of the meeting of the Wilts and Denewdney streams.
Jorian compared them to the Rhone and the—I
forget the name of the river below Geneva—dirtyish;
for there was a transparent difference in the Denewdney
style of dress, and did I choose it I could sit and
rule those two factions as despotically as Buonaparte
his Frenchmen. Ask me what I mean by scaling billows,
Richie. I will some day tell you. I have
done it all my life, and here I am. But I thank
heaven I have a son I love, and I can match him against
the best on earth, and henceforward I live for him,
to vindicate and right the boy, and place him in his
legitimate sphere. From this time I take to looking
exclusively forward, and I labour diligently.
I have energies.
’Not to boast, darling old son, I tell truth;
I am only happy when my heart is beating near you.
Here comes the mother in me pumping up. Adieu.
Lebe wohl. The German!—the German!—may
God in his Barmherzigkeit!—Tell her I never
encouraged the girl, have literally nothing to trace
a temporary wrinkle on my forehead as regards conscience.
I say, may it please Providence to make you a good
German scholar by the day of your majority. Hurrah
for it! Present my humble warm respects to your
aunt Dorothy. I pray to heaven nightly for one
of its angels on earth. Kunst, Wissenschaft,
Ehre, Liebe. Die Liebe. Quick at the German
poets. Frau: Fraulein. I am actually
dazzled at the prospect of our future. To be
candid, I no longer see to write. Gruss’
dich herzlich. From Vienna to you next.
Lebe wohl!’
My aunt Dorothy sent a glance at the letter while
I was folding it evidently thinking my unwillingness
to offer it a sign of bad news or fresh complications.
She spoke of Miss Penrhys.
‘Oh! that’s over,’ said I.
‘Heiresses soon get consoled.’
She accused me of having picked up a vulgar idea.
I maintained that it was my father’s.
‘It cannot be your father’s,’ said
she softly; and on affirming that he had uttered it
and written it, she replied in the same tone, more
effective than the ordinary language of conviction,
’He does not think it.’
The rage of a youth to prove himself in the right
of an argument was insufficient to make me lay the
letter out before other eyes than my own, and I shrank
from exposing it to compassionate gentle eyes that
would have pleaded similar allowances to mine for
the wildness of the style. I should have thanked,
but despised the intelligence of one who framed my
excuses for my father, just as the squire, by abusing
him, would have made me a desperate partisan in a
minute. The vitality of the delusion I cherished
was therefore partly extinct; not so the love; yet
the love of him could no longer shake itself free
from oppressive shadows.
Out of his circle of attraction books were my resource.
MY TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY
