Marion Fay: A Novel

"Perhaps that is not his fault."

"Yes, it is. A man needn't talk to a woman unless he likes. It is downright impudence on his part. Your stepmother comes to me every day, and never leaves me without abusing Fanny."

"That is why I thought it better that Fanny should come to me."

"And then, when I argue with her, she always tells me what Mr. Greenwood says about it. Who cares about Mr. Greenwood? What business has Mr. Greenwood to interfere in my family? He does not know how to behave himself, and he shall go."

"He has been here a great many years, sir," said Hampstead, pleading for the old man.

"Too many," said the Marquis. "When you've had a man about you so long as that, he is sure to take liberties."

"You must provide for him, sir, if he goes."

"I have thought of that. He must have something, of course. He has had three hundred a-year for the last ten years, and has had everything found for him down to his washing and his cab fares. For five-and-twenty years he has never paid for a bed or a meal out of his own pocket. What has he done with his money? He ought to be a rich man for his degree."

"What a man does with his money is, I suppose, no concern to those who pay it. It is supposed to have been earned, and there is an end of it as far as they are concerned."

"He shall have a thousand pounds," said the Marquis.

"That would hardly be liberal. I would think twice before I dismissed him, sir."

"I have thought a dozen times."

"I would let him remain," said Hampstead, "if only because he's a comfort to Lady Kingsbury. What does it matter though he does talk of Fanny? Were he to go she would talk to somebody else who might be perhaps less fit to hear her, and he would, of course, talk to everybody."

"Why has he not obeyed me?" demanded the Marquis, angrily. "It is I who have employed him. I have been his patron, and now he turns against me." Thus the Marquis went on till his strength would not suffice for any further talking. Hampstead found himself quite unable to bring him to any other subject on that day. He was sore with the injury done him in that he was not allowed to be the master in his own house.

On the next morning Hampstead heard from Dr. Spicer that his father was in a state of health very far from satisfactory. The doctor recommended that he should be taken away from Trafford, and at last went so far as to say that his advice extended to separating his patient from Lady Kingsbury. "It is, of course, a very disagreeable subject," said the doctor, "for a medical man to meddle with; but, my lord, the truth is that Lady Kingsbury frets him. I don't, of course, care to hear what it is, but there is something wrong." Lord Hampstead, who knew very well what it was, did not attempt to contradict him. When, however, he spoke to his father of the expediency of change of air, the Marquis told him that he would rather die at Trafford than elsewhere.

That his father was really thinking of his death was only too apparent from all that was said and done. As to those matters of business, they were soon settled between them. There was, at any rate, that comfort to the poor man that there was no probability of any difference between him and his heir as to the property or as to money. Half-an-hour settled all that. Then came the time which had been arranged for Hampstead's return to his sister. But before he went there were conversations between him and Mr. Greenwood, between him and his stepmother, and between him and his father, to which, for the sake of our story, it may be as well to refer.

"I think your father is ill-treating me," said Mr. Greenwood. Mr. Greenwood had allowed himself to be talked into a thorough contempt and dislike for the young lord; so that he had almost brought himself to believe in those predictions as to the young lord's death in which Lady Kingsbury was always indulging. As a consequence of this, he now spoke in a voice very different from those obsequious tones which he had before been accustomed to use when he had regarded Lord Hampstead as his young patron.

"I am sure my father would never do that," said Hampstead, angrily.

"It looks very like it. I have devoted all the best of my life to his service, and he now talks of dismissing me as though I were no better than a servant."

"Whatever he does, he will, I am sure, have adequate cause for doing."

"I have done nothing but my duty. It is out of the question that a man in my position should submit to orders as to what he is to talk about and what not. It is natural that Lady Kingsbury should come to me in her troubles."

"If you will take my advice," said Lord Hampstead, in that tone of voice which always produces in the mind of the listener a determination that the special advice offered shall not be taken, "you will comply with my father's wishes while it suits you to live in his house. If you cannot do that, it would become you, I think, to leave it." In every word of this there was a rebuke; and Mr. Greenwood, who did not like being rebuked, remembered it.

"Of course I am nobody in this house now," said the Marchioness in her last interview with her stepson. It is of no use to argue with an angry woman, and in answer to this Hampstead made some gentle murmur which was intended neither to assent or to dispute the proposition made to him. "Because I ventured to disapprove of Mr. Roden as a husband for your sister I have been shut up here, and not allowed to speak to any one."

"Fanny has left the house, so that she may no longer cause you annoyance by her presence."

"She has left the house in order that she may be near the abominable lover with whom you have furnished her."

"This is not true," said Hampstead, who was moved beyond his control by the double falseness of the accusation.

"Of course you can be insolent to me, and tell me that I speak falsehoods. It is part of your new creed that you should be neither respectful to a parent, nor civil to a lady."

"I beg your pardon, Lady Kingsbury," – he had never called her Lady Kingsbury before, – "if I have been disrespectful or uncivil, but your statements were very hard to bear. Fanny's engagement with Mr. Roden has not even received my sanction. Much less was it arranged or encouraged by me. She has not gone to Hendon Hall to be near Mr. Roden, with whom she had undertaken to hold no communication as long as she remains there with me. Both for my own sake and for hers I am bound to repudiate the accusation." Then he went without further adieu, leaving with her a conviction that she had been treated with the greatest contumely by her husband's rebellious heir.

Nothing could be sadder than the last words which the Marquis spoke to his son. "I don't suppose, Hampstead, that we shall ever meet again in this world."

"Oh, father!"

"I don't think Mr. Spicer knows how bad I am."

"Will you have Sir James down from London?"

"No Sir James can do me any good, I fear. It is ill ministering to a mind diseased."

"Why, sir, should you have a mind diseased? With few men can things be said to be more prosperous than with you. Surely this affair of Fanny's is not of such a nature as to make you feel that all things are bitter round you."

"It is not that."

"What then? I hope I have not been a cause of grief to you?"

"No, my boy; – no. It irks me sometimes to think that I should have trained you to ideas which you have taken up too violently. But it is not that."

"My mother – ?"

"She has set her heart against me, – against you and Fanny. I feel that a division has been made between my two families. Why should my daughter be expelled from my own house? Why should I not be able to have you here, except as an enemy in the camp? Why am I to have that man take up arms against me, whom I have fed in idleness all his life?"

"I would not let him trouble my thoughts."

"When you are old and weak you will find it hard to banish thoughts that trouble you. As to going, where am I to go to?"

"Come to Hendon."

"And leave her here with him, so that all the world shall say that I am running away from my own wife? Hendon is your house now, and this is mine; – and here I must stay till my time has come."

This was very sad, not as indicating the state of his father's health, as to which he was more disposed to take the doctor's opinion than that of the patient, but as showing the infirmity of his father's mind. He had been aware of a certain weakness in his father's character, – a desire not so much for ruling as for seeming to rule all that were around him. The Marquis had wished to be thought a despot even when he had delighted in submitting himself to the stronger mind of his first wife. Now he felt the chains that were imposed upon him, so that they galled him when he could not throw them off. All this was very sad to Hampstead; but it did not make him think that his father's health had in truth been seriously affected.

END OF VOL. I

VOL. II

CHAPTER I

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CROCKER

Hampstead remained nearly a fortnight down at Trafford, returning to Hendon only a few days before Christmas. Crocker, the Post Office clerk, came back to his duties at the same time, but, as was the custom with him, stole a day more than belonged to him, and thus incurred the frowns of Mr. Jerningham and the heavy wrath of the great Æolus. The Æoluses of the Civil Service are necessarily much exercised in their minds by such irregularities. To them personally it matters not at all whether one or another young man may be neglectful. It may be known to such a one that a Crocker may be missed from his seat without any great injury, – possibly with no injury at all, – to the Queen's service. There are Crockers whom it would be better to pay for their absence than their presence. This Æolus thought it was so with this Crocker. Then why not dismiss Crocker, and thus save the waste of public money? But there is a necessity, – almost a necessity, – that the Crockers of the world should live. They have mothers, or perhaps even wives, with backs to be clothed and stomachs to be fed, or perhaps with hearts to be broken. There is, at any rate, a dislike to proceed to the ultimate resort of what may be called the capital punishment of the Civil Service. To threaten, to frown, to scold, to make a young man's life a burden to him, are all within the compass of an official Æolus. You would think occasionally that such a one was resolved to turn half the clerks in his office out into the streets, – so loud are the threats. In regard to individuals he often is resolved to do so at the very next fault. But when the time comes his heart misgives him. Even an Æolus is subject to mercy, and at last his conscience becomes so callous to his first imperative duty of protecting the public service, that it grows to be a settled thing with him, that though a man's life is to be made a burden to him, the man is not to be actually dismissed. But there are men to whom you cannot make their life a burden, – men upon whom no frowns, no scoldings, no threats operate at all; and men unfortunately sharp enough to perceive what is that ultimate decision to which their Æolus had been brought. Such a one was our Crocker, who cared very little for the blusterings. On this occasion he had remained away for the sake of having an additional day with the Braeside Harriers, and when he pleaded a bilious headache no one believed him for an instant. It was in vain for Æolus to tell him that a man subject to health so precarious was altogether unfitted for the Civil Service. Crocker had known beforehand exactly what was going to be said to him, and had discounted it at its exact worth. Even in the presence of Mr. Jerningham he spoke openly of the day's hunting, knowing that Mr. Jerningham would prefer his own ease to the trouble of renewed complaint. "If you would sit at your desk now that you have come back, and go on with your docketing, instead of making everybody else idle, it would be a great deal better," said Mr. Jerningham.

"Then my horse took the wall in a fly, and old Amblethwaite crept over afterwards," continued Crocker, standing with his back to the fire, utterly disregarding Mr. Jerningham's admonitions.