THE WILFULNESS OF YOUTH.
Henry Ivraine had scarcely concluded, when the door of the apartment was
flung violently open, giving admittance to the tall gaunt baronet, the
“Miser Sir Ernest,” as he was universally called by all who knew him.
He resembled, and yet was dissimilar to, both his sons, having the
rapid, energetic manner of the one, and the melancholy, dissatisfied
expression of the other; his hair, which had once been black as
Ernest’s, was now grey and grizzled; his face was wrinkled, though
apparently more from temper than great age; his eyes were dark and keen,
and seemed to be perpetually darting rapid glances into remote corners
in search of any coin, no matter how insignificant; his mouth, like the
clasp of a purse, appeared to have a natural disinclination to open,
excepting with a snap; his untrimmed beard gave a wild, haggard
expression to his wasted features; his hands were long and thin, the
fingers bent like vulture’s claws. He had on an old pair of slippers,
coarse stockings, grey trousers of the commonest material, an old
tattered faded dressing gown, which, floating behind as he shuffled
rapidly towards the fire-place, gave him the appearance of a theatrical
caricature, save that the stage always lacks that of which he had the
stamp—reality.
“At it again, Henry,” he commenced, hastily removing the blazing logs
from their position and extinguishing them, as if they had been going to
set the house on fire, “at it again, haranguing and talking and wasting
the fuel; you will die in the workhouse yet, boy; you would spend a
fortune in a week. If you never can keep silent for ten minutes at a
time, why can’t you talk in the dark? you do not require to see when you
are speaking, do you? I cannot afford such fires; and that reminds
me—what’s this bill which has just come in?”
“You have not left me light sufficient to inform you,” answered the
youth angrily, gazing for a moment at his parent through the gloom, with
a look in which contempt had decidedly gained the mastery over filial
respect; but then, remembering that the questioner was his father, he
made a strong effort, and added, in a different tone, “if you tell me
the name of the sender, I shall be able to give you further
particulars.”
“It is a bill which I do not intend to pay,” remarked Sir Ernest, “from
a tailor of the name of Turner: items—a dress coat; ditto, vest; amount,
five pounds. I dare say the fellow wishes he may get it.”
“I am sure he cannot afford to lose it,” said Henry warmly; “I ordered
those articles, sir, when, at your desire, I went to Colonel Purday’s to
propose for his hideous daughter, who ran off with Lord Rondeford before
I had time to do it. I could not go to Bellefort Park in a plain
shooting jacket; and in the whole of my wardrobe, at that period, there
was not a coat innocent of the crime of being out at the elbows: I was
forced to order the clothes from some one, and, accordingly, Turner made
them.”
“And you may pay for them,” his father added, “as you would not marry
Miss Purday.”
“As Miss Purday would not marry me, you mean, sir,” retorted Henry: “on
my honour, at that time I’d have wedded Xantippe if she would only have
promised to carry me bodily out of Lincolnshire. If I had known she was
secretly engaged to that pauper, Lord Rondeford, why of course I should
not have wasted a new coat upon her; but being ignorant of that fact, I
did so, and Turner must not suffer for my over haste.”
“Or rather want of haste,” sneered his father, who had his own private
opinions on the subject. “Well, as I said before, you may pay the bill.”
“Had I possessed the means of doing so, it should never have been sent
to you,” said Henry; “as matters stand, I hope, sir, you will settle it.
I assure you it is the last account you will ever have to discharge for
me.”
“Yes, the last—and the last—and the last, for years; no, no, Henry, that
won’t do with me now; I am tired of that cry, I have no faith in that
promise. As I cannot teach you to be economical, I will prevent these
tradespeople giving you credit: let them go once or twice without their
money, and they will think half-a-dozen times before trusting you again.
I have been a most indulgent father; anything in reason I am willing
for—anything in reason, but not for bills like this: Turner will never
make coats for you again.”
“He is a poor man, sir, and has a large family,” urged Henry; “it would
not be a very great sum for you to pay, and it would be a heavy loss for
him to sustain.”
“The heavier the loss, the longer he will remember it,” the baronet said
savagely.
“He can force you to settle the account,” remarked his son.
“Ay! and how, pray?”
“He can summon you for the amount; I am under age,” Henry rejoined,
hotly.
“Just let him try it,” chuckled the baronet, “just let him try it, and I
will teach him a lesson he will never forget: but he won’t attempt it.
Go to law with Sir Ernest Ivraine! there’s not a man, noble or commoner,
in Lincolnshire who would attempt it: summon me!” and the old miser
laughed so long at the idea, that Henry had time to calm down a little
ere the baronet had concluded.
“I may have thought, and said, ere now that I would relieve you from the
burden of supporting me,” began his son, when Sir Ernest’s merriment was
fairly at an end; “but I have sworn it now: twenty-four hours more, and
I shall be off to seek my fortune, or to find a grave somewhere; for I
had rather dig the soil like the poorest labourer, than remain here.
After to-morrow we may never meet again, and as my last request, as my
only one ere I depart, I ask you to discharge this little debt; it is my
only one, and not extravagant. Will you promise me this before I go?”
Once again the baronet broke out into a sort of diabolical chuckle, as
he inquired where Henry was thinking of going.
“Out into the world, sir,” responded the young man sadly, and in a very
different tone from that which he had used during the course of his
conversation with his brother; “whither I care very little, whether
east, west, north, or south, so as it take me fairly away from this
wretched place. Father, I do not want to say anything disrespectful, or
unkind, but I have been so miserable here, that I feel I can bear it no
longer.”
“You have thriven upon it,” remarked Sir Ernest, drily, glancing at the
stalwart frame of his son; “you do not look miserable, though you talk
so much about it: probably all your grief evaporates in words. Now,
Ernest appears melancholy; perhaps it is because he never speaks.”
“There are griefs too deep for words,” murmured Ernest to the
smouldering embers, while Henry rejoined:
“How I have looked and talked, you know; how I have _felt_, I know. I
have often before said I would leave home, fully intending to carry that
intention into execution when any definite plan of support presented
itself. I am resolved to depart now: you have frequently told me I
might; that young men ought to battle and struggle for themselves. I
shall follow your advice: I shall avail myself of your permission at
last, and start to-morrow.”
“You will remain for many morrows,” sneered his parent.
“The sun of heaven shall never shine on my face here again, unless,
after the lapse of years, I return, rich and independent, to prove what
a strong will and a just purpose may accomplish for any man,” Henry
retorted. “If hereafter I should be happy and prosperous, how I would
glory just once to look upon these swamps and quagmires again, and think
of the weary life I led amongst them, and how I hated and detested the
very name of Paradise.”
“Henry!” exclaimed his brother, quickly; but the baronet merely laughed,
and said,
“Let him go on; it does me no harm, it makes Paradise none the less
valuable, it costs no money, nothing but breath, and he has plenty of
that to spare: it does him good, let him go on.”
“You are right, sir,” said Henry, vehemently; “it does do me good on
this the last evening of my sojourn under my father’s roof, to speak out
for once fully and frankly. I loathe this place; for years I have had
but one wish—to get away from it by any means. I have thought by day, I
have pondered by night, how that object might be best effected; but it
was only this morning that I took my final resolution to depart at all
hazards, and, please Heaven, I will adhere to it.”
“For how long?” the old man asked.
“Through life,” Henry answered; “some of our relatives flatter you, sir,
for their own ends. I am speaking now, not as a son to a father, not as
one who hopes or expects aught from you, either now or at any future
time, but as one man might to another, plainly and truthfully; and I say
they do flatter you for their own ends, and talk as if Ernest and I had
everything in life to be thankful for, if we would only be contented;
they trace all the misery of this wretched home of ours to those who,
instead of being the causes of unhappiness, are merely sufferers from
the evil which has made it what it is. They tell you we are murmuring,
dissatisfied, repining; and I tell you what they assert is false: that
we have borne patiently, as few young men would have done, privations
and humiliations; poverty in the midst of wealth; parsimony in the lap
of plenty——stay, Ernest, as I have begun, I will speak: our youth has
been wretched; we have been deprived of everything natural to our age;
the poorest cottager has fared better than we; the labourers on your
estate have been clad in costlier garments than the sons of its baronet
possessor; we have been debarred from society, have not been educated as
became our rank and your means, have neither the privileges of children,
nor the advantages of men; you will not give us the means to go, you
reproach us when we stay. Our relatives say all has been done for our
ultimate advantage. They may be correct; but as I never expect to derive
advantage from it, I confess it seems to me our present happiness has
been sacrificed to a mistaken system. I have been wretched, and a pauper
amidst lands and estates sufficient to have made me a being almost
without a care. I had rather go forth to encounter any fate than pass
the last few years of my existence over again.”
“Have you nearly done?” the baronet demanded, his whole frame quivering
with anger.
“Almost,” said Henry. “I have only to add that as Paradise has been a
place of torture to me, I mean to leave it in the space of a few brief
hours.”
“I will believe it when you are gone: and Ernest—”
“What he will do I know not,” the younger brother returned. “I wish he
would come with me. I trust he will be guided to a manly determination;
but whether or not, whether he decide to go forth to breast the world as
he can, or remain here, will make not the least alteration in my
purpose: nothing could turn me now.”
“Go then,” said the old man, bitterly; “I command you to go out into the
world which you think will act a kinder part to you than your father has
done; away from those relations whose counsel you despise: do what you
like. I renounce you, I cast you off; child of mine you are, heir of
mine you shall never be: go forth—see what stuff the world is made of;
learn the nature of men; discover what wins their hearts, turns their
purposes, sways the destinies of nations, shakes empires, moves the
world,—and then repent for ever that you threw from you him, who, for
your sake, struggled through years to gain the precious talisman, but
who, for your sake, will struggle no longer.”
“I know what a blessing gold can be made; I have felt what a curse it
may become,” the young man replied sadly: “the world can teach me
nothing about it I have not learnt already. Aid from you I ask not; but
lest hereafter my conscience should reproach me for having uttered some
expressions which have just escaped my lips, I request, before we part
for ever, you will say you forgive them; for, though true, I admit that,
perhaps, I should not have spoken them.”
“Always the same,” sneered the old man; “always speaking, always
repenting: always threatening, never performing; always dreaming, never
acting; always murmuring, never satisfied; always extravagant, never
reforming; always offending, always apologizing, but never amending;
always the same—always—always—till the end of time.” And as he concluded
this complimentary summary of his son’s character, the baronet turned to
leave the room.
“I am not threatening, I am not dreaming now; I mean to go: ere daybreak
to-morrow, I shall be miles from here. After to-night, we may not meet
for years again,—most likely, never: speak to me, say something before I
leave this place, which, in all human probability, I shall never see
more.”
And Henry, who was always in extreme, either of anger or sorrow, laid a
hand on the arm of the man, who, with his numerous faults and scanty
virtues, was still, and, in spite of all, his father. But the baronet,
who had come at length to regard Henry’s repinings as mere matters of
course, shook him off with a scornful laugh, and murmuring and muttering
“Always the same—always—always the same,” left the dark chamber, and
went out into the still darker corridor beyond.
How long and how earnestly the brothers remained after his departure in
that dreary apartment, conversing together, it would be impossible to
tell; they stayed there till the stars peeped forth and the moon arose;
and then Ernest, wearied and mournful, bade Henry go to rest, and sleep
upon it. Upon what? Upon the subject which was to decide his future lot;
on the step which might make or mar, elevate or destroy. “He will be
calmer in the morning,” thought the elder; and thus, after hours of
mutual expostulation, they separated for a time.
How often in after years did Ernest Ivraine remember the words and the
thoughts of that memorable night, when, sleepless and wretched, he
pondered on which path he should take, which road he would choose; when
unadorned freedom and gilded slavery were presented to his choice; when
he strove to see rightly by the dim flickering light of prudence, and
acted wrongly after all; when it was still in his power to cast the
fetters from his soul, but only bound them tighter around it; when he
called Henry rash and foolish and misguided, and strove to think him so;
when he fancied his own choice was better and more sensible, and felt in
his heart he was wrong; when he dreamed for one minute of happiness in
distant lands, and shrunk back the next, appalled by the spectre of
poverty grimly awaiting him on foreign shores; when he thought, with a
wild throb of pleasure, of leaving “Paradise” behind him, and then
resolved to remain there, lest strangers should share his parent’s gold
among them and he be left a bankrupt baronet, a beggar, an
outcast,—because of over-impatience, because he could not endure the
yoke till his father died.
Ere the faintest shade of grey coloured the eastern sky, Henry stood by
his brother’s side; he held a lighted candle in one hand, a valise in
the other.
“Have you made up your mind?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Ernest.
“And what is your decision?” Henry demanded.
“To stay,” was the reply; “as you will not remain to take care of your
own interests, I will guard them faithfully for you.”
“Guard your own,” returned his brother quickly, but not unkindly. “I
tell you I want nothing, I expect nothing, and I am starting in life—not
as the son of Sir Ernest Ivraine, but as a man without a shilling or the
hope of making one, excepting by his own exertions. If he make you his
heir, I shall say you have earned every guinea by the dreariest
servitude ever endured: no prospect of _certain_ ultimate wealth could
induce me to wait here for it. And remember, Ernest, that misers’ wills
are often strange documents: you are not sure of riches after years of
endurance: you are choosing certain misery for a mere chance. Come with
me, and we will show the world what two unassisted youths can do: will
you come?”
“No,” Ernest returned: “I will not leave unbounded wealth to the
cupidity of our relations; I will not cast such a chance from me, when,
by enduring a little longer, I may be free to shape my destiny as I
like. If I am ever rich, you shall be so too; if not, I, a titled
pauper, will then take the step I dread at present. Go out and labour,
and be happy if you can, and I will remain and try to do better for you
than you might yourself, waiting and praying and trusting for happier
times.”
“But not for _his_ death, Ernest, not for his death,” Henry said
solemnly.
“Nothing but his death can ever bring happiness to us, Henry,” his
brother responded emphatically.
“Oh! Ernest, I never wished for him to die; never even at my worst.”
“I often have,” was the elder’s brief confession, and gazing into his
brother’s face, after he had uttered the words, he saw him turn pale and
faint, as if the sentence sickened him.
“God help you from sinful thoughts and deeds, Ernest,” he murmured, as
they left the apartment together, and Ernest responded, “Amen.”
They walked along the corridor for some yards in silence; but then
Henry, pausing by a door almost at the end of it, said hurriedly,
“I cannot leave without seeing him.”
A bitter smile curled Ernest’s lip at the idea; he could not comprehend
his brother’s half-instinctive feelings of vague, changeable affection
for their parent. He had a settled hatred for the miser himself, and he
could not understand how Henry, who had suffered so much that he was
casting behind him all hope of wealth for ever, sooner than endure the
thraldom longer, could entertain any other sentiment than that of fixed
aversion towards the man who, though he was their father, had darkened
their lives, thwarted their wishes, clouded their futures, mortified
their pride through years.
“He will not thank you for disturbing him and raising all sorts of
horrors in his mind, concerning thieves and skeleton keys,” remarked the
elder brother with a sneer his parent might have envied; but Henry
called softly through the closed door, which was, as he well knew,
bolted and barred in the inside.
“Father, I want to speak to you—only one word.”
The miser was awake and up in a moment; with trembling fingers he undid
the fastenings.
“What is wrong?” he inquired; “what has happened?”
“I am going, sir,” said Henry.
“Is that all?” his father rejoined; “I thought, perhaps, some one had
broken in. When will you be back?”
“If I live, before I am grey-haired,” was the answer.
“A safe reply—time to come and go in: may mean to-morrow, or to-day, for
that matter,” the old man remarked.
“It does not mean to-day, or to-morrow, or the day after,” replied his
son; “it means years, long years, hence: when I have made a fortune:
when I am a youth no longer, but a man who has fought and struggled and
won. I—I could not leave you, perhaps for ever, without one word more—I
am sorry for what I said last night; you will bid me good-bye, sir,
won’t you?”
Perhaps the presence of his brother restrained him from asking a
parent’s blessing on his enterprise; perhaps he felt that such a word
from those thin avaricious lips would have been little but a mockery;
perhaps such an idea never crossed his mind: at all events, the brief
English honest parting phrase was all he requested, and all he received.
“Good-bye, then,” said the old man, who went through the scene as if it
had been a sort of farce—(in fact, he considered it as such; the only
serious thing he dreaded in the piece being a demand for money);
“Good-bye, then,” and he held out a long skinny hand, which his son took
mournfully.
All the past floated dimly before his eyes: his childhood, his mother,
her death, the few kindnesses his father had ever conferred upon him,
the many angry and impatient expressions he had made use of towards that
parent! He glanced wildly back into the previous years of his existence,
and at that glance all the events, and trials, and purposes, and
disappointments, and wrongs, came like spectres at a master’s bidding up
to view: he gazed forth almost fearfully into the dim, gloomy, uncertain
future, into which, without friend, or light, or rudder, or compass, he
was plunging: he was leaving a home which, though dreary, had still been
a sort of home; a father who, though a selfish, unfeeling man, was his
only surviving parent; a brother, to whom he had clung and appealed
through years; a place, which, though surrounded by swamps and marshes
and desolation, had once been tenanted by a gentle woman, his mother,
who, after having bequeathed to her children whatever of good beautified
their natures, died in that house which somehow, at that moment, her
spirit seemed to sanctify.
Leaving all—a miserable home, a miser father, a melancholy brother!
going to a foreign land to face death as a common soldier! departing,
certainly for years, possibly for ever! The whole vision of past,
present, and future swept rapidly across his soul and softened it; and
on that, the last time when he and his father ever met or parted, the
young man, forgetful or regardless of Ernest’s grave, contemptuous
smile, bent down his head over that hand, which never grasped aught
eagerly save a piece of gold, and kissed it.
There was something about the act which touched for an instant the old
miser’s iron soul; but muttering to himself the words, “He won’t go
after all; it’s all talk,” he only said, “Good-bye, then, boy, you’ll be
back soon,” and so let his son depart.
A sort of film obscured Henry’s eyes as he turned from that door to
break all ties asunder: a sentence would have made him stay then—but the
old man spoke it not—though a word might have made him depart the next
day.
Ere they reached the principal hall, however, the sound of Sir Ernest’s
voice calling to them echoed drearily through the long corridors. Henry
ran back to the foot of the stairs at the summons, his heart beating
painfully.
“No, no, it’s not you I want,” cried the miser, leaning over the
banisters as he spoke, “but Ernest; I can trust him, and you never
remember anything. Be sure to see the door is properly shut when you go
out; that is all: or stay, I will fasten it after you myself.”
And the old man, shuffling down the stairs and across the hall, closed
and locked the heavy oaken door upon the departing figure of his
youngest born, and with trembling eagerness adjusted each chain and bar,
to see all was in its place, whilst Ernest remarked, as they walked
along the terrace together,
“He could sleep if we were in our coffins, Henry, but not if a bolt in
the house were neglected to be drawn.”
A chill had fallen over the soul of the younger brother as he heard the
door bang violently behind him, and the rattling of the chains and
grating of the locks smote harshly on his ear: it was his father’s
farewell to him; it was the last sound he listened to in that house,
till, after years of exile, he returned to find his parent dead, removed
to that other world where gold and earthly treasures avail not.
The damp morning wind blew not more coldly upon his cheek than the
miser’s words struck to his soul; winter’s frosts never possessed a
bitterness of more reality than his brother’s brief sentence. Thus Henry
Ivraine passed forth, after many resolves and many struggles, as he had
said he would, “into the world;” and Sir Ernest, his father, without a
regretful or tender word, bolted the door of home behind him. When next
he beheld that house, a different hand clasped his at the open portal:
another voice bade him welcome back again, for the old man had gone from
amongst his money bags for ever, and the place he had darkened and
clouded knew him no more.
For five miles the brothers pursued their way in silence; for Henry was
too sick at heart, and vexed in spirit, to utter a syllable, and Ernest
cared not for the exertion when it could be avoided; but at length when
they reached the London road, and saw by the gloomy light of a November
morning, the coach rapidly advancing along the straight, flat,
interminable highway, the younger said,
“Now, Ernest, finally decide; will you come with me?”
“No,” was the reply; “but will you think thrice and turn?”
“Not for worlds,” Henry answered, with a shudder; and, resting his arm
on an old stump of a willow-tree which was lying by the road-side, he
looked first, sorrowfully, at the dark object coming rolling towards
them, and then wistfully at his brother. “I will never forget you,” he
said at last, in a faltering voice, “in life or in death, never; and
whatever comes, whether good fortune or evil, you, Ernest, must never
forget me.”
Without answering, the elder took the outstretched hand in his, and
pressed it in his own; then, drawing a ring off his finger—a plain
golden ring, containing a few fine threads of auburn hair—he gave it
silently to his brother, with a look which Henry interpreted rightly,
“Keep it for _her_ sake, and remember me.”
As he might have twined his arms when a child about that mother’s neck,
the departing one now flung them wildly round Ernest, his dark, stern
brother: the latter felt his breath warm on his cheek for a moment, and
the next heard him calling loudly to the coachman to stop: he saw a hand
waving to him from the top of the vehicle, and then the horses, dashing
round a curve in the road, bore all from his view, and left him standing
there alone.
The one had fairly started off into the world; and Ernest, with a
blacker shade than ever on his brow, walked back, even more solitary
than of yore, to the swamps, and marshes, and poplars of Paradise.
Henry Ivraine was indeed gone to London to “seek his fortune,” and
thither we must also proceed, though not to follow him: no—he went there
to become a soldier; and we journey thither to make acquaintance with
Mr. Alfred Westwood, and—some other people, to accomplish which laudable
purpose it is needful to close this second chapter, and commence a
third.