John Halifax, Gentleman

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

  “Love, when I was waiting to-day in Jessop’s bank—”

  (Ah! that was another change, to which we were even yet not familiar, the passing away of our good doctor and his wife, and his brother and heir turning the old dining-room into a “County Bank—open from ten till four.”)

  “While waiting there I heard of a lady who struck me as likely to be an excellent governess for Maud.”

  “Indeed!” said Mrs. Halifax, not over-enthusiastically. Maud became eager to know “what the lady was like?” I at the same time inquiring “who she was?”

  “Who? I really did not ask,” John answered, smiling. “But of what she is, Jessop gave me first-rate evidence—a good daughter, who teaches in Norton Bury anybody’s children for any sort of pay, in order to maintain an ailing mother. Ursula, you would let her teach our Maud, I know?”

  413“Is she an Englishwoman?”—For Mrs. Halifax, prejudiced by a certain French lady who had for a few months completely upset the peace of the manor-house, and even slightly tainted her own favourite, pretty Grace Oldtower, had received coldly this governess plan from the beginning. “Would she have to live with us?”

  “I think so, decidedly.”

  “Then it can’t be. The house will not accommodate her. It will hardly hold even ourselves. No, we cannot take in anybody else at Longfield.”

  “But—we may have to leave Longfield.”

  The boys here turned to listen; for this question had already been mooted, as all family questions were. In our house we had no secrets: the young folk, being trusted, were ever trustworthy; and the parents, clean-handed and pure-hearted, had nothing that they were afraid to tell their children.

  “Leave Longfield!” repeated Mrs. Halifax; “surely—surely—” But glancing at her husband, her tone of impatience ceased.

  He sat gazing into the fire with an anxious air.

  “Don’t let us discuss that question—at least, not to-night. It troubles you, John. Put it off till to-morrow.”

  No, that was never his habit. He was one of the very few who, a thing being to be done, will not trust it to uncertain “to-morrows.” His wife saw that he wanted to talk to her, and listened.

  “Yes, the question does trouble me a good deal. Whether, now that our children are growing up, and our income is doubling and trebling year by year, we ought to widen our circle of usefulness, or close it up permanently within the quiet bound of little Longfield. Love, which say you?”

  “The latter, the latter—because it is far the happiest.”

  “I am afraid, NOT the latter, because it IS the happiest.”

  He spoke gently, laying his hand on his wife’s shoulder, and 414looking down on her with that peculiar look which he always had when telling her things that he knew were sore to hear. I never saw that look on any living face save John’s; but I have seen it once in a picture—of two Huguenot lovers. The woman is trying to fasten round the man’s neck the white badge that will save him from the massacre (of St. Bartholomew)—he, clasping her the while, gently puts it aside—not stern, but smiling. That quiet, tender smile, firmer than any frown, will, you feel sure, soon control the woman’s anguish, so that she will sob out—any faithful woman would—“Go, die! Dearer to me than even thyself are thy honour and thy duty!”

  When I saw this noble picture, it touched to the core this old heart of mine—for the painter, in that rare expression, might have caught John’s. Just as in a few crises of his life I have seen it, and especially in this one, when he first told to his wife that determination which he had slowly come to—that it was both right and expedient for us to quit Longfield, our happy home for so many years, of which the mother loved every flower in the garden, every nook and stone in the walls.

  “Leave Longfield!” she repeated again, with a bitter sigh.

  “Leave Longfield!” echoed the children, first the youngest, then the eldest, but rather in curiosity than regret. Edwin’s keen, bright eyes were just lifted from his book, and fell again; he was not a lad of much speech, or much demonstration of any kind.

  “Boys, come and let us talk over the matter.”

  They came at once and joined in the circle; respectfully, yet with entire freedom, they looked towards their father—these, the sons of his youth, to whom he had been from their birth, not only parent and head, but companion, guide, and familiar friend. They honoured him, they trusted him, they loved him; not, perhaps, in the exact way that they loved their mother; for it often seems Nature’s own ordinance, that a mother’s influence should be strongest over her sons, while the father’s is greatest 415over his daughters. But even a stranger could not glance from each to each of those attentive faces, so different, yet with a curious “family look” running through them all, without seeing in what deep, reverent affection, such as naturally takes the place of childish fondness, these youths held their father.

  “Yes, I am afraid, after much serious thought on the matter, and much consultation with your mother here,—that we ought to leave Longfield.”

  “So I think,” said Mistress Maud, from her footstool; which putting forward of her important opinion shook us all from gravity to merriment, that compelled even Mrs. Halifax to join. Then, laying aside her work, and with it the saddened air with which she had bent over it, she drew her chair closer to her husband, slipping her hand in his, and leaning against his shoulder. Upon which Guy, who had at first watched his mother anxiously, doubtful whether or no his father’s plan had her approval, and therefore ought to be assented to,—relapsed into satisfied, undivided attention.

  “I have again been over Beechwood Hall. You all remember Beechwood?”

  Yes. It was the “great house” at Enderley, just on the slope of the hill, below Rose Cottage. The beech-wood itself was part of its pleasure ground, and from its gardens honest James Tod, who had them in keeping, had brought many a pocketful of pears for the boys, many a sweet-scented nosegay for Muriel.

  “Beechwood has been empty a great many years, father? Would it be a safe investment to buy it?”

  “I think so, Edwin, my practical lad,” answered the father, smiling. “What say you, children? Would you like living there?”

  Each one made his or her comment. Guy’s countenance brightened at the notion of “lots of shooting and fishing” about Enderley, especially at Luxmore; and Maud counted on the numerous visitors that would come to John Halifax, Esquire, of Beechwood Hall.

  416“Neither of which excellent reasons happen to be your father’s,” said Mrs. Halifax, shortly. But John, often tenderer over youthful frivolities than she, answered:

  “I will tell you, boys, what are my reasons. When I was a young man, before your mother and I were married, indeed before I had ever seen her, I had strongly impressed on my mind the wish to gain influence in the world—riches if I could—but at all events, influence. I thought I could use it well, better than most men; those can best help the poor who understand the poor. And I can; since, you know, when Uncle Phineas found me, I was—”

  “Father,” said Guy, flushing scarlet, “we may as well pass over that fact. We are gentlefolks now.”

  “We always were, my son.”

  The rebuke, out of its very mildness, cut the youth to the heart. He dropped his eyes, colouring now with a different and a holier shame.

  “I know that. Please will you go on, father.”

  “And now,” the father continued, speaking as much out of his own thoughts as aloud to his children—“now, twenty-five years of labour have won for me the position I desired. That is, I might have it for the claiming. I might take my place among the men who have lately risen from the people, to guide and help the people—the Cannings, Huskissons, Peels.”

  “Would you enter parliament? Sir Herbert asked me to-day if you ever intended it. He said there was nothing you might not attain to if you would give yourself up entirely to politics.”

  “No, Guy, no. Wisdom, like charity, begins at home. Let me learn to rule in my own valley, am
ong my own people, before I attempt to guide the state. And that brings me back again to the pros and cons about Beechwood Hall.”

  “Tell them, John; tell all out plainly to the children.”

  The reasons were—first, the advantage of the boys themselves; for John Halifax was not one of those philanthropists 417who would benefit all the world except their own household and their own kin. He wished—since the higher a man rises, the wider and nobler grows his sphere of usefulness—not only to lift himself, but his sons after him; lift them high enough to help on the ever-advancing tide of human improvement, among their own people first, and thence extending outward in the world whithersoever their talents or circumstances might call them.

  “I understand,” cried the eldest son, his eyes sparkling; “you want to found a family. And so it shall be—we will settle at Beechwood Hall; all coming generations shall live to the honour and glory of your name—our name—”

  “My boy, there is only one Name to whose honour we should all live. One Name ‘in whom all the generations of the earth are blessed.’ In thus far only do I wish to ‘found a family,’ as you call it, that our light may shine before men—that we may be a city set on a hill—that we may say plainly unto all that ask us, ‘For me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’”

  It was not often that John Halifax spoke thus; adopting solemnly the literal language of the Book—his and our life’s guide, no word of which was ever used lightly in our family. We all listened, as in his earnestness he rose, and, standing upright in the firelight, spoke on.

  “I believe, with His blessing, that one may ‘serve the Lord’ as well in wealth as in poverty, in a great house as in a cottage like this. I am not doubtful, even though my possessions are increased. I am not afraid of being a rich man. Nor a great man neither, if I were called to such a destiny.”

  “It may be—who knows?” said Ursula, softly.

  John caught his wife’s eyes, and smiled.

  “Love, you were a true prophet once, with a certain ‘Yes, you will,’ but now—Children, you know when I married your mother I had nothing, and she gave up everything for me. I said I would yet make her as high as any lady in the land,—in 418fortune I then meant, thinking it would make her happier; but she and I are wiser now. We know that we never can be happier than we were in the old house at Norton Bury, or in this little Longfield. By making her lady of Beechwood I should double her responsibilities and treble her cares; give her an infinitude of new duties, and no pleasures half so sweet as those we leave behind. Still, of herself and for herself, my wife shall decide.”

  Ursula looked up at him; tears stood in her eyes, though through them shone all the steadfastness of faithful love. “Thank you, John. I have decided. If you wish it, if you think it right, we will leave Longfield and go to Beechwood.”

  He stooped and kissed her forehead, saying only: “We will go.”

  Guy looked up, half-reproachfully, as if the father were exacting a sacrifice; but I question whether the greater sacrifice were not his who took rather than hers who gave.

  So all was settled—we were to leave beloved Longfield. It was to be let, not sold; let to a person we knew, who would take jealous care of all that was ours, and we might come back and see it continually; but it would be ours—our own home—no more.

  Very sad—sadder even than I had thought—was the leaving all the familiar things; the orchard and the flower-garden, the meadow and the stream, the woody hills beyond, every line and wave of which was pleasant and dear almost as our children’s faces. Ay, almost as that face which for a year—one little year, had lived in sight of, but never beheld, their beauty; the child who one spring day had gone away merrily out of the white gate with her three brothers, and never came back to Longfield any more.

  Perhaps this circumstance, that her fading away and her departure happened away from home, was the cause why her memory—the memory of our living Muriel, in her human childhood—afterwards clung more especially about the house 419at Longfield. The other children altered, imperceptibly, yet so swiftly, that from year to year we half forgot their old likenesses. But Muriel’s never changed. Her image, only a shade, yet often more real than any of these living children, seemed perpetually among us. It crept through the house at dusk; in winter fire-light it sat smiling in dim corners; in spring mornings it moved about the garden borders, with tiny soft footsteps neither seen nor heard. The others grew up—would be men and women shortly—but the one child that “was not,” remained to us always a child.

  I thought, even the last evening—the very last evening that John returned from Enderley, and his wife went down to the stream to meet him, and they came up the field together, as they had done so for many, many years;—ay, even then I thought I saw his eyes turn to the spot where a little pale figure used to sit on the door-sill, listening and waiting for him, with her dove in her bosom. We never kept doves now.

  And the same night, when all the household was in bed—even the mother, who had gone about with a restless activity, trying to persuade herself that there would be at least no possibility of accomplishing the flitting to-morrow—the last night, when John went as usual to fasten the house-door, he stood a long time outside, looking down the valley.

  “How quiet everything is. You can almost hear the tinkle of the stream. Poor old Longfield!” And I sighed, thinking we should never again have such another home.

  John did not answer. He had been mechanically bending aside and training into its place a long shoot of wild clematis—virgin’s bower, which Guy and Muriel had brought in from the fields and planted, a tiny root; it covered the whole front of the house now. Then he came and leaned beside me over the wicket-gate, looking fixedly up into the moon-light blue.

  “I wonder if she knows we are leaving Longfield?”

  “Who?” said I; for a moment forgetting.

  “The child.”

  420CHAPTER XXX

  Father and son—a goodly sight, as they paced side by side up and down the gravel walk—(alas! the pretty field-path belonged to days that were!)—up and down the broad, sunshiny walk, in front of the breakfast-room windows of Beechwood Hall.

  It was early—little past eight o’clock; but we kept Longfield hours and Longfield ways still. And besides, this was a grand day—the day of Guy’s coming of age. Curious it seemed to watch him, as he walked along by his father, looking every inch “the young heir;” and perhaps not unconscious that he did so;—curious enough, remembering how meekly the boy had come into the world, at a certain old house at Norton Bury, one rainy December morning, twenty-one years ago.

  It was a bright day to-day—bright as all our faces were, I think, as we gathered round the cosy breakfast-table. There, as heretofore, it was the mother’s pride and the father’s pleasure that not one face should be missing—that, summer and winter, all should assemble for an hour of family fun and family chat, before the busy cares of the day; and by general consent, which had grown into habit, every one tried to keep unclouded this little bit of early sunshine, before the father and brothers went away. No sour or dreary looks, no painful topics, were ever brought to the breakfast-table.

  421Thus it was against all custom when Mr. Halifax, laying down his paper with a grave countenance, said:

  “This is very ill news. Ten Bank failures in the Gazette to-day.”

  “But it will not harm us, father.”

  “Edwin is always thinking of ‘us,’ and ‘our business,’” remarked Guy, rather sharply. It was one of the slight—the very slight—jars in our household, that these two lads, excellent lads both, as they grew into manhood did not exactly “pull together.”

  “Edwin is scarcely wrong in thinking of ‘us,’ since upon us depend so many,” observed the father, in that quiet tone with which, when he did happen to interfere between his sons, he generally smoothed matters down and kept the balance even. “Yet though we are ourselves secure, I trust the losses everywhere around us make it the more necessary that
we should not parade our good fortune by launching out into any of Guy’s magnificences—eh, my boy?”

  The youth looked down. It was well known in the family that since we came to Beechwood his pleasure-loving temperament had wanted all sorts of improvements on our style of living—fox-hounds, dinner-parties, balls; that the father’s ways, which, though extended to liberal hospitalities, forbade outward show, and made our life a thorough family life still—were somewhat distasteful to that most fascinating young gentleman, Guy Halifax, Esquire, heir of Beechwood Hall.

  “You may call it ‘magnificence,’ or what you choose; but I know I should like to live a little more as our neighbours do. And I think we ought too—we that are known to be the wealthiest family—”

  He stopped abruptly—for the door opened; and Guy had too much good taste and good feeling to discuss our riches before Maud’s poor governess—the tall, grave, sad-looking, sad-clothed Miss Silver; the same whom John had seen at Mr. 422Jessop’s bank; and who had been with us four months—ever since we came to Beechwood.

  One of the boys rose and offered her a chair; for the parents set the example of treating her with entire respect—nay, would gladly have made her altogether one of the family, had she not been so very reserved.

  Miss Silver came forward with the daily nosegay which Mrs. Halifax had confided to her superintendence.

  “They are the best I can find, madam—I believe Watkins keeps all his greenhouse flowers for to-night.”