It was nearly six years after the departure of Mr. David Faux for the
West Indies, that the vacant shop in the market-place at Grimworth was
understood to have been let to the stranger with a sallow complexion
and a buff cravat, whose first appearance had caused some excitement in
the bar of the Woolpack, where he had called to wait for the coach.
Grimworth, to a discerning eye, was a good place to set up shopkeeping
in. There was no competition in it at present; the Church-people had
their own grocer and draper; the Dissenters had theirs; and the two or
three butchers found a ready market for their joints without strict
reference to religious persuasion—except that the rector’s wife had
given a general order for the veal sweet-breads and the mutton kidneys,
while Mr. Rodd, the Baptist minister, had requested that, so far as was
compatible with the fair accommodation of other customers, the sheep’s
trotters might be reserved for him. And it was likely to be a growing
place, for the trustees of Mr. Zephaniah Crypt’s Charity, under the
stimulus of a late visitation by commissioners, were beginning to apply
long-accumulating funds to the rebuilding of the Yellow Coat School,
which was henceforth to be carried forward on a greatly-extended scale,
the testator having left no restrictions concerning the curriculum, but
only concerning the coat.
The shopkeepers at Grimworth were by no means unanimous as to the
advantages promised by this prospect of increased population and
trading, being substantial men, who liked doing a quiet business in
which they were sure of their customers, and could calculate their
returns to a nicety. Hitherto, it had been held a point of honour by
the families in Grimworth parish, to buy their sugar and their flannel
at the shop where their fathers and mothers had bought before them;
but, if newcomers were to bring in the system of neck-and-neck trading,
and solicit feminine eyes by gown-pieces laid in fan-like folds, and
surmounted by artificial flowers, giving them a factitious charm (for
on what human figure would a gown sit like a fan, or what female head
was like a bunch of China-asters?), or, if new grocers were to fill
their windows with mountains of currants and sugar, made seductive by
contrast and tickets,—what security was there for Grimworth, that a
vagrant spirit in shopping, once introduced, would not in the end carry
the most important families to the larger market town of Cattleton,
where, business being done on a system of small profits and quick
returns, the fashions were of the freshest, and goods of all kinds
might be bought at an advantage?
With this view of the times predominant among the tradespeople at
Grimworth, their uncertainty concerning the nature of the business
which the sallow-complexioned stranger was about to set up in the
vacant shop, naturally gave some additional strength to the fears of
the less sanguine. If he was going to sell drapery, it was probable
that a pale-faced fellow like that would deal in showy and inferior
articles—printed cottons and muslins which would leave their dye in the
wash-tub, jobbed linen full of knots, and flannel that would soon look
like gauze. If grocery, then it was to be hoped that no mother of a
family would trust the teas of an untried grocer. Such things had been
known in some parishes as tradesmen going about canvassing for custom
with cards in their pockets: when people came from nobody knew where,
there was no knowing what they might do. It was a thousand pities that
Mr. Moffat, the auctioneer and broker, had died without leaving anybody
to follow him in the business, and Mrs. Cleve’s trustee ought to have
known better than to let a shop to a stranger. Even the discovery that
ovens were being put up on the premises, and that the shop was, in
fact, being fitted up for a confectioner and pastry-cook’s business,
hitherto unknown in Grimworth, did not quite suffice to turn the scale
in the newcomer’s favour, though the landlady at the Woolpack defended
him warmly, said he seemed to be a very clever young man, and from what
she could make out, came of a very good family; indeed, was most likely
a good many people’s betters.
It certainly made a blaze of light and colour, almost as if a rainbow
had suddenly descended into the market-place, when, one fine morning,
the shutters were taken down from the new shop, and the two windows
displayed their decorations. On one side, there were the variegated
tints of collared and marbled meats, set off by bright green leaves,
the pale brown of glazed pies, the rich tones of sauces and bottled
fruits enclosed in their veil of glass—altogether a sight to bring
tears into the eyes of a Dutch painter; and on the other, there was a
predominance of the more delicate hues of pink, and white, and yellow,
and buff, in the abundant lozenges, candies, sweet biscuits and icings,
which to the eyes of a bilious person might easily have been blended
into a faëry landscape in Turner’s latest style. What a sight to dawn
upon the eyes of Grimworth children! They almost forgot to go to their
dinner that day, their appetites being preoccupied with imaginary
sugar-plums; and I think even Punch, setting up his tabernacle in the
market-place, would not have succeeded in drawing them away from those
shop-windows, where they stood according to gradations of size and
strength, the biggest and strongest being nearest the window, and the
little ones in the outermost rows lifting wide-open eyes and mouths
towards the upper tier of jars, like small birds at meal-time.
The elder inhabitants pished and pshawed a little at the folly of the
new shopkeeper in venturing on such an outlay in goods that would not
keep; to be sure, Christmas was coming, but what housewife in Grimworth
would not think shame to furnish forth her table with articles that
were not home-cooked? No, no. Mr. Edward Freely, as he called himself,
was deceived, if he thought Grimworth money was to flow into his
pockets on such terms.
Edward Freely was the name that shone in gilt letters on a mazarine
ground over the doorplace of the new shop—a generous-sounding name,
that might have belonged to the open-hearted, improvident hero of an
old comedy, who would have delighted in raining sugared almonds, like a
new manna-gift, among that small generation outside the windows. But
Mr. Edward Freely was a man whose impulses were kept in due
subordination: he held that the desire for sweets and pastry must only
be satisfied in a direct ratio with the power of paying for them. If
the smallest child in Grimworth would go to him with a halfpenny in its
tiny fist, he would, after ringing the halfpenny, deliver a just
equivalent in “rock.” He was not a man to cheat even the smallest
child—he often said so, observing at the same time that he loved
honesty, and also that he was very tender-hearted, though he didn’t
show his feelings as some people did.
Either in reward of such virtue, or according to some more hidden law
of sequence, Mr. Freely’s business, in spite of prejudice, started
under favourable auspices. For Mrs. Chaloner, the rector’s wife, was
among the earliest customers at the shop, thinking it only right to
encourage a new parishioner who had made a decorous appearance at
church; and she found Mr. Freely a most civil, obliging young man, and
intelligent to a surprising degree for a confectioner; well-principled,
too, for in giving her useful hints about choosing sugars he had thrown
much light on the dishonesty of other tradesmen. Moreover, he had been
in the West Indies, and had seen the very estate which had been her
poor grandfather’s property; and he said the missionaries were the only
cause of the negro’s discontent—an observing young man, evidently. Mrs.
Chaloner ordered wine-biscuits and olives, and gave Mr. Freely to
understand that she should find his shop a great convenience. So did
the doctor’s wife, and so did Mrs. Gate, at the large carding-mill,
who, having high connexions frequently visiting her, might be expected
to have a large consumption of ratafias and macaroons.
The less aristocratic matrons of Grimworth seemed likely at first to
justify their husbands’ confidence that they would never pay a
percentage of profits on drop-cakes, instead of making their own, or
get up a hollow show of liberal housekeeping by purchasing slices of
collared meat when a neighbour came in for supper. But it is my task to
narrate the gradual corruption of Grimworth manners from their
primitive simplicity—a melancholy task, if it were not cheered by the
prospect of the fine peripateia or downfall by which the progress of
the corruption was ultimately checked.
It was young Mrs. Steene, the veterinary surgeons wife, who first gave
way to temptation. I fear she had been rather over-educated for her
station in life, for she knew by heart many passages in _Lalla Rookh_,
the _Corsair_, and the _Siege of Corinth_, which had given her a
distaste for domestic occupations, and caused her a withering
disappointment at the discovery that Mr. Steene, since his marriage,
had lost all interest in the “bulbul,” openly preferred discussing the
nature of spavin with a coarse neighbour, and was angry if the pudding
turned out watery—indeed, was simply a top-booted “vet.”, who came in
hungry at dinner-time; and not in the least like a nobleman turned
Corsair out of pure scorn for his race, or like a renegade with a
turban and crescent, unless it were in the irritability of his temper.
And scorn is such a very different thing in top-boots!
This brutal man had invited a supper-party for Christmas eve, when he
would expect to see mince-pies on the table. Mrs. Steene had prepared
her mince-meat, and had devoted much butter, fine flour, and labour, to
the making of a batch of pies in the morning; but they proved to be so
very heavy when they came out of the oven, that she could only think
with trembling of the moment when her husband should catch sight of
them on the supper-table. He would storm at her, she was certain; and
before all the company; and then she should never help crying: it was
so dreadful to think she had come to that, after the bulbul and
everything! Suddenly the thought darted through her mind that _this
once_ she might send for a dish of mince-pies from Freely’s: she knew
he had some. But what was to become of the eighteen heavy mince-pies?
Oh, it was of no use thinking about that; it was very expensive—indeed,
making mince-pies at all was a great expense, when they were not sure
to turn out well: it would be much better to buy them ready-made. You
paid a little more for them, but there was no risk of waste.
Such was the sophistry with which this misguided young woman—enough.
Mrs. Steene sent for the mince-pies, and, I am grieved to add, garbled
her household accounts in order to conceal the fact from her husband.
This was the second step in a downward course, all owing to a young
woman’s being out of harmony with her circumstances, yearning after
renegades and bulbuls, and being subject to claims from a veterinary
surgeon fond of mince-pies. The third step was to harden herself by
telling the fact of the bought mince-pies to her intimate friend Mrs.
Mole, who had already guessed it, and who subsequently encouraged
herself in buying a mould of jelly, instead of exerting her own skill,
by the reflection that “other people” did the same sort of thing. The
infection spread; soon there was a party or clique in Grimworth on the
side of “buying at Freely’s”; and many husbands, kept for some time in
the dark on this point, innocently swallowed at two mouthfuls a tart on
which they were paying a profit of a hundred per cent., and as
innocently encouraged a fatal disingenuousness in the partners of their
bosoms by praising the pastry. Others, more keen-sighted, winked at the
too frequent presentation on washing-days, and at impromptu suppers, of
superior spiced-beef, which flattered their palates more than the cold
remnants they had formerly been contented with. Every housewife who had
once “bought at Freely’s” felt a secret joy when she detected a similar
perversion in her neighbour’s practice, and soon only two or three
old-fashioned mistresses of families held out in the protest against
the growing demoralization, saying to their neighbours who came to sup
with them, “I can’t offer you Freely’s beef, or Freely’s cheesecakes;
everything in our house is home-made; I’m afraid you’ll hardly have any
appetite for our plain pastry.” The doctor, whose cook was not
satisfactory, the curate, who kept no cook, and the mining agent, who
was a great _bon vivant_, even began to rely on Freely for the greater
part of their dinner, when they wished to give an entertainment of some
brilliancy. In short, the business of manufacturing the more fanciful
viands was fast passing out of the hinds of maids and matrons in
private families, and was becoming the work of a special commercial
organ.
I am not ignorant that this sort of thing is called the inevitable
course of civilization, division of labour, and so forth, and that the
maids and matrons may be said to have had their hands set free from
cookery to add to the wealth of society in some other way. Only it
happened at Grimworth, which, to be sure, was a low place, that the
maids and matrons could do nothing with their hands at all better than
cooking: not even those who had always made heavy cakes and leathery
pastry. And so it came to pass, that the progress of civilization at
Grimworth was not otherwise apparent than in the impoverishment of men,
the gossiping idleness of women, and the heightening prosperity of Mr.
Edward Freely.
The Yellow Coat School was a double source of profit to the calculating
confectioner; for he opened an eating-room for the superior workmen
employed on the new school, and he accommodated the pupils at the old
school by giving great attention to the fancy-sugar department. When I
think of the sweet-tasted swans and other ingenious white shapes
crunched by the small teeth of that rising generation, I am glad to
remember that a certain amount of calcareous food has been held good
for young creatures whose bones are not quite formed; for I have
observed these delicacies to have an inorganic flavour which would have
recommended them greatly to that young lady of the _Spectator’s_
acquaintance who habitually made her dessert on the stems of
tobacco-pipes.
As for the confectioner himself, he made his way gradually into
Grimworth homes, as his commodities did, in spite of some initial
repugnance. Somehow or other, his reception as a guest seemed a thing
that required justifying, like the purchasing of his pastry. In the
first place, he was a stranger, and therefore open to suspicion;
secondly, the confectionery business was so entirely new at Grimworth,
that its place in the scale of rank had not been distinctly
ascertained. There was no doubt about drapers and grocers, when they
came of good old Grimworth families, like Mr. Luff and Mr. Prettyman:
they visited with the Palfreys, who farmed their own land, played many
a game at whist with the doctor, and condescended a little towards the
timber-merchant, who had lately taken to the coal-trade also, and had
got new furniture; but whether a confectioner should be admitted to
this higher level of respectability, or should be understood to find
his associates among butchers and bakers, was a new question on which
tradition threw no light. His being a bachelor was in his favour, and
would perhaps have been enough to turn the scale, even if Mr. Edward
Freely’s other personal pretensions had been of an entirely
insignificant cast. But so far from this, it very soon appeared that he
was a remarkable young man, who had been in the West Indies, and had
seen many wonders by sea and land, so that he could charm the ears of
Grimworth Desdemonas with stories of strange fishes, especially sharks,
which he had stabbed in the nick of time by bravely plunging overboard
just as the monster was turning on his side to devour the cook’s mate;
of terrible fevers which he had undergone in a land where the wind
blows from all quarters at once; of rounds of toast cut straight from
the breadfruit trees; of toes bitten off by land-crabs; of large
honours that had been offered to him as a man who knew what was what,
and was therefore particularly needed in a tropical climate; and of a
Creole heiress who had wept bitterly at his departure. Such
conversational talents as these, we know, will overcome disadvantages
of complexion; and young Towers, whose cheeks were of the finest pink,
set off by a fringe of dark whisker, was quite eclipsed by the presence
of the sallow Mr. Freely. So exceptional a confectioner elevated the
business, and might well begin to make disengaged hearts flutter a
little.
Fathers and mothers were naturally more slow and cautious in their
recognition of the newcomer’s merits.
“He’s an amusing fellow,” said Mr. Prettyman, the highly respectable
grocer. (Mrs. Prettyman was a Miss Fothergill, and her sister had
married a London mercer.) “He’s an amusing fellow; and I’ve no
objection to his making one at the Oyster Club; but he’s a bit too fond
of riding the high horse. He’s uncommonly knowing, I’ll allow; but how
came he to go to the Indies? I should like that answered. It’s
unnatural in a confectioner. I’m not fond of people that have been
beyond seas, if they can’t give a good account how they happened to go.
When folks go so far off, it’s because they’ve got little credit nearer
home—that’s my opinion. However, he’s got some good rum; but I don’t
want to be hand and glove with him, for all that.”
It was this kind of dim suspicion which beclouded the view of Mr.
Freely’s qualities in the maturer minds of Grimworth through the early
months of his residence there. But when the confectioner ceased to be a
novelty, the suspicions also ceased to be novel, and people got tired
of hinting at them, especially as they seemed to be refuted by his
advancing prosperity and importance. Mr. Freely was becoming a person
of influence in the parish; he was found useful as an overseer of the
poor, having great firmness in enduring other people’s pain, which
firmness, he said, was due to his great benevolence; he always did what
was good for people in the end. Mr. Chaloner had even selected him as
clergyman’s churchwarden, for he was a very handy man, and much more of
Mr. Chaloner’s opinion in everything about church business than the
older parishioners. Mr. Freely was a very regular churchman, but at the
Oyster Club he was sometimes a little free in his conversation, more
than hinting at a life of Sultanic self-indulgence which he had passed
in the West Indies, shaking his head now and then and smiling rather
bitterly, as men are wont to do when they intimate that they have
become a little too wise to be instructed about a world which has long
been flat and stale to them.
For some time he was quite general in his attentions to the fair sex,
combining the gallantries of a lady’s man with a severity of criticism
on the person and manners of absent belles, which tended rather to
stimulate in the feminine breast the desire to conquer the approval of
so fastidious a judge. Nothing short of the very best in the department
of female charms and virtues could suffice to kindle the ardour of Mr.
Edward Freely, who had become familiar with the most luxuriant and
dazzling beauty in the West Indies. It may seem incredible that a
confectioner should have ideas and conversation so much resembling
those to be met with in a higher walk of life, but it must be
remembered that he had not merely travelled, he had also bow-legs and a
sallow, small-featured visage, so that nature herself had stamped him
for a fastidious connoisseur of the fair sex.
At last, however, it seemed clear that Cupid had found a sharper arrow
than usual, and that Mr. Freely’s heart was pierced. It was the general
talk among the young people at Grimworth. But was it really love, and
not rather ambition? Miss Fullilove, the timber-merchant’s daughter,
was quite sure that if _she_ were Miss Penny Palfrey, she would be
cautious; it was not a good sign when men looked so much above
themselves for a wife. For it was no less a person than Miss Penelope
Palfrey, second daughter of the Mr. Palfrey who farmed his own land,
that had attracted Mr. Freely’s peculiar regard, and conquered his
fastidiousness; and no wonder, for the Ideal, as exhibited in the
finest waxwork, was perhaps never so closely approached by the Real as
in the person of the pretty Penelope. Her yellowish flaxen hair did not
curl naturally, I admit, but its bright crisp ringlets were such
smooth, perfect miniature tubes, that you would have longed to pass
your little finger through them, and feel their soft elasticity. She
wore them in a crop, for in those days, when society was in a healthier
state, young ladies wore crops long after they were twenty, and
Penelope was not yet nineteen. Like the waxen ideal, she had round blue
eyes, and round nostrils in her little nose, and teeth such as the
ideal would be seen to have, if it ever showed them. Altogether, she
was a small, round thing, as neat as a pink and white double daisy, and
as guileless; for I hope it does not argue guile in a pretty damsel of
nineteen, to think that she should like to have a beau and be
“engaged,” when her elder sister had already been in that position a
year and a half. To be sure, there was young Towers always coming to
the house; but Penny felt convinced he only came to see her brother,
for he never had anything to say to her, and never offered her his arm,
and was as awkward and silent as possible.
It is not unlikely that Mr. Freely had early been smitten by Penny’s
charms, as brought under his observation at church, but he had to make
his way in society a little before he could come into nearer contact
with them; and even after he was well received in Grimworth families,
it was a long while before he could converse with Penny otherwise than
in an incidental meeting at Mr. Luff’s. It was not so easy to get
invited to Long Meadows, the residence of the Palfreys; for though Mr.
Palfrey had been losing money of late years, not being able quite to
recover his feet after the terrible murrain which forced him to borrow,
his family were far from considering themselves on the same level even
as the old-established tradespeople with whom they visited. The
greatest people, even kings and queens, must visit with somebody, and
the equals of the great are scarce. They were especially scarce at
Grimworth, which, as I have before observed, was a low parish,
mentioned with the most scornful brevity in gazetteers. Even the great
people there were far behind those of their own standing in other parts
of this realm. Mr. Palfrey’s farmyard doors had the paint all worn off
them, and the front garden walks had long been merged in a general
weediness. Still, his father had been called Squire Palfrey, and had
been respected by the last Grimworth generation as a man who could
afford to drink too much in his own house.
Pretty Penny was not blind to the fact that Mr. Freely admired her, and
she felt sure that it was he who had sent her a beautiful valentine;
but her sister seemed to think so lightly of him (all young ladies
think lightly of the gentlemen to whom they are not engaged), that
Penny never dared mention him, and trembled and blushed whenever they
met him, thinking of the valentine, which was very strong in its
expressions, and which she felt guilty of knowing by heart. A man who
had been to the Indies, and knew the sea so well, seemed to her a sort
of public character, almost like Robinson Crusoe or Captain Cook; and
Penny had always wished her husband to be a remarkable personage,
likely to be put in Mangnall’s Questions, with which register of the
immortals she had become acquainted during her one year at a
boarding-school. Only it seemed strange that a remarkable man should be
a confectioner and pastry-cook, and this anomaly quite disturbed
Penny’s dreams. Her brothers, she knew, laughed at men who couldn’t sit
on horseback well, and called them tailors; but her brothers were very
rough, and were quite without that power of anecdote which made Mr.
Freely such a delightful companion. He was a very good man, she
thought, for she had heard him say at Mr. Luff’s, one day, that he
always wished to do his duty in whatever state of life he might be
placed; and he knew a great deal of poetry, for one day he had repeated
a verse of a song. She wondered if he had made the words of the
valentine!—it ended in this way:—
“Without thee, it is pain to live,
But with thee, it were sweet to die.”
Poor Mr. Freely! her father would very likely object—she felt sure he
would, for he always called Mr. Freely “that sugar-plum fellow.” Oh, it
was very cruel, when true love was crossed in that way, and all because
Mr. Freely was a confectioner: well, Penny would be true to him, for
all that, and since his being a confectioner gave her an opportunity of
showing her faithfulness, she was glad of it. Edward Freely was a
pretty name, much better than John Towers. Young Towers had offered her
a rose out of his button-hole the other day, blushing very much; but
she refused it, and thought with delight how much Mr. Freely would be
comforted if he knew her firmness of mind.
Poor little Penny! the days were so very long among the daisies on a
grazing farm, and thought is so active—how was it possible that the
inward drama should not get the start of the outward? I have known
young ladies, much better educated, and with an outward world
diversified by instructive lectures, to say nothing of literature and
highly-developed fancy-work, who have spun a cocoon of visionary joys
and sorrows for themselves, just as Penny did. Her elder sister
Letitia, who had a prouder style of beauty, and a more worldly
ambition, was engaged to a wool-factor, who came all the way from
Cattelton to see her; and everybody knows that a wool-factor takes a
very high rank, sometimes driving a double-bodied gig. Letty’s notions
got higher every day, and Penny never dared to speak of her cherished
griefs to her lofty sister—never dared to propose that they should call
at Mr. Freely’s to buy liquorice, though she had prepared for such an
incident by mentioning a slight sore throat. So she had to pass the
shop on the other side of the market-place, and reflect, with a
suppressed sigh, that behind those pink and white jars somebody was
thinking of her tenderly, unconscious of the small space that divided
her from him.
And it was quite true that, when business permitted, Mr. Freely thought
a great deal of Penny. He thought her prettiness comparable to the
loveliest things in confectionery; he judged her to be of submissive
temper—likely to wait upon him as well as if she had been a negress,
and to be silently terrified when his liver made him irritable; and he
considered the Palfrey family quite the best in the parish, possessing
marriageable daughters. On the whole, he thought her worthy to become
Mrs. Edward Freely, and all the more so, because it would probably
require some ingenuity to win her. Mr. Palfrey was capable of
horse-whipping a too rash pretender to his daughter’s hand; and,
moreover, he had three tall sons: it was clear that a suitor would be
at a disadvantage with such a family, unless travel and natural acumen
had given him a countervailing power of contrivance. And the first idea
that occurred to him in the matter was, that Mr. Palfrey would object
less if he knew that the Freelys were a much higher family than his
own. It had been foolish modesty in him hitherto to conceal the fact
that a branch of the Freelys held a manor in Yorkshire, and to shut up
the portrait of his great uncle the admiral, instead of hanging it up
where a family portrait should be hung—over the mantelpiece in the
parlour. Admiral Freely, K.C.B., once placed in this conspicuous
position, was seen to have had one arm only, and one eye—in these
points resembling the heroic Nelson—while a certain pallid
insignificance of feature confirmed the relationship between himself
and his grand-nephew.
Next, Mr. Freely was seized with an irrepressible ambition to posses
Mrs. Palfrey’s receipt for brawn, hers being pronounced on all hands to
be superior to his own—as he informed her in a very flattering letter
carried by his errand-boy. Now Mrs. Palfrey, like other geniuses,
wrought by instinct rather than by rule, and possessed no
receipts—indeed, despised all people who used them, observing that
people who pickled by book, must pickle by weights and measures, and
such nonsense; as for herself, her weights and measures were the tip of
her finger and the tip of her tongue, and if you went nearer, why, of
course, for dry goods like flour and spice, you went by handfuls and
pinches, and for wet, there was a middle-sized jug—quite the best thing
whether for much or little, because you might know how much a teacupful
was if you’d got any use of your senses, and you might be sure it would
take five middle-sized jugs to make a gallon. Knowledge of this kind is
like Titian’s colouring, difficult to communicate; and as Mrs. Palfrey,
once remarkably handsome, had now become rather stout and asthmatical,
and scarcely ever left home, her oral teaching could hardly be given
anywhere except at Long Meadows. Even a matron is not insusceptible to
flattery, and the prospect of a visitor whose great object would be to
listen to her conversation, was not without its charms to Mrs. Palfrey.
Since there was no receipt to be sent in reply to Mr. Freely’s humble
request, she called on her more docile daughter, Penny, to write a
note, telling him that her mother would be glad to see him and talk
with him on brawn, any day that he could call at Long Meadows. Penny
obeyed with a trembling hand, thinking how wonderfully things came
about in this world.
In this way, Mr. Freely got himself introduced into the home of the
Palfreys, and notwithstanding a tendency in the male part of the family
to jeer at him a little as “peaky” and bow-legged, he presently
established his position as an accepted and frequent guest. Young
Towers looked at him with increasing disgust when they met at the house
on a Sunday, and secretly longed to try his ferret upon him, as a piece
of vermin which that valuable animal would be likely to tackle with
unhesitating vigour. But—so blind sometimes are parents—neither Mr. nor
Mrs. Palfrey suspected that Penny would have anything to say to a
tradesman of questionable rank whose youthful bloom was much withered.
Young Towers, they thought, had an eye to her, and _that_ was likely
enough to be a match some day; but Penny was a child at present. And
all the while Penny was imagining the circumstances under which Mr.
Freely would make her an offer: perhaps down by the row of
damson-trees, when they were in the garden before tea; perhaps by
letter—in which case, how would the letter begin? “Dearest Penelope?”
or “My dear Miss Penelope?” or straight off, without dear anything, as
seemed the most natural when people were embarrassed? But, however he
might make the offer, she would not accept it without her father’s
consent: she would always be true to Mr. Freely, but she would not
disobey her father. For Penny was a good girl, though some of her
female friends were afterwards of opinion that it spoke ill for her not
to have felt an instinctive repugnance to Mr. Freely.
But he was cautious, and wished to be quite sure of the ground he trod
on. His views on marriage were not entirely sentimental, but were as
duly mingled with considerations of what would be advantageous to a man
in his position, as if he had had a very large amount of money spent on
his education. He was not a man to fall in love in the wrong place; and
so, he applied himself quite as much to conciliate the favour of the
parents, as to secure the attachment of Penny. Mrs. Palfrey had not
been inaccessible to flattery, and her husband, being also of mortal
mould, would not, it might be hoped, be proof against rum—that very
fine Jamaica rum—of which Mr. Freely expected always to have a supply
sent him from Jamaica. It was not easy to get Mr. Palfrey into the
parlour behind the shop, where a mild back-street light fell on the
features of the heroic admiral; but by getting hold of him rather late
one evening as he was about to return home from Grimworth, the aspiring
lover succeeded in persuading him to sup on some collared beef which,
after Mrs. Palfrey’s brawn, he would find the very best of cold eating.
From that hour Mr. Freely felt sure of success: being in privacy with
an estimable man old enough to be his father, and being rather lonely
in the world, it was natural he should unbosom himself a little on
subjects which he could not speak of in a mixed circle—especially
concerning his expectations from his uncle in Jamaica, who had no
children, and loved his nephew Edward better than any one else in the
world, though he had been so hurt at his leaving Jamaica, that he had
threatened to cut him off with a shilling. However, he had since
written to state his full forgiveness, and though he was an eccentric
old gentleman and could not bear to give away money during his life,
Mr. Edward Freely could show Mr. Palfrey the letter which declared,
plainly enough, who would be the affectionate uncle’s heir. Mr. Palfrey
actually saw the letter, and could not help admiring the spirit of the
nephew who declared that such brilliant hopes as these made no
difference to his conduct; he should work at his humble business and
make his modest fortune at it all the same. If the Jamaica estate was
to come to him—well and good. It was nothing very surprising for one of
the Freely family to have an estate left him, considering the lands
that family had possessed in time gone by—nay, still possessed in the
Northumberland branch. Would not Mr. Palfrey take another glass of rum?
and also look at the last year’s balance of the accounts? Mr. Freely
was a man who cared to possess personal virtues, and did not pique
himself on his family, though some men would.
We know how easily the great Leviathan may be led, when once there is a
hook in his nose or a bridle in his jaws. Mr. Palfrey was a large man,
but, like Leviathan’s, his bulk went against him when once he had taken
a turning. He was not a mercurial man, who easily changed his point of
view. Enough. Before two months were over, he had given his consent to
Mr. Freely’s marriage with his daughter Penny, and having hit on a
formula by which he could justify it, fenced off all doubts and
objections, his own included. The formula was this: “I’m not a man to
put my head up an entry before I know where it leads.”
Little Penny was very proud and fluttering, but hardly so happy as she
expected to be in an engagement. She wondered if young Towers cared
much about it, for he had not been to the house lately, and her sister
and brothers were rather inclined to sneer than to sympathize.
Grimworth rang with the news. All men extolled Mr. Freely’s good
fortune; while the women, with the tender solicitude characteristic of
the sex, wished the marriage might turn out well.
While affairs were at this triumphant juncture, Mr. Freely one morning
observed that a stone-carver who had been breakfasting in the
eating-room had left a newspaper behind. It was the _X-shire Gazette_,
and X-shire being a county not unknown to Mr. Freely, he felt some
curiosity to glance over it, and especially over the advertisements. A
slight flush came over his face as he read. It was produced by the
following announcement:—“If David Faux, son of Jonathan Faux, late of
Gilsbrook, will apply at the office of Mr. Strutt, attorney, of Rodham,
he will hear of something to his advantage.”
“Father’s dead!” exclaimed Mr. Freely, involuntarily. “Can he have left
me a legacy?”