Enough of boyhood and its faults and follies. I sought but to show the
reader, as in a glass, the back of a pageant that has past. Oh, how I
sometimes laugh at the fools--the critics--God save the mark! who see
no more in the slight sketch I choose to give, than a mere daub of
paint across the canvas, when that one touch gives effect to the whole
picture. Let them stand back, and view it as a whole; and if they can
find aught in it to make them say "Well done," let them look at the
frame. That is enough for them; their wits are only fitted to deal
with "leather, and prunella."
I have given you, reader--kind and judicious reader--a sketch of the
boy, that you may be enabled to judge rightly of the man. Now, take
the lad as I have moulded him--bake him well in the fiery furnace of
strong passion, remembering still that the form is of hard
iron--quench and harden him in the cold waters of opposition, and
disappointment, and anxiety--and bring him forth tempered, but too
highly tempered for the world he has to live in--not pliable--not
elastic; no watch-spring, but like a graver's tool, which must cut
into everything opposed to it, or break under the pressure.
Let us start upon our new course some fifteen years after the period
at which our tale began, and view Philip Hastings as that which he had
now become.
Dr. Paulding had passed from this working day world to another and a
better--where we hope the virtues of the heart may be weighed against
vices of the head--a mode of dealing rare here below. Sir John
Hastings and his wife had gone whither their eldest son had gone
before them; and Philip Hastings was no longer the boy. Manhood had
set its seal upon his brow only too early; but what a change had come
with manhood!--a change not in the substance, but in its mode.
Oh, Time! thy province is not only to destroy! Thou worker-out of
human destinies--thou new-fashioner of all things earthly--thou
blender of races--thou changer of institutions--thou discoverer--thou
concealer--thou builder up--thou dark destroyer; thy waters as they
flow have sometimes a petrifying, sometimes a solvent power, hardening
the soft, melting the strong, accumulating the sand, undermining the
rock! What had been thine effect upon Philip Hastings?
All the thoughts had grown manly as well as the body. The slight
youth had been developed into the hardy and powerful man; somewhat
inactive--at least so it seemed to common eyes--more thoughtful than
brilliant, steady in resolution, though calm in expression, giving way
no more to bursts of boyish feeling, somewhat stern, men said somewhat
hard, but yet extremely just, and resolute for justice. The poetry of
life--I should have said the poetry of young life--the brilliancy of
fancy and hope, seemed somewhat dimmed in him--mark, I say seemed, for
that which seems too often is not; and he might, perhaps, have learnt
to rule and conceal feelings which he could not altogether conquer or
resist.
Still there were many traces of his old self visible: the same love of
study, the same choice of books and subjects of thought, the same
subdued yet strong enthusiasms. The very fact of mingling with the
world, which had taught him to repress those enthusiasms, seemed to
have concentrated and rendered them more intense.
The course of his studies; the habits of his mind; his fondness for
the school of the stoics, it might have been supposed, would rather
have disgusted him with the society in which he now habitually
mingled, and made him look upon mankind--for it was a very corrupt
age--with contempt, if not with horror.
Such, however, was not the case. He had less of the cynic in him than
his father--indeed he had nothing of the cynic in him at all. He loved
mankind in his own peculiar way. He was a philanthropist of a certain
sort; and would willingly have put a considerable portion of his
fellow-creatures to death, in order to serve, and elevate, and improve
the rest.
His was a remarkable character--not altogether fitted for the times in
which he lived; but one which in its wild and rugged strength,
commanded much respect and admiration even then. Weak things clung to
it, as ivy to an oak or a strong wall: and its power over them was
increased by a certain sort of tenderness--a protecting pity, which
mingled strangely with his harder and ruder qualities. He seemed to be
sorry for everything that was weak, and to seek to console and comfort
it, under the curse of feebleness. It seldom offended him--he rather
loved it, it rarely came in his way; and his feeling toward it might
approach contempt but never rose to anger.
He was capable too of intense and strong affections, though he could
not extend them to many objects. All that was vigorous and powerful in
him concentrated itself in separate points here and there; and general
things were viewed with much indifference.
See him as he walks up and down there before the old house, which I
have elsewhere described. He has grown tall and powerful in frame: and
yet his gait is somewhat slovenly and negligent, although his step is
firm and strong. He is not much more than thirty-one years of age; but
he looks forty at the least; and his hair is even thickly sprinkled
with gray. His face is pale, with some strong marked lines and
indentations in it; yet, on the whole, it is handsome, and the slight
habitual frown, thoughtful rather than stern, together with the
massive jaw, and the slight drawing down of the corners of the mouth,
give it an expression of resolute firmness, that is only contradicted
by the frequent variation of the eye, which is sometimes full of deep
thought, sometimes of tenderness; and sometimes is flashing with a
wild and almost unearthly fire.
But there is a lady hanging on his arm which supports her somewhat
feeble steps. She seems recovering from illness; the rose in her cheek
is faint and delicate; and an air of languor is in her whole face and
form. Yet she is very beautiful, and seems fully ten years younger
than her husband, although, in truth, she is of the same age--or
perhaps a little older. It is Rachael Marshal, now become Lady
Hastings.
Their union did not take place without opposition; all Sir John
Hastings' prejudices against the Marshal family revived as soon as his
son's attachment to the daughter of the house became apparent. Like
most fathers, he saw too late; and then sought to prevent that which
had become inevitable. He sent his son to travel in foreign lands; he
even laid out a scheme for marrying him to another, younger, and as he
thought fairer. He contrived that the young man should fall into the
society of the lady he had selected, and he fancied that would be
quite sufficient; for he saw in her character, young as she was,
traits, much more harmonious, as he fancied, with those of his son,
than could be found in the softer, gentler, weaker Rachael Marshal.
There was energy, perseverance, resolution, keen and quick
perceptions--perhaps a little too much keenness. More, he did not stay
to inquire; but, as is usual in matters of the heart, Philip Hastings
loved best the converse of himself. The progress of the scheme was
interrupted by the illness of Sir John Hastings, which recalled his
son from Rome. Philip returned, found his father dead, and married
Rachael Marshal.
They had had several children; but only one remained; that gay, light,
gossamer girl, like a gleam darting along the path from sunny rays
piercing through wind-borne clouds. On she ran with a step of light
and careless air, yet every now and then she paused suddenly, gazed
earnestly at a flower, plucked it, pored into its very heart with her
deep eyes, and, after seeming to labor under thought for a moment,
sprang forward again as light as ever.
The eyes of the father followed her with a look of grave, thoughtful,
intense affection. The mother's eyes looked up to him, and then
glanced onward to the child.
She was between nine and ten years old--not very handsome, for it is
not a handsome age. Yet there were indications of future beauty--fine
and sparkling eyes, rich, waving, silky hair, long eyelashes, a fine
complexion, a light and graceful figure, though deformed by the stiff
fashions of the day.
There was a sparkle too in her look--that bright outpouring of the
heart upon the face which is one of the most powerful charms of youth
and innocence. Ah! how soon gone by! How soon checked by the thousand
loads which this heavy laboring world casts upon the buoyancy of
youthful spirits--the chilling conventionality--the knowledge, and the
fear of wrong--the first taste of sorrow--the anxieties, cares,
fears--even the hopes of mature life, are all weights to bear down the
pinions of young, lark-like joy. After twenty, does the heart ever
rise up from her green sod and fling at Heaven's gate as in childhood?
Never--eh, never! The dust of earth is upon the wing of the sky
songster, and will never let her mount to her ancient pitch.
That child was a strange combination of her father and her mother. She
was destined to be their only one; and it seemed as if nature had
taken a pleasure in blending the characters of both in one. Not that
they were intimately mingled, but that they seemed like the twins of
Laconia, to rise and set by turns.
In her morning walk: in her hours of sportive play; when no subject of
deep thought, no matter that affected the heart or the imagination was
presented to her, she was light and gay as a butterfly; the child--the
happy child was in every look, and word, and movement. But call her
for a moment from this bright land of pleasantness--present something
to her mind or to her fancy which rouses sympathies, or sets the
energetic thoughts at work, and she was grave, meditative, studious,
deep beyond her years.
She was a subject of much contemplation, some anxiety, some wonder to
her father. The brightness of her perceptions, her eagerness in the
pursuit of knowledge, her vigorous resolution even as a child, when
convinced that she was right, showed him his own mind reflected in
hers. Even her tenderness, her strong affections, he could comprehend;
for the same were in his own heart, and though he believed them to be
weaknesses, he could well understand their existence in a child and in
a woman.
But that which he did not understand--that which made him marvel--was
her lightness, her gayety, her wild vivacity--I might almost say, her
trifling, when not moved by deep feeling or chained down by thought.
This was beyond him. Yet strange! the same characteristics did not
surprise nor shook him in her mother--never had surprised or shocked
him; indeed he had rather loved her for those qualities, so unlike his
own. Perhaps it was that he thought it strange, his child should, in
any mood, be so unlike himself; or perhaps it was the contrast between
the two sides of the same character that moved his wonder when he saw
it in his child, he might forget that her mother was her parent as
well as himself; and that she had an inheritance from each.
In his thoughtful, considering, theoretical way, he determined
studiously to seek a remedy for what he considered the defect in his
child--to cultivate with all the zeal and perseverance of paternal
affection, supported by his own force of character, those qualities
which were most like his own--those, in short, which were the least
womanly. But nature would not be baffled. You may divert her to a
certain degree; but you cannot turn her aside from her course
altogether.
He found that he could not--by any means which his heart would let him
employ--conquer what he called, the frivolity of the child. Frivolity!
Heaven save us! There were times when she showed no frivolity, but on
the contrary, a depth and intensity far, far beyond her years. Indeed,
the ordinary current of her mind was calm and thoughtful. It was but
when a breeze rippled it that it sparkled on the surface. Her father,
too, saw that this was so; that the wild gayety was but occasional.
But still it surprised and pained him--perhaps the more because it was
occasional. It seemed to hie eyes an anomaly in her nature. He would
have had her altogether like himself. He could not conceive any one
possessing so much of his own character, having room in heart and
brain for aught else. It was a subject of constant wonder to him; of
speculation, of anxious thought.
He often asked himself if this was the only anomaly in his child--if
there were not other traits, yet undiscovered, as discrepant as this
light volatility with her general character: and he puzzled himself
sorely.
Still he pursued her education upon his own principles; taught her
many things which women rarely learned in those days; imbued her mind
with thoughts and feelings of his own; and often thought, when a
season of peculiar gravity fell upon her, that he made progress in
rendering her character all that he could wish it. This impression
never lasted long, however; for sooner or later the bird-like spirit
within her found the cage door open, and fluttered forth upon some gay
excursion, leaving all his dreams vanished and his wishes
disappointed.
Nevertheless he loved her with all the strong affection of which his
nature was capable; and still he persevered in the course which he
thought for her benefit. At times, indeed, he would make efforts to
unravel the mystery of her double nature, not perceiving that the only
cause of mystery was in himself: that what seemed strange in his
daughter depended more upon his own want of power to comprehend her
variety than upon anything extraordinary in her. He would endeavor to
go along with her in her sportive moods--to let his mind run free
beside hers in its gay ramble to find some motive for them which he
could understand; to reduce them to a system; to discover the rule by
which the problem was to be solved. But he made nothing of it, and
wearied conjecture in vain.
Lady Hastings sometimes interposed a little; for in unimportant things
she had great influence with her husband. He let her have her own way
wherever he thought it not worth while to oppose her; and that was
very often. She perfectly comprehended the side of her daughter's
character which was all darkness to the father; and strange to say,
with greater penetration than his own, she comprehended the other side
likewise. She recognized easily the traits in her child which she knew
and admired in her husband, but wished them heartily away in her
daughter's case, thinking such strength of mind, joined with whatever
grace and sweetness, somewhat unfeminine.
Though she was full of prejudices, and where her quickness of
perception failed her, altogether unteachable by reason, yet she was
naturally too virtuous and good to attempt even to thwart the objects
of the father's efforts in the education of his child. I have said
that she interfered at times, but it was only to remonstrate against
too close study, to obtain frequent and healthful relaxation, and to
add all those womanly accomplishments on which she set great value. In
this she was not opposed. Music, singing, dancing, and a knowledge of
modern languages, were added to other branches of education, and Lady
Hastings was so far satisfied.