Book: Night and Morning, Volume 1

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Night and Morning, Volume 1




"Upon his good faith?--no," said Caleb, smiling, "but upon his deafness,
his ignorance, and his age. My poor old clerk! He will have forgotten
all about it before this day three months. Now I have seen your lady, I
no longer wonder that you incur so great a risk. I never beheld so
lovely a countenance. You will be happy!" And the village priest
sighed, and thought of the coming winter and his own lonely hearth.

"My dear friend, you have only seen her beauty--it is her least charm.
Heaven knows how often I have made love; and this is the only woman I
have ever really loved. Caleb, there is an excellent living that adjoins
my uncle's house. The rector is old; when the house is mine, you will
not be long without the living. We shall be neighbours, Caleb, and then
you shall try and find a bride for yourself. Smith,"--and the bridegroom
turned to the servant who had accompanied his wife, and served as a
second witness to the marriage,--tell the post-boy to put to the horses
immediately."

"Yes, Sir. May I speak a word with you?"

"Well, what?"

"Your uncle, sir, sent for me to come to him, the day before we left
town."

"Aha!--indeed!"

"And I could just pick up among his servants that he had some suspicion--
at least, that he had been making inquiries--and seemed very cross, sir."

"You went to him?"

"No, Sir, I was afraid. He has such a way with him;--whenever his eye is
fixed on mine, I always feel as if it was impossible to tell a lie; and--
and--in short, I thought it was best not to go."

"You did right. Confound this fellow!" muttered the bridegroom, turning
away; "he is honest, and loves me: yet, if my uncle sees him, he is
clumsy enough to betray all. Well, I always meant to get him out of the
way--the sooner the better. Smith!"

"Yes, sir!"

"You have often said that you should like, if you had some capital, to
settle in Australia. Your father is an excellent farmer; you are above
the situation you hold with me; you are well educated, and have some
knowledge of agriculture; you can scarcely fail to make a fortune as a
settler; and if you are of the same mind still, why, look you, I have
just L1000. at my bankers: you shall have half, if you like to sail by
the first packet."

"Oh, sir, you are too generous."

"Nonsense--no thanks--I am more prudent than generous; for I agree with
you that it is all up with me if my uncle gets hold of you. I dread my
prying brother, too; in fact, the obligation is on my side; only stay
abroad till I am a rich man, and my marriage made public, and then you
may ask of me what you will. It's agreed, then; order the horses, we'll
go round by Liverpool, and learn about the vessels. By the way, my good
fellow, I hope you see nothing now of that good-for-nothing brother of
yours?"

"No, indeed, sir. It's a thousand pities he has turned out so ill; for
he was the cleverest of the family, and could always twist me round his
little finger."

"That's the very reason I mentioned him. If he learned our secret, he
would take it to an excellent market. Where is he?"

"Hiding, I suspect, sir."

"Well, we shall put the sea between you and him! So now all's safe."

Caleb stood by the porch of his house as the bride and bridegroom entered
their humble vehicle. Though then November, the day was exquisitely mild
and calm, the sky without a cloud, and even the leafless trees seemed to
smile beneath the cheerful sun. And the young bride wept no more; she
was with him she loved--she was his for ever. She forgot the rest. The
hope--the heart of sixteen--spoke brightly out through the blushes that
mantled over her fair cheeks. The bridegroom's frank and manly
countenance was radiant with joy. As he waved his hand to Caleb from the
window the post-boy cracked his whip, the servant settled himself on the
dickey, the horses started off in a brisk trot,--the clergyman was left
alone.

To be married is certainly an event in life; to marry other people is,
for a priest, a very ordinary occurrence; and yet, from that day, a great
change began to operate in the spirits and the habits of Caleb Price.
Have you ever, my gentle reader, buried yourself for some time quietly in
the lazy ease of a dull country-life? Have you ever become gradually
accustomed to its monotony, and inured to its solitude; and, just at the
time when you have half-forgotten the great world--that _mare magnum_
that frets and roars in the distance--have you ever received in your calm
retreat some visitor, full of the busy and excited life which you
imagined yourself contented to relinquish? If so, have you not
perceived, that, in proportion as his presence and communication either
revived old memories, or brought before you new pictures of "the bright
tumult" of that existence of which your guest made a part,--you began to
compare him curiously with yourself; you began to feel that what before
was to rest is now to rot; that your years are gliding from you unenjoyed
and wasted; that the contrast between the animal life of passionate
civilisation and the vegetable torpor of motionless seclusion is one
that, if you are still young, it tasks your philosophy to bear,--feeling
all the while that the torpor may be yours to your grave? And when your
guest has left you, when you are again alone, is the solitude the same as
it was before?

Our poor Caleb had for years rooted his thoughts to his village. His
guest had been like the Bird in the Fairy Tale, settling upon the quiet
branches, and singing so loudly and so gladly of the enchanted skies
afar, that, when it flew away, the tree pined, nipped and withering in
the sober sun in which before it had basked contented. The guest was,
indeed, one of those men whose animal spirits exercise upon such as come
within their circle the influence and power usually ascribed only to
intellectual qualities. During the month he had sojourned with Caleb, he
had brought back to the poor parson all the gaiety of the brisk and noisy
novitiate that preceded the solemn vow and the dull retreat;--the social
parties, the merry suppers, the open-handed, open-hearted fellowship of
riotous, delightful, extravagant, thoughtless YOUTH. And Caleb was not a
bookman--not a scholar; he had no resources in himself, no occupation but
his indolent and ill-paid duties. The emotions, therefore, of the Active
Man were easily aroused within him. But if this comparison between his
past and present life rendered him restless and disturbed, how much more
deeply and lastingly was he affected by a contrast between his own future
and that of his friend! Not in those points where he could never hope
equality--wealth and station--the conventional distinctions to which,
after all, a man of ordinary sense must sooner or later reconcile
himself--but in that one respect wherein all, high and low, pretend to
the same rights--rights which a man of moderate warmth of feeling can
never willingly renounce--viz., a partner in a lot however obscure; a
kind face by a hearth, no matter how mean it be! And his happier friend,
like all men full of life, was full of himself--full of his love, of his
future, of the blessings of home, and wife, and children. Then, too, the
young bride seemed so fair, so confiding, and so tender; so formed to
grace the noblest or to cheer the humblest home! And both were so happy,
so all in all to each other, as they left that barren threshold! And the
priest felt all this, as, melancholy and envious, he turned from the door
in that November day, to find himself thoroughly alone. He now began
seriously to muse upon those fancied blessings which men wearied with
celibacy see springing, heavenward, behind the altar. A few weeks
afterwards a notable change was visible in the good man's exterior. He
became more careful of his dress, he shaved every morning, he purchased a
crop-eared Welsh cob; and it was soon known in the neighbourhood that the
only journey the cob was ever condemned to take was to the house of a
certain squire, who, amidst a family of all ages, boasted two very pretty
marriageable daughters. That was the second holy day-time of poor Caleb
--the love-romance of his life: it soon closed. On learning the amount
of the pastor's stipend the squire refused to receive his addresses; and,
shortly after, the girl to whom he had attached himself made what the
world calls a happy match: and perhaps it was one, for I never heard that
she regretted the forsaken lover. Probably Caleb was not one of those
whose place in a woman's heart is never to be supplied. The lady
married, the world went round as before, the brook danced as merrily
through the village, the poor worked on the week-days, and the urchins
gambolled round the gravestones on the Sabbath,--and the pastor's heart
was broken. He languished gradually and silently away. The villagers
observed that he had lost his old good-humoured smile; that he did not
stop every Saturday evening at the carrier's gate, to ask if there were
any news stirring in the town which the carrier weekly visited; that he
did not come to borrow the stray newspapers that now and then found their
way into the village; that, as he sauntered along the brookside, his
clothes hung loose on his limbs, and that he no longer "whistled as he
went;" alas, he was no longer "in want of thought!" By degrees, the
walks themselves were suspended; the parson was no longer visible: a
stranger performed his duties.

One day, it might be some three years and more after the fatal visit I
have commemorated--one very wild rough day in early March, the postman,
who made the round of the district, rang at the parson's bell. The
single female servant, her red hair loose on her neck, replied to the
call.

"And how is the master?"

"Very bad;" and the girl wiped her eyes.

"He should leave you something handsome," remarked the postman, kindly,
as he pocketed the money for the letter.

The pastor was in bed--the boisterous wind rattled clown the chimney and
shook the ill-fitting casement in its rotting frame. The clothes he had
last worn were thrown carelessly about, unsmoothed, unbrushed; the scanty
articles of furniture were out of their proper places; slovenly
discomfort marked the death-chamber. And by the bedside stood a
neighbouring clergyman, a stout, rustic, homely, thoroughly Welsh priest,
who might have sat for the portrait of Parson Adams.

"Here's a letter for you," said the visitor.

"For me!" echoed Caleb, feebly. "Ah--well--is it not very dark, or are
my eyes failing?" The clergyman and the servant drew aside the curtains
and propped the sick man up: he read as follows, slowly, and with
difficulty:

"DEAR, CALEB,--At last I can do something for you. A friend of mine has
a living in his gift just vacant, worth, I understand, from three to four
hundred a year: pleasant neighbourhood--small parish. And my friend
keeps the hounds!--just the thing for you. He is, however, a very
particular sort of person--wants a companion, and has a horror of
anything evangelical; wishes, therefore, to see you before he decides.
If you can meet me in London, some day next month, I'll present you to
him, and I have no doubt it will be settled. You must think it strange I
never wrote to you since we parted, but you know I never was a very good
correspondent; and as I had nothing to communicate advantageous to you I
thought it a sort of insult to enlarge on my own happiness, and so forth.
All I shall say on that score is, that I've sown my wild oats; and that
you may take my word for it, there's nothing that can make a man know how
large, the heart is, and how little the world, till he comes home
(perhaps after a hard day's hunting) and sees his own fireside, and hears
one dear welcome; and--oh, by the way, Caleb, if you could but see my
boy, the sturdiest little rogue! But enough of this. All that vexes me
is, that I've never yet been able to declare my marriage: my uncle,
however, suspects nothing: my wife bears up against all, like an angel as
she is; still, in case of any accident, it occurs to me, now I'm writing
to you, especially if you leave the place, that it may be as well to send
me an examined copy of the register. In those remote places registers
are often lost or mislaid; and it may be useful hereafter, when I
proclaim the marriage, to clear up all doubt as to the fact.
"Good-bye, old fellow,
"Yours most truly, &c., &c."


"It comes too late," sighed Caleb, heavily; and the letter fell from his
hands. There was a long pause. "Close the shutters," said the sick man,
at last; "I think I could sleep: and--and--pick up that letter."

With a trembling, but eager gripe, he seized the paper, as a miser would
seize the deeds of an estate on which he has a mortgage. He smoothed the
folds, looked complacently at the well-known hand, smiled--a ghastly
smile! and then placed the letter under his pillow, and sank down; they
left him alone. He did not wake for some hours, and that good clergyman,
poor as himself, was again at his post. The only friendships that are
really with us in the hour of need are those which are cemented by
equality of circumstance. In the depth of home, in the hour of
tribulation, by the bed of death, the rich and the poor are seldom found
side by side. Caleb was evidently much feebler; but his sense seemed
clearer than it had been, and the instincts of his native kindness were
the last that left him. "There is something he wants me do for him," he
muttered.

"Ah! I remember: Jones, will you send for the parish register? It is
somewhere in the vestry-room, I think--but nothing's kept properly.
Better go yourself--'tis important."

Mr. Jones nodded, and sallied forth. The register was not in the vestry;
the church-wardens knew nothing about it; the clerk--a new clerk, who was
also the sexton, and rather a wild fellow--had gone ten miles off to a
wedding: every place was searched; till, at last, the book was found,
amidst a heap of old magazines and dusty papers, in the parlour of Caleb
himself. By the time it was brought to him, the sufferer was fast
declining; with some difficulty his dim eye discovered the place where,
amidst the clumsy pothooks of the parishioners, the large clear hand of
the old friend, and the trembling characters of the bride, looked forth,
distinguished.

"Extract this for me, will you?" said Caleb. Mr. Jones obeyed.

"Now, just write above the extract:

"'Sir,--By Mr. Price's desire I send you the inclosed. He is too ill to
write himself. But he bids me say that he has never been quite the same
man since you left him; and that, if he should not get well again, still
your kind letter has made him easier in his mind."

Caleb stopped.

"Go on."

"That is all I have to say: sign your name, and put the address--here it
is. Ah, the letter," he muttered, "must not lie about! If anything
happens to me, it may get him into trouble."

And as Mr. Jones sealed his communication, Caleb feebly stretched his wan
hand, held the letter which had "come too late" over the flame of the
candle. As the blazing paper dropped on the carpetless floor, Mr. Jones
prudently set thereon the broad sole of his top-boot, and the maidservant
brushed the tinder into the grate.

"Ah, trample it out:--hurry it amongst the ashes. The last as the rest,"
said Caleb, hoarsely. "Friendship, fortune, hope, love, life--a little
flame, and then--and then--"

"Don't be uneasy--it's quite out!" said Mr. Jones. Caleb turned his
face to the wall. He lingered till the next day, when he passed
insensibly from sleep to death. As soon as the breath was out of his
body, Mr. Jones felt that his duty was discharged, that other duties
called him home. He promised to return to read the burial-service over
the deceased, gave some hasty orders about the plain funeral, and was
turning from the room, when he saw the letter he had written by Caleb's
wish, still on the table. "I pass the post-office--I'll put it in," said
he to the weeping servant; "and just give me that scrap of paper." So he
wrote on the scrap, "P. S. He died this morning at half-past twelve,
without pain.--M. J.;" and not taking the trouble to break the seal,
thrust the final bulletin into the folds of the letter, which he then
carefully placed in his vast pocket, and safely transferred to the post.
And that was all that the jovial and happy man, to whom the letter was
addressed, ever heard of the last days of his college friend.

The living, vacant by the death of Caleb Price, was not so valuable as to
plague the patron with many applications. It continued vacant nearly the
whole of the six months prescribed by law. And the desolate parsonage
was committed to the charge of one of the villagers, who had occasionally
assisted Caleb in the care of his little garden. The villager, his wife,
and half-a-dozen noisy, ragged children, took possession of the quiet
bachelor's abode. The furniture had been sold to pay the expenses of the
funeral, and a few trifling bills; and, save the kitchen and the two
attics, the empty house, uninhabited, was surrendered to the sportive
mischief of the idle urchins, who prowled about the silent chambers in
fear of the silence, and in ecstasy at the space. The bedroom in which
Caleb had died was, indeed, long held sacred by infantine superstition.
But one day the eldest boy having ventured across the threshold, two
cupboards, the doors standing ajar, attracted the child's curiosity. He
opened one, and his exclamation soon brought the rest of the children
round him. Have you ever, reader, when a boy, suddenly stumbled on that
El Dorado, called by the grown-up folks a lumber room? Lumber, indeed!
what _Virtu_ double-locks in cabinets is the real lumber to the boy!
Lumber, reader! to thee it was a treasury! Now this cupboard had been
the lumber-room in Caleb's household. In an instant the whole troop had
thrown themselves on the motley contents. Stray joints of clumsy
fishing-rods; artificial baits; a pair of worn-out top-boots, in which
one of the urchins, whooping and shouting, buried himself up to the
middle; moth-eaten, stained, and ragged, the collegian's gown-relic of
the dead man's palmy time; a bag of carpenter's tools, chiefly broken; a
cricket-bat; an odd boxing-glove; a fencing-foil, snapped in the middle;
and, more than all, some half-finished attempts at rude toys: a boat, a
cart, a doll's house, in which the good-natured Caleb had busied himself
for the younger ones of that family in which he had found the fatal ideal
of his trite life. One by one were these lugged forth from their dusty
slumber-profane hands struggling for the first right of appropriation.
And now, revealed against the wall, glared upon the startled violators of
the sanctuary, with glassy eyes and horrent visage, a grim monster. They
huddled back one upon the other, pale and breathless, till the eldest,
seeing that the creature moved not, took heart, approached on tip-toe-
twice receded, and twice again advanced, and finally drew out, daubed,
painted, and tricked forth in the semblance of a griffin, a gigantic
kite.

The children, alas! were not old and wise enough to knew all the dormant
value of that imprisoned aeronaut, which had cost Caleb many a dull
evening's labour--the intended gift to the false one's favourite brother.
But they guessed that it was a thing or spirit appertaining of right to
them; and they resolved, after mature consultation, to impart the secret
of their discovery to an old wooden-legged villager, who had served in
the army, who was the idol of all the children of the place, and who,
they firmly believed, knew everything under the sun, except the mystical
arts of reading and writing. Accordingly, having seen that the coast was
clear--for they considered their parents (as the children of the hard-
working often do) the natural foes to amusement--they carried the monster
into an old outhouse, and ran to the veteran to beg him to come up slyly
and inspect its properties.

Three months after this memorable event, arrived the new pastor--a slim,
prim, orderly, and starch young man, framed by nature and trained by
practice to bear a great deal of solitude and starving. Two loving
couples had waited to be married till his Reverence should arrive. The
ceremony performed, where was the registry-book? The vestry was
searched-the church-wardens interrogated; the gay clerk, who, on the
demise of his deaf predecessor, had come into office a little before
Caleb's last illness, had a dim recollection of having taken the registry
up to Mr. Price at the time the vestry-room was whitewashed. The house
was searched-the cupboard, the, mysterious cupboard, was explored. "Here
it is, sir!" cried the clerk; and he pounced upon a pale parchment
volume. The thin clergyman opened it, and recoiled in dismay--more than
three-fourths of the leaves had been torn out.

"It is the moths, sir," said the gardener's wife, who had not yet removed
from the house.

The clergyman looked round; one of the children was trembling. "What
have you done to this book, little one?"

"That book?--the--hi!--hi!--"

"Speak the truth, and you sha'n't be punished."

"I did not know it was any harm--hi!--hi!--"

"Well, and--"

"And old Ben helped us."

"Well?"

"And--and--and--hi!--hi!--The tail of the kite, sir!--"

"Where is the kite?"

Alas! the kite and its tail were long ago gone to that undiscovered
limbo where all things lost, broken, vanished, and destroyed; things that
lose themselves--for servants are too honest to steal; things that break
themselves--for servants are too careful to break; find an everlasting
and impenetrable refuge.

"It does not signify a pin's head," said the clerk; "the parish must find
a new 'un!"

"It is no fault of mine," said the Pastor. "Are my chops ready?"




CHAPTER II.

"And soothed with idle dreams the frowning fate."--CRABBE.

"Why does not my father come back? what a time he has been away!"

"My dear Philip, business detains him; but he will be here in a few days
--perhaps to-day!"

"I should like him to see how much I am improved."

"Improved in what, Philip?" said the mother, with a smile. "Not Latin,
I am sure; for I have not seen you open a book since you insisted on poor
Todd's dismissal."

"Todd! Oh, he was such a scrub, and spoke through his nose: what could
he know of Latin?"

"More than you ever will, I fear, unless--" and here there was a certain
hesitation in the mother's voice, "unless your father consents to your
going to school."

"Well, I should like to go to Eton! That's the only school for a
gentleman. I've heard my father say so."

"Philip, you are too proud."--"Proud! you often call me proud; but,
then, you kiss me when you do so. Kiss me now, mother."

The lady drew her son to her breast, put aside the clustering hair from
his forehead, and kissed him; but the kiss was sad, and the moment after
she pushed him away gently and muttered, unconscious that she was
overheard:

"If, after all, my devotion to the father should wrong the children!"

The boy started, and a cloud passed over his brow; but he said nothing.
A light step entered the room through the French casements that opened on
the lawn, and the mother turned to her youngest-born, and her eye
brightened.

"Mamma! mamma! here is a letter for you. I snatched it from John: it is
papa's handwriting."

The lady uttered a joyous exclamation, and seized the letter. The
younger child nestled himself on a stool at her feet, looking up while
she read it; the elder stood apart, leaning on his gun, and with
something of thought, even of gloom, upon his countenance.

There was a strong contrast in the two boys. The elder, who was about
fifteen, seemed older than he was, not only from his height, but from the
darkness of his complexion, and a certain proud, nay, imperious,
expression upon features that, without having the soft and fluent graces
of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green shooting-
dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold tassel set upon
his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven's plume,
blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his own tastes, with the
love of the fantastic and the picturesque which bespeaks the presiding
genius of the proud mother. The younger son had scarcely told his ninth
year; and the soft, auburn ringlets, descending half-way down the
shoulders; the rich and delicate bloom that exhibits at once the hardy
health and the gentle fostering; the large deep-blue eyes; the flexile
and almost effeminate contour of the harmonious features; altogether made
such an ideal of childlike beauty as Lawrence had loved to paint or
Chantrey model. And the daintiest cares of a mother, who, as yet, has
her darling all to herself--her toy, her plaything--were visible in the
large falling collar of finest cambric, and the blue velvet dress with
its filigree buttons and embroidered sash.

Both the boys had about them the air of those whom Fate ushers blandly
into life; the air of wealth, and birth, and luxury, spoiled and pampered
as if earth had no thorn for their feet, and heaven not a wind to visit
their young cheeks too roughly. The mother had been extremely handsome;
and though the first bloom of youth was now gone, she had still the
beauty that might captivate new love--an easier task than to retain the
old. Both her sons, though differing from each other, resembled her; she
had the features of the younger; and probably any one who had seen her in
her own earlier youth would have recognized in that child's gay yet
gentle countenance the mirror of the mother when a girl. Now, however,
especially when silent or thoughtful, the expression of her face was
rather that of the elder boy;--the cheek, once so rosy was now pale,
though clear, with something which time had given, of pride and thought,
in the curved lip and the high forehead. One who could have looked on
her in her more lonely hours, might have seen that the pride had known
shame, and the thought was the shadow of the passions of fear and sorrow.

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