John Caldigate Part 2

'I never did, sir.'

'It seemed so.'

'Of course I have been weak.'

'Do not suppose for a moment that I am finding fault. It would be of no avail, and I would not thus embitter our last hours together. But when I saw how your tastes seemed to lead you, I began to fear that there could be no career for you here. On such a property as Babington an eldest son may vegetate like his father before him, and may succeed to it in due time, before he has wasted everything, and may die as he had lived, useless, but having to the end all the enjoyments of a swine.'

'You are severe upon my cousins, sir.'

'I say what I think. But you would not have done that. And though you are not industrious, you are far too active and too clever for such a life. Now you are probably in earnest as to the future.'

'Yes, I am certainly in earnest.'

'And though you are going to risk your capital in a precarious business, you will only be doing what is done daily by enterprising men. I could wish that your position were more secure;--but that now cannot be helped.'

'My bed is as I have made it. I quite understand that, sir.'

'Thinking of all this, I have endeavoured to reconcile myself to your going.' Then he paused a moment, considering what he should next say.

And his son was silent, knowing that something further was to come. 'Had you remained in England we could hardly have lived together as father and son should live. You would have been dependent on me, and would have rebelled against that submission which a state of dependence demands.

There would have been nothing for you but to have waited,--and almost to have wished, for my death.'

'No, sir; never; never that.'

'It would have been no more than natural. I shall hear from you sometimes?'

'Certainly, sir.'

'It will give an interest to my life if you will write occasionally.

Whither do you go to-morrow?'

It had certainly been presumed, though never said, that this last visit to the old home was to be only for one day. The hired gig had been kept; and in his letter the son had asked whether he could be taken in for Thursday night. But now the proposition that he should go so soon seemed to imply a cold-blooded want of feeling on his part. 'I need not be in such a hurry, sir,' he said.

'Of course, it shall be as you please, but I do not know that you will do any good by staying. A last month may be pleasant enough, or even a last week, but a last day is purgatory. The melancholy of the occasion cannot be shaken off. It is only the prolonged wail of a last farewell.'

All this was said in the old man's ordinary voice, but it seemed to betoken if not feeling itself, a recognition of feeling which the son had not expected.

'It is very sad,' said the son.

'Therefore, why prolong it? Stand not upon the order of your going but go at once,--seeing that it is necessary that you should go. Will you take any more wine? No? Then let us go into the other room. As they are making company of you and have lighted another fire, we will do as they would have us.' Then for the rest of the evening there was some talk about books, and the father, who was greatly given to reading, explained to his son what kind of literature would, as he thought, fit in best with the life of a gold-digger.

After what had pa.s.sed, Caldigate, of course, took his departure on the following morning. Good-bye said the old man, as the son grasped his hand, 'Good-bye.' He made no overture to come even as far as the hall in making this his final adieu.

'I trust I may return to see you in health.'

'It may be so. As to that we can say nothing. Good-bye.' Then, when the son had turned his back, the father recalled him, by a murmur rather than by a word,--but in that moment he had resolved to give way a little to the demands of nature. Good-bye my son,' he said, in a low voice, very solemnly; 'May G.o.d bless you and preserve you.' Then he turned back at once to his own closet.

Chapter IV

The Shands

John Caldigate had promised to go direct from Folking to the house of his friend Richard Shand, or rather, to the house in which lived Richard Shand's father and family. The two young men had much to arrange together, and this had been thought to be expedient. When Caldigate, remembering how affairs were at his own home, had suggested that at so sad a moment he might be found to be in the way, Shand had a.s.sured him that there would be no sadness at all. 'We are not a sentimental race,'

he had said. 'There are a dozen of us, and the sooner some of us disperse ourselves, the more room will there be in the nest for the others.'

Shand had been Caldigate's most intimate friend at college through the whole period of their residence, and now he was to be his companion in a still more intimate alliance. And yet, though he liked the man, he did not altogether approve of him. Shand had also got into debt at Cambridge, but had not paid his debts; and had dealings also with Davis, as to which he was now quite indifferent. He had left the University without taking a degree, and had seemed to bear all these adversities with perfect equanimity. There had not been hitherto much of veneration in Caldigate's character, but even he had, on occasions, been almost shocked at the want of respect evinced by his friend for conventional rules. All college discipline, all college authorities, all university traditions had been despised by Shand, who even in his dress had departed as far from recognised customs and fas.h.i.+ons among the men as from the requisitions of the statutes and the milder requirements of the dignitaries of the day. Now, though he could not pay his debts,--and intended, indeed, to run away from them,--he was going to try his fortune with a certain small capital which his father had agreed to give him as his share of what there might be of the good things of the world among the Shands generally. As Shand himself said of both of them, he was about to go forth as a prodigal son, with a perfect a.s.surance that, should he come back empty-handed, no calf would be killed for him. But he was an active man, with a dash of fun, and perhaps a sprinkling of wit, quick and brave, to whom life was apparently a joke, and who boasted of himself that, though he was very fond of beef and beer, he could live on bread and water, if put to it, without complaining.

Caldigate almost feared that the man was a dangerous companion, but still there was a certain fitness about him for the thing contemplated; and, for such a venture, where could he find any other companion who would be fit?

Dr. Shand, the father, was a physician enjoying a considerable amount of provincial eminence in a small town in Ess.e.x. Here he had certainly been a succesful man; for, with all the weight of such a family on his back, he had managed to save some money. There had been small legacies from other Shands, and trifles of portion had come to them from the Potters, of whom Mrs. Shand had been one,--Shand and Potter having been wholesale druggists in Smithfield. The young Shands had generally lived a pleasant life; had gone to school,--the eldest son, as we have seen, to the university also,--and had had governesses, and ponies to ride, and had been great at dancing, and had shot arrows, and played Badminton, and been subject to but little domestic discipline. They had lived crowded together in a great red-brick house, plenteously, roughly, quarrelling continually, but very fond of each other in their own way, and were known throughout that side of the country as a happy family.

The girls had always gloves and shoes for dancing, and the boys had enjoyed a considerable amount of shooting and hunting without owning either guns or horses of their own. Now d.i.c.k was to go in quest of a fortune, and all the girls were st.i.tching s.h.i.+rts for him, and were as happy as possible. Not a word was said about his debts, and no one threw it in his teeth that he had failed to take a degree. It was known of the Shands that they always made the best of everything.

When Caldigate got out of the railway carriage at Pollington, he was still melancholy with the remembrance of all that he had done and all that he had lost, and he expected to find something of the same feeling at his friend's house. But before he had been there an hour he was laughing with the girls as though such an enterprise as theirs was the best joke in the world. And when a day and a night had pa.s.sed, Mrs.

Shand was deep among his s.h.i.+rts and socks, and had already given him much advice about flannel and soft soap. 'I know Maria would like to go out with you,' said the youngest daughter on the third day, a girl of twelve years old, who ought to have known better, and who, nevertheless, knew more than she ought to have done.

'Indeed Maria would like nothing of the kind,' said the young lady in question.

'Only, Mr. Caldigate, of course you would have to marry her.' Then the child was cuffed, and Maria declared that the proposed arrangement would suit neither her nor Mr. Caldigate in the least. The eldest daughter, Harriet, was engaged to marry a young clergyman in the neighbourhood, which event, however, was to be postponed till he had got a living; and the second, Matilda, was under a cloud because she would persist in being in love with Lieutenant Postlethwaite, of the Dragoons, whose regiment was quartered in the town. Maria was the third. All these family secrets were told to him quite openly as well as the fact that Josh, the third son, was to become a farmer because he could not be got to learn the multiplication table.

Between Pollington and London, Caldigate remained for six weeks, during which time he fitted himself out, took his pa.s.sage, and executed the necessary deeds as to the estate. It might have been pleasant enough,--this little interval before his voyage,--as the Shands, though rough and coa.r.s.e, were kind to him and good-humoured, had it not been that a great trouble befell him through over conscientiousness as to a certain matter. After what had pa.s.sed at Babington House, it was expedient that he should, before he started for New South Wales, give some notice to his relatives there, so that Julia might know that destiny did not intend her to become Mrs. Caldigate of Folking. Aunt Polly had, no doubt, been too forward in that matter, and in wis.h.i.+ng to dispose of her daughter had put herself in the way of merited rebuke and disappointment. It was, however, not the less necessary that she should be told of the altered circ.u.mstances of her wished-for son-in-law. But, had he been wise, he would so have written his letter that no answer should reach him before he had left the sh.o.r.es of England. His conscience, however, pinched him, and before he had even settled the day on which he would start, he wrote to his aunt a long letter in which he told her everything,--how he had disposed of his inheritance,--how he had become so indebted to Davis as to have to seek a new fortune out of England,--how he had bade farewell to Folking for ever,--and how impossible it was under all these circ.u.mstances that he should aspire to the hand of his cousin Julia.

It was as though a thunderbolt had fallen among them at Babington. Mr.

Babington himself was certainly not a clever man, but he knew enough of his own position, as an owner of acres, to be very proud of it, and he was affectionate enough towards his nephew to feel the full weight of this terrible disruption It seemed to him that his brother-in-law, Daniel Caldigate, was doing a very wicked thing, and he hurried across the country, to Folking, that he might say so. 'You have not sense enough to understand the matter,' said Daniel Caldigate. 'You have no heart in your bowels if you can disinherit an only son,' said the big squire. 'Never mind where I carry my heart,' said the smaller squire; 'but it is a pity you should carry so small an amount of brain.' No good could be done by such a meeting as that, nor by the journey which aunt Polly took to Pollington. The Caldigates, both father and son, were gifted with too strong a will to be turned from their purpose by such interference. But a great deal of confusion was occasioned; and aunt Polly among the Shands was regarded as a very wonderful woman indeed.

'Oh, my son, my darling son!' she said, weeping on John Caldigate's shoulder. Now John Caldigate was certainly not her son, in the usual acceptation of the word, nor did Maria Shand believe that he was so even in that limited sense in which a daughter's husband may be so designated. It was altogether very disagreeable, and made our hero almost resolve to get on board the s.h.i.+p a week before it started from the Thames instead of going down to Plymouth and catching it at the last moment. Of course it would have been necessary that the Babingtons should know all about it sooner or later, but John very much regretted that he had not delayed his letter till the day before his departure.

There is something jovial when you are young in preparing for a long voyage and for totally altered circ.u.mstances in life, especially when the surroundings are in themselves not melancholy. A mother weeping over a banished child may be sad enough,--going as an exile when there is no hope of a return, But here among the Shands, with whom sons and daughters were plentiful, and with whom the feelings were of a useful kind, and likely to wear well, rather than of a romantic nature, the bustle, the purchasings, the arrangements, and the packings generally had in them a pleasantness of activity with no disagreeable accompaniments.

'I do hope you will wear them, d.i.c.k,' the mother said with something like a sob in her voice; but the tenderness came not from the approaching departure, but from her fear that the thick woollen drawers on which she was re-sewing all the b.u.t.tons, should be neglected,--after d.i.c.k's usual fas.h.i.+on. 'Mr. Caldigate I hope you will see that he wears them. He looks strong, but indeed he is not.' Our hero who had always regarded his friend as a bull for strength of const.i.tution generally, promised that he would be attentive to d.i.c.k's drawers.

'You may be sure that I shall wear them,' said d.i.c.k; 'but the time will come when I shall probably wear nothing else, so you had better make the b.u.t.tons firm.'

Everything was to be done with strict economy, but yet there was plenty of money for purchases. There always is at such occasions. The quant.i.ty of clothes got together seemed to be more than any two men could ever wear; and among it all there were no dress-coats and no dress-trousers: or, if either of them had such articles, they were smuggled. The two young men were going out as miners, and took a delight in preparing themselves to be rough. Caldigate was at first somewhat modest in submitting his own belongings to the females of the establishment but that feeling soon wore off, and the markings and mendings, and b.u.t.tonings and hemmings went on in a strictly impartial manner as though he himself were a chick out of the same brood.

'What will you do?' said the doctor, 'if you spend your capital and make nothing?'

'Work for wages,' said d.i.c.k. 'We shall have got, at any rate, enough experience out of our money to be able to do that. Men are getting 10s.

a-day.'

'But you'd have to go on doing that always,' said the mother.

'Not at all. Of course it's a life of ups and downs. A man working for wages can put half what he earns into a claim, so that when a thing does come up trumps at last, he will have his chance. I have read a good deal about it now. There is plenty to be got if a man only knows how to keep it.'

'Drinking is the worst,' said the doctor.

'I think I can trust myself for that,' said d.i.c.k, whose hand at the moment was on a bottle of whisky, and who had been by no means averse to jollifications at Cambridge. 'A miner when he's at work should never drink.'

'Nor when he's not at work, if he wants to keep what he earns.'