The Battle of Life. A Love Story

“Here are them two lawyers a-coming, Mister!” said Clemency, in a tone of no very great good-will.

“Aha!” cried the Doctor, advancing to the gate to meet them. “Good morning, good morning! Grace, my dear! Marion! Here are Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs. Where’s Alfred?”

“He’ll be back directly, father, no doubt,” said Grace. “He had so much to do this morning in his preparations for departure, that he was up and out by daybreak. Good morning, gentlemen.”

“Ladies!” said Mr. Snitchey, “For Self and Craggs,” who bowed, “good morning. Miss,” to Marion, “I kiss your hand.” Which he did. “And I wish you” – which he might or might not, for he didn’t look, at first sight, like a gentleman troubled with many warm outpourings of soul, in behalf of other people, “a hundred happy returns of this auspicious day.”

“Ha ha ha!” laughed the Doctor thoughtfully, with his hands in his pockets. “The great farce in a hundred acts!”

“You wouldn’t, I am sure,” said Mr. Snitchey, standing a small professional blue bag against one leg of the table, “cut the great farce short for this actress, at all events, Doctor Jeddler.”

“No,” returned the Doctor. “God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as long as she can laugh, and then say, with the French wit, ‘The farce is ended; draw the curtain.’”

“The French wit,” said Mr. Snitchey, peeping sharply into his blue bag, “was wrong, Doctor Jeddler; and your philosophy is altogether wrong, depend upon it, as I have often told you. Nothing serious in life! What do you call law?”

“A joke,” replied the Doctor.

“Did you ever go to law?” asked Mr. Snitchey, looking out of the blue bag.

“Never,” returned the Doctor.

“If you ever do,” said Mr. Snitchey, “perhaps you’ll alter that opinion.”

Craggs, who seemed to be represented by Snitchey, and to be conscious of little or no separate existence or personal individuality, offered a remark of his own in this place. It involved the only idea of which he did not stand seised and possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey; but he had some partners in it among the wise men of the world.

“It’s made a great deal too easy,” said Mr. Craggs.

“Law is?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes,” said Mr. Craggs, “everything is. Everything appears to me to be made too easy, now-a-days. It’s the vice of these times. If the world is a joke (I am not prepared to say it isn’t), it ought to be made a very difficult joke to crack. It ought to be as hard a struggle, Sir, as possible. That’s the intention. But it’s being made far too easy. We are oiling the gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We shall have them beginning to turn, soon, with a smooth sound. Whereas they ought to grate upon their hinges, Sir.”

Mr. Craggs seemed positively to grate upon his own hinges, as he delivered this opinion; to which he communicated immense effect – being a cold, hard, dry man, dressed in grey and white, like a flint; with small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck sparks out of them. The three natural kingdoms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative among this brotherhood of disputants: for Snitchey was like a magpie or a raven (only not so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face like a winter-pippin, with here and there a dimple to express the peckings of the birds, and a very little bit of pigtail behind, that stood for the stalk.

As the active figure of a handsome young man, dressed for a journey, and followed by a porter, bearing several packages and baskets, entered the orchard at a brisk pace, and with an air of gaiety and hope that accorded well with the morning, – these three drew together, like the brothers of the sister Fates, or like the Graces most effectually disguised, or like the three weird prophets on the heath, and greeted him.

“Happy returns, Alf,” said the Doctor, lightly.

“A hundred happy returns of this auspicious day, Mr. Heathfield,” said Snitchey, bowing low.

“Returns!” Craggs murmured in a deep voice, all alone.

“Why, what a battery!” exclaimed Alfred, stopping short, “and one – two – three – all foreboders of no good, in the great sea before me. I am glad you are not the first I have met this morning: I should have taken it for a bad omen. But Grace was the first – sweet, pleasant Grace – so I defy you all!”

“If you please, Mister, I was the first you know,” said Clemency Newcome. “She was a walking out here, before sunrise, you remember. I was in the house.”

“That’s true! Clemency was the first,” said Alfred. “So I defy you with Clemency.”

“Ha, ha, ha! – for Self and Craggs,” said Snitchey. “What a defiance!”

“Not so bad a one as it appears, may be,” said Alfred, shaking hands heartily with the Doctor, and also with Snitchey and Craggs, and then looking round. “Where are the – Good Heavens!”

With a start, productive for the moment of a closer partnership between Jonathan Snitchey and Thomas Craggs than the subsisting articles of agreement in that wise contemplated, he hastily betook himself to where the sisters stood together, and – however, I needn’t more particularly explain his manner of saluting Marion first, and Grace afterwards, than by hinting that Mr. Craggs may possibly have considered it “too easy.”

Perhaps to change the subject, Doctor Jeddler made a hasty move towards the breakfast, and they all sat down at table. Grace presided; but so discreetly stationed herself, as to cut off her sister and Alfred from the rest of the company. Snitchey and Craggs sat at opposite corners, with the blue bag between them for safety; and the Doctor took his usual position, opposite to Grace. Clemency hovered galvanically about the table, as waitress; and the melancholy Britain, at another and a smaller board, acted as Grand Carver of a round of beef, and a ham.

“Meat?” said Britain, approaching Mr. Snitchey, with the carving knife and fork in his hands, and throwing the question at him like a missile.

“Certainly,” returned the lawyer.

“Do you want any?” to Craggs.

“Lean, and well done,” replied that gentleman.

Having executed these orders, and moderately supplied the Doctor (he seemed to know that nobody else wanted anything to eat), he lingered as near the Firm as he decently could, watching, with an austere eye, their disposition of the viands, and but once relaxing the severe expression of his face. This was on the occasion of Mr. Craggs, whose teeth were not of the best, partially choking, when he cried out with great animation, “I thought he was gone!”

“Now Alfred,” said the Doctor, “for a word or two of business, while we are yet at breakfast.”

“While we are yet at breakfast,” said Snitchey and Craggs, who seemed to have no present idea of leaving off.

Although Alfred had not been breakfasting, and seemed to have quite enough business on his hands as it was, he respectfully answered:

“If you please, Sir.”

“If anything could be serious,” the Doctor began, “in such a – ”

“Farce as this, Sir,” hinted Alfred.

“In such a farce as this,” observed the Doctor, “it might be this recurrence, on the eve of separation, of a double birth-day, which is connected with many associations pleasant to us four, and with the recollection of a long and amicable intercourse. That’s not to the purpose.”

“Ah! yes, yes, Doctor Jeddler,” said the young man. “It is to the purpose. Much to the purpose, as my heart bears witness this morning; and as yours does too, I know, if you would let it speak. I leave your house to-day; I cease to be your ward to-day; we part with tender relations stretching far behind us, that never can be exactly renewed, and with others dawning yet before us,” he looked down at Marion beside him, “fraught with such considerations as I must not trust myself to speak of now. Come, come!” he added, rallying his spirits and the Doctor at once, “there’s a serious grain in this large foolish dust-heap, Doctor. Let us allow to-day, that there is One.”

“To-day!” cried the Doctor. “Hear him! Ha, ha, ha! Of all days in the foolish year. Why on this day, the great battle was fought on this ground. On this ground where we now sit, where I saw my two girls dance this morning, where the fruit has just been gathered for our eating from these trees, the roots of which are struck in Men, not earth, – so many lives were lost, that within my recollection, generations afterwards, a churchyard full of bones, and dust of bones, and chips of cloven skulls, has been dug up from underneath our feet here. Yet not a hundred people in that battle, knew for what they fought, or why; not a hundred of the inconsiderate rejoicers in the victory, why they rejoiced. Not half a hundred people were the better, for the gain or loss. Not half-a-dozen men agree to this hour on the cause or merits; and nobody, in short, ever knew anything distinct about it, but the mourners of the slain. Serious, too!” said the Doctor, laughing. “Such a system!”

“But all this seems to me,” said Alfred, “to be very serious.”

“Serious!” cried the Doctor. “If you allowed such things to be serious, you must go mad, or die, or climb up to the top of a mountain, and turn hermit.”

“Besides – so long ago,” said Alfred.

“Long ago!” returned the Doctor. “Do you know what the world has been doing, ever since? Do you know what else it has been doing? I don’t!”

“It has gone to law a little,” observed Mr. Snitchey, stirring his tea.

“Although the way out has been always made too easy,” said his partner.

“And you’ll excuse my saying, Doctor,” pursued Mr. Snitchey, “having been already put a thousand times in possession of my opinion, in the course of our discussions, that, in its having gone to law, and in its legal system altogether, I do observe a serious side – now, really, a something tangible, and with a purpose and intention in it – ”

Clemency Newcome made an angular tumble against the table, occasioning a sounding clatter among the cups and saucers.