CHAPTER XXXV
A RACE OF PLATERS
Of the 26,250 days (which, after due allowance made for the little jangles of the sun and moon, are the up-cast of our living-time according to the wise man) that sage complains that no one produces anything exactly like the produce of its brother one day old. If it were so in the almanac of Solon, what can be expected now, when every day is supposed to achieve a long stride in advance of all previous ages, clapping their laurels on its own pert head? So have I seen a pretty little dear, with her hair upon her shoulders, dash out in front of the village mile-race, at half a skip from the winning-post, and scream out, "I have won it."
To me, in my quiet slow-go pace, it would have been more than enough, if the morrow had been content with its yesterday, and backed it up in a friendly style. But instead of that, it only cared to indorse the safe corollary – "All in all, a human creature is nothing more than accident." Accident to wit, just out of luck, according to the word there used, which bears no merry meaning. Perhaps this on the whole was my disgrace; for a friend's good luck should be one's own.
But could I put Tom Erricker in the most romantic scale of friendship (such as the Romans cultivated) against the heavenly Dariel? Those Tusculans knew not such love as ours; because they had no such girls to love. However, let Tom have his say.
"Beloved George, – You are my best friend, the only one that understands me, in this smiling vale of tears. You may not have heard from me for some months, because I have had the finest shooting I have ever yet been blest with. It makes one despise all the partridges and pheasants, tame fowl of a lower order. Grouse, my dear boy, and blackcocks too, and we heard of capercailzie! Tell old Stocks and Stones, who was so stingy about his rabbits, that I blow my nail at him, as the poet says. But that is not half of it. The grub – the grub – George, you never came across the like. I am seven pounds heavier than when I came down, in spite of walking off two pounds per diem. The wind seems to blow it back into you. And you make it up at dinner-time; and then you have cigars, such as you never put between your teeth; and then half-a-dozen lovely girls, all ready to scratch one another's faces, to draw you for their pal at billiards. And did not I show them a dodge or two?
"But that reminds me that I had my choice; and I chose like the man who put the broom across the walk. I might have had beauty; I might have had fashion; I might have had wit, though I hate it in a girl, because they soon give you the worst of it. And I might have had noble birth; but that would never do, because she might be nasty about the forks and spoons, at the height of the most festive enterprise. She was very sweet upon me for as much as three days; and my aunt, who has £80,000 to leave, was wild to have a Lady Frances Erricker. But my Lady Fanny made a wicked slip about the new process, that the Governor has given five pounds for, and expects to clear five thousand by it; and it was all over with her chance. She repented with many tears, and I forgave her, but could not see my way to put her on again; for her outside value was about a thou.; and she would cost more per ann. than that to keep.
"Well, I was just putting on my blinkers for another trot in single harness, when a little thing comes round my nose, and looks at me, and strokes my ears, and, by Jove, it was all up with me. Oh, she is such a little Venus, George! Small, as all the true sort are; but no mistake about her. Every time you look at her, you say to yourself – This is a girl; not an Amazon, nor an owl, nor an owl-faced Athenè, nor even the one who changed her sex, every time she struck a serpent. I may be wrong about that; never mind, my Loo will never want to be a Louis. In plain unvarnished fact, she is a duck, and that is what you want of them. Swans are not for me, nor eagles, least of all a cormorant. Her sweet name is Louisa Box; and I said a pretty thing to her. You know my little knack that way. I said, 'Loo Box, you have boxed my compass, and fetched it all to looward.' She could not quite take in my point, for no girl ever knows north from south; but she said, 'Oh, Tom, you are so clever!' while some of them would have boxed my ears; and Lady Fanny longed to do it.
"To cut a delicious tale too short, Louisa Box – who has £20,000 on the nail, which is not to be sneezed at, with tin going down – and Thomas Erricker, of Middle Temple, are to be joined in holy matrimony, at 11 A. M. next Saturday, and the devil take the hindmost. I have been up to London for new togs, but could not get an hour to run down to you, and I know what a rumpus you are always in. This you will excuse of course. But I rely upon you, mind (and if you fail me it will not come off), to put yourself into your best array, and be best man on Saturday. You must come by the train which reaches Sheffield, 7.45 P. M. on Friday. I will meet you at the station, and we will have a blow-out at the Governor's, and I will put you up to everything. And it would be kind if you would call at old Puckerpant's before you start, and bring my vestments with you. I have paid his bill; so that you can swear at him.
"Now, my dear fellow, this is a solemn matter. I feel the vitality of holy matrimony; and I trust my old pal to back me up. Last night I had a spasm in the plaster on my chest. I am not so strong as I was at College, and I shall never pull through it without you. You are a sneak, if you desert the Tom who has done so much for you."
Any one of lofty altruistic soul, or even decent fidelity, would vote me a very paltry fellow, for doubting what to do in a case like this. It seemed an atrocious thing of Tom, and a pestilent piece of luck for me, to take me two hundred miles from home, at this very crisis of my life, – just when I meant to compel my father to call upon Sûr Imar; or if that could not be done, to bring sweet Dariel to see my mother, whose kind heart she would captivate. Then I would show her to Grace, and perhaps at some leisure to Jackson Stoneman; and look what becomes of their pride and their Saxon infatuation, after that! Was this and every other delightful plan to be put off, nobody knew how long, for the sake of a headlong cash and love-affair concocted by Tom Erricker? I was sure that my sister would agree with me, for she always had made light of Tom, and I vowed to my reluctant self, that the decision should be left to her. What then was my chagrin and wonder, when she said, "You are bound to go, George!" And I fear that she wanted me out of the way, because I would not kow-tow to her "Jack!"
The terrible results of this sudden start have strengthened me for ever in my solid judgment, which for the moment I was much inclined to slacken under the arch spell of St. Winifred. Listen deferentially to feminine opinion, but never let it go beyond your ears; until you have a good wife of your own. She will know how you look at things, and shape her wisdom to suit yours, and go beyond your own conviction in the certainty that you are right. And then she knows that she has done it all, whenever everything turns out well. But if, peradventure, it all goes amiss, she is the last one in the world to make it bad for you. It is your place then to take the blame on your own clumsy shoulders, and think scorn of outside results, while you have one true breast to comfort you.
These thoughts were far beyond me yet; for a young man believes himself wondrous clever, and airs his conclusions about womankind, as a boy blows his bubble, or a child upon the grass his ball of dandelion-seed. And this was just the very thing Tom Erricker had always done; and I had thought it very fine, until I met my Dariel. But now I felt disgusted with him, and his Loo of £20,000 and all that snobbish frippery about his togs. However, I must make the best of that and him.
To the life of my life I sent a line, as full of love as I could make it, with any room for common-sense behind. And then off I set for all that humbug, show, and sham, and breakfast-speeches, women up to date with tears, and men beyond it with champagne, lovely bride with lips too sweet for margarine to melt inside them, bridegroom in tepid waxwork form, and looking for courage to his mother, whose mind dwells over his weaning.
All this was there, and a great deal more; and it seemed to me that my dear friend (who had lost his wit, and his wits as well) deserved our finest sympathies; though the girl was a harmless and good little thing, who wondered how her Tom could have thought so much of me.
But if ever there were kind and warm people on the face of this cold-complexioned earth, these Yorkshire folk might fairly claim the warmest place among them. Not for hospitality alone (though in that they were beyond abundance) but also for solid good-will without sham, and a hearty power of liking any one who met them frankly. There was something about them altogether different from our Southern style; stronger and deeper, and more true in the way they stuck to what they said. Also I found them very eager to have large and liberal views of their own in abstract questions of politics; and if they made mistakes, it was – so far as I could follow suit – from contempt of shilly-shallying. I went among them, with the tags of my Tory armour tied, hooked with steel I ought to say; and though they could not pull any of it off, they made the whole suit more flexible, and airy, and elastic.
Alas, that I had so brief a chance of expanding under the broadcloth! None of them could unsettle me in what I was brought up to. But having an equitable mind, and being worsted generally in argument, I began to see that the strongest principles may go too far in their own strength. There was one old man of mighty aspect, and immense benevolence, who must have brought me beneath his mantle, in three more nights of looking at me. I felt his influence, and feel it now.
But whether for any good or harm, all this was cut short suddenly. After Tom and his bride were gone, with the usual showers after them, all the guests and many more came together at Silver Hall, the abode of the ancient Tinman, as Tom in his impudence called his father. For why; it had been arranged among them to have the wedding-dance out there, with more room for enjoyment than Sir Benjamin Box could minister. And I was beginning to count my time, for I meant to go by the midnight train; and clumsy dancer as I am, there were several very nice girls indeed, who did their best in a charming way to make me do my best as well. Especially there was Tom's younger sister, as pretty a girl as need be seen; in a formal mood of the masculine mind, "Miss Argyrophylla Erricker." Her mother had paid a poor Oxford man a guinea for invention of that name; and she was worth it, though everybody called her "Pilla."
It was a lucky thing for me that I had not seen Pilla too early in life, for I know not where I might have been. This very pretty girl was also of a very romantic tendency; which, with a little wit to quicken, and sweet brown eyes to sweeten it, stops you, in your course, like a double water-jump with a hurdle of furze between it. You pause to think; and you pause for ever. I had heard of her a hundred times from Tom, but had never imagined that she was so nice; for he spoke of her with that fond condescension which made her look up to him as a mighty hero. And now I had to take care what I said, as she always got back to him at every other breath; and a great stretch of verity was needful on my part, to respond to her view of his merits. But this made me like her all the more, and I wished more than once that my sister Grace, who certainly possessed much more occasion for it, were gifted with an equal amount of this lovely philadelphia.
How many times I danced with Pilla is a great deal more than I can say; but it was very far from being to the exclusion of everybody else, as people were found to say afterwards. She, as the daughter of the house, was bound to pay proper attention to the guest who had come so far to please her brother, and would have to leave so early. And, for my part, I could not forget the duty of warm friendship to my dear old Tom. Every time she came back to me, I thought that her rich brown eyes grew brighter, and I told her how much they resembled Tom's, although infinitely more expressive. And she found me improving so fast in my steps, which had fallen into sad neglect among the furrows, that I feared to fall off again, if I failed to make the most of so rare a chance. But as to making love to her – what love had I to make? All my rights and dues of that were signed, sealed, and delivered to another lady – of a different grade altogether.
But away went all a man's thoughts of homage to anything but humanity when, after I had said "Good-bye" to Pilla, and seen my bag come down the stairs, and was casting a wrapper around me, while the cabman thumped himself betwixt the doors, the sweet little creature ran up to me again and tried to speak, but only mumbled, and would have gone down with her chin upon the floor, if I had not stretched both arms to catch her. Upon them she lay, like a lamb upon a rail, with all her body quivering, and the helplessness of her slack head thrown against my dancing waistcoat.
"What is it, dear child?" I asked in vain. All she could do was to spread one hand towards a big door; and then that hand fell, and she was all long hair and pink muslin. "Is there a woman here?" I called out, in terror of a fit, as I kept her from the floor; and a woman of great substance rushed up and caught her, and glared at me, as if I were a villain. "Poor lamb! Poor darling! The bad wicked man!" "Did you see how he swept her off her feet?" There were half-a-dozen handmaids now; and I left poor Pilla to them.
Then seeing how stupidly quick they were, I went to the door she had pointed at, and with heavy misgivings entered. It was a large high room, with a lot of gilt about it, and gorgeous books sprawling upon stamped leather; but the gas was turned down, and the light of the fire flickered with gushes of shape and shadow.
There was another and a darker shadow there. A dead man lay in the deep composure of a most luxurious chair; his head had fallen back against the rich morocco; and the fire that played on his dull wan eyes should warm no part of him any more, – Theophilus Erricker, a man who had made his fortune, in the rush, and kick, and pell-mell of life – by fair play, no doubt, when the rules permitted; and with kindness to his fellows, when so be it, the facts went the right way for him.
It was strong hospitality, and quick heart now, which had brought him to this sad extreme. Throughout the day, he had been doing too much for a man of his legs, and years, and weight, as several persons told him. But the old man kept up to the height of young time; and when Sir Benjamin Box (an alderman of substantial yet melancholy order) entreated him not to dance so much, stout Mr. Erricker challenged him, though Box was ten years his junior, to jump over a dining-room chair with him! And thus he carried on for hour after hour, dancing, and slapping old friends on the back, and running about among the pretty girls, like a waiter who has to subsist upon tips; and ever so much rasher than that man is, because he was stirring up his intellect, to the same high scale as his body. What wonder then – with his doctor called away to a wealthy confinement, and his good wife too busy to frown at him – that he verified the warnings of those who knew, but could not at such a time remind him, that he had all but created a vacancy in the Town Council last Easter Monday, through juvenile impetuosity?
What an awful crash of buffers, in the midst of headlong gaiety! Even to me, so new a friend, it seemed to sweep aside all thoughts of self, and plunge it in the great tide of human fate, that pitiless gulf-stream, in which we cannot even endeavour a course of our own, but are whirled along like a dollop of froth, or a shred of pop-weed among other weeds.
Being (as a young man ought to be) entirely without experience of the sudden tragedies of life, perhaps I overdid my sense of duty in a case like this. If so, I erred on the better side; and in spite of all the sad home results I say that I would do the like again, whether others would do as much for me, or not. Right or wrong, I could not bring myself to leave these unhappy people without any friend to help them. My services were but small of course; and yet as it happened there was no one in the house to be more efficient. The family lawyer had left the town, after seeing to the marriage-settlement; the execution of the will was committed to Tom and his mother. Tom was away on his wedding-trip; and his mother, in delicate health for some years, had now broken down entirely, and left her daughter to do the best she could. Only on one point the widowed mother still had the courage to insist. Whatever came of it, her son should not be called back from his honeymoon to the coffin of his father. He had set off for Italy, or the South of France – I forgot which it was for the moment – nothing but a telegram could stop him; and no telegram should be sent.
A miserable time it was indeed. The lawyer's junior partner came; but he was a young man without self-reliance, regardful of nothing but legal forms, and desirous of nothing but to please Miss Pilla, who could make a flexible stalactite – if such a thing there be – of him, by every crystal tear; and she having therefore little faith in him, all he did was to cast the burden of every doubtful arrangement upon me.
"The old man will cut up finely, sir," was the most practical of his remarks to me; "no expense must be spared on his funeral. Under the widow's instructions – poor thing! you must now act as quasi-executor. The Corporation will not be pleased, unless everything is carried out A1. And if I may venture upon a private sentiment, it will all tell up, sir; it will be a sound investment, with an eye to the welfare of the business."
Then Sir Benjamin Box came in, and put his hat upon the very chair in which the Master of the house had breathed his last, and spake below breath impressively.
"Saddest thing I ever knew, in all my life! We shall never look upon his like again. My dear Sir George, what a lesson for us! But to jump over chairs, at his time of life! And eighteen stone, if he weighed an ounce. I, who am comparatively active – but we will not reproach him, when he cannot reply. Fine thing for Tom though; can you give me an idea? You are the acting Executor, I believe."
"I am not an Executor at all, Sir Benjamin. And I am no Sir George, but plain George Cranleigh. I am doing what little I can, at the request of the ladies, and their lawyer. But you are more nearly connected, and if you would only take it off my hands – "
"No, no, thank you. That wouldn't do at all. I never could stand a house of mourning. My own heart is ticklish; this has given me quite a turn. But you are young, sir, you are young. My deepest sympathies to the afflicted ladies."
He was off with so light a foot, that even the ghost of the poor deceased would have found itself too heavy, if it ever came to finish the jumping-match. And then Argyrophylla glided in, looking like a silver aspen leaf in a coil of black ivy, as she took my hand.
"Oh, Mr. George, what a hateful old man! I heard what he said, and I saw him run away. And my brother has married his daughter! Cowards, how they fly at the very thought of death; and when their time of life should make them so glad to know more about it! But you are not like that, are you? Though it must be most sadly distressing for you. To attempt to thank you would be so absurd and hopeless. How proud my brother must be of such a friend! If I live to be eighty, I shall never forget you. But I came to tell you two pieces of good news, if there can be such a thing as good news now. Dr. Golightly has called upon the Coroner, and got him to dispense with an Inquest, as the case had been medically treated before. And then Aunt Gertrude is coming to-morrow, and she will bring Selina Petheril, who was at our school at Brompton."
Of Selina Petheril I knew nothing, but this Aunt Gertrude was the relative from whom Tom had great expectations; and her arrival made things much better, and relieved me of some anxiety. She approved of all that I had done; but I found it impossible to leave the house with any security that all was right, until the third day after the funeral. I had written to my sister, and heard from her once or twice, so that there could be no uneasiness at home. But of my dear friends in the valley not a word had reached me, though among all those dismal duties my thoughts had been with them constantly.
It is not for me to pretend to say whether I acted well or ill. But to one thing I can pledge my honour, that no small motive and no tender claims of beauty in distress detained me. If Pilla had been the plainest girl in the county of many acres, my behaviour would have been just the same. I never said a word to her that was not of the purest pity and good feeling; neither did she think twice of me, except as a willing and warm friend. There is nothing in me to attract any girl; and even if there were, any man who imagines that a loving daughter in deep affliction would set up a flirtation with a stranger, the same is a bad man, and proves it by measuring women by his own low mark.
However, no more of that. Enough that when we heard by telegram that Tom would be at home that night, I took the mail-train to London, and got home at breakfast-time on Sunday morning, having thus been absent just nine days.