An Old Man's Love
about with him! And that's what you call fine feelings. I call it
all rubbish. If you've a mind to make her Mrs Whittlestaff, make her
Mrs Whittlestaff. Drat them fine feelings. I never knew no good come
of what people call fine feelings. If a young woman does her work
as it should be, she's got no time to think of 'em. And if a man is
master, he should be master. How's a man to give way to a girl like
that, and then stand up and face the world around him? A man has to
be master; and when he's come to be a little old-like, he has to see
that he will be master. I never knew no good come of one of them
soft-going fellows who is minded to give up whenever a woman wants
anything. What's a woman? It ain't natural that she should have her
way; and she don't like a man a bit better in the long-run because
he lets her. There's Miss Mary; if you're stiff with her now, she'll
come out right enough in a month or two. She's lived without Mr
Gordon well enough since she's been here. Now he's come, and we hear
a deal about these fine feelings. You take my word, and say nothing
to nobody about the young man. He's gone by this time, or he's
a-going. Let him go, say I; and if Miss Mary takes on to whimper a
bit, don't you see it."
Mrs Baggett took her departure, and Mr Whittlestaff felt that he
had received the comfort, or at any rate the strength, of which he
had been in quest. In all that the woman had said to him, there had
been a re-echo of his own thoughts,--of one side, at any rate, of
his own thoughts. He knew that true affection, and the substantial
comforts of the world, would hold their own against all romance.
And he did not believe,--in his theory of ethics he did not
believe,--that by yielding to what Mrs Baggett called fine feelings,
he would in the long-run do good to those with whom he was concerned
in the world. Were he to marry Mary Lawrie now, Mary Whittlestaff
would, he thought, in ten years' time, be a happier woman than were
he to leave her. That was the solid conviction of his mind, and in
that he had been strengthened by Mrs Baggett's arguments. He had
desired to be so strengthened, and therefore his interview had been
successful.
But as the minutes passed by, as every quarter of an hour added
itself to the quarters that were gone, and as the hours grew on, and
the weakness of evening fell upon him, all his softness came back
again. They had dined at six o'clock, and at seven he declared his
purpose of strolling out by himself. On these summer evenings he
would often take Mary with him; but he now told her, with a sort of
apology, that he would rather go alone. "Do," she said, smiling up
into his face; "don't let me ever be in your way. Of course, a man
does not always want to have to find conversation for a young lady."
"If you are the young lady, I should always want it--only that I have
things to think of."
"Go and think of your things. I will sit in the garden and do my
stitching."
About a mile distant, where the downs began to rise, there was a walk
supposed to be common to all who chose to frequent it, but which was
entered through a gate which gave the place within the appearance of
privacy. There was a little lake inside crowded with water-lilies,
when the time for the water-lilies had come; and above the lake a
path ran up through the woods, very steep, and as it rose higher and
higher, altogether sheltered. It was about a mile in length till
another gate was reached; but during the mile the wanderer could
go off on either side, and lose himself on the grass among the
beech-trees. It was a favourite haunt with Mr Whittlestaff. Here he
was wont to sit and read his Horace, and think of the affairs of the
world as Horace depicted them. Many a morsel of wisdom he had here
made his own, and had then endeavoured to think whether the wisdom
had in truth been taken home by the poet to his own bosom, or had
only been a glitter of the intellect, never appropriated for any
useful purpose. "'Gemmas, marmor, ebur,'" he had said. "'Sunt qui non
habeant; est qui non curat habere.' I suppose he did care for jewels,
marble, and ivory, as much as any one. 'Me lentus Glycerae torret
amor meae.' I don't suppose he ever loved her really, or any other
girl." Thus he would think over his Horace, always having the volume
in his pocket.
Now he went there. But when he had sat himself down in a spot to
which he was accustomed, he had no need to take out his Horace. His
own thoughts came to him free enough without any need of his looking
for them to poetry. After all, was not Mrs Baggett's teaching a
damnable philosophy? Let the man be the master, and let him get
everything he can for himself, and enjoy to the best of his ability
all that he can get. That was the lesson as taught by her. But as he
sat alone there beneath the trees, he told himself that no teaching
was more damnable. Of course it was the teaching by which the world
was kept going in its present course; but when divested of its
plumage was it not absolutely the philosophy of selfishness? Because
he was a man, and as a man had power and money and capacity to do the
things after which his heart lusted, he was to do them for his own
gratification, let the consequences be what they might to one whom
he told himself that he loved! Did the lessons of Mrs Baggett run
smoothly with those of Jesus Christ?
Then within his own mind he again took Mrs Baggett's side of the
question. How mean a creature must he not become, if he were now to
surrender this girl whom he was anxious to make his wife! He knew of
himself that in such a matter he was more sensitive than others. He
could not let her go, and then walk forth as though little or nothing
were the matter with him. Now for the second time in his life he had
essayed to marry. And now for the second time all the world would
know that he had been accepted and then rejected. It was, he thought,
more than he could endure,--and live.
Then after he had sat there for an hour he got up and walked
home; and as he went he tried to resolve that he would reject the
philosophy of Mrs Baggett and accept the other. "If I only knew!"
he said as he entered his own gate. "If one could only see clearly!"
Then he found Mary still seated in the garden. "Nothing is to be
got," he said, "by asking you for an answer."
"In what have I failed?"
"Never mind. Let us go in and have a cup of tea." But she knew well
in what he accused her of failing, and her heart turned towards him
again.
CHAPTER XVII.
MR WHITTLESTAFF MEDITATES A JOURNEY.
The next day was Sunday, and was passed in absolute tranquillity.
Nothing was said either by Mr Whittlestaff or by Mary Lawrie; nor,
to the eyes of those among whom they lived, was there anything to
show that their minds were disturbed. They went to church in the
morning, as was usual with them, and Mary went also to the evening
service. It was quite pleasant to see Mrs Baggett start for her slow
Sabbath morning walk, and to observe how her appearance altogether
belied that idea of rags and tatters which she had given as to her
own wardrobe. A nicer dressed old lady, or a more becoming black silk
gown, you shall not see on a Sunday morning making her way to any
country church in England. While she was looking so pleasant and
demure,--one may say almost so handsome, in her old-fashioned and
apparently new bonnet,--what could have been her thoughts respecting
the red-nosed, one-legged warrior, and her intended life, to be
passed in fetching two-penn'orths of gin for him, and her endeavours
to get for him a morsel of wholesome food? She had had her breakfast
out of her own china tea-cup, which she used to boast was her own
property, as it had been given to her by Mr Whittlestaff's mother,
and had had her little drop of cream, and, to tell the truth, her
boiled egg, which she always had on a Sunday morning, to enable her
to listen to the long sermon of the Rev Mr Lowlad. She would talk
of her hopes and her burdens, and undoubtedly she was in earnest. But
she certainly did seem to make her hay very comfortably while the sun
shone.
Everything on this Sunday morning was pleasant, or apparently
pleasant, at Croker's Hall. In the evening, when Mary and the
maid-servants went to church, leaving Mrs Baggett at home to look
after the house and go to sleep, Mr Whittlestaff walked off to the
wooded path with his Horace. He did not read it very long. The bits
which he did usually read never amounted to much at a time. He would
take a few lines and then digest them thoroughly, wailing over them
or rejoicing, as the case might be. He was not at the present moment
much given to joy. "Intermissa, Venus, diu rursus bella moves? Parce,
precor, precor." This was the passage to which he turned at the
present moment; and very little was the consolation which he found
in it. What was so crafty, he said to himself, or so vain as that an
old man should hark back to the pleasures of a time of life which was
past and gone! "Non sum qualis eram," he said, and then thought with
shame of the time when he had been jilted by Catherine Bailey,--the
time in which he had certainly been young enough to love and be
loved, had he been as lovable as he had been prone to love. Then he
put the book in his pocket. His latter effort had been to recover
something of the sweetness of life, and not, as had been the poet's,
to drain those dregs to the bottom. But when he got home he bade Mary
tell him what Mr Lowlad had said in his sermon, and was quite cheery
in his manner of picking Mr Lowlad's theology to pieces;--for Mr
Whittlestaff did not altogether agree with Mr Lowlad as to the uses
to be made of the Sabbath.
On the next morning he began to bustle about a little, as was usual
with him before he made a journey; and it did escape him, while he
was talking to Mrs Baggett about a pair of trousers which it turned
out that he had given away last summer, that he meditated a journey
to London on the next day.
"You ain't a-going?" said Mrs Baggett.
"I think I shall."
"Then don't. Take my word for it, sir,--don't." But Mr Whittlestaff
only snubbed her, and nothing more was said about the journey at the
moment.
In the course of the afternoon visitors came. Miss Evelina Hall with
Miss Forrester had been driven into Alresford, and now called in
company with Mr Blake. Mr Blake was full of his own good tidings,
but not so full but that he could remember, before he took his
departure, to say a half whispered word on behalf of John Gordon.
"What do you think, Mr Whittlestaff? Since you were at Little
Alresford we've settled the day."
"You needn't be telling it to everybody about the county," said
Kattie Forrester.
"Why shouldn't I tell it to my particular friends? I am sure Miss
Lawrie will be delighted to hear it."
"Indeed I am," said Mary.
"And Mr Whittlestaff also. Are you not, Mr Whittlestaff?"
"I am very happy to hear that a couple whom I like so well are soon
to be made happy. But you have not yet told us the day."
"The 1st of August," said Evelina Hall.
"The 1st of August," said Mr Blake, "is an auspicious day. I am sure
there is some reason for regarding it as auspicious, though I cannot
exactly remember what. It is something about Augustus, I think."
"I never heard of such an idea to come from a clergyman of the Church
of England," said the bride. "I declare Montagu never seems to think
that he's a clergyman at all."
"It will be better for him," said Mr Whittlestaff, "and for all
those about him, that he should ever remember the fact and never seem
to do so."
"All the same," said Blake, "although the 1st of August is
auspicious, I was very anxious to be married in July, only the
painters said they couldn't be done with the house in time. One is