At noon next day, John Willet’s guest sat lingering over his breakfast
in his own home, surrounded by a variety of comforts, which left the
Maypole’s highest flight and utmost stretch of accommodation at an
infinite distance behind, and suggested comparisons very much to the
disadvantage and disfavour of that venerable tavern.
In the broad old-fashioned window-seat--as capacious as many modern
sofas, and cushioned to serve the purpose of a luxurious settee--in the
broad old-fashioned window-seat of a roomy chamber, Mr Chester lounged,
very much at his ease, over a well-furnished breakfast-table. He had
exchanged his riding-coat for a handsome morning-gown, his boots for
slippers; had been at great pains to atone for the having been obliged
to make his toilet when he rose without the aid of dressing-case and
tiring equipage; and, having gradually forgotten through these means the
discomforts of an indifferent night and an early ride, was in a state of
perfect complacency, indolence, and satisfaction.
The situation in which he found himself, indeed, was particularly
favourable to the growth of these feelings; for, not to mention the lazy
influence of a late and lonely breakfast, with the additional sedative
of a newspaper, there was an air of repose about his place of residence
peculiar to itself, and which hangs about it, even in these times, when
it is more bustling and busy than it was in days of yore.
There are, still, worse places than the Temple, on a sultry day,
for basking in the sun, or resting idly in the shade. There is yet a
drowsiness in its courts, and a dreamy dulness in its trees and gardens;
those who pace its lanes and squares may yet hear the echoes of their
footsteps on the sounding stones, and read upon its gates, in passing
from the tumult of the Strand or Fleet Street, ‘Who enters here leaves
noise behind.’ There is still the plash of falling water in fair
Fountain Court, and there are yet nooks and corners where dun-haunted
students may look down from their dusty garrets, on a vagrant ray of
sunlight patching the shade of the tall houses, and seldom troubled
to reflect a passing stranger’s form. There is yet, in the Temple,
something of a clerkly monkish atmosphere, which public offices of law
have not disturbed, and even legal firms have failed to scare away. In
summer time, its pumps suggest to thirsty idlers, springs cooler, and
more sparkling, and deeper than other wells; and as they trace the
spillings of full pitchers on the heated ground, they snuff the
freshness, and, sighing, cast sad looks towards the Thames, and think of
baths and boats, and saunter on, despondent.
It was in a room in Paper Buildings--a row of goodly tenements, shaded
in front by ancient trees, and looking, at the back, upon the Temple
Gardens--that this, our idler, lounged; now taking up again the paper
he had laid down a hundred times; now trifling with the fragments of
his meal; now pulling forth his golden toothpick, and glancing leisurely
about the room, or out at window into the trim garden walks, where a few
early loiterers were already pacing to and fro. Here a pair of lovers
met to quarrel and make up; there a dark-eyed nursery-maid had better
eyes for Templars than her charge; on this hand an ancient spinster,
with her lapdog in a string, regarded both enormities with scornful
sidelong looks; on that a weazen old gentleman, ogling the nursery-maid,
looked with like scorn upon the spinster, and wondered she didn’t know
she was no longer young. Apart from all these, on the river’s margin two
or three couple of business-talkers walked slowly up and down in earnest
conversation; and one young man sat thoughtfully on a bench, alone.
‘Ned is amazingly patient!’ said Mr Chester, glancing at this last-named
person as he set down his teacup and plied the golden toothpick,
‘immensely patient! He was sitting yonder when I began to dress, and has
scarcely changed his posture since. A most eccentric dog!’
As he spoke, the figure rose, and came towards him with a rapid pace.
‘Really, as if he had heard me,’ said the father, resuming his newspaper
with a yawn. ‘Dear Ned!’
Presently the room-door opened, and the young man entered; to whom his
father gently waved his hand, and smiled.
‘Are you at leisure for a little conversation, sir?’ said Edward.
‘Surely, Ned. I am always at leisure. You know my constitution.--Have
you breakfasted?’
‘Three hours ago.’
‘What a very early dog!’ cried his father, contemplating him from behind
the toothpick, with a languid smile.
‘The truth is,’ said Edward, bringing a chair forward, and seating
himself near the table, ‘that I slept but ill last night, and was glad
to rise. The cause of my uneasiness cannot but be known to you, sir; and
it is upon that I wish to speak.’
‘My dear boy,’ returned his father, ‘confide in me, I beg. But you know
my constitution--don’t be prosy, Ned.’
‘I will be plain, and brief,’ said Edward.
‘Don’t say you will, my good fellow,’ returned his father, crossing his
legs, ‘or you certainly will not. You are going to tell me’--
‘Plainly this, then,’ said the son, with an air of great concern, ‘that
I know where you were last night--from being on the spot, indeed--and
whom you saw, and what your purpose was.’
‘You don’t say so!’ cried his father. ‘I am delighted to hear it. It
saves us the worry, and terrible wear and tear of a long explanation,
and is a great relief for both. At the very house! Why didn’t you come
up? I should have been charmed to see you.’
‘I knew that what I had to say would be better said after a night’s
reflection, when both of us were cool,’ returned the son.
‘’Fore Gad, Ned,’ rejoined the father, ‘I was cool enough last night.
That detestable Maypole! By some infernal contrivance of the builder,
it holds the wind, and keeps it fresh. You remember the sharp east wind
that blew so hard five weeks ago? I give you my honour it was rampant
in that old house last night, though out of doors there was a dead calm.
But you were saying’--
‘I was about to say, Heaven knows how seriously and earnestly, that you
have made me wretched, sir. Will you hear me gravely for a moment?’
‘My dear Ned,’ said his father, ‘I will hear you with the patience of an
anchorite. Oblige me with the milk.’
‘I saw Miss Haredale last night,’ Edward resumed, when he had complied
with this request; ‘her uncle, in her presence, immediately after your
interview, and, as of course I know, in consequence of it, forbade
me the house, and, with circumstances of indignity which are of your
creation I am sure, commanded me to leave it on the instant.’
‘For his manner of doing so, I give you my honour, Ned, I am not
accountable,’ said his father. ‘That you must excuse. He is a mere boor,
a log, a brute, with no address in life.--Positively a fly in the jug.
The first I have seen this year.’
Edward rose, and paced the room. His imperturbable parent sipped his
tea.
‘Father,’ said the young man, stopping at length before him, ‘we must
not trifle in this matter. We must not deceive each other, or ourselves.
Let me pursue the manly open part I wish to take, and do not repel me by
this unkind indifference.’
‘Whether I am indifferent or no,’ returned the other, ‘I leave you, my
dear boy, to judge. A ride of twenty-five or thirty miles, through miry
roads--a Maypole dinner--a tete-a-tete with Haredale, which, vanity
apart, was quite a Valentine and Orson business--a Maypole bed--a
Maypole landlord, and a Maypole retinue of idiots and centaurs;--whether
the voluntary endurance of these things looks like indifference, dear
Ned, or like the excessive anxiety, and devotion, and all that sort of
thing, of a parent, you shall determine for yourself.’
‘I wish you to consider, sir,’ said Edward, ‘in what a cruel situation I
am placed. Loving Miss Haredale as I do--’
‘My dear fellow,’ interrupted his father with a compassionate smile,
‘you do nothing of the kind. You don’t know anything about it. There’s
no such thing, I assure you. Now, do take my word for it. You have good
sense, Ned,--great good sense. I wonder you should be guilty of such
amazing absurdities. You really surprise me.’
‘I repeat,’ said his son firmly, ‘that I love her. You have interposed
to part us, and have, to the extent I have just now told you of,
succeeded. May I induce you, sir, in time, to think more favourably of
our attachment, or is it your intention and your fixed design to hold us
asunder if you can?’
‘My dear Ned,’ returned his father, taking a pinch of snuff and pushing
his box towards him, ‘that is my purpose most undoubtedly.’
‘The time that has elapsed,’ rejoined his son, ‘since I began to know
her worth, has flown in such a dream that until now I have hardly once
paused to reflect upon my true position. What is it? From my childhood
I have been accustomed to luxury and idleness, and have been bred as
though my fortune were large, and my expectations almost without a
limit. The idea of wealth has been familiarised to me from my cradle. I
have been taught to look upon those means, by which men raise themselves
to riches and distinction, as being beyond my heeding, and beneath my
care. I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit
for nothing. I find myself at last wholly dependent upon you, with no
resource but in your favour. In this momentous question of my life we do
not, and it would seem we never can, agree. I have shrunk instinctively
alike from those to whom you have urged me to pay court, and from the
motives of interest and gain which have rendered them in your eyes
visible objects for my suit. If there never has been thus much
plain-speaking between us before, sir, the fault has not been mine,
indeed. If I seem to speak too plainly now, it is, believe me father, in
the hope that there may be a franker spirit, a worthier reliance, and a
kinder confidence between us in time to come.’
‘My good fellow,’ said his smiling father, ‘you quite affect me. Go
on, my dear Edward, I beg. But remember your promise. There is great
earnestness, vast candour, a manifest sincerity in all you say, but I
fear I observe the faintest indications of a tendency to prose.’
‘I am very sorry, sir.’
‘I am very sorry, too, Ned, but you know that I cannot fix my mind for
any long period upon one subject. If you’ll come to the point at once,
I’ll imagine all that ought to go before, and conclude it said. Oblige
me with the milk again. Listening, invariably makes me feverish.’
‘What I would say then, tends to this,’ said Edward. ‘I cannot bear
this absolute dependence, sir, even upon you. Time has been lost and
opportunity thrown away, but I am yet a young man, and may retrieve it.
Will you give me the means of devoting such abilities and energies as I
possess, to some worthy pursuit? Will you let me try to make for myself
an honourable path in life? For any term you please to name--say for
five years if you will--I will pledge myself to move no further in the
matter of our difference without your full concurrence. During that
period, I will endeavour earnestly and patiently, if ever man did, to
open some prospect for myself, and free you from the burden you fear
I should become if I married one whose worth and beauty are her chief
endowments. Will you do this, sir? At the expiration of the term we
agree upon, let us discuss this subject again. Till then, unless it is
revived by you, let it never be renewed between us.’
‘My dear Ned,’ returned his father, laying down the newspaper at which
he had been glancing carelessly, and throwing himself back in the
window-seat, ‘I believe you know how very much I dislike what are called
family affairs, which are only fit for plebeian Christmas days, and
have no manner of business with people of our condition. But as you
are proceeding upon a mistake, Ned--altogether upon a mistake--I will
conquer my repugnance to entering on such matters, and give you a
perfectly plain and candid answer, if you will do me the favour to shut
the door.’
Edward having obeyed him, he took an elegant little knife from his
pocket, and paring his nails, continued:
‘You have to thank me, Ned, for being of good family; for your mother,
charming person as she was, and almost broken-hearted, and so forth, as
she left me, when she was prematurely compelled to become immortal--had
nothing to boast of in that respect.’
‘Her father was at least an eminent lawyer, sir,’ said Edward.
‘Quite right, Ned; perfectly so. He stood high at the bar, had a great
name and great wealth, but having risen from nothing--I have
always closed my eyes to the circumstance and steadily resisted its
contemplation, but I fear his father dealt in pork, and that his
business did once involve cow-heel and sausages--he wished to marry his
daughter into a good family. He had his heart’s desire, Ned. I was a
younger son’s younger son, and I married her. We each had our object,
and gained it. She stepped at once into the politest and best circles,
and I stepped into a fortune which I assure you was very necessary to my
comfort--quite indispensable. Now, my good fellow, that fortune is among
the things that have been. It is gone, Ned, and has been gone--how old
are you? I always forget.’
‘Seven-and-twenty, sir.’
‘Are you indeed?’ cried his father, raising his eyelids in a languishing
surprise. ‘So much! Then I should say, Ned, that as nearly as I
remember, its skirts vanished from human knowledge, about eighteen or
nineteen years ago. It was about that time when I came to live in these
chambers (once your grandfather’s, and bequeathed by that extremely
respectable person to me), and commenced to live upon an inconsiderable
annuity and my past reputation.’
‘You are jesting with me, sir,’ said Edward.
‘Not in the slightest degree, I assure you,’ returned his father with
great composure. ‘These family topics are so extremely dry, that I am
sorry to say they don’t admit of any such relief. It is for that reason,
and because they have an appearance of business, that I dislike them so
very much. Well! You know the rest. A son, Ned, unless he is old enough
to be a companion--that is to say, unless he is some two or three and
twenty--is not the kind of thing to have about one. He is a restraint
upon his father, his father is a restraint upon him, and they make each
other mutually uncomfortable. Therefore, until within the last four
years or so--I have a poor memory for dates, and if I mistake, you will
correct me in your own mind--you pursued your studies at a distance, and
picked up a great variety of accomplishments. Occasionally we passed a
week or two together here, and disconcerted each other as only such near
relations can. At last you came home. I candidly tell you, my dear boy,
that if you had been awkward and overgrown, I should have exported you
to some distant part of the world.’
‘I wish with all my soul you had, sir,’ said Edward.
‘No you don’t, Ned,’ said his father coolly; ‘you are mistaken, I assure
you. I found you a handsome, prepossessing, elegant fellow, and I threw
you into the society I can still command. Having done that, my dear
fellow, I consider that I have provided for you in life, and rely upon
your doing something to provide for me in return.’
‘I do not understand your meaning, sir.’
‘My meaning, Ned, is obvious--I observe another fly in the cream-jug,
but have the goodness not to take it out as you did the first, for
their walk when their legs are milky, is extremely ungraceful and
disagreeable--my meaning is, that you must do as I did; that you must
marry well and make the most of yourself.’
‘A mere fortune-hunter!’ cried the son, indignantly.
‘What in the devil’s name, Ned, would you be!’ returned the father. ‘All
men are fortune-hunters, are they not? The law, the church, the court,
the camp--see how they are all crowded with fortune-hunters, jostling
each other in the pursuit. The stock-exchange, the pulpit, the
counting-house, the royal drawing-room, the senate,--what but
fortune-hunters are they filled with? A fortune-hunter! Yes. You
ARE one; and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned, if you were
the greatest courtier, lawyer, legislator, prelate, or merchant, in
existence. If you are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself with
the reflection that at the very worst your fortune-hunting can make but
one person miserable or unhappy. How many people do you suppose these
other kinds of huntsmen crush in following their sport--hundreds at a
step? Or thousands?’
The young man leant his head upon his hand, and made no answer.
‘I am quite charmed,’ said the father rising, and walking slowly to and
fro--stopping now and then to glance at himself in the mirror, or survey
a picture through his glass, with the air of a connoisseur, ‘that we
have had this conversation, Ned, unpromising as it was. It establishes
a confidence between us which is quite delightful, and was certainly
necessary, though how you can ever have mistaken our positions and
designs, I confess I cannot understand. I conceived, until I found your
fancy for this girl, that all these points were tacitly agreed upon
between us.’
‘I knew you were embarrassed, sir,’ returned the son, raising his head
for a moment, and then falling into his former attitude, ‘but I had no
idea we were the beggared wretches you describe. How could I suppose it,
bred as I have been; witnessing the life you have always led; and the
appearance you have always made?’
‘My dear child,’ said the father--‘for you really talk so like a child
that I must call you one--you were bred upon a careful principle;
the very manner of your education, I assure you, maintained my credit
surprisingly. As to the life I lead, I must lead it, Ned. I must have
these little refinements about me. I have always been used to them, and
I cannot exist without them. They must surround me, you observe, and
therefore they are here. With regard to our circumstances, Ned, you
may set your mind at rest upon that score. They are desperate. Your own
appearance is by no means despicable, and our joint pocket-money alone
devours our income. That’s the truth.’
‘Why have I never known this before? Why have you encouraged me, sir, to
an expenditure and mode of life to which we have no right or title?’
‘My good fellow,’ returned his father more compassionately than ever,
‘if you made no appearance, how could you possibly succeed in the
pursuit for which I destined you? As to our mode of life, every man
has a right to live in the best way he can; and to make himself as
comfortable as he can, or he is an unnatural scoundrel. Our debts, I
grant, are very great, and therefore it the more behoves you, as a young
man of principle and honour, to pay them off as speedily as possible.’
‘The villain’s part,’ muttered Edward, ‘that I have unconsciously
played! I to win the heart of Emma Haredale! I would, for her sake, I
had died first!’
‘I am glad you see, Ned,’ returned his father, ‘how perfectly
self-evident it is, that nothing can be done in that quarter. But apart
from this, and the necessity of your speedily bestowing yourself on
another (as you know you could to-morrow, if you chose), I wish you’d
look upon it pleasantly. In a religious point of view alone, how
could you ever think of uniting yourself to a Catholic, unless she was
amazingly rich? You ought to be so very Protestant, coming of such a
Protestant family as you do. Let us be moral, Ned, or we are nothing.
Even if one could set that objection aside, which is impossible, we come
to another which is quite conclusive. The very idea of marrying a girl
whose father was killed, like meat! Good God, Ned, how disagreeable!
Consider the impossibility of having any respect for your father-in-law
under such unpleasant circumstances--think of his having been “viewed”
by jurors, and “sat upon” by coroners, and of his very doubtful position
in the family ever afterwards. It seems to me such an indelicate sort
of thing that I really think the girl ought to have been put to death by
the state to prevent its happening. But I tease you perhaps. You would
rather be alone? My dear Ned, most willingly. God bless you. I shall
be going out presently, but we shall meet to-night, or if not to-night,
certainly to-morrow. Take care of yourself in the mean time, for both
our sakes. You are a person of great consequence to me, Ned--of vast
consequence indeed. God bless you!’
With these words, the father, who had been arranging his cravat in
the glass, while he uttered them in a disconnected careless manner,
withdrew, humming a tune as he went. The son, who had appeared so lost
in thought as not to hear or understand them, remained quite still and
silent. After the lapse of half an hour or so, the elder Chester, gaily
dressed, went out. The younger still sat with his head resting on his
hands, in what appeared to be a kind of stupor.