Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and, as the mystery of the
apparition that had frightened little Clare was never solved on the
stage of events at Raynham, where dread walked the Abbey, let us go
behind the scenes a moment. Morally superstitious as the baronet was,
the character of his mind was opposed to anything like spiritual agency
in the affairs of men, and, when the matter was made clear to him, it
shook off a weight of weakness and restored his mental balance; so that
from this time he went about more like the man he had once been,
grasping more thoroughly the great truth, that This World is well
designed. Nay, he could laugh on hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the
ill luck of one of the family members at its first manifestation, call
the uneasy spirit, Algernon’s Leg.
Mrs. Doria was outraged. She maintained that her child had seen ——. Not
to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal property. After
satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her, Sir Austin, moved
by pity, took her aside one day and showed her that her Ghost could
write words in the flesh. It was a letter from the unhappy lady who had
given Richard birth,—brief cold lines, simply telling him his house
would be disturbed by her no more. Cold lines, but penned by what
heart-broken abnegation, and underlying them with what anguish of soul!
Like most who dealt with him, Lady Feverel thought her husband a man
fatally stern and implacable, and she acted as silly creatures will act
when they fancy they see a fate against them: she neither petitioned
for her right nor claimed it: she tried to ease her heart’s yearning by
stealth, and, now she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not wanting in the
family tenderness and softness, shuddered at him for accepting the
sacrifice so composedly: but he bade her to think how distracting to
this boy would be the sight of such relations between mother and
father. A few years, and as man he should know, and judge, and love
her. “Let this be her penance, not inflicted by me!” Mrs. Doria bowed
to the System for another, not opining when it would be her turn to bow
for herself.
Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older, much
disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,—he with gouty fingers on a
greasy guitar. The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small
hires. His fame has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased. What
he can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the
juniper is in requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot
be performed without it. Returning from her wretched journey to her
wretcheder home, the lady had to listen to a mild reproof from
easy-going Diaper,—a reproof so mild that he couched it in blank verse:
for, seldom writing metrically now, he took to talking it. With a
fluent sympathetic tear, he explained to her that she was damaging her
interests by these proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to
elucidate wherefore. Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told
her that the poverty she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle
nurture, and that he had reason to believe—could assure her—that an
annuity was on the point of being granted her by her husband. And
Diaper broke his bud of a smile into full flower as he delivered this
information. She learnt that he had applied to her husband for money.
It is hard to have one’s prop of self-respect cut away just when we are
suffering a martyr’s agony at the stake. There was a five minutes’
tragic colloquy in the recesses behind the scenes,—totally tragic to
Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in the warm sun of that annuity,
and re-emerge from his state of grub. The lady then wrote the letter
Sir Austin held open to his sister. The atmosphere behind the scenes is
not wholesome, so, having laid the Ghost, we will return and face the
curtain.
That infinitesimal dose of The World which Master Ripton Thompson had
furnished to the System with such instantaneous and surprising effect
was considered by Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be for the
time quite sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a second
invitation to Raynham, and Richard had no special intimate of his own
age to rub his excessive vitality against, and wanted none. His hands
were full enough with Tom Bakewell. Moreover, his father and he were
heart in heart. The boy’s mind was opening, and turned to his father
affectionately reverent. At this period, when the young savage grows
into higher influences, the faculty of worship is foremost in him. At
this period Jesuits will stamp the future of their chargeling flocks;
and all who bring up youth by a System, and watch it, know that it is
the malleable moment. Boys possessing any mental or moral force to give
them a tendency, then predestinate their careers; or, if under
supervision, take the impress that is given them: not often to cast it
off, and seldom to cast it off altogether.
In Sir Austin’s Note-book was written: “Between Simple Boyhood and
Adolescence—The Blossoming Season—on the threshold of Puberty, there is
one Unselfish Hour—say, Spiritual Seed-time.”
He took care that good seed should be planted in Richard, and that the
most fruitful seed for a youth, namely, Example, should be of a kind to
germinate in him the love of every form of nobleness.
“I am only striving to make my son a Christian,” he said, answering
them who persisted in expostulating with the System. And to these
instructions he gave an aim: “First be virtuous,” he told his son, “and
then serve your country with heart and soul.” The youth was instructed
to cherish an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read
history and the speeches of British orators to some purpose; for one
day Sir Austin found him leaning cross-legged, and with his hand to his
chin, against a pedestal supporting the bust of Chatham, contemplating
the hero of our Parliament, his eyes streaming with tears.
People said the baronet carried the principle of Example so far that he
only retained his boozing dyspeptic brother Hippias at Raynham in order
to exhibit to his son the woeful retribution nature wreaked upon a life
of indulgence; poor Hippias having now become a walking complaint. This
was unjust, but there is no doubt he made use of every illustration to
disgust or encourage his son that his neighbourhood afforded him, and
did not spare his brother, for whom Richard entertained a contempt in
proportion to his admiration of his father, and was for flying into
penitential extremes which Sir Austin had to soften.
The boy prayed with his father morning and night.
“How is it, sir,” he said one night, “I can’t get Tom Bakewell to
pray?”
“Does he refuse?” Sir Austin asked.
“He seems to be ashamed to,” Richard replied. “He wants to know what is
the good? and I don’t know what to tell him.”
“I’m afraid it has gone too far with him,” said Sir Austin, “and until
he has had some deep sorrows he will not find the divine want of
Prayer. Strive, my son, when you represent the people, to provide for
their education. He feels everything now through a dull impenetrable
rind. Culture is half-way to heaven. Tell him, my son, should he ever
be brought to ask how he may know the efficacy of Prayer, and that his
prayer will be answered, tell him (he quoted The Pilgrim’s Scrip):
“‘Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.’”
“I will, sir,” said Richard, and went to sleep happy.
Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived. Conscience was
beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage known
to men; though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now on this
side, now on that.
The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary
developments in his pupil, soberly cynical. He was under Sir Austin’s
interdict not to banter him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by
the sight of a felonious young rick-burner turning saint, by grave
affectations of sympathy and extreme accuracy in marking the not
widely-distant dates of his various changes. The Bread-and-water phase
lasted a fortnight: the Vegetarian (an imitation of his cousin Austin),
little better than a month: the religious, somewhat longer: the
religious-propagandist (when he was for converting the heathen of
Lobourne and Burnley, and the domestics of the Abbey, including Tom
Bakewell), longer still, and hard to bear;—he tried to convert Adrian!
All the while Tom was being exercised like a raw recruit. Richard had a
drill-sergeant from the nearest barracks down for him, to give him a
proper pride in himself, and marched him to and fro with immense
satisfaction, and nearly broke his heart trying to get the
round-shouldered rustic to take in the rudiments of letters: for the
boy had unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero in grain.
Richard’s pride also was cast aside. He affected to be, and really
thought he was, humble. Whereupon Adrian, as by accident, imparted to
him the fact that men were animals, and he an animal with the rest of
them.
“I an animal!” cries Richard in scorn, and for weeks he was as troubled
by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom by his letters. Sir Austin
had him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore his
self-respect.
Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his cousin
Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him. She too was
growing, but nobody cared how she grew. Outwardly even her mother
seemed absorbed in the sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel
tree, and Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by him.
Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: “If I had
been a girl, I would have had you for my husband.” And he with the
frankness of his years would reply: “And how do you know I would have
had you?” causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not
heard her say she would have had him? Terrible words, he knew not then
the meaning of!
“You don’t read your father’s Book,” she said. Her own copy was bound
in purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to have holier
books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian
remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed
at him therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted her
brother would not be on his guard.
“See here,” said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to one
of the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must
clay-enclose us ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any
human creature in our path. “Can you understand it, child?”
Richard informed her that when she read he could.
“Well, then, my squire,” she touched his cheek and ran her fingers
through his hair, “learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and
yon with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met a wise
man to guide me.”
“Is my father very wise?” Richard asked.
“I think so,” the lady emphasized her individual judgment.
“Do you—” Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating of his
heart.
“Do I—what?” she calmly queried.
“I was going to say, do you—I mean, I love him so much.”
Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.
They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it;
always with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the
sense of a growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally
disturb him.
Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it was part of Sir
Austin’s principle of education that his boy should be thoroughly
joyous and happy; and whenever Adrian sent in a satisfactory report of
his pupil’s advancement, which he did pretty liberally, diversions were
planned, just as prizes are given to diligent school-boys, and Richard
was supposed to have all his desires gratified while he attended to his
studies. The System flourished. Tall, strong, bloomingly healthy, he
took the lead of his companions on land and water, and had more than
one bondsman in his service besides Ripton Thompson—the boy without a
Destiny! Perhaps the boy with a Destiny was growing up a trifle too
conscious of it. His generosity to his occasional companions was
princely, but was exercised something too much in the manner of a
prince; and, notwithstanding his contempt for baseness, he would
overlook that more easily than an offence to his pride, which demanded
an utter servility when it had once been rendered susceptible. If
Richard had his followers he had also his feuds. The Papworths were as
subservient as Ripton, but young Ralph Morton, the nephew of Mr.
Morton, and a match for Richard in numerous promising qualities,
comprising the noble science of fisticuffs, this youth spoke his mind
too openly, and moreover would not be snubbed. There was no middle
course for Richard’s comrades between high friendship or absolute
slavery. He was deficient in those cosmopolite habits and feelings
which enable boys and men to hold together without caring much for each
other; and, like every insulated mortal, he attributed the deficiency,
of which he was quite aware, to the fact of his possessing a superior
nature. Young Ralph was a lively talker: therefore, argued Richard’s
vanity, he had no intellect. He was affable: therefore he was
frivolous. The women liked him: therefore he was a butterfly. In fine,
young Ralph was popular, and our superb prince, denied the privilege of
despising, ended by detesting him.
Early in the days of their contention for leadership, Richard saw the
absurdity of affecting to scorn his rival. Ralph was an Eton boy, and
hence, being robust, a swimmer and a cricketer. A swimmer and a
cricketer is nowhere to be scorned in youth’s republic. Finding that
manoeuvre would not do, Richard was prompted once or twice to entrench
himself behind his greater wealth and his position; but he soon
abandoned that also, partly because his chilliness to ridicule told him
he was exposing himself, and chiefly that his heart was too chivalrous.
And so he was dragged into the lists by Ralph, and experienced the luck
of champions. For cricket, and for diving, Ralph bore away the belt:
Richard’s middle-stump tottered before his ball, and he could seldom
pick up more than three eggs underwater to Ralph’s half-dozen. He was
beaten, too, in jumping and running. Why will silly mortals strive to
the painful pinnacles of championship? Or why, once having reached
them, not have the magnanimity and circumspection to retire into
private life immediately? Stung by his defeats, Richard sent one of his
dependent Papworths to Poer Hall, with a challenge to Ralph Barthrop
Morton; matching himself to swim across the Thames and back, once,
twice, or thrice, within a less time than he, Ralph Barthrop Morton,
would require for the undertaking. It was accepted, and a reply
returned, equally formal in the trumpeting of Christian names, wherein
Ralph Barthrop Morton acknowledged the challenge of Richard Doria
Feverel, and was his man. The match came off on a midsummer morning,
under the direction of Captain Algernon. Sir Austin was a spectator
from the cover of a plantation by the river-side, unknown to his son,
and, to the scandal of her sex, Lady Blandish accompanied the baronet.
He had invited her attendance, and she, obeying her frank nature, and
knowing what The Pilgrim’s Scrip said about prudes, at once agreed to
view the match, pleasing him mightily. For was not here a woman worthy
the Golden Ages of the world? one who could look upon man as a creature
divinely made, and look with a mind neither tempted, nor taunted, by
the Serpent! Such a woman was rare. Sir Austin did not discompose her
by uttering his praises. She was conscious of his approval only in an
increased gentleness of manner, and something in his voice and
communications, as if he were speaking to a familiar, a very high
compliment from him. While the lads were standing ready for the signal
to plunge from the steep decline of greensward into the shining waters,
Sir Austin called upon her to admire their beauty, and she did, and
even advanced her head above his shoulder delicately. In so doing, and
just as the start was given, a bonnet became visible to Richard. Young
Ralph was heels in air before he moved, and then he dropped like lead.
He was beaten by several lengths.
The result of the match was unaccountable to all present, and Richard’s
friends unanimously pressed him to plead a false start. But though the
youth, with full confidence in his better style and equal strength, had
backed himself heavily against his rival, and had lost his little
river-yacht to Ralph, he would do nothing of the sort. It was the
Bonnet had beaten him, not Ralph. The Bonnet, typical of the mystery
that caused his heart those violent palpitations, was his dear,
detestable enemy.
And now, as he progressed from mood to mood, his ambition turned
towards a field where Ralph could not rival him, and where the Bonnet
was etherealized, and reigned glorious mistress. A check to the pride
of a boy will frequently divert him to the path where lie his subtlest
powers. Richard gave up his companions, servile or antagonistic: he
relinquished the material world to young Ralph, and retired into
himself, where he was growing to be lord of kingdoms where Beauty was
his handmaid, and History his minister and Time his ancient harper, and
sweet Romance his bride; where he walked in a realm vaster and more
gorgeous than the great Orient, peopled with the heroes that have been.
For there is no princely wealth, and no loftiest heritage, to equal
this early one that is made bountifully common to so many, when the
ripening blood has put a spark to the imagination, and the earth is
seen through rosy mists of a thousand fresh-awakened nameless and
aimless desires; panting for bliss and taking it as it comes; making of
any sight or sound, perforce of the enchantment they carry with them, a
key to infinite, because innocent, pleasure. The passions then are
gambolling cubs; not the ravaging gluttons they grow to. They have
their teeth and their talons, but they neither tear nor bite. They are
in counsel and fellowship with the quickened heart and brain. The whole
sweet system moves to music.
Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his son,
which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due
to his plan. The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging to
solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were
matters for rejoicing to the prescient gentleman. “For it comes,” said
he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically on the
youth’s behalf and being assured of his soundness, “it comes of a
thoroughly sane condition. The blood is healthy, the mind virtuous:
neither instigates the other to evil, and both are perfecting toward
the flower of manhood. If he reach that pure—in the untainted fulness
and perfection of his natural powers—I am indeed a happy father! But
one thing he will owe to me: that at one period of his life he knew
paradise, and could read God’s handwriting on the earth! Now those
abominations whom you call precocious boys—your little pet monsters,
doctor!—and who can wonder that the world is what it is? when it is
full of them—as they will have no divine time to look back upon in
their own lives, how can they believe in innocence and goodness, or be
other than sons of selfishness and the Devil? But my boy,” and the
baronet dropped his voice to a key that was touching to hear, “my boy,
if he fall, will fall from an actual region of purity. He dare not be a
sceptic as to that. Whatever his darkness, he will have the guiding
light of a memory behind him. So much is secure.”
To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of
profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received
opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual
insight, is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first
persuaded themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and
through them to make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or
for ill. Sir Austin had this gift. He spoke as if he saw the truth,
and, persisting in it so long, he was accredited by those who did not
understand him, and silenced them that did.
“We shall see,” was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other
unbelievers.
So far certainly the experiment had succeeded. A comelier, bracer,
better boy was nowhere to be met. His promise was undeniable. The
vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved
by the buffets of the elements on the great ocean, had made a good
trial trip, and got well through stormy weather, as the records of the
Bakewell Comedy witnessed to at Raynham. No augury could be hopefuller.
The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark,
that could destroy so bright a Spring! But, bright as it was, the
baronet relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision. He said to his
intimates: “Every act, every fostered inclination, almost every
thought, in this Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future. The
living Tree now requires incessant watchfulness.” And, acting up to his
light, Sir Austin did watch. The youth submitted to an examination
every night before he sought his bed; professedly to give an account of
his studies, but really to recapitulate his moral experiences of the
day. He could do so, for he was pure. Any wildness in him that his
father noted, any remoteness or richness of fancy in his expressions,
was set down as incidental to the Blossoming Season. There is nothing
like a theory for binding the wise. Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch
and ward, knew less of his son than the servant of his household. And
he was deaf, as well as blind. Adrian thought it his duty to tell him
that the youth was consuming paper. Lady Blandish likewise hinted at
his mooning propensities. Sir Austin from his lofty watch-tower of the
System had foreseen it, he said. But when he came to hear that the
youth was writing poetry, his wounded heart had its reasons for being
much disturbed.
“Surely,” said Lady Blandish, “you knew he scribbled?”
“A very different thing from writing poetry,” said the baronet. “No
Feverel has ever written poetry.”
“I don’t think it’s a sign of degeneracy,” the lady remarked. “He
rhymes very prettily to me.”
A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry,
quieted Sir Austin’s fears.
The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative
faculty; and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and
instanced several consoling false quantities in the few effusions
submitted to him. Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that
Richard had, at his best, done what no poet had ever been known to be
capable of doing: he had, with his own hands, and in cold blood,
committed his virgin manuscript to the flames: which made Lady Blandish
sigh forth, “Poor boy!”
Killing one’s darling child is a painful imposition. For a youth in his
Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested to
destroy his first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a reason
cogent enough to justify the request were a mockery), is a piece of
abhorrent despotism, and Richard’s blossoms withered under it. A
strange man had been introduced to him, who traversed and bisected his
skull with sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his soul while, in an
infallible voice, declaring him the animal he was: making him feel such
an animal! Not only his blossoms withered, his being seemed to draw in
its shoots and twigs. And when, coupled thereunto (the strange man
having departed, his work done), his father, in his tenderest manner,
stated that it would give him pleasure to see those same precocious,
utterly valueless, scribblings among the cinders, the last remaining
mental blossoms spontaneously fell away. Richard’s spirit stood bare.
He protested not. Enough that it could be wished! He would not delay a
minute in doing it. Desiring his father to follow him, he went to a
drawer in his room, and from a clean-linen recess, never suspected by
Sir Austin, the secretive youth drew out bundle after bundle: each
neatly tied, named, and numbered: and pitched them into flames. And so
Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true confidence
between Father and Son.