Paul Markham was not in his rooms. The porter at the college gate looked
curiously upon the party of people who asked after him. It was not the
time of year when college authorities interfere with undergraduates;
neither was a virtuous young man “staying up to read” likely to call
forth their censures. The porter could not give them any information as
to where to find Paul; the party (he thought) looked anxious, just as he
had seen people look whose son had got into trouble: the father with
wrinkles in his forehead, but an air of business and anxious
determination to look as if there was nothing particular in it--nothing
but an ordinary visit; the mother with a redness about her eyes, but a
smile, very courteous, even conciliatory, to the porter himself, and so
sorry to give him trouble; and an eager young sister clinging to the
mother, looking anxiously about, staring at every figure she saw
approaching.
“Here’s a gentleman, sir, as can tell you, if any one can,” the porter
said. All three turned round simultaneously to look at the person thus
indicated. He was a young man of not very distinguished appearance, who
came carelessly across the quadrangle in a rough coloured suit, with a
pipe in his mouth. He came along swinging his cane, smoking his pipe,
not thinking of what awaited him. However, those three pairs of eyes
affected him unawares. He looked up and saw the little group, and
instinctively withdrew his pipe from his mouth. He had just slipped it
quickly into the pocket of his loose jacket, and was trying to steal
through the party under cover of a messenger who was passing, when Sir
William stepped forward and addressed him--
“This man tells me,” he said, “that you are a friend of my son, Paul
Markham, and can perhaps give us some information where to find him.”
While the father spoke, the two ladies looked at the young man with eyes
half-investigating, half-imploring. He felt that they were making notes
of his rough clothes, his pipe, which alas! they had seen going into
his pocket, and of a general aspect which was not very decorous, and
forming opinions unfavourable, not only to himself, but to Paul; while,
at the same time, they were entreating him with soft looks to tell them
where Paul was, and somehow--they could not tell how--to reassure them
on his account.
Young Fairfax, who was not perhaps a very elevated member of society in
general, was of a sympathetic nature at least. He was greatly
embarrassed by their looks, and confused between the two sides, giving
the attention of his eyes to the ladies on the one hand, and that of his
ears to Sir William on the other. He felt himself blush at the thought
of his own unsatisfactory appearance--his worst clothes (for who
expected to meet ladies _in August_?) and the pipe, which both literally
and metaphorically burnt his pocket. Lady Markham and Alice took the
redness which overspread the stranger’s face, not as referring to the
state of his own appearance (though they were keenly sensible of that),
but as a sign that he had nothing that was comforting or satisfactory to
say of Paul--and their hearts sank.
Young Fairfax coughed and cleared his throat.
“Markham?” he said. “I will go and see if he is in his rooms.”
“He is not in his rooms,” they said all together, a fact which the other
knew very well.
When Fairfax found this little expedient of his to gain time did not
answer, he ventured on a bolder step. “If you will go to Markham’s
rooms,” he said, “I think I can find him for you. I know where he will
be; that is to say I know two or three men’s rooms--where he is very
likely to be.”
“Could not we go with this gentleman?” said Lady Markham, looking at
him, though it was to her husband she spoke--and Alice looked at him too
with a supplicating look which went to the young good-for-nothing’s
heart. He gave the ladies a look in return which he felt was apologetic,
and yet full of a protest and appeal to their sense of justice. What can
I do? I cannot make him all that you wish him to be; was what he felt
his look said; and this was really the sentiment in his mind, though he
would have laughed at himself for it. They understood him well enough,
and their hearts sank a little too.
“Impossible!” said Sir William, “how could you go to--a man’s rooms?
perhaps into the midst of a---- party” he was going to have said riotous
party, but forbore for the sake of the girl. “No, you had better take
this--young gentleman’s advice--”
“My name is Fairfax” said the youth, taking off his hat. He blushed
again, having kept that engaging weakness, though it is not by any means
sure that he had kept the modest grace of which it is the sign: and a
smile crept about his lips. The hearts of the two women rose a little.
If things had been very bad with Paul he would not, they reasoned, have
had the heart to smile.
“Mr. Fairfax’s advice,” said Sir William; “go to Paul’s room and wait
there, and I will go with Mr. Fairfax to find him. That is much the best
thing to do.”
“I may have to run about to one place and another,” said the young man
alarmed; “it is a pity to give you so much trouble. Would not you, sir,
wait with the ladies? I promise you to find him with as little delay--”
“I will go with you,” said Sir William, in his cold way, which admitted
of no appeal; “you know the way, Isabel, to Paul’s rooms.” And thus they
parted, the young man looking at the ladies again with a kind of
dismayed protest: can I help it? He was very much dismayed to have Sir
William with him. Fairfax had not much doubt as to where Paul was, and
he did not think it was a place which would please his father. He felt
already that he had established an understanding with the others which
justified his glance of dismay. Lady Markham and her daughter turned
very reluctantly away. They went across the quadrangle with drooping
heads. Everything lay vacant in the sunshine, no cheerful bustle about,
the windows all black, no voices, no footsteps, no lounging figures
under the trees. Slowly they went across the light with their heads
close together. “He knows where Paul is,” said Lady Markham, with a
sigh. “But he did not want papa to go,” said Alice with another. They
crept up the silent staircase and went into the vacant room, and sat
down timidly, not venturing to look at anything. They were afraid of
seeing something, even a book, which in Paul’s absence would betray
Paul. His mother glanced furtively, pitifully about her. She was more
bound by honour here in her son’s room, more determined to make no
discoveries, than if her boy had been her enemy; and who can tell how
the consciousness of this sank like a stone into her heart! A few years
ago everything would have been so lightly reviewed, so gaily
discussed--but now! The fringes of her cloak swept some papers off a
side-table, and she let them lie, not venturing to touch them. Paul
should not suppose that his mother had come to pry into his secrets. God
forbid! He should be allowed to explain himself, to say the best he
could for himself.
“Mr. Fairfax looked as if he knew everything. Did not you think so,
mamma?”
“Oh, my darling, what can I say? He looked, I think, as if he were fond
of Paul.”
“That I am sure he did. He was not very nice looking, nor well dressed;
but these young men are very careless, are they not, when they are
living alone?”
“I should not think anything of that, dear,” said Lady Markham,
decidedly; “I think, too, though he was careless of his appearance, that
he had an innocent look. He met your eye; there was nothing
down-looking about him; and he blushed; that is always a good sign, and
smiled at me, like a boy who has got a mother.”
“And he did not look at all frightened to see us; as he would have done
had there been anything very wrong. I think he was rather pleased--it
was papa he was afraid of. Now it is clear that if Paul had
been--wicked, as papa said--(oh, Paul, Paul, I beg your pardon dear, I
never thought it!)--it would have been you and me, mamma, don’t you
think, that they would have been afraid of? They could not have borne to
look us in the face if _that_ had been true; whereas,” said Alice, in a
tingle of logic, the tears starting into her eyes, “it was papa Mr.
Fairfax was afraid of, not you or me.”
“That is true,” said Lady Markham, brightening slowly, but she did not
take all the comfort from this potent argument that Alice expected.
“Unless they are very intimate, he is not likely to know all that Paul
is doing” she said, shaking her head. Paul’s room was far from orderly.
Once upon a time he had been very fond of knick-knacks, and had
cultivated china and hung plates about the walls. All that was gone
now. Lady Markham looked at the bareness of the room with a pang. Would
he have neglected it so if everything had been going well with him?
Perhaps had it been much decorated she would have asked herself whether
these meritricious ornaments did not indicate a mind given up to
frivolity; but at this moment it seemed a curious and significant fact
that the ornaments had all disappeared from his walls.
In the meantime young Fairfax was hurrying Sir William at a pace which
scarcely befitted his dignity, or his years, along the streets. Probably
the young man forgot that his companion was likely to suffer from this
rapid progress; and when he remembered, he was not without hope of
tiring the angry (as he supposed) father. But Sir William was a
statesman and trained to exertion. He puffed a little and got very hot,
but he did not flinch. Fairfax it was evident knew very well where he
was going. He made a cunning attempt to deceive his companion by
pretending to pause and wonder at the first corner; then he smote his
thigh, and declared that of course he knew where Paul would be at this
hour--not in any man’s lodgings--with the man who was teaching
him--what was it? He could not recollect what it was--wood-carving, or
something of that sort. “It is a good way off; would it not be better to
let me fetch him?” he said, making a last attempt. “Let us get a cab,”
said Sir William. “Oh, it is not so far as that,” said his guide, with a
blush. Sir William had a half-suspicion that he was being led round and
round about to make him think the way longer than it really was; but
that part of Oxford had changed since his time, and he was not quite
sure of the way. At last, however, when no further delay was possible,
he found himself at the door of a little grimy house, the ground floor
of which seemed to be occupied as some kind of workshop, where a man sat
working. The place smelt of varnish and the window was full of small
picture-frames, gilt and ungilt, and other very simple articles, carved
workboxes and book-shelves. “Oh, Spears! has Markham been here?” the
young man cried with a certain relief in his tone, evidently pleased not
to see the person of whom he was in search. The workman looked up from
his work. He was busy with a glue-pot, and the varnish which smelt so
badly. He did not rise from his bench in honour of the gentleman, or
remove his cap from his head. He said shortly, but in a voice of unusual
sweetness and refinement--
“He is here still. He has gone up stairs, to wash his hands I suppose.”
“Ah!” said Fairfax. It was not a syllable, it was a sigh. He had hoped
to have escaped easily; but it was not to be so. He went to the foot of
the stairs, which led directly out of the workshop. “Markham!” he cried,
“are you there? Come down at once; you are wanted.” How could he throw
special significance into his voice? It sounded to himself just as
careless as usual, though he had meant to make it very serious.
“Markham, I say, there’s some one wants you--important! Come at once!”
he added, going up a few steps.
Sir William stood stiffly down below, watching with the utmost
attention, while the workman upon his bench eyed him with suspicious
eyes.
Then Paul’s voice came still more lightly from above, striking strangely
upon the ear of his father, who had never heard that tone in it before.
“Confound you, what’s the hurry?” Paul said. “If it’s a dun you ought
to know better than to bring him here. I’ll come when I’m ready.”
“Markham! I tell you it’s of the first importance,” said the young man,
going a step or two higher, but still quite audible to Sir William.
Then there came a burst of laughter from above, seconded by what sounded
to Sir William’s suspicious ears like feminine voices.
“Is it the Vice-chancellor?” said Paul; “or the Provost? Say the word,
and I’ll get out over the leads or through the window--”
The next moment he appeared, rubbing his hands in a towel, and without
his coat, with a face more full of laughter than, Sir William thought,
he had ever seen it before; and this time he felt certain that he heard
women laughing up stairs. He was standing with his back to the light,
and his son did not see him for the moment.
Paul came down stairs, gradually emerging, always rubbing his hands. He
called out--
“Who is it, Spears? What is this fellow making a fuss about?”
“I cannot tell who it is,” said the workman; “it is some one who has
come into my house without taking the trouble to notice me. I presume
therefore that it must be what is called a gentleman.”
The sound of the man’s voice was so pleasant that Sir William did not at
first realise the offence in it; and at that moment he was too much
absorbed in watching the changes of his son’s countenance to think of
anything else.
Paul emerged from the shadow of the staircase, which was like a ladder,
his face full of amusement and brightness, entirely at his ease, and
familiar with all about him. His hat was on and his coat was off, but
that evidently made no difference; neither did he cease to dry his hands
with the towel as he came leisurely down stairs. It was clear that he
expected no one whose appearance could require any more regard to the
decorum of formal life.
When he first caught sight of his father a cloud came over him. Sir
William’s face was not visible, but Sir William’s figure and voice were
scarcely to be mistaken. The father looked on while the first shadow of
fear came over his son’s face; then saw it lighten with a desperate
effort not to believe what was too apparent; then darken suddenly and
completely with the sense of discovery and of the fate which had
overtaken him. To see your child’s bright countenance cloud over at the
sight of you, to see the struggle of hope that this may not be you, and
despair to find that it is you, what mortal parent can bear this
unmoved? It would have half killed Lady Markham.
Sir William was of tougher stuff, and less entirely moved by the
affections; but yet he felt it. He saw the same line come into his son’s
forehead which all the family knew so well in his own, and that
expression of angry displeasure, impatience and gloom, came over his
face. This made him too angry, in spite of himself. He said, harshly--
“Yes, Paul, it is I. I am the last person you expected, or evidently
wished to see here.”
Paul came down the remaining steps, the very sound of his foot changing;
he threw away his towel and took off his hat, and assumed an air of
punctilious politeness.
“I do not deny that I am much surprised to see you, sir,” he said,
darting a glance aside of annoyed reproach at Fairfax. He had flushed a
gloomy red, of shame and annoyance, feeling his very shirt-sleeves to
be evidence against him--and looked round for his coat with an
inclination to be angry with everybody.
“I had just gone to wash my hands after my work,” he said, with a
confused apology. Confronted thus suddenly with his father in all the
solemnity of authority and parental displeasure, how could he help
feeling himself at a disadvantage? He forgot everything but that his
father had found him in circumstances which to him would seem equivocal,
perhaps disgraceful; but he was not allowed to forget.
“If you require to apologise, Markham, for being found in my shop or my
house, you had better not return here,” said the master of the place,
eyeing him over his shoulder from his bench, “any more.”
“I beg your pardon, Spears. My father--does not think with me. It is by
no will of mine that he has come here----”
“If you can’t be civil, and introduce him civilly--and if he can’t be
civil, and doesn’t know how to treat a man in his own house,” said
Spears, busy with his glue-pot, “you had better take him away.”
“This is the man you brought to my house--in my absence,” said Sir
William, “imposing upon your mother. I suppose the well-known”--(he was
going to say demagogue, but paused, after looking at the person in
question)--“orator and leader of Trades Unions----”
“Yes, that is I,” said the master of the shop. “I am quite ready to
answer any question on my own account. But I beg your pardon, whoever
you may be. Markham did not impose upon his mother, nor did I. He
introduced me as his friend, and I lost no time in telling the lady that
I was a working man. Lady Markham has the manners of a queen. She was
perfectly polite to me, as I hope I am capable of being to any one who
comes in the same way into my house.”
Sir William gave his son’s friend another look. He had no desire to make
a personal enemy of this demagogue. A public man must think of
expediency in public matters, even where his own affections are
concerned.
“You will excuse me,” he said, coldly. “My business is with my son. I
should not have intruded myself into your house had I known it. Paul,
your mother is at your rooms, waiting for you. I must ask you to come
there with me at once.”
Paul’s countenance fell still more.
“My mother!--here!”
“Good morning,” said Sir William, taking off his hat with much
solemnity. “I am sorry to have invaded Mr. Spears’s privacy even for a
moment. I will wait for you, Paul, outside.”
The workman got up and took off his cap, bowing ceremoniously in answer
to Sir William’s salutation. He had not moved till his name was
mentioned.
“There!” he cried, with comical discomfiture, “dash the little
aristocrat! He has the last word--that’s the worst, or the best of them.
They have their senses always about them. No flurry--no feeling. Well,
Paul, aren’t you going? Be off with you and explain, like a good boy, to
your mamma and your papa.”
“What is it all about?” said a girl’s voice from the top of the stairs;
and first one, then another, fair, curly, somewhat unkempt head appeared
peeping down upon the group below. “And who is the little old gentleman?
Father, may we come down stairs?”
“Go back to your work, on the instant,” said Spears; “I want no girls
here. Well, Markham, why don’t you go? Is your father to wait for you
all day--and I too?”
“I shall go when I am ready,” said Paul, gloomily.
He took a long time to put on that coat. He was not of a temper to be
cowed or frightened, and for a moment he was undecided whether to defy
his father directly and deny all jurisdiction or control on his part, or
to take the more difficult part of extending to Sir William that
courtesy which his teacher had instructed him was due from all men to
each other--from rebellious sons to fathers as well as in every other
relation of life--hearing what he had to say with politeness as he would
have heard any other opponent in argument. But the fact is that an
argument between father and son on their reciprocal duties is a thing
more difficult to maintain with perfect temper and politeness than any
argument that ever took place in the Union or perhaps in Parliament
itself. And Paul was bitterly angry that his father should have invaded
this place, and dismayed to hear that his mother had come, and that he
should have her entreaties to meet. He had not anticipated anything of
the kind, strangely enough. He had expected letters of all kinds--angry,
reproachful, entreating--but it had not occurred to him that his father
would come in person, much less any other of the family. He was dismayed
and he was angry; his heart failed him in spite of all his courage.
Pride and temper forbade him to run away, yet he would have escaped if
he could. He took a long time to put on his coat; he said nothing to
either of the two men that stood by, and pushed Fairfax aside when he
tried to help him. Spears had given up his work altogether, and stood
watching his pupil with a smile upon his face.
“When does that fellow mean to go?” he said. “What is he waiting for? I
like the looks of the little old gentleman, as the girls call him.
There’s stuff in that man. But for him and such as him the people would
have had their rights long ago; but I respect the man for all that.
Markham, what do you mean by keeping him kicking his heels outside my
shop in the sun? That is not the respect due from one man to another.
He’s an older man than you are, and merits more consideration. What are
you frightened for, man alive? Can’t you go?”
“Frightened!” cried Paul, with an indignant curl of his lip.
“Yes, frightened, nothing else; or you wouldn’t take so long a time
about going. Ah, that’s driven him out at last! Do you know those
people, Fairfax, or how did you come to bring the father here?”
“I know them? I am not half grand enough. How should I know a man who is
a Right Honourable? I met them by chance. Spears, you may say what you
like, but even a little rank, however it may go against reason, has an
effect--”
“Do you think I need you to tell me that? If it hadn’t an effect what
would be the use of all we’re doing? ‘Why stand I in peril every day?’
as that fine democrat Paul says somewhere. To be sure there’s something
in it. I once lived three days in that man’s house. I didn’t know he was
absent, as he says he was. I should have liked to have stood up to him
and stated my way of thinking, and seen what he had to say for himself.
It was the first sneaking thing I ever knew in Markham to take me there
while his father was away. Life goes on wheels in those houses,” said
Spears, taking his seat again upon his bench. “It was all one could do
after a day or two to keep one’s moral consciousness awake. A footman
waited upon me hand and foot, and I never spoke to him--not as I ought
to have done--about the unnatural folly of his position, till the last
day. I couldn’t do it; a fortnight in that place would have demoralised
even me. The mother--ah, there it is! We can’t build up women like that.
I don’t know how you’re to do it without their conditions. We have good
women, and brave women, and pure women, but nothing like that. You have
to see it,” said Spears, shaking his head, “even to know what it is.”
“So long as it’s only a fine lady--” said the young man.
“Don’t talk of what you don’t understand,” said the other. “I’d have the
best of everything in my Republic. I’d have that little old man’s pluck
and self-command; and the lady--I don’t see my way to anything like the
lady.”
“I have always told you, Spears, that the old society which you condemn
has everything that is good in it, if you would have patience and--”
“_You_ have always told me!” said Spears in his melodious voice.
He returned to his work without further argument, as if this were enough
reply. He was finishing a number of little carved frames, of which his
window was full. There was a bill in the window on which “Selling off”
was printed in large letters. The shop was full of wood and bits of
carving all done up in bundles, and everything about showed marks of an
approaching departure or breaking-up. The master of the house put on his
cap again and gave himself up to his work. It was not of a kind which
impressed the spectator. But the man who worked was not commonplace in
appearance. He was not much taller than Sir William, but had a large
massive head, covered with a crop of dusky hair. The softness of his
eyes corresponded with that of his voice, but the lines of the face were
not soft. He took no further notice of Fairfax, who, for his part, took
his neglect quite calmly. The young man took his pipe out of his pocket,
where he had put it stealthily when he first caught sight of the ladies,
for one moment paused, and looked at it with a look of half-comic
half-serious uncertainty. Should he keep it as a memento of that
interview? He looked at it again and laughed, then pulled out of another
pocket a little box of matches and lighted his pipe. He, like Paul, was
quite familiar and at his ease in the workman’s shop.