Tales from Blackwood Volume Iv Part 20

"Well, seriously then, Hawthorne, I _have_ had a very narrow escape, for which I am very thankful; but I don't want to alarm any one about it, for fear it should reach my sister's ears, which I very much wish to avoid, for the present at all events. So I came up to your rooms here as soon as I could walk. Luckily, John saw me down at the water, so I came up with him, and got rid of a good many civil people who offered their a.s.sistance; and I have sent down to the lodgings to tell Mary I have staid to supper with you; so I shall get home quietly, and she will know nothing about this business. Fortunately, she is not in the way of hearing much Oxford gossip, poor girl!"

Russell sat with me about an hour, and then, as he said he felt very comfortable, I walked home with him to the door of his lodgings, where I wished him good night, and returned.

I had intended to have paid him an early visit the next morning; but somehow I was lazier than usual, and had scarcely bolted my commons in time to get to lecture. This over, I was returning to my rooms, when my scout met me.

"Oh, sir," said he, "Mr Smith has just been here, and wanted to see you, he said, particular."

Mr Smith? Of all the gentlemen there might be of that name in Oxford, I thought I had not the honour of a personal acquaintance with one.

"Mr Russell's Mr Smith, sir," explained John: "the little gentleman as used to come to his rooms so often."

I walked up the staircase, ruminating within myself what possible business "poor Smith" could have with me, of whom he had usually appeared to entertain a degree of dread. Something to do with Russell, probably. And I had half resolved to take the opportunity to call upon him, and try to make out who and what he was, and how he and Russell came to be so intimately acquainted. I had scarcely stuck old Herodotus back into his place on the shelf, however, when there came a gentle tap at the door, and the little Bible-clerk made his appearance. All diffidence and shyness had wholly vanished from his manner. There was an earnest expression in his countenance which struck me even before he spoke. I had scarcely time to utter the most commonplace civility, when, without attempt at explanation or apology, he broke out with--"Oh, Mr Hawthorne, have you seen Russell this morning?"

"No," said I, thinking he might possibly have heard some false report of the late accident--"but he was in my rooms last night, and none the worse for his wetting."

"Oh, yes, yes! I know that; but pray, come down and see him now--he is very, very ill, I fear."

"You don't mean it? What on earth is the matter?"

"Oh! he has been in a high fever all last night! and they say he is worse this morning--Dr Wilson and Mr Lane are both with him--and poor Miss Russell!--he does not know her--not know his sister; and oh, Mr Hawthorne, he must be _very_ ill! and they won't let me go to him!"

And poor Smith threw himself into a chair, and fairly burst into tears.

I was very much distressed too: but, at the moment, I really believe I felt more pity for the poor lad before me, than even apprehension for my friend Russell. I went up to him, shook his hand, and begged him to compose himself. Delirium, I a.s.sured him--and tried hard to a.s.sure myself--was the usual concomitant of fever, and not at all alarming.

Russell had taken a chill, no doubt, from the unlucky business of the last evening, but there could not be much danger in so short a time.

"And now, Smith," said I, "just take a gla.s.s of wine, and you and I will go down together, and I dare say we shall find him better by this time."

"Oh, thank you, thank you," he replied; "you are very kind--very kind indeed--no wine, thank you--I could not drink it: but oh! if they would only let me see him! And poor Miss Russell! and no one to attend to him but her!--but will you come down now directly?"

My own anxiety was not less than his, and in a very few minutes we were at the door of Russell's lodgings. The answer to our inquiries was, that he was in much the same state, and that he was to be kept perfectly quiet; the old housekeeper was in tears; and although she said Dr Wilson told them he hoped there would be a change for the better soon, it was evident that poor Russell was at present in imminent danger.

I sent up my compliments to Miss Russell to offer my services in any way in which they could be made available; but nothing short of the most intimate acquaintance could have justified any attempt to see her at present, and we left the house. I thought I should never have got Smith from the door; he seemed thoroughly overcome. I begged him to come with me back to my rooms--a Bible-clerk has seldom too many friends in the University, and it seemed cruel to leave him by himself in such evident distress of mind. Attached as I was to Russell myself, his undisguised grief really touched me, and almost made me reproach myself with being comparatively unfeeling. At any other time, I fear it might have annoyed me to encounter as I did the inquisitive looks of some of my friends, as I entered the college gates arm-in-arm with my newly-found and somewhat strange-looking acquaintance. As it was, the only feeling that arose in my mind was a degree of indignation that any man should venture to throw a supercilious glance at him; and if I longed to replace his shabby and ill-cut coat by something more gentlemanly in appearance, it was for his sake, and not my own.

And now it was that, for the first time, I learnt the connection that existed between the Bible-clerk and the quondam gentleman-commoner.

Smith's father had been for many years a confidential clerk in Mr Russell's bank; for Mr Russell's bank it was solely, the Smith who had been one of the original partners having died some two generations back, though the name of the firm, as is not unusual, had been continued without alteration. The clerk was a poor relation, in some distant degree, of the some-time partner: his father, too, had been a clerk before him. By strict carefulness, he had saved some little money during his many years of hard work: and this, by special favour on the part of Mr Russell, he had been allowed to invest in the bank capital, and thereby to receive a higher rate of interest for it than he could otherwise have obtained. The elder Smith's great ambition--indeed it was his only ambition--for the prosperity of the bank itself he looked upon as a law of nature, which did not admit of the feeling of hope, as being a fixed and immutable certainty--his ambition was to bring up his son as a gentleman. Mr Russell would have given him a stool and a desk, and he might have aspired hereafter to his father's situation, which would have a.s.sured him 250 per annum. But somehow the father did not wish the son to tread in his own steps. Perhaps the close confinement, and unrefreshing relaxations of a London clerk, had weighed heavily upon his own youthful spirits: perhaps he was anxious to spare the son of his old age--for, like a prudent man, he had not married until late in life--from the unwholesome toils of the counting-house, varied only too often by the still less wholesome dissipation of the evening. At all events, his visions for him were not of annually increasing salaries, and future independence: of probable partnerships, and possible lord-mayoralties; but of some cottage among green trees, far away in the quiet country, where, even as a country parson, people would touch their hats to him as they did to Mr Russell himself, and where, when the time should come for superannuation and a pension--the house had always behaved liberally to its old servants--his own last days might be happily spent in listening to his son's sermons, and smoking his pipe--if such a thing were lawful--in the porch of the parsonage. So while the princ.i.p.al was carefully training his heir to enact the fashionable man at Oxford, and in due time to take his place among the squires of England, and shunning, as if with a kind of remorseful conscience, to make him a sharer in his own contaminating speculations; the humble official too, but from far purer motives, was endeavouring in his degree, perhaps unconsciously, to deliver his boy from the snares of Mammon. And when Charles Russell was sent to the University, many were the inquiries which Smith's anxious parent made, among knowing friends, about the expenses and advantages of an Oxford education. And various, according to each individual's sanguine or saturnine temperament, were the answers he obtained, and tending rather to his bewilderment than information. One intimate acquaintance a.s.sured him, that the necessary expenses of an undergraduate _need_ not exceed a hundred pounds per annum: another--he was somewhat of a sporting character--did not believe any young man could do the thing like a gentleman under five. So Mr Smith would probably have given up his darling project for his son in despair, if he had not fortunately thought of consulting Mr Russell himself upon the point; and that gentleman, though somewhat surprised at his clerk's aspiring notions, good-naturedly solved the difficulty as to ways and means, by procuring for his son a Bible-clerk's appointment at one of the Halls, upon which he could support himself respectably, with comparatively little pecuniary help from his friends. With his connections and interest, it was no great stretch of friendly exertion in behalf of an old and trusted servant; but to the Smiths, father and son, both the munificence which designed such a favour, and the influence which could secure it, tended to strengthen if possible their previous conviction that the power and the bounty of the house of Russell came within a few degrees of omnipotence. Even now, when recent events had so fearfully shaken them from this delusion; when the father's well-earned savings had disappeared in the general wreck with the h.o.a.rds of wealthier creditors, and the son was left almost wholly dependent on the slender proceeds of his humble office; even now, as he told me the circ.u.mstances just mentioned, regret at the ruined fortunes of his benefactors seemed in a great measure to overpower every personal feeling. In the case of the younger Russell, indeed, this grat.i.tude was not misplaced. No sooner was he aware of the critical situation of his father's affairs, and the probability of their involving all connected with him, than, even in the midst of his own hara.s.sing anxieties, he turned his attention to the prospects of the young Bible-clerk, whose means of support, already sufficiently narrow, were likely to be further straitened in the event of a bankruptcy of the firm. His natural good-nature had led him to take some little notice of young Smith on his first entrance at the University, and he knew his merits as a scholar to be very indifferent. The obscure suburban boarding-school at which he had been educated, in spite of its high-sounding name--"Minerva House,"

I believe--was no very sufficient preparation for Oxford. Where the Greek and the washing are both extras at three guineas per annum, one clean shirt in the week, and one lesson in _Delectus_, are perhaps as much as can reasonably be expected. Poor Smith had, indeed, a fearful amount of up-hill work, to qualify himself even for his "little-go."

Charles Russell, not less to his surprise than to his unbounded grat.i.tude, inasmuch as he was wholly ignorant of his motives for taking so much trouble, undertook to a.s.sist and direct him in his reading: and Smith, when he had got over his first diffidence, having a good share of plain natural sense, and hereditary habits of plodding, made more rapid progress than might have been expected. The frequent visits to Russell's rooms, whose charitable object neither I nor any one else could have guessed, had resulted in a very safe pa.s.s through his first formidable ordeal, and he seemed now to have little fear of eventual success for his degree, with a strong probability of being privileged to starve upon a curacy thereafter. But for Russell's aid, he would, in all likelihood, have been remanded from his first examination back to his father's desk, to the bitter mortification of the old man at the time, and to become an additional burden to him on the loss at once of his situation and his little capital.

Poor Smith! it was no wonder that, at the conclusion of his story, interrupted constantly by broken expressions of grat.i.tude, he wrung his hands, and called Charles Russell the only friend he had in the world.

"And, oh! if he were to die! Do you think he will die?"

I a.s.sured him I hoped and trusted not; and with the view of relieving his and my own suspense, though it was little more than an hour since we had left his lodgings, we went down again to make inquiries. The street door was open, and so was that of the landlady's little parlour, so we walked in at once. She shook her head in reply to our inquiries. "Dr Wilson has been up-stairs with him, sir, for the last hour nearly, and he has sent twice to the druggist's for some things, and I fancy he's no better at all events."

"How is Miss Russell?" I inquired.

"Oh, sir, she don't take on much--not at all, as I may say; but she don't speak to n.o.body, and she don't take nothing: twice I have carried her up some tea, poor thing, and she just tasted it because I begged her, and she wouldn't refuse me, I know--but, poor dear young lady! it is very hard upon her, and she all alone like."

"Will you take up my compliments--Mr Hawthorne--and ask if I can be of any possible service?" said I, scarce knowing what to say or do. Poor girl! she was indeed to be pitied; her father ruined, disgraced, and a fugitive from the law; his only son--the heir of such proud hopes and expectations once--lying between life and death; her only brother, her only counsellor and protector, now unable to recognise or to speak to her--and she so unused to sorrow or hardship, obliged to struggle on alone, and exert herself to meet the thousand wants and cares of illness, with the added bitterness of poverty.

The answer to my message was brought back by the old housekeeper, Mrs Saunders. She shook her head, said her young mistress was very much obliged, and would be glad if I would call and see her brother to-morrow, when she hoped he would be better. "But oh, sir!" she added, "he will never be better any more! I know the doctors don't think so, but I can't tell her, poor thing--I try to keep her up, sir; but I do wish some of her own friends were here--she won't write to anybody, and I don't know the directions"--and she stopped, for her tears were almost convulsing her.

I could not remain to witness misery which I could do nothing to relieve; so I took Smith by the arm--for he stood by the door half-stupified--and proceeded back towards college. He had to mark the roll at his own chapel that evening; so we parted at the top of the street, after I had made him promise to come to breakfast with me in the morning. Russell's illness cast a universal gloom over the college that evening; and when the answer to our last message, sent down as late as we could venture to do, was still unfavourable, it was with anxious antic.i.p.ation that we awaited any change which the morrow might bring.

The next day pa.s.sed, and still Russell remained in the same state. He was in a high fever, and either perfectly unconscious of all around him, or talking in that incoherent and yet earnest strain, which is more painful to those who have to listen to and to soothe it than even the total prostration of the reason. No one was allowed to see him; and his professional attendants, though they held out hopes founded on his youth and good const.i.tution, acknowledged that every present symptom was most unfavourable.

The earliest intelligence on the third morning was, that the patient had pa.s.sed a very bad night, and was much the same; but in the course of an hour or two afterwards, a message came to me to say that Mr Russell would be glad to see me. I rushed, rather than ran, down to his lodgings, in a perfect exultation of hope, and was so breathless with haste and excitement when I arrived there, that I was obliged to pause a few moments to calm myself before I raised the carefully m.u.f.fled knocker. My joy was damped at once by poor Mrs Saunders' mournful countenance.

"Your master is better, I hope--is he not?" said I.

"I am afraid not, sir; but he is very quiet now: and he knew his poor dear sister; and then he asked if any one had been to see him, and we mentioned you, sir; and then he said he should like to see you very much, and so Miss made bold to send to you--if you please to wait, sir, I'll tell her you are here."

In a few moments she returned--Miss Russell would see me if I would walk up.

I followed her into the little drawing-room, and there, very calm and very pale, sat Mary Russell. Though her brother and myself had now so long been constant companions, I had seen but very little of her; on the very few evenings I had spent with Russell at his lodgings she had merely appeared to make tea for us, had joined but little in the conversation, and retired almost before the table was cleared. In her position, this behaviour seemed but natural; and as, in spite of the attraction of her beauty, there was a shade of that haughtiness and distance of manner which we had all at first fancied in her brother, I had begun to feel a respectful kind of admiration for Mary Russell, tinged, I may now venture to admit--I was barely twenty at the time--with a slight degree of awe. Her very misfortunes threw over her a sort of sanct.i.ty. She was too beautiful not to rivet the gaze, too n.o.ble and too womanly in her devotion to her brother not to touch the affections, but too cold and silent--almost as it seemed too sad--to love. Her brother seldom spoke of her; but when he did, it was in a tone which showed--what he did not care to conceal--his deep affection and anxious care for her; he watched her every look and movement whenever she was present; and if his love erred in any point, it was, that it seemed possible it might be even too sensitive and jealous for her own happiness.

The blinds were drawn close down, and the little room was very dark; yet I could see at a glance the work which anguish had wrought upon her in the last two days, and, though no tears were to be seen now, they had left their traces only too plainly. She did not rise, or trust herself to speak; but she held out her hand to me as if we had been friends from childhood. And if thorough sympathy, and mutual confidence, and true but pure affection, make such friendship, then surely we became so from that moment. I never thought Mary Russell cold again; yet I did not dream of loving her; she was my sister in everything but the name.

I broke the silence of our painful meeting--painful as it was, yet not without that inward throb of pleasure which always attends the awakening of hidden sympathies. What I said I forget; what does one, or can one say, at such moments, but words utterly meaningless, so far as they affect to be an expression of what we feel? The hearts understand each other without language, and with that we must be content.

"He knew me a little while ago," said Mary Russell at last; "and asked for you; and I knew you would be kind enough to come directly if I sent."

"Surely it must be a favourable symptom, this return of consciousness?"

"We will hope so: yes, I thought it was; and oh! how glad I was! But Dr Wilson does not say much, and I fear he thinks him weaker. I will go now and tell him you are come."

"You can see him now if you please," she said when she returned; "he seems perfectly sensible still; and when I said you were here, he looked quite delighted." She turned away, and, for the first time, her emotion mastered her.

I followed her into her brother's room. He did not look so ill as I expected; but I saw with great anxiety, as I drew nearer his bed, that his face was still flushed with fever, and his eye looked wild and excited. He was evidently, however, at present free from delirium, and recognised me at once. His sister begged him not to speak much, or ask questions, reminding him of the physician's strict injunctions with regard to quiet.

"Dr Wilson forgets, my love, that it is as necessary at least for the mind to be quiet as the tongue," said Russell with an attempt to smile; and then, after a pause, he added, as he took my hand, "I wanted to see you, Hawthorne; I know I am in very great danger; and, once more, I want to trouble you with a confidence. Nay, nothing very important; and pray, don't ask me, as I see you are going to do, not to tire myself with talking: I know what I am going to say, and will try to say it very shortly; but thinking is at least as bad for me as speaking." He paused again from weakness; Miss Russell had left the room. I made no reply. He half rose, and pointed to a writing-desk on a small table, with keys in the lock. I moved towards it, and opened it, as I understood his gestures; and brought to him, at his request, a small bundle of letters, from which he selected one, and gave it me to read. It was a banker's letter, dated some months back, acknowledging the receipt of three hundred pounds to Russell's credit, and enclosing the following note:--

"SIR,--Messrs ---- are directed to inform you of the sum of 300 placed to your credit. You will be wrongly advised if you scruple to use it. If at any time you are enabled, and desire it, it may be repaid through the same channel.

"ONE OF YOUR FATHER'S CREDITORS."

"I have never touched it," said Russell, as I folded up the note.

"I should have feared you would not," said I.

"But now," he proceeded, "now things seem changed with me. I shall want money--Mary will; and I shall draw upon this unseen charity; ay, and gratefully. Poor Mary!"

"You are quite right, my dear Russell," said I, eager to interrupt a train of thought which I saw would be too much for him. "I will manage all that for you, and you shall give me the necessary authority till you get well again yourself," I added in a tone meant to be cheerful.

He took no notice of my remark. "I fear," said he, "I have not been a wise counsellor to my poor sister. She had kind offers from more than one of our friends, and might have had a home more suited to her than this has been, and I allowed her to choose to sacrifice all her own prospects to mine!"

He turned his face away, and I knew that one painful thought besides was in his mind--that they had been solely dependent on her little income for his support at the University since his father's failure.

"Russell," said I gently, "this conversation can surely do no good; why distress yourself and me unnecessarily? Come, I shall leave you now, or your sister will scold me. Pray, for all our sakes, try to sleep; you know how desirable it is, and how much stress Dr Wilson has laid upon your being kept perfectly calm and quiet."