CHARLIE MILLTHORPE.
I.
Pierre had been induced to take chambers at the Apostles', by one of the
Apostles themselves, an old acquaintance of his, and a native of Saddle
Meadows.
Millthorpe was the son of a very respectable farmer--now dead--of more
than common intelligence, and whose bowed shoulders and homely garb had
still been surmounted by a head fit for a Greek philosopher, and
features so fine and regular that they would have well graced an opulent
gentleman. The political and social levelings and confoundings of all
manner of human elements in America, produce many striking individual
anomalies unknown in other lands. Pierre well remembered old farmer
Millthorpe:--the handsome, melancholy, calm-tempered, mute, old man; in
whose countenance--refinedly ennobled by nature, and yet coarsely tanned
and attenuated by many a prolonged day's work in the harvest--rusticity
and classicalness were strangely united. The delicate profile of his
face, bespoke the loftiest aristocracy; his knobbed and bony hands
resembled a beggar's.
Though for several generations the Millthorpes had lived on the
Glendinning lands, they loosely and unostentatiously traced their origin
to an emigrating English Knight, who had crossed the sea in the time of
the elder Charles. But that indigence which had prompted the knight to
forsake his courtly country for the howling wilderness, was the only
remaining hereditament left to his bedwindled descendants in the fourth
and fifth remove. At the time that Pierre first recollected this
interesting man, he had, a year or two previous, abandoned an ample farm
on account of absolute inability to meet the manorial rent, and was
become the occupant of a very poor and contracted little place, on which
was a small and half-ruinous house. There, he then harbored with his
wife,--a very gentle and retiring person,--his three little daughters,
and his only son, a lad of Pierre's own age. The hereditary beauty and
youthful bloom of this boy; his sweetness of temper, and something of
natural refinement as contrasted with the unrelieved rudeness, and
oftentimes sordidness, of his neighbors; these things had early
attracted the sympathetic, spontaneous friendliness of Pierre. They were
often wont to take their boyish rambles together; and even the severely
critical Mrs. Glendinning, always fastidiously cautious as to the
companions of Pierre, had never objected to his intimacy with so
prepossessing and handsome a rustic as Charles.
Boys are often very swiftly acute in forming a judgment on character.
The lads had not long companioned, ere Pierre concluded, that however
fine his face, and sweet his temper, young Millthorpe was but little
vigorous in mind; besides possessing a certain constitutional,
sophomorean presumption and egotism; which, however, having nothing to
feed on but his father's meal and potatoes, and his own essentially
timid and humane disposition, merely presented an amusing and harmless,
though incurable, anomalous feature in his character, not at all
impairing the good-will and companionableness of Pierre; for even in his
boyhood, Pierre possessed a sterling charity, which could cheerfully
overlook all minor blemishes in his inferiors, whether in fortune or
mind; content and glad to embrace the good whenever presented, or with
whatever conjoined. So, in youth, do we unconsciously act upon those
peculiar principles, which in conscious and verbalized maxims shall
systematically regulate our maturer lives;--a fact, which forcibly
illustrates the necessitarian dependence of our lives, and their
subordination, not to ourselves, but to Fate.
If the grown man of taste, possess not only some eye to detect the
picturesque in the natural landscape, so also, has he as keen a
perception of what may not unfitly be here styled, the _povertiresque_
in the social landscape. To such an one, not more picturesquely
conspicuous is the dismantled thatch in a painted cottage of
Gainsborough, than the time-tangled and want-thinned locks of a beggar,
_povertiresquely_ diversifying those snug little cabinet-pictures of the
world, which, exquisitely varnished and framed, are hung up in the
drawing-room minds of humane men of taste, and amiable philosophers of
either the "Compensation," or "Optimist" school. They deny that any
misery is in the world, except for the purpose of throwing the fine
_povertiresque_ element into its general picture. Go to! God hath
deposited cash in the Bank subject to our gentlemanly order; he hath
bounteously blessed the world with a summer carpet of green. Begone,
Heraclitus! The lamentations of the rain are but to make us our
rainbows!
Not that in equivocal reference to the _povertiresque_ old farmer
Millthorpe, Pierre is here intended to be hinted at. Still, man can not
wholly escape his surroundings. Unconsciously Mrs. Glendinning had
always been one of these curious Optimists; and in his boyish life
Pierre had not wholly escaped the maternal contagion. Yet often, in
calling at the old farmer's for Charles of some early winter mornings,
and meeting the painfully embarrassed, thin, feeble features of Mrs.
Millthorpe, and the sadly inquisitive and hopelessly half-envious
glances of the three little girls; and standing on the threshold, Pierre
would catch low, aged, life-weary groans from a recess out of sight
from the door; then would Pierre have some boyish inklings of something
else than the pure _povertiresque_ in poverty: some inklings of what it
might be, to be old, and poor, and worn, and rheumatic, with shivering
death drawing nigh, and present life itself but a dull and a chill! some
inklings of what it might be, for him who in youth had vivaciously
leaped from his bed, impatient to meet the earliest sun, and lose no
sweet drop of his life, now hating the beams he once so dearly loved;
turning round in his bed to the wall to avoid them; and still postponing
the foot which should bring him back to the dismal day; when the sun is
not gold, but copper; and the sky is not blue, but gray; and the blood,
like Rhenish wine, too long unquaffed by Death, grows thin and sour in
the veins.
Pierre had not forgotten that the augmented penury of the Millthorpe's
was, at the time we now retrospectively treat of, gravely imputed by the
gossiping frequenters of the Black Swan Inn, to certain insinuated moral
derelictions of the farmer. "The old man tipped his elbow too often,"
once said in Pierre's hearing an old bottle-necked fellow, performing
the identical same act with a half-emptied glass in his hand. But though
the form of old Millthorpe was broken, his countenance, however sad and
thin, betrayed no slightest sign of the sot, either past or present. He
never was publicly known to frequent the inn, and seldom quitted the few
acres he cultivated with his son. And though, alas, indigent enough, yet
was he most punctually honest in paying his little debts of shillings
and pence for his groceries. And though, heaven knows, he had plenty of
occasion for all the money he could possibly earn, yet Pierre
remembered, that when, one autumn, a hog was bought of him for the
servants' hall at the Mansion, the old man never called for his money
till the midwinter following; and then, as with trembling fingers he
eagerly clutched the silver, he unsteadily said, "I have no use for it
now; it might just as well have stood over." It was then, that chancing
to overhear this, Mrs. Glendinning had looked at the old man, with a
kindly and benignantly interested eye to the _povertiresque_; and
murmured, "Ah! the old English Knight is not yet out of his blood.
Bravo, old man!"
One day, in Pierre's sight, nine silent figures emerged from the door of
old Millthorpe; a coffin was put into a neighbor's farm-wagon; and a
procession, some thirty feet long, including the elongated pole and box
of the wagon, wound along Saddle Meadows to a hill, where, at last, old
Millthorpe was laid down in a bed, where the rising sun should affront
him no more. Oh, softest and daintiest of Holland linen is the motherly
earth! There, beneath the sublime tester of the infinite sky, like
emperors and kings, sleep, in grand state, the beggars and paupers of
earth! I joy that Death is this Democrat; and hopeless of all other real
and permanent democracies, still hug the thought, that though in life
some heads are crowned with gold, and some bound round with thorns, yet
chisel them how they will, head-stones are all alike.
This somewhat particular account of the father of young Millthorpe, will
better set forth the less immature condition and character of the son,
on whom had now descended the maintenance of his mother and sisters.
But, though the son of a farmer, Charles was peculiarly averse to hard
labor. It was not impossible that by resolute hard labor he might
eventually have succeeded in placing his family in a far more
comfortable situation than he had ever remembered them. But it was not
so fated; the benevolent State had in its great wisdom decreed
otherwise.
In the village of Saddle Meadows there was an institution, half
common-school and half academy, but mainly supported by a general
ordinance and financial provision of the government Here, not only were
the rudiments of an English education taught, but likewise some touch of
belles lettres, and composition, and that great American bulwark and
bore--elocution. On the high-raised, stage platform of the Saddle
Meadows Academy, the sons of the most indigent day-laborers were wont to
drawl out the fiery revolutionary rhetoric of Patrick Henry, or
gesticulate impetuously through the soft cadences of Drake's "Culprit
Fay." What wonder, then, that of Saturdays, when there was no elocution
and poesy, these boys should grow melancholy and disdainful over the
heavy, plodding handles of dung-forks and hoes?
At the age of fifteen, the ambition of Charles Millthorpe was to be
either an orator, or a poet; at any rate, a great genius of one sort or
other. He recalled the ancestral Knight, and indignantly spurned the
plow. Detecting in him the first germ of this inclination, old
Millthorpe had very seriously reasoned with his son; warning him against
the evils of his vagrant ambition. Ambition of that sort was either for
undoubted genius, rich boys, or poor boys, standing entirely alone in
the world, with no one relying upon them. Charles had better consider
the case; his father was old and infirm; he could not last very long; he
had nothing to leave behind him but his plow and his hoe; his mother was
sickly; his sisters pale and delicate; and finally, life was a fact, and
the winters in that part of the country exceedingly bitter and long.
Seven months out of the twelve the pastures bore nothing, and all cattle
must be fed in the barns. But Charles was a boy; advice often seems the
most wantonly wasted of all human breath; man will not take wisdom on
trust; may be, it is well; for such wisdom is worthless; we must find
the true gem for ourselves; and so we go groping and groping for many
and many a day.
Yet was Charles Millthorpe as affectionate and dutiful a boy as ever
boasted of his brain, and knew not that he possessed a far more
excellent and angelical thing in the possession of a generous heart. His
father died; to his family he resolved to be a second father, and a
careful provider now. But not by hard toil of his hand; but by gentler
practices of his mind. Already he had read many books--history, poetry,
romance, essays, and all. The manorial book-shelves had often been
honored by his visits, and Pierre had kindly been his librarian. Not to
lengthen the tale, at the age of seventeen, Charles sold the horse, the
cow, the pig, the plow, the hoe, and almost every movable thing on the
premises; and, converting all into cash, departed with his mother and
sisters for the city; chiefly basing his expectations of success on some
vague representations of an apothecary relative there resident. How he
and his mother and sisters battled it out; how they pined and
half-starved for a while; how they took in sewing; and Charles took in
copying; and all but scantily sufficed for a livelihood; all this may be
easily imagined. But some mysterious latent good-will of Fate toward
him, had not only thus far kept Charles from the Poor-House, but had
really advanced his fortunes in a degree. At any rate, that certain
harmless presumption and innocent egotism which have been previously
adverted to as sharing in his general character, these had by no means
retarded him; for it is often to be observed of the shallower men, that
they are the very last to despond. It is the glory of the bladder that
nothing can sink it; it is the reproach of a box of treasure, that once
overboard it must down.
II.
When arrived in the city, and discovering the heartless neglect of Glen,
Pierre,--looking about him for whom to apply to in this
strait,--bethought him of his old boy-companion Charlie, and went out to
seek him, and found him at last; he saw before him, a tall, well-grown,
but rather thin and pale yet strikingly handsome young man of
two-and-twenty; occupying a small dusty law-office on the third floor
of the older building of the Apostles; assuming to be doing a very
large, and hourly increasing business among empty pigeon-holes, and
directly under the eye of an unopened bottle of ink; his mother and
sisters dwelling in a chamber overhead; and himself, not only following
the law for a corporeal living, but likewise inter-linked with the
peculiar secret, theologico-politico-social schemes of the masonic order
of the seedy-coated Apostles; and pursuing some crude, transcendental
Philosophy, for both a contributory means of support, as well as for his
complete intellectual aliment.
Pierre was at first somewhat startled by his exceedingly frank and
familiar manner; all old manorial deference for Pierre was clean gone
and departed; though at the first shock of their encounter, Charlie
could not possibly have known that Pierre was cast off.
"Ha, Pierre! glad to see you, my boy! Hark ye, next month I am to
deliver an address before the Omega order of the Apostles. The Grand
Master, Plinlimmon, will be there. I have heard on the best authority
that he once said of me--'That youth has the Primitive Categories in
him; he is destined to astonish the world.' Why, lad, I have received
propositions from the Editors of the Spinozaist to contribute a weekly
column to their paper, and you know how very few can understand the
Spinozaist; nothing is admitted there but the Ultimate Transcendentals.
Hark now, in your ear; I think of throwing off the Apostolic disguise
and coming boldly out; Pierre! I think of stumping the State, and
preaching our philosophy to the masses.--When did you arrive in town?"
Spite of all his tribulations, Pierre could not restrain a smile at this
highly diverting reception; but well knowing the youth, he did not
conclude from this audacious burst of enthusiastic egotism that his
heart had at all corroded; for egotism is one thing, and selfishness
another. No sooner did Pierre intimate his condition to him, than
immediately, Charlie was all earnest and practical kindness; recommended
the Apostles as the best possible lodgment for him,--cheap, snug, and
convenient to most public places; he offered to procure a cart and see
himself to the transport of Pierre's luggage; but finally thought it
best to mount the stairs and show him the vacant rooms. But when these
at last were decided upon; and Charlie, all cheerfulness and alacrity,
started with Pierre for the hotel, to assist him in the removal;
grasping his arm the moment they emerged from the great arched door
under the tower of the Apostles; he instantly launched into his amusing
heroics, and continued the strain till the trunks were fairly in sight.
"Lord! my law-business overwhelms me! I must drive away some of my
clients; I must have my exercise, and this ever-growing business denies
it to me. Besides, I owe something to the sublime cause of the general
humanity; I must displace some of my briefs for my metaphysical
treatises. I can not waste all my oil over bonds and mortgages.--You
said you were married, I think?"
But without stopping for any reply, he rattled on. "Well, I suppose it
is wise after all. It settles, centralizes, and confirms a man, I have
heard.--No, I didn't; it is a random thought of my own, that!--Yes, it
makes the world definite to him; it removes his morbid _sub_jectiveness,
and makes all things _ob_jective; nine small children, for instance, may
be considered _ob_jective. Marriage, hey!--A fine thing, no doubt, no
doubt:--domestic--pretty--nice, all round. But I owe something to the
world, my boy! By marriage, I might contribute to the population of men,
but not to the census of mind. The great men are all bachelors, you
know. Their family is the universe: I should say the planet Saturn was
their elder son; and Plato their uncle.--So you are married?"
But again, reckless of answers, Charlie went on. "Pierre, a thought, my
boy;--a thought for you! You do not say it, but you hint of a low
purse. Now I shall help you to fill it--Stump the State on the Kantian
Philosophy! A dollar a head, my boy! Pass round your beaver, and you'll
get it. I have every confidence in the penetration and magnanimousness
of the people! Pierre, hark in your ear;--it's my opinion the world is
all wrong. Hist, I say--an entire mistake. Society demands an Avatar,--a
Curtius, my boy! to leap into the fiery gulf, and by perishing himself,
save the whole empire of men! Pierre, I have long renounced the
allurements of life and fashion. Look at my coat, and see how I spurn
them! Pierre! but, stop, have you ever a shilling! let's take a cold cut
here--it's a cheap place; I go here sometimes. Come, let's in."