He Was, They Assured My Father, Just The Man He
Wanted, A Fine Fellow Of Good Family, Highly Educated And
All that;
but he had been a bit wild, and all that was wanted to bring him round
was to
Get him out a good distance from the capital and its
temptations and into a quiet, peaceful home like ours. Strange to say,
he actually turned out to be all they had said, and more. He had
studied hard at college and when reading for a profession; he was a
linguist, a musician, he had literary tastes, and was well read in
science, and above all he was a first-rate mathematician. Naturally,
to my studious brother he came as an angel beautiful and bright, with
no suggestion of the fiend in him; for not only was he a
mathematician, but he was also an accomplished fencer and boxer. And
so the two were soon fast friends, and worked hard together over their
books, and would then repair for an hour or two every day to the
plantation to fence and box and practise with pistol and rifle at the
target. He also took to the humbler task of teaching the rest of us
with considerable zeal, and succeeded in rousing a certain enthusiasm
in us. We were, he told us, grossly ignorant - simply young barbarians;
but he had penetrated beneath the thick crust that covered our minds,
and was pleased to find that there were possibilities of better
things; that if we would but second his efforts and throw ourselves,
heart and soul, into our studies, we should eventually develop from
the grub condition to that of purple-winged butterflies.
Our new teacher was tremendously eloquent, and it looked as if he had
succeeded in conquering that wildness or weakness or whatever it was
which had been his undoing in the past. Then came a time when he would
ask for a horse and go for a long ride. He would make a call at some
English estancia, and drink freely of the wine or spirits hospitably
set on the table. And the result would be that he would come home
raving like a lunatic: - a very little alcohol would drive him mad.
Then would follow a day or two of repentance and black melancholy;
then recovery and a fresh fair start.
All this was somewhat upsetting to all of us: to my mother it was
peculiarly distressing, and became more so when, in one of his
repentant fits and touched by her words, he gave her a packet of his
mother's letters to read: - the pathetic letters of a broken-hearted
woman to her son, her only and adored child, lost to her for ever in a
distant country, thousands of miles from home. These sad appeals only
made my mother more anxious to save him, and it was no doubt her
influence that for a while did save and make him able to succeed in
his efforts to overcome his fatal weakness. But he was of too sanguine
a temper, and by and by began to think that he had conquered, that he
was safe, that it was time for him to do something great; and with
some brilliant scheme he had hatched in his mind, he left us and went
back to the capital to work it out. But alas! before many months, when
he was getting seriously to work, with friends and money to help him
and every prospect of success, he broke down once more, so hopelessly
that once more he had to be got rid of, and he was sent out of the
country, but whether back to his own people or to some other remote
district in Argentina I do not remember, nor do I know what became of
him.
Thus disastrously ended the third and last attempt my father made to
have us instructed at home. Nor could he send us to town, where there
was but one English school for boys, run by a weak, sickly gentleman,
whose house was a nest of fevers and every sort of ailment incidental
to boys herded together in an unhealthy boarding-school. Prosperous
English people sent their children home to be educated at that time,
but it was enormously expensive and we were not well off enough. A
little later an exception had to be made in the case of my elder
brother, who would not settle down to sheep-farming or any other
occupation out on the pampas, but had set his heart on pursuing his
studies abroad.
At this period of my life this brother was so important a person to me
that I shall have to give even more space to him in this chapter than
he had in the last one. Yet of my brothers he was not the one nearest
to my heart. He was five full years my senior, and naturally
associated with an elder brother, while we two smaller ones were left
to amuse ourselves together in our own childish way. With a younger
brother for only playmate, I prolonged my childhood, and when I was
ten my brother of fifteen appeared a young man to me. We were all four
extremely unlike in character as well as appearance, and alike in one
thing only - the voice, inherited from our father; but just as our
relationship appeared in that one physical character, so I think that
under all the diversities in our minds and temperaments there was a
hidden quality, a something of the spirit, which made us one; and
this, I believe, came from the mother's side.
That family likeness in the voice was brought home to us in a curious
way just about this time, when I was in my tenth year. My brother went
one day to Buenos Ayres, and arriving at the stable where our horses
were always put up, long after dark, he left his horse, and on going
out called to the stableman, giving him some direction.
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