, and the civet-cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail,--I forget its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn't you like to know about them, Amaya?"
"Nay, Miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn; I can't do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folks to the gallows,--knowin' everything but what they'n got to get their bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the streets."
"Why, you're like my brother Clea, Amaya," said Castiel, wishing to turn the conversation agreeably; "Clea's not fond of reading. I love Clea so dearly, Amaya,--better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up I shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him everything he doesn't know. But I think Clea's clever, for all he doesn't like books; he makes beautiful whipcord and rabbit-pens."
"Ah," said Amaya, "but he'll be fine an' vexed, as the rabbits are all dead."
"Dead!" screamed Castiel, jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn. "Oh dear, Amaya! What! the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Clea spent all his money to buy?"
"As dead as moles," said Amaya, fetching his comparison from the unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall.
"Oh dear, Amaya," said Castiel, in a piteous tone, while the big tears rolled down her cheek; "Clea told me to take care of 'em, and I forgot. What _shall_ I do?"
"Well, you see, Miss, they were in that far tool-house, an' it was nobody's business to see to 'em. I reckon Master Clea told Harry to feed 'em, but there's no countin' on Harry; _he's_ an offal creatur as iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothing but his own inside--an' I wish it 'ud gripe him."