Still another picture. This one on the sea, to give variety to the group.
A fresh breeze is blowing, the white sails are full, and a noble vessel--the Blue Jacket, a famous clipper--is ploughing her way through the snow-crested waves. Holding on to the bulwarks, a lad, scarcely eighteen years of age, is gazing now into the billowy depths into which they are descending, now to the curling heights up and over which the ship is sailing. A rapture of delight dwells in his great spiritual eyes, and a flush rises to his pale and pensive face, as he gazes on the wonders of the deep. His heart is pulsing with worship of the beautiful, and with his inner sight he sees what is hidden from many. The breeze brings to him musical and thrilling whispers; the laughing, joyous waters teem with images of spiritual loveliness.
By his side, gazing also into the water's depths, and holding on to a rope with a stronger and more careless grip, stands a man whose years exceed two score. A handsome, strongly-built man, with a mole on his right temple which adds to rather than detracts from his beauty. That he is of a commoner order than the lad by whose side he stands is clearly apparent; yet he is one in whom the majority of women would instinctively take a deeper interest because of his riper development and the larger power expressed in him. His features are wanting in the refinement and delicacy which characterise his young companion, but they have boldness and fulness which, allied with good proportion, possess a special and individual attraction of their own.
The young gentleman's name is Arthur Temple; the name of his valet is Ned Chester; and the ship is ploughing her way to England's shores.
What the lad sees in the restless, laughing waters is created by his poetical nature. What the man sees is the issue of an actual experience in the past. In the lad's dreams there is no thread of connection: images of beauty appear and disappear; slowly form themselves, and fade as slowly away; and are not repeated. In the man's, one face is always present, and always visible to his fancy; the face of a beautiful child, whose eyes rival heaven's brightest blue, whose cheeks are blooming with roses, whose head is covered with clusters of golden curls.
A word of retrospect is necessary.
The lad is the only child, by his wife, Lady Temple, of Mr. Temple, a name famous in the superior Law Courts of England, a gentleman of wealth, distinction, and high position in the land. From his birth, Arthur Temple has been the object of the most anxious and devoted care of his parents--the devotion mainly springing from the mother's breast, the anxiety from the father's. Not that the father was wanting in love. On the contrary. As much love as it was in his nature to bestow, he bestowed upon his son. But it was not like the mother's love, purely unselfish; it was alloyed with personal ambition, and was consequently of a coarser grain. From a delicate babe, Arthur Temple grew into a delicate boy--so delicate that his life often hung upon a thread, as ordinary people express it, and he was not sent to a public school for his education. The best private tutors were obtained for him, and the lad showed an eager desire to acquire what they were engaged to teach. But his mental vigour ran ahead of his physical power, and the physicians ordered that his studies should be discontinued. "His brain is too wakeful," they said, "his nerves too sensitive. The difficulty will be not to make him study, but to keep him from it." So it turned out. Free from the trammels of enforced study, and left to follow his own inclination, the lad flew to the books most congenial to his nature, and learnt from them what he most desired to learn. The intellectual power apparent in the lad delighted his father as much as his lack of physical strength distressed him. Mr. Temple's ambition was various. Wealth he loved for the sake of the luxury and ease it conferred; power he coveted, and coveted the more as he rose, for its own sake, and because it placed him above his fellows, and gave him control over them; but beyond all, his chief ambition was to found a family, which should be famous in the land. To the accomplishment of this end two things were necessary: the first, that he himself should become famous, and should amass much wealth; the second, that his son--his only child--should marry, and have children. In the first, he was successful. It is not necessary to inquire by what means--whether by superior talent, by tact, by industry, or by force of patronage--he rose to power, and passed men in the race who at least were equal with himself. The fact is sufficient; he rose above them, and it was acknowledged that the highest prize in his profession might one day be his.
This is an envious world. As worshippers of the successful and powerful are everywhere to be found, so are detractors, and men who by innuendoes throw dirt at those who occupy the best seats. But whatever might be said to his detraction by the envious few, he was quoted in public as a man of rare virtues and integrity. The public prints never neglected an opportunity to point a moral by means of his example. They never tired of quoting his stainless life, his probity, his righteous conduct as an administrator of justice, and holding him forth as a practical illustration of the highest qualities of human nature. It cannot be denied that he, by his conduct, contributed to this result. There was manifest in him a distinct assertion to the possession of spotless honour and blamelessness; so pure a man was he that he had no pity for human failings; that "earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice," found no assenting response within his breast. Woe to the fallen wretches who appeared before him for judgment; he gave them their deservings, with no compassionate regard of the tangled, dirt-stained roads they had been compelled to travel. His stern manner said, "Look upon me. Have I fallen? Why, then, have you?" And in his addresses to criminals when passing sentence, he frequently embodied this in words--whereupon the world would rejoice that the law had such an interpreter, justice such a champion. All other things, therefore, being smooth before him, the full accomplishment of his dearest ambition hung upon the health of his only child, and he experienced the keenest anxiety in the circumstance that as the lad grew in years, he failed in strength. At the age of sixteen, Arthur Temple was a pale, dreamy stripling, full of fine fancies, and sensitive to a fault. The physicians spoke gravely of his condition.
"There is but one chance of his attaining manhood," they said; "a complete change must be effected in his life. He must travel. Not on the Continent, or in cities where money can purchase the indulgences of existence. A long sea-voyage in a sailing vessel, to the other end of the world. A sojourn there of twelve or eighteen months. Then home again, with blood thickened, and bones well set."
"But if he should die!" exclaimed the anxious mother, distracted at the thought of parting with her darling.
"He may," replied the physicians; "but there, at all events, he has a chance of living. Keep him at home, and you condemn him to certain death."
After this there was, of course, nothing to be said, and preparations were made for the lad's temporary exile. Arthur received the news with joy. It was the realisation of a cherished dream. He felt like a knight-errant going out in search of romantic adventures. The glad anticipation made his step lighter, his manner cheerier.
"He is better already," said the physicians.
The difficulty was to find a companion for him. His father's professional duties would not permit of his leaving England; his mother's health was too delicate. The need was supplied by the younger member of a family of rank and distinction, who, with his family, was going out to settle in the new land across the seas. Into their care Arthur Temple was given. Before he left England, his father conversed privately and seriously with the lad, and in some part made a disclosure of his views of the future. Arthur listened with respect and attention; he had a sincere regard for his father, although between their natures existed an undefinable barrier which prevented the perfect merging of their sympathies.
"You are my one only hope," said Mr. Temple to his son; "but for you, all the honours I have gained would be valueless in my eyes. Get strong, for your mother's sake and mine, and come home to take your proper position in society--a position which I have made for you, and which you will worthily sustain. You have yet to choose your career--it will be politics, I hope; it opens out the widest field to a young man of wealth and talent. Before I die, I may see my boy in office."
Arthur shook his head. He had his dreams of the path in which he would choose to walk; the pen should be the weapon by means of which he would carve his way to fame. He expressed his hope, with a boy's timidity and bashfulness, to his father, who was too wise to fan the fire by a show of opposition.'
"All that is in the future," he said; "your first care is to get strong."
This conference between father and son was one of solemnity to the lad; he was going on a long voyage, and he and his father might never meet again; there was a thought in his mind to which he was impelled to give utterance.
"Be sure of one thing, sir," he said, gazing steadily with his truthful eyes into his father's face, "whatever occurs, in whatever groove my life may run, I shall never do anything to disgrace the name of Temple."
"My dear lad!" murmured his father.
"Whatever career I adopt," said the lad, with a heightened colour, "I solemnly promise always and for ever to set right and justice before me, and to be guided by their light."
His right hand was slightly raised as he spoke, and he looked upwards, as though he were registering a vow. The words were the outcome of his truthful nature, and were a fit utterance at such a time and under such circumstances.
"If I believed," continued the lad, "that it were possible I should ever commit an act which would reflect shame upon the name we bear, I should pray to die to-night. I should not be happy if I went away without giving you this assurance. Believe me, sir, I will be worthy of the trust you repose in me."
Mr. Temple received this assurance with averted head. He was accustomed to boyish outbursts from his son, but this last bore with it, in its more earnest tones, a deeper signification than usual.
"You afford me great pleasure, Arthur," he said slowly; "I am sure I shall not be disappointed in you. Yet you must not forget that, in the practical issues of life, sentiment must occasionally be set aside."
The lad pondered for a few moments, saying then:
"I do not quite understand you, sir."
Mr. Temple briefly explained his meaning.
"Merely, my son, that the circumstances of life frequently call for the exercise of wisdom, and that we must look carefully to the results of our actions."
Arthur Temple was always ready for an argument.
"I do not know how I should act if wisdom and sentiment clashed. I have heard you say I am given to sentiment."
"Yes, Arthur; but you are young."
"I hope never to alter, sir. What I intended fully to say was this: that if a matter were before me in which wisdom and sentiment clashed, I do not know how I should act. But I do know how I should act in a matter where wisdom and justice pulled different ways. I may not always be wise; I should despise myself if I suspected that I should not always be just. Had I to choose between a wise and a just man, I know whose hand I should take. Why, sir, it enters into my love for you"--his arm here stole around his father's shoulder--"that I know you to be a just man, incapable of a base or mean action! I will follow in your footsteps; the example you have set me shall not be thrown away."
The conversation was then continued in another strain, and shortly afterwards Arthur Temple bade his parents farewell, and started for the New World. From the moment the lad placed his foot upon the vessel which conveyed him from his native land, it seemed as though he were animated by a new life. The lassitude and languor which had weighed upon him were blown away by the fresh breezes that swept across the seas; his pulses beat more briskly, his blood flowed through his veins with fuller force. The pale, sickly lad whose feeble health had but yesterday caused his parents so much anxiety, became drunk with animal spirits, and was the life and soul of the ship. He had his quiet hours, when he would sit in happy silent communion with the spirit of beauty which touched every natural effect in air and sea with heavenly colour, which whispered to him in the silence of the night, when the stars shone peacefully on the waters, and in the storm, when fierce winds lashed the seas to fury. There was exhibited in him that combination of forces which is the special attribute of some highly-strung sensitive natures: a wild riot of animal spirits which compelled him to become the noisiest and foremost in every noisy crew, and a calm, spiritual repose which demanded perfect peacefulness of body and soul. In the New World, he passed a happy time. His name and his father's position and reputation in the h............