JANET RENOUNCES ME
An illness of old Sewis, the butler,—amazingly resembling a sick monkey
in his bed,—kept me from paying a visit to Temple and seeing my father
for several weeks, during which time Janet loyally accustomed the
squire to hear of the German princess, and she did it with a decent and
agreeable cheerfulness that I quite approved of. I should have been
enraged at a martyr-like appearance on her part, for I demanded a
sprightly devotion to my interests, considering love so holy a thing,
that where it existed, all surrounding persons were bound to do it
homage and service. We were thrown together a great deal in attending
on poor old Sewis, who would lie on his pillows recounting for hours my
father's midnight summons of the inhabitants of Riversley, and his
little Harry's infant expedition into the world. Temple and Heriot came
to stay at the Grange, and assisted in some rough scene-painting—torrid
colours representing the island of Jamaica. We hung it at the foot of
old Sewis's bed. He awoke and contemplated it, and went downstairs the
same day, cured, he declared: the fact being that the unfortunate
picture testified too strongly to the reversal of all he was used to in
life, in having those he served to wait on him. The squire celebrated
his recovery by giving a servants' ball. Sewis danced with the
handsomest lass, swung her to supper, and delivered an extraordinary
speech, entirely concerning me, and rather to my discomposure,
particularly so when it was my fate to hear that the old man had made
me the heir of his savings. Such was his announcement, in a very
excited voice, but incidentally upon a solemn adjuration to the squire
to beware of his temper—govern his temper and not be a turncoat.
We were present at the head of the supper-table to hear our healths
drunk. Sewis spoke like a half-caste oblivious of his training, and of
the subjects he was at liberty to touch on as well. Evidently there was
a weight of foreboding on his mind. He knew his master well. The squire
excused him under the ejaculation, 'Drunk, by the Lord!' Sewis went so
far as to mention my father 'He no disgrace, sar, he no disgrace, I
say! but he pull one way, old house pull other way, and 'tween 'em my
little Harry torn apieces, squire. He set out in the night “You not
enter it any more!” Very well. I go my lawyer next day. You see my
Will, squire. Years ago, and little Harry so high. Old Sewis not the
man to change. He no turncoat, squire. God bless you, my master; you
recollect, and ladies tell you if you forget, old Sewis no turncoat.
You hate turncoat. You taught old Sewis, and God bless you, and Mr.
Harry, and British Constitution, all Amen!'
With that he bounded to bed. He was dead next morning.
The squire was humorous over my legacy. It amounted to about seventeen
hundred pounds invested in Government Stock, and he asked me what I
meant to do with it; proposed a Charity to be established on behalf of
decayed half-castes, insisting that servants' money could never be
appropriated to the uses of gentlemen. All the while he was muttering,
'Turncoat! eh? turncoat?'—proof that the word had struck where it was
aimed. For me, after thinking on it, I had a superstitious respect for
the legacy, so I determined, in spite of the squire's laughter over
'Sixty pounds per annum!' to let it rest in my name: I saw for the
first time the possibility that I might not have my grandfather's
wealth to depend upon. He warned me of growing miserly. With my father
in London, living freely on my property, I had not much fear of that.
However, I said discreetly, 'I don't mind spending when I see my way.'
'Oh! see your way,' said he. 'Better a niggard than a chuckfist. Only,
there's my girl: she's good at accounts. One 'll do for them,
Harry?—ha'n't been long enough at home yet?'
Few were the occasions when our conversation did not diverge to this
sort of interrogation. Temple and Heriot, with whom I took counsel,
advised me to wait until the idea of the princess had worn its way into
his understanding, and leave the work to Janet. 'Though,' said Heriot
to me aside, 'upon my soul, it's slaughter.' He believed that Janet
felt keenly. But then, she admired him, and so they repaid one another.
I won my grandfather's confidence in practical matters on a trip we
took into Wales. But it was not enough for me to be a man of business,
he affirmed; he wanted me to have some ambition; why not stand for our
county at the next general election? He offered me his Welsh borough if
I thought fit to decline a contest. This was to speak as mightily as a
German prince. Virtually, in wealth and power, he was a prince; but of
how queer a kind! He was immensely gratified by my refraining to look
out for my father on our return journey through London, and remarked,
that I had not seen him for some time, he supposed. To which I said,
no, I had not, He advised me to let the fellow run his length.
Suggesting that he held it likely I contributed to 'the fellow's'
support: he said generously, 'Keep clear of him, Hal: I add you a
thousand a year to your allowance,' and damned me for being so
thoughtful over it. I found myself shuddering at a breath of anger from
him. Could he not with a word dash my hopes for ever? The warning I had
taken from old Sewis transformed me to something like a hypocrite, and
I dare say I gave the squire to understand, that I had not seen my
father for a very long period and knew nothing of his recent doings.
'Been infernally quiet these last two or three years,' the squire
muttered of the object of his aversion. 'I heard of a City widow last,
sick as a Dover packet-boat 'bout the fellow! Well, the women are
ninnies, but you're a man, Harry; you're not to be taken in any longer,
eh?'
I replied that I knew my father better now, and was asked how the deuce
I knew him better; it was the world I knew better after my stay on the
Continent.
I contained myself enough to say, 'Very well, the world, sir.'
'Flirted with one of their princesses?' He winked.
'On that subject I will talk to you some other time,' said I.
'Got to pay an indemnity? or what?' He professed alarm, and pushed for
explanations, with the air of a man of business ready to help me if
need were. 'Make a clean breast of it, Harry. You're not the son of Tom
Fool the Bastard for nothing, I'll swear. All the same you're Beltham;
you're my grandson and heir, and I'll stand by you. Out with 't! She's
a princess, is she?'
The necessity for correcting his impressions taught me to think the
moment favourable. I said, 'I am engaged to her, sir.'
He returned promptly: 'Then you'll break it off.'
I shook my head.
'Why, you can't jilt my girl at home!' said he.
'Do you find a princess objectionable, sir?'
'Objectionable? She's a foreigner. I don't know her. I never saw her.
Here's my Janet I've brought up for you, under my own eyes, out of the
way of every damned soft-sawderer, safe and plump as a melon under a
glass, and you fight shy of her, and go and engage yourself to a
foreigner I don't know and never saw! By George, Harry, I'll call in a
parson to settle you soon as ever we sight Riversley. I'll couple you,
by George, I will! 'fore either of you know whether you're on your legs
or your backs.'
We were in the streets of London, so he was obliged to moderate his
vehemence.
'Have you consulted Janet?' said I.
'Consulted her? ever since she was a chick with half a feather on.'
'A chick with half a feather on,' I remarked, 'is not always of the
same mind as a piece of poultry of full plumage.'
'Hang your sneering and your talk of a fine girl, like my Janet, as a
piece of poultry, you young rooster! You toss your head up like a cock
too conceited to crow. I'll swear the girl's in love with you. She does
you the honour to be fond of you. She's one in a million. A handsome
girl, straight-backed, honest, just a dash, and not too much, of our
blood in her.'
'Consult her again, sir,' I broke in. 'You will discover she is not of
your way of thinking.'
'Do you mean to say she's given you a left-hander, Harry?'
'I have only to say that I have not given her the option.'
He groaned going up the steps of his hotel, faced me once or twice, and
almost gained my sympathy by observing, 'When we're boys, the old ones
worry us; when we're old ones, the boys begin to tug!' He rarely spoke
so humanely,—rarely, at least, to me.
For a wonder, he let the matter drop: possibly because he found me
temperate. I tried the system on him with good effect during our stay
in London; that is, I took upon myself to be always cool, always
courteous, deliberate in my replies, and not uncordial, though I was
for representing the reserved young man. I obtained some praise for my
style and bearing among his acquaintances. To one lady passing an
encomium on me, he said, 'Oh, some foreign princess has been training
him,' which seemed to me of good augury.
My friends Temple and Heriot were among the Riversley guests at
Christmas. We rode over to John Thresher's, of whom we heard that the
pretty Mabel Sweetwinter had disappeared, and understood that suspicion
had fallen upon one of us gentlemen. Bob, her brother, had gone the way
of the bravest English fellows of his class-to America. We called on
the miller, a soured old man. Bob's evasion affected him more than
Mabel's, Martha Thresher said, in derision of our sex. I was pained to
hear from her that Bob supposed me the misleader of his sister; and
that he had, as she believed, left England, to avoid the misery of ever
meeting me again, because he liked me so much. She had been seen
walking down the lanes with some one resembling me in figure. Heriot
took the miller's view, counting the loss of one stout young Englishman
to his country of far greater importance than the escapades of dozens
of girls, for which simple creatures he had no compassion: he held the
expression of it a sham. He had grown coxcombical. Without talking of
his conquests, he talked largely of the ladies who were possibly in the
situation of victims to his grace of person, though he did not do so
with any unctuous boasting. On the contrary, there was a rather taking
undertone of regret that his enfeebled over-fat country would give her
military son no worthier occupation. He laughed at the mention of Julia
Bulsted's name. 'She proves, Richie, marriage is the best of all
receipts for women, just as it's the worst for men. Poor Billy Bulsted,
for instance, a first-rate seaman, and his heart's only half in his
profession since he and Julia swore their oath; and no wonder,—he made
something his own that won't go under lock and key. No military or
naval man ought ever to marry.'
'Stop,' said Temple, 'is the poor old country—How about continuing the
race of heroes?'
Heriot commended him to rectories, vicarages, and curates' lodgings for
breeding grounds, and coming round to Julia related one of the racy
dialogues of her married life. 'The saltwater widow's delicious. Billy
rushes home from his ship in a hurry. What's this Greg writes me?—That
he's got a friend of his to drink with him, d'ye mean, William?—A
friend of yours, ma'am.—And will you say a friend of mine is not a
friend of yours, William?—Julia, you're driving me mad!—And is that far
from crazy, where you said I drove you at first sight of me, William?
Back to his ship goes Billy with a song of love and constancy.'
I said nothing of my chagrin at the behaviour of the pair who had
furnished my first idea of the romantic beauty of love.
'Why does she talk twice as Irish as she used to, Heriot?'
'Just to coax the world to let her be as nonsensical as she likes.
She's awfully dull; she has only her nonsense to amuse her. I repeat:
soldiers and sailors oughtn't to marry. I'm her best friend. I am, on
my honour: for I'm going to make Billy give up the service, since he
can't give her up. There she is!' he cried out, and waved his hat to a
lady on horseback some way down the slope of a road leading to the view
of our heathland:
'There's the only girl living fit to marry a man and swear she's stick
to him through life and death.'
He started at a gallop. Temple would have gone too at any possible
speed, for he knew as well as I did that Janet was the girl alone
capable of winning a respectful word from Heriot; but I detained him to
talk of Ottilia and my dismal prospect of persuading the squire to
consent to my proposal for her, and to dower her in a manner worthy a
princess. He doled out his yes and no to me vacantly. Janet and Heriot
came at a walking pace to meet us, he questioning her, she replying,
but a little differently from her usual habit of turning her full face
to the speaker. He was evidently startled, and, to judge from his
posture, repeated his question, as one would say, 'You did this?' She
nodded, and then uttered some rapid words, glanced at him, laughed
shyly, and sank her features into repose as we drew near. She had a
deep blush on her face. I thought it might be, that Janet and her loud
champion had come to particular terms, a supposition that touched me
with regrets for Temple's sake. But Heriot was not looking pleased. It
happened that whatever Janet uttered struck a chord of opposition in
me. She liked the Winter and the Winter sunsets, had hopes of a frost
for skating, liked our climate, thought our way of keeping Christmas
venerable, rejoiced in dispensing the squire's bounties—called them
bounties, joined Heriot in abusing foreign countries to the exaltation
of her own: all this with 'Well, Harry, I'm sorry you don't think as we
do. And we do, don't we?' she addressed him.
'I reserve a point,' he said, and not playfully.
She appeared distressed, and courted a change of expression in his
features, and I have to confess that never having seen her gaze upon
any one save myself in that fashion, which was with her very winning,
especially where some of her contralto tones of remonstrance or
entreaty aided it, I felt as a man does at a neighbour's shadow cast
over his rights of property.
Heriot dropped to the rear: I was glad to leave her with Temple, and
glad to see them canter ahead together on the sand of tie heaths.
'She has done it,' Heriot burst out abruptly. 'She has done it!' he
said again. 'Upon my soul, I never wished in my life before that I was
a marrying man: I might have a chance of ending worth something. She
has won the squire round with a thundering fib, and you're to have the
German if you can get her. Don't be in a hurry. The squire 'll speak to
you to-night: but think over it. Will you? Think what a girl this is. I
believe on my honour no man ever had such an offer of a true woman.
Come, don't think it's Heriot speaking—I've always liked her, of
course. But I have always respected her, and that's not of course.
Depend upon it, a woman who can be a friend of men is the right sort of
woman to make a match with. Do you suppose she couldn't have a dozen
fellows round her at the lift of her finger? the pick of the land! I'd
trust her with an army. I tell you, Janet Ilchester's the only girl
alive who'll double the man she marries. I don't know another who
wouldn't make the name of wife laugh the poor devil out of house and
company. She's firm as a rock; and sweet as a flower on it! Will that
touch you? Bah! Richie, let's talk like men. I feel for her because
she's fond of you, and I know what it is when a girl like that sets her
heart on a fellow. There,' he concluded, 'I'd ask you to go down on
your knees and pray before you decide against her!'
Heriot succeeded in raising a certain dull indistinct image in my mind
of a well-meaning girl, to whom I was bound to feel thankful, and felt
so. I thanked Heriot, too, for his friendly intentions. He had never
seen the Princess Ottilia. And at night I thanked my grandfather. He
bore himself, on the whole, like the good and kindly old gentleman
Janet loved to consider him. He would not stand in my light, he said,
recurring to that sheet-anchor of a tolerant sentence whenever his
forehead began to gather clouds. He regretted that Janet was no better
than her sex in her preference for rakes, and wished me to the deuce
for bringing Heriot into the house, and not knowing when I was lucky.
'German grandchildren, eh!' he muttered. No Beltham had ever married a
foreigner. What was the time fixed between us for the marriage? He
wanted to see his line safe before he died. 'How do I know this foreign
woman'll bear?' he asked, expecting an answer. His hand was on the back
of a chair, grasping and rocking it; his eyes bent stormily on the
carpet; they were set blinking rapidly after a glance at me. Altogether
his self-command was creditable to Janet's tuition.
Janet met me next day, saying with some insolence (so it struck me from
her liveliness): 'Well, it's all right, Harry? Now you'll be happy, I
hope.' I did not shine in my reply. Her amiable part appeared to be to
let me see how brilliant and gracious the commonplace could be made to
look. She kept Heriot at the Grange, against the squire's remonstrance
and her mother's. 'It's to keep him out of harm's way: the women he
knows are not of the best kind for him,' she said, with astounding
fatuity. He submitted, and seemed to like it. She must be teaching
Temple to skate figures in the frost, with a great display of
good-humoured patience, and her voice at musical pitches. But her
principal affectation was to talk on matters of business with Mr.
Burgin and Mr. Trewint, the squire's lawyer and bailiff, on mines and
interest, on money and economical questions; not shrinking from
politics either, until the squire cries out to the males assisting in
the performance, 'Gad, she's a head as good as our half-dozen put
together,' and they servilely joined their fragmentary capitals in
agreement. She went so far as to retain Peterborough to teach her
Latin. He was idling in the expectation of a living in the squire's
gift.
The annoyance for me was that I could not detach myself from a
contemplation of these various scenes, by reverting to my life in
Germany. The preposterous closing of my interview with Ottilia blocked
the way, and I was unable to write to her—unable to address her even in
imagination, without pangs of shame at the review of the petty
conspiracy I had sanctioned to entrap her to plight her hand to me, and
without perpetually multiplying excuses for my conduct. So to escape
them I was reduced to study Janet, forming one of her satellites. She
could say to me impudently, with all the air of a friendly comrade,
'Had your letter from Germany yet, Harry?' She flew—she was always on
the chase. I saw her permit Heriot to kiss her hand, and then the
squire appeared, and Heriot and she burst into laughter, and the
squire, with a puzzled face, would have the game explained to him, but
understood not a bit of it, only growled at me; upon which Janet became
serious and chid him. I was told by my aunt Dorothy to admire this
behaviour of hers. One day she certainly did me a service: a paragraph
in one of the newspapers spoke of my father, not flatteringly:
'Richmond is in the field again,' it commenced. The squire was waiting
for her to hand the paper to him. None of us could comprehend why she
played him off and denied him his right to the first perusal of the
news; she was voluble, almost witty, full of sprightly Roxalana
petulance.
'This paper,' she said, 'deserves to be burnt,' and she was allowed to
burn it—money article, mining column as well—on the pretext of an
infamous anti-Tory leader, of which she herself composed the first
sentence to shock the squire completely. I had sight of that paper some
time afterwards. Richmond was in the field again, it stated, with mock
flourishes. But that was not the worst. My grandfather's name was down
there, and mine, and Princess Ottilia's. My father's connection with
the court of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld was alluded to as the latest, and next
to his winning the heiress of Riversley, the most successful of his
ventures, inasmuch as his son, if rumour was to be trusted, had
obtained the promise of the hand of the princess. The paragraph was an
excerpt from a gossiping weekly journal, perhaps less malevolent than I
thought it. There was some fun to be got out of a man who, the journal
in question was informed, had joined the arms of England and a petty
German principality stamped on his plate and furniture.
My gratitude to Janet was fervent enough when I saw what she had saved
me from. I pressed her hand and held it. I talked stupidly, but I made
my cruel position intelligible to her, and she had the delicacy, on
this occasion, to keep her sentiments regarding my father unuttered. We
sat hardly less than an hour side by side—I know not how long hand in
hand. The end was an extraordinary trembling in the limb abandoned to
me. It seized her frame. I would have detained her, but it was plain
she suffered both in her heart and her pride. Her voice was under fair
command—more than mine was. She counselled me to go to London, at once.
'I would be off to London if I were you, Harry,'—for the purpose of
checking my father's extravagances,—would have been the further
wording, which she spared me; and I thanked her, wishing, at the same
time, that she would get the habit of using choicer phrases whenever
there might, by chance, be a stress of emotion between us. Her
trembling, and her 'I'd be off,' came into unpleasant collision in the
recollection.
I acknowledge to myself that she was a true and hearty friend. She
listened with interest to my discourse on the necessity of my being in
Parliament before I could venture to propose formally for the hand of
the princess, and undertook to bear the burden of all consequent
negotiations with my grandfather. If she would but have allowed me to
speak of Temple, instead of saying, 'Don't, Harry, I like him so much!'
at the very mention of his name, I should have sincerely felt my
indebtedness to her, and some admiration of her fine spirit and figure
besides. I could not even agree with my aunt Dorothy that Janet was
handsome. When I had to grant her a pardon I appreciated her better.