Читать книгу The Hillyars and the Burtons - Henry Kingsley - Страница 21

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GOLDEN hours, which can never come back any more. Hours as peaceful and happy as the close of a summer Sabbath, among dark whispering elm-woods, or on quiet downs, aloft above the murmuring village. Was it on that evening only, or was it on many similar evenings, that we all sat together, in a twilight which seemed to last for hours, before the fire, talking quietly together? Why, when at this distance of time I recall those gatherings before the fire, in the quaint draughty old room, do I always think of such things as these?--of dim, vast cathedrals, when the service is over, and the last echoes of the organ seem still rambling in the roof, trying to break away after their fellows towards heaven,--of quiet bays between lofty chalk headlands, where one lies and basks the long summer day before the gently murmuring surf,--of very quiet old churches, where the monuments of the dead are crowded thick together, and the afternoon sun slopes in on the kneeling and lying effigies of men who have done their part in the great English work, and are waiting, without care, without anxiety, for their wages? Why does my rambling fancy, on these occasions, ever come back again to the long series of peaceful and quiet images,--to crimson sunsets during a calm in mid ocean,--to high green capes, seen from the sea, the sides of whose long--drawn valleys are ribbed with gray rocks,--to curtains of purple dolomite, seen from miles away across the yellow plain, cut in the centre by a silver waterfall,--to great icebergs floating on the calm blue sea,--to everything, in short, which I have seen in my life which speaks of peace? And why, again, do I always come at last to the wild dim blue promontory, whose wrinkled downs are half obscured by clouds of wind-driven spray?

How many of these evenings were there? There must have been a great many, because I remember that Reuben came home for the winter one dead drear November night, and Erne accompanied him and stayed for an hour. I cannot say how long they lasted. A year or two, first and last.

What arose out of them that is noticeable is soon told. In the first place, this period constituted a new era in Joe's life. Erne's books and Erne's knowledge and assistance were at his service, and he soon, as Erne told me, began to bid fair to be a distinguished scholar. "He not only had perseverance and memory, but genius also," said Erne. "He sees the meaning of a thing quicker than I do. Joe is far cleverer than I."

At first I had been a little anxious about one thing, though I have never named my anxiety to any one. I was afraid lest Reuben should become jealous of Erne, and stay away from us. It was not so. Reuben grew devoted to Erne, and seemed pleased with his admiration of Emma. I began to see that Emma's influence over Reuben, great as it was, arose more from a sincere respect and esteem on his part than anything else. I was therefore glad to find that nothing was likely to interfere with it. As for Erne, he had fallen most deeply in love with her, and I had seen it from the beginning.

I, for my part, in my simplicity, could see no harm in that. In fact, it seemed to me an absolutely perfect arrangement that these two should pass their lives in a fool's paradise together. As for my father and mother, they looked on us all as a parcel of children, and nothing more; and, besides, they both had the blindest confidence in Emma, child as she was. At all events, I will go bail that no two people ever lived less capable of any design on Erne's rank or property. I insult them by mentioning such a subject.

Whether it was that I had represented Sir George Hillyar to Reuben as a very terrible person, or whether it was that Reuben's London assurance would not stand the test of the chilling atmosphere of the upper classes, I cannot say; but Reuben was cowed. When the time came for him to fulfil his engagement to go to Kew and take care of Sir George Hillyar's boats, he grew anxious and fidgetty, and showed a strong tendency to back out of the whole business.

"I say, Emma, old woman," he said, the night before I was to go with him and introduce him, "I wish I was well out of this here."

"Well out of what, Reuben dear?" said Emma.--"And no body but the child and the two angels knew as the crossing sweeper boy was gone to heaven; but, when they got up there, he was awaiting for 'em, just as the angel in blue had told the angel in pink silk and spangles he would be." (This last was only the tail of some silly story which she had been telling the little ones; it has nothing to do with the plot).

"Why, well out of going up to Kew, to look after these boats. The old co--gentleman, I should say, is a horrid old painted Mussulman. When he do go on the war-train, which is twenty-four hours a day,--no allowance for meals,--he is everlastingly a-digging up of his tommyawk. All the servants is prematurely gray; and, if the flowers don't blow on the very day set down in the gardening column of Bell's Life, he's down on the gardeners, till earthquakes and equinoctials is a fool to him."

"Ain't you talking nonsense, Reuben dear?" said Emma.

"May be," said Reuben, quietly. "But, by all accounts, he is the most exasperating bart as ever was since barts was, which was four years afore the first whycount married the heiress of the great cod-liver-oil manufacturer at Battersea. It flew to his lower extremities," continued Reuben, looking in a comically defiant manner at Emma, and carefully putting the fire together; "and he drank hisself to death with it. He died like a bus-horse, in consequence of the grease getting into his heels. Now!"

"Have you quite done, Reuben?" asked Emma.

Reuben said he had finished for the present.

"Then," said Emma, "let me tell you that you are very foolish in prejudicing yourself against this gentleman from what you have heard at the waterside, since he came to Kew. However, I am not altogether sorry, for you will find him quite different,--quite different, I assure you."

It was bedtime, and we all moved up stairs together in a compact body, on account of Frank. That tiresome young monkey, Harry, in an idle hour--when, as Dr. Watts tells us, Satan is ready to find employment--had told Frank that the Guy Fawkeses lived under the stairs, and had produced the most tiresome complications. The first we heard of it was one day when Frank was helping Fred down stairs. Fred was coming carefully down one step at a time, sucking his thumb the while, and holding on by Frank, when Frank suddenly gave a sharp squeal, and down the two came, fifteen stairs, on to the mat at the bottom. To show the extraordinary tricks which our imaginations play with us at times,--to show, indeed, that Mind does sometimes triumph over Matter,--I may mention that Frank (the soul of truth and honesty) declared positively that he had seen an arm clothed in blue cloth, with brass buttons at the wrist, thrust itself through the banisters, and try to catch hold of his leg. On observing looks of incredulity, he added that the Hand of the Arm was full of brimstone matches, and that he saw the straw coming out at its elbows. After this, a strong escort was necessary every night, when he went to bed. He generally preferred going up pick-a-back on Reuben's broad shoulders, feeling probably safer about the legs.

How well I remember a little trait of character that night. Fred conceived it more manly to walk up to bed without the assistance even of Emma. When we were half-way up the great staircase, Reuben, carrying Frank, raised an alarm of Guy Fawkeses. We all rushed, screaming and laughing, up the stairs, and when we gained the landing, and looked back, we saw that we had left Fred behind, in the midst of all the dreadful peril which we had escaped. But the child toiled steadily and slowly on after us, with a broad smile on his face, refusing to hurry himself for all the Guy Fawkeses in the world. When he got his Victoria Cross at Delhi for staying behind, that he might bring poor Lieutenant Tacks back on his shoulders, to die among English faces, I thought of this night on the stairs at Chelsea. He hurried no faster out of that terrible musketry fire in the narrow street than he did from the Guy Fawkeses on the stairs. Among all Peel's heroes, there was no greater hero than our big-headed Fred. The post-captain who has got Frederick Burton for his boatswain is an envied and lucky man to this day.

Reuben, who had to toil up stairs to his lonely haunted room at the top of the house, asked me to come with him. Of course I went, though, great lubberly lad as I was, I remember having an indistinct dread of coming down again by myself.

There was a dull fire burning, and the great attic looked horribly ghostly; and, as I sat before the fire, strange unearthly draughts seemed to come from the deserted and still more ghostly room beyond, which struck, now on this shoulder and now on that, with a chill, as if something was laying its hand on me. Reuben had lit a candle, but that did not make matters better, but a great deal worse; for, when I looked at his face by the light of it, I saw that he looked wild and wan, and was ashy pale.

He took a letter from the pocket of his pea-jacket, and burnt it. Before it was quite consumed, he turned to me, and said:--

"Jim, Jim, dear old chap, you won't desert me, will you, when it comes, and I can't see or speak to Emma or the kids any more? You will go between us sometimes, and tell her and them that I am only stupid old Reuben, as loves 'em well, by G--; and that I ain't changed in spite of all?"

I was infinitely distressed. The fact is, that I loved my cousin Reuben,--in a selfish way, of course. I had a certain quantity of rough, latent humor, but no power of expression. Reuben, on a mere hint from me of some gross incongruity, would spin out yard after yard of verbose, fantastic nonsense to the text which I had given him. He was necessary to me, and I was fond of him in consequence.

"Reuben, old boy," I said, "I'll go to death with you. I'll never, never desert you, I tell you. If you have been led away, Reuben, why, you may be led back again." I took his hand, and felt that I was as pale as he. "Is it--is it--anything that will take you for long, Rube? Shall you go abroad, Rube?" And here, like a young fool, I burst out crying.

"Lord bless his faithful heart!" said Reuben, in his old manner, "I have n't been doing of nothink. But, Jim, what was it you said just now?"

I said, "What did he mean? 'that I could follow him to death?"'

He said, "Yes; that is what I meant. And, Jim, old chap, it runs to that. Not for me, but for others. In my belief, Jim, it runs to that. Joe could tell us, but we musn't ask Joe. Joe's a chap as is rising fast, and musn't be pulled down by other folk's troubles. Lawyers could tell us,--but, Lord love you, we musn't ask no lawyers. We'd best know nothing about it than ask they. And you musn't know nothing either; only don't desert me, old Jim."

I said again that I would not. And, if ever I kept my word, I kept that promise.

"I know you won't," he said, with that strange mixture of shrewdness, rough honor, and recklessness which one finds among Londoners; "but then, Jim, if you are true to me, you will have, may be, to know and not to know at one and the same time, to go with a guilty breast among the little ones, and before Emma. Better leave me, Jim; better leave me while you can."

I declared I would not; but that I would stick by him and give him a good word when he wanted it. And then, at his solicitation, I stayed with him all night. Once he woke, and cried out that the barge had got too far down the river, and was drifting out to sea. Then that the corpses of all the people who had committed suicide on the bridges were rising up and looking at us. I slept but little after this, and was glad when morning dawned.

But the next morning Reuben was as bright, as brisk, and as nonsensical as ever. He defied Emma. She ventured to hope that he would be steady, and not attend to everything he heard about people without inquiry. He said he was obliged to her, and would n't; that he had left three or four pair of old boots up stairs, and, if she'd be good enough to send 'em to the beadle and get 'em darned, he 'd thank her. The passion and earnestness of last night was all gone apparently. Nothing was to be got from him, even by Emma, but chaff and nonsense. The true London soul revolted from, and was ashamed of, the passion of last night. Even with me he seemed half ashamed and half captious.

We were not very long in getting to Kew. Early as we were, the servants had to inform us that Sir George and Mr. Erne had gone out riding. We waited in the servants' hall, in and out of which gray-headed servants came now and then to look, it would seem, at the strange sight of two round young faces like ours. About nine o'clock, the butler came and asked us to come to prayers, and we went up into a great room, where breakfast was laid, and made the end of a long row of servants, sitting with our backs against a great sideboard, while a gray-headed old gentleman read a very long prayer. The moment we were alone together, Reuben, who was in a singularly nervous and insolent mood, objected to this prayer in language of his own, which I shall not repeat. He objected that three-quarters of it was consumed in conveying information to the Deity, concerning our own unworthiness and his manifold greatness and goodness; and that altogether it was as utterly unlike the Lord's Prayer or any of the Church prayers as need be.

I was very anxious about him. I dreaded the meeting between him and the terrible old baronet. I was glad when things came to a crisis. We saw Sir George come riding across the park on a beautiful swift-stepping gray cob, accompanied by Erne on a great, nearly thorough-bred chestnut. They were talking merrily together and laughing. They were certainly a splendid couple, though Erne would have looked to better advantage on a smaller horse. They rode into the stable-yard, where we were instructed to wait for them, and dismounted.

"That," said Sir George Hillyar, advancing and pointing sternly at me with his riding-whip, "is the boy Burton. I have seen him before."

This previous conviction was too damning to be resisted. I pleaded guilty.

"And that?" said he, turning almost fiercely upon Reuben.

Erne stood amused, leaving us to fight our own battle. I said it was Rube.

"Who?" said Sir George.

"Reuben, my cousin," I said, "that was come to take care of his honor's boats."

Sir George looked at Reuben for full a minute without speaking, and then he said, "Come here, you young monkey."

As Reuben approached, utterly puzzled by this style of reception, I noticed a look of curiosity on Sir George's face. When Reuben stood before him, quick as light Sir George turned and looked at Erne for one second, and then looked at Reuben again. Steadily gazing at him, he pointed the handle of his riding-whip towards him, and said, "Look here, sirrah, do you hear? You are to have fifteen shillings a week, and are to put three half--crowns in the savings'-bank. You are to get up at seven, to say your prayers, to clean the boats, and offer to help the gardener. If he is fool enough to accept your offer, you may tell him that you were n't hired to work in the garden. If Mr. Erne bathes, you are to row round and round him in a boat, and try to prevent his drowning himself. If he does, you are to send a servant to me, informing me of the fact, and go for the drags. If such a casualty should occur, you are to consider your engagement as terminated that day week. I object to skittles, to potting at public-houses, and to running along the towing-path like a lunatic, bellowing at the idiots who row boat-races. Any conversation with my son Erne on the subjects of pigeon-shooting, pedestrianism, bagatelle, all-fours, toy-terriers, or Non--conformist doctrines, will lead to your immediate dismissal. Do you understand!"

I did not; but Erne and Reuben did. They understood that the old man had taken a fancy to Reuben, and was making fun. They both told me this, and of course I saw they were right at once. Still, I was puzzled at one thing more. Why, after he had turned away, did the old gentleman come back after a few steps, and lay his hands on Reuben's shoulders, looking eagerly into his face? Could he see any likeness to his father,--to the man who had used him so cruelly,--to Samuel Burton? I could not think so. It must have been merely an old man's fancy for Reuben's handsome, merry countenance; for Sir George pushed him away with a smile, and bade him go about his business.