CHAPTER XII

Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and, as the mystery of the apparition

that had frightened little Clare was never solved on the stage of events

at Raynham, where dread walked the Abbey, let us go behind the scenes a

moment. Morally superstitious as the baronet was, the character of his

mind was opposed to anything like spiritual agency in the affairs of men,

and, when the matter was made clear to him, it shook off a weight of

weakness and restored his mental balance; so that from this time he went

about more like the man he had once been, grasping more thoroughly the

great truth, that This World is well designed. Nay, he could laugh on

hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the ill luck of one of the family

members at its first manifestation, call the uneasy spirit, Algernon's

Leg.

Mrs. Doria was outraged. She maintained that her child had seen ---- Not

to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal property. After

satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her, Sir Austin, moved

by pity, took her aside one day and showed her that her Ghost could write

words in the flesh. It was a letter from the unhappy lady who had given

Richard birth,--brief cold lines, simply telling him his house would be

disturbed by her no more. Cold lines, but penned by what heart-broken

abnegation, and underlying them with what anguish of soul! Like most who

dealt with him, Lady Feverel thought her husband a man fatally stern and

implacable, and she acted as silly creatures will act when they fancy

they see a fate against them: she neither petitioned for her right nor

claimed it: she tried to ease her heart's yearning by stealth, and, now

she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not wanting in the family tenderness and

softness, shuddered at him for accepting the sacrifice so composedly: but

he bade her to think how distracting to this boy would be the sight of

such relations between mother and father. A few years, and as man he

should know, and judge, and love her. "Let this be her penance, not

inflicted by me!" Mrs. Doria bowed to the System for another, not opining

when it would be her turn to bow for herself.

Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older, much

disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,--he with gouty fingers on a

greasy guitar. The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small

hires. His fame has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased. What

he can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the

juniper is in requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot be

performed without it. Returning from her wretched journey to her

wretcheder home, the lady had to listen to a mild reproof from easy-going

Diaper,--a reproof so mild that he couched it in blank verse: for, seldom

writing metrically now, he took to talking it. With a fluent sympathetic

tear, he explained to her that she was damaging her interests by these

proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to elucidate wherefore.

Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told her that the poverty

she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle nurture, and that he had

reason to believe--could assure her--that an annuity was on the point of

being granted her by her husband. And Diaper broke his bud of a smile

into full flower as he delivered this information. She learnt that he had

applied to her husband for money. It is hard to have one's prop of

self-respect cut away just when we are suffering a martyr's agony at the

stake. There was a five minutes' tragic colloquy in the recesses behind

the scenes,--totally tragic to Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in

the warm sun of that annuity, and re-emerge from his state of grub. The

lady then wrote the letter Sir Austin held open to his sister. The

atmosphere behind the scenes is not wholesome, so, having laid the Ghost,

we will return and face the curtain.

That infinitesimal dose of The World which Master Ripton Thompson had

furnished to the System with such instantaneous and surprising effect was

considered by Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be for the time

quite sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a second invitation to

Raynham, and Richard had no special intimate of his own age to rub his

excessive vitality against, and wanted none. His hands were full enough

with Tom Bakewell. Moreover, his father and he were heart in heart. The

boy's mind was opening, and turned to his father affectionately reverent.

At this period, when the young savage grows into higher influences, the

faculty of worship is foremost in him. At this period Jesuits will stamp

the future of their chargeling flocks; and all who bring up youth by a

System, and watch it, know that it is the malleable moment. Boys

possessing any mental or moral force to give them a tendency, then

predestinate their careers; or, if under supervision, take the impress

that is given them: not often to cast it off, and seldom to cast it off

altogether.

In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: "Between Simple Boyhood and

Adolescence--The Blossoming Season--on the threshold of Puberty, there is

one Unselfish Hour--say, Spiritual Seed-time."

He took care that good seed should be planted in Richard, and that the

most fruitful seed for a youth, namely, Example, should be of a kind to

germinate in him the love of every form of nobleness.

"I am only striving to make my son a Christian," he said, answering them

who persisted in expostulating with the System. And to these instructions

he gave an aim: "First be virtuous," he told his son, "and then serve

your country with heart and soul." The youth was instructed to cherish an

ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read history and the

speeches of British orators to some purpose; for one day Sir Austin found

him leaning cross-legged, and with his hand to his chin, against a

pedestal supporting the bust of Chatham, contemplating the hero of our

Parliament, his eyes streaming with tears.

People said the baronet carried the principle of Example so far that he

only retained his boozing dyspeptic brother Hippias at Raynham in order

to exhibit to his son the woeful retribution nature wreaked upon a life

of indulgence; poor Hippias having now become a walking complaint. This

was unjust, but there is no doubt he made use of every illustration to

disgust or encourage his son that his neighbourhood afforded him, and did

not spare his brother, for whom Richard entertained a contempt in

proportion to his admiration of his father, and was for flying into

penitential extremes which Sir Austin had to soften.

The boy prayed with his father morning and night.

"How is it, sir," he said one night, "I can't get Tom Bakewell to pray?"

"Does he refuse?" Sir Austin asked.

"He seems to be ashamed to," Richard replied. "He wants to know what is

the good? and I don't know what to tell him."

"I'm afraid it has gone too far with him," said Sir Austin, "and until he

has had some deep sorrows he will not find the divine want of Prayer.

Strive, my son, when you represent the people, to provide for their

education. He feels everything now through a dull impenetrable rind.

Culture is half-way to heaven. Tell him, my son, should he ever be

brought to ask how he may know the efficacy of Prayer, and that his

prayer will be answered, tell him (he quoted The Pilgrim's Scrip):

"'Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.'"

"I will, sir," said Richard, and went to sleep happy.

Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived. Conscience was

beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage known to

men; though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now on this side,

now on that.

The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary developments

in his pupil, soberly cynical. He was under Sir Austin's interdict not to

banter him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by the sight of a

felonious young rick-burner turning saint, by grave affectations of

sympathy and extreme accuracy in marking the not widely-distant dates of

his various changes. The Bread-and-water phase lasted a fortnight: the

Vegetarian (an imitation of his cousin Austin), little better than a

month: the religious, somewhat longer: the religious-propagandist (when

he was for converting the heathen of Lobourne and Burnley, and the

domestics of the Abbey, including Tom Bakewell), longer still, and hard

to bear;--he tried to convert Adrian! All the while Tom was being

exercised like a raw recruit. Richard had a drill-sergeant from the

nearest barracks down for him, to give him a proper pride in himself, and

marched him to and fro with immense satisfaction, and nearly broke his

heart trying to get the round-shouldered rustic to take in the rudiments

of letters: for the boy had unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero in grain.

Richard's pride also was cast aside. He affected to be, and really

thought he was, humble. Whereupon Adrian, as by accident, imparted to him

the fact that men were animals, and he an animal with the rest of them.

"I an animal!" cries Richard in scorn, and for weeks he was as troubled

by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom by his letters. Sir Austin had

him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore his self-respect.

Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his cousin

Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him. She too was

growing, but nobody cared how she grew. Outwardly even her mother seemed

absorbed in the sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel tree, and

Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by him.

Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: "If I had been

a girl, I would have had you for my husband." And he with the frankness

of his years would reply: "And how do you know I would have had you?"

causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not heard her

say she would have had him? Terrible words, he knew not then the meaning

of!

"You don't read your father's Book," she said. Her own copy was bound in

purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to have holier

books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian

remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed at

him therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted her

brother would not be on his guard.

"See here," said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to one of

the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must clay-enclose us

ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any human creature in our

path. "Can you understand it, child?"

Richard informed her that when she read he could.

"Well, then, my squire," she touched his cheek and ran her fingers

through his hair, "learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and yon

with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met a wise man to

guide me."

"Is my father very wise?" Richard asked.

"I think so," the lady emphasized her individual judgment.

"Do you--" Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating of his

heart.

"Do I--what?" she calmly queried.

"I was going to say, do you--I mean, I love him so much."

Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.

They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it;

always with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the

sense of a growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally

disturb him.

Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it was part of Sir

Austin's principle of education that his boy should be thoroughly joyous

and happy; and whenever Adrian sent in a satisfactory report of his

pupil's advancement, which he did pretty liberally, diversions were

planned, just as prizes are given to diligent school-boys, and Richard

was supposed to have all his desires gratified while he attended to his

studies. The System flourished. Tall, strong, bloomingly healthy, he took

the lead of his companions on land and water, and had more than one

bondsman in his service besides Ripton Thompson--the boy without a

Destiny! Perhaps the boy with a Destiny was growing up a trifle too

conscious of it. His generosity to his occasional companions was

princely, but was exercised something too much in the manner of a prince;

and, notwithstanding his contempt for baseness, he would overlook that

more easily than an offence to his pride, which demanded an utter

servility when it had once been rendered susceptible. If Richard had his

followers he had also his feuds. The Papworths were as subservient as

Ripton, but young Ralph Morton, the nephew of Mr. Morton, and a match for

Richard in numerous promising qualities, comprising the noble science of

fisticuffs, this youth spoke his mind too openly, and moreover would not

be snubbed. There was no middle course for Richard's comrades between

high friendship or absolute slavery. He was deficient in those

cosmopolite habits and feelings which enable boys and men to hold

together without caring much for each other; and, like every insulated

mortal, he attributed the deficiency, of which he was quite aware, to the

fact of his possessing a superior nature. Young Ralph was a lively

talker: therefore, argued Richard's vanity, he had no intellect. He was

affable: therefore he was frivolous. The women liked him: therefore he

was a butterfly. In fine, young Ralph was popular, and our superb prince,

denied the privilege of despising, ended by detesting him.

Early in the days of their contention for leadership, Richard saw the

absurdity of affecting to scorn his rival. Ralph was an Eton boy, and

hence, being robust, a swimmer and a cricketer. A swimmer and a cricketer

is nowhere to be scorned in youth's republic. Finding that manoeuvre

would not do, Richard was prompted once or twice to entrench himself

behind his greater wealth and his position; but he soon abandoned that

also, partly because his chilliness to ridicule told him he was exposing

himself, and chiefly that his heart was too chivalrous. And so he was

dragged into the lists by Ralph, and experienced the luck of champions.

For cricket, and for diving, Ralph bore away the belt: Richard's

middle-stump tottered before his ball, and he could seldom pick up more

than three eggs underwater to Ralph's half-dozen. He was beaten, too, in

jumping and running. Why will silly mortals strive to the painful

pinnacles of championship? Or why, once having reached them, not have the

magnanimity and circumspection to retire into private life immediately?

Stung by his defeats, Richard sent one of his dependent Papworths to Poer

Hall, with a challenge to Ralph Barthrop Morton; matching himself to swim

across the Thames and back, once, trice, or thrice, within a less time

than he, Ralph Barthrop Morton, would require for the undertaking. It was

accepted, and a reply returned, equally formal in the trumpeting of

Christian names, wherein Ralph Barthrop Morton acknowledged the challenge

of Richard Doria Feverel, and was his man. The match came off on a

midsummer morning, under the direction of Captain Algernon. Sir Austin

was a spectator from the cover of a plantation by the river-side, unknown

to his son, and, to the scandal of her sex, Lady Blandish accompanied the

baronet. He had invited her attendance, and she, obeying her frank

nature, and knowing what The Pilgrim's Scrip said about prudes, at once

agreed to view the match, pleasing him mightily. For was not here a woman

worthy the Golden Ages of the world? one who could look upon man as a

creature divinely made, and look with a mind neither tempted, nor

taunted, by the Serpent! Such a woman was rare. Sir Austin did not

discompose her by uttering his praises. She was conscious of his approval

only in an increased gentleness of manner, and something in his voice and

communications, as if he were speaking to a familiar, a very high

compliment from him. While the lads were standing ready for the signal to

plunge from the steep decline of greensward into the shining waters, Sir

Austin called upon her to admire their beauty, and she did, and even

advanced her head above his shoulder delicately. In so doing, and just as

the start was given, a bonnet became visible to Richard. Young Ralph was

heels in air before he moved, and then he dropped like lead. He was

beaten by several lengths.

The result of the match was unaccountable to all present, and Richard's

friends unanimously pressed him to plead a false start. But though the

youth, with full confidence in his better style and equal strength, had

backed himself heavily against his rival, and had lost his little

river-yacht to Ralph, he would do nothing of the sort. It was the Bonnet

had beaten him, not Ralph. The Bonnet, typical of the mystery that caused

his heart those violent palpitations, was his dear, detestable enemy.

And now, as he progressed from mood to mood, his ambition turned towards

a field where Ralph could not rival him, and where the Bonnet was

etherealized, and reigned glorious mistress. A cheek to the pride of a

boy will frequently divert him to the path where lie his subtlest powers.

Richard gave up his companions, servile or antagonistic: he relinquished

the material world to young Ralph, and retired into himself, where he was

growing to be lord of kingdoms where Beauty was his handmaid, and History

his minister and Time his ancient harper, and sweet Romance his bride;

where he walked in a realm vaster and more gorgeous than the great

Orient, peopled with the heroes that have been. For there is no princely

wealth, and no loftiest heritage, to equal this early one that is made

bountifully common to so many, when the ripening blood has put a spark to

the imagination, and the earth is seen through rosy mists of a thousand

fresh-awakened nameless and aimless desires; panting for bliss and taking

it as it comes; making of any sight or sound, perforce of the enchantment

they carry with them, a key to infinite, because innocent, pleasure. The

passions then are gambolling cubs; not the ravaging gluttons they grow

to. They have their teeth and their talons, but they neither tear nor

bite. They are in counsel and fellowship with the quickened heart and

brain. The whole sweet system moves to music.

Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his son,

which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due to

his plan. The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging to

solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were

matters for rejoicing to the prescient gentleman. "For it comes," said he

to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically on the

youth's behalf and being assured of his soundness, "it comes of a

thoroughly sane condition. The blood is healthy, the mind virtuous:

neither instigates the other to evil, and both are perfecting toward the

flower of manhood. If he reach that pure--in the untainted fulness and

perfection of his natural powers--I am indeed a happy father! But one

thing he will owe to me: that at one period of his life he knew paradise,

and could read God's handwriting on the earth! Now those abominations

whom you call precocious boys--your little pet monsters, doctor!--and who

can wonder that the world is what it is? when it is full of them--as they

will have no divine time to look back upon in their own lives, how can

they believe in innocence and goodness, or be other than sons of

selfishness and the Devil? But my boy," and the baronet dropped his voice

to a key that was touching to hear, "my boy, if he fall, will fall from

an actual region of purity. He dare not be a sceptic as to that. Whatever

his darkness, he will have the guiding light of a memory behind him. So

much is secure."

To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of

profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received

opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual insight,

is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first persuaded

themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and through them to

make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or for ill. Sir

Austin had this gift. He spoke as if he saw the truth, and, persisting in

it so long, he was accredited by those who did not understand him, and

silenced them that did.

"We shall see," was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other

unbelievers.

So far certainly the experiment had succeeded. A comelier, bracer, better

boy was nowhere to be met. His promise was undeniable. The vessel, too,

though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved by the buffets

of the elements on the great ocean, had made a good trial trip, and got

well through stormy weather, as the records of the Bakewell Comedy

witnessed to at Raynham. No augury could be hopefuller. The Fates must

indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark, that could destroy

so bright a Spring! But, bright as it was, the baronet relaxed nothing of

his vigilant supervision. He said to his intimates: "Every act, every

fostered inclination, almost every thought, in this Blossoming Season,

bears its seed for the Future. The living Tree now requires incessant

watchfulness." And, acting up to his light, Sir Austin did watch. The

youth submitted to an examination every night before he sought his bed;

professedly to give an account of his studies, but really to recapitulate

his moral experiences of the day. He could do so, for he was pure. Any

wildness in him that his father noted, any remoteness or richness of

fancy in his expressions, was set down as incidental to the Blossoming

Season. There is nothing like a theory for binding the wise. Sir Austin,

despite his rigid watch and ward, knew less of his son than the servant

of his household. And he was deaf, as well as blind. Adrian thought it

his duty to tell him that the youth was consuming paper. Lady Blandish

likewise hinted at his mooning propensities. Sir Austin from his lofty

watch-tower of the System had foreseen it, he said. But when he came to

hear that the youth was writing poetry, his wounded heart had its reasons

for being much disturbed.

"Surely," said Lady Blandish, "you knew he scribbled?"

"A very different thing from writing poetry," said the baronet. "No

Feverel has ever written poetry."

"I don't think it's a sign of degeneracy," the lady remarked. "He rhymes

very prettily to me."

A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry, quieted

Sir Austin's fears.

The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative faculty;

and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and instanced

several consoling false quantities in the few effusions submitted to him.

Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that Richard had, at his

best, done what no poet had ever been known to be capable of doing: he

had, with his own hands, and in cold blood, committed his virgin

manuscript to the flames: which made Lady Blandish sigh forth, "Poor

boy!"

Killing one's darling child is a painful imposition. For a youth in his

Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested to destroy

his first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a reason cogent

enough to justify the request were a mockery), is a piece of abhorrent

despotism, and Richard's blossoms withered under it. A strange man had

been introduced to him, who traversed and bisected his skull with

sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his soul while, in an infallible

voice, declaring him the animal he was making him feel such an animal!

Not only his blossoms withered, his being seemed to draw in its shoots

and twigs. And when, coupled thereunto (the strange man having departed,

his work done), his father, in his tenderest manner, stated that it would

give him pleasure to see those same precocious, utterly valueless,

scribblings among the cinders, the last remaining mental blossoms

spontaneously fell away. Richard's spirit stood bare. He protested not.

Enough that it could be wished! He would not delay a minute in doing it.

Desiring his father to follow him, he went to a drawer in his room, and

from a clean-linen recess, never suspected by Sir Austin, the secretive

youth drew out bundle after bundle: each neatly tied, named, and

numbered: and pitched them into flames. And so Farewell my young

Ambition! and with it farewell all true confidence between Father and

Son.