Two Years Ago Volume I Part 4

"Stop, John," said the Doctor. "I think it would be the more courteous plan for Tom to relieve you of his presence. Go and find Mark, Tom; and please to remember that John Briggs is my guest, and that I will not allow any rudeness to him in my house."

"I'll go, daddy, to the world's end, if you like, provided you won't ask me to write poetry. But Jack takes offence so soon. Give us your hand, old tinder-box! I meant no harm, and you know it."

John Briggs took the proffered hand sulkily enough; and Tom went out of the gla.s.s door, whistling as merry as a cricket.

"My dear boy," said the Doctor, when they were alone, "you must try to curb this temper of yours. Don't be angry with me, but--"

"I should be an ungrateful brute if I was, sir. I can bear anything from you. I ought to, for I owe everything to you; but--"

"But, my dear boy--'better is he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.'"

John Briggs tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. "I cannot help it, sir. It will drive me mad, I think at times,--this contrast between what I might be, and what I am, I can bear it no longer--mixing medicines here, when I might be educating myself, distinguishing myself--for I can do it; have you not said as much yourself to me again and again?"

"I have, of course; but--"

"But, sir, only hear me. It is in vain to ask me to command my temper while I stay here. I am not fit for this work; not fit for the dull country. I am not appreciated, not understood; and I shall never be, till I can get to London,--till I can find congenial spirits, and take my rightful place in the great parliament of mind. I am Pegasus in harness, here!" cried the vain, discontented youth. "Let me but once get there,--amid art, civilisation, intellect, and the company of men like that old Mermaid Club, to hear and to answer--

'words, So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As one had put his whole soul in a jest;'--

and then you shall see whether Pegasus has not wings, and can use them too!" And he stopped suddenly, choking with emotion, his nostril and chest dilating, his foot stamping impatiently on the ground.

The Doctor watched him with a sad smile.

"Do you remember the devil's temptation of our Lord--'Cast thyself down from hence; for, it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee?"

"I do; but what has that to do with me?"

"Throw away the safe station in which G.o.d has certainly put you, to seek, by some desperate venture, a new, and, as you fancy, a grander one for yourself? Look out of that window, lad; is there not poetry enough, beauty and glory enough, in that sky, those fields,--ay, in every fallen leaf,--to employ all your powers, considerable as I believe them to be? Why spurn the pure, quiet, country life, in which such men as Wordsworth have been content to live and grow old?"

The boy shook his head like an impatient horse. "Too slow--too slow for me, to wait and wait, as Wordsworth did, through long years of obscurity, misconception, ridicule. No. What I have, I must have at once; and, if it must be, die like Chatterton--if only, like Chatterton, I can have my little day of success, and make the world confess that another priest of the beautiful has arisen among men."

Now, it can scarcely be denied, that the good Doctor was guilty of a certain amount of weakness in listening patiently to all this rant.

Not that the rant was very blamable in a lad of eighteen; for have we not all, while we are going through our course of Sh.e.l.ley, talked very much the same abominable stuff, and thought ourselves the grandest fellows upon earth on account of that very length of ear which was patent to all the world save our precious selves; blinded by our self-conceit, and wondering in wrath why everybody was laughing at us?

But the truth is, the Doctor was easy and indulgent to a fault, and dreaded nothing so much, save telling a lie, as hurting people's feelings; besides, as the acknowledged wise man of Whitbury, he was a little proud of playing the Maecenas; and he had, and not unjustly, a high, opinion of John Briggs's powers. So he had lent him books, corrected his taste in many matters, and, by dint of petting and humouring, had kept the wayward youth half-a-dozen times from running away from his father, who was an apothecary in the town, and from the general pract.i.tioner, Mr. Bolus, under whom John Briggs fulfilled the office of co-a.s.sistant with Tom Thurnall. Plenty of trouble had both the lads given the Doctor in the last five years, but of very different kinds, Tom, though he was in everlasting hot water, as the most incorrigible scapegrace for ten miles round, contrived to confine his naughtiness strictly to play-hours, while he learnt everything which was to be learnt with marvellous quickness, and so utterly fulfilled the ideal of a bottle-boy (for of him, too, as of all things, I presume, an ideal exists eternally in the supra-sensual Platonic universe), that Bolus told his father,--"In hours, sir, he takes care of my business as well as I could myself; but out of hours, sir, I believe he is possessed by seven devils."

John Briggs, on the other hand, sinned in the very opposite direction.

Too proud to learn his business, and too proud also to play the scapegrace as Tom did, he neglected alike work and amus.e.m.e.nt, for lazy mooning over books, and the dreams which books called up. He made perpetual mistakes in the shop; and then considered himself insulted by an "inferior spirit," if poor Bolus called him to account for it.

Indeed, had it not been for many applications of that "precious oil of unity," with which the good Doctor daily anointed the creaking wheels of Whitbury society, John Briggs and his master would have long ago "broken out of gear," and parted company in mutual wrath and fury.

And now, indeed, the critical moment seemed come at last; for the lad began afresh to declare his deliberate intention of going to London to seek his fortune, in spite of parents and all the world.

"To live on here, and never to rise, perhaps, above the post of correspondent to a country newspaper!--To publish a volume of poems by subscription and have to go round, hat in hand, begging five shillings' worth of patronage from every stupid country squire--intolerable! I must go! Shakespeare was never Shakespeare till he fled from miserable Stratford, to become at once the friend of Sidney and Southampton."

"But John Briggs will be John Briggs still, if he went to the moon,"

shouted Tom Thurnall, who had just come up to the window. "I advise you to change that name of yours, Jack, to Sidney, or Percy, or Walker if you like; anything but the ill.u.s.trious surname of Briggs the poisoner!"

"What do you mean, sir!" thundered John, while the Doctor himself jumped up; for Tom was red with rage.

"What is this, Tom!"

"What's that?" screamed Tom, bursting, in spite of his pa.s.sion into roars of laughter. "What's that?"--and he held out a phial "Smell it!

taste it! Oh, if I had but a gallon of it to pour down your throat!

That's what you brought Mark Armsworth last night, instead of his cough mixture, while your brains were wool-gathering after poetry!"

"What is it?" gasped John Briggs.

"Miss Twiddle's black dose;--strong enough to rive the gizard out of an old c.o.c.k!"

"It's not!"

"It is!" roared Mark Armsworth from behind as he rushed in, in shooting-jacket and gaiters, his red face redder with fury, his red whiskers standing on end with wrath like a tiger's, his left hand upon his hapless hypogastric region, his right brandishing an empty gla.s.s, which smelt strongly of brandy and water. "It is! And you've given me the cholera, and spoilt my day's shooting; and if I don't serve you out for it there's no law in England!"

"And spoilt my day's shooting, too; the last I shall get before I'm off to Paris! To have a day in Lord Minchampstead's preserves, and to be baulked of it in this way!"

John Briggs stood as one astonied.

"If I don't serve you out for this!" shouted Mark.

"If I don't serve you out for it! You shall never hear the last of it!" shouted Tom. "I'll take to writing, after all I'll put it in the papers. I'll make the name of Briggs the poisoner an abomination in the land."

John Briggs turned and fled.

"Well!" said Mark, "I must spend my morning at home, I suppose. So I shall just sit and chat with you, Doctor."

"And I shall go and play with Molly," said Tom, and walked off to Armsworth's garden.

"I don't care for myself so much," said Mark; "but I'm sorry the boy's lost his last day's shooting."

"Oh, you will be well enough by noon, and can go then; and as for the boy, it is just as well for him not to grow too fond of sports in which he can never indulge."

"Never indulge? Why not? He vows he'll go to the Rocky Mountains, and shoot a grizzly bear; and he'll do it."

"He has a great deal to do before that, poor fellow; and a great deal to learn."

"And he'll learn it. You're always down-hearted about the boy, Doctor."

"I can't help feeling the parting with him: and for Paris, too:--such a seat of temptation. But it is his own choice; and, after all, he must see temptation, wherever he goes."

"Bless the man! if a boy means to go to the bad, he'll go just as easily in Whitbury as in Paris. Give the lad his head, and never fear; he'll fall on his legs like a cat, I'll warrant him, whatever happens.

He's as steady as old Time, I tell you; there's a grey head on green shoulders there."

"Steady?" said the Doctor, with a smile and a shrug.

"Steady, I tell you at heart; as prudent as you or I; and never lost you a farthing, that you know. Hang good boys! give me one who knows how to be naughty in the right place; I wouldn't give sixpence for a good boy; I never was one myself, and have no faith in them. Give me the lad who has more steam up than he knows what to do with, and must needs blow off a little in larks. When once he settles down on the rail, it'll send him along as steady as a luggage train. Did you never hear a locomotive puffing and roaring before it gets under way? well, that's what your boy is doing. Look at him now, with my poor little Molly."

Tom was cantering about the garden with a little weakly child of eight in his arms. The little thing was looking up in his face with delight, screaming at his jokes.

"You are right, Mark: the boy's heart cannot be in the wrong place while he is so fond of little children."