SECOND PAPER
The impression made by Webster's personality, referred to at the beginning of these papers, partly accounts for the eagerness with which everything he said or did is caught up, even at second hand. In any gathering, however brilliant, the whole company pricks up its ears and listens if one of them says, "I shook hands with Daniel Webster," or "I once heard him speak," or "I saw him go by in the street." So it seems well worth while to include among these very important and characteristic papers of Mr. Webster, now published for the first time, not only several of his letters, but a few notes that might seem trifling and insignificant if they related to anybody else.
The following letters written from London show Mr. Webster's opinion of the English lawyers and public speakers, and his keen interest in everything relating to agriculture. The alarm which was excited by the fear of a dishonor of the drafts of the Bank of the United States is an interesting fact in our financial history:
"London, June 9, '39.
"My Dear Sir,
"On Monday morning, the 2nd inst, we arrived at Lpool, after a passage of 14½ days, or rather less, from Pilot to Pilot. For a great part of the way we had calm, the rest, light winds ahead; which same light winds have so retarded the sailing ships, that we were in Lpool several days before the N. Y. Packet of May 1., tho' we left the 18th. We staid in Lpool 2 days, went to Chester, and thence struck off & hit the Lpool & London Rail Road, & got to London, on the evening of the 5th. The sixth, it was rainy. I went out, quite alone, looked into all the Courts—the whole four were sitting—I saw all their venerable wigs. I stayed long enough to hear several Gentlemen speak. They are vastly better trained than we are. They speak short. They get up, begin immediately, & leave off when they have done. Their manner is more like that of a school boy, who gets up to say his lesson, goes right through it, & then sits down, than it is like our more leisurely & elaborate habit. I think Sergeant Wilde, who is esteemed a long speaker, argued an insurance question in 15 minutes, that most of us would have got an hour's speech out of. The rooms are all small, with very inconvenient writing places, & almost nobody present, except the wigged population. I went to the Parliament Houses (Houses not in session). They are very small rooms. Where the Lords sit, I was sure, must be the old painted chamber where the Comees. of conference used to meet. On entering it, I asked the guide, what Comee. room that was—he turned to rebuke my ignorance, & exclaimed, "this is the House of Lords." I was right, however. The H. of C. was burnt, you know, some time ago, & the H. of C. now sit in what was the H. of L., & the Lords sit, temporarily, in the old painted chamber. All these accommodations are small & paltry; & new buildings are in progress for the use of both Houses.
"The political state of things is quite unsettled. All sorts of expectations exist, as to what shall happen. The ministry, most certainly, are very weak, in public estimation, & as clearly not very strong in their own. But Lord Wellington, whose weight & influence are, at this moment, prodigious, does not want office; & it is said that both he & Sir Robt. see the difficulty which they would be obliged to encounter, if in power, in consequence of the state of things in Ireland. Mr. O'Connell is king of Ireland; & it is thought that nothing but military power could keep the peace in that kingdom of his under an administration which he should oppose. Some speak of a dissolution of Parliament—others say, the Queen will rather give way to radicalism, than receive the tories into power. A new election, in the opinion of some, would give the Tories a working majority of 70 members. On all these topics, I have seen too little, & know too little, to be able to form any opinion for myself. As yet, I have not attended any Debates in Parliament, but purpose to go to the H. C. to-morrow Evening to witness a second Debate on the Jamaica Question. As to private matters, I will write you, if possible, in season for the same conveyance which takes this,—if not, I will write by the next. I propose to send this by the Lpool, which sails on the 13th.
"June 12.
"I attended the Debate on the Jamaica Question. The great guns were not fired, but the Debate was handsomely conducted. Sir Ed. Sugden began it. He is not remarkably interesting as a political Speaker. Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Gladstone, Sir George Grey, all young men, followed & spoke well.
"Pray remember me to all friends. Write me often, & tell me all the news. Send my regards Mr. Blake, & let me know how he is.
"Yrs truly
D. Webster.
"Be sure to let no one single thing from me ever get into the newspapers."
"London, Sep. 20, 1839.
"My Dear Sir
"I have recd. your letter, respecting the two acceptances. I had thought they were both provided for. As the Boat goes to-morrow, and as I returned to London only last evening, I may not be able to arrange so as to write by this opportunity; but by the very next, I will cause you to hear from me. We have been about six weeks, having run over much of England, & something of Scotland. Of course we could stay but little time in any one place, nor were we able to see much below the surface of things. But the agriculture, and the general of things, in England & Scotland, I have looked at, pretty attentively. Taken together, England exhibits a high wrought, exact, elaborate system of art & industry. Every productive power is carried to the utmost extent of skill, & maintained in the most unceasing activity. Constant attention & close calculation pervade everything. Rent is high, but prices of produce are high also. About thirty shillings, Sterling, say seven dollars, or thereabouts, may be regarded, perhaps, as near the average rent of good land in England. In some parts, it is much higher, say ten dollars, or, rent & tithes together, perhaps fifteen. The land is vastly productive, & prices are high. A gentleman told me yesterday that he had sold, some weeks ago, his wheat crop, at eleven pounds Sterling, pr acre, standing, & his oat crop for eight. This will shew you the aggregate of product & price. Forty bushels of wheat, & fifty or even sixty of oats, are not an uncommon yield to the acre. The land is naturally good, & is made the subject of the most careful & skilful cultivation. In the course of forty years, the turnip has vastly enriched England. It feeds millions of sheep, whose wool & flesh command high prices, & the feeding of which in the field, during the winter, say ten sheep to the acre, enriches the land, for the succeeding crop of wheat. Then, too, lime is used extensively, & every bone ground up, for bone dust, which is found a most powerful manure. And when the lands require it, a complete system of underground draining is practised, especially in Scotland, which produces the best effects. Agricultural labor is not more than half as dear in England, as in the U. S.
"(I shall add a P.S. if I learn anything before this P. M. of this matter of the U. S. Bank & Hottinguer.
"(4 P. M. Mr. Jaudon has been to Paris. Rothschilds have accepted the Bills of the Bk. U. S. for the honor of the Bank. It is thought the Bank may have drawn, under an understanding with Hottinguer's agt. in U. S. of which his principals were not seasonably advised. It is an unlucky affair, at least, & will much prejudice American interests and credits here."
D. Webster.
Here are Mr. Webster's minutes of his famous conversation with Mr. Jefferson when he visited him in December, 1824. They were afterward published in full from these memoranda. They are written on two pages of a very small sheet of note-paper. But they contain, among other things, a graphic portrait of Patrick Henry, his tribute to Sam Adams as more than any other man the author of Revolutionary measures; to John Adams as the colossus of the great debate of liberty which preceded the Declaration of Independence; Mr. Jay's authorship of the Address to the People of England, one of the four greatest state papers in our history; of the fact that Richard Henry Lee came near being a stamp-master, and the fact that Virginia and the New England States always acted together and carried through the Revolution, picking up a few other votes where they could:
Next comes a letter from Lord Ashburton, written from London, June 18, 1852, interesting for the confession of that sincere and candid Englishman, that he did not pretend to be a free-trader for America. If many of our English advisers, and many Americans who have been prone to take their advice, had been as sensible as Lord Ashburton, it would have been much better for all concerned. This letter, as some others of Ashburton's which have been published heretofore, is a thorough refutation, if any were needed after Edward Everett's conclusive statement, of the old slander once uttered in Parliament, and occasionally revived on both sides of the Atlantic, that Mr. Webster obtained dishonest advantage over the English Commissioner by suppressing an ancient map wherein the boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia had been traced in conformity with the British claim. Lord Ashburton's expressions of friendship and esteem for Mr. Webster are wholly inconsistent with such a transaction:
"London, June 18th, '52.
"My Dear Mr. Webster,
"It was with no small pleasure that I recognised your handwriting, and accepted the very grateful office of shewing civility to your friend.
"I fear that our climate at this moment will prove anything but beneficial to his daughter's health. We are now paying the penalty for three months of drought; I wish for his sake that he had arrived at an earlier period.
"We expect very little change in the relative strength of parties from the coming elections. The popular element must always gain, but less on this occasion than on any other, as the masses are enjoying in comfort the blessings of cheap food & abundant employment. The farmer even is thriving. He sells mutton of the growth of 18 months, he saves 20 per cent in the cost of labor. He economises in the purchase of all he consumes. Forgive this burst of Peelite exultation in consideration of the abuse & odium under which we have been laboring.
"Let me add however that I do not pretend to be a free trader for America, and thus oppose myself to your powerful authority. Believe me my dear Mr. Webster
"Yours very truly
Ashburton."
The following letter, addressed to Mr. Webster's law partner, John P. Healey, with its enclosure, has never been printed. Allusions are found to it in other letters of Mr. Webster written from London, contained in Mr. Webster's published correspondence. It is probable that Mr. Webster's friends in Boston took the liberty of withholding his letter refusing to be a candidate. At any rate, his name was presented to the Whig National Convention held at Harrisburg in October(?), 1839. That convention was held more than a year before the election. The delegates from each State were requested to present to the convention the name of their own choice for the Presidency, and with it the name of the other person whom they thought likely to be the strongest candidate in case their own selection were not adopted by the convention. These reports of the different delegations were all referred to a grand committee with instructions to recommend a candidate to the convention. The result was the nomination of General Harrison by a large majority. Then a committee was appointed to select a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. That committee first agreed upon the name of Benjamin Watkins Leigh, but, on his refusal to be a candidate, reported the name of John Tyler, with most unfortunate results for the Whig party:
"London, June 12, '39.
"Dr Sir,—Please cause the enclosed to be published, the same day, in all the Whig newspapers in Boston, & as soon as you receive it.
Yrs
D. Webster.
"To the People of Massachusetts.
"It is known that my name has been presented to the Public, by a meeting of Members of the Legislature of the State, as a candidate for the office of President of the United States at the ensuing Election. As it has been expected that a Convention would be holden in the autumn of this year, composed of Delegates from the Several States, I have hitherto thought proper not to anticipate, in any way, the results of that Convention. But I am now out of the country, not to return, probably, much earlier than the period fixed for the meeting of the convention, and do not know what events may occur, in the meantime, which, if I were at home, might demand immediate attention from me. I desire, moreover, to act no part which may tend to prevent a cordial & effective union among those, whose object, I trust, is to maintain, unimpaired, the Constitution of the Country, and to uphold all its great interests, by a wise, prudent, and patriotic administration of the Government. These considerations have induced me to withdraw my name as a Candidate for the office of President at the next Election.
"Dan'l Webster.
"London, June 12, 1839."
Mr. Webster was counsel in the celebrated case of Myra Clark Gaines, the wife of General Gaines, who laid claim to a large property in Louisiana as the daughter of Daniel Clark by an alleged marriage with Zuleima Carriere. This marriage was denied, and it was also alleged that the mother of Mrs. Gaines had, at the time of the alleged marriage, another lawful husband living.
Mr. Webster's brief, which is in his own writing, consists of seventeen pages of manuscript notes. It contains nothing specially striking except an observation about one of the witnesses, a woman who seems to have been called to prove a marriage of reputation, and seems to have been one of three female witnesses called by the same party. Mr. Webster's memorandum for his arguments is this:
"There is but one witness. And who is she? Who are they all? Not respectable women at that period. All three alike.
Facies non omnibus una
Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum.
One bad element of character taints the rest."
This letter to William Sullivan refers to the famous Dartmouth College case, the judgment in which, as the result of Webster's argument, made safe the endowment of every incorporated institution of learning and charity in the country. It was doubtless sent by Mr. Sullivan to Mrs. Webster for her inspection, as appears by the following note written by Sullivan in the margin: "Dear Madam, In a letter which I have seen, it is said, 'In the College cause, Webster shone like the sun; and Holmes like a sunfish.'"
"Washington, March 13, Friday,
2 o'clock.
"Dear Sir,—The Court has announced its intention to rise tomorrow, & will hear no argument except in the cause now before them, which is No. 79.
"The Pastora will not be reached. I am exceedingly sorry for this, but could not help it. I insisted to the last & the Chief Justice was obliged to tell me it was impossible—& then I gave it up.
"The College case is argued—not decided—There is a difference of opinion on the bench, & some of the Judges have not come to a conclusion in their own minds. So it is to be continued. I shall depart, on the rising of the Court, & make the best of my way home.
"Yrs
D. Webster."
The following letter to Mr. Brewer is interesting as showing Mr. Webster's interest in questions relating to the currency. It is well known that he himself thought that the department of activity in which he was most capable to render service to the country was that of finance, and that he would have liked very well to have taken the Treasury instead of the Department of State in Harrison's administration:
"Boston, Aug. 25, 1837.
"My Dear Sir,—I am very much obliged to you for your trouble in procuring & sending me the plan of Mr. Wood's House. I enclose the amount of the Architect's charge.
Like yourself, I look forward with much concern to the ensuing session of Congress. That there has been a considerable change, in public opinion, is certain; that this may produce a corresponding effect, in some degree, on the deliberations of Congress, is to be hoped; but whether the change has proceeded so far, as to justify the expectation that the Country is now ready to renounce, entirely, the folly of "Experiments" on the currency, & to return to the former well approved system of finance & currency, may admit of doubt. To the friends of the right cause, however, there remains nothing but a steady, honest, patriotic adherence to sound policy & the true interests of the Country.
"I am, Dr Sir,
with regard & esteem
Yr ob serv.
Dan'l Webster.
"Mr. Brewer."
Some very zealous persons were impatient of Mr. Webster's hesitation and irresolution long before the time of the anti-slavery struggle. My Uncle Jeremiah Evarts, a man whom many people think quite the intellectual equal of his son, the famous advocate, threw himself with all his zeal into the defence of the Cherokee Indians when they were removed from their homes in Georgia by the Legislature of that State, in spite of the judgment of the Supreme Court, which was set at defiance. Mr. Evarts said, "There is One who knows how to execute His judgments." That prophecy had a terrible fulfilment in the region about Missionary Ridge, named, I suppose, for the mission to those Indians maintained by the board of which Mr. Evarts was secretary, which during the Civil War was, as Horace Maynard told me, drenched with blood and honeycombed with graves. Mr. Evarts gave his life to the cause of these oppressed people. His death was caused by over-exertion in their defence. He always claimed to have Mr. Webster's promise of earnest support; and whether he were right or not, no such promise was ever kept. But I have in my possession a considerable number of bound volumes of pamphlets which belonged to Mr. Webster, including many presentation copies from their authors who were among his famous cotemporaries. One of them is a copy of Jeremiah Evarts's "William Penn," written by him in the cause of the Cherokee Indians, which was very famous in its day. On the title-page, written in pencil but still quite legible, in Daniel Webster's handwriting, are the words: "When Greece uttered her voice and stretched forth her hand for aid your hearts were moved, your kindling sympathies went out. Will you be deaf to the no less piteous Indian cry?" This single sentence shows, I suppose, that Mr. Webster was thinking of a speech to be made in the Senate in the cause of the Indians, and also what, as we have said, was his usual method of preparation, that he intended to compose a few sentences in a complete form, the rest of the speech being, so far as composition was concerned, extempore.
The following is from Aaron Burr, containing little in itself, other than the autograph, and the fact that it in all probability relates to the case of which Mr. Todd tells the story in his delightful paper in the "Green Bag," as follows:
"The late Judge Tenney, of Maine, told me that Mr. Webster, when at Portsmouth, heard one of Mr. Mason's students say that the 'old man' had been much puzzled over a particular law difficulty, but had settled it. Mr. Webster inquired what it was, and what was Mr. Mason's solution, and did not forget it. A few years after, in New York, Aaron Burr, one of the ablest lawyers of his time, applied to Mr. Webster for his opinion on this very question, and was surprised to hear his ready answer, that of Mr. Mason."
The tone of hostility in the following letter from Benton is not explained, so far as I know, by any occurrence which history has preserved. If it implied a threat of a challenge, undoubtedly Mr. Webster bore himself on the occasion as became a Senator from Massachusetts, as he did in dealing with the fiery-hearted John Randolph, and as Henry Wilson afterward did in dealing with Preston S. Brooks:
"Senate Chamber, Jan'y 4th 1832.
"Sir,—I take leave to invite your attention to a published letter which Col. Davis will show you, and to say, that he will receive the answer, if any, which you may think the occasion calls for.
"Yr. obt. servant
"Thomas H. Benton.
"Hon. Mr. Webster."
Among the books in my possession belonging to Daniel Webster is a copy of Granger's Biographical Dictionary, in three volumes. It contains Mr. Webster's book-plate, with the motto, "Vera Pro Gratis." On the fly-leaf Mr. Webster has written:
"Mr. Granger died, April 15, 1776, while administering the sacrament, of an apoplectic fit.
More happy end what saint e'er knew!
To whom like mercy shown!
His Saviour's death in rapturous view,
And unperceived his own.
Vide Annual Register for 1776.
D. W."
The poetry is not original, but is taken from the "Register."
Mr. Webster's scrupulous care of his dress is well known. On each of the occasions I saw him, his dress—which, as is well known, was the blue coat with the buff or white vest and brass buttons, and, at least on one occasion in the summer, white trousers—seemed to have been nearly new. I was told by a lady who heard the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson in 1826, in Faneuil Hall that on that occasion he wore a gown.
There are in literature a few biographies in which the hand of a master has, in a brief compass, given a portraiture of an illustrious subject, which, like the faces portrayed by the great painters of the Middle Ages, leaves nothing wanting and which no fulness of detail could improve. Of these, Tacitus's "Life of Agricola" is probably the most perfect example. Kirkland's "Fisher Ames" is of the same class. So, also, unless I am greatly deceived, is the "Life of Daniel Webster," by Edward Everett, published with Webster's Works in 1852. This admirable biography, partly, perhaps, by reason of its place in a voluminous publication, has attracted far less attention than its own excellence and the fame of its author would lead us to expect. It will be worth all the pains taken in preparing these articles if it shall lead the youth of the country to study carefully this masterly portrait by one great statesman and orator of another who was his teacher, leader, and friend. I extract from it one passage which gives the key to Webster's great success and to the success of every great orator who has stirred the feeling or convinced the understanding of the people by the power of eloquent speech:
"The orator who would do justice to a great theme or a great occasion must thoroughly study and understand the subject; he must accurately and, if possible, minutely digest in writing beforehand the substance, and even the form, of his address; otherwise, though he may speak ably, he will be apt not to make in all respects an able speech. He must entirely possess himself beforehand of the main things which he wishes to say, and then throw himself upon the excitement of the moment and the sympathy of the audience. In those portions of his discourse which are didactic or narrative, he will not be likely to wander, in any direction, far from his notes; although even in those portions new facts, illustrations, and suggestions will be apt to spring up before him as he proceeds. But when the topic rises, when the mind kindles from within, and the strain becomes loftier, or bolder, or more pathetic, when the sacred fountain of tears is ready to overflow, and audience and speaker are moved by one kindred sympathetic passion, then the thick-coming fancies cannot be kept down, the storehouse of the memory is unlocked, images start up from the slumber of years, and all that the orator has seen, read, heard, or felt returns in distinct shape and vivid colors. The cold and premeditated text will no longer suffice for the glowing thought. The stately, balanced phrase gives place to some abrupt, graphic expression, that rushes unbidden to his lips. The unforeseen incident or locality furnishes an apt and speaking image; and the discourse instinctively transposes itself into a higher key."
BALLAD
By J. Russell Taylor
"Whither away? Shall we sail or stay? Whither away," I said,
"Into the sunset's glory of gold and passion of rose-red?
Over the water changed to wine and into the sky we slip,
But never a fairer shore than this shall find our buoyant ship,
Not though by shadowy Arcady we drop the anchor at last,
And in the dusk our weary sails come rattling down the mast.
Into the dark steals off the bark: let us stay in our bridal June:
Whither away should lovers stray from the Island of Honeymoon?"
"O far away in the dying day, and farther away," she cried,
"Ere the glory of gold has faded yet or the passion of rose-red died,
O far away from the happier present visit the happy past,
Though never shall our ghostly sails die down the shadowy mast:
For we will flit by the twilight land and name the places fair,
But set no foot on the shore," she cried, "nor drop the anchor there:
But under the night with so swift a flight that the keel is singing in tune,
Back, haste back on the starry track to the Island of Honeymoon!"
A ROYAL ALLY
By William Maynadier Browne
Illustrations by A. I. Keller
Like many other energetic and successful men, Mr. Cutting had his enemies. When, as counsel for the East End Land and Traction Company, he discovered that the policy of a majority of the Board of Directors was to slowly but surely "freeze out" the smaller stockholders, he promptly resigned his position, and proceeded to form a coalition among the to-be-frozen. This coalition had for its object the overthrow of the existing management and the subsequent instituting of a new and generous policy.
Michael O'Connor.
After a hard, stubborn fight, Mr. Cutting and his followers won; the management was displaced, and Mr. Cutting again became counsel for the company. But he had added to his list of enemies some who, though few in number, were long of memory, relentless, and powerful.
Under the new régime the company prospered, and the patient stockholders received their dividends regularly, hitherto withheld or, rather, made to appear non-existing by means of the well-known device of undervaluing the company's lands in converse ratio to its increasing earnings.
The annual meeting was but two days off, and Mr. Cutting's sky seemed clear and tranquil; but overnight clouds had gathered black and ominous. The enemy, believing themselves once more superior in strength, or nearly enough so to venture upon the step, at the last moment sounded the note of war. That evening's paper contained insinuations, which were followed in the morning editions by large headlines and by direct though guarded accusations.
It was this morning, the morning of the very day before the annual meeting, that I was sitting in the office reading these same accusations. I was indignant and tired out.
All the night before I had been closeted with Mr. Cutting in his house, working out with him a defence for use in the battle to come, writing to this or telegraphing to that out-of-town holder of the stock; in one instance even cabling to London for a proxy allowing Mr. Cutting to vote a thousand shares held by a friend of his who was abroad. Together we had gone through the long list of stockholders, checking off those for and those against us, and embodying in a new list the names, not a few, of those either uncertain or unknown to us. This list comprised the names of almost all the smaller holders, owning from one to fifty shares. The only large holding was that of one Andrew J. Ahearn, against whose name appeared the goodly figure of five hundred shares. But, alas! he was among the unknown to us.
As I was leaving the house Mr. Cutting had said to me, mournfully: "I'm afraid they've got us this time. We need four thousand shares more, counting Emley's as safe; and the cable may not reach him in time, or he may be out of London. But, never mind," he added, clapping me warmly on the shoulder; "we will fight 'em till they knock us out, and go for 'em again next year. See you at the office."
As I walked slowly home to my lodgings through the long, level shadows of the early morning, the distinct rattling of incoming milk-carts and the twitter of countless sparrows pulsed through my tired brain in throb with the names of big and little stockholders. Thus, after a bath and breakfast, I had reached the office tired and indignant over the unjust and unwarranted attacks upon Mr. Cutting contained in the morning papers. Though counsel in name, he was in fact the managing head of the company's affairs.
As I sat at my desk, the newspapers lying about on the floor where I had thrown them in my anger, the door opened and old O'Connor entered.
Unlike his former appearances upon the scene of Mr. Cutting's domain, he did not wait to be spoken to, but crossed to me briskly, without hesitation or apology, merely removing his tall hat and sweepingly smoothing his thin white hair as he sat himself down firmly in a chair directly facing me. Something was on his mind, evidently.
"Phwat's dthis the papers do be sayin' about Mr. Cuttin', sor," he began, but, remembering himself, hastened to add, "Good-morning, sor. And how is Mr. Cutting this morning, sor?"
I told him that Mr. Cutting was well. Then I explained to him that the newspaper attacks were instigated by the old Board of Directors of the East End Company, who were trying to oust Mr. Cutting and his friends from the directorate. At receiving this piece of information he merely remarked, tersely, "The divils!" and after a pause added, in a whisper, "Shure, Mr. Cuttin' can down the whole av thim——" Then, with a note of anxiety in his voice, "Can't he, now, sor?"
I replied that it looked very doubtful, the time left us being so short and the other side having prepared themselves so secretly.
"And phwat's dthis," O'Connor went on, an angry look still more contracting his wizened face and concentrating all his features to a point at the tip of his short up-turned nose—"phwat's dthis they do be sayin'—Chimmie, me bar-tender, was afther readin' ut to me—phwat's dthis about Mr. Cuttin' mismanaging the money?"
"Not the money," I hastened to say; "the affairs of the company."
"Well—annyho-ow, 'tis a dommed lie," said O'Connor, thrusting out his square chin farther and farther with each word as it escaped from between the compressed wide lips, which at last opened in a far from pleasant grin, showing his still sound if ragged teeth, as he ejaculated, with fine distinctness, "The blay-gyards!" and then asked, with sudden eagerness, "Do there be anny wan av thim oi knaw, now?"
"No," I said, laughingly, "unless you happen to have met the former president, Mr. Walker;" thinking that that gentleman would in all probability be the least likely to be among the O'Connor's acquaintances.
"Phwat Walker is this?" he asked, all interest and expectation.
"The former president," I said.
"'Tis not Jarge Double-ye, it is, now, is ut?" He was leaning forward, looking eagerly into my eyes, his hands tightly clutching his knees.
"It is," I replied. "George W. Walker."
"An' do I know him!" he exclaimed, leaning back and throwing up both hands, as if exhausted with amazement. "An' it's the loikes av him is fightin' Mr. Cuttin', is ut?" I nodded. "Well, well, well!" he murmured, softly. "Phwat do ye dthink av that! Whishper! Sit still, there, you."
He rose and tiptoed quickly to the door, opened it, and with an imperative backward jerk of the head summoned somebody from the hallway without. In a few moments a small elderly woman squeezed into the room. She was dressed in black and carried her hands clasped in front of her, seeming to hold in place the corners of a shawl that, folded over her shoulders, was crossed at her waist. Her bonnet was diminutive, but somehow uncompromising, almost defiant, in its plainness. From beneath it peeped a portion, but enough, of a smooth brown wig. By it I recognized her. She was the consort of the lineal descendant of the last king of Ireland; she was O'Connor's wife and Mollie's, now Mrs. Fennessey's, mother.
Ejaculated, with fine distinctness, "The blay-gyards!"—[Page 222].
"Ah! Mrs. O'Connor!" I exclaimed, rising, "how do you do? I am glad to see you again."
She merely courtesied sharply and sniffed once. She was not nearly so gracious and so comfortably confiding as she had been in the state chamber of her own castle, where I last saw her. However, she remarked at length, pleasantly enough, that "it was a rale plisint mornin', the day," and seated herself in a chair near the door. For perhaps a minute O'Connor stood by her side and whispered to her. She seemed interested. I caught the sound of "Jarge Double-ye" from him, and a crisp and threatening "Ho, ho!" from her in reply. Then they crossed to my desk, O'Connor drawing a folded paper from his pocket as he came. His manner now was grave and business-like.
"Av you plaze, sor, Mrs. O'Connor and mesilf would thank you if you would be so kind as to lit us j'intly sign this paper forninst ye."
"Do you want me to witness the signatures? Is that it?" I asked, taking the paper and mechanically starting to unfold it.
"Yis, sor. But 'tis—excuse me, sor—'tis a private matther. Read it, sor, if—if——" He paused, much embarrassed. I hastened to assure him it was not necessary for me to read it, and, smoothing down the lowest fold of the document, handed O'Connor a well-filled pen. He, in turn, handed it to his wife, with the words, "Sign you, Bridget Ann, fur-rst, and I'll sign afther, meself."
"Where do I putt me name, Michael, dear?" she asked, now seated uneasily at my desk.
"Just undher the worruds 'Wid my consint,'" he answered, pointing with a short, knotty, curved index-finger to the words "So help me, God," which appeared on the right side of the sheet, just below the edge of the folded section that covered the remainder of the writing, except the words "With my consent," which were on the same line, but at the left. I corrected his mistake.
Slowly and awkwardly, but with great patience, Mrs. O'Connor's signature was constructed. If a decided upward slant indicates, as students of chirography assert, that the writer is of sanguine and ambitious temperament, the lady was surely a worthy spouse for an heir to the throne of Ireland. The signature ran up, up, up, until balked by the folded edge; but pressing against this obstacle, it ran its remaining course in protest against its confinement. Whether or not it spelled Bridget Ann O'Connor, it certainly spelled nothing else.
O'Connor, as usual, had left his spectacles at home. I signed his name and an ×, while he softly touched the tip of my pen-holder. He sighed with relief when it was over, and remarked: "Shure, cross or name, 'tis all the same. There's no differ. Thank you kindly, sor, and phwat do I owe you, now?"
As I waved away his question, Mr. Cutting came in from the company's offices, which adjoined our own.
Despite his anxieties, Mr. Cutting greeted O'Connor with his usual cheery, "Well, Michael, how are you?" and then seeing Mrs. O'Connor, crossed to her and shook hands; after which she resumed her seat, and sniffed once more—this time with more decision and with her nose in the air. She knew she knew Henry H. Cutting, Esq., whether the rest of the world knew she did or not.
"Well, Michael, what can I do for you to-day?" he asked, pleasantly. O'Connor was immediately all confusion. As he tried to answer, he fumbled with his tall hat (which he had hurriedly grasped from its resting-place on my desk at Mr. Cutting's entrance), he pulled with gentle uncertainty at the fringe of white beard that encircled his anxious face, while his eyes followed the line of the washboard as if searching there for encouragement.
"Anything wrong?" asked Mr. Cutting.
"No, sor; no, Mr. Cuttin'," O'Connor at last stammered. "Not wid me, nor yit wid anny belongin' to me. But, Mr. Cuttin', sor, I do be hearin' av—av—phwat the papers——" He paused.
I saw a look of pain and disappointment quickly cross Mr. Cutting's face, and I read his thoughts on the instant. His old servant and friend, doubtful of its security, had come to demand his money.
"Av phwat the papers do be sayin' about you," O'Connor at last gained courage to say, "and av phwat thim blaygyards do be havin' in moind to do to you, sor. So-o I wud—meanin' no presumshin, sor, and wid your kind permission—be afther givin' you this, sor. I dictayted it and me daughter, Mollie, that's now Mrs. Fennessey, wrote it down for me. Av you plaze, sor."
He handed Mr. Cutting the paper I had witnessed, and was gently rising and falling on his toes, holding his tall hat behind him in both hands, while he nervously moistened his lips and gazed at the wall.
Mr. Cutting read the paper quickly, then walked abruptly to the window and stood looking out. There was silence for several moments. O'Connor continued his gentle rising and falling. Mrs. O'Connor sighed softly, smoothed her gown by a touch or two, and again folded her hands. Then Mr. Cutting turned and resting his left hand, which still held the paper, on O'Connor's shoulder, with his right grasped the other's right and shook it warmly. There was the glitter of moisture in his eyes, but his fine face wore an expression of mingled affection and mirth.
"Michael," he said, his clear, musical voice firm and kind, "I thank you with all my heart for your generous offer of assistance. And you, too, Bridget." Mrs. O'Connor half rose, sat down again and sniffed. "But I cannot—it would not be right for me to accept it."
Then followed a wholly unwritable scene—O'Connor and his wife, by turns and at times together, protesting, insisting, assuring, even coaxing. In the mêlée of warm-hearted Irish explosives, I could distinguish, "Shure, I've plinty money"—"More than plinty, he has"—"What wid me rum"—"Yis, an' your junk"—"And me rints"—"There's a good man, now" "No bodther at all, at all." But at last O'Connor caught a look in his former employer's eye that he knew. He saw that further argument or entreaty was useless. At a gesture from Mr. Cutting, he and his wife desisted.
Slowly and awkwardly, but with great patience, Mrs. O'Connor's signature was constructed.—[Page 224].
"No, Michael," Mr. Cutting continued, quietly; "it is impossible. It is out of the question. Besides, I must tell you, and now seems a good time, that while my affairs are in no danger, they are, owing to this new development in the company's prospects, causing me a good deal of trouble and anxiety. I have, therefore, turned the property of yours I was holding into cash, and it is now in my bank. I want you to wait here while I send and draw it out. Then I am going to ask you to take care of it yourself—at least, for the present. I am happy to say the amount has increased considerably, and I know you won't be disappointed."
His tone was firm, and his determination manifest. O'Connor humbly acquiesced with his familiar "Phwativer you plaze, sor, Mr. Cutting, sor." Then Mr. Cutting said:
"But there is one thing you can do for me, Michael, and I shall be very much obliged to you if you will."
"I will, then," said O'Connor, brightening. "Phwat is ut?"
"Give me this paper," said Mr. Cutting, holding up the paper O'Connor had handed him.
"Shure I will, sor, if you want it. 'Tis no use to me now." His sadness had returned, and now held him completely.
Mr. Cutting then disappeared into the company's offices; but in passing my desk on the way he laid the paper before me, whispering as he did so, "Read that."
O'Connor and his wife were now conversing apart, in mournful numbers, so I read, unobserved, this:
"I, Michael O'Connor, being of sound and disposing mind, this day do hereby loan to Mr. Henry H. Cutting, Esq., for any use he please, all my money he has now in charge, him to repay whenever it suits his convenience, and if never at all, no matter at all.
"So help me God.
"Michael
"his × mark
"O'Connor.
"With my consent,
"Bridget Ann O'Connor."
You may be sure it found a safe abiding-place among Mr. Cutting's most cherished possessions. He soon came back into the office, alert and eager, a new light in his eyes.
"Mike," he exclaimed, so suddenly that O'Connor dropped his hat, "perhaps you can help me after all."
"Glory be to God!" exclaimed O'Connor, looking at him, though groping for his hat, which had rolled in a short semi-circle to his wife's feet and was now safely reposing in her lap. "How, sor?"
"Parker," said Mr. Cutting turning to me, "let me have that copy of the list of the uncertain and unknown. Ah!" as he took it and with a flirt opened it. "Michael, see if you can tell me anything of these people. Perhaps you may know the first one on the list—Andrew J. Ahearn, five hundred shares."
"Andy Ahearn!" replied O'Connor, in interested surprise. "Yis, sor, shure I know Andy Ahearn these t'irty years—more shame to me."
"Oh, ho! Thrue for you," came from Mrs. O'Connor's direction.
"What sort of man is he?" Mr. Cutting asked.
"Shure, he do go round pickin' up bur-rnt matches against the day there's no builder left who'll give him firewood; and him wort' his t'ousands upon t'ousands. And now I think av it, sor, I can tell ye how he kem by thim five hunder' shares." Here the old man became very deliberate and precise. "Now, d'ye moind, he is—no-o—he was father to Carneelus Ahearn, him that was in the Legislayter five year ago. 'Twas thin d'ye moind, your company—as it is no-ow—was petishinin' for a—phwat's this ut is—a franchise. Well, I dunno-o; but thin it was many av thim in the Legislayter got shares av stock. Some sez they bought thim, and odthers sez—but that's neidther here nor there, at all, at all, and av no consequince now. But 'twas this same Carneelus, d'ye moind, son to Andy, that was afther give a term av five years in jail, for—for—phwat's this they calls shtealin' whin it ain't shtealin', now?"
"Embezzlement," I suggested.
"That's ut," said O'Connor. "An' he died two years afther, wid t'ree year yet comin' to him. So, now, d'ye moind how ould Andy Ahearn kem by the five hunder' shares? He bought thim arf av his son, Carneelus."
"Do you think you could get him to give you a proxy?" Mr. Cutting asked.
"An' phwat's that, sor, av you plaze?"
"Shure, Michael, dear," came in cooing accents from the lady across the room, "a proxy is a godfather or a godmother whin they are unabil to be prisint."
I tried not to laugh, and Mr. Cutting turned his head to hide a smile; but O'Connor saw that something was wrong. Turning toward his wife, he said, impressively:
"Shure, Bridgit Ann, 'tis not ba-abies we're dishcussin', dear. 'Tis business, it is."
Mr. Cutting and I finally succeeded in giving him a fairly good idea of what a proxy was.
"Shure, 'tis a permit fer me to vote fer him as I plaze, thin?" he asked, at last.
Mr. Cutting said that that was near enough for all practical purposes, and went on reading from the list of names, selecting those of evident or probable Celtic origin. It was amazing how many the old couple knew, either personally or by hearsay. In many instances Mrs. O'Connor was with difficulty restrained from giving a complete family history of the person in question. As the reading progressed they became more and more excited and enthusiastic, until at last O'Connor broke out with:
"Nivver moind the rist, sor. Gimme the list av the whole av thim, and a boonch av thim godfa—I mane, thim proxies."
"There's a good man, now—no bodther at all, at all."—[Page 225].
"And moind you take Chimmie along wid you, Michael," said Mrs. O'Connor, grasping at once her husband's intention and eagerly espousing it. "Chim knows manny as well as you, and some betther. Thin, he is eddicayted, too, Michael, dear. And I'll get Tim to come over and tind bar, dear."
"Thrue for you, Bridgit Ann," said O'Connor, warmly. "'Tis Chimmie an' me will do the job this day."
I gave him a handful of printed blanks to use for the proxies, and Mr. Cutting handed him the list of names. He disposed of these summarily in the capacious pocket of his coat, caught his wife by the arm, and together they started to go.
At this moment a clerk entered and handed Mr. Cutting O'Connor's money.
"Wait, Michael," he called. "Here's your money; and here"—reaching for a paper in his desk—"is an account of how we stand. It is all there. Look it over at your leisure."
O'Connor hesitated, a last look of pleading in his eyes; then took the money and account, thrust them deep into his trousers pocket, and hurried to the door. This he partly opened, and he and milady scurried funnily through the narrow space, like a pair of elderly black puppies. The door closed behind them.
Mr. Cutting leaned back in his chair, and laughed for a full minute. Then he asked me to bring him the signed dictation. I did so. He read it through once more, laughed again, and sighed:
"God bless him! Being of sound and disposing mind this day, I will take the will for the deed." He sat for a moment in thought; then holding the paper before him, he said, musingly: "Few, very, very few are those in this world so broadly eddicayted as to have dictayted this."
"There are few of the blood royal," I ventured to remark.
"And more's the pity," he said, as the lock of his lacquered dispatch-box clicked. For a time we were silent.
"It just occurs to me," I said at last, "that we forgot to have him sign a receipt."
"Receipt, man!" he exclaimed. "A receipt from him? Besides, we have Bridget Ann as a witness." And chuckling, he passed again into the company's offices.
Not until the very hour of the day of the meeting did we realize that we had entirely forgotten to instruct O'Connor to have such proxies as he might get made out in Mr. Cutting's name.
The morrow came, and with it the meeting. The stockholders were not present in large numbers, but enough were there to crowd uncomfortably the directors' room where the meeting was held. O'Connor had not put in an appearance, nor had we heard from him since his and his wife's hurried departure of the day before. Our side was not a very hopeful party. True, Emley had cabled his attorney to give Mr. Cutting a proxy, and it was now safe in Mr. Cutting's possession, with the others he had obtained. But we were sure of only twenty-two thousand out of a total of fifty thousand shares, and to our knowledge (now, alas! at the last moment) the other side had been working like beavers to obtain proxies. Still, there was a chance for us. It is as misleading to count your proxies before they are voted, as to count your chickens before they are hatched. Some of the enemy's might be revoked at any moment, or be superseded by others bearing later dates. At any rate, preparation was passed. The fight was on.
Mr. Cutting was seated at the side of the room, surrounded by a little group of his fellow-directors and friends. I was beside the president, the necessary books and papers at my hand, ready to perform my duties as secretary. It was a position I held through Mr. Cutting's kindness and influence. At last the president called the meeting to order.
The reading of the minutes of the previous meeting was dispensed with, for which I was grateful. Something in the air told me that the enemy were eager for action. As many formalities as could be were omitted or summarily disposed of. The instant the treasurer's report had been read and accepted, Mr. Walker, the ex-president, was on his feet.
Then followed a very able, if wholly misleading, attack upon the policy pursued by the board of directors during their term of office. Mr. Walker was a man of force and a good speaker; and his remarks had their effect upon not a few uncertain ones, if one could judge by the look of approval apparent on the faces of many who were present. But as he neared the end, either his personal enmity toward Mr. Cutting or the excitement due to the occasion, got the better of his judgment. He closed by a personal attack upon the counsel, whom he characterized as "the non-commissioned general who had cunningly devised this whole campaign of extravagance, wickedly designed to elate and bamboozle the smaller stockholders, who, when the inevitable result of such reckless expenditure should come—namely, a crash—would find themselves obliged to sell their little hard-earned holdings." "To whom," Mr. Walker ended, "it is hardly necessary for me to say."
From where I sat I commanded a view of the door that led directly into the corridor of the building. Just as Mr. Walker's spleen was beginning to take possession of him, I saw this door open and O'Connor enter. He was accompanied by a short, stocky, red-haired young Irishman, whom I recognized as his bartender, "Chimmie."
The old chap looked hot and excited, but not tired, and far from dejected. There was a new alertness about him, much like that you will see in an old and experienced bull-terrier, who has every reason to believe that the rat-trap is about to be opened. I watched him.
"A proxy is a godfather or a godmother whin they are unabil to be prisint."—[Page 226].
With head bent forward, and with one bunchy hand curled like a warped oyster-shell about his ear, he listened to every word. I saw him ask a man next him who was speaking. I could tell that this was his question by the effect the man's answer produced upon him. His eyebrows lowered and contracted, and from beneath them he glared at "Jarge Double-ye," while the far from pleasant grin appeared, grew, and hardened about his mouth. Meanwhile he was gradually edging his way forward, his faithful companion at his elbow, nearer and nearer to the speaker. In the general interest in Mr. Walker's remarks, few noticed the pair.
At last the descendant of the last King of Ireland was in a position squarely in front of the speaker, and separated from him by the width of the directors' long table, upon which now reposed the old tall hat so familiar to me and to Mr. Cutting.
The instant Mr. Walker was seated, after his speech, he of the royal blood seized his opportunity.
"Mr. Prisidint," he said, firmly and clearly, depositing his large red cambric handkerchief in the hat beside him. The president bowed, saying:
"You have the floor, Mr. ——. Excuse me; you are a stockholder, I suppose?"
"I am, sor."
I was amazed.
"Your name, please."
"Michael O'Connor, twinty-wan —— Wharf, junk-dealer and licensed liquor-seller."
There was a slight stir of expectancy among those present. The president glanced at me, waiting for me to verify O'Connor's statement. I had run my finger down the O's in the list of names, well knowing, of course, O'Connor's was not there. I shook my head.
"Your name does not seem to appear on the list, Mr. O'Connor," said the president.
"Shure, I only bought me shtock this mornin', sor," replied O'Connor with a reassuring and comforting wave of the hand to the chief officer of the company. Chimmie, at his elbow still, handed him a paper from a bunch of many he held ready in his hand. O'Connor passed it up to the president, with the remark, "Here is me credintials, sor, av you plaze."
That gentleman merely glanced at it, then returned it to O'Connor, and said,
"A certificate of stock, I see. Did you expect to vote?"
"Dthat's phwat I kem here fer," said O'Connor, with a quick nod of the head, which showed that the royal blood was stirring.
Then the president explained to him that the transfer-books were closed, and that, by the by-laws of the company, nobody was allowed to vote at its meetings except such persons as were duly registered holders of its stock, or were holders of a proxy from somebody who was.
Enter O'Connor and Chimmie.—[Page 228].
"Proxy, is ut!" exclaimed O'Connor. "Chimmie, me boy, give me the odther wan." Jimmie handed him a second paper, which he in turn handed to the president.
The royal blood was now at boiling-point.—[Page 232].
"This seems to be perfectly regular, dated to-day, from Andrew J. Ahearn, for five hundred shares," the president said, and handed the proxy to me.
The stir of expectation had become a ripple of excitement. I observed that Mr. Walker moved uneasily.
"Yis, sor," said O'Connor, with a touch of ludicrous aplomb. "Andy Ahearn—shure, the ould divil wouldn't give me the wan widout I bought the odther. And now, thin, sor, I have the privilege to vote, is ut?"
The president bowed and looked about the room for some other person who might have business before the meeting.
"Thin I, Michael O'Connor," the old fellow continued, to everybody's surprise and amusement, "do hereby vote on these five hunder' shares"—here he held the certificate aloft in his right hand—"for Mr. Hinry Haitch Cutting, Esquire, so help me God, and——"
He was interrupted by a roar of laughter. Mr. Walker was now on his feet. When the laughter ceased, he said:
"Mr. President, are we to take this stockholder as a fair example of Mr. Cutting's faithful following?"
The question was greeted with silence. Mr. Walker had made a blunder, and he was instantly made to feel it. O'Connor spoke again, quietly and slowly, addressing the presiding officer, but looking angrily at the interrupter through half-closed eyelids, his nose held high. As he spoke he gently smoothed down his long upper lip at the corners with thumb and forefinger.
"Mr. Prisidint," he said, "I think—I dunno-o—but may-be-e—I have the floo-or?"
The president bowed, but added that it was not yet time to take a vote. Those who are familiar with the Irish well know how rarely you find one with absolutely no knowledge of parliamentary procedure. It seems to be imbibed with the mother's milk. O'Connor was not in the least disconcerted. "Thin, sor," he continued, "wid your kind permission, I will make a few remarks."
"I shall be glad to hear them, Mr. O'Connor," the president said. A small wave of approval passed over the meeting. O'Connor placed his thumbs firmly in the armholes of his waistcoat, planted his feet well apart, and began. The royal blood was up.
"Mr. Prisidint and gintlemin," with a low, sweeping bow from left to right, "and Jarge Double-ye Walker." Here he cleared his throat to allow his sarcasm time to penetrate the understanding of his hearers. It did. "Whidther or not I am a fair example uv ahl Mr. Hinry Haitch Cutting Esquire's fait'ful follyers, I am unabil to say, they bein' so large in noomber, by God's justice. But, Mr. Prisidint and gintlemin, and Jarge Double-ye Walker, wid ahl modesty, I do claim to be a fair example av some thirty-foor av Mr. Hinry Haitch Cutting Esquire's fait'ful follyers, who owns bechune thim two t'ousand wan hunder' and sivin shares, countin' me own five hunder'. They are ivery wan av thim Oirish, includin' mesilf, and I have the proxies av ivery wan av thim, includin' me own. Put that in your poipe, Jarge Double-ye Walker." The royal blood was getting hot. A round of applause burst from Mr. Cutting's party, but it quickly subsided at the sharp rap of the president's gavel upon the table. This, however, had little effect upon O'Connor. The royal blood was now at boiling-point.
"Moreover, Jarge Double-ye Walker," he continued, too quickly for interruption, and emphasizing each clause with clenched fists, "they pays their taxes, they pays their bills. They has paid for their little hard-earned holdin's in this company, and—some av thim owns tinimint-houses, but not one wid bad plumbin' and defective drainage, Jarge Double-ye Walker."
Caution had been royally thrown to the winds. The president rapped hard and long upon his desk. The listeners moved uneasily in their seats.
"Mr. O'Connor," the president said, sharply, "you must confine your remarks to the business in hand and address them to the chair, or I must ask you to take your seat."
"I ax your pardon, Mr. Prisidint," said O'Connor. He was now his old self, and went on with homely courtesy, to say: "It is my wish, sor, to say just a few worruds more regyardin' me idee av phwat conshtitutes the fitness av a man for the job av managin' the affairs av odthers than himself—wid your kind permission, Mr. Prisidint, and I'll not be long, at all, at all." The president bowed. As the old Irishman continued, his voice grew soft and tender, at times sinking almost to a whisper.
"I am unabil, bein' mesilf uneddicayted and a plain man, to deshcribe to yez just phwat I'm wantin' to tell yez. But maybe you'll know from this. Twinty year ago come the tinth av this prisint month, I wint to worruk for a certin gintleman, to do chores about the place and phwat gyardenin' and potherin' round the grounds was nicissary. He had a purty place in the country—a rale pur-rty place, and there was a shweet little house there he putt me in—all for mesilf and me wife and me baby—a little gurrul she was, wan year old. I had been to worruk in the city, where I lived in a tinimint—noomber t'ree Gay's Alley, so called it was. Me wife was ailin', and the baby was takin' afther her modther at the time; so, shure, it was deloighted we was at the chanst to live in the country and wid our new place. A lovely home it was. Well, just tin days afther we kem, me wife was tuk wid fever—typhide fever it was—and two days afther little Mollie was tuk, too, just the same. Oh! wurra! wurra! but thim was heart-breakin' days! But niver moind, I'll not bodther you wid ahl av it. Wan night me wife was terrible bad, little Mollie bein' ashleep in the nixt room, and not near so bad as her modther, to my thinkin'. The docthor kem, and wid him the gintleman that emplyed me. Whin the docthor had looked at the two, he sez to me, 'The modther is very low,' he sez, 'but she will come t'rough all right; but the young un,' he sez, 'is in a viry criticil condition. She'll need conshtant attintion,' he sez, 'and I cannot be here mesilf,' he sez, 'to save her life!' Me heart died in me that minute.
"But quick, wid no hesitation, the gintleman sez to the docthor, callin' him by name, he bein' a frind av his, he sez, 'John,' he sez, 'I'll look afther the little one mesilf durin' the night,' he sez. 'I've done it before this, as you know,' he sez; 'and come again, you, in the mornin',' he sez."
Here the old man paused. There was perfect silence in the room. When he again spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper, but he could be distinctly heard.
"For t'ree whole nights—long, sad, weary nights—the gintleman niver lift the side av Mollie's bed, onliss whin he crep' in to putt his hand on me shoulder and say to me, 'Keep up, me man. We'll pull 'em both t'rough, all right'—and we did that same. Glory be to God and the Blessed Virgin! they're alive and well this day, the two av thim.
"Well, Mr. Prisidint and gintlemin, I am not eddicayted and I dunno-o—I may be wrong, but to my moind that gintleman is the kind av a man that hav fitness for the job av managin' the affairs av odthers beside himself. And that gintleman is Mr. Hinry Haitch Cutting, Esquire."
He paused and looked about him sheepishly; then turning so as to face Mr. Walker, he said:
"Mr. Jarge Double-ye Walker, I ax your pardon for shpeakin' so rough to ye, sor. 'Tis ahl past and gone now, sor, and I bear ye no ill-will." Then to the president he said, quietly, "Thank you kindly, Mr. Prisidint;" and taking his hat, moved back among those who were standing near the door.
Mr. Cutting now moved that we proceed to the election of officers for the ensuing year. The motion was carried.
When the ballots were counted, it was found that the existing officers had received the votes of twenty-seven thousand and some odd shares, thus having a clear majority. We could, of course, tell exactly how many votes were due to O'Connor's proxies; but how many more were due to his personal presence at the meeting, we could only estimate.
THE SHIP OF STARS
By A. T. Quiller-Couch
(Q.)
XVIII
THE BARRIERS FALL
There were marks of teeth on his right boot, but no marks at all on his body. Fright—or fright following on that evening's frenzy—had killed him.
He was buried three days later, and Mr. Raymond read the service. No rain had fallen, and the blood of the three hounds still stained the gravel dividing the grave from the porch, where the crowd had shot them down.
For awhile his death made small difference to the family at the Parsonage. They had fought the shadow of his enmity and proved it for what it was; a shadow and little else. But they had scarcely realized their success, and wondered why the removal of the shadow did not affect them more.
About this time Taffy began to carry out a scheme which he and his father had often discussed, but hitherto had found no leisure for—the setting up of wooden crosses on the graves of the drowned sailormen. They had wished for slate: but good slate was expensive and hard to come by, and Taffy had no skill in stone-cutting. Since wood it must be, he resolved to put his best work into it. The names, etc., should be engraved, not painted merely. Some of the pew-fronts in the church had panels elaborately carved in flat and shallow relief—fine Jacobean designs, all of them. He took careful rubbings of the narrowest, made tracings, and set to work to copy them on the face of his crosses.
One afternoon, some three weeks after the Squire's funeral, he happened to return to the house for a tracing which he had forgotten, and found Honoria seated in the kitchen and talking with his father and mother. She was dressed in black, of course, and either this or the solemnity of her visit gave her quite a grown-up look. But to be sure, she was mistress of Tredinnis now, and a child no longer.
Taffy guessed the meaning of her visit at once. And no doubt this act of formal reconciliation between Tredinnis House and the Parsonage had cost her some nervousness. When he entered his parents stood up and seemed just as awkward as their visitor. "Another time, perhaps," he heard his father say. Honoria rose almost at once, and would not stay to drink tea, though Humility pressed her.
"I suppose," said Taffy next day, looking up from his Virgil, "I suppose Miss Honoria wants to make friends now, and help on the restoration?"
Mr. Raymond, who was on his knees fastening a loose hinge in a pew-door, took a screw from between his lips.
"Yes, she proposed that."
"It must be splendid for you, dad!"
"I don't quite see," answered Mr. Raymond, with his head well inside the pew.
Taffy stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and took a turn up and down the aisle.
"Why," said he, coming to a halt, "it means that you have won. It's victory, dad, and I call it glorious!" His lip trembled. He wanted to put a hand on his father's shoulder, as any other comrade would. But his abominable shyness stood between.
"We won long ago, my boy." And Mr. Raymond wheeled round on his knees, pushed up his spectacles, and quoted the famous lines, very solemnly and slowly:
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
"I see," Taffy nodded. "And—I say, that's jolly. Who wrote it?"
"A man I used to see in the streets of Oxford, and always turned to stare after: a man with big oddly shaped feet and the face of a god—a young tormented god. Those were days when young men's thoughts tormented them. Taffy," he asked, abruptly, "should you like to go to Oxford?"
"Don't, father!" The boy bit his lip to keep back the tears. "Talk of something else—something cheerful. It has been a splendid fight, just splendid! And now it's over I'm almost sorry."
"What is over?"
"Well, I suppose—now that Honoria wants to help—we can hire workmen and have the whole job finished in a month or two at farthest: and you——"
Mr. Raymond stood up, and leaning against a bench-end examined the thread of the screw between his fingers.
"That is one way of looking at it, no doubt," he said, slowly; "and I hope God will forgive me if I have put my own pride before His service. But a man desires to leave some completed work behind him: something to which people may point and say, 'he did it.' There was my book, now: for years I thought that was to be my work. But God thought otherwise and—to correct my pride, perhaps—set me to this task instead. To set a small forsaken country church in order and make it worthy of His presence—that is not the mission I should have chosen. But so be it: I have accepted it. Only, to let others step in at the last and finish even this—I say He must forgive me, but I cannot."
"Your book ... you can go back to it and finish it."
"I have burnt it."
"Dad!"
"I burned it. I had to. It was a temptation to me, and until I lifted it from the grate and the flakes crumbled in my hands, the surrender was not complete."
Taffy felt a sudden gush of pity. And as he pitied, suddenly he understood his father.
"It had to be complete?"
"Either the book or the surrender. My boy"—and in his voice there echoed the aspiration and the despair of the true scholar who abhors imperfection and incompleteness in a world where nothing is either perfect or complete, "it is different with you. I borrowed you, so to say, for the time. Without you I must have failed; but this was never your work. For myself, I have been humble and learnt my lesson; but, please God, you shall be my Solomon and be granted a temple to build."
Taffy had lost his shyness now. He laid a hand on his father's sleeve.
"We will go on, then."
"Yes, we will go on."
"And Jacky? Where has he been? I haven't seen him since the Squire died."
Mr. Raymond searched in his coat-pocket and handed over a crumpled letter. It ran:—
"Dear friend.—This is to say that you will not see me no more. The dear Lord tells me I have made a cauch of it. He don't say how, all He says is go and do better somewheres else.
"Seems to me a terrable thing to think Religion can be bad for anny man. It have done me such powars of good. The late Moyle esq he was like a dirty pan all the milk turned sour no mattar what. Dr friend I pored Praise into him and it come out Prayer and all for him self. But the dear Lord says I was to blame as much as Moyle esq so must do bettar next time but feel terrable timid.
"My respects to Masr Taffy. Dr friend I done my best I come like Nicodemus by night. Seeming to me when Christians fall out tis over what they pray for. When they praise God forget diffnses and I cant think where the quaraling comes in and so no more at present from
"Yours respflly
"J. Pascoe."
After supper that night, in the Parsonage kitchen, Humility kept rising from her chair, and laying her needlework aside to re-arrange the pans and kettles on the hearth. This restlessness was so unusual that Taffy, seated in the ingle with a book on his knee, had half raised his head to twit her when he felt a hand laid softly on his hair, and looked up into his mother's eyes.
"Taffy, should you like to go to Oxford?"
"Don't, mother!"
"But you can." The tears in her eyes answered his at once. She turned to his father. "Tell him——"
"Yes, my boy, you can go," said Mr. Raymond; "that is, if you can win a scholarship. Your mother and I have been talking it over."
"But—" Taffy began and could get no farther. He knew nothing of his parents' affairs except that they were poor: he had always supposed, almost desperately poor.
"We have money enough, with care," said Mr. Raymond.
But the boy's eyes were on his mother. Her cheeks, usually so pale, were flushed; but she turned her face away and walked slowly back to her chair. "The lace-work," he heard her say: "I have been saving ... from the beginning——"
"For this?" He followed and took her hand. With the other she covered her eyes; but nodded.
"O mother—mother!" He knelt and let his brow drop on her lap. She ceased to weep; her palms rested on his bowed head, but now and then her body shook with a sob that would not be restrained. And but for the ticking of the tall clock there was silence in the room.
It was wonderful; and the wonder of it grew when they recovered themselves and fell to discussing their actual plans. In spite of his idolatry, Mr. Raymond could not help remembering certain slights which he, a poor miller's son, had undergone at Christ Church. He had chosen Magdalen, which Taffy knew to be the most beautiful of all the colleges; and the news that his name had been entered on the college books for years past gave him a delicious shock. It was now July. He would matriculate in the October term, and in January enter for a demyship. But (the marvels followed so fast on each other's heels) there would be an examination held in ten days' time—actually in ten days' time—a "Certificate" examination, Mr. Raymond called it—which would excuse the boy not only the ordinary Matriculation test, but Responsions too. And, in short, Taffy was to pack his box and go.
"But the subjects?"
"You have been reading them and the prescribed books for four months past. And I have had sets of the old papers by me for a guide. Your mathematics are shaky—but I think you should do well enough."
It was now Humility's turn, and the discussion plunged among shirts and collars. Never had evening been so happy; and whether they talked of mathematics or of collars, Taffy could not help observing how from time to time his father's and mother's eyes would meet and say, as plainly as words, "We have done rightly," "Yes, we have done rightly."
And the wonder of it remained next morning, when he awoke to a changed world and took down his books with a new purpose. Already his box had been carried into old Mrs. Venning's room, and his mother and grandmother were busy, the one packing and repacking, the other making a new and important suggestion every minute.
He was to go up alone, and to lodge in Trinity College, where an old friend of Mr. Raymond's, a resident fellow just then abroad and spending his Long Vacation in the Tyrol, had placed his own room at the boy's service.
To see Oxford—to be lodging in college! He had to hug his mother in the midst of her packing.
"You will be going by the Great Western," she said. "You won't be seeing Honiton on your way."
When the great morning came, Mr. Raymond travelled with him in the van to Truro, to see him off. Humility went upstairs to her mother's room, and the two women prayed together.
They also serve who only stand and wait.
XIX
OXFORD
"Eight o'clock, sir!"
Taffy heard the voice speaking above a noise which his dreams confused with the rattle of yesterday's journey. He was still in the train, rushing through the rich levels of Somersetshire. He saw the broad horizon, the cattle at pasture, the bridges and flagged pools flying past the window—and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Blenkiron, the scout, stood between him and the morning sunshine, emptying a can of water into the tub beside his bed.
Blenkiron wore a white waistcoat, and a tie of orange scarlet and blue, the colors of the College Servants Cricket Club. These were signs of the Long Vacation. For the rest his presence would have become an archdeacon; and he guided Taffy's choice of a breakfast with an air which suggested the hand of iron beneath the glove of velvet.
"And begging your pardon, sir, but will you be lunching in?"
Taffy would consult Mr. Blenkiron's convenience.
"The fact is, sir, we've arranged to play Teddy 'All this afternoon at Cowley, and the drag starts at one-thirty sharp."
"Then I'll get my lunch out of college," said Taffy, wondering who Teddy Hall might be.
"I thank you, sir. I had, indeed, took the liberty of telling the manciple that you was not a gentleman to give more trouble than you could 'elp. Fried sole, pot of tea, toast, pot of blackberry jam, commons of bread—" Mr. Blenkiron disappeared.
Taffy sprang out of bed and ran to the open window in the next room. The gardens lay below him—smooth turf flanked with a border of gay flowers, flanked on the other side with yews; and beyond the yews, with an avenue of limes; and beyond these, with tall elms. A straight gravelled walk divided the turf. At the end of it two yews of magnificent spread guarded a great iron gate. Beyond these the chimneys and battlements of Wadham College stood gray against the pale eastern sky, and over them the larks were singing.
So this was Oxford; more beautiful than all his dreams. And since his examination would not begin until to-morrow, he had a whole long day to make acquaintance with her. Half a dozen times he had to interrupt his dressing to run and gaze out of the window, skipping back when he heard Blenkiron's tread on the staircase. And at breakfast again he must jump up and examine the door. Yes, there was a second door outside—a heavy oak—just as his father had described. What stories had he not heard about these oaks! He was handling this one almost idolatrously when Blenkiron appeared suddenly at the head of the stairs. Blenkiron was good enough to explain at some length how the door worked; while Taffy, who did not need his instruction in the least, blushed to the roots of his hair.
For, indeed, it was like first love, this adoration of Oxford; shamefast, shy of its own raptures; so shy, indeed, that when he put on his hat and walked out into the streets he could not pluck up courage to ask his way. Some of the colleges he recognized from his father's description: of one or two he discovered the names by peeping through their gateways and reading the notices pinned up by the porters' lodges: for it never occurred to him that he was free to step inside and ramble through the quadrangles. He wondered where the river lay, and where Magdalen, and where Christ Church. He passed along the Turl, and down Brasenose Lane; and at the foot of it, beyond the great chestnut-tree leaning over Exeter wall, the vision of noble square, the dome of the Radcliffe, and St. Mary's spire caught his breath and held him gasping.
His feet took him by the gate of Brasenose and across the High. On the farther pavement he halted, round-eyed, held at gaze by the beauty of the Virgin's Porch with the creeper drooping like a veil over its twisted pillars. High up, white pigeons wheeled round the spire, or fluttered from niche to niche, and a queer fancy took him that they were the souls of the carved saints, up there, talking to one another above the city's traffic. At length he withdrew his eyes, and reading the name "Oriel Street" on an angle of the wall above him, passed down a narrow by-lane in search of further wonders.
The clocks were striking three when, after regaining the High and lunching at a pastry-cook's, Taffy turned down into St. Aldates and recognized Tom Tower ahead of him. The great gates were closed. Through the open wicket he had a glimpse of green turf and an idle fountain; and while he peered in a jolly-looking porter stepped out of the lodge for a breath of air and nodded in the friendliest manner.
"You can walk through, if you want to. Were you looking for anyone?"
"No," said Taffy; and explained, proudly, "My father used to be at Christ Church."
The porter seemed interested. "What name?" he asked.
"Raymond."
"That must have been before my time. I suppose you'll be wanting to see the Cathedral. That's the door—right opposite."
Taffy thanked him, and walked across the great empty quadrangle. Within the Cathedral the organ was sounding and pausing; and from time to time a boy's voice broke in upon the music like a flute, the pure treble rising to the roof as though it were the very voice of the building and every pillar sustained its petition, "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law!" Neither organist nor chorister was visible, and Taffy tiptoed along the aisles in dread of disturbing them. For the moment this voice adoring in the noble building expressed to him the completest, the most perfect thing in life. All his own boyish handiwork, remember, had been guided under his father's eye toward the worship of God.
"... and incline our hearts to keep this law." The music ceased. He heard the organist speaking, up in the loft; criticising, no doubt: and it reminded him somehow of the small sounds of home and his mother moving about her house-work in the hush between breakfast and noon.
He stepped out into the sunlight again, and wandering through archway and cloister found himself at length beyond the college walls and at the junction of two avenues of elms, between the trunks of which shone the acres of a noble meadow, level and green. The avenues ran at a right angle, east and south; the one old, with trees of magnificent girth, the other new and interset with poplars.
Taffy stood irresolute. One of these avenues, he felt sure, must lead to the river; but which?
Two old gentlemen stepped out from the wicket of the Meadow Buildings, and passed him, talking together. The taller—a lean man, with a stoop—was clearly a clergyman. The other wore cap and gown, and Taffy remarked, as he went by, that his cap was of velvet; and also that he walked with his arms crossed just above the wrists, his right hand clutching his left cuff, and his left hand his right cuff, his elbows hugged close to his sides.
After a few paces the clergyman paused, said something to his companion, and the two turned back toward the boy.
"Were you wanting to know your way?"
"I was looking for the river," Taffy answered. He was thinking that he had never in his life seen a face so full of goodness.
"Then this is your first visit to Oxford? Suppose, now, you come with us? and we will take you by the river and tell you the names of the barges. There is not much else to see, I'm afraid, in Vacation time."
He glanced at his companion in the velvet cap, who drew down an extraordinarily bushy pair of eyebrows (yet he, too, had a beautiful face) and seemed to come out of a dream.
"So much the better, boy, if you come up to Oxford to worship false gods."
Taffy was taken aback.
"Eight false gods in little blue caps, seated in a trough and tugging at eight poles: and all to discover if they can get from Putney to Mortlake sooner than eight other false gods in little blue caps of a lighter shade! What do they do at Mortlake when they get there in such a hurry? Eh, boy?"
"I—I'm sure I don't know," stammered Taffy.
The clergyman broke out laughing, and turned to him. "Are you going to tell us your name?"
"Raymond, sir. My father used to be at Christ Church."
"What? Are you Sam Raymond's son?"
"You knew my father?"
"A very little. I was his senior by a year or two. But I know something about him." He turned to the other. "Let me introduce the son of a man after your own heart—of a man fighting for God in the wilds, and building an altar there with his own hands and by the lamp of sacrifice."
"But how do you know all this?" cried Taffy.
"Oh," the old clergyman smiled, "we are not so ignorant up here as you suppose."
They walked by the river-bank, and there Taffy saw the college barges and was told the name of each. Also he saw a racing eight go by: it belonged to the Vacation Rowing Club. From the barges they turned aside and followed the windings of the Cherwell. The clergyman did most of the talking; but now and then the old gentleman in the velvet cap interposed a question about the church at home, its architecture, the materials it was built of, and so forth; or about Taffy's own work, his carpentry, his apprenticeship with Mendarva the smith. And to all these questions the boy found himself replying with an ease which astonished him.
Suddenly the old clergyman said, "There is your College!"
And unperceived by Taffy a pair of kindly eyes watched his own as they met the first vision of that lovely tower rising above the trees and (so like a thing of life it seemed) lifting its pinnacles exultantly into the blue heaven.
"Well?"
All three had come to a halt. The boy turned, blushing furiously.
"This is the best of all, sir."
"Boy," said old Velvet-cap, "do you know the meaning of 'edification'? There stands your lesson for four years to come, if you can learn it in that time. Do you think it easy? Come and see how it has been learnt by men who have spent their lives face to face with it."
They crossed the street by Magdalen bridge, and passed under Pugin's gateway, by the Chapel door and into the famous cloisters. All was quiet here; so quiet that even the voices of the sparrows chattering in the ivy seemed but a part of the silence. The shadow of the great tower fell across the grass, on which (so a notice-board announced) nobody was allowed to walk.
"This is how one generation read the lesson. Come and see how another, and a later, read it."
A narrow passage led them out of gloom into sudden sunlight; and the sunlight spread itself on fair grass-plots and gravelled walks, flower-beds and the pale yellow façade of a block of buildings in the classical style, stately and elegant, with a colonnade which only needed a few promenading figures in laced coats and tie-wigs to complete the agreeable picture.
"What do you make of that?"
As a matter of fact, Taffy's thoughts had run back to the theatre at Plymouth with its sudden changes of scenery. And he stood for a moment while he collected them.
"It's different—that is," he added, feeling that this was lame, "it means something different; I cannot tell what."
"It means the difference between godly fear and civil ease, between a house of prayer and one of no-prayer. It spells the moral change which came over this University when religion, the spring and source of collegiate life, was discarded. The cloisters behind you were built for men who walked with God."
"But why," objected Taffy, plucking up courage, "couldn't they do that in the sunlight?"
Velvet-cap opened his mouth. The boy felt he was going to be denounced; when a merry laugh from the old clergyman averted the storm.
"Be content," he said to his companion; "we are Gothic enough in Oxford nowadays. And the lad is right too. There was hope even for eighteenth-century Magdalen while its buildings looked on sunlight and on that tower. We lay too much stress on prayer. The lesson of that tower (with all deference to your amazing discernment and equally amazing whims) is not prayer, but praise. And between ourselves, when all men unite to worship God, it'll be praise, not prayer, that brings them together.
Praise is devotion fit for noble minds,
The differing world's agreeing sacrifice...."
"Oh, if you're going to fling quotations from a tapster's son at my head.... Let me see ... how does it go on?... Where—something or other—different faiths—
Where Heaven divided faiths united finds...."
And in a moment the pair were in hot pursuit after the quotation, tripping each other up, like two schoolboys at a game. Taffy never forgot the last stanza, the last line of which they recovered exactly in the middle of the street, Velvet-cap standing between two tram-lines, right in the path of an advancing car, while he declaimed—
"By penitence when we ourselves forsake,
'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven;
In praise—
In praise we nobly give what God may take,
And are without a beggar's blush forgiven.
—Damn these trams!"
The old clergyman shook hands with Taffy in some haste. "And when you reach home give my respects to your father. Stay, you don't know my name. Here is my card, or you'll forget it."
"Mine too," said Velvet-cap.
Taffy stood staring after them as they walked off down the lane which skirts the Botanical Gardens. The names on the two cards were famous ones, as even he knew. He walked back toward Trinity a proud and happy boy. Half-way up Queen's Lane, finding himself between blank walls, with nobody in sight, he even skipped.
XX
TAFFY GIVES A PROMISE
The postman halted by the foot-bridge and blew his horn. The sound sent the rabbits scampering into their burrows; and just as they began to pop out again, Taffy came charging across the slope; whereupon they drew back their noses in disgust, and to avoid the sand scattered by his heels.
The postman held up a blue envelope and waved it. "Here, 'tis come, at last!"
"It may not be good news," said Taffy, clutching it, and then turning it over in his hand.
"Well, that's true. And till you open it, it won't be any news at all."
"I wanted mother to be the first to know."
"Oh, very well—only as you say, it mightn't be good news."
"If it's bad news, I want to be alone. But why should they trouble to write?"
"True again. I s'pose now you're sure it is from them?"
"I can tell by the seal."
"Take it home, then," said the postman. "Only if you think 'tis for the sake of a twiddling sixteen shilling a week that I traipse all these miles every day——"
Taffy fingered the seal. "If you would really like to know——"
"Don't 'ee mention it. Not on any account." He waved his hand magnanimously and trudged off toward Tredinnis.
Taffy waited until he disappeared behind the first sand-hill, and broke the seal. A slip of parchment lay inside the envelope.
"This is to certify——"
He had paused! He pulled off his cap and waved it round his head. And once more the rabbits popped back into their burrows.
Toot—toot—toot!—It was that diabolical postman. He had fetched a circuit round the sand-hill, and was peeping round the north side of it and grinning as he blew.
Taffy set off running, and never stopped until he reached the Parsonage and burst into the kitchen.
"Mother—it's all right! I've passed!"
Somebody was knocking at the door. Taffy jumped up from his knees and Humility made the lap of her apron smooth.
"May I come in?" asked Honoria, and pushed the door open. She stepped into the middle of the kitchen and dropped Taffy an elaborate courtesy. "A thousand congratulations, sir!"
"Why, how did you know?"
"Well, I met the postman: and I looked in through the window before knocking."
Taffy bit his lip. "People seem to be taking a deal of interest in us, all of a sudden," he said to his mother. Humility looked distressed, uncomfortable. Honoria ignored the snub. "I am starting for Carwithiel to-day," she said, "for a week's visit; and thought I would look in—after hearing what the postman told me—and pay my compliments."
She talked for a minute or two on matters of no importance; asked after old Mrs. Venning's health; and left, turning at the door to give Humility a cheerful little nod.
"Taffy, you ought not to have spoken so." Humility's eyes were tearful.
Taffy's conscience was already accusing him. He snatched up his cap and ran out.
"Miss Honoria!"
She did not turn.
"Miss Honoria—I am sorry." He overtook her, but she turned her face away. "Forgive me——"
She halted, and after a moment looked him in the eyes. He saw then that she had been crying.
"The first time I came to see you, he whipped me," she said slowly.
"I am sorry; please——"
"Taffy——"
"Miss Honoria."
"I said—Taffy."
"Honoria, then."
"Do you know what it is to feel lonely, here?"
Taffy remembered the afternoons when he had roamed the sand-hills longing for George's company. "Why, yes," said he; "it used to be always lonely."
"I think we have been the loneliest children in the whole world—you and I and George; only George didn't feel it in the same way. And now it's coming to an end with you. You are going up to Oxford, and soon you will have heaps of friends. Can you not understand? Suppose there were two prisoners, alone in the same prison, but shut in different cells; and one heard that the other's release had come. He would feel—would he not?—that now he was going to be lonelier than ever. And yet he might be glad of the other's liberty, and if the chance were given, might be the happier for shaking hands with the other and wishing him joy."
Taffy had never heard her speak at all like this.
"But you are going over to Carwithiel, and George is famous company."
"I am going over to Carwithiel because I hate Tredinnis. I hate every stone of it, and will sell the place as soon as ever I come of age. And George is the best fellow in the world. Some day I shall marry him (Oh, it's all arranged!) and we shall live at Carwithiel and be quite happy; for I like him, and he likes people to be happy. And we shall talk of you. Being out of the world ourselves, we shall talk of you, and the great things you are going to do, and the great things you are doing. We shall say to each other, 'It's all very well for the world to be proud of him, but we have the best right; for we grew up with him and know the stories he used to tell us, and when the time came for his going, it was we who waved from the door'——"
"Honoria——"
"But there is one thing you haven't told; and you shall now, if you care to—about your examination and what you did at Oxford."
So he sat down beside her on a sand-hill and told her; about the long low-ceiled room in the quadrangle of the Bodleian, the old marbles which lined the walls, the examiner at the blue-baize table, and the little deal tables (all scribbled over with names and dates and verses and ribald remarks) at which the candidates wrote; also of the viva voce examination in the ante-chamber of the Convocation House. He told it all as if it were the great event which he honestly felt it to be.
"And the others," said she: "those who were writing around you, and the examiner—how did you feel toward them?"
Taffy stared at her. "I don't know that I thought much about them?"
"Didn't you feel as if it was a battle, and you wanted to beat them all?"
He broke out laughing. "Why the examiner was an old man, as dry as a stick! And the others—I hardly remember what they were like—except one, a white-headed boy with a pimply face. I couldn't help noticing him, because, whenever I looked up, there he was at the next table, staring at me and chewing a quill."
"I can't understand," she confessed. "Often and often I have tried to think myself a man—a man with ambition. And to me that has always meant fighting. I see myself a man, and the people between me and the prize have all to be knocked down or pushed out of the way. But you don't even see them—all you see is a pimply-faced boy sucking a quill. Taffy——"
"What is it, Honoria?"
"I wish you would write to me, when you get to Oxford. Write regularly. Tell me all you do."
"You will like to hear?"
"Of course I shall; so will George. But it's not only that. You have such an easy way of going forward; you take it for granted you're going to be a great man——"
"I don't."
"Yes, you do. You think it just lies with yourself, and it is nobody's business to interfere with you. You don't even notice those who are on the same path. Now a woman would notice every one, and find out all about them."
"Who said I wanted to be a great man?"
"Don't be silly, that's a good boy. There's your father coming out of the church-porch, and you haven't told him yet. Run to him, but promise first."
"What?"
"That you will write."
"I promise."
(To be continued.)