This chance had not been fair for him, forsaken as he was, and outcast; banned by all the laws of men, because his mother had been trustful, and his father treacherous. Yet against all chances, he, by his own rightful power, deeply hating and (which was worse) conscientiously despising every social prejudice, made his way among smaller men, taught himself by day and night, formed his own strong character, with the hatred of tyranny for its base, and tyranny of his own for its apex; and finally gained success in the world, and large views of Christianity. And in all of this he was sincere!
It was a vile and bitter wrong to which he owed his birth. Sir Cradock Nowell, the father of the present baronet, had fallen in love of some sort with a comely Yorkshire maiden, whose motherʼs farm adjoined the moors, whereon the shooting quarters were. Then, in that period of mean license, when fashionable servility was wriggling, like a cellar–slug, in the slime–track of low princes, Sir Cradock Nowell did what few of his roystering friends would have thought of—unfashionable Tarquinian, he committed a quiet bigamy. He had lived apart from Lady Nowell, even before her second confinement; because he could not get on with her. So Miss Garnet went with him to the quiet altar of a little Yorkshire church, and fancied she was Lady Nowell; only that must be a secret, “because they had not the kingʼs consent, for he was not in a state to give it.”
When she learned her niddering wrong, and the despite to her unborn child, she cast her curse upon the race, not with loud rant, but long scorn, and went from her widowed mother, to a cold and unknown place.
So soon as Bull Garnet was old enough to know right from wrong, and to see how much more of the latter had fallen to his share, two courses lay before him. Two, I mean, were possible to a strong and upright nature; to a false and weak one fifty would have offered, and a little of each been taken. Conscious as he was of spirit, energy, and decision, he might apply them all to very ungenial purposes, to sarcasm, contemptuousness, and general misanthropy. Or else he might take a larger view, pity the poor old–fashioned prigs who despise a man for his fatherʼs fault, and generously adapt himself to the broadest Christianity.
The latter course was the one he chose; in solid earnest, too, because it suited his nature. And so perhaps we had better say that he chose no course at all, but had the wiser one forced upon him. Yet the old Adam of damnable temper too often would rush out of Paradise, and prove in strong language that he would not be put off together with his works. Exeter Hall would have owned him, in spite of all his backslidings, as a very “far–advanced Christian;” because he was so “evangelical.” And yet he never dealt in cant, nor distributed idyllic tracts, Sabbatarian pastorals, where godly Thomas meets drunken John, and converts him to the diluted vappa of an unfermented Sunday.
And now this man, whom all who knew him either loved or hated, felt the troubles closing around him, and saw that the end was coming. He had kept his own sense of justice down, while it jerked (like a thistle on springs) in his heart; he had worn himself out with thinking for ever what would become of his children, whom he had wronged more heavily than his own bad father had wronged him—only the difference was that he loved them; and most of all he had let a poor fellow, whom he liked and esteemed most truly, bear all the brunt, all the misery, all the despair of fratricide.
Now all he asked for, all he prayed for—and, indeed, he prayed more than ever now, and with deeper feeling; though many would have feared to do it—now his utmost hope was to win six months of life. In that time all might be arranged for his childrenʼs interest; his purchase of those five hundred acres from the Crown Commissioners—all good land, near the Romsey–road, but too full of juice—would soon be so completed that he could sell again at treble the price he gave, so well had he reclaimed the land, while equitably his; and then Bob should have half, and Pearl take half (because she had been so injured), and, starting with the proceeds of all his earthly substance before it should escheat, be happy in America, and think fondly of dead father.
This was all he lived for now. It may seem a wild programme; but, practical as he was in business, and not to be wronged of a halfpenny, Bull Garnet was vague and sentimental when he “took on” about his children. Furious if they were wronged, loving them as the cow did (who, without a horn to her head, pounded dead the leopard), ready to take most liberal views of everything beyond them, yet keeping ever to his eyes that parental lens, whose focus is so very short, and therefore, by the optic laws, its magnifying power and aberration glorious.
Now three foes were closing round him; all of whom, by different process, and from different premises, had arrived at the one conclusion. The three were, as he knew too well, Rufus Hutton, Issachar Jupp, and Mr. Chope, of Southampton. Of the first he held undue contempt (not knowing all his evidence); the second he had for the time disarmed, by an appeal ad hominem; the third was the most to be feared, the most awful, because so crafty, keen, and deep, so utterly impenetrable.