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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Caxtons, by Bulwer-Lytton, Part 8
+#22 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Caxtons, Part 8
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: February 2005  [EBook #7593]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 1, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAXTONS, BY LYTTON, PART 8 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+PART VIII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in Russell
+Street, an Elf! clad in white,--small, delicate, with curls of jet over
+her shoulders; with eyes so large and so lustrous that they shone
+through the room as no eyes merely human could possibly shine.  The Elf
+approached, and stood facing us.  The sight was so unexpected and the
+apparition so strange that we remained for some moments in startled
+silence.  At length my father, as the bolder and wiser man of the two,
+and the more fitted to deal with the eerie things of another world, had
+the audacity to step close up to the little creature, and, bending down
+to examine its face, said, "What do you want, my pretty child?"
+
+Pretty child!  Was it only a pretty child after all?  Alas!  it would be
+well if all we mistake for fairies at the first glance could resolve
+themselves only into pretty children.
+
+"Come," answered the child, with a foreign accent, and taking my father
+by the lappet of his coat, "come, poor papa is so ill!  I am frightened!
+come, and save him."
+
+"Certainly," exclaimed  my father, quickly.  "Where's my hat, Sisty?
+Certainly, my child; we will go and save papa."
+
+"But who is papa?" asked Pisistratus,--a question that would never have
+occurred to my father.  He never asked who or what the sick papas of
+poor children were when the children pulled him by the lappet of his
+coat.  "Who is papa?"
+
+The child looked hard at me, and the big tears rolled from those large,
+luminous eyes, but quite silently.  At this moment a full-grown figure
+filled up the threshold, and emerging from the shadow, presented to us
+the aspect of a stout, well-favored young woman.  She dropped a
+courtesy, and then said, mincingly,--
+
+"Oh, miss, you ought to have waited for me, and not alarmed the
+gentlefolks by running upstairs in that way!  If you please, sir, I was
+settling with the cabman, and he was so imperent,--them low fellows
+always are, when they have only us poor women to deal with, sir, and--"
+
+"But what is the matter?" cried I, for my father had taken the child in
+his arms soothingly, and she was now weeping on his breast.
+
+"Why, you see, sir [another courtesy], the gent only arrived last night
+at our hotel, sir,--the Lamb, close by Lunnun Bridge,--and he was taken
+ill, and he's not quite in his right mind like; so we sent for the
+doctor, and the doctor looked at the brass plate on the gent's carpet-
+bag, sir, and then he looked into the 'Court Guide,' and he said, 'There
+is a Mr. Caxton in Great Russell Street,--is he any relation?' and this
+young lady said, 'That's my papa's brother, and we were going there.'
+And so, sir, as the Boots was out, I got into a cab, and miss would come
+with me, and--"
+
+"Roland--Roland ill!  Quick, quick, quick!" cried my father, and with
+the child still in his arms he ran down the stairs.  I followed with his
+hat, which of course he had forgotten.  A cab, by good luck, was passing
+our very door; but the chambermaid would not let us enter it till she
+had satisfied herself that it was not the same she had dismissed.  This
+preliminary investigation completed, we entered and drove to the Lamb.
+
+The chambermaid, who sat opposite, passed the time in ineffectual
+overtures to relieve my father of the little girl,--who still clung
+nestling to his breast,--in a long epic, much broken into episodes, of
+the causes which had led to her dismissal of the late cabman, who, to
+swell his fare, had thought proper to take a "circumbendibus!"--and with
+occasional tugs at her cap, and smoothings down of her gown, and
+apologies for being such a figure, especially when her eyes rested on my
+satin cravat, or drooped on my shining boots.
+
+Arrived at the Lamb, the chambermaid, with conscious dignity, led us up
+a large staircase, which seemed interminable.  As she mounted the region
+above the third story, she paused to take breath and inform us,
+apologetically, that the house was full, but that if the "gent" stayed
+over Friday, he would be moved into No. 54, "with a look-out and a
+chimbly."  My little cousin now slipped from my father's arms, and,
+running up the stairs, beckoned to us to follow.  We did so, and were
+led to a door, at which the child stopped and listened; then, taking off
+her shoes, she stole in on tiptoe.  We entered after her.
+
+By the light of a single candle we saw my poor uncle's face; it was
+flushed with fever, and the eyes had that bright, vacant stare which it
+is so terrible to meet.  Less terrible is it to find the body wasted,
+the features sharp with the great life-struggle, than to look on the
+face from which the mind is gone,--the eyes in which there is no
+recognition.  Such a sight is a startling shock to that unconscious
+habitual materialism with which we are apt familiarly to regard those we
+love; for in thus missing the mind, the heart, the affection that sprang
+to ours, we are suddenly made aware that it was the something within the
+form, and not the form itself, that was so dear to us.  The form itself
+is still, perhaps, little altered; but that lip which smiles no welcome,
+that eye which wanders over us as strangers, that ear which
+distinguishes no more our voices,--the friend we sought is not there!
+Even our own love is chilled back; grows a kind of vague, superstitious
+terror.  Yes, it was not the matter, still present to us, which had
+conciliated all those subtle, nameless sentiments which are classed and
+fused in the word "affection;" it was the airy, intangible, electric
+something, the absence of which now appals us.
+
+I stood speechless; my father crept on, and took the hand that returned
+no pressure.  The child only did not seem to share our emotions, but,
+clambering on the bed, laid her cheek on the breast, and was still.
+
+"Pisistratus," whispered my father at last, and I stole near, hushing my
+breath,--"Pisistratus, if your mother were here!"
+
+I nodded; the same thought had struck us both.  His deep wisdom, my
+active youth, both felt their nothingness then and there.  In the sick
+chamber both turned helplessly to miss the woman.
+
+So I stole out, descended the stairs, and stood in the open air in a
+sort of stunned amaze.  Then the tramp of feet, and the roll of wheels,
+and the great London roar, revived me.  That contagion of practical life
+which lulls the heart and stimulates the brain,--what an intellectual
+mystery there is in its common atmosphere!  In another moment I had
+singled out, like an inspiration, from a long file of those ministrants
+of our Trivia, the cab of the lightest shape and with the strongest
+horse, and was on my way, not to my mother's, but to Dr. M-- H--,
+Manchester Square, whom I knew as the medical adviser to the Trevanions.
+Fortunately, that kind and able physician was at home, and he promised
+to be with the sufferer before I myself could join him.  I then drove to
+Russell Street, and broke to my mother, as cautiously as I could, the
+intelligence with which I was charged.
+
+When we arrived at the Lamb, we found the doctor already writing his
+prescription and injunctions: the activity of the treatment announced
+the clanger.  I flew for the surgeon who had been before called in.
+Happy those who are strange to that indescribable silent bustle which
+the sick-room at times presents,--that conflict which seems almost hand
+to hand between life and death,--when all the poor, unresisting,
+unconscious frame is given up to the war against its terrible enemy the
+dark blood flowing, flowing; the hand on the pulse, the hushed suspense,
+every look on the physician's bended brow; then the sinapisms to the
+feet, and the ice to the head; and now and then, through the lull of the
+low whispers, the incoherent voice of the sufferer,--babbling, perhaps,
+of green fields and fairyland, while your hearts are breaking!  Then, at
+length, the sleep,--in that sleep, perhaps, the crisis,--the breathless
+watch, the slow waking, the first sane words, the old smile again, only
+fainter, your gushing tears, your low "Thank God thank God!"
+
+Picture all this!  It is past; Roland has spoken, his sense has
+returned; my mother is leaning over him; his child's small hands are
+clasped round his neck; the surgeon, who has been there six hours, has
+taken up his hat, and smiles gayly as he nods farewell; and my father is
+leaning against the wall, his face covered with his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+All this had been so sudden that, to use the trite phrase,--for no other
+is so expressive,--it was like a dream.  I felt an absolute, an
+imperious want of solitude, of the open air.  The swell of gratitude
+almost stifled me; the room did not seem large enough for my big heart.
+In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we
+find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others.  On the spring
+side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in
+our room, or get away into the streets or the fields; in our earlier
+years we are still the savages of Nature, and we do as the poor brute
+does: the wounded stag leaves the herd, and if there is anything on a
+dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.
+
+Accordingly, I stole out of the hotel and wandered through the streets,
+which were quite deserted.  It was about the first hour of dawn,--the
+most comfortless hour there is, especially in London!  But I only felt
+freshness in the raw air, and soothing in the desolate stillness.  The
+love my uncle inspired was very remarkable in its nature; it was not
+like that quiet affection with which those advanced in life must usually
+content themselves, but connected with the more vivid interest that
+youth awakens.  There was in him still so much of viva, city and fire,
+in his errors and crotchets so much of the self-delusion of youth, that
+one could scarce fancy him other than young.  Those Quixotic,
+exaggerated notions of honor, that romance of sentiment which no
+hardship, care, grief, disappointment, could wear away (singular in a
+period when, at two and twenty, young men declare themselves blases!),
+seemed to leave him all the charm of boyhood.  A season in London had
+made me more a man of the world, older in heart than he was.  Then, the
+sorrow that gnawed him with such silent sternness.  No, Captain Roland
+was one of those men who seize hold of your thoughts, who mix themselves
+up with your lives.  The idea that Roland should die,--die with the load
+at his heart unlightened,--was one that seemed to take a spring out of
+the wheels of nature, all object out of the aims of life,--of my life at
+least.  For I had made it one of the ends of my existence to bring back
+the son to the father, and restore the smile, that must have been gay
+once, to the downward curve of that iron lip.  But Roland was now out of
+danger; and yet, like one who has escaped shipwreck, I trembled to look
+back on the danger past: the voice of the devouring deep still boomed in
+my ears.  While rapt in my reveries, I stopped mechanically to hear a
+clock strike--four; and, looking round, I perceived that I had wandered
+from the heart of the City, and was in one of the streets that lead out
+of the Strand.  Immediately before me, on the doorsteps of a large shop
+whose closed shutters were as obstinate a stillness as if they had
+guarded the secrets of seventeen centuries in a street in Pompeii,
+reclined a form fast asleep, the arm propped on the hard stone
+supporting the head, and the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs.  The
+dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the
+remains of a certain pretence; an air of faded, shabby, penniless
+gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate
+unfitness to grapple with it.  The face of this person was hollow and
+pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard.  I drew
+near and nearer; I recognized the countenance, the regular features, the
+raven hair, even a peculiar gracefulness of posture: the young man whom
+I had met at the inn by the way-side, and who had left me alone with the
+Savoyard and his mice in the churchyard, was before me.  I remained
+behind the shadow of one of the columns of the porch, leaning against
+the area rails, and irresolute whether or not so slight an acquaintance
+justified me in waking the sleeper, when a policeman, suddenly emerging
+from an angle in the street, terminated my deliberations with the
+decision of his practical profession; for he laid hold of the young
+man's arm and shook it roughly: "You must not lie here; get up and go
+home!"  The sleeper woke with a quick start, rubbed his eyes, looked
+round, and fixed them upon the policeman so haughtily that that
+discriminating functionary probably thought that it was not from sheer
+necessity that so improper a couch had been selected, and with an air of
+greater respect he said, "You have been drinking, young man,--can you
+find your way home?"
+
+"Yes," said the youth, resettling himself, "you see I have found it!"
+
+"By the Lord Harry!" muttered the policeman, "if he ben't going to sleep
+again.  Come, come, walk on; or I must walk you off."
+
+My old acquaintance turned round.  "Policeman," said he, with a strange
+sort of smile, "what do you think this lodging is worth,--I don't say
+for the night, for you see that is over, but for the next two hours?
+The lodging is primitive, but it suits me; I should think a shilling
+would be a fair price for it, eh?"
+
+"You love your joke, sir," said the policeman, with a brow much relaxed,
+and opening his hand mechanically.
+
+"Say a shilling, then; it is a bargain!  I hire it of you upon credit.
+Good night, and call me at six o'clock."
+
+With that the young man settled himself so resolutely, and the
+policeman's face exhibited such bewilderment, that I burst out laughing,
+and came from my hiding-place.
+
+The policeman looked at me.  "Do you know this--this--"
+
+"This gentleman?" said I, gravely.  "Yes, you may leave him to me;" and
+I slipped the price of the lodging into the policeman's hand.  He looked
+at the shilling, he looked at me, he looked up the street and down the
+street, shook his head, and walked off.  I then approached the youth,
+touched him, and said: "Can you remember me, sir; and what have you done
+with Mr. Peacock?"
+
+Stranger (after a pause).--"I remember you; your name is Caxton."
+
+Pisistratus.--"And yours?"
+
+Stranger.--"Poor devil, if you ask my pockets,--pockets, which are the
+symbols of man; Dare-devil, if you ask my heart.  [Surveying me from
+head to foot.]  The world seems to have smiled on you, Mr. Caxton!  Are
+you not ashamed to speak to a wretch lying on the stones?  but, to be
+sure, no one sees you."
+
+Pisistratus (sententiously).--"Had I lived in the last century, I might
+have found Samuel Johnson lying on the stones."
+
+Stranger (rising).--"You have spoilt my sleep: you had a right, since
+you paid for the lodging.  Let me walk with you a few paces; you need
+not fear, I do not pick pockets--yet!"
+
+Pisistratus.--"You say the world has smiled on me; I fear it has frowned
+on you.  I don't say 'courage,' for you seem to have enough of that; but
+I say 'patience,' which is the rarer quality of the two."
+
+Stranger.--"Hem! [again looking at me keenly.]  Why is it that you stop
+to speak to me,--one of whom you know nothing, or worse than nothing?"
+
+Pisistratus.--"Because I have often thought of you; because you interest
+me; because--pardon me--I would help you if I can,--that is, if you want
+help."
+
+Stranger.--"Want?  I am one want!  I want sleep, I want food; I want the
+patience you recommend,--patience to starve and rot.  I have travelled
+from Paris to Boulogne on foot, with twelve sous in my pocket.  Out of
+those twelve sous in my pocket I saved four; with the four I went to a
+billiard-room at Boulogne: I won just enough to pay my passage and buy
+three rolls.  You see I only require capital in order to make a fortune.
+If with four sous I can win ten francs in a night, what could I win with
+a capital of four sovereigns, and in the course of a year?  That is an
+application of the Rule of Three which my head aches too much to
+calculate just at present.  Well, those three rolls have lasted me three
+days; the last crumb  went for supper last night.  Therefore, take care
+how you offer me money (for that is what men mean by help).  You see I
+have no option but to take it.  But I warn you, don't expect gratitude;
+I have none in me!"
+
+Pisistratus.--"You are not so bad as you paint yourself.  I would do
+something more for you, if I can, than lend you the little I have to
+offer.  Will you be frank with me?"
+
+Stranger.--"That depends; I have been frank enough hitherto, I think."
+
+Pisistratus.--"True; so I proceed without scruple.  Don't tell me your
+name or your condition, if you object to such confidence; but tell me if
+you have relations to whom you can apply?  You shake your head.  Well,
+then, are you willing to work for yourself, or is it only at the
+billiard-table--pardon me--that you can try to make four sous produce
+ten francs?"
+
+Stranger (musing).--"I understand you.  I have never worked yet,--I
+abhor work.  But I have no objection to try if it is in me."
+
+Pisistratus.--"It is in you.  A man who can walk from Paris to Boulogne
+with twelve sous in his pocket and save four for a purpose; who can
+stake those four on the cool confidence in his own skill, even at
+billiards; who can subsist for three days on three rolls; and who, on
+the fourth day, can wake from the stones of a capital with an eye and a
+spirit as proud as yours,--has in him all the requisites to subdue
+fortune."
+
+Stranger.--"Do you work--you?"
+
+Pisistratus.--"Yes--and hard."
+
+Stranger.--"I am ready to work, then."
+
+Pisistratus.--"Good.  Now, what can you do?"
+
+Stranger (with his odd smile).--"Many things useful.  I can split a
+bullet on a penknife; I know the secret tierce of Coulon, the fencing-
+master; I can speak two languages (besides English) like a native, even
+to their slang; I know every game in the cards; I can act comedy,
+tragedy, farce; I can drink down Bacchus himself; I can make any woman I
+please in love with me,--that is, any woman good for nothing.  Can I
+earn a handsome livelihood out of all this,--wear kid gloves and set up
+a cabriolet?  You see my wishes are modest!"
+
+Pisistratus.--"You speak two languages, you say, like a native,--French,
+I suppose, is one of them?"
+
+Stranger.--"Yes."
+
+Pisistratus.--"Will you teach it?"
+
+Stranger (haughtily). "No.  Je suis gentilhomme, which means more or
+less than a gentleman.  Gentilhomme means well born, because free born;
+teachers are slaves!"
+
+Pisistratus (unconsciously imitating Mr. Trevanion).--"Stuff!"
+
+Stranger (looks angry, and then laughs).--"Very true; stilts don't suit
+shoes like these!  But I cannot teach.  Heaven help those I should
+teach!  Anything else?"
+
+Pisistratus.--"Anything else!--you leave me a wide margin.  You know
+French thoroughly,--to write as well as speak?  That is much.  Give me
+some address where I can find you,--or will you call on me?"
+
+Stranger.--"No!  Any evening at dusk I will meet you.  I have no address
+to give, and I cannot show these rags at another man's door."
+
+Pisistratus.--"At nine in the evening, then, and here in the Strand, on
+Thursday next.  I may then have found some thing that will suit you.
+Meanwhile--"  slides his purse into the Stranger's hand.  N. B.--Purse
+not very full.
+
+Stranger, with the air of one conferring a favor, pockets the purse; and
+there is something so striking in the very absence of all emotion at so
+accidental a rescue from starvation that Pisistratus exclaims,--
+
+"I don't know why I should have taken this fancy to you, Mr. Dare-devil,
+if that be the name that pleases you best.  The wood you are made of
+seems cross-grained, and full of knots; and yet, in the hands of a
+skilful carver, I think it would be worth much."
+
+Stranger (startled).--"Do you?  Do you?  None, I believe, ever thought
+that before.  But the same wood, I suppose, that makes the gibbet could
+make the mast of a man-of-war.  I tell you, however, why you have taken
+this fancy to me,--the strong sympathize with the strong.  You, too,
+could subdue fortune!"
+
+Pisistratus.--"Stop!  If  so, if there is congeniality between us, then
+liking should be reciprocal.  Come, say that; for half my chance of
+helping you is in my power to touch your heart."
+
+Stranger (evidently softened).--"If I were as great a rogue as I ought
+to be, my answer would be easy enough.  As it is, I delay it.  Adieu.--
+On Thursday."
+
+Stranger vanishes in the labyrinth of alleys round Leicester Square.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+On my return to the Lamb, I found that my uncle was in a soft sleep; and
+after a morning visit from the surgeon, and his assurance that the fever
+was fast subsiding, and all cause for alarm was gone, I thought it
+necessary to go back to Trevanion's house and explain the reason for my
+night's absence.  But the family had not returned from the country.
+Trevanion himself came up for a few hours in the afternoon, and seemed
+to feel much for my poor uncle's illness.  Though, as usual, very busy,
+he accompanied me to the Lamb to see my father and cheer him up.  Roland
+still continued to mend, as the surgeon phrased it; and as we went back
+to St. James's Square, Trevanion had the consideration to release me
+from my oar in his galley for the next few days.  My mind, relieved from
+my anxiety for Roland, now turned to my new friend.  It had not been
+without an object that I had questioned the young man as to his
+knowledge of French.  Trevanion had a large correspondence in foreign
+countries which was carried on in that language; and here I could be but
+of little help to him.  He himself, though he spoke and wrote French
+with fluency and grammatical correctness, wanted that intimate knowledge
+of the most delicate and diplomatic of all languages to satisfy his
+classical purism.
+
+For Trevanion was a terrible word-weigher.  His taste was the plague of
+my life and his own.  His prepared speeches (or rather perorations) were
+the most finished pieces of cold diction that could be conceived under
+the marble portico of the Stoics,--so filed and turned, trimmed and
+tamed, that they never admitted a sentence that could warm the heart, or
+one that could offend the ear.  He had so great a horror of a vulgarism
+that, like Canning, he would have made a periphrasis of a couple of
+lines to avoid using the word "cat."  It was only in extempore speaking
+that a ray of his real genius could indiscreetly betray itself.  One may
+judge what labor such a super-refinement of taste would inflict upon a
+man writing in a language not his own to some distinguished statesman or
+some literary institution,--knowing that language just well enough to
+recognize all the native elegances he failed to attain.  Trevanion at
+that very moment was employed upon a statistical document intended as a
+communication to a Society at Copenhagen of which he was all honorary
+member.  It had been for three weeks the torment of the whole house,
+especially of poor Fanny (whose French was the best at our joint
+disposal).  But Trevanion had found her phraseology too mincing, too
+effeminate, too much that of the boudoir.  Here, then, was an
+opportunity to introduce my new friend and test the capacities that I
+fancied he possessed.  I therefore, though with some hesitation, led the
+subject to "Remarks on the Mineral Treasures of Great Britain and
+Ireland" (such was the title of the work intended to enlighten the
+savants of Denmark); and by certain ingenious circumlocutions, known to
+all able applicants, I introduced my acquaintance with a young gentleman
+who possessed the most familiar and intimate knowledge of French, and
+who might be of use in revising the manuscript.  I knew enough of
+Trevanion to feel that I could not reveal the circumstances under which
+I had formed that acquaintance, for he was much too practical a man not
+to have been frightened out of his wits at the idea of submitting so
+classical a performance to so disreputable a scapegrace.  As it was,
+however, Trevanion, whose mind at that moment was full of a thousand
+other things, caught at my suggestion, with very little cross-
+questioning on the subject, and before he left London consigned the
+manuscript to my charge.
+
+"My friend is poor," said I, timidly.
+
+"Oh! as to that," cried Trevanion, hastily, "if it be a matter of
+charity, I put my purse in your hands; but don't put my manuscript in
+his!  If it be a matter of business, it is another affair; and I must
+judge of his work before I can say how much it is worth,--perhaps
+nothing!"
+
+So ungracious was this excellent man in his very virtues!
+
+"Nay," said I, "it is a matter of business, and so we will consider it."
+
+"In that case," said Trevanion, concluding the matter and buttoning his
+pockets, "if I dislike his work,--nothing; if I like it,--twenty
+guineas.  Where are the evening papers?" and in another moment the
+member of Parliament had forgotten the statist, and was pishing and
+tutting over the "Globe" or the "Sun."
+
+On Thursday my uncle was well enough to be moved into our house; and on
+the same evening I went forth to keep my appointment with the stranger.
+The clock struck nine as we met.  The palm of punctuality might be
+divided between us.  He had profited by the interval, since our last
+meeting, to repair the more obvious deficiencies of his wardrobe; and
+though there was something still wild, dissolute, outlandish, about his
+whole appearance, yet in the elastic energy of his step and the resolute
+assurance of his bearing there was that which Nature gives to her own
+aristocracy: for, as far as my observation goes, what has been called
+the "grand air" (and which is wholly distinct from the polish of manner
+or the urbane grace of high breeding) is always accompanied, and perhaps
+produced, by two qualities,--courage, and the desire of command.  It is
+more common to a half-savage nature than to one wholly civilized.
+The Arab has it, so has the American Indian; and I suspect that it
+was more frequent among the knights and barons of the Middle Ages
+than it is among the polished gentlemen of the modern drawing-room.
+
+We shook hands, and walked on a few moments in silence; at length thus
+commenced the Stranger,--
+
+"You have found it more difficult, I fear, than you imagined, to make
+the empty sack stand upright.  Considering that at least one third of
+those born to work cannot find it, why should I?"
+
+Pisistratus.--"I am hard-hearted enough to believe that work never fails
+to those who seek it in good earnest.  It was said of some man, famous
+for keeping his word, that 'if he had promised you an acorn, and all the
+oaks in England failed to produce one, he would have sent to Norway for
+an acorn.'  If I wanted work, and there was none to be had in the Old
+World, I would find my way to the New.  But to the point: I have found
+something for you, which I do not think your taste will oppose, and
+which may open to you the means of an honorable independence.  But I
+cannot well explain it in the streets: where shall we go?"
+
+Stranger (after some hesitation).--"I have a lodging near here which I
+need not blush to take you to,--I mean, that it is not among rogues and
+castaways."
+
+Pisistratus (much pleased, and taking the stranger's arm).--"Come,
+then."
+
+Pisistratus and the stranger pass over Waterloo Bridge and pause before
+a small house of respectable appearance.  Stranger admits them both with
+a latch-key, leads the way to the third story, strikes a light, and does
+the honors to a small chamber, clean and orderly.  Pisistratus explains
+the task to be done, and opens the manuscript.  The stranger draws his
+chair deliberately towards the light and runs his eye rapidly over the
+pages.  Pisistratus trembles to see him pause before a long array of
+figures and calculations.  Certainly it does not look inviting; but,
+pshaw! it is scarcely a part of the task, which limits itself to the
+mere correction of words.
+
+Stranger (briefly).--"There must be a mistake here--stay!--I see--"  (He
+turns back a few pages and corrects with rapid precision an error in a
+somewhat complicated and abstruse calculation.)
+
+Pisistratus  (surprised).--"You seem a notable arithmetician."
+
+Stranger.--"Did I not tell you that I was skilful in all games of
+mingled skill and chance?  It requires an arithmetical head for that: a
+first-rate card-player is a financier spoilt.  I am certain that you
+never could find a man fortunate on the turf or at the gaining-table who
+had not an excellent head for figures.  Well, this French is good
+enough, apparently; there are but a few idioms, here and there, that,
+strictly speaking, are more English than French.  But the whole is a
+work scarce worth paying for!"
+
+Pisistratus.--"The work of the head fetches a price not proportioned to
+the quantity, but the quality.  When shall I call for this?"
+
+Stranger.--"To-morrow."  (And he puts the manuscript away in a drawer.)
+
+We then conversed on various matters for nearly an hour; and my
+impression of this young man's natural ability was confirmed and
+heightened.  But it was an ability as wrong and perverse in its
+directions or instincts as a French novelist's.  He seemed to have, to a
+high degree, the harder portion of the reasoning faculty, but to be
+almost wholly without that arch beautifier of character, that sweet
+purifier of mere intellect,--the imagination; for though we are too much
+taught to be on our guard against imagination, I hold it, with Captain
+Roland, to be the divinest kind of reason we possess, and the one that
+leads us the least astray.  In youth, indeed, it occasions errors, but
+they are not of a sordid or debasing nature.  Newton says that one final
+effect of the comets is to recruit the seas and the planets by a
+condensation of the vapors and exhalations therein; and so even the
+erratic flashes of an imagination really healthful and vigorous deepen
+our knowledge and brighten our lights; they recruit our seas and our
+stars.  Of such flashes my new friend was as innocent as the sternest
+matter-of-fact person could desire.  Fancies he had in profusion, and
+very bad ones; but of imagination not a scintilla!  His mind was one of
+those which live in a prison of logic, and cannot, or will not, see
+beyond the bars such a nature is at once positive and sceptical.  This
+boy had thought proper to decide at once on the numberless complexities
+of the social world from his own harsh experience.
+
+With him the whole system was a war and a cheat.  If the universe were
+entirely composed of knaves, he would be sure to have made his way.  Now
+this bias of mind, alike shrewd and unamiable, might be safe enough if
+accompanied by a lethargic temper; but it threatened to become terrible
+and dangerous in one who, in default of imagination, possessed abundance
+of passion: and this was the case with the young outcast.  Passion, in
+him, comprehended many of the worst emotions which militate against
+human happiness.  You could not contradict him but you raised quick
+choler; you could not speak of wealth, but the cheek paled with gnawing
+envy.  The astonishing natural advantages of this poor boy his beauty,
+his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery
+atmosphere--had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an
+arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices
+against him.  Irascible, envious, arrogant,--bad enough, but not the
+worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold,
+repellent cynicism,--his passions vented themselves in sneers.  There
+seemed in him no moral susceptibility, and, what was more remarkable in
+a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor.  He had,
+to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called
+"ambition," but no apparent wish for fame or esteem or the love of his
+species; only the hard wish to succeed, not shine, not serve,--succeed,
+that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-
+conceit, and enjoy the pleasures which the redundant nervous life in him
+seemed to crave.  Such were the more patent attributes of a character
+that, ominous as it was, yet interested me, and yet appeared to me to be
+redeemable,--nay, to have in it the rude elements of a certain
+greatness.  Ought we not to make something great out of a youth, under
+twenty, who has, in the highest degree, quickness to conceive and
+courage to execute?  On the other hand, all faculties that can make
+greatness, contain those that can attain goodness.  In the savage
+Scandinavian or the ruthless Frank lay the germs of a Sidney or a
+Bayard.  What would the best of us be if he were suddenly placed at war
+with the whole world?  And this fierce spirit was at war with the whole
+world,--a war self-sought, perhaps, but it was war not the less.  You
+must surround the savage with peace, if you want the virtues of peace.
+
+I cannot say that it was in a single interview and conference that I
+came to these convictions; but I am rather summing up the impressions
+which I received as I saw more of this person, whose destiny I presumed
+to take under my charge.
+
+In going away, I said, "But at all events you have a name in your
+lodgings: whom am I to ask for when I call tomorrow?"
+
+"Oh! you may know my name now," said he smiling, "it is Vivian,--Francis
+Vivian."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+I remember one morning, when a boy, loitering by an old wall to watch
+the operations of a garden spider whose web seemed to be in great
+request.  When I first stopped, she was engaged very quietly with a fly
+of the domestic species, whom she managed with ease and dignity.  But
+just when she was most interested in that absorbing employment came a
+couple of May-flies, and then a gnat, and then a blue-bottle,--all at
+different angles of the web.  Never was a poor spider so distracted by
+her good fortune!  She evidently did not know which godsend to take
+first.  The aboriginal victim being released, she slid half-way towards
+the May-flies; then one of her eight eyes caught sight of the blue-
+bottle, and she shot off in that direction,--when the hum of the gnat
+again diverted her; and in the middle of this perplexity, pounce came a
+young wasp in a violent passion!  Then the spider evidently lost her
+presence of mind; she became clean demented; and after standing, stupid
+and stock-still, in the middle of her meshes for a minute or two, she
+ran off to her hole as fast as she could run, and left her guests to
+shift for themselves.  I confess that I am somewhat in the dilemma of
+the attractive and amiable insect I have just described.  I got on well
+enough while I had only my domestic fly to see after.  But now that
+there is something fluttering at every end of my net (and especially
+since the advent of that passionate young wasp, who is fuming and
+buzzing in the nearest corner), I am fairly at a loss which I should
+first grapple with; and alas! unlike the spider, I have no hole where I
+can hide myself, and let the web do the weaver's work.  But I will
+imitate the spider as far as I can; and while the rest hum and struggle
+away their impatient, unnoticed hour, I will retreat into the inner
+labyrinth of my own life.
+
+The illness of my uncle and my renewed acquaintance with Vivian had
+naturally sufficed to draw my thoughts from the rash and unpropitious
+love I had conceived for Fanny Trevanion.  During the absence of the
+family from London (and they stayed some time longer than had been
+expected), I had leisure, however, to recall my father's touching
+history, and the moral it had so obviously preached to me; and I formed
+so many good resolutions that it was with an untrembling hand that I
+welcomed Miss Trevanion at last to London, and with a firm heart that I
+avoided, as much as possible, the fatal charm of her society.  The slow
+convalescence of my uncle gave me a just excuse to discontinue our
+rides.  What time Trevanion spared me, it was natural that I should
+spend with my family.  I went to no balls nor parties; I even absented
+myself from Trevanion's periodical dinners.  Miss Trevanion at first
+rallied me on my seclusion, with her usual lively malice.  But I
+continued worthily to complete my martyrdom.  I took care that no
+reproachful look at the gayety that wrung my soul should betray my
+secret.  Then Fanny seemed either hurt or disdainful, and avoided
+altogether entering her father's study; all at once, she changed her
+tactics, and was seized with a strange desire for knowledge, which
+brought her into the room to look for a book, or ask a question, ten
+times a day.  I was proof to all.  But, to speak truth, I was profoundly
+wretched.  Looking back now, I am dismayed at the remembrance of my own
+sufferings: my health became seriously affected; I dreaded alike the
+trial of the day and the anguish of the night.  My only distractions
+were in my visits to Vivian and my escape to the dear circle of home.
+And that home was my safeguard and preservative in that crisis of my
+life; its atmosphere of unpretended honor and serene virtue strengthened
+all my resolutions; it braced me for my struggles against the strongest
+passion which youth admits, and counteracted the evil vapors of that air
+in which Vivian's envenomed spirit breathed and moved.  Without the
+influence of such a home, if I had succeeded in the conduct that probity
+enjoined towards those in whose house I was a trusted guest, I do not
+think I could have resisted the contagion of that malign and morbid
+bitterness against fate and the world which love, thwarted by fortune,
+is too inclined of itself to conceive, and in the expression of which
+Vivian was not without the eloquence that belongs to earnestness,
+whether in truth or falsehood.  But, somehow or other, I never left the
+little room that contained the grand suffering in the face of the
+veteran soldier, whose lip, often quivering with anguish, was never
+heard to murmur, and the tranquil wisdom which had succeeded my father's
+early trials (trials like my own), and the loving smile on my mother's
+tender face, and the innocent childhood of Blanche (by which name the
+Elf had familiarized herself to us), whom I already loved as a sister,--
+without feeling that those four walls contained enough to sweeten the
+world, had it been filled to its capacious brim with gall and hyssop.
+
+Trevanion had been more than satisfied with Vivian's performance, he had
+been struck with it; for though the corrections in the mere phraseology
+had been very limited, they went beyond verbal amendments,--they
+suggested such words as improved the thoughts; and besides that notable
+correction of an arithmetical error which Trevanion's mind was formed to
+over-appreciate, one or two brief annotations on the margin were boldly
+hazarded, prompting some stronger link in a chain of reasoning, or
+indicating the necessity for some further evidence in the assertion of a
+statement.  And all this from the mere natural and naked logic of an
+acute mind, unaided by the smallest knowledge of the subject treated of!
+Trevanion threw quite enough work into Vivian's hands, and at a
+remuneration sufficiently liberal to realize my promise of an
+independence.  And more than once he asked me to introduce to him my
+friend.  But this I continued to elude,--Heaven knows, not from
+jealousy, but simply because I feared that Vivian's manner and way of
+talk would singularly displease one who detested presumption, and
+understood no eccentricities but his own.
+
+Still, Vivian, whose industry was of a strong wing, but only for short
+flights, had not enough to employ more than a few hours of the day, and
+I dreaded lest he should, from very idleness, fall back into old habits
+and re-seek old friendships.  His cynical candor allowed that both were
+sufficiently disreputable to justify grave apprehensions of such a
+result; accordingly, I contrived to find leisure in my evenings to
+lessen his ennui, by accompanying him in rambles through the gas-lit
+streets, or occasionally, for an hour or so, to one of the theatres.
+
+Vivian's first care, on finding himself rich enough, had been bestowed
+on his person; and those two faculties of observation and imitation
+which minds so ready always eminently possess, had enabled him to
+achieve that graceful neatness of costume peculiar to the English
+gentleman.  For the first few days of his metamorphosis traces indeed of
+a constitutional love of show or vulgar companionship were noticeable;
+but one by one they disappeared.  First went a gaudy neckcloth, with
+collars turned down; then a pair of spurs vanished; and lastly a
+diabolical instrument that he called a cane--but which, by means of a
+running bullet, could serve as a bludgeon at one end, and concealed a
+dagger in the other--subsided into the ordinary walking-stick adapted to
+our peaceable metropolis.  A similar change, though in a less degree,
+gradually took place in his manner and his conversation.  He grew less
+abrupt in the one, and more calm, perhaps more cheerful, in the other.
+It was evident that he was not insensible to the elevated pleasure of
+providing for himself by praiseworthy exertion, of feeling for the first
+time that his intellect was of use to him creditably.
+
+A new world, though still dim--seen through mist and fog--began to dawn
+upon him.
+
+Such is the vanity of us poor mortals that my interest in Vivian was
+probably increased, and my aversion to much in him materially softened,
+by observing that I had gained a sort of ascendancy over his savage
+nature.  When we had first suet by the roadside, and afterwards
+conversed in the churchyard, the ascendancy was certainly not on my
+side.  But I now came from a larger sphere of society than that in which
+he had yet moved.  I had seen and listened to the first men in England.
+What had then dazzled me only, now moved my pity.  On the other hand,
+his active mind could not but observe the change in me; and whether from
+envy or a better feeling, he was willing to learn from me how to eclipse
+me and resume his earlier superiority,--not to be superior chafed him.
+Thus he listened to me with docility when I pointed out the books which
+connected themselves with the various subjects incidental to the
+miscellaneous matters on which he was employed.  Though he had less of
+the literary turn of mind than any one equally clever I had ever met,
+and had read little, considering the quantity of thought he had acquired
+and the show he made of the few works with which he had voluntarily made
+himself familiar, he yet resolutely sat himself down to study; and
+though it was clearly against the grain, I augured the more favorably
+from tokens of a determination to do what was at the present irksome for
+a purpose in the future.  Yet whether I should have approved the purpose
+had I thoroughly understood it, is another question.  There were
+abysses, both in his past life and in his character, which I could not
+penetrate.  There was in him both a reckless frankness and a vigilant
+reserve: his frankness was apparent in his talk on all matters
+immediately before us, in the utter absence of all effort to make
+himself seem better than he was.  His reserve was equally shown in the
+ingenious evasion of every species of confidence that could admit me
+into such secrets of his life as he chose to conceal where he had been
+born, reared, and educated; how he came to be thrown on his own
+resources; how he had contrived, how he had subsisted, were all matters
+on which he had seemed to take an oath to Harpocrates, the god of
+silence.  And yet he was full of anecdotes of what he had seen, of
+strange companions whom he never named, but with whom he had been
+thrown.  And, to do him justice, I remarked that though his precocious
+experience seemed to have been gathered from the holes and corners, the
+sewers and drains of life, and though he seemed wholly without dislike
+to dishonesty, and to regard virtue or vice with as serene an
+indifference as some grand poet who views them both merely as
+ministrants to his art, yet he never betrayed any positive breach of
+honesty in himself.  He could laugh over the story of some ingenious
+fraud that he had witnessed, and seem insensible to its turpitude; but
+he spoke of it in the tone of an approving witness, not of an actual
+accomplice.  As we grew more intimate, he felt gradually, however, that
+pudor, or instinctive shame, which the contact with minds habituated to
+the distinctions between wrong and right unconsciously produces, and
+such stories ceased.  He never but once mentioned his family, and that
+was in the following odd and abrupt manner:--
+
+"Ah!" cried he one day, stopping suddenly before a print-shop, "how that
+reminds me of my dear, dear mother."
+
+"Which?" said I, eagerly, puzzled between an engraving of Raffaelle's
+"Madonna" and another of "The Brigand's Wife."
+
+Vivian did not satisfy my curiosity, but drew me on in spite of my
+reluctance.
+
+"You loved your mother, then?" said I, after a pause.  "Yes, as a whelp
+may a tigress."
+
+"That's a strange comparison."
+
+"Or a bull-dog may the prize-fighter, his master!  Do you like that
+better?"
+
+"Not much; is it a comparison your mother would like?"
+
+"Like?  She is dead!" said he, rather falteringly.
+
+I pressed his arm closer to mine.
+
+"I understand you," said he, with his cynic, repellent smile.  "But you
+do wrong to feel for my loss.  I feel for it; but no one who cares for
+me should sympathize with my grief."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because my mother was not what the world would call a good woman.  I
+did not love her the less for that.  And now let us change the subject."
+
+"Nay; since you have said so much, Vivian, let me coax you to say on.
+Is not your father living?"
+
+"Is not the Monument standing?"
+
+"I suppose so; what of that?"
+
+"Why, it matters very little to either of us; and my question answers
+yours."
+
+I could not get on after this, and I never did get on a step further.  I
+must own that if Vivian did not impart his confidence liberally, neither
+did he seek confidence inquisitively from me.  He listened with interest
+if I spoke of Trevanion (for I told him frankly of my connection with
+that personage, though you may be sure that I said nothing of Fanny),
+and of the brilliant world that my residence with one so distinguished
+opened to me.  But if ever, in the fulness of my heart, I began to speak
+of my parents, of my home, he evinced either so impertinent an ennui or
+assumed so chilling a sneer that I usually hurried away from him, as
+well as the subject, in indignant disgust.  Once especially, when I
+asked him to let me introduce him to my father,--a point on which I was
+really anxious, for I thought it impossible but that the devil within
+him would be softened by that contact,--he said, with his low, scornful
+laugh,--
+
+"My dear Caxton, when I was a child I was so bored with 'Telemachus'
+that, in order to endure it, I turned it into travesty."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Are you not afraid that the same wicked disposition might make a
+caricature of your Ulysses?"
+
+I did not see Mr. Vivian for three days after that speech; and I should
+not have seen him then, only we met, by accident, under the Colonnade of
+the Opera-House.  Vivian was leaning against one of the columns, and
+watching the long procession which swept to the only temple in vogue
+that Art has retained in the English Babel.  Coaches and chariots
+blazoned with arms and coronets, cabriolets (the brougham had not then
+replaced them) of sober hue but exquisite appointment, with gigantic
+horses and pigmy "tigers," dashed on, and rolled off before him.  Fair
+women and gay dresses, stars and ribbons, the rank and the beauty of the
+patrician world,--passed him by.  And I could not resist the compassion
+with which this lonely, friendless, eager, discontented spirit inspired
+me, gazing on that gorgeous existence in which it fancied itself formed
+to shine, with the ardor of desire and the despair of exclusion.
+By one glimpse of that dark countenance, I read what was passing
+within the yetdarker heart.  The emotion might not be amiable, nor
+the thoughts wise, yet were they unnatural?  I had experienced something
+of them,--not at the sight of gay-dressed people, of wealth and idleness,
+pleasure and fashion, but when, at the doors of Parliament, men who have
+won noble names, and whose word had weight on the destinies of glorious
+England, brushed heedlessly by to their grand arena; or when, amidst the
+holiday crowd of ignoble pomp, I had heard the murmur of fame buzz and
+gather round some lordly laborer in art or letters: that contrast
+between glory so near and yet so far, and one's own obscurity, of course
+I had felt it,--who has not?  Alas! many a youth not fated to be a
+Themistocles will yet feel that the trophies of a Miltiades will not
+suffer him to sleep!  So I went up to Vivian and laid my hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Ah!" said he, more gently than usual, "I am glad to see you, and to
+apologize,--I offended you the other day.  But you would not get very
+gracious answers from souls in purgatory if you talked to them of the
+happiness of heaven.  Never speak to me about homes and fathers!
+Enough!  I see you forgive me.  Why are you not going to the opera?  You
+can."
+
+"And you too, if you so please.  A ticket is shamefully dear, to be
+sure; still, if you are fond of music, it is a luxury you can afford."
+
+"Oh! you flatter me if you fancy the prudence of saving withholds me.  I
+did go the other night, but I shall not go again.  Music!--when you go
+to the opera, is it for the music?"
+
+"Only partially, I own; the lights, the scene, the pageant, attract me
+quite as much.  But I do not think the opera a very profitable pleasure
+for either of us.  For rich idle people, I dare say, it may be as
+innocent an amusement as any other, but I find it a sad enervator."
+
+"And I just the reverse,--a horrible stimulant!  Caxton, do you know
+that, ungracious as it will sound to you, I am growing impatient of this
+`honorable independence'?  What does it lead to?  Board, clothes, and
+lodging,--can it ever bring me anything more?"
+
+"At first, Vivian, you limited your aspirations to kid gloves and a
+cabriolet: it has brought the kid gloves already; by and by it will
+bring the cabriolet!"
+
+"Our wishes grow by what they feed on.  You live in the great world, you
+can have excitement if you please it; I want excitement, I want the
+world, I want room for my mind, man!  Do you understand me?"
+
+"Perfectly, and sympathize with you, my poor Vivian; but it will all
+come.  Patience! as I preached to you while dawn rose so comfortless
+over the streets of London.  You are not losing time.  Fill your mind;
+read, study, fit yourself for ambition.  Why wish to fly till you have
+got your wings?  Live in books now; after all, they are splendid
+palaces, and open to us all, rich and poor."
+
+"Books, books!  Ah! you are the son of a book-man.  It is not by books
+that men get on in the world, and enjoy life in the mean while."
+
+"I don't know that; but, my good fellow, you want to do both,--get on in
+the world as fast as labor can, and enjoy life as pleasantly as
+indolence may.  You want to live like the butterfly, and yet have all
+the honey of the bee; and, what is the very deuce of the whole, even as
+the butterfly, you ask every flower to grow up in a moment; and, as a
+bee, the whole hive must be stored in a quarter of an hour!  Patience,
+patience, patience!"
+
+Vivian sighed a fierce sigh.  "I suppose," said he, after an unquiet
+pause, "that the vagrant and the outlaw are strong in me, for I long to
+run back to my old existence, which was all action, and therefore
+allowed no thought."
+
+While he thus said, we had wandered round the Colonnade, and were in
+that narrow passage in which is situated the more private entrance to
+the opera: close by the doors of that entrance, two or three young men
+were lounging.  As Vivian ceased, the voice of one of these loungers
+came laughingly to our ears.
+
+"Oh!" it said, apparently in answer to some question, "I have a much
+quicker way to fortune than that: I mean to marry an heiress!"
+
+Vivian started, and looked at the speaker.  He was a very good-looking
+fellow.  Vivian continued to look at him, and deliberately, from head to
+foot; he then turned away with a satisfied and thoughtful smile.
+
+"Certainly," said I, gravely (construing the smile), "you are right
+there: you are even better--looking than that heiress-hunter!"
+
+Vivian colored; but before he could answer, one of the loungers, as the
+group recovered from the gay laugh which their companion's easy
+coxcombry had excited, said,--
+
+"Then, by the way, if you want an heiress, here comes one of the
+greatest in England; but instead of being a younger son, with three good
+lives between you and an Irish peerage, one ought to be an earl at least
+to aspire to Fanny Trevanion!"
+
+The name thrilled through me, I felt myself tremble; and looking up, I
+saw Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion, as they hurried from their carriage
+towards the entrance of the opera.  They both recognized me, and Fanny
+cried,--
+
+"You here!  How fortunate!  You must see us into the box, even if you
+run away the moment after."
+
+"But I am not dressed for the opera," said I, embarrassed.
+
+"And why not?" asked Miss Trevanion; then, dropping her voice, she
+added, "why do you desert us so wilfully?" and, leaning her hand on my
+arm, I was drawn irresistibly into the lobby.  The young loungers at the
+door made way for us, and eyed me, no doubt, with envy.
+
+"Nay!" said I, affecting to laugh, as I saw Miss Trevanion waited for my
+reply.  "You forget how little time I have for such amusements now, and
+my uncle--"
+
+"Oh, but mamma and I have been to see your uncle to-day, and he is
+nearly well,--is he not, mamma?  I cannot tell you how I like and admire
+him.  He is just what I fancy a Douglas of the old day.  But mamma is
+impatient.  Well, you must dine with us to-morrow, promise!  Not adieu,
+but au revoir," and Fanny glided to her mother's arm.  Lady Ellinor,
+always kind and courteous to me, had good-naturedly lingered till this
+dialogue, or rather monologue, was over.
+
+On returning to the passage, I found Vivian walking to and fro; he had
+lighted his cigar, and was smoking energetically.  "So this great
+heiress," said he, smiling, "who, as far as I could see,--under her
+hood,--seems no less fair than rich, is the daughter, I presume, of the
+Mr. Trevanion, whose effusions you so kindly submit to me.  He is very
+rich, then!  You never said so, yet I ought to have known it; but you
+see I know nothing of your beau monde,--not even that Miss Trevanion is
+one of the greatest heiresses in England."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Trevanion is rich," said I, repressing a sigh,--very rich."
+
+"And you are his secretary!  My dear friend, you may well offer me
+patience, for a large stock of yours will, I hope, be superfluous to
+you."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"Yet you heard that young gentleman, as well as myself and you are in
+the same house as the heiress."
+
+"Vivian!"
+
+"Well, what have I said so monstrous?"
+
+"Pooh!  since you refer to that young gentleman, you heard, too, what
+his companion told him, 'one ought to be an earl, at least, to aspire to
+Fanny Trevanion!'"
+
+"Tut! as well say that one ought to be a millionnaire to aspire to a
+million!  Yet I believe those who make millions generally begin with
+pence."
+
+"That belief should be a comfort and encouragement to you, Vivian.  And
+now, good-night; I have much to do."
+
+"Good-night, then," said Vivian, and we parted.
+
+I made my way to Mr. Trevanion's house and to the study.  There was a
+formidable arrear of business waiting for me, and I sat down to it at
+first resolutely; but by degrees I found my thoughts wandering from the
+eternal blue-books, and the pen slipped from my hand in the midst of an
+extract from a Report on Sierra Leone.  My pulse beat loud and quick; I
+was in that state of nervous fever which only emotion can occasion.  The
+sweet voice of Fanny rang in my ears; her eyes, as I had last met them,
+unusually gentle, almost beseeching, gazed upon me wherever I turned;
+and then, as in mockery, I heard again those words,--"One ought to be an
+earl at least to aspire to-"  Oh! did I aspire?  Was I vain fool so
+frantic, household traitor so consummate?  No, no!  Then what did I
+under the same roof?  Why stay to imbibe this sweet poison that was
+corroding the very springs of my life?  At that self-question, which,
+had I been but a year or two older, I should have asked long before, a
+mortal terror seized me; the blood rushed from my heart and left me
+cold, icy cold.  To leave the house, leave Fanny!  Never again to see
+those eyes, never to hear that voice!  Better die of the sweet poison
+than of the desolate exile!  I rose, I opened the windows; I walked to
+and fro the room; I could decide nothing, think of nothing; all my mind
+was in an uproar.  With a violent effort at self-mastery, I approached
+the table again.  I resolved to force myself to my task, if it were only
+to re-collect my faculties and enable them to bear my own torture.  I
+turned over the books impatiently, when lo! buried amongst them, what
+met my eye?  Archly, yet reproachfully,--the face of Fanny herself!  Her
+miniature was there.  It had been, I knew, taken a few days before by a
+young artist whom Trevanion patronized.  I suppose he had carried it
+into his study to examine it, and so left it there carelessly.  The
+painter had seized her peculiar expression, her ineffable smile,--so
+charming, so malicious; even her favorite posture,--the small head
+turned over the rounded Hebe-like shoulder; the eye glancing up from
+under the hair.  I know not what change in my madness came over me; but
+I sank on my knees, and, kissing the miniature again and again, burst
+into tears.  Such tears!  I did not hear the door open, I did not see
+the shadow steal ever the floor; a light hand rested on my shoulder,
+trembling as it rested--I started.  Fanny herself was bending over me!
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked tenderly.  "What has happened?  Your
+uncle--your family--all well?  Why are you weeping?"
+
+I could not answer; but I kept my hands clasped over the miniature, that
+she might not see what they contained.
+
+"Will you not answer?  Am I not your friend,--almost your sister?  Come,
+shall I call mamma?"
+
+"Yes--yes; go--go."
+
+"No, I will not go yet.  What have you there?  What are you hiding?"
+
+And innocently, and sister-like, those hands took mine; and so--and so--
+the picture became visible!  There was a dead silence.  I looked up
+through my tears.  Fanny had recoiled some steps, and her cheek was very
+flushed, her eyes downcast.  I felt as if I had committed a crime, as if
+dishonor clung to me; and yet I repressed--yes, thank Heaven!  I
+repressed the cry that swelled from my heart and rushed to my lips:
+"Pity me, for I love you!"  I repressed it, and only a groan escaped
+me,--the wail of my lost happiness!  Then, rising, I laid the miniature
+on the table, and said, in a voice that I believe was firm,--
+
+"Miss Trevanion, you have been as kind as a sister to me, and therefore
+I was bidding a brother's farewell to your likeness; it is so like you--
+this!"
+
+"Farewell!" echoed Fanny, still not looking up.
+
+"Farewell--sister!  There, I have boldly said the word; for--for--"  I
+hurried to the door, and, there turning, added, with what I meant to be
+a smile,--" for they say at home that I--I am not well; too much for me
+this; you know, mothers will be foolish; and--and--I am to speak to your
+father to-morrow; and-good-night!  God bless you, Miss Trevanion!"
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAXTONS, BY LYTTON, PART 8 ***
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