The reason why Mrs. OʼGaghan, generally so prompt and careful, though
never very lucid, had neglected better precautions in a matter so
important, was simply and solely this—Lady Nowell, the delicate
mother, was dying. It had been known, ever since the birth, that she
had scarcely any chance of recovery. And Biddy loved her with all her
warm heart, and so did every one in the house who owned a heart that
could love. In the great anxiety, all things were upside down. None of
the servants knew where to go for orders, and few could act without
them; the housekeeper was all abroad; house–steward there was none;
head–butler Hogstaff cried in his pantry, and wiped his eyes with
the leathers; and, as for the master of them all, Sir Cradock Nowell
himself, he rarely left the darkened room, and when he did he could not
see well.
A sweet frail creature the young mother was, wedded too early, as
happens here more often than we are aware of. Then disappointed, and
grieving still more at her husbandʼs disappointment, she had set her
whole heart so long and so vainly upon prospective happiness, that now
it was come she had not the strength to do anything more than smile
at it. And smile she did, very sweetly, all the time she knew she was
dying; she felt so proud of those two fine boys, and could not think
how she had them. Ever so many times Sir Cradock, hanging fondly over
her wan, sweet face, ordered the little wretches away, who would keep
on coming to trouble her. But every time she looked up at him with
such a feeble glory, and such a dash of humour,—“Youʼve got them at
last, and now you donʼt care a bit about them; but oh! please do for my
sake”; every time her fading eyes followed them to the door, so that
the loving husband, cold with the shadow of the coming void, had to
whisper, “Bring them back, put them here between us”.
Although he knew that she was dying, he could not feel it yet; the mind
admitted that fearful truth, but the heart repulsed it. Further as
she sunk, and further yet, from his pleading gaze, the closer to her
side he crept, the more he clasped her shadowy hands, and raised her
drooping neck; the fonder grew the entreating words, the whispers of
the love–time, faint smiles that hoped to win her smile, although they
moved in tears. And smile she did once more on earth, through the ashy
hue—the shadow of the soulʼs wings fluttering—when two fresh lives,
bought by her death, were shown for the farewell to her.
“And if itʼs wrong, then, sheʼll make it right”, thought the
conscientious Biddy. “I can take my oath onʼt she knowed the differ
from the very first; though nobody else couldnʼt see it, barring the
caps they was put in. Now, if only that gossoon will consent to her see
them, once more, and it canʼt hurt, the poor darlinʼ—and the blessing
as comes from the deathʼs gaze——”
Mrs. OʼGaghanʼs doubts were ended by the entrance of the doctor, a
spare, short man, with a fiery face, red hair, and quick little eyes.
He was not more than thirty years old, but knew his duties thoroughly;
nevertheless, he would not have been there but for the sudden
emergency. He was now come to fetch the nurse, having observed that the
poor motherʼs eyes were gleaming feebly, once and again, towards the
door that led to the nursery; and at last she had tried to raise her
hand, and point in that direction. So in came Biddy, sobbing hard, with
a babe on either arm; and she curtseyed cleverly to Sir Cradock without
disturbing the equipoise. But the motherʼs glance was not judicial, as
poor Biddy had expected—her heart and soul were far beyond rosettes,
and even titles. In one long, yearning look, she lingered on her
new–born babes, then turned those hazy eyes in fondness to her kneeling
husbandʼs, then tried to pray or bless the three, and shivered twice,
and died.
For days and weeks Sir Cradock Nowell bore his life, but did not live.
All his clear intellect and strong will, noble plans, and useful
labours, all his sense of truth and greatness, lay benumbed and frozen
in the cold track of death. He could not bear to see his children, he
would not even hear of them; “they had robbed him of his loved one, and
what good were they? Little red things; perhaps he would love them when
they grew like their mother”. Those were not his expressions, for he
was proud and shy; but that was the form his thoughts would take, if
they could take any. No wonder that he, for a time, was lost beyond the
verge of reason; because that blow, which most of all stuns and defeats
the upright man, had descended on him—the blow to the sense of justice.
This a man of large mind feels often from his fellow–men, never from
his Maker. But Sir Cradock was a man of intellect, rather than of mind.
To me a large mind seems to be strong intellect quickened with warm
heart. Sir Cradock Nowell had plenty of intellect, and plenty of heart
as well, but he kept the two asunder. So much the better for getting
on in the world; so much the worse for dealing with God. A man so
constituted rarely wins, till overborne by trouble, that only knowledge
which falls (like genius) where our Father listeth. So the bereaved man
measured justice by the ells and inches of this world.
And it did seem very hard, that he who had lived for twenty years,
from light youth up to the balance age of forty, not only without
harming any fellow–mortal, but, upon fair average, to do good in the
world—it seemed, I say—it was, thought he—most unjust that such a man
could not set his serious heart upon one little treasure without losing
it the moment he had learned its value. Now, with pride to spur sad
memory—bronze spurs to a marble horse—he remembered how his lovely
Violet chose him from all others. Gallant suitors crowded round her,
for she was rich as well as beautiful; but she quietly came from out
them all for him, a man of twice her age. And he who had cared for none
till then, and had begun to look on woman as a stubby–bearded man looks
back at the romance of his first lather, he first admired her grace and
beauty, then her warmth of heart and wit, then, scorning all analysis,
her own sweet self; and loved her.
A few days after the funeral he was walking sadly up and down in his
lonely library, caring no whit for his once–loved books, for the news
of the day, or his business, and listless to look at anything, even
the autumn sunset; when the door was opened quietly, and shyly through
the shadows stole his schoolfellow of yore, his truest friend, John
Rosedew. With this gentleman I take a very serious liberty; but he
never yet was known to resent a liberty taken honestly. That, however,
does not justify me. “John Rosedew” I intend to call him, because
he likes it best; and so he would though ten times a Bachelor of
Divinity, a late Vice–Principal of his college, and the present Rector
of Nowelhurst. Formerly I did my best, loving well the character, to
describe that simple–minded, tender–hearted yeoman, John Huxtable, of
Tossilʼs Barton, in the county of Devon. Like his, as like any two of
Natureʼs ever–varied works, were the native grain and staple of the
Rev. John Rosedew. Beside those little inborn and indying variations
which Nature still insists on, that she may know her sons apart, those
two genial Britons differed both in mental and bodily endowments, and
through education. In spite of that, they were, and are, as like to
one another as any two men can be who have no smallness in them. Small
men run pretty much of a muchness; as the calibre increases, so the
divergence multiplies.
Farmer Huxtable was no fool; but having once learned to sign his name,
he had attained his maximum of literary development; John Rosedew, on
the other hand, although a strong and well–built man, who had pulled a
good oar in his day, was not, in bulk and stature, a match for Hercules
or Milo. Unpretending, gentle, a lover of the truth, easily content
with others, but never with himself, even now, at the age of forty, he
had not overcome the bashfulness and diffidence of a fine and sensitive
nature. And, first–rate scholar as he was, he would have lost his class
at Oxford solely through that shyness, unless a kind examiner, who saw
his blushing agony, had turned from some commonplace of Sophocles to a
glorious passage of Pindar. Then, carried away by the noble poet, John
Rosedew forgot the schools, the audience, even the row of examiners,
and gave grand thoughts their grand expression, breathing free as the
winds of heaven. Nor till his voice began to falter from the high
emotion, and his heart beat fast, though not from shame, and the tears
of genius touched by genius were difficult to check, not till then knew
he, or guessed, that every eye was fixed upon him, that every heart
was thrilling, that even the stiff examiners bent forward like eager
children, and the young men in the gallery could scarcely keep from
cheering. Then suddenly, in the full sweep of magnificence, he stopped,
like an eagle shot.
Now the parson, ruddy cheeked, with a lock of light brown hair astray
upon his forehead, and his pale, blue eyes looking much as if he had
just awoke and rubbed them, came shyly and with deep embarrassment
into the darkening room. For days and days he had thought and thought,
but could not at all determine whether, and when, and how, he ought to
visit his ancient friend. His own heart first suggested that he ought
to go at once, if only to show the bereaved one that still there were
some to love him. To this right impulse—and the impulse of a heart
like this could seldom be a wrong one—rose counter–checks of worldly
knowledge, such little as he had. And it seemed to many people strange
and unaccountable, that if Mr. Rosedew piqued himself upon anything
whatever, it was not on his learning, his purity, or benevolence, it
was not on his gentle bearing, or the chivalry of his soul, but on a
fine acquirement, whereof in all opinions (except, indeed, his own) he
possessed no jot or tittle—a strictly–disciplined and astute experience
of the world. Now this supposed experience told him that it might seem
coarse and forward to offer the hard grasp of friendship ere the soft
clasp of love was cold; that he, as the clergyman of the parish, would
appear to presume upon his office; that no proud man could ever bear
to have his anguish pryed into. These, and many other misgivings and
objections, met his eager longings to help his dear old friend.
Suddenly and to his great relief—for he knew not how to begin, though
he felt how and mistrusted it—the old friend turned upon him from his
lonely pacing, and held out both his hands. Not a word was said by
either; what they meant required no telling, or was told by silence.
Long time they sat in the western window, John Rosedew keeping his eyes
from sunset, which did not suit them then. At last he said, in a low
voice, which it cost him much to find—
“What name, dear Cradock, for the younger babe? Your own, of course,
for the elder”.
“No name, John, but his sweet motherʼs; unless you like to add his
uncleʼs”.
John Rosedew was puzzled lamentably. He could not bear to worry his
friend any more upon the subject; and yet it seemed to him sad,
false concord, to christen a boy as “Violet”. But he argued that, in
botanical fact, a violet is male as well as female, and at such a
time he could not think of thwarting a widowerʼs yearnings. In spite
of all his worldly knowledge, it never occurred to his simple mind
that poor Sir Cradock meant the ladyʼs maiden surname, which I believe
was “Incledon”. And yet he had suggestive precedent brought even
then before him, for Sir Cradock Nowellʼs brother bore the name of
“Clayton”; which name John Rosedew added now, and found relief in doing
so.
Thus it came to pass, that the babe without rosette was baptized as
“Violet Clayton”, while the owner of the bauble received the name
of “Cradock”—Cradock Nowell, now the ninth in lineal succession.
The father was still too broken down to care about being present;
godfathers and godmothers made all their vows by proxy. Mrs. OʼGaghan
held the infants, and one of them cried, and the other laughed. The
rosette was there in all its glory, and received a tidy sprinkle; and
the wearer of it was, as usual, the one who took things easily. As the
common children said, who came to see the great ones “loustering”,
the whole affair was rather like a white burying than a baptism.
Nevertheless, the tenants and labourers moistened their semi–regenerate
clay with many a fontful of good ale, to ensure the success of the
ceremony.