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Cradock Nowell Vol. 1

<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> At this melancholy time, John Rosedew had quite enough to do without any burden of fresh anxieties about his own pet Amy. Nevertheless, that burden was added; not by Dr. Huttonʼs vague questions, although they helped to impose it, but by the fatherʼs own observation of his darlingʼs strange condition. “Can it be”, he asked himself, and often longed to ask her, as he saw only lilies where roses had been, and little hands trembling at breakfast–time, “can it be that this child of mine loved the poor boy Clayton, and is wasting away in sorrow for him? Is that the reason why she will not meet Cradock, nor Cradock meet her, and she trembles at his name? And then that book which Aunt Doxy made her throw on the kitchen fire—very cruel I now see it was of my good sister Eudoxia, though at first I did not think so—that book I know was poor Claytonʼs, for I have seen it in his hand. Well, if it truly is so, there is nothing to be done, except to be unusually[282] kind to her, and trust to time for the cure, and give her plenty of black–currant jam”. These ideas he imparted to the good Aunt Doxy, who delivered some apophthegms (which John did not want to listen to), but undertook, whatever should happen, to be down upon Amy sharply. She knew all about her tonsils and her uvula, and all that stuff, and she did not want Johnʼs advice, though she had never had a family; and thank God heartily for it! On Monday, when the funeral came to Nowelhurst churchyard, John Rosedew felt his heart give way, and could not undertake it. At the risk of deeply offending Sir Cradock, whose nerves that day were of iron, he passed the surplice to his curate, Mr. Pell, of Rushford; and begged him, with a sad slow smile, to do the duty for him. Sir Cradock Nowell frowned, and coloured, and then bowed low with an icy look, when he saw the change which had been made, and John Rosedew fall in as a mourner. People said that from that day the old friendship was dissevered. John, for his part, could not keep his eyes from the nook of the churchyard, where among the yew–trees stood, in the bitterness of anguish, he who had not asked, nor been asked, to attend as mourner. Cradock bowed his head and wept, for now his tears came freely, and prayed the one Almighty Father, who alone has mercy, not to take his misery from him, but to take him from it. When the mould was cast upon the coffin, black[283] Wena came between peopleʼs legs, gave a cry, and jumped in after it, thinking to retrieve her master, like a stick from the water. She made such a mournful noise in the grave, and whimpered, and put her head down, and wondered why no one said “Wena, dear”, that all the school–girls burst out sobbing—having had apples from Clayton lately—and Octavius Pell, the great cricketer, wanted something soft for his throat. That evening, when all was over, and the grave heaped snugly up, and it was time to think of other things and begin to wonder at sorrow, John Rosedew went to Sir Cradock Nowell, not only as a fellow–mourner and a friend of ancient days, but as a minister of Christ. It had cost John many struggles; and, what with his sense of worldly favours, schoolday–friendship, delicacy, he could scarce tell what to make of it, till he just went down on his knees and prayed; then the learned man learned his duty. Sir Cradock turned his head away, as if he did not want him. John held out his hand, and said nothing. “Mr. Rosedew, I am surprised to see you. And yet, John, this is kind of you”. John hoped that he only said “Mr. Rosedew”, because the footman was lingering, and he tried not to feel the difference. “Cradock, you know what I am, as well as I know what you are. Fifty years, my dear fellow, fifty years of friendship”. [284] “Yes, John, I remember when I was twelve years old, and you fought Sam Cockings for me”. “And, Cradock, I thrashed him fairly; you know I thrashed him fairly. They said I got his head under the form; but you know it was all a lie. How I do hate lies! I believe it began that day. If so, the dislike is subjective. Perhaps I ought to reconsider it”. “John, I know nothing in your life which you ought to reconsider, except what you are doing now”. Sir Cradock Nowell began the combat, because he felt that it must be waged; and perhaps he knew in that beginning that he had the weaker cause. “Cradock, I am doing nothing which is not my simple duty. When I see those I love in the deepest distress, can I help siding with them”? “Upon that principle, or want of it, you might espouse, as a duty, the cause of any murderer”. The old man shuddered, and his voice shook, as he whispered that last word. As yet he had not worked himself up, nor been worked up by others, to the black belief which made the living lost beyond the dead. “I am sure I donʼt know what I might do”, said John Rosedew, simply, “but what I am doing now is right; and in your heart you know it. Come, Cradock, as an old man now, and one whom God has visited, forgive your poor, your noble son, who never will forgive himself”. [285] But for one word in that speech, John Rosedew would perhaps have won his cause, and reconciled son and father. “My noble son indeed, John! A very noble thing he has done. Shall I never hear the last of his nobility? And who ever called my Clayton noble? You have been unfair throughout, John Rosedew, most unfair and blind to the merits of my more loving, more simple–hearted, more truly noble boy, I tell you”. Mr. Rosedew, at such a time, could not of course contest the point, could not tell the bereaved old man that it was he himself who had been unfair. “And when”, asked Sir Cradock, getting warmer, “when did you know my poor boy Violet stick up for political opinions of his own at the age of twenty, want to drain tenants’ cottages, and pretend to be better and wiser than his father”? “And when have you known Cradock do, at any rate, the latter”? “Ever since he got that scholarship, that Scotland thing at Oxford”—Sir Cradock knew the name well enough, as every Oxford man does—“he has been perfectly insufferable; such arrogance, such conceit, such airs! And he only got it by a trick. Poor Viley ought to have had it”. John Rosedew tried to control himself, but the gross untruth and injustice of that last accusation were a little too much for him. “Perhaps, Sir Cradock Nowell, you will allow[286] that I am a competent judge of the relative powers of the two boys, who knew all they did know from me, and from no one else”. “Of course, I know you are a competent judge, only blinded by partiality”. John allowed even that to go by. “Without any question of preference, simply as a lover of literature, I say that Clayton had no chance with him in a Greek examination. In Latin he would have run him close. You know I always said so, even before they went to college. I was surprised, at the time, that they mentioned Clayton even as second to him”. “And grieved, I dare say, deeply grieved, if the truth were told”! “It is below me to repel mean little accusations”. “Come, John Rosedew”, said Sir Cradock, magnanimously and liberally, “I can forgive you for being quarrelsome, even at such a time as this. It always was so, and I suppose it always will be. To–day I am not fit for much, though perhaps you do not know it. Thinking so little of my dead boy, you are surprised that I should grieve for him”. “I should be surprised indeed if you did not. God knows even I have grieved deeply, as for a son of my own”. “Shake hands, John; you are a good fellow—the best fellow in the world. Forgive me for[287] being petulant. You donʼt know how my heart aches”. After that it was impossible to return for the moment to Cradock Nowell. But the next day John renewed the subject, and at length obtained a request from the father that his son should come to him. By this time Cradock hardly knew when he was doing anything, and when he was doing nothing. He seemed to have no regard for any one, no concern about anything, least of all for himself. Even his love for Amy Rosedew had a pall thrown over it, and lay upon the trestles. The only thing he cared at all for was his fatherʼs forgiveness: let him get that, and then go away and be seen no more among them. He could not think, or feel surprise, or fear, or hope for anything; he could only tell himself all day long, that if God were kind He would kill him. A young life wrecked, so utterly wrecked, and through no fault of its own; unless (as some begin to dream) we may not slay for luxury; unless we have but a limited right to destroy our Fatherʼs property. Sir Cradock, it has been stated, cared a great deal more for his children than he did for his ancestors. He had not been wondering, through his sorrow, what the world would say of him, what it would think of the Nowells; he had a little too much self–respect to care a fig for foolʼs–tongue. Now he sat in his carved oak–chair, expecting his[288] only son, and he tried to sit upright. But the flatness of his back was gone, never to return; and the shoulder–blades showed through his coat, like a spoon left under the tablecloth. Still he appeared a stately man, one not easily bowed by fortune, or at least not apt to acknowledge it. Young Cradock entered his fatherʼs study, with a flush on his cheeks, which had been so pale, and his mind made up for endurance, but his wits going round like a swirl of leaves. He could not tell what he might say or do. He began to believe he had shot his father, and to wonder whether it hurt him much. Trying in vain to master his thoughts, he stood with his quivering hands clasped hard, and his chin upon his breast. So perhaps Adrastus stood, Adrastus son of Gordias, before the childless Crœsus; and the simple words are these. “After this there came the Lydians carrying the corpse. And behind it followed the slayer. And standing there before the corpse, he gave himself over to Crœsus, stretching forth his hands, commanding to slay him upon the corpse, telling both his own former stress, and how upon the top of that he had destroyed his cleanser, nor was his life now liveable. Crœsus, having heard these things, though being in so great a trouble of the hearth, has compassion on Adrastus, and says to him—— ” “But Adrastus, son of Gordias, son of Midas, this man, I say, who had been the slayer of his[289] womb–brother, and slayer of him that cleansed him, when there was around the grave a quietude from men, feeling that he was of all men whom he had ever seen the most weighed down with trouble, kills himself dead upon the tomb”. But the father now was not like Croesus, the generous–hearted Lydian, although the man who stood before him was not a runagate from Phrygia, but the son of his own loins. The father did not look at him, but kept his eyes fixed on the window, as though he knew not any were near him. Then the son could wait no more, but spoke in a hollow, trembling voice: “Father, I am come, as you ordered”. “Yes. I will not keep you long. Perhaps you want to go out” (“shooting” he was about to say, but could not be quite so cruel). “I only wish so to settle matters that we may meet no more”. “Oh, father—my own father!—for Godʼs sake!—if there be a God—donʼt speak to me like that”! “Sir, I shall take it as a proof that you are still a gentleman, which at least you used to be, if you will henceforth address me as ‘Sir Cradock Nowell’, a title which soon will be your own”. “Father, look me in the face, and ask me; then I will”. Sir Cradock Nowell still looked forth the heavily–tinted window. His son, his only, his grief–worn son, was kneeling at his side, unable to weep, too proud to sob, with the sense of deep wrong rising. [290] If the father once had looked at him, nature must have conquered. “Mr. Nowell, I have only admitted you that we might treat of business. Allow me to forget the face of a fratricide, perhaps murderer”. Cradock Nowell fell back heavily, for he had risen from his knees. The crown of his head crashed the glass of a picture, and blood showered down his pale face. He never even put his hand up, to feel what was the matter. He said nothing, not a syllable; but stood there, and let the room go round. How his mother must have wept, if she was looking down from heaven! The old man, having all the while a crude, dim sense of outrunning his heart, gave the youth time to recover himself, if it were a thing worth recovering. “Now, as to our arrangements—the subject I wished to speak about. I only require your consent to the terms I propose, until, in the natural course of events, you succeed to the family property”. “What family property, sir”? Cradockʼs head was dizzy still, the bleeding had done him good. “Why, of course, the Nowelhurst property; all these entailed estates, to which you are now sole heir”. “I will never touch one shilling, nor step upon one acre of it”. [291] “Under your motherʼs—that is to say, under my marriage–settlement”, continued Sir Cradock, in the same tone, as if his son were only bantering, “you are at once entitled to the sum of 50,000l. invested in Three per Cent. Consols—which would have been—I mean, which was meant for younger children. This sum the trustees will be prepared—— ” “Do you think I will touch it? Am I a thief as well as a murderer”? “I shall also make arrangements for securing to you, until my death, an income of 5000l. per annum. This you can draw for quarterly, and the cheques will be countersigned by my steward, Mr. Garnet”. “Of course, lest I should forge. Once for all, hear me, Sir Cradock Nowell. So help me the God who has now forsaken me, who has turned my life to death, and made my own father curse me—every word of yours is a curse, I say—so help me that God (if there be one to help, as well as to smite a man), till you crave my pardon upon your knees, as I have craved yours this day, I will never take one yard of your land, I will never call myself ‘Nowell’, or own you again as my father. God knows I am very unlucky and little, but you have shown yourself less. And some day you will know it”. In the full strength of his righteous pride, he walked for the first time like a man, since he[292] leaped that deadly hedge. From that moment a change came over him. There was nothing to add to his happiness, but something to rouse his manhood. The sense of justice, the sense of honour—that flower and crown of justice—forbade him henceforth to sue, and be shy, and bemoan himself under hedges. From that day forth he was as a man visited of God, and humbled, but facing ever his fellow–men, and not ashamed of affliction. <hr class="chap" /></div> [293] <div class="break"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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