A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
embrowned by exposure, but her forehead was not brown. Mr. Reginald is
quite another thing. The skin of his body, the white of his eye, the
pupil, all look like a reversion to some Oriental type; and, mark the
coincidence, he has mental peculiarities that point toward the East.”
Sir Charles lost patience. “On the contrary,” said he, “he talks and
feels just like an English snob, and makes me miserable.”
“Oh, as to that, he has picked up vulgar phrases at that farm, and in
your stables; but he never picked up his musical genius in stables and
farms, far less his poetry.”
“What poetry?”
“What poetry? Why, did not you hear him? Was it not poetical of a
wounded, fevered boy to beg to be laid by the window, and to say 'Let
me drink the moonshine?' Take down your Homer, and read a thousand
lines haphazard, and see whether you stumble over a thought more
poetical than that. But criticism does not exist: whatever the dead
said was good; whatever the living say is little; as if the dead were a
race apart, and had never been the living, and the living would never
be the dead.”
Heaven knows where he was running to now, but Sir Charles stopped him
by conceding that point. “Well you are right: poor child, it was
poetical,” and the father's pride predominated, for a moment, over
every other sentiment.
“Yes; but where did it come from? That looks to me a typical idea; I
mean an idea derived, not from his luxurious parents, dwellers in
curtained mansions, but from some out-door and remote ancestor; perhaps
from the Oriental tribe that first colonized Britain; they worshiped
the sun and the moon, no doubt; or perhaps, after all, it only came
from some wandering tribe that passed their lives between the two
lights of heaven, and never set foot in a human dwelling.”
“This,” said Sir Charles, “is a flattering speculation, but so wild and
romantic that I fear it will lead us to no practical result. I thought
you undertook to advise me. What advice can you build on these cobwebs
of your busy brain?”
“Excuse me, my practical friend,” said Rolfe. “I opened my discourse in
three heads. What I see--what I foresee--and what, with diffidence, I
advise. Pray don't disturb my methods, or I am done for; never disturb
an artist's form. I have told you what I see. What I foresee is this:
you will have to cut off the entail with Reginald's consent, when he is
of age, and make the Saxon boy Compton your successor. Cutting off
entails runs in families, like everything else; your grandfather did
it, and so will you. You should put by a few thousands every year, that
you may be able to do this without injustice either to your Oriental or
your Saxon son.”
“Never!” shouted Sir Charles: then, in a broken voice, “He is my
first-born, and my idol; his coming into the world rescued me out of a
morbid condition: he healed my one great grief. Bar the entail, and put
his younger brother in his place--never!”
Mr. Rolfe bowed his head politely, and left the subject, which, indeed,
could be carried no farther without serious offense.
“And now for my advice. The question is, how to educate this strange
boy. One thing is clear; it is no use trying the humdrum plan any
longer; it has been tried, and failed. I should adapt his education to
his nature. Education is made as stiff and unyielding as a board; but
it need not be. I should abolish that spectacled tutor of yours at
once, and get a tutor, young, enterprising, manly, and supple, who
would obey orders; and the order should be to observe the boy's nature,
and teach accordingly. Why need men teach in a chair, and boys learn in
a chair? The Athenians studied not in chairs. The Peripatetics, as
their name imports, hunted knowledge afoot; those who sought truth in
the groves of Academus were not seated at that work. Then let the tutor
walk with him, and talk with him by sunlight and moonlight, relating
old history, and commenting on each new thing that is done, or word
spoken, and improve every occasion. Why, I myself would give a guinea a
day to walk with William White about the kindly aspects and wooded
slopes of Selborne, or with Karr about his garden. Cut Latin and Greek
clean out of the scheme. They are mere cancers to those who can never
excel in them. Teach him not dead languages, but living facts. Have him
in your justice-room for half an hour a day, and give him your own
comments on what he has heard there. Let his tutor take him to all
Quarter Sessions and Assizes, and stick to him like diaculum,
especially out-of-doors; order him never to be admitted to the
stable-yard; dismiss every biped there that lets him come. Don't let
him visit his nurse so often, and never without his tutor; it was she
who taught him to look forward to your decease; that is just like these
common women. Such a tutor as I have described will deserve 500 pounds
a year. Give it him; and dismiss him if he plays humdrum and doesn't
earn it. Dismiss half a dozen, if necessary, till you get a fellow with
a grain or two of genius for tuition. When the boy is seventeen, what
with his Oriental precocity, and this system of education, he will know
the world as well as a Saxon boy of twenty-one, and that is not saying
much. Then, if his nature is still as wild, get him a large tract in
Australia; cattle to breed, kangaroos to shoot, swift horses to thread
the bush and gallop mighty tracts; he will not shirk business, if it
avoids the repulsive form of sitting down in-doors, and offers itself
in combination with riding, hunting, galloping, cracking of rifles, and
of colonial whips as loud as rifles, and drinking sunshine and
moonshine in that mellow clime, beneath the Southern Cross and the
spangled firmament of stars unknown to us.”
His own eyes sparkled like hot coals at this Bohemian picture.
Then he sighed and returned to civilization. “But,” said he, “be ready
with eighty thousand pounds for him, that he may enjoy his own way and
join you in barring the entail. I forgot, I must say no more on that
subject; I see it is as offensive--as it is inevitable. Cassandra has
spoken wisely, and, I see, in vain. God bless you both--good-night.”
And he rolled out of the room with a certain clumsy importance.
Sir Charles treated all this advice with a polite forbearance while he
was in the room, but on his departure delivered a sage reflection.
“Strange,” said he, “that a man so valuable in any great emergency
should be so extravagant and eccentric in the ordinary affairs of life.
I might as well drive to Bellevue House and consult the first gentleman
I met there.”
Lady Bassett did not reply immediately, and Sir Charles observed that
her face was very red and her hands trembled.
“Why, Bella,” said he, “has all that rhodomontade upset you?”
Lady Bassett looked frightened at his noticing her agitation, and said
that Mr. Rolfe always overpowered her. “He is so large, and so
confident, and throws such new light on things.”
“New light! Wild eccentricity always does that; but it is the light of
Jack-o'-lantern. On a great question, so near my heart as this, give me
the steady light of common sense, not the wayward coruscations of a
fiery imagination. Bella dear, I shall send the boy to a good school,
and so cut off at one blow all the low associations that have caused
the mischief.”
“You know what is best, dear,” said Lady Bassett; “you are wiser than
any of us.”
In the morning she got hold of Mr. Rolfe, and asked him if he could put
her in the way of getting more than three per cent for her money
_without risk._
“Only one,” said.Rolfe. “London freeholds in rising situations let to
substantial tenants. I can get you five per cent that way, if you are
always ready to buy. The thing does not offer every day.”
“I have twenty thousand pounds to dispose of so,” said Lady Bassett.
“Very well,” said Rolfe. “I'll look out for you, but Oldfield must
examine titles and do the actual business. The best of that investment
is, it is always improving; no ups and downs. Come,” thought he,
“Cassandra has not spoken quite in vain.”
Sir Charles acted on his judgment, and in due course sent Mr. Bassett
to a school at some distance, kept by a clergyman, who had the credit
in that county of exercising sharp supervision and strict discipline.
Sir Charles made no secret of the boy's eccentricities. Mr. Beecher
said he had one or two steady boys who assisted him in such cases.
Sir Charles thought that a very good idea; it was like putting a wild
colt into the break with a steady horse.
He missed the boy sadly at first, but comforted himself with the
conviction that he had parted with him for his good: that consoled him
somewhat.
The younger children of Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were educated
entirely by their mother, and taught as none but a loving lady can
teach.
Compton, with whom we have to do, never knew the thorns with which the
path of letters is apt to be strewn. A mistress of the great art of
pleasing made knowledge from the first a primrose path to him.
Sparkling all over with intelligence, she impregnated her boy with it.
She made herself his favorite companion; she would not keep her
distance. She stole and coaxed knowledge and goodness into his heart
and mind with rare and loving cunning.
She taught him English and French and Latin on the Hamiltonian plan,
and stored his young mind with history and biography, and read to him,
and conversed with him on everything as they read it.
She taught him to speak the truth, and to be honorable and just.
She taught him to be polite, and even formal, rather than free-and-easy
and rude. She taught him to be a man. He must not be what brave boys
called a molly-coddle: like most womanly women, she had a veneration
for man, and she gave him her own high idea of the manly character.
Natural ability, and habitual contact with a mind so attractive and so
rich, gave this intelligent boy many good ideas beyond his age.
When he was six years old, Lady Bassett made him pass his word of honor
that he would never go into the stable-yard; and even then he was far
enough advanced to keep his word religiously.
In return for this she let him taste some sweets of liberty, and was
not always after him. She was profound enough to see that without
liberty a noble character cannot be formed; and she husbanded the curb.
One day he represented to her that, in the meadow next their lawn, were
great stripes of yellow, which were possibly cowslips; of course they
might be only buttercups, but he hoped better things of them; he
further reported that there was an iron gate between him and this
paradise: he could get over it if not objectionable; but he thought it
safest to ask her what she thought of the matter; was that iron gate
intended to keep little boys from the cowslips, because, if so, it was
a misfortune to which he must resign himself. Still, it _was_ a
misfortune. All this, of course, in the simple language of boyhood.
Then Lady Bassett smiled, and said, “Suppose I were to lend you a key
of that iron gate?”
“Oh, mamma!”
“I have a great mind to.”
“Then you will, you will.”
“Does that follow?”
“Yes: whenever you say you think you'll do something kind, or you have
a great mind to do it, you know you always do it; and that is one thing
I do like you for, mamma--you are better than your word.”
“Better than my word? Where does the child learn these things?”
“La, mamma, papa says that often.”
“Oh, that accounts for it. I like the phrase very much. I wish I could
think I deserved it. At any rate, I will be as good as my word for
once; you shall have a key of the gate.”
The boy clapped his hands with delight. The key was sent for, and,
meantime, she told him one reason why she had trusted him with it was