The Quality of Mercy: A Novel

  “Two hundred and fifty pounds is a lot of money,” he said. “I wonder if you realize how much. It is easily enough to establish you in some independent business on your own, or if you thought of investing it I could arrange through my bank for you to realize a good return on the money. Two hundred and fifty pounds, invested wisely, could bring you seven shillings a week. When you marry and start a family, that would be a great resource to you, coming in addition to your wages.”

  “There must be more to it than that. Tha canna be only wantin’ to do me a favor.”

  “The Dene is a place of great natural beauty,” Kemp said. Things were not going as he had expected. The offer of money had brought no change in the young man’s face or manner. “It should be kept as a whole, not divided up into smallholdings. All the character would be gone.”

  Michael looked for some moments in silence at the stranger sitting so close to him, who had been a guest of Lord Spenton’s, who had been seen riding round the place, asking questions, looking at everything. Since he had first started playing handball, eight years ago now, he had waited quite often in this shed with the one who was shortly to be his opponent on the court, and some strain of antagonism had developed in these moments of waiting, a period of mutual assessment, of firm intention to win, to prevail. He recognized the feeling now, it was the same; they had come to the shed to meet as opponents, one to win and one to lose.

  “Tha’s off’rin’ me two hunnerd an’ fifty pound so the Dene can keep its character?” he said.

  “Well, there is more to it than that. I have learned that you bought the land out of care for your father. I was sorry indeed to hear of the accident that befell him, you have my deepest condolences. Obviously, he cannot now fulfill the ambition of making a garden there. Not to be able to make him this gift must have been a great blow to you and aggravated the loss, and this consideration has influenced me in making the offer, which I feel to be not excessive at all but just and appropriate under the circumstances.”

  “How does tha know so much? Tha must be him that wants to make the road through. He said there was someone.”

  “Who was it said that?”

  “The notary, Mr. Bathgate, when he came to make out the deed of sale.”

  “I see, yes.” He had been too high-handed with Bathgate. He had realized it at the time, but too late; aided by enmity and no doubt by native shrewdness, the rogue had sniffed him out. “I had formed such an idea, yes,” he said. “I will make it three hundred and fifty pounds, immediate cash.”

  The two regarded each other closely for some moments. The words of condolence, rendered meaningless—as it seemed to him—by the swift jumping-up of the price, had gone down badly with Michael, who was in grief for his father, not long since buried. A faint smell of hyacinths came from the other’s person, scent of some kind. He was in riding clothes, obviously expensive: high-collared frock coat, jack boots and spurs; a tall hat rested on his knees as he sat there; the cravat looked like silk, the pin in it looked like silver. His clothes, Michael estimated, would have cost more than he himself could earn in a year’s work down the mine. He owned a bank, as it seemed; he would have a grand house. And yet he sits there, Michael thought, offering sums that are nothing to him, trying to whittle away my chances. He belongs among those who killed my father and others besides, out of greed, whittling away at the pillars of coal until they are not strong enough to hold up the roof.

  “He told me I should sell to naybody,” he said.

  “He gave you bad advice. How long will you have to work on that bit of land, and plant and sow and cart your produce to where you can sell it, how long before you have three hundred and fifty pounds in your pocket?”

  “Tha talks as if them was the only choices,” Michael said, and there was a note of anger now in his voice, though he still spoke quietly. “But tha knows full well there is another way.”

  He paused on this, thinking of his wealth of choices, knowing already which choice would be his. Choice was wealth. He remembered the sitting room at Wingfield, where he had waited for Lord Spenton to see him. The furniture came back to his mind, the objects in the room, the lions’ heads on the drawers, the several chairs, the divan that fitted into a corner, the numerous pictures on the walls. Choice was having things you didn’t need but wanted to have—the silk cravat, the silver pin; choice gave you freedom from need. His father had labored all his life to escape from this cage of need; he himself had been imprisoned in it from the age of seven. And now this man was striving to keep him caged.

  “Tha was hopin’ a didna know,” he said. “Tha was thinkin’ to take me for a fool. A will not work on the land an’ a will not sell it, not to you, not to naybody. Them that use the road will pay for passage as long as they gan on bringin’ out the coal. Me an’ my fam’ly will have a share in the money that’s made from it. Why should you have it all? That’s what my father would have wanted for us, that’s what he would have said if he’d been standin’ here today.”

  In the face of these words and the look that accompanied them, Kemp found little to say. He was intending to point out, as he got to his feet, that there could in the nature of things be no certainty as to what the father would have wanted or what he would have said; there was only one certainty in the matter, which was that those interpreting the wishes of the dead would study their own advantage and convenience.

  These sage remarks, delivered with the authority of his greater age and wider experience, might have gone some way to lessen the sting of his defeat, the bitter knowledge that this miner he had thought so ignorant had proved him wrong, worsted him, shown him up, and all without even raising his voice. But as he hesitated on the brink of speech, some delayed and changed reaction to Bordon’s last words came to him. He looked again, more closely now, at the young man’s face, and as he did so, as he met the other’s clear and determined gaze, he was pierced suddenly and unexpectedly by a feeling of fellowship completely new to him, an emotion like an ambush, something lying in wait for just such an unwary moment. He had resisted the comparison when Jane made it. Debts are not wishes, he had said. But they were, they were—he had been wrong.

  It was himself that he was looking at, not an adversary, not someone to be outwitted, but the young man he had been fourteen years before, when he had lost his own father at much the same age. The ambitions were his own, the need to repair things, to refashion the world after such loss. But the man before him did not see debts to pay; he sought to make his father the giver of blessings, the giver of freedom from drudgery and want. Of course there was self-interest in it—no human motive was free from this, in Kemp’s view—but there was much more besides, so much more … He felt a tightness in his throat as he held out a hand to the other and felt it, after some hesitation, grasped and held, though briefly. “Good luck to you, Michael Bordon,” he said. “You have been in the right today.” And as he spoke it was strangely as if, in spite of the reluctance to take his hand, in spite of his own lingering sense of defeat, the congratulation was for them both.

  There was no other form of farewell between them. As Kemp rode back to the inn, the sense of kinship faded, the sting of the defeat returned and with it the knowledge of financial loss. In the light of what he knew now about Michael Bordon, it was highly unlikely that the young man could be beguiled into accepting anything less than the standard rate for a wayleave of such a kind. Jane too had been wrong about the young man, he thought, but somehow she had come closer to the truth of things than he had. It was the kind of distinction he was not used to making, and he puzzled over it for a while without coming to any definite conclusion. But when they met he would tell her how things had gone, he would not conceal anything, he would confess the sympathy that had taken him so unawares. Sympathy for an opponent, and one, moreover, who had defeated him, an emotion deep enough almost to bring tears. She would be pleased to hear of this rush of feeling on his part. In fact, he was already feeling slightly ashamed of the display; it co
uld not be regarded as anything but weakness to allow feeling to obscure your objectives; there might have been further arguments that could never now be put forward. He would say nothing of this to Jane, however. He had not so far told her of his interview with Sullivan, but he would do so when he saw her, he would tell her how he had been compelled by that runaway into a sense of sharing, still not fully accepted or understood …

  Should he mention the brass button? To do so would cast him in the role of beneficiary; he had been left in possession of the token and the gifts of fortune it had brought. It was as the granter of pardon, the dispenser of mercy, that he wanted her to see him. He had forgiven Sullivan, or so he felt now; it was in this light that he would relate the matter. She would approve, she would think it high-minded, he would gain merit in her eyes. Sullivan had not forgiven him, in the slightest degree, any more than Michael Bordon had, but there was no need to dwell on this. Instead he would tell her of the words overheard as he approached the open door of the alehouse, the only ones he could afterward recall: It is the power of imagining that makes a man stand out.

  She had that power in full measure. She had said something not much different when they had last talked together and he had seen the compassion for him on her face. Probably a faculty more common among women than among men, he thought—they had more leisure. He saw it as a sort of task, an effort of the will, requiring concentration. A man with important aims in life would be too much occupied for it. Pike too had spoken of the power of imagination, he suddenly remembered. Disapproval of the lawyer had prevented him from giving much weight to the words. By reporting that vagabond’s remark and giving it some stamp of his own assent and sympathy, he would please Jane, he felt sure of that. And he wanted, before all else, to please her. All the same, it was odd, he thought, extremely so, that an itinerant fiddler, a person of no substance and no standing, a fugitive from the gallows, should have the last word.

  38

  In the silence of her apartment, seated at the small writing desk, Jane Ashton strove to compose the promised letter, the main labor of which lay in the effort to understand herself.

  There were things about Erasmus Kemp that she could not admire. The way he set the achievement of his aims on the same, unqualified, identical plane of success, whatever their nature, the way he neglected to consider the cost to others. However, she felt that she understood these things better now, after their last talk together. Something of the compassion she had felt for him on that occasion returned to her mind. He was endlessly seeking to fulfill the vow he had made to his father, as if in the end his successes would leave no room for any sense of inadequacy or guilt. Like trying to fill a pit with gold, not knowing that the pit was bottomless … Or was she simply trying to find excuses for this lack of care he showed, this overriding devotion to his own purposes? Finding excuses for him was easy; he was attractive to her in a way no other man had ever been, she was stirred by the thought of lovemaking between them, his imagined touch upon her. His desire was so strong, so evident in his looks and behavior. Sometimes she had found it hard to meet his eyes, fierce with need in that dark-complexioned face. He was relentless …

  It came to her, in this room where she had thought so much about him from the very first, where from girlhood she had tried to understand life and the world and her place in things, where she had thrilled to Gray’s Pindaric odes and wrestled with Hume and Voltaire, that perhaps it was this, the relentlessness, something merciless in him, that attracted her so. She reviewed all she knew of him, what she had sensed and what he had told her, the wishes, the ambitions. His life had been a series of aims imposed on himself. Was she no more than this, something to achieve and possess and then lay indifferently aside among the other trophies? Like the mission of justice that had taken him in pursuit of the survivors of the Liverpool Merchant, like this Durham coal mine that he would take over and then perhaps lose interest in and relinquish.

  No, she did not believe he would let the mine go; he had found something to devote himself to. He wanted to improve things, bring more efficiency, reduce the harshness of the labor. Was not this a desire to improve the lot of his fellow men? Even if he himself did not altogether regard it in this light, or at least refer to it in this way, was not this perhaps what underlay his ambitions, the desire to be a benefactor? Profit, efficiency, material improvement—was not this the way forward? She had always believed in measures that would bring more independence, more well-being to those who were deprived, whose lives were all toil, who were ignorant and kept in ignorance and helpless because of it, always at the mercy of those richer and more powerful.

  She could help him in this; it was something she had always dreamed of, practical measures, practical solutions, looking to see what could be done. The boys went to work in the mine at seven years of age! It was appalling—they were children still, they were not grown, their bones were not properly formed. For children to be racked with toil and have no remedy, it cried out for betterment. She could speak of it to Erasmus if they were married, she could prevail upon him to see things with more tenderness. For love of her—and she could not doubt the love—he would be prepared to change. For her sake, for what he would see as the sake of her happiness. Guided by her, he would come to see what was due, what was just—not the justice of the courts, but the justice of human dealings, where the quality of mercy entered more closely and decisively. She could press for the setting-up of a school; it was an ambition close to her heart to teach people to read and write—the children, anyone else who wanted to attend and learn. A kind of Sunday school. The working people would benefit; they would be able to understand what was happening in the world, discuss things, form opinions. But what leisure would they have for reading, what energy left over from their work? She had been assuming a way of life not far different from her own. The answer, of course, was to reduce the hours of labor, but she could not imagine Erasmus agreeing to this. However, he had other ideas for making things better. The men worked by candlelight at present, but he had spoken of a kind of lamp that might be devised, which they could attach to their caps in some way; no, not caps, they would wear a sort of metal helmet, a modified version of what soldiers sometimes wore. It would be safer, he had said, but the main thing was that better light would save time and so increase production. He sometimes put things in what seemed to her the wrong order …

  These things might take time, but all manner of more immediate reforms could be introduced. She and Erasmus together would make this colliery village a happier place. Other collieries would imitate them, follow suit.

  He would listen to her. She had been struck from the first by the way he listened to her, hung on her words. She had been flattered by this attention, the way he confided his plans and designs to her, made her a partner in them.

  It was now, thinking this, that a shadow of fear came to her. What he had always sought was her accord, her complete approval and endorsement. Not once had he consulted her on the grounds of opinion, not truly. She remembered his face as it had been when she had taken the pitman’s part and defended his choice—and his right—to keep the land and cultivate it for his father’s sake, as a memorial to his father. He had not seemed to see the similarity with his own case. He had assumed an air of amusement, which she had not much liked, but he had been surprised and displeased—it had shown in his expression—because she had not seen things exactly as he did. Unendurable to be trapped forever in his expectations of her, his need for her blessing. Like an imprisonment … Her only role the invariable one of support and assent. But he could be supported in a deeper, more meaningful way; he would come to recognize the value of her independent judgment, which would be exercised for his good. Even disagreeing, always for his sake. He would know she had his interests at heart, his true interests.

  The fear, however, persisted. In the toils of guilt and debt and obligation that had long lost all reason, possessed by the need for successes that might silence the voices but never did
, he had made a cage for himself, and now he wanted to draw her into it. But to draw her in, he would have to open the cage door and take the risk of freedom.

  She looked round the room, the objects in it so familiar, accompanying her through all the stages of her life so far. It was time for a new stage, it was time for her to marry. With this recognition, a kind of partial yielding, Erasmus’s face and figure invaded her mind, as if they had been waiting only for that, endowed with an extraordinary vividness and immediacy. She was enveloped in thoughts of him; there was no closing them off. The sense of him—what she knew and what she surmised—was too potent, there was no door that could be closed on it. She knew herself to be strong, not easily daunted or browbeaten; she would not consent to be imprisoned in his judgments; she would give battle if need be. In the fear that she felt there was love and a sense of rising to challenge, a sense that such a moment, such a desire, would never come to her again. She drew the sheet of paper toward her and wrote the first words of the letter: My Dearest Erasmus …

  39

  The case of Jeremy Evans had aroused very considerable public interest, and this increased during the period of the adjournment; letters and articles on the topics of Evans in particular and the institution of slavery in general filled the columns of the newspapers. There was a letter from a white man born in the West Indies who maintained that whites could keep control of the slaves in the sugar plantations only if black people were prevented from coming to Britain. Once arriving here, they would see the weaknesses of the whites and learn to despise them, and as a consequence the use of terror that had kept them in subjection on the plantations would be of no avail when they returned, in the face of this newfound contempt for their masters. One letter expressed the fear that white criminals, in order to get rid of their enemies, would organize blacks into gangs of assassins, something that could be done with total impunity, as the confession of a slave could not be offered in court, and he could not give evidence against his master. A man who signed himself Humanist argued that black people living in Britain were unhappy because alien, and therefore constituted a pernicious and dangerous element of society. If unwilling to leave of their own accord, they should be shipped back at public expense and the costs recovered by selling them. If they remained in the country, they should have no claim to any rights under English law.