Читать книгу Cradock Nowell - R. D. Blackmore - Страница 9

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The lapse of years made little difference with the Reverend John Rosedew, except to mellow and enfranchise the heart so free and rich by nature, and to pile fresh stores of knowledge in the mind so stored already. Of course the parson had his faults. In many a little matter his friends could come down upon him sharply, if minded so to do. But any one so minded would not have been fit to be called John Rosedewʼs friend.

His greatest fault was one which sprang from his own high chivalry. If once he detected a person, whether taught or untaught, in the attempt to deceive or truckle, that person was to him thenceforth a thing to be pitied and prayed for. Large and liberal as his heart was, charitable and even lenient to all other frailties, the presence of a lie in the air was to it as ozone to a test–paper. And then he was always sorry afterwards when he had shown his high disdain. For who could disprove that John Rosedew himself might have been a thorough liar, if trained and taught to consider truth a policeman with his staff drawn?

Another fault John Rosedew had—and I do not tell his foibles (as our friends do) to enjoy them—he gave to his books and their bygone ages much of the time which he ought to have spent abroad in his own little parish. But this could not be attributed to any form of self–indulgence. Much as he liked his books, he liked his flock still better, but never could overcome the idea that they would rather not be bothered. If any one were ailing, if any one were needy, he would throw aside his Theophrastus, and be where he was wanted, with a mild sweet voice and gentle eyes that crannied not, like a craneʼs bill, into the family crocks and dustbin. It was a part, and no unpleasant one, of his natural diffidence, that he required a poor manʼs invitation quite as much as a rich oneʼs, ere ever he crossed the threshold; unless trouble overflowed the impluvium. In all the parish of Nowelhurst there was scarcely a man or a woman who did not rejoice to see the rector pacing his leisurely rounds, carrying his elbows a little out, as men with large deltoid muscles do, wearing his old hat far back on his head, so that it seemed to slope away from him, and smiling quietly to himself at the children who tugged his coat–tails for an orange or a halfpenny. He never could come out but what the urchins of the village were down upon him as promptly as if he were apple–pie; and many of them had the impudence to call him “Uncle John” before his hair was grey.

Instead of going to school, the boys were apprenticed to him in the classics; and still more pleasantly he taught them to swim, and fish, and row. Of riding he knew but little, except from the treatise of Xenophon, and a paper on the Pelethronian Lapiths; so they learned it as all other boys do, by dint of crown and hard bumpage. Moreover, Mark Stote, head gamekeeper, took them in hand very early as his pupils in woodcraft and gunnery. To tell the truth, Uncle John objected to this accomplishment; he thought that the wholesome excitement and exercise of shooting afforded scarcely a valid reason for the destruction of innocent life. However, he recollected that he had not always thought so—his conversion having been wrought by the shrieks of a wounded hare—neither did he expect to bind all the world with his own girdle. Sir Cradock insisted that the young idea should be taught to shoot, and both the young ideas took to it very kindly.

Perhaps on the whole they were none the worse for the want of public–school training. What they lost thereby in quickness, suspicion, and effrontery, was more than balanced by the gain in purity, simplicity, love of home, and kindliness. For nature had not gifted them with that vulgar arrogance, for which the best prescription is “calcitration nine times a day, and clean the boots for kicking you”. Every year their father took them for a month or two to London, to garnish with some courtly frilling the knuckles of his Hampshire hams. But they only hated it; thorough agricoles they were, and well knew their own blessings: and sweet and gladsome was the morning after each return, though it might be blowing a gale of wind, or drizzling through the ash–leaves. And then the headlong rush to see beloved Uncle John. Nature they loved in any form, sylvan, agrarian, human, when that human form was such as they could climb and nestle in. And there was not in the parish, nor in all the forest, any child so rough and dirty, so shock–headed, and such a scamp, that it could not climb into the arms of John Rosedewʼs fellow–feeling.

But I must not dwell on these pleasant days, the fatherʼs glory, the hopes of the sons, the love of all who came near them, and the blessings of Mrs. OʼGaghan.

They were now to go to Oxford, and astonish the natives there, by showing that a little hic, hæc, hoc, may come even out of Galilee; that a youth never drawn through the wire–gauge of Eton, Harrow, or Rugby, may carry still the electric spark, and be taper and well–rounded. Half their learning accrued sub dio, in the manner of the ancients. Uncle John would lead them between the trees and down to some forest dingle, the boy on his right hand construing aloud or parsing very slowly, the little spark at his left all glowing to explode at the first mistake. Δεξιύσειρος made the running, until he tripped and fell mentally, and even then he was set on his legs, unless the other was down upon him; but in the latter case the yoke–mate leaped into the harness. The stroke–oar on the river that evening was awarded to the one who paced the greatest number of stades in the active voice of expounding. The accuracy, the caution, born of this warm rivalry, became at last so vigilant, that the boy who won the toss for the right–hand place at starting, was almost sure of the stroke–oar.

So they passed the matriculation test with consummate ease, and delighted the college tutor by their clear bold writing. They had not read so much as some men have before entering the University, but all their knowledge was close and firm, and staunch enough for a spring–board. And they wrote most excellent Latin prose, and Greek verse easily flowing. However, Sir Cradock was very nervous on the eve of their departure for the first term of Oxford residence, and led John Rosedew, in whose classical powers he placed the highest confidence, into his private room, and there begged him, as a real friend, tested now for forty years, to tell him bluntly whether the boys were likely to do him credit.

“Donʼt spare me, John, and donʼt spare them: only let us have no disappointment about it”.

“My dear fellow, my dear fellow”! cried John, tugging at his collar, as he always did when nonplussed, for fear of losing himself; “how on earth can I tell? Most likely the men know a great deal more in the University now than they did when I had lectures. Havenʼt I begged you fifty times to have down a young first–classman”?

“Yes, I know you have, John. But I am not quite such a fool, nor so shamelessly ungrateful. To upset the pile of your ten years’ labour, and rebuild it upon its apex! And talk to me of young first–classmen! Why, you know as well as I do, John, that there is not one of them, however brilliant, with a tenth part of your knowledge. It could never be, any more than a young tree can carry the fruit of an old one. Why, when you took your own first–class, they could only find one man to put with you, and you have never ceased to read, read, read, ever since you left old Oriel, and chiefly in taste and philology. And such a memory as you have! John, I am ashamed of you. You want to impose upon me”.

And Sir Cradock fixed the parsonʼs eyes with that keen and point–blank gaze, which was especially odious to the shy John Rosedew.

“I am sure I donʼt. You cannot mean that”, he replied, rather warmly, for, like all imaginative men, when of a diffident cast, he was desperately matter–of–fact the moment his honour was played with. His friend began to smile at him, drawing up his grey moustache, and saying, “Yes, John, you are a donkey”.

“I know that I am”, said John Rosedew, shutting his eyes, as he loved to do when he got on a favourite topic; “by the side of those mighty critics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the Scaligers, the Casaubons, the Vossii, the Stephani—what am I but a starving donkey, without a thistle left for him? But as regards our English critics—at least too many of them—I submit that we have been misled by the superiority of their Latin, and their more slashing style. I doubt whether any of them had a tenth part of the learning, or the sequacity of genius—— ”

“Come, John, I canʼt stand this, you know; and the boys will be down here directly, they are so fond of brown sherry”.

“Well, to return to the subject—I own that I was surprised and hurt when a former Professor of Greek actually confounded the Æolic form of the plusquam perfectum of so common a verb as—— ”

“Yes, John, I know all about that, and how it spoiled your breakfast. But about the boys, the boys, John”?

“And again, as to the delicate sub–significance, not the well–known tortuousness of παρά in composition, but—— ”

“Confound it, John. Theyʼve got all their things packed. Theyʼll be here in a moment, pretending to rollick for our sakes; and you wonʼt tell me what you think of them”.

“Well, I think there never were two finer fellows to jump a gate since the days of Castor and Pollux. ‘Hunc equis, illum superare pugnis.’ You remember how you took me down for construing ‘pugnis’ wrongly, when we were at Sherborne”?

“Yes, and how proud I was, John! You had been at the head of the form for three months, and none of us could stir you; but you came back again next day in the fifth Æneid. But here come the villains—now itʼs all over”.

And so the boys went away, and their father could not for his life ascertain what opinion his ancient friend had formed as to the chances of their doing something good at Oxford. Simple and straightforward as Mr. Rosedew was, no man ever lived from whom it was harder to force an opinion. He saw matters from so many aspects, everything took so many facets, shifting lights, and playing colours, from the versatility of his mind, that whoso could fix him at such times, and extort his real sentiments, might spin a diamond ring, and shave by it. He had golden hopes about his “nephews”, as he often called them, but he would not pronounce those hopes at present, lest the father should be disappointed. And so the boys went up to Oxford, half a moon before the woodcocks came.