The Three Clerks Part 80

'Now, Alley,' said Mrs. Woodward, 'you're a made man; won't that do beautifully to play with on board the big s.h.i.+p?'

'And so, Harry, you have given up official life altogether,' said Gertrude.

'Yes,' said he--'the last day of the last year saw my finale at the Weights and Measures. I did not live long--officially--to enjoy my promotion. I almost wish myself back again.'

'You'll go in on melting days, like the retired tallow-chandler,'

said Gertrude; 'but, joking apart, I wish you joy on your freedom from thraldom; a government office in England is thraldom. If a man were to give his work only, it would be well. All men who have to live by labour must do that; but a man has to give himself as well as his work; to sacrifice his individuality; to become body and soul a part of a lumbering old machine.'

This hardly came well from Gertrude, seeing that Alaric at any rate had never been required to sacrifice any of his individuality.

But she was determined to hate all the antecedents of his life, as though those antecedents, and not the laxity of his own principles, had brought about his ruin. She was prepared to live entirely for the future, and to look back on her London life as bad, tasteless, and demoralizing. England to her was no longer a glorious country; for England's laws had made a felon of her husband. She would go to a new land, new hopes, new ideas, new freedom, new work, new life, and new ambition. 'Excelsior!'

there was no longer an excelsior left for talent and perseverance in this effete country. She and hers would soon find room for their energies in a younger land; and as she went she could not but pity those whom she left behind. Her reasoning was hardly logical, but, perhaps, it was not unfortunate.

'For myself,' said Norman, not quite following all this--'I always liked the Civil Service, and now I leave it with a sort of regret. I am quite glad that Charley has my old desk; it will keep up a sort of tie between me and the place.'

'What does Linda say about it, mamma?'

'Linda and I are both of Harry's way of thinking,' said Mrs.

Woodward, 'because Normansgrove is such a distance.'

'Distance!' repeated Gertrude, with something of sorrow, but more of scorn in her tone. 'Distance, mamma! why you can get to her between breakfast and dinner. Think where Melbourne is, mamma!'

'It has nearly broken my heart to think of it,' said Mrs.

Woodward.

'And you will still have Linda, mamma, and our darling Katie, and Harry, and dear Charley. If the idea of distance should frighten anyone it is me. But nothing shall frighten me while I have my husband and children. Harry, you must not let mamma be too often alone when some other knight shall have come and taken away Katie.'

'We will take her to Normansgrove for good and all, if she will let us,' said Harry.

And now the time came for them to part. Harry was to say good-bye to her, and then to see her no more. Early on the following morning Gertrude was to go to Hampton and see Katie for the last time; to see Katie for the last time, and the Cottage, and the s.h.i.+ning river, and all the well-known objects among which she had pa.s.sed her life. To Mrs. Woodward, to Linda, and Katie, all this was subject of inexpressible melancholy; but with Gertrude every feeling of romance seemed to have been absorbed by the realities of life. She would, of course, go to Katie and give her a farewell embrace, since Katie was still too weak to come to her; she would say farewell to Uncle Bat, to whom she and Alaric owed so much; she would doubtless shed a tear or two, and feel some emotion at parting, even from the inanimate a.s.sociations of her youth; but all this would now impress no lasting sorrow on her.

She was eager to be off, eager for her new career, eager that he should stand on a soil where he could once more face his fellow-creatures without shame. She panted to put thousands of leagues of ocean between him and his disgrace.

On the following morning Gertrude was to go to Hampton for two hours, and then to return to Millbank, with her mother and sister, for whose accommodation a bed had been hired in the neighbourhood. On that evening Alaric would be released from his prison; and then before daybreak on the following day they were to take their way to the far-off docks, and place themselves on board the vessel which was to carry them to their distant home.

'G.o.d bless you, Gertrude,' said Norman, whose eyes were not dry.

'G.o.d Almighty bless you, Harry, you and Linda--and make you happy. If Linda does not write constantly very constantly, you must do it for her. We have delayed the happiness of your marriage, Harry--you must forgive us that, as well as all our other trespa.s.ses. I fear Linda will never forgive that.'

'You won't find her unmerciful on that score,' said he. 'Dear Gertrude, good-bye.'

She put up her face to him, and he kissed her, for the first time in his life. 'He bade me give you his love,' said she, in her last whisper; 'I must, you know, do his bidding.'

Norman's heart palpitated so that he could hardly compose his voice for his last answer; but even then he would not be untrue to his inexorable obstinacy; he could not send his love to a man he did not love. 'Tell him,' said he, 'that he has my sincerest wishes for success wherever he may be; and Gertrude, I need hardly say----' but he could get no further.

And so they parted.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE CRIMINAL POPULATION IS DISPOSED OF

Before we put Alaric on board the s.h.i.+p which is to take him away from the land in which he might have run so exalted a career, we must say one word as to the fate and fortunes of his old friend Undy Scott. This gentleman has not been represented in our pages as an amiable or high-minded person. He has indeed been the bad spirit of the tale, the Siva of our mythology, the devil that has led our hero into temptation, the incarnation of evil, which it is always necessary that the novelist should have personified in one of his characters to enable him to bring about his misfortunes, his tragedies, and various requisite catastrophes. Scott had his Varney and such-like; d.i.c.kens his Bill Sykes and such-like; all of whom are properly disposed of before the end of those volumes in which are described their respective careers.

I have ventured to introduce to my readers, as my devil, Mr. Undy Scott, M.P. for the Tillietudlem district burghs; and I also feel myself bound to dispose of him, though of him I regret I cannot make so decent an end as was done with Sir Richard Varney and Bill Sykes.

He deserves, however, as severe a fate as either of those heroes.

With the former we will not attempt to compare him, as the vices and devilry of the days of Queen Elizabeth are in no way similar to those in which we indulge; but with Bill Sykes we may contrast him, as they flourished in the same era, and had their points of similitude, as well as their points of difference.

They were both apparently born to prey on their own species; they both resolutely adhered to a fixed rule that they would in nowise earn their bread, and to a rule equally fixed that, though they would earn no bread, they would consume much. They were both of them blessed with a total absence of sensibility and an utter disregard to the pain of others, and had no other use for a heart than that of a machine for maintaining the circulation of the blood. It is but little to say that neither of them ever acted on principle, on a knowledge, that is, of right and wrong, and a selection of the right; in their studies of the science of evil they had progressed much further than this, and had taught themselves to believe that that which other men called virtue was, on its own account, to be regarded as mawkish, insipid, and useless for such purposes as the acquisition of money or pleasure; whereas vice was, on its own account, to be preferred, as offering the only road to those things which they were desirous of possessing.

So far there was a great resemblance between Bill Sykes and Mr.

Scott; but then came the points of difference, which must give to the latter a great pre-eminence in the eyes of that master whom they had both so worthily served. Bill could not boast the merit of selecting the course which he had run; he had served the Devil, having had, as it were, no choice in the matter; he was born and bred and educated an evil-doer, and could hardly have deserted from the colours of his great Captain, without some spiritual interposition to enable him to do so. To Undy a warmer reward must surely be due: he had been placed fairly on the world's surface, with power to choose between good and bad, and had deliberately taken the latter; to him had, at any rate, been explained the theory of _meum_ and _tuum_, and he had resolved that he liked _tuum_ better than _meum_; he had learnt that there is a G.o.d ruling over us, and a Devil hankering after us, and had made up his mind that he would belong to the latter. Bread and water would have come to him naturally without any villany on his part, aye, and meat and milk, and wine and oil, the fat things of the world; but he elected to be a villain; he liked to do the Devil's bidding.--Surely he was the better servant; surely he shall have the richer reward.

And yet poor Bill Sykes, for whom here I would willingly say a word or two, could I, by so saying, mitigate the wrath against him, is always held as the more detestable scoundrel. Lady, you now know them both. Is it not the fact, that, knowing him as you do, you could spend a pleasant hour enough with Mr. Scott, sitting next to him at dinner; whereas your blood would creep within you, your hair would stand on end, your voice would stick in your throat, if you were suddenly told that Bill Sykes was in your presence?

Poor Bill! I have a sort of love for him, as he walks about wretched with that dog of his, though I know that it is necessary to hang him. Yes, Bill; I, your friend, cannot gainsay that, must acknowledge that. Hard as the case may be, you must be hung; hung out of the way of further mischief; my spoons, my wife's throat, my children's brains, demand that. You, Bill, and polecats, and such-like, must be squelched when we can come across you, seeing that you make yourself so universally disagreeable. It is your ordained nature to be disagreeable; you plead silently. I know it; I admit the hards.h.i.+p of your case; but still, my Bill, self-preservation is the first law of nature. You must be hung.

But, while hanging you, I admit that you are more sinned against than sinning. There is another, Bill, another, who will surely take account of this in some way, though it is not for me to tell you how.

Yes, I hang Bill Sykes with soft regret; but with what a savage joy, with what exultation of heart, with what alacrity of eager soul, with what apt.i.tude of mind to the deed, would I hang my friend, Undy Scott, the member of Parliament for the Tillietudlem burghs, if I could but get at his throat for such a purpose! Hang him! aye, as high as Haman! In this there would be no regret, no vacillation of purpose, no doubt as to the propriety of the sacrifice, no feeling that I was so treating him, not for his own desert, but for my advantage.

We hang men, I believe, with this object only, that we should deter others from crime; but in hanging Bill we shall hardly deter his brother. Bill Sykes must look to crime for his bread, seeing that he has been so educated, seeing that we have not yet taught him another trade.

But if I could hang Undy Scott, I think I should deter some others. The figure of Undy swinging from a gibbet at the broad end of Lombard Street would have an effect. Ah! my fingers itch to be at the rope.

Fate, however, and the laws are averse. To gibbet him, in one sense, would have been my privilege, had I drunk deeper from that Castalian rill whose dark waters are tinged with the gall of poetic indignation; but as in other sense I may not hang him, I will tell how he was driven from his club, and how he ceased to number himself among the legislators of his country.

Undy Scott, among his other good qualities, possessed an enormous quant.i.ty of that which schoolboys in these days call 'cheek.' He was not easily browbeaten, and was generally prepared to browbeat others. Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s certainly did get the better of him; but then Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s was on his own dunghill. Could Undy Scott have had Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s down at the clubs, there would have been, perhaps, another tale to tell.

Give me the c.o.c.k that can crow in any yard; such c.o.c.ks, however, we know are scarce. Undy Scott, as he left the Old Bailey, was aware that he had cut a sorry figure, and felt that he must immediately do something to put himself right again, at any rate before his portion of the world. He must perform some exploit uncommonly cheeky in order to cover his late discomfiture. To get the better of Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s at the Old Bailey had been beyond him; but he might yet do something at the clubs to set aside the unanimous verdict which had been given against him in the city.

Nay, he must do something, unless he was prepared to go to the wall utterly, and at once.

Going to the wall with Undy would mean absolute ruin; he lived but on the cheekiness of his gait and habits; he had become member of Parliament, Government official, railway director, and club aristocrat, merely by dint of cheek. He had now received a great blow; he had stood before a crowd, and been annihilated by the better cheek of Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s, and, therefore, it behoved him at once to do something. When the perfume of the rose grows stale, the flower is at once thrown aside, and carried off as foul refuse. It behoved Undy to see that his perfume was maintained in its purity, or he, too, would be carried off.

The club to which Undy more especially belonged was called the Downing; and of this Alaric was also a member, having been introduced into it by his friend. Here had Alaric spent by far too many of the hours of his married life, and had become well known and popular. At the time of his conviction, the summer was far advanced; it was then August; but Parliament was still sitting, and there were sufficient club men remaining in London to create a daily gathering at the Downing.

On the day following that on which the verdict was found, Undy convened a special committee of the club, in order that he might submit to it a proposition which he thought it indispensable should come from him; so, at least, he declared. The committee did a.s.semble, and when Undy met it, he saw among the faces before him not a few with whom he would willingly have dispensed.

However, he had come there to exercise his cheek; no one there should cow him; the wig of Mr. Chaffanbra.s.s was, at any rate, absent.

And so he submitted his proposition. I need not trouble my readers with the neat little speech in which it was made. Undy was true to himself, and the speech was neat. The proposition was this: that as he had unfortunately been the means of introducing Mr. Alaric Tudor to the club, he considered it to be his duty to suggest that the name of that gentleman should be struck off the books. He then expressed his unmitigated disgust at the crime of which Tudor had been found guilty, uttered some nice little plat.i.tudes in the cause of virtue, and expressed a hope 'that he might so far refer to a personal matter as to say that his father's family would take care that the lady, whose fortune had been the subject of the trial, should not lose one penny through the dishonesty of her trustee.'

Oh, Undy, as high as Haman, if I could! as high as Haman! and if not in Lombard Street, then on that open ground where Waterloo Place bisects Pall Mall, so that all the clubs might see thee!

'He would advert,' he said, 'to one other matter, though, perhaps, his doing so was unnecessary. It was probably known to them all that he had been a witness at the late trial; an iniquitous attempt had been made by the prisoner's counsel to connect his name with the prisoner's guilt. They all too well knew the lat.i.tude allowed to lawyers in the criminal courts, to pay much attention to this. Had he' (Undy Scott) 'in any way infringed the laws of his country, he was there to answer for it.

But he would go further than this, and declare that if any member of that club doubted his probity in the matter, he was perfectly willing to submit to such member doc.u.ments which would,' &c., &c.

He finished his speech, and an awful silence reigned around him.

No enthusiastic ardour welcomed the well-loved Undy back to his club, and comforted him after the rough usage of the unpolished Chaffanbra.s.s. No ten or twenty combined voices expressed, by their clamorous negation of the last-proposed process, that their Undy was above reproach. The eyes around looked into him with no friendly alacrity. Undy, Undy, more cheek still, still more cheek, or you are surely lost.