CHAPTER V.
But I ought to be hard at work preparing myself for Cambridge. The
deuce! how can I? The point in academical education on which I require
most preparation is Greek composition. I come to my father, who, one
might think, was at home enough in this. But rare indeed it is to find
a great scholar who is a good teacher.
My dear father, if one is content to take you in your own way, there
never was a more admirable instructor for the heart, the head, the
principles, or the taste,--when you have discovered that there is some
one sore to be healed, one defect to be repaired; and you have rubbed
your spectacles, and got your hand fairly into that recess between your
frill and your waistcoat. But to go to you cut and dry, monotonously,
regularly, book and exercise in hand; to see the mournful patience with
which you tear yourself from that great volume of Cardan in the very
honeymoon of possession; and then to note those mild eyebrows gradually
distend themselves into perplexed diagonals over some false quantity or
some barbarous collocation, till there steal forth that horrible Papce!
which means more on your lips than I am sure it ever did when Latin was
a live language, and Papce a natural and unpedantic ejaculation!--no, I
would sooner blunder through the dark by myself a thousand times than
light my rushlight at the lamp of that Phlegethonian Papce!
And then my father would wisely and kindly, but wondrous slowly, erase
three fourths of one's pet verses, and intercalate others that one saw
were exquisite, but could not exactly see why. And then one asked why;
and my father shook his head in despair, and said, "But you ought to
feel why!"
In short, scholarship to him was like poetry; he could no more teach it
you than Pindar could have taught you how to make an ode. You breathed
the aroma, but you could no more seize and analyze it than, with the
opening of your naked hand, you could carry off the scent of a rose. I
soon left my father in peace to Cardan and to the Great Book,--which
last, by the way, advanced but slowly; for Uncle Jack had now insisted
on its being published in quarto, with illustrative plates, and those
plates took an immense time, and were to cost an immense sum,--but that
cost was the affair of the Anti-Publisher Society. But how can I settle
to work by myself? No sooner have I got into my room--penitus ab orbe
divisus, as I rashly think--than there is a tap at the door. Now it is
my mother, who is benevolently engaged upon making curtains to all the
windows (a trifling superfluity that Bolt had forgotten or disdained),
and who wants to know how the draperies are fashioned at Mr.
Trevanion's,--a pretence to have me near her, and see with her own eyes
that I am not fretting; the moment she hears I have shut myself up in my
room, she is sure that it is for sorrow. Now it is Bolt, who is making
bookshelves for my father, and desires to consult me at every turn,
especially as I have given him a Gothic design, which pleases him
hugely. Now it is Blanche, whom, in an evil hour, I undertook to teach
to draw, and who comes in on tiptoe, vowing she'll not disturb me, and
sits so quiet that she fidgets me out of all patience. Now, and much
more often, it is the Captain, who wants me to walk, to ride, to fish.
And, by St. Hubert (saint of the chase) bright August comes, and there
is moorgame on those barren wolds; and my uncle has given me the gun he
shot with at my age,--single-barrelled, flint lock; but you would not
have laughed at it if you had seen the strange feats it did in Roland's
hands,--while in mine, I could always lay the blame on the flint lock!
Time, in short, passed rapidly; and if Roland and I had our dark hours,
we chased them away before they could settle,--shot them on the wing as
they got up.
Then, too, though the immediate scenery around my uncle's was so bleak
and desolate, the country within a few miles was so full of objects of
interest,--of landscapes so poetically grand or lovely; and occasionally
we coaxed my father from the Cardan, and spent whole days by the margin
of some glorious lake.
Amongst these excursions I made one by myself to that house in which my
father had known the bliss and the pangs of that stern first-love which
still left its scars fresh on my own memory. The house, large and
imposing, was shut up,--the Trevanions had not been there for years,--
the pleasure-grounds had been contracted into the smallest possible
space. There was no positive decay or ruin,--that Trevanion would never
have allowed; but there was the dreary look of absenteeship everywhere.
I penetrated into the house with the help of my card and half-a-crown.
I saw that memorable boudoir,--I could fancy the very spot in which my
father had heard the sentence that had changed the current of his life.
And when I returned home, I looked with new tenderness on my father's
placid brow, and blessed anew that tender helpmate who in her patient
love had chased from it every shadow.
I had received one letter from Vivian a few days after our arrival. It
had been re-directed from my father's house, at which I had given him my
address. It was short, but seemed cheerful. He said that he believed
he had at last hit on the right way, and should keep to it; that he and
the world were better friends than they had been; that the only way to
keep friends with the world was to treat it as a tamed tiger, and have
one hand on a crowbar while one fondled the beast with the other. He
enclosed me a bank-note, which somewhat more than covered his debt to
me, and bade me pay him the surplus when he should claim it as a
millionnaire. He gave me no address in his letter, but it bore the
postmark of Godalming. I had the impertinent curiosity to look into an
old topographical work upon Surrey, and in a supplemental itinerary I
found this passage: "To the left of the beech wood, three miles from
Godalming, you catch a glimpse of the elegant seat of Francis Vivian,
Esq." To judge by the date of the work, the said Francis Vivian might
be the grandfather of my friend, his namesake. There could no longer be
any doubt as to the parentage of this prodigal son.
The long vacation was now nearly over, and all his guests were to leave
the poor Captain. In fact, we had made a considerable trespass on his
hospitality. It was settled that I was to accompany my father and
mother to their long-neglected Penates, and start thence for Cambridge.
Our parting was sorrowful,--even Mrs. Primmins wept as she shook hands
with Bolt. But Bolt, an old soldier, was of course a lady's man. The
brothers did not shake hands only,--they fondly embraced, as brothers of
that time of life rarely do nowadays, except on the stage. And Blanche,
with one arm round my mother's neck and one round mine, sobbed in my
ear: "But I will be your little wife, I will." Finally, the fly-coach
once more received us all,--all but poor Blanche, and we looked round
and missed her.
