The Bertrams

"Think of her!" said George.

"A very beautiful young lady; isn't she? and clever, too. I knew her father well, Mr. George – very well. Isn't she a very handsome young lady? Ah, well! she hasn't money enough, Mr. George; that's the fact; that's the fact. But" – and Mr. Pritchett whispered as he continued – "the old gentleman might make it more, Mr. George."

Mr. Pritchett had a somewhat melancholy way of speaking of everything. It was more in his tone than in his words. And this tone, which was all but sepulchral, was perhaps owing rather to a short neck and an asthmatic tendency than to any real sorrow or natural lowness of spirits.

Those who saw Mr. Pritchett often probably remembered this, and counted on it; but with George there was always a graveyard touch about these little interviews. He could not, therefore, but have some melancholy presentiment when he heard Miss Waddington spoken of in such a tone.

On the following day he went down to Hadley, and, as was customary there, found that he was to spend the evening tête-à-tête with his uncle. Nothing seemed changed since he had left it: his uncle came in just before dinner, and poked the fire exactly as he had done on the last visit George had paid him after a long absence. "Come, John, we're three minutes late! why don't we have dinner?" He asked no question – at least, not at first – either about Sir Lionel or about Jerusalem, and seemed resolute to give the traveller none of that éclat, to pay to his adventures none of that deferential awe which had been so well expressed by Mr. Pritchett in two words.

But Mr. Bertram, though he always began so coldly, did usually improve after a few hours. His tone would gradually become less cynical and harsh; his words would come out more freely; and he would appear somewhat less anxious to wound the amour propre of his companion.

"Are you much wiser for your travels, George?" he said at last, when John had taken away the dinner, and they were left alone with a bottle of port wine between them. This, too, was asked in a very cynical tone, but still there was some improvement in the very fact of his deigning to allude to the journey.

"Yes, I think I am rather wiser."

"Well, I'm glad of that. As you have lost a year in your profession, it is well that you should have gained something. Has your accession of wisdom been very extensive?"

"Somewhat short of Solomon's, sir; but probably quite as much as I should have picked up had I remained in London."

"That is very probable. I suppose you have not the slightest idea how much it cost you. Indeed, that would be a very vulgar way of looking at it."

"Thanks to your unexpected kindness, I have not been driven to any very close economy."

"Ah! that was Pritchett's doing. He seemed afraid that the land would not flow with milk and honey unless your pocket was fairly provided. But of course it's your own affair, George. It is money borrowed; that's all."

George did not quite understand what this meant, and remained silent; but at one moment it was almost on his tongue to say that it ought at least to be admitted that the borrower had not been very pressing in his application.

"And I suppose you have come back empty?" continued his uncle.

George then explained exactly how he stood with regard to money, saying how he had put himself into the hands of Mr. Neversaye Die, how he had taken chambers in the Middle Temple, and how a volume of Blackstone was already lying open in his dingy sitting-room.

"Very well, very well. I have no objection whatever. You will perhaps make nothing at the bar, and certainly never the half what you would have done with Messrs. Dry and Stickatit. But that's your affair. The bar is thoroughly respectable. By-the-by, is your father satisfied with it as a profession?" This was the first allusion that Mr. Bertram had made to his brother.

"Perfectly so," said George.

"Because of course you were bound to consult him." If this was intended for irony, it was so well masked that George was not able to be sure of it.

"I did consult him, sir," said George, turning red in accordance with that inveterate and stupid habit of his.

"That was right. And did you consult him about another thing? did you ask him what you were to live on till such time as you could earn your own bread?"

In answer to this, George was obliged to own that he did not. "There was no necessity," said he, "for he knows that I have my fellowship."

"Oh! ah! yes; and that of course relieves him of any further cause for anxiety in the matter. I forgot that."

"Uncle George, you are always very hard on my father; much too hard."

"Am I?"

"I think you are. As regards his duty to me, if I do not complain, you need not."

"Oh! that is it, is it? I did think that up to this, his remissness in doing his duty as a father had fallen rather on my shoulders than on yours. But I suppose I have been mistaken; eh?"

"At any rate, if you have to complain, your complaint should be made to him, not to me."

"But you see I have not time to run across the world to Jerusalem; and were I to do so, the chances are ten to one I should not catch him. If you will ask Pritchett too, you will find that your father is not the best correspondent in the world. Perhaps he has sent back by you some answer to Pritchett's half-yearly letters?"

"He has sent nothing by me."

"I'll warrant he has not. But come, George, own the truth. Did he borrow money from you when he saw you? If he did not, he showed a very low opinion of your finances and my liberality."

George might have declared, without any absolute falseness, that his father had borrowed no money of him. But he had not patience at the present moment to distinguish between what would be false and what not false in defending his father's character. He could not but feel that his father had behaved very shabbily to him, and that Sir Lionel's conduct could not be defended in detail. But he also felt that his uncle was quite unjustifiable in wounding him by such attacks. It was not to him that Mr. Bertram should have complained of Sir Lionel's remissness in money matters. He resolved that he would not sit by and hear his father so spoken of; and, therefore, utterly disregardful of what might be the terribly ill effects of his uncle's anger, he thus spoke out in a tone not of the meekest: —

"I will neither defend my father, Mr. Bertram; nor will I sit still and hear him so spoken of. How far you may have just ground of complaint against him, I do not know, nor will I inquire. He is my father, and that should protect his name in my presence."

"Hoity, toity!"

"I will ask you to hear me if you please, sir. I have received very many good offices from you, for which I heartily thank you. I am aware that I owe to you all my education and support up to this time. This debt I fear I can never pay."

"And therefore, like some other people, you are inclined to resent it."

"No, by heaven! I would resent nothing said by you to myself; but I will not sit by and hear my father ill spoken of. I will not – no; not for all the money which you could give or leave me. It seems to me that what I spend of your money is added up as a debt against my father – "

"Pray don't imagine, my boy, that that is any burden to him."

"It is a burden to me, and I will endure it no longer. While at school, I knew nothing of these things, and not much while I was at college. Now I do know something, and feel something. If you please, sir, I will renounce any further assistance from you whatever; and beg, in return, that you will say nothing further to me as to any quarrel there may be between you and Sir Lionel."

"Quarrel!" said his uncle, getting up and standing with his back to the fire. "He has not spirit enough to quarrel with me."

"Well, I have," said George, who was now walking about the room; and from the fire in his eyes, it certainly appeared that he spoke the truth in this respect.

"I know the bitterness of your spirit against your brother," continued George; "but your feelings should teach you not to show it before his son."

Mr. Bertram was still standing with his hands in his pockets, leaning against the mantel-piece, with his coat-tails over his arms. He said nothing further at once, but continued to fix his eyes on his nephew, who was now walking backwards and forwards from one end of the room to the other with great vehemence. "I think," at last said George, "that it will be better that I should go back to town. Good-night, sir."

"You are an ass," said his uncle.

"Very likely," said George. "But asses will kick sometimes."

"And bray too," said his uncle.

There was a certain spirit about them both which made it difficult for either altogether to get the better of the other.

"That I may bray no more in your hearing, I will wish you good-night." And again he held out his hand to the old man.

His uncle took hold of his hand, but he did not go through the process of shaking it, nor did he at once let it go again. He held it there for a time, looking stedfastly into his nephew's face, and then he dropped it. "You had better sit down and drink your wine," he said at last.

"I had rather return to town," said George, stoutly.

"And I had rather you stayed here," said his uncle, in a tone of voice that for him was good-humoured. "Come, you need not be in a pet, like a child. Stay where you are now, and if you don't like to come again, why you can stay away."

As this was said in the manner of a request, George did again sit down. "It will be foolish to make a fuss about it," said he to himself; "and what he says is true. I need not come again, and I will not." So he sat down and again sipped his wine.

"So you saw Caroline at Jerusalem?" said the old man, after a pause of about twenty minutes.

"Yes, I met her with Miss Baker. But who told you?"

"Who told me? Why, Miss Baker, of course. They were both here for a week after their return."

"Here in this house?"

"Why shouldn't they be here in this house? Miss Baker is usually here three or four times every year."

"Is she?" said George, quite startled by the information. Why on earth had Miss Baker not told him of this?

"And what did you think of Caroline?" asked Mr. Bertram.

"Think of her?" said George.

"Perhaps you did not think anything about her at all. If so, I shall be delighted to punish her vanity by telling her so. She had thought a great deal about you; or, at any rate, she talked as though she had."

This surprised George a great deal, and almost made him forgive his uncle the inquiry he had received. "Oh, yes, I did think of her," said he. "I thought of her a little at least."

"Oh, a little!"

"Well, I mean as much as one does generally think of people one meets – perhaps rather more than of others. She is very handsome and clever, and what I saw of her I liked."

"She is a favourite of mine – very much so. Only that you are too young, and have not as yet a shilling to depend on, she might have done for a wife for you."

And so saying, he drew the candles to him, took up his newspaper, and was very soon fast asleep.

George said nothing further that night to his uncle about Caroline, but he sat longing that the old man might again broach the subject. He was almost angry with himself for not having told his uncle the whole truth; but then he reflected that Caroline had not yet acknowledged that she felt anything like affection for him; and he said to himself, over and over again, that he was sure she would not marry him without loving him for all the rich uncles in Christendom; and yet it was a singular coincidence that he and his uncle should have thought of the same marriage.

The next morning he was again more surprised. On coming down to the breakfast-parlour, he found his uncle there before him, walking up and down the room with his hands behind his back. As soon as George had entered, his uncle stopped his walk, and bade him shut the door.

"George," said he, "perhaps you are not very often right, either in what you do or what you say; but last night you were right."

"Sir!"

"Yes, last night you were right. Whatever may have been your father's conduct, you were right to defend it; and, bad as it has been, I was wrong to speak of it as it deserved before you. I will not do so again."

"Thank you, sir," said George, his eyes almost full of tears.

"That is what I suppose the people in the army call an ample apology. Perhaps, however, it may be made a little more ample."

"Sir, sir," said George, not quite understanding him; "pray do not say anything more."

"No, I won't, for I have got nothing more to say; only this: Pritchett wants to see you. Be with him at three o'clock to-day."

At three o'clock Bertram was with Pritchett, and learned from that gentleman, in the most frozen tone of which he was capable, and with sundry little, good-humoured, asthmatic chuckles, that he had been desired to make arrangements for paying to Mr. George regularly an income of two hundred a year, to be paid in the way of annuity till Mr. Bertram's death, and to be represented by an adequate sum in the funds whenever that much-to-be-lamented event should take place.

"To be sure, sir," said Pritchett, "two hundred a year is nothing for you, Mr. George; but – "

But two hundred a year was a great deal to George. That morning he had been very much puzzled to think how he was to keep himself going till he might be able to open the small end of the law's golden eggs.

CHAPTER XIII

LITTLEBATH

I abhor a mystery. I would fain, were it possible, have my tale run through from its little prologue to the customary marriage in its last chapter, with all the smoothness incidental to ordinary life. I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse. I would as lief have to do with a giant in my book – a real giant, such as Goliath – as with a murdering monk with a scowling eye. The age for such delights is, I think, gone. We may say historically of Mrs. Radcliffe's time that there were mysterious sorrows in those days. They are now as much out of date as are the giants.

I would wish that a serene gratification might flow from my pages, unsullied by a single start. Now I am aware that there is that in the last chapter which appears to offend against the spirit of calm recital which I profess. People will begin to think that they are to be kept in the dark as to who is who; that it is intended that their interest in the novel shall depend partly on a guess. I would wish to have no guessing, and therefore I at once proceed to tell all about it.

Miss Caroline Waddington was the granddaughter of old Mr. George Bertram; and was, therefore, speaking with absolute technical propriety, the first-cousin once removed of her lover, young Mr. George Bertram – a degree of relationship which happily admits of love and matrimony.

Old Mr. Bertram has once or twice been alluded to as a bachelor; and most of those who were best acquainted with him had no doubt of his being so. To you, my reader, is permitted the great privilege of knowing that he was married very early in life. He, doubtless, had his reasons for keeping this matter a secret at the time, and the very early death of his wife saved him from the necessity of much talking about it afterwards. His wife had died in giving birth to a daughter, but the child had survived. There was then living a sister of Mrs. Bertram's, who had been married some few years to a Mr. Baker, and the infant was received into this family, of which our friend Miss Baker was a child. Miss Baker was therefore a niece, by marriage, of Mr. Bertram. In this family, Caroline Bertram was educated, and she and Mary Baker were brought up together as sisters. During this time Mr. Bertram did his duty by his daughter as regards money, as far as his means then went, and was known in that family to be her father; but elsewhere he was not so known. The Bakers lived in France, and the fact of his having any such domestic tie was not suspected among his acquaintance in England.

In the course of time his daughter married one Mr. Waddington, hardly with the full consent of the Bakers, for Mr. Waddington's means were small – but not decidedly in opposition to it; nor had the marriage been opposed by Mr. Bertram. He of course was asked to assist in supplying money for the young couple. This he refused to give; but he offered to Mr. Waddington occupation by which an income could be earned. Mr. Waddington wisely acceded to his views, and, had he lived, would doubtless have lived to become a rich man. He died, however, within four years of his marriage, and it so fell out that his wife did not survive him above a year or two.

Of this marriage, Caroline Waddington, our heroine, was the sole offspring. Mr. Waddington's commercial enterprises had not caused him to live in London, though he had been required to be there frequently. Mr. Bertram had, therefore, seen more of him than of his own daughter. The infant had been born in the house of the Bakers, and there she was brought up. As an orphan of four years old, she had come under the care of Mary Baker, and under her care she remained. Miss Baker was therefore not in truth her aunt. What was their exact relationship I leave as a calculation to those conversant with the mysteries of genealogy. I believe myself that she was almost as nearly connected with her lover.

When Mr. Waddington and his daughter were both dead, Mr. Bertram felt himself to be altogether relieved from family ties. He was not yet an old man, being then about fifty-five; but he was a very rich man. It was of course considered that he would provide liberally for his grandchild. But when asked to do so by Miss Baker, he had replied that she was provided for; that he had enabled the child's father to leave behind him four thousand pounds, which for a girl was a provision sufficiently liberal; that he would not give rise to false hopes that she would be his heiress; but that if his niece, Mary Baker, would take the charge of her, he would allow an income for the purpose. This he had done with sufficient liberality.

All that is mysterious has now, I believe, been unravelled, and we may go back to our story. Of Mr. Pritchett, we should perhaps say a word. He had been habituated in his sundry money dealings to look on Miss Baker as his patron's niece, and had always called her as such. Indeed, the connection had been so far back that he usually styled her Miss Mary. But he did not know, nor – though he was very suspicious on the matter – did he quite suspect what was the truth as to Miss Waddington. She was niece to his patron's niece; he knew no more than that, excepting, of course, that she was the daughter of Mr. Waddington, and that she was mistress in her own right of four thousand pounds.

Mr. Pritchett was very anxious about his patron's wealth. Here was Mr. Bertram turned seventy years of age – Mr. Pritchett himself was sixty-six – and no one knew who was to be his heir. As far as he, Mr. Pritchett, was aware, he had no heir. Mr. George would naturally be so – so thought Mr. Pritchett; and the old man's apparent anxiety respecting his nephew, the habit which he had now given himself for years of paying the cost of that nephew's education, and the income which he now allowed him, all led to such a conclusion. But then the uncle liked so well to lead, and Mr. George was so unwilling to be led! Had Waddington lived, he would have been the heir, doubtless. Miss Waddington might still be so, or even Miss Baker. Mr. Bertram, in his way, was certainly very fond of Miss Baker. It was thus that Mr. Pritchett speculated from day to day. George, however, was always regarded by him as the favourite in the race.

And now at last we may return to our story.

Having seen his uncle, George's next business was to see his lady-love. His was a disposition which would not allow him to remain quiet while his hopes were so doubtful and his heart so racked. Had he been travelling with Miss Baker ever since, and living in daily intercourse with Caroline, it is probable enough that he might by this time have been half tired of her. But his love had had no such safety-valve, and was now, therefore, bubbling and boiling within his heart in a manner very subversive of legal accuracy and injurious to legal studies.

It was absolutely necessary, he said to himself, that he should know on what ground he stood; absolutely necessary, also, that he should be able to talk to some one on the subject. So he wrote to Miss Baker, saying that he intended to do himself the pleasure of renewing his acquaintance with her at Littlebath, and he determined to see Arthur Wilkinson on his way. These were the days in which Wilkinson was taking pupils at Oxford, the days in which he used to think so much of Adela Gauntlet.

The meeting of the two friends was sufficiently joyous; for such love sorrows as those which oppressed Bertram when sitting in the chambers of Mr. Neversaye Die rarely oppress a young man in moments which would otherwise be jovial. And Arthur had at this time gotten over one misery, and not yet fallen into another. He had obtained the fellowship which he had hardly expected, and was commencing the life of a don, with all a don's comforts around him.

"Well, upon my word, I envy you, Arthur; I do, indeed," said Bertram, looking round his cousin's room at Balliol as they sat down to pass an evening quietly together. "This was what I always looked forward to, as you did also; you have obtained it, I have forsworn it."

"Your envy cannot be very envious," said Wilkinson, laughing, "as all my bliss is still within your own reach. You have still your rooms at Oriel if you choose to go into them." For Bertram had been elected to a fellowship at that college.

"All! that's easily said; but somehow it couldn't be. I don't know why it is, Arthur; but I have panted to have the privileges of an ordained priest, and yet it is not to be so. I have looked forward to ordination as the highest ambition of a man, but yet I shall never be ordained."

"Why not, George?"

"It is not my destiny."

"On such a subject, do not talk such nonsense."

"Well, at any rate it will not be my lot. I do not mind telling you, Arthur, but there is no one else to whom I could own how weak I am. There have been moments since I have been away in which I have sworn to devote myself to this work, so sworn when every object around me was gifted with some solemn tie which should have made my oath sacred; and yet – "

"Well – and yet? as yet everything is in your own power."

"No, Arthur, no, it is not so; I am now one of the myrmidons of that most special of special pleaders, Mr. Neversaye Die. I have given myself over to the glories of a horse-hair wig; 'whereas' and 'heretofore' must now be my gospel; it is my doom to propagate falsehood instead of truth. The struggle is severe at first; there is a little revulsion of feeling; but I shall do it very well after a time; as easily, I have no doubt, as Harcourt does."

"It is Harcourt who has led you to this."

"Perhaps so, partly; but no – I wrong myself in that. It has not been Harcourt. I have been talked over; I have weakly allowed myself to be talked out of my own resolve, but it has not been done by Harcourt. I must tell you all: it is for that that I came here."

And then he told the history of his love; that history which to men of twenty-four and girls of twenty is of such vital importance. A young man when first he loves, and first knows that his love is frequent in the thoughts of the woman he has chosen, feels himself to be separated from all humanity by an amber-tinted cloud – to be enveloped in a mystery of which common mortals know nothing. He shakes his mane as he walks on with rapid step, and regards himself almost as a god.

"And did she object to your taking orders?" asked Wilkinson.

"Object! no, I am nothing to her; nothing on earth. She would not have objected to my being a shoemaker; but she said that she would advise me to think of the one trade as soon as the other."

"I cannot say that I think she showed either good feeling or good taste," said Wilkinson, stiffly.

"Ah! my dear fellow, you do not know her. There was no bad taste in it, as she said it. I would defy her to say anything in bad taste. But, Arthur, that does not matter. I have told her that I should go to the bar; and, as a man of honour, I must keep my word to her."