FATHER MACKWORTH.
I have noticed that the sayings and doings of young gentlemen before
they come to the age of, say seven or eight, are hardly interesting to
any but their immediate relations and friends. I have my eye, at this
moment, on a young gentleman of the mature age of two, the instances of
whose sagacity and eloquence are of greater importance, and certainly
more pleasant, to me, than the projects of Napoleon, or the orations of
Bright. And yet I fear that even his most brilliant joke, if committed
to paper, would fall dead upon the public ear; and so, for the present,
I shall leave Charles Ravenshoe to the care of Norah, and pass on to
some others who demand our attention more.
The first thing which John Mackworth remembered was his being left in
the _loge_ of a French school at Rouen by an English footman. Trying to
push back his memory further, he always failed to conjure up any
previous recollection to that. He had certainly a very indistinct one of
having been happier, and having lived quietly in pleasant country places
with a kind woman who talked English; but his first decided impression
always remained the same--that of being, at six years old, left
friendless, alone, among twenty or thirty French boys older than
himself.
His was a cruel fate. He would have been happier apprenticed to a
collier. If the man who sent him there had wished to inflict the
heaviest conceivable punishment on the poor unconscious little innocent,
he could have done no more than simply left him at that school. We shall
see how he found out at last who his benefactor was.
English boys are sometimes brutal to one another (though not so often as
some wish to make out), and are always rough. Yet I must say, as far as
my personal experience goes, the French boy is entirely master in the
art of tormenting. He never strikes; he does not know how to clench his
fist. He is an arrant coward, according to an English schoolboy's
definition of the word: but at pinching, pulling hair, ear pulling, and
that class of annoyance, all the natural ingenuity of his nation comes
out, and he is superb; add to this a combined insolent studied sarcasm,
and you have an idea of what a disagreeable French schoolboy can be.
To say that the boys at poor John Mackworth's school put all these
methods of torture in force against him, and ten times more, is to give
one but a faint idea of his sufferings. The English at that time were
hated with a hatred which we in these sober times have but little idea
of; and, with the cannon of Trafalgar ringing as it were in their ears,
these young French gentlemen seized on Mackworth as a lawful prize
providentially delivered into their hands. We do not know what he may
have been under happier auspices, or what he may be yet with a more
favourable start in another life; we have only to do with what he was.
Six years of friendless persecution, of life ungraced and uncheered by
domestic love, of such bitter misery as childhood alone is capable of
feeling or enduring, transformed him from a child into a heartless,
vindictive man.
And then, the French schoolmaster having roughly finished the piece of
goods, it was sent to Rome to be polished and turned out ready for the
market. Here I must leave him; I don't know the process. I have seen the
article when finished, and am familiar with it. I know the trade mark on
it as well as I know the Tower mark on my rifle. I may predicate of a
glass that it is Bohemian ruby, and yet not know how they gave it the
colour. I must leave descriptions of that system to Mr. Steinmetz, and
men who have been behind the scenes.
The red-hot ultramontane thorough-going Catholicism of that pretty
pervert, Lady Alicia, was but ill satisfied with the sensible, old
English, cut and dried notions of the good Father Clifford. A comparison
of notes with two or three other great ladies, brought about a
consultation, and a letter to Rome, the result of which was that a young
Englishman of presentable exterior, polite manners, talking English with
a slight foreign accent, made his appearance at Ravenshoe, and was
installed as her ladyship's confessor, about eighteen months before her
death.
His talents were by no means ordinary. In very few days he had gauged
every intellect in the house, and found that he was by far the superior
of all in wit and education; and he determined that as long as he stayed
in the house he would be master there.
Densil's jealous temper sadly interfered with this excellent resolution;
he was immensely angry and rebellious at the slightest apparent
infringement of his prerogative, and after his parents' death treated
Mackworth in such an exceedingly cavalier manner, that the latter feared
he should have to move, till chance threw into his hand a whip wherewith
he might drive Densil where he would. He discovered a scandalous liaison
of poor Densil's, and in an indirect manner let him know that he knew
all about it. This served to cement his influence until the appearance
of Mrs. Ravenshoe the second, who, as we have seen, treated him with
such ill-disguised contempt, that he was anything but comfortable, and
was even meditating a retreat to Rome, when the conversation he
overheard in the drawing-room made him pause, and the birth of the boy
Cuthbert confirmed his resolution to stay.
For now, indeed, there was a prospect open to him. Here was this child
delivered over to him like clay to a potter, that he might form it as he
would. It should go hard but that the revenues and county influence of
the Ravenshoes should tend to the glory of the Church as heretofore.
Only one person was in his way, and that was Mrs. Ravenshoe; after her
death he was master of the situation with regard to the eldest of the
boys. He had partly guessed, ever since he overheard the conversation
of Densil and his wife, that some sort of bargain existed between them
about the second child; but he paid little heed to it. It was,
therefore, with the bitterest anger that he saw his fears confirmed, and
Densil angrily obstinate on the matter; for supposing Cuthbert were to
die, all his trouble and anxiety would avail nothing, and the old house
and lands would fall to a Protestant heir, the first time in the history
of the island. Father Clifford consoled him.
Meanwhile, his behaviour towards Densil was gradually and insensibly
altered. He became the free and easy man of the world, the amusing
companion, the wise counsellor. He saw that Densil was of a nature to
lean on some one, and he was determined it should be on him; so he made
himself necessary. But he did more than this; he determined he would be
beloved as well as respected, and with a happy audacity he set to work
to win that poor wild foolish heart to himself, using such arts of
pleasing as must have been furnished by his own mother wit, and could
never have been learned in a hundred years from a Jesuit college. The
poor heart was not a hard one to win; and, the day they buried poor
Father Clifford in the mausoleum, it was with a mixture of pride at his
own talents, and contemptuous pity for his dupe, that Mackworth listened
to Densil as he told him that he was now his only friend, and besought
him not to leave him--which thing Mackworth promised, with the deepest
sincerity, he would not do.