“Mrs. Cardew and I were discussing the lines about doubt and music, and we cannot see what Milton means. We cannot see how music can make us sure of a thing if there is not good reason for it.”
Catharine used the first person plural with the best intention, but her object was defeated. The rector recognised the words at once.
“Yes, yes,” he replied, impatiently; “but, Miss Furze, you know better than that. Milton does not mean doubt whether an arithmetical proposition is true. I question if he means theological doubt. Doubt in that passage is nearer despondency. It is despondency taking an intellectual form and clothing itself with doubts which no reasoning will overcome, which re-shape themselves the moment they are refuted.” He stopped for a moment. “Don’t you think so, Miss Furze?”
She forgot Mrs. Cardew, and looked straight into Mr. Cardew’s face bent earnestly upon her.
“I understand.”
Mrs. Cardew had lifted her eyes from the ground, on which they had been fixed. “I think,” said she, “we had better be going.”
“We can go out by the door at the end of the garden, if you will go and bid the Misses Ponsonby good-bye.”
Mrs. Cardew lingered a moment.
“I have bidden them good-bye,” said her husband.
She went, and Miss Ponsonby detained her for a few minutes to arrange the details of an important quarterly meeting of the Dorcas Society for next week.
“What do you think of the subject of the ‘Paradise Lost.’ Miss Furze?”
“I hardly know; it seems so far away.”
“Ah! that is just the point. I thought so once, but not now. Milton could not content himself with a common theme; nothing less than God and the man—mortal feud between Him and Satan would suffice. Milton is representative to me of what I may call the heroic attitude towards existence. Mark, too, the importance of man in the book. Men and women are not mere bubbles—here for a moment and then gone—but they are actually important, all-important, I may even say, to the Maker of the universe and his great enemy. In this Milton follows Christianity, but what stress he lays on the point! Our temptation, notwithstanding our religion, so often is to doubt our own value. All appearances tend to make us doubt it. Don’t you think so?”
Catharine looked earnestly at the excited preacher, but said nothing.
“I do not mean our own personal worth. The temptation is to doubt whether it is of the smallest consequence whether we are or are not, and whether our being here is not an accident. Oh, Miss Furze, to think that your existence and mine are part of the Divine eternal plan, and that without us it would be wrecked! Then there is Satan. Milton has gone beyond the Bible, beyond what is authorised, in giving such a distinct, powerful, and prominent individuality to Satan. You will remember that in the great celestial battle—
“‘Long time in even scale
The battle hung.’
But what a wonderful conception that is of the great antagonist of God! It comes out even more strongly in the ‘Paradise Regained.’ Is it not a relief to think that the evil thought in you or me is not altogether yours and mine, but is foreign; that it is an incident in the war of wars, an attack on one of the soldiers of the Most High?”
Mr. Cardew paused.
“Have you never written anything which I could read?”
“Scarcely anything. I wrote some time ago a little story of a few pages, but it was never published. I will lend you the manuscript, but you will please remember that it is anonymous, and that I do not wish the authorship revealed. I believe most people would not think any the better of me, certainly as a clergyman, if they knew it was mine.”
“That is very kind of you.”
Catharine felt the distinction, the confidence. The sweetest homage which can be offered us is to be entrusted with something which others would misinterpret.
“I should like, Miss Furze, to have some further talk with you about Milton, but I do not quite see” (musingly) “how it is to be managed.”
“Could you not tell us something about him when you and Mrs. Cardew next have tea with us at the Limes?”
“I do not think so. I meant with you, yourself. It is not easy for me to express myself clearly in company—at any rate, I should not hear your difficulties. You seem to possess a sympathy which is unusual, and I should be glad to know more of your mind.”
“When Mrs. Cardew comes here, could you not fetch her, and could we not sit out here together?”
He hesitated. They were walking slowly over the grass towards the gate, and were just beginning to turn off to the right by the side path between the laurels. At that point, the lawn being levelled and raised, there were two stone steps. In descending them Catharine slipped, and he caught her arm. She did not fall, but he did not altogether release her for at least some seconds.
“Mrs. Cardew has no liking for poetry.”
Catharine was silent.
“It is quite a new thing to me, Miss Furze, to find anybody in Abchurch who cares anything for that which is most interesting to me.”
“But, Mr. Cardew, I am sure I have not shown any particular capacity, and I am very ignorant, for I have read very little.”
“It does not need much to reveal what is in a person. It would be a great help to me if we could read a book together. This self-imprisonment day after day and self-imposed reticence is very unwholesome. I would give much to have a pupil or a friend whose world is my world.”
To Catharine it seemed as if she was being sucked in by a whirlpool and carried she knew not whither. They had reached the gate, and he had taken her hand in his to bid her good-bye. She felt a distinct and convulsive increase of pressure, and she felt also that she returned it. Suddenly something passed through her brain swift as the flash of the swiftest blazing meteor: she dropped his hand, and, turning instantly, went back to the house, retreating behind the thick bank of evergreens.
“Where is Miss Furze?” said Mrs. Cardew, who came down the path a minute or two afterwards.
“I do not know: I suppose she is indoors.”
“A canting, hypocritical parson, type not uncommon, described over and over again in novels, and thoroughly familiar to theatre-goers.” Such, no doubt, will be the summary verdict passed upon Mr. Cardew. The truth is, however, that he did not cant, and was not a hypocrite. One or two observations here may perhaps be pertinent. The accusation of hypocrisy, if we mean lofty assertion, and occasional and even conspicuous moral failure, may be brought against some of the greatest figures in history. But because David sinned with Bathsheba, and even murdered her husband, we need not discredit the sincerity of the Psalms. The man was inconsistent, it is true, inconsistent exactly because there was so much in him that was great, for which let us be thankful. Let us take notice too, of what lies side by sidle quietly in our own souls. God help us if all that is good in us is to be invalidated by the presence of the most contradictory evil.
Secondly it is a fact that vitality means passion. It does not mean avarice or any of the poor, miserable vices. If David had been a wealthy and most pious Jerusalem shopkeeper, who subscribed largely to missionary societies to the Philistines, but who paid the poor girls in his employ only two shekels a week, refusing them ass-hire when they had to take their work three parts of the way to Bethlehem, and turning them loose at a minute’s warning, he certainly would not have been selected to be part author of the Bible, even supposing his courtship and married life to have been most exemplary and orthodox. We will, however, postpone any further remarks upon Mr. Cardew: a little later we shall hear something about his early history, which may perhaps explain and partly exculpate him. As to Catharine, she escaped. It is vexatious that a complicated process in her should be represented by a single act which was transacted in a second. It would have been much more intelligible if it could have written itself in a dramatic conversation extending over two or three pages, but, as the event happened, so it must be recorded. The antagonistic and fiercely combatant forces did so issue in that deed, and the present historian has no intention to attempt an analysis. One thing is clear to him, that the quick stride up the garden path was urged not by any single, easily predominating impulse which had been enabled to annihilate all others. Do not those of us, who have been mercifully prevented from damming ourselves before the whole world, who have succeeded and triumphed—do we not know, know as we know hardly anything else, that our success and our triumph were due to superiority in strength by just a grain, no more, of our better self over the raging rebellion beneath it? It was just a tremble of the tongue of the balance: it might have gone this way, or it might have gone the other, but by God’s grace it was this way settled—God’s grace, as surely, in some form of words, everybody must acknowledge it to have been. When she reached her bedroom she sat down with her head on her hands, rose, walked about, looked out of window in the hope that she might see him, thought of Mrs. Cardew; forgot her; dwelt on what she had passed through till she almost actually felt the pressure of his hand; cursed herself that she had turned away from him; prayed for strength to resist temptation, and longed for one more chance of yielding to it.
The next morning a little parcel was left for Miss Furze. It contained the promised story, which is here presented to my readers:—
“Did he Believe?
“Charmides was born in Greece, but about the year 300 A.D. was living in Rome. He had come there, like many of his countrymen, to pursue his calling as sculptor in the imperial city, and he cherished a great love for his art. He knew too well that it was not the art of the earlier days of Athens, and that he could never catch the spirit of that golden time, but he loved it none the less. He was also a philosopher in his way. He had read not only the literature of Greece, but that of his adopted land, and he was especially familiar with Lucretius and his pupil Virgil. His intellectual existence, however, was not particularly happy. Rome was a pleasant city; his occupation was one in which he delighted; the thrill of a newly noticed Lucretian idea or of a tender touch in Virgil were better to him than any sensual pleasure, but his dealings with his favourite authors ended in his own personal emotion, and it was sad to think that the Hermes on which he had spent himself to such a degree should become a mere decoration to a Roman nobleman’s villa, valued only because it cost so much, and that nobody who looked at it would ever really care for it. Once, however, he was rewarded. He had finished a Pallas Athene just as the sun went down. He was excited, and after a light sleep he rose very early and went into the studio with the dawn. There stood the statue, severe, grand in the morning twilight, and if there was one thing in the world clear to him, it was that what he saw was no inanimate mineral mass, but something more. It was no mere mineral mass with an outline added. Part of the mind which formed the world was in it, actually in it, and it came to Charmides that intellect, thought, had their own rights, that they were as much a fact as the stone, and that what he had done was simply to realise a Divine idea which was immortal, no matter what might become of its embodiment. The weight of the material world lifted, an avenue of escape seemed to open itself to him from so much that oppressed and deadened him, and he felt like a man in an amphitheatre of overhanging mountains, who should espy in a far-off corner some scarcely perceptible track, and on nearer inspection a break in the walled precipices, a promise, or at least a hint, of a passage from imprisonment to the open plain. It was nothing more than he had learned in his Plato, but the truth was made real to him, and he clung to it.
“Rome at the end of the third century was one of the most licentious of cities. It was invaded by all the vices of Greece, and the counterpoise of the Greek virtues was absent. The reasoning powers assisted rather than prevented the degradation of morals, for they dissected and represented as nothing all the motives which had hitherto kept men upright. The healthy and uncorrupted instinct left to itself would have been a sufficient restraint, but sophistry argued and said, What is there in it?—and so the very strength and prerogative of man hired itself out to perform the office of making him worse than a beast. Charmides was unmarried, and it is not to be denied that though his life as a whole was pure, he had yielded to temptation, not without loathing himself afterwards. He did not feel conscious of any transgression of a moral law, for no such law was recognised, but he detested himself because he had been drawn into close contact with a miserable wretch simply in order to satisfy a passion, and in the touch of mercenary obscenity there was something horrible to him. It was bitter to him to reflect that, notwithstanding his aversion from it, notwithstanding his philosophy and art, he had been equally powerless with the uttermost fool of a young aristocrat to resist the attraction of the commonest of snares. What were his books and fine pretensions worth if they could not protect him in such ordinary danger? Thus it came to pass that after a fall, when he went back to his work, it was so unreal to him, such a mockery, that days often elapsed before he could do anything. It was a mere toy, a dilettante dissipation, the embroidery of corruption. Oh, for a lawgiver, for a time of restraint, for the time of Regulus and the republic! Then, said Charmides to himself, my work would have some value, for heroic obedience would he behind it. He was right, for the love of the beautiful cannot long exist where there is moral pollution. The love of the beautiful itself is moral—that is to say, what we love in it is virtue. A perfect form or a delicate colour are the expression of something which is destroyed in us by subjugation to the baser desires or meanness, and he who has been unjust to man or woman misses the true interpretation of a cloud or falling wave.
“One night Charmides was walking through the lowest part of the city, and he heard from a mere hovel the sound of a hymn. He knew what it was—that it was the secret celebration of a religious rite by the despised sect of the Jews and their wretched proselytes. The Jews were especially hateful to him and to all cultured people in Rome. They were typical of all the qualities which culture abhorred. No Jew had ever produced anything lovely in any department whatever—no picture, statue, melody, nor poem. Their literature was also barbaric: there was no consecutiveness in it, no reasoning, no recognition in fact of the reason. It was a mere mass of legends without the exquisite charm and spiritual intention of those of Greece, of bloody stories and obscure disconnected prophecies by shepherds and peasants. Their god was a horror, a boor upon a mountain, wielding thunder and lightning. Aphrodite was perhaps not all that could be wished, but she was divine compared with the savage Jehovah. It was true that a recent Jewish sect professed better things and recognised as their teacher a young malefactor who was executed when Tiberius was emperor. So far, however, as could be made out he was a poor crack-brained demagogue, who dreamed of restoring a native kingdom in Palestine. What made the Jews especially contemptible to culture was that they were retrograde. They strove to put back the clock. There is only one path, so culture affirmed, and that is the path opened by Aristotle, the path of rational logical progress from what we already know to something not now known, but which can be known. If our present state is imperfect, it is because we do not know enough. Every other road, excepting this, the king’s highway, heads into a bog. These Jews actually believed in miracles; they had no science, and thought they could regenerate the world by hocus-pocus. They ought to be suppressed by law, and, if necessary, put to death, for they bred discontent.
“Nevertheless, Charmides decided to enter the hovel. He was in idle mood, and he was curious to see for himself what the Jews were like. He pushed open the door, and when he went in he found himself in a low, mean room very dimly lighted and crowded with an odd medley of Greeks, Romans, tolerably well-dressed persons, and slaves. The poor and the shaves were by far the most numerous. The atmosphere was stifling, and Charmides sat as near the door as possible. Next to him was a slave-girl, not beautiful, but with a peculiar expression on her face very rare in Rome at that time. The Roman women were, many of them, lovely, but their loveliness was cold—the loveliness of indifference. The somewhat common features of this slave, on the contrary, were lighted up with eagerness: to her there was evidently something in life of consequence—nay, of immense importance. There were few of her betters in Rome to whom anything was of importance. A hymn at that moment was being sung, the words of which Charmides could not catch, and when it was finished an elderly man rose and read what seemed the strangest jargon about justification and sin. The very terms used were in fact unintelligible. The extracts were from a letter addressed to the sect in Rome by one Paul, a disciple of that Jesus who was crucified. After the reading was over came an address, very wild in tone and gesture, and equally unintelligible, and then a prayer or invocation, partly to their god, but also, as it seemed, to this Jesus, who evidently ranked as a dæmon, or perhaps as Divine, Charmides was quite unaffected. The whole thing appeared perfect nonsense, not worth investigation, but he could not help wondering what there was in it which could so excite that girl, whom he could hardly conclude to be a fool, and whose earnestness was a surprise to him. He thought no more about the affair until some days afterwards when he happened to visit a friend. Just as he was departing he met this very slave in the porch. He involuntarily stopped, and she whispered to him.
“‘You will not betray us?’
“‘I? Certainly not.’
“‘I will lend you this. Read it and return it to me.’ So saying, she vanished.
“Charmides, when he reached home, took out the manuscript. He recognised it as a copy of the letter which he had partly heard at the meeting. He was somewhat astonished to find that it was written by a man of learning, who was evidently familiar with classic authors, but surely never was scholarship pressed into such a service! The confusion of metaphor, the suddenness of transition, the illogical muddles were bad enough, but the chief obstacle to comprehension was that the author’s whole scope and purpose, the whole circle of his ideas, were outside Charmides altogether. He was not attracted any more than he was at the meeting, but he was a little piqued because Paul had certainly been well educated, and he determined to attend the meeting again. This time he was late, and did not arrive till it was nearly at an end. His friend was there, and again he sat down next to her. When they went out it was dark, and he walked by her side.
“‘Have you read the letter?’
“‘Yes, but I do not understand it, and I have brought it back.’
“‘May Christ the Lord open your eyes!’
“‘Who is this Christ whom you worship?’
“‘The Son of God, He who was crucified; the man Jesus; He who took upon Himself flesh to redeem us from our sins; in whom by faith we are justified and have eternal life.’
“It was all pure Hebrew to him, save the phrase ‘Son of God,’ which sounded intelligible.
“‘You are Greek,’ he said, for he recognised her accent although she spoke Latin.
“‘Yes, from Corinth: my name is Demariste;’ and she explained to him that, although she was a slave, she was partly employed in teaching Greek to the children of her mistress.
“‘If you are Greek and well brought up, you must know that I cannot comprehend a word of what you have spoken. It is Judaism.’
“‘To me, too,’ she replied, speaking Greek to him, ‘it was incomprehensible, but God by the light which lighteth every man hath brought me into His marvellous light, and now this that I have told you is exceedingly clear—nay, clearer than anything which men say they see.’
“‘Tell me how it happened.’
“‘When I first came to Rome I had a master who desired to make me his concubine, and I hated him; but what strength had I?—and I was tempted to yield. My parents were dead; I had no friends who cared for me—what did it matter! I had read in my books of the dignity of the soul, but that was a poor weapon with which to fight, and, moreover, sin was not exceeding sinful to me. By God’s grace I was brought amongst these Christians, and I was convinced of sin. I saw that it was not only transgression against myself, but against the eternal decrees of the Most High, against those decrees which, as one of our own poets still dear to me has said—
“‘Ου yαρ τι νυν yε καχθες, αλλ' αει ποτε
ζη ταυτα, κουδεις οιδεν εξ οτου φανη.’ {1}
“‘I saw that all art, all learning, everything which men value, were as straw compared with God’s commandments, and that it would be well to destroy all our temples, and statues, and all that we have which is beautiful, if we could thereby establish the kingdom of God within us, and so become heirs of the life everlasting. Oh, my friend, my friend in Christ, I hope, believe me, Rome will perish, and we shall all perish, not because we are ignorant, but because we have not obeyed His word. But how was I to obey it? Then I heard told the life of Christ the Lord: how God the Father in His infinite pity sent His Son into the world; how He lived amongst his and died a shameful death upon the cross that we might not die: and all His strength passed into me and became mine through faith, and I was saved; saved for this life; saved eternally; justified through Him; worthy to wait for Him and meet Him at His coming, for He shall come, and I shall be for ever with the Lord.’
“Demariste stood straight upright as she spoke, and the light in her transfigured her countenance as the sun penetrating a grey mass of vapour informs it with such an intensity of brightness that the eye can scarcely endure it. It was a totally new experience to Charmides, an entire novelty in Rome. He did not venture to look in her face directly, for he felt that there was nothing in him equal to its sublime, solemn pleading.
“‘I do not know anything of your Jesus,’ he said at last, timidly; ‘upon what do you rest His claims?’
“‘Read His life. I will lend it to you; you will want no other evidence for Him. And was He not raised from the dead to reign for ever at His Father’s right hand? No, keep the letter for a little while, and perhaps you will understand it better when you know upon what it is based.’
“A day or two afterwards the manuscript was sent to him secretly with many precautions. He was not smitten suddenly by it. The Palestinian tale, although he confessed it was much more to his mind than Paul, was still rude. It was once more the rudeness which was repellent, and which almost outweighed the pathos of many of the episodes and the undeniable grandeur of the trial and death. Moreover, it was full of superstition and supernaturalism, which he could not abide. He was in his studio after his first perusal, and he turned to an Apollo which he was carving. The god looked at him with such overpowering, balanced sanity, such a contrast to Christian incoherence and the rhapsodies of the letter to the Romans, that he was half ashamed of himself for meddling with it. He opened his Lucretius. Here was order and sequence; he knew where he was; he was at home. Was all this nought, were the accumulated labour and thought of centuries to be set aside and trampled on by the crude, frantic inspiration of clowns? The girl’s face, however, recurred to him; he could not get rid of it, and he opened the biography again. He stumbled upon what now stand as our twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters of Matthew, containing the denunciation of the Pharisees, and the prophecy of the coming of the Son of Man. He was amazed at the new turn which was given to life, at the reasons assigned for the curses which were dealt to these Jewish doctors. They were damned for their lack of mercy, judgment, faith, for their extortion, excess, and because they were full of hypocrisy and iniquity. They were fools and blind, but not through defects which would have condemned them in Greece and Rome at that day, but through failings of which Greece and Rome took small account. Charmides pondered and pondered, and saw that this Jew had given a new centre, a new pivot to society. This, then, was the meaning of the world as nearly as it could be said to have a single meaning. Read by the light of the twenty-third chapter, the twenty-fourth chapter was magnificent. ‘For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.’ Was it not intelligible that He to whom right and wrong were so diverse, to whom their diversity was the one fact for man, should believe that Heaven would proclaim and enforce it? He read more and more, until at last the key was given to him to unlock even that strange mystery, that being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Still it was idle for him to suppose that he could ever call himself a Christian in the sense in which those poor creatures whom he had seen were Christians. Their fantastic delusions, their expectation that any day the sky might open and their Saviour appear in the body, were impossible to him; nor could he share their confidence that once for all their religion alone was capable of regenerating the world. He could not, it is true, avoid the reflection that the point was not whether the Christians were absurd, nor was it even the point whether Christianity was not partly absurd. The real point was whether there was not more certainty in it than was to be found in anything at that time current in the world. Here, in what Paul called faith, was a new spring of action, a new reason for the blessed life, and, what was of more consequence, a new force by which men might be enabled to persist in it. He could not, we say, avoid this reflection; he could not help feeling that he was bound not to wait for that which was in complete conformity with an ideal, but to enlist under the flag which was carried by those who in the main fought for the right, and that it was treason to cavil and stand aloof because the great issue was not presented in perfect purity. Nevertheless, he was not decided, and could not quite decide. If he could have connected Christianity with his own philosophy; if it had been the outcome, the fulfilment of Plato, his duty would have been so much simpler; it was the complete rupture—so it seemed to him—which was the difficulty. His heart at times leaped up to join this band of determined, unhesitating soldiers; to be one in an army; to have a cause; to have a banner waving over his head; to have done with isolation, aloofness, speculation ending in nothing, and dreams which profited nobody: but even in those moments when he was nearest to a confession of discipleship he was restrained by faintness and doubt. If he were to enrol himself as a convert his conversion would be due not to an irresistible impulse, but to a theory, to a calculation, one might almost say, that such and such was the proper course to take.
“He went again to the meeting, and he went again and again. One night, as he came home, he walked as he had walked before, with Demariste. She was going as far as his door for the manuscript which he had now copied for his own use. As they went along a man met them who raised a lantern, and directed it full in their faces.
“‘The light of death,’ said Demariste.
“‘Who is he?’
“‘I know him well; he is a spy. I have often seen him at the door of our assembly.’
“‘Do you fear death?’
“‘I? Has not Christ died?’
“Charmides hath fallen in love with this slave, but it was love so different from any love which he had felt before for a woman, that it ought to have had some other name. It was a love of the soul, of that which was immortal, of God in her; it was a love too, of no mere temporary phenomenon, but of reality outlasting death into eternity. There was thus a significance, there was a grandeur in it wanting to any earthly love. It was the new love with which men were henceforth to love women—the love of Dante for Beatrice.
“She waited at the door while he went inside to fetch in the parchment. He brought it out and gave it to her, and as he stood opposite to her he looked in her face, and her eyes were not averted. He caught her hand, but she drew back.
“‘’Tis but for a day or two,’ she said; ‘a week will see the end.’
“‘A week!’ he cried! ‘Oh, my Demariste, rather a week with thee than an age with anything less than thee!’
“‘You will have to die too. Dare you die? The spirit may be willing, but the flesh may be weak.’
“‘Death? Yes, death, if only I am yours!’
“‘Nay, nay, my beloved, not for me, but for the Lord Jesus!’
“He bent nearer to her; his head was on her neck, and his arms were round her body. Oh, son and daughter of Time! oh, son and daughter of Eternity!
“He had hardly returned to his house, when he was interrupted by his friend Callippus, just a little the worse for wine.
“‘What new thing is this?’ said Callippus. ‘I hear you have consorted with the Jews, and have been seen at their assembly.’
“‘True, my friend.’
“True! By Jupiter! what is the meaning of it? You do not mean to say that you are bitten by the mad dog?’
“‘I believe.’
“‘Oh, by God, that it should have come to this! Are you not ashamed to look him in the face?’ pointing to the Apollo statue. ‘Ah! the old prophecy is once more verified!—
“‘Tutemet a nobis iam quovis tempore vatum
terriloquis victus dictis desciscere quæres.’ {2}
But I must be prudent. I saw somebody watching your house on the other side of the street. If I am caught they will think I belong to the accursed sect too. Farewell.”
“The morning came, and about an hour after Charmides had risen two soldiers presented themselves. He was hurried away, brought before the judges, and examined. Some little pity was felt for him by two or three members of the court, as he was well known in Rome, and one of them condescended to argue with him and to ask him how he could become ensnared by a brutal superstition which affirmed, so it was said, the existence of devil-possessed pigs, and offered sacrifices to them.
“‘You,’ said he, ‘an artist and philosopher—if it be true that you are a pervert, you deserve a heavier punishment than the scum whom we have hitherto convicted.’
“‘For Christ and His Cross!’ cried Charmides.
“‘Take him away!’
“The next day Charmides and Demariste met outside the prison gates. They were chained together in mockery, the seducer, Demariste, and the seduced, Charmides. They were marched through the streets of Rome, the crowd jeering them and thronging after them to enjoy the sport of their torments and death. Charmides saw the eyes of Demariste raised heavenward and her lips moving in prayer.
“‘He has heard me,’ she said, ‘and you will endure.’
“He pressed her hand, and replied, with unshaken voice, ‘Fear not.’
“They came to the place of execution, but before the final stroke they were cruelly tortured. Charmides bore his sufferings in silence, but in her extremest agony the face of Demariste was lighted with rapture.
“‘Look, look, my beloved, there, there!’ trying to lift her mangled arm, ‘Christ the Lord! One moment more and we are for ever with Him.’
“Charmides could just raise his head, and saw nothing but Demariste. He was able to turn himself towards her and move her hand to his lips, the second, only the second and the last kiss.
“So they died. Charmides was never considered a martyr by the Church. The circumstances were doubtful, and it was not altogether clear that he deserved the celestial crown.”
CHAPTER IX
The school broke up next week for the summer holidays, and Catharine went home. Her mother was delighted with her daughter. She was less awkward, straighter, and her air and deportment showed the success of the plan. The father acquiesced, although he did not notice the change till Mrs. Furze had pointed it out. As to Mrs. Bellamy, she declared, when she met Catharine in the street the first market afternoon, that “she had all at once become a woman grown.” Mrs. Furze’s separation from her former friends was now complete, but she had, unfortunately, not yet achieved admission into the superior circle. She had done so in a measure, but she was not satisfied. She felt that these people were not intimate with her, and that, although she had screwed herself with infinite pains into a bowing acquaintance, and even into a shaking of hands, they formed a set by themselves, with their own secrets and their own mysteries, into which she could not penetrate. Their very politeness was more annoying than rudeness would have been. It showed they could afford to be polite. Had she been wealthy, she could have crushed all opposition by sheer weight of bullion; but in Eastthorpe everybody’s position was known with tolerable exactitude, and nobody was deluded into exaggerating Mr. Furze’s resources because of the removal to the Terrace. Eastthorpe, on the contrary, affirmed that the business had not improved, and that expenses had increased.
When Catharine came home a light suddenly flashed across Mrs. Furze’s mind. What might not be done with such a girl as that! She was good-looking—nay, handsome; she had the manners which Mrs. Furze knew that she herself lacked, and Charlie Colston, aged twenty-eight, was still disengaged. It was Mrs. Furze’s way when she proposed anything to herself, to take no account of any obstacles, and she had the most wonderful knack of belittling and even transmuting all moral objections. Mr. Charlie Colston was a well-known figure in Eastthorpe. He was an only son, about five feet eleven inches high, thin, unsteady on his legs, smooth-faced, unwholesome, and silly. He had been taken into his father’s business because there was nothing else for him, and he was a mere shadow in it, despised by every cask-washer. There was nothing wicked recorded against him; he did not drink, he did not gamble, he cared nothing for horses or dogs; but Eastthorpe thought none the better of him for these negative virtues. He was not known to be immoral, but he was for ever playing with this girl or the other, smiling, mincing, toying, and it all came to nothing. A very unpleasant creature was Mr. Charlie Colston, a byword with women in Eastthorpe, even amongst the nursery-maids. Mrs. Furze knew all about his youth; but she brought out her philosopher’s stone and used it with effect. She did not intend to mate Catharine with a fool, and make her miserable. If she could not have persuaded herself that the young man was everything that could be desired she would have thought no more about him. The whole alchemical operation, however, of changing him into purest gold occupied only a few minutes, and the one thought now was how to drop the bait. It did cross her mind that Catharine herself might object; but she was convinced that if her daughter could have a distinct offer made to her, all opposition might somehow be quenched.
Fate came to her assistance, as it does always to those who watch persistently and with patience. One Sunday evening at church it suddenly began to rain. The Furze family had not provided themselves with umbrellas, but Mrs. Furze knew that Mr. Charlie Colston never went out without one. Her strategy, when the service was over, was worthy of Napoleon, and, with all the genius of a great commander, she brought her forces into exact position at the proper moment. She herself and Mr. Furze detained the elder Mr. Colston and his wife, and kept them in check a little way behind, so that Catharine and their son were side by side when the entrance was reached. Of course he could do nothing but offer Catharine his umbrella, and his company on the way homewards, but to his utter amazement, and the confusion of Mrs. Furze, who watched intently the result of her manœuvres, Catharine somewhat curtly declined, and turned back to wait for her parents. Mr. Charlie rejoined his father and mother, who naturally forsook the Furzes at the earliest possible moment in such a public place as a church porch. In a few minutes the shower abated. Mrs. Furze could not say anything to her daughter; she could not decently appear to force Charlie on her by rebuking her for not responding to his generosity, but she was disappointed and embittered.
On the following morning Catharine announced her intention of going to Chapel Farm for a few days. Her mother remonstrated, but she knew she would have to yield, and Catharine went. Mrs. Bellamy poured forth the pent-up tale of three months—gossip we may call it if we wish to be contemptuous; but what is gossip? A couple of neighbours stand at the garden gate on a summer’s evening and tell the news of the parish. They discuss the inconsistency of the parson, the stony-heartedness of the farmer, the behaviour of this young woman and that young man; and what better could they do? They certainly deal with what they understand—something genuinely within their own circle and experience; and there is nothing to them in politics, British or Babylonian, of more importance. There is no better conversation than talk about Smith, Brown, and Harris, male and female, about Spot the terrier or Juno the mare. Catharine had many questions to answer about the school, but Mr. Cardew’s name was not once mentioned.
One afternoon, late in August, Catharine had gone with the dog down to the riverside, her favourite haunt. Clouds, massive, white, sharply outlined, betokening thunder, lay on the horizon in a long line; the fish were active; great chub rose, and every now and then a scurrying dimple on the pool showed that the jack and the perch were busy. It was a day full of heat, a day of exultation, for it proclaimed that the sun was alive; it was a day on which to forget winter with its doubts, its despairs, and its indistinguishable grey; it was a day on which to believe in immortality. Catharine was at that happy age when summer has power to warm the brain; it passed into her blood and created in her simple, uncontaminated bliss. She sat down close to an alder which overhung the bank. It was curious, but so it was, that her thoughts suddenly turned from the water and the thunderclouds and the blazing heat to Mr. Cardew, and it is still more strange that at that moment she saw him coming along the towing-path. In a minute he was at her side, but before he reached her she had risen.
“Good morning, Miss Furze.”
“Mr. Cardew! What brings you here?”
“I have been here several times; I often go out for the day; it is a favourite walk.”
He was silent, and did not move. He seemed prepossessed and anxious, taking no note of the beauty of the scene around him.
“How is Mrs. Cardew?”
“She is well, I believe.”
“You have not left home this morning, then?”
“No; I was not at home last night.”
“I think I must be going.”
“I will walk a little way with you.”
“My way is over the bridge to the farmhouse, where I am staying.”
“I will go as far as you go.”
Catharine turned towards the bridge.
“Is it the house beyond the meadows?”
“Yes.”
It is curious how indifferent conversation often is just at the moment when the two who are talking may be trembling with passion.
“You should have brought Mrs. Cardew with you,” said Catharine, tearing to pieces a water lily, and letting the beautiful white petals fall bit by bit into the river.
Mr. Cardew looked at her steadfastly, scrutinisingly, but her eyes were on the thunderclouds, and the lily fell faster and faster. The face of this girl had hovered before him for weeks, day and night. He never for a moment proposed to himself deliberate love for her—he could not do it, and yet he had come there, not, perhaps, consciously in order to find her, but dreaming of her all the time. He was literally possessed. The more he thought about her, the less did he see and hear of the world outside him, and no motive for action found access to him which was not derived from her. Of course it was all utterly mad and unreasonable, for, after all, what did he really know about her, and what was there in her to lay hold of him with such strength? But, alas! thus it was, thus he was made; so much the worse for him. Was this a Christian believer? was he really sincere in his belief? He was sincere with a sincerity, to speak arithmetically, of the tenth power beyond that of his exemplary churchwarden Johnson, whose religion would have restrained him from anything warmer than the extension of a Sunday black-gloved finger-tip to any woman save “Mrs. J.” Here he was by the riverside with her; he was close to her; nobody was present, but he could not stir nor speak! Catharine felt his gaze, although her eyes were not towards him. At last the lily came to an end and she tossed the naked stalk after the flower. She loved this man; it was a perilous moment: one touch, a hair’s breadth of oscillation, and the two would have been one. At such a crisis the least external disturbance is often decisive. The first note of the thunder was heard, and suddenly the image of Mrs. Cardew presented itself before Catharine’s eyes, appealing to her piteously, tragically. She faced Mr. Cardew.
“I am sorry Mrs. Cardew is not here. I wish I had seen more of her. Oh, Mr. Cardew! how I envy her! how I wish I had her brains for scientific subjects! She is wonderful. But I must be going; the thunder is distant; you will be in Eastthorpe, I hope, before the storm comes. Good-bye,” and she had gone.
She did not go straight to the house, however, but went into the garden and again cursed herself that she had dismissed him. Who had dismissed him? Not she. How had it been done? She could not tell. She crept out of the garden and went to the corner of the meadow where she could see the bridge. He was still there. She tried to make up an excuse for returning; she tried to go back without one, but it was impossible. Something, whatever it was, stopped her; she struggled and wrestled, but it was of no avail, and she saw Mr. Cardew slowly retrace his steps to the town. Then she leaned upon the wall and found some relief in a great fit of sobbing. Consolation she had none; not even the poor reward of conscience and duty. She had lost him, and she felt that, if she had been left to herself, she would have kept him. She went out again late in the evening. The clouds had passed away to the south and east, but the lightning still fired the distant horizon far beyond Eastthorpe and towards Abchurch. The sky was clearing in the west, and suddenly in a rift Arcturus, about to set, broke through and looked at her, and in a moment was again eclipsed. What strange confusion! What inexplicable contrasts! Terror and divinest beauty; the calm of the infinite interstellar space and her own anguish; each an undoubted fact, but each to be taken by itself as it stood: the star was there, the dark blue depth was there, but they were no answer to the storm or her sorrow.
She returned to Eastthorpe on the following day and immediately told her mother she should not go back to the Misses Ponsonby.
CHAPTER X
The reader has, doubtless, by this time judged with much severity not only Catharine, but Mr. Cardew. It is admitted to the full that they are both most unsatisfactory and most improbable. Is it likely that in a sleepy Midland town, such as Eastthorpe, knowing nothing but the common respectabilities of the middle of this century, the daughter of an ironmonger would fall in love with a married clergyman? Perhaps to their present biographer it seems more remarkable than to his readers. He remembers what the Eastern Midlands were like fifty years ago and they do not. They are thinking of Eastthorpe of the present day, of its schoolgirls who are examined in Keats and Shelley, of the Sunday morning walks there, and of the, so to speak, smelling acquaintance with sceptical books and theories which half the population now boasts. But Eastthorpe, when Mr. Cardew was at Abchurch, was totally different. It knew what it was for parsons to go wrong. It had not forgotten a former rector and the young woman at the Bell. What talk there was about that affair! Happily his friends were well connected: they exerted themselves, and he obtained a larger sphere of usefulness two hundred miles away. Mr. Cardew, however, was not that rector, and Catharine was not the pretty waitress, and it is time now to tell the promised early history of Mr. Cardew.
He was the son of a well-to-do London merchant, who lived in Stockwell, in a large, white house, with a garden of a couple of acres, shaded by a noble cedar in its midst. There were four children, but he was the only boy. His mother belonged to an old and very religious family, and inherited all its traditions of Calvinistic piety and decorum. Her love for this boy was boundless, and she had a double ambition for him, which was that he might become a minister of God’s Word, and in due time might marry Jane Berdoe, the only daughter of the Reverend Charles Berdoe, M.A., and Euphemia, her dearest friend. Mrs. Cardew had heard so much of the contamination of boys’ schools that Theophilus was educated at home and sent straight from home to Cambridge. At the University he became a member of the ultra-evangelical sect of young men there, and devoted himself entirely to theology. He thus passed through youth and early manhood without any intercourse with the world so called, and he lacked that wholesome influence which is exercised by healthy companionship with those who differ from us and are not afraid to oppose us. Of course he married Jane Berdoe. His mother was always contriving that Jane should be present when he was at home; he was young; he had never known what it was to go astray with women, and he was unable to stand at a distance from her and ask himself if he really cared for her. He fell in love with himself, married himself, and soon after discovered that he did not know who his wife was. After his marriage he became wholly unjust to her, and allowed her defects to veil the whole of her character.
The ultra-evangelical school in the Church preserved at that time the religious life of England, although in a very strange form. They believed and felt certain vital truths, although they did not know what was vital and what has not. They had real experience, and their roots lay, not upon the surface, but went deep down to the perennial springs, and the articles of their creed became a vehicle for the expression of the most real emotions. Evangelicalism, however, to Mr. Cardew was dangerous. He was always prone to self-absorption, and the tendency was much increased by his religion. He lived an entirely interior life, and his joys and sorrows were not those of Abchurch, but of another sphere. Abchurch feared wet weather, drought, ague, rheumatism, loss of money, and, on Sundays, feared hell, but Mr. Cardew’s fears were spiritual or even spectral. His self-communion produced one strange and perilous result, a habit of prolonged evolution from particular ideas uncorrected by reference to what was around him. If anything struck him it remained with him, deduction followed deduction in practice unfortunately as well as in thought, and he was ultimately landed in absurdity or something worse. The wholesome influence of ordinary men and women never permits us to link conclusion to conclusion from a single premiss, or at any rate to act upon our conclusions, but Mr. Cardew had no world at Abchurch save himself. He saw himself in things, and not as they were. A sunset was just what it might happen to symbolise to him at the time, and his judgments upon events and persons were striking, but they were frequently judgments upon creations of his own imagination, and were not in the least apposite to what was actually before him. The happy, artistic, Shakespearean temper, mirroring the world like a lake, was altogether foreign to him.
When he saw Catharine a new love awoke in him instantaneously. Was it legitimate or illegitimate? In many cases of the same kind the answer would be that the question is one which cannot be put. No matter how pure the intellectual bond between man and woman may be, it is certain to carry with it a sentiment which cannot be explained by the attraction of mere mental similarity. A man says to a man, “Do you really believe it?” and, if the answer is “yes,” the two become friends; but if it is a woman who responds to him, something follows which is sweeter than friendship, whether she be bound or free. It cannot be helped; there is no reason why we should try to help it, provided only we do no harm to others, and indeed these delicate threads are the very fairest in the tissue of life. With Mr. Cardew it was a little different. Undoubtedly he was drawn to Catharine because her thoughts were his thoughts. St. Paul and Milton in him saluted St. Paul and Milton in her. But he did not know where to stop, nor could he look round and realise whither he was being led. Any other person in six weeks would have noticed the milestones on the road, and would have determined that it was time to turn, but he gaily walked forward with his head in the clouds. If anybody at that particular moment when he left the bridge could have made him comprehend that he was making love to a girl; that what he was doing was an ordinary, commonplace criminal act, or one which would justifiably be interpreted as such, he not only would have been staggered and confounded, but would instantly have drawn back. As it was, he was neither staggered nor confounded, and went home to his wife with but one image in his brain, that of Catharine Furze.
Catharine was one of those creatures whose life is not uniform from sixteen to sixty, a simple progressive accumulation of experiences, the addition of a ring of wood each year. There had come a time to her when she had suddenly opened. The sun shone with new light, a new lustre lay on river and meadow, the stars became something more than mere luminous points in the sky, she asked herself strange questions, and she loved more than ever her long wanderings at Chapel Farm. This phenomenon of a new birth is more often seen at some epochs than at others. When a nation is stirred by any religious movement it is common, but it is also common in a different shape during certain periods of spiritual activity, such as the latter part of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth in England and Germany. Had Catharine been born two hundred years earlier, life would have been easy. All that was in her would have found expression in the faith of her ancestors, large enough for any intellect or any heart at that time. She would have been happy in the possession of a key which unlocks the mystery of things, and there would have been ample room for emotion. How impatient she became of those bars which nowadays restrain people from coming close to one another! Often and often she felt that she could have leaped out towards the person talking to her, that she could have cried to him to put away his circumlocutions, his forms and his trivialities, and to let her see and feel what he really was. Often she knew what it was to thirst like one in a desert for human intercourse, and she marvelled how those who pretended to care for her could stay away so long: she could have humiliated herself if only they would have permitted her to love them and be near them. Poor Catharine! the world as it is now is no place for people so framed! When life runs high and takes a common form men can walk together as the disciples walked on the road to Emmaus. Christian and Hopeful can pour out their hearts to one another as they travel towards the Celestial City and are knit together in everlasting bonds by the same Christ and the same salvation. But when each man is left to shift for himself, to work out the answers to his own problems, the result is isolation. People who, if they were believers, would find the richest gift of life in utter confidence and mutual help are now necessarily strangers. One turns to metaphysics; another to science; one takes up with Rousseau’s theory of existence, and another with Kant’s; they meet; they have nothing to say; they are of no use to one another in trouble; one hears that the other is sick; what can be done? There is a nurse; he does not go; his old friend dies, and as to the funeral—well, we are liable to catch cold. Not so Christian and Hopeful! for when Christian was troubled “with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits, even on the borderland of Heaven—oh, Bunyan! Hopeful kept his brother’s head above water, and called upon him to turn his eyes to the Gate and the men standing by it to receive him.” My poor reader-friend, how many times have you in this nineteenth century, when the billows have gone over you—how many times have you felt the arm of man or woman under you raising you to see the shining ones and the glory that is inexpressible?
Had Catharine been born later it would have been better. She would perhaps have been able to distract herself with the thousand and one subjects which are now got up for examinations, or she would perhaps. have seriously studied some science, which might at least have been effectual as an opiate in suppressing sensibility. She was, however, in Eastthorpe before the new education, as it is called, had been invented. There was no elaborate system of needle points, Roman and Greek history, plain and spherical trigonometry, political economy, ethics, literature, chemistry, conic sections, music, English history, and mental philosophy, to draw off the electricity within her, nor did she possess the invaluable privilege of being able, after studying a half-crown handbook, to unbosom herself to women of her own age upon the position of Longland as an English poet.
Shakespeare or Wordsworth might have been of some use to her, but to Shakespeare she was not led, although there was a brown, dusty, one-volume edition at the Terrace; and of Wordsworth nobody whom she knew in Eastthorpe had so much as heard. A book would have turned much that was vague in her into definite shape; it would have enabled her to recognise herself; it would have given an orthodox expression to cloud singularity, and she would have seen that she was a part of humanity in her most extravagant and personal emotions. As it was, her position was critical because she stood by herself, affiliated to nothing, an individual belonging to no species, so far as she knew. She then met Mr. Cardew. It was through him the word was spoken to her, and he was the interpreter of the new world to her. She was in love with him—but what is love? There is no such thing: there are loves, and they are all different. Catharine’s was the very life of all that was Catharine, senses, heart, and intellect, a summing-up and projection of her whole selfhood. He was more to her than she to him—was any woman ever so much to a man as a man is to a woman? She was happy when she was near him. When she was in ordinary Eastthorpe society she felt as a pent-up lake might feel if the weight of its waters were used in threading needles, but when Mr. Cardew talked to her, and she to him, she rejoiced in the flow of all her force, and that horrible oppression in her chest vanished.
Nevertheless, the fear, the shudder, came to her and not to him; the wrench came from her and not from him. It was she and not he who watched through the night and found no motive for the day, save a dull, miserable sense that it was her duty to live through it.
CHAPTER XI
It was a fact, and everybody noticed it, that since the removal to the Terrace, and the alteration in their way of living, Mr. Furze was no longer the man he used to be, and seemed to have lost his grasp over his business. To begin with, he was not so much in the shop. His absences in the Terrace at meal-times made a great gap in the day, and Tom Catchpole was constantly left in sole charge. Mr. Bellamy came home one evening and told his wife that he had called at Furze’s to ask the meaning of a letter Furze had signed, explaining the action of a threshing-machine which was out of order. To his astonishment Furze, who was in his counting-house, called for Tom, and said, “Here, Tom, this is one of your letters; you had better tell Mr. Bellamy how the thing works.”
“I held my tongue, Mrs. Bellamy, but I had my thoughts all the same, and the next time I go there, if I go at all, I shall ask for Tom.”
Mr. Furze was aware of Tom’s growing importance, and Mrs. Furze was aware of it too. The worst of it was that Mr. Furze, at any rate, knew that he could not do without him. It is very galling to the master to feel that his power is slipping from him into the hands of a subordinate, and he is apt to assert himself by spasmodic attempts at interference which generally make matters worse and rivet his chains more tightly. There was a small factory in Eastthorpe in which a couple of grindstones were used which were turned by water-power at considerable speed. One of them had broken at a flaw. It had flown to pieces while revolving, and had nearly caused a serious accident. The owner called at Mr. Furze’s to buy another. There were two in stock, one of which he would have taken; but Tom, his master being at the Terrace, strongly recommended his customer not to have that quality, as it was from the same quarry as the one which was faulty, but that another should be ordered. To this he assented. When Mr. Furze returned Tom told him what had happened. He was in an unusually irritable, despotic mood. Mrs. Furze had forced him to yield upon a point which he had foolishly made up his mind not to concede, and consequently he was all the more disposed to avenge his individuality elsewhere. After meditating for a minute or two he called Tom from the counter.
“Mr. Catchpole, what do you mean by taking upon yourself to promise you would obtain another grindstone?”
“Mean, sir! I do not quite understand. The two out there are of the same sort as the one that broke, and I did not think them safe.”
“Think, sir! What business had you to think? I tell you what it is, you are much too fond of thinking. If you would only leave the thinking to me, and do what you are told, it would be much better for you.”
Tom’s first impulse was to make a sharp reply, and to express his willingness to leave, but for certain private reasons he was silent. Encouraged by the apparent absence of resistance, Mr. Furze continued—
“I’ve meant to have a word or two with you several times. You seem to have forgotten your position altogether, and that I am master here, and not you. You, perhaps, do not remember where you came from, and what you would have been if I had not picked you up. Let there be no misunderstanding in future.”
“There shall be none, sir. Shall I call at the factory and explain your wishes about the grindstone? I will tell them I was mistaken, and that they had better have one of those in stock.”
“No, you cannot do that now; let matters remain as they are; I must lose the sale of the stone and put up with it.”
Tom withdrew. That evening, after supper, Mr. Furze, anxious to show his wife that he possessed some power to quell opposition, told her what had happened. It met with her entire approval. She hated Tom. For all hatred, as well as for all love, there is doubtless a reason, but the reasons for the hatreds of a woman of Mrs. Furze’s stamp are often obscure, and perhaps more nearly an exception than any other known fact in nature to the rule that every effect must have a cause.
“I would get rid of him,” said she. “I think that his not replying to you is ten times more aggravating than if he had gone into a passion.”
“You cannot get rid of him,” said Catharine.
“Cannot! What do you mean, Catharine—cannot? I like that! Do you suppose that I do not understand my own business—I who took him up out of the gutter and taught him? Cannot, indeed!”
“Of course you can get rid of him, father; but I would not advise you to try it.”
“Now, do take my advice,” said Mrs. Furze: “send him about his business, at once, before he does any further mischief, and gets hold of your connection. Promise me.”
“I will,” said Mr. Furze, “to-morrow morning, the very first thing.”
Morning came, and Mr. Furze was not quite so confident. Mrs. Furze had not relented, and as her husband went out at the door she reminded him of his vow.
“You will, now? I shall expect to hear when you come home that he has had notice.”
“Oh, certainly he shall go, but I am doubtful whether I had better not wait till I have somebody in my eye whom I can put in his place.”
“Nonsense! you can find somebody easily enough.”
Mr. Furze strode into his shop looking and feeling very important. Instead of the usual kindly “Good morning,” he nodded almost imperceptibly and marched straight into his counting-house. It had been his habit to call Tom in there and open the letters with him, Tom suggesting a course of action and replies. To-day he opened his correspondence in silence. It happened to be unusually bulky for a small business, and unusually important. The Honourable Mr. Eaton was about to make some important alterations in his house and grounds. New conservatories were to be built, and an elaborate system of hot-water warming apparatus was to be put up both for house and garden. He had invited tenders to specification from three houses—one in London, one in Cambridge, and from Mr. Furze. Tom and Mr. Furze had gone over the specification carefully, but Tom had preceded and originated, and Mr. Furze had followed, and, in order not to appear slow of comprehension, had frequently assented when he did not understand—a most dangerous weakness. To his surprise he found that his tender of £850 was accepted. There was much work to be done which was not in his line, but had been put into his contract in order to save subdivision, and consequently arrangements had to be made with sub-contractors. Materials had also to be provided at once, and there was a penalty of so much a day if the job was not completed by a certain time. He did not know exactly where to begin; he was stunned, as if somebody had hit him a blow on the head, and, after trying in vain to think, he felt that his brain was in knots. He put the thing aside; looked at his other letters, and they were worse. One of his creditors, a blacksmith, who owed him £55 for iron, had failed, and he was asked to attend a meeting of creditors. A Staffordshire firm, upon whom he had depended for pipes, in case he should obtain Mr. Eaton’s order, had sent a circular announcing an advance in iron, and he forgot that in their offer their price held good for another week. He was trustee under an old trust, upon which no action had been taken for years; he remembered none of its provisions, and now the solicitors had written to him requesting him to be present at a most important conference in London that day week. There was also a notice from the Navigation Commissioners informing him that, in consequence of an accident at one of their locks, it would be fully a fortnight before any barge could pass through, and he knew that his supply of smithery coal would be exhausted before that date, as he had refrained from purchasing in consequence of high prices. To crown everything a tap came at the door, and in walked his chief man at the foundry to announce that he would shortly leave, as he had obtained a better berth. Mr. Furze by this time was so confused that he said nothing but “Very well,” and when the man had gone he leaned his head on his elbows in despair. He looked through the glass window of the counting-house and saw Tom quietly weighing some nails. He would have given anything if he could have called him in, but he could not. As to dismissing him, it was out of the question now, and yet his sense of dependence on him excited a jealousy nearly as intense as his wife’s animosity. When a man cannot submit to be helped he dislikes the benevolent friend who offers assistance worse than an avowed enemy. Mr. Furze felt as if he must at once request Tom’s aid, and at the same time do him some grievous bodily harm.
The morning passed away and nothing was advanced one single step. He went home to his dinner excited, and he was dangerous. It is very trying, when we are in a coil of difficulty, out of which we see no way of escape, to hear some silly thing suggested by an outsider who perhaps has not spent five minutes in considering the case. Mrs. Furze, knowing nothing of Mr. Eaton’s contract, of the blacksmith’s failure, of the advance in iron, of the trust meeting, of the stoppage of the navigation, and of the departure of the foundryman, asked her husband the moment the servant had brought in the dinner and had left the room—
“Well, my dear, what did Tom say when you told him to go?”
“I haven’t told him.”
“Not told him, my dear! how is that?”
“I wish with all my heart you’d mind your own affairs.”
“Mr. Furze! what is the matter? You do not seem to know what you are saying.”
“I know perfectly well what I am saying. I wish you knew what you are saying. When we came up here to the Terrace—much good has it done us—I thought I should have no interference with my business. You understand nothing whatever about it, and I shall take it as a favour if you will leave it alone.”
Mrs. Furze was aghast. Presently she took out her pocket-handkerchief and retreated to her bedroom. Mr. Furze did not follow her, but his dinner remained untouched. When he rose to leave, Catharine went after him to the door, caught hold of his hand and silently kissed him, but he did not respond.
During the dinner-hour Tom had looked in the counting-house and saw the letters lying on the table untouched. Mr. Eaton’s steward came in with congratulations that the tender was accepted, but he could not wait. As Mr. Furze passed through the shop Tom told him simply that the steward had called.
“What did he want?”
“I do not know, sir.”
Mr. Furze went to his papers again and shut the door. He was still more incapable of collecting his thoughts and of determining how to begin. First of all came the contract, but before he could settle a single step the navigation presented itself. Then, without any progress, came the rise in the price of iron, and so forth. In about three hours the post would be going, and nothing was done. He cast about for some opportunity of a renewal of intercourse with Tom, and looked anxiously through his window, hoping that Tom might have some question to ask. At last he could stand it no longer, and he opened the door and called out—
“Mr. Catchpole”—not the familiar “Tom.” Mr. Catchpole presented himself.
“I wish to give you some instructions about these letters. I have arranged them in order. You will please write what I say, and I will sign in time for the post to-night. First of all there is the contract. You had better take the necessary action and ask the Staffordshire people what advance they want.”
“Yes, sir, but”—deferentially—“the Staffordshire people cannot claim an advance if you accept at once: you remember the condition?”
“Certainly; what I mean is that you can accept their tender. Then there is the meeting of creditors.”
“I suppose you wish Mr. Eaton’s acceptance acknowledged and the sub-contractors at once informed?”
“Of course, of course; I said necessary action—that covers everything. With regard to the creditors’ meeting, my proposal is—”
A pause.
“Perhaps it will be as well, sir, if you merely say you will attend.”
“I thought you would take that for granted. I was considering what proposal I should make when we meet.”
“Probably, sir, you can make it better after you hear his statement.”
“Well, possibly it may be so; but I am always in favour of being prepared. However, we will postpone that for the present. Then there is the trustee business. That is a private matter of my own, which you will not understand. I will give you the papers, however, and you can make an abstract of them. I cannot carry every point in my head. If you are in any doubt come to me.”
“You wish me to say you will go, sir?”
“I should have thought there was no need to ask. You surely do not suppose that I am to give instructions upon every petty detail! Then about the navigation: I must have some coal, and that is the long and the short of it.”
The “how” was probably a petty detail, for Mr. Furze went no further with the subject, and was inclined to proceed with the man at the foundry.
“It will be too late if we wait till the lock is repaired, sir. I understand it will be three weeks really. Will you write to Ditchfield and tell them five tons are to come to Millfield Sluice? We will then cart it from there. That will be the cheapest and the best way.”
“Yes, I do not object; but we must have the coal—that is really the important point. As to Jack in the foundry, I will get somebody else. I suppose we shall have to pay more.”
“How would it be, sir, if you put Sims in Jack’s place, and Spurling in Sims’ place? You would then only want a new labourer, and you would pay no more than you pay now. Sims, too, knows the work, and it might be awkward to have a new man at the head just now.”
“Yes, that may do; but what I wish to impress on you is that the vacancy must be filled up. That is all, I think; you can take the letters.”
Tom took them up and went to his little corner near the window to reperuse them. There was much to be done which had not been mentioned, particularly with regard to Mr. Eaton’s contract. He took out the specification, jotted down on a piece of paper the several items, marked methodically with a cross those which required prompt attention, and began to write. Mr. Furze, seeing his desk unencumbered, was very well satisfied with himself. He had “managed” the whole thing perfectly. His head became clear, the knots were untied, and he hummed a few bars of a hymn. He then went to his safe, took out the trust papers without looking at them, handed them over to Tom with a remark that he should like the abstract the next morning, and at once went up to the Terrace. He was hungry: he had left Mrs. Furze unwell, and, in his extreme good-humour, had relented towards her. She had recovered, but did not mention again the subject of Tom’s discharge. He had ham with his tea, but it was over sooner than usual, and he rose to depart.
“You are going early, father,” said Catharine.