Harry Joscelyn; vol. 1 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

Young Mrs. Joscelyn when she came home had hung her antimacassars over the chairs, she had put out her “Keepsake” and “Friendship’s Offering” upon the table, and placed her guitar in the most favourable position; and then she sat down to be happy. Poor gentle young woman! She had been the pet at home, the only daughter. She had been considered the most accomplished of girls. Whatever she said had secured the smiles and admiration of father and mother; all that she did had been pretty, had been sweet, not from any quality of its own, but because it was Liddy who did it. To describe the extraordinary sensation with which she woke up a few months after her marriage, perhaps not so much, to discover that Liddy having done it, made nothing attractive or charming, would be impossible. It took away from her all her little confidence in herself, all her faith in those around her. Very soon—so soon that it seemed immediately, the next day—her husband made it very clearly visible that Liddy was the synonym not for everything that was pleasant, but for all the awkwardness, the foolishness, the inappropriate words and inconvenient actions of the house. “It is just like you,” he began to say to her, long before the first summer was over. For a time she tried to think it was “Ralph’s way,” but that did not stand her long in stead. And with her opinion of herself, her confidence in everything else gradually deserted her. She recognised that the Joscelyns’ blue blood did very little for them, that old Uncle Harry was often less polite than Isaac Oliver who was his hind, and more dreadful still, an admission she never would make to herself, that the very curates whom she had despised were beside her patrician Ralph like beings of another world.

Perhaps of all that happened to her in her after-life there was no shock so terrible as this first disenchantment. She had a large family, plunging into all the roughnesses of life, its nursery prose and bread-and-butter, without any interval of repose, without money enough or leisure enough to put any glow of prettiness upon the rude circumstances, the band of children—noisy boys who made an end of all her attempts at neatness, and gobbled their food and tore their clothes, and were dirty and disorderly as any cottage brood. She struggled on among them as best she could, always watching every new baby wistfully to see if perhaps a something like herself, a child who would be her very own and speak her language and understand her meaning might be born to her. But alas! they were Joscelyns every one, big-limbed creatures with light blue eyes, and great red cheeks, who stared at her cynically out of their very cradles, and seemed to demand what she was making a fuss about when she sang them to sleep. Poor woman, she was always hopeful; every new child that came was, she thought, at last the one for whom she had been pining. Even now she had a lingering notion that Harry, her youngest boy, was that child—and far more than a notion, a hopeful certainty that little Liddy at school, the youngest of all, was exactly what she herself had been at the same age. These two, were in fact the least like Joscelyns of all her children. Harry was a broad-shouldered young fellow indeed, but he was less tall, and less powerful than his brothers; he had taken a little more to books; and there were traces in him of something less matter-of-fact than the stolid, steady nature of Will and Tom, and Benjamin and Hartley, all now established in occupations, and some of them in houses of their own. Will and Tom were married; they had both descended a single step lower down than the position of their father, marrying, one of them, the daughter of a farmer, and the other, the only child of a famous “vet,” who gave her what was understood to be “a tidy bit of money,” and to whose business the young man hoped to succeed. It was a coming down in the world to his mother. But how could she help it? With so many boys to provide for, the Joscelyn pride had to be put in their pocket. Hartley was in Colorado, Ben in New Zealand, all struggling along in much the same kind of occupation which their father pursued at home. As for Harry he had been rather delicate, a circumstance of which his mother was almost proud, as showing his affinity to her side of the house. And he was in an office in Liverpool, an occupation more fit for a delicate youth than the rough sheep-farming and horse-selling of the Fells. It was time now that something should be decided about his career. Was he to have a little money to invest, to get him a small share in the concern? He had been clerk long enough, Harry thought—long enough for himself and long enough too for his employer, who wanted a partner, but no further clerks.

This was the question which at present agitated the house. Each of the sons as he established himself in life had done so with a quarrel, often a series of wranglings; but they had all taken it more easily than Harry. Certainly Harry was the one most like his mother. Her heart yearned over him. She took a little pride in him too, more than it was possible to take in Tom and Will and their rough affairs. A merchant in Liverpool sounded better, and Harry in his black coat looked, his mother thought, more like a gentleman than any of the others. For the first time for all these years she had been able to recall to her mind what a gentleman looked like, and the pride which had been natural to a well-connected person, a clergyman’s daughter, had begun to dawn faintly, timidly, once more within her. Supposing that the baronet, who was the head of her family, should ever inquire into the fortunes of his humble relation, Harry was the one she had always thought who could be put forward. “One of her sons is a merchant in Liverpool,” how often had she taken refuge in this as a thing that might be said to Sir John, if ever at long and last he should make inquiries after Liddy Brotherton. The others, alas! were not very presentable; but Harry and Liddy might, if the inquiry came soon, while they were yet young and amenable, show themselves with the best. These were the secret thoughts in Mrs. Joscelyn’s heart. She had not given up yet; she was always ready to begin again; day by day her hope renewed itself, her disappointments went out of her mind. And thus she went on daily laying herself open to fresh disappointments because of these new hopes.

As for her husband, he was no unusual type of his class. He had a great deal of the rough arrogance which characterises it. When he was among his neighbours it got him ill-will, but still he could hold his own among them; domineering over the gentler sort, tyrannical to his servants, but only altogether unjust and unkind to those who were weak and in subjection to him. It was his own family who felt this most. For women he had an absolute contempt, unveiled by any of those polite pretences with which ordinary men holding this opinion sometimes consent to conceal it from motives of general expediency. His wife had been to him a pretty lass, for whom he had a passion dans le temps, and whom he had been rather proud to win, at the moment, as a lady and full of dainty ways, superior to those of the other pretty lasses in his sphere. It was right and natural that he, a Joscelyn, should have a lady for his wife, one who would not have looked at any other yeoman in the county, and who, indeed, had refused one or two better matches than himself for his sake. He knew that it was a fine thing to be a Joscelyn, though he did not know very well in what this consisted. It entitled him to be called Ralph Joscelyn, Esq., of the White House, when the other rough Dalesmen had scarcely so much as a Mr. to their names, and it gave him a general vague sense of superiority and of personal elation, as a man made of a different stuff from that out of which his neighbours were shaped. But though he was proud of this, he knew nothing about it. He was just as capable of investigating into “the old Joscelyns,” and tracing them to their real origin, as he was of exploring the sources of the Nile. He did not know, even, what it was which made it such an advantage to him to belong to those old Joscelyns, but he accepted it as a benefit which was no doubt to be partially attributed to his own excellence and high qualities. After the first flush of youth was over, he considered his wife no longer as a lady whom it was a pride to have won, but as a creature belonging to him, like one of his dogs, but not so docile or invariably lovable as his dogs. They all followed and worshipped him obsequiously, whether he was kind to them or not, condoning all his contrary actions, and ready to receive a caress with overflowing gratitude, and forget the kick by which it had been preceded. Mrs. Joscelyn had not the sense of the dogs; she struggled for a time to get the place which her imagination had pictured—that of the poetical mate, the help-meet, the sharer of her husband’s life; and when sent “to heel” with a kick, she had not taken it as the dogs did, but allowed the dismay, the disenchantment, the consternation which overwhelmed her to be seen in her face. Since then Joscelyn had emancipated himself altogether from any bondage of affection or respect. He frankly despised the woman he owned; despised her for her weakness, for the interruptions of illness to which she was subject, for her tremblings and nervous terrors, in short, for being a woman and his wife. Their life together had contained scarcely an element of beauty or happiness of any kind. She had remained with him by force of circumstances, because it had never occurred to her as possible that she could do anything else. In these days people did not think of obtaining relief from the special burdens of their lives, or of throwing them off. A woman who had a bad or unkind husband endured him, as she would in all likelihood have endured a constitutional ailment, as a thing to be concealed from others as much as possible and made the best of, without seeking after doctors or medicines. It was a cross which had been put upon her to bear. She had happened badly in the lottery of life, drawn a bad number, an unhappy lot; but now there was nothing for it but to lie upon the bed that had been made for her, and to cut her coat according to her cloth.

And thus life had gone on for five-and-thirty years. The number of miseries that can be borne in that time is incalculable, as wonderful as the tenacity with which human nature can support them, and rise every morning to a consciousness of them, yet go on all the same, scarcely less vigorous, in some cases more vigorous, than those to whom existence is happiness. No one in the White House was happy after the age of childhood, but nobody minded much except the mother, who had this additional burden to bear that the expectation of at least some future happiness in her children, never died out of her. Perhaps being no wiser than her neighbours she missed some legitimate if humble happiness, which she might have had, by not understanding how much real strength and support might have been found in the stout and homely affection of her eldest daughter, who was not in the least like her, and did not understand her, nor flatter her with any sympathy, yet who stood steadfastly by her and shielded her, and furthered her wishes when they could be divined, with a friendly, half compassionate, sometimes impatient support. But Joan had been critical from her very cradle, always conscious of the “fuss” which her mother only became conscious of making when she saw it in the half-mocking question in her children’s eyes. No, Mrs. Joscelyn would have said to herself, Joan was a good girl—though it seemed a misnomer to call her a girl, so mature as she was, in some indefinable way older than her mother—a good girl; but not one that was like her, or understood her, or knew what she meant. Perhaps Harry might, if she could get any good of him, if she did not always live in terror of a deadly quarrel between him and his father which would drive her last boy from the house; and Liddy, little Liddy would—no doubt Liddy would when she came back from her school. But all her other children had been Joscelyns, not one of them like her. She was even tremblingly conscious that Harry was growing less like her side of the house every day; but she clung to her little girl as her perfect representative, a last hope and compensation for the uncomprehended life she had led all these weary years.

CHAPTER III.
THE YOUNGEST SON.

HARRY JOSCELYN had been said in the nursery to be a sweet-tempered child; and he had lived upon the reputation through all the impatient years of youth, during which he had not been sweet-tempered, but decidedly “contrary,” as all the Joscelyns were. Notwithstanding the fact that the Joscelyns thought a great deal of themselves, and the vague grandeur of their ancestry, education had always been a very doubtful necessity in the house. Ralph Joscelyn himself had been at school it was supposed in the natural course, and could write and read and make up his accounts, which was all that was necessary; and it had not occurred to him that his sons wanted more. Such nervous attempts as their mother made to secure for them advantages to which she on her side, as a clergyman’s daughter, attached a value which was more superstitious than enlightened, only strengthened her husband’s conviction that the ways of horses were much better worth learning than anything that could be got out of books. Harry had been the exception; he was the godson of an old uncle who lived in the nearest town, and who also had a tidy bit of money to leave behind him, a qualification which gave him great credit among his kinsfolks, and made his recommendation potent. He it was who had procured for Harry the education which made him superior to his brethren. Uncle Henry had gone so far as to permit the boy to live in his house while he attended school, and as this seemed a plain indication that the boy was to be his heir there had not been a word to say against it. As for Mrs. Joscelyn, she had triumphed sadly in the fate which satisfied her wishes while taking her solace from her. She thought ever after that if Harry had not been taken from her at that susceptible period of his life, he would have been a comfort to her in his later years, and never would have forsaken his mother. But we are all apt to find out afterwards the disadvantages which attend every piece of good fortune. At the first proposal it had seemed something too good to be hoped for. When it was intimated to her that Harry was to go to the Grammar School at Wyburgh, at Uncle Henry’s cost, and was to be housed under Uncle Henry’s roof and cared for by his housekeeper, whose only fault was that she was too kind to the rough boys—whom she only of all the dependants of the family, insisted upon calling the young gentlemen—there was a sort of Nunc Dimittis in Mrs. Joscelyn’s heart. If only she could hope for anything as good for Liddy, though Liddy was but a baby in those days! But when Harry, the one who she fondly thought would understand her, was gone, his mother wrung her hands over that as over so many other troubles. From that time forth she had never again felt that he understood her. He veered from her side, to which he had been so constant, and preferred the rough sports of the other boys, and even to hear his father’s stories of desperate rides, and cunning mares, and all the adventures of the stable, better than to walk and talk with her as he had once done. Perhaps it was natural, no doubt it was quite natural; but what is from one side the thing most clearly to be expected, is often a most painful revelation on the other. Harry was for five years in Uncle Henry’s house, during which time his mother formed many fine visions of what might happen to him. She thought he would most certainly get the exhibition and go to Cambridge, and become a scholar like his grandfather, and might then perhaps eventually become a clergyman, and afford her in the end of her life a refuge of peaceful sweetness like that once lightly thought of, but now so fondly looked back upon, sweet peaceful parsonage of her girlhood. But Harry, as a matter of fact, was never within a hundred miles of the exhibition. It was won by a lad who was nobody, who had no blood to speak of in his veins, and nobody to care much whether he succeeded or not. Then Mrs. Joscelyn thought that Uncle Henry would very likely draw that long purse, which was supposed much longer at the White House than it was in reality, and out of family pride, and to give himself the satisfaction of a nephew at college, would send the boy to Cambridge, even without the exhibition. But even that was not to be.

Harry himself for his part was not very grateful to Uncle Henry for his education. He would rather have been at home riding the colts, in the middle of all the fun. And he was not very fond of the education, any more than of the old man who gave it to him. He saw the disadvantages much more than the advantages of his position, as most people, and especially most young people, do. He had no fervid desire for learning, though his mother thought so; and to be as quiet as a mouse in that carefully arranged bachelor’s house was not half so pleasant as rushing in and out after his own fancy at home. He obeyed while he was a boy, but he was not grateful; and when he began to be a young man and the end of his studies approached, he was neither grateful nor obedient. He went in for all the sports in the neighbourhood, and persistently, though without any temper, defied his uncle. The result was that instead of being sent to Cambridge and made a scholar of and Uncle Henry’s avowed heir, which was all on the cards at one time, Harry was placed in the office in Liverpool where Uncle Henry had made his money. It was “a fine opening,” the old man said; but it did not much please anybody concerned. Mrs. Joscelyn felt as if she had tumbled from the top of the stairs to the bottom when she heard that all her hopes were to come to nothing better than this. And Harry himself who had begun to be proud of his education, though he did not love it, went about with a very grave countenance, furtively examining the faces of all concerned, that he might see what hope there was of an alteration in his fate. But his father had too many sons to quarrel with any provision for the youngest of them, and his mother had no power whatever, and there was nobody else who could help him. So he went to Liverpool at last, notwithstanding his own and his mother’s reluctance, and once there soon began to appreciate the advantage of his liberty and an income of his own. He had been frugally bred, and had never known what it was to have money before. His income seemed a fortune at first, but after a while Harry did not consider it in this light; and to tell the truth his application to his father for funds to push his fortune, to get advancement and a partnership, meant also a something, a little margin to pay sundry debts which his inexperience had been beguiled into, and which appalled him as soon as he had discovered that his income was less inexhaustible than he thought; and he had come home for his yearly holiday with the determination, by hook or by crook, to get this change in his position effected, and to be done with debt for ever and ever.

The house in Liverpool where Uncle Henry had made his fortune was by no means a great house. It had gone on very steadily since the old man retired from it, and now there was a need for new blood. Harry had explained all this when he went to see his uncle, and had done all that was possible to do short of asking for the money to show to Uncle Henry how highly expedient it was to “come forward” on such an occasion. But the old gentleman had not taken the hint. And then Harry had spoken to his mother, urging her to make an effort to get her own little fortune, if possible, from his father’s hands, and invest it in the business. To get it from his father’s hands! it would have been as easy to get him the moon out of the skies. Mrs. Joscelyn would have set out on any journey, would even have consented to be shot out of a big cannon, like the hero of M. Jules Verne, in order to get her boy what he wanted. But get it from his father! She sank back upon herself at the mere suggestion. Nothing in heaven or earth was less possible.

Then Harry had taken it in hand himself. He was not one who had ever “got on” with his father. Notwithstanding his long absence from home, as soon as they met it seemed that they could not avoid jangling. An impulse to contradict everything his father said seemed somehow the first thing in Harry’s mind; and Joscelyn himself, always dogmatical, was never so much so, never so impatient of any expression of opinion as when it was his youngest son who made it. It may be imagined then if Mrs. Joscelyn had reason for her alarm when Harry at last took the bull by the horns, as he said, and ventured to propound to his father the tremendous idea that he wanted money. The young man was a little alarmed by it himself. He took the bull by the horns with a weak rush at last, his mind so deranged by the traditions of the house and the alarming presence of his father, that his appeal was quite wanting in the business-like form he had intended to give it. What he meant to say was, that here was an excellent opportunity for investing a little money, that it would bring in good interest, and would be perfectly safe, and would give him a great step in life—all these things together. But instead of this he blundered and stumbled, and gave his father to understand that his mother was quite willing and anxious that her money should be employed in this way, and that the return would be far better if it were put into his hands than any other possible use of it could give.