“Te somnus fusco velavit amictu.” (1)
But is not silence as good a cloak as sleep; does it not wrap a man round with as offusc and impervious a fold? Silence, what a world it covers,—what busy schemes, what bright hopes and dark fears, what ambition, or what despair! Do you ever see a man in any society sitting mute for hours, and not feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate the wall he thus builds up between others and himself? Does he not interest you far more than the brilliant talker at your left, the airy wit at your right whose shafts fall in vain on the sullen barrier of the silent man! Silence, dark sister of Nox and Erebus, how, layer upon layer, shadow upon shadow, blackness upon blackness, thou stretchest thyself from hell to heaven, over thy two chosen haunts,—man’s heart and the grave!
So, then, wrapped in my great-coat and my silence, I performed my journey; and on the evening of the second day I reached the old-fashioned brick house. How shrill on my ears sounded the bell! How strange and ominous to my impatience seemed the light gleaming across the windows of the hall! How my heart beat as I watched the face of the servant who opened the gate to my summons!
“All well?” cried I.
“All well, sir,” answered the servant, cheerfully. “Mr. Squills, indeed, is with master, but I don’t think there is anything the matter.”
But now my mother appeared at the threshold, and I was in her arms.
“Sisty, Sisty! my dear, dear son—beggared, perhaps—and my fault—mine.”
“Yours! Come into this room, out of hearing,—your fault?”
“Yes, yes! for if I had had no brother, or if I had not been led away,—if I had, as I ought, entreated poor Austin not to—”
“My dear, dearest mother, you accuse yourself for what, it seems, was my uncle’s misfortune,—I am sure not even his fault! [I made a gulp there.] No, lay the fault on the right shoulders,—the defunct shoulders of that horrible progenitor, William Caxton the printer; for though I don’t yet know the particulars of what has happened, I will lay a wager it is connected with that fatal invention of printing. Come, come! my father is well, is he not?”