John Halifax, Gentleman

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

  For some minutes we sat, bewildered as it were, thinking of the tale as if it had been told of some other family than ours. 475Mechanically the mother raised her eyes; the first object they chanced to meet was a rude water-colour drawing, kept, coarse daub as it was, because it was the only reminder we had of what never could be recalled—one red-cheeked child with a hoop, staring at another red-cheeked child with a nosegay—supposed to represent little Edwin and little Guy.

  “Guy taught Edwin to walk. Edwin made Guy learn his letters. How fond they were of one another—those two boys. Now—brother will be set against brother! They will never feel like brothers—never again.”

  “Love—”

  “Don’t, John! don’t speak to me just yet. It is so terrible to think of. Both my boys—both my two noble boys! to be made miserable for that girl’s sake. Oh! that she had never darkened our doors. Oh! that she had never been born.”

  “Nay, you must not speak thus. Remember—Edwin loves her—she will be Edwin’s wife.”

  “Never!” cried the mother, desperately; “I will not allow it. Guy is the eldest. His brother has acted meanly. So has she. No, John, I will NOT allow it.”

  “You will not allow what has already happened—what Providence has permitted to happen? Ursula, you forget—they love one another.”

  This one fact—this solemn upholding of the pre-eminent right and law of love,—which law John believed in, they both believed in, so sacredly and firmly—appeared to force itself upon Mrs. Halifax’s mind. Her passion subsided.

  “I cannot judge clearly. You can—always. Husband, help me!”

  “Poor wife!—poor mother!” he muttered, caressing her, and in that caress himself all but giving way—“Alas! that I should have brought thee into such a sea of trouble.”

  Perhaps he referred to the circumstance of his bringing Miss Silver into our house; perhaps to his own blindness, or 476want of parental caution, in throwing the young people continually together. However, John was not one to lament over things inevitable; or by overweening blame of his own want of foresight, to imply a doubt of the foreseeing of Providence.

  “Love,” he said, “I fear we have been too anxious to play Deus ex machina with our children, forgetting in whose Hands are marrying and giving in marriage—life’s crosses and life’s crowns. Trouble has come when we looked not for it. We can but try to see the right course, and seeing it, to act upon it.”

  Ursula assented—with a bursting heart it seemed—but still she assented, believing, even as in her young days, that her husband’s will was wisest, best.

  He told her, in few words, all that Edwin had that day confessed to his father; how these two, being much together, had become attached to one another, as young folks will—couples whom no one would ever think suited each for each, except Nature, and the instinct of their own hearts. Absorbed in this love—which, Edwin solemnly declared, was never openly declared till this morning—they neither of them thought of Guy. And thus things had befallen—things which no earthly power could remove or obliterate—things in which, whatever way we looked, all seemed darkness. We could but walk blindly on, a step at a time, trusting to that Faith, of which all our lives past had borne confirmation—the firm faith that evil itself is to the simple and God-fearing but the disguised messenger of good.

  Something like this John said, talking as his wife loved to hear him talk—every quiet, low word dropping like balm upon her grieved heart; not trying to deceive her into the notion that pain is not pain, but showing her how best to bear it. At length she looked up, as if with God’s help—and her husband’s comforting—she could bear it.

  “Only one thing—Guy does not know. He need not know just yet—not till he is stronger. Surely, Edwin will not tell him?”

  477“No; he promised me he would not. Do not start so. Indeed, there is no fear.”

  But that very assurance seemed to rouse it. She began straining her ears to catch the least noise in the rooms overhead—the boys’ rooms. Guy and Walter shared one; Edwin had his to himself.

  “They surely will not meet. Yet Guy sometimes likes sitting over Edwin’s fire. Hark!—was not that the creaking of Guy’s room-door?”

  “Love—” detaining her.

  “I know, John. I am not thinking of going. Guy might suspect something. No, indeed I am not afraid. They were always fond of one another—my boys.”

  She sat down, violently forcing herself not to listen, not to fear. But the truth was too strong for her.

  “Hark! I am sure they are talking. John, you said Edwin promised?”

  “Faithfully promised.”

  “But if, by some accident, Guy found out the truth? Hark! they are talking very loud. That is a chair fallen. Oh, John—don’t keep me! My boys—my boys.” And she ran up-stairs in an agony.

  What a sight for a mother’s eyes. Two brothers of whom it had been our boast that from babyhood they had never been known to lift a hand against each other—now struggling together like Cain and Abel. And from the fury in their faces, the quarrel might have had a similar ending.

  “Guy!—Edwin!” But the mother might as well have shrieked to the winds.

  The father came and parted them. “Boys, are you gone mad? fighting like brutes in this way. Shame, Guy! Edwin, I trusted you.”

  “I could not help it, father. He had no right to steal into my room; no right to snatch her letter from me.”

  478“It was her letter, then?” cried Guy, furiously. “She writes to you? You were writing back to her?”

  Edwin made no answer; but held out his hand for the letter, with that look of white passion in him so rarely seen—perhaps not thrice since his infancy. Guy took no heed.

  “Give it me back, Guy; I warn you.”

  “Not till I have read it. I have a right.”

  “You have none. She is mine.”

  “Yours?” Guy laughed in his face.

  “Yes, mine. Ask my father—ask my mother. They know.”

  “Mother!”—the letter fell from the poor lad’s hand. “Mother, YOU would not deceive me. He only says it to vex me. I was in a passion, I know. Mother, it isn’t true?”

  His piteous tone—the almost childish way in which he caught at her sleeve, as she turned from him—ah, poor Guy!

  “Edwin, is it my brother Edwin? Who would have thought it?” Half-bewildered, he looked from one to the other of us all; but no one spoke, no one contradicted him.

  Edwin, his passion quite gone, stooped in a sorrowful and humble way to pick up his betrothed’s letter. Then Guy flew at him, and caught him by the collar.

  “You coward!—how dared you?—No, I won’t hurt him; she is fond of him. Go away, every one of you. Oh, mother, mother, mother!”

  He fell on her neck, sobbing. She gathered him in her arms, as she had used to do in his childhood; and so we left them.

  “AS ONE WHOM HIS MOTHER COMFORTETH.”

  Ay, Prophet of Israel, thou wert wise.

  479CHAPTER XXXIV

  John and I sat over the study fire till long after midnight.

  Many an anxious watch I had kept with him, but none sadder than this. Because now, for the first time, our house was divided against itself. A sorrow had entered it, not from without but from within—a sorrow which we could not meet and bear, as a family. Alas! darker and darker had the bitter truth forced itself upon us, that neither joy nor affliction would ever find us as a family again.

  I think all parents must feel cruelly a pang like this—the first trouble in which they cannot help their children—the first time when those children must learn to stand alone, each for himself, compelled to carry his own burthen and work out, well or ill, his individual life. When the utmost the wisest or tenderest father can do, is to keep near with outstretched hand that the child may cling to, assured of finding sympathy, counsel, and love.

  If this father had stood aloof all his life, on some pinnacle of paternal “pride,” paternal “dignity”—if he had not made himsel
f his boys’ companion, counsellor, and friend, how great would have been his terrors now!

  For, as we both knew well—too well to trust ourselves to say it—if there was one thing in the world that ruins a lad, 480drives him to desperation, shuts the door of home upon him, and opens many another door, of which the entrance is the very gate of hell—it is such a disappointment as this which had happened to our Guy.

  His father saw it all. Saw it clearer, crueller, than even his mother could see. Yet when, very late, almost at dawn, she came in, with the tidings that Guy was himself again now—sleeping as quietly as a child—her husband was able to join in her deep thankfulness, and give her hope for the days to come.

  “But what is to be done with Guy?”

  “God knows,” John answered. But his tone expressed a meaning different from that generally conveyed in the words: a meaning which the mother caught at once, and rested on.

  “Ay—you are right. He knows!”—And so they went away together, almost content.

  Next morning, I woke late; the sunshine falling across my bed, and the sparrows chattering loud in the ivy. I had been dreaming, with a curious pertinacity, of the old days at Rose Cottage, the days when John first fell in love with Ursula.

  “Uncle Phineas.” I heard myself called.

  It was John’s son, who sat opposite, with wan, wild eyes, and a settled anguish on his mouth—that merry, handsome mouth—the only really handsome mouth in the family.

  “You are up early, my boy.”

  “What was the good of lying in bed? I am not ill. Besides, I wish to go about as usual. I don’t wish anybody to think that—that I care.”

  He stopped—evidently fighting hard against himself. A new lesson, alas! for our Guy.

  “Was I too violent last night? I did not mean it. I mean to be a man. Not the first man whom a lady has refused—eh?” And braving it out, he began to whistle; but the lips fell—the frank brow grew knotted with pain. The lad broke into a passion of misery.

  481The chief bitterness was that he had been deceived. Unwittingly, we well believed—but still deceived. Many little things he told me— Guy’s was a nature that at once spent and soothed itself by talking—of Miss Silver’s extreme gentleness and kindness towards him; a kindness which seemed so like, so cruelly like love.

  “Love!—Oh, she loved me. She told me so. Of course!—I was Edwin’s brother.”

  Ay, there was the sting, which never could be removed; which might rankle in the boy’s heart for life. He had not only lost his love, but what is more precious than love—faith in womankind. He began to make light of his losings—to think the prize was not so great after all. He sat on my bed, singing—Guy had a fine voice and ear—singing out of mockery, songs which I had an especial aversion to—light songs written by an Irishman, Mr. Thomas Moore, about girls and wine, and being “far from the lips we love,” but always ready enough “to make love to the lips we are near.” Then, laughing at me, he threw up the window and looked out.

  I think it was wrong of those two, wrong and selfish, as all lovers are—young lovers in the flush of their happiness; I think it was cruel of Edwin and Louise to walk up and down there in the elder brother’s very eyes.

  For a moment he struggled against his passion.

  “Uncle Phineas, just look here. How charming! Ha, ha! Did you ever see such a couple of fools?”

  Fools, maybe, but happy; happy to the very core—thoroughly engrossed in their happiness. The elder brother was almost maddened by it.

  “He must mind what he does—tell him so, Uncle Phineas—it would be safer. He MUST mind, or I will not answer for myself. I was fond of Edwin—I was indeed—but now it seems sometimes as if I HATED him.”

  “Guy!”

  482“Oh, if it had been a stranger, and not he! If it had been any one in the world except my brother!”

  And in that bitter cry the lad’s heart melted again; it was such a tender heart—his mother’s heart.

  After a time he recovered himself, and came down with me to breakfast, as he had insisted upon doing; met them all, even Miss Silver—and Edwin, who had placed himself by her side with an air of right. These lovers, however deeply grieved they looked—and, to do justice, it was really so—needed not to be grieved over by any of us.

  Nor, looking at the father and mother, would we have dared to grieve over THEM. In the silent watches of the night, heart to heart, husband and wife had taken council together; together had carried their sorrow to the only Lightener of burthens. It seemed that theirs was lightened; that even in this strange entanglement of fate they were able to wait patiently—trusting unto the Almighty Mercy not only themselves but the children He had given them.

  When, breakfast being over, John according to his custom read the chapter and the prayer—no one rose up or went out; no one refused, even in this anguish of strife, jealousy, and disunion—to repeat after him the “Our Father” of their childhood.

  I believe every one of us remembered for years, with an awe that was not altogether pain, this morning’s chapter and prayer.

  When it was ended, worldly troubles closed round us again.

  Nothing seemed natural. We hung about in twos and threes, uncertain what to do. Guy walked up and down, alone. His mother asked him if, seeing his foot was so well, he would like to go down to the mills as usual; but he declined. Miss Silver made some suggestion about “lessons,” which Edwin jealously negatived immediately, and proposed that she and Maud should take a drive somewhere.

  483Mrs. Halifax eagerly assented. “Lady Oldtower has been wanting them both for some time. You would like to go, would you not, for a day or two?” said she, addressing the governess.

  Guy caught at this. “Going away, are you? When?”

  He put the question to Miss Silver direct—his eyes blazing right into her own. She made some confused reply, about “leaving immediately.”

  “In the carriage, of course? Shall I have the honour of driving you?”

  “No,” said Edwin, decisively.

  A fierce, vindictive look passed between the brothers—a look terrible in itself—more terrible in its warning of days to come. No wonder the mother shuddered—no wonder the young betrothed, pale and alarmed, slipped out of the room. Edwin followed her. Then Guy, snatching up his sister, lifted her roughly on his knee.

  “Come along, Maud. You’ll be my girl now. Nobody else wants you. Kiss me, child.” But the little lady drew back.

  “So, you hate me too? Edwin has been teaching you? Very well. Get away, you cheat!”

  He pushed her violently aside. Maud began to cry.

  Her father looked up from his book—the book he had not been reading—though he had seemingly thought it best to take no notice of what was passing around him.

  “Come here, Maud, my child. Guy, you should not be unkind to your little sister. Try and command yourself, my dear boy!”

  The words, though spoken gently, almost in a whisper, were more than the lad’s chafed spirit could brook.

  “Father, you insult me. I will not bear it. I will quit the room.”

  He went out, shutting the door passionately after him. His mother rose up to follow him—then sat down again. The eyes that she lifted to her husband were deprecating, beseeching, heavy with a speechless pain.

  484For John—he said nothing. Not though, as was plain to see, this, the first angry or disrespectful word he had ever received from any one of his children, struck him like an arrow; for a moment stirred him even to wrath—holy wrath—the just displeasure of a father who feels that the least portion of his child’s sin is the sin against him. Perhaps this very feeling, distinct from, and far beyond, all personal indignation, all sense of offended dignity, made the anger strangely brief—so brief, that when the other children, awed and startled, looked for some ebullition of it—lo! it was all gone. In its stead was something at which the children, more awed still, crept out of the room.

  Ursula even, alarmed, looked in his face
as if for the first time she could not comprehend her husband.

  “John, you should forgive poor Guy! he did not intend any harm.”

  “No—no.”

  “And he is so very miserable. Never before did he fail in his duty to you.”

  “But what if I have failed in mine to him?—What if—you used to say I could not understand Guy—what if I have come short towards him? I, that am accountable to God for every one of my children.”

  “John—John”—she knelt down and put her arms round his neck. “Husband, do not look unhappy. I did not mean to blame you—we may be wrong, both of us—all of us. But we will not be afraid. We know Who pities us, even as we pity our children.”

  Thus she spoke, and more to the same purport; but it was a long time before her words brought any consolation. Then the parents talked together, trying to arrange some plan whereby Guy’s mind might be occupied and soothed, or else Edwin removed out of his sight for a little while. Once I hinted at the advantage of Guy’s leaving home; but Mrs. Halifax seemed to 485shrink from this project as though it were a foreboding of perpetual exile.

  “No, no; anything but that. Beside, Guy would not wish it. He has never left me in his life. His going would seem like the general breaking up of the family.”

  Alas! she did not, would not see that the family was already “broken.” Broken, more than either absence, marriage, or death itself could have effected.

  One thing more we had to consider—a thing at once natural and right in any family, namely, how to hide its wounds from the chattering, scandalous world. And so, when by a happy chance there came over that morning our good friend Lady Oldtower and her carriage full of daughters, Mrs. Halifax communicated, with a simple dignity that quelled all comment, the fact of “my son Edwin’s engagement,” and accepted the invitation for Maud and Miss Silver, which was willingly repeated and pressed.