Troy Chimneys

A MEMOIR OF this kind should open with a guarantee of respectability, both upon the paternal and the maternal sides. There should be property somewhere, a baronetcy (at least) in a collateral branch, loyal endeavours, a bishop or two, and all that sort of thing. The Luftons, unfortunately, are deficient in this respect. The Chadwicks are rather better connected, having got hold of Great Bramfield at some time or other. But there is nothing very striking to report until Dr. Aeneas Chadwick, the eminent antiquary, breaks his neck while scrambling about the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in the year 1775. He leaves many debts, a widow, and three daughters, – Augusta, Theodosia and Amelia, with whom I must principally concern myself in this chapter, since my father, for the greater part of the time, is still at Cambridge, a humble and industrious Sizar. Whereas the Chadwick females, abandoned by their natural protector in a foreign land, were far from humble.

Evidence of their disgusting independence may be found in many houses throughout these Isles in the shape of a picture, which hangs upon some dark staircase or in a lesser bedchamber. If examined closely, it turns out to be an indifferent copy of a Reni or a Luini. The master of the house will explain that his father, or his grandfather, bought it in Rome forty years ago. And he will wonder why Pronto peers at it so closely.

Pronto is looking for a little scratch in one corner which will tell him whether this sad daub has been the work of his Aunt Gussie.

People who make the Grand Tour must bring back some evidence of its effect upon their taste. Squire Bumpkin must prove that he has travelled further than his neighbours; a picture will do very well, and it won’t cost him much, for there are painter fellows by the score, in Rome, in Venice, in Florence, who will sell him one for a few soldi.

Miss Augusta had been at this trade for some years before her Papa broke his neck. She took to it, in order to support the family, when it became clear that he had dissipated the whole of his fortune. Her appearance, for she was a handsome girl, brought her custom. Set up with her paints and her easel, in some old church, she was a striking object, – she attracted the attention of travellers. Her situation was interesting and her fluency in the English tongue gave her an advantage over the foreign painter fellows. Not that her English would now pass muster in polite society; the only specimen of it known to me, which I will quote later, does little credit to her breeding. She must have been the true daughter of her mother, an Irish-woman of no discernible family, disliked by all the Chadwicks, whom the antiquary met and married at Avignon.

Blood is thicker than water, and some effort was made on behalf of these unfortunate women, when news of Dr. Chadwick’s death reached Bramfield. Provision of a sort was offered, if the family would return to Albion, fogs, roast beef and genteel dependence. This generosity was rejected, with marked incivility, in favour of sunshine and risotto. Miss Augusta, who wrote the letters (and I am sure that they were lamentably ill spelt), protested that they might all manage very well in Rome upon her earnings as a she-painter-fellow.

The affronted Chadwicks were thus able to wash their hands of the whole set, and would have done so had not a very pretty letter from Miss Theodosia reached Bramfield, shortly after the arrival of Miss Augusta’s scrawl. This revived a preference which had always existed, for poor little Dosie had been a favourite, in spite of her disagreeable family, ever since a visit which she had paid to Bramfield when she was eight or nine years old. I don’t know what convulsion in the antiquary’s household had caused her to be deposited there for six months, but she seems to have won every heart in a very short time. They would have liked to keep her for ever, but she was eventually snatched away again by her black-haired Irish mother. They have a crayon portrait of her, up at the Park, which was made during that visit. The artist has given her, not only the rosy Chadwick complexion, which is well enough, but the protruding gooseberry eyes and the lithe proboscis of the Chadwicks, which I am sure she never had. There is no trace, in this simpering little miss, of the angel whom I knew; I don’t covet the little picture, and Mrs. Ned is welcome to it, though anybody else would have offered it to us, when my mother died.

Dosie’s letter abolished all resentment, so far as she was concerned. It was felt that she had been overborne by her hoyden sister, – that she would have come to Bramfield if she could. Not that she uttered any complaint. She wrote simply because she wished to thank her uncle for his kind offers, and to express the gratitude which her mother and sisters ought to have felt. She, alone of the family, seems to have perceived that these offers were, in their way, pretty generous. He had a numerous family of his own to support; to take in four extra would have put him to considerable expense. And he had proposed coming himself to Italy that he might wind up their affairs and escort them all home. This, for an old gentleman who seldom stirred out of Gloucestershire, would have been a formidable undertaking. Dosie was grateful for such a proof of amiable solicitude and said so. She thanked him warmly and furnished him with fuller particulars of their situation than Gussie had vouchsafed. In conclusion she sent affectionate messages to all her young cousins, desired news of them, and declared that she would never love any place so well as Bramfield.

Calculation was ever foreign to my mother’s disposition. Upon this, as upon every other occasion, she felt as she ought and therefore did as she ought. She was genuinely grateful and sincerely attached to all the people at Bramfield. It was but natural that her enquiries should embrace the whole neighbourhood, for she had found a friend in every house. Old Dr. Maxwell had given her lollipops when he examined her in the Catechism; why should she not remember him? I can see no justification whatever for the construction which certain minds have chosen to put upon these artless letters. For she wrote several times. A pretty regular correspondence sprang up. The Chadwicks were anxious for more news of her, and eager for an excuse to get her away from Rome. No opportunity occurred, however, until after her marriage. When, at last, they got her back to Bramfield, she came as Mrs. Eustace Lufton.

My father, meanwhile, had quitted Cambridge, taken Orders, and got himself a noble patron with whom he went a-travelling. This bored him mightily but offered a short-cut to preferment. Of his travels I know but little; he never speaks of them and I don’t suppose he cares to think of them over much. Anybody acquainted with the late Lord M—’s reputation might well be surprised that he should choose to travel with a clergyman. But he had his reasons. He desired to be married, as soon as possible, to a lady who was also of the party. She was about to present him with an heir, and it was of great consequence to a number of people that this child should be born in wedlock, but nothing could be done during the lifetime of the legitimate Lady M—. She was, however, dying as fast as she could; the melancholy news was daily expected, and Lord M— intended to waste no time. Prudence might have kept him in England where word might reach him immediately; foresight of another kind took him out of it since, at a pinch, a little juggling with dates might be necessary. He wanted no witnesses save of his own choosing.

That my father should ever have consented to play such a role I must believe, since many circumstances bear it out. But, when I reflect upon the uniform respectability and piety of his life at Bramfield, I am stunned. He never perhaps fully understood the circumstances, or supposed that he would be expected to perjure himself, should the heir turn up too promptly. A poor man cannot afford to be over nice. It is even possible that an excessive unworldliness trapped him into a course from which a baser mind might have recoiled. He was a scholar, desiring provision which would enable him to continue his studies in peace. Ample provision was offered, if he would accompany a nobleman upon a six months’ tour of Europe. His travelling companions may have been so totally uncongenial that he took very little notice of them. He may not have observed the lady’s condition. He may not even have observed the lady. I like to think that he did not, though she was certainly present upon the momentous occasion when his lordship encountered my Aunt Gussie.

I should have known nothing of all this, had I not fallen in with my Aunt Amelia, in Paris three years ago, when I was there immediately after the victorious conclusion of the Brussels campaign. She turns out to be an amusing old fellow, gouty and raddled, but very good company. The salon in which I met her was not of the choicest kind, there was not a woman of character in the room, I imagine; it was the kind of half-way house which we don’t have over here. Upon hearing my name she immediately claimed me as a nephew; I called upon her afterwards and she told me all about Gussie and the old life in Rome, – everything, in fact, which I had long wished to know and despaired of ever finding out. I could only wish that she had been as communicative about her own history, which must, I am sure, have been lively. Upon that subject she was mum. She calls herself the Princess Czerny.

To her I owe all this information, including the sole specimen extant of Gussie’s English. Gussie was copying an altar-piece in an old church when she heard voices behind her, raised in unfavourable comment upon her performance. Lord M— and his party would not have quizzed her so loudly had they supposed that she could understand what they said. But she was black-haired, like her mother, and her dress was in the Italian style. Nothing was to prepare them for a sudden volte-face on the part of the Signorina, as, fine eyes ablaze, she administered the memorable reproof:

Explanations and apologies ensued. Have I not said that Gussie was handsome? His lordship’s opinion of the picture took a most favourable turn. He grew anxious to buy it, as a means of pursuing the lady’s acquaintance. Unluckily it was bespoke, but Gussie could offer him many others, if he would call at her mother’s house by the Spanish Steps.

Here came an intervention from her ladyship designate, who did not above half like Gussie and her eyes. Mr. Lufton, said she, might do the calling, had better do it, since he was fond of pictures, whereas this appeared to be the first evidence of such a taste in his lordship. Mr. Lufton might go to the Spanish Steps and select a canvas, since there was very little else, at the moment, that he could do to earn his keep.

Mr. Lufton called in due course, caught sight of Dosie, and then it was all over with Mr. Lufton. Not for an archbishopric would he quit Rome without her. When Lord M—’s party moved on he remained, throwing all ideas of preferment to the winds. One hopes that some other, more accommodating, parson was secured in time. Pronto is acquainted with the present Lord M— and has been at pains to discover that he was born in Naples, but there is some obscurity about the date.

My parents became engaged in the teeth of severe opposition from Miss Gussie and her mother. Theodosia, whose beauty was remarkable, had already irritated them by refusing several excellent matches. That she should throw herself away upon a penniless clergyman was a piece of folly which estranged them for ever.

‘Claire de lune!’ sighed the Princess Czerny. ‘But then you know Dosie was an angel, and they did not do too badly neither, since our uncle gave him the Bramfield living. Il paraît qu’une ange porte le pain sous le bras. If Dosie had not been an angel they must have starved.’

This is very true. I have witnessed, again and again, the effect of my mother’s charm upon all around her. All were sensible of an impulse to please her, to oblige her, to say agreeable things to her, to strew her path with flowers. Kind offices sprang from any encounter with her. My own place in College at Winchester was got for me by a gentleman who once stayed for a se’night at the Park and only saw my mother at church.

The living was not vacant when the young couple first arrived in England, but upon the death of Dr. Maxwell, a few months later, the gift was a settled thing, – a clever scheme for keeping Dosie at Bramfield for life. My father was well enough liked by all the family, but this provision was made for her sake. I am certain that Uncle Chadwick would have done nothing of the sort for any other niece, but angels do generally receive the treatment that they deserve.

To Mrs. Ned, of course, the whole business is incomprehensible, though she knew my mother, received endless kindness from her, and professed, at one time, an excessive regard for her. She, so I understand, has never ceased to grumble at Ned’s grandfather, and to wonder at the doting folly which could thus dispose of a valuable property. Sukey is my informant upon this point; she has it from the Chadwick girls. They should not have told her and she should not have told me, but we are all in a sad way, now that our angel has returned to her own dominions.

I learn that Mrs. Ned admires the discretion which prompted so young a girl to keep upon good terms with her rich uncle, when the rest of the family had offended him. She wonders at the prudence which demanded constant news of Dr. Maxwell’s health. She applauds, as a bold stroke, a marriage which took place so soon as that health was reported to be failing.

Eden

Pronto could answer that question without a moment’s hesitation. But for Miles it must ever be a matter of debate. He has been dragged by Pronto into company of all kinds, but he questions whether any satisfies him half so well as that which he knew first of all in his home at Bramfield Parsonage. Greater elegance, more of worldly polish, he may have encountered elsewhere, but always at a cost, – always with some sacrifice of sincerity and genuine refinement. Greater luxury he has bought at the expense of simple comfort. In the best houses they hide your breeches and bring you tepid shaving water.

How can any society be good which does not contribute to happiness? How can a man impart felicity when he does not possess any degree of it himself? Happiness is the first ingredient. I cannot be content among peevish people, though their inward poverty may be concealed beneath a polished exterior. The rational melancholy produced by sickness or bereavement I can excuse; I don’t ask that my friends should be in perpetual spirits, but I do ask that they should be capable of enjoyment.

My parents were singularly happy. They were devotedly attached to one another, they enjoyed an income sufficient for their modest needs, they were esteemed and loved by all who knew them. Their children were born into a climate of perpetual sunshine.

My father, I imagine, never knew how to be happy until he came to Bramfield. The study of Greek had ever been his ruling passion, but he was continually called from it by the necessity of advancing himself, since a curiosity concerning Euripides puts few guineas into a man’s pocket. At Bramfield he had the means and the leisure wherewith to pursue his favourite study. He learnt also to appreciate blessings of which he had hitherto been quite ignorant. He became aware of what he ate; he began to enjoy his dinner. Taught by my mother, desirous of loving all that might be dear to her, he perceived the beauties of Nature. The awkward, shy scholar became very good company, – warm-hearted, well informed, a fluent but not an overpowering talker, with all the ease of manner which springs from genuine contentment.

For her the change was equally benign. She had always longed for England and for Bramfield, yet I cannot feel that her early travels in France and Italy were entirely wasted; to natural good breeding there was added experience of the world, and manners above what one usually finds in a country parsonage. During her father’s lifetime she had been used to meeting distinguished people. She liked to read, although she was no blue-stocking. She possessed that power to be continually interested, even in the commonest objects, which is one of the marks of a truly superior intellect. She loved a country life, yet had no trace of rusticity.

The society in which they moved, however, was nothing above what might be expected in such a place. They were superior; their neighbours were not. I think that I must have perceived this very early, and I therefore took it for granted that I was a great deal more fortunate than my cousin Ned Chadwick, who had no such parents. I was sorry for him. Although I gradually came to learn that the world thought him more fortunate than myself, I continued to be sorry for him until we were one and twenty.

He is the nearest to me, in age, of that family, though he is an eldest and I a second son. There were seven of us; Eustace, Caroline, Miles, George, Catherine, Harriet and Susan. Our cousins were more numerous, but given to dying in infancy. Only five of them survived. Perpetual funerals were one of the many disadvantages for which I pitied Ned. He was for ever wearing black for some little brother or sister, too young to be of consequence to anybody.

We were all handsome children and our cousins were extremely plain. I suspect that my mother’s faith in green vegetables and fruit may have something to do with our advantage in this way. Her notions of diet were continental and she dressed many dishes at which our neighbours stared. Cabbage, for instance, which she cooked with sour cream, was a great favourite with us; in this country it is reckoned as only fit for cottagers. She set great store by sour cream and buttermilk, which our people throw away or give to the pigs. Nor would she suffer the gardener to send in those prodigious peas and carrots which are thought becoming to a gentleman’s table. She would have them small and tender. As for fruit, which is often forbidden to children, she gave it to us daily. My Winchester fare of beef, cheese and beer distressed her; at the beginning of every Half she would give me a guinea, with strict instructions to lay it out, not at the pastry-cook, but with the apple-woman. She believed that fruit is good for the bowels. And it is a fact that we seldom needed the black draught which was daily administered in the Chadwick nurseries. My sisters’ complexions were the boast of the country and we all had the bright eyes, the glow of perfect health, which is so particularly prepossessing in young people.

‘To be sure I was,’ said she. ‘And am still. Only consider the size of their noses!’

‘Yes indeed! Everything at the Park was always so flat and spiritless. They had no notion of fun, or picnics, or schemes, or anything. They were good-natured enough, not cross or peevish, but they could not enjoy themselves as we did.’

‘No! Why should it? We kept a better table. My mother was beyond comparison the best housekeeper I ever knew. And our dress was always far more tasteful. Their Sunday bonnets! I am sure, if I pitied Isabella and Charlotte once, I pitied them a hundred times for those frightful bonnets.’

‘And when did you first understand that their mother must always walk out of the room before ours?’

‘Why Miles! She never did, poor thing. I never saw her with my mother but they were walking arm in arm.’

Harriet would have come to feel it, had she not married so well. She can now walk out of the room before Mrs. Ned.

There was not a single activity in which I could not count myself superior to Ned. I could out-ride him, out-shoot him, bowl him at cricket and beat him at cards. That I rode his ponies, and shot his father’s coverts, did not occur to either of us. For Ned admired me almost as much as I admired myself. In acting, of which we were very fond, he often forgot his own part, in his wonder at me, as I gesticulated and ranted. In our studies with my father, I had always got my task before poor Ned had found his place in the book.

Ned is inseparable from all my memories of those early days. To recall them, to see him as he was then, is melancholy work, when I consider what he is now. I have so long thought of him as a sot, quite sunk, the surly husband of an odious wife, that I forget that he was not born so. He was a very good sort of boy, heavy and slow but sweet-natured, – better natured than I. He would never laugh at poor Bob Howes, the blacksmith’s son, who was a little clouded in his intellect, though a fast bowler at cricket. Bob, Ned and I were all confirmed together, along with Harry Ridding, a farmer’s son. Bob’s blundering answers, when examined in the Catechism, never failed to convulse Harry and me, but Ned pitied him and would often shield him from our mockery.

Unlucky Bob! We hauled him through his Confirmation, but when we all stayed for the Sacrament, for the first time, he disgraced himself in a most ludicrous way. I suppose that he was so much stricken with awe as to be robbed of what few wits he possessed. We had told him, again and again, what he must do, but, being once got to the altar-rail, he found it impossible to rise and go away, and remained kneeling there long after Harry, Ned and I had returned to our places. We should have observed it and dragged him along with us, but we were so much agitated ourselves that we noticed nothing. My father continued to minister to his Easter congregation, until he came to Bob again, whom he urged in a whisper to rise and go away. Bob remained kneeling, his eyes tight shut. My father, in despair, went on. But when he came to Bob a third time he lost his temper, and bellowed loudly: ROBERT HOWES! BEGONE! Whereat Bob, in absolute terror, rose and fled from the church.

I am sorry to say that I, once I had recovered from the scandalised sensations that this incident excited, was inclined to tease Bob and cry out: BEGONE! whenever I saw him. Ned would never suffer this in his presence. He once knocked me down for it, and we fought awhile, and I got the best of it, for I was the quicker with my fists, though Ned was the heavier. He would not shake hands and went off in a very ill humour, – a thing so rare in him that I was quite astonished.

‘Why don’t he take his beating like a gentleman?’ cried I to Harry Ridding, who had been a spectator of the fight.

For which I was obliged to fight him, and this time got the worst of it. But I knew that it was ungentlemanly to tease Bob and I never did so again.

This chapter does not exactly come up to its title. I had not expected to arrive at black eyes and bloody noses. If I wish to believe that my infancy was an Idyll, I had better not remember any more of it.

Aut Disce

AT THIRTEEN WE were, in any case, thrust from Eden and sent to school. I went to Winchester, by the good offices of the gentleman who had admired my mother at church. Ned went to a private academy in Hertfordshire where he was exceedingly miserable, caught the ringworm, and was partially bald for many months.

I was miserable too, but in a more glorious fashion. I had less than he to eat. I washed in cold water, exposed to all the elements. I was beaten constantly for the slowness with which my chilblained fingers buttoned prefectorial gaiters. But these tundings sounded more heroic than the occasional floggings endured by Ned; bevers was a manlier drink than beer; conduit more romantic than a bath. Poor Ned was very ready to believe that I was better off and he often wished that we might change places.

To hear him say so raised my spirits, for I had begun to understand some very disquieting truths concerning the importance of property. The young gentlemen with whom I now associated were not all of them as oblivious of their own consequence as was Ned. They were beaten, as I was. They lived hard, as I did. But, if their fathers were men of property, they thought better of themselves than they did of me. My prowess at games and up to books might advance me in College, but, in the world to which they returned in the holidays, I was nobody, because I was heir to nothing.

I can recollect the first occasion upon which this fact became apparent to me. It was towards the end of my first Long Half that a boy lamented, in my hearing, the isolated situation of his father’s estate, – not another gentleman’s house within fifteen miles! I asked, very innocently, if there was no parsonage.

I said hotly that parsons are gentlemen, but he would not have it. Some gentlemen were parsons, he allowed that, since his younger brother was to be one. But not all parsons were men of family.

Any other boy, I suppose, would have discovered all this long before. But I had grown up in Eden. I had gone to school, expecting trials, but determined to excel. It had never occurred to me that the world might have fixed my consequence in advance, without waiting to ascertain my merits. I had daily before my eyes the board in our schoolroom, which promised rewards to those who would exert themselves and a whip for those who would not.

Aut Disce … If I minded my book I believed that I should wear a mitre, and sit among the Lords Spiritual.

Aut Discede … If I chose an active life, rather than that of a scholar, it should win for me a place among the Lords Temporal.

Manet Sors Tertia Cœdi … of the whipping, reserved for those who cannot choose, I had no fear whatever.

I discussed the question with another junior, Newsome, the son of a poor curate in Yorkshire. He had entered as a quirister, but had got a place in College through the interest of a gentleman who took a benevolent pleasure in advancing boys of that sort.

Newsome laughed and told me that his father was happy to consider himself out of debt. When summoned to dine with the squire of their parish he invariably ate in the housekeeper’s room. The incumbent, who held several livings, and never came into Yorkshire, might be regarded as a gentleman. The curate, who did the duties, was not.

‘You know,’ said Newsome, ‘there is, there must be, a vast difference between a man of property and one who must work.’

‘I cannot see it,’ cried I. ‘The superior must be he who possesses the greater genius.’

I was quite certain, at that time, that I should make a fortune, but I was uneasy at the idea that these louts might not consider my father a gentleman. During the holidays I put the matter to my mother and asked her if she did not think it shocking that Mr. Newsome should dine with the housekeeper.

‘Why, as to that,’ said my mother, ‘the housekeeper may be better company for a clergyman than her mistress. She is also his parishioner, and she may be a better Christian.’

‘But should you not resent it, Ma’am, if my father were to be treated so?’

‘I should scold myself for any resentment that I might feel. A clergyman is not to be setting himself above other people, – thinking that he is too good to dine with one, and resenting a slight from another.’

My mother took an exalted view of a clergyman’s calling. She was deeply and unaffectedly religious. We were all aware of it, in spite of her reserve in such matters. We had her example before our eyes, – the regularity of her devotions, her stillness and attention at church, the Christian charity which inspired the whole of her conduct.

My father was made of other metal, though association with her had somewhat elevated his ideas. When I took my tale to him, his comment was:

‘Does he indeed? But that is up in the North, you know, and they are all fifty years at least behind the times. Their manners would make you stare, if all I hear be true. ’Tis all the fault of their roads. When I was a lad one could not get to Scotland save by pack horse, and even now they have no roads to speak of.’

‘Civility depends upon some knowledge of the world. A fellow who never gets about, but crows on his own dunghill, will contract a boorish suspicion of anyone who knows more than he does. He will conceal his sense of inferiority by an insolent manner. He will flinch and jeer at words or customs which may be unfamiliar to him. Your northerners have always been so. You have the portrait of one in Harry Hotspur, with his thick speech and his scorn for the southern lord with the “pooncet ba-ax.”’

These replies should have answered my question. Both my parents, without asserting superiority, had displayed a considerable degree of it. They were quite free from any uneasiness about their station. But it was not enough to me to know that they were superior. I desired that others should be sensible of the fact.

An excessive ambition was the outcome of all this, – an anxiety to become a person of consequence, not so much to satisfy my own vanity as to furnish proof of my parents’ worth. I could not wait for the mitre which was one day to be mine; I wished to be first among these boys who asserted, so insolently, that parsons did not count.

Believing my motives to be pure and commendable, I daily and nightly implored the Supreme Being to make me, some day, Prefect of Hall. This was the goal of all my prayers and vows, as I toasted bread and polished the shoes of my seniors.

Success depended largely, but not entirely, upon my progress in scholarship. Absolute seniority turned, as I soon perceived, upon favour of a tricky sort. Those were turbulent days. College was still rent by the vendetta between the Warden and the boys which, just before my time, had broken out into the Great Rebellion. Feeling was very bitter. Our treatment by Warden Huntingford was such that fresh revolts were ever near the surface. We had little government save that which we provided for ourselves. It was clear to me that, where the laurels of Senior Scholar were in question, Huntingford had a finger in the pie. To be thought a safe man by him was of first consequence. Yet his favour might have disadvantages; nobody who openly enjoyed it could hope for respect among the boys.

With these diverse considerations in mind I worked and played, cultivated popularity, studied the foibles of the masters, and strove to recommend myself in that quarter whence the most powerful influence was likely to be felt.

My appearance has always been of advantage to me. I was just such a fine young man as a noble visitor, received ad portas, might wish to see as Senior Scholar. The sight of me was enough to contradict all those rumours afloat, of which Huntingford was not unaware, concerning the true state of morals and discipline within our gates. My carriage was easy, my countenance open, – frank enough to please those who like to believe that boys are candid animals, yet with sufficient sensibility to satisfy a more discerning eye. The manly address with which Pronto makes so good an impression, his simplicity, his apparent modesty, were all well in train before I was sixteen years old. I looked like a good Prefect of Hall.

The pursuit of my ambition obliged me early to make those sacrifices which are necessary for one who wishes to go up in the world. Policy forced me to forgo certain friendships which I would otherwise have wished to cultivate. With quiet Newsome I was always intimate. But there were others, congenial to me in temper, with whom I could not afford to be too friendly, for they were always so near rebellion as to be dangerous companions. They might at any time break out, and get me into trouble; so I kept clear of them, though I liked and respected some of them very much, and felt, with a little regret, that they were my natural friends.

There is no doubt that we were monstrously neglected, that the masters could not keep order, and that every promise of reform was consistently broken. But we had before our eyes the fate of those who had been expelled in consequence of an effort to secure improvement. We could not know that the courage and energy which locked out the masters, and set up the Cap of Liberty upon Middle Gate, would, in some cases, win the world’s applause upon greater battle-fields. Dalbiac, for instance, was at that time a naughty boy; the hero of Salamanca was as yet undiscerned. But something of his spirit was left in College, and several were for taking measures against the unwarranted extortions laid upon us, the unjust taxes whereby the masters enriched themselves. My sympathy was with these young Hampdens, but I made it my business to restrain them as well as I could, without entirely forfeiting their respect. I think that Huntingford, perpetually in fear lest he might again be obliged to summon the magistrates, and call out the military, regarded me as a useful ally.

How far I might have gone in abetting him it is not easy to say. I was never upon explicit terms with him. He kept spies among us and we knew it, but I was not one of them. I don’t think that I got anybody into trouble; on the contrary, I kept hot heads out of trouble. I maintained a sort of order, in the absence of anyone else able to do so. In fact, I think that I was a good Prefect of Hall.

Ned, meanwhile, had come to love his school no better, although he had grown his hair again. While I drank the cup of success, and felt myself greater than I have ever since contrived to feel, poor Ned was always the same, – big-nosed, disconsolate and friendly, scuffling at my heels every day of the holidays, ready to do anything I chose, but expecting that we should do everything together. I began to grow weary of him. I no longer needed him as a boasting target. During the last summer holidays I sent him about his business once or twice. Newsome was staying with me and Ned made an unwelcome third.

At Christmas the tables were turned. Ned had a friend at the Park, a boy called Ponsonby, who struck me as singularly dull, though my sisters voted him a capital dancer. And Ponsonby rode the mare which I had hitherto regarded as my especial property, though in fact she belonged to Ned.

It had never occurred to me that I could not hunt because I had no horse. At the Parsonage we had three beasts: my father’s horse, a pony which drew my mother’s little carriage, and another pony used by anybody for errands. My father seldom hunted, but Eustace was with us, he was at home on leave, and we all planned to go out together. Eustace, who is a typical sailor and never cares how he looks, said that he would ride the errand pony. The meet was at Ribstone. After an early breakfast I set off to the Park stables to get ‘my’ mare. To my astonishment she had been taken out, ‘for young Squire Ponsonby,’ so a grinning stable-boy informed me, nor was any mount left for me. A large party from the Park was out, and all available animals taken, unless I chose to ride a broken-winded, wall-eyed beast kept for the use of Charlotte’s governess.

I returned home in a very ill humour. Ned, of course, had a perfect right to do as he chose with his own horses, but I thought that he should have sent me some message. I said so to him, at the first opportunity, without getting much in the way of an apology. Ned said he thought I should have known that he must mount his guest, and how else could he, save on the mare?

‘’Tis too far. His father is very indulgent, but the expense of sending horses down into Gloucestershire would not occur to him.’

To hear that Ponsonby had got horses, even though they could not be sent into Gloucestershire, by no means mollified me. I did not hunt during the whole of those holidays, even after Ponsonby had gone and the offer of the mare reverted to me. I did not choose to be obliged to Ned, after the way that I had thrown him off in the summer, and I did not choose to ride the errand pony. I would have tried to persuade my father to buy another animal, had I not feared my mother’s silence. When displeased, it was her custom to say less than usual. I had a notion that she thought all this pother about the mare very foolish and could not see why I should not ride the errand pony, as Eustace did.

I returned to College, for my last Long Half, in a sulky mood. The period of my greatness would soon be at an end, and I began to see that it would go for nothing, once I had quitted Winchester. Even Ned, in the world’s view, was of more consequence than I, and many pleasures at Bramfield, which I had hitherto taken for granted, were, as I now saw, only mine through Ned’s good nature. This did not suit me, since I reckoned myself superior to Ned.

Ludovic

HAVING READ OVER my memoir thus far, I ask myself how nearly these reported conversations resemble those which took place so long ago. Very little, I daresay, though certain words and phrases are firmly lodged in my memory. I recollect, as though I had seen it this morning, the little frowning pause with which my mother considered whether she would resent any slight upon my father. And I can hear most clearly the decisive tones in which she said that she should scold herself for any resentment that she might feel. I can see Ned’s look too, when I upbraided him about the mare. We were standing by the gate into the stable paddock. He had a switch in his hand and he kept switching the top rail of the gate as we talked.

I think that I have translated the sense of these conversations very well, although the chief part must now of course, be invention; and I daresay that which I recall as a single interchange may be the essence of several upon the same point. But I believe that I shall continue in this manner, for it brings back looks and accents which were often more important than words. How else can I fully recall my mother, and others now lost to me? It will not serve that I should merely epitomise their opinions; I must depict their style, as far as I can, if I am to fetch them whole out of the past.

I quitted Winchester and went to Oxford, where disparities of fortune were even more significant. It became clear to me that my first object must be to provide myself with the necessaries of life, and I applied myself diligently to my studies. I was destined for Orders and would probably have taken them, and now might be heading for that mitre, had I not made the acquaintance of Ludovic, a circumstance which profoundly affected the course of my life.

It was by the merest chance that I came to know him, for he was not in my college and sought nobody’s acquaintance. He had come to Christ Church from Eton where he had been, I suspect, as comfortable as a felon in a convict ship. He never speaks of his school days, but I know that their memory fills him with terror. Even now he will not willingly walk along Piccadilly or St. James’s, for fear of meeting a former school fellow; and when Prinney succeeds I fancy Ludovic will take to his bed rather than face the peerage, in an Abbey full of Etonians.

Strangely enough it was Ponsonby brought us together, – that same Ponsonby who rode my mare at Bramfield. He came up when I did and, meeting me during the first week, in Turl Street, he greeted me as heartily as though he had been my oldest friend. Indeed, I think that he was very glad to see me, for he had, as yet, made no acquaintance. He had never been at a public school, whereas I, at New College, was surrounded by former Wykehamists. I was able to patronise him a little and recommended a barber as coolly as though I had lived in Oxford all my life. We proceeded to take a look at those famous horses of his, which could not be brought to Bramfield, but which had come to Oxford and were stabled near the Castle Inn. The poor fellow had had nothing to do save look at them, two or three times a day, since he came up. I, very obligingly, rode one of them for him, for about a fortnight, during which time that magnetism began to operate which enables the Ponsonbys of this world to discover their rightful friends. Our intimacy gradually dissolved and he took to riding with men who also kept horses.

I meet him occasionally nowadays, and got a place for his younger brother a couple of years ago. He was infinitely obliged to me and remembered that we used to ride together at Oxford. But he has managed to forget our first encounter with Lord Chalfont.

It was towards the end of that first fortnight that we returned, after riding, to Ponsonby’s chambers in Brasenose. We crossed the quadrangle to the music of a flute which somebody was playing in the vicinity. I recognised the air, – my sister Caroline sang it – and I hummed the words as we mounted the staircase.

What though I trace each herb and flower

That drinks the morning dew?

Did I not own Jehovah’s power

How vain were all I knew!

By now we had reached Ponsonby’s door, from behind which these strains seemed to issue. Ponsonby changed colour a trifle and hesitated. In every college there are wags who divert themselves at the expense of freshmen, and I daresay he had already suffered at their hands. Those who have survived a public school are more likely to be spared. At length he plucked up his spirits and strode in. I tactfully hung back.

‘That is my name. But who are you and why do you play the flute in my chamber?’

‘I am here, Mr. Ponsonby, because your scout brought me here, assuring me that you would return very shortly. I play the flute because I have nothing else to do, you know.’

‘I brought it with me. But I should tell you my name, which is Chalfont. My father desired me to call upon you, since he is a friend of your father.’

I can tell by his tone that he does not believe a word of it. Neither do I. I take a peep through the crack of the door. Our visitor is a wizened little creature, standing perhaps at five foot four, and of no calculable age; he might be an elderly fifteen, he might be a juvenile fifty. He wears his hair long and cut straight across the brow, in imitation of Buonaparte, whom he does not otherwise resemble. His finger-nails are very black, his cravat under his ear, and a button is missing from his coat.

Ponsonby had already told me that he expected the acquaintance of Lord Chalfont and the reason for it. I daresay he had informed a good many people of his expectations. This visitor had a spurious appearance, but poor Ponsonby, unused to being foxed, knew not how to act. Straightening my face as well as I could, I went to his aid, for I had, after all, spent the morning upon his horse.

‘Lord Chalfont?’ said I hastily, joining them. ‘How do you do? How charmingly your lordship plays the flute! Pray continue! We love the flute, don’t we, Ponsonby?’

‘Oh, beyond all things. We have been pining for a little music. We must beg, we must insist, that you continue!’

He did so, nothing loath, which was as well for him, for, if he had refused, I should have dropped him out of the window. I meant to turn the tables by forcing him to play until he was completely blown. But the air which he gave us was so charming that I felt inclined to let him off short of that. I am very fond of music and he played exceedingly well.

Ponsonby meanwhile, too stupid to understand my tactics, stood gaping at us both.

‘What’s this?’ I cried, when the air was over. ‘I never heard it before. Who is the composer?’

Our visitor explained that it was from Idomeneo. I asked where it might be procured, for I had it in mind to send a copy home. My mother and sisters were always very glad to get hold of new songs.

My question brought down upon me a torrent of information. I had never heard of Mozart, but I heard of nothing else for the rest of the day. Ludovic’s dotes are like a hurricane. This one swept us all out of Brasenose and into his chambers in Peckwater, where he undertook to play us all the works of Mozart upon his pianoforte. As we walked he chattered incessantly, occasionally breaking into song and beating time with his flute. The bewildered Ponsonby trotted at our heels. I had ceased to care whom the queer little fellow might be; I was charmed by his talk and eager to hear him play again. But Ponsonby, finding himself actually in Christ Church, reading the name of Chalfont upon the staircase, and perceiving the luxury of the quarters into which we were got, comes out with a bellow:

He passes from one air to another and after a while I observe that Ponsonby has disappeared. I ask what has become of him. My host is puzzled, since he has now got it into his head that I am Ponsonby. We have got through a good deal of port wine, between songs. If I am not Ponsonby, says he, then the fellow was lying who said I would return very shortly. When I try to set him right he exclaims:

Within a very short time we are ‘Miles’ and ‘Ludovic’ to one another, but it is months before he is certain of my surname. He is liable to introduce me everywhere as Ponsonby.

I am exceedingly fond of Ludovic. I cannot follow him in all his dotes, but he has introduced me to so many pleasures, since that first evening of Mozart, that I am deeply grateful to him. His enthusiasm for all the arts is prodigious but I am not sure that his judgment is entirely to be trusted. I have yet to be persuaded, for instance, that La clemenza di Tito is Mozart’s finest work.

In the realms of poetry he is equally eccentric. Neither Scott nor Southey will do, and he has not very much to say for Byron. He insists that Wordsworth and Coleridge are superior in genius and execution, yet is hard put to it to say why. He cannot criticise; he can only dote, chirrup his favourite airs, and declaim his favourite verses, with so much absurdity of expression and gesture that the most elegant lines could scarcely come off well. I shall never forget one summer at Brailsford when he was in perpetual lamentation for a young woman called Lucy, bewailing her untimely death in verses which struck me, at that time, as sad doggerel, though I have since come to understand and share his enthusiasm. He would mutter them to himself, as he went up and down stairs, with so much woe in his countenance that I could not forbear laughing. I can see him now, pausing suddenly during a ramble across the meadows, and addressing one of his father’s pedigree cows in these terms:

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be.

But she is in her grave and OH!

The difference to ME!

It was the more ridiculous in that a genuine Lucy, in a material grave, would not have made a tittle of difference to him. The whole human race, with the exception of his valet, might have perished without his taking much notice of it. He would, I think, have thought that something must be amiss if nobody brought him his morning chocolate.

Immense wealth and noble birth may enable a man to patronise the arts, but I suspect that they impede his capacity as a critic. Nobody restrains his extravagance and nobody bids him hold his tongue. Your aristocrat is a fish out of water among the artists: they don’t talk to him as they talk to one another. And among his own kind he finds few companions, for these people, though they learn early the jargon of taste, and can cry up the masterpieces of the day, do not really take the matter seriously, nor are they taken seriously by the fellows whom they patronise. Ludovic has actually spoken to Mozart. Lord Amersham was our minister at Vienna before the wars broke out, and Ludovic, in infancy, was often taken to the Opera. During some performance the composer was brought to Lord Amersham’s box to receive the compliments of the Quality. His little lordship was, I am sure, very gracious.

In appearance Ludovic continues to be eccentric. No valet can keep him fit to be seen for any length of time. He never knows what he eats and spills food upon his clothes. I had some conversation about him once with his sister, Lady Sophia Harnish, and she asked me to tell her frankly if I thought him deranged.

‘We fear so,’ she said, ‘but there is nothing to be done. It is my father’s fault. His severity caused a brain fever from which I think poor Ludovic has never fully recovered.’

She told me that the family had spent a winter in Naples when Ludovic was eight years old. While they were there a servant, a young lad to whom he was extravagantly attached, had been discovered in the act of theft. It transpired that his thievery had been carrying on for some time and had been known to Ludovic, who held his tongue out of loyalty to his friend. Lord Amersham was very angry and thought it right that the child should witness the punishment of the criminal; in this case, to be broken upon the wheel. Ludovic was brought home insensible and lay for many weeks between life and death. Ever since that time he has been subject to fits and seizures.

‘He never speaks of it,’ said Lady Sophia. ‘But I believe he is still very unhappy about it. Have you ever heard him laugh?’

I realised, in some astonishment, that I had not. Ludovic will go off into a transport. Pictures, poetry and music will move him to ecstasy. But he is never merry.

At the end of our first year at Oxford, our intimacy had become so close that he invited me to stay at Brailsford. It is but a long day’s ride from Bramfield, and I have been staying there a good deal ever since. I was received with the greatest kindness by his family, who were delighted that he should, for once, bring home a friend who looked and behaved like a gentleman. He had made no friends at school and his former dotes, in the way of human affection, had been of a kind to disturb his friends; such attachments as he formed were all for lads much inferior to himself in station, – for grooms and ploughboys whom he admired, I suppose, because they were his opposites in everything.

My ad portas manner was of great reassurance to the Amershams. I think I really did a good deal for Ludovic. I got him to cut his hair and pare his nails. His confidence in me was so great that he would, when with me, occasionally venture into company. I could never induce him to shoot; the loud reports of the guns startled him too much. But he took to riding with me and would even hunt, so long as he was not expected to be present at the kill. I cannot think that he is fond of me; he is fond of nobody. But he has feeling for me of a sort. He admires my looks; that has always great power with him. We have many ideas and tastes in common. And my manners are gentler than those to which he has been accustomed among men of his own station, or women either.

The Amershams were grateful for this improvement and would have had me live at Brailsford, if I would have stayed. My position there has always been more comfortable than it has been in any other great house. I came there first as a benefactor, which put me upon a footing with them which Pronto has never been able to command elsewhere, among people of rank.

Ludovic came to stay with me, and, though my sisters and cousins thought him a quiz, my parents liked him. He supported my father in a notion that there might be Roman remains in Farmer Roundhay’s meadow. They grew so positive that they began to dig, or rather cause a number of little scare-the-crow boys to dig, and did indeed uncover part of a mosaic pavement. They might, I believe, have dug up a whole villa, had Roundhay not rebelled.

As for my mother, he came as near to loving her as he did anyone. While she lived he talked of her continually, though I have never heard her name upon his lips since she died. From the Sex in general he has a decided aversion, though he admires my sisters for their beauty and good humour. He is, in a way, attached to Lady Sophia, I think, nor was he indifferent to his mother, to whom he paid more attention than to anyone else. He would generally try to do what she wished, as far as it was in his power. But I don’t think that he loved her. His strongest feeling, in her case, appeared to be compassion, which puzzled me a little at first, for no woman asked for pity less than did Lady Amersham. She always seemed to be perfectly satisfied with herself and her lot. But I suspect that she interceded for him, and interceded in vain, upon that dreadful occasion in Naples and that this failure, in a singularly powerful woman, had made a deep impression upon him. He hated his father.

He once told me that no man upon earth had ever been more fortunate than I, in the possession of such parents. In fact, he grew so rhapsodical about the pleasures of life in a country parsonage that I advised him to take Orders himself and settle down in one of the many good livings of which his family had the disposal. He took my suggestion very seriously and told me that it would not do. He had been converted to atheism at an early age.

I, for my part, had begun to doubt whether a parson’s life would suit me. Life at Brailsford had brought me into company more elegant than what I had previously known. I made new acquaintance, received other invitations, and stayed in other great houses. I had the reputation for being agreeable. I could sing, dance, talk, read aloud and play charades. A young man so gifted may hold his own very well even though he is poor and of no family. He has his value. He is dependable, he can be trusted to keep his engagements and can be invited to make up a party at short notice.

I liked to stay with people who had nothing to do save amuse themselves. I liked that kind of life very well. I had no wish to be rich; I only wanted enough money to dress well, travel post, and purchase civility from the servants. Had I possessed an income of a thousand pounds per annum I don’t believe that I should have sought any profession. But I had not a hundred pounds, and it was clear that I must do something.

My new friends were all against my taking Orders. Lady Amersham talked to me seriously upon the subject. She told me that I could do very much better if I went to the Bar and afterwards into politics. A seat in Parliament could certainly be found for me, and a place would follow.

So said all my fair friends. They were determined to get me on and were able to be unaffectedly tender towards me because I could never figure as a husband, or a lover, for any of them. I might flirt with them as much as I pleased, secure that I had raised no expectations. I could read poetry to Lady Georgiana under an oak tree and later refer to it, with a conscious glance, as ‘our tree,’ without reproof. This kind of gallantry is very pleasant.

‘I quite dote upon Miles Lufton,’ these ladies would cry, ‘and it is a great shame that he should be so poor, for he is a delightful creature. We must get him a seat, we must get him a place, and help him to grow rich.’

They liked me for my interesting poverty, my sensibility, my freshness and my innocence. They were therefore in great haste to destroy in me every quality which they had praised and found delightful, to corrupt Miles and to conjure up Pronto in his stead.

I have ever demanded the impossible. I wish that elegance should not depend upon wealth. I wish that pretty women should flirt with me and flatter me, – and yet would like them to read great books all through, understand the poetry which they quote so readily, and feel a genuine pang whenever they choose to sigh.

Edmée

I BECAME, IN due course, a fellow of my College, but I delayed for some months in the choice of a profession. During that period I fell seriously in love, a circumstance which, at one time, seemed likely to settle the question for me.

Her name was Edmée de Cavignac and we had been hearing of her for many years before we saw her, since her mother was English and a distant cousin of the Chadwicks. Cousinly feeling is, or was, strong at Bramfield. When the revolution broke out in France the safety of the Cavignacs was our principal interest. Much anxiety was felt by us during the disturbances which followed, and when, at last, news reached us we were horrified. The whole family had perished, – the father by guillotine and the rest in the noyades at Nantes. We were far more impressed by this atrocity than by anything else that the French had done; that they should decapitate and drown each other was but natural, but that Chadwick blood should be shed was another matter.

A few months later the rumour reached us that one child had escaped. As the dreadful procession moved towards the bridge there had been some pause, some halt, which brought Mdme de Cavignac and her children to a standstill close beside a spectator – a man in a very long cloak. He whispered that he might save one. Immediately, by tacit consent, the other children pushed the youngest under that long cloak. The procession moved on. The other Cavignacs, tied back to back, were flung from the bridge into the river.

This story was brought to us by later émigrés, who assured us that the young lady was safe in the care of her preserver and that he would send her to her friends in England when opportunity offered. And at length she came, during the short cessation of hostilities, after the Treaty of Amiens. She brought with her sufficient proof of her identity. Her preserver had been an artist and she had grown up in his family, somewhere in Provence. To our surprise she was reported to be a very pretty, genteel girl. We had often wondered about the child under the cloak, as we called her, and pictured her living in a cave, perhaps, and eating wild berries. We had supposed everybody in France to exist amidst riots, tumults, caps of liberty and guillotines, but, in many parts of the country, life seems to have gone on much as usual.

I suppose that I may have been a little in love with her before I ever saw her. I had thought of her often and her story had made a deep impression upon me. As a boy I had imagined our own family in such a situation. I hoped, I believed, that I should have had the courage immediately to push one of my sisters under the cloak. I was sure that an instant’s reflection would have enabled me to proceed and die with my mother; I could not have wished to survive her. But might not that instant’s indecision have ruined all? Nor was I certain that I should have chosen Sukey for preservation, although she was the youngest. I wondered what marked quality in Edmée, beyond that of simple minority, had impelled the Cavignacs to so immediate an agreement. I imagined her a very lovely child, an angel whom everybody cherished. And I wondered what this angel must have felt, when bidden preserve herself while the rest went on to die. Had she understood that she would never see them again? Had she tried to resist the little loving hands which pushed her into safety? Had she been too young to understand? When she came to understand, could she ever smile again?

She spent some time with a relative of her father in Essex. Upon his death she came to pay a long visit at Bramfield. She had been there for several days when I returned for the summer vacation and I lost no time in asking for an account of her. A chorus of voices broke out, in a variety of assertions.

She played the harp. She spoke English very well. She wore no cap. She was a Protestant. She could not ride. She had very good teeth. Nobody had liked to mention Nantes, and she had said nothing upon that subject. She was afraid of dogs and of cows. Her dress was very queer, but doubtless in the latest fashion. Ned had offered to teach her to ride, but she had refused. She was very good-natured and had offered to teach everyone the harp. She was of middle height, taller than Kitty but not so tall as Caroline. Her gowns were of muslin, almost untrimmed, exposing the ankles and so scanty as to be barely decent, nor did she appear to wear many petticoats. But in conduct she was prudish; she had refused Ned’s offer because she thought it improper. Isabella might be a little jealous of her. She must be very clever; it was a wonder to hear her speak French so fast.

The chief of this information came from Harriet, Kitty and Sukey, though my father contributed the items concerning her religion and her teeth. My mother said nothing until George had, for the third time, exclaimed upon our cousin’s cleverness in speaking French so fast. She then observed that, in a Frenchwoman, this was not very astonishing, nor would she allow that the accent was good; it was not Parisian, but Provençal. I got the impression that my mother did not much care for Mlle de Cavignac. Caroline, upon whose opinion I should most have depended, was no longer with us. She had married a naval lieutenant the year before, and was living in Portsmouth. If I wished to know how the child under the cloak had really turned out, I must judge for myself.

During the following morning I walked up to call at the Park. Nobody was within, but I was told that the ladies, who had gone to visit a cottage, would be at home within half an hour. So I turned into the morning room to wait for them, and there encountered the most beautiful creature in the world.

I really think that she was, at that time, very lovely. It was a matter of colour, complexion, youth (she was but seventeen), grace – I know not what. The features, apart from that April freshness, were not good; they were sharp, – the lips too thin and the brow too low. But nobody, seeing her then, could have been so nice as to complain of such blemishes. In beauty we prize most highly that which has least permanence. If a rainbow were to be always in the sky we should seldom observe it; we pause and exclaim because we know that it is there but for an instant. And, in a woman, it is the transience of youth which heightens every charm. I have admired many beautiful women, yet am still sensible of a particular pang, half ecstasy, half anguish, when I catch a glimpse of Edmée in some young creature, – that transparent skin, the changing colour, the glancing grace and sparkle of a dewy morning.

I saw, in Paris, a painting by David which recalled her to me; a young girl drawing by a window, who turns to look at the new-comer just as she turned from her embroidery frame. By what genius is that evanescent magic caught by the painter! Long after we are all dead she will glance up from her drawing-board with a look that shall recall, to men unborn, the loved and the lost, – the transport of an hour, the regret of a lifetime.

I was better acquainted than were my sisters with the newest fashions. I was accustomed to the simple classical dress of the Consulate, but I had never seen it worn to better advantage. Her hair, a rich chestnut, was arranged with an artful negligence which would seem to owe nothing to the curling-tongs. Part of it was knotted up and part fell upon her neck in careless, childish ringlets. Her form was exquisitely rounded, – too much so for her age. Perfect symmetry at seventeen is often the precursor of excessive embonpoint at seven and twenty. But I did not know that, nor did I perceive any vacancy in her eye, for there is a certain lustre which vanishes from eyes as soon as they have anything to express. I thought her perfect, – the ideal embodiment of the child under the cloak. No wonder they should think that she, among them all, must live!

The memory of that episode was so strong upon me that I could scarcely speak or explain myself. She had started up, curtsied, and was about to quit the room before I found my voice. I detained her, however, introduced myself, and claimed kinship. Her extreme delicacy, which my sisters had called prudery, kept her hovering for awhile before she would consent to stay and talk to me. She was evidently uncertain of the propriety of sitting alone with a young man. French rules of chaperonage are, I believe, much stricter than ours, and the effect is provocative, for to suggest that a man cannot safely be left alone with a woman is to turn his mind inevitably to thoughts of what might ensue if he were; it supposes a natural licentiousness to be so near the surface that neither his honour nor her virtue should be exposed to the ordeal of propinquity. Edmée’s flutterings had something of this effect upon me, – they certainly reminded me that I was a man and she a woman, and, when I prevailed upon her to stay, I had a feeling, which was far from unpleasant, that I had triumphed over her discretion rather than her reason, – that she did not think it quite proper but had been charmed into staying.

She reseated herself at her work and was soon speaking, in her pretty English, of the kindness which she had received from my family, of my mother, and of the pleasure that it had been to her to find a friend at Bramfield who could talk French so well, and who had been in Provence.

As she talked, that picture of the bridge at Nantes again flashed upon me. I thought of her mother, parting from her for ever, without a word, without a gesture. Tears rose to my eyes and I was obliged to turn away. I believe that a strong degree of compassion is implicit in all love. We never apprehend the woes, the anguish, of the human lot more clearly than when we love, – when we know that the beloved object has suffered, will suffer, must die.

For the first time in my life I felt displeased with my mother. She had criticised Edmée’s accent. I could not understand how she had found anything to criticise in such a creature.

My cousins joined us far sooner than I could have wished, whereat my charmer became intent upon her embroidery. I must make an effort to talk connectedly, to answer questions, to listen to the local news. I wondered to see them sit there, chatting so composedly, as though no miracle had been present in the room with them. I took my leave as soon as I could, got one more glance from her, and departed, to roam the park in a kind of solemn ecstasy. I believe that I wept. It was some hours before I could calm myself sufficiently to face my fellow creatures.

My state needs no further description for it is a pretty common one. I was violently in love. Subsequent meetings did but increase my passion. I believed Edmée to be as intelligent as she was beautiful, and I don’t blame myself over much for that illusion. Her accomplishments were all novelties to us; she played the harp, she had a pleasing voice, and, though she sang but a dozen songs, they were songs which we had never heard before. Her conversation had freshness. A translated phrase would seem to be more apt and witty than its English equivalent. A comment which had been inspired merely by contact with the unfamiliar was, to me, evidence of penetrating observation.

Some weeks of that delightful summer drifted by, during which I formed no project. I was simply content to be in her company as often as possible. If she had not continually, by her manner, assured me of her preference, I might have been more uneasy.

It was my mother who put an end to this happy dream. I had always been half aware that she did not like me to spend so much time with Edmée. She had made efforts to prevent it, – had suggested that I might like to visit Ludovic, and finally tried to take me with her to Portsmouth, where Caroline was expecting her first confinement. But, as I pointed out, it was a most unseasonable time for me to be visiting my sister; how would I pass my time while she lay in and my mother attended her? I had no acquaintance in Portsmouth and my brother-in-law, Lieutenant Dawson, was at sea. I would escort my mother on her journey with all the pleasure in the world, but I would not stay there. She gave up the point, refused my escort, and, before she left, spoke to me very seriously about Edmée. She said that I ought not to pay such marked attentions to any girl unless I meant to marry her. I was startled. I did not above half like to hear my behaviour thus described.

‘I pay her no more attention than all the world does,’ I protested. ‘At the Stokehampton Ball there was a positive stampede to stand up with her. And Ned is never out of the way when I am at the Park.’

‘I have perceived as much,’ said my mother. ‘She receives a great deal of admiration. But not every young man who stampedes to dance with her is in a position to marry her. Such attentions from you may raise an expectation of more than you have intended.’

‘I’m not near so well in a position to marry as Ned or Charles Pinney, Ma’am. They are eldest sons. I have no income save my fellowship, which I must resign if I marry.’

‘It is generally supposed that you will soon take Orders and that the Amershams will give you a living.’

‘No, Miles. But you should be a little careful. Vulgar people might call you a good catch for such a girl, for any young woman in this neighbourhood. I think you are aware of that; I notice that you are always very much upon your guard with Maria Cotman.’

I blushed, for I thought nobody had noticed that affair. I had, at Christmas, begun an idle flirtation with Maria, the prettiest of the Cotman girls; then, perceiving that I should be caught if I did not look sharp, I kept out of her way.

‘I do not see why I am to be raising more expectations than Ned or Charles Pinney,’ I repeated, a little sulkily.

‘You all behave,’ said my mother, ‘in a way to turn the poor girl’s head. But their conduct is no business of ours. I want you to consider your own. Edmée has no fortune and she is alone in the world. The Chadwicks do not mean to keep her here for ever. She must go out as a governess or companion, I suppose, unless she can settle. If she supposes you serious, and you are not, it may make her very unhappy, – it might lead her to reject other offers. You should not raise her hopes, simply because you enjoy her company. That is very selfish.’

This was too much. I assured my mother that I had never been more serious in my life and that I fully intended to marry Edmée some time or other.

‘Then,’ said my mother, after she had agreed with me, several times over, that Edmée was a most beautiful girl, ‘you should make up your mind what you mean to do.’

‘Then don’t pay court to her so openly. If you go on so, with no engagement, you will put her into an awkward position and might be censured yourself as a trifler.’

‘Then we had better be engaged, Ma’am. There is nothing for it. I will ask her, and tell her that we must wait.’

I confessed that I was pretty sure of them. Edmée had given me very little uneasiness upon that score. Many admired her, but she had given me evidence of a decided preference.

My mother listened to my raptures rather sadly. I know now that she wished me not to commit myself; she was positive that Edmée could never make me happy. But happiness was, to her, inseparable from strict honour and the most scrupulous attention to the rights and feelings of others. What I said convinced her, to her great regret, that I was committed. She feared that Edmée might be in love with me, and she forced herself to remember that the girl had no mother to protect her. That dead mother was as much in her mind as in mine. She resolved to accept Edmée as a daughter and to love her, not only for my sake, but for the sake of that poor woman at Nantes.

‘I scarcely think,’ she said at last, ‘that it would be fair to bind her to a long engagement. You can assure her of your regard, so that her feelings may not suffer if you behave with more caution. She may get other offers, you know. If she does not love you, she should be free to accept them. If she does, she will wait for you. But you should not go on as you do, for you are exposing her to comment.’

What she said was so kind and rational, it expressed so much genuine concern for Edmée’s welfare, that I could scarcely disagree with it. But I was by no means pleased at having the alternatives before me so plainly stated. I wished to marry Edmée, but I was not sure that I wished to take Orders. An engagement would force me into choosing a profession and I had not yet made up my mind.

My mother set off for Portsmouth upon the following day, and very disconsolate were we without her. I tried to keep out of Edmée’s way, for I could not trust myself to act with caution when actually in her company. Some kind of explanation I must have with her, and I had settled upon nothing. But life without her was intolerable. I endured three days of it and then thought that she looked at me reproachfully when we were obliged to meet at church. That was intolerable. I spent the whole of Sunday afternoon in miserable indecision, trying to determine what I meant to say to her. In the evening, unable to endure the rack any longer, I set off to see her, having come to no conclusion.

I half hoped that I might not see her alone; that the decisive interview might be postponed and that I might be rewarded by an hour spent in the same room with her. But I met her strolling in the moonlight down the avenue. I instantly asked her to marry me, promising to take Orders and to provide a home for her as soon as possible.

She accepted me. What her words were I cannot remember; even a week later I could not be sure of them. But I am positive that I was accepted, else I would not have ventured upon caresses which were received and returned with a warmth equal to my own. I went much further, in that way, than I could have believed possible an hour earlier, further than I had ever permitted myself to imagine in my most rapturous dreams. No word or gesture of protest came from her; my own respect for her youth and innocence restrained me a little, and besides, Ned interrupted us. He came whistling down the avenue and we were forced to part. Edmée ran off and I returned home in a state of remorseful exaltation. I was ashamed of the precipitate liberties which I had taken, but uplifted by the proof they gave me that my passion was returned.

A long engagement was not to be tolerated. She must be all mine as soon as possible. I became certain that I had always meant to be a parson, and decided that I had better see Ludovic at once about a living in Devonshire which was in his father’s gift, and for which I had put in a word on behalf of my friend Newsome. I now required that favour for myself and I set off very early next morning for Brailsford, fearing that a letter might be sent to Newsome if I delayed.

I knew that Ludovic was alone at Brailsford and I was by no means sure that he would receive my news very kindly, for he was no friend to matrimony. He was, however, unexpectedly sympathetic. I told him the whole of Edmée’s history, which was of a kind to capture his interest. He was ready to believe her everything that she should be in the way of poetry and romance; if I must marry he was more content with the child under the cloak than with any other choice I might have made. No letter to Newsome had been sent, and he promised to speak to his father about the Ullacombe living.

‘I am sure,’ said he, as we sat over our wine, ‘that Mile de Cavignac must resemble your mother a little.’

I declared that she did, although I could not imagine my parents in any such scene as had taken place in the avenue twenty-four hours earlier. But to suppose passion in one’s parents is very indecorous.

‘What a good thing,’ said Ludovic, ‘that we have not yet started upon the great picture that I plan, for now we must include your Edmée in the garland.’

This was to be a portrait group of my mother and sisters which he was always proposing, though he never could decide upon the artist who should paint it. His idea was to illustrate some verses which my father had written to my mother upon their wedding anniversary, in which he said that, in that fair garland, she shone forth herself the crown: Eklampei tou stephanou stephanos.

‘If Ullacombe is to be another Bramfield,’ said he, ‘I shall forgive you for marrying.’

‘It is indeed. Everyone is happy there. Some deity protects it. And seriously, Miles, I believe that it is your destiny to be happy. I know no one else of whom I should venture to say that. Of others I should merely enquire how well they might support misery. But you will listen an hour contentedly to a nightingale; in that you are unique among my acquaintance. My mother, I know, has other ideas, but I am glad that you will not listen to her. She means to turn you into Somebody. That would never satisfy you, for you would be for ever regretting the nightingale.

We spent the evening making plans to improve the parsonage house at Ullacombe. Ludovic had never seen it, but he insisted that it must face south, with a slope upon which we could make a flower garden for Edmée.

We went to bed pretty sober and very happy. I was never, before or after, so happy as I was upon that night.

The future cheats us from afar.

Nor can we be what we recall

Nor dare to think on what we are.

I had no human fears

I was awakened in the dawn by a rattling of my bed curtains and the agitated voice of a servant. A letter had come from Bramfield by express, – a few hurried lines from Kitty. Caroline was dead. News of her death in childbirth had reached them soon after I left home. My father was gone to Portsmouth and Kitty wrote begging me to return.

I rose and dressed myself, so stunned that I was almost calm. Ludovic was fast asleep when I went to his room. I woke him. A kind of frost settled upon his thin face as he heard me. He could not speak save to urge food upon me before I set out; he cried to his man to see that I breakfasted well. No word of condolence came from him, but, as I turned from his bed, I heard him mutter: A slumber did my spirit seal. He vanished under the bedclothes, leaving only the tassel of his nightcap visible as a hint that he had nothing else to say. But I understood him. It was a line from one of his odd Lucy poems. It haunted me, the whole piece haunted me strangely, all through that long and lovely day as I rode homewards, past busy market towns and fields where the corn was carrying.

We had supposed that nothing could touch Bramfield, – that it was exempt from the toll of human woe. My consternation was still so great that I did not wholly believe in Kitty’s note. Childish hopes were mingled with premonitions of the truth; some mistake might have been made, – the first news might have been a false report. At times I thought of my mother and her anguish. Then I would see Caroline, radiant, a bride, as I handed her into the carriage at the church door and she drove away from us all: A thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years. I remembered her, always waiting for me at the turn of the lane when I came home for the holidays. Now she lay, stiff, white and shrouded, upon some bed in Portsmouth. No motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees. It could not be true. It was impossible. When I reached home other news might have come.

My father too! What a journey for him! And her young husband, at sea, already cheated by the future, believing himself a happy man. It might be months before he knew. Her grave might be growing green and she at one with these busy harvest fields: rolled round in earth’s diurnal course…. Ah Caroline! Ah my sister, my beloved sister!

They were still harvesting in the twilight as I rode into Bramfield. But here the cottagers did not turn to shout after me as my tired horse clattered past; they knew why I came and watched me in silence. Every window at the Parsonage was alight. Kitty came running from the house as I dismounted and threw herself upon my neck, and wept with relief to see me, and wept again because it made no difference. Grief, to our young hearts, was as yet an unstudied book.

Mrs. Cotman and Maria were in the house. They had been there all day and, though my sisters found them very tiresome, nobody knew how to send them away. They sat in the parlour, consuming cake and wine, while my sisters sobbed above stairs and the maids sobbed in the kitchen. Kitty did not warn me that they were there. She ran up to tell Harriet and Sukey that I was come, and I blundered into the parlour.

‘Old heads are better than young ones,’ said Mrs. Cotman, in answer, I suppose, to some look of astonishment from me. ‘Your sisters should have some older person about them.’

Maria, who had risen and curtsied slightly, said nothing. She gazed upon me with a kind of frightful curiosity. Perhaps she had never seen a man weep before.

‘The Lord giveth,’ continued Mrs. Cotman with unction, ‘and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Maria, my love, step into the kitchen and tell Betty to bring the ham, for I daresay Mr. Miles is hungry.’

I said that I wanted no ham, and was beating a retreat when Maria spoke. Casting down her eyes for a moment she murmured:

‘Had any of the Chadwicks been able to come, we should not have intruded. But since they are in such trouble themselves—’

‘What?’ cried I, turning at the door. ‘Is there trouble too at the Park?’

‘Did Kitty not tell you?’ exclaimed Maria. ‘I made sure she would have told you immediately.’

Both were fixing me now with this avid glare. The thought that Edmée must be dead burst upon me and turned me to ice. I could not speak. I could only wait for them to say it.

Their merciless eyes were before me and their intolerable whining voices rang in my ears. But it seems as though they must have talked for a long time before I was quite able to comprehend what they said.

Edmée was gone, and Ned with her. They had disappeared upon the preceding night, when I was sitting with Ludovic and planning a flower garden for Ullacombe. It was thought that they had gone to Scotland. Ned’s father had had some kind of seizure at the news and all was in confusion at the Park.

Mrs. Ned

I WILL BEGIN this chapter by mentioning an agreeable circumstance, for I have little else that is cheerful to relate. The Ullacombe living went to Newsome, who was a thousand times more deserving of it than I. He subsequently married Kitty, upon whom his heart had long been set. He sticks to it that he made up his mind when she was but fourteen and was suffered, as a great favour, to field for us at cricket. But he did not immediately make her an offer, when he got his preferment. He thought her too young. He knew that he was a favourite with her, upon my account, and feared lest inexperience might lead her to suppose her preference greater than it was.

‘I wished her to get about a little,’ he told me once, ‘and see the world, and compare me with others, before choosing. If, after meeting livelier fellows, she still preferred me, I might be sure that she knew her own heart.’

Kitty, when applied to, accepted at once and laughed at him for all this caution. She declared that she had never meant to marry anyone else, and had been sure that he would offer as soon as he could, supposing some good reason for the delay. She knew that his first care, upon getting Ullacombe, must be to assist his own family in the education of his younger brothers and sisters. It was, indeed, three years before he could afford to marry.

I like to think of Newsome and Kitty. I still call him so, although he is now my brother, because his baptismal name is Augustus, which suits him so ill that I refuse to pronounce it. I like to think of people who knew their own minds so well and who managed their affairs so rationally. They are as happy at Ullacombe as ever I intended to be, though neither of them attends much to the nightingale. And they never change. Time’s foot spares Ullacombe and will do so, I hope, for many years. Newsome is still the same tall, thin, black-haired creature with whom I climbed Hills at Winchester. Not all the cream in Devonshire will put an ounce of flesh upon him. The wig which he wears in church so transforms him that I always feel as though a stranger were preaching his sermons. He talks of discarding it; many parsons have begun to do so, I believe. I hope that I shall be present when he does, for the first sight of that black poll in the Ullacombe pulpit will, I am sure, cause an immense sensation among his flock.

I write of Newsome because I shrink from getting back to Edmée and the days which followed her disappearance from Bramfield. She gave me so much pain that my mind still falls into a kind of confusion when I remember it, although it is so long ago. I could not think. I could only suffer.

Her conduct was, for some time, a complete mystery to me. Only when I came to understand her character better, as I have since had every opportunity to do, did I begin to piece it out. She was determined to secure a husband. She would have preferred Ned or Pinney, as better matches, but had despaired of her power with either when she accepted me. To marry a parson was better than nothing.

It appears that there had been some trouble at the Park during those three days when I kept away. Ned’s admiration became more apparent to his family when I was not by to cut him out. His mother felt some alarm. They had all thought of me as her suitor and had flattered themselves that she would settle well. To welcome her as a wife for Ned was another matter. They were too kind to put her out of doors forthwith, but plans were making to despatch her to Lincolnshire as companion to an elderly lady, a distant connection. Edmée got wind of this, no doubt, and made haste to provide for herself.

Some love passages must have already taken place with Ned, and I expect her trouble lay in getting him to run off. He was a good and affectionate son; he must have balked at so open an offence to his parents. For her, nothing short of an elopement would do. She would not trust to his constancy, once she had been sent to Lincolnshire. Knowing nothing of honour herself she would not, naturally, depend upon it in other people. I think that Ned would have been true to her, for he was very much in love. He would have wished to wait until his parents came round. But she bore him down, at some time during the twenty-four hours after she had accepted me. Perhaps he caught sight of me, parting from her in the avenue; perhaps there was some jealous scene and her hopes of him revived. I know what her power is, for I have had a taste of it. She can put a man beside himself; she can excite him to any act of folly. I am sure now that she meant me to compromise myself beyond retreat. She suspected that my mother was against her, and meant to put me into such a position that the Chadwicks could insist upon my marrying her. I daresay that she had tried the same tactics with Ned, and our gentlemanly scruples must have annoyed her very much. Pinney, who had fewer, got off better than we did. He had quitted Gloucestershire suddenly, just before all this, and gone on a visit to friends in Scotland. Long afterwards, when in his cups, he once let fall something which explained this prudent flight. Somebody had spoken contemptuously of Ned, and Pinney said:

Of one thing I am certain. Ned never suspected that he had done me any injury. He was jealous. He knew that we were rivals. But he thought that he had cut me out quite fairly.

I had, fortunately, told nobody at Bramfield of my engagement. Ludovic had been my only confidant. I sent him a line telling him that I no longer wanted Ullacombe and begging him to renew his efforts on Newsome’s behalf. I did not tell him why, and he never asked. We did not refer to the episode again.

Nobody else knew. I had meant to tell the whole to my mother, but I never did. During the first weeks we were all in such grief that I felt unable to obtrude my private sorrow upon anyone. I felt indeed a little ashamed of myself for having a private sorrow. Caroline’s remains were brought back to Bramfield for burial. Her poor little infant had survived her, and he provided a certain degree of consolation for the women of the family. Our old nurseries were set up again. My mother had a child in her arms once more, – a child who pretty well monopolised her attention for a long period. When she was at leisure to listen to me, I no longer cared to speak, or to reopen a wound which had healed after a fashion.

Ned’s father suffered no lasting damage from his fit, if he ever had one. (I daresay that particular had been invented by the Cotmans.) He did not disown or disinherit his son. I have heard of parents who do such things, but I never met any. Some talk there was of never receiving Edmée at the Park, but I doubt if anyone took it seriously. Ned had a little money of his own, inherited from a great-aunt. The young couple were next heard of at Tunbridge Wells, where they took lodgings and waited for the Chadwicks to come round. By Christmas they were back at Bramfield, not forgiven perhaps, but accepted.

I dreaded the idea of meeting her again and would have avoided it if I could, but I shrank from the comment which my absence at Christmas would provoke. I feared my own feelings, lest her beauty might still have power with me, in spite of her conduct. Those feelings were not now restrained by any illusions as to her character. There were moments when I was visited by the notion of serving Ned as he had served me, though I fought against it, for I knew that he was blameless. Had I confided in my mother I should not, perhaps, have been plagued by such base thoughts. Nor need I have apprehended a temptation which was not in the least likely to arise. I must have been very green if I really entertained the idea of seducing her. I believed her, by this time, to be all that was bad, and was innocent enough to suppose that bad women are easily seduced. I still could not quite believe that her ardour had all been calculated, and that I was nothing to her; I was half persuaded that she had wanted me and only took Ned for his money.

All this agitation I might have spared myself. I saw her first at church upon Christmas day, and for some seconds could scarcely recognise her. The beauty I had so much feared was completely gone. She was pregnant, though nobody knew of it then and her shape was not altered; her complexion had suffered, – she looked pinched and sallow. She wore an ugly snuff-coloured bonnet and pelisse. My imagination must have been greatly disordered, for I had expected to see her, at Christmas, in the airy muslins of high summer. I realised, with mingled anguish and relief, that Edmée was gone for ever and that Mrs. Ned could be nothing to me.

What she was to be, as Mrs. Ned, was then unknown to us. We did not think well of her but we little guessed how much worse we were destined to think. For it is she who has put an end to all the happy, easy affection which used to subsist between the Parsonage and the Park, and which once made Bramfield such a pleasant place. She has done it slowly but very thoroughly. With my mother’s death vanished the chief of our happiness, but something of the past might have remained had Ned married a more amiable woman. Sukey’s life would have been far more tolerable. There would have been company, small parties, picnics and dancing, in which poor Sukey would have had her share. My father would have continued to receive all those little attentions to which he had become accustomed.

That woman understands nothing of the duties of a country gentleman. Her foreign education may in part account for this, but the chief cause is in a grasping cupidity, a determination to get, in every transaction, two pennyworth for a penny. This had begun to appear before she married Ned; her ‘good nature’ in offering to teach my sisters the harp had turned out to be expensive for them, since they found themselves paying for their lessons with ribbons, feathers and shoe roses, demanded with such assurance that they knew not how to refuse.

She began to make mischief at once, but her full power was not felt until the death of Ned’s father, a couple of years later. I shall not here enter into the details of her contemptible conduct towards his family. His mother and sisters removed, as soon as possible, to Clifton, to be out of her way. Tom is in the Army and Sam in the East India Company; neither of them ever comes near Bramfield. Mrs. Ned has got the Park all to herself. They entertain but little, for it is agony to her to put a dinner before a guest unless she is immediately to get something by it. Ned still hunts occasionally. To be sure they have heavy expenses, for they have now at least ten children, or it may be twelve. I forget. They have been about it for fifteen years without any noticeable intermission.

But their neglect of their neighbours is as nothing in comparison with their inhumanity to those whose comfort must depend on them, – I mean their people and their tenants. Ned is such a bad landlord that he is losing the better class of tenant. Many farms have changed hands; when a farmer dies his son prefers to move and start afresh elsewhere, if he has any enterprise. Only poor, thriftless farmers will put up with it and the land is being ruined among them.

As for the cottagers it is abominable. People of that sort get such a small wage that they must receive some kind of assistance if they are not to starve. They cannot provide for themselves in old age, or lay by in case of sickness. It is the squire’s duty to see to that; it is a matter of plain justice, for he owes it to them over and above the money that he pays them. Ned’s father, though something of an autocrat, understood that principle perfectly. He never turned old people out because they were past work. If a family were in want through sickness he relieved them. He repaired their cottages and their wells. He exerted, on their behalf, his own advantages of position and education. If a widow’s son were taken for the militia he set the matter right. Our people never felt that they had no friend to protect them. He believed, in fact, that the rich have a duty to the poor. It is a principle which is, I think, generally recognised in this country, though it may not be universally practised. I know men of property who neglect their people; I have never met one who would have maintained that he was right to do so. I never met a rake so abandoned that he did not know how a good squire ought to behave.

But for Mrs. Ned this principle does not exist. If there is an ought for her, it is that she ought to drive the hardest bargain that she can. To give anything is impossible to her. She feels no duty whatever towards the poor people here, will not allow that they have any rights, and the result is that they starve. We see no rosy children nor tidy old women in our village; hungry sullen faces scowl at us, and curses are muttered behind our backs. They drink, thieve and poach, and I don’t blame them. I often wonder if all the Cavignacs were as bad as she; if they were, then the man in the cloak was a blockhead. But I don’t believe that anybody pushed her under it. I am certain that she secured that advantageous position for herself before the rest knew what she was about.

It is curious to reflect that much misery might have been spared had she married me. I should have been very wretched, no doubt, and perhaps a child or two might have had the misfortune to call her mother. (But not ten or twelve.) Her marriage with Ned has wasted a prosperous countryside. He is clay in her hands and grown so sottish that he is, now, hardly up to managing any business for himself. I think that he drinks in order to escape from his thoughts, for he must know how low he is sunk, – despised by all his neighbours and hated by his people. Poor good-natured old Ned! He meets one now with a surly, suspicious stare, as if he expected some insult. Yet he fought me once, for laughing at Bob Howes, and Harry Ridding once called him a ‘proper gentleman.’

I am the least pitiable of Edmée’s victims. I daresay that I might have taken no lasting harm from her betrayal had I confided in my mother. Then the wound would not have healed with poison in it. She would have told me not to despise myself for loving, even though my first choice had been unlucky. She might have given me courage to love again. But that, hardening my heart in bitter silence, I was determined never to do. This decision was greatly to Pronto’s advantage. So far as the Sex is concerned, he henceforth took charge of our affairs, and he is very much the ladies’ man.

Of Pronto’s career I don’t mean to write more than I need. I will, however, mention one circumstance which will not, I trust, appear in any of his biographies, since he is a monument of discretion. Nobody supposes him an anchorite and he is as much at his ease among the poplollies, when taken into their company, as he is everywhere else; but nobody knows what provision he has made for himself in that way. Has he got a poplolly of his own, and where does he keep her? None of his particular friends are able to answer that question.

Since I know that he will one day destroy this manuscript I will here record that he did, at one time, pay the rent of a small villa in St. John’s Wood, but, finding it confoundedly expensive, gave it up. Pronto is ever careful of his money. He had been so discreet that his charmer got no chance of reverting to any of his friends and was obliged to marry a haberdasher at Edgware. But Pronto gave her all the furniture which, when sold, fetched five hundred pounds. He is not a bad fellow in his way.

Aut Discede

THE LOSS OF Edmée turned me against all thoughts of the Church as a profession. I had only half liked it before; to make a home for her had been my principal object. I now determined upon the Bar as the gate to a political career. Politics had no great attraction for me, – no course, during those despondent months, had much allurement. But I felt some satisfaction in the prospect of becoming, some day, a greater man than Ned. If I had any positive ambition, it was to come rattling in my carriage through Bramfield, a member of the Government, to dazzle everybody with my wealth and consequence, to receive obsequious invitations to dine at the Park, to patronise Ned, and to catch a sparkle of regret in Edmée’s eyes.

My father was frankly disappointed at my decision, but I knew that my mother was relieved. She did not, I daresay, think me fit to be a clergyman. Her power with me, during the years that followed, declined considerably, though I loved her as much as ever. She could give me no advice in the life that I had chosen, and I suppose that I might, though I did not then know it, have harboured a little resentment against her for her preoccupation with her grandson at a time when her son was so much in need of consolation. Her place, as guide and mentor, was largely taken by Lady Amersham of whom I think I should here give a short account, since she might almost be called Pronto’s mother.

She was a remarkable woman. I was always a little afraid of her, – why, I cannot tell, for she was uniformly kind to me. She was kind to everybody, yet I think all were afraid of her. She had no foibles, no human frailties, no tender spots. Nothing appeared to hurt or discompose her, which was as well, for her life, between such a husband and such a son, cannot have been very agreeable. I sometimes wondered whether she had not, in her youth, suffered extremely. If she had, no trace of it was visible. But she may not. She may have been born without the power to feel. Recent experience has taught me to wonder if there is much difference between a broken heart and no heart at all. In any case, she could make one feel that emotion is a trifle vulgar.

She can never have been a beauty, but had the knack of making beauty look cheap. She had a fresh healthy complexion which survived the loss of youth; in spite of corpulence and lameness she always moved with great dignity. Her nose was prominent and her mouth small. She had sharp grey eyes which observed everything, but I am not quite sure how much they saw. Everything, to her, was quite definite; she had no doubts, no hesitations, no confused ideas. That which she could not understand did not exist, so far as she was concerned, – in certain matters she was oblivious rather than ignorant.

A faint, ironic smile was her most striking trait, the smile of one who is amused rather than pleased. (It is strange that the same word must serve for her and for my mother, – they were both smiling women. But with what a difference!) She was proficient in German, French and Italian, had been everywhere, met everybody, and could talk as though she had read everything. I cannot exactly say that she had taste, or particularly praise her manners. They were adequate, – they could not be criticised, but she had a kind of grand carelessness, as though taste and polish were all very well for lesser people.

Her influence in politics was enormous. Amersham was but a cypher in her hands. She knew everything that went on and, what is more, foresaw much of what would shortly be going on. I have seldom known her to be out in her judgments unless some totally unexpected circumstance capsized the board. She could predict exactly what everybody would do for the next half-dozen moves. She was the best player at human chess that ever I saw.

This chess-board was the entire world to her. I doubt if anything else had any significance at all. With that faint smile she would watch and applaud Siddons at the play, ask what one thought of Marmion, report that Buonaparte had returned from Elba, repeat the General Confession, or deplore the frost which had ruined her tulips. She was like a person who lives at the summit of an unscaleable mountain, who sees the world with a clarity impossible to the dwellers below, – sees how all rivers must run and whither all roads go, – but sees it in a lack of detail which destroys proportion and reduces all to equal insignificance.

Of greatness I suspect that she knew nothing. Her few mistakes sprang from her complete ignorance of those qualities which inspire greatness in a man. She knew to a hair’s breadth what lesser men will do, and for this reason her acumen was at its height in the years immediately succeeding the deaths of Pitt and Fox. Two powerful and, to her, slightly incalculable pieces had been removed from the board. The survivors were well within the scope of her comprehension. She knew how both parties would flounder and scramble, when thus deprived of their leaders. Castlereagh was the only man left concerning whom she hesitated to prophesy, and even there she was generally right in anything that she ventured to say.

It was by her advice that I chose the Chancery Bar where the Amersham interest could procure me such connections as might help me forward as a conveyancer. Since I must resign my fellowship she got Arisaig to secure me the post of Warden of Slane Forest, a small sinecure upon which I was to live until I had found my feet. But her plan turned out to be much more costly than I had expected. She knew nothing of poverty, and never thought of money save in large quantities. I dined out a good deal, in the best circles, but there were days when I had nothing for breakfast. As ‘poor delightful Miles Lufton,’ a guest in some great house, I had not been put to any great expense. It was not expected or desired that I should appear as a man of fashion, bring a servant with me, or pay much attention to the cut of my coats. As Pronto I must make a greater show; I must not seem to be too poor, – I must not seem to consider money at all.

Frank poverty is hard enough, but it is not near so disgusting as covert poverty. Pronto is as little inclined as I am to remember all the shifts to which we were put, especially in the matter of clean linen and paying the laundress.

Our most painful memory is of Richmond Hill. Arisaig, Crockett, Dysart and I drove four smart girls down to the Star and Garter. I had not wished to be of the party, I had never cared for that sort of scheme, but Arisaig was insistent and I could not very well disoblige him, after what he had done for me. By some mischance I was left to pay for the whole frolic, including boats upon the river, supper and wine. That was bad enough, but, to my great mortification, I had not the necessary sum upon me to meet the bill when it was brought. Had I been a rich man I should doubtless have bellowed this news from the top of Richmond Hill. Being what I was, my first object must be to conceal my predicament. I sat in silent consternation, racking my brains for some way out of the scrape, and strongly averse from applying to my companions. Any reputation for meanness would have sat ill upon Pronto.

At this point my fair neighbour dropped her handkerchief. As we both dived to retrieve it I found a banknote pressed into my hand and heard a whisper:

I settled the bill with the greatest unconcern and called upon her next day, to pay my debt, with a dozen pairs of gloves by way of interest. She was Dysart’s mistress at that time, and a world too good for him, – a most beautiful girl with great sweetness of disposition. Her action in saving me from humiliation was just like her. It was a trick put upon me by Dysart and Crockett. I doubt if Arisaig was party to it; he is so rich that he never pays for his supper. But Crockett is a very malicious fellow. Poor Fanny had known how it would be and had brought this bank-note with her and seated herself beside me, meaning to help me out of the scrape if she could. She scolded me a little, very kindly, for keeping such company.

Sweet Fanny Osborne! Shall I ever forget you? Mine was not the only sad heart when you died. I remember Harrington coming into White’s, – it was just before we had the Corunna despatches, and we asked him if there was any news.

‘Nothing from the Peninsula,’ he said, ‘but I hear that Fanny Osborne is dead.’

I remembered Richmond Hill and walked off, unwilling to hear any discussion of her. I had not gone far when little Bowman caught me up; he was almost in tears and told me that he had been to see poor Fanny a few days before. He had heard that she was very ill and wished to know if he could do anything for her. She told him that she was dying and wanted for nothing.

‘We know that God is an indulgent parent,’ she whispered, ‘and I am sure that He will receive me kindly.’

The worst of the Richmond frolic was that I could not give the handsome wedding present of plate which I had intended for Newsome and Kitty. Repayment to Fanny took up most of the little hoard that I had laid by for it. I was forced to give Kitty a paltry locket of which I was ashamed, and the more ashamed when I reflected how the money had been spent, upon what company, with what total lack of satisfaction. Pronto, so soon as he was assured that nobody would know he had borrowed from a poplolly, was perfectly comfortable. Yet it was Miles who got the money for him, – that frank, ingenuous creature behind whom Pronto masquerades. Fanny had been distressed, as she said herself, to see an honest, pleasant young man in such difficulties.

Upon the whole we kept out of scrapes pretty well. We avoided play, abhorred the Jews, and drank very little. Though taking pains to be liked by the men, we knew that our future must depend upon the good graces of the women, with whom we preserved our reputation for interesting sensibility. We read to them, sang with them, danced, flirted and sauntered, ran errands for them, took notice of their bracelets, listened to their advice and escorted them to church. If our manner was less candid, our sentiment less unaffected, our flattery a little grosser, than it had been a year or so ago, these well-bred women did not observe the fact. Only one woman in ten million has genuine taste.

In due time we reaped our reward. We began to make money at conveyancing. We got a seat in Parliament; Amersham gave us West Malling as soon as it was available. We grew easy, were sure of clean linen, and breakfasted as often as we dined.

Nor did we fall out. Though accomplices, we were never friends enough to quarrel. Each meant, at some time, to be rid of the other. Miles was content to let Pronto take the lead to a certain point: he did not mean to put up with fellows like Crockett for ever, but he was anxious to secure an income of £3000 a year. Having got that, Pronto was to be dismissed; a pretty little property in the country was to be rented where Miles could retire and listen, in elegant surroundings, to the nightingale.

Pronto is an active, Miles a passive creature. Pronto never expects, never prepares for, those sudden bursts of feeling on the part of Miles which threaten, from time to time, a revolution. They always take him by surprise, and he is powerless before them. He takes cover when the gale blows up and only ventures forth when it is over. So far they have done him little damage. Since they invariably blow themselves out he very properly ignores them.

Gulley’s Cove

OUR COUNTRY, MEANWHILE , had been ‘saving herself by her exertions and Europe by her example.’ Very proud of themselves were Miles and Pronto, whose exertions, described above, had been of the most heroic order. We daily defied the Corsican on terra firma, drinking many loyal toasts, while our brother Eustace defied him less comfortably upon the seas. And it was in this connection that one of those sudden divergences took place between us which are to supply the subject matter for this memoir. Were it not for these upheavals, these Declarations of Independence, upon the part of Miles, his story must have ended when Pronto’s began.

When not in town I spent a good deal of time at Ullacombe, both before and after Newsome’s marriage. It is by the sea and there is good fishing. I kept a small sailing-boat in which I roamed up and down the coast, sometimes with Newsome, sometimes alone. In the course of these explorations I made some new friends of the class which is generally called humble, though no man was ever less humble than William Hawker.

I had gone out one day alone in my boat and was caught in a sudden squall of great violence, which blew me on to some rocks near a sequestered cove some twelve miles from Ullacombe. There was no great danger, but I was obliged to swim for it. When I reached the cove I got such a pounding from the surf on the beach that I was pretty well exhausted. A man came running down from a solitary cottage above the cove. He brought me up to his house, gave me dry clothes and hot rum, and set me by his fire.

When I had a little recovered my senses, and begun to look about me, I had a curious sense of ease and pleasure for which I could not exactly account. I might still have been a little dazed by my buffeting. I was almost positive that I had seen this place before, or had known of it in some way. And then it would seem to me as though it might be some old picture into which I was got. It was a common enough room, – a clean sanded kitchen and a bright fire, the points of light winking in the pewter plates ranged along the dresser. The cottager’s wife rocked a heavy cradle with her foot as she sat gazing pensively into the fire. In her blue gown, checked handkerchief and round-eared cap, she was very neat and pretty; she reminded me of some old Flemish pictures that Ludovic has.

Every article in the room had a charm for me. I liked the side of bacon and the herbs that hung from the rafters, a heap of nets and lobster-pots in a dark corner, and an old dog snoring upon the hearth.

The storm without increased in violence. Presently my host returned. He had been seeing to his stock.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you should not attempt the walk to Ullacombe by night in this wind. The path goes by the cliffs and is dangerous unless you know it well. You had best remain with us till daylight, for there is not a house nearer than Gulley’s Cross, and none where you might get a bed.’

I assented readily enough, for I was in no hurry to change my quarters. I wondered, though, where my bed might be; the cottage had but one room and I could see no bed in it. The young woman rose to prepare supper and I was quite sorry that she did so. I would have liked to sit on for ever in this dreamy repose, contemplating my old picture. But I continued to watch all that they did with great satisfaction, – as though I had arrived at some long-desired bourn, and had come to stay there for ever, after a desperate and perilous voyage.

The man lighted a tallow dip and placed it upon a shelf in the corner by the fish-nets. Seating himself there he began some task of mending or fitting. The faint light falling on his face, the strong shadows, made a picture of another sort. I thought of Rembrandt, and wished Ludovic there to agree with me. He was a fine fellow; I judged him to be between thirty and forty years old. His features were strongly marked and of a thoughtful cast, though glowing with health. His eye was bright and his manner decisive. He was very much his own master. I had been aware of that from the first; even in the few sentences that had passed between us, I had been struck by something unusual in his air.

There is about most labouring people a kind of blankness of countenance, when addressing their betters, which is not natural. It is assumed in order to keep us at a distance. They will seldom volunteer an opinion and, if questioned, will give as indirect an answer as they can. They don’t wish us to know what they think.

I once rambled beside a lake with my father, and we watched some people in a boat a little distance away across the water. We could not imagine what they were about, for they rowed continually up and down over the same spot and a great discussion was carrying on amongst them. Only a word or two occasionally reached us. Presently my father remarked that the man in the stem must be a gentleman because he had just begun a sentence with the words: I think.

‘Your labourer,’ said my father, ‘would never do so. He may state a fact, but he will never express an opinion without some preface such as: “They do say …” or “I’ve heard tell …” This is not, I believe, because he does not and cannot think; it is because nobody ever asks him what he thinks. Since Adam was driven from Paradise, to earn his living in the sweat of his brow, nobody has enquired what he thinks.’

I remembered this as I contemplated my Rembrandt, and it occurred to me that he had told me what he thought as coolly as though he owned half a county.

The woman meanwhile had put plates, knives and mugs upon the table. She brought ale, bread and cheese, and took a mess of beans and bacon from the pot over the fire. A little shyly she asked if I would be pleased to take supper with them.

We talked of the crops and of the weather. I learnt that he was both farmer and fisherman in a small way. He had a little plot of land above the cove, – a field or so in plough and some pasture; he kept cows, fowls, pigs and bees, and in addition caught lobsters. These last he kept alive in a salt-water tank that he had made, until he could take them, with his wife’s butter, cheeses, eggs and so forth, to Torhaven, a sizeable market town some way farther up the coast. He made this trip once a week, taking his boat in fine weather, and his pack-horse when it was stormy.

‘I wish,’ I said, ‘that you would go to Ullacombe, for we cannot get good lobsters there.’

He said briefly that he never did, which astonished me, because it was so much nearer than Torhaven. But a faint sigh from his wife restrained me from further questions; it struck me that he might have some particular reason for avoiding the place. I could not quite make him out. His accent, though pleasant, was unfamiliar to me. He pronounced his words very clearly; he did not slur them as country people usually do. I understood him to say that he came from Lincolnshire, but this was not so. I was a little tired and sleepy and I could not have been fully attending to what he said. I had taken notice of a pewter spoon that was set for me; it was of a very graceful design, – much less clumsy than cottage spoons usually are. He said that it had been his mother’s spoon and that it was made in Boston, where the pewter smiths are the finest in the world. I asked if he came from Boston and he replied that he was born not far from it, in Marblehead, a little town upon the coast, some way to the north of it. I had never heard of it, and never surmised that such a town is nowhere to be found in this island.

From my place at the table I could see rather more of the room, and my eye was now struck by some forty or fifty books, arranged upon deal shelves behind the settle where I had been sitting beside the fire. This was so unusual a sight, in a house of that kind, that my surprise burst out at the expense of my manners.

‘I see,’ said I, ‘that you have a very pretty little library! I suppose that you are fond of reading?’

His smiling assent left me with the impression that he thought my remark too foolish for any lengthy reply. And I felt it so myself, but knew not how to talk to him. But these books filled me with curiosity and when the meal was over I took a rush-light to that corner, in order to examine them. They were old and shabby but their titles startled me. He had a good collection of poetry and essays, some novels, and Shakespeare’s plays. The chief of his library, however, was of a philosophical or political nature. He had, among others, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, More’s Utopia, Smith’s Theory of the Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, Rousseau’s Social Contract, Hobbes’ Leviathan, all the works of Thomas Paine, and a small pamphlet, – A Summary View of the Rights of America, edited by Burke and written, I believe, by Jefferson.

I regarded them silently, not venturing upon any comment. Presently he joined me and asked if I was fond of reading aloud. I said that I was. He then asked if I would be so good as to read to them a little.

‘Mary,’ he said, ‘cannot read, though I am teaching her. I generally read aloud to her in the evenings.’

‘She likes a feeling story and we are half through Pamela. But we will leave that this evening, since we have you with us. It was in my mind to ask you to read us some poetry, for that is work at which I make but a poor hand. I should like Mary to hear a gentleman read poetry.’

‘With all the pleasure in the world,’ said I, ‘if you will tell me what poetry you prefer.’

‘No, sir. If you please, you will read what you prefer yourself, for you will read that best.’

I accordingly found a volume of Milton and read Comus to them. This poem has always been a favourite with me, but Milton is quite out, just now, and Pronto is seldom invited to read him. I think that I acquitted myself well. My hosts listened with close attention and he seemed to take great pleasure in the entertainment. As for Mary, half the words must have been unintelligible to her, but she liked it in her way, for her greatest pleasure was ever to see her husband happy. When I had done she thanked me very prettily, declaring that it was a sweet piece and that she was ‘sure the poor Lady would get off at the last.’

‘I told you,’ said he, with a laugh, ‘that she is all for a pathetic story.’

The hour was now advanced, for people of their habits. He asked me if I would choose to go to bed. When I assented he drew back some check curtains, revealing a box bed set in the wall. I had thought it a window.

‘If you will take the place over against the wall,’ said he, ‘I think you will be comfortable enough, for it is a large bed.’

I now understood that I was to share it with them. Hastily following his example I stripped to my shirt and got into the bed, whilst Mary sat with her back to us, in the chimney-corner, suckling her child. A moment later he joined me, talking of poetry with an enthusiasm almost equal to anything Ludovic can do in that line. The reading of Comus had quite thawed any natural taciturnity in his manner.

‘It is a kind of language,’ said he, ‘which is not the worse for being hard to understand. There is always meaning of a sort, and fancy feeds upon the sound of it. I may not always comprehend what your poet means, but that does not extinguish my pleasure in what he says. Whereas, in all other books, there is no enjoyment save in following the argument.’

I asked him how he got his books. He explained that he bought them of a pedlar who travelled the country and to whom he had given a list of the works which he most desired to possess. This man was able to get them cheap, at sales or at houses where a removal was expected. When he came to Gulley’s Cove he always brought one or two volumes in his pack. He had got the Human Understanding from a dairy-maid in exchange for a cap ribbon. She had been using it as a scale-weight for cheeses.

He in turn asked me if I could recommend any new works, lately out; he said that he had little opportunity to learn of new books. I mentioned some of Ludovic’s dotes, and quoted some lines from Wordsworth which struck him very much. He asked me to repeat them and had almost got them by heart when Mary clambered in beside us and blew out the rush-light. But he would not sleep until he was sure of these lines and kept mumbling: Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns … until I burst out laughing. I could not help it. Our situation, – the three of us laid there in a row, – was too much for me.

In a little while he began to laugh himself, though protesting that he could see nothing ridiculous in his proceedings. The bed shook with our laughter. For some time afterwards one or other of us would give a drowsy chuckle.

For my part, I half believed that I was dreaming. My heart was so light. I could not remember when it had last been as light as this. I wished that I should not have to go away in the morning. I wished that this had been in truth my bed, and that I might sleep in it for ever.

The American

I WAS UP, however, in the dawn, and off to Ullacombe, for I knew that Newsome would be alarmed at my absence. My new friends bade me a kind farewell. I felt that it would be indelicate to offer payment, but I promised myself that I would return to Gulley’s Cove very soon, with books for him and ribbons for Mary.

Newsome (he was still a bachelor at this time) was much relieved to see me. As I ate my breakfast I related my adventures.

‘That is the name they have for him round here. I hardly know him by sight. I believe that his name is William Hawker. He came here some ten years ago with his father, and they bought the little farm at Gulley’s Cove. But the old man is dead, is not he?’

‘There was no old man to be seen,’ I agreed. ‘Only a pretty wife, whose bed I shared last night.’

‘The American between us, as chaperon,’ continued I, ignoring his start. ‘But tell me about him, for he is a queer fellow. Why does he never come to Ullacombe?’

This was a man who owned most of the land in that part of the country. He was a Justice of the Peace and a notable tyrant.

‘Don’t tell me,’ cried I, ‘that my friend Hawker is afraid of Lockesley! I should be sorry to think it.’

‘He may not be, but others are. Since their quarrel, nobody in Ullacombe dare buy Hawker’s lobsters for fear of offending Lockesley. If Gulley’s Cove Farm were not a freehold, Lockesley would have sent him packing; it enrages the old man to have a cottager, like Hawker, defying him with impunity.’

The fact was that Hawker had voted against Lockesley’s man in an election. Lockesley had gone himself down to the hustings to see that all his people were voting as they ought, and was outraged to perceive Hawker, from whom he had bought lobsters, in the hostile enclosure. He immediately withdrew his custom from the rebel and let all his people know that they must do likewise, on pain of his severe displeasure. This was why Hawker was obliged to take his wares to Torhaven.

‘And you,’ said I to Newsome, ‘do you tolerate this? Do you buy lobsters as Lockesley bids you?’

‘Why no,’ said Newsome. ‘I am fortunately independent of Lockesley, and not, as you know, upon very good terms with him, though I do my best to avoid an absolute breach. I would buy Hawker’s lobsters, if he came this way. But it is not worth his while to come for one customer.’

All this increased my liking for Hawker. I lost no time in obtaining several new books, and within ten days I took them over with me to Gulley’s Cove. It was the first of many visits, during which I gradually learnt much of Hawker’s history.

His father had been a Devonshire man and came from Exeter. He had gone to the American Colonies in consequence of some trouble known to the Hawker family as the riot. What riot it could have been William did not know. As a child he had supposed it to be some immense, historic upheaval, comparable to the Porteous Riots. But it would seem to have been one of those little commotions which history ignores. Some injustice, real or fancied, led to violence in the streets of Exeter. Some heads were broken, some ringleaders jailed, and Richard Hawker decided to get out of the country. I do not know whether this was from fear of the law or fear of his neighbours, but I should guess the latter, for he would appear to have been the kind of man who inevitably runs counter to popular sentiment.

He settled in Massachusetts, married, and did well in the trade of a cordwainer. He had several children but none, save William, survived infancy. When the American revolt broke out, this same contrary strain drove him to assert his loyalty to a German king whom he had never seen. He would not become an American citizen and removed with his family to Canada.

My friend William deplored this decision. He could remember very little of Marblehead, where he was born, but he would speak of it with such enthusiasm that I asked him once why he did not return to it.

‘I should,’ said he, ‘if I were not happy here. I always intended to go, but could not while my father was alive. And then I married. So I said to myself that I am perfectly contented here and want for nothing. I have had enough of travelling. This is a sweet place. I don’t care to leave it.’

The Hawkers remained in Canada until William was about fifteen years of age. The mother then died, and the father took to a roving life. He seems to have been the kind of man who never settles. William roved with him; some unexplained tie kept them together, for he grew very tired of it, yet would not leave the old man. They were in the West Indies for some time. Word at length reached them of the death of a relative in Exeter and a small inheritance. They returned to England, claimed the money, and ended their wanderings by purchasing the farm at Gulley’s Cove.

In William Hawker these circumstances had combined to produce a striking character. He had his father’s independence of temper, but was a good deal more rational. Though a Briton there was little about him that might be described as English. He was, as near as may be, a man with no country at all, living on his little plot at Gulley’s Cove like Alexander Selkirk upon his desert island. His neighbours called him the American, and I fancy that there was some justice in this, – that in spirit he belonged to that country rather than to any other. He should have returned to Marblehead. Had he done so he might have got the better of a certain melancholy which was not, I think, natural to him, but which sprung from too much solitude. He had seen too much of the world. Travel is a fine thing only when we can call some place home, and think it superior to any other.

He studied philosophy in an attempt to discover some logic in human affairs, which his wanderings had shown him to be totally disordered. He had a remarkable intellect. Upon many subjects, of course, he was very ill informed, but he was perfectly aware of that, and anxious for information.

In principle he was a Republican. He thought poorly of our British institutions, and many an argument did we have upon the subject. But, upon the other hand, he had none of the enthusiasm which generally accompanies revolutionary opinions. He expected little good to come of reform. He believed that injustice and the abuse of power are ineradicable evils in human society. We might, he said, get new masters, but we must for ever expect to live under tyranny of some sort.

He regarded himself as the equal of any man, but was quite free from that peevish, levelling strain which cries: I am as good as you are. True superiority, in any direction, he readily recognised and respected. I was struck by the calm impartiality with which he spoke of his foe, Mr. Lockesley, to whom he allowed some very good qualities.

‘We might have a worse man to lead us,’ he said, ‘should Boney land upon our shores some dark night. Squire Lockesley would not run away, not he! He would never suppose that he could be beaten or that any of his people would disobey his orders to stand and fight. He is so stupid that I daresay he would give us guns and forget powder. But he would have us all there, in Boney’s path, and Boney would have to account for every one of us, beginning with Squire Lockesley, before he could get on. And then he would but get five miles, and there would be another Lockesley in his path and it would be all to do over again.’

I think that it was William’s innate sense of justice which most commanded my admiration.

Since his marriage he had been very happy. Mary, too, had had a hard and solitary life. An orphan, brought up by the Parish, she had been put to work at eight years old. When William first saw her she was servant to a farmer at Gulley’s Cross. William was the first creature who ever spoke a kind word to her. I think his love must have begun in compassion, but, by the time that I knew them, it had become a strong and tender attachment.

For her he was the whole world. She could neither read nor write, but she was by no means a stupid girl. She turned out to be an excellent manager and she had, in her own way, a strong poetic strain. She was the sweetest singer I ever heard. I suppose that music had been her only joy, – the only release that she had ever known, in the brutish slavery of her life. She had but to hear a song or ballad once to remember it; she knew scores. And there was, in the tones of her voice, a kind of wild pathos, and an attention to the sense of what she sang, which is unusual, even in the finest singers. William loved to hear her, and so did I, once we had overcome her natural shyness and got her to sing for me. For the most part she sang the rhymed psalms, or old country songs, – simple ditties of parted sweethearts, old battles, harvesting, sheep-shearing and the like, that you may hear in any ale-house or farm kitchen. But to many she imparted a strong degree of feeling, as though she gave a voice to those countless myriads who have worked, and loved, and died, leaving no memorial behind them save these strains of ‘the unlettered Muse.’

There was one in particular, a favourite with me, for which I often asked. I wish now that I had not done so, and had not learnt to remember it so well. It was a kind of dialogue between a girl and her drowned sweetheart, whose phantom appears to her in the dead of night. He complains that he cannot rest for her endless lamentations and asks when she will have done weeping for him. She replies:

When acorns fall from the mulberry tree,

And the sun rises up in the West.

It is but a country jingle, but the pathetic note in her voice always brought tears to my eyes.

This friendship flourished for several years. After Newsome’s marriage I once took Kitty with me to Gulley’s Cove, hoping that she and Mary might become friends. But this scheme did not prosper. Kitty could not understand my regard for the Hawkers. She thought them very odd sort of people and could not quite forgive them for never coming to church. For my sake she tried to be affable. As a rule she gets on very well with cottagers and has the right manner with all, but here she was totally at a loss. She praised Mary’s tidy kitchen and advised her in the management of the children, of whom the Hawkers now had two. William resented this. He was himself proud of Mary’s good housekeeping, but this way of talking was new to him, – as though Mary were clean and industrious in order to win the approbation of her betters, rather than to make her husband and children comfortable. He became a little stiff. And it did, indeed, strike me as impertinent, though I had never thought so before, when I heard our ladies commending cottage women.

Kitty, for her part, did not like to see so many books in a house of that kind. She said that, for a man of Hawker’s station, too much reading might be an evil and likely to unsettle his mind. The Bible should be enough for him. Both she and Newsome were puzzled at my attachment to Gulley’s Cove. But they were as distressed and indignant as I was, when the blow fell which annihilated that little Eden.

Mr. Justice Hyde

IT WAS UPON a night in July, and we were about to retire, when we heard a knocking at the Parsonage door. Newsome, supposing it a call from some sick parishioner, went out into the hall. A moment later we heard Mary’s voice, raised in agonised supplication. Then she was with us, her dress disordered, her cap half off her head, and herself so distracted that she hardly knew what she did, as she flung herself upon me, grasping my arm and crying:

‘Oh, Mr. Lufton! Oh sir! Save him! Oh save my William! They have taken him. They have pressed him for a sailor!’

We all exclaimed that this was impossible. A farmer could not be pressed. By whose authority had it been done?

‘He says that William’s books are wicked. They have found some wicked thing in one of William’s books.’

It took a little time to get the story clear. William had been obliged to go to Ullacombe upon some business and had there, outside the ale-house, encountered a very foul-mouthed and drunken carter, one of Lockesley’s men, with whom he had got into a fight. William was a peaceable man, but the carter had shouted out such intolerable insults, calling him a traitor and a rascally American, that he was obliged to knock the fellow down. Other Lockesleyites joined in and there was a brawl, and William was taken up for a breach of the peace. Lockesley, before whom he was brought, committed him to jail for assault and sent two constables to Gulley’s Cove, in search of treasonable books. They removed several, including The Rights of Man and the Jefferson pamphlet. Lockesley, having these laid before him, declared that William was ‘a malcontent and a notorious spreader of sedition,’ and, as such, fit to be despatched forthwith into His Majesty’s Navy, since the magistrates and sheriffs had been instructed, in every county, to make up the quota by impressing persons of that description.

We knew that any appeal to Lockesley would be useless. He had been long determined to get rid of William. I set off next morning, at daybreak, to see the Sheriff, having rashly promised Mary that I would bring William back with me.

The Sheriff received me civilly enough and may have been impressed by the great names with which I bombarded him. I did not scruple to assert that I was intimately acquainted with half the peerage and that an uproar would ensue, in both Houses, if William were not instantly released. He was obliged to agree with me that the ‘seditious’ books in question might be found upon the shelves of the most respectable citizens, that the evidence against William was of a highly questionable sort, and that farmers are exempt from impressment. But he told me that he had no power to set aside the decision of a Justice of the Peace; for that I must get a writ of habeas corpus from a Judge of the High Court.

I might have known as much, and I cursed myself for the waste of time. When Miles is agitated he acts without reflection. To ride off instantly, and threaten somebody, had been my first impulse, and I had wasted the better part of the day in getting to Tipton St. John’s, where the Sheriff lived.

Pronto, were he ever to exert himself upon another’s behalf, which is not likely, would have managed the matter more wisely. Precipitate folly is not his weakness; he never acts without reflection, is seldom agitated, nor does he make applications in the wrong quarter. He would have foreseen the unlikelihood of getting the Sheriff to engage in a controversy with Lockesley.

I had, besides, some scruples about applying for a writ; I was far from sure of my ground. I meant to plead that farmers are exempt from forced service, but I doubted whether a judge, if he knew all, would rate William entirely as a farmer. At least half of his livelihood was earned by catching lobsters. And as for the charge of sedition, – a cottager who studies philosophy is so uncommon a creature that a stranger might not believe in my account of him. My case for False Imprisonment must depend upon a number of evasions and suppressions from which I shrank, and I had hoped that intervention by the Sheriff might save me from applying to a judge.

There is, I fear, no doubt whatever that Pronto at this juncture would have been a better friend for William, were he anybody’s friend but his own. He would have gone directly to a judge, with a very good story; he would, moreover, have known where to find a judge, for he makes it his business to know that sort of thing. But I never brought Pronto with me into Devonshire. I regarded my visits to Ullacombe as a vacation from Pronto; I took no trouble to make acquaintance, and visited no houses where Newsome and Kitty were not received. I was perfectly unaware that Mr. Justice Hyde had a house near Dawlish, where he would certainly be found in July, since the Courts were in recess. Pronto would have known of it and would have dragged me off to call upon the old fellow, years before.

The Sheriff, however, gave me this information and told me, what I knew already, that I might come to the judge, for such a purpose, at any hour of the day or night. He told me also that I had little time to lose; William would probably be at Exmouth, where a number of Devonshire men, recently pressed, had been collected, and they would be hurried aboard some vessel with all possible speed. They might indeed be gone already. He advised me that my quickest route to Dawlish would be to go to Exmouth and then cross the bay by boat, since I must otherwise take a wide detour inland.

The day was so far advanced that I decided to spend the night at Exmouth and to take a boat early in the morning. I asked him for a pass, enabling me to see William, which he readily gave me. And so I set off again, refusing his kind offer of refreshment, for I was in a fever to be gone.

I could see that he wondered at my agitation and thought me a very odd sort of Member of Parliament. That I should exert myself on behalf of a friend did not surprise him; he seemed to be a just man and by no means a tyrant of the Lockesley sort. But, though I tried to be calm, I knew that my manner was that of an impulsive youth who does not know the world. I could not help it. Mary’s tears, her anguish, were ever before my eyes.

Off I set, over some upland country which lies between Tipton and the estuary of the Exe. The sun was setting as I came out upon a view of the bay, with Exmouth lying below me. Across the water lay the red cliffs of Dawlish, and I saw how quickly the trip might be made by boat. Exmouth has no harbour, but a good deal of small craft lay at anchor in the bay and among them a sloop which flew the Ensign. My heart sank when I saw this. I feared that William might already be aboard of her.

I had meant to take some food before trying to see him, but my agitation was so great that I hastened at once to the guard-house where the Sheriff had said that he might be confined. There I learnt that the pressed men had not yet been taken off. They were waiting for a party to come in from Dartmoor. The sloop was taking on supplies and would not sail until the following afternoon.

The Sheriff’s pass, my own credentials, and a guinea to the guard, got me the accommodation of a small chamber where I might talk to William undisturbed. I waited there, and presently he was brought in to me. He looked very pale, but calmer than I had expected. When he saw who it was he smiled and grasped my hand.

‘This is very good of you,’ said he. ‘How is Mary? Have you seen her? How does she bear it?’

I told him what I meant to do, but he shook his head and said that he feared I might be too late. Among his fellow captives it was believed that they would not wait beyond midnight for the Dartmoor party. They expected to be taken aboard at daybreak and to sail upon the morning tide. He thought that the sloop would go down to Plymouth, where they should be drafted to the vessels upon which they were to serve.

‘In that case,’ said I, ‘I shall go on to Plymouth, as soon as I have got my writ. Once I have that, I can demand your release.’

‘From whom could you demand it? You never saw Plymouth Roads! You might search among the vessels laying there for a week, and never find me, even supposing your writ gives you the right to board them. Nor is it to be supposed that anyone will help you. Having got their men, they will keep them if they can. No, no! Go back to Mary. You may be of the greatest service to her, but for me I am afraid that you can do nothing.’

He began to give me instructions as to the care of Mary and the children, to which I hardly attended, so resolved was I to bring him home. He seemed quite to have accepted his fate. He said that she must sell Gulley’s Farm, for that there was more work there than she could well do alone. And he gave me a letter which he had written to her, hoping that he might find some means of sending it, before he was taken off. It was a great evil, he said, that she could not read, but I must read it to her and explain it, and I must assure her that he would come back, safe and sound, when the wars were over.

‘Why, what else can I do? Mutiny, and get myself hanged? A fine thing for Mary that would be!’

‘As to that, a little tyrant sends me to fight a great one. Somebody, you know, must fight, if we are to keep Boney off. Why should I lie snug in my bed while others fight my battles for me?’

I thought that he gave me a queer look. He said nothing for a moment and then spoke of a cow in calf that was to be sold, or not sold, – I could not listen. I was thinking of Pronto’s snug bed in Dover Street. Presently I interrupted him to ask if he did not think that the guards might be bribed to accept a substitute. I had plenty of money with me; I had at least thought of that. Some poor creature, with nothing to lose, might well be willing to take William’s place for fifty guineas: I did not suppose that the guards would be so nice as to mind whom they sent on board, provided they sent the correct tally.

‘Easy enough,’ said William, ‘if any were willing to go. Two of my companions have tried it. But all the quota men of that kind are gone from these parts, long ago.’

‘Then,’ cried I, ‘if all else fails, I shall go myself. No! don’t gainsay me! I have no wife. I have no farm. Nobody would be a pin the worse if I died tomorrow. If anybody can be spared to defend our shores, I can. I am singularly useless to my friends in any other way.’

At that he became angry and desired me not to harass him by talking nonsense. What should a gentleman like myself do upon a ship of war? I should be of very little use.

‘You had best go back to your Parliament,’ he said. ‘For you know how to set about work of that kind. I am used to hardship and rough company. I know how to look out for myself. But you – you would be as helpless as a kitten.’

‘I cannot go back to Mary without you. She was sure that I could save you, and I promised her.’

This nettled me a little, for I knew that he thought me equally ignorant to have made such a promise. He had often accused me, in a good-natured way, of what he called ‘a gentleman’s ignorance.’ He would have it that British justice, which I maintained to be the best in the world, had one face for the rich and powerful, another for the poor and weak. I had thought him prejudiced by his enthusiasm for the American institutions. I could see now that Lockesley’s action shocked him less than it did me; it was no more than he expected.

‘There is very little that we cannot do if we are obliged,’ he said. ‘And besides, Mr. Lockesley will never leave me in peace at Gulley’s Farm. I should only be taken again, and if you are not there poor Mary will have no friend.’

‘There is nothing for it,’ said I, ‘but to get that writ before daybreak, if I can. It is a full moon and a fine night. I shall instantly take a boat to Dawlish. If the judge is in bed, I’ll have him out of it.’

‘In that case I shall return here and go in your stead. I shall insist upon doing so. I am not as helpless as you think. You may have to leave Gulley’s Cove, but you shall go back to Mary and I shall have kept my promise. But he shall give it! He must give it! I must lose no more time!’

At the water front I engaged a boat for the night and we set off for Dawlish. We passed close under the bows of the sloop. She lay dark upon the water; her rigging swayed gently against the clear night sky. I looked up at her and told myself that I should sail in her tomorrow, if there proved to be no other course. By tomorrow evening William would be again in Mary’s arms, and he could take her ‘home to Marblehead’ – that ‘sweet town’ of which he could remember so little, but of which he always spoke so fondly.

‘There are trees there,’ he told me once. ‘A great many trees, and the houses are of wood. ’Tis not like your fishing towns, that have no trees and are built of stone, – at Torhaven a man might be already at sea when he walks in the streets. But at Marblehead you may smell the earth and the trees. The land there smells stronger than the sea.’

My resolve filled me with exaltation, as though I had cast off fetters which had strangled me. I almost longed to sail in that ship, – to slip away from Pronto, who must be sleeping unawares in his snug bed at Dover Street, since he raised no word of protest. Hardship, exertion, rough usage, had no terrors for me. I believed myself equal to them all. William and Mary had been happy as I should never be; the best that I could do must be to preserve that felicity for them.

It was an exquisite moonlight night, with just such a gentle breeze as took us swiftly towards Dawlish. The lights of Exmouth, which had twinkled in the water, faded in the distance, but the riding light of the sloop stood out for a long time, as if beckoning to me.

We rounded Dawlish Head and came upon the town. It was growing so late that few lights were burning there. I leapt ashore, bade the people in the boat await my return, and hurried off to find an inn. A drowsy ostler saddled me a horse and gave me the direction to Millstock House, where the judge lived.

Now that I was fully resolved how to act, and certain of saving William in any event, I had grown much calmer. All did not depend upon my getting the writ, although I was determined to get it if I could. I was able to consider what I should say, and was less afraid of saying too much; I felt that I should cut a better figure with the judge than I had with the Sheriff. I rather hoped, however, that I might find him in bed and too sleepy to ask many questions.

Millstock House lay some two miles from Dawlish. I observed, as I rode up, that there were still lights in the lower rooms, as though the household had not yet retired. I hitched my horse to a ring by the door and rang the bell. Some time elapsed before it was answered, and I could hear a kind of clamour within, as though several people were shouting or singing. At length a servant appeared, none too sober, to whom I gave my card and explained my errand. When I asked to be taken to his master directly he looked doubtful, but he admitted me into the hall, where I waited while he went into an adjoining room, whence all the noise and singing came. There was plainly a drinking bout in progress. Some person was endeavouring to bawl a ballad whilst others were shouting him down. Presently the servant returned and said that he was very sorry, – his lordship was unable to attend to me.

‘But he must do so!’ I cried. ‘Here is a case of false imprisonment. The laws of this country oblige him to attend to it.’

‘That will be too late. Take me to him instantly, or it will be the worse for you! British Justice must not be denied in this manner!’

Shrugging his shoulders, he opened the dining-room door and stood aside to let me pass.

My eyes were dazzled by a blaze of candles, my ears confused by a babel of raucous voices, and my nose assailed by the nasty stench of a debauch. Five or six voices were shouting out a song, but were unable to compete in volume with another which continually bellowed for a jordan. When my vision cleared I could see a number of men sprawling about a table. One of them had risen and was staring at me.

I knew him slightly, – a very dissolute young fellow called Wortley, whom I had met once or twice with Crockett. He had but lately come into a fortune and was getting through it as fast as he could. When sober he would scarcely have had the assurance to call me Pronto, but he now turned to the others and informed them that I was his particular friend.

It was but too true. At the head of the table there was an empty chair and under it was the master of the house. Two or three of his guests were with him.

I looked to see if anybody there was sober enough to understand me, and addressed myself to an old fellow who still seemed able to pour his liquor into his glass rather than down his waistcoat. To him I explained the situation, imploring him to help me in bringing our host to his senses, but he must have been drunker than he seemed, for he answered not a word and continued to stare pensively at the candle flames, as though he had not heard. The rest meanwhile were demanding a song from me, for Wortley had informed them that I was a capital singer. I turned to the servant and assured him that his master would incur the most frightful penalties if he were not sufficiently revived to attend to me within the hour. I think that my manner really alarmed the man. He promised to do what he could, and staggered off in search of a colleague. Presently the two of them returned with a bucket of cold water, which they threw over his lordship without disturbing his slumbers in the least.

Much against my will, I was obliged to sing for the company and drink with them, for they were growing unfriendly. In a short time I was almost as drunk as they were. I did not take much, but I was exhausted with fatigue, hunger and anxiety. I lost all sense of time and do not know how often we tried, vainly, to revive the judge. We poured several gallons of water over him, hoisted him into his chair, and slapped his face; but he remained completely insensible and slipped to the floor again as soon as we let him go.

At one time all the company appeared to be ardently interested in my cause. They were as determined to rouse him as I was, and repeatedly cried that:

I must have told them some part of the story, for I can remember Wortley drinking a toast to Mary Hawker and howling a maudlin song about her:

‘Remember the vows that you made to poor Mary!

Remember the bower where you promised to be true!’

And I recollect that I was weeping and telling them that we might all be happy if we could go home to Marblehead, because there were so many trees there. I can hear my own voice, sobbing this out, in a room which had grown more silent, since most of my company had passed into oblivion. At last I must have joined them.

I wakened with a start. The candle flames were guttering out and the grey of early daylight struggled through the windows. All my companions were now upon the floor amid swimming water, wine, broken glass and vomit.

I rose and reeled round the table to take a last look at the judge, in case he might show signs of coming to. He lay upon his face. I touched his hand and thought it uncommonly cold, though, to be sure, he had been drenched in water several times. Trying to pull him over, I found him stiff. He must have been dead for some hours. I suppose he had had some kind of seizure, and had probably been dead when we set him up in the chair and slapped him.

This discovery completely sobered me. I tried to summon the servants, but neither shouts nor tugs at the bell-rope had any effect. They must have been sleeping off the night’s carouse in some distant part of the house.

The day was breaking fast and I was in haste to return to Exmouth. I thought that I might leave them to make the discovery in their own time, since there was nothing to be done for the old man save carry him from that pig-sty and shroud him decently. I could not risk any further delay. I let myself out into the cold dawn, mounted my horse, and fled from Millstock House.

The sky was turning red as I reached Dawlish. I paid for the horse and got back to my boat. My thoughts were clear and decided, and my head ached. I intended to take William’s place, though I felt none of the exultation which had sustained me the night before. I did not fear the fate before me. No quarters could be more disgusting, no company worse, than those in which I had spent the night. But I had no hope, either for myself or for any other human being. The happiness which I had pictured for my friends now appeared to be an illusion, – insubstantial as the rosy clouds of dawn which had glimmered for a short time, and then sunk into the greyness of a rainy morning. I could not feel that it signified very much whether I stayed or went. But I had made a promise and I intended to keep it.

The wind was up and the sea grew choppy as we rounded the head. A great mass of rain clouds had come down over Exmouth and obscured the wide gap of the river estuary. The little boats at anchor in the bay were bobbing up and down. I looked about me for the sloop and could not find her.

I thought that I must have been mistaken about her position. I could not believe that she was gone until I landed at Exmouth and was assured by the people there that she had sailed at dawn.

Newsome

I WAS HALF-WAY back to Ullacombe before I discovered that I had, during the night’s debauch, lost the letter which William had entrusted to me for Mary.

This circumstance gave me more pain than anything else, – a greater sense of failure. I had not even done what he asked me to do, which was far less than what I had promised. And I could not remember half his directions about the farm.

It was dark when I reached the Parsonage, for I had been obliged to sleep for a little at an inn at Exmouth, before setting out. Kitty and Newsome hurried to meet me and saw, by my face, that I brought no good news. I asked at once for Mary and learnt that she had returned to Gulley’s Cove, for her children were there and she could not leave them for long. Almost mechanically I began to mount my horse again, meaning to go to her, but Kitty prevented me.

‘You cannot go tonight,’ she said. ‘’Tis past ten o’clock. Mary won’t expect you. And you are wet to the skin.’

‘If you had good news there might be some sense in your going on. What you have to tell may keep.’

So I came in and sat by a fire that they had lighted, for they expected me to come home cold and wet. They brought me food and mulled wine. Presently I began to feel warm again. Kitty’s eyes were red, as though she had been crying, and, when she left the room to warm my bed, I asked Newsome if anything was amiss.

‘Nothing,’ said he, ‘except this business of poor Mary Hawker. She has been crying over it for two days. She went to Gulley’s Cove yesterday; I am afraid that poor woman quite believes that a Member of Parliament may do anything. Kitty tried to warn her that you might fail, but she refused to believe it.’

Kitty returned just then, and I was so much moved that I rose and kissed her. I loved my sister very much for her kind heart. She burst into fresh tears. Her disapproval of the Hawkers was all forgotten; she could think of nothing but Mary’s grief. I gave them a brief account of my efforts, suppressing the fact that I had intended to sail in William’s stead, for I knew that they would think it extravagant.

‘As to disposing of the farm,’ said Kitty, ‘we will help her with that. It will give her a little money in hand. But I think that she had better get out of this neighbourhood; there is such a strong prejudice against the Hawkers. Yet she must not go wandering off among strangers. She should be near friends who will read William’s letters to her and advise her. If we could but get her to Bramfield! My mother would care for her. In the old days the Chadwicks would have found some cottage – but one cannot hope that from Mrs. Ned. Perhaps we might get her a place as lodge-keeper at some great house. You must keep your eyes open, Miles, for something of that kind, among your grand friends.’

‘I cannot think so far ahead,’ I replied. ‘What am I to say to her tomorrow? How am I to tell her?’

‘You had better let me come with you. She will need another woman about her at such a moment.’

She, also, refuses to call Newsome Augustus. Why he should be Boo I know not, but she vows that it exactly suits him. He said that he should certainly come. I realised that, in their quiet way, they were both as indignant as I was, and as shocked by Lockesley’s vindictive abuse of power. I went to bed a little comforted, and in the morning we all rode over to Gulley’s Cove.

Where the lane turned down to the farm, Kitty dismounted. She said that she would walk to the cottage and that we were to wait for half an hour before joining her. She went off, looking very pale. I realised that she was going to tell Mary before we came and that the worst was to be spared me.

Newsome and I sat upon our horses and gazed out over the sea. I told him that I was resolved to go to Portsmouth. I thought that I might still make some effort on William’s behalf. Henry Dawson, who had been Caroline’s husband, was at Portsmouth. He was now a Captain, and had lately married again, but we still saw something of him, for Caroline’s little boy remained in my mother’s care at Bramfield. I thought that Dawson might be able to tell me if there was anything further to be done.

‘Not a bad idea,’ agreed Newsome, ‘but I should say nothing of it to Mary, if I were you. It would be cruel to raise her hopes, unless something comes of it.’

I said that I should not, and sat silent for some time, wondering if I should tell him my real reason for going to Portsmouth. I had not now very much hope of getting William out of the Navy, but I was resolved to join it myself. His look was hard to forget, – the look which he gave me when I asked him why he should fight my battles. To return to Pronto and Dover Street, after these scenes, was impossible. If such men as William were to be forced into the fighting, I should know no peace until I had joined them. That appeared to be the only kind of amends which I could offer to Mary. In all else, especially in the matter of practical help and advice, Newsome and Kitty were worth ten of me. They led useful, happy and contented lives. My own, just then, struck me as being singularly worthless.

I looked at Newsome and thought how little he had altered since I first made his acquaintance, at thirteen years old, and he had laughed when I asked if his father did not consider himself a gentleman. The men we were to become might already have been discerned. I was still wondering how to consider myself, while he had never wasted two thoughts upon such a topic.

Words were not easy in which to tell him of my intention. I knew that he would think it foolish. As a sort of preparation I gave him fuller particulars of the scene at Millstock House than I had thought fit to mention when Kitty was by. I described the drunken debauch and then asked Newsome whether he did not think the life of a bluejacket infinitely preferable to that led by some gentlemen.

‘Sailors can get as drunk as gentlemen,’ said he, ‘and can be quite as nasty. Pray don’t begin to think all sailors heroes because Hawker has been pressed.’

This was so near to the knuckle that I was silenced. His next remark, therefore, surprised me:

‘Though I have sometimes thought it a pity that you did not enter the Service yourself. I believe that it would have suited you very well.’

‘Why yes. I think an active life would have suited you. Your father thought you a scholar, but you are not, you know. You have no strong bent and you are inclined to mope. You would not do so, if you lived amidst danger and exertion.’

‘I am inclined to agree with you,’ said I. ‘And I don’t see that it is too late to change.’

I would have said more, but he remarked that half an hour was gone and that we should proceed to the cottage.

We descended the hill and tethered our animals by the gate. Before entering the house Newsome surprised me by drawing on, beneath his hose, a pair of red flannel knee-caps, explaining that he always did so, by Kitty’s desire, when visiting people in trouble. He was inclined to rheumatism in the knees and Kitty believed that this malady might be aggravated by prolonged kneeling upon cold stone floors.

‘And very often it is damp as well,’ he said. ‘Poor people will scrub their floors before the Parson comes.’

I asked if he meant to pray for Mary, feeling a lively repugnance at the thought of witnessing such a scene.

‘I don’t always wait to be asked. I must judge for myself. The solemnity of prayer often has a calming effect upon people who are distracted by grief. The mere repeating of familiar words will recall them a little to themselves. But when the sufferer is perfectly composed I try to acquaint myself with his state of mind before offering the consolations of religion.’

The cottage door was open and Kitty’s voice called to us to enter. She had flung off her bonnet and was seated upon the hearth-settle with her arm round Mary’s waist. The two little children were in a kind of pen which William had made to keep them out of the way of the fire; they stood unsteadily, holding to the rails of this pen, and watched the scene with solemn eyes.

Mary lifted her head from Kitty’s shoulder and looked at me. There was no reproach in her eyes. I had dreaded that above all things, but there was none, and I immediately wished that there had been. Resentment is a protection; it shields some part of our minds, so that we are not entirely exposed to the full blow of calamity. When we can blame this or that person, we are not feeling the worst pain. But I saw that she had forgotten my rash promises. She was aware of nothing save her loss.

She was deathly pale and she looked very much surprised, as though she beheld something which she could not completely credit. I have, since then, caught sight of this pale astonishment upon other faces. I pass it in the street continually. Despair, mute and surprised, goes quietly about its business, unrecognised, save by those who have once been obliged to scan it fully. They must see it for ever. It dogs them all their lives, with a promise of what we must expect when we meet at compt.

‘It must be of the greatest comfort to William,’ he said, ‘to know that he can be certain of your fortitude. What pangs he would suffer, if he could not rely upon you! And how glad you must be that there is this, that you can do for him.’

‘Yes indeed,’ cried Kitty. ‘’Tis in such times that a man may bless himself that he has got a good wife.’

‘And he knows,’ continued Newsome, ‘that you have good friends about you. Mr. Lufton was able to assure him of that.’

I found myself obliged to come forward, still tortured by the thought of that lost letter and the messages that I had forgotten. I said hastily that William desired her not to lose heart, for that he would come back, safe and sound, when the wars were over.

‘And when will that be, sir?’ asked Mary faintly, as though she depended upon us to tell her.

‘Very soon, I daresay,’ declared Kitty. ‘A tyrant is never permitted to live for long. And then, you know, William will write to you and you may write to him.’

‘I will write for you, – anything you bid me say. We will tell him how cleverly you are managing.’

Mary shook her head and murmured that she should not know how to manage without William, that she was very ignorant and had had no schooling. She had looked to him for everything.

‘You may overcome all trials,’ said Newsome, ‘if you look to our Heavenly Father. If you please, we will pray to Him now, that He may give you strength.’

We all knelt and he repeated the Lord’s Prayer. Kitty and Mary joined with him, but I could not. I was suffocated with a needless anxiety lest he should repeat the prayer for Those at Sea. I might have known him better; he was not likely to increase Mary’s sorrows by reminding her that William was not only gone, but gone into danger. He proceeded to the prayer for All Sorts and Conditions of Men. Then, raising Mary up, he seated himself again beside her upon the settle. I thought that she did look a little more collected. He began to talk to her in a low voice and she seemed to be attending.

Kitty and I went over to talk to the quiet little children in the pen. The younger had fallen asleep upon an old sack, but the elder was inclined to whimper. I lifted him up and sat with him on my knee, upon the old bench by the lobster-pots. He was a fine little fellow, with Mary’s eyes. He knew me well, of course, and sat there, contentedly enough, playing with my watch and seals.

I could only catch a word or two of Newsome’s discourse to Mary. He seemed to be reminding her of the forlornness of her condition before she married William, and pointing out that her lot, in spite of this temporary trial, was a thousand times better. She seemed to listen very earnestly, but I think that she took more comfort from the tone of his voice than from the sense of what he said. Newsome’s voice in the pulpit is nothing extraordinary. He is not an eloquent preacher. But in conversation it has a friendly warmth which is heartening.

It was with some stupefaction that I remembered my own proposal, five years before, to take Orders and be Vicar of Ullacombe. I had thought myself equal to tasks of this kind! I had, in fact, always supposed that I should make a better parson than Newsome, since I might have preached a better sermon.

Kitty, meanwhile, was unpacking a basket that she had brought with her. She took out a bottle of wine and a fowl, ready cut up. Moving quietly about the room, she set a meal upon the table. I was reminded of the meal that I had watched Mary set, on my first coming to the cottage, when William sat, where I sat now, mending his nets. The whole anguish of it broke over me afresh, as I thought of the haven which this little house had seemed to me then.

‘When Boo goes, you should go with him, I think,’ murmured Kitty, coming up to me. ‘I shall stay with Mary for a little and make her eat a good meal.’

‘But we have given her no advice about the farm,’ said I. ‘William thinks that she should sell it.’

‘That must wait. ’Tis too soon to speak to her of it. She cannot comprehend much more today.’

Mary suddenly sprang up in a wild burst of sobbing, whereat I heard Kitty give a low exclamation of relief. The little boy slipped from my knee and ran to his mother. Newsome and I hurried from the house.

Before we mounted our horses he methodically removed his red flannel protecters and advised me to brush the sand from my knees.

We rode away from Gulley’s Cove. I suppose that I shall never see it again. A farmer at Gulley’s Cross bought the land, but the cottage remains empty. Few would care to live in so secluded a spot. In time it will fall down and become a ruin.

‘I imagine,’ said I, as we went home, ‘that you are accustomed to such scenes?’

‘Pretty well. This was not so painful as some. Mary won’t starve, and William may some day return to her. One can offer some rational consolation. But sometimes …’

‘Why, Miles, I believe what I tell them. Without religion, I do not see how human existence is to be supported. If there is to be no hope of another, and a better world, – but I have that hope, and would wish to impart it to others.’

I had never before heard him speak so warmly of his calling. I had thought that he took Orders merely as a means of livelihood. And so, I daresay, he did; but his heart was in his work.

He and Kitty appeared to lead so placid and cheerful a life that I had imagined this distressing part of his duties to weigh but lightly upon his mind. I had always regarded myself as being the more sensitive to human suffering. I had taken it for granted that all clergymen must pray in cottages. My father, I know, did so without any very painful feelings; he was confident that he relieved poor sufferers. But, for Newsome, I could see that it had been a considerable effort, both of mind and spirit. He looked pale and tired.

‘Does it appear to you,’ I said suddenly, ‘that we are more humane? That we feel for others more than our fathers did?’

That is just like Newsome. If one propounds an idea to him he will always ask: What of it? He never muses. I replied that if we had really become a different people we should, perhaps, set about managing our affairs in a different way.

‘I suppose that the burden of suffering might be more equally distributed. The poor might be better protected against it than they are, if all were determined that it should be so.’

‘Well! That is your business, not mine. When you have made every labourer in the country as happy as your friend Chalfont I will engage a curate for all the praying that I shall have to do.’

Kitty joined us at Ullacombe late in the afternoon, bringing a good report of Mary. The cow had calved and Mary had attended the creature with signal success; she was not a little proud of herself, since William had formerly undertaken such tasks.

Both Kitty and Newsome were as cheerful as usual that evening, and I knew that they did not think the better of me for my continued low spirits. But I felt that I should not know an easy moment until I had taken some decisive step. They had done what they could, and were entitled to peace of mind. I had done nothing. I was not content to allow that William’s misfortune was of a common sort which could be deplored and forgotten. It appeared to me that the emotions which had governed me during the past three days must lead me to some definite conclusion. Our feelings must ever be our best guide. Guide to what? What of it? I hoped to find out at Portsmouth.

Captain Dawson

THESE MEMORIES STILL have power to agitate me beyond what I could have thought possible. For some days I have been unable to continue my memoir.

My health is much improved. I am, in fact, quite well enough to get back to town. But whereas, a month ago, I was eager to be off, I am now tempted to linger. I have made no effort to arrange my progress of summer visits, although it is now June.

Pronto keeps very quiet and does not plague me to be up and doing. I suspect him. He has deceived me before by this sham quiescence. Has he given up all hopes of a place? Does he mean to devote himself henceforth entirely to conveyancing?

I wish that I were certain he does not mean to turn his coat! To be sure, our Tory friends may have done as much for us as they will ever do, but what interest does Pronto hope to secure among the Whigs? He has, I know, assurance enough for anything; he is capable de tout. But I don’t see how he hopes to manage this somersault. I suppose that a few years of purification, during which we attend to our legal practice, might be the first step in such a course. It must, in any case, be several years before the other fellows have anything to offer us. Pronto is no rat, to desert a sinking ship. He transfers himself to fresh quarters in a manner which smacks of integrity and principle, while the fatal rocks are still a great way off. I believe it to be Pronto’s opinion that Reform must come within the next dozen years. He is not so sure, though, whether it will be the work of Whigs, who have got in, or of Tories, who are determined not to be thrown out. And she who might have told him is no more.

The countryside is very lovely at this time of year. I am able to ride again and I went yesterday with Sukey over to Ribstone. The dog roses are blooming and the hay as good as ever I saw it. Please God we have a good harvest! Two bad ones in succession have come hard upon our people. How the poorest make shift to live I don’t know, with bread the price it is. Wheat is double what it was two years ago. There is trouble everywhere, riots, rick-burning and the like. I suppose that it must always be so, after a long period of war, but it must be felt most sharply in such places as Bramfield where the Squire has no conscience.

Sukey was delighted with her outing. We talked much of old times and she reminded me of many little particulars which had slipped my memory. I have never felt myself so much in sympathy with her. She reminded me that our mother had her own names for many wild flowers, – not the names common among the country people here. She must have learnt them from her Irish mother. We passed by Ribstone Pit which was full of the weeds which, round here, are called dandelions. Sukey remembered that our mother called them ‘golden lads’, and the seeds, which are here sometimes called dandelion clocks, she called ‘chimney sweepers’ on account of their likeness to the brushes which are used for that purpose.

‘In a few weeks,’ said Sukey, ‘Ribstone Pit will be a sea of chimney sweepers.’

I believe that she might be a very agreeable companion, could she but escape from the penance of her life here. Some provision must be made for her when my father dies. I must see to it. She shall not be left to live with George and Anna. I have already provided for her in my Will, but I must consider a nearer future than that. I think it possible that she might do well, and be very happy, as housekeeper for me when I get to Troy Chimneys. She would be her own mistress and could do as she pleased, so long as she made me comfortable. A grateful sister is more biddable than a wife. She has a good mind and would, with a little encouragement, read more. She can talk amusingly. But she must learn to keep a good table. Upon that I should insist. Here she takes no trouble and, of course, has not the money to lay out that I should give her. I dropped a hint of this scheme to her and she was overjoyed. It is very pleasant to think that Troy Chimneys may bring unalloyed felicity to her. For me it can never be what I once hoped, but I shall feel that I have not laboured all these years in vain. My mother would have been pleased at this plan. She would have allowed that I am not entirely selfish.

We came home by Ridding’s farm and I stopped to call to Harry over the hedge. I had not seen him for a great while. He now has the farm which his father had before him, and he married, some years ago, a girl from Chipping Campden. It is a snug place; the best farm, I think, upon the Bramfield property.

I was surprised at the black look that he gave me, though black looks are now pretty common hereabouts. He came up with an unwilling air, as though angry at being taken from his hay-making. I asked him how he did and he scowled.

‘You should know. You gentry should know if there is anything amiss when a man is turned out of his farm.’

It did not occur to me, at first, that he could be speaking of himself. I thought that he was indignant on behalf of some neighbour, and asked who the man was.

‘Myself, to be sure,’ said he. ‘I am to be flung out at Midsummer. They have got the law against me.’

Our exclamations of surprise and indignation soon convinced him that we knew nothing of it and he became a little more civil. He came out into the lane and told us some of the particulars.

I think that it is the worst thing they have done yet. It is all that woman’s work, of course. She is so stupid that she cannot even understand her own advantage; she will never get another tenant so good.

It is not only the bad harvests; he has had singularly ill luck in other ways, pest among his cattle, and a flood at Ribstone brook which ruined his haystacks. And then he spent too much of his savings upon a new barn, having reason to understand that half the cost of it was to be borne by Ned. That is the work of a rascally attorney, employed by Mrs. Ned as an agent; he is continually playing tricks of that sort, I believe. Harry says that Ned told him to build the barn and said that he would pay half. Now this Simmons, this agent, denies that there was any agreement and asks for evidence!

Be that as it may, poor Harry has got behind with his rent, has forfeited his lease, and is told to quit. I am sure that he could pull round, were he given time. But Simmons wants the farm for his son, a half-witted creature who never ploughed a furrow in his life. I urged upon Harry to see an attorney of his own, – I gave him the name of one in Tewkesbury. Although he has nothing written, he has witnesses of Ned’s spoken promise about the barn. And they are cheating him in other ways; they are turning him out at such short notice that he will have to sell his stock at a disadvantage. I daresay Simmons hopes to buy it at a bargain. But he declares that attorneys are all scoundrels together and that he will get no justice among them, though they will take what is left of his money. He is a pig-headed fellow and too ignorant to look after his own interests.

Sukey, as we rode home, asked me if I could not remonstrate with Ned. But that I cannot do; I must keep out of Ned’s affairs. Remonstrance would be useless. Any person supporting Harry Ridding must join battle with Mrs. Ned. A stranger might do that, but I cannot. For me she is too dangerous an antagonist.

Yet I hate a tyrant, and I feel almost as indignant for Harry as I did for William Hawker. Ten years have not taught me to take these things in a philosophical mood. They rouse in me a passion of rebellion. But nothing comes of it. My passion blows away, like the chimney sweepers.

Every incident of my ride to Dawlish, and my return to Ullacombe, is printed for ever upon my memory. But I can recollect nothing at all of my journey to Portsmouth, – how I travelled, or when I reached it. This is not surprising; I am often astonished that I should remember as much as I do. Miles has this retentive capacity, I suppose, because so very little has happened to him in the course of thirty-six years. Pronto’s powers of recollection are of a different sort. He has facts, names and dates at his command. But he is not plagued by ‘the inward eye’ as Ludovic would call it. No scenes are printed upon his memory for ever, and that is one thing for which to be thankful! Were I burdened with Pronto’s memory–

I suppose that I must have travelled post to Portsmouth, for I intended to go on to London after. I had not seen Dawson for some years nor had I met his new wife. They had visited Bramfield, and the family had reported her to be well enough, if one did not remember that she succeeded Caroline. She was, I think, anxious to be upon good terms with us, for it was highly convenient to her that we should have the care of little Frank.

My first recollection of Portsmouth is of dining with the Dawsons at their lodgings, in a large party, and of feeling that dismay which always comes upon me when I must be Miles to some of the company and Pronto to others.

To Henry Dawson I was Miles; he had only met me at Bramfield and our closest acquaintance had been in those happy days when he was courting Caroline, before Edmée came to the Park. But with Mrs. Dawson it was otherwise. In her eyes I was an M.P. and a man of fashion. She knew all about me, knew with whom I was generally seen when in town, knew at what houses I habitually stayed. She had, so she said, quite longed to meet me, and I was forced to rattle away to her in a very Pronto-ish style which caused poor Dawson to open his eyes. She was an elegant, pretty woman, but too fine for a sailor’s wife. She could not endure Portsmouth and was uneasily aware that her husband merely commanded a sloop, while my brother Eustace was captain of a frigate.

Dawson, meanwhile, was talking eagerly to his brother officers and, when I could attend to them, I found myself unable to understand a word that they said. For the greater part of the meal they talked of some French and Dutch prizes, then refitting in the dockyards. When the ladies left us they endeavoured, out of courtesy to me, to change the subject; they brought up one which they imagined must be within my comprehension. I might be excused for not knowing the difference between a mizzen course and a driver, but the whole nation must be disturbed by the strength of the American fleet, especially by their 44-gun frigates, and must be asking how we should come off, should we ever be called upon to engage them. Some of those present insisted that we must cut down our own seventy-fours to the clamps of the quarterdeck and the forecastle, to make what they called razee frigates. Others maintained that we should build new vessels with a complete spar deck to carry thirty guns.

‘You will see,’ said Dawson, ‘that we shall have both, soon enough, if ever we have to fight the Americans.’

‘Ay and that will come!’ cried another. ‘For they hate us worse than the French do.’

But Dawson was talked down by another fellow who had served on the Endymion and declared that ships of this class could engage any frigate upon the seas. He was by far the most persuasive talker and convinced me that he must know best. I had no very great opinion of Dawson’s ability, but Dawson turned out to be right, I believe. Not long ago Eustace told me that the Leander and some other ship had been built to meet the American forty-fours.

They kept up this talk, without intermission, for about two hours. My head went round, though Pronto (who turned out to be there all the time incognito) listed some facts and figures which were useful to him later.

Dawson and his friends had been at this work for the best part of their lives and had thought of little else since they were twelve years old. As I listened, I began to perceive that I could never be of their company. ‘Exertion and danger’ might be all very well, as a cure for my moping, and I could fancy myself at sea, taking part in an action, but I could never, when on shore, take part in this kind of conversation. To be a sailor, one must think a great deal about ships.

Yet some obstinate part of my mind still enquired why William should be taken and I not. I determined to go through with the business, so soon as I could secure a private interview with Dawson, trusting that there might prove to be some way in which an active and healthy man of six and twenty might serve his country upon the high seas.

We eventually adjourned to the dockyards where a ship was building which Dawson wished me to see. She was modelled upon a Dutch vessel, the Hippomenes, captured at the surrender of Demerara, in which business he had taken part. He discoursed to me at some length upon the merits of this kind of craft. By the time that he had done I was so much exhausted that I returned to my inn and went to bed.

The morning found me still more reluctant to confide in him. It was clear to me that I was totally unfit to hold any position of responsibility upon a ship of war; it would be years before I had learnt a tenth part of all that I should know. And, if I meant to volunteer as a rating, I need take no advice from Dawson. I had merely to offer myself to the first recruiting party I might meet.

Why then, thought I, am I here? I must, to be sure, make some enquiries on William’s behalf, but how can Dawson help me to settle with my own conscience?

When setting out for Portsmouth I had intentionally rejected any rational consideration because I feared that it would work against my purpose. I knew perfectly well that mine was a lunatic scheme, – to break off so promising a career in favour of one which had never possessed the least attraction for me. But I believed that this lunacy might save me. The Christian martyrs – all, indeed, who follow conscience at the expense of self-interest – might be described as lunatics. I had entertained a confused notion that Dawson might take me in his ship and find a use for me, or might recommend me to some friend, – in what capacity I could not imagine, but I had been content to set this vagueness down to my own ignorance and to hope that Dawson might have some suggestion.

Waking in the sober light of morning, with all my wits about me, I perceived my own folly. However strong might be my determination to quit my present course of life, I had been already in it long enough to impair my fitness for any other. My capabilities had been for years entirely concentrated upon the grand task of making my fortune; they were now, to some extent, contracted and modified by the usage that they had received. I had, in Newsome’s company, perceived my unfitness for Orders. I now doubted whether I should ever make a capable sailor. The mere desire to be useful was not enough; I was deficient in those qualities which might make me of use, qualities which Dawson and his friends, though they were nothing out of the ordinary, most certainly possessed. They had a passion for their profession which kept them talking of open timber heads by the hour together. Ambitious they might be, greedy of advancement and prize money, envious of one another, but their hearts were in their ships.

I had invited Dawson to breakfast and he duly appeared. He was a good deal altered since I had known him at Bramfield, and not altered for the better. Then he had been a handsome young fellow, in whom every virtue had been aroused to the full by his strong attachment to my sister. And his prospects, at that time, had been excellent, for he had an uncle or cousin at the Admiralty whose interest might secure him early promotion.

But Caroline was no more, and he had not got on as he deserved. His great relative had died or forgot him. Five years of exposure, hardship and disappointment had extinguished all that prepossessing ardour, nor was his second marriage as happy as his first. He had been continually in action, but action of that commonplace and useful kind which continues from day to day, and which we are inclined to forget in favour of those few great engagements which are all that the world knows in the history of a war. He had been passed over, again and again, and would probably never rise higher than the command of a sloop.

In my mood of humility I respected him and felt him to be a better man than I, but I was also obliged to think him very dull.

As soon as we had set to work upon our bacon and eggs I opened the case of William, but had some difficulty in getting his full attention. He began by thinking that I hoped to secure William’s release and interrupted me with an assurance that he had no influence in that way. I would do better if I applied to Eustace. Set right upon this point he fell into a bitter complaint upon the policy which sent these malcontents into the Service. Your reading fellows, said he, were the plague of every commander and at the bottom of every mutiny. The trouble at the Nore had all been got up by rascals of that sort. Their leader had been a schoolmaster, if you please, and as rank a Jacobin as ever graced a gallows. Your reading fellows will bring politics into everything. I might see as much, if I would consider how differently matters went in what he called ‘the breeze at Spithead.’ That, he maintained, was no mutiny; it was but a little noise made by honest bluejackets who had grievances enough, God knew, but who put the blame where it belonged, – not upon their officers, but upon a Pay Office ashore, which robbed them. At any hour they would have put to sea directly, if the French had been troublesome. They would never have failed their officers.

It was some time before I could manage to convince him that William, though a reading fellow, was sensible, well disposed, and unlikely to lead a mutiny. I believed him determined to make the best of it, and I merely wished to know how I might get news of his welfare and whereabouts.

Dawson, when he had grasped this, grew more attentive. He listened to the whole story and ended by getting up quite a regard for William, saying that he wished he got more men of that temper on his sloop.

‘You may depend upon it he will do well,’ he said, ‘and may soon expect to be made a petty officer. We are short of men fit for that work, and it does no harm if they have had some schooling. As for his wife, he will be able to send her a letter from the Depot Ship, when he knows to what vessel he will be drafted.’

He also asked me to let him know these particulars, as soon as I had got them, in case it should ever be in his power to do William a good turn. He might know something of William’s commander, and be able to drop a word to him. He mentioned some vessel then at Plymouth, the name of which I forget, but it began with a B, and might have been the Boyne, the Bellona or the Blenheim, – upon which he hoped that William might serve, for she was, he said, a very good ship. It was a thousand pities that Eustace was in the Mediterranean and that I could not have gone to him, ‘for I am sure he would be very glad to get hold of such a man, and he might have some chance of doing it. As for me, if I got such an one, I daresay I should lose him. You would not credit the shabby tricks that have been played upon me.’

He wandered off into a disconsolate account of the intrigues whereby commanders got away each other’s men, complaining that brisk young fellows, with a turn for the sea, never came his way, – that he got none but cripples and jail-birds, and he might count himself lucky if he put to sea with a crew that had arms and legs. There is that side to every profession, – the jealousies, the feuds and the shabby tricks.

By the time that we had finished with Dawson’s grievances we had almost finished breakfast, and I had still said nothing of what was uppermost in my mind. I looked at his stolid red face and wondered how to begin.

‘It appears to me that these things are managed very unjustly,’ I said at last. ‘Here is a fellow like William, taken from his wife and children, and from a farm which will run to ruin without him, while gentlemen like myself are left in peace.’

‘I suppose not. But I think I should have chosen the Navy as my profession, had I been able to foresee what dangers my country was going to encounter. I don’t like to sit snug at home whilst others are forced to fight for me.’

‘Why, you don’t sit snug alone,’ he said. ‘Most Britons do the same. And some fellows must be in Parliament, I suppose, else we should have no British Constitution to defend.’

I repeated that I disliked that occupation and asked him outright if it was possible for a man of my age to join the Navy. At that he seemed thunderstruck, but was not, when he discovered that I was in earnest, as derisive as I had feared. There was, indeed, something almost apologetic in his manner, as he assured me that my plan was impossible.

‘To be of use in the Service, you know, a man must have been bred up to it.’

‘Ay, but he is a bluejacket. I speak of officers. There is no way but to start at the beginning. A man of your age could not well take service as a midshipman, amongst boys of twelve years old.’

‘Well, to be sure, you might join the Army. For that you need know nothing in particular. You have but to purchase a commission.’

I objected that the Army did not fight. Nor did it at that period. The danger upon the seas had been averted by our Navy, but the great military campaigns had not begun. We had not yet met Buonaparte upon land and some of us doubted whether we should ever do so. It is difficult now to recall our want of faith in our armies, ten years ago. When heard of, they were in retreat, and the unsuccessful expeditions to South America and Egypt had still further depressed our spirits.

‘There is to be fighting now in Portugal,’ said Dawson. ‘They say that Wellesley is sailed from Ireland with a large force and that Moore is called back from Sweden.’

‘It will be over in a week or so,’ said I. ‘Depend upon it, we shall be thrown out of Portugal. We are not sending forces sufficient to meet the French in Spain.’

‘When did we ever send forces sufficient to meet the French? Were I a soldier I should be glad enough to serve under Wellesley.’

‘I know that Castlereagh is all for him, but I believe that he is not to command.’

‘What? Is he out? We had a cutter came in here, two days ago, that was at Cork when he embarked. ’Twas said on all sides that he was to command.’

‘When he reaches Lisbon,’ said I, ‘he will find, if he does not know it already, that Dalrymple and Burrard have been put over him.’

Pronto had received this information, just before quitting Ullacombe, in a long letter of gossip from a particular friend, which told him of the recent squalls in Downing Street, and how pressure, brought by the Duke of York on behalf of Burrard, had ousted Castlereagh’s man. It is exactly like Pronto to know that a general has been deprived of his command before the poor gentleman knows of it himself.

‘Dalrymple does not intend to fight very much,’ I asserted. ‘I hear that his great scheme is to entertain the Duc d’Orléans in Lisbon, if His Highness can somehow be brought there. When they have dined together, the expedition will come home. Wellesley would not have been content with a dinner-party, I daresay, but he is out.’

‘But that is ever the way,’ he complained. ‘We must be down to hard tack and in danger of invasion before they will give command to an admiral who likes putting to sea, so one must not expect that they will appoint a general who means to fight, if they can help it. ’Tis enough to make a man turn politician! No offence intended!’

‘I advise nothing of the sort. I merely say that you might find work in the Army but, as for us, you must be bred up to it. I am very sorry, Miles. I honour you for your feelings. Indeed I do. I had not thought … ’tis very strange … I believe that I did not do you justice … the fact is, that I had an argument with my wife last night … I thought her a little too partial to you political fellows, you know, and I thought that she had slighted Captain Spaulding, who sat t’other side of her, for she would not talk to him … I might have spoken unjustly … some fellows must sit in Parliament …’

He broke off in confusion. I could well imagine the argument. His wife had slighted his friends and would talk only to Pronto; he had retorted by some contemptuous criticisms of political fellows.

He shook me warmly by the hand and took his leave. But at the door, he turned to exclaim:

‘They might take you. And it is not work to be despised, since Nelson set them properly to the guns. Before that, nobody could be sure what they might be supposed to do. There is the 4th Division at Woolwich might take you. That is an idea! They are all picked men, trained in the use of artillery. You might consider of it. But I must go now, for I have to meet a fellow.’

This time he really did go. Crestfallen though I was, I could not help laughing as soon as he had closed the door, for it was a most ridiculous end to my exalted project.

I am sure that there is no finer body of men in our services, and I don’t know why there should be a universal tendency to laugh at them. Perhaps it may be because the improvement in their condition is so recent; the old prejudice against them has not yet been overcome. Eustace had often told us of the tricks that were played upon them, aboard ship, in the old days; there is a saying among the common people: Tell that to the Marines, – implying that a Marine is so ignorant that he will believe anything.

I had been able to imagine the countenances of my family and friends at the news that I had gone for a soldier or a sailor. They might be shocked, puzzled, disappointed, even contemptuous, but they would not laugh. The news that Pronto had joined the Marines would keep half London in convulsions for nine days.

Lady Amersham

A DAY OR two later found me at Colesworth, the country seat of Lord Beaumont, who had married Ludovic’s sister.

She and I had always been good friends. In the old days at Brailsford she had been a plain, good-humoured girl, who did not expect me to flirt with her; we had often laid our heads together in schemes to restrain Ludovic and bring him into better accord with his father.

Her husband was a very pleasant fellow. There was but one thing amiss with the Beaumonts, – a fault which I have frequently observed in Good Society. They did not seem to suffer in the least from the vulgarity, the stupidity and the inferiority of the company which they were often obliged to keep. They were themselves well bred and intelligent, but they were not repelled by a Duchess who picked her nose or a Marquess who believed that Cape Horn was in Africa. They would not have dreamt of choosing their friends upon the score of compatibility; to them the Peerage was a family handbook and all in it some kind of relative with whom, however repulsive, they had closer ties than they could have with any commoner, however agreeable. It is this capacity for enduring one another which preserves our Aristocracy, I think, in an age of change. We commoners are too squeamish. If a man stinks we avoid him. They are made of sterner stuff; their noses are subservient to their sense of rank.

I had a reason for pausing at Colesworth on my way to London for I hoped that Lady Sophia might help me in the matter of Mary Hawker. Kitty’s suggestion of a post as lodge-keeper was a good one; could I find any opening of that sort at Colesworth it would ensure that Mary would have friends at hand to read William’s letters to her.

As I drove up to the house I saw Ludovic at an upper window, hanging over the sill in a limp manner resembling a punchinello at a puppet show, the effect being heightened by a tasselled white night-cap. I had not known that he was to be there, and I waved gaily. He responded with a lugubrious flap of one hand before vanishing from the window. I saw that he was in one of his black moods and the reason for it was explained by his sister as soon as she saw me.

‘Do go up to Ludovic,’ she said, ‘and tell him that he must come out of his room. He has been there for three days, and all because Lowestoft is staying here.’

‘He cannot go through life like this. Everybody has been at Eton. Make him go out riding with you.’

I went up to Ludovic and found him in his dressing-gown, although the hour was noon. His room was in its usual state of confusion, – his man busy with some travelling bags which were either packing or unpacking. This was always the way with Ludovic. He can never settle. Even at Brailsford he will daily order this or that portmanteau to be packed for him, although he has no intention of going away.

He greeted me with another melancholy flap and told the servant to ‘bring something’ for me, leaving the interpretation of this command to the poor fellow’s native wit. Nothing annoys him more than to be forced to explain his vague orders, for that obliges him to remember what time of day it is, and if one has come far, and how long it will be until dinner-time. The man departed and found out, from my postillions I suppose, that I had been travelling since an early hour, for he returned with a luncheon of cold meat and wine.

‘You need not put those things up after all,’ Ludovic told him, ‘for I shall not be going today.’

‘I had intended going to the Isle of Wight, but, since you are come I shall stay, because I must take you to see Troy Chimneys. It is a house, some ten miles from here, and it would be just the house for you.’

‘I shall call you out if you don’t want this one. It is the very thing for you, – not quite a manor-house and yet not quite a farm. I believe that it must have been built by a man who intended to be happy in it; and there are very few houses of which one could say that.’

‘I grant that. One does not imagine chimneys upon the topless towers of Ilium. But you may change the name, you know, when you have got it.’

‘Oh, I know! I know! But it is to be sold and you might not have the chance again. You may buy it and let it for a while.’

I did not argue with him, for the prospect of showing me this house had clearly dispersed his fit of melancholy. As I swallowed my meal he rapturously described this latest dote, which lay, so he said, upon the banks of the Avon, a little to the north of Laycock. Although very secluded it was not difficult of access, since three lanes met there, one of which led, in less than a quarter of a mile, to the Bath road. I might, at small expense, improve and widen this lane, so that all my friends could visit me at their ease.

I asked if we could get there and back before dinner, which I knew to be at four o’clock. This is the sort of question which always irritates him, for he hates to think of time and distance. He gave an impatient groan and tugged at the bell rope.

‘What does it signify?’ said he. ‘We may dine upon the road. Oh Mason! Tell them to have horses ready for Mr. Lufton and myself immediately, and unpack my riding-boots.’

I returned to Lady Sophia and reported that I had got Ludovic out of his chamber but that I doubted if I could produce him for dinner. She was delighted, and declared that our presence at dinner was not of the least consequence, – we might dine where we chose. I changed my dress and we set out.

We had not ridden very far before Ludovic asked if the cliffs at Dawlish were not of a very strange red colour. The question startled me. I asked what had put Dawlish into his head.

‘Somebody or other at Colesworth said that you had been there. I have forgotten who it was.’

Greatly disconcerted, I questioned him, but he declared that he could not remember. He can at times be very malicious, and is not near so unobservant as he pretends to be. I was dismayed at the thought of my Dawlish adventure getting out. To have been involved in a party of that kind would do my reputation no good; I had already heard it reported that all the worst rakes in Devonshire had been present when Hyde was found to be dead. I feared that Wortley had not been too fuddled to remember having seen me, and that the story must have been spread by him. But I could not imagine him as a guest at Colesworth.

‘Don’t pester me like this. You will find out soon enough. I have not seen any of them except Spencer Perceval.’

Pronto, roused to sudden and violent life, gave a cry of anguish. To be staying for a night in the same house with the Tory leader and to miss him at dinner was a crushing mishap. Pronto’s acquaintance with Perceval was not near so close as he could have wished; here was an opportunity for improving it clean thrown away!

‘I wonder your sister should say it was of no consequence if we were away for dinner!’ cried I.

‘It might be for me. You seem to forget that I might have reasons for seeking Perceval’s company. I should like to know him better than I do. This is just such an occasion when– ’Tis too bad of you not to tell me before! I am sure that your mother would think it very strange if I did not take the opportunity to– Can you never think of anybody but yourself? Because you don’t care to meet Lowestoft, you take me upon this wild-goose chase.’

‘And that is all the thanks I get for saving you from a dinner with Crockett!’

‘To be sure he is. And what’s more, I remember now, – it was he said you had been at Dawlish. Did you not get very drunk at Dawlish and beat a judge to death?’

‘Something of the sort, I believe. Sophy said that he had entertained them all at dinner yesterday with some great story about you at Dawlish.’

‘Before Perceval! I must return instantly and contradict it. I cannot think how Lady Sophia came not to warn me, why she sent me out of the way! She knows my position.!’

‘Your position, so far as she is concerned,’ said Ludovic, ‘is to act dry nurse to me. She does not care a fig for you otherwise.’

This was perfectly true, and I knew it. But the insolence with which he proclaimed it put me quite beside myself. I turned my horse abruptly and galloped back to Colesworth in such a rage that it was touch and go whether I did not gallop straight on to London and join the Marines. The arrogance of these people was too much. I could endure it no longer. A dry nurse! That was how they thought of me, – a kind of valuable upper servant to be rewarded with tit-bits. My career, my future, was nothing to them in comparison with their own convenience.

If I had seen Lady Sophia again, and she had scolded me for leaving Ludovic, I really think that Miles might have won the day. But nobody seemed to be about, when I reached the house. I could not go off without a word. A servant told me that her ladyship might be walking down beside the lake. So off I went, and by the lake I encountered, not Lady Sophia, but her mother, who was very composedly feeding some swans. She waved her hand in greeting, smiled her smile, and said:

‘What a talent you have for turning up at the right moment! You can carry this basket for me.’

Miles could not have done less, but he would not have done it with so much alacrity.

We fed the swans and then sauntered for a while by the lake. Lady Amersham asked if I had yet seen Perceval, and shook her head at me when I said that I had been riding with Ludovic. I excused myself by saying that Lady Sophia had bid me go.

‘Oh, Sophy does not understand these things,’ she said. ‘I am particularly anxious that you should talk to him, for we have been speaking of you, and I believe that it may soon be in his power to do something for you.’

She said nothing of Crockett and I came gradually to believe that Crockett’s great story had done me little damage. He tells too many scandalous stories; his malice defeats itself. Ludovic had been teasing me, and I had been caught, because he teases so seldom.

Lady Amersham took me more into her confidence, upon this occasion, than she had ever done before. She told me that, in her opinion, Portland might soon resign, that his health was far from good, and that another twelve months might see Perceval at the head of the Government. She expected that he would make great efforts to secure a coalition with Grey and Grenville, and that he would not easily give up hope. He would therefore reserve some very good places for their friends, should they consent to come in. These places would not, meanwhile, be given to leading Tories but would be offered to young men like myself, who would later be expected to resign them, if they could be filled by Grenvillites. She prophesied that Croker, for instance, might get astonishing advancement, and mentioned the post of First Secretary to the Admiralty, which that young man eventually did get. And she believed that something equally good might be forthcoming for me, if I put myself in the way of it.

‘You may think it is uncertain,’ she said, ‘and not worth while to take a place that must be given up. But I don’t believe that he will succeed with Grenville, and if he does not, you may stay for years. I expect this to be the kind of government which staggers on and on, while all expect it to collapse in a matter of months. My counsel to you is that any offer of this kind would be worth taking, even though some uncertainty is attached to it. I should not expect it before next year, but it might happen sooner, so it is best to be prepared.’

Prime Ministers have been known to change their minds after a saunter with Lady Amersham. By the time that we returned to the house Pronto was in an assured ascendancy, for if Croker was to get £4000 p.a., Pronto did not see why he should not do as well.

At dinner everything fell out capitally for him. Mulgrave was there, and he had also been at Portsmouth, and the conversation took a dockyards direction; Pronto was the only person present who knew anything about razée frigates, and the number of guns carried by American ships of war. Pronto created an excellent impression; only a very serious and hard-working young man could have contrived to learn so much during so short a time.

Crockett kept very quiet. He would have liked to trip Pronto up, but he had the sense to see that he must hold his fire. He, Lowestoft, and some others, did most of the drinking at one end of the table, whilst serious conversation carried on at the other. They stayed when the rest of us went, – Perceval and Mulgrave to their despatches, Beaumont and Pronto to join the ladies.

Pronto

THE WEATHER WAS warm and we all strolled out upon the terrace to admire the sunset, which was remarkably fine. We stared and exclaimed at the splendours of the western sky which cast a deep glow upon the whole front of the house, turned green lawns to bronze, and the women’s white dresses to rose.

I have said that Miles and Pronto never communicate. That is true in a sense; they have no overt debate. But there is an infernal sort of coalition between them, all the same. It is entirely to Pronto’s advantage. He draws upon Miles’ credit and does nothing in return. His experience and his address are never at his victim’s disposal, as I have shown in the case of William Hawker. But Miles’ talents are unfailingly at his command. The confounded fellow can look like Miles, and talk like Miles, and read Comus as feelingly as though £4000 a year were of no consequence whatever. He never listens to the nightingale, but he can talk as though he did.

I think that he never showed to better advantage than when he admired this sunset. All the ladies were in a romantic mood. Even Lady Amersham smilingly declared that she could not go indoors just yet, and sent for a warmer shawl. The younger members of the party, braving the dew, wandered down to the temple by the lake, where they might see the sky reflected in the water. They stayed there until the last red was gone, and the trees stood up black against a yellow afterglow. One by one, the few small stars of summer made their appearance.

‘I think,’ said Lady Lowestoft, ‘that Pr— that Mr. Lufton should sing to us.’

There was a murmur of assent. Pronto was quite ready to oblige and chose a ditty of Lyttelton’s which should give point to the conversation that had gone before, since all the company had been laughing at a young lady who complained that she could not fall in love. The air needed a harp, but he managed it pretty well without an accompaniment.

Say Myra, why is gentle love

A stranger to that mind

Which pity and esteem can move,

Which can be just and kind?

Is it because you fear to share

The ills which love molest?

The jealous doubt, the tender care,

That rack the amorous breast?

Alas! by some degree of woe

We every bliss must gain:

The heart can ne’er a transport know,

That never feels a pain.

Soft voices called applause, which was mingled with laughter, because some swans had swum up close to the shore as if to listen. Lady Sophia accused Pronto of being a second Orpheus. He was pressed for another air but, before he could oblige, there was a halloo! from Lowestoft, who had come from the house with Crockett and was standing a little way off, throwing pebbles at the swans.

An awkward silence fell. Pronto perceived that all were looking at him through the dusk; there was, after all, some hidden curiosity concerning his reputed exploits at Dawlish. He replied very calmly:

‘No, my lord. It was another song altogether took me to Dawlish. But I shall not sing it when you are here, for I am sure that you would not care for it.’

‘No, indeed,’ cried Lady Lowestoft. ‘He hates music. Go away, you horrid creature. Crockett! Pray take him away.’

Lady Sophia also told them to go away and play billiards. I heard her say in a low voice to Mrs. Madden, a Wiltshire neighbour who was dining there, that if Crockett could not be depended upon to prevent that sort of thing she did not know why one should ask him to the house. It was Crockett’s business to keep drunk men quiet, just as it was Pronto’s business to amuse the ladies. He took the hint and walked off, dragging Lowestoft with him.

Pronto hoped that the incident was over, and so it might have been had not the young lady who could not fall in love been so inexperienced in atmosphere as to ask, very innocently, what he had sung at Dawlish. This enquiry was maliciously taken up by Lady Lowestoft, who pressed to hear the ditty. He saw that he must either explain Dawlish with some credit to himself or allow it to be for ever a source of scandalous speculation.

He sighed and told them that Lord Lowestoft had touched upon a tragical little business in which he had recently been concerned. They might have heard of the death of Mr. Justice Hyde? A faint stir among them advised him that they certainly had.

‘Upon the night of his death,’ continued Pronto, ‘I called upon him in the hope of saving a friend, a humble friend, from disaster. The business was of the utmost urgency, – I dared not stay till morning. I arrived … too late! His lordship was dead … in circumstances … but I need not go into that—’

‘Oh, pray do!’ murmured Lady Lowestoft, but Pronto managed not to hear her, and hurried on:

‘Had I reached him but a few hours earlier … but I will, if you please, tell you the whole story, for I think that your kind hearts will feel for poor Mary Hawker.’

Women will not listen to a story unless another woman comes into it. By now he had aroused their curiosity. He told his tale very well indeed, heightening all that might appeal to the sensibility of his audience and omitting anything that might offend them. He softened William’s rough pride, emphasised his enthusiasm for poetry, but mentioned no books of a controversial sort. William was pictured as a loyal Briton who had fled from America rather than raise a parricidal hand against his king. That it was William’s father who made this choice, and that William himself did not approve of it, was not allowed to appear, nor was the true story told of William’s independence at the hustings.

Pronto appeared as the patron rather than the friend; he mentioned that he had stayed a night with this poor couple, but not that he had shared their bed.

Concerning Mary he was more frank. She needed no touching up. She made a most pathetic figure as she was, with her sweet singing, her forlorn situation, and her devotion to William. As he told of his frantic efforts on her behalf, and his hopeless return to Gulley’s Cove, many of his fair listeners were in tears.

‘’Tis as good as a novel!’ said Lady Lowestoft, wiping her eyes. ‘But pray, what is to become of her?’

Pronto begged their help in deciding this, and got a thoughtful enquiry from Mrs. Madden as to Mary’s proficiency in the care of poultry.

‘For she might,’ said that lady, ‘be the very person for me. I have some rare pheasants, and I have recently begun to breed Muscovy ducks. I am looking for a reliable woman to take care of them. There is a cottage she could have, behind the old stables.’

Pronto was able sincerely to praise Mary’s skill in poultry-keeping. He declared that nothing could be more delightful, so long as Mary should have some friend at hand who would read William’s letters to her.

‘Oh I will do that,’ promised Mrs. Madden, ‘and write hers for her too, if she likes. It will be amusing to hear what such people have to say to one another.’

This happy sequel to a pathetic story was felt by all to furnish a good end to the evening. If tears had been excited, benevolence now dried them. But Lady Lowestoft was insatiable:

‘You have not yet sung your Dawlish song,’ she complained. ‘I suppose it was one of Mary’s songs. Do pray sing it!’

Pronto objected that it was but a country ballad and not fit for such company. They bore him down, assured him that he should not be criticised, and reminded him that he was not in a drawing-room. A country ballad would just suit the occasion. He was most reluctant and would have sung another, could he have thought of a likely substitute, but his wits deserted him and he was at last obliged to give them the air which Mary had sung so often at Gulley’s Cove. Darkness had quite fallen and he was glad of it. If they smiled he would not see their faces. Never has he exerted himself more than he did then, hoping to sing so sweetly that the faults of the song might be forgotten. In a room, among lights, it would have been impossible; under the faint stars, beside the lake, he had more confidence.

Cold blows the gale at Hallowtide,

And coldly falls the rain.

The dead man rises from the flood

And seeks his earthly love again,

And seeks his love again.

Well met, well met, my sweetheart true!

How come you to my bed?

Your sighs have drawn me from the sea,

Your tears have raised me from the dead,

Have raised me from the dead.

Oh bitter is the salt, salt sea,

And chill the ocean deep;

But salter yet those endless tears

That nightly break upon my sleep,

That break upon my sleep.

And if my tears can bring you back,

They shall for ever flow!

They hold me from the Port of Heaven,

Where fain, and fain am I to go,

Where fain am I to go.

Ah weep no more, no more for me!

When shall you let me rest?

When acorns fall from the mulberry tree,

And the sun rises up in the West, my dear,

And the sun rises up in the West.

In the little silence which fell, as the last notes died away over the water, Pronto knew that he had escaped ridicule. After a short pause he began to talk briskly in favour of such old songs, saying that they should not be despised, for that Shakespeare often used them. A lively discussion arose as the party returned to the house; all were glad to pass from feelings which had threatened to be too painful. Other old ditties were remembered, heard from nurses and people of that sort; it was agreed that they should be collected and set down before they were quite forgotten.

On his way upstairs, Pronto looked into Ludovic’s room to see how matters stood there and to make his peace, if possible, for having deserted before dinner. Ludovic was playing upon his flute. At the sight of Pronto he waved it angrily, exclaiming:

‘Don’t come here, if you please! I wish never to see you again. You will find a letter from me upon your dressing-table.’

The letter proved to be long and abusive. It accused Pronto of caring for nobody but himself, of using all his friends as stepping-stones, and of hiding the ‘pangs of conscious truth’ which, in his case, could not even be described as struggling.

Ludovic occasionally flew into these rages but they never lasted for long. Pronto went to bed in high good humour. He believed that he had impressed Perceval. He had got himself out of the Dawlish scrape. He had foiled Crockett’s malice. He had pleased Lady Amersham. And he had found an excellent opening for Mary Hawker, – had done more for her in a quarter of an hour than Miles had done in a fortnight. Best of all, he had so much outraged Miles, in doing it, that the wretched fellow was not likely to give any trouble again for a great while.

I recall that evening as a more innocent and respectable man might recall a sensual debauch. Mingled with our shame and remorse, at the memory of any excess, there is always the sense that some other person has been guilty of it.

Troy Chimneys

BUT I HAD bad dreams that night. I should not now remember this if I had not, next day, recounted one of them to Ludovic, who made me write it down. He is as superstitious upon this subject as any housemaid. He writes down all his own, and any which his friends may mention, believing that some great secret is hidden in our dreams.

I dreamt that I was in the House and about to speak upon some very important subject, but unable to remember what it might be. I sat hoping that I might recall it, when a voice moved the order of the day for going into Committee, and I saw that Henry Dawson had taken the chair. He said: We will now examine some of your reading fellows! I started up, with a sense of extreme urgency, but was embarrassed by Lady Amersham’s basket which I held. As one does, in dreams, I hoped nobody would notice it. I began to speak upon the export of Jesuits’ bark, though I knew that this was not what I had to say. Voices began crying: Who is this man? I told them that I was Prefect of Hall, but was interrupted by a loud crash and by Maria Cotman, who pulled at my sleeve, with a sly smile, and whispered: He is dead! The debate continued amid persistent crashes and other voices echoing: He is dead!

Four years later, when I had totally forgotten this dream, Ludovic sent me a copy of it with the date, jubilantly claiming that it had been prophetic. I cannot agree with him. If a man writes down every dream he has, some can always be found which will fit future events. I was in the House upon the day of Perceval’s death; we had gone into Committee upon the petitions against the Orders in Council, and Stephen was cross-examining a witness, when we heard a report in the lobby, and a whisper went round that ‘somebody was shot,’ followed by a stampede for the door. But I do not believe that the he in my dream was poor Perceval, and the crashes were not shots, but a repeated hammering at my door which eventually woke me.

I started up, supposing the house to be on fire, and called out something, whereat Ludovic rushed into the room, talking very fast and with even less than his usual coherence. I heard sentences like these:

‘… Have never been myself obliged to work for a living and forget that others are not so free … no business to expect my friends to be always at my disposal … particularly ashamed of the expression stepping-stones … could wish that my mother had less power with you … if you can ever forgive me …’

In short, he had come to beg pardon for his letter and to ask very humbly if I would not accompany him to Troy Chimneys.

‘With all the pleasure in the world,’ said I. ‘When do we start? Instantly I suppose?’

It was scarcely daylight, but Ludovic embraced this suggestion with enthusiasm and summoned the unfortunate Mason to bring us breakfast. As we ate, I recounted my dream and he wrote it down.

‘But why,’ said I, ‘should I dream of Maria Cotman? Dawson and the basket are explicable; they have been recently in my mind. But I have not seen her, or thought of her, for years.’

Ludovic asked very seriously if any striking passage in my life had been connected with this young lady. I was bound to admit that she had been present when I received a great blow. Then, said he, I might depend upon it another blow was coming; I should soon hear of bad news. He was a little crestfallen when the weeks passed and I did not, and now insists that Maria turned up, four years too early, to warn me of Perceval’s death.

I asked him if he had a Maria Cotman of his own, who foretells disaster. He nodded and presently muttered: Candle snuffers! He explained that, where one particular person or image would be too dreadful, a deputy is sent; he says that Maria Cotman and the candle snuffers are deputies for something much worse. But the instances of his own dreams, which he gave me, do not quite bear him out. It is true that he has often dreamt of candle snuffers before trouble, but I should say that it is always trouble of his own making; he has made a blunder from which ill consequences will ensue. Were he to dream of snuffers, and then be hit by a thunderbolt, I might allow his theories. But, if these ‘deputies’ come to mock at us for our sins and mistakes, they are more comprehensible. Maria Cotman might well grin at me that night at Colesworth.

Within an hour we were off upon our excursion, and had a capital ride over the downs. Ludovic was in spirits, as he always is after one of his black fits, and I was happy enough to be galloping so swiftly through the fine air, in the sunrise.

A little below Caine we came to a rough lane which led us to a ford over the Avon. Ludovic said that this was one of the three lanes of which he had spoken. After crossing the river we went at a walking pace, for the ground was rutted. The lane, pleasantly shaded by trees, ran between flowery banks. Presently we came to the corner of a high stone wall, with a dovecote in the angle.

He said that it was, and I knew at once the kind of house it would be, for I have seen several, in that part of the country, built upon the same plan. To tease Ludovic, I began to describe it, though we could not see it over the wall, assuring him that I had never been there before, and pretending those supernatural powers with which he was so anxious to endow me.

‘There is a square enclosure,’ I said, ‘a little court in fact. Two sides of it are composed by this high wall, and two by the wings of the house, which is of a greyish brown stone, with a steep pitched roof, and gables for the second-storey windows. It has a square porch and a flagged path leading from that to a white gate in the wall. The enclosure is all grass, very closely shaved, with a fine old mulberry tree.’

‘But this is sorcery!’ cried Ludovic, much excited. ‘You have got it all exactly, except that there is no grass and no mulberry tree. The court is merely a rough farm-yard. But you certainly will have grass, and a mulberry tree, for nothing could suit the place better. Here is your white gate!’

I laughed at him, but was pleased to find how well I had guessed at the house. Opposite the white gate our lane joined two others, one going towards Bath and the other towards Salisbury, the three meeting at a little circular space which would, so Ludovic said, be very useful for turning round a carriage.

Once inside the gate we seemed to be secluded from the world, for the high walls hid all save the foliage of the trees. The principal part of the house faced the gate, and had a square porch, as I had said, with a date, – 1620. This wing was clearly of later date than the other, which ran at right angles and had much smaller windows, set at irregular levels. But the two harmonised very well.

Ludovic had a key and proceeded to unlock the great oaken door in the porch. We passed straight into an immensely long room which ran the whole length of that part of the house. It was lighted by six windows and there were great fireplaces at either end, with stone chimney-hoods. This room was panelled with fine linenfold. I thought it a noble apartment but a trifle sombre. I was better pleased with the two parlours behind it, for they faced east and were full of the morning sunshine. I was immediately struck by a rippling play of light upon the ceilings, made by the sun catching the river below the house.

‘It is set high enough that you need not be afraid of floods,’ said Ludovic. ‘Though the river runs in so near, there is quite a steep slope of grass down to it. We were coming a little way uphill, all the time, in the lane. And as you see, the prospect upon this side is very open. A clear day will give you a fine view over the meadows to the downs. These rooms shall be your parlour and study. The great room in front must be your dining-room; it is something large, but one very large room is a necessity. There are moods when one must have space. And there is a door from it to your kitchens, which will be in the other wing, where you may lodge your servants. These are the stairs, through this door. I don’t like a boxed staircase, but at least it will prevent draughts. There are five or six bed-chambers above. The barns, stables and cart-houses are beyond the kitchen wing, and there is a very pretty cottage. You must look at the orchard; you will like it extremely. There is some good farm land goes with the property; you may let it, or put a man into the cottage to farm it for you.’

I let him chatter, whilst I sat in the window-seat of the larger parlour and watched the slow, liquid play of the sunlight upon the ceiling, with its reminder of the constant current passing below. This particular has always delighted me in Troy Chimneys. I try to go there upon a sunny morning, so that I may see it. The passing of time never presents itself in a more agreeable fashion; I like to think that when I am dead, as long as the house stands, the sun and the water will write these chronicles upon the ceiling, – the same sun, the same river, – only the current gives an illusion of change. I already saw myself living there and beholding it daily. I might some day get the Hawkers into the cottage. William could have the farm, and the stream of time, rolling ever past us, might carry away all that I wished to forget.

We went through a door, from the smaller parlour, to the slope of grass down to the river. Ludovic said first that this must be shaven. Then he changed his mind. I must let it grow and plant flowers in it, daffodils and snake-bells.

‘Admit that you could be very happy here and that you are wretched as you are.’

He began to speak and checked himself. I knew that he had been about to offer me the money and then, recollecting his insults of the previous day, doubted the delicacy of such a suggestion.

‘Besides,’ said I, ‘the man I mean to put into the cottage will not be available, I fear, for some years yet.’

‘But you may not get another chance for such a house. And soon you will not want it, if you go on as you do.’

‘If I thought,’ he said, ‘that you were happy … if I thought your heart to be in a political career … I blame myself that I ever brought you to Brailsford. There is a blight upon it, I think. And I cannot endure to hear people call you Pronto!’

I started. It was the first time I had heard him use that name. I said that I was not called so at Brailsford.

‘You are mistaken. I was extremely ambitious, even at school. And it is all very well for you, Ludovic, who were born at the top of the hill, to censure ambition. What would you have me do? I am not, I think, without talent and ability. Am I not to exert myself? Am I to spend my whole life at the bottom?’

He shook his head and declared dolefully that it was the wrong hill, but he was unable to indicate a better. Later, when we were inspecting the orchard, he resumed the argument:

This he pronounced in so shrill a voice that I nearly laughed. I knew what he meant, – that our principal exertions should always be inspired by some passion. I agree with him, if, among the passions, may be included such propensities as Henry Dawson’s enthusiasm for open timber heads.

I told him that I had none. Then, remembering my recent gallopings over Devonshire, I qualified that by saying:

‘Only one thing in the world has power to transport me; the spectacle of tyranny and the sufferings of helpless people.’

‘Helpless! Helpless!’ he cried. ‘That indeed is insupportable. If you feel it to be so, you must seclude yourself, as I do. What could be more secluded than this spot?’

‘My mother,’ I replied, ‘is too good for this world. She can’t give one advice. She believes that we shall always act rightly if we feel as we ought. If I were to purchase Troy Chimneys, for example, she would merely ask what feelings prompted me to do it.’

‘I fancy she might. She would call it an escape from feeling. She believes that our feelings should rule us, and that our search in life must be for a duty which we are happy to fulfil.’

‘No. All you see, all that anyone sees, is the Paradise made by one angel upon earth. Her goodness seems to be so easy and natural that one is scarcely aware of the inflexible principles upon which it is based.’

This mystified him. He knows nothing of moral principles. He grew up among people who had none, and was not enough of a philosopher to have discovered them for himself.

I had actually a sum put by sufficient for the purchase of Troy Chimneys, though such an outlay would leave me very short. Before leaving Colesworth I bought the house, – exactly why, I cannot tell, except that I wanted it very much, and felt that such a deed might count as a challenge to Pronto. But he made no objection. It has turned out to be a good investment and ‘property in Wiltshire’ sounds well.

I found an excellent tenant, almost at once, who took it upon a ten years’ lease, with the understanding that I might wish to live there myself at the end of that period. I have spent a good deal, since then, upon various improvements. Dr. King, my tenant, is a middle-aged clergyman and he keeps a little school there. Half a dozen lads, too delicate for a public school, board with him. They live very happily, I think, for Mrs. King is an excellent woman and cares for them like a mother. Poor Ned would never have caught the ringworm in the Kings’ establishment. I go there often and I like to see these rosy lads about the house.

King has been of the greatest assistance to me in my improvements. Between us we have put the front court into grass, and have planted a mulberry tree, which comes on very well. But we have never got snake-bells to grow upon the river slope.

For some years I cherished my project of getting the Hawkers into the cottage, but I don’t think now that it would answer, even if they were willing to come. William has done very well in the Navy; I have had several cheerful letters from him. He seems to have become entirely the sailor, and I suspect that he is a good deal altered. He has made the best of his lot with a vengeance. I daresay that he gets little time for reading. He writes that he would like to remain in the Navy, were it not for the separation from Mary. As it is, he does not despair of taking her to America some day, though he has been very busy fighting the Americans since 1812. ‘We sail under the Jack and they under the Stars and Stripes,’ he wrote to me once, ‘so what else can we do, when the gentlemen at home bid us send one another to the bottom? They tell us the cause is just. But That’s more than we know, as the soldier says in King Henry the Fifth.’ This is the only occasion upon which he has quoted anything out of a book, when writing to me.

I see Mary sometimes, when I go into Wiltshire. She succeeds very well as poultry-woman to Mrs. Madden, but she too is greatly changed. She has put on flesh and lost her rosy cheeks. She says little. That surprised look is still there. When I think of the lively girl who laughed at William as she clambered into bed, and meet the blank stare of this stout, pale, silent woman, I feel that she is a stranger. I once asked her if the children did not delight to hear her sing. She said hastily that she never sings now.

If they came to Troy Chimneys, I doubt if our old intimacy could be resumed. We are all changed. Perhaps they never were quite what my fancy painted them. I suppose that I may have once been a little in love with both, if such a thing is possible, – I mean in love with that composite creature which is a happy couple. To feel a warm friendship for such a dual person is not uncommon. Most men have an attachment of that sort, my feeling for Kitty and Newsome is an example of it. The love I have for each is enhanced because they are united to one another. But with the Hawkers it was more romantic, as though I shared something of their felicity, – shared William’s tenderness for Mary and Mary’s pride in William. I may have overlooked many shortcomings, little rusticities, for the sake of the charm which they exerted upon me. I am sure that all I have said of them is true, but it may not be the whole picture.

In any case, time will not run back. Not even the river at Troy Chimneys does that, where time runs at his gentlest. Elsewhere he tramps forward.

THE LIFE OF MILES LUFTON: 1782-1818

Theodosia

Eden

Aut Disce

Ludovic

Edmée

I had no human fears

Mrs. Ned

Aut Discede

Gulley’s Cove

The American

Mr. Justice Hyde

Newsome

Captain Dawson

Lady Amersham

Pronto

Troy Chimneys