A DECISION.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Charlie Atheling slowly. Having made this
preface, the big boy paused: it was his manner of opening an important
subject, to which the greater part of his cogitations were directed. His
sisters came close to him immediately, half-embracing this great fellow
in their united arms, and waiting for his communication. It was the
twilight of an April evening, soft and calm. There were no stars in the
sky--no sky even, except an occasional break of clear deep heavenly blue
through the shadowy misty shapes of clouds, crowding upon each other
over the whole arch of heaven. The long boughs of the lilac-bushes
rustled in the night wind with all their young soft leaves--the prim
outline of the poplar was ruffled with brown buds, and low on the dark
soil at its feet was a faint golden lustre of primroses. Everything was
as still--not as death, for its deadly calm never exists in nature; but
as life, breathing, hushing, sleeping in that sweet season, when the
grass is growing and the bud unfolding, all the night and all the day.
Even here, in this suburban garden, with the great Babel muffling its
voices faintly in the far distance, you could hear, if you listened,
that secret rustle of growth and renewing which belongs to the sweet
spring. Even here, in this colourless soft light, you could see the
earth opening her unwearied bosom, with a passive grateful sweetness, to
the inspiring touch of heaven. The brown soil was moist with April
showers, and the young leaves glistened faintly with blobs of dew. Very
different from the noonday hope was this hope of twilight; but not less
hopeful in its silent operations, its sweet sighs, its soft tears, and
the heart that stirred within it, in the dark, like a startled bird.
These three young figures, closely grouped together, which you could see
only in outline against the faint horizon and the misty sky, were as
good a human rendering as could be made of the unexpressed sentiment of
the season and the night--they too were growing, with a sweet
involuntary progression, up to their life, and to their fate. They stood
upon the threshold of the world innocent adventurers, fearing no evil;
and it was hard to believe that these hopeful neophytes could ever be
made into toil-worn, care-hardened people of the world by any sum of
hardships or of years.
“I’ve been thinking;”--all this time Charlie Atheling had added nothing
to his first remarkable statement, and we are compelled to admit that
the conclusion which he now gave forth did not seem to justify the
solemnity of the delivery--“yes, I’ve made up my mind; I’ll go to old
Foggo and the law.”
“And why, Charlie, why?”
Charlie was not much given to rendering a reason.
“Never mind the why,” he said, abruptly; “that’s best. There’s old Foggo
himself, now; nobody can reckon his income, or make a balance just what
he is and what he has, and all about him, as people could do with us. We
are plain nobodies, and people know it at a glance. My father has five
children and two hundred a-year--whereas old Foggo, you see--”
“_I_ don’t see--I do not believe it!” cried Marian, impatiently. “Do you
mean to say, you bad boy, that Mr Foggo is better than papa--_my_
father? Why, he has mamma, and Bell and Beau, and all of us: if anything
ailed him, we should break our hearts. Mr Foggo has only Miss Willsie:
he is an old man, and snuffs, and does not care for anybody: do you call
_that_ better than papa?”
But Charlie only laughed. Certain it was that this lad had not the
remotest intention of setting up Mr Foggo as his model of happiness.
Indeed, nobody quite knew what Charlie’s ideal was; but the boy, spite
of his practical nature, had a true boyish liking for that margin of
uncertainty which made it possible to surmise some unknown power or
greatness even in the person of this ancient lawyer’s clerk. Few lads,
we believe, among the range of those who have to make their own fortune,
are satisfied at their outset to decide upon being “no better than
papa.”
“Well,” said Agnes, with consideration, “I should not like Charlie to be
just like papa. Papa can do nothing but keep us all--so many
children--and he never can be anything more than he is now. But
Charlie--Charlie is quite a different person. I wish he could be
something great.”
“Agnes--don’t! it is such nonsense!” cried Marian. “Is there anything
great in old Mr Foggo’s office? He is a poor old man, _I_ think, living
all by himself with Miss Willsie. I had rather be Susan in our house,
than be mistress in Mr Foggo’s: and how could _he_ make Charlie anything
great?”
“Stuff!” said Charlie; “nobody wants to be _made_; that’s a man’s own
business. Now, you just be quiet with your romancing, you girls. I’ll
tell you what, though, there’s one man I think I’d like to be--and I
suppose you call him great--I’d like to be Rajah Brooke.”
“Oh, Charlie! and hang people!” cried Marian.
“Not people--only pirates,” said the big boy: “wouldn’t I string them up
too! Yes, if that would please you, Agnes, I’d like to be Rajah Brooke.”
“Then why, Charlie,” exclaimed Agnes--“why do you go to Mr Foggo’s
office? A merchant may have a chance for such a thing--but a lawyer!
Charlie, boy, what do you mean?”
“Never mind,” said Charlie; “your Brookes and your Layards and such
people don’t begin by being merchants’ clerks. I know better: they have
birth and education, and all that, and get the start of everybody, and
then they make a row about it. I don’t see, for my part,” said the young
gentleman meditatively, “what it is but chance. A man may succeed, or a
man may fail, and it’s neither much to his credit nor his blame. It is a
very odd thing, and I can’t understand it--a man may work all his life,
and never be the better for it. It’s chance, and nothing more, so far as
I can see.”
“Hush, Charlie--say Providence,” said Agnes, anxiously.
“Well, I don’t know--it’s very odd,” answered the big boy.
Whereupon there began two brief but earnest lectures for the good of
Charlie’s mind, and the improvement of his sentiments. The girls were
much disturbed by their brother’s heterodoxy; they assaulted him
vehemently with the enthusiastic eagerness of the young faith which had
never been tried, and would not comprehend any questioning. Chance! when
the very sparrows could not fall to the ground--The bright face of Agnes
Atheling flushed almost into positive beauty; she asked indignantly,
with a trembling voice and tears in her eyes, how Mamma could have
endured to live if it had not been God who did it? Charlie, rough as he
was, could not withstand an appeal like this: he muttered something
hastily under his breath about success in business being a very
different thing from _that_, and was indisputably overawed and
vanquished. This allusion made them all very silent for a time, and the
young bright eyes involuntarily glanced upward where the pure faint
stars were gleaming out one by one among the vapoury hosts of cloud.
Strangely touching was the solemnity of this link, not to be broken,
which connected the family far down upon the homely bosom of the
toilsome earth with yonder blessed children in the skies. Marian, saying
nothing, wiped some tears silently from the beautiful eyes which turned
such a wistful, wondering, longing look to the uncommunicating heaven.
Charlie, though you could scarcely see him in the darkness, worked those
heavy furrows of his brow, and frowned fiercely upon himself. The long
branches came sweeping towards them, swayed by the night wind; up in the
east rose the pale spring moon, pensive, with a misty halo like a saint.
The aspect of the night was changed; instead of the soft brown gloaming,
there was broad silvery light and heavy masses of shadow over sky and
soil--an instant change all brought about by the rising of the moon. As
swift an alteration had passed upon the mood of these young speculators.
They went in silently, full of thought--not so sad but that they could
brighten to the fireside brightness, yet more meditative than was their
wont; even Charlie--for there was a warm heart within the clumsy form of
this big boy!