THE BARONET’S FIRST-BORN.
But as the mariner, tossing on the bosom of the ever-restless, always
treacherous, ocean, clings with might and main to the quivering mast,
though aloft storms surround, and tempests howl about him, whilst below
lies the sure, certain calm of the grave, so the miser baronet
resolutely grasped the volume of life, perhaps with even a firmer clutch
than he might have done, had its numerous pages contained the story of
an existence devoted to the good and well-being of his fellow-creatures.
As the slave strives for freedom, as the wretched do for peace, as the
weary pine for rest, as the drowning catch at straws, as the sailor
seizes the saving spar,—so, with similar eagerness, Sir Ernest kept an
unrelaxing hand on that which many an one would gladly relinquish any
day; for more than mothers love their children and some men love fame,
than others love station, than the young love pleasure, or the old
repose, the miser loved gold: dearer was it unto his soul than mortal
affection or immortal expectations; than comfort, or ease, or luxury, or
virtue, or principle: the hope of adding the merest trifle to his hoard
seemed more in his eyes than the hope of salvation; the dread of letting
one sixpence pass by his greedy hand swallowed up all fear or horror of
perdition.
Though life was to him a mere sordid existence, he resolved to “take the
most out of it,” as he did out of everything else: gold was the only
thing he cared for, and, to go on acquiring it, life was necessary; and
so he clung to the latter and amassed the former with a perseverance
which, if employed in a better cause, would have made him an unspeakable
benefactor to his species.
The wrinkles on his withered face grew daily deeper; the lines below his
eyes and round his mouth became marked and fixed, as if they had been
chiselled there; the twisted veins on his high narrow forehead looked,
spite of the sallow skin that only partially concealed them, like
crawling reptiles wandering through his flesh; his hands seemed to get
more like talons—the long colourless nails like claws; his tone grew
shriller and harsher; his step more uncertain and rapid than ever; his
temper more unbearable; his mood more changeable; his spirit more
litigious: but still the bright light of former times gleamed in his
eyes; there was purpose in his thought, command in his voice, energy in
his mind: age might do its worst upon him, but Sir Ernest defied it to
kill him; he shook one trembling hand undauntedly in the face of time,
and, laying the other firmly on the principle of vitality, refused to
die. Men, with no business, no purpose, no plan, might lie down in their
narrow graves if it so pleased them any day; but the miser had work to
do, which, if properly carried out, would last him for ever: and so he
lived on, faithfully serving _his_ God as few men serve _their_ God. He
never attempted the impossible task of serving two masters; but, taking
Mammon for his, worked and slaved and toiled at his bidding with fifty
times more vigour and determination than those do who profess to be
laying up treasures for themselves in that land “where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.” He
lived on—and Ernest waited.
As men do wait who wish for what they dared not speak of—with outward
patience, with intense irritability, with feverish thirst, and dark
heart, and darker reveries; saved from utter ruin by one good purpose,
by one unselfish object which he strove to gain, not for his own sake,
but for that of Henry.
He had formed a resolution the day of his brother’s departure, about
which he never said a syllable to any one, which was to scrape together,
by some indefinite means, an amount sufficient to buy Henry a
commission. Many amiable persons, as they are usually termed, constantly
plan generous and philanthropic projects, but never carry them out; and
others, who are charmed by their wordy benevolence, take the will for
the deed, and think better of such empty talkers than of their silenter
fellows, who talk not at all and act much. With Ernest, however, to
think was not to speak, but to do; to resolve was to perform, not
brilliantly or rapidly, but silently and probably tardily.
He neither possessed the hope nor the talents of his brother; but he had
a kind of invincible obstinacy, or adhesiveness, of disposition, which
caused him, whenever he had once made up his mind on any point, to stick
thereto with unswerving tenacity. It might be years after,—it might be
towards the close of life,—other and brighter prospects might arise
before him, obstacles might present themselves, difficulties appear, but
it was much the same to him: he walked aside, or round, or over; he
stood still, or strode on; but whichever course he pursued, it was _in
his character_ to keep his eye ever steadily fixed on the object he had
once determined to reach, and never for one moment to remove his gaze
from the contemplation thereof. To a nature like this, it was a matter
of no small importance what he decided was worth striving or waiting for
in life. As weak characters change their ideas every hour, it follows,
_par consequence_, that what they resolve to do to-day signifies not in
the least, as it is quite certain not to be carried out to-morrow: but,
with a man whose resolves are not to be shaken, it becomes almost an
affair of temporal and eternal welfare that he shall resolve well, or
else not at all; for, if the bad be chosen, it cannot, in the hands of
one blessed or cursed with such a temperament, work for aught else than
evil; and, if the good be embraced, it can never, even by a mischance,
turn out completely ill.
Thus it was fortunate that, while much of wrong entered Ernest’s mind,
right had obtained part possession of his soul too; wherefore the one,
guided, and the other clouded, his life: his heart resembled the briny
ocean, filled to suffocation with unhealthy thoughts and dangerous
wishes; but, affection for Henry, dashing like the rapid mountain
torrent through the flood, kept still a portion of his nature pure and
undefiled. As in the natural world, so in the moral; the two waters
ebbed and flowed ceaselessly, but never mingled—a drop of the salt never
mixed with the other: the brine never became fresh, nor the fresh,
brine. Living a life so lonely and retired, neither passion ever got so
far from land as to be swallowed up in that larger ocean which cools
hatreds, quenches loves, tears the magnifying glass—self-pity—from the
eye and reveals wrongs, as they frequently are, mere bubbles on the
surface; which divides friends, reconciles enemies, makes some better,
many worse, mends a few, mars more; which most pant to enter; which all
are loath to leave; that busy, ever-varying, ever-deceitful,
ever-inviting ocean, on which all sigh to try their frail barks; whose
characteristic is turmoil, whose mandate is toil, whose boundary is
eternity; over whose surface keeps ever sailing the grim pilot,
Death,—who takes one from his pleasure boat and another from his
merchant vessel; the child from his little skiff; the fisherman from his
tarry yawl; the officer from the man of war; the pirate from his
ill-gotten prize; the traveller from his comfortless ship: who picks off
a man from the crew of every bark, and removes them from that mighty
ocean, the World, for ever.
In that bustling arena Ernest Ivraine, though he might have lost
something, would assuredly have gained much; but he had determined to
sit out the drama of his father’s existence till the curtain finally
dropped on the last act of the interminable piece. And whilst he wearied
over scene after scene of that which some deem a comedy, and others a
tragedy—life,—he strove to diversify the incidents of his own existence
a little, by working earnestly at the plan he had formed for Henry’s
advancement that morning when they parted. Often, when sleep—that
heaven-sent angel which visits millions of the poor and needy, and
passes by the couches of those who toil not with their bodies for their
daily bread—refused to fall either lightly or heavily, or, in fact, at
all on his weary eyelids, Ernest began to reflect about his brother, so
refined in his tastes, so striking in appearance, so tender of heart,
living as a common soldier amongst rude companions, far away from any
friend, prevented by rank and circumstances from forming a single
acquaintance in his own grade of society. He thought of his dead mother
and his surviving parent; of his home and its occupants; of the trifling
sum which could raise Henry and emancipate both; and, knowing how
hopeless it would be to expect to wring even a guinea from the miser’s
chest, he vowed firmly to work out his brother’s deliverance by some
means, and wait patiently himself till destiny should do the same good
generous turn by him.
Most amongst us feel wonderfully inclined to believe in the assertion of
“where there’s a will there’s a way;” but no one blessed by that worthy
dame, whom we call our mother—Nature—with half an ounce of the
invaluable commodity, rarely to be met with, always to be devoutly
prayed for,—yclept common sense, can deny that same way often proves a
most desperately tedious and round-about one. So at least Ernest Ivraine
found: there was not a device or an expedient which he did not think of
to gain money; he spared no time, nor thought, nor fatigue, to become
the possessor of so many hundred pounds in hard cash. But, though he did
make some way, he discovered his crippled efforts so mightily resembled
trying to cut through a log of timber with an oyster knife, that fifty
times he would have abandoned his effort in disgust and despair had
something stronger than love of self not held him to his weary,
money-getting, sterile post.
About a large property, barren though it may be, there are many
perfectly legitimate openings for a son to gain a little of the precious
metal, even though his parent be lord and master of the estate and
entitled to the revenues derivable therefrom. So soon as Ernest
perceived this fact, he wondered it had never revealed itself to his
understanding before, and became, not like Nimrod, a mighty hunter, but
an amateur farmer, who grew learned in all sorts of agricultural
mysteries, who came to know the value of a sheep, the weight of that
Jewish horror—the pig, the market value of a cow, and, above all, the
intrinsic beauty and worth of that finest amongst animals—a horse.
It is not, perhaps, very desirable for any gentleman to become
“professionally versed” in this latter point, since knowledge of racers
and acquaintance with that numerous and ill-reputed class, called
“jobbers,” generally brings individuals into company where, to say the
least of it, they had best not be, and not unfrequently conducts them to
that disagreeable finale, the Court of Bankruptcy. But Ernest Ivraine
was too proud and reserved ever to make friends, or rather familiars, of
his inferiors: no one could assert his acquaintances were ostlers, that
his drawing-room was the stable, his associates men who at “Tattersalls
do congregate.” He had no taste for races,—no propensity to, or
predilection for, gambling; he never entered a horse for a “Cup”
anywhere, he made no bets, took no odds: he reared and sold for
employment and for—Henry.
There were not wanting those amongst his connections, who had formerly
termed him a mercenary though indolent hanger-on for the crumbs that
might fall to his greedy hand from death’s table, who now termed him, in
angry contempt, “a gentleman horse-jockey:” but, if he did lay himself
in the slightest degree open to such an imputation, surely the deed, in
this instance, justified the means; for nothing could be nobler than to
aid a struggling brother; and if trading in black and grey and brown and
chesnut quadrupeds be not the most respectable profession in the world,
it is no worse than many another, if followed fairly and honestly.
Sir Ernest laughed in his most diabolical manner at those who
represented that his son had fairly started in the race on that road
which is universally admitted to lead to ruin. “There is more in that
fellow than I ever thought,” he said; “he is making Paradise of real
value: he gives me the whole of the profits, and I let him, now and
then, have an animal to rear and get what he can out of it. He wants a
small sum of money, he says, for something or other; and, as he improves
my property, I humour his whim: he adds, he is “happier” employed about
the place, seeing after the labourers, and so forth, than in doing
nothing; and as, though he looks no happier than before, he benefits my
purse, I agree to his fancy. Mutual accommodation, reciprocal
advantages! father and son, owner and heir, pulling the same way—for
once working disinterestedly together! ha! ha!” and the old man chuckled
at the idea till the veins in his forehead became more conspicuous, and
the expression of his countenance less human than ever.
And, in truth, as years rolled on, the father and the son did seem to
agree so admirably, and to become so communicative, after their
extraordinary fashion, that relatives, far and near, trembled for their
respective interests in the old man’s will, and silently struck an all
important nought from the sum they had once fondly hoped he would leave
them; whilst Ernest first made shillings pounds, and pounds twenties,
and twenties hundreds, and silently gathered together the sum needful to
make Henry a lieutenant, and began to feel his hope of a favourable
bequest strengthen, and to rejoice he had not, like his brother, cast
fortune from him, and to yearn more sinfully and eagerly than ever for
his father’s death, ere a change came.
Meantime letters arrived from Henry, at long intervals and uncertain
periods, as they always do from the proud but unsuccessful; they were
short, though affectionate; the high confident tone soon vanished from
the sheet. True, he had, occasionally, little scraps of good fortune and
approving notice to recount: he was a corporal, had gained a stripe, two
stripes, three—he was a sergeant: his officer, a hard, stern, Waterloo
hero, had said he was as brave a fellow as ever lived, and prophesied
great things for him; but Henry wrote all this in a manner which spoke
quite as much of mortification as of pleasure; of a heart that was
despairing,—as of one which strove still to hope.
“He was climbing,” he once briefly said. “Yes,” thought Ernest, “but it
is as the tortoise climbs up the weary hill to fame; so slowly that life
will be finished before he reach the summit, or even a pleasant halting
place half-way.”
The awful gulf that separates the ranks from the mess table, which
birth, unassisted by influence, cannot cross; which money can only pass
with a golden bridge; which valour dyes crimson with its best blood in
its frantic endeavours to stem,—yawned between Henry and success. It had
not seemed so wide or impracticable at a distance; but now, when the
impetuous young man stood on the brink, he saw how almost impossible he
should find it to reach the other side, without a helping hand stretched
forth to aid his endeavour. “No one to help you,” Ernest had said ere he
left his home behind him. “No one to help you?”
“Except God and myself,” Henry had then promptly replied; and should he
who, amidst the depressing swamps of Paradise had firm faith in the
power of God, and humble confidence in the abilities and energies with
which his Creator had gifted him, doubt now?
Ah! it is easy for men always to be brave in action; but who, on the
surface of this wide earth, is constantly so in thought? Not Henry
Ivraine, who grew sick, and faint, and hopeless, even whilst he
presented a cheerful face against adverse circumstances, and prepared
him sternly, day by day, to meet the weary struggle men call life.
He said he never repented; and it was true, for his motive now for
exertion was an honest one; whilst the former, spoken of as the reason
for endurance, seemed to his good manly heart, mean and sinful. But he
was disappointed, as others have been, and others must be,—as it seems
to be the will of the Universal Disposer of all events that, at some
time or other in their careers, most shall be. He strove to conceal
knowledge of this from Ernest; strove to smother the feeling, even as it
arose in his breast; and so for years he continued trying to wait
patiently for that which he had long begun to fear never would arrive
unto him—success.
Ernest grieved for the blight which he saw had fallen on the once
hopeful spirit; but he comforted himself by thinking how proudly, after
this severe probation, his brother would wear his epaulettes; how nobly
he had deserved that which merit seemed impotent to win: he felt glad to
reflect that Henry would be made happy by him, and he longed to tell his
father that the “vagabond soldier” was at length a respected officer.
Dearer to him, oh, far dearer, was Henry the disappointed, than Henry
the sanguine. He had possessed love for the latter, it is true; but he
had love and sympathy to give to the former, who required both,—yet
would fain have concealed that his impetuous daring heart, and
unfortunate position, made him stand so wofully in need of two of the
best gifts bountiful Heaven has placed in the hands of man to bestow on
his stricken and struggling fellow—assistance and compassion.
Years had rolled away since they two parted; since that night when, by
the blazing wood fire, Henry told his final resolution to his brother;
since that night when, in semi-darkness, with the half-extinguished logs
smouldering on the hearth, he confronted his parent and spoke bitterly,
impetuously, but truthfully to him for the last time; since that night
when Ernest dissuaded and he persisted; when it was free to both to go,
or both to stay; when the elder tossed restlessly on his couch, as the
hours given, not to repose, but to mental strife and sad deliberation,
hurried, as such hours do, rapidly away, leaving, however, a vivid
memory of every painful minute behind them; since that morning when the
younger came to the bedside of his brother to hear his choice; when he
roused the miser from slumber to say, with his pale, troubled, youthful,
noble face confronting the old man’s withered, sunken, sordid visage,
that earnest word which comes in stifled tones from the heart when it is
almost breaking,—good-bye; since that morning when his father closed the
portals of home so securely behind him; when he and Ernest walked
through the dense chill darkness preceding dawn for five dreary miles;
when he saw the vehicle which was to take him a few stages on his long
vague journey; when he hung for a moment like a child upon his brother’s
neck; and still, though tears blinded his eyes, rushed resolutely to his
fate: years had rolled away since then, changed the hopeful stripling
into a disappointed man, and his gloomy desponding brother into a
scarcely less gloomy hoper; had bronzed the fair cheek and subdued the
high spirit of the one, and given a sort of purpose and one or two
pleasant thoughts to the other. The first had been boyishly flinging
stones at fortune’s apples during all that period, and missed the mark
for which he aimed; whilst the second perseveringly climbed the tree, at
the top of which hung the inviting cluster he desired to grasp; and, as
he ascended, he traded and bartered, to the end that he might fling
Henry some of the heavy metal—gold—which, more sure in its operation
than those unpolished gems, worth and merit, deemed by most, till seen
in precious settings, common worthless stones of no account, was certain
to bring down at the first throw the prize he had so long desired.
Years of care, of weariness, of anxiety, of sorrow, had passed over the
heads of both men,—for men they were in every thought and feeling
now,—and altered them in mind, appearance, hope, expectation, in almost
everything, save the old sensations, hate and love; for these two
passions of the soul render the heart which hath been tried in the evil
or the good fire of aversion or affection, invulnerable to change. As
steel, thrice tempered, resists the strength of iron, so that portion of
man’s nature which hath once really passed through either of the glowing
furnaces, lighted by wrongs or kindled by regard, defies the withering,
chilling hand of time for ever, and remains through time loving or
hating always.
And thus, after the lapse of all those years, Ernest was enabled to
remit to Henry the sum needful to raise him from the ranks; and having,
as he fondly hoped, after immense difficulty, thrown him the first broad
stepping-stone leading to fortune, he turned him with more zeal and
interest than ever to watch the progress he himself was making along the
road to wealth.
For he had now a sort of double prize in view; he had two to please
instead of one: he had not merely an avaricious father, but a widowed
aunt, to humour. Wealth, treble what Henry had spurned in those far away
days, treble what Ernest had then deemed worth trying for, was now in
the house, ready to be taken possession of by _some one_, whenever the
last breath struggled slowly through the thin lips of the miser baronet
and his still more sordid sister, who, having wedded in girlhood a man
rich as some are in this mighty England, had saved and hoarded and made
a private purse for herself during his lifetime, and finally induced him
at death to bequeath everything which he could will away from his next
kin to his childless widow; then fleeing, on the one hand, from the
wrath of his relatives and the needy importunities of many of her own,
she took refuge in Paradise, where she and Sir Ernest watched each
other, as two dogs with bones a-piece watch, lest, by any lack of
vigilance, a sovereign or a sixpence should be stolen from the hoard of
either to find its way by an unaccountable process called, in vulgar
language—thieving, into a money-chest in which it had never previously
been locked.
The house that had formerly only been haunted by a tall, lean, meagre,
sneering old man, was now also the abode of a little, sharp, vindictive,
restless woman, who stole about on tiptoe and caught up everything that
her brother overlooked, and pinched the limited establishment more than
ever, and looked at morsels of meat and fragments of bread and atoms of
wood and little pieces of soap with the eye of a woman who had only one
aim and object in life, to save and hoard money as her brother did, only
with double eagerness, with a double zest, if that were possible.
“Close” was the name which heaven, in the person of her husband, had
decreed she should be known by; and assuredly it was not an altogether
inappropriate one, for she was so close of hand and heart, that Paradise
grew more dreary every day after her arrival. And Ernest felt how
insupportable this second chain would have made home, had it not been so
beautifully gilded. He waited on now for them both to die, but neither
felt inclined to do so at his bidding; he sometimes grew tired of the
never-ending delay, but the prize had now become so great that it was
better worth striving for than ever; besides which, after lingering so
long, he was not going to give up now: and, beyond the gates of
Paradise, no treasure lay within his reach; and the treasure within its
gates he had at last grown to fancy himself certain of, if he only had
patience and never despaired.
For his father was now most confidential and communicative: he consulted
him about investments, legal cases, disputed points, contested
questions; got him occasionally to transact such business for him as
required no money to pass through the hands of his eldest born, who had
come to be regarded by almost every one as his heir. And Mrs. Close also
was, comparatively speaking, gracious to the grave, dark, stern young
man, who never crossed her inclinations, who appeared so careful and
fond of money-making, and who, above all, valued society so very little,
and avoided, as if it had been a pestilence, all intercourse with his
kind.
She liked him for his sins and faults; his father had never entertained
any particular regard for him, but he had begun lately to feel he was of
use to him, and to believe he would keep the guineas and acres of
Paradise and the residue of his land and tenements “better together”
than any other relative he was so fortunate as to possess. And neither,
seeing further than the silent gloomy surface, knew aught of the
character which lay beneath, and thought there was “nothing more” in
Ernest, of any kind, good, bad, or indifferent.