CHAPTER III. EARLY TRAINING FOR AN UPRIGHT GENTLEMAN.
Percival St. John had been brought up at home under the eye of hismother and the care of an excellent man who had been tutor to himselfand his brothers. The tutor was not much of a classical scholar, for ingreat measure he had educated himself; and he who does so, usually lacksthe polish and brilliancy of one whose footsteps have been led earlyto the Temple of the Muses. In fact, Captain Greville was a gallantsoldier, with whom Vernon St. John had been acquainted in his own briefmilitary career, and whom circumstances had so reduced in life as tocompel him to sell his commission and live as he could. He had alwaysbeen known in his regiment as a reading man, and his authority looked upto in all the disputes as to history and dates, and literary anecdotes,which might occur at the mess-table. Vernon considered him the mostlearned man of his acquaintance; and when, accidentally meeting him inLondon, he learned his fallen fortunes, he congratulated himself ona very brilliant idea when he suggested that Captain Greville shouldassist him in the education of his boys and the management of hisestate. At first, all that Greville modestly undertook, with respect tothe former, and, indeed, was expected to do, was to prepare the younggentlemen for Eton, to which Vernon, with the natural predilection ofan Eton man, destined his sons. But the sickly constitutions of thetwo elder justified Lady Mary in her opposition to a public school; andPercival conceived early so strong an affection for a sailor's life thatthe father's intentions were frustrated. The two elder continued theireducation at home, and Percival, at an earlier age than usual, went tosea. The last was fortunate enough to have for his captain one of thatnew race of naval officers who, well educated and accomplished, form anotable contrast to the old heroes of Smollett. Percival, however,had not been long in the service before the deaths of his two elderbrothers, preceded by that of his father, made him the head of hisancient house, and the sole prop of his mother's earthly hopes. Heconquered with a generous effort the passion for his noble profession,which service had but confirmed, and returned home with his fresh,childlike nature uncorrupted, his constitution strengthened, his livelyand impressionable mind braced by the experience of danger and thehabits of duty, and quietly resumed his reading under Captain Greville,who moved from the Hall to a small house in the village.
Now, the education he had received, from first to last, was less adaptedprematurely to quicken his intellect and excite his imagination than towarm his heart and elevate, while it chastened, his moral qualities; forin Lady Mary there was, amidst singular sweetness of temper, a high castof character and thought. She was not what is commonly called clever,and her experience of the world was limited, compared to that of mostwomen of similar rank who pass their lives in the vast theatre ofLondon. But she became superior by a certain single-heartedness whichmade truth so habitual to her that the light in which she lived renderedall objects around her clear. One who is always true in the great dutiesof life is nearly always wise. And Vernon, when he had fairly buried hisfaults, had felt a noble shame for the excesses into which they hadled him. Gradually more and more wedded to his home, he dropped his oldcompanions. He set grave guard on his talk (his habits now requiredno guard), lest any of the ancient levity should taint the ears of hischildren. Nothing is more common in parents than their desire that theirchildren should escape their faults. We scarcely know ourselves tillwe have children; and then, if we love them duly, we look narrowly intofailings that become vices, when they serve as examples to the young.
The inborn gentleman, with the native courage and spirit and horrorof trick and falsehood which belong to that chivalrous abstraction,survived almost alone in Vernon St. John; and his boys sprang up in theatmosphere of generous sentiments and transparent truth. The tutor wasin harmony with the parents,--a soldier every inch of him; not a meredisciplinarian, yet with a profound sense of duty, and a knowledge thatduty is to be found in attention to details. In inculcating the habitof subordination, so graceful to the young, he knew how to make himselfbeloved, and what is harder still, to be understood. The soul of thispoor soldier was white and unstained, as the arms of a maiden knight;it was full of suppressed but lofty enthusiasm. He had been ill used,whether by Fate or the Horse Guards; his career had been a failure; buthe was as loyal as if his hand held the field-marshal's truncheon, andthe garter bound his knee. He was above all querulous discontent. Fromhim, no less than from his parents, Percival caught, not only a spiritof honour worthy the antiqua fides of the poets, but that peculiarcleanliness of thought, if the expression may be used, which belongs tothe ideal of youthful chivalry. In mere booklearning, Percival, as maybe supposed, was not very extensively read; but his mind, if not largelystored, had a certain unity of culture, which gave it stability andindividualized its operations. Travels, voyages, narratives of heroicadventure, biographies of great men, had made the favourite pasture ofhis enthusiasm. To this was added the more stirring, and, perhaps, themore genuine order of poets who make you feel and glow, rather thandoubt and ponder. He knew at least enough of Greek to enjoy old Homer;and if he could have come but ill through a college examination intoAeschylus and Sophocles, he had dwelt with fresh delight on the rushingstorm of spears in the "Seven before Thebes," and wept over the heroiccalamities of Antigone. In science, he was no adept; but his cleargood sense and quick appreciation of positive truths had led him easilythrough the elementary mathematics, and his somewhat martial spirit hadmade him delight in the old captain's lectures on military tactics. Hadhe remained in the navy, Percival St. John would doubtless have beendistinguished. His talents fitted him for straightforward, manly action;and he had a generous desire of distinction, vague, perhaps, the momenthe was taken from his profession, and curbed by his diffidence inhimself and his sense of deficiencies in the ordinary routine of purelyclassical education. Still, he had in him all the elements of a trueman,--a man to go through life with a firm step and a clear conscienceand a gallant hope. Such a man may not win fame,--that is an accident;but he must occupy no despicable place in the movement of the world.
It was at first intended to send Percival to Oxford; but for some reasonor other that design was abandoned. Perhaps Lady Mary, over cautious, asmothers left alone sometimes are, feared the contagion to which ayoung man of brilliant expectations and no studious turn is necessarilyexposed in all places of miscellaneous resort. So Percival was sentabroad for two years, under the guardianship of Captain Greville. On hisreturn, at the age of nineteen, the great world lay before him, andhe longed ardently to enter. For a year Lady Mary's fears and fondanxieties detained him at Laughton; but though his great tenderness forhis mother withheld Percival from opposing her wishes by his own, thisinterval of inaction affected visibly his health and spirits. CaptainGreville, a man of the world, saw the cause sooner than Lady Mary, andone morning, earlier than usual, he walked up to the Hall.
The captain, with all his deference to the sex, was a plain man enoughwhen business was to be done. Like his great commander, he came to thepoint in a few words.
"My dear Lady Mary, our boy must go to London,--we are killing himhere."
"Mr. Greville!" cried Lady Mary, turning pale and putting aside herembroidery,--"killing him?"
"Killing the man in him. I don't mean to alarm you; I dare say his lungsare sound enough, and that his heart would bear the stethoscope to thesatisfaction of the College of Surgeons. But, my dear ma'am, Percival isto be a man; it is the man you are killing by keeping him tied to yourapron-string."
"Oh, Mr. Greville, I am sure you don't wish to wound me, but--"
"I beg ten thousand pardons. I am rough, but truth is rough sometimes."
"It is not for my sake," said the mother, warmly, and with tears in hereyes, "that I have wished him to be here. If he is dull, can we not fillthe house for him?"
"Fill a thimble, my dear Lady Mary. Percival should have a plunge in theocean."
"But he is so young yet,--that horrid London; suchtemptations,--fatherless, too!"
"I have no fear of the result if Pe
rcival goes now, while his principlesare strong and his imagination is not inflamed; but if we keep him heremuch longer against his bent, he will learn to brood and to muse, writebad poetry perhaps, and think the world withheld from him a thousandtimes more delightful than it is. This very dread of temptationwill provoke his curiosity, irritate his fancy, make him imagine thetemptation must be a very delightful thing. For the first time in mylife, ma'am, I have caught him sighing over fashionable novels, andsubscribing to the Southampton Circulating Library. Take my word for it,it is time that Percival should begin life, and swim without corks."
Lady Mary had a profound confidence in Greville's judgment and affectionfor Percival, and, like a sensible woman, she was aware of her ownweakness. She remained silent for a few moments, and then said, with aneffort,--
"You know how hateful London is to me now,--how unfit I am to return tothe hollow forms of its society; still, if you think it right, I willtake a house for the season, and Percival can still be under our eye."
"No, ma'am,--pardon me,--that will be the surest way to make him eitherdiscontented or hypocritical. A young man of his prospects and tempercan hardly be expected to chime in with all our sober, old-fashionedhabits. You will impose on him--if he is to conform to our hours andnotions and quiet set--a thousand irksome restraints; and what willbe the consequence? In a year he will be of age, and can throw usoff altogether, if he pleases. I know the boy; don't seem to distrusthim,--he may be trusted. You place the true restraint on temptation whenyou say to him: 'We confide to you our dearest treasure,--your honour,your morals, your conscience, yourself!'"
"But at least you will go with him, if it must be so," said Lady Mary,after a few timid arguments, from which, one by one, she was driven.
"I! What for? To be a jest of the young puppies he must know; to makehim ashamed of himself and me,--himself as a milksop, and me as a drynurse?"
"But this was not so abroad."
"Abroad, ma'am, I gave him full swing I promise you; and when we wentabroad he was two years younger."
"But he is a mere child still."
"Child, Lady Mary! At his age I had gone through two sieges. Thereare younger faces than his at a mess-room. Come, come! I know what youfear,--he may commit some follies; very likely. He may be taken in,and lose some money,--he can afford it, and he will get experience inreturn. Vices he has none. I have seen him,--ay, with the vicious. Sendhim out against the world like a saint of old, with his Bible in hishand, and no spot on his robe. Let him see fairly what is, not stay hereto dream of what is not. And when he's of age, ma'am, we must get himan object, a pursuit; start him for the county, and make him serve theState. He will understand that business pretty well. Tush! tush! what isthere to cry at?"
The captain prevailed. We don't say that his advice would have beenequally judicious for all youths of Percival's age; but he knew wellthe nature to which he confided; he knew well how strong was that youngheart in its healthful simplicity and instinctive rectitude; and heappreciated his manliness not too highly when he felt that all evidentprops and aids would be but irritating tokens of distrust.
And thus, armed only with letters of introduction, his mother's tearfuladmonitions, and Greville's experienced warnings, Percival St. John waslaunched into London life. After the first month or so, Greville cameup to visit him, do him sundry kind, invisible offices amongst hisold friends, help him to equip his apartments, and mount his stud; andwholly satisfied with the result of his experiment, returned in highspirits, with flattering reports, to the anxious mother.
But, indeed, the tone of Percival's letters would have been sufficientto allay even maternal anxiety. He did not write, as sons are apt todo, short excuses for not writing more at length, unsatisfactorycompressions of details (exciting worlds of conjecture) into a hurriedsentence. Frank and overflowing, those delightful epistles gave accountsfresh from the first impressions of all he saw and did. There was aracy, wholesome gusto in his enjoyment of novelty and independence. Hisballs and his dinners and his cricket at Lord's, his partners and hiscompanions, his general gayety, his occasional ennui, furnished amplematerials to one who felt he was corresponding with another heart, andhad nothing to fear or to conceal.
But about two months before this portion of our narrative opens withthe coronation, Lady Mary's favourite sister, who had never married,and who, by the death of her parents, was left alone in the worse thanwidowhood of an old maid, had been ordered to Pisa for a complaintthat betrayed pulmonary symptoms; and Lady Mary, with her usualunselfishness, conquered both her aversion to movement and her wish tobe in reach of her son, to accompany abroad this beloved and solitaryrelative. Captain Greville was pressed into service as their jointcavalier. And thus Percival's habitual intercourse with his twoprincipal correspondents received a temporary check.