The Caxtons, Part 11

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PART XI.

CHAPTER I.

The next day, on the outside of the "Cambridge Telegraph," there was one
passenger who ought to have impressed his fellow-travellers with a very
respectful idea of his lore in the dead languages; for not a single
syllable, in a live one, did he vouchsafe to utter from the moment he
ascended that "bad eminence" to the moment in which he regained his
mother earth. "Sleep," says honest Sancho, "covers a man better than a
cloak." I am ashamed of thee, honest Sancho, thou art a sad plagiarist;
for Tibullus said pretty nearly the same thing before thee,--

"Te somnus fusco velavit amictu." (1)

But is not silence as good a cloak as sleep; does it not wrap a man round
with as offusc and impervious a fold? Silence, what a world it covers,--
what busy schemes, what bright hopes and dark fears, what ambition, or
what despair! Do you ever see a man in any society sitting mute for
hours, and not feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate the wall he thus
builds up between others and himself? Does he not interest you far more
than the brilliant talker at your left, the airy wit at your right whose
shafts fall in vain on the sullen barrier of the silent man! Silence,
dark sister of Nox and Erebus, how, layer upon layer, shadow upon shadow,
blackness upon blackness, thou stretchest thyself from hell to heaven,
over thy two chosen haunts,--man's heart and the grave!

So, then, wrapped in my great-coat and my silence, I performed my
journey; and on the evening of the second day I reached the old-fashioned
brick house. How shrill on my ears sounded the bell! How strange and
ominous to my impatience seemed the light gleaming across the windows of
the hall! How my heart beat as I watched the face of the servant who
opened the gate to my summons!

"All well?" cried I.

"All well, sir," answered the servant, cheerfully. "Mr. Squills, indeed,
is with master, but I don't think there is anything the matter."

But now my mother appeared at the threshold, and I was in her arms.

"Sisty, Sisty! my dear, dear son--beggared, perhaps--and my fault--mine."

"Yours! Come into this room, out of hearing,--your fault?"

"Yes, yes! for if I had had no brother, or if I had not been led away,--
if I had, as I ought, entreated poor Austin not to--"

"My dear, dearest mother, you accuse yourself for what, it seems, was my
uncle's misfortune,--I am sure not even his fault! [I made a gulp
there.] No, lay the fault on the right shoulders,--the defunct shoulders
of that horrible progenitor, William Caxton the printer; for though I
don't yet know the particulars of what has happened, I will lay a wager
it is connected with that fatal invention of printing. Come, come! my
father is well, is he not?"

"Yes, thank Heaven!"

"And I too, and Roland, and little Blanche! Why, then, you are right to
thank Heaven, for your true treasures are untouched. But sit down and
explain, pray."

"I cannot explain. I do not understand anything more than that he, my
brother--mine!--has involved Austin in--in--" (a fresh burst of tears.)

I comforted, scolded, laughed, preached, and adjured in a breath; and
then, drawing my another gently on, entered my father's study.

At the table was seated Mr. Squills, pen in hand, and a glass of his
favorite punch by his side. My father was standing on the hearth, a
shade more pale, but with a resolute expression on his countenance which
was new to its indolent, thoughtful mildness. He lifted his eyes as the
door opened, and then, putting his finger to his lips, as he glanced
towards my mother, he said gayly, "No great harm done. Don't believe
her! Women always exaggerate, and make realities of their own bugbears:
it is the vice of their lively imaginations, as Wierus has clearly shown
in accounting for the marks, moles, and hare-lips which they inflict upon
their innocent infants before they are even born. My dear boy," added my
father, as I here kissed him and smiled in his face, "I thank you for
that smile! God bless you!" He wrung my hand and turned a little aside.

"It is a great comfort," renewed my father, after a short pause, "to
know, when a misfortune happens, that it could not be helped. Squills
has just discovered that I have no bump of cautiousness; so that,
craniologically speaking, if I had escaped one imprudence, I should
certainly have run my head against another."

"A man with your development is made to be taken in," said Mr. Squills,
consolingly.

"Do you hear that, my own Kitty? And have you the heart to blame Jack
any longer,--a poor creature cursed with a bump that would take in the
Stock Exchange? And can any one resist his bump, Squills?"

"Impossible!" said the surgeon, authoritatively.

"Sooner or later it must involve him in its airy meshes,--eh, Squills?-
entrap him into its fatal cerebral cell. There his fate waits him, like
the ant-lion in its pit."

"Too true," quoth Squills. "What a phrenological lecturer you would have
made!"

"Go then, my love," said my father, "and lay no blame but on this
melancholy cavity of mine, where cautiousness--is not! Go, and let Sisty
have some supper; for Squills says that he has a fine development of the
mathematical organs, and we want his help. We are hard at work on
figures, Pisistratus."

My mother looked broken-hearted, and, obeying submissively, stole to the
door without a word. But as she reached the threshold she turned round
and beckoned to me to follow her.

I whispered my father and went out. My mother was standing in the hall,
and I saw by the lamp that she had dried her tears, and that her face,
though very sad, was more composed.

"Sisty," she said, in a low voice which struggled to be firm, promise me
that you will tell me all,--the worst, Sisty. They keep it from me, and
that is my hardest punishment; for when I don't know all that he--that
Austin suffers, it seems to me as if I had lost his heart. Oh, Sisty, my
child, my child, don't fear me! I shall be happy whatever befalls us, if
I once get back my privilege,--my privilege, Sisty, to comfort, to share!
Do you understand me?"

"Yes indeed, my mother! And with your good sense and clear woman's wit,
if you will but feel how much we want them, you will be the best
counsellor we could have. So never fear; you and I will have no
secrets."

My mother kissed me, and went away with a less heavy step.

As I re-entered, my father came across the room and embraced me.

"My son," he said in a faltering voice, "if your modest prospects in life
are ruined--"

"Father, father, can you think of me at such a moment? Me! Is it
possible to ruin the young and strong and healthy! Ruin me, with these
thews and sinews; ruin me, with the education you have given me,--thews
and sinews of the mind! Oh, no! there, Fortune is harmless! And you
forget, sir,--the saffron bag!"

Squills leaped up, and wiping his eyes with one hand, gave me a sounding
slap on the shoulder with the other.

"I am proud of the care I took of your infancy, Master Caxton. That
comes of strengthening the digestive organs in early childhood. Such
sentiments are a proof of magnificent ganglions in a perfect state of
order. When a man's tongue is as smooth as I am sure yours is, he
slips through misfortune like an eel."

I laughed outright, my father smiled faintly; and, seating myself, I drew
towards me a paper filled with Squills's memoranda, and said, "Now to
find the unknown quantity. What on earth is this? 'Supposed value of
books, L750.' Oh, father! this is impossible. I was prepared for
anything but that. Your books,--they are your life!"

"Nay," said my father; "after all, they are the offending party in this
case, and so ought to be the principal victims. Besides, I believe I
know most of them by heart. But, in truth, we are only entering all our
effects, to be sure [added my father, proudly], that, come what may, we
are not dishonored."

"Humor him," whispered Squills; "we will save the books." Then he added
aloud, as he laid finger and thumb on my pulse, "One, two, three, about
seventy,--capital pulse, soft and full; he can bear the whole: let us
administer it."

My father nodded: "Certainly. But, Pisistratus, we must manage your dear
mother. Why she should think of blaming herself because poor Jack took
wrong ways to enrich us, I cannot understand. But as I have had occasion
before to remark, Sphinx is a noun feminine."

My poor father! that was a vain struggle for thy wonted innocent humor.
The lips quivered.

Then the story came out. It seems that when it was resolved to undertake
the publication of the "Literary Times," a certain number of shareholders
had been got together by the indefatigable energies of Uncle Jack; and in
the deed of association and partnership, my father's name figured
conspicuously as the holder of a fourth of this joint property. If in
this my father had committed some imprudence, he had at least done
nothing that, according to the ordinary calculations of a secluded
student, could become ruinous. But just at the time when we were in the
hurry of leaving town, Jack had represented to my father that it might be
necessary to alter a little the plan of the paper, and in order to allure
a larger circle of readers, touch somewhat on the more vulgar news and
Interests of the day. A change of plan might involve a change of title;
and he suggested to my father the expediency of leaving the smooth hands
of Mr. Tibbets altogether unfettered, as to the technical name and
precise form of the publication. To this my father had unwittingly
assented, on hearing that the other shareholders would do the same. Mr.
Peck, a printer of considerable opulence and highly respectable name, had
been found to advance the sum necessary for the publication of the
earlier numbers, upon the guarantee of the said act of partnership and
the additional security of my father's signature to a document
authorizing Mr. Tibbets to make any change in the form or title of the
periodical that might be judged advisable, concurrent with the consent of
the other shareholders.

Now, it seems that Mr. Peck had, in his previous conferences with Mr.
Tibbets, thrown much cold water on the idea of the "Literary Times," and
had suggested something that should "catch the moneyed public,"--the fact
being, as was afterwards discovered, that the printer, whose spirit of
enterprise was congenial to Uncle Jack's, had shares in three or four
speculations to which he was naturally glad of an opportunity to invite
the attention of the public. In a word, no sooner was my poor father's
back turned than the "Literary Times" was dropped incontinently, and Mr.
Peck and Mr. Tibbets began to concentrate their luminous notions into
that brilliant and comet-like apparition which ultimately blazed forth
under the title of "The Capitalist."

From this change of enterprise the more prudent and responsible of the
original shareholders had altogether withdrawn. A majority, indeed, were
left; but the greater part of those were shareholders of that kind most
amenable to the influences of Uncle Jack, and willing to be shareholders
in anything, since as yet they were possessors of nothing.

Assured of my father's responsibility, the adventurous Peck put plenty of
spirit into the first launch of "The Capitalist." All the walls were
placarded with its announcements; circular advertisements ran from one
end of the kingdom to the other. Agents were engaged, correspondents
levied en masse. The invasion of Xerxes on the Greeks was not more
munificently provided for than that of "The Capitalist" upon the
credulity and avarice of mankind.

But as Providence bestows upon fishes the instrument of fins, whereby
they balance and direct their movements, however rapid and erratic,
through the pathless deeps, so to the cold-blooded creatures of our own
species--that may be classed under the genus Money-Makers--the same
protective power accords the fin-like properties of prudence and caution,
wherewith your true money-getter buoys and guides himself majestically
through the great seas of speculation. In short, the fishes the net was
cast for were all scared from the surface at the first splash. They came
round and smelt at the mesh with their sharp bottle-noses, and then,
plying those invaluable fins, made off as fast as they could, plunging
into the mud, hiding themselves under rocks and coral banks. Metaphor
apart, the capitalists buttoned up their pockets, and would have nothing
to say to their namesake.

Not a word of this change, so abhorrent to all the notions of poor
Augustine Caxton, had been breathed to him by Peck or Tibbets. He ate
and slept and worked at the Great Book, occasionally wondering why he had
not heard of the advent of the "Literary Times," unconscious of all the
awful responsibilities which "The Capitalist" was entailing on him,
knowing no more of "The Capitalist" than he did of the last loan of the
Rothschilds.

Difficult was it for all other human nature, save my father's, not to
breathe an indignant anathema on the scheming head of the brother-in-law
who had thus violated the most sacred obligations of trust and kindred,
and so entangled an unsuspecting recluse. But, to give even Jack Tibbets
his due, he had firmly convinced himself that "The Capitalist" would make
my father's fortune; and if he did not announce to him the strange and
anomalous development into which the original sleeping chrysalis of the
"Literary Times" had taken portentous wing, it was purely and wholly in
the knowledge that my father's "prejudices," as he termed them, would
stand in the way of his becoming a Creesus. And, in fact, Uncle Jack had
believed so heartily in his own project that he had put himself
thoroughly into Mr. Peck's power, signed bills, in his own name, to some
fabulous amount, and was actually now in the Fleet, whence his
penitential and despairing confession was dated, arriving simultaneously
with a short letter from Mr. Peck, wherein that respectable printer
apprised my father that he had continued, at his own risk, the
publication of "The Capitalist" as far as a prudent care for his family
would permit; that he need not say that a new daily journal was a very
vast experiment; that the expense of such a paper as "The Capitalist" was
immeasurably greater than that of a mere literary periodical, as
originally suggested; and that now, being constrained to come upon the
shareholders for the sums he had advanced, amounting to several
thousands, he requested my father to settle with him immediately,--
delicately implying that Mr. Caxton himself might settle as he could with
the other shareholders, most of whom, he grieved to add, he had been
misled by Mr. Tibbets into believing to be men of substance, when in
reality they were men of straw!

Nor was this all the evil. The "Great Anti-Bookseller Publishing
Society," which had maintained a struggling existence, evinced by
advertisements of sundry forthcoming works of solid interest and enduring
nature, wherein, out of a long list, amidst a pompous array of "Poems;"
"Dramas not intended for the Stage;" "Essays by Phileutheros,
Philanthropos, Philopolis, Philodemus, and Philalethes," stood
prominently forth "The History of Human Error, Vols. I. and II., quarto,
with illustrations,"--the "Anti-Bookseller Society," I say, that had
hitherto evinced nascent and budding life by these exfoliations from its
slender stem, died of a sudden blight the moment its sun, in the shape of
Uncle Jack, set in the Cimmerian regions of the Fleet; and a polite
letter from another printer (O William Caxton, William Caxton, fatal
progenitor!) informing my father of this event, stated complimentarily
that it was to him, "as the most respectable member of the Association,"
that the said printer would be compelled to look for expenses incurred,
not only in the very costly edition of the "History of Human Error," but
for those incurred in the print and paper devoted to "Poems," "Dramas not
intended for the Stage," "Essays by Phileutheros, Philanthropos,
Philopolis, Philodemus, and Philalethes," with sundry other works, no
doubt of a very valuable nature, but in which a considerable loss, in a
pecuniary point of view, must be necessarily expected.

I own that as soon as I had mastered the above agreeable facts, and
ascertained from Mr. Squills that my father really did seem to have
rendered himself legally liable to these demands, I leaned back in my
chair stunned and bewildered.

"So you see," said my father, "that as yet we are contending with
monsters in the dark,--in the dark all monsters look larger and uglier.
Even Augustus Caesar, though certainly he had never scrupled to make as
many ghosts as suited his convenience, did not like the chance of a visit
from them, and never sat alone in tenebris. What the amount of the sums
claimed from me may be, we know not; what may be gained from the other
shareholders is equally obscure and undefined. But the first thing to do
is to get poor Jack out of prison."

"Uncle Jack out of prison!" exclaimed I. "Surely, sir, that is carrying
forgiveness too far."

"Why, he would not have been in prison if I had not been so blindly
forgetful of his weakness, poor man! I ought to have known better. But
my vanity misled me; I must needs publish a great book, as if [said Mr.
Caxton, looking round the shelves] there were not great books enough in
the world! I must needs, too, think of advancing and circulating
knowledge in the form of a journal,--I, who had not knowledge enough of
the character of my own brother-in-law to keep myself from ruin! Come
what--will, I should think myself the meanest of men to let that poor
creature, whom I ought to have considered as a monomaniac, rot in prison
because I, Austin Caxton, wanted common-sense. And [concluded my father,
resolutely] he is your mother's brother, Pisistratus. I should have gone
to town at once, but hearing that my wife had written to you, I waited
till I could leave her to the companionship of hope and comfort,--two
blessings that smile upon every mother in the face of a son like you.
To-morrow I go."

"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Squills, firmly; "as your medical adviser, I
forbid you to leave the house for the next six days."

(1) Tibullus, iii. 4,55.

CHAPTER II.

"Sir," continued Mr. Squills, biting off the end of a cigar which he
pulled from his pocket, "you concede to me that it is a very important
business on which you propose to go to London."

"Of that there is no doubt," replied my father.

"And the doing of business well or ill entirely depends upon the habit of
body!" cried Mr. Squills, triumphantly. "Do you know, Mr. Caxton, that
while you are looking so calm, and talking so quietly,--just on purpose
to sustain your son and delude your wife,--do you know that your pulse,
which is naturally little more than sixty, is nearly a hundred? Do you
know, sir, that your mucous membranes are in a state of high irritation,
apparent by the papillce at the tip of your tongue? And if, with a pulse
like this and a tongue like that, you think of settling money matters
with a set of sharp-witted tradesmen, all I can say is, that you are a
ruined man."

"But--" began my father.

"Did not Squire Rollick," pursued Mr. Squills,--"Squire Rollick, the
hardest head at a bargain I know of,--did not Squire Rollick sell that
pretty little farm of his, Scranny Holt, for thirty per cent below its
value? And what was the cause, sir? The whole county was in amaze!
What was the cause, but an incipient simmering attack of the yellow
jaundice, which made him take a gloomy view of human life and the
agricultural interest? On the other hand, did not Lawyer Cool, the most
prudent man in the three kingdoms,--Lawyer Cool, who was so methodical
that all the clocks in the county were set by his watch,--plunge one
morning head over heels into a frantic speculation for cultivating the
bogs in Ireland? (His watch did not go right for the next three months,
which made our whole shire an hour in advance of the rest of England!)
And what was the cause of that nobody knew, till I was called in, and
found the cerebral membrane in a state of acute irritation,--probably
just in the region of his acquisitiveness and ideality. No, Mr. Caxton,
you will stay at home and take a soothing preparation I shall send you,
of lettuce-leaves and marshmallows. But I," continued Squills, lighting
his cigar and taking two determined whiffs,--"but I will go up to town
and settle the business for you, and take with me this young gentleman,
whose digestive functions are just in a state to deal safely with those
horrible elements of dyspepsia,--the L. S. D."

As he spoke, Mr. Squills set his foot significantly upon mine.

"But," resumed my father, mildly, "though I thank you very much, Squills,
for your kind offer, I do not recognize the necessity of accepting it. I
am not so bad a philosopher as you seem to imagine; and the blow I have
received has not so deranged my physical organization as to render me
unfit to transact my affairs."

"Hum!" grunted Squills, starting up and seizing my father's pulse;
"ninety-six,--ninety-six if a beat! And the tongue, sir!"

"Pshaw!" quoth my father; "you have not even seen my tongue!"

"No need of that; I know what it is by the state of the eyelids,--tip
scarlet, sides rough as a nutmeg-grater!"

"Pshaw!" again said my father, this time impatiently.

"Well," said Squills, solemnly, "it is my duty to say," (here my mother
entered, to tell me that supper was ready), "and I say it to you, Mrs.
Caxton, and to you, Mr. Pisistratus Caxton, as the parties most nearly
interested, that if you, sir, go to London upon this matter, I'll not
answer for the consequences."

"Oh! Austin, Austin," cried my mother, running up and throwing her arms
round my father's neck; while I, little less alarmed by Squills's serious
tone and aspect, represented strongly the inutility of Mr. Caxton's
personal interference at the present moment. All he could do on arriving
in town would be to put the matter into the hands of a good lawyer, and
that we could do for him; it would be time enough to send for him when
the extent of the mischief done was more clearly ascertained. Meanwhile
Squills griped my father's pulse, and my mother hung on his neck.

"Ninety-six--ninety-seven!" groaned Squills in a hollow voice.

"I don't believe it!" cried my father, almost in a passion,--"never
better nor cooler in my life."

"And the tongue--Look at his tongue, Mrs. Caxton,--a tongue, ma'am, so
bright that you could see to read by it!"

"Oh! Austin, Austin!"

"My dear, it is not my tongue that is in fault, I assure you," said my
father, speaking through his teeth; "and the man knows no more of my
tongue than he does of the Mysteries of Eleusis."

"Put it out then," exclaimed Squills; "and if it be not as I say, you
have my leave to go to London and throw your whole fortune into the two
great pits you have dug for it. Put it out!"

"Mr. Squills!" said my father, coloring,--"Mr. Squills, for shame!"

"Dear, dear, Austin! your hand is so hot; you are feverish, I am sure."

"Not a bit of it."

"But, sir, only just gratify Mr. Squills," said I, coaxingly.

"There, there!" said my father, fairly baited into submission, and shyly
exhibiting for a moment the extremest end of the vanquished organ of
eloquence.

Squills darted forward his lynx-like eyes. "Red as a lobster, and rough
as a gooseberry-bush!" cried Squills, in a tone of savage joy.

CHAPTER III.

How was it possible for one poor tongue, so reviled and persecuted, so
humbled, insulted, and triumphed over, to resist three tongues in league
against it?

Finally, my father yielded, and Squills; in high spirits, declared that
he would go to supper with me, to see that I ate nothing that would tend
to discredit his reliance on my system. Leaving my mother still with her
Austin, the good surgeon then took my arm, and as soon as we were in the
next room, shut the door carefully, wiped his forehead, and said: "I
think we have saved him!"

"Would it really, then, have injured my father so much?"

"So much? Why, you foolish young man, don't you see that with his
ignorance of business where he himself is concerned,--though for any
other one's business, neither Rollick nor Cool has a better judgment,--
and with his d--d Quixotic spirit of honor worked up into a state of
excitement, he would have rushed to Mr. Tibbets and exclaimed, "How much
do we owe you? There it is' settled in the same way with these printers,
and come back without a sixpence; whereas you and I can look coolly about
us and reduce the inflammation to the minimum!"

"I see, and thank you heartily, Squills."

"Besides," said the surgeon, with more feeling, "your father has really
been making a noble effort over himself. He suffers more than you would
think,--not for himself (for I do believe that if he were alone in the
world, he would be quite contented if he could save fifty pounds a-year
and his books), but for your mother and yourself; and a fresh access of
emotional excitement, all the nervous anxiety of a journey to London on
such a business, might have ended in a paralytic or epileptic affection.
Now we have him here snug; and the worst news we can give him will be
better than what he will make up his mind for. But you don't eat."

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