BOOK II.—CHAPTER I.
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 arbour. "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 arbour. 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 colour 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 honour 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 every-day 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 me 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 Augustine," 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 honour. 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 Tibbetts—whose organ of combativeness is finely developed, by the bye—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 twenty-three years in his Majesty's service, and should be only a captain on half-pay. This, I say, comes of the infamous system of purchase, which sets up the highest honours 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 realise a capital sufficient to outpurchase 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 honour. It would be an interference with a soldier's first duty—his respect for his sovereign."
"On the contrary," said Mr Squills, "it would still be to the sovereigns that one would owe the promotion."
"Honour," pursued the Captain, colouring up, and unheeding this witty interruption, "is the reward of a soldier. What do I care that a young jackanapes buys his colonelcy over my head? Sir, he does not buy from me my wounds and my services. Sir, he does not buy from me the medal I won at Waterloo. He is a rich man, and I am a poor man; he is called—colonel, because he paid money for the name. That pleases him; well and good. It would not please me: I had rather remain a captain, and feel my dignity, not in my title, but in the services of my three-and-twenty years. A beggarly, rascally association of stockbrokers, for aught I know, buy me a company! I don't want to be uncivil, or I would say, Damn 'em, Mr—sir—Jack!"
A sort of thrill ran through the Captain's audience—even Uncle Jack looked touched, as I thought, for he stared very hard at the grim veteran, and said nothing. The pause was awkward—Mr Squills broke it. "I should like," quoth he, "to see your Waterloo medal—you have not it about you?"
"Mr Squills," answered the Captain, "it lies next to my heart while I live. It shall be buried in my coffin, and I shall rise with it, at the word of command, on the day of the Grand Review!" So saying, the Captain leisurely unbuttoned his coat, and, detaching from a piece of striped ribbon as ugly a specimen of the art of the silversmith (begging its pardon) as ever rewarded merit at the expense of taste, placed the medal on the table.
The medal passed round, without a word, from hand to hand.
"It is strange," at last said my father, "how such trifles can be made of such value—how in one age a man sells his life for what in the next age he would not give a button! A Greek esteemed beyond price a few leaves of olive twisted into a circular shape, and set upon his head—a very ridiculous headgear we should now call it. An American Indian prefers a decoration of human scalps, which, I apprehend, we should all agree (save and except Mr Squills, who is accustomed to such things) to be a very disgusting addition to one's personal attractions; and my brother values this piece of silver, which may be worth about five shillings, more than Jack does a gold mine, or I do the library of the London Museum. A time will come when people will think that as idle a decoration as leaves and scalps."
"Brother," said the Captain, "there is nothing strange in the matter. It is as plain as a pike-staff to a man who understands the principles of honour."
"Possibly," said my father mildly. "I should like to hear what you have to say upon honour. I am sure it would very much edify us all."