The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope

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I remember a line of poetry, learnt in my earliest youth, and
which I believe to have emanated from a sentimental Frenchman, a
man of genius, with whom my parents were acquainted. It is as
follows:--

Are you go?--Is you gone?--And I left?--Vera vell!

Now the whole business of a farewell is contained in that line.
When the moment comes, let that be said; let that be said and
felt, and then let the dear ones depart.

Mrs. Woodward and Gertrude--God bless them!--had never studied
the subject. They knew no better than to sit in the nasty cabin,
surrounded by boxes, stewards, porters, children, and abominations
of every kind, holding each other's hands, and pressing damp
handkerchiefs to their eyes. The delay, the lingering, upset even
Gertrude, and brought her for a moment down to the usual level
of leave-taking womanhood. Alaric, the meanwhile, stood leaning
over the taffrail with Charley, as mute as the fishes beneath him.

'Write to us the moment you get there,' said Charley. How often
had the injunction been given! 'And now we had better get off--
you'll be better when we are gone, Alaric,'--Charley had some
sense of the truth about him--'and, Alaric, take my word for it,
I'll come and set the Melbourne Weights and Measures to rights
before long--I'll come and weigh your gold for you.'

'We had better be going now,' said Charley, looking down into the
cabin; 'they may let loose and be off any moment now.'

'Oh, Charley, not yet, not yet,' said Linda, clinging to her
sister.

'You'll have to go down to the Nore, if you stay; that's all,'
said Charley.

And then again began the kissing and the crying. Yes, ye dear
ones--it is hard to part--it is hard for the mother to see the
child of her bosom torn from her for ever; it is cruel that
sisters should be severed: it is a harsh sentence for the world
to give, that of such a separation as this. These, O ye loving
hearts, are the penalties of love! Those that are content to love
must always be content to pay them.

'Go, mamma, go,' said Gertrude; 'dearest, best, sweetest mother--
my own, own mother; go, Linda, darling Linda. Give my kindest
love to Harry--Charley, you and Harry will be good to mamma, I
know you will. And mamma'--and then she whispered to her mother
one last prayer in Charley's favour--'she may love him now,
indeed she may.'

Alaric came to them at the last moment--'Mrs. Woodward,' said he,
'say that you forgive me.'

'I do,' said she, embracing him--'God knows that I do;--but,
Alaric, remember what a treasure you possess.'

And so they parted. May God speed the wanderers!

CHAPTER XLV

THE FATE OF THE NAVVIES

And now, having dispatched Alaric and his wife and bairns on
their long journey, we must go back for a while and tell how
Charley had been transformed from an impudent, idle young Navvy
into a well-conducted, zealous young Weights.

When Alaric was convicted, Charley had, as we all know, belonged
to the Internal Navigation; when the six months' sentence had
expired, Charley was in full blow at the decorous office in
Whitehall; and during the same period Norman had resigned and
taken on himself the new duties of a country squire. The change
which had been made had affected others than Charley. It had been
produced by one of those far-stretching, world-moving commotions
which now and then occur, sometimes twice or thrice in a
generation, and, perhaps, not again for half a century, causing
timid men to whisper in corners, and the brave and high-spirited
to struggle with the struggling waves, so that when the storm
subsides they may be found floating on the surface. A moral
earthquake had been endured by a portion of the Civil Service of
the country.

The Internal Navigation had--No, my prognostic reader, it had not
been reformed; no new blood had been infused into it; no attempt
had been made to produce a better discipline by the appointment
of a younger secretary; there had been no carting away of decayed
wood in the shape of Mr. Snape, or gathering of rank weeds in the
form of Mr. Corkscrew; nothing of the kind had been attempted.
No--the disease had gone too far either for phlebotomy, purging,
or cautery. The Internal Navigation had ceased to exist! Its
demise had been in this wise.--It may be remembered that some
time since Mr. Oldeschole had mentioned in the hearing of Mr.
Snape that things were going wrong. Sir Gregory Hardlines had
expressed an adverse opinion as to the Internal Navigation, and
worse, ten times worse than that, there had been an article in
the _Times_. Now, we all know that if anything is ever done
in any way towards improvement in these days, the public press
does it. And we all know, also, of what the public press
consists. Mr. Oldeschole knew this well, and even Mr. Snape had a
glimmering idea of the truth. When he read that article, Mr.
Oldeschole felt that his days were numbered, and Mr. Snape, when
he heard of it, began to calculate for the hundredth time to what
highest amount of pension he might be adjudged to be entitled by
a liberal-minded Treasury minute.

Mr. Oldeschole began to set his house in order, hopelessly; for
any such effort the time was gone by. It was too late for the
office to be so done by, and too late for Mr. Oldeschole to do
it. He had no aptitude for new styles and modern improvements; he
could not understand Sir Gregory's code of rules, and was
dumbfounded by the Civil Service requisitions that were made upon
him from time to time. Then came frequent calls for him to attend
at Sir Gregory's office. There a new broom had been brought in,
in the place of our poor friend Alaric, a broom which seemed
determined to sweep all before it with an unmitigable energy. Mr.
Oldeschole found that he could not stand at all before this young
Hercules, seeing that his special stall was considered to be the
foulest in the whole range of the Augean stables. He soon saw
that the river was to be turned in on him, and that he was to be
officially obliterated in the flood.

The civility of those wonder-doing demigods--those Magi of the
Civil Service office--was most oppressive to him. When he got to
the board, he was always treated with a deference which he knew
was but a prelude to barbaric tortures. They would ask him to sit
down in a beautiful new leathern arm-chair, as though he were
really some great man, and then examine him as they would a
candidate for the Custom House, smiling always, but looking at
him as though they were determined to see through him.

They asked him all manner of questions; but there was one
question which they put to him, day after day, for four days,
that nearly drove him mad. It was always put by that horrid young
lynx-eyed new commissioner, who sat there with his hair brushed
high from off his forehead, peering out of his capacious,
excellently-washed shirt-collars, a personification of conscious
official zeal.

'And now, Mr. Oldeschole, if you have had leisure to consider the
question more fully, perhaps you can define to us what is the--
hum--hm--the use--hm--hm--the exact use of the Internal
Navigation Office?'

And then Sir Warwick would go on looking through his millstone as
though now he really had a hope of seeing something, and Sir
Gregory would lean back in his chair, and rubbing his hands
slowly over each other, like a great Akinetos as he was, wait
leisurely for Mr. Oldeschole's answer, or rather for his no
answer.

What a question was this to ask of a man who had spent all his
life in the Internal Navigation Office! O reader! should it
chance that thou art a clergyman, imagine what it would be to
thee, wert thou asked what is the exact use of the Church of
England; and that, too, by some stubborn catechist whom thou wert
bound to answer; or, if a lady, happy in a husband and family,
say, what would be thy feelings if demanded to define the exact
use of matrimony? Use! Is it not all in all to thee?

Mr. Oldeschole felt a hearty inward conviction that his office
had been of very great use. In the first place, had he not drawn
from it a thousand a year for the last five-and-twenty years? had
it not given maintenance and employment to many worthy men who
might perhaps have found it difficult to obtain maintenance
elsewhere? had it not always been an office, a public office of
note and reputation, with proper work assigned to it? The use of
it--the exact use of it? Mr. Oldeschole at last declared, with
some indignation in his tone, that he had been there for forty
years and knew well that the office was very useful; but that he
would not undertake to define its exact use. 'Thank you, thank
you, Mr. Oldeschole--that will do, I think,' said the very
spruce-looking new gentleman out of his shirt-collars.

In these days there was a kind of prescience at the Internal
Navigation that something special was going to be done with them.
Mr. Oldeschole said nothing openly; but it may be presumed that
he did whisper somewhat to those of the seniors around him in
whom he most confided. And then, his frequent visits to Whitehall
were spoken of even by the most thoughtless of the navvies, and
the threatenings of the coming storm revealed themselves with
more or less distinctness to every mind.

At last the thundercloud broke and the bolt fell. Mr. Oldeschole
was informed that the Lords of the Treasury had resolved on
breaking up the establishment and providing for the duties in
another way. As the word duties passed Sir Gregory's lips a
slight smile was seen to hover round the mouth of the new
commissioner. Mr. Oldeschole would, he was informed, receive an
official notification to this effect on the following morning;
and on the following morning accordingly a dispatch arrived, of
great length, containing the resolution of my Lords, and putting
an absolute extinguisher on the life of every navvy.

How Mr. Oldeschole, with tears streaming down his cheeks,
communicated the tidings to the elder brethren; and how the elder
brethren, with palpitating hearts and quivering voices, repeated
the tale to the listening juniors, I cannot now describe. The
boldest spirits were then cowed, the loudest miscreants were then
silenced, there were but few gibes, but little jeering at the
Internal Navigation on that day; though Charley, who had already
other hopes, contrived to keep up his spirits. The men stood
about talking in clusters, and old animosities were at an end.
The lamb sat down with the wolf, and Mr. Snape and Dick
Scatterall became quite confidential.

'I knew it was going to happen,' said Mr. Snape to him. 'Indeed,
Mr. Oldeschole has been consulting us about it for some time; but
I must own I did not think it would be so sudden; I must own
that.'

'If you knew it was coming,' said Corkscrew, 'why didn't you tell
a chap?'

'I was not at liberty,' said Mr. Snape, looking very wise.

'We shall all have liberty enough now,' said Scatterall; 'I
wonder what they'll do with us; eh, Charley?'

'I believe they will send the worst of us to Spike Island or
Dartmoor prison,' said Charley; 'but Mr. Snape, no doubt, has
heard and can tell us.'

'Oh, come, Charley! It don't do to chaff now,' said a young
navvy, who was especially down in the mouth. 'I wonder will they
do anything for a fellow?'

'I heard my uncle, in Parliament Street, say, that when a chap
has got any _infested_ interest in a thing, they can't turn
him out,' said Corkscrew; 'and my uncle is a parliamentary
agent.'

'Can't they though!' said Scatterall. 'It seems to me that they
mean to, at any rate; there wasn't a word about pensions or
anything of that sort, was there, Mr. Snape?'

'Not a word,' said Snape. 'But those who are entitled to pensions
can't be affected injuriously. As far as I can see they must give
me my whole salary. I don't think they can do less.'

'You're all serene then, Mr. Snape,' said Charley; 'you're in the
right box. Looking at matters in that light, Mr. Snape, I think
you ought to stand something handsome in the shape of lunch.
Come, what do you say to chops and stout all round? Dick will go
over and order it in a minute.'

'I wish you wouldn't, Charley,' said the navvy who seemed to be
most affected, and who, in his present humour, could not endure a
joke, As Mr. Snape did not seem to accede to Charley's views, the
liberal proposition fell to the ground.

'Care killed a cat,' said Scatterall. 'I shan't break my heart
about it. I never liked the shop--did you, Charley?'

'Well, I must say I think we have been very comfortable here,
under Mr. Snape,' said Charley. But if Mr. Snape is to go, why
the office certainly would be deuced dull without him.'

'Charley!' said the broken-hearted young navvy, in a tone of
reproach.

Sorrow, however, did not take away their appetite, and as Mr.
Snape did not see fitting occasion for providing a banquet, they
clubbed together, and among them managed to get a spread of
beefsteaks and porter. Scatterall, as requested, went across the
Strand to order it at the cookshop, while Corkscrew and Charley
prepared the tables. 'And now mind it's the thing,' said Dick,
who, with intimate familiarity, had penetrated into the eating-
house kitchen; 'not dry, you know, or too much done; and lots of
fat.'

And then, as the generous viands renewed their strength, and as
the potent stout warmed their blood, happier ideas came to them,
and they began to hope that the world was not all over. 'Well, I
shall try for the Customs,' said the unhappy one, after a deep
pull at the pewter. 'I shall try for the Customs; one does get
such stunning feeds for tenpence at that place in Thames Street.'
Poor youth! his ideas of earning his bread did not in their
wildest flight spread beyond the public offices of the Civil
Service.

For a few days longer they hung about the old office, doing
nothing--how could men so circumstanced do anything?--and
waiting for their fate. At last their fate was announced. Mr.
Oldeschole retired with his full salary. Secretaries and such-
like always retire with full pay, as it is necessary that dignity
should be supported. Mr. Snape and the other seniors were
pensioned, with a careful respect to their years of service; with
which arrangement they all of them expressed themselves highly
indignant, and loudly threatened to bring the cruelty of their
treatment before Parliament, by the aid of sundry members, who
were supposed to be on the look out for such work; but as nothing
further was ever heard of them, it may be presumed that the
members in question did not regard the case as one on which the
Government of the day was sufficiently vulnerable to make it
worth their while to trouble themselves. Of the younger clerks,
two or three, including the unhappy one, were drafted into other
offices; some others received one or more years' pay, and then
tore themselves away from the fascinations of London life; among
those was Mr. R. Scatterall, who, in after years, will doubtless
become a lawgiver in Hong-Kong; for to that colony has he betaken
himself. Some few others, more unfortunate than the rest, among
whom poor Screwy was the most conspicuous, were treated with a
more absolute rigour, and were sent upon the world portionless.
Screwy had been constant in his devotion to pork chops, and had
persisted in spelling blue without the final 'e.' He was
therefore, declared unworthy of any further public confidence
whatever. He is now in his uncle's office in Parliament Street;
and it is to be hoped that his peculiar talents may there be
found useful.

And so the Internal Navigation Office came to an end, and the
dull, dingy rooms were vacant. Ruthless men shovelled off as
waste paper all the lock entries of which Charley had once been
so proud; and the ponderous ledgers, which Mr. Snape had
delighted to haul about, were sent away into Cimmerian darkness,
and probably to utter destruction. And then the Internal
Navigation was no more.

Among those who were drafted into other offices was Charley, whom
propitious fate took to the Weights and Measures. But it must not
be imagined that chance took him there. The Weights and Measures
was an Elysium, the door of which was never casually open.

Charley at this time was a much-altered man; not that he had
become a good clerk at his old office--such a change one may say
was impossible; there were no good clerks at the Internal
Navigation, and Charley had so long been among navvies the most
knavish or navviest, that any such transformation would have met
with no credence--but out of his office he had become a much-
altered man. As Katie had said, it was as though some one had
come to him from the dead. He could not go back to his old
haunts, he could not return like a dog to his vomit, as long as
he had that purse so near his heart, as long as that voice
sounded in his ear, while the memory of that kiss lingered in his
heart.

He now told everything to Gertrude, all his debts, all his love,
and all his despair. There is no relief for sorrow like the
sympathy of a friend, if one can only find it. But then the
sympathy must be real; mock sympathy always tells the truth
against itself, always fails to deceive. He told everything to
Gertrude, and by her counsel he told much to Norman. He could not
speak to him, true friend as he was, of Katie and her love. There
was that about the subject which made it too sacred for man's
ears, too full of tenderness to be spoken of without feminine
tears. It was only in the little parlour at Paradise Row, when
the evening had grown dark, and Gertrude was sitting with her
baby in her arms, that the boisterous young navvy could bring
himself to speak of his love.

During these months Katie's health had greatly improved, and as
she herself had gained in strength, she had gradually begun to
think that it was yet possible for her to live. Little was now
said by her about Charley, and not much was said of him in her
hearing; but still she did learn how he had changed his office,
and with his office his mode of life; she did hear of his
literary efforts, and of his kindness to Gertrude, and it would
seem as though it were ordained that his moral life and her
physical life were to gain strength together.

CHAPTER XLVI

MR. NOGO'S LAST QUESTION

But at this time Charley was not idle. The fate of 'Crinoline and
Macassar' has not yet been told; nor has that of the two rival
chieftains, the 'Baron of Ballyporeen and Sir Anthony Allan-a-
dale.' These heartrending tales appeared in due course, bit by
bit, in the pages of the _Daily Delight_. On every morning
of the week, Sundays excepted, a page and a half of Charley's
narrative was given to the expectant public; and though I am not
prepared to say that the public received the offering with any
violent acclamations of applause, that his name became suddenly
that of a great unknown, that literary cliques talked about him
to the exclusion of other topics, or that he rose famous one
morning as Byron did after the publication of the 'Corsair,'
nevertheless something was said in his praise. The _Daily
Delight_, on the whole, was rather belittled by its grander
brethren of the press; but a word or two was said here and there
to exempt Charley's fictions from the general pooh-poohing with
which the remainder of the publication was treated.

Success, such as this even, is dear to the mind of a young
author, and Charley began to feel that he had done something. The
editor was proportionably civil to him, and he was encouraged to
commence a third historiette.

'We have polished off poison and petticoats pretty well,' said
the editor; 'what do you say to something political?'

Charley had no objection in life.

'This Divorce Bill, now--we could have half a dozen married
couples all separating, getting rid of their ribs and buckling
again, helter-skelter, every man to somebody else's wife; and the
parish parson refusing to do the work; just to show the
immorality of the thing.'

Charley said he'd think about it.

'Or the Danubian Principalities and the French Alliance--could
you manage now to lay your scene in Constantinople?'

Charley doubted whether he could.

'Or perhaps India is the thing? The Cawnpore massacre would work
up into any lengths you pleased. You could get a file of the
_Times_, you know, for your facts.'

But while the editor was giving these various valuable hints as
to the author's future subjects, the author himself, with base
mind, was thinking how much he should be paid for his past
labours. At last he ventured, in the mildest manner, to allude to
the subject.

'Payment!' said the editor.

Charley said that he had understood that there was to be some
fixed scale of pay; so much per sheet, or something of that sort.

'Undoubtedly there will,' said the editor; 'and those who will
have the courage and perseverance to work through with us, till
the publication has obtained that wide popularity which it is
sure to achieve, will doubtless be paid,--be paid as no writers
for any periodical in this metropolis have ever yet been paid.
But at present, Mr. Tudor, you really must be aware that it is
quite out of the question.'

Charley had not the courage and perseverance to work through with
the _Daily Delight_ till it had achieved its promised popularity,
and consequently left its ranks like a dastard. He consulted both
Gertrude and Norman on the subject, and on their advice set
himself to work on his own bottom. 'You may perhaps manage to
fly alone,' said Gertrude; 'but you will find it very difficult to fly if
you tie the whole weight of the _Daily Delight_ under your wings.'
So Charley prepared himself for solitary soaring.

While he was thus working, the time arrived at which Norman was
to leave his office, and it occurred to him that it might be
possible that he should bequeath his vacancy to Charley. He went
himself to Sir Gregory, and explained, not only his own
circumstances, and his former friendship with Alaric Tudor, but
also the relationship between Alaric and Charley. He then learnt,
in the strictest confidence of course, that the doom of the
Internal Navigation had just been settled, and that it would be
necessary to place in other offices those young men who could in
any way be regarded as worth their salt, and, after considerable
manoeuvring, had it so arranged that the ne'er-do-well young
navvy should recommence his official life under better auspices.

Nor did Charley come in at the bottom of his office, but was
allowed, by some inscrutable order of the great men who arranged
those things, to take a position in the Weights and Measures
equal in seniority and standing to that which he had held at the
Navigation, and much higher, of course, in pay. There is an old
saying, which the unenlightened credit, and which declares that
that which is sauce for the goose is sauce also for the gander.
Nothing put into a proverb since the days of Solomon was ever
more untrue. That which is sauce for the goose is not sauce for
the gander, and especially is not so in official life. Poor
Screwy was the goose, and certainly got the sauce best suited to
him when he was turned adrift out of the Civil Service. Charley
was the gander, and fond as I am of him for his many excellent
qualities, I am fain to own that justice might fairly have
demanded that he should be cooked after the same receipt. But it
suited certain potent personages to make a swan of him; and
therefore, though it had long been an assured fact through the
whole service that no man was ever known to enter the Weights and
Measures without the strictest examination, though the character
of aspirants for that high office was always subjected to a rigid
scrutiny, though knowledge, accomplishments, industry, morality,
outward decency, inward zeal, and all the cardinal virtues were
absolutely requisite, still Charley was admitted, without any
examination or scrutiny whatever, during the commotion consequent
upon the earthquake above described.

Charley went to the Weights some time during the recess. In the
process of the next session Mr. Nogo gave notice that he meant to
ask the Government a question as to a gross act of injustice
which had been perpetrated--so at least the matter had been
represented to him--on the suppression of the Internal Navigation
Office.

Mr. Nogo did not at first find it very easy to get a fitting
opportunity for asking his question. He had to give notice, and
inquiries had to be made, and the responsible people were away,
and various customary accidents happened, so that it was late in
June before the question was put. Mr. Nogo, however, persevered
ruthlessly, and after six months' labour, did deliver himself of
an indignant, and, as his friends declared to him, a very telling
speech.

It was reported at the time by the opposition newspapers, and
need not therefore be given here. But the upshot was this: two
men bearing equal character--Mr. Nogo would not say whether the
characters of the gentlemen were good or bad; he would only say
equal characters--sat in the same room at this now defunct
office; one was Mr. Corkscrew and the other Mr. Tudor. One had no
friends in the Civil Service, but the other was more fortunate.
Mr. Corkscrew had been sent upon the world a ruined, blighted
man, without any compensation, without any regard for his
interests, without any consideration for his past services or
future prospects. They would be told that the Government had no
further need of his labours, and that they could not dare to
saddle the country with a pension for so young a man. But what
had been done in the case of the other gentleman? Why, he had
been put into a valuable situation, in the best Government office
in London, had been placed over the heads of a dozen others, who
had been there before him, &c., &c., &c. And then Mr. Nogo ended
with so vehement an attack on Sir Gregory, and the Government as
connected with him, that the dogs began to whet their teeth and
prepare for a tug at the great badger.