Some days have elapsed: we are in London, my father with us; and Roland
has permitted Austin to tell me his tale, and received through Austin
all that Vivian’s narrative to me suggested, whether in extenuation
of the past or in hope of redemption in the future. And Austin has
inexpressibly soothed his brother. And Roland’s ordinary roughness has
gone, and his looks are meek and his voice low. But he talks little, and
smiles never. He asks me no questions, does not to me name his son,
nor recur to the voyage to Australia, nor ask why it is put off, nor
interest himself, as before, in preparations for it,--he has no heart
for anything.
The voyage is put off till the next vessel sails, and I have seen Vivian
twice or thrice, and the result of the interviews has disappointed and
depressed me. It seems to me that much of the previous effect I
had produced is already obliterated. At the very sight of the great
Babel,--the evidence of the ease, the luxury, the wealth, the pomp;
the strife, the penury, the famine, and the rags, which the focus of
civilization, in the disparities of old societies, inevitably gathers
together,--the fierce, combative disposition seemed to awaken again; the
perverted ambition, the hostility to the world; the wrath, the scorn;
the war with man, and the rebellious murmur against Heaven. There
was still the one redeeming point of repentance for his wrongs to his
father,--his heart was still softened there; and, attendant on that
softness, I hailed a principle more like that of honor than I had yet
recognized in Vivian. He cancelled the agreement which had assured him
of a provision at the cost of his father’s comforts. “At least there,”
he said, “I will injure him no more!”
But while on this point repentance seemed genuine, it was not so with
regard to his conduct towards Miss Trevanion. His gypsy nurture, his
loose associates, his extravagant French romances, his theatrical mode
of looking upon love intrigues and stage plots, seemed all to rise
between his intelligence and the due sense of the fraud and treachery he
had practised. He seemed to feel more shame at the exposure than at the
guilt, more despair at the failure of success than gratitude at
escape from crime. In a word, the nature of a whole life was not to be
remodelled at once,--at least by an artificer so unskilled as I.
After one of these interviews I stole into the room where Austin sat
with Roland, and watching a seasonable moment when Roland, shaking off
a revery, opened his Bible and sat down to it, with each muscle in his
face set, as I had seen it before, into iron resolution, I beckoned my
father from the room.
Pisistratus.--“I have again seen my cousin. I cannot make the way I
wished. My dear father, you must see him.”
Mr. Caxton.--“I? Yes, assuredly, if I can be of any service. But will he
listen to me?”
Pisistratus.--“I think so. A young man will often respect in his elder
what he will resent as a presumption in his contemporary.”
Mr. Caxton.--“It may be so. [Then more thoughtfully] But you describe
this strange boy’s mind as a wreck! In what part of the mouldering
timbers can I fix the grappling-hook? Here it seems that most of the
supports on which we can best rely, when we would save another, fail
us,--religion, honor, the associations of childhood, the bonds of
home, filial obedience, even the intelligence of self-interest, in the
philosophical sense of the word. And I, too,--a mere bookman! My dear
son, I despair!”
Pisistratus.--“No, you do not despair; no, you must succeed,--for if you
do not, what is to become of Uncle Roland? Do you not see his heart is
fast breaking?”
Mr. Caxton.--“Get me my hat. I will go; I will save this Ishmael,--I
will not leave him till he is saved!”
Pisistratus. (Some minutes after, as they are walking towards Vivian’s
lodging).--“You ask me what support you are to cling to: a strong and a
good one, sir.”
Mr. Caxton. “Ah! what is that?”
Pisistratus.--“Affection! There is a nature capable of strong affection
at the core of this wild heart. He could love his mother,--tears gush
to his eyes at her name; he would have starved rather than part with the
memorial of that love. It was his belief in his father’s indifference
or dislike that hardened and embruted him; it is only when he hears how
that father loved him that I now melt his pride and curb his passions.
You have affection to deal with! Do you despair now?
“My father turned on me those eyes so inexpressibly benign and mild, and
replied softly, ‘No!’
“We reached the house; and my father said, as we knocked at the door,
‘If he is at home, leave me. This is a hard study to which you have set
me; I must work at it alone.’
“Vivian was at home, and the door closed on his visitor. My father
stayed some hours.
“On returning home, to my great surprise I found Trevanion with my
uncle. He had found us out,--no easy matter, I should think. But a good
impulse in Trevanion was not of that feeble kind which turns home at the
sight of a difficulty. He had come to London on purpose to see and to
thank us.
“I did not think there had been so much of delicacy--of what I may call
the ‘beauty of kindness’--in a man whom incessant business had rendered
ordinarily blunt and abrupt. I hardly recognized the impatient Trevanion
in the soothing, tender, subtle respect that rather implied than spoke
gratitude, and sought to insinuate what he owed to the unhappy father,
without touching on his wrongs from the son. But of this kindness--which
showed how Trevanion’s high nature of gentleman raised him aloof from
that coarseness of thought which those absorbed wholly in practical
affairs often contract--of this kindness, so noble and so touching,
Roland seemed scarcely aware. He sat by the embers of the neglected
fire, his hands grasping the arms of his elbow-chair, his head drooping
on his bosom; and only by a deep hectic flush on his dark cheek could
you have seen that he distinguished between an ordinary visitor and the
man whose child he had helped to save. This minister of state, this high
member of the elect, at whose gift are places, peerages, gold-sticks,
and ribbons, has nothing at his command for the bruised spirit of the
half-pay soldier. Before that poverty, that grief, and that pride, the
King’s Counsellor was powerless. Only when Trevanion rose to depart,
something like a sense of the soothing intention which the visit implied
seemed to rouse the repose of the old man and to break the ice at its
surface; for he followed Trevanion to the door, took both his hands,
pressed them, then turned away, and resumed his seat. Trevanion beckoned
to me, and I followed him downstairs and into a little parlor which was
unoccupied.
“After some remarks upon Roland, full of deep and considerate feeling,
and one quick, hurried reference to the son,--to the effect that his
guilty attempt would never be known by the world,--Trevanion then
addressed himself to me with a warmth and urgency that took me by
surprise. ‘After what has passed,’ he exclaimed, ‘I cannot suffer you to
leave England thus. Let me not feel with you, as with your uncle, that
there is nothing by which I can repay--No, I will not so put it,--stay,
and serve your country at home; it is my prayer, it is Ellinor’s. Out
of all at my disposal it will go hard but what I shall find something
to suit you.’ And then, hurrying on, Trevanion spoke flatteringly of
my pretensions, in right of birth and capabilities, to honorable
employment, and placed before me a picture of public life, its prizes
and distinctions, which for the moment, at least, made my heart beat
loud and my breath come quick. But still, even then I felt (was it an
unreasonable pride?) that there was something that jarred, something
that humbled, in the thought of holding all my fortunes as a dependency
on the father of the woman I loved, but might not aspire to; something
even of personal degradation in the mere feeling that I was thus to be
repaid for a service, and recompensed for a loss. But these were not
reasons I could advance; and, indeed, so for the time did Trevanion’s
generosity and eloquence overpower me that I could only falter out my
thanks and my promise that I would consider and let him know.
With that promise he was forced to content himself; he told me to
direct to him at his favorite country seat, whither he was going that
day, and so left me. I looked round the humble parlor of the mean
lodging-house, and Trevanion’s words came again before me like a flash
of golden light. I stole into the open air and wandered through the
crowded streets, agitated and disturbed.