Beauchamp; or, The Error.

by G. P. R. James

Now Mr. Wittingham was not accustomed to be compassionated; he did not like the thing and he did not like the word; he was a vain man and a proud man, and compassion was a humiliation which he did not like to undergo; but still anxiety and trouble were the strongest, and he repeated two or three times in a quick, sharp voice,

"What did I say? What did I say?"

"You said that it was your son," answered the clergyman, "and various corroborative circumstances have transpired which--"

But by this time Mr. Wittingham was in such a state of agitation that it was evident he would hear nothing further that was said to him at the moment, and therefore the good doctor stopped short. The magistrate covered his eyes; he wrung his hands hard together; he gazed forth at the sky; he even wept.

"Then it is all over, all over," he cried, at length, "it is all over," by which he meant that all his dreams of importance, his plans of rural grandeur and justice-of-the-peaceism, his "reverence" on the bench and at the quarter-sessions, his elevation as a country gentleman, and his oblivion as a small trader, were all frustrated, gone, lost, smothered and destroyed by his son's violent conduct and his own indiscreet babbling in the moment of fear and grief.

"Ah, Doctor Miles," he said, "it's a sad business, a sad business. As you know it all, there is no use of my holding my tongue. Harry did do it; and, indeed, he told me before that he would do it, or something like it; for he came here--here, down into Tarningham, and told me on the very bench, that if I pushed that business about Mrs. Clifford's carriage any further it should go worse with me. It was a threat, my dear doctor, and I was not to be deterred from doing my duty by a threat, and so I told him, and immediately took up the man they call Wolf, on suspicion--for Sir John had been down here, swearing at my door, and what could I do, you know."

Now Doctor Miles had seen a great deal of the world, and, though a good and benevolent man, and one not at all inclined to think the worst of one of his fellow-creatures, yet he could not help seeing that there was a great deal of weakness and eagerness to shuffle any burden from himself in Mr. Wittingham's reply. There are certain sorts of knowledge which force themselves upon our understanding, whether we will or not, and amongst these is discrimination of human character. People, long accustomed to the world, find great difficulty even in believing a practised liar, however much they may wish to do so on certain points. They see through, in spite of themselves, all the little petty artifices with which self hides itself from self, and still more clearly through the mean policy by which the mean man strives to conceal his meanness from the eyes of his fellow-creatures. Whether it be the pitiful man, in any of the common walks of life, exacting more than his due, and striving to hide his greed under the veil of liberality and disinterestedness, whether it be the candidate, on the canvass or on the hustings, escaping from the explanation of his intentions upon the plea of independence and free judgment, or whether it be the minister of the crown evading the fulfilment of obligations, or shrinking from the recognition of support by all the thousand subterfuges in the vast dictionary of political dishonesty, the man learned in the world's ways, however willing to be duped, cannot believe and confide, cannot admire and respect. The case with Mr. Wittingham was a very simple one. Doctor Miles saw and understood the whole process of his mind in a moment; but he was sorry for the man; he felt what agony it must be to have such a son, and he hastened as far as possible to relieve him.

"I think, my dear Sir," he said, "that you have made some mistakes in this matter; I do not presume to interfere with any man's domestic arrangements, but I will candidly acknowledge that I have thought, in watching the progress of your son's education, that it was not likely to result in good to his character--nay, hear me out, for I am only making this observation as a sort of excuse, not so much for him, as for the advice I am going to give you, which can only be justified by a belief that the young man is not so depraved by nature as by circumstances."

They were hard words, very hard words, that Doctor Miles uttered, but there was a stern impressiveness in his manner which overawed Mr. Wittingham, kept down his vanity from revolting against the implied accusation, and prevented him from even writhing openly at the plain terms in which his son's conduct was stigmatised.

"Under these circumstances," continued Doctor Miles, "I think it much better that you send your son out of the country as fast as possible, afford him such means as will enable him to live in respectability, without indulging in vice; warn him seriously of the end to which his present courses will lead him, and give him to understand that if he abandons them, and shows an inclination to become a good and useful member of society, the faults of his youth may be forgotten, and their punishment be remitted. On the latter point, I think I may say that, should he at once quit the country, no further steps against him will be taken. You know very well that Sir John Slingsby, though hot and irascible, is a kind and good-natured man at heart."