The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper

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Nevertheless, with reference to quartering at Burleigh, a certain
long-neglected wife of his, Mrs. Tracy, had; and that for the period of
at least the twenty-one years preceding: how and wherefore I proceed to
tell.

A common case and common fate was that of Mrs. Tracy. She had married,
both early and hastily, a gallant lieutenant, John George Julian Tracy,
to wit, the military germ of our future general; their courtship and
acquaintance previous to matrimony extended over the not inconsiderable
space of three whole weeks--commencing with a country ball; and after
marriage, honey-moon inclusive, they lived the life of cooing doves for
three whole months.

And now came the furlough's end: Mr. Tracy, in his then habitual reserve
(a quiet man was he), had concealed its existence altogether: and, for
aught Jane knew, the hearty invalid was to remain at home for ever: but
months soon slip away; and so it came to pass, that on a certain next
Wednesday he must be on his way back to the Presidency of Madras,
and--if she will not follow him--he must leave her.

However, there was a certain old relative, one Mrs. Green, a childless
widow--rich, capricious, and infirm--whom Jane Tracy did not wish to
lose sight of: her money was well worth both watching and waiting for;
and the captain, whom a lucky chance had now lifted out of the
lieutenancy, was easily persuaded to forego the pleasure of his wife's
company till the somewhat indefinite period of her old aunt's death.

How far sundry discoveries made in the unknown regions of each other's
temper reconciled him to this retrograding bachelorship, and her to her
widowhood-bewitched, I will not undertake to say: but I will hazard the
remark, anti-poor-law though it seemeth, that the separation of man and
wife, however convenient, lucrative, or even mutually pleasant, is a
dereliction of duty, which always deserves, and generally meets, its
proper and discriminative punishment. Had the young wife faithfully
performed her Maker's bidding, and left all other ties unstrung to
cleave unto her lord; had she considered a husband's true affections
before all other wealth, and resolved to share his dangers, to solace
his cares, to be his blessing through life, and his partner even unto
death, rather than selfishly to seek her own comfort, and consult her
own interest--the tale of crime and sadness, which it is my lot to tell,
would never have had truth for its foundation.

Ill-matched for happiness though they were, however well-matched as to
mutual merit, the common man of pleasure and the frivolous woman of
fashion, still the wisest way to fuse their minds to union, the
likeliest receipt for moral good and social comfort, would have been
this course of foreign scenes, of new faces, sprinkled with a seasoning
of adventure, hardship, danger, in a distant land. Gradually would they
have learned to bear and forbear; the petty quarrel would have been
forgotten in the frequent kindness; the rougher edges of temper and
opinion would insensibly have smoothed away; new circumstances would
have brought out better feelings under happier skies; old acquaintances,
false friends forgotten, would have neutralized old feuds: and, by
long-living together, though it were perhaps amid various worries and
many cares, they might still have come to a good old age with more than
average happiness, and more than the common run of love. Patience in
dutiful enduring brings a sure reward: and marriage, however irksome a
constraint to the foolish and the gay, is still so wise an ordinance,
that the most ill-assorted couple imaginable will unconsciously grow
happy, if they only remain true to one another, and will learn the
wisdom always to hope and often to forgive.

The Tracys, however, overlooked all this, and mutual friends (those
invariable foes to all that is generous and unworldly) smiled upon the
prudence of their temporary separation. The captain was to come home
again on furlough in five years at furthest, even if the aunt held out
so long; and this availed to keep his wife in the rear-guard; therefore,
Mrs. Tracy wiped her eyes, bade adieu to her retreating lord in Plymouth
Sound, and determined to abide, with other expectant dames and Asiatic
invalided heroes, at Burleigh-Singleton, until she might go to him, or
he return to her: for pleasant little Burleigh, besides its contiguity
to arriving Indiamen, was advantageous as being the dwelling-place of
aforesaid Mrs. Green;--that wealthy, widowed aunt, devoutly wished in
heaven: and the considerate old soul had offered her designing niece a
home with her till Tracy could come back.

During the first year of absence, ship-letters and India-letters arrived
duteously in consecutive succession: but somehow or other, the regular
post, in no long time afterwards, became unfaithful to its trust; and if
Mrs. Jane heard quarterly, which at any rate she did through the agent,
when he remitted her allowance, she consoled herself as to the captain's
well-being: in due course of things, even this became irregular; he was
far up the country, hunting, fighting, surveying, and what not; and no
wonder that letters, if written at all, which I rather doubt, got lost.
Then there came a long period of positive and protracted silence--months
of it--years of it; barring that her checks for cash were honoured still
at Hancock's, though they could tell her nothing of her lord; so that
Mrs. Tracy was at length seriously recommended by her friends to become
a widow; she tried on the cap, and looked into many mirrors; but, after
long inspection, decided upon still remaining a wife, because the weeds
were so clearly unbecoming. Habit, meanwhile, and that still-existing
old aunt, who seemed resolved to live to a hundred, kept her as before
at Burleigh: and, seeing that a few months after the captain's departure
she had presented the world, not to say her truant lord, with twins, she
had always found something to do in the way of, what she considered,
education, and other juvenile amusement: that is to say, when the
gayeties of a circle of fifteen miles in radius left her any time to
spare in such a process. The twins--a brace of boys--were born and bred
at Burleigh, and had attained severally to twenty years of age, just
before their father came home again as brevet-major-general. But both
they, and that arrival, deserve special detail, each in its own chapter.

CHAPTER II.

THE HEROES.

Mrs. Tracy's sons were as unlike each other as it is well possible for
two human beings to be, both in person and character. Julian, whose
forward and bold spirit gained him from the very cradle every
prerogative of eldership (and he did struggle first into life, too, so
he was the first-born), had grown to be a swarthy, strong, big-boned
man, of the Roman-nosed, or, more physiognomically, the Jewish cast of
countenance; with melo-dramatic elf-locks, large whiskers, and
ungovernable passions; loud, fierce, impetuous; cunning, too, for all
his overbearing clamour; and an embodied personification of those choice
essentials to criminal happiness--a hard heart and a good digestion.
Charles, on the contrary (or, as logicians would say, on the
contradictory), was fair-haired, blue-eyed, of Grecian features; slim,
though well enough for inches, and had hitherto (as the commonalty have
it) "enjoyed" weak health: he was gentle and affectionate in heart, pure
and religious in mind, studious and unobtrusive in habits. It was a
wonder to see the strange diversity between those own twin-brothers,
born within the same hour, and, it is superfluous to add, of the same
parents; brought up in all outward things alike, and who had shared
equally in all that might be called advantage or disadvantage, of
circumstance or education.

Certain is it that minds are different at birth, and require as
different a treatment as Iceland moss from cactuses, or bull-dogs from
bull-finches: certain is it, too, that Julian, early submitted and
resolutely broken in, would have made as great a man, as Charles,
naturally meek, did make a good one; but for the matter of educating her
boys, poor Mrs. Tracy had no more notion of the feat, than of squaring
the circle, or determining the longitude. She kept them both at home,
till the peevish aunt could suffer Julian's noise no longer: the house
was a Pandemonium, and the giant grown too big for that castle of
Otranto; so he must go at any rate; and (as no difference in the
treatment of different characters ever occurred to any body) of course
Charles must go along with him. Away they went to an expensive school,
which Julian's insubordination on the instant could not brook--and,
accordingly, he ran away; without doubt, Charles must be taken away too.
Another school was tried, Julian got expelled this time; and Charles,
in spite of prizes, must, on system, be removed with him: so forth, with
like wisdom, all through the years of adolescence and instruction, those
ill-matched brothers were driven as a pair. Then again, for fashion's
sake, and Aunt Green's whims, the circumspective mother, notwithstanding
all her inconsistencies, gave each of them prettily bound hand-books of
devotion; which the one used upon his knees, and the other lit cigars
withal; both extremes having exceeded her intention: and she proved
similarly overreached when she persisted in treating both exactly alike,
as to liberal allowances, and liberty of will; the result being, that
one of her sons "foolishly" spent his money in a multitude of charitable
hobbies; and that the other was constantly supplied with means for (the
mother was sorry to say it, vulgar) dissipation. By consequence, Charles
did more good, and Julian more evil, than I have time to stop and tell
off.

If any thing in this life must be personal, peculiar, and specific, it
is education: we take upon ourselves to speak thus dogmatically, not of
mere school-teaching only, _musa_, _musae_, and so forth; nor yet of
lectures, on relative qualities of carbon and nitrogen in vegetables;
no, nor even of schemes of theology, or codes of morals; but we do speak
of the daily and hourly reining-in, or letting-out, of discouragement in
one appetite, and encouragement in another; of habitual formation of
characters in their diversity; and of shaping their bear's-cub, or that
child-angel, the natural human mind, to its destined ends; that it may
turn out, for good, according to its several natures, to be either the
strong-armed, bold-eyed, rough-hewer of God's grand designs, or the
delicate-fingered polisher of His rarest sculptures. Julian,
well-trained, might have grown to be a Luther; and many a gentle soul
like Charles, has turned out a coxcomb and a sensualist.

The boys were born, as I have said, in the regulation order of things, a
few months after Captain Tracy sailed away for India some full score of
years, and more, from this present hour, when we have seen him seated as
a general in the library at Burleigh; and, until the last year, they had
never seen their father--scarcely ever heard of him.

The incidents of their lives had been few and common-place: it would be
easy, but wearisome, to specify the orchards and the bee-hives which
Julian had robbed as a school-boy; the rebellions he had headed; the
monkey tricks he had played upon old fish-women; and the cruel havoc he
made of cats, rats, and other poor tormented creatures, who had
ministered to his wanton and brutalizing joys. In like manner, wearily,
but easily, might I relate how Charles grew up the nurse's darling,
though little of his flaunting mother's; the curly-pated young
book-worm; the sympathizing, innoffensive, gentle heart, whose effort
still it was to countervail his brother's evil: how often, at the risk
of blows, had he interposed to save some drowning puppy: how often paid
the bribe for Julian's impunity, when mulcted for some damage done in
the way of broken windows, upset apple-stalls, and the like: how often
had he screened his bad twin-brother from the flagellatory consequences
of sheer idleness, by doing for him all his school-tasks: how often
striven to guide his insensate conscience to truth, and good, and
wisdom: how often, and how vainly!

And when the youths grew up, and their good and evil grew up with them,
it were possible to tell you a heart-rending tale of Julian's treachery
to more than one poor village beauty; and many a pleasing trait of
Charles's pure benevolence, and wise zeal to remedy his brother's
mischiefs. The one went about doing ill, and the other doing good:
Julian, on account of obligations, more truly than in spite of them,
hated Charles; and yet one great aim of all Charles's amiabilities
tended continually to Julian's good, and he strove to please him, too,
while he wished to bless him. The one had grown to manhood, full of
unrepented sins, and ripe for darker crime: the other had attained a
like age of what is somewhat satirically called discretion, having
amassed, with Solon of old, "knowledge day by day," having lived a life
of piety and purity, and blest with a cheerful disposition, that teemed
with happy thoughts.

They had, of course, in the progress of human life, been both laid upon
the bed of sickness, where, with similar contrast, the one lay muttering
discontent, and the other smiling patiently: they had both been in
dangers by land and by sea, where Julian, though not a little lacking to
himself at the moment of peril, was still loudly minacious till it came
too near; while Charles, with all his caution, was more actually
courageous, and in spite of all his gentleness, stood against the worst
undaunted: they had both, with opposite motives and dissimilar modes of
life, passed through various vicissitudes of feeling, scene, society;
and the influence of circumstance on their different characters,
heightened or diminished, bettered or depraved, by the good or evil
principle in each, had produced their different and probable results.

Thus, strangely dissimilar, the twin-brothers together stand before us:
Julian the strong impersonation of the animal man, as Charles of the
intellectual; Julian, matter; Charles, spirit; Julian, the creature of
this world, tending to a lower and a worse: Charles, though in the
world, not of the world, and reaching to a higher and a better.

Mrs. Tracy, the mother of this various progeny, had been somewhat of a
beauty in her day, albeit much too large and masculine for the taste of
ordinary mortals; and though now very considerably past forty, the vain
vast female was still ambitious of compliment, and greedy of admiration.
That Julian should be such a woman's favourite will surprise none: she
had, she could have, no sympathies with mild and thoughtful Charles; but
rather dreaded to set her flaunting folly in the light of his wise
glance, and sought to hide her humbled vanity from his pure and keen
perceptions. His very presence was a tacit rebuke to her social
dissipation, and she could not endure the mild radiance of his virtues.
He never fawned and flattered her, as Julian would; but had even
suffered filial presumption (it could not be affection--O dear, no!) to
go so far as gently to expostulate at what he fancied wrong; he never
gave her reason to contrast, with happy self-complacence, her own soul's
state with Charles's, however she could with Julian's: and then, too,
she would indulgently allow her foolish mind--a woman's, though a
parent's--to admire that tall, black, bandit-looking son, above the
slight build, the delicate features, and almost feminine elegance of his
brother: she found Julian always ready to countenance and pamper her
gayest wishes, and was glad to make him her escort every where--at
balls, and fetes, and races, and archery parties; while as to Charles,
he would be the stay-at-home, the milk-sop, the learned pundit, the
pious prayer-monger, any thing but the ladies' man. Yes: it is little
wonder that Mrs. Tracy's heart clave to Julian, the masculine image of
herself; while it barely tolerated Charles, who was a rarefied and
idealized likeness of the absent and forgotten Tracy.

But the mother--and there are many silly mothers, almost as many as
silly men and silly maids--in her admiration of the outward form of
manliness, overlooked the true strength, and chivalry, and nobleness of
mind which shone supreme in Charles. How would Julian have acted in such
a case as this?--a sheep had wandered down the cliff's face to a narrow
ledge of rock, whence it could not come back again, for there was no
room to turn: Julian would have pelted it, and set his bull-dog at it,
and rejoiced to have seen the poor animal's frantic leaps from shingly
shelf to shelf, till it would be dashed to pieces. But how did Charles
act? With the utmost courage, and caution, and presence of mind, he
crept down, and, at the risk of his life, dragged the bleating,
unreluctant creature up again; it really seemed as if the ungrateful
poor dumb brute recognised its humane friend, and suffered him to rescue
it without a struggle or a motion that might have endangered both.

Again: a burly costermonger was belabouring his donkey, and the wretched
beast fell beneath his cudgel: strange to say, Julian and Charles were
walking together that time; and the same sight affected each so
differently, that the one sided with the cruel man, and the other with
his suffering victim: Charles, in momentary indignation, rushed up to
the fellow, wrested the cudgel from his hand, and flung it over the
cliff; while Julian was so base, so cowardly, as to reward such generous
interference, by holding his weaker brother's arms, and inviting the
wrathful costermonger to expend the remainder of his phrensy on unlucky
Charles. Yes, and when at home Mrs. Tracy heard all this, she was silly
enough, wicked enough, to receive her truly noble son with ridicule, and
her other one, the child of her disgrace, with approval.

"It will teach you, Master Charles, not to meddle with common people and
their donkeys; and you may thank your brother Julian for giving you a
lesson how a gentleman should behave."

Poor Charles! but poorer Julian, and poorest Mrs. Tracy!

It would be easy, if need were, to enumerate multiplied examples tending
towards the same end--a large, masculine-featured mother's foolish
preference of the loud, bold, worldly animal, before the meek, kind,
noble, spiritual. And the results of all these many matters were, that
now, at twenty years of age, Charles found himself, as it were, alone in
a strange land, with many common friends indeed abroad, but at home no
nearer, dearer ties to string his heart's dank lyre withal; neither
mother nor brother, nor any other kind familiar face, to look upon his
gentleness in love, or to sympathize with his affections, unapprehended,
unappreciated: so--while Mrs. Tracy was the showy, gay, and vapid thing
she ever had been, and Julian the same impetuous mother's son which his
very nurse could say she knew him--Charles grew up a shy and silent
youth, necessarily reserved, for lack of some one to understand him;
necessarily chilled, for want of somebody to love him.

CHAPTER III.

THE ARRIVAL.

The young men were thus situated as regards both the world and one
another, and Mrs. Tracy had almost entirely forgotten the fact, that she
possessed a piece of goods so supererogatory as her husband (a property
too which her children had never quite realized), when all on a sudden,
one ordinary morning, the postman's-knock brought to her breakfast-table
at Burleigh-Singleton the following epistle:

"British Channel, Thursday, March 11th, 1842.
"The Sir William Elphinston, E.I.M.

"DEAR JANE: You will be surprised to find that you are to see me so
soon, I dare say, especially as it is now some years since you will have
heard from me. The reason is, I have been long in an out-of-the-way part
of India, where there is little communication with Europe, and so you
will excuse my not writing. We hope to find ourselves to-night in
Plymouth roads, where I shall get into a pilot-boat, and so shall see
you to-morrow. You may, therefore, now expect your affectionate husband,

"J.G.J. TRACY, General H.E.I.C.S.

"P.S.1.--Remember me to our boy, or boys--which is it?

"P.S.2.--I bring with me the daughter of a friend in India, who is come
over for a year or two's polish at a first-rate school. Of course you
will be glad to receive her as our guest.

"J.G.J.T."

This loving letter was the most startling event that had ever attempted
to unnerve Mrs. Tracy; and she accordingly managed, for effect and
propriety's sake, to grow very faint upon the spot, whether for joy, or
sorrow, or fear of lost liberty, or hope of a restored lord, doth not
appear; she had so long been satisfied with receiving quarterly pay from
the India agents, that she forgot it was an evidence of her husband's
existence; and, lo! here he was returning a general, doubtlessly a
magnificent moustachioed individual, and she was to be Mrs. General! so
that when she came completely to herself, after that feint of a faint,
she was thinking of nothing but court-plumes, oriental pearls, and her
gallant Tracy's uniform.

The postscripts also had their influence: Charles, naturally
affectionate, and willing to love a hitherto unseen father, felt hurt,
as well he might, at the "boy, or boys;" while Julian, who ridiculed his
brother's sentimentality, was already fancying that the "daughter of a
friend" might be a pleasant addition to the dullness of
Burleigh-Singleton.

Preparations vast were made at once for the general's reception; from
attic to kitchen was sounded the tocsin of his coming. Julian was all
bustle and excitement, to his mother's joy and pride; while Charles
merited her wrath by too much of his habitual and paternal quietude,
particularly when he withdrew his forces altogether from the loud
domestic fray, by retreating up-stairs to cogitate and muse, perhaps to
make a calming prayer or two about all these matters of importance. As
for Mrs. Tracy herself, she was even now, within the first hour of that
news, busily engaged in collecting cosmetics, trinkets, blonde lace, and
other female finery, resolved to trick herself out like Jezebel, and win
her lord once more; whilst the pernicious old aunt, who still lived on,
notwithstanding all those twenty years of patience, as vivacious as
before, grumbled and scolded so much at this upsetting of her house,
that there was really some risk of her altering the will at last, and
cutting out Jane Tracy after all.

And the morrow morning came, as if it were no more than an ordinary
Friday, and with it came expectancy; and noon succeeded, and with it
spirits alternately elated and depressed; and evening drew in, with
heart-sickness and chagrin at hopes or prophecies deferred; and night,
and next morning, and still the general came not. So, much weeping at
that vexing disappointment, after so many pains to please, Mrs. Tracy
put aside her numerous aids and appliances, and lay slatternly a-bed, to
nurse a head-ache until noon; and all had well nigh forgotten the
probable arrival, when, to every body's dismay, a dusty chaise and four
suddenly rattled up the terrace, and stopped at our identical number
seven.

Then was there scuffling up, and getting down, and making preparation in
hot haste; and a stout gentleman with a gamboge face descended from the
chaise, exploding wrath like a bomb-shell, that so important an approach
had made such slight appearance of expectancy: it was disrespectful to
his rank, and he took care to prove he was somebody, by blowing up the
very innocent post-boys. This accomplished, he gallantly handed out
after him a pretty-looking miss in her teens. Poor Mrs. Tracy, _en
papillotes_, looked out at the casement like any one but Jezebel attired
for bewitching, and could have cried for vexation; in fact, she did,
and passed it off for feeling. Aunt Green, whom the general at first
lovingly saluted as his wife (for the poor man had entirely forgotten
the uxorial appearance), was all in a pucker for deafness, blindness,
and evident misapprehension of all things in general, though clearly
pleased, and flattered at her gallant nephew's salutation. Julian, with
what grace of manner he could muster, was already playing the agreeable
to that pretty ward, after having, to the general's great surprise,
introduced himself to him as his son; while Charles, who had rushed into
the room, warm-heartedly to fling himself into his father's arms, was
repelled on the spot for his affection: General Tracy, with a military
air, excused himself from the embrace, extending a finger to the unknown
gentleman, with somewhat of offended dignity.

At last, down came the wife: our general at once perceived himself
mistaken in the matter of Mrs. Green; and, coldly bowing to the
bedizened dame, acknowledged her pretensions with a courteous--