ANOTHER DISCOVERY.
When folks are not in accord, and especially if there is fear on one side, communication of all kinds is difficult enough, but personal companionship is well-nigh unendurable. Often and often in evenings not so long ago William Henry had hesitated to come in on his father’s very doorstep, and turned away into the wet and wind-swept streets rather than thrust his unwelcome companionship upon him. Not seldom, in the days between the death of his wife and Margaret’s coming to Norfolk Street, Mr. Erin had left the supper table without a word, and sought his own chamber an hour before his time, rather than endure the sight of the boy whose very existence was a reproach to him, who had had the ill taste to survive his own beloved child, and who had not a pleasure or pursuit in common with him. Now, however, all this was changed; and nothing was more significant of the alteration in the old man’s feelings towards William Henry than the satisfaction he took in his society. So close an attachment the young man might well have dispensed with, since it kept him sometimes from his Margaret; but he nevertheless was far from discouraging it, since he knew that such familiarity tended in the end to ensure her to him.
It was the antiquary’s whim—or perhaps he thought that association of ideas might help to incline the young man’s heart towards him—to read at night Shakespeare’s plays with him, as they had been wont to do when William Henry was yet a child and no coldness had as yet sprung up between them. At times the young fellow’s attention would flag a little; his thoughts would fly after his heart, which was upstairs in Margaret’s keeping; but as a rule he shared, or seemed to share, the old man’s enthusiasm. His comments and suggestions on the text were always received with a respect which, considering what would have been their fate had they been hazarded six months ago, was almost ludicrous. Such illogical changes in personal estimation are not unexampled; even in modern times there have been instances where the sudden acquisition of wealth, or the unexpected succession to a title, have invested their astonished possessors with attributes in no way connected with either rank or riches; in the present case the admiration expressed was, however, remarkable, because the very qualities of literary judgment and the like, which were now acknowledged, had been of old contemptuously ignored. William Henry, who had never himself ignored them, was content to find them recognised at last by whatever means, and exchanged his views upon the character of Hamlet with the antiquary with cheerful confidence and upon equal terms.
One night they were reading ‘Lear’ together, and had come to those lines wherein the Duke offers Kent half the administration of the kingdom. To this Kent replies—
I have a journey, sir, shortly to go:
My master calls me; I must not say ‘No.’
‘Do you not think, sir,’ observed William Henry, ‘that such a couplet is somewhat inappropriate to the occasion?’
‘How so?’ inquired the antiquary. It was noteworthy that he took the objection with such mildness. The notion of anything in Shakespeare being inappropriate was like suggesting to a fire-worshipper that there were spots on the sun.
‘Well, sir, it strikes me as somewhat too brief and trivial, considering the subject on which he speaks. Now what do you think of this by way of an emendation?’ He drew from his pocket a slip of paper on which the following lines were written in his own handwriting:—
Thanks, sir; but I go to that unknown land
That chains each pilgrim fast within its soil,
By living men most shunned, most dreaded.
Still my good master this same journey took:
He calls me; I am content and straight obey.
Then farewell, world; the busy scene is done:
Kent lived most true; Kent died most like a man.