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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - ""

George MacDonald - "Lilith"

Ambrose Bierce - "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge"

Plato - "Theaetetus"

John Halifax, Gentleman

D >> Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik) >> John Halifax, Gentleman




When I saw this noble picture, it touched to the core this old heart
of mine--for the painter, in that rare expression, might have caught
John's. Just as in a few crises of his life I have seen it, and
especially in this one, when he first told to his wife that
determination which he had slowly come to--that it was both right and
expedient for us to quit Longfield, our happy home for so many years,
of which the mother loved every flower in the garden, every nook and
stone in the walls.

"Leave Longfield!" she repeated again, with a bitter sigh.

"Leave Longfield!" echoed the children, first the youngest, then the
eldest, but rather in curiosity than regret. Edwin's keen, bright
eyes were just lifted from his book, and fell again; he was not a lad
of much speech, or much demonstration of any kind.

"Boys, come and let us talk over the matter."

They came at once and joined in the circle; respectfully, yet with
entire freedom, they looked towards their father--these, the sons of
his youth, to whom he had been from their birth, not only parent and
head, but companion, guide, and familiar friend. They honoured him,
they trusted him, they loved him; not, perhaps, in the exact way that
they loved their mother; for it often seems Nature's own ordinance,
that a mother's influence should be strongest over her sons, while
the father's is greatest over his daughters. But even a stranger
could not glance from each to each of those attentive faces, so
different, yet with a curious "family look" running through them all,
without seeing in what deep, reverent affection, such as naturally
takes the place of childish fondness, these youths held their father.

"Yes, I am afraid, after much serious thought on the matter, and much
consultation with your mother here,--that we ought to leave
Longfield."

"So I think," said Mistress Maud, from her footstool; which putting
forward of her important opinion shook us all from gravity to
merriment, that compelled even Mrs. Halifax to join. Then, laying
aside her work, and with it the saddened air with which she had bent
over it, she drew her chair closer to her husband, slipping her hand
in his, and leaning against his shoulder. Upon which Guy, who had at
first watched his mother anxiously, doubtful whether or no his
father's plan had her approval, and therefore ought to be assented
to,--relapsed into satisfied, undivided attention.

"I have again been over Beechwood Hall. You all remember Beechwood?"

Yes. It was the "great house" at Enderley, just on the slope of the
hill, below Rose Cottage. The beech-wood itself was part of its
pleasure ground, and from its gardens honest James Tod, who had them
in keeping, had brought many a pocketful of pears for the boys, many
a sweet-scented nosegay for Muriel.

"Beechwood has been empty a great many years, father? Would it be a
safe investment to buy it?"

"I think so, Edwin, my practical lad," answered the father, smiling.
"What say you, children? Would you like living there?"

Each one made his or her comment. Guy's countenance brightened at
the notion of "lots of shooting and fishing" about Enderley,
especially at Luxmore; and Maud counted on the numerous visitors that
would come to John Halifax, Esquire, of Beechwood Hall.

"Neither of which excellent reasons happen to be your father's," said
Mrs. Halifax, shortly. But John, often tenderer over youthful
frivolities than she, answered:

"I will tell you, boys, what are my reasons. When I was a young man,
before your mother and I were married, indeed before I had ever seen
her, I had strongly impressed on my mind the wish to gain influence
in the world--riches if I could--but at all events, influence. I
thought I could use it well, better than most men; those can best
help the poor who understand the poor. And I can; since, you know,
when Uncle Phineas found me, I was--"

"Father," said Guy, flushing scarlet, "we may as well pass over that
fact. We are gentlefolks now."

"We always were, my son."

The rebuke, out of its very mildness, cut the youth to the heart. He
dropped his eyes, colouring now with a different and a holier shame.

"I know that. Please will you go on, father."

"And now," the father continued, speaking as much out of his own
thoughts as aloud to his children--"now, twenty-five years of labour
have won for me the position I desired. That is, I might have it for
the claiming. I might take my place among the men who have lately
risen from the people, to guide and help the people--the Cannings,
Huskissons, Peels."

"Would you enter parliament? Sir Herbert asked me to-day if you ever
intended it. He said there was nothing you might not attain to if
you would give yourself up entirely to politics."

"No, Guy, no. Wisdom, like charity, begins at home. Let me learn to
rule in my own valley, among my own people, before I attempt to guide
the state. And that brings me back again to the pros and cons about
Beechwood Hall."

"Tell them, John; tell all out plainly to the children."

The reasons were--first, the advantage of the boys themselves; for
John Halifax was not one of those philanthropists who would benefit
all the world except their own household and their own kin. He
wished--since the higher a man rises, the wider and nobler grows his
sphere of usefulness--not only to lift himself, but his sons after
him; lift them high enough to help on the ever-advancing tide of
human improvement, among their own people first, and thence extending
outward in the world whithersoever their talents or circumstances
might call them.

"I understand," cried the eldest son, his eyes sparkling; "you want
to found a family. And so it shall be--we will settle at Beechwood
Hall; all coming generations shall live to the honour and glory of
your name--our name--"

"My boy, there is only one Name to whose honour we should all live.
One Name 'in whom all the generations of the earth are blessed.' In
thus far only do I wish to 'found a family,' as you call it, that our
light may shine before men--that we may be a city set on a hill--that
we may say plainly unto all that ask us, 'For me and my house, we
will serve the Lord.'"

It was not often that John Halifax spoke thus; adopting solemnly the
literal language of the Book--his and our life's guide, no word of
which was ever used lightly in our family. We all listened, as in
his earnestness he rose, and, standing upright in the firelight,
spoke on.

"I believe, with His blessing, that one may 'serve the Lord' as well
in wealth as in poverty, in a great house as in a cottage like this.
I am not doubtful, even though my possessions are increased. I am
not afraid of being a rich man. Nor a great man neither, if I were
called to such a destiny."

"It may be--who knows?" said Ursula, softly.

John caught his wife's eyes, and smiled.

"Love, you were a true prophet once, with a certain 'Yes, you will,'
but now--Children, you know when I married your mother I had nothing,
and she gave up everything for me. I said I would yet make her as
high as any lady in the land,--in fortune I then meant, thinking it
would make her happier; but she and I are wiser now. We know that we
never can be happier than we were in the old house at Norton Bury, or
in this little Longfield. By making her lady of Beechwood I should
double her responsibilities and treble her cares; give her an
infinitude of new duties, and no pleasures half so sweet as those we
leave behind. Still, of herself and for herself, my wife shall
decide."

Ursula looked up at him; tears stood in her eyes, though through them
shone all the steadfastness of faithful love. "Thank you, John. I
have decided. If you wish it, if you think it right, we will leave
Longfield and go to Beechwood."

He stooped and kissed her forehead, saying only: "We will go."

Guy looked up, half-reproachfully, as if the father were exacting a
sacrifice; but I question whether the greater sacrifice were not his
who took rather than hers who gave.

So all was settled--we were to leave beloved Longfield. It was to be
let, not sold; let to a person we knew, who would take jealous care
of all that was ours, and we might come back and see it continually;
but it would be ours--our own home--no more.

Very sad--sadder even than I had thought--was the leaving all the
familiar things; the orchard and the flower-garden, the meadow and
the stream, the woody hills beyond, every line and wave of which was
pleasant and dear almost as our children's faces. Ay, almost as that
face which for a year--one little year, had lived in sight of, but
never beheld, their beauty; the child who one spring day had gone
away merrily out of the white gate with her three brothers, and never
came back to Longfield any more.

Perhaps this circumstance, that her fading away and her departure
happened away from home, was the cause why her memory--the memory of
our living Muriel, in her human childhood--afterwards clung more
especially about the house at Longfield. The other children altered,
imperceptibly, yet so swiftly, that from year to year we half forgot
their old likenesses. But Muriel's never changed. Her image, only a
shade, yet often more real than any of these living children, seemed
perpetually among us. It crept through the house at dusk; in winter
fire-light it sat smiling in dim corners; in spring mornings it moved
about the garden borders, with tiny soft footsteps neither seen nor
heard. The others grew up--would be men and women shortly--but the
one child that "was not," remained to us always a child.

I thought, even the last evening--the very last evening that John
returned from Enderley, and his wife went down to the stream to meet
him, and they came up the field together, as they had done so for
many, many years;--ay, even then I thought I saw his eyes turn to the
spot where a little pale figure used to sit on the door-sill,
listening and waiting for him, with her dove in her bosom. We never
kept doves now.

And the same night, when all the household was in bed--even the
mother, who had gone about with a restless activity, trying to
persuade herself that there would be at least no possibility of
accomplishing the flitting to-morrow--the last night, when John went
as usual to fasten the house-door, he stood a long time outside,
looking down the valley.

"How quiet everything is. You can almost hear the tinkle of the
stream. Poor old Longfield!" And I sighed, thinking we should never
again have such another home.

John did not answer. He had been mechanically bending aside and
training into its place a long shoot of wild clematis--virgin's
bower, which Guy and Muriel had brought in from the fields and
planted, a tiny root; it covered the whole front of the house now.
Then he came and leaned beside me over the wicket-gate, looking
fixedly up into the moon-light blue.

"I wonder if she knows we are leaving Longfield?"

"Who?" said I; for a moment forgetting.

"The child."



CHAPTER XXX

Father and son--a goodly sight, as they paced side by side up and
down the gravel walk--(alas! the pretty field-path belonged to days
that were!)--up and down the broad, sunshiny walk, in front of the
breakfast-room windows of Beechwood Hall.

It was early--little past eight o'clock; but we kept Longfield hours
and Longfield ways still. And besides, this was a grand day--the day
of Guy's coming of age. Curious it seemed to watch him, as he walked
along by his father, looking every inch "the young heir;" and perhaps
not unconscious that he did so;--curious enough, remembering how
meekly the boy had come into the world, at a certain old house at
Norton Bury, one rainy December morning, twenty-one years ago.

It was a bright day to-day--bright as all our faces were, I think, as
we gathered round the cosy breakfast-table. There, as heretofore, it
was the mother's pride and the father's pleasure that not one face
should be missing--that, summer and winter, all should assemble for
an hour of family fun and family chat, before the busy cares of the
day; and by general consent, which had grown into habit, every one
tried to keep unclouded this little bit of early sunshine, before the
father and brothers went away. No sour or dreary looks, no painful
topics, were ever brought to the breakfast-table.

Thus it was against all custom when Mr. Halifax, laying down his
paper with a grave countenance, said:

"This is very ill news. Ten Bank failures in the Gazette to-day."

"But it will not harm us, father."

"Edwin is always thinking of 'us,' and 'our business,'" remarked Guy,
rather sharply. It was one of the slight--the very slight--jars in
our household, that these two lads, excellent lads both, as they grew
into manhood did not exactly "pull together."

"Edwin is scarcely wrong in thinking of 'us,' since upon us depend so
many," observed the father, in that quiet tone with which, when he
did happen to interfere between his sons, he generally smoothed
matters down and kept the balance even. "Yet though we are ourselves
secure, I trust the losses everywhere around us make it the more
necessary that we should not parade our good fortune by launching out
into any of Guy's magnificences--eh, my boy?"

The youth looked down. It was well known in the family that since we
came to Beechwood his pleasure-loving temperament had wanted all
sorts of improvements on our style of living--fox-hounds,
dinner-parties, balls; that the father's ways, which, though extended
to liberal hospitalities, forbade outward show, and made our life a
thorough family life still--were somewhat distasteful to that most
fascinating young gentleman, Guy Halifax, Esquire, heir of Beechwood
Hall.

"You may call it 'magnificence,' or what you choose; but I know I
should like to live a little more as our neighbours do. And I think
we ought too--we that are known to be the wealthiest family--"

He stopped abruptly--for the door opened; and Guy had too much good
taste and good feeling to discuss our riches before Maud's poor
governess--the tall, grave, sad-looking, sad-clothed Miss Silver; the
same whom John had seen at Mr. Jessop's bank; and who had been with
us four months--ever since we came to Beechwood.

One of the boys rose and offered her a chair; for the parents set the
example of treating her with entire respect--nay, would gladly have
made her altogether one of the family, had she not been so very
reserved.

Miss Silver came forward with the daily nosegay which Mrs. Halifax
had confided to her superintendence.

"They are the best I can find, madam--I believe Watkins keeps all his
greenhouse flowers for to-night."

"Thank you, my dear. These will do very well.--Yes, Guy, persuade
Miss Silver to take your place by the fire. She looks so cold."

But Miss Silver, declining the kindness, passed on to her own seat
opposite.

Ursula busied herself over the breakfast equipage rather nervously.
Though an admirable person, Miss Silver in her extreme and all but
repellant quietness was one whom the mother found it difficult to get
on with. She was scrupulously kind to her; and the governess was as
scrupulously exact in all courtesy and attention; still that
impassible, self-contained demeanour, that great reticence--it might
be shyness, it might be pride--sometimes, Ursula privately admitted,
"fidgeted" her.

To-day was to be a general holiday for both masters and servants; a
dinner at the mills; and in the evening something which, though we
call it a tea-drinking, began to look, I was amused to see,
exceedingly like "a ball." But on this occasion both parents had
yielded to their young people's wishes, and half the neighbourhood
had been invited, by the universally-popular Mr. Guy Halifax to
celebrate his coming of age.

"Only once in a way," said the mother, half ashamed of herself for
thus indulging the boy--as, giving his shoulder a fond shake, she
called him "a foolish fellow."

Then we all dispersed; Guy and Walter to ride to the manor-house,
Edwin vanishing with his sister, to whom he was giving daily Latin
lessons in the school-room.

John asked me to take a walk on the hill with him.

"Go, Phineas," whispered his wife--"it will do him good. And don't
let him talk too much of old times. This is a hard week for him."

The mother's eyes were mournful, for Guy and "the child" had been
born within a year and three days of each other; but she never
hinted--it never would have struck her to hint--"this is a hard week
for ME."

That grief--the one great grief of their life, had come to her more
wholesomely than to her husband: either because men, the very best
of men, can only suffer, while women can endure; or because in the
mysterious ordinance of nature Maud's baby lips had sucked away the
bitterness of the pang from the bereaved mother, while her loss was
yet new. It had never been left to rankle in that warm heart, which
had room for every living child, while it cherished, in tenderness
above all sorrow, the child that was no more.

John and I, in our walk, stood a moment by the low churchyard wall,
and looked over at that plain white stone, where was inscribed her
name, "Muriel Joy Halifax,"--a line out of that New Testament
miracle-story she delighted in, "WHEREAS I WAS BLIND, NOW I SEE,"--
and the date when SHE SAW. Nothing more: it was not needed.

"December 5, 1813," said the father, reading the date. "She would
have been quite a woman now. How strange! My little Muriel!"

And he walked thoughtfully along, almost in the same footprints where
he had been used to carry his darling up the hillside to the brow of
Enderley Flat. He seemed in fancy to bear her in his arms still--
this little one, whom, as I have before said, Heaven in its
compensating mercy, year by year, through all changes, had made the
one treasure that none could take away--the one child left to be a
child for ever.

I think, as we rested in the self-same place, the sunshiny nook where
we used to sit with her for hours together, the father's heart took
this consolation so closely and surely into itself that memory
altogether ceased to be pain. He began talking about the other
children--especially Maud--and then of Miss Silver, her governess.

"I wish she were more likeable, John. It vexes me sometimes to see
how coldly she returns the mother's kindness."

"Poor thing!--she has evidently not been used to kindness. You
should have seen how amazed she looked yesterday when we paid her a
little more than her salary, and my wife gave her a pretty silk dress
to wear to-night. I hardly knew whether she would refuse it, or
burst out crying--in girlish fashion."

"Is she a girl? Why, the boys say she looks thirty at least. Guy
and Walter laugh amazingly at her dowdy dress and her solemn, haughty
ways."

"That will not do, Phineas. I must speak to them. They ought to
make allowance for poor Miss Silver, of whom I think most highly."

"I know you do; but do you heartily like her?"

"For most things, yes. And I sincerely respect her, or, of course,
she would not be here. I think people should be as particular over
choosing their daughter's governess as their son's wife; and having
chosen, should show her almost equal honour."

"You'll have your sons choosing themselves wives soon, John. I fancy
Guy has a soft place in his heart for that pretty Grace Oldtower."

But the father made no answer. He was always tenacious over the
slightest approach to such jests as these. And besides, just at this
moment Mr. Brown, Lord Luxmore's steward, passed--riding solemnly
along. He barely touched his hat to Mr. Halifax.

"Poor Mr. Brown! He has a grudge against me for those Mexican
speculations I refused to embark in; he did, and lost everything but
what he gets from Lord Luxmore. I do think, Phineas, the country has
been running mad this year after speculation. There is sure to come
a panic afterwards, and indeed it seems already beginning."

"But you are secure? You have not joined in the mania, the crash
cannot harm you? Did I not hear you say that you were not afraid of
losing a single penny?"

"Yes--unfortunately," with a troubled smile.

"John, what do you mean?"

"I mean, that to stand upright while one's neighbours are falling on
all sides is a most trying position. Misfortune makes people unjust.
The other day at the sessions I got cold looks enough from my brother
magistrates--looks that would have set my blood boiling twenty years
ago. And--you saw in the Norton Bury Mercury that article about
'grasping plebeian millionaires'--'wool-spinners, spinning out of
their country's vitals.' That's meant for me, Phineas. Don't look
incredulous. Yes--for me."

"How disgraceful!"

"Perhaps so--but to them more than to me. I feel sorry, because of
the harm it may do me--especially among working people, who know
nothing but what they hear, and believe everything that is told them.
They see I thrive and others fail--that my mills are the only cloth
mills in full work, and I have more hands than I can employ. Every
week I am obliged to send new-comers away. Then they raise the old
cry--that my machinery has ruined labour. So, you see, for all that
Guy says about our prosperity, his father does not sleep exactly upon
a bed of roses."

"It is wicked--atrocious!"

"Not at all. Only natural--the penalty one has to pay for success.
It will die out most likely; meantime, we will mind it as little as
we can."

"But are you safe?--your life--" For a sudden fear crossed me--a
fear not unwarranted by more than one event of this year--this
terrible 1825.

"Safe?--Yes--" and his eyes were lifted, "I believe my life is safe--
if I have work to do. Still, for others' sake, I have carried this
month past whenever I go to and from the Coltham bank, besides my
cash-box--this."

He showed me, peering out of his breast-pocket, a small pistol.

I was greatly startled.

"Does your wife know?"

"Of course. But she knows too that nothing but the last extremity
would force me to use it: also that my carrying it, and its being
noised about that I do so, may prevent my ever having occasion to use
it. God grant I never may! Don't let us talk about this."

He stopped, gazing with a sad abstraction down the sunshiny valley--
most part of which was already his own property. For whatever
capital he could spare from his business he never sunk in
speculation, but took a patriarchal pleasure in investing it in land,
chiefly for the benefit of his mills and those concerned therein.

"My poor people--they might have known me better! But I suppose one
never attains one's desire without its being leavened with some
bitterness. If there was one point I was anxious over in my youth,
it was to keep up through life a name like the Chevalier Bayard--how
folk would smile to hear of a tradesman emulating Bayard--'sans peur
et sans reproche!' And so things might be--ought to be. So perhaps
they shall be yet, in spite of this calumny."

"How shall you meet it? What shall you do?"

"Nothing. Live it down."

He stood still, looking across the valley to where the frosty line of
the hill-tops met the steel-blue, steadfast sky. Yes, I felt sure he
WOULD 'live it down.'

We dismissed the subject, and spent an hour more in pleasant chat,
about many things. Passing homeward through the beech-wood, where
through the bare tree-tops a light snow was beginning to fall, John
said, musingly:

"It will be a hard winter--we shall have to help our poor people a
great deal. Christmas dinners will be much in request."

"There's a saying, that the way to an Englishman's heart is through
his stomach. So, perhaps, you'll get justice by spring."

"Don't be angry, Phineas. As I tell my wife, it is not worth while.
Half the wrongs people do to us are through sheer ignorance. We must
be patient. 'IN YOUR PATIENCE POSSESS YE YOUR SOULS.'"

He said this, more to himself than aloud, as if carrying out the
thread of his own thought. Mine following it, and observing him,
involuntarily turned to another passage in our Book of books, about
the blessedness of some men, even when reviled and persecuted.

Ay, and for all his many cares, John Halifax looked like a man who
was "blessed."

Blessed, and happy too, throughout that day, especially in the midst
of the mill-yard dinner--which reminded me forcibly of that feast at
which guests were gathered out of the highways and hedges--guests
such as John Halifax liked to have--guests who could not, by any
possibility, "recompense"' him. Yet it did one's heart good to hear
the cheer that greeted the master, ay, and the young master too, who
was to-day for the first time presented as such: as the firm
henceforward was to be, "Halifax and Son."

And full of smiling satisfaction was the father's look, when in the
evening he stood in the midst of his children waiting for "Guy's
visitors," as he pertinaciously declared them to be--these fine
people, for whose entertainment our house had been these three days
turned upside down; the sober old dining-room converted into a
glittering ball-room, and the entrance-hall a very "bower of bliss"--
all green boughs and Chinese lanterns. John protested he should not
have known his own study again; and that, if these festive
transformations were to happen frequently he should soon not even
know himself!

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