Volume 1 - Chapter 2. Mr Whittlestaff

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_ CHAPTER II. MR WHITTLESTAFF

Mr Whittlestaff had not been a fortunate man, as fortune is generally counted in the world. He had not succeeded in what he had attempted. He had, indeed, felt but little his want of success in regard to money, but he had encountered failure in one or two other matters which had touched him nearly. In some things his life had been successful; but these were matters in which the world does not write down a man's good luck as being generally conducive to his happiness. He had never had a headache, rarely a cold, and not a touch of the gout. One little finger had become crooked, and he was recommended to drink whisky, which he did willingly,--because it was cheap. He was now fifty, and as fit, bodily and mentally, for hard work as ever he had been. And he had a thousand a-year to spend, and spent it without ever feeling the necessity of saving a shilling. And then he hated no one, and those who came in contact with him always liked him. He trod on nobody's corns, and was, generally speaking, the most popular man in the parish. These traits are not generally reckoned as marks of good fortune; but they do tend to increase the amount of happiness which a man enjoys in this world. To tell of his misfortunes a somewhat longer chronicle of his life would be necessary. But the circumstances need only be indicated here. He had been opposed in everything to his father's views. His father, finding him to be a clever lad, had at first designed him for the Bar. But he, before he had left Oxford, utterly repudiated all legal pursuits. "What the devil do you wish to be?" said his father, who at that time was supposed to be able to leave his son L2000 a-year. The son replied that he would work for a fellowship, and devote himself to literature. The old admiral sent literature to all the infernal gods, and told his son that he was a fool. But the lad did not succeed in getting his fellowship, and neither father nor mother ever knew the amount of suffering which he endured thereby. He became plaintive and wrote poetry, and spent his pocket-money in publishing it, which again caused him sorrow, not for the loss of his money, but by the obscurity of his poetry. He had to confess to himself that God had not conferred upon him the gift of writing poetry; and having acknowledged so much, he never again put two lines together. Of all this he said nothing; but the sense of failure made him sad at heart. And his father, when he was in those straits, only laughed at him, not at all believing the assurances of his son's misery, which from time to time were given to him by his wife.

Then the old admiral declared that, as his son would do nothing for himself, he must work for his son. And he took in his old age to going into the city and speculating in shares. Then the Admiral died. The shares came to nothing, and calls were made; and when Mrs Whittlestaff followed her husband, her son, looking about him, bought Croker's Hall, reduced his establishment, and put down the man-servant whose departed glory was to Mrs Baggett a matter of such deep regret.

But before this time Mr Whittlestaff had encountered the greatest sorrow of his life. Even the lost fellowship, even the rejected poetry, had not caused him such misery as this. He had loved a young lady, and had been accepted;--and then the young lady had jilted him. At this time of his life he was about thirty; and as to the outside world, he was absolutely dumfounded by the catastrophe. Up to this period he had been a sportsman in a moderate degree, fishing a good deal, shooting a little, and devoted to hunting, to the extent of a single horse. But when the blow came, he never fished or shot, or hunted again. I think that the young lady would hardly have treated him so badly had she known what the effect would be. Her name was Catherine Bailey, and she married one Compas, who, as years went on, made a considerable reputation as an Old Bailey barrister. His friends feared at the time that Mr Whittlestaff would do some injury either to himself or Mr Compas. But no one dared to speak to him on the subject. His mother, indeed, did dare,--or half dared. But he so answered his mother that he stopped her before the speech was out of her mouth. "Don't say a word, mother; I cannot bear it." And he stalked out of the house, and was not seen for many hours.

There had then, in the bitter agony of his spirit, come upon him an idea of blood. He himself must go,--or the man. Then he remembered that she was the man's wife, and that it behoved him to spare the man for her sake. Then, when he came to think in earnest of self-destruction, he told himself that it was a coward's refuge. He took to his classics for consolation, and read the philosophy of Cicero, and the history of Livy, and the war chronicles of Caesar. They did him good,--in the same way that the making of many shoes would have done him good had he been a shoemaker. In catching fishes and riding after foxes he could not give his mind to the occupation, so as to abstract his thoughts. But Cicero's de Natura Deorum was more effectual. Gradually he returned to a gentle cheerfulness of life, but he never burst out again into the violent exercise of shooting a pheasant. After that his mother died, and again he was called upon to endure a lasting sorrow. But on this occasion the sorrow was of that kind which is softened by having been expected. He rarely spoke of his mother,--had never, up to this period at which our tale finds him, mentioned his mother's name to any of those about him. Mrs Baggett would speak of her, saying much in the praise of her old mistress. Mr Whittlestaff would smile and seem pleased, and so the subject would pass away. There was something too reverend to him in his idea of his mother, to admit of his discussing her character with the servant. But he was well pleased to hear her thus described. Of the other woman, of Catherine Bailey, of her who had falsely given herself up to so poor a creature as Compas, after having received the poetry of his vows, he could endure no mention whatever; and though Mrs Baggett knew probably well the whole story, no attempt at naming the name was ever made.

Such had been the successes and the failures of Mr Whittlestaff's life when Mary Lawrie was added as one to his household. The same idea had occurred to him as to Mrs Baggett. He was not a young man, because he was fifty; but he was not quite an old man, because he was only fifty. He had seen Mary Lawrie often enough, and had become sufficiently well acquainted with her to feel sure that if he could win her she would be a loving companion for the remainder of his life. He had turned it all over in his mind, and had been now eager about it and now bashful. On more than one occasion he had declared to himself that he would be whipped if he would have anything to do with her. Should he subject himself again to some such agony of despair as he had suffered in the matter of Catherine Bailey? It might not be an agony such as that; but to him to ask and to be denied would be a terrible pain. And as the girl did receive from his hands all that she had--her bread and meat, her bed, her very clothes--would it not be better for her that he should stand to her in the place of a father than a lover? She might come to accept it all and not think much of it, if he would take before himself the guise of an old man. But were he to appear before her as a suitor for her hand, would she refuse him? Looking forward, he could perceive that there was room for infinite grief if he should make the attempt and then things should not go well with him.

But the more he saw of her he was sure also that there was room for infinite joy. He compared her in his mind to Catherine Bailey, and could not but feel that in his youth he had been blind and fatuous. Catherine had been a fair-haired girl, and had now blossomed out into the anxious mother of ten fair-haired children. The anxiety had no doubt come from the evil courses of her husband. Had she been contented to be Mrs Whittlestaff, there might have been no such look of care, and there might perhaps have been less than ten children; but she would still have been fair-haired, blowsy, and fat. Mr Whittlestaff had with infinite trouble found an opportunity of seeing her and her flock, unseen by them, and a portion of his agony had subsided. But still there was the fact that she had promised to be his, and had become a thing sacred in his sight, and had then given herself up to the arms of Mr Compas. But now if Mary Lawrie would but accept him, how blessed might be the evening of his life!

He had confessed to himself often enough how sad and dreary he was in his desolate life. He had told himself that it must be so for the remainder of all time to him, when Catherine Bailey had declared her purpose to him of marrying the successful young lawyer. He had at once made up his mind that his doom was fixed, and had not regarded his solitude as any deep aggravation of his sorrow. But he had come by degrees to find that a man should not give up his life because of a fickle girl, and especially when he found her to be the mother of ten flaxen haired infants. He had, too, as he declared to himself, waited long enough.

But Mary Lawrie was very different from Catherine Bailey. The Catherine he had known had been bright, and plump, and joyous, with a quick good-natured wit, and a rippling laughter, which by its silvery sound had robbed him of his heart. There was no plumpness, and no silver-sounding laughter with Mary. She shall be described in the next chapter. Let it suffice to say here that she was somewhat staid in her demeanour, and not at all given to putting herself forward in conversation. But every hour that he passed in her company he became more and more sure that, if any wife could now make him happy, this was the woman who could do so.

But of her manner to himself he doubted much. She was gratitude itself for what he was prepared to do for her. But with her gratitude was mingled respect, and almost veneration. She treated him at first almost as a servant,--at any rate with none of the familiarity of a friend, and hardly with the reserve of a grown-up child. Gradually, in obedience to his evident wishes, she did drop her reserve, and allowed herself to converse with him; but it was always as a young person might with all modesty converse with her superior. He struggled hard to overcome her reticence, and did at last succeed. But still there was that respect, verging almost into veneration, which seemed to crush him when he thought that he might begin to play the lover.

He had got a pony carriage for her, which he insisted that she should drive herself. "But I never have driven," she had said, taking her place, and doubtfully assuming the reins, while he sat beside her. She had at this time been six months at Croker's Hall.

"There must be a beginning for everything, and you shall begin to drive now." Then he took great trouble with her, teaching her how to hold the reins, and how to use the whip, till at last something of familiarity was engendered. And he went out with her, day after day, showing her all those pretty haunts among the downs which are to be found in the neighbourhood of Alresford.

This did well for a time, and Mr Whittlestaff thought that he was progressing. But he had not as yet quite made up his mind that the attempt should be made at all. If he can be imagined to have talked to a friend as he talked to himself, that friend would have averred that he spoke more frequently against marriage,--or rather against the young lady's marriage,--than in favour of it. "After all it will never do," he would have said to this friend; "I am an old man, and an old man shouldn't ask a young girl to sacrifice herself. Mrs Baggett looks on it only as a question of butchers and bakers. There are, no doubt, circumstances in which butchers and bakers do come uppermost. But here the butchers and bakers are provided. I wouldn't have her marry me for that sake. Love, I fear, is out of the question. But for gratitude I would not have her do it." It was thus that he would commonly have been found speaking to his friend. There were moments in which he roused himself to better hopes,--when he had drank his glass of whisky and water, and was somewhat elate with the consequences. "I'll do it," he would then have said to his friend; "only I cannot exactly say when." And so it went on, till at last he became afraid to speak out and tell her what he wanted.

Mr Whittlestaff was a tall, thin man, not quite six feet, with a face which a judge of male beauty would hardly call handsome, but which all would say was impressive and interesting. We seldom think how much is told to us of the owner's character by the first or second glance of a man or woman's face. Is he a fool, or is he clever; is he reticent or outspoken; is he passionate or long-suffering;--nay, is he honest or the reverse; is he malicious or of a kindly nature? Of all these things we form a sudden judgment without any thought; and in most of our sudden judgments we are roughly correct. It is so, or seems to us to be so, as a matter of course,--that the man is a fool, or reticent, or malicious; and, without giving a thought to our own phrenological capacity, we pass on with the conviction. No one ever considered that Mr Whittlestaff was a fool or malicious; but people did think that he was reticent and honest. The inner traits of his character were very difficult to be read. Even Mrs Baggett had hardly read them all correctly. He was shamefaced to such a degree that Mrs Baggett could not bring herself to understand it. And there was present to him a manner of speech which practice had now made habitual, but which he had originally adopted with the object of hiding his shamefacedness under the veil of a dashing manner. He would speak as though he were quite free with his thoughts, when, at the moment, he feared that thoughts should be read of which he certainly had no cause to be ashamed. His fellowship, his poetry, and his early love were all, to his thinking, causes of disgrace, which required to be buried deep within his own memory. But the true humility with which he regarded them betokened a character for which he need not have blushed. But that he thought of those matters at all--that he thought of himself at all--was a matter to be buried deep within his own bosom.

Through his short dark-brown hair the grey locks were beginning to show themselves--signs indeed of age, but signs which were very becoming to him. At fifty he was a much better-looking man than he had been at thirty,--so that that foolish, fickle girl, Catherine Bailey, would not have rejected him for the cruelly sensuous face of Mr Compas, had the handsome iron-grey tinge been then given to his countenance. He, as he looked at the glass, told himself that a grey-haired old fool, such as he was, had no right to burden the life of a young girl, simply because he found her in bread and meat. That he should think himself good-looking, was to his nature impossible. His eyes were rather small, but very bright; the eyebrows black and almost bushy; his nose was well-formed and somewhat long, but not so as to give that peculiar idea of length to his face which comes from great nasal prolongation. His upper lip was short, and his mouth large and manly. The strength of his character was better shown by his mouth than by any other feature. He wore hardly any beard, as beards go now,--unless indeed a whisker can be called a beard, which came down, closely shorn, about half an inch below his ear. "A very common sort of individual," he said of himself, as he looked in the glass when Mary Lawrie had been already twelve months in the house; "but then a man ought to be common. A man who is uncommon is either a dandy or a buffoon."

His clothes were all made after one pattern and of one colour. He had, indeed, his morning clothes and his evening clothes. Those for the morning were very nearly black, whereas for the evening they were entirely so. He walked about the neighbourhood in a soft hat such as clergymen now affect, and on Sundays he went to church with the old well-established respectable chimney-pot. On Sundays, too, he carried an umbrella, whereas on week-days he always had a large stick; and it was observed that neither the umbrella nor the stick was adapted to the state of the weather.

Such was Mr Whittlestaff of Croker's Hall, a small residence which stood half-way up on the way to the downs, about a mile from Alresford. He had come into the neighbourhood, having bought a small freehold property without the knowledge of any of the inhabitants. "It was just as though he had come out of the sun," said the old baker, forgetting that most men, or their ancestors, must have come to their present residences after a similar fashion. And he had brought Mrs Baggett with him, who had confided to the baker that she had felt herself that strange on her first arrival that she didn't know whether she was standing on her head or her heels.

Mrs Baggett had since become very gracious with various of the neighbours. She had the paying of Mr Whittlestaff's bills, and the general disposal of his custom. From thence arose her popularity. But he, during the last fifteen years, had crept silently into the society of the place. At first no one had known anything about him; and the neighbourhood had been shy. But by degrees the parsons and then the squires had taken him by the hand, so that the social endowments of the place were more than Mr Whittlestaff even desired. _

Read next: Volume 1: Chapter 3. Mary Lawrie

Read previous: Volume 1: Chapter 1. Mrs Baggett

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