The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope

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The assurance made to him on his first visit to the office by Mr.
Secretary Oldeschole, that the Internal Navigation was a place of
herculean labours, had long before this time become matter to him
of delightful ridicule. He had found himself to be one of six
young men, who habitually spent about five hours a day together
in the same room, and whose chief employment was to render the
life of the wretched Mr. Snape as unendurable as possible. There
were copies to be written, and entries to be made, and books to
be indexed. But these things were generally done by some extra
hand, as to the necessity of whose attendance for such purpose
Mr. Snape was forced to certify. But poor Snape knew that he had
no alternative. He rule six unruly young navvies! There was not
one of them who did not well know how to make him tremble in his
shoes.

Poor Mr. Snape had selected for his own peculiar walk in life a
character for evangelical piety. Whether he was a hypocrite--as
all the navvies averred--or a man sincere as far as one so weak
could accomplish sincerity, it is hardly necessary for us to
inquire. He was not by nature an ill-natured man, but he had
become by education harsh to those below him, and timid and
cringing with those above. In the former category must by no
means be included the six young men who were nominally under his
guidance. They were all but acknowledged by him as his superiors.
Ignorant as they were, they could hardly be more so than he.
Useless as they were, they did as much for the public service as
he did. He sometimes complained of them; but it was only when
their misconduct had been so loud as to make it no longer
possible that he should not do so.

Mr. Snape being thus by character and predilection a religious
man, and having on various occasions in olden days professed much
horror at having his ears wounded by conversation which was
either immoral or profane, it had of course become the habitual
practice of the navvies to give continual utterance to every
description of ribaldry and blasphemy for his especial edification.
Doubtless it may be concluded from the habits of the men, that
even without such provocation, their talk would have exceeded
the yea, yea, and nay, nay, to which young men should confine
themselves. But they especially concerted schemes of blasphemy
and dialogues of iniquity for Mr. Snape's particular advantage;
and continued daily this disinterested amusement, till at last an
idea got abroad among them that Mr. Snape liked it. Then they
changed their tactics and canted through their noses in the
manner which they imagined to be peculiar to methodist preachers.
So on the whole, Mr. Snape had an uneasy life of it at the Internal
Navigation.

Into all these malpractices Charley Tudor plunged headlong. And
how should it have been otherwise? How can any youth of nineteen
or twenty do other than consort himself with the daily companions
of his usual avocations? Once and again, in one case among ten
thousand, a lad may be found formed of such stuff, that he
receives neither the good nor the bad impulses of those around
him. But such a one is a _lapsus naturae_. He has been born
without the proper attributes of youth, or at any rate, brought
up so as to have got rid of them.

Such, a one, at any rate, Charley Tudor was not. He was a little
shocked at first by the language he heard; but that feeling soon
wore off. His kind heart, also, in the first month of his
novitiate, sympathized with the daily miseries of Mr. Snape; but
he also soon learnt to believe that Mr. Snape was a counterfeit,
and after the first half year could torture him with as much
gusto as any of his brethren. Alas! no evil tendency communicates
itself among young men more quickly than cruelty. Those infernal
navvies were very cruel to Mr. Snape.

And yet young Tudor was a lad of a kindly heart, of a free,
honest, open disposition, deficient in no proportion of mind
necessary to make an estimable man. But he was easily malleable,
and he took at once the full impression of the stamp to which he
was subjected. Had he gone into the Weights and Measures, a
hypothesis which of course presumes a total prostration of the
intellects and energy of Mr. Hardlines, he would have worked
without a groan from ten till five, and have become as good a
model as the best of them. As it was, he can be hardly said to
have worked at all, soon became _facile princeps_ in the list of
habitual idlers, and was usually threatened once a quarter with
dismissal, even from that abode of idleness, in which the very
nature of true work was unknown.

Some tidings of Charley's doings in London, and non-doings at the
Internal Navigation, of course found their way to the Shropshire
parsonage. His dissipation was not of a very costly kind; but L90
per annum will hardly suffice to afford an ample allowance of
gin-and-water and bird's-eye tobacco, over and above the other
wants of a man's life. Bills arrived there requiring payment; and
worse than this, letters also came through Sir Gilbert de Salop
from Mr. Oldeschole, the Secretary, saying that young Tudor was
disgracing the office, and lowering the high character of the
Internal Navigation; and that he must be removed, unless he could
be induced to alter his line of life, &c.

Urgent austere letters came from the father, and fond heart-
rending appeals from the mother. Charley's heart was rent. It
was, at any rate, a sign in him that he was not past hope of
grace, that he never laughed at these monitions, that he never
showed such letters to his companions, never quizzed his
'governor's' lectures, or made merry over the grief of his
mother. But if it be hard for a young man to keep in the right
path when he has not as yet strayed out of it, how much harder is
it to return to it when he has long since lost the track! It was
well for the father to write austere letters, well for the mother
to make tender appeals, but Charley could not rid himself of his
companions, nor of his debts, nor yet even of his habits. He
could not get up in the morning and say that he would at once be
as his cousin Alaric, or as his cousin's friend, Mr. Norman. It
is not by our virtues or our vices that we are judged, even by
those who know us best; but by such credit for virtues or for
vices as we may have acquired. Now young Tudor's credit for
virtue was very slight, and he did not know how to extend it.

At last papa and mamma Tudor came up to town to make one last
effort to save their son; and also to save, on his behalf, the
valuable official appointment which he held. He had now been
three years in his office, and his salary had risen to L110 per
annum. L110 per annum was worth saving if it could be saved. The
plan adopted by Mrs. Tudor was that of beseeching their cousin
Alaric to take Charley under his especial wing.

When Charley first arrived in town, the fact of Alaric and Norman
living together had given the former a good excuse for not
offering to share his lodgings with his cousin. Alaric, with the
advantage in age of three or four years--at that period of life
the advantage lies in that direction--with his acquired
experience of London life, and also with all the wondrous eclat
of the Weights and Measures shining round him, had perhaps been a
little too unwilling to take by the hand a rustic cousin who was
about to enter life under the questionable auspices of the
Internal Navigation. He had helped Charley to transcribe the
chapter of Gibbon, and had, it must be owned, lent him from time
to time a few odd pounds in his direst necessities. But their
course in life had hitherto been apart. Of Norman, Charley had
seen less even than of his cousin.

And now it became a difficult question with Alaric how he was to
answer the direct appeal made to him by Mrs. Tudor;--'Pray, pray
let him live with you, if it be only for a year, Alaric,' the
mother had said, with the tears running down her cheeks. 'You are
so good, so discreet, so clever--you can save him.' Alaric
promised, or was ready to promise, anything else, but hesitated
as to the joint lodgings. 'How could he manage it,' said he,
'living, as he was, with another man? He feared that Mr. Norman
would not accede to such an arrangement. As for himself, he would
do anything but leave his friend Norman.' To tell the truth,
Alaric thought much, perhaps too much, of the respectability of
those with whom he consorted. He had already begun to indulge
ambitious schemes, already had ideas stretching even beyond the
limits of the Weights and Measures, and fully intended to make
the very most of himself.

Mrs. Tudor, in her deep grief, then betook herself to Mr. Norman,
though with that gentleman she had not even the slightest
acquaintance. With a sulking heart, with a consciousness of her
unreasonableness, but with the eloquence of maternal sorrow, she
made her request. Mr. Norman heard her out with all the calm
propriety of the Weights and Measures, begged to have a day to
consider, and then acceded to the request.

'I think we ought to do it,' said he to Alaric. The mother's
tears had touched his heart, and his sense of duty had prevailed.
Alaric, of course, could now make no further objection, and thus
Charley the Navvy became domesticated with his cousin Alaric and
Harry Norman.

The first great question to be settled, and it is a very great
question with a young man, was that of latch-key or no latch-key.
Mrs. Richards, the landlady, when she made ready the third
bedroom for the young gentleman, would, as was her wont in such
matters, have put a latchkey on the toilet-table as a matter of
course, had she not had some little conversation with Mamma Tudor
regarding her son. Mamma Tudor had implored and coaxed, and
probably bribed Mrs. Richards to do something more than 'take her
son in and do for him'; and Mrs. Richards, as her first
compliance with these requests, had kept the latch-key in her own
pocket. So matters went on for a week; but when Mrs. Richards
found that her maidservant was never woken by Mr. Charley's raps
after midnight, and that she herself was obliged to descend in
her dressing-gown, she changed her mind, declared to herself that
it was useless to attempt to keep a grown gentleman in leading-
strings, and put the key on the table on the second Monday
morning.

As none of the three men ever dined at home, Alaric and Norman
having clubs which they frequented, and Charley eating his dinner
at some neighbouring dining-house, it may be imagined that this
change of residence did our poor navvy but little good. It had,
however, a salutary effect on him, at any rate at first. He
became shamed into a quieter and perhaps cleaner mode of dressing
himself; he constrained himself to sit down to breakfast with his
monitors at half-past eight, and was at any rate so far regardful
of Mrs. Richards as not to smoke in his bedroom, and to come home
sober enough to walk upstairs without assistance every night for
the first month.

But perhaps the most salutary effect made by this change on young
Tudor was this, that he was taken by his cousin one Sunday to the
Woodwards. Poor Charley had had but small opportunity of learning
what are the pleasures of decent society. He had gone headlong
among the infernal navvies too quickly to allow of that slow and
gradual formation of decent alliances which is all in all to a
young man entering life. A boy is turned loose into London, and
desired to choose the good and eschew the bad. Boy as he is, he
might probably do so if the opportunity came in his way. But no
such chance is afforded him. To eschew the bad is certainly
possible for him; but as to the good, he must wait till he be
chosen. This it is, that is too much for him. He cannot live
without society, and so he falls.

Society, an ample allowance of society, this is the first
requisite which a mother should seek in sending her son to live
alone in London; balls, routs, picnics, parties; women, pretty,
well-dressed, witty, easy-mannered; good pictures, elegant
drawing rooms, well got-up books, Majolica and Dresden china--
these are the truest guards to protect a youth from dissipation
and immorality.

These are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain, and nourish all the world,

if only a youth could have them at his disposal. Some of these
things, though by no means all, Charley Tudor encountered at the
Woodwards.

CHAPTER III

THE WOODWARDS

It is very difficult nowadays to say where the suburbs of London
come to an end, and where the country begins. The railways,
instead of enabling Londoners to live in the country, have turned
the country into a city. London will soon assume the shape of a
great starfish. The old town, extending from Poplar to Hammersmith,
will be the nucleus, and the various railway lines will be the projecting
rays.

There are still, however, some few nooks within reach of the
metropolis which have not been be-villaged and be-terraced out of
all look of rural charm, and the little village of Hampton, with
its old-fashioned country inn, and its bright, quiet, grassy
river, is one of them, in spite of the triple metropolitan
waterworks on the one side, and the close vicinity on the other
of Hampton Court, that well-loved resort of cockneydom.

It was here that the Woodwards lived. Just on the outskirts of
the village, on the side of it farthest from town, they inhabited
not a villa, but a small old-fashioned brick house, abutting on
to the road, but looking from its front windows on to a lawn and
garden, which stretched down to the river.

The grounds were not extensive, being included, house and all, in
an area of an acre and a half: but the most had been made of it;
it sloped prettily to the river, and was absolutely secluded from
the road. Thus Surbiton Cottage, as it was called, though it had
no pretension to the grandeur of a country-house, was a desirable
residence for a moderate family with a limited income.

Mrs. Woodward's family, for there was no Mr. Woodward in the
case, consisted of herself and three daughters. There was
afterwards added to this an old gentleman, an uncle of Mrs.
Woodward's, but he had not arrived at the time at which we would
wish first to introduce our readers to Hampton.

Mrs. Woodward was the widow of a clergyman who had held a living
in London, and had resided there. He had, however, died when two
of his children were very young, and while the third was still a
baby. From that time Mrs. Woodward had lived at the cottage at
Hampton, and had there maintained a good repute, paying her way
from month to month as widows with limited incomes should do, and
devoting herself to the amusements and education of her
daughters.

It was not, probably, from any want of opportunity to cast them
aside, that Mrs. Woodward had remained true to her weeds; for at
the time of her husband's death she was a young and a very pretty
woman; and an income of L400 a year, though moderate enough for
all the wants of a gentleman's family, would no doubt have added
sufficiently to her charms to have procured her a second
alliance, had she been so minded.

Twelve years, however, had now elapsed since Mr. Woodward had
been gathered to his fathers, and the neighbouring world of
Hampton, who had all of them declared over and over again that
the young widow would certainly marry again, were now becoming as
unanimous in their expressed opinion that the old widow knew the
value of her money too well to risk it in the keeping of the best
he that ever wore boots.

At the date at which our story commences, she was a comely little
woman, past forty, somewhat below the middle height, rather
_embonpoint_, as widows of forty should be, with pretty fat
feet, and pretty fat hands; wearing just a _soupcon_ of a
widow's cap on her head, with her hair, now slightly grey, parted
in front, and brushed very smoothly, but not too carefully, in
_bandeaux_ over her forehead.

She was a quick little body, full of good-humour, slightly given
to repartee, and perhaps rather too impatient of a fool. But
though averse to a fool, she could sympathize with folly. A great
poet has said that women are all rakes at heart; and there was
something of the rake at heart about Mrs. Woodward. She never
could be got to express adequate horror at fast young men, and
was apt to have her own sly little joke at women who prided
themselves on being punctilious. She could, perhaps, the more
safely indulge in this, as scandal had never even whispered a
word against herself.

With her daughters she lived on terms almost of equality. The two
elder were now grown up; that is, they were respectively eighteen
and seventeen years old. They were devotedly attached to their
mother, looked on her as the only perfect woman in existence, and
would willingly do nothing that could vex her; but they perhaps
were not quite so systematically obedient to her as children
should be to their only surviving parent. Mrs. Woodward, however,
found nothing amiss, and no one else therefore could well have a
right to complain.

They were both pretty--but Gertrude, the elder, was by far the
more strikingly so. They were, nevertheless, much alike; they
both had rich brown hair, which they, like their mother, wore
simply parted over the forehead. They were both somewhat taller
than her, and were nearly of a height. But in appearance, as in
disposition, Gertrude carried by far the greater air of command.
She was the handsomer of the two, and the cleverer. She could
write French and nearly speak it, while her sister could only
read it. She could play difficult pieces from sight, which it
took her sister a morning's pains to practise. She could fill in
and finish a drawing, while her sister was still struggling, and
struggling in vain, with the first principles of the art.

But there was a softness about Linda, for such was the name of
the second Miss Woodward, which in the eyes of many men made up
both for the superior beauty and superior talent of Gertrude.
Gertrude was, perhaps, hardly so soft as so young a girl should
be. In her had been magnified that spirit of gentle raillery
which made so attractive a part of her mother's character. She
enjoyed and emulated her mother's quick sharp sayings, but she
hardly did so with her mother's grace, and sometimes attempted it
with much more than her mother's severity. She also detested
fools; but in promulgating her opinion on this subject, she was
too apt to declare who the fools were whom she detested.

It may be thought that under such circumstances there could be
but little confidence between the sisters; but, nevertheless, in
their early days, they lived together as sisters should do.
Gertrude, when she spoke of fools, never intended to include
Linda in the number; and Linda appreciated too truly, and admired
too thoroughly, her sister's beauty and talent to be jealous of
either.

Of the youngest girl, Katie, it is not necessary at present to
say much. At this time she was but thirteen years of age, and was
a happy, pretty, romping child. She gave fair promise to be at
any rate equal to her sisters in beauty, and in mind was quick
and intelligent. Her great taste was for boating, and the romance
of her life consisted in laying out ideal pleasure-grounds, and
building ideal castles in a little reedy island or ait which lay
out in the Thames, a few perches from the drawing-room windows.

Such was the family of the Woodwards. Harry Norman's father and
Mr. Woodward had been first cousins, and hence it had been quite
natural that when Norman came up to reside in London he should be
made welcome to Surbiton Cottage. He had so been made welcome,
and had thus got into a habit of spending his Saturday evenings
and Sundays at the home of his relatives. In summer he could row
up in his own wherry, and land himself and carpet-bag direct on
the Woodwards' lawn, and in the winter he came down by the
Hampton Court five p.m. train--and in each case he returned on
the Monday morning. Thus, as regards that portion of his time
which was most his own, he may be said almost to have lived at
Surbiton Cottage, and if on any Sunday he omitted to make his
appearance, the omission was ascribed by the ladies of Hampton,
in some half-serious sort of joke, to metropolitan allurements
and temptations which he ought to have withstood.

When Tudor and Norman came to live together, it was natural
enough that Tudor also should be taken down to Surbiton Cottage.
Norman could not leave him on every Saturday without telling him
much of his friends whom he went to visit, and he could hardly
say much of them without offering to introduce his companion to
them. Tudor accordingly went there, and it soon came to pass that
he also very frequently spent his Sundays at Hampton.

It must be remembered that at this time, the time, that is, of
Norman and Tudor's first entrance on their London life, the girls
at Surbiton Cottage were mere girls--that is, little more than
children; they had not, as it were, got their wings so as to be
able to fly away when the provocation to do so might come; they
were, in short, Gertrude and Linda Woodward, and not the Miss
Woodwards: their drawers came down below their frocks, instead of
their frocks below their drawers; and in lieu of studying the
French language, as is done by grown-up ladies, they did French
lessons, as is the case with ladies who are not grown-up. Under
these circumstances there was no embarrassment as to what the
young people should call each other, and they soon became very
intimate as Harry and Alaric, Gertrude and Linda.

It is not, however, to be conceived that Alaric Tudor at once
took the same footing in the house as Norman. This was far from
being the case. In the first place he never slept there, seeing
that there was no bed for him; and the most confidential
intercourse in the household took place as they sat cosy over the
last embers of the drawing-room fire, chatting about everything
and nothing, as girls always can do, after Tudor had gone away to
his bed at the inn, on the opposite side of the way. And then
Tudor did not come on every Saturday, and at first did not do so
without express invitation; and although the girls soon
habituated themselves to the familiarity of their new friend's
Christian name, it was some time before Mrs. Woodward did so.

Two--three years soon flew by, and Linda and Gertrude became the
Miss Woodwards; their frocks were prolonged, their drawers
curtailed, and the lessons abandoned. But still Alaric Tudor and
Harry Norman came to Hampton not less frequently than of yore,
and the world resident on that portion of the left bank of the
Thames found out that Harry Norman and Gertrude Woodward were to
be man and wife, and that Alaric Tudor and Linda Woodward were to
go through the same ceremony. They found this out, or said that
they had done so. But, as usual, the world was wrong; at least in
part, for at the time of which we are speaking no word of love-
making had passed, at any rate, between the last-named couple.

And what was Mrs. Woodward about all this time? Was she match-
making or match-marring; or was she negligently omitting the
duties of a mother on so important an occasion? She was certainly
neither match-making nor match-marring; but it was from no
negligence that she was thus quiescent. She knew, or thought she
knew, that the two young men were fit to be husbands to her
daughters, and she felt that if the wish for such an alliance
should spring up between either pair, there was no reason why she
should interfere to prevent it. But she felt also that she should
not interfere to bring any such matter to pass. These young
people had by chance been thrown together. Should there be love-
passages among them, as it was natural to suppose there might be,
it would be well. Should there be none such, it would be well
also. She thoroughly trusted her own children, and did not
distrust her friends; and so as regards Mrs. Woodward the matter
was allowed to rest.

We cannot say that on this matter we quite approve of her
conduct, though we cannot but admire the feeling which engendered
it. Her daughters were very young; though they had made such
positive advances as have been above described towards the
discretion of womanhood, they were of the age when they would
have been regarded as mere boys had they belonged to the other
sex. The assertion made by Clara Van Artevelde, that women 'grow
upon the sunny side of the wall,' is doubtless true; but young
ladies, gifted as they are with such advantages, may perhaps be
thought to require some counsel, some advice, in those first
tender years in which they so often have to make or mar their
fortunes.

Not that Mrs. Woodward gave them no advice; not but that she
advised them well and often--but she did so, perhaps, too much as
an equal, too little as a parent.

But, be that as it may--and I trust my readers will not be
inclined so early in our story to lean heavily on Mrs. Woodward,
whom I at once declare to be my own chief favourite in the tale--
but, be that as it may, it so occurred that Gertrude, before she
was nineteen, had listened to vows of love from Harry Norman,
which she neither accepted nor repudiated; and that Linda had,
before she was eighteen, perhaps unfortunately, taught herself to
think it probable that she might have to listen to vows of love
from Alaric Tudor.