John Halifax, Gentleman

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

  And in her unwearied spirits she seemed as if she would readily have responded to the wish.

  We did not see Guy among the dancers, who were now forming in a somewhat confused square, in order to execute a new dance called quadrilles, of which Miss Grace Oldtower was to be the instructress.

  “Where is Guy?” said the mother, who would have missed him among a room full of people. “Have you seen Guy anywhere, Miss Silver?”

  Miss Silver, who sat playing tunes—she had declined dancing—turned, colouring visibly.

  “Yes, I have seen him; he is in the study.”

  “Would you be so kind as to fetch him?”

  The governess rose and crossed the room, with a stately walk—statelier than usual. Her silk gown, of some rich soft colour, fashioned after Mrs. Halifax’s taste, and the chaplet of bay-leaves, which Maud had insisted upon putting in her dark hair, made an astonishing change in Miss Silver. I could not help noticing it to Mrs. Halifax.

  “Yes, indeed, she looks well. John says her features are fine; 433but for my part, I don’t care for your statuesque faces; I like colour—expression. See that bright little Grace Oldtower!—a thoroughly English rose;—I like HER. Poor Miss Silver! I wish—”

  What, out of compunction for a certain sharpness with which she had spoken, Mrs. Halifax was about to wish, remained undeclared. For, just this minute, Guy entered, and leaning his handsome head and his tender petits soins over the “English rose,” as his mother called her, led her out to the dancing.

  We sat down and looked on.

  “Guy dances lazily; he is rather pale too, I fancy.”

  “Tired, probably. He was out far too long on the ice to-day, with Maud and Miss Silver. What a pretty creature his partner is!” added Ursula, thoughtfully.

  “The children are growing up fast,” I said.

  “Ay, indeed. To think that Guy is actually twenty-one—the age when his father was married!”

  “Guy will be reminding you of that fact some day soon.”

  Mrs. Halifax smiled. “The sooner the better, if only he makes a worthy choice—if only he brings me a daughter whom I can love.”

  And I fancied there was love—motherly love—in the eyes that followed through the graceful mazes of her dancing, the bonny English rose.

  Guy and his partner sat down beside us. His mother noticed that he had turned very pale again, and the lad owned to be in some pain: he had twisted his foot that morning, in helping Maud and Miss Silver across the ice; but it was a mere trifle—not worth mentioning.

  It passed over, with one or two anxious inquiries on the mother’s part, and a soft, dewy shadow over the down-dropped cheek of the little rose, who evidently did not like to think of any harm coming to her old play-fellow. Then Sir Herbert appeared to lead Mrs. Halifax in to supper, Guy limped along 434with pretty Grace on his arm, and all the guests, just enough to fill our longest table in John’s study, came thronging round in a buzz of mirthfulness.

  Either the warm, hospitable atmosphere, or the sight of the merry youngsters, or the general influence of social pleasantness, had for the time being dispelled the cloud. But certainly it was dispelled. The master of the feast looked down two long lines of happy faces—his own as bright as theirs—down to where, at the foot of the table, the mother and mistress sat. She had been slightly nervous at times during the evening, but now she appeared thoroughly at ease and glad—glad to see her husband take his place at the head of his own hospitable board, in the midst of his own friends and his own people honoured and beloved. It seemed a good omen—an omen that the bitter things outside would pass away.

  How bitter they had been, and how sore the wife’s heart still felt, I could see from the jealous way in which, smiling and cheerful as her demeanour was, she caught every look, every word of those around her which might chance to bear reference to her husband; in her quick avoidance of every topic connected with these disastrous times, and, above all, in her hurried grasp of a newspaper that some careless servant brought in fresh from the night-mail, wet with sleet and snow.

  “Do you get your country paper regularly?” asked some one at table. And then some others appeared to recollect the Norton Bury Mercury, and its virulent attacks on their host—for there ensued an awkward pause, during which I saw Ursula’s face beginning to burn. But she conquered her wrath.

  “There is often much interest in our provincial papers, Sir Herbert. My husband makes a point of taking them all in—bad and good—of every shade of politics. He believes it is only by hearing all sides that you can truly judge of the state of the country.”

  “Just as a physician must hear all symptoms before he 435decides on the patient’s case. At least, so our good old friend Doctor Jessop used to say.”

  “Eh?” said Mr. Jessop the banker, catching his own name, and waking up from a brown study, in which he had seemed to see nothing—except, perhaps, the newspaper, which, in its printed cover, lay between himself and Mrs. Halifax. “Eh? did any one—Oh, I beg pardon—beg pardon—Sir Herbert,” hastily added the old man; who was a very meek and worthy soul, and had been perhaps more subdued than usual this evening.

  “I was referring,” said Sir Herbert, with his usual ponderous civility, “to your excellent brother, who was so much respected among us,—for which respect, allow me to say, he did not leave us without an inheritor.”

  The old banker answered the formal bow with a kind of nervous hurry; and then Sir Herbert, with a loud premise of his right as the oldest friend of our family, tried to obtain silence for the customary speech, prefatory to the customary toast of “Health and prosperity to the heir of Beechwood.”

  There was great applause and filling of glasses; great smiling and whispering; everybody glancing at poor Guy, who turned red and white, and evidently wished himself a hundred miles off. In the confusion I felt my sleeve touched, and saw leaning towards me, hidden by Maud’s laughing happy face, the old banker. He held in his hand the newspaper which seemed to have so fascinated him.

  “It’s the London Gazette. Mr. Halifax gets it three hours before any of us. I may open it? It is important to me. Mrs. Halifax would excuse, eh?”

  Of course she would. Especially if she had seen the old man’s look, as his trembling fingers vainly tried to unfold the sheet without a single rustle’s betraying his surreptitious curiosity.

  Sir Herbert rose, cleared his throat, and began:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I speak as a father myself, and as son of a father whom—whom I will not refer to here, except to 436say that his good heart would have rejoiced to see this day. The high esteem in which Sir Ralph always held Mr. Halifax, has descended, and will descend—”

  Here some one called out:

  “Mr. Jessop! Look at Mr. Jessop!”

  The old man had suddenly sank back, with a sort of choking groan. His eyes were staring blankly, his cheek was the colour of ashes. But when he saw every one looking at him he tried desperately to recover himself.

  “’Tis nothing. Nothing of the slightest moment. Eh?” clutching tightly at the paper which Mrs. Halifax was kindly removing out of his hand. “There’s no news in it—none, I assure you.”

  But from his agitation—from the pitiful effort he made to disguise it—it was plain enough that there was news. Plain also, as in these dangerous and critical times men were only too quick to divine, in what that news consisted. Tidings, which now made every newspaper a sight of fear,—especially this—the London Gazette.

  Edwin caught and read the fatal page—the fatal column—known only too well.

  “W——’s have stopped payment.”

  W——’s was a great London house, the favourite banking-house in our country, with which many provincial banks, and Jessop’s especially, were widely connected, and would be no one knew how widely involved.

  “W——’s stopped payment!”

  A murmur—a hush of momentary suspense, as the Gazette was passed hurriedly from hand to hand; and then our guests
, one and all, sat looking at one another in breathless fear, suspicion, or assured dismay. For, as every one was aware (we knew our neighbours’ affairs so well about innocent Enderley), there was not a single household of that merry little company upon whom, near or remote, the blow would not fall—except ours.

  437No polite disguise could gloss over the general consternation. Few thought of Jessop—only of themselves. Many a father turned pale; many a mother melted into smothered tears. More than one honest countenance that five minutes before had beamed like the rising sun, all friendliness and jocularity, I saw shrink into a wizened, worldly face with greedy selfishness peering out of the corners of its eyes, eager to conceal its own alarms and dive as far as possible into the terrors of its neighbours.

  “There will be a run on Jessop’s bank to-morrow,” I heard one person saying; glancing to where the poor old banker still sat, with a vacant, stupefied smile, assuring all around him that “nothing had happened; really, nothing.”

  “A run? I suppose so. Then it will be ‘Sauve qui peut,’ and the devil take the hindmost.”

  “What say you to all this, Mr. Halifax?”

  John still kept his place. He sat perfectly quiet, and had never spoken a syllable.

  When Sir Herbert, who was the first to recover from the shock of these ill-tidings, called him by his name, Mr. Halifax looked quickly up. It was to see, instead of those two lines of happy faces, faces already gathering in troubled groups, faces angry, sullen, or miserable, all of which, with a vague distrust, seemed instinctively turned upon him.

  “Mr. Halifax,” said the baronet, and one could see how, in spite of his steadfast politeness, he too was not without his anxieties—“this is an unpleasant breaking-in upon your kindly hospitalities. I suppose, through this unpropitious event, each of us must make up our minds to some loss. Let me hope yours will be trifling.”

  John made no answer.

  “Or, perhaps—though I can hardly hope anything so fortunate—perhaps this failure will not affect you at all?”

  He waited—as did many others, for Mr. Halifax’s reply; 438which was long in coming. However, since all seemed to expect it, it did come at last; but grave and sad as if it were the announcement of some great misfortune.

  “No, Sir Herbert; it will not affect me at all.”

  Sir Herbert, and not he alone—looked surprised—uneasily surprised. Some mutters there were of “congratulation.” Then arose a troubled murmur of talking, in which the master of the house was forgotten; until the baronet said, “My friends, I think we are forgetting our courtesy. Allow me to give you without more delay—the toast I was about to propose,—‘Health, long life, and happiness to Mr. Guy Halifax.’”

  And so poor Guy’s birthday toast was drunk; almost in silence; and the few words he said in acknowledgment were just listened to, scarcely heard. Every one rose from table, and the festivities were over.

  One by one all our guests began to make excuse. One by one, involuntarily perhaps, yet not the less painfully and plainly, they all shrunk away from us, as if in the universal trouble we, who had nothing to fear, had no part nor lot. Formal congratulations, given with pale lips and wandering eyes; brusque adieux, as some of the more honest or less courteous showed but too obviously how cruelly, even resentfully, they felt the inequalities of fortune; hasty departures, full of a dismay that rejected angrily every shadow of consolation;—all these things John had to meet and to bear.

  He met them with composure; scarcely speaking a word, as indeed what was there to say? To all the friendly speeches, real or pretended, he listened with a kind of sad gravity: of all harsher words than these—and there were not a few—he took not the least notice, but held his place as master of the house; generously deaf and blind to everything that it were as well the master of the house should neither hear nor see.

  At last he was left, a very Pariah of prosperity, by his own hearth, quite alone.

  439The last carriage had rolled away; the tired household had gone to bed; there was no one in the study but me. John came in and stood leaning with both his arms against the fireplace, motionless and silent. He leant there so long, that at last I touched him.

  “Well, Phineas!”

  I saw this night’s events had wounded him to the core.

  “Are you thinking of these honest, friendly, disinterested guests of ours? Don’t! They are not worth a single thought.”

  “Not an angry thought, certainly.” And he smiled at my wrath—a sad smile.

  “Ah, Phineas! now I begin to understand what is meant by the curse of prosperity.”

  440CHAPTER XXXI

  A great, eager, but doggedly-quiet crowd, of which each had his or her—for it was half women—individual terror to hide, his or her individual interest to fight for, and cared not a straw for that of any one else.

  It was market-day, and this crowd was collected and collecting every minute, before the bank at Norton Bury. It included all classes, from the stout farmer’s wife or market-woman, to the pale, frightened lady of “limited income,” who had never been in such a throng before; from the aproned mechanic to the gentleman who sat in his carriage at the street corner, confident that whatever poor chance there was, his would be the best.

  Everybody was, as I have said, extremely quiet. You heard none of the jokes that always rise in and circulate through a crowd; none of the loud outcries of a mob. All were intent on themselves and their own business; on that fast-bolted red-baize door, and on the green blind of the windows, which informed them that it was “open from ten till four.”

  The Abbey clock struck three quarters. Then there was a slight stirring, a rustling here and there of paper, as some one drew out and examined his bank notes; openly, with small fear of theft—they were not worth stealing.

  441John and I, a little way off, stood looking on, where we had once watched a far different crowd; for Mr. Jessop owned the doctor’s former house, and in sight of the green bank blinds were my dear old father’s known windows.

  Guy’s birthday had fallen on a Saturday. This was Monday morning. We had driven over to Norton Bury, John and I, at an unusually early hour. He did not exactly tell me why, but it was not difficult to guess. Not difficult to perceive how strongly he was interested, even affected—as any man, knowing all the circumstances, could not but be affected—by the sight of that crowd, all the sadder for its being such a patient, decent, respectable crowd, out of which so large a proportion was women.

  I noticed this latter fact to John.

  “Yes, I was sure it would be so. Jessop’s bank has such a number of small depositors and issues so many small notes. He cannot cash above half of them without some notice. If there comes a run, he may have to stop payment this very day; and then, how wide the misery would spread among the poor, God knows.”

  His eye wandered pitifully over the heaving mass of anxious faces blue with cold, and growing more and more despondent as every minute they turned with a common impulse from the closed bank door to the Abbey clock, glittering far up in the sunshiny atmosphere of morning.

  Its finger touched the one heel of the great striding X—glided on to the other—the ten strokes fell leisurely and regularly upon the clear frosty air; then the chimes—Norton Bury was proud of its Abbey chimes—burst out in the tune of “Life let us Cherish.”

  The bells went through all the tune, to the very last note—then ensued silence. The crowd were silent too—almost breathless with intent listening—but, alas! not to the merry Abbey chimes.

  The bank door remained closed—not a rattle at the bolts, 442not a clerk’s face peering out above the blind. The house was as shut-up and desolate as if it were entirely empty.

  Five whole minutes—by the Abbey clock—did that poor, patient crowd wait on the pavement. Then a murmur arose. One or two men hammered at the door; some frightened women, jostled in the press, began to scream.

  John could bear it no longer. “Come along with me,” he said, hurriedly. “I mu
st see Jessop—we can get in at the garden door.”

  This was a little gate round the corner of the street, well known to us both in those brief “courting days,” when we came to tea of evenings, and found Mrs. Jessop and Ursula March in the garden watering the plants and tying up the roses. Nay, we passed out of it into the same summer parlour, where—I cannot tell if John ever knew of the incident, at all events he never mentioned it to me—there had been transacted a certain momentous event in Ursula’s life and mine. Entering by the French window, there rose up to my mental vision, in vivid contrast to all present scenes, the picture of a young girl I had once seen sitting there, with head drooped, knitting. Could that day be twenty-five years ago?

  No summer parlour now—its atmosphere was totally changed. It was a dull, dusty room, of which the only lively object was a large fire, the under half of which had burnt itself away unstirred into black dingy caverns. Before it, with breakfast untasted, sat Josiah Jessop—his feet on the fender, his elbows on his knees, the picture of despair.

  “Mr. Jessop, my good friend!”

  “No, I haven’t a friend in the world, or shall not have an hour hence. Oh! it’s you, Mr. Halifax?—You have not an account to close? You don’t hold any notes of mine, do you?”

  John put his hand on the old man’s shoulder, and repeated that he only came as a friend.

  “Not the first ‘friend’ I have received this morning. I knew 443I should be early honoured with visitors;” and the banker attempted a dreary smile. “Sir Herbert and half-a-dozen more are waiting for me up-stairs. The biggest fish must have the first bite—eh, you know?”

  “I know,” said John, gloomily.

  “Hark! those people outside will hammer my door down!—Speak to them, Mr. Halifax—tell them I’m an old man—that I was always an honest man—always. If only they would give me time—hark—just hark! Heaven help me! do they want to tear me in pieces?”

  John went out for a few moments, then came back and sat down beside Mr. Jessop.

  “Compose yourself,”—the old man was shaking like an aspen leaf. “Tell me, if you have no objection to give me this confidence, exactly how your affairs stand.”