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The Three Clerks

by Anthony Trollope · English · Gutenberg #7481 · 1,195,936 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Three Clerks

Author: Anthony Trollope


        
Release date: February 1, 2005 [eBook #7481]
                Most recently updated: March 22, 2017

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE CLERKS ***


E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Delphine Lettau, Mark Sherwood, and
the people at Distributed Proofreading



THE THREE CLERKS

BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE



ANTHONY TROLLOPE

Born London, April 24, 1815 Died London, December 6, 1882



INTRODUCTION

There is the proper mood and the just environment for the reading as
well as for the writing of works of fiction, and there can be no better
place for the enjoying of a novel by Anthony Trollope than under a tree
in Kensington Gardens of a summer day. Under a tree in the avenue that
reaches down from the Round Pond to the Long Water. There, perhaps more
than anywhere else, lingers the early Victorian atmosphere. As we sit
beneath our tree, we see in the distance the dun, red-brick walls of
Kensington Palace, where one night Princess Victoria was awakened to
hear that she was Queen; there in quaint, hideously ugly Victorian
rooms are to be seen Victorian dolls and other playthings; the whole
environment is early Victorian. Here to the mind's eye how easy it is to
conjure up ghosts of men in baggy trousers and long flowing whiskers, of
prim women in crinolines, in hats with long trailing feathers and
with ridiculous little parasols, or with Grecian-bends and
chignons--church-parading to and fro beneath the trees or by the water's
edge--perchance, even the fascinating Lady Crinoline and the elegant Mr.
Macassar Jones, whose history has been written by Clerk Charley in the
pages we are introducing to the 'gentle reader'. As a poetaster of an
earlier date has written:--

  Where Kensington high o'er the neighbouring lands
  'Midst green and sweets, a royal fabric, stands,
  And sees each spring, luxuriant in her bowers,
  A snow of blossoms, and a wild of flowers,
  The dames of Britain oft in crowds repair
  To gravel walks, and unpolluted air.
  Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies,
  They breathe in sunshine, and see azure skies;
  Each walk, with robes of various dyes bespread,
  Seems from afar a moving tulip bed,
  Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow,
  And chintz, the rival of the showery bow.

Indeed, the historian of social manners, when dealing with the Victorian
period, will perforce have recourse to the early volumes of Punch and to
the novels of Thackeray, Dickens, and Trollope.

There are certain authors of whom personally we know little, but of
whose works we cannot ever know enough, such a one for example as
Shakespeare; others of whose lives we know much, but for whose works
we can have but scant affection: such is Doctor Johnson; others who are
intimate friends in all their aspects, as Goldsmith and Charles Lamb;
yet others, who do not quite come home to our bosoms, whose writings we
cannot entirely approve, but for whom and for whose works we find a soft
place somewhere in our hearts, and such a one is Anthony Trollope. His
novels are not for every-day reading, any more than are those of Marryat
and Borrow--to take two curious examples. There are times and moods and
places in which it would be quite impossible to read _The Three Clerks_;
others in which this story is almost wholly delightful. With those who
are fond of bed-reading Trollope should ever be a favourite, and it is
no small compliment to say this, for small is the noble army of authors
who have given us books which can enchant in the witching hour between
waking and slumber. It is probable that all lovers of letters have their
favourite bed-books. Thackeray has charmingly told us of his. Of the few
novels that can really be enjoyed when the reader is settling down for
slumber almost all have been set forth by writers who--consciously or
unconsciously--have placed character before plot; Thackeray himself,
Miss Austen, Borrow, Marryat, Sterne, Dickens, Goldsmith and--Trollope.

Books are very human in their way, as what else should they be, children
of men and women as they are? Just as with human friends so with book
friends, first impressions are often misleading; good literary coin
sometimes seems to ring untrue, but the untruth is in the ear of the
reader, not of the writer. For instance, Trollope has many odd and
irritating tricks which are apt to scare off those who lack perseverance
and who fail to understand that there must be something admirable
in that which was once much admired by the judicious. He shares with
Thackeray the sinful habit of pulling up his readers with a wrench by
reminding them that what is set before them is after all mere fiction
and that the characters in whose fates they are becoming interested
are only marionettes. With Dickens and others he shares the custom, so
irritating to us of to-day, of ticketing his personages with clumsy,
descriptive labels, such as, in _The Three Clerks_, Mr. Chaffanbrass,
Sir Gregory Hardlines, Sir Warwick West End, Mr. Neverbend, Mr. Whip
Vigil, Mr. Nogo and Mr. Gitemthruet. He must plead guilty, also, to some
bad ways peculiarly his own, or which he made so by the thoroughness
with which he indulged in them. He moralizes in his own person in
deplorable manner: is not this terrible:--'Poor Katie!--dear, darling,
bonnie Katie!--sweet, sweetest, dearest child! why, oh, why, has that
mother of thine, that tender-hearted loving mother, put thee unguarded
in the way of such perils as this? Has she not sworn to herself that
over thee at least she would watch as a hen over her young, so that no
unfortunate love should quench thy young spirit, or blanch thy cheek's
bloom?' Is this not sufficient to make the gentlest reader swear to
himself?

Fortunately this and some other appalling passages occur after the story
is in full swing and after the three Clerks and those with whom
they come into contact have proved themselves thoroughly interesting
companions. Despite all his old-fashioned tricks Trollope does
undoubtedly succeed in giving blood and life to most of his characters;
they are not as a rule people of any great eccentricity or of profound
emotions; but ordinary, every-day folk, such as all of us have met,
and loved or endured. Trollope fills very adequately a space between
Thackeray and Dickens, of whom the former deals for the most part with
the upper 'ten', the latter with the lower 'ten'; Trollope with the
suburban and country-town 'ten'; the three together giving us a very
complete and detailed picture of the lives led by our grandmothers and
grandfathers, whose hearts were in the same place as our own, but whose
manners of speech, of behaviour and of dress have now entered into the
vague region known as the 'days of yore'.

_The Three Clerks_ is an excellent example of Trollope's handiwork. The
development of the plot is sufficiently skilful to maintain the reader's
interest, and the major part of the characters is lifelike, always
well observed and sometimes depicted with singular skill and insight.
Trollope himself liked the work well:--

'The plot is not so good as that of _The Macdermots_; nor are any
characters in the book equal to those of Mrs. Proudie and the Warden;
but the work has a more continued interest, and contains the first
well-described love-scene that I ever wrote. The passage in which Kate
Woodward, thinking she will die, tries to take leave of the lad she
loves, still brings tears to my eyes when I read it. I had not the heart
to kill her. I never could do that. And I do not doubt that they are
living happily together to this day.

'The lawyer Chaffanbrass made his first appearance in this novel, and I
do not think that I have cause to be ashamed of him. But this novel
now is chiefly noticeable to me from the fact that in it I introduced a
character under the name of Sir Gregory Hardlines, by which I intended
to lean very heavily on that much loathed scheme of competitive
examination, of which at that time Sir Charles Trevelyan was the
great apostle. Sir Gregory Hardlines was intended for Sir Charles
Trevelyan--as any one at the time would know who had taken an interest
in the Civil Service. 'We always call him Sir Gregory,' Lady Trevelyan
said to me afterwards when I came to know her husband. I never learned
to love competitive examination; but I became, and am, very fond of Sir
Charles Trevelyan. Sir Stafford Northcote, who is now Chancellor of
the Exchequer, was then leagued with his friend Sir Charles, and he too
appears in _The Three Clerks_ under the feebly facetious name of Sir
Warwick West End. But for all that _The Three Clerks_ was a good novel.'

Which excerpt from Trollope's _Autobiography_ serves to throw light
not only upon the novel in question, but also upon the character of its
author.

Trollope served honestly and efficiently for many a long year in the
Post Office, achieving his entrance through a farce of an examination:--

'The story of that examination', he says, 'is given accurately in the
opening chapters of a novel written by me, called _The Three Clerks_.
If any reader of this memoir would refer to that chapter and see how
Charley Tudor was supposed to have been admitted into the Internal
Navigation Office, that reader will learn how Anthony Trollope was
actually admitted into the Secretary's office of the General Post Office
in 1834.'

Poe's description of the manner in which he wrote _The Raven_ is
incredible, being probably one of his solemn and sombre jokes; equally
incredible is Trollope's confession of his humdrum, mechanical methods
of work. Doubtless he believed he was telling the whole truth, but only
here and there in his _Autobiography_ does he permit to peep out touches
of light, which complete the portrait of himself. It is impossible that
for the reader any character in fiction should live which has not been
alive to its creator; so is it with Trollope, who, speaking of his
characters, says,

'I have wandered alone among the rooks and woods, crying at their grief,
laughing at their absurdities, and thoroughly enjoying their joy. I
have been impregnated with my own creations till it has been my only
excitement to sit with the pen in my hand, and drive my team before me
at as quick a pace as I could make them travel.'

There is a plain matter-of-factness about Trollope's narratives which is
convincing, making it difficult for the reader to call himself back to
fact and to remember that he has been wandering in a world of fiction.
In _The Three Clerks_, the young men who give the tale its title are all
well drawn. To accomplish this in the cases of Alaric and Charley Tudor
was easy enough for a skilled writer, but to breathe life into Harry
Norman was difficult. At first he appears to be a lay-figure, a priggish
dummy of an immaculate hero, a failure in portraiture; but toward the
end of the book it is borne in on us that our dislike had been aroused
by the lifelike nature of the painting, dislike toward a real man,
priggish indeed in many ways, but with a very human strain of obstinacy
and obdurateness, which few writers would have permitted to have entered
into the make-up of any of their heroes. Of the other men, Undy Scott
may be named as among the very best pieces of portraiture in Victorian
fiction; touch after touch of detail is added to the picture with really
admirable skill, and Undy lives in the reader's memory as vividly as
he must have existed in the imagination of his creator. There are some
strong and curious passages in Chapter XLIV, in which the novelist
contrasts the lives and fates of Varney, Bill Sykes and Undy Scott; they
stir the blood, proving uncontestibly that Undy Scott was as real to
Trollope as he is to us: 'The figure of Undy swinging from a gibbet at
the broad end of Lombard Street would have an effect. Ah, my fingers
itch to be at the rope.'

Trollope possessed the rare and beautiful gift of painting the hearts
and souls of young girls, and of this power he has given an admirable
example in Katie Woodward. It would be foolish and cruel to attempt to
epitomize, or rather to draw in miniature, this portrait that Trollope
has drawn at full length; were it not for any other end, those that are
fond of all that is graceful and charming in young womanhood should read
_The Three Clerks_, so becoming the friend, nay, the lover of Katie. Her
sisters are not so attractive, simply because nature did not make them
so; a very fine, faithful woman, Gertrude; a dear thing, Linda. All
three worthy of their mother, she who, as we are told in a delicious
phrase, 'though adverse to a fool' 'could sympathize with folly '.

These eight portraits are grouped in the foreground of this
'conversation' piece, the background being filled with slighter but
always live figures.

Particularly striking, as being somewhat unusual with Trollope, is the
depiction of the public-house, 'The Pig and Whistle', in Norfolk Street,
the landlady, Mrs. Davis, and the barmaid, Norah Geraghty. We can almost
smell the gin, the effluvia of stale beer, the bad tobacco, hear
the simpers and see the sidlings of Norah, feel sick with and at
Charley:--he 'got up and took her hand; and as he did so, he saw that
her nails were dirty. He put his arms round her waist and kissed her;
and as he caressed her, his olfactory nerves perceived that the pomatum
in her hair was none of the best ... and then he felt very sick'. But,
oh, why 'olfactory nerves'? Was it vulgar in early Victorian days to
call a nose a nose?

How far different would have been Dickens's treatment of such characters
and such a scene; out of Mrs. Davis and Norah he would have extracted
fun, and it would never have entered into his mind to have brought such
a man as Charley into contact with them in a manner that must hurt that
young hero's susceptibilities. Thackeray would have followed a third
way, judging by his treatment of the Fotheringay and Captain Costigan,
partly humorous, partly satirical, partly serious.

Trollope was not endowed with any spark of wit, his satire tends towards
the obvious, and his humour is mild, almost unconscious, as if he could
depict for us what of the humorous came under his observation without
himself seeing the fun in it. Where he sets forth with intent to be
humorous he sometimes attains almost to the tragic; there are few things
so sad as a joke that misses fire or a jester without sense of humour.

Of the genius of a writer of fiction there is scarce any other test so
sure as this of the reality of his characters. Few are the authors that
have created for us figures of fiction that are more alive to us than
the historic shadows of the past, whose dead bones historians do not
seem to be able to clothe with flesh and blood. Trollope hovers on the
border line between genius and great talent, or rather it would be more
fair to say that with regard to him opinions may justly differ. For
our own part we hold that his was not talent streaked with genius, but
rather a jog-trot genius alloyed with mediocrity. He lacked the supreme
unconsciousness of supreme genius, for of genius as of talent there are
degrees. There are characters in _The Three Clerks_ that live; those
who have read the tale must now and again when passing Norfolk Street,
Strand, regret that it would be waste of time to turn down that rebuilt
thoroughfare in search of 'The Pig and Whistle', which was 'one of these
small tranquil shrines of Bacchus in which the god is worshipped with as
constant a devotion, though with less noisy demonstration of zeal than
in his larger and more public temples'. Alas; lovers of Victorian
London must lament that such shrines grow fewer day by day; the great
thoroughfares know them no more; they hide nervously in old-world
corners, and in them you will meet old-world characters, who not seldom
seem to have lost themselves on their way to the pages of Charles
Dickens.

Despite the advent of electric tramways, Hampton would still be
recognized by the three clerks, 'the little village of Hampton, with its
old-fashioned country inn, and its bright, quiet, grassy river.' Hampton
is now as it then was, the 'well-loved resort of cockneydom'.

So let us alight from the tramcar at Hampton, and look about on the
outskirts of the village for 'a small old-fashioned brick house,
abutting on the road, but looking from its front windows on to a lawn
and garden, which stretched down to the river'. Surbiton Cottage it is
called. Let us peep in at that merry, happy family party; and laugh at
Captain Cuttwater, waking from his placid sleep, rubbing his eyes in
wonderment, and asking, 'What the devil is all the row about?' But it is
only with our mind's eye that we can see Surbiton Cottage--a cottage
in the air it is, but more substantial to some of us than many a real
jerry-built villa of red brick and stucco.

Old-fashioned seem to us the folk who once dwelt there, old-fashioned in
all save that their hearts were true and their outlook on life sane and
clean; they live still, though their clothes be of a quaint fashion and
their talk be of yesterday.

Who knows but that they will live long after we who love them shall be
dead and turned to dust?

W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE.



CONTENTS

  I.       THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
  II.      THE INTERNAL NAVIGATION
  III.     THE WOODWARDS
  IV.      CAPTAIN CUTTWATER
  V.       BUSHEY PARK
  VI.      SIR GREGORY HARDLINES
  VII.     MR. FIDUS NEVERBEND
  VIII.    THE HON. UNDECIMUS SCOTT
  IX.      MR. MANYLODES
  X.       WHEAL MARY JANE
  XI.      THE THREE KINGS
  XII.     CONSOLATION
  XIII.    A COMMUNICATION OF IMPORTANCE
  XIV.     VERY SAD
  XV.      NORMAN RETURNS TO TOWN
  XVI.     THE FIRST WEDDING
  XVII.    THE HONOURABLE MRS. VAL AND MISS GOLIGHTLY
  XVIII.   A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.--MORNING
  XIX.     A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.--AFTERNOON
  XX.      A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.--EVENING
  XXI.     HAMPTON COURT BRIDGE
  XXII.    CRINOLINE AND MACASSAR; OR, MY AUNT'S WILL
  XXIII.   SURBITON COLLOQUIES
  XXIV.    MR. M'BUFFER ACCEPTS THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS
  XXV.     CHISWICK GARDENS
  XXVI.    KATIE'S FIRST BALL
  XXVII.   EXCELSIOR
  XXVIII.  OUTERMAN _v_. TUDOR
  XXIX.    EASY IS THE SLOPE OF HELL
  XXX.     MRS. WOODWARD'S REQUEST
  XXXI.    HOW APOLLO SAVED THE NAVVY
  XXXII.   THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE
  XXXIII.  TO STAND, OR NOT TO STAND
  XXXIV.   WESTMINSTER HALL
  XXXV.    MRS. VAL'S NEW CARRIAGE
  XXXVI.   TICKLISH STOCK
  XXXVII.  TRIBULATION
  XXXVIII. ALARIC TUDOR TAKES A WALK
  XXXIX.   THE LAST BREAKFAST
  XL.      MR. CHAFFANBRASS
  XLI.     THE OLD BAILEY
  XLII.    A PARTING INTERVIEW
  XLIII.   MILLBANK
  XLIV.    THE CRIMINAL POPULATION IS DISPOSED OF
  XLV.     THE FATE OF THE NAVVIES
  XLVI.    MR. NOGO'S LAST QUESTION
  XLVII.   CONCLUSION



CHAPTER I

THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES


All the English world knows, or knows of, that branch of the Civil
Service which is popularly called the Weights and Measures. Every
inhabitant of London, and every casual visitor there, has admired the
handsome edifice which generally goes by that name, and which stands so
conspicuously confronting the Treasury Chambers. It must be owned that
we have but a slip-slop way of christening our public buildings. When a
man tells us that he called on a friend at the Horse Guards, or looked
in at the Navy Pay, or dropped a ticket at the Woods and Forests, we put
up with the accustomed sounds, though they are in themselves, perhaps,
indefensible. The 'Board of Commissioners for Regulating Weights and
Measures', and the 'Office of the Board of Commissioners for Regulating
Weights and Measures', are very long phrases; and as, in the course of
this tale, frequent mention will be made of the public establishment in
question, the reader's comfort will be best consulted by maintaining its
popular though improper denomination.

It is generally admitted that the Weights and Measures is a
well-conducted public office; indeed, to such a degree of efficiency has
it been brought by its present very excellent secretary, the two
very worthy assistant-secretaries, and especially by its late most
respectable chief clerk, that it may be said to stand quite alone as
a high model for all other public offices whatever. It is exactly
antipodistic of the Circumlocution Office, and as such is always
referred to in the House of Commons by the gentleman representing the
Government when any attack on the Civil Service, generally, is being
made.

And when it is remembered how great are the interests entrusted to the
care of this board, and of these secretaries and of that chief clerk, it
must be admitted that nothing short of superlative excellence ought to
suffice the nation. All material intercourse between man and man must be
regulated, either justly or unjustly, by weights and measures; and as we
of all people depend most on such material intercourse, our weights and
measures should to us be a source of never-ending concern. And then that
question of the decimal coinage! is it not in these days of paramount
importance? Are we not disgraced by the twelve pennies in our
shilling, by the four farthings in our penny? One of the worthy
assistant-secretaries, the worthier probably of the two, has already
grown pale beneath the weight of this question. But he has sworn within
himself, with all the heroism of a Nelson, that he will either do or
die. He will destroy the shilling or the shilling shall destroy him.
In his more ardent moods he thinks that he hears the noise of battle
booming round him, and talks to his wife of Westminster Abbey or a
peerage. Then what statistical work of the present age has shown half
the erudition contained in that essay lately published by the secretary
on _The Market Price of Coined Metals_? What other living man could have
compiled that chronological table which is appended to it, showing the
comparative value of the metallic currency for the last three hundred
years? Compile it indeed! What other secretary or assistant-secretary
belonging to any public office of the present day, could even read it
and live? It completely silenced Mr. Muntz for a session, and even _The
Times_ was afraid to review it.

Such a state of official excellence has not, however, been obtained
without its drawbacks, at any rate in the eyes of the unambitious tyros
and unfledged novitiates of the establishment. It is a very fine thing
to be pointed out by envying fathers as a promising clerk in the
Weights and Measures, and to receive civil speeches from mammas with
marriageable daughters. But a clerk in the Weights and Measures is soon
made to understand that it is not for him to--

  Sport with Amaryllis in the shade.

It behoves him that his life should be grave and his pursuits laborious,
if he intends to live up to the tone of those around him. And as,
sitting there at his early desk, his eyes already dim with figures, he
sees a jaunty dandy saunter round the opposite corner to the Council
Office at eleven o'clock, he cannot but yearn after the pleasures of
idleness.

  Were it not better done, as others use?

he says or sighs. But then comes Phoebus in the guise of the chief
clerk, and touches his trembling ears--

  As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
  Of so much fame, in Downing Street--expect the meed.

And so the high tone of the office is maintained.

Such is the character of the Weights and Measures at this present period
of which we are now treating. The exoteric crowd of the Civil Service,
that is, the great body of clerks attached to other offices, regard
their brethren of the Weights as prigs and pedants, and look on them
much as a master's favourite is apt to be regarded by other boys at
school. But this judgement is an unfair one. Prigs and pedants, and
hypocrites too, there are among them, no doubt--but there are also among
them many stirred by an honourable ambition to do well for their country
and themselves, and to two such men the reader is now requested to
permit himself to be introduced.

Henry Norman, the senior of the two, is the second son of a gentleman
of small property in the north of England. He was educated at a public
school, and thence sent to Oxford; but before he had finished his
first year at Brasenose his father was obliged to withdraw him from it,
finding himself unable to bear the expense of a university education for
his two sons. His elder son at Cambridge was extravagant; and as, at
the critical moment when decision became necessary, a nomination in
the Weights and Measures was placed at his disposal, old Mr. Norman
committed the not uncommon injustice of preferring the interests of his
elder but faulty son to those of the younger with whom no fault had been
found, and deprived his child of the chance of combining the glories and
happiness of a double first, a fellow, a college tutor, and a don.

Whether Harry Norman gained or lost most by the change we need not now
consider, but at the age of nineteen he left Oxford and entered on his
new duties. It must not, however, be supposed that this was a step which
he took without difficulty and without pause. It is true that the grand
modern scheme for competitive examinations had not as yet been composed.
Had this been done, and had it been carried out, how awful must have
been the cramming necessary to get a lad into the Weights and Measures!
But, even as things were then, it was no easy matter for a young man to
convince the chief clerk that he had all the acquirements necessary for
the high position to which he aspired.

Indeed, that chief clerk was insatiable, and generally succeeded in
making every candidate conceive the very lowest opinion of himself and
his own capacities before the examination was over. Some, of course,
were sent away at once with ignominy, as evidently incapable. Many
retired in the middle of it with a conviction that they must seek their
fortunes at the bar, or in medical pursuits, or some other comparatively
easy walk of life. Others were rejected on the fifth or sixth day as
being deficient in conic sections, or ignorant of the exact principles
of hydraulic pressure. And even those who were retained were so
retained, as it were, by an act of grace. The Weights and Measures was,
and indeed is, like heaven--no man can deserve it. No candidate can
claim as his right to be admitted to the fruition of the appointment
which has been given to him. Henry Norman, however, was found, at the
close of his examination, to be the least undeserving of the young men
then under notice, and was duly installed in his clerkship.

It need hardly be explained, that to secure so high a level of
information as that required at the Weights and Measures, a scale
of salaries equally exalted has been found necessary. Young men
consequently enter at £100 a year. We are speaking, of course, of that
more respectable branch of the establishment called the Secretary's
Department. At none other of our public offices do men commence with
more than £90--except, of course, at those in which political confidence
is required. Political confidence is indeed as expensive as hydraulic
pressure, though generally found to be less difficult of attainment.

Henry Norman, therefore, entered on his labours under good auspices,
having £10 per annum more for the business and pleasures of life in
London than most of his young brethren of the Civil Service. Whether
this would have sufficed of itself to enable him to live up to that tone
of society to which he had been accustomed cannot now be surmised, as
very shortly after his appointment an aunt died, from whom he inherited
some £150 or £200 a year. He was, therefore, placed above all want, and
soon became a shining light even in that bright gallery of spiritualized
stars which formed the corps of clerks in the Secretary's Office at the
Weights and Measures.

Young Norman was a good-looking lad when he entered the public service,
and in a few years he grew up to be a handsome man. He was tall and thin
and dark, muscular in his proportions, and athletic in his habits. From
the date of his first enjoyment of his aunt's legacy he had a wherry on
the Thames, and was soon known as a man whom it was hard for an amateur
to beat. He had a racket in a racket-court at St. John's Wood Road,
and as soon as fortune and merit increased his salary by another £100
a year, he usually had a nag for the season. This, however, was not
attained till he was able to count five years' service in the Weights
and Measures. He was, as a boy, somewhat shy and reserved in his
manners, and as he became older he did not shake off the fault. He
showed it, however, rather among men than with women, and, indeed, in
spite of his love of exercise, he preferred the society of ladies to
any of the bachelor gaieties of his unmarried acquaintance. He was,
nevertheless, frank and confident in those he trusted, and true in his
friendships, though, considering his age, too slow in making a friend.
Such was Henry Norman at the time at which our tale begins. What were
the faults in his character it must be the business of the tale to show.

The other young clerk in this office to whom we alluded is Alaric Tudor.
He is a year older than Henry Norman, though he began his official
career a year later, and therefore at the age of twenty-one. How it
happened that he contrived to pass the scrutinizing instinct and deep
powers of examination possessed by the chief clerk, was a great wonder
to his friends, though apparently none at all to himself. He took the
whole proceeding very easily; while another youth alongside of him,
who for a year had been reading up for his promised nomination, was so
awe-struck by the severity of the proceedings as to lose his powers of
memory and forget the very essence of the differential calculus.

Of hydraulic pressure and the differential calculus young Tudor knew
nothing, and pretended to know nothing. He told the chief clerk that
he was utterly ignorant of all such matters, that his only acquirements
were a tolerably correct knowledge of English, French, and German, with
a smattering of Latin and Greek, and such an intimacy with the ordinary
rules of arithmetic and with the first books of Euclid, as he had been
able to pick up while acting as a tutor, rather than a scholar, in a
small German university.

The chief clerk raised his eyebrows and said he feared it would not
do. A clerk, however, was wanting. It was very clear that the young
gentleman who had only showed that he had forgotten his conic sections
could not be supposed to have passed. The austerity of the last few
years had deterred more young men from coming forward than the extra £10
had induced to do so. One unfortunate, on the failure of all his hopes,
had thrown himself into the Thames from the neighbouring boat-stairs;
and though he had been hooked out uninjured by the man who always
attends there with two wooden legs, the effect on his parents' minds had
been distressing. Shortly after this occurrence the chief clerk had been
invited to attend the Board, and the Chairman of the Commissioners, who,
on the occasion, was of course prompted by the Secretary, recommended
Mr. Hardlines to be a _leetle_ more lenient. In doing so the quantity of
butter which he poured over Mr. Hardlines' head and shoulders with the
view of alleviating the misery which such a communication would be sure
to inflict, was very great. But, nevertheless, Mr. Hardlines came out
from the Board a crestfallen and unhappy man. 'The service,' he said,
'would go to the dogs, and might do for anything he cared, and he did
not mind how soon. If the Board chose to make the Weights and Measures a
hospital for idiots, it might do so. He had done what little lay in his
power to make the office respectable; and now, because mammas complained
when their cubs of sons were not allowed to come in there and rob
the public and destroy the office books, he was to be thwarted and
reprimanded! He had been,' he said, 'eight-and-twenty years in office,
and was still in his prime--but he should,' he thought, 'take advantage
of the advice of his medical friends, and retire. He would never remain
there to see the Weights and Measures become a hospital for incurables!'

It was thus that Mr. Hardlines, the chief clerk, expressed himself.
He did not, however, send in a medical certificate, nor apply for a
pension; and the first apparent effect of the little lecture which he
had received from the Chairman, was the admission into the service
of Alaric Tudor. Mr. Hardlines was soon forced to admit that the
appointment was not a bad one, as before his second year was over, young
Tudor had produced a very smart paper on the merits--or demerits--of the
strike bushel.

Alaric Tudor when he entered the office was by no means so handsome a
youth as Harry Norman; but yet there was that in his face which was more
expressive, and perhaps more attractive. He was a much slighter man,
though equally tall. He could boast no adventitious capillary graces,
whereas young Norman had a pair of black curling whiskers, which
almost surrounded his face, and had been the delight and wonder of the
maidservants in his mother's house, when he returned home for his first
official holiday. Tudor wore no whiskers, and his light-brown hair was
usually cut so short as to give him something of the appearance of a
clean Puritan. But in manners he was no Puritan; nor yet in his mode of
life. He was fond of society, and at an early period of his age strove
hard to shine in it. He was ambitious; and lived with the steady aim of
making the most of such advantages as fate and fortune had put in his
way. Tudor was perhaps not superior to Norman in point of intellect; but
he was infinitely his superior in having early acquired a knowledge how
best to use such intellect as he had.

His education had been very miscellaneous, and disturbed by many causes,
but yet not ineffective or deficient. His father had been an officer in
a cavalry regiment, with a fair fortune, which he had nearly squandered
in early life. He had taken Alaric when little more than an infant, and
a daughter, his only other child, to reside in Brussels. Mrs. Tudor was
then dead, and the remainder of the household had consisted of a French
governess, a _bonne_, and a man-cook. Here Alaric remained till he
had perfectly acquired the French pronunciation, and very nearly as
perfectly forgotten the English. He was then sent to a private school
in England, where he remained till he was sixteen, returning home to
Brussels but once during those years, when he was invited to be present
at his sister's marriage with a Belgian banker. At the age of sixteen he
lost his father, who, on dying, did not leave behind him enough of the
world's wealth to pay for his own burial. His half-pay of course died
with him, and young Tudor was literally destitute.

His brother-in-law, the banker, paid for his half-year's schooling
in England, and then removed him to a German academy, at which it was
bargained that he should teach English without remuneration, and learn
German without expense. Whether he taught much English may be doubtful,
but he did learn German thoroughly; and in that, as in most other
transactions of his early life, certainly got the best of the bargain
which had been made for him.

At the age of twenty he was taken to the Brussels bank as a clerk; but
here he soon gave visible signs of disliking the drudgery which was
exacted from him. Not that he disliked banking. He would gladly have
been a partner with ever so small a share, and would have trusted to
himself to increase his stake. But there is a limit to the good nature
of brothers-in-law, even in Belgium; and Alaric was quite aware that no
such good luck as this could befall him, at any rate until he had gone
through many years of servile labour. His sister also, though sisterly
enough in her disposition to him, did not quite like having a brother
employed as a clerk in her husband's office. They therefore put their
heads together, and, as the Tudors had good family connexions in
England, a nomination in the Weights and Measures was procured.

The nomination was procured; but when it was ascertained how very short
a way this went towards the attainment of the desired object, and how
much more difficult it was to obtain Mr. Hardlines' approval than the
Board's favour, young Tudor's friends despaired, and recommended him to
abandon the idea, as, should he throw himself into the Thames, he might
perhaps fall beyond the reach of the waterman's hook. Alaric himself,
however, had no such fears. He could not bring himself to conceive that
he could fail in being fit for a clerkship in a public office, and the
result of his examination proved at any rate that he had been right to
try.

The close of his first year's life in London found him living in
lodgings with Henry Norman. At that time Norman's income was nearly
three times as good as his own. To say that Tudor selected his companion
because of his income would be to ascribe unjustly to him vile motives
and a mean instinct. He had not done so. The two young men had been
thrown together by circumstances. They worked at the same desk, liked
each other's society, and each being alone in the world, thereby not
unnaturally came together. But it may probably be said that had Norman
been as poor as Tudor, Tudor might probably have shrunk from rowing in
the same boat with him.

As it was they lived together and were fast allies; not the less so
that they did not agree as to many of their avocations. Tudor, at his
friend's solicitation, had occasionally attempted to pull an oar from
Searle's slip to Battersea bridge. But his failure in this line was so
complete, and he had to encounter so much of Norman's raillery, which
was endurable, and of his instruction, which was unendurable, that he
very soon gave up the pursuit. He was not more successful with a racket;
and keeping a horse was of course out of the question.

They had a bond of union in certain common friends whom they much loved,
and with whom they much associated. At least these friends soon became
common to them. The acquaintance originally belonged to Norman, and he
had first cemented his friendship with Tudor by introducing him at the
house of Mrs. Woodward. Since he had done so, the one young man was
there nearly as much as the other.

Who and what the Woodwards were shall be told in a subsequent chapter.
As they have to play as important a part in the tale about to be told as
our two friends of the Weights and Measures, it would not be becoming to
introduce them at the end of this.

As regards Alaric Tudor it need only be further said, by way of preface,
of him as of Harry Norman, that the faults of his character must be made
to declare themselves in the course of our narrative.



CHAPTER II

THE INTERNAL NAVIGATION


The London world, visitors as well as residents, are well acquainted
also with Somerset House; and it is moreover tolerably well known that
Somerset House is a nest of public offices, which are held to be of less
fashionable repute than those situated in the neighbourhood of Downing
Street, but are not so decidedly plebeian as the Custom House, Excise,
and Post Office.

But there is one branch of the Civil Service located in Somerset House,
which has little else to redeem it from the lowest depths of official
vulgarity than the ambiguous respectability of its material position.
This is the office of the Commissioners of Internal Navigation. The
duties to be performed have reference to the preservation of canal
banks, the tolls to be levied at locks, and disputes with the Admiralty
as to points connected with tidal rivers. The rooms are dull and dark,
and saturated with the fog which rises from the river, and their only
ornament is here and there some dusty model of an improved barge.
Bargees not unfrequently scuffle with hobnailed shoes through the
passages, and go in and out, leaving behind them a smell of tobacco, to
which the denizens of the place are not unaccustomed.

Indeed, the whole office is apparently infected with a leaven of
bargedom. Not a few of the men are employed from time to time in the
somewhat lethargic work of inspecting the banks and towing-paths of the
canals which intersect the country. This they generally do seated on a
load of hay, or perhaps of bricks, in one of those long, ugly, shapeless
boats, which are to be seen congregating in the neighbourhood of
Brentford. So seated, they are carried along at the rate of a mile and
a half an hour, and usually while away the time in gentle converse with
the man at the rudder, or in silent abstraction over a pipe.

But the dullness of such a life as this is fully atoned for by the
excitement of that which follows it in London. The men of the Internal
Navigation are known to be fast, nay, almost furious in their pace of
living; not that they are extravagant in any great degree, a fault which
their scale of salaries very generally forbids; but they are one and all
addicted to Coal Holes and Cider Cellars; they dive at midnight hours
into Shades, and know all the back parlours of all the public-houses
in the neighbourhood of the Strand. Here they leave messages for one
another, and call the girl at the bar by her Christian name. They are a
set of men endowed with sallow complexions, and they wear loud clothing,
and spend more money in gin-and-water than in gloves.

The establishment is not unusually denominated the 'Infernal
Navigation', and the gentlemen employed are not altogether displeased at
having it so called. The 'Infernal Navvies', indeed, rather glory in the
name. The navvies of Somerset House are known all over London, and there
are those who believe that their business has some connexion with the
rivers or railroads of that bourne from whence no traveller returns.
Looking, however, from their office windows into the Thames, one might
be tempted to imagine that the infernal navigation with which they
are connected is not situated so far distant from the place of their
labours.

The spirit who guards the entrance into this elysium is by no means so
difficult to deal with as Mr. Hardlines. And it was well that it was
so some few years since for young Charley Tudor, a cousin of our friend
Alaric; for Charley Tudor could never have passed muster at the Weights
and Measures. Charles Tudor, the third of the three clerks alluded to in
our title-page, is the son of a clergyman, who has a moderate living on
the Welsh border, in Shropshire. Had he known to what sort of work he
was sending his son, he might probably have hesitated before he accepted
for him a situation in the Internal Navigation Office. He was, however,
too happy in getting it to make many inquiries as to its nature. We none
of us like to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Old Mr. Tudor knew that
a clerkship in the Civil Service meant, or should mean, a respectable
maintenance for life, and having many young Tudors to maintain himself,
he was only too glad to find one of them provided for.

Charley Tudor was some few years younger than his cousin Alaric when he
came up to town, and Alaric had at that time some three or four years'
experience of London life. The examination at the Internal Navigation
was certainly not to be so much dreaded as that at the Weights and
Measures; but still there was an examination; and Charley, who had not
been the most diligent of schoolboys, approached it with great dread
after a preparatory evening passed with the assistance of his cousin and
Mr. Norman.

Exactly at ten in the morning he walked into the lobby of his future
workshop, and found no one yet there but two aged seedy messengers. He
was shown into a waiting-room, and there he remained for a couple of
hours, during which every clerk in the establishment came to have a look
at him. At last he was ushered into the Secretary's room.

'Ah!' said the Secretary, 'your name is Tudor, isn't it?'

Charley confessed to the fact.

'Yea,' said the Secretary, 'I have heard about you from Sir Gilbert de
Salop.' Now Sir Gilbert de Salop was the great family friend of this
branch of the Tudors. But Charley, finding that no remark suggested
itself to him at this moment concerning Sir Gilbert, merely said, 'Yes,
sir.'

'And you wish to serve the Queen?' said the Secretary.

Charley, not quite knowing whether this was a joke or not, said that he
did.

'Quite right--it is a very fair ambition,' continued the great official
functionary--'quite right--but, mind you, Mr. Tudor, if you come to us
you must come to work. I hope you like hard work; you should do so, if
you intend to remain with us.'

Charley said that he thought he did rather like hard work. Hereupon
a senior clerk standing by, though a man not given to much laughter,
smiled slightly, probably in pity at the unceasing labour to which the
youth was about to devote himself.

'The Internal Navigation requires great steadiness, good natural
abilities, considerable education, and--and--and no end of application.
Come, Mr. Tudor, let us see what you can do.' And so saying, Mr.
Oldeschole, the Secretary, motioned him to sit down at an office table
opposite to himself.

Charley did as he was bid, and took from the hands of his future master
an old, much-worn quill pen, with which the great man had been signing
minutes.

'Now,' said the great man, 'just copy the few first sentences of that
leading article--either one will do,' and he pushed over to him a huge
newspaper.

To tell the truth, Charley did not know what a leading article was, and
so he sat abashed, staring at the paper.

'Why don't you write?' asked the Secretary.

'Where shall I begin, sir?' stammered poor Charley, looking piteously
into the examiner's face.

'God bless my soul! there; either of those leading articles,' and
leaning over the table, the Secretary pointed to a particular spot.

Hereupon Charley began his task in a large, ugly, round hand, neither
that of a man nor of a boy, and set himself to copy the contents of
the paper. 'The name of Pacifico stinks in the nostril of the British
public. It is well known to all the world how sincerely we admire the
vers_i_tility of Lord Palmerston's genius; how cordially we s_i_mpathize
with his patriotic energies. But the admiration which even a Palmerston
inspires must have a bound, and our s_i_mpathy may be called on too far.
When we find ourselves asked to pay--'. By this time Charley had half
covered the half-sheet of foolscap which had been put before him, and
here at the word 'pay' he unfortunately suffered a large blot of ink to
fall on the paper.

'That won't do, Mr. Tudor, that won't do--come, let us look,' and
stretching over again, the Secretary took up the copy.

'Oh dear! oh dear! this is very bad; versatility with an 'i!'--sympathy
with an 'i!' sympathize with an 'i!' Why, Mr. Tudor, you must be very
fond of 'i's' down in Shropshire.'

Charley looked sheepish, but of course said nothing.

'And I never saw a viler hand in my life. Oh dear, oh dear, I must send
you back to Sir Gilbert. Look here, Snape, this will never do--never do
for the Internal Navigation, will it?'

Snape, the attendant senior clerk, said, as indeed he could not help
saying, that the writing was very bad.

'I never saw worse in my life,' said the Secretary. 'And now, Mr. Tudor,
what do you know of arithmetic?'

Charley said that he thought he knew arithmetic pretty well;--'at least
some of it,' he modestly added.

'Some of it!' said the Secretary, slightly laughing. 'Well, I'll tell
you what--this won't do at all;' and he took the unfortunate manuscript
between his thumb and forefinger. 'You had better go home and endeavour
to write something a little better than this. Mind, if it is not
very much better it won't do. And look here; take care that you do it
yourself. If you bring me the writing of any one else, I shall be sure
to detect you. I have not any more time now; as to arithmetic, we'll
examine you in 'some of it' to-morrow.'

So Charley, with a faint heart, went back to his cousin's lodgings and
waited till the two friends had arrived from the Weights and Measures.
The men there made a point of staying up to five o'clock, as is the case
with all model officials, and it was therefore late before he could get
himself properly set to work. But when they did arrive, preparations
for calligraphy were made on a great scale; a volume of Gibbon was taken
down, new quill pens, large and small, and steel pens by various makers
were procured; cream-laid paper was provided, and ruled lines were put
beneath it. And when this was done, Charley was especially cautioned to
copy the spelling as well as the wording.

He worked thus for an hour before dinner, and then for three hours in
the evening, and produced a very legible copy of half a chapter of the
'Decline and Fall.'

'I didn't think they examined at all at the Navigation,' said Norman.

'Well, I believe it's quite a new thing,' said Alaric Tudor. 'The
schoolmaster must be abroad with a vengeance, if he has got as far as
that.'

And then they carefully examined Charley's work, crossed his t's, dotted
his i's, saw that his spelling was right, and went to bed.

Again, punctually at ten o'clock, Charley presented himself at the
Internal Navigation; and again saw the two seedy old messengers warming
themselves at the lobby fire. On this occasion he was kept three hours
in the waiting-room, and some of the younger clerks ventured to come and
speak to him. At length Mr. Snape appeared, and desired the acolyte
to follow him. Charley, supposing that he was again going to the awful
Secretary, did so with a palpitating heart. But he was led in another
direction into a large room, carrying his manuscript neatly rolled in
his hand. Here Mr. Snape introduced him to five other occupants of the
chamber; he, Mr. Snape himself, having a separate desk there, being, in
official parlance, the head of the room. Charley was told to take a
seat at a desk, and did so, still thinking that the dread hour of his
examination was soon to come. His examination, however, was begun and
over. No one ever asked for his calligraphic manuscript, and as to his
arithmetic, it may be presumed that his assurance that he knew 'some of
it,' was deemed to be adequate evidence of sufficient capacity. And in
this manner, Charley Tudor became one of the Infernal Navvies.

He was a gay-hearted, thoughtless, rollicking young lad, when he came up
to town; and it may therefore be imagined that he easily fell into the
peculiar ways and habits of the office. A short bargee's pilot-coat, and
a pipe of tobacco, were soon familiar to him; and he had not been six
months in London before he had his house-of-call in a cross lane running
between Essex Street and Norfolk Street. 'Mary, my dear, a screw of
bird's-eye!' came quite habitually to his lips; and before his fist year
was out, he had volunteered a song at the Buckingham Shades.

The assurance made to him on his first visit to the office by Mr.
Secretary Oldeschole, that the Internal Navigation was a place of
herculean labours, had long before this time become matter to him of
delightful ridicule. He had found himself to be one of six young men,
who habitually spent about five hours a day together in the same room,
and whose chief employment was to render the life of the wretched Mr.
Snape as unendurable as possible. There were copies to be written,
and entries to be made, and books to be indexed. But these things
were generally done by some extra hand, as to the necessity of whose
attendance for such purpose Mr. Snape was forced to certify. But poor
Snape knew that he had no alternative. He rule six unruly young navvies!
There was not one of them who did not well know how to make him tremble
in his shoes.

Poor Mr. Snape had selected for his own peculiar walk in life a
character for evangelical piety. Whether he was a hypocrite--as all the
navvies averred--or a man sincere as far as one so weak could accomplish
sincerity, it is hardly necessary for us to inquire. He was not by
nature an ill-natured man, but he had become by education harsh to
those below him, and timid and cringing with those above. In the
former category must by no means be included the six young men who were
nominally under his guidance. They were all but acknowledged by him as
his superiors. Ignorant as they were, they could hardly be more so than
he. Useless as they were, they did as much for the public service as
he did. He sometimes complained of them; but it was only when their
misconduct had been so loud as to make it no longer possible that he
should not do so.

Mr. Snape being thus by character and predilection a religious man,
and having on various occasions in olden days professed much horror
at having his ears wounded by conversation which was either immoral or
profane, it had of course become the habitual practice of the navvies to
give continual utterance to every description of ribaldry and blasphemy
for his especial edification. Doubtless it may be concluded from the
habits of the men, that even without such provocation, their talk would
have exceeded the yea, yea, and nay, nay, to which young men should
confine themselves. But they especially concerted schemes of blasphemy
and dialogues of iniquity for Mr. Snape's particular advantage; and
continued daily this disinterested amusement, till at last an idea
got abroad among them that Mr. Snape liked it. Then they changed their
tactics and canted through their noses in the manner which they imagined
to be peculiar to methodist preachers. So on the whole, Mr. Snape had an
uneasy life of it at the Internal Navigation.

Into all these malpractices Charley Tudor plunged headlong. And how
should it have been otherwise? How can any youth of nineteen or twenty
do other than consort himself with the daily companions of his usual
avocations? Once and again, in one case among ten thousand, a lad may
be found formed of such stuff, that he receives neither the good nor the
bad impulses of those around him. But such a one is a _lapsus naturae_.
He has been born without the proper attributes of youth, or at any rate,
brought up so as to have got rid of them.

Such, a one, at any rate, Charley Tudor was not. He was a little shocked
at first by the language he heard; but that feeling soon wore off. His
kind heart, also, in the first month of his novitiate, sympathized with
the daily miseries of Mr. Snape; but he also soon learnt to believe that
Mr. Snape was a counterfeit, and after the first half year could torture
him with as much gusto as any of his brethren. Alas! no evil tendency
communicates itself among young men more quickly than cruelty. Those
infernal navvies were very cruel to Mr. Snape.

And yet young Tudor was a lad of a kindly heart, of a free, honest, open
disposition, deficient in no proportion of mind necessary to make an
estimable man. But he was easily malleable, and he took at once the full
impression of the stamp to which he was subjected. Had he gone into
the Weights and Measures, a hypothesis which of course presumes a total
prostration of the intellects and energy of Mr. Hardlines, he would have
worked without a groan from ten till five, and have become as good a
model as the best of them. As it was, he can be hardly said to have
worked at all, soon became _facile princeps_ in the list of habitual
idlers, and was usually threatened once a quarter with dismissal, even
from that abode of idleness, in which the very nature of true work was
unknown.

Some tidings of Charley's doings in London, and non-doings at the
Internal Navigation, of course found their way to the Shropshire
parsonage. His dissipation was not of a very costly kind; but £90 per
annum will hardly suffice to afford an ample allowance of gin-and-water
and bird's-eye tobacco, over and above the other wants of a man's life.
Bills arrived there requiring payment; and worse than this, letters also
came through Sir Gilbert de Salop from Mr. Oldeschole, the Secretary,
saying that young Tudor was disgracing the office, and lowering the
high character of the Internal Navigation; and that he must be removed,
unless he could be induced to alter his line of life, &c.

Urgent austere letters came from the father, and fond heart-rending
appeals from the mother. Charley's heart was rent. It was, at any rate,
a sign in him that he was not past hope of grace, that he never laughed
at these monitions, that he never showed such letters to his companions,
never quizzed his 'governor's' lectures, or made merry over the grief of
his mother. But if it be hard for a young man to keep in the right
path when he has not as yet strayed out of it, how much harder is it to
return to it when he has long since lost the track! It was well for
the father to write austere letters, well for the mother to make tender
appeals, but Charley could not rid himself of his companions, nor of his
debts, nor yet even of his habits. He could not get up in the morning
and say that he would at once be as his cousin Alaric, or as his
cousin's friend, Mr. Norman. It is not by our virtues or our vices that
we are judged, even by those who know us best; but by such credit for
virtues or for vices as we may have acquired. Now young Tudor's credit
for virtue was very slight, and he did not know how to extend it.

At last papa and mamma Tudor came up to town to make one last effort to
save their son; and also to save, on his behalf, the valuable official
appointment which he held. He had now been three years in his office,
and his salary had risen to £110 per annum. £110 per annum was worth
saving if it could be saved. The plan adopted by Mrs. Tudor was that of
beseeching their cousin Alaric to take Charley under his especial wing.

When Charley first arrived in town, the fact of Alaric and Norman living
together had given the former a good excuse for not offering to share
his lodgings with his cousin. Alaric, with the advantage in age of
three or four years--at that period of life the advantage lies in that
direction--with his acquired experience of London life, and also with
all the wondrous éclat of the Weights and Measures shining round him,
had perhaps been a little too unwilling to take by the hand a rustic
cousin who was about to enter life under the questionable auspices of
the Internal Navigation. He had helped Charley to transcribe the chapter
of Gibbon, and had, it must be owned, lent him from time to time a
few odd pounds in his direst necessities. But their course in life had
hitherto been apart. Of Norman, Charley had seen less even than of his
cousin.

And now it became a difficult question with Alaric how he was to answer
the direct appeal made to him by Mrs. Tudor;--'Pray, pray let him live
with you, if it be only for a year, Alaric,' the mother had said, with
the tears running down her cheeks. 'You are so good, so discreet, so
clever--you can save him.' Alaric promised, or was ready to promise,
anything else, but hesitated as to the joint lodgings. 'How could he
manage it,' said he, 'living, as he was, with another man? He feared
that Mr. Norman would not accede to such an arrangement. As for himself,
he would do anything but leave his friend Norman.' To tell the truth,
Alaric thought much, perhaps too much, of the respectability of those
with whom he consorted. He had already begun to indulge ambitious
schemes, already had ideas stretching even beyond the limits of the
Weights and Measures, and fully intended to make the very most of
himself.

Mrs. Tudor, in her deep grief, then betook herself to Mr. Norman, though
with that gentleman she had not even the slightest acquaintance. With
a sulking heart, with a consciousness of her unreasonableness, but with
the eloquence of maternal sorrow, she made her request. Mr. Norman heard
her out with all the calm propriety of the Weights and Measures, begged
to have a day to consider, and then acceded to the request.

'I think we ought to do it,' said he to Alaric. The mother's tears
had touched his heart, and his sense of duty had prevailed. Alaric, of
course, could now make no further objection, and thus Charley the Navvy
became domesticated with his cousin Alaric and Harry Norman.

The first great question to be settled, and it is a very great question
with a young man, was that of latch-key or no latch-key. Mrs. Richards,
the landlady, when she made ready the third bedroom for the young
gentleman, would, as was her wont in such matters, have put a latch-key
on the toilet-table as a matter of course, had she not had some little
conversation with Mamma Tudor regarding her son. Mamma Tudor had
implored and coaxed, and probably bribed Mrs. Richards to do something
more than 'take her son in and do for him'; and Mrs. Richards, as her
first compliance with these requests, had kept the latch-key in her own
pocket. So matters went on for a week; but when Mrs. Richards found that
her maidservant was never woken by Mr. Charley's raps after midnight,
and that she herself was obliged to descend in her dressing-gown, she
changed her mind, declared to herself that it was useless to attempt to
keep a grown gentleman in leading-strings, and put the key on the table
on the second Monday morning.

As none of the three men ever dined at home, Alaric and Norman having
clubs which they frequented, and Charley eating his dinner at some
neighbouring dining-house, it may be imagined that this change of
residence did our poor navvy but little good. It had, however, a
salutary effect on him, at any rate at first. He became shamed into a
quieter and perhaps cleaner mode of dressing himself; he constrained
himself to sit down to breakfast with his monitors at half-past eight,
and was at any rate so far regardful of Mrs. Richards as not to smoke
in his bedroom, and to come home sober enough to walk upstairs without
assistance every night for the first month.

But perhaps the most salutary effect made by this change on young Tudor
was this, that he was taken by his cousin one Sunday to the Woodwards.
Poor Charley had had but small opportunity of learning what are the
pleasures of decent society. He had gone headlong among the infernal
navvies too quickly to allow of that slow and gradual formation of
decent alliances which is all in all to a young man entering life. A boy
is turned loose into London, and desired to choose the good and eschew
the bad. Boy as he is, he might probably do so if the opportunity came
in his way. But no such chance is afforded him. To eschew the bad is
certainly possible for him; but as to the good, he must wait till he
be chosen. This it is, that is too much for him. He cannot live without
society, and so he falls.

Society, an ample allowance of society, this is the first requisite
which a mother should seek in sending her son to live alone in London;
balls, routs, picnics, parties; women, pretty, well-dressed, witty,
easy-mannered; good pictures, elegant drawing rooms, well got-up books,
Majolica and Dresden china--these are the truest guards to protect a
youth from dissipation and immorality.

  These are the books, the arts, the academes
  That show, contain, and nourish all the world,

if only a youth could have them at his disposal. Some of these things,
though by no means all, Charley Tudor encountered at the Woodwards.



CHAPTER III

THE WOODWARDS


It is very difficult nowadays to say where the suburbs of London come to
an end, and where the country begins. The railways, instead of enabling
Londoners to live in the country, have turned the country into a city.
London will soon assume the shape of a great starfish. The old town,
extending from Poplar to Hammersmith, will be the nucleus, and the
various railway lines will be the projecting rays.

There are still, however, some few nooks within reach of the metropolis
which have not been be-villaged and be-terraced out of all look of rural
charm, and the little village of Hampton, with its old-fashioned country
inn, and its bright, quiet, grassy river, is one of them, in spite
of the triple metropolitan waterworks on the one side, and the close
vicinity on the other of Hampton Court, that well-loved resort of
cockneydom.

It was here that the Woodwards lived. Just on the outskirts of the
village, on the side of it farthest from town, they inhabited not a
villa, but a small old-fashioned brick house, abutting on to the road,
but looking from its front windows on to a lawn and garden, which
stretched down to the river.

The grounds were not extensive, being included, house and all, in an
area of an acre and a half: but the most had been made of it; it sloped
prettily to the river, and was absolutely secluded from the road. Thus
Surbiton Cottage, as it was called, though it had no pretension to the
grandeur of a country-house, was a desirable residence for a moderate
family with a limited income.

Mrs. Woodward's family, for there was no Mr. Woodward in the case,
consisted of herself and three daughters. There was afterwards added
to this an old gentleman, an uncle of Mrs. Woodward's, but he had
not arrived at the time at which we would wish first to introduce our
readers to Hampton.

Mrs. Woodward was the widow of a clergyman who had held a living in
London, and had resided there. He had, however, died when two of his
children were very young, and while the third was still a baby. From
that time Mrs. Woodward had lived at the cottage at Hampton, and had
there maintained a good repute, paying her way from month to month
as widows with limited incomes should do, and devoting herself to the
amusements and education of her daughters.

It was not, probably, from any want of opportunity to cast them aside,
that Mrs. Woodward had remained true to her weeds; for at the time of
her husband's death she was a young and a very pretty woman; and an
income of £400 a year, though moderate enough for all the wants of a
gentleman's family, would no doubt have added sufficiently to her charms
to have procured her a second alliance, had she been so minded.

Twelve years, however, had now elapsed since Mr. Woodward had been
gathered to his fathers, and the neighbouring world of Hampton, who
had all of them declared over and over again that the young widow would
certainly marry again, were now becoming as unanimous in their expressed
opinion that the old widow knew the value of her money too well to risk
it in the keeping of the best he that ever wore boots.

At the date at which our story commences, she was a comely little woman,
past forty, somewhat below the middle height, rather _embonpoint_, as
widows of forty should be, with pretty fat feet, and pretty fat hands;
wearing just a _soupçon_ of a widow's cap on her head, with her hair,
now slightly grey, parted in front, and brushed very smoothly, but not
too carefully, in _bandeaux_ over her forehead.

She was a quick little body, full of good-humour, slightly given to
repartee, and perhaps rather too impatient of a fool. But though averse
to a fool, she could sympathize with folly. A great poet has said that
women are all rakes at heart; and there was something of the rake at
heart about Mrs. Woodward. She never could be got to express adequate
horror at fast young men, and was apt to have her own sly little joke
at women who prided themselves on being punctilious. She could, perhaps,
the more safely indulge in this, as scandal had never even whispered a
word against herself.

With her daughters she lived on terms almost of equality. The two
elder were now grown up; that is, they were respectively eighteen and
seventeen years old. They were devotedly attached to their mother,
looked on her as the only perfect woman in existence, and would
willingly do nothing that could vex her; but they perhaps were not quite
so systematically obedient to her as children should be to their only
surviving parent. Mrs. Woodward, however, found nothing amiss, and no
one else therefore could well have a right to complain.

They were both pretty--but Gertrude, the elder, was by far the more
strikingly so. They were, nevertheless, much alike; they both had rich
brown hair, which they, like their mother, wore simply parted over the
forehead. They were both somewhat taller than her, and were nearly of
a height. But in appearance, as in disposition, Gertrude carried by far
the greater air of command. She was the handsomer of the two, and the
cleverer. She could write French and nearly speak it, while her sister
could only read it. She could play difficult pieces from sight, which
it took her sister a morning's pains to practise. She could fill in and
finish a drawing, while her sister was still struggling, and struggling
in vain, with the first principles of the art.

But there was a softness about Linda, for such was the name of the
second Miss Woodward, which in the eyes of many men made up both for the
superior beauty and superior talent of Gertrude. Gertrude was, perhaps,
hardly so soft as so young a girl should be. In her had been magnified
that spirit of gentle raillery which made so attractive a part of her
mother's character. She enjoyed and emulated her mother's quick sharp
sayings, but she hardly did so with her mother's grace, and sometimes
attempted it with much more than her mother's severity. She also
detested fools; but in promulgating her opinion on this subject, she was
too apt to declare who the fools were whom she detested.

It may be thought that under such circumstances there could be but
little confidence between the sisters; but, nevertheless, in their early
days, they lived together as sisters should do. Gertrude, when she
spoke of fools, never intended to include Linda in the number; and Linda
appreciated too truly, and admired too thoroughly, her sister's beauty
and talent to be jealous of either.

Of the youngest girl, Katie, it is not necessary at present to say much.
At this time she was but thirteen years of age, and was a happy, pretty,
romping child. She gave fair promise to be at any rate equal to her
sisters in beauty, and in mind was quick and intelligent. Her great
taste was for boating, and the romance of her life consisted in laying
out ideal pleasure-grounds, and building ideal castles in a little
reedy island or ait which lay out in the Thames, a few perches from the
drawing-room windows.

Such was the family of the Woodwards. Harry Norman's father and Mr.
Woodward had been first cousins, and hence it had been quite natural
that when Norman came up to reside in London he should be made welcome
to Surbiton Cottage. He had so been made welcome, and had thus got into
a habit of spending his Saturday evenings and Sundays at the home of his
relatives. In summer he could row up in his own wherry, and land himself
and carpet-bag direct on the Woodwards' lawn, and in the winter he came
down by the Hampton Court five p.m. train--and in each case he returned
on the Monday morning. Thus, as regards that portion of his time which
was most his own, he may be said almost to have lived at Surbiton
Cottage, and if on any Sunday he omitted to make his appearance, the
omission was ascribed by the ladies of Hampton, in some half-serious
sort of joke, to metropolitan allurements and temptations which he ought
to have withstood.

When Tudor and Norman came to live together, it was natural enough that
Tudor also should be taken down to Surbiton Cottage. Norman could not
leave him on every Saturday without telling him much of his friends whom
he went to visit, and he could hardly say much of them without offering
to introduce his companion to them. Tudor accordingly went there, and
it soon came to pass that he also very frequently spent his Sundays at
Hampton.

It must be remembered that at this time, the time, that is, of Norman
and Tudor's first entrance on their London life, the girls at Surbiton
Cottage were mere girls--that is, little more than children; they had
not, as it were, got their wings so as to be able to fly away when the
provocation to do so might come; they were, in short, Gertrude and Linda
Woodward, and not the Miss Woodwards: their drawers came down below
their frocks, instead of their frocks below their drawers; and in lieu
of studying the French language, as is done by grown-up ladies, they did
French lessons, as is the case with ladies who are not grown-up. Under
these circumstances there was no embarrassment as to what the young
people should call each other, and they soon became very intimate as
Harry and Alaric, Gertrude and Linda.

It is not, however, to be conceived that Alaric Tudor at once took the
same footing in the house as Norman. This was far from being the case.
In the first place he never slept there, seeing that there was no bed
for him; and the most confidential intercourse in the household took
place as they sat cosy over the last embers of the drawing-room fire,
chatting about everything and nothing, as girls always can do, after
Tudor had gone away to his bed at the inn, on the opposite side of the
way. And then Tudor did not come on every Saturday, and at first did not
do so without express invitation; and although the girls soon habituated
themselves to the familiarity of their new friend's Christian name, it
was some time before Mrs. Woodward did so.

Two--three years soon flew by, and Linda and Gertrude became the Miss
Woodwards; their frocks were prolonged, their drawers curtailed, and
the lessons abandoned. But still Alaric Tudor and Harry Norman came to
Hampton not less frequently than of yore, and the world resident on that
portion of the left bank of the Thames found out that Harry Norman and
Gertrude Woodward were to be man and wife, and that Alaric Tudor and
Linda Woodward were to go through the same ceremony. They found this
out, or said that they had done so. But, as usual, the world was wrong;
at least in part, for at the time of which we are speaking no word of
love-making had passed, at any rate, between the last-named couple.

And what was Mrs. Woodward about all this time? Was she match-making or
match-marring; or was she negligently omitting the duties of a mother
on so important an occasion? She was certainly neither match-making
nor match-marring; but it was from no negligence that she was thus
quiescent. She knew, or thought she knew, that the two young men were
fit to be husbands to her daughters, and she felt that if the wish for
such an alliance should spring up between either pair, there was no
reason why she should interfere to prevent it. But she felt also that
she should not interfere to bring any such matter to pass. These young
people had by chance been thrown together. Should there be love-passages
among them, as it was natural to suppose there might be, it would be
well. Should there be none such, it would be well also. She thoroughly
trusted her own children, and did not distrust her friends; and so as
regards Mrs. Woodward the matter was allowed to rest.

We cannot say that on this matter we quite approve of her conduct,
though we cannot but admire the feeling which engendered it. Her
daughters were very young; though they had made such positive advances
as have been above described towards the discretion of womanhood, they
were of the age when they would have been regarded as mere boys had they
belonged to the other sex. The assertion made by Clara Van Artevelde,
that women 'grow upon the sunny side of the wall,' is doubtless true;
but young ladies, gifted as they are with such advantages, may perhaps
be thought to require some counsel, some advice, in those first tender
years in which they so often have to make or mar their fortunes.

Not that Mrs. Woodward gave them no advice; not but that she advised
them well and often--but she did so, perhaps, too much as an equal, too
little as a parent.

But, be that as it may--and I trust my readers will not be inclined
so early in our story to lean heavily on Mrs. Woodward, whom I at once
declare to be my own chief favourite in the tale--but, be that as it
may, it so occurred that Gertrude, before she was nineteen, had listened
to vows of love from Harry Norman, which she neither accepted nor
repudiated; and that Linda had, before she was eighteen, perhaps
unfortunately, taught herself to think it probable that she might have
to listen to vows of love from Alaric Tudor.

There had been no concealment between the young men as to their
feelings. Norman had told his friend scores of times that it was the
first wish of his heart to marry Gertrude Woodward; and had told him,
moreover, what were his grounds for hope, and what his reasons for
despair.

'She is as proud as a queen,' he had once said as he was rowing from
Hampton to Searle's Wharf, and lay on his oars as the falling tide
carried his boat softly past the green banks of Richmond--'she is as
proud as a queen, and yet as timid as a fawn. She lets me tell her that
I love her, but she will not say a word to me in reply; as for touching
her in the way of a caress, I should as soon think of putting my arm
round a goddess.'

'And why not put your arms round a goddess?' said Alaric, who was
perhaps a little bolder than his friend, and a little less romantic. To
this Harry answered nothing, but, laying his back to his work, swept
on past the gardens of Kew, and shot among the wooden dangers of Putney
Bridge.

'I wish you could bring yourself to make up to Linda,' said he, resting
again from his labours; 'that would make the matter so much easier.'

'Bring myself!' said Alaric; 'what you mean is, that you wish I could
bring Linda to consent to be made up to.'

'I don't think you would have much difficulty,' said Harry, finding it
much easier to answer for Linda than for her sister; 'but perhaps you
don't admire her?'

'I think her by far the prettier of the two,' said Alaric.

'That's nonsense,' said Harry, getting rather red in the face, and
feeling rather angry.

'Indeed I do; and so, I am convinced, would most men. You need not
murder me, man. You want me to make up to Linda, and surely it will be
better that I should admire my own wife than yours.'

'Oh! you may admire whom you like; but to say that she is prettier than
Gertrude--why, you know, it is nonsense.'

'Very well, my dear fellow; then to oblige you, I'll fall in love with
Gertrude.'

'I know you won't do that,' said Harry, 'for you are not so very fond of
each other; but, joking apart, I do wish so you would make up to Linda.'

'Well, I will when _my_ aunt leaves _me_ £200 a year.'

There was no answering this; so the two men changed the conversation as
they walked up together from the boat wharf to the office of the Weights
and Measures.

It was just at this time that fortune and old Mr. Tudor, of the
Shropshire parsonage, brought Charley Tudor to reside with our two
heroes. For the first month, or six weeks, Charley was ruthlessly left
by his companions to get through his Sundays as best he could. It is to
be hoped that he spent them in divine worship; but it may, we fear, be
surmised with more probability, that he paid his devotions at the
shrine of some very inferior public-house deity in the neighbourhood of
Somerset House. As a matter of course, both Norman and Tudor spoke much
of their new companion to the ladies at Surbiton Cottage, and as by
degrees they reported somewhat favourably of his improved morals, Mrs.
Woodward, with a woman's true kindness, begged that he might be brought
down to Hampton.

'I am afraid you will find him very rough,' said his cousin Alaric.

'At any rate you will not find him a fool,' said Norman, who was always
the more charitable of the two.

'Thank God for that!' said Mrs. Woodward,' and if he will come next
Saturday, let him by all means do so. Pray give my compliments to him,
and tell him how glad I shall be to see him.'

And thus was this wild wolf to be led into the sheep-cote; this infernal
navvy to be introduced among the angels of Surbiton Cottage. Mrs.
Woodward thought that she had a taste for reclaiming reprobates, and was
determined to try her hand on Charley Tudor.

Charley went, and his debut was perfectly successful. We have hitherto
only looked on the worst side of his character; but bad as his
character was, it had a better side. He was good-natured in the extreme,
kind-hearted and affectionate; and, though too apt to be noisy and
even boisterous when much encouraged, was not without a certain innate
genuine modesty, which the knowledge of his own iniquities had rather
increased than blunted; and, as Norman had said of him, he was no fool.
His education had not been good, and he had done nothing by subsequent
reading to make up for this deficiency; but he was well endowed with
mother-wit, and owed none of his deficiencies to nature's churlishness.

He came, and was well received. The girls thought he would surely get
drunk before he left the table, and Mrs. Woodward feared the austere
precision of her parlour-maid might be offended by some unworthy
familiarity; but no accident of either kind seemed to occur. He came to
the tea-table perfectly sober, and, as far as Mrs. Woodward could tell,
was unaware of the presence of the parlour-maiden.

On the Sunday morning, Charley went to church, just like a Christian.
Now Mrs. Woodward certainly had expected that he would have spent those
two hours in smoking and attacking the parlour-maid. He went to church,
however, and seemed in no whit astray there; stood up when others stood
up, and sat down when others sat down. After all, the infernal navvies,
bad as they doubtless were, knew something of the recognized manners of
civilized life.

Thus Charley Tudor ingratiated himself at Surbiton Cottage, and when
he left, received a kind intimation from its mistress that she would
be glad to see him again. No day was fixed, and so Charley could not
accompany his cousin and Harry Norman on the next Saturday; but it was
not long before he got another direct invitation, and so he also became
intimate at Hampton. There could be no danger of any one falling in love
with him, for Katie was still a child.

Things stood thus at Surbiton Cottage when Mrs. Woodward received a
proposition from a relative of her own, which surprised them all not a
little. This was from a certain Captain Cuttwater, who was a maternal
uncle to Mrs. Woodward, and consisted of nothing less than an offer to
come and live with them for the remaining term of his natural life. Now
Mrs. Woodward's girls had seen very little of their grand-uncle, and
what little they had seen had only taught them to laugh at him. When
his name was mentioned in the family conclave, he was always made the
subject of some little feminine joke; and Mrs. Woodward, though she
always took her uncle's part, did so in a manner that made them feel
that he was fair game for their quizzing.

When the proposal was first enunciated to the girls, they one and all,
for Katie was one of the council, suggested that it should be declined
with many thanks.

'He'll take us all for midshipmen,' said Linda, 'and stop our rations,
and mast-head us whenever we displease him.'

'I am sure he is a cross old hunks, though mamma says he's not,' said
Katie, with all the impudence of spoilt fourteen.

'He'll interfere with every one of our pursuits,' said Gertrude, more
thoughtfully, 'and be sure to quarrel with the young men.'

But Mrs. Woodward, though she had consulted her daughters, had arguments
of her own in favour of Captain Cuttwater's proposition, which she had
not yet made known to them. Good-humoured and happy as she always was,
she had her cares in the world. Her income was only £400 a year,
and that, now that the Income Tax had settled down on it, was barely
sufficient for her modest wants. A moiety of this died with her, and the
remainder would be but a poor support for her three daughters, if at the
time of her death it should so chance that she should leave them in
want of support. She had always regarded Captain Cuttwater as a probable
source of future aid. He was childless and unmarried, and had not,
as far as she was aware, another relative in the world. It would,
therefore, under any circumstances, be bad policy to offend him. But the
letter in which he had made his offer had been of a very peculiar kind.
He had begun by saying that he was to be turned out of his present berth
by a d---- Whig Government on account of his age, he being as young a
man as ever he had been; that it behoved him to look out for a place of
residence, in which he might live, and, if it should so please God, die
also. He then said that he expected to pay £200 a year for his board
and lodging, which he thought might as well go to his niece as to some
shark, who would probably starve him. He also said that, poor as he was
and always had been, he had contrived to scrape together a few hundred
pounds; that he was well aware that if he lived among strangers he
should be done out of every shilling of it; but that if his niece would
receive him, he hoped to be able to keep it together for the benefit of
his grand-nieces, &c.

Now Mrs. Woodward knew her uncle to be an honest-minded man; she knew
also, that, in spite of his protestation as to being a very poor man, he
had saved money enough to make him of some consequence wherever he went;
and she therefore conceived that she could not with prudence send him to
seek a home among chance strangers. She explained as much of this to
the girls as she thought proper, and ended the matter by making them
understand that Captain Cuttwater was to be received.

On the Saturday after this the three scions of the Civil Service were
all at Surbiton Cottage, and it will show how far Charley had then made
good his ground, to state that the coming of the captain was debated in
his presence.

'And when is the great man to be here?' said Norman.

'At once, I believe,' said Mrs. Woodward; 'that is, perhaps, before the
end of this week, and certainly before the end of next.'

'And what is he like?' said Alaric.

'Why, he has a tail hanging down behind, like a cat or a dog,' said
Katie.

'Hold your tongue, miss,' said Gertrude. 'As he is to come he must be
treated with respect; but it is a great bore. To me it will destroy all
the pleasures of life.'

'Nonsense, Gertrude,' said Mrs. Woodward; 'it is almost wicked of you to
say so. Destroy all the pleasure of life to have an old gentleman live
in the same house with you!--you ought to be more moderate, my dear, in
what you say.'

'That's all very well, mamma,' said Gertrude, 'but you know you don't
like him yourself.'

'But is it true that Captain Cuttwater wears a pigtail?' asked Norman.

'I don't care what he wears,' said Gertrude; 'he may wear three if he
likes.'

'Oh! I wish he would,' said Katie, laughing; 'that would be so
delicious. Oh, Linda, fancy Captain Cuttwater with three pigtails!'


'I am sorry to disappoint you, Katie,' said Mrs. Woodward, 'but your
uncle does not wear even one; he once did, but he cut it off long
since.'

'I am so sorry,' said Katie.

'I suppose he'll want to dine early, and go to bed early?' said Linda.

'His going to bed early would be a great blessing,' said Gertrude,
mindful of their midnight conclaves on Saturdays and Sundays.

'But his getting up early won't be a blessing at all,' said Linda, who
had a weakness on that subject.

'Talking of bed, Harry, you'll have the worst of it,' said Katie, 'for
the captain is to have your room.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Mrs. Woodward, sighing gently, 'we shall no longer
have a bed for you, Harry; that _is_ the worst of it.'

Harry of course assured her that if that was the worst of it there was
nothing very bad in it. He could have a bed at the inn as well as Alaric
and Charley. The amount of that evil would only be half-a-crown a night.

And thus the advent of Captain Cuttwater was discussed.



CHAPTER IV

CAPTAIN CUTTWATER


Captain Cuttwater had not seen much service afloat; that is, he had not
been personally concerned in many of those sea-engagements which in and
about the time of Nelson gave so great a halo of glory to the British
Lion; nor had it even been permitted to him to take a prominent part in
such minor affairs as have since occurred; he had not the opportunity
of distinguishing himself either at the battle of Navarino or the
bombarding of Acre; and, unfortunately for his ambition, the period of
his retirement came before that great Baltic campaign, in which, had he
been there, he would doubtless have distinguished himself as did so many
others. His earliest years were spent in cruising among the West Indies;
he then came home and spent some considerable portion of his life in
idleness--if that time can be said to have been idly spent which he
devoted to torturing the Admiralty with applications, remonstrances,
and appeals. Then he was rated as third lieutenant on the books of some
worm-eaten old man-of-war at Portsmouth, and gave up his time to looking
after the stowage of anchors, and counting fathoms of rope. At last
he was again sent afloat as senior lieutenant in a ten-gun brig, and
cruised for some time off the coast of Africa, hunting for slavers; and
returning after a while from this enterprising employment, he received a
sort of amphibious appointment at Devonport. What his duties were here,
the author, being in all points a landsman, is unable to describe. Those
who were inclined to ridicule Captain Cuttwater declared that the most
important of them consisted in seeing that the midshipmen in and about
the dockyard washed their faces, and put on clean linen not less often
than three times a week. According to his own account, he had many
things of a higher nature to attend to; and, indeed, hardly a ship sank
or swam in Hamoaze except by his special permission, for a space of
twenty years, if his own view of his own career may be accepted as
correct.

He had once declared to certain naval acquaintances, over his third
glass of grog, that he regarded it as his birthright to be an Admiral;
but at the age of seventy-two he had not yet acquired his birthright,
and the probability of his ever attaining it was becoming very small
indeed. He was still bothering Lords and Secretaries of the Admiralty
for further promotion, when he was astounded by being informed by the
Port-Admiral that he was to be made happy by half-pay and a pension. The
Admiral, in communicating the intelligence, had pretended to think that
he was giving the captain information which could not be otherwise than
grateful to him, but he was not the less aware that the old man would
be furious at being so treated. What, pension him! put him on
half-pay--shelf him for life, while he was still anxiously expecting
that promotion, that call to higher duties which had so long been his
due, and which, now that his powers were matured, could hardly be longer
denied to him! And after all that he had done for his country--his
ungrateful, thankless, ignorant country--was he thus to be treated? Was
he to be turned adrift without any mark of honour, any special guerdon,
any sign of his Sovereign's favour to testify as to his faithful
servitude of sixty years' devotion? He, who had regarded it as his
merest right to be an Admiral, and had long indulged the hope of being
greeted in the streets of Devonport as Sir Bartholomew Cuttwater,
K.C.B., was he to be thus thrown aside in his prime, with no other
acknowledgement than the bare income to which he was entitled!

It is hardly too much to say, that no old officers who have lacked the
means to distinguish themselves, retire from either of our military
services, free from the bitter disappointment and sour feelings of
neglected worth, which Captain Cuttwater felt so keenly. A clergyman, or
a doctor, or a lawyer, feels himself no whit disgraced if he reaches
the end of his worldly labours without special note or honour. But to a
soldier or a sailor, such indifference to his merit is wormwood. It is
the bane of the professions. Nine men out of ten who go into it must
live discontented, and die disappointed.

Captain Cuttwater had no idea that he was an old man. He had lived for
so many years among men of his own stamp, who had grown grey and bald,
and rickety, and weak alongside of him, that he had no opportunity of
seeing that he was more grey or more rickety than his neighbours. No
children had become men and women at his feet; no new race had gone out
into the world and fought their battles under his notice. One set
of midshipmen had succeeded to another, but his old comrades in the
news-rooms and lounging-places at Devonport had remained the same; and
Captain Cuttwater had never learnt to think that he was not doing, and
was not able to do good service for his country.

The very name of Captain Cuttwater was odious to every clerk at the
Admiralty. He, like all naval officers, hated the Admiralty, and
thought, that of all Englishmen, those five who had been selected to sit
there in high places as joint lords were the most incapable. He pestered
them with continued and almost continuous applications on subjects of
all sorts. He was always asking for increased allowances, advanced rank,
more assistance, less work, higher privileges, immunities which could
not be granted, and advantages to which he had no claim. He never
took answers, but made every request the subject of a prolonged
correspondence; till at last some energetic Assistant-Secretary declared
that it should no longer be borne, and Captain Cuttwater was dismissed
with pension and half-pay. During his service he had contrived to save
some four or five thousand pounds, and now he was about to retire with
an assured income adequate to all his wants. The public who had the
paying of Captain Cuttwater may, perhaps, think that he was amply
remunerated for what he had done; but the captain himself entertained a
very different opinion.

Such is the view which we are obliged to take of the professional side
of Captain Cuttwater's character. But the professional side was by far
the worst. Counting fathoms of rope and looking after unruly midshipmen
on shore are not duties capable of bringing out in high relief the
better traits of a main's character. Uncle Bat, as during the few
last years of his life he was always called at Surbiton Cottage, was a
gentleman and a man of honour, in spite of anything that might be said
to the contrary at the Admiralty. He was a man with a soft heart, though
the end of his nose was so large, so red, and so pimply; and rough as
was his usage to little midshipmen when his duty caused him to encounter
them in a body, he had befriended many a one singly with kind words and
an open hand. The young rogues would unmercifully quiz Old Nosey, for so
Captain Cuttwater was generally called in Devonport, whenever they could
safely do so; but, nevertheless, in their young distresses they knew him
for their friend, and were not slow to come to him.

In person Captain Cuttwater was a tall, heavy man, on whose iron
constitution hogsheads of Hollands and water seemed to have had no very
powerful effect. He was much given to profane oaths; but knowing that
manners required that he should refrain before ladies, and being unable
to bring his tongue sufficiently under command to do so, he was in the
habit of 'craving the ladies' pardon' after every slip.

All that was really remarkable in Uncle Bat's appearance was included in
his nose. It had always been a generous, weighty, self-confident nose,
inviting to itself more observation than any of its brother features
demanded. But in latter years it had spread itself out in soft, porous,
red excrescences, to such an extent as to make it really deserving of
considerable attention. No stranger ever passed Captain Cuttwater in
the streets of Devonport without asking who he was, or, at any rate,
specially noticing him.

It must, of course, be admitted that a too strongly pronounced
partiality for alcoholic drink had produced these defects in Captain
Cuttwater's nasal organ; and yet he was a most staunch friend of
temperance. No man alive or dead had ever seen Captain Cuttwater the
worse for liquor; at least so boasted the captain himself, and there
were none, at any rate in Devonport, to give him the lie. Woe betide the
midshipman whom he should see elated with too much wine; and even to the
common sailor who should be tipsy at the wrong time, he would show
no mercy. Most eloquent were the discourses which he preached against
drunkenness, and they always ended with a reference to his own sobriety.
The truth was, that drink would hardly make Captain Cuttwater drunk. It
left his brain untouched, but punished his nose.

Mrs. Woodward had seen her uncle but once since she had become a widow.
He had then come up to London to attack the Admiralty at close quarters,
and had sojourned for three or four days at Surbiton Cottage. This was
now some ten years since, and the girls had forgotten even what he was
like. Great preparations were made for him. Though the summer had nearly
commenced, a large fire was kept burning in his bedroom--his bed was
newly hung with new curtains; two feather beds were piled on each
other, and everything was done which five women could think desirable
to relieve the ailings of suffering age. The fact, however, was that
Captain Cuttwater was accustomed to a small tent bedstead in a room
without a carpet, that he usually slept on a single mattress, and that
he never had a fire in his bedroom, even in the depth of winter.

Travelling from Devonport to London is now an easy matter; and Captain
Cuttwater, old as he was, found himself able to get through to Hampton
in one day. Mrs. Woodward went to meet him at Hampton Court in a fly,
and conveyed him to his new home, together with a carpet-bag, a cocked
hat, a sword, and a very small portmanteau. When she inquired after the
remainder of his luggage, he asked her what more lumber she supposed
he wanted. No more lumber at any rate made its appearance, then or
afterwards; and the fly proceeded with an easy load to Surbiton Cottage.

There was great anxiety on the part of the girls when the wheels were
heard to stop at the front door. Gertrude kept her place steadily
standing on the rug in the drawing-room; Linda ran to the door and
then back again; but Katie bolted out and ensconced herself behind the
parlour-maid, who stood at the open door, looking eagerly forth to get
the first view of Uncle Bat.

'So here you are, Bessie, as snug as ever,' said the captain, as he let
himself ponderously down from the fly. Katie had never before heard her
mother called Bessie, and had never seen anything approaching in size or
colour to such a nose, consequently she ran away frightened.

'That's Gertrude--is it?' said the captain.

'Gertrude, uncle! Why Gertrude is a grown-up woman now. That's Katie,
whom you remember an infant.'

'God bless my soul!' said the captain, as though he thought that
girls must grow twice quicker at Hampton than they did at Devonport or
elsewhere, 'God bless my soul!'

He was then ushered into the drawing-room, and introduced in form to his
grand-nieces. 'This is Gertrude, uncle, and this Linda; there is just
enough difference for you to know them apart. And this Katie. Come here,
Katie, and kiss your uncle.'

Katie came up, hesitated, looked horrified, but did manage to get her
face somewhat close to the old man's without touching the tremendous
nose, and then having gone through this peril she retreated again behind
the sofa.

'Well; bless my stars, Bessie, you don't tell me those are your
children?'

'Indeed, uncle, I believe they are. It's a sad tale for me to tell, is
it not?' said the blooming mother with a laugh.

'Why, they'll be looking out for husbands next,' said Uncle Bat.

'Oh! they're doing that already, every day,' said Katie.

'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Uncle Bat; 'I suppose so, I suppose so;--ha, ha,
ha!'

Gertrude turned away to the window, disgusted and angry, and made up her
mind to hate Uncle Bat for ever afterwards. Linda made a little attempt
to smile, and felt somewhat glad in her heart that her uncle was a man
who could indulge in a joke.

He was then taken upstairs to his bedroom, and here he greatly
frightened Katie, and much scandalized the parlour-maid by declaring,
immediately on his entering the room, that it was 'd----- hot, d---ation
hot; craving your pardon, ladies!'

'We thought, uncle, you'd like a fire,' began Mrs. Woodward, 'as----'

'A fire in June, when I can hardly carry my coat on my back!'

'It's the last day of May now,' said Katie timidly, from behind the
bed-curtains.

This, however, did not satisfy the captain, and orders were forthwith
given that the fire should be taken away, the curtains stripped off,
the feather beds removed, and everything reduced to pretty much the
same state in which it had usually been left for Harry Norman's
accommodation. So much for all the feminine care which had been thrown
away upon the consideration of Uncle Bat's infirmities.

'God bless my soul!' said he, wiping his brow with a huge coloured
handkerchief as big as a mainsail, 'one night in such a furnace as that
would have brought on the gout.'

He had dined in town, and by the time that his chamber had been stripped
of its appendages, he was nearly ready for bed. Before he did so, he was
asked to take a glass of sherry.

'Ah! sherry,' said he, taking up the bottle and putting it down again.
'Sherry, ah! yes; very good wine, I am sure. You haven't a drop of rum
in the house, have you?'

Mrs. Woodward declared with sorrow that she had not.

'Or Hollands?' said Uncle Bat. But the ladies of Surbiton Cottage were
unsupplied also with Hollands.

'Gin?' suggested the captain, almost in despair.

Mrs. Woodward had no gin, but she could send out and get it; and the
first evening of Captain Cuttwater's visit saw Mrs. Woodward's own
parlour-maid standing at the bar of the Green Dragon, while two gills of
spirits were being measured out for her.

'Only for the respect she owed to Missus,' as she afterwards declared,
'she never would have so demeaned herself for all the captains in the
Queen's battalions.'

The captain, however, got his grog; and having enlarged somewhat
vehemently while he drank it on the iniquities of those scoundrels
at the Admiralty, took himself off to bed; and left his character and
peculiarities to the tender mercies of his nieces.

The following day was Friday, and on the Saturday Norman and Tudor were
to come down as a matter of course. During the long days, they usually
made their appearance after dinner; but they had now been specially
requested to appear in good orderly time, in honour of the captain.
Their advent had been of course spoken of, and Mrs. Woodward had
explained to Uncle Bat that her cousin Harry usually spent his Sundays
at Hampton, and that he usually also brought with him a friend of his,
a Mr. Tudor. To all this, as a matter of course, Uncle Bat had as yet no
objection to make.

The young men came, and were introduced with due ceremony. Surbiton
Cottage, however, during dinnertime, was very unlike what it had been
before, in the opinion of all the party there assembled. The girls
felt themselves called upon, they hardly knew why, to be somewhat less
intimate in their manner with the young men than they customarily were;
and Harry and Alaric, with quick instinct, reciprocated the feeling.
Mrs. Woodward, even, assumed involuntarily somewhat of a company air;
and Uncle Bat, who sat at the bottom of the table, in the place usually
assigned to Norman, was awkward in doing the honours of the house to
guests who were in fact much more at home there than himself.

After dinner the young people strolled out into the garden, and Katie,
as was her wont, insisted on Harry Norman rowing her over to her damp
paradise in the middle of the river. He attempted, vainly, to induce
Gertrude to accompany them. Gertrude was either coy with her lover,
or indifferent; for very few were the occasions on which she could be
induced to gratify him with the rapture of a _tête-à-tête_ encounter.
So that, in fact, Harry Norman's Sunday visits were generally moments
of expected bliss of which the full fruition was but seldom attained. So
while Katie went off to the island, Alaric and the two girls sat under
a spreading elm tree and watched the little boat as it shot across the
water. 'And what do you think of Uncle Bat?' said Gertrude.

'Well, I am sure he's a good sort of fellow, and a very, gallant
officer, but--'

'But what?' said Linda.

'It's a thousand pities he should have ever been removed from Devonport,
where I am sure he was both useful and ornamental.'

Both the girls laughed cheerily; and as the sound came across the water
to Norman's ears, he repented himself of his good nature to Katie, and
determined that her sojourn in the favourite island should, on this
occasion, be very short.

'But he is to pay mamma a great deal of money,' said Linda, 'and his
coming will be a great benefit to her in that way.'

'There ought to be something to compensate for the bore,' said Gertrude.

'We must only make the best of him,' said Alaric. 'For my part, I am
rather fond of old gentlemen with long noses; but it seemed to me that
he was not quite so fond of us. I thought he looked rather shy at Harry
and me.'

Both the girls protested against this, and declared that there could be
nothing in it.

'Well, now, I'll tell you what, Gertrude,' said Alaric, 'I am quite sure
that he looks on me, especially, as an interloper; and yet I'll bet you
a pair of gloves I am his favourite before a month is over.'

'Oh, no; Linda is to be his favourite,' said Gertrude.

'Indeed I am not,' said Linda. 'I liked him very well till he drank
three huge glasses of gin-and-water last night, but I never can fancy
him after that. You can't conceive, Alaric, what the drawing-room smelt
like. I suppose he'll do the same every evening.'

'Well, what can you expect?' said Gertrude; 'if mamma will have an old
sailor to live with her, of course he'll drink grog.'

While this was going on in the garden, Mrs. Woodward sat dutifully
with her uncle while he sipped his obnoxious toddy, and answered his
questions about their two friends.

'They were both in the Weights and Measures, by far the most respectable
public office in London,' as she told him, 'and both doing extremely
well there. They were, indeed, young men sure to distinguish themselves
and get on in the world. Had this not been so, she might perhaps have
hesitated to receive them so frequently, and on such intimate terms, at
Surbiton Cottage.' This she said in a half-apologetic manner, and
yet with a feeling of anger at herself that she should condescend to
apologize to any one as to her own conduct in her own house.

'They are very nice young men, I am sure,' said Uncle Bat.

'Indeed they are,' said Mrs. Woodward.

'And very civil to the young ladies,' said Uncle Bat.

'They have known them since they were children, uncle; and of course
that makes them more intimate than young men generally are with young
ladies;' and again Mrs. Woodward was angry with herself for making any
excuses on the subject.

'Are they well off?' asked the prudent captain.

'Harry Norman is very well off; he has a private fortune. Both of them
have excellent situations.'

'To my way of thinking that other chap is the better fellow. At any rate
he seems to have more gumption about him.'

'Why, uncle, you don't mean to tell me that you think Harry Norman a
fool?' said Mrs. Woodward. Harry Norman was Mrs. Woodward's special
friend, and she fondly indulged the hope of seeing him in time become
the husband of her elder and favourite daughter; if, indeed, she can be
fairly said to have had a favourite child.

Captain Cuttwater poured out another glass of rum, and dropped the
subject.

Soon afterwards the whole party came in from the lawn. Katie was all
draggled and wet, for she had persisted in making her way right across
the island to look out for a site for another palace. Norman was a
little inclined to be sulky, for Katie had got the better of him; when
she had got out of the boat, he could not get her into it again; and as
he could not very well leave her in the island, he had been obliged to
remain paddling about, while he heard the happy voices of Alaric and the
two girls from the lawn. Alaric was in high good-humour, and entered the
room intent on his threatened purpose of seducing Captain Cuttwater's
affections. The two girls were both blooming with happy glee, and
Gertrude was especially bright in spite of the somewhat sombre demeanour
of her lover.

Tea was brought in, whereupon Captain Cuttwater, having taken a bit of
toast and crammed it into his saucer, fell fast asleep in an arm-chair.

'You'll have very little opportunity to-night,' said Linda, almost in a
whisper.

'Opportunity for what?' asked Mrs. Woodward.

'Hush,' said Gertrude, 'we'll tell you by and by, mamma. You'll wake
Uncle Bat if you talk now.'

'I am so thirsty,' said Katie, bouncing into the room with dry shoes and
stockings on. 'I am so thirsty. Oh, Linda, do give me some tea.'

'Hush,' said Alaric, pointing to the captain, who was thoroughly
enjoying himself, and uttering sonorous snores at regular fixed
intervals.

'Sit down, Katie, and don't make a noise,' said Mrs. Woodward, gently.

Katie slunk into a chair, opened wide her large bright eyes, applied
herself diligently to her tea-cup, and then, after taking breath, said,
in a very audible whisper to her sister, 'Are not we to talk at all,
Linda? That will be very dull, I think.'

'Yes, my dear, you are to talk as much as you please, and as often as
you please, and as loud as you please; that is to say, if your mamma
will let you,' said Captain Cuttwater, without any apparent waking
effort, and in a moment the snoring was going on again as regularly as
before.

Katie looked round, and again opened her eyes and laughed. Mrs. Woodward
said, 'You are very good-natured, uncle.' The girls exchanged looks with
Alaric, and Norman, who had not yet recovered his good-humour, went on
sipping his tea.

As soon as the tea-things were gone, Uncle Bat yawned and shook himself,
and asked if it was not nearly time to go to bed.

'Whenever you like, Uncle Bat,' said Mrs. Woodward, who began to find
that she agreed with Gertrude, that early habits on the part of her
uncle would be a family blessing. 'But perhaps you'll take something
before you go?'

'Well, I don't mind if I do take a thimbleful of rum-and-water.' So the
odious spirit-bottle was again brought into the drawing-room.

'Did you call at the Admiralty, sir, as you came through town?' said
Alaric.

'Call at the Admiralty, sir!' said the captain, turning sharply round
at the questioner; 'what the deuce should I call at the Admiralty for?
craving the ladies' pardon.'

'Well, indeed, I don't know,' said Alaric, not a bit abashed. 'But
sailors always do call there, for the pleasure, I suppose, of kicking
their heels in the lords' waiting-room.'

'I have done with that game,' said Captain Cuttwater, now wide awake;
and in his energy he poured half a glass more rum into his beaker. 'I've
done with that game, and I'll tell you what, Mr. Tudor, if I had a dozen
sons to provide for to-morrow--'

'Oh, I do so wish you had,' said Katie; 'it would be such fun. Fancy
Uncle Bat having twelve sons, Gertrude. What would you call them all,
uncle?'

'Why, I tell you what, Miss Katie, I wouldn't call one of them a sailor.
I'd sooner make tailors of them.'

'Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy,
thief,' said Katie. 'That would only be eight; what should the other
four be, uncle?'

'You're quite right, Captain Cuttwater,' said Alaric, 'at least as far
as the present moment goes; but the time is coming when things at the
Admiralty will be managed very differently.'

'Then I'm d---- if that time can come too soon--craving the ladies'
pardon!' said Uncle Bat.

'I don't know what you mean, Alaric,' said Harry Norman, who was just at
present somewhat disposed to contradict his friend, and not ill-inclined
to contradict the captain also; 'as far as I can judge, the Admiralty is
the very last office the Government will think of touching.'

'The Government!' shouted Captain Cuttwater; 'oh! if we are to wait for
the Government, the navy may go to the deuce, sir.'

'It's the pressure from without that must do the work,' said Alaric.

'Pressure from without!' said Norman, scornfully; 'I hate to hear such
trash.'

'We'll see, young gentleman, we'll see,' said the captain; 'it may be
trash, and it may be right that five fellows who never did the Queen a
day's service in their life, should get fifteen hundred or two thousand
a year, and have the power of robbing an old sailor like me of the
reward due to me for sixty years' hard work. Reward! no; but the very
wages that I have actually earned. Look at me now, d---- me, look at me!
Here I am, Captain Cuttwater--with sixty years' service--and I've done
more perhaps for the Queen's navy than--than--'

'It's too true, Captain Cuttwater,' said Alaric, speaking with a sort
of mock earnestness which completely took in the captain, but stealing a
glance at the same time at the two girls, who sat over their work at the
drawing-room table, 'it's too true; and there's no doubt the whole
thing must be altered, and that soon. In the first place, we must have a
sailor at the head of the navy.'

'Yes,' said the captain, 'and one that knows something about it too.'

'You'll never have a sailor sitting as first lord,' said Norman,
authoritatively; 'unless it be when some party man, high in rank, may
happen to have been in the navy as a boy.'

'And why not?' said Captain Cuttwater quite angrily.

'Because the first lord must sit in the Cabinet, and to do that he must
be a thorough politician.'

'D---- politicians! craving the ladies' pardon,' said Uncle Bat.

'Amen!' said Alaric.

Uncle Bat, thinking that he had thoroughly carried his point, finished
his grog, took up his candlestick, and toddled off to bed.

'Well, I think I have done something towards carrying my point,' said
Alaric.

'I didn't think you were half so cunning,' said Linda, laughing.

'I cannot think how you can condescend to advocate opinions
diametrically opposed to your own convictions,' said Norman, somewhat
haughtily.

'Fee, fo, fum!' said Alaric.

'What is it all about?' said Mrs. Woodward.

'Alaric wants to do all he can to ingratiate himself with Uncle Bat,'
said Gertrude; 'and I am sure he's going the right way to work.'

'It's very good-natured on his part,' said Mrs. Woodward.

'I don't know what you are talking about,' said Katie, yawning, 'and I
think you are all very stupid; so I'll go to bed.'

The rest soon followed her. They did not sit up so late chatting over
the fire this evening, as was their wont on Saturdays, though none of
them knew what cause prevented it.



CHAPTER V

BUSHEY PARK


The next day being Sunday, the whole party very properly went to church;
but during the sermon Captain Cuttwater very improperly went to sleep,
and snored ponderously the whole time. Katie was so thoroughly shocked
that she did not know which way to look; Norman, who had recovered his
good-humour, and Alaric, could not refrain from smiling as they caught
the eyes of the two girls; and Mrs. Woodward made sundry little abortive
efforts to wake her uncle with her foot. Altogether abortive they were
not, for the captain would open his eyes and gaze at her for a moment
in the most good-natured, lack-lustre manner conceivable; but then, in a
moment, he would be again asleep and snoring, with all the regularity of
a kitchen-clock. This was at first very dreadful to the Woodwards; but
after a month or two they got used to it, and so apparently did the
pastor and the people of Hampton.

After church there was a lunch of course; and then, according to their
wont, they went out to walk. These Sunday walks in general were matters
of some difficulty. The beautiful neighbourhood of Hampton Court, with
its palace-gardens and lovely park, is so popular with Londoners that it
is generally alive on that day with a thronged multitude of men, women,
and children, and thus becomes not an eligible resort for lovers of
privacy. Captain Cuttwater, however, on this occasion, insisted on
seeing the chestnuts and the crowd, and consequently, they all went into
Bushey Park.

Uncle Bat, who professed himself to be a philanthropist, and who was
also a bit of a democrat, declared himself delighted with what he saw.
It was a great thing for the London citizens to come down there with
their wives and children, and eat their dinners in the open air under
the spreading trees; and both Harry and Alaric agreed with him. Mrs.
Woodward, however, averred that it would be much better if they would
go to church first, and Gertrude and Linda were of opinion that the Park
was spoilt by the dirty bits of greasy paper which were left about on
all sides. Katie thought it very hard that, as all the Londoners were
allowed to eat their dinners in the Park, she might not have hers there
also. To which Captain Cuttwater rejoined that he should give them a
picnic at Richmond before the summer was over.

All the world knows how such a party as that of our friends by degrees
separates itself into twos and threes, when sauntering about in shady
walks. It was seldom, indeed, that Norman could induce his Dulcinea to
be so complaisant in his favour; but either accident or kindness on her
part favoured him on this occasion, and as Katie went on eliciting from
Uncle Bat fresh promises as to the picnic, Harry and Gertrude found
themselves together under one avenue of trees, while Alaric and Linda
were equally fortunate, or unfortunate, under another.

'I did so wish to speak a few words to you, Gertrude,' said Norman; 'but
it seems as though, now that this captain has come among us, all our old
habits and ways are to be upset.'

'I don't see that _you_ need say that,' said she. 'We may, perhaps, be
put out a little--that is, mamma and Linda and I; but I do not see that
you need suffer.'

'Suffer--no, not suffer--and yet it is suffering.'

'What is suffering?' said she.

'Why, to be as we were last night--not able to speak to each other.'

'Come, Harry, you should be a little reasonable,' said she, laughing.
'If you did not talk last night whose fault was it?'

'I suppose you will say it was my own. Perhaps it was. But I could not
feel comfortable while he was drinking gin-and-water--'

'It was rum,' said Gertrude, rather gravely.

'Well, rum-and-water in your mother's drawing-room, and cursing and
swearing before you and Linda, as though he were in the cockpit of a
man-of-war.'

'Alaric you saw was able to make himself happy, and I am sure he is not
more indifferent to us than you are.'

'Alaric seemed to me to be bent on making a fool of the old man; and, to
tell the truth, I cannot approve of his doing so.'

'It seems to me, Harry, that you do not approve of what any of us
are doing,' said she; 'I fear we are all in your black books--Captain
Cuttwater, and mamma, and Alaric, and I, and all of us.'

'Well now, Gertrude, do you mean to say you think it right that Katie
should sit by and hear a man talk as Captain Cuttwater talked last
night? Do you mean to say that the scene which passed, with the rum and
the curses, and the absurd ridicule which was thrown on your mother's
uncle, was such as should take place in your mother's drawing-room?'

'I mean to say, Harry, that my mother is the best and only judge of what
should, and what should not, take place there.'

Norman felt himself somewhat silenced by this, and walked on for a
time without speaking. He was a little too apt to take upon himself the
character of Mentor; and, strange to say, he was aware of his own fault
in this particular. Thus, though the temptation to preach was very
powerful, he refrained himself for a while. His present desire was to
say soft things rather than sharp words; and though lecturing was at
this moment much easier to him than love-making, he bethought himself
of his object, and controlled the spirit of morality which was strong
within him.

'But we were so happy before your uncle came,' he said, speaking with
his sweetest voice, and looking at the beautiful girl beside him with
all the love he was able to throw into his handsome face.

'And we are happy now that he has come--or at any rate ought to be,'
said Gertrude, doing a little in the Mentor line herself, now that the
occasion came in her way.

'Ah! Gertrude, you know very well there is only one thing can make me
happy,' said Harry.

'Why, you unreasonable man! just now you said you were perfectly happy
before Captain Cuttwater came, I suppose the one thing now necessary is
to send him away again.'

'No, Gertrude, the thing necessary is to take you away.'

'What! out of the contamination of poor old Uncle Bat's bottle of rum?
But, Harry, you see it would be cowardly in me to leave mamma and Linda
to suffer the calamity alone.'

'I wonder, Gertrude, whether, in your heart of hearts, you really care
a straw about me,' said Harry, who was now very sentimental and somewhat
lachrymose.

'You know we all care very much about you, and it is very wrong in
you to express such a doubt,' said Gertrude, with a duplicity that
was almost wicked; as if she did not fully understand that the kind of
'caring' of which Norman spoke was of a very different nature from the
general 'caring' which she, on his behalf, shared with the rest of her
family.

'All of you--yes, but I am not speaking of all of you; I am speaking of
you, Gertrude--you in particular. Can you ever love me well enough to be
my wife?'

'Well, there is no knowing what I may be able to do in three or four
years' time; but even that must depend very much on how you behave
yourself in the mean time. If you get cross because Captain Cuttwater
has come here, and snub Alaric and Linda, as you did last night, and
scold at mamma because she chooses to let her own uncle live in her own
house, why, to tell you the truth, I don't think I ever shall.'

All persons who have a propensity to lecture others have a strong
constitutional dislike to being lectured themselves. Such was decidedly
the case with Harry Norman. In spite of his strong love, and his anxious
desire to make himself agreeable, his brow became somewhat darkened, and
his lips somewhat compressed. He would not probably have been annoyed
had he not been found fault with for snubbing his friend Tudor. Why
should Gertrude, his Gertrude, put herself forward to defend his friend?
Let her say what she chose for her mother, or even for her profane,
dram-drinking, vulgar old uncle, but it was too much that she should
take up the cudgels for Alaric Tudor.

'Well,' said he, 'I was annoyed last night, and I must own it. It
grieved me to hear Alaric turning your uncle into ridicule, and that
before your mother's face; and it grieved me to see you and Linda
encourage him. In what Alaric said about the Admiralty he did not speak
truthfully.'

'Do you mean to say that Alaric said what was false?'

'Inasmuch as he was pretending to express his own opinion, he did say
what was false.'

'Then I must and will say that I never yet knew Alaric say a word that
was not true; and, which is more, I am quite sure that he would not
accuse you of falsehood behind your back in a fit of jealousy.'

'Jealousy!' said Norman, looking now as black as grim death itself.

'Yes, it is jealousy. It so turned out that Alaric got on better last
night with Captain Cuttwater than you did, and that makes you jealous.'

'Pish!' said Norman, somewhat relieved, but still sufficiently disgusted
that his lady-love should suppose that he could be otherwise than
supremely indifferent to the opinion of Captain Cuttwater.

The love-scene, however, was fatally interrupted; and the pair were not
long before they joined the captain, Mrs. Woodward, and Katie.

And how fared it with the other pair under the other avenue of
chestnuts?

Alaric Tudor had certainly come out with no defined intention of making
love as Harry Norman had done; but with such a companion it was very
difficult for him to avoid it. Linda was much more open to attacks
of this nature than her sister. Not that she was as a general rule
willingly and wilfully inclined to give more encouragement to lovers
than Gertrude; but she had less power of fence, less skill in protecting
herself, and much less of that naughty self-esteem which makes some
women fancy that all love-making to them is a liberty, and the want of
which makes others feel that all love-making is to them a compliment.

Alaric Tudor had no defined intention of making love; but he had a sort
of suspicion that he might, if he pleased, do so successfully; and
he had no defined intention of letting it alone. He was a far-seeing,
prudent man; for his age perhaps too prudent; but he was nevertheless
fully susceptible of the pleasure of holding an affectionate, close
intercourse with so sweet a girl as Linda Woodward; and though he knew
that marriage with a girl without a dowry would for him be a death-blow
to all his high hopes, he could hardly resist the temptation of
conjugating the verb to love. Had he been able to choose from the two
sisters, he would probably have selected Gertrude in spite of what
he had said to Norman in the boat; but Gertrude was bespoken; and it
therefore seemed all but unnatural that there should not be some love
passages between him and Linda.

Ah! Mrs. Woodward, my friend, my friend, was it well that thou shouldst
leave that sweet unguarded rosebud of thine to such perils as these?

They, also, commenced their wooing by talking over Captain Cuttwater;
but they did not quarrel over him. Linda was quite content to be told
by her friend what she ought to do, and how she ought to think about her
uncle; and Alaric had a better way of laying down the law than Norman.
He could do so without offending his hearer's pride, and consequently
was generally better listened to than his friend, though his law was
probably not in effect so sound.

But they had soon done with Captain Cuttwater, and Alaric had to choose
another subject. Gertrude and Norman were at some distance from them,
but were in sight and somewhat in advance.

'Look at Harry,' said Alaric; 'I know from the motion of his shoulder
that he is at this moment saying something very tender.'

'It is ten times more likely that they are quarrelling,' said Linda.

'Oh! the quarrels of lovers--we know all about that, don't we?'

'You must not call them lovers, Alaric; mamma would not like it, nor
indeed would Gertrude, I am sure.'

'I would not for the world do anything that Mrs. Woodward would not
like; but between ourselves, Linda, are they not lovers?'

'No; that is, not that I know of. I don't believe that they are a bit,'
said Linda, blushing at her own fib.

'And why should they not be? How indeed is it possible that they
should not be; that is--for I heartily beg Gertrude's pardon--how is it
possible that Harry should not be in love with her?'

'Indeed, Gertrude is very, very beautiful,' said Linda, with the
faintest possible sigh, occasioned by the remembrance of her own
inferior charms.

'Indeed she is, very, very beautiful,' repeated Alaric, speaking with
an absent air as though his mind were fully engaged in thinking of the
beauty of which he spoke.

It was not in Linda's nature to be angry because her sister was admired,
and because she was not. But yet there was something in Alaric's warm
tone of admiration which gave her a feeling of unhappiness which she
would have been quite unable to define, even had she attempted it. She
saw her sister and Harry Norman before her, and she knew in her heart
that they were lovers, in spite of her little weak declaration to the
contrary. She saw how earnestly her sister was loved, and she in
her kindly loving nature could not but envy her fancied happiness.
Envy--no--it certainly was not envy. She would not for worlds have
robbed her sister of her admirer; but it was so natural for her to feel
that it must be delicious to be admired!

She did not begrudge Gertrude Norman's superior beauty, nor his greater
wealth; she knew that Gertrude was entitled to more, much more, than
herself. But seeing that Norman was Gertrude's lover, was it not natural
that Alaric should be hers? And then, though Harry was the handsomer and
the richer, she liked Alaric so much the better of the two. But now that
Alaric was alone with her, the only subject he could think to talk of
was Gertrude's beauty!

It must not be supposed that these thoughts in their plainly-developed
form passed through Linda's mind. It was not that she thought all this,
but that she felt it. Such feelings are quite involuntary, whereas one's
thoughts are more or less under command. Linda would not have allowed
herself to think in this way for worlds; but she could not control her
feelings.

They walked on side by side, perfectly silent for a minute or two, and
an ill-natured tear was gathering itself in the corner of Linda's eye:
she was afraid even to raise her hand to brush it away, for fear Alaric
should see her, and thus it went on gathering till it was like to fall.

'How singular it is,' said Alaric--'how very singular, the way in which
I find myself living with you all! such a perfect stranger as I am.'

'A perfect stranger!' said Linda, who, having remembered Alaric since
the days of her short frocks and lessons, looked on him as a very old
friend indeed.

'Yes, a perfect stranger, if you think of it. What do any of you know
about me? Your mother never saw my mother; your father knew nothing of
my father; there is no kindred blood common to us. Harry Norman, there,
is your near cousin; but what am I that I should be thus allowed to
live with you, and walk with you, and have a common interest in all your
doings?'

'Why, you are a dear friend of mamma's, are you not?'

'A dear friend of mamma's! said he, 'well, indeed, I hope I am; for your
mother is at any rate a dear friend to me. But, Linda, one cannot be so
much without longing to be more. Look at Harry, how happy he is!'

'But, Alaric, surely you would not interfere with Harry,' said Linda,
whose humble, innocent heart thought still of nothing but the merits of
her sister; and then, remembering that it was necessary that she should
admit nothing on Gertrude's behalf, she entered her little protest
against the assumption that her sister acknowledged Norman for her
lover. 'That is, you would not do so, if there were anything in it.'

'I interfere with Harry!' said Alaric, switching the heads off the bits
of fern with the cane he carried. 'No, indeed. I have no wish at all to
do that. It is not that of which I was thinking. Harry is welcome to all
his happiness; that is, if Gertrude can be brought to make him happy.'

Linda, made no answer now; but the tear came running down her face, and
her eyes became dim, and her heart beat very quick, and she didn't quite
remember where she was. Up to this moment no man had spoken a word of
love to Linda Woodward, and to some girls the first word is very trying.

'Interfere with Harry!' Alaric repeated again, and renewed his attack on
the ferns. 'Well, Linda, what an opinion you must have of me!'

Linda was past answering; she could not protest--nor would it have
been expedient to do so--that her opinion of her companion was not
unfavourable.

'Gertrude is beautiful, very beautiful,' he continued, still beating
about the bush as modest lovers do, and should do; 'but she is not the
only beautiful girl in Surbiton Cottage, nor to my eyes is she the most
so.'

Linda was now quite beside herself. She knew that decorum required that
she should say something stiff and stately to repress such language, but
if all her future character for propriety had depended on it, she
could not bring herself to say a word. She knew that Gertrude, when so
addressed, would have maintained her dignity, and have concealed her
secret, even if she allowed herself to have a secret to conceal. She
knew that it behoved her to be repellent and antagonistic to the first
vows of a first lover. But, alas! she had no power of antagonism, no
energy for repulse left in her. Her knees seemed to be weak beneath her,
and all she could do was to pluck to pieces the few flowers that she
carried at her waist.

Alaric saw his advantage, but was too generous to push it closely; nor
indeed did he choose to commit himself to all the assured intentions of
a positive declaration. He wished to raise an interest in Linda's heart,
and having done so, to leave the matter to chance. Something, however,
it was necessary that he should say. He walked a while by her in
silence, decapitating the ferns, and then coming close to her, he said--

'Linda, dear Linda! you are not angry with me?' Linda, however, answered
nothing. 'Linda, dearest Linda! speak one word to me.'

'Don't!' said Linda through her tears. 'Pray don't, Alaric; pray don't.'

'Well, Linda, I will not say another word to you now. Let us walk
gently; we shall catch them up quite in time before they leave the
park.'

And so they sauntered on, exchanging no further words. Linda by degrees
recovered her calmness, and as she did so, she found herself to be, oh!
so happy. She had never, never envied Gertrude her lover; but it was so
sweet, so very sweet, to be able to share her sister's happiness.
And Alaric, was he also happy? At the moment he doubtless enjoyed the
triumph of his success. But still he had a feeling of sad care at his
heart. How was he to marry a girl without a shilling? Were all his high
hopes, was all his soaring ambition, to be thrown over for a dream of
love?

Ah! Mrs. Woodward, my friend, my friend, thou who wouldst have fed thy
young ones, like the pelican, with blood from thine own breast, had such
feeding been of avail; thou who art the kindest of mothers; has it been
well for thee to subject to such perils this poor weak young dove of
thine?

Uncle Bat had become tired with his walk, and crawled home so slowly
that Alaric and Linda caught the party just as they reached the small
wicket which leads out of the park on the side nearest to Hampton.
Nothing was said or thought of their absence, and they all entered the
house together. Four of them, however, were conscious that that Sunday's
walk beneath the chestnuts of Bushey Park would long be remembered.

Nothing else occurred to make the day memorable. In the evening, after
dinner, Mrs. Woodward and her daughters went to church, leaving her
younger guests to entertain the elder one. The elder one soon took the
matter in his own hand by going to sleep; and Harry and Alaric being
thus at liberty, sauntered out down the river side. They both made a
forced attempt at good-humour, each speaking cheerily to the other; but
there was no confidence between them as there had been on that morning
when Harry rowed his friend up to London. Ah me! what had occurred
between them to break the bonds of their mutual trust--to quench the
ardour of their firm friendship? But so it was between them now. It was
fated that they never again should place full confidence in each other.

There was no such breach between the sisters, at least not as yet; but
even between them there was no free and full interchange of their
hopes and fears. Gertrude and Linda shared the same room, and were
accustomed--as what girls are not?--to talk half through the night of
all their wishes, thoughts, and feelings. And Gertrude was generally
prone enough to talk of Harry Norman. Sometimes she would say she loved
him a little, just a little; at others she would declare that she loved
him not at all--that is, not as heroines love in novels, not as she
thought she could love, and would do, should it ever be her lot to be
wooed by such a lover as her young fancy pictured to her. Then she
would describe her beau idéal, and the description certainly gave no
counterpart of Harry Norman. To tell the truth, however, Gertrude was as
yet heart whole; and when she talked of love and Harry Norman, she did
not know what love was.

On this special Sunday evening she was disinclined to speak of him at
all. Not that she loved him more than usual, but that she was beginning
to think that she could not ever really love him at all. She had taught
herself to think that he might probably be her husband, and had hitherto
felt no such repugnance to her destiny as caused her to shun the
subject. But now she was beginning to think of the matter seriously; and
as she did so, she felt that life might have for her a lot more blessed
than that of sharing the world with her cousin Harry.

When, therefore, Linda began to question her about her lover, and to
make little hints of her desire to tell what Alaric had said of her and
Norman, Gertrude gave her no encouragement. She would speak of Captain
Cuttwater, of Katie's lessons, of the new dress they were to make for
their mother, of Mr. Everscreech's long sermon, of anything in fact but
of Harry Norman.

Now this was very hard on poor Linda. Her heart was bursting within her
to tell her sister that she also was beloved; but she could not do so
without some little encouragement.

In all their conferences she took the cue of the conversation from her
sister; and though she could have talked about Alaric by the hour, if
Gertrude would have consented to talk about Harry, she did not know how
to start the subject of her own lover, while Gertrude was so cold
and uncommunicative as to hers. She struggled very hard to obtain the
privilege for which she so anxiously longed; but in doing so she only
met with a sad and sore rebuff.

'Gertrude,' at last said Linda, when Gertrude thought that the subject
had been put to rest at any rate for that night, 'don't you think mamma
would be pleased if she knew that you had engaged yourself to Harry
Norman?'

'No,' said Gertrude, evincing her strong mind by the tone in which she
spoke; 'I do not. If mamma wished it, she would have told me; for she
never has any secrets. I should be as wrong to engage myself with Harry
as you would be with Alaric. For though Harry has property of his own,
while poor Alaric has none, he has a very insufficient income for a
married man, and I have no fortune with which to help him. If nothing
else prevented it, I should consider it wicked in me to make myself a
burden to a man while he is yet so young and comparatively so poor.'

Prudent, sensible, high-minded, well-disciplined Gertrude! But had her
heart really felt a spark of love for the man of whom she spoke, how
much would prudent, sensible, high-minded considerations have weighed
with her? Alas! not a feather.

Having made her prudent, high-minded speech, she turned round and slept;
and poor Linda also turned round and bedewed her pillow. She no longer
panted to tell her sister of Alaric's love.

On the next morning the two young men returned to town, and the
customary dullness of the week began.



CHAPTER VI

SIR GREGORY HARDLINES


Great changes had been going on at the Weights and Measures; or rather
it might be more proper to say that great changes were now in progress.
From that moment in which it had been hinted to Mr. Hardlines that he
must relax the rigour of his examinations, he had pondered deeply over
the matter. Hitherto he had confined his efforts to his own office, and,
so far from feeling personally anxious for the amelioration of the Civil
Service generally, had derived no inconsiderable share of his happiness
from the knowledge that there were such sinks of iniquity as the
Internal Navigation. To be widely different from others was Mr.
Hardlines' glory. He was, perhaps, something of a Civil Service
Pharisee, and wore on his forehead a broad phylactery, stamped with
the mark of Crown property. He thanked God that he was not as those
publicans at Somerset House, and took glory to himself in paying tithes
of official cumin.

But now he was driven to a wider range. Those higher Pharisees who were
above him in his own pharisaical establishment, had interfered with the
austerity of his worship. He could not turn against them there, on their
own ground. He, of all men, could not be disobedient to official orders.
But if he could promote a movement beyond the walls of the Weights and
Measures; if he could make Pharisees of those benighted publicans in the
Strand; if he could introduce conic sections into the Custom House, and
political economy into the Post Office; if, by any effort of his, the
Foreign Office clerks could be forced to attend punctually at ten; and
that wretched saunterer, whom five days a week he saw lounging into the
Council Office--if he could be made to mend his pace, what a wide field
for his ambition would Mr. Hardlines then have found!

Great ideas opened themselves to his mind as he walked to and from his
office daily. What if he could become the parent of a totally different
order of things! What if the Civil Service, through his instrumentality,
should become the nucleus of the best intellectual diligence in
the country, instead of being a byword for sloth and ignorance! Mr.
Hardlines meditated deeply on this, and, as he did so, it became
observed on all sides that he was an altered man as regarded his
solicitude for the Weights and Measures. One or two lads crept in, by no
means conspicuous for their attainments in abstract science; young men,
too, were observed to leave not much after four o'clock, without calling
down on themselves Mr. Hardlines' usual sarcasm. Some said he was
growing old, others that he was broken-hearted. But Mr. Hardlines was
not old, nor broken in heart or body. He was thinking of higher things
than the Weights and Measures, and at last he published a pamphlet.

Mr. Hardlines had many enemies, all in the Civil Service, one of the
warmest of whom was Mr. Oldeschole, of the Navigation, and at first they
rejoiced greatly that Job's wish had been accomplished on their behalf,
and that their enemy had written a book. They were down on Mr. Hardlines
with reviews, counter pamphlets, official statements, and indignant
contradiction; but Mr. Hardlines lived through this storm of missiles,
and got his book to be fêted and made much of by some Government
pundits, who were very bigwigs indeed. And at last he was invited
over to the building on the other side, to discuss the matter with
a President, a Secretary of State, a Lord Commissioner, two joint
Secretaries, and three Chairmen.

And then, for a period of six months, the light of Mr. Hardlines' face
ceased to shine on the children of the Weights and Measures, and they
felt, one and all, that the glory had in a certain measure departed from
their house. Now and again Mr. Hardlines would look in, but he did
so rather as an enemy than as a friend. There was always a gleam of
antagonistic triumph in his eye, which showed that he had not forgotten
the day when he was called in question for his zeal. He was felt to be
in opposition to his own Board, rather than in co-operation with it. The
Secretary and the Assistant-Secretaries would say little caustic things
about him to the senior clerks, and seemed somewhat to begrudge him his
new honours. But for all this Mr. Hardlines cared little. The President
and the Secretary of State, the joint Secretaries and the Chairmen, all
allowed themselves to be led by him in this matter. His ambition was
about to be gratified. It was his destiny that he should remodel the
Civil Service. What was it to him whether or no one insignificant office
would listen to his charming? Let the Secretary at the Weights and
Measures sneer as he would; he would make that hero of the metallic
currency know that he, Mr. Hardlines, was his master.

At the end of six months his budding glory broke out into splendid,
full-blown, many-coloured flowers. He resigned his situation at the
Weights and Measures, and was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Board
of Civil Service Examination, with a salary of £2,000 a year; he was
made a K.C.B., and shone forth to the world as Sir Gregory Hardlines;
and he received a present of £1,000, that happy _ne plus ultra_ of
Governmental liberality. Sir Gregory Hardlines was forced to acknowledge
to himself that he was born to a great destiny.

When Sir Gregory, as we must now call him, was first invited to give his
attendance at another office, he found it expedient to take with him one
of the young men from the Weights and Measures, and he selected Alaric
Tudor. Now this was surprising to many, for Tudor had been brought into
the office not quite in accordance with Sir Gregory's views. But during
his four years of service Alaric had contrived to smooth down any
acerbity which had existed on this score; either the paper on the
strike-bushel, or his own general intelligence, or perhaps a certain
amount of flattery which he threw into his daily intercourse with the
chief clerk, had been efficacious, and when Sir Gregory was called
upon to select a man to take with him to his new temporary office, he
selected Alaric Tudor.

The main effect which such selection had upon our story rises from
the circumstance that it led to an introduction between Tudor and the
Honourable Undecimus Scott, and that this introduction brought about a
close alliance.

We will postpone for a short while such description of the character and
position of this gentleman as it may be indispensable to give, and will
in this place merely say that the Honourable Undecimus Scott had been
chosen to act as secretary to the temporary commission that was now
making inquiry as to the proposed Civil Service examinations, and that
in this capacity he was necessarily thrown into communication with
Tudor. He was a man who had known much of officialities, had filled
many situations, was acquainted with nearly all the secretaries,
assistant-secretaries, and private secretaries in London, had been in
Parliament, and was still hand-and-glove with all young members who
supported Government. Tudor, therefore, thought it a privilege to know
him, and allowed himself to become, in a certain degree, subject to his
influence.

When it was declared to the world of Downing Street that Sir Gregory
Hardlines was to be a great man, to have an office of his own, and to
reign over assistant-commissioners and subject secretaries, there was
great commotion at the Weights and Measures; and when his letter
of resignation was absolutely there, visible to the eyes of clerks,
properly docketed and duly minuted, routine business was, for a day,
nearly suspended. Gentlemen walked in and out from each other's rooms,
asking this momentous question--Who was to fill the chair which had so
long been honoured by the great Hardlines? Who was to be thought worthy
to wear that divine mantle?

But even this was not the question of the greatest moment which at that
period disturbed the peace of the office. It was well known that the
chief clerk must be chosen from one of the three senior clerks, and that
he would be so chosen by the voice of the Commissioners. There were only
three men who were deeply interested in this question. But who would
then be the new senior clerk, and how would he be chosen? A strange
rumour began to be afloat that the new scheme of competitive examination
was about to be tried in filling up this vacancy, occasioned by the
withdrawal of Sir Gregory Hardlines. From hour to hour the rumour gained
ground, and men's minds began to be much disturbed.

It was no wonder that men's minds should be disturbed. Competitive
examinations at eighteen, twenty, and twenty-two may be very well,
and give an interesting stimulus to young men at college. But it is
a fearful thing for a married man with a family, who has long looked
forward to rise to a certain income by the worth of his general conduct
and by the value of his seniority--it is a fearful thing for such a one
to learn that he has again to go through his school tricks, and fill up
examination papers, with all his juniors round him using their stoutest
efforts to take his promised bread from out of his mouth. _Detur digno_
is a maxim which will make men do their best to merit rewards; every man
can find courage within his heart to be worthy; but _detur digniori_ is
a fearful law for such a profession as the Civil Service. What worth
can make a man safe against the possible greater worth which will come
treading on his heels? The spirit of the age raises, from year to year,
to a higher level the standard of education. The prodigy of 1857, who
is now destroying all the hopes of the man who was well enough in 1855,
will be a dunce to the tyro of 1860.

There were three or four in the Weights and Measures who felt all this
with the keenest anxiety. The fact of their being there, and of their
having passed the scrutiny of Mr. Hardlines, was proof enough that they
were men of high attainments; but then the question arose to them and
others whether they were men exactly of those attainments which were
_now_ most required. Who is to say what shall constitute the merits of
the _dignior_? It may one day be conic sections, another Greek iambics,
and a third German philosophy. Rumour began to say that foreign
languages were now very desirable. The three excellent married gentlemen
who stood first in succession for the coveted promotion were great only
in their vernacular.

Within a week from the secession of Sir Gregory, his immediate successor
had been chosen, and it had been officially declared that the vacant
situation in the senior class was to be thrown open as a prize for the
best man in the office. Here was a brilliant chance for young merit!
The place was worth £600 a-year, and might be gained by any one who now
received no more than £100. Each person desirous of competing was to
send in his name to the Secretary, on or before that day fortnight; and
on that day month, the candidates were to present themselves before Sir
Gregory Hardlines and his board of Commissioners.

And yet the joy of the office was by no means great. The senior of those
who might become competitors, was of course a miserable, disgusted man.
He went about fruitlessly endeavouring to instigate rebellion against
Sir Gregory, that very Sir Gregory whom he had for many years all but
worshipped. Poor Jones was, to tell the truth, in a piteous case. He
told the Secretary flatly that he would not compete with a lot of
boys fresh from school, and his friends began to think of removing his
razors. Nor were Brown and Robinson in much better plight. They both,
it is true, hated Jones ruthlessly, and desired nothing better than
an opportunity of supplanting him. They were, moreover, fast friends
themselves; but not the less on that account had Brown a mortal fear of
Robinson, as also had Robinson a mortal fear of Brown.

Then came the bachelors. First there was Uppinall, who, when he entered
the office, was supposed to know everything which a young man had ever
known. Those who looked most to dead knowledge were inclined to back him
as first favourite. It had, however, been remarked, that his utility as
a clerk had not been equal to the profundity of his acquirements. Of all
the candidates he was the most self-confident.

The next to him was Mr. A. Minusex, a wondrous arithmetician. He was one
who could do as many sums without pen and paper as a learned pig; who
was so given to figures that he knew the number of stairs in every
flight he had gone up and down in the metropolis; one who, whatever the
subject before him might be, never thought but always counted. Many who
knew the peculiar propensities of Sir Gregory's earlier days thought
that Mr. Minusex was not an unlikely candidate.

The sixth in order was our friend Norman. The Secretary and the two
Assistant-Secretaries, when they first put their heads together on the
matter, declared that he was the most useful man in the office.

There was a seventh, named Alphabet Precis. Mr. Precis' peculiar forte
was a singular happiness in official phraseology. Much that he wrote
would doubtless have been considered in the purlieus of Paternoster Row
as ungrammatical, if not unintelligible; but according to the syntax of
Downing Street, it was equal to Macaulay, and superior to Gibbon. He had
frequently said to his intimate friends, that in official writing,
style was everything; and of his writing it certainly did form a very
prominent part. He knew well, none perhaps so well, when to beg leave to
lay before the Board--and when simply to submit to the Commissioners. He
understood exactly to whom it behoved the secretary 'to have the honour
of being a very humble servant,' and to whom the more simple 'I am,
sir,' was a sufficiently civil declaration. These are qualifications
great in official life, but were not quite so much esteemed at the time
of which we are speaking as they had been some few years previously.

There was but one other named as likely to stand with any probability of
success, and he was Alaric Tudor. Among the very juniors of the office
he was regarded as the great star of the office. There was a dash about
him and a quick readiness for any work that came to hand in which,
perhaps, he was not equalled by any of his compeers. Then, too, he was
the special friend of Sir Gregory.

But no one had yet heard Tudor say that he intended to compete with his
seven seniors--none yet knew whether he would put himself forward as
an adversary to his own especial friend, Norman. That Norman would be a
candidate had been prominently stated. For some few days not a word was
spoken, even between the friends themselves, as to Tudor's intention.

On the Sunday they were as usual at Hampton, and then the subject was
mooted by no less a person than Captain Cuttwater.

So you young gentlemen up in London are all going to be examined, are
you?' said he; 'what is it to be about? Who's to be first lieutenant of
the ship, is that it?'

'Oh no,' said Alaric, 'nothing half so high as that. Boatswain's mate
would be nearer the mark.'

'And who is to be the successful man?'

'Oh, Harry Norman, here. He was far the first favourite in yesterday's
betting.'

And how do you stand yourself?' said Uncle Bat.

'Oh! I'm only an outsider,' said Alaric. 'They put my name down just to
swell the number, but I shall be scratched before the running begins.'

'Indeed he won't,' said Harry. 'He'll run and distance us all. There is
no one who has a chance with him. Why, he is Sir Gregory's own pet.'

There was nothing more said on the subject at Surbiton Cottage. The
ladies seemed instinctively to perceive that it was a matter which they
had better leave alone. Not only were the two young men to be pitted
against each other, but Gertrude and Linda were as divided in their
wishes on the subject as the two candidates could be themselves.

On the following morning, however, Norman introduced the subject. 'I
suppose you were only jesting yesterday,' said he, 'when you told the
captain that you were not going to be a candidate?'

'Indeed I can hardly say that I was in jest or in earnest,' said Alaric.
'I simply meant to decline to discuss the subject with Uncle Bat.'

'But of course you do mean to stand?' said Harry. Alaric made no answer.

'Perhaps you would rather decline to discuss the matter with me also?'
said Harry.

'Not at all; I would much prefer discussing it openly and honestly. My
own impression is, that I had better leave it alone.'

'And why so?' said Harry.

'Why so?' repeated Alaric. 'Well, there are so many reasons. In the
first place, there would be seven to one against me; and I must confess
that if I did stand I should not like to be beaten.'

'The same argument might keep us all back,' said Norman.

'That's true; but one man will be more sensitive, more cowardly, if you
will, than another; and then I think no one should stand who does not
believe himself to have a fair chance. His doing so might probably mar
his future prospects. How can I put myself in competition with such men
as Uppinall and Minuses?'

Harry laughed slightly, for he knew it had been asked by many how
such men as Uppinall and Minusex could think of putting themselves in
competition with Alaric Tudor.

'That is something like mock-modesty, is it not, Alaric?'

'No, by heaven, it is not! I know well what those men are made of; and
I know, or think I know, my own abilities. I will own that I rank myself
as a human creature much higher than I rank them. But they have that
which I have not, and that which they have is that which these examiners
will chiefly require.'

'If you have no other reason,' said Norman, 'I would strongly advise you
to send in your name.'

'Well, Harry, I have another reason; and, though last, it is by no means
the least. You will be a candidate, and probably the successful one. To
tell you the truth, I have no inclination to stand against you.'

Norman turned very red, and then answered somewhat gravely: 'I would
advise you to lay aside that objection. I fairly tell you that I
consider your chance better than my own.'

'And suppose it be so, which I am sure it is not--but suppose it be so,
what then?'

'Why, you will do right to take advantage of it.'

'Yes, and so gain a step and lose a friend!' said Alaric. 'No; there can
be no heartburn to me in your being selected, for though I am older than
you, you are my senior in the office. But were I to be put over your
head, it would in the course of nature make a division between us;
and if it were possible that you should forgive it, it would be quite
impossible that Gertrude should do so. I value your friendship and that
of the Woodwards too highly to risk it.'

Norman instantly fired up with true generous energy. 'I should be
wretched,' said he, 'if I thought that such a consideration weighed
with you; I would rather withdraw myself than allow such a feeling to
interfere with your prospects. Indeed, after what you have said, I shall
not send in my own name unless you also send in yours.'

'I shall only be creating fuel for a feud,' said Alaric. 'To put you out
of the question, no promotion could compensate to me for what I should
lose at Hampton.'

'Nonsense, man; you would lose nothing. Faith, I don't know whether it
is not I that should lose, if I were successful at your expense.'

'How would Gertrude receive me?' said Alaric, pushing the matter further
than he perhaps should have done.

'We won't mind Gertrude,' said Norman, with a little shade of black upon
his brow. 'You are an older man than I, and therefore promotion is to
you of more importance than to me. You are also a poorer man. I have
some means besides that drawn from my office, which, if I marry, I can
settle on my wife; you have none such. I should consider myself to be
worse than wicked if I allowed any consideration of such a nature to
stand in the way of your best interests. Believe me, Alaric, that though
I shall, as others, be anxious for success myself, I should, in failing,
be much consoled by knowing that you had succeeded.' And as he finished
speaking he grasped his friend's hand warmly in token of the truth of
his assertion.

Alaric brushed a tear from his eye, and ended by promising to be guided
by his friend's advice. Harry Norman, as he walked into the office,
felt a glow of triumph as he reflected that he had done his duty by his
friend with true disinterested honesty. And Alaric, he also felt a glow
of triumph as he reflected that, come what might, there would be now
no necessity for him to break with Norman or with the Woodwards. Norman
must now always remember that it was at his own instigation that he,
Alaric, had consented to be a candidate.

As regarded the real fact of the candidature, the prize was too great
to allow of his throwing away such a chance. Alaric's present income was
£200; that which he hoped to gain was £600!



CHAPTER VII

MR. FIDUS NEVERBEND

Immediately on entering the office, Tudor gave it to be understood that
he intended to give in his name as a candidate; but he had hardly done
so when his attention was called off from the coming examinations by
another circumstance, which was ultimately of great importance to him.
One of the Assistant-Secretaries sent for him, and told him that his
services having been required by Sir Gregory Hardlines for a week or so,
he was at once to go over to that gentleman's office; and Alaric
could perceive that, as Sir Gregory's name was mentioned, the
Assistant-Secretary smiled on him with no aspect of benign solicitude.

He went over accordingly, and found that Sir Gregory, having been
desired to select a man for a special service in the country, had named
him. He was to go down to Tavistock with another gentleman from the
Woods and Forests, for the purpose of settling some disputed point as to
the boundaries and privileges of certain mines situated there on Crown
property.

'You know nothing about mining, I presume?' said Sir Gregory.

'Nothing whatever,' said Alaric.

'I thought not; that was one reason why I selected you. What is wanted
is a man of sharp intelligence and plain common sense, and one also who
can write English; for it will fall to your lot to draw up the report on
the matter. Mr. Neverbend, who is to be your colleague, cannot put two
words together.'

'Mr. Neverbend!' said Alaric.

'Yes, Fidus Neverbend, of the Woods and Forests; a very excellent public
servant, and one in whom the fullest confidence can be placed. But
between you and me, he will never set the Thames on fire.'

'Does he understand mining?' asked Alaric.

'He understands Government properties, and will take care that the Crown
be not wronged; but, Tudor, the Government will look to you to get the
true common-sense view of the case. I trust--I mean that I really do
trust, that you will not disgrace my choice.'

Alaric of course promised that he would do his best, expressed the
deepest gratitude to his patron, and went off to put himself into
communication with Mr. Neverbend at the Woods and Forests, having
received an assurance that the examination in his own office should
not take place till after his return from Tavistock. He was not slow to
perceive that if he could manage to come back with all the _éclat_ of
a successful mission, the prestige of such a journey would go far to
assist him on his coming trial.

Mr. Fidus Neverbend was an absolute dragon of honesty. His integrity was
of such an all-pervading nature, that he bristled with it as a porcupine
does with its quills. He had theories and axioms as to a man's conduct,
and the conduct especially of a man in the Queen's Civil Service, up
to which no man but himself could live. Consequently no one but himself
appeared to himself to be true and just in all his dealings.

A quarter of an hour spent over a newspaper was in his eyes a downright
robbery. If he saw a man so employed, he would divide out the total of
salary into hourly portions, and tell him to a fraction of how much he
was defrauding the public. If he ate a biscuit in the middle of the day,
he did so with his eyes firmly fixed on some document, and he had never
been known to be absent from his office after ten or before four.

When Sir Gregory Hardlines declared that Mr. Fidus Neverbend would
never set the Thames on fire, he meant to express his opinion that that
gentleman was a fool; and that those persons who were responsible for
sending Mr. Neverbend on the mission now about to be undertaken,
were little better than fools themselves for so sending him. But Mr.
Neverbend was no fool. He was not a disciple of Sir Gregory's school.
He had never sat in that philosopher's porch, or listened to the high
doctrines prevalent at the Weights and Measures. He could not write with
all Mr. Precis' conventional correctness, or dispose of any subject at
a moment's notice as would Mr. Uppinall; but, nevertheless, he was no
fool. Sir Gregory, like many other wise men, thought that there were
no swans but of his own hatching, and would ask, with all the pompous
conceit of Pharisees in another age, whether good could come out of the
Woods and Forests?

Sir Gregory, however, perfectly succeeded in his object of imbuing Tudor
with a very indifferent opinion of his new colleague's abilities. It was
his object that Tudor should altogether take the upper hand in the piece
of work which was to be done between them, and that it should be clearly
proved how very incapable the Woods and Forests were of doing their own
business.

Mr. Fidus Neverbend, however, whatever others in the outer world might
think of him, had a high character in his own office, and did not
under-estimate himself. He, when he was told that a young clerk
named Tudor was to accompany him, conceived that he might look on his
companion rather in the light of a temporary private secretary than an
equal partner, and imagined that new glory was added to him by his being
so treated. The two men therefore met each other with very different
views.

But though Mr. Neverbend was no fool, he was not an equal either in tact
or ability to Alaric Tudor. Alaric had his interview with him, and was
not slow to perceive the sort of man with whom he had to act. Of course,
on this occasion, little more than grimaces and civility passed between
them; but Mr. Neverbend, even in his grimaces and civility, managed to
show that he regarded himself as decidedly No. 1 upon the occasion.

'Well, Mr. Tudor,' said he, 'I think of starting on Tuesday. Tuesday
will not, I suppose, be inconvenient to you?'

'Sir Gregory has already told me that we are expected to be at Tavistock
on Tuesday evening.'

'Ah! I don't know about that,' said Neverbend; 'that may be all very
well for Sir Gregory, but I rather think I shall stay the night at
Plymouth.'

'It will be the same to me,' said Tudor; 'I haven't looked at the papers
yet, so I can hardly say what may be necessary.'

'No, no; of course not. As to the papers, I don't know that there is
much with which you need trouble yourself. I believe I am pretty well up
in the case. But, Mr. Tudor, there will be a good deal of writing to do
when we are there.'

'We are both used to that, I fancy,' said Tudor, 'so it won't kill us.'

'No, of course not. I understand that there will be a good many people
for me to see, a great many conflicting interests for me to reconcile;
and probably I may find myself obliged to go down two or three of these
mines.'

'Well, that will be good fun,' said Alaric.

Neverbend drew himself up. The idea of having fun at the cost of
Government was painful to him; however, he spared the stranger his
reproaches, and merely remarked that the work he surmised would be
heavy enough both for the man who went below ground, and for the one who
remained above.

The only point settled between them was that of their starting by
an early train on the Tuesday named; and then Alaric returned to Sir
Gregory's office, there to read through and digest an immense bulk of
papers all bearing on the question at issue. There had, it appeared,
been lately opened between the Tamar and the Tavy a new mine, which had
become exceedingly prosperous--outrageously prosperous, as shareholders
and directors of neighbouring mines taught themselves to believe. Some
question had arisen as to the limits to which the happy possessors of
this new tin El Dorado were entitled to go; squabbles, of course, had
been the result, and miners and masters had fought and bled, each side
in defence of its own rights. As a portion of these mines were on Crown
property it became necessary that the matter should be looked to, and as
the local inspector was accused of having been bribed and bought, and of
being, in fact, an absolute official Judas, it became necessary to send
some one to inspect the inspector. Hence had come Alaric's mission. The
name of the mine in question was Wheal Mary Jane, and Alaric had read
the denomination half a score of times before he learnt that there was
no real female in the case.

The Sunday before he went was of course passed at Hampton, and there he
received the full glory of his special appointment. He received glory,
and Norman in an equal degree fell into the background. Mrs. Woodward
stuck kindly to Harry, and endeavoured, in her gentle way, to quiz the
projected trip to Devonshire. But the other party was too strong, and
her raillery failed to have the intended effect. Gertrude especially
expressed her opinion that it was a great thing for so young a man to
have been selected for such employment by such a person; and Linda,
though she said less, could not prevent her tell-tale face from saying
more. Katie predicted that Alaric would certainly marry Mary Jane Wheal,
and bring her to Surbiton Cottage, and Captain Cuttwater offered to the
hero introductions to all the old naval officers at Devonport.

'By jingo! I should like to go with you,' said the captain.

'I fear the pleasure would not repay the trouble,' said Alaric,
laughing.

'Upon my word I think I'll do it,' said the captain. 'It would be of the
greatest possible service to you as an officer of the Crown. It would
give you so much weight there. I could make you known, you know----'

'I could not hear of such a thing,' said Alaric, trembling at the idea
which Uncle Bat had conjured up.

'There is Admiral Starbod, and Captain Focassel, and old Hardaport, and
Sir Jib Boom--why, d----n me, they would all do anything for me--craving
the ladies' pardon.'

Alaric, in his own defence, was obliged to declare that the rules of
the service especially required that he should hold no friendly
communication with any one during the time that he was employed on this
special service. Poor Captain Cuttwater, grieved to have his good nature
checked, was obliged to put up with this excuse, and consoled himself
with abusing the Government which could condescend to give so absurd an
order.

This was on the Saturday. On the Sunday, going to church, the captain
suggested that Alaric might, at any rate, just call upon Sir Jib on the
sly. 'It would be a great thing for you,' said Uncle Bat. 'I'll write
a note to-night, and you can take it with you. Sir Jib is a rising man,
and you'll regret it for ever if you miss the opportunity.' Now Sir Jib
Boom was between seventy and eighty, and he and Captain Cuttwater had
met each other nearly every day for the last twenty years, and had never
met without a squabble.

After church they had their usual walk, and Linda's heart palpitated as
she thought that she might have to undergo another _tête-à-tête_ with
her lover. But it palpitated in vain. It so turned out that Alaric
either avoided, or, at any rate, did not use the privilege, and Linda
returned home with an undefined feeling of gentle disappointment. She
had fully made up her mind to be very staid, very discreet, and very
collected; to take a leaf out of her sister's book, and give him no
encouragement whatever; she would not absolutely swear to him that she
did not now, and never could, return his passion; but she would point
out how very imprudent any engagement between two young persons,
situated as they were, must be--how foolish it would be for them to
bind themselves, for any number of years, to a marriage which must be
postponed; she would tell Alaric all this, and make him understand that
he was not to regard himself as affianced to her; but she with a woman's
faith would nevertheless remain true to him. This was Linda's great
resolve, and the strong hope, that in a very few weeks, Alaric would be
promoted to a marrying income of £600 per annum, made the prospect of
the task not so painful as it might otherwise have been. Fate, however,
robbed her of the pleasure, if it would have been a pleasure, of
sacrificing her love to her duty; and 'dear Linda, dearest Linda,' was
not again whispered into her ear.

'And what on earth is it that you are to do down in the mines?' asked
Mrs. Woodward as they sat together in the evening.

'Nothing on the earth, Mrs. Woodward--it is to be all below the surface,
forty fathom deep,' said Alaric.

'Take care that you ever come up again,' said she.

'They say the mine is exceedingly rich--perhaps I may be tempted to stay
down there.'

'Then you'll be like the gloomy gnome, that lives in dark, cold mines,'
said Katie.

'Isn't it very dangerous, going down into those places?' asked Linda.

'Men go down and come up again every day of their lives, and what other
men can do, I can, I suppose.'

'That doesn't follow at all,' said Captain Cuttwater, 'What sort of a
figure would you make on a yard-arm, reefing a sail in a gale of wind?'

'Pray do take care of yourself,' said Gertrude.

Norman's brow grew black. 'I thought that it was settled that Mr.
Neverbend was to go down, and that you were to stay above ground,' said
he.

'So Mr. Neverbend settled it; but that arrangement may, perhaps, be
unsettled again,' said Alaric, with a certain feeling of confidence in
his own strong will.

'I don't at all doubt,' said Mrs. Woodward, 'that if we were to get a
sly peep at you, we should find you both sitting comfortably at your inn
all the time, and that neither of you will go a foot below the ground.'

'Very likely. All I mean to say is, that if Neverbend goes down I'll go
too.'

'But mind, you gloomy gnome, mind you bring up a bit of gold for me,'
said Katie.

On the Monday morning he started with the often-expressed good wishes of
all the party, and with a note for Sir Jib Boom, which the captain made
him promise that he would deliver, and which Alaric fully determined to
lose long before he got to Plymouth.

That evening he and Norman passed together. As soon as their office
hours were over, they went into the London Exhibition, which was then
open; and there, walking up and down the long centre aisle, they talked
with something like mutual confidence of their future prospects. This
was a favourite resort with Norman, who had schooled himself to feel
an interest in works of art. Alaric's mind was of a different cast;
he panted rather for the great than the beautiful; and was inclined
to ridicule the growing taste of the day for torsos, Palissy ware, and
Assyrian monsters.

There was then some mutual confidence between the two young men. Norman,
who was apt to examine himself and his own motives more strictly than
Alaric ever did, had felt that something like suspicion as to his friend
had crept over him; and he had felt also that there was no ground for
such suspicion. He had determined to throw it off, and to be again
cordial with his companion. He had resolved so to do before his last
visit at Hampton; but it was at Hampton that the suspicion had been
engendered, and there he found himself unable to be genial, kindly, and
contented. Surbiton Cottage was becoming to him anything but the abode
of happiness that it had once been. A year ago he had been the hero of
the Hampton Sundays; he could not but now feel that Alaric had, as
it were, supplanted him with his own friends. The arrival even of so
insignificant a person as Captain Cuttwater--and Captain Cuttwater was
very insignificant in Norman's mind--had done much to produce this state
of things. He had been turned out of his bedroom at the cottage, and had
therefore lost those last, loving, lingering words, sometimes protracted
to so late an hour, which had been customary after Alaric's departure
to his inn--those last lingering words which had been so sweet because
their sweetness had not been shared with his friend.

He could not be genial and happy at Surbiton Cottage; but he was by no
means satisfied with himself that he should not have been so. When he
found that he had been surly with Alaric, he was much more angry with
himself than Alaric was with him. Alaric, indeed, was indifferent
about it. He had no wish to triumph over Harry, but he had an object to
pursue, and he was not the man to allow himself to be diverted from it
by any one's caprice.

'This trip is a great thing for you,' said Harry.

'Well, I really don't know. Of course I could not decline it; but on
the whole I should be just as well pleased to have been spared. If I get
through it well, why it will be well. But even that cannot help me at
this examination.'

'I don't know that.'

'Why--a week passed in the slush of a Cornish mine won't teach a man
algebra.'

'It will give you _prestige_.'

'Then you mean to say the examiners won't examine fairly; well, perhaps
so. But what will be the effect on me if I fail? I know nothing of
mines. I have a colleague with me of whom I can only learn that he
is not weak enough to be led, or wise enough to lead; who is so
self-opinionated that he thinks he is to do the whole work himself,
and yet so jealous that he fears I shall take the very bread out of his
mouth. What am I to do with such a man?'

'You must manage him,' said Harry.

'That is much easier said than done,' replied Alaric. 'I wish you had
the task instead of me.'

'So do not I. Sir Gregory, when he chose you, knew what he was about.'

'Upon my word, Harry, you are full of compliments to-day. I really ought
to take my hat off.'

'No, I am not; I am in no mood for compliments. I know very well what
stuff you are made of. I know your superiority to myself. I know you
will be selected to go up over all our heads. I feel all this; and
Alaric, you must not be surprised that, to a certain degree, it is
painful to me to feel it. But, by God's help I will get over it; and if
you succeed it shall go hard with me, but I will teach myself to rejoice
at it. Look at that fawn there,' said he, turning away his face to hide
the tear in his eye, 'did you ever see more perfect motion?'

Alaric was touched; but there was more triumph than sympathy in his
heart. It was sweet, much too sweet, to him to hear his superiority thus
acknowledged. He was superior to the men who worked round him in his
office. He was made of a more plastic clay than they, and despite the
inferiority of his education, he knew himself to be fit for higher work
than they could do. As the acknowledgement was made to him by the man
whom, of those around him, he certainly ranked second to himself, he
could not but feel that his heart's blood ran warm within him, he could
not but tread with an elastic step.

But it behoved him to answer Harry, and to answer him in other spirit
than this.

'Oh, Harry,' said he, 'you have some plot to ruin me by my own conceit;
to make me blow myself out and destroy myself, poor frog that I am, in
trying to loom as largely as that great cow, Fidus Neverbend. You know I
am fully conscious how much inferior my education has been to yours.'

'Education is nothing,' said Harry.

Education is nothing! Alaric triumphantly re-echoed the words in his
heart--'Education is nothing--mind, mind is everything; mind and the
will.' So he expressed himself to his own inner self; but out loud he
spoke much more courteously.

'It is the innate modesty of your own heart, Harry, that makes you think
so highly of me and so meanly of yourself. But the proof of what we each
can do is yet to be seen. Years alone can decide that. That your career
will be honourable and happy, of that I feel fully sure! I wish I were
as confident of mine.'

'But, Alaric,' said Norman, going on rather with the thread of his own
thoughts, than answering or intending to answer what the other said, 'in
following up your high ambition--and I know you have a high ambition--do
not allow yourself to believe that the end justifies the means, because
you see that men around you act as though they believed so.'

'Do I do so--do I seem to do so?' said Alaric, turning sharply round.

'Don't be angry with me, Alaric; don't think that I want to preach; but
sometimes I fancy, not that you do so, but that your mind is turning
that way; that in your eager desire for honourable success you won't
scrutinize the steps you will have to take.'

'That I would get to the top of the hill, in short, even though the
hillside be miry. Well, I own I wish to get to the top of the hill.'

'But not to defile yourself in doing so.'

'When a man comes home from a successful chase, with his bag well
stuffed with game, the women do not quarrel with him because there is
mud on his gaiters.'

'Alaric, that which is evil is evil. Lies are evil--'

'And am I a liar?'

'Heaven forbid that I should say so: heaven forbid that I should have to
think so! but it is by such doctrines as that that men become liars.'

'What! by having muddy gaiters?'

'By disregarding the means in looking to the end.'

'And I will tell you how men become mere vegetables, by filling their
minds with useless--needless scruples--by straining at gnats--'

'Well, finish your quotation,' said Harry.

'I have finished it; in speaking to you I would not for the world go
on, and seem to insinuate that you would swallow a camel. No insinuation
could be more base or unjust. But, nevertheless, I think you may be
too over-scrupulous. What great man ever rose to greatness,' continued
Alaric, after they had walked nearly the length of the building in
silence, 'who thought it necessary to pick his steps in the manner you
have described?'

'Then I would not be great,' said Harry.

'But, surely, God intends that there shall be great men on the earth?'

'He certainly wishes that there should be good men,' said Harry.

'And cannot a man be good and great?'

'That is the problem for a man to solve. Do you try that. Good you
certainly can be, if you look to Him for assistance. Let that come
first; and then the greatness, if that be possible.'

'It is all a quibble about a word,' said Alaric. 'What is good? David
was a man after God's own heart, and a great man too, and yet he did
things which, were I to do, I should be too base to live. Look
at Jacob--how did he achieve the tremendous rights of patriarchal
primogeniture? But, come, the policemen are trying to get rid of us;
it is time for us to go,' and so they left the building, and passed the
remainder of the evening in concord together--in concord so soon to be
dissolved, and, ah! perhaps never to be renewed.

On the next morning Alaric and his new companion met each other at an
early hour at the Paddington station. Neverbend was rather fussy
with his dispatch-box, and a large official packet, which an office
messenger, dashing up in a cab, brought to him at the moment of his
departure. Neverbend's enemies were wont to declare that a messenger, a
cab, and a big packet always rushed up at the moment of his starting on
any of his official trips. Then he had his ticket to get and his _Times_
to buy, and he really had not leisure to do more than nod at Alaric
till he had folded his rug around him, tried that the cushion was soft
enough, and completed his arrangements for the journey.

'Well, Mr. Tudor,' at last he said, as soon as the train was in motion,
'and how are you this morning--ready for work, I hope?'

'Well, not exactly at this moment,' said Alaric. 'One has to get up so
early for these morning trains.'

'Early, Mr. Tudor! my idea is that no hour should be considered either
early or late when the Crown requires our services.'

'Just at present the Crown requires nothing else of us, I suppose, but
that we should go along at the rate of forty miles an hour.'

'There is nothing like saving time,' said Neverbend. 'I know you have,
as yet, had no experience in these sort of cases, so I have brought you
the papers which refer to a somewhat similar matter that occurred in the
Forest of Dean. I was sent down there, and that is the report which I
then wrote. I propose to take it for the model of that which we shall
have to draw up when we return from Tavistock;' and as he spoke he
produced a voluminous document, or treatise, in which he had contrived
to render more obscure some matter that he had been sent to clear up, on
the Crown property in the Forest of Dean.

Now Alaric had been told of this very report, and was aware that he
was going to Tavistock in order that the joint result of his and Mr.
Neverbend's labours might be communicated to the Crown officers in
intelligible language.

The monster report before him contained twenty-six pages of close folio
writing, and he felt that he really could not oblige Mr. Neverbend by
reading it.

'Forest of Dean! ah, that's coal, is it not?' said Alaric. 'Mary
Jane seems to be exclusively in the tin line. I fear there will be no
analogy.'

'The cases are in many respects similar,' said Neverbend, 'and the
method of treating them----'

'Then I really cannot concur with you as to the propriety of my reading
it. I should feel myself absolutely wrong to read a word of such a
report, for fear I might be prejudiced by your view of the case. It
would, in my mind, be positively dishonest in me to encourage any bias
in my own feelings either on one side or the other.'

'But really, Mr. Tudor----'

'I need not say how much personal advantage it would be to me to have
the benefit of your experience, but my conscience tells me that I should
not do it--so I think I'll go to sleep.'

Mr. Neverbend did not know what to make of his companion; whether
to admire the high tone of his official honesty, or to reprobate his
idleness in refusing to make himself master of the report. While he was
settling the question in his own mind, Tudor went to sleep, and did
not wake till he was invited to partake of ten minutes' refreshment at
Swindon.

'I rather think,' said Mr. Neverbend, 'that I shall go on to Tavistock
to-night.'

'Oh! of course,' said Alaric. 'I never for a moment thought of stopping
short of it;' and, taking out a book, he showed himself disinclined for
further conversation.

'Of course, it's open to me to do as I please in such a matter,' said
Neverbend, continuing his subject as soon as they reached the Bristol
station, 'but on the whole I rather think we had better go on to
Tavistock to-night.'

'No, I will not stop at Plymouth,' he said, as he passed by Taunton; and
on reaching Exeter he declared that he had fully made up his mind on the
subject.

'We'll get a chaise at Plymouth,' said Alaric.

'I think there will be a public conveyance,' said Neverbend.

'But a chaise will be the quickest,' said the one.

'And much the dearest,' said the other.

'That won't signify much to us,' said Alaric; 'we shan't pay the bill.'

'It will signify a great deal to me,' said Neverbend, with a look of
ferocious honesty; and so they reached Plymouth.

On getting out of the railway carriage, Alaric at once hired a carriage
with a pair of horses; the luggage was strapped on, and Mr. Neverbend,
before his time for expostulation had fairly come, found himself posting
down the road to Tavistock, followed at a respectful distance by two
coaches and an omnibus.

They were soon drinking tea together at the Bedford Hotel, and I beg to
assure any travelling readers that they might have drunk tea in a much
worse place. Mr. Neverbend, though he made a great struggle to protect
his dignity, and maintain the superiority of his higher rank, felt the
ground sinking from beneath his feet from hour to hour. He could not at
all understand how it was, but even the servants at the hotel seemed to
pay more deference to Tudor than to him; and before the evening was
over he absolutely found himself drinking port wine negus, because his
colleague had ordered it for him.

'And now,' said Neverbend, who was tired with his long journey, 'I think
I'll go to bed.'

'Do,' said Alaric, who was not at all tired, 'and I'll go through this
infernal mass of papers. I have hardly looked at them yet. Now that I am
in the neighbourhood I shall better understand the strange names.'

So Alaric went to work, and studied the dry subject that was before
him. It will luckily not be necessary for us to do so also. It will be
sufficient for us to know that Wheal Mary Jane was at that moment
the richest of all the rich mines that had then been opened in that
district; that the, or its, or her shares (which is the proper way of
speaking of them I am shamefully ignorant) were at an enormous premium;
that these two Commissioners would have to see and talk to some scores
of loud and angry men, deeply interested in their success or failure,
and that that success or failure might probably in part depend on the
view which these two Commissioners might take.



CHAPTER VIII

THE HON. UNDECIMUS SCOTT


The Hon. Undecimus Scott was the eleventh son of the Lord Gaberlunzie.
Lord Gaberlunzie was the representative of a very old and very noble
race, more conspicuous, however, at the present time for its age and
nobility than for its wealth. The Hon. Undecimus, therefore, learnt,
on arriving at manhood, that he was heir only to the common lot of
mortality, and that he had to earn his own bread. This, however, could
not have surprised him much, as nine of his brethren had previously
found themselves in the same condition.

Lord Gaberlunzie certainly was not one of those wealthy peers who are
able to make two or three elder sons, and after that to establish any
others that may come with comfortable younger children's portions. The
family was somewhat accustomed to the _res angusta domi_; but they were
fully alive to the fact, that a noble brood, such as their own, ought
always to be able to achieve comfort and splendour in the world's broad
field, by due use of those privileges which spring from a noble name.
Cauldkail Castle, in Aberdeenshire, was the family residence; but few
of the eleven young Scotts were ever to be found there after arriving at
that age at which they had been able to fly from the paternal hall.

It is a terrible task, that of having to provide for eleven sons. With
two or three a man may hope, with some reasonable chance of seeing
his hope fulfilled, that things will go well with him, and that he may
descend to his grave without that worst of wretchedness, that gnawing
grief which comes from bad children. But who can hope that eleven sons
will all walk in the narrow path?

Had Lord Gaberlunzie, however, been himself a patriarch, and ruled
the pastoral plains of Palestine, instead of the bleak mountains which
surround Cauldkail Castle, he could not have been more indifferent as to
the number of his sons. They flew away, each as his time came, with the
early confidence of young birds, and as seldom returned to disturb the
family nest.

They were a cannie, comely, sensible brood. Their father and mother, if
they gave them nothing else, gave them strong bodies and sharp brains.
They were very like each other, though always with a difference. Red
hair, bright as burnished gold; high, but not very high, cheek bones;
and small, sharp, twinkling eyes, were the Gaberlunzie personal
characteristics. There were three in the army, two in the navy, and one
at a foreign embassy; one was at the diggings, another was chairman of
a railway company, and our own more particular friend, Undecimus,
was picking up crumbs about the world in a manner that satisfied the
paternal mind that he was quite able to fly alone.

There is a privilege common to the sons of all noble lords, the full
value of which the young Scotts learnt very early in life--that of
making any woman with a tocher an honourable lady. 'Ye maun be a puir
chiel, gin ye'll be worth less than ten thoosand pound in the market o'
marriage; and ten thoosand pound is a gawcey grand heritage!' Such had
been the fatherly precept which Lord Gaberlunzie had striven to instil
into each of his noble sons; and it had not been thrown away upon them.
One after the other they had gone forth into the market-place alluded
to, and had sold themselves with great ease and admirable discretion.
There had been but one Moses in the lot: the Hon. Gordon Hamilton Scott
had certainly brought home a bundle of shagreen spectacle cases in the
guise of a widow with an exceedingly doubtful jointure; doubtful indeed
at first, but very soon found to admit of no doubt whatever. He was the
one who, with true Scotch enterprise, was prosecuting his fortunes at
the Bendigo diggings, while his wife consoled herself at home with her
title.

Undecimus, with filial piety, had taken his father exactly at his word,
and swapped himself for £10,000. He had, however, found himself imbued
with much too high an ambition to rest content with the income arising
from his matrimonial speculation. He had first contrived to turn his
real £10,000 into a fabulous £50,000, and had got himself returned to
Parliament for the Tillietudlem district burghs on the credit of his
great wealth; he then set himself studiously to work to make a second
market by placing his vote at the disposal of the Government.

Nor had he failed of success in his attempt, though he had hitherto been
able to acquire no high or permanent post. He had soon been appointed
private secretary to the First Lord of the Stannaries, and he found that
his duty in this capacity required him to assist the Government whip in
making and keeping houses. This occupation was congenial to his spirit,
and he worked hard and well at it; but the greatest of men are open to
the tainting breath of suspicion, and the Honourable Undecimus Scott, or
Undy Scott, as he was generally now called, did not escape. Ill-natured
persons whispered that he was not on all occasions true to his party;
and once when his master, the whip-in-chief, overborne with too much
work, had been tempted to put himself to bed comfortably in his own
house, instead of on his usual uneasy couch behind the Speaker's chair,
Undy had greatly failed. The leader of a party whose struggles for the
religion of his country had hitherto met but small success, saw at a
glance the opportunity which fortune had placed in his way; he spied
with eagle eye the nakedness of that land of promise which is compressed
in the district round the Treasury benches; the barren field before him
was all his own, and he put and carried his motion for closing the parks
on Sundays.

He became a hero; but Undy was all but undone. The highest hope of the
Sabbatarian had been to address an almost empty house for an hour and
a half on this his favourite subject. But the chance was too good to
be lost; he sacrificed his oratorical longings on the altar of party
purpose, and limited his speech to a mere statement of his motion. Off
flew on the wings of Hansom a youthful member, more trusty than the
trusted Undy, to the abode of the now couchant Treasury Argus. Morpheus
had claimed him all for his own. He was lying in true enjoyment, with
his tired limbs stretched between the unaccustomed sheets, and snoring
with free and sonorous nose, restrained by the contiguity of no
Speaker's elbow. But even in his deepest slumber the quick wheels of
the bounding cab struck upon the tympanum of his anxious ear. He roused
himself as does a noble watch-dog when the 'suspicious tread of theft'
approaches. The hurry of the jaded horse, the sudden stop, the maddened
furious knock, all told a tale which his well-trained ear only knew too
well. He sat up for a moment, listening in his bed, stretched himself
with one involuntary yawn, and then stood upright on the floor. It
should not at any rate be boasted by any one that he had been found in
bed.

With elastic step, three stairs at a time, up rushed that young and
eager member. It was well for the nerves of Mrs. Whip Vigil that the
calls of society still held her bound in some distant brilliant throng;
for no consideration would have stopped the patriotic energy of that
sucking statesman. Mr. Vigil had already performed the most important
act of a speedy toilet, when his door was opened, and as his young
friend appeared was already buttoning his first brace.

'Pumpkin is up!' said the eager juvenile,' and we have only five men in
the house.'

'And where the devil is Undy Scott?' said the Right Hon. Mr. Vigil.

'The devil only knows,' said the other.

'I deserve it for trusting him,' said the conscience-stricken but worthy
public servant. By this time he had on his neckcloth and boots; in his
eager haste to serve his country he had forgotten his stockings. 'I
deserve it for trusting him--and how many men have they?'

'Forty-one when I left.'

'Then they'll divide, of course?'

'Of course they will,' said the promising young dove of the Treasury.

And now Mr. Whip Vigil had buttoned on that well-made frock with which
the Parliamentary world is so conversant, and as he descended the
stairs, arranged with pocket-comb his now grizzling locks. His
well-brushed hat stood ready to his touch below, and when he entered the
cab he was apparently as well dressed a gentleman as when about three
hours after noon he may be seen with slow and easy step entering the
halls of the Treasury chambers.

But ah! alas, he was all too late. He came but to see the ruin which
Undy's defection had brought about. He might have taken his rest, and
had a quiet mind till the next morning's _Times_ revealed to him the
fact of Mr. Pumpkin's grand success. When he arrived, the numbers
were being taken, and he, even he, Mr. Whip Vigil, he the great
arch-numberer, was excluded from the number of the counted. When the
doors were again open the Commons of England had decided by a majority
of forty-one to seven that the parks of London should, one and all,
be closed on Sundays; and Mr. Pumpkin had achieved among his own set a
week's immortality.

'We mustn't have this again, Vigil,' said a very great man the next
morning, with a good-humoured smile on his face, however, as he uttered
the reprimand. 'It will take us a whole night, and God knows how much
talking, to undo what those fools did yesterday.'

Mr. Vigil resolved to leave nothing again to the unassisted industry or
honesty of Undy Scott, and consequently that gentleman's claims on
his party did not stand so highly as they might have done but for this
accident. Parliament was soon afterwards dissolved, and either through
the lukewarm support of his Government friends, or else in consequence
of his great fortune having been found to be ambiguous, the independent
electors of the Tillietudlem burghs took it into their heads to unseat
Mr. Scott. Unseated for Tillietudlem, he had no means of putting himself
forward elsewhere, and he had to repent, in the sackcloth and ashes of
private life, the fault which had cost him the friendship of Mr. Vigil.

His life, however, was not strictly private. He had used the Honourable
before his name, and the M.P. which for a time had followed after it,
to acquire for himself a seat as director at a bank board. He was a
Vice-President of the Caledonian, English, Irish, and General European
and American Fire and Life Assurance Society; such, at least, had been
the name of the joint-stock company in question when he joined it; but
he had obtained much credit by adding the word 'Oriental,' and inserting
it after the allusion to Europe; he had tried hard to include the fourth
quarter of the globe; but, as he explained to some of his friends, it
would have made the name too cumbrous for th

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