"I did not let him, my dear child," replied the old man, "he came of his own will, and would not be let. But take him in with you; send him to bed as speedily as may be; give him a large glass of the fever-water he was taking, and say as little as possible of this rash act to any one."
The girl made the sick boy lean upon her rounded arm, led him away into the house, and tended him like a sister. She kept the secret of his rashness, too, from every one; and there were feelings sprang up in his bosom toward her during the next few hours which were never to be obliterated. She was so beautiful, so tender, so gentle, so full of all womanly graces, that he fancied, with his strong imagination, that no one perfection of body or mind could be wanting; and he continued to think so for many a long year after.
CHAPTER IV.
Enough of boyhood and its faults and follies. I sought but to show the reader, as in a glass, the back of a pageant that has past. Oh, how I sometimes laugh at the fools--the critics--God save the mark! who see no more in the slight sketch I choose to give, than a mere daub of paint across the canvas, when that one touch gives effect to the whole picture. Let them stand back, and view it as a whole; and if they can find aught in it to make them say "Well done," let them look at the frame. That is enough for them; their wits are only fitted to deal with "leather, and prunella."
I have given you, reader--kind and judicious reader--a sketch of the boy, that you may be enabled to judge rightly of the man. Now, take the lad as I have moulded him--bake him well in the fiery furnace of strong passion, remembering still that the form is of hard iron--quench and harden him in the cold waters of opposition, and disappointment, and anxiety--and bring him forth tempered, but too highly tempered for the world he has to live in--not pliable--not elastic; no watch-spring, but like a graver's tool, which must cut into everything opposed to it, or break under the pressure.
Let us start upon our new course some fifteen years after the period at which our tale began, and view Philip Hastings as that which he had now become.
Dr. Paulding had passed from this working day world to another and a better--where we hope the virtues of the heart may be weighed against vices of the head--a mode of dealing rare here below. Sir John Hastings and his wife had gone whither their eldest son had gone before them; and Philip Hastings was no longer the boy. Manhood had set its seal upon his brow only too early; but what a change had come with manhood!--a change not in the substance, but in its mode.
Oh, Time! thy province is not only to destroy! Thou worker-out of human destinies--thou new-fashioner of all things earthly--thou blender of races--thou changer of institutions--thou discoverer--thou concealer--thou builder up--thou dark destroyer; thy waters as they flow have sometimes a petrifying, sometimes a solvent power, hardening the soft, melting the strong, accumulating the sand, undermining the rock! What had been thine effect upon Philip Hastings?
All the thoughts had grown manly as well as the body. The slight youth had been developed into the hardy and powerful man; somewhat inactive--at least so it seemed to common eyes--more thoughtful than brilliant, steady in resolution, though calm in expression, giving way no more to bursts of boyish feeling, somewhat stern, men said somewhat hard, but yet extremely just, and resolute for justice. The poetry of life--I should have said the poetry of young life--the brilliancy of fancy and hope, seemed somewhat dimmed in him--mark, I say seemed, for that which seems too often is not; and he might, perhaps, have learnt to rule and conceal feelings which he could not altogether conquer or resist.
Still there were many traces of his old self visible: the same love of study, the same choice of books and subjects of thought, the same subdued yet strong enthusiasms. The very fact of mingling with the world, which had taught him to repress those enthusiasms, seemed to have concentrated and rendered them more intense.