The Caxtons, Complete - Edward Bulwer Lytton
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Trevanion had been more than satisfied with Vivian's performance, he had
been struck with it; for though the corrections in the mere phraseology
had been very limited, they went beyond verbal amendments,--they
suggested such words as improved the thoughts; and besides that notable
correction of an arithmetical error which Trevanion's mind was formed to
over-appreciate, one or two brief annotations on the margin were boldly
hazarded, prompting some stronger link in a chain of reasoning, or
indicating the necessity for some further evidence in the assertion of a
statement. And all this from the mere natural and naked logic of an acute
mind, unaided by the smallest knowledge of the subject treated of!
Trevanion threw quite enough work into Vivian's hands, and at a
remuneration sufficiently liberal to realize my promise of an
independence. And more than once he asked me to introduce to him my
friend. But this I continued to elude,--Heaven knows, not from jealousy,
but simply because I feared that Vivian's manner and way of talk would
singularly displease one who detested presumption, and understood no
eccentricities but his own.
Still, Vivian, whose industry was of a strong wing, but only for short
flights, had not enough to employ more than a few hours of the day, and I
dreaded lest he should, from very idleness, fall back into old habits and
re-seek old friendships. His cynical candor allowed that both were
sufficiently disreputable to justify grave apprehensions of such a
result; accordingly, I contrived to find leisure in my evenings to lessen
his ennui, by accompanying him in rambles through the gas-lit streets, or
occasionally, for an hour or so, to one of the theatres.
Vivian's first care, on finding himself rich enough, had been bestowed on
his person; and those two faculties of observation and imitation which
minds so ready always eminently possess, had enabled him to achieve that
graceful neatness of costume peculiar to the English gentleman. For the
first few days of his metamorphosis traces indeed of a constitutional
love of show or vulgar companionship were noticeable; but one by one they
disappeared. First went a gaudy neckcloth, with collars turned down; then
a pair of spurs vanished; and lastly a diabolical instrument that he
called a cane--but which, by means of a running bullet, could serve as a
bludgeon at one end, and concealed a dagger in the other--subsided into
the ordinary walking-stick adapted to our peaceable metropolis. A similar
change, though in a less degree, gradually took place in his manner and
his conversation. He grew less abrupt in the one, and more calm, perhaps
more cheerful, in the other. It was evident that he was not insensible to
the elevated pleasure of providing for himself by praiseworthy exertion,
of feeling for the first time that his intellect was of use to him
creditably.
A new world, though still dim--seen through mist and fog--began to dawn
upon him.
Such is the vanity of us poor mortals that my interest in Vivian was
probably increased, and my aversion to much in him materially softened,
by observing that I had gained a sort of ascendancy over his savage
nature. When we had first suet by the roadside, and afterwards conversed
in the churchyard, the ascendancy was certainly not on my side. But I now
came from a larger sphere of society than that in which he had yet moved.
I had seen and listened to the first men in England. What had then
dazzled me only, now moved my pity. On the other hand, his active mind
could not but observe the change in me; and whether from envy or a better
feeling, he was willing to learn from me how to eclipse me and resume his
earlier superiority,--not to be superior chafed him. Thus he listened to
me with docility when I pointed out the books which connected themselves
with the various subjects incidental to the miscellaneous matters on
which he was employed. Though he had less of the literary turn of mind
than any one equally clever I had ever met, and had read little,
considering the quantity of thought he had acquired and the show he made
of the few works with which he had voluntarily made himself familiar, he
yet resolutely sat himself down to study; and though it was clearly
against the grain, I augured the more favorably from tokens of a
determination to do what was at the present irksome for a purpose in the
future. Yet whether I should have approved the purpose had I thoroughly
understood it, is another question. There were abysses, both in his past
life and in his character, which I could not penetrate. There was in him
both a reckless frankness and a vigilant reserve: his frankness was
apparent in his talk on all matters immediately before us, in the utter
absence of all effort to make himself seem better than he was. His
reserve was equally shown in the ingenious evasion of every species of
confidence that could admit me into such secrets of his life as he chose
to conceal where he had been born, reared, and educated; how he came to
be thrown on his own resources; how he had contrived, how he had
subsisted, were all matters on which he had seemed to take an oath to
Harpocrates, the god of silence. And yet he was full of anecdotes of what
he had seen, of strange companions whom he never named, but with whom he
had been thrown. And, to do him justice, I remarked that though his
precocious experience seemed to have been gathered from the holes and
corners, the sewers and drains of life, and though he seemed wholly
without dislike to dishonesty, and to regard virtue or vice with as
serene an indifference as some grand poet who views them both merely as
ministrants to his art, yet he never betrayed any positive breach of
honesty in himself. He could laugh over the story of some ingenious fraud
that he had witnessed, and seem insensible to its turpitude; but he spoke
of it in the tone of an approving witness, not of an actual accomplice.
As we grew more intimate, he felt gradually, however, that pudor, or
instinctive shame, which the contact with minds habituated to the
distinctions between wrong and right unconsciously produces, and such
stories ceased. He never but once mentioned his family, and that was in
the following odd and abrupt manner:--
"Ah!" cried he one day, stopping suddenly before a print-shop, "how that
reminds me of my dear, dear mother."
"Which?" said I, eagerly, puzzled between an engraving of Raffaelle's
"Madonna" and another of "The Brigand's Wife."
Vivian did not satisfy my curiosity, but drew me on in spite of my
reluctance.
"You loved your mother, then?" said I, after a pause. "Yes, as a whelp
may a tigress."
"That's a strange comparison."
"Or a bull-dog may the prize-fighter, his master! Do you like that
better?"
"Not much; is it a comparison your mother would like?"
"Like? She is dead!" said he, rather falteringly.
I pressed his arm closer to mine.
"I understand you," said he, with his cynic, repellent smile. "But you do
wrong to feel for my loss. I feel for it; but no one who cares for me
should sympathize with my grief."
"Why?"
"Because my mother was not what the world would call a good woman. I did
not love her the less for that. And now let us change the subject."
"Nay; since you have said so much, Vivian, let me coax you to say on. Is
not your father living?"
"Is not the Monument standing?"
"I suppose so; what of that?"
"Why, it matters very little to either of us; and my question answers
yours."
I could not get on after this, and I never did get on a step further. I
must own that if Vivian did not impart his confidence liberally, neither
did he seek confidence inquisitively from me. He listened with interest
if I spoke of Trevanion (for I told him frankly of my connection with
that personage, though you may be sure that I said nothing of Fanny), and
of the brilliant world that my residence with one so distinguished opened
to me. But if ever, in the fulness of my heart, I began to speak of my
parents, of my home, he evinced either so impertinent an ennui or assumed
so chilling a sneer that I usually hurried away from him, as well as the
subject, in indignant disgust. Once especially, when I asked him to let
me introduce him to my father,--a point on which I was really anxious,
for I thought it impossible but that the devil within him would be
softened by that contact,--he said, with his low, scornful laugh,--
"My dear Caxton, when I was a child I was so bored with 'Telemachus'
that, in order to endure it, I turned it into travesty."
"Well?"
"Are you not afraid that the same wicked disposition might make a
caricature of your Ulysses?"
I did not see Mr. Vivian for three days after that speech; and I should
not have seen him then, only we met, by accident, under the Colonnade of
the Opera-House. Vivian was leaning against one of the columns, and
watching the long procession which swept to the only temple in vogue that
Art has retained in the English Babel. Coaches and chariots blazoned with
arms and coronets, cabriolets (the brougham had not then replaced them)
of sober hue but exquisite appointment, with gigantic horses and pigmy
"tigers," dashed on, and rolled off before him. Fair women and gay
dresses, stars and ribbons, the rank and the beauty of the patrician
world,--passed him by. And I could not resist the compassion with which
this lonely, friendless, eager, discontented spirit inspired me, gazing
on that gorgeous existence in which it fancied itself formed to shine,
with the ardor of desire and the despair of exclusion. By one glimpse of
that dark countenance, I read what was passing within the yet darker
heart. The emotion might not be amiable, nor the thoughts wise, yet were
they unnatural? I had experienced something of them,--not at the sight of
gay-dressed people, of wealth and idleness, pleasure and fashion, but
when, at the doors of Parliament, men who have won noble names, and whose
word had weight on the destinies of glorious England, brushed heedlessly
by to their grand arena; or when, amidst the holiday crowd of ignoble
pomp, I had heard the murmur of fame buzz and gather round some lordly
laborer in art or letters: that contrast between glory so near and yet so
far, and one's own obscurity, of course I had felt it,--who has not?
Alas! many a youth not fated to be a Themistocles will yet feel that the
trophies of a Miltiades will not suffer him to sleep! So I went up to
Vivian and laid my hand on his shoulder.
"Ah!" said he, more gently than usual, "I am glad to see you, and to
apologize,--I offended you the other day. But you would not get very
gracious answers from souls in purgatory if you talked to them of the
happiness of heaven. Never speak to me about homes and fathers! Enough! I
see you forgive me. Why are you not going to the opera? You can."
"And you too, if you so please. A ticket is shamefully dear, to be sure;
still, if you are fond of music, it is a luxury you can afford."
"Oh! you flatter me if you fancy the prudence of saving withholds me. I
did go the other night, but I shall not go again. Music!--when you go to
the opera, is it for the music?"
"Only partially, I own; the lights, the scene, the pageant, attract me
quite as much. But I do not think the opera a very profitable pleasure
for either of us. For rich idle people, I dare say, it may be as innocent
an amusement as any other, but I find it a sad enervator."
"And I just the reverse,--a horrible stimulant! Caxton, do you know that,
ungracious as it will sound to you, I am growing impatient of this
`honorable independence'? What does it lead to? Board, clothes, and
lodging,--can it ever bring me anything more?"
"At first, Vivian, you limited your aspirations to kid gloves and a
cabriolet: it has brought the kid gloves already; by and by it will bring
the cabriolet!"
"Our wishes grow by what they feed on. You live in the great world, you
can have excitement if you please it; I want excitement, I want the
world, I want room for my mind, man! Do you understand me?"
"Perfectly, and sympathize with you, my poor Vivian; but it will all
come. Patience! as I preached to you while dawn rose so comfortless over
the streets of London. You are not losing time. Fill your mind; read,
study, fit yourself for ambition. Why wish to fly till you have got your
wings? Live in books now; after all, they are splendid palaces, and open
to us all, rich and poor."
"Books, books! Ah! you are the son of a book-man. It is not by books that
men get on in the world, and enjoy life in the mean while."
"I don't know that; but, my good fellow, you want to do both,--get on in
the world as fast as labor can, and enjoy life as pleasantly as indolence
may. You want to live like the butterfly, and yet have all the honey of
the bee; and, what is the very deuce of the whole, even as the butterfly,
you ask every flower to grow up in a moment; and, as a bee, the whole
hive must be stored in a quarter of an hour! Patience, patience,
patience!"
Vivian sighed a fierce sigh. "I suppose," said he, after an unquiet
pause, "that the vagrant and the outlaw are strong in me, for I long to
run back to my old existence, which was all action, and therefore allowed
no thought."
While he thus said, we had wandered round the Colonnade, and were in that
narrow passage in which is situated the more private entrance to the
opera: close by the doors of that entrance, two or three young men were
lounging. As Vivian ceased, the voice of one of these loungers came
laughingly to our ears.
"Oh!" it said, apparently in answer to some question, "I have a much
quicker way to fortune than that: I mean to marry an heiress!"
Vivian started, and looked at the speaker. He was a very good-looking
fellow. Vivian continued to look at him, and deliberately, from head to
foot; he then turned away with a satisfied and thoughtful smile.
"Certainly," said I, gravely (construing the smile), "you are right
there: you are even better--looking than that heiress-hunter!"
Vivian colored; but before he could answer, one of the loungers, as the
group recovered from the gay laugh which their companion's easy coxcombry
had excited, said,--
"Then, by the way, if you want an heiress, here comes one of the greatest
in England; but instead of being a younger son, with three good lives
between you and an Irish peerage, one ought to be an earl at least to
aspire to Fanny Trevanion!"
The name thrilled through me, I felt myself tremble; and looking up, I
saw Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion, as they hurried from their carriage
towards the entrance of the opera. They both recognized me, and Fanny
cried,--
"You here! How fortunate! You must see us into the box, even if you run
away the moment after."
"But I am not dressed for the opera," said I, embarrassed.
"And why not?" asked Miss Trevanion; then, dropping her voice, she added,
"why do you desert us so wilfully?" and, leaning her hand on my arm, I
was drawn irresistibly into the lobby. The young loungers at the door
made way for us, and eyed me, no doubt, with envy.
"Nay!" said I, affecting to laugh, as I saw Miss Trevanion waited for my
reply. "You forget how little time I have for such amusements now, and my
uncle--"
"Oh, but mamma and I have been to see your uncle to-day, and he is nearly
well,--is he not, mamma? I cannot tell you how I like and admire him. He
is just what I fancy a Douglas of the old day. But mamma is impatient.
Well, you must dine with us to-morrow, promise! Not adieu, but au
revoir," and Fanny glided to her mother's arm. Lady Ellinor, always kind
and courteous to me, had good-naturedly lingered till this dialogue, or
rather monologue, was over.
On returning to the passage, I found Vivian walking to and fro; he had
lighted his cigar, and was smoking energetically. "So this great
heiress," said he, smiling, "who, as far as I could see,--under her
hood,--seems no less fair than rich, is the daughter, I presume, of the
Mr. Trevanion, whose effusions you so kindly submit to me. He is very
rich, then! You never said so, yet I ought to have known it; but you see
I know nothing of your beau monde,--not even that Miss Trevanion is one
of the greatest heiresses in England."
"Yes, Mr. Trevanion is rich," said I, repressing a sigh,--very rich."
"And you are his secretary! My dear friend, you may well offer me
patience, for a large stock of yours will, I hope, be superfluous to
you."
"I don't understand you."
"Yet you heard that young gentleman, as well as myself and you are in the
same house as the heiress."
"Vivian!"
"Well, what have I said so monstrous?"
"Pooh! since you refer to that young gentleman, you heard, too, what his
companion told him, 'one ought to be an earl, at least, to aspire to
Fanny Trevanion!'"
"Tut! as well say that one ought to be a millionnaire to aspire to a
million! Yet I believe those who make millions generally begin with
pence."
"That belief should be a comfort and encouragement to you, Vivian. And
now, good-night; I have much to do."
"Good-night, then," said Vivian, and we parted.
I made my way to Mr. Trevanion's house and to the study. There was a
formidable arrear of business waiting for me, and I sat down to it at
first resolutely; but by degrees I found my thoughts wandering from the
eternal blue-books, and the pen slipped from my hand in the midst of an
extract from a Report on Sierra Leone. My pulse beat loud and quick; I
was in that state of nervous fever which only emotion can occasion. The
sweet voice of Fanny rang in my ears; her eyes, as I had last met them,
unusually gentle, almost beseeching, gazed upon me wherever I turned; and
then, as in mockery, I heard again those words,--"One ought to be an earl
at least to aspire to-" Oh! did I aspire? Was I vain fool so frantic,
household traitor so consummate? No, no! Then what did I under the same
roof? Why stay to imbibe this sweet poison that was corroding the very
springs of my life? At that self-question, which, had I been but a year
or two older, I should have asked long before, a mortal terror seized me;
the blood rushed from my heart and left me cold, icy cold. To leave the
house, leave Fanny! Never again to see those eyes, never to hear that
voice! Better die of the sweet poison than of the desolate exile! I rose,
I opened the windows; I walked to and fro the room; I could decide
nothing, think of nothing; all my mind was in an uproar. With a violent
effort at self-mastery, I approached the table again. I resolved to force
myself to my task, if it were only to re-collect my faculties and enable
them to bear my own torture. I turned over the books impatiently, when
lo! buried amongst them, what met my eye? Archly, yet reproachfully,--the
face of Fanny herself! Her miniature was there. It had been, I knew,
taken a few days before by a young artist whom Trevanion patronized. I
suppose he had carried it into his study to examine it, and so left it
there carelessly. The painter had seized her peculiar expression, her
ineffable smile,--so charming, so malicious; even her favorite
posture,--the small head turned over the rounded Hebe-like shoulder; the
eye glancing up from under the hair. I know not what change in my madness
came over me; but I sank on my knees, and, kissing the miniature again
and again, burst into tears. Such tears! I did not hear the door open, I
did not see the shadow steal ever the floor; a light hand rested on my
shoulder, trembling as it rested--I started. Fanny herself was bending
over me!
"What is the matter?" she asked tenderly. "What has happened? Your
uncle--your family--all well? Why are you weeping?"
I could not answer; but I kept my hands clasped over the miniature, that
she might not see what they contained.
"Will you not answer? Am I not your friend,--almost your sister? Come,
shall I call mamma?"
"Yes--yes; go--go."
"No, I will not go yet. What have you there? What are you hiding?"
And innocently, and sister-like, those hands took mine; and so--and
so--the picture became visible! There was a dead silence. I looked up
through my tears. Fanny had recoiled some steps, and her cheek was very
flushed, her eyes downcast. I felt as if I had committed a crime, as if
dishonor clung to me; and yet I repressed--yes, thank Heaven! I repressed
the cry that swelled from my heart and rushed to my lips: "Pity me, for I
love you!" I repressed it, and only a groan escaped me,--the wail of my
lost happiness! Then, rising, I laid the miniature on the table, and
said, in a voice that I believe was firm,--
"Miss Trevanion, you have been as kind as a sister to me, and therefore I
was bidding a brother's farewell to your likeness; it is so like
you--this!"
"Farewell!" echoed Fanny, still not looking up.
"Farewell--sister! There, I have boldly said the word; for--for--" I
hurried to the door, and, there turning, added, with what I meant to be a
smile,--"for they say at home that I--I am not well; too much for me
this; you know, mothers will be foolish; and--and--I am to speak to your
father to-morrow; and-good-night! God bless you, Miss Trevanion!"
PART IX.
CHAPTER I.
And my father pushed aside his books.
O young reader, whoever thou art,--or reader at least who hast been
young,--canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles
and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that hard,
stern world which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out of the
threshold of home,--come back to the four quiet walls wherein thine
elders sit in peace,--and seen, with a sort of sad amaze, how calm and
undisturbed all is there? That generation which has gone before thee in
the path of the passions,--the generation of thy parents (not so many
years, perchance, remote from thine own),--how immovably far off, in its
still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth! It has in it a stillness
as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks. That tranquil
monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded thee have
merged; the occupations that they have found sufficing for their
happiness, by the fireside, in the arm-chair and corner appropriated to
each,--how strangely they contrast thine own feverish excitement! And
they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and then resettle to their
hushed pursuits as if nothing had happened! Nothing had happened! while
in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world seems to have shot from its axis,
all the elements to be at war! And you sit down, crushed by that quiet
happiness which you can share no more, and smile mechanically, and look
into the fire; and, ten to one, you say nothing till the time comes for
bed, and you take up your candle and creep miserably to your lonely room.
Now, it in a stage-coach in the depth of winter, when three passengers
are warm and snug, a fourth, all besnowed and frozen, descends from the
outside and takes place amongst them, straightway all the three
passengers shift their places, uneasily pull up their cloak collars,
re-arrange their "comforters," feel indignantly a sensible loss of
caloric: the intruder has at least made a sensation. But if you had all
the snows of the Grampians in your heart, you might enter unnoticed; take
care not to tread on the toes of your opposite neighbor, and not a soul
is disturbed, not a "comforter" stirs an inch. I had not slept a wink, I
had not even lain down all that night,--the night in which I had said
farewell to Fanny Trevanion; and the next morning, when the sun rose, I
wandered out,--where I know not: I have a dim recollection of long, gray,
solitary streets; of the river, that seemed flowing in dull, sullen
silence, away, far away, into some invisible eternity; trees and turf,
and the gay voices of children. I must have gone from one end of the
great Babel to the other; for my memory only became clear and distinct
when I knocked, somewhere before noon, at the door of my father's house,
and, passing heavily up the stairs, came into the drawing-room, which was
the rendezvous of the little family; for since we had been in London, my
father had ceased to have his study apart, and contented himself with
what he called "a corner,"--a corner wide enough to contain two tables
and a dumb-waiter, with chairs a discretion all littered with books. On
the opposite side of this capacious corner sat my uncle, now nearly
convalescent, and he was jotting down, in his stiff, military hand,
certain figures in a little red account-book; for you know already that
my Uncle Roland was, in his expenses, the most methodical of men.
My father's face was more benign than usual, for before him lay a
proof,--the first proof of his first work--his one work--the Great Book!
Yes! it had positively found a press. And the first proof of your first
work--ask any author what that is! My mother was out, with the faithful
Mrs. Primmins, shopping or marketing, no doubt; so, while the brothers
were thus engaged, it was natural that my entrance should not make as
much noise as if it had been a bomb, or a singer, or a clap of thunder,
or the last "great novel of the season," or anything else that made a
noise in those days. For what makes a noise now,--now, when the most
astonishing thing of all is our easy familiarity with things astounding;
when we say, listlessly, "Another revolution at Paris," or, "By the by,
there is the deuce to do at Vienna!" when De Joinville is catching fish
in the ponds at Claremont, and you hardly turn back to look at Metternich
on the pier at Brighton!