From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes,[7] and the war-whoop
of the wild men, I wake and see the sun shining in through the
jasmine that Blanche herself has had trained round the window--old
school-books, neatly ranged round the wall--fishing rods, cricket-bats,
foils, and the old-fashioned gun,--and my mother seated by the
bedside--and Juba whining and scratching to get up. Had I taken thy
murmured blessing, my mother, for the whoop of the blacks, and Juba's
low whine for the howl of the dingoes?
Then what days of calm exquisite delight!--the interchange of heart
with heart; what walks with Roland, and tales of him once our shame,
now our pride; and the art with which the old man would lead those
walks round by the village, that some favourite gossips might stop and
ask, "What news of his brave young honour?"
I strive to engage my uncle in my projects for the repair of the
ruins--for the culture of those wide bogs and moorlands: why is it that
he turns away, and looks down embarrassed? Ah, I guess!--his true heir
now is restored to him. He cannot consent that I should invest this
dross, for which (the Great Book once published) I have no other use,
in the house and the lands that will pass to his son. Neither would
he suffer me so to invest even his son's fortune, the bulk of which
I still hold in trust for that son. True, in his career, my cousin
may require to have his money always forthcoming. But I, who have no
career,--pooh! these scruples will rob me of half the pleasure my
years of toil were to purchase. I must contrive it somehow or other:
what if he would let me house and moorland on a long improving lease?
Then, for the rest, there is a pretty little property to be sold close
by, on which I can retire when my cousin, as heir of the family,
comes, perhaps with a wife, to reside at the Tower. I must consider
of all this, and talk it over with Bolt when my mind is at leisure
from happiness to turn to such matters; meanwhile I fall back on my
favourite proverb,--"_Where there's a will there's a way_."
What smiles and tears, and laughter and careless prattle with my
mother, and roundabout questions from her, to know if I had never lost
my heart in the Bush; and evasive answers from me, to punish her for
not letting out that Blanche was so charming. "I fancied Blanche had
grown the image of her father, who has a fine martial head certainly,
but not seen to advantage in petticoats! How could you be so silent
with a theme so attractive?"
"Blanche made me promise."
Why? I wonder. Therewith I fell musing.
What quiet delicious hours are spent with my father in his study, or
by the pond, where he still feeds the carps, that have grown into
Ceprinidian leviathans. The duck, alas! has departed this life--the
only victim that the Grim King has carried off; so I mourn, but am
resigned to that lenient composition of the great tribute to Nature. I
am sorry to say the Great Book has advanced but slowly--by no means yet
fit for publication, for it is resolved that it shall not come out as
first proposed, a part at a time, but _totus, teres, atque rotundus_.
The matter has spread beyond its original compass; no less than five
volumes--and those of the amplest--will contain the History of Human
Error. However, we are far in the fourth, and one must not hurry
Minerva.
My father is enchanted with Uncle Jack's "noble conduct," as he
calls it; but he scolds me for taking the money, and doubts as to
the propriety of returning it. In these matters my father is quite
as Quixotical as Roland. I am forced to call in my mother as umpire
between us, and she settles the matter at once by an appeal to feeling.
"Ah, Austin! do you not humble me, if you are too proud to accept what
is due to you from my brother."
"_Velit, nolit, quod amica_," answered my father, taking off and
rubbing his spectacles--"which means, Kitty, that when a man's married
he has no will of his own. To think," added Mr Caxton, musingly,
"that in this world one cannot be sure of the simplest mathematical
definition! You see, Pisistratus, that the angles of a triangle so
decidedly scalene as your Uncle Jack's, may be equal to the angles of a
right-angled triangle after all!"[8]
The long privation of books has quite restored all my appetite for
them. How much I have to pick up!--what a compendious scheme of reading
I and my father chalk out. I see enough to fill up all the leisure
of life. But, somehow or other, Greek and Latin stand still: nothing
charms me like Italian. Blanche and I are reading Metastasio, to the
great indignation of my father, who calls it "rubbish," and wants to
substitute Dante. I have no associations at present with the souls
"Che son contenti
Nel fuoco;"
I am already one of the "_beate gente_." Yet, in spite of Metastasio,
Blanche and I are not so intimate as cousins ought to be. If we are by
accident alone, I become as silent as a Turk, as formal as Sir Charles
Grandison. I caught myself calling her _Miss_ Blanche the other day.
I must not forget thee, honest Squills!--nor thy delight at my health
and success; nor thy exclamation of pride, (one hand on my pulse and
the other griping hard the "ball" of my arm,) "It all comes of my
citrate of iron; nothing like it for children; it has an effect on the
cerebral developments of hope and combativeness." Nor can I wholly omit
mention of poor Mrs Primmins, who still calls me "Master Sisty," and
is breaking her heart that I will not wear the new flannel waistcoats
she had such pleasure in making--"Young gentlemen just growing up are
so apt to go off in a galloping 'sumption!" "She knew just such another
as Master Sisty, when she lived at Torquay, who wasted away, and went
out like a _snuff_, all because he would not wear flannel waistcoats."
Therewith my mother looks grave, and says, "One can't take too much
precaution."
Suddenly the whole neighbourhood is thrown into commotion. Trevanion--I
beg his pardon, Lord Ulverstone--is coming to settle for good at
Compton. Fifty hands are employed, daily in putting the grounds into
hasty order. Fourgons, and waggons, and vans have disgorged all the
necessaries a great man requires, where he means to eat, drink, and
sleep--books, wines, pictures, furniture. I recognise my old patron
still. He is in earnest, whatever he does. I meet my friend, his
steward, who tells me that Lord Ulverstone finds his favourite seat,
near London, too exposed to interruption; and, moreover, that as he has
there completed all improvements that wealth and energy can effect, he
has less occupation for agricultural pursuits, to which he has grown
more and more partial, than on the wide and princely domain which
has hitherto wanted the master's eye. "He is a bra' farmer, I know,"
quoth the steward, "so far as the theory goes but I don't think we in
the north want great lords to teach us how to follow the pleugh." The
steward's sense of dignity is hurt; but he is an honest fellow, and
really glad to see the family come to settle in the old place.
They have arrived, and with them the Castletons, and a whole _posse
comitatus_ of guests. The County Paper is full of fine names.
"What on earth did Lord Ulverstone, mean by pretending to get out of
the way of troublesome visitors?"
"My dear Pisistratus," answered my father to that exclamation, "it is
not the visitors who come, but the visitors who stay away, that most
trouble the repose of a retired minister. In all the procession, he
sees but the images of Brutus and Cassius--that are _not_ there! And
depend on it, also, a retirement so near London did not make noise
enough. You see, a retiring statesman is like that fine carp--the
farther he leaps from the water, the greater splash he makes in falling
into the weeds! But," added Mr Caxton, in a repentant tone, "this
jesting does not become us; and, if I indulged it, it is only because
I am heartily glad that Trevanion is likely now to find out his true
vocation. And as soon as the fine people he brings with him have left
him alone in his library, I trust he will settle to that vocation, and
be happier than he has been yet."
"And that vocation, sir, is--"
"Metaphysics!" said my father. "He will be quite at home in puzzling
over Berkeley, and considering whether the Speaker's chair, and
the official red boxes, were really things whose ideas of figure,
extension, and hardness, were all in the mind. It will be a great
consolation to him to agree, with Berkeley, and to find that he has
only been baffled by immaterial phantasma!"
My father was quite right. The repining, subtle, truth-weighing
Trevanion, plagued by his conscience into seeing all sides of a
question, (for the least question has more than two sides, and is
hexagonal at least,) was much more fitted to discover the origin of
ideas than to convince Cabinets and Nations that two and two make
four--a proposition on which he himself would have agreed with Abraham
Tucker, where that most ingenious and suggestive of all English
metaphysicians observes, "Well persuaded as I am that two and two
make four, if I were to meet with a person of credit, candour, and
understanding, who should sincerely call it in question, I would
give him a hearing; for I am not more certain of that than of the
whole being greater than a part. And yet I could myself suggest _some
considerations that might seem to controvert this point_."[9] I can so
well imagine Trevanion listening to "some person of credit, candour,
and understanding," in disproof of that vulgar proposition that twice
two make four! But the news of this arrival, including that of Lady
Castleton, disturbed me greatly, and I took to long wanderings alone.
In one of these rambles, they all called at the Tower--Lord and Lady
Ulverstone, the Castletons, and their children. I escaped the visit;
and on my return home, there was a certain delicacy respecting old
associations, that restrained much talk before me on so momentous an
event. Roland, like me, had kept out of the way. Blanche, poor child,
ignorant of the antecedents, was the most communicative. And the
especial theme she selected--was the grace and beauty of Lady Castleton!
A pressing invitation to spend some days at the castle had been
cordially given to all. It was accepted only by myself: I wrote word
that I would come.
Yes; I longed to prove the strength of my own self-conquest, and
accurately test the nature of the feelings that had disturbed me. That
any sentiment which could be called love remained for Lady Castleton,
the wife of another, and that other a man with so many claims on my
affection as her lord, I held as a moral impossibility. But, with
all those lively impressions of early youth still engraved on my
heart--impressions of the image of Fanny Trevanion, as the fairest
and brightest of human beings--could I feel free to love again? Could
I seek to woo, and rivet to myself for ever, the entire and virgin
affections of another, while there was a possibility that I might
compare and regret? No; either I must feel that, if Fanny were again
single--could be mine without obstacle, human or divine--she had ceased
to be the one I would single out of the world; or, though regarding
love as the dead, I would be faithful to its memory and its ashes. My
mother sighed, and looked fluttered and uneasy all the morning of the
day on which I was to repair to Compton. She even seemed cross, for
about the third time in her life, and paid no compliment to Mr Stultz,
when my shooting-jacket was exchanged for a black frock, which that
artist had pronounced to be "splendid;" neither did she honour me with
any of those little attentions to the contents of my portmanteau, and
the perfect "getting up" of my white waistcoats and cravats, which
made her natural instincts on such memorable occasions. There was also
a sort of querulous pitying tenderness in her tone when she spoke to
Blanche, which was quite pathetic; though, fortunately, its cause
remained dark and impenetrable to the innocent comprehension of one
who could not see where the past filled the urns of the future, at the
fountain of life. My father understood me better--shook me by the hand,
as I got into the chaise, and muttered, out of Seneca--
"Non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam explorator!"
'Not to desert, but examine.'
Quite right.