A month later, after a night of sharp
frost on the verge of the warmer days of spring, Mr.
Fellingham entered Crikswich under a sky of perfect
blue that was in brilliant harmony with the green downs,
the white cliffs and sparkling sea, and no doubt it
was the beauty before his eyes which persuaded him
of his delusion in having taken Annette for a commonplace
girl. He had come in a merely curious mood to
discover whether she was one or not. Who but
a commonplace girl would care to reside in Crikswich,
he had asked himself; and now he was full sure that
no commonplace girl would ever have had the idea.
Exquisitely simple, she certainly was; but that may
well be a distinction in a young lady whose eyes are
expressive.
The sound of sawing attracted him
to Crickledon’s shop, and the industrious carpenter
soon put him on the tide of affairs.
Crickledon pointed to the house on
the beach as the place where Mr. Van Diemen Smith
and his daughter were staying.
“Dear me! and how does he look?” said
Fellingham.
“Our town seems to agree with him, sir.”
“Well, I must not say any more,
I suppose.” Fellingham checked his tongue.
“How have they settled that dispute about the
chiwal-glass?”
“Mr. Tinman had to give way.”
“Really.”
“But,” Crickledon stopped work, “Mr.
Tinman sold him a meadow.”
“I see.”
“Mr. Smith has been buying a
goodish bit of ground here. They tell me he’s
about purchasing Elba. He has bought the Crouch.
He and Mr. Tinman are always out together. They’re
over at Helmstone now. They’ve been to
London.”
“Are they likely to be back to-day?”
“Certain, I should think. Mr. Tinman has
to be in London to-morrow.”
Crickledon looked. He was not
the man to look artful, but there was a lighted corner
in his look that revived Fellingham’s recollections,
and the latter burst out:
“The Address? I ’d
half forgotten it. That’s not over yet?
Has he been practicing much?”
“No more glasses ha’ been broken.”
“And how is your wife, Crickledon?”
“She’s at home, sir, ready for a talk,
if you’ve a mind to try her.”
Mrs. Crickledon proved to be very
ready. “That Tinman,” was her theme.
He had taken away her lodgers, and she knew his objects.
Mr. Smith repented of leaving her, she knew, though
he dared not say it in plain words. She knew
Miss Smith was tired to death of constant companionship
with Mrs. Cavely, Tinman’s sister. She generally
came once in the day just to escape from Mrs. Cavely,
who would not, bless you! step into a cottager’s
house where she was not allowed to patronize.
Fortunately Miss Smith had induced her father to get
his own wine from the merchants.
“A happy resolution,” said Fellingham;
“and a saving one.”
He heard further that Mr. Smith would
take possession of the Crouch next month, and that
Mrs. Cavely hung over Miss Smith like a kite.
“And that old Tinman, old enough
to be her father!” said Mrs. Crickledon.
She dealt in the flashes which connect
ideas. Fellingham, though a man, and an Englishman,
was nervously wakeful enough to see the connection.
“They’ll have to consult the young lady
first, ma’am.”
“If it’s her father’s
nod she’ll bow to it; now mark me,” Mrs.
Crickledon said, with emphasis. “She’s
a young lady who thinks for herself, but she takes
her start from her father where it’s feeling.
And he’s gone stone-blind over that Tinman.”
While they were speaking, Annette appeared.
“I saw you,” she said
to Fellingham; gladly and openly, in the most commonplace
manner.
“Are you going to give me a
walk along the beach?” said he.
She proposed the country behind the
town, and that was quite as much to his taste.
But it was not a happy walk. He had decided that
he admired her, and the notion of having Tinman for
a rival annoyed him. He overflowed with ridicule
of Tinman, and this was distressing to Annette, because
not only did she see that he would not control himself
before her father, but he kindled her own satirical
spirit in opposition to her father’s friendly
sentiments toward his old schoolmate.
“Mr. Tinman has been extremely
hospitable to us,” she said, a little coldly.
“May I ask you, has he consented
to receive instruction in deportment and pronunciation?”
Annette did not answer.
“If practice makes perfect, he must be near
the mark by this time.”
She continued silent.
“I dare say, in domestic life,
he’s as amiable as he is hospitable, and it
must be a daily gratification to see him in his Court
suit.”
“I have not seen him in his Court suit.”
“That is his coyness.”
“People talk of those things.”
“The common people scandalize
the great, about whom they know nothing, you mean!
I am sure that is true, and living in Courts one must
be keenly aware of it. But what a splendid sky
and-sea!”
“Is it not?”
Annette echoed his false rapture with a candour that
melted him.
He was preparing to make up for lost
time, when the wild waving of a parasol down a road
to the right, coming from the town, caused Annette
to stop and say, “I think that must be Mrs. Cavely.
We ought to meet her.”
Fellingham asked why.
“She is so fond of walks,” Anisette replied,
with a tooth on her lip
Fellingham thought she seemed fond of runs.
Mrs. Cavely joined them, breathless.
“My dear! the pace you go at!” she shouted.
“I saw you starting. I followed, I ran,
I tore along. I feared I never should catch you.
And to lose such a morning of English scenery!
“Is it not heavenly?”
“One can’t say more,” Fellingham
observed, bowing.
“I am sure I am very glad to see you again,
sir. You enjoy Crikswich?”
“Once visited, always desired,
like Venice, ma’am. May I venture to inquire
whether Mr. Tinman has presented his Address?”
“The day after to-morrow.
The appointment is made with him,” said Mrs.
Cavely, more officially in manner, “for the day
after to-morrow. He is excited, as you may well
believe. But Mr. Smith is an immense relief to
him the very distraction he wanted.
We have become one family, you know.”
“Indeed, ma’am, I did not know it,”
said Fellingham.
The communication imparted such satiric
venom to his further remarks, that Annette resolved
to break her walk and dismiss him for the day.
He called at the house on the beach
after the dinner-hour, to see Mr. Van Diemen Smith,
when there was literally a duel between him and Tinman;
for Van Diemen’s contribution to the table was
champagne, and that had been drunk, but Tinman’s
sherry remained. Tinman would insist on Fellingham’s
taking a glass. Fellingham parried him with a
sedate gravity of irony that was painfully perceptible
to Anisette. Van Diemen at last backed Tinman’s
hospitable intent, and, to Fellingham’s astonishment,
he found that he had been supposed by these two men
to be bashfully retreating from a seductive offer
all the time that his tricks of fence and transpiercings
of one of them had been marvels of skill.
Tinman pushed the glass into his hand.
“You have spilt some,” said Fellingham.
“It won’t hurt the carpet,” said
Tinman.
“Won’t it?” Fellingham
gazed at the carpet, as if expecting a flame to arise.
He then related the tale of the magnanimous
Alexander drinking off the potion, in scorn of the
slanderer, to show faith in his friend.
“Alexander Who was
that?” said Tinman, foiled in his historical
recollections by the absence of the surname.
“General Alexander,” said
Fellingham. “Alexander Philipson, or he
declared it was Joveson; and very fond of wine.
But his sherry did for him at last.”
“Ah! he drank too much, then,” said Tinman.
“Of his own!”
Anisette admonished the vindictive
young gentleman by saying, “How long do you
stay in Crikswich, Mr. Fellingham?”
He had grossly misconducted himself.
But an adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes
brutality. Anisette prudently avoided letting
her father understand that satire was in the air;
and neither he nor Tinman was conscious of it exactly:
yet both shrank within themselves under the sensation
of a devilish blast blowing. Fellingham accompanied
them and certain jurats to London next day.
Yes, if you like: when a mayor
visits Majesty, it is an important circumstance, and
you are at liberty to argue at length that it means
more than a desire on his part to show his writing
power and his reading power: it is full of comfort
the people, as an exhibition of their majesty likewise;
and it is an encouragement to men to strive to become
mayors, bailiffs, or prime men of any sort; but a stress
in the reporting of it the making it appear
too important a circumstance will surely
breathe the intimation to a politically-minded people
that satire is in the air, and however dearly they
cherish the privilege of knocking at the first door
of the kingdom, and walking ceremoniously in to read
their writings, they will, if they are not in one of
their moods for prostration, laugh. They will
laugh at the report.
All the greater reason is it that
we should not indulge them at such periods; and I
say woe’s me for any brother of the pen, and
one in some esteem, who dressed the report of that
presentation of the Address of congratulation by Mr.
Bailiff Tinman, of Crikswich! Herbert Fellingham
wreaked his personal spite on Tinman. He should
have bethought him that it involved another than Tinman
that is to say, an office which the fitful
beast rejoices to paw and play with contemptuously
now and then, one may think, as a solace to his pride,
and an indemnification for those caprices of
abject worship so strongly recalling the days we see
through Mr. Darwin’s glasses.
He should not have written the report.
It sent a titter over England. He was so unwise
as to despatch a copy of the newspaper containing it
to Van Diemen Smith. Van Diemen perused it with
satisfaction. So did Tinman. Both of these
praised the able young writer. But they handed
the paper to the Coastguard Lieutenant, who asked
Tinman how he liked it; and visitors were beginning
to drop in to Crikswich, who made a point of asking
for a sight of the chief man; and then came a comic
publication, all in the Republican tone of the time,
with Man’s Dignity for the standpoint, and the
wheezy laughter residing in old puns to back it, in
eulogy of the satiric report of the famous Address
of congratulation of the Bailiff of Crikswich.
“Annette,” Van Diemen
said to his daughter, “you’ll not encourage
that newspaper fellow to come down here any more.
He had his warning.”