which he notified his intention to me were, indeed, almost as cold and frigid as those which he habitually employed; but, I knew him well enough by this time not to judge him altogether by his manner or his mere words; and when, in the excess of my gratitude, I so far forgot his stately presence as to seize his hand, and kiss it impetuously, whilst I stammered out some blundering words of thankfulness and of never-dying recollection of his goodness towards me, there was a tremor in his voice as he told me that he would willingly do more than this for my father's son, which made me think that there were chords, even in his heart, which vibrated to the memories of the past-chords which, perchance, were but seldom touched, but which, when touched, responded all the more deeply, all the more truly, at the call of nature, the great master-hand, by very reason that the notes which they contained, whether of pleasure or of pain, were thus seldom evoked, or allowed to make themselves heard beyond the secret and hidden recesses of the sensitive, or the proud and haughty heart. I could not help thinking, too, that cold, haughty, and passionless, as he seemed to be, there had been a time when he and my dead father were friends, no less faithful and true than were now his own son and the son of his early friend. At all events, I parted from him, on my return to my mother's cottage, with all my former veneration and respect for him increased a thousandfold by the appreciation of his goodness towards me, which was now added to those sentiments. I should have thought him perfection if I could have forgotten those sad words of my friend, which were still ringing in my ears: "His heart might hold us all; oh, surely, his heart might hold us all;" and, although the recollection of the change which he had allowed to come over him since his marriage, in regard to his elder children, lowered him somewhat in my estimation, still, as I blamed my lady a good deal more than him for even this, I parted from him with a feeling of respectful veneration for himself, and with such a deep and sincere appreciation of what I deemed his high and noble qualities, as would have endured to the end of my life, if, at a later period, by his own heartless and cruel indifference to one whom he ought to have cherished with his heart's best loveif, by his own harsh and unreasonable severity, he had not destroyed the delusion, and scattered it to the winds. There are, I think, few things more painful, even in a world which is full of pain, than the destroying of those illusions which the heart, either in its simplicity or its love, has built up with such a profuse expenditure of its best affections or the object loved; with such a keen and jealous ap preciation of those qualities, either real or fancied, which it believes its idol to possess; with such a lavish forgetfulness of self and selfish interest in its yearning anxiety to pour itself out, with all that it has, on him whom it deems so worthy of its truest love, its fairest hope, its deepest and its never-dying care. And then, when the appointed time, which, sooner or later, is almost certain to come, has arrived, and the love which seemed so changeless has been blown away by the first rude breath which fell upon it; when the summer heat has withered up, or the autumn blast has blighted, ruthlessly and unsparingly, the flowers which looked so pleasant and so fair whilst the dew of early spring was resting on their leaves, and nestling in their half-blown buds; when the experience and the wisdom of growing years sit down in judgment to condemn with such wise ɛaws, such heartless sneers, such cold and cutting words, the ill-judged sympathies and affections of those earlier and, in truth, those better and those purer days,-ah, me! it is a weary and a bitter task, and one at which strong men may well falter and grow pale, to demolish at one fell blow the baseless fabric which till then had seemed so strong and firm, to sweep away and utterly wipe out the delusion which till then had seemed so true and deep, and, which, when it has gone, will surely leave a void which all the coming years will never fill again. Yes, this demolishing and sweeping away of our illusions is, in truth, a weary and a comfortless task, but one which, I fear me much, we are most of us called upon to perform oftener than is at all pleasant; a task which is none the less hateful, none the less to be trembled and shuddered at, because it is as unavoidable as it is full of painful and of sorrowful regrets. I was called upon in later days to demolish thus ruthlessly the very innocent delusion which, in my inexperience, I had fallen into regarding Sir Percy Percy. I discovered later on that he was not all that I had fancied him, all that I had imagined him to be; and would that this had been the most bitter discovery which, in the battle of life, I was ever called upon to make; oh, would that this had been the strongest and most dearly-cherished illusion which I was ever called upon to annihilate and sweep away. But, no more of this. I will only add with the poet, that "The apprehension of the good Gives but the greater feeling to the worse: than At the close of our vacation my friend and I entered Oxford. I, of course, was bound to a certain fixed college, and consequently had no choice in this matter. Sir Percy willingly allowed his son to enter the same college as myself, although he might have reasonably preferred that his son should be in a more aristocratic house than that in which my Exhibition entitled me to take up my abode. Tom Bowman came down on the same day as ourselves, and a very hearty, and a very pleasant meeting we had. However, I saw at a glance that the friendship of Atherby school was somewhat in danger. I knew well enough that there would be no change between Eustace and me, but Tom had put his name on the books of the "fastest" college in Oxford; and as I was very much afraid that Tom was likely to be the fastest amongst the fast, I thought that he would be pretty sure to travel at a much more lively pace either my means or my inclinations would allow me to take. I knew well enough that his "set" would never suit me on pecuniary grounds, even if on no other, and I was sure that it would suit Eustace less. I was equally sure that I would do my best to keep Eustace out of it; for, although he was incomparably purer and better than I, still, ridiculous as it may seem, I always considered myself, in a certain sense, as his guardian; and, whilst probably I should merely have laughed off any attempt to lead myself astray, I should have repelled the same attempt, if it had been made upon him, with the angry word, and, as likely as not, the hasty blow. Hence, as I saw that Tom would necessarily have to choose between his old friends and his new ones, and although I had little doubt that, whilst his better feelings would be in favour of the old ones, he would be carried captive by the new ones, as well through his own inclinations, as by the greater attractions which he would find in their company, and by their more showy qualities, I was quite prepared to find a considerable falling off in our former intimacy, or, at all events, in the outward manifestation of it, and in this I was not disappointed. I have, however, written those words, "the outward manifestation of it," advisedly, for I believe that there was never any change in his heart. I believe that in his heart he was ever the same, and that, although he might sometimes leave us for days without dropping into our rooms, the hours which he did spend with us in our own quiet way were the happiest, as they were the most dearly cherished by him. I believe that, although he had not strength of will to break away from the new companions who got such hold upon him, he always wished to do it; and I am sure that, in his better moments, his heart always instinctively turned away with disgust from the noisy band who surrounded him, and played, I do not say maliciously, but, at all events, thoughtlessly and heedlessly, upon his pliant nature, to the friends of his earlier days. However, as I shall have to speak of him again shortly, I will say no more on this point, except that, as at Atherby school, Tom had always been the leader in everything that was daring or out of order, so, at Oxford, whether an unpopular dean were to be screwed up in his room, an obnoxious proctor to be persecuted within an inch of his life, or a battle-royal to be organized between Town and Gown, Tom Bowman was certain to be the heart and soul of the undertaking. As I must hasten on to other and more important matters, I have no intention of giving my reader |