CHAPTER XV.
And Mr. Jericho went on, a rejoicing conqueror. His huge town mansion, burning with gold—the very domain of upholstery, massive, rich and gorgeous, for the Man of Money was for the most substantial, the most potent development of his creed, whereby to awe and oppress his worshippers—his house, in its wide hospitality, embraced, as Jericho devoutly believed, the world. Let all mankind outside his walls suddenly sink and die, and he would be convinced that still under his roof-tree were gathered together all the men and women who composed the heart, the kernel of human life. The earth might be replenished and set up again all the better, the finer; both for what was lost, and what was spared. The kernel might grow kernels, without husk or straw.
And comfortable, happy people, with the bread of competence and the butter of comfort inch-thick, would nevertheless marvel at the imagined happiness, the life-long rapture of Jericho. And honest, well-to-do folk, from country homes would stare at Jericho House as though it was made of a single diamond cut into chambers and banquetting-halls: for it was to them a magnified Mountain of Light, albeit they had never heard of the jewel. And London paupers stared at the walls, as though they saw in them a strange, fantastic reflection of their own rags and wretchedness; and took a savage pleasure, a malicious joy in seeing their hungry faces flung back from the House of Gold.And there were others who delighted, though they tasted not of his labours, in all that Jericho did: they instinctively loved him for his money, although they had no hope of a farthing of it. Nevertheless was he to them a mighty power—a great presence; one of the wonders of our mortal state. Could Mr. Jericho have papered the sky with bank-notes, these impartial admirers would have sung praises to the work and the workman. It would have been a marvellous triumph of wealth; to be honoured by the well-to-do accordingly.
Nevertheless, so headstrong, so self-destructive was Basil Pennibacker, that he refused to cross the threshold of Jericho House. He resolved to break for ever with the Man of Money. He had made his last essay upon his own spirit; and impulsive and indignant, it rose above the politic restraint. He would touch no farthing of Jericho’s means; he would, in his own want, be nevertheless his own man of money.
Basil sat in his chamber writing. A letter lay before him. It was from his mother—the last of many, sent day after day—entreating him to Jericho House. All the world would be there only too glad to show delight upon the occasion; for it was Basil’s birth-day. On that day, he came of age. On that day, he gave a quittance to natural and legal guardians; and became invested with the rights of citizen. On that day, in Basil’s own words, he was free to sit down in Parliament, if he could only find a seat. On that day, he took possession of man’s estate—withhispurposes and aspirations, a glorious heritage! And Basil proposed to keep his birth-day in finest state, too, though not at the board of his legal father. And this determination he had again written—had folded and scaled the letter, when the clock struck twelve. Basil rose to his feet at the first stroke, and, with self-communing looks, paused until the hour was told. In that brief space, he had entered into a compact with his heart, and—with uplifted eyes—silently asked for strength to maintain it.
Basil then cast a heap of papers in the flames—letters and other records of his dead, disowned life—and, as he stood leaningat the fireside, watching the destruction of notes and recollections once so treasured; as he looked down upon the curling flames, and now and then tossed back some scattered fragments to the burning heap, he laughed a moment as in contempt of his olden idols—for he had worn some of those things in his bosom, had kissed them with his lips, had read their words, as though he caught their syllables from speaking mouths. And now he laughed; and the next moment a grave look rebuked the levity. The flames went out; the papers were consumed; and casting one look at their ashes, specked with dying fire, Basil went to his rest. He had fulfilled his self-promise; had accomplished his first work. He had, as he purposed, seen his birth-day in alone: in due and solemn state—as he was fain in after-times to avow; with preparation and with ceremony befitting the crowning One-and-Twenty.
Basil rose early on his birth-day. He was up and out; for he feared to be waylaid by his mother and sisters—and he had resolved, and it was hardly the day to begin with weakness, not to be made the show at Jericho House. And he felt anger, pity, that Bessy and her father and mother—the girl so sweet, so gentle; the old man with so cheery and strong a heart; and the wife so soft and patient, with not a frown or angry word for fortune—should be forgotten, cast aside like holiday garments sported and worn out:—that his mother and sisters should do this—should value his love for the daughter of a ruined man, as a mere caprice—a wayward generosity, which, with any other youthful freak, would last its time, and then subside and die—gave him the heart-ache, not unmixed with shame—the sharp shame that comes with blushes for those we love.
Basil, we say, left home early, resolved in his own fashion to celebrate his coming of age. It was the first day he showed to the world,—a citizen. He had determined to strip himself for the race of life, casting aside all needless trappings; all foolish cumbrous pride; all vanities, that at their best bladdery lightness, take much room; and sometimes, make much idle noise.He would start in his path like a runner in his course. But he shall give the history of the day—an odd, curious day for a newly-risen heir—in his own words. He shall give it as he narrated it years after; when the flush of youth had passed from his brow; and in manly maturity of strength and beauty, with some forty years descended with grace and goodness on his head; some forty years hardening his cheek; and looking with sober sweetness from his eyes,—he told the story of his twenty-first birth-day, to his eldest boy aged eighteen.
“It was after this manner, Basil”—for the boy though some time distant from the world, is upon arrival to have his father’s name—“after this manner, boy.
“Up and early through the city to the fields; and there, in the eye of God, my knees upon their kindred clay, my spirit seeking its hoped-for home—I asked a blessing on the day. I prayed that my heart might feel the freshness of life, even as my body felt in every limb the freshness of the morning earth. I prayed that my soul might be lighted, even as my sight, with the glory that from the gates of heaven streamed upon the world. I prayed that I might carry through my days the mingled feelings of that time.—The constant touch of earth that warned me whence I came—the flooding light of heaven that showed me where I’d go.
“And then, Basil, I walked about the fields, and began to school myself—making little moralities by the way—to see nothing common in my path, wheresoever it fell—still to wonder at a blade of grass, with its thousand veins, carrying up and down the nourishing green blood. And then, I would lay down awhile, and listen to the lark—there is a mighty orchestra in fields and woods, if we would but cultivate the ear to attend to the musicians,—listen until my blood throbbed in my ears, and I sprang to the earth, bounding with joy and life. And then, I peeped in and out of hedges, plucking little gentle, bashful flowers, that looked so beautiful in the light, and preached this lesson—one of the many of the day—to him who plucked them; to look tenderly, thoughtfully for humble worth,—the hedgeflowers of the world; the very poor relations, but still relations, of the lilies of the field.
“After an hour or two, I felt it must be time for breakfast; and I resolved to take the meal in patriarchal state. And I moreover resolved, on this day, to take a lesson of temperance. So I pitched upon a little bit of a hillock, no higher than a woolsack, with a tall poplar in the middle of it. Well, I lay myself down, and laid my breakfast. Rolls, and butter, a bottle of milk and hard eggs. But the moment I was about to fall to, a bird, perched on the top branch of the tree, piped away, as though giving me especial welcome to his breakfast parlour: pausing to acknowledge the creature’s civility, my breakfast still remained untasted. Just as the music was finished, a miserable woman—a moving bundle of rags—with three children, crawled round a corner of the hedge and paused, and for the moment, seeing my breakfast, looked as though they beheld the Land of Promise (if, indeed, such misery had been ever cheered with the tidings of it).
“And now there were four unexpected guests—four hungry mouths that, without uttering a syllable, had declared for my breakfast. The wretched woman’s eyes shone with an uncomfortable light; a glittering sharpness, as she saw the food. And the children though they never stirred a foot—the bread and butter seemed to drag their hungry heads and shoulders forward. A grand opportunity this for self-discipline. Providence had so ordered it, that I might open my Twenty-First Birth-Day in a goodly and hopeful manner. I gladly acknowledged the occasion; and, at a word, called the woman and her children to the outspread meal—there was not enough for all of us—and yielding my place, departed. It was plain the woman thought me mad. She watched me as I ascended the hill; and—I could see—wondering at the stranger, sat down with her children, doubtless thanking her fortune that had that day sent her a lunatic. And this was my breakfast when I came of age—so began my trial birth-day.
“I made my way back to the town, that I might go on withmy lessons: for I determined to study one matter or the other until I returned to bed. I walked in the Park. There was a drill-serjeant at work with a score or so of young recruits; human clods in scarlet livery. It was odd, and in my humour, sad to see with what pains and care the master-man thumped and punched and rapped and rebuked his louting, goggling, shambling, prentices. With what serene stupidity they took a tap upon the knuckles, as though the cane was some light prettiness of office—some radiant peacock’s feather; nought uglier or heavier, descending. Curious, too, to see how contentedly these lumps of men would swallow an oath and curse flung at them, as though the blasphemy and malediction were an expected part and portion of their daily bread. And so these civil babes and sucklings were swathed and bandaged, and set upon their legs, and taught to walk, and shoot, and stab, and—upon severe occasions—to throw firebrands among cottage thatch, and bomb-shells upon consecrated churches. And I thought this a sad sight; spectacle of folly, and crime, and ignorance. And I determined, for my life forward, whenever I heard of glory, to think and speak of it, as an evil in the ornaments of greatness—a harlot in jewels and a crown; and these filched from the transmuted toil of the peasant and the craftsman. And this was the next lesson of my birth-day.
“Then I wandered to a famous spot.—It was where, in the olden time, the great grim men in power—who wore authority, as though authority should have the look and manners of an ogre, not of a sage—set up the pillory wherein men were punished for having souls with more than the proper daring and stubbornness of souls. Souls that would have their own opinions, as their masters had their own teeth; to digest for themselves, and not take in the spoon’s-meat of power, with thankful looks for what was given them. And the bodies corrupted with these wicked and rebellious souls were placed in the pillory—and approaching the spot, I bowed to the place; the martyr-field of opinion. And—perhaps, it was that I was hungry, and with empty stomachs, men, they say,have sometimes wandering heads, but my son”—(the reader, we trust, has not forgotten that Basil is all the while talking in this page by anticipation—compelled to do so by the tyranny of the quill, to his unborn boy Basil, junior)—“but my son, I winked, and when I looked again, there, indeed, was the pillory: but not the pillory of punishment; not the dry, meagre wood; the hungry flesh-devouring timber.—No: the blood that had run about it carried strange virtue with it; a strange excellence, under the brooding wings of time. The naked wood imbibed the stream; and the bare pillory became leafy as laurel, and fruitful as the vine: the leaves of a strange sort, but undying; and filled with a sweet perfume that scented far around. And the fruit was of a curious, a delicious kind; bite and bite as you would, the lovely pulp returned, the wound healed; now bitten, and now whole. Well, my boy, having had my day-dream—my vision of the pillory—I learned to strive to look backward with thankful looks: I learned to read the suffering of the man by the light of his time, and—with all love for the living—to have gratitude for the dead. We are too apt to bury our accounts along with our benefactors; to enjoy the triumphs of others, as though they were the just property of ourselves. Now, to think against this, was another lesson—a lesson learned in the Place of Pillory—of my birth-day.
“And then I looked into a Court of Law—then into a Church—then went upon ’Change,—and in every place tried to divide man from his double or false man—from the artificial twin-self that so often walks about the world with him in profane places, and sometimes in sacred temples.
“And I went into miserable lanes, where human creatures styed like swine, had little beyond the swine’s instinct,—to eat and drink, and gabble brutishly. And even here, I learnt to reverence the human heart, for, in some foul place, some very nest of misery,—there, it would flourish in its best beauty, giving out even in such an atmosphere the sweets of love, and charity, and resignation. It was in one of these places, I tooka crust for my dinner; and tried to swallow a life-long lesson of patience, and contentment with the meal.
“And this and these were the lessons I tried to learn on my twenty-first birth-day. Coming to man’s estate, I lost no time, you see, but set out to contemplate for that day what it was that lay about me.”
The reader, who has advanced somewhat more than eighteen years, to read the foregoing confession, will be pleased to turn back on the road, it is to be hoped satisfied with the employment of Basil, whom we left at early morn setting out for his birth-day work. We take it there are few who thus upon the threshold of manhood welcome one-and-twenty. Who knows? The example of Basil may beget followers.
Early the next morning, Basil took his road to Primrose Place. He had resolved at once to ask Bessy of her father. He would not accept a shilling of Jericho; he would not compromise his conscience by submitting to the poorest obligation at his hands; nevertheless, he felt in his heart such a spring-tide of hope and happiness, that the worst worldly difficulties were but as a hedge of thorns, to be thrust aside by an arm of resolution.
Mr. Carraways was alone: deep in his book; and more and more assured that he was securing a stock of knowledge that should make him flourish at the antipodes. It was a little late, as poor Mrs. Carraways would meekly, sadly suggest, for such removal; but the old man with every day and hour, assured his wife—assured Bessy, who though she tried to smile and look content, pined and withered beneath the sentence—that it was the only place for broken men to grow whole again. They would yet see him in the fulness of fortune; and he would yet leave his girl with the dowry of a lady.
“Good morning, Basil,” said the old man, with somewhat forced politeness; for though he had a true regard for the youth he cared not to see him so often at Primrose Place as in old times at Jogtrot Lodge. However, the ship would sail soon,and, with this thought, Carraways called up his old look of cordiality, and gave his old grasp of the hand. “Why, you are out early for a reveller, eh? After your doings, last night?”
Basil stared. He then remembered: Carraways doubtless spoke of the festival held at Jericho House, in honour of the absent. He would not explain this. He merely said—“I take but little sleep, sir.”
“Humph! How’s that?” asked Carraways. “But the fact is, Basil, you seem changed altogether. I sometimes think that one of the judges has lost his gravity, and you’ve picked it up: for after all, it doesn’t seem very well to fit you. I hardly know if I like you so well in it as in the boy suit. However, you’re right, lad. Be grave betimes: ’tis best, and prepares you before hand for the knocks that are certain to come. Though, to be sure, if a man may count upon a bright and easy road—a path of diamond dust with rosebud borders, like the gardens in the fairy book—you are the man.”
“Indeed, sir,” and Basil shook his head, “I think—that is, I know you mistake my path of life. ’Tis not so fine; and more, I hope not so tedious as that you see for me. In a word, I shall owe nothing to Mr. Jericho.”
“Indeed! What, quarrelled with him? I’m sorry for that. You should remember your interest, Basil.”
“There, my good sir, without a thought you speak a wisdom that, with a thought, you despise. I shall try to make interest one with honesty; if it succeeds, why, the profits will bring the best sweets of gain; if it fails, why still it leaves something behind; it is not all beggary.”
“Very good, very excellent, Basil”—said Carraways—“nevertheless, you must not cast away Mr. Jericho. He is a strange man, no doubt. If half that’s said of him be true, a very strange man. But then again only that very half, said of the most of us, would make a deuced alteration in the best looking,—the most punctual and respectable. Therefore, not half—no, not a twentieth part that’s said—is to be listened to. Nevertheless Basil”—and, despite of himself, Carraways lookedgrave, and felt the craving of curiosity—“nevertheless do you know, it is all about the world that your father-in-law, a few days since, received a pistol-bullet through his heart, and that moreover his heart has a hole through it at this very moment?”
“Yes, I have heard the story,” said Basil. “One of the jokes of”—
“Ha! Well, I thought so; a joke is it? Bessy would have it that it meant nothing more than a fable—or hieroglyphic—or something of that sort. Of course, I knew that. I knew a man couldn’t live with a hole in his heart,” for all which Carraways seemed a little disappointed at Basil’s half-explanation at the moment. Common truth fell like cold water upon the awakened fancy of the old merchant; with the greater shock, as it was rare indeed that he laid himself out for an enjoyment of the extraordinary.
“And now, sir,” said Basil, and he almost trembled as he spoke, “I wish to address you upon the dearest question of my life.”
“Bless me!” said Carraways, and he gravely seated himself, and motioned Basil to a chair. Then the old man, with a slight tremor of hand, wiped his spectacles, replaced them on his nose, cleared his throat, clasped his hands, and endeavoured to look the very study of easy, unconscious courtesy—placid and polite. And at the time the colour was tingling in his cheeks, and he felt his heart beat distinctly, painfully.
In few stammering words, speech running freer as it flowed, Basil spoke of his affection for Bessy. All that has been said since the first father was first asked for the first daughter—if the reader be capable of the task, may be imagined; and the most eloquent and affectionate phrases assorted from the mountain of words, to piece out at the bravest and best the declaration of Basil. At length he paused. Carraways pressed his hand, and looked mournfully in the young man’s face.
“My dear young man,” said the father, “once, when the fortune was of our side, I should have been glad to hear this.I should have been proud of you as a husband for Bessy. Now, it can’t be.”
“Why not? Indeed, dear sir, I”.—
“We have not a shilling, Mr. Pennibacker. Not a shilling. We have just scraped together a loan—a gratuity—alms—whatever the world may call it, to take ourselves out of the way. I will not quarter my family upon your relations. Quarter! Why, ’twould be the town-talk that that cunning old fox Carraways had gulled a foolish boy—the Man of Money’s son—to marry a beggar girl. And all to end his own days in clover. No, sir; no. You’re very good, Basil; you mean this honestly, nobly; I’m sure you do; but you’ll think better of it; and with the prospects that await you—with the part you have to play in the world—in a little while, you’ll thank me for refusing you.”
“No, sir, no: for your refusal—though I can fully value the integrity of its meaning—will change into consent, when you become assured that no influence, no argument of wealth or station, can make me debtor to Mr. Jericho for a single shilling. I will provide for my wife—for Bessy”—
“You are very good,” said Carraways, melting somewhat at the passion of the youth, “very good; but the fact is, my dear lad—and make your mind up once and all to hear it—the fact is, Bessy is already provided for.”
“Provided! Already!” cried Basil, and the young man turned pale as a corpse, and shook from head to limb.
Carraways was yet more affected by the youth’s emotion. Kindly he took Basil’s hand—“I mean, my good boy—don’t mistake me, I wouldn’t be mistaken; for I can live back my life”—and the old man’s eyes glistened, and his voice trembled—“live it back in my memory to the very moment, when I asked for Bessy’s mother,—and I—I can feel for you, my lad; believe it, Basil; I can, boy—I can,” and Carraways stood shaking Basil’s hand, his eyes swimming the while,—begging him to dismiss the matter from his mind, and be “a good boy and a man.”
“I entreat you, good sir—I entreat you, by the precious memories you speak of—tell me what it is you mean! Bessy provided”—
“I mean with a—a ship,” said Carraways, with forced cheerfulness.
“A ship?” exclaimed Basil.
“Yes—a ship,” answered Carraways. “And I remember, I have an appointment with the Captain. So if you will, you shall walk part of the way with me?” A proposition that, as the reader will conclude, the politic lover immediately assented to.