John Halifax, Gentleman Part 13

"No, thank G.o.d!"

"Thin, rather-"

"Very--a mere skeleton!"

"Face elongated and pale-"

"Sallow, John, decidedly sallow."

"Be it so, sallow. Big eyes, much given to observation, which means hard staring. Take them off me, Phineas, or I'll not lie on the gra.s.s a minute longer. Thank you. To return: Imprimis and finis (I'm grand at Latin now, you see)--long hair, which, since the powder tax, has resumed its original blackness, and is--any young damsel would say, only we count not a single one among our acquaintance--exceedingly bewitching."

I smiled, feeling myself colour a little too, weak invalid as I was. I was, nevertheless, twenty years old; and although Jael and Sally were the only specimens of the other s.e.x which had risen on my horizon, yet once or twice, since I had read Shakspeare, I had had a boy's lovely dreams of the divinity of womanhood. They began, and ended--mere dreams. Soon dawned the bare, hard truth, that my character was too feeble and womanish to be likely to win any woman's reverence or love.

Or, even had this been possible, one sickly as I was, stricken with hereditary disease, ought never to seek to perpetuate it by marriage.

I therefore put from me, at once and for ever, every feeling of that kind; and during my whole life--I thank G.o.d!--have never faltered in my resolution. Friendship was given me for love--duty for happiness. So best, and I was satisfied.

This conviction, and the struggle succeeding it--for, though brief, it was but natural that it should have been a hard struggle--was the only secret that I had kept from John. It had happened some months now, and was quite over and gone, so that I could smile at his fun, and shake at him my "bewitching" black locks, calling him a foolish boy. And while I said it, the notion slowly dawning during the long gaze he had complained of, forced itself upon me, clear as daylight, that he was not a "boy" any longer.

"Now let me turn the tables. How old are YOU, John?"

"You know. Eighteen next week."

"And how tall?"

"Five feet eleven inches and a half." And, rising, he exhibited to its full advantage that very creditable alt.i.tude, more tall perhaps than graceful, at present; since, like most youths, he did not as yet quite know what to do with his legs and arms. But he was--

I cannot describe what he was. I could not then. I only remember that when I looked at him, and began jocularly "Imprimis," my heart came up into my throat and choked me.

It was almost with sadness that I said, "Ah! David, you are quite a young man now."

He smiled, of course only with pleasure, looking forward to the new world into which he was going forth; the world into which, as I knew well, I could never follow him.

"I am glad I look rather old for my years," said he, when, after a pause, he had again flung himself down on the gra.s.s. "It tells well in the tan-yard. People would be slow to trust a clerk who looked a mere boy. Still, your father trusts me."

"He does, indeed. You need never have any doubt of that. It was only yesterday he said to me that now he was no longer dissatisfied with your working at all sorts of studies, in leisure hours, since it made you none the worse man of business."

"No, I hope not, or I should be much ashamed. It would not be doing my duty to myself any more than to my master, if I shirked his work for my own. I am glad he does not complain now, Phineas."

"On the contrary; I think he intends to give you a rise this Midsummer.

But oh!" I cried, recurring to a thought which would often come when I looked at the lad, though he always combated it so strongly, that I often owned my prejudices were unjust: "how I wish you were something better than a clerk in a tan-yard. I have a plan, John."

But what that plan was, was fated to remain unrevealed. Jael came to us in the garden, looking very serious. She had been summoned, I knew, to a long conference with her master the day before--the subject of which she would not tell me, though she acknowledged it concerned myself. Ever since she had followed me about, very softly, for her, and called me more than once, as when I was a child, "my dear." She now came with half-dolorous, half-angry looks, to summon me to an interview with my father and Doctor Jessop.

I caught her parting mutterings, as she marched behind me: "Kill or cure, indeed,"--"No more fit than a baby,"--"Abel Fletcher be clean mad,"--"Hope Thomas Jessop will speak out plain, and tell him so," and the like. From these, and from her strange fit of tenderness, I guessed what was looming in the distance--a future which my father constantly held in terrorem over me, though successive illness had kept it in abeyance. Alas! I knew that my poor father's hopes and plans were vain! I went into his presence with a heavy heart.

There is no need to detail that interview. Enough, that after it he set aside for ever his last lingering hope of having a son able to a.s.sist, and finally succeed him in his business, and that I set aside every dream of growing up to be a help and comfort to my father. It cost something on both our parts; but after that day's discussion we tacitly covered over the pain, and referred to it no more.

I came back into the garden, and told John Halifax all. He listened with his hand on my shoulder, and his grave, sweet look--dearer sympathy than any words! Though he added thereto a few, in his own wise way; then he and I, also, drew the curtain over an inevitable grief, and laid it in the peaceful chamber of silence.

When my father, Dr. Jessop, John Halifax, and I, met at dinner, the subject had pa.s.sed into seeming oblivion, and was never afterwards revived.

But dinner being over, and the chatty little doctor gone, while Abel Fletcher sat mutely smoking his pipe, and we two at the window maintained that respectful and decorous silence which in my young days was rigidly exacted by elders and superiors, I noticed my father's eyes frequently resting, with keen observance, upon John Halifax. Could it be that there had recurred to him a hint of mine, given faintly that morning, as faintly as if it had only just entered my mind, instead of having for months continually dwelt there, until a fitting moment should arrive?--Could it be that this hint, which he had indignantly scouted at the time, was germinating in his acute brain, and might bear fruit in future days? I hoped so--I earnestly prayed so. And to that end I took no notice, but let it silently grow.

The June evening came and went. The service-bell rang out and ceased.

First, deep shadows, and then a bright star, appeared over the Abbey-tower. We watched it from the garden, where, Sunday after Sunday, in fine weather, we used to lounge, and talk over all manner of things in heaven and in earth, chiefly ending with the former, as on Sunday nights, with stars over our head, was natural and fit we should do.

"Phineas," said John, sitting on the gra.s.s with his hands upon his knees, and the one star, I think it was Jupiter, shining down into his eyes, deepening them into that peculiar look, worth any so-called "handsome eyes;"--"Phineas, I wonder how soon we shall have to rise up from this quiet, easy life, and fight our battles in the world? Also, I wonder if we are ready for it?"

"I think you are."

"I don't know. I'm not clear how far I could resist doing anything wrong, if it were pleasant. So many wrong things are pleasant--just now, instead of rising to-morrow, and going into the little dark counting-house, and scratching paper from eight till six, shouldn't I like to break away!--dash out into the world, take to all sorts of wild freaks, do all sorts of grand things, and perhaps never come back to the tanning any more."

"Never any more?"

"No! no! I spoke hastily. I did not mean I ever should do such a wrong thing; but merely that I sometimes feel the wish to do it. I can't help it; it's my Apollyon that I have to fight with--everybody keeps a private Apollyon, I fancy. Now, Phineas, be content; Apollyon is beaten down."

He rose up, but I thought that, in the red glow of the twilight, he looked rather pale. He stretched his hand to help me up from the gra.s.s. We went into the house together, silently.

After supper, when the chimes struck half-past nine, John prepared to leave as usual. He went to bid good-night to my father, who was sitting meditatively over the fireless hearth-place, sometimes poking the great bow-pot of fennel and asparagus, as in winter he did the coals: an instance of obliviousness, which, in my sensible and acute father, argued very deep cogitation on some subject or other.

"Good-night," said John, twice over, before his master heard him.

"Eh?--Oh, good-night, good-night, lad! Stay! Halifax, what hast thee got to do to-morrow?"

"Not much, unless the Russian hides should come in; I cleared off the week's accounts last night, as usual."

"Ay, to-morrow I shall look over all thy books and see how thee stand'st, and what further work thou art fit for. Therefore, take a day's holiday, if thee likes."

We thanked him warmly. "There, John," whispered I, "you may have your wish, and run wild to-morrow."

He said, "the wish had gone out of him." So we planned a sweet lazy day under the Midsummer sky, in some fields about a mile off, called the Vineyards.

The morning came, and we took our way thither, under the Abbey walls, and along a lane, shaded on one side by the "willows in the water-courses." We came out in those quiet hay-fields, which, tradition says, had once grown wine for the rosy monks close by, and history avers, were afterwards watered by a darker stream than the blood of grapes. The Vineyards had been a battle-field; and under the long wavy gra.s.s, and the roots of the wild apple trees, slept many a Yorkist and Lancastrian. Sometimes an unusually deep furrow turned out a white bone--but more often the relics were undisturbed, and the meadows used as pastures or hay-fields.

John and I lay down on some wind-rows, and sunned ourselves in the warm and delicious air. How beautiful everything was! so very still! with the Abbey-tower--always the most picturesque point in our Norton Bury views--showing so near, that it almost seemed to rise up out of the fields and hedge-rows.

"Well, David," and I turned to the long, lazy figure beside me, which had considerably flattened the hay, "are you satisfied?"

"Ay."

Thus we lounged out all the summer morning, recurring to a few of the infinitude of subjects we used to compare notes upon; though we were neither of us given to wordiness, and never talked but when we had something to say. Often--as on this day--we sat for hours in a pleasant dreaminess, scarcely exchanging a word; nevertheless, I could generally track John's thoughts, as they went wandering on, ay, as clearly as one might track a stream through a wood; sometimes--like to-day--I failed.

In the afternoon, when we had finished our bread and cheese--eaten slowly and with graceful dignity, in order to make dinner a more important and lengthy affair--he said abruptly--

"Phineas, don't you think this field is rather dull? Shall we go somewhere else? not if it tires you, though."

I protested the contrary, my health being much above the average this summer. But just as we were quitting the field we met two rather odd-looking persons entering it, young-old persons they seemed, who might own to any age or any occupation. Their dress, especially that of the younger, amused us by its queer mixture of fashionableness and homeliness, such as grey ribbed stockings and shining paste shoe-buckles, rusty velvet small-clothes and a coatee of blue cloth.

But the wearer carried off this anomalous costume with an easy, condescending air, full of pleasantness, humour, and grace.

"Sir," said he, approaching John Halifax with a bow that I feel sure the "first gentleman of his day," as loyal folk then ent.i.tled the Prince Regent, could not have surpa.s.sed--"Sir, will you favour me by informing us how far it is to Coltham?"