Two Years Ago, Volume I

"Then be as good as your word, Tom, and let every one please themselves," said the Doctor; but the dark youth broke out in sudden passion.

"Mr. Thomas Thurnall! I will not endure this! Why are you always making me your butt,—insulting me, sir, even in your father's house? You do not understand me; and I do not care to understand you. If my presence is disagreeable to you, I can easily relieve you of it!" and the dark youth turned to go away like Naaman, in a rage.

"Stop, John," said the Doctor. "I think it would be the more courteous plan for Tom to relieve you of his presence. Go and find Mark, Tom; and please to remember that John Briggs is my guest, and that I will not allow any rudeness to him in my house."

"I'll go, daddy, to the world's end, if you like, provided you won't ask me to write poetry. But Jack takes offence so soon. Give us your hand, old tinder-box! I meant no harm, and you know it."

John Briggs took the proffered hand sulkily enough; and Tom went out of the glass door, whistling as merry as a cricket.

"My dear boy," said the Doctor, when they were alone, "you must try to curb this temper of yours. Don't be angry with me, but—"

"I should be an ungrateful brute if I was, sir. I can bear anything from you. I ought to, for I owe everything to you; but—"

"But, my dear boy—'better is he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.'"

John Briggs tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. "I cannot help it, sir. It will drive me mad, I think at times,—this contrast between what I might be, and what I am, I can bear it no longer—mixing medicines here, when I might be educating myself, distinguishing myself—for I can do it; have you not said as much yourself to me again and again?"

"I have, of course; but—"

"But, sir, only hear me. It is in vain to ask me to command my temper while I stay here. I am not fit for this work; not fit for the dull country. I am not appreciated, not understood; and I shall never be, till I can get to London,—till I can find congenial spirits, and take my rightful place in the great parliament of mind. I am Pegasus in harness, here!" cried the vain, discontented youth. "Let me but once get there,—amid art, civilisation, intellect, and the company of men like that old Mermaid Club, to hear and to answer—

'words,So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,As one had put his whole soul in a jest;'—

and then you shall see whether Pegasus has not wings, and can use them too!" And he stopped suddenly, choking with emotion, his nostril and chest dilating, his foot stamping impatiently on the ground.

The Doctor watched him with a sad smile.

"Do you remember the devil's temptation of our Lord—'Cast thyself down from hence; for, it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee?"

"I do; but what has that to do with me?"

"Throw away the safe station in which God has certainly put you, to seek, by some desperate venture, a new, and, as you fancy, a grander one for yourself? Look out of that window, lad; is there not poetry enough, beauty and glory enough, in that sky, those fields,—ay, in every fallen leaf,—to employ all your powers, considerable as I believe them to be? Why spurn the pure, quiet, country life, in which such men as Wordsworth have been content to live and grow old?"

The boy shook his head like an impatient horse. "Too slow—too slow for me, to wait and wait, as Wordsworth did, through long years of obscurity, misconception, ridicule. No. What I have, I must have at once; and, if it must be, die like Chatterton—if only, like Chatterton, I can have my little day of success, and make the world confess that another priest of the beautiful has arisen among men."

Now, it can scarcely be denied, that the good Doctor was guilty of a certain amount of weakness in listening patiently to all this rant. Not that the rant was very blamable in a lad of eighteen; for have we not all, while we are going through our course of Shelley, talked very much the same abominable stuff, and thought ourselves the grandest fellows upon earth on account of that very length of ear which was patent to all the world save our precious selves; blinded by our self-conceit, and wondering in wrath why everybody was laughing at us? But the truth is, the Doctor was easy and indulgent to a fault, and dreaded nothing so much, save telling a lie, as hurting people's feelings; besides, as the acknowledged wise man of Whitbury, he was a little proud of playing the Maecenas; and he had, and not unjustly, a high, opinion of John Briggs's powers. So he had lent him books, corrected his taste in many matters, and, by dint of petting and humouring, had kept the wayward youth half-a-dozen times from running away from his father, who was an apothecary in the town, and from the general practitioner, Mr. Bolus, under whom John Briggs fulfilled the office of co-assistant with Tom Thurnall. Plenty of trouble had both the lads given the Doctor in the last five years, but of very different kinds, Tom, though he was in everlasting hot water, as the most incorrigible scapegrace for ten miles round, contrived to confine his naughtiness strictly to play-hours, while he learnt everything which was to be learnt with marvellous quickness, and so utterly fulfilled the ideal of a bottle-boy (for of him, too, as of all things, I presume, an ideal exists eternally in the supra-sensual Platonic universe), that Bolus told his father,—"In hours, sir, he takes care of my business as well as I could myself; but out of hours, sir, I believe he is possessed by seven devils."

John Briggs, on the other hand, sinned in the very opposite direction. Too proud to learn his business, and too proud also to play the scapegrace as Tom did, he neglected alike work and amusement, for lazy mooning over books, and the dreams which books called up. He made perpetual mistakes in the shop; and then considered himself insulted by an "inferior spirit," if poor Bolus called him to account for it. Indeed, had it not been for many applications of that "precious oil of unity," with which the good Doctor daily anointed the creaking wheels of Whitbury society, John Briggs and his master would have long ago "broken out of gear," and parted company in mutual wrath and fury. And now, indeed, the critical moment seemed come at last; for the lad began afresh to declare his deliberate intention of going to London to seek his fortune, in spite of parents and all the world.

"To live on here, and never to rise, perhaps, above the post of correspondent to a country newspaper!—To publish a volume of poems by subscription and have to go round, hat in hand, begging five shillings' worth of patronage from every stupid country squire—intolerable! I must go! Shakespeare was never Shakespeare till he fled from miserable Stratford, to become at once the friend of Sidney and Southampton."

"But John Briggs will be John Briggs still, if he went to the moon," shouted Tom Thurnall, who had just come up to the window. "I advise you to change that name of yours, Jack, to Sidney, or Percy, or Walker if you like; anything but the illustrious surname of Briggs the poisoner!"

"What do you mean, sir!" thundered John, while the Doctor himself jumped up; for Tom was red with rage.

"What is this, Tom!"

"What's that?" screamed Tom, bursting, in spite of his passion into roars of laughter. "What's that?"—and he held out a phial "Smell it! taste it! Oh, if I had but a gallon of it to pour down your throat! That's what you brought Mark Armsworth last night, instead of his cough mixture, while your brains were wool-gathering after poetry!"

"What is it?" gasped John Briggs.

"Miss Twiddle's black dose;—strong enough to rive the gizard out of an old cock!"

"It's not!"

"It is!" roared Mark Armsworth from behind as he rushed in, in shooting-jacket and gaiters, his red face redder with fury, his red whiskers standing on end with wrath like a tiger's, his left hand upon his hapless hypogastric region, his right brandishing an empty glass, which smelt strongly of brandy and water. "It is! And you've given me the cholera, and spoilt my day's shooting; and if I don't serve you out for it there's no law in England!"

"And spoilt my day's shooting, too; the last I shall get before I'm off to Paris! To have a day in Lord Minchampstead's preserves, and to be baulked of it in this way!"

John Briggs stood as one astonied.

"If I don't serve you out for this!" shouted Mark.

"If I don't serve you out for it! You shall never hear the last of it!" shouted Tom. "I'll take to writing, after all I'll put it in the papers. I'll make the name of Briggs the poisoner an abomination in the land."

John Briggs turned and fled.

"Well!" said Mark, "I must spend my morning at home, I suppose. So I shall just sit and chat with you, Doctor."

"And I shall go and play with Molly," said Tom, and walked off to Armsworth's garden.

"I don't care for myself so much," said Mark; "but I'm sorry the boy's lost his last day's shooting."

"Oh, you will be well enough by noon, and can go then; and as for the boy, it is just as well for him not to grow too fond of sports in which he can never indulge."

"Never indulge? Why not? He vows he'll go to the Rocky Mountains, and shoot a grizzly bear; and he'll do it."

"He has a great deal to do before that, poor fellow; and a great deal to learn."

"And he'll learn it. You're always down-hearted about the boy, Doctor."

"I can't help feeling the parting with him: and for Paris, too:—such a seat of temptation. But it is his own choice; and, after all, he must see temptation, wherever he goes."

"Bless the man! if a boy means to go to the bad, he'll go just as easily in Whitbury as in Paris. Give the lad his head, and never fear; he'll fall on his legs like a cat, I'll warrant him, whatever happens. He's as steady as old Time, I tell you; there's a grey head on green shoulders there."

"Steady?" said the Doctor, with a smile and a shrug.

"Steady, I tell you at heart; as prudent as you or I; and never lost you a farthing, that you know. Hang good boys! give me one who knows how to be naughty in the right place; I wouldn't give sixpence for a good boy; I never was one myself, and have no faith in them. Give me the lad who has more steam up than he knows what to do with, and must needs blow off a little in larks. When once he settles down on the rail, it'll send him along as steady as a luggage train. Did you never hear a locomotive puffing and roaring before it gets under way? well, that's what your boy is doing. Look at him now, with my poor little Molly."

Tom was cantering about the garden with a little weakly child of eight in his arms. The little thing was looking up in his face with delight, screaming at his jokes.

"You are right, Mark: the boy's heart cannot be in the wrong place while he is so fond of little children."

"Poor Molly! How she'll miss him! Do you think she'll ever walk, Doctor?"

"I do indeed."

"Hum! ah! well! if she grows up, Doctor, and don't go to join her poor dear mother up there, I don't know that I'd wish her a better husband than your boy."

"It would be a poor enough match for her."

"Tut! she'll have the money, and he the brains. Mark my words, Doctor, that boy'll be a credit to you; he'll make a noise in the world, or I know nothing. And if his fancy holds seven years hence, and he wants still to turn traveller, let him. If he's minded to go round the world, I'll back him to go, somehow or other, or I'll eat my head, Ned Thurnall!"

The Doctor acquiesced in this hopeful theory, partly to save an argument; for Mark's reverence for his opinion was confined to scientific matters; and he made up to his own self-respect by patronising the Doctor, and, indeed, taking him sometimes pretty sharply to task on practical matters.

"Best fellow alive is Thurnall; but not a man of business, poor fellow. None of your geniuses are. Don't know what he'd do without me."

So Tom carried Mary about all the morning, and went to Minchampstead in the afternoon, and got three hours' good shooting; but in the evening he vanished; and his father went into Armsworth's to look for him.

"Why do you want to know where he is?" replied Mark, looking sly. "However, as you can't stop him now, I'll tell you. He is just about this time sewing up Briggs's coat-sleeves, putting copperas into his water jug, and powdered galls on his towel, and making various other little returns for this morning's favour."

"I dislike practical jokes."

"So do I; especially when they come in the form of a black dose. Sit down, old boy, and we'll have a game at cribbage."

In a few minutes Tom came in—"Here's a good riddance. The poisoner has fabricated his pilgrim's staff, to speak scientifically, and perambulated his calcareous strata."

"What!"

"Cut his stick, and walked his chalks; and is off to London."

"Poor boy," said the Doctor, much distressed.

"Don't cry, daddy; you can't bring him back again. He's been gone these four hours. I went to his room, at Bolus's, about a little business, and saw at once that he had packed up, and carried off all he could. And, looking about, I found a letter directed to his father. So to his father I took it; and really I was sorry for the poor people. I left them all crying in chorus."

"I must go to them at once;" and up rose the Doctor.

"He's not worth the trouble you take for him—the addle-headed, ill-tempered coxcomb," said Mark. "But it's just like your soft-heartedness. Tom, sit down, and finish the game with me."

So vanished from Whitbury, with all his aspirations, poor John Briggs; and save an occasional letter to his parents, telling them that he was alive and well, no one heard anything of him for many a year. The Doctor tried to find him out in London, again and again; but without success. His letters had no address upon them, and no clue to his whereabouts could be found.

And Tom Thurnall went to Paris, and became the best pistol-shot and billiard-player in the Quartier Latin; and then went to St. Mumpsimus's Hospital in London, and became the best boxer therein, and captain of the eight-oar, besides winning prizes and certificates without end, and becoming in due time the most popular house-surgeon in the hospital: but nothing could keep him permanently at home. Stay drudging in London he would not. Settle down in a country practice he would not. Cost his father a farthing he would not. So he started forth into the wide world with nothing but his wits and his science, as anatomical professor to a new college in some South American republic. Unfortunately, when he got there, he found that the annual revolution had just taken place, and that the party who had founded the college had been all shot the week before. Whereat he whistled, and started off again, no man knew whither.

"Having got round half the world, daddy," he wrote home, "it's hard if I don't get round the other half. So don't expect me till you see me; and take care of your dear old eyes."

With which he vanished into infinite space, and was only heard of by occasional letters dated from the Rocky Mountains (where he did shoot a grizzly bear), the Spanish West Indies, Otahiti, Singapore, the Falkland Islands, and all manner of unexpected places; sending home valuable notes (sometimes accompanied by valuable specimens), zoological and botanical; and informing his father that he was doing very well; that work was plentiful, and that he always found two fresh jobs before he had finished one old one.

His eldest brother, John, died meanwhile. His second brother, William, was in good general practice in Manchester. His father's connections supported him comfortably; and if the old Doctor ever longed for Tom to come home, he never hinted it to the wanderer, but bade him go on and prosper, and become (which he gave high promise of becoming) a distinguished man of science. Nevertheless the old man's heart sank at last, when month after month, and at last two full years, had passed without any letter from Tom.

At last, when full four years were past and gone since Tom started for South America, he descended from the box of the day-mail, with a serene and healthful countenance; and with no more look of interest in his face than if he had been away on a two days' visit, shouldered his carpet-bag, and started for his father's house. He stopped, however; as there appeared from the inside of the mail a face which he must surely know. A second look told him that it was none other than John Briggs. But how altered! He had grown up into a very handsome man,—tall and delicate-featured, with long black curls, and a black moustache. There was a slight stoop about his shoulders, as of a man accustomed to too much sitting and writing; and he carried an eye-glass, whether for fashion's sake, or for his eyes' sake, was uncertain. He was wrapt in a long Spanish cloak, new and good; wore well-cut trousers, and (what Tom, of course, examined carefully) French boots, very neat, and very thin. Moreover, he had lavender kid-gloves on. Tom looked and wondered, and walked half round him, sniffing like a dog when he examines into the character of a fellow dog.

"Hum!—his mark seems to be at present P.P.—prosperous party: so there can be no harm in renewing our acquaintance. What trade on earth does he live by, though? Editor of a newspaper? or keeper of a gambling-table? Begging his pardon, he looks a good deal more like the latter than the former. However—"

And he walked up and offered his hand, with "How d'e do, Briggs? Who would have thought of our falling from the skies against each other in this fashion?"

Mr. Briggs hesitated a moment, and then took coldly the offered hand.

"Excuse me; but the circumstances of my visit here are too painful to allow me to wish for society."

And Mr. Briggs withdrew, evidently glad to escape.

"Has he vampoosed with the contents of a till, that he wishes so for solitude?" asked Tom; and, shouldering his carpet-bag a second time, with a grim inward laugh, he went to his father's house, and hung up his hat in the hall, just as if he had come in from a walk, and walked into the study; and not finding the old man, stepped through the garden to Mark Armsworth's, and in at the drawing-room window, frightening out of her wits a short, pale, ugly girl of seventeen, whom he discovered to be his old playfellow, Mary. However, she soon recovered her equanimity: he certainly never lost his.

"How d'e do, darling? How you are grown! and how well you look! How's your father? I hadn't anything particular to do, so I thought I'd come home and see you all, and get some fishing."

And Mary, who had longed to throw her arms round his neck, as of old, and was restrained by the thought that she was grown a great girl now, called in her father, and all the household; and after a while the old Doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son, who, whether from affectation, or from that blunted sensibility which often comes by continual change and wandering, took all their affection and delight with the most provoking coolness.

Nevertheless, though his feelings were not "demonstrative," as fine ladies say now-a-days, he evidently had some left in some corner of his heart; for after the fatted calf was eaten, and they were all settled in the Doctor's study, it came out that his carpet-bag contained little but presents, and those valuable ones—rare minerals from the Ural for his father; a pair of Circassian pistols for Mark; and for little Mary, to her astonishment, a Russian malachite bracelet, at which Mary's eyes opened wide, and old Mark said—

"Pretty fellow you are, to go fooling your money away like that. What did that gimcrack cost, pray, sir?"

"That is no concern of yours, sir, or mine either; for I didn't pay for it."

"Oh!" said Mary, doubtingly.

"No, Mary. I killed a giant, who was carrying off a beautiful princess; and this, you see, he wore as a ring on one of his fingers: so I thought it would just suit your wrist."

"Oh, Tom—Mr. Thurnall—what nonsense!"

"Come, come," said his father: "instead of telling us these sort of stories, you ought to give an account of yourself, as you seem quite to forget that we have not heard from you for more than two years."

"Whew! I wrote," said Tom, "whenever I could. However, you can have all my letters in one now."

So they sat round the fire, and Tom gave an account of himself; while his father marked with pride that the young man had grown and strengthened in body and in mind; and that under that nonchalant, almost cynical outside, the heart still beat honest and kindly. For before Tom began, he would needs draw his chair closer to his father's, and half-whispered to him,—

"This is very jolly. I can't be sentimental, you know. Knocking about the world has beat all that out of me: but it is very comfortable, after all, to find oneself with a dear old daddy and a good coal fire."

"Which of the two could you best do without?"

"Well, one takes things as one finds them. It don't do to look too deeply into one's feelings. Like chemicals, the more you analyse them, the worse they smell."

So Tom began his story.

"You heard from me at Bombay; after I'd been up to the Himalaya with an old Mumpsimus friend?"

"Yes."

"Well, I worked my way to Suez on board a ship whose doctor had fallen ill; and then I must needs see a little of Egypt; and there robbed was I, and nearly murdered, too; but I take a good deal of killing."

"I'll warrant you do," said Mark, looking at him with pride.

"So I begged my way to Cairo; and there I picked up a Yankee—a New Yorker, made of money, who had a yacht at Alexandria, and travelled en prince; and nothing would serve him but I must go with him to Constantinople; but there he and I quarrelled—more fools, both of us! I wrote to you from Constantinople."

"We never got the letter."

"I can't help that; I wrote. But there I was on the wide world again. So I took up with a Russian prince, whom I met at a gambling-table in Pera,—a mere boy, but such a plucky one,—and went with him to Circassia, and up to Astrakhan, and on to the Kirghis steppes; and there I did see snakes."

"Snakes?" says Mary. "I should have thought you had seen plenty in India already."

"Yes, Mary! but these were snakes spiritual and metaphorical. For, poking about where we had no business, Mary, the Tartars caught us, and tied us to their horses' tails, after giving me this scar across the cheek, and taught us to drink mares' milk, and to do a good deal of dirty work beside. So there we stayed with them six months, and observed their manners, which were none, and their customs, which were disgusting, as the midshipman said in his diary; and had the honour of visiting a pleasant little place in No-man's Land, called Khiva, which you may find in your atlas, Mary; and of very nearly being sold for slaves into Persia, which would not have been pleasant; and at last, Mary, we ran away—or rather, rode away, on two razor-backed Calmuc ponies, and got back to Russia, viâ Orenberg,—for which consult your atlas again; so the young prince was restored to the bosom of his afflicted family; and a good deal of trouble I had to get him safe there, for the poor boy's health gave way. They wanted me to stay with them, and offered to make my fortune."

"I'm so glad you didn't," said Mary.

"Well—I wanted to see little Mary again, and two worthy old gentlemen beside, you see. However, those Russians are generous enough. They filled my pockets, and heaped me with presents; that bracelet among them. What's more, Mary, I've been introduced to old Nick himself, and can testify, from personal experience, to the correctness of Shakspeare's opinion that the prince of darkness is a gentleman."

"And now you are going to stay at home?" asked the Doctor.

"Well, if you'll take me in, daddy, I'll send for my traps from London, and stay a month or so."

"A month!" cried the forlorn father.

"Well, daddy, you see, there is a chance of more fighting in Mexico, and I shall see such practice there; beside meeting old friends who were with me in Texas. And—and I've got a little commission, too, down in Georgia, that I should like to go and do."

"What is that?"

"Well,—it's a long story and a sad one: but there was a poor Yankee surgeon with the army in Circassia—a Southerner, and a very good fellow; and he had taken a fancy to some coloured girl at home—poor fellow, he used to go half mad about her sometimes, when he was talking to me, for fear she should have been sold—sent to the New Orleans market, or some other devilry; and what could I say to comfort him? Well, he got his mittimus by one of Schamyl's bullets; and when he was dying, he made me promise (I hadn't the heart to refuse) to take all his savings, which he had been hoarding for years for no other purpose, and see if I couldn't buy the girl, and get her away to Canada. I was a fool for promising. It was no concern of mine; but the poor fellow wouldn't die in peace else. So what must be, must."