Chapter XV

Like some fair plant set by a heavenly hand,
He grew, he flourish’d, and he blest the land;
In all the youth his father’s image shined,
Bright in his person, brighter in his mind.
POPE’S ODYSSEY.

The remembrance of youth is a sigh.
ARABIAN PROVERB.

“What a sermon we had this morning! Edward,” remarked Mrs. Hervey to her son, on the following Sunday evening; “it went right through my old bones. If I were young and strong, and a man, I don’t know what would not be the end of it.”

“True, mother, it was a sermon calculated to make much impression. I wonder what young St. Maur thought of it.”

By “young St. Maur” Ernest’s exhortations were more profitably and personally applied than by old Mrs. Hervey and her son.

Reginald had returned from Oxford much changed and improved. There are certain times and occasions in life when, from no apparent reason, the mind makes strides, accomplishing in a few weeks that which the laggard footsteps of years have failed to fulfil. A change of scene, a new acquaintance, a new book, or causes even less apparent than these, have been the trumpet-call which has awakened whole armies of feelings, whole hosts of thought and power, in a youthful mind. Such an effect had this intercourse with Ernest De Grey produced on Reginald St. Maur.

He was changed and improved, because he was become practical. In dreaminess of mind, however high and exalted the dreams may be, there is childishness. It is action that marks the man, and Reginald had suddenly passed the boundary that separates the strong vigour of manhood from the imaginations of the child. Few understand their own powers of influence, and poor Ernest, earthly and earth-bound, had little idea how his simple quiet words affected the loftier character of his friend. He would have felt himself unworthy to influence him, and perhaps he was so; but, as a bridle to a noble restive horse, so Ernest’s clear views and practical judgments tamed and subdued the soaring, but undefined, visions of the ambitious young man.

It was a mark of the true genius of Reginald’s mind,--the true virtue of his character,--that he was so easily affected, so ready to receive instruction. Many kinds of talent,--many who are called clever, are narrow-minded and arrogant: they will not learn; but the eye of true and pure genius is like a mirror, on which whatever is light is necessarily reflected: so it was with him. Day by day as he increased in age and stature, and outward beauty, he increased in wisdom and knowledge also, till the eye almost ached to follow him, so bright and full of promise was the dawning of his day.

With a glowing cheek and a sparkling eye, and a mind more glowing and kindling within, Reginald listened to the sermon of Ernest De Grey. It is the character of strong and vigorous truth, that, like the cameleon, it changes its colours and adapts itself to the eye of every beholder. An ignorant village girl remarked to one of her companions, “That mother must have been telling tales of _her_, or Mr. De Grey could never have preached as he did;” and the very same idea passed through the thoughts of the highly-educated young man. Ernest, he thought, must have seen _his_ dangers, have studied _his_ temptations, have wished to arouse _him_ to exertion with the dawning of that first year of freedom and of life; and, responsive to the call, he determined to arise, and indulge fancy’s dreams no more.

In the first freshness of feeling--in his first anxiety to prove himself and his power--his thoughts recurred to Ernest’s strongly-expressed desire for the restoration of the Church. It had not been forgotten, but it had been superseded in his mind by dreams of a more expansive kind. To Ernest, it might be much to have dreamed in his youth of restoring a church to its original beauty--of making way for the excluded forms of poor and lowly worshippers; but to Reginald, whose desires for improvement spread “far as the breeze can waft the billow’s foam,” it was a descent and humiliation.

With pleasure, however, as to a work laid ready to his hand, he recurred to it now, and a few hours’ consideration had formed a plan for its immediate accomplishment: a plan, perhaps, involving a needless sacrifice on his part; but which, from the very necessity of sacrifice, was acceptable.

On the Monday morning, he knocked at his father’s door, and was admitted.

Lord Vere sat at a large table, with books before and around him. He was engaged in some of the abstruse, bewildering metaphysical speculations, in which alone he delighted, and from which he was ever unwilling to be disturbed. As he raised his head on his son’s approach, the “Well?” with which he received him was nothing less than surly.

Reginald’s colour rose, for he was sensitive to repulse; but he was not abashed by it. “If you are at leisure, father, I wish to speak to you,” he said.

There was something in Reginald’s manner of speaking, which superficial observers would have called formal; a grave and measured tone, apparent even when at his ease, and still more observable in his intercourse with his father; but closer observers, those who watched the countenance changing as he spoke, would have seen that his measured words were but the barriers by which he restrained an eagerness perhaps too great, and an ardour liable to transgress the common bounds of self-control. His manner and words on this occasion were peculiarly grave and restrained, but never had their contrast with his speaking countenance been more strangely seen.

“Speak on, then,” was Lord Vere’s uninviting reply to his son’s request.

“I would not trouble you, father, with my ideas or desires, if I could act upon them without your leave. But what I have to ask requires your leave and assistance too.” Without explaining himself further, he laid Ernest’s drawing of the Cranleigh Church upon his father’s book.

“What have we here?” exclaimed Lord Vere ironically, after inspecting the sketch for some moments. “I am no saint, Reginald, and if, bitten by these new-fangled notions, you wish to persuade me to build and endow churches, or rather _chapels_, you may spare your pains; I have no such intentions.”

“No, father, I have no such wishes; my request is much more simple. This is a drawing of Cranleigh Church as I suppose it once was, and as it ought to be. It is now some months since Ernest De Grey pointed out to me the improvement that might be made, and the advantage the people would derive from its restoration. I listened coldly at the time, for I am apt to dream dreams of many and great actions, and to neglect even the small ones that lie at my feet; but now, father, I feel that the years are creeping on, and that the pains you have bestowed upon me should begin to bear fruit; and I should be willing to enter on my life with some such work as this; to mark its beginning by an offering to God and to man.”

Lord Vere listened to his son with fixed attention. He _knew_ Reginald’s character well; but it was very rarely that, in his presence at least, that character was expressed in words. His answer, however, was given in his usual ironical tone.

“If I were a philanthropist like you, Reginald, I should dream of some more profitable scheme than that of adorning a church for a parcel of ignorant rustics, who will be none the wiser when the work is done.”

“Not the wiser, but perhaps the better, father. It is good to look on beauty: I have felt it myself.”

And so at the moment the father seemed to feel likewise; for as his eyes rested on the countenance before him, pure and glowing as the face of a young seraph--a something as by magic touched his heart, awaking thoughts which had long slept, calling forth a father’s tenderness, of which till now he had been unconscious, kindling a father’s pride and a father’s ambition--casting him back upon the long past, sending him forth into the far future.

Of these varied thoughts, however, there was little evidence in Lord Vere’s outward manner. His reply was in a degree, but only a degree, less cold.

“Your dreams must bide their time, Reginald--bide _your_ time, I should say; for even if I had a fancy for such airy schemes, my hands are shackled. These are times when even the richest are poor; and had I the inclination, I have not the power to throw my money away.”

“You misunderstand me, father: it is I who wish to do it. I have considered and arranged it all, if you will only consent.”

And quietly and methodically, with a definiteness unlike the plans of a dreamer, he detailed his intention. The probable cost of the alterations and improvements was estimated at £2,000, the beauty of the older parts of the building making any additions necessarily costly. He purposed that his father should borrow the sum required on the security of the property, and deduct a yearly sum of £100 or £150 from his allowance, until the whole was repaid.

Lord Vere listened, but shook his head.

“You are a dreamer indeed, Reginald. Wait a while. £500 a year is all I can allow you; and let me tell you £500 a year is no inexhaustible store. You will not thank me for shackling you with this claim for a mere visionary good, when once you are fairly launched on your world of pleasure and ambition.”

“I know, father, what you say is true,” Reginald said, thoughtfully. “When fresh hopes and new desires arise, I may feel regret that I am already so much bound; but, father, if this work is good now, it will be so then, and I ought not to feel regret.” He paused and hesitated; then added, “And if I do feel it, I ought to rejoice. Nothing great or good will ever be done without self-denial, and the feeling of this claim upon me will but animate me to more.”

A thousand hopes of a bright and active future sparkled in his radiant eye, and again, as its beauty met his father’s gaze, his hard heart melted within him.

“You shall have your will, Reginald,” he said, gravely, but with an unwonted tone in his voice. “In a week from this time the money shall be at your disposal. And now leave me.”

“And I was once like this,” mused the withered, care-worn man, as the door closed and his head rested upon his hands, “full, like him, of the hopes of a high ambition. For me, too, the world once shone brightly--a theatre where great deeds were to be done. And what am I now?--and what now to me is the world or its hopes, its welfare or its end?” He paused--then another voice, the voice of conscience, arose. “But was I like him? Did such a light ever shine in my eyes--such a fire ever burn in my heart? No--or here, or thus, I should not now be. What were my hopes, what was my ambition?--self, the pride of self! And what is its end?”

He drew his book impatiently before him, and turned to his daily tasks; for the self-examination was too painful to be prolonged.

If any are ever tempted to wonder at the waste of man’s short existence in the years of infancy, childhood, and early youth, surely, without other thoughts, the freshening influence of youth upon hardened manhood and withered age might be in itself a sufficient answer. Where but in youth (speaking of earthly influences) shall the heart battered by the world recruit itself, or taste again the sweet waters of its early virtue and holiness? It is when suddenly recalled by the sight of youthful innocence and enthusiasm to the remembrance of our own lost glory, that we exclaim, “Dreams of my youth, where are they?” and Echo’s mournful answer has been the first fruits of many a late yet true repentance.

A light, unconsciously to himself, had risen in the void of Lord Vere’s life, and with time it might bear fruit: the fountain was unsealed from whence, dry as it now was, the springs of a healthful stream might one day burst, and pour its waters on his heart. “What a single word can do!”--single words and single glances also; for in that day, strangely and suddenly, and to both at the time unconsciously, the hearts of the father and son were knit together.

“Do you remember our conversation about the church, Ernest?” Reginald asked, a few days after he had obtained his father’s consent to his wishes. He and Ernest De Grey were walking together, and passed before the old church as he spoke.

“Yes, very well,” Ernest replied, with a smile. “On that day, and that day only, you disappointed me.”

“I know I did: I felt it, and grieved for it afterwards.”

“It was the only definite plan I ever formed in my youth,” Ernest continued, “which had not some kind of selfish gratification for its object; and for that reason, I suppose, I have always cherished it, and recurred to it with satisfaction when my life and feelings condemned me too strongly. Your cold reception humbled me; for I thought how little to you was that which once had been my best ambition. I think, however,” he added again, “that on this single occasion I was right, and you were wrong. It is not perhaps, as I once thought, a great thing to do; but when I compare the state of this church with the beauty and order of Clare Abbey, I often think of the words of the prophet: ‘Ye dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lieth waste.’”

“You are right, Ernest, very right,” Reginald said warmly, “and it shall be done. Your wish shall be realized. You must help me with your thoughts and your advice, and we will try,” he added smiling, “to make our second temple overpass the first.”

“Is it to be done?--Have you undertaken it?” Ernest said, eagerly and yet sadly. He _was_ pleased, he wished it to be done, and yet at the moment he felt a pang at the idea that it should be done by any but himself.

“I have undertaken it; yes, for I have the means,” Reginald replied, his quick perception, his natural courteousness at once reading the thought that flushed Ernest’s cheek; “but what are the means compared to the intention?--the intention and the offering are yours.”

Ernest shook his head mournfully; conscience was suggesting that he might have been long in Reginald’s place, and the dream, still but a dream; pleasing his fancy, but by no self-denial fulfilled. “So it will ever be,” he said, answering his own thoughts, not Reginald’s words; “I can think--but you act and do.”

“And if I do, Ernest, who is it prompts me to act?” He paused; then, with a slight smile, repeated the concluding words of Ernest’s last discourse.

Ernest coloured deeply; for already the glow of feeling which had prompted his animated exhortations was fading from his own heart--the resolutions beginning to falter--the thirst for earthly happiness to gush forth again.

“Dear Ernest,” Reginald said, laying his hand on his shoulder with a peculiar grave tenderness which occasionally marked his composed manner, “no single word that falls from your lips returns to you void, so far as I am concerned; and if,” he continued, his eye kindling, “the day should ever come, when, as I trust, I shall do some service to God and his Church, to my country and mankind; you, Ernest, will have been the guide that led, and the teacher that warned me. I _must_ say this, for you are humble, and not proud, like me.”

“I _am_ humble,” Ernest said, with something of bitterness against himself; “humbled to the dust, to hear you say such words; say them no more, for I cannot bear them:” and he changed the conversation. Southey says, there is no humiliation like the consciousness of unmerited praise; and it is true.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged, as were obsolete and alternative spellings. Missing punctuation and final stops were added. Eight misspelled words were corrected.