UNCLE HENRY.
Mr. Henry Joscelyn came down stairs at nine o’clock to breakfast as he
always did. No clock was ever more regular. He was not like the present
family of Joscelyns. He had taken after his mother, who was the
grandmother of Ralph Joscelyn of the White House. The family had been
one of greater pretensions and more gentility in his day. The heir at
that time was educated in Oxford, and the Joscelyns still belonged,
though gradually falling away from it, to the higher level, and counted
themselves county people. Henry had been sent off early to business; but
he had never lost the sentiment which so often remains to an “old
family” when more substantial possessions are gone. In the case of the
present representative of the name this sentiment was mere pride with a
bitter edge to it, and resentful sense of downfall; but with Mr. Henry
Joscelyn it was a real consciousness of superiority to the common
persons round him. _Noblesse oblige_: perhaps he did not understand
these words in their highest sense. The _noblesse_ was small. And the
behaviour it exacted was not of a princely or magnanimous character; but
still there were many things which, being a Joscelyn, he felt it
incumbent upon him both to do and not to do. He would not allow himself
to drop. He looked with indignation and contempt at the rudeness and
roughness of his nephew’s house. Even what was best in it was, he felt,
beneath him. He had never married at all, not feeling able to aspire to
the only kind of wife he ever could have been content with; but to marry
a parson’s daughter was an expedient Henry Joscelyn would have scorned.
It would have better befitted the reigning head of so good and old a
race to have followed the example of King Cophetua--a beautiful
beggar-maid is a possibility always, but an insipid parson’s daughter!
Mr. Henry Joscelyn had not cut his nephew--that would have been
impossible too; but he looked upon him with a fierce contempt; and
though he allowed Mrs. Joscelyn to be “a worthy person,” and
probably quite good enough, nay, even too good, for Ralph Joscelyn
as he was, still Mr. Henry could not meet her on grounds of
equality--notwithstanding the fact that there was a baronet in her
family, which at first had staggered him. It did not seem to him that
these high claims of his were at all injured by the fact that he himself
had been engaged in, and had made all his money by, trade. “I was a
younger son,” he would say, with a gentle shrug of his shoulders, and
his godson Harry was also a younger son. Mr. Henry believed that there
was a certain amount of self-sacrifice necessary in a family. If it was
a right and good thing to keep it up, then it was quite right that the
younger children should have their part in sustaining its honour. Its
importance, its prestige, belonged to them as well as to the heir, and
it was their interest as well as their duty to make an exertion and keep
it up.
His own exertions had not succeeded badly; he had been able to come back
to his own county, while he was still not an old man, and to settle
himself according to his pleasure. Now Mr. Henry’s opinion was that you
could not live absolutely in the country unless you had “a place” in the
country, and all the consequence that brings. His notions, it will be
seen, were a great deal higher than his real position; he thought of the
Joscelyns as if they had been a ducal house. And without “a place” he
considered a country life impossible. He did not choose to live in a
small house in the shadow of a great one. Had the White House really
been a great ducal establishment he might have done so; but as he could
not so much as look at the White House without a sense of its
discrepancy with the pretensions of the family, and unlikeness to
everything that the mansion of the Joscelyns ought to be; and as the
society there, when there was any society, was distinctly below, not
above, his own level, he did not hesitate a moment as to his place of
abode. He bought a house in Wyburgh, the county town; a modest
house--but he did not want very much--where he was served most
comfortably and carefully by Mrs. Eadie, the most excellent of managers,
with the assistance of one small aid, and compensated himself for the
smallness of his establishment within doors by keeping a groom and a
couple of horses, which were his personal luxuries. No horses in the
country were more carefully groomed, and no groom presented a more neat
and spruce appearance; and Mr. Henry still rode across country, though
not with the daring which once sat so oddly on his prim little person.
For he was little and light-coloured, exactly the reverse of the
Joscelyns, like his mother, the small pale woman, whose
over-masterfulness and tyrannical control of her sons, was said to have
turned her grandson, the present man, and his father before him, to evil
courses. She had wanted to make them good, to perfect their characters,
whether they would or not; and the strong restraint she had exercised
had made the re-action all the more vehement. So people said: except in
the case of Henry, who took after his mother in every way, and had all
her intolerance of useless people and indolent minds. He lived a life
which was very satisfactory to himself in his little house in Wyburgh.
He had besides a little bit of land in his native parish with an old
house upon it, uninhabitable, but yet a creditable sort of possession in
a corner of which Isaac Oliver--who was, in a very lowly manner his
bailiff--lived with his family. Mr. Henry was a much respected member of
the county club which had its seat in Wyburgh, and to which his nephew
of the White House might have sought admittance in vain. The duke
himself treated old Henry, as he was called, with the utmost
condescension. His position was never contended or doubted. He was as
good a gentleman as the king. He knew more about the county than anyone
else did, and called cousins remotely with many of the great people, who
were most courteously ready to allow the kindred so far as Mr. Henry
Joscelyn went; and he was an active magistrate, and took a certain
interest in the town itself, where most people believed in him, and
wondered how the Joscelyns could have gone off so completely since Mr.
Henry’s time--which was like the period before the deluge to the young
people. And Mr. Henry was a man of the most regular habits. It might
have been known what hour it was, had the town clock stopped in Wyburgh,
by his appearance at the window, after he had breakfasted, with the
newspaper in his hand, by the sound of his step as he went to the Club
regular as the sun himself, and by his return to his dinner. These were
the three departures, so to speak, of his day. In the evening he dined
out sometimes, at the Rectory, at Dr. Peregrine’s, or with Mr. Despond,
the solicitor: and now and then with some of the greater people about,
where he drove in his own little brougham, which he kept expressly for
such occasions. At other times one or two old inhabitants of the better
class would drop in in the evening to make up his rubber. He looked very
well after his money, and gave his neighbours excellent advice about
their investments; and a more admirable member of society, a more
respected townsman, could not be.
It may be supposed that to such a man, with such a life, the existence
of a schoolboy under his roof had not been an unmixed pleasure. Still
Mr. Henry Joscelyn was not a man to fail in his duties when they were
pointed out to him. Though nobody but Mrs. Joscelyn guessed it, it was
to the housekeeper that his family were indebted for Harry’s preferment.
Mrs. Eadie was just then greatly in want of somebody to be kind to. Her
master, though he required the most scrupulous attention, did not come
within this category, and the good woman had long sighed for a bairn in
the house. When Harry was in the house he did not see much of his
uncle--their hours (thank heaven! Mr. Henry said, devoutly), being quite
incompatible. The boy was off to school in the morning, long before Mr.
Henry was up. He had his dinner in the middle of the day, when Mr. Henry
was engaged in magisterial or county business, or in the Club. So they
got on very well, and the old man was actually sorry when the boy set
out in his turn for Liverpool to get an insight into “the business” in
which his uncle had grown moderately rich; but this did not affect his
methodical life, which flowed on just as before. Mr. Henry was growing
old; even he himself acknowledged this, with cheerful readiness to other
people, with a little impatience to himself. He spoke of his age with
great equanimity in society when the subject was mooted, but he did not
think of it when he could help it, nor did he like the thought. High and
dry above all mortal loss and gain, quite safe from the agitations of
life, very comfortable in all its circumstances, having succeeded in
working out just the perfection of detail, the harmony of movement that
satisfied him, it was a vexing and unpleasant reflection that this life
was to be disturbed, broken in upon, brought to a conclusion by illness
and death. Sometimes the thought made him almost angry. Why? He was not,
to be sure, so strong as he once was, but he was strong enough for all
reasonable purposes, as strong as he required to be; and he had all his
wits about him. Never had he been more clear-headed; and every sort of
inclination to do things that were not good for him, whether in the way
of eating or drinking, or other practices of a more strictly moral or
immoral character had died out of his mind. He knew how to take care of
himself exactly, and he did take the greatest care of himself. Why
should he die? It was an idea that annoyed him. It seemed so
unnecessary: he was not weary of life, nor had he the least desire to
give it up. In such circumstances there had been a lurking feeling in
his mind that Providence should know how to discriminate. But there was
no telling how long Providence might choose to discriminate: and this
recollection was about the only disturbing influence in a life so
comfortable and well proportioned, and altogether satisfactory, that
there seemed no reason whatever that it should ever come to an end.
“Mr. Harry here? How did he get here at such an hour in the morning?
Why, he must have started in the middle of the night.”
“I make no doubt of that,” said the housekeeper. She had brought up a
second kidney, piping hot, and tender as a baby, upon a piece of toast,
so crisp yet so melting, so brown and savoury, so penetrated by generous
juices that it was in itself a luxury; “and for that and other things I
have made him lie down upon his bed. He’s not been in a bed this night,
that’s clear to see; he’s sleeping like a babe in a cradle; it does the
heart good to see him.”
“I don’t think it would do my heart good,” said Mr. Henry, “the young
fellow must have been up to some mischief. Did he give you any idea of
what was the matter? or is it mere nonsense, perhaps a bet, or a brag,
or something of that sort?”
“Mere nonsense--nay, nay, Sir, it’s not that. He’s got a look on his
face--a look I have seen on your own face, Sir, when you are put out.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times, Mrs. Eadie, there is not the slightest
resemblance between Mr. Harry and me.”
“And how are you to tell that, Sir, that canna see the two together? You
are far more clever than me in most things; but my eyesight I must
trust to.” Mrs. Eadie made a little curtsey when she opposed her master.
She had a conviction that it gave him a secret pleasure, though he would
never confess it, to hear that Harry was like him; and perhaps she was
right.
“Have your own way,” he said; “but that makes no difference to the
question. What’s wrong? has he said nothing to you? You used to be great
friends.”
“I’m his true friend; and stiddy well-wisher, as much good as I could do
him; and Mr. Harry has always been very kind,” said the housekeeper,
putting her master’s sentiment in her own softest words; “but he has
said nothing to me. I did not look for it. He would not, being one of
the proud Joscelyns, saving your presence, Sir, take a servant into his
confidence. Though he’s aye been very kind.”
“We are proud, are we?” said her master, with a half smile; “well,
perhaps that is a fault of the Joscelyns, Mrs. Eadie. You can send him
to me when he wakes. Of course now that he is here I must listen to what
he has to say.”
But Mr. Henry sighed. He ate that delicious kidney with an internal
sense of annoyance which took half the savour out of it. He said to
himself that it was always the case: when he came down in the morning
with any unusual sentiment of comfort and well-being, something always
happened to put him out. As sure as that light-heartedness came,
something would follow to pull him down, something would go wrong in the
Club, or his conduct in some petty session case would be aspersed in the
“Wyburgh Gazette,” or some old friend of his boyhood would send him a
begging letter, or--still more annoying, something about the White House
family would interfere with his digestion. “I might have known,” he said
to himself. He had got up at peace with all men; with absolutely no care
which he could think of when he woke and swept the mental horizon for
causes of inconvenience, as it is one of the privileges of humanity to
do--absolutely nothing to bring him any vexation or annoyance. He had
believed that he was going to have a comfortable day. A little
uneasiness which he had felt in his foot (he did not say, even to
himself, in his toe), had gone off; a stiffness which he had been
conscious of had disappeared; the wind had changed, going round to the
southward, and the morning was quite warm for the time of the year. He
had not been buffeted about by the night wind, as Harry had, and at six
in the morning, when poor Harry was so cold, he had been as warm as he
could desire in bed. When he came down stairs the fire was just as he
liked it, the newspaper with the chill taken off it, neatly cut, and
folded, and a letter from the Duke, with a seal as big as a penny, was
lying by his plate. It was an invitation, and Mr. Henry was much
pleased. Never had a day begun more auspiciously. He had sat down,
opened his napkin, poured out for himself an aromatic cup of coffee,
laid the newspaper before him conveniently, so as to be able to glance
his eye over the news, while he addressed himself to the more solid part
of the meal. And it was while he was thus beginning the day, in peace
with himself and all about him, that “the woman,” as he called his
housekeeper when anything went wrong, appeared with that kidney, and the
cloud which was to overshadow the whole day. Of course it must be
something wrong. Why could not the woman have recommended that boy to go
back again, and make it up with his father, and not bother another
person with his troubles? Had not every man troubles enough of his own?
But he had been too comfortable. It was just as it always
happened--whenever he felt particularly at his ease, something, some
annoyance or other, was certain to come. He sighed impatiently as Mrs.
Eadie withdrew. But then he felt it to be his duty to himself to put all
anxiety out of his thoughts, and to address himself seriously, if not
with such a sensation of comfort, to his breakfast; it would do no good
to himself or anyone if he put his digestion out of order for the rest
of the day.
He had finished his breakfast and read his paper, and done some trifling
businesses such as were of importance in his easy life, before Harry
appeared. When a man or woman lives at perfect ease, with nothing to do,
there are always some solemnities of supposed duty which they go through
for their own comfort, to give a semblance of serious occupation to
their day. With some people it is their correspondence, with others the
rain-gauge and the thermometer, which they register with as grave a
countenance as if the comfort of the country depended upon it. Mr.
Henry’s duty was the Club. He was looking over the accounts of the last
half year with serious devotion. He spread this over a long time, doing
a little every day, comparing all the items with their respective
vouchers, and with the expenditure of the previous half year. All had
been perfectly satisfactory till this morning; but to-day he discovered
that the sale of the waste-paper was not entered in the previous month,
which made a difference of some seven shillings and sixpence, or
thereabouts, in the half year’s accounts, a difference such as ought not
to have occurred. He could scarcely help feeling that this would not
have happened had it not been for the very inopportune arrival of Harry,
and introduction of the troubles of a family, things he had
systematically kept clear of, into his comfortable and self-sufficing
life.
He had just made this discovery--which obliged him to refer to the
expenditure in the corresponding quarters of last year, and several
years before, and make close investigation into what had then become of
the waste-paper, and who had bought it, and what price it had brought;
and had made a careful note in his pocket-book of various questions to
be put to the butler at the Club, who had the practical management of
affairs--when the door opened and Harry appeared. Mr. Joscelyn looked up
and made an instant mental estimate of his nephew, whom he had not seen
for some time, on not very just grounds. Harry had been immensely
refreshed and restored by his breakfast, and the consciousness of having
a roof over his head, and a legitimate right to be here; but his sleep
perhaps had not done him so much good. At five-and-twenty a man can do
without a night’s rest with no very great inconvenience; but to have a
snatch of insufficient sleep is of little advantage to him. It had made
his eyes red, and given him an inclination to yawn, and confused his
head. He had the look of a man who has been sleeping illegitimately,
sleeping in daytime when other men are awake; and he was unshaven, and
he had on a shirt of his uncle’s, which was too tight at the throat, and
otherwise of a fashion not adapted to a young man. His dusty coat had
been brushed, and he was not really travel-soiled or slovenly, much the
reverse indeed, for his appearance had been the cause of much more
searchings of the heart both to himself and kind Mrs. Eadie than was at
all usual in respect to Harry’s simple toilette; but that air of
suppressed fatigue and premature awakening, and altogether
wrong-sidedness, was strong upon him. And he was deeply conscious of it.
He knew exactly how he looked, with his eyes rather red, and that
blueness on his chin, and Uncle Henry’s collar cutting his throat; and
a great many doubts as to his reception by Uncle Henry--doubts which had
not entered his mind before, arose within him in that first moment when,
opening the door, he met the startled eyes of Mr. Joscelyn over the top
of his spectacles, lifted to him with an alarmed and inquiring look.
Harry saw that in a moment he was weighed in the balance and found
wanting. This did not give him more ease in his manner, or a less
painful sense of being on his trial.
“Good morning, Harry. I hear that you were a surprisingly early visitor
this morning; but you keep early hours in the country. I hope there is
nothing amiss at the White House.”
Mr. Joscelyn held out a hand, of which he was rather proud to be shaken
by his grand-nephew. It was, he flattered himself, a hand that was in
itself a guarantee of blue blood. Harry embraced it in the grasp of a
powerful member with none of these qualities, and gave it a squeeze much
more energetic than he had intended.
“There is a good deal amiss with me,” he said. Harry had been debating
the point with himself for the last half-hour, whether he should fully
confide in his uncle or not. He could not but feel that it would be
wiser to deal lightly with the fact of his exclusion from his father’s
house; but he was so angry that he could not be prudent, and the moment
that he had an opportunity of speech his temper broke out.
“I was not in bed all last night,” he said; “I was on the road like a
tramp, Uncle Henry. My father turned me out of the house--”
Three lines came across Mr. Henry Joscelyn’s brow--three horizontal,
well-marked lines. These were two too many. When he was sympathetic a
slight indentation over his eyebrows was all that appeared. The second
meant doubt, the third annoyance.
“Dear me!” he said, “how did that happen? I fear you must have been
doing something to displease your father.”
“Who can help displeasing my father?” cried Harry. “I am sure, Uncle
Henry, you know him well enough. I had been doing nothing wrong. I had
been trying to get him to interest himself in my affairs. He has never
done anything for me, it is you that have done everything for me. I laid
before him a chance I’ve got. I meant at any rate to come and talk it
all over with you; but in the first place I thought it was as well to
ask a question about my mother’s money--”
“Ah--that was not quite an ingratiating way of opening the matter, I
fear,” Uncle Henry said.
“Why not?” cried Harry, forgetting all the prudential rules he had been
trying to impose upon himself. “My mother was willing, and when it would
have advanced my interests--and of course I should have paid as good a
per-centage as anybody else. Surety if there is anything a man can have
a claim upon,” he added, argumentatively, “it must be his mother’s
money. I mayn’t have any right to touch the family property, as I am
only a younger son, and all that--and especially as there are such a lot
of us; but my mother’s money--when it is doing nothing, only lying at
interest. Surely a man has a claim upon that.”
“The man that has a claim upon that is your father, I should say. I
never knew a man yet that liked any questions about his wife’s money,”
said Mr. Joscelyn; “whether it’s in her own power or in his, its not a
nice thing to interfere with. You have your own ways of looking at
things, you young fellows; but in your place I would have said nothing
about that. I didn’t know your mother had any money,” he added, in an
indifferent tone.
“It is only--a thousand pounds, Uncle Henry: not what you would call a
fortune--”
Mr. Henry Joscelyn smiled, and waved his hand. Impossible to have waved
away a trifle, a nothing, with a more complete representation of its
nothingness. “Ah--that!--” he said, “I thought I never had heard
anything about money. Well, I can’t flatter you that your claim on your
father was made in a very judicious way. And he would not hear of it?
That is easy enough to understand; but why did he turn you out of
doors?”
“I can’t tell you,” cried Harry, “I can tell you no more than that. I
laid it all before him. It is a good opportunity, an opportunity that
may never occur again. I have been in the office for three years, long
enough to be a mere clerk.”
“I have known very good men, Harry, who were clerks all their lives.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Harry, impatiently, “one knows that. There’s an
excellent fellow now in our office: but I don’t suppose, Uncle Henry,
that was what you intended for me.”
“Well, my boy: I intended that you should earn your living and be off
the hands of your family. I am not aware that I went much further. Of
course, if your own talents and industry pushed you on, one would have
been very glad to hear of it; otherwise, in your circumstances, the
fifth son, I should not be disposed to turn up my nose at the position
of a mere clerk.”
Harry gazed at his uncle while he spoke with an impatient reluctance and
protest against every word. He could scarcely bear to hear him out; he
had his mouth open to reply before Uncle Henry was half done: but when
the old gentleman ended his speech, Harry, with a gasp as of baffled
utterance, remained silent. He did not know what reply to make, he felt
the ground cut from under his feet; how was he to ask his uncle to place
himself in the breach, to do what his father would not do, when this was
how his representation was received? He gazed at him with a hard breath
and said nothing; for the moment his very utterance was taken away.
And then there was a pause. Mr. Joscelyn sat quietly with his gold
spectacles between his fingers and thumb, looking at his nephew. The
lines were gone from his forehead, he was quite bland and amiable, but
demonstratively indifferent, with an air of having nothing whatever to
do with the question, which, to Harry, was exasperating beyond
description. He kept his other hand upon the Club papers, which were his
business. The young fellow who had so suddenly come down upon him in
vehement wrath and offence, yet expectation, was manifestly nothing but
an interruption to Uncle Henry. He was thinking of his waste-paper, not
of the future prospects of any foolish young man. After a pause he spoke
again.
“And when are you going back to business, Harry? I hope, now that you
are here, that you will stay a day or two and renew your acquaintance
with your old friends. Mrs. Eadie will make you very comfortable. I am
sorry to say I am dining out both to-day and to-morrow, but if you like
to have young Pilgrim, or Gus Grey, or any of your former acquaintances,
my housekeeper is really equal to a very nice little dinner, as you
know. I think I heard there was a dance getting up somewhere. Stay till
the end of the week, if your leave lasts so long.”
“Uncle Henry,” said Harry, with an air of tragedy, which he was quite
unconscious of, “you may suppose that a man who has been turned out of
his father’s house, and has thrown off all connection with his native
soil----”
“No, no, my boy, no, no,” said Mr. Joscelyn, with a half laugh, “not so
bad as that.”
“I say,” continued Harry, with increasing solemnity, “who has parted
from his family for ever, and cut off all connection with his native
soil--you may suppose that he hasn’t much heart to pay visits or take up
old acquaintances. What is there likely to be between me and Jack
Pilgrim, who is stepping into his father’s business, and as settled as
the Fells? or Gus Grey, who is kept up and set forward at the Bar,
though he is not earning a penny, by relations that think all the world
of him? what can there be in common, I should like to know, between them
and me? I’m only the fifth son, as you say, to start with, therefore I’m
of no consequence; and, by Jove!” cried Harry, striking the table with
his clenched fist, “if ever I enter that house while Ralph Joscelyn’s
the master of it--if ever I go back to knock at the door that was locked
upon me, locked upon me in the middle of the night----”
Uncle Henry’s brow contracted when that blow came down upon his neat
writing-table; it shook the inkstand, which perhaps was overfull, and
spilt a drop or two of ink, which of all things in the world was the
thing which annoyed him most. He mopped it up hurriedly with his
blotting-paper, but his brow became dark, and his mouth drew up at the
corners in a way that meant mischief.
“Pardon me,” he said, with exquisite civility, “but to spoil my table
will not do your affairs any good. It is a pity that you take such a
very tragical view of the matter, but in your present state of mind
nothing that I could say, I fear, would be of much use. Thick! thick! I
don’t think this spot is likely to come out.”
“I am dreadfully sorry, uncle----” poor Harry began.
“Sorrow, so far as I am aware, does not take out ink-spots,” said the
old gentleman, testily; “perhaps you will do me the favour to ring for
Eadie. If things are so very serious the less we say about them the
better--heated discussions are never any good. I can only say that if
you like to stay a day or two you are quite welcome, Harry. Mrs. Eadie,
look here; the ink-bottle has been filled too full, perhaps you know
something that will take it out.”
“Dear, dear me!” Mrs. Eadie cried, with an anxious look from the old
gentleman with his crisped lips to the young fellow standing much
abashed beside him, “it’s that little lass again; but I take the blame
to myself; I should never have trusted it out of my hands. Dear! dear!
milk will may be do it. I wouldn’t like to try benzine or salts of
lemon.”
“Try what you like, but get it out,” said Mr. Joscelyn. “I’ll see you,
Harry, when I come back from the Club.”
“Oh, my bonnie young gentleman!” cried Mrs. Eadie, when they were left
alone, “you have said something that’s gone against him! you have turned
him the wrong way!”
“I think everything is turning the wrong way,” said Harry, throwing
himself into his uncle’s easy-chair. He was still so young and
unaccustomed to trouble that the tears came hot to his eyes. “I’ll tell
you what I’ll do, Eadie, I’ll be off before he comes back; I’ll go
straight off to my work, there’s nobody will turn the cold shoulder upon
me there.”
“No, no, Mr. Harry, no, no, my canny lad, you must not be so hasty.
Besides, you know as well as I do there’s no train. It’s coming out just
with blotting-paper; look! see! When he comes back he’ll have forgotten
all about it, and I’ll make you up a nice little bit of something for
your lunch, and you’ll ’gree again, and get his advice. He’s grand with
his advice, and he’s awfu’ fond of giving it. Just you ask him for his
advice, Mr. Harry, and you’ll ’gree like two birds in a nest. It’s aye
how I come round the maister when he has cast out with me.”