Bred in the Bone; Or, Like Father, Like Son: A Novel

by James Payn

His rage and bitterness had vanished, as though by magic; her tone and touch had spirited them away.

"Perhaps I do, dear. Go to bed, and dream of one. You must be very tired. I ought not to say that I am glad to see you back, Dick; yet how can I help it?"

CHAPTER X.

OVER THE EMBERS.

It was one of the peculiarities of Jane Yorke that she took but little sleep. The household had long retired, and she put the remains of her son's meal away with her own hands, then sat down by the fire, thinking. She had more subject for thought than most women; her life had been eventful, her experience strange. We know what her second husband—the man who repudiated her and her child—had been and was. Her first husband had been scarcely less remarkable. Leonard Yorke was a young man of respectable family, and of tolerable means. His parents were dead, and his relatives and himself had parted company early. They were sober, steady people, connected with the iron trade: a share in their house of business at Birmingham, carried on in the name of his two uncles, was the only tie between him and them, save that of kinship. They were strong Unitarians, strong political economists, strong in their rugged material fashion every way. They did not know what to do with a nephew who was a religious zealot, and thought all the world was out of joint; and they had characteristically sought for assistance in the advertising columns of the Times. Mr. Hardcastle therein proclaimed himself as having a specialty for the reduction and reform of intractable young gentlemen, and they had consigned Leonard to his establishment. It was the best thing that they could think of—for they were genuinely conscientious men—and they did not grudge the money, though the tutor's terms were high. Jane was then a very young girl—so young, indeed, that parents and guardians would scarcely have taken alarm had they been aware of her being beneath the same roof with their impressionable charges; and she was childish-looking even for her tender years. Leonard Yorke, gentle and good-humored, was moved with compassion toward the orphan girl, as guileless-eyed as a saint in a picture; he pitied her poverty, and, still more, the worldly character of her uncle and her surroundings. She was wholly ignorant of the spiritual matters which engrossed his being, and yet so willing to be taught. She sat at his feet, and listened by the hour to the outpourings of his fervid zeal. If she did not understand them, she was in no worse position than himself. His tongue was fluent. His words were like a lambent flame, playing with some indestructible material. His mind was weak, and devoted to metaphysical speculations—mysticisms: the arcana coelestia of Swedenborg was Holy Writ to him. He believed in three heavens, and their opposites. Jane's endeavors were directed to make him believe in a fourth heaven. Childlike and immature in appearance, she was in character exceedingly precocious. Her intelligence was keen and practical. In very early years it had been instilled into her that her future welfare would depend upon her own exertions, and she never forgot the lesson. Her uncle was very generous to her; but he was not the man to have saved money for his own offspring, if he had had any, and far less for his niece; he spent every shilling of his income. Little Jane would secretly have preferred to receive in hard cash the sums which he lavished upon her in indulgences; she would have dispensed with her pony, and kept a steed in the stable for herself of another sort. The rainy day was certain to come some time or other to her, and she would have liked to have made provision for it—a difficult matter for most of us, and for her impossible. She was wise enough, even then, to know how Uncle Hardcastle would have received any suggestion of a prudential nature, and she held her tongue.

In Leonard Yorke, if she did not comprehend his doctrine of "perpetual subsistence," she perceived a provision for her future. At one-and-twenty, indeed, he made his pupil his wife, to the astonishment rather than the scandal of the neighborhood. They opined that it was only in the East, or in royal families who wedded by proxy, that brides ran so young. Jane Hardcastle, however, was in reality eighteen years of age.

Yorke Brothers, of Birmingham, had nothing to say against the match, but they objected to a Swedenborgian partner in the iron trade, and bought their nephew at a fair price out of the business. They did not offer to take him back again, when, five years later, he became a true believer in the faith of Mary Joanna Southcott and the coming of the young Shiloh. This lady, whose portrait, with that of her spiritual amanuensis, hung in Mrs. Yorke's sitting-room, had been her only rival in the affections of her husband. She had not been jealous of her upon that account, feeling pretty certain, perhaps, that the "affinity" between them was Platonic; but she had rather grudged the money with which he had so lavishly relieved the "perplexities" of "the handmaid." The amanuensis used to issue I O U's at Joanna's dictation, to be paid with enormous interest Hereafter, and Leonard Yorke was always ready to discount her paper. There was no one that subscribed more munificently than he did toward the famous "cradle," or looked more devoutly for its expected tenant. Even when that long-looked-for 19th of October had come and gone without sign, and two months later his poor deluded idol passed away into that future with which she had been so rashly familiar, he was faithful to her yet, and kept the "seal" which she had given him—his passport to the realms of bliss—as his dearest treasure. He had scarcely any other "effects" by that time, for, actuated by his too fervent faith, he had been living upon the principle of his fortune; and at five-and-thirty years of age Mrs. Yorke found herself a widow, with a stock of very varied experience indeed, but not much more of worldly wealth than she had had to start with. It was hard, after half a lifetime, to resume the same semi-relative, semi-dependent position under her uncle's roof which she had occupied before; but no better offered itself, and she was glad to accept it. Her natural attractions were still wondrously preserved to her; and, perhaps, on the occasion of her second nuptials (and the fact of her first was carefully concealed), her age excited less astonishment than her youth had done in the former instance.

Yet now at fifty-three, this woman, as remarkable for her talents as for her beauty, and who, if but for a brief period, had once stood "on fortune's crowning slope," found herself with little beyond a bare subsistence, which she received without gratitude from the hands of Carew. What she derived from her lodging-house defrayed the somewhat lavish expenditure of her son Richard. She was far, however, from complaining of his extravagances. She wished him to live like a gentleman, and not to soil his hands with ignoble, pursuits. She felt a genuine pleasure—only known to mothers—in gathering toilsomely together what she knew he would lightly spend. She was for the present amply repaid by the reflection that her Dick was as handsome and well-appointed a young fellow as was to be seen in London, with an air and manner that would become a prince. It was only a question of time, she thought, when the princess should appear, be captivated, and raise him to the sphere for which she had taken care to fit him. In the mean time, it was only natural that he should enjoy himself after the manner of other youth of great expectations. She was not averse to his dissipations, for in them indeed lay his best chance of getting acquainted with young men of this class; nor, so far, had she been disappointed. It would be surprising to many a stately pater-familias to learn how easily acquaintanceship, and even friendship, is contracted with his male offspring, if they be among the pleasure-seekers of the town. A young man of good address and exterior, with plenty of money in his pocket, does not require introduction. The club door soon flies open to him, but not that of the home. Richard was on tolerably intimate terms with Chandos, and other young men of the same class—but he had never been introduced to their sisters. It was here that Mrs. Yorke made her mistake: she thought she understood society because she had studied two exceptional phases of it. There is nobody more short-sighted than the Bohemian, who imagines he is a citizen of the world; his round of life may have no fence in the shape of convention, yet it is often, very limited, and it is outside every other.

Mrs. Yorke judged of all men by her knowledge of her late husband and of Carew, and of women by herself. If it had not been for the artificialities of society, she might have been right; but they are powerful, and she knew little about them. In some matters she was exceedingly sagacious. She did not entertain the alarm which would have been felt by some mothers with respect to her son's morals, probably exposed to some danger by his mode of life; perhaps she had not their scruples; and yet it is strange to see how light those weigh, even with our severest matrons, when any question of "position" is in the other scale: they will not only permit their sons to herd with roués, provided they are persons of distinction, but even accept them for their sons-in-law. Mrs. Yorke, being daughterless, had no temptation to commit this latter crime, but she was not displeased to imagine her Richard a man of gallantry; he would in that case be less likely to fall a victim to undowered charms. "It is not your man-about-town who sacrifices his future in a love-match," was her reflection. On the other hand, no one knew better than herself what an easy prey to woman's wiles is a young gentleman without experience. It was for this reason, as well as because she loved to have her boy about her, that she had opposed Richard's going to Midlandshire. She knew Carew too well to hope that he would ever take into favor a son of hers, and she distrusted the country, with its opportunities for ensnaring youth into matrimonial engagements. Thirty years ago, in a fortnight of village life together, she would have backed herself to have got a promise of marriage out of the Pope; and she did not believe this to be one of the lost arts among young persons of her sex.

Thus Mrs. Yorke had strained every nerve to get the necessary funds to make town-life pleasant to her son, and yet she had not succeeded. It was not so much that he found his allowance insufficient, for he had various means of supplementing it, one of them (at which we have already hinted) a strange one enough; but the wayward fit was on him that takes so many of us in the early dawn of manhood; he was restless and eager for change, and the lessons which his mother had caused him to receive in landscape-painting furnished him with an excuse for wandering. She had had him taught to sketch, because it was a likely sort of accomplishment to aid the scheme of life which she had planned for him; and he had taken up with the art more seriously than with any thing else. But it was not in Richard's nature to apply himself with assiduity to any pursuit. Such callings as lay within his means and opportunities he was incapacitated for by education and temper. He could not have occupied any subordinate position that required respectful behavior—submission to the will of a master. He had had to put the greatest restraint upon himself during his brief residence at Crompton, and it was more than doubtful if he could have maintained his position there as a dependent in any case. He was gentle and good-humored, genial and agreeable, when pleased; but he had that personal pride which is as stubborn as any haughtiness of descent, and infinitely more inflammable. It was no idle brag when he told the Crompton chaplain that he would put up with injustice from no man (if he could help it), and would repay his wrong-doer sevenfold (if he got the chance). His sense of right was very acute and sensitive, especially as respected himself. All his passions were strong. Much of this might probably be said of any young gentleman of position accustomed to have his own way: lads of spirit (who can afford it) do not put up with slights; young noblemen in moments of exhilaration may even pitch into policemen; and generally, where there is no temptation to offend, much is forgiven. The danger in Richard Yorke's case was that his position was far from assured, while he had done some things which might prove great obstacles to his ever winning one. He had all the sensitiveness and impatience of one born to fortune, without the money.