style="font-size:15px;"> VIVIAN. – But were they not soldiers? – I mean the first Romans?
Pisistratus. – My dear cousin, we are in advance of those grim outcasts, if we can get lands, houses, and wives, (though the last is difficult, and it is well that we have no white Sabines in the neighbourhood!) without that same soldiering which was the necessity of their existence.
Vivian, (after a pause.) – I have written to my father, and to yours more fully – stating in the one letter my wish, in the other trying to explain the feelings from which it springs.
Pisistratus. – Are the letters gone?
Vivian. – Yes.
Pisistratus. – And you would not show them to me!
Vivian. – Do not speak so reproachfully. I promised your father to pour out my whole heart to him, whenever it was troubled and at strife. I promise you now that I will go by his advice.
PISISTRATUS, (disconsolately.) – What is there in this military life for which you yearn that can yield you more food for healthful excitement and stirring adventure than your present pursuits afford?
Vivian. —Distinction! You do not see the difference between us. You have but a fortune to make, I have a name to redeem; you look calmly on the future, I have a dark blot to erase from the past.
Pisistratus, (soothingly.) – It is erased. Five years of no weak bewailings, but of manly reform, steadfast industry, conduct so blameless, that even Guy (whom I look upon as the incarnation of blunt English honesty) half doubts whether you are 'cute enough for "a station" – a character already so high, that I long for the hour when you will again take your father's spotless name, and give me the pride to own our kinship to the world; all this surely redeems the errors arising from an uneducated childhood and a wandering youth.
Vivian, (leaning over his horse, and putting his hand on my shoulder.) – "My dear friend, what do I owe you?" Then recovering his emotion, and pushing on at a quicker pace, while he continues to speak, "But can you not see that, just in proportion as my comprehension of right would become clear and strong, so my conscience would become also more sensitive and reproachful; and the better I understand my gallant father, the more I must desire to be as he would have had his son. Do you think it would content him, could he see me branding cattle and bargaining with bullock-drivers? Was it not the strongest wish of his heart that I should adopt his own career? Have I not heard you say that he would have had you too a soldier, but for your mother? I have no mother! If I made thousands, and tens of thousands, by this ignoble calling, would they give my father half the pleasure that he would feel at seeing my name honourably mentioned in a despatch? No, no! you have banished the gipsy blood, and now the soldier's breaks out! Oh for one glorious day in which I may clear my way into fair repute, as our fathers before us! – when tears of proud joy may flow from those eyes that have wept such hot drops at my shame! When she, too, in her high station, beside that sleek lord, may say, 'His heart was not so vile, after all!' Don't argue with me – it is in vain! Pray, rather, that I may have leave to work out my own way; for I tell you that, if condemned to stay here, I may not murmur aloud – I may go through this round of low duties as the brute turns the wheel of a mill: but my heart will prey on itself, and you shall soon write on my gravestone the epitaph of the poor poet you told us of, whose true disease was the thirst of glory – 'Here lies one whose name was written in water.'"
I had no answer; that contagious ambition made my own veins run more warmly, and my own heart beat with a louder tumult. Amidst the pastoral scenes, and under the tranquil moonlight, of the New, the Old World, even in me, rude Bushman, claimed for a while its son. But as we rode on, the air, so inexpressibly buoyant, yet soothing as an anodyne, restored me to peaceful Nature. Now the flocks, in their snowy clusters, were seen sleeping under the stars; hark, the welcome of the watch-dogs; see the light gleaming far from the chink of the door! And, pausing, I said aloud, "No, there is more glory in laying these rough foundations of a mighty state, though no trumpets resound with your victory – though no laurels shall shadow your tomb – than in forcing the onward progress of your race over burning cities and hecatombs of men!" I looked round for Vivian's answer; but, ere I spoke, he had spurred from my side, and I saw the wild dogs slinking back from the hoofs of his horse, as he rode at speed, on the sward, through the moonlight.
CHAPTER XCVII
The weeks and the months rolled on, and the replies to Vivian's letters came at last: I foreboded too well their purport. I knew that my father could not set himself in opposition to the deliberate and cherished desire of a man who had now arrived at the full strength of his understanding, and must be left at liberty to make his own election of the paths of life. Long after that date, I saw Vivian's letter to my father; and even his conversation had scarcely prepared me for the pathos of that confession of a mind remarkable alike for its strength and its weakness. If born in the age, or submitted to the influences, of religious enthusiasm, here was a nature that, awaking from sin, could not have been contented with the sober duties of mediocre goodness – that would have plunged into the fiery depths of monkish fanaticism – wrestled with the fiend in the hermitage, or marched barefoot on the infidel, with the sackcloth for armour – the cross for a sword. Now, the impatient desire for redemption took a more mundane direction, but with something that seemed almost spiritual in its fervour. And this enthusiasm flowed through strata of such profound melancholy! Deny it a vent, and it might sicken into lethargy, or fret itself into madness – give it the vent, and it might vivify and fertilise as it swept along.
My father's reply to this letter was what might be expected. It gently reinforced the old lessons in the distinctions between aspirations towards the perfecting ourselves – aspirations that are never in vain – and the morbid passion for applause from others, which shifts conscience from our own bosoms to the confused Babel of the crowd, and calls it "fame." But my father, in his counsels, did not seek to oppose a mind so obstinately bent upon a single course – he sought rather to guide and strengthen it in the way it should go. The seas of human life are wide. Wisdom may suggest the voyage, but it must first look to the condition of the ship, and the nature of the merchandise to exchange. Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish can bring back the gold of Ophir; but shall it therefore rot in the harbour? No; give its sails to the wind!
But I had expected that Roland's letter to his son would have been full of joy and exultation – joy there was none in it, yet exultation there might be – though serious, grave, and subdued. In the proud assent that the old soldier gave to his son's wish, in his entire comprehension of motives so akin to his own nature – there was yet a visible sorrow; it seemed even as if he constrained himself to the assent he gave. Not till I had read it again and again, could I divine Roland's feelings while he wrote. At this distance of time, I comprehend them well. Had he sent from his side, into noble warfare, some boy fresh to life, new to sin, with an enthusiasm pure and single-hearted as his own young chivalrous ardour – then, with all a soldier's joy, he had yielded a cheerful tribute to the hosts of England; but here he recognised, though perhaps dimly, not the frank military fervour, but the stern desire of expiation – and in that thought he admitted forebodings that would have been otherwise rejected – so that, at the close of the letter, it seemed not the fiery war-seasoned Roland that wrote, but rather some timid, anxious mother. Warnings and entreaties, and cautions not to be rash, and assurances that the best soldiers were ever the most prudent – were these the counsels of the fierce veteran, who, at the head of the forlorn hope, had mounted the wall at – , his sword between his teeth!
But, whatever his presentiments, Roland had yielded at once to his son's prayer – hastened to London at the receipt of his letter – obtained a commission in a regiment now in active service in India; and that commission was made out in his son's name. The commission, with an order to join the regiment as soon as possible, accompanied the letter.
And
