The quiet little town of Tarningham was more quiet than ever about the
hour of twelve each day; for, according to good old primeval habits,
noon was the period for feeding. Men ate, beasts ate, and birds ate,
and we all know that eating is a silent process. It is the greatest
mistake in the world for doctors to tell you to talk while you are
eating, or else it is the bitterest sarcasm. They must either mean
that your digestion should be spoiled, or else that you are in the
habit of talking without thinking. But we, will make a sort of
corollary of it. "Man should not think when he is eating, man should
not talk without thinking; _ergo_, man should not talk at his dinner."
Therefore the people of Tarningham were wise; for never was there such
a silent town at the hour of twelve o'clock, when they were eating.
Doctor Miles could hear his own footfall with the most perfect
distinctness, as he walked along the High-street; and a good broad
foot it was, with a square-toed shoe and a buckle in it.
But Doctor Miles did not attend to the sound of his footfall; he was,
indeed, busily thinking of something else, with his eyes bent
down--but not his head--he rarely bent his head--holding it upright
and straight, and a little stiff, by the natural effect of mind on
body. His meditations were very deep, so much so, that it required an
extraordinary apparition to rouse him from his reverie. The sight,
however, of a human being in the streets of Tarningham a little after
twelve, was quite enough to produce that effect; and at the distance
of about two hundred yards from the door of the White Hart, he was
startled by beholding the diminutive form and somewhat contorted
person, of the poor little pot-boy, Billy Lamb, coming towards him
with an empty jug in his hand. Nobody attended to Billy's meals. He
got them how he could, where he could, and when he could. When all the
rest were eating, he was sent with a jug of beer here, or a pint of
gin there, and came back to feed upon the cold remnants of what the
rest had eaten warm, if, indeed, they left him anything; but yet the
fat landlord, ostlers, stable-boys, and barmaids, all thought that
Billy was very well off. The landlord thought so, because he declared
he had taken the boy in from charity; and the ostlers, and the
post-boys, and the barmaids believed it. O, charity! charity! thou
perverted and misused term. Since the first words that were uttered by
Adam in his garden, down to the moment when one of the world's great
men declared that language was intended to conceal men's thoughts, no
word in the whole dictionary has ever been applied to cover so
many sins as thou hast. Thou art the robe of vanity every day;
tricking it out in subscription lists, almshouses, hospitals; thou
art the cloak of pride and haughtiness, the pretext of every petty
tyrant who seeks a slave, the excuse of avarice, and greed, and
narrow-mindedness--ever, ever coupled with a lie! In what human heart
art thou ever found pure and unadulterated? The foul-mouthed slanderer
of a neighbour's fame, who gives a sixpence to a beggar or a pound to
an infirmary, is a charitable person. The scoffing sneerer at virtue
he cannot imitate, who flings away money profusely for the sole
gratification of a loose habit, is called charitable. The hard-hearted
man who denies others their rights, or he who cheats his followers of
their due reward, or he who grinds the faces of his workmen with
excessive toil, or he who is harsh and stern in his own household,
fierce and censorious to others, a despot with his wife, a tyrant with
his children, dies, and, in a pompous will, bequeaths a portion of his
ill-gotten wealth to build an asylum, and perpetuate his name, and is
praised and honoured as a charitable man.
That boy, forced to labour day and night, without consideration,
without comfort, without a kind word, fed upon refuse, palleted on
straw, yet doing more than the whole household altogether, was taken
in from charity! Believe it, reader, if you can. For my part, I don't
believe a word of it. I am quite sure that worthy Mr. Groomber wanted
somebody particularly, of an active and willing disposition, to carry
out the beer, and to attend to all those little matters which Mr.
Groomber could not do himself, and which his servants did not choose
to do, and that in taking in Billy Lamb for his own convenience, he
persuaded himself, and tried to persuade the public too, that he was
doing an act of charity. It is an extraordinary thing to consider how
often in the great tragic farce of the world we are our own
spectators; or, in other words, how continually, when we act a part,
we consider ourselves one of the audience, and strive to deceive that
individual the very first.
However that might be, there was Billy Lamb, the pot-boy, just before
Doctor Miles, with an empty tankard in his hand; and the good doctor
no sooner beheld him, than he stopped, and, in a kindly tone, asked
him how the world went with him. Now Doctor Miles was a great man in
the neighbourhood; he had property of his own of not very great
extent, but which rendered the living that he held but an accessory to
his principal means of subsistence. He did not live by the altar, but
for the altar; and there are no such keen drawers of distinctions as
the lower classes. Of this thing all clergymen may be sure, that he
who makes a trade of his profession, who exacts the uttermost penny
which he has a right to, and something more, who increases burial
fees, and makes broad the borders of all his dues, will always be held
in contempt. Of the butcher, the baker, and the grocer, the lower
orders expect such things. The exaction of a farthing on half-a-pound,
more than is really just, they know is a part of the privileges of the
knife, the oven, and the scales and weights. But with the ministers of
a pure and holy religion, whose grand and fundamental principle is
charity and abnegation of self, they expect a higher and a wider sense
of benevolence, a more large and disinterested view of the relations
of a pastor and flock. Thick must be the veil that covers from the
eyes of the humble and the needy that greedy and grasping spirit which
too frequently, like the ghoul of Eastern fable, preys among the
sepulchres of the dead, and takes advantage of the moment of
overwhelming distress and agony of mind, to urge the coarse claims of
priestly avarice; claims, but too frequently, untenable in law and
always barbarous, even when not illegal--dues which should be swept
away for ever, which should no longer exist as a constant source of
heart-burning and complaint between pastor and people, making the one
derive a portion of his living by laying a tax most onerous and hard
to be borne, either upon the joys or the sorrows of his parishioners,
and the others to look upon their teacher as one who sets at defiance
the first principles of the Gospel that he preaches, following
"avarice which is idolatry," and forgetting charity, "which covers a
multitude of sins."
Luckily, both by position and inclination, Doctor Miles was exempt
from all such reproaches. His necessities did not force him into
meannesses, and his natural disposition would never have suffered him
to fall into them, whatever his circumstances might have been. One
heard nothing in his parish of enormous charges for a brick grave,
swollen surplice-fees, that would make a cholera, a plague, or a
pestilence so rich a harvest, that the minister who would pray in his
desk against plague, pestilence, and famine, would be the grossest of
hypocrites. He did not look upon his churchyard as the most valuable
and productive part of his glebe, to be manured by the corpses of
his parishioners, and bear a cent-per-cent crop in monuments and
grave-stones. The consecration of the bishop he did not look upon as
fertilising the land for his own enrichment, but contented himself
with the bare amount of the moderate fee awarded by the law, and
neither asked nor received a penny more. Many of the neighbouring
clergy called him a weak and prejudiced man, and exclaimed loudly
against him for neglecting the interests, or, as they called them,
"the rights of the church." But, somehow, his parishioners loved him,
though he was rather an austere man, too, and never spared invective
or exhortation in case of error and misconduct. The secret, perhaps,
was, that they were convinced of his disinterestedness. He took from
no man more than was his due; he required of no man more than he had
the warrant of Scripture for requiring. His private fortune gave him
the means of charity, and to that object all his private fortune was
devoted. Every one in the neighbourhood knew that Doctor Miles could
have a finer house, could keep a better table, could maintain a
smarter equipage; but, at the same time, they were aware of two
things, first, that his income was not as large as it might have been
had he chosen to exact the uttermost farthing; and, secondly, that it
was not for the purpose of hoarding his money that he did not spend it
upon himself.
Thus Doctor Miles, as well may be conceived, was very much reverenced
in the neighbourhood; his rebukes were listened to, and sometimes
taken to heart; his advice was sought, and sometimes followed; his
opinions were always respected, if his injunctions were not always
obeyed; and his severity of manner was very well understood not to
imply any real harshness of heart.
The cap was off Billy Lamb's head in a moment, when he approached Dr.
Miles; but he did not venture to speak to him till the doctor, after
gazing at him for a moment in a fit of absence, exclaimed, "Ah,
William, how goes it with you? and how is your poor mother?"
"Oh, quite well," replied the youth, in his peculiarly sweet, low
voice; "mother's better than she was, though she has never been so
well since poor Mary's death."
"How should she? how should she?" exclaimed Doctor Miles; "these
things, my man, affect young people but little, old people but little;
for young people are full of their own life, and with them that
consideration supersedes all thoughts connected with death; and old
people are so full of the conviction of life's brevity, that the
matter of a few years more or less is to them insignificant. It is to
the middle-aged that the death of the young is terrible; it clouds the
past with regrets, and the future with apprehensions. But I want to
speak to your mother, Bill; she must forgive Stephen Gimlet, and try
and help him, and be a comfort to him."
"I wish she would," said the boy, looking down; "I am sure Stephen is
not so bad as people call him, and never would have taken poor Mary
away, if mother had not been so strict."
"I must talk to her," answered Doctor Miles; "but you may tell her, if
you see her before I do, that Stephen is a changed man, and Sir John
Slingsby has taken him for a gamekeeper.--Tell her, will you," he
continued, after a moment's thought, "that the cottage on the moor has
been burned down, and the poor little boy, Charley, would have been
burnt in it, because there was no mother, nor other relation of any
kind to help him, had it not been for a gentleman who is staying up at
the hall coming by at the time and rescuing the boy from the flames."
"Ah, I am sure that was the gentleman that was down here," exclaimed
the pot-boy; "Captain Hayward they called him; for he was a kind, good
gentleman as ever lived, and gave me enough for mother to put
something by against the winter."
"That is no reason why he should be walking on the moor," said Doctor
Miles, quickly. "However, I must talk to her, for the boy must not be
left alone any more; and we must see what can be done. But now tell
me, Bill, what wages do you get?"
"A shilling a week and my victuals," replied the boy, in an unrepining
tone; "it is very kind of Mr. Groomber, I am sure; and I do what I can
but that's not much."
"Humph!" said Doctor Miles, with not the most affirmative tone in the
world; "well, I'll come by and by, and see your mother; can you go
down and tell her that I am coming?"
"Oh yes, Sir," replied the boy; "they give me a quarter of an hour to
eat my dinner, so I can go very well; but I must go first to Mr.
Slattery's, the doctor; for Mrs. Billiter told me to bid him come up
quietly to Mr. Wittingham, as if just for a call; for the old
gentleman came home ill last night, and has taken to his bed."
"Mr. Slattery is out," replied Doctor Miles. "I met him on the road;
but leave the message, Bill, leave the message, and I will go up and
see Mr. Wittingham myself."
Thus saying, he bade the boy adieu, and walked on to the smart white
gates of Mr. Wittingham's highly-cultivated place, and, passing
through the garden, rang the bell at the door, which was opened to him
by a servant in a straight-cut blue coat, black and yellow striped
waistcoat, and black plush breeches, with drab gaiters.
In answer to Doctor Miles's inquiry, the servant informed him that Mr.
Wittingham was in bed, and could see no one; but the worthy clergyman
pressed for admission, saying that his business was of importance. A
consultation then took place between the man-servant and the
housekeeper, and, after some hesitation, Mrs. Billiter went up to her
master to inform him of Doctor Miles's visit, with a particular
injunction to impress upon the mind of the sick man that the
clergyman's business was of moment. She came down the next minute and
begged the visitor to walk up, with as low a curtsey as her long stiff
stays would permit her to make; and, she leading the way, Doctor Miles
followed with a slow and meditative step.
The room-door was gently unclosed, and the clergyman, entering, fixed
his eyes upon the figure of Mr. Wittingham as he lay in the bed, and a
sad sight it was. Terrible was the effect that one night of sickness
had wrought upon him. The long, thin, bony limbs were plainly visible
through the bed-clothes, and so far, Mr. Wittingham well, or Mr.
Wittingham ill, showed no difference; but there was the face upon the
pillow, and there were to be seen traces enough, more of suffering
than sickness. The features had suddenly grown sharp, and the cheeks
hollow; the eye was bright and wandering, the brow furrowed, and the
hue of the complexion, partly from the light-brown moreen curtain of
the bed--the most detestable curtains in the world--partly from a
sleepless, anxious, suffering night, had grown yellow, if not
cadaverous. Patches of short-cut gray hair, usually concealed by the
wig, were now suffered, by the nightcap, to show themselves upon the
temples. The large front teeth, the high nose and the protuberant
chin, were all more prominent than usual; and certainly Mr.
Wittingham, in cotton nightcap and clean linen sheets, was not the
most prepossessing person that ever the eye rested upon.
Doctor Miles, however, advanced quietly to his bedside, and, sitting
down in a chair, opened the conversation in a kindly tone.
"I am sorry to find you ill, my good friend," he said; "you seemed
well enough last night."
"Ay, ay, that's another thing, doctor," replied the invalid; "but I
got a terrible fright after that, and that has given me quite a turn."
"As to the way you will direct that turn," answered the clergyman,
"you will need some good advice, Mr. Wittingham."
"Ay, ay," said the magistrate, somewhat impatiently. "Billiter there
has been boring me for an hour to send for that fellow Slattery; but I
don't think he could do me any good. He is a humbug, as well as the
most of those doctors."
"But not more than most," answered Doctor Miles, "which is a great
thing in this part of the country. You may go, Mrs. Billiter; I wish
to be alone with Mr. Wittingham."
Mrs. Billiter, who had remained upon the best, the oldest, and most
invariable excuse, that of putting the room in order, for the purpose
of gaining an insight into all that took place, dropped a curtsey, and
withdrew unwillingly.
Mr. Wittingham eyed Doctor Miles with a shrewd, inquiring, but timid
glance. It was evident that he would have dispensed, with the doctor's
coming, that he did not half like it, that he wished to know what he
could want, why he came, what was his business, what could be his
object, and why his manner was so grave and cautious. Heaven knows
that Mr. Wittingham was not an imaginative man; that he was not
subject to the sports of fancy, and seldom or ever presented to his
mind any image of things, past or future, unless it were in a large
parchment-covered volume, in which was inscribed in large letters,
upon the last page: "Balance, in favour of Mr. Wittingham, sixty-nine
thousand odd hundred pounds." Nevertheless, on this occasion the
worthy gentleman's imagination ran restive; for, as a weedy old horse,
when people endeavour to whip it into any thing; more than its
ordinary pace, turns up its heels, and flings them, into the face of
its driver; so did Mr. Wittingham's fancy at once assert its
predominance over reason, by presenting to him for his choice every
possible sort of business upon which Doctor Miles might, could, would,
should, or ought, have come to Tarningham Lodge. He, therefore, sat in
his bed with his nightcap on his head, grinning at him, like Yorick's
skull, with a ghastly smile. Courtesy has its agonies, as well as
other things; and the politeness of Mr. Wittingham was agonising.
Speak he could not, that was out of the question; but, with a grim
contortion of countenance, he motioned the worthy doctor to a chair,
and the other took it with provoking deliberation, concealing, under
an air of imperturbable coolness, a certain degree of embarrassment,
and a considerable degree of feeling.
To tell the truth, he much desired that Mr. Wittingham would begin
first; but he soon saw that there was no hope of such being the case,
and his profession had accustomed him to the initiative. Wherefore,
after three preliminary hums, he went on to say, "My dear Sir, I
thought it better to come down to you to-day, to speak to you on a
somewhat painful subject, but one which had better be grappled with at
once; and that rather in conversation with me, a minister of peace and
goodwill towards men, than with others, who, though equally bound by
the injunctions of the religion which I unworthily teach and they
believe, have what they consider duties apart, which might interfere
with an unlimited exercise of Christian charity."
Excellent, Doctor Miles; you are keeping the poor man in a state of
torture. Why will you preach, when you are not in the pulpit. But
Doctor Miles was not a prosy man by nature; he was short, brief, and
terse in his general conversation, and only preached when he was in
embarrassment. That such was evidently the case at present greatly
increased the evils of Mr. Wittingham's position; and when the doctor
was talking of Christian charity, the sick magistrate was mentally
sending him to a place where very little charity of any kind is
supposed to be practised--not that we know any thing of the matter;
for even in the present day, with steamboats, railroads, and all the
appliances of human ingenuity to boot, tourists and travellers have
not pushed their researches quite as far as the place alluded to; or,
at all events, have not favoured the world with an account of their
discoveries.
After the above proem, Dr. Miles stumbled for a moment or two, and
then recovering himself, continued thus:
"The unfortunate affair which took place last night must doubtless
give rise to legal inquiries, which will, depend upon it, be pursued
with great energy and determination; for Captain Hayward, I find,
followed the unhappy young man at once; and, if I judge rightly, he is
not one to abandon his object when it is but half-attained."
"Oh, that Captain Hayward, that Captain Hayward!" cried Wittingham,
angrily, "he is always meddling with other people's affairs."
"Nay, my dear Sir," answered Dr. Miles; "this was his affair, and the
affair of every body in the room. The ball passed within an inch of
his friend Mr. Beauchamp's head, and might have been intended for
him--at least, so Captain Hayward might have supposed, had not your
own exclamation at the moment--"
"My exclamation!" cried Mr. Wittingham, with a look of horror, "what
did I exclaim?"
Doctor Miles did not answer him directly at first, replying merely,
"you said enough, Mr. Wittingham, to show who it was, in your opinion,
that had fired the shot."
Mr. Wittingham clasped his hands together in an agony of despair and
sunk with his head upon the pillow, as if he would fain have hid his
face in the bed-clothes, but Dr. Miles went on kindly to say,
"Moreover, my dear Sir, your exclamation was sufficient to make me
feel for you deeply--to feel for you with sincere compassion, and to
desire anxiously to serve and assist you."
Now Mr. Wittingham was not accustomed to be compassionated; he did not
like the thing and he did not like the word; he was a vain man and a
proud man, and compassion was a humiliation which he did not like to
undergo; but still anxiety and trouble were the strongest, and he
repeated two or three times in a quick, sharp voice,
"What did I say? What did I say?"
"You said that it was your son," answered the clergyman, "and various
corroborative circumstances have transpired which--"
But by this time Mr. Wittingham was in such a state of agitation that
it was evident he would hear nothing further that was said to him at
the moment, and therefore the good doctor stopped short. The
magistrate covered his eyes; he wrung his hands hard together; he
gazed forth at the sky; he even wept.
"Then it is all over, all over," he cried, at length, "it is all
over," by which he meant that all his dreams of importance, his plans
of rural grandeur and justice-of-the-peaceism, his "reverence" on the
bench and at the quarter-sessions, his elevation as a country
gentleman, and his oblivion as a small trader, were all frustrated,
gone, lost, smothered and destroyed by his son's violent conduct and
his own indiscreet babbling in the moment of fear and grief.
"Ah, Doctor Miles," he said, "it's a sad business, a sad business. As
you know it all, there is no use of my holding my tongue. Harry did do
it; and, indeed, he told me before that he would do it, or something
like it; for he came here--here, down into Tarningham, and told me on
the very bench, that if I pushed that business about Mrs. Clifford's
carriage any further it should go worse with me. It was a threat, my
dear doctor, and I was not to be deterred from doing my duty by a
threat, and so I told him, and immediately took up the man they call
Wolf, on suspicion--for Sir John had been down here, swearing at my
door, and what could I do, you know."
Now Doctor Miles had seen a great deal of the world, and, though a
good and benevolent man, and one not at all inclined to think the
worst of one of his fellow-creatures, yet he could not help seeing
that there was a great deal of weakness and eagerness to shuffle any
burden from himself in Mr. Wittingham's reply. There are certain sorts
of knowledge which force themselves upon our understanding, whether we
will or not, and amongst these is discrimination of human character.
People, long accustomed to the world, find great difficulty even in
believing a practised liar, however much they may wish to do so on
certain points. They see through, in spite of themselves, all the
little petty artifices with which self hides itself from self, and
still more clearly through the mean policy by which the mean man
strives to conceal his meanness from the eyes of his fellow-creatures.
Whether it be the pitiful man, in any of the common walks of life,
exacting more than his due, and striving to hide his greed under the
veil of liberality and disinterestedness, whether it be the candidate,
on the canvass or on the hustings, escaping from the explanation of
his intentions upon the plea of independence and free judgment, or
whether it be the minister of the crown evading the fulfilment of
obligations, or shrinking from the recognition of support by all the
thousand subterfuges in the vast dictionary of political dishonesty,
the man learned in the world's ways, however willing to be duped,
cannot believe and confide, cannot admire and respect. The case with
Mr. Wittingham was a very simple one. Doctor Miles saw and understood
the whole process of his mind in a moment; but he was sorry for the
man; he felt what agony it must be to have such a son, and he hastened
as far as possible to relieve him.
"I think, my dear Sir," he said, "that you have made some mistakes in
this matter; I do not presume to interfere with any man's domestic
arrangements, but I will candidly acknowledge that I have thought, in
watching the progress of your son's education, that it was not likely
to result in good to his character--nay, hear me out, for I am only
making this observation as a sort of excuse, not so much for him, as
for the advice I am going to give you, which can only be justified by
a belief that the young man is not so depraved by nature as by
circumstances."
They were hard words, very hard words, that Doctor Miles uttered, but
there was a stern impressiveness in his manner which overawed Mr.
Wittingham, kept down his vanity from revolting against the implied
accusation, and prevented him from even writhing openly at the plain
terms in which his son's conduct was stigmatised.
"Under these circumstances," continued Doctor Miles, "I think it much
better that you send your son out of the country as fast as possible,
afford him such means as will enable him to live in respectability,
without indulging in vice; warn him seriously of the end to which his
present courses will lead him, and give him to understand that if he
abandons them, and shows an inclination to become a good and useful
member of society, the faults of his youth may be forgotten, and their
punishment be remitted. On the latter point, I think I may say that,
should he at once quit the country, no further steps against him will
be taken. You know very well that Sir John Slingsby, though hot and
irascible, is a kind and good-natured man at heart."
"Sir John Slingsby! Sir John Slingsby!" exclaimed Mr. Wittingham,
bustling up with an air of relief, as if something had suddenly turned
a screw or opened a safety-valve, and delivered him from the high
pressure of Doctor Miles's grave and weighty manner, "Sir John
Slingsby, Sir, dare do nothing against me or mine; for there is a
balance against him. He may talk, and he may bully and crack his
jokes.--I have submitted to all that a great deal too long, without
requiring a settlement of the account; and there's five thousand
pounds against him I can tell you, which he will find it a difficult
matter to pay, I have a notion--ah, ah, Doctor Miles, I know what I am
about. Five thousand pounds are five thousand pounds, Doctor Miles,
and I know all the situation of Sir John's affairs, too; so he had
better not meddle with me, he had better not enrage me; for he will
risk less in letting all this foolish business pass off quietly
without inquiry, than producing inquiry into his own affairs in the
county. A good jolly gentleman I don't mean to say he is not; but I
can tell you he is tottering on the verge of ruin, and I don't want to
force him over unless he drives me: and so he had better not, that's
all."
Doctor Miles had gazed at him as he spoke with a keen, subacid look,
and in some degree even of amusement, and this calm, supercilious look
greatly annoyed and embarrassed Mr. Wittingham towards the end of his
tirade. It was evident that Doctor Miles was not in the least taken
unprepared, that the intimation of Sir John Slingsby's position in
worldly affairs neither surprised nor disappointed him in the least;
and when Mr. Wittingham at length stopped in some embarrassment, his
reply tended still further to puzzle and confound the worthy
magistrate for he merely said,
"Perhaps so, Mr. Wittingham, but I do not think Sir John Slingsby's
pecuniary circumstances will at all prevent him from performing his
public duties. If he has reason to believe that your son is in the
road to amendment, he is very likely to look over his present
offences, as they are, in some degree, personal to himself and his
family. If he imagines that he will go on from one crime to another,
depend upon it he will think it only right to cut his career short at
once. The only fear is, that if this debt which you speak of ever
crosses his mind, it will only serve as a bar to his lenity; for no
man is so likely to be seized with a sudden determination to punish
with the utmost rigour, if he were to suspect for one moment that his
debt to you, whatever might be the amount, might be assigned as the
motive by any one for his forbearance. I would not advise you to urge
such a plea, Mr. Wittingham; but, depend upon it, if this debt is
considered at all, it will be considered to your disadvantage. Besides
all this, you must recollect that other persons were present;
therefore Sir John has not the whole matter in his own hands. However,
I have given you the best advice in my power; you can take it, if you
like; if not, the consequences be upon your own head; and you must not
blame any one for any thing that may occur in the due course of law."
And rising from the bedside, he was about to depart, when Mr.
Wittingham stopped him.
"Stay, stay, my dear Sir," said the magistrate, eagerly; "let us
discuss this question a little further; I wish no harm to Sir John
Slingsby, and I trust he wishes none to me. But are you sure there
were other persons who heard the words I spoke? Very unfortunate, very
unfortunate, indeed."
Now the truth was, that Mr. Wittingham was in a state of high
irritation. The comments which Doctor Miles had made, or rather the
hints which he had thrown out in regard to the education of his son,
had greatly exasperated him. He never liked it to be even hinted that
he was wrong; it was a sort of accusation which he never could bear;
and the worthy doctor would have been permitted in patience to proceed
with any other of Mr. Wittingham's friends or enemies without the
least interruption; but it was natural that he should take fire in
regard to his son. Why natural? it may be asked. For this reason, that
the education of his son was associated intimately with Mr.
Wittingham's own vanity; and the idea of his faults being owing to
education, was a direct reflection upon Mr. Wittingham himself.
Doctor Miles, however, regarded none of these things; and though the
worthy magistrate desired him to stay, he declared he had no time,
saying,
"Further discussion is out of the question. I have given you advice
that I know to be kind, that I believe to be good. Take it, if you
judge so; leave it, if you judge otherwise. Pursue what course you
think best in regard to Sir John Slingsby; but, at all events, do not
attempt to influence him, by pecuniary considerations; for be assured
that, although he may, by imprudence, have embarrassed his property,
he has not arrived at that pitch of degradation which is only brought
on step by step from the pressure of narrow circumstances, and which
induces men to forget, great principles in order to escape from small
difficulties. Good morning, Mr. Wittingham;" and, without further
pause, Doctor Miles quitted the room, and walked down stairs. In the
hall he met Mr. Wharton, the attorney, going up, with a somewhat sour
and discontented face; but all that passed between the two gentlemen
was a cold bow, and the clergyman left the house in possession of the
lawyer.