I MEET MY FIRST PLAYFELLOW AND TAKE MY PUNISHMENT
There came to me a little note on foreign paper, unaddressed, an
enclosure forwarded by Janet, and containing merely one scrap from the
playful XENIEN of Ottilia's favourite brotherly poets, of
untranslatable flavour:—
Who shuns true friends flies fortune in the concrete:
Would he see what he aims at? let him ask his heels.
It filled me with a breath of old German peace.
From this I learnt that Ottilia and Janet corresponded. Upon what
topics? to what degree of intimacy?
Janet now confessed to me that their intimacy had never known reserve.
The princess had divined her attachment for Harry Richmond when their
acquaintance was commenced in the island, and knew at the present
moment that I had travelled round to the recognition of Janet's worth.
Thus encouraged by the princess's changeless friendship, I wrote to
her, leaving little to be guessed of my state of mind, withholding
nothing of the circumstances surrounding me. Imagination dealt me all
my sharpest misery, and now that Ottilia resumed her place there, I
became infinitely peacefuller, and stronger to subdue my hungry nature.
It caused me no pang, strangely though it read in my sight when
written, to send warm greetings and respects to the prince her husband.
Is it any waste of time to write of love? The trials of life are in it,
but in a narrow ring and a fierier. You may learn to know yourself
through love, as you do after years of life, whether you are fit to
lift them that are about you, or whether you are but a cheat, and a
load on the backs of your fellows. The impure perishes, the inefficient
languishes, the moderate comes to its autumn of decay—these are of the
kinds which aim at satisfaction to die of it soon or late. The love
that survives has strangled craving; it lives because it lives to
nourish and succour like the heavens.
But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death before you
reach your immortality.
But again, to write of a love perverted by all the elements
contributing to foolishness, and foredoomed to chastisement, would be a
graceless business. Janet and I went through our trial, she, you may
believe, the braver under the most to bear.
I was taken by Temple down to the ship—smelling East of London, for the
double purpose of trying to convince Captain Welsh of the extravagance
of a piece of chivalry he was about to commit, and of seeing a lady
with a history, who had recently come under his guardianship. Temple
thought I should know her, but he made a mystery of it until the moment
of our introduction arrived, not being certain of her identity, and not
wishing to have me disappointed. It appeared that Captain Welsh
questioned his men closely after he had won his case, and he arrived at
the conclusion that two or three of them had been guilty of false
swearing in his interests. He did not dismiss them, for, as he said, it
was twice a bad thing to turn sinners loose: it was to shove them out
of the direct road of amendment, and it was a wrong to the population.
He insisted, however, on paying the legal costs and an indemnity for
the collision at sea; and Temple was in great distress about it, he
having originally suggested the suspicion of his men to Captain Welsh.
'I wanted to put him on his guard against those rascals,' Temple said,
'and I suppose,' he sighed, 'I wanted the old captain to think me
enormously clever all round.' He shook himself, and assumed a bearish
aspect, significant of disgust and recklessness. 'The captain 'll be
ruined, Richie; and he's not young, you know, to go on sailing his
barque Priscilla for ever. If he pays, why, I ought to pay, and then
you ought to pay, for I shouldn't have shown off before him alone, and
then the wind that fetched you ought to pay. Toss common sense
overboard, there's no end to your fine-drawings; that's why it's always
safest to swear by the Judge.'
We rolled down to the masts among the chimneys on the top of an
omnibus. The driver was eloquent on cricket-matches. Now, cricket, he
said, was fine manly sport; it might kill a man, but it never meant
mischief: foreigners themselves had a bit of an idea that it was the
best game in the world, though it was a nice joke to see a foreigner
playing at it! None of them could stand to be bowled at. Hadn't
stomachs for it; they'd have to train for soldiers first. On one
occasion he had seen a Frenchman looking on at a match. 'Ball was hit a
shooter twixt the slips: off starts Frenchman, catches it, heaves it
up, like his head, half-way to wicket, and all the field set to bawling
at him, and sending him, we knew where. He tripped off: “You no
comprong politeness in dis country.” Ha! ha!'
To prove the aforesaid Frenchman wrong, we nodded to the driver's
laughter at his exquisite imitation.
He informed us that he had backed the Surrey Eleven last year, owing to
the report of a gentleman-bowler, who had done things in the way of
tumbling wickets to tickle the ears of cricketers. Gentlemen-batters
were common: gentlemen-bowlers were quite another dish. Saddlebank was
the gentleman's name.
'Old Nandrew Saddle?' Temple called to me, and we smiled at the
supposition of Saddlebank's fame, neither of us, from what we had known
of his bowling, doubting that he deserved it.
'Acquainted with him, gentlemen?' the driver inquired, touching his
hat. 'Well, and I ask why don't more gentlemen take to cricket? 'stead
of horses all round the year! Now, there's my notion of happiness,'
said the man condemned to inactivity, in the perpetual act of motion;
'cricket in cricket season! It comprises—count: lots o' running; and
that's good: just enough o' taking it easy; that's good: a appetite for
your dinner, and your ale or your Port, as may be the case; good,
number three. Add on a tired pipe after dark, and a sound sleep to
follow, and you say good morning to the doctor and the parson; for
you're in health body and soul, and ne'er a parson 'll make a better
Christian of ye, that I'll swear.'
As if anxious not to pervert us, he concluded: 'That's what _I_ think,
gentlemen.'
Temple and I talked of the ancient raptures of a first of May
cricketing-day on a sunny green meadow, with an ocean of a day before
us, and well-braced spirits for the match. I had the vision of a
matronly, but not much altered Janet, mounted on horseback, to witness
the performance of some favourite Eleven of youngsters with her
connoisseur's eye; and then the model of an English lady, wife, and
mother, waving adieu to the field and cantering home to entertain her
husband's guests. Her husband!
Temple was aware of my grief, but saw no remedy. I knew that in his
heart he thought me justly punished, though he loved me.
We had a long sitting with Captain Welsh, whom I found immoveable, as I
expected I should. His men, he said, had confessed their sin similarly
to the crab in a hole, with one claw out, as the way of sinners was. He
blamed himself mainly. 'Where you have accidents, Mr. Richmond, you
have faults; and where you have faults aboard a ship you may trace a
line to the captain. I should have treated my ship's crew like my
conscience, and gone through them nightly. As it is, sir, here comes
round one of your accidents to tell me I have lived blinded by conceit.
That is my affliction, my young friend. The payment of the money is no
more so than to restore money held in trust.'
Temple and I argued the case with him, as of old on our voyage, on
board the barque Priscilla, quite unavailingly.
'Is a verdict built on lies one that my Maker approves of?' said he.
'If I keep possession of that money, my young friends, will it clothe
me? Ay, with stings! Will it feed me? Ay, with poison. And they that
should be having it shiver and want!'
He was emphatic, as he would not have been, save to read us an example,
owing to our contention with him. 'The money is Satan in my very
hands!' When he had dismissed the subject he never returned to it.
His topic of extreme happiness, to which Temple led him, was the rescue
of a beautiful sinner from a life of shame. It appeared that Captain
Welsh had the habit between his voyages of making one holiday
expedition to the spot of all creation he thought the fairest, Richmond
Hill, overlooking the Thames; and there, one evening, he espied a lady
in grief, and spoke to her, and gave her consolation. More, he gave her
a blameless home. The lady's name was Mabel Bolton. She was in distress
of spirit rather than of circumstances, for temptation was thick about
one so beautiful, to supply the vanities and luxuries of the father of
sin. He described her.
She was my first playfellow, the miller's daughter of Dipwell, Mabel
Sweetwinter, taken from her home by Lord Edbury during my German
university career, and now put away by him upon command of his family
on the eve of his marriage.
She herself related her history to me, after telling me that she had
seen me once at the steps of Edbury's Club. Our meeting was no great
surprise to either of us. She had heard my name as that of an expected
visitor; she had seen Temple, moreover, and he had prompted me with her
Christian name and the praise of her really glorious hair, to
anticipate the person who was ushered into the little cabin-like
parlour by Captain Welsh's good old mother.
Of Edbury she could not speak for grief, believing that he loved her
still and was acting under compulsion. Her long and faithful attachment
to the scapegrace seemed to preserve her from the particular regrets
Captain Welsh supposed to occupy her sinner's mind; so that, after some
minutes of the hesitation and strangeness due to our common
recollections, she talked of him simply and well—as befitted her
situation, a worldling might say. But she did not conceal her relief in
escaping to this quaint little refuge (she threw a kindly-comical look,
not overtoned, at the miniature ships on the mantelpiece, and the
picture of Joseph leading Mary with her babe on the ass) from the
temptations I could imagine a face like hers would expose her to. The
face was splendid, the figure already overblown. I breathed some thanks
to my father while she and I conversed apart. The miller was dead, her
brother in America. She had no other safe home than the one Captain
Welsh had opened to her. When I asked her (I had no excuse for it)
whether she would consent to go to Edbury again, she reddened and burst
into tears. I cursed my brutality. 'Let her cry,' said Captain Welsh on
parting with us at his street door. 'Tears are the way of women and
their comfort.'
To our astonishment he told us he intended to take her for a voyage in
the Priscilla. 'Why?' we asked.
'I take her,' he said, 'because not to do things wholly is worse than
not to do things at all, for it's waste of time and cause for a chorus
below, down in hell, my young friends. The woman is beautiful as
Solomon's bride. She is weak as water. And the man is wicked. He has
written to her a letter. He would have her reserved for himself, a
wedded man: such he is, or is soon to be. I am searching, and she is
not deceitful; and I am a poor man again and must go the voyage. I
wrestled with her, and by grace I conquered her to come with me of a
free will, and be out of his snares. Aboard I do not fear him, and she
shall know the mercy of the Lord on high seas.'
We grimaced a little on her behalf, but had nothing to reply.
Seeing Janet after Mabel was strange. In the latter one could perceive
the palpably suitable mate for Edbury.
I felt that my darling was insulted—no amends for it I had to keep
silent and mark the remorseless preparations going forward. Not so
Heriot. He had come over from the camp in Ireland on leave at this
juncture. His talk of women still suggested the hawk with the downy
feathers of the last little plucked bird sticking to his beak; but his
appreciation of Janet and some kindness for me made him a vehement
opponent of her resolve. He took licence of his friendship to lay every
incident before her, to complete his persuasions. She resisted his
attacks, as I knew she would, obstinately, and replied to his
entreaties with counter-supplications that he should urge me to accept
old Riversley. The conflicts went on between those two daily, and I
heard of them from Heriot at night. He refused to comprehend her
determination under the head of anything save madness. Varied by
reproaches of me for my former inveterate blindness, he raved upon
Janet's madness incessantly, swearing that he would not be beaten. I
told him his efforts were useless, but thought them friendly, and so
they were, only Janet's resistance had fired his vanity, and he stalked
up and down my room talking a mixture of egregious coxcombry and hearty
good sense that might have shown one the cause he meant to win had
become personal to him. Temple, who was sometimes in consultation with
him, and was always amused by his quasi-fanfaronade, assured me that
Heriot was actually scheming. The next we heard of him was, that he had
been seen at a whitebait hotel down the river drunk with Edbury. Janet
also heard of that, and declined to see Heriot again.
Our last days marched frightfully fast. Janet had learnt that any the
most distant allusion to her marriage day was an anguish to the man who
was not to marry her, so it was through my aunt Dorothy that I became
aware of Julia Bulsted's kindness in offering to take charge of my
father for a term. Lady Sampleman undertook to be hostess to him for
one night, the eve of Janet's nuptials. He was quiet, unlikely to give
annoyance to persons not strongly predisposed to hear sentences
finished and exclamations fall into their right places.
Adieu to my darling! There have been women well won; here was an
adorable woman well lost. After twenty years of slighting her, did I
fancy she would turn to me and throw a man over in reward of my
ultimate recovery of my senses?—or fancy that one so tenacious as she
had proved would snap a tie depending on her pledged word? She liked
Edbury; she saw the best of him, and liked him. The improved young lord
was her handiwork. After the years of humiliation from me, she had
found herself courted by a young nobleman who clung to her for help,
showed improvement, and brought her many compliments from a wondering
world. She really felt that she was strength and true life to him. She
resisted Heriot: she resisted a more powerful advocate, and this was
the princess Ottilia. My aunt Dorothy told me that the princess had
written. Janet either did or affected to weigh the princess's
reasonings; and she did not evade the task of furnishing a full reply.
Her resolution was unchanged. Loss of colour, loss of light in her
eyes, were the sole signs of what it cost her to maintain it. Our task
was to transfer the idea of Janet to that of Julia in my father's
whirling brain, which at first rebelled violently, and cast it out like
a stick thrust between rapidly revolving wheels.
The night before I was to take him away, she gave me her hand with a
'good-bye, dear Harry.' My words were much the same. She had a ghastly
face, but could not have known it, for she smiled, and tried to keep
the shallow smile in play, as friends do. There was the end.
It came abruptly, and was schoolingly cold and short.
It had the effect on me of freezing my blood and setting what seemed to
be the nerves of my brain at work in a fury of calculation to reckon
the minutes remaining of her maiden days. I had expected nothing, but
now we had parted I thought that one last scene to break my heart on
should not have been denied to me. My aunt Dorothy was a mute; she wept
when I spoke of Janet, whatever it was I said.
The minutes ran on from circumstance to circumstance of the destiny
Janet had marked for herself, each one rounded in my mind of a blood
colour like the edge about prismatic hues. I lived through them a
thousand times before they occurred, as the wretch who fears death dies
multitudinously.
Some womanly fib preserved my father from a shock on leaving Janet's
house. She left it herself at the same time that she drove him to Lady
Sampleman's, and I found him there soon after she had gone to her
bridesmaids. A letter was for me:—
'DEAR HARRY,—
I shall not live at Riversley, never go there again; do not let it be
sold to a stranger; it will happen unless you go there. For the sake of
the neighbourhood and poor people, I cannot allow it to be shut up. I
was the cause of the chief misfortune. You never blamed me. Let me
think that the old place is not dead. Adieu.
'Your affectionate,
'JANET.'
I tore the letter to pieces, and kept them.
The aspect of the new intolerable world I was to live in after
to-morrow, paralyzed sensation. My father chattered, Lady Sampleman
hushed him; she said I might leave him to her, and I went down to
Captain Welsh to bid him good-bye and get such peace as contact with a
man clad in armour proof against earthly calamity could give.
I was startled to see little Kiomi in Mabel's company.
They had met accidentally at the head of the street, and had been
friends in childhood, Captain Welsh said, adding: 'She hates men.'
'Good reason, when they're beasts,' said Kiomi.
Amid much weeping of Mabel and old Mrs. Welsh, Kiomi showed as little
trouble as the heath when the woods are swept.
Captain Welsh wanted Mabel to be on board early, owing, he told me, to
information. Kiomi had offered to remain on board with her until the
captain was able to come. He had business to do in the City.
We saw them off from the waterside.
'Were I to leave that young woman behind me, on shore, I should be
giving the devil warrant to seize upon his prey,' said Captain Welsh,
turning his gaze from the boat which conveyed Kiomi and Mabel to the
barque Priscilla. He had information that the misleader of her youth
was hunting her.
He and I parted, and for ever, at a corner of crossways in the central
city. There I saw the last of one who deemed it as simple a matter to
renounce his savings for old age, to rectify an error of justice, as to
plant his foot on the pavement; a man whose only burden was the folly
of men.
I thought to myself in despair, under what protest can I also escape
from England and my own intemperate mind? It seemed a miraculous
answer:—There lay at my chambers a note written by Count Kesensky; I
went to the embassy, and heard of an Austrian ship of war being at one
of our ports upon an expedition to the East, and was introduced to the
captain, a gentlemanly fellow, like most of the officers of his
Government. Finding in me a German scholar, and a joyful willingness,
he engaged me to take the post of secretary to the expedition in the
place of an invalided Freiherr von Redwitz. The bargain was struck
immediately: I was to be ready to report myself to the captain on board
not later than the following day. Count Kesensky led me aside: he
regretted that he could do nothing better for me: but I thought his
friendliness extreme and astonishing, and said so; whereupon the count
assured me that his intentions were good, though he had not been of
great use hitherto—an allusion to the borough of Chippenden: he had
only heard of von Redwitz's illness that afternoon. I thanked him
cordially, saying I was much in his debt, and he bowed me out, letting
me fancy, as my father had fancied before me, and as though I had never
observed and reflected in my life, that the opportuneness of this
intervention signified a special action of Providence.
The flattery of the thought served for an elixir. But with whom would
my father abide during my absence? Captain Bulsted and Julia saved me
from a fit of remorse; they had come up to town on purpose to carry him
home with them, and had left a message on my table, and an invitation
to dinner at their hotel, where the name of Janet was the Marino
Faliero of our review of Riversley people and old times. The captain
and his wife were indignant at her conduct. Since, however, I chose to
excuse it, they said they would say nothing more about her, and she was
turned face to the wall. I told them how Janet had taken him for
months. 'But I'll take him for years,' said Julia. 'The truth is,
Harry, my old dear! William and I are never so united—for I'm ashamed
to quarrel with him—as when your father's at Bulsted. He belongs to us,
and other people shall know you're not obliged to depend on your family
for help, and your aunt Dorothy can come and see him whenever she
likes.'
That was settled. Captain Bulsted went with me to Lady Sampleman's to
prepare my father for the change of nurse and residence. We were
informed that he had gone down with Alderman Duke Saddlebank to dine at
one of the great City Companies' halls. I could hardly believe it. 'Ah!
my dear Mr. Harry,' said Lady Sampleman, 'old friends know one another
best, believe that, now. I treated him as if he was as well as ever he
was, gave him his turtle and madeira lunch; and Alderman Saddlebank,
who lunched here—your father used to say, he looks like a robin hopping
out of a larder—quite jumped to dine him in the City like old times;
and he will see a great spread of plate!'
She thought my father only moderately unwell, wanting novelty. Captain
Bulsted agreed with me that it would be prudent to go and fetch him. At
the door of the City hall stood Andrew Saddlebank, grown to be simply a
larger edition of Rippenger's head boy, and he imparted to us that my
father was 'on his legs' delivering a speech: It alarmed me. With
Saddlebank's assistance I pushed in.
'A prince! a treacherous lover! an unfatherly man!'
Those were the words I caught: a reproduction of many of my phrases
employed in our arguments on this very subject.
He bade his audience to beware of princes, beware of idle princes; and
letting his florid fancy loose on these eminent persons, they were at
one moment silver lamps, at another poising hawks, and again sprawling
pumpkins; anything except useful citizens. How could they be? They had
the attraction of the lamp, the appetite of the hawk, the occupation of
the pumpkin: nothing was given them to do but to shine, destroy, and
fatten. Their hands were kept empty: a trifle in their heads would
topple them over; they were monuments of the English system of
compromise. Happy for mankind if they were monuments only! Happy for
them! But they had the passions of men. The adulation of the multitude
was raised to inflate them, whose self-respect had not one prop to rest
on, unless it were contempt for the flatterers and prophetic foresight
of their perfidy. They were the monuments of a compromise between the
past and terror of the future; puppets as princes, mannikins as men,
the snares of frail women, stop-gaps of the State, feathered
nonentities!
So far (but not in epigram) he marshalled the things he had heard to
his sound of drum and trumpet, like one repeating a lesson off-hand.
Steering on a sudden completely round, he gave his audience an outline
of the changes he would have effected had he but triumphed in his
cause; and now came the lashing of arms, a flood of eloquence. Princes
with brains, princes leaders, princes flowers of the land, he had
offered them! princes that should sway assemblies, and not stultify the
precepts of a decent people 'by making you pay in the outrage of your
morals for what you seem to gain in policy.' These or similar words.
The whole scene was too grotesque and afflicting. But his command of
his hearers was extraordinary, partly a consolation I thought, until,
having touched the arm of one of the gentlemen of the banquet and said,
'I am his son; I wish to remove him,' the reply enlightened me: 'I'm
afraid there's danger in interrupting him; I really am.'
They were listening obediently to one whom they dared not interrupt for
fear of provoking an outburst of madness.
I had to risk it. His dilated eyes looked ready to seize on me for an
illustration. I spoke peremptorily, and he bowed his head low, saying,
'My son, gentlemen,' and submitted himself to my hands. The feasters
showed immediately that they felt released by rising and chatting in
groups. Alderman Saddlebank expressed much gratitude to me for the
service I had performed. 'That first half of your father's speech was
the most pathetic thing I ever heard!' I had not shared his privilege,
and could not say. The remark was current that a great deal was true of
what had been said of the Fitzs. My father leaned heavily on my arm
with the step and bent head of an ancient pensioner of the Honourable
City Company. He was Julia Bulsted's charge, and I was on board the
foreign vessel weighing anchor from England before dawn of Janet's
marriage-day.