Masters of the Novella

by Delphi Classics

  ‘Whatever is the man about!’

  And on looking round, I saw my father taking a straight burning stick out of the fire, and, after waiting for a minute, and examining the charred end to see if it was fitted for his purpose, he went to the hard-wood dresser, scoured to the last pitch of whiteness and cleanliness, and began drawing with the stick; the best substitute for chalk or charcoal within his reach, for his pocket-book pencil was not strong or bold enough for his purpose. When he had done, he began to explain his new model of a turnip-cutting machine to the minister, who had been watching him in silence all the time. Cousin Holman had, in the meantime, taken a duster out of a drawer, and, under pretence of being as much interested as her husband in the drawing, was secretly trying on an outside mark how easily it would come off, and whether it would leave her dresser as white as before. Then Phillis was sent for the book on dynamics about which I had been consulted during my first visit, and my father had to explain many difficulties, which he did in language as clear as his mind, making drawings with his stick wherever they were needed as illustrations, the minister sitting with his massive head resting on his hands, his elbows on the table, almost unconscious of Phillis, leaning over and listening greedily, with her hand on his shoulder, sucking in information like her father’s own daughter. I was rather sorry for cousin Holman; I had been so once or twice before; for do what she would, she was completely unable even to understand the pleasure her husband and daughter took in intellectual pursuits, much less to care in the least herself for the pursuits themselves, and was thus unavoidably thrown out of some of their interests. I had once or twice thought she was a little jealous of her own child, as a fitter companion for her husband than she was herself; and I fancied the minister himself was aware of this feeling, for I had noticed an occasional sudden change of subject, and a tenderness of appeal in his voice as he spoke to her, which always made her look contented and peaceful again. I do not think that Phillis ever perceived these little shadows; in the first place, she had such complete reverence for her parents that she listened to them both as if they had been St Peter and St Paul; and besides, she was always too much engrossed with any matter in hand to think about other people’s manners and looks.

  This night I could see, though she did not, how much she was winning on my father. She asked a few questions which showed that she had followed his explanations up to that point; possibly, too, her unusual beauty might have something to do with his favourable impression of her; but he made no scruple of expressing his admiration of her to her father and mother in her absence from the room; and from that evening I date a project of his which came out to me a day or two afterwards, as we sate in my little three-cornered room in Eltham. ‘Paul,’ he began, ‘I never thought to be a rich man; but I think it’s coming upon me. Some folk are making a deal of my new machine (calling it by its technical name), and Ellison, of the Borough Green Works, has gone so far as to ask me to be his partner.’

  ‘Mr Ellison the Justice! — who lives in King Street? why, he drives his carriage!’ said I, doubting, yet exultant.

  ‘Ay, lad, John Ellison. But that’s no sign that I shall drive my carriage. Though I should like to save thy mother walking, for she’s not so young as she was. But that’s a long way off; anyhow. I reckon I should start with a third profit. It might be seven hundred, or it might be more. I should like to have the power to work out some fancies o’ mine. I care for that much more than for th’ brass. And Ellison has no lads; and by nature the business would come to thee in course o’ time. Ellison’s lasses are but bits o’ things, and are not like to come by husbands just yet; and when they do, maybe they’ll not be in the mechanical line. It will be an opening for thee, lad, if thou art steady. Thou’rt not great shakes, I know, in th’ inventing line; but many a one gets on better without having fancies for something he does not see and never has seen. I’m right down glad to see that mother’s cousins are such uncommon folk for sense and goodness. I have taken the minister to my heart like a brother; and she is a womanly quiet sort of a body. And I’ll tell you frank, Paul, it will be a happy day for me if ever you can come and tell me that Phillis Holman is like to be my daughter. I think if that lass had not a penny, she would be the making of a man; and she’ll have yon house and lands, and you may be her match yet in fortune if all goes well.’

  I was growing as red as fire; I did not know what to say, and yet I wanted to say something; but the idea of having a wife of my own at some future day, though it had often floated about in my own head, sounded so strange when it was thus first spoken about by my father. He saw my confusion, and half smiling said, —

  ‘Well, lad, what dost say to the old father’s plans? Thou art but young, to be sure; but when I was thy age, I would ha’ given my right hand if I might ha’ thought of the chance of wedding the lass I cared for—’

  ‘My mother?’ asked I, a little struck by the change of his tone of voice.

  ‘No! not thy mother. Thy mother is a very good woman — none better. No! the lass I cared for at nineteen ne’er knew how I loved her, and a year or two after and she was dead, and ne’er knew. I think she would ha’ been glad to ha’ known it, poor Molly; but I had to leave the place where we lived for to try to earn my bread and I meant to come back but before ever I did, she was dead and gone: I ha’ never gone there since. But if you fancy Phillis Holman, and can get her to fancy you, my lad, it shall go different with you, Paul, to what it did with your father.’

  I took counsel with myself very rapidly, and I came to a clear conclusion. ‘Father,’ said I, ‘if I fancied Phillis ever so much, she would never fancy me. I like her as much as I could like a sister; and she likes me as if I were her brother — her younger brother.’

  I could see my father’s countenance fall a little.

  ‘You see she’s so clever she’s more like a man than a woman — she knows Latin and Greek.’

  ‘She’d forget ‘em, if she’d a houseful of children,’ was my father’s comment on this.

  ‘But she knows many a thing besides, and is wise as well as learned; she has been so much with her father. She would never think much of me, and I should like my wife to think a deal of her husband.’

  ‘It is not just book-learning or the want of it as makes a wife think much or little of her husband,’ replied my father, evidently unwilling to give up a project which had taken deep root in his mind. ‘It’s a something I don’t rightly know how to call it — if he’s manly, and sensible, and straightforward; and I reckon you’re that, my boy.’

  ‘I don’t think I should like to have a wife taller than I am, father,’ said I, smiling; he smiled too, but not heartily.

  ‘Well,’ said he, after a pause. ‘It’s but a few days I’ve been thinking of it, but I’d got as fond of my notion as if it had been a new engine as I’d been planning out. Here’s our Paul, thinks I to myself, a good sensible breed o’ lad, as has never vexed or troubled his mother or me; with a good business opening out before him, age nineteen, not so bad-looking, though perhaps not to call handsome, and here’s his cousin, not too near cousin, but just nice, as one may say; aged seventeen, good and true, and well brought up to work with her hands as well as her head; a scholar — but that can’t be helped, and is more her misfortune than her fault, seeing she is the only child of scholar — and as I said afore, once she’s a wife and a she’ll forget it all, I’ll be bound — with a good fortune in land and house when it shall please the Lord to take her parents to himself; with eyes like poor Molly’s for beauty, a colour that comes and goes on a milk-white skin, and as pretty a mouth — ,

  ‘Why, Mr Manning, what fair lady are you describing?’ asked Mr Holdsworth, who had come quickly and suddenly upon our tete-a-tete, and had caught my father’s last words as he entered the room. Both my father and I felt rather abashed; it was such an odd subject for us to be talking about; but my father, like a straightforward simple man as he was, spoke out the truth.

  ‘I’ve been telli
ng Paul of Ellison’s offer, and saying how good an opening it made for him—’

  ‘I wish I’d as good,’ said Mr Holdsworth. ‘But has the business a “pretty mouth”?

  ‘You’re always so full of your joking, Mr Holdsworth,’ said my father. ‘I was going to say that if he and his cousin Phillis Holman liked to make it up between them, I would put no spoke in the wheel.’

  ‘Phillis Holman!’ said Mr Holdsworth. ‘Is she the daughter of the minister-farmer out at Heathbridge? Have I been helping on the course of true love by letting you go there so often? I knew nothing of it.’

  ‘There is nothing to know,’ said I, more annoyed than I chose to show. ‘There is no more true love in the case than may be between the first brother and sister you may choose to meet. I have been telling father she would never think of me; she’s a great deal taller and cleverer; and I’d rather be taller and more learned than my wife when I have one.’

  ‘And it is she, then, that has the pretty mouth your father spoke about? I should think that would be an antidote to the cleverness and learning. But I ought to apologize for breaking in upon your last night; I came upon business to your father.’

  And then he and my father began to talk about many things that had no interest for me just then, and I began to go over again my conversation with my father. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I had spoken truly about my feelings towards Phillis Holman. I loved her dearly as a sister, but I could never fancy her as my wife. Still less could I think of her ever — yes, condescending, that is the word — condescending to marry me. I was roused from a reverie on what I should like my possible wife to be, by hearing my father’s warm praise of the minister, as a most unusual character; how they had got back from the diameter of driving-wheels to the subject of the Holmans I could never tell; but I saw that my father’s weighty praises were exciting some curiosity in Mr Holdsworth’s mind; indeed, he said, almost in a voice of reproach, —

  ‘Why, Paul, you never told me what kind of a fellow this minister-cousin of yours was!’

  ‘I don’t know that I found out, sir,’ said I. ‘But if I had, I don’t think you’d have listened to me, as you have done to my father.’

  ‘No! most likely not, old fellow,’ replied Mr Holdsworth, laughing. And again and afresh I saw what a handsome pleasant clear face his was; and though this evening I had been a bit put out with him — through his sudden coming, and his having heard my father’s open-hearted confidence — my hero resumed all his empire over me by his bright merry laugh.

  And if he had not resumed his old place that night, he would have done so the next day, when, after my father’s departure, Mr Holdsworth spoke about him with such just respect for his character, such ungrudging admiration of his great mechanical genius, that I was compelled to say, almost unawares, —

  ‘Thank you, sir. I am very much obliged to you.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not at all. I am only speaking the truth. Here’s a Birmingham workman, self-educated, one may say — having never associated with stimulating minds, or had what advantages travel and contact with the world may be supposed to afford — working out his own thoughts into steel and iron, making a scientific name for himself — a fortune, if it pleases him to work for money — and keeping his singleness of heart, his perfect simplicity of manner; it puts me out of patience to think of my expensive schooling, my travels hither and thither, my heaps of scientific books, and I have done nothing to speak of. But it’s evidently good blood; there’s that Mr Holman, that cousin of yours, made of the same stuff’

  ‘But he’s only cousin because he married my mother’s second cousin,’ said I.

  ‘That knocks a pretty theory on the head, and twice over, too. I should like to make Holman’s acquaintance.’

  ‘I am sure they would be so glad to see you at Hope Farm,’ said I, eagerly. ‘In fact, they’ve asked me to bring you several times: only I thought you would find it dull.’

  ‘Not at all. I can’t go yet though, even if you do get me an invitation; for the —— Company want me to go to the —— Valley, and look over the ground a bit for them, to see if it would do for a branch line; it’s a job which may take me away for some time; but I shall be backwards and forwards, and you’re quite up to doing what is needed in my absence; the only work that may be beyond you is keeping old Jevons from drinking.’ He went on giving me directions about the management of the men employed on the line, and no more was said then, or for several months, about his going to Hope Farm. He went off into —— Valley, a dark overshadowed dale, where the sun seemed to set behind the hills before four o’clock on midsummer afternoon. Perhaps it was this that brought on the attack of low fever which he had soon after the beginning of the new year; he was very ill for many weeks, almost many months; a married sister — his only relation, I think — came down from London to nurse him, and I went over to him when I could, to see him, and give him ‘masculine news,’ as he called it; reports of the progress of the line, which, I am glad to say, I was able to carry on in his absence, in the slow gradual way which suited the company best, while trade was in a languid state, and money dear in the market. Of course, with this occupation for my scanty leisure, I did not often go over to Hope Farm. Whenever I did go, I met with a thorough welcome; and many inquiries were made as to Holdsworth’s illness, and the progress of his recovery.

  At length, in June I think it was, he was sufficiently recovered to come back to his lodgings at Eltham, and resume part at least of his work. His sister, Mrs Robinson, had been obliged to leave him some weeks before, owing to some epidemic amongst her own children. As long as I had seen Mr Holdsworth in the rooms at the little inn at Hensleydale, where I had been accustomed to look upon him as an invalid, I had not been aware of the visible shake his fever had given to his health. But, once back in the old lodgings, where I had always seen him so buoyant, eloquent, decided, and vigorous in former days, my spirits sank at the change in one whom I had always regarded with a strong feeling of admiring affection. He sank into silence and despondency after the least exertion; he seemed as if he could not make up his mind to any action, or else that, when it was made up, he lacked strength to carry out his purpose. Of course, it was but the natural state of slow convalescence, after so sharp an illness; but, at the time, I did not know this, and perhaps I represented his state as more serious than it was to my kind relations at Hope Farm; who, in their grave, simple, eager way, immediately thought of the only help they could give.

  ‘Bring him out here,’ said the minister. ‘Our air here is good to a proverb; the June days are fine; he may loiter away his time in the hay-field, and the sweet smells will be a balm in themselves — better than physic.’

  ‘And,’ said cousin Holman, scarcely waiting for her husband to finish his sentence, ‘tell him there is new milk and fresh eggs to be had for the asking; it’s lucky Daisy has just calved, for her milk is always as good as other cows’ cream; and there is the plaid room with the morning sun all streaming in.’ Phillis said nothing, but looked as much interested in the project as any one. I took it upon myself. I wanted them to see him; him to know them. I proposed it to him when I got home. He was too languid after the day’s fatigue, to be willing to make the little exertion of going amongst strangers; and disappointed me by almost declining to accept the invitation I brought. The next morning it was different; he apologized for his ungraciousness of the night before; and told me that he would get all things in train, so as to be ready to go out with me to Hope Farm on the following Saturday.

  ‘For you must go with me, Manning,’ said he; ‘I used to be as impudent a fellow as need be, and rather liked going amongst strangers, and making my way; but since my illness I am almost like a girl, and turn hot and cold with shyness, as they do, I fancy.’

  So it was fixed. We were to go out to Hope Farm on Saturday afternoon; and it was also understood that if the air and the life suited Mr Holdsworth, he was to remain there for a week or ten days, doing wh
at work he could at that end of the line, while I took his place at Eltham to the best of my ability. I grew a little nervous, as the time drew near, and wondered how the brilliant Holdsworth would agree with the quiet quaint family of the minister; how they would like him, and many of his half-foreign ways. I tried to prepare him, by telling him from time to time little things about the goings-on at Hope Farm.

  ‘Manning,’ said he, ‘I see you don’t think I am half good enough for your friends. Out with it, man.’

  ‘No,’ I replied, boldly. ‘I think you are good; but I don’t know if you are quite of their kind of goodness.’

  ‘And you’ve found out already that there is greater chance of disagreement between two “kinds of goodness”, each having its own idea of right, than between a given goodness and a moderate degree of naughtiness — which last often arises from an indifference to right?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think you’re talking metaphysics, and I am sure that is bad for you.’

  ‘“When a man talks to you in a way that you don’t understand about a thing which he does not understand, them’s metaphysics.” You remember the clown’s definition, don’t you, Manning?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said I. ‘But what I do understand is, that you must go to bed; and tell me at what time we must start tomorrow, that I may go to Hepworth, and get those letters written we were talking about this morning.’

  ‘Wait till to-morrow, and let us see what the day is like,’ he answered, with such languid indecision as showed me he was over-fatigued. So I went my way. The morrow was blue and sunny, and beautiful; the very perfection of an early summer’s day. Mr Holdsworth was all impatience to be off into the country; morning had brought back his freshness and strength, and consequent eagerness to be doing. I was afraid we were going to my cousin’s farm rather too early, before they would expect us; but what could I do with such a restless vehement man as Holdsworth was that morning? We came down upon the Hope Farm before the dew was off the grass on the shady side of the lane; the great house-dog was loose, basking in the sun, near the closed side door. I was surprised at this door being shut, for all summer long it was open from morning to night; but it was only on latch. I opened it, Rover watching me with half-suspicious, half-trustful eyes. The room was empty.