From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes,(1) and the war-whoop of
the wild men, I wake and see the sun shining in through the jasmine that
Blanche herself has had trained round the window; old school-books neatly
ranged round the wall; fishing-rods, cricket-bats, foils, and the old-
fashioned gun; and my mother seated by the bed-side; and Juba whining and
scratching to get up. Had I taken thy murmured blessing, my mother, for
the whoop of the blacks, and Juba's low whine for the howl of the
dingoes?
Then what days of calm, exquisite delight,--the interchange of heart with
heart; what walks with Roland, and tales of him once our shame, now our
pride; and the art with which the old man would lead those walks round by
the village, that some favorite gossips might stop and ask, "What news of
his brave young honor?"
I strive to engage my uncle in my projects for the repair of the ruins,
for the culture of those wide bogs and moorlands why is it that he turns
away and looks down embarrassed? Ah! I guess,--his true heir now is
restored to him. He cannot consent that I should invest this dross, for
which (the Great Book once published) I have no other use, in the house
and the lands that will pass to his son. Neither would he suffer me so
to invest even his son's fortune, the bulk of which I still hold in trust
for that son. True, in his career my cousin may require to have his
money always forthcoming. But I, who have no career,--pooh! these
scruples will rob me of half the pleasure my years of toil were to
purchase. I must contrive it somehow or other: what if he would let me
house and moorland on a long improving lease? Then, for the rest, there
is a pretty little property to be sold close by, on which I can retire,
when my cousin, as heir of the family, comes, perhaps with a wife, to
reside at the Tower. I must consider of all this, and talk it over with
Bolt, when my mind is at leisure from happiness to turn to such matters;
meanwhile I fall back on my favorite proverb,--"Where there's a will
there's a way."
What smiles and tears, and laughter and careless prattle with my mother,
and roundabout questions from her to know if I had never lost my heart in
the Bush; and evasive answers from me, to punish her for not letting out
that Blanche was so charming. "I fancied Blanche had grown the image of
her father, who has a fine martial head certainly, but not seen to
advantage in petticoats! How could you be so silent with a theme so
attractive?"
"Blanche made me promise."
Why, I wonder. Therewith I fell musing.
What quiet, delicious hours are spent with my father in his study, or by
the pond, where he still feeds the carps, that have grown into
Cyprinidian leviathans. The duck, alas! has departed this life,--the
only victim that the Grim King has carried off; so I mourn, but am
resigned to that lenient composition of the great tribute to Nature. I
am sorry to say the Great Book has advanced but slowly,--by no means yet
fit for publication; for it is resolved that it shall not come out as
first proposed, a part at a time, but, totus, teres, atque rotundus. The
matter has spread beyond its original compass; no less than five volumes
--and those of the amplest--will contain the History of Human Error.
However, we are far in the fourth, and one must not hurry Minerva.
My father is enchanted with Uncle Jack's "noble conduct," as he calls it;
but he scolds me for taking the money, and doubts as to the propriety of
returning it. In these matters my father is quite as Quixotical as
Roland. I am forced to call in my mother as umpire between us, and she
settles the matter at once by an appeal to feeling. "Ah, Austin! do you
not humble me if you are too proud to accept what is due to you from my
brother?"
"Velit, nolit, quod amica," answered my father, taking off and rubbing
his spectacles,--"which means, Kitty, that when a man's married he has no
will of his own. To think," added Mr. Caxton, musingly, "that in this
world one cannot be sure of the simplest mathematical definition. You
see, Pisistratus, that the angles of a triangle so decidedly scalene as
your Uncle Jack's may be equal to the angles of a right-angled triangle
after all!" (2)
The long privation of books has quite restored all my appetite for them.
How much I have to pick up; what a compendious scheme of reading I and my
father chalk out! I see enough to fill up all the leisure of life. But,
somehow or other, Greek and Latin stand still; nothing charms me like
Italian. Blanche and I are reading Metastasio, to the great indignation
of my father, who calls it "rubbish," and wants to substitute Dante. I
have no associations at present with the souls
"Che son contenti
Nel fuoco;"
I am already one of the "beate gente." Yet, in spite of Metastasio,
Blanche and I are not so intimate as cousins ought to be. If we are by
accident alone, I become as silent as a Turk, as formal as Sir Charles
Grandison. I caught myself calling her Miss Blanche the other day.
I must not forget thee, honest Squills, nor thy delight at my health and
success, nor thy exclamation of pride (one hand on my pulse and the other
griping hard the "ball" of my arm)! "It all comes of my citrate of iron:
nothing like it for children; it has an effect on the cerebral
developments of hope and combativeness." Nor can I wholly omit mention
of poor Mrs. Primmins, who still calls me "Master Sisty," and is breaking
her heart that I will not wear the new flannel waistcoats she had such
pleasure in making,--"Young gentlemen just growing up are so apt to go
off in a galloping 'sumption! She knew just such another as Master
Sisty, when she lived at Torquay, who wasted away and went out like a
snuff, all because he would not wear flannel waistcoats." Therewith my
mother looks grave, and says, "One can't take too much precaution."
Suddenly the whole neighborhood is thrown into commotion. Trevanion--I
beg his pardon, Lord Ulverstone--is coming to settle for good at Compton.
Fifty hands are employed daily in putting the grounds into hasty order.
Four-gons and wagons and vans have disgorged all the necessaries a great
man requires where he means to eat, drink, and sleep,--books, wines,
pictures, furniture. I recognize my old patron still. He is in earnest,
whatever he does. I meet my friend, his steward, who tells me that Lord
Ulverstone finds his favorite seat, near London, too exposed to
interruption; and moreover that, as he has there completed all
improvements that wealth and energy can effect, he has less occupation
for agricultural pursuits, to which he has grown more and more partial,
than on the wide and princely domain which has hitherto wanted the
master's eye. "He is a bra' farmer, I know," quoth the steward, "so far
as the theory goes; but I don't think we in the North want great lords to
teach us how to follow the pleugh." The steward's sense of dignity is
hurt; but he is an honest fellow, and really glad to see the family come
to settle in the old place.
They have arrived, and--with them the Castletons and a whole posse
comitatus of guests. The county paper is full of fine names.
"What on earth did Lord Ulverstone mean by pretending to get out of the
way of troublesome visitors?"
"My dear Pisistratus," answered my father to that exclamation, "it is not
the visitors who come, but the visitors who stay away that most trouble
the repose of a retired minister. In all the procession he sees but the
images of Brutus and Cassius that are not there! And depend on it also,
a retirement so near London did not make noise enough. You see, a
retiring statesman is like that fine carp,--the farther he leaps from the
water, the greater splash he makes in falling into the weeds! But,"
added Mr. Caxton, in a repentant tone, "this jesting does not become us;
and if I indulged it, it is only because I am heartily glad that
Trevanion is likely now to find out his true vocation. And as soon as
the fine people he brings with him have left him alone in his library, I
trust he will settle to that vocation, and be happier than he has been
yet."
"And that vocation, sir, is--"
"Metaphysics," said my father. "He will be quite at home in puzzling
over Berkeley, and considering whether the Speaker's chair and the
official red boxes were really things whose ideas of figure, extension,
and hardness were all in the mind. It will be a great consolation to him
to agree with Berkeley, and to find that he has only been baffled by
immaterial phantasma!"
My father was quite right. The repining, subtle, truth-weighing
Trevanion, plagued by his conscience into seeing all sides of a question
(for the least question has more than two sides, and is hexagonal at
least), was much more fitted to discover the origin of ideas than to
convince Cabinets and Nations that two and two make four,--a proposition
on which he himself would have agreed with Abraham Tucker where that most
ingenious and suggestive of all English metaphysicians observes, "Well,
persuaded as I am that two and two make four, if I were to meet with a
person of credit, candor, and understanding who should sincerely call it
in question, I would give him a hearing; for I am not more certain of
that than of the whole being greater than a part. And yet I could myself
suggest some considerations that might seem to controvert this point."
(3) I can so well imagine Trevanion listening to "some person of credit,
candor, and understanding" in disproof of that vulgar proposition that
twice two make four! But the news of this arrival, including that of
Lady Castleton, disturbed me greatly, and I took to long wanderings
alone. In one of these rambles they all called at the Tower,--Lord and
Lady Ulverstone, the Castletons, and their children. I escaped the
visit; and on my return home there was a certain delicacy respecting old
associations that restrained much talk, before me, on so momentous an
event. Roland, like me, had kept out of the way. Blanche, poor child,
ignorant of the antecedents, was the most communicative. And the
especial theme she selected was the grace and beauty of Lady Castleton!
A pressing invitation to spend some days at the castle had been cordially
given to all. It was accepted only by myself: I wrote word that I would
come.
Yes, I longed to prove the strength of my own self-conquest, and
accurately test the nature of the feelings that had disturbed me. That
any sentiment which could be called "love" remained for Lady Castleton,
the wife of another, and that other a man with so many claims on my
affection as her lord, I held as a moral impossibility. But with all
those lively impressions of early youth still engraved on my heart,--
impressions of the image of Fanny Trevanion as the fairest and brightest
of human beings,--could I feel free to love again? Could I seek to woo,
and rivet to myself forever, the entire and virgin affections of another
while there was a possibility that I might compare and regret? No;
either I must feel that if Fanny were again single, could be mine without
obstacle, human or divine, she had ceased to be the one I would single
out of the world; or, though regarding love as the dead, I would be
faithful to its memory and its ashes. My mother sighed, and looked
fluttered and uneasy all the morning of the day on which I was to repair
to Compton. She even seemed cross, for about the third time in her life,
and paid no compliment to Mr. Stultz when my shooting-jacket was
exchanged for a black frock which that artist had pronounced to be
"splendid;" neither did she honor me with any of those little attentions
to the contents of my portmanteau, and the perfect "getting up" of my
white waistcoats and cravats, which made her natural instincts on such
memorable occasions. There was also a sort of querulous, pitying
tenderness in her tone, when she spoke to Blanche, which was quite
pathetic; though, fortunately, its cause remained dark and impenetrable
to the innocent comprehension of one who could not see where the past
filled the urns of the future at the fountain of life. My father
understood me better, shook me by the hand as I got into the chaise, and
muttered, out of Seneca: "Non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam explorator"
("Not to desert, but examine").
Quite right.
(1) "Dingoes "--the name given by Australian natives to the wild dogs.
(2) Not having again to advert to Uncle Jack, I may be pardoned for
informing the reader, by way of annotation, that he continues to prosper
surprisingly in Australia, though the Tibbets' Wheal stands still for
want of workmen. Despite of a few ups and downs, I have had no fear of
his success until this year (1849), when I tremble to think what effect
the discovery of the gold mines in California may have on his lively
imagination. If thou escapest that snare, Uncle Jack, res age, tutus
eris--thou art safe for life!
(3) "Light of Nature,"--chapter on Judgment.--See the very ingenious
illustration of doubt, "whether the part is always greater than the
whole,"--taken from time, or rather eternity.