Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - The Caxtons - A Family Picture — Complete

Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more school, Sisty,— no more school! I shall have your room all done, freshly, and made so pretty; they are coming about it to-morrow.

The duck is quite well, and I really don’t think it is quite as lame as it was.

God bless you, dear, dear child. Your affectionate happy mother.

The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was to return home seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet half-dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in farewell to the Philhellenic, which Dr. Herman pronounced a chef d’oeuvre, and my father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter of false English with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in my mother-tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and consoled myself with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six years in learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further occasion to avail myself of so precious an accomplishment.

And so came the last day. Then alone, and in a kind of delighted melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts,—the robbers’ cave we had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of the little kingdom; the place near the pales where I had fought my first battle; the old beech-stump on which I sat to read letters from home! With my knife, rich in six blades (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a button-hook), I carved my name in large capitals over my desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine,—which should light to fame and fortune the manhood about to commence. Hope and Ambition were high within me; and yet, behind them stood Melancholy. Ah! who amongst you, readers, can now summon back all those thoughts, sweet and sad,—all that untold, half-conscious regret for the past,—all those vague longings for the future, which made a poet of the dullest on the last night before leaving boyhood and school forever?

It was a beautiful summer afternoon when the coach set me down at my father’s gate. Mrs. Primmins herself ran out to welcome me; and I had scarcely escaped from the warm clasp of her friendly hand before I was in the arms of my mother.

As soon as that tenderest of parents was convinced that I was not famished, seeing that I had dined two hours ago at Dr. Herman’s, she led me gently across the garden towards the arbor. “You will find your father so cheerful,” said she, wiping away a tear. “His brother is with him.”

I stopped. His brother! Will the reader believe it? I had never heard that he had a brother, so little were family affairs ever discussed in my hearing.

“His brother!” said I. “Have I then an Uncle Caxton as well as an Uncle Jack?”

“Yes, my love,” said my mother. And then she added, “Your father and he were not such good friends as they ought to have been, and the Captain has been abroad. However, thank Heaven! they are now quite reconciled.”

We had time for no more,—we were in the arbor. There, a table was spread with wine and fruit,—the gentlemen were at their dessert; and those gentlemen were my father, Uncle Jack, Mr. Squills, and—tall, lean, buttoned-to-the-chin—an erect, martial, majestic, and imposing personage, who seemed worthy of a place in my great ancestor’s “Boke of Chivalrie.”

All rose as I entered; but my poor father, who was always slow in his movements, had the last of me. Uncle Jack had left the very powerful impression of his great seal-ring on my fingers; Mr. Squills had patted me on the shoulder and pronounced me “wonderfully grown;” my new-found relative had with great dignity said, “Nephew, your hand, sir,—I am Captain de Caxton;” and even the tame duck had taken her beak from her wing and rubbed it gently between my legs, which was her usual mode of salutation, before my father placed his pale hand on my forehead, and looking at me for a moment with unutterable sweetness, said, “More and more like your mother,—God bless you!”

A chair had been kept vacant for me between my father and his brother. I sat down in haste, and with a tingling color on my cheeks and a rising at my throat, so much had the unusual kindness of my father’s greeting affected me; and then there came over me a sense of my new position. I was no longer a schoolboy at home for his brief holiday: I had returned to the shelter of the roof-tree to become myself one of its supports. I was at last a man, privileged to aid or solace those dear ones who had ministered, as yet without return, to me. That is a very strange crisis in our life when we come home for good. Home seems a different thing; before, one has been but a sort of guest after all, only welcomed and indulged, and little festivities held in honor of the released and happy child. But to come home for good,—to have done with school and boyhood,—is to be a guest, a child no more. It is to share the everyday life of cares and duties; it is to enter into the confidences of home. Is it not so? I could have buried my face in my hands and wept!

My father, with all his abstraction and all his simplicity, had a knack now and then of penetrating at once to the heart. I verily believe he read all that was passing in mine as easily as if it had been Greek. He stole his arm gently round my waist and whispered, “Hush!” Then, lifting his voice, he cried aloud, “Brother Roland, you must not let Jack have the best of the argument.”

“Brother Austin,” replied the Captain, very formally, “Mr. Jack, if I may take the liberty so to call him—”

“You may indeed,” cried Uncle Jack.

“Sir,” said the Captain, bowing, “it is a familiarity that does me honor. I was about to say that Mr. Jack has retired from the field.”

“Far from it,” said Squills, dropping an effervescing powder into a chemical mixture which he had been preparing with great attention, composed of sherry and lemon-juice—“far from it. Mr. Tibbets—whose organ of combativeness is finely developed, by the by—was saying—”

“That it is a rank sin and shame in the nineteenth century,” quoth Uncle Jack, “that a man like my friend Captain Caxton—”

“De Caxton, sir—Mr. Jack.”

“De Caxton,—of the highest military talents, of the most illustrious descent,—a hero sprung from heroes,—should have served so many years, and with such distinction, in his Majesty’s service, and should now be only a captain on half-pay. This, I say, comes of the infamous system of purchase, which sets up the highest honors for sale, as they did in the Roman empire—”

My father pricked up his ears; but Uncle jack pushed on before my father could get ready the forces of his meditated interruption.

“A system which a little effort, a little union, can so easily terminate. Yes, sir,” and Uncle Jack thumped the table, and two cherries bobbed up and smote Captain de Caxton on the nose, “yes, sir, I will undertake to say that I could put the army upon a very different footing. If the poorer and more meritorious gentlemen, like Captain de Caxton, would, as I was just observing, but unite in a grand anti-aristocratic association, each paying a small sum quarterly, we could realize a capital sufficient to out-purchase all these undeserving individuals, and every man of merit should have his fair chance of promotion.”

“Egad! sir,” said Squills, “there is something grand in that, eh, Captain?”

“No, sir,” replied the Captain, quite seriously; “there is in monarchies but one fountain of honor. It would be an interference with a soldier’s first duty,—his respect for his sovereign.”