LAW.
Law went with his sister dutifully to the door in the great cloister. He
did not care much for the honour and glory of going to the Deanery, but
he was pleased to walk with Lottie in her pretty evening dress, with the
roses in her hair. This gave him a certain gratification and sense of
family pride, though he scoffed at that sentiment in general. Law did
not feel that on the whole he had much to be proud of. Still, he was
proud of Lottie, who was a creature quite out of the common, and like
nobody else he had ever seen. He waited till the Deanery door was opened
to her. That was a world of which Law knew nothing, and did not want to
know anything. How Lottie had managed to get among these fine people,
and why she liked to get among them, were equally strange to him. He
admired her for the first, and wondered at her for the last. She was, at
the present moment, the only lady belonging to the Chevaliers who had
got footing in the Deanery; and this was just like Lottie, just what he
would have expected from her, he said to himself; but how she could
stand those old fogies, with their pride and their finery, that was
what he could not tell. All the same, it gave him a certain
gratification to leave her there in her element among the great people.
And when the door closed upon him Law went off about his own business.
He went through the cloister, and a curious little back cloister
beyond--for there were many intricacies about the Abbey, the different
degrees of the hierarchy being very distinct, one cloister for the
Chapter, another for the Minor people, and a third for the lay clerks.
He went through the little square of the minor cloister, and came out
upon a stone staircase which abridged the slopes of St. Michael’s Hill,
and led straight down into the town. The lights had begun to be lighted
in the picturesque street which wound round the foot of the hill; they
twinkled here and there in the shops opposite, and appeared in glimmers
in the villages across the river. The dim misty plain lying doubly broad
in the twilight, stretching out vaguely to the sky, was here and there
defined by one of those twinkles which showed where a group of houses
stood together. The town was all out in the streets, and on the river
this lovely evening: boats floating dimly about the stream, people
walking vaguely up and down the hill. And the air was filled with
pleasant soft, uncertain sounds of talking, of footsteps, now and then
the clocks chiming or striking, and a bugle sounding faint and far from
where the soldiers were quartered, for there was a military depôt not
far off. Law stopped at the head of the Steps, as they were called, and
looked down over all this scene. The mere notion of being out in the
_grand air_, as the French call it, with somehow a fuller sense of space
and width than we can find a word for, was pleasant to Law; but if he
paused, it was neither to enjoy the picture before him, nor was it
because he had no definite place to go to. He knew very well where he
was going. No vagueness on that point was in his mind; and he did not
care a brass farthing for the landscape; but he paused at the head of
the Steps and looked about, just as a child will pause before eating his
cake, a pause of anticipation and spiritual enjoyment of the dainty
before it goes to his lips. Then he ran down the Steps three at a time,
skimming down the long flights, turning the corners like a bird. To take
care of his sister had been duty, but Law was about his own business
now.
What was Law’s business? In all St. Michael’s there was not a more idle
boy. He was over eighteen, and he did nothing. Vague hopes that he would
get some appointment--that something would turn up for him--that he
would suddenly awake and find himself in an office somehow, doing
something and making money--had been in his own mind and that of his
family all his life. Law had no objection. Had some one taken him and
set him down at once in any office, it was quite possible that he might
have done the best he could in his place, and succeeded as well as most
men; but in the meantime there were a great many preliminaries to go
through, for which Law had never been required or encouraged to fit
himself. In these days of examination, when the pitifullest little bit
of an office builds up those prickly thorns, those red-hot ploughshares
before its door, how was he to get into any office without education? He
had spent all his earlier years, as has been seen, in eluding school as
cleverly as possible, and doing as little as he could of his lessons;
and now here he was on the verge of manhood, with nothing to do and no
great wish to do anything;--a great, straight, powerful young fellow,
without any absolute aim or tendency to evil, but good for nothing, not
capable of anything, with neither purpose nor object in his life. He
could row very well when anyone would give him an oar. He was not amiss
at cricket when anyone asked him to play. He could walk with any man,
and had won a race or two, and was quite capable of competing for a high
jump, or for throwing a cricket-ball, or any of those useful
accomplishments; but as for anything else he was not capable. He hated
books with that sincere and earnest hatred which seems possible only to
those who know books to be the preliminary of everything--a peculiarity
of this examining age. Never before surely was such a candid and
thorough detestation of the tools of knowledge possible. Law knew that
no door could possibly open to him without them, and therefore he hated
and despised them, illogically no doubt, but very cordially all the
same; and so went drifting along upon the stream, not asking what was to
become of him, never thinking much of the subject, though he suffered
greatly from want of pocket-money, and would gladly have made some
exertion from time to time to obtain that, had he known what to do.
This want of pocket-money is the grand drawback to the education or no
education of the youths of the nineteenth century. So long as they can
have enough of that, what a pleasant life is theirs! For it does you no
particular harm to be supposed to be “working for an examination” so
long as you don’t work much for that, and are exempted, for the sake of
it, from all other kinds of work. Boating and cricketing and running
races, and every kind of exercise, are known now-a-days to be compatible
with the hardest mental labour, and he is a stern parent indeed who
interferes with his son’s training in such essential points. But all
these delights are more or less dependent upon pocket-money. Law, whose
bread and cheese had never yet failed, and whose conscience was not
active, would have found his life quite pleasant but for that; but it
was hard upon him not to be able to pay his subscription to a cricket
club, nor the hire of a boat, nor even the entry money for a race,
though that was sure to repay itself abundantly if he won it. This was
very hard upon him, and often stimulated him to the length of a
resolution that he would work to-morrow and conquer all his subjects,
and “scrape through” by sheer force of will, so as to have an income of
his own. But the habit of idleness unfortunately overcame the resolution
next morning, which was a pity, and Law “loafed,” as he himself said,
not being able to afford to “do anything.” It is needless to inform the
instructed who have to do with youths working for examinations, that it
is cricket and boating and athletics these heroes mean when they talk of
“having something to do.”
Law, however, had a pleasure before him which had no connection with
pocket-money. He went straight down with the directness of habit, till
he came to a lane very tortuous and narrow, crowded with builders’-yards
and coal-merchants, and affording glimpses of the little wharves where a
little traffic was carried on, edging the river. Threading his way
through them, he came to a red brick house, the front of which overhung
the stream with its projecting gable. Law went in through a door which
stood open always, and showed signs of much and constant use. There were
lodgings upstairs, which were very pleasant in summer, and which were
always let, and made a very comfortable item in the earnings of the
family; but it was not upstairs that Law went, though that would have
done him good. On the first floor, in the room with the square window,
which overlooked and indeed overhung the river, the excellent curate was
living with whom Law occasionally “read,” and to whom no doubt he would
have said he was going had Lottie seen him at this door. But Law had no
intention of disturbing the curate, who for his part did not want his
pupil. He passed the staircase altogether, and pushed open a green baize
door, beyond which was a short passage leading into a room, all ablaze
with gas. The door of the room was wide open, and so were the windows,
to admit all the air that was possible, and round the large table
between sat three or four young women working and talking. They were
very busy; the great table was covered with silk and muslin, and all
kinds of flimsy trimming, and though they chatted they were working as
for bare life. As Law sauntered in they all looked up for a moment, and
threw a smile or a nod or half-a-dozen words at him, but scarcely
intermitted a stitch. “We’re awful busy; we can’t so much as look at
you; we’ve got some wedding things to finish for to-morrow,” said one
fair-haired girl who seemed specially to appropriate his visit. She
pushed her chair a little aside without pausing in her work, as if
accustomed to make room for him; and Law took a chair and placed it
sideways, so that he could lean his idle elbow on the table between this
busy needlewoman and the rest. Perhaps as a stormy sea gives zest to the
enjoyment of tranquillity on shore, so the extreme occupation of this
workroom made him feel his own absolute leisure more delightful.
“Who is going to be married?” he said.
“Oh, you know just as well as I do. I am sure you have heard us talking
of it for the last week. Polly, didn’t you tell Mr. Despard all about
it? It’s a lady you know. It’s Miss Hare at the Golden Eagle, who is one
of your papa’s great friends. I don’t know what the Captain will do when
she’s gone. Polly, do you?”
“I don’t know what the Captain has to do with her, nor me neither,” said
the young lady at the head of the table. The rest of the girls were
sisters, with fair frizzy locks a little out of order after the long
day’s work, what with the warmth of the room, and the fluttering of the
faint breeze from the river that ruffled the well-crimped tresses. But
Polly was of a different stamp. She had a mountain of dark brown hair
upon her head in plaits and curls and puffs innumerable, and though she
was sallow in complexion, had commanding features, a grand aquiline
nose, and brilliant eyes. “The Captain nor me, we hav’nt much to say to
that sort,” said Polly. “I don’t go with them that has a word and a
laugh for everybody. What I like is a young lady that respects herself.
If you work for your living, that’s not to say that you ain’t as good as
the best of them. Stick up for yourself, and other folks will think of
you according, that’s what I say.”
“I am sure Miss Hare always sticks up for herself,” said the girl by
Law’s side. “Going to be married in a veil, like one of the quality!”
“And so would I, if it was me,” cried Polly. “The quality! What are they
better than us, only they’ve got a pocketful of money. If I was the
Queen, I’d do away with them all. I’d be the Queen, and all the rest
should be the people. There shouldn’t be one more than another, or one
greater than another, only me. And then shouldn’t I do whatever I
pleased, and cut off their heads if they said a word!”
This instinctive perception of the secret of despotism made Law laugh,
who thought he knew a great deal better. “It would be a funny world with
Queen Polly over it,” he said. “I hope you’d take me for your prime
minister.”
Polly gave him a look of saucy malice. “I’d take the Captain,” she said.
“Has he been here to-night, Emma? I think he’s always coming here,” said
Law, under his breath. It was a kind of growl which the young fellow
gave out when he spoke low, in the voice which not very long ago had
been treble, a soprano, as clear and pure as Lottie’s--but it was
extremely bass now.
“He wants to know,” said Emma, with a glance at the others as she pinned
her work straight, “if the Captain has been here;” upon which there was
a chorus of laughter, making Law red and angry. He turned upon them
with a furious look.
“I should like to know how you would all like it,” said the boy, “if
your governor were to come poking in the very same place where----”
“Oh, you may make yourself quite easy, Mr. Lawrence,” said Polly, with a
toss of her elaborately dressed head. “He don’t meddle with you. The
Captain is a man of taste, he ain’t a boy, like some folks. He knows
what’s what, the Captain does. Other girls may have their fancies; I
don’t say anything against that, but give me a man as knows the world,
and knows what he wants. That’s the sort for me.”
“She gets more insufferable than ever. I wonder how you can put up with
her,” said Law under his breath.
“Doesn’t she,” said Emma in a whisper. “I wish she had never come into
our workroom; but she has taste, mother says, and we have to put up with
it. Everything has to give way to the work,” the girl added, threading
her needle; and as she made a knot upon the end of the new thread, she
shook her head with a sigh.
Everything has to give way to the work! Law could not but smile, feeling
the superiority of his gentlemanhood. With him it was the work that gave
way to everything. “Poor little Em!” he said, with a little laugh. She
was only seventeen, a year younger than he was; her forefinger was
seamed into furrows with her needle, and sometimes bled, which called
forth no sympathy, but only scoldings, from the forewoman or her mother,
when an unlucky red mark appeared on a hem. Emma did not very much mind
the scoldings, which came natural to her, and she never made any
comparison of herself with Law. He was a _gentleman_, that made all the
difference. And it was a great deal nicer, and much more important, to
have such a fine fellow to keep company with, than a young painter or
carpenter, or even a tailor, which was what ’Liza had to be content
with. Mr. Despard was a very different sort of person. As Law whispered
to her, Emma felt her heart swell with pride. She went on with her work
all the same, sometimes threatening to prick him with the needle which
was at the end of that long thread. Emma was only “running a skirt,” not
trusted as yet with the more difficult parts of the work, and she
pointed her needle at Law’s nose when he came too close. But it was very
sweet to her to have him there. Polly might brag as she pleased of the
Captain--the Captain was old, and what was the good of him? He did
nothing but puff Polly up with pride, the younger girls thought, and
nothing would ever come of it. But Law was young, and there was no
telling what might come of that. Emma threatened him with her needle,
but in her heart was very proud of him. And there he sat and talked to
her, while Lottie was having her little triumph among all the fine
people at the Rectory. The Welting girls were all pleased to have Law
there. They liked to talk of Mr. Despard, “from the Abbey,” and how they
“could not keep him out of their workroom.” By and by they began to joke
about his idleness, the only idle one among so busy a company. “Can’t
you give him something simple to do--a skirt to run up or a long hem?”
“Oh, yes,” said Emma. “Do, Polly, he bothers me so I can’t get my skirt
done.” Polly opened her drawer, and drew out from it the current number
of a distinguished periodical, which all these young women admired.
“I’ll tell you what he can do,” she said, “and make himself useful--for
we’ve got to sit up all night a’most, and there’s nothing makes work go
like reading out loud. Mr. Lawrence, if you want to be as good as your
professions, and help us young ladies on, as are far harder worked than
the like of you knows of even, there’s the last number of the _Family
Herald_, and we’re all that anxious, we don’t know how to bear it, to
hear how Lady Araminta got on----”
“Oh, give it me,” said Emma, with her eyes sparkling. “Oh, give it me!
Oh, you nasty cruel creature, to have it in your drawer all the time,
and never to tell!”
“I’ll give it to Mr. Despard,” said Polly, “and we’ll all be done half
as soon again if he’ll read it out loud.”
“Give it here,” said Law with lordly good-nature, and he began at once
upon his task. How the needles flew as he read! Lady Araminta was a
wonderful heroine. She wore nothing less than velvet and satin, and
carried her diamonds about with her wherever she went, and the title
deeds of her estate in the bosom of her dress. Law leaned his long arm
on the table, sometimes pausing to take breath and playing with Emma’s
pins and cotton. He would thus tantalise them now and then when the
story grew most exciting and his auditors most breathless. He was _bon
prince_ among them all, very good-natured and willing to please them,
though Emma had his special vows. His head was not so much turned as was
the head of virtuous Lottie, listening to the applause of Mr. Rollo
Ridsdale, but he was very happy with this little court about him all the
same.