CHAPTER II
It was nearly six years after the departure of Mr. David Faux for
the West Indies, that the vacant shop in the marketplace at
Grimworth was understood to have been let to the stranger with a
sallow complexion and a buff cravat, whose first appearance had
caused some excitement in the bar of the Woolpack, where he had
called to wait for the coach.
Grimworth, to a discerning eye, was a good place to set up
shopkeeping in. There was no competition in it at present; the
Church-people had their own grocer and draper; the Dissenters had
theirs; and the two or three butchers found a ready market for their
joints without strict reference to religious persuasion--except that
the rector's wife had given a general order for the veal sweet-
breads and the mutton kidneys, while Mr. Rodd, the Baptist minister,
had requested that, so far as was compatible with the fair
accommodation of other customers, the sheep's trotters might be
reserved for him. And it was likely to be a growing place, for the
trustees of Mr. Zephaniah Crypt's Charity, under the stimulus of a
late visitation by commissioners, were beginning to apply long-
accumulating funds to the rebuilding of the Yellow Coat School,
which was henceforth to be carried forward on a greatly-extended
scale, the testator having left no restrictions concerning the
curriculum, but only concerning the coat.
The shopkeepers at Grimworth were by no means unanimous as to the
advantages promised by this prospect of increased population and
trading, being substantial men, who liked doing a quiet business in
which they were sure of their customers, and could calculate their
returns to a nicety. Hitherto, it had been held a point of honour
by the families in Grimworth parish, to buy their sugar and their
flannel at the shop where their fathers and mothers had bought
before them; but, if newcomers were to bring in the system of neck-
and-neck trading, and solicit feminine eyes by gown-pieces laid in
fan-like folds, and surmounted by artificial flowers, giving them a
factitious charm (for on what human figure would a gown sit like a
fan, or what female head was like a bunch of China-asters?), or, if
new grocers were to fill their windows with mountains of currants
and sugar, made seductive by contrast and tickets,--what security
was there for Grimworth, that a vagrant spirit in shopping, once
introduced, would not in the end carry the most important families
to the larger market town of Cattleton, where, business being done
on a system of small profits and quick returns, the fashions were of
the freshest, and goods of all kinds might be bought at an
advantage?
With this view of the times predominant among the tradespeople at
Grimworth, their uncertainty concerning the nature of the business
which the sallow-complexioned stranger was about to set up in the
vacant shop, naturally gave some additional strength to the fears of
the less sanguine. If he was going to sell drapery, it was probable
that a pale-faced fellow like that would deal in showy and inferior
articles--printed cottons and muslins which would leave their dye in
the wash-tub, jobbed linen full of knots, and flannel that would
soon look like gauze. If grocery, then it was to be hoped that no
mother of a family would trust the teas of an untried grocer. Such
things had been known in some parishes as tradesmen going about
canvassing for custom with cards in their pockets: when people came
from nobody knew where, there was no knowing what they might do. It
was a thousand pities that Mr. Moffat, the auctioneer and broker,
had died without leaving anybody to follow him in the business, and
Mrs. Cleve's trustee ought to have known better than to let a shop
to a stranger. Even the discovery that ovens were being put up on
the premises, and that the shop was, in fact, being fitted up for a
confectioner and pastry-cook's business, hitherto unknown in
Grimworth, did not quite suffice to turn the scale in the newcomer's
favour, though the landlady at the Woolpack defended him warmly,
said he seemed to be a very clever young man, and from what she
could make out, came of a very good family; indeed, was most likely
a good many people's betters.
It certainly made a blaze of light and colour, almost as if a
rainbow had suddenly descended into the marketplace, when, one fine
morning, the shutters were taken down from the new shop, and the two
windows displayed their decorations. On one side, there were the
variegated tints of collared and marbled meats, set off by bright
green leaves, the pale brown of glazed pies, the rich tones of
sauces and bottled fruits enclosed in their veil of glass--
altogether a sight to bring tears into the eyes of a Dutch painter;
and on the other, there was a predominance of the more delicate hues
of pink, and white, and yellow, and buff, in the abundant lozenges,
candies, sweet biscuits and icings, which to the eyes of a bilious
person might easily have been blended into a faery landscape in
Turner's latest style. What a sight to dawn upon the eyes of
Grimworth children! They almost forgot to go to their dinner that
day, their appetites being preoccupied with imaginary sugar-plums;
and I think even Punch, setting up his tabernacle in the market-
place, would not have succeeded in drawing them away from those
shop-windows, where they stood according to gradations of size and
strength, the biggest and strongest being nearest the window, and
the little ones in the outermost rows lifting wide-open eyes and
mouths towards the upper tier of jars, like small birds at meal-
time.
The elder inhabitants pished and pshawed a little at the folly of
the new shopkeeper in venturing on such an outlay in goods that
would not keep; to be sure, Christmas was coming, but what housewife
in Grimworth would not think shame to furnish forth her table with
articles that were not home-cooked? No, no. Mr. Edward Freely, as
he called himself, was deceived, if he thought Grimworth money was
to flow into his pockets on such terms.
Edward Freely was the name that shone in gilt letters on a mazarine
ground over the doorplace of the new shop--a generous-sounding name,
that might have belonged to the open-hearted, improvident hero of an
old comedy, who would have delighted in raining sugared almonds,
like a new manna-gift, among that small generation outside the
windows. But Mr. Edward Freely was a man whose impulses were kept
in due subordination: he held that the desire for sweets and pastry
must only be satisfied in a direct ratio with the power of paying
for them. If the smallest child in Grimworth would go to him with a
halfpenny in its tiny fist, he would, after ringing the halfpenny,
deliver a just equivalent in "rock." He was not a man to cheat even
the smallest child--he often said so, observing at the same time
that he loved honesty, and also that he was very tender-hearted,
though he didn't show his feelings as some people did.
Either in reward of such virtue, or according to some more hidden
law of sequence, Mr. Freely's business, in spite of prejudice,
started under favourable auspices. For Mrs. Chaloner, the rector's
wife, was among the earliest customers at the shop, thinking it only
right to encourage a new parishioner who had made a decorous
appearance at church; and she found Mr. Freely a most civil,
obliging young man, and intelligent to a surprising degree for a
confectioner; well-principled, too, for in giving her useful hints
about choosing sugars he had thrown much light on the dishonesty of
other tradesmen. Moreover, he had been in the West Indies, and had
seen the very estate which had been her poor grandfather's property;
and he said the missionaries were the only cause of the negro's
discontent--an observing young man, evidently. Mrs. Chaloner
ordered wine-biscuits and olives, and gave Mr. Freely to understand
that she should find his shop a great convenience. So did the
doctor's wife, and so did Mrs. Gate, at the large carding-mill, who,
having high connexions frequently visiting her, might be expected to
have a large consumption of ratafias and macaroons.
The less aristocratic matrons of Grimworth seemed likely at first to
justify their husbands' confidence that they would never pay a
percentage of profits on drop-cakes, instead of making their own, or
get up a hollow show of liberal housekeeping by purchasing slices of
collared meat when a neighbour came in for supper. But it is my
task to narrate the gradual corruption of Grimworth manners from
their primitive simplicity--a melancholy task, if it were not
cheered by the prospect of the fine peripateia or downfall by which
the progress of the corruption was ultimately checked.
It was young Mrs. Steene, the veterinary surgeons wife, who first
gave way to temptation. I fear she had been rather over-educated
for her station in life, for she knew by heart many passages in
Lalla Rookh, the Corsair, and the Siege of Corinth, which had given
her a distaste for domestic occupations, and caused her a withering
disappointment at the discovery that Mr. Steene, since his marriage,
had lost all interest in the "bulbul," openly preferred discussing
the nature of spavin with a coarse neighbour, and was angry if the
pudding turned out watery--indeed, was simply a top-booted "vet.",
who came in hungry at dinner-time; and not in the least like a
nobleman turned Corsair out of pure scorn for his race, or like a
renegade with a turban and crescent, unless it were in the
irritability of his temper. And scorn is such a very different
thing in top-boots!
This brutal man had invited a supper-party for Christmas eve, when
he would expect to see mince-pies on the table. Mrs. Steene had
prepared her mince-meat, and had devoted much butter, fine flour,
and labour, to the making of a batch of pies in the morning; but
they proved to be so very heavy when they came out of the oven, that
she could only think with trembling of the moment when her husband
should catch sight of them on the supper-table. He would storm at
her, she was certain; and before all the company; and then she
should never help crying: it was so dreadful to think she had come
to that, after the bulbul and everything! Suddenly the thought
darted through her mind that THIS ONCE she might send for a dish of
mince-pies from Freely's: she knew he had some. But what was to
become of the eighteen heavy mince-pies? Oh, it was of no use
thinking about that; it was very expensive--indeed, making mince-
pies at all was a great expense, when they were not sure to turn out
well: it would be much better to buy them ready-made. You paid a
little more for them, but there was no risk of waste.
Such was the sophistry with which this misguided young woman--
enough. Mrs. Steene sent for the mince-pies, and, I am grieved to
add, garbled her household accounts in order to conceal the fact
from her husband. This was the second step in a downward course,
all owing to a young woman's being out of harmony with her
circumstances, yearning after renegades and bulbuls, and being
subject to claims from a veterinary surgeon fond of mince-pies. The
third step was to harden herself by telling the fact of the bought
mince-pies to her intimate friend Mrs. Mole, who had already guessed
it, and who subsequently encouraged herself in buying a mould of
jelly, instead of exerting her own skill, by the reflection that
"other people" did the same sort of thing. The infection spread;
soon there was a party or clique in Grimworth on the side of "buying
at Freely's"; and many husbands, kept for some time in the dark on
this point, innocently swallowed at two mouthfuls a tart on which
they were paying a profit of a hundred per cent., and as innocently
encouraged a fatal disingenuousness in the partners of their bosoms
by praising the pastry. Others, more keen-sighted, winked at the
too frequent presentation on washing-days, and at impromptu suppers,
of superior spiced-beef, which flattered their palates more than the
cold remnants they had formerly been contented with. Every
housewife who had once "bought at Freely's" felt a secret joy when
she detected a similar perversion in her neighbour's practice, and
soon only two or three old-fashioned mistresses of families held out
in the protest against the growing demoralization, saying to their
neighbours who came to sup with them, "I can't offer you Freely's
beef, or Freely's cheesecakes; everything in our house is home-made;
I'm afraid you'll hardly have any appetite for our plain pastry."
The doctor, whose cook was not satisfactory, the curate, who kept no
cook, and the mining agent, who was a great bon vivant, even began
to rely on Freely for the greater part of their dinner, when they
wished to give an entertainment of some brilliancy. In short, the
business of manufacturing the more fanciful viands was fast passing
out of the hinds of maids and matrons in private families, and was
becoming the work of a special commercial organ.
I am not ignorant that this sort of thing is called the inevitable
course of civilization, division of labour, and so forth, and that
the maids and matrons may be said to have had their hands set free
from cookery to add to the wealth of society in some other way.
Only it happened at Grimworth, which, to be sure, was a low place,
that the maids and matrons could do nothing with their hands at all
better than cooking: not even those who had always made heavy cakes
and leathery pastry. And so it came to pass, that the progress of
civilization at Grimworth was not otherwise apparent than in the
impoverishment of men, the gossiping idleness of women, and the
heightening prosperity of Mr. Edward Freely.
The Yellow Coat School was a double source of profit to the
calculating confectioner; for he opened an eating-room for the
superior workmen employed on the new school, and he accommodated the
pupils at the old school by giving great attention to the fancy-
sugar department. When I think of the sweet-tasted swans and other
ingenious white shapes crunched by the small teeth of that rising
generation, I am glad to remember that a certain amount of
calcareous food has been held good for young creatures whose bones
are not quite formed; for I have observed these delicacies to have
an inorganic flavour which would have recommended them greatly to
that young lady of the Spectator's acquaintance who habitually made
her dessert on the stems of tobacco-pipes.
As for the confectioner himself, he made his way gradually into
Grimworth homes, as his commodities did, in spite of some initial
repugnance. Somehow or other, his reception as a guest seemed a
thing that required justifying, like the purchasing of his pastry.
In the first place, he was a stranger, and therefore open to
suspicion; secondly, the confectionery business was so entirely new
at Grimworth, that its place in the scale of rank had not been
distinctly ascertained. There was no doubt about drapers and
grocers, when they came of good old Grimworth families, like Mr.
Luff and Mr. Prettyman: they visited with the Palfreys, who farmed
their own land, played many a game at whist with the doctor, and
condescended a little towards the timber-merchant, who had lately
taken to the coal-trade also, and had got new furniture; but whether
a confectioner should be admitted to this higher level of
respectability, or should be understood to find his associates among
butchers and bakers, was a new question on which tradition threw no
light. His being a bachelor was in his favour, and would perhaps
have been enough to turn the scale, even if Mr. Edward Freely's
other personal pretensions had been of an entirely insignificant
cast. But so far from this, it very soon appeared that he was a
remarkable young man, who had been in the West Indies, and had seen
many wonders by sea and land, so that he could charm the ears of
Grimworth Desdemonas with stories of strange fishes, especially
sharks, which he had stabbed in the nick of time by bravely plunging
overboard just as the monster was turning on his side to devour the
cook's mate; of terrible fevers which he had undergone in a land
where the wind blows from all quarters at once; of rounds of toast
cut straight from the breadfruit trees; of toes bitten off by land-
crabs; of large honours that had been offered to him as a man who
knew what was what, and was therefore particularly needed in a
tropical climate; and of a Creole heiress who had wept bitterly at
his departure. Such conversational talents as these, we know, will
overcome disadvantages of complexion; and young Towers, whose cheeks
were of the finest pink, set off by a fringe of dark whisker, was
quite eclipsed by the presence of the sallow Mr. Freely. So
exceptional a confectioner elevated the business, and might well
begin to make disengaged hearts flutter a little.
Fathers and mothers were naturally more slow and cautious in their
recognition of the new-comer's merits.
"He's an amusing fellow," said Mr. Prettyman, the highly respectable
grocer. (Mrs. Prettyman was a Miss Fothergill, and her sister had
married a London mercer.) "He's an amusing fellow; and I've no
objection to his making one at the Oyster Club; but he's a bit too
fond of riding the high horse. He's uncommonly knowing, I'll allow;
but how came he to go to the Indies? I should like that answered.
It's unnatural in a confectioner. I'm not fond of people that have
been beyond seas, if they can't give a good account how they
happened to go. When folks go so far off, it's because they've got
little credit nearer home--that's my opinion. However, he's got
some good rum; but I don't want to be hand and glove with him, for
all that."
It was this kind of dim suspicion which beclouded the view of Mr.
Freely's qualities in the maturer minds of Grimworth through the
early months of his residence there. But when the confectioner
ceased to be a novelty, the suspicions also ceased to be novel, and
people got tired of hinting at them, especially as they seemed to be
refuted by his advancing prosperity and importance. Mr. Freely was
becoming a person of influence in the parish; he was found useful as
an overseer of the poor, having great firmness in enduring other
people's pain, which firmness, he said, was due to his great
benevolence; he always did what was good for people in the end. Mr.
Chaloner had even selected him as clergyman's churchwarden, for he
was a very handy man, and much more of Mr. Chaloner's opinion in
everything about church business than the older parishioners. Mr.
Freely was a very regular churchman, but at the Oyster Club he was
sometimes a little free in his conversation, more than hinting at a
life of Sultanic self-indulgence which he had passed in the West
Indies, shaking his head now and then and smiling rather bitterly,
as men are wont to do when they intimate that they have become a
little too wise to be instructed about a world which has long been
flat and stale to them.
For some time he was quite general in his attentions to the fair
sex, combining the gallantries of a lady's man with a severity of
criticism on the person and manners of absent belles, which tended
rather to stimulate in the feminine breast the desire to conquer the
approval of so fastidious a judge. Nothing short of the very best
in the department of female charms and virtues could suffice to
kindle the ardour of Mr. Edward Freely, who had become familiar with
the most luxuriant and dazzling beauty in the West Indies. It may
seem incredible that a confectioner should have ideas and
conversation so much resembling those to be met with in a higher
walk of life, but it must be remembered that he had not merely
travelled, he had also bow-legs and a sallow, small-featured visage,
so that nature herself had stamped him for a fastidious connoisseur
of the fair sex.
At last, however, it seemed clear that Cupid had found a sharper
arrow than usual, and that Mr. Freely's heart was pierced. It was
the general talk among the young people at Grimworth. But was it
really love, and not rather ambition? Miss Fullilove, the timber-
merchant's daughter, was quite sure that if SHE were Miss Penny
Palfrey, she would be cautious; it was not a good sign when men
looked so much above themselves for a wife. For it was no less a
person than Miss Penelope Palfrey, second daughter of the Mr.
Palfrey who farmed his own land, that had attracted Mr. Freely's
peculiar regard, and conquered his fastidiousness; and no wonder,
for the Ideal, as exhibited in the finest waxwork, was perhaps never
so closely approached by the Real as in the person of the pretty
Penelope. Her yellowish flaxen hair did not curl naturally, I
admit, but its bright crisp ringlets were such smooth, perfect
miniature tubes, that you would have longed to pass your little
finger through them, and feel their soft elasticity. She wore them
in a crop, for in those days, when society was in a healthier state,
young ladies wore crops long after they were twenty, and Penelope
was not yet nineteen. Like the waxen ideal, she had round blue
eyes, and round nostrils in her little nose, and teeth such as the
ideal would be seen to have, if it ever showed them. Altogether,
she was a small, round thing, as neat as a pink and white double
daisy, and as guileless; for I hope it does not argue guile in a
pretty damsel of nineteen, to think that she should like to have a
beau and be "engaged," when her elder sister had already been in
that position a year and a half. To be sure, there was young Towers
always coming to the house; but Penny felt convinced he only came to
see her brother, for he never had anything to say to her, and never
offered her his arm, and was as awkward and silent as possible.
It is not unlikely that Mr. Freely had early been smitten by Penny's
charms, as brought under his observation at church, but he had to
make his way in society a little before he could come into nearer
contact with them; and even after he was well received in Grimworth
families, it was a long while before he could converse with Penny
otherwise than in an incidental meeting at Mr. Luff's. It was not
so easy to get invited to Long Meadows, the residence of the
Palfreys; for though Mr. Palfrey had been losing money of late
years, not being able quite to recover his feet after the terrible
murrain which forced him to borrow, his family were far from
considering themselves on the same level even as the old-established
tradespeople with whom they visited. The greatest people, even
kings and queens, must visit with somebody, and the equals of the
great are scarce. They were especially scarce at Grimworth, which,
as I have before observed, was a low parish, mentioned with the most
scornful brevity in gazetteers. Even the great people there were
far behind those of their own standing in other parts of this realm.
Mr. Palfrey's farmyard doors had the paint all worn off them, and
the front garden walks had long been merged in a general weediness.
Still, his father had been called Squire Palfrey, and had been
respected by the last Grimworth generation as a man who could afford
to drink too much in his own house.
Pretty Penny was not blind to the fact that Mr. Freely admired her,
and she felt sure that it was he who had sent her a beautiful
valentine; but her sister seemed to think so lightly of him (all
young ladies think lightly of the gentlemen to whom they are not
engaged), that Penny never dared mention him, and trembled and
blushed whenever they met him, thinking of the valentine, which was
very strong in its expressions, and which she felt guilty of knowing
by heart. A man who had been to the Indies, and knew the sea so
well, seemed to her a sort of public character, almost like Robinson
Crusoe or Captain Cook; and Penny had always wished her husband to
be a remarkable personage, likely to be put in Mangnall's Questions,
with which register of the immortals she had become acquainted
during her one year at a boarding-school. Only it seemed strange
that a remarkable man should be a confectioner and pastry-cook, and
this anomaly quite disturbed Penny's dreams. Her brothers, she
knew, laughed at men who couldn't sit on horseback well, and called
them tailors; but her brothers were very rough, and were quite
without that power of anecdote which made Mr. Freely such a
delightful companion. He was a very good man, she thought, for she
had heard him say at Mr. Luff's, one day, that he always wished to
do his duty in whatever state of life he might be placed; and he
knew a great deal of poetry, for one day he had repeated a verse of
a song. She wondered if he had made the words of the valentine!--it
ended in this way:-
"Without thee, it is pain to live,
But with thee, it were sweet to die."
Poor Mr. Freely! her father would very likely object--she felt sure
he would, for he always called Mr. Freely "that sugar-plum fellow."
Oh, it was very cruel, when true love was crossed in that way, and
all because Mr. Freely was a confectioner: well, Penny would be
true to him, for all that, and since his being a confectioner gave
her an opportunity of showing her faithfulness, she was glad of it.
Edward Freely was a pretty name, much better than John Towers.
Young Towers had offered her a rose out of his button-hole the other
day, blushing very much; but she refused it, and thought with
delight how much Mr. Freely would be comforted if he knew her
firmness of mind.
Poor little Penny! the days were so very long among the daisies on a
grazing farm, and thought is so active--how was it possible that the
inward drama should not get the start of the outward? I have known
young ladies, much better educated, and with an outward world
diversified by instructive lectures, to say nothing of literature
and highly-developed fancy-work, who have spun a cocoon of visionary
joys and sorrows for themselves, just as Penny did. Her elder
sister Letitia, who had a prouder style of beauty, and a more
worldly ambition, was engaged to a wool-factor, who came all the way
from Cattelton to see her; and everybody knows that a wool-factor
takes a very high rank, sometimes driving a double-bodied gig.
Letty's notions got higher every day, and Penny never dared to speak
of her cherished griefs to her lofty sister--never dared to propose
that they should call at Mr. Freely's to buy liquorice, though she
had prepared for such an incident by mentioning a slight sore
throat. So she had to pass the shop on the other side of the
market-place, and reflect, with a suppressed sigh, that behind those
pink and white jars somebody was thinking of her tenderly,
unconscious of the small space that divided her from him.
And it was quite true that, when business permitted, Mr. Freely
thought a great deal of Penny. He thought her prettiness comparable
to the loveliest things in confectionery; he judged her to be of
submissive temper--likely to wait upon him as well as if she had
been a negress, and to be silently terrified when his liver made him
irritable; and he considered the Palfrey family quite the best in
the parish, possessing marriageable daughters. On the whole, he
thought her worthy to become Mrs. Edward Freely, and all the more
so, because it would probably require some ingenuity to win her.
Mr. Palfrey was capable of horse-whipping a too rash pretender to
his daughter's hand; and, moreover, he had three tall sons: it was
clear that a suitor would be at a disadvantage with such a family,
unless travel and natural acumen had given him a countervailing
power of contrivance. And the first idea that occurred to him in
the matter was, that Mr. Palfrey would object less if he knew that
the Freelys were a much higher family than his own. It had been
foolish modesty in him hitherto to conceal the fact that a branch of
the Freelys held a manor in Yorkshire, and to shut up the portrait
of his great uncle the admiral, instead of hanging it up where a
family portrait should be hung--over the mantelpiece in the parlour.
Admiral Freely, K.C.B., once placed in this conspicuous position,
was seen to have had one arm only, and one eye--in these points
resembling the heroic Nelson--while a certain pallid insignificance
of feature confirmed the relationship between himself and his grand-
nephew.
Next, Mr. Freely was seized with an irrepressible ambition to posses
Mrs. Palfrey's receipt for brawn, hers being pronounced on all hands
to be superior to his own--as he informed her in a very flattering
letter carried by his errand-boy. Now Mrs. Palfrey, like other
geniuses, wrought by instinct rather than by rule, and possessed no
receipts--indeed, despised all people who used them, observing that
people who pickled by book, must pickle by weights and measures, and
such nonsense; as for herself, her weights and measures were the tip
of her finger and the tip of her tongue, and if you went nearer,
why, of course, for dry goods like flour and spice, you went by
handfuls and pinches, and for wet, there was a middle-sized jug--
quite the best thing whether for much or little, because you might
know how much a teacupful was if you'd got any use of your senses,
and you might be sure it would take five middle-sized jugs to make a
gallon. Knowledge of this kind is like Titian's colouring,
difficult to communicate; and as Mrs. Palfrey, once remarkably
handsome, had now become rather stout and asthmatical, and scarcely
ever left home, her oral teaching could hardly be given anywhere
except at Long Meadows. Even a matron is not insusceptible to
flattery, and the prospect of a visitor whose great object would be
to listen to her conversation, was not without its charms to Mrs.
Palfrey. Since there was no receipt to be sent in reply to Mr.
Freely's humble request, she called on her more docile daughter,
Penny, to write a note, telling him that her mother would be glad to
see him and talk with him on brawn, any day that he could call at
Long Meadows. Penny obeyed with a trembling hand, thinking how
wonderfully things came about in this world.
In this way, Mr. Freely got himself introduced into the home of the
Palfreys, and notwithstanding a tendency in the male part of the
family to jeer at him a little as "peaky" and bow-legged, he
presently established his position as an accepted and frequent
guest. Young Towers looked at him with increasing disgust when they
met at the house on a Sunday, and secretly longed to try his ferret
upon him, as a piece of vermin which that valuable animal would be
likely to tackle with unhesitating vigour. But--so blind sometimes
are parents--neither Mr. nor Mrs. Palfrey suspected that Penny would
have anything to say to a tradesman of questionable rank whose
youthful bloom was much withered. Young Towers, they thought, had
an eye to her, and THAT was likely enough to be a match some day;
but Penny was a child at present. And all the while Penny was
imagining the circumstances under which Mr. Freely would make her an
offer: perhaps down by the row of damson-trees, when they were in
the garden before tea; perhaps by letter--in which case, how would
the letter begin? "Dearest Penelope?" or "My dear Miss Penelope?"
or straight off, without dear anything, as seemed the most natural
when people were embarrassed? But, however he might make the offer,
she would not accept it without her father's consent: she would
always be true to Mr. Freely, but she would not disobey her father.
For Penny was a good girl, though some of her female friends were
afterwards of opinion that it spoke ill for her not to have felt an
instinctive repugnance to Mr. Freely.
But he was cautious, and wished to be quite sure of the ground he
trod on. His views on marriage were not entirely sentimental, but
were as duly mingled with considerations of what would be
advantageous to a man in his position, as if he had had a very large
amount of money spent on his education. He was not a man to fall in
love in the wrong place; and so, he applied himself quite as much to
conciliate the favour of the parents, as to secure the attachment of
Penny. Mrs. Palfrey had not been inaccessible to flattery, and her
husband, being also of mortal mould, would not, it might be hoped,
be proof against rum--that very fine Jamaica rum--of which Mr.
Freely expected always to have a supply sent him from Jamaica. It
was not easy to get Mr. Palfrey into the parlour behind the shop,
where a mild back-street light fell on the features of the heroic
admiral; but by getting hold of him rather late one evening as he
was about to return home from Grimworth, the aspiring lover
succeeded in persuading him to sup on some collared beef which,
after Mrs. Palfrey's brawn, he would find the very best of cold
eating.
From that hour Mr. Freely felt sure of success: being in privacy
with an estimable man old enough to be his father, and being rather
lonely in the world, it was natural he should unbosom himself a
little on subjects which he could not speak of in a mixed circle--
especially concerning his expectations from his uncle in Jamaica,
who had no children, and loved his nephew Edward better than any one
else in the world, though he had been so hurt at his leaving
Jamaica, that he had threatened to cut him off with a shilling.
However, he had since written to state his full forgiveness, and
though he was an eccentric old gentleman and could not bear to give
away money during his life, Mr. Edward Freely could show Mr. Palfrey
the letter which declared, plainly enough, who would be the
affectionate uncle's heir. Mr. Palfrey actually saw the letter, and
could not help admiring the spirit of the nephew who declared that
such brilliant hopes as these made no difference to his conduct; he
should work at his humble business and make his modest fortune at it
all the same. If the Jamaica estate was to come to him--well and
good. It was nothing very surprising for one of the Freely family
to have an estate left him, considering the lands that family had
possessed in time gone by--nay, still possessed in the
Northumberland branch. Would not Mr. Palfrey take another glass of
rum? and also look at the last year's balance of the accounts? Mr.
Freely was a man who cared to possess personal virtues, and did not
pique himself on his family, though some men would.
We know how easily the great Leviathan may be led, when once there
is a hook in his nose or a bridle in his jaws. Mr. Palfrey was a
large man, but, like Leviathan's, his bulk went against him when
once he had taken a turning. He was not a mercurial man, who easily
changed his point of view. Enough. Before two months were over, he
had given his consent to Mr. Freely's marriage with his daughter
Penny, and having hit on a formula by which he could justify it,
fenced off all doubts and objections, his own included. The formula
was this: "I'm not a man to put my head up an entry before I know
where it leads."
Little Penny was very proud and fluttering, but hardly so happy as
she expected to be in an engagement. She wondered if young Towers
cared much about it, for he had not been to the house lately, and
her sister and brothers were rather inclined to sneer than to
sympathize. Grimworth rang with the news. All men extolled Mr.
Freely's good fortune; while the women, with the tender solicitude
characteristic of the sex, wished the marriage might turn out well.
While affairs were at this triumphant juncture, Mr. Freely one
morning observed that a stone-carver who had been breakfasting in
the eating-room had left a newspaper behind. It was the X-shire
Gazette, and X-shire being a county not unknown to Mr. Freely, he
felt some curiosity to glance over it, and especially over the
advertisements. A slight flush came over his face as he read. It
was produced by the following announcement:- "If David Faux, son of
Jonathan Faux, late of Gilsbrook, will apply at the office of Mr.
Strutt, attorney, of Rodham, he will hear of something to his
advantage."
"Father's dead!" exclaimed Mr. Freely, involuntarily. "Can he have
left me a legacy?"
