Part the Second
Part the Second
Part the Second
SnitcheyandCraggshad a snug little office on the old Battle Ground, where they drove a snug little business, and fought a great many smallpitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights—for in truth they generally proceeded at a snail’s pace—the part the Firm had in them came so far within that general denomination, that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an irregular body of small debtors, just as the occasion served, and the enemy happened to present himself. The Gazette was an important and profitable feature in some of their fields, as well as in fields of greater renown; and in most of the Actions wherein they shewed their generalship, it was afterwards observed by the combatants that they had had great difficulty in making each other out, or in knowing with any degree of distinctness what they were about, in consequence of the vast amount of smoke by which they were surrounded.
The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs stood convenient with an open door, down two smooth steps in the market-place: so that any angry farmer incliningtowards hot water, might tumble into it at once. Their special council-chamber and hall of conference was an old back room up stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its brows gloomily in the consideration of tangled points of law. It was furnished with some high-backed leathern chairs, garnished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of which, every here and there, two or three had fallen out; or had been picked out, perhaps, by the wandering thumbs and forefingers of bewildered clients. There was a framed print of a great judge in it, every curl in whose dreadful wig had made a man’s hair stand on end. Bales of papers filled the dusty closets, shelves, and tables; and round the wainscoat there were tiers of boxes, padlocked and fireproof, with people’s names painted outside, which anxious visitors felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment, obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to make anagrams of, while they sat, seeming to listen to Snitchey and Craggs, without comprehending one word of what they said.
Snitchey and Craggs had each, in private life as in professional existence, a partner of his own. Snitchey and Craggs were the best friends in the world, andhad a real confidence in one another; but Mrs. Snitchey, by a dispensation not uncommon in the affairs of life, was, on principle, suspicious of Mr. Craggs, and Mrs. Craggs was, on principle, suspicious of Mr. Snitchey. “Your Snitcheys indeed,” the latter lady would observe, sometimes, to Mr. Craggs; using that imaginative plural as if in disparagement of an objectionable pair of pantaloons, or other articles not possessed of a singular number; “I don’t see what you want with your Snitcheys, for my part. You trust a great deal too much to your Snitcheys,Ithink, and I hope you may never find my words come true.” While Mrs. Snitchey would observe to Mr. Snitchey, of Craggs, “that if ever he was led away by man he was led away by that man; and that if ever she read a double purpose in a mortal eye, she read that purpose in Craggs’s eye.” Notwithstanding this, however, they were all very good friends in general: and Mrs. Snitchey and Mrs. Craggs maintained a close bond of alliance against “the office,” which they both considered a Blue chamber, and common enemy, full of dangerous (because unknown) machinations.
In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and Craggs made honey for their several hives. Here sometimes they would linger, of a fine evening, at the window of their council-chamber, overlooking the old battle-ground, and wonder (but that was generally at assize time, when much business had made them sentimental) at the folly of mankind, who couldn’t always be at peace with one another, and go to law comfortably. Here days, and weeks, and months, and years, passed over them; their calendar, the gradually diminishing number of brass nails in the leathern chairs, and the increasing bulk of papers on the tables. Here nearly three years’ flight had thinned the one and swelled the other, since the breakfast in the orchard; when they sat together in consultation, at night.
Snitchey and Craggs
Snitchey and Craggs
Snitchey and Craggs
Snitchey and Craggs
Snitchey and Craggs
Snitchey and Craggs
Snitchey and Craggs
Not alone; but with a man of thirty, or about that time of life, negligently dressed, and somewhat haggard in the face, but well-made, well-attired, and well-looking, who sat in the arm-chair of state, with one hand in his breast, and the other in his dishevelled hair, pondering moodily. Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs sat opposite each other at a neighbouringdesk. One of the fire-proof boxes, unpadlocked and opened, was upon it; a part of its contents lay strewn upon the table, and the rest was then in course of passing through the hands of Mr. Snitchey, who brought it to the candle, document by document, looked at every paper singly, as he produced it, shookhis head, and handed it to Mr. Craggs, who looked it over also, shook his head, and laid it down. Sometimes they would stop, and shaking their heads in concert, look towards the abstracted client; and the name on the box being Michael Warden, Esquire, we may conclude from these premises that the name and the box were both his, and that the affairs of Michael Warden, Esquire, were in a bad way.
“That’s all,” said Mr. Snitchey, turning up the last paper. “Really there’s no other resource. No other resource.”
“All lost, spent, wasted, pawned, borrowed and sold, eh?” said the client, looking up.
“All,” returned Mr. Snitchey.
“Nothing else to be done, you say?”
“Nothing at all.”
The client bit his nails, and pondered again.
“And I am not even personally safe in England? You hold to that; do you?”
“In no part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,” replied Mr. Snitchey.
“A mere prodigal son with no father to go back to, no swine to keep, and no husks to share with them?Eh?” pursued the client, rocking one leg over the other, and searching the ground with his eyes.
Mr. Snitchey coughed, as if to deprecate the being supposed to participate in any figurative illustration of a legal position. Mr. Craggs, as if to express that it was a partnership view of the subject, also coughed.
“Ruined at thirty!” said the client. “Humph!”
“Not ruined, Mr. Warden,” returned Snitchey. “Not so bad as that. You have done a good deal towards it, I must say, but you are not ruined. A little nursing—”
“A little Devil,” said the client.
“Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, “will you oblige me with a pinch of snuff? Thank you, Sir.”
As the imperturbable lawyer applied it to his nose, with great apparent relish and a perfect absorption of his attention in the proceeding, the client gradually broke into a smile, and, looking up, said:
“You talk of nursing. How long nursing?”
“How long nursing?” repeated Snitchey, dusting the snuff from his fingers, and making a slow calculation in his mind. “For your involved estate,Sir? In good hands? S. and C.’s, say? Six or seven years.”
“To starve for six or seven years!” said the client with a fretful laugh, and an impatient change of his position.
“To starve for six or seven years, Mr. Warden,” said Snitchey, “would be very uncommon indeed. You might get another estate by shewing yourself, the while. But we don’t think you could do it—speaking for Self and Craggs—and consequently don’t advise it.”
“Whatdoyou advise?”
“Nursing, I say,” repeated Snitchey. “Some few years of nursing by Self and Craggs would bring it round. But to enable us to make terms, and hold terms, and you to keep terms, you must go away, you must live abroad. As to starvation, we could ensure you some hundreds a year to starve upon, even in the beginning, I dare say, Mr. Warden.”
“Hundreds,” said the client. “And I have spent thousands!”
“That,” retorted Mr. Snitchey, putting thepapers slowly back into the cast-iron box, “there is no doubt about. No doubt a—bout,” he repeated to himself, as he thoughtfully pursued his occupation.
The lawyer very likely knew his man; at any rate his dry, shrewd, whimsical manner, had a favourable influence upon the client’s moody state, and disposed him to be more free and unreserved. Or perhaps the client knewhisman; and had elicited such encouragement as he had received, to render some purpose he was about to disclose the more defensible in appearance. Gradually raising his head, he sat looking at his immovable adviser with a smile, which presently broke into a laugh.
“After all,” he said, “my iron-headed friend—”
Mr. Snitchey pointed out his partner. “Self and—excuse me—Craggs.”
“I beg Mr. Craggs’s pardon,” said the client. “After all, my iron-headed friends,” he leaned forward in his chair, and dropped his voice a little, “you don’t know half my ruin yet.”
Mr. Snitchey stopped and stared at him. Mr. Craggs also stared.
“I am not only deep in debt,” said the client “but I am deep in—”
“Not in love!” cried Snitchey.
“Yes!” said the client, falling back in his chair, and surveying the Firm with his hands in his pockets. “Deep in love.”
“And not with an heiress, Sir?” said Snitchey.
“Not with an heiress.”
“Nor a rich lady?”
“Nor a rich lady that I know of—except in beauty and merit.”
“A single lady, I trust?” said Mr. Snitchey, with great expression.
“Certainly.”
“It’s not one of Doctor Jeddler’s daughters?” said Snitchey, suddenly squaring his elbows on his knees, and advancing his face at least a yard.
“Yes!” returned the client.
“Not his younger daughter?” said Snitchey.
“Yes!” returned the client.
“Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, much relieved, “will you oblige me with another pinch of snuff? Thank you. I am happy to say it don’t signify, Mr. Warden;she’s engaged, Sir, she’s bespoke. My partner can corroborate me. We know the fact.”
“We know the fact,” repeated Craggs.
“Why, so do I perhaps,” returned the client quietly. “What of that? Are you men of the world, and did you never hear of a woman changing her mind?”
“There certainly have been actions for breach,” said Mr. Snitchey, “brought against both spinsters and widows, but in the majority of cases—”
“Cases!” interposed the client, impatiently. “Don’t talk to me of cases. The general precedent is in a much larger volume than any of your law books. Besides, do you think I have lived six weeks in the Doctor’s house for nothing?”
“I think, Sir,” observed Mr. Snitchey, gravely addressing himself to his partner, “that of all the scrapes Mr. Warden’s horses have brought him into at one time and another—and they have been pretty numerous, and pretty expensive, as none know better than himself and you and I—the worst scrape may turn out to be, if he talks in this way, his having been ever left by one of them at the Doctor’s gardenwall, with three broken ribs, a snapped collar-bone, and the Lord knows how many bruises. We didn’t think so much of it, at the time when we knew he was going on well under the Doctor’s hands and roof; but it looks bad now, Sir. Bad! It looks very bad. Doctor Jeddler too—our client, Mr. Craggs.”
“Mr. Alfred Heathfield too—a sort of client, Mr. Snitchey,” said Craggs.
“Mr. Michael Warden too, a kind of client,” said the careless visitor, “and no bad one either: having played the fool for ten or twelve years. However Mr. Michael Warden has sown his wild oats now; there’s their crop, in that box; and means to repent and be wise. And in proof of it, Mr. Michael Warden means, if he can, to marry Marion, the Doctor’s lovely daughter, and to carry her away with him.”
“Really, Mr. Craggs,” Snitchey began.
“Really Mr. Snitchey, and Mr. Craggs, partners both,” said the client, interrupting him; “you know your duty to your clients, and you know well enough, I am sure, that it is no part of it to interfere in a mere love affair, which I am obliged toconfide to you. I am not going to carry the young lady off, without her own consent. There’s nothing illegal in it. I never was Mr. Heathfield’s bosom friend. I violate no confidence of his. I love where he loves, and I mean to win where he would win, if I can.”
“He can’t, Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, evidently anxious and discomfited. “He can’t do it, Sir. She dotes on Mr. Alfred.”
“Does she?” returned the client.
“Mr. Craggs, she dotes on him, Sir,” persisted Snitchey.
“I didn’t live six weeks, some few months ago, in the Doctor’s house for nothing; and I doubted that soon,” observed the client. “She would have doted on him, if her sister could have brought it about; but I watched them. Marion avoided his name, avoided the subject: shrunk from the least allusion to it, with evident distress.”
“Why should she, Mr. Craggs, you know? Why should she, Sir?” inquired Snitchey.
“I don’t know why she should, though there are many likely reasons,” said the client, smiling at theattention and perplexity expressed in Mr. Snitchey’s shining eye, and at his cautious way of carrying on the conversation, and making himself informed upon the subject; “but I know she does. She was very young when she made the engagement—if it may be called one, I am not even sure of that—and has repented of it, perhaps. Perhaps—it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light—she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen in love with her.”
“He, he! Mr. Alfred, her old playfellow too, you remember, Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, with a disconcerted laugh; “knew her almost from a baby!”
“Which makes it the more probable that she may be tired of his idea,” calmly pursued the client, “and not indisposed to exchange it for the newer one of another lover, who presents himself (or is presented by his horse) under romantic circumstances; has the not unfavorable reputation—with a country girl—of having lived thoughtlessly and gaily, without doing much harm to anybody; and who, for his youth and figure, and so forth—this may seem foppish again, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light—mightperhaps pass muster in a crowd with Mr. Alfred himself.”
There was no gainsaying the last clause, certainly; and Mr. Snitchey, glancing at him, thought so. There was something naturally graceful and pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better if he chose: and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. “A dangerous sort of libertine,” thought the shrewd lawyer, “to seem to catch the spark he wants from a young lady’s eyes.”
“Now, observe, Snitchey,” he continued, rising and taking him by the button, “and Craggs,” taking him by the button also, and placing one partner on either side of him, so that neither might evade him. “I don’t ask you for any advice. You are right to keep quite aloof from all parties in such a matter, which is not one in which grave men like you could interfere, on any side. I am briefly going to review in half-a-dozen words, my position and intention, and then I shall leave it to you to do the best for me, inmoney matters, that you can: seeing, that, if I run away with the Doctor’s beautiful daughter (as I hope to do, and to become another man under her bright influence), it will be, for the moment, more chargeable than running away alone. But I shall soon make all that up in an altered life.”
“I think it will be better not to hear this, Mr. Craggs?” said Snitchey, looking at him across the client.
“Ithink not,” said Craggs.—Both listening attentively.
“Well! You needn’t hear it,” replied their client. “I’ll mention it, however. I don’t mean to ask the Doctor’s consent, because he wouldn’t give it me. But I mean to do the Doctor no wrong or harm, because (besides there being nothing serious in such trifles, as he says) I hope to rescue his child, my Marion, from what I see—Iknow—she dreads, and contemplates with misery: that is, the return of this old lover. If anything in the world is true, it is true that she dreads his return. Nobody is injured so far. I am so harried and worried here just now, that I lead the life of a flying-fish; skulk about in thedark, am shut out of my own house, and warned off my own grounds: but that house, and those grounds, and many an acre besides, will come back to me one day, as you know and say; and Marion will probably be richer—on your showing, who are never sanguine—ten years hence as my wife, than as the wife of Alfred Heathfield, whose return she dreads (remember that), and in whom or in any man, my passion is not surpassed. Who is injured yet? It is a fair case throughout. My right is as good as his, if she decide in my favor; and I will try my right by her alone. You will like to know no more after this, and I will tell you no more. Now you know my purpose, and wants. When must I leave here?”
“In a week,” said Snitchey. “Mr. Craggs?—”
“In something less, I should say,” responded Craggs.
“In a month,” said the client, after attentively watching the two faces. “This day month. To-day is Thursday. Succeed or fail, on this day month I go.”
“It’s too long a delay,” said Snitchey; “much too long. But let it be so. I thought he’d havestipulated for three,” he murmured to himself. “Are you going? Good night, Sir.”
“Good night!” returned the client, shaking hands with the Firm. “You’ll live to see me making a good use of riches yet. Henceforth, the star of my destiny is, Marion!”
“Take care of the stairs, Sir,” replied Snitchey; “for she don’t shine there. Good night!”
“Good night!”
So they both stood at the stair-head with a pair of office-candles, watching him down; and when he had gone away, stood looking at each other.
“What do you think of all this, Mr. Craggs?” said Snitchey.
Mr. Craggs shook his head.
“It was our opinion, on the day when that release was executed, that there was something curious in the parting of that pair, I recollect,” said Snitchey.
“It was,” said Mr. Craggs.
“Perhaps he deceives himself altogether,” pursued Mr. Snitchey, locking up the fireproof box, and putting it away; “or if he don’t, a little bit of fickleness and perfidy is not a miracle, Mr. Craggs. Andyet I thought that pretty face was very true. I thought,” said Mr. Snitchey, putting on his great coat, (for the weather was very cold), drawing on his gloves, and snuffing out one candle, “that I had even seen her character becoming stronger and more resolved of late. More like her sister’s.”
“Mrs. Craggs was of the same opinion,” returned Craggs.
“I’d really give a trifle to-night,” observed Mr. Snitchey, who was a good-natured man, “if I could believe that Mr. Warden was reckoning without his host; but light-headed, capricious, and unballasted as he is, he knows something of the world and its people (he ought to, for he has bought what he does know, dear enough); and I can’t quite think that. We had better not interfere: we can do nothing, Mr. Craggs, but keep quiet.”
“Nothing,” returned Craggs.
“Our friend the Doctor makes light of such things,” said Mr. Snitchey, shaking his head. “I hope he mayn’t stand in need of his philosophy. Our friend Alfred talks of the battle of life,” he shook his head again, “I hope he mayn’t be cut down early in theday. Have you got your hat, Mr. Craggs? I am going to put the other candle out.”
Mr Craggs replying in the affirmative, Mr. Snitchey suited the action to the word, and they groped their way out of the council-chamber: now as dark as the subject, or the law in general.
My story passes to a quiet little study, where, on that same night, the sisters and the hale old Doctor sat by a cheerful fire-side. Grace was working at her needle. Marion read aloud from a book before her. The Doctor, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his feet spread out upon the warm rug, leaned back in his easy chair, and listened to the book, and looked upon his daughters.
They were very beautiful to look upon. Two better faces for a fireside, never made a fireside bright and sacred. Something of the difference between them had been softened down in three years’ time; and enthroned upon the clear brow of the younger sister, looking through her eyes, and thrilling in her voice, was the same earnest nature that her own motherless youth had ripened in the elder sister long ago. Butshe still appeared at once the lovelier and weaker of the two; still seemed to rest her head upon her sister’s breast, and put her trust in her, and look into her eyes for counsel and reliance. Those loving eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful, as of old.
“‘And being in her own home,’” read Marion, from the book; “‘her home made exquisitely dear by these remembrances, she now began to know that the great trial of her heart must soon come on, and could not be delayed. Oh Home, our comforter and friend when others fall away, to part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave—’”
“Marion, my love!” said Grace.
“Why, Puss!” exclaimed her father, “what’s the matter?”
She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched towards her, and read on; her voice still faltering and trembling, though she made an effort to command it when thus interrupted.
“‘To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave, is always sorrowful. Oh Home, so true to us, so often slighted in return, be lenient to them that turn away from thee, and do nothaunt their erring footsteps too reproachfully! Let no kind looks, no well-remembered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom face. Let no ray of affection, welcome, gentleness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy white head. Let no old loving word or tone rise up in judgment against thy deserter; but if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in mercy to the Penitent!’”
“Dear Marion, read no more to-night,” said Grace—for she was weeping.
“I cannot,” she replied, and closed the book. “The words seem all on fire!”
The Doctor was amused at this; and laughed as he patted her on the head.
“What! overcome by a story-book!” said Doctor Jeddler. “Print and paper! Well, well, it’s all one. It’s as rational to make a serious matter of print and paper as of anything else. But dry your eyes, love, dry your eyes. I dare say the heroine has got home again long ago, and made it up all round—and if she hasn’t, a real home is only four walls; and a fictitious one, mere rags and ink. What’s the matter now?”
“It’s only me, Mister,” said Clemency, putting in her head at the door.
“And what’s the matter withyou?” said the Doctor.
“Oh, bless you, nothing an’t the matter with me,” returned Clemency—and truly too, to judge from her well-soaped face, in which there gleamed as usual the very soul of good humour, which, ungainly as she was, made her quite engaging. Abrasions on the elbows are not generally understood, it is true, to range within that class of personal charms called beauty-spots. But it is better, going through the world, to have the arms chafed in that narrow passage, than the temper: and Clemency’s was sound and whole as any beauty’s in the land.
“Nothing an’t the matter with me,” said Clemency, entering, “but—come a little closer, Mister.”
The Doctor, in some astonishment, complied with this invitation.
“You said I wasn’t to give you one before them, you know,” said Clemency.
A novice in the family might have supposed, from her extraordinary ogling as she said it, as well as froma singular rapture or ecstasy which pervaded her elbows, as if she were embracing herself, that ‘one,’ in its most favorable interpretation, meant a chaste salute. Indeed the Doctor himself seemed alarmed, for the moment; but quickly regained his composure, as Clemency, having had recourse to both her pockets—beginning with the right one, going away to the wrong one, and afterwards coming back to the right one again—produced a letter from the Post-office.
“Britain was riding by on a errand,” she chuckled, handing it to the Doctor, “and see the Mail come in, and waited for it. There’s A. H. in the corner. Mr. Alfred’s on his journey home, I bet. We shall have a wedding in the house—there was two spoons in my saucer this morning. Oh Luck, how slow he opens it!”
All this she delivered, by way of soliloquy, gradually rising higher and higher on tiptoe, in her impatience to hear the news, and making a corkscrew of her apron, and a bottle of her mouth. At last, arriving at a climax of suspense, and seeing the Doctor still engaged in the perusal of the letter, she came down flat upon the soles of her feet again, andcast her apron, as a veil, over her head, in a mute despair, and inability to bear it any longer.
“Here! Girls!” cried the Doctor. “I can’t help it: I never could keep a secret in my life. There are not many secrets, indeed, worth being kept in such a—well! never mind that. Alfred’s coming home, my dears, directly.”
“Directly!” exclaimed Marion.
“What! The story-book is soon forgotten!” said the Doctor, pinching her cheek. “I thought the news would dry those tears. Yes. ‘Let it be a surprise,’ he says, here. But I can’t let it be a surprise. He must have a welcome.”
“Directly!” repeated Marion.
“Why, perhaps not what your impatience calls ‘directly,’” returned the Doctor; “but pretty soon too. Let us see. Let us see. To-day is Thursday, is it not? Then he promises to be here, this day month.”
“This day month!” repeated Marion, softly.
“A gay day and a holiday for us,” said the cheerful voice of her sister Grace, kissing her in congratulation. “Long looked forward to, dearest, and come at last.”
She answered with a smile; a mournful smile, but full of sisterly affection: and as she looked in her sister’s face, and listened to the quiet music of her voice, picturing the happiness of this return, her own face glowed with hope and joy.
And with a something else: a something shining more and more through all the rest of its expression: for which I have no name. It was not exultation, triumph, proud enthusiasm. They are not so calmly shown. It was not love and gratitude alone, though love and gratitude were part of it. It emanated from no sordid thought, for sordid thoughts do not light up the brow, and hover on the lips, and move the spirit, like a fluttered light, until the sympathetic figure trembles.
Doctor Jeddler, in spite of his system of philosophy—which he was continually contradicting and denying in practice, but more famous philosophers have done that—could not help having as much interest in the return of his old ward and pupil, as if it had been a serious event. So he sat himself down in his easy chair again, stretched out his slippered feet once more upon the rug, read the letter over and over agreat many times, and talked it over more times still.
“Ah! The day was,” said the Doctor, looking at the fire, “when you and he, Grace, used to trot about arm-in-arm, in his holiday time, like a couple of walking dolls. You remember?”
“I remember,” she answered, with her pleasant laugh, and plying her needle busily.
“This day month, indeed!” mused the Doctor. “That hardly seems a twelve-month ago. And where was my little Marion then!”
“Never far from her sister,” said Marion, cheerily, “however little. Grace was everything to me, even when she was a young child herself.”
“True, Puss, true,” returned the Doctor. “She was a staid little woman, was Grace, and a wise housekeeper, and a busy, quiet, pleasant body; bearing with our humours and anticipating our wishes, and always ready to forget her own, even in those times. I never knew you positive or obstinate, Grace, my darling, even then, on any subject but one.”
“I am afraid I have changed sadly for the worse,since,” laughed Grace, still busy at her work. “What was that one, father?”
“Alfred, of course,” said the Doctor. “Nothing would serve you but you must be called Alfred’s wife; so we called you Alfred’s wife; and you liked it better, I believe (odd as it seems now), than being called a Duchess, if we could have made you one.”
“Indeed!” said Grace, placidly.
“Why, don’t you remember?” inquired the Doctor.
“I think I remember something of it,” she returned, “but not much. It’s so long ago.” And as she sat at work, she hummed the burden of an old song, which the Doctor liked.
“Alfred will find a real wife soon,” she said, breaking off; “and that will be a happy time indeed for all of us. My three years’ trust is nearly at an end, Marion. It has been a very easy one. I shall tell Alfred, when I give you back to him, that you have loved him dearly all the time, and that he has never once needed my good services. May I tell him so, love?”
“Tell him, dear Grace,” replied Marion, “thatthere never was a trust so generously, nobly, stedfastly discharged; and that I have lovedyou, all the time, dearer and dearer every day; and oh! how dearly now!”
“Nay,” said her cheerful sister, returning her embrace, “I can scarcely tell him that; we will leave my deserts to Alfred’s imagination. It will be liberal enough, dear Marion; like your own.”
With that she resumed the work she had for a moment laid down, when her sister spoke so fervently: and with it the old song the Doctor liked to hear. And the Doctor, still reposing in his easy chair, with his slippered feet stretched out before him on the rug, listened to the tune, and beat time on his knee with Alfred’s letter, and looked at his two daughters, and thought that among the many trifles of the trifling world, these trifles were agreeable enough.
Clemency Newcome in the mean time, having accomplished her mission and lingered in the room until she had made herself a party to the news, descended to the kitchen, where her coadjutor, Mr. Britain, was regaling after supper, surrounded by such a plentiful collection of bright pot-lids, well-scouredsaucepans, burnished dinner-covers, gleaming kettles, and other tokens of her industrious habits, arranged upon the walls and shelves, that he sat as in the centre of a hall of mirrors. The majority did not give forth very flattering portraits of him, certainly; nor were they by any means unanimous in their reflections; as some made him very long-faced, others very broad-faced, some tolerably well-looking, others vastly ill-looking, according to their several manners of reflecting: which were as various, in respect of one fact, as those of so many kinds of men. But they all agreed that in the midst of them sat, quite at his ease, an individual with a pipe in his mouth, and a jug of beer at his elbow, who nodded condescendingly to Clemency, when she stationed herself at the same table.
“Well, Clemmy,” said Britain, “how are you by this time, and what’s the news?”
Clemency told him the news, which he received very graciously. A gracious change had come over Benjamin from head to foot. He was much broader, much redder, much more cheerful, and much jollier in all respects. It seemed as if his face had been tiedup in a knot before, and was now untwisted and smoothed out.
“There’ll be another job for Snitchey and Craggs, I suppose,” he observed, puffing slowly at his pipe. “More witnessing for you and me, perhaps, Clemmy!”
“Lor!” replied his fair companion, with her favorite twist of her favorite joints. “I wish it was me, Britain.”
“Wish what was you?”
“A going to be married,” said Clemency.
Benjamin took his pipe out of his mouth and laughed heartily. “Yes! you’re a likely subject for that!” he said. “Poor Clem!” Clemency for her part laughed as heartily as he, and seemed as much amused by the idea. “Yes,” she assented, “I’m a likely subject for that; an’t I?”
“You’ll never be married, you know,” said Mr. Britain, resuming his pipe.
“Don’t you think I ever shall though?” said Clemency, in perfect good faith.
Mr. Britain shook his head. “Not a chance of it!”
“Only think!” said Clemency. “Well!—I supposeyou mean to, Britain, one of these days; don’t you?”
A question so abrupt, upon a subject so momentous, required consideration. After blowing out a great cloud of smoke, and looking at it with his head now on this side and now on that, as if it were actually the question, and he were surveying it in various aspects, Mr. Britain replied that he wasn’t altogether clear about it, but—ye-es—he thought he might come to that at last.
“I wish her joy, whoever she may be!” cried Clemency.
“Oh she’ll have that,” said Benjamin; “safe enough.”
“But she wouldn’t have led quite such a joyful life as she will lead, and wouldn’t have had quite such a sociable sort of husband as she will have,” said Clemency, spreading herself half over the table, and staring retrospectively at the candle, “if it hadn’t been for—not that I went to do it, for it was accidental, I am sure—if it hadn’t been for me; now would she, Britain?”
“Certainly not,” returned Mr. Britain, by this timein that high state of appreciation of his pipe, when a man can open his mouth but a very little way for speaking purposes; and sitting luxuriously immovable in his chair, can afford to turn only his eyes towards a companion, and that very passively and gravely. “Oh! I’m greatly beholden to you, you know, Clem.”
“Lor, how nice that is to think of!” said Clemency.
At the same time, bringing her thoughts as well as her sight to bear upon the candle-grease, and becoming abruptly reminiscent of its healing qualities as a balsam, she anointed her left elbow with a plentiful application of that remedy.
“You see I’ve made a good many investigations of one sort and another in my time,” pursued Mr. Britain, with the profundity of a sage; “having been always of an inquiring turn of mind; and I’ve read a good many books about the general Rights of things and Wrongs of things, for I went into the literary line myself, when I began life.”
“Did you though!” cried the admiring Clemency.
“Yes,” said Mr. Britain; “I was hid for the best part of two years behind a bookstall, ready to fly out if anybody pocketed a volume; and after that I was lightporter to a stay and mantua maker, in which capacity I was employed to carry about, in oilskin baskets, nothing but deceptions—which soured my spirits and disturbed my confidence in human nature; and after that, I heard a world of discussions in this house, which soured my spirits fresh; and my opinion after all is, that, as a safe and comfortable sweetener of the same, and as a pleasant guide through life, there’s nothing like a nutmeg-grater.”
Clemency was about to offer a suggestion, but he stopped her by anticipating it.
“Com-bined,” he added gravely, “with a thimble.”
“Do as you wold, you know, and cetrer, eh!” observed Clemency, folding her arms comfortably in her delight at this avowal, and patting her elbows. “Such a short cut, an’t it?”
“I’m not sure,” said Mr. Britain, “that it’s what would be considered good philosophy. I’ve my doubts about that: but it wears well, and saves a quantity of snarling, which the genuine article don’t always.”
“See how you used to go on once, yourself, you know!” said Clemency.
“Ah!” said Mr. Britain. “But the most extraordinary thing, Clemmy, is that I should live to be brought round, through you. That’s the strange part of it. Through you! Why, I suppose you haven’t so much as half an idea in your head.”
Clemency, without taking the least offence, shook it, and laughed, and hugged herself, and said, “No, she didn’t suppose she had.”
“I’m pretty sure of it,” said Mr. Britain.
“Oh! I dare say you’re right,” said Clemency. “I don’t pretend to none. I don’t want any.”
Benjamin took his pipe from his lips, and laughed till the tears ran down his face. “What a natural you are, Clemmy!” he said, shaking his head, with an infinite relish of the joke, and wiping his eyes. Clemency, without the smallest inclination to dispute it, did the like, and laughed as heartily as he.
“But I can’t help liking you,” said Mr. Britain; “you’re a regular good creature in your way; so shake hands, Clem. Whatever happens, I’ll always take notice of you, and be a friend to you.”
“Will you?” returned Clemency. “Well! that’s very good of you.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Britain, giving her his pipe to knock the ashes out of; “I’ll stand by you. Hark! That’s a curious noise!”
“Noise!” repeated Clemency.
“A footstep outside. Somebody dropping from the wall, it sounded like,” said Britain. “Are they all abed up-stairs?”
“Yes, all abed by this time,” she replied.
“Didn’t you hear anything?”
“No.”
They both listened, but heard nothing.
“I tell you what,” said Benjamin, taking down a lantern. “I’ll have a look round before I go to bed myself, for satisfaction’s sake. Undo the door while I light this, Clemmy.”
Clemency complied briskly; but observed as she did so, that he would only have his walk for his pains, that it was all his fancy, and so forth. Mr. Britain said ‘very likely;’ but sallied out, nevertheless, armed with the poker, and casting the light of the lantern far and near in all directions.
“It’s as quiet as a churchyard,” said Clemency, looking after him; “and almost as ghostly too!”
Glancing back into the kitchen, she cried fearfully, as a light figure stole into her view, “What’s that!”
“Hush!” said Marion, in an agitated whisper. “You have always loved me, have you not!”
“Loved you, child! You may be sure I have.”
“I am sure. And I may trust you, may I not? There is no one else just now, in whom Icantrust.”
“Yes,” said Clemency, with all her heart.
“There is some one out there,” pointing to the door, “whom I must see, and speak with, to-night. Michael Warden, for God’s sake retire! Not now!”
Clemency started with surprise and trouble as, following the direction of the speaker’s eyes, she saw a dark figure standing in the doorway.
“In another moment you may be discovered,” said Marion. “Not now! Wait, if you can, in some concealment. I will come, presently.”
He waved his hand to her, and was gone.
“Don’t go to bed. Wait here for me!” said Marion, hurriedly. “I have been seeking to speak to you for an hour past. Oh, be true to me!”
Eagerly seizing her bewildered hand, and pressing it with both her own to her breast—an action moreexpressive, in its passion of entreaty, than the most eloquent appeal in words,—Marion withdrew; as the light of the returning lantern flashed into the room.
“All still and peaceable. Nobody there. Fancy, I suppose,” said Mr. Britain, as he locked and barred the door. “One of the effects of having a lively imagination. Halloa! Why, what’s the matter?”
Clemency, who could not conceal the effects of her surprise and concern, was sitting in a chair: pale, and trembling from head to foot.
“Matter!” she repeated, chafing her hands and elbows, nervously, and looking anywhere but at him. “That’s good in you, Britain, that is! After going and frightening one out of one’s life with noises, and lanterns, and I don’t know what all. Matter! Oh, yes.”
“If you’re frightened out of your life by a lantern, Clemmy,” said Mr. Britain, composedly blowing it out and hanging it up again, “that apparition’s very soon got rid of. But you’re as bold as brass in general,” he said, stopping to observe her; “and were, after the noise and the lantern too. What have you taken into your head? Not an idea, eh?”
But as Clemency bade him good night very much after her usual fashion, and began to bustle about with a show of going to bed herself immediately, Little Britain, after giving utterance to the original remark that it was impossible to account for a woman’s whims, bade her good night in return, and taking up his candle strolled drowsily away to bed.
When all was quiet, Marion returned.
“Open the door,” she said; “and stand there close beside me, while I speak to him, outside.”
Timid as her manner was, it still evinced a resolute and settled purpose, such as Clemency could not resist. She softly unbarred the door: but before turning the key, looked round on the young creature waiting to issue forth when she should open it.
The face was not averted or cast down, but looking full upon her, in its pride of youth and beauty. Some simple sense of the slightness of the barrier that interposed itself between the happy home and honoured love of the fair girl, and what might be the desolation of that home, and shipwreck of its dearest treasure, smote so keenly on the tender heart of Clemency, and so filled it to overflowing with sorrowand compassion, that, bursting into tears, she threw her arms round Marion’s neck.
“It’s little that I know, my dear,” cried Clemency, “very little; but I know that this should not be. Think of what you do!”
“I have thought of it many times,” said Marion, gently.
“Once more,” urged Clemency. “Till to-morrow.”
Marion shook her head.
“For Mr. Alfred’s sake,” said Clemency, with homely earnestness. “Him that you used to love so dearly, once!”
She hid her face, upon the instant, in her hands, repeating “Once!” as if it rent her heart.
“Let me go out,” said Clemency, soothing her. “I’ll tell him what you like. Don’t cross the door-step to-night. I’m sure no good will come of it. Oh, it was an unhappy day when Mr. Warden was ever brought here! Think of your good father, darling: of your sister.”
“I have,” said Marion, hastily raising her head. “You don’t know what I do. You don’t know what I do. Imustspeak to him. You are the best andtruest friend in all the world for what you have said to me, but I must take this step. Will you go with me, Clemency,” she kissed her on her friendly face, “or shall I go alone?”