At this melancholy time, John Rosedew had quite enough to do without
any burden of fresh anxieties about his own pet Amy. Nevertheless,
that burden was added; not by Dr. Huttonʼs vague questions, although
they helped to impose it, but by the fatherʼs own observation of his
darlingʼs strange condition. “Can it be”, he asked himself, and often
longed to ask her, as he saw only lilies where roses had been, and
little hands trembling at breakfast–time, “can it be that this child of
mine loved the poor boy Clayton, and is wasting away in sorrow for him?
Is that the reason why she will not meet Cradock, nor Cradock meet her,
and she trembles at his name? And then that book which Aunt Doxy made
her throw on the kitchen fire—very cruel I now see it was of my good
sister Eudoxia, though at first I did not think so—that book I know was
poor Claytonʼs, for I have seen it in his hand. Well, if it truly is
so, there is nothing to be done, except to be unusually kind to her,
and trust to time for the cure, and give her plenty of black–currant
jam”.
These ideas he imparted to the good Aunt Doxy, who delivered some
apophthegms (which John did not want to listen to), but undertook,
whatever should happen, to be down upon Amy sharply. She knew all
about her tonsils and her uvula, and all that stuff, and she did not
want Johnʼs advice, though she had never had a family; and thank God
heartily for it!
On Monday, when the funeral came to Nowelhurst churchyard, John Rosedew
felt his heart give way, and could not undertake it. At the risk of
deeply offending Sir Cradock, whose nerves that day were of iron, he
passed the surplice to his curate, Mr. Pell, of Rushford; and begged
him, with a sad slow smile, to do the duty for him. Sir Cradock Nowell
frowned, and coloured, and then bowed low with an icy look, when he saw
the change which had been made, and John Rosedew fall in as a mourner.
People said that from that day the old friendship was dissevered.
John, for his part, could not keep his eyes from the nook of the
churchyard, where among the yew–trees stood, in the bitterness of
anguish, he who had not asked, nor been asked, to attend as mourner.
Cradock bowed his head and wept, for now his tears came freely, and
prayed the one Almighty Father, who alone has mercy, not to take his
misery from him, but to take him from it.
When the mould was cast upon the coffin, black Wena came between
peopleʼs legs, gave a cry, and jumped in after it, thinking to retrieve
her master, like a stick from the water. She made such a mournful
noise in the grave, and whimpered, and put her head down, and wondered
why no one said “Wena, dear”, that all the school–girls burst out
sobbing—having had apples from Clayton lately—and Octavius Pell, the
great cricketer, wanted something soft for his throat.
That evening, when all was over, and the grave heaped snugly up, and
it was time to think of other things and begin to wonder at sorrow,
John Rosedew went to Sir Cradock Nowell, not only as a fellow–mourner
and a friend of ancient days, but as a minister of Christ. It had cost
John many struggles; and, what with his sense of worldly favours,
schoolday–friendship, delicacy, he could scarce tell what to make of
it, till he just went down on his knees and prayed; then the learned
man learned his duty.
Sir Cradock turned his head away, as if he did not want him. John held
out his hand, and said nothing.
“Mr. Rosedew, I am surprised to see you. And yet, John, this is kind of
you”.
John hoped that he only said “Mr. Rosedew”, because the footman was
lingering, and he tried not to feel the difference.
“Cradock, you know what I am, as well as I know what you are. Fifty
years, my dear fellow, fifty years of friendship”.
“Yes, John, I remember when I was twelve years old, and you fought Sam
Cockings for me”.
“And, Cradock, I thrashed him fairly; you know I thrashed him fairly.
They said I got his head under the form; but you know it was all a lie.
How I do hate lies! I believe it began that day. If so, the dislike is
subjective. Perhaps I ought to reconsider it”.
“John, I know nothing in your life which you ought to reconsider,
except what you are doing now”.
Sir Cradock Nowell began the combat, because he felt that it must be
waged; and perhaps he knew in that beginning that he had the weaker
cause.
“Cradock, I am doing nothing which is not my simple duty. When I see
those I love in the deepest distress, can I help siding with them”?
“Upon that principle, or want of it, you might espouse, as a duty, the
cause of any murderer”.
The old man shuddered, and his voice shook, as he whispered that last
word. As yet he had not worked himself up, nor been worked up by
others, to the black belief which made the living lost beyond the dead.
“I am sure I donʼt know what I might do”, said John Rosedew, simply,
“but what I am doing now is right; and in your heart you know it. Come,
Cradock, as an old man now, and one whom God has visited, forgive your
poor, your noble son, who never will forgive himself”.
But for one word in that speech, John Rosedew would perhaps have won
his cause, and reconciled son and father.
“My _noble_ son indeed, John! A very noble thing he has done. Shall I
never hear the last of his nobility? And who ever called my Clayton
noble? You have been unfair throughout, John Rosedew, most unfair and
blind to the merits of my more loving, more simple–hearted, more truly
noble boy, I tell you”.
Mr. Rosedew, at such a time, could not of course contest the point,
could not tell the bereaved old man that it was he himself who had been
unfair.
“And when”, asked Sir Cradock, getting warmer, “when did you know my
poor boy Violet stick up for political opinions of his own at the age
of twenty, want to drain tenants’ cottages, and pretend to be better
and wiser than his father”?
“And when have you known Cradock do, at any rate, the latter”?
“Ever since he got that scholarship, that Scotland thing at Oxford”—Sir
Cradock knew the name well enough, as every Oxford man does—“he has
been perfectly insufferable; such arrogance, such conceit, such airs!
And he only got it by a trick. Poor Viley ought to have had it”.
John Rosedew tried to control himself, but the gross untruth and
injustice of that last accusation were a little too much for him.
“Perhaps, Sir Cradock Nowell, you will allow that I am a competent
judge of the relative powers of the two boys, who knew all they did
know from me, and from no one else”.
“Of course, I know you are a competent judge, only blinded by
partiality”.
John allowed even that to go by.
“Without any question of preference, simply as a lover of literature,
I say that Clayton had no chance with him in a Greek examination. In
Latin he would have run him close. You know I always said so, even
before they went to college. I was surprised, at the time, that they
mentioned Clayton even as second to him”.
“And grieved, I dare say, deeply grieved, if the truth were told”!
“It is below me to repel mean little accusations”.
“Come, John Rosedew”, said Sir Cradock, magnanimously and liberally, “I
can forgive you for being quarrelsome, even at such a time as this. It
always was so, and I suppose it always will be. To–day I am not fit for
much, though perhaps you do not know it. Thinking so little of my dead
boy, you are surprised that I should grieve for him”.
“I should be surprised indeed if you did not. God knows even I have
grieved deeply, as for a son of my own”.
“Shake hands, John; you are a good fellow—the best fellow in the world.
Forgive me for being petulant. You donʼt know how my heart aches”.
After that it was impossible to return for the moment to Cradock
Nowell. But the next day John renewed the subject, and at length
obtained a request from the father that his son should come to him.
By this time Cradock hardly knew when he was doing anything, and when
he was doing nothing. He seemed to have no regard for any one, no
concern about anything, least of all for himself. Even his love for
Amy Rosedew had a pall thrown over it, and lay upon the trestles. The
only thing he cared at all for was his fatherʼs forgiveness: let him
get that, and then go away and be seen no more among them. He could not
think, or feel surprise, or fear, or hope for anything; he could only
tell himself all day long, that if God were kind He would kill him. A
young life wrecked, so utterly wrecked, and through no fault of its
own; unless (as some begin to dream) we may not slay for luxury; unless
we have but a limited right to destroy our Fatherʼs property.
Sir Cradock, it has been stated, cared a great deal more for his
children than he did for his ancestors. He had not been wondering,
through his sorrow, what the world would say of him, what it would
think of the Nowells; he had a little too much self–respect to care a
fig for foolʼs–tongue. Now he sat in his carved oak–chair, expecting
his only son, and he tried to sit upright. But the flatness of his
back was gone, never to return; and the shoulder–blades showed through
his coat, like a spoon left under the tablecloth. Still he appeared a
stately man, one not easily bowed by fortune, or at least not apt to
acknowledge it.
Young Cradock entered his fatherʼs study, with a flush on his cheeks,
which had been so pale, and his mind made up for endurance, but his
wits going round like a swirl of leaves. He could not tell what he
might say or do. He began to believe he had shot his father, and to
wonder whether it hurt him much. Trying in vain to master his thoughts,
he stood with his quivering hands clasped hard, and his chin upon his
breast.
So perhaps Adrastus stood, Adrastus son of Gordias, before the
childless Crœsus; and the simple words are these.
“After this there came the Lydians carrying the corpse. And behind it
followed the slayer. And standing there before the corpse, he gave
himself over to Crœsus, stretching forth his hands, commanding to slay
him upon the corpse, telling both his own former stress, and how upon
the top of that he had destroyed his cleanser, nor was his life now
liveable. Crœsus, having heard these things, though being in so great a
trouble of the hearth, has compassion on Adrastus, and says to him——”
“But Adrastus, son of Gordias, son of Midas, this man, I say, who had
been the slayer of his womb–brother, and slayer of him that cleansed
him, when there was around the grave a quietude from men, feeling that
he was of all men whom he had ever seen the most weighed down with
trouble, kills himself dead upon the tomb”.
But the father now was not like Croesus, the generous–hearted Lydian,
although the man who stood before him was not a runagate from Phrygia,
but the son of his own loins. The father did not look at him, but kept
his eyes fixed on the window, as though he knew not any were near him.
Then the son could wait no more, but spoke in a hollow, trembling voice:
“Father, I am come, as you ordered”.
“Yes. I will not keep you long. Perhaps you want to go out” (“shooting”
he was about to say, but could not be quite so cruel). “I only wish so
to settle matters that we may meet no more”.
“Oh, father—my own father!—for Godʼs sake!—if there be a God—donʼt
speak to me like that”!
“Sir, I shall take it as a proof that you are still a gentleman, which
at least you used to be, if you will henceforth address me as ‘Sir
Cradock Nowell’, a title which soon will be your own”.
“Father, look me in the face, and ask me; then I will”.
Sir Cradock Nowell still looked forth the heavily–tinted window. His
son, his only, his grief–worn son, was kneeling at his side, unable to
weep, too proud to sob, with the sense of deep wrong rising.
If the father once had looked at him, nature must have conquered.
“Mr. Nowell, I have only admitted you that we might treat of business.
Allow me to forget the face of a fratricide, perhaps _murderer_”.
Cradock Nowell fell back heavily, for he had risen from his knees. The
crown of his head crashed the glass of a picture, and blood showered
down his pale face. He never even put his hand up, to feel what was the
matter. He said nothing, not a syllable; but stood there, and let the
room go round. How his mother must have wept, if she was looking down
from heaven!
The old man, having all the while a crude, dim sense of outrunning his
heart, gave the youth time to recover himself, if it were a thing worth
recovering.
“Now, as to our arrangements—the subject I wished to speak about. I
only require your consent to the terms I propose, until, in the natural
course of events, you succeed to the family property”.
“What family property, sir”? Cradockʼs head was dizzy still, the
bleeding had done him good.
“Why, of course, the Nowelhurst property; all these entailed estates,
to which you are now sole heir”.
“I will never touch one shilling, nor step upon one acre of it”.
“Under your motherʼs—that is to say, under my marriage–settlement”,
continued Sir Cradock, in the same tone, as if his son were only
bantering, “you are at once entitled to the sum of 50,000_l._ invested
in Three per Cent. Consols—which would have been—I mean, which was
meant for younger children. This sum the trustees will be prepared——”
“Do you think I will touch it? Am I a thief as well as a murderer”?
“I shall also make arrangements for securing to you, until my death, an
income of 5000_l._ per annum. This you can draw for quarterly, and the
cheques will be countersigned by my steward, Mr. Garnet”.
“Of course, lest I should forge. Once for all, hear me, Sir Cradock
Nowell. So help me the God who has now forsaken me, who has turned my
life to death, and made my own father curse me—every word of yours is a
curse, I say—so help me that God (if there be one to help, as well as
to smite a man), till you crave my pardon upon your knees, as I have
craved yours this day, I will never take one yard of your land, I will
never call myself ‘Nowell’, or own you again as my father. God knows I
am very unlucky and little, but you have shown yourself less. And some
day you will know it”.
In the full strength of his righteous pride, he walked for the first
time like a man, since he leaped that deadly hedge. From that moment
a change came over him. There was nothing to add to his happiness, but
something to rouse his manhood. The sense of justice, the sense of
honour—that flower and crown of justice—forbade him henceforth to sue,
and be shy, and bemoan himself under hedges. From that day forth he was
as a man visited of God, and humbled, but facing ever his fellow–men,
and not ashamed of affliction.