The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Volume 05

"Pisistratus," said my father one evening, as he arranged his notes before him and rubbed his spectacles, "Pisistratus, a great library is an awful place! There, are interred all the remains of men since the Flood."

"It is a burial-place!" quoth my Uncle Roland, who had that day found us out.

"Please, not such hard words," said the Captain, shaking his head.

"Heraclea was the city of necromancers, in which they raised the dead.

Do want to speak to Cicero?—-I invoke him. Do I want to chat in the Athenian market-place, and hear news two thousand years old?—-I write down my charm on a slip of paper, and a grave magician calls me up Aristophanes. And we owe all this to our ancest—"

"Ancestors who wrote books; thank you."

Here Roland offered his snuff-box to my father, who, abhorring snuff, benignly imbibed a pinch, and sneezed five times in consequence,—an excuse for Uncle Roland to say, which he did five times, with great unction, "God bless you, brother Austin!"

As soon as my father had recovered himself, he proceeded, with tears in his eyes, but calm as before the interruption—for he was of the philosophy of the Stoics,—

"But it is not that which is awful. It is the presuming to vie with these `spirits elect;' to say to them, 'Make way,—I too claim place with the chosen. I too would confer with the living, centuries after the death that consumes my dust. I too—' Ah, Pisistratus! I wish Uncle Jack had been at Jericho before he had brought me up to London and placed me in the midst of those rulers of the world!"

I was busy, while my father spoke, in making some pendent shelves for these "spirits elect;" for my mother, always provident where my father's comforts were concerned, had foreseen the necessity of some such accommodation in a hired lodging-house, and had not only carefully brought up to town my little box of tools, but gone out herself that morning to buy the raw materials. Checking the plane in its progress over the smooth deal, "My dear father," said I, "if at the Philhellenic Institute I had looked with as much awe as you do on the big fellows that had gone before me, I should have stayed, to all eternity, the lag of the Infant Division."

"Pisistratus, you are as great an agitator as your namesake," cried my father, smiling. "And so, a fig for the big fellows!"

And now my mother entered in her pretty evening cap, all smiles and good humor, having just arranged a room for Uncle Roland, concluded advantageous negotiations with the laundress, held high council with Mrs. Primmins on the best mode of defeating the extortions of London tradesmen, and, pleased with herself and all the world, she kissed my father's forehead as it bent over his notes, and came to the tea-table, which only waited its presiding deity. My Uncle Roland, with his usual gallantry, started up, kettle in hand (our own urn—for we had one—not being yet unpacked), and having performed with soldier-like method the chivalrous office thus volunteered, he joined me at my employment, and said,—

"There is a better steel for the hands of a well-born lad than a carpenter's plane."

"Aha! Uncle—that depends—"

"Depends! What on?"

"On the use one makes of it. Peter the Great was better employed in making ships than Charles XII. in cutting throats."

"Poor Charles XII.!" said my uncle, sighing pathetically; "a very brave fellow!"

"Pity he did not like the ladies a little better!"

"No man is perfect!" said my uncle, sententiously. "But, seriously, you are now the male hope of the family; you are now-" My uncle stopped, and his face darkened. I saw that he thought of his son,—that mysterious son! And looking at him tenderly, I observed that his deep lines had grown deeper, his iron-gray hair more gray. There was the trace of recent suffering on his face; and though he had not spoken to us a word of the business on which he had left us, it required no penetration to perceive that it had come to no successful issue.

My uncle resumed: "Time out of mind, every generation of our house has given one soldier to his country. I look round now: only one branch is budding yet on the old tree; and—"

"Ah! uncle. But what would they say? Do you think I should not like to be a soldier? Don't tempt me!"

My uncle had recourse to his snuff-box; and at that moment— unfortunately, perhaps, for the laurels that might otherwise have wreathed the brows of Pisistratus of England—private conversation was stopped by the sudden and noisy entrance of Uncle Jack. No apparition could have been more unexpected.

"Here I am, my dear friends. How d'ye do; how are you all? Captain de Caxton, yours heartily. Yes, I am released, thank Heaven! I have given up the drudgery of that pitiful provincial paper. I was not made for it. An ocean in a tea cup! I was indeed! Little, sordid, narrow interests; and I, whose heart embraces all humanity,—you might as well turn a circle into an isolated triangle."

"Isosceles!" said my father, sighing as he pushed aside his notes, and very slowly becoming aware of the eloquence that destroyed all chance of further progress that night in the Great Book. "'Isosceles' triangle, Jack Tibbets, not 'isolated."'

"'Isosceles' or 'isolated,' it is all one," said Uncle Jack, as he rapidly performed three evolutions, by no means consistent with his favorite theory of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number,"— first, he emptied into the cup which he took from my mother's hands half the thrifty contents of a London cream-jug; secondly, he reduced the circle of a muffin, by the abstraction of three triangles, to as nearly an isosceles as possible; and thirdly, striding towards the fire, lighted in consideration of Captain de Caxton, and hooking his coat- tails under his arms while he sipped his tea, he permitted another circle peculiar to humanity wholly to eclipse the luminary it approached.

"'Isolated' or 'isosceles,' it is all the same thing. Alan is made for his fellow-creatures. I had long been disgusted with the interference of those selfish Squirearchs. Your departure decided me. I have concluded negotiations with a London firm of spirit and capital and extended views of philanthropy. On Saturday last I retired from the service of the oligarchy.

"I am now in my true capacity of protector of the million. My prospectus is printed,—here it is in my pocket. Another cup of tea, sister; a little more cream, and another muffin. Shall I ring?" Having disembarrassed himself of his cup and saucer, Uncle Jack then drew forth from his pocket a damp sheet of printed paper. In large capitals stood out "The Anti-Monopoly Gazette; or Popular Champion." He waved it triumphantly before my father's eyes.

"Pisistratus," said my father, "look here. This is the way your Uncle Jack now prints his pats of butter,—a cap of liberty growing out of an open book! Good, Jack! good! good!"

"It is Jacobinical!" exclaimed the Captain.

"Very likely," said my father; "but knowledge and freedom are the best devices in the world to print upon pats of butter intended for the market."

"Pats of butter! I don't understand," said Uncle Jack. "The less you understand, the better will the butter sell, Jack," said my father, settling back to his notes.

CHAPTER III

Uncle Jack had made up his mind to lodge with us, and my mother found some difficulty in inducing him to comprehend that there was no bed to spare.

"That's unlucky," said he. "I had no sooner arrived in town than I was pestered with invitations; but I refused them all, and kept myself for you."

"So kind in you, so like you!" said my mother; "but you see—"

"Well, then, I must be off and find a room. Don't fret; you know I can breakfast and dine with you all the same,—that is, when my other friends will let me. I shall be dreadfully persecuted." So saying, Uncle Jack repocketed his prospectus and wished us good-night.

The clock had struck eleven, my mother had retired, when my father looked up from his books and returned his spectacles to their case. I had finished my work, and was seated over the fire, thinking now of Fanny Trevanion's hazel eyes, now, with a heart that beat as high at the thought, of campaigns, battle-fields, laurels, and glory; while, with his arms folded on his breast and his head drooping, Uncle Roland gazed into the low clear embers. My father cast his eyes round the room, and after surveying his brother for some moments he said, almost in a whisper,—

"My son has seen the Trevanions. They remember us, Roland."

The Captain sprang to his feet and began whistling,—a habit with him when he was much disturbed.

"And Trevanion wishes to see us. Pisistratus promised to give him our address: shall he do so, Roland?"

"If you like it," answered the Captain, in a military attitude, and drawing himself up till he looked seven feet high.

"I should like it," said my father, mildly. "Twenty years since we met."

"More than twenty," said my uncle, with a stern smile; "and the season was—the fall of the leaf!"

"Man renews the fibre and material of his body every seven years," said my father; "in three times seven years he has time to renew the inner man. Can two passengers in yonder street be more unlike each other than the soul is to the soul after an interval of twenty years? Brother, the plough does not pass over the soil in vain, nor care over the human heart. New crops change the character of the land; and the plough must go deep indeed before it stirs up the mother stone."

"Let us see Trevanion," cried my uncle; then, turning to me, he said abruptly, "What family has he?"

"One daughter."

"No son?"

"No."

"That must vex the poor, foolish, ambitious man. Oho! you admire this Mr. Trevanion much, eh? Yes, that fire of manner, his fine words, and bold thoughts, were made to dazzle youth."

"Fine words, my dear uncle,—fire! I should have said, in hearing Mr. Trevanion, that his style of conversation was so homely you would wonder how he could have won such fame as a public speaker."