Authors: Elizabeth Gaskell
"What is to be done?" said she, half to herself and half to me. I could
not answer, for I was puzzled myself.
"It was a right word," she continued, "that I used, when I called reading
and writing 'edge-tools.' If our lower orders have these edge-tools
given to them, we shall have the terrible scenes of the French Revolution
acted over again in England. When I was a girl, one never heard of the
rights of men, one only heard of the duties. Now, here was Mr. Gray,
only last night, talking of the right every child had to instruction. I
could hardly keep my patience with him, and at length we fairly came to
words; and I told him I would have no such thing as a Sunday-school (or a
Sabbath-school, as he calls it, just like a Jew) in my village."
"And what did he say, my lady?" I asked; for the struggle that seemed now
to have come to a crisis, had been going on for some time in a quiet way.
"Why, he gave way to temper, and said he was bound to remember, he was
under the bishop's authority, not under mine; and implied that he should
persevere in his designs, notwithstanding my expressed opinion."
"And your ladyship—" I half inquired.
"I could only rise and curtsey, and civilly dismiss him. When two
persons have arrived at a certain point of expression on a subject, about
which they differ as materially as I do from Mr. Gray, the wisest course,
if they wish to remain friends, is to drop the conversation entirely and
suddenly. It is one of the few cases where abruptness is desirable."
I was sorry for Mr. Gray. He had been to see me several times, and had
helped me to bear my illness in a better spirit than I should have done
without his good advice and prayers. And I had gathered from little
things he said, how much his heart was set upon this new scheme. I liked
him so much, and I loved and respected my lady so well, that I could not
bear them to be on the cool terms to which they were constantly getting.
Yet I could do nothing but keep silence.
I suppose my lady understood something of what was passing in my mind;
for, after a minute or two, she went on:—
"If Mr. Gray knew all I know,—if he had my experience, he would not be
so ready to speak of setting up his new plans in opposition to my
judgment. Indeed," she continued, lashing herself up with her own
recollections, "times are changed when the parson of a village comes to
beard the liege lady in her own house. Why, in my grandfather's days,
the parson was family chaplain too, and dined at the Hall every Sunday.
He was helped last, and expected to have done first. I remember seeing
him take up his plate and knife and fork, and say with his mouth full all
the time he was speaking: 'If you please, Sir Urian, and my lady, I'll
follow the beef into the housekeeper's room;' for you see, unless he did
so, he stood no chance of a second helping. A greedy man, that parson
was, to be sure! I recollect his once eating up the whole of some little
bird at dinner, and by way of diverting attention from his greediness, he
told how he had heard that a rook soaked in vinegar and then dressed in a
particular way, could not be distinguished from the bird he was then
eating. I saw by the grim look of my grandfather's face that the
parson's doing and saying displeased him; and, child as I was, I had some
notion of what was coming, when, as I was riding out on my little, white
pony, by my grandfather's side, the next Friday, he stopped one of the
gamekeepers, and bade him shoot one of the oldest rooks he could find. I
knew no more about it till Sunday, when a dish was set right before the
parson, and Sir Urian said: 'Now, Parson Hemming, I have had a rook shot,
and soaked in vinegar, and dressed as you described last Sunday. Fall
to, man, and eat it with as good an appetite as you had last Sunday. Pick
the bones clean, or by—, no more Sunday dinners shall you eat at my
table!' I gave one look at poor Mr. Hemming's face, as he tried to
swallow the first morsel, and make believe as though he thought it very
good; but I could not look again, for shame, although my grandfather
laughed, and kept asking us all round if we knew what could have become
of the parson's appetite."
"And did he finish it?" I asked.
"O yes, my dear. What my grandfather said was to be done, was done
always. He was a terrible man in his anger! But to think of the
difference between Parson Hemming and Mr. Gray! or even of poor dear Mr.
Mountford and Mr. Gray. Mr. Mountford would never have withstood me as
Mr. Gray did!"
"And your ladyship really thinks that it would not be right to have a
Sunday-school?" I asked, feeling very timid as I put time question.
"Certainly not. As I told Mr. Gray. I consider a knowledge of the
Creed, and of the Lord's Prayer, as essential to salvation; and that any
child may have, whose parents bring it regularly to church. Then there
are the Ten Commandments, which teach simple duties in the plainest
language. Of course, if a lad is taught to read and write (as that
unfortunate boy has been who was here this morning) his duties become
complicated, and his temptations much greater, while, at the same time,
he has no hereditary principles and honourable training to serve as
safeguards. I might take up my old simile of the race-horse and cart-
horse. I am distressed," continued she, with a break in her ideas,
"about that boy. The whole thing reminds me so much of a story of what
happened to a friend of mine—Clement de Crequy. Did I ever tell you
about him?"
"No, your ladyship," I replied.
"Poor Clement! More than twenty years ago, Lord Ludlow and I spent a
winter in Paris. He had many friends there; perhaps not very good or
very wise men, but he was so kind that he liked every one, and every one
liked him. We had an apartment, as they call it there, in the Rue de
Lille; we had the first-floor of a grand hotel, with the basement for our
servants. On the floor above us the owner of the house lived, a Marquise
de Crequy, a widow. They tell me that the Crequy coat-of-arms is still
emblazoned, after all these terrible years, on a shield above the arched
porte-cochere, just as it was then, though the family is quite extinct.
Madame de Crequy had only one son, Clement, who was just the same age as
my Urian—you may see his portrait in the great hall—Urian's, I mean." I
knew that Master Urian had been drowned at sea; and often had I looked at
the presentment of his bonny hopeful face, in his sailor's dress, with
right hand outstretched to a ship on the sea in the distance, as if he
had just said, "Look at her! all her sails are set, and I'm just off."
Poor Master Urian! he went down in this very ship not a year after the
picture was taken! But now I will go back to my lady's story. "I can
see those two boys playing now," continued she, softly, shutting her
eyes, as if the better to call up the vision, "as they used to do five-
and-twenty years ago in those old-fashioned French gardens behind our
hotel. Many a time have I watched them from my windows. It was,
perhaps, a better play-place than an English garden would have been, for
there were but few flower-beds, and no lawn at all to speak about; but,
instead, terraces and balustrades and vases and flights of stone steps
more in the Italian style; and there were jets-d'eau, and little
fountains that could be set playing by turning water-cocks that were
hidden here and there. How Clement delighted in turning the water on to
surprise Urian, and how gracefully he did the honours, as it were, to my
dear, rough, sailor lad! Urian was as dark as a gipsy boy, and cared
little for his appearance, and resisted all my efforts at setting off his
black eyes and tangled curls; but Clement, without ever showing that he
thought about himself and his dress, was always dainty and elegant, even
though his clothes were sometimes but threadbare. He used to be dressed
in a kind of hunter's green suit, open at the neck and half-way down the
chest to beautiful old lace frills; his long golden curls fell behind
just like a girl's, and his hair in front was cut over his straight dark
eyebrows in a line almost as straight. Urian learnt more of a
gentleman's carefulness and propriety of appearance from that lad in two
months than he had done in years from all my lectures. I recollect one
day, when the two boys were in full romp—and, my window being open, I
could hear them perfectly—and Urian was daring Clement to some
scrambling or climbing, which Clement refused to undertake, but in a
hesitating way, as though he longed to do it if some reason had not stood
in the way; and at times, Urian, who was hasty and thoughtless, poor
fellow, told Clement that he was afraid. 'Fear!' said the French boy,
drawing himself up; 'you do not know what you say. If you will be here
at six to-morrow morning, when it is only just light, I will take that
starling's nest on the top of yonder chimney.' 'But why not now,
Clement?' said Urian, putting his arm round Clement's neck. 'Why then,
and not now, just when we are in the humour for it?' 'Because we De
Crequys are poor, and my mother cannot afford me another suit of clothes
this year, and yonder stone carving is all jagged, and would tear my coat
and breeches. Now, to-morrow morning I could go up with nothing on but
an old shirt.'
"'But you would tear your legs.'
"'My race do not care for pain,' said the boy, drawing himself from
Urian's arm, and walking a few steps away, with a becoming pride and
reserve; for he was hurt at being spoken to as if he were afraid, and
annoyed at having to confess the true reason for declining the feat. But
Urian was not to be thus baffled. He went up to Clement, and put his arm
once more about his neck, and I could see the two lads as they walked
down the terrace away from the hotel windows: first Urian spoke eagerly,
looking with imploring fondness into Clement's face, which sought the
ground, till at last the French boy spoke, and by-and-by his arm was
round Urian too, and they paced backwards and forwards in deep talk, but
gravely, as became men, rather than boys.
"All at once, from the little chapel at the corner of the large garden
belonging to the Missions Etrangeres, I heard the tinkle of the little
bell, announcing the elevation of the host. Down on his knees went
Clement, hands crossed, eyes bent down: while Urian stood looking on in
respectful thought.
"What a friendship that might have been! I never dream of Urian without
seeing Clement too—Urian speaks to me, or does something,—but Clement
only flits round Urian, and never seems to see any one else!"
"But I must not forget to tell you, that the next morning, before he was
out of his room, a footman of Madame de Crequy's brought Urian the
starling's nest."
"Well! we came back to England, and the boys were to correspond; and
Madame de Crequy and I exchanged civilities; and Urian went to sea."
"After that, all seemed to drop away. I cannot tell you all. However,
to confine myself to the De Crequys. I had a letter from Clement; I knew
he felt his friend's death deeply; but I should never have learnt it from
the letter he sent. It was formal, and seemed like chaff to my hungering
heart. Poor fellow! I dare say he had found it hard to write. What
could he—or any one—say to a mother who has lost her child? The world
does not think so, and, in general, one must conform to the customs of
the world; but, judging from my own experience, I should say that
reverent silence at such times is the tenderest balm. Madame de Crequy
wrote too. But I knew she could not feel my loss so much as Clement, and
therefore her letter was not such a disappointment. She and I went on
being civil and polite in the way of commissions, and occasionally
introducing friends to each other, for a year or two, and then we ceased
to have any intercourse. Then the terrible Revolution came. No one who
did not live at those times can imagine the daily expectation of news—the
hourly terror of rumours affecting the fortunes and lives of those whom
most of us had known as pleasant hosts, receiving us with peaceful
welcome in their magnificent houses. Of course, there was sin enough and
suffering enough behind the scenes; but we English visitors to Paris had
seen little or nothing of that,—and I had sometimes thought, indeed, how
even death seemed loth to choose his victims out of that brilliant throng
whom I had known. Madame de Crequy's one boy lived; while three out of
my six were gone since we had met! I do not think all lots are equal,
even now that I know the end of her hopes; but I do say that whatever our
individual lot is, it is our duty to accept it, without comparing it with
that of others.
"The times were thick with gloom and terror. 'What next?' was the
question we asked of every one who brought us news from Paris. Where
were these demons hidden when, so few years ago, we danced and feasted,
and enjoyed the brilliant salons and the charming friendships of Paris?
"One evening, I was sitting alone in Saint James's Square; my lord off at
the club with Mr. Fox and others: he had left me, thinking that I should
go to one of the many places to which I had been invited for that
evening; but I had no heart to go anywhere, for it was poor Urian's
birthday, and I had not even rung for lights, though the day was fast
closing in, but was thinking over all his pretty ways, and on his warm
affectionate nature, and how often I had been too hasty in speaking to
him, for all I loved him so dearly; and how I seemed to have neglected
and dropped his dear friend Clement, who might even now be in need of
help in that cruel, bloody Paris. I say I was thinking reproachfully of
all this, and particularly of Clement de Crequy in connection with Urian,
when Fenwick brought me a note, sealed with a coat-of-arms I knew well,
though I could not remember at the moment where I had seen it. I puzzled
over it, as one does sometimes, for a minute or more, before I opened the
letter. In a moment I saw it was from Clement de Crequy. 'My mother is
here,' he said: 'she is very ill, and I am bewildered in this strange
country. May I entreat you to receive me for a few minutes?' The bearer
of the note was the woman of the house where they lodged. I had her
brought up into the anteroom, and questioned her myself, while my
carriage was being brought round. They had arrived in London a fortnight
or so before: she had not known their quality, judging them (according to
her kind) by their dress and their luggage; poor enough, no doubt. The
lady had never left her bedroom since her arrival; the young man waited
upon her, did everything for her, never left her, in fact; only she (the
messenger) had promised to stay within call, as soon as she returned,
while he went out somewhere. She could hardly understand him, he spoke
English so badly. He had never spoken it, I dare say, since he had
talked to my Urian."