THE BLOSSOMING SEASON
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), a little better than a month: the
religious, somewhat longer: the religious-propagandist (when he was
for converting the heathen of Lobourne and Bursley, 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!" cried 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 schoolboys, 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 under water 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 water, 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, to 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, braver,
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 a 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 blossom
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.