The woman laughed as she spoke; but there was a kindly tone in her voice and a pitying look in her bright eyes that went straight to my heart. Many a time since, in life, when the storm has indeed been boisterous and the wings so weary, have I thought of those words of encouragement, "The time will come--beat on."
It was now Victor's turn, and he crossed his palm with a golden ducat ere he presented it to the sibyl. This was of itself sufficient to insure him a magnificent future; and as the queen perused the lines on his soft little hand, with its pink fingers, she indulged in anticipations of magnificence proportioned to the handsome donation of the child.
"Thou shalt be a 'De Rohan,' my darling, and I can promise thee no brighter lot,--broad acres, and blessings from the poor, and horses, and wealth, and honours. And the sword shall spare thee, and the battle turn aside to let thee pass. And thou shalt wed a fair bride with dark eyes and a queenly brow; but beware of St. Hubert's Day. Birth and burial, birth and burial--beware of St. Hubert's Day."
"But I want to be a soldier," exclaimed Victor, who seemed much disappointed at the future which was prognosticated for him; "the De Rohans were always soldiers. Mother, can't you make out I shall be a soldier?" still holding the little hand open.
"Farewell, my children," was the only answer vouchsafed by the prophetess. "I can only read, I cannot write: farewell." And setting the troop in order, she motioned to them to continue their march without further delay.
I took advantage of the movement to press near my acquaintance of the day before, whom I had not failed to recognise in his gipsy garb. Poor fellow, my childish heart bled for him, and, in a happy moment, I bethought me of my remaining bit of silver. I stooped from my pony and kissed his forehead, while I squeezed the coin into his hand without a word. The tears came into the deserter's eyes. "God bless you, little man! I shall never forget you," was all he said; but I observed that he bit the coin with his large, strong teeth till it was nearly double, and then placed it carefully in his bosom. We turned our ponies, and were soon out of sight; but I never breathed a syllable to Victor about the fugitive, or the steward, or the Ghost's Gallery, for two whole days. Human nature could keep the secret no longer.
CHAPTER VI
SCHOOL
In one of the pleasantest valleys of sweet Somersetshire stands a large red-brick house that bears unmistakably impressed on its exterior the title "School." You would not take it for a "hall," or an hospital, or an almshouse, or anything in the world but an institution for the rising generation, in which the ways of the wide world are so successfully imitated that, in the qualities of foresight, cunning, duplicity, and general selfishness, the boy may indeed be said to be "father to the man." The house stands on a slope towards the south, with a trim lawn and carefully-kept gravel drive, leading to a front door, of which the steps are always clean and the handles always bright. How a ring at that door-bell used to bring all our hearts into our mouths. Forty boys were we, sitting grudgingly over our lessons on the bright summer forenoons, and not one of us but thought that ring might possibly announce a "something" for him from "home." Home! what was there in the word, that it should call up such visions of happiness, that it should create such a longing, sickening desire to have the wings of a dove and flee away, that it should make the present such a blank and comfortless reality? Why do we persist in sending our children so early to school? A little boy, with all his affections developing themselves, loving and playful and happy, not ashamed to be fond of his sisters, and thinking mamma all that is beautiful and graceful and good, is to be torn from that home which is to him an earthly Paradise, and transferred to a place of which we had better not ask the urchin his own private opinion. We appeal to every mother--and it is a mother who is best capable of judging for a child--whether her darling returns to her improved in her eyes after his first half-year at school. She looks in vain for the pliant, affectionate disposition that a word from her used to be capable, of moulding at will, and finds instead a stubborn self-sufficient spirit that has been called forth by harsh treatment and intercourse with the mimic world of boys; more selfish and more conventional, because less characteristic than that of men. He is impatient of her tenderness now, nay, half ashamed to return it. Already he aspires to be a man, in his own eyes, and thinks it manly to make light of those affections and endearments by which he once set such store. The mother is no longer all in all in his heart, her empire is divided and weakened, soon it will be swept away, and she sighs for the white-frock days when her child was fondly and entirely her own. Now, I cannot help thinking the longer these days last the better. Anxious parent, what do you wish your boy to become? A successful man in after life?--then rear him tenderly and carefully at first. You would not bit a colt at two years old; be not less patient with your own flesh and blood. Nature is the best guide, you may depend. Leave him to the women till his strength is established and his courage high, and when the metal has assumed shape and consistency, to the forge with it as soon as you will. Hardship, buffetings, adversity, all these are good for the youth, but, for Heaven's sake, spare the child.
Forty boys are droning away at their tasks on a bright sunshiny morning in June, and I am sitting at an old oak desk, begrimed and splashed with the inkshed of many generations, and hacked by the knives of idler after idler for the last fifty years. I have yet to learn by heart some two score lines from the Æneid. How I hate Virgil whilst I bend over those dog's-eared leaves and that uncomfortable desk. How I envy the white butterfly of which I have just got a glimpse as he soars away into the blue sky--for no terrestrial objects are visible from our schoolroom window to distract our attention and interfere with our labours. I have already accompanied him in fancy over the lawn, and the garden, and the high white-thorn fence into the meadow beyond,--how well I know the deep glades of that copse for which he is making; how I wish I was on my back in its shadow now. Never mind, to-day is a half-holiday, and this afternoon I will spend somehow in a dear delicious ramble through the fairy-land of "out of bounds." The rap of our master's cane against his desk--a gentlemanlike method of awakening attention and asserting authority--startles me from my day-dream. "March," for we drop the Mr. prefixed, in speaking of our pedagogue, "March is a bit of a Tartar, and I tremble for the result."