From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes,(1) 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 bed-side; 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 favorite gossips might stop and ask, “What news of his brave young honor?”
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 favorite 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 Cyprinidian 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!” (2)
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 neighborhood 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 wagons and vans have disgorged all the necessaries a great man requires where he means to eat, drink, and sleep,—books, wines, pictures, furniture. I recognize 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 favorite 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, candor, 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.” (3) I can so well imagine Trevanion listening to “some person of credit, candor, 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 forever, 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 honor 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.
(1) “Dingoes “—the name given by Australian natives to the wild dogs.
(2) Not having again to advert to Uncle Jack, I may be pardoned for informing the reader, by way of annotation, that he continues to prosper surprisingly in Australia, though the Tibbets’ Wheal stands still for want of workmen. Despite of a few ups and downs, I have had no fear of his success until this year (1849), when I tremble to think what effect the discovery of the gold mines in California may have on his lively imagination. If thou escapest that snare, Uncle Jack, res age, tutus eris—thou art safe for life!
(3) “Light of Nature,”—chapter on Judgment.—See the very ingenious illustration of doubt, “whether the part is always greater than the whole,”—taken from time, or rather eternity.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg