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John Halifax, Gentleman

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




And even the description was refreshing, this heavy, sultry day, with
not a breath of air moving across the level valley.

"Shouldn't you like to live on a hill-side, to be at the top of
everything, overlooking everything? Well, that's Enderley: the
village lies just under the brow of the Flat."

"Is there a village?"

"A dozen cottages or so, at each door of which half-a-dozen white
little heads and a dozen round eyes appeared staring at me. But oh,
the blessed quiet and solitude of the place! No fights in filthy
alleys! no tan-yards--I mean"--he added, correcting himself--"it's a
thorough country spot; and I like the country better than the town."

"Do you, still? Would you really like to take to the 'shepherd's
life and state,' upon which my namesake here is so eloquent? Let us
see what he says."

And from the handful of books that usually lay strewn about wherever
we two sat, I took up one he had lately got, with no small pains I
was sure, and had had bound in its own proper colour, and presented
it to me--"The Purple Island," and "Sicelides," of Phineas Fletcher.
People seldom read this wise, tender, and sweet-voiced old fellow
now; so I will even copy the verses I found for John to read.

"Here is the place. Thyrsis is just ending his 'broken lay.'

'Lest that the stealing night his later song might stay--'"

"Stop a minute," interrupted John. "Apropos of 'stealing night,' the
sun is already down below the yew-hedge. Are you cold?"

"Not a bit of it."

"Then we'll begin:--

'Thrice, oh, thrice happy, shepherd's life and state:
When courts are happiness, unhappy pawns!'

That's not clear," said John, laying down the book. "Now I do like
poetry to be intelligible. A poet ought to see things more widely,
and express them more vividly, than ordinary folk."

"Don't you perceive--he means the pawns on the chess-board--the
common people."

"Phineas, don't say the common people--I'm a common person myself.
But to continue:--

'His cottage low, and safely humble gate,
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns:
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep.
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep,
Himself as innocent as are his quiet sheep.'

(Not many sheep at Enderley, I fancy; the Flat chiefly abounds in
donkeys. Well--)

'No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread,
Drew out their silken lives--nor silken pride--'

Which reminds me that--"

"David, how can you make me laugh at our reverend ancestor in this
way? I'm ashamed of you."

"Only let me tell you this one fact--very interesting, you'll allow--
that I saw a silken gown hanging up in the kitchen at Rose Cottage.
Now, though Mrs. Tod is a decent, comely woman, I don't think it
belonged to her."

"She may have lodgers."

"I think she said she had--an old gentleman--but HE wouldn't wear a
silken gown."

"His wife might. Now, do go on reading."

"Certainly; I only wish to draw a parallel between Thyrsis and
ourselves in our future summer life at Enderley. So the old
gentleman's wife may appropriate the 'silken pride,' while we emulate
the shepherd.

'His lambs' warm fleece well fits his little need--'

I wear a tolerably good coat now, don't I, Phineas?"

"You are incorrigible."

Yet, through all his fun, I detected a certain under-tone of
seriousness, observable in him ever since my father's declaration of
his intentions concerning him, had, so to speak, settled John's
future career. He seemed aware of some crisis in his life, arrived
or impending, which disturbed the generally even balance of his
temperament.

"Nay, I'll be serious;" and passing over the unfinished verse, with
another or two following, he began afresh, in a new place, and in an
altogether changed tone.

"'His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content;
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades till noon-tide's rage is spent;
His life is neither tost on boisterous seas
Of troublous worlds, nor lost in slothful ease.
Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.

'His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place;
His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively image of his father's face;
Never his humble house or state torment him,
Less he could like, if less his God had sent him;
And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him.'"

John ceased. He was a good reader--but I had never heard him read
like this before. Ending, one missed it like the breaking of music,
or like the inner voice of one's own heart talking when nobody is by.

"David," I said, after a pause, "what are you thinking about?"

He started, with his old quick blush--"Oh, nothing--No, that's not
quite true. I was thinking that, so far as happiness goes, this
'shepherd's' is my ideal of a happy life--ay, down to the 'grassy
tomb.'"

"Your fancy leaps at once to the grassy tomb; but the shepherd
enjoyed a few intermediate stages of felicity before that."

"I was thinking of those likewise."

"Then you do intend some day to have a 'faithful spouse and a little
son'?"

"I hope so--God willing."

It may seem strange, but this was the first time our conversation had
ever wandered in a similar direction. Though he was twenty and I
twenty-two--to us both--and I thank Heaven that we could both look up
in the face of Heaven and say so!--to us both, the follies and
wickednesses of youth were, if not equally unknown, equally and alike
hateful. Many may doubt, or smile at the fact; but I state it now,
in my old age, with honour and pride, that we two young men that day
trembled on the subject of love as shyly, as reverently, as
delicately, as any two young maidens of innocent sixteen.

After John's serious "God willing," there was a good long silence.
Afterwards, I said--

"Then you propose to marry?"

"Certainly! as soon as I can."

"Have you ever--" and, while speaking, I watched him narrowly, for a
sudden possibility flashed across my mind--"Have you ever seen any
one whom you would like for your wife?"

"No."

I was satisfied. John's single "No" was as conclusive as a score of
asseverations.

We said no more; but after one of those pauses of conversation which
were habitual to us--John used to say, that the true test of
friendship was to be able to sit or walk together for a whole hour in
perfect silence, without wearying of one another's company--we again
began talking about Enderley.

I soon found, that in this plan, my part was simply acquiescence; my
father and John had already arranged it all. I was to be in charge
of the latter; nothing could induce Abel Fletcher to leave, even for
a day, his house, his garden, and his tan-yard. We two young men
were to set up for a month or two our bachelor establishment at Mrs.
Tod's: John riding thrice a-week over to Norton Bury to bring news
of me, and to fulfil his duties at the tan-yard. One could see plain
enough--and very grateful to me was the sight--that whether or no
Abel Fletcher acknowledged it, his right hand in all his business
affairs was the lad John Halifax.

On a lovely August day we started for Enderley. It was about eight
miles off, on a hilly, cross-country road. We lumbered slowly along
in our post-chaise; I leaning back, enjoying the fresh air, the
changing views, and chiefly to see how intensely John enjoyed them
too.

He looked extremely well to-day--handsome, I was about to write; but
John was never, even in his youth, "handsome." Nay, I have heard
people call him "plain"; but that was not true. His face had that
charm, perhaps the greatest, certainly the most lasting, either in
women or men--of infinite variety. You were always finding out
something--an expression strange as tender, or the track of a swift,
brilliant thought, or an indication of feeling different from,
perhaps deeper than, anything which appeared before. When you
believed you had learnt it line by line it would startle you by a
phase quite new, and beautiful as new. For it was not one of your
impassive faces, whose owners count it pride to harden into a mass of
stone those lineaments which nature made as the flesh and blood
representation of the man's soul. True, it had its reticences, its
sacred disguises, its noble powers of silence and self-control. It
was a fair-written, open book; only, to read it clearly, you must
come from its own country, and understand the same language.

For the rest, John was decidedly like the "David" whose name I still
gave him now and then--"a goodly person;" tall, well-built, and
strong. "The glory of a young man is his strength;" and so I used
often to think, when I looked at him. He always dressed with extreme
simplicity; generally in grey, he was fond of grey; and in something
of our Quaker fashion. On this day, I remember, I noticed an
especial carefulness of attire, at his age neither unnatural nor
unbecoming. His well-fitting coat and long-flapped vest, garnished
with the snowiest of lawn frills and ruffles; his knee-breeches,
black silk hose, and shoes adorned with the largest and brightest of
steel buckles, made up a costume, which, quaint as it would now
appear, still is, to my mind, the most suitable and graceful that a
young man can wear. I never see any young men now who come at all
near the picture which still remains in my mind's eye of John Halifax
as he looked that day.

Once, with the natural sensitiveness of youth, especially of youth
that has struggled up through so many opposing circumstances as his
had done, he noticed my glance.

"Anything amiss about me, Phineas? You see I am not much used to
holidays and holiday clothes."

"I have nothing to say against either you or your clothes," replied
I, smiling.

"That's all right; I beg to state, it is entirely in honour of you
and of Enderley that I have slipped off my tan-yard husk, and put on
the gentleman."

"You couldn't do that, John. You couldn't put on what you were born
with."

He laughed--but I think he was pleased.

We had now come into a hilly region. John leaped out and gained the
top of the steep road long before the post-chaise did. I watched him
standing, balancing in his hands the riding-whip which had replaced
the everlasting rose-switch, or willow-wand, of his boyhood. His
figure was outlined sharply against the sky, his head thrown backward
a little, as he gazed, evidently with the keenest zest, on the breezy
flat before him. His hair--a little darker than it used to be, but
of the true Saxon colour still, and curly as ever--was blown about by
the wind, under his broad hat. His whole appearance was full of
life, health, energy, and enjoyment.

I thought any father might have been proud of such a son, any sister
of such a brother, any young girl of such a lover. Ay, that last
tie, the only one of the three that was possible to him--I wondered
how long it would be before times changed, and I ceased to be the
only one who was proud of him.

We drove on a little further, and came to the chief landmark of the
high moorland--a quaint hostelry, called the "Bear." Bruin swung
aloft pole in hand, brown and fierce, on an old-fashioned sign, as he
and his progenitors had probably swung for two centuries or more.

"Is this Enderley?" I asked.

"Not quite, but near it. You never saw the sea? Well, from this
point I can show you something very like it. Do you see that
gleaming bit in the landscape far away? That's water--that's our
very own Severn, swelled to an estuary. But you must imagine the
estuary--you can only get that tiny peep of water, glittering like a
great diamond that some young Titaness has flung out of her necklace
down among the hills."

"David, you are actually growing poetical."

"Am I? Well, I do feel rather strange to-day--crazy like; a high
wind always sends me half crazy with delight. Did you ever feel such
a breeze? And there's something so gloriously free in this high
level common--as flat as if my Titaness had found a little Mont
Blanc, and amused herself with patting it down like a dough-cake."

"A very culinary goddess."

"Yes! but a goddess after all. And her dough-cake, her mushroom, her
flattened Mont Blanc, is very fine. What a broad green sweep--
nothing but sky and common, common and sky. This is Enderley Flat.
We shall come to its edge soon, where it drops abruptly into such a
pretty valley. There, look down--that's the church. We are on a
level with the top of its tower. Take care, my lad,"--to the
post-boy, who was crossing with difficulty the literally "pathless
waste."--"Don't lurch us into the quarry-pits, or topple us at once
down the slope, where we shall roll over and over--facilis descensus
Averni--and lodge in Mrs. Tod's garden hedge."

"Mrs. Tod would feel flattered if she knew Latin. You don't look
upon our future habitation as a sort of Avernus?"

John laughed merrily. "No, as I told you before, I like Enderley
Hill. I can't tell why, but I like it. It seems as if I had known
the place before. I feel as if we were going to have great happiness
here."

And as he spoke, his unwonted buoyancy softened into a quietness of
manner more befitting that word "happiness." Strange word! hardly in
my vocabulary. Yet, when he uttered it, I seemed to understand it
and to be content.

We wound a little way down the slope, and came in front of Rose
Cottage. It was well named. I never in my life had seen such a bush
of bloom. They hung in clusters--those roses--a dozen in a group;
pressing their pinky cheeks together in a mass of family fragrance,
pushing in at the parlour window, climbing up even to the very attic.
There was a yellow jasmine over the porch at one front door, and a
woodbine at the other; the cottage had two entrances, each distinct.
But the general impression it gave, both as to sight and scent, was
of roses--nothing but roses.

"How are you, Mrs. Tod?" as a comely, middle-aged body appeared at
the right-hand doorway, dressed sprucely in one of those things Jael
called a "coat and jacket," likewise a red calamanco petticoat tucked
up at the pocket-holes.

"I be pretty fair, sir--be you the same? The children ha' not
forgotten you--you see, Mr. Halifax."

"So much the better!" and he patted two or three little white heads,
and tossed the youngest high up in the air. It looked very strange
to see John with a child in his arms.

"Don't 'ee make more noise than 'ee can help, my lad," the good woman
said to our post-boy, "because, sir, the sick gentleman bean't so
well again to-day."

"I am sorry for it. We would not have driven up to the door had we
known. Which is his room?"

Mrs. Tod pointed to a window--not on our side of the house, but the
other. A hand was just closing the casement and pulling down the
blind--a hand which, in the momentary glimpse we had of it, seemed
less like a man's than a woman's.

When we were settled in the parlour John noticed this fact.

"It was the wife, most likely. Poor thing! how hard to be shut up
in-doors on such a summer evening as this!"

It did seem a sad sight--that closed window, outside which was the
fresh, balmy air, the sunset, and the roses.

"And how do you like Enderley?" asked John, when, tea being over, I
lay and rested, while he sat leaning his elbow on the window-sill,
and his cheek against a bunch of those ever-intruding, inquisitive
roses.

"It is very, very pretty, and so comfortable--almost like home."

"I feel as if it were home," John said, half to himself. "Do you
know, I can hardly believe that I have only seen this place once
before; it is so familiar. I seem to know quite well that slope of
common before the door, with its black dots of furze-bushes. And
that wood below; what a clear line its top makes against the yellow
sky! There, that high ground to the right; it's all dusky now, but
it is such a view by daylight. And between it and Enderley is the
prettiest valley, where the road slopes down just under those
chestnut-trees."

"How well you seem to know the place already."

"As I tell you, I like it. I hardly ever felt so content before. We
will have a happy time, Phineas."

"Oh, yes!" How--even if I had felt differently--could I say anything
but "yes" to him then?

I lay until it grew quite dark, and I could only see a dim shape
sitting at the window, instead of John's known face; then I bade him
good-night, and retired. Directly afterwards, I heard him, as I knew
he would, dash out of the house, and away up the Flat. In the deep
quiet of this lonely spot I could distinguish, for several minutes,
the diminishing sound of his footsteps along the loose, stony road;
and the notes, clear and shrill, of his whistling. I think it was
"Sally in our Alley," or some such pleasant old tune. At last it
faded far off, and I fell into sleep and dreams.



CHAPTER X

"That Mrs. Tod is an extraordinary woman. I repeat it--a most
extraordinary woman."

And leaning his elbows on the table, from which the said
extraordinary woman had just removed breakfast, John looked over to
me with his own merry brown eyes.

"Wherefore, David?"

"She has a house full of children, yet manages to keep it quiet and
her own temper likewise. Astonishing patience! However people
attain it who have to do with brats, _I_ can't imagine."

"John! that's mean hypocrisy. I saw you myself half-an-hour ago
holding the eldest Tod boy on a refractory donkey, and laughing till
you could hardly stand."

"Did I?" said he, half-ashamed. "Well, it was only to keep the
little scamp from making a noise under the windows. And that reminds
me of another remarkable virtue in Mrs. Tod--she can hold her
tongue."

"How so?"

"In two whole days she has not communicated to us a single fact
concerning our neighbours on the other half of Rose Cottage."

"Did you want to know?"

John laughingly denied; then allowed that he always had a certain
pleasure in eliciting information on men and things.

"The wife being indicated, I suppose, by that very complimentary word
'thing.' But what possible interest can you have in either the old
gentleman or the old lady?"

"Stop, Phineas: you have a bad habit of jumping at conclusions. And
in our great dearth of occupation here, I think it might be all the
better for you to take a little interest in your neighbours. So I've
a great mind to indulge you with an important idea, suggestion,
discovery. Harkee, friend!"--and he put on an air of sentimental
mystery, not a bad copy of our old acquaintance, Mr. Charles--"what
if the--the individual should not be an old lady at all?"

"What! The old gentleman's wife?"

"Wife? Ahem! more jumping at conclusions. No; let us keep on the
safe side, and call her the--individual. In short; the owner of that
grey silk gown I saw hanging up in the kitchen. I've seen it again."

"The grey gown! when and where?"

"This morning, early. I walked after it across the Flat, a good way
behind, though; for I thought that it--well, let me say SHE--might
not like to be watched or followed. She was trotting along very
fast, and she carried a little basket--I fancy a basket of eggs."

"Capital housekeeper! excellent wife!"

"Once more--I have my doubts on that latter fact. She walked a great
deal quicker and merrier than any wife ought to walk when her husband
is ill!"

I could not help laughing at John's original notions of conjugal
duty.

"Besides, Mrs. Tod always calls her invalid 'the old gentleman!' and
I don't believe this was an elderly lady."

"Nay, old men do sometimes marry young women."

"Yes, but it is always a pity; and sometimes not quite right. No,"--
and I was amused to see how gravely and doggedly John kept to his
point--"though this lady did not look like a sylph or a wood-nymph--
being neither very small nor very slight, and having a comfortable
woollen cloak and hood over the grey silk gown--still, I don't
believe she's an old woman, or married either."

"How can you possibly tell? Did you see her face?"

"Of course not," he answered, rather indignantly. "I should not
think it manly to chase a lady as a schoolboy does a butterfly, for
the mere gratification of staring at her. I stayed on the top of the
Flat till she had gone indoors."

"Into Rose Cottage?"

"Why--yes."

"She had, doubtless, gone to fetch new-laid eggs for her--I mean for
the sick gentleman's breakfast. Kind soul!"

"You may jest, Phineas, but I think she is a kind soul. On her way
home I saw her stop twice; once to speak to an old woman who was
gathering sticks; and again, to scold a lad for thrashing a donkey."

"Did you hear her?"

"No; but I judge from the lad's penitent face as I passed him. I am
sure she had been scolding him."

"Then she's not young, depend upon it. Your beautiful young
creatures never scold."

"I'm not so sure of that," said John, meditatively. "For my part, I
should rather not cheat myself, or be cheated after that manner.
Perfection is impossible. Better see the young woman as she really
is, bad and good together."

"The young woman! The fair divinity, you mean!"

"No;" shutting his mouth over the negative in his firm way--"I
strongly object to divinities. How unpleasant it would be to woo an
angel of perfection, and find her out at last to be only--only Mrs.--
"

"Halifax," suggested I; at which he laughed, slightly colouring.

"But how woeful must be our dearth of subjects, when we talk such
nonsense as this! What suggested it?"

"Your friend in the grey gown, I suppose."

"Requiescat in Pace! May she enjoy her eggs! And now I must go
saddle the brown mare, and be off to Norton Bury. A lovely day for a
ride. How I shall dash along!"

He rose up cheerily. It was like morning sunshine only to see his
face. No morbid follies had ever tainted his healthy nature,
whatsoever romance was there--and never was there a thoroughly noble
nature without some romance in it. But it lay deep down, calm and
unawakened. His heart was as light and free as air.

Stooping over my easy chair, he wheeled it to the window, in sight of
the pleasant view.

"Now, Phineas, what more books do you want? You'll take a walk
before dinner? You'll not be moping?"

No; why should I, who knew I had always, whether absent or present,
the blessing, the infinite blessing, of being first in his thoughts
and cares? Who, whether he expressed it or not--the best things
never are expressed or expressible--knew by a thousand little daily
acts like these, the depth and tenderness of his friendship, his
brotherly love for me. As yet, I had it all. And God, who knows how
little else I had, will pardon, if in my unspeakable thankfulness
lurked a taint of selfish joy in my sole possession of such a
priceless boon.

He lingered about, making me "all right," as he called it, and
planning out my solitary day. With much merriment, too, for we were
the gayest couple of young bachelors, when, as John said, "the duties
of our responsible position" would allow.

"Responsible position! It's our good landlady who ought to talk
about that. With two sets of lodgers, a husband, and an indefinite
number of children. There's one of them got into mischief at last.
Hark!"

"It's Jack, my namesake. Bless my life! I knew he would come to
grief with that donkey. Hey, lad! never mind. Get up again."

But soon he perceived that the accident was more serious; and
disappeared like a shot, leaping out through the open window. The
next minute I saw him carrying in the unlucky Jack, who was bleeding
from a cut in the forehead, and screaming vociferously.

"Don't be frightened, Mrs. Tod; it is very slight--I saw it done.
Jack, my lad!--be a man, and never mind it. Don't scream so; you
alarm your mother."

But as soon as the good woman was satisfied that there was no real
cause for terror, hers changed into hearty wrath against Jack for his
carelessness, and for giving so much trouble to the gentleman.

"But he be always getting into mischief, sir--that boy. Three months
back, the very day Mr. March came, he got playing with the
carriage-horse, and it kicked him and broke his arm. A deal he
cares: he be just as sprack as ever. As I say to Tod--it bean't no
use fretting over that boy."

"Have patience," answered John, who had again carried the unfortunate
young scapegrace from our parlour into Mrs. Tod's kitchen--the centre
room of the cottage; and was trying to divert the torrent of maternal
indignation, while he helped her to plaster up the still ugly looking
wound. "Come, forgive the lad. He will be more sorry afterwards
than if you had punished him."

"Do'ee think so?" said the woman, as, struck either by the words, the
manner, or the tone, she looked up straight at him. "Do'ee really
think so, Mr. Halifax?"

"I am sure of it. Nothing makes one so good as being forgiven when
one has been naughty. Isn't it so, Jack, my namesake?"

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