Folking
Perhaps it was more the fault of Daniel Caldigate
the father than of his son John Caldigate, that they
two could not live together in comfort in the days
of the young man’s early youth. And yet
it would have been much for both of them that such
comfortable association should have been possible
to them. Wherever the fault lay, or the chief
fault—for probably there was some on both
sides—the misfortune was so great as to
bring crushing troubles upon each of them.
There were but the two of which to make a household.
When John was fifteen, and had been about a year at
Harrow, he lost his mother and his two little sisters
almost at a blow. The two girls went first, and
the poor mother, who had kept herself alive to see
them die, followed them almost instantly. Then
Daniel Caldigate had been alone.
And he was a man who knew how to live alone,—a
just, hard, unsympathetic man,—of whom
his neighbours said, with something of implied reproach,
that he bore up strangely when he lost his wife and
girls. This they said, because he was to be seen
riding about the country, and because he was to be
heard talking to the farmers and labourers as though
nothing special had happened to him. It was rumoured
of him, too, that he was as constant with his books
as before; and he had been a man always constant with
his books; and also that he had never been seen to
shed a tear, or been heard to speak of those who had
been taken from him.
He was, in truth, a stout, self-constraining man,
silent unless when he had something to say. Then
he could become loud enough, or perhaps it might be
said, eloquent. To his wife he had been inwardly
affectionate, but outwardly almost stern. To
his daughters he had been the same,—always
anxious for every good thing on their behalf, but never
able to make the children conscious of this anxiety.
When they were taken from him, he suffered in silence,
as such men do suffer; and he suffered the more because
he knew well how little of gentleness there had been
in his manners with them.
But he had hoped, as he sat alone in his desolate
house, that it would be different with him and his
only son,—with his son who was now the
only thing left to him. But the son was a boy,
and he had to look forward to what years might bring
him rather than to present happiness from that source.
When the boy came home for his holidays, the father
would sometimes walk with him, and discourse on certain
chosen subjects,—on the politics of the
day, in regard to which Mr. Caldigate was an advanced
Liberal, on the abomination of the Game Laws, on the
folly of Protection, on the antiquated absurdity of
a State Church;—as to all which matters
his son John lent him a very inattentive ear.
Then the lad would escape and kill rabbits, or rats,
or even take birds’ nests, with a zest for such
pursuits which was disgusting to the father, though
he would not absolutely forbid them. Then John
would be allured to go to his uncle Babington’s
house, where there was a pony on which he could hunt,
and fishing-rods, and a lake with a boat, and three
fine bouncing girl-cousins, who made much of him,
and called him Jack; so that he soon preferred his
uncle Babington’s house, and would spend much
of his holidays at Babington House.
