The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Volume 11
PART XI
CHAPTER I
The next day, on the outside of the "Cambridge Telegraph," there was one passenger who ought to have impressed his fellow-travellers with a very respectful idea of his lore in the dead languages; for not a single syllable, in a live one, did he vouchsafe to utter from the moment he ascended that "bad eminence" to the moment in which he regained his mother earth. "Sleep," says honest Sancho, "covers a man better than a cloak." I am ashamed of thee, honest Sancho, thou art a sad plagiarist; for Tibullus said pretty nearly the same thing before thee,—
"Te somnus fusco velavit amictu."1
But is not silence as good a cloak as sleep; does it not wrap a man round with as offusc and impervious a fold? Silence, what a world it covers,— what busy schemes, what bright hopes and dark fears, what ambition, or what despair! Do you ever see a man in any society sitting mute for hours, and not feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate the wall he thus builds up between others and himself? Does he not interest you far more than the brilliant talker at your left, the airy wit at your right whose shafts fall in vain on the sullen barrier of the silent man! Silence, dark sister of Nox and Erebus, how, layer upon layer, shadow upon shadow, blackness upon blackness, thou stretchest thyself from hell to heaven, over thy two chosen haunts,—man's heart and the grave!
So, then, wrapped in my great-coat and my silence, I performed my journey; and on the evening of the second day I reached the old-fashioned brick house. How shrill on my ears sounded the bell! How strange and ominous to my impatience seemed the light gleaming across the windows of the hall! How my heart beat as I watched the face of the servant who opened the gate to my summons!
"All well?" cried I.
"All well, sir," answered the servant, cheerfully. "Mr. Squills, indeed, is with master, but I don't think there is anything the matter."
But now my mother appeared at the threshold, and I was in her arms.
"Sisty, Sisty! my dear, dear son—beggared, perhaps—and my fault—mine."
"Yours! Come into this room, out of hearing,—your fault?"
"Yes, yes! for if I had had no brother, or if I had not been led away,— if I had, as I ought, entreated poor Austin not to—"
"My dear, dearest mother, you accuse yourself for what, it seems, was my uncle's misfortune,—I am sure not even his fault! [I made a gulp there.] No, lay the fault on the right shoulders,—the defunct shoulders of that horrible progenitor, William Caxton the printer; for though I don't yet know the particulars of what has happened, I will lay a wager it is connected with that fatal invention of printing. Come, come! my father is well, is he not?"
"Yes, thank Heaven!"
"And I too, and Roland, and little Blanche! Why, then, you are right to thank Heaven, for your true treasures are untouched. But sit down and explain, pray."
"I cannot explain. I do not understand anything more than that he, my brother—mine!—has involved Austin in—in—" (a fresh burst of tears.)
I comforted, scolded, laughed, preached, and adjured in a breath; and then, drawing my another gently on, entered my father's study.
At the table was seated Mr. Squills, pen in hand, and a glass of his favorite punch by his side. My father was standing on the hearth, a shade more pale, but with a resolute expression on his countenance which was new to its indolent, thoughtful mildness. He lifted his eyes as the door opened, and then, putting his finger to his lips, as he glanced towards my mother, he said gayly, "No great harm done. Don't believe her! Women always exaggerate, and make realities of their own bugbears: it is the vice of their lively imaginations, as Wierus has clearly shown in accounting for the marks, moles, and hare-lips which they inflict upon their innocent infants before they are even born. My dear boy," added my father, as I here kissed him and smiled in his face, "I thank you for that smile! God bless you!" He wrung my hand and turned a little aside.
"It is a great comfort," renewed my father, after a short pause, "to know, when a misfortune happens, that it could not be helped. Squills has just discovered that I have no bump of cautiousness; so that, craniologically speaking, if I had escaped one imprudence, I should certainly have run my head against another."
"A man with your development is made to be taken in," said Mr. Squills, consolingly.
"Do you hear that, my own Kitty? And have you the heart to blame Jack any longer,—a poor creature cursed with a bump that would take in the Stock Exchange? And can any one resist his bump, Squills?"
"Impossible!" said the surgeon, authoritatively.
"Sooner or later it must involve him in its airy meshes,—eh, Squills?- entrap him into its fatal cerebral cell. There his fate waits him, like the ant-lion in its pit."
"Too true," quoth Squills. "What a phrenological lecturer you would have made!"
"Go then, my love," said my father, "and lay no blame but on this melancholy cavity of mine, where cautiousness—is not! Go, and let Sisty have some supper; for Squills says that he has a fine development of the mathematical organs, and we want his help. We are hard at work on figures, Pisistratus."
My mother looked broken-hearted, and, obeying submissively, stole to the door without a word. But as she reached the threshold she turned round and beckoned to me to follow her.
I whispered my father and went out. My mother was standing in the hall, and I saw by the lamp that she had dried her tears, and that her face, though very sad, was more composed.
"Sisty," she said, in a low voice which struggled to be firm, promise me that you will tell me all,—the worst, Sisty. They keep it from me, and that is my hardest punishment; for when I don't know all that he—that Austin suffers, it seems to me as if I had lost his heart. Oh, Sisty, my child, my child, don't fear me! I shall be happy whatever befalls us, if I once get back my privilege,—my privilege, Sisty, to comfort, to share! Do you understand me?"
"Yes indeed, my mother! And with your good sense and clear woman's wit, if you will but feel how much we want them, you will be the best counsellor we could have. So never fear; you and I will have no secrets."
My mother kissed me, and went away with a less heavy step.
As I re-entered, my father came across the room and embraced me.
"My son," he said in a faltering voice, "if your modest prospects in life are ruined—"
"Father, father, can you think of me at such a moment? Me! Is it possible to ruin the young and strong and healthy! Ruin me, with these thews and sinews; ruin me, with the education you have given me,—thews and sinews of the mind! Oh, no! there, Fortune is harmless! And you forget, sir,—the saffron bag!"
Squills leaped up, and wiping his eyes with one hand, gave me a sounding slap on the shoulder with the other.
"I am proud of the care I took of your infancy, Master Caxton. That comes of strengthening the digestive organs in early childhood. Such sentiments are a proof of magnificent
Tibullus, iii. 4,55.
