John Halifax, Gentleman

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

  When, at her usual hour of half-past nine, the little lady was summoned away to bed, “to keep up her roses,” he looked half resentful of the mother’s interference.

  “Maud is not a child now; and this may be my last night—” he stopped, sensitively, at the involuntary foreboding.

  “Your last night? Nonsense! you will come back soon again. You must—you shall!” said Maud, decisively.

  “I hope I may—I trust in Heaven I may!”

  He spoke low, holding her hand distantly and reverently, 517not attempting to kiss it, as in all his former farewells he had invariably done.

  “Maud, remember me! However or whenever I come back, dearest child, be faithful, and remember me!”

  Maud fled away with a sob of childish pain—partly anger, the mother thought—and slightly apologized to the guest for her daughter’s “naughtiness.”

  Lord Ravenel sat silent for a long, long time.

  Just when we thought he purposed leaving, he said, abruptly, “Mr. Halifax, may I have five minutes’ speech with you in the study?”

  The five minutes extended to half an hour. Mrs. Halifax wondered what on earth they were talking about. I held my peace. At last the father came in alone.

  “John, is Lord Ravenel gone?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What could he have wanted to say to you?”

  John sat down by his wife, picked up the ball of her knitting, rolled and unrolled it. She saw at once that something had grieved and perplexed him exceedingly. Her heart shrunk back—that still sore heart!—recoiled with a not unnatural fear.

  “Oh, husband, is it any new misfortune?”

  “No, love,” cheering her with a smile; “nothing that fathers and mothers in general would consider as such. He has asked me for our Maud.”

  “What for?” was the mother’s first exceedingly simple question—and then she guessed its answer. “Impossible! Ridiculous—absolutely ridiculous! She is only a child.”

  “Nevertheless, Lord Ravenel wishes to marry our little Maud!”

  “Lord Ravenel wishes to marry our Maud!”

  Mrs. Halifax repeated this to herself more than once before she was able to entertain it as a reality. When she did, the first impression it made upon her mind was altogether pain.

  518“Oh, John! I hoped we had done with these sort of things; I thought we should have been left in peace with the rest of our children.”

  John smiled again; for, indeed, there was a comical side to her view of the subject; but its serious phase soon returned; doubly so, when, looking up, they both saw Lord Ravenel standing before them. Firm his attitude was, firmer than usual; and it was with something of his father’s stately air, mingled with a more chivalric and sincerer grace, that he stooped forward and kissed the hand of Maud’s mother.

  “Mr. Halifax has told you all, I believe?”

  “He has.”

  “May I then, with entire trust in you both, await my answer?”

  He waited it, patiently enough, with little apparent doubt as to what it would be. Besides, it was only the prior question of parental consent, not the vital point of Maud’s preference. And, with all his natural humility, Lord Ravenel might be forgiven if, brought up in the world, he was aware of his position therein—nor quite unconscious that it was not merely William Ravenel, but the only son and heir of the Earl of Luxmore, who came a-wooing.

  Not till after a long pause, and even a whispered word or two between the husband and wife, who knew each other’s minds so well that no more consultation was needed—did the suitor again, with a more formal air, ask for an answer.

  “It is difficult to give. I find that my wife, like myself, had no idea of your feelings. The extreme suddenness—”

  “Pardon me; my intention has not been sudden. It is the growth of many months—years, I might almost say.”

  “We are the more grieved.”

  “Grieved?”

  Lord Ravenel’s extreme surprise startled him from the mere suitor into the lover; he glanced from one to the other in 519undisguised alarm. John hesitated: the mother said something about the “great difference between them.”

  “In age, do you mean? I am aware of that,” he answered, with some sadness. “But twenty years is not an insuperable bar in marriage.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Halifax, thoughtfully.

  “And for any other disparity—in fortune—or rank—”

  “I think, Lord Ravenel,”—and the mother spoke with her “dignified” air—“you know enough of my husband’s character and opinions to be assured how lightly he would hold such a disparity—if you allude to that supposed to exist between the son of the Earl of Luxmore and the daughter of John Halifax.”

  The young nobleman coloured, as if with ingenuous shame at what he had been implying. “I am glad of it. Let me assure you there will be no impediments on the side of my family. The earl has long wished me to marry. He knows well enough that I can marry whom I please—and shall marry for love only. Give me your leave to win your little Maud.”

  A dead silence.

  “Again pardon me,” Lord Ravenel said with some hauteur; “I cannot have clearly explained myself. Let me repeat, Mr. Halifax, that I ask your permission to win your daughter’s affection, and, in due time, her hand.”

  “I would that you had asked of me anything that it could be less impossible to give you.”

  “Impossible! What do you mean?—Mrs. Halifax—” He turned instinctively to the woman—the mother.

  Ursula’s eyes were full of a sad kindness—the kindness any mother must feel towards one who worthily woos her daughter—but she replied distinctly—

  “I feel, with my husband, that such a marriage would be impossible.”

  Lord Ravenel grew scarlet—sat down—rose again, and stood facing them, pale and haughty.

  520“If I may ask—your reasons?”

  “Since you ask—certainly,” John replied. “Though, believe me, I give them with the deepest pain. Lord Ravenel, do you not yourself see that our Maud—”

  “Wait one moment,” he interrupted. “There is not, there cannot be, any previous attachment?”

  The supposition made the parents smile. “Indeed, nothing of the kind: she is a mere child.”

  “You think her too young for marriage, then?” was the eager answer. “Be it so. I will wait, though my youth, alas! is slipping from me; but I will wait—two years, three—any time you choose to name.”

  John needed not to reply. The very sorrow of his decision showed how inevitable and irrevocable it was.

  Lord Ravenel’s pride rose against it.

  “I fear in this my novel position I am somewhat slow of comprehension. Would it be so great a misfortune to your daughter if I made her Viscountess Ravenel, and in course of time Countess of Luxmore?”

  “I believe it would. Her mother and I would rather see our little Maud lying beside her sister Muriel than see her Countess of Luxmore.”

  These words, hard as they were, John uttered so softly and with such infinite grief and pain, that they struck the young man, not with anger, but with an indefinite awe, as if a ghost from his youth—his wasted youth—had risen up to point out that truth, and show him that what seemed insult or vengeance was only a bitter necessity.

  All he did was to repeat, in a subdued manner—“Your reasons?”

  “Ah, Lord Ravenel!” John answered sadly, “do you not see yourself that the distance between us and you is wide as the poles? Not in worldly things, but in things far deeper;—personal things, which strike at the root of love, home—nay, honour.”

  521Lord Ravenel started. “Would you imply that anything in my past life, aimless and useless as it may have been, is unworthy of my honour—the honour of our house?”

  Saying this he stopped—recoiled—as if suddenly made aware by the very words himself had uttered, what—contrasted with the unsullied dignity of the tradesman’s life, the spotless innocence of the tradesman’s daughter
—what a foul tattered rag, fit to be torn down by an honest gust, was that flaunting emblazonment, the so-called “honour” of Luxmore!

  “I understand you now. ‘The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,’ as your Bible says—your Bible, that I had half begun to believe in. Be it so. Mr. Halifax, I will detain you no longer.”

  John intercepted the young man’s departure.

  “No, you do NOT understand me. I hold no man accountable for any errors, any shortcomings, except his own.”

  “I am to conclude, then, that it is to myself you refuse your daughter?”

  “It is.”

  Lord Ravenel once more bowed, with sarcastic emphasis.

  “I entreat you not to mistake me,” John continued, most earnestly. “I know nothing of you that the world would condemn, much that it would even admire; but your world is not our world, nor your aims our aims. If I gave you my little Maud, it would confer on you no lasting happiness, and it would be thrusting my child, my own flesh and blood, to the brink of that whirlpool where, soon or late, every miserable life must go down.”

  Lord Ravenel made no answer. His new-born energy, his pride, his sarcasm, had successively vanished; dead, passive melancholy resumed its empire over him. Mr. Halifax regarded him with mournful compassion.

  “Oh, that I had foreseen this! I would have placed the breadth of all England between you and my child.”

  522“Would you?”

  “Understand me. Not because you do not possess our warm interest, our friendship: both will always be yours. But these are external ties, which may exist through many differences. In marriage there must he perfect unity; one aim, one faith, one love, or the marriage is incomplete, unholy—a mere civil contract and no more.”

  Lord Ravenel looked up amazed at this doctrine, then sat awhile pondering drearily.

  “Yes, you may be right,” at last he said. “Your Maud is not for me, nor those like me. Between us and you is that ‘great gulf fixed;’— what did the old fable say? I forget.—Che sara sara! I am but as others: I am but what I was born to be.”

  “Do you recognize what you were born to be? Not only a nobleman, but a gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man—man, made in the image of God. How can you, how dare you, give the lie to your Creator?”

  “What has He given me? What have I to thank Him for?”

  “First, manhood; the manhood His Son disdained not to wear; worldly gifts, such as rank, riches, influence, things which others have to spend half an existence in earning; life in its best prime, with much of youth yet remaining—with grief endured, wisdom learnt, experience won. Would to Heaven, that by any poor word of mine I could make you feel all that you are—all that you might be!”

  A gleam, bright as a boy’s hope, wild as a boy’s daring, flashed from those listless eyes—then faded.

  “You mean, Mr. Halifax, what I might have been. Now it is too late.”

  “There is no such word as ‘too late,’ in the wide world—nay, not in the universe. What! shall we, whose atom of time is but a fragment out of an ever-present eternity—shall we, so long as we live, or even at our life’s ending, dare to cry out to the Eternal One, ‘It is too late!’”

  523As John spoke, in much more excitement than was usual to him, a sudden flush or rather spasm of colour flushed his face, then faded away, leaving him pallid to the very lips. He sat down hastily, in his frequent attitude, with the left arm passed across his breast.

  “Lord Ravenel.” His voice was faint, as though speech was painful to him.

  The other looked up, the old look of reverent attention, which I remembered in the boy-lord who came to see us at Norton Bury; in the young “Anselmo,” whose enthusiastic hero-worship had fixed itself, with an almost unreasoning trust, on Muriel’s father.

  “Lord Ravenel, forgive anything I have said that may have hurt you. It would grieve me inexpressibly if we did not part as friends.”

  “Part?”

  “For a time, we must. I dare not risk further either your happiness or my child’s.”

  “No, not hers. Guard it. I blame you not. The lovely, innocent child! God forbid she should ever have a life like mine!”

  He sat silent, his clasped hands listlessly dropping, his countenance dreamy; yet, it seemed to me, less hopelessly sad: then with a sudden effort he rose.

  “I must go now.”

  Crossing over to Mrs. Halifax, he thanked her, with much emotion, for all her kindness.

  “For your husband, I owe him more than kindness, as perhaps I may prove some day. If not, try to believe the best of me you can. Good-bye.”

  They both said good-bye, and bade God bless him; with scarcely less tenderness than if things had ended as he desired, and, instead of this farewell, sad and indefinite beyond most farewells, they were giving the parental welcome to a newly-chosen son.

  524Ere finally quitting us, Lord Ravenel turned back to speak to John once more, hesitatingly and mournfully.

  “If she—if the child should ask or wonder about my absence—she likes me in her innocent way you know—you will tell her—What shall you tell her?”

  “Nothing. It is best not.”

  “Ay, it is, it is.”

  He shook hands with us all three, without saying anything else; then the carriage rolled away, and we saw his face—that pale, gentle, melancholy face—no more.

  It was years and years before any one beyond ourselves knew what a near escape our little Maud had had of becoming Viscountess Ravenel— future Countess of Luxmore.

  525CHAPTER XXXVII

  It was not many weeks after this departure of Lord Ravenel’s—the pain of which was almost forgotten in the comfort of Guy’s first long home letter, which came about this time—that John one morning, suddenly dropping his newspaper, exclaimed:

  “Lord Luxmore is dead.”

  Yes, he had returned to his dust, this old bad man; so old, that people had begun to think he would never die. He was gone; the man who, if we owned an enemy in the world, had certainly proved himself that enemy. Something peculiar is there in a decease like this—of one whom, living, we have almost felt ourselves justified in condemning, avoiding—perhaps hating. Until Death, stepping in between, removes him to another tribunal than this petty justice of ours, and laying a solemn finger on our mouths, forbids us either to think or utter a word of hatred against that which is now—what?—a disembodied spirit—a handful of corrupting clay.

  Lord Luxmore was dead. He had gone to his account; it was not ours to judge him. We never knew—I believe no one except his son ever fully knew—the history of his death-bed.

  John sat in silence, the paper before him, long after we had 526passed the news and discussed it, not without awe, all round the breakfast-table.

  Maud stole up—hesitatingly, and asked to see the announcement of the earl’s decease.

  “No, my child; but you shall hear it read aloud, if you choose.”

  I guessed the reason of his refusal; when, looking over him as he read, I saw, after the long list of titles owned by the new Earl of Luxmore, one bitter line; how it must have cut to the heart of him whom we first heard of as “poor William!”

  “HAD LIKEWISE ISSUE, CAROLINE, MARRIED IN 17—, TO RICHARD BRITHWOOD, ESQUIRE, AFTERWARDS DIVORCED.”

  And by a curious coincidence, about twenty lines further down I read among the fashionable marriages:

  “AT THE BRITISH EMBASSY, PARIS, SIR GERARD VERMILYE, BART., TO THE YOUTHFUL AND BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER OF—”

  I forget who. I only saw that the name was not her name, of whom the “youthful and beautiful” bride had most likely never heard. He had not married Lady Caroline.

  This morning’s intelligence brought the Luxmore family so much to our thoughts, that driving out after breakfast, John and I involuntarily recurred to the subject. Nay, talking on, in the solitude of our front seat—for Mrs. Halifax, Miss Halifax, and Mrs. Edwin Halifax, in the carriage behind, were deep in some other subject—
we fell upon a topic which by tacit consent had been laid aside, as in our household we held it good to lay aside any inevitable regret.

  527“Poor Maud! how eager she was to hear the news to-day. She little thinks how vitally it might have concerned her.”

  “No,” John answered thoughtfully; then asked me with some abruptness, “Why did you say ‘poor Maud’?”

  I really could not tell; it was a mere accident, the unwitting indication of some crotchets of mine, which had often come into my mind lately. Crotchets, perhaps peculiar to one, who, never having known a certain possession, found himself rather prone to over-rate its value. But it sometimes struck me as hard, considering how little honest and sincere love there is in the world, that Maud should never have known of Lord Ravenel’s.

  Possibly, against my will, my answer implied something of this; for John was a long time silent. Then he began to talk of various matters; telling me of many improvements he was planning and executing, on his property, and among his people. In all his plans, and in the carrying out of them, I noticed one peculiarity, strong in him throughout his life, but latterly grown stronger than ever—namely, that whatever he found to do, he did immediately. Procrastination had never been one of his faults; now, he seemed to have a horror of putting anything off even for a single hour. Nothing that could be done did he lay aside until it was done; his business affairs were kept in perfect order, each day’s work being completed with the day. And in the thousand-and-one little things that were constantly arising, from his position as magistrate and land-owner, and his general interest in the movements of the time, the same system was invariably pursued. In his relations with the world outside, as in his own little valley, he seemed determined to “work while it was day.” If he could possibly avoid it, no application was ever unattended to; no duty left unfinished; no good unacknowledged; no evil unremedied, or at least unforgiven.

  “John,” I said, as to-day this peculiarity of his struck me 528more than usual, “thou art certainly one of the faithful servants whom the Master when He cometh will find watching.”