Lenny Fairfield continued to give great satisfaction to his new
employers, and to profit in many respects by the familiar kindness with
which he was treated. Riccabocca, who valued himself on penetrating
into character, had from the first seen that much stuff of no common
quality and texture was to be found in the disposition and mind of the
English village boy. On farther acquaintance, he perceived that, under
a child's innocent simplicity, there were the workings of an acuteness
that required but development and direction. He ascertained that the
pattern boy's progress at the village school proceeded from something
more than mechanical docility and readiness of comprehension. Lenny had
a keen thirst for knowledge, and through all the disadvantages of birth
and circumstance, there were the indications of that natural genius
which converts disadvantages themselves into stimulants. Still, with
the germs of good qualities lay the embryos of those which, difficult
to separate, and hard to destroy, often mar the produce of the soil.
With a remarkable and generous pride in self-repute, there was some
stubbornness; with great sensibility to kindness, there was also strong
reluctance to forgive affront.
This mixed nature in an uncultivated peasant's breast interested
Riccabocca, who, though long secluded from the commerce of mankind,
still looked upon man as the most various and entertaining volume which
philosophical research can explore. He soon accustomed the boy to the
tone of a conversation generally subtle and suggestive; and Lenny's
language and ideas became insensibly less rustic and more refined.
Then Riccabocca selected from his library, small as it was, books that
though elementary, were of a higher cast than Lenny could have found
within his reach at Hazeldean. Riccabocca knew the English language
well, better in grammar, construction, and genius than many a not
ill-educated Englishman; for he had studied it with the minuteness with
which a scholar studies a dead language, and amidst his collection he
had many of the books which had formerly served him for that purpose.
These were the first works he had lent to Lenny. Meanwhile Jackeymo
imparted to the boy many secrets in practical gardening and minute
husbandry, for at that day farming in England (some favoured counties
and estates excepted) was far below the nicety to which the art has
been immemorially carried in the north of Italy--where, indeed, you may
travel for miles and miles as through a series of market-gardens--so
that, all these things considered, Leonard Fairfield might be said to
have made a change for the better. Yet in truth, and looking below the
surface, that might be fair matter of doubt. For the same reason which
had induced the boy to fly his native village, he no longer repaired to
the church of Hazeldean. The old intimate intercourse between him and
the Parson became necessarily suspended, or bounded to an occasional
kindly visit from the latter--visits which grew more rare, and less
familiar, as he found his former pupil in no want of his services, and
wholly deaf to his mild entreaties to forget and forgive the past,
and come at least to his old seat in the parish church. Lenny still
went to church--a church a long way off in another parish--but the
sermons did not do him the same good as Parson Dale's had done; and
the clergyman, who had his own flock to attend to, did not condescend,
as Parson Dale would have done, to explain what seemed obscure, and
enforce what was profitable, in private talk, with that stray lamb from
another's fold.
Now I question much if all Dr Riccabocca's sage maxims, though they
were often very moral, and generally very wise, served to expand the
peasant boy's native good qualities, and correct his bad, half so
well as the few simple words, not at all indebted to Machiavelli,
which Leonard had once reverently listened to when he stood by his
father's chair, yielded up for the moment to the good Parson, worthy
to sit in it; for Mr Dale had a heart in which all the fatherless of
the parish found their place. Nor was this loss of tender, intimate,
spiritual lore so counterbalanced by the greater facilities for purely
intellectual instruction, as modern enlightenment might presume.
For, without disputing the advantage of knowledge in a general way,
knowledge, in itself, is not friendly to content. Its tendency, of
course, is to increase the desires, to dissatisfy us with what is, in
order to urge progress to what may be; and, in that progress, what
unnoticed martyrs among the many must fall, baffled and crushed by
the way! To how large a number will be given desires they will never
realise, dissatisfaction of the lot from which they will never rise!
_Allons!_ one is viewing the dark side of the question. It is all the
fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny
Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and
seeing no one near him, groan out querulously--
"And am I born to dig a potato ground?"
_Pardieu_, my friend Lenny, if you live to be seventy, and ride in your
carriage;--and by the help of a dinner-pill digest a spoonful of curry,
you may sigh to think what a relish there was in potatoes, roasted in
ashes after you had digged them out of that ground with your own stout
young hands. Dig on, Lenny Fairfield, dig on! Dr Riccabocca will tell
you that there was once an illustrious personage[1] who made experience
of two very different occupations--one was ruling men, the other was
planting cabbages; he thought planting cabbages much the pleasanter of
the two!