If you take the Underground Railway to Whitechapel Road (the East
station), and from there take one of the yellow tramcars that start
from that point, and go down the Commercial Road, past the George, in
front of which stands—or used to stand—a high flagstaff, at the base of
which sits—or used to sit—an elderly female purveyor of pigs’ trotters
at three-ha’pence apiece, until you come to where a railway arch
crosses the road obliquely, and there get down and turn to the right up
a narrow, noisy street leading to the river, and then to the right
again up a still narrower street, which you may know by its having a
public-house at one corner (as is in the nature of things) and a marine
store-dealer’s at the other, outside which strangely stiff and
unaccommodating garments of gigantic size flutter ghost-like in the
wind, you will come to a dingy railed-in churchyard, surrounded on all
sides by cheerless, many-peopled houses. Sad-looking little old houses
they are, in spite of the tumult of life about their ever open doors.
They and the ancient church in their midst seem weary of the ceaseless
jangle around them. Perhaps, standing there for so many years,
listening to the long silence of the dead, the fretful voices of the
living sound foolish in their ears.
Peering through the railings on the side nearest the river, you will
see beneath the shadow of the soot-grimed church’s soot-grimed
porch—that is, if the sun happen, by rare chance, to be strong enough
to cast any shadow at all in that region of grey light—a curiously high
and narrow headstone that once was white and straight, not tottering
and bent with age as it is now. There is upon this stone a carving in
bas-relief, as you will see for yourself if you will make your way to
it through the gateway on the opposite side of the square. It
represents, so far as can be made out, for it is much worn by time and
dirt, a figure lying on the ground with another figure bending over it,
while at a little distance stands a third object. But this last is so
indistinct that it might be almost anything, from an angel to a post.
And below the carving are the words (already half obliterated) that I
have used for the title of this story.
Should you ever wander of a Sunday morning within sound of the cracked
bell that calls a few habit-bound, old-fashioned folk to worship within
those damp-stained walls, and drop into talk with the old men who on
such days sometimes sit, each in his brass-buttoned long brown coat,
upon the low stone coping underneath those broken railings, you might
hear this tale from them, as I did, more years ago than I care to
recollect.
But lest you do not choose to go to all this trouble, or lest the old
men who could tell it you have grown tired of all talk, and are not to
be roused ever again into the telling of tales, and you yet wish for
the story, I will here set it down for you.
But I cannot recount it to you as they told it to me, for to me it was
only a tale that I heard and remembered, thinking to tell it again for
profit, while to them it was a thing that had been, and the threads of
it were interwoven with the woof of their own life. As they talked,
faces that I did not see passed by among the crowd and turned and
looked at them, and voices that I did not hear spoke to them below the
clamour of the street, so that through their thin piping voices there
quivered the deep music of life and death, and my tale must be to
theirs but as a gossip’s chatter to the story of him whose breast has
felt the press of battle.
* * * * *
John Ingerfield, oil and tallow refiner, of Lavender Wharf, Limehouse,
comes of a hard-headed, hard-fisted stock. The first of the race that
the eye of Record, piercing the deepening mists upon the centuries
behind her, is able to discern with any clearness is a long-haired,
sea-bronzed personage, whom men call variously Inge or Unger. Out of
the wild North Sea he has come. Record observes him, one of a small,
fierce group, standing on the sands of desolate Northumbria, staring
landward, his worldly wealth upon his back. This consists of a
two-handed battle-axe, value perhaps some forty stycas in the currency
of the time. A careful man, with business capabilities, may, however,
manipulate a small capital to great advantage. In what would appear, to
those accustomed to our slow modern methods, an incredibly short space
of time, Inge’s two-handed battle-axe has developed into wide lands and
many head of cattle; which latter continue to multiply with a rapidity
beyond the dreams of present-day breeders. Inge’s descendants would
seem to have inherited the genius of their ancestor, for they prosper
and their worldly goods increase. They are a money-making race. In all
times, out of all things, by all means, they make money. They fight for
money, marry for money, live for money, are ready to die for money.
In the days when the most saleable and the highest priced article in
the markets of Europe was a strong arm and a cool head, then each
Ingerfield (as “Inge,” long rooted in Yorkshire soil, had grown or been
corrupted to) was a soldier of fortune, and offered his strong arm and
his cool head to the highest bidder. They fought for their price, and
they took good care that they obtained their price; but, the price
settled, they fought well, for they were staunch men and true,
according to their lights, though these lights may have been placed
somewhat low down, near the earth.
Then followed the days when the chief riches of the world lay tossed
for daring hands to grasp upon the bosom of the sea, and the sleeping
spirit of the old Norse Rover stirred in their veins, and the lilt of a
wild sea-song they had never heard kept ringing in their ears; and they
built them ships and sailed for the Spanish Main, and won much wealth,
as was their wont.
Later on, when Civilisation began to lay down and enforce sterner rules
for the game of life, and peaceful methods promised to prove more
profitable than violent, the Ingerfields became traders and merchants
of grave mien and sober life; for their ambition from generation to
generation remains ever the same, their various callings being but
means to an end.
A hard, stern race of men they would seem to have been, but just—so far
as they understood justice. They have the reputation of having been
good husbands, fathers, and masters; but one cannot help thinking of
them as more respected than loved.
They were men to exact the uttermost farthing due to them, yet not
without a sense of the thing due from them, their own duty and
responsibility—nay, not altogether without their moments of heroism,
which is the duty of great men. History relates how a certain Captain
Ingerfield, returning with much treasure from the West Indies—how
acquired it were, perhaps, best not to inquire too closely—is
overhauled upon the high seas by King’s frigate. Captain of King’s
frigate sends polite message to Captain Ingerfield requesting him to be
so kind as to promptly hand over a certain member of his ship’s
company, who, by some means or another, has made himself objectionable
to King’s friends, in order that he (the said objectionable person) may
be forthwith hanged from the yard-arm.
Captain Ingerfield returns polite answer to Captain of King’s frigate
that he (Captain Ingerfield) will, with much pleasure, hang any member
of his ship’s company that needs hanging, but that neither the King of
England nor any one else on God Almighty’s sea is going to do it for
him. Captain of King’s frigate sends back word that if objectionable
person be not at once given up he shall be compelled with much regret
to send Ingerfield and his ship to the bottom of the Atlantic. Replies
Captain Ingerfield, “That is just what he will have to do before I give
up one of my people,” and fights the big frigate—fights it so fiercely
that after three hours Captain of King’s frigate thinks it will be good
to try argument again, and sends therefore a further message,
courteously acknowledging Captain Ingerfield’s courage and skill, and
suggesting that, he having done sufficient to vindicate his honour and
renown, it would be politic to now hand over the unimportant cause of
contention, and so escape with his treasure.
“Tell your Captain,” shouts back this Ingerfield, who has discovered
there are sweeter things to fight for than even money, “that the _Wild
Goose_ has flown the seas with her belly full of treasure before now,
and will, if it be God’s pleasure, so do again, but that master and man
in her sail together, fight together, and die together.”
Whereupon King’s frigate pounds away more vigorously than ever, and
succeeds eventually in carrying out her threat. Down goes the _Wild
Goose_, her last chase ended—down she goes with a plunge, spit foremost
with her colours flying; and down with her goes every man left standing
on her decks; and at the bottom of the Atlantic they lie to this day,
master and man side by side, keeping guard upon their treasure.
Which incident, and it is well authenticated, goes far to prove that
the Ingerfields, hard men and grasping men though they be—men caring
more for the getting of money than for the getting of love—loving more
the cold grip of gold than the grip of kith or kin, yet bear buried in
their hearts the seeds of a nobler manhood, for which, however, the
barren soil of their ambition affords scant nourishment.
The John Ingerfield of this story is a man very typical of his race. He
has discovered that the oil and tallow refining business, though not a
pleasant one, is an exceedingly lucrative one. These are the good days
when George the Third is king, and London is rapidly becoming a city of
bright night. Tallow and oil and all materials akin thereto are in
ever-growing request, and young John Ingerfield builds himself a large
refining house and warehouse in the growing suburb of Limehouse, which
lies between the teeming river and the quiet fields, gathers many
people round about him, puts his strong heart into his work, and
prospers.
All the days of his youth he labours and garners, and lays out and
garners yet again. In early middle age he finds himself a wealthy man.
The chief business of life, the getting of money, is practically done;
his enterprise is firmly established, and will continue to grow with
ever less need of husbandry. It is time for him to think about the
secondary business of life, the getting together of a wife and home,
for the Ingerfields have ever been good citizens, worthy heads of
families, openhanded hosts, making a brave show among friends and
neighbours.
John Ingerfield, sitting in his stiff, high-backed chair, in his
stiffly, but solidly, furnished dining-room, above his counting-house,
sipping slowly his one glass of port, takes counsel with himself.
What shall she be?
He is rich, and can afford a good article. She must be young and
handsome, fit to grace the fine house he will take for her in
fashionable Bloomsbury, far from the odour and touch of oil and tallow.
She must be well bred, with a gracious, noble manner, that will charm
his guests and reflect honour and credit upon himself; she must, above
all, be of good family, with a genealogical tree sufficiently
umbrageous to hide Lavender Wharf from the eyes of Society.
What else she may or may not be he does not very much care. She will,
of course, be virtuous and moderately pious, as it is fit and proper
that women should be. It will also be well that her disposition be
gentle and yielding, but that is of minor importance, at all events so
far as he is concerned: the Ingerfield husbands are not the class of
men upon whom wives vent their tempers.
Having decided in his mind _what_ she shall be, he proceeds to discuss
with himself _who_ she shall be. His social circle is small.
Methodically, in thought, he makes the entire round of it, mentally
scrutinising every maiden that he knows. Some are charming, some are
fair, some are rich; but no one of them approaches near to his
carefully considered ideal.
He keeps the subject in his mind, and muses on it in the intervals of
business. At odd moments he jots down names as they occur to him upon a
slip of paper, which he pins for the purpose on the inside of the cover
of his desk. He arranges them alphabetically, and when it is as
complete as his memory can make it, he goes critically down the list,
making a few notes against each. As a result, it becomes clear to him
that he must seek among strangers for his wife.
He has a friend, or rather an acquaintance, an old school-fellow, who
has developed into one of those curious social flies that in all ages
are to be met with buzzing contentedly within the most exclusive
circles, and concerning whom, seeing that they are neither rare nor
rich, nor extraordinarily clever nor well born, one wonders “how the
devil they got there!” Meeting this man by chance one afternoon, he
links his arm in his and invites him home to dinner.
So soon as they are left alone, with the walnuts and wine between them,
John Ingerfield says, thoughtfully cracking a hard nut between his
fingers—
“Will, I’m going to get married.”
“Excellent idea—delighted to hear it, I’m sure,” replies Will, somewhat
less interested in the information than in the delicately flavoured
Madeira he is lovingly sipping. “Who’s the lady?”
“I don’t know, yet,” is John Ingerfield’s answer.
His friend glances slyly at him over his glass, not sure whether he is
expected to be amused or sympathetically helpful.
“I want you to find one for me.”
Will Cathcart puts down his glass and stares at his host across the
table.
“Should be delighted to help you, Jack,” he stammers, in an alarmed
tone—“’pon my soul I should; but really don’t know a damned woman I
could recommend—’pon my soul I don’t.”
“You must see a good many: I wish you’d look out for one that you
_could_ recommend.”
“Certainly I will, my dear Jack!” answers the other, in a relieved
voice. “Never thought about ’em in that way before. Daresay I shall
come across the very girl to suit you. I’ll keep my eyes open and let
you know.”
“I shall be obliged to you if you will,” replies John Ingerfield,
quietly; “and it’s your turn, I think, to oblige me, Will. I have
obliged you, if you recollect.”
“Shall never forget it, my dear Jack,” murmurs Will, a little uneasily.
“It was uncommonly good of you. You saved me from ruin, Jack: shall
think about it to my dying day—’pon my soul I shall.”
“No need to let it worry you for so long a period as that,” returns
John, with the faintest suspicion of a smile playing round his firm
mouth. “The bill falls due at the end of next month. You can discharge
the debt then, and the matter will be off your mind.”
Will finds his chair growing uncomfortable under him, while the Madeira
somehow loses its flavour. He gives a short, nervous laugh.
“By Jove,” he says: “so soon as that? The date had quite slipped my
memory.”
“Fortunate that I reminded you,” says John, the smile round his lips
deepening.
Will fidgets on his seat. “I’m afraid, my dear Jack,” he says, “I shall
have to get you to renew it, just for a month or two,—deuced awkward
thing, but I’m remarkably short of money this year. Truth is, I can’t
get what’s owing to myself.”
“That’s very awkward, certainly,” replies his friend, “because I am not
at all sure that I shall be able to renew it.”
Will stares at him in some alarm. “But what am I to do if I hav’n’t the
money?”
John Ingerfield shrugs his shoulders.
“You don’t mean, my dear Jack, that you would put me in prison?”
“Why not? Other people have to go there who can’t pay their debts.”
Will Cathcart’s alarm grows to serious proportions. “But our
friendship,” he cries, “our—”
“My dear Will,” interrupts the other, “there are few friends I would
lend three hundred pounds to and make no effort to get it back. You,
certainly, are not one of them.”
“Let us make a bargain,” he continues. “Find me a wife, and on the day
of my marriage I will send you back that bill with, perhaps, a couple
of hundred added. If by the end of next month you have not introduced
me to a lady fit to be, and willing to be, Mrs. John Ingerfield, I
shall decline to renew it.”
John Ingerfield refills his own glass and hospitably pushes the bottle
towards his guest—who, however, contrary to his custom, takes no notice
of it, but stares hard at his shoe-buckles.
“Are you serious?” he says at length.
“Quite serious,” is the answer. “I want to marry. My wife must be a
lady by birth and education. She must be of good family—of family
sufficiently good, indeed, to compensate for the refinery. She must be
young and beautiful and charming. I am purely a business man. I want a
woman capable of conducting the social department of my life. I know of
no such lady myself. I appeal to you, because you, I know, are intimate
with the class among whom she must be sought.”
“There may be some difficulty in persuading a lady of the required
qualifications to accept the situation,” says Cathcart, with a touch of
malice.
“I want you to find one who will,” says John Ingerfield.
Early in the evening Will Cathcart takes leave of his host, and departs
thoughtful and anxious; and John Ingerfield strolls contemplatively up
and down his wharf, for the smell of oil and tallow has grown to be
very sweet to him, and it is pleasant to watch the moonbeams shining on
the piled-up casks.
Six weeks go by. On the first day of the seventh John takes Will
Cathcart’s acceptance from its place in the large safe, and lays it in
the smaller box beside his desk, devoted to more pressing and immediate
business. Two days later Cathcart picks his way across the slimy yard,
passes through the counting-house, and enters his friend’s inner
sanctum, closing the door behind him.
He wears a jubilant air, and slaps the grave John on the back. “I’ve
got her, Jack,” he cries. “It’s been hard work, I can tell you:
sounding suspicious old dowagers, bribing confidential servants,
fishing for information among friends of the family. By Jove, I shall
be able to join the Duke’s staff as spy-in-chief to His Majesty’s
entire forces after this!”
“What is she like?” asks John, without stopping his writing.
“Like! My dear Jack, you’ll fall over head and ears in love with her
the moment you see her. A little cold, perhaps, but that will just suit
you.”
“Good family?” asks John, signing and folding the letter he has
finished.
“So good that I was afraid at first it would be useless thinking of
her. But she’s a sensible girl, no confounded nonsense about her, and
the family are poor as church mice. In fact—well, to tell the truth, we
have become most excellent friends, and she told me herself frankly
that she meant to marry a rich man, and didn’t much care whom.”
“That sounds hopeful,” remarks the would-be bridegroom, with his
peculiar dry smile: “when shall I have the pleasure of seeing her?”
“I want you to come with me to-night to the Garden,” replies the other;
“she will be in Lady Heatherington’s box, and I will introduce you.”
So that evening John Ingerfield goes to Covent Garden Theatre, with the
blood running a trifle quicker in his veins, but not much, than would
be the case were he going to the docks to purchase tallow—examines,
covertly, the proposed article from the opposite side of the house, and
approves her—is introduced to her, and, on closer inspection, approves
her still more—receives an invitation to visit—visits frequently, and
each time is more satisfied of the rarity, serviceableness, and quality
of the article.
If all John Ingerfield requires for a wife is a beautiful social
machine, surely here he has found his ideal. Anne Singleton, only
daughter of that persistently unfortunate but most charming of
baronets, Sir Harry Singleton (more charming, it is rumoured, outside
his family circle than within it), is a stately, graceful, high-bred
woman. Her portrait, by Reynolds, still to be seen above the carved
wainscoting of one of the old City halls, shows a wonderfully handsome
and clever face, but at the same time a wonderfully cold and heartless
one. It is the face of a woman half weary of, half sneering at the
world. One reads in old family letters, whereof the ink is now very
faded and the paper very yellow, long criticisms of this portrait. The
writers complain that if the picture is at all like her she must have
greatly changed since her girlhood, for they remember her then as
having a laughing and winsome expression.
They say—they who knew her in after-life—that this earlier face came
back to her in the end, so that the many who remembered opening their
eyes and seeing her bending down over them could never recognise the
portrait of the beautiful sneering lady, even when they were told whom
it represented.
But at the time of John Ingerfield’s strange wooing she was the Anne
Singleton of Sir Joshua’s portrait, and John Ingerfield liked her the
better that she was.
He had no feeling of sentiment in the matter himself, and it simplified
the case that she had none either. He offered her a plain bargain, and
she accepted it. For all he knew or cared, her attitude towards this
subject of marriage was the usual one assumed by women. Very young
girls had their heads full of romantic ideas. It was better for her and
for him that she had got rid of them.
“Ours will be a union founded on good sense,” said John Ingerfield.
“Let us hope the experiment will succeed,” said Anne Singleton.