Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 11

Chapter IV

Chapter IV.

I have noticed that the sayings and doings of young gentlemen, before they come to the age of, say seven or eight, are hardly interesting to any but their immediate relations and friends. I have my eye, at this moment, on a young gentleman of the mature age of two, the instances of whose sagacity and eloquence are of greater importance, and certainly more pleasant to me, than the projects of Napoleon, or the orations of Bright. And yet I fear that even his most brilliant joke, if committed to paper, would fall dead upon the public ear; and so for the present I shall leave Charles Ravenshoe to the care of Nora, and pass on to some others who demand our attention more.

The first thing which John Mackworth remembered was his being left in the loge of a French school at Rouen by an English footman. Trying to push back his memory farther, he always failed to conjure up any previous recollection to that. He had certainly a very indistinct one of having been happier, and having lived quietly in pleasant country places with a kind woman who talked English; but his first decided impression always remained the same—that of being, at six years old, left friendless, alone, among twenty or thirty French boys older than himself.

His was a cruel fate. He would have been happier apprenticed to a collier. If the man who sent him there had wished to inflict the heaviest conceivable punishment on the poor, unconscious, little innocent, he could have done no more than simply left him at that school. (Mack worth was long before he found out who was his benefactor—with all his cleverness he was long in finding out that. When he got into the world again he soon knew whose livery the footman who brought him wore, but he was quickly abroad again, completely baffled.) English boys are sometimes brutal to one another, (though not so often as some wish to make out.) and are always rough. Yet page 278 I must sy, as far as my personal experience pes, the French boy is entirely master in he art of tormenting. He never strikes; [unclear: be] does not know how to clench his fist. He is an arrant coward according to an English schoolboy's definition of the word; [unclear: but] at pinching, pulling hair, ear pulling, ad that class of annoyance, all the naturaingenuity of his nation comes out, and h is superb; add to this a combined [unclear: inscent] studied sarcasm, and you have an dea of what a disagreeable French school boy can be.

To say hat the boys at poor John Mackwort's school put all these methods of torture n force against him, and ten times more, is to give one but a faint idea of his sufferings. The English at that time were hated with a hatred which we n these sober times have but little idea of; and, with the cannon of Trafalgar rnging as it were in their ears, these young; French gentlemen seized on Mackworth as a lawful prize providentially delivered into their hands. We do not know what he may have been under happier auspices, or what he may be yet with a more favourable start in another lift; we have only to do with what he was. Six years of friendless persecution of life ungraced and un-cheered by domestic love, of such bitter misery as childhood alone is capable of feeling or enduring, transformed him from a chill into a heartless, vindictive man.

And then, the French schoolmaster having roughly finished the piece of goods, it was sent to Rome to be polished and turned out ready for the market. Here I must leave him; I don't know the process. I have seen the article when finished and am familiar with it. I know the trade mark on it as well as I know the [unclear: tower] mark on my rifle. I may predicae of a glass that it is Bohemian ruby, and yet not know how they gave it the clour. I must leave descriptions of tha system to Mr. Steinmetz, and men who have been behind the scenes.

The red-bt ultramontane thorough-going Cathobism of that pretty pervert, lady Alicia, was but ill satisfied with the sensible, old English, cut and dried notions of the good Father Clifford A comparison of notes with two or three other great ladies, brought about a consultation, and a letter to Rome, the result of which was that a young Englishman of presentable exterior, polite manners, talking English with a slightly foreign accent, made his appearance at Ravenshoe, and was installed as her ladyship's confessor, about eighteen months before her death.

His talents were by no means ordinary. In very few days he had guaged every intellect in the house, and found that he was by far the superior of all in wit and education; and he determined that as long as he stayed in the house he would be master there.

Densil's jealous temper sadly interfered with this excellent resolution; he was immensely angry and rebellious at the slightest apparent infringement of his prerogative, and after his parents' death treated Mackworth in such an exceedingly cavalier manner, that the latter feared he should have to move, till chance threw into his hand a whip wherewith he might drive Densil where he would. He discovered a scandalous liaison of poor Densil's, and in an in-direct manner let him know that he knew all about it. This served to cement his influence until the appearance of Mrs. Ravenshoe the second, who, as we have seen, treated him with such ill-disguised contempt, that he was anything but comfortable, and was even meditating a retreat to Rome, when the conversation he overheard in the drawing-room caused him to delay, and the birth of the boy Cuthbert confirmed him in his resolution to stay.

For now, indeed, there was a prospect open to him. Here was this child de-livered over to him like clay to a potter, that he might form it as he would. It should go hard but that the revenues and county influence of the Ravenshoes should tend to the glory of the church as heretofore. Only one person was in his way, and that was Mrs. Ravenshoe; after her death he was master of the situation with regard to the eldest of the page 279 boys. He had partly guessed, ever since he overheard the conversation of Densil and his wife, that some sort of bargain existed between them about the second child; but he paid little heed to it. It was, therefore, with the bitterest anger that he saw his fears confirmed, and Densil angrily obstinate on the matter; for, supposing Cuthbert were to die, all his trouble and anxiety would avail nothing, and the old house and lands would fall to a Protestant heir, the first time in the history of the island.

Meanwhile, his behaviour towards Densil was gradually and insensibly altered. He became the free and easy man of the world, the amusing companion, the wise counsellor. He saw that Densil was of a nature to lean on some one, and he was determined it should be on him; so he made himself necessary. But he did more than this; he determined he would be beloved as well as respected, and with a happy audacity he set to work to win that poor wild foolish heart to himself, using such arts of pleasing as must have been furnished by his own mother wit, and could never have been learned in a hundred years from a Jesuit College. The poor heart was not a hard one to win; and, the day they buried poor Father Clilford in the mausoleum, it was with a mixture of pride at his own talents, and contemptuous pity for his dupe, that Mackworth listened to Densil as he told him that he was now his only friend, and besought him not to leave him—which thing Mackworth promised, with the deepest sincerity, he would not do.