Charles Kingsley - Two Years Ago, Volume I

The "Tom" who had spoken was one of two youths of eighteen, who stood in opposite corners of the bay-window, gazing out upon the landscape, but evidently with thoughts as different as were their complexions.

Tom was of that bull-terrier type so common in England; sturdy, and yet not coarse; middle-sized, deep-chested, broad-shouldered; with small, well-knit hands and feet, large jaw, bright grey eyes, crisp brown hair, a heavy projecting brow; his face full of shrewdness and good-nature, and of humour withal, which might be at whiles a little saucy and sarcastic, to judge from the glances which he sent forth from the corners of his wicked eyes at his companion on the other side of the window. He was evidently prepared for a day's shooting, in velveteen jacket and leather gaiters, and stood feeling about in his pockets to see whether he had forgotten any of his tackle, and muttering to himself amid his whistling,—"Capital day. How the birds will lie. Where on earth is old Mark? Why must he wait to smoke his cigar after breakfast? Couldn't he have had it in the trap, the blessed old chimney that he is?"

The other lad was somewhat taller than Tom, awkwardly and plainly dressed, but with a highly-developed Byronic turn-down collar, and long black curling locks. He was certainly handsome, as far as the form of his features and brow; and would have been very handsome, but for the bad complexion which at his age so often accompanies a sedentary life, and a melancholic temper. One glance at his face was sufficient to tell that he was moody, shy, restless, perhaps discontented, perhaps ambitious and vain. He held in his hand a volume of Percy's Reliques, which he had just taken down from Thurnall's shelves; yet he was looking not at it, but at the landscape. Nevertheless, as he looked, one might have seen that he was thinking not so much of it as of his own thoughts about it. His eye, which was very large, dark, and beautiful, with heavy lids and long lashes, had that dreamy look so common among men of the poetic temperament; conscious of thought, if not conscious of self; and as his face kindled, and his lips moved more and more earnestly, he began muttering to himself half-aloud, till Tom Thurnall burst into an open laugh.

"There's Jack at it again! making poetry, I'll bet my head to a China orange."

"And why not?" said his father, looking up quietly, but reprovingly, as Jack winced and blushed, and a dark shade of impatience passed across his face.

"Oh! it's no concern of mine. Let everybody please themselves. The country looks very pretty, no doubt, I can tell that; only my notion is, that a wise man ought to go out and enjoy it—as I am going to do—with a gun on his shoulder, instead of poking at home like a yard-dog, and behowling oneself in po-o-oetry;" and Tom lifted up his voice into a doleful mastiff's howl.

"Then be as good as your word, Tom, and let every one please themselves," said the Doctor; but the dark youth broke out in sudden passion.

"Mr. Thomas Thurnall! I will not endure this! Why are you always making me your butt,—insulting me, sir, even in your father's house? You do not understand me; and I do not care to understand you. If my presence is disagreeable to you, I can easily relieve you of it!" and the dark youth turned to go away like Naaman, in a rage.

"Stop, John," said the Doctor. "I think it would be the more courteous plan for Tom to relieve you of his presence. Go and find Mark, Tom; and please to remember that John Briggs is my guest, and that I will not allow any rudeness to him in my house."

"I'll go, daddy, to the world's end, if you like, provided you won't ask me to write poetry. But Jack takes offence so soon. Give us your hand, old tinder-box! I meant no harm, and you know it."

John Briggs took the proffered hand sulkily enough; and Tom went out of the glass door, whistling as merry as a cricket.

"My dear boy," said the Doctor, when they were alone, "you must try to curb this temper of yours. Don't be angry with me, but—"

"I should be an ungrateful brute if I was, sir. I can bear anything from you. I ought to, for I owe everything to you; but—"

"But, my dear boy—'better is he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.'"

John Briggs tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. "I cannot help it, sir. It will drive me mad, I think at times,—this contrast between what I might be, and what I am, I can bear it no longer—mixing medicines here, when I might be educating myself, distinguishing myself—for I can do it; have you not said as much yourself to me again and again?"

"I have, of course; but—"

"But, sir, only hear me. It is in vain to ask me to command my temper while I stay here. I am not fit for this work; not fit for the dull country. I am not appreciated, not understood; and I shall never be, till I can get to London,—till I can find congenial spirits, and take my rightful place in the great parliament of mind. I am Pegasus in harness, here!" cried the vain, discontented youth. "Let me but once get there,—amid art, civilisation, intellect, and the company of men like that old Mermaid Club, to hear and to answer—

and then you shall see whether Pegasus has not wings, and can use them too!" And he stopped suddenly, choking with emotion, his nostril and chest dilating, his foot stamping impatiently on the ground.

The Doctor watched him with a sad smile.

"Do you remember the devil's temptation of our Lord—'Cast thyself down from hence; for, it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee?"

"I do; but what has that to do with me?"

"Throw away the safe station in which God has certainly put you, to seek, by some desperate venture, a new, and, as you fancy, a grander one for yourself? Look out of that window, lad; is there not poetry enough, beauty and glory enough, in that sky, those fields,—ay, in every fallen leaf,—to employ all your powers, considerable as I believe them to be? Why spurn the pure, quiet, country life, in which such men as Wordsworth have been content to live and grow old?"

The boy shook his head like an impatient horse. "Too slow—too slow for me, to wait and wait, as Wordsworth did, through long years of obscurity, misconception, ridicule. No. What I have, I must have at once; and, if it must be, die like Chatterton—if only, like Chatterton, I can have my little day of success, and make the world confess that another priest of the beautiful has arisen among men."

Now, it can scarcely be denied, that the good Doctor was guilty of a certain amount of weakness in listening patiently to all this rant. Not that the rant was very blamable in a lad of eighteen; for have we not all, while we are going through our course of Shelley, talked very much the same abominable stuff, and thought ourselves the grandest fellows upon earth on account of that very length of ear which was patent to all the world save our precious selves; blinded by our self-conceit, and wondering in wrath why everybody was laughing at us? But the truth is, the Doctor was easy and indulgent to a fault, and dreaded nothing so much, save telling a lie, as hurting people's feelings; besides, as the acknowledged wise man of Whitbury, he was a little proud of playing the Maecenas; and he had, and not unjustly, a high, opinion of John Briggs's powers. So he had lent him books, corrected his taste in many matters, and, by dint of petting and humouring, had kept the wayward youth half-a-dozen times from running away from his father, who was an apothecary in the town, and from the general practitioner, Mr. Bolus, under whom John Briggs fulfilled the office of co-assistant with Tom Thurnall. Plenty of trouble had both the lads given the Doctor in the last five years, but of very different kinds, Tom, though he was in everlasting hot water, as the most incorrigible scapegrace for ten miles round, contrived to confine his naughtiness strictly to play-hours, while he learnt everything which was to be learnt with marvellous quickness, and so utterly fulfilled the ideal of a bottle-boy (for of him, too, as of all things, I presume, an ideal exists eternally in the supra-sensual Platonic universe), that Bolus told his father,—"In hours, sir, he takes care of my business as well as I could myself; but out of hours, sir, I believe he is possessed by seven devils."