He that will not when he may; vol. I

Sir William was of tougher stuff, and less entirely moved by the affections; but yet he felt it. He saw the same line come into his son’s forehead which all the family knew so well in his own, and that expression of angry displeasure, impatience and gloom, came over his face. This made him too angry, in spite of himself. He said, harshly—

“Yes, Paul, it is I. I am the last person you expected, or evidently wished to see here.”

Paul came down the remaining steps, the very sound of his foot changing; he threw away his towel and took off his hat, and assumed an air of punctilious politeness.

“I do not deny that I am much surprised to see you, sir,” he said, darting a glance aside of annoyed reproach at Fairfax. He had flushed a gloomy red, of shame and annoyance, feeling his very shirt-sleeves to be evidence against him—and looked round for his coat with an inclination to be angry with everybody.

“I had just gone to wash my hands after my work,” he said, with a confused apology. Confronted thus suddenly with his father in all the solemnity of authority and parental displeasure, how could he help feeling himself at a disadvantage? He forgot everything but that his father had found him in circumstances which to him would seem equivocal, perhaps disgraceful; but he was not allowed to forget.

“If you require to apologise, Markham, for being found in my shop or my house, you had better not return here,” said the master of the place, eyeing him over his shoulder from his bench, “any more.”

“I beg your pardon, Spears. My father—does not think with me. It is by no will of mine that he has come here——”

“If you can’t be civil, and introduce him civilly—and if he can’t be civil, and doesn’t know how to treat a man in his own house,” said Spears, busy with his glue-pot, “you had better take him away.”

“This is the man you brought to my house—in my absence,” said Sir William, “imposing upon your mother. I suppose the well-known”—(he was going to say demagogue, but paused, after looking at the person in question)—“orator and leader of Trades Unions——”

“Yes, that is I,” said the master of the shop. “I am quite ready to answer any question on my own account. But I beg your pardon, whoever you may be. Markham did not impose upon his mother, nor did I. He introduced me as his friend, and I lost no time in telling the lady that I was a working man. Lady Markham has the manners of a queen. She was perfectly polite to me, as I hope I am capable of being to any one who comes in the same way into my house.”

Sir William gave his son’s friend another look. He had no desire to make a personal enemy of this demagogue. A public man must think of expediency in public matters, even where his own affections are concerned.

“You will excuse me,” he said, coldly. “My business is with my son. I should not have intruded myself into your house had I known it. Paul, your mother is at your rooms, waiting for you. I must ask you to come there with me at once.”

Paul’s countenance fell still more.

“My mother!—here!”

“Good morning,” said Sir William, taking off his hat with much solemnity. “I am sorry to have invaded Mr. Spears’s privacy even for a moment. I will wait for you, Paul, outside.”

The workman got up and took off his cap, bowing ceremoniously in answer to Sir William’s salutation. He had not moved till his name was mentioned.

“There!” he cried, with comical discomfiture, “dash the little aristocrat! He has the last word—that’s the worst, or the best of them. They have their senses always about them. No flurry—no feeling. Well, Paul, aren’t you going? Be off with you and explain, like a good boy, to your mamma and your papa.”

“What is it all about?” said a girl’s voice from the top of the stairs; and first one, then another, fair, curly, somewhat unkempt head appeared peeping down upon the group below. “And who is the little old gentleman? Father, may we come down stairs?”

“Go back to your work, on the instant,” said Spears; “I want no girls here. Well, Markham, why don’t you go? Is your father to wait for you all day—and I too?”

“I shall go when I am ready,” said Paul, gloomily.

He took a long time to put on that coat. He was not of a temper to be cowed or frightened, and for a moment he was undecided whether to defy his father directly and deny all jurisdiction or control on his part, or to take the more difficult part of extending to Sir William that courtesy which his teacher had instructed him was due from all men to each other—from rebellious sons to fathers as well as in every other relation of life—hearing what he had to say with politeness as he would have heard any other opponent in argument. But the fact is that an argument between father and son on their reciprocal duties is a thing more difficult to maintain with perfect temper and politeness than any argument that ever took place in the Union or perhaps in Parliament itself. And Paul was bitterly angry that his father should have invaded this place, and dismayed to hear that his mother had come, and that he should have her entreaties to meet. He had not anticipated anything of the kind, strangely enough. He had expected letters of all kinds—angry, reproachful, entreating—but it had not occurred to him that his father would come in person, much less any other of the family. He was dismayed and he was angry; his heart failed him in spite of all his courage. Pride and temper forbade him to run away, yet he would have escaped if he could. He took a long time to put on his coat; he said nothing to either of the two men that stood by, and pushed Fairfax aside when he tried to help him. Spears had given up his work altogether, and stood watching his pupil with a smile upon his face.

“When does that fellow mean to go?” he said. “What is he waiting for? I like the looks of the little old gentleman, as the girls call him. There’s stuff in that man. But for him and such as him the people would have had their rights long ago; but I respect the man for all that. Markham, what do you mean by keeping him kicking his heels outside my shop in the sun? That is not the respect due from one man to another. He’s an older man than you are, and merits more consideration. What are you frightened for, man alive? Can’t you go?”

“Frightened!” cried Paul, with an indignant curl of his lip.

“Yes, frightened, nothing else; or you wouldn’t take so long a time about going. Ah, that’s driven him out at last! Do you know those people, Fairfax, or how did you come to bring the father here?”

“I know them? I am not half grand enough. How should I know a man who is a Right Honourable? I met them by chance. Spears, you may say what you like, but even a little rank, however it may go against reason, has an effect—”

“Do you think I need you to tell me that? If it hadn’t an effect what would be the use of all we’re doing? ‘Why stand I in peril every day?’ as that fine democrat Paul says somewhere. To be sure there’s something in it. I once lived three days in that man’s house. I didn’t know he was absent, as he says he was. I should have liked to have stood up to him and stated my way of thinking, and seen what he had to say for himself. It was the first sneaking thing I ever knew in Markham to take me there while his father was away. Life goes on wheels in those houses,” said Spears, taking his seat again upon his bench. “It was all one could do after a day or two to keep one’s moral consciousness awake. A footman waited upon me hand and foot, and I never spoke to him—not as I ought to have done—about the unnatural folly of his position, till the last day. I couldn’t do it; a fortnight in that place would have demoralised even me. The mother—ah, there it is! We can’t build up women like that. I don’t know how you’re to do it without their conditions. We have good women, and brave women, and pure women, but nothing like that. You have to see it,” said Spears, shaking his head, “even to know what it is.”

“So long as it’s only a fine lady—” said the young man.

“Don’t talk of what you don’t understand,” said the other. “I’d have the best of everything in my Republic. I’d have that little old man’s pluck and self-command; and the lady—I don’t see my way to anything like the lady.”

“I have always told you, Spears, that the old society which you condemn has everything that is good in it, if you would have patience and—”

“You have always told me!” said Spears in his melodious voice.

He returned to his work without further argument, as if this were enough reply. He was finishing a number of little carved frames, of which his window was full. There was a bill in the window on which “Selling off” was printed in large letters. The shop was full of wood and bits of carving all done up in bundles, and everything about showed marks of an approaching departure or breaking-up. The master of the house put on his cap again and gave himself up to his work. It was not of a kind which impressed the spectator. But the man who worked was not commonplace in appearance. He was not much taller than Sir William, but had a large massive head, covered with a crop of dusky hair. The softness of his eyes corresponded with that of his voice, but the lines of the face were not soft. He took no further notice of Fairfax, who, for his part, took his neglect quite calmly. The young man took his pipe out of his pocket, where he had put it stealthily when he first caught sight of the ladies, for one moment paused, and looked at it with a look of half-comic half-serious uncertainty. Should he keep it as a memento of that interview? He looked at it again and laughed, then pulled out of another pocket a little box of matches and lighted his pipe. He, like Paul, was quite familiar and at his ease in the workman’s shop.

CHAPTER XI.

Sir William turned round upon his son with quick impatience; then paused. This was not a case to be treated hastily, and patience was the best. “You and I differ in a great many points,” he said; “therefore it is not wonderful perhaps that I should think you have made a curious choice of a trade to learn: for I suppose you are by way of learning a trade. Don’t you think a certain amount of civilisation is necessary before picture-frames will become remunerative? I don’t think you could live by them in the bush.”

Paul coloured high with that acute sense of being open to ridicule which is so terrible to youth. “Spears is selling off his stock,” he said. “I do not know if it is a sign of high civilisation, but he sells his picture-frames and lives by them. Most men of genius have been reduced to make their livelihood by some inferior branch of their work.”

“And what then do you call his highest work?” Sir William asked carelessly. Paul, astonished, but willing to believe that his father had taken an interest in Spears and that all was about to go as he wished, fell into the trap, as any other unsuspicious nature would have done.

“His carvings are wonderful,” he said, with all the fervour of enthusiasm. “When he has a congenial subject he is equal to Gibbons or any one. He ought to have been a great sculptor. If you saw some of the things he has done you would see what bitter satire it is that he should live by those wretched little picture-frames.”

“Is it so, indeed?” said Sir William. “Then it is the higher branch of wood-carving and not picture-frames that you are learning, I suppose? Do you mean then to carry high art, Paul, into the bush?”

“I cannot see what this has to do with the bush, sir,” said Paul, impatiently. “One must live there by one’s hands, and to know how to use them in any special way cannot be a disadvantage in any other way. That is Spears’s view of the subject, and mine too.”

“I doubt if wood-carving will help you much in felling trees or making them into huts,” said Sir William, with a great air of candour. “What do you suppose the advantage is likely to be of changing from a state of society where everything that is beautiful has its value, to one where you will live by your hands, as you say, and where the highest skill will only not do you any harm? I should like to know the reasoning by which you have arrived at your present convictions—the ideas expressed in the letter I got last night.”

“You have received my letter then?” Paul said, with dignity. “You know what my settled determination is. I hope you do not mean, and that my mother does not mean, to attempt to turn me from a plan which I have not decided on without great thought.”

“I don’t know what your mother may mean to do, my boy,” said Sir William, quietly. “She will act according to her own standards of duty, not mine; but I know what I intend myself, and the first thing is to understand your reasons for the extraordinary step you propose. You, the heir of a fine property——” Sir William made a stumble before the word heir, which, notwithstanding that Paul was about to abjure everything, led him to make a rapid calculation of his father’s power in this matter. The Markham property was not all entailed. Did the father mean to disinherit his lawful successor? Paul felt a flush of indignation go over him, though he was about to declare his intention of giving up all.

“The heir of a fine property,” said Sir William, “and an influential position. At this moment, young as you are, you might make a start in public life, and have a hand in the government of your country, which is as high an ambition as a man can entertain. How have you managed to persuade yourself that to go out into a half savage country and encounter the first difficulties of savage life is better or more honourable than this? To live by your hands instead of your head,” he continued, growing warm, “to surround yourself with beggarly elements of living instead of the highest developments of civilisation—to make yourself of no more account than any ploughboy——”

Here Paul felt himself touch the ground. There had stolen over him a chill of alarm as to how he was to answer such a question, but this last clause brought him back to the superficial polemics with which he was familiar enough. “Why should I be of more account than any ploughboy?” he said; “that is the whole question. Why is there this immense gulf between the ploughboy and me? Is he less a man than I am? Are not my advantages a shame to me in the face of manhood? What right have I to humiliate him for my advancement?”

“What right have you to be a fool?” said Sir William, bitterly. “I don’t know: your mother is not a fool, though she is not clever. If your ploughboy had been educated as you have been, your argument might have had some show of reason. Do you mean to tell me that education is nothing—that a lad from the fields ought to be of as much use in the world as you are? This is to despise not only rank, which I know is your favourite type of injustice, but breeding, culture, everything you have acquired by your work. How do you justify yourself in throwing away that? There is no question of humiliating the ploughboy; the ploughboy will be of ten times as much use as you are in the bush.”

This view of the question was not pleasant to Paul. He held himself up with great stateliness, and did not deign to look at his father. “That remains to be seen, sir,” he said.

“What remains to be seen?—that a man brought up to farming will make a better farmer than you—or your friend the wood-carver? Suppose we consider the question from his point of view,” said Sir William. “He is a skilled workman, you tell me.”

“I said a man of genius.”

“All the better for my argument. Your man of genius,” Sir William went on with a barely perceptible smile, “may be—appreciated, let us say, in a country like this, where art is known: but who will care for his art where he is going?”

“More than here,” cried Paul hotly, interrupting his father. “Here, because he has no money, nor position to make him known, and no impudence to push him into favour, his beautiful work is taken no notice of, and he lives by making picture-frames. Ploughing and digging is better than that. The earth at least is grateful for what is done for her.”

“Not always,” said Sir William. “I thought you had heard enough about farming to know better. However, the advantage of emigrating to your—friend, will be, not the gain of anything, but the giving up of his work, and the sacrifice of what you call his genius. No, I do not scoff at his genius. I know nothing about it. I take it on your word. Your man of genius will throw away his chief distinction on your own showing; and you will throw away what as yet are your only distinctions, the position you derive from your ancestors, the education which you have got (partially) by your own exertions—for what? to attempt to do clumsily what two ploughmen could do much better than you.—— Ah! who is that?”

Paul’s eye had been caught some moments before by a lady coming towards them, at sight of whom a sudden flush came over his face. A lady! was she a lady? She was dressed very simply in a black alpaca gown, the long plain lines of which harmonised and gave elegance to a tall, well-developed figure. The dress was well made and graceful, such as any lady might have worn; but the little hat upon the young woman’s head was doubtful. Even Sir William, who looked somewhat anxiously at her, seeing the flush on his son’s face, felt that it was doubtful. The faded brown velvet and scrubby little feather did not suit the rest of the dress. She walked well, as she came towards them, but when she perceived Paul and his companion, an air of embarrassment which was half fright came over her face. When Paul, all red and glowing with a mixture of feelings which Sir William could not fathom, took off his hat, she gave him an alarmed, inquiring look, blushed fiercely, and replied to his salutation with a hurried nod of her head, which made the question of her position more uncertain than ever. Still she was a handsome young woman: before she had seen Paul, Sir William himself had remarked her stately carriage and figure. “Who is that?” he repeated, suspicious, as a parent naturally is of a young man’s unknown female friends, yet not unprepared to hear that it was somebody not unworthy to be known by Sir William Markham’s son; for it might well be that ladies in a learned community, fearless of misconception, were not always so particular as could be desired about their hats. He turned half round and gave a glance after her as she continued her way, which, as she had just done the same, was somewhat awkward. But Paul marched straight forward and took no notice. “Who is that?” Sir William repeated, sharply, determined this time to have a reply.

Paul’s blush and discomfiture, and his marked and ceremonious recognition of the stranger, meant several things. They meant that he felt himself certain to be misconstrued, yet was too proud and too sincere to take any means of avoiding misconstruction; that he was annoyed by the encounter, alarmed by the new idea which his father would certainly take up in consequence; yet forced by this alarm and annoyance to show a more marked and excessive courtesy to the person (oh, had she but gone down another street and kept out of the way!) whose appearance plunged him into so much confusion, and would, he felt sure, complicate everything. Whether this sudden liveliness of consciousness did not mean that there was cause for alarm is another matter. In the meantime all that Paul felt was that the girl’s name once mentioned must add tenfold to the difficulty of his position.

“Who is it? It is Spears’s eldest daughter,” he said curtly, with a new and brilliant suffusion of colour over all his face.

“Oh!” was all Sir William said. What more was necessary? The young man felt, with a sensation of intolerable impatience that he was judged and condemned on the spot; but he could not protest against a conclusion which was not put into words. If he said anything, would not his guilt be considered doubly proved? Silence seemed his only policy; and no more was said. The discussion, which had been so serious, came to a dead stop. They walked on together without saying another word. Sir William, who had been so bent upon convincing his son, dropped his argument all at once. Paul did not look at him, but yet he was aware that the line on his forehead, the pucker that meant trouble, had deepened. The young man felt himself suddenly in the grip of despair. He felt himself judged, the question settled, everything changed. His whole conduct had assumed a new light in his father’s eyes, and it was a false light. Instead of respecting him as the logical if rash devotee of certain fixed principles, his father evidently concluded him to be the victim of a commonplace love affair. How was Paul to overcome this hasty and false judgment? Pride and prudence alike made it necessary that he should take no notice of it. He held his head higher in the air than ever, and walked on with a certain protestation and appeal against the injustice done him in every step he took. Sir William, on his side, dropped the argument with a mixture of despair and contempt. This was how it was—far more easy to understand than democratic ideas or communistic principles in the heir to a great property, here was an inducement which was plain to the meanest capacity: a fine, handsome, young woman! This was how it was! Sir William felt angry with himself for being duped, and for having really for a moment believed in the revolutionary sentiments which had been assumed (he had no doubt) in order to carry on this other pursuit. How foolish he had been to allow himself to be thus deceived! He gave up his argument with an abruptness which had impatience in it, and for the moment he could not say anything to the boy who had thus succeeded in deceiving him, and added the feeling of shame for his own gullibility to that of anger. He had taken the trouble to attempt to convince him, to believe in an intellectual error, which, however exasperating, was not discreditable—and this was how it was!

What was to be done? It was all a mistake, but Paul could not say so, for his father did not condescend to make any accusation. Thus they walked on, fuming both with indignation and impatience. Now and then the young man eyed his father as if he could have taken him by the shoulders and shaken him, an undutiful form of the mutual exasperation. But Sir William was beyond this. What was the good? He would save his breath, he thought, for better purposes. Why should he talk himself hoarse while Paul laughed in his sleeve, not caring a straw for his arguments, meaning perhaps to laugh with the girl the next time they met over the ease with which his father had fallen into the snare. No, the fellow was not worthy of argument; he who was capable of masking an unworthy entanglement in this way. Let his mother try her hand upon him, the father thought, indignantly. She might do something. A woman’s tears and suffering are sometimes more effectual than reason. Sir William felt in his indignant disgust that to let his own beautiful and perfect wife enter the lists against this—hussy—yes, he was coarse in his vexation and distress—to let Lady Markham, the pride of the county, a woman whom it was a glory for a man to have won—to let her come down from her pedestal and humble herself to the pleadings and the tears of an anxious mother for a boy so little worthy of her as to be capable of such a connection—was a disgrace. But then he knew that was not how she would feel it. She would not think of her own dignity. And she would get it all out of him—women can; they do not disdain to return and return to the inquiry, to ask question after question; he would not be able to elude her examination. She would get it all out of him—how far it had gone, all about it. And then some strong step must be taken—something must be done—though, for the moment, he could not think what that something should be.

“I see them at last,” said Alice from the window. “Oh, Paul! Papa is coming along quite quietly, not scolding him. He is looking—not so angry. It is so natural to see them walking along—quite friendly. He is not scolding——”

“Oh, my dear! do not use such a word. Scold! we might scold Harry for climbing trees: but this is too serious, far too serious. How is my poor boy looking? Oh, I hope—I hope your papa has not been hard upon him. Men forget that they were once young and foolish too.’

“That was what I meant,” said Alice. “I wonder—— they are not saying anything to each other, mamma.”

Lady Markham had come to the window and was looking out too, over her child’s shoulder, while the father and the son came along the street together, silent, separated by so much that was real, and something that was mistaken. The mother and daughter looked out together with but one heart. Not a breath had ever come between these two: they knew each other absolutely as no one else knew either. How could it be possible for them to misunderstand each other, to fall apart, to experience ever whatever might happen, the chill distance and severance which was between Sir William and his son? Lady Markham leant upon her child’s shoulder.

“Not a word,” she said; “not a word. Oh, my boy—my boy! Your father must have given it up; he must think there is nothing more to be said.”

“But we will never give him up!” cried the girl. “How could we give him up? That is impossible. You could as soon give up me!”

“Not Paul, dear—never Paul: but the attempt to turn him from his own way. If he will not listen to your papa, Alice, what attention will he pay to me and you?”

Alice had no answer to make to this question, so intent was she, watching the expression of Paul’s face as he crossed the street and disappeared under the gateway. She read in it, or thought she read in it, the conclusion of a stormy argument, the opposition to all that could be said to him, the determination to have his own way which was natural to Paul. And she too, with a sigh, recognised the futility of argument.

“He never would listen to papa,” she said. “Papa proves you so in the wrong that you can’t help going on with it. But he will not be cruel to you and me. Oh, when he knows it will break our hearts!” said Alice.

And then they were silent, hearing the steps come up the staircase, turning two pairs of anxious eyes towards the door. Sir William came in first with a kind of stern introduction of the culprit.

“Here is Paul,” he said. And then without any words, with a certain half-protest against their presence there at all, Paul submitted to be kissed by his mother and sister. They stood all together in a confused group for a moment, not knowing what to do or say, for it is difficult to rush into such a subject as this which was in all their thoughts in a company of four. Lady Markham held her boy by the hand, and looked at him pathetically with an unspoken appeal which made his heart ache, but felt that she must have him to herself, must be free of all spectators, before she could say all she had to say to him. “We had better go back to the inn and get some luncheon,” said Sir William, breaking the spell with practical simplicity. He took his wife by the arm as they went down stairs. “The democracy is a pretence, and so is the fancy for a new world,” he half-whispered, hissing into her ear. “It is a woman, as I thought.”

Lady Markham started so that she almost lost her footing, and her parasol fell out of her hand.

“A woman?” she said, with a scarlet blush of trouble and shame. The first intrusion of this possibility daunts and terrifies a mother. A woman! what does that mean?—not the pure and delicate love with which all her thoughts would be in sympathy; something very different. The shock of separation between the boy, the heir of all her hopes, and a man half-known, who is no longer the child of her bosom, was almost more than she could bear. The cry she gave echoed low but bitter through the empty passages, where many such have echoed, audible or inaudible, before.

CHAPTER XII.

They were in a room in the hotel, one of those bare and loveless rooms, denuded of everything that is warm or homelike, in which so often the bitterest scenes of the tragedy of our life take place. Lady Markham sat by the bare table; Sir William paced up and down between that and the door. Outside was all the commotion of one of those big caravanserai which have become so common in England, echoes of noisy parties below, and a constant passage up and down of many feet. Trouble itself is made harder vulgarised by such contact. They were far too much absorbed to think of this, yet it made them a little more miserable unawares.

“Does he mean to marry her?” Sir William said.

“Oh!” cried Lady Markham, with a start as if she had received a blow; “I cannot think it is that. He will not allow it is that. It is, what he has always said, those new principles, those revolutionary ideas, I do not know what those men are worthy of who fill a boy’s head with ridiculous theories, who teach him to despise his home.”

“There are few who are much harmed by that. Isabel you must not be squeamish. You must forget you are a delicate lady, and speak plainly. I know what a young man is at Paul’s age; they can hold the wildest theories without feeling any necessity to act upon them. It is a privilege of youth; but against that other kind of influence, they are helpless. And a woman like you does not understand the arts and the wiles of these others. And he does not know how important it is,” said Sir William, with a piteous tone in his voice; “he does not know——”

“He knows very well what he is to me and to you,” Lady Markham said. In this particular she spoke with perfect calm, not fearing anything. “How should he not know? I have not hidden it from him that a great part of the happiness of my life hangs upon his. It seems ungrateful when one has so many blessings; but, oh! if one is in trouble, how can you be comforted though all the others are well? All your heart goes to the one. It is not that you love the others less, but him more—him more.”

Sir William listened to this outburst without a word. They were bearing one burden between them, and yet each had a separate burden to bear. His heart would not be racked like hers by the desertion of the boy. He would not concentrate his whole soul on Paul because Paul was in trouble. But on the other hand, she was altogether unaware of what was in his thoughts, the doubtful position in which perhaps Paul might one day find himself; the need there was that his future should be within his own power to shape and form. Also Sir William was aware of the disappointment and misery awaiting those who compromise their whole lives in one fit of foolish passion, and secure their own misery by a hasty marriage. These were the things he was thinking of. He saw his son waking up to the realities of a life very different from anything he had dreamed—and encumbered, he, so fastidious, so fantastical, with an uneducated woman and all the miseries of premature fatherhood. He groaned as this picture arose in his mind.

“Trouble,” he said. “Yes, I suppose if a young man allows himself to get entangled, there is trouble involved in the breaking of the tie; but not half so much trouble as will come after, when his life is dragged down by association with a woman like that,—when he has a wretched home, a sordid life, a hundred miserable necessities to provide for,—you don’t know what it is, you can’t know what it is——”

He broke off abruptly. Would she perhaps suspect him—him, her husband—of having learned by experience what these horrors were?

But no such notion entered Lady Markham’s mind. “No,” she said; “I think you are wrong, William. I think it is not that that is in my boy’s mind. Oh, if one could know—if one could feel sure, that his heart was open as it used to be!”

Here she paused; and there was silence between the two, Sir William walking slowly up and down, with his head forward, and she sitting wistful gazing into the dark air; her eyes enlarged with anxiety and pain. They were such prosperous, happy people—so well off, so full of everything that can make life smooth and sweet, that the silence of their trouble was all the more impressive—so many things that harm poorer people would have passed innocently over them. They had such a stock (people might have said) of comfort and happiness to fall back upon. Nevertheless, this blow was so skilfully dealt, that it found out the weak places in their armour at once. To Sir William, indeed, it came as a sort of retribution! but what had his wife done to have her gladness thus stolen away from her? Fortunately those who suffer thus innocently are not those who ask such questions. She shed her tears silently, with many prayers for him who was the cause; but she did not complain of the pain which was laid upon her for no fault of hers. They had talked it all over in every possible aspect, and now they were silent, saying nothing. What was there to say? They could do nothing, however they might toil or struggle. It was not in their power to change the circumstances. Even Sir William, though he was a man of much influence, a great personage, of importance in Europe—capable perhaps of stopping revolutions, of transforming the face of a country, and modifying the fortunes of a race by the advice he might give—was powerless before his boy. He could not turn Paul from the way he had chosen, nor persuade him to think differently. He might be able to destroy old corporations, to raise up new cities, to disestablish a church, or disturb an empire; but he could not make a change in the fancies of his son—whether it was in his opinions, or in his inclinations; that was altogether beyond his power. He sighed heavily as he went and came from the dull green-painted wall, to the dull table covered with a green cloth. The Queen might listen to him, and the country; but Paul would not listen. What wonder that his wife covering her hot eyes with her hand, and knowing that Paul’s contumacy would steal all the pleasure out of her life, should feel herself powerless too?

There was one thing however that threw a little light on Lady Markham’s thoughts—one person to whom she could still appeal. She did not speak of this to her husband, who might, she felt, oppose her purpose. But she told Alice, with whom her consultations were still more confidential and detailed.

“He was made welcome in our house,” she said; “he was received as well as if he had been—any one else; and he is not a man without sense or feeling. If it is put before him as it ought, he will understand. I will go and speak to Mr. Spears——”

“About—his daughter?” Alice faltered.

Lady Markham did not make any reply. She would not say anything about the chief object of her mission. What she wanted above all things was to test the truthfulness of her son’s assertion that this daughter was nothing to him. Sir William put no faith in these assertions; but Paul’s mother believed in him with trembling, even while she feared, and longed for some indirect testimony which would convince her husband. She thought over it all night, while she lay awake listening to the clocks answering each other with hour after hour.

Paul had not responded to his mother’s inquiries, as they had all hoped. He had resisted her questions proudly, and he had not attempted to explain.

“You have made up your mind, you and my father, that I have not spoken the truth,” he said. “Why should I repeat what you will not believe? I have nothing to say but what I have said.”

“Oh, Paul, look in my face, and tell me—tell me!” she said. “I will not doubt you.” But he was obdurate.

“I have told you,” he said, “and you have doubted.”

There was something even in this pride and indignant resistance of her entreaties which moved his mother to believe in him; but Sir William was of a different opinion. Her heart was torn asunder with doubt and fear; and here was the one way in which she could know. Her husband might think of Spears as a dangerous demagogue, but to her he was a man whose face had brightened at the sight of her children, a man to whom she had given her own ready sympathy—a human creature, whom she knew. Had she not a right to go to him, to appeal to him to relinquish his hold on her boy? Whether it was by his arguments, or by something less abstract, he had, it seemed, power which was almost absolute over her boy. Lady Markham did not mean to say anything to him about his daughter, to ask of him whether it was love for her which was leading Paul away; but could any one doubt that she would discover the truth if she could see him, and speak to him without any one to interfere between them? She could not endure the doubts of Paul which rose in her own mind, nor to be obliged to listen to his father’s doubts of him, and say no word in his defence.

Notwithstanding her sleepless night, she got up very early in the morning, full of this idea, and stole out of the inn unperceived. It was not till the morning air blowing in her face, and the looks of the passers-by, which, like any one unaccustomed to go about alone, she thought specially directed to her, had fully roused her out of the mist of thought in which she was enveloped, that she remembered that she did not know where Spears was to be found. What was she to do? She went along vaguely, unwilling to return, past Paul’s college, with all its vacant windows twinkling in the sun, by the way which her husband had taken when he went to seek Paul the day before. Her heart gave a little leap as she passed the gate to see some one come out whose face seemed familiar to her. Was it Paul so early? Had he changed his habits like everything else? But she saw very well it was not Paul; it was his friend who had guided Sir William in search of him on the previous day.

Young Fairfax took off his hat respectfully, and would have passed, but she stopped and beckoned to him to come to her. Here, too, Providence had thrown in her way a witness who might corroborate Paul. She was out of breath with agitation when he came across the street.

“Can I—be of any use, Lady Markham?” the young man said.

“If it will not detain you—if it is not out of your way,” she said, with anxious politeness, “would you show me where Mr. Spears lives—Mr. Spears—I think my husband said you knew him—the—the public speaker—the—very great Radical—he whom my son knows?”

Fairfax was puzzled for the moment by this respectful description.

“Oh, Spears!” he cried at last, suddenly waking to intelligence; he had not heard him called Mr. Spears before. A laugh woke about the corners of his mouth. He was apt to laugh at most things, and it amused him to hear the softening politeness with which the great lady spoke of the demagogue. But the next moment the wistful anxiety in Lady Markham’s eyes made him ashamed of his smile.

“I will show you the place if you will let me go with you,” he said.

It seemed some strange negligence on the part of the race generally that such a woman should be unattended wherever she might choose to go. He was a democrat too, mildly, with less devotion to Spears than Paul, yet with some interest in his teaching; but Paul’s mother roused within him a natural loyalty and respect which was not in accordance with these principles—loyalty in which a subtle unexpressed regard for her rank mingled with reverence for herself. It was not as a mere woman and his friend’s mother, but also as a lady—the kind that queens are made of—that she affected his mind. The idea of her required an attendant, a servant, a retainer. He put himself into the vacant place hastily, to repair the neglect of the world.

Lady Markham took an unfair advantage of this devotion. She plied him with questions—subtle and skilful—not always about Paul, but coming back to Paul with many a wily twist and turn. She threw herself with the warmest pretence of interest into his own career—what he was doing, how his studies were being directed, what his future was to be? Was it a pretence? No, it was not altogether a pretence. She could not but be polite, and true politeness cannot but be interested. She was pleased that he should tell her about himself, and a kind of shadow of an anxiety that he too should do well came into her mind—a shadow faint and vague of her great anxiety and longing that Paul should do well, better than any one had ever done before. And like a lark descending in circles of cautious approach to her home, she came back to Paul when her young companion was off his guard, when she had beguiled him to babble of himself.

“Ah!” she said, “I fear you are both idle, both Paul and you,” when Fairfax had been making confession of sundry shortcomings.

“No, Markham is not like me,” he said. “Markham puts more of himself into everything; he does not take things lightly as I do. He is a more serious fellow altogether. That makes me rather fear Spears’s influence over him, if you will let me say so.”

“Indeed I will let you say so,” Paul’s mother replied. “That is just what makes me unhappy. He is a great deal with Mr. Spears?”

“One time and another—yes, they have seen a great deal of each other,” Fairfax said. “Perhaps you don’t know, Spears is the most entertaining fellow. He has his own opinion about everything. I think myself he is wrong just as often as he is right; but he has his own way of looking at things. I don’t go with him in half he says, but I like to hear him talk——”

“And his house is a pleasant place to go to?” said the anxious mother. “Excuse me if I don’t quite know. He is not in any kind of society, but he has a family? It is a pleasant house?”

Fairfax stared and then he laughed.

“It is not a house at all, in the way you think of,” he said. “I don’t suppose you can form any idea—we go and talk to him in his workshop. There is no sort of ceremony. He will hold forth for the hour when he is in the vein, and he is very entertaining—but as for what you understand by a pleasant house——”

Lady Markham’s heart grew lighter every moment.

“But he has a family?” she said.

“Oh, yes—there are girls, I believe,” said Fairfax. Was he on his guard? She almost feared the directness of this question had put him on his guard. “One sees them sometimes running out and in, but that has nothing to do with it,” he added, carelessly. “In his class it is not at all the same as in other ranks of life.”

Here there was a pause. Not an inference was there in all this of any other influence than that of the political visionary—the influence which Paul acknowledged. Lady Markham’s heart had given a leap of pleasure. Oh, if Sir William had but heard this careless, impartial witness, every word of whose evidence supported that of Paul! But then a chill breath of suspicion came over her. What if he were less unconscious than she thought, skilfully arranging his replies so as to back up Paul’s assertions? This discouraged and silenced her, in spite of herself. How easy it is to learn the miserable alphabet of suspicion! She went along with him doubtfully, sick at heart, asking no more questions, not knowing whether there was anything in the whole matter to which she could trust.

“There is Spears’s shop. You will find him at work already; he is always early. May I come back again for you, Lady Markham, in case you should miss the way to the hotel?”

“You are very kind,” she said; but the sight of the place where Paul had spent so much of his time raised again a sick flutter in her bosom. She waved her hand to him without any further reply, with a smile which went to his heart; and then crossed over, dismissing him thus, and went direct to the fountain-head of information—to Spears’s open door.

CHAPTER XIII.

Spears was seated on his bench, with his tools and his glue-pot, as Sir William had seen him on the previous day, when Lady Markham entered the shop. He had never ceased to be industrious at his work, though he had so many other things to do. Indeed, the many other things he had to do made it incumbent upon him to work early and late, in order to keep, as he called it, “the pot boiling.” For he was not a paid agitator. The man was proud, as men will be in all stations; and, moreover, he was uncertain—not to be calculated upon as a supporter of all kinds of measures which might be proved good for “the trade,” and therefore not half so serviceable an implement as many who were much less powerful. Like the independent member who cannot be trusted always to vote with one party, he was looked upon with doubt even by those who took the greatest advantage of his gifts. His influence had never done himself any good. He had acquired it by exhausting labour, which had taken him away from the work by which he made his bread, without supplying any bread in the interval to nourish those who were dependent upon him; and the consequence was that he had to work at other times early and late, and was saved from all possibility of the idle life which a stump orator may be so easily led into. His shop itself was swept and clean, the boards freshly watered in large damp circles still marked upon the wood, and a great bundle of large flowers—sunflowers and dahlias—stuck into a large jug, stood in the window among the picture-frames. Some brilliant gladiolas, in the brightest tints of colour, lay neglected on the floor, and a great magnificent stalk of foxglove nodded on the table at which he was working. These floral decorations, unexpected in such a place, made the shop cheerful; and so did a stray ray of morning sun, which got in through a break in the houses opposite, and fell across it, dividing it as with a line of gold. The door stood open; the air, even though laden with varnish, retained some freshness. Lady Markham came in softly, and stood, her heart beating, not knowing well how to open this important interview, in the middle of the sunshine. Her breath came quick. Now that she had arrived at the point for which she had been aiming, a sudden alarm seized her. Might it not have been better, she asked herself, hurriedly, to remain in ignorance—not to seek to be convinced? There are things which it is better not to know.

Spears, who was whistling over his work, did not hear the light footstep coming in; but he noted, with the quick sense of a man to whom daylight is indispensable, the shadow that had come across the sunshine. He paused and looked up. A doubt—a question came over his face. Was it possible he did not know her? Then he rose and came forward, holding out to Lady Markham a hand not free from stains of the varnish which perfumed the shop.

“Is it you, my lady?” he cried. His face beamed over with a smile of welcome, but showed no surprise or alarm at the appearance of such an inquisitor. He drew forth a rough wooden seat without any back, and placed it in the centre of the vacant space.

“I am very glad to see you in my poor place,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Lady Markham. She glanced round her with a little perturbation. She did not know how to begin. “Mr. Spears!” she said, faltering a little, “I was very glad to see you in my house.”

“Were you, my lady?” He stood before her with a good-humoured smile upon his face, but slightly shook his head. “Never mind, you were as kind as if you had been glad to see me, and that says more. But your husband upbraided me for coming to his house in his absence, which you know was your son’s fault, and not mine.”

“It is of my son I want to speak to you,” said Lady Markham, seizing this easy means of introducing her subject. “Mr. Spears, you know something of what he is to me—my eldest boy, the one who should be the prop of the family: to whom his brothers and sisters will look hereafter as the head of the family.”

“Ay, that’s just it,” said the revolutionary. “Why should they look to him? What is there so creditable in being the eldest son? It was no thanks to him. He was not born first for any merit of his. Far better to teach them to depend on themselves—to give them their just share—to make no eldest sons.”

“As if that were possible,” Lady Markham said, with a soft smile at this theoretical folly. “One must be the eldest, whatever you say; and if any harm were to happen to us,” she added, after a pause, raising her beautiful head, “I have no fear that Paul would give up his position then. If we were to become poor, to lose all we have—such things have happened, Mr. Spears—my boy would not find it hard to remember to take up his duties as the eldest son!”

“Ah!” said Spears in involuntary sympathy. Then he added with again the same good-humoured smile, “There now, that is how you get the better of us, you aristocrats. You are terribly cunning in argument, my lady. You get over us by a suggestion of generosity when we are talking of justice. The thing will never happen, of course—not in our day, more’s the pity—your money and your land will never be taken from you.”

“Do you think that is a pity, Mr. Spears?”

“Well, yes,” he said, laughing, “from our point of view; but it will never happen, not in our time. And even if it did happen, don’t you think it would be far better to live each man for himself, and not a whole family casting themselves on the shoulders of your son Paul?”

“My son Paul,” said Lady Markham, in a low voice, looking at him through the tears in her eyes, “will be far away from us—will not be at hand to be of use or consolation in case anything should happen to us, if you and he have your will, Mr. Spears. He will be far away where he will be of no use to his family. Such a thing might happen, though God forbid it! as that I might be left to struggle alone for my children; and Paul, my eldest, my natural help, far away, lost to me, as if he had never been.”

Spears turned away while she was speaking, and returned to his bench. He cleared his throat; his face flushed; he was as much embarrassed as she had been at the beginning, and did not know how to reply.

“My lady,” he said, “this is too bad; I think it is too bad. After all a man has more things to think of in this world than whether his family has need of him, or if he can be of use to his mamma.”

He said the last word with a semitone of ridicule, then blushed for himself as he caught her eye. Lady Markham saw her advantage. She would not let him escape.

“Are there then many things in this world that are better than being of use to your family, and helping in a hard task your mother? Do you think so, Mr. Spears? Ah, no! I am certain you don’t. You are talking au bout des lèvres, not from your heart. If we should ever need him, Paul will be—who can tell?—thousands and thousands of miles away; and for what? Why do you want him to go with you? Why are you going? I do not know the reason. Because you are impatient, and do not like the manner in which things are arranged at home?”

“We will not enter into that, my lady,” said Spears; “we will not enter into that.”

He said this, half in contempt of her intelligence, which did not rise to his lofty view, half because (and this really meant the same thing) it was very difficult to explain why he thought it expedient to go away. Many motives were mingled in his resolution which he did not dwell upon even to himself. He was tired of poor work and poor pay, and the struggle of living; tired of having to manufacture pictures-frames for bread when he could have done something so much better: and disgusted that his higher work got no real appreciation from any one. And he was tired too even of his agitation, the speeches and popular applause which were all very well for the moment, but neither seemed to convince any one, nor to affect the world at all. All this was going on day after day, week after week, but never came to anything. Often speakers whom he knew to be much inferior to himself were more warmly applauded; and some whom he considered (as other people considered him) to be stump orators and noisy demagogues, got elevated and salaried, and swaggered about in all the importance of delegates and representatives of the people, while he received no such distinction. Though this was partly his own fault through the pride and love of independence which characterised him, yet Spears felt it. It soured him, in spite of himself. All this, however, lay in his heart undivulged, except by a bitter word now and then; and what he said to himself was that the old country was thoroughly corrupt and hopeless, but that in a new country, under better conditions, life would be more worth having. Did this fine lady, who knew nothing about it, divine what was secretly shut up in his mind? He grew half afraid of her, simple and ignorant as she had seemed to him a little while before.

“Ah, Mr. Spears, let us speak of it! You forget how important it is to me. But for you, I should not run any risk of losing my boy.”

“I did not propose that he should come with me. You will do me the justice to believe, Lady Markham, that I never attempted to bias him.”

“To bias him,” she said—“what is it then? Is it not all your doing? Why, should Paul go away, but for you? He has got these notions which you have taught him into his head—”

“On the contrary,” said the workman, “I have told him that were I in his place I should certainly stay in England. This is no place for a poor man who thinks—but for a man who is not poor, who has a position like his, why, it is the ideal place. There is no aristocracy so solid as in England. I have told him so a hundred times.”

Lady Markham’s face grew whiter and whiter. It did not occur to her that this very advice might be conveyed in a tone which would make Paul wildly indignant at the supposed immunity and privileged condition with which his friend credited him. Such an explanation did not occur to her. Dismay stole over her heart; it was then as Sir William thought—Paul was not telling them the truth. The cause of his wild project was not philosophy and foolish opinions, since even his leader disowned it. It was something else. Her heart sank within her, she lost the control of her better sense. “If it is not you,” she said, “who is it then—who is it, Mr. Spears? You have—a daughter?” This seemed to come from her in spite of herself.

“A daughter—I have three,” he said, “but what have they—” here he stopped, and getting up from his bench gave vent to a low whistle of astonishment and perplexity. He was as much surprised as she could be, and not much more pleased. He gazed at her a moment speechless. “Can that be so?” he said.

Impossible to sink lower than Lady Markham’s heart sank—it seemed to melt away altogether in humiliation and disappointment. She looked at him piteously, the tears so gathering into her eyes that she could scarcely see his face.

“Oh, Mr. Spears,” she cried, “you know what such a connection always comes to; disappointment on both sides—the woman’s as well as the man’s. Whatever his feelings may be now, he would soon find out that she was not—like the women he had been used to; and she would find herself among—habits that were not congenial to her. Oh, Mr. Spears, for both their sakes—you that Paul thinks so much of, you whose opinion he follows so meekly—oh, will you not exert your authority, and forbid it—forbid it altogether?”

Lady Markham lost control of the words she was saying. She did not think whether this was likely to be a mode of entreaty that would be grateful to him. She lost her own fine sense of what was fit and seemly, in the eagerness of the appeal which might save her boy.

He stood over her, looking at her, changed she could not tell how. His face clouded over before her eyes. At first this seemed only the effect of the tears that blinded her, but when these latter fell she became aware that the countenance which had been so good-humoured and friendly was full now of a very different sentiment. The man seemed to have expanded even in outline as he stood between her and the light.

“Forbid it, forbid it altogether!” he repeated, with a smile that seemed to freeze her. “Why?” She felt herself tremble before him as he fixed his eyes upon her. “My lady,” he said, “you forget where you are, and you forget your politeness for once. How do you know my girl is not like the women he has been used to? By God! she’s better than most he’ll meet with among your depraved and worn-out race. My girl! if it is true, and she likes him, do you think I would forbid it, to save your fine blood from pollution, and keep your Paul for some fine lady of the kind he’s been used to? No, not for a million of mothers—not for all the soft-spoken insults in the world.”

Lady Markharn made no reply; she could not, her agitation was so great; but indignation began to steady her nerves, and give back her forces. What had she said to call for this? How dared he speak of insult, the man whom she felt she had honoured by coming to him, by appealing to him? She was not an angel, though she was a good woman, and instinctively she began to call together her faculties, to range herself, as it were, on her own side.

Apparently, however, after this outburst, Spears felt ashamed of himself. A fine sense of courtesy was in the man, almost finer than her own. He began to be ashamed of having thus violated hospitality, of having so addressed her in his own house. He turned away from her to recover himself, turning his back upon her, then came back with again a changed aspect. “I beg your pardon,” he said; “I ought to have more control of myself in my own place. I don’t believe it’s true what you think. No, my lady, I don’t mean you’re saying what you don’t believe—I think you’re deceived. I won’t ask who’s told you, or how it’s come into your head; I’ll put it to a better test. I’ll ask the girl herself.”

“Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, “you have been very rude to me; I have not insulted you, nor did I mean to do so. It never occurred to me,” she added, with a fine sting in her words which penetrated through all his armour, “that I need fear anything from you which I should not have encountered in—another rank of life. But I do not wish to make reprisals,” she said, with a faint smile, rising from her seat. “If you question your daughter on such a subject it ought not to be before me.”

“My lady,” cried Spears, his face full of passion, “unless it is to be open war between us it shall be before you. If there’s love between them there should be no shame in it. My girl is one that can hold up her head before any on the face of the earth. It is not my beginning, but it shall be settled and cleared up on the spot. Janet! come down here, I want you,” he called at the foot of the stairs.

Even in the midst of her agitation, Lady Markham had been conscious of sounds above, footsteps and young voices, one of which indeed had been persistently singing all the time, some trivial song of the moment in a clear little sweet voice, like the trill of a bird. The insignificant tune had run through all this exciting interview, and worked itself into Lady Markham’s head, and in spite of herself she stood still, not resisting any longer, turning towards the stairs involuntarily, watching for the appearance of the girl who (perhaps) was dearer to her boy than anything else, who, perhaps, was his motive for relinquishing everything else, including his mother’s happiness and the comfort of his family. What woman could remain unmoved under such circumstances? Once more her heart began to beat as she turned her face towards the dingy stairs. Was it some beautiful apparition which was to appear from it, some creature such as exists in poetry, some woman for whom it would be comprehensible that a man should give up all? Lady Markham had romance enough in her to feel that this was possible, almost to wish it, while she feared it. If it were so, it would be more easy to forgive Paul. Ah, forgive him!—that was never hard; that was not the question. Our forgiveness, like a weeping angel, is it not always hovering, forestalling even the evil to be forgiven, over our children’s wayward ways? But to get it out of her mind, out of her memory, that he had deceived her, that was not so easy. She, who had come in search of evidence to exonerate Paul, can any one wonder that she stood trembling, scarcely seeing, scarcely hearing, yet all eyes and ears, to receive the testimony of this indisputable witness, against whom there could be no appeal? But when the girl’s foot sounded on the stair it seemed to Lady Markham that she had already given up all hope that Paul was true—provided only that this woman for whom he had compromised the honour of his word, might at least afford some justification for the sacrifice.