“I’VE been thinking,” said Charlie Atheling slowly. Having made this preface, the big boy paused: it was his manner of opening an important subject, to which the greater part of his cogitations were directed. His sisters came close to him immediately, half-embracing this great fellow in their united arms, and waiting for his communication. It was the twilight of an April evening, soft and calm. There were no stars in the sky—no sky even, except an occasional break of clear deep heavenly blue through the shadowy misty shapes of clouds, crowding upon each other over the whole arch of heaven. The long boughs of the lilac-bushes rustled in the night wind with all their young soft leaves—the prim outline of the poplar was ruffled with brown buds, and low on the dark soil at its feet was a faint golden lustre of primroses. Everything was as still—not as death, for its deadly calm never exists in nature; but as life, breathing, hushing, sleeping in that sweet season, when the grass is growing and the bud unfolding, all the night and all the day. Even here, in this suburban garden, with the great Babel muffling its voices faintly in the far distance, you could hear, if you listened, that secret rustle of growth and renewing which belongs to the sweet spring. Even here, in this colourless soft light, you could see the earth opening her unwearied bosom, with a passive grateful sweetness, to the inspiring touch of heaven. The brown soil was moist with April showers, and the young leaves glistened faintly with blobs of dew. Very different from the noonday hope was this hope of twilight; but not less hopeful in its silent operations, its sweet sighs, its soft tears, and the heart that stirred within it, in the dark, like a startled bird.
These three young figures, closely grouped together, which you could see only in outline against the faint horizon and the misty sky, were as good a human rendering as could be made of the unexpressed sentiment of the season and the night—they too were growing, with a sweet involuntary progression, up to their life, and to their fate. They stood upon the threshold of the world innocent adventurers, fearing no evil; and it was hard to believe that these hopeful neophytes could ever be made into toil-worn, care-hardened people of the world by any sum of hardships or of years.
“I’ve been thinking;”—all this time Charlie Atheling had added nothing to his first remarkable statement, and we are compelled to admit that the conclusion which he now gave forth did not seem to justify the solemnity of the delivery—“yes, I’ve made up my mind; I’ll go to old Foggo and the law.”
“And why, Charlie, why?”
Charlie was not much given to rendering a reason.
“Never mind the why,” he said, abruptly; “that’s best. There’s old Foggo himself, now; nobody can reckon his income, or make a balance just what he is and what he has, and all about him, as people could do with us. We are plain nobodies, and people know it at a glance. My father has five children and two hundred a-year—whereas old Foggo, you see—”
“I don’t see—I do not believe it!” cried Marian, impatiently. “Do you mean to say, you bad boy, that Mr Foggo is better than papa—my father? Why, he has mamma, and Bell and Beau, and all of us: if anything ailed him, we should break our hearts. Mr Foggo has only Miss Willsie: he is an old man, and snuffs, and does not care for anybody: do you call that better than papa?”
But Charlie only laughed. Certain it was that this lad had not the remotest intention of setting up Mr Foggo as his model of happiness. Indeed, nobody quite knew what Charlie’s ideal was; but the boy, spite of his practical nature, had a true boyish liking for that margin of uncertainty which made it possible to surmise some unknown power or greatness even in the person of this ancient lawyer’s clerk. Few lads, we believe, among the range of those who have to make their own fortune, are satisfied at their outset to decide upon being “no better than papa.”
“Well,” said Agnes, with consideration, “I should not like Charlie to be just like papa. Papa can do nothing but keep us all—so many children—and he never can be anything more than he is now. But Charlie—Charlie is quite a different person. I wish he could be something great.”
“Agnes—don’t! it is such nonsense!” cried Marian. “Is there anything great in old Mr Foggo’s office? He is a poor old man, I think, living all by himself with Miss Willsie. I had rather be Susan in our house, than be mistress in Mr Foggo’s: and how could he make Charlie anything great?”
“Stuff!” said Charlie; “nobody wants to be made; that’s a man’s own business. Now, you just be quiet with your romancing, you girls. I’ll tell you what, though, there’s one man I think I’d like to be—and I suppose you call him great—I’d like to be Rajah Brooke.”
“Oh, Charlie! and hang people!” cried Marian.
“Not people—only pirates,” said the big boy: “wouldn’t I string them up too! Yes, if that would please you, Agnes, I’d like to be Rajah Brooke.”
“Then why, Charlie,” exclaimed Agnes—“why do you go to Mr Foggo’s office? A merchant may have a chance for such a thing—but a lawyer! Charlie, boy, what do you mean?”
“Never mind,” said Charlie; “your Brookes and your Layards and such people don’t begin by being merchants’ clerks. I know better: they have birth and education, and all that, and get the start of everybody, and then they make a row about it. I don’t see, for my part,” said the young gentleman meditatively, “what it is but chance. A man may succeed, or a man may fail, and it’s neither much to his credit nor his blame. It is a very odd thing, and I can’t understand it—a man may work all his life, and never be the better for it. It’s chance, and nothing more, so far as I can see.”
“Hush, Charlie—say Providence,” said Agnes, anxiously.
“Well, I don’t know—it’s very odd,” answered the big boy.
Whereupon there began two brief but earnest lectures for the good of Charlie’s mind, and the improvement of his sentiments. The girls were much disturbed by their brother’s heterodoxy; they assaulted him vehemently with the enthusiastic eagerness of the young faith which had never been tried, and would not comprehend any questioning. Chance! when the very sparrows could not fall to the ground—The bright face of Agnes Atheling flushed almost into positive beauty; she asked indignantly, with a trembling voice and tears in her eyes, how Mamma could have endured to live if it had not been God who did it? Charlie, rough as he was, could not withstand an appeal like this: he muttered something hastily under his breath about success in business being a very different thing from that, and was indisputably overawed and vanquished. This allusion made them all very silent for a time, and the young bright eyes involuntarily glanced upward where the pure faint stars were gleaming out one by one among the vapoury hosts of cloud. Strangely touching was the solemnity of this link, not to be broken, which connected the family far down upon the homely bosom of the toilsome earth with yonder blessed children in the skies. Marian, saying nothing, wiped some tears silently from the beautiful eyes which turned such a wistful, wondering, longing look to the uncommunicating heaven. Charlie, though you could scarcely see him in the darkness, worked those heavy furrows of his brow, and frowned fiercely upon himself. The long branches came sweeping towards them, swayed by the night wind; up in the east rose the pale spring moon, pensive, with a misty halo like a saint. The aspect of the night was changed; instead of the soft brown gloaming, there was broad silvery light and heavy masses of shadow over sky and soil—an instant change all brought about by the rising of the moon. As swift an alteration had passed upon the mood of these young speculators. They went in silently, full of thought—not so sad but that they could brighten to the fireside brightness, yet more meditative than was their wont; even Charlie—for there was a warm heart within the clumsy form of this big boy!