John Halifax, Gentleman Read online

  “Self-investigation is good on birthdays. Phineas, here goes for a catalogue of your qualities, internal and external.”

  “John, don’t be foolish.”

  “I will, if I like; though perhaps not quite so foolish as some other people; so listen:—‘Imprimis,’ as saith Shakspeare—Imprimis, height, full five feet four; a stature historically appertaining to great men, including Alexander of Macedon and the First Consul.”

  “Oh, oh!” said I, reproachfully; for this was our chief bone of contention—I hating, he rather admiring, the great ogre of the day, Napoleon Bonaparte.

  “Imprimis, of a slight, delicate person, but not lame as once was.”

  “No, thank God!”

  “Thin, rather—”

  “Very—a mere skeleton!”

  “Face elongated and pale—”

  “Sallow, John, decidedly sallow.”

  62“Be it so, sallow. Big eyes, much given to observation, which means hard staring. Take them off me, Phineas, or I’ll not lie on the grass a minute longer. Thank you. To return: Imprimis and finis (I’m grand at Latin now, you see)—long hair, which, since the powder tax, has resumed its original blackness, and is—any young damsel would say, only we count not a single one among our acquaintance— exceedingly bewitching.”

  I smiled, feeling myself colour a little too, weak invalid as I was. I was, nevertheless, twenty years old; and although Jael and Sally were the only specimens of the other sex which had risen on my horizon, yet once or twice, since I had read Shakspeare, I had had a boy’s lovely dreams of the divinity of womanhood. They began, and ended—mere dreams. Soon dawned the bare, hard truth, that my character was too feeble and womanish to be likely to win any woman’s reverence or love. Or, even had this been possible, one sickly as I was, stricken with hereditary disease, ought never to seek to perpetuate it by marriage. I therefore put from me, at once and for ever, every feeling of that kind; and during my whole life—I thank God!—have never faltered in my resolution. Friendship was given me for love—duty for happiness. So best, and I was satisfied.

  This conviction, and the struggle succeeding it—for, though brief, it was but natural that it should have been a hard struggle—was the only secret that I had kept from John. It had happened some months now, and was quite over and gone, so that I could smile at his fun, and shake at him my “bewitching” black locks, calling him a foolish boy. And while I said it, the notion slowly dawning during the long gaze he had complained of, forced itself upon me, clear as daylight, that he was not a “boy” any longer.

  “Now let me turn the tables. How old are YOU, John?”

  “You know. Eighteen next week.”

  “And how tall?”

  63“Five feet eleven inches and a half.” And, rising, he exhibited to its full advantage that very creditable altitude, more tall perhaps than graceful, at present; since, like most youths, he did not as yet quite know what to do with his legs and arms. But he was—

  I cannot describe what he was. I could not then. I only remember that when I looked at him, and began jocularly “Imprimis,” my heart came up into my throat and choked me.

  It was almost with sadness that I said, “Ah! David, you are quite a young man now.”

  He smiled, of course only with pleasure, looking forward to the new world into which he was going forth; the world into which, as I knew well, I could never follow him.

  “I am glad I look rather old for my years,” said he, when, after a pause, he had again flung himself down on the grass. “It tells well in the tan-yard. People would be slow to trust a clerk who looked a mere boy. Still, your father trusts me.”

  “He does, indeed. You need never have any doubt of that. It was only yesterday he said to me that now he was no longer dissatisfied with your working at all sorts of studies, in leisure hours, since it made you none the worse man of business.”

  “No, I hope not, or I should be much ashamed. It would not be doing my duty to myself any more than to my master, if I shirked his work for my own. I am glad he does not complain now, Phineas.”

  “On the contrary; I think he intends to give you a rise this Midsummer. But oh!” I cried, recurring to a thought which would often come when I looked at the lad, though he always combated it so strongly, that I often owned my prejudices were unjust: “how I wish you were something better than a clerk in a tan-yard. I have a plan, John.”

  But what that plan was, was fated to remain unrevealed. Jael came to us in the garden, looking very serious. She had been summoned, I knew, to a long conference with her master 64the day before—the subject of which she would not tell me, though she acknowledged it concerned myself. Ever since she had followed me about, very softly, for her, and called me more than once, as when I was a child, “my dear.” She now came with half-dolorous, half-angry looks, to summon me to an interview with my father and Doctor Jessop.

  I caught her parting mutterings, as she marched behind me: “Kill or cure, indeed,”—“No more fit than a baby,”—“Abel Fletcher be clean mad,”—“Hope Thomas Jessop will speak out plain, and tell him so,” and the like. From these, and from her strange fit of tenderness, I guessed what was looming in the distance—a future which my father constantly held in terrorem over me, though successive illness had kept it in abeyance. Alas! I knew that my poor father’s hopes and plans were vain! I went into his presence with a heavy heart.

  There is no need to detail that interview. Enough, that after it he set aside for ever his last lingering hope of having a son able to assist, and finally succeed him in his business, and that I set aside every dream of growing up to be a help and comfort to my father. It cost something on both our parts; but after that day’s discussion we tacitly covered over the pain, and referred to it no more.

  I came back into the garden, and told John Halifax all. He listened with his hand on my shoulder, and his grave, sweet look—dearer sympathy than any words! Though he added thereto a few, in his own wise way; then he and I, also, drew the curtain over an inevitable grief, and laid it in the peaceful chamber of silence.

  When my father, Dr. Jessop, John Halifax, and I, met at dinner, the subject had passed into seeming oblivion, and was never afterwards revived.

  But dinner being over, and the chatty little doctor gone, while Abel Fletcher sat mutely smoking his pipe, and we two at the window maintained that respectful and decorous silence 65which in my young days was rigidly exacted by elders and superiors, I noticed my father’s eyes frequently resting, with keen observance, upon John Halifax. Could it be that there had recurred to him a hint of mine, given faintly that morning, as faintly as if it had only just entered my mind, instead of having for months continually dwelt there, until a fitting moment should arrive?—Could it be that this hint, which he had indignantly scouted at the time, was germinating in his acute brain, and might bear fruit in future days? I hoped so—I earnestly prayed so. And to that end I took no notice, but let it silently grow.

  The June evening came and went. The service-bell rang out and ceased. First, deep shadows, and then a bright star, appeared over the Abbey-tower. We watched it from the garden, where, Sunday after Sunday, in fine weather, we used to lounge, and talk over all manner of things in heaven and in earth, chiefly ending with the former, as on Sunday nights, with stars over our head, was natural and fit we should do.

  “Phineas,” said John, sitting on the grass with his hands upon his knees, and the one star, I think it was Jupiter, shining down into his eyes, deepening them into that peculiar look, worth any so-called “handsome eyes;”—“Phineas, I wonder how soon we shall have to rise up from this quiet, easy life, and fight our battles in the world? Also, I wonder if we are ready for it?”

  “I think you are.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not clear how far I could resist doing anything wrong, if it were pleasant. So many wrong things are pleasant—just now, instead of rising to-morrow, and going into the little dark counting-house, and scratching paper from eight till six,
shouldn’t I like to break away!—dash out into the world, take to all sorts of wild freaks, do all sorts of grand things, and perhaps never come back to the tanning any more.”

  “Never any more?”

  66“No! no! I spoke hastily. I did not mean I ever should do such a wrong thing; but merely that I sometimes feel the wish to do it. I can’t help it; it’s my Apollyon that I have to fight with—everybody keeps a private Apollyon, I fancy. Now, Phineas, be content; Apollyon is beaten down.”

  He rose up, but I thought that, in the red glow of the twilight, he looked rather pale. He stretched his hand to help me up from the grass. We went into the house together, silently.

  After supper, when the chimes struck half-past nine, John prepared to leave as usual. He went to bid good-night to my father, who was sitting meditatively over the fireless hearth-place, sometimes poking the great bow-pot of fennel and asparagus, as in winter he did the coals: an instance of obliviousness, which, in my sensible and acute father, argued very deep cogitation on some subject or other.

  “Good-night,” said John, twice over, before his master heard him.

  “Eh?—Oh, good-night, good-night, lad! Stay! Halifax, what hast thee got to do to-morrow?”

  “Not much, unless the Russian hides should come in; I cleared off the week’s accounts last night, as usual.”

  “Ay, to-morrow I shall look over all thy books and see how thee stand’st, and what further work thou art fit for. Therefore, take a day’s holiday, if thee likes.”

  We thanked him warmly. “There, John,” whispered I, “you may have your wish, and run wild to-morrow.”

  He said, “the wish had gone out of him.” So we planned a sweet lazy day under the Midsummer sky, in some fields about a mile off, called the Vineyards.

  The morning came, and we took our way thither, under the Abbey walls, and along a lane, shaded on one side by the “willows in the water-courses.” We came out in those quiet hay-fields, which, tradition says, had once grown wine for the rosy monks close by, and history avers, were afterwards 67watered by a darker stream than the blood of grapes. The Vineyards had been a battle-field; and under the long wavy grass, and the roots of the wild apple trees, slept many a Yorkist and Lancastrian. Sometimes an unusually deep furrow turned out a white bone—but more often the relics were undisturbed, and the meadows used as pastures or hay-fields.

  John and I lay down on some wind-rows, and sunned ourselves in the warm and delicious air. How beautiful everything was! so very still! with the Abbey-tower—always the most picturesque point in our Norton Bury views—showing so near, that it almost seemed to rise up out of the fields and hedge-rows.

  “Well, David,” and I turned to the long, lazy figure beside me, which had considerably flattened the hay, “are you satisfied?”

  “Ay.”

  Thus we lounged out all the summer morning, recurring to a few of the infinitude of subjects we used to compare notes upon; though we were neither of us given to wordiness, and never talked but when we had something to say. Often—as on this day—we sat for hours in a pleasant dreaminess, scarcely exchanging a word; nevertheless, I could generally track John’s thoughts, as they went wandering on, ay, as clearly as one might track a stream through a wood; sometimes—like today—I failed.

  In the afternoon, when we had finished our bread and cheese—eaten slowly and with graceful dignity, in order to make dinner a more important and lengthy affair—he said abruptly—

  “Phineas, don’t you think this field is rather dull? Shall we go somewhere else? not if it tires you, though.”

  I protested the contrary, my health being much above the average this summer. But just as we were quitting the field we met two rather odd-looking persons entering it, young-old persons they seemed, who might own to any age or any occupation. 68Their dress, especially that of the younger, amused us by its queer mixture of fashionableness and homeliness, such as grey ribbed stockings and shining paste shoe-buckles, rusty velvet small-clothes and a coatee of blue cloth. But the wearer carried off this anomalous costume with an easy, condescending air, full of pleasantness, humour, and grace.

  “Sir,” said he, approaching John Halifax with a bow that I feel sure the “first gentleman of his day,” as loyal folk then entitled the Prince Regent, could not have surpassed—“Sir, will you favour me by informing us how far it is to Coltham?”

  “Ten miles, and the stage will pass here in three hours.”

  “Thank you; at present I have little to do with the—at least with THAT stage. Young gentlemen, excuse our continuing our dessert, in fact, I may say our dinner. Are you connoisseurs in turnips?”

  He offered us—with a polite gesture—one of the “swedes” he was munching. I declined; but John, out of a deeper delicacy than I could boast, accepted it.

  “One might dine worse,” he said; “I have done, sometimes.”

  “It was a whim of mine, sir. But I am not the first remarkable person who has eaten turnips in your Norton Bury fields—ay, and turned field-preacher afterwards—the celebrated John Philip—”

  Here the elder and less agreeable of the two wayfarers interposed with a nudge, indicating silence.

  “My companion is right, sir,” he continued. “I will not betray our illustrious friend by mentioning his surname; he is a great man now, and might not wish it generally known that he had dined off turnips. May I give you instead my own humble name?”

  He gave it me; but I, Phineas Fletcher, shall copy his reticence, and not indulge the world therewith. It was a name wholly out of my sphere, both then and now; but I know it has 69since risen into note among the people of the world. I believe, too, its owner has carried up to the topmost height of celebrity always the gay, gentlemanly spirit and kindly heart which he showed when sitting with us and eating swedes. Still, I will not mention his surname—I will only call him “Mr. Charles.”

  “Now, having satisfactorily ‘munched, and munched, and munched,’ like the sailor’s wife who had chestnuts in her lap—are you acquainted with my friend, Mr. William Shakspeare, young gentleman?—I must try to fulfil the other duties of existence. You said the Coltham mail passed here in three hours? Very well. I have the honour of wishing you a very good day, Mr.—”

  “Halifax.”

  “And yours?”

  “Fletcher.”

  “Any connection with him who went partnership with the worthy Beaumont?”

  “My father has no partner, sir,” said I. But John, whose reading had lately surpassed mine, and whom nothing ever puzzled, explained that I came from the same old stock as the brothers Phineas and Giles Fletcher. Upon which Mr. Charles, who till now had somewhat overlooked me, took off his hat, and congratulated me on my illustrious descent.

  “That man has evidently seen a good deal of the world,” said John, smiling; “I wonder what the world is like!”

  “Did you not see something of it as a child?”

  “Only the worst and lowest side; not the one I want to see now. What business do you think that Mr. Charles is? A clever man, anyhow; I should like to see him again.”

  “So should I.”

  Thus talking at intervals and speculating upon our new acquaintance, we strolled along till we came to a spot called by the country people, “The Bloody Meadow,” from being, like several other places in the neighbourhood, the scene of one of 70those terrible slaughters chronicled in the wars of the Roses. It was a sloping field, through the middle of which ran a little stream down to the meadow’s end, where, fringed and hidden by a plantation of trees, the Avon flowed. Here, too, in all directions, the hay-fields lay, either in green swathes, or tedded, or in the luxuriously-scented quiles. The lane was quite populous with waggons and hay-makers—the men in their corduroys and blue hose—the women in their trim jackets and bright calamanco petticoats. There were more women than men, by far, for the flower of the peasant youth of England had been drafted off to fight against “Bonyparty.” Still hay-time was a glorious season, when half our
little town turned out and made holiday in the sunshine.

  “I think we will go to a quieter place, John. There seems a crowd down in the meadow; and who is that man standing on the hay-cart, on the other side the stream?”

  “Don’t you remember the bright blue coat? ’Tis Mr. Charles. How he’s talking and gesticulating! What can he be at?”

  Without more ado John leaped the low hedge, and ran down the slope of the Bloody Meadow. I followed less quickly.

  There, of a surety, stood our new friend, on one of the simple-fashioned hay-carts that we used about Norton Bury, a low framework on wheels, with a pole stuck at either of the four corners. He was bare-headed, and his hair hung in graceful curls, well powdered. I only hope he had honestly paid the tax, which we were all then exclaiming against—so fondly does custom cling to deformity. Despite the powder, the blue coat, and the shabby velvet breeches, Mr. Charles was a very handsome and striking-looking man. No wonder the poor hay-makers had collected from all parts to hear him harangue.

  What was he haranguing upon? Could it be, that like his friend, “John Philip,” whoever that personage might be, his vocation was that of a field preacher? It seemed like it, especially 71judging from the sanctified demeanour of the elder and inferior person who accompanied him; and who sat in the front of the cart, and folded his hands and groaned, after the most approved fashion of a methodistical “revival.”

  We listened, expecting every minute to be disgusted and shocked: but no! I must say this for Mr. Charles, that in no way did he trespass the bounds of reverence and decorum. His harangue, though given as a sermon, was strictly and simply a moral essay, such as might have emanated from any professor’s chair. In fact, as I afterwards learnt, he had given for his text one which the simple rustics received in all respect, as coming from a higher and holier volume than Shakspeare—

  “Mercy is twice blessed: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest.”

  And on that text did he dilate; gradually warming with his subject, till his gestures—which at first had seemed burthened with a queer constraint, that now and then resulted in an irrepressible twitch of the corners of his flexible mouth—became those of a man beguiled into real earnestness. We of Norton Bury had never heard such eloquence.