C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Viscount and Lower Classes
By Charles Reade (1814–1884)
T
This young gentleman was not insensible to the beauty of the scene. He was a little lazy by nature, and made lazier by the misfortune of wealth: but he had sensibilities. He was an artist of great natural talent. Had he only been without, a penny, how he would have handled the brush! And then he was a mighty sailor. If he had sailed for biscuit a few years, how he would have handled a ship!
As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for nature’s beauties; and the sea always came back to him like a friend after an absence.
This scene, then, curled round his heart a little; and he felt the good physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that name, and strive to build health on the sandy foundation of drugs.
“Saunders, do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the lower classes?”
“Perfectly, my lord.”
“Are there any about here?”
“I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord.”
“Get me some”—(cigarette).
Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful empressement, but an internal shrug of his shoulders.
He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a double expression on his face. Pride at his success in diving to the very bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished up thence.
He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, sotto voce but impressively, “This is low enough, my lord.” Then glided back, and ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he had ever opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed existence.
On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin, with a broad lace border, stiffened, and arched over the forehead about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unincumbered.
They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in patterns, confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed below the waist; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical stripes, red and white, most vivid in color; white worsted stockings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets they wore a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of which was visible round the lower part of the throat.
Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or gathered up towards the front; and the second, of the same color, hung in the usual way.
Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with the red blood mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious black eyebrows.
The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as white as milk; glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which glittered like gold, and a blue eye, which being contrasted with dark eyebrows and lashes, took the luminous effect peculiar to that rare beauty.
Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a noble swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters, who with their air-like sylphs, and their smoke-like verses, fight for want of flesh in woman and want of fact in poetry as parallel beauties.
They are, my lads.—Continuez!
These women had a grand corporeal trait: they had never known a corset! so they were straight as javelins; they could lift their hands above their heads!—actually! Their supple persons moved as nature intended; every gesture was ease, grace, and freedom.
What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and brightness of their costume, they came like meteors into the apartment.
Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet politeness with which he would have received two princes of the blood, said, “How do you do?” and smiled a welcome.
“Fine! hoow’s yoursel’,?” answered the dark lass, whose name was Jean Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face.
“What’n lord are ye?” continued she. “Are you a juke?—I wad like fine to hae a crack wi’ a juke.”
Saunders, who knew himself the cause of this question, replied sotto voce, “His Lordship is a viscount.”
“I dinna ken’t,” was Jean’s remark. “But it has a bonny soond.”
“What mair would ye hae?” said the fair beauty, whose name was Christie Johnstone. Then appealing to his Lordship as the likeliest to know, she added, “Nobeelity is just a soond itsel’, I’m tauld.”
The viscount, finding himself expected to say something on a topic he had not attended much to, answered dryly, “We must ask the republicans: they are the people that give their minds to such subjects.”
“And yon man,” asked Jean Carnie,—“is he a lord too?”
“I am his Lordship’s servant,” replied Saunders gravely, not without a secret misgiving whether fate had been just.
“Na!” replied she, not to be imposed upon. “Ye are statelier and prooder than this ane.”
“I will explain,” said his master. “Saunders knows his value: a servant like Saunders is rarer than an idle viscount.”
“My lord, my lord!” remonstrated Saunders, with a shocked and most disclamatory tone. “Rather!” was his inward reflection.
“Jean,” said Christie, “ye hae muckle to laern. Are ye for herrin’ the day, Vile Count?”
“No: are you for this sort of thing?”
At this, Saunders, with a world of empressement, offered the Carnie some cake that was on the table.
She took a piece, instantly spat it out into her hand, and with more energy than delicacy flung it into the fire.
“Augh!” cried she, “just a sugar and saut butter thegither: buy nae mair at yon shoep, Vile Count.”
“Try this, out of Nature’s shop,” laughed their entertainer; and he offered them, himself, some peaches and things.
“Hech! a medi-cine!” said Christie.
“Nature, my lad,” said Miss Carnie, making her ivory teeth meet in their first nectarine, “I dinna ken whaur ye stoep, but ye beat the other confectioners, that div ye.”
The fair lass, who had watched the viscount all this time as demurely as a cat cream, now approached him.
This young woman was the thinker: her voice was also rich, full, and melodious, and her manner very engaging; it was half advancing, half retiring, not easy to resist or to describe.
“Noo,” said she, with a very slight blush stealing across her face, “ye maun let me catecheeze ye, wull ye?”
The last two words were said in a way that would have induced a bear to reveal his winter residence.
He smiled assent. Saunders retired to the door, and excluding every shade of curiosity from his face, took an attitude half majesty, half obsequiousness.
Christie stood by Lord Ipsden, with one hand on her hip (the knuckles downwards), but graceful as Antinoüs, and began:—
“Hoo muckle is the Queen greater than y’are?”
His Lordship was obliged to reflect.
“Let me see;—as is the moon to a wax taper, so is her Majesty the Queen to you and me and the rest.”
“An’ whaur does the juke come in?”
“On this particular occasion, the duke makes one of us, my pretty maid.”
“I see! Are na ye awfu’ prood o’ being a lorrd?”
“What an idea!”
“His Lordship did not go to bed a spinning-jenny, and rise up a lord, like some of them,” put in Saunders.
“Saunders,” said the peer doubtfully, “eloquence rather bores people.”
“Then I mustn’t speak again, my lord,” said Saunders, respectfully.
“Noo,” said the fair inquisitor, “ye shall tell me how ye came to be lorrds, your faemily.”
“Saunders!”
“Na! ye mauna flee to Sandy for a thing: ye are no a bairn, are ye?”
Here was a dilemma: the Saunders prop knocked rudely away, and obliged to think for ourselves.
But Saunders would come to his distressed master’s assistance. He furtively conveyed to him a plump book,—this was Saunders’s manual of faith; the author was Mr. Burke—not Edmund.
Lord Ipsden ran hastily over the page, closed the book, and said, “Here is the story:—
“Five hundred years ago—”
“Listen, Jean,” said Christie: “we’re gaun to get a boeny story. ‘Five hundre’ years ago,’” added she, with interest and awe.
“—was a great battle,” resumed the narrator in cheerful tones, as one larking with history, “between a King of England and his rebels. He was in the thick of the fight—”
“That’s the King, Jean,—he was in the thick o’t.”
“My ancestor killed a fellow who was sneaking behind him; but the next moment a man-at-arms prepared a thrust at his Majesty, who had his hands full with three assailants.”
“Eh! that’s no fair,” said Christie, “as sure as deeth.”
“My ancestor dashed forward, and as the King’s sword passed through one of them, he clove another to the waist with a blow.”
“Weel done! weel done!”
Lord Ipsden looked at the speaker: her eyes were glittering and her cheek flushing.
“Good Heavens!” thought he: “she believes it!” So he began to take more pains with his legend.
“But for the spearsman,” continued he, “he had nothing but his body: he gave it,—it was his duty,—and received the death leveled at his sovereign.”
“Hech! puir mon.” And the glowing eyes began to glisten.
“The battle flowed another way, and God gave victory to the right; but the King came back to look for him, for it was no common service.”
“Deed no!”
Here Lord Ipsden began to turn his eye inwards, and call up the scene. He lowered his voice.
“They found him lying on his back, looking death in the face.
“The nobles by the King’s side uncovered as soon as he was found, for they were brave men too. There was a moment’s silence: eyes met eyes, and said, This is a stout soldier’s last battle.
“The King could not bid him live,—”
“Na! lad, King Deeth has ower strong a grrip.”
“But he did what kings can do: he gave him two blows with his royal sword.”
“Oh, the robber, and him a deeing mon!”
“Two words from his royal mouth, and he and we were barons of Ipsden and Hawthorn Glen from that day to this.”
“But the puir dying creature?”
“What poor dying creature—?”
“Your forbear, lad.”
“I don’t know, why you call him poor, madam: all the men of that day are dust; they are the gold dust, who died with honor.
“He looked round uneasily for his son,—for he had but one,—and when that son knelt, unwounded, by him, he said, ‘Good night, Baron Ipsden;’ and so he died, fire in his eye, a smile on his lip, and honor on his name for ever. I meant to tell you a lie, and I’ve told you the truth.”
“Laddie,” said Christie, half admiringly, half reproachfully, “ye gar the tear come in my een. Hech! look at yon lassie! how could you think t’eat plums through siccan a boeny story?”
“Hets,” answered Jean, who had in fact cleared the plate, “I aye listen best when my ain mooth’s stappit.”
“But see now,” pondered Christie: “two words fra a king—thir titles are just breeth.”
“Of course,” was the answer. “All titles are. What is popularity? Ask Aristides and Lamartine: the breath of a mob,—smells of its source,—and is gone before the sun can set on it. Now, the royal breath does smell of the Rose and Crown, and stays by us from age to age.”
The story had warmed our marble acquaintance. Saunders opened his eyes, and thought, “We shall wake up the House of Lords some evening,—we shall.”
His Lordship then added, less warmly, looking at the girls:
“I think I should like to be a fisherman.” So saying, my lord yawned slightly.
To this aspiration the young fishwives deigned no attention, doubting perhaps its sincerity; and Christie, with a shade of severity, inquired of him how he came to be a Vile Count.
“A baron’s no a Vile Count, I’m sure,” said she; “sae tell me how ye came to be a Vile Count.”
“Ah!” said he, “that is by no means a pretty story, like the other: you will not like it, I am sure.”
“Ay will I,—ay will I: I’m aye seeking knoewledge.”
“Well, it is soon told. One of us sat twenty years on one seat, in the same house, so one day he got up a—Viscount.”
“Ower muckle pay for ower little wark.”
“Now don’t say that; I wouldn’t do it to be Emperor of Russia.”
“Aweel, I hae gotten a heap out o’ ye; sae noow I’ll gang, since ye are no for herrin’: come away, Jean.”
At this their host remonstrated, and inquired why bores are at one’s service night and day, and bright people are always in a hurry. He was informed in reply, “Labor is the lot o’ man. Div ye no ken that muckle? And abune a’, o’ women.”
“Why, what can two such pretty creatures have to do, except to be admired?”
This question coming within the dark beauty’s scope, she hastened to reply:—
“To sell our herrin’,—we hae three hundre’ left in the creel.”
“What is the price?”
At this question the poetry died out of Christie Johnstone’s face; she gave her companion a rapid look, indiscernible to male eye, and answered:—
“Three a penny, sirr: they are no plenty the day,” added she, in smooth tones that carried conviction.
(Little liar,—they were selling six a penny everywhere.)
“Saunders, buy them all, and be ever so long about it, count them, or some nonsense.”
“He’s daft! he’s daft! Oh, ye ken, Jean, an Ennglishman and a lorrd,—twa daft things thegither, he couldna’ miss the road. Coont them, lassie.”
“Come away, Sandy, till I coont them till ye,” said Jean.
Saunders and Jean disappeared.
Business being out of sight, curiosity revived.
“An’ what brings ye here from London, if you please?” recommenced the fair inquisitor.
“You have a good countenance; there is something in your face. I could find it in my heart to tell you, but I should bore you.”
“De’el a fear! Bore me, bore me! whaat’s thaat, I wonder?”
“What is your name, madam? Mine is Ipsden.”
“They ca’ me Christie Johnstone.”
“Well, Christie Johnstone, I am under the doctor’s hands.”
“Puir lad! What’s the trouble?” (solemnly and tenderly).
“Ennui!” (rather piteously).
“Yawn-we? I never heerd tell o’t.”
“Oh you lucky girl!” burst out he; “but the doctor has undertaken to cure me: in one thing you could assist me, if I am not presuming too far on our short acquaintance. I am to relieve one poor distressed person every day, but I mustn’t do two: is not that a bore?”
“Gie’s your hand, gie’s your hand. I’m vexed for ca’ing you daft. Hech! what a saft hand ye hae. Jean, I’m saying, come here; feel this.”
Jean, who had run in, took the viscount’s hand from Christie.
“It never wroucht any,” explained Jean.
“And he has boeny hair,” said Christie, just touching his locks on the other side.
“He’s a boeny lad,” said Jean, inspecting him scientifically and point-blank.
“Ay is he,” said the other. “Aweel, there’s Jess Rutherford, a widdy, wi’ four bairns: ye meicht do waur than ware your siller on her.”
“Five pounds to begin?” inquired his Lordship.
“Five pund! Are ye made o’ siller? Ten schell’n!”
Saunders was rung for, and produced a one-pound note.
“The herrin’ is five and saxpence; it’s four and saxpence I’m awin’ ye,” said the young fishwife, “and Jess will be a glad woman the neicht.”
The settlement was effected, and away went the two friends, saying:—
“Good boye, Vile Count.”
Their host fell into thought.
“When have I talked so much?” asked he of himself.
“Dr. Aberford, you are a wonderful man; I like your lower classes amazingly.”
“Méfiez-vous, Monsieur Ipsden!” should some mentor have said.
As the devil puts into a beginner’s hands ace, queen, five trumps, to give him a taste for whist, so these lower classes have perhaps put forward one of their best cards to lead you into a false estimate of the strength of their hand.
Instead however of this, who should return to disturb the equilibrium of truth but this Christina Johnstone. She came thoughtfully in, and said:—
“I’ve been taking a thoucht, and this is no what yon gude physeecian meaned: ye are no to fling your chaerity like a bane till a doeg; ye’ll gang yoursel’ to Jess Rutherford; Flucker Johnstone, that’s my brother, will convoy ye.”
“But how is your brother to know me?”
“How? Because I’ll give him a sair, sair hiding if he lets ye gang by.”
She then returned the one-pound note, a fresh settlement was effected, and she left him.
At the door she said, “And I am muckle obleeged to ye for your story and your goodness.”
Whilst uttering these words she half kissed her hand to him, with a lofty and disengaged gesture such as one might expect from a queen, if queens did not wear stays,—and was gone.
When his Lordship, a few minutes after, sauntered out for a stroll, the first object he beheld was an exact human square: a handsome boy, with a body swelled out, apparently to the size of a man’s, with blue flannel, and blue cloth above it, leaning against a wall, with his hands in his pockets,—a statuette of insouciance.
This marine puff-ball was Flucker Johnstone, aged fourteen.
Stain his sister’s face with diluted walnut-juice, as they make the stage gipsy and red Indian (two animals imagined by actors to be one), and you have Flucker’s face.
A slight moral distinction remains, not to be so easily got over.
She was the best girl in the place, and he a baddish boy.
He was however as sharp in his way as she was intelligent in hers.
This youthful mariner allowed his Lordship to pass him, and take twenty steps, but watched him all the time, and compared him with a description furnished him by his sister.
He then followed, and brought him to, as he called it.
“I daursay it’s you I’m to convoy to yon auld faggitt!” said this baddish boy.
On they went, Flucker rolling and pitching and yawing to keep up with the lordly galley; for a fisherman’s natural waddle is two miles an hour.
At the very entrance of Newhaven, the new pilot suddenly sung out, “Starboard!”
Starboard it was: and they ascended a filthy “close” or alley, they mounted a staircase which was out of doors, and without knocking, Flucker introduced himself into Jess Rutherford’s house.
“Here a gentleman to speak till ye, wife.”
The widow was weather-beaten and rough. She sat mending an old net.
“The gentleman’s welcome,” said she; but there was no gratification in her tone, and but little surprise.
His Lordship then explained that, understanding there were worthy people in distress, he was in hopes he might be permitted to assist them; and that she must blame a neighbor of hers if he had broken in upon her too abruptly with this object. He then, with a blush, hinted at ten shillings, which he begged she would consider as merely an installment, until he could learn the precise nature of her embarrassments, and the best way of placing means at her disposal.
The widow heard all this with a lack-lustre mind.
For many years her life had been unsuccessful labor; if anything ever had come to her, it had always been a misfortune; her incidents had been thorns,—her events, daggers.
She could not realize a human angel coming to her relief, and she did not realize it; and she worked away at her net.
At this Flucker, to whom his Lordship’s speech appeared monstrously weak and pointless, drew nigh, and gave the widow in her ear his version; namely, his sister’s embellished. It was briefly this: “That the gentleman was a daft lord from England who had come with the bank in his breeks, to remove poverty from Scotland, beginning with her. Sae speak loud aneuch, and ye’ll no want siller,” was his polite corollary.
His Lordship rose, laid a card on a chair, begged her to make use of him, et cetera; he then, recalling the oracular prescription, said, “Do me the favor to apply to me for any little sum you have a use for, and in return I will beg of you (if it does not bore you too much) to make me acquainted with any little troubles you may have encountered in the course of your life.”
His Lordship, receiving no answer, was about to go, after bowing to her and smiling gracefully upon her.
His hand was on the latch, when Jess Rutherford burst into a passion of tears. He turned with surprise.
“My troubles, laddie,” cried she, trembling all over. “The sun wad set, and rise, and set again, ere I could tell ye a’ the trouble I hae come through.
“Oh! ye needna vex yourself for an auld wife’s tears: tears are a blessin’, lad, I shall assure ye. Mony’s the time I hae prayed for them, and could na hae them. Sit ye doon! sit ye doon! I’ll no let ye gang fra my door till I hae thankit ye,—but gie me time, gie me time. I canna greet a’ the days of the week.”
Flucker, ætat. 14, opened his eyes, unable to connect ten shillings and tears.
Lord Ipsden sat down, and felt very sorry for her.
And she cried at her ease.
If one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, methinks that sweet and wonderful thing, sympathy, is not less powerful. What frozen barriers, what ice of centuries, it can melt in a moment!
His bare mention of her troubles had surprised the widow woman’s heart: and now she looked up, and examined his countenance; it was soon done.
A woman, young or old, high or low, can discern and appreciate sensibility in a man’s face at a single glance.
What she saw there was enough. She was sure of sympathy. She recalled his resolve, and the tale of her sorrows burst from her like a flood.
The old fishwife told the young aristocrat how she had borne twelve children, and buried six as bairns; how her man was always unlucky; how a mast fell on him, and disabled him a whole season; how they could but just keep the pot boiling by deep-sea fishing, and he was not allowed to dredge for oysters because his father was not a Newhaven man. How, when the herring-fishing came to make all right, he never had another man’s luck; how his boat’s crew would draw empty nets, and a boat alongside him would be gunwale down in the water with the fish. How at last, one morning, the 20th day of November, his boat came into Newhaven Pier without him, and when he was inquired for, his crew said “he had stayed at home, like a lazy loon, and not sailed with them the night before.” How she was anxious, and had all the public-houses searched, “for he took a drop now and then,—nae wonder, and him aye in the weather.” Poor thing! when he was alive she used to call him a drunken scoundrel to his face. How when the tide went down, a mad wife, whose husband had been drowned twenty years ago, pointed out something under the pier, that the rest took for seaweed floating,—how it was the hair of her man’s head, washed about by the water; and he was there, drowned without a cry or a struggle by his enormous boots, that kept him in an upright position, though he was dead; there he stood,—dead,—drowned by slipping from the slippery pier, close to his comrades’ hands, in a dark and gusty night; how her daughter married, and was well-to-do, and assisted her; how she fell into a rapid decline, and died, a picture of health to inexperienced eyes. How she, the mother, saw and knew and watched the treacherous advance of disease and death; how others said gayly “her daughter was better,” and she was obliged to say “Yes.” How she had worked eighteen hours a day at making nets; how when she let out her nets to the other men at the herring-fishing, they always cheated her because her man was gone. How she had many times had to choose between begging her meal and going to bed without it,—but thank Heaven! she had always chosen the latter.
She told him of hunger, cold, and anguish. As she spoke they became real things to him; up to that moment they had been things in a story-book. And as she spoke she rocked herself from side to side.
Indeed, she was a woman “acquainted with grief.” She might have said, “Here I and sorrow sit! This is my throne; bid kings come bow to it!”
Her hearer felt this: and therefore this woman, poor, old, and ugly, became sacred in his eye; it was with a strange sort of respect that he tried to console her.
He spoke to her in tones gentle and sweet as the south wind on a summer evening.
“Madam,” said he, “let me be so happy as to bring you some comfort. The sorrows of the heart I cannot heal; they are for a mightier hand: but a part of your distress appears to have been positive need; that we can at least dispose of, and I entreat you to believe that from this hour want shall never enter that door again. Never! upon my honor!”
The Scotch are icebergs with volcanoes underneath; thaw the Scotch ice, which is very cold, and you shall get to the Scotch fire, warmer than any sun of Italy or Spain.
His Lordship had risen to go. The old wife had seemed absorbed in her own grief; she now dried her tears.
“Bide ye, sirr,” said she, “till I thank ye.”
So she began to thank him, rather coldly and stiffly.
“He says ye are a lord,” said she; “I dinna ken, an’ I dinna care: but ye’re a gentleman, I daursay, and a kind heart ye hae.”
Then she began to warm.
“And ye’ll never be a grain the poorer for the siller ye hae gi’en me; for he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.”
Then she began to glow.
“But it’s no your siller; dinna think it,—na, lad, na! Oh, fine! I ken there’s mony a supper for the bairns and me in yon bits metal; but I canna feel your siller as I feel your winsome smile,—the drop in your young een,—and the sweet words ye gied me, in the sweet music o’ your Soothern tongue, Gude bless ye!” (Where was her ice by this time?) “Gude bless ye! and I bless ye!”
And she did bless him; and what a blessing it was!—not a melodious generality, like a stage parent’s, or papa’s in a damsel’s novel. It was like the son of Barak on Zophim.
She blessed him as one who had the power and the right to bless or curse.
She stood on the high ground of her low estate and her afflictions, and demanded of their Creator to bless the fellow-creature that had come to her aid and consolation.
This woman had suffered to the limits of endurance; yesterday she had said, “Surely the Almighty doesna see me a’ these years!”
So now she blessed him, and her heart’s blood seemed to gush into words.
She blessed him by land and water.
She knew most mortal griefs; for she had felt them.
She warned them away from him one by one.
She knew the joys of life; for she had felt their want.
She summoned them one by one to his side.
“And a fair wind to your ship,” cried she; “an’ the storms aye ten miles to leeward o’ her.”
Many happy days, “an’ weel spent,” she wished him.
“His love should love him dearly, or a better take her place.”
“Health to his side by day; sleep to his pillow by night.”
A thousand good wishes came, like a torrent of fire, from her lips, with a power that eclipsed his dreams of human eloquence; and then, changing in a moment from the thunder of a Pythoness to the tender music of some poetess mother, she ended:—
“An’ oh, my boeny, boeny lad, may ye be wi’ the rich upon the airth a’ your days,—
His Lordship’s tongue refused him the thin phrases of society.
“Farewell for the present,” said he, and he went quietly away.
He paced thoughtfully home.
He had drunk a fact with every sentence; and an idea with every fact.
For the knowledge we have never realized is not knowledge to us,—only knowledge’s shadow.