‘I am too old to be converted, even by my friend Snitchey here, or my good spinster sister, Martha Jeddler; who had what she calls her domestic trials ages ago, and has led a sympathising life with all sorts of people ever since; and who is so much of your opinion (only she’s less reasonable and more obstinate, being a woman), that we can’t agree, and seldom meet. I was born upon this battle-field. I began, as a boy, to have my thoughts directed to the real history of a battle-field. Sixty years have gone over my head, and I have never seen the Christian world, including Heaven knows how many loving mothers and good enough girls like mine here, anything but mad for a battle-field. The same contradictions prevail in everything. One must either laugh or cry at such stupendous inconsistencies; and I prefer to laugh.’
Britain, who had been paying the profoundest and most melancholy attention to each speaker in his turn, seemed suddenly to decide in favour of the same preference, if a deep sepulchral sound that escaped him might be construed into a demonstration of risibility. His face, however, was so perfectly unaffected by it, both before and afterwards, that although one or two of the breakfast party looked round as being startled by a mysterious noise, nobody connected the offender with it.
Except his partner in attendance, Clemency Newcome; who rousing him with one of those favourite joints, her elbows, inquired, in a reproachful whisper, what he laughed at.
‘Not you!’ said Britain.
‘Who then?’
‘Humanity,’ said Britain. ‘That’s the joke!’
‘What between master and them lawyers, he’s getting more and more addle-headed every day!’ cried Clemency, giving him a lunge with the other elbow, as a mental stimulant. ‘Do you know where you are? Do you want to get warning?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ said Britain, with a leaden eye and an immovable visage. ‘I don’t care for anything. I don’t make out anything. I don’t believe anything. And I don’t want anything.’
Although this forlorn summary of his general condition may have been overcharged in an access of despondency, Benjamin Britain – sometimes called Little Britain, to distinguish him from Great; as we might say Young England, to express Old England with a decided difference – had defined his real state more accurately than might be supposed. For, serving as a sort of man Miles to the Doctor’s Friar Bacon, and listening day after day to innumerable orations addressed by the Doctor to various people, all tending to show that his very existence was at best a mistake and an absurdity, this unfortunate servitor had fallen, by degrees, into such an abyss of confused and contradictory suggestions from within and without, that Truth at the bottom of her well, was on the level surface as compared with Britain in the depths of his mystification. The only point he clearly comprehended, was, that the new element usually brought into these discussions by Snitchey and Craggs, never served to make them clearer, and always seemed to give the Doctor a species of advantage and confirmation. Therefore, he looked upon the Firm as one of the proximate causes of his state of mind, and held them in abhorrence accordingly.
‘But, this is not our business, Alfred,’ said the Doctor. ‘Ceasing to be my ward (as you have said) to-day; and leaving us full to the brim of such learning as the Grammar School down here was able to give you, and your studies in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon both; you are away, now, into the world. The first term of probation[10] appointed by your poor father, being over, away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his second desire. And long before your three years’ tour among the foreign schools of medicine is finished, you’ll have forgotten us. Lord, you’ll forget us easily in six months!’
‘If I do – But you know better; why should I speak to you!’ said Alfred, laughing.
‘I don’t know anything of the sort,’ returned the Doctor. ‘What do you say, Marion?’
Marion, trifling with her teacup, seemed to say – but she didn’t say it – that he was welcome to forget, if he could. Grace pressed the blooming face against her cheek, and smiled.
‘I haven’t been, I hope, a very unjust steward in the execution of my trust,’ pursued the Doctor; ‘but I am to be, at any rate, formally discharged, and released, and what not this morning; and here are our good friends Snitchey and Craggs, with a bagful of papers, and accounts, and documents, for the transfer of the balance of the trust fund to you (I wish it was a more difficult one to dispose of, Alfred, but you must get to be a great man and make it so), and other drolleries of that sort, which are to be signed, sealed, and delivered.’
‘And duly witnessed as by law required,’ said Snitchey, pushing away his plate, and taking out the papers, which his partner proceeded to spread upon the table; ‘and Self and Craggs having been co-trustees with you, Doctor, in so far as the fund was concerned, we shall want your two servants to attest the signatures – can you read, Mrs. Newcome?’
‘I an’t married, Mister,’ said Clemency.
‘Oh! I beg your pardon. I should think not,’ chuckled Snitchey, casting his eyes over her extraordinary figure. ‘You CAN read?’
‘A little,’ answered Clemency.
‘The marriage service, night and morning, eh?’ observed the lawyer, jocosely.
‘No,’ said Clemency. ‘Too hard. I only reads a thimble.’
‘Read a thimble!’ echoed Snitchey. ‘What are you talking about, young woman?’
Clemency nodded. ‘And a nutmeg grater.’
‘Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chancellor!’ said Snitchey, staring at her.
‘If possessed of any property,’ stipulated Craggs.
Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the articles in question bore an engraved motto, and so formed the pocket library of Clemency Newcome, who was not much given to the study of books[11].
‘Oh, that’s it, is it, Miss Grace!’ said Snitchey.
‘Yes, yes. Ha, ha, ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She looks uncommonly like it,’ he muttered, with a supercilious glance. ‘And what does the thimble say, Mrs. Newcome?’
‘I an’t married, Mister,’ observed Clemency.
‘Well, Newcome. Will that do?’ said the lawyer. ‘What does the thimble say, Newcome?’
How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one pocket open, and looked down into its yawning depths for the thimble which wasn’t there, – and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors in a sheath more expressively describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she entrusted individually and separately to Britain to hold, – is of no consequence.
Nor how, in her determination to grasp this pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to swing, and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed and calmly maintained, an attitude apparently inconsistent with the human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last she triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the nutmeg grater: the literature of both those
term of probation – (
was not much given to the study of books – (
