The Caxtons, Part 12

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PART XII.

CHAPTER I.

The Hegira is completed,--we have all taken roost in the old Tower. My
father's books have arrived by the wagon, and have settled themselves
quietly in their new abode,--filling up the apartment dedicated to their
owner, including the bed chamber and two lobbies. The duck also has
arrived, under wing of Mrs. Primmins, and has reconciled herself to the
old stewpond, by the side of which my father has found a walk that
compensates for the peach-wall, especially as he has made acquaintance
with sundry respectable carps, who permit him to feed them after he has
fed the duck,--a privilege of which (since, if any one else approaches,
the carps are off in an instant) my father is naturally vain. All
privileges are valuable in proportion to the exclusiveness of their
enjoyment.

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."

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