The Caxtons, Complete - Edward Bulwer Lytton
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Now, from the moment the first carp had eaten the bread my father threw
to it, Mr. Caxton had mentally resolved that a race so confiding should
never be sacrificed to Ceres and Primmins. But all the fishes on my
uncle's property were under the special care of that Proteus Bolt; and
Bolt was not a man likely to suffer the carps to earn their bread without
contributing their full share to the wants of the community. But, like
master, like man! Bolt was an aristocrat fit to be hung a la lanterne. He
out-Rolanded Roland in the respect he entertained for sounding names and
old families; and by that bait my father caught him with such skill that
you might see that if Austin Caxton had been an angler of fishes, he
could have filled his basket full any day, shine or rain.
"You observe, Bolt," said my father, beginning artfully, "that those
fishes, dull as you may think them; are creatures capable of a syllogism;
and if they saw that, in proportion to their civility to me, they were
depopulated by you, they would put two and two together, and renounce my
acquaintance."
"Is that what you call being silly Jems, sir?" said Bolt. "Faith! there
is many a good Christian not half so wise."
"Man," answered my father, thoughtfully, "is an animal less syllogistical
or more silly-Jemical, than many creatures popularly esteemed his
inferiors. Yes, let but one of those Cyprinidae, with his fine sense of
logic, see that if his fellow-fishes eat bread, they, are suddenly jerked
out of their element and vanish forever, and though you broke a quartern
loaf into crumbs, he would snap his tail at you with enlightened
contempt. If," said my father, soliloquizing, "I had been as syllogistic
as those scaly logicians, I should never have swallowed that hook
which--Hum! there--least said soonest mended. But, Mr. Bolt, to return to
the Cyprinidae."
"What's the hard name you call them 'ere carp, yer honor?" asked Bolt.
"Cyprinidae,--a family of the section Malacoptergii Abdominales," replied
Mr. Caxton; "their teeth are generally confined to the Pharyngeans, and
their branehiostegous rays are but few,--marks of distinction from fishes
vulgar and voracious."
"Sir," said Bolt, glancing to the stewpond, "if I had known they had been
a family of such importance, I am sure I should have treated them with
more respect."
"They are a very old family, Bolt, and have been settled in England since
the fourteenth century. A younger branch of the family has established
itself in a pond in the gardens of Peterhoff (the celebrated palace of
Peter the Great, Bolt,--an emperor highly respected by my brother, for he
killed a great many people very gloriously in battle, besides those whom
he sabred for his own private amusement); and there is an officer or
servant of the Imperial household, whose task it is to summon those
Russian Cyprinidae to dinner, by ringing a bell, shortly after which, you
may see the emperor and empress, with all their waiting ladies and
gentlemen, coming down in their carriages to see the Cyprinidae eat in
state. So you perceive, Bolt, that it would be a republican, Jacobinical
proceeding to stew members of a family so intimately associated with
royalty."
"Dear me, sir," said Bolt, "I am very glad you told me. I ought to have
known they were genteel fish, they are so mighty shy,--as all your real
quality are."
My father smiled, and rubbed his hands gently,--he had carried his point;
and henceforth the Cyprinidae of the section Malacoptergii Abdominales
were as sacred in Bolt's eyes as cats and ichneumons were in those of a
priest in Thebes.
My poor father, with what true and unostentatious philosophy thou didst
accommodate thyself to the greatest change thy quiet, harmless life had
known since it had passed out of the brief, burning cycle of the
passions! Lost was the home endeared to thee by so many noiseless
victories of the mind, so many mute histories of the heart; for only the
scholar knoweth how deep a charm lies in monotony, in the old
associations, the old ways and habitual clockwork of peaceful time. Yet
the home may be replaced,--thy heart built its home round itself
everywhere,--and the old Tower might supply the loss of the brick house,
and the walk by the stewpond become as dear as the haunts by the sunny
peach-wall. But what shall replace to thee the bright dream of thine
innocent ambition,--that angel-wing which had glittered across thy
manhood, in the hour between its noon and its setting What replace to
thee the Magnum Opus--the Great Book!--fair and broad-spreading tree,
lone amidst the sameness of the landscape, now plucked up by the roots?
The oxygen was subtracted from the air of thy life. For be it known to
you, O my compassionate readers, that with the death of the
Anti-Publisher Society the blood-streams of the Great Book stood still,
its pulse was arrested, its full heart beat no more. Three thousand
copies of the first seven sheets in quarto, with sundry unfinished
plates, anatomical, architectural, and graphic, depicting various
developments of the human skull (that temple of Human Error), from the
Hottentot to the Greek; sketches of ancient buildings, Cyclopean and
Pelasgic; Pyramids and Pur-tors, all signs of races whose handwriting was
on their walls; landscapes to display the influence of Nature upon the
customs, creeds, and philosophy of men,--here showing how the broad
Chaldean wastes led to the contemplation of the stars; and illustrations
of the Zodiac, in elucidation of the mysteries of symbol-worship;
fantastic vagaries of earth fresh from the Deluge, tending to impress on
early superstition the awful sense of the rude powers of Nature; views of
the rocky defiles of Laconia,--Sparta, neighbored by the "silent
Amyclae," explaining, as it were, geographically the iron customs of the
warrior colony (arch-Tories, amidst the shift and roar of Hellenic
democracies), contrasted by the seas and coasts and creeks of Athens and
Ionia, tempting to adventure, commerce, and change. Yea, my father, in
his suggestions to the artist of those few imperfect plates, had thrown
as much light on the infancy of earth and its tribes as by the "shining
words" that flowed from his calm, starry knowledge! Plates and copies,
all rested now in peace and dust, "housed with darkness and with death,"
on the sepulchral shelves of the lobby to which they were
consigned,--rays intercepted, world incompleted. The Prometheus was
bound, and the fire he had stolen from heaven lay imbedded in the flints
of his rock. For so costly was the mould in which Uncle Jack and the
Anti-Publisher Society had contrived to cast this exposition of Human
Error that every bookseller shied at its very sight, as an owl blinks at
daylight, or human error at truth. In vain Squills and I, before we left
London, had carried a gigantic specimen of the Magnum Opus into the back
parlors of firms the most opulent and adventurous. Publisher after
publisher started, as if we had held a blunderbuss to his ear. All
Paternoster Row uttered a "Lord deliver us!" Human Error found no man so
egregiously its victim as to complete those two quartos, with the
prospect of two others, at his own expense. Now, I had earnestly hoped
that my father, for the sake of mankind, would be persuaded to risk some
portion--and that, I own, not a small one--of his remaining capital on
the conclusion of an undertaking so elaborately begun. But there my
father was obdurate. No big words about mankind, and the advantage to
unborn generations, could stir him an inch. "Stuff!" said Mr. Caxton,
peevishly. "A man's duties to mankind and posterity begin with his own
son; and having wasted half your patrimony, I will not take another huge
slice out of the poor remainder to gratify my vanity, for that is the
plain truth of it. Man must atone for sin by expiation. By the book I
have sinned, and the book must expiate it. Pile the sheets up in the
lobby, so that at least one man may be wiser and humbler by the sight of
Human Error every time he walks by so stupendous a monument of it."
Verily, I know not how my father could bear to look at those dumb
fragments of himself,--strata of the Caxtonian conformation lying layer
upon layer, as if packed up and disposed for the inquisitive genius of
some moral Murchison or Mantell. But for my part, I never glanced at
their repose in the dark lobby without thinking, "Courage, Pisistratus!
courage! There's something worth living for; work hard, grow rich, and
the Great Book shall come out at last!"
Meanwhile, I wandered over the country and made acquaintance with the
farmers and with Trevanion's steward,--an able man and a great
agriculturist,--and I learned from them a better notion of the nature of
my uncle's domains. Those domains covered an immense acreage, which, save
a small farm, was of no value at present. But land of the same sort had
been lately redeemed by a simple kind of draining, now well known in
Cumberland; and, with capital, Roland's barren moors might become a noble
property. But capital, where was that to come from? Nature gives us all,
except the means to turn her into marketable account. As old Plautus
saith so wittily, "Day, night, water, sun, and moon, are to be had
gratis; for everything else--down with your dust!"
CHAPTER II.
Nothing has been heard of Uncle Jack. Before we left the brick house the
Captain gave him an invitation to the Tower,--more, I suspect, out of
compliment to my mother than from the unbidden impulse of his own
inclinations. But Mr. Tibbets politely declined it. During his stay at
the brick house he had received and written a vast number of
letters,--some of those he received, indeed, were left at the village
post-office, under the alphabetical addresses of A. B. or X. Y.; for no
misfortune ever paralyzed the energies of Uncle Jack. In the winter of
adversity he vanished, it is true; but even in vanishing, he vegetated
still. He resembled those algae, termed the Prolococcus nivales, which
give a rose-color to the Polar snows that conceal them, and flourish
unsuspected amidst the general dissolution of Nature. Uncle Jack, then,
was as lively and sanguine as ever; though he began to let fall vague
hints of intentions to abandon the general cause of his fellow-creatures,
and to set up business henceforth purely on his own account,--wherewith
my father, to the great shock of my belief in his philanthropy, expressed
himself much pleased. And I strongly suspect that when Uncle Jack wrapped
himself up in his new double Saxony and went off at last, he carried with
him something more than my father's good wishes in aid of his conversion
to egotistical philosophy.
"That man will do yet," said my father, as the last glimpse was caught of
Uncle Jack standing up on the stage-coach box, beside the driver, partly
to wave his hand to us as we stood at the gate, and partly to array
himself more commodiously in a box-coat with six capes, which the
coachman had lent him.
"Do you think so, sir?" said I, doubtfully. "May I ask why?"
Mr. Caxton.--"On the cat principle,--that he tumbles so lightly. You may
throw him down from St. Paul's, and the next time you see him he will be
scrambling atop of the Monument."
Pisistratus.--"But a cat the most vicarious is limited to nine lives; and
Uncle Jack must be now far gone in his eighth."
Ms. Caxton (not heeding that answer, for he has got his hand in his
waistcoat).--"The earth, according to Apuleius, in his 'Treatise on the
Philosophy of Plato,' was produced from right-angled triangles; but fire
and air from the scalene triangle,--the angles of which, I need not say,
are very different from those of a right-angled triangle. Now I think
there are people in the world of whom one can only judge rightly
according to those mathematical principles applied to their original
construction: for if air or fire predominates in our natures, we are
scalene triangles; if earth, right-angled. Now, as air is so notably
manifested in Jack's conformation, he is, nolens volens, produced in
conformity with his preponderating element. He is a scalene triangle, and
must be judged, accordingly, upon irregular, lop-sided principles;
whereas you and I, common-place mortals, are produced, like the earth,
which is our preponderating element, with our triangles all right-angled,
comfortable and complete,--for which blessing let us thank Providence,
and be charitable to those who are necessarily windy and gaseous, from
that unlucky scalene triangle upon which they have had the misfortune to
be constructed, and which, you perceive, is quite at variance with the
mathematical constitution of the earth!"
Pisistratus.--"Sir, I am very happy to hear so simple, easy, and
intelligible an explanation of Uncle Jack's peculiarities; and I only
hope that, for the future, the sides of his scalene triangle may never be
produced to our rectangular conformations."
Mr. Caxton (descending from his stilts with an air as mildly reproachful
as if I had been cavilling at the virtues of Socrates).--"You don't do
your uncle justice, Pisistratus,--he is a very clever man; and I am sure
that, in spite of his scalene misfortune, he would be an honest
one,--that is [added Mr. Caxton, correcting himself], not romantically or
heroically honest, but holiest as men go,--if he could but keep his head
long enough above water; but, you see, when the best man in the world is
engaged in the process of sinking, he catches hold of whatever comes in
his way, and drowns the very friend who is swimming to save him."
Pisistratus.--"Perfectly true, sir; but Uncle Jack makes it his business
to be always sinking!"
Mr. Caxton (with naivete).--"And how could it be otherwise, when he has
been carrying all his fellow-creatures in his breeches' pockets? Now he
has got rid of that dead weight, I should not be surprised if he swam
like a cork."
Pisistratus (who, since the "Capitalist," has become a strong
Anti-Jackian). "But if, sir, you really think Uncle Jack's love for his
fellow-creatures is genuine, that is surely not the worst part of him."
Mr. Caxton.--"O literal ratiocinator, and dull to the true logic of Attic
irony! can't you comprehend that an affection may be genuine as felt by
the man, yet its nature be spurious in relation to others? A man may
generally believe he loves his fellow-creatures when he roasts them like
Torquemada, or guillotines them like St. Just! Happily Jack's scalene
triangle, being more produced from air than from fire, does not give to
his philanthropy the inflammatory character which distinguishes the
benevolence of inquisitors and revolutionists. The philanthropy,
therefore, takes a more flatulent and innocent form, and expends its
strength in mounting paper balloons, out of which Jack pitches himself,
with all the fellow-creatures he can coax into sailing with him. No doubt
Uncle Jack's philanthropy is sincere when he cuts the string and soars up
out of sight; but the sincerity will not much mend their bruises when
himself and fellow-creatures come tumbling down neck and heels. It must
be a very wide heart that can take in all mankind,--and of a very strong
fibre to bear so much stretching. Such hearts there are, Heaven be
thanked! and all praise to them. Jack's is not of that quality. He is a
scalene triangle. He is not a circle! And yet, if he would but let it
rest, it is a good heart,--a very good heart [continued my father,
warming into a tenderness quite infantine, all things considered]. Poor
Jack! that was prettily said of him--'That if he were a dog, and he had
no home but a dog kennel, he would turn out to give me the best of the
straw!' Poor brother Jack!"
So the discussion was dropped; and in the mean while, Uncle Jack, like
the short-faced gentleman in the "Spectator," "distinguished himself by a
profound silence."
CHAPTER III.
Blanche has contrived to associate herself, if not with my more active
diversions,--in running over the country and making friends with the
farmers,--still in all my more leisurely and domestic pursuits. There is
about her a silent charm that it is very hard to define; but it seems to
arise from a kind of innate sympathy with the moods and humors of those
she loves. If one is gay, there is a cheerful ring in her silver laugh
that seems gladness itself; if one is sad, and creeps away into a corner
to bury one's head in one's hand and muse, by and by, and just at the
right moment, when one has mused one's fill, and the heart wants
something to refresh and restore it, one feels two innocent arms round
one's neck, looks up, and lo! Blanche's soft eyes, full of wistful,
compassionate kindness, though she has the tact not to question; it is
enough for her to sorrow with your sorrow,--she cares not to know more. A
strange child,--fearless, and yet seemingly fond of things that inspire
children with fear; fond of tales of fay, sprite, and ghost, which Mrs.
Primmins draws fresh and new from her memory as a conjurer draws pancakes
hot and hot from a hat. And yet so sure is Blanche of her own innocence
that they never trouble her dreams in her lone little room, full of
caliginous corners and nooks, with the winds moaning round the desolate
ruins, and the casements rattling hoarse in the dungeon-like wall. She
would have no dread to walk through the ghostly keep in the dark, or
cross the church-yard what time,--
"By the moon's doubtful and malignant light,"--
the gravestones look so spectral, and the shade from the yew-trees lies
so still on the sward. When the brows of Roland are gloomiest, and the
compression of his lips makes sorrow look sternest, be sure that Blanche
is couched at his feet, waiting the moment when, with some heavy sigh,
the muscles relax, and she is sure of the smile if she climbs to his
knee. It is pretty to chance on her gliding up broken turret-stairs, or
standing hushed in the recess of shattered casements; and you wonder what
thoughts of vague awe and solemn pleasure can be at work under that
still, little brow.
She has a quick comprehension of all that is taught to her; she already
tasks to the full my mother's educational arts. My father has had to
rummage his library for books to feed (or extinguish) her desire for
"further information," and has promised lessons in French and Italian--at
some golden time in the shadowy "By and by"--which are received so
gratefully that one might think Blanche mistook "Telema que" and "Novelle
Morali" for baby-houses and dolls. Heaven send her through French and
Italian with better success than attended Mr. Caxton's lessons in Greek
to Pisistratus! She has an ear for music which my mother, who is no bad
judge, declares to be exquisite. Luckily there is an old Italian, settled
in a town ten miles off, who is said to be an excellent music-master, and
who comes the round of the neighboring squirearchy twice a week. I have
taught her to draw,--an accomplishment in which I am not without
skill,--and she has already taken a sketch from nature, which, barring
the perspective, is not so amiss; indeed, she has caught the notion of
"idealizing" (which promises future originality) from her own natural
instincts, and given to the old witch-elm, that hangs over the stream,
just the bough that it wanted to dip into the water and soften off the
hard lines. My only fear is that Blanche should become too dreamy and
thoughtful.
Poor child, she has no one to play with! So I look out, and get her a
dog, frisky and young, who abhors sedentary occupations,--a spaniel,
small, and coal-black, with ears sweeping the ground. I baptize him
"Juba," in honor of Addison's "Cato," and in consideration of his sable
curls and Mauritanian complexion. Blanche does not seem so eerie and
elf-like while gliding through the ruins when Juba barks by her side and
scares the birds from the ivy.
One day I had been pacing to and fro the hall, which was deserted; and
the sight of the armor and portraits--dumb evidences of the active and
adventurous lives of the old inhabitants, which seemed to reprove my own
inactive obscurity--had set me off on one of those Pegasean hobbies on
which youth mounts to the skies,--delivering maidens on rocks, and
killing Gorgons and monsters,--when Juba bounded in, and Blanche came
after him, her straw hat in her hand.
Blanche. "I thought you were here, Sisty: may I stay?"
Pisistratus.--"Why, my dear child, the day is so fine that instead of
losing it indoors, you ought to be running in the fields with Juba."
Juba.--"Bow-wow."
Blanche.--"Will you come too? If Sisty stays in, Blanche does not care
for the butterflies!"
Pisistratus, seeing that the thread of his day-dreams is broken, consents
with an air of resignation. Just as they gain the door, Blanche pauses,
and looks as if there were something on her mind.
Pisistratus--"What now, Blanche? Why are you making knots in that ribbon,
and writing invisible characters on the floor with the point of that busy
little foot?"
Blanche (mysteriously).--"I have found a new room, Sisty. Do you think we
may look into it?"
Pisistratus--"Certainly; unless any Bluebeard of your acquaintance told
you not. Where is it?"
Blanche.--"Upstairs, to the left."
Pisistratus.--"That little old door, going down two stone steps, which is
always kept locked?"
Blanche.--"Yes; it is not locked to-day. The door was ajar, and I peeped
in; but I would not do more till I came and asked you if you thought it
would not be wrong."
Pisistratus.--"Very good in you, my discreet little cousin. I have no
doubt it is a ghost-trap; however, with Juba's protection, I think we
might venture together."
Pisistratus, Blanche, and Juba ascend the stairs, and turn off down a
dark passage to the left, away from the rooms in use. We reach the
arch-pointed door of oak planks nailed roughly together, we push it open,
and perceive that a small stair winds down from the room,--it is just
over Roland's chamber.
The room has a damp smell, and has probably been left open to be aired;
for the wind comes through the unbarred casement, and a billet barns on
the Hearth. The place has that attractive, fascinating air which belongs
to a lumber-room,--than which I know nothing that so captivates the
interest and fancy of young people. What treasures, to them, often lie
hid in those quaint odds and ends which the elder generations have
discarded as rubbish! All children are by nature antiquarians and
relic-hunters. Still, there is an order and precision with which the
articles in that room are stowed away that belies the true notion of
lumber,--none of the mildew and dust which give such mournful interest to
things abandoned to decay.
In one corner are piled up cases and military-looking trunks of
outlandish aspect, with R. D. C. in brass nails on their sides. From
these we turn with involuntary respect and call off Juba, who has wedged
himself behind in pursuit of some imaginary mouse. But in the other
corner is what seems to me a child's cradle,--not an English one,
evidently; it is of wood, seemingly Spanish rosewood, with a railwork at
the back, of twisted columns; and I should scarcely have known it to be a
cradle but for the fairy-like quilt and the tiny pillows, which
proclaimed its uses.
On the wall above the cradle were arranged sundry little articles that
had, perhaps, once made the joy of a child's heart,--broken toys with the
paint rubbed off, a tin sword and trumpet, and a few tattered books,
mostly in Spanish; by their shape and look, doubtless children's books.
Near these stood, on the floor, a picture with its face to the wall. Juba
had chased the mouse, that his fancy still insisted on creating, behind
this picture, and as he abruptly drew back, the picture fell into the
hands I stretched forth to receive it. I turned the face to the light,
and was surprised to see merely an old family portrait; it was that of a
gentleman in the flowered vest mid stiff ruff which referred the date of
his existence to the reign of Elizabeth,--a man with a bold and noble
countenance. On the corner was placed a faded coat of arms, beneath which
was inscribed, "Herbert De Caxton, Eq: Aur: AEtat: 35."
On the back of the canvas I observed, as I now replaced the picture
against the wall, a label in Roland's handwriting, though in a younger
and more running hand than he now wrote. The words were these "The best
and bravest of our line, He charged by Sidney's side on the field of
Zutphen; he fought in Drake's ship against the armament of Spain. If ever
I have a--" The rest of the label seemed to have been torn off.
I turned away, and felt a remorseful shame that I had so far gratified my
curiosity,--if by so harsh a name the powerful interest that had absorbed
me must be called. I looked round for Blanche; she had retreated from my
side to the door, and, with her hands before her eyes, was weeping. As I
stole towards her, my glance fell on a book that lay on a chair near the
casement and beside those relics of an infancy once pure and serene. By
the old-fashioned silver clasps I recognized Roland's Bible. I felt as if
I had been almost guilty of profanation in my thoughtless intrusion. I
drew away Blanche, and we descended the stairs noiselessly; and not till
we were on our favorite spot, amidst a heap of ruins on the feudal
justice-hill, did I seek to kiss away her tears and ask the cause.