The weeks and the months rolled on, and the replies to Vivian's letters
came at last; I foreboded too well their purport. I knew that my father
could not set himself in opposition to the deliberate and cherished
desire of a man who had now arrived at the full strength of his
understanding, and must be left at liberty to make his own election of
the paths of life. Long after that date I saw Vivian's letter to my
father; and even his conversation had scarcely prepared me for the
pathos of that confession of a mind remarkable alike for its strength
and its weakness. If born in the age, or submitted to the influences,
of religious enthusiasm, here was a nature that, awaking from sin, could
not have been contented with the sober duties of mediocre goodness; that
would have plunged into the fiery depths of monkish fanaticism, wrestled
with the fiend in the hermitage, or marched barefoot on the infidel with
a sackcloth for armor,--the cross for a sword. Now, the impatient
desire for redemption took a more mundane direction, but with something
that seemed almost spiritual in its fervor. And this enthusiasm flowed
through strata of such profound melancholy! Deny it a vent, and it
might sicken into lethargy or fret itself into madness,--give it the
vent, and it might vivify and fertilize as it swept along.
My father's reply to this letter was what might be expected. It gently
reinforced the old lessons in the distinctions between aspirations
towards the perfecting ourselves,--aspirations that are never in vain,--
and the morbid passion for applause from others, which shifts conscience
from our own bosoms to the confused Babel of the crowd and calls it
"fame." But my father in his counsels did not seek to oppose a mind so
obstinately bent upon a single course,--he sought rather to guide and
strengthen it in the way it should go. The seas of human life are wide.
Wisdom may suggest the voyage, but it must first look to the condition
of the ship and the nature of the merchandise to exchange. Not every
vessel that sails from Tarshish can bring back the gold of Ophir; but
shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No; give its sails to the wind!
But I had expected that Roland's letter to his son would have been full
of joy and exultation,--joy there was none in it, yet exultation there
might be, though serious, grave, and subdued. In the proud assent that
the old soldier gave to his son's wish, in his entire comprehension of
motives so akin to his own nature, there was yet a visible sorrow; it
seemed even as if he constrained himself to the assent he gave. Not
till I had read it again and again could I divine Roland's feelings
while he wrote. At this distance of time I comprehend them well. Had
he sent from his side, into noble warfare, some boy fresh to life, new
to sin, with an enthusiasm pure and single-hearted as his own young
chivalrous ardor, then, with all a soldier's joy, he had yielded a
cheerful tribute to the hosts of England. But here he recognized,
though perhaps dimly, not the frank, military fervor, but the stern
desire of expiation; and in that thought he admitted forebodings that
would have been otherwise rejected, so that at the close of the letter
it seemed, not the fiery, war-seasoned Roland that wrote, but rather
some timid, anxious mother. Warnings and entreaties and cautions not to
be rash, and assurances that the best soldiers were ever the most
prudent,--were these the counsels of the fierce veteran who at the head
of the forlorn hope had mounted the wall at--, his sword between his
teeth?
But whatever his presentiments, Roland had yielded at once to his son's
prayer, hastened to London at the receipt of his letter, obtained a
commission in a regiment now in active service in India; and that
commission was made out in his son's name. The commission, with an
order to join the regiment as soon as possible, accompanied the letter.
And Vivian, pointing to the name addressed to him, said, "Now indeed I
may resume this name, and next to Heaven will I hold it sacred! It
shall guide me to glory in life, or my father shall read it, without
shame, on my tomb!" I see him before me as he stood then,--his form
erect, his dark eyes solemn in their light, a serenity in his smile, a
grandeur on his brow, that I had never marked till then! Was that the
same man I had recoiled from as the sneering cynic, shuddered at as the
audacious traitor, or wept over as the cowering outcast? How little the
nobleness of aspect depends on symmetry of feature, or the mere
proportions of form! What dignity robes the man who is filled with a
lofty thought!