George Gissing
In the Year of Jubilee
CHAPTER 8
‘Where are your friends?’
‘That’s more than I can tell you.’
They laughed together.
‘It’s a miracle we’ve been able to meet,’ said Crewe. ‘I had to thrash a fellow five minutes ago, and was precious near getting run in. Shall we go the Tottenham Court Road way? Look out! You’d better hold on to my arm. These big crossings are like whirlpools; you might go round and round, and never get anywhere. Don’t be afraid; if any one runs up against you, I’ll knock him down.’
‘There wouldn’t be room for him to fall,’ said Nancy, wild with merriment, as they swayed amid the uproar. For the first time she understood how perilous such a crowd might be. A band of roisterers, linked arm in arm, were trying to break up the orderly march of thousands into a chaotic fight. The point for which Crewe made was unattainable; just in front of him a woman began shrieking hysterically; another fainted, and dropped into her neighbour’s arms.
‘Don’t get frightened!’
‘Not I! I like it. It’s good fun.’
‘You’re the right sort, you are. But we must get out of this. It’s worse than the pit-door on the first night of a pantomime. I must hold you up; don’t mind.’
His arm encircled her body, and for a moment now and then he carried rather than led her. They were safe at length, in the right part of Oxford Street, and moving with the stream.
‘I couldn’t find your brother,’ Crewe had leisure to say; ‘and I didn’t see Fanny French. There weren’t many people about just then, either. They must have gone off before I came.’
‘Yes, they must. It doesn’t matter.’
‘You have some life in you.’ He gazed at her admiringly. ‘You’re worth half a million of the girls that squeak and wobble when there’s a bit of rough play going on.’
‘I hope so. Did you set me down as one of that kind?’
Nancy found that her tongue had achieved a liberty suitable to the occasion. She spoke without forethought, and found pleasure in her boldness.
‘Not I,’ Crewe answered. ‘But I never had a chance before now of telling you what I thought.’
Some one in front of them ignited a Bengal light and threw it into the air; the flame flashed across Nancy’s features, and fell upon the hat of a man near her.
‘How do you mean to get home?’ asked Crewe presently. Nancy explained that all her party were to meet on the other side of the river.
‘Oh, then, there’s plenty of time. When you’ve had enough of this kind of thing we can strike off into the quiet streets. If you were a man, which I’m glad you’re not, I should say I was choking for a glass of beer.’
‘Say it, and look for a place where you can quench your thirst.’
‘It must be a place, then, where you can come in as well. You don’t drink beer, of course, but we can get lemonade and that kind of thing. No wonder we get thirsty; look up there.’
Following the direction of his eyes, Nancy saw above the heads of the multitude a waving dust-canopy, sent up by myriad tramplings on the sun-scorched streets. Glare of gas illumined it in the foreground; beyond, it dimmed all radiance like a thin fog.
‘We might cut across through Soho,’ he pursued, ‘and get among the restaurants. Take my arm again. Only a bit of cross-fighting, and we shall be in the crowd going the other way. Did you do physics at school? Remember about the resultant of forces? Now we’re a force tending to the right, and the crowd is a force making for straight on; to find the—’
His hat was knocked over his eyes, and the statement of the problem ended in laughter.
With a good deal of difficulty they reached one of the southward byways; and thenceforth walking was unimpeded.
‘You know that I call myself Luckworth Crewe,’ resumed Nancy’s companion after a short silence.
‘Of course I do.’
‘Well, the fact is, I’ve no right to either of the names. I thought I’d just tell you, for the fun of the thing; I shouldn’t talk about it to any one else that I know. They tell me I was picked up on a doorstep in Leeds, and the wife of a mill-hand adopted me. Their name was Crewe. They called me Tom, but somehow it isn’t a name I care for, and when I was grown up I met a man called Luckworth, who was as kind as a father to me, and so I took his name in place of Tom. That’s the long and short of it.’
Nancy looked a trifle disconcerted.
‘You won’t think any worse of me, because I haven’t a name of my own?’
‘Why should I? It isn’t your fault.’
‘No. But I’m not the kind of man to knuckle under. I think myself just as good as anybody else I’ll knock the man down that sneers at me; and I won’t thank anybody for pitying me; that’s the sort of chap I am. And I’m going to have a big fortune one of these days. It’s down in the books. I know I shall live to be a rich man, just as well as I know that I’m walking down Dean Street with Miss. Lord.’
‘I should think it very possible,’ his companion remarked.
‘It hasn’t begun yet. I can only lay my hand on a few hundred pounds, one way and another. And I’m turned thirty. But the next ten years are going to do it. Do you know what I did last Saturday? I got fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of advertising for our people, from a chap that’s never yet put a penny into the hands of an agent. I went down and talked to him like a father. He was the hardest nut I ever had to crack, but in thirty-five minutes I’d got him—like a roach on a hook. And it’ll be to his advantage, mind you. That fifteen hundred ‘ll bring him in more business than he’s had for ten years past. I got him to confess he was going down the hill. “Of course,” I said, “because you don’t know how to advertise, and won’t let anybody else know for you?” In a few minutes he was telling me he’d dropped more than a thousand on a patent that was out of date before it got fairly going. “All right,” said I. “Here’s your new cooking-stove. You’ve dropped a thousand on the other thing; give your advertising to us, and I’ll guarantee you shall come home on the cooking-stove.”’
‘Come home on it?’ Nancy inquired, in astonishment.
‘Oh, it’s our way of talking,’ said the other, with his hearty laugh. ‘It means to make up one’s loss. And he’ll do it. And when he has, he’ll think no end of me.’
‘I daresay.’
‘Not long ago, I boxed a chap for his advertising. A fair turn-up with the gloves. Do you suppose I licked him? Not I; though I could have done it with one hand. I just let him knock me out of time, and two minutes after he put all his business into my hands.’
‘Oh, you’ll get rich,’ declared Nancy, laughing. ‘No doubt about it.’
‘There was a spot down the South Western Railway where we wanted to stick up a board, a great big board, as ugly as they make ‘em. It was in a man’s garden; a certain particular place, where the trains slow, and folks have time to read the advertisement and meditate on it. That chap wouldn’t listen. What! spoil his garden with our da–with our confounded board! not for five hundred a year! Well, I went down, and I talked to him—’
‘Like a father,’ put in Nancy.
‘Just so, like a father. “Look here,” said I, “my dear sir, you’re impeding the progress of civilisation. How could we have become what we are without the modern science and art of advertising? Till advertising sprang up, the world was barbarous. Do you suppose people kept themselves clean before they were reminded at every corner of the benefits of soap? Do you suppose they were healthy before every wall and hoarding told them what medicine to take for their ailments? Not they indeed! Why, a man like you—an enlightened man, I see it in your face (he was as ugly as Ben’s bull-dog), ought to be proud of helping on the age.” And I made him downright ashamed of himself. He asked me to have a bit of dinner, and we came to terms over the cheese.’
In this strain did Luckworth Crewe continue to talk across the gloomy solitudes of Soho. And Nancy would on no account have had him cease. She was fascinated by his rough vigour and by his visions of golden prosperity. It seemed to her that they reached very quickly the restaurant he had in view. With keen enjoyment of the novelty, she followed him between tables where people were eating, drinking, smoking, and took a place beside him on a cushioned seat at the end of the room.
‘I know you’re tired,’ he said. ‘There’s nearly half-an-hour before you need move.’
Nancy hesitated in her choice of a refreshment. She wished to have something unusual, something that fitted an occasion so remarkable, yet, as Crewe would of course pay, she did not like to propose anything expensive.
‘Now let me choose for you,’ her companion requested. ‘After all that rough work, you want something more than a drop of lemonade. I’m going to order a nice little bottle of champagne out of the ice, and a pretty little sandwich made of whatever you like.’
‘Champagne—?’
It had been in her thoughts, a sparkling audacity. Good; champagne let it be. And she leaned back in defiant satisfaction.
‘I didn’t expect much from Jubilee Day,’ observed the man of business, ‘but that only shows how things turn out—always better or worse than you think for. I’m not likely to forget it; it’s the best day I’ve had in my life yet, and I leave you to guess who I owe that to.’
‘I think this is good wine,’ remarked Nancy, as if she had not heard him.
‘Not bad. You wouldn’t suppose a fellow of my sort would know anything about it. But I do. I’ve drunk plenty of good champagne, and I shall drink better.’
Nancy ate her sandwich and smiled. The one glass sufficed her; Crewe drank three. Presently, looking at her with his head propped on his hand, he said gravely:
‘I wonder whether this is the last walk we shall have together?’
‘Who can say?’ she answered in a light tone.
‘Some one ought to be able to say.’
‘I never make prophecies, and never believe other people’s.’
‘Shows your good sense. But I make wishes, and plenty of them.’
‘So do I,’ said Nancy.
‘Then let us both make a wish to ourselves,’ proposed Crewe, regarding her with eyes that had an uncommon light in them.
His companion laughed, then both were quiet for a moment.
They allowed themselves plenty of time to battle their way as far as Westminster Bridge. At one point police and crowd were in brief conflict; the burly guardians of order dealt thwacking blows, right and left, sound fisticuffs, backed with hearty oaths. The night was young; by magisterial providence, hours of steady drinking lay before the hardier jubilants. Thwacks and curses would be no rarity in another hour or two.
At the foot of Parliament Street, Nancy came face to face with Samuel Barmby, on whose arm hung the wearied Jessica. Without heeding their exclamations, she turned to her protector and bade him a hearty good-night. Crewe accepted his dismissal. He made survey of Barmby, and moved off singing to himself, ‘Do not forget me—do not forget me—’
Part II: Nature’s Graduate
CHAPTER 1
The disorder which Stephen Lord masked as a ‘touch of gout’ had in truth a much more disagreeable name. It was now twelve months since his doctor’s first warning, directed against the savoury meats and ardent beverages which constituted his diet; Stephen resolved upon a change of habits, but the flesh held him in bondage, and medical prophecy was justified by the event. All through Jubilee Day he suffered acutely; for the rest of the week he remained at home, sometimes sitting in the garden, but generally keeping his room, where he lay on a couch.
A man of method and routine, sedentary, with a strong dislike of unfamiliar surroundings, he could not be persuaded to try change of air. The disease intensified his native stubbornness, made him by turns fretful and furious, disposed him to a sullen solitude. He would accept no tendance but that of Mary Woodruff; to her, as to his children, he kept up the pretence of gout. He was visited only by Samuel Barmby, with whom he discussed details of business, and by Mr. Barmby, senior, his friend of thirty years, the one man to whom he unbosomed himself.
His effort to follow the regimen medically prescribed to him was even now futile. At the end of a week’s time, imagining himself somewhat better, he resumed his daily walk to Camberwell Road, but remained at the warehouse only till two or three o’clock, then returned and sat alone in his room. On one of the first days of July, when the weather was oppressively hot, he entered the house about noon, and in a few minutes rang his bell. Mary Woodruff came to him. He was sitting on the couch, pale, wet with perspiration, and exhausted.
‘I want something to drink,’ he said wearily, without raising his eyes.
‘Will you have the lime-water, sir?’
‘Yes—what you like.’
Mary brought it to him, and he drank two large glasses, with no pause.
‘Where is Nancy?’
‘In town, sir. She said she would be back about four.’
He made an angry movement.
‘What’s she doing in town? She said nothing to me. Why doesn’t she come back to lunch? Where does she go to for all these hours?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
The servant spoke in a low, respectful voice, looking at her master with eyes that seemed to compassionate him.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’ He waved a hand, as if in dismissal. ‘Wait—if I’m to be alone, I might as well have lunch now. I feel hungry, as if I hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours. Get me something, Mary.’
Later in the afternoon his bell again sounded, and Mary answered it. As he did not speak at once,—he was standing by the window with his hands behind him,—she asked him his pleasure.
‘Bring me some water, Mary, plain drinking-water.’
She returned with a jug and glass, and he took a long draught.
‘No, don’t go yet. I want to—to talk to you about things. Sit down there for a minute.’
He pointed to the couch, and Mary, with an anxious look, obeyed him.
‘I’m thinking of leaving this house, and going to live in the country. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. My partner can look after the business well enough.’
‘It might be the best thing you could do, sir. The best for your health.’
‘Yes, it might. I’m not satisfied with things. I want to make a decided change, in every way.’
His face had grown more haggard during the last few days, and his eyes wandered, expressing fretfulness or fear; he spoke with effort, and seemed unable to find the words that would convey his meaning.
‘Now I want you to tell me plainly, what do you think of Nancy?’
‘Think of her, sir?’
‘No, no—don’t speak in that way. I don’t want you to call me ‘sir’; it isn’t necessary; we’ve known each other so long, and I think of you as a friend, a very good friend. Think of me in the same way, and speak naturally. I want to know your opinion of Nancy.’
The listener had a face of grave attention: it signified no surprise, no vulgar self-consciousness, but perhaps a just perceptible pleasure. And in replying she looked steadily at her master for a moment.
‘I really don’t feel I can judge her, Mr. Lord. It’s true, in a way, I ought to know her very well, as I’ve seen her day by day since she was a little thing. But now she’s a well-educated and clever young lady, and she has got far beyond me—’
‘Ay, there it is, there it is!’ Stephen interrupted with bitterness. ‘She’s got beyond us—beyond me as well as you. And she isn’t what I meant her to be, very far from it. I haven’t brought them up as I wished. I don’t know—I’m sure I don’t know why. It was in own hands. When they were little children, I said to myself: hey shall grow up plain, good, honest girl and boy. I said that I wouldn’t educate them very much; I saw little good that came of it, in our rank of life. I meant them to be simple-minded. I hoped Nancy would marry a plain countryman, like the men I used to know when I was a boy; a farmer, or something of that kind. But see how it’s come about. It wasn’t that I altered my mind about what was best. But I seemed to have no choice. For one thing, I made more money at business than I had expected, and so—and so it seemed that they ought to be educated above me and mine. There was my mother, did a better woman ever live? She had no education but that of home. She could have brought up Nancy in the good, old-fashioned way, if I had let her. I wish I had, yes, I wish I had.’
‘I don’t think you could have felt satisfied,’ said the listener, with intelligent sympathy.
‘Why not? If she had been as good and useful a woman as you are—’
‘Ah, you mustn’t think in that way, Mr. Lord. I was born and bred to service. Your daughter had a mind given her at her birth, that would never have been content with humble things. She was meant for education and a higher place.’
‘What higher place is there for her? She thinks herself too good for the life she leads here, and yet I don’t believe she’ll ever find a place among people of a higher class. She has told me herself it’s my fault. She says I ought to have had a big house for her, so that she might make friends among the rich. Perhaps she’s right. I have made her neither one thing nor another. Mary, if I had never come to London, I might have lived happily. My place was away there, in the old home. I’ve known that for many a year. I’ve thought: wait till I’ve made a little more money, and I’ll go back. But it was never done; and now it looks to me as if I had spoilt the lives of my children, as well as my own. I can’t trust Nancy, that’s the worst of it. You don’t know what she did on Jubilee night. She wasn’t with Mr. Barmby and the others—Barmby told me about it; she pretended to lose them, and went off somewhere to meet a man she’s never spoken to me about. Is that how a good girl would act? I didn’t speak to her about it; what use? Very likely she wouldn’t tell me the truth. She takes it for granted I can’t understand her. She thinks her education puts her above all plain folk and their ways—that’s it.’
Mary’s eyes had fallen, and she kept silence.
‘Suppose anything happened to me, and they were left to themselves. I have money to leave between them, and of course they know it. How could it do them anything but harm? Do you know that Horace wants to marry that girl Fanny French—a grinning, chattering fool—if not worse. He has told me he shall do as he likes. Whether or no it was right to educate Nancy, I am very sure that I ought to have done with him as I meant at first. He hasn’t the brains to take a good position. When his schooling went on year after year, I thought at last to make of him something better than his father—a doctor, or a lawyer. But he hadn’t the brains: he disappointed me bitterly. And what use can he make of my money, when I’m in my grave? If I die soon he’ll marry, and ruin his life. And won’t it be the same with Nancy? Some plotting, greedy fellow—the kind of man you see everywhere now-a-days, will fool her for the money’s sake.’
‘We must hope they’ll be much older and wiser before they have to act for themselves,’ said Mary, looking into her master’s troubled face.
‘Yes!’ He came nearer to her, with a sudden hopefulness. ‘And whether I live much longer or not, I can do something to guard them against their folly. They needn’t have the money as soon as I am gone.’
He seated himself in front of his companion.
‘I want to ask you something, Mary. If they were left alone, would you be willing to live here still, as you do now, for a few more years?’
‘I shall do whatever you wish—whatever you bid me, Mr. Lord,’ answered the woman, in a voice of heartfelt loyalty.
‘You would stay on, and keep house for them?’
‘But would they go on living here?’
‘I could make them do so. I could put it down as a condition, in my will. At all events, I would make Nancy stay. Horace might live where he liked—though not with money to throw about. They have no relatives that could be of any use to them. I should wish Nancy to go on living here, and you with her; and she would only have just a sufficient income, paid by my old friend Barmby, or by his son. And that till she was—what? I have thought of six-and-twenty. By that time she would either have learnt wisdom, or she never would. She must be free sooner or later.’
‘But she couldn’t live by herself, Mr. Lord.’
‘You tell me you would stay,’ he exclaimed impulsively.
‘Oh, but I am only her servant. That wouldn’t be enough.’
‘It would be. Your position shall be changed. There’s no one living to whom I could trust her as I could to you. There’s no woman I respect so much. For twenty years you have proved yourself worthy of respect—and it shall be paid to you.’
His vehemence would brook no opposition.
‘You said you would do as I wished. I wish you to have a new position in this house. You shall no longer be called a servant; you shall be our housekeeper, and our friend. I will have it, I tell you!’ he cried angrily. ‘You shall sit at table with us, and live with us. Nancy still has sense enough to acknowledge that this is only your just reward; from her, I know, there won’t be a word of objection. What can you have to say against it?’
The woman was pale with emotion. Her reserve and sensibility shrank from what seemed to her an invidious honour, yet she durst not irritate the sick man by opposition.
‘It will make Nancy think,’ he pursued, with emphasis. ‘It will help her, perhaps, to see the difference between worthless women who put themselves forward, and the women of real value who make no pretences. Perhaps it isn’t too late to set good examples before her. I’ve never found her ill-natured, though she’s wilful; it isn’t her heart that’s wrong—I hope and think not—only her mind, that’s got stuffed with foolish ideas. Since her grandmother’s death she’s had no guidance. You shall talk to her as a woman can; not all at once, but when she’s used to thinking of you in this new way.’
‘You are forgetting her friends,’ Mary said at length, with eyes of earnest appeal.
‘Her friends? She’s better without such friends. There’s one thing I used to hope, but I’ve given it up. I thought once that she might have come to a liking for Samuel Barmby, but now I don’t think she ever will, and I believe it’s her friends that are to blame for it. One thing I know, that she’ll never meet with any one who will make her so good a husband as he would. We don’t think alike in every way; he’s a young man, and has the new ideas; but I’ve known him since he was a boy, and I respect his character. He has a conscience, which is no common thing now-a-days. He lives a clean, homely life—and you won’t find many of his age who do. Nancy thinks herself a thousand times too good for him; I only hope he mayn’t prove a great deal too good for her. But I’ve given up that thought. I’ve never spoken to her about it, and I never shall; no good comes of forcing a girl’s inclination. I only tell you of it, Mary, because I want you to understand what has been going on.’
They heard a bell ring; that of the front door.
‘It’ll be Miss. Nancy,’ said Mary, rising.
‘Go to the door then. If it’s Nancy, tell her I want to speak to her, and come back yourself.’
‘Mr. Lord—’
‘Do as I tell you—at once!’
All the latent force of Stephen’s character now declared itself. He stood upright, his face stern and dignified. In a few moments, Nancy entered the room, and Mary followed her at a distance.
‘Nancy,’ said the father, ‘I want to tell you of a change in the house. You know that Mary has been with us for twenty years. You know that for a long time we haven’t thought of her as a servant, but as a friend, and one of the best possible. It’s time now to show our gratitude. Mary will continue to help us as before, but henceforth she is one of our family. She will eat with us and sit with us; and I look to you, my girl, to make the change an easy and pleasant one for her.’
As soon as she understood the drift of her father’s speech, Nancy experienced a shock, and could not conceal it. But when silence came, she had commanded herself. An instant’s pause; then, with her brightest smile, she turned to Mary and spoke in a voice of kindness.
‘Father is quite right. Your place is with us. I am glad, very glad.’
Mary looked from Mr. Lord to his daughter, tried vainly to speak, and left the room.
