Read Ebook: Ηθικά Νικομάχεια Τόμος Δεύτερος by Aristotle BCE BCE Zambas Kyriakos Translator

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WITHIN THE MAZE.

The house was ugly and old-fashioned, with some added modern improvements, and was surrounded by a really beautiful garden. Though situated close upon a large market town of Northamptonshire, it stood alone, excluded from the noise and bustle of the world.

The occupant of this house was a widow lady, Mrs. Andinnian. Her husband, a post-captain in the Royal Navy, had been dead some years. She had two sons. The elder, Adam, was of no profession, and lived with her: the younger, Karl, was a lieutenant in one of Her Majesty's regiments. Adam was presumptive heir to his uncle, Sir Joseph Andinnian, a baronet of modern creation: Karl had his profession alone to look to, and a small private income of two hundred a year.

They were not rich, these Andinnians: though the captain had deemed himself well-off, what with his private fortune, and what with his pay. The private fortune was just six hundred a year; the pay not great: but Captain Andinnian's tastes were simple, his wants few. At his death it was found that he had bequeathed his money in three equal parts: two hundred a year to his wife, and two hundred each to his sons. "Adam and his mother will live together," he said in the will; "she'd not be parted from him: and four hundred pounds, with her bit of pension, will be enough for comfort. When Adam succeeds his uncle, they can make any fresh arrangement that pleases them. But I hope when that time shall come they will not forget Karl."

Mrs. Andinnian resented the will, and resented these words in it. Her elder boy, Adam, had always been first and foremost with her: never a mother loved a son more ardently than she loved him. For Karl she cared not. Captain Andinnian was not blind to the injustice, and perhaps thence arose the motive that induced him not to leave his wife's two hundred pounds of income at her own disposal: when Mrs. Andinnian died, it would lapse to Karl. The captain had loved his sons equally: he would willingly have left them equally provided for in life, and divided the fortune that was to come sometime to Adam. Mrs. Andinnian, in spite of the expected rise for Adam, would have had him left better off from his father's means than Karl.

There had been nearly a lifelong feud between the two family branches. Sir Joseph Andinnian and his brother the captain had not met for years and years: and it was a positive fact that the latter's sons had never seen their uncle. For this feud the brothers themselves were not in the first instance to blame. It did not arise with them, but with their wives. Both ladies were of a haughty, overbearing, and implacable temper: they had quarrelled very soon after their first introduction to each other; the quarrel grew, and grew, and finally involved the husbands as well in its vortex.

Joseph Andinnian, who was the younger of the two brothers, had been a noted and very successful civil engineer. Some great work, that he had originated and completed, gained him his reward--a baronetcy. While he was in the very flush of his new honours, an accident, that he met with, laid him for many months upon a sick-bed. Not only that: it incapacitated him for future active service. So, when he was little more than a middle-aged man, he retired from his profession, and took up his abode for life at a pretty estate he had bought in Kent, called Foxwood Court, barely an hour's railway journey from London: by express train not much more than half one. Here, he and his wife had lived since: Sir Joseph growing more and more of an invalid as the years went on. They had no children; consequently his brother, Captain Andinnian, was heir to the baronetcy: and, following on Captain Andinnian, Adam, the captain's eldest son.

Captain Andinnian did not live to succeed. In what seemed the pride of his health and strength, just after he had landed from a three years' voyage, and was indulging in ambitious visions of a flag, symptoms of a mortal disease manifested themselves. He begged of his physicians to let him know the truth; and they complied--he must expect but a very few weeks more of life. Captain Andinnian, after taking a day or two to look matters fully in the face, went up to London, and thence down to Sir Joseph's house in Kent. The brothers, once face to face, met as though no ill-blood had ever separated them: hands were locked in hands, gaze went out to gaze. Both were simple-minded, earnest-hearted, affectionate-natured men; and but for their wives--to whom, if the truth must be avowed, each lay in subjection--not a mis-word would ever have arisen between them.

"I am dying, Joseph," said the captain, when some of their mutual emotion had worn away. "The doctors tell me so, and I feel it to be true. Naturally, it has set me on the thought of many things--that I am afraid I have been too carelessly putting off. What I have come down to you chiefly for, is to ask about my son--Adam. You'll tell me the truth, won't you, Joseph, as between brothers?"

"I'll tell you anything, Harry," was Sir Joseph's answer. "The truth about what?"

"Whether he is to succeed you or not?"

"Why, of course he must succeed: failing yourself. What are you thinking of, Harry, to ask it? I've no son of my own: it's not likely I shall have one now. He will be Sir Adam after me."

"It's not the title I was thinking of, Joseph. Failing a direct heir, I know that must come to him. But the property?--will he have that? It is not entailed; and you could cut him out absolutely."

"D'ye think I'd be so unjust as that, Harry?" was the half indignant reply. "A baronet's title, and nothing to keep it up upon! I have never had an idea of leaving it away from you; or from him if you went first. When Adam succeeds to my name and rank, he will succeed to my property. Were my wife to survive me, she'd have this place for life, and a good part of the income: but Adam would get it all at her death."

"A bad thing that--no profession," interrupted Sir Joseph. "If I had ten sons, and they were all heirs to ten baronetcies, each one should be brought up to use his brains or his hands."

"It's what I have urged over and over again," avowed the captain. "But the wife--you know what she is--set her face against it. 'He'll be Sir Adam Andinnian of Foxwood,' she'd answer me with, 'and he shall not soil his hands with work.' I have been nearly, always afloat, too, Joseph: not on the spot to enforce things: something has lain in that."

"I wonder the young man should not have put himself forward to be of use in the world!"

"Adam is idly inclined. I am sorry for it, but it is so. One thing has been against him, and that's his health. He's as tall and strong a young fellow to look at as you'd meet in a summer's day, but he is, I fear, anything but sound in constitution. A nice fellow too, Joseph."

"Of good disposition?"

"Very. We had used to be almost afraid of him as a boy; he would put himself into such unaccountable fits of passion. Just as--as--somebody else used to do, you know, Joseph," added the sailor with some hesitation.

Sir Joseph nodded. The somebody else was the captain's wife, and Adam's mother. Sir Joseph's own wife was not exempt from the same kind of failing: but in a less wild degree than Mrs. Andinnian. With her the defects of temper partook more of the nature of sullenness.

"But Adam seems to have outgrown all that: I've seen and heard nothing of it since he came to manhood," resumed the captain. "I wish from my heart he had some profession to occupy him. His mother always filled him up with the notion that he would be your heir and not want it."

"He'll be my heir, in all senses, safe enough, Harry: though I'd rather have heard he was given to industry than idleness. How does he get through his time? Young men naturally seek some pursuit as an outlet for their superfluous activity."

"Adam has a pursuit that he makes a hobby of; and that is his love of flowers; in fact his love of gardening in any shape. He'll be out amidst the plants and shrubs from sunrise to sunset. Trained to it, he'd have made a second Sir Joseph Paxton. I should like you to see him: he is very handsome."

"And the young one--what is he like? What's his name by the way? Henry?"

"No. Karl."

"Ay, Karl. His mother was in Germany when he was born, it being a cheap place to live in--I was only a poor lieutenant then, Joseph, and just gone off to be stationed before the West Indies. A great friend of hers, there, some German lady, had a little boy named Karl. My wife fell in love with the name, and called her own infant after it."

"Well, it sounds an outlandish name to me," cried the baronet, who was entirely unacquainted with every language but his own.

"So I thought, when she first wrote me word," assented Captain Andinnian. "But after I came home and got used to call the lad by it, you don't know how I grew to like it. The name gains upon your favour in a wonderful manner, Joseph: and I have heard other people say the same. It is Charles in English, you know."

"Then why not call him Charles?"

"Because the name is really Karl, and not Charles. He was baptized in Germany, but christened in England, and in both places it was done as 'Karl.' His mother has never cared very much for him."

"For him or his name, do you mean?"

"Oh, for him."

Sir Joseph opened his eyes. "Why on earth not?"

"Because all the love her nature's capable of--and in her it's tolerably strong--is given to Adam. She can't spare an atom from him: her love for him is as a kind of idolatry. For one thing, she was very ill when Karl was born, and neither nursed nor tended him: he was given over to the care of her sister who lived with her, and who had him wholly, so to say, for the first three years of his life."

"And what's Karl like?" repeated Sir Joseph.

"You ought to see him," burst forth the Captain with animation. "He's everything that's good and noble arid worthy. Joseph, there are not many young men of the present day so attractive as Karl."

"With a tendency to be passionate, like his brother?"

"Not he. A tendency to patience, rather. They have put upon him at home--between ourselves; kept him down, you know; both mother and brother. He is several years younger than Adam; but they are attached to each other. A more gentle-natured, sweet-tempered lad than Karl never lived: all his instincts are those of a gentleman. He will make a brave soldier. He is ensign in the -- regiment."

"The -- regiment," repeated Sir Joseph. "Rather a crack corps that, is it not?"

"Yes: Karl has been lucky. He will have to make his own way in the world, for I can't give him much. But now that I am assured of your intentions as to Adam, things look a trifle brighter. Joseph, I thank you with all my heart."

Once more the brothers clasped hands. This reunion was the pleasantest event of their later lives. The captain remained two days at Foxwood. Lady Andinnian was civilly courteous to him, but never cordial. She did not second her brother's pressing wish that he should prolong his stay: neither did she once ask after any of his family.

Captain Andinnian's death took place, as anticipated. His will, when opened, proved to be w

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