The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope

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And so Mrs. Woodward set to work to teach her daughter how best
she might conduct herself in her present state of wretchedness.
She had to bear with her sister's success, to listen to her
sister's joy, to enter into all her future plans, to assist at
her toilet, to prepare her wedding garments, to hear the
congratulations of friends, and take a sister's share in a
sister's triumph, and to do this without once giving vent to a
reproach. And she had worse than this to do; she had to encounter
Alaric, and to wish him joy of his bride; she had to protect her
female pride from the disgrace which a hopeless but acknowledged
love would throw on it; she had to live in the house with Alaric
as though he were her brother, and as though she had never
thought to live with him in any nearer tie. She would have to
stand at the altar as her sister's bridesmaid, and see them
married, and she would have to smile and be cheerful as she did
so.

This was the lesson which Mrs. Woodward had now to teach
her daughter; and she so taught it that Linda did all that
circumstances and her mother required of her. Late on that
afternoon she went to Gertrude, and, kissing her, wished her joy.
At that moment Gertrude was the more embarrassed of the two.

'Linda, dear Linda,' she said, embracing her sister convulsively.

'I hope you will be happy, Gertrude, with all my heart,' said
Linda; and so she relinquished her lover.

We talk about the weakness of women--and Linda Woodward was, in
many a way, weak enough--but what man, what giant, has strength
equal to this? It was not that her love was feeble. Her heart was
capable of truest love, and she had loved Alaric truly. But she
had that within her which enabled her to overcome herself, and
put her own heart, and hopes, and happiness--all but her maiden
pride--into the background, when the hopes and happiness of
another required it.

She still shared the same room with her sister; and those who
know how completely absorbed a girl is by her first acknowledged
love, may imagine how many questions she had to answer, to how
many propositions she was called to assent, for how many schemes
she had to vouchsafe a sister's interest, while her heart was
telling her that she should have been the questioner, she should
have been the proposer, that the schemes should all have been her
own.

But she bore it bravely. When Alaric first came down, which he
did in the middle of the week, she was, as she told her mother,
too weak to stand in his presence. Her mother strongly advised
her not to absent herself; so she sat gently by, while he kissed
Mrs. Woodward and Katie. She sat and trembled, for her turn she
knew must come. It did come; Alaric, with an assurance which told
more for his courage than for his heart, came up to her, and with
a smiling face offered her his hand. She rose up and muttered
some words which she had prepared for the occasion, and he, still
holding her by the hand, stooped down and kissed her cheek. Mrs.
Woodward looked on with an angry flush on her brow, and hated him
for his cold-hearted propriety of demeanour.

Linda went up to her mother's room, and, sitting on her mother's
bed, sobbed herself into tranquillity.

It was very grievous to Mrs. Woodward to have to welcome Alaric
to her house. For Alaric's own sake she would no longer have
troubled herself to do so; but Gertrude was still her daughter,
her dear child. Gertrude had done nothing to disentitle her to a
child's part, and a child's protection; and even had she done so,
Mrs. Woodward was not a woman to be unforgiving to her child. For
Gertrude's sake she had to make Alaric welcome; she forced
herself to smile on him and call him her son; to make him more at
home in her house even than Harry had ever been; to give him
privileges which he, wolf as he was, had so little deserved.

But Captain Cuttwater made up by the warmth of his
congratulations for any involuntary coolness which Alaric might
have detected in those of Mrs. Woodward. It had become a strong
wish of the old man's heart that he might make Alaric, at any
rate in part, his heir, without doing an injustice to his niece
or her family. He had soon seen and appreciated what he had
called the 'gumption' both of Gertrude and Alaric. Had Harry
married Gertrude, and Alaric Linda, he would have regarded either
of those matches with disfavour. But now he was quite satisfied--
now he could look on Alaric as his son and Gertrude as his
daughter, and use his money according to his fancy, without
incurring the reproaches of his conscience.

'Quite right, my boy, 'he said to Alaric, slapping him on the
back at the same time with pretty nearly all his power--'quite
right. Didn't I know you were the winning horse?--didn't I tell
you how it would be? Do you think I don't know what gumption
means? If I had not had my own weather-eye open, aye, and d---
wide open, the most of my time, I shouldn't have two or three
thousand pounds to give away now to any young fellow that I take
a fancy to.'

Alaric was, of course, all smiles and good humour, and Gertrude
not less so. The day after he heard of the engagement Uncle Bat
went to town, and, on his return, he gave Gertrude L100 to buy
her wedding-clothes, and half that sum to her mother, in order
that the thing might go off, as he expressed himself, 'slip-slap,
and no mistake.' To Linda he gave nothing, but promised her that
he would not forget her when her time came.

All this time Norman was at Normansgrove; but there were three of
the party who felt that it behoved them to let him know what was
going on. Mrs. Woodward wrote first, and on the following day
both Gertrude and Alaric wrote to him, the former from Hampton,
and the latter from his office in London.

All these letters were much laboured, but, with all this labour,
not one of them contained within it a grain of comfort. That from
Mrs. Woodward came first and told the tale. Strange to say,
though Harry had studiously rejected from his mind all idea of
hope as regarded Gertrude, nevertheless the first tidings of her
betrothal with Alaric struck him as though he had still fancied
himself a favoured lover. He felt as though, in his absence, he
had been robbed of a prize which was all his own, as though a
chattel had been taken from him to which he had a full right; as
though all the Hampton party, Mrs. Woodward included, were in a
conspiracy to defraud him the moment his back was turned.

The blow was so severe that it laid him prostrate at once. He
could not sob away his sorrow on his mother's bosom; no one could
teach him how to bear his grief with meek resignation. He had
never spoken of his love to his friends at Normansgrove. They had
all been witnesses to his deep disappointment, but that had been
attributed to his failure at his office. He was not a man to seek
for sympathy in the sorrows of his heart. He had told Alaric of
his rejection, because he had already told him of his love, but
he had whispered no word of it to anyone besides. On the day on
which he received Mrs. Woodward's letter, he appeared at dinner
ghastly pale, and evidently so ill as to be all but unable to sit
at table; but he would say nothing to anybody; he sat brooding
over his grief till he was unable to sit any longer.

And yet Mrs. Woodward had written with all her skill, with all
her heart striving to pluck the sting away from the tidings which
she had to communicate. She had felt, however, that she owed as
much, at least, to her daughter as she did to him, and she failed
to call Alaric perjured, false, dishonoured, unjust, disgraced,
and treacherous. Nothing short of her doing so would have been
deemed by Norman fitting mention of Tudor's sin; nothing else
would have satisfied the fury of his wrath.

On the next morning he received Gertrude's letter and Alaric's.
The latter he never read--he opened it, saw that it began as
usual, 'My dear Harry,' and then crammed it into his pocket. By
return of post it went back under a blank cover, addressed to
Alaric at the Weights and Measures. The days of duelling were
gone by--unfortunately, as Norman now thought, but nothing, he
determined, should ever induce him again to hold friendly
intercourse with the traitor. He abstained from making any such
oath as to the Woodwards; but determined that his conduct in that
respect should be governed by the manner in which Alaric was
received by them.

But Gertrude's letter he read over and over again, and each time
he did so he indulged in a fresh burst of hatred against the man
who had deceived him. 'A dishonest villain!' he said to himself
over and over again; 'what right had I to suppose he would be
true to me when I found that he had been so false to others?'

'Dearest Harry,' the letter began. Dearest Harry!--Why should she
begin with a lie? He was not dearest! 'You must not, must not,
must not be angry with Alaric,' she went on to say, as soon as
she had told her tale. Oh, must he not? Not be angry with Alaric!
Not angry with the man who had forgotten every law of honour,
every principle of honesty, every tie of friendship! Not angry
with the man whom he had trusted with the key of his treasure,
and who had then robbed him; who had stolen from him all his
contentment, all his joy, his very heart's blood; not angry with
him!

'Our happiness will never be perfect unless you will consent to
share it.' Thus simply, in the affection of her heart, had
Gertrude concluded the letter by which she intended to pour balm
into the wounds of her rejected lover, and pave the way for the
smoothing of such difficulties as might still lie in the way of
her love.

'Their happiness would not be perfect unless he would consent to
share it.' Every word in the sentence was gall to him. It must
have been written with the object of lacerating his wounds, and
torturing his spirit; so at least said Norman to himself. He read
the letter over and over again. At one time he resolved to keep
it till he could thrust it back into her hand, and prove to her
of what cruelty she had been guilty. Then he thought of sending
it to Mrs. Woodward, and asking her how, after that, could she
think that he should ever again enter her doors at Hampton.
Finally he tore it into a thousand bits, and threw them behind
the fire.

'Share their happiness!' and as he repeated the words he gave the
last tear to the fragments of paper which he still held in his
hand. Could he at that moment as easily have torn to shreds all
hope of earthly joys for those two lovers, he would then have
done it, and cast the ruins to the flames.

Oh! what a lesson he might have learnt from Linda! And yet what
were his injuries to hers? He in fact had not been injured, at
least not by him against whom the strength of his wrath most
fiercely raged. The two men had both admired Gertrude, but Norman
had started on the race first. Before Alaric had had time to know
his own mind, he had learnt that Norman claimed the beauty as his
own. He had acknowledged to himself that Norman had a right to do
so, and had scrupulously abstained from interfering with him. Why
should Norman, like a dog in the manger, begrudge to his friend
the fodder which he himself could not enjoy? To him, at any rate,
Alaric had in this been no traitor. 'Twas thus at least that
Gertrude argued in her heart, and 'twas thus that Mrs. Woodward
tried to argue also.

But who could excuse Alaric's falseness to Linda? And yet Linda
had forgiven him.

CHAPTER XV

NORMAN RETURNS TO TOWN

Harry Norman made no answer to either of his three letters beyond
that of sending Alaric's back unread; but this, without other
reply, was sufficient to let them all guess, nearly with
accuracy, what was the state of his mind. Alaric told Gertrude
how his missive had been treated, and Gertrude, of course, told
her mother.

There was very little of that joy at Surbiton Cottage which
should have been the forerunner of a wedding. None of the
Woodward circle were content thus to lose their friend. And then
their unhappiness on this score was augmented by hearing that
Harry had sent up a medical certificate, instead of returning to
his duties when his prolonged leave of absence was expired.

To Alaric this, at the moment, was a relief. He had dreaded the
return of Norman to London. There were so many things to cause
infinite pain to them both. All Norman's things, his books and
clothes, his desks and papers and pictures, his whips and sticks,
and all those sundry belongings which even a bachelor collects
around him--were strewing the rooms in which Alaric still lived.
He had of course felt that it was impossible that they should
ever again reside together. Not only must they quarrel, but all
the men at their office must know that they had quarrelled. And
yet some intercourse must be maintained between them; they must
daily meet in the rooms at the Weights and Measures; and it would
now in their altered position become necessary that in some
things Norman should receive instructions from Alaric as his
superior officer. But if Alaric thought of this often, so did
Norman; and before the last fortnight had expired, the thinking
of it had made him so ill that his immediate return to London was
out of the question.

Mrs. Woodward's heart melted within her when she heard that Harry
was really ill. She had gone on waiting day after day for an
answer to her letter, but no answer came. No answer came, but in
lieu thereof she heard that Harry was laid up at Normansgrove.
She heard it, and Gertrude heard it, and in spite of the coming
wedding there was very little joy at Surbiton Cottage.

And then Mrs. Woodward wrote again; and a man must have had a
heart of stone not to be moved by such a letter. She had 'heard,'
she said, 'that he was ill, and the tidings had made her
wretched--the more so inasmuch as he had sent no answer to her
last letter. Was he very ill? was he dangerously ill? She hoped,
she would fain hope, that his illness had not arisen from any
mental grief. If he did not reply to this, or get some of his
family to do so, there would be nothing for her but to go,
herself, to Normansgrove. She could not remain quiet while she
was left in such painful doubt about her dearest, well-loved
Harry Norman.' How to speak of Gertrude, or how not to speak of
her, Mrs. Woodward knew not--at last she added: 'The three girls
send their kindest love; they are all as wretchedly anxious as I
am. I know you are too good to wish that poor Gertrude should
suffer, but, if you did, you might have your wish. The tidings of
your illness, together with your silence, have robbed her of all
her happiness;' and it ended thus:--'Dearest Harry! do not be
cruel to us; our hearts are all with you.'

This was too much for Norman's sternness; and he relented, at
least as far as Mrs. Woodward was concerned. He wrote to say that
though he was still weak, he was not dangerously ill; and that he
intended, if nothing occurred amiss, to be in town about the end
of the year. He hoped he might then see her to thank her for all
her kindness. She would understand that he could not go down to
Surbiton Cottage; but as she would doubtless have some occasion
for coming up to town, they might thus contrive to meet. He then
sent his love to Linda and Katie, and ended by saying that he had
written to Charley Tudor to take lodgings for him. Not the
slightest allusion was made either to Gertrude or Alaric, except
that which might seem to be conveyed in the intimation that he
could make no more visits to Hampton.

This letter was very cold. It just permitted Mrs. Woodward to
know that Norman did not regard them all as strangers; and that
was all. Linda said it was very sad; and Gertrude said, not to
her mother but to Alaric, that it was heartless. Captain
Cuttwater predicted that he would soon come round, and be as
sound as a roach again in six months' time. Alaric said nothing;
but he went on with his wooing, and this he did so successfully,
as to make Gertrude painfully alive to what would have been, in
her eyes, the inferiority of her lot, had she unfortunately
allowed herself to become the victim of Norman's love.

Alaric went on with his wooing, and he also went on with his
share-buying. Undy Scott had returned to town for a week or two
to wind up the affairs of his expiring secretaryship, and he made
Alaric understand that a nice thing might yet be done in Mary
Janes. Alaric had been very foolish to sell so quickly; so at
least said Undy. To this Alaric replied that he had bought the
shares thoughtlessly, and had felt a desire to get rid of them as
quickly as he could. Those were scruples at which Undy laughed
pleasantly, and Alaric soon laughed with him.

'At any rate,' said Undy, 'your report is written, and off your
hands now: so you may do what you please in the matter, like a
free man, with a safe conscience.'

Alaric supposed that he might.

'I am as fond of the Civil Service as any man,' said Undy; 'just
as fond of it as Sir Gregory himself. I have been in it, and may
be in it again. If I do, I shall do my duty. But I have no idea
of having my hands tied. My purse is my own, to do what I like
with it. Whether I buy beef or mutton, or shares in Cornwall, is
nothing to anyone. I give the Crown what it pays for, my five or
six hours a day, and nothing more. When I was appointed private
secretary to the First Lord of the Stannaries, I told my friend
Whip Vigil that those were the terms on which I accepted office;
and Vigil agreed with me.' Alaric, pupil as he was to the great
Sir Gregory, declared that he also agreed with him. 'That is not
Sir Gregory's doctrine, but it's mine,' said Undy; 'and though
it's my own, I think it by far the honester doctrine of the two.'

Alaric did not sift the matter very deeply, nor did he ask Undy,
or himself either, whether in using the contents of his purse in
the purchase of shares he would be justified in turning to his
own purpose any information which he might obtain in his official
career. Nor did he again offer to put that broad test to himself
which he had before proposed, and ask himself whether he would
dare to talk of what he was doing in the face of day, in his own
office, before Sir Gregory, or before the Neverbends of the
Service. He had already learnt the absurdity of such tests. Did
other men talk of such doings? Was it not notorious that the
world speculated, and that the world was generally silent in the
matter? Why should he attempt to be wiser than those around him?
Was it not sufficient for him to be wise in his generation? What
man had ever become great, who allowed himself to be impeded by
small scruples? If the sportsman returned from the field laden
with game, who would scrutinize the mud on his gaiters?
'Excelsior!' said Alaric to himself with a proud ambition; and so
he attempted to rise by the purchase and sale of mining shares.

When he was fairly engaged in the sport, his style of play so
fascinated Undy that they embarked in a sort of partnership,
_pro hoc vice_, good to the last during the ups and downs of
Wheal Mary Jane. Mary Jane, no doubt, would soon run dry, or else
be drowned, as had happened to New Friendship. But in the
meantime something might be done.

'Of course you'll be consulted about those other papers,' said
Undy. 'It might be as well they should be kept back for a week or
two.'

'Well, I'll see,' said Alaric; and as he said it, he felt that
his face was tinged with a blush of shame. But what then? Who
would look at the dirt on his gaiters, if he filled his bag with
game?

Mrs. Woodward was no whit angered by the coldness of Norman's
letter. She wished that he could have brought himself to write in
a different style, but she remembered his grief, and knew that as
time should work its cure upon it, he would come round and again
be gentle and affectionate, at any rate with her.

She misdoubted Charley's judgement in the choice of lodgings, and
therefore she talked over the matter with Alaric. It was at last
decided that he, Alaric, should move instead of driving Norman
away. His final movement would soon take place; that movement
which would rob him of the freedom of lodginghood, and invest him
with all the ponderous responsibility and close restraint of a
householder. He and Gertrude were to be married in February, and
after spending a cold honeymoon in Paris and Brussels, were to
begin their married life amidst the sharp winds of a London
March. But love, gratified love, will, we believe, keep out even
an English east wind. If so, it is certainly the only thing that
will.

Charley, therefore, wrote to Norman, telling him that he could
remain in his old home, and humbly asking permission to remain
there with him. To this request he received a kind rejoinder in
the affirmative. Though Charley was related to Alaric, there had
always apparently been a closer friendship between him and Norman
than between the two cousins; and now, in his fierce unbridled
quarrel with Alaric, and in his present coolness with the
Woodwards, he seemed to turn to Charley with more than ordinary
affection.

Norman made his appearance at the office on the first Monday of
the new year. He had hitherto sat at the same desk with Alaric,
each of them occupying one side of it; on his return he found
himself opposite to a stranger. Alaric had, of course, been
promoted to a room of his own.

The Weights and Measures had never been a noisy office; but now
it became more silent than ever. Men there talked but little at
any time, and now they seemed to cease from talking altogether.
It was known to all that the Damon and Pythias of the establishment
were Damon and Pythias no longer; that war waged between them,
and that if all accounts were true, they were ready to fly each at
the other's throat. Some attributed this to the competitive examination;
others said it was love; others declared that it was money, the root
of evil; and one rash young gentleman stated his positive knowledge
that it was all three. At any rate something dreadful was expected;
and men sat anxious at their desks, fearing the coming evil.

On the Monday the two men did not meet, nor on the Tuesday. On
the next morning, Alaric, having acknowledged to himself the
necessity of breaking the ice, walked into the room where Norman
sat with three or four others. It was absolutely necessary that
he should make some arrangement with him as to a certain branch
of office-work; and though it was competent for him, as the
superior, to have sent for Norman as the inferior, he thought it
best to abstain from doing so, even though he were thereby
obliged to face his enemy, for the first time, in the presence of
others.

'Well, Mr. Embryo,' said he, speaking to the new junior, and
standing with his back to the fire in an easy way, as though
there was nothing wrong under the sun, or at least nothing at the
Weights and Measures, 'well, Mr. Embryo, how do you get on with
those calculations?'

'Pretty well, I believe, sir; I think I begin to understand them
now,' said the tyro, producing for Alaric's gratification five or
six folio sheets covered with intricate masses of figures.

'Ah! yes; that will do very well,' said Alaric, taking up one of
the sheets, and looking at it with an assumed air of great
interest. Though he acted his part pretty well, his mind was very
far removed from Mr. Embryo's efforts.

Norman sat at his desk, as black as a thunder-cloud, with his
eyes turned intently at the paper before him; but so agitated
that he could not even pretend to write.

'By the by, Norman,' said Alaric, 'when will it suit you to look
through those Scotch papers with me?'

'My name, sir, is Mr. Norman,' said Harry, getting up and
standing by his chair with all the firmness of a Paladin of old.

'With all my heart,' said Alaric. 'In speaking to you I can have
but one wish, and that is to do so in any way that may best
please you.'

'Any instructions you may have to give I will attend to, as far
as my duty goes,' said Norman.

And then Alaric, pushing Mr. Embryo from his chair without much
ceremony, sat down opposite to his former friend, and said and
did what he had to say and do with an easy unaffected air, in
which there was, at any rate, none of the usual superciliousness
of a neophyte's authority. Norman was too agitated to speak
reasonably, or to listen calmly, but Alaric knew that though he
might not do so to-day, he would to-morrow, or if not to-morrow,
then the next day; and so from day to day he came into Norman's
room and transacted his business. Mr. Embryo got accustomed to
looking through the window at the Council Office for the ten
minutes that he remained there, and Norman also became reconciled
to the custom. And thus, though they never met in any other way,
they daily had a kind of intercourse with each other, which, at
last, contrived to get itself arranged into a certain amount of
civility on both sides.

Immediately that Norman's arrival was heard of at Surbiton
Cottage, Mrs. Woodward hastened up to town to see him. She wrote
to him to say that she would be at his lodgings at a certain
hour, and begged him to come thither to her. Of course he did not
refuse, and so they met. Mrs. Woodward had much doubted whether
or no she would take Linda or Katie with her, but at last she
resolved to go alone. Harry, she thought, would be more willing
to speak freely to her, to open his heart to her, if there were
nobody by but herself.