Some days have elapsed: we are in London, my father with us; and Roland has permitted Austin to tell me his tale, and received through Austin all that Vivian’s narrative to me suggested, whether in extenuation of the past or in hope of redemption in the future. And Austin has inexpressibly soothed his brother. And Roland’s ordinary roughness has gone, and his looks are meek and his voice low. But he talks little, and smiles never. He asks me no questions, does not to me name his son, nor recur to the voyage to Australia, nor ask why it is put off, nor interest himself, as before, in preparations for it,—he has no heart for anything.
The voyage is put off till the next vessel sails, and I have seen Vivian twice or thrice, and the result of the interviews has disappointed and depressed me. It seems to me that much of the previous effect I had produced is already obliterated. At the very sight of the great Babel,—the evidence of the ease, the luxury, the wealth, the pomp; the strife, the penury, the famine, and the rags, which the focus of civilization, in the disparities of old societies, inevitably gathers together,—the fierce, combative disposition seemed to awaken again; the perverted ambition, the hostility to the world; the wrath, the scorn; the war with man, and the rebellious murmur against Heaven. There was still the one redeeming point of repentance for his wrongs to his father,—his heart was still softened there; and, attendant on that softness, I hailed a principle more like that of honor than I had yet recognized in Vivian. He cancelled the agreement which had assured him of a provision at the cost of his father’s comforts. “At least there,” he said, “I will injure him no more!”
But while on this point repentance seemed genuine, it was not so with regard to his conduct towards Miss Trevanion. His gypsy nurture, his loose associates, his extravagant French romances, his theatrical mode of looking upon love intrigues and stage plots, seemed all to rise between his intelligence and the due sense of the fraud and treachery he had practised. He seemed to feel more shame at the exposure than at the guilt, more despair at the failure of success than gratitude at escape from crime. In a word, the nature of a whole life was not to be remodelled at once,—at least by an artificer so unskilled as I.
After one of these interviews I stole into the room where Austin sat with Roland, and watching a seasonable moment when Roland, shaking off a revery, opened his Bible and sat down to it, with each muscle in his face set, as I had seen it before, into iron resolution, I beckoned my father from the room.
Pisistratus.—“I have again seen my cousin. I cannot make the way I wished. My dear father, you must see him.”
Mr. Caxton.—“I? Yes, assuredly, if I can be of any service. But will he listen to me?”
Pisistratus.—“I think so. A young man will often respect in his elder what he will resent as a presumption in his contemporary.”
Mr. Caxton.—“It may be so. [Then more thoughtfully] But you describe this strange boy’s mind as a wreck! In what part of the mouldering timbers can I fix the grappling-hook? Here it seems that most of the supports on which we can best rely, when we would save another, fail us,—religion, honor, the associations of childhood, the bonds of home, filial obedience, even the intelligence of self-interest, in the philosophical sense of the word. And I, too,—a mere bookman! My dear son, I despair!”
Pisistratus.—“No, you do not despair; no, you must succeed,—for if you do not, what is to become of Uncle Roland? Do you not see his heart is fast breaking?”
Mr. Caxton.—“Get me my hat. I will go; I will save this Ishmael,—I will not leave him till he is saved!”
Pisistratus. (Some minutes after, as they are walking towards Vivian’s lodging).—“You ask me what support you are to cling to: a strong and a good one, sir.”
Mr. Caxton. “Ah! what is that?”
Pisistratus.—“Affection! There is a nature capable of strong affection at the core of this wild heart. He could love his mother,—tears gush to his eyes at her name; he would have starved rather than part with the memorial of that love. It was his belief in his father’s indifference or dislike that hardened and embruted him; it is only when he hears how that father loved him that I now melt his pride and curb his passions. You have affection to deal with! Do you despair now?
“My father turned on me those eyes so inexpressibly benign and mild, and replied softly, ‘No!’
“We reached the house; and my father said, as we knocked at the door, ‘If he is at home, leave me. This is a hard study to which you have set me; I must work at it alone.’
“Vivian was at home, and the door closed on his visitor. My father stayed some hours.
“On returning home, to my great surprise I found Trevanion with my uncle. He had found us out,—no easy matter, I should think. But a good impulse in Trevanion was not of that feeble kind which turns home at the sight of a difficulty. He had come to London on purpose to see and to thank us.
“I did not think there had been so much of delicacy—of what I may call the ‘beauty of kindness’—in a man whom incessant business had rendered ordinarily blunt and abrupt. I hardly recognized the impatient Trevanion in the soothing, tender, subtle respect that rather implied than spoke gratitude, and sought to insinuate what he owed to the unhappy father, without touching on his wrongs from the son. But of this kindness—which showed how Trevanion’s high nature of gentleman raised him aloof from that coarseness of thought which those absorbed wholly in practical affairs often contract—of this kindness, so noble and so touching, Roland seemed scarcely aware. He sat by the embers of the neglected fire, his hands grasping the arms of his elbow-chair, his head drooping on his bosom; and only by a deep hectic flush on his dark cheek could you have seen that he distinguished between an ordinary visitor and the man whose child he had helped to save. This minister of state, this high member of the elect, at whose gift are places, peerages, gold-sticks, and ribbons, has nothing at his command for the bruised spirit of the half-pay soldier. Before that poverty, that grief, and that pride, the King’s Counsellor was powerless. Only when Trevanion rose to depart, something like a sense of the soothing intention which the visit implied seemed to rouse the repose of the old man and to break the ice at its surface; for he followed Trevanion to the door, took both his hands, pressed them, then turned away, and resumed his seat. Trevanion beckoned to me, and I followed him downstairs and into a little parlor which was unoccupied.
“After some remarks upon Roland, full of deep and considerate feeling, and one quick, hurried reference to the son,—to the effect that his guilty attempt would never be known by the world,—Trevanion then addressed himself to me with a warmth and urgency that took me by surprise. ‘After what has passed,’ he exclaimed, ‘I cannot suffer you to leave England thus. Let me not feel with you, as with your uncle, that there is nothing by which I can repay—No, I will not so put it,—stay, and serve your country at home; it is my prayer, it is Ellinor’s. Out of all at my disposal it will go hard but what I shall find something to suit you.’ And then, hurrying on, Trevanion spoke flatteringly of my pretensions, in right of birth and capabilities, to honorable employment, and placed before me a picture of public life, its prizes and distinctions, which for the moment, at least, made my heart beat loud and my breath come quick. But still, even then I felt (was it an unreasonable pride?) that there was something that jarred, something that humbled, in the thought of holding all my fortunes as a dependency on the father of the woman I loved, but might not aspire to; something even of personal degradation in the mere feeling that I was thus to be repaid for a service, and recompensed for a loss. But these were not reasons I could advance; and, indeed, so for the time did Trevanion’s generosity and eloquence overpower me that I could only falter out my thanks and my promise that I would consider and let him know.
With that promise he was forced to content himself; he told me to direct to him at his favorite country seat, whither he was going that day, and so left me. I looked round the humble parlor of the mean lodging-house, and Trevanion’s words came again before me like a flash of golden light. I stole into the open air and wandered through the crowded streets, agitated and disturbed.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg