All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story

"No! they won't subscribe. Is it likely that they will help to bring out a work which proves them all wrong? Come, sir, even at your age you can't think so well of poor humanity."

"Daniel" – the young man laid his hands impressively upon the little man's shoulders – "you showed me yesterday a list of forty-five subscribers to your book, at twelve shillings and sixpence apiece. Where is that subscription-money?"

The poor man blushed and hung his head.

"A man must live," he said at length, trying to frown fiercely.

"Yes, but unpleasant notice is sometimes taken of the way in which people live, my dear friend. This is not a free country; not by any means free. If I were you, I would take the triangles back to Australia, and print the book there, among your friends."

"No!" The little man stamped on the ground, and rammed his head into his hat with determination. "No, Mr. Goslett, and no again. It shall be printed here. I will hurl it at the head of the so-called scholars here, in London – in their stronghold, close to the British Museum. Besides" – here he relaxed, and turned a pitiful face of sorrow and shame upon his adviser – "besides, can I forget the day when I left Australia? They all came aboard to say good-by. The papers had paragraphs about it. They shouted one after the other, and nobblers went around surprising, and they slapped me on the back and said, 'Go, Dan'l,' or 'Go, Fagg,' or 'Go, Mr. Fagg,' according to their intimacy and the depth of their friendship – 'Go where honor and glory and a great fortune, with a pension on the Queen's civil-list, are waiting for you.' On the voyage I even dreamed of a title; I thought Sir Daniel Fagg, knight or baronet, or the Right Reverend Lord Fagg, would sound well to go back to Australia with. Honor? Glory? Fortune? where are they? Eight-and-sixpence in my pocket; and the head of the Greek department calls me a fool, because I won't acknowledge that truth – yes, TRUTH – is error. Laughs at the triangles, Mr. Goslett!"

He laughed bitterly and went out, slamming the door behind him.

Then Harry entered the breakfast-room, nodding pleasantly to everybody; and without any apology for lateness, as if breakfast could be kept about all the morning to suit his convenience, sat down and began to eat. Jonathan Coppin got up, sighed, and went away to his brewery. The professor looked at the last comer with a meditative air, as if he would like to make him disappear, and could do it, too, but was uncertain how Harry would take it. Mrs. Bormalack hurried away on domestic business. Mr. Maliphant laughed and rubbed his hands together, and then laughed again as if he were thinking of something really comic, and said, "Yes, I knew the sergeant very well; a well set-up man he was, and Caroline Coppin was a pretty girl." At this point his face clouded and his eyes expressed doubt. "There was," he added, "something I wanted to ask you, young man, something" – here he tapped his forehead – "something about your father or your mother, or both; but I have forgotten – never mind. Another time – another time."

He ran away with boyish activity and a schoolboy's laugh, being arrived at that time of life when one becomes light of heart once more, knowing by experience that nothing matters very much. There were none left in the room but the couple who enjoyed the title.

His lordship sat in his arm-chair, apparently enjoying it, in meditation and repose; this, one perceives, is quite the best way of enjoying an hereditary title, if you come to it late in life.

His wife had, meanwhile, got out a little shabby portfolio in black leather, and was turning over the papers with impatience; now and then she looked up to see whether this late young man had finished his breakfast. She fidgeted, arranged, and worried with her papers, so that any one whose skull was not six inches thick might have seen that she wanted to be alone with her husband. It was also quite clear to those who thought about things, and watched this little lady, that there may be meaning in certain proverbial expressions touching gray mares.

Presently Harry Goslett finished his coffee, and, paying no attention to her little ladyship's signals of distress, began to open up conversation on general subjects with the noble lord.

She could bear it no longer. Here were the precious moments wasted and thrown away, every one of which should be bringing them nearer to the recognition of their rights.

"Young man," she cried, jumping up in her chair, "if you've got nothing to do but to loll and lop around, all forenoon, I guess we hev, and this is the room in which we do that work."

"I beg your pardon, Lady Davenant – "

"Young man – Git – "

She pointed to the door.

CHAPTER II.

A VERY COMPLETE CASE

His lordship, left alone with his wife, manifested certain signs of uneasiness. She laid the portfolio on the table, turned over the papers, sorted some of them, picked out some for reference, fetched the ink, and placed the penholder in position.

"Now, my dear," she said, "no time to lose. Let us set to work in earnest."

His lordship sighed. He was sitting with his fat hands upon his knees, contented with the repose of the moment.

"Clara Martha," he grumbled, "cannot I have one hour of rest?"

"Not one, till you get your rights." She hovered over him like a little falcon, fierce and persistent. "Not one. What? You a British peer? You, who ought to be sitting with a coronet on your head – you to shrink from the trouble of writing out your case? And such a case!"

He only moaned. Certainly he was a very lethargic person.

"You are not the carpenter, your father. Nor even the wheelwright, your grandfather, who came down of his own accord. You would rise, you would soar – you have the spirit of your ancestors."

He feebly flapped with his elbows, as if he really would like to take a turn in the air, but made no verbal response.

"Cousin Nathaniel," she went on, "gave us six months at six dollars a week. That's none too generous of Nathaniel, seeing we have no children, and he will be the heir to the title. I guess Aurelia Tucker set him against the thing. Six months, and three of them gone already, and nothing done! What would Aurelia say if we went home again, beaten?"

The little woman gasped, and would have shrugged her shoulders, but they were such a long way down – shoulders so sloping could not be shrugged.

Her remonstrances moved the heavy man, who drew his chair to the table with great deliberation.

"We are here," she continued – always the exhorter and the strengthener of faith – "not to claim a title, but to assume it. We shall present our case to Parliament, or the Queen, or the House of Lords, or the Court of Chancery, or whosoever is the right person, and we shall say, 'I am Lord Davenant.' That is all."

"Clara Martha," said her husband, "I wish that were all we had to do. And, on the whole, I would as soon be back in Canaan City, New Hampshire, and the trouble over. The memoranda are all here," he said. "Can't we get some one else to draw up the case?"

"Certainly not. You must do it. Why, you used to think nothing of writing out a Fourth of July speech."

He shook his head.

"And you know that you have often said, yourself, that there wasn't a book written that could teach you anything up to quadratic equations. And self-raised, too!"

"It isn't that, Clara Martha. It isn't that. Listen!" he sank his voice to a whisper. "It's the doubt. That's the point. Every time I face that doubt it's like a bucket of cold water down my back."

She shivered. Yes: there was always the doubt.

"Come, my dear," she said presently; "we must get the case drawn up, so that any one may read it. That is the first thing – never think of any doubt."

He took up one of the loose papers, which was covered with writing.

"Timothy Clitheroe Davenant," he read with a weary sigh, "died at Canaan City, New Hampshire, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety-four. By trade he was a wheelwright. His marriage is recorded in the church-register of July 1, 1773. His headstone still stands in the old church-yard, and says that he was born in England in the year one thousand seven hundred and thirty-two – it does not say where he was born – and that he was sixty-two years of age at the day of his death. Also, that long time he bore – "

"Yes, yes, but you needn't put that in. Go on with your case. The next point is your own father. Courage, my dear; it is a very strong case."

"The case is very strong." His lordship plucked up courage, and took up another paper. "This is my father's record. All is clear: Born in Canaan City on October 10, 1774, the year of Independence, the eldest son of the aforesaid Timothy Clitheroe Davenant, wheelwright, and Dinah, his wife – here is a copy of the register. Married on May 13, 1810, which was late in life, because he didn't somehow get on so fast as some, to Susanna Pegley, of the same parish. Described as carpenter – but a poor workman, Clara Martha, and fond of chopping yarns, in which he was equalled by none. He died in the year 1830, his tombstone still standing, like his father's before him. It says that his end was peace. Wal – he always wanted it. Give him peace, with a chair in the veranda, and a penknife and a little bit of pine, and he asked for no more. Only that, and his wife wouldn't let him have it. His end was peace."

"You all want peace," said his wife. "The Davenants always did think that they only had to sit still and the plums would drop in their mouths. As for you, I believe you'd be content to sit and sit in Canaan City till Queen Victoria found you out and sent you the coronet herself. But you've got a wife as well as your father."

"I hev," he said, with another sigh. "Perhaps we were wrong to come over – I think I was happier in the schoolroom, when the boys were gone hum. It was very quiet there, for a sleep in the afternoon by the stove. And in summer the trees looked harnsome in the sunlight."

She shook her head impatiently.

"Come," she cried. "Where are the 'Recollections' of your grandfather?"

He found another paper, and read it slowly.

"My grandfather died before I was born. My father, however, said that he used to throw out hints about his illustrious family, and that if he chose to go back to England some people would be very much surprised. But he never explained himself. Also he would sometimes speak of a great English estate, and once he said that the freedom of a wheelwright was better than the gilded chains of a British aristocrat – that was at a Fourth of July meetin'."

"Men talk wild at meetin's," said his wife. "Still, there may have been a meanin' behind it. Go on, Timothy – I mean my lord."

"As for my father, it pleased him, when he could put up his feet and crack with his friends, to brag of his great connections in England. But he never knew rightly who they were, and he was too peaceful and restful a creature to take steps to find out."