The children were all open-eyed and open-mouthed next morning to see
Paul’s friend. As for the boys, they did not feel at all sure what might
have been going on during the night, or whether Paul’s friend would be
visible in the morning. “It is money those sort of fellows want,” Roland
said; and then the question arose whether papa being away mamma would
have money enough to satisfy such a claimant. The little girls besieged
Alice with questions. Who was that strange man? He looked exactly like
the man that came to wind the clocks.
“He is a friend of Paul’s; hush--hush!” said Alice; “you must all be
very polite and not stare at him.”
“But how can he be a friend?” demanded Bell.
“He is a bailiff,” said Roland. “In _Harry Lorrequer_ there is somebody
exactly like that.”
“Oh, hush, children, for mamma’s sake! he will come in directly. He is
Paul’s friend. Grown-up people do not go by appearances like children.
Paul says he has done him more good than all the dons. Most likely he is
a very learned man--or an author or something,” Alice said.
“Oh, an author! they’re a queer lot,” said Harry, with relief. At all
events, an author was less objectionable than a bailiff.
Lady Markham came in before these questions were over. She was not all
so bright as usual. Though she smiled upon them as they all came round
her, it was not her own natural smile; and she had a cap on, a thing
which she only wore when she was out of sorts, a kind of signal of
distress. The family were divided as to this cap. Some of them were in
favour of it, some against it. The little girls thought it made their
mother look old, whereas Alice was of opinion that it imparted dignity
to her appearance.
“I don’t want to have a mother just as young and a great deal prettier
than I am,” she said. But Bell and Marie called out, “Oh, that odious
cap!”
“Why should mamma, only because she is mamma, cover up all her pretty
hair? It is such pretty hair! mine is just the same colour,” said Bell,
who was inclined to vanity.
Lady Markham smiled upon this charming nonsense, but it was not her own
smile. “Has any one seen Paul this morning?” she said, with a sigh.
What a change there was in everything! Paul had not come into his
mother’s dressing-room last night to talk over all he had been doing and
meant to do, as had always been his habit when he came home. And when
Lady Markham went to her boy’s room on her way down stairs, thinking of
nothing but the little laughing lecture she was wont to administer on
finding him not yet out of bed--which was the usual state of
affairs--what was her surprise to find Paul out of his room, already
dressed, and “gone for a walk.” Brown meeting her in the hall told her
this with a subdued voice and mingled wonder and sympathy in his face.
“Mr. Markham is turning over a new leaf, my lady,” he said, with the
license of an old servant, who had seen Paul born, so to speak.
“I am very glad to hear it--it is so much better for him,” Lady Markham
said. So it was, no doubt; but this change, even of the bad habit which
was familiar to her, gave her a little shock. Therefore it was with a
failure of her usual bright cheerfulness that she took her place at the
breakfast-table.
“Has any one seen Paul?” she said.
“Oh, fancy seeing Paul already!” cried the little girls. “He will come
in when we have all done breakfast, and Brown will bring him everything
quite hot, after we have waited and waited. Brown makes dreadful
favourites, don’t you think so? He does not mind what he does for Paul.”
“Paul has gone out for a walk,” said Lady Markham, not without
solemnity.
There was a cry of astonishment all round the table. Roland gave Harry a
little nod of intelligence. (“He will have found it was no use, and he
will have taken him away.”) Alice had looked up into her mother’s face
with consternation; but as she was Paul’s unhesitating partisan through
everything, she recovered herself at once.
“He must be showing Mr. Spears the Park,” she said. “What a good thing
if he will take to getting up early.”
And nobody could say anything against that. Getting up early was a
virtue in which Paul had been sadly deficient, as everybody was aware.
However, this was long enough to have been occupied about Paul, and the
children, tired of the subject, had already plunged into their own
affairs, when their elder brother suddenly appeared, ushering in Mr.
Spears--who in the morning light looked more out of place than
ever--through the great bow window which opened on the lawn. The
stranger had his hat in his hand, and made an awkward sort of bow.
“I am afraid it is a liberty, my lady,” he said, stepping in with shoes
all wet from the dewy grass. He did not know what to do with his hat,
and ended by putting it under his chair when he got to the table. But by
that time his embarrassment had disappeared, and his face grew benignant
as he looked round, before sitting down, upon the girls and boys. “The
sight of children is a benediction,” he said with that softening which
mothers know by instinct. He was very like the man who wound up the
clocks, who was a most respectable country tradesman; but this look
reconciled Lady Markham to him more than anything else which had
happened yet.
“You are fond of children?” she said.
“I ought to be. I have had six of my own; but they had hard times after
my wife died, and there are but three left.”
“Ah!” Lady Markham cried out of the depths of her heart. She looked
round upon her own children, and the tears came to her eyes. “I am very,
very sorry. There can be nothing in the world so dreadful.”
“It is a pull,” said her visitor. “Yes, it is a pull. A man does not
know what it is till he has gone through it. Often you think, poor
things, it is better for them; you would never have been able to rear
them as you ought; but when it comes it is a pull; though you may have
no bread to give them, it is hard to part with them.”
He had begun to eat his breakfast very composedly, notwithstanding this.
The way he held his fork was a wonder to Marie who had but recently
acquired full mastery of her own, and Harry had watched with great
gravity and interest the passage of the stranger’s knife to his mouth.
But Lady Markham no longer noticed these things. She forgot that he was
like the man that wound up the clocks.
“I always feel,” she said, “when I hear of losses like yours as if I
ought to go down on my knees and beg your pardon for being so much
better off--thank God!”
Spears looked up at her suddenly, putting down his knife and fork. Here
was a strange thing; while all the rest were so conscious of the
difference between them, the two chief persons had forgotten it. But he
did not make any immediate reply. He looked at her wondering, grateful,
understanding; and that piece of silent conversation was more effective
than anything that could be said.
“There are not many people that feel like you,” he said at length;
“those that are better off than their neighbours are apt to look as if
it sprang from some virtue of theirs. They are more likely to crow over
us than to beg our pardon. And just as well too, Markham,” he said with
a laugh. “If they were all like your mother, they’d cut the ground from
under our feet.”
“I do not see that,” said Paul. “The principle is unaltered, however
well-intentioned those may be who are in the position of unjust
superiority; that makes no difference so far as I can see.”
All the Markham family were roused to attention when Paul spoke. The
children looked at him, stopping their private chatter, and Lady Markham
cast a wondering, reproachful look at her boy. Was she in a position of
unjust superiority because all her children were living, and another
parent had lost the half of his? She felt wounded by this strange
speech.
“Ah,” said Spears, with a twinkle in his eyes, “there is nothing like a
recruit from the other side for going the whole----. You have a
beautiful family, and you have a beautiful park, my lady. You have got a
great deal more than the most of your fellow-creatures have. I can do
nothing but stand and wonder at it for my part. Everything you see,
everything you touch, is beautiful. You ought to be very sorry for all
the others, so many of them, who are not so well off as you.”
“Indeed I am, Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, simply; but then she
added, after a pause, “for those who have not the things that give
happiness; but there are a great many things that are of no importance
to happiness. Everybody, of course, cannot have a beautiful park, as you
say, and a nice house; but----”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” She looked up surprised. “Ah, I see! You are all for
equality, like Paul.”
“Like _Paul_! I taught him everything he knows. He had not an idea on
the subject before I opened his eyes to the horrible injustice of the
present state of affairs. He is my disciple, and I am his master. Now
you know who I am. I cannot be in any house under false pretences,” said
Spears, pushing his chair a little away from the table.
The children all looked at him aghast; and he had himself the air of
having made a great and dangerous revelation, probably to be followed by
his dismissal from the house as a dangerous person. “Now you know who I
am.” The climax was melodramatic in its form; but there was nothing
theatrical in it so far as the revolutionary was concerned. He was
perfectly sincere. He felt the importance of his own position; and
feeling it, could entertain no doubt as to the knowledge of him as their
fellest enemy, and the horror of him which must be felt in every house
like this throughout the country. He had not wished to come; he had been
disappointed to find that Sir William was not there, who (he felt sure)
would have refused him admittance. And he would not take advantage of my
lady, who was certainly a woman to whom any man might submit himself.
Had she rung the bell instantly for her menials to turn him out; had she
expressed her horror at the contamination which her family had sustained
by sitting down at the same table with him--he would not have been
surprised. He pushed his chair gently from the table, and waited to see
what she would order; though he was a revolutionary, he had unbounded
respect for the mistress of this house.
Lady Markham looked at her strange visitor with bewildered eyes. She
made a rapid telegraphic appeal to her son for explanation. “Now you
know who I am,” but she did not in the least know who he was. He was
famous enough in his way, and he thought himself more famous than he
was; but Lady Markham had never heard of him. When she saw that no
assistance could be afforded her by her children in this dilemma, she
collected her thoughts with a desperate effort. She was one of the women
who would rather die than be rude to any one. To speak to a man at her
own table, under her own roof, with less than the most perfect courtesy
was impossible to her. Besides, she did not really understand what he
meant. She was annoyed and affronted that he should speak of her boy as
Paul, but in the confusion of the moment that was all her mind took up,
and as for openly resenting _that_, how was it possible? One time or
another no doubt she would give the stranger a little return blow, a
reminder of his over-familiarity, when it could be done with perfect
politeness, but not now. She was startled by his solemnity; and it was
very clear that he was not a man of what she called “our own class,” but
Lady Markham’s high breeding was above all pettiness.
“Was it really you,” she said, “who taught my son (she would not call
him Paul again) all the nonsense he has been talking to us? Yes, indeed
it is great nonsense, Mr. Spears--you must let me say so. We are doing
no one injustice. My husband says all young men are Radicals one time or
other; but I should have expected you, a man with children of your own,
to know better. Oh no, I don’t want to argue. I am not clever enough for
that. Let me give you another cup of tea.”
The demagogue stared at the beautiful lady as if he could not believe
his ears. Partly he was humiliated, seeing that she was not in the least
afraid of him, and even did not realise at all what was the terrible
disclosure he had made. This gave him that sense of having made himself
ridiculous which is so intolerable to those who are unaccustomed to the
world. He cast a jealous look round the table to see if he could detect
any laughter.
Paul caught him by the arm at this critical moment.
“Eat your breakfast,” he said, in a wrathful undertone. “Do you hear,
Spears? Do you think _she_ knows? Have some of this fish, for Heaven’s
sake, and shut up. What on earth do they care if you taught me or not?
Do you think she goes into all that?”
Nobody heard this but Harry, who was listening both with ears and eyes.
And Mr. Spears returned to his breakfast as commanded. He was abashed,
and he was astonished, but still he made a very hearty meal when all was
said. And by and by his spirit rose again; in the eyes of this lady, who
had so completely got the better of him, far more than if she had turned
him out, there was no way of redeeming himself, but by “bringing her
over.” That would be a triumph. He immediately addressed himself to it
with every art at his command. He had an extremely prepossessing and
melodious voice, and he spoke with what the ladies thought a kind of
old-fashioned grace. The somewhat stiff, stilted phraseology of the
self-educated has always more or less a whiff of the formality of an
older age. And he made observations which interested them, in spite of
themselves. Lady Markham was very polite to her son’s friend.
When the children reminded her of her promise to go with them on a
long-planned expedition into the woods, she put them off. “You know I
cannot leave when I have visitors,” she said.
“Perhaps Mr. Spears would come too?” said Alice. And before he knew what
was going to happen, he found himself pushed into the front seat of the
carriage, which was like a Noah’s ark, with hampers and children. Never
had this man of the people, this popular orator, occupied so strange a
position. He had never known before what it was to roll luxuriously
along the roads, to share in the ease and dignity of wealth. He took
notes of it, like a man in a foreign country, and observed keenly all
that took place--the manners of the people for whom the world was made:
that was how they seemed to take it. The world was made for them. It was
not a subject of arrogant satisfaction on their part, or pride in their
universal dominion; they took it quite easily, gently, as a matter of
course. My lady gave her orders with a gentle confidence in the
obedience of everybody she addressed. It was all wonderful to the man
who knew only the other side of the question. He asked about
everything--the game (with an eye to the poachers); the great extent of
the park (as bearing upon one of his favourite points--the abstraction
from the public of so many acres which might have cultivation); and was
answered with a perfect absence of all sense of guilt, which was very
strange to him. They did not know they were doing wrong, these rich
people. They told him all about it, simply, smilingly, as if it was the
most natural thing in the world. All this went against his preconceived
notions, just as the manners of a foreign country so often go against
the idea you have formed of them. He had all his senses keenly about
him, and yet everything was so novel and surprising that he felt
scarcely able to trust to his own impressions. It was the strangest
position surely in which a popular agitator, a preacher of democracy and
revolution, a special pleader against the rich, ever was.
“We have not many neighbours,” Lady Markham said. “That is Lord
Westland’s property beyond the church. You can see Westland Towers from
the turn of the road. And there are the Trevors on the other side of the
parish.”
“A whole parish,” said Spears, “divided amongst three families.”
“The Trevors have very little,” said Lady Markham. “Sir William is the
chief proprietor. But they are a very good family. Admiral Trevor--you
must have heard of him--was once a popular hero. He did a great many
daring things I have heard, but fame gets forgotten like other things.
He lives very quietly now, an old man----”
“The oldest man that ever was,” said Alice. “Fancy, it was in Napoleon’s
time he was so famous--the great Napoleon--before even _old_ people were
born.”
“Before I was born,” said Lady Markham, with her soft laugh; “that is
something like saying before the Flood. Then there is the vicar, of
course, and a few people of less importance. It is easy to go over a
country neighbourhood.”
“And what do you call the people in all these cottages, my lady? The
world was not made for them as it is for you. These would be the
neighbours I should think of. When I hear of your three families in the
parish, I wonder what all these roofs mean. Are they not flesh and blood
too? Don’t they live and have things happen to them as well as you fine
folks? If they were cleared away out of the place, what would become of
your parish, my lady? Could you get on all the same without them that
you make no account of them? These are the houses where I should feel
at home, among the poor cottagers whom you don’t even know about----”
“Mamma--not know about them!” cried Alice. “Why, it is our own village!
Do you think because it is a mile away that makes any difference? Why,
it is our own village, Mr. Spears.”
“I dare say,” said the revolutionary--“your own village. Perhaps they
pay you rent for suffering them to live there, and allowing them to do
all the work of the world and keep everything going----”
“Hush, Alice,” said Lady Markham. “Perhaps Mr. Spears does not
understand a little country village. They are often not at all fond of
doing the work, and they do not much like to pay their rent; but we know
them very well for that matter. I could tell you all about them, every
house. To be sure we have not the same kind of intercourse with them as
with our equals.”
“Ah, that is the whole question, Lady Markham. Pardon me; I am not your
equal, and yet you let me sit in your fine carriage and talk to you. No,
I am not a bit humble; I feel myself the equal of any man. There is
nobody in the world whom I will acknowledge my superior--in my dignity
as a man.”
Lady Markham made him a little bow; it was her way when she did not know
what to say. “One does not need to be told,” she said, “that you are a
very superior man, Mr. Spears; quite equal to talk with anybody, were it
the greatest philosopher.” Here she stopped short in a little
embarrassment. “But we are all very simple, ignorant country people,”
she added with a smile, “about here.”
“Ah, you are very clever, my lady. You beg the question.”
“Do I?” said Lady Markham. “I wonder what that means. But now we are
just arriving at the place for the pic-nic. When my boy comes up, I will
make him take you to the most beautiful point of view. There is a
waterfall which we are very proud of, and now when everything is in the
first green of spring---- Paul!” she cried, “come and get your
directions. I want Mr. Spears to see the view.”
“Your mother is something I don’t understand Markham,” said the
demagogue. “I never came across that kind of woman before.”
“Didn’t you?” said Paul. He was ready to be taught on other points, but
not on this. “You see the bondage we live in,” said the young man.
“Luxury, people call it; to me it seems slavery. Oh, to be free of all
this folly and finery--to feel one’s self a man among men, earning one’s
bread, shaping one’s own life----”
“Ah!----” said Spears, drawing a long breath. He could not be unaffected
by what was an echo of his own eloquence. “But there’s a deal to say,
too, for the other side.”