The Quality of Mercy (37 page)

“No, I told him I needed time to consider.”

“Well, my dear Jane, you must consider it well and carefully. Mr. Kemp represents many things that you and I dislike and find deplorable—the wrong use he makes of capital invested through his bank, the fortune he has made in the sugar trade. The slave trade, in other words.” He paused a moment, then said somberly, “At least, I have always supposed that we share these feelings.”

“He is much more than that,” she said with sudden warmth, recalling the pity she had felt for him, the terrible singleness of purpose that made him undefended. What Frederick said was like comparing a creature with a beating heart to a bloodless abstraction, a bank, an economic system. “He is changing,” she said. “He could be guided by someone who understood him and appreciated his talents. He wants to introduce new methods of production, new ways of doing things, he wants to create more wealth so that everyone will benefit. He never wanted to go into the sugar trade—he was forced into it in order to pay his father’s debts. He always wanted to build things, to make roads and canals, to construct a better society.”

She broke off, aware of having gone too far in these praises, revealed too much of what she hoped rather than what she knew.
Frederick would not understand in any case; he could not envisage progress except through changes in the law. But improvements could be made by acting directly, fighting abuses where you found them. She had always believed this; it was what had first attracted her to Erasmus, his combativeness, his readiness to enter the lists and charge at things and make them better. She would be able to help him in this, if she so chose … “He is ready to do anything,” she said. “He will withdraw completely from the Africa trade, he will dissociate himself entirely from it, cut off all the ties of business that unite him to it.”

“What, he has said this?”

“Yes, he said so to me.”

“Would he be willing to make a public statement to that effect, declare a change of heart, come out as an opponent of the slave trade?”

“Yes,” Jane said, and felt a familiar dismay at this new tone, this alerted, sharp-eyed face that was her brother’s now. “Yes, so he declared to me,” she said.

“Well, that makes all the difference,” Ashton said. “It would be an earnest of his good faith.”

She could not see that it made any difference at all, not to the desirability of the marriage, not to her prospects of happiness. But she knew, with a hurt that had also grown familiar, that these were matters of secondary importance to him. “It would be an earnest of his desire to marry me, so much is true,” she said. “And of his desire to disarm your enmity,” she added after a moment.

But he was too much taken up with thoughts of the use that could be made of such a declaration to pay much heed to this. “It is exactly what I wanted from him.”

“Yes, you wanted me to ask it as a favor. You will remember that we disagreed about it.”

“Well, for all practical purposes it comes to the same thing. What did you say to him? Did you accept this offer of his?”

“I said nothing at the time, I was in some confusion. But if I had replied, it would have been to say that I think he should make
such a statement only if he really means it, if it is truly a change of heart and not just a form of words designed to please me.” Or worse still, she thought, an offer of exchange, a form of bargaining such as one might use in the marketplace. But would there be, for Erasmus, any discernible difference? She had been pleased by the offer, by the air of sacrifice he gave it, pleased and flattered. But was it so great a sacrifice? All his interest now lay in the coal industry … She felt a sudden lurch of uncertainty, a fraying of safe moorings.

“You and I are very different in the way we look at things,” Ashton said, “and it has taken the advent of Mr. Kemp to make this difference clearer, I think to both of us. I see it matters to you what his motives are, but it has no importance for me. Motives are a labyrinth we need not enter. All that matters is the use that can be made of his words. Every year ships leave our ports and ports all over Europe, bound for the west coast of Africa. Hundreds of ships. Every year scores of thousands of innocent human beings are taken by violence from their homes to be worked to death on the plantations. If Kemp’s words can make any contribution, however slight, to the movement to end this infamous traffic, what can it matter whether they are uttered to please you or because he means them, or for some other reason?”

“It is not the same thing,” Jane said. “Abolition is a noble cause, I do not deny it, but the numbers are very great. You are not involved in close relations with anyone in particular, whereas it is very necessary for any couple who think of marrying to have respect for each other, and that must include a regard for the truth of the other person and the honesty of his motives.”

But he scarcely listened; his own words had impassioned him. “We have a date set now,” he said, “a date for the hearing concerning the condition of Jeremy Evans, whether slave or free. We may get a verdict that will change the face of the law, abolish forever the right of property in another person, in England at least. That is the purpose, we believe it is noble. We may have ulterior motives, but what end would it serve for us to examine into them?”

“But there would be no need to do so. Your motive and your purpose are one and the same thing.”

“And so it is, I suppose, with Mr. Kemp.”

With a sense of falling back onto safe ground, Jane strove to infuse her voice with firmness and said, “If Erasmus, or anyone, makes a declaration in order to serve his ends rather than serve the truth, that is wrong and will always be so, no matter what use is made of the words or how noble the cause.” But suppose Erasmus thought that serving his ends
was
serving the truth, suppose he saw no difference? It seemed possible from her knowledge of him.

“And you think the cause is thereby made less worthy?” Ashton said.

It was a way out, and in her confusion she took it gratefully. “No, I do not think that.”

On this note of compromise they fell silent. And when they resumed their talk it was of other things.

When Kemp thought afterward about his conversation with Lord Spenton, and went over in his mind the words exchanged between them, what struck him as least supportable was the way in which he was allowed to go on at such length and enter into such detail about his idea for a road through the Dene before Spenton raised a hand in languid fashion—rather in the manner of one requesting less volume of sound—to announce that a piece of the Dene was no longer in his ownership.

“Not for the next forty years, at least,” he said, and Kemp, in the midst of his consternation, saw that he looked quite unperturbed as he spoke. There was even a slight smile on his face.

“How can that be?”

He listened, staring straight ahead, while Spenton explained how it had come to pass that Michael Bord on was now the owner of a piece of land adjoining the stream, about halfway through the Dene. It was a saga, as he related it: the offer of reward, the young man’s very affecting wish to acquire the land for his father with the money, and then, following hard upon this, the father’s death in an accident at the pit. “He was dead when they got to him,” he said. “It seems that he was killed outright by the fall. Even if they had reached him sooner, it would have been to no avail.”

But Kemp had no thought to spare for this obscure and
irrelevant death. “You sold the land without so much as consulting me, the lessee?” There was fury in his face and his voice. The agreements for the lease had been drawn up and signed; he was no longer Spenton’s guest, there was no need now to countenance the man’s follies. “You have done a most ill-considered thing, sir,” he said. “And for the idlest of reasons.”

Spenton’s face did not change, but his voice was colder when he answered. “I suppose you do not think I should refer to you for my reasons? They seemed sufficient to me. The Dene does not form part of the mine. You are not thinking clearly, Kemp. How on earth was I to know that you had this plan in mind? You chose not to broach the subject while you were staying with me. Do you think I am a mindreader?”

There was justice in this, he was compelled to recognize; the caution that had kept him silent had been needless, due only to inveterate habit. But the knowledge did nothing to lessen the rage he was laboring under. Spenton’s smile had deepened with this last question; it seemed that in some outrageous and incomprehensible way he was finding the situation humorous. And not only that: it was clear that his sympathies lay with this miserable pitman rather than his partner in business. “There is no great harm done,” he said now.

“What can you mean? There is no other route than the bed of the stream. The land ends in cliffs on either side. The slopes of the ravine are too steep—we could not build a road that would be safe from slipping under such heavy loads.”

“The young man is far from stupid. No doubt you will be able to reach some settlement with him. It will involve you in expenses, of course, but that is no great objection, as far as I can see.”

There had been a note of contempt in this, quite undisguised, and Kemp knew as he got up to leave that Spenton too saw no further need for conciliation between them, knew that just as he resented the nobleman for the privilege that surrounded him, for his air of immunity to the common struggle, so Spenton disliked him for the fact that he had been through that struggle and
acquired wealth from it—wealth in the form of capital, not land. The nonchalance of manner was a form of hostility, expressing disdain for the mercantile class Kemp knew himself to represent, which grew always richer, always more threatening to the power and influence of the landed gentry. “At least,” he said, repeating the other’s words with deliberate sarcasm, “you will have no great objection, as far as I can see, to the road being built, provided of course that the costs are met by the lessee.”

“None at all, my dear sir, good heavens, no,” Spenton said, and Kemp detected in his voice and look the complacent knowledge that profits deriving from the road would continue to accrue long after the lease had run out. He had considered the matter after all, without appearing to. He was far from indifferent to his own interests, despite the assumption of vagueness. This was the knowledge that Kemp bore away from the interview, a certain sense of duplicity on Spenton’s part, together with the conviction that the dislike thus revealed between them would prove to be lasting.

He would have to return to Durham sooner than he had intended, more or less immediately in fact, and endeavor to come to terms with this Michael Bordon, if possible buy him out. He would stay at an inn somewhere within a few miles, he would go nowhere near Wingfield. But he had to see Jane before leaving. The need for her to know at once of this new development was urgent with him; without this, without her blessing on the enterprise, he would be weaker. On arriving home again, he at once sent Hudson with a note asking if he might be allowed some minutes of her company, and obtained an appointment for that afternoon. She had paid—as always when she knew she was to see him—particular attention to the details of her appearance, and Kemp was smitten anew by the radiant pallor of her face, the beauty of her eyes and brows, the alluring grace of her movements in the lilac-colored taffeta gown, close-fitting at the waist and hips, as was then becoming fashionable.

“He has never shown any real interest in the running of the
mine,” he said. “In all the time I have known him he has never shown much interest in anything but sopranos and waterworks and clockwork toys and handball.”

It smarted still that Spenton should have waited so long, sported with him, before coming out with the fact that a piece of the Dene had been bought. Kemp had begun with this news, wanting her to know at once the blow to his plans. “Buffooneries of that sort,” he said with contempt. “I shall have to return to Durham as soon as possible. This Michael Bordon is young and illiterate, he has never known anything but laboring in a pit. He may not realize the value of the land he has bought. If I can get to him in time, I may be able to prevail upon him to sell at a reasonable price.”

“But I understand that he bought the land as a gift for his father, to free him from the mine. This being so, he is not likely to sell it, surely—it would be like a kind of betrayal, wouldn’t it, changing his mind like that and taking money instead?”

“No, I forgot to tell you, the father is dead. I thought at first that the deed was in his name and that it might be possible to have it annulled with his death, but unfortunately it is made out to the son.”

“Forgot to tell me?” Jane looked closely at him, as if there might be something in his expression, some quality of sympathy or regret not evident in his words. But she could see nothing of the sort there, only the look she had always found so compelling, the dark, level brows, the eyes brilliant, full of light, the mouth firm set as if there were something to be resisted or endured, but not mean or ungenerous. It was the look that came to her mind when she thought of being with him, sharing his life. “But it is the most important thing of all,” she said. “He will want to keep the pact, keep faith with his father. He will want to fulfill his father’s wishes for the land by cultivating it himself, growing the things his father wanted to grow. He would be right to do that, surely?”

Her face was alight with approval for such a course, the love and duty it would show. “How fine it would be,” she said, and
saw a smile appear on his face of the kind she had seen on other men’s faces when she had gone so far as to express enthusiasm for some cause or idea thought to be eccentric, a smile of indulgence for sentiments that only ignorance of the world could account for.

“Do you really think that will weigh so strongly with him? He has never seen more than a few shillings at any one time. I know these people—the immediate gain is everything to them. I will make him a good offer. Be assured that he will not resist for long.”

Despite the smile with which he accompanied these words, he felt disappointed at the way the conversation was going. She was not seeing things in a way that accorded with the realities of the situation; she was failing to put his interests first when they were so much more important, so much larger in scale. “No,” he said, “a lump of money in the pocket will always count for more with them. He will not choose to spend the rest of his life laboring on two or three acres of ground if he is offered a capital sum that would rescue him from the mine for good.”