John Halifax, Gentleman

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

  John went early to the room up-stairs. It was very still. 402Ursula lay calmly asleep, with baby Maud in her bosom; on her other side, with eyes wide open to the daylight, lay—that which for more than ten years we had been used to call “blind Muriel.” She saw, now.

  The same day at evening we three were sitting in the parlour; we elders only—it was past the children’s bed-time. Grief had spent itself dry; we were all very quiet. Even Ursula, when she came in from fetching the boys’ candle, as had always been her custom, and though afterwards I thought I had heard her going up-stairs, likewise from habit,—where there was no need to bid any mother’s good-night now—even Ursula sat in the rocking-chair, nursing Maud, and trying to still her crying with a little foolish baby-tune that had descended as a family lullaby from one to the other of the whole five—how sad it sounded!

  John—who sat at the table, shading the light from his eyes, an open book lying before him, of which he never turned one page—looked up at her.

  “Love, you must not tire yourself. Give me the child.”

  “No, no! Let me keep my baby—she comforts me so.” And the mother burst into uncontrollable weeping.

  John shut his book and came to her. He supported her on his bosom, saying a soothing word or two at intervals, or when the paroxysm of her anguish was beyond all bounds supporting her silently till it had gone by; never once letting her feel that, bitter as her sorrow was, his was heavier than hers.

  Thus, during the whole of the day, had he been the stay and consolation of the household. For himself—the father’s grief was altogether dumb.

  At last Mrs. Halifax became more composed. She sat beside her husband, her hand in his, neither speaking, but gazing, as it were, into the face of this their great sorrow, and from thence up to the face of God. They felt that He could help them to 403bear it; ay, or anything else that it was His will to send—if they might thus bear it, together.

  We all three sat thus, and there had not been a sound in the parlour for ever so long, when Mrs. Tod opened the door and beckoned me.

  “He will come in—he’s crazy-like, poor fellow! He has only just heard—”

  She broke off with a sob. Lord Ravenel pushed her aside and stood at the door. We had not seen him since the day of that innocent jest about his “falling in love” with Muriel. Seeing us all so quiet, and the parlour looking as it always did when he used to come of evenings—the young man drew back, amazed.

  “It is not true! No, it could not be true!” he muttered.

  “It is true,” said the father. “Come in.”

  The mother held out her hand to him. “Yes, come in. You were very fond of—”

  Ah! that name!—now nothing but a name! For a little while we all wept sore.

  Then we told him—it was Ursula who did it chiefly—all particulars about our darling. She told him, but calmly, as became one on whom had fallen the utmost sorrow and crowning consecration of motherhood—that of yielding up her child, a portion of her own being, to the corruption of the grave—of resigning the life which out of her own life had been created, unto the Creator of all.

  Surely, distinct and peculiar from every other grief, every other renunciation, must be that of a woman who is thus chosen to give her very flesh and blood, the fruit of her own womb, unto the Lord!

  This dignity, this sanctity, seemed gradually to fall upon the mourning mother, as she talked about her lost one; repeating often— “I tell you this, because you were so fond of Muriel.”

  He listened silently. At length he said, “I want to see Muriel.”

  404The mother lit a candle, and he followed her up-stairs.

  Just the same homely room—half-bedchamber, half-nursery—the same little curtainless bed where, for a week past, we had been accustomed to see the wasted figure and small pale face lying, in smiling quietude, all day long.

  It lay there still. In it, and in the room, was hardly any change. One of Walter’s playthings was in a corner of the window-sill, and on the chest of drawers stood the nosegay of Christmas roses which Guy had brought for his sister yesterday morning. Nay, her shawl—a white, soft, furry shawl, that she was fond of wearing—remained still hanging up behind the door. One could almost fancy the little maid had just been said “good-night” to, and left to dream the childish dreams on her nursery pillow, where the small head rested so peacefully, with that pretty babyish nightcap tied over the pretty curls.

  There she was, the child who had gone out of the number of our children—our earthly children—for ever.

  Her mother sat down at the side of the bed, her father at its foot, looking at her. Lord Ravenel stood by, motionless; then stooping down, he kissed the small marble hand.

  “Good-bye, good-bye, my little Muriel!”

  And he left the room abruptly, in such an anguish of grief that the mother rose and followed him.

  John went to the door and locked it, almost with a sort of impatience; then came back and stood by his darling, alone. Me he never saw—no, nor anything in the world except that little face, even in death so strangely like his own. The face which had been for eleven years the joy of his heart, the very apple of his eye.

  For a long time he remained gazing, in a stupor of silence; then, sinking on his knee, he stretched out his arms across the bed, with a bitter cry:

  “Come back to me, my darling, my first-born! Come back to me, Muriel, my little daughter—my own little daughter!”

  But thou wert with the angels, Muriel—Muriel!

  405CHAPTER XXIX

  We went home, leaving all that was mortal of our darling sleeping at Enderley, underneath the snows.

  For twelve years after then, we lived at Longfield; in such unbroken, uneventful peace, that looking back seems like looking back over a level sea, whose leagues of tiny ripples make one smooth glassy plain.

  Let me recall—as the first wave that rose, ominous of change—a certain spring evening, when Mrs. Halifax and I were sitting, as was our wont, under the walnut-tree. The same old walnut-tree, hardly a bough altered, though many of its neighbours and kindred had grown from saplings into trees—even as some of us had grown from children almost into young men.

  “Edwin is late home from Norton Bury,” said Ursula.

  “So is his father.”

  “No—this is just John’s time. Hark! there are the carriage-wheels!”

  For Mr. Halifax, a prosperous man now, drove daily to and from his mills, in as tasteful an equipage as any of the country gentry between here and Enderley.

  His wife went down to the stream to meet him, as usual, and they came up the field-path together.

  406Both were changed from the John and Ursula of whom I last wrote. She, active and fresh-looking still, but settling into that fair largeness which is not unbecoming a lady of middle-age, he, inclined to a slight stoop, with the lines of his face more sharply defined, and the hair wearing away off his forehead up to the crown. Though still not a grey thread was discernible in the crisp locks at the back, which successively five little ones had pulled, and played with, and nestled in; not a sign of age, as yet, in “father’s curls.”

  As soon as he had spoken to me, he looked round as usual for his children, and asked if the boys and Maud would be home to tea?

  “I think Guy and Walter never do come home in time when they go over to the manor-house.”

  “They’re young—let them enjoy themselves,” said the father, smiling. “And you know, love, of all our ‘fine’ friends, there are none you so heartily approve of as the Oldtowers.”

  These were not of the former race. Good old Sir Ralph had gone to his rest, and Sir Herbert reigned in his stead; Sir Herbert, who in his dignified gratitude never forgot a certain election day, when he first made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Halifax. The manor-house family brought several other “county families” to our notice, or us to theirs. These, when John’s fortunes grew rapidly—as many another fortune grew, in the beginning of the thirty years’ peace,
when unknown, petty manufacturers first rose into merchant princes and cotton lords—these gentry made a perceptible distinction, often amusing enough to us, between John Halifax, the tanner of Norton Bury, and Mr. Halifax, the prosperous owner of Enderley Mills. Some of them, too, were clever enough to discover, what a pleasant and altogether “visitable” lady was Mrs. Halifax, daughter of the late Mr. March, a governor in the West Indies, and cousin of Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe. But Mrs. Halifax, with quiet tenacity, altogether declined being visited 407as anything but Mrs. Halifax, wife of John Halifax, tanner, or mill-owner, or whatever he might be. All honours and all civilities that did not come through him, and with him, were utterly valueless to her.

  To this her peculiarity was added another of John’s own, namely, that all his life he had been averse to what is called “society;” had eschewed “acquaintances,”—and—but most men might easily count upon their fingers the number of those who, during a life-time, are found worthy of the sacred name of “friend.” Consequently, our circle of associations was far more limited than that of many families holding an equal position with us—on which circumstance our neighbours commented a good deal. But little we cared; no more than we had cared for the chit-chat of Norton Bury. Our whole hearts were bound up within our own home—our happy Longfield.

  “I do think this place is growing prettier than ever,” said John, when, tea being over—a rather quiet meal, without a single child—we elders went out again to the walnut-tree bench. “Certainly, prettier than ever;” and his eye wandered over the quaint, low house, all odds and ends—for nearly every year something had been built, or something pulled down; then crossing the smooth bit of lawn, Jem Watkins’s special pride, it rested on the sloping field, yellow with tall buttercups, wavy with growing grass. “Let me see—how long have we lived here? Phineas, you are the one for remembering dates. What year was it we came to Longfield?”

  “Eighteen hundred and twelve. Thirteen years ago.”

  “Ah, so long!”

  “Not too long,” said Mrs. Halifax, earnestly. “I hope we may end our days here. Do not you, John?”

  He paused a little before answering. “Yes, I wish it; but I am not sure how far it would be right to do it.”

  “We will not open that subject again,” said the mother, uneasily. “I thought we had all made up our minds that little 408Longfield was a thousand times pleasanter than Beechwood, grand as it is. But John thinks he never can do enough for his people at Enderley.”

  “Not that alone, love. Other reasons combined. Do you know, Phineas,” he continued, musingly, as he watched the sun set over Leckington Hill—“sometimes I fancy my life is too easy—that I am not a wise steward of the riches that have multiplied so fast. By fifty, a man so blest as I have been, ought to have done really something of use in the world—and I am forty-five. Once, I hoped to have done wonderful things ere I was forty-five. But somehow the desire faded.”

  His wife and I were silent. We both knew the truth; that calm as had flowed his outer existence, in which was omitted not one actual duty, still, for these twelve years, all the high aims which make the glory and charm of life as duties make its strength, all the active energies and noble ambitions which especially belong to the prime of manhood, in him had been, not dead perhaps, but sleeping. Sleeping, beyond the power of any human voice to waken them, under the daisies of a child’s grave at Enderley.

  I know not if this was right—but it was scarcely unnatural. In that heart, which loved as few men love, and remembered as few men remember, so deep a wound could never be thoroughly healed. A certain something in him seemed different ever after, as if a portion of the father’s own life had been taken away with Muriel, and lay buried in the little dead bosom of his first-born, his dearest child.

  “You forget,” said Mrs. Halifax, tenderly—“you forget, John, how much you have been doing, and intend to do. What with your improvements at Enderley, and your Catholic Emancipation—your Abolition of Slavery and your Parliamentary Reform—why, there is hardly any scheme for good, public or private, to which you do not lend a helping hand.”

  “A helping purse, perhaps, which is an easier thing, much.”

  409“I will not have you blaming yourself. Ask Phineas, there—our household Solomon.”

  “Thank you, Ursula,” said I, submitting to the not rare fortune of being loved and laughed at.

  “Uncle Phineas, what better could John have done in all these years, than look after his mills and educate his three sons?”

  “Have them educated, rather,” corrected he, sensitive over his own painfully-gained and limited acquirements. Yet this feeling had made him doubly careful to give his boys every possible advantage of study, short of sending them from home, to which he had an invincible objection. And three finer lads, or better educated, there could not be found in the whole country.

  “I think, John, Guy has quite got over his fancy of going to Cambridge with Ralph Oldtower.”

  “Yes; college life would not have done for Guy,” said the father thoughtfully.

  “Hush! we must not talk about them, for here come the children.”

  It was now a mere figure of speech to call them so, though in their home-taught, loving simplicity, they would neither have been ashamed nor annoyed at the epithet—these two tall lads, who in the dusk looked as man-like as their father.

  “Where is your sister, boys?”

  “Maud stopped at the stream with Edwin,” answered Guy, rather carelessly. His heart had kept its childish faith; the youngest, pet as she was, was never anything to him but “little Maud.” One—whom the boys still talked of, softly and tenderly, in fireside evening talks, when the winter winds came and the snow was falling—one only was ever spoken of by Guy as “sister.”

  Maud, or Miss Halifax, as from the first she was naturally called—as naturally as our lost darling was never called anything else than Muriel—came up, hanging on Edwin’s arm, 410which she was fond of doing, both because it happened to be the only arm low enough to suit her childish stature, and because she was more especially “Edwin’s girl,” and had been so always. She had grown out of the likeness that we longed for in her cradle days, or else we had grown out of the perception of it; for though the external resemblance in hair and complexion still remained, nothing could be more unlike in spirit than this sprightly elf, at once the plague and pet of the family—to our Muriel.

  “Edwin’s girl” stole away with him, merrily chattering. Guy sat down beside his mother, and slipped his arm round her waist. They still fondled her with a child-like simplicity—these her almost grown-up sons; who had never been sent to school for a day, and had never learned from other sons of far different mothers, that a young man’s chief manliness ought to consist in despising the tender charities of home.

  “Guy, you foolish boy!” as she took his cap off and pushed back his hair, trying not to look proud of his handsome face, “what have you been doing all day?”

  “Making myself agreeable, of course, mother.”

  “That he has,” corroborated Walter, whose great object of hero-worship was his eldest brother. “He talked with Lady Oldtower, and he sang with Miss Oldtower and Miss Grace. Never was there such a fellow as our Guy.”

  “Nonsense!” said his mother, while Guy only laughed, too accustomed to this family admiration to be much disconcerted or harmed thereby.

  “When does Ralph return to Cambridge?”

  “Not at all. He is going to leave college, and be off to help the Greeks. Father, do you know everybody is joining the Greeks? Even Lord Byron is off with the rest. I only wish I were.”

  “Heaven forbid!” muttered the mother.

  “Why not? I should have made a capital soldier, and liked it too, better than anything.”

  411“Better than being my right hand at the mills, and your mother’s at home?—Better than growing up to be our eldest son, our comfort and our hope?—I think not, Guy.”

  “You are right, father,
” was the answer, with an uneasy look. For this description seemed less what Guy was than what we desired him to be. With his easy, happy temper, generous but uncertain, and his showy, brilliant parts, he was not nearly so much to be depended on as the grave Edwin, who was already a thorough man of business, and plodded between Enderley mills and a smaller one which had taken the place of the flour mill at Norton Bury, with indomitable perseverance.

  Guy fell into a brown study, not unnoticed by those anxious eyes, which lingered oftener upon his face than on that of any of her sons. Mrs. Halifax said, in her quick, decisive way, that it was “time to go in.”

  So the sunset picture outside changed to the home-group within; the mother sitting at her little table, where the tall silver candlestick shed a subdued light on her work-basket, that never was empty, and her busy fingers, that never were still. The father sat beside her; he kept his old habit of liking to have her close to him; ay, even though he was falling into the middle-aged comforts of an arm-chair and newspaper. There he sat, sometimes reading aloud, or talking; sometimes lazily watching her, with silent, loving eyes, that saw beauty in his old wife still.

  The young folk scattered themselves about the room. Guy and Walter at the unshuttered window—we had a habit of never hiding our home-light—were looking at the moon, and laying bets, sotto voce, upon how many minutes she would be in climbing over the oak on the top of One-tree Hill. Edwin sat, reading hard—his shoulders up to his ears, and his fingers stuck through his hair, developing the whole of his broad, knobbed, knotted forehead, where, Maud declared, the wrinkles had already begun to show. For Mistress Maud herself, 412she flitted about in all directions, interrupting everything, and doing nothing.

  “Maud,” said her father, at last, “I am afraid you give a great deal of trouble to Uncle Phineas.”

  Uncle Phineas tried to soften the fact, but the little lady was certainly the most trying of his pupils. Her mother she had long escaped from, for the advantage of both. For, to tell the truth, while in the invisible atmosphere of moral training the mother’s influence was invaluable, in the minor branch of lesson-learning there might have been found many a better teacher than Ursula Halifax. So the children’s education was chiefly left to me; other tutors succeeding as was necessary; and it had just begun to be considered whether a lady governess ought not to “finish” the education of Miss Halifax. But always at home. Not for all the knowledge and all the accomplishments in the world would these parents have suffered either son or daughter—living souls intrusted them by the Divine Father—to be brought up anywhere out of their own sight, out of the shelter and safeguard of their own natural home.