The Caxtons, Part 8

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> The Caxtons, Part 8

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3

This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
and David Widger

PART VIII.

CHAPTER I.

There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in Russell
Street, an Elf! clad in white,--small, delicate, with curls of jet over
her shoulders; with eyes so large and so lustrous that they shone
through the room as no eyes merely human could possibly shine. The Elf
approached, and stood facing us. The sight was so unexpected and the
apparition so strange that we remained for some moments in startled
silence. At length my father, as the bolder and wiser man of the two,
and the more fitted to deal with the eerie things of another world, had
the audacity to step close up to the little creature, and, bending down
to examine its face, said, "What do you want, my pretty child?"

Pretty child! Was it only a pretty child after all? Alas! it would be
well if all we mistake for fairies at the first glance could resolve
themselves only into pretty children.

"Come," answered the child, with a foreign accent, and taking my father
by the lappet of his coat, "come, poor papa is so ill! I am frightened!
come, and save him."

"Certainly," exclaimed my father, quickly. "Where's my hat, Sisty?
Certainly, my child; we will go and save papa."

"But who is papa?" asked Pisistratus,--a question that would never have
occurred to my father. He never asked who or what the sick papas of
poor children were when the children pulled him by the lappet of his
coat. "Who is papa?"

The child looked hard at me, and the big tears rolled from those large,
luminous eyes, but quite silently. At this moment a full-grown figure
filled up the threshold, and emerging from the shadow, presented to us
the aspect of a stout, well-favored young woman. She dropped a
courtesy, and then said, mincingly,--

"Oh, miss, you ought to have waited for me, and not alarmed the
gentlefolks by running upstairs in that way! If you please, sir, I was
settling with the cabman, and he was so imperent,--them low fellows
always are, when they have only us poor women to deal with, sir, and--"

"But what is the matter?" cried I, for my father had taken the child in
his arms soothingly, and she was now weeping on his breast.

"Why, you see, sir [another courtesy], the gent only arrived last night
at our hotel, sir,--the Lamb, close by Lunnun Bridge,--and he was taken
ill, and he's not quite in his right mind like; so we sent for the
doctor, and the doctor looked at the brass plate on the gent's carpet-
bag, sir, and then he looked into the 'Court Guide,' and he said, 'There
is a Mr. Caxton in Great Russell Street,--is he any relation?' and this
young lady said, 'That's my papa's brother, and we were going there.'
And so, sir, as the Boots was out, I got into a cab, and miss would come
with me, and--"

"Roland--Roland ill! Quick, quick, quick!" cried my father, and with
the child still in his arms he ran down the stairs. I followed with his
hat, which of course he had forgotten. A cab, by good luck, was passing
our very door; but the chambermaid would not let us enter it till she
had satisfied herself that it was not the same she had dismissed. This
preliminary investigation completed, we entered and drove to the Lamb.

The chambermaid, who sat opposite, passed the time in ineffectual
overtures to relieve my father of the little girl,--who still clung
nestling to his breast,--in a long epic, much broken into episodes, of
the causes which had led to her dismissal of the late cabman, who, to
swell his fare, had thought proper to take a "circumbendibus!"--and with
occasional tugs at her cap, and smoothings down of her gown, and
apologies for being such a figure, especially when her eyes rested on my
satin cravat, or drooped on my shining boots.

Arrived at the Lamb, the chambermaid, with conscious dignity, led us up
a large staircase, which seemed interminable. As she mounted the region
above the third story, she paused to take breath and inform us,
apologetically, that the house was full, but that if the "gent" stayed
over Friday, he would be moved into No. 54, "with a look-out and a
chimbly." My little cousin now slipped from my father's arms, and,
running up the stairs, beckoned to us to follow. We did so, and were
led to a door, at which the child stopped and listened; then, taking off
her shoes, she stole in on tiptoe. We entered after her.

By the light of a single candle we saw my poor uncle's face; it was
flushed with fever, and the eyes had that bright, vacant stare which it
is so terrible to meet. Less terrible is it to find the body wasted,
the features sharp with the great life-struggle, than to look on the
face from which the mind is gone,--the eyes in which there is no
recognition. Such a sight is a startling shock to that unconscious
habitual materialism with which we are apt familiarly to regard those we
love; for in thus missing the mind, the heart, the affection that sprang
to ours, we are suddenly made aware that it was the something within the
form, and not the form itself, that was so dear to us. The form itself
is still, perhaps, little altered; but that lip which smiles no welcome,
that eye which wanders over us as strangers, that ear which
distinguishes no more our voices,--the friend we sought is not there!
Even our own love is chilled back; grows a kind of vague, superstitious
terror. Yes, it was not the matter, still present to us, which had
conciliated all those subtle, nameless sentiments which are classed and
fused in the word "affection;" it was the airy, intangible, electric
something, the absence of which now appals us.

I stood speechless; my father crept on, and took the hand that returned
no pressure. The child only did not seem to share our emotions, but,
clambering on the bed, laid her cheek on the breast, and was still.

"Pisistratus," whispered my father at last, and I stole near, hushing my
breath,--"Pisistratus, if your mother were here!"

I nodded; the same thought had struck us both. His deep wisdom, my
active youth, both felt their nothingness then and there. In the sick
chamber both turned helplessly to miss the woman.

So I stole out, descended the stairs, and stood in the open air in a
sort of stunned amaze. Then the tramp of feet, and the roll of wheels,
and the great London roar, revived me. That contagion of practical life
which lulls the heart and stimulates the brain,--what an intellectual
mystery there is in its common atmosphere! In another moment I had
singled out, like an inspiration, from a long file of those ministrants
of our Trivia, the cab of the lightest shape and with the strongest
horse, and was on my way, not to my mother's, but to Dr. M-- H--,
Manchester Square, whom I knew as the medical adviser to the Trevanions.
Fortunately, that kind and able physician was at home, and he promised
to be with the sufferer before I myself could join him. I then drove to
Russell Street, and broke to my mother, as cautiously as I could, the
intelligence with which I was charged.

When we arrived at the Lamb, we found the doctor already writing his
prescription and injunctions: the activity of the treatment announced
the clanger. I flew for the surgeon who had been before called in.
Happy those who are strange to that indescribable silent bustle which
the sick-room at times presents,--that conflict which seems almost hand
to hand between life and death,--when all the poor, unresisting,
unconscious frame is given up to the war against its terrible enemy the
dark blood flowing, flowing; the hand on the pulse, the hushed suspense,
every look on the physician's bended brow; then the sinapisms to the
feet, and the ice to the head; and now and then, through the lull of the
low whispers, the incoherent voice of the sufferer,--babbling, perhaps,
of green fields and fairyland, while your hearts are breaking! Then, at
length, the sleep,--in that sleep, perhaps, the crisis,--the breathless
watch, the slow waking, the first sane words, the old smile again, only
fainter, your gushing tears, your low "Thank God thank God!"

Picture all this! It is past; Roland has spoken, his sense has
returned; my mother is leaning over him; his child's small hands are
clasped round his neck; the surgeon, who has been there six hours, has
taken up his hat, and smiles gayly as he nods farewell; and my father is
leaning against the wall, his face covered with his hands.

CHAPTER II.

All this had been so sudden that, to use the trite phrase,--for no other
is so expressive,--it was like a dream. I felt an absolute, an
imperious want of solitude, of the open air. The swell of gratitude
almost stifled me; the room did not seem large enough for my big heart.
In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we
find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring
side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in
our room, or get away into the streets or the fields; in our earlier
years we are still the savages of Nature, and we do as the poor brute
does: the wounded stag leaves the herd, and if there is anything on a
dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.

Accordingly, I stole out of the hotel and wandered through the streets,
which were quite deserted. It was about the first hour of dawn,--the
most comfortless hour there is, especially in London! But I only felt
freshness in the raw air, and soothing in the desolate stillness. The
love my uncle inspired was very remarkable in its nature; it was not
like that quiet affection with which those advanced in life must usually
content themselves, but connected with the more vivid interest that
youth awakens. There was in him still so much of viva, city and fire,
in his errors and crotchets so much of the self-delusion of youth, that
one could scarce fancy him other than young. Those Quixotic,
exaggerated notions of honor, that romance of sentiment which no
hardship, care, grief, disappointment, could wear away (singular in a
period when, at two and twenty, young men declare themselves blases!),
seemed to leave him all the charm of boyhood. A season in London had
made me more a man of the world, older in heart than he was. Then, the
sorrow that gnawed him with such silent sternness. No, Captain Roland
was one of those men who seize hold of your thoughts, who mix themselves
up with your lives. The idea that Roland should die,--die with the load
at his heart unlightened,--was one that seemed to take a spring out of
the wheels of nature, all object out of the aims of life,--of my life at
least. For I had made it one of the ends of my existence to bring back
the son to the father, and restore the smile, that must have been gay
once, to the downward curve of that iron lip. But Roland was now out of
danger; and yet, like one who has escaped shipwreck, I trembled to look
back on the danger past: the voice of the devouring deep still boomed in
my ears. While rapt in my reveries, I stopped mechanically to hear a
clock strike--four; and, looking round, I perceived that I had wandered
from the heart of the City, and was in one of the streets that lead out
of the Strand. Immediately before me, on the doorsteps of a large shop
whose closed shutters were as obstinate a stillness as if they had
guarded the secrets of seventeen centuries in a street in Pompeii,
reclined a form fast asleep, the arm propped on the hard stone
supporting the head, and the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs. The
dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the
remains of a certain pretence; an air of faded, shabby, penniless
gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate
unfitness to grapple with it. The face of this person was hollow and
pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. I drew
near and nearer; I recognized the countenance, the regular features, the
raven hair, even a peculiar gracefulness of posture: the young man whom
I had met at the inn by the way-side, and who had left me alone with the
Savoyard and his mice in the churchyard, was before me. I remained
behind the shadow of one of the columns of the porch, leaning against
the area rails, and irresolute whether or not so slight an acquaintance
justified me in waking the sleeper, when a policeman, suddenly emerging
from an angle in the street, terminated my deliberations with the
decision of his practical profession; for he laid hold of the young
man's arm and shook it roughly: "You must not lie here; get up and go
home!" The sleeper woke with a quick start, rubbed his eyes, looked
round, and fixed them upon the policeman so haughtily that that
discriminating functionary probably thought that it was not from sheer
necessity that so improper a couch had been selected, and with an air of
greater respect he said, "You have been drinking, young man,--can you
find your way home?"

"Yes," said the youth, resettling himself, "you see I have found it!"

"By the Lord Harry!" muttered the policeman, "if he ben't going to sleep
again. Come, come, walk on; or I must walk you off."

My old acquaintance turned round. "Policeman," said he, with a strange
sort of smile, "what do you think this lodging is worth,--I don't say
for the night, for you see that is over, but for the next two hours?
The lodging is primitive, but it suits me; I should think a shilling
would be a fair price for it, eh?"

"You love your joke, sir," said the policeman, with a brow much relaxed,
and opening his hand mechanically.

"Say a shilling, then; it is a bargain! I hire it of you upon credit.
Good night, and call me at six o'clock."

With that the young man settled himself so resolutely, and the
policeman's face exhibited such bewilderment, that I burst out laughing,
and came from my hiding-place.

The policeman looked at me. "Do you know this--this--"

"This gentleman?" said I, gravely. "Yes, you may leave him to me;" and
I slipped the price of the lodging into the policeman's hand. He looked
at the shilling, he looked at me, he looked up the street and down the
street, shook his head, and walked off. I then approached the youth,
touched him, and said: "Can you remember me, sir; and what have you done
with Mr. Peacock?"

Stranger (after a pause).--"I remember you; your name is Caxton."

Pisistratus.--"And yours?"

Stranger.--"Poor devil, if you ask my pockets,--pockets, which are the
symbols of man; Dare-devil, if you ask my heart. [Surveying me from
head to foot.] The world seems to have smiled on you, Mr. Caxton! Are
you not ashamed to speak to a wretch lying on the stones? but, to be
sure, no one sees you."

Pisistratus (sententiously).--"Had I lived in the last century, I might
have found Samuel Johnson lying on the stones."

Stranger (rising).--"You have spoilt my sleep: you had a right, since
you paid for the lodging. Let me walk with you a few paces; you need
not fear, I do not pick pockets--yet!"

Pisistratus.--"You say the world has smiled on me; I fear it has frowned
on you. I don't say 'courage,' for you seem to have enough of that; but
I say 'patience,' which is the rarer quality of the two."

Stranger.--"Hem! [again looking at me keenly.] Why is it that you stop
to speak to me,--one of whom you know nothing, or worse than nothing?"

Pisistratus.--"Because I have often thought of you; because you interest
me; because--pardon me--I would help you if I can,--that is, if you want
help."

Stranger.--"Want? I am one want! I want sleep, I want food; I want the
patience you recommend,--patience to starve and rot. I have travelled
from Paris to Boulogne on foot, with twelve sous in my pocket. Out of
those twelve sous in my pocket I saved four; with the four I went to a
billiard-room at Boulogne: I won just enough to pay my passage and buy
three rolls. You see I only require capital in order to make a fortune.
If with four sous I can win ten francs in a night, what could I win with
a capital of four sovereigns, and in the course of a year? That is an
application of the Rule of Three which my head aches too much to
calculate just at present. Well, those three rolls have lasted me three
days; the last crumb went for supper last night. Therefore, take care
how you offer me money (for that is what men mean by help). You see I
have no option but to take it. But I warn you, don't expect gratitude;
I have none in me!"

Pisistratus.--"You are not so bad as you paint yourself. I would do
something more for you, if I can, than lend you the little I have to
offer. Will you be frank with me?"

Stranger.--"That depends; I have been frank enough hitherto, I think."

Pisistratus.--"True; so I proceed without scruple. Don't tell me your
name or your condition, if you object to such confidence; but tell me if
you have relations to whom you can apply? You shake your head. Well,
then, are you willing to work for yourself, or is it only at the
billiard-table--pardon me--that you can try to make four sous produce
ten francs?"

Stranger (musing).--"I understand you. I have never worked yet,--I
abhor work. But I have no objection to try if it is in me."

Pisistratus.--"It is in you. A man who can walk from Paris to Boulogne
with twelve sous in his pocket and save four for a purpose; who can
stake those four on the cool confidence in his own skill, even at
billiards; who can subsist for three days on three rolls; and who, on
the fourth day, can wake from the stones of a capital with an eye and a
spirit as proud as yours,--has in him all the requisites to subdue
fortune."

Stranger.--"Do you work--you?"

Pisistratus.--"Yes--and hard."

Stranger.--"I am ready to work, then."

Pisistratus.--"Good. Now, what can you do?"

Stranger (with his odd smile).--"Many things useful. I can split a
bullet on a penknife; I know the secret tierce of Coulon, the fencing-
master; I can speak two languages (besides English) like a native, even
to their slang; I know every game in the cards; I can act comedy,
tragedy, farce; I can drink down Bacchus himself; I can make any woman I
please in love with me,--that is, any woman good for nothing. Can I
earn a handsome livelihood out of all this,--wear kid gloves and set up
a cabriolet? You see my wishes are modest!"

Pisistratus.--"You speak two languages, you say, like a native,--French,
I suppose, is one of them?"

Stranger.--"Yes."

Pisistratus.--"Will you teach it?"

Stranger (haughtily). "No. Je suis gentilhomme, which means more or
less than a gentleman. Gentilhomme means well born, because free born;
teachers are slaves!"

Pisistratus (unconsciously imitating Mr. Trevanion).--"Stuff!"

Stranger (looks angry, and then laughs).--"Very true; stilts don't suit
shoes like these! But I cannot teach. Heaven help those I should
teach! Anything else?"

Pisistratus.--"Anything else!--you leave me a wide margin. You know
French thoroughly,--to write as well as speak? That is much. Give me
some address where I can find you,--or will you call on me?"

Stranger.--"No! Any evening at dusk I will meet you. I have no address
to give, and I cannot show these rags at another man's door."

Pisistratus.--"At nine in the evening, then, and here in the Strand, on
Thursday next. I may then have found some thing that will suit you.
Meanwhile--" slides his purse into the Stranger's hand. N. B.--Purse
not very full.

Stranger, with the air of one conferring a favor, pockets the purse; and
there is something so striking in the very absence of all emotion at so
accidental a rescue from starvation that Pisistratus exclaims,--

"I don't know why I should have taken this fancy to you, Mr. Dare-devil,
if that be the name that pleases you best. The wood you are made of
seems cross-grained, and full of knots; and yet, in the hands of a
skilful carver, I think it would be worth much."

Stranger (startled).--"Do you? Do you? None, I believe, ever thought
that before. But the same wood, I suppose, that makes the gibbet could
make the mast of a man-of-war. I tell you, however, why you have taken
this fancy to me,--the strong sympathize with the strong. You, too,
could subdue fortune!"

Pisistratus.--"Stop! If so, if there is congeniality between us, then
liking should be reciprocal. Come, say that; for half my chance of
helping you is in my power to touch your heart."

Stranger (evidently softened).--"If I were as great a rogue as I ought
to be, my answer would be easy enough. As it is, I delay it. Adieu.--
On Thursday."

Stranger vanishes in the labyrinth of alleys round Leicester Square.

CHAPTER III.

On my return to the Lamb, I found that my uncle was in a soft sleep; and
after a morning visit from the surgeon, and his assurance that the fever
was fast subsiding, and all cause for alarm was gone, I thought it
necessary to go back to Trevanion's house and explain the reason for my
night's absence. But the family had not returned from the country.
Trevanion himself came up for a few hours in the afternoon, and seemed
to feel much for my poor uncle's illness. Though, as usual, very busy,
he accompanied me to the Lamb to see my father and cheer him up. Roland
still continued to mend, as the surgeon phrased it; and as we went back
to St. James's Square, Trevanion had the consideration to release me
from my oar in his galley for the next few days. My mind, relieved from
my anxiety for Roland, now turned to my new friend. It had not been
without an object that I had questioned the young man as to his
knowledge of French. Trevanion had a large correspondence in foreign
countries which was carried on in that language; and here I could be but
of little help to him. He himself, though he spoke and wrote French
with fluency and grammatical correctness, wanted that intimate knowledge
of the most delicate and diplomatic of all languages to satisfy his
classical purism.

For Trevanion was a terrible word-weigher. His taste was the plague of
my life and his own. His prepared speeches (or rather perorations) were
the most finished pieces of cold diction that could be conceived under
the marble portico of the Stoics,--so filed and turned, trimmed and
tamed, that they never admitted a sentence that could warm the heart, or
one that could offend the ear. He had so great a horror of a vulgarism
that, like Canning, he would have made a periphrasis of a couple of
lines to avoid using the word "cat." It was only in extempore speaking
that a ray of his real genius could indiscreetly betray itself. One may
judge what labor such a super-refinement of taste would inflict upon a
man writing in a language not his own to some distinguished statesman or
some literary institution,--knowing that language just well enough to
recognize all the native elegances he failed to attain. Trevanion at
that very moment was employed upon a statistical document intended as a
communication to a Society at Copenhagen of which he was all honorary
member. It had been for three weeks the torment of the whole house,
especially of poor Fanny (whose French was the best at our joint
disposal). But Trevanion had found her phraseology too mincing, too
effeminate, too much that of the boudoir. Here, then, was an
opportunity to introduce my new friend and test the capacities that I
fancied he possessed. I therefore, though with some hesitation, led the
subject to "Remarks on the Mineral Treasures of Great Britain and
Ireland" (such was the title of the work intended to enlighten the
savants of Denmark); and by certain ingenious circumlocutions, known to
all able applicants, I introduced my acquaintance with a young gentleman
who possessed the most familiar and intimate knowledge of French, and
who might be of use in revising the manuscript. I knew enough of
Trevanion to feel that I could not reveal the circumstances under which
I had formed that acquaintance, for he was much too practical a man not
to have been frightened out of his wits at the idea of submitting so
classical a performance to so disreputable a scapegrace. As it was,
however, Trevanion, whose mind at that moment was full of a thousand
other things, caught at my suggestion, with very little cross-
questioning on the subject, and before he left London consigned the
manuscript to my charge.

"My friend is poor," said I, timidly.

"Oh! as to that," cried Trevanion, hastily, "if it be a matter of
charity, I put my purse in your hands; but don't put my manuscript in
his! If it be a matter of business, it is another affair; and I must
judge of his work before I can say how much it is worth,--perhaps
nothing!"

So ungracious was this excellent man in his very virtues!

"Nay," said I, "it is a matter of business, and so we will consider it."

"In that case," said Trevanion, concluding the matter and buttoning his
pockets, "if I dislike his work,--nothing; if I like it,--twenty
guineas. Where are the evening papers?" and in another moment the
member of Parliament had forgotten the statist, and was pishing and
tutting over the "Globe" or the "Sun."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3