She muttered something, speedily interrupted by a cough; and he, not caring to catch her words, went on: —
“It is a politeness that cuts both ways, and makes me as uncomfortable as him. This waistcoat has a beggarly account of empty button-holes; and as for my coat, nothing but a dim candle-light would screen its deficiencies. I was a fool to accept!” cried he, impatiently.
“Don’t go, Tom! don’t go!” screamed the parrot, addressing him by a familiar sobriquet.
“And why not, doctor?” said Layton, laughing at the apropos.
“Don’t go! don’t go!” repeated the bird.
“Give me your reasons, old boy, and not impossible is it I ‘ll agree with you. What do you say, Grace?” added he, advancing to the door of his room the better to catch her words.
“It is to them the honor is done, not to you,” said she, faintly, and as though the speech cost her heavily.
“Very hard to persuade the rector of that, – very hard to convince the man of silver side-dishes and cut decanters that he is not the patron of him who dines off Delf and drinks out of pewter. Is this cravat too ragged, Grace? I think I ‘d better wear my black one.”
“Yes, the black one,” said she, coughing painfully.
“After all, it is no grand occasion, – a little party of four.”
“What a swell! what a swell!” shrieked the parrot.
“Ain’t I? By Jove,” laughed Layton, “the doctor is marvellous in his remarks to-day.”
“There, I have done my best with such scanty ‘properties,’” said he, as he turned away from the glass. “The greatest peril to a shabby man is the self-imposed obligation to show he is better than he looks. It is an almost invariable blunder.”
She muttered something inaudibly, and, as usual, he went on with his own thoughts.
“One either assumes a more dictatorial tone, or takes more than his share of the talk, or is more apt to contradict the great man of the company, – at least I do.”
“Don’t go, Tom! don’t! don’t!” called out Dr. Barret.
“Not go? – after all these splendid preparations!” said Layton, with a laugh. “After yourself exclaiming, ‘What a swell!’”
“It ‘ll never pay, – never pay, – never pay!” croaked out Poll.
“That I’m sure of, doctor. I never knew one of these politic things that did; but yet we go on through life practising them in the face of all their failure, dancing attendance at levées, loitering in antechambers, all to be remembered by some great man who is just as likely to hate the sight of us. However, this shall be my last transgression.”
The faint female voice muttered some indistinct words about what he “owed to himself,” and the “rightful station that belonged to him;” but he speedily cut the reflection short as he said: “So long as a man is poor as I am, he can only hold his head high by total estrangement from the world. Let him dare to mix with it, and his threadbare coat and patched shoes will soon convince him that they will extend no equality to him who comes among them in such beggarly fashion. With what authority, I ask, can he speak, whose very poverty refutes his sentiments, and the simple question stands forth unanswerable: ‘If this man knew so much, why is he as we see him?’”
“This is, then, to say that misfortune is never unmerited. Surely you do not mean that, Herbert?” said she, with an eagerness almost painful.
“It is exactly what I would say, – that for all the purposes of worldly judgments upon men, there is no easier rule than to assume that they who fail deserve failure. Richelieu never asked those who sought high command, ‘Are you skilful in the field? are you clever in strategy?’ but’ ‘Are you lucky?’”
A deep sigh was her only answer.
“I wonder who Millar’s fourth man is to be? Colonel Karstairs, I know, is one; a man of importance to me, Grace,” said he, laughing; “a two-guinea subscriber to the dispensary! How I wish I were in a more fitting spirit of submissiveness to my betters; and, by ill fortune, this is one of my rebellious days!”
“Don’t go, Tom! Don’t go, I say!” yelled out Poll.
“Prophet of evil, and evil prophet, hold your tongue! I will go,” said he, sternly, and as if answering a responsible adviser; and setting his hat on, with a certain air of dogged defiance, he left the house.
His wife arose, and with feeble steps tottered to the door of the cottage to look after him. A few steps brought him to the foot of the cliff, up the steep face of which a zigzag path led upwards for fully four hundred feet, a narrow track trodden by the bare feet of hardy mountaineers into some semblance of a pathway, but such as few denizens of towns would willingly have taken. Layton, however, stepped along like one whose foot was not new to the heather; nay, the very nature of the ascent, the bracing air of the sea, and something in the peril itself of the way, seemed to revive in the man his ancient vigor; and few, seeing him from the beach below, as he boldly breasted the steep bluff, or sprang lightly over some fissured chasm, would have deemed him one long since past the prime of life, – one who had spent more than youth, and its ambitions, in excess.
At first, the spirit to press onward appeared to possess him entirely; but ere he reached the half ascent, he turned to look down on the yellow strip of strand and the little cottage, up to whose very door-sill now the foam seemed curling. Never before had its isolation seemed so complete. Not a sail was to be seen seaward, not even a gull broke the stillness with his cry; a low, mournful plash, with now and then a rumbling half thunder, as the sea resounded within some rocky cavern, were the only sounds, and Layton sat down on a mossy ledge, to drink in the solitude in all its fulness. Amidst thoughts of mingled pain and pleasure, memories of long-past struggles, college triumphs and college friendships, came dreary recollections of dark reverses, when the world seemed to fall back from him, and leave him to isolation. Few had ever started with more ambitious yearnings, – few with more personal assurances of success. Whatever he tried he was sure to be told, “There lies your road, Layton; that is the path will lead you to high rewards.” He had, besides, – strange inexplicable gift, – that prestige of superiority about him that made men cede the place to him, as if by prescription. “And what had come of it all? – what had come of it all?” he cried out aloud, suddenly awaking out of the past to face the present. “Why have I failed?” asked he wildly of himself. “Is it that others have passed me in the race? Have my successes been discovered to have been gained by trick or fraud? Have my acquirements been pronounced mere pretensions? These, surely, cannot be alleged of one whose fame can be attested by almost every scientific and literary journal of the empire. No, no! the explanation is easier, – the poet was wrong, – Fortune is a Deity, and some men are born to be unlucky.”
With a sudden start he arose, and rallied from these musings. He quickly bethought himself of his engagement, and continued his way upward. When he reached the tableland at top, it wanted but a few minutes of five o’clock, and five was the hour for which he was invited, and there was yet two miles to walk to the Rectory. Any one who has lived for a considerable space estranged from society and its requirements, will own to the sense of slavery impressed by a return to the habits of the world. He will feel that every ordinance is a tyranny, and the necessity of being dressed for this, or punctual for that, a downright bondage.
Thus chafing and irritable, Layton walked along. Never was man less disposed to accept hospitality as a polite attention, and more than once did he halt, irresolute whether he should not retrace his steps towards home. “No man,” thought he, “could get off more cheaply. They would ascribe it all to my ignorance. What should a poor devil with eighty pounds a year know of politeness? and when I had said, I had forgotten the invitation, they would forget me!”
Thus self-accusing and self-disparaging, he reached the little avenue gate, which by a trim gravel walk led up to the parsonage. The neat lodge, with its rustic porch, all overgrown with a rich japonica, – the well-kept road, along whose sides two little paved channels conducted the water, – the flower-plats at intervals in the smooth emerald turf, were all assurances of care and propriety; and as Layton marked them, he muttered, “This is one of the lucky ones.”
As Layton moved on with laggard step, he halted frequently to mark some new device or other of ornamental gardening. Now it was a tasteful group of rock-work, over which gracefully creepers hung in festoons; now it was a little knot of flowering shrubs, so artfully intermingled as to seem as though growing from a single stem; now a tiny fishpond could be descried through the foliage; even the rustic seats, placed at points of commanding view, seemed to say how much the whole scene had been planned for enjoyment, and that every tint of foliage, every undulation of the sward, every distant glimpse caught through a narrow vista, had all been artfully contrived to yield its share of pleasure.
“I wonder,” muttered he, bitterly, to himself, – “I wonder when this man preaches on a Sunday against wealth and its temptations, reminding others that out of this world men take nothing, but go out upon their new pilgrimage naked and poor, does he ever turn a thought to all these things, so beautiful now, and with that vitality that will make them beautiful years and years after he himself has become dust? I have little doubt,” added he, hurriedly, “that he says all this, and believes it too. Here am I, after just as many determinations to eat no man’s salt, nor sit down to any board better than my own, – here I am to-day creeping like a poor parasite to a great man’s table, – ay, he is a great man to me!
“How strange is the casuistry, too, with which humble people like myself persuade themselves that they go into the world against their will; that they do so purely from motives of policy, forgetting all the while how ignoble is the motive they lay claim to.
“The old Roman moralist told us that poverty had no heavier infliction in its train than that it made men ridiculous, but I tell him he is wrong. It makes men untrue to themselves, false to their own hearts, enemies to their own convictions, doing twenty things every day of their lives that they affect to deem prudent, and know to be contemptible. I wish my worthy host had left me unnoticed!”
He was at last at the door, and rang the bell with the impatient boldness of one chafing and angry with himself. There was a short delay, for the servants were all engaged in the dining-room, and Layton rang again.
“Dr. Millar at home?” asked he, sternly, of the well-powdered footman who stood before him.
“Yes, sir; he’s at dinner.”
“At dinner! I was invited to dinner!”
“I know, sir; and the doctor waited for half an hour beyond the time; but he has only gone in this moment.”
It is just possible, in Layton’s then frame of mind, that he had turned away and left the house, never to re-enter it, when a slight circumstance determined him to the opposite. This was the footman’s respectful manner as he took the hat from his hand, and threw wide the door for him to pass onward. Ay, it is ever so! Things too trivial and insignificant for notice in this life are every hour influencing our actions and swaying our motives. Men have stormed a breach for a smile, and gone out in black despair with life just for a cold word or a cold look. So much more quickly does the heart influence than the head, even with the very cleverest amongst us.
As Layton entered the dining-room, his host rose to receive him, and, with a polished courtesy, apologized for having gone to table before his arrival. “I gave you half an hour, doctor, and I would have given you longer, but that I am aware a physician is not always master of his time. Colonel Karstairs you are acquainted with. Let me present you to Mr. Ogden. Dr. Layton, Mr. Ogden.”
There is no manner that so impresses the world with the idea of self-sufficiency and pretension as that of the bashful man contending against his own diffidence; and this same timidity, that one would imagine so easily rubbed off by contact with the world, actually increases with age, and, however glossed over by an assumed ease and a seeming indifference, lives to torment its possessor to his last day. Of this Layton was an unhappy victim, and while imbued with a consummate self-esteem, he had a painful consciousness of the criticism that his manner and breeding might call forth. The result of this conflict was to render him stern, defiant, and even overbearing, – traits which imparted their character even to his features in first intercourse with strangers.
“I don’t know how Halford managed it,” said Mr. Ogden, as he reseated himself at table, “but I ‘ve heard him say that his professional engagements never lost him a dinner.”
Simple as were these words, they contained a rebuke, and the air of the man that uttered them did not diminish their significance.
Mr. Ogden was a thin, pale, pock-marked man, with an upstanding head of gray hair, a very high and retreating forehead, and a long upper lip, – one of those men in whom the face, disproportionately large for the head, always gives the impression of a self-sufficient nature. He had a harsh, sharp voice, with an articulation of a most painful accuracy, even his commonplaces being enunciated with a sort of distinct impressiveness, as though to imply that his copper was of more value than another man’s gold. Nor was this altogether a delusion; he had had a considerable experience of mankind and the world, and had contrived to pass his bad money on them as excellent coin of the realm. He was – and it is very distinctive in its mark – one of those men who always live in a class above their own, and, whatever be the recognition and the acceptance they have there, are ever regarded by their rightful equals as something peculiarly privileged and superior.
“My Lord” would have called him a useful man; his friends all described him as “influential.” But he was something greater than either, – he was a successful man. We are constantly told that the efficiency of our army is mainly owing to the admirable skill and ability of its petty officers. That to their unobtrusive diligence, care, and intelligence we are indebted for all those qualities by which a force is rendered manageable, and victories are won. Do we not see something very similar in our Bureaucracy? Is not our Government itself almost entirely in the hands of “petty officers”? The great minister who rises in his place in Parliament, the exponent of some grand policy, the author of some extensive measure, is, after all, little more than the mouthpiece of some “Mr. Ogden” in Downing Street; some not very brilliant or very statesmanlike personage, but a man of business habits, every-day intelligence, and long official traditions, – one of those three or four men in all England who can say to a minister, “It can’t be done,” and yet give no reason why.
The men of this Ogden stamp are, in reality, great influences in a country like ours, where frequent changes of government require that the traditions of office should be transmitted through something higher and more responsible than mere clerks. They are the stokers who keep the fires alight and the steam up till a new captain comes aboard, and, though neither commanders nor pilots, they do manage to influence the course of the ship, by the mere fact that they can diminish the force of her speed or increase its power without any one being very well aware of how or wherefore.
Such men as these are great people in that dingy old house, whose frail props without are more than emblems of what goes on within. Of their very offices men speak as of the Holy of Holies; places where none enter fearlessly save secretaries of state, and at whose door inferior mortals wipe their feet with heart-sinking fear and lowness of spirit, rehearsing not unfrequently the abject words of submissiveness with which they are to approach such greatness.
It is curious, therefore, to see one of these men in private life. One wishes to know how M. Houdin will look without his conjuring-rod, or what Coriolanus will do in plain clothes; for, after all, he must come into the world unattended with his belongings, and can no more carry Downing Street about with him than could Albert Smith carry “China” to a dinner-party.
And now the soup has been brought back, and the fish, somewhat cold and mangled, to be sure, has been served to Dr. Layton; the servant has helped him to an admirable glass of sherry, and the dinner proceeds pleasantly enough, – not, however, without its casualties. But of these the next chapter will tell us.
CHAPTER IX. A DINNER AT THE RECTORY
These are men who have specialities for giving admirable “little dinners,” and little dinners are unquestionably the ne plus ultra of social enjoyment. To accomplish these there are far more requirements necessary than the world usually wots of. They are not the triumphs of great houses, with regiments of yellow plush and gold candelabra; they affect no vast dining-rooms, nor a private band. They are, on the contrary, the prerogatives of moderate incomes, middle-aged or elderly hosts, usually bachelors, with small houses, furnished in the perfection of comfort, without any display, but where everything, from the careful disposal of a fire-screen to the noiseless gait of the footman, shows you that a certain supervision and discipline prevail, even though you never hear an order and rarely see a servant.
Where these people get their cooks, I never could make out! It is easy enough to understand that fish and soup, your sirloin and your woodcock, could be well and carefully dressed, but who devised that exquisite little entrée, what genius presided over that dish of macaroni, that omelette, or that soufflé? Whence, besides, came the infinite taste of the whole meal, with its few dishes, served in an order of artistic elegance? And that butler, too, – how quiet, how observant, how noiseless his ministration; how steady his decanter hand! Where did they find him? And that pale sherry, and that Chablis, and that exquisite cup of Mocha? Don’t tell me that you or I can have them all as good, – that you know his wine-merchant, and have the receipt for his coffee. You might as well tell me you could sing like Mario because you employ his hairdresser. No, no; they who accomplish these things are peculiar organizations. They have great gifts of order and system, the nicest perceptions of taste, considerable refinement, and no small share of sensuality. They possess a number of high qualities in miniature, and are, so to say, “great men seen through the wrong end of a telescope.”
Of this the Rev. Dr. Millar was a pleasing specimen. With that consciousness of having done everything possible for your comfort which makes a good host, he had a racy gratification in quietly watching your enjoyment. Easily and unobtrusively marking your taste for this or preference for that, he would contrive that your liking should be gratified, as though by mere accident, and never let you know yourself a debtor for the attentions bestowed upon you. It was his pride to have a perfect establishment: would that all vanity were as harmless and as pleasurable to others! And now to the dinner, which, in our digression, we are forgetting.
“Try these cutlets, doctor,” interposed the host. “It is a receipt I brought back with me from Provence; I think you ‘ll find them good.”
“An over-rich, greasy sort of cuisine is the Provençale,” remarked Ogden.
“And yet almost every good cook of France comes from that country,” said Layton.
Ogden raised his large double eye-glass to look at the man who thus dared to “cap” a remark of his.
“I wish we could get out of the bastard French cookery all the clubs give us nowadays,” said the Colonel. “You neither see a good English joint nor a well-dressed entrée.”
“An emblem of the alliance,” said Layton, “where each nation spoils something of its own in the effort to be more palatable to its neighbor.”
“Apparently, then, Sir, the great statesmen who promoted this policy are not fortunate enough to enjoy your sanction?” said Ogden, with an insolent air.
“My sanction is scarcely the word for it. They have not, certainly, my approval.”
“I hope you like French wines, though, doctor,” said the host, eager to draw the conversation into some easier channel. “Taste that Sauterne.”
“It only wants age to be perfect,” said the doctor, sipping. “All these French white wines require more time than the red.”
Ogden again looked through his glass at the dispensary doctor who thus dared to give judgment on a question of such connoisseurship; and then, with the air of one not easily imposed on, said, —
“You have travelled much abroad, perhaps?”
Layton bowed a silent assent.
“I think I saw a German diploma amongst the papers you forwarded to our committee?” said Karstairs.
“Yes, I am a doctor of medicine of Gottingen.”
“A university, I verily believe, only known to Englishmen through Canning’s doggerel,” said Ogden.
“I trust not, sir. I hope that Blumenbach’s name alone would rescue it from such oblivion.”
“I like the Germans, I confess,” broke in the Colonel. “I served with Arentschild’s Hanoverians, and never knew better or pleasanter fellows.”
“Oh, I by no means undervalue Germans!” said Ogden. “I think we, at this very moment, owe to them no small gratitude for suggesting to us the inestimable practice of examination for all public employment.”
“In my mind, the greatest humbug of an age of humbug!” said Layton, fiercely.
“Nay, doctor, you will, I ‘m certain, recall your words when I tell you that my friend here, Mr. Ogden, is one of the most distinguished promoters of that system.”
“The gentleman would confer a far deeper obligation upon me by sustaining than by withdrawing his thesis,” said Ogden, with a sarcastic smile.
“To undertake the task of sustaining the cause of ignorance against knowledge,” said Layton, quietly, “would be an ungrateful one always. In the present case, too, it would be like pitting myself against that gentleman opposite. I decline such an office.”
“So, then, you confess that such would be your cause, sir?” said Ogden, triumphantly.
“No, sir; but it would partake so much the appearance of such a struggle, that I cannot accept it. What I called a humbug was the attempt to test men’s fitness for the public service by an examination at which the most incapable might distinguish himself, and the ablest not pass. The system of examination begot the system of ‘grinding,’ – a vulgar term for a more vulgar practice, and a system the most fatal to all liberal education, limiting study to a question-and-answer formula, and making acquirements only desirable when within the rubric of a Government commission. Very different would have been the result if the diploma of certain recognized educational establishments had been required as qualification to serve the State; if the law ran, ‘You shall be a graduate of this university, or that college, or possess the licentiate degree of that school.’”
“Your observations seem, then, rather directed against certain commissioners than the system they practise?” said Odgen, sarcastically.
“Scarcely, sir. My experience is very limited. I never met but one of them!”
The Colonel laughed heartily at this speech, – he could n’t help it; and even the host, mortified as he was, gave a half-smile. As for Ogden, his pale face grew a shade sicklier, and his green eyes more fishy.
“To question the post-office clerk or the landing waiter,” continued Layton, with fresh warmth, – for when excited he could rarely control himself, – “to test some poor aspirant for eighty pounds per annum in his knowledge of mathematics or his skill in physical geography, while you make governors that cannot speak correctly, and vice-governors whose despatches are the scorn of Downing Street; to proclaim that you want your tide-waiter to be a moral philosopher, but that the highest offices in the State may be held by any political partisan active enough, troublesome enough, and noisy enough to make himself worth purchase; you demand logarithms and special geometry from a clerk in the Customs, while you make a mill-owner a cabinet minister on the simple showing of his persevering; and your commissioners, too, – ‘Quis custodiet, ipsos custodes!’”
“You probably, however, submitted to be examined, once on a time, for your medical degree?” asked Ogden.
“Yes, sir; and that ordeal once passed, I had ample leisure to unlearn the mass of useless rubbish required of me, and to address myself to the real cares of my profession. But do you suppose that if it were demanded of me to subject myself to another examination to hold the humble post I now fill, that I should have accepted it?”
“I really cannot answer that question,” said Ogden, superciliously.
“Then I will, sir. I would not have done so. Eighty pounds a year is a very attractive bribe, but it may require too costly a sacrifice to win it.”
“The neighborhood is a very poor one,” struck in Millar, “and, indeed, if it had not been for the strenuous exertions of my friend Colonel Karstairs here, we should never have raised the forty pounds which gives us the claim for as much more in the presentments.”
“And yet you got two hundred and thirty for a regatta in June last!” said Layton, with a quiet smile.
“The way of the world, doctor; the way of the world! Men are never stingy in what regards their own amusements!”
“That is the port, doctor; the other is Lafitte,” said the rector, as he saw Layton hesitate about a choice.
And now the talk took a capricious turn, as it will do occasionally, in those companies where people are old-fashioned enough to “sit” after dinner, and let the decanter circulate. Even here, however, conversation could not run smoothly. Ogden launched into the manufacture of wines, the chemistry of adulterations, and the grape disease, on every one of which Layton found something to correct him, – some slip or error to set right, – an annoyance all the more poignant that Karstairs seemed to enjoy it heartily. From fabricated wines to poisons the transition was easy, and they began to talk of certain curious trials wherein the medical testimony formed the turning-point of conviction. Here, again, Layton was his superior in information, and made the superiority felt. Of what the most subtle tests consisted, and wherein their fallacy lay, he was thoroughly master, while his retentive memory supplied a vast variety of curious and interesting illustration.
Has our reader ever “assisted” at a scene where the great talker of a company has unexpectedly found himself confronted by some unknown, undistinguished competitor, who, with the pertinacity of an actual persecution, will follow him through all the devious windings of an evening’s conversation, ever present to correct, contradict, amend, or refute? In vain the hunted martyr seeks out some new line of country, or starts new game; his tormentor is ever close behind him. Ogden wandered from law to literature. He tried art, scientific discovery, religious controversy, agriculture, foreign travel, the drama, and field sports; and Layton followed him through all, – always able to take up the theme and carry it beyond where the other had halted. If Millar underwent all the tortures of an unhappy host at this, Karstairs was in ecstasy. He had been spending a week at the Rectory in Ogden’s company, and it seemed a sort of just retribution now that this dictatorial personage should have met his persecutor. Layton, always drinking deeply as the wine came to him, and excited by a sort of conflict which for years back he had never known, grew more and more daring in his contradictions, less deferential, and less fearful of offending. Whatever little reserve he had felt at first, oozed away as the evening advanced. The law of physics is the rule of morals, and as the swing of the pendulum is greater in proportion to the retraction, so the bashful man, once emancipated from his reserve, becomes the most daringly aggressive to mortals. Not content with refuting, he now ridiculed; his vein of banter was his richest, and he indulged it in all the easy freedom of one who defied reprisals. Millar tried once or twice to interpose, and was at last fain to suggest that, as the decanters came round untouched, they should adjourn to coffee.
Ogden rose abruptly at the intimation, and, muttering something inaudible, led the way into the drawing-room.
“You have been too hard upon him, doctor,” whispered Karstairs, as he walked along at Layton’s side. “You should be more careful; he is a man of note on the other side of the Channel; he was a Treasury Lord for some six months once, and is always in office somewhere. I see you are rather sorry for this yourself.”
“Sorry! I ‘m sorry to leave that glorious Madeira, which I know I shall never taste again,” said Layton, sternly.
“Are you a smoker, Dr. Layton?” said the host. “If so, don’t forget this house gives all a bachelor’s privileges. Try these cheroots.”
“Liberty Hall!” chimed in the Colonel, with a vacant laugh.
“Not a bad name for your dining-room, Millar,” said Ogden, bitterly.
A slight shrug was the parson’s answer.
“Is this man a frequent guest here?” he asked again, in a low whisper.
“It is his first time. I need scarcely say, it shall be his last,” replied Millar, as cautiously.
“I felt for you, Millar. I felt what pain he must have been giving you, though, for myself, I pledge you my word it was most amusing; his violence, his presumption, the dictatorial tone in which he affirmed his opinions, were high comedy. I was half sorry when you proposed coffee.”
Under pretence of admiring some curiously carved chessmen, Karstairs had withdrawn the doctor into a small room adjoining; but, in reality, his object was the friendly one of suggesting greater caution and more reserve on his part.