"My Novel" — Volume 04

The philosopher mechanically shrugged his shoulders, as he always did when another man moralized,—especially if the moralizer were a priest; but there was no irony in his smile, as he answered thoughtfully,—

"There is some truth in what you say. I own that we live too much as if we were all brain. Knowledge has its penalties and pains, as well as its prizes."

"That is just what I want you to say to Leonard."

"How have you settled the object of your journey?"

"I will tell you as we walk down to him after tea. At present, I am rather too much occupied with you."

"Me? The tree is formed—try only to bend the young twig!"

"Trees are trees, and twigs twigs," said the parson, dogmatically; "but man is always growing till he falls into the grave. I think I have heard you say that you once had a narrow escape of a prison?"

"Very narrow."

"Just suppose that you were now in that prison, and that a fairy conjured up the prospect of this quiet home in a safe land; that you saw the orange-trees in flower, felt the evening breeze on your cheek; beheld your child gay or sad, as you smiled or knit your brow; that within this phantom home was a woman, not, indeed, all your young romance might have dreamed of, but faithful and true, every beat of her heart all your own, —would you not cry from the depth of your dungeon, 'O fairy! such a change were a paradise!' Ungrateful man! you want interchange for your mind, and your heart should suffice for all!"

Riccabocca was touched and silent.

"Come hither, my child," said Mr. Dale, turning round to Violante, who stood still among the flowers, out of hearing, but with watchful eyes. "Come hither," he said, opening his arms.

Violante bounded forward, and nestled to the good man's heart.

"Tell me, Violante, when you are alone in the fields or the garden, and have left your father looking pleased and serene, so that you have no care for him at your heart,—tell me, Violante, though you are all alone, with the flowers below, and the birds singing overhead, do you feel that life itself is happiness or sorrow?"

"Happiness!" answered Violante, half shutting her eyes, and in a measured voice.

"Can you explain what kind of happiness it is?"

"Oh, no, impossible! and it is never the same. Sometimes it is so still —so still, and sometimes so joyous, that I long for wings to fly up to God, and thank Him!"

"O friend," said the parson, "this is the true sympathy between life and nature, and thus we should feel ever, did we take more care to preserve the health and innocence of a child. We are told that we must become as children to enter into the kingdom of Heaven; methinks we should also become as children to know what delight there is in our heritage of earth!"

CHAPTER XVII

The maid-servant (for Jackeymo was in the fields) brought the table under the awning, and with the English luxury of tea, there were other drinks as cheap and as grateful on summer evenings,—drinks which Jackeymo had retained and taught from the customs of the South,—unebriate liquors, pressed from cooling fruits, sweetened with honey, and deliciously iced: ice should cost nothing in a country in which one is frozen up half the year! And Jackeymo, too, had added to our good, solid, heavy English bread preparations of wheat much lighter, and more propitious to digestion,—with those crisp grissins, which seem to enjoy being eaten, they make so pleasant a noise between one's teeth.

The parson esteemed it a little treat to drink tea with the Riccaboccas. There was something of elegance and grace in that homely meal at the poor exile's table, which pleased the eye as well as taste. And the very utensils, plain Wedgwood though they were, had a classical simplicity, which made Mrs. Hazeldean's old India delf, and Mrs. Dale's best Worcester china, look tawdry and barbarous in comparison. For it was Flaxman who gave designs to Wedgwood, and the most truly refined of all our manufactures in porcelain (if we do not look to the mere material) is in the reach of the most thrifty.

The little banquet was at first rather a silent one; but Riccabocca threw off his gloom, and became gay and animated. Then poor Mrs. Riccabocca smiled, and pressed the grissins; and Violante, forgetting all her stateliness, laughed and played tricks on the parson, stealing away his cup of warm tea when his head was turned, and substituting iced cherry- juice. Then the parson got up and ran after Violante, making angry faces, and Violante dodged beautifully, till the parson, fairly tired out, was too glad to cry "Peace," and come back to the cherry-juice. Thus time rolled on, till they heard afar the stroke of the distant church-clock, and Mr. Dale started up and cried, "But we shall be too late for Leonard. Come, naughty little girl, get your father his hat."

"And umbrella!" said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloudless, moonlit sky.

"Umbrella against the stars?" asked the parson, laughing. "The stars are no friends of mine," said Riccabocca, "and one never knows what may happen!"

The philosopher and the parson walked on amicably.

"You have done me good," said Riccabocca, "but I hope I am not always so unreasonably melancholic as you seem to suspect. The evenings will sometimes appear long, and dull too, to a man whose thoughts on the past are almost his sole companions."

"Sole companions?—your child?"

"She is so young."

"Your wife?"

"She is so—" the bland Italian appeared to check some disparaging adjective, and mildly added, "so good, I allow; but you must own that she and I cannot have much in common."

"I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your interests, your happiness and your lives, in common. We men are so exacting, we expect to find ideal nymphs and goddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal; and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come up as cold as a stone."

"Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing. "But I am not so sceptical as you are. I honour the fair sex too much. There are a great many women who realize the ideal of men, to be found in—the poets!"

"There's my dear Mrs. Dale," resumed the parson, not heeding the sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper, and looking round cautiously,—"there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman in the world,—an angel I would say, if the word were not profane; BUT—"

"What's the BUT?" asked the doctor, demurely.

"BUT I too might say that 'she and I have not much in common,' if I were only to compare mind to mind, and when my poor Carry says something less profound than Madame de Stael might have said, smile on her in contempt from the elevation of logic and Latin. Yet when I remember all the little sorrows and joys that we have shared together, and feel how solitary I should have been without her—oh, then, I am instantly aware that there is between us in common something infinitely closer and better than if the same course of study had given us the same equality of ideas; and I was forced to brace myself for a combat of intellect, as I am when I fall in with a tiresome sage like yourself. I don't pretend to say that Mrs. Riccabocca is a Mrs. Dale," added the parson, with lofty candour,—"there is but one Mrs. Dale in the world; but still, you have drawn a prize in the wheel matrimonial! Think of Socrates, and yet he was content even with his—Xantippe!"

Dr. Riccabocca called to mind Mrs. Dale's "little tempers," and inly rejoiced that no second Mrs. Dale had existed to fall to his own lot. His placid Jemima gained by the contrast. Nevertheless he had the ill grace to reply, "Socrates was a man beyond all imitation!—Yet I believe that even he spent very few of his evenings at home. But /revenons a nos moutons/, we are nearly at Mrs. Fairfield's cottage, and you have not yet told me what you have settled as to Leonard."

The parson halted, took Riccabocca by the button, and informed him, in very few words, that Leonard was to go to Lansmere to see some relations there, who had the fortune, if they had the will, to give full career to his abilities.

"The great thing, in the mean while," said the parson, "would be to enlighten him a little as to what he calls—enlightenment."

"Ah!" said Riccabocca, diverted, and rubbing his hands, "I shall listen with interest to what you say on that subject."

"And must aid me: for the first step in this modern march of enlightenment is to leave the poor parson behind; and if one calls out 'Hold! and look at the sign-post,' the traveller hurries on the faster, saying to himself, 'Pooh, pooh!—that is only the cry of the parson!' But my gentleman, when he doubts me, will listen to you,—you're a philosopher!"

"We philosophers are of some use now and then, even to parsons!"

"If you were not so conceited a set of deluded poor creatures already, I would say 'Yes,'" replied the parson, generously; and, taking hold of Riccabocca's umbrella, he applied the brass handle thereof, by way of a knocker, to the cottage door.

CHAPTER XVIII

Certainly it is a glorious fever,—that desire To Know! And there are few sights in the moral world more sublime than that which many a garret might afford, if Asmodeus would bare the roofs to our survey,—namely, a brave, patient, earnest human being toiling his own arduous way, athwart the iron walls of penury, into the magnificent Infinite, which is luminous with starry souls.

So there sits Leonard the Self-taught in the little cottage alone: for, though scarcely past the hour in which great folks dine, it is the hour in which small folks go to bed, and Mrs. Fairfield has retired to rest, while Leonard has settled to his books.

He had placed his table under the lattice, and from time to time he looked up and enjoyed the stillness of the moon. Well for him that, in reparation for those hours stolen from night, the hardy physical labour commenced with dawn. Students would not be the sad dyspeptics they are, if they worked as many hours in the open air as my scholar-peasant. But even in him you could see that the mind had begun a little to affect the frame. They who task the intellect must pay the penalty with the body. Ill, believe me, would this work-day world get on if all within it were hard-reading, studious animals, playing the deuce with the ganglionic apparatus.

Leonard started as he heard the knock at the door; the parson's well- known voice reassured him. In some surprise he admitted his visitors.

"We are come to talk to you, Leonard," said Mr. Dale; "but I fear we shall disturb Mrs. Fairfield."

"Oh, no, sir! the door to the staircase is shut, and she sleeps soundly."

"Why, this is a French book! Do you read French, Leonard?" asked Riccabocca.

"I have not found French difficult, sir. Once over the grammar, and the language is so clear; it seems the very language for reasoning."