Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance · Chapter 4 (1/2)

IV

A Necessary Development

The few friends who have read the first part of my autobiography may perhaps remember that in my younger days I had engaged myself to a girl named Ellen, from whom afterwards I parted. After some two or three years she was left an orphan, and came into the possession of a small property, over which unfortunately she had complete power. She was attractive and well-educated, and I heard long after I had broken with her, and had ceased to have intercourse with Butts, that the two were married. He of course, living so near her, had known her well, and he found her money useful. How they agreed I knew not save by report, but I was told that after the first child was born, the only child they ever had, Butts grew indifferent to her, and that she, to use my friend’s expression, “went off,” by which I suppose he meant that she faded. There happened in those days to live near Butts a small squire, married, but with no family. He was a lethargic creature, about five-and-thirty years old, farming eight hundred acres of his own land. He did not, however, belong to the farming class. He had been to Harrow, was on the magistrates’ bench, and associated with the small aristocracy of the country round. He was like every other squire whom I remember in my native county, and I can remember scores of them. He read no books and tolerated the usual conventional breaches of the moral law, but was an intense worshipper of respectability, and hated a scandal. On one point he differed from his neighbours. He was a Whig and they were all Tories. I have said he read no books, and this, on the whole, is true, but nevertheless he did know something about the history of the early part of the century, and he was rather fond at political gatherings of making some allusion to Mr. Fox. His father had sat in the House of Commons when Fox was there, and had sternly opposed the French war. I don’t suppose that anybody not actually in it⁠—no Londoner certainly⁠—can understand the rigidity of the bonds which restricted county society when I was young, and for aught I know may restrict it now. There was with us one huge and dark exception to the general uniformity. The earl had broken loose, had ruined his estate, had defied decorum and openly lived with strange women at home and in Paris, but this black background did but set off the otherwise universal adhesion to the Church and to authorised manners, an adhesion tempered and rendered tolerable by port wine. It must not, however, be supposed that human nature was different from the human nature of today or a thousand years ago. There were then, even as there were a thousand years ago, and are today, small, secret doors, connected with mysterious staircases, by which access was gained to freedom; and men and women, inmates of castles with walls a yard thick, and impenetrable portcullises, sought those doors and descended those stairs night and day. But nobody knew, or if we did know, the silence was profound. The broad-shouldered, yellow-haired Whig squire, had a wife who was the opposite of him. She came from a distant part of the country, and had been educated in France. She was small, with black hair, and yet with blue eyes. She spoke French perfectly, was devoted to music, read French books, and, although she was a constant attendant at church, and gave no opportunity whatever for the slightest suspicion, the matrons of the circle in which she moved were never quite happy about her. This was due partly to her knowledge of French, and partly to her having no children. Anything more about her I do not know. She was beyond us, and although I have seen her often enough I never spoke to her. Butts, however, managed to become a visitor at the squire’s house. Fancy my going to the squire’s! But Butts did, was accepted there, and even dined there with a parson, and two or three half-pay officers. The squire never called on Butts. That was an understood thing, nor did Mrs. Butts accompany her husband. That also was an understood thing. It was strange that Butts could tolerate and even court such a relationship. Most men would scorn with the scorn of a personal insult an invitation to a house from which their wives were expressly excluded. The squire’s lady and Clem became great friends. She discovered that his mother was a Frenchwoman, and this was a bond between them. She discovered also that Clem was artistic, that he was devotedly fond of music, that he could draw a little, paint a little, and she believed in the divine right of talent wherever it might be found to assert a claim of equality with those who were better born. The women in the countryside were shy of her; for the men she could not possibly care, and no doubt she must at times have got rather weary of her heavy husband with his one outlook towards the universal in the person of George James Fox, and the Whig policy of 1802. I am under some disadvantage in telling this part of my story, because I was far away from home, and only knew afterwards at second hand what the course of events had been; but I learned them from one who was intimately concerned, and I do not think I can be mistaken on any essential point. I imagine that by this time Mrs. Butts must have become changed into what she was in later years. She had grown older since she and I had parted; she had seen trouble; her child had been born, and although she was not exactly estranged from Clem, for neither he nor she would have admitted any coolness, she had learned that she was nothing specially to him. I have often noticed what an imperceptible touch, what a slight shifting in the balance of opposing forces, will alter the character. I have observed a woman, for example, essentially the same at twenty and thirty⁠—who is there who is not always essentially the same?⁠—and yet, what was a defect at twenty, has become transformed and transfigured into a benignant virtue at thirty; translating the whole nature from the human to the divine. Some slight depression has been wrought here, and some slight lift has been given there, and beauty and order have miraculously emerged from what was chaotic. The same thing may continually be noticed in the hereditary transmission of qualities. The redeeming virtue of the father palpably present in the son becomes his curse, through a faint diminution of the strength of the check which caused that virtue to be the father’s salvation. The propensity, too, which is a man’s evil genius, and leads him to madness and utter ruin, gives vivid reality to all his words and thoughts, and becomes all his strength, if by divine assistance it can just be subdued and prevented from rising in victorious insurrection. But this is a digression, useful, however, in its way, because it will explain Mrs. Butts when we come a little nearer to her in the future.

For a time Clem’s visits to the squire’s house always took place when the squire was at home, but an amateur concert was to be arranged in which Clem was to take part together with the squire’s lady. Clem consequently was obliged to go to the Hall for the purpose of practising, and so it came to pass that he was there at unusual hours and when the master was afield. These morning and afternoon calls did not cease when the concert was over. Clem’s wife did not know anything about them, and, if she noticed his frequent absence, she was met with an excuse. Perhaps the worst, or almost the worst effect of relationships which we do not like to acknowledge, is the secrecy and equivocation which they beget. From the very first moment when the intimacy between the squire’s wife and Clem began to be anything more than harmless, he was compelled to shuffle and to become contemptible. At the same time I believe he defended himself against himself with the weapons which were ever ready when self rose against self because of some wrongdoing. He was not as other men. It was absurd to class what he did with what an ordinary person might do, although externally his actions and those of the ordinary person might resemble one another. I cannot trace the steps by which the two sinners drew nearer and nearer together, for the simple reason that this is an autobiography, and not a novel. I do not know what the development was, nor did anybody except the person concerned. Neither do I know what was the mental history of Mrs. Butts during this unhappy period. She seldom talked about it afterwards. I do, however, happen to recollect hearing her once say that her greatest trouble was the cessation, from some unknown cause, of Clem’s attempts⁠—they were never many⁠—to interest and amuse her. It is easy to understand how this should be. If a man is guilty of any defection from himself, of anything of which he is ashamed, everything which is better becomes a farce to him. After he has been betrayed by some passion, how can he pretend to the perfect enjoyment of what is pure? The moment he feels any disposition to rise, he is stricken through as if with an arrow, and he drops. Not until weeks, months, and even years have elapsed, does he feel justified in surrendering himself to a noble emotion. I have heard of persons who have been able to ascend easily and instantaneously from the mud to the upper air, and descend as easily; but to me at least they are incomprehensible. Clem, less than most men, suffered permanently, or indeed in any way from remorse, because he was so shielded by his peculiar philosophy; but I can quite believe that when he got into the habit of calling at the Hall at midday, his behaviour to his wife changed.

One day in December the squire had gone out with the hounds. Clem, going on from bad to worse, had now reached the point of planning to be at the Hall when the squire was not at home. On that particular afternoon Clem was there. It was about half-past four o’clock, and the master was not expected till six. There had been some music, the lady accompanying, and Clem singing. It was over, and Clem, sitting down beside her at the piano, and pointing out with his right hand some passage which had troubled him, had placed his left arm on her shoulder, and round her neck, she not resisting. He always swore afterwards that never till then had such a familiarity as this been permitted, and I believe that he did not tell a lie. But what was there in that familiarity? The worst was already there, and it was through a mere accident that it never showed itself. The accident was this. The squire, for some unknown reason, had returned earlier than usual, and dismounting in the stable-yard, had walked round the garden on the turf which came close to the windows of the ground floor. Passing the drawing-room window, and looking in by the edge of the drawn-down blind, he saw his wife and Clem just at the moment described. He slipped round to the door, took off his boots so that he might not be heard, and as there was a large screen inside the room he was able to enter it unobserved. Clem caught sight of him just as he emerged from behind the screen, and started up instantly in great confusion, the lady, with greater presence of mind, remaining perfectly still. Without a word the squire strode up to Clem, struck out at him, caught him just over the temple, and felled him instantaneously. He lay for some time senseless, and what passed between husband and wife I cannot say. After about ten minutes, perhaps, Clem came to himself; there was nobody to be seen; and he managed to get up and crawl home. He told his wife he had met with an accident; that he would go to bed, and that she should know all about it when he was better. His forehead was dressed, and to bed he went. That night Mrs. Butts had a letter. It ran as follows:⁠—

Madam⁠—It may at first sight seem a harsh thing for me to write and tell you what I have to say, but I can assure you I do not mean to be anything but kind to you, and I think it will be better, for reasons which I will afterwards explain, that I should communicate with you rather than with your husband. For some time past I have suspected that he was too fond of my wife, and last night I caught him with his arms round her neck. In a moment of not unjustifiable anger I knocked him down. I have not the honour of knowing you personally, but from what I have heard of you I am sure that he has not the slightest reason for playing with other women. A man who will do what he has done will be very likely to conceal from you the true cause of his disaster, and if you know the cause you may perhaps be able to reclaim him. If he has any sense of honour left in him, and of what is due to you, he will seek your pardon for his baseness, and you will have a hold on him afterwards which you would not have if you were in ignorance of what has happened. For him I do not care a straw, but for you I feel deeply, and I believe that my frankness with you, although it may cause you much suffering now, will save you more hereafter. I have only one condition to make. Mr. Butts must leave this place, and never let me see his face again. He has ruined my peace. Nothing will be published through me, for, as far as I can prevent it, I will have no public exposure. If Mr. Butts were to remain here it would be dangerous for us to meet, and probably everything, by some chance, would become common property.⁠—Believe me to be, Madam, with many assurances of respect, truly yours⁠—.

I cannot distinguish the precise proportion of cruelty in this letter. Did the writer designedly torture Butts by telling his wife, or did he really think that she would in the end be happier because Butts would not have a secret reserved from her⁠—a temptation to lying⁠—and because with this secret in her possession, he might perhaps be restrained in future? Nobody knows. All we know is that there are very few human actions of which it can be said that this or that taken by itself produced them. With our inborn tendency to abstract, to separate mentally the concrete into factors which do not exist separately, we are always disposed to assign causes which are too simple, and which, in fact, have no being in rerum natura. Nothing in nature is propelled or impeded by one force acting alone. There is no such thing, save in the brain of the mathematician. I see no reason why even motives diametrically opposite should not unite in one resulting deed, and think it very probable that the squire was both cruel and merciful to the same person in the letter; influenced by exactly conflicting passions, whose conflict ended so.

As to the squire and his wife, they lived together just as before. I do not think, that, excepting the four persons concerned, anybody ever heard a syllable about the affair, save myself a long while afterwards. Clem, however, packed up and left the town, after selling his business. He had a reputation for restlessness; and his departure, although it was sudden, was no surprise. He betook himself to Australia, his wife going with him. I heard that they had gone, and heard also that he was tired of school-keeping in England, and had determined to try his fortune in another part of the world. Our friendship had dwindled to nothing, and I thought no more about him. Mrs. Butts never uttered one word of reproach to her husband. I cannot say that she loved him as she could have loved, but she had accepted him, and she said to herself that as perhaps it was through her lack of sympathy with him that he had strayed, it was her duty more and more to draw him to herself. She had a divine disposition, not infrequent amongst women, to seek in herself the reason for any wrong which was done to her. That almost instinctive tendency in men, to excuse, to transfer blame to others, to be angry with somebody else when they suffer from the consequences of their own misdeeds, in her did not exist.