HARRY JOSCELYN.
VOL. II.
HARRY JOSCELYN.
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF
“The Chronicles of Carlingford,”
&c., &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1881.
_All rights reserved._
HARRY JOSCELYN.
CHAPTER I.
HARRY’S RESOLUTION.
There is nothing that grows and strengthens with thinking of it like the
sense of personal injury. Harry Joscelyn had been very angry when he
left home; but he was not half so angry at that moment as when he looked
out of the window of the railway carriage, as the train swept through
the valley, and saw in the distance the village roofs, over which, had
there been light enough, and had his eyes served him so far, he might
have seen the White House seated, firm and defiant, upon the Fellside.
And every mile that he travelled his wrath and indignation grew. When he
reached Liverpool he had formed his purpose beyond the reach of
argument, or anything that reason could say; and reason said very little
in the general excitement of his being. He had been turned out of his
home, he had been refused the money by which he thought he could have
made his fortune. He felt himself cast off by everybody belonging to
him. His mother had permitted that final outrage, he thought; for surely
she could have found means of help if she had chosen to exert herself.
His Uncle Henry had bought himself off, and got rid of a troublesome
applicant by the gift of that twenty pounds. They were all against him.
He thought of it and thought of it till they seemed to be all his
enemies, and at last he came to believe that they were glad to get quit
of him, to be done with him. This was the aspect under which he
contemplated his relations with his family when he got to Liverpool; and
the effect upon him was that of a settled disgust with all the ordinary
habits of his life, and its fashion altogether. When he thought of
returning to the office, to his former routine as clerk, the idea made
him sick. It seemed to him that he could do anything, or go anywhere,
rather than this. But though the impulse of abandoning all he had been
or done hitherto was instantaneous, he could not quite settle in a
moment, with the same rapidity, what he was to do, or be, in the future.
He crossed to the other side of the great river with his little bag of
“needments,” the linen Mrs. Eadie had bought for him and a few other
indispensable things which he had himself procured, and lived in one of
the villages there, which have now grown into towns, watching the ships
go by, and leaving his mind open to any wandering impulse that might lay
hold upon it. In these days the River Mersey was a great sight, as
probably it is still. To the idle young man, accustomed to some share in
the perpetual commotion of that coming and going, there was meaning in
every one of the multitudinous ships that lay at anchor in the great
stream, or glided out, full-sail, to the sea, or were poked and dragged
away by a restless, toiling little slave of a steam-tug, carrying off
its prey like one of the devils of the Inferno. He knew where they were
going, and what they had to bring from afar, and all about their bills
of lading and the passengers they carried. The river had not to him that
grandeur of prose which becomes poetry, and fact which turns to romance,
in less accustomed minds; but was only a huge highway, a big street
full of crowds coming and going, over which he brooded, wondering where
he should plunge into the tide of movement, and how take his first step
out of the horizons which hitherto had bounded him. He did not say, as
his mother might have done, “Oh, for the wings of a dove!” but he put
that profound breath of human impatience into nineteenth century prose,
and said to himself, “If I had but a steamboat, a yacht, anything to
take me out of reach of all of them, where they will never hear of me
again!” He was not rich enough, however, to hope for a yacht, so that
all he could really do was to decide what “boat” he would go with, and
whether he should turn his steps across the Atlantic, or choose another
quarter of the world in which to become another man.
He went to the office one day, as Philip Selby discovered, and asked for
the amount of salary due to him, and purchased a few more necessary
articles of clothing; and he wrote to the persons to whom he owed money,
telling them that he was about to leave Liverpool, but would send them
their money without fail within a certain period. He did not know how
this was to be done, but he was resolute to do it, and he had no more
doubt on the matter than he had that he should perfectly succeed in his
plunge into the unknown. But after he had done this he remained for some
days longer by the river-side with a self-contradictory impulse,
watching the ships go by, and putting off the execution of his project.
Where was he to go? To resolve to give up his own identity, to separate
himself for ever from his family, and all his belongings, and all his
antecedents, was easy; but to make up his mind which boat he was to go
by, and whither he was to betake himself, was much more difficult.
America was so hackneyed, he said to himself, with that fastidious
impatience and disgust which is one of the characteristics of a sick
soul: everybody goes to America; it would be the first idea that would
occur to everyone; and this made him throw away that first suggestion
angrily, as if it had been an offence; but if not to America, then
where? He tossed about various names in his mind, satisfied with none,
and when at last he made his decision, it was made in a moment, with the
same kind of sick disgust and impatience as had made him reject the
other ideas as they presented themselves. He was crossing the river to
Liverpool, leaning over the side of the ferry steamboat lest anybody
should see and recognize him, and in his own mind passing in review the
advantages and disadvantages of all the ships he passed. The Mersey was
very full and very bright, the sun shining, a brisk breeze blowing, the
sky blue, the great estuary throwing up white edges of spray and leaping
here and there against the bows of an out-going boat, in a manner which
boded little comfort to unaccustomed sailors outside the shelter of its
banks. The opposite shore was still clothed with trees beginning to grow
green in the earliest tints of spring, and not unpleasantly mingled with
the beginnings of docks and traces of mercantile invasion. Nature, as
yet, had not given up her harmonizing power; the touches of colour on
the masts, a national flag flying here and there, even the sailors’
washing fluttering among the yards, was an addition to the brilliancy of
the spring lights. The ferry-boat was full of people, though it was not
the hour for business men to be moving about. The freight was a more
varied one than that mass of black-coated figures which weighed it down
to the water’s edge in the morning. But Harry turned his back upon them
all, and looked over the side, watching in a dream the long trail of
water which slid under the bows and was caught and churned by the
paddle-wheel. The motion, as he watched it thus, soothed him, and took
the place of thinking in his mind, carrying him vaguely, he knew not
whither, just as he would fain have been carried beyond the ken of men.
He was waiting the guidance of chance, not caring what became of him.
Something caught his ear suddenly as the ferry-boat rustled along by the
side of a long low steamer with raking masts and short funnels, which
lay not far from the bank.
“I wouldn’t go in that boat for the world,” some one said. The remark
caught Harry’s ear, and roused him into mere wantonness of opposition.
“Why?” he said to himself aloud. It did not matter whether it was said
loud or low, nobody but himself could hear it as he leaned over the
rushing water. “I’ll go.” He was in such a condition of perversity that
this was all he wanted to fix his purpose.
He landed on the Liverpool side, no longer languidly, but with the air
of a man who has something to do, and went straight to examine the ship
and ascertain where to apply for his passage. She was bound for
Leghorn. He went stepping briskly forth to the office of the agent, and
then with a mixture of economy and gentility, still conscious of the
importance of the family from which he was about to cut himself off,
took a passage in what was called the second cabin.
“What name?” said the clerk. What name? he had not considered this
question. Should he give his own name, thus leaving a clue to anyone who
chose to inquire? The doubt, the question was momentary: “Isaac Oliver,”
he said, and looked the man in the face as if defying contradiction. But
the clerk had no idea of contradicting him; as well Isaac Oliver as
Harry Joscelyn to the stranger, who knew nothing about either. Five
minutes after he could not tell what had put this name into his head;
but his fate was decided, and beyond correction. He went home with a
curious feeling in his mind, not sure whether it was amusement, or
shame, or anger with himself and fate. It was all three together. He was
himself no longer, he had thrown away his birthright. What had tempted
him to take the name of Isaac Oliver he could not explain. He laughed,
but his laugh was not pleasant. He was annoyed and appalled and
disgusted with himself, but he could not alter that now. All the evening
he roamed about the riverbank, looking at the ships going out and in,
and the little steamers rustling and fuming across the gleaming water,
and all the many coloured symbols and ceaseless industry of the scene,
with a strange sense of having lost himself, of having so to speak died
in the middle of his life. He could not get over it. He was living in a
little inn which had been turned into a sort of suburban tea-garden,
instead of the little neat ale-house it once was. The weather was very
fine and warm, though it was so early in the season, and every steamboat
disgorged a crowd of visitors to sit under the half-open foliage of the
trees, and in the damp little arbours. Harry avoided all these visitors
in the fear of meeting some one who might know him. Harry! he was not
Harry any longer. The mere giving of the false name had changed him. He
did not know who he was. He was confused and confounded with the sudden
difference. Had some one called out Harry Joscelyn quickly, he thought
that it would no longer have occurred to him to answer. He was not Harry
Joscelyn; and who was he? The name he had chosen, or which some
malicious spirit had put into his head, seemed to float before him
wherever he went. He shuffled in his walk unconsciously as he fled from
himself along the margin of the great flood. What had he done? He had
abandoned not only his own name and family, but his own condition, his
place in life. Wherever he went, he would be known as a peasant, a
common countryman, he thought, never thinking in his pre-occupation that
the strangers among whom he was going knew just as much about Isaac
Oliver as about Harry Joscelyn. The night grew dark, and the great river
gleamed with a thousand sparkles of light like glowworms. Little
vessels, each with a coloured lantern, went darting across and across,
lights swung steadily with a sort of dreamy regular cadence from the
stationary ships. The stars above were not more manifold than those
little lamps below. The quiet of the night had hushed the sounds of the
great city on the other side, and all the heavy hammers and the din of
machinery: but still life was busy, coming and going, darting on a
hundred messages; pilot boats steaming out to sea, little dark tugboats
bringing back cargoes of souls out of the unknown. But Harry thought of
nothing save of the strange, unpremeditated step he had taken; that one
incident filled all the earth to him; a momentary impulse, a deed that
was scarcely his, and yet he felt that it would colour all his life. He
stayed out till the passenger boats had stopped and all the visitors
were gone. The little inn was shut up and dark, all but one little
querulous candle sitting up for him, when he went home: home! he called
this temporary refuge by that sacred name involuntarily--just such a
home he now said bitterly, as he would have for the rest of his life.
Fortunately next day the Leghorn boat was to sail, and his new start
would be made without time to think about it any more.
Isaac Oliver took possession of his berth next morning. He went on board
early, and lounged about the deck all day. For the first time this
morning it occurred to him that they might send after him, that his
departure could not have passed altogether without notice among his
friends. He had not thought of this before, but now it came upon him
with some force. They would try to stop him at the last moment. The very
name he had chosen would betray him, for who but Harry Joscelyn would
call himself Isaac Oliver? He kept on the further side of the ship,
leaning over the bulwarks, and watched everybody who went or came with
jealous eyes. Tardy passengers came on board one after another, bringing
luggage and new items of cargo and provisions; there was scarcely a
moment without some arrival, and every one of them, Harry felt, must be
for him. When at last the gangway was detached, the anchor weighed, the
latest idler or porter put on shore, and the very screw in motion, he
felt sure there must be some last attempt, some appeal from the quay.
“Have you one of the name of Harry Joscelyn there?” he thought he could
actually hear them calling; and saw the rapid examination of the list of
passengers, and the shaking of heads of the captain and his immediate
assistants, who were standing together high above all the others. When
there could be no longer any doubt that the steamboat was off, and that
no appeal of the kind had been made, a quick and hot sense of offence
came over Harry. He had been alarmed by the idea of being identified and
stopped at the outset of his voyage: but as soon as he was certain that
he was to be allowed to proceed peaceably on that voyage, his heart
burned within him with a sense of injury. Now it was indeed all ended
and all over, his life, his name, everything to which he had been
accustomed in the past. He went below to his berth, with a sense of
complete abandonment and desolation which it would be impossible to
describe. It appeared to him that until now he had only been playing
with the idea, amusing himself with all the preparations for a change
which would never really take place, which somehow would be stopped and
prevented at the end. But nobody had put forth a finger to stop him, and
now the end was accomplished and beyond all remedy. Up to the time he
came on shipboard he had not thought of being stopped, but now he felt
as if he had expected it all the time, and was grievously injured and
heartlessly abandoned by all the world and by all his relations, not one
of whom would lift a finger on his behalf. He went down to his shabby
berth in the second cabin, and felt much disposed, like his mother, to
turn his face to the wall. But, perhaps fortunately for Harry, the sea
was rough, and when the vessel steamed out of the Mersey and felt the
full commotion of the waves outside, he was sick, and not in a condition
to care for anything.
In this way he lost the thread of his trouble for the first two days:
and then novelty and excitement began to tell upon him, and he came
altogether to himself. No, not to himself: he did not feel clear about
who he was or what. He came to--Isaac Oliver, looking that new personage
in the face with a bewildered awe of him and wonder at him. Isaac
Oliver! who, he wondered vaguely, could he be? not a son of old Isaac,
who had only little children--a nephew or a cousin, some off-shoot of
the family, if the Olivers could be called a family, a suggestion at
which he smiled in spite of himself. That must be who he was, the
offspring of a race of peasants, no better blood, no other pretensions.
The Joscelyns were a very different class of people, but he had given
them up, he had shaken off all bonds between them and himself. “In for a
penny, in for a pound,” he said to himself, setting his face to it with
a smile, as the steamboat bore up along the Italian coast, and “the old
miraculous mountains hove in sight.” Harry did not feel any special
interest in Italy: he was of the class who never travel, and understand
but little why one place should be more interesting than another. And,
indeed, Leghorn does not sound like Italy to any traveller. What he
knew of it was that it was a busy sea-port, where there were merchants’
offices and a thriving trade. He did not interest himself much about
anything else. He had his living to make, alone and unbefriended in a
strange country: need was that he should collect himself and pluck up a
heart and think what he was to do, now that he was so near the place of
his destination--or, at least, not what he, but young Isaac Oliver, was
to do. Would any merchant take him in without character, without
introduction or testimonial? This thought was like a cold breath going
through and through him, when he began to think. But he had still a
little money in his pocket, and could afford to wait and look about him
for a week or two. There is always something turning up in a busy place.
And Harry, accustomed to occupation all his life, could not believe that
he would ever starve where there was anything to do.
They had touched at various other ports on the way, whose chief claims
to be visited were such as Harry had little understanding of, and the
eagerness of his fellow-passengers to get on shore and see these places
had surprised him. For his own part, he did not see the fun of going to
see a succession of churches and pictures. He had seen but few pictures
in his life, and he had never been taught that they were of much
importance. He had, indeed, privately, an honest contempt for such
things, though he said little about it. He was disposed to ask, “What
are you all staring at?” when he was brought face to face with an early
Master, a thing which he would have banished into the darkest corner had
it been his. But when he got into the harbour at Leghorn he began to
feel himself once more _dans son assiette_. He knew what the docks
meant, and appreciated the masts of the shipping better than if they had
been the most delicate works of art. It was nothing to Liverpool, but it
was something he could understand and felt at home with. He landed in
better spirits than he had experienced for a very long time. He felt a
moral certainty that he should “get on” here.
But what a shock it was when the unaccustomed Englishman stepped first
on shore, and found himself in the midst of a strange life, of which he
did not understand even the first word! He knew very well, of course,
that it was a foreign place, and that English was not spoken there; but
he never had realized that it would be impossible by speaking loudly, or
using a sort of broken English, or some other simple contrivance, to
make the barbarous natives understand. Even an individual much better
educated than poor Harry may be excused if the shock of that
extraordinary solitude and isolation which surrounds him when he finds
himself incapable of understanding a word of what is going on, is a
surprise and irritation as well as a discomfort. He stood on the quay
with his little portmanteau by him--after having been rowed over endless
links of basins, all full of clear green sea-water, cut like a great
jelly by the progress of the boat, to the landing-place--and stood there
aghast, and, indeed, agape, hustled by the crowd, and with a grinning
porter on each side of him making offers of incomprehensible service. He
would not deliver himself over into the hands of any such harpies he was
resolved, not even when they addressed him in a word or two of English,
though the sound was as balm to his ears. He stood over his portmanteau
and angrily pushed the facchini away, but at last got hold of a lad
whose appearance pleased him, who was tidier than the rest. To him
Harry said “Hotel?” in a sort of half-questioning, half-suggestive way;
but this was not enough to get him clear of the officious crowd, who
flew at him with names which conveyed no meaning to his ears. Harry felt
like a man caught in a hailstorm as he was pelted with those big
sonorous syllables. He grew furious with confusion and bewilderment. He
had not been thought specially strong on the Fells, but here his
North-country muscles told. He pushed away the crowd, who he thought
were making a joke of him, and took up his own portmanteau. “The
gentleman is all right,” said some one beside him; “you have no
education, you are without manners, you others,” and somebody took off a
hat and made a salutation, somebody who reached to about Harry’s elbow.
It was civil, and the first part of the sentence had been said in
English, so Harry, learning by experience, conquered his wrath, and was
civil too. “Can I perhaps indicate a hotel?” this new personage said;
“Mister is an English?” Harry stood still and looked down upon his new
acquaintance, not quite clear as to the meaning of what he said. He was
a little man, small and dainty, dressed with quaint care, with high
shirt-collars, and a large black cravat tied in a bow, and the most
shining of black hats, which he took off when he spoke. He was
olive-complexioned, with big, dark, soft Italian eyes. “Mister is an
English?” he said; “by paternity I am an English, too. I will indicate a
hotel if the gentleman chooses. It will deliver him from _la canaglia_,
what you call this rabbel,” he added, with an ingratiating smile, and a
great rattle of his _r’s_. It was mere good-nature, but Harry was by no
means sure of this, and he knew that foreigners were deceivers. “Thanks,
I won’t trouble you,” he said, abruptly, and lifting his portmanteau--it
was not a big one--strode away. He felt angry and depressed, yet
excited. The astonished look of the little man, who made him another
bow, and replaced his hat with a shrug of his shoulders at the
Englishman’s want of manners, added to his discomfiture. Perhaps he had
made a fool of himself by refusing those good offices which were offered
to him, Harry thought. Perhaps he would have been a bigger fool had he
accepted. Perhaps they were all in a conspiracy to rob him. He strode on
and on, somewhat ashamed of his own appearance with the portmanteau, as
if he were too poor to pay anyone to carry it, and thoroughly
bewildered altogether amid the sounds and sights which he did not
understand. But at the end he got into an inn where there was some one
who spoke English, not such a usual accomplishment in these days as it
is now; and where he got a room which was very strange of aspect to the
untravelled young man. The half hour which he passed there, seated upon
the odd little bed, with his portmanteau at his feet upon the tiled
floor, all so strange, so desolate to Harry, was as terrible a moment as
he had ever passed in his life. His very soul was discouraged, sunk low
in his breast with a kind of physical drop and downfall. It was all he
could do not to burst out crying in his forlornness and helplessness and
solitude. What could he do in a place where he did not understand a
word? In many cases novelty is delightful, but there are some in which
it is the most dreadful of all depressing circumstances. Everything,
from the dingy tiles under his feet, and the dark eating-room
downstairs, with its unaccustomed smells, up to the blaze of the Italian
noon, and the incomprehensible tongue that everybody spoke, weighed upon
Harry. He covered his face with his hands, sitting there upon his bed.
What evil fate had led him to this unknown place? What should he do
without even a name that belonged to him, without a friend? A gasp came
into his throat, and the hand that covered his eyes was wet. He felt
himself bowed down to the very ground.
After thus “giving way,” however, Harry braced himself up, and recovered
at least the appearance of courage. He made the best toilette he could
by the help of the small washing utensils, which were not so entirely
abhorrent to English customs then as they are now--for baths were not
very general, and washing-basins were but small, in the first quarter,
if not the first half, of this century. And then he sallied forth
refreshed--into a new world.