Caxtons: A Family Picture — Part 12, Chapters 4 and 5

CHAPTER IV.

My uncle sat on one side the fireplace, my mother on the other; and I, at a small table between them, prepared to note down the results of their conference; for they had met in high council, to assess their joint fortunes,--determine what should be brought into the common stock and set apart for the Civil List, and what should be laid aside as a Sinking Fund.

Now my mother, true woman as she was, had a womanly love of show in her own quiet way,--of making “a genteel figure” in the eyes of the neighborhood; of seeing that sixpence not only went as far as sixpence ought to go, but that, in the going, it should emit a mild but imposing splendor,--not, indeed, a gaudy flash, a startling Borealian coruscation, which is scarcely within the modest and placid idiosyncracies of sixpence,--but a gleam of gentle and benign light, just to show where a sixpence had been, and allow you time to say “Behold!

” before “The jaws of darkness did devour it up.

” Thus, as I once before took occasion to apprise the reader, we had always held a very respectable position in the neighborhood round our square brick house; been as sociable as my father’s habits would permit;

given our little tea-parties, and our occasional dinners, and, without attempting to vie with our richer associates, there had always been so exquisite a neatness, so notable a housekeeping, so thoughtful a disposition, in short, of all the properties indigenous to a well-spent sixpence, in my mother’s management, that there was not an old maid within seven miles of us who did not pronounce our tea-parties to be perfect; and the great Mrs. Rollick, who gave forty guineas a year to a professed cook and housekeeper, used regularly, whenever we dined at Rollick Hall, to call across the table to my mother (who therewith blushed up to her ears) to apologize for the strawberry jelly.

It is true that when, on returning home, my mother adverted to that flattering and delicate compliment, in a tone that revealed the self-conceit of the human heart, my father--whether to sober his Kitty’s vanity into a proper and Christian mortification of spirit, or from that strange shrewdness which belonged to him--would remark that Mrs. Rollick was of a querulous nature; that the compliment was meant, not to please my mother, but to spite the professed cook and housekeeper, to whom the butler would be sure to repeat the invidious apology.

In settling at the Tower, and assuming the head of its establishment, my mother was naturally anxious that, poor battered invalid though the Tower was, it should still put its best leg foremost.

Sundry cards, despite the thinness of the neighborhood, had been left at the door;

various invitations, which my uncle had hitherto declined, had greeted his occupation of the ancestral ruin, and had become more numerous since the news of our arrival had gone abroad; so that my mother saw before her a very suitable field for her hospitable accomplishments,--a reasonable ground for her ambition that the Tower should hold up its head as became a Tower that held the head of the family.

But not to wrong thee, O dear mother!

as thou sittest there, opposite the grim Captain, so fair and so neat,--with thine apron as white, and thy hair as trim and as sheen, and thy morning cap, with its ribbons of blue, as coquettishly arranged as if thou hadst a fear that the least negligence on thy part might lose thee the heart of thine Austin,--not to wrong thee by setting down to frivolous motives alone thy feminine visions of the social amenities of life, I know that thine heart, in its provident tenderness, was quite as much interested as ever thy vanities could be, in the hospitable thoughts on which thou wert intent.

For, first and foremost, it was the wish of thy soul that thine Austin might, as little as possible, be reminded of the change in his fortunes,--might miss as little as possible those interruptions to his abstracted scholarly moods at which, it is true, he used to fret and to pshaw and to cry Papa!

but which nevertheless always did him good, and freshened up the stream of his thoughts.

And, next, it was the conviction of thine understanding that a little society and boon companionship, and the proud pleasure of showing his ruins and presiding at the hall of his forefathers, would take Roland out of those gloomy reveries into which he still fell at times.

And, thirdly, for us young people, ought not Blanche to find companions in children of her own sex and age?

Already in those large black eyes there was something melancholy and brooding, as there is in the eyes of all children who live only with their elders.

And for Pisistratus, with his altered prospects, and the one great gnawing memory at his heart,--which he tried to conceal from himself, but which a mother (and a mother who had loved) saw at a glance,--what could be better than such union and interchange with the world around us, small though that world might be, as woman, sweet binder and blender of all social links, might artfully effect?

So that thou didst not go, like the awful Florentine,-- “Sopra for vanita che par persona,”-- “over thin shadows that mocked the substance of real forms,” but rather it was the real forms that appeared as shadows, or vanita.

What a digression!

Can I never tell my story in a plain, straightforward way?

Certainly I was born under Cancer, and all my movements are circumlocutory, sideways, and crab-like.

CHAPTER V.

“I think, Roland,” said my mother, “that the establishment is settled,--Bolt, who is equal to three men at least; Primmins, cook and housekeeper; Molly, a good, stirring girl, and willing (though I’ve had some difficulty in persuading her to submit not to be called Anna Maria).

Their wages are but a small item, my dear Roland.

” “Hem!

” said Roland; “since we can’t do with fewer servants at less wages, I suppose we must call it small.

” “It is so,” said my mother, with mild positiveness.

“And indeed, what with the game and fish, and the garden and poultry-yard, and your own mutton, our housekeeping will be next to nothing.

” “Hem!

” again said the thrifty Roland, with a slight inflection of the beetle brows.

“It may be next to nothing, ma’am,--sister,--just as a butcher’s shop may be next to Northumberland House; but there is a vast deal between nothing and that next neighbor you have given it.

” This speech was so like one of my father’s--so naive an imitation of that subtle reasoner’s use of the rhetorical figure called Antanaclasis (or repetition of the same words in a different sense)--that I laughed and my mother smiled.

But she smiled reverently, not thinking of the Antanaclasis, as, laying her hand on Roland’s arm, she replied in the yet more formidable figure of speech called Epiphonema (or exclamation), “Yet, with all your economy, you would have had us--” “Tut!

” cried my uncle, parrying the Epiphonema with a masterly Aposiopesis (or breaking off); “tut!

if you had done what I wished, I should have had more pleasure for my money!

” My poor mother’s rhetorical armory supplied no weapon to meet that artful Aposiopesis; so she dropped the rhetoric altogether, and went on with that “unadorned eloquence” natural to her, as to other great financial reformers: “Well, Roland, but I am a good housewife, I assure you, and--Don’t scold; but that you never do;--I mean, don’t look as if you would like to scold.

The fact is, that even after setting aside L100 a year for our little parties--” “Little parties!

--a hundred a year!

” cried the Captain, aghast.

My mother pursued her way remorselessly,--“which we can well afford; and without counting your half-pay, which you must keep for pocket-money and your wardrobe and Blanche’s,--I calculate that we can allow Pisistratus L150 a year, which, with the scholarship he is to get, will keep him at Cambridge” (at that, seeing the scholarship was as yet amidst the Pleasures of Hope, I shook my head doubtfully), “and,” continued my mother, not heeding that sign of dissent, “we shall still have something to lay by.

” The Captain’s face assumed a ludicrous expression of compassion and horror; he evidently thought my mother’s misfortunes had turned her head.

His tormentor continued.

“For,” said my mother, with a pretty calculating shake of her head, and a movement of the right forefinger towards the five fingers of the left hand, “L370,--the interest of Austin’s fortune,--and L50 that we may reckon for the rent of our house, make L420 a year.

Add your L330 a year from the farm, sheep-walk, and cottages that you let, and the total is L750.

Now, with all we get for nothing for our housekeeping, as I said before, we can do very well with L500 a year, and indeed make a handsome figure.

So, after allowing Sisty L150, we still have L100 to lay by for Blanche.

” “Stop, stop, stop!

” cried the Captain in great agitation; “who told you that I had L330 a year?

” “Why, Bolt,--don’t be angry with him.

” “Bolt is a blockhead.

From L330 a year take L200, and the remainder is all my income, besides my half-pay.

” My mother opened her eyes, and so did I. “To that L130 add, if you please, L130 of your own.

All that you have over, my dear sister, is yours or Austin’s, or your boy’s; but not a shilling can go to give luxuries to a miserly, battered old soldier.

Do you understand me?

” “No, Roland,” said my mother; “I don’t understand you at all.

Does not your property bring in L330 a year?

” “Yes, but it has a debt of L200 a year on it,” said the Captain, gloomily and reluctantly.

“Oh, Roland!

” cried my mother tenderly, and approaching so near that, had my father been in the room, I am sure she would have been bold enough to kiss the stern Captain, though I never saw him look sterner and less kissable.

“Oh, Roland!

” cried my mother, concluding that famous Epiphonema which my uncle’s Aposiopesis had before nipped in the bud, “and yet you would have made us, who are twice as rich, rob you of this little all!

” “Ah!

” said Roland, trying to smile, “but I should have had my own way then, and starved you shockingly.

No talk then of ‘little parties’ and such like.

But you must not now turn the tables against me, nor bring your L420 a year as a set-off to my L130.

” “Why,” said my mother generously, “you forget the money’s worth that you contribute,--all that your grounds supply, and all that we save by it.

I

am sure that that’s worth a yearly L300 at the least.

” “Madam,--sister,” said the Captain, “I’m sure you don’t want to hurt my feelings.

All I have to say is, that if you add to what I bring an equal sum,--to keep up the poor old ruin,--it is the utmost that I can allow, and the rest is not more than Pisistratus can spend.

” So saying, the Captain rose, bowed, and before either of us could stop him, hobbled out of the room.

“Dear me, Sisty!

” said my mother, wringing her hands; “I have certainly displeased him.

How could I guess he had so large a debt on the property?

” “Did not he pay his son’s debts?

Is not that the reason that--” “Ah!

” interrupted my mother, almost crying, “and it was that which ruffled him; and I not to guess it!

What shall I do?

” “Set to work at a new calculation, dear mother, and let him have his own way.

” “But then,” said my mother, “your uncle will mope himself to death, and your father will have no relaxation, while you see that he has lost his former object in his books.

And Blanche--and you too.

If we were only to contribute what dear Roland does, I do not see how, with L260 a year, we could ever bring our neighbors round us!

I wonder what Austin would say!

I have half a mind--No, I’ll go and look over the week-books with Primmins.

” My mother went her way sorrowfully, and I was left alone.

Then I looked on the stately old hall, grand in its forlorn decay.

And the dreams I had begun to cherish at my heart swept over me, and hurried me along, far, far away into the golden land whither Hope beckons youth.

To restore my father’s fortunes; re-weave the links of that broken ambition which had knit his genius with the world; rebuild those fallen walls; cultivate those barren moors; revive the ancient name; glad the old soldier’s age; and be to both the brothers what Roland had lost,--a son: these were my dreams; and when I woke from them, lo!

they had left behind an intense purpose, a resolute object.

Dream, O youth!

dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets!

CHAPTER VI.