were turned towards him in reply; but Marion’s look and attitude remained
unchanged.
The coach was at the gate. There was a bustle with the luggage. The
coach drove away. Marion never moved.
‘He waves his hat to you, my love,’ said Grace. ‘Your chosen husband,
darling. Look!’
The younger sister raised her head, and, for a moment, turned it. Then,
turning back again, and fully meeting, for the first time, those calm
eyes, fell sobbing on her neck.
‘Oh, Grace. God bless you! But I cannot bear to see it, Grace! It
breaks my heart.’
Part the Second
SNITCHEY AND CRAGGS had a snug little office on the old Battle Ground,
where they drove a snug little business, and fought a great many small
pitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could
hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights—for in
truth they generally proceeded at a snail’s pace—the part the Firm had in
them came so far within the general denomination, that now they took a
shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made
a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light
skirmishing among an irregular body of small debtors, just as the
occasion served, and the enemy happened to present himself. The Gazette
was an important and profitable feature in some of their fields, as in
fields of greater renown; and in most of the Actions wherein they showed
their generalship, it was afterwards observed by the combatants that they
had had great difficulty in making each other out, or in knowing with any
degree of distinctness what they were about, in consequence of the vast
amount of smoke by which they were surrounded.
The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs stood convenient, with an open
door down two smooth steps, in the market-place; so that any angry farmer
inclining towards hot water, might tumble into it at once. Their special
council-chamber and hall of conference was an old back-room up-stairs,
with a low dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its brows gloomily
in the consideration of tangled points of law. It was furnished with
some high-backed leathern chairs, garnished with great goggle-eyed brass
nails, of which, every here and there, two or three had fallen out—or had
been picked out, perhaps, by the wandering thumbs and forefingers of
bewildered clients. There was a framed print of a great judge in it,
every curl in whose dreadful wig had made a man’s hair stand on end.
Bales of papers filled the dusty closets, shelves, and tables; and round
the wainscot there were tiers of boxes, padlocked and fireproof, with
people’s names painted outside, which anxious visitors felt themselves,
by a cruel enchantment, obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to
make anagrams of, while they sat, seeming to listen to Snitchey and
Craggs, without comprehending one word of what they said.
Snitchey and Craggs had each, in private life as in professional
existence, a partner of his own. Snitchey and Craggs were the best
friends in the world, and had a real confidence in one another; but Mrs.
Snitchey, by a dispensation not uncommon in the affairs of life, was on
principle suspicious of Mr. Craggs; and Mrs. Craggs was on principle
suspicious of Mr. Snitchey. ‘Your Snitcheys indeed,’ the latter lady
would observe, sometimes, to Mr. Craggs; using that imaginative plural as
if in disparagement of an objectionable pair of pantaloons, or other
articles not possessed of a singular number; ‘I don’t see what you want
with your Snitcheys, for my part. You trust a great deal too much to
your Snitcheys, _I_ think, and I hope you may never find my words come
true.’ While Mrs. Snitchey would observe to Mr. Snitchey, of Craggs,
‘that if ever he was led away by man he was led away by that man, and
that if ever she read a double purpose in a mortal eye, she read that
purpose in Craggs’s eye.’ Notwithstanding this, however, they were all
very good friends in general: and Mrs. Snitchey and Mrs. Craggs
maintained a close bond of alliance against ‘the office,’ which they both
considered the Blue chamber, and common enemy, full of dangerous (because
unknown) machinations.
In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and Craggs made honey for their
several hives. Here, sometimes, they would linger, of a fine evening, at
the window of their council-chamber overlooking the old battle-ground,
and wonder (but that was generally at assize time, when much business had
made them sentimental) at the folly of mankind, who couldn’t always be at
peace with one another and go to law comfortably. Here, days, and weeks,
and months, and years, passed over them: their calendar, the gradually
diminishing number of brass nails in the leathern chairs, and the
increasing bulk of papers on the tables. Here, nearly three years’
flight had thinned the one and swelled the other, since the breakfast in
the orchard; when they sat together in consultation at night.
Not alone; but, with a man of thirty, or about that time of life,
negligently dressed, and somewhat haggard in the face, but well-made,
well-attired, and well-looking, who sat in the armchair of state, with
one hand in his breast, and the other in his dishevelled hair, pondering
moodily. Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs sat opposite each other at a
neighbouring desk. One of the fireproof boxes, unpadlocked and opened,
was upon it; a part of its contents lay strewn upon the table, and the
rest was then in course of passing through the hands of Mr. Snitchey; who
brought it to the candle, document by document; looked at every paper
singly, as he produced it; shook his head, and handed it to Mr. Craggs;
who looked it over also, shook his head, and laid it down. Sometimes,
they would stop, and shaking their heads in concert, look towards the
abstracted client. And the name on the box being Michael Warden,
Esquire, we may conclude from these premises that the name and the box
were both his, and that the affairs of Michael Warden, Esquire, were in a
bad way.
‘That’s all,’ said Mr. Snitchey, turning up the last paper. ‘Really
there’s no other resource. No other resource.’
‘All lost, spent, wasted, pawned, borrowed, and sold, eh?’ said the
client, looking up.
‘All,’ returned Mr. Snitchey.
‘Nothing else to be done, you say?’
‘Nothing at all.’
The client bit his nails, and pondered again.
‘And I am not even personally safe in England? You hold to that, do
you?’
‘In no part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,’ replied
Mr. Snitchey.
‘A mere prodigal son with no father to go back to, no swine to keep, and
no husks to share with them? Eh?’ pursued the client, rocking one leg
over the other, and searching the ground with his eyes.
Mr. Snitchey coughed, as if to deprecate the being supposed to
participate in any figurative illustration of a legal position. Mr.
Craggs, as if to express that it was a partnership view of the subject,
also coughed.
‘Ruined at thirty!’ said the client. ‘Humph!’
‘Not ruined, Mr. Warden,’ returned Snitchey. ‘Not so bad as that. You
have done a good deal towards it, I must say, but you are not ruined. A
little nursing—’
‘A little Devil,’ said the client.
‘Mr. Craggs,’ said Snitchey, ‘will you oblige me with a pinch of snuff?
Thank you, sir.’
As the imperturbable lawyer applied it to his nose with great apparent
relish and a perfect absorption of his attention in the proceeding, the
client gradually broke into a smile, and, looking up, said:
‘You talk of nursing. How long nursing?’
‘How long nursing?’ repeated Snitchey, dusting the snuff from his
fingers, and making a slow calculation in his mind. ‘For your involved
estate, sir? In good hands? S. and C.’s, say? Six or seven years.’
‘To starve for six or seven years!’ said the client with a fretful laugh,
and an impatient change of his position.
‘To starve for six or seven years, Mr. Warden,’ said Snitchey, ‘would be
very uncommon indeed. You might get another estate by showing yourself,
the while. But, we don’t think you could do it—speaking for Self and
Craggs—and consequently don’t advise it.’
‘What _do_ you advise?’
‘Nursing, I say,’ repeated Snitchey. ‘Some few years of nursing by Self
and Craggs would bring it round. But to enable us to make terms, and
hold terms, and you to keep terms, you must go away; you must live
abroad. As to starvation, we could ensure you some hundreds a-year to
starve upon, even in the beginning—I dare say, Mr. Warden.’
‘Hundreds,’ said the client. ‘And I have spent thousands!’
‘That,’ retorted Mr. Snitchey, putting the papers slowly back into the
cast-iron box, ‘there is no doubt about. No doubt a—bout,’ he repeated
to himself, as he thoughtfully pursued his occupation.
The lawyer very likely knew _his_ man; at any rate his dry, shrewd,
whimsical manner, had a favourable influence on the client’s moody state,
and disposed him to be more free and unreserved. Or, perhaps the client
knew _his_ man, and had elicited such encouragement as he had received,
to render some purpose he was about to disclose the more defensible in
appearance. Gradually raising his head, he sat looking at his immovable
adviser with a smile, which presently broke into a laugh.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘my iron-headed friend—’
Mr. Snitchey pointed out his partner. ‘Self and—excuse me—Craggs.’
‘I beg Mr. Craggs’s pardon,’ said the client. ‘After all, my iron-headed
friends,’ he leaned forward in his chair, and dropped his voice a little,
‘you don’t know half my ruin yet.’
Mr. Snitchey stopped and stared at him. Mr. Craggs also stared.
‘I am not only deep in debt,’ said the client, ‘but I am deep in—’
‘Not in love!’ cried Snitchey.
‘Yes!’ said the client, falling back in his chair, and surveying the Firm
with his hands in his pockets. ‘Deep in love.’
‘And not with an heiress, sir?’ said Snitchey.
‘Not with an heiress.’
‘Nor a rich lady?’
‘Nor a rich lady that I know of—except in beauty and merit.’
‘A single lady, I trust?’ said Mr. Snitchey, with great expression.
‘Certainly.’
‘It’s not one of Dr. Jeddler’s daughters?’ said Snitchey, suddenly
squaring his elbows on his knees, and advancing his face at least a yard.
‘Yes!’ returned the client.
‘Not his younger daughter?’ said Snitchey.
‘Yes!’ returned the client.
‘Mr. Craggs,’ said Snitchey, much relieved, ‘will you oblige me with
another pinch of snuff? Thank you! I am happy to say it don’t signify,
Mr. Warden; she’s engaged, sir, she’s bespoke. My partner can
corroborate me. We know the fact.’
‘We know the fact,’ repeated Craggs.
‘Why, so do I perhaps,’ returned the client quietly. ‘What of that! Are
you men of the world, and did you never hear of a woman changing her
mind?’
‘There certainly have been actions for breach,’ said Mr. Snitchey,
‘brought against both spinsters and widows, but, in the majority of
cases—’
‘Cases!’ interposed the client, impatiently. ‘Don’t talk to me of cases.
The general precedent is in a much larger volume than any of your law
books. Besides, do you think I have lived six weeks in the Doctor’s
house for nothing?’
‘I think, sir,’ observed Mr. Snitchey, gravely addressing himself to his
partner, ‘that of all the scrapes Mr. Warden’s horses have brought him
into at one time and another—and they have been pretty numerous, and
pretty expensive, as none know better than himself, and you, and I—the
worst scrape may turn out to be, if he talks in this way, this having
ever been left by one of them at the Doctor’s garden wall, with three
broken ribs, a snapped collar-bone, and the Lord knows how many bruises.
We didn’t think so much of it, at the time when we knew he was going on
well under the Doctor’s hands and roof; but it looks bad now, sir. Bad?
It looks very bad. Doctor Jeddler too—our client, Mr. Craggs.’
‘Mr. Alfred Heathfield too—a sort of client, Mr. Snitchey,’ said Craggs.
‘Mr. Michael Warden too, a kind of client,’ said the careless visitor,
‘and no bad one either: having played the fool for ten or twelve years.
However, Mr. Michael Warden has sown his wild oats now—there’s their
crop, in that box; and he means to repent and be wise. And in proof of
it, Mr. Michael Warden means, if he can, to marry Marion, the Doctor’s
lovely daughter, and to carry her away with him.’
‘Really, Mr. Craggs,’ Snitchey began.
‘Really, Mr. Snitchey, and Mr. Craggs, partners both,’ said the client,
interrupting him; ‘you know your duty to your clients, and you know well
enough, I am sure, that it is no part of it to interfere in a mere love
affair, which I am obliged to confide to you. I am not going to carry
the young lady off, without her own consent. There’s nothing illegal in
it. I never was Mr. Heathfield’s bosom friend. I violate no confidence
of his. I love where he loves, and I mean to win where he would win, if
I can.’
‘He can’t, Mr. Craggs,’ said Snitchey, evidently anxious and discomfited.
‘He can’t do it, sir. She dotes on Mr. Alfred.’
‘Does she?’ returned the client.
‘Mr. Craggs, she dotes on him, sir,’ persisted Snitchey.
‘I didn’t live six weeks, some few months ago, in the Doctor’s house for
nothing; and I doubted that soon,’ observed the client. ‘She would have
doted on him, if her sister could have brought it about; but I watched
them. Marion avoided his name, avoided the subject: shrunk from the
least allusion to it, with evident distress.’
‘Why should she, Mr. Craggs, you know? Why should she, sir?’ inquired
Snitchey.
‘I don’t know why she should, though there are many likely reasons,’ said
the client, smiling at the attention and perplexity expressed in Mr.
Snitchey’s shining eye, and at his cautious way of carrying on the
conversation, and making himself informed upon the subject; ‘but I know
she does. She was very young when she made the engagement—if it may be
called one, I am not even sure of that—and has repented of it, perhaps.
Perhaps—it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don’t mean it
in that light—she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen in
love with her.’
‘He, he! Mr. Alfred, her old playfellow too, you remember, Mr. Craggs,’
said Snitchey, with a disconcerted laugh; ‘knew her almost from a baby!’
‘Which makes it the more probable that she may be tired of his idea,’
calmly pursued the client, ‘and not indisposed to exchange it for the
newer one of another lover, who presents himself (or is presented by his
horse) under romantic circumstances; has the not unfavourable
reputation—with a country girl—of having lived thoughtlessly and gaily,
without doing much harm to anybody; and who, for his youth and figure,
and so forth—this may seem foppish again, but upon my soul I don’t mean
it in that light—might perhaps pass muster in a crowd with Mr. Alfred
himself.’
There was no gainsaying the last clause, certainly; and Mr. Snitchey,
glancing at him, thought so. There was something naturally graceful and
pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of
his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better
if he chose: and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had
been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. ‘A dangerous
sort of libertine,’ thought the shrewd lawyer, ‘to seem to catch the
spark he wants, from a young lady’s eyes.’
‘Now, observe, Snitchey,’ he continued, rising and taking him by the
button, ‘and Craggs,’ taking him by the button also, and placing one
partner on either side of him, so that neither might evade him. ‘I don’t
ask you for any advice. You are right to keep quite aloof from all
parties in such a matter, which is not one in which grave men like you
could interfere, on any side. I am briefly going to review in
half-a-dozen words, my position and intention, and then I shall leave it
to you to do the best for me, in money matters, that you can: seeing,
that, if I run away with the Doctor’s beautiful daughter (as I hope to
do, and to become another man under her bright influence), it will be,
for the moment, more chargeable than running away alone. But I shall
soon make all that up in an altered life.’
‘I think it will be better not to hear this, Mr. Craggs?’ said Snitchey,
looking at him across the client.
‘_I_ think not,’ said Craggs.—Both listened attentively.
‘Well! You needn’t hear it,’ replied their client. ‘I’ll mention it,
however. I don’t mean to ask the Doctor’s consent, because he wouldn’t
give it me. But I mean to do the Doctor no wrong or harm, because
(besides there being nothing serious in such trifles, as he says) I hope
to rescue his child, my Marion, from what I see—I _know_—she dreads, and
contemplates with misery: that is, the return of this old lover. If
anything in the world is true, it is true that she dreads his return.
Nobody is injured so far. I am so harried and worried here just now,
that I lead the life of a flying-fish. I skulk about in the dark, I am
shut out of my own house, and warned off my own grounds; but, that house,
and those grounds, and many an acre besides, will come back to me one
day, as you know and say; and Marion will probably be richer—on your
showing, who are never sanguine—ten years hence as my wife, than as the
wife of Alfred Heathfield, whose return she dreads (remember that), and
in whom or in any man, my passion is not surpassed. Who is injured yet?
It is a fair case throughout. My right is as good as his, if she decide
in my favour; and I will try my right by her alone. You will like to
know no more after this, and I will tell you no more. Now you know my
purpose, and wants. When must I leave here?’
‘In a week,’ said Snitchey. ‘Mr. Craggs?’
‘In something less, I should say,’ responded Craggs.
‘In a month,’ said the client, after attentively watching the two faces.
‘This day month. To-day is Thursday. Succeed or fail, on this day month
I go.’
‘It’s too long a delay,’ said Snitchey; ‘much too long. But let it be
so. I thought he’d have stipulated for three,’ he murmured to himself.
‘Are you going? Good night, sir!’
‘Good night!’ returned the client, shaking hands with the Firm.
‘You’ll live to see me making a good use of riches yet. Henceforth the
star of my destiny is, Marion!’
‘Take care of the stairs, sir,’ replied Snitchey; ‘for she don’t shine
there. Good night!’
‘Good night!’
So they both stood at the stair-head with a pair of office-candles,
watching him down. When he had gone away, they stood looking at each
other.
‘What do you think of all this, Mr. Craggs?’ said Snitchey.
Mr. Craggs shook his head.
‘It was our opinion, on the day when that release was executed, that
there was something curious in the parting of that pair; I recollect,’
said Snitchey.
‘It was,’ said Mr. Craggs.
‘Perhaps he deceives himself altogether,’ pursued Mr. Snitchey, locking
up the fireproof box, and putting it away; ‘or, if he don’t, a little bit
of fickleness and perfidy is not a miracle, Mr. Craggs. And yet I
thought that pretty face was very true. I thought,’ said Mr. Snitchey,
putting on his great-coat (for the weather was very cold), drawing on his
gloves, and snuffing out one candle, ‘that I had even seen her character
becoming stronger and more resolved of late. More like her sister’s.’
‘Mrs. Craggs was of the same opinion,’ returned Craggs.
‘I’d really give a trifle to-night,’ observed Mr. Snitchey, who was a
good-natured man, ‘if I could believe that Mr. Warden was reckoning
without his host; but, light-headed, capricious, and unballasted as he
is, he knows something of the world and its people (he ought to, for he
has bought what he does know, dear enough); and I can’t quite think that.
We had better not interfere: we can do nothing, Mr. Craggs, but keep
quiet.’
‘Nothing,’ returned Craggs.
‘Our friend the Doctor makes light of such things,’ said Mr. Snitchey,
shaking his head. ‘I hope he mayn’t stand in need of his philosophy.
Our friend Alfred talks of the battle of life,’ he shook his head again,
‘I hope he mayn’t be cut down early in the day. Have you got your hat,
Mr. Craggs? I am going to put the other candle out.’ Mr. Craggs
replying in the affirmative, Mr. Snitchey suited the action to the word,
and they groped their way out of the council-chamber, now dark as the
subject, or the law in general.
* * * * *
My story passes to a quiet little study, where, on that same night, the
sisters and the hale old Doctor sat by a cheerful fireside. Grace was
working at her needle. Marion read aloud from a book before her. The
Doctor, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his feet spread out upon
the warm rug, leaned back in his easy-chair, and listened to the book,
and looked upon his daughters.
They were very beautiful to look upon. Two better faces for a fireside,
never made a fireside bright and sacred. Something of the difference
between them had been softened down in three years’ time; and enthroned
upon the clear brow of the younger sister, looking through her eyes, and
thrilling in her voice, was the same earnest nature that her own
motherless youth had ripened in the elder sister long ago. But she still
appeared at once the lovelier and weaker of the two; still seemed to rest
her head upon her sister’s breast, and put her trust in her, and look
into her eyes for counsel and reliance. Those loving eyes, so calm,
serene, and cheerful, as of old.
‘“And being in her own home,”’ read Marion, from the book; ‘“her home
made exquisitely dear by these remembrances, she now began to know that
the great trial of her heart must soon come on, and could not be delayed.
O Home, our comforter and friend when others fall away, to part with
whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave”’—
‘Marion, my love!’ said Grace.
‘Why, Puss!’ exclaimed her father, ‘what’s the matter?’
She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched towards her, and read
on; her voice still faltering and trembling, though she made an effort to
command it when thus interrupted.
‘“To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave, is
always sorrowful. O Home, so true to us, so often slighted in return, be
lenient to them that turn away from thee, and do not haunt their erring
footsteps too reproachfully! Let no kind looks, no well-remembered
smiles, be seen upon thy phantom face. Let no ray of affection, welcome,
gentleness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy white head. Let no
old loving word, or tone, rise up in judgment against thy deserter; but
if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in mercy to the Penitent!”’
‘Dear Marion, read no more to-night,’ said Grace for she was weeping.
‘I cannot,’ she replied, and closed the book. ‘The words seem all on
fire!’
The Doctor was amused at this; and laughed as he patted her on the head.
‘What! overcome by a story-book!’ said Doctor Jeddler. ‘Print and paper!
Well, well, it’s all one. It’s as rational to make a serious matter of
print and paper as of anything else. But, dry your eyes, love, dry your
eyes. I dare say the heroine has got home again long ago, and made it up
all round—and if she hasn’t, a real home is only four walls; and a
fictitious one, mere rags and ink. What’s the matter now?’
‘It’s only me, Mister,’ said Clemency, putting in her head at the door.
‘And what’s the matter with _you_?’ said the Doctor.
‘Oh, bless you, nothing an’t the matter with me,’ returned Clemency—and
truly too, to judge from her well-soaped face, in which there gleamed as
usual the very soul of good-humour, which, ungainly as she was, made her
quite engaging. Abrasions on the elbows are not generally understood, it
is true, to range within that class of personal charms called
beauty-spots. But, it is better, going through the world, to have the
arms chafed in that narrow passage, than the temper: and Clemency’s was
sound and whole as any beauty’s in the land.
‘Nothing an’t the matter with me,’ said Clemency, entering, ‘but—come a
little closer, Mister.’
The Doctor, in some astonishment, complied with this invitation.
‘You said I wasn’t to give you one before them, you know,’ said Clemency.