Part 23 (1/2)
”Never mind; we'll make it all right somehow. Those poems of yours--you must let me have them and look over them; and I dare say I shall persuade the governor to do something with them. After all, it's no loss for you; you couldn't have got on tailoring--much too sharp a fellow for that;--you ought to be at college, if one could only get you there. These sizars.h.i.+ps, now, were meant for--just such cases as yours--clever fellows who could not afford to educate themselves; if we could only help you to one of them, now--
”You forget that in that case,” said I, with something like a sigh, ”I should have to become a member of the Church of England.”
”Why, no; not exactly. Though, of course, if you want to get all out of the university which you ought to get, you must do so at last.”
”And pretend to believe what I do not; for the sake of deserting my own cla.s.s, and pandering to the very aristocrats, whom--”
”Hullo!” and he jumped with a hoa.r.s.e laugh. ”Stop that till I see whether the door is sported. Why, you silly fellow, what harm have the aristocrats, as you call them, ever done you? Are they not doing you good at this moment? Are you not, by virtue of their aristocratic inst.i.tutions, nearer having your poems published, your genius recognized, etc. etc., than ever you were before?”
”Aristocrats? Then you call yourself one?”
”No, Alton, my boy; not yet,” said he quietly and knowingly. ”Not yet: but I have chosen the right road, and shall end at the road's end; and I advise you--for really, as my cousin, I wish you all success, even for the mere credit of the family, to choose the same road likewise.”
”What road?”
”Come up to Cambridge, by hook or by crook, and then take orders.”
I laughed scornfully.
”My good cousin, it is the only method yet discovered for turning a sn.o.b (as I am, or was) into a gentleman; except putting him into a heavy cavalry regiment. My brother, who has no brains, preferred the latter method. I, who flatter myself that I have some, have taken the former.” The thought was new and astonis.h.i.+ng to me, and I looked at him in silence while he ran on--
”If you are once a parson, all is safe. Be you who you may before, from that moment you are a gentleman. No one will offer an insult. You are good enough for any man's society. You can dine at any n.o.bleman's table. You can be friend, confidant, father confessor, if you like, to the highest women in the land; and if you have person, manners, and common sense, marry one of them into the bargain, Alton, my boy.”
”And it is for that that you will sell your soul--to become a hanger-on of the upper cla.s.ses, in sloth and luxury?”
”Sloth and luxury? Stuff and nonsense! I tell you that after I have taken orders, I shall have years and years of hard work before me; continual drudgery of serving tables, managing charities, visiting, preaching, from morning till night, and after that often from night to morning again.
Enough to wear out any but a tough const.i.tution, as I trust mine is. Work, Alton, and hard work, is the only way now-a-days to rise in the Church, as in other professions. My father can buy me a living some day: but he can't buy me success, notoriety, social position, power--” and he stopped suddenly, as if he had been on the point of saying something more which should not have been said.
”And this,” I said, ”is your idea of a vocation for the sacred ministry? It is for this, that you, brought up a dissenter, have gone over to the Church of England?”
”And how do you know”--and his whole tone of voice changed instantly into what was meant, I suppose, for a gentle seriousness and reverent suavity--”that I am not a sincere member of the Church of England? How do you know that I may not have loftier plans and ideas, though I may not choose to parade them to everyone, and give that which is holy to the dogs?”
”I am the dog, then?” I asked, half amused, for I was too curious about his state of mind to be angry.
”Not at all, my dear fellow. But those great men to whom we (or at least I) owe our conversion to the true Church, always tell us (and you will feel yourself how right they are) not to parade religious feelings; to look upon them as sacred things, to be treated with that due reserve which springs from real reverence. You know, as well as I, whether that is the fas.h.i.+on of the body in which we were, alas! brought up. You know, as well as I, whether the religious conversation of that body has heightened your respect for sacred things.”
”I do, too well.” And I thought of Mr. Wigginton and my mother's tea parties.
”I dare say the vulgarity of that school has, ere now, shaken your faith in all that was holy?”
I was very near confessing that it had: but a feeling came over me, I knew not why, that my cousin would have been glad to get me into his power, and would therefore have welcomed a confession of infidelity. So I held my tongue.
”I can confess,” he said, in the most confidential tone, ”that it had for a time that effect on me. I have confessed it, ere now, and shall again and again, I trust. But I shudder to think of what I might have been believing or disbelieving now, if I had not in a happy hour fallen in with Mr.
Newman's sermons, and learnt from them, and from his disciples, what the Church of England really was; not Protestant, no; but Catholic in the deepest and highest sense.”
”So you are one of these new Tractarians? You do not seem to have adopted yet the ascetic mode of life, which I hear they praise up so highly,”
”My dear Alton, if you have read, as you have, your Bible, you will recollect a text which tells you not to appear to men to fast. What I do or do not do in the way of self-denial, unless I were actually profligate, which I give you my sacred honour I am not, must be a matter between Heaven and myself.”