The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 67

"Blanche made me promise."

Why, I wonder. Therewith I fell musing.

What quiet, delicious hours are spent with my father in his study, or by the pond, where he still feeds the carps, that have grown into Cyprinidian leviathans. The duck, alas! has departed this life,--the only victim that the Grim King has carried off; so I mourn, but am resigned to that lenient composition of the great tribute to Nature. I am sorry to say the Great Book has advanced but slowly,--by no means yet fit for publication; for it is resolved that it shall not come out as first proposed, a part at a time, but, totus, teres, atque rotundus.

The matter has spread beyond its original compa.s.s; no less than five volumes--and those of the amplest--will contain the History of Human Error. However, we are far in the fourth, and one must not hurry Minerva.

My father is enchanted with Uncle Jack's "n.o.ble conduct," as he calls it; but he scolds me for taking the money, and doubts as to the propriety of returning it. In these matters my father is quite as Quixotical as Roland. I am forced to call in my mother as umpire between us, and she settles the matter at once by an appeal to feeling. "Ah, Austin! do you not humble me if you are too proud to accept what is due to you from my brother?"

"Velit, nolit, quod amica," answered my father, taking off and rubbing his spectacles,--"which means, Kitty, that when a man's married he has no will of his own. To think," added Mr. Caxton, musingly, "that in this world one cannot be sure of the simplest mathematical definition. You see, Pisistratus, that the angles of a triangle so decidedly scalene as your Uncle Jack's may be equal to the angles of a right-angled triangle after all!" (2)

The long privation of books has quite restored all my appet.i.te for them.

How much I have to pick up; what a compendious scheme of reading I and my father chalk out! I see enough to fill up all the leisure of life.

But, somehow or other, Greek and Latin stand still; nothing charms me like Italian. Blanche and I are reading Metastasio, to the great indignation of my father, who calls it "rubbish," and wants to subst.i.tute Dante. I have no a.s.sociations at present with the souls

"Che son contenti Nel fuoco;"

I am already one of the "beate gente." Yet, in spite of Metastasio, Blanche and I are not so intimate as cousins ought to be. If we are by accident alone, I become as silent as a Turk, as formal as Sir Charles Grandison. I caught myself calling her Miss Blanche the other day.

I must not forget thee, honest Squills, nor thy delight at my health and success, nor thy exclamation of pride (one hand on my pulse and the other griping hard the "ball" of my arm)! "It all comes of my citrate of iron: nothing like it for children; it has an effect on the cerebral developments of hope and combativeness." Nor can I wholly omit mention of poor Mrs. Primmins, who still calls me "Master Sisty," and is breaking her heart that I will not wear the new flannel waistcoats she had such pleasure in making,--"Young gentlemen just growing up are so apt to go off in a galloping 'sumption! She knew just such another as Master Sisty, when she lived at Torquay, who wasted away and went out like a snuff, all because he would not wear flannel waistcoats."

Therewith my mother looks grave, and says, "One can't take too much precaution." Suddenly the whole neighborhood is thrown into commotion.

Trevanion--I beg his pardon, Lord Ulverstone--is coming to settle for good at Compton. Fifty hands are employed daily in putting the grounds into hasty order. Four-gons and wagons and vans have disgorged all the necessaries a great man requires where he means to eat, drink, and sleep,--books, wines, pictures, furniture. I recognize my old patron still. He is in earnest, whatever he does. I meet my friend, his steward, who tells me that Lord Ulverstone finds his favorite seat, near London, too exposed to interruption; and moreover that, as he has there completed all improvements that wealth and energy can effect, he has less occupation for agricultural pursuits, to which he has grown more and more partial, than on the wide and princely domain which has. .h.i.therto wanted the master's eye. "He is a bra' farmer, I know," quoth the steward, "so far as the theory goes; but I don't think we in the North want great lords to teach us how to follow the pleugh." The steward's sense of dignity is hurt; but he is an honest fellow, and really glad to see the family come to settle in the old place.

They have arrived, and--with them the Castletons and a whole posse comitatus of guests. The county paper is full of fine names.

"What on earth did Lord Ulverstone mean by pretending to get out of the way of troublesome visitors?"

"My dear Pisistratus," answered my father to that exclamation, "it is not the visitors who come, but the visitors who stay away that most trouble the repose of a retired minister. In all the procession he sees but the images of Brutus and Ca.s.sius that are not there! And depend on it also, a retirement so near London did not make noise enough. You see, a retiring statesman is like that fine carp,--the farther he leaps from the water, the greater splash he makes in falling into the weeds! But,"

added Mr. Caxton, in a repentant tone, "this jesting does not become us; and if I indulged it, it is only because I am heartily glad that Trevanion is likely now to find out his true vocation. And as soon as the fine people he brings with him have left him alone in his library, I trust he will settle to that vocation, and be happier than he has been yet."

"And that vocation, sir, is--"

"Metaphysics," said my father. "He will be quite at home in puzzling over Berkeley, and considering whether the Speaker's chair and the official red boxes were really things whose ideas of figure, extension, and hardness were all in the mind. It will be a great consolation to him to agree with Berkeley, and to find that he has only been baffled by immaterial phantasma!"

My father was quite right. The repining, subtle, truth-weighing Trevanion, plagued by his conscience into seeing all sides of a question (for the least question has more than two sides, and is hexagonal at least), was much more fitted to discover the origin of ideas than to convince Cabinets and Nations that two and two make four,--a proposition on which he himself would have agreed with Abraham Tucker where that most ingenious and suggestive of all English metaphysicians observes, "Well, persuaded as I am that two and two make four, if I were to meet with a person of credit, candor, and understanding who should sincerely call it in question, I would give him a hearing; for I am not more certain of that than of the whole being greater than a part. And yet I could myself suggest some considerations that might seem to controvert this point." (3) I can so well imagine Trevanion listening to "some person of credit, candor, and understanding" in disproof of that vulgar proposition that twice two make four! But the news of this arrival, including that of Lady Castleton, disturbed me greatly, and I took to long wanderings alone. In one of these rambles they all called at the Tower,--Lord and Lady Ulverstone, the Castletons, and their children.

I escaped the visit; and on my return home there was a certain delicacy respecting old a.s.sociations that restrained much talk, before me, on so momentous an event. Roland, like me, had kept out of the way. Blanche, poor child, ignorant of the antecedents, was the most communicative.

And the especial theme she selected was the grace and beauty of Lady Castleton!

A pressing invitation to spend some days at the castle had been cordially given to all. It was accepted only by myself: I wrote word that I would come.

Yes, I longed to prove the strength of my own self-conquest, and accurately test the nature of the feelings that had disturbed me. That any sentiment which could be called "love" remained for Lady Castleton, the wife of another, and that other a man with so many claims on my affection as her lord, I held as a moral impossibility. But with all those lively impressions of early youth still engraved on my heart,--impressions of the image of f.a.n.n.y Trevanion as the fairest and brightest of human beings,--could I feel free to love again? Could I seek to woo, and rivet to myself forever, the entire and virgin affections of another while there was a possibility that I might compare and regret? No; either I must feel that if f.a.n.n.y were again single, could be mine without obstacle, human or divine, she had ceased to be the one I would single out of the world; or, though regarding love as the dead, I would be faithful to its memory and its ashes. My mother sighed, and looked fluttered and uneasy all the morning of the day on which I was to repair to Compton. She even seemed cross, for about the third time in her life, and paid no compliment to Mr. Stultz when my shooting-jacket was exchanged for a black frock which that artist had p.r.o.nounced to be "splendid;" neither did she honor me with any of those little attentions to the contents of my portmanteau, and the perfect "getting up" of my white waistcoats and cravats, which made her natural instincts on such memorable occasions. There was also a sort of querulous, pitying tenderness in her tone, when she spoke to Blanche, which was quite pathetic; though, fortunately, its cause remained dark and impenetrable to the innocent comprehension of one who could not see where the past filled the urns of the future at the fountain of life.

My father understood me better, shook me by the hand as I got into the chaise, and muttered, out of Seneca: "Non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam explorator" ("Not to desert, but examine").

Quite right.

(1) "Dingoes "--the name given by Australian natives to the wild dogs.

(2) Not having again to advert to Uncle Jack, I may be pardoned for informing the reader, by way of annotation, that he continues to prosper surprisingly in Australia, though the Tibbets' Wheal stands still for want of workmen. Despite of a few ups and downs, I have had no fear of his success until this year (1849), when I tremble to think what effect the discovery of the gold mines in California may have on his lively imagination. If thou escapest that snare, Uncle Jack, res age, tutus eris--thou art safe for life!

(3) "Light of Nature,"--chapter on Judgment.--See the very ingenious ill.u.s.tration of doubt, "whether the part is always greater than the whole,"--taken from time, or rather eternity.

CHAPTER VI.

Agreeably to the usual custom in great houses, as soon as I arrived at Compton I was conducted to my room to adjust my toilet or compose my spirits by solitude,--it wanted an hour to dinner. I had not, however, been thus left ten minutes before the door opened and Trevanion himself (as I would fain still call him) stood before me. Most cordial were his greeting and welcome; and seating himself by my side, he continued to converse in his peculiar way--bluntly eloquent and carelessly learned--till the half-hour bell rang. He talked on Australia, the Wakefield system, cattle, books, his trouble in arranging his library, his schemes for improving his property and embellis.h.i.+ng his grounds, his delight to find my father look so well, his determination to see a great deal of him, whether his old college friend would or not; he talked, in short, of everything except politics and his own past career,--showing only his soreness in that silence. But--independently of the mere work of time--he looked yet more worn and jaded in his leisure than he had done in the full tide of business; and his former abrupt quickness of manner now seemed to partake of feverish excitement. I hoped that my father would see much of him, for I felt that the weary mind wanted soothing.

Just as the second bell rang I entered the drawing-room. There were at least twenty guests present,--each guest, no doubt, some planet of fas.h.i.+on or fame, with satellites of its own. But I saw only two forms distinctly: first, Lord Castleton, conspicuous with star and garter,--somewhat ampler and portlier in proportions, and with a frank dash of gray in the silky waves of his hair, but still as pre-eminent as ever for that beauty, the charm of which depends less than any other upon youth, arising, as it does, from a felicitous combination of bearing and manner, and that exquisite suavity of expression which steals into the heart and pleases so much that it be comes a satisfaction to admire! Of Lord Castleton, indeed, it might be said, as of Alcibiades, "that he was beautiful at every age." I felt my breath come thick, and a mist pa.s.sed before my eyes as Lord Castleton led me through the crowd, and the radiant vision of f.a.n.n.y Trevanion--how altered, and how dazzling!--burst upon me.

I felt the light touch of that hand of snow; but no guilty thrill shot through my veins. I heard the voice, musical as ever,--lower than it was once, and more subdued in its key, but steadfast and untremulous: it was no longer the voice that made "my soul plant itself in the ears." (1) The event was over, and I knew that the dream had fled from the waking world forever.

"Another old friend!" as Lady Ulverstone came forth from a little group of children, leading one fine boy of nine years old, while one, two or three years younger, clung to her gown. "Another old friend! and," added Lady Ulverstone, after the first kind greetings, "two new ones when the old are gone." The slight melancholy left the voice as, after presenting to me the little viscount, she drew forward the more bashful Lord Albert, who indeed had something of his grandsire and namesake's look of refined intelligence in his brow and eyes.

The watchful tact of Lord Castleton was quick in terminating whatever embarra.s.sment might belong to these introductions, as, leaning lightly on my arm, he drew me forward and presented me to the guests more immediately in our neighborhood, who seemed by their earnest cordiality to have been already prepared for the introduction.

Dinner was now announced, and I welcomed that sense of relief and segregation with which one settles into one's own "particular" chair at your large miscellaneous entertainment.

I stayed three days at that house. How truly had Trevanion said that f.a.n.n.y would make "an excellent great lady." What perfect harmony between her manners and her position! just retaining enough of the girl's seductive gayety and bewitching desire to please, to soften the new dignity of bearing she had unconsciously a.s.sumed,--less, after all, as great lady, than as wife and mother; with a fine breeding, perhaps a little languid and artificial as compared with her lord's,--which sprang, fresh and healthful, wholly from nature,--but still so void of all the chill of condescension or the subtle impertinence that belongs to that order of the inferior n.o.blesse which boasts the name of "exclusives;" with what grace, void of prudery, she took the adulation of the flatterers, turning from them to her children, or escaping lightly to Lord Castleton, with an ease that drew round her at once the protection of hearth and home!

And certainly Lady Castleton was more incontestably beautiful than f.a.n.n.y Trevanion had been.

All this I acknowledged, not with a sigh and a pang, but with a pure feeling of pride and delight. I might have loved madly and presumptuously; as boys will do; but I had loved worthily,--the love left no blush on my manhood; and f.a.n.n.y's very happiness was my perfect and total cure of every wound in my heart not quite scarred over before.

Had she been discontented, sorrowful, without joy in the ties she had formed, there might have been more danger that I should brood over the past and regret the loss of its idol. Here there was none. And the very improvement in her beauty had so altered its character--so altered--that f.a.n.n.y Trevanion and Lady Castleton seemed two persons. And thus observing and listening to her, I could now dispa.s.sionately perceive such differences in our natures as seemed to justify Trevanion's a.s.sertion, which once struck me as so monstrous, "that we should not have been happy had fate permitted our union." Pure-hearted and simple though she remained in the artificial world, still that world was her element; its interests occupied her; its talk, though just chastened from scandal, flowed from her lips. To borrow the words of a man who was himself a courtier, and one so distinguished that he could afford to sneer at Chesterfield, (2) "She had the routine of that style of conversation which is a sort of gold leaf, that is a great embellishment where it is joined to anything else." I will not add, "but makes a very poor figure by itself,"--for that Lady Castleton's conversation certainly did not do,--perhaps, indeed, because it was not "by itself,"--and the gold leaf was all the better for being thin, since it could not cover even the surface of the sweet and amiable nature over which it was spread. Still, this was not the mind in which now, in maturer experience, I would seek to find sympathy with manly action, or companions.h.i.+p in the charms of intellectual leisure.

There was about this same beautiful favorite of nature and fortune a certain helplessness, which had even its grace in that high station, and which, perhaps, tended to insure her doinestic peace, for it served to attach her to those who had won influence over her, and was happily accompanied by a most affectionate disposition. But still, if less favored by circ.u.mstances, less sheltered from every wind that could visit her too roughly; if, as the wife of a man of inferior rank, she had failed of that high seat and silken canopy reserved for the spoiled darlings of fortune,--that helplessness might have become querulous.

I thought of poor Ellen Bolding and her silken shoes. f.a.n.n.y Trevanion seemed to have come into the world with silk shoes,--not to walk where there was a stone or a brier. I heard something, in the gossip of those around, that confirmed this view of Lady Castleton's character, while it deepened my admiration of her lord, and showed me how wise had been her choice, and how resolutely he had prepared himself to vindicate his own.

One evening, as I was sitting, a little apart from the rest, with two men of the London world, to whose talk--for it ran upon the on-dits and anecdotes of a region long strange to me--I was a silent but amused listener, one of the two said: "Well, I don't know anywhere a more excellent creature than Lady Castleton: so fond of her children, and her tone to Castleton so exactly what it ought to be,--so affectionate, and yet, as it were, respectful. And the more credit to her if, as they say, she was not in love with him when she married (to be sure, handsome as he is, he is twice her age)! And no woman could have been more flattered and courted by Lotharios and lady-killers than Lady Castleton has been.

I confess, to my shame, that Castleton's luck puzzles me, for it is rather an exception to my general experience."

"My dear--," said the other, who was one of those wise men of pleasure who occasionally startle us into wondering how they come to be so clever, and yet rest contented with mere drawing-room celebrity,--men who seem always idle, yet appear to have read everything; always indifferent to what pa.s.ses before them, yet who know the character and divine the secrets of everybody, "my dear," said the gentleman, "you would not be puzzled if you had studied Lord Castleton, instead of her ladys.h.i.+p. Of all the conquests ever made by Sedley Beaudesert,--when the two fairest dames of the Faubourg are said to have fought for his smiles in the Bois de Boulogne,--no conquest ever cost him such pains, or so tasked his knowledge of women, as that of his wife after marriage.

He was not satisfied with her hand, he was resolved to have her whole heart,--'one entire and perfect chrysolite;' and he has succeeded! Never was husband so watchful and so little jealous, never one who confided so generously in all that was best in his wife, yet was so alert in protecting and guarding her wherever she was weakest. When in the second year of marriage that dangerous German Prince Von Leibenfels attached himself so perseveringly to Lady Castleton, and the scandal-mongers p.r.i.c.ked up their ears, in hopes of a victim, I watched Castleton with as much interest as if I had been looking over Deschappelles playing at chess. You never saw anything so masterly; he pitted himself against his highness with the cool confidence, not of a blind spouse, but a fortunate rival. He surpa.s.sed him in the delicacy of his attentions, he outshone him by his careless magnificence. Leibenfels had the impertinence to send Lady Castleton a bouquet of some rare flowers just in fas.h.i.+on. Castleton, an hour before, had filled her whole balcony with the same costly exotics, as if they were too common for nosegays, and only just worthy to bloom for her a day. Young and really accomplished as Leibenfels is, Castleton eclipsed him by his grace, and fooled him with his wit; he laid little plots to turn his mustache and guitar into ridicule; he seduced him into a hunt with the buckhounds (though Castleton himself had not hunted before since he was thirty), and drew him, spluttering German oaths, out of the slough of a ditch; he made him the laughter of the clubs; he put him fairly out of fas.h.i.+on,--and all with such suavity, and politeness, and bland sense of superiority, that it was the finest piece of high comedy you ever beheld. The poor prince, who had been c.o.xcomb enough to lay a bet with a Frenchman as to his success with the English in general, and Lady Castleton in particular, went away with a face as long as Don Quixote's. If you had but seen him at S--House, the night before he took leave of the island, and his comical grimace when Castleton offered him a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture! No; the fact is that Castleton made it the object of his existence, the masterpiece of his art, to secure to himself a happy home and the entire possession of his wife's heart. The first two or three years, I fear, cost him more trouble than any other man ever took,--with his own wife, at least; but he may now rest in peace,--Lady Castleton is won, and forever."

As my gentleman ceased, Lord Castleton's n.o.ble head rose above the group standing round him; and I saw Lady Castleton turn with a look of well-bred fatigue from a handsome young fop who had affected to lower his voice while he spoke to her, and, encountering the eyes of her husband, the look changed at once into one of such sweet, smiling affection, such frank, unmistakable wife-like pride, that it seemed a response to the a.s.sertion,--"Lady Castleton is won, and forever."

Yes, that story increased my admiration for Lord Castleton; it showed me with what forethought and earnest sense of responsibility he had undertaken the charge of a life, the guidance of a character yet undeveloped; it lastingly acquitted him of the levity that had been attributed to Sedley Beaudesert. But I felt more than ever contented that the task had devolved on one whose temper and experience had so fitted him to discharge it. That German prince made me tremble from sympathy with the husband, and in a sort of relative shudder for myself!

Had that episode happened to me, I could never have drawn "high comedy"

from it; I could never have so happily closed the fifth act with a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture! No, no; to my homely sense of man's life and employment there was nothing alluring in the prospect of watching over the golden tree in the garden, with a "woe to the Argus if Mercury once lull him to sleep!" Wife of mine shall need no watching, save in sickness and sorrow! Thank Heaven that my way of life does not lead through the roseate thoroughfares, beset with German princes laying bets for my perdition, and fine gentlemen admiring the skill with which I play at chess for so terrible a stake! To each rank and each temper, its own laws. I acknowledge that f.a.n.n.y is an excellent marchioness, and Lord Castleton an incomparable marquis. But, Blanche! if I can win thy true, simple heart, I trust I shall begin at the fifth act of high comedy, and say at the altar,--

"Once won, won forever."

(1) Sir Philip Sidney.

(2) Lord Hervey's Memoirs of George II.

CHAPTER VII.