Mr. Jones nodded, and sallied forth. The register was not in the vestry; the church-wardens knew nothing about it; the clerk--a new clerk, who was also the s.e.xton, and rather a wild fellow--had gone ten miles off to a wedding: every place was searched; till, at last, the book was found, amidst a heap of old magazines and dusty papers, in the parlour of Caleb himself. By the time it was brought to him, the sufferer was fast declining; with some difficulty his dim eye discovered the place where, amidst the clumsy pothooks of the parishioners, the large clear hand of the old friend, and the trembling characters of the bride, looked forth, distinguished.
"Extract this for me, will you?" said Caleb. Mr. Jones obeyed.
"Now, just write above the extract:
""Sir,--By Mr. Price"s desire I send you the inclosed. He is too ill to write himself. But he bids me say that he has never been quite the same man since you left him; and that, if he should not get well again, still your kind letter has made him easier in his mind."
Caleb stopped.
"Go on."
"That is all I have to say: sign your name, and put the address--here it is. Ah, the letter," he muttered, "must not lie about! If anything happens to me, it may get him into trouble."
And as Mr. Jones sealed his communication, Caleb feebly stretched his wan hand, held the letter which had "come too late" over the flame of the candle. As the blazing paper dropped on the carpetless floor, Mr.
Jones prudently set thereon the broad sole of his top-boot, and the maidservant brushed the tinder into the grate.
"Ah, trample it out:--hurry it amongst the ashes. The last as the rest,"
said Caleb, hoa.r.s.ely. "Friendship, fortune, hope, love, life--a little flame, and then--and then--"
"Don"t be uneasy--it"s quite out!" said Mr. Jones. Caleb turned his face to the wall. He lingered till the next day, when he pa.s.sed insensibly from sleep to death. As soon as the breath was out of his body, Mr.
Jones felt that his duty was discharged, that other duties called him home. He promised to return to read the burial-service over the deceased, gave some hasty orders about the plain funeral, and was turning from the room, when he saw the letter he had written by Caleb"s wish, still on the table. "I pa.s.s the post-office--I"ll put it in," said he to the weeping servant; "and just give me that sc.r.a.p of paper." So he wrote on the sc.r.a.p, "P. S. He died this morning at half-past twelve, without pain.--M. J.;" and not taking the trouble to break the seal, thrust the final bulletin into the folds of the letter, which he then carefully placed in his vast pocket, and safely transferred to the post.
And that was all that the jovial and happy man, to whom the letter was addressed, ever heard of the last days of his college friend.
The living, vacant by the death of Caleb Price, was not so valuable as to plague the patron with many applications. It continued vacant nearly the whole of the six months prescribed by law. And the desolate parsonage was committed to the charge of one of the villagers, who had occasionally a.s.sisted Caleb in the care of his little garden.
The villager, his wife, and half-a-dozen noisy, ragged children, took possession of the quiet bachelor"s abode. The furniture had been sold to pay the expenses of the funeral, and a few trifling bills; and, save the kitchen and the two attics, the empty house, uninhabited, was surrendered to the sportive mischief of the idle urchins, who prowled about the silent chambers in fear of the silence, and in ecstasy at the s.p.a.ce. The bedroom in which Caleb had died was, indeed, long held sacred by infantine superst.i.tion. But one day the eldest boy having ventured across the threshold, two cupboards, the doors standing ajar, attracted the child"s curiosity. He opened one, and his exclamation soon brought the rest of the children round him. Have you ever, reader, when a boy, suddenly stumbled on that El Dorado, called by the grown-up folks a lumber room? Lumber, indeed! what Virtu double-locks in cabinets is the real lumber to the boy! Lumber, reader! to thee it was a treasury!
Now this cupboard had been the lumber-room in Caleb"s household. In an instant the whole troop had thrown themselves on the motley contents.
Stray joints of clumsy fishing-rods; artificial baits; a pair of worn-out top-boots, in which one of the urchins, whooping and shouting, buried himself up to the middle; moth-eaten, stained, and ragged, the collegian"s gown-relic of the dead man"s palmy time; a bag of carpenter"s tools, chiefly broken; a cricket-bat; an odd boxing-glove; a fencing-foil, snapped in the middle; and, more than all, some half-finished attempts at rude toys: a boat, a cart, a doll"s house, in which the good-natured Caleb had busied himself for the younger ones of that family in which he had found the fatal ideal of his trite life. One by one were these lugged forth from their dusty slumber-profane hands struggling for the first right of appropriation. And now, revealed against the wall, glared upon the startled violators of the sanctuary, with gla.s.sy eyes and horrent visage, a grim monster. They huddled back one upon the other, pale and breathless, till the eldest, seeing that the creature moved not, took heart, approached on tip-toe-twice receded, and twice again advanced, and finally drew out, daubed, painted, and tricked forth in the semblance of a griffin, a gigantic kite.
The children, alas! were not old and wise enough to knew all the dormant value of that imprisoned aeronaut, which had cost Caleb many a dull evening"s labour--the intended gift to the false one"s favourite brother. But they guessed that it was a thing or spirit appertaining of right to them; and they resolved, after mature consultation, to impart the secret of their discovery to an old wooden-legged villager, who had served in the army, who was the idol of all the children of the place, and who, they firmly believed, knew everything under the sun, except the mystical arts of reading and writing. Accordingly, having seen that the coast was clear--for they considered their parents (as the children of the hard-working often do) the natural foes to amus.e.m.e.nt--they carried the monster into an old outhouse, and ran to the veteran to beg him to come up slyly and inspect its properties.
Three months after this memorable event, arrived the new pastor--a slim, prim, orderly, and starch young man, framed by nature and trained by practice to bear a great deal of solitude and starving. Two loving couples had waited to be married till his Reverence should arrive.
The ceremony performed, where was the registry-book? The vestry was searched-the church-wardens interrogated; the gay clerk, who, on the demise of his deaf predecessor, had come into office a little before Caleb"s last illness, had a dim recollection of having taken the registry up to Mr. Price at the time the vestry-room was whitewashed.
The house was searched-the cupboard, the mysterious cupboard, was explored. "Here it is, sir!" cried the clerk; and he pounced upon a pale parchment volume. The thin clergyman opened it, and recoiled in dismay--more than three-fourths of the leaves had been torn out.
"It is the moths, sir," said the gardener"s wife, who had not yet removed from the house.
The clergyman looked round; one of the children was trembling. "What have you done to this book, little one?"
"That book?--the--hi!--hi!--"
"Speak the truth, and you sha"n"t be punished."
"I did not know it was any harm--hi!--hi!--"
"Well, and--"
"And old Ben helped us."
"Well?"
"And--and--and--hi!--hi!--The tail of the kite, sir!--"
"Where is the kite?"
Alas! the kite and its tail were long ago gone to that undiscovered limbo where all things lost, broken, vanished, and destroyed; things that lose themselves--for servants are too honest to steal; things that break themselves--for servants are too careful to break; find an everlasting and impenetrable refuge.
"It does not signify a pin"s head," said the clerk; "the parish must find a new "un!"
"It is no fault of mine," said the Pastor. "Are my chops ready?"
CHAPTER II.
"And soothed with idle dreams the frowning fate."--CRABBE.
"Why does not my father come back? what a time he has been away!"
"My dear Philip, business detains him; but he will be here in a few days--perhaps to-day!"
"I should like him to see how much I am improved."
"Improved in what, Philip?" said the mother, with a smile. "Not Latin, I am sure; for I have not seen you open a book since you insisted on poor Todd"s dismissal."
"Todd! Oh, he was such a scrub, and spoke through his nose: what could he know of Latin?"
"More than you ever will, I fear, unless--" and here there was a certain hesitation in the mother"s voice, "unless your father consents to your going to school."
"Well, I should like to go to Eton! That"s the only school for a gentleman. I"ve heard my father say so."
"Philip, you are too proud."--"Proud! you often call me proud; but, then, you kiss me when you do so. Kiss me now, mother."
The lady drew her son to her breast, put aside the cl.u.s.tering hair from his forehead, and kissed him; but the kiss was sad, and the moment after she pushed him away gently and muttered, unconscious that she was overheard:
"If, after all, my devotion to the father should wrong the children!"
The boy started, and a cloud pa.s.sed over his brow; but he said nothing.
A light step entered the room through the French cas.e.m.e.nts that opened on the lawn, and the mother turned to her youngest-born, and her eye brightened.
"Mamma! mamma! here is a letter for you. I s.n.a.t.c.hed it from John: it is papa"s handwriting."
The lady uttered a joyous exclamation, and seized the letter. The younger child nestled himself on a stool at her feet, looking up while she read it; the elder stood apart, leaning on his gun, and with something of thought, even of gloom, upon his countenance.
There was a strong contrast in the two boys. The elder, who was about fifteen, seemed older than he was, not only from his height, but from the darkness of his complexion, and a certain proud, nay, imperious, expression upon features that, without having the soft and fluent graces of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green shooting-dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold ta.s.sel set upon his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven"s plume, blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his own tastes, with the love of the fantastic and the picturesque which bespeaks the presiding genius of the proud mother. The younger son had scarcely told his ninth year; and the soft, auburn ringlets, descending half-way down the shoulders; the rich and delicate bloom that exhibits at once the hardy health and the gentle fostering; the large deep-blue eyes; the flexile and almost effeminate contour of the harmonious features; altogether made such an ideal of childlike beauty as Lawrence had loved to paint or Chantrey model. And the daintiest cares of a mother, who, as yet, has her darling all to herself--her toy, her plaything--were visible in the large falling collar of finest cambric, and the blue velvet dress with its filigree b.u.t.tons and embroidered sash.
Both the boys had about them the air of those whom Fate ushers blandly into life; the air of wealth, and birth, and luxury, spoiled and pampered as if earth had no thorn for their feet, and heaven not a wind to visit their young cheeks too roughly. The mother had been extremely handsome; and though the first bloom of youth was now gone, she had still the beauty that might captivate new love--an easier task than to retain the old. Both her sons, though differing from each other, resembled her; she had the features of the younger; and probably any one who had seen her in her own earlier youth would have recognized in that child"s gay yet gentle countenance the mirror of the mother when a girl.
Now, however, especially when silent or thoughtful, the expression of her face was rather that of the elder boy;--the cheek, once so rosy was now pale, though clear, with something which time had given, of pride and thought, in the curved lip and the high forehead. One who could have looked on her in her more lonely hours, might have seen that the pride had known shame, and the thought was the shadow of the pa.s.sions of fear and sorrow.