John Halifax, Gentleman Read online

  “Isn’t this better than hanging?” said John to the men, when he had distributed the little bits of paper—precious as pound-notes—and made them all fully understand the same. “Why, there isn’t another gentleman in Norton Bury, who, if you had come to burn HIS house down, would not have had the constables or the soldiers, have shot down one-half of you like mad dogs, and sent the other half to the county gaol. Now, for all your misdoings, we let you go quietly home, well fed, and with food for children, too. WHY, think you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jacob Baines, humbly.

  “I’ll tell you. Because Abel Fletcher is a Quaker and a Christian.”

  “Hurrah for Abel Fletcher! hurrah for the Quakers!” shouted they, waking up the echoes down Norton Bury streets; which, of a surety, had never echoed to THAT shout before. And so the riot was over.

  John Halifax closed the hall-door and came in—unsteadily—staggering. Jael placed a chair for him—worthy soul! she was wiping her old eyes. He sat down, shivering, speechless. I put my hand on his shoulder; he took it and pressed it hard.

  115“Oh! Phineas, lad, I’m glad; glad it’s safe over.”

  “Yes, thank God!”

  “Ay, indeed; thank God!”

  He covered his eyes for a minute or two, then rose up pale, but quite himself again. “Now let us go and fetch your father home.”

  We found him on John’s bed, still asleep. But as we entered he woke. The daylight shone on his face—it looked ten years older since yesterday—he stared, bewildered and angry, at John Halifax.

  “Eh, young man—oh! I remember. Where is my son—where’s my Phineas?”

  I fell on his neck as if I had been a child. And almost as if it had been a child’s feeble head, mechanically he smoothed and patted mine.

  “Thee art not hurt? Nor any one?”

  “No,” John answered; “nor is either the house or the tan-yard injured.”

  He looked amazed. “How has that been?”

  “Phineas will tell you. Or, stay—better wait till you are at home.”

  But my father insisted on hearing. I told the whole, without any comments on John’s behaviour; he would not have liked it; and, besides, the facts spoke for themselves. I told the simple, plain story—nothing more.

  Abel Fletcher listened at first in silence. As I proceeded he felt about for his hat, put it on, and drew its broad brim close down over his eyes. Not even when I told him of the flour we had promised in his name, the giving of which would, as we had calculated, cost him considerable loss, did he utter a word or move a muscle.

  John at length asked him if he were satisfied.

  “Quite satisfied.”

  But, having said this, he sat so long, his hands locked together on his knees, and his hat drawn down, hiding all the 116face except the rigid mouth and chin—sat so long, so motionless, that we became uneasy.

  John spoke to him gently, almost as a son would have spoken.

  “Are you very lame still? Could I help you to walk home?”

  My father looked up, and slowly held out his hand.

  “Thee hast been a good lad, and a kind lad to us; I thank thee.”

  There was no answer, none. But all the words in the world could not match that happy silence.

  By degrees we got my father home. It was just such another summer morning as the one, two years back, when we two had stood, exhausted and trembling, before that sternly-bolted door. We both thought of that day: I knew not if my father did also.

  He entered, leaning heavily on John. He sat down in the very seat, in the very room, where he had so harshly judged us—judged him.

  Something, perhaps, of that bitterness rankled in the young man’s spirit now, for he stopped on the threshold.

  “Come in,” said my father, looking up.

  “If I am welcome; not otherwise.”

  “Thee art welcome.”

  He came in—I drew him in—and sat down with us. But his manner was irresolute, his fingers closed and unclosed nervously. My father, too, sat leaning his head on his two hands, not unmoved. I stole up to him, and thanked him softly for the welcome he had given.

  “There is nothing to thank me for,” said he, with something of his old hardness. “What I once did, was only justice—or I then believed so. What I have done, and am about to do, is still mere justice. John, how old art thee now?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Then, for one year from this time I will take thee as my ’prentice, though thee knowest already nearly as much of the 117business as I do. At twenty-one thee wilt be able to set up for thyself, or I may take thee into partnership—we’ll see. But”—and he looked at me, then sternly, nay, fiercely, into John’s steadfast eyes—“remember, thee hast in some measure taken that lad’s place. May God deal with thee as thou dealest with my son Phineas—my only son!”

  “Amen!” was the solemn answer.

  And God, who sees us both now—ay, NOW! and, perhaps, not so far apart as some may deem—He knows whether or no John Halifax kept that vow.

  118CHAPTER IX

  “Well done, Phineas—to walk round the garden without once resting! now I call that grand, after an individual has been ill a month. However, you must calm your superabundant energies, and be quiet.”

  I was not unwilling, for I still felt very weak. But sickness did not now take that heavy, overpowering grip of me, mind and body, that it once used to do. It never did when John was by. He gave me strength, mentally and physically. He was life and health to me, with his brave cheerfulness—his way of turning all minor troubles into pleasantries, till they seemed to break and vanish away, sparkling, like the foam on the top of the wave. Yet, all the while one knew well that he could meet any great evil as gallantly as a good ship meets a heavy sea—breasting it, plunging through it, or riding over it, as only a good ship can.

  When I recovered—just a month after the bread-riot, and that month was a great triumph to John’s kind care—I felt that if I always had him beside me I should never be ill any more; I said as much, in a laughing sort of way.

  “Very well; I shall keep you to that bargain. Now, sit down; listen to the newspaper, and improve your mind as to what the world is doing. It ought to be doing something, with the new 119century it began this year. Did it not seem very odd at first to have to write ‘1800’?”

  “John, what a capital hand you write now!”

  “Do I! That’s somebody’s credit. Do you remember my first lesson on the top of the Mythe?”

  “I wonder what has become of those two gentlemen?”

  “Oh! did you never hear? Young Mr. Brithwood is the ’squire now. He married, last month, Lady Somebody Something, a fine lady from abroad.”

  “And Mr. March—what of him?”

  “I haven’t the least idea. Come now, shall I read the paper?”

  He read well, and I liked to listen to him. It was, I remember, something about “the spacious new quadrangles, to be called Russell and Tavistock Squares, with elegantly laid out nursery-grounds adjoining.”

  “It must be a fine place, London.”

  “Ay; I should like to see it. Your father says, perhaps he shall have to send me, this winter, on business—won’t that be fine? If only you would go too.”

  I shook my head. I had the strongest disinclination to stir from my quiet home, which now held within it, or about it, all I wished for and all I loved. It seemed as if any change must be to something worse.

  “Nevertheless, you must have a change. Doctor Jessop insists upon it. Here have I been beating up and down the country for a week past—‘Adventures in Search of a Country Residence’—and, do you know, I think I’ve found one at last. Shouldn’t you like to hear about it?”

  I assented, to please him.

  “Such a nice, nice place, on the slope of Enderley Hill. A cottage—Rose Cottage—for it’s all in a bush of cluster-roses, up to the very roof.”

  “Where is Enderley?”

  “Did you never h
ear of Enderley Flat, the highest tableland 120in England? Such a fresh, free, breezy spot—how the wind sweeps over it! I can feel it in my face still.”

  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!’

  121That’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 chessboard—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 122gentleman’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.

  123“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 124which 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 125self-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.”