CHAPTER LV

I MEET MY FIRST PLAYFELLOW AND TAKE MY PUNISHMENT

There came to me a little note on foreign paper, unaddressed, an

enclosure forwarded by Janet, and containing merely one scrap from the

playful XENIEN of Ottilia's favourite brotherly poets, of untranslatable

flavour:--

Who shuns true friends flies fortune in the concrete:

Would he see what he aims at? let him ask his heels.

It filled me with a breath of old German peace.

From this I learnt that Ottilia and Janet corresponded. Upon what topics?

to what degree of intimacy?

Janet now confessed to me that their intimacy had never known reserve.

The princess had divined her attachment for Harry Richmond when their

acquaintance was commenced in the island, and knew at the present moment

that I had travelled round to the recognition of Janet's worth.

Thus encouraged by the princess's changeless friendship, I wrote to her,

leaving little to be guessed of my state of mind, withholding nothing of

the circumstances surrounding me. Imagination dealt me all my sharpest

misery, and now that Ottilia resumed her place there, I became infinitely

peacefuller, and stronger to subdue my hungry nature. It caused me no

pang, strangely though it read in my sight when written, to send warm

greetings and respects to the prince her husband.

Is it any waste of time to write of love? The trials of life are in it,

but in a narrow ring and a fierier. You may learn to know yourself

through love, as you do after years of life, whether you are fit to lift

them that are about you, or whether you are but a cheat, and a load on

the backs of your fellows. The impure perishes, the inefficient

languishes, the moderate comes to its autumn of decay--these are of the

kinds which aim at satisfaction to die of it soon or late. The love that

survives has strangled craving; it lives because it lives to nourish and

succour like the heavens.

But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death before you reach

your immortality.

But again, to write of a love perverted by all the elements contributing

to foolishness, and foredoomed to chastisement, would be a graceless

business. Janet and I went through our trial, she, you may believe, the

braver under the most to bear.

I was taken by Temple down to the ship--smelling East of London, for the

double purpose of trying to convince Captain Welsh of the extravagance of

a piece of chivalry he was about to commit, and of seeing a lady with a

history, who had recently come under his guardianship. Temple thought I

should know her, but he made a mystery of it until the moment of our

introduction arrived, not being certain of her identity, and not wishing

to have me disappointed. It appeared that Captain Welsh questioned his

men closely after he had won his case, and he arrived at the conclusion

that two or three of them had been guilty of false swearing in his

interests. He did not dismiss them, for, as he said, it was twice a bad

thing to turn sinners loose: it was to shove them out of the direct road

of amendment, and it was a wrong to the population. He insisted, however,

on paying the legal costs and an indemnity for the collision at sea; and

Temple was in great distress about it, he having originally suggested the

suspicion of his men to Captain Welsh. 'I wanted to put him on his guard

against those rascals,' Temple said, 'and I suppose,' he sighed, 'I

wanted the old captain to think me enormously clever all round.' He shook

himself, and assumed a bearish aspect, significant of disgust and

recklessness. 'The captain 'll be ruined, Richie; and he's not young, you

know, to go on sailing his barque Priscilla for ever. If he pays, why, I

ought to pay, and then you ought to pay, for I shouldn't have shown off

before him alone, and then the wind that fetched you ought to pay. Toss

common sense overboard, there's no end to your fine-drawings; that's why

it's always safest to swear by the Judge.'

We rolled down to the masts among the chimneys on the top of an omnibus.

The driver was eloquent on cricket-matches. Now, cricket, he said, was

fine manly sport; it might kill a man, but it never meant mischief:

foreigners themselves had a bit of an idea that it was the best game in

the world, though it was a nice joke to see a foreigner playing at it!

None of them could stand to be bowled at. Hadn't stomachs for it; they'd

have to train for soldiers first. On one occasion he had seen a Frenchman

looking on at a match. 'Ball was hit a shooter twixt the slips: off

starts Frenchman, catches it, heaves it up, like his head, half-way to

wicket, and all the field set to bawling at him, and sending him, we knew

where. He tripped off: "You no comprong politeness in dis country." Ha!

ha!'

To prove the aforesaid Frenchman wrong, we nodded to the driver's

laughter at his exquisite imitation.

He informed us that he had backed the Surrey Eleven last year, owing to

the report of a gentleman-bowler, who had done things in the way of

tumbling wickets to tickle the ears of cricketers. Gentlemen-batters were

common: gentlemen-bowlers were quite another dish. Saddlebank was the

gentleman's name.

'Old Nandrew Saddle?' Temple called to me, and we smiled at the

supposition of Saddlebank's fame, neither of us, from what we had known

of his bowling, doubting that he deserved it.

'Acquainted with him, gentlemen?' the driver inquired, touching his hat.

'Well, and I ask why don't more gentlemen take to cricket? 'stead of

horses all round the year! Now, there's my notion of happiness,' said the

man condemned to inactivity, in the perpetual act of motion; 'cricket in

cricket season! It comprises--count: lots o' running; and that's good:

just enough o' taking it easy; that's good: a appetite for your dinner,

and your ale or your Port, as may be the case; good, number three. Add on

a tired pipe after dark, and a sound sleep to follow, and you say good

morning to the doctor and the parson; for you're in health body and soul,

and ne'er a parson 'll make a better Christian of ye, that I'll swear.'

As if anxious not to pervert us, he concluded: 'That's what I think,

gentlemen.'

Temple and I talked of the ancient raptures of a first of May

cricketing-day on a sunny green meadow, with an ocean of a day before us,

and well-braced spirits for the match. I had the vision of a matronly,

but not much altered Janet, mounted on horseback, to witness the

performance of some favourite Eleven of youngsters with her connoisseur's

eye; and then the model of an English lady, wife, and mother, waving

adieu to the field and cantering home to entertain her husband's guests.

Her husband!

Temple was aware of my grief, but saw no remedy. I knew that in his heart

he thought me justly punished, though he loved me.

We had a long sitting with Captain Welsh, whom I found immoveable, as I

expected I should. His men, he said, had confessed their sin similarly to

the crab in a hole, with one claw out, as the way of sinners was. He

blamed himself mainly. 'Where you have accidents, Mr. Richmond, you have

faults; and where you have faults aboard a ship you may trace a line to

the captain. I should have treated my ship's crew like my conscience, and

gone through them nightly. As it is, sir, here comes round one of your

accidents to tell me I have lived blinded by conceit. That is my

affliction, my young friend. The payment of the money is no more so than

to restore money held in trust.'

Temple and I argued the case with him, as of old on our voyage, on board

the barque Priscilla, quite unavailingly.

'Is a verdict built on lies one that my Maker approves of?' said he. 'If

I keep possession of that money, my young friends, will it clothe me? Ay,

with stings! Will it feed me? Ay, with poison. And they that should be

having it shiver and want!'

He was emphatic, as he would not have been, save to read us an example,

owing to our contention with him. 'The money is Satan in my very hands!'

When he had dismissed the subject he never returned to it.

His topic of extreme happiness, to which Temple led him, was the rescue

of a beautiful sinner from a life of shame. It appeared that Captain

Welsh had the habit between his voyages of making one holiday expedition

to the spot of all creation he thought the fairest, Richmond Hill,

overlooking the Thames; and there, one evening, he espied a lady in

grief, and spoke to her, and gave her consolation. More, he gave her a

blameless home. The lady's name was Mabel Bolton. She was in distress of

spirit rather than of circumstances, for temptation was thick about one

so beautiful, to supply the vanities and luxuries of the father of sin.

He described her.

She was my first playfellow, the miller's daughter of Dipwell, Mabel

Sweetwinter, taken from her home by Lord Edbury during my German

university career, and now put away by him upon command of his family on

the eve of his marriage.

She herself related her history to me, after telling me that she had seen

me once at the steps of Edbury's Club. Our meeting was no great surprise

to either of us. She had heard my name as that of an expected visitor;

she had seen Temple, moreover, and he had prompted me with her Christian

name and the praise of her really glorious hair, to anticipate the person

who was ushered into the little cabin-like parlour by Captain Welsh's

good old mother.

Of Edbury she could not speak for grief, believing that he loved her

still and was acting under compulsion. Her long and faithful attachment

to the scapegrace seemed to preserve her from the particular regrets

Captain Welsh supposed to occupy her sinner's mind; so that, after some

minutes of the hesitation and strangeness due to our common

recollections, she talked of him simply and well--as befitted her

situation, a worldling might say. But she did not conceal her relief in

escaping to this quaint little refuge (she threw a kindly-comical look,

not overtoned, at the miniature ships on the mantelpiece, and the picture

of Joseph leading Mary with her babe on the ass) from the temptations I

could imagine a face like hers would expose her to. The face was

splendid, the figure already overblown. I breathed some thanks to my

father while she and I conversed apart. The miller was dead, her brother

in America. She had no other safe home than the one Captain Welsh had

opened to her. When I asked her (I had no excuse for it) whether she

would consent to go to Edbury again, she reddened and burst into tears. I

cursed my brutality. 'Let her cry,' said Captain Welsh on parting with us

at his street door. 'Tears are the way of women and their comfort.'

To our astonishment he told us he intended to take her for a voyage in

the Priscilla. 'Why?' we asked.

'I take her,' he said, 'because not to do things wholly is worse than not

to do things at all, for it 's waste of time and cause for a chorus

below, down in hell, my young friends. The woman is beautiful as

Solomon's bride. She is weak as water. And the man is wicked. He has

written to her a letter. He would have her reserved for himself, a wedded

man: such he is, or is soon to be. I am searching, and she is not

deceitful; and I am a poor man again and must go the voyage. I wrestled

with her, and by grace I conquered her to come with me of a free will,

and be out of his snares. Aboard I do not fear him, and she shall know

the mercy of the Lord on high seas.'

We grimaced a little on her behalf, but had nothing to reply.

Seeing Janet after Mabel was strange. In the latter one could perceive

the palpably suitable mate for Edbury.

I felt that my darling was insulted--no amends for it I had to keep

silent and mark the remorseless preparations going forward. Not so

Heriot. He had come over from the camp in Ireland on leave at this

juncture. His talk of women still suggested the hawk with the downy

feathers of the last little plucked bird sticking to his beak; but his

appreciation of Janet and some kindness for me made him a vehement

opponent of her resolve. He took licence of his friendship to lay every

incident before her, to complete his persuasions. She resisted his

attacks, as I knew she would, obstinately, and replied to his entreaties

with counter-supplications that he should urge me to accept old

Riversley. The conflicts went on between those two daily, and I heard of

them from Heriot at night. He refused to comprehend her determination

under the head of anything save madness. Varied by reproaches of me for

my former inveterate blindness, he raved upon Janet's madness

incessantly, swearing that he would not be beaten. I told him his efforts

were useless, but thought them friendly, and so they were, only Janet's

resistance had fired his vanity, and he stalked up and down my room

talking a mixture of egregious coxcombry and hearty good sense that might

have shown one the cause he meant to win had become personal to him.

Temple, who was sometimes in consultation with him, and was always amused

by his quasi-fanfaronade, assured me that Herriot was actually scheming.

The next we heard of him was, that he had been seen at a whitebait hotel

down the river drunk with Edbury. Janet also heard of that, and declined

to see Heriot again.

Our last days marched frightfully fast. Janet had learnt that any the

most distant allusion to her marriage day was an anguish to the man who

was not to marry her, so it was through my aunt Dorothy that I became

aware of Julia Bulsted's kindness in offering to take charge of my father

for a term. Lady Sampleman undertook to be hostess to him for one night,

the eve of Janet's nuptials. He was quiet, unlikely to give annoyance to

persons not strongly predisposed to hear sentences finished and

exclamations fall into their right places.

Adieu to my darling! There have been women well won; here was an adorable

woman well lost. After twenty years of slighting her, did I fancy she

would turn to me and throw a man over in reward of my ultimate recovery

of my senses?--or fancy that one so tenacious as she had proved would

snap a tie depending on her pledged word? She liked Edbury; she saw the

best of him, and liked him. The improved young lord was her handiwork.

After the years of humiliation from me, she had found herself courted by

a young nobleman who clung to her for help, showed improvement, and

brought her many compliments from a wondering world. She really felt that

she was strength and true life to him. She resisted Heriot: she resisted

a more powerful advocate, and this was the princess Ottilia. My aunt

Dorothy told me that the princess had written. Janet either did or

affected to weigh the princess's reasonings; and she did not evade the

task of furnishing a full reply.

Her resolution was unchanged. Loss of colour, loss of light in her eyes,

were the sole signs of what it cost her to maintain it. Our task was to

transfer the idea of Janet to that of Julia in my father's whirling

brain, which at first rebelled violently, and cast it out like a stick

thrust between rapidly revolving wheels.

The night before I was to take him away, she gave me her hand with a

'good-bye, dear Harry.' My words were much the same. She had a ghastly

face, but could not have known it, for she smiled, and tried to keep the

shallow smile in play, as friends do. There was the end.

It came abruptly, and was schoolingly cold and short.

It had the effect on me of freezing my blood and setting what seemed to

be the nerves of my brain at work in a fury of calculation to reckon the

minutes remaining of her maiden days. I had expected nothing, but now we

had parted I thought that one last scene to break my heart on should not

have been denied to me. My aunt Dorothy was a mute; she wept when I spoke

of Janet, whatever it was I said.

The minutes ran on from circumstance to circumstance of the destiny Janet

had marked for herself, each one rounded in my mind of a blood colour

like the edge about prismatic hues. I lived through them a thousand times

before they occurred, as the wretch who fears death dies multitudinously.

Some womanly fib preserved my father from a shock on leaving Janet's

house. She left it herself at the same time that she drove him to Lady

Sampleman's, and I found him there soon after she had gone to her

bridesmaids. A letter was for me:--

'DEAR HARRY,--I shall not live at Riversley, never go there again;

do not let it be sold to a stranger; it will happen unless you go

there. For the sake of the neighbourhood and poor people, I cannot

allow it to be shut up. I was the cause of the chief misfortune.

You never blamed me. Let me think that the old place is not dead.

Adieu.

'Your affectionate,

'JANET.'

I tore the letter to pieces, and kept them.

The aspect of the new intolerable world I was to live in after to-morrow,

paralyzed sensation. My father chattered, Lady Sampleman hushed him; she

said I might leave him to her, and I went down to Captain Welsh to bid

him good-bye and get such peace as contact with a man clad in armour

proof against earthly calamity could give.

I was startled to see little Kiomi in Mabel's company.

They had met accidentally at the head of the street, and had been friends

in childhood, Captain Welsh said, adding: 'She hates men.'

'Good reason, when they're beasts,' said Kiomi.

Amid much weeping of Mabel and old Mrs. Welsh, Kiomi showed as little

trouble as the heath when the woods are swept.

Captain Welsh wanted Mabel to be on board early, owing, he told me, to

information. Kiomi had offered to remain on board with her until the

captain was able to come. He had business to do in the City.

We saw them off from the waterside.

'Were I to leave that young woman behind me, on shore, I should be giving

the devil warrant to seize upon his prey,' said Captain Welsh, turning

his gaze from the boat which conveyed Kiomi and Mabel to the barque

Priscilla. He had information that the misleader of her youth was hunting

her.

He and I parted, and for ever, at a corner of crossways in the central

city. There I saw the last of one who deemed it as simple a matter to

renounce his savings for old age, to rectify an error of justice, as to

plant his foot on the pavement; a man whose only burden was the folly of

men.

I thought to myself in despair, under what protest can I also escape from

England and my own intemperate mind? It seemed a miraculous

answer:--There lay at my chambers a note written by Count Kesensky; I

went to the embassy, and heard of an Austrian ship of war being at one of

our ports upon an expedition to the East, and was introduced to the

captain, a gentlemanly fellow, like most of the officers of his

Government. Finding in me a German scholar, and a joyful willingness, he

engaged me to take the post of secretary to the expedition in the place

of an invalided Freiherr von Redwitz. The bargain was struck immediately:

I was to be ready to report myself to the captain on board not later than

the following day. Count Kesensky led me aside: he regretted that he

could do nothing better for me: but I thought his friendliness extreme

and astonishing, and said so; whereupon the count assured me that his

intentions were good, though he had not been of great use hitherto--an

allusion to the borough of Chippenden he had only heard of von Redwitz's

illness that afternoon. I thanked him cordially, saying I was much in his

debt, and he bowed me out, letting me fancy, as my father had fancied

before me, and as though I had never observed and reflected in my life,

that the opportuneness of this intervention signified a special action of

Providence.

The flattery of the thought served for an elixir. But with whom would my

father abide during my absence? Captain Bulsted and Julia saved me from a

fit of remorse; they had come up to town on purpose to carry him home

with them, and had left a message on my table, and an invitation to

dinner at their hotel, where the name of Janet was the Marino Faliero of

our review of Riversley people and old times. The captain and his wife

were indignant at her conduct. Since, however, I chose to excuse it, they

said they would say nothing more about her, and she was turned face to

the wall. I told them how Janet had taken him for months. 'But I 'll take

him for years,' said Julia. 'The truth is, Harry, my old dear! William

and I are never so united--for I'm ashamed to quarrel with him--as when

your father's at Bulsted. He belongs to us, and other people shall know

you 're not obliged to depend on your family for help, and your aunt

Dorothy can come and see him whenever she likes.'

That was settled. Captain Bulsted went with me to Lady Sampleman's to

prepare my father for the change of nurse and residence. We were informed

that he had gone down with Alderman Duke Saddlebank to dine at one of the

great City Companies' halls. I could hardly believe it. 'Ah! my dear Mr.

Harry,' said Lady Sampleman, 'old friends know one another best, believe

that, now. I treated him as if he was as well as ever he was, gave him

his turtle and madeira lunch; and Alderman Saddlebank, who lunched

here--your father used to say, he looks like a robin hopping out of a

larderquite jumped to dine him in the City like old times; and he will

see a great spread of plate!'

She thought my father only moderately unwell, wanting novelty. Captain

Bulsted agreed with me that it would be prudent to go and fetch him. At

the door of the City hall stood Andrew Saddlebank, grown to be simply a

larger edition of Rippenger's head boy, and he imparted to us that my

father was 'on his legs' delivering a speech: It alarmed me. With

Saddlebank's assistance I pushed in.

'A prince! a treacherous lover! an unfatherly man!'

Those were the words I caught: a reproduction of many of my phrases

employed in our arguments on this very subject.

He bade his audience to beware of princes, beware of idle princes; and

letting his florid fancy loose on these eminent persons, they were at one

moment silver lamps, at another poising hawks, and again sprawling

pumpkins; anything except useful citizens. How could they be? They had

the attraction of the lamp, the appetite of the hawk, the occupation of

the pumpkin: nothing was given them to do but to shine, destroy, and

fatten. Their hands were kept empty: a trifle in their heads would topple

them over; they were monuments of the English system of compromise. Happy

for mankind if they were monuments only! Happy for them! But they had the

passions of men. The adulation of the multitude was raised to inflate

them, whose self-respect had not one prop to rest an, unless it were

contempt for the flatterers and prophetic foresight of their perfidy.

They were the monuments of a compromise between the past and terror of

the future; puppets as princes, mannikins as men, the snares of frail

women, stop-gaps of the State, feathered nonentities!

So far (but not in epigram) he marshalled the things he had heard to his

sound of drum and trumpet, like one repeating a lesson off-hand. Steering

on a sudden completely round, he gave his audience an outline of the

changes he would have effected had he but triumphed in his cause; and now

came the lashing of arms, a flood of eloquence. Princes with brains,

princes leaders, princes flowers of the land, he had offered them!

princes that should sway assemblies, and not stultify the precepts of a

decent people 'by making you pay in the outrage of your morals for what

you seem to gain in policy.' These or similar words. The whole scene was

too grotesque and afflicting. But his command of his hearers was

extraordinary, partly a consolation I thought, until, having touched the

arm of one of the gentlemen of the banquet and said, 'I am his son; I

wish to remove him,' the reply enlightened me: 'I 'm afraid there's

danger in interrupting him; I really am.'

They were listening obediently to one whom they dared not interrupt for

fear of provoking an outburst of madness.

I had to risk it. His dilated eyes looked ready to seize on me for an

illustration. I spoke peremptorily, and he bowed his head low, saying,

'My son, gentlemen,' and submitted himself to my hands. The feasters

showed immediately that they felt released by rising and chatting in

groups. Alderman Saddlebank expressed much gratitude to me for the

service I had performed. 'That first half of your father's speech was the

most pathetic thing I ever heard!' I had not shared his privilege, and

could not say. The remark was current that a great deal was true of what

had been said of the Fitzs. My father leaned heavily on my arm with the

step and bent head of an ancient pensioner of the Honourable City

Company. He was Julia Bulsted's charge, and I was on board the foreign

vessel weighing anchor from England before dawn of Janet's marriage-day.