John Caldigate I

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

small gravel, or welded together in a lump too heavy to be lift­ed, has a peculiar charm of its own. I have heard of a man who, having his pocket full of diamonds, declared, as he let them run through his fingers, that human bliss could not go beyond that sensation. John Caldigate did not shoe his horse with gold; but he liked to feel that he had enough gold by him to shoe a whole team. He could not return home quite as yet. His af­fairs were too complicated to be left quite at a moment’s notice. If, as he hoped, he should find himself able to leave the colony within four years of the day on which he had begun work, and could then do so with an adequate fortune, he believed that he should have done better than any other Englishman who had set himself to the task of gold-finding. In none of his letters did he say anything special about Hester Bolton; but his inquiries about the family generally were so frequent as to make his fa­ther wonder why such questions should be asked. The squire himself, who was living hardly a dozen miles from Mr. Bolton’s house, did not see the old banker above once a quarter per­haps and the ladies of the family certainly not oftener than once a year. Very little was said in answer to any of John’s in­quiries. ‘Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Bolton are, I believe, quite well.’ So much was declared in one of the old squire’s letters; and even that little served to make known that at any rate, so far, no tidings as to marriage on the part of Hester had reached the ear of her father’s old friend. Perhaps this was all that John Caldigate wanted to learn.

On his arrival in England John Caldigate went instantly down to Folking. He had come back quite fortified in his res­olution of making Hester Bolton his wife, if he should find Hester Bolton willing and if she should have grown at all into that form and manner, into those ways of look, of speech, and of gait, which he had pictured to himself when think­ing of her. Away at Nobble the females by whom he had been surrounded had not been attractive to him. In all our colonies the women are beautiful and in the large towns a society is soon created, of which the fastidious traveller has very little ground to complain; but in the small distant bush-towns, as they are called, the rougher elements must predominate Our hero, though he had worn moleskin trousers and jersey shirts, and had worked down a pit twelve hours a-day with a pick­axe, had never reconciled himself to female roughnesses. He had condescended to do so occasionally — telling himself that it was his destiny to pass his life among such surround­ings; but his imagination had ever been at work with him, and he possessed a certain aptitude for romance which told him continually that Hester Bolton was the dream of his life, and

ought to become, if possible, the reality; and now he came back resolved to attempt the reality — unless he should find that the Hester Bolton of Chesterton was altogether different from the Hester Bolton of his dreams.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

all the decision of purpose which comes to a man when he is called upon to act quickly on his own judgment in matters of importance; and there was that look of self-confidence which success gives. He had thriven in all that he had undertaken. In that gold-finding business of his he had made no mistakes. Men who had been at it when a boy had tried to cheat him, but had failed. He had seen into such mysteries as the business possessed with quick glances, and had soon learned to know his way. And he had neither gambled nor drank — which are the two rocks on which gold-miners are apt to wreck their vessels. All this gave him an air of power and self-assertion which might, perhaps, have been distasteful to an indifferent acquaintance, but which at this first meeting was very pleas­ing to the father. His son was somebody — had done some­thing, that son of whom he had been so thoroughly ashamed when the dealings with Davis had first been brought to light. He had kept up his reading too; had strong opinions of his own respecting politics; regarded the colonies generally from a po­litico-economical point of view; had ideas on social, religious, and literary subjects sufficiently alike to his father’s not to be made disagreeable by the obstinacy with which he maintained them. He had become much darker in colour, having been, as it seemed, bronzed through and through by colonial suns and colonial labour. Altogether he was a son of whom any father might be proud, as long as the father managed not to quar­rel with him. Mr. Caldigate, who during the last four years had thought very much on the subject, was determined not to quarrel with his son.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

‘I don’t think I ever knew such a houseful of fools.’ There was no relationship by blood between the Squire of Folking and the Squire of Babington; but they had married two sis­ters, and therefore Mrs. Babington was Aunt Polly to John Caldigate.

‘But fools may be very worthy, sir. I should say that a great many people are fools to you.’

‘I deny it. Our neighbour over the water’ — the middle wash was always called the water at Folking — ‘never looks at a book, as far as I know, and he is not a fool. He thorough­ly understands his own business But your uncle Babington doesn’t know how to manage his own property — and yet he knows nothing else. That’s what I call being a fool.’

‘Now, I’m going to tell you a secret, sir.’