The Caxtons, Complete - Edward Bulwer Lytton
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The artificers promise all despatch. Meanwhile I hasten to re-make
acquaintance with my mother-country over files of the "Times," "Post,"
"Chronicle," and "Herald." Nothing comes amiss to me but articles on
Australia; from those I turn aside with the true pshaw supercilious of
your practical man.
No more are leaders filled with praise and blame of Trevanion. "Percy's
spur is cold." Lord Ulverstone figures only in the "Court Circular," or
"Fashionable Movements." Lord Ulverstone entertains a royal duke at
dinner, or dines in turn with a royal duke, or has come to town, or gone
out of it. At most (faint Platonic reminiscence of the former life), Lord
Ulverstone says in the House of Lords a few words on some question, not a
party one, and on which (though affecting perhaps the interests of some
few thousands, or millions, as the case may be) men speak without
"hears," and are inaudible in the gallery; or Lord Ulverstone takes the
chair at an agricultural meeting, or returns thanks when his health is
drunk at a dinner at Guildhall. But the daughter rises as the father
sets, though over a very different kind of world.
"First ball of the season at Castleton House,"--long description of the
rooms and the company; above all, of the hostess. Lines on the
Marchioness of Castleton's picture in the "Book of Beauty," by the Hon.
Fitzroy Fiddledum, beginning with "Art thou an angel from," etc.: a
paragraph that pleased me more, on "Lady Castleton's Infant School at
Raby Park;" then again, "Lady Castleton, the new patroness at Almack's;"
a criticism, more rapturous than ever gladdened living poet, on Lady
Castleton's superb diamond stomacher, just reset by Storr & Mortimer;
Westmacott's bust of Lady Castleton; Landseer's picture of Lady Castleton
and her children in the costume of the olden time. Not a month in that
long file of the "Morning Post" but what Lady Castleton shone forth from
the rest of womankind,--
"Velut inter ignes Luna minores."
The blood mounted to my cheek. Was it to this splendid constellation in
the patrician heaven that my obscure, portionless youth had dared to lift
its presumptuous eyes? But what is this? "Indian Intelligence: Skilful
retreat of the Sepoys under Captain de Caxton"! A captain already! What
is the date of the newspaper!--three months ago. The leading article
quotes the name with high praise. Is there no leaven of envy amidst the
joy at my heart? How obscure has been my career,--how laurelless my poor
battle with adverse fortune! Fie, Pisistratus! I am ashamed of thee. Has
this accursed Old World, with its feverish rivalries, diseased thee
already? Get thee home, quick, to the arms of thy mother, the embrace of
thy father; hear Roland's low blessing that thou hast helped to minister
to the very fame of that son. If thou wilt have ambition, take it,--not
soiled and foul with the mire of London. Let it spring fresh and hardy in
the calm air of wisdom, and fed, as with dews, by the loving charities of
Home.
CHAPTER III.
It was at sunset that I stole through the ruined court-yard, having left
my chaise at the foot of the hill below. Though they whom I came to seek
knew that I had arrived in England, they did not, from my letter, expect
me till the next day. I had stolen a march upon them; and now, in spite
of all the impatience which had urged me thither, I was afraid to
enter,--afraid to see the change more than ten years had made in those
forms for which, in my memory, Time had stood still. And Roland had, even
when we parted, grown old before his time. Then my father was in the
meridian of life, now he had approached to the decline. And my mother,
whom I remembered so fair, as if the freshness of her own heart bad
preserved the soft bloom to the cheek,--I could not bear to think that
she was no longer young. Blanche, too, whom I had left a child,--Blanche,
my constant correspondent during those long years of exile, in letters
crossed and recrossed, with all the small details that make the eloquence
of letter-writing, so that in those epistles I had seen her mind
gradually grow up in harmony with the very characters, at first vague and
infantine, then somewhat stiff with the first graces of running-hand,
then dashing off free and facile; and for the last year before I left, so
formed yet so airy, so regular yet so unconscious of effort, though in
truth, as the calligraphy had become thus matured, I had been half vexed
and half pleased to perceive a certain reserve creeping over the
style,--wishes for my return less expressed from herself than as messages
from others, words of the old child-like familiarity repressed, and
"Dearest Sisty" abandoned for the cold form of "Dear Cousin." Those
letters, coming to me in a spot where maiden and love had been as myths
of the bygone, phantasms and eidola only vouchsafed to the visions of
fancy, had by little and little crept into secret corners of my heart;
and out of the wrecks of a former romance, solitude and revery had gone
far to build up the fairy domes of a romance yet to come. My mother's
letters had never omitted to make mention of Blanche,--of her forethought
and tender activity, of her warm heart and sweet temper,--and in many a
little home picture presented her image where I would fain have placed
it, not "crystal seeing," but joining my mother in charitable visits to
the village, instructing the young and tending on the old, or teaching
herself to illuminate, from an old missal in my father's collection, that
she might surprise my uncle with a new genealogical table, with all
shields and quarterings, blazoned or, sable, and argent; or flitting
round my father where he sat, and watching when he looked round for some
book he was too lazy to rise for. Blanche had made a new catalogue and
got it by heart, and knew at once from what corner of the Heraclea to
summon the ghost. On all these little traits had my mother been
eulogistically minute; but somehow or other she had never said, at least
for the last two years, whether Blanche was pretty or plain. That was a
sad omission. I had longed just to ask that simple question, or to imply
it delicately and diplomatically; but, I know not why, I never
dared,--for Blanche would have been sure to have read the letter; and
what business was it of mine? And if she was ugly, what question more
awkward both to put and to answer? Now, in childhood Blanche had just one
of those faces that might become very lovely in youth, and would yet
quite justify the suspicion that it might become gryphonesque,
witch-like, and grim. Yes, Blanche, it is perfectly true! If those large,
serious black eyes took a fierce light instead of a tender; if that nose,
which seemed then undecided whether to be straight or to be aquiline,
arched off in the latter direction, and assumed the martial, Roman, and
imperative character of Roland's manly proboscis; if that face, in
childhood too thin, left the blushes of youth to take refuge on two
salient peaks by the temples (Cumberland air, too, is famous for the
growth of the cheekbone!),--if all that should happen, and it very well
might, then, O Blanche, I wish thou hadst never written me those letters;
and I might have done wiser things than steel my heart so obdurately to
pretty Ellen Bolding's blue eyes and silk shoes. Now, combining together
all these doubts and apprehensions, wonder not, O reader, why I stole so
stealthily through the ruined court-yard, crept round to the other side
of the tower, gazed wistfully on the sun setting slant, on the high
casements of the hall (too high, alas! to look within), and shrank yet to
enter,--doing battle, as it were, with my heart.
Steps--one's sense of hearing grows so quick in the Bushland!--steps,
though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept under
the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes from the
little door at an angle in the ruins,--a woman's form. Is it my mother?
It is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the
building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice--a voice strange, yet
familiar--calls, tender but chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor
Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground; he is evidently much
disturbed in his mind: now he stands still, his nose in the air. Poor
Juba! I left thee so slim and so nimble,--
"Thy form, that was fashioned as light as a fay's,
Has assumed a proportion more round;"
years have sobered thee strangely, and made thee obese and Primmins-like.
They have taken too good care of thy creature-comforts, O sensual
Mauritanian! Still, in that mystic intelligence we call instinct thou art
chasing something that years have not swept from thy memory. Thou art
deaf to thy lady's voice, however tender and chiding. That's right! Come
near,--nearer,--my cousin Blanche; let me have a fair look at thee.
Plague take the dog! he flies off from her; he has found the scent; he is
making up to the buttress! Now--pounce--he is caught, whining ungallant
discontent! Shall I not yet see the face? It is buried in Juba's black
curls! Kisses too! Wicked Blanche, to waste on a dumb animal what, I
heartily hope, many a good Christian would be exceedingly glad of! Juba
struggles in vain, and is borne off! I don't think that those eyes can
have taken the fierce turn, and Roland's eagle nose can never go with
that voice, which has the coo of the dove.
I leave my hiding-place and steal after the Voice and its owner. Where
can she be going? Not far. She springs up the hill whereon the lords of
the castle once administered justice,--that hill which commands the land
far and wide, and from which can be last caught the glimpse of the
westering sun. How gracefully still is that attitude of wistful repose!
Into what delicate curves do form and drapery harmoniously flow! How
softly distinct stands the lithe image against the purple hues of the
sky! Then again comes the sweet voice, gay and carolling as a
bird's,--now in snatches of song, now in playful appeals to that dull
four-footed friend. She is telling him something that must make the black
ears stand on end, for I just catch the words, "He is coming," and
"home."
I cannot see the sun set where I lurk in my ambush amidst the brake and
the ruins, but I feel that the orb has passed from the landscape, in the
fresher air of the twilight, in the deeper silence of eve. Lo! Hesper
comes forth; at his signal, star after star, come the hosts,--
"Ch' eran con lui, quando l' amor divino,
Mosse da prima quelle cose belle!"
And the sweet voice is hushed.
Then slowly the watcher descends the hill on the opposite side; the form
escapes from my view. What charm has gone from the twilight? See, again,
where the step steals through the ruins and along the desolate court. Ah!
deep and true heart, do I divine the remembrance that leads thee? I pass
through the wicket, down the dell, skirt the laurels, and behold the face
looking up to the stars,--the face which had nestled to my breast in the
sorrow of parting years, long years ago; on the grave where we had
sat,--I the boy, thou the infant,--there, O Blanche, is thy fair face,
fairer than the fondest dream that had gladdened my exile, vouchsafed to
my gaze!
"Blanche, my cousin! again, again,--soul with soul, amidst the dead! Look
up, Blanche; it is I."
CHAPTER IV.
"Go in first and prepare them, dear Blanche; I will wait by the door.
Leave it ajar, that I may see them."
Roland is leaning against the wall, old armor suspended over the gray
head of the soldier. It is but a glance that I give to the dark cheek and
high brow: no change there for the worse,--no new sign of decay. Rather,
if anything, Roland seems younger than when I left. Calm is the brow,--no
shame on it now, Roland; and the lips, once so compressed, smile with
ease,--no struggle now, Roland, "not to complain." A glance shows me all
this.
"Papoe!" says my father, and I hear the fall of a book, "I can't read a
line. He is coming to-morrow,--to-morrow! If we lived to the age of
Methuselah, Kitty, we could never reconcile philosophy and man; that is,
if the poor man's to be plagued with a good, affectionate son!"
And my father gets up and walks to and fro. One minute more, father, one
minute more, and I am on thy breast! Time, too, has dealt gently with
thee, as he doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen cares of
the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad front looks more broad, for
the locks are more scanty and thin, but still not a furrow. Whence comes
that short sigh?
"What is really the time, Blanche? Did you look at the turret-clock?
Well, just go and look again."
"Kitty," quoth my father, "you have not only asked what time it is thrice
within the last ten minutes, but you have got my watch, and Roland's
great chronometer, and the Dutch clock out of the kitchen, all before
you, and they all concur in the same tale,--to-day is not to-morrow."
"They are all wrong, I know," said my mother, with mild firmness; "and
they've never gone right since he left." Now out comes a letter, for I
hear the rustle, and then a step glides towards the lamp, and the dear,
gentle, womanly face--fair still, fair ever for me, fair as when it bent
over my pillow in childhood's first sickness, or when we threw flowers at
each other on the lawn at sunny noon! And now Blanche is whispering; and
now the flutter, the start, the cry,--"It is true! it is true! Your arms,
mother. Close, close round my necks as in the old time. Father! Roland
too! Oh, joy! joy! joy! home again,--home till death!"
CHAPTER V.
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. Four-gons 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").