He that will not when he may; vol. I

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Was it really you,” she said, “who taught my son (she would not call him Paul again) all the nonsense he has been talking to us? Yes, indeed it is great nonsense, Mr. Spears—you must let me say so. We are doing no one injustice. My husband says all young men are Radicals one time or other; but I should have expected you, a man with children of your own, to know better. Oh no, I don’t want to argue. I am not clever enough for that. Let me give you another cup of tea.”

The demagogue stared at the beautiful lady as if he could not believe his ears. Partly he was humiliated, seeing that she was not in the least afraid of him, and even did not realise at all what was the terrible disclosure he had made. This gave him that sense of having made himself ridiculous which is so intolerable to those who are unaccustomed to the world. He cast a jealous look round the table to see if he could detect any laughter.

Paul caught him by the arm at this critical moment.

“Eat your breakfast,” he said, in a wrathful undertone. “Do you hear, Spears? Do you think she knows? Have some of this fish, for Heaven’s sake, and shut up. What on earth do they care if you taught me or not? Do you think she goes into all that?”

Nobody heard this but Harry, who was listening both with ears and eyes. And Mr. Spears returned to his breakfast as commanded. He was abashed, and he was astonished, but still he made a very hearty meal when all was said. And by and by his spirit rose again; in the eyes of this lady, who had so completely got the better of him, far more than if she had turned him out, there was no way of redeeming himself, but by “bringing her over.” That would be a triumph. He immediately addressed himself to it with every art at his command. He had an extremely prepossessing and melodious voice, and he spoke with what the ladies thought a kind of old-fashioned grace. The somewhat stiff, stilted phraseology of the self-educated has always more or less a whiff of the formality of an older age. And he made observations which interested them, in spite of themselves. Lady Markham was very polite to her son’s friend.

When the children reminded her of her promise to go with them on a long-planned expedition into the woods, she put them off. “You know I cannot leave when I have visitors,” she said.

“Perhaps Mr. Spears would come too?” said Alice. And before he knew what was going to happen, he found himself pushed into the front seat of the carriage, which was like a Noah’s ark, with hampers and children. Never had this man of the people, this popular orator, occupied so strange a position. He had never known before what it was to roll luxuriously along the roads, to share in the ease and dignity of wealth. He took notes of it, like a man in a foreign country, and observed keenly all that took place—the manners of the people for whom the world was made: that was how they seemed to take it. The world was made for them. It was not a subject of arrogant satisfaction on their part, or pride in their universal dominion; they took it quite easily, gently, as a matter of course. My lady gave her orders with a gentle confidence in the obedience of everybody she addressed. It was all wonderful to the man who knew only the other side of the question. He asked about everything—the game (with an eye to the poachers); the great extent of the park (as bearing upon one of his favourite points—the abstraction from the public of so many acres which might have cultivation); and was answered with a perfect absence of all sense of guilt, which was very strange to him. They did not know they were doing wrong, these rich people. They told him all about it, simply, smilingly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. All this went against his preconceived notions, just as the manners of a foreign country so often go against the idea you have formed of them. He had all his senses keenly about him, and yet everything was so novel and surprising that he felt scarcely able to trust to his own impressions. It was the strangest position surely in which a popular agitator, a preacher of democracy and revolution, a special pleader against the rich, ever was.

“We have not many neighbours,” Lady Markham said. “That is Lord Westland’s property beyond the church. You can see Westland Towers from the turn of the road. And there are the Trevors on the other side of the parish.”

“A whole parish,” said Spears, “divided amongst three families.”