The weeks and the months rolled on, and the replies to Vivian's
letters came at last: I foreboded too well their purport. I knew that
my father could not set himself in opposition to the deliberate and
cherished desire of a man who had now arrived at the full strength
of his understanding, and must be left at liberty to make his own
election of the paths of life. Long after that date, I saw Vivian's
letter to my father; and even his conversation had scarcely prepared
me for the pathos of that confession of a mind remarkable alike for
its strength and its weakness. If born in the age, or submitted to
the influences, of religious enthusiasm, here was a nature that,
awaking from sin, could not have been contented with the sober duties
of mediocre goodness--that would have plunged into the fiery depths
of monkish fanaticism--wrestled with the fiend in the hermitage, or
marched barefoot on the infidel, with the sackcloth for armour--the
cross for a sword. Now, the impatient desire for redemption took a more
mundane direction, but with something that seemed almost spiritual in
its fervour. And this enthusiasm flowed through strata of such profound
melancholy! Deny it a vent, and it might sicken into lethargy, or
fret itself into madness--give it the vent, and it might vivify and
fertilise as it swept along.
My father's reply to this letter was what might be expected. It gently
reinforced the old lessons in the distinctions between aspirations
towards the perfecting ourselves--aspirations that are never in
vain--and the morbid passion for applause from others, which shifts
conscience from our own bosoms to the confused Babel of the crowd, and
calls it "fame." But my father, in his counsels, did not seek to oppose
a mind so obstinately bent upon a single course--he sought rather to
guide and strengthen it in the way it should go. The seas of human life
are wide. Wisdom may suggest the voyage, but it must first look to the
condition of the ship, and the nature of the merchandise to exchange.
Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish can bring back the gold of
Ophir; but shall it therefore rot in the harbour? No; give its sails to
the wind!
But I had expected that Roland's letter to his son would have been full
of joy and exultation--joy there was none in it, yet exultation there
might be--though serious, grave, and subdued. In the proud assent that
the old soldier gave to his son's wish, in his entire comprehension of
motives so akin to his own nature--there was yet a visible sorrow; it
seemed even as if he constrained himself to the assent he gave. Not
till I had read it again and again, could I divine Roland's feelings
while he wrote. At this distance of time, I comprehend them well. Had
he sent from his side, into noble warfare, some boy fresh to life, new
to sin, with an enthusiasm pure and single-hearted as his own young
chivalrous ardour--then, with all a soldier's joy, he had yielded a
cheerful tribute to the hosts of England; but here he recognised,
though perhaps dimly, not the frank military fervour, but the stern
desire of expiation--and in that thought he admitted forebodings
that would have been otherwise rejected--so that, at the close of
the letter, it seemed not the fiery war-seasoned Roland that wrote,
but rather some timid, anxious mother. Warnings and entreaties, and
cautions not to be rash, and assurances that the best soldiers were
ever the most prudent--were these the counsels of the fierce veteran,
who, at the head of the forlorn hope, had mounted the wall at ----, his
sword between his teeth!
But, whatever his presentiments, Roland had yielded at once to his
son's prayer--hastened to London at the receipt of his letter--obtained
a commission in a regiment now in active service in India; and that
commission was made out in his son's name. The commission, with an
order to join the regiment as soon as possible, accompanied the letter.
And Vivian, pointing to the name addressed to him, said, "Now, indeed,
I may resume this name, and, next to Heaven, will I hold it sacred! It
shall guide me to glory in life, or my father shall read it, without
shame, on my tomb!" I see him before me, as he stood then--his form
erect, his dark eyes solemn in their light, a serenity in his smile, a
grandeur on his brow, that I had never marked till then! Was that the
same man I had recoiled from as the sneering cynic, shuddered at as the
audacious traitor, or wept over as the cowering outcast? How little
the nobleness of aspect depends on symmetry of feature, or the mere
proportions of form! What dignity robes the man who is filled with a
lofty thought!