The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 61

Pisistratus.--"I think so. A young man will often respect in his elder what he will resent as a presumption in his contemporary."

Mr. Caxton.--"It may be so. [Then more thoughtfully] But you describe this strange boy's mind as a wreck! In what part of the mouldering timbers can I fix the grappling-hook? Here it seems that most of the supports on which we can best rely, when we would save another, fail us,--religion, honor, the a.s.sociations of childhood, the bonds of home, filial obedience, even the intelligence of self-interest, in the philosophical sense of the word. And I, too,--a mere bookman! My dear son, I despair!"

Pisistratus.--"No, you do not despair; no, you must succeed,--for if you do not, what is to become of Uncle Roland? Do you not see his heart is fast breaking?"

Mr. Caxton.--"Get me my hat. I will go; I will save this Ishmael,--I will not leave him till he is saved!"

Pisistratus. (Some minutes after, as they are walking towards Vivian's lodging).--"You ask me what support you are to cling to: a strong and a good one, sir."

Mr. Caxton. "Ah! what is that?"

Pisistratus.--"Affection! There is a nature capable of strong affection at the core of this wild heart. He could love his mother,--tears gush to his eyes at her name; he would have starved rather than part with the memorial of that love. It was his belief in his father's indifference or dislike that hardened and imbruted him; it is only when he hears how that father loved him that I now melt his pride and curb his pa.s.sions.

You have affection to deal with! Do you despair now?

"My father turned on me those eyes so inexpressibly benign and mild, and replied softly, 'No!'

"We reached the house; and my father said, as we knocked at the door, 'If he is at home, leave me. This is a hard study to which you have set me; I must work at it alone.'

"Vivian was at home, and the door closed on his visitor. My father stayed some hours.

"On returning home, to my great surprise I found Trevanion with my uncle. He had found us out,--no easy matter, I should think. But a good impulse in Trevanion was not of that feeble kind which turns home at the sight of a difficulty. He had come to London on purpose to see and to thank us.

"I did not think there had been so much of delicacy--of what I may call the 'beauty of kindness'--in a man whom incessant business had rendered ordinarily blunt and abrupt. I hardly recognized the impatient Trevanion in the soothing, tender, subtle respect that rather implied than spoke grat.i.tude, and sought to insinuate what he owed to the unhappy father, without touching on his wrongs from the son. But of this kindness--which showed how Trevanion's high nature of gentleman raised him aloof from that coa.r.s.eness of thought which those absorbed wholly in practical affairs often contract--of this kindness, so n.o.ble and so touching, Roland seemed scarcely aware. He sat by the embers of the neglected fire, his hands grasping the arms of his elbow-chair, his bead drooping on his bosom; and only by a deep hectic flush on his dark cheek could you have seen that he distinguished between an ordinary visitor and the man whose child he had helped to save. This minister of state, this high member of the elect, at whose gift are places, peerages, gold-sticks, and ribbons, has nothing at his command for the bruised spirit of the half-pay soldier. Before that poverty, that grief, and that pride, the King's Counsellor was powerless. Only when Trevanion rose to depart, something like a sense of the soothing intention which the visit implied seemed to rouse the repose of the old man and to break the ice at its surface; for he followed Trevanion to the door, took both his hands, pressed them, then turned away, and resumed his seat. Trevanion beckoned to me, and I followed him downstairs and into a little parlor which was unoccupied.

"After some remarks upon Roland, full of deep and considerate feeling, and one quick, hurried reference to the son,--to the effect that his guilty attempt would never be known by the world,--Trevanion then addressed himself to me with a warmth and urgency that took me by surprise. 'After what has pa.s.sed,' he exclaimed, 'I cannot suffer you to leave England thus. Let me not feel with you, as with your uncle, that there is nothing by which I can repay--No, I will not so put it,--stay, and serve your country at home; it is my prayer, it is Ellinor's. Out of all at my disposal it will go hard but what I shall find something to suit you.' And then, hurrying on, Trevanion spoke flatteringly of my pretensions, in right of birth and capabilities, to honorable employment, and placed before me a picture of public life, its prizes and distinctions, which for the moment, at least, made my heart beat loud and my breath come quick. But still, even then I felt (was it an unreasonable pride?) that there was something that jarred, something that humbled, in the thought of holding all my fortunes as a dependency on the father of the woman I loved, but might not aspire to; something even of personal degradation in the mere feeling that I was thus to be repaid for a service, and recompensed for a loss. But these were not reasons I could advance; and, indeed, so for the time did Trevanion's generosity and eloquence overpower me that I could only falter out my thanks and my promise that I would consider and let him know.

"With that promise he was forced to content himself; he told me to direct to him at his favorite country seat, whither he was going that day, and so left me. I looked round the humble parlor of the mean lodging-house, and Trevanion's words came again before me like a flash of golden light. I stole into the open air and wandered through the crowded streets, agitated and disturbed."

CHAPTER X.

Several days elapsed, and of each day my father spent a considerable part at Vivian's lodgings. But he maintained a reserve as to his success, begged me not to question him, and to refrain also for the present from visiting my cousin. My uncle guessed or knew his brother's mission; for I observed that whenever Austin went noiseless away, his eye brightened, and the color rose in a hectic flush to his cheek. At last my father came to me one morning, his carpet-bag in his hand, and said, "I am going away for a week or two. Keep Roland company till I return."

"Going with him?"

"With him."

"That is a good sign."

"I hope so; that is all I can say now."

The week had not quite pa.s.sed when I received from my father the letter I am about to place before the reader; and you may judge how earnestly his soul must have been in the task it had volunteered, if you observe how little, comparatively speaking, the letter contains of the subtleties and pedantries (may the last word be pardoned, for it is scarcely a just one) which ordinarily left my father,--a scholar even in the midst of his emotions. He seemed here to have abandoned his books, to have put the human heart before the eyes of his pupil, and said, "Read and un-learn!"

To Pisistratus Caxton.

My Dear Son,--It were needless to tell you all the earlier difficulties I have had to encounter with my charge, nor to repeat all the means which, acting on your suggestion (a correct one), I have employed to arouse feelings long dormant and confused, and allay others long prematurely active and terribly distinct. The evil was simply this: here was the intelligence of a man in all that is evil, and the ignorance of an infant in all that is good.

In matters merely worldly, what wonderful ac.u.men; in the plain principles of right and wrong, what gross and stolid obtuseness!

At one time I am straining all my poor wit to grapple in an encounter on the knottiest mysteries of social life; at another, I am guiding reluctant fingers over the horn-book of the most obvious morals. Here hieroglyphics, and there pot-hooks! But as long as there is affection in a man, why, there is Nature to begin with!

To get rid of all the rubbish laid upon her, clear back the way to that Nature and start afresh,--that is one's only chance.

Well, by degrees I won my way, waiting patiently till the bosom, pleased with the relief, disgorged itself of all "its perilous stuff,"--not chiding, not even remonstrating, seeming almost to sympathize, till I got him, Socratically, to disprove himself.

When I saw that he no longer feared me, that my company had become a relief to him, I proposed an excursion, and did not tell him whither.

Avoiding as much as possible the main north road (for I did not wish, as you may suppose, to set fire to a train of a.s.sociations that might blow us up to the dog-star), and where that avoidance was not possible, travelling by night, I got him into the neighborhood of the old Tower.

I would not admit him under its roof. But you know the little inn, three miles off, near the trout stream? We made our abode there.

Well, I have taken him into the village, preserving his incognito.

I have entered with him into cottages, and turned the talk upon Roland. You know how your uncle is adored; you know what anecdotes of his bold, warm-hearted youth once, and now of his kind and charitable age, would spring up from the garrulous lips of grat.i.tude! I made him see with his own eyes, hear with his own ears, how all who knew Roland loved and honored him,--except his son. Then I took him round the ruins (still not suffering him to enter the house); for those ruins are the key to Roland's character,--seeing them, one sees the pathos in his poor foible of family pride. There, you distinguish it from the insolent boasts of the prosperous, and feel that it is little more than the pious reverence to the dead, "the tender culture of the tomb." We sat down on heaps of mouldering stone, and it was there that I explained to him what Roland was in youth, and what he had dreamed that a son would be to him. I showed him the graves of his ancestors, and explained to him why they were sacred in Roland's eyes. I had gained a great way when he longed to enter the home that should have been his and I could make him pause of his own accord and say, "No, I must first be worthy of it." Then you would have smiled--sly satirist that you are--to have heard me impressing upon this acute, sharp-witted youth all that we plain folk understand by the name of Home,--its perfect trust and truth, its simple holiness, its exquisite happiness, being to the world what conscience is to the human mind. And after that I brought in his sister, whom till then he had scarcely named, for whom he scarcely seemed to care,--brought her in to aid the father and endear the home. "And you know," said I, "that if Roland were to die, it would be a brother's duty to supply his place,--to s.h.i.+eld her innocence, to protect her name! A good name is something, then.

Your father was not so wrong to prize it. You would like yours to be that which your sister would be proud to own!"

While we were talking, Blanche suddenly came to the spot, and rushed to my arms. She looked on him as a stranger, but I saw his knees tremble. And then she was about to put her hand in his, but I drew her back. Was I cruel? He thought so. But when I dismissed her, I replied to his reproach: "Your sister is a part of Home. If you think yourself worthy of either, go and claim both; I will not object."

"She has my mother's eyes," said he, and walked away. I left him to muse amidst the ruins, while I went in to see your poor mother and relieve her fears about Roland and make her understand why I could not yet return home.

This brief sight of his sister has sunk deep into him. But I now approach what seems to me the great difficulty of the whole. He is fully anxious to redeem his name, to regain his home. So far so well. But he cannot yet see ambition, except with hard, worldly eyes. He still fancies that all he has to do is to get money and power and some of those empty prizes in the Great Lottery which we often win more easily by our sins than our virtues. [Here follows a long pa.s.sage from Seneca, omitted as superfluous.] He does not yet even understand me--or if he does, he fancies me a mere book- worm indeed--when I imply that he might be poor and obscure, at the bottom of fortune's wheel, and yet be one we should be proud of.

He supposes that to redeem his name he has only got to lacker it.

Don't think me merely the fond father when I add my hope that I shall use you to advantage here. I mean to talk to him to-morrow, as we return to London, of you and of your ambition; you shall hear the result.

At this moment (it is past midnight) I hear his step in the room above me. The window-sash aloft opens, for the third time. Would to Heaven he could read the true astrology of the stars! There they are,--bright, luminous, benignant. And I seeking to chain this wandering comet into the harmonies of heaven! Better task than that of astrologers, and astronomers to boot! Who among them can "loosen the band of Orion"? But who amongst us may not be permitted by G.o.d to have sway over the action and orbit of the human soul?

Your ever-affectionate father,

A. C.

Two days after the receipt of this letter came the following; and though I would fain suppress those references to myself which must be ascribed to a father's partiality, yet it is so needful to retain them in connection with Vivian that I have no choice but to leave the tender flatteries to the indulgence of the kind.

My Dear Son,--I was not too sanguine as to the effect that your simple story would produce upon your cousin. Without implying any contrast to his own conduct, I described that scene in which you threw yourself upon our sympathy, in the struggle between love and duty, and asked for our counsel and support; when Roland gave you his blunt advice to tell all to Trevanion; and when, amidst such sorrow as the heart in youth seems scarcely large enough to hold, you caught at truth impulsively, and the truth bore you safe from the s.h.i.+pwreck. I recounted your silent and manly struggles, your resolution not to suffer the egotism of pa.s.sion to unfit you for the aims and ends of that spiritual probation which we call Life.

I showed you as you were,--still thoughtful for us, interested in our interests, smiling on us, that we might not guess that you wept in secret! Oh, my son, my son, do not think that in those times I did not feel and pray for you! And while he was melted by my own emotion, I turned from your love to your ambition. I made him see that you too had known the restlessness which belongs to young, ardent natures; that you too had had your dreams of fortune and aspirations for success. But I painted that ambition in its true colors: it was not the desire of a selfish intellect to be in yourself a somebody, a something, raised a step or two in the social ladder, for the pleasure of looking down on those at the foot, but the warmer yearning of a generous heart; your ambition was to repair your father's losses, minister to your father's very foible in his idle desire of fame, supply to your uncle what he had lost in his natural heir, link your success to useful objects, your interests to those of your kind, your reward to the proud and grateful smiles of those you loved. That was thine ambition, O my tender Anachronism! And when, as I closed the sketch, I said, "Pardon me, you know not what delight a father feels when, while sending a son away from him into the world, he can speak and think thus of him. But this, you see, is not your kind of ambition. Let us talk of making money, and driving a coach-and-four through this villanous world,"--your cousin sank into a profound revery; and when he woke from it, it was like the waking of the earth after a night in spring,--the bare trees had put forth buds!

And, some time after, he startled me by a prayer that I would permit him, with his father's consent, to accompany you to Australia. The only answer I have given him as yet has been in the form of a question: "Ask yourself if I ought? I cannot wish Pisistratus to be other than he is; and unless you agree with him in all his principles and objects, ought I to incur the risk that you should give him your knowledge of the world and inoculate him with your ambition?" he was struck, and had the candor to attempt no reply.

Now, Pisistratus, the doubt I expressed to him is the doubt I feel.

For, indeed, it is only by home-truths, not refining arguments, that I can deal with this unscholastic Scythian, who, fresh from the Steppes, comes to puzzle me in the Portico.

On the one hand, what is to become of him in the Old World? At his age and with his energies it would be impossible to cage him with us in the c.u.mberland ruins; weariness and discontent would undo all we could do. He has no resource in books, and I fear never will have! But to send him forth into one of the over-crowded professions; to place him amidst all those "disparities of social life," on the rough stones of which he is perpetually grinding his heart; turn him adrift amongst all the temptations to which he is most p.r.o.ne,--this is a trial which, I fear, will be too sharp for a conversion so incomplete. In the New World, no doubt, his energies would find a safer field, and even the adventurous and desultory habits of his childhood might there be put to healthful account.

Those complaints of the disparities of the civilized world find, I suspect, an easier, if a bluffer, reply from the political economist than the Stoic philosopher. "You don't like them, you find it hard to submit to them," says the political economist; "but they are the laws of a civilized state, and you can't alter them.

Wiser men than you have tried to alter them, and never succeeded, though they turned the earth topsy-turvy! Very well; but the world is wide,--go into a state that is not so civilized. The disparities of the Old World vanish amidst the New! Emigration is the reply of Nature to the rebellious cry against Art." Thus would say the political economist; and, alas, even in your case, my son, I found no reply to the reasonings! I acknowledge, then, that Australia might open the best safety-valve to your cousin's discontent and desires; but I acknowledge also a counter-truth, which is this: "It is not permitted to an honest man to corrupt himself for the sake of others." That is almost the only maxim of Jean Jacques to which I can cheerfully subscribe! Do you feel quite strong enough to resist all the influences which a companions.h.i.+p of this kind may subject you to; strong enough to bear his burden as well as your own; strong enough, also,--ay, and alert and vigilant enough,--to prevent those influences harming the others whom you have undertaken to guide, and whose lots are confided to you? Pause well and consider maturely, for this must not depend upon a generous impulse. I think that your cousin would now pa.s.s under your charge with a sincere desire for reform; but between sincere desire and steadfast performance there is a long and dreary interval, even to the best of us. Were it not for Roland, and had I one grain less confidence in you, I could not entertain the thought of laying on your young shoulders so great a responsibility. But every new responsibility to an earnest nature is a new prop to virtue; and all I now ask of you is to remember that it is a solemn and serious charge, not to be undertaken without the most deliberate gauge and measure of the strength with which it is to be borne.

In two days we shall be in London.

Yours, my Anachronism, anxiously and fondly, A. C.

I was in my own room while I read this letter, and I had just finished it when, as I looked up, I saw Roland standing opposite to me. "It is from Austin," said he; then he paused a moment, and added, in a tone that seemed quite humble, "May I see it,--and dare I?" I placed the letter in his hands, and retired a few paces, that he might not think I watched his countenance while he read it. And I was only aware that he had come to the end by a heavy, anxious, but not disappointed sigh. Then I turned, and our eyes met; and there was something in Roland's look, inquiring and, as it were, imploring. I interpreted it at once.

"Oh, yes, uncle!" I said, smiling; "I have reflected, and I have no fear of the result. Before my father wrote, what he now suggests had become my secret wish. As for our other companions, their simple natures would defy all such sophistries as--But he is already half-cured of those. Let him come with me, and when he returns he shall be worthy of a place in your heart beside his sister Blanche. I feel, I promise it; do not fear for me! Such a charge will be a talisman to myself. I will shun every error that I might otherwise commit, so that he may have no example to entice him to err."

I know that in youth, and the superst.i.tion of first love, we are credulously inclined to believe that love and the possession of the beloved are the only happiness. But when my uncle folded me in his arms and called me the hope of his age and stay of his house,--the music of my father's praise still ringing on my heart,--I do affirm that I knew a prouder bliss than if Trevanion had placed f.a.n.n.y's hand in mine and said, "She is yours."