CHAPTER. VI
I hate law details as cordially as my readers can, and therefore I shall content myself with stating that Mr. Pike’s management at the end, not of three days, but of two weeks, was so admirable that Uncle Jack was drawn out of prison and my father extracted from all his liabilities by a sum two thirds less than was first startlingly submitted to our indignant horror,—and that, too, in a manner that would have satisfied the conscience of the most punctilious formalist whose contribution to the national fund for an omitted payment to the Income Tax the Chancellor of the Exchequer ever had the honor to acknowledge. Still, the sum was very large in proportion to my poor father’s income; and what with Jack’s debts, the claims of the Anti-Publisher Society’s printer, including the very expensive plates that had been so lavishly bespoken, and in great part completed, for the “History of Human Error,” and, above all, the liabilities incurred on “The Capitalist;” what with the plant, as Mr. Peck technically phrased a great upas-tree of a total, branching out into types, cases, printing-presses, engines, etc., all now to be resold at a third of their value; what with advertisements and bills that had covered all the dead-walls by which rubbish might be shot, throughout the three kingdoms; what with the dues of reporters, and salaries of writers, who had been engaged for a year at least to “The Capitalist,” and whose claims survived the wretch they had killed and buried; what, in short, with all that the combined ingenuity of Uncle Jack and Printer Peck could supply for the utter ruin of the Caxton family (even after all deductions, curtailments, and after all that one could extract in the way of just contribution from the least unsubstantial of those shadows called the shareholders),—my father’s fortune was reduced to a sum of between seven and eight thousand pounds, which being placed at mortgage at four per cent, yielded just L372 10s. a year: enough for my father to live upon, but not enough to afford also his son Pisistratus the advantages of education at Trinity College, Cambridge. The blow fell rather upon me than my father, and my young shoulders bore it without much wincing.
This settled to our universal satisfaction, I went to pay my farewell visit to Sir Sedley Beaudesert. He had made much of me during my stay in London. I had breakfasted and dined with him pretty often; I had presented Squills to him, who no sooner set eyes upon that splendid conformation than he described his character with the nicest accuracy, as the necessary consequence of such a development for the rosy pleasures of life. We had never once retouched on the subject of Fanny’s marriage, and both of us tacitly avoided even mentioning the Trevanions. But in this last visit, though he maintained the same reserve as to Fanny, he referred without scruple to her father.
“Well, my young Athenian,” said he, after congratulating me on the result of the negotiations, and endeavoring again in vain to bear at least some share in my father’s losses, “well, I see I cannot press this further; but at least I can press on you any little interest I may have in obtaining some appointment for yourself in one of the public offices. Trevanion could of course be more useful; but I can understand that he is not the kind of man you would like to apply to.”
“Shall I own to you, my dear Sir Sedley, that I have no taste for official employment? I am too fond of my liberty. Since I have been at my uncle’s old Tower, I account for half my character by the Borderer’s blood that is in me. I doubt if I am meant for the life of cities; and I have odd floating notions in my head that will serve to amuse me when I get home, and may settle into schemes. And now to change the subject: may I ask what kind of person has succeeded me as Mr. Trevanion’s secretary?”
“Why, he has got a broad-shouldered, stooping fellow, in spectacles and cotton stockings, who has written upon ‘Rent,’ I believe,—an imaginative treatise in his case, I fear, for rent is a thing he could never have received, and not often been trusted to pay. However, he is one of your political economists, and wants Trevanion to sell his pictures, as ‘unproductive capital.’ Less mild than Pope’s Narcissa, ‘to make a wash,’ he would certainly ‘stew a child.’ Besides this official secretary, Trevanion trusts, however, a good deal to a clever, good-looking young gentleman who is a great favorite with him.”
“What is his name?”
“His name? Oh! Gower,—a natural son, I believe, of one of the Gower family.”
Here two of Sir Sedley’s fellow fine gentlemen lounged in, and my visit ended.
CHAPTER VII
“I Swear,” cried my uncle, “that it shall be so.” And with a big frown and a truculent air he seized the fatal instrument.
“Indeed, brother, it must not,” said my father, laying one pale, scholar-like hand mildly on Captain Roland’s brown, bellicose, and bony fist, and with the other, outstretched, protecting the menaced, palpitating victim.
Not a word had my uncle heard of our losses until they had been adjusted and the sum paid; for we all knew that the old Tower would have been gone—sold to some neighboring squire or jobbing attorney—at the first impetuous impulse of Uncle Roland’s affectionate generosity. Austin endangered! Austin ruined!—he would never have rested till he came, cash in hand, to his deliverance. Therefore, I say, not till all was settled did I write to the Captain and tell him gayly what had chanced. And however light I made of our misfortunes, the letter brought the Captain to the red brick house the same evening on which I myself reached it, and about an hour later. My uncle had not sold the Tower, but he came prepared to carry us off to it vi et armis. We must live with him and on him, let or sell the brick house, and put out the remnant of my father’s income to nurse and accumulate. And it was on finding my father’s resistance stubborn, and that hitherto he had made no way, that my uncle, stepping back into the hall, in which he had left his carpet bag, etc., returned with an old oak case, and, touching a spring roller, out flew the Caxton pedigree.
Out it flew, covering all the table, and undulating, Nile-like, till it had spread over books, papers, my mother’s work-box, and the tea-service (for the table was large and compendious, emblematic of its owner’s mind); and then, flowing on the carpet, dragged its slow length along till it was stopped by the fender.
“Now,” said my uncle, solemnly, “there never have been but two causes of difference between you and me, Austin. One is over: why should the other last? Aha! I know why you hang back: you think that we may quarrel about it!”
“About what, Roland?”
“About it, I say; and I’ll be d—d if we do!” cried my uncle, reddening. “And I have been thinking a great deal upon the matter, and I have no doubt you are right. So I brought the old parchment with me, and you shall see me fill up the blank just as you would have it. Now, then, you will come and live with me, and we can never quarrel any more.” Thus saying, Uncle Roland looked round for pen and ink; and having found them,—not without difficulty, for they had been submerged under the overflow of the pedigree,—he was about to fill up the lacuna, or hiatus, which had given rise to such memorable controversy, with the name of “William Caxton, printer in the Sanctuary,” when my father, slowly recovering his breath, and aware of his brother’s purpose, intervened. It would have done your heart good to hear them, so completely, in the inconsistency of human nature, had they changed sides upon the question,—my father now all for Sir William de Caxton, the hero of Bosworth; my uncle all for the immortal printer. And in this discussion they grew animated their eyes sparkled, their voices rose,—Roland’s voice deep and thunderous, Austin’s sharp and piercing. Mr. Squills stopped his ears. Thus it arrived at that point, when my uncle doggedly came to the end of all argumentation,—“I swear that it shall be so;” and my father, trying the last resource of pathos, looked pleadingly into Roland’s eyes, and said, with a tone soft as mercy, “Indeed, brother, it must not.” Meanwhile the dry parchment crisped, creaked, and trembled in every pore of its yellow skin.
“But,” said I, coming in opportunely, like the Horatian deity, “I don’t see that either of you gentlemen has a right so to dispose of my ancestry. It is quite clear that a man has no possession in posterity. Posterity may possess him; but deuce a bit will he ever be the better for his great great-grandchildren!”
Squills.—“Hear, hear!”
Pisistratus (warming).—“But a man’s ancestry is a positive property to him. How much, not only of acres, but of his constitution, his temper, his conduct, character, and nature, he may inherit from some progenitor ten times removed! Nay, without that progenitor would he ever have been born,—would a Squills ever have introduced him into the world, or a nurse ever have carried him upo kolpo!”
Squills.—“Hear, hear!”
Pisistratus (with dignified emotion).—“No man, therefore, has a right to rob another of a forefather, with a stroke of his pen, from any motive, howsoever amiable. In the present instance you will say, perhaps, that the ancestor in question is apocryphal,—it may be the printer, it may be the knight. Granted; but here, where history is in fault, shall a mere sentiment decide? While both are doubtful, my imagination appropriates both. At one time I can reverence industry and learning in the printer; at another, valor and devotion in the knight. This kindly doubt gives me two great forefathers; and, through them, two trains of idea that influence my conduct under different circumstances. I will not permit you, Captain Roland, to rob me of either forefather, either train of idea. Leave, then, this sacred void unfilled, unprofaned, and accept this compromise of chivalrous courtesy while my father lives with the Captain, we will believe in the printer; when away from the Captain, we will stand firm to the knight.”
“Good!” cried Uncle Roland, as I paused, a little out of breath.
“And,” said my mother, softly, “I do think, Austin, there is a way of settling the matter which will please all parties. It is quite sad to think that poor Roland and dear little Blanche should be all alone in the Tower; and I am sure that we should be much happier all together.”
“There!” cried Roland, triumphantly. “If you are not the most obstinate, hard-hearted, unfeeling brute in the world,—which I don’t take you to be,—brother Austin, after that really beautiful speech of your wife’s, there is not a word to be said further.”
“But we have not yet heard Kitty to the end, Roland.”
“I beg your pardon a thousand times, ma’am—sister,” said the Captain, bowing.
“Well, I was going to add,” said my mother, “that we will go and live with you, Roland, and club our little fortunes together. Blanche and I will take care of the house, and we shall be just twice as rich together as we are separately.”
“Pretty sort of hospitality that!” grunted the Captain. “I did not expect you to throw me over in that way. No, no; you must lay by for the boy there. What’s to become of him?”
“But we shall all lay by for him,” said my mother, simply,—“you as well as Austin. We shall have more to save, if we have more to spend.”
“Ah, save!—that is easily said; there would be a pleasure in saving, then,” said the Captain, mournfully.
“And what’s to become of me?” cried Squills, very petulantly. “Am I to be left here in my old age, not a rational soul to speak to, and no other place in the village where there’s a drop of decent punch to be had? ‘A plague on both your houses!’ as the chap said at the theatre the other night.”
“There’s room for a doctor in our neighborhood, Mr. Squills,” said the Captain. “The gentleman in your profession who does for us, wants, I know, to sell the business.”
“Humph,” said Squills,—“a horribly healthy neighborhood, I suspect!”
“Why, it has that misfortune, Mr. Squills; but with your help,” said my uncle, slyly, “a great alteration for the better may be effected in that respect.”
Mr. Squills was about to reply when ring—a—ting—ring—ting! there came such a brisk, impatient, make-one’s-self-at home kind of tintinnabular alarum at the great gate that we all started up and looked at each other in surprise. Who could it possibly be? We were not kept long in suspense; for in another moment Uncle Jack’s voice, which was always very clear and distinct, pealed through the hall, and we were still staring at each other when Mr. Tibbets, with a bran-new muffler round his neck, and a peculiarly comfortable greatcoat,—best double Saxony, equally new,—dashed into the room, bringing with him a very considerable quantity of cold air, which he hastened to thaw, first in my father’s arms, next in my mother’s. He then made a rush at the Captain, who ensconced himself behind the dumb-waiter with a “Hem! Mr.—sir—Jack—sir—hem, hem!” Failing there, Mr. Tibbets rubbed off the remaining frost upon his double Saxony against your humble servant, patted Squills affectionately on the back, and then proceeded to occupy his favorite position before the fire.
“Took you by surprise, eh?” said Uncle Jack, unpeeling himself by the hearth-rug. “But no,—not by surprise; you must have known Jack’s heart: you at least, Austin Caxton, who know everything,—you must have seen that it overflowed with the tenderest and most brotherly emotions; that once delivered from that cursed Fleet (you have no idea what a place it is, sir!), I could not rest, night or day, till I had flown here,—here, to the dear family nest,—poor wounded dove that I am,” added Uncle Jack, pathetically, and taking out his pocket-handkerchief from the double Saxony, which he had now flung over my father’s arm-chair.
Not a word replied to this eloquent address, with its touching peroration. My mother hung down her pretty head and looked ashamed. My uncle retreated quite into the corner and drew the dumb-waiter after him, so as to establish a complete fortification. Mr. Squills seized the pen that Roland had thrown down, and began mending it furiously,—that is, cutting it into slivers,—thereby denoting, symbolically, how he would like to do with Uncle Jack, could he once get him safe and snug under his manipular operations. I bent over the pedigree, and my father rubbed his spectacles.
The silence would have been appalling to another man: nothing appalled Uncle Jack.
Uncle Jack turned to the fire, and warmed first one foot, then the other. This comfortable ceremony performed, he again faced the company, and resumed, musingly, and as if answering some imaginary observations,—
“Yes, yes, you are right there; and a deuced unlucky speculation it proved too. But I was overruled by that fellow Peck. Says I to him, says I, ‘Capitalist!—pshaw! no popular interest there; it don’t address the great public! Very confined class the capitalists, better throw ourselves boldly on the people. Yes,’ said I, ‘call it the “Anti-Capitalist.”’ By Jove! sir, we should have carried all before us! but I was overruled. The ‘Anti-Capitalist’!—what an idea! Address the whole reading world, there, sir: everybody hates the capitalist—everybody would have his neighbor’s money. The ‘Anti-Capitalist’!—sir, we should have gone off, in the manufacturing towns, like wildfire. But what could I do?—”
“John Tibbets,” said my father, solemnly, “Capitalist ‘or’ Anti-Capitalist,’ thou hadst a right to follow thine own bent in either,—but always provided it had been with thine own money. Thou seest not the thing, John Tibbets, in the right point of view; and a little repentance in the face of those thou hast wronged, would not have misbecome thy father’s son and thy sister’s brother!”
Never had so severe a rebuke issued from the mild lips of Austin Caxton; and I raised my eyes with a compassionate thrill, expecting to see John Tibbets gradually sink and disappear through the carpet.
“Repentance!” cried Uncle Jack, bounding up as if he had been shot. “And do you think I have a heart of stone, of pumice-stone? Do you think I don’t repent? I have done nothing but repent; I shall repent to my dying day.”
“Then there is no more to be said, Jack,” cried my father, softening, and holding out his hand.
“Yes!” cried Mr. Tibbets, seizing the hand and pressing it to the heart he had thus defended from the suspicion of being pumice, “yes,—that I should have trusted that dunderheaded, rascally curmudgeon Peck; that I should have let him call it ‘The Capitalist,’ despite all my convictions, when the Anti—‘”
“Pshaw!” interrupted my father, drawing away his hand.
“John,” said my mother, gravely, and with tears in her voice, “you forget who delivered you from prison; you forget whom you have nearly consigned to prison yourself; you forg—”
“Hush, hush!” said my father, “this will never do; and it is you who forget, my dear, the obligations I owe to Jack. He has reduced my fortune one half, it is true; but I verily think he has made the three hearts, in which lie my real treasures, twice as large as they were before. Pisistratus, my boy, ring the bell.”
“My dear Kitty,” cried Jack, whimperingly, and stealing up to my mother, “don’t be so hard on me; I thought to make all your fortunes,—I did indeed.”
Here the servant entered.
“See that Mr. Tibbets’s things are taken up to his room, and that there is a good fire,” said my father.
“And,” continued Jack, loftily, “I will, make all your fortunes yet. I have it here!” and he struck his head.
“Stay a moment!” said my father to the servant, who had got back to the door. “Stay a moment,” said my father, looking extremely frightened,—“perhaps Mr. Tibbets may prefer the inn!”
“Austin,” said Uncle Jack, with emotion, “if I were a dog, with no home but a dog-kennel, and you came to me for shelter, I would turn out—to give you the best of the straw!”
My father was thoroughly melted this time.
“Primmins will be sure to see everything is made comfortable for Mr. Tibbets,” said he, waving his hand to the servant. “Something nice for supper, Kitty, my dear,—and the largest punch-bowl. You like punch, Jack?”
“Punch, Austin!” said Uncle Jack, putting his handkerchief to his eyes.
The Captain pushed aside the dumb-waiter, strode across the room, and shook hands with Uncle Jack; my mother buried her face in her apron, and fairly ran off; and Squills said in my ear, “It all comes of the biliary secretions. Nobody could account for this who did not know the peculiarly fine organization of your father’s—liver!”
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!”