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diff --git a/78299-h/78299-h.htm b/78299-h/78299-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f5b8bdb --- /dev/null +++ b/78299-h/78299-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5198 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no,date=no,address=no,email=no,url=no"> + <title> + Oliver Constable, vol. 1 | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +.tdw { white-space: nowrap; } + +p { + margin-top: .5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .5em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +.tdl {text-align: left;} +.tdr {text-align: right;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; +} /* page numbers */ + +blockquote { + margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.br {border-right: 2px solid;} + +.center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + +figcaption {font-weight: bold;} +figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; text-align: inherit;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} + +/* Footnotes */ + +/* Poetry */ +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +/* .poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} */ +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +p { text-indent: 2em; } /* Adds first paragraph indent */ + +h1 span { font-size: .5em; } /* h1 and h2 sub headings */ +h2 span { font-size: .7em; } + +.sub5 { font-size: .5em; } /* Preset font-size adjustments */ +.sub7 { font-size: .7em; } +.sub12 { font-size: 1.2em; } + +.flat { text-indent: 0em; } /* removes first paragraph indent */ + +.front { /* Matches h2 but w/out chapter marker */ + font-size: 1.5em; + font-weight: bold; + margin-top: 20px; + margin-bottom: 10px; + display: block; + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + } + +.hang { /* adds hanging indent */ + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -2em; + text-align: left; + } + +.tpad { padding-left: 4em; + line-height: 1.8; + vertical-align: bottom; } + +.poetry-container { display: flex; + justify-content: center; } + +p.tpdc:first-letter { /* transparent first letter */ + color: transparent; + visibility: hidden; + } + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} +.poetry .indent1 {text-indent: -2.5em;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78299 ***</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <h1 class="nobreak" id="OLIVER_CONSTABLE"> + OLIVER CONSTABLE + <br> + <span>VOL. I.</span> + </h1> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center"> +<span class="front"> +OLIVER CONSTABLE<br></span> +<br> +MILLER AND BAKER<br> +<br> +<span class="sub5">BY<br></span> +<br> +<span class="sub12">SARAH TYTLER<br></span> +<span class="allsmcap">AUTHOR OF ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ ‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ETC.<br></span> +<br> +<i>IN THREE VOLUMES</i><br> +<br> +VOL. I.<br> +<br> +LONDON<br> +SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE<br> +1880<br> +<br> +[<i>All rights reserved</i>] +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <p class="front" id="TO_MARGARET"> + <i>TO MARGARET</i> + </p> +</div> + +<blockquote> +<p class="flat">MOTHER AND SISTER IN ONE: LOVING AND FAITHFUL FELLOW-WORKER WHOSE EAGER +INTEREST IN THIS STORY PROVED ITS AUTHOR’S GREATEST ENCOURAGEMENT IN +WRITING IT: WHOSE DEATH BEFORE THE STORY WAS FINISHED DARKENED LIFE AND +WORK TO ONE SOLITARY WORKER</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>IN HOPE OF</i><br> +<i>THE TIMES OF RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS</i><br> +<br> +<span class="smcap">Oxford</span>: <i>17th April 1880</i> +</p> +</blockquote> + + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + <p class="front" id="CONTENTS"> + CONTENTS + <br> + <span class="sub7">OF<br> + THE FIRST VOLUME.<br> + </span> + </p> + +<table> + <tr> + <td class="tdr tdw allsmcap">CHAPTER</td> + <td colspan=2 class="allsmcap tdr">PAGE</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">I.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">Friarton Mill</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">II.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">Oliver Constable’s Return</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">III.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">Oliver’s Announcement</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IV.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">A Hot Argument</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">V.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">A Last Appeal</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VI.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">Louisa and Catherine Hilliard</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VII.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">How Mrs. Hilliard and Catherine + Judged the last St. George of + Friarton</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">VIII.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">Oliver’s Proclamation in the Mill and + the Bakehouse</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">IX.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">The New Tenants of Copley Grange Farm</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">X.</td> + <td class="tdl hang smcap">Oliver’s Notion of Good Citizenship</td> + <td class="tpad tdr"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> + + + <p class="front" id="OLIVER_CONSTABLE_1"> + OLIVER CONSTABLE, + <br> + <i><span class="sub7">MILLER AND BAKER</span></i>. + </p> +</div> + +<hr class="br"> + +<div class="chapter"> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I"> + CHAPTER I. + <br> + <span>FRIARTON MILL.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Old</span> mills which were built to be worked by water power are +mostly picturesque objects in the landscape. They command without +fail certain advantages of situation. Certainly they are not likely +to possess extensive views, where they stand in the low lands which +claim a fall of water. But water is their specialty, and where there +is water, there is generally wood. My readers must call up without any +difficulty <span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>before their minds’ eyes pleasant pictures of such mills +with their placid dams and flashing weirs, their great mill wheels +and their noisy clappers, their dusty sacks and their equally dusty +millers, so proverbial for their white coats as to have lent a popular +name to one pollen sprinkled auriculus. Mill and water, wheel and man, +are all set in a green leafy nook which forms the broadest possible +contrast to the grey bare downs on which the windmill extends its giant +arms and swings its flapping sails. Picture and song have enshrined +the old water mills from the days when Constable the painter loved to +represent on canvas such a Suffolk mill as that which was familiar +to his youth, to the later days when Tennyson wrote his idyll of the +Miller’s Daughter.</p> + +<p>Of all mills which had their sites chosen with reference to water, +though the millers—not anticipating Mr. Ruskin’s objections—had long +before the present day, by the help of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>machinery, set seasons of +drought at defiance, none was more thoroughly picturesque in its own +line of picturesqueness, pleasanter to all the senses, more homelike, +restful and sweet, like a thrush’s nest or a tuft of primroses, than +Friarton Mill in Holmshire. It was so evidently agreeable to the +eye, and had attained to such an amount of fame for this desirable +quality, that it had been suffered to remain where it had been built +in primitive easy-going times, within a stone’s throw of the park of +Copley Grange, and in full view of the manor-house. In fact it had been +found that, after the fashion of those happy accidents which create +leaning towers and whispering galleries, and which can never be copied +with any certainty of success, the indifference to æsthetics which +had made the old squire of Copley Grange permit the miller of his day +to erect his mill at his liege lord’s elbow, had been oddly enough +rewarded by furnishing the Squire’s descendants <span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>or successors with +one of the choicest bits of what we may call landscape vertu—a home +lion which, as the modern squires were not needy men, and had further +acquired the modern culture of beauty to their finger tips, they would +not have lacked for a good many broad acres. If the reigning miller and +owner of Friarton Mill had been Vandal enough to propose to demolish +it—which he could have done since his fathers had bought it and certain +pasture fields of the original suzerain—he would have awakened the +liveliest consternation in the breasts of his social superiors.</p> + +<p>The loss of Friarton Mill would have gone far to destroy the +picturesque charm of Copley Grange, with all its advantages of +wood and water. For, to the deep regret of its youngest sons and +daughters, their ancestor under the second George had taken it +upon him with no consideration for the tastes and feelings of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>his great-great-grandchildren to pull down a gem of a rambling, +inconvenient, half-ruinous Elizabethan manor-house. And he had +replaced it with a distressingly heavy, square pile of masonry, in +which he and the architect had actually thought of little save of +expressing pompously their ideas of space and comfort. The little +which went beyond these prosaic requirements had borne the doubtful +fruit of an Italian portico. It had been voted elegant and classical +by the contemporaries of the unfortunate squire who was thus severely +reflected upon by his heirs. In a few more years it might rise again +into value. It might be prized as a proof of past style, of the +tendency of the day, serving as a key to the prevalence of fiddle brown +in artists’ work, and to the choice of subjects in Richard Wilson’s +paintings, or as an indication of something else equally interesting. +But in the present day, with which after all this generation has most +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>to do, it was regarded as an incongruous humbug.</p> + +<p>The living representative of the family at Copley Grange had done +what he could to remedy the fatal error of his ancestor. He had +succeeded, when he came of age, to the savings of a long minority. He +was also the manager in chief of a large endowment which a pious and +charitable predecessor had bequeathed to support a Copley Grange row +of almshouses. By a most fortuitous circumstance, if not by a clear +interposition of Providence, as the young Squire was disposed to think, +this endowment had been legally disputed, and had remained in abeyance +till the lawyers picked as much flesh as they could off its bones, so +that the rearing of the fabric, which was to be emblematic to all time, +fell to a nineteenth-century man. He improved the circumstance. Instead +of building a set of ordinary red brick cottages with little cottage +kailyards, which might have fitly <span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>housed and afforded recreation to +twenty old Copley Grange labourers and their aged partners, he let in a +little light on the crass ignorance of the destroyer of the Elizabethan +manor-house, by building in the immediate vicinity of Copley Grange a +terrace of dainty little structures, all gables and mullioned windows, +and stacks of chimneys—with pleasure-grounds having thickets and lawns +to correspond, which took several experienced gardeners, told off for +the purpose, to keep them in order. Finally he built a tiny alms-house +chapel on the strictest principles of mediæval architecture. The +carving within and without, the painted glass, the frescoes, the Latin +texts which might have been Greek or Hebrew to the daily worshippers, +the peal of bells, supplied a boast to the county guide-book.</p> + +<p>It is another question whether the poor old bodies, whose number was +now limited to eight, and whose taste could hardly be supposed to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>have +reached the stage at which that unlucky forefather of the Squire’s had +committed his solecism, did not feel far from home, aggrieved, and made +mountebanks of in their new quarters. The arrangements, which included +endless draughty corners, and troublesome, perilous steps up and steps +down, were purely perplexing and affronting to the occupants of the +almshouses. These pensioners were taken out of ugly houses on a level +with their capacities, and therefore more to their minds. The old men +and women, too old to learn, were elected according to the reigning +Squire and his wife’s will and pleasure, and somewhat with reference to +the worn out labourers’ venerable beards and their wives’ smooth silver +braids of hair, or to the couples’ reasonable disposition to avail +themselves of blackthorn sticks and silver-rimmed spectacles, as well +as to their general good behaviour, and what might be reckoned upon in +the matter of their punctual and decorous <span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>attendance at the chaplain’s +daily services.</p> + +<p>Naturally, perhaps, the recipients of the Squire’s bounty were not +particularly grateful for the manner of its bestowal. They were too +practical and hard pressed to refuse a refuge which after all was +far before the poor-house. But old Mrs. Scud expressed boldly the +secret sentiments of six out of the eight women when she declared she +‘wished Squire’s lady would try a day’s washing herself, and see if she +would like it, in a nasty cold common wash-house which anybody might +halve and quarter, and who wanted that imperent, pushing Mrs. Webb, +or sly Anne Sole, to come in <span id="cor_1"></span>and take a invitory of their old men’s +wussen shirts, and their own darnedest stockings, when they had been +accustomed to wash nice and comfortable in private on their own warm +hearth-stone where nobody could come and spy, without the missus of the +house’s leave? Ah! she were missus of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>her house in them days, and not +bound to say her prayers at the gentlefolks’ pleasure. What good could +that do to her poor old soul, she would like to know? It “might lend a +lift” to her betters’ souls, since they were always in luck, but forced +prayers never did no good to them as said them, that she would take her +Bible oath on.’</p> + +<p>And old Mr. Fry (the members of the stranded colony were each strictly +Mr. and Mrs. among themselves, unless in the case of a miserable +spinster who had missed her mark, like Anne Sole) daringly defined the +opinions of his brethren when he protested he would give all ‘them +fandangles of shrubberies and grass that were of no good save to the +screeching birds of the air as he was not allowed to put a finger on, +for his old cabbage bed, where, as everybody knew, he had riz the +whitest-hearted cabbages in the parish, not to say for his pig-stye, +where, when he could do a double day’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>work, and was well-to-do—never +thinking what he would come to—as some there could bear him witness, he +had fed prime pigs as were a <span id="cor_2"></span>pleasure to look at.</p> + +<p>So it became another question whether the owner of Copley Grange had +altogether fulfilled the intention—always supposing it to have been +kindly and not ostentatious or selfish in disguise—of his forerunner, +as he was fully persuaded he had done, while he fumed over the +thanklessness and discontent of the poor, or whether he had served +himself and ridden his hobby to the death, by way of loving his +neighbour.</p> + +<p>When all was done, the Copley Grange Almshouses were only a modern +antique, and the Squire had too much taste not to prefer the real +antique of Friarton Mill, which was not his property, indeed, but was +set down within a stone’s throw of his grounds. As he took care to keep +on the best terms with the miller, the Squire flattered himself, it was +as safe almost, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>as though it were in his own hands. He was at liberty +to take his guests over it at all hours, in the course of the shortest +of strolls, and he had so managed a vista of old thorn trees that the +mill formed the loveliest vignette from the grand drawing-room windows.</p> + +<p>There was no inscription on the building, and there is no existing +architecture which could decide the date when Friarton Mill was built. +Popular tradition, which always tends to the age of good Queen Bess, +as if it had been golden and not iron in English annals, loosely +attributed that date to the mill. Undoubtedly, it was so old that even +its unsophisticated millers had grown proud and careful of its age, +as a man who will ignore and trample upon his years at sixty, nay, at +threescore and ten, will boast of them, and cherish them tenderly from +eighty upwards. Everything about the mill, except the iron machinery +which was kept out of sight, was white powdered or silvery grey, or +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>rich brown, or toned in sage or olive green, dull crimson, and dusky +orange by stonecrops and lichens, as no art-school design could tone +colours. The building stood as near the water as an old Venetian palace +is to its canal. The site must have been untenable in an English +climate to any miller who was not proof against the chest complaints +and rheumatisms that English flesh is heir to, had not the water which +in floods lapped the mill walls been the flow just below the weir. It +was always rapid in its current, thus carrying off a large proportion +of its own vapour, never stagnated in pools, nor, even when there +was least water, dried up in portions of its channel, throwing off +unwholesome miasma in the process. Another protection to the miller +and his family was, that his two-storied, stone-roofed, dwelling +house, built at right angles to the mill, stood by the whole breadth +of its court back from the water where the ground rose, and a natural +drainage filtered <span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>away the damp in the soil. Actual evidence removed +all reproach of slimy or mildewed unwholesomeness from Friarton Mill, +or, for that matter, from the mansion-house of Copley Grange, which +stood only a little farther from what was still called ‘the Brook,’ or +‘Buller’s Brook.’ No races of men or women in the parish had been, in +the memory of the oldest Friarton man (and he was to be found in the +Copley Grange Almshouses), stronger and longer-lived, in the main, than +the two families which had for generations dwelt in the mill and the +manor-house.</p> + +<p>On the face of the mill, as it fronted the water, opening from the +second story, was a curiously carved wooden gallery, such as one meets +with in Nüremberg and some of the older German towns. It had been +intended originally to hold sacks of corn or flour, which were hoisted +up or lowered down by a crane from, or to, the narrow road-way—only +broad enough <span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>at the widest to hold a single farm cart with its +horses—that interposed between the mill and the water. The gallery had +become obsolete for this purpose, having been superseded by other and +ampler contrivances on the other side of the mill; and a great willow +tree had been allowed to grow up and still farther impede the road-way, +which it narrowed to a footpath, as it spread out its roots, and flung +across its higher branches until they drooped over the water. But the +respect which had been developed for every sign of the mill’s antiquity +not only saved the gallery from destruction, but, in order to keep up +its character, caused it to be occasionally used still, as a place of +deposit for floury sacks. It was more frequently employed as a point +of vantage which the miller could appropriate—a place for smoking his +pipe and staring at the water beneath his feet; where the gentle folks +from Copley could come and loiter and gaze <span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>abroad into the recesses of +Copley Grange Park, which was only divided from the mill by the Brook +and a sunk fence.</p> + +<p>The park was by no means large, but the ground was undulating, and, +furnished with patches of bracken, old thorns, brakes of hazel and +blackberry, and some magnificent oaks and beeches, it formed of itself +dells and dingles, which had the appearance of stretching far and wide.</p> + +<p>At two seasons of the year the view from the gallery of Friarton +Mill which did not extend beyond the park, and had the objection, if +you will, of being shut in, ‘tame and domestic,’ formed at the same +time a nearly perfect bit of woodland, while the well ‘seasoned’ +Georgian house, with the Italian façade in the foreground, stopped +short of being an eyesore. In late spring, when the tender green of +the beech and oak contrasted with the sombre green of the fir, and +was relieved by the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>white blossoms of the wild crab and pear trees; +when the gnarled hawthorn bushes, in the dim light of early morning +or late twilight, stood crowned like ‘aged men,’ or in the glory of +noon bent like veiled brides; when clusters of red May and the spikes +of the red-flowered chestnut—introduced to compete with the native +trees—lent a half tropical brilliance to the sweet English purity of +the colouring; when the turf below was here and there pale gold with +primroses or misty blue with hyacinths; when blackbirds and thrushes +sang openly and unblushingly to their mates on every spray, and the +cuckoo’s note and the ringdove’s call sounded from hidden hollows; when +the first nightingale made night tuneful and poured out his passion +till it rose in liquid clearness above the monotonous rush and tinkle +of the waters, then Copley Grange Park, and Friarton Mill were at +their second best. For the autumn suited them even better than the +spring, nothing <span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>could surpass the exquisite rich mellowness and tender +delicacy when the ripe brown chestnut was dropping from its husk on +the water-of-Nile coloured grass, in the chillness of October; when +the five fingers of the chestnut leaves and the vine leaf of the maple +were burning in maize colour; when the oak was russet, the beech and +wild cherry crimson darkening into purple or streaked with scarlet; +the birch and the elm straw and daffodil colour; when the bracken was +rusty; when only the trill of the robin and the distant bark of a +dog broke the stillness of the earth resting from its labours with a +curtain of haze falling between it and the dappled sky.</p> + +<p>But in winter also, when Buller’s Brook was hanging with icicles, and +‘roaring and reaming’ after it had broken its frozen bounds, and the +grass was sere, and the boughs of the trees stood out bare and black, +unless where the sunlight caught those near at hand, and brought out +their furry greys, and the blue <span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>bloom of a plum, hovering about the +twigs and bourgeons; or when they were feathered with hoar frost or +panoplied with snow, standing out in dead cold masses against the +leaden grey of the clouds—the park, as seen from the mill gallery, +was not to be despised by any hardy sight-seer who could face with +fortitude benumbed toes and tingling fingers.</p> + +<p>The court before the mill-house had its own tree, a round-headed +bushy mulberry tree, while the house itself was covered with several +old-fashioned rose bushes, including a monthly rose which did not +wait for June, but sent out its china pink buds early in May, and +went on obligingly, supplying large instalments of various shades of +magenta-coloured, faintly smelling roses, from month to month, till +November, if the winter were not a hard one. The other roses, noisette +and a crimson—acquiring a duller purple tinge, perhaps the nearest +approach to ‘blue roses’ in fading—adhered <span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>strictly to June and +July for flowering in one blow, but they made up as much as possible +for their unbending character in this respect by pouring forth, when +they did blossom, a prodigal wealth of roses, which in their turn +discharged a perfect avalanche of crumbled petals into the court and +on the breast of the brook, that ran, for days at a time, pied like +a daisy, impartially divided into the colours of York and Lancaster, +as other rivers have run yellow with gold or red with blood. One side +of the house would show sumptuous crimson without a green leaf for a +whole fortnight, when it was not a rainy summer; and as for the ivory +white noisette roses, the half-blown buds and flowers on a branch could +be counted by the fifty, and a single cluster would fill one of Fan +Constable’s crazy, tottering flower-glasses.</p> + +<p>At one time the older of these rose trees, with the ‘mulberry-bush,’ +as it was called, had served for a flower-garden to the mill-house, as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>the bough of a tree or a few stones on the stage used to stand for a +forest or a rocky pass. Then the dwellers in the mill-house became less +primitive in their notions, and not so easily satisfied. The miller’s +wife had her border round her court with daffodils and carnations, +sweet-williams and sunflowers in their order, until at last the border +merged into a walled garden, which, in addition to its apricot-trees +and its early peas and potatoes, had its dahlia and salvia beds, and +its frames for raising geraniums and verbenas, all of them not so far +behind the terraces and green-houses at Copley Grange.</p> + +<p>But full of living beauty as Friarton Mill and Copley Grange were, +their owners did not escape the curse of humanity, and the dead were +lying at the same time both in the mill-house and the grange. Old Peter +Constable had paid his last debt, and been gathered to his fathers—full +of days and of such honours as an <span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>honest, active useful life cannot +fail to gather; and the Squire’s wife had inherited so little strength +that she had died, worn out with sustaining the dignity and refinement +of her station and with bearing three children, before she had attained +her twenty-fifth year.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II"> + CHAPTER II. + <br> + <span>OLIVER CONSTABLE’S RETURN.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Fan Constable</span> was in the drawing-room of the mill-house, +awaiting the return of her brother from his last term at Oxford. +A mill-house may have its drawing-room, and its son may have been +at Oxford, and that not in the old capacity of a servitor, in the +experience of modern England.</p> + +<p>Old Peter Constable, who had inherited from his father not only +Friarton Mill and its meadows, but the chief baking business in the +town of Friarton, had possessed other flour mills also, and had died a +well-to-do man. He might have gone a little way off and kept a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>much +more pretentious establishment than that of Friarton Mill, without +being guilty of extravagant housekeeping for his means. But he was +neither ashamed of his origin nor of his business; he was unassuming +in his nature, and he was almost as proud of the old place with an +instinctive unquestioning fondness, as his neighbour the Squire adored +it on the last principles of taste.</p> + +<p>The miller and baker’s only son had distinguished himself as a boy in +his classes at Friarton Grammar School—which was rather famous among +grammar schools, and, having acquired a good name for sending up lads +who took scholarships, and became in due time fellows and tutors of +Oxford colleges, was eager to keep up its reputation, and, by the +mouths of its masters, egged on promising pupils to go in for the +prizes of learning. The case of Oliver Constable formed no exception. +It seemed as if he were only fulfilling his part of the obligation, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>when, after having been head boy at Friarton, he went up to Oxford +and immediately vindicated the propriety of the step by gaining a +scholarship—though indeed his father was sufficiently well off to make +no objection to paying his son’s college terms in full.</p> + +<p>Old Peter Constable continued to have no scruple on the point of +maintaining his son at Oxford, because at the end of Oliver’s first +term there occurred a passage between the father and son which may +sound incredible, but which actually had a precedent, that appeared +in print in the life of a Scotch earl and his heir. The miller, like +the old Earl of Elgin, feeling highly gratified by his boy’s success, +thought to reward it by sending him as big a cheque as the elder man +felt justified in giving over and above the younger man’s income, +bidding him spend that in any manner which might please him best. +And the young miller, like the young earl, returned the cheque <span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>with +a grateful acknowledgment of the kindness of the intention, and an +announcement that he had no use for the money; he was amply provided +with the sinews of war already; he would rather the sum were spent in +procuring some special pleasure for the father, who was frugal and +self-denying in his personal habits, or for the sister Fan, who, being +a girl—and an only and motherless girl—needed particular indulgence. +It remained to be proved whether the young miller would follow up his +extraordinary moderation by a career in any respect parallel to that of +the patriotic statesman.</p> + +<p>But in spite of Peter Constable’s pride and confidence in his son +from the beginning, it had not been without a certain ruefulness that +the man had consented to the single lad of the Constables’ household +forsaking the old path, which in Peter’s eyes was the safest and +pleasantest in the world, and which had been trodden smooth—as it +were, sprinkled white—for <span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>young Oliver by his father, grandfather, +and great-grandfather. The Constables were not of a rank to go beyond +a great-grandfather, but there had been at least three generations of +them in Friarton Mill and Friarton bakehouse, and mill and bakehouse +had flourished under the Constables’ rule, and had been known far +and wide for as unadulterated, well-ground flour, and as honestly +kneaded bread as could be expected from fallible men. The staff of +life, preserved as nearly as possible intact, had proved a boon to the +community, while the community in its turn had rewarded its faithful +servants by becoming their steady patrons.</p> + +<p>Of course the mill and the bakehouse must pass away from the family if +Oliver developed into a scholar and gentleman, unless, to be sure, Fan +married a miller and baker, which did not seem likely. On the whole, +fully sensible as Peter felt that Oliver was a credit and even an +honour to his people, the miller would a good <span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>deal rather that his son +had remained in his own rank of life, and taken over from his failing +hands the old mill, which was the next thing to ‘parent, child and +wife’ in its owner’s estimation.</p> + +<p>Events had not so shaped themselves, while Peter Constable was modest, +just, even generous. He would not set up his judgment against the +combined opinions of those who ought to know better—the learned masters +and parsons of Friarton Grammar School. Old Peter would not let his +prepossessions and prejudices stand in the way of Oliver’s rise in +life, if Oliver chose to rise; though to Peter’s mind such an ascent +was very often neither a comfortable nor a creditable process. He would +not constrain the lad to sacrifice an ambition which, with his gifts, +might be natural and proper in him, in order to maintain old landmarks.</p> + +<p>As for Oliver, he responded plastically to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>the promptings of his +early teachers. He was keen on colleges and college-learning with +all the power and delight which those ideas then involved for him. +And the child Fan was even more enthusiastic than her brother on the +associations and attainments he was entering upon. She set herself +with the pertinacity and absence of reasonable calculation of a woman, +from the day Oliver left for college, to qualify herself for being, at +no distant day, the worthy sister and fit companion of a great don—a +dignitary high up in the Church, or an honoured judge.</p> + +<p>So Peter tried also to accommodate himself to the will of Providence +and the force of circumstances. He was too old, indeed, to begin a +course of training in order to figure suitably as the father of one +of the magnates whose laurels were so quickly and easily won—in Fan’s +imagination. He knew full well, that though his boy as yet was the same +to him, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>and came home in the long vacation, rather to Fan’s disgust, +unforgetful of and undisgusted with a single homely detail of the old +life, though Oliver was, as he had ever been, perfectly natural and +unaffected, and would lend a hand to make up accounts and to help his +father with the management of the large business and many servants +in every way in the young man’s power, still in the course of time +Oliver’s widely different occupations must separate father and son.</p> + +<p>Even already, in the midst of the son’s staunchness to first ties, +the father recognised with a curious mixture of fatherly pride and +sharp twinges of pain, in spite of his fatherly unselfishness, the +certain consequences of Oliver’s withdrawal from handicraft or trade +and absorption in the pursuit of learning, and in the companionship of +the class with regard to which Peter, in spite of his sagacity, fully +believed the pursuit of learning was the regular <span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>business of the +members’ lives, unless when they took a little bodily recreation in +the form of cricket, or boating, or sport. Oliver might be as humble +and hearty as he liked, but he was growing in the very tone of his +voice, and carriage of his head, and movement of his hand, more and +more of a gentleman, like the Squire and his friends. The boy could +not help himself; it was to his credit that he should, like good wood, +take on polish so rapidly. But though he would never turn his back on +his father, the men would gradually grow strange and shy as companions +to each other. All the more reason, Peter thought bravely and +disinterestedly, for him to make matters as smooth and easy to Oliver +when he should come after him, his father, as the old miller could +contrive. There were certain things which he, Peter, could still do +better than his clever, cultivated son, and it was some indemnification +to Peter for his own loss to do them for Oliver.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p> + +<p>Peter sold advantageously the leases of the mills he had taken on in +addition to Friarton, and laid up the purchase-money in the funds, +where it would be no trouble, but a decided boon, to a gentleman and +scholar, as well as to Fan. Peter was on terms for the sale of the +baking business, but he could not find it in his heart to dispose of +Friarton Mill, though he knew he should always find a ready buyer in +the squire of Copley Grange, who would willingly suffer Peter to stay +on as tenant in the place for the rest of his life. But the miller +fancied Oliver might care to retain the mill, letting it to a tenant +who should reserve quarters for the landlord if ever he liked to +revisit the mill-house.</p> + +<p>Death stepped in and settled all the arrangements before Peter had +come to an end of his plans for his son’s greater ease and well-being. +The miller died peacefully with Oliver sharing Fan’s watch by their +father’s pillow, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>raising, for an interval of relief on the broad young +breast, the bowed shoulders on which the young man, as a child, had so +often ridden triumphantly, and receiving reverently and tenderly the +last fluttering sigh.</p> + +<p>In those first days of mourning little had been said of Oliver’s future +line of life, which had still remained so far undecided at the time +of his father’s death. As a matter of course, Oliver had returned to +Oxford to finish his term and take his degree, which he did with all +the <i>éclat</i> that had been expected from him, winning a first +class, and immediately afterwards returning to Friarton Mill—his first +return since his father’s death—with Fan awaiting him to do what she +could to make up for the absence of another face and voice by lavishing +upon her brother her unbounded congratulations.</p> + +<p>It was the month of June, one of the two seasons when Friarton Mill was +the nearest to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>an Arcadia. Enough of time had passed for Fan Constable +to be comforted for her old father’s death. She was able to hail her +brother’s arrival on the heels of his achievement, with all it implied +to her, in a spirit of exalted approbation. She was anxious to do him +all the honour in her power, and she displayed her anxiety according to +her instincts and training.</p> + +<p>It was the fashion in Friarton to say that Fan Constable was a +worldly-minded as well as an unjustifiably proud and assuming young +woman. But Fan expressed herself on this occasion in a sufficiently +simple manner. She conned a cookery book, and tormented the miller’s +old housekeeper to cook a dinner, which Sally Pope said might have +been another funeral or wedding feast; and farther exasperated Sally +by bidding her serve it at a late hour. In the meantime Fan repaired +with all her belongings to the drawing-room, which <span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>had not been her +ordinary sitting-room. She had previously dressed herself in her best +gown of dim black silk and crape, with its sweeping train, and she now +sat down to look out for Oliver with an impatiently throbbing heart.</p> + +<p>That drawing-room had been inaugurated by Fan, and yet it did not +reflect her character in the slightest degree. It was a singularly +colourless, pointless room, and Fan’s was not a colourless or pointless +nature. Fan’s taste had been just so far educated as to have reached +the chill circle of negation. She was able to reject with aversion +the stuffy crowd of incongruous, inconsequent tables and chairs, the +tawdry or glaring vulgarity of ornament in the houses of the wealthier +tradespeople, and even of the condescending professional people of +Friarton, with whom her visiting-list began and ended. Therefore +there was none of the embarrassment of more than doubtful riches apt +to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span><span id="cor_3"></span> +distinguish third- or fourth-rate drawing-rooms in the room at +Friarton Mill. There were no Berlin wool or bead monstrosities, no +‘table books’ overpoweringly gorgeous, like the Queen’s Lifeguards, +in scarlet and gold bindings; no terrible specimens of art in +water-colours or chalks, no china chimney vases painted coarsely in +all the colours of the rainbow, and reckoned very handsome jars by +their complacent possessors; no starched tangles of white cotton, +crackling at every touch, on the backs of chairs and sofas, or on the +faces of little tables, attaching themselves without permission to the +collars of coats and the sleeves of gowns. Fan knew better than these +attributes of half civilisation went, but her knowledge stopped short +there, and only served to reveal her remaining amount of ignorance. +And she was so afraid of compromising herself in her ignorance that +she restricted herself as severely in her drawing-room as though +she had been a social <span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>Puritan: she ventured on little or nothing +beyond the absolutely necessary rosewood tables and cane seats of the +simplest form, the carpet and hangings of the most subdued tint and +pattern, the plain cottage piano with its heap of music, not in admired +disorder, but in deliberate tidiness in the background,—the attenuated +flower-glasses which would only hold the most attenuated bouquets. The +one error which Fan had allowed herself to fall into, was still on the +side of colourlessness and coldness. There was a large mirror over the +plain white marble chimney-piece which reflected and intensified with a +stony, topographical correctness the dim, meagre effect of the room.</p> + +<p>There could not have been a wider contrast between the interior and +the world without, to which the room ought to have had an affinity, +between the natural homeliness and affluence of sweet beauty and gaiety +in the Friarton Mill surroundings, and the artificial vow of perpetual +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>frigidity and austerity—according to which Fan’s drawing-room was +arranged.</p> + +<p>‘That drawing-room of Fan Constable’s is another version of the glacial +theory,’ Mrs. Hilliard, the most privileged and liveliest woman in +Friarton, used to declare, with a shrug of her shoulders and a real +shiver. ‘It is the bondage to starvation of rising gentility.’</p> + +<p>Fan was perfectly conscious of a deficiency, while she would rather lay +herself open to a charge of something lacking in her room, than to the +countercharge of false adornment. But she was not sensible that the +chief and unpardonable defect was the absence of all trace of human joy +or sorrow, all touch of human character and token of individual bent, +which might have redeemed the barest room; and that it was the sense of +uneasiness and uncertainty, of doubting and halting on the threshold +of a new order of existence which rendered the atmosphere of this +room repellant as well as cold. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>Mrs. Hilliard was speaking a certain +amount of nonsense when she added that Fan’s room contained the last +drawing-room suite advertised by Maple or Shoolbred, weeded to death, +since neither Maple—nor Morris himself—could have adequately supplied +the fatal weakness of that room.</p> + +<p>But Fan’s own presence did something to enrich it. Fan in her sweeping +mourning was a small, fine-featured, keen-eyed, dark-haired, restless +little woman, whose temperament was the reverse of lymphatic, who had +none of the facile, mindless, heartless sweetness that would have added +the last mawkish offence to the other offences. How a creature like Fan +could exist even for an hour at a time in such a domestic desert, how +she could fail to impress on it some token of her ardent identity, only +proved the strong self-restraint, the determination of purpose of which +the girl was capable.</p> + +<p>Fan was idle this afternoon as she was rarely <span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>idle, since her +energy, like that of Michael the Wizard’s little fiends, demanded a +constant field for its operation; and as she was inclined to treat +with withering contempt all the poor little girlish fancy-work which +had ever come under her notice, she was notable, for her years, in +household management, and practical in feminine wisdom. Fan could have +kept the house, and regulated and overlooked the <i>ménage</i> very +nearly as well as Sally Pope—in fact she did so when Sally would let +her—and this is no small testimony to Fan’s talents, for old Sally Pope +was an experienced and efficient, if conceited, housekeeper and cook. +Not a girl in Friarton, not one of the well-born vicar’s daughters, who +had each received an excellent education, seen something of the great +world, was clever in her own way, and knew herself compelled to make +the most of her allowance for dress and minor expenses, could spend +that allowance more judiciously in every respect than Fan Constable—who +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>might have been supposed to revel in rude abundance—could dispose of +her private income. Not a girl, hardly a matron in the parish, was so +available for choir-practising, school teaching, managing the details +of charitable clubs as Fan Constable had already proved herself,—facts +which the vicar’s wife, and the mistress of Copley Grange, when she was +alive, knew right well.</p> + +<p>Fan acted more from general good principles, and, perhaps, in some +measure, unconsciously from policy, than from a purely benevolent +temper. Yet at the most unexpected seasons, and in circumstances which +were not so much out of the common as to warrant an exception to the +rule, Fan Constable would suddenly amaze and overcome her coadjutors +by a burst of womanly tenderness, deep, wistful and self-accusing, +perfectly irresistible in such a woman.</p> + +<p>It was by dint of her early strength of will, and of something sterling +in her earnestness even <span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>when the game did not seem worth the candle, +quite as much as on account of her father’s purse and a credulous +faith in her brother’s genius—with the future honour which it might +reflect on Friarton, that Fan had been lifted over the heads of her +compeers and promoted to a somewhat difficult footing, for which it +is needless to say that she had to bear much obloquy, in a rank of +society considerably above what was the original sphere of the owners +of Friarton Mill.</p> + +<p>Fan could not work on the eve of what she was firmly persuaded must be +one of the great crises of her life. Oliver was coming home crowned +with the only laurels he could have gathered; and Fan had the entire +sympathy with the gathering which belonged to the consciousness that +she too was capable of enterprise and application, though not in +securing such triumphs as Oliver had won. Fan knew perfectly that she +was not clever in one sense; she <span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>was even slow where book-learning was +concerned. Of course, she had by perseverance mastered the obstacles +which had lain in the way of her becoming a fairly well-educated girl, +after her father had been induced to send her to good schools both +at home and abroad; and she had striven hard to cultivate her mind +and taste still farther, so as to become a tolerable companion for +Oliver—one of whom he need not be ashamed when educated men and refined +women were his daily associates.</p> + +<p>Still the truth remained that Fan was not intellectual—like Catherine +Hilliard at the Meadows, or Lucy Houghton, the vicar’s eldest daughter, +who might have made some pretence to enact ‘sweet girl-graduates.’ +None could be better aware of what she lacked in this respect than +Fan, who had even an inordinate value for the attainments in which +she failed—who felt only the more called upon, with a half-pathetic +meekness and humility in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>the middle of her pride and high spirit, to +support Oliver’s dignity by the sedulous exercise of the faculties +Providence had given her. She believed she was ladylike, she knew she +was sensible, she felt none could be more deeply attached to Oliver +and his interests. She was prepared to prove an excellent mistress of +his establishment and manager of his household expenses, so long as he +needed her. What was still stronger evidence of her devotion, she was +prepared to vacate the post she craved, for the consummation of her +wishes, on a suitable marriage on Oliver’s part. Of course Oliver ought +to marry and marry well, which would be a help to his social position. +Then her services would no longer be required, and—well, she might +possibly marry in her turn.</p> + +<p>Oliver was coming home to Friarton Mill, but there was little +likelihood that he would stay there. He might already have formed his +plans—whatever they were Fan was ready to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>give in her adherence to +them. She had no desire to remain at Friarton Mill; she had, on the +contrary, a great inclination to get away from all that hampered her +and would hamper her brother. She was a woman of strong and faithful +family affections, but she was as nearly as possible without local +attachments. She had a feeling for beauty—rather in form than in +colour, but she was not possessed with the admiration which Friarton +Mill frequently called forth. She rather resented its ardent expression +to her, as some Scotchmen resent the enthusiasm many foreigners +entertain for them in the light of the countrymen of Robert Burns and +Sir Walter Scott.</p> + +<p>She did not at all approve of the shape the furor took; and she kept +herself out of the way of those visitors from Copley Grange, who, in +spite of the hints of the Squire, were too stolid in their superior +rank to understand that Fan was not the typical miller’s daughter and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>were fain to patronise her under an altogether erroneous impression.</p> + +<p>Such gratuitous patronage would fill Fan with an intensity of +indignation and affront so far beyond what the offence deserved, that +the wrath became ludicrous in its anti-climax. It was the new order of +things, it was the coming dignity, it was Oliver the chief bestower of +the dignity, that were all affably patronised in the person of Fan, and +Fan had to be angry for the whole.</p> + +<p>At last Oliver turned into the court, walking and carrying his bag from +the station as usual—‘as if nothing had happened,’ Fan exclaimed to +herself, with a quick shade of vexation, while she ran downstairs to +welcome him on the threshold.</p> + +<p>There was little family likeness between the brother and sister, as +there were few points in unison in their characters, beyond what +existed in their uprightness and the depth of regard between <span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>the +two—who, so far as near kindred was concerned, stood alone in the world +and were all in all to each other. Certainly Oliver was spare as Fan +was slight, and there was a little of a worn look about the young man’s +thin face, which testified to the work of nervous energy there also. +But he was big and Fan was little. His hair was brown, straight, and +already thin. Hers was black, wavy and luxuriant. He had a ruddy tinge +in the brown of his complexion which no burning of the midnight oil—and +he had burned it in his time with a young man’s superb recklessness—had +served to rout. Fan’s complexion was the clear paleness often found in +a brunette.</p> + +<p>But the greatest contrast in Oliver and Fan Constable’s features was +found in the eyes, though in both brother and sister these were brown. +Fan’s had the hazel tint and the keen observation combined with the +shyness of a pheasant or a partridge’s eye. Oliver’s eyes <span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>were darker +in hue, and though they were not without repressed fire, had much of +the brooding reflectiveness—verging on doggedness—of the ox’s eye.</p> + +<p>Oliver Constable was firmly knit, and ought to have carried himself as +easily, and with as natural a grace, in his broad-shouldered height, as +Fan did in her low stature. But the peculiar neatness and daintiness of +personal belongings which constituted not only a crowning distinction +but a ruling passion in Fan, so that slovenliness and disorder caused +her absolute pain, were wholly absent in her brother’s case. There +could not have been the remotest chance, even supposing he had been +a short instead of a tall man, of his worst enemies calling Oliver +‘dapper’ or ‘smug,’ as some of Fan’s ‘dear friends’ chose to term her +‘natty’ or ‘trim.’</p> + +<p>But although Oliver wore the grey morning suit which has replaced the +‘purple’ in connection <span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>with the ‘fine linen’ in the dress of a Dives +or a duke, which is at once perfectly unassuming and perfectly good of +its kind, the miller’s son and heir suffered from an innate, incurable +personal negligence, such as besets some men in all ranks and in all +nations—only the defect in an Englishman belonging to one of the upper +classes is free from the repulsive element of uncleanliness which is +apt to attend on the Bohemian negligence of a foreigner.</p> + +<p>Fan was chronically distressed by this flaw of negligence in Oliver’s +idiosyncrasy. She had made a searching analysis to discover its origin, +in the course of vigorous attempts to overcome the weakness, but she +had been no more able to reach its root than she had succeeded in +shaking its influence for a day. It was not that Oliver was so ill-made +that his coats and trousers would not sit properly on his figure, for +he was really a handsome man if he could have done himself justice. It +was not <span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>that the habits of a gentleman did not come naturally to him, +and had not been long practised by him. For that matter their father, +who had never aspired to be more than his father had been before him, +had shown himself a tidy old martinet in his ways—just as she, Fan, +could not bear a pin out of its place, long before she was subjected to +school training. Yet here was Oliver, who had enjoyed every advantage +since he was a mere lad, who was, as Fan owned willingly, more +fastidious than herself in all essentials of manly and womanly good +breeding, in non-essentials a picture of helpless, hopeless disorder +from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot; with the shifting +hat or cap on the drifting clouds of brown hair which no close clipping +of barber could keep a week in its place; with his crumpled collar, +his loosened, twisted necktie, his eccentric cuffs—one of which would +disappear up his coat-sleeve, while the other would out-herod fashion +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>by hanging not merely over his knuckles, but nearly to the tips of his +fingers. The last offence was in his boots, which, let Oliver buy them +from the prince of honest and accomplished boot-makers, in the course +of a week or two, took to disreputable curling up at the toes and going +down at the heels, with an air of being hard upon the parting of upper +leather and sole, and of affording an irresistible attraction to mud +and dust, like the sorriest hob-nailed shoes of any day labourer.</p> + +<p>All this in a young, handsome, college-bred man would have been +unpardonable if there had been any cure for it; but Fan in her despair +was profoundly conscious there was none. She might call Oliver to +account every hour of the day, as a mother who is a disciplinarian may +lecture a careless hoyden among her daughters. Oliver would take her +remonstrance in perfect good humour, but he would not be a bit the +better for it. She might quote for his <span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>benefit with cutting sarcasm +the old tripping compliment to the very wildness of <i>abandon</i> in +woman’s dress——</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Hair loosely flowing, dress as free;</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Simplicity more taketh me,—’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="flat">and ask him if he thought that applied as well to a man’s toilet?</p> + +<p>Oliver would laugh and put up his hand, with a sense of guilt, to his +dishevelled moustache, then let it travel further to the Ricquet-like +tufts of his hair. He would look down with too tranquil deprecation at +the handkerchief dangling by one end from his pocket. But though hair +and handkerchief were remedied for the moment, they would be in a worse +condition twenty times before the day was done.</p> + +<p>Oliver was also spasmodically awkward in his gestures, a peculiarity +sufficiently noticeable in a well-made man who had taken his share of +muscular exercise and learnt the noble art of self-defence.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p> + +<p>Fan’s consolation was that Oliver, though the reverse of a puppy or +even alas! of an Adonis, was still unmistakably a gentleman in his most +extraordinary <i>gaucheries</i>; and when he was roused and in earnest, +his passion and determination mastered his mixture of indifference and +nervousness, until the bodily movements responded to the spirit within, +and acquired a certain untrammelled dignity and power.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III"> + CHAPTER III. + <br> + <span>OLIVER’S ANNOUNCEMENT.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">The</span> brother and sister met with the ‘Here I am, Fan,’ and +the ‘So you’ve got home, Oliver,’ of the thoroughly English brother +and sister, who, however cordially attached and however much they may +have to say to each other on particular occasions, rarely exceed such +words—accompanying the grasp of the hand, and the kiss on the cheek, +even on meeting after months of separation. Effusive speech and lavish +caresses are not for the true representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race.</p> + +<p>Oliver, in writing to his sister, when his name was in the prize list, +had so far forgotten <span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>his origin as to let his pen slip into the short +regretful sentence, ‘He would have been pleased that I had not missed +the mark.’ But even on paper he did not further specify the tie, and +now Oliver gave no sign of remembrance, that it was the first time he +had come home and failed to receive his father’s greeting. For the +old man was yet alive, though on his death-bed eagerly watching for +his son, when Oliver obeyed the summons which had last brought him to +Friarton Mill. It did not follow by any means that Oliver forgot the +past, though he remained dumb as he followed Fan to her room.</p> + +<p>‘Do you sit here now, Fan?’ he asked his sister with a little surprise, +and an involuntary tone of disappointment. But even as he spoke, he +began to reproach himself privately for the question—so like a man’s +blundering to put it, within the first moment of his arrival too. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>To +be sure poor Fan still found the old sitting-room too full of sad +memories to be encountered without an effort. How could he, even in +imagination, have condemned a girl to sit alone where the old family +circle had been formed, with a dreary sense of a blank never to be +filled up, in one corner, and in one chair, constantly present to her +mind? It mattered little what room they occupied just then, and only a +stupid, thoughtless fellow would have drawn attention to the change, +thus carelessly probing the wound.</p> + +<p>Oliver hastily directed the conversation to something else, without +waiting for an answer to his question, and in doing so accepted the +new domestic arrangement without protest—all the same his thoughts had +been dwelling vaguely but persistently throughout his railway journey +on the familiar low-browed room. The local attachments, which did not +exist for Fan, approached to a passion in Oliver’s nature. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>He had +seen, without trying to see them, his father’s big chair and ponderous +writing-desk, opposite which Fan’s little table and work-basket used +to stand. He had contemplated idly and half absently as if he had been +on the spot, the high wooden chimney-piece painted grey, and having +in relief, only in stucco unfortunately, clusters of wheat ears—as +if the chimney-piece had been designed expressly for a miller and +baker’s hearth—the corner cupboards, the odd nondescript article of +furniture in old mahogany which was neither side-board nor side-table, +nor cabinet, but which had the handiest shelves, the roomiest drawers +conceivable. At this season the purplish red roses were budding in such +profusion round the windows of the old parlour, that if a high wind +came when the roses were in full bloom, their petals would—as Oliver +had seen them before—be stripped off, and swept in a stream on the +faded worsted moss of the carpet <span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. +There were seats in the windows on which Oliver had often gathered +up his long legs and disposed of his arms in an attitude the most +excruciating to the eye of the spectator, yet the most restful to the +body of the performer. Oliver had been addicted, from boyhood, to +employing these low window ledges as convenient steps to the court, a +practice which obviated any trouble of opening and closing doors. He +had been prone to sitting half in half out of a window, with his legs +dangling to the ground; when he occupied the post in June, he had felt +himself like an old Greek crowned with roses, and as it was his only +chance of such a distinction he had borne with stoicism sundry pricks +and scratches from aggressive stems, and faced philosophically the +dropping of rose leaves—possibly of earwigs and ladybirds—within the +collar of his coat.</p> + +<p>Oliver was exceedingly fond of the old parlour, and he was decidedly +not fond of Fan’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>drawing-room; at the same time he was cast in a +different mould from the Squire of Copley Grange. Oliver had his +own views on æsthetics as on everything else, but the pattern of a +wall-paper or the tone of a carpet did not cost him agonies. He was not +always calling out for calm and repose and key notes. His residence +in Oxford had no doubt cultivated his taste without his knowing it, +but the training had failed to beget in him a special mania—apart +from intrinsic beauty or pleasant associations—for old oak and blue +china, Venetian glass, or Queen Anne needlework, unless the last were +the homely old garden-flower which bears that name. Now, as it had +more than once occurred to him, if Fan had been in some of the men’s +rooms, and had possessed rooms of her own, she would by this time have +been engulfed beyond the redemption of her natural taste in a charmed +region of dim and soft hues, faded colours and faint tracery varied by +bold interjections; <span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>she would have sat surrounded by mystic dados, +quaint Indian and Japanese matting, stately Jacobian chairs, gorgeous +peacock’s plumes and sunflowers. Yet it was Oliver and not Fan—as +both were aware—who was imaginative and susceptible. Except where her +prominent bump of order was concerned, it was he and not she, who was +sensitively affected by the surroundings; above all it was he who was +tenderly faithful to his first love in household gods, as in inanimate +nature.</p> + +<p>Oliver and Fan Constable talked at dinner of the hundred-and-one +nothings which the members of one family, meeting after some months’ +separation which has not divided the speakers in more than space, find +to interest them. Oliver took occasion to remark, <i>à propos</i> of +the dinner itself, that Sally Pope had not lost her skill, and that he +was quite able to do justice to her fried soles and lamb cutlets though +he had dined at Paddington. He had not <span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>meant either to try Sally’s +patience, or to keep Fan’s dinner waiting. He had intended to come in +for her tea.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t mind dining late, indeed, I greatly prefer it,’ said Fan with +decision; ‘and since—since poor father is gone,’ it was an effort for +her still to get out the words, though she showed no inclination to +cry,—she was not the ordinary sort of woman, who is given to express +her deepest feelings in tears,—‘we have not his tastes and habits to +think of first. There is no need for you to dine early after you have +been so long accustomed to dine late in hall.’</p> + +<p>‘The hour for dining in hall is not considered late feeding-time +now-a-days,’ said Oliver, carelessly; ‘but it is a great deal too late +for me,’ he added, with more interest. ‘I am not like you, Fan; I +detest dining late. I stick to one o’clock as the hour which appetite, +common sense, the testimony of our ancestors, and the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>practice of our +continental neighbours have all agreed to honour. I know what you are +going to say, that noon is the correct time. Well, I don’t object to +anticipate matters; dining at noon is nearly the only mediæval custom, +about the restitution of which, with advantage, I am quite clear.’</p> + +<p>‘I was not going to propose dining at noon,’ denied Fan, emphatically; +‘it would be an exceedingly inconvenient arrangement, unless households +rose at daybreak again.’</p> + +<p>‘And why not?’ inquired Oliver, innocently.</p> + +<p>‘Why not, indeed?’ retorted Fan, with lively impatience. ‘It is +sufficient they don’t, and few people would like to form solitary +exceptions. You may try it yourself if you like; not that I mean to say +you’re a bad riser as it is.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t often see the sun rise in summer,’ acknowledged Oliver, +penitently, as he carved <span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>Sally’s <i>pièce de resistance</i>. He carved +badly—worse than his father had carved, causing Fan, who was an expert +in such feats, to fidget and marvel afresh. But Oliver himself was not +in the least put out by his deficiency in table accomplishments.</p> + +<p>‘If sunrise is so well worth seeing in Switzerland,’ continued Oliver, +‘it cannot be wholly unworthy of our notice here, as our actions seem +to imply.’</p> + +<p>‘But if you get up in time for the sunrise, you must be content to go +to bed with the sun,’ said Fan; ‘when all your neighbours are widest +awake and fullest of life.’</p> + +<p>‘There’s the rub,’ admitted Oliver, shaking his finely-proportioned +head, <span id="cor_4"></span>with its towselled thatch; ‘but there ought to be some +compensation.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t think you men, wise as you are, take consequences into +consideration sufficiently,’ dogmatised Fan.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span></p> + +<p>‘My dear child, don’t treat us to ironical flattery, though I grant +ours is a belated kind of wisdom, so that we have to go to you women +to make it practical for us. There was Greatorex, one of our tutors, +who kept me in company in groaning over dinner in hall not being supper +and the winding up of the day at once, supposing we were condemned to +eat a meal in common. You will say the remedy was in Greatorex’s hands +as well as in mine, but he never found it till he married a nice young +soul who condescended to work out his theory for him. He has his dinner +now at the time he ought to have eaten his lunch, but generally forgot +or made a muddle of it. He is saved from becoming an ignoble martyr to +mingled starvation and dyspepsia quite as much as to work. He has his +evening stroll or his book, and his wife’s music by his own fireside +in winter, when other men are at table, where he can join them for a +little variety when he chooses.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span></p> + +<p>‘Ay, the little variety when he chooses, which no doubt will be pretty +frequently, makes all the difference in the world,’ said Fan, drily. +‘But I thought, Oliver, men could not work after dinner?’</p> + +<p>‘Can’t they?’ questioned Oliver, with equal dryness. ‘What! not after +an hour’s rest such as a labouring man takes? Why, they do it every day +they live when they eat a sufficient meal and call it luncheon. If they +eat less it is at the peril of their health, with the temptation to +gorge in the evening.’</p> + +<p>‘But head work, Oliver, head work,’ remonstrated Fan.</p> + +<p>‘Is much like other work,’ maintained Oliver, stoutly. ‘It is not head +work which stands in the way. Are you such an innocent as to suppose +that head work is the engrossing occupation of the mass of the men at +Oxford, or, for that matter, the mass of late diners? You may as well +say prayers and have done <span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>with it. Bless you, Fan, I wish you saw +some of the drags coming into the town, or watched the men in their +boats at every hour of the twelve save the dinner-hour. True, many of +the undergraduates do their reading on the water, only the subjects +of study are apt to consist of the “Field” or “Bell’s Life,” or the +fastest, trashiest novel.’</p> + +<p>‘But you read, Oliver,’ protested Fan, almost indignantly, for she +had not so many cherished visions that she could afford to have one +demolished in this cool manner.</p> + +<p>‘Oh yes, I read,’ he asserted, as the simplest matter of course. ‘There +are always some fellows who sap, some men whose business and pleasure +are made up of reading under any circumstances. And I may give it as +my experience that a proportion of the reading men are of my mind and +Greatorex’s. How I did envy Greatorex going home to eat his wholesome +little early dinner—call it a dinner of herbs, if <span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>you like—in peace, +tête-à-tête with his wife, in his own little dining-room; returning to +Mrs. Greatorex’s cheerful, pretty tea-table, walking with her, having +his book, and his lounge, and smoke, his song and his chat afterwards; +supping with his family, perhaps bidding a solitary beggar like me, +who did not go in much for riotous “wines,” share his supper, like a +Christian and a gentleman.’</p> + +<p>‘But “the feast of reason and the flow of soul,” the very spirit of the +feast, there would not be room for that, Oliver?’ It was characteristic +of Fan that she never contracted her brother’s name.</p> + +<p>‘“Oceans of room,” according to Traddles the immortal. Where there is +a will there is a way, Fannikin. Besides, you are referring to a rare +sort of spice, not often to be found at any dinner, “late or ear’,” +as Sandy Carmichael would say. Now you are the lady of the house, +will your ladyship let me carry the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>claret, and the strawberries, +and biscuits over to the mill gallery? It is the hour, as a hundred +poets have sung in a thousand styles of verse, as well as the season +for enjoying the cream of out-of-door delights, including beetles and +bats—but I’ll smoke the last away to a respectful distance if you +object to them. Don’t let us lose more of the first evening, and Fan, +what an evening! The sun is not to say shining on us, he is setting +for us, like an affable, royal old fellow, at the height of his June +splendour. Come along, Fan.’</p> + +<p>She would much rather have gone to the drawing-room, but, to do her +justice, she had always humoured Oliver in trifles. She went with him +without apparent reluctance, only trying in vain to make him leave +the transference of the wine and fruit to the housemaid, whom Fan had +drilled into a deft and dexterous table-maid.</p> + +<p>‘No, no!’ Oliver would have his way; ‘you <span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>go before, and I follow +after. Imagine yourself a lady of the last century, Fan, with a black +boy grinning, and covetously eyeing the best strawberries in the dish, +<span id="cor_5"></span>at your heels.’</p> + +<p>Then she had to wait a little impatiently till he exchanged a jesting +compliment with Sally Pope, who had smoothed her ruffled plumes, put on +her afternoon gown, and was ready to waylay and have a word with the +young master on his return, as he passed across the court. Had she not +done so, unquestionably Oliver would have repaired to Sally’s region of +the house before the end of the evening.</p> + +<p>‘Welcome home, Master Oliver, the sight of you is good for an old +woman’s eyes,’ Sally hailed him.</p> + +<p>‘Of course, Sally, and ain’t I growing a handsomer fellow every day? +As for you, why you look a dozen years younger than you did last +summer. You’ll be having the banns put <span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>up, and coming upon me for a +wedding-present before I have time to think what it shall be.’</p> + +<p>‘Come, now, Master Oliver, none of your young man’s chaff—and me old +enough to be your granny,’ remonstrated Sally, with great relish of the +stale joke.</p> + +<p>Fan was considerate of Sally’s claims where they did not interfere with +the girl’s own plans. She was substantially kind to the old woman, +and Sally, like everybody else who came in contact with Fan, had a +just respect and regard for her young mistress. Notwithstanding this +laudable sentiment, Sally looked upon life in the light that it was +alike her duty and privilege to bear her testimony against the crying +sin and folly of new-fangled, upstart ways, and to resist them to the +utmost of her power. The opposition was fruitless; Miss Fan got the +better of the old housekeeper, and Sally was not without a secret, +half-grudging admiration of the girl’s capacity for ruling.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p> + +<p>But the old servant entertained a totally different kind of pride in +Master Oliver—of fondness half-protecting, half-reliant for him. She +detained him at this moment entirely with his own will, though to the +chagrin of his sister.</p> + +<p>Fan could not understand Oliver’s accessibility to servants, and his +ease with them. She was tempted to think he did not know and keep his +own place where they were concerned. On the other hand, this conclusion +did not coincide with some of her independent observations. Fan had +a candour and liberality of observation, in spite of her essential +narrowness and concentration of mind, which forced her often to remark +effects that puzzled her in her rooted convictions. Fan had learnt +from local gossip that there was something of the same bearing as that +of Oliver towards his servants in Mr. Ayott of Copley Grange to his +confidential and superannuated gamekeepers and nurses. She could not be +altogether sure that the simplicity <span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>and geniality were not among those +secrets of good breeding which were somehow beyond her acquisition. +Certainly no servant abused Oliver’s frankness and <i>bonhomie</i>.</p> + +<p>The brother and sister stood in the twilight darkness of the oldest +room in the mill, empty at this hour. Oliver would have paused again +to make comments on what machinery was dimly revealed, and what store +of grain could be faintly discerned. But Fan, who had never from her +childhood cared for such details, nipped his intention in the bud and +dragged him on. ‘You said you wanted to be in the open air, dear; don’t +stay in this musty-fusty place, where I always dread rats.’ Then they +went out into the gallery.</p> + +<p>Oliver pulled out a pile of new sacks to serve as a seat for Fan, +and converted a full sack into a pedestal to support the tray he had +carried. For himself he was content to loll on the old carved railing, +hunching up his <span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>shoulders, sinking his head in his breast, thrusting +out his bearded chin, squaring his moustached mouth, and blinking +with his brown eyes, contriving altogether to look as like a dwarf or +humpback, with the grotesquely ugly face which would have served for a +<span id="cor_6"></span>gurgoyle, as a stalwart, comely Englishman could well look.</p> + +<p>At the couple’s feet flowed the Brook, over which the long pendent +boughs of the great willow drooped and swayed and dipped their +leaves—the blue-green of which was whitened, yellowed, and stained +with olive in the water. Before the two stretched the undulating bosky +park of Copley Grange, with the rich foliage of its fine trees still +in the gay vivid green of June, before it has grown dull, heavy, and +monotonous under the heat of July, with the red and white clusters of +the thorns competing with the red and white spikes of the chestnuts. +The sun was sinking like a ball of fire in the gold <span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>and crimson west, +where all the magnificence of the sky was still gathered, leaving +what had been the dim soft blue of a midsummer day, for a moment, by +contrast, cold in its purity in the east.</p> + +<p>No nightingale yet lifted up his voice and poured forth his fervent +appeal, but a whole chorus of thrushes and blackbirds spoke and +answered in their hearts’ content. Occasionally the continuous gurgle +of the water was broken and accentuated by the leap of a trout or the +splash of a water-rat.</p> + +<p>Oliver looked and listened in silence for some time, turning his face +to the sunset light. Then he suddenly, and as it were, involuntarily, +took off his cap, and the radiance about his head brought out threads +of chestnut and gold in his brown hair.</p> + +<p>He drew a long breath—a kind of sighing heigho! as with a depth of +enjoyment that by reason of its very depth had a strain of sadness +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>in it, because of the shallowness and transitoriness of all human +pleasure, and then announced, confidentially, that people ought not +to boast, but he believed Friarton Mill in its own peculiar line beat +England, beat Europe hollow for beauty.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, it is beautiful here,’ said Fan, quietly, with her eyes turning +naturally to the pillars and arcades of that unfortunate Italian front +to Copley Grange, seen at the end of the vista directly opposite the +mill. ‘I know judges object to the house, and Mr. Ayott cannot bear +it. If he had money enough he would pull it down and begin rebuilding +to-morrow. They know best, no doubt, and I am prepared to be told it +is bad taste in me, but the house always strikes me as stately and +imposing.’</p> + +<p>‘I was not thinking of the house,’ said Oliver; ‘but I don’t see +why it should not be allowed a sort of English classicism, though +of course its Italian classicism is humbug here. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>It is not without +associations,—calls up George Lord Lyttelton and Johnson’s “Lives of +the Poets.”’</p> + +<p>‘Not to me,’ said honest Fan; ‘but I wonder,’ she persisted, sticking +to her idea, and desiring, without changing the conversation abruptly, +and putting a point-blank question with brutal plainness, to lead +the talk to the great point with which she began to think Oliver was +dallying, seeking to keep it in the background, ‘I wonder you are so +little critical of Copley Grange and so much in love with Friarton Mill +after you have been at Oxford.’</p> + +<p>Oxford was Fan’s Rome or Jerusalem. She had visited Oxford more than +once in Commemoration Week, and though that was hardly the proper +season at which to estimate academical glories, it had been enough for +her to see her brother at home among distinguished men and refined +women. Fan secretly hoped <span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>that Oliver’s destination, with her own +in his company, would be Oxford. In spite of what he had told her, +his university town still stood to her in the light of the capital of +the great English empire of letters—not a Bohemian empire, but such +a dignified, decorous, learned empire as Fan’s soul loved, to which +Oliver had a birthright and title, to which his claim would be Fan’s +passport. Nowhere else, she fancied, could they without pretence get +into such good society, escaping finally from the penalties of the most +unvarnished trading antecedents.</p> + +<p>‘Everything in its own place,’ said Oliver, lightly. ‘I am fond of my +“’Varsity,” too—of every stone of my college. I think Cambridge is the +only place worthy of being named in the same breath with Oxford. I do +not give a rap for the pretensions of Salamanca, or Padua, or Paris, +or Heidelberg, or Zurich, or Edinburgh, matched with those of Oxford +and Cambridge. I am as besottedly proud of my “’Varsity” as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>an Oxonian +and a John Bull can be. But after all, my connection with it, though I +shall never forget it, was a passing accident compared to my life-long +connection with this place.’</p> + +<p>Fan’s hopes fell a little. Oliver’s words, however appreciative of +his ‘’Varsity,’ did not indicate an intention of returning to it and +settling in it. ‘I am afraid it will cost you a pang to leave Friarton +Mill,’ suggested Fan, still feeling her way to her object, as the +sincerest woman will sometimes.</p> + +<p>‘But I am not going to leave it,’ said Oliver, with quiet assurance, +staring down into the water, as if in contradiction of the words which +the poet had put into its mouth—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Men may come and men may go,</div> + <div class="verse indent1">But I go on for ever.’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class="flat">‘At least, not so long as I can help it, I hope,’ Oliver corrected +himself quickly; ‘not till I <span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>have to make that exodus which lies +before every mother’s son of us.’</p> + +<p>‘My dear boy, what are you thinking of?’ Fan was driven to ask, in +discomfited surprise and bewilderment. ‘Father was not able to make you +independent of a profession. You may, indeed, become one of the masters +of the Grammar School in the town here. But oh! Oliver, I am sure it +would be a great mistake. The Fremantles and the Wrights,’ naming the +families of two of Oliver’s old patrons among the masters, ‘have been +kind, but even they, while they are ready to acknowledge your honours, +don’t forget that you are the son of a tradesman.’</p> + +<p>‘They are heartily welcome to remember it,’ said Oliver, with perhaps +more heat than there was occasion for. ‘What! deny our father, Fan, who +never did a thing to be ashamed of? which is what few men’s sons in any +rank can say. It is my turn to wonder. My origin is <span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>the last thing I +should wish my associates to forget if I were to become a master in +Friarton, which I have not the slightest intention of being.’</p> + +<p>‘You know that is not what I meant,’ protested Fan, growing pale with +reproach and excitement; ‘I loved and honoured father with all my +heart, Oliver, you know I did. And it is no dishonour to his memory to +say that while I am proud to think he had qualities far above those +of an ordinary tradesman, I am sorry he had to go into trade, and to +continue in it all his life.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t know what you call an ordinary tradesman,’ said Oliver; ‘but +though I am perfectly aware that you were the best of daughters, Fan,—I +would not for a moment think of questioning it,—I must in common truth +blame you for inconsistency. My father, who was as you say all his life +in trade, had not the opinion of it which you appear to hold; and I +must say to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>look upon trade as degrading, is rather an odd way, though +you don’t intend it, of honouring the man who was pleased to be the +miller and baker of Friarton.’</p> + +<p>‘Father was an old man who belonged to another generation than ours,’ +Fan defended herself.</p> + +<p>‘I have no doubt there were as many fools in the past generation as in +the present,’ growled Oliver, not very politely, but his spirit was +beginning to kindle into a flame.</p> + +<p>‘He got on in the world,’ continued Fan, paying no attention to the +growl. ‘Our starting-point, thanks to him, is not what his was. He +was willing that you should go to Oxford and become a scholar and +<span id="cor_7"></span>gentleman.’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, God bless him!’ said Oliver, shortly.</p> + +<p>‘After all I cannot think what we are arguing about;’ Fan took herself +back with a faint smile. ‘Over what you imagine is my undervaluation of +trade—but that is past so far as we <span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>are concerned. And I promise to +respect any profession you may choose, Oliver.’</p> + +<p>‘I am not going in for any profession,’ said Oliver, still a little +moodily. He was a man by nature eager for the sympathy of those he +cared for, though he was not dependent upon it, and he knew he would +get no sympathy from Fan in what he was about to do, therefore he had +instinctively put off to the last moment telling her his intention.</p> + +<p>‘Are you going abroad then?’ inquired Fan, with her heart sinking +fathoms deeper than at its first disappointment.</p> + +<p>Was Oliver, her only brother, all that she had in the light of mere +kindred, deliberately purposing to cut himself off from her? He +professed to put small weight on his advantages; but was he meaning +to let them—as in the case of so many men who rose in the world—be +the means of creating a gulf between him and the single person who +represented his relations and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>his early life? Which of the two was the +inconsistent person?</p> + +<p>Oliver penetrated so far into Fan’s suspicions—they were altogether +unjust, but they were too cruel towards herself for him to resent the +reflection they cast on him.</p> + +<p>‘My dear Fan, didn’t you hear me say I was going to live and die at +Friarton Mill?’ he contented himself with putting it strongly.</p> + +<p>‘But what are you to do here?’ demanded Fan, in a voice half mystified, +half sharp. She felt a little relieved; but such a terrible suspicion +was rising in the background of her thoughts that it threatened not +merely to cloud her returning serenity, but to overwhelm it more +entirely even than the apprehension of her brother’s forsaking her had +done. Oliver at his best had always been somewhat incomprehensible to +Fan, unmoved by the things which keenly affected her, powerfully worked +upon by influences which did not touch her. They <span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>had always been an +affectionate brother and sister, but in some respects they had never +been of one mind and soul from babyhood upwards; she felt at this +moment of doubt and alarm that she could not venture to predict what +Oliver might not do or leave undone at any crisis of his history.</p> + +<p>‘Of course be a miller and baker, like all the heads of the family I +ever heard of,’ said Oliver, trying hard to look and speak as if he +were not aware that he was inflicting a shock on his sister. But the +fact was he was agitated in giving his decision, and he showed the +amount of his agitation, by relinquishing the bodily contortions in +which he was prone to indulge. He stood up tall and straight facing +Fan, merely thrusting his hands into the depths of his pockets, as he +proceeded to unfold his intentions. ‘I shall bolt the cleanest flour, +and bake the purest bread, and have my finger in the capital and labour +pie—there is an appropriate <span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>figure for you; and as bread is the staff +of life, and the capital and labour question one of the most vexed +questions of the day, I should think the duties and interests involved +will last my time.’</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV"> + CHAPTER IV. + <br> + <span>A HOT ARGUMENT.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">‘You</span> will never do it,’ gasped Fan, rising to her feet also.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, I will,’ said Oliver, now perching himself precariously on the +ancient carved railing. ‘I mean what I say and I will do what I mean.’</p> + +<p>‘What! waste all your talents and education?’</p> + +<p>‘I should not call them wasted; “the better man the better deed.” If I +have any talent out of the common—’</p> + +<p>‘You know you have; what is the good of mock humility?’ poor Fan +assailed him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p> + +<p>‘Well, granted I am not a blockhead, even granted I were a genius, +which would be a gross delusion—stop, I’ll light my pipe, as we’ve got +the length of talking the matter calmly over.’</p> + +<p>He had recovered his composure and cheerfulness the moment he had +broken the truth to his sister, but that did not make the truth less +exasperating to Fan.</p> + +<p>‘Hans Sachs,’ Oliver recommenced with easy discursiveness, ‘remained at +once a minnesinger and a cobbler, and I do not know that he either sang +or cobbled the worse for it. You will go and listen with satisfaction +to an opera of Wagner’s, but not take the moral of the text into +account, you most illogical of Fans. Hans Sachs lived in the blooming +time of Nüremberg, in the middle ages to be sure. You may think the +world has grown too old for simplicity and a higher ambition than +rising above the class one was born in.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p> + +<p>‘What is a higher ambition?’ interrupted Fan, abruptly and +incredulously.</p> + +<p>‘To raise one’s class and rise with it—much the truer and surer, if +it be the slower process,’ answered Oliver, without hesitation or +circumlocution, as announcing a thought out and incontrovertible +proposition. ‘But if you think Hans Sachs forms too remote a precedent, +there is Jasmin, the French barber and poet, quite in our day. And I +have heard of a very worthy fellow who is also more than a poetaster, +and has yet worked out his “shifts” like a man, going down day by +day with his pick and his lamp into the blackness of darkness of a +Scotch coal mine. I tell you, child, it is the notion that ability +and education will not grace any honest calling and station which is +the essence of snobbishness and vulgarity. It has tainted every class +in this country. It plays the very devil with many a man who might +otherwise have been respected and respectable, a useful <span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>citizen and +worthy member of society. It causes a certain order of talents and +refined tastes to prove a curse instead of a blessing to a working +man, even to a clerk, or a shop-lad. I look upon it,’ said Oliver with +restrained passion, ‘as being at the bottom of much of the unprincipled +extravagance, fraudulent speculation, and criminality and misery which +are eating out—not to say the prosperity—the integrity of the nation.’</p> + +<p>‘Then you would introduce Hindoo castes or Russian serfdom into +England?’ Fan was a little confused and incoherent in her examples, +which was not like her, for she was clear-headed as far so she saw, +but she was driven nearly beside herself. ‘You would forbid any man to +exercise the gifts which God has given him, and rise to their level in +the social scale.’</p> + +<p>‘I would do nothing of the kind. I would have every man be a law to +himself, and act <span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>up to his own standard—doing his best to raise that +standard. I don’t quarrel with any fellow for abandoning tailoring—say, +and adopting painting—always provided he has a clear justification for +the change by finding it absolutely necessary for the expression of the +gift that is in him. I only say that it is done a thousand times every +day, when it is neither justifiable nor necessary. It is high time +somebody made a stand against the disloyalty and folly.’</p> + +<p>‘And you are the somebody who knows better than every one else!’ said +Fan, sarcastically.</p> + +<p>There had always been great freedom of opinion and speech between the +brother and sister in the middle of their warm mutual regard. Oliver +was not the man to behave like a Turk to his womankind. Fan had not +been accustomed to be treated as an inane dove, neither was she the +woman to consent <span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>readily to the treatment, whether from father, +brother, husband or son.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, Oliver, how can you be so conceited and self-willed?’ she +protested, indignantly. ‘I thought you were too clever—really, not to +be modest; I begin to think learning has made you mad!’</p> + +<p>Oliver shrugged his shoulders.</p> + +<p>‘An unlucky, unintentional quotation, my dear, which, after all, I dare +not presume to take to myself. But I am not the only man who holds +views which, thank God, are gaining ground in our day. Look here, +Fan, I hope this is not altogether a case of want of ambition, sloth, +a taste for low life—if you care to apply that term to the trading +class to which our father belonged. It is a point of conscience which +is beginning to be mooted among men, whether or not they may be able +to act upon it as they ought. You think a great deal of Oxford. If +you were down there, you <span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>would find some reading men, far before +me in scholarship, regretting that they had not learned a trade and +maintaining the dignity of labour in its most primitive form.’</p> + +<p>‘Young men will take up any crochet for the sake of contradiction,’ +said Fan, with a girl’s narrow dogmatism and ready scorn.</p> + +<p>‘Still, if it is any comfort to you,’ continued Oliver, with a laugh +not so genial as his laugh was wont to be, ‘there are far more cads +and fools in Oxford and the world than such would be reformers—idiotic +as you may reckon them in their own line. There are fellows who, +like Tito, would not only cut as neatly as possible their greatest +benefactors if they happened to be grocers and linen-drapers, but would +go far beyond Tito in boasting of the creditable performance. There +are numbers of young Englishmen prepared to turn their backs, on the +first opportunity, on the iron or the cotton by which their fathers +have played their parts, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>according to their lights, like men, with +success (while the iron and the cotton trades were never in greater +need of fresh light and guidance), all in order that young England in +this direction may vegetate, run to seed, starve or steal, as officers +whom the piping times of peace suit best, briefless barristers, or +incompetent clergymen.’</p> + +<p>‘But you would not be a briefless barrister or an incompetent +clergyman,’ said Fan.</p> + +<p>Oliver shook his head. ‘I cannot speak in public, I can only hold forth +to my own cronies.’</p> + +<p>This was true; Oliver was not calculated to shine as an orator; his +highly wrought nervous awkwardness was entirely against him; a certain +turgidness in the rush of his thoughts proved even a more serious +obstacle.</p> + +<p>Occasionally, when he was ‘dead in earnest,’ as he said, he could +surmount both defects. He would then speak tersely and clearly while +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>he towered the head and shoulders above his brethren, and flung out an +arm with something like might and majesty. But, as a rule, a singular +shyness and self-consciousness came over the young man in any general +assemblage, from a debating club upwards, and left him a fettered and +dumb giant.</p> + +<p>‘I should make a bad advocate and a worse judge,’ said Oliver; ‘I have +not the making of a good lawyer in me—none of the sifting impartiality, +critical acumen, and hard-headed common sense which ought to dispense +justice. My own ideas, instead of authorities and precedents, would +possess me. You have only to put on a wig and gown in order to be a +sounder, safer judge yourself, though I can’t flatter you, little +woman, by pretending you would prove another Portia.’</p> + +<p>‘But a clergyman is different,’ said Fan, faintly.</p> + +<p>He shook the whole man, not his head <span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>alone, in his impatience. ‘Do +you suppose I should think myself warranted in becoming a clergyman +if I had not the highest motive and the clearest bent?’ he demanded, +with more indignant sharpness than he had yet spoken. ‘I would rather +break stones on the road. I might preserve my self-respect as an +honest man while I hammered at flints; I should certainly despise +myself as a profane cheat and liar if I offered spiritual stones for +bread—all because the Church was a gentleman’s calling, and by great +good fortune, policy, energy, and carefully cultivated interest I might +die a right reverend bishop. I wonder though if a miller and baker’s +son ever did die a bishop—out of the colonies,’ speculated Oliver with +returning good humour.</p> + +<p>‘Oliver,’ said Fan, solemnly, ‘I cannot think you are in earnest. I +seem not able to believe my ears. After father resigned your services, +after you have kept all your terms, taken more <span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>than one scholarship +and gained this first class, which everybody who knows anything about +it said you could do, and added that it would be a great honour to you +and the making of you in any profession, to throw it all up in the end, +to act as if you had been keeping another man out of his place, and +wasting money the whole time! For you would have made as good—I should +say a far better miller,’ (Fan could not bring herself to say the word +baker,) ‘if you had never gone to Oxford, if you had left the Grammar +School when you were fourteen or fifteen at the latest, and served your +apprenticeship like other lads who meant to be tradesmen, and then +father might have had your help in his old age.’</p> + +<p>‘There is something in that,’ answered Oliver in a low tone, with the +pain which the reminder roused in him perceptible in his voice. ‘I +shall never cease to regret that I did not see things as I do now from +the first. I would <span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>give a great deal even to have made up my mind +sooner—in time to tell father. But nothing will convince me that he +would have opposed my decision.’</p> + +<p>‘He might have said that you were spoilt either for a miller or for +anything else,’ retorted Fan.</p> + +<p>‘If he had done so, it would have been the result of an old-fashioned +prejudice; and if I had been able to show him that he was in the wrong, +he would have been the first to admit it gladly,’ said Oliver, keeping +his temper. ‘Why, on earth, should a man not make as good a miller—or +coal-heaver for that matter—because he knows a little Latin and Greek, +and can read Horace and Virgil, Sophocles and Plato, in the original, +if he chose, when his work is done?’</p> + +<p>Fan was getting desperate. No one save herself could tell how grievous +had been the <span id="cor_8"></span>downfall of all the castles in the air which she <span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>had been +building since her earliest girlhood, while she sat or stood, during +the last half-hour, in the <span id="cor_9"></span>familiar mill gallery, looking down, as she +had looked many a time before, on the lovely home landscape, in the +midsummer twilight, and only betraying her emotion by her changing +colour and tightly clasped hands. It was all so utterly wrong-headed +and delirious in Oliver; what one might have expected in a French +Communist, but what one could never have imagined would find a fitting +soil at Oxford.</p> + +<p>Fan had prepared herself for so different a conclusion. She would have +done anything, taken any pains and faced any ordeal for Oliver—the +Oliver of her dreams. Had he been called to fill a throne, she would +have toiled to qualify herself to stand on its lowest step. She was +one of those women who have high enterprise in their composition. But +if Oliver’s regalia were to consist, after all, of the mill-wheel <span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>and +the baker’s oven, which had been thorns in Fan’s flesh when they were +connected with her father and grandfather, she had not the enterprise +to follow her brother in that adventure.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! Oliver, if you would only think it all over again!’ besought +Fan, with tears, which she had too much pride and endurance to shed, +dimming her bright dark eyes, as the evening star came out above the +Copley Grange woods, and glimmered over the two. ‘You have been away +from home, for the most part, for years and years, ever since you +were little more than a boy. You have forgotten what the conditions +of a tradesman’s life really are, how hopelessly commonplace and +vulgar—worse in some respects than the life of a day labourer. +There may be some dignity in hard toil and grinding poverty bravely +borne—though I should not like to be the one to bear them,’ said +Fan, in parenthesis; yet even as she spoke <span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>Oliver recognised that +this worldly-minded little sister of his was a woman who, in the +circumstances she referred to, would have been found capable of working +herself to death and making no sign, dying with the elements of true +tragedy and pathos in the self-respecting silence and resignation +of her humble end. ‘But I cannot see how there can be dignity in +ordinary buying and selling, in low chaffering and huxtering, and often +cheating.’</p> + +<p>‘You are talking utter nonsense, Fan,’ said Oliver, half amused, +half angry. ‘There is nothing dishonouring in trade, any more than +in a handicraft; you might have known that. There is dignity in any +honest work which a man does in the sweat of his brow. It is idleness, +however refined, which is clear degradation and a blot on the social +economy. We have surely got a long way ahead of the early nations +that committed every useful art to their slaves. When we go out now, +with the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>laudable aim of civilising savages, don’t we first qualify +ourselves—those of us who have spent our youth in the colleges—by +graduating in carpenters’ and masons’ work, cooking and tailoring?’</p> + +<p>‘That may be the way among savages,’ said Fan, with a nice distinction, +‘but at home we have not, in practice at least, gone so far beyond the +old theory.’</p> + +<p>‘My dear Fan, have you never heard that we are a nation of shopkeepers? +How have you managed to shut your ears! In what corner have you been +hiding?’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t laugh,’ said Fan, passionately; ‘I am not able to bear it. And +you must know that when English people of the upper classes own to +be shopkeepers, it is on a grand scale like the merchant princes of +Venice.’</p> + +<p>‘Or Tyre and Sidon,’ suggested Oliver ‘and we know what they came to; +but don’t starve your simile.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span></p> + +<p>‘Trade, or anything on a grand scale,’ floundered Fan, ‘where the +interests involved extend far and wide and where the petty details +hardly reach the head trader, is very different from a small business, +with its meanness and sordidness.’</p> + +<p>‘Call nothing common and unclean which human beings require,’ muttered +Oliver; and then he could not resist resuming his banter.</p> + +<p>‘I have you now, Fan; you go in for the gulf between wholesale and +retail, in the comparative offences of selling a bar of iron and a +tin-tack. What a humbug you are!’</p> + +<p>She disdained to defend herself from an accusation which was +particularly untrue and objectionable to her.</p> + +<p>‘I am sensible that there is a tremendous amount of humbug in society +in the present day. Doubtless it has existed in every generation, but +in ours, I think, the crop is an unusually fine one,’ commented Oliver, +with provoking <span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>coolness. He was swinging one leg with a laziness that +had an irritation in the very slowness of the movement—monotonous as +that of a pendulum. Then he stopped the pendulum, but caused it to +quiver quickly, in a still more trying manner, until Fan, under the +torture, was fain to cry out as if she had been a vixen.</p> + +<p>‘If you don’t keep your leg still, this moment, Oliver, I—I believe I +shall leap down into the water. You ought to have been whipped when you +were a child till you learned to stand and sit still.’</p> + +<p>‘But you see I wasn’t; and I believe it would have been next to an +impossibility to teach me,’ said Oliver, stopping on the instant, +contritely. He would not willingly have hurt a fly if he could have +avoided it, though he was compelled to wound Fan to the quick. Happily +for him, he could not sound the depths of her prejudices, or altogether +realise the pain <span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>he was inflicting. But he struggled not to chaff +her any more, since she was so thin-skinned and so much vexed by his +determination. He reverted to general illustrations of humbugs. ‘I +will say nothing of the curious favour which is shown to brewers in +these days; but though I don’t go in for total abstinence, and can +sing out for a glass of beer with an easy conscience, it seems to me, +in the name of morality, the baker ought to be esteemed the better +tradesman of the two. Let me refer further to the odd fact that a +squireen, or duke, or a prince, with an agricultural hobby may farm +his own land, grow corn, and fatten beeves, without coming under the +ban of a spurious gentility—odious word, Fan! But society holds that +when the same corn comes to be ground into flour and kneaded into +bread, and the same cattle to be slaughtered and cut into beef—very +essential processes for the welfare of the million, the men who take +the processes <span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>in hand and pledge themselves to bring them to a fair +issue, are justly to lose all social status, and sink in the scale +to depths of vulgarity lower than the brutality of the most stupid, +ignorant, ragged, dirty lout! (Of course you understand I am pointing +my moral by an extreme instance of the working man.) Now, I maintain +that if we had—in addition to the great farming landowner, and to that +extraordinary exception in position to other tradesmen, the great +brewer—the great baker, butcher——’</p> + +<p>‘Fishmonger and greengrocer,’ chimed in Fan, mockingly.</p> + +<p>‘Why not?’ Oliver accepted the addition undauntedly. ‘Men who should +endow the world with excellent bread, wholesome meat, fresh fish—at +reasonable prices, do you see? for the credit of their trades and the +good of humanity—not merely that the baker and his fellow-tradesmen +might make haste to grow rich and cut the shop, rear their sons for +professions, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>and marry their daughters to professional men as the +first step to a higher social grade—they would deserve to be ranked as +public benefactors. I should not wonder,’ declared Oliver, breaking +out into fun again, ‘though I had a statue erected to me one day for +leading the van in the beneficent movement. Most likely I shan’t be +there to see. It won’t be, I dare say, till I’m “Old Constable” to a +third or fourth generation. But if the world is only a little quicker +in its appreciation and gratitude than it is wont to be, as you are +my junior by a few years, it is just on the cards, if you live to +be ninety-nine, Fannikin, you may behold the tribute. Won’t it be +glorious! Won’t you be proud of me then?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh don’t,’ groaned Fan. And Oliver repented of an inveterate +propensity to relieve with a kind of light humour his gravest moods. +Then Fan rallied sufficiently to say, ‘If the statue be true to life, +it will be like that of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>Horatius Cocles, “halting on one knee,” or +doing something equally uncouth and grotesque.’</p> + +<p>‘Never mind that,’ said Oliver, who had little personal vanity, and who +was glad, in the innocence of his heart, to suppose Fan was not so much +hurt that she could not take him off in her turn. But Fan was simply +galled into irony. She was sharpening her weapons in the little silence +which succeeded for a new assault on her brother’s position.</p> + +<p>‘Any ordinary man may be such a tradesman as you describe.’</p> + +<p>‘The ordinary man is long of coming, then,’ he interrupted her briskly.</p> + +<p>She paid no heed to the interruption. ‘An extraordinary man only rises +to his natural level when he forsakes some common occupation for +another more in keeping with his powers. You may as well pretend that +God made all men equal in every respect, and it is a sin and wrong +that there should be different classes in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>society, as hold that your +talents and education can be fitly applied to a trade.’</p> + +<p>‘No. I say every new social movement demands extraordinary men to be +its pioneers. I confess I am rather ashamed to give myself out as the +extraordinary man in this case, but I may serve till a better appear.’</p> + +<p>‘It is not trade as it ought to be, it is trade as it is, which you +are bound to take into account before you throw away all your hard-won +advantages. High-flown notions may be all very well in theory, but they +are not for real life,’ said Fan, hardly sensible that she was airing +a terribly unchristian doctrine, only aware that Oliver was shaking +himself in vehement protest. ‘The tricks of trade are proverbial.’</p> + +<p>‘Disgracefully proverbial,’ assented Oliver, briefly. ‘But if I thought +they were universal I should be fit to hang myself. Do you infer that +our father was not an honest man?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p> + +<p>‘I have never said a word against father’s honesty,’ protested Fan, +hotly. ‘I believe he was as honest as man could be. But he went into +trade for a livelihood, not to regenerate society, as you are bold +enough to propose. You will ruin yourself in the first place, I know.’</p> + +<p>‘Then I don’t know it, and what is more, I don’t mean to do it. That +is the common cant; no thinker outside the details of his trade can +steer clear of the bankruptcy court. And we have the disastrous fate of +Burns and of other thinkers—poets, politicians and what not, in their +respective businesses—lugged in as a timely warning. I tell you no +man’s thought and culture, unless they were attended by some radical +mental defect or fatal self-indulgence, ever disqualified him from +managing his worldly affairs. The reverse has been proved over and over +again; but it does not suit the commonplace <span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>world, and you as its +present exponent, to believe it. However, I am no poet or astronomer or +geologist. Unlike the Laird of Cockpen, my head is not taken up with +the affairs of the State. Even my scholarship is of modest dimensions. +Moreover, I shall make it my careful endeavour not to ruin myself, +were it only to give the lie to my self-complacent friends who go in +for business on what they call business principles, forsooth!—every +man for himself and the most money soonest made—as if there were not +sounder as well as higher laws of political economy than some of +the political economists themselves ever touched. But if I do ruin +myself in an attempt to regenerate society, as you, Fan, term—rather +grandiloquently—my simple resolution to stick to the old shop and do +the best I can with it, can I ruin myself in a worthier cause?’</p> + +<p>Then, in contradiction to his disclaimer of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>anything remarkable in his +purpose, he began to repeat with repressed enthusiasm:—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">‘Can a man die better</div> + <div class="verse indent1">Than facing fearful odds?’</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>She would not let him finish the verse. She broke in with the old +fruitless adjuration, <span id="cor_10"></span>‘Oh, Oliver, think again.’</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V"> + CHAPTER V. + <br> + <span>A LAST APPEAL.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">‘Think</span> twice over what you are <span id="cor_11"></span>going to do,’ urged Fan, for +the last time. ‘I tell you that you look back on the past softened +by distance, and I suppose surrounded by a sort of halo of youthful +associations and kindly recollections. I have never been removed from +Friarton Mill for such a length of time as to forget all its ills and +only remember its advantages. How will you like to hang on in the mill +and, worse, in the bakehouse and shop—to be bearded by your own men, +who will be the first to recognise that you have not been bred to their +trade and to make good use of your ignorance—to be <span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>worsted by trades’ +unions—for I conclude bakers will go out “on strike,” if they have not +yet done so—like other work people? How will you stand being patronised +by the farmers and corn-dealers, and having to submit to the whims and +insolence of your customers?’</p> + +<p>‘Upon my word, I do not see why I should stand either, if I do my +duty. And I would rather hang on in a mill or a bake-shop than in city +chambers draped round with cobwebs and filled with empty tin boxes +bearing lying titles, or in a vestry hall where I had no business to +be, or in a barrack yard where I should never learn the goose step, or +in stables or kennels.’</p> + +<p>‘It is my duty to speak,’ said Fan, solemnly, developing a fine talent +for lecturing; ‘since you have been so long away, you have forgotten +or you do not rightly understand a great deal that will happen if you +persist in your folly. All the better class of people in Friarton—the +Fremantles and Wrights and that set, who <span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>took us up because they +expected you to become one of themselves and to do them credit—will +drop us again; and who can blame them? when they discover that you have +no ambition—that you have a taste for low company—so it will seem to +them. We shall of course fall back among the Polleys and the Dadds and +the rest of the tradespeople like ourselves,’ said Fan, bitterly. ‘We +choose their ranks deliberately as ours, and how can we expect that +the members of another rank will continue to stoop to us, or consent, +for our sake, to anything so disagreeable as being habitually mixed up +with people far beneath them in birth and breeding? Are you not able +to recall how dreadful a tea at the Dadds, or a supper at the Polleys, +used to be? How, when you were a boy and knew little else, you hated it +and shirked it, when father would let you?’</p> + +<p>Oliver winced a little, but recovered himself gallantly. ‘I was an +intolerable young fool—giving <span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>myself airs, as old Dadd once told me +to my face. He is a shrewd intelligent old fellow in his linendrapery +line. One may easily listen to the experience of a far inferior man.’</p> + +<p>‘Have you grown fonder of his coarse familiar jokes and the +all-pervading smell of his gin-and-water?’ asked Fan, with scornful +incredulity. ‘If so, perhaps you can also better appreciate young +Dadd’s jewellery and Mrs. Dadd’s mock “umbleness,” like Uriah Heep’s, +to hide her slyness and spitefulness. And you may have come to value, +at their proper worth, the Polley girls’ giggles and shams, and their +mother’s loud self-assertion and sheer impertinence. No doubt you +admire their combined illiterateness and absorption in the pettiest +gossip, their poor aping of the faults, or else their rude defiance of +the merits, of their social superiors. Don’t you know that the Dadd +and Polley idea of a life worth leading, is to make money in order to +eat, drink, and lie in bed, to keep sporting dogs, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>attend low races +and offer and accept bets, to have parties, “beaux,” and flirtations +to the girls’ hearts’ content? Are greediness, laziness, bumptiousness +and folly—gaudy, tawdry pretence, and coarse gorgeousness, such +admirable qualities in men and women and their surroundings? I declare +the Dadds and Polleys are the most irreverent undutiful people I know. +Oh! Oliver, it is too horrible that the end of your cleverness and +college training should be to condemn yourself, and me with you, to +close contact and hopeless association with such people—when we have no +relief to expect save from our own deterioration. We shall deteriorate +and grow like our neighbours speedily, I daresay, and then we may not +feel that we were ever fit for something better. But how we—one of +us, at least—must suffer in the process of deterioration before it is +complete!’</p> + +<p>Fan was perfectly sincere, however absurd, in her horror and distress. +She had a natural <span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>abhorrence of the vulgar, gross self-indulgence +which she had described, and an intense yearning for its opposite, +the true refinement of simplicity, self-restraint, and self-devotion, +with its outward expression in the subtle charm of pure and graceful +harmony. There was this to be said for Fan’s ambition, that it was +not composed of coarse materials. It was neither sensual nor sordid. +Fan would have been very tolerably content to be a poor lady among +ladies and gentlemen. She would have made the very best of her gentle +poverty, because she fully comprehended the self-respect involved in +self-denial, the essential honour included in showing regard for the +rights and claims of her neighbours, and in energy, diligence, and +usefulness fitly exercised. Fan had the making of a real lady—rich or +poor—in her. And if she were not speaking under a delusion, it was a +pity that her vocation should be spoilt.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span></p> + +<p>But Oliver dealt her a stern rebuke.</p> + +<p>‘This is too bad,’ he said, indignantly, taking the pipe from his +mouth. ‘There is only one grain of truth in your tirade against the +class in which you were born—its members are guilty of aping the +faults of a higher class. As you have yourself said so, you cannot be +ignorant that greed, and its opposite—senseless extravagance, laziness, +levity, and worse, are safe to be found—just masked by a thin veneer +of polish—in still greater abundance among dukes and duchesses—or say +at once kings and queens, than among tradespeople. And you have said +nothing of the peculiar virtues of tradespeople. You spoke of Mrs. +Polley’s self-assertion. I grant it is offensive—but surely you have +been told what that woman has done for her family. When her husband +proved an incapable ne’er-do-well, who if left to himself would have +gone straight to the dogs, and reduced his children to the workhouse, +did not <span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>his “missus” come to the front and stand by her master like +a brick and a Trojan? She kept him from both his and her undoing. She +maintained Polley’s grocery business by her industry, and made it +flourish by her mother-wit, till now her husband is no worse than a +tolerably respectable nonentity, and her children have been reared in +independence and comfort. No blame will rest on her if they are not +able to hold their own in the world. I have often heard, and so have +you, my father and old Floyd praise that woman for her works. As for +Mrs. Dadd, I don’t say that her meekness is the real thing, but she is +not without true motherliness and kindness of heart. Have you forgotten +how she left her own child and came out and stayed here to nurse you +through scarlatina because she doubted Sally Pope’s experience and +ability to cope with the disease? For shame! Fan, a short memory is +unpardonable here.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span></p> + +<p>‘I have not forgotten,’ said Fan, pettishly; ‘if I had, I should not +have kept up the amount of intercourse with the Dadds I have consented +to keep.’</p> + +<p>‘No doubt it is a great reward for her trouble and risk that you should +call for her—behaving civilly in the performance of your duty, I take +it for granted—once in three months,’ said Oliver, still in a fume. ‘I +am not of your opinion. But though I have not the same faith in the +light of my countenance, and the edification implied in the bestowal +of my company for a spare half-hour, still I have my own views on the +subject. But upon my honour, Fan, I hesitate at this moment under +a sense of my unworthiness, and a conception of these respectable +people’s positive virtues, to presume to weigh their comparative +defects and measure them against any supposed superiority of intellect +and training on my part. Are brains and culture—of which one <span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>hears +so much from pedants and puppies—to be named in the same breath with +honest men and women’s fidelity to their sense of right? But if the +questionable superiority has an existence, am I not called upon by +every dictate of true public spirit and good feeling to show that +superiority by striving to do what I have already spoken of—raise the +tone of my class, and lead it to higher aims and purer pleasures? Is +not that a nobler ambition than to content myself with rising above +my class—abandoning it to grovel in materialism, if not to wallow in +the mire? Do you know that Kingsley said teachers and preachers to the +rich and the poor were not wanting, but where was he who would go on a +mission to the lower middle and small trading classes, and reclaim them +from their special form of animalism and licence, “their irreverence +and undutifulness,” as you put it. Do you believe the Bible, Fan, +or do you hold that such injunctions as to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span>preserve old landmarks +and not to forget our own and our father’s friends, are out-of-date +precepts—simply fit for Orientals?’</p> + +<p>‘You are clever, Oliver,’ said Fan, coldly. ‘I cannot pretend to vie +with you in quotations misapplied.’</p> + +<p>‘As the devil is great in texts—no, you don’t mean that,’ said Oliver, +trying to conjure back a friendly spirit into the dispute. He had +smoked his pipe and was knocking out its ashes. There was silence for +a time, and then he pointed out that the moon had risen unobserved +while they were speaking. It was flooding the landscape with a light +which, though it comes so often, never gives a familiar impression, but +always produces an effect wholly removed from that of ordinary light, +causing both heaven and earth to be changed for us, and to come out, in +their every aspect, a more solemn and grander sky, a sadder and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>fairer +world, than those we see by the beams of the sun.</p> + +<p>Under the rays of the moon, the midsummer green of the Copley Grange +trees had grown dusky. They were massed together and cast deep shadows +over the turf, while the waters of the Brook flashed here and there +like silver by contrast. In the sky overhead the Pleiades were asking +who should bind their sweet influence? Orion the mighty hunter was +abroad. The Pole-star was glittering with his special effulgence.</p> + +<p>‘How small those lamps up yonder, whose oil has never failed since +the creation, make a poor beggar and skirmisher of a day feel!’ said +Oliver, suddenly. ‘One would not say, either, that they disdain the +humanity they have given light to throughout the centuries. I am +not sure whether Friarton Mill is not jollier by moonlight than by +daylight. If all you said were <span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>true, Fan, what a compensation the +beauty of this place might still prove! I defy you to say that in one +respect, and that of all save the first importance, the lines have not +fallen to us in pleasant places.’</p> + +<p>But she would not be appeased. Nature was not to her at any time what +it was to him; at this moment the perfection of the scene before her, +hurt her afresh, like a taunt added to a blow. ‘You will make me hate +this place,’ she cried reproachfully; ‘you will make me wish I had +never seen this house which was father’s house, where I have lived the +most of my life.’</p> + +<p>He was sorry for her pain, but he was also disappointed and wounded at +her utter want of sympathy with him. ‘You have one resource left you,’ +he said, with some hardness, which had not been there before, stealing +into his tone. ‘You can go away and leave me and the mill. My father +made sufficient provision <span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>for you, to enable you to act as you like, +and I will do all in my power——’</p> + +<p>She interrupted him, turning upon him with a passionate protest. ‘Do +you think I could do it? Do you think I would leave you alone to bear +the penalty, though it may be of your own incurring? What do you take +me for? You do not know me, Oliver.’</p> + +<p>‘That may very well be, since I do not <span id="cor_12"></span>believe your know yourself,’ said +Oliver, with a shrug. ‘But I am obliged to you, all the same, for your +magnanimity.’ He was really touched by her womanly love and constancy, +though he had been too much provoked to show it.</p> + +<p>‘There is one question I am entitled to ask you,’ said Fan, more +calmly. ‘You admit you did not always mean to sink into a tradesman. I +know you had very different ideas when you went first to Oxford. What +changed you?’</p> + +<p>He hesitated and did not speak for a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>moment. He did not deny her right +to put the question, but he did not know how to answer it. In many +things which related to his words and acts, he was by disposition a +frank and open-hearted man, but in proportion to his general frankness +were his particular reserves. He had sacred secrets which had to do +with convictions, feelings, and principles. He could no more turn his +nature inside out to his dearest friend where these were concerned than +he could consciously practise self-deception and social hypocrisy. +He was even shy with himself in dealing with the deep things of his +spirit. Still he owed some explanation to Fan, who had been the happy +confidant of the early dreams which had passed away like the morning +mist, and who now stood there in such estrangement from him.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! all sorts of arguments came in and did their work,’ he said at +last, a little vaguely. ‘Some familiarity with learning bred the usual +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>contempt, I dare say. I was only her valet, and so she ceased to be +a heroine to me. I have grown a good deal older and wiser—let us hope +to begin with—and—well there was one affair which made a considerable +impression upon me at the time that I can speak of to you. There are +plenty of tradesmen’s sons who find their way to Oxford, but there was +just one other baker’s son who got there with me. He or his friends +for him made a grand mistake in somehow procuring his admission, under +false colours possibly, into a notably aristocratic college. I don’t +suppose his people had any very honourable aim in sending him to +college at all, at least he himself was a vain, weak fellow who thought +chiefly of acquiring associates—whom he called friends, in a rank of +life far above his own. I have no doubt he intended to cut the baking +trade entirely when he left Oxford, and that he hoped by means of his +fellow-Oxonians to hoist himself into polite <span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>society. For that end he +was willing to make himself generally obliging and useful, poor beggar, +to his temporary companions. He would help and back them in their money +transactions, cater for their entertainment, and bear more than his +share of the brunt of their scrapes.</p> + +<p>‘That was to be the great business of his college life—with the +securing of a high connection for its end—not a very heroic end, +eh, Fan? But, to do him justice, he had no more natural turn for +study in any shape—classics, history, philosophy, or philology, than +nineteen out of twenty of his chosen patrons had developed in their +more favourable circumstances, or than had been shown by the whole of +his father’s journeymen bakers with their adverse surroundings. But, +there was not any more harm in him than being the wrong man in the +wrong place, which is not a very uncommon or heinous transgression, +though being that, he was <span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>a mean little flunkey. But the fault was not +altogether his, and he was good-natured and soft-hearted; though he was +idle, I never heard he was vicious. They said afterwards that he was +liked in his native town, and had been a good son and brother.</p> + +<p>‘The fact of his father’s disgraceful trade had been kept in strict +concealment, and did not come out for some time. But when it did, +the enormity of the offence—though one would say that most people +are personally indebted to bakers who mind their business—together +with the low deceit of the concealment, proved far too much for any +poor popularity Tom Neaves had attained. The fellows he was amongst +could not get over the “rank impudence” of his intrusion into their +college, yet I should not wonder though they imagined they admired +Thackeray—“Less of a cad, you know, than Dickens”—and knew something +about George Osborne and “Figs.” They judged Neaves deserved <span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>to be +punished, and they sat upon him to give him his deserts, and above all +to get rid of him, as the officers of a crack regiment sometimes agree +to compel a wretched subaltern who is not of their set, and so is not +fit for their mess, to exchange or sell out. Of course in both cases +the affair is so managed as not to attract the attention or force the +interference either of a superior officer or a dean, and only what +are considered legitimate weapons are used against the common enemy. +Mind, Fan, I do not pretend that Neaves was without blame; and I am +perfectly aware that the young fellows who led the attack against +him, in their very contempt, did it more in thoughtlessness than in +malice. A few of them dropped his acquaintance summarily, as they were +perfectly at liberty to do. But the greater number settled to make him +their butt till he should endure it no longer. They assailed him with +a perpetual storm of allusions to his origin and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>practical jokes on +his father’s trade. They inquired gravely his opinion on dinner rolls. +They smuggled loaves into his gown. They showered as much flour upon +him from the windows of their rooms when he crossed the quad as ever +was scattered from a costermonger’s cart on a Derby day, or a Roman +balcony during the carnival. No doubt the wit of these gentlemen was +not very high-bred or unique in its expression; but what was lacking +in brilliance was made up in energy—the energy of a pack of boys, of +undergraduates—in teasing and tormenting their victim. Of course, if +Neaves had possessed sense and spirit he would not have minded a straw, +or he would have returned the aggressors scorn for scorn—if he had +not risen to the height of repaying them good for evil—and possibly +brought them to a more rational frame of mind. But unfortunately sense +and spirit were just the qualities in which poor Neaves was lamentably +deficient. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>He had already proved himself, as I have told you, a silly, +weak fellow, mortally ashamed of his father’s honest calling; therefore +his assailants hit him on the tenderest point, and had him at their +mercy. He struggled against the persecution for some time, tried to +behave as if he did not see it, then blustered a little, then knocked +under. To think such gnat-bites could drive a fellow with a soul in him +beside himself! They did; therefore his body was found floating in the +Isis one fine morning, down among the boats, not far from a place where +he had once, after his boat had bumped another boat, given a sort of +pic-nic, and boasted that the greatest ‘nobs’ of his college—the wild +younger son of a duke and an out-at-elbows young viscount—had been his +supporters. There was some confusion in the wording of the telegram +which broke the catastrophe to old Neaves. The family clung to the idea +that though an accident had happened, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>and their Tom was the sufferer, +he might still be alive. So the mother hurried to the spot along with +the father.</p> + +<p>‘I chanced to see them after they had been told the worst and were +starting for home again to warn the rest of their children of what +was coming. The old man did not show what he felt, but the mother——I +tell you, Fan, every jury in the kingdom would, with justice, have +exonerated the perpetrators of the mischief from even so much guilt +as manslaughter, though one of them—I need not say he was not a +ringleader—took the misfortune so much to heart that he had to be +removed from Oxford to save his reason——and to this day when that +woman’s face comes into my mind, I think as I did then, I would rather +have been the wretched simpleton in his coffin than those men in the +flush of their youth and strength and whatever goodly birthright they +claimed besides. By Heavens, Fan,’ protested Oliver, in the passion +which had <span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span>been gathering during his story, ‘what these fellows did was +the farthest removed from the chivalrous courtesy which was once held +to constitute gentle bearing, it was the grossest example of caddish +behaviour I ever came across.’</p> + +<p>Fan was scared by the ghastly ludicrousness and grievous pathos of the +story, and by the degree to which Oliver was moved in telling it. She +had never seen him in his grief for the loss of their father betray so +much emotion as he did now, when he grew pale in the moonlight with +the violence of his anger, and clenched his teeth in the height of his +reprobation and disgust. ‘It was very cruel, very ungenerous,’ said +Fan, with a kind of shivering recoil. She crept close to her brother +and clasped his arm with her two hands, clinging to him. ‘They never +treated you so, dear?’ she asked with a gasp, as if seeking to reassure +herself.</p> + +<p>‘Not they,’ he said with an awkward laugh, half ashamed of his +excitement. ‘My college <span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>was not quite so exclusive, and I trust I was +made of sterner stuff. If the men had chaffed me with a miff-wheel or +a rolling-pin, I should have replied, Yes, these were my arms, and I +did not see that something might not be said for them as well as for a +pair of wild men of the woods, a Moor’s head, a pirate’s ship, or an +assassin’s dagger. The gist of the matter is that if I lost some of my +ideals at Oxford I found others to replace them. Let us be thankful. +Come along, Fan; the dew has done falling, indeed, but I am keeping you +out far too late with only that rag of a handkerchief over your head.’</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI"> + CHAPTER VI. + <br> + <span>LOUISA AND CATHERINE HILLIARD.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">‘Your</span> settling down here as a tradesman, Oliver, will be +a nice story for Mrs. Hilliard and Catherine,’ said Fan Constable, +tartly, over the breakfast-table next morning. For Fan was by no means +permanently converted, however touched for the moment, by the last +evening’s conversation.</p> + +<p>Oliver shook himself with some vigour, but the gesture was so common +with him as not necessarily to imply any special depth of feeling +stirred by the observation; however, his colour rose as he spoke in +answer.</p> + +<p>‘What will Mrs. Hilliard and Catherine <span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>make of it? what can it be +to them? At the same time Mrs. Hilliard puts little weight on social +distinctions; you must do her the justice to grant that, Fan,’ he +said, looking straight across the table to his sister, and speaking +with a degree of emphasis which implied that, in his opinion, Fan was +not in the habit of judging righteous judgment where Mrs. Hilliard was +concerned. ‘As for Catherine,’ he added, after a moment’s pause, ‘I +imagine she is too much in the clouds, as usual, to take much notice of +what happens on the common earth.’ He said the words with an attempt at +carelessness, but in reality he spoke with an effort, stiffly.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, it may suit Louisa Hilliard to profess that she is indifferent +to public opinion and independent of it, that she is a privileged, +irresponsible person, in short. But you are greatly mistaken if you +think you will escape her gibing tongue and impertinent laughter. +And you will find to your cost that when the matter is <span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>of the least +importance she will take care to comply with the world’s standard.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t wish to stand between any genial soul and her jest,’ said +Oliver; ‘and I am sure, Fan, you need not quarrel with respect for +social standards.’</p> + +<p>‘I don’t quarrel with it,’ said Fan, decidedly. ‘I think that whatever +the social standards of the past may have been, social standards in our +day ought in the main to be deferred to by all sensible people. What I +object to, naturally, is that you should insist on running counter to +them in order to indulge in a wild dream.’</p> + +<p>‘I plead guilty,’ said Oliver.</p> + +<p>‘As for Catherine Hilliard,’ Fan went on, ‘she is not too much “in the +clouds,” as you call it, to prevent her coming down among ordinary +people and saying very stinging sarcastic things. Louisa is only too +well content with herself and her belongings; but I think Catherine +Hilliard is a discontented girl.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span></p> + +<p>‘The level of “a low content,”’ muttered Oliver, gratifying his +father’s old, half-blind, half-deaf English terrier ‘Ned’ with a +sardine.</p> + +<p>Fan did not catch the quotation, or notice the typical act: she was +leaping to a conclusion. ‘Catherine Hilliard is so dissatisfied with +herself and everything around her, that I fancy she will learn to +welcome any change of circumstances, until she may get the length of +selling herself and her feelings some day. Then, no doubt, after the +bargain is completed, she will turn round and decide that this gain +also is not worth a tithe of what she has paid for it.’</p> + +<p>‘You have no right to speak so, Fan,’ said Oliver angrily. ‘Of course, +I don’t pretend to guess how Catherine Hilliard may dispose of +herself,’ he went on more calmly; ‘but she has always appeared to me +a kind of nineteenth-century vestal virgin, a “Christian priestess of +Nature” and such letters and art as have come <span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>in her way. That is not +the sort of creature who sells herself.’</p> + +<p>‘I beg your pardon, Oliver.’ Fan contradicted her brother with mingled +dignity and obstinacy.</p> + +<p>‘And I beg your pardon, Fan.’ Oliver perpetrated with considerable +success a mimicry of his sister’s manner.</p> + +<p>‘There,’ he said quickly, ‘as you are always tempted to be unfair to +the Hilliards, we had better let the subject drop.’</p> + +<p>Fan did not protest against the charge of unfairness, or insist on +prolonging the discussion. Perhaps her conscience pricked her a little. +She was perfectly sensible in the truthfulness of her nature that +Louisa Hilliard was her <i>bête noire</i>. Fan used to say to herself +without disguise, ‘I can’t bear Louisa Hilliard.’</p> + +<p>This was one of the instances of natural antipathy and comparatively +causeless dislike, which, like the opposite examples of instinctive +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span>partiality, and hardly warranted attachment, were apt to hold sway +over Fan Constable’s ardent, concentrated temperament. Hers was not +an unjust or undisciplined character, while it was loyal to the core; +but it was full of ‘likes and dislikes.’ There was nothing lymphatic +or volatile about Fan, to her great loss of ease and tranquillity. If +she had been put under an examination as to the provocation she had +received from Mrs. Hilliard, who was Fan’s remote kinswoman and early +patroness, Fan could not have given any save the pettiest reasons of +which she herself would have been the first to feel ashamed. Yet her +asperity where this woman was concerned amounted to rancour. Sometimes +the sentiment in her own bosom struck Fan as unchristian, and being +very sincere in her Christianity, she sought to qualify her enmity by +solemnly assuring herself of what was the truth—that she would not +injure Louisa Hilliard for the world. It was <span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>only incidentally that +Catherine Hilliard came in for her share of the dislike which Fan had +to Catherine’s cousin. The two younger women possessed nothing in +common, but neither had they any sharp points of antagonism. If it had +not been for Fan Constable’s extraordinary aversion to Mrs. Hilliard, +Fan would have viewed Catherine Hilliard with simple indifference.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard and her cousin kept house together, chiefly upon Mrs. +Hilliard’s income, at the ‘Meadows,’ which was at once the largest, +and, though it sounds a contradiction, the cosiest, certainly the +prettiest, of the villas which had sprung up on the outskirts of +Friarton. The ‘Meadows,’ in fact, was more of a small country house +than a villa. It entitled its occupant, unless she were a very +objectionable person otherwise, to revolve in the first of the social +circles—which, like the sap-rings in the trunk of a tree, divided the +townspeople <span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>into various grades of enclosure. Nay, the ‘Meadows’ +entitled its owner to hover on the verge, which she crossed not +infrequently, of the county families.</p> + +<p>For Mrs. Hilliard was only objectionable in possessing a carelessness +of mind—a rather pronounced Bohemianism. She was regardless of who +took her up or who let her down, which had an effect the reverse +of what some people might have expected. As she was also a lively +agreeable woman, superficially refined, a well-endowed, comely widow +of thirty-five years of age, who relished her freedom too keenly to +have any thought of marrying again, but who kept a pleasant house and +welcomed her friends to it, she was lifted clean above the ebb and flow +of social fickleness; she was landed in established popularity with +<i>carte blanche</i> to do very much as she pleased, and fill up her +visiting-list just as she chose.</p> + +<p>In fact, Mrs. Hilliard’s house was what <span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>the vicarage often is in +country society, a sort of neutral ground and meeting place for +different classes—or degrees of classes, in the community—not that its +mistress would descend so far as to receive ordinary tradespeople and +fraternise with them, Fan now reflected, gloomily. Yet Mrs. Hilliard +had opened her doors to the brother and sister since they were a mere +boy and girl, and had in her turn visited at Friarton Mill. And she had +not come exactly as the Fremantles and Wrights, the dignitaries of the +Grammar School, had come, because the mill family, so far as it had to +do with Oliver, might be regarded as in a transition state, and on the +point of taking flight into higher regions; but because Mrs. Hilliard, +though a well-born, well-married woman, the daughter of a rural dean +and the widow of a commodore, was really distantly related to the +Constables through their mother. Mrs. Constable, as Fan never forgot, +had been the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>daughter of a clergyman, not a dissenting minister but +a regular parson of the Church of England. But, after all, there +are clergymen and clergymen even of the Church of England. The poor +curate who had been Mrs. Constable’s father had lived and died in very +different circumstances from those of the comfortably situated rural +dean to whom Mrs. Hilliard had owed allegiance. The curate, to begin +with, had stooped and married the daughter of a yeoman, who on his part +had not enjoyed any of the plain plenty apt to be associated with a +great farmhouse. Accordingly, the curate’s brood of children had been +brought up in a spare as well as homely fashion, until they had been +sent out into the world to earn their living, and make their own way, +as clerks and nursery governesses; one of those governesses, with her +limited education and still more limited earnings—not to be compared to +a good cook’s wages—was found not unwilling <span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>to exchange her anxious +dependence and drudgery for the serene independence and importance, in +her own sphere, of the mistress of Friarton Mill. Strange to say, the +fact of the slight tie of blood between the two women failed to prevent +Mrs. Hilliard from settling at Friarton when the Meadows offered itself +to her and her man of business—at once as a good investment for her +spare money and a suitable house which she could make a home.</p> + +<p>Stranger still to relate, Mrs. Hilliard was too secure of her position, +and too defiant of censure, to ignore for a moment the thread of +relationship between herself and the Constables of Friarton Mill. On +the contrary, she proclaimed it openly with evident cold blood whenever +she had occasion to do so, compelling confidence and respect in her +hearers. For if Mrs. Hilliard could afford to make light of, nay, to +sport, her far-away cousinship to the family of a provincial miller and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>baker, her acquaintances might rest on the conviction that she had +substantial claims on their regard in much closer alliance with the +families in canons’ houses in cathedral closes, in government houses +abroad, in pleasant little houses near Hyde Park or at Kensington. But +in reality the eccentricity belonged rather to the idiosyncrasy of the +woman than to the remoteness of the relationship which she elected to +count with the Constables.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard had been ready to hold out her hand to the Constable +young people, which was one of the offences Fan, though she could not +dispense with the hand, had not been able to forgive. This was not pure +perversity and ingratitude in Fan Constable. It was the result of the +observation that Mrs. Hilliard laughed, without taking the trouble to +conceal it, at Fan’s serious pretensions, and that the older woman was +as little, as the younger was much, in earnest.</p> + +<p>The Meadows was a wide white house, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>cheerful in its whiteness, and, +at the same time, amply shaded and sheltered by old and luxuriant +shrubberies, of which the Portugal laurels, Irish yews and hollies were +giants of their kind, while the lilacs, Guelder roses, and syringas +offered, in their season, pyramids, piles, and thickets of flowers. +The public rooms were all on the ground floor; and, in the case of the +drawing-room, the long French windows, which faced the south, opened +to the lawn with its clumps of rhododendrons and brakes of thorns, +and its glimpse in mid distance, through an archway of roses, of the +flower-garden.</p> + +<p>The drawing-room at the Meadows was the sunniest, most cheerful room in +a house the great distinction of which was resolute, sometimes slightly +overpowering, social sunshine and cheerfulness. Mrs. Hilliard used to +call it an ‘Omnium Gatherum,’ a flagrant instance of eclecticism where +rooms were concerned. Its furniture, and the occupations she engaged +in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span>there, did not date beyond her own reign at the Meadows, and so +would have been pronounced worthless by connoisseurs. But, as Mrs. +Hilliard maintained, she had lived long enough to have seen several +styles of decoration and ladies’ work, and her drawing-room proved with +what catholicity of spirit she had ‘gone in’ for each in succession. +The only drawback was that she could not make up her mind to be +entirely off with the old love in order to be on with the new. Thus she +sacrificed the great aim of the last exposition of high art—unity, to +her unprincipled softness of heart and lack of sternness of purpose. +She retained the cold whiteness and pompous glitter of the upper part +of her walls, and the undue warmth of colouring and floweriness of +her carpets—attempting to combine them with dirty orange dados and +sage-green <i>portières</i>, just as she kept the faded gorgeousness of +her Berlin woolwork in stripes of bold embroidery divided by bands of +imperial <span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>purple and emerald-green velvet, or in great groups of Queen +of Sheba flowers like the exuberant flower-pieces of Flemish painters, +introduced into close contact with the dim, delicate conventionalities +and studiously faint, long-drawn-out effects of nineteenth-century, +art needlework. It was a highly objectionable compromise from an +artistic point of view, but somehow it was not only saved from absolute +frightfulness, to a Philistine it had a charm of its own, because of +its little bit of mellowed, blended life—such as one may occasionally +meet with, on a grand scale, in a pile of building which began by being +a feudal castle, and went on to be an old English manor-house, then +progressed into a Georgian mansion, ending by proving the many-sided +home of a race. So time with lingering fingers had toned down and +tempered the robust gaudiness of the abused Berlin woolwork till it too +had acquired something of the exquisitely soft harmonies of ancient +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>tapestry. That was Catherine Hilliard’s opinion, and she had a fine +eye for colour. The chairs and tables, the books, the pictures and the +china in the room, were all about as incongruous, and yet all in a +manner represented some phase and echo of human life, and had come to +fit into each other.</p> + +<p>So much could hardly be said with regard to Catherine Hilliard and her +surroundings, as she stood listlessly looking out of one of the long +windows on the lengthening shadows falling across the lilac flowers of +the rhododendrons, and waiting for her cousin coming in to afternoon +tea. It might be because Catherine belonged to all time that she did +not belong particularly to that room—in which, however, the window +where she stood with its round table, heap of books, letter-case and +blotting-book, work-basket, and Nankin jar holding a bunch of purple +and pink and white pea-blossoms, constituted Catherine’s sanctum and +private properties.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span></p> + +<p>Catherine Hilliard was a young orphan cousin of Louisa Hilliard’s, +who, when she left school with a bare competence, had been invited by +the mistress of the Meadows to share her establishment. Catherine had +accepted the invitation on the stipulation that, in proportion to her +more slender means, she should pay her share of the joint housekeeping. +‘Catherine is such a dragon of pride for a young girl,’ Mrs. Hilliard +explained to anyone who had a right to be made acquainted with the +details of the arrangement, ‘that I dared not propose to her to come +and live with me and let me keep house for both. Yet she might have +the sense to guess that her company is a boon to me, though she has +little sympathy with my pottering commonplace ways, and lives in an +intellectual world of her own. It is my single regret with regard +to Catherine that she is a bit of a blue stocking.’ But though Mrs. +Hilliard professed and half persuaded herself to believe the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>contrary, +in reality she neither objected to Catherine’s contribution to the +general expenses nor to the different line she took in society. Mrs. +Hilliard’s hand was not so open that it had not its seasons and +occasions of closing, and she did not care to run the risk, slight +though it might be, of a rival in her special field.</p> + +<p>Altogether the arrangement, which had continued from the time that +Catherine Hilliard was eighteen, up to the present date when she was +in her twenty-third year, had answered admirably. Mrs. Hilliard was +the reverse of exacting, and she was even forbearing and indulgent +where Catherine’s dissimilar tastes and habits were concerned. On +Catherine’s side she was not so ignorant and abstracted in her want of +knowledge of human nature and absorption in her own pursuits, as to be +unaware how much colder and more forlorn a place the world would have +proved to her, if Mrs. Hilliard had forgotten their cousinship and had +not extended <span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>to the girl an older woman’s friendly protection, and +given her a home with a member of her kindred. Catherine cherished +in silence and reserve sentiments of gratitude and affection for her +cousin Louisa, and was a good deal more under her influence than could +easily have been supposed. But there was a hitch—what miners call +‘a fault’—between Catherine and ordinary humanity, the consequences +of which were so plain that Fan Constable, who was not in the other +girl’s confidence, could read them though she could not trace them to +their source. Without near ties, without clear, positive duties—apart +from the obligation to keep the ten commandments and lead what she +understood of a Christian life, Catherine Hilliard was thrown back +and in upon herself, which, unless as a discipline to teach her how +insufficient she was for any achievement she really valued, seemed +about the worst experience she could have encountered. She was like a +plant withdrawn <span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>from the wholesome, common, out-of-door influences +of sun, rain, wind, and a touch of frost, while the plant is at the +same time subjected in one part of its cellular tissue to the strain +of over-stimulus and over-cultivation. Though Catherine lived in a +house full of lively movement, with many comers and goers, though +she was on excellent terms with the house’s mistress and its circle +or circles, the girl remained always like an unfamiliar visitor in +what served her for a home. She was only in, not of, its circles. +Catherine’s was largely an inner world of fancy and feeling; its +scenes furnished by the vivid representations which she drew in her +mind, of places and incidents met with in her books; its characters, +ideal personages, ghosts and shades—goodly ghosts and heroic shades, +no doubt, but destitute of the substantiality and warmth, and what is +salutary even in the provoking contradictions, the piteous failures, +the tough warfare of flesh and blood. There was a certain bloodlessness +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>and fantasticalness about Catherine’s world, amidst much that was +noble and sweet in it. She had an aching consciousness of a hollow +emptiness about it, and not of a gaping void alone, but of a harsh +discord between it and the actual world. She felt herself getting more +and more fastidious and captious and—she feared—horribly selfish. She +moped a good deal, as well as mused. She dreaded instinctively she +knew not what, as the result of her star-gazing and hero-worship. +She was conscious she shrank from the common work-a-day world and +from the vulgar and mean interests—often, of ordinary people with +the common business of life on their hands. But she did not know in +the least how to give up her habits, or reconcile herself to society +as she found it. She was helpless in the bondage she had made for +herself—yet she was frequently more weary and disgusted with herself +than she could possibly be with any other person. But <span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>Catherine had +one great resource against morbidness, though she repaired to it as +to other occupations, either listlessly, or with a fitfulness in her +temporary eagerness, resorting to it with no distinct comprehension of +what a safeguard it was to her, from the consequences of the continual +exercise of those faculties which were already over-wrought.</p> + +<p>Catherine was exceedingly fond of animals, and she happened to be +free to express her fondness, since she was not merely the mistress +of half-a-dozen pets of her own, she was the sovereign protector +of the whole animal kingdom as it existed at the Meadows. She was +likewise the head-gardener on the spot. For Mrs. Hilliard had nimbly +seized the opportunity of a floricultural tyrant’s throwing up his +good situation, in a fit of pique, to get rid of her hired oppressor +permanently. She had then vested in Catherine supreme authority over +a junior gardener and a boy who were well broken in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>to obedience. +The only obligation which Mrs. Hilliard had imposed on her cousin was +that she should not indulge her predilection for <span id="cor_13"></span>Shakespearian flowers +in the beds, and untrimmed luxuriance in the shrubbery, to the extent +of banishing every choice pelargonium and perfectly quilled dahlia, +which had formerly crowned Mrs. Hilliard with honour at flower-shows; +neither should Catherine be guilty of corrupting her subordinates to +the degree of reducing the grounds to the picturesquely disorderly +level of the gardens of a French or Italian country house, so ruining +the established reputation of the Meadows for the trimness which is the +English gardener’s delight.</p> + +<p>Catherine, always overwhelmed as she was, not with bracing work, +but with a dreary surplus of vacant time on her hands, in spite of +her reading, was fortunately capable of revelling, in her desultory +fashion, in this double resource. She would leave Dante in the saddest +region of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>the Inferno, the Jungfrau when the Black Knight had her +at last, Mary Barton pursuing the outward-bound ship, Janet in the +agony of her repentance, to take refuge in her own section of the +living world. She would play for half-an-hour with Pepper and Crab +or the youngest kitten. She would watch the eight rooks whose big, +black-coated presence always seemed to Catherine to lend a solid +dignity to the fry of small birds, just as the rooks’ deep cawing +supplied a solemn diapason to the lighter music of the orchestra in +the shrubbery on a bright morning in spring, or a quiet evening in +early summer. Catherine stoutly maintained the innocence of the rooks +against the respectful representations of the modest under-gardener, +that the birds did not confine their bill of fare to worms and the +wide genus grub, as she was fain to assert. And after all, the alleged +depredations committed by the rooks, were as nothing to the frightful +accusations brought <span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>against a pair of demure sinners of Cushat doves, +which were like the apple of Catherine’s eye, for whose condescension +in coming of their own sweet will and building a nest in an old Scotch +fir, and their affability in indulging in soft cooings, she could never +be sufficiently grateful. Catherine scouted the idea of replacing the +wild pigeons by a couple of their tame kindred, which should be housed +in a neat little pigeon-house, submit to be fed with grain and crumbs +from feasts, or fly far a-field for their meals instead of proceeding +with the marauding instincts of the most incorrigible of thieves, and +alas! in spite of their sleek, iridescent plumage, and the tender +sentiment associated with them, of the greediest feeders belonging to +the feathered tribes, to devastate whole rows of newly-sown peas and +‘breaks’ of young cauliflowers.</p> + +<p>What did Catherine care for peas and cauliflowers compared to her +Cushat doves? <span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>But Mrs. Hilliard, though she found some food for +laughter in the doves’ exploits and Catherine’s dismay, was not so +indifferent to the wreck of her vegetables. Catherine was very much +obliged to Oliver Constable for telling her, though it was in a +measure another disillusion in the way the information was put, that +wood-pigeons were the most arrant cowards in addition to being the most +disgraceful thieves, for the most transparent sham—the least life-like +scarecrow—sufficed to hold the robbers at bay.</p> + +<p>Catherine was as well acquainted with every bird’s nest within her +bounds as were the Friarton boys, whom she could not keep out of the +shrubbery in the bird-nesting season, and whom she detested with an +illogical detestation—to say the least, enough to show that she had +never had a brother. She would suddenly start out on these boys from a +little wilderness of green branches, and assail them <span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>with a torrent +of passionate reproach. The boys would stare blankly at the apparition +they had aroused, but any unwonted bashfulness, if excited at all, +would speedily give way to a sense of the utter disproportion between +cause and effect. The result would be an ironical titter or guffaw +(for the Friarton boys were by no means models of good manners), and +a noisy, careless retreat to be followed by a return rendered doubly +certain by Catherine’s injudicious challenge.</p> + +<p>Catherine retreated too, covered with swift mortification for her +extravagant anger. But it was difficult to be patient with those young +savages, who could no more be barred out than the waves of the sea +could be held back, who would make short work in one holiday afternoon +of all those exquisite little homes of moss and leaves, leaving the +poor, fond, helpless architects fluttering in despair round their +ruined dwellings and pillaged treasures of blue, green, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>black and +red spotted, and freckled eggs, or, more precious still, downy, +yellow-beaked, tottering, gaping fledglings. The nests were perfectly +beautiful and sacred to Catherine, and she took great pleasure in +visiting them all round every morning, with elaborate precautions +not to disturb family arrangements or trouble heads of houses in the +performance of their duties.</p> + +<p>Catherine was almost as happy and much less liable to worry, among +her lilies, of which she cultivated an infinite variety; her trailing +love-lies-bleeding, like a warrior’s plumes heavy and drooping with +the red stains of battle; the golden shields, with the dark discs and +the stiff grenadier stalks, of her sunflowers; the pinked perfection +and spicy breath of her clove carnations. She would hang over each +of them, and touch them with a lingering, fondling touch, as if they +were sentient creatures, and could welcome and respond to a friendly +caress. She <span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>hated to shorten their brief blossoming time; she would +never gather them with lavish wastefulness. She liked to have them near +her at all times, and so would take a tribute from their abundance to +‘busk’ her person and the Meadows drawing-room, but she never did it +unsparingly and recklessly.</p> + +<p>Catherine Hilliard was of the middle size, but looked taller than she +was from the slenderness of her figure. Her hair was of that dubious +colour which enemies called red, friends auburn, and gushing admirers +golden. In reality it was each tint as the light fell on its simple +braids and twists. Her complexion was fair and pale—too waxen, in +spite of her bird-herding and gardening, for perfect health. Her nose, +mouth, and chin were well and softly moulded. But the results of her +temperament and circumstances were visible in her personal appearance. +There was a languor which had no vital purpose to conquer it, evident +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>in her air, that threatened to drain away the last remnant of what +ought to have been the healthy hope and joyousness of her years. Her +mouth had a sensitive, plaintive droop. The expression of her eyes +varied continually from hesitating dreaminess to spasmodic enthusiasm, +from short-lived enthusiasm to intolerant scorn, from quick scorn to +morbid depression. The beauty of Catherine Hilliard’s face, as it +struck strangers, dwelt principally in the dark blue of her eyes. +Withal, she was by no means strictly beautiful, only endowed with a +peculiar charm for those on whom the charm worked at all. She had a +fancy for gowns of thin material, in their season, like summer clouds +floating round or clinging to her, according to the atmosphere, in the +dry heat of noon, or in the slight dankness of the dew point. But she +preferred the colour of her gowns to be softly dark like the clouds +after sunset, thus instinctively rather than deliberately setting +off the fair <span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>paleness of her complexion. She kept her cousin Louisa +marvelling where Catherine could find so many misty purples, heather +browns, and cool slate colours, as well as naval blues, of a wire-woven +texture. Catherine wore a gauzy gown of a deep plum-colour at this +moment.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII"> + CHAPTER VII. + <br> + <span>HOW MRS. HILLIARD AND CATHERINE JUDGED THE LAST SAINT GEORGE OF + FRIARTON.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">At</span> last Mrs. Hilliard came briskly into the room still wearing +her hat. She could not, although she had tried, have walked otherwise +than briskly; and if she had been a duchess, her buxom and florid good +looks, a little overblown, would still have recalled a dairy-maid. +But as Mrs. Hilliard was perfectly aware of the association, and, +instead of attempting to smother it by all lawful and unlawful means, +faced it courageously and acknowledged it openly, she succeeded in +surmounting it; by not pretending to be what she was not, she remained +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span>herself in all essentials. She looked what she had always been—a lady +in spite of excessive plumpness, a decided inclination to redness, +and an exuberant, lasting elasticity and quickness of carriage and +step—the reverse of Catherine’s listlessness—which would have been +more becoming in early youth, and which had small connection with the +sober-mindedness, not to say the stateliness and dignity, of mature +years.</p> + +<p>The only sensitiveness which Mrs. Hilliard betrayed as to her personal +style, was that while she was by implication resigned to, nay, +reasonably consoled for, the death of her husband, whom she had married +after the shortest of wooings, and of whom she had not seen much during +their brief married life, she continued faithful to her widow’s black, +though it was twelve years since she had been a wife. At the same +time she could not get over her cousin’s eccentricity of taste when +Catherine <span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>could have fluttered so fitly, in every respect, in white or +in the palest of pinks, blues, or primroses. For a girl to be addicted +to sobriety in anything, before her time, was incomprehensible to +Louisa Hilliard, save in the light of affectation, if not hypocrisy, on +the girl’s part. But though Mrs. Hilliard did not believe much in most +people—young or old, she had still faith in Catherine’s odd childish +simplicity.</p> + +<p>‘Have I kept you long waiting, my dear?’ asked Mrs. Hilliard as she +subsided, buoyantly still, into her own low chair, and, untying her +hat, tilted it unceremoniously, for greater coolness, on the back of +her profuse brown hair. Her action made conspicuous, what was a marked +feature in her round face, the great expanse of white forehead—round +like the face itself, and big enough to have been, so far as size +was concerned, the forehead of a sage, but so flat and smooth that, +gazing on it, one felt tempted to doubt the fact of which there was <span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>no +question, that Mrs. Hilliard represented a woman of rather more than +ordinary intelligence.</p> + +<p>‘Not very long,’ answered Catherine, with her slow, absent-minded mode +of speech, dawdling as she spoke across the floor; ‘and though you had, +you know it would not have signified,’ she added indifferently.</p> + +<p>‘It always signifies if one interferes with another person’s comfort,’ +said Mrs. Hilliard, lightly; ‘only you are too young to understand the +value of that jewel of an English word, and I am bringing my excuse in +my afternoon’s budget, Catherine.’</p> + +<p>In their familiar household intercourse Mrs. Hilliard never abbreviated +her cousin’s name, or played affectionate or mischievous tricks with +it. This was not because Mrs. Hilliard was in the least like either of +those dignitaries Fan Constable or the Vicar of Wakefield, who loved +to be particular, who might choose to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>revenge themselves nobly on the +base liberties taken, doubtless, with each in turn, when they were +addressed as ‘Fan’ and ‘Dr. Prim.’</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard asserted that Catherine was ‘Catherine’ like her namesake +of Sienna, therefore the elder woman could not presume to call the +younger ‘Kate’ or ‘Kitty,’ though Mrs. Hilliard herself had never been +anything else to her intimates than ‘Loo’ or ‘Looey,’ unless ‘Tom’ +sometimes in the days of her youth.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard was in the habit of referring unblushingly, and with +a merry defiance of the contempt excited in the superior, highly +cultivated people who proclaimed themselves far above gossip, to +her diligence in collecting, and keenness in enjoying, the Friarton +news of the day. Catherine did not often appreciate, in themselves, +the promiscuous heaps of news cast down at her feet, for her to pick +and choose from without much trouble on her part. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>But she did set +wistful store on the merry heart of the gatherer and scatterer, and +counted herself a dull girl by contrast. Not that Catherine was a dull +young woman to speak with, she was rather pungent in a quiet way, as +Fan Constable had described her. Yet with all her pungency she had a +singleheartedness and magnanimity of character, a speedy inclination +to own herself in the wrong, after speaking her mind, which generally +forced her inferiors to respect as well as to pity her, and to receive +her under their protection from the encroachments of others, even while +they were taking advantage of her themselves.</p> + +<p>‘You won’t enquire what great event has happened,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, +hardly waiting till the servant had left the room.</p> + +<p>‘I shall hear it presently,’ said Catherine composedly.</p> + +<p>‘Then you shall have it <i>au naturel</i>, without any stuffing or +garnishing, to punish a great <span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span>lazybones of a girl who will not so much +as get up a little curiosity to serve as a relish for my tit-bit.’</p> + +<p>‘Too many cooks spoil the kale,’ said Catherine. ‘I should only waste +my small culinary talents by setting them up against yours.’</p> + +<p>‘I am not going to punish myself, in order to keep you in suspense any +longer. I flatter myself, though you are a mouldy book-worm, you feel +an agony of suspense, whatever you may pretend. As for myself, I am +itching to create a sensation. Oliver Constable is going in for the +mill and bakehouse—what do you think of that? What an anti-climax to +Fan’s solemn gentility!’</p> + +<p>‘Going in for the mill and bakehouse?’ repeated Catherine, vaguely.</p> + +<p>‘My dear Catherine, you are getting as pedantically precise in your +English, and as stupid, as the rest of your clever people,’ protested +Mrs. Hilliard, with lively impatience. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>‘Don’t tell me going in for a +thing is slang. Very soon, if you don’t take care, you will be mistaken +for a school-mistress. You will be as incapable as a senior wrangler +of speaking the language of ordinary life, or of taking in a simple +statement. Oliver Constable has come home from Oxford to be a miller +and baker, as old Peter Constable was before him—do you understand +that?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ said Catherine, with a faint smile. ‘What is your objection, +Louisa?’</p> + +<p>‘Mine? I have none in the world. He may be the bellman or the +lamplighter—by-the-by, these are two far more romantic occupations than +what he has chosen—for me. I am rather obliged to him for making the +unexpected happen, because, though it always happens, according to Lord +Beaconsfield, still, somehow, it sets us talking, and talking—or shall +I call it gabbling—is my vocation.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span></p> + +<p>‘Don’t you find it tiresome?’ suggested Catherine, with odd +<i>naïveté</i>.</p> + +<p>‘To myself or other people?’ enquired Mrs. Hilliard, unmoved save for +the twinkle in her eyes. ‘I can vouch it does not tire me;’ and she +used her plump fingers French fashion to help herself to another lump +of sugar.</p> + +<p>‘I suppose Oliver Constable cares more for making money than for +winning success in what is called a learned profession, and securing +a social position; that is all it comes to,’ said Catherine, with +a little sigh at the smallness of the sacrifice and the result +altogether. ‘I am not sure that he may not be right, from his point +of view, unless he were to “go in” (Louisa?) for great scholarship or +for travelling to the North or the South Pole. You see there are no +Eldorados or Asgards left for men to believe in, and go in search of +now. Oliver Constable is not a genius, to write an immortal <span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>book, or +paint a picture which will never be forgotten. I do not know that there +is anything so very much better for him to do than honestly add pound +to pound, and take his worldly pleasure by counting up his gains at the +year’s end.’</p> + +<p>‘My love, what a Mammon-worshipping speech from you, of all people!’</p> + +<p>‘But we don’t seem to be able to keep from worshipping Mammon,’ alleged +Catherine, wearily, ‘though we say and perhaps mean that we are +worshipping another god; and I am not at all clear that Mrs. Grundy is +a more respectable deity than Mammon.’</p> + +<p>‘You can’t accuse me of paying homage at her shrine. But are you not +sorry for sister Fan? What was her ultimatum for Oliver? That he should +become Lord Chancellor or Archbishop of Canterbury, while she should be +Jock the Laird’s sister? What a descent, to be condemned to remain the +sister, as she <span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>was the daughter, of a well-to-do miller and baker!’</p> + +<p>‘No, I am not sorry,’ said Catherine, with more animation than she had +yet shown, for there was a spice of short-lived indignation in the +tone. ‘If she could have no higher ambition for her brother than that +he should be a barrister or a rector—you know his rising to be so much +as a judge or a dean was hardly to be thought of—I have not a spark of +pity to spare for Fan Constable’s disappointment.’</p> + +<p>‘You have very little pity to spare for anybody out of a book, it +appears to me,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, with cheerful absence of concern. +‘Your little foible is that you are extremely hard-hearted. I am not—at +least nobody can refuse to give me the credit of good nature. I am +really sorry for Fan in the collapse of the dream of her life, if she +would only believe me, and if she would not make herself so ridiculous +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>by her fixed determination to be a lady. Of course the determination +defeats itself. She is not and never will be a lady—conventionally, +though she is well enough in her irregular way, if she would relax her +resolution—which she will not do so that I must laugh or die,’ finished +Mrs. Hilliard, not looking like dying.</p> + +<p>‘I had quite a different idea of Oliver Constable, however,’ +said Catherine, returning voluntarily to the main thread of the +conversation, but not speaking as if this or any other baffled idea +mattered much. ‘I never thought him mercenary——’</p> + +<p>‘Wait a little,’ interrupted Mrs. Hilliard, with unquenched vivacity; +‘my hero is not mercenary. He is the most disinterested, unselfish of +mortals, though he is a “sair saunt” to Fan. He has come back among +us as the self-appointed champion of the millers and advocate of the +bakers. He is to be the defender <span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span>of the tradespeople—the last version +of St. George in Friarton.’</p> + +<p>‘But who is harming the millers, or what need have the bakers of +an advocate?’ asked Catherine, in a puzzled tone. ‘I thought the +tradespeople here were particularly prosperous—much more so than any +other class. I am sure they are not deficient in a sense of their own +merits and in a capacity for bringing them into the foreground.’</p> + +<p>‘I agree with you entirely. But I suppose their prosperity is their +bane in one sense, and that our taking them at their own word goes to +prove that we are a pair of would be, bloated aristocrats. But it is +a fact that I never go into Polley’s or Dadd’s shop without having +a distinct perception that Mrs. Polley and old and young Dadd are +thinking to themselves, “You need not look down on us; we are every bit +as good as you are. We have as early spring chickens and lamb on our +tables as you <span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>have on yours. We could buy you out any day” (and I dare +say they could, if the Meadows were to sell). “We know our place, so +far as being civil in return for your custom; but don’t try to turn up +your nose at us”—as if my nose would do anything save turn up—to her +Majesty the Queen on her throne in the House of Lords. Catherine, you +are aware of its infirmity?’ exclaimed Mrs. Hilliard, parenthetically, +tip-tilting the refractory member still farther with her middle finger +in the most comical manner. ‘“Don’t go to think of trampling <i>us</i> +under your feet,” which, as Sairey Gamp used to say, “Betsy Prig will +take her Bible oath” is the last exercise she would seek to take for +the mere pleasure of the thing.’</p> + +<p>Catherine was fain to laugh. ‘When I begged Mrs. Polley to keep her +errand-boy away from the shrubbery—away from the birds’ nests,’ the +girl chimed in—‘Mrs. Polley was quite rude. “You must really look after +him yourself, Miss,” <span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span> +she told me sharply; <span id="cor_14"></span>“he is my servant here, but +he is not answerable to me when he is out of the shop. Excuse me, but +it ain’t any call of mine to look after Mrs. Hilliard’s place. Let them +idle fellows of gardeners as are in her pay see to that, I have enough +to do with my business. You ladies would be the first to complain and +leave the shop if it were neglected.”’</p> + +<p>‘There is something in that,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, candidly. ‘Indeed I +have had thoughts of giving up Polley’s, because, according to cook, +Mrs. Polley will not amend the error of her ways in the line of capers +and cloves. I have meditated making an experiment in the new shop near +the railway station, only I feared that, on the whole, I should be +worse served there. For Mrs. Polley, to give the woman her due, knows +her business, keeps a good article as a rule, and despises to ask an +absurd price for it. As for her “Britons never shall be slaves” tone, +it borders on the aggressive, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>but then it is the reverse of servility +and it is the echo of a highly esteemed patriotic song. I imagine +Oliver Constable will call it the expression of a fine independent +spirit.’</p> + +<p>‘But what does Oliver Constable mean?’ repeated Catherine, looking +as she was apt to do sometimes, hopelessly mystified in spite of her +cleverness.</p> + +<p>‘He means to regenerate the lower middle classes—to make all the +members ladies and gentlemen in spite of themselves. Young Dadd must +learn Greek, and carry Plato, instead of “Verdant Green” and “Mrs. +Brown at Margate,” in his coat-pocket, and dip into ancient philosophy +in the intervals of handling his shears or his yard measure, of cutting +off a yard of lace, and calculating how much cloth is required for the +present fashion in flounces. Mrs. Polley and her girls will attend +evening classes for the higher education of women, and trip you and +me up with an opinion on the tertiary formation, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>or the recently +discovered satellite of Neptune, when our small minds are full of bloom +raisins and Carolina rice.’</p> + +<p>‘But I thought you said he was to identify himself with the millers and +bakers?’</p> + +<p>‘That goes without saying, you little goose. Charity begins at home.’</p> + +<p>‘But they will still be millers and bakers,’ hammered Catherine.</p> + +<p>‘I should hope so. Let him make them what he likes, I trust he intends +to leave us our flour and bread, else we shall be in a bad way. For, +though the railway might bring us a supply from a distance, still we +should miss a little, our breakfast and dinner rolls. Even these would +be too heavy a price to pay for a young fanatic’s radicalism—is that +the proper name to call it, Catherine?’</p> + +<p>‘I cannot tell,’ said Catherine, slowly, ‘but surely the thing itself +is wasted on millers and bakers and common tradespeople.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span></p> + +<p>The girl was not hard-hearted, as she had been called. Any social +arrogance which she expressed was more an acquired trick of thought and +speech than a calm persuasion. She was not a fool, yet she nourished +a vague impression that it might be a Christian, patriotic duty to +do something for the outcast and forlorn—that a troop of soldiers or +a crew of sailors called for care from their leaders; while she held +the notion that millers and bakers, with tradespeople in general, +even though they were convicted of gross self-indulgence, and that +coarse materialism which is the deadly enemy of a higher life—of all +spirituality, might very well be left to take care of themselves.</p> + +<p>‘Will Oliver Constable’s mission have any success?’ Catherine +speculated, with mild, idle curiosity. ‘Will the great vulgar consent +to be refined?’</p> + +<p>‘I should think not,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, decidedly. ‘If I were one +of them, I should hate <span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span>to be poked up and enlightened. After all, I +have a strong suspicion I am one of them, with just an outer coating +of polish, the result of circumstances,’ Mrs. Hilliard announced +impenitently, with a keen perception of the fun of taking guilt to +herself.</p> + +<p>It was like Catherine not to contradict the assertion beyond a certain +point.</p> + +<p>‘You don’t speak fine language like one of the Miss Polleys, or run +away, after the fashion of some of the others, when they have come into +the shop in their morning deshabille, and are scared by the entrance +of a customer belonging to the upper ranks. You are not slovenly, +smart, and splendid by turns. You don’t giggle at every word and think +it witty to be rude to men, clenching your rudeness with an emphatic +“There!” as I have heard the Miss Polleys do when I have gone to their +shop with some of Reddock’s commissions on market-day. You don’t spend +your evenings sauntering up and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>down the street, or paying perpetual +visits to your cronies.’</p> + +<p>‘But I am a very prosaic, commonplace person for all that,’ said Mrs. +Hilliard, demurely. ‘You are sensible I have no sympathy with high +heroics or “high faluting” of any kind—my nature is pitched in too +low a key. The rest is accident. You forget that I am twice as old as +the youngest Miss Polley—almost old enough to be her mother—not to +speak of the cares I have gone through. I have no occasion to walk +out after dinner, or shop-shutting, as it may be, since the whole +day is mine, and you must admit I make good use of the hours after +luncheon. I believe I am the best visitor in Friarton. Oliver Constable +ought to include me in his mission, or get up a private one for my +special benefit. It is not fair to my needs, it is impertinent to +the tradespeople, to omit me in his benevolent efforts. But perhaps +he would prefer to reform you, withdrawing you from <span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>your books +and converting you into a social animal with a due regard to your +neighbour’s welfare;’ as she spoke, Mrs. Hilliard glanced quickly at +Catherine, but the glance fell without effect like blank shot.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t think he will trouble with either of us,’ said Catherine, +composedly. ‘We are not in trade, we should be wide of his mark. +Will he continue to come here? I mean, will he drop you from his +visiting-list, or will you drop him from yours?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh dear no, not so far as I am concerned. I am not particular lest any +offence should come between the wind and my gentility, and my friends +know my Bohemian tendencies. My acquaintances are aware beforehand +of the risks they run in countenancing me. Besides, the Constables, +as everybody has heard, are blood relations of mine, and it does not +suit my pride to throw them over, though they were to take to highway +robbery, instead of grinding corn <span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>and baking bread, as they have done +all along,’ said Louisa Hilliard, raising her head with a genuinely +aristocratic movement, notwithstanding the shortness of her neck. +‘Then,’ she resumed in her usual tone, ‘I should lose the opportunity +of seeing Fan stiffening into stone and at the same time kindling into +a white heat before the bitter draught she has to swallow. And when +all is said, Oliver Constable cannot get rid of the rather important +items that he has been bred a university man, and has succeeded to a +considerable patrimony, even though he should be eccentric enough to +knead dough with his own hands or carry round a basket of loaves like +St. Elizabeth on his head.’ Mrs. Hilliard ended hastily with a greater +concession to public opinion than her previous sentence had implied.</p> + +<p>The next moment she began to laugh at the picture she had conjured +up. ‘I think I see him,’ she exclaimed, in high glee; ‘as if he <span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>did +not make a sufficient spectacle of himself already—an Adonis who must +contort himself into a Caliban—what a waste of good looks!’</p> + +<p>‘I do not agree with you,’ said Catherine, with her sincerity as +striking and more rampant than Fan Constable’s. ‘In the first place, he +is not an Adonis, though he is a fairly handsome man. In the second, I +should hate good looks which were not liable to be affected by temper +and mood. They would be little better than those of a barber’s block. +As a contrast, I could easily understand the fascination of the mobile +ugliness of a Mirabeau. An Adonis liable to be replaced at any moment +by a Caliban, is not at all a bad idea for enhancing the fugitive +graces of Adonis. But Oliver Constable is not an Adonis.’</p> + +<p>‘So be it, since you will have it so,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, shrugging +her shoulders. ‘But my theory of real good looks is that they should +rise superior to every vicissitude. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>Oliver Constable doth profess too +much. I do not say he is intentionally hypocritical, but I imagine +he has been nettled by his connection with trade, and now he is +going to brazen it out, and thrust it down people’s throats, forcing +his fellow-creatures to own that there is nothing like trade in the +end. Very likely, too, he is not averse to drawing more money from +money-making concerns. What more natural than that he should have +inherited the trading spirit, and be still keener in business than his +father was? Only he ought not to assume a cloak of philanthropy.’</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard deprecated enthusiasm as stoutly as if she had been a +great diplomatist, and distrusted every profession which had not in it +a large leaven of openly proclaimed self-interest and cynicism, while +in her cheerful pessimism she treated the reverse as a good joke.</p> + +<p>‘The game is not worth the candle,’ said <span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>Catherine, letting her +heavily weighted eyelids drop.</p> + +<p>‘It is far worse than that. Oliver Constable’s crotchet will not merely +come to grief like other crotchets, it will serve to unsettle the young +man. It will cost him the fair start in life he might have commanded, +and of which he might have made something, if he has a tithe of the +ability which has been liberally attributed to him. Though I laughed at +first, and though I cannot help smiling still, at what I foresee of the +manifestations of Fan’s wrath, still as an older woman and a relative +of the family, however remote, I am sorry. I have sufficient grace left +for that,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, with greater seriousness and with some +genuine good feeling.</p> + +<p>Catherine continued to look as if she saw no cause either for joy or +sorrow, as if she were drearily impervious to emotion from the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span>actual +world outside herself and her books. Catherine’s faith and hope in +humanity had reached the lowest ebb.</p> + +<p>Oliver Constable’s aims would meet with nothing at the Meadows, save +ridicule on the one hand, and unbelief on the other.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII"> + CHAPTER VIII. + <br> + <span>OLIVER’S PROCLAMATION IN THE MILL AND THE BAKEHOUSE.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Old</span> Peter Constable had been a good master in more senses than +one—a better master, inasmuch as he and his servants understood each +other, than his son seemed likely to prove. Peter had kept his men long +in his service, but it so happened that at this date, from death and +other weeders-out of grey-headed workpeople, the men in the mill were +comparatively young. The head man, who had been promoted recently, was +not older than Oliver himself, and as yet supported such dignity as he +had to maintain in a sheepish fashion, while his <span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>trumpet still gave +forth an uncertain sound. Accordingly, the new master’s announcement, +though it excited a good deal of curiosity, drew forth no protest, not +even a private one, in this quarter.</p> + +<p>Oliver’s little speech was made with a great effort in a pause of +the drowsy hum of the machinery and the equally lulling splash of +the water—churned into the likeness of foaming milk by the rapid +revolutions of the mill-wheel. In the middle of the self-consciousness +and confusion which beset him, and disturbed the clear sequence of his +best thoughts and ideas, Oliver made it be heard and understood that +he was to keep on the mill and take the chief management in the room +of his father. He succeeded in saying that he expected the men to do +him faithful service, while he would try his best to make their close +connection the mutual benefit it ought to be. He hoped that each man +of them, as well as himself, saw only one interest <span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span>between master +and servant, and would be ready to back him in trying to do his duty. +Therefore, as he would not stint them in their wages, without a good +cause which he should put plainly before them, or ask them to make +bricks without straw—that is, to grind corn without sufficient water +power, mechanical power, reasonable time and competent guidance—so +he trusted they would be prepared to play their part in furnishing +the due amount of labour, and not demean themselves to any of the +tricks of palming off bad, slovenly, half-completed work, for good +and thorough work, which were bringing labour into general disrepute, +and threatening to become the curse and ruin of the integrity and +prosperity of England, where employers and employed were concerned. +Oliver told them frankly that for their sake—no less than for his own, +he would not consent to take scamped work, or any known lazy, knavish +substitute for honest <span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>work, from the best and most skilled workmen, in +other respects, among them.</p> + +<p>In return, his workpeople had a right to require from him not only +punctual payment of their wages, but intelligent consideration of their +position, helpful sympathy with their efforts, forbearance for their +blunders, as he should claim tolerance from them for his mistakes. +Although he had thought it advisable to begin by warning them of +what he could not and ought not to permit in their relation, he also +told them what they were not called upon to bear from him—heartless +indifference to their welfare, and unprincipled gambling with flesh and +blood, as the means of keeping up the game of speculation rather than +fair trade. He was ready to trust them for the loyal discharge of their +obligations, till they were put to the proof. He asked them in return +to trust his father’s son till they learned to know him better as their +master.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span></p> + +<p>If it was a strain upon Oliver Constable to make such a speech except +to his cronies, and he only made it by a kind of mental and physical +convulsion, it was also a strain upon the young men in the mill to +listen properly. They could not compose themselves to catch half the +words, far less their meaning. They grinned and gaped at each other, +and every man looked how his immediate neighbour was conducting +himself, rather than attended to Oliver. Yet they did not fail to +develop instantly keen criticism of what might be called Oliver’s style +of public speaking. ‘Goin’ to school and college hain’t made him speak +out, or thump with his fist in the right place, like old Sam Snuffles +the Methody, as roars hisself hoarse, and lashes all around him so +that a chap has to duck his head for safety. Old Sam beats the young +master, old Sam does, hout and hout,’ reflected one lad, in a vein +of class conceit and agreeable superciliousness. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span>Another promising +youth, who had been reared at a seaport, made an apt comparison in his +mind between the speaker and a heavily-laden vessel, sailing against +the wind, labouring and tacking; ‘and if I was only near him, I would +lay you any odds but I’d hear his timbers groaning,’ the ingenious +youngster silently pursued the simile which he was reserving for future +use.</p> + +<p>But Ted Green, the head man in the mill, never got beyond the news +that ‘the concern’ was not to stand still or be transferred to other +ownership, which might have endangered Ted’s late rise in the world. +He pondered throughout the whole of the remaining sentences, on the +substance of the introductory remark. He wished he could go home to his +wife and repeat to her the welcome assurance. Wishes were useless in +the present case, they could not even free Ted from the responsibility +of acting as the mouthpiece of the men under him in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>replying to the +address. Naturally, Ted only replied to what had gone into his ears and +taken hold of his mind. Still, as the intelligence grasped by him had +been of a pleasant sort, one might have expected that there would have +been warmth, at least, in the partial response. But Ted was stolid as +well as stupid—a large, heavy-looking, fair-complexioned young man, +with the fairness increased to positive pallor by such a plentiful +application of flour to the skin as would have put to shame the thick +powdering preceding the thicker painting of the fine ladies of the last +century. Ted leant against the door-post with that hopeless incapacity +to stand upright which is mostly shown by sailors on firm ground. ‘You +aire, sir,’ said Ted, abruptly and concisely, with idiotic vagueness +and apparently the utmost phlegm.</p> + +<p>Oliver had to knit his brows and think for a moment before he +recognised that the two <span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span>words replied concisely to the single +statement that he was to keep on the mill, while they were totally +irrelevant to what he considered the gist of the speech which he had +pumped up by a severe struggle out of the depth of the temporary chaos +of his mind. It sounded as if Ted and his fellows dismissed that with +cynical contempt and only troubled themselves to grapple with the bit +of information which was practical in their eyes.</p> + +<p>‘Well, I take it, since there is no question of parting company, me +and my mates here don’t object to present terms—not at present,’ Ted +resumed and ended with stiff and wary, but unmistakable condescension, +the moment the decision had, in his judgment, passed over to the men. +‘Not at present, sir,’ the young millers confirmed their leader’s +opinion with one voice, as if it were worked by the mill machinery, and +rendered a little husky and obscure by the pervading dust.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span></p> + +<p>Oliver’s gravity was nearly upset. At the same time, he was aware of +a slight sense of repulse, and consequent disappointment, which he +said to himself proved him to be the inveterately sanguine and hasty +beggar with whose foolish traits he ought at this date to have been +familiar enough to overcome them, and set their reactionary influence +at defiance.</p> + +<p>But he could not help looking forward to receiving a little more +encouragement in the bakehouse, were it only in an indignant +apprehension of some of his inferences, and a dogged assertion of +a working baker’s rights, including that of testing the quality of +his work, and of dealing with his master, in the full bloom of class +prejudice, as his natural enemy. It was all very well to speak of +the superior comfort and general agreeability of a miller’s life +over that of a baker. The former had the advantage in the matter of +picturesqueness like the toil of the day labourer in the fields over +the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>artisan’s—above all the petty tradesman’s occupations. Yet there +could be no comparison—taking the two trades <i>en masse</i>—of which +was the more intelligent of the two.</p> + +<p>There were honourable exceptions of ploughmen-poets and young +shepherds, among the lowly pastoral hills, who had lived to become—like +David, king of Israel—leaders of men. But the exceptions only proved +the rule.</p> + +<p>In the same line of argument the sallow-faced journeymen bakers, with +their complexions bleached by so much of their lives spent in the +atmosphere of the oven, even the forward lads who, after the ancient +fashion of Pharaoh’s chief baker, poised on their heads baskets full +of ‘all manner of baked meats’ or more ponderous loaves, and traversed +the streets of Friarton, had their minds and their very faces sharpened +by contact, at once wider and closer, with their fellows. And the +bakers were as far <span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>in intellectual advance of the manly young louts of +millers whose employment consisted chiefly in heaving up and down sacks +of corn and flour, and mechanically feeding the mill, as the millers +were before ordinary farm servants.</p> + +<p>Oliver counted, too, on Jim Hull, his father’s old factotum and +right-hand man, such a long-established ‘institution’ in the bakehouse +and shop, that Peter Constable had been wont to say, Jim was not only a +great deal better acquainted with the details of the business than he, +Peter, had been able to continue, so that he should not like to venture +on any step without Jim’s concurrence, but that, in fact, he would +hardly consent to such a liberty taken with him and his position. He +knew his own importance, and while he had the interest of the master as +much at heart as any Constable of them all could have it, Jim was just +a trifle inclined to take the rule into his own hands and reign on his +own account.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span></p> + +<p>Oliver had compared Jim Hull to those mayors of the palace who had +founded the Carlovingian dynasty in the west of Europe; but while +Oliver himself felt by no means inclined to act the lackadaisically +sentimental part of the long-haired monarchs of France, he believed +he might reckon on his man for something shrewd and telling, whether +on his master’s side or against him. And Oliver secretly sighed for a +foeman worthy of his steel, for the stimulus of the sharpest opposition +to balance the enervating languor induced by his sister Fan’s +despairing acquiescence, and Ted Green and his companions’ mortifying +indifference where Oliver’s will was concerned.</p> + +<p>The Constables’ extensive bakehouse and shop at Friarton bore no +resemblance in any respect to Friarton Mill. In place of being a +venerable structure—half superannuated, it was a comparatively new +building furnished with every modern improvement, in full activity. +Indeed <span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>it had been erected by Peter Constable’s enterprise when he +began to flourish greatly in his twin trades. The large and somewhat +staring shop had an intimation inscribed over the door, ‘Peter +Constable, Baker and Confectioner,’ and the pledge was fulfilled in the +display of every description of British bread within the windows. The +shop and its double sign stood out boldly and with perfect confidence +among the shops in the old-fashioned High Street where the weekly +corn market was still held, on the pavement before the door of the +Ayott Arms Inn. Old Peter Constable had attended the corn market +with the regularity of clock-work, and had enjoyed the opportunity +afforded him, in the intervals between inspecting samples of grain, of +looking over the way with entire complacency at the handsome shop and +bakehouse which were among the fruits of his industry and enterprise. +The immediate vicinity of the shop had also enabled Peter to entertain +hospitably <span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span>select little parties of his customers among the farmers, +in the back-shop, and to conclude bargains with them there in greater +privacy than could be found in the street, or in the commercial room +of the inn. Fan Constable, in walking up Friarton High Street, had not +looked upon the great bake-shop with the same favourable eyes. But she +was a true and high-spirited woman. She had never gone out of her way +or got up an excuse to avoid passing her father’s shop-door. She had +walked straight by it, though she might not have been able to prevent +her foolish colour from rising, in company with Mrs. Fremantle, and +while Fan saw Clara Houghton advancing in the opposite direction. Fan +would have risked meeting Clara on the doorstep, and if the vicar’s +daughter had declined to own acquaintance with a valuable ally and an +old school-fellow to boot because of the fire of half-mischievous, +half-malicious eyes which Fan knew so well <span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>were watching the +encounter, then let the friendship come to a violent end on the spot, +the miller and baker’s daughter would have said without hesitation, +though its destruction must undoubtedly have proved a blow to Fan. +She had never failed her father or even betrayed any repugnance to +joining him at the shop when she was in town with him on market days, +and he was to drive her home in the pony phaeton, which to please Fan +had superseded a gig, just as the gig had in its time, to please Fan’s +mother, taken the place of a spring cart.</p> + +<p>Fan had only not been equal to getting up an enthusiasm for the +contents of pans and trays, in well-raised loaves and crisp biscuits, +and she did not see that she was called upon—good housekeeper though +she was—to be one of the severely initiated in the inner mysteries +of bread made with or without yeast, steamed or not steamed. She was +guilty of greater wilful ignorance in the matter of bread than in any +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span>other domestic question; though of course she was acquainted with such +an A B C piece of knowledge as how to distinguish a cottage from a pan +loaf when she saw them, while she was perfectly aware that the Polley +girls had a joke among them and their companions, of her affected +ignorance in this particular.</p> + +<p>It had certainly vexed Fan when her father, in his satisfaction with +his bread, would illustrate its excellence by lightly patting the crust +or gently pinching the crumb. She confessed to herself she hated to +see him on an emergency, when he had sent the shopman out and no other +man or boy was in the way, quietly step behind the counter, and in the +innocence of his heart, sell a twopenny loaf to a working woman or a +halfpenny biscuit to a child. And Fan had the conviction that rather +than witness Oliver, with his college breeding, and the gentleman-like +character impressed on his very twists and grimaces, demean himself to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>dispense the staff of life, as his father had done before him, to his +fellow-townspeople, she would herself go behind the counter and wait +on the mocking public. It is to be feared that Fan would have offered +cakes and buns with a tragedy air which would have repelled all save +the most persistent buyer.</p> + +<p>Oliver had assured himself that he had long ago got over the boyish +weakness—barely excusable in a boy, and the paltriest of all follies +in a man—which, to do men justice, a large proportion of them cast +off with the growth of their beards, of wincing under the knowledge +that his father had been in trade—in the primitive trade—of a baker. +Oliver had fancied he had well-nigh forgotten the sneaking sense of +affront at the pit whence he had been dug. But it seemed the sillier +<span id="cor_15"></span>and more Jeames-like a social definition was, the more it stuck in +the consciousness of its victim. Oliver, to his disgust, experienced +a sensation of personal <span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span>discomfort, an inclination to avoid public +attention, when he walked into the Friarton bake-shop in the light of +the heir come to take possession. He had to relieve his self-disgust +by defying his self-consciousness, standing up as large as life and +lounging purposely in the sight of the bystanders for a few minutes. He +had to sit down in the retirement of the back-shop and smoke a pipe to +recover his equanimity as he meditated on the manliness of Thackeray’s +Philip on his way through the world, bowing with perfect nonchalance +and satisfaction from the ‘knife-board’ of an omnibus, to his +fashionable friends in their carriages. Oliver ended by recalling the +occasion when as a small boy he was led by his father through the same +premises, then in the process of building. Little Oliver had enjoyed +the inspection at least as much as his father had enjoyed making it +with him, and had listened with pride while the owner of the place +told the child—when there was no thought of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>Oliver’s developing into +a scholar—a gentleman far above such low aims as baking and selling +bread—that the buildings would be his one day—he should get the chief +good out of them after they had paid their cost to the builder. ‘And +you’ll make something worth while out of them, Nolly? You’ll be up to +all the new improvements that ain’t mere catchpennies? You’ll bake and +sell the best and cheapest bread in the county—won’t you now, my little +chap?’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, Far’er,’ little Oliver had answered, with unhesitating +cheerfulness, as children will undertake without doubt or fear to +conquer kingdoms.</p> + +<p>After that recollection, Oliver had only to rise and perform a +pantomime of freeing his arms from an encumbrance, to get rid of what +shreds remained of that parti-coloured garment of the conventional +fool, which we have most of us considerable difficulty to escape from +wearing, each in his turn.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span></p> + +<p>Oliver was fit to go to the bakehouse, and, in the sweat of his brow, +deliver his speech a second time—in this instance to his bakers. They +were a set of men both young and middle-aged, some portly, some lean, +all more or less yellow rather than white-skinned—like the millers, for +these were not the lads who spent a large part of their day in the open +air distributing the bread. These were journeymen who had not their +time at their own disposal, and even if they had, would not, unless +in perhaps one exceptional case, have devoted their leisure with the +enthusiasm of genius to the pursuit of any branch of natural history, +taking the student out into the fields and woods like the famous baker +whose book was the iron-bound coast and the bleak moors of Caithness.</p> + +<p>The sallow complexions of the bakers were brought out in relief by +their white caps as they stood with their shirt sleeves rolled up to +their <span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span>elbows. The men had left their baking boards for the day, but +still had to keep a vigilant eye on the ovens in the background. As +the party came forward to listen to the new owner of the business, +they fell naturally into the attitude of a deputation, with one +man representing their leader pushed well into the foreground, who +instinctively caught up his apron under his left arm as a sign in +character. But he was not Jim Hull.</p> + +<p>Jim Hull was in a white suit like the rest. But his suit was +conspicuously shrunk at the wrists and ankles as if he had grown away +from the original fit in his growing days and yet had adhered to the +measurement in anticipation of the time when he should begin to grow +down, not up, to bend nearer the earth instead of raising his head high +above it. Jim stood a little apart from the group of bakers and their +future master, as Oliver addressed his views to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span>his workmen. Contrary +to Oliver’s anticipations, Jim preserved at least the attitude of +neutrality in the encounter.</p> + +<p>Jim Hull was an elderly man with a compact face, as if his rather neat +and regular features had been compressed so as to take up the least +room. He had a remarkably clear, keen eye under the grizzled hair which +hung low on his square forehead, for a man approaching threescore. +He had been a faithful servant in the Constables’ service from youth +to approaching age. He was not without a kind of feudal sentiment +both to the family and the business. It gave him a certain amount of +gratification that they should still remain united—that Master Oliver +had not cut the whole concern and turned his back on it as if it were a +disgrace. On the other hand, Jim had his own deeply rooted prejudices +and his own schemes, and he was capable, as his former master had +foreseen, of becoming factious and troublesome <span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>if he were thwarted in +his opinions, and mortified in his conceit.</p> + +<p>Jim had not in the least anticipated the course Oliver Constable was +taking; so far from it, Jim had entertained a project of risking his +bachelor savings and enabling a favourite nephew who was already a +tolerably successful master baker in a neighbouring village, to buy the +Constables’ business, and carry it on in Friarton with the further help +of Jim’s experience.</p> + +<p>But, to do the old man justice, he would have resigned this private +plan with less reluctance if he had been satisfied with Oliver +Constable’s rearing, or with the young man personally.</p> + +<p>Jim listened and reflected, standing all alive and vigilant with his +hands clasped behind him. ‘Peter Constable kneaded his batch by my +side, many’s the day, when we were lads. He could set the sponge better +than I could, when we were <span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span>fellow-apprentices to his father. Peter’s +mind was in the baking business from the first. Now young Oliver has +been bred different, and his mind has been in his books—that’s what +makes me mistrustful of his proposal, and not altogether agreeable to +it, though it comes from his father’s son and does him no discredit—I’m +bound to say,’ thought Jim. ‘’Arry Reddock can look out for himself, +and I’m not pledged to take him up, if I were sure of this turn of +affairs. But young <span id="cor_16"></span>Oliver’s an amature—that’s what he is—and no good +<span id="cor_17"></span>comes of amatures. He’ll make ducks and drakes of as fine and solid a +business as ever three generations got together; and he’s a crotchety +lad, too. Hear to him, what he’s telling the lads! about everything +being above-board—as if there ever was a trade without its secrets—and +of his not passing over a man’s shirking his work and disobeying +orders, as if any tradesman—be he ever so flourishing—can afford in +them times to quarrel <span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>with his best hand, maybe, because he has a mind +of his own, or will go on the spree nows and thens, or is not careful +to make his batches every bit as light and sweet as they may be. Master +Oliver has to find this is a world in which a man must live and let +live and act conformable to circumstances.</p> + +<p>‘He ought to be rare and perfect as a master that demands a perfect +servant, and them is not the days for that uncommon commodity when the +servants are like to have the ruling of the masters—instead of the +masters the picking and choosing of the servants. This young fellow has +to learn life out of college, and he had as well learn his trade at the +same time before he takes upon him to be a master baker.’</p> + +<p>But Jim Hull kept his counsel in the meanwhile. It was the foremost man +of the group of bakers who spoke out in reply to Oliver. ‘Do you mean +to say, sir,’ said the man, not disrespectfully, but with a flavour of +offence in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>his tone, ‘that there are to be a set of fresh arrangements +made here, and that we are to consent beforehand—without knowing what +we are doing—to a whole lot of new-fangled ways?’ And there was a +murmur of assent to the objection from the men behind him.</p> + +<p>‘I don’t see the obligation, Webster,’ said Oliver, who simply knew the +man by name.</p> + +<p>Webster was a young man of not more than five-and-twenty, though he was +put prominently forward by his fellows. He had bushy sandy-coloured +hair, and a large up-turned nose with deep lion-like lines drawn from +its base to the corners of his mouth.</p> + +<p>Oliver spoke calmly, but he felt in some degree taken aback and ruffled +by the commentary on his words. ‘The business has been conducted on +the same principles all along. But if I see it advisable to make +alterations, I shall let you know, when you must be prepared to agree +to them, or quit my employment.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span></p> + +<p>‘All right, sir,’ said Webster, promptly. ‘Of course you are entitled +to say that much, while you will not refuse to allow that there are two +at a bargain-making.’</p> + +<p>So the brief colloquy, which was only ‘feeling the way’ on the part of +both master and man, came to an abrupt conclusion.</p> + +<p>Oliver returned to the back-shop, taking Jim Hull with him.</p> + +<p>‘Sit down, Jim, and make yourself comfortable,’ said Oliver, bringing +out a bottle of ale and glasses from the familiar cupboard and taking +the second armchair. ‘Now, what about that lad Webster who spoke up for +the others?’</p> + +<p>‘He’s a good baker when he likes, which is more than can be said of +most of your speechifiers and politicians,’ said Jim.</p> + +<p>‘Then he’ll like to bake well for me, or he’ll turn out of the +bakehouse,’ said Oliver, holding up his glass to the light.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span></p> + +<p>‘Stop a bit, not so fast,’ said Jim, putting down his glass for a +moment, after a testing sip. ‘Your father always kept good ale in +cask and in bottle because he gave it time to clear and ripen, so he +did. You had better think—if I’m at liberty to speak,’—he paused, and +Oliver nodded. ‘You see, I was afraid new men might mean new manners,’ +went on Jim, clearing his throat. ‘What I was going to say comes +to this, where are you to get a better man to put in Sam Webster’s +place? You must consider that, sir, before you speak of dismissing Sam +hot and sharp. Good bakers, in a country town in especial, ain’t as +plentiful as blackberries, now-a-days, Master Oliver; and if Sam go and +stump the neighbourhood—that, and reading, and holding forth on them +newspapers is second nature to the fellow—if he tell everywhere what an +oonreasonable master young Constable is like to be, why you may have to +whistle long enough for a new <span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span>baker fit to stand in the shoes of Sam, +though he do be off and on troublesome.’</p> + +<p>‘You and Sam had better wait and find if I am an unreasonable master,’ +said Oliver, with a smile. ‘Who is letting his imagination go ahead, I +should like to know? I made no unreasonable stipulation. I did not bid +the men do by me what I am not willing to do by them. If I am to be +a master baker I shall not feed my customers on husks and worse, Sam +Webster and his allies may rest assured of that—and in order that I may +be honest in all my dealings, I will have proper work out of my men.’</p> + +<p>Jim looked dubious. ‘Excuse me, sir, but do you know what proper work +of this sort is, and what are the conditions of work in general at this +date? You don’t mean to be oonreasonable, but a man’s intentions and +his deeds don’t always square.’</p> + +<p>‘Granted. But do you mean there are <span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>trades-unions and strikes among +the Friarton bakers, and that we may be reduced any day—not as a matter +of eccentric taste, or in obedience to a doctor’s prescription, but +as a case of necessity—to eat unleavened bread like the Jews in the +Passover week, or to bake at home, a lost art where housewives and +maid-servants are concerned?’</p> + +<p>‘It ain’t a laughing matter,’ Jim rebuked the young man’s levity; ‘and +if the things themselves ain’t here—and I have not heard tell yet of +trades-unions and strikes among the bakers in Friarton—do you think +their spirit ain’t about in the air? Do you think the bakers alone +of working men,’ continued Jim, with an accent of injured <i>esprit +de corps</i>, ‘will be content to remain without a voice, ay, and a +precious influential voice, in all that concerns them nearly—their +hours of work, their mode of work, and mode of pay, and all the rest +of it? Are the bakers to be left behind when every other <span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>specie of +working man is having his say? I should not have consented to that +myself, when I was a young baker; now, I am nigh an old man,’ Jim +cooled down at the recollection, ‘and I’m free to admit that I don’t +see much good comes of speechifying and vapouring,’ ended Jim, drinking +off his ale and drawing a long sigh after the refreshment.</p> + +<p>‘Well hit at me, old “specie,”’ thought Oliver, while he said, quietly, +‘Nobody is preventing any man from having his say in what particularly +concerns him. It is one of the privileges that living in the present +generation has given him. I should be the last person to object to it. +I intended the men to take what I said to them into consideration; only +I can’t, for the life of me, see what just and rational argument they +have to bring against it; I touched on no debatable point. If they are +worth their salt in morals as in ability, they are surely willing to +give a fair exchange of work for wages. And <span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span>if the men have a grain +of common sense, they must grant that no organised system of work can +be maintained without one person in authority to enforce discipline on +those under him.’</p> + +<p>‘The capital and labour question ain’t so easily settled as you +suppose, Master Oliver,’ said Jim, shaking his head doggedly if +somewhat evasively. ‘At the best it is a very ticklish matter, and I +only hope you won’t burn your fingers meddling with it.’</p> + +<p>‘I can guess you are of opinion that I am not setting about the task +in the proper fashion; but wait till you see how I get on, Jim,’ said +Oliver, good-humouredly; ‘don’t damp my spirits by forecasting evil.’</p> + +<p>‘I wouldn’t wish to do that,’ said Jim, more formally than heartily or +cheerfully. ‘That don’t belong to my place. But I’m nigh an old man, +about as old as your father, and grown grey with the Constables: if +putting my experience <span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>at your service could have been of any use, it +belonged to my dooty.’</p> + +<p>‘Thanks,’ said Oliver, quickly. ‘You are quite right to ease your +conscience. But I am afraid I must earn my experience like the rest of +the world—I must have my fling—try to work out my theories, and when +they break down, then begin to mend them—do you take me, Jim?’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, ay, sir,’ said Jim with polite dryness, ‘and I had as well say +good morning to you, and go about my own business in the bake-shop.’</p> + +<p>Oliver let him go, and sat alone twisting his stalwart body in his +armchair. ‘The game would not be worth the candle,’ he reflected, ‘if +one paid heed only to these clods in the mill and cheeky swaggerers +in the bakehouse; and there is old Jim, conservative to the backbone, +even while he is full to the tongue of class prejudice and jealousy. +He feels the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span>world turning upside down with him; yet he sets his face +against the only hope of control for the new spirit. But the principles +of right and wrong are eternal and as capable of being fought out in a +mill and a bakehouse as on any other battle-field.’</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX"> + CHAPTER IX. + <br> + <span>THE NEW TENANTS OF COPLEY FARM.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver</span> was standing before the mulberry-bush in the mill-house +court watching the colony of white ducks which waddled up from the +water and claimed their right in the dropping mulberries.</p> + +<p>He had stepped out of one of the windows of the parlour, which Fan, +with tacit reproach and soreness of spirit, had re-constituted the +family sitting-room. Since Oliver chose to be a miller and baker, +the old mill-house parlour was in keeping with his calling and good +enough for him. Oliver welcomed the change with much satisfaction +which escaped being damped from <span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span>his want of full knowledge of what +was passing in his sister’s mind, and his absolute incapacity of +sympathising with it.</p> + +<p>He stood hunching up his shoulders, his hands in his pockets. He was +bareheaded, so that the light summer wind lifted his hair, blowing it +across his forehead as near his eyes as the shortness of the locks +would allow, without discomposing him. The same wind every moment +plucked off and strewed about the last full-blown red and white rose +petals and reversed the leaves of the mulberry and the willow round +the corner, turning their white sides uppermost and silvering whole +branches at once.</p> + +<p>Oliver was wondering why he should feel any particular pleasure in +contemplating the ducks wriggling their short necks with delight, +rolling about like ships at sea, quivering their tail-tufts of +feathers, making rushes to snatch the beaded maroon morsel, each +duck from his <span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span>neighbour, at last gobbling down the mulberry with an +intensity of relish which in its breadth of display was farcical in the +extreme. But Oliver did find so much satisfaction in the spectacle that +he was tempted to propose to take Sally Pope’s office out of her hands, +and feed the ducks from their basket of mill refuse every morning. +They would soon learn to know his step and voice as they knew Sally’s. +Pooh! it was all egotism, to be gratified by a duck’s recognition. It +was a thread of vanity which in Rousseau reached the diseased pitch of +imagining that the sparrows were chattering jibes at him. But how much +more lovable, after all, if less respectable, was a vain man or woman +than your Lucifer or Luciferina who made a boast of his or her proud +indifference!</p> + +<p>Oliver was aware that he had a sneaking fondness for approbation. He +would have liked Ted Green and every hulking hobble-de-hoy about the +mill, as well as Fan and Sally <span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span>Pope with her subordinates, to have a +real regard for him and trust in him. He would have liked old Jim Hull +and the men in the bakehouse to believe that he meant them well, and +would serve them no less than himself, if he could. It was a weakness +of course, and all that he was likely to get for his pains, was that +everybody would incline to suspect him of being a humbug where he was +not a fool, and no one would understand that he was setting himself, +according to his light, to be a good citizen, though the effort in his +case went in some respects against the grain.</p> + +<p>Catherine Hilliard had plenty of sympathy and admiration to spare for +every good citizen and patriot, a history of whose achievements got +between the boards of a book; nay, she wasted interest and regard on +some patriots of rather doubtful complexion—Count Egmont and Camille +Desmoulins, for example. She only saw them in their dress-coats and +revived <span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span>togas, as the men figured in print; she could not guess that +in their dressing-gowns and slippers, or what stood for their undress, +the fellows were self-indulgent and ‘rough customers’ enough, like +ordinary men. But a simple tradesman was nobody in Catherine’s eyes, +because his ambition reached no higher than to give back to his branch +of trade that integrity and excellence which ought to be the crowning +distinction of all honest trade in an honest—not to say a Christian +nation—because he would magnify his peculiar field of work and make it +honourable, feeding the people with material food convenient for their +bodily life, as Frederick Perthes, the prince of booksellers, strove +in his day to raise the book trade of Germany and sought to feed the +minds and hearts of his countrymen with spiritual food. It was a trifle +to her that the faintest approach should be made to elevating whole +classes, with regard to which the present absurd and dishonouring creed +was <span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span>that no member could rise without abandoning his homely trade and +his fellow-traders. In the name of Heaven, if the craft were honest, +could it not be ennobled in its loyal performance? Had it not been so +with many a craft, such as those of the goldsmith, the weaver, and the +dyer, now treated with comparative contempt, in old burgher towns and +free cities, when the craftsmen were men of genius, skill, and taste +far advanced in civilisation?</p> + +<p>People might tell him—Oliver, that such an ornamental craft as that +of a goldsmith, for instance, requiring notable skill and taste, was +one thing, and a purely useful business like that of a baker, was +another. But he was prepared to show that the fine arts were very far +from being what their idle amateur worshippers, not their true and +humble disciples, represented them to be, in the economy of a people. +He did not cry down art or learning, perhaps it would have been easier +for him, on the whole, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>if he had appreciated each of them less. Yet +bread—not art—was the staff of life, and One who had come among them +as the King of men had not thought it beneath his Divinity to work +miracles in order to give common bread to hungry multitudes.</p> + +<p>There was a notion current among competent authorities, that the +physique and stamina of English men and women, especially in the large +towns, were undergoing a gradual disastrous deterioration. If this +were true and arrived at its natural culmination, the world might +not fare the better for the lapse of that portion of the Anglo-Saxon +race which had elected itself, in its more vigorous days, the pioneer +of civilisation and the champion of liberty all over the world. +Unadulterated food—which also inferred less craving for intoxicating +drink—better lodging, legislation which should enact and compel freer +space, purer air, fresher water, and the light of day, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>ought to do +something to arrest the progress downwards. But the great hope, under +God and his Son, lay in the recovery of true manliness and womanliness; +to work—not dream—for the love of the work, and not for the wages +alone; to be in the world as one who served with a will; to recognise +fully that life did not consist of its lower gains, equally Philistine +whether they belonged to a respectable bank-book or a disreputable +betting-book. For when one came to the rank materialism of the +things, it did not so much signify whether the object of desire and +attainment implied being made secretary of state or mayor of Friarton, +churchwarden of St. Philip’s or deacon of the chapel, or whether it +descended to the lower level of the possibility of drinking champagne +on occasions, as a variety on unlimited gin-and-water.</p> + +<p>Oliver was brought up short in his cogitations. He heard footsteps and +voices approaching, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span>and conjectured they belonged to two men whose +figures in grey suits and wide-awakes he had seen ten minutes before, +from the other side of the Mill, making their way through Copley Grange +Park. He had remarked the new-comers particularly, since he had not +heard that the Squire had come home, and visitors from that quarter +proved comparatively rare when the family were not at Copley Grange. +The Mill had to put up with the plague of its picturesqueness, and +Oliver found himself called upon to display the good citizenship he +so insisted upon, in giving up a portion of his privacy to render the +picturesqueness public property. He did not come out of the ordeal +without flaw. Certainly, he refrained from inaugurating his reign as +many another good citizen has inaugurated his, by erecting barriers +where his father had raised none. Oliver objected to calling his +mill his castle, and defying anybody who was not on mill <span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span>business, +and with whom Oliver was not on speaking terms, from approaching its +time-mellowed walls. Therefore he scouted Ted Green’s suggestion to +keep a watch-dog, even on chain, and for the protection of the outlying +sacks of wheat and flour.</p> + +<p>But Oliver Constable did not show himself remarkably cordial to +absolute strangers, especially when they came from Copley Grange. On +the contrary, he avoided them almost as resolutely as Fan did. He would +make a point that the place should be free to the Dadds and Polleys of +Friarton, or, for that matter, to any inhabitant of the town; for he +earnestly wished that his fellow-townsmen of all classes—the lower the +better—should profit by the rural beauty of Friarton Mill. But perhaps +Catherine Hilliard was right when she said that he looked upon those +persons who were not happy enough to belong to the trading class as +outside his purpose. Indeed, Oliver Constable’s relations <span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>with the +upper ten at Oxford, and all he had insensibly acquired from them, only +rendered him more determined to have nothing to do with them. He waged +no war with his superiors in social rank, but their respective paths +lay wide apart. There were plenty of tuft-hunters and eager satellites +struggling in the wake of the objects of their homage without Oliver’s +adding himself to the number. Indeed, there was danger in the +association; for the mere conception of another social atmosphere had +spoilt Fan for her world, and her world for Fan. It should not spoil +him—at least, so far as his work was concerned. It is very difficult +for an ardent reformer to steer clear of partisanship.</p> + +<p>On the present occasion Oliver put up his back, and turned it in its +rounded form on his company. At the same time he accomplished a feat in +balancing himself, while winding one long leg round the other, much as +if he were <span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>borrowing a pattern from a duck now standing at ease on a +single leg before him.</p> + +<p>‘That’s our man,’ said a genial voice behind him. ‘I thought I knew the +back, and the attitude nails him beyond mistake. Constable, what are +you doing here?’</p> + +<p>Oliver could not lend a deaf ear to the enquiry; besides, he wondered +who was making it. He wheeled round, and saw that the two figures in +grey he had spied from a distance, had developed into two men—with whom +he had been on terms of slight acquaintance, though they had not lived +in his set, at Oxford. But what was a bare acquaintance on the banks +of the Isis threatened to assert itself as a positive friendship up in +Holmshire, on the threshold of Oliver’s mill.</p> + +<p>When Oliver considered Harry Stanhope’s rashness and thoughtlessness, +Oliver felt he had not a moment to lose. He had never concealed his +antecedents like poor Tom Neaves, but he <span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>must now state roundly what +they had led to, before Harry swore eternal comradeship on the spot, +and poor Horace backed his brother in this as in all else.</p> + +<p>‘What am I doing here?’ echoed Oliver, with a laugh. ‘Everything. I am +in my proper place. This is Friarton Mill, and I am the miller.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, this is a go!’ said Harry, without the least attempt at the +concealment of his surprise. ‘Isn’t it awfully jolly, Horry?’ The +brother appealed to nodded in confirmation of the extreme jolliness of +the situation, which Oliver was slow to perceive.</p> + +<p>‘I never knew these Stanhopes had such a feeling for natural scenery,’ +said Oliver to himself, puzzled at his acquaintances’ manner of taking +his communication. ‘I thought—give Harry a rowing path or a hunting +field, and he would ask no more, while the other had not a mind of his +own. But I suppose they admire <span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>this,’ and Oliver glanced around him +complacently.</p> + +<p>But Harry was ready to supply a different explanation of his +enthusiasm. ‘I knew you hailed from a farm or a mill, old fellow,’ he +said, lightly; ‘but I always thought the “’Varsity” old wives were +starching and stiffening you, preparatory to turning you out a parson +or a schoolmaster. I am glad you knew a thing worth two of that. And +Horry and I are in great luck to unearth you here.’</p> + +<p>Oliver still remained in a fog as to what the luck could consist of, +unless Harry had private views on the fishing in the Brook, and counted +on Oliver’s making it sure to him. There was one piece of hospitality +which, as Oliver was not really a churl, he did not see he could avoid +dispensing. He must invite these fellows into the house to join Fan’s +tea-table. He hoped Fan would forgive it, because they were old college +men—not merely sightseers.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span></p> + +<p>‘You don’t ask what brings us here,’ said Harry—clearly eager to tell +his secret. ‘Why, we are nearly as much at home—at least we shall be +soon—as you are. We are the new tenants of Copley Grange Farm. Horry +and I are going in for being English yeomen instead of Ceylon coffee +planters, as our governors intended we should be. The doctors found +Horry’s liver would not stand the tropics, and as the old man and I +have always stuck together, the entire project fell to the ground. We +made up our minds to rough it at home instead of in the colonies—to +descend a few steps in the ladder here, instead of crossing the seas +to do it there. Horry and I ain’t either swells or snobs, and we +haven’t got handles to our names to make the descent more difficult. We +thought we should like nothing better than to become yeomen—since we +were not born squires and could not very well be gamekeepers or grooms +without ceasing to continue our own <span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>masters. There are no English +regiments—the more’s the pity—such as the French used to have, into +which gentlemen cadets could enlist without losing caste altogether, +and being reduced to associate with the scum of the streets and the +fields in the guard-room. Any people that we have left, to speak of, +are all settled in the northern counties, well out of the reach of +the trial of coming across Horry and me driving in a market cart, +and selling our own pigs. For that matter, princes of the blood and +dukes are pleased to play at being farmers, and I do not see why poor +gentlemen may not slide down gracefully into the real thing. We are of +age and can do what we like, but we have also persuaded the uncles and +aunts into giving their consent to our taking this farm and investing +our princely capital in it. We have got a good bailiff to put us up to +the wrinkles, and we mean to go the whole hog.’</p> + +<p>‘You haven’t asked my advice,’ said Oliver, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>‘but I am afraid it won’t +answer—this won’t answer, Stanhope.’</p> + +<p>‘Now, look here, Constable,’ argued the sanguine advocate, ‘you think +we are going in for being gentlemen farmers, and so will fall between +stools, but it is nothing of the kind. Didn’t I say we were going +the whole hog? Whatever that appropriate phrase may mean, we are to +learn to do everything for ourselves, just as we should have done in +Queensland or Natal. It is not the season for holding a plough, else I +should have tried it to-morrow. But we are in time for the first crop +of hay, and we are to help at the harvest. Won’t it be jolly fun, like +a page out of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” which somebody gave me to read +when I had scarlet fever at school a century ago—only I am afraid the +Miss Primroses are still more out-of-date, and will not show among the +haycocks next week. We thought of doing without a woman-servant, and +making our own beds <span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>and cooking our own grub. But since old Horry is +not as strong as a horse like me, we judged it better to change our +coats by degrees.’</p> + +<p>‘You were right there,’ said Oliver, asking himself whether Harry +Stanhope were a greater young fool than he, Oliver, had ever taken +the trouble to rate the lad—the most thorough-going donkey Oliver had +encountered—whether Harry were in earnest or simply talking bosh, +knowing it to be bosh all the time? And if there should turn out to +be some foundation for what Stanhope was telling him, as, after all, +Oliver had no reason to question, here was a fine complication of the +difficulties of his position in these fellows establishing themselves +on the next farm to him, with the deliberate intention, however +wildly carried out, of exiling themselves from their own class and +naturalising themselves in Oliver’s! He did not for a moment entertain +the idea that the Stanhopes would aid him in his aims. The young men +would simply import <span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span>their own faults and follies into a sphere in +which the brothers had neither part nor lot, while they would assuredly +ruin themselves in a pecuniary sense.</p> + +<p>‘I say, Constable, you are a nice liberal-minded, benevolent fellow, +not to speak an encouraging word to two poor beggars seeking to better +themselves,’ interposed Harry Stanhope—partly in chaff, partly with +a deeper meaning in his words. ‘You are trying on the supercilious +dodge. But what would you have us turn our white hands to?’ holding up +a pair of paws very brown and a good deal hacked about the knuckles. +‘We haven’t got any brains to speak of, between the two. Our education +has been neglected, what with private tutors and Oxford. Poor Horry +was bowled out without any fault of his as soon as the wicket was set +up,’ he lowered his voice and said the last sentence in a cautious +undertone. ‘We are a likely pair to shine in the learned <span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span>professions, +ain’t we?’ he resumed, with fresh spirit and light bravado. ‘All the +people who have the misfortune to be connected with us have been in +despair about what was to become of us ever since we were small shavers +in petticoats. Indeed, I fancy it was rather a mistake our being here +at all. They might have disposed of me in a marching regiment, where I +might have had a fair chance of being comfortably knocked on the head +and decently put out of sight, in a fashion becoming my station. But +the Maori or Zulu, or whatever gallant native gentleman was to do the +deed, must have looked sharp about it, else I was tolerably certain to +go to the dogs or the Jews and create a scandal in the mean time. I put +it to you how could I have helped it, Constable? I could not flatter +myself, and what was more no groaning old fogey of a relation could +cherish the forlorn hope that I was endowed with the genius of keeping +out of debt and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>rising in the army, while all the time I should belong +to a set who might be tailors’ sons and duffers of various kinds, yet +would, for the most part, have ten and twenty guineas to spend in +proportion to my one. Then we were two,’—here he dropped his voice +again, and spoke more quickly to hide some under-current of feeling. +‘By Jove, I was not going to leave <i>him</i> in the lurch, to be +recommended to board and vegetate in the country with one of your +needy parsons, as if Horry were a lunatic, or to be treated as a poor +relation, and a hanger-on at other men’s tables.’</p> + +<p>The speaker, whom Oliver had known incorrigibly light of heart and +light of head in a world where even youthful beards are beginning +to wag with ominous seriousness, finished with some genuine though +repressed indignation.</p> + +<p>The listener could not refuse to Harry Stanhope the credit of fidelity +to the solitary obligation <span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span>he had owned—that of honest brotherly +regard, and of a certain amount of reason in his statement.</p> + +<p>However, before Oliver could make any amends, Harry Stanhope set upon +him again with his mixture of confident assertion and gay banter. ‘I +should call it a shabby trick to treat us as intruders in your ranks, +even if you yourself were not the greatest humbug going. A reading man +and a prize man, to pretend to grind at any other stuff than Latin +or Greek or German philosophy! I bet you I could do it a great deal +better myself without so much as being coached beforehand. There was a +song I used to sing about the miller who “was drowned in his own mill +dam,” and I remember a couple of farces I have seen played on country +town boards and at circuses. There was a miller of Brentford who rode +like Dick Turpin, and there was a Scotch beggar who pounded a king +at Cramond Brig. I could take the parts in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span>private theatricals any +day. I am not sure, indeed, whether I am not better cut out for the +<i>rôle</i> of a jolly miller than for that of a heavy farmer.’</p> + +<p>‘You do not know what you are speaking about,’ said Oliver, hotly, ‘if +you identify <i>bonâ-fide</i> millers with stage ruffians.’ Then he +was struck with the absurdity of quarrelling with Harry Stanhope on +such a count. ‘Come along with me,’ he said, abruptly; ‘I’ll show you a +mill-house and my sister will give us some tea, if you don’t prefer a +glass of ale.’</p> + +<p>‘Thanks,’ said Harry with cheerful alacrity, ‘either will be uncommonly +acceptable. We are as hungry as hawks and as thirsty as washer-women. +She won’t mind our muddy boots—will she? We have been trying to make +out the boundaries of our fields, and it saved trouble and felt +professional to walk in the ditches, instead of the growing corn.’</p> + +<p>Oliver was dubious that Fan would mind <span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span>more than the muddy boots in +the unceremonious addition to her tea-table, but he was in for it, and +it could not be helped.</p> + +<p>Harry and Horace Stanhope were the grandsons of an impecunious English +peer. The boys, together with an only sister, had been left orphans at +an early age with small patrimonies to fall back upon. The children’s +kindred and guardians had been, as Harry represented them, a good +deal at a loss what to do with the lads in those hard times, where +slenderly-provided-for sprigs of the aristocracy are concerned. It +was far easier to deal with the girl, the interest of whose portion +would pay the expenses of her education and furnish her with dress +and pocket-money at a modest rate afterwards, while a childless aunt +undertook to give her a home and bring her out in society until she +attained her natural goal, a suitable establishment. But not only were +the two lads destitute of any special ability which <span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>should make up +for their lack of fortune among their compeers, one of the brothers, +Horace, the elder of the two, though he was always put second to Harry, +had started in life heavily weighted in any race for worldly success. +From the effects of an illness in childhood in which the infection was +caught from his younger brother, Horace had contracted a degree of +deafness, not enough to reduce him to an ear-trumpet, but sufficient to +put him at a serious disadvantage in the ordinary routine of school and +college, and in social intercourse.</p> + +<p>The two brothers had always been inseparable; but though they formed a +marked instance of fraternal alliance, they were as unlike in person +and character as devoted friends sometimes are. The very nicknames +bestowed on them at school and college, which burlesqued their close +association, referred as often to the contrast as to the union between +them. They were dubbed not only ‘Romulus and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span>Remus,’ and ‘Hengist and +Horsa,’ but ‘Valentine and Orson,’ and ‘Day and Night,’ or any other +couple of terms linked yet opposed to each other, which schoolboy and +undergraduate wits could compass. Harry was a fair-haired, sun-burned, +comely young athlete, great in muscular development, the popular +champion of boat-races and cricket-fields, though he had not reached +the eminence of figuring in his university’s ‘eight’ or ‘eleven,’ and +so had been denied the crowning glory of forming one of the heroes +in any spring or summer at Putney or Lord’s. He was so frank and +cordial, so honestly heedless of his own interests, no less than those +of his neighbours, that it was hard, even for men as unlike him as +Oliver Constable was, to resist altogether the influence of Harry’s +involuntary good fellowship when they happened to come in contact with +it.</p> + +<p>Horace was sickly, sallow and stunted, with a good deal of the captious +testiness and jealous <span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span>moroseness which are said to distinguish +unfavourably the mass of the victims of deafness from the bulk of their +fellow-sufferers from blindness. Horace Stanhope was as hard as Harry +was easy to get on with, and if left to himself would have held aloof +from his fellow-creatures as sedulously as Harry cast himself with a +disarming confidence on their sympathy. The single exception Horace +made was in favour of his brother, between whom and himself there had +existed a strong attachment—cemented by the curious attraction of +extremes—since the two young men were babies.</p> + +<p>Harry saved his brother from utter isolation. The silent saturnine +lad, shut out by one of the chief doors of the senses from joining +in much of human effort and enjoyment, whether ‘at kirk or market’ +or by friends’ hearths, transferred his active share in the struggle +of life and in its joys and sorrows to his brother, and vested and +centred in Harry the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>main part of Horace’s ambition, pleasure, and +pain, apart from what was purely physical. He elected to live as it +were vicariously, to take his experience by proxy. In accordance +with this choice, wherever Harry went, Horace followed at his +heels. Harry’s friends—and he was pre-eminently a young man of many +comrades—making them for good or for evil wherever he went, Horace +immediately adopted—although they might be as unlike him as he was +unlike Harry—in Horace’s silent, rather cantankerous fashion, which +caused his friendship to prove somewhat of an infliction to Harry’s +congenial associates. Whenever Horace shook off the heavy fetters of +his infirmity, and, instead of being doggedly indifferent, showed +himself alert and interested, one might be sure it was in something +that concerned Harry.</p> + +<p>The dedication of Horace’s blighted life was made mutely even with +regard to himself, for his was a nature as shy and reticent as it was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span>tenacious. And it was an undreamt of mystery to Harry’s transparent, +unreflective disposition. Harry had only an instinctive sense that poor +old Horry would be lost without him—Harry. Why, his was the only voice +which, while still pitched in a natural key, Horry could distinguish +without difficulty—and did not that point plainly to the conclusion, +insisted the sapient Harry, that the two were meant to hang out +together? No, no, a wife, though she were ten times a beauty and an +heiress, could not induce him to cut the connection. And the advantage +was not all on one side, Harry went on to argue—for he was generous in +his youthful flush of manliness—he himself was like one of those little +fellows who are put out in repeating their lessons, if the youngsters +have not a pet button to finger. Now, Horry was his button. Harry +was convinced he could not get a single inning at cricket, or play +billiards save like a muff—horrible misadventure!—if he <span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span>did not have +Horry to look out, or mark for him.</p> + +<p>This was the pair whom Oliver Constable brought to Fan’s tea-table that +summer afternoon.</p> + +<p>Fan received the strangers with very formal courtesy, until Oliver +mentioned them more particularly as fellow-Oxonians, when she suddenly +brightened all over and became gracious to the tips of her fingers, and +there was something specially flattering in Fan Constable’s earnest +abandonment of graciousness.</p> + +<p>Oliver groaned a little privately—going off as he did on a wrong cue. +All women were led captive by good looks and winning tongues, and Harry +Stanhope was a bonnie, pleasant boy enough to serve for the pair, to +extend his passport to yellow-skinned, turned-tempered Horace. But +Oliver would have thought that Fan had more sense than to be carried +away by the eyes—granted that in measuring Harry <span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span>from head to foot, +they found a sop for their individual weakness in the fact that his +whole air and every movement, no less than his clothes—rough and +ill-used, from his battered wide-awake to his muddy boots—belonged +originally to no farmer’s ‘cut,’ but were the bearing and dress of a +better-born, better-bred man.</p> + +<p>But all the same, Oliver comforted himself with reckoning Fan would +be thoroughly disgusted when she learnt the young man’s precious +scheme. For if Oliver had wounded her sense of propriety by sticking to +their father’s trade from worthy motives, must she not be scandalised +outright by the Stanhopes’ mean-spirited desertion of their post and +voluntary abasement simply to save themselves from the trouble of +shaping a career and securing a provision for their wants in any other +fashion?</p> + +<p>Oliver had not yet gauged the depths of a woman’s inconsistency. He +found himself twice deceived in his clever man’s egregious <span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>simplicity. +When Fan was told the news that the Stanhopes had become the tenants of +Copley Grange Farm, she grew radiant, and threw herself into Harry’s +mad project with positive enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>Oliver looked on and listened with open-eyed wonder. He had not +objected altogether to his sister’s being won over to cordiality +towards the Stanhopes as his former associates. He had noticed with +ready approval how she had set herself to entertain Horace—as most in +need of entertainment, taking pains to raise and modulate her clear +voice to suit his deafness, and striving to find subjects which he +might care to discuss. It was the innate gentlewoman showing itself in +Fan as in all true women of whatever rank, which caused her, in the +office of hostess, to select the guest who was least attractive and +most apt to be neglected, and to lavish on him her chief cares. Oliver +had admired the delicate consideration which <span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span>lay at the foundation of +a lady’s duty in this respect. He had also appreciated the tact which +had helped Fan to discover soon that her little attentions only bored +Horace, since he preferred to be let alone. The perception caused Fan +to turn and join in Oliver’s conversation with Harry. Then her brother +was amazed and certainly not edified to find that Fan, in spite of her +declared opinions, was warmly applauding and even, as it seemed to +Oliver, proposing to back Harry Stanhope in his enterprise. ‘Oliver +will be so glad to have you and your brother for neighbours;’ she put +the sentiment quite gratuitously into Oliver’s mouth in his presence; +‘and if he or I—sometimes a woman’s ideas are of some value where +housekeeping is concerned—can be of the least service to you, we shall +be very much pleased.’</p> + +<p>Oliver could not believe his ears. It was not that there was the +least suspicion of forwardness or indecorum in Fan’s spontaneous +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span>friendliness. The girl was perfectly incapable of such breaches of +good taste. But it was evident to anyone who knew her, that Fan was +interested and excited—to the extent of being carried out of herself, +in sheer sympathy with an adventure, which any reasonable man or woman +might have held as certain to provoke her contempt.</p> + +<p>Sally Pope, coming in herself to remove the tea-tray, in the +accidental absence of another servant, could not refrain from casting +a questioning glance at Oliver. That appeal of Sally’s eyes said, ‘Do +you see Miss Fan? She is coming out of her shell for once in her life. +What makes her, that is so ill to please, so rarely taken with what the +talkative young gentleman is saying?’</p> + +<p>Indeed, Fan’s ordinary quiet, reserved manner in society was +transformed as Oliver had never seen it before to a stranger, though +he had always been aware that it masked an <span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span>ardent temperament. She +was exclaiming brightly, in answer to Harry’s far from discriminating +praise of the mill-house parlour. In fact the lad’s satisfaction, +though he was guiltless of any intention to produce such an impression, +gave Oliver Constable the impression that the family sitting-room +reminded Harry, in a confused not disagreeable way, of the parlour of +one of those rural alehouses which his pursuits had led him to frequent +a good deal.</p> + +<p>‘I am so happy to hear you like this room,’ said Fan, ‘because the +parlour at Copley Grange Farm’ (which any impartial person would have +pronounced greatly inferior in Oliver’s judgment, and which Fan had +been in the habit of holding in very low estimation) ‘is just such +another homely, old-fashioned place. I must believe they have their +merits, since they strike you favourably. You have always been fond +of a country life, you tell me; then I think <span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span>you will like being a +farmer. Hay-making, of course, is charming, and bean-hoeing is not +bad—to watch, at least. And you will take a deep interest in your +cattle and poultry, won’t you?’</p> + +<p>‘What has come over Fan,’ was Oliver’s dumb protest. ‘<i>She</i> never +made hay in her life. I did not suppose she condescended to observe +there was a species of pulse called beans. As for ducks, she only +considers them in the light of furnishing dishes for the table. I am +convinced she has not looked into a duck’s nest, or fed the ducklings +afterwards, since she was herself a chick of five years old.’</p> + +<p>In the meantime, in answer to Harry Stanhope’s fervent assurance that +he luxuriated in all country work and adored every kind of live stock, +Fan was saying, almost wistfully, she appeared so anxious that he +should not be disappointed in his ridiculous experiment, ‘And you will +not mind that you are tenant instead of landlord?’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span></p> + +<p>‘Not a bit,’ answered sanguine Harry, who had not minded anything, save +not getting his play, since he was born.</p> + +<p>Oliver was inclined to tax his sister with insincerity and with +indiscretion in pledging them to support Harry Stanhope in his +delusion, the moment the visitors left. But before he could begin, Fan, +still in high spirits, took his arm and walked him out to the garden. +Half of it was already in cold shadow, while in the other half the long +slanting rays of the sun were kindling the low beds of pink saponaria +into a rosy red, shining through the blue cups of the nemophila—warming +them to the tone of the summer sky, performing a fine process of +silvering on the white bells of the tall campanula.</p> + +<p>‘Isn’t it jolly?’ demanded Fan, taking the first word, in her delight +departing from her correct Queen’s English, which was generally as +perfect as Becky Sharp’s French. ‘To think that two of your old college +friends should come <span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span>and settle in this way on the very next farm to +us!’</p> + +<p>Was it the simple rebound from the mortification with which she had +seen herself and him turned back to the old vulgar, illiterate circle +of the tradespeople of Friarton, which caused Fan to clutch at a straw, +and induced her to open her heart to the Stanhopes?</p> + +<p>‘Nice!’ growled Oliver. ‘You are a nice sensible young woman to think +so. It will be the greatest nuisance going. In the first place, the +Stanhopes are not friends of mine—don’t run off with that big blunder +at starting. They were once in a reading-party under my charge—a +beastly drag they proved, and we nodded and exchanged a word or two in +the meadows or on the water from that time. That is the head and tail +of our friendship. Nobody but Harry Stanhope would have made a claim +upon it.’</p> + +<p>‘But you acknowledged the claim at your <span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span>own door,’ said Fan, quickly; +‘and are you not gratified by his turning farmer?’ she added, +innocently. ‘It is quite in your own way, and I admit that in him it is +romantic.’</p> + +<p>‘In my way!’ cried Oliver, losing breath at the injustice of the +assertion; ‘in my way to intrude where I am not wanted! And you to +welcome romance! You, who boast you are the most matter-of-fact girl, +who defend the commonplace ambition to rise in life, to cut trade, to +go in for a profession—which requires a smattering of Greek and Latin, +or a speaking acquaintance with civil or ecclesiastical law, or with +drill and musketry—to wear a wig, or a cassock, or a red coat—the last +strictly on parade—without the smallest title to put on either—to +dine at seven or eight instead of one o’clock, and look down, with +the intense snobbery of a deserter from his ranks, on the class of +shopkeepers! You, Fan, who scout any ambition which has a wider scope +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span>and a less selfish aim, and call it either high-flown or low-lifed, +equally despicable in both lights.’</p> + +<p>‘But Mr. Stanhope is not proposing to be a shopkeeper,’ said Fan, +with narrow literalness; ‘and don’t you know a gentleman, a dozen +generations deep, can do anything?’ she asserted, defiantly, gathering +a cluster of heliotrope and smelling it.</p> + +<p>‘It is the first time I ever heard such a sublime dogma from the lips +of anybody who fell short of being an idiot or a scamp,’ retorted +Oliver.</p> + +<p>‘Oh! my dear, dear boy, how can you be so abominably rude?’ said Fan, +driven to laugh outright at his vehemence.</p> + +<p>‘A gentleman’s birthright must be worth having,’ snorted Oliver, +still in towering indignation. ‘It is a pity he does not improve the +advantage oftener by doing something which deserves to be chronicled. +And if he fails, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span>what can be expected from the <i>canaille</i> who buy +and sell?’</p> + +<p>‘Oliver, don’t pretend to misunderstand me,’ remonstrated Fan, +relapsing quickly after her short flight into her customary +earnestness—even with her proneness to feel aggrieved, getting angry on +her own account; ‘you know very well what I mean.’</p> + +<p>‘I defy anybody to arrive at the meaning of so contradictory a person,’ +said Oliver, growing cool as she waxed hot, picking up a stone and +aiming it at an audacious sparrow on a neighbouring bough.</p> + +<p>‘You are perfectly aware,’ explained poor Fan, with laborious +iteration, ‘that I consider a man who has had the education of a +gentleman, and lived in the society of gentlemen, is qualified to +belong to their rank if he will.’</p> + +<p>‘Thanks; I quite agree with you there; we only differ in what +constitutes a gentleman.’</p> + +<p>‘Then let us agree to differ,’ said Fan, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span>coming down from her stilts +for the moment, and making an overture towards reconciliation. ‘Don’t +quarrel any more this evening. I really want you to tell me if you +think Clarke is right in this border, for I can never make up my mind.’</p> + +<p>Oliver’s opinion was at her service, as his hands and feet would have +been if she had cared to employ them. And he agreed with her that the +dispute had gone far enough, when it was assuming too sharp a tone.</p> + +<p>That evening impressed itself on Oliver Constable’s mind, as certain +days and nights which, in themselves, at the time, have offered no +elements of distinction to arrest and excite us, stand out through +all our subsequent histories. He could recall each incident and +feature afterwards. The fact that he was the person to introduce the +two Stanhopes at Fan’s tea-table, the characteristics and doings +of the little incongruous group which gathered in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span>the mill-house +parlour—fair-haired, broad-shouldered, sanguine Harry trotting out his +chimera; dark, narrow-chested, melancholious Horace leaning forward in +the shadow to catch Harry’s words, and his alone, content in the middle +of his natural scepticism to accept and act on Harry’s version of their +prospects; Fan’s rapid conversion to Harry’s views and the effect +his influence had on her; with Oliver himself playing the part of a +critical and condemnatory chorus to the others—all remained legibly +written on Oliver’s memory. And the second act in the garden was +preserved to his consciousness in the same involuntary manner. He did +not forget its smallest accessories—the low sunk sun touching the beds +and borders with a final glory, and shining dazzlingly in his eyes and +Fan’s, while she was unwontedly gay, and he quenched her gaiety by his +savageness. Yet the two had ‘fallen out’ and made it up again, as even +the most affectionate <span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span>brothers and sisters will do, thousands of times +before, without the circumstances making the smallest mark on his mind.</p> + +<p>Harry Stanhope was well accustomed to find himself a favourite with +women; and he was of an age and temperament which inclined him to repay +the obligation impartially and liberally. But there was a fascination +to Harry, little as he was accustomed to analysis, in the manner in +which Fan Constable’s dignified reserve melted at his approach into +a proportionate depth and wealth of cordiality. He had a perception +that the conquest of her formal coldness was not a common occurrence, +and was flattering to his bearing and address. And somehow the lad, +with his volatile disposition, had a capacity which Oliver Constable +did not possess, of fathoming and rightly estimating a woman’s nature. +Fan’s brother, who had known her all her life, might accuse her most +erroneously of changing like the wind; <span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span>but the stranger, who had only +known her an hour, guessed, without being in fault, that steadfastness +was the key-note to her character.</p> + +<p>‘A famous acquisition Constable’s turning up at Friarton Mill will be +to us,’ Harry announced complacently, if brokenly, between puffs of his +pipe, when he and Horace trudged over to such accommodation as had been +improvised for them at their farm. ‘We have fallen on our feet. There +is not only Constable, an old acquaintance and a man to be trusted—all +the more that he is apt to be as crusty as any governor’s port—there +is Miss Constable, an awfully nice girl and thunderingly ladylike to +boot. Upon my word, Horry, if millers’ daughters are like that, I +don’t wonder at fellows getting spoony and spouting verses about them, +and I do wonder at fine ladies holding their own. What a pair of eyes +she has got! as dark a brown as those of “Pin Him,”’ naming with fond +regret the supreme pet of the host of dogs <span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span>which had in their time +called Harry master, which, having passed away from earth to the happy +hunting ground of dogs, was farther exalted in her late owner’s fond +imagination. It was an immense compliment from Harry when he compared +Fan’s eyes to the orbs of the departed ‘Pin Him,’ and when he added +with pensive meditativeness, ‘I dare say she would prove just such +another little brick in standing by her friends. How kind she was after +the first ten minutes!’</p> + +<p>‘I think Constable might have had the hospitality to offer to put +us up for the night till the rest of our traps turned up,’ objected +Horace, querulously. The poor fellow had an unfortunate constitutional +instinct by which he invariably laid hold first of all the flaws +in an encounter, or an individual. ‘The sister ain’t a bouncing, +barn-door specimen of a woman such as one might have expected from the +surroundings. But it struck me there was rather <span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span>too much starch and +buckram about her, to begin with, for good form—not to say the real +thing.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh, come along, old Diogenes,’ cried Harry.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span></p> + + + <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X"> + CHAPTER X. + <br> + <span>OLIVER’S NOTION OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP.</span> + </h2> +</div> + + +<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver</span> got into a habit of standing in his shop-door, +leaning against one or other of the door-posts. He stood there to +keep his weaknesses well in hand, as a declaration of war against all +promulgators of recognised theories of gentility, and as a proclamation +of fraternity and equality to his brother-shopkeepers. If he had known +it, he was rather a striking figure at the station he had chosen. He +was a Saul among the people. His shoulders were only rounded by his own +shrugs. His complexion was fresh and slightly weather-beaten, neither +tanned into leather nor baked into paste, nor <span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span>faded into a girlish +delicacy. His hands, when he took them out of his pockets, were the +unbroadened, unflattened, well-kept hands of a man who for a period +of years has handled books chiefly, and only plied an oar or a foil, +and carried a rod or a gun, by way of that variety which has saved +his fingers from becoming either slender or plump. His feet showed +the effect of contact with the wares of a higher order of bootmaker +than any known in Friarton. The clothes Oliver had bought and paid +for from an Oxford tailor were not worn out, and though he meant to +replace them by the work of a Friarton tailor in all its integrity, it +was not to be supposed that even then he would be able to prevent an +imitative townsman doing his best to copy the University ‘cut;’ so that +Oliver, in spite of himself, would still wear suits which were a faint +reflection of the coats of the disciples of Poole.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span></p> + +<p>Oliver was standing in this guise at his shop-door the next time he saw +the Stanhopes; and Harry called out again in the same tone of cheerful +curiosity, ‘I say, Constable, what are you about there?’</p> + +<p>After his former experience, Oliver was pleased to find that now he did +not change colour—by the ghost of a shade. He simply moved a quarter +of an inch to enable himself to glance up at the sign above his head, +and call the Stanhopes’ attention to it—especially to the glittering +spot where the Christian name ‘Peter’ had been erased and replaced by +‘Oliver.’ ‘Was reading not included in your education?’ he enquired, +lazily.</p> + +<p>It was Harry who grew red, gaped and stopped short, while Horace looked +sharply from the sign to Harry to get his cue from his prompter. +‘Come, now,’ stammered Harry, taken aback as he was, and speaking out +impulsively according to his wont, ‘this is too <span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span>much to make us cram. +You don’t mean to say you’re a——’</p> + +<p>‘A baker as well as a miller,’ suggested Oliver, with a laugh; ‘just +so. I wish I could say I was keeping shop—I am hardly good for so +much—but I’m looking after the premises and my business in a general +way.’</p> + +<p>Harry stared, and then he swallowed the camel at a gulp, bursting out +into a laugh on his own account as he accomplished the feat. ‘All +right, old fellow,’ he took it upon him to assure Oliver; ‘I grow the +corn and you complete the process, not merely by grinding it, but by +going a step farther and converting it into food for man as well as +for beast—why should the service to the beast be regarded as more +honourable than that to the man? As well keep a shop here as a store in +Adelaide or Victoria. Look here, Constable, invite us in and give us a +tip of tarts.’</p> + +<p>‘No,’ said Oliver, ‘my customers are the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span>genuine article, and pay +for what they get—all save an exceptional small maid or man in rags, +who may be caught looking hungrily in at the windows. Your coats are +as good as mine, and I’ll swear you’ve had an excellent breakfast on +kidneys or mutton chops sufficient to spoil your youthful appetite for +tarts for some hours to come. But I’ll send one of my carts, in its +rounds, to call at the Farm and supply you with bread, if you like to +give me the order.’</p> + +<p>‘And he expects us to say we are obliged to him for proposing to +furnish us with his goods on his own terms, and on short credit, no +doubt! We’ll see him hanged first, Horry. Is there any other baker in +the town, less of a wretched screw, that we can favour with our custom? +though of course we shan’t trust your report. I’ll tell you what, +Constable, we’ll run handicaps—my corn against your bread.’</p> + +<p>‘You had better grow your crop first.’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! never fear.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span></p> + +<p>Oliver could not help being amused by Harry Stanhope’s manner of taking +the discovery. The older man was touched a little, too, by the lad’s +staunchness to his new colours, his honest if spasmodic efforts to +accommodate himself to a changed order of things, in direct opposition +to every standard and watchword of the past, and to all the traditions +of his youth.</p> + +<p>Upon the whole the new-comers, Harry Stanhope with Horace in his wake, +behaved a great deal better—Fan would have said in vindication of their +birth and breeding—than nearly the entire upper ten long resident in +Friarton, on Oliver Constable’s declining to avail himself of their +permission and his own power to join their order. Harry received the +shock, made up his mind to it, and went on as if nothing had happened, +and everything was the same as before. If Constable chose to be a +baker, of all trades, let him. For that matter, who could hinder +him? and what did it signify? Harry <span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span>took it fully for granted that +Constable might still preserve all the claims he had ever had to being +a gentleman. Certainly Harry had not been in the habit of reckoning +bakers gentlemen, though he had known great brewers who were granted +the ‘Open sesame’ by his people. But he had enough modesty left to +own he and his people might have been mistaken in their partial and +arbitrary estimate. Unquestionably it helped Harry greatly in his +judgment to be sensible that he himself continued a gentleman, in spite +of his idle talk of going down in the social scale and sinking his coat +of arms and all ‘the humbug’ of his former station, in the plain style +and title of Harry Stanhope, yeoman.</p> + +<p>The Wrights and Fremantles of Friarton said among themselves that +Oliver Constable had disappointed, nay, cheated them, in permitting +them to extend to him the right-hand of fellowship on false premises. +True, he had taken University honours as had been predicted <span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span>of him, +but he was about to degrade these honours by sinking them in trade of +the most plebeian description. The fact was race, like murder, would +out. Young Constable came of generations of millers and bakers, instead +of masters of grammar schools and the like, and he must perforce return +to the hereditary calling with its substantial profits. It had not been +in scholarship to save him from his natural destiny.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding their just displeasure, Oliver’s old allies and patrons +did not at once give him the cut direct, to his face. As Mrs. Hilliard +had shrewdly defined the position, he could not rid himself in a +moment of the independent fortune his father had left him, and of his +university training. His going into trade might be a mere passing skit, +like the freaks of some other University men tinged with the craze +of doing something, at once out of the common and communistic, which +distinguished a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span>few of the young scholars and geniuses of the era; +or it might be a simple step to winding up the business and getting +rid of it; or it might be feeling Oliver’s way to popularity with some +dim notion of getting into Parliament at a later date. If so, though +the fellow might be a dreaming scheming fool for his pains, it would +be a totally different kind of folly, which society could not afford +to condemn severely. And a mistake might be awkward. The Fremantles +and Co. could not be altogether sure of the motive at work, and, like +politic people, they were disposed to temporise and refrain for a +while from compromising themselves strongly. In addition the Friarton +magnates wondered a little how Constable would get on, how he would +manage to combine qualifications which the Wrights and Fremantles were +accustomed to consider far apart. In the dearth of sources of social +interest and excitement, Oliver’s former friends retained a great +curiosity, in the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span>middle of their indignation and disgust, with regard +to his proceedings. Therefore ladies and gentlemen greeted him in his +new character blandly at first, and even made half-jesting allusions +to his having become what the speakers termed courteously a ‘business +man,’ just hinting that he would be a <i>rara avis</i> among the common +shopkeepers at Friarton. The Wrights and Fremantles showed that it +would not be their fault if they did not drop young Constable—supposing +they were compelled to drop him—by imperceptible degrees, and with a +gentle decorum and consideration both for themselves and him.</p> + +<p>But Oliver would not consent to be treated as a spectacle for men +and angels. When he found he was to be smilingly stared at, pumped +dry, and rallied, he broke off, rashly perhaps, his intercourse with +his old masters, and Fan, who had shown she was capable of bridling +her own pride and compelling it to go in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span>harness, could not, in the +middle of her mortification, conquer her sore pride for Oliver so as to +make any effectual resistance to the renunciation of their connection +with professional and better-bred Friarton. Before Harry Stanhope had +appeared on the scene to change the current of her ideas and reinspirit +her, she had given in gloomily to Oliver’s determination to decline +the few and wary invitations extended jointly to the brother and +sister after Oliver’s return home, by the heads of the best houses in +Friarton. The would be hosts and hostesses took the unsatisfactory +couple at their word with a rapidity that savoured of relief.</p> + +<p>‘The Constables know their own place best, after all,’ said the high +contending faction among themselves, with admirable candour. ‘We are +not going to force them to continue to come to our houses, when they +may have felt themselves not at home all the time, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span>though we did what +we could to put these young persons at their ease.’</p> + +<p>‘Constable has grown up an awkward brutally abrupt fellow, full of +angles and crotchets. He has nothing conciliatory about him,’ said +Mr. Fremantle, who was himself eminently gliding in his progress +through the world. ‘I don’t believe now, that he would ever get over +his original disadvantages—clever as he undoubtedly is—in a different +sphere. So, no doubt, he judges wisely in falling back into the old +track, where he may be as rude and overbearing as he likes. Probably +we erred in tempting him from it, though it seemed a pity that talents +like his should be wasted in a mill and bakehouse.’</p> + +<p>‘And you know, my dear,’ said Mrs. Fremantle, who was by temperament +caressing, and in the absence of other channels for her social +affectionateness, became necessarily the bosom <span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span>friend of Mrs. Wright, +though the two were only sympathetic on class grounds, ‘good schools +have not done everything for Miss Constable.’</p> + +<p>‘Yes,’ answered Mrs. Wright. But in spite of her assent she was +a tiresome woman, in doubt about everything, given to argue the +conclusiveness of the plainest proposition. Thus she immediately turned +and contended. ‘But they were excellent schools. The plain old father, +and the brother with more ambitious views in those days, made a good +selection. Miss Constable was at a school at Norwood, where my cousin +Constantia’s daughters went afterwards, and she left it for Madame +Fléchier’s in Brussels, where Miss Hilliard’s nieces the Cholmondeley +girls finished their education. By-the-by,’ added Mrs. Wright, in +fresh helpless uncertainty, ‘they count some relationship with the +Constables.’</p> + +<p>‘In a slightly nearer degree than we all do <span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span>through Adam,’—Mrs. +Fremantle put up her chin impatiently. ‘It is only a whim of darling +Mrs. Hilliard’s to acknowledge it. As for Miss Constable’—the lady took +up the broken thread of her discourse—‘she is so cold and stiff, she +has got into such a habit of repressing herself—I suppose from having +been compelled to hold the other shopkeepers at arm’s length, it is +a positive effort to maintain an acquaintance with her; and where is +the use, when she will never let herself out so that one has no chance +of knowing her any better? It would be cruel to tease the Constables +further by going on—trying to draw them away from their old set, which +is quite respectable in its way. They may really be happier in it, +education or no education. We have given them the opportunity of coming +among us, and if we do not suit them, there is no more to be said. Of +course we shall still be on bowing and speaking terms, which may be a +little awkward <span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span>when it leads to nothing more—otherwise I daresay it is +all for the best.’</p> + +<p>Fan writhed under what she guessed of this result, and Oliver grinned +at it. But neither of the two did anything, after they had set the ball +moving, to prevent the catastrophe.</p> + +<p>The single reservation in the sentence which consigned the +Constables once more to the Coventry of vulgar allies, occurred +in the case of Mrs. Hilliard. Her house was, as in the beginning, +the neutral ground on which the relapsed tradespeople could still +encounter the professional circle. Mrs. Hilliard had proclaimed her +blood-relationship with the Constables, while it was a point of +honour with her to assert openly her interest in the most distant of +her kindred. She announced now with the greatest <i>sang froid</i>, +and with a suspicion of gratified mischief, in the line she +adopted—including as she did the culprits among the recipients of the +announcement—that <span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span>she did not mean to give Oliver and Fan Constable +up, neither did she mean them to give her up, since there were two at +making a bargain and picking a quarrel.</p> + +<p>It is putting it mildly to say that Fan did not like Louisa Hilliard +and objected to being taken up by her, either on the score of remote +relationship or anything else; but the girl could not bring herself, +even with her strong dislikes, to reject the last refuge against +finding herself reduced solely to the society of the Dadds and the +Polleys.</p> + +<p>Oliver rather enjoyed the broad tolerance of Mrs. Hilliard’s +self-indulgent <i>bonhomie</i>, and he had a hankering still after +having the entrance to the Meadows, though he availed himself of it to +his own hurt, smarting as he did under the total absence of sympathy +there, even more so than at home, from another Hilliard than Louisa.</p> + +<p>Between Fan’s passiveness and Oliver’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span>treacherous inclinations, the +exception to the social ban was admitted, and Mrs. Hilliard carried her +point triumphantly as usual.</p> + +<p>The tradespeople of Friarton could not be said to welcome with open +arms Oliver Constable’s return to their shops and back parlours. His +old acquaintances had liked him better than they had liked Fan, though +he had been of Fan’s mind once on a day, and had looked down from the +giddy heights of juvenile scholarship on the dull fat plains of trade, +vowing superciliously that he should never rest in them. But, oddly +enough, in proportion as Oliver became a man and changed his mind, his +early friends learnt to distrust him more and more. True, Oliver’s +recantation was received with shouts from young Dadd, chuckles from +old Dadd, and giggles from the Polley girls, as at a conquest won by +their class over that which pretended to be the superior rank. But +Oliver’s outward adherence <span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span>did not flatter his fellows out of their +rooted conviction that he was not one of them, and might prove no +better than a traitor in the camp. He was ‘a chield’ preparing to come +among them, and take notes—not for the purpose of printing the notes, +which would have been disloyal enough—but, what was far worse, with +the intention of gauging the moral and intellectual condition of the +shop people, and with the conceited aspiration of elevating it. And +they had a strong objection to being thus elevated by a wolf in sheep’s +clothing—old Peter Constable’s son spoilt by his own college education. +He was giving himself out as intending to carry on his father’s trade, +which he was safe to make a mess of, while he was nourishing deep +designs under the cloak of the mill and the baker’s shop. He to be a +miller and baker! Old Dadd had heard Oliver could read Greek like a +parson, but he could no more throw off a covering of pie crust than +he could <span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span>fly. Why, it was only the other day he was walking up the +High Street with his arm linked in Fremantle’s! Fremantle might be as +poor as a church-mouse and only a better sort of school usher, but he +could read the lessons in his white surplice on Sundays the same as the +Archbishop of Canterbury. Dadd went in for chapel, not church, still +even his minister owned that Fremantle was a cut above him in this +world. And there was Mrs. Fremantle in her shabby gown—that woman only +acknowledged the existence of such a female as Mrs. Dadd in the shop. +No doubt Mrs. Fremantle was as gracious as could be over the counter, +which was no less than her bounden duty, seeing the length of time her +bills stood in his books, still, in the middle of her graciousness, she +managed to convey the impression that his—Dadd’s—better half was of a +different order of creation from that which had the honour of claiming +Mrs. Fremantle as its product. Well, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span>old Dadd, for his part, did not +object. He was aware that the Fremantles, for all their poverty and +shabbiness, dined at the squire’s table when he was at home, while Dadd +and Mrs. Dadd got no farther than the housekeeper’s room; and neither +did he wish to change places with the schoolmaster and his lady in this +respect. But let fish be fish, and fowl fowl—not ‘’alf and ’alf,’ as +Oliver Constable would have them.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilliard was not wrong when she judged from her own feelings the +general disagreeableness of being dragged up to breathe a higher and +purer atmosphere.</p> + +<p>At the same time, as may have been seen, the shop people, with their +plain common sense and shrewd wits—sharpened by jealousy, alarm, and +latent sluggish hostility—arrived more quickly and surely at Oliver’s +eccentric, high-flying views than the more cultivated portion of the +community puzzling over his meaning.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span></p> + +<p>Oliver Constable laid himself out to gain old Dadd and induce his +senior to look upon him as a man and a brother. Oliver had patience +with the draper’s ways, including the loud stale jokes he poked at +Oliver as to his getting a wife and Fan’s finding a husband. According +to Dadd’s ideas, courtship in some form was the one engrossing concern +of all young people—after the attention which the young man was bound +to pay to his trade and the pleasure the girl might take in her smart +clothes and her outings, which, to be sure, were adjuncts to the main +business of her life. Indeed Dadd looked charitably to a suitable +marriage for Oliver Constable as the most likely cure for the lad’s +folly. Certainly young Dadd, who was several years Oliver’s senior, +remained a bachelor. But his father explained the contradiction by +rubbing his hands and accusing Jack of being ‘a sad dog’ among the +ladies.</p> + +<p>Jack blustered out, ‘What nonsense, guv’ner! <span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span>Anyone might tell I had +not much to say to the girls by the looks of me,’ clearly regarding the +charge as made out and as a feather in his cap. Even his mother, in her +sleek demureness, seemed to agree with him.</p> + +<p>Oliver manfully stood the ‘heavy teas’ under which the Dadds’ table +groaned. He ate gallantly the fat bacon and pickled salmon in order +that his entertainers, like John Gilpin’s neighbours, might not say +he was proud. He did not faint at the sight, or smell, of the raw +onions, to which the whole Dadd family were partial. He did not throw +down his arms and fly when gin-and-water succeeded tea, and added +its contribution to the already salient odours of the back parlour. +Luckily, Oliver had a good digestion and a robust constitution; and +though the details had not to him the fascination of novelty which +they might have possessed for Harry Stanhope, neither were they the +exaggerated offences which they had <span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span>proved to Fan in her craving for +outward refinement. It goes without saying that Oliver was free from +the affected, effeminate horror of the small pretender to gentility, +the snob who, having just cast his native coarse slough, has wriggled +himself into a new coat of superfine delicacy and fastidiousness. +Oliver rather respected the Dadds for not altering their ordinary style +of hospitality out of compliment to what they might imagine his changed +habits and tastes.</p> + +<p>The Dadds’ independence saved Oliver the trouble—which worried him +at the Polleys, of having perpetually to rebut the attacks which +Mrs. Polley with her high spirit made on his supposed conversion to +fine living. Mrs. Polley would not—any more than old Dadd—deign to +accommodate herself to Oliver Constable’s presumed new standard, but +she would persist in bringing it up in the form of testy apologies for +the deprivations he had to suffer. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span>‘Of course, our teas ain’t like +the meals you’ve been accustomed to, Mr. Oliver,’ she always began, +exasperatingly. ‘French cooks and a dozen courses, I dare say, no less +will serve you now—I am sure I pity your sister—and your choice of +wines every day. All I can say for our poached eggs and fried mackerel +is they are new laid and I know the hens as laid them, while the fish +is fresh and done to a turn, though I say it that should not. They are +honest English dishes honestly come by and paid for.’</p> + +<p>Then the girls would giggle and protest. ‘Oh! mother!’ in chorus. And +’Mily, the youngest and most forward of the sisters, would toss her +elaborately dressed head and cry, ‘I hope you are not hard to please, +Mr. Oliver; I should never put myself about to cosset any man. There!’</p> + +<p>At last the poor creature the father, whose wife had stood in the +breach, and prevented <span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span>him from dragging down the family to ruin, would +edge in his word and declare solemnly—not without a timid attempt at +pleasing his mistress, who was not great enough to forget what she had +done for him—‘Missus Polley never did go in for kickshaws or waste; she +always was a one to prefer what was plain and satisfying.’</p> + +<p>In return for the tribute cast at her feet, Mrs. Polley would look +round with complacent contempt, and charge her husband: ‘You shut up, +Polley, and eat your victuals; you know you have a trick of keeping the +table waiting. I am glad none of the gals take after you, unless it be +Liza—soft thing! Slow at meat is slow at work. You may be thankful I +never were a dawdler, and that I went in—the greater fool I—for looking +after you.’</p> + +<p>Whereupon poor Mr. Polley would subside into silence and the munching +of his food as fast as his few teeth would go.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span></p> + +<p>And the girls would titter afresh and cry again, ‘Oh! mother!’ in +another round of family applause. Only Liza would protest against +the accusation of procrastination—particularly where her favourite +‘beverage’ was in question. They all knew, Liza said—almost as solemnly +and pompously as her father spoke—that she could sip tea morning, noon, +and night. There was no substitute for it—unless lemonade.</p> + +<p>‘Or beer—especially when Jack Dadd is having a glass,’ suggested ’Mily, +flippantly.</p> + +<p>The result of the impertinence was that the two sisters began to +dispute together with painful frankness and vigour as to which of +them paid least heed to Jack Dadd and his actions, till Mrs. Polley, +who took and kept the high constable tone in her family, called the +noisy pair to order, as it were, with a wave of her truncheon, and an +imperious, ‘Be quiet, gals! Don’t be two sillies putting up your backs +before Mr. Oliver.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span></p> + +<p>But although Dadd the draper was brought to discuss with Oliver, in +the character of a fellow-tradesman, the general principles of sales, +profits, ready money discount, long credit, bad debts, the danger of +the co-operative system, apprentices, journeymen, hours of closing and +holidays, the cautious veteran would no more approach, in the course +of conversation, his individual practice in such debatable doings as +a percentage to the seller on each day’s sales, or with regard to +so-called ‘bankrupt stocks,’ ‘damaged goods,’ ‘clearing-off sales,’ +‘ready-made work done on the premises,’ than he would have spoken +of these trade mysteries to the vicar, Mr. Houghton, or Dadd’s own +minister, Mr. Holland.</p> + +<p>Moreover, old Dadd would say ‘sir’ in addressing his young +fellow-townsman. Mrs. Dadd was quite as mannerly, with a certain +folding of the hands and falsetto tone of voice which took the place +of the twinkle in her husband’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span>eye and his sturdy accents, in their +common politeness; and so long as that small term of half-ironical +respect came in with every alternate sentence from the two, Oliver had +scanty hope of gaining ground with them.</p> + +<p>Jack Dadd was not unwilling to be seen walking along the High Street +with Constable of Friarton Mill, late of St. Bodolph’s, Oxford +University, or standing with him at their respective shop-doors. Jack +went farther: he slapped his old school-fellow and brother-tradesman +on the shoulder at parting with a resounding slap, which Oliver bore +unflinchingly, though he did not return it. The young draper addressed +the miller and baker as ‘Noll,’ in the hearing of the Polley girls, and +Oliver answered cheerfully the free abbreviation of his Christian name; +yet, though Oliver was anxiously wary in his intercourse with Jack, and +scrupulously avoided the most distant reference to printed matter which +was not in the ‘Friarton News,’ all the same, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span>Jack had continually +present to him his own literary deficiencies, especially in the +rudimentary branches of grammar and spelling. What was lacking in the +last might have escaped detection for the present, but the culprit had +a guilty conviction that Constable would somehow guess that he—Jack—was +never sure in writing a letter when he ought or ought not to double his +consonants, or to introduce an <i>e</i> after a <i>b</i> or an <i>l</i> +or a <i>t</i>. And Jack had an inward uncomfortable impression that a +college swell must look down upon him for such a weakness; even though +Constable might be a big enough swell, or a sufficiently artful dodger, +not to brandish his superior advantages in Jack’s face.</p> + +<p>It is by no means pleasant to be haunted by a sense of inferiority even +in so small a matter. And Jack Dadd was not accustomed to submit to +such an experience.</p> + +<p>Till Oliver came home, Jack had swaggered <span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span>and crowed a good deal over +the young men of his class in Friarton and the neighbourhood.</p> + +<p>Old Dadd was well-to-do, and Jack was an only child. Of course he was +not like an ordinary young man in the drapery line to which he had been +bred. He was the young master and successor to a good business.</p> + +<p>But now Jack Dadd began to fear that Oliver Constable—queer fish and +out of the water as he was—would cut Jack out with some of his most +ardent admirers. In taking up his father’s trade Oliver had still +retained his reputation for wonderful cleverness and learning, above +all for that swell’s tone of consideration, tolerance, and gentleness +which qualified Constable’s bluntest ways, and of which none had a +keener perception than poor Jack, who lacked it utterly. Girls were +so foolish and vain, always caught by novelty and gentility. No doubt +Oliver Constable was not a gentleman born, any more than the rest of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span>them could boast of being lords’ and squires’ sons. What was more, he +had farther diminished his claims to being a gentleman by choosing to +work—at least to have a mill and a bakehouse and shop, instead of to +live idle and take his pleasure out of the fortune old Constable had +left, as Jack felt certain he would have done in Oliver’s place.</p> + +<p>Still, when all was said, Constable was the nearest thing to a +gentleman that would cross the path of girls in Jack’s circle, and Jack +reflected the girls would make the most of Oliver, and he would become +the rage.</p> + +<p>That goose Liza Polley, who pretended to read collections of poetry, +would be making a hero of Constable, and that minx ’Mily would be +treating the fellow to some of her sauce.</p> + +<p>Jack, on his part and speaking impartially, was disappointed in +Constable’s abilities and attainments. It was all very well to admit +that Oliver Constable had got a fine education and had not become an +insolent shaver on the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span>strength of it. Hang him! he was too near the +real Mackay for that. But actually he did not know anything worth +caring about. He could not put Jack up to a single wrinkle on any point +he was interested in, with regard to which Constable had been in a +position to have become a valuable authority if he were not a noodle in +some respects.</p> + +<p>Jack had sought to balance the effeminate nature of his daily +occupations in matching skeins of silk and turning over gloves, by +an excess of manliness in his recreations. He went in strongly for +games and sport. He could not often get away to attend a morning or +an afternoon cricket match, for his father had old-fashioned strict +notions of what was due to business and business hours. Therefore +Jack’s pink and white complexion lost the chance of being tanned brown. +But he played cricket and bowls with a club of Friarton shopkeepers +every fine evening all the summer. He took <span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span>in ‘Bell’s Life;’ he kept +a bull-terrier, and sometimes managed to engage it in a ratting match. +And he betted as regularly on the Derby and the Oxford and Cambridge +boat-race as if he had driven more than once in his life to Epsom +Downs, wearing a green veil and scattering flour on the way, or as if +he had a hereditary association with either University.</p> + +<p>Jack found Oliver Constable, for all his so-called attainments, +lamentably behind him in the important matters referred to. Oliver +could play cricket decently indeed, but he could do so when he was a +boy. And it was only by dragging what information there was to get, +word by word, out of him, that a Friarton cricketer could ascertain how +the nobs at the University played their game. Constable did not read a +sporting paper. He had not been in the habit of betting, though he did +not preach a sermon against the practice, possibly he meant his silent +example to serve as a text. Altogether, and this <span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span>was a consolation, if +he said as little to the girls about the college spreads and blow-outs, +he might not take the wind out of Jack’s sails to the extent he had +apprehended. But the deficiency certainly rendered Oliver less of an +acquisition to his old acquaintances.</p> + + +<p class="center">END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<span class="allsmcap">LONDON: PRINTED BY</span><br> +<span class="allsmcap">SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE</span><br> +<span class="allsmcap">AND PARLIAMENT STREET</span> +</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="transnote"> + <p class="front" id="Transcriber_Notes"> + Transcriber Notes + </p> + +<table> + <tr> + <td colspan=2 class="tdl">Hyphens standardised across text.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td colspan=2 class="tdl">The following are corrections to the original text.</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p11</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_2">close quote removed from (pleasure to look at.)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p36</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_3">“distinugish” changed to (distinguish third- or).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p69</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_5">close quote added to (at your heels.’)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p81</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_7">close quote added to (scholar and gentleman.’)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p97</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_8">“downfal” changed to (downfall of all the).</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p98</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_9">period changed to comma (familiar mill gallery,)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p111</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_10">period added to (‘Oh, Oliver, think again.’)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p112</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_11">close quote added to (are going to do,’)</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td class="tdr">p181</td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#cor_14">single changed to double quote (“he is my servant)</a></td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78299 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |