Part 11 (1/2)

I had read through Milton, as I said, again and again; I had got out of him all that my youth and my unregulated mind enabled me to get. I had devoured, too, not without profit, a large old edition of ”Fox's Martyrs,”

which the venerable minister lent me, and now I was hungering again for fresh food, and again at a loss where to find it.

I was hungering, too, for more than information--for a friend. Since my intercourse with Sandy Mackaye had been stopped, six months had pa.s.sed without my once opening my lips to any human being upon the subjects with which my mind was haunted day and night. I wanted to know more about poetry, history, politics, philosophy--all things in heaven and earth. But, above all, I wanted a faithful and sympathizing ear into which to pour all my doubts, discontents, and aspirations. My sister Susan, who was one year younger than myself, was growing into a slender, pretty, hectic girl of sixteen. But she was altogether a devout Puritan. She had just gone through the process of conviction of sin and conversion; and being looked upon at the chapel as an especially gracious professor, was either unable or unwilling to think or speak on any subject, except on those to which I felt a growing distaste. She had shrunk from me, too, very much, since my ferocious attack that Sunday evening on the dark minister, who was her special favourite. I remarked it, and it was a fresh cause of unhappiness and perplexity.

At last I made up my mind, come what would, to force myself upon Crossthwaite. He was the only man whom I knew who seemed able to help me; and his very reserve had invested him with a mystery, which served to heighten my imagination of his powers. I waylaid him one day coming out of the workroom to go home, and plunged at once desperately into the matter.

”Mr. Crossthwaite, I want to speak to you. I want to ask you to advise me.”

”I have known that a long time.”

”Then why did you never say a kind word to me?”

”Because I was waiting to see whether you were worth saying a kind word to.

It was but the other day, remember, you were a bit of a boy. Now, I think, I may trust you with a thing or two. Besides, I wanted to see whether you trusted me enough to ask me. Now you've broke the ice at last, in with you, head and ears, and see what you can fish out.”

”I am very unhappy--”

”That's no new disorder that I know of.”

”No; but I think the reason I am unhappy is a strange one; at least, I never read of but one person else in the same way. I want to educate myself, and I can't.”

”You must have read precious little then, if you think yourself in a strange way. Bless the boy's heart! And what the d.i.c.kens do you want to be educating yourself for, pray?”

This was said in a tone of good-humoured banter, which gave me courage. He offered to walk homewards with me; and, as I shambled along by his side, I told him all my story and all my griefs.

I never shall forget that walk. Every house, tree, turning, which we pa.s.sed that day on our way, is indissolubly connected in my mind with some strange new thought which arose in me just at each spot; and recurs, so are the mind and the senses connected, as surely as I repa.s.s it.

I had been telling him about Sandy Mackaye. He confessed to an acquaintance with him; but in a reserved and mysterious way, which only heightened my curiosity.

We were going through the Horse Guards, and I could not help lingering to look with wistful admiration on the huge mustachoed war-machines who sauntered about the court-yard.

A tall and handsome officer, blazing in scarlet and gold, cantered in on a superb horse, and, dismounting, threw the reins to a dragoon as grand and gaudy as himself. Did I envy him? Well--I was but seventeen. And there is something n.o.ble to the mind, as well as to the eye, in the great strong man, who can fight--a completeness, a self-restraint, a terrible sleeping power in him. As Mr. Carlyle says, ”A soldier, after all, is--one of the few remaining realities of the age. All other professions almost promise one thing, and perform--alas! what? But this man promises to fight, and does it; and, if he be told, will veritably take out a long sword and kill me.”

So thought my companion, though the mood in which he viewed the fact was somewhat different from my own.

”Come on,” he said, peevishly clutching me by the arm; ”what do you want dawdling? Are you a nursery-maid, that you must stare at those red-coated butchers?” And a deep curse followed.

”What harm have they done you?”

”I should think I owed them turn enough.”

”What?”

”They cut my father down at Sheffield,--perhaps with the very swords he helped to make,--because he would not sit still and starve, and see us starving around him, while those who fattened on the sweat of his brow, and on those lungs of his, which the sword-grinding dust was eating out day by day, were wantoning on venison and champagne. That's the harm they've done me, my chap!”

”Poor fellows!--they only did as they were ordered, I suppose.”

”And what business have they to let themselves be ordered? What right, I say--what right has any free, reasonable soul on earth, to sell himself for a s.h.i.+lling a day to murder any man, right or wrong--even his own brother or his own father--just because such a whiskered, profligate jackanapes as that officer, without learning, without any G.o.d except his own looking-gla.s.s and his opera-dancer--a fellow who, just because he is born a gentleman, is set to command grey-headed men before he can command his own meanest pa.s.sions. Good heavens! that the lives of free men should be entrusted to such a stuffed c.o.c.katoo; and that free men should be such traitors to their country, traitors to their own flesh and blood, as to sell themselves, for a s.h.i.+lling a day and the smirks of the nursery-maids, to do that fellow's bidding!”

”What are you a-grumbling here about, my man?--gotten the cholera?” asked one of the dragoons, a huge, stupid-looking lad.