Born in Exile (4 page)

'I don't mind tellin' you, Godwin,' pursued Andrew presently, in
a cautious voice, laying an open hand against his trousers-pocket,
'as I've been a-doin' pretty good business lytely. Been growin' a
bit—see? I'm runnin' round an' keepin' my heyes open understand?
Thoughts I, now, if I could come acrosst a nicet little openin',
somethink in the rest'rant line,
that's
what 'ud sewt me
jest about down to the ground. I'm cut out for it—see? I've got the
practical experience, and I've got the capital; and as soon as I
got a squint of this little corner shop—understand what I
mean?'

His eyes gleamed with eagerness which was too candid for the
typically vulgar mind. In his self-satisfaction he exhibited a
gross cordiality which might have made rather an agreeable
impression on a person otherwise disinterested.

At this point the asthmatic woman reappeared, carrying a laden
tray. Andrew at once entered into conversation with her, framing
his remarks and queries so as to learn all he could concerning the
state of the business and the disposition of its proprietors. His
nephew, meanwhile, stung to the core with shame, kept apart, as if
amusing himself with the prospect from the window, until summoned
to partake of the meal. His uncle expressed contempt of everything
laid before them.

'
This
ain't no wye of caterin' for young gents at
Collige!' he exclaimed. 'If there ain't a openin' 'ere, then I
never see one. Godwin, bo-oy, 'ow much longer'll it be before
you're out of you're time over there?'

'It's uncertain—I can't say.'

'But ain't it understood as you stay till you've passed the top
standard, or whatever it's called?'

'I really haven't made up my mind what to do.'

'But you'll be studyin' 'ere for another twelve months, I
dessay?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Why? cos s'posin' I got 'old o' this 'ere little shop, or
another like it close by, me an' you might come to an
understandin'—see? It might be worth your while to give a 'int to
the young gents as you're in with—eh?'

Godwin was endeavouring to masticate a piece of toast, but it
turned to sawdust upon his palate. Of a sudden, when the bilious
gloom of his countenance foretold anything but mirth, he burst into
hard laughter. Andrew smote him jovially on the back.

'Tickles you, eh, bo-oy? "Peak's Refreshment an' Dinin' Rooms!"
Everything tip-top, mind; respectable business, Godwin; nothing for
nobody to be ashamed of—
that
wouldn't do, of course.'

The young man's laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun, but
his visage was no longer clouded with bitter misery. A strange
indifference seemed to have come upon him, and whilst the
speculative uncle talked away with increasing excitement, he ate
and drank heedlessly.

'Mother expects you to-morrow, she tells me,' said Andrew, when
his companion's taciturnity had suggested a change of topic.
'Shouldn't wonder if you see me over at Twybridge again before
long. I was to remember your awnt and your cousin Jowey to you. You
wouldn't know Jowey? the sharpest lad of his age as ever I knowed,
is Jowey. Your father 'ud a' took a delight in 'im, if 'e'd lived,
that 'e would.'

For a quarter of an hour or so the dialogue was concerned with
domestic history. Godwin gave brief reply to many questions, but
asked none, not even such as civility required. The elder man,
however, was unaffected by this reticence, and when at length his
nephew pleaded an engagement as excuse for leave-taking he shook
hands with much warmth. The two parted close by the shop, and
Godwin, casting a glance at the now silent College, walked hastily
towards his lodgings.

In the prosperous year of 1856, incomes of between a hundred and
a hundred and fifty pounds were chargeable with a tax of
elevenpence halfpenny in the pound: persons who enjoyed a revenue
of a hundred and fifty or more had the honour of paying one and
fourpence. Abatements there were none, and families supporting life
on two pounds a week might in some cases, perchance, be reconciled
to the mulct by considering how equitably its incidence was
graduated.

Some, on the other hand, were less philosophical; for instance,
the household consisting of Nicholas Peak, his wife, their
three-year-old daughter, their newly-born son, and a blind sister
of Nicholas, dependent upon him for sustenance. Mr. Peak, aged
thirty and now four years wedded, had a small cottage on the
outskirts of Greenwich. He was employed as dispenser, at a salary
of thirty-five shillings a week, by a medical man with a large
practice. His income, therefore, fell considerably within the
hundred pound limit; and, all things considered, it was not
unreasonable that he should be allowed to expend the whole of this
sum on domestic necessities. But it came to pass that Nicholas, in
his greed of wealth, obtained supplementary employment, which
benefited him to the extent of a yearly ten pounds. Called upon to
render his statement to the surveyor of income-tax, he declared
himself in possession of a hundred and one pounds per annum;
consequently, he stood indebted to the Exchequer in the sum of four
pounds, sixteen shillings, and ninepence. His countenance darkened,
as also did that of Mrs. Peak.

'This is wrong and cruel—dreadfully cruel!' cried the latter,
with tears in her eyes.

'It is; but that's no new thing,' was the bitter reply.

'I think it's wrong of
you
, Nicholas. What need is there
to say anything about that ten pounds? It's taking the food out of
our mouths.'

Knowing only the letter of the law, Mr. Peak answered
sternly:

'My income is a hundred and one pounds. I can't sign my name to
a lie.'

Picture the man. Tall, gaunt, with sharp intellectual features,
and eyes of singular beauty, the face of an enthusiast—under given
circumstances, of a hero. Poorly clad, of course, but with rigorous
self-respect; his boots polished,
propria manu
, to the point
of perfection; his linen washed and ironed by the indefatigable
wife. Of simplest tastes, of most frugal habits, a few books the
only luxury which he deemed indispensable; yet a most difficult man
to live with, for to him applied precisely the description which
Robert Burns gave of his own father; he was 'of stubborn, ungainly
integrity and headlong irascibility'.

Ungainly, for his strong impulses towards culture were powerless
to obliterate the traces of his rude origin. Born in a London
alley, the son of a labourer burdened with a large family, he had
made his way by sheer force of character to a position which would
have seemed proud success but for the difficulty with which he kept
himself alive. His parents were dead. Of his brothers, two had
disappeared in the abyss, and one, Andrew, earned a hard livelihood
as a journeyman baker; the elder of his sisters had married poorly,
and the younger was his blind pensioner. Nicholas had found a wife
of better birth than his own, a young woman with country kindred in
decent circumstances, though she herself served as nursemaid in the
house of the medical man who employed her future husband. He had
taught himself the English language, so far as grammar went, but
could not cast off the London accent; Mrs. Peak was fortunate
enough to speak with nothing worse than the note of the
Midlands.

His bent led him to the study of history, politics, economics,
and in that time of military outbreak he was frenzied by the
conflict of his ideals with the state of things about him. A book
frequently in his hands was Godwin's
Political Justice
, and
when a son had been born to him he decided to name the child after
that favourite author. In this way, at all events, he could find
some expression for his hot defiance of iniquity.

He paid his income-tax, and felt a savage joy in the privation
thus imposed upon his family. Mrs. Peak could not forgive her
husband, and in this case, though she had but dim appreciation of
the point of honour involved, her censures doubtless fell on
Nicholas's vulnerable spot; it was the perversity of arrogance, at
least as much as honesty, that impelled him to incur taxation. His
wife's perseverance in complaint drove him to stern impatience, and
for a long time the peace of the household suffered.

When the boy Godwin was five years old, the death of his blind
aunt came as a relief to means which were in every sense overtaxed.
Twelve months later, a piece of unprecedented good fortune seemed
to place the Peaks beyond fear of want, and at the same time to
supply Nicholas with a fulfilment of hopeless desires. By the death
of Mrs Peak's brother, they came into possession of a freehold
house and about nine hundred pounds. The property was situated some
twelve miles from the Midland town of Twybridge, and thither they
at once removed. At Twybridge lived Mrs. Peak's elder sister, Miss
Cadman; but between this lady and her nearest kinsfolk there had
been but slight correspondence—the deceased Cadman left her only a
couple of hundred pounds. With capital at command, Nicholas Peak
took a lease of certain fields near his house, and turned farmer.
The study of chemistry had given a special bent to his economic
speculations; he fancied himself endowed with exceptional aptitude
for agriculture, and the scent of the furrow brought all his
energies into feverish activity—activity which soon impoverished
him: that was in the order of things. 'Ungainly integrity' and
'headlong irascibility' wrought the same results for the
ex-dispenser as for the Ayrshire husbandman. His farming came to a
chaotic end; and when the struggling man died, worn out at
forty-three, his wife and children (there was now a younger boy,
Oliver, named after the Protector) had no very bright
prospects.

Things went better with them than might have been anticipated.
To Mrs. Peak her husband's death was not an occasion of unmingled
mourning. For the last few years she had suffered severely from
domestic discord, and when left at peace by bereavement she turned
with a sense of liberation to the task of caring for her children's
future. Godwin was just thirteen, Oliver was eleven; both had been
well schooled, and with the help of friends they might soon be put
in the way of self-support. The daughter, Charlotte, sixteen years
of age, had accomplishments which would perhaps be profitable. The
widow decided to make a home in Twybridge, where Miss Cadman kept a
millinery shop. By means of this connection, Charlotte presently
found employment for her skill in fine needlework. Mrs. Peak was
incapable of earning money, but the experiences of her early
married life enabled her to make more than the most of the pittance
at her disposal.

Miss Cadman was a woman of active mind, something of a
busy-body—dogmatic, punctilious in her claims to respect, proud of
the acknowledgment by her acquaintances that she was not as other
tradespeople; her chief weakness was a fanatical ecclesiasticism,
the common blight of English womanhood. Circumstances had allowed
her a better education than generally falls to women of that
standing, and in spite of her shop she succeeded in retaining the
friendship of certain ladies long ago her schoolfellows. Among
these were the Misses Lumb—middle-aged sisters, who lived at
Twybridge on a small independence, their time chiefly devoted to
the support of the Anglican Church. An eldest Miss Lumb had been
fortunate enough to marry that growing potentate of the Midlands,
Mr. Job Whitelaw. Now Lady Whitelaw, she dwelt at Kingsmill, but
her sisters frequently enjoyed the honour of entertaining her, and
even Miss Cadman the milliner occasionally held converse with the
baronet's wife. In this way it came to pass that the Widow Peak and
her children were brought under the notice of persons who sooner or
later might be of assistance to them.

Abounding in emphatic advice, Miss Cadman easily persuaded her
sister that Godwin must go to school for at least two years longer.
The boys had been at a boarding-school twenty miles away from their
country home; it would be better for them now to be put under the
care of some Twybridge teacher—such an one as Miss Cadman's
acquaintances could recommend. For her own credit, the milliner was
anxious that these nephews of hers should not be running about the
town as errand-boys or the like, and with prudence there was no
necessity for such degradation. An uncommon lad like Godwin (she
imagined him named after the historic earl) must not be robbed of
his fair chance in life; she would gladly spare a little money for
his benefit; he was a boy to repay such expenditure.

Indeed it seemed probable. Godwin devoured books, and had a
remarkable faculty for gaining solid information on any subject
that took his fancy. What might be the special bent of his mind one
could not yet discover. He read poetry with precocious gusto, but
at the same time his aptitude for scientific pursuits was strongly
marked. In botany, chemistry, physics, he made progress which the
people about him, including his schoolmaster, were incapable of
appreciating; and already the collection of books left by his
father, most of them out of date, failed to satisfy his curiosity.
It might be feared that tastes so discursive would be
disadvantageous to a lad who must needs pursue some definite
bread-study, and the strain of self-consciousness which grew strong
in him was again a matter for concern. He cared nothing for boyish
games and companionship; in the society of strangers especially of
females—he behaved with an excessive shyness which was easily
mistaken for a surly temper. Reproof, correction, he could not
endure, and it was fortunate that the decorum of his habits made
remonstrance seldom needful.

Ludicrous as the project would have appeared to any unbiassed
observer of character, Miss Cadman conceived a hope that Godwin
might become a clergyman. From her point of view it was natural to
assume that uncommon talents must be devoted to the service of the
Church, and she would have gladly done her utmost for the practical
furthering of such an end. Mrs. Peak, though well aware that her
son had imbibed the paternal prejudices, was disposed to entertain
the same hope, despite solid obstacles. For several years she had
nourished a secret antagonism to her husband's spirit of political,
social, and religious rebellion, and in her widowhood she speedily
became a pattern of the conservative female. It would have
gratified her to discern any possibility of Godwin's assuming the
priestly garb. And not alone on the ground of conscience. Long ago
she had repented the marriage which connected her with such a
family as that of the Peaks, and she ardently desired that the
children, now exclusively her own, might enter life on a plane
superior to their father's.