Our host regaled us with a hospitality that notably contrasted his
economical thrifty habits in London. To be sure, Bolt had caught the
great pike which headed the feast; and Bolt, no doubt, had helped to
rear those fine chickens ab ovo; Bolt, I have no doubt, made that
excellent Spanish omelette; and, for the rest, the products of the
sheepwalk and the garden came in as volunteer auxiliaries,--very
different from the mercenary recruits by which those metropolitan
Condottieri, the butcher and greengrocer, hasten the ruin of that
melancholy commonwealth called "genteel poverty."
Our evening passed cheerfully; and Roland, contrary to his custom, was
talker in chief. It was eleven o'clock before Bolt appeared with a
lantern to conduct me through the courtyard to my dormitory among the
ruins,--a ceremony which, every night, shine or dark, he insisted upon
punctiliously performing.
It was long before I could sleep; before I could believe that but so few
days had elapsed since Roland heard of his son's death,--that son whose
fate had so long tortured him; and yet, never had Roland appeared so
free from sorrow! Was it natural, was it effort? Several days passed
before I could answer that question, and then not wholly to my
satisfaction. Effort there was, or rather resolute, systematic
determination. At moments Roland's head drooped, his brows met, and the
whole man seemed to sink. Yet these were only moments; he would rouse
himself up, like a dozing charger at the sound of the trumpet, and shake
off the creeping weight. But whether from the vigor of his
determination, or from some aid in other trains of reflection, I could
not but perceive that Roland's sadness really was less grave and bitter
than it had been, or than it was natural to suppose. He seemed to
transfer, daily, more and more, his affections from the dead to those
around him, especially to Blanche and myself. He let it be seen that he
looked on me now as his lawful successor,--as the future supporter of
his name; he was fond of confiding to me all his little plans, and
consulting me on them. He would walk with me around his domains (of
which I shall say more hereafter),--point out, from every eminence we
climbed, where the broad lands which his forefathers had owned stretched
away to the horizon: unfold with tender hand the mouldering pedigree,
and rest lingeringly on those of his ancestors who had held martial post
or had died on the field. There was a crusader who had followed Richard
to Ascalon; there was a knight who had fought at Agincourt: there was a
cavalier (whose picture was still extant), with fair love-locks, who had
fallen at Worcester,--no doubt the same who had cooled his son in that
well which the son devoted to more agreeable associations. But of all
these worthies there was none whom my uncle, perhaps from the spirit of
contradiction, valued like that apocryphal Sir William. And why?
Because when the apostate Stanley turned the fortunes of the field at
Bosworth, and when that cry of despair, "Treason! treason!" burst from
the lips of the last Plantagenet, "amongst the faithless," this true
soldier, "faithful found," had fallen in that lion rush which Richard
made at his foe. "Your father tells me that Richard was a murderer and
usurper," quoth my uncle. "Sir, that might be true or not; but it was
not on the field of battle that his followers were to reason on the
character of the master who trusted them, especially when a legion of
foreign hirelings stood opposed to them. I would not have descended
from that turncoat Stanley to be lord of all the lands the earls of
Derby can boast of. Sir, in loyalty, men fight and die for a grand
principle and a lofty passion; and this brave Sir William was paying
back to the last Plantagenet the benefits he had received from the
first!"
"And yet it may be doubted," said I, maliciously, "whether William
Caxton the printer did not--"
Plague, pestilence, and fire seize William Caxton the printer, and his
invention too!" cried my uncle, barbarously.
"When there were only a few books, at least they were good ones; and now
they are so plentiful, all they do is to confound the judgment, unsettle
the reason, drive the good books out of cultivation, and draw a
ploughshare of innovation over every ancient landmark; seduce the women,
womanize the men, upset states, thrones, and churches; rear a race of
chattering, conceited coxcombs who can always find books in plenty to
excuse them from doing their duty; make the poor discontented, the rich
crotchety and whimsical, refine away the stout old virtues into quibbles
and sentiments! All imagination formerly was expended in noble action,
adventure, enterprise, high deeds, and aspirations; now a man can but be
imaginative by feeding on the false excitement of passions he never
felt, dangers he never shared, and he fritters away all there is of life
to spare in him upon the fictitious love--sorrows of Bond Street and St.
James's. Sir, chivalry ceased when the Press rose! And to fasten upon
me, as a forefather, out of all men who ever lived and sinned, the very
man who has most destroyed what I most valued,--who, by the Lord! with
his cursed invention has well-nigh got rid of respect for forefathers
altogether,--is a cruelty of which my brother had never been capable if
that printer's devil had not got hold of him!"
That a man in this blessed nineteenth century should be such a Vandal,
and that my Uncle Roland should talk in a strain that Totila would have
been ashamed of, within so short a time after my father's scientific and
erudite oration on the Hygeiana of Books,--was enough to make one
despair of the progress of intellect and the perfectibility of our
species. And I have no manner of doubt that, all the while, my uncle
had a brace of books in his pockets, Robert Hall one of them! In truth,
he had talked himself into a passion, and did not know what nonsense he
was saying. But this explosion of Captain Roland's has shattered the
thread of my matter. Pouff! I must take breath and begin again.
Yes, in spite of my sauciness, the old soldier evidently took to me more
and more. And besides our critical examination of the property and the
pedigree, he carried me with him on long excursions to distant villages
where some memorial of a defunct Caxton, a coat of arms, or an epitaph
on a tombstone, might be still seen. And he made me pore over
topographical works and county histories (forgetful, Goth that he was,
that for those very authorities he was indebted to the repudiated
printer!) to find some anecdote of his beloved dead! In truth, the
county for miles round bore the vestigia of those old Caxtons; their
handwriting was on many a broken wall. And obscure as they all were,
compared to that great operative of the Sanctuary at Westminster whom my
father clung to, still, that the yesterdays that had lighted them the
way to dusty death had cast no glare on dishonored scutcheons seemed
clear, from the popular respect and traditional affection in which I
found that the name was still held in hamlet and homestead. It was
pleasant to see the veneration with which this small hidalgo of some
three hundred a-year was held, and the patriarchal affection with which
he returned it. Roland was a man who would walk into a cottage, rest
his cork leg on the hearth, and talk for the hour together upon all that
lay nearest to the hearts of the owners. There is a peculiar spirit of
aristocracy amongst agricultural peasants: they like old names and
families; they identify themselves with the honors of a house, as if of
its clan. They do not care so much for wealth as townsfolk and the
middle class do; they have a pity, but a respectful one, for well-born
poverty. And then this Roland, too,--who would go and dine in a
cookshop, and receive change for a shilling, and shun the ruinous luxury
of a hack cabriolet,--could be positively extravagant in his
liberalities to those around him. He was altogether another being in
his paternal acres. The shabby-genteel, half-pay captain, lost in the
whirl of London, here luxuriated into a dignified ease of manner that
Chesterfield might have admired. And if to please is the true sign of
politeness, I wish you could have seen the faces that smiled upon
Captain Roland as he walked down the village, nodding from side to side.
One day a frank, hearty old woman, who had known Roland as a boy, seeing
him lean on my arm, stopped us, as she said bluffly, to take a "geud
luik" at me.
Fortunately I was stalwart enough to pass muster, even in the eyes of a
Cumberland matron; and after a compliment at which Roland seemed much
pleased, she said to me, but pointing to the Captain,--
"Hegh, sir, now you ha' the bra' time before you, you maun e'en try and
be as geud as he. And if life last, ye wull too; for there never waur a
bad ane of that stock. Wi' heads
kindly stup'd to the least, and lifted manfu' oop to the heighest,--that
ye all war' sin ye came from the Ark. Blessin's on the ould name!
though little pelf goes with it, it sounds on the peur man's ear like a
bit of gould!"
"Do you not see now," said Roland, as we turned away, "what we owe to a
name, and what to our forefathers? Do you not see why the remotest
ancestor has a right to our respect and consideration,--for he was a
parent? 'Honor your parents': the law does not say, 'Honor your
children!' If a child disgrace us, and the dead, and the sanctity of
this great heritage of their virtues,--the name; if he does--" Roland
stopped short, and added fervently, "But you are my heir now,--I have no
fear! What matter one foolish old man's sorrows? The name, that
property of generations, is saved, thank Heaven,--the name!"
Now the riddle was solved, and I understood why, amidst all his natural
grief for a son's loss, that proud father was consoled. For he was less
himself a father than a son,--son to the long dead. From every grave
where a progenitor slept, he had heard a parent's voice. He could bear
to be bereaved, if the forefathers were not dishonored. Roland was more
than half a Roman; the son might still cling to his household
affections, but the Lares were a part of his religion.