Are you go?—Is you gone?—And I left?—Vera vell!
Now the whole business of a farewell is contained in that line. When the moment comes, let that be said; let that be said and felt, and then let the dear ones depart.
Mrs. Woodward and Gertrude—God bless them!—had never studied the subject. They knew no better than to sit in the nasty cabin, surrounded by boxes, stewards, porters, children, and abominations of every kind, holding each other's hands, and pressing damp handkerchiefs to their eyes. The delay, the lingering, upset even Gertrude, and brought her for a moment down to the usual level of leave-taking womanhood. Alaric, the meanwhile, stood leaning over the taffrail with Charley, as mute as the fishes beneath him.
'Write to us the moment you get there,' said Charley. How often had the injunction been given! 'And now we had better get off—you'll be better when we are gone, Alaric,'—Charley had some sense of the truth about him—'and, Alaric, take my word for it, I'll come and set the Melbourne Weights and Measures to rights before long—I'll come and weigh your gold for you.'
'We had better be going now,' said Charley, looking down into the cabin; 'they may let loose and be off any moment now.'
'Oh, Charley, not yet, not yet,' said Linda, clinging to her sister.
'You'll have to go down to the Nore, if you stay; that's all,' said Charley.
And then again began the kissing and the crying. Yes, ye dear ones—it is hard to part—it is hard for the mother to see the child of her bosom torn from her for ever; it is cruel that sisters should be severed: it is a harsh sentence for the world to give, that of such a separation as this. These, O ye loving hearts, are the penalties of love! Those that are content to love must always be content to pay them.
'Go, mamma, go,' said Gertrude; 'dearest, best, sweetest mother—my own, own mother; go, Linda, darling Linda. Give my kindest love to Harry—Charley, you and Harry will be good to mamma, I know you will. And mamma'—and then she whispered to her mother one last prayer in Charley's favour—'she may love him now, indeed she may.'
Alaric came to them at the last moment—'Mrs. Woodward,' said he, 'say that you forgive me.'
'I do,' said she, embracing him—'God knows that I do;—but, Alaric, remember what a treasure you possess.'
And so they parted. May God speed the wanderers!
And now, having dispatched Alaric and his wife and bairns on their long journey, we must go back for a while and tell how Charley had been transformed from an impudent, idle young Navvy into a well-conducted, zealous young Weights.
When Alaric was convicted, Charley had, as we all know, belonged to the Internal Navigation; when the six months' sentence had expired, Charley was in full blow at the decorous office in Whitehall; and during the same period Norman had resigned and taken on himself the new duties of a country squire. The change which had been made had affected others than Charley. It had been produced by one of those far-stretching, world-moving commotions which now and then occur, sometimes twice or thrice in a generation, and, perhaps, not again for half a century, causing timid men to whisper in corners, and the brave and high-spirited to struggle with the struggling waves, so that when the storm subsides they may be found floating on the surface. A moral earthquake had been endured by a portion of the Civil Service of the country.
The Internal Navigation had—No, my prognostic reader, it had not been reformed; no new blood had been infused into it; no attempt had been made to produce a better discipline by the appointment of a younger secretary; there had been no carting away of decayed wood in the shape of Mr. Snape, or gathering of rank weeds in the form of Mr. Corkscrew; nothing of the kind had been attempted. No—the disease had gone too far either for phlebotomy, purging, or cautery. The Internal Navigation had ceased to exist! Its demise had been in this wise.—It may be remembered that some time since Mr. Oldeschole had mentioned in the hearing of Mr. Snape that things were going wrong. Sir Gregory Hardlines had expressed an adverse opinion as to the Internal Navigation, and worse, ten times worse than that, there had been an article in theTimes. Now, we all know that if anything is ever done in any way towards improvement in these days, the public press does it. And we all know, also, of what the public press consists. Mr. Oldeschole knew this well, and even Mr. Snape had a glimmering idea of the truth. When he read that article, Mr. Oldeschole felt that his days were numbered, and Mr. Snape, when he heard of it, began to calculate for the hundredth time to what highest amount of pension he might be adjudged to be entitled by a liberal-minded Treasury minute.
Mr. Oldeschole began to set his house in order, hopelessly; for any such effort the time was gone by. It was too late for the office to be so done by, and too late for Mr. Oldeschole to do it. He had no aptitude for new styles and modern improvements; he could not understand Sir Gregory's code of rules, and was dumbfounded by the Civil Service requisitions that were made upon him from time to time. Then came frequent calls for him to attend at Sir Gregory's office. There a new broom had been brought in, in the place of our poor friend Alaric, a broom which seemed determined to sweep all before it with an unmitigable energy. Mr. Oldeschole found that he could not stand at all before this young Hercules, seeing that his special stall was considered to be the foulest in the whole range of the Augean stables. He soon saw that the river was to be turned in on him, and that he was to be officially obliterated in the flood.
The civility of those wonder-doing demigods—those Magi of the Civil Service office—was most oppressive to him. When he got to the board, he was always treated with a deference which he knew was but a prelude to barbaric tortures. They would ask him to sit down in a beautiful new leathern arm-chair, as though he were really some great man, and then examine him as they would a candidate for the Custom House, smiling always, but looking at him as though they were determined to see through him.
They asked him all manner of questions; but there was one question which they put to him, day after day, for four days, that nearly drove him mad. It was always put by that horrid young lynx-eyed new commissioner, who sat there with his hair brushed high from off his forehead, peering out of his capacious, excellently-washed shirt-collars, a personification of conscious official zeal.
'And now, Mr. Oldeschole, if you have had leisure to consider the question more fully, perhaps you can define to us what is the—hum—hm—the use—hm—hm—the exact use of the Internal Navigation Office?'
And then Sir Warwick would go on looking through his millstone as though now he really had a hope of seeing something, and Sir Gregory would lean back in his chair, and rubbing his hands slowly over each other, like a great Akinetos as he was, wait leisurely for Mr. Oldeschole's answer, or rather for his no answer.
What a question was this to ask of a man who had spent all his life in the Internal Navigation Office! O reader! should it chance that thou art a clergyman, imagine what it would be to thee, wert thou asked what is the exact use of the Church of England; and that, too, by some stubborn catechist whom thou wert bound to answer; or, if a lady, happy in a husband and family, say, what would be thy feelings if demanded to define the exact use of matrimony? Use! Is it not all in all to thee?
Mr. Oldeschole felt a hearty inward conviction that his office had been of very great use. In the first place, had he not drawn from it a thousand a year for the last five-and-twenty years? had it not given maintenance and employment to many worthy men who might perhaps have found it difficult to obtain maintenance elsewhere? had it not always been an office, a public office of note and reputation, with proper work assigned to it? The use of it—the exact use of it? Mr. Oldeschole at last declared, with some indignation in his tone, that he had been there for forty years and knew well that the office was very useful; but that he would not undertake to define its exact use. 'Thank you, thank you, Mr. Oldeschole—that will do, I think,' said the very spruce-looking new gentleman out of his shirt-collars.
In these days there was a kind of prescience at the Internal Navigation that something special was going to be done with them. Mr. Oldeschole said nothing openly; but it may be presumed that he did whisper somewhat to those of the seniors around him in whom he most confided. And then, his frequent visits to Whitehall were spoken of even by the most thoughtless of the navvies, and the threatenings of the coming storm revealed themselves with more or less distinctness to every mind.
At last the thunder-cloud broke and the bolt fell. Mr. Oldeschole was informed that the Lords of the Treasury had resolved on breaking up the establishment and providing for the duties in another way. As the word duties passed Sir Gregory's lips a slight smile was seen to hover round the mouth of the new commissioner. Mr. Oldeschole would, he was informed, receive an official notification to this effect on the following morning; and on the following morning accordingly a dispatch arrived, of great length, containing the resolution of my Lords, and putting an absolute extinguisher on the life of every navvy.
How Mr. Oldeschole, with tears streaming down his cheeks, communicated the tidings to the elder brethren; and how the elder brethren, with palpitating hearts and quivering voices, repeated the tale to the listening juniors, I cannot now describe. The boldest spirits were then cowed, the loudest miscreants were then silenced, there were but few gibes, but little jeering at the Internal Navigation on that day; though Charley, who had already other hopes, contrived to keep up his spirits. The men stood about talking in clusters, and old animosities were at an end. The lamb sat down with the wolf, and Mr. Snape and Dick Scatterall became quite confidential.
'I knew it was going to happen,' said Mr. Snape to him. 'Indeed, Mr. Oldeschole has been consulting us about it for some time; but I must own I did not think it would be so sudden; I must own that.'
'If you knew it was coming,' said Corkscrew, 'why didn't you tell a chap?'
'I was not at liberty,' said Mr. Snape, looking very wise.
'We shall all have liberty enough now,' said Scatterall; 'I wonder what they'll do with us; eh, Charley?'
'I believe they will send the worst of us to Spike Island or Dartmoor prison,' said Charley; 'but Mr. Snape, no doubt, has heard and can tell us.'
'Oh, come, Charley! It don't do to chaff now,' said a young navvy, who was especially down in the mouth. 'I wonder will they do anything for a fellow?'
'I heard my uncle, in Parliament Street, say, that when a chap has got anyinfestedinterest in a thing, they can't turn him out,' said Corkscrew; 'and my uncle is a parliamentary agent.'
'Can't they though!' said Scatterall. 'It seems to me that they mean to, at any rate; there wasn't a word about pensions or anything of that sort, was there, Mr. Snape?'
'Not a word,' said Snape. 'But those who are entitled to pensions can't be affected injuriously. As far as I can see they must give me my whole salary. I don't think they can do less.'
'You're all serene then, Mr. Snape,' said Charley; 'you're in the right box. Looking at matters in that light, Mr. Snape, I think you ought to stand something handsome in the shape of lunch. Come, what do you say to chops and stout all round? Dick will go over and order it in a minute.'
'I wish you wouldn't, Charley,' said the navvy who seemed to be most affected, and who, in his present humour, could not endure a joke, As Mr. Snape did not seem to accede to Charley's views, the liberal proposition fell to the ground.
'Care killed a cat,' said Scatterall. 'I shan't break my heart about it. I never liked the shop—did you, Charley?'
'Well, I must say I think we have been very comfortable here, under Mr. Snape,' said Charley. But if Mr. Snape is to go, why the office certainly would be deuced dull without him.'
'Charley!' said the broken-hearted young navvy, in a tone of reproach.
Sorrow, however, did not take away their appetite, and as Mr. Snape did not see fitting occasion for providing a banquet, they clubbed together, and among them managed to get a spread of beefsteaks and porter. Scatterall, as requested, went across the Strand to order it at the cookshop, while Corkscrew and Charley prepared the tables. 'And now mind it's the thing,' said Dick, who, with intimate familiarity, had penetrated into the eating-house kitchen; 'not dry, you know, or too much done; and lots of fat.'
And then, as the generous viands renewed their strength, and as the potent stout warmed their blood, happier ideas came to them, and they began to hope that the world was not all over. 'Well, I shall try for the Customs,' said the unhappy one, after a deep pull at the pewter. 'I shall try for the Customs; one does get such stunning feeds for tenpence at that place in Thames Street.' Poor youth! his ideas of earning his bread did not in their wildest flight spread beyond the public offices of the Civil Service.
For a few days longer they hung about the old office, doing nothing—how could men so circumstanced do anything?—and waiting for their fate. At last their fate was announced. Mr. Oldeschole retired with his full salary. Secretaries and such-like always retire with full pay, as it is necessary that dignity should be supported. Mr. Snape and the other seniors were pensioned, with a careful respect to their years of service; with which arrangement they all of them expressed themselves highly indignant, and loudly threatened to bring the cruelty of their treatment before Parliament, by the aid of sundry members, who were supposed to be on the look out for such work; but as nothing further was ever heard of them, it may be presumed that the members in question did not regard the case as one on which the Government of the day was sufficiently vulnerable to make it worth their while to trouble themselves. Of the younger clerks, two or three, including the unhappy one, were drafted into other offices; some others received one or more years' pay, and then tore themselves away from the fascinations of London life; among those was Mr. R. Scatterall, who, in after years, will doubtless become a lawgiver in Hong-Kong; for to that colony has he betaken himself. Some few others, more unfortunate than the rest, among whom poor Screwy was the most conspicuous, were treated with a more absolute rigour, and were sent upon the world portionless. Screwy had been constant in his devotion to pork chops, and had persisted in spelling blue without the final 'e.' He was therefore, declared unworthy of any further public confidence whatever. He is now in his uncle's office in Parliament Street; and it is to be hoped that his peculiar talents may there be found useful.
And so the Internal Navigation Office came to an end, and the dull, dingy rooms were vacant. Ruthless men shovelled off as waste paper all the lock entries of which Charley had once been so proud; and the ponderous ledgers, which Mr. Snape had delighted to haul about, were sent away into Cimmerian darkness, and probably to utter destruction. And then the Internal Navigation was no more.
Among those who were drafted into other offices was Charley, whom propitious fate took to the Weights and Measures. But it must not be imagined that chance took him there. The Weights and Measures was an Elysium, the door of which was never casually open.
Charley at this time was a much-altered man; not that he had become a good clerk at his old office—such a change one may say was impossible; there were no good clerks at the Internal Navigation, and Charley had so long been among navvies the most knavish or navviest, that any such transformation would have met with no credence—but out of his office he had become a much-altered man. As Katie had said, it was as though some one had come to him from the dead. He could not go back to his old haunts, he could not return like a dog to his vomit, as long as he had that purse so near his heart, as long as that voice sounded in his ear, while the memory of that kiss lingered in his heart.
He now told everything to Gertrude, all his debts, all his love, and all his despair. There is no relief for sorrow like the sympathy of a friend, if one can only find it. But then the sympathy must be real; mock sympathy always tells the truth against itself, always fails to deceive. He told everything to Gertrude, and by her counsel he told much to Norman. He could not speak to him, true friend as he was, of Katie and her love. There was that about the subject which made it too sacred for man's ears, too full of tenderness to be spoken of without feminine tears. It was only in the little parlour at Paradise Row, when the evening had grown dark, and Gertrude was sitting with her baby in her arms, that the boisterous young navvy could bring himself to speak of his love.
During these months Katie's health had greatly improved, and as she herself had gained in strength, she had gradually begun to think that it was yet possible for her to live. Little was now said by her about Charley, and not much was said of him in her hearing; but still she did learn how he had changed his office, and with his office his mode of life; she did hear of his literary efforts, and of his kindness to Gertrude, and it would seem as though it were ordained that his moral life and her physical life were to gain strength together.
But at this time Charley was not idle. The fate of 'Crinoline and Macassar' has not yet been told; nor has that of the two rival chieftains, the 'Baron of Ballyporeen and Sir Anthony Allan-a-dale.' These heart-rending tales appeared in due course, bit by bit, in the pages of theDaily Delight. On every morning of the week, Sundays excepted, a page and a half of Charley's narrative was given to the expectant public; and though I am not prepared to say that the public received the offering with any violent acclamations of applause, that his name became suddenly that of a great unknown, that literary cliques talked about him to the exclusion of other topics, or that he rose famous one morning as Byron did after the publication of the 'Corsair,' nevertheless something was said in his praise. TheDaily Delight, on the whole, was rather belittled by its grander brethren of the press; but a word or two was said here and there to exempt Charley's fictions from the general pooh-poohing with which the remainder of the publication was treated.
Success, such as this even, is dear to the mind of a young author, and Charley began to feel that he had done something. The editor was proportionably civil to him, and he was encouraged to commence a third historiette.
'We have polished off poison and petticoats pretty well,' said the editor; 'what do you say to something political?'
Charley had no objection in life.
'This Divorce Bill, now—we could have half a dozen married couples all separating, getting rid of their ribs and buckling again, helter-skelter, every man to somebody else's wife; and the parish parson refusing to do the work; just to show the immorality of the thing.'
Charley said he'd think about it.
'Or the Danubian Principalities and the French Alliance—could you manage now to lay your scene in Constantinople?'
Charley doubted whether he could.
'Or perhaps India is the thing? The Cawnpore massacre would work up into any lengths you pleased. You could get a file of theTimes, you know, for your facts.'
But while the editor was giving these various valuable hints as to the author's future subjects, the author himself, with base mind, was thinking how much he should be paid for his past labours. At last he ventured, in the mildest manner, to allude to the subject.
'Payment!' said the editor.
Charley said that he had understood that there was to be some fixed scale of pay; so much per sheet, or something of that sort.
'Undoubtedly there will,' said the editor; 'and those who will have the courage and perseverance to work through with us, till the publication has obtained that wide popularity which it is sure to achieve, will doubtless be paid,—be paid as no writers for any periodical in this metropolis have ever yet been paid. But at present, Mr. Tudor, you really must be aware that it is quite out of the question.'
Charley had not the courage and perseverance to work through with theDaily Delighttill it had achieved its promised popularity, and consequently left its ranks like a dastard. He consulted both Gertrude and Norman on the subject, and on their advice set himself to work on his own bottom. 'You may perhaps manage to fly alone,' said Gertrude; 'but you will find it very difficult to fly if you tie the whole weight of theDaily Delightunder your wings.' So Charley prepared himself for solitary soaring.
While he was thus working, the time arrived at which Norman was to leave his office, and it occurred to him that it might be possible that he should bequeath his vacancy to Charley. He went himself to Sir Gregory, and explained, not only his own circumstances, and his former friendship with Alaric Tudor, but also the relationship between Alaric and Charley. He then learnt, in the strictest confidence of course, that the doom of the Internal Navigation had just been settled, and that it would be necessary to place in other offices those young men who could in any way be regarded as worth their salt, and, after considerable manoeuvring, had it so arranged that the ne'er-do-well young navvy should recommence his official life under better auspices.
Nor did Charley come in at the bottom of his office, but was allowed, by some inscrutable order of the great men who arranged those things, to take a position in the Weights and Measures equal in seniority and standing to that which he had held at the Navigation, and much higher, of course, in pay. There is an old saying, which the unenlightened credit, and which declares that that which is sauce for the goose is sauce also for the gander. Nothing put into a proverb since the days of Solomon was ever more untrue. That which is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, and especially is not so in official life. Poor Screwy was the goose, and certainly got the sauce best suited to him when he was turned adrift out of the Civil Service. Charley was the gander, and fond as I am of him for his many excellent qualities, I am fain to own that justice might fairly have demanded that he should be cooked after the same receipt. But it suited certain potent personages to make a swan of him; and therefore, though it had long been an assured fact through the whole service that no man was ever known to enter the Weights and Measures without the strictest examination, though the character of aspirants for that high office was always subjected to a rigid scrutiny, though knowledge, accomplishments, industry, morality, outward decency, inward zeal, and all the cardinal virtues were absolutely requisite, still Charley was admitted, without any examination or scrutiny whatever, during the commotion consequent upon the earthquake above described.
Charley went to the Weights some time during the recess. In the process of the next session Mr. Nogo gave notice that he meant to ask the Government a question as to a gross act of injustice which had been perpetrated—so at least the matter had been represented to him—on the suppression of the Internal Navigation Office.
Mr. Nogo did not at first find it very easy to get a fitting opportunity for asking his question. He had to give notice, and inquiries had to be made, and the responsible people were away, and various customary accidents happened, so that it was late in June before the question was put. Mr. Nogo, however, persevered ruthlessly, and after six months' labour, did deliver himself of an indignant, and, as his friends declared to him, a very telling speech.
It was reported at the time by the opposition newspapers, and need not therefore be given here. But the upshot was this: two men bearing equal character—Mr. Nogo would not say whether the characters of the gentlemen were good or bad; he would only say equal characters—sat in the same room at this now defunct office; one was Mr. Corkscrew and the other Mr. Tudor. One had no friends in the Civil Service, but the other was more fortunate. Mr. Corkscrew had been sent upon the world a ruined, blighted man, without any compensation, without any regard for his interests, without any consideration for his past services or future prospects. They would be told that the Government had no further need of his labours, and that they could not dare to saddle the country with a pension for so young a man. But what had been done in the case of the other gentleman? Why, he had been put into a valuable situation, in the best Government office in London, had been placed over the heads of a dozen others, who had been there before him, &c., &c., &c. And then Mr. Nogo ended with so vehement an attack on Sir Gregory, and the Government as connected with him, that the dogs began to whet their teeth and prepare for a tug at the great badger.
But circumstances were mischancy with Mr. Nogo, and all he said redounded only to the credit of our friend Charley. His black undoubtedly was black; the merits of Charley and Mr. Corkscrew, as public servants, had been about equal; but Mr. Whip Vigil turned the black into white in three minutes.
As he got upon his legs, smiling after the manner of his great exemplar, he held in his hand a small note and a newspaper. 'A comparison,' he said, 'had been instituted between the merits of two gentlemen formerly in the employment of the Crown, one of them had been selected for further employment, and the other rejected. The honourable member for Mile End had, he regretted to say, instituted this comparison. They all knew what was the proverbial character of a comparison. It was, however, ready made to his hands, and there was nothing left for him, Mr. Whip Vigil, but to go on with it. This, however, he would do in as light a manner as possible. It had been thought that the one gentleman would not suit the public service, and that the other would do so. It was for him merely to defend this opinion. He now held in his hand a letter written by the protégé of the honourable member for Limehouse; he would not read it—' (cries of 'Read, read!') 'no, he would not read it, but the honourable member might if he would—and could. He himself was prepared to say that a gentleman who chose to express himself in such a style in his private notes—this note, however, was not private in the usual sense—could hardly be expected to command a proper supply of wholesome English, such as the service of the Crown demanded!' Then Mr. Vigil handed across to Mr. Nogo poor Screwy's unfortunate letter about the pork chops. 'As to the other gentleman, whose name was now respectably known in the lighter walks of literature, he would, if permitted, read the opinion expressed as to his style of language by a literary publication of the day; and then the House would see whether or no the produce of the Civil Service field had not been properly winnowed; whether the wheat had not been garnered, and the chaff neglected.' And then the right honourable gentleman read some half-dozen lines, highly eulogistic of Charley's first solitary flight.
Poor Mr. Nogo remained in silence, feeling that his black had become white to all intents and purposes; and the big badger sat by and grinned, not deigning to notice the dogs around him. Thus it may be seen that that which is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.
Early in the spring Norman was married; and then, as had been before arranged, Charley once more went to Surbiton Cottage. The marriage was a very quiet affair. The feeling of disgrace which had fallen upon them all since the days of Alaric's trial had by no means worn itself away. There were none of them yet—no, not one of the Cottage circle, from Uncle Bat down to the parlour-maid—who felt that they had a right to hold up their faces before the light of day as they had formerly done. There was a cloud over their house, visible perhaps with more or less distinctness to all eyes, but which to themselves appeared black as night. That evil which Alaric had done to them was not to be undone in a few moons. We are all of us responsible for our friends, fathers-in-law for their sons-in-law, brothers for their sisters, husbands for their wives, parents for their children, and children even for their parents. We cannot wipe off from us, as with a wet cloth, the stains left by the fault of those who are near to us. The ink-spot will cling. Oh! Alaric, Alaric, that thou, thou who knewest all this, that thou shouldest have done this thing! They had forgiven his offence against them, but they could not forget their own involuntary participation in his disgrace. It was not for them now to shine forth to the world with fine gala doings, and gay gaudy colours, as they had done when Gertrude had been married.
But still there was happiness—quiet, staid happiness—at the Cottage. Mrs. Woodward could not but be happy to see Linda married to Harry Norman, her own favourite, him whom she had selected in her heart for her son-in-law from out of all the world. And now, too, she was beginning to be conscious that Harry and Linda were better suited for each other than he and Gertrude would have been. What would have been Linda's fate, how unendurable, had she been Alaric's wife, when Alaric fell? How would she have borne such a fall? What could she have done, poor lamb, towards mending the broken thread or binding the bruised limbs? What balm could she have poured into such wounds as those which fate had inflicted on Gertrude and her household? But at Normansgrove, with a steady old housekeeper at her back, and her husband always by to give her courage, Linda would find the very place for which she was suited.
And then Mrs. Woodward had another source of joy, of liveliest joy, in Katie's mending looks. She was at the wedding, though hardly with her mother's approval.
As she got better her old spirit returned to her, and it became difficult to refuse her anything. It was in vain that her mother talked of the cold church, and easterly winds, and the necessary lightness of a bridesmaid's attire. Katie argued that the church was only two hundred yards off, that she never suffered from the cold, and that though dressed in light colours, as became a bridesmaid, she would, if allowed to go, wear over her white frock any amount of cloaks which her mother chose to impose on her. Of course she went, and we will not say how beautiful she looked, when she clung to Linda in the vestry-room, and all her mother's wrappings fell in disorder from her shoulders.
So Linda was married and carried off to Normansgrove, and Katie remained with her mother and Uncle Bat.
'Mamma, we will never part—will we, mamma?' said she, as they comforted each other that evening after the Normans were gone, and when Charley also had returned to London.
'When you go, Katie, I think you must take me with you,' said her mother, smiling through her tears. 'But what will poor Uncle Bat do? I fear you can't take him also.'
'I will never go from you, mamma.'
Her mother knew what she meant. Charley had been there, Charley to whom she had declared her love when lying, as she thought, on her bed of death—Charley had been there again, and had stood close to her, and touched her hand, and looked—oh, how much handsomer he was than Harry, how much brighter than Alaric!—he had touched her hand, and spoken to her one word of joy at her recovered health. But that had been all. There was a sort of compact, Katie knew, that there should be no other Tudor marriage. Charley was not now the scamp he had been, but still—it was understood that her love was not to win its object.
'I will never go from you, mamma.'
But Mrs. Woodward's heart was not hard as the nether millstone. She drew her daughter to her, and as she pressed her to her bosom, she whispered into her ears that she now hoped they might all be happy.
Our tale and toils have now drawn nigh to an end; our loves and our sorrows are over; and we are soon to part company with the three clerks and their three wives. Their three wives? Why, yes. It need hardly be told in so many words to an habitual novel-reader that Charley did get his bride at last.
Nevertheless, Katie kept her promise to Mrs. Woodward. What promise did she ever make and not keep? She kept her promise, and did not go from her mother. She married Mr. Charles Tudor, of the Weights and Measures, that distinguished master of modern fiction, as theLiterary Censorvery civilly called him the other day; and Mr. Charles Tudor became master of Surbiton Cottage.
Reader! take one last leap with me, and presume that two years have flown from us since the end of the last chapter; or rather somewhat more than two years, for we would have it high midsummer when we take our last farewell of Surbiton Cottage.
But sundry changes had taken place at the Cottage, and of such a nature, that were it not for the old name's sake, we should now find ourselves bound to call the place Surbiton Villa, or Surbiton Hall, or Surbiton House. It certainly had no longer any right to the title of a cottage; for Charley, in anticipation of what Lucina might do for him, had added on sundry rooms, a children's room on the ground floor, and a nursery above, and a couple of additional bedrooms on the other side, so that the house was now a comfortable abode for an increasing family.
At the time of which we are now speaking Lucina had not as yet done much; for, in truth, Charley had been married but little over twelve months; but there appeared every reason to believe that the goddess would be propitious. There was already one little rocking shrine, up in that cosy temple opening out of Katie's bedroom—we beg her pardon, we should have said Mrs. Charles Tudor's bedroom—one precious tabernacle in which was laid a little man-deity, a young Charley, to whom was daily paid a multitude of very sincere devotions.
How precious are all the belongings of a first baby; how dear are the cradle, the lace-caps, the first coral, all the little duds which are made with such punctilious care and anxious efforts of nicest needlework to encircle that small lump of pink humanity! What care is taken that all shall be in order! See that basket lined with crimson silk, prepared to hold his various garments, while the mother, jealous of her nurse, insists on tying every string with her own fingers. And then how soon the change comes; how different it is when there are ten of them, and the tenth is allowed to inherit the well-worn wealth which the ninth, a year ago, had received from the eighth. There is no crimson silk basket then, I trow.
'Jane, Jane, where are my boots?' 'Mary, I've lost my trousers!' Such sounds are heard, shouted through the house from powerful lungs.
'Why, Charley,' says the mother, as her eldest hope rushes in to breakfast with dishevelled hair and dirty hands, 'you've got no handkerchief on your neck—what have you done with your handkerchief?'
'No, mamma; it came off in the hay-loft, and I can't find it.'
'Papa,' says the lady wife, turning to her lord, who is reading his newspaper over his coffee—'papa, you really must speak to Charley; he will not mind me. He was dressed quite nicely an hour ago, and do see what a figure he has made himself.'
'Charley,' says papa, not quite relishing this disturbance in the midst of a very interesting badger-baiting—'Charley, my boy, if you don't mind your P's and Q's, you and I shall fall out; mind that;' and he again goes on with his sport; and mamma goes on with her teapot, looking not exactly like Patience on a monument.
Such are the joys which await you, Mr. Charles Tudor; but not to such have you as yet arrived. As yet there is but the one little pink deity in the rocking shrine above; but one, at least, of your own. At the moment of which we are now speaking there were visitors at Surbiton Cottage, and the new nursery was brought into full use. Mr. and Mrs. Norman of Normansgrove were there with their two children and two maids, and grandmamma Woodward had her hands quite full in the family nursery line.
It was a beautiful summer evening, and the two young mothers were sitting with Mrs. Woodward and Uncle Bat in the drawing-room, waiting for their lords' return from London. As usual, when they stayed late, the two men were to dine at their club and come down to tea. The nursemaids were walking on the lawn before the window with their charges, and the three ladies were busily employed with some fairly-written manuscript pages, which they were cutting carefully into shape, and arranging in particular form.
'Now, mamma,' said Katie, 'if you laugh once while you are reading it, you'll spoil it all.'
'I'll do the best I can, my dear, but I'm sure I shall break down; you have made it so very abusive,' said Mrs. Woodward.
'Mamma, I think I'll take out that about official priggism—hadn't I better, Linda?'
'Indeed, I think you had; I'm sure mamma would break down there,' said Linda. 'Mamma, I'm sure you would never get over the official priggism.'
'I don't think I should, my dear,' said Mrs. Woodward.
'What is it you are all concocting?' said Captain Cuttwater; 'some infernal mischief, I know, craving your pardons.'
'If you tell, Uncle Bat, I'll never forgive you,' said Katie.
'Oh, you may trust me; I never spoil sport, if I can't make any; but the fun ought to be very good, for you've been a mortal long time about it.'
And then the two younger ladies again went on clipping and arranging their papers, while Mrs. Woodward renewed her protest that she would do her best as to reading their production. While they were thus employed the postman's knock was heard, and a letter was brought in from the far-away Australian exiles. The period at which these monthly missives arrived were moments of intense anxiety, and the letter was seized upon with eager avidity. It was from Gertrude to her mother, as all these letters were; but in such a production they had a joint property, and it was hardly possible to say who first mastered its contents.
It will only be necessary here to give some extracts from the letter, which was by no means a short one. So much must be done in order that our readers may know something of the fate of those who perhaps may be called the hero and heroine of the tale. The author does not so call them; he professes to do his work without any such appendages to his story—heroism there may be, and he hopes there is—more or less of it there should be in a true picture of most characters; but heroes and heroines, as so called, are not commonly met with in our daily walks of life.
Before Gertrude's letter had been disposed of, Norman and Charley came in, and it was therefore discussed in full conclave. Alaric's path in the land of his banishment had not been over roses. The upward struggle of men, who have fallen from a high place once gained, that second mounting of the ladder of life, seldom is an easy path. He, and with him Gertrude and his children, had been called on to pay the full price of his backsliding. His history had gone with him to the Antipodes; and, though the knowledge of what he had done was not there so absolute a clog upon his efforts, so overpowering a burden, as it would have been in London, still it was a burden and a heavy one.
It had been well for Gertrude that she had prepared herself to give up all her luxuries by her six months' residence in that Millbank Paradise of luxuries: for some time she had little enough in the 'good and happy land,' to which she had taught herself and her children to look forward. That land of promise had not flowed with milk and honey when first she put her foot upon its soil; its produce for her had been gall and bitter herbs for many a weary month after she first landed. But her heart had never sunk within her. She had never forgotten that he, if he were to work well, should have at least one cheerful companion by his side. She had been true to him, then as ever. And yet it is so hard to be true to high principles in little things. The heroism of the Roman, who, for his country's sake, leapt his horse into a bottomless gulf, was as nothing to that of a woman who can keep her temper through poverty, and be cheerful in adversity.
Through poverty, scorn, and bad repute, under the privations of a hard life, separated from so many that she had loved, and from everything that she had liked, Gertrude had still been true to her ideas of her marriage vow; true, also, to her pure and single love. She had entwined herself with him in sunny weather; and when the storm came she did her best to shelter the battered stem to which she had trusted herself.
By degrees things mended with them; and in this letter, which is now passing from eager hand to hand in Katie's drawing-room, Gertrude spoke with better hope of their future prospects.
'Thank God, we are once more all well,' she said; 'and Alaric's spirits are higher than they were. He has, indeed, had much to try them. They think, I believe, in England, that any kind of work here is sure to command a high price; of this I am quite sure, that in no employment in England are people so tasked as they are here. Alaric was four months in these men's counting-house, and I am sure another four months would have seen him in his grave. Though I knew not then what other provision might be made for us, I implored him, almost on my knees, to give up that. He was expected to be there for ten, sometimes twelve, hours a day; and they thought he should always be kept going like a steam-engine. You know Alaric never was afraid of work; but that would have killed him. And what was it for? What did they give him for that—for all his talent, all his experience, all his skill? And he did give them all. His salary was two pounds ten a week! And then, when he told them of all he was doing for them, they had the baseness to remind him of——. Dearest mother, is not the world hard? It was that that made me insist that he should leave them.'
Alaric's present path was by no means over roses. This certainly was a change from those days on which he had sat, one of a mighty trio, at the Civil Service Examination Board, striking terror into candidates by a scratch of his pen, and making happy the desponding heart by his approving nod. His ambition now was not to sit among the magnates of Great Britain, and make his voice thunder through the columns of theTimes; it ranged somewhat lower at this period, and was confined for the present to a strong desire to see his wife and bairns sufficiently fed, and not left absolutely without clothing. He inquired little as to the feeling of the electors of Strathbogy.
And had he utterly forgotten the stirring motto of his early days? Did he ever mutter 'Excelsior' to himself, as, with weary steps, he dragged himself home from that hated counting-house? Ah! he had fatally mistaken the meaning of the word which he had so often used. There had been the error of his life. 'Excelsior!' When he took such a watchword for his use, he should surely have taught himself the meaning of it.
He had now learnt that lesson in a school somewhat of the sternest; but, as time wore kindly over him, he did teach himself to accept the lesson with humility. His spirit had been wellnigh broken as he was carried from that court-house in the Old Bailey to his prison on the river-side; and a broken spirit, like a broken goblet, can never again become whole. But Nature was a kind mother to him, and did not permit him to be wholly crushed. She still left within the plant the germ of life, which enabled it again to spring up and vivify, though sorely bruised by the heels of those who had ridden over it. He still repeated to himself the old watchword, though now in humbler tone and more bated breath; and it may be presumed that he had now a clearer meaning of its import.
'But his present place,' continued Gertrude, 'is much—very much more suited to him. He is corresponding clerk in the first bank here, and though his pay is nearly double what it was at the other place, his hours of work are not so oppressive. He goes at nine and gets away at five—that is, except on the arrival or dispatch of the English mails.' Here was a place of bliss for a man who had been a commissioner, attending at the office at such hours as best suited himself, and having clerks at his beck to do all that he listed. And yet, as Gertrude said, this was a place of bliss to him. It was a heaven as compared with that other hell.
'Alley is such a noble boy,' said Gertrude, becoming almost joyous as she spoke of her own immediate cares. 'He is most like Katie, I think, of us all; and yet he is very like his papa. He goes to a day-school now, with his books slung over his back in a bag. You never saw such a proud little fellow as he is, and so manly. Charley is just like you—oh! so like. It makes me so happy that he is. He did not talk so early as Alley, but, nevertheless, he is more forward than the other children I see here. The little monkeys! they are neither of them the least like me. But one can always see oneself, and it don't matter if one does not.'
'If ever there was a brick, Gertrude is one,' said Norman.
'A brick!' said Charley—'why you might cut her to pieces, and build another Kensington palace out of the slices. I believe she is a brick.'
'I wonder whether I shall ever see her again?' said Mrs. Woodward, not with dry eyes.
'Oh yes, mamma,' said Katie. 'She shall come home to us some day, and we will endeavour to reward her for it all.'
Dear Katie, who will not love you for such endeavour? But, indeed, the reward for heroism cometh not here.
There was much more in the letter, but enough has been given for our purpose. It will be seen that hope yet remained both for Alaric and his wife; and hope not without a reasonable base. Bad as he had been, it had not been with him as with Undy Scott. The devil had not contrived to put his whole claw upon him. He had not divested himself of human affections and celestial hopes. He had not reduced himself to the present level of a beast, with the disadvantages of a soul and of an eternity, as the other man had done. He had not put himself beyond the pale of true brotherhood with his fellow-men. We would have hanged Undy had the law permitted us; but now we will say farewell to the other, hoping that he may yet achieve exaltation of another kind.
And to thee, Gertrude—how shall we say farewell to thee, excluded as thou art from that dear home, where those who love thee so well are now so happy? Their only care remaining is now thy absence. Adversity has tried thee in its crucible, and thou art found to be of virgin gold, unalloyed; hadst thou still been lapped in prosperity, the true ring of thy sterling metal would never have been heard. Farewell to thee, and may those young budding flowerets of thine break forth into golden fruit to gladden thy heart in coming days!
The reading of Gertrude's letter, and the consequent discussion, somewhat put off the execution of the little scheme which had been devised for that evening's amusement; but, nevertheless, it was still broad daylight when Mrs. Woodward consigned the precious document to her desk; the drawing-room windows were still open, and the bairns were still being fondled in the room. It was the first week in July, when the night almost loses her dominion, and when those hours which she generally claims as her own, become the pleasantest of the day.
'Oh, Charley,' said Katie, at last, 'we have great news for you, too. Here is another review on "The World's Last Wonder."'
Now 'The World's Last Wonder' was Charley's third novel; but he was still sensitive enough on the subject of reviews to look with much anxiety for what was said of him. These notices were habitually sent down to him at Hampton, and his custom was to make his wife or her mother read them, while he sat by in lordly ease in his arm-chair, receiving homage when homage came to him, and criticizing the critics when they were uncivil.
'Have you?' said Charley. 'What is it? Why did you not show it me before?'
'Why, we were talking of dear Gertrude,' said Katie; 'and it is not so pleasant but that it will keep. What paper do you think it is?'
'What paper? how on earth can I tell?—show it me.'
'No; but do guess, Charley; and then mamma will read it—pray guess now.'
'Oh, bother, I can't guess.The Literary Censor, I suppose—I know they have turned against me.'
'No, it's not that,' said Linda; 'guess again.'
'The Guardian Angel,' said Charley.
'No—that angel has not taken you under his wings as yet,' said Katie.
'I know it's not theTimes,' said Charley, 'for I have seen that.'
'O no,' said Katie, seriously; 'if it was anything of that sort, we would not keep you in suspense.'
'Well, I'll be shot if I guess any more—there are such thousands of them.'
'But there is only oneDaily Delight,' said Mrs. Woodward.
'Nonsense!' said Charley. 'You don't mean to tell me that my dear old friend and foster-father has fallen foul of me—my old teacher and master, if not spiritual pastor; well—well—well! The ingratitude of the age! I gave him my two beautiful stories, the first-fruits of my vine, all for love; to think that he should now lay his treacherous axe to the root of the young tree—well, give it here.'
'No—mamma will read it—we want Harry to hear it.'
'O yes—let Mrs. Woodward read it,' said Harry. 'I trust it is severe. I know no man who wants a dragging over the coals more peremptorily than you do.'
'Thankee, sir. Well, grandmamma, go on; but if there be anything very bad, give me a little notice, for I am nervous.'
And then Mrs. Woodward began to read, Linda sitting with Katie's baby in her arms, and Katie performing a similar office for her sister.
"'The World's Last Wonder,' by Charles Tudor, Esq."
'He begins with a lie,' said Charley, 'for I never called myself Esquire.'
'Oh, that was a mistake,' said Katie, forgetting herself.
'Men of that kind shouldn't make such mistakes,' said Charley. 'When one fellow attempts to cut up another fellow, he ought to take special care that he does it fairly.'
"By the author of 'Bathos.'"
'I didn't put that in,' said Charley, 'that was the publisher. I only put Charles Tudor.'
'Don't be so touchy, Charley, and let me go on,' said Mrs. Woodward.
'Well, fire away—it's good fun to you, I dare say, as the fly said to the spider.'
'Well, Charley, at any rate we are not the spiders,' said Linda. Katie said nothing, but she could not help feeling that she must look rather spiderish.
'Mr. Tudor has acquired some little reputation as a humorist, but as is so often the case with those who make us laugh, his very success will prove his ruin.'
'Then upon my word theDaily Delightis safe,' said Charley. 'It will never be ruined in that way.'
'There is an elaborate jocosity about him, a determined eternity of most industrious fun, which gives us the idea of a boy who is being rewarded for having duly learnt by rote his daily lesson out of Joe Miller.'
'Now, I'll bet ten to one he has never read the book at all—well, never mind—go on.'
"'The World's Last Wonder' is the description of a woman who kept a secret under certain temptations to reveal it, which, as Mr. Tudor supposes, might have moved any daughter of Eve to break her faith."
'I haven't supposed anything of the kind,' said Charley.
'This secret, which we shall not disclose, as we would not wish to be thought less trustworthy than Mr. Tudor's wonderful woman—'
'We shall find that he does disclose it, of course; that is the way with all of them.'
—'Is presumed to permeate the whole three volumes.'
'It is told at full length in the middle of the second,' said Charley.
'And the effect upon the reader of course is, that he has ceased to interest himself about it, long before it is disclosed to him!
'The lady in question is engaged to be married to a gentleman, a circumstance which in the pages of a novel is not calculated to attract much special attention. She is engaged to be married, but the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo——'
'Intended sposo!' said Charley, expressing by his upturned lip a withering amount of scorn—'how well I know the fellow's low attempts at wit! That's the editor himself—that's my literary papa. I know him as well as though I had seen him at it.'
Katie and Mrs. Woodward exchanged furtive glances, but neither of them moved a muscle of her face.
'But the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo,' continued Mrs. Woodward.
'What the devil's a sposo?' said Uncle Bat, who was sitting in an arm-chair with a handkerchief over his head.
'Why, you're not a sposo, Uncle Bat,' said Linda; 'but Harry is, and so is Charley.'
'Oh, I see,' said the captain; 'it's a bird with his wings clipped.'
'But the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo——' again read Mrs. Woodward.
'Now I'm sure I'm speaking by the card,' said Charley, 'when I say that there is not another man in London who could have written that line, and who would have used so detestable a word. I think I remember his using it in one of his lectures to me; indeed I'm sure I do. Sposo! I should like to tweak his nose oh!'
'Are you going to let me go on?' said Mrs. Woodward—'her intended sposo'—Charley gave a kick with his foot and satisfied himself with that—'is determined to have nothing to say to her in the matrimonial line till she has revealed to him this secret which he thinks concerns his own honour.'
'There, I knew he'd tell it.'
'He has not told it yet,' said Norman.
'The lady, however, is obdurate, wonderfully so, of course, seeing that she is the world's last wonder, and so the match is broken off. But the secret is of such a nature that the lady's invincible objection to revealing it is bound up with the fact of her being a promised bride.'
'I wonder he didn't say sposa,' said Charley.
'I never thought of that,' said Katie.
Mrs. Woodward and Linda looked at her, but Charley did not, and her blunder passed by unnoticed.
'Now that she is free from her matrimonial bonds, she is free also to tell the secret; and indeed the welfare both of the gentleman and of the lady imperiously demands that it should be told. Should he marry her, he is destined to learn it after his marriage; should he not marry her, he may hear it at any time. She sends for him and tells him, not the first of these facts, by doing which all difficulty would have at once been put an end to—'
'It is quite clear he has never read the story, quite clear,' said Charley.
'She tells him only the last, viz., that as they are now strangers he may know the secret; but that when once known it will raise a barrier between them that no years, no penance, no sorrow on his part, no tenderness on hers, can ever break down. She then asks him—will he hear the secret?'
'She does not ask any such thing,' said Charley; 'the letter that contains it has been already sent to him. She merely gives him an opportunity of returning it unopened.'
'The gentleman, who is not without a grain of obstinacy in his own composition and many grains of curiosity, declares it to be impossible that he can go to the altar in ignorance of facts which he is bound to know, and the lady, who seems to be of an affectionate disposition, falls in tenderness at his feet. She is indeed in a very winning mood, and quite inclined to use every means allowable to a lady for retaining her lover; every means that is short of that specially feminine one of telling her secret.
'We will give an extract from this love scene, partly for the sake of its grotesque absurdity—'
Charley kicked out another foot, as though he thought that the editor of theDaily Delightmight perhaps be within reach.
'—And partly because it gives a fair example of the manner in which Mr. Tudor endeavours to be droll even in the midst of his most tender passages.
'Leonora was at this time seated—'
'Oh, skip the extract,' said Charley; 'I suppose there are three or four pages of it?'
'It goes down to where Leonora says that his fate and her own are in his hands.'
'Yes, about three columns,' said Charley; 'that's an easy way of making an article—eh, Harry?'
'Aliter non fit, amice, liber,' said the classical Norman.
'Well, skip the extract, grandmamma.'
'Now, did anyone ever before read such a mixture of the bombastic and the burlesque? We are called upon to cry over every joke, and, for the life of us, we cannot hold our sides when the catastrophes occur. It is a salad in which the pungency of the vinegar has been wholly subdued by the oil, and the fatness of the oil destroyed by the tartness of the vinegar.'
'His old simile,' said Charley; 'he was always talking about literary salads.'
'The gentleman, of course, gives way at the last minute,' continued Mrs. Woodward. 'The scene in which he sits with the unopened letter lying on his table before him has some merit; but this probably arises from the fact that the letter is dumb, and the gentleman equally so.'
'D——nation!' said Charley, whose patience could not stand such impudence at this.
'The gentleman, who, as we should have before said, is the eldest son of a man of large reputed fortune——'
'There—I knew he'd tell it.'
'Oh, but he hasn't told it,' said Norman.
'Doesn't the word 'reputed' tell it?'
'—The eldest son of a man of large reputed fortune, does at last marry the heroine; and then he discovers—But what he discovers, those who feel any interest in the matter may learn from the book itself; we must profess that we felt none.
'We will not say there is nothing in the work indicative of talent. The hero's valet, Jacob Brush, and the heroine's lady's-maid, Jacintha Pintail, are both humorous and good in their way. Why it should be so, we do not pretend to say; but it certainly does appear to us that Mr. Tudor is more at home in the servants' hall than in the lady's boudoir.'
'Abominable scoundrel!' said Charley.
'But what we must chiefly notice,' continued the article, 'in the furtherance of those views by which we profess that we are governed—'
'Now, I know, we are to have something very grandiloquent and very false,' said Charley.
'—Is this: that no moral purpose can be served by the volumes before us. The hero acts wrongly throughout, but nevertheless he is rewarded at last. There is no Nemesis—'
'No what?' said Charley, jumping up from his chair and looking over the table.
'No Nemesis,' said Mrs. Woodward, speaking with only half-sustained voice, and covering with her arms the document which she had been reading.
Charley looked sharply at his wife, then at Linda, then at Mrs. Woodward. Not one of them could keep her face. He made a snatch at the patched-up manuscript, and as he did so, Katie almost threw out of her arms the baby she was holding.
'Take him, Harry, take him,' said she, handing over the child to his father. And then gliding quick as thought through the furniture of the drawing-room, she darted out upon the lawn, to save herself from the coming storm.
Charley was quickly after her; but as he made his exit, one chair fell to the right of him, and another to the left. Mrs. Woodward followed them, and so did Harry and Linda, each with a baby.
And then Captain Cuttwater, waking from his placid nap, rubbed his eyes in wondering amazement.
'What the devil is all the row about?' said he. But there was nobody to answer him.