Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? If it happens tohave been cut in stone, though it lie face down-most for ages on aforsaken beach, or "rest quietly under the drums and tramplings of manyconquests," it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations andother scandals gossiped about long empires ago:—this world beingapparently a huge whispering-gallery. Such conditions are often minutelyrepresented in our petty lifetimes. As the stone which has been kicked bygenerations of clowns may come by curious little links of effect under theeyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at last fix the date ofinvasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has longbeen an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at last be laid open underthe one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into theopening of a catastrophe. To Uriel watching the progress of planetaryhistory from the sun, the one result would be just as much of acoincidence as the other.
Having made this rather lofty comparison I am less uneasy in callingattention to the existence of low people by whose interference, howeverlittle we may like it, the course of the world is very much determined. Itwould be well, certainly, if we could help to reduce their number, andsomething might perhaps be done by not lightly giving occasion to theirexistence. Socially speaking, Joshua Rigg would have been generallypronounced a superfluity. But those who like Peter Featherstone neverhad a copy of themselves demanded, are the very last to wait for such arequest either in prose or verse. The copy in this case bore more ofoutside resemblance to the mother, in whose sex frog-features,accompanied with fresh-colored cheeks and a well-rounded figure, arecompatible with much charm for a certain order of admirers. The resultis sometimes a frog-faced male, desirable, surely, to no order ofintelligent beings. Especially when he is suddenly brought into evidenceto frustrate other people's expectations—the very lowest aspect in whicha social superfluity can present himself.
But Mr. Rigg Featherstone's low characteristics were all of the sober,water-drinking kind. From the earliest to the latest hour of the day hewas always as sleek, neat, and cool as the frog he resembled, and oldPeter had secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more calculating,and far more imperturbable, than himself. I will add that his finger-nailswere scrupulously attended to, and that he meant to marry a well-educated young lady (as yet unspecified) whose person was good, andwhose connections, in a solid middle-class way, were undeniable. Thushis nails and modesty were comparable to those of most gentlemen;though his ambition had been educated only by the opportunities of aclerk and accountant in the smaller commercial houses of a seaport. Hethought the rural Featherstones very simple absurd people, and they intheir turn regarded his "bringing up" in a seaport town as an exaggerationof the monstrosity that their brother Peter, and still more Peter'sproperty, should have had such belongings.
The garden and gravel approach, as seen from the two windows ofthe wainscoted parlor at Stone Court, were never in better trim thannow, when Mr. Rigg Featherstone stood, with his hands behind him,looking out on these grounds as their master. But it seemed doubtfulwhether he looked out for the sake of contemplation or of turning hisback to a person who stood in the middle of the room, with his legsconsiderably apart and his hands in his trouser-pockets: a person in allrespects a contrast to the sleek and cool Rigg. He was a man obviouslyon the way towards sixty, very florid and hairy, with much gray in hisbushy whiskers and thick curly hair, a stoutish body which showed todisadvantage the somewhat worn joinings of his clothes, and the air of aswaggerer, who would aim at being noticeable even at a show offireworks, regarding his own remarks on any other person's performanceas likely to be more interesting than the performance itself.
His name was John Raffles, and he sometimes wrote jocosely W.A.G.after his signature, observing when he did so, that he was once taught byLeonard Lamb of Finsbury who wrote B.A. after his name, and that he,Raffles, originated the witticism of calling that celebrated principal Ba-Lamb. Such were the appearance and mental flavor of Mr. Raffles, bothof which seemed to have a stale odor of travellers' rooms in thecommercial hotels of that period.
"Come, now, Josh," he was saying, in a full rumbling tone, "look at itin this light: here is your poor mother going into the vale of years, andyou could afford something handsome now to make her comfortable."
"Not while you live. Nothing would make her comfortable while youlive," returned Rigg, in his cool high voice. "What I give her, you'll take."
"You bear me a grudge, Josh, that I know. But come, now—asbetween man and man—without humbug—a little capital might enableme to make a first-rate thing of the shop. The tobacco trade is growing. Ishould cut my own nose off in not doing the best I could at it. I shouldstick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake. I should always be onthe spot. And nothing would make your poor mother so happy. I'vepretty well done with my wild oats—turned fifty-five. I want to settledown in my chimney-corner. And if I once buckled to the tobacco trade,I could bring an amount of brains and experience to bear on it thatwould not be found elsewhere in a hurry. I don't want to be botheringyou one time after another, but to get things once for all into the rightchannel. Consider that, Josh—as between man and man—and with yourpoor mother to be made easy for her life. I was always fond of the oldwoman, by Jove!"
"Have you done?" said Mr. Rigg, quietly, without looking away fromthe window.
"Yes, I've done," said Raffles, taking hold of his hat which stoodbefore him on the table, and giving it a sort of oratorical push.
"Then just listen to me. The more you say anything, the less I shallbelieve it. The more you want me to do a thing, the more reason I shallhave for never doing it. Do you think I mean to forget your kicking mewhen I was a lad, and eating all the best victual away from me and mymother? Do you think I forget your always coming home to sell andpocket everything, and going off again leaving us in the lurch? I shouldbe glad to see you whipped at the cart-tail. My mother was a fool to you:she'd no right to give me a father-in-law, and she's been punished for it.She shall have her weekly allowance paid and no more: and that shall bestopped if you dare to come on to these premises again, or to come intothis country after me again. The next time you show yourself inside thegates here, you shall be driven off with the dogs and the wagoner'swhip."
As Rigg pronounced the last words he turned round and looked atRaffles with his prominent frozen eyes. The contrast was as striking as itcould have been eighteen years before, when Rigg was a most unengagingkickable boy, and Raffles was the rather thick-set Adonis of bar-roomsand back-parlors. But the advantage now was on the side of Rigg, andauditors of this conversation might probably have expected that Raffleswould retire with the air of a defeated dog. Not at all. He made agrimace which was habitual with him whenever he was "out" in a game;then subsided into a laugh, and drew a brandy-flask from his pocket.
"Come, Josh," he said, in a cajoling tone, "give us a spoonful ofbrandy, and a sovereign to pay the way back, and I'll go. Honor bright!I'll go like a bullet, by Jove!"
"Mind," said Rigg, drawing out a bunch of keys, "if I ever see youagain, I shan't speak to you. I don't own you any more than if I saw acrow; and if you want to own me you'll get nothing by it but a characterfor being what you are—a spiteful, brassy, bullying rogue."
"That's a pity, now, Josh," said Raffles, affecting to scratch his headand wrinkle his brows upward as if he were nonplussed. "I'm very fondof you; by Jove, I am! There's nothing I like better than plaguing you—you're so like your mother, and I must do without it. But the brandy andthe sovereign's a bargain."
He jerked forward the flask and Rigg went to a fine old oaken bureauwith his keys. But Raffles had reminded himself by his movement withthe flask that it had become dangerously loose from its leather covering,and catching sight of a folded paper which had fallen within the fender,he took it up and shoved it under the leather so as to make the glassfirm.
By that time Rigg came forward with a brandy-bottle, filled the flask,and handed Raffles a sovereign, neither looking at him nor speaking tohim. After locking up the bureau again, he walked to the window andgazed out as impassibly as he had done at the beginning of the interview,while Raffles took a small allowance from the flask, screwed it up, anddeposited it in his side-pocket, with provoking slowness, making agrimace at his stepson's back.
"Farewell, Josh—and if forever!" said Raffles, turning back his headas he opened the door.
Rigg saw him leave the grounds and enter the lane. The gray day hadturned to a light drizzling rain, which freshened the hedgerows and thegrassy borders of the by-roads, and hastened the laborers who wereloading the last shocks of corn. Raffles, walking with the uneasy gait of atown loiterer obliged to do a bit of country journeying on foot, looked asincongruous amid this moist rural quiet and industry as if he had been ababoon escaped from a menagerie. But there were none to stare at himexcept the long-weaned calves, and none to show dislike of hisappearance except the little water-rats which rustled away at hisapproach.
He was fortunate enough when he got on to the highroad to beovertaken by the stage-coach, which carried him to Brassing; and therehe took the new-made railway, observing to his fellow-passengers that heconsidered it pretty well seasoned now it had done for Huskisson. Mr.Raffles on most occasions kept up the sense of having been educated atan academy, and being able, if he chose, to pass well everywhere;indeed, there was not one of his fellow-men whom he did not feelhimself in a position to ridicule and torment, confident of theentertainment which he thus gave to all the rest of the company.
He played this part now with as much spirit as if his journey hadbeen entirely successful, resorting at frequent intervals to his flask. Thepaper with which he had wedged it was a letter signed NicholasBulstrode, but Raffles was not likely to disturb it from its present usefulposition.
CHAPTER XLII.
"How much, methinks, I could despise this man
Were I not bound in charity against it!
—SHAKESPEARE: Henry VIII.
One of the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his returnfrom his wedding-journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence of aletter which had requested him to fix a time for his visit.
Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature ofhis illness to Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed any anxietyas to how far it might be likely to cut short his labors or his life. On thispoint, as on all others, he shrank from pity; and if the suspicion of beingpitied for anything in his lot surmised or known in spite of himself wasembittering, the idea of calling forth a show of compassion by franklyadmitting an alarm or a sorrow was necessarily intolerable to him. Everyproud mind knows something of this experience, and perhaps it is onlyto be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough to make all effortsat isolation seem mean and petty instead of exalting.
But Mr. Casaubon was now brooding over something through whichthe question of his health and life haunted his silence with a moreharassing importunity even than through the autumnal unripeness of hisauthorship. It is true that this last might be called his central ambition;but there are some kinds of authorship in which by far the largest resultis the uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the consciousness of theauthor—one knows of the river by a few streaks amid a long-gathereddeposit of uncomfortable mud. That was the way with Mr. Casaubon'shard intellectual labors. Their most characteristic result was not the "Keyto all Mythologies," but a morbid consciousness that others did not givehim the place which he had not demonstrably merited—a perpetualsuspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to hisadvantage—a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts atachievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he hadachieved nothing.
Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to haveabsorbed and dried him, was really no security against wounds, least ofall against those which came from Dorothea. And he had begun now toframe possibilities for the future which were somehow more embitteringto him than anything his mind had dwelt on before.
Against certain facts he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw'sexistence, his defiant stay in the neighborhood of Lowick, and hisflippant state of mind with regard to the possessors of authentic, well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea's nature, always taking on somenew shape of ardent activity, and even in submission and silencecovering fervid reasons which it was an irritation to think of: againstcertain notions and likings which had taken possession of her mind inrelation to subjects that he could not possibly discuss with her. Therewas no denying that Dorothea was as virtuous and lovely a young ladyas he could have obtained for a wife; but a young lady turned out to besomething more troublesome than he had conceived. She nursed him, sheread to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous about hisfeelings; but there had entered into the husband's mind the certainty thatshe judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like a penitentialexpiation of unbelieving thoughts—was accompanied with a power ofcomparison by which himself and his doings were seen too luminously asa part of things in general. His discontent passed vapor-like through allher gentle loving manifestations, and clung to that inappreciative worldwhich she had only brought nearer to him.
Poor Mr. Casaubon! This suffering was the harder to bear because itseemed like a betrayal: the young creature who had worshipped him withperfect trust had quickly turned into the critical wife; and early instancesof criticism and resentment had made an impression which notenderness and submission afterwards could remove. To his suspiciousinterpretation Dorothea's silence now was a suppressed rebellion; aremark from her which he had not in any way anticipated was anassertion of conscious superiority; her gentle answers had an irritatingcautiousness in them; and when she acquiesced it was a self-approvedeffort of forbearance. The tenacity with which he strove to hide thisinward drama made it the more vivid for him; as we hear with the morekeenness what we wish others not to hear.
