Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  ‘I am Mr. Hamley of Hamley. I suppose you are as yet ignorant of the boundary of Lord Cumnor’s land, and so I will inform you that my property begins at the pond yonder — just where you see the rise in the ground.’

  ‘I am perfectly acquainted with that fact, Mr. Hamley,’ said Mr

  Preston, a little annoyed at the ignorance attributed to him. ‘But may

  I inquire why my attention is called to it just now?’

  The squire was beginning to boil over; but he tried to keep his temper in. The effort was very much to be respected, for it was a great one. There was something in the handsome and well-dressed agent’s tone and manner inexpressibly irritating to the squire, and it was not lessened by an involuntary comparison of the capital roadster on which Mr. Preston was mounted with his own ill-groomed and aged cob.

  ‘I have been told that your men out yonder do not respect these boundaries, but are in the habit of plucking up gorse from my covers to light their fires.’

  ‘It is possible they may!’ said Mr. Preston, lifting his eyebrows, his manner being more nonchalant than his words. ‘I daresay they think no great harm of it. However, I’ll inquire.’

  ‘Do you doubt my word, sir?’ said the squire, fretting his mare till she began to dance about. ‘I tell you I’ve heard it only within this last half-hour.’

  ‘I don’t mean to doubt your word, Mr. Hamley; it’s the last thing I should think of doing. But you must excuse my saying that the argument which you have twice brought up for the authenticity of your statement, “that you have heard it within the last half-hour,” is not quite so forcible as to preclude the possibility of a mistake.’

  ‘I wish you’d only say in plain language that you doubt my word,’ said the squire, clenching and slightly raising his horsewhip. ‘I can’t make out what you mean — you use so many words.’

  ‘Pray don’t lose your temper, sir. I said I should inquire. You have not seen the men pulling up gorse yourself, or you would have named it. I surely may doubt the correctness of your informant until I have made some inquiry; at any rate, that is the course I shall pursue, and if it gives you offence, I shall be sorry, but I shall do it just the same. When I am convinced that harm has been done to your property, I shall take steps to prevent it for the future, and of course, in my lord’s name, I shall pay you compensation — it may probably amount to half-a- crown.’ He added these last words in a lower tone, as if to himself, with a slight, contemptuous smile on his face.

  ‘Quiet, mare, quiet,’ said the squire, quite unaware that he was the cause of her impatient movements by the way he was perpetually tightening her reins; and also, perhaps, he unconsciously addressed the injunction to himself.

  Neither of them saw Roger Hamley, who was just then approaching them with long, steady steps. He had seen his father from the door of old Silas’s cottage, and, as the poor fellow was still asleep, he was coming to speak to his father, and was near enough now to hear the next words.

  ‘I don’t know who you are, but I’ve known land-agents who were gentlemen, and I’ve known some who were not. You belong to this last set, young man,’ said the squire, ‘that you do. I should like to try my horsewhip on you for your insolence.’

  ‘Pray, Mr. Hamley,’ replied Mr. Preston, coolly, ‘curb your temper a little, and reflect. I really feel sorry to see a man of your age in such a passion’ — moving a little farther off, however, but really more with a desire to save the irritated man from carrying his threat into execution, out of a dislike to the slander and excitement it would cause, than from any personal dread. Just at this moment Roger Hamley came close up. He was panting a little, and his eyes were very stern and dark; but he spoke quietly enough.

  ‘Mr. Preston, I can hardly understand what you mean by your last words. But, remember, my father is a gentleman of age and position, and not accustomed to receive advice as to the management of his temper from young men like you.’

  ‘I desired to keep his men off my land,’ said the squire to his son — his wish to stand well in Roger’s opinion restraining his temper a little; but though his words might be a little calmer, there were all other signs of passion present — the discoloured complexion, the trembling hands, the fiery cloud in his eyes. ‘He refused, and doubted my word.’

  Mr. Preston turned to Roger, as if appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober, and spoke in a tone of cool explanation, which, though not insolent in words, was excessively irritating in manner. ‘Your father has misunderstood me — perhaps it is no wonder,’ trying to convey, by a look of intelligence at the son, his opinion that the father was in no state to hear reason. ‘I never refused to do what was just and right. I only required further evidence as to the past wrong- doing; your father took offence at this’ — and then he shrugged his shoulders, and lifted his eyebrows in a manner he had formerly learnt in France.

  ‘At any rate, sir! I can scarcely reconcile the manner and words to my father, which I heard you use when I first came up, with the deference you ought to have shown to a man of his age and position. As to the fact of the trespass — ’

  ‘They are pulling up all the gorse, Roger — there’ll be no cover whatever for game soon,’ put in the squire. Roger bowed to his father, but took up his speech at the point it was at before the interruption.

  ‘I will inquire into it myself at a cooler moment; and if I find that such trespass or damage has been committed, of course I shall expect that you will see it put a stop to. Come, father! I am going to see old Silas — perhaps you don’t know that he is very ill.’ So he endeavoured to wile the squire away to prevent further words. He was not entirely successful.

  Mr. Preston was enraged by Roger’s calm and dignified manner, and threw after them this parting shaft, in the shape of a loud soliloquy, —

  ‘Position, indeed! What are we to think of the position of a man who begins works like these without counting the cost, and comes to a stand-still, and has to turn off his labourers just at the beginning of winter, leaving — ’

  They were too far off to hear the rest. The squire was on the point of turning back before this, but Roger took hold of the reins of the old mare, and led her over some of the boggy ground, as if to guide her into sure footing, but, in reality, because he was determined to prevent the renewal of the quarrel. It was well that the cob knew him, and was, indeed, old enough to prefer quietness to dancing; for Mr. Hamley plucked hard at the reins, and at last broke out with an oath, — ‘Damn it, Roger! I’m not a child; I won’t be treated as such. Leave go, I say!’

  Roger let go; they were not on firm ground, and he did not wish any watchers to think that he was exercising any constraint over his father; and this quiet obedience to his impatient commands did more to soothe the squire than anything else could have effected just then.

  ‘I know I turned them off — what could I do? I’d no more money for their weekly wages; it’s a loss to me, as you know. He doesn’t know, no one knows, but I think your mother would, how it cut me to turn ‘em off just before winter set in. I lay awake many a night thinking of it, and I gave them what I had — I did, indeed. I hadn’t got money to pay ‘em, but I had three barren cows fattened, and gave every scrap of meat to the men, and I let ‘em go into the woods and gather what was fallen, and I winked at their breaking off old branches, and now to have it cast up against me by that cur — that servant. But I’ll go on with the works, by — , I will, if only to spite him. I’ll show him who I am. My position, indeed! A Hamley of Hamley takes a higher position than his master. I’ll go on with the works, see if I don’t! I’m paying between one and two hundred a year interest on Government money. I’ll raise some more if I go to the Jews; Osborne has shown me the way, and Osborne shall pay for it — he shall. I’ll not put up with insults. You shouldn’t have stopped me, Roger! I wish to heaven I’d horsewhipped the fellow!

  He was lashing himself again into an impotent rage, painful to a son to witness; but just then the little grandchild of old Silas, wh
o had held the squire’s horse during his visit to the sick man, came running up, breathless, —

  ‘Please, sir, please, squire, mammy has ‘sent me; grandfather has wakened up sudden, and mammy says he’s dying, and would you please come; she says he’d take it as a kind compliment, she’s sure.’

  So they went to the cottage, the squire speaking never a word, but suddenly feeling as if lifted out of a whirlwind and set down in a still and awful place.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  A PASSIVE COQUETTE

  It is not to be supposed that such an encounter as Mr. Preston had just had with Roger Hamley sweetened the regards in which the two young men henceforward held each other. They had barely spoken to each other before, and but seldom met; for the land-agent’s employment had hitherto lain at Ashcombe, some sixteen or seventeen miles from Hamley. He was older than Roger by several years; but during the time he had been in the county Osborne and Roger had been at school and at college. Mr. Preston was prepared to dislike the Hamleys for many unreasonable reasons. Cynthia and Molly had both spoken of the brothers with familiar regard, implying considerable intimacy; their flowers had been preferred to his on the occasion of the ball; most people spoke well of them; and Mr. Preston had an animal’s instinctive jealousy and combativeness against all popular young men. Their ‘position’ — poor as the Hamleys might be — was far higher than his own in the county; and, moreover, he was agent to the great Whig lord, whose political interests were diametrically opposed to those of the old Tory squire. Not that Lord Cumnor troubled himself much about his political interests. His family had obtained property and title from the Whigs at the time of the Hanoverian succession; and so, traditionally, he was a Whig, and had belonged in his youth to Whig clubs, where he had lost considerable sums of money to Whig gamblers. All this was satisfactory and consistent enough. And if Lord Hollingford had not been returned for the county on the Whig interest — as his father had been before him, until he had succeeded to the title — it is quite probable Lord Cumnor would have considered the British constitution in danger, and the patriotism of his ancestors ungratefully ignored. But, excepting at elections, he had no notion of making Whig and Tory a party cry. He had lived too much in London, and was of too sociable a nature, to exclude any man who jumped with his humour, from the hospitality he was always ready to offer, be the agreeable acquaintance Whig, Tory, or Radical. But in the county of which he was lord-lieutenant, the old party distinction was still a shibboleth by which men were tested for their fitness for social intercourse, as well as on the hustings. If by any chance a Whig found himself at a Tory dinner-table — or vice-versa — the food was hard of digestion, and wine and viands were criticized rather than enjoyed. A marriage between the young people of the separate parties was almost as unheard-of and prohibited an alliance as that of Romeo and Juliet’s. And of course Mr. Preston was not a man in whose breast such prejudices would die away. They were an excitement to him for one thing, and called out all his talent for intrigue on behalf of the party to which he was allied. Moreover, he considered it as loyalty to his employer to ‘scatter his enemies’ by any means in his power. He had always hated and despised the Tories in general; and after that interview on the marshy common in front of Silas’s cottage, he hated the Hamleys and Roger especially, with a very choice and particular hatred. ‘That prig,’ as hereafter he always designated Roger — ’he shall pay for it yet,’ he said to himself by way of consolation, after the father and son had left him. ‘What a lout it is!’ — watching the receding figure. ‘The old chap has twice as much spunk,’ as the squire tugged at his bridle-reins. ‘The old mare could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I see through your dodge. You’re afraid of your old father turning back and getting into another rage. Position indeed! a beggarly squire — a man who did turn off his men just before winter, to rot or starve, for all he cared — it’s just like a brutal old Tory.’ And, under the cover of sympathy with the dismissed labourers, Mr. Preston indulged his own private pique very pleasantly.

  Mr. Preston had many causes for rejoicing: he might have forgotten this discomfiture, as he chose to feel it, in the remembrance of an increase of income, and in the popularity he enjoyed in his new abode. All Hollingford came forward to do the earl’s new agent honour. Mr. Sheepshanks had been a crabbed, crusty old bachelor, frequenting inn- parlours on market-days, not unwilling to give dinners to three or four chosen friends and familiars, with whom, in return, he dined from time to time, and with whom, also, he kept up an amicable rivalry in the matter of wines. But he ‘did not appreciate female society,’ as Miss Browning elegantly worded his unwillingness to accept the invitations of the Hollingford ladies. He was unrefined enough to speak of these invitations to his intimate friends aforesaid in the following manner, ‘Those old women’s worrying,’ but, of course, they never heard of this. Little quarter-of-sheet notes, without any envelopes — that invention was unknown in those days — but sealed in the corners when folded up instead of gummed as they are fastened at present, occasionally passed between Mr. Sheepshanks and the Miss Brownings, Mrs. Goodenough or others. In the first instance, the form ran as follows: — ’Miss’ Browning and her sister, Miss Phoebe Browning, present their respectful compliments to Mr. Sheepshanks, and beg to inform him that a few friends have kindly consented to favour them with their company at tea on Thursday next. Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe will take it very kindly if Mr. Sheepshanks will join their little circle.’

  Now for Mrs. Goodenough: —

  ‘Mrs. Goodenough’s respects to Mr. Sheepshanks, and hopes he is in good health. She would be very glad if he would favour her with his company to tea on Monday. My daughter, in Combermere, has sent me a couple of guinea fowls, and Mrs. Goodenough hopes Mr. Sheepshanks will stay and take a bit of supper.’

  No need for the dates of the days of the month. The good ladies would have thought that the world was coming to an end if the invitation had been sent out a week before the party therein named. But not even guinea-fowls for supper could tempt Mr. Sheepshanks. He remembered the made-wines he had tasted in former days at Hollingford parties, and shuddered. Bread-and-cheese, with a glass of bitter-beer, or a little brandy-and-water, partaken of in his old clothes (which had worn into shapes of loose comfort, and smelt strongly of tobacco), he liked better than roast guinea-fowl and birch-wine, even without throwing into the balance the stiff uneasy coat, and the tight neckcloth and tighter shoes. So the ex-agent had been seldom, if ever, seen at the Hollingford tea-parties. He might have had his form of refusal stereotyped, it was so invariably the same.

  ‘Mr. Sheepshanks’ duty to Miss Browning and her sister’ (to Mrs Goodenough, or to others, as the case might be). ‘Business of importance prevents him from availing himself of their polite invitation; for which he begs to return his best thanks.’

  But now that Mr. Preston had succeeded, and come to live in

  Hollingford, things were changed.

  He accepted every civility right and left, and won golden opinions accordingly. Parties were made in his honour, ‘just as if he had been a bride,’ Miss Phoebe Browning said; and to all of them he went.

  ‘What’s the man after?’ said Mr. Sheepshanks to himself, when he heard of his successor’s affability, and sociability, and amiability, and a variety of other agreeable ‘ilities,’ from the friends whom the old steward still retained at Hollingford.

  ‘Preston’s not a man to put himself out for nothing. He’s deep. He’ll be after something solider than popularity.’

  The sagacious old bachelor was right. Mr. Preston was ‘after’ something more than mere popularity. He went wherever he had a chance of meeting Cynthia Kirkpatrick.

  It might be that Molly’s spirits were more depressed at this time than they were in general; or that Cynthia was exultant, unawares to herself, in the amount of attention and admiration she was receiving from Roger by day, from Mr. Preston in the evenings, but the two girls seemed to have parted company
in cheerfulness. Molly was always gentle, but very grave and silent. Cynthia, on the contrary, was merry, full of pretty mockeries, and hardly ever silent. When first she came to Hollingford, one of her great charms had been that she was such a gracious listener; now her excitement, by whatever caused, made her too restless to hold her tongue; yet what she said was too pretty, too witty, not to be a winning and sparkling interruption, eagerly welcomed by those who were under her sway. Mr Gibson was the only one who observed this change, and reasoned upon it.

  ‘She is in a mental fever of some kind,’ thought he to himself. ‘She is very fascinating, but I don’t quite understand her.’ If Molly had not been so entirely loyal to her friend, she might have thought this constant brilliancy a little tiresome when brought into every-day life; it was not the sunshiny rest of a placid lake, it was rather the glitter of the pieces of a broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders. Cynthia would not talk quietly about anything now; subjects of thought or conversation seemed to have lost their relative value. There were exceptions to this mood of hers, when she sank into deep fits of silence, that would have been gloomy had it not been for the never varying sweetness of her temper. If there was a little kindness to be done to either Mr Gibson or Molly, Cynthia was just as ready as ever to do it; nor did she refuse to do anything her mother wished, however fidgety might be, the humour that prompted the wish. But in this latter case Cynthia’s eyes were not quickened by her heart.

  Molly was dejected, she knew not why. Cynthia had drifted a little apart; that was not it. Her stepmother had whimsical moods; and if Cynthia displeased her, she would oppress Molly with small kindnesses and pseudo-affection. Or else everything was wrong, the world was out of joint, and Molly had failed in her mission to set it right, and was to be blamed accordingly. But Molly was of too steady a disposition to be much moved by the changeableness of an unreasonable person. She might be annoyed, or irritated, but she was not depressed. That was not it. The real cause was certainly this. As long as Roger was drawn to Cynthia, and sought her of his own accord, it had been a sore pain and bewilderment to Molly’s heart; but it was a straightforward attraction, and one which Molly acknowledged, in her humility and great power of loving, to be the most natural thing in the world. She would look at Cynthia’s beauty and grace, and feel as if no one could resist it. And when she witnessed all the small signs of honest devotion which Roger was at no pains to conceal, she thought, with a sigh, that surely no girl could help relinquishing her heart to such tender, strong keeping as Roger’s character ensured. She would have been willing to cut off her right hand, if need were, to forward his attachment to Cynthia; and the self-sacrifice would have added a strange zest to a happy crisis. She was indignant at what she considered to be Mrs. Gibson’s obtuseness to so much goodness and worth; and when she called Roger ‘a country lout’, or any other depreciative epithet, Molly would pinch herself in order to keep silent. But after all those were peaceful days compared to the present, when she, seeing the wrong side of the tapestry, after the wont of those who dwell in the same house with a plotter, became aware that Mrs. Gibson had totally changed her behaviour to Roger, from some cause unknown to Molly.