Bart Ridgeley Part 16

HENRY.

The princ.i.p.al event of the spring among the Ridgeleys, was the return home of Henry. He had closed his novitiate, and was awaiting his examination for admission to the bar. He had already, on the recommendation of his friend and instructor, Wade, formed a favorable business connection with the younger Hitchc.o.c.k, at Painesville; and now, after a year's absence, he came back to his mother and brothers, for a few days of relaxation and visiting. Less strong than the Major, of grave, thoughtful, but cheerful face and mien, heavy-browed and deep-eyed, with plain, marked face, and finished manners, he was well calculated to impress favorably, and win confidence and respect. His mind was solid, but lacked the sparkle and vivacity of Bart's, and compensatingly was believed to be deep. He was the pride and hope of the family: around him gathered all its expectations of distinction, and no one shared all these more intensely than Bart, who had awaited his coming with hope and fear. He was accompanied by a fellow-student named Ranney, of about his own age, and like him, above the usual height, broad and heavy-shouldered, with a ma.s.sive head and strong face, a high narrow forehead; rather shy in manner, and taciturn.

They came one night while Bart was in the sugar-camp, where he spent many nights, and he met them the next morning at the breakfast-table.

No one could be gladder than he to meet his brother, but, like his mother, he was struck by his emaciated form and languor of manner.

Bart had heard of Ranney as a man of strong, profound, ingenious mind, with much power of sarcasm, and who had formed a partners.h.i.+p with Wade, on the retirement of Mr. Giddings from the bar. He stood a little in awe of him, whose good opinion he would have gladly secured, but who, he had a presentiment, would not understand him. Indeed, he was quite certain he did not understand himself.

The young men had been fellow-students for two years, had many things in common, and were strong friends.

Bart soon found that they had a slender view of his law reading, and spoke slightingly of Ford as a lawyer. They had both diligently studied to the lower depths of the law, had a fair appreciation of their acquisitions, and would not overestimate the few months of solitary reading of a boy in the country.

Bart did not mention his studies, and only answered modestly his brother's inquiries, who closed the subject for the time by saying that if he was serious in his desire to study law, "he would either arrange to take him to Painesville in the Fall, or have his friend Ranney take him in hand." Bart was pleased with the idea of being with either; and possibly he may have wondered whether whoever took him in hand would not have that hand full.

The young men strolled off to his sugar-camp during the forenoon, lounged learnedly about, evincing little interest in the camp and surroundings, although the deepening season had filled the woods with flowers and birds; and Bart wondered whether "c.o.ke on Littleton," and executory devises, and contingent remainders, had produced in them their natural consequences. He watched to see whether new maple sugar was sweet to them, and on full reflection doubted if it was.

They did not interfere with his work, and sauntered back to an early dinner, and Bart saw no more of them until night.

He closed out his work early for the day, and spent the evening with them and his mother.

Henry naturally inquired about his old acquaintances, and Bart answered graphically. He was in a mood of reckless gayety. He took them up, one after another, and in a few happy strokes presented them in ludicrous caricature, irresistible for its. .h.i.ts of humor, and sometimes for wit, and sometimes sarcasm--a stream of sparkle and glitter, with queer quotations of history, poetry, and Scripture, always apt, and the latter not always irreverent. Ranney had a capacity to enjoy a medley, and both of the young men abandoned themselves to uncontrollable laughter; and even the good mother, who tried in vain to stop her reckless son, surprised herself with tears streaming down her cheeks. Bart, for the most part, remained grave, and occasionally Edward helped him out with a suggestion, or contributed a dry and pungent word of his own.

As the fit subsided, Henry, half serious and half laughing, turned to him: "Oh, Bart, I thought you had reformed, and become considerate and thoughtful, and I find that you are worse than ever."

"But, Henry, what's the use of having neighbors and acquaintances and friends, if one cannot serve them up to his guests; and only think, I've gone about for six months with the odds and ends of 'flat, stale and unprofitable' things acc.u.mulating in and about him--the said Bart--until, as a sanitary measure, I had to utter them."

"How do you feel after it?" inquired Henry.

"Rather depressed, though I hope to tone up again."

"Bart," said Henry, gravely, "I haven't seen much of you for two or three years; I used to get queer glimpses of you in your letters, and I must look through your mental and moral make-up some time."

"You will find me like the sterile, stony glebe, which, when the priest reached in his career of invocation and blessing--'Here,' said the holy father, 'prayers and supplications are of no avail. This must have manure.' Grace would, I fear, be wasted on me, and our good mother would willingly see me under your subsoiling and fertilizing hand."

"Do you ever seriously think?"

"I? oh yes! such thoughts as I can think. I think of the wondrously beautiful in nature, and am glad. I think of the wretched race of men, and am sad. I think of my shallow self, and am mad."

Henry, with unchanged gravity: "Do you believe in anything?"

"Yes, I believe fully in our mother; a good deal in you, though my faith is shaken a little just now; and am inclined to great faith in your friend Mr. Ranney."

All smile but Henry. "Yes, all that of course, but abstract propositions. Have you faith, in anything?"

"Well, I believe in genius, I believe in poetry--though not much in poets--music--though that is not for men. I believe in love--for those who may have it. I believe in woman and in G.o.d. When I draw myself close to Him, I am overcome with a great awe, and dare not pray. It is only when I seem to push Him off, and coop Him up in a little crystal-domed palace beyond the stars, and out of hearing, that I dare tell Him how huge He is, and pipe little serenades of psalmody to Him."

"Oh, Barton, you are profane!"

"No, mother, men are profane in their gorgeous egotism. We are the braggarts, and ascribe egotism to G.o.d Himself; while we are the sole objects of interest in the universe. G.o.d was and is on our account only; and when men fancy that they have found a way of running things without Him, they shove Him out entirely. I put it plainly, and it sounds bad."

"This is a compendious confession of faith," said Henry; and, pausing, "why do you put genius first?"

"As the most doubtful, and, at the same time, an interesting article.

I am at the age when a young man queries anxiously about it. Has he any of it--the least bit?"

"Well, what is your conclusion?"

"Sometimes I fancy I feel faintly its stir and spur and inspiration."

"When it may be only dyspepsia," said Henry.

"It may be. I haven't ranked myself among geniuses."

"Yet you believe in it. What is it?"

"I can't tell. Can you tell what is electricity or life?"

"That is not logical. You answer one question by asking another."

"I am not sure but that is allowable," interrupted Ranney. "You pose your opponent with an unanswerable question, and he in turn proposes several, thereby suggesting that there are things unknown, and that if you will push him to that realm you are equally involved. It may not be logical, but it usually silences."

"Not quite, in this instance," said Henry, "for we know by their manifestations that life and electricity are; they manifest themselves to us."

"And by the same rule genius manifests itself to your brother, although it may not to you."

"Thank you, Mr. Ranney," said Bart.

"Now I do not suppose," he went on, "that genius is a beneficent little imp, or genie, lodged in the brain of the fortunate or unfortunate, who is all-powerful, and always at hand to give strength, emit a flash of light, or pour inspiration into the faculties, nor does it consist in anything that answers to that idea. But there are men endowed with quick, strong intellects, with warm, ardent, intense temperaments, and with strong imaginations; where these, or their equivalents, are found happily blended, the result is genius. There is a working power that can do anything, and with apparent ease. If it plunges down, it need not remain long; if it mounts up, it alights again without effort or injury."

"And such a 'working power,' you suppose, would, of itself, be a constant self-supply, and always equal to emergencies, and of its own unaided spontaneous inspirations and energies, I suppose," said Henry, "and has nothing to do but float and plunge about, diving and soaring, in the amplitude of nature?"

"Well, Henry, you can't get out of a man what isn't in him. You need not draw on a water-bottle for nectar, or hope to carve marble columns from empty air; genius can't do that. An unformed, undeveloped mind never threw out great things spontaneously, as the cloud throws out lightning. Men are not great without achievement, nor wise without study and reflection. Nor was there ever a genius, however strong and brilliant in the rough, that would not have been stronger and more brilliant by cutting," said Bart, with vehemence. "All I contend for is, that genius, as I have supposed, can make the most and best of things, often doing with them what other and commoner minds cannot do at all."

"This is not the school-boy's idea of genius," said Ranney.

"And," said Bart, a little a.s.sertively, "I am not a school-boy."

"So I perceive," said Ranney, coolly.

"The fault I find with you geniuses--"

"We geniuses!!--"

"Is," said Henry, "you perpetually fly and caracol about, and just because you can, apparently, and for the fun of the thing."

"Eagles fly," said Bart.

"And so do b.u.t.terflies, and other gilded insects."