The Quality of Mercy

34



Ashton returned home early in the evening after a long consultation with his new lawyer, Harvey, the young barrister recommended by Stanton, a convinced abolitionist who had offered his services free in the Evans case. It was Ashton’s view now that Horace Stanton’s withdrawal from the case—felt at the time as failure of nerve and betrayal on his friend’s part—had been on the whole a good thing. This new man was still on the right side of thirty, full of fire and energy, just what was needed. He had entirely supported the decision to prosecute Bolton and Lyons on the original charges of criminal assault and abduction carried out in the attempt to return Evans by force to Jamaica. And he shared Ashton’s hope that such an action, never brought before on behalf of a former slave, might result in a judgment that set an absolute prohibition on all private attempts in future to transport anyone without consent out of the kingdom, which Harvey hoped to show was tantamount to saying that no person, having once set foot in England, could any longer be regarded as the property of another. The date for the hearing had finally been set, and Ashton was intending to inform his sister of this, but she was before him with the news of Kemp’s proposal, eager to confront, as soon as she could, what she felt likely to be an unfavorable reception.

Her brother’s looks confirmed this suspicion now. He was silent for some moments, then said, “Well, it has hardly been a protracted courtship. I had no idea that things had reached so far between you.”

It was as if he were accusing her of a haste that was unbecoming. “He spoke on the spur of the moment,” she said. “He will be leaving for Durham again before very long. He wanted to have some hope of a favorable reply while he is still here in London.” Did Frederick really think she would keep him informed from day to day of the attraction that had grown, the looks, the tones? She was not herself conscious of any precipitation in the relations between them. It had all begun the evening of her visit to her friend Anne Sykes, a good while before Frederick had so much as set eyes on Erasmus.

“You did not give him an answer, then?”

“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.