EXPOSTULATION.
Thomas descended to breakfast, feeling fresh and hopeful. The weather
had changed during the night, and it was a clear, frosty morning, cold
blue cloudless sky and cold gray leafless earth reflecting each other's
winter attributes. The sun was there, watching from afar how they could
get on without him; but, as if they knew he had not forsaken them, they
were both merry. Thomas stood up with his back to the blazing fire, and
through the window saw his father walking bareheaded in the garden.
He had not returned home till late the night before, and Thomas had
gone to bed without seeing him. Still he had been up the first in the
house, and had been at work for a couple of hours upon the papers he
had brought home in his blue bag. Thomas walked to the window to show
himself, as a hint to his father that breakfast was ready. Mr. Worboise
saw him, and came in. Father and son did not shake hands or wish each
other good-morning, but they nodded and smiled, and took their seats
at the table. As Mr. Worboise sat down, he smoothed, first with one
hand, then with the other, two long side-tresses of thin hair, trained
like creepers over the top of his head, which was perfectly bald. Their
arrangement added to the resemblance his forehead naturally possessed
to the bottom of a flat-iron, set up on the base of its triangle. His
eyebrows were very dark, straight, and bushy, his eyes a keen hazel;
his nose straight on the ridge, but forming an obtuse angle at the
point; his mouth curved upward, and drawn upward by the corners when he
smiled, which gave him the appearance of laughing down at everything;
his chin now is remarkable. And there, reader, I hope you have him. I
ought to have mentioned that no one ever saw his teeth, though to judge
from his performances at the table, they were in serviceable condition.
He was considerably above the middle hight, shapeless rather than
stout, and wore black clothes.
"You're going to dine at the Boxall's to-night, I believe, Tom? Mr.
Boxall asked me, but I can't go. I am so busy with that case of Spender
& Spoon."
"No, father. I don't mean to go," said Tom.
"Why not?" asked Mr. Worboise, with some surprise, and more than a
hint of dissatisfaction. "Your mother hasn't been objecting, has she?"
"I am not aware that my mother knows of the invitation," answered Tom,
trying to hide his discomfort in formality of speech.
"Well, _I_ said nothing about it, I believe. But I accepted for you at
the same time that I declined for myself. You saw the letter--I left it
for you."
"Yes, sir, I did."
"Well, in the name of Heaven, what do you mean? You answer as if you
were in the witness-box. I am not going to take any advantage of you.
Speak out, man. Why won't you go to Boxall's?"
"Well, sir, to tell the truth, I didn't think he behaved quite well to
me yesterday. I happened to be a few minutes late, and--"
"And Boxall blew you up; and that's the way you take to show your
dignified resentment! Bah!"
"He ought to behave to me like a gentleman."
"But how is he, if he isn't a gentleman? He hasn't had the bringing up
you've had. But he's a good, honest fellow, and says what he means."
"That is just what I did, sir. And you have always told me that honesty
is the best policy."
"Yes, I confess. But that is not exactly the kind of honesty I mean,"
returned Mr. Worboise with a fishy smile, for his mouth was exactly of
the fish type. "The law scarcely refers to the conduct of a gentleman
as a gentleman."
This was obscure to his son, as it may be to the reader.
"Then you don't want me to behave like a gentleman?" said Tom.
"Keep your diploma in your pocket till it's asked for," answered his
father. "If you are constantly obtruding it on other people, they
will say you bought it and paid for it. A gentleman can afford to put
an affront in beside it, when he knows it's there. But the idea of
good old Boxall insulting a son of mine is too absurd, Tom. You must
remember you are his servant."
"So he told me," said Tom, with reviving indignation.
"And that, I suppose, is what you call an insult, eh?"
"Well, to say the least, it is not a pleasant word to use."
"Especially as it expresses a disagreeable fact. Come, come, my boy.
Better men then you will ever be have had to sweep their master's
office before now. But no reference is made to the fact after they
call the office their own. You go and tell Mr. Boxall that you will be
happy to dine with him to-night if he will allow you to change your
mind."
"But I told him I was engaged."
"Tell him the engagement is put off, and you are at his service."
"But--" began Tom, and stopped. He was going to say the engagement was
not put off.
"But what?" said his father.
"I don't like to do it," answered Tom. "He will take it for giving in
and wanting to make up."
"Leave it to me, then, my boy," returned his father, kindly. "I will
manage it. My business is not so very pressing but that I can go if I
choose. I will write and say that a change in my plans has put it in my
power to be his guest, after all, and that I have persuaded you to put
off your engagement and come with me."
"But that would be--would not be true," hesitated Tom.
"Pooh! pooh! I'll take the responsibility of that. Besides, it _is_
true. Your mother will make a perfect spoon of you--with the help of
good little Master Simon. Can't I change my plans if I like? We must
_not_ offend Boxall. He is a man of mark--and warm. I say nothing about
figures--I never tell secrets. I don't even say how many figures. But
I know all about it, and venture to say, between father and son, that
he is warm, decidedly warm--possibly hot," concluded Mr. Worboise,
laughing.
"I don't exactly understand you, sir," said Tom, meditatively.
"You would understand me well enough if you had a mind to business,"
answered his father.
But what he really meant in his heart was that Mr. Boxall had two
daughters, to one of whom it was possible that his son might take a
fancy, or rather--to express it in the result, which was all that he
looked to--a marriage might be brought about between Tom and Jane or
Mary Boxall; in desiring which he thought he knew what he was about,
for he was Mr. Boxall's man of business.
"I won't have you offend Mr. Boxall, anyhow," he concluded. "He is your
governor."
The father had tact enough to substitute the clerk's pseudonym for the
obnoxious term.
"Very well, sir; I suppose I must leave it to you," answered Tom; and
they finished their breakfast without returning to the subject.
When he reached the counting-house, Tom went at once to Mr. Boxall's
room, and made his apologies for being late again, on the ground that
his father had detained him while he wrote the letter he now handed to
him. Mr. Boxall glanced at the note.
"I am very glad, Tom, that both your father and you have thought better
of it. Be punctual at seven."
"Wife must put another leaf yet in the table," he said to himself, as
Thomas retired to his desk. "Thirteen's not lucky, though; but one is
sure to be absent."
No one was absent, however, and number thirteen was the standing
subject of the jokes of the evening, especially as the thirteenth was
late, in the person of Mr. Wither, whom Mr. Boxall had invited out of
mere good nature; for he did not care much about introducing him to his
family, although his conduct in the counting-house was irreproachable.
Miss Worboise had been invited with her father and brother, but whether
she stayed at home to nurse her mother or to tease the curate, is of no
great importance to my history.
The dinner was a good, well-contrived, rather antiquated dinner,
within the compass of the house itself; for Mrs. Boxall only pleased
her husband as often as she said that they were and would remain
old-fashioned people, and would have their own maids to prepare and
serve a dinner--"none of those men-cooks and undertakers to turn up
their noses at everything in the house!" But Tom abused the whole
affair within himself as nothing but a shop-dinner; for there was Mr.
Stopper, the head-clerk, looking as sour as a summons; and there was
Mr. Wither, a good enough fellow and gentleman-like, but still of the
shop; besides young Weston, of whom nobody could predicate any thing
in particular, save that he stood in such awe of Mr. Stopper, that he
missed the way to his mouth in taking stolen stares at him across the
table. Mr. Worboise sat at the hostess's left hand, and Mr. Stopper at
her right; Tom a little way from his father, with Mary Boxall, whom he
had taken down, beside him; and many were the underbrowed glances which
the head-clerk shot across the dishes at the couple.
Mary was a very pretty, brown-haired, white-skinned, blue-eyed damsel,
whose charms lay in harmony of color, general roundness, the smallness
of her extremities, and her simple kind-heartedness. She was dressed in
white muslin, with ribbons precisely the color of her eyes. Tom could
not help being pleased at having her beside him. She was not difficult
to entertain, for she was willing to be interested in anything; and
while Tom was telling her a story about a young lad in his class at
the Sunday-school, whom he had gone to see at his wretched home, those
sweet eyes filled with tears, and Mr. Stopper saw it, and choked in
his glass of sherry. Tom saw it too, and would have been more overcome
thereby, had it not been for reasons.
Charles Wither, on the opposite side of the table, was neglecting his
own lady for the one at his other elbow, who was Jane Boxall--a fine,
regular-featured, dark-skinned young woman. They were watched with
stolen glances of some anxiety from both ends of the table, for neither
father nor mother cared much about Charles Wither, although the former
was too kind to omit inviting him to his house occasionally.
After the ladies retired, the talk was about politics, the
money-market, and other subjects quite uninteresting to Tom, who, as I
have already said, was at this period of his history a reader of Byron,
and had therefore little sympathy with human pursuits except they took
some abnormal form--such as piracy, atheism, or the like--in the person
of one endowed with splendid faculties and gifts in general. So he
stole away from the table, and joined the ladies some time before the
others rose from their wine; not, however, before he had himself drunk
more than his gravity of demeanor was quite sufficient to ballast. He
found Mary turning over some music, and as he drew near he saw her
laying aside, in its turn, Byron's song, "She walks in beauty."
"Oh! do you sing that song, Miss Mary?" he asked with _empressement_.
"I have sung it several times," she answered; "but I am afraid I cannot
sing it well enough to please you. Are you fond of the song?"
"I only know the words of it, and should so much like to hear you sing
it. I never heard it sung. _Do_, Miss Mary."
"You will be indulgent, then?"
"I shall have no chance of exercising that virtue, I know. There."
He put the music on the piano as he spoke, and Mary, adjusting her
white skirts and her white shoulders, began to sing the song with
taste, and, what was more, with simplicity. Her voice was very pleasant
to the ears of Thomas, warbling one of the songs of the man whom,
against his conscience, he could not help regarding as the greatest he
knew. So much moved was he, that the signs of his emotion would have
been plainly seen had not the rest of the company, while listening
more or less to the song, been employing their eyes at the same time
with Jane's portfolio of drawings. All the time he had his eyes upon
her white shoulder: stooping to turn the last leaf from behind her, he
kissed it lightly. At the same moment the door opened, and Mr. Stopper
entered. Mary stopped singing, and rose with a face of crimson and the
timidest, slightest glance at Tom, whose face flushed up in response.
It was a foolish action, possibly repented almost as soon as done.
Certainly, for the rest of the evening, Thomas sought no opportunity
of again approaching Mary. I do not doubt it was with some feeling of
relief that he heard his father say it was time for them to be going
home.
None of the parents would have been displeased had they seen the little
passage between the young people. Neither was Mary offended at what had
occurred. While she sat singing, she knew that the face bending over
her was one of the handsomest--a face rather long and pale, of almost
pure Greek outline, with a high forehead, and dark eyes with a yet
darker fringe. Nor, although the reader must see that Tom had nothing
yet that could be called character, was his face therefore devoid of
expression; for he had plenty of feeling, and that will sometimes shine
out the more from the very absence of a _characteristic_ meaning in
the countenance. Hence, when Mary felt the kiss, and glanced at the
face whence it had fallen, she read more in the face than there was
in it to read, and the touch of his lips went deeper than her white
shoulder. They were both young, and as yet mere electric jars charged
with emotions. Had they both continued such as they were now, there
could have been no story to tell about them; none such, at least, as
I should care to tell. They belonged to the common class of mortals
who, although they are weaving a history, are not aware of it, and in
whom the process goes on so slowly that the eye of the artist can find
in them no substance sufficient to be woven into a human creation in
tale or poem. How dull that life looks to him, with its ambitions,
its love-making, its dinners, its sermons, its tailors' bills, its
weariness over all--without end or goal save that toward which it is
driven purposeless! Not till a hope is born such that its fullfilment
depends upon the will of him who cherishes it, does a man begin to
develop the stuff out of which a tale can be wrought. For then he
begins to have a story of his own--it may be for good, it may be for
evil--but a story. Thomas's religion was no sign of this yet; for a man
can no more be saved by the mere reflex of parental influences than he
will be condemned by his inheritance of parental sins. I do not say
that there is no interest in the emotions of such young people; but I
say there is not reality enough in them to do anything with. They are
neither consistent nor persistent enough to be wrought into form. Such
are in the condition over which, in the miracle-play, Adam laments to
Eve after their expulsion from Paradise--
"Oure hap was hard, _oure wytt was nesche_ (_soft, tender_) To paradys
whan we were brought."
Mr. Boxall lived in an old-fashioned house in Hackney, with great rooms
and a large garden. Through the latter he went with Mr. Worboise and
Tom to let them out at a door in the wall, which would save them a few
hundred yards in going to the North London Railway. There were some
old trees in the garden, and much shrubbery. As he returned he heard
a rustle among the lilacs that crowded about a side-walk, and thought
he saw the shimmer of a white dress. When he entered the drawing-room,
his daughter Jane entered from the opposite door. He glanced round
the room: Mr. Wither was gone. This made Mr. Boxall suspicious and
restless; for, as I have said, he had not confidence in Mr. Wither.
Though punctual and attentive to business, he was convinced that he
was inclined to be a fast man; and he strongly suspected him of being
concerned in betting transactions of different sorts, which are an
abomination to the man of true business associations and habits.
Mr. Worboise left the house in comfortable spirits, for Providence had
been propitious to him for some months past, and it mattered nothing
to him whether or how the wind blew. But it blew from the damp west
cold and grateful upon Thomas's brow. The immediate influence of the
wine he had drunk had gone off, and its effects remained in discomfort
and doubt. Had he got himself into a scrape with Mary Boxall? He had
said nothing to her. He had not committed himself to anything. And the
wind blew cooler and more refreshing upon his forehead. And then came
a glow of pleasure as he recalled her blush and the glance she had
so timidly lifted toward his lordly face. That was something to be
proud of! Certainly he was one whom women--I suppose he said _girls_
to himself--were ready to--yes--to fall in love with. Proud position!
Enviable destiny! Before he reached home the wind had blown away every
atom of remorse with the sickly fumes of the wine; and although he
resolved to be careful how he behaved to Mary Boxall in future, he
hugged his own handsome idea in the thought that she felt his presence,
and was--just a little--not dangerously--but really a little in love
with him.