Bab Bab 41 · 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 considerably

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.