I must not dwell long upon the youthful scenes of the lad I have just
introduced to the reader; but as it is absolutely needful that his
peculiar character should be clearly understood, I must suffer it to
display itself a little farther before I step from his boyhood to his
maturity.
We left Philip Hastings senseless upon the ground, at the feet of his
old preceptor, struck down by the sudden intelligence he had received,
without warning or preparation.
The old man was immeasurably shocked at what he had done, and he
reproached himself bitterly; but he had been a man of action all his
life, who never suffered thought, whether pleasant or painful, to impede
him. He could think while he acted, and as he was a strong man too, he
had no great difficulty in taking the slight, pale youth up in his arms,
and carrying him over the park stile, which was close at hand, as the
reader may remember. He had made up his mind at once to bear his young
charge to a small cottage belonging to a laborer on the other side of
the road which ran under the park wall; but on reaching it, he found
that the whole family were out walking in the fields, and both doors and
windows were closed.
This was a great disappointment to him, although there was a very
handsome house, in modern taste, not two hundred yards off. But there
were circumstances which made him unwilling to bear the son of Sir John
Hastings to the dwelling of his next neighbor. Next neighbors are not
always friends; and even the clergyman of the parish may have his
likings and dislikings.
Colonel Marshal and Sir John Hastings were political opponents. The
latter was of the Calvinistic branch of the Church of England--not
absolutely a non-juror, but suspected even of having a tendency that
way. He was sturdy and stiff in his political opinions, too, and had but
small consideration for the conscientious views and sincere opinions of
others. To say the truth, he was but little inclined to believe that any
one who differed from him had conscientious views or sincere opinions at
all; and certainly the demeanor, if not the conduct, of the worthy
Colonel did not betoken any fixed notion or strong principles. He was a
man of the Court--gay, lively, even witty, making a jest of most things,
however grave and worthy of reverence. He played high, generally won,
was shrewd, complaisant, and particular in his deference to kings and
prime ministers. Moreover, he was of the very highest of the High Church
party--so high, indeed, that those who belonged to the Low Church party,
fancied he must soon topple over into Catholicism.
In truth, I believe, had the heart of the Colonel been very strictly
examined, it would have been found very empty of anything like real
religion. But then the king was a Roman Catholic, and it was pleasant to
be as near him as possible.
It may be asked, why then did not the Colonel go the same length as his
Majesty? The answer is very simple. Colonel Marshal was a shrewd
observer of the signs of the times. At the card table, after the three
first cards were played, he could tell where every other card in the
pack was placed. Now in politics he was nearly as discerning; and he
perceived that, although King James had a great number of honors in his
hand, he did not hold the trumps, and would eventually lose the game.
Had it been otherwise, there is no saying what sort of religion he might
have adopted. There is no reason to think that Transubstantiation would
have stood in the way at all; and as for the Council of Trent, he would
have swallowed it like a roll for his breakfast.
For this man, then, Sir John Hastings had both a thorough hatred and a
profound contempt, and he extended the same sensations to every member
of the family. In the estimation of the worthy old clergyman the Colonel
did not stand much higher; but he was more liberal toward the Colonel's
family. Lady Annabella Marshal, his wife, was, when in the country, a
very regular attendant at his church. She had been exceedingly
beautiful, was still handsome, and she had, moreover, a sweet,
saint-like, placid expression, not untouched by melancholy, which was
very winning, even in an old man's eyes. She was known, too, to have
made a very good wife to a not very good husband; and, to say the truth,
Dr. Paulding both pitied and esteemed her. He went but little to the
house, indeed, for Colonel Marshal was odious to him; and the Colonel
returned the compliment by never going to the church.
Such were the reasons which rendered the thought of carrying young
Philip Hastings up to The Court--as Colonel Marshal's house was
called--anything but agreeable to the good clergyman. But then, what
could he do? He looked in the boy's face. It was like that of a corpse.
Not a sign of returning animation showed itself. He had heard of
persons dying under such sudden affections of the mind; and so still, so
death-like, was the form and countenance before him, as he laid the lad
down for a moment on the bench at the cottage door, that his heart
misgave him, and a trembling feeling of dread came over his old frame.
He hesitated no longer, but after a moment's pause to gain breath,
caught young Hastings up in his arms again, and hurried away with him
toward Colonel Marshal's house.
I have said that it was a modern mansion; that is to imply, that it was
modern in that day. Heaven only knows what has become of it now; but
Louis Quatorze, though he had no hand in the building of it, had many of
its sins to answer for--and the rest belonged to Mansard. It was the
strangest possible contrast to the old-fashioned country seat of Sir
John Hastings, who had his joke at it, and at the owner too--for he,
too, could jest in a bitter way--and he used to say that he wondered his
neighbor had not added his own name to the building, to distinguish it
from all other courts; and then it would have been Court Marshal. Many
were the windows of the house; many the ornaments; pilasters running up
between the casements, with sunken panels, covered over with quaint
wreaths of flowers, as if each had an embroidered waistcoat on; and a
large flight of steps running down from the great doorway, decorated
with Cupids and cornucopias running over with this most indigestible
kind of stone-fruit.
The path from the gates up to the house was well graveled, and ran in
and out amongst sundry parterres, and basins of water, with the Tritons,
&c., of the age, all spouting away as hard as a large reservoir on the
top of the neighboring slope could make them. But for serviceable
purposes these basins were vain, as the water was never suffered to rise
nearly to the brim; and good Dr. Paulding gazed on them without hope, as
he passed on toward the broad flight of steps.
There, however, he found something of a more comfortable aspect. The
path he had been obliged to take had one convenience to the dwellers in
the mansion. Every window in that side of the house commanded a view of
it, and the Doctor and his burden were seen by one pair of eyes at
least.
Running down the steps without any of the frightful appendages of the
day upon her head, but her own bright beautiful hair curling wild like
the tendrils of a vine, came a lovely girl of fourteen or fifteen, just
past the ugly age, and blushing in the spring of womanhood. There was
eagerness and some alarm in her face: for the air and haste of the
worthy clergyman, as well as the form he carried in his arms, spoke as
plainly as words could have done that some accident had happened; and
she called to him, at some distance, to ask what was the matter.
"Matter, child! matter!" cried the clergyman, "I believe I have half
killed this poor boy."
"Killed him!" exclaimed the girl, with a look of doubt as well as
surprise.
"Ay, Mistress Rachael," replied the old man, "killed him by unkindly and
rashly telling him of his brother's death, without preparation."
"You intended it for kind, I am sure," murmured the girl in a sweet low
tone, coming down the steps, and gazing on his pale face, while the
clergyman carried the lad up the steps.
"There, Miss Marshal, do not stay staring," said Dr. Paulding; "but pray
call some of the lackeys, and bid them bring water or hartshorn, or
something. Your lady-mother must have some essences to bring folks out
of swoons. There is nothing but swooning at Court, I am told--except
gaming, and drinking, and profanity."
The girl was already on her way, but she looked back, saying, "My father
and mother are both out; but I will soon find help."
When the lad opened his eyes, there was something very near, which
seemed to him exceedingly beautiful--rich, warm coloring, like that of a
sunny landscape; a pair of liquid, tender eyes, deeply fringed and full
of sympathy; and the while some sunny curls of bright brown hair played
about his cheek, moved by the hay-field breath of the sweet lips that
bent close over him.
"Where am I?" he said. "What is the matter? What has happened? Ah! now I
recollect. My brother--my poor brother! Was it a dream?"
"Hush, hush!" said a musical voice. "Talk to him, sir. Talk to him, and
make him still."
"It is but too true, my dear Philip," said the old clergyman; "your
brother is lost to us. But recollect yourself, my son. It is weak to
give way in this manner. I announced your misfortune somewhat suddenly,
it is true, trusting that your philosophy was stronger than it is--your
Christian fortitude. Remember, all these dispensations are from the hand
of the most merciful God. He who gives the sunshine, shall he not bring
the clouds? Doubt not that all is merciful; and suffer not the
manifestations of His will to find you unprepared or unsubmissive."
"I have been very weak," said the young man, "but it was so sudden!
Heaven! how full of health and strength he looked when he went away! He
was the picture of life--almost of immortality. I was but as a reed
beside him--a weak, feeble reed, beside a sapling oak."
"'One shall be taken, and the other left,'" said the sweet voice of the
young girl; and the eyes both of the youth and the old clergyman turned
suddenly upon her.
Philip Hastings raised himself upon his arm, and seemed to meditate for
a moment or two. His thoughts were confused and indistinct. He knew not
well where he was. The impression of what had happened was vague and
indefinite. As eyes which have been seared by the lightning, his mind,
which had lost the too vivid impression, now perceived everything in
mist and confusion.
"I have been very weak," he said, "too weak. It is strange. I thought
myself firmer. What is the use of thought and example, if the mind
remains thus feeble? But I am better now. I will never yield thus
again;" and flinging himself off the sofa on which they had laid him, he
stood for a moment on his feet, gazing round upon the old clergyman and
that beautiful young girl, and two or three servants who had been called
to minister to him.
We all know--at least, all who have dealt with the fiery things of
life--all who have felt and suffered, and struggled and conquered, and
yielded and grieved, and triumphed in the end--we all know how
short-lived are the first conquests of mind over body, and how much
strength and experience it requires to make the victory complete. To
render the soul the despot, the tyranny must be habitual.
Philip Hastings rose, as I have said, and gazed around him. He struggled
against the shock which his mere animal nature had received, shattered
as it had been by long and intense study, and neglect of all that
contributes to corporeal power. But everything grew hazy to his eyes
again. He felt his limbs weak and powerless; even his mind feeble, and
his thoughts confused. Before he knew what was coming, he sunk fainting
on the sofa again, and when he woke from the dull sort of trance into
which he had fallen, there were other faces around him; he was stretched
quietly in bed in a strange room, a physician and a beautiful lady of
mature years were standing by his bedside, and he felt the oppressive
lassitude of fever in every nerve and in every limb.
But we must turn to good Doctor Paulding. He went back to his rectory
discontented with himself, leaving the lad in the care of Lady Annabella
Marshal and her family. The ordinary--as the man who carried the letters
was frequently called in those days--was to depart in an hour, and he
knew that Sir John Hastings expected his only remaining son in London to
attend the body of his brother down to the family burying place. It was
impossible that the lad could go, and the old clergyman had to sit down
and write an account of what had occurred.
There was nothing upon earth, or beyond the earth, which would have
induced him to tell a lie. True, his mind might be subject to such
self-deceptions as the mind of all other men. He might be induced to
find excuses to his own conscience for anything he did that was
wrong--for any mistake or error in judgment; for, willfully, he never
did what was wrong; and it was only by the results that he knew it. But
yet he was eagerly, painfully upon his guard against himself. He knew
the weakness of human nature--he had dealt with it often, and observed
it shrewdly, and applied the lesson with bitter severity to his own
heart, detecting its shrinking from candor, its hankering after
self-defense, its misty prejudices, its turnings and windings to escape
conviction; and he dealt with it as hardly as he would have done with a
spoiled child.
Calmly and deliberately he sat down to write to Sir John Hastings a full
account of what had occurred, taking more blame to himself than was
really his due. I have called it a full account, though it occupied but
one page of paper, for the good doctor was anything but profuse of
words; and there are some men who can say much in small space. He blamed
himself greatly, anticipating reproach; but the thing which he feared
the most to communicate was the fact that the lad was left ill at the
house of Colonel Marshal, and at the house of a man so very much
disliked by Sir John Hastings.
There are some men--men of strong mind and great abilities--who go
through life learning some of its lessons, and totally neglecting
others--pre-occupied by one branch of the great study, and seeing
nothing in the course of scholarship but that. Dr. Paulding had no
conception of the change which the loss of their eldest son had wrought
in the heart of Sir John and Lady Hastings. The second--the neglected
one--had now become not only the eldest, but the only one. His illness,
painfully as it affected them, was a blessing to them. It withdrew their
thoughts from their late bereavement. It occupied their mind with a new
anxiety. It withdrew it from grief and from disappointment. They thought
little or nothing of whose house he was at, or whose care he was under;
but leaving the body of their dead child to be brought down by slow and
solemn procession to the country, they hurried on before, to watch over
the one that was left.
Sir John Hastings utterly forgot his ancient feelings toward Colonel
Marshal. He was at the house every day, and almost all day long, and
Lady Hastings was there day and night.
Wonderful how--when barriers are broken down--we see the objects brought
into proximity under a totally different point of view from that in
which we beheld them at a distance. There might be some stiffness in the
first meeting of Colonel Marshal and Sir John Hastings, but it wore off
with exceeding rapidity. The Colonel's kindness and attention to the
sick youth were marked. Lady Annabella devoted herself to him as to one
of her own children. Rachael Marshal made herself a mere nurse. Hard
hearts could only withstand such things. Philip was now an only child,
and the parents were filled with gratitude and affection.