Loe raamatut: «Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service», lehekülg 3

CONFESSION THE SECOND

AS TO LOVE

CHAPTER I. “IN DOUBT”

The door into the anteroom where I was waiting stood half-open, and I heard a very imperious voice say, “Tell Mr. Gosslett it is impossible, – quite impossible! There are above three hundred applicants, and I believe he is about the least suitable amongst them.” A meek-looking young gentleman came out after this; and, closing the door cautiously, said, “My Lord regrets extremely, Mr. Gosslett, that you should have been so late in forwarding your testimonials. He has already filled the place; but if another vacancy occurs, his Lordship will bear your claims in mind.”

I bowed in silent indignation, and withdrew. How I wished there had been any great meeting, any popular gathering, near me at that moment, that I might go down and denounce, with all the force of a wounded and insulted spirit, the insolence of office and the tyranny of the place-holder! With what withering sarcasm I would have flayed those parasites of certain great houses who, without deserts of their own, regard every office under the Crown as their just prerogative! Who was Henry Lord Scatterdale that he should speak thus of Paul Gosslett? What evidences of ability had he given to the world? What illustrious proofs of high capacity as a minister, that he should insult one of those who, by the declared avowal of his party, are the bone and sinew of England? Let Beales only call another meeting, and shall I not be there to expose these men to the scorn and indignation of the country? Down with the whole rotten edifice of pampered menials and corrupt place-men, – down with families patented to live on the nation, – down with a system which perpetuates the worst intrigues that ever disgraced and demoralized a people, – a system worse than the corrupt rule of the Bourbons of Naples, and more degrading than —

“Now, stoopid!” cried a cabman, as one of his shafts struck me on the shoulder, and sent me spinning into an apple-stall.

I recovered my legs, and turned homewards to my lodgings in a somewhat more subdued spirit.

“Please, sir,” said a dirty maid-of-all-work, entering my room after me, “Mrs. Mechim says the apartment is let to another gentleman after Monday, and please begs you have to pay one pound fourteen and threepence, sir.”

“I know, I know,” said I, impatiently.

“Yes, sir,” replied the smutty face, still standing in the same place.

“Well, I have told you I know all that. You have got your answer, haven’t you?”

“Please yes, sir, but not the money.”

“Leave the room,” said I, haughtily; and my grand imperious air had its success, for I believe she suspected I was a little deranged.

I locked the door to be alone with my own thoughts, and, opening my writing-desk, I spread before me four sovereigns and some silver. “Barely my funeral expenses,” said I, bitterly. I leaned my head on my hand, and fell into a mood of sad thought. I was n’t a bit of a poet. I could n’t have made three lines of verse had you given me a million for it; but somehow I bethought me of Chatterton in his garret, and said to myself, “Like him, poor Gosslett sunk, famished in the midst of plenty, – a man in all the vigor of youth, able, active, and energetic, with a mind richly gifted, and a heart tender as a woman’s.” I could n’t go on. I blubbered out into a fit of crying that nearly choked me.

“Please, sir,” said the maid, tapping at the door, “the gentleman in the next room begs you not to laugh so loud.”

“Laugh!” burst I out. “Tell him, woman, to take care and be present at the inquest. His evidence will be invaluable.” As I spoke, I threw myself on my bed, and fell soon after into a sound sleep.

When I woke, it was night. The lamps were lighted in the street, and a small, thin rain was falling, blurring the gas-flame, and making everything look indistinct and dreary. I sat at the window and looked out, I know not how long. The world was crape-covered to me; not a thought of it that was not dark and dismal. I tried to take a retrospect of my life, and see where and how I might have done better; but all I could collect was, that I had met nothing but ingratitude and injustice, while others, with but a tithe of my capacity, had risen to wealth and honor. I, fated to evil from my birth, fought my long fight with fortune, and sank at last, exhausted. “I wonder will any one ever say, ‘Poor Gosslett’? I wonder will there be – even late though it be – one voice to declare, ‘That was no common man! Gosslett, in any country but our own, would have been distinguished and honored. To great powers of judgment he united a fancy rich, varied, and picturesque; his temperament was poetic, but his reasoning faculties asserted the mastery over his imagination ‘? Will they be acute enough to read me thus? Will they know, – in one word, – will they know the man they have suffered to perish in the midst of them?” My one gleam of comfort was the unavailing regret I should leave to a world that had neglected me. “Yes,” said I, bitterly, “weep on, and cease not.”

I made a collection of all my papers, – some of them very curious indeed, – stray fragments of my life, – brief jottings of my opinions on the current topics of the day. I sealed these carefully up, and began to bethink me whom I should appoint my literary executor. I had not the honor of his acquaintance, but how I wished I had known Martin Tupper! There were traits in that man’s writings that seemed to vibrate in the closer chambers of my heart. While others gave you words and phrases, he gave you the outgushings of a warm nature, – the overflowings of an affectionate heart. I canvassed long with myself whether a stranger might dare to address him, and prefer such a request as mine; but I could not summon courage to take the daring step.

After all, thought I, a man’s relatives are his natural heirs. My mother’s sister had married a Mr. Morse, who had retired from business, and settled down in a cottage near Rochester. He had been “in rags” – I mean the business of that name – for forty years, and made a snug thing of it; but, by an unlucky speculation, had lost more than half of his savings. Being childless, and utterly devoid of affection for any one, he had purchased an annuity on the joint lives of his wife and himself, and retired to pass his days near his native town.

I never liked him, nor did he like me. He was a hard, stern, coarse-natured man, who thought that any one who had ever failed in anything was a creature to be despised, and saw nothing in want of success but an innate desire to live in indolence, and be supported by others. He often asked me why I did n’t turn coal-heaver? He said he would have been a coal-heaver rather than be dependent upon his relations.

My aunt might originally have been somewhat softer-natured, but time and association had made her very much like my uncle. Need I say that I saw little of them, and never, under any circumstances, wrote a line to either of them?

I determined I would go down and see them, and, not waiting for morning nor the rail, that I would go on foot. It was raining torrents by this time, but what did I care for that? When the ship was drifting on the rocks, what mattered a leak more or less?

It was dark night when I set out; and when day broke, dim and dreary, I was soaked thoroughly through, and not more than one-fifth of the way. There was, however, that in the exercise, and in the spirit it called forth, to rally me out of my depression; and I plodded along through mud and mire, breasting the swooping rain in a far cheerier frame than I could have thought possible. It was closing into darkness as I reached the little inn where the cottage stood, and I was by this time fairly beat between fatigue and hunger.

“Here’s a go!” cried my uncle, who opened the door for me. “Here’s Paul Gosslett, just as we’re going to dinner.”

“The very time to suit him,” said I, trying to be jocular.

“Yes, lad, but will it suit us? We ‘ve only an Irish stew, and not too much of it, either.”

“How are you, Paul?” said my aunt, offering her hand. “You seem wet through. Won’t you dry your coat?”

“Oh, it’s no matter,” said I. “I never mind wet.”

“Of course he does n’t,” said my uncle. “What would he do if he was up at the ‘diggins’? What would he do if he had to pick rags as I have, ten, twelve hours at a stretch, under heavier rain than this?”

“Just so, sir,” said I, concurring with all he said.

“And what brought you down, lad?” asked he.

“I think, sir, it was to see you and my aunt. I haven’t been very well of late, and I fancied a day in the country might rally me.”

“Stealing a holiday, – the old story,” muttered he. “Are you doing anything now?”

“No, sir. I have unfortunately nothing to do.”

“Why not go on the quay then, and turn coal-heaver? I ‘d not eat bread of another man’s earning when I could carry a sack of coals. Do you understand that?”

“Perhaps I do, sir; but I’m scarcely strong enough to be a coal-porter.”

“Sell matches, then, – lucifer matches!” cried he, with a bang of his hand on the table, “or be a poster.”

“Oh, Tom!” cried my aunt, who saw that I had grown first red, and then sickly pale all over.

“As good men as he have done both. But here’s the dinner, and I suppose you must have your share of it.”

I was in no mood to resent this invitation, discourteous as it was, for I was in no mood to resent anything. I was crushed and humbled to a degree that I began to regard my abject condition as a martyr might his martyrdom.

The meal went over somewhat silently; little was spoken on any side. A half-jocular remark on the goodness of my appetite was the only approach to a pleasantry. My uncle drank something which by the color I judged to be port, but he neither offered it to my aunt nor myself. She took water, and I drank largely of beer, which once more elicited a compliment to me on my powers of suction.

“Better have you for a week than a fortnight, lad,” said my uncle, as we drew round the fire after dinner.

My aunt now armed herself with some knitting apparatus, while my uncle, flanked by a smoking glass of toddy on one side and the “Tizer” on the other, proceeded to fill his pipe with strong tobacco, puffing out at intervals short and pithy apothegms about youth being the season for work and age for repose, – under the influence of whose drowsy wisdom, and overcome by the hot fire, I fell off fast asleep. For a while I was so completely lost in slumber that I heard nothing around. At last I began to dream of my long journey, and the little towns I had passed through, and the places I fain would have stopped at to bait and rest, but nobly resisted, never breaking bread nor tasting water till I had reached my journey’s end. At length I fancied I heard people calling me by my name, some saying words of warning or caution, and others jeering and bantering me; and then quite distinctly, – as clearly as though the words were in my ear, – I heard my aunt say, – “I’m sure Lizzy would take him. She was shamefully treated by that heartless fellow, but she’s getting over it now; and if any one, even Paul there, offered, I ‘m certain she ‘d not refuse him.”

“She has a thousand pounds,” grunted out my uncle.

“Fourteen hundred in the bank; and as they have no other child, they must leave her everything they have, when they die.”

“It won’t be much. Old Dan has little more than his vicarage, and he always ends each year a shade deeper in debt than the one before it.”

“Well, she has her own fortune, and nobody can touch that.”

I roused myself, yawned aloud, and opened my eyes.

“Pretty nigh as good a hand at sleeping as eating,” said my uncle, gruffly.

“It’s a smart bit of a walk from Duke Street, Piccadilly,” said I, with more vigor than I had yet assumed.

“Why, a fellow of your age ought to do that twice a week just to keep him in wind.”

“I say, Paul,” said my aunt, “were you ever in Ireland?”

“Never, aunt. Why do you ask me?”

“Because you said a little while back that you felt rather poorly of late, – low and weakly.”

“No loss of appetite, though,” chuckled in my uncle.

“And we were thinking,” resumed she, “of sending you over to stay a few weeks with an old friend of ours in Donegal. He calls it the finest air in Europe; and I know he ‘d treat you with every kindness.”

“Do you shoot?” asked my uncle.

“No, sir.”

“Nor fish?”

“No, sir.”

“What are you as a sportsman? Can you ride? Can you do anything?”

“Nothing whatever, sir. I once carried a game-bag, and that was all.”

“And you’re not a farmer nor a judge of cattle. How are you to pass your time, I ‘d like to know?”

“If there were books, or if there were people to talk to – ”

“Mrs. Dudgeon’s deaf, – she’s been deaf these twenty years; but she has a daughter. Is Lizzy deaf?”

“Of course she’s not,” rejoined my aunt, tartly.

“Well, she’d talk to you; and Dan would talk. Not much, I believe, though; he a’n’t a great fellow for talk.”

“They ‘re something silent all of them, but Lizzy is a nice girl and very pretty, – at least she was when I saw her here two years ago.”

“At all events, they are distant connections of your mother’s; and as you are determined to live on your relations, I think you ought to give them a turn.”

“There is some justice in that, sir,” said I, determined now to resent no rudeness, nor show offence at any coarseness, however great it might be.

“Well, then, I ‘ll write to-morrow, and say you ‘ll follow my letter, and be with them soon after they receive it. I believe it’s a lonely sort of place enough, – Dan calls it next door to Greenland; but there’s good air, and plenty of it.”

We talked for some time longer over the family whose guest I was to be, and I went off to bed, determined to see out this new act of my life’s drama before I whistled for the curtain to drop.

It gave a great additional interest besides to my journey to have overheard the hint my aunt threw out about a marriage. It was something more than a mere journey for change of air. It might be a journey to change the whole character and fortune of my life. And was it not thus one’s fate ever turned? You went somewhere by a mere accident, or you stopped at home. You held a hand to help a lady into a boat, or you assisted her off her horse, or you took her in to dinner; and out of something insignificant and trivial as this your whole life’s destiny was altered. And not alone your destiny, but your very nature; your temper, as fashioned by another’s temper; your tastes as moulded by others’ tastes; and your morality, your actual identity, was the sport of a casualty too small and too poor to be called an incident.

“Is this about to be the turning-point in my life?” asked I of myself. “Is Fortune at last disposed to bestow a smile upon me? Is it out of the very depth of my despair I ‘m to catch sight of the first gleam of light that has fallen upon my luckless career?”

CHAPTER II. THE REV. DAN DUDGEON

My plan of procedure was to be this. I was supposed to be making a tour in Ireland, when, hearing of certain connections of my mother’s family living in Donegal, I at once wrote to my uncle Morse for an introduction to them, and he not only provided me with a letter accrediting me, but wrote by the same post to the Dudgeons to say I was sure to pay them a visit.

On arriving in Dublin I was astonished to find so much that seemed unlike what I had left behind me. That intense preoccupation, that anxious eager look of business so remarkable in Liverpool, was not to be found here. If the people really were busy, they went about their affairs in a half-lounging, half-jocular humor, as though they wouldn’t be selling hides, or shipping pigs, or landing sugar hogsheads, if they had anything else to do, – as if trade was a dirty necessity, and the only thing was to get through with it with as little interruption as possible to the pleasanter occupations of life.

Such was the aspect of things on the quays. The same look pervaded the Exchange, and the same air of little to do, and of deeming it a joke while doing it, abounded in the law courts, where the bench exchanged witty passages with the bar; and the prisoners, the witnesses, and the jury fired smart things at each other with a seeming geniality and enjoyment that were very remarkable. I was so much amused by all I saw, that I would willingly have delayed some days in the capital; but my uncle had charged me to present myself at the vicarage without any unnecessary delay; so I determined to set out at once. I was not, I shame to own, much better up in the geography of Ireland than in that of Central Africa, and had but a very vague idea whither I was going.

“Do you know Donegal?” asked I of the waiter, giving to my pronunciation of the word a long second and a short third syllable.

“No, your honor, never heard of him,” was the answer.

“But it’s a place I’m asking for, – a county,” said I, with some impatience.

“Faix, maybe it is,” said he; “but it’s new to me, all the same.”

“He means Donegal,” said a red-whiskered man with a bronzed weather-beaten face, and a stern defiant air, that invited no acquaintanceship.

“Oh, Donegal,” chimed in the waiter. “Begorra! it would n’t be easy to know it by the name your honor gav’ it.”

“Are you looking for any particular place in that county?” asked the stranger in a tone sharp and imperious as his former speech.

“Yes,” said I, assuming a degree of courtesy that I thought would be the best rebuke to his bluntness; “but I ‘ll scarcely trust myself with the pronunciation after my late failure. This is the place I want;” and I drew forth my uncle’s letter and showed the address.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” cried he, reading aloud. “‘The Reverend Daniel Dudgeon, Killyrotherum, Donegal.’ And are you going there? Oh, I see you are,” said he, turning his eyes to the foot of the address. ‘“Favored by Paul Gosslett, Esq.’ and you are Paul Gosslett.”

“Yes, sir, with your kind permission, I am Paul Gosslett,” said I, with what I hoped was a chilling dignity of manner.

“If it’s only my permission you want, you may be anything you please,” said he, turning his insolent stare full on me.

I endeavored not to show any sensitiveness to this impertinence, and went on with my dinner, the stranger’s table being quite close to mine.

“It’s your first appearance in Ireland, I suspect,” said he, scanning me as he picked his teeth, and sat carelessly with one leg crossed over the other.

I bowed a silent acquiescence, and he went on. “I declare that I believe a Cockney, though he has n’t a word of French, is more at home on the Continent than in Ireland.” He paused for some expression of opinion on my part, but I gave none. I filled my glass, and affected to admire the color of the wine, and sipped it slowly, like one thoroughly engaged in his own enjoyments.

“Don’t you agree with me?” asked he, fiercely.

“Sir, I have not given your proposition such consideration as would entitle me to say I concur with it or not.”

“That’s not it at all!” broke he in, with an insolent laugh; “but you won’t allow that you ‘re a Cockney.”

“I protest, sir,” said I, sternly; “I have yet to learn that I ‘m bound to make a declaration of my birth, parentage, and education to the first stranger I sit beside in a coffee-room.”

“No, you ‘re not, – nothing of the kind, – for it’s done for you. It ‘s done in spite of you, when you open your mouth. Did n’t you see the waiter running out of the room with the napkin in his mouth when you tried to say Donegal? Look here, Paul,” said he, drawing his chair confidentially towards my table. “We don’t care a rush what you do with your H’s, or your W’s, either; but, if we can help it, we won’t have our national names miscalled. We have a pride in them, and we ‘ll not suffer them to be mutilated or disfigured. Do you understand me now?”

“Sufficiently, sir, to wish you a very good-night,” said I, rising from the table, and leaving my pint of sherry, of which I had only drunk one glass.

As I closed the coffee-room door, I thought – indeed, I ‘m certain – I heard a loud roar of laughter.

“‘Who is that most agreeable gentleman I sat next at dinner?” asked I of the waiter.

“Counsellor MacNamara, sir. Isn’t he a nice man?”

“A charming person,” said I.

“I wish you heard him in the coort, sir. By my conscience, a witness has a poor time under him! He ‘d humbug you if you was an archbishop.”

“Call me at five,” said I, passing up the stairs, and impatient to gain my room and be alone with my indignation.

I passed a restless, feverish night, canvassing with myself whether I would not turn back and leave forever a country whose first aspect was so forbidding and unpromising. What stories had I not heard of Irish courtesy to strangers, – Irish wit and Irish pleasantry! Was this, then, a specimen of that captivating manner which makes these people the French of Great Britain? Why, this fellow was an unmitigated savage!

Having registered a vow not to open my lips to a stranger till I reached the end of my journey, and to affect deafness rather than be led into conversation, I set off the next day, by train, for Derry. True to my resolve, I only uttered the word “beer” till I arrived in the evening. The next day I took the steamer to a small village called Cushnagorra, from whence it was only ten miles by a good mountain-road to Killyrotherum Bay. I engaged a car to take me on, and at last found myself able to ask a few questions without the penalty of being cross-examined by an impertinent barrister, and being made the jest of a coffee-room.

I wanted to learn something about the people to whose house I was going, and asked Pat, accordingly, if he knew Mr. Dudgeon.

“Troth I do, sir, well,” said he.

“He’s a good kind of man, I’m told,” said I.

“He is, indeed, sir; no betther.”

“Kind to the poor, and charitable?”

“Thrue for you; that’s himself.”

“And his family is well liked down here?”

“I’ll be bound they are. There’s few like them to the fore.”

Rather worried by the persistent assent he gave me, and seeing that I had no chance of deriving anything like an independent opinion from my courteous companion, I determined to try another line. After smoking a cigar and giving one to my friend, who seemed to relish it vastly, I said, as if incidentally, “Where I got that cigar, Paddy, the people are better off than here.”

“And where’s that, sir?”

“In America, in the State of Virginia.”

“That’s as thrue as the Bible. It’s elegant times they have there.”

“And one reason is,” said I, “every man can do what he likes with his own. You have a bit of land here, and you dare n’t plant tobacco; or if you sow oats or barley, you must n’t malt it. The law says, ‘You may do this, and you sha’n’t do that;’ and is that freedom, I ask, or is it slavery?”

“Slavery, – devil a less,” said he, with a cut of his whip that made the horse plunge into the air.

“And do you know why that’s done? Do you know the secret of it all?”

“Sorra a bit o’ me.”

“I’ll tell you, then. It’s to keep up the Church; it’s to feed the parsons that don’t belong to the people, – that’s what they put the taxes on tobacco and whiskey for. What, I ‘d like to know, do you and I want with that place there with the steeple? What does the Rev. Daniel Dudgeon do for you or me? Grind us, – squeeze us, – maybe, come down on us when we ‘re trying to scrape a few shillings together, and carry it off for tithes.”

“Shure and he’s a hard man! He’s taking the herrins out of the net this year, – for every ten herrins he takes one.”

“And do they bear that?”

“Well, they do,” said he, mournfully; “they’ve no spirit down here; but over at Muggle-na-garry they put slugs in one last winter.”

“One what?”

“A parson, your honor; and it did him a dale o’ good. He ‘s as meek as a child now about his dues, and they ‘ve no trouble with him in life.”

“They’ll do that with Dudgeon yet, maybe?” asked I.

“With the Lord’s blessing, sir,” said he, piously.

Satisfied now that it was not a very hopeful task to obtain much information about Ireland from such a source, I drew my hat over my eyes and affected to doze for the remainder of the journey.

We arrived, at length, at the foot of a narrow road, impassable by the car, and here the driver told me I must descend and make the rest of my way on foot.

“The house wasn’t far,” he said; “only over the top of the hill in front of me, – about half-a-quarter of a mile away.”

Depositing my portmanteau under a clump of furze, I set out, – drearily enough, I will own. The scene around me, for miles, was one of arid desolation. It was not that no trace of human habitation, nor of any living creature was to be seen, but that the stony, shingly soil, totally destitute of all vegetation, seemed to deny life to anything. The surface rose and fell in a monotonous undulation, like a great sea suddenly petrified, while here and there some greater boulders represented those mighty waves which in the ocean seem to assert supremacy over their fellows.

At last I gained the crest of the ridge, and could see the Atlantic, which indented the shore beneath into many a little bay and inlet; but it was some time ere I could distinguish a house which stood in a narrow cleft of the mountain, and whose roof, kept down by means of stones and rocks, had at first appeared to me as a part of the surface of the soil. The strong wind almost carried me off my legs on this exposed ridge; so, crouching down, I began my descent, and after half an hour’s creeping and stumbling, I reached a little enclosed place, where stood the house. It was a long, one-storied building, with cow-house and farm-offices under the same roof. The hall-door had been evidently long in disuse, since it was battened over with strong planks, and secured, besides, against the northwest wind by a rough group of rocks. Seeing entrance to be denied on this side, I made for the rear of the house, where a woman, beating flax under a shed, at once addressed me civilly, and ushered me into the house.

“His riv’rence is in there,” said she, pointing to a door, and leaving me to announce myself. I knocked, and entered. It was a small room, with an antiquated fireplace, at which the parson and his wife and daughter were seated, – he reading a very much-crumpled newspaper, and they knitting.

“Oh, this is Mr. Gosslett. How are you, sir?” asked Mr. Dudgeon, seizing and shaking my hand; while his wife said, “We were just saying we ‘d send down to look after you. My daughter Lizzy, Mr. Gosslett.”

Lizzy smiled faintly, but did not speak. I saw, however, that she was a pretty, fair-haired girl, with delicate features and a very gentle expression.

“It’s a wild bit of landscape here, Mr. Gosslett; but of a fine day, with the sun on it, and the wind not so strong, it’s handsome enough.”

“It ‘s grand,” said I, rather hesitating to find the epithet I wanted.

Mrs. D. sighed, and I thought her daughter echoed it; but as his reverence now bustled away to send some one to fetch my trunk, I took my place at the fire, and tried to make myself at home.