The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 18

I had enough to do to listen. They had all day been hunting for lodgings in vain. My father's pocket had been picked of a new India handkerchief.

Primmins, who ought to know London so well, knew nothing about it, and declared it was turned topsy-turvy, and all the streets had changed names. The new silk umbrella, left for five minutes unguarded in the hall, had been exchanged for an old gingham with three holes in it.

It was not till my mother remembered that if she did not see herself that my bed was well aired I should certainly lose the use of my limbs, and therefore disappeared with Primmins and a pert chambermaid, who seemed to think we gave more trouble than we were worth, that I told my father of my new acquaintance with Mr. Trevanion.

He did not seem to listen to me till I got to the name "Trevanion." He then became very pale, and sat down quietly. "Go on," said he, observing I stopped to look at him.

When I had told all, and given him the kind messages with which I had been charged by husband and wife, he smiled faintly; and then, shading his face with his hand, he seemed to muse, not cheerfully, perhaps, for I heard him sigh once or twice.

"And Ellinor," said he at last, without looking up,--"Lady Ellinor, I mean; she is very--very--"

"Very what, sir?"

"Very handsome still?"

"Handsome! Yes, handsome, certainly; but I thought more of her manner than her face. And then f.a.n.n.y, Miss f.a.n.n.y, is so young!"

"Ah!" said my father, murmuring in Greek the celebrated lines of which Pope's translation is familiar to all,--

"'Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground.'

"Well, so they wish to see me. Did Ellinor--Lady Ellinor--say that, or her--her husband?"

"Her husband, certainly; Lady Ellinor rather implied than said it."

"We shall see," said my father. "Open the window; this room is stifling."

I opened the window, which looked on the Strand. The noise, the voices, the trampling feet, the rolling wheels, became loudly audible. My father leaned out for some moments, and I stood by his side. He turned to me with a serene face. "Every ant on the hill," said he, "carries its load, and its home is but made by the burden that it bears. How happy am I!

how I should bless G.o.d! How light my burden! how secure my home!"

My mother came in as he ceased. He went up to her, put his arm round her waist and kissed her. Such caresses with him had not lost their tender charm by custom: my mother's brow, before somewhat ruffled, grew smooth on the instant. Yet she lifted her eyes to his in soft surprise.

"I was but thinking," said my father, apologetically, "how much I owed you, and how much I love you!"

CHAPTER II.

And now behold us, three days after my arrival, settled in all the state and grandeur of our own house in Russell Street, Bloomsbury, the library of the Museum close at hand. My father spends his mornings in those lata silentia, as Virgil calls the world beyond the grave. And a world beyond the grave we may well call that land of the ghosts,--a book collection.

"Pisistratus," said my father one evening, as he arranged his notes before him and rubbed his spectacles, "Pisistratus, a great library is an awful place! There, are interred all the remains of men since the Flood."

"It is a burial-place!" quoth my Uncle Roland, who had that day found us out.

"Please, not such hard words," said the Captain, shaking his head.

"Heraclea was the city of necromancers, in which they raised the dead.

Do want to speak to Cicero?--I invoke him. Do I want to chat in the Athenian market-place, and hear news two thousand years old?--I write down my charm on a slip of paper, and a grave magician calls me up Aristophanes. And we owe all this to our ancest--"

"Ancestors who wrote books; thank you."

Here Roland offered his snuff-box to my father, who, abhorring snuff, benignly imbibed a pinch, and sneezed five times in consequence,--an excuse for Uncle Roland to say, which he did five times, with great unction, "G.o.d bless you, brother Austin!"

As soon as my father had recovered himself, he proceeded, with tears in his eyes, but calm as before the interruption--for he was of the philosophy of the Stoics,--

"But it is not that which is awful. It is the presuming to vie with these 'spirits elect;' to say to them, 'Make way,--I too claim place with the chosen. I too would confer with the living, centuries after the death that consumes my dust. I too--' Ah, Pisistratus! I wish Uncle Jack had been at Jericho before he had brought me up to London and placed me in the midst of those rulers of the world!"

I was busy, while my father spoke, in making some pendent shelves for these "spirits elect;" for my mother, always provident where my father's comforts were concerned, had foreseen the necessity of some such accommodation in a hired lodging-house, and had not only carefully brought up to town my little box of tools, but gone out herself that morning to buy the raw materials. Checking the plane in its progress over the smooth deal, "My dear father," said I, "if at the Philh.e.l.lenic Inst.i.tute I had looked with as much awe as you do on the big fellows that had gone before me, I should have stayed, to all eternity, the lag of the Infant Division."

"Pisistratus, you are as great an agitator as your namesake," cried my father, smiling. "And so, a fig for the big fellows!"

And now my mother entered in her pretty evening cap, all smiles and good humor, having just arranged a room for Uncle Roland, concluded advantageous negotiations with the laundress, held high council with Mrs. Primmins on the best mode of defeating the extortions of London tradesmen, and, pleased with herself and all the world, she kissed my father's forehead as it bent over his notes, and came to the tea-table, which only waited its presiding deity. My Uncle Roland, with his usual gallantry, started up, kettle in hand (our own urn--for we had one--not being yet unpacked), and having performed with soldier-like method the chivalrous office thus volunteered, he joined me at my employment, and said,--

"There is a better steel for the hands of a well-born lad than a carpenter's plane."

"Aha! Uncle--that depends--"

"Depends! What on?"

"On the use one makes of it. Peter the Great was better employed in making ships than Charles XII. in cutting throats."

"Poor Charles XII.!" said my uncle, sighing pathetically; "a very brave fellow!"

"Pity he did not like the ladies a little better!"

"No man is perfect!" said my uncle, sententiously. "But, seriously, you are now the male hope of the family; you are now-" My uncle stopped, and his face darkened. I saw that he thought of his son,--that mysterious son! And looking at him tenderly, I observed that his deep lines had grown deeper, his iron-gray hair more gray. There was the trace of recent suffering on his face; and though he had not spoken to us a word of the business on which he had left us, it required no penetration to perceive that it had come to no successful issue.

My uncle resumed: "Time out of mind, every generation of our house has given one soldier to his country. I look round now: only one branch is budding yet on the old tree; and--"

"Ah! uncle. But what would they say? Do you think I should not like to be a soldier? Don't tempt me!"

My uncle had recourse to his snuff-box; and at that moment--unfortunately, perhaps, for the laurels that might otherwise have wreathed the brows of Pisistratus of England--private conversation was stopped by the sudden and noisy entrance of Uncle Jack. No apparition could have been more unexpected.

"Here I am, my dear friends. How d'ye do; how are you all? Captain de Caxton, yours heartily. Yes, I am released, thank Heaven! I have given up the drudgery of that pitiful provincial paper. I was not made for it.

An ocean in a tea cup! I was indeed! Little, sordid, narrow interests; and I, whose heart embraces all humanity,--you might as well turn a circle into an isolated triangle."

"Isosceles!" said my father, sighing as he pushed aside his notes, and very slowly becoming aware of the eloquence that destroyed all chance of further progress that night in the Great Book. "'Isosceles' triangle, Jack Tibbets, not 'isolated."'

"'Isosceles' or 'isolated,' it is all one," said Uncle Jack, as he rapidly performed three evolutions, by no means consistent with his favorite theory of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number,"--first, he emptied into the cup which he took from my mother's hands half the thrifty contents of a London cream-jug; secondly, he reduced the circle of a m.u.f.fin, by the abstraction of three triangles, to as nearly an isosceles as possible; and thirdly, striding towards the fire, lighted in consideration of Captain de Caxton, and hooking his coat-tails under his arms while he sipped his tea, he permitted another circle peculiar to humanity wholly to eclipse the luminary it approached.

"'Isolated' or 'isosceles,' it is all the same thing. Alan is made for his fellow-creatures. I had long been disgusted with the interference of those selfish Squirearchs. Your departure decided me. I have concluded negotiations with a London firm of spirit and capital and extended views of philanthropy. On Sat.u.r.day last I retired from the service of the oligarchy.

"I am now in my true capacity of protector of the million. My prospectus is printed,--here it is in my pocket. Another cup of tea, sister; a little more cream, and another m.u.f.fin. Shall I ring?" Having disembarra.s.sed himself of his cup and saucer, Uncle Jack then drew forth from his pocket a damp sheet of printed paper. In large capitals stood out "The Anti-Monopoly Gazette; or Popular Champion." He waved it triumphantly before my father's eyes.

"Pisistratus," said my father, "look here. This is the way your Uncle Jack now prints his pats of b.u.t.ter,--a cap of liberty growing out of an open book! Good, Jack! good! good!"

"It is Jacobinical!" exclaimed the Captain.