Читать книгу Nature and Art - Mrs. Inchbald - Страница 14

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While the dean was reading to himself this letter, his countenance frequently changed, and once or twice the tears streamed from his eyes. When it was finished, he exclaimed,

“My brother has sent his child to me, and I will be a parent to him.” He was rushing towards the door, when Lady Clementina stopped him.

“Is it proper, do you think, Mr. Dean, that all the servants in the house should be witnesses to your meeting with your brother and your nephew in the state in which they must be at present? Send for them into a private apartment.”

“My brother!” cried the dean; “oh! that it were my brother! The man is merely a person from the ship, who has conducted his child hither.”

The bell was rung, money was sent to the man, and orders given that the boy should be shown up immediately.

While young Henry was walking up the stairs, the dean’s wife was weighing in her mind in what manner it would most redound to her honour to receive him; for her vanity taught her to believe that the whole inquisitive world pried into her conduct, even upon every family occurrence.

Young William was wondering to himself what kind of an unpolished monster his beggarly cousin would appear; and was contemplating how much the poor youth would be surprised, and awed by his superiority.

The dean felt no other sensation than an impatient desire of beholding the child.

The door opened—and the son of his brother Henry, of his benefactor, entered.

The habit he had on when he left his father, having been of slight texture, was worn out by the length of the voyage, and he was in the dress of a sailor-boy. Though about the same age with his cousin, he was something taller: and though a strong family resemblance appeared between the two youths, he was handsomer than William; and from a simplicity spread over his countenance, a quick impatience in his eye—which denoted anxious curiosity, and childish surprise at every new object which presented itself—he appeared younger than his well-informed and well-bred cousin.

He walked into the room, not with a dictated obeisance, but with a hurrying step, a half pleased, yet a half frightened look, an instantaneous survey of every person present; not as demanding “what they thought of him,” but expressing almost as plainly as in direct words, “what he thought of them.” For all alarm in respect to his safety and reception seemed now wholly forgotten, in the curiosity which the sudden sight of strangers such as he had never seen in his life before, excited: and as to himself, he did not appear to know there was such a person existing: his whole faculties were absorbed in others.

The dean’s reception of him did honour to his sensibility and his gratitude to his brother. After the first affectionate gaze, he ran to him, took him in his arms, sat down, drew him to him, held him between his knees, and repeatedly exclaimed, “I will repay to you all I owe to your father.”

The boy, in return, hugged the dean round the neck, kissed him, and exclaimed,

“Oh! you are my father—you have just such eyes, and such a forehead—indeed you would be almost the same as he, if it were not for that great white thing which grows upon your head!”

Let the reader understand, that the dean, fondly attached to every ornament of his dignified function, was never seen (unless caught in bed) without an enormous wig. With this young Henry was enormously struck; having never seen so unbecoming a decoration, either in the savage island from whence he came, or on board the vessel in which he sailed.

“Do you imagine,” cried his uncle, laying his hand gently on the reverend habiliment, “that this grows?”

“What is on my head grows,” said young Henry, “and so does that which is upon my father’s.”

“But now you are come to Europe, Henry, you will see many persons with such things as these, which they put on and take off.”

“Why do you wear such things?”

“As a distinction between us and inferior people: they are worn to give an importance to the wearer.”

“That’s just as the savages do; they hang brass nails, wire, buttons, and entrails of beasts all over them, to give them importance.”

The dean now led his nephew to Lady Clementina, and told him, “She was his aunt, to whom he must behave with the utmost respect.”

“I will, I will,” he replied, “for she, I see, is a person of importance too; she has, very nearly, such a white thing upon her head as you have!”

His aunt had not yet fixed in what manner it would be advisable to behave; whether with intimidating grandeur, or with amiable tenderness. While she was hesitating between both, she felt a kind of jealous apprehension that her son was not so engaging either in his person or address as his cousin; and therefore she said,

“I hope, Dean, the arrival of this child will give you a still higher sense of the happiness we enjoy in our own. What an instructive contrast between the manners of the one and of the other!”

“It is not the child’s fault,” returned the dean, “that he is not so elegant in his manners as his cousin. Had William been bred in the same place, he would have been as unpolished as this boy.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said young William with a formal bow and a sarcastic smile, “I assure you several of my tutors have told me, that I appear to know many things as it were by instinct.”

Young Henry fixed his eyes upon his cousin, while, with steady self-complacency, he delivered this speech, and no sooner was it concluded than Henry cried out in a kind of wonder,

“A little man! as I am alive, a little man! I did not know there were such little men in this country! I never saw one in my life before!”

“This is a boy,” said the dean; “a boy not older than yourself.”

He put their hands together, and William gravely shook hands with his cousin.

“It is a man,” continued young Henry; then stroked his cousin’s chin. “No, no, I do not know whether it is or not.”

“I tell you again,” said the dean, “he is a boy of your own age; you and he are cousins, for I am his father.”

“How can that be?” said young Henry. “He called you Sir.”

“In this country,” said the dean, “polite children do not call their parents father and mother.”

“Then don’t they sometimes forget to love them as such?” asked Henry.

His uncle became now impatient to interrogate him in every particular concerning his father’s state. Lady Clementina felt equal impatience to know where the father was, whether he were coming to live with them, wanted anything of them, and every circumstance in which her vanity was interested. Explanations followed all these questions; but which, exactly agreeing with what the elder Henry’s letter has related, require no recital here.