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What Will He Do With It, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 4 - Chapter 11 |
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_ BOOK IV CHAPTER XI A man of the world, having accepted a troublesome charge, considers "what he will do with it;" and, having promptly decided, is sure, first, that he could not have done better; and, secondly, that much may be said to prove that he could not have done worse. Reserving to a later occasion anymore detailed description of Colonel Morley, it suffices for the present to say that he was a man of a very fine understanding as applied to the special world in which he lived. Though no one had a more numerous circle of friends, and though with many of those friends he was on that footing of familiar intimacy which Darrell's active career once, and his rigid seclusion of late, could not have established with any idle denizen of that brilliant society in which Colonel Morley moved and had his being, yet to Alban Morley's heart (a heart not easily reached) no friend was so dear as Guy Darrell. They had entered Eton on the same day, left it the same day, lodged while there in the same house; and though of very different characters, formed one of those strong, imperishable, brotherly affections which the Fates weave into the very woof of existence. Darrell's recommendation would have secured to any young protege Colonel Morley's gracious welcome and invaluable advice. But, both as Darrell's acknowledged kinsman and as Charles Haughton's son, Lionel called forth his kindliest sentiments and obtained his most sagacious deliberations. He had already seen the boy several times before waiting on Mrs. Haughton, deeming it would please her to defer his visit until she could receive him in all the glories of Gloucester Place; and he had taken Lionel into high favour and deemed him worthy of a conspicuous place in the world. Though Darrell in his letter to Colonel Morley had emphatically distinguished the position of Lionel, as a favoured kinsman, from that of a presumptive or even a probable heir, yet the rich man had also added: "But I wish him to take rank as the representative to the Haughtons; and, whatever I may do with the bulk of my fortune, I shall insure to him a liberal independence. The completion of his education, the adequate allowance to him, the choice of a profession, are matters in which I entreat you to act for yourself, as if you were his guardian. I am leaving England: I may be abroad for years." Colonel Morley, in accepting the responsibilities thus pressed on him, brought to bear upon his charge subtle discrimination, as well as conscientious anxiety. He saw that Lionel's heart was set upon the military profession, and that his power of application seemed lukewarm and desultory when not cheered and concentred by enthusiasm, and would, therefore, fail him if directed to studies which had no immediate reference to the objects of his ambition. The Colonel, accordingly, dismissed the idea of sending him for three years to a university. Alban Morley summed up his theories on the collegiate ordeal in these succinct aphorisms: "Nothing so good as a university education, nor worse than a university without its education. Better throw a youth at once into the wider sphere of a capital--provided you there secure to his social life the ordinary checks of good company, the restraints imposed by the presence of decorous women, and men of grave years and dignified repute--than confine him to the exclusive society of youths of his own age, the age of wild spirits and unreflecting imitation, unless he cling to the safeguard which is found in hard reading, less by the book-knowledge it bestows than by the serious and preoccupied mind which it abstracts from the coarser temptations." But Lionel, younger in character than in years, was too boyish as yet to be safely consigned to those trials of tact and temper which await the neophyte who enters on life through the doors of a mess-room. His pride was too morbid, too much on the alert for offence; his frankness too crude, his spirit too untamed by the insensible discipline of social commerce. Quoth the observant man of the world: "Place his honour in his own keeping, and he will carry it about with him on full cock, to blow off a friend's head or his own before the end of the first month. Huffy! decidedly huffy! and of all causes that disturb regiments, and induce courts-martial, the commonest cause is a huffy lad! Pity! for that youngster has in him the right metal,--spirit and talent that should make him a first-rate soldier. It would be time well spent that should join professional studies with that degree of polite culture which gives dignity and cures dulness. I must get him out of London, out of England; cut him off from his mother's apron-strings, and the particular friends of his poor father who prowl unannounced into the widow's drawing-room. He shall go to Paris; no better place to learn military theories, and be civilized out of huffy dispositions. No doubt my old friend, the chevalier, who has the art strategic at his fingerends, might be induced to take him en pension, direct his studies, and keep him out of harm's way. I can secure to him the entree into the circles of the rigid old Faubourg St. Germain, where manners are best bred, and household ties most respected. Besides, as I am so often at Paris myself, I shall have him under my eye, and a few years there, spent in completing him as man, may bring him nearer to that marshal's baton which every recruit should have in his eye, than if I started him at once a raw boy, unable to take care of himself as an ensign, and unfitted, save by mechanical routine, to take care of others, should he live to buy the grade of a colonel." The plans thus promptly formed Alban Morley briefly explained to Lionel when the boy came to breakfast in Curzon Street; requesting him to obtain Mrs. Haughton's acquiesence in that exercise of the discretionary powers with which he had been invested by Mr. Darrell. To Lionel the proposition that commended the very studies to which his tastes directed his ambition, and placed his initiation into responsible manhood among scenes bright to his fancy, because new to his experience, seemed of course the perfection of wisdom. Less readily pleased was poor Mrs. Haughton, when her son returned to communicate the arrangement, backing a polite and well-worded letter from the Colonel with his own more artless eloquence. Instantly she flew off on the wing of her "little tempers." "What! her only son taken from her; sent to that horrid Continent, just when she was so respectably settled! What was the good of money if she was to be parted from her boy! Mr. Darrell might take the money back if he pleased; she would write and tell him so. Colonel Morley had no feeling; and she was shocked to think Lionel was in such unnatural hands. She saw very plainly that he no longer cared for her,--a serpent's tooth," etc. But as soon as the burst was over, the sky cleared and Mrs. Haughton became penitent and sensible. Then her grief for Lionel's loss was diverted by preparations for his departure. There was his wardrobe to see to; a patent portmanteau to purchase and to fill. And, all done, the last evening mother and son spent together, though painful at the moment, it would be happiness for both hereafter to recall! Their hands clasped in each other, her head leaning on his young shoulder, her tears kissed so soothingly away, and soft words of kindly motherly counsel, sweet promises of filial performances. Happy, thrice happy, as an after remembrance, be the final parting between hopeful son and fearful parent at the foot of that mystic bridge, which starts from the threshold of home,--lost in the dimness of the far-opposing shore!--bridge over which goes the boy who will never return but as the man. _ |
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