Chapter XLI
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.
Twelfth Night
The transactions referred to by Caleb Garth as having
gone forward between Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Joshua Rigg
Featherstone concerning the land attached to Stone Court,
had occasioned the interchange of a letter or two between
these personages.
Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? If it
happens to have been cut in stone, though it lie face
down-most for ages on a forsaken beach, or " rest quietly
under the drums and tramplings of many conquests," it may
end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and other
scandals gossiped about long empires ago: — this world being
apparently a huge whispering-gallery. Such conditions are
often minutely represented in our petty lifetimes. As the
stone which has been kicked by generations of clowns may
come by curious little links of effect under the eyes of a
scholar, through whose labors it may at last fix the date of
invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper
which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at
last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have
knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a
catastrophe. To Uriel watching the progress of planetary
history from the sun, the one result would be just as much
of a coincidence as the other.
Having made this rather lofty comparison I am less
uneasy in calling attention to the existence of low people
by whose interference, however little we may like it, the
course of the world is very much determined. It would be
well, certainly, if we could help to reduce their number,
and something might perhaps be done by not lightly giving
occasion to their existence. Socially speaking, Joshua Rigg
would have been generally pronounced a superfluity. But
those who like Peter
Featherstone never had a copy of
themselves demanded, are the very last to wait for such a
request either in prose or verse. The copy in this case
bore more of outside resemblance to the mother, in whose sex
frog-features, accompanied with fresh-colored cheeks and a
well-rounded figure, are compatible with much charm for a
certain order of admirers. The result is sometimes a
frog-faced male, desirable, surely, to no order of
intelligent beings. Especially when he is suddenly brought
into evidence to frustrate other people's expectations — the
very lowest aspect in which a social superfluity can present
himself.
But Mr. Rigg Featherstone's low characteristics were all
of the sober, water-drinking kind. From the earliest to the
latest hour of the day he was always as sleek, neat, and
cool as the frog he resembled, and old Peter had secretly
chuckled over an offshoot almost more calculating, and far
more imperturbable, than himself. I will add that his
finger-nails were scrupulously attended to, and that he
meant to marry a well-educated young lady (as yet
unspecified) whose person was good, and whose connections,
in a solid middle-class way, were undeniable. Thus his
nails and modesty were comparable to those of most
gentlemen; though his ambition had been educated only by the
opportunities of a clerk and accountant in the smaller
commercial houses of a seaport. He thought the rural
Featherstones very simple absurd people, and they in their
turn regarded his "bringing up" in a seaport town as an
exaggeration of the monstrosity that their brother Peter,
and still more Peter's property, should have had such
belongings.
The garden and gravel approach, as seen from the two
windows of the wainscoted parlor at Stone Court, were never
in better trim than now, when Mr. Rigg Featherstone stood,
with his hands behind him, looking out on these grounds as
their master. But it seemed doubtful whether he looked out
for the sake of contemplation or of turning his back to a
person who stood in the middle of the room, with his legs
eonsiderably apart and his hands in his trouser-pockets: a
person in all respects a contrast to the sleek and cool
Rigg.
He was a man obviously on the way towards sixty,
very florid and hairy, with much gray in his bushy whiskers
and thick curly hair, a stoutish body which showed to
disadvantage the somewhat worn joinings of his clothes, and
the air of a swaggerer, who would aim at being noticeable
even at a show of fireworks, regarding his own remarks on
any other person's performance as likely to be more
interesting than the performance itself.
His name was John Raffles, and he sometimes wrote
jocosely W.A.G. after his signature, observing when he did
so, that he was once taught by Leonard Lamb of Finsbury who
wrote B.A. after his name, and that he, Raffles, originated
the witticism of calling that celebrated principal Ba-Lamb.
Such were the appearance and mental flavor of Mr. Raffles,
both of which seemed to have a stale odor of travellers'
rooms in the commercial hotels of that period.
"Come, now, Josh," he was saying, in a full rumbling
tone, "look at it in this light: here is your poor mother
going into the vale of years, and you could afford something
handsome now to make her comfortable."
"Not while you live. Nothing would make her comfortable
while you live," returned Rigg, in his cool high voice.
"What I give her, you'll take."
"You bear me a grudge, Josh, that I know. But come,
now — as between man and man — without humbug — a little
capital might enable me to make a first-rate thing of the
shop. The tobacco trade is growing. I should cut my own
nose off in not doing the best I could at it. I should
stick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake. I
should always be on the spot. And nothing would make your
poor mother so happy. I've pretty well done with my wild
oats — turned fifty-five. I want to settle down in my
chimney-corner. And if I once buckled to the tobacco trade,
I could bring an amount of brains and experience to bear on
it that would not be found elsewhere in a hurry. I don't
want to be bothering you one time after another, but to get
things once for all into the right channel. Consider that,
Josh — as between man and man — and with your poor mother to
be made easy for her life. I was always fond of the old
woman, by Jove!"
"Have you done?" said Mr. Rigg, quietly, without looking
away from the window.
"Yes, _I_'ve done," said Raffles, taking hold of his hat
which stood before him on the table, and giving it a sort of
oratorical push.
"Then just listen to me. The more you say anything, the
less I shall believe it. The more you want me to do a
thing, the more reason I shall have for never doing it. Do
you think I mean to forget your kicking me when I was a lad,
and eating all the best victual away from me and my mother?
Do you think I forget your always coming home to sell and
pocket everything, and going off again leaving us in the
lurch? I should be glad to see you whipped at the
cart-tail. My mother was a fool to you: she'd no right to
give me a father-in-law, and she's been punished for it.
She shall have her weekly allowance paid and no more: and
that shall be stopped if you dare to come on to these
premises again, or to come into this country after me again.
The next time you show yourself inside the gates here, you
shall be driven off with the dogs and the wagoner's whip."
As Rigg pronounced the last words he turned round and
looked at Raffles with his prominent frozen eyes. The
contrast was as striking as it could have been eighteen
years before, when Rigg was a most unengaging kickable boy,
and Raffles was the rather thick-set Adonis of bar-rooms and
back-parlors. But the advantage now was on the side of
Rigg, and auditors of this conversation might probably have
expected that Raffles would retire with the air of a
defeated dog. Not at all. He made a grimace which was
habitual with him whenever he was "out" in a game; then
subsided into a laugh, and drew a brandy-flask from his
pocket.
"Come, Josh," he said, in a cajoling tone, " give us a
spoonful of brandy, and a sovereign to pay the way back, and
I'll go. Honor bright! I'll go like a bullet, by
Jove!"
"Mind," said Rigg, drawing out a bunch of keys, " if I
ever see you again, I shan't speak to you. I don't own you
any more than if I saw a crow; and if you want to own me
you'll
get nothing by it but a character for being what
you are — a spiteful, brassy, bullying rogue."
"That's a pity, now, Josh," said Raffles, affecting to
scratch his head and wrinkle his brows upward as if he were
nonplussed. "I'm very fond of you; by Jove, I am!
There's nothing I like better than plaguing you — you're so
like your mother, and I must do without it. But the brandy
and the sovereign's a bargain."
He jerked forward the flask and Rigg went to a fine old
oaken bureau with his keys. But Raffles had reminded
himself by his movement with the flask that it had become
dangerously loose from its leather covering, and catching
sight of a folded paper which had fallen within the fender,
he took it up and shoved it under the leather so as to make
the glass firm.
By that time Rigg came forward with a brandy-bottle,
filled the flask, and handed Raffles a sovereign, neither
looking at him nor speaking to him. After locking up the
bureau again, he walked to the window and gazed out as
impassibly as he had done at the beginning of the interview,
while Raffles took a small allowance from the flask, screwed
it up, and deposited it in his side-pocket, with provoking
slowness, making a grimace at his stepson's back.
"Farewell, Josh — and if forever!" said Raffles, turning
back his head as he opened the door.
Rigg saw him leave the grounds and enter the lane. The
gray day had turned to a light drizzling rain, which
freshened the hedgerows and the grassy borders of the
by-roads, and hastened the laborers who were loading the
last shocks of corn. Raffles, walking with the uneasy gait
of a town loiterer obliged to do a bit of country journeying
on foot, looked as incongruous amid this moist rural quiet
and industry as if he had been a baboon escaped from a
menagerie. But there were none to stare at him except the
long-weaned calves, and none to show dislike of his
appearance except the little water-rats which rustled away
at his approach.
He was fortunate enough when he got on to the highroad
to be overtaken by the stage-coach, which carried him to
Brassing;
and there he took the new-made railway,
observing to his fellow-passengers that he considered it
pretty well seasoned now it had done for Huskisson. Mr.
Raffles on most occasions kept up the sense of having been
educated at an academy, and being able, if he chose, to pass
well everywhere; indeed, there was not one of his fellow-men
whom he did not feel himself in a position to ridicule and
torment, confident of the entertainment which he thus gave
to all the rest of the company.
He played this part now with as much spirit as if his
journey had been entirely successful, resorting at frequent
intervals to his flask. The paper with which he had wedged
it was a letter signed Nicholas Bulstrode, but Raffles
was not likely to disturb it from its present useful
position.