“Fanny, there is something else you can do for me. Can you please write to mother, to break the news to her. I should rather not surprise her and come upon her all at once.”
Fanny nodded. “I will write to her immediately.” And she almost ran to do his bidding at once, so eager was she to show her earnest desire to be of service to him.
“No, Fanny, stay with me. But if you do write for me later, I need not go to Portsmouth until I have some particular reason.”
“Are you expecting some prize money, Sam?” asked Fanny, for she knew that Sam’s pay had stopped with his discharge—there was no half-pay for midshipman.
“Perhaps a few pounds, but I will not see that for many months,” he answered.
The news of the visitor by now had been carried to Mrs. Butters, who sent word that Sam was welcome to sleep in the carriage-house and dine at the servants’ table.
One night, by the consent of everyone involved, became every night thereafter. Mr. McIntosh reported that he rose early, and attempted to assist with every means in his limited power, awkwardly shovelling out the stables with one hand. Or else he walked about the streets of Bristol, looking for employment of some kind. He would come back for dinner, tired and discouraged but uncomplaining. He had nothing to show for his exertions but shoes sadly in need of repair.
When Mrs. Butters was well disposed toward the young man on account of his being Fanny’s brother. When she understood that Sam was anxious to find employment, she enquired of all her friends and acquaintances, but without success, which discomposed her not a little. Her recommendation, she thought, ought to have been enough.
Sam’s prospects were indeed poor, and Fanny meditated on how she might assist him, without mortifying his pride.
* * * * * * *
During this same period of time, one the most prominent visitors to Mrs. Butters’ afternoon gatherings was Mr. Henry Hunt, a well-to-do farmer from Wiltshire who was rising to great prominence in Bristol as a champion of parliamentary reform. Large audiences attended his passionate orations, and his influence among the working classes was not inconsiderable.
Mr. Hunt was a well-looking man, with just enough polish about him for gentility, but his imposing physique and his powerful voice overpowered the domestic confines of a lady’s drawing room. One morning as everyone was sitting at tea, an admiring female guest declared, “I wonder you did not become a clergyman, Mr. Hunt! With your eloquent powers of expression, you would have been a most eminent divine!”
This brought a shout of laughter from Mr. Hunt, and he summoned Mrs. Butters’ footman to refill his glass of sherry preparatory to making his reply: “My father—to test my character, I am convinced—offered to send me up to university for that purpose. ‘I have now an opportunity of purchasing the next presentation to a good living,’ he told me, ‘you will have secured to you for life a thousand or perhaps twelve hundred pounds a year; and you will have nothing to do for it, for six days out of the seven, but hunt, shoot, and fish by day, and play cards in the evening.’ Yes, he held out such a soft and easy life to me, but I refused it.”
Fanny, thinking of Edmund, said gravely, “It is a noble profession.”
She was not surprised when Mr. Hunt took no notice of her quiet remark, but another lady exclaimed, “Oh tush, tush, Mr. Hunt! Although there is too much truth in the picture you have drawn, you have been a little too severe upon the clergy, when speaking of them in the mass. There are many excellent and worthy men who are an ornament to our society, and do great credit to their profession.”
Hunt shook his head. “Do not tell me about ornaments to society; they are the parasites of society, for, without contributing anything to the common stock, they feed upon the choicest honey, collected by the labour of the industrious bees... that is all that can be said for the best of them.” And he said this with such an air of finality, with a countenance which announced he intended to overbear all opposition, that he was allowed to have his way, and the talk moved on to other topics.
Fanny could not like him, and in subsequent meetings, never found a reason to change her opinion. He always assumed the role of chief, and preferably the only speaker, before, during and after dinner; or, he would pause in his remarks only to attend to a question posed by one of his admirers.
She was initially entertained by some of his stories, but when they were repeated, on subsequent occasions, twice, three times or more, she suspected he only wished to be admired, and could not trouble himself to recall that he had already told Mr. So-and-so an anecdote from his youth, and Mrs. Such-a-one the story of his time in the militia.
In this fashion he held forth in Mrs. Butters’ dining room, telling her dinner guests the excellent tale about his ancestor, Colonel Hunt, a loyal Royalist who had escaped from prison the night before his execution. “He was captured by Cromwell’s soldiers, tried, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. But his sisters, Elizabeth and Margery, came to visit him the night previous to his execution, which was ordered to take place at day-break the next morning. Now, the regulations of the jail not being so strictly performed as they are now, the sisters were permitted to remain with him for what was supposedly his last night on earth. That evening, two sisters entered the prison, and at sunrise, two departed.
“But,” he said, leaning
