SCENE—The Hall in the Old Tower of CAPTAIN ROLAND DE CAXTON.
“But you have not done?” said Augustine Caxton.
PISISTRATUS.—“What remains to do?”
MR. CAXTON.—“What! why, the Final Chapter!—the last news you can give us of those whom you have introduced to our liking or dislike.”
PISISTRATUS.—“Surely it is more dramatic to close the work with a scene that completes the main design of the plot, and leave it to the prophetic imagination of all whose flattering curiosity is still not wholly satisfied, to trace the streams of each several existence, when they branch off again from the lake in which their waters converge, and by which the sibyl has confirmed and made clear the decree that ‘Conduct is Fate.’”
MR. CAXTON.—“More dramatic, I grant; but you have not written a drama. A novelist should be a comfortable, garrulous, communicative, gossiping fortune-teller; not a grim, laconical, oracular sibyl. I like a novel that adopts all the old-fashioned customs prescribed to its art by the rules of the Masters,—more especially a novel which you style ‘My Novel’ par emphasis.”
CAPTAIN ROLAND.—“A most vague and impracticable title ‘My Novel’! It must really be changed before the work goes in due form to the public.”
MR. SQUILLS.—“Certainly the present title cannot be even pronounced by many without inflicting a shock upon their nervous system. Do you think, for instance, that my friend, Lady Priscilla Graves—who is a great novel-reader indeed, but holds all female writers unfeminine deserters to the standard of Man—could ever come out with, ‘Pray, sir, have you had time to look at—MY Novel?’—She would rather die first. And yet to be silent altogether on the latest acquisition to the circulating libraries would bring on a functional derangement of her ladyship’s organs of speech. Or how could pretty Miss Dulcet—all sentiment, it is true, but all bashful timidity—appall Captain Smirke from proposing with, ‘Did not you think the parson’s sermon a little too dry in—MY Novel’? It will require a face of brass, or at least a long course of citrate of iron, before a respectable lady or unassuming young gentleman, with a proper dread of being taken for scribblers, could electrify a social circle with ‘The reviewers don’t do justice to the excellent things in—My Novel.’”
CAPTAIN ROLAND.—“Awful consequences, indeed, may arise from the mistakes such a title gives rise to. Counsellor Digwell, for instance, a lawyer of literary tastes, but whose career at the Bar was long delayed by an unjust suspicion amongst the attorneys that he had written a ‘Philosophical Essay’—imagine such a man excusing himself for being late at a dinner of bigwigs, with ‘I could not get away from—My Novel!’ It would be his professional ruin! I am not fond of lawyers in general, but still I would not be a party to taking the bread out of the mouth of those with a family; and Digwell has children,—the tenth an innocent baby in arms.”
MR. CAXTON.—“As to Digwell in particular, and lawyers in general, they are too accustomed to circumlocution to expose themselves to the danger your kind heart apprehends; but I allow that a shy scholar like myself, or a grave college tutor, might be a little put to the blush, if he were to blurt forth inadvertently with, ‘Don’t waste your time over trash like—MY Novel.’ And that thought presents to us another and more pleasing view of this critical question. The title you condemn places the work under universal protection. Lives there a man or a woman so dead to self-love as to say, ‘What contemptible stuff is—MY Novel’? Would he or she not rather be impelled by that strong impulse of an honourable and virtuous heart, which moves us to stand as well as we can with our friends, to say, ‘Allow that there is really a good thing now and then in—My Novel.’ Moreover, as a novel aspires to embrace most of the interests or the passions that agitate mankind,—to generalize, as it were, the details of life that come home to us all,—so, in reality, the title denotes that if it be such as the author may not unworthily call his Novel, it must also be such as the reader, whoever he be, may appropriate in part to himself, representing his own ideas, expressing his own experience, reflecting, if not in full, at least in profile, his own personal identity. Thus, when we glance at the looking-glass in another man’s room, our likeness for the moment appropriates the mirror; and according to the humour in which we are, or the state of our spirits and health, we say to ourselves, ‘Bilious and yellow!—I might as well take care of my diet!’ Or, ‘Well, I ‘ve half a mind to propose to dear Jane; I’m not such an ill-looking dog as I thought for!’ Still, whatever result from that glance at the mirror, we never doubt that ‘t is our likeness we see; and each says to the phantom reflection, ‘Thou art myself,’ though the mere article of furniture that gives the reflection belongs to another. It is my likeness if it be his glass. And a narrative that is true to the Varieties of Life is every Man’s Novel, no matter from what shores, by what rivers, by what bays, in what pits, were extracted the sands and the silex, the pearlash, the nitre, and quicksilver which form its materials; no matter who the craftsman who fashioned its form; no matter who the vendor that sold, or the customer who bought: still, if I but recognize some trait of myself, ‘t is my likeness that makes it ‘My Novel.’”
MR. SQUILLS (puzzled, and therefore admiring).—“Subtle, sir,—very subtle. Fine organ of Comparison in Mr. Caxton’s head, and much called into play this evening!”
MR. CAXTON (benignly).—“Finally, the author by this most admirable and much signifying title dispenses with all necessity of preface. He need insinuate no merits, he need extenuate no faults; for, by calling his work thus curtly ‘MY Novel,’ he doth delicately imply that it is no use wasting talk about faults or merits.”
PISISTRATUS (amazed).—“How is that, sir?”
MR. CAXTON.—“What so clear? You imply that, though a better novel may be written by others, you do not expect to write a novel to which, taken as a novel, you would more decisively and unblushingly prefix that voucher of personal authorship and identity conveyed in the monosyllable ‘My.’ And if you have written your best, let it be ever so bad, what can any man of candour and integrity require more from you? Perhaps you will say that, if you had lived two thousand years ago, you might have called it ‘The Novel,’ or the ‘Golden Novel,’ as Lucius called his story ‘The Ass;’ and Apuleius, to distinguish his own more elaborate Ass from all Asses preceding it, called his tale ‘The Golden Ass.’ But living in the present day, such a designation—implying a merit in general, not the partial and limited merit corresponding only with your individual abilities—would be presumptuous and offensive. True, I here anticipate the observation I see Squills is about to make—”
SQUILLS.—“I, Sir?”
MR. CAXTON.—“You would say that, as Scarron called his work of fiction ‘The Comic Novel,’ so Pisistratus might have called his ‘The Serious Novel,’ or ‘The Tragic Novel.’ But, Squills, that title would not have been inviting nor appropriate, and would have been exposed to comparison with Scarron, who being dead is inimitable. Wherefore—to put the question on the irrefragable basis of mathematics—wherefore as A B ‘My Novel’ is not equal to B C ‘The Golden Novel,’ nor to D E ‘The Serious or Tragic Novel,’ it follows that A B ‘My Novel’ is equal to P C ‘Pisistratus Caxton,’ and P C ‘Pisistratus Caxton’ must therefore be just equal, neither more nor less, to A B ‘My Novel,’—which was to be demonstrated.” My father looked round triumphantly, and observing that Squills was dumfounded, and the rest of his audience posed, he added mildly,
“And so now, ‘non quieta movere,’ proceed with the Final Chapter, and tell us first what became of that youthful Giles Overreach, who was himself his own Marrall?”
“Ay,” said the captain, “what became of Randal Leslie? Did he repent and reform?”
“Nay,” quoth my father, with a mournful shake of the head, “you can regulate the warm tide of wild passion, you can light into virtue the dark errors of ignorance; but where the force of the brain does but clog the free action of the heart, where you have to deal, not with ignorance misled, but intelligence corrupted, small hope of reform; for reform here will need re-organization. I have somewhere read (perhaps in Hebrew tradition) that of the two orders of fallen spirits,—the Angels of Love and the Angels of Knowledge,—the first missed the stars they had lost, and wandered back through the darkness, one by one, into heaven; but the last, lighted on by their own lurid splendours, said, ‘Wherever we go, there is heaven!’ And deeper and lower descending, lost their shape and their nature, till, deformed and obscene, the bottomless pit closed around them.”
MR. SQUILLS.—“I should not have thought, Mr. Caxton, that a book-man like you would be thus severe upon Knowledge.”
MR. CAXTON (in wrath).—“Severe upon knowledge! Oh, Squills, Squills, Squills! Knowledge perverted is knowledge no longer. Vinegar, which, exposed to the sun, breeds small serpents, or at best slimy eels, not comestible, once was wine. If I say to my grandchildren, ‘Don’t drink that sour stuff, which the sun itself fills with reptiles,’ does that prove me a foe to sound sherry? Squills, if you had but received a scholastic education, you would know the wise maxim that saith, ‘All things the worst are corruptions from things originally designed as the best.’ Has not freedom bred anarchy, and religion fanaticism? And if I blame Marat calling for blood, or Dominic racking a heretic, am I severe on the religion that canonized Francis de Sales, or the freedom that immortalized Thrasybulus?”
Mr. Squills, dreading a catalogue of all the saints in the calendar, and an epitome of Ancient History, exclaimed eagerly, “Enough, sir; I am convinced!”
MR. CAXTON.—“Moreover, I have thought it a natural stroke of art in Pisistratus to keep Randal Leslie, in his progress towards the rot of the intellect unwholesomely refined, free from all the salutary influences that deter ambition from settling into egotism. Neither in his slovenly home, nor from his classic tutor at his preparatory school, does he seem to have learned any truths, religious or moral, that might give sap to fresh shoots, when the first rank growth was cut down by the knife; and I especially noted, as illustrative of Egerton, no less than of Randal, that though the statesman’s occasional hints of advice to his protege are worldly wise in their way, and suggestive of honour as befitting the creed of a gentleman, they are not such as much influence a shrewd reasoner like Randal, whom the example of the playground at Eton had not served to correct of the arid self-seeking, which looked to knowledge for no object but power. A man tempted by passions like Audley, or seduced into fraud by a cold, subtle spirit like Leslie, will find poor defence in the elegant precept, ‘Remember to act as a gentleman.’ Such moral embroidery adds a beautiful scarf to one’s armour; but it is not the armour itself! Ten o’clock, as I live! Push on, Pisistratus! and finish the chapter.”
MRS. CAXTON (benevolently).—“Don’t hurry. Begin with that odious Randal Leslie, to oblige your father; but there are others whom Blanche and I care much more to hear about.”
Pisistratus, since there is no help for it, produces a supplementary manuscript, which proves that, whatever his doubt as to the artistic effect of a Final Chapter, he had foreseen that his audience would not be contented without one.
Randal Leslie, late at noon the day after he quitted Lansmere Park, arrived on foot at his father’s house. He had walked all the way, and through the solitudes of the winter night; but he was not sensible of fatigue till the dismal home closed round him, with its air of hopeless ignoble poverty; and then he sunk upon the floor feeling himself a ruin amidst the ruins. He made no disclosure of what had passed to his relations. Miserable man, there was not one to whom he could confide, or from whom he might hear the truths that connect repentance with consolation! After some weeks passed in sullen and almost unbroken silence, be left as abruptly as he had appeared, and returned to London. The sudden death of a man like Egerton had even in those excited times created intense, though brief sensation. The particulars of the election, that had been given in detail in the provincial papers, were copied into the London journals, among those details, Randal Leslie’s conduct in the Committee-room, with many an indignant comment on selfishness and ingratitude. The political world of all parties formed one of those judgments on the great man’s poor dependant, which fix a stain upon the character and place a barrier in the career of ambitious youth. The important personages who had once noticed Randal for Audley’s sake, and who, on their subsequent and not long-deferred restoration to power, could have made his fortune, passed him in the streets without a nod. He did not venture to remind Avenel of the promise to aid him in another election for Lansmere, nor dream of filling up the vacancy which Egerton’s death had created. He was too shrewd not to see that all hope of that borough was over,—he would have been hooted in the streets and pelted from the hustings. Forlorn in the vast metropolis as Leonard had once been, in his turn he loitered on the bridge, and gazed on the remorseless river. He had neither money nor connections,—nothing save talents and knowledge to force his way back into the lofty world in which all had smiled on him before; and talents and knowledge, that had been exerted to injure a benefactor, made him but the more despised. But even now, Fortune, that had bestowed on the pauper heir of Rood advantages so numerous and so dazzling, out of which he had cheated himself, gave him a chance, at least, of present independence, by which, with patient toil, he might have won, if not to the highest places, at least to a position in which he could have forced the world to listen to his explanations; and perhaps receive his excuses. The L5,000 that Audley designed for him, and which, in a private memorandum, the statesman had entreated Harley to see safely rescued from the fangs of the law, were made over to Randal by Lord L’Estrange’s solicitor; but this sum seemed to him so small after the loss of such gorgeous hopes, and the up-hill path seemed so slow after such short cuts to power, that Randal looked upon the unexpected bequest simply as an apology for adopting no profession. Stung to the quick by the contrast between his past and his present place in the English world, he hastened abroad. There, whether in distraction from thought, or from the curiosity of a restless intellect to explore the worth of things yet untried, Randal Leslie, who had hitherto been so dead to the ordinary amusements of youth, plunged into the society of damaged gamesters and third-rate roues. In this companionship his very talents gradually degenerated, and their exercise upon low intrigues and miserable projects but abased his social character, till, sinking step after step as his funds decayed, he finally vanished out of the sphere in which even profligates still retain the habits, and cling to the caste of gentlemen. His father died; the neglected property of Rood devolved on Randal, but out of its scanty proceeds he had to pay the portions of his brother and sister, and his mother’s jointure; the surplus left was scarcely visible in the executor’s account. The hope of restoring the home and fortunes of his forefathers had long ceased. What were the ruined hall and its bleak wastes, without that hope which had once dignified the wreck and the desert? He wrote from St. Petersburg, ordering the sale of the property. No one great proprietor was a candidate for the unpromising investment; it was sold in lots among small freeholders and retired traders. A builder bought the hall for its material. Hall, lands, and name were blotted out of the map and the history of the county.
The widow, Oliver, and Juliet removed to a provincial town in another shire. Juliet married an ensign in a marching regiment; and died of neglect after childbirth. Mrs. Leslie did not long survive her. Oliver added to his little fortune by marriage with the daughter of a retail tradesman, who had amassed a few thousand pounds. He set up a brewery, and contrived to live without debt, though a large family and his own constitutional inertness extracted from his business small profits and no savings. Nothing of Randal had been heard of for years after the sale of Rood, except that he had taken up his residence either in Australia or the United States; it was not known which, but presumed to be the latter. Still, Oliver had been brought up with so high a veneration of his brother’s talents, that he cherished the sanguine belief that Randal would some day appear, wealthy and potent, like the uncle in a comedy; lift rip the sunken family, and rear into graceful ladies and accomplished gentlemen the clumsy little boys and the vulgar little girls who now crowded round Oliver’s dinner-table, with appetites altogether disproportioned to the size of the joints.
One winter day, when from the said dinner-table wife and children had retired, and Oliver sat sipping his half-pint of bad port, and looking over unsatisfactory accounts, a thin terrier, lying on the threadbare rug by the niggard fire, sprang up and barked fiercely. Oliver lifted his dull blue eyes, and saw opposite to him, at the window, a human face. The face was pressed close to the panes, and was obscured by the haze which the breath of its lips drew forth from the frosty rime that had gathered on the glass.
Oliver, alarmed and indignant, supposing this intrusive spectator of his privacy to be some bold and lawless tramper, stepped out of the room, opened the front door, and bade the stranger go about his business; while the terrier still more inhospitably yelped and snapped at the stranger’s heels. Then a hoarse voice said, “Don’t you know me, Oliver? I am your brother Randal! Call away your dog and let me in.” Oliver stared aghast; he could not believe his slow senses, he could not recognize his brother in the gaunt grim apparition before him; but at length he came forward, gazed into Randal’s face, and, grasping his hand in amazed silence, led him into the little parlour. Not a trace of the well-bred refinement which had once characterized Randal’s air and person was visible. His dress bespoke the last stage of that terrible decay which is significantly called the “shabby genteel.” His mien was that of the skulking, timorous, famished vagabond. As he took off his greasy tattered hat, he exhibited, though still young in years, the signs of premature old age. His hair, once so fine and silken, was of a harsh iron-gray, bald in ragged patches; his forehead and visage were ploughed into furrows; intelligence was still in the aspect, but an intelligence that instinctively set you on your guard,—sinister, gloomy, menacing.
Randal stopped short all questioning. He seized the small modicum of wine on the table, and drained it at a draught. “Poole,” said he, “have you nothing that warms a man better than this?” Oliver, who felt as if under the influence of a frightful dream, went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of brandy three-parts full. Randal snatched at it eagerly, and put his lips to the mouth of the bottle. “Ah,” said he, after a short pause, “this comforts; now give me food.” Oliver hastened himself to serve his brother; in fact, he felt ashamed that even the slipshod maid-servant should see his visitor. When he returned with such provisions as he could extract from the larder, Randal was seated by the fire, spreading over the embers emaciated bony hands, like the talons of a vulture.
He devoured the cold meat set before him with terrible voracity, and nearly finished the spirits left in the bottle; but the last had no effect in dispersing his gloom. Oliver stared at him in fear; the terrier continued to utter a low suspicious growl.
“You would know my history?” at length said Randal, bluntly. “It is short. I have tried for fortune and failed, I am without a penny and without a hope. You seem poor,—
“I suppose you cannot much help me. Let me at least stay with you for a time,—I know not where else to look for bread and for shelter.”
Oliver burst into tears, and cordially bade his brother welcome. Randal remained some weeks at Oliver’s house, never stirring out of the doors, and not seeming to notice, though he did not scruple to use, the new habiliments, which Oliver procured ready-made, and placed, without remark, in his room. But his presence soon became intolerable to the mistress of the house, and oppressive even to its master. Randal, who had once been so abstemious that he had even regarded the most moderate use of wine as incompatible with clear judgment and vigilant observation, had contracted the habit of drinking spirits at all hours of the day; but though they sometimes intoxicated him into stupor, they never unlocked his heart nor enlivened his sullen mood. If he observed less acutely than of old, he could still conceal just as closely. Mrs. Oliver Leslie, at first rather awed and taciturn, grew cold and repelling, then pert and sarcastic, at last undisguisedly and vulgarly rude. Randal made no retort; but his sneer was so galling that the wife flew at once to her husband, and declared that either she or his brother must leave the house. Oliver tried to pacify and compromise, with partial success; and a few days afterwards, he came to Randal and said timidly, “You see, my wife brought me nearly all I possess, and you don’t condescend to make friends with her. Your residence here must be as painful to you as to me. But I wish to see you provided for; and I could offer you something, only it seems, at first glance, so beneath—”
“Beneath what?” interrupted Randal, witheringly. “What I was—or what I am? Speak out!”
“To be sure you are a scholar; and I have heard you say fine things about knowledge and so forth; and you’ll have plenty of books at your disposal, no doubt; and you are still young, and may rise—and—”
“Hell and torments! Be quick,—say the worst or the best!” cried Randal, fiercely.
“Well, then,” said poor Oliver, still trying to soften the intended proposal, “you must know that our poor sister’s husband was nephew to Dr. Felpem, who keeps a very respectable school. He is not learned himself, and attends chiefly to arithmetic and book-keeping, and such matters; but he wants an usher to teach the classics, for some of the boys go to college. And I have written to him, just to sound—I did not mention your name till I knew if you would like it; but he will take my recommendation. Board, lodging, L50 a year; in short, the place is yours if you like it.” Randal shivered from head to foot, and was long before he answered. “Well, be it so; I have come to that. Ha, ha! yes, knowledge is power!” He paused a few moments. “So, the old Hall is razed to the ground, and you are a tradesman in a small country town, and my sister is dead, and I henceforth am—John Smith! You say that you did not mention my name to the schoolmaster,—still keep it concealed; forget that I once was a Leslie. Our tie of brotherhood ceases when I go from your hearth. Write, then, to your head-master, who attends to arithmetic, and secure the rank of his usher in Latin and Greek for—John Smith!”
Not many days afterwards, the protege of Audley Egerton entered on his duties as usher in one of those large, cheap schools, which comprise a sprinkling of the sons of gentry and clergymen designed for the learned professions, with a far larger proportion of the sons of traders, intended, some for the counting-house, some for the shop and the till. There, to this day, under the name of John Smith, lives Randal Leslie.
It is probably not pride alone that induces him to persist in that change of name, and makes him regard as perpetual the abandonment of the one that he took from his forefathers, and with which he had once identified his vaulting ambition; for shortly after he had quitted his brother’s house, Oliver read in the weekly newspaper, to which he bounded his lore of the times in which he lived, an extract from an American journal, wherein certain mention was made of an English adventurer who, amongst other aliases, had assumed the name of Leslie,—that extract caused Oliver to start, turn pale, look round, and thrust the paper into the fire. From that time he never attempted to violate the condition Randal had imposed on him, never sought to renew their intercourse, nor to claim a brother. Doubtless, if the adventurer thus signalized was the man Oliver suspected, whatever might be imputed to Randal’s charge that could have paled a brother’s cheek, it was none of the more violent crimes to which law is inexorable, but rather (in that progress made by ingratitude and duplicity, with Need and Necessity urging them on) some act of dishonesty which may just escape from the law, to sink, without redemption, the name. However this be, there is nothing in Randal’s present course of life which forbodes any deeper fall. He has known what it is to want bread, and his former restlessness subsides into cynic apathy.
He lodges in the town near the school, and thus the debasing habit of unsocial besotment is not brought under the eyes of his superior. The drain is his sole luxury; if it be suspected, it is thought to be his sole vice. He goes through the ordinary routine of tuition with average credit; his spirit of intrigue occasionally shows itself in attempts to conciliate the favour of the boys whose fathers are wealthy, who are born to higher rank than the rest; and he lays complicated schemes to be asked home for the holidays. But when the schemes succeed, and the invitation comes, he recoils and shrinks back,—he does not dare to show himself on the borders of the brighter world he once hoped to sway; he fears that he may be discovered to be—a Leslie! On such days, when his taskwork is over, he shuts himself up in his room, locks the door, and drugs himself into insensibility.
Once he found a well-worn volume running the round of delighted schoolboys, took it up, and recognized Leonard’s earliest popular work, which had, many years before, seduced himself into pleasant thoughts and gentle emotions. He carried the book to his own lodgings, read it again; and when he returned it to its young owner, some of the leaves were stained with tears. Alas! perhaps but the maudlin tears of broken nerves, not of the awakened soul,—for the leaves smelt strongly of whiskey. Yet, after that re-perusal, Randal Leslie turned suddenly to deeper studies than his habitual drudgeries required. He revived and increased his early scholarship; he chalked the outline of a work of great erudition, in which the subtlety of his intellect found field in learned and acute criticism. But he has never proceeded far in this work. After each irregular and spasmodic effort, the pen drops from his hand, and he mutters, “But to what end?
“I can never now raise a name. Why give reputation to—John Smith?”
Thus he drags on his life; and perhaps, when he dies, the fragments of his learned work may be discovered in the desk of the usher, and serve as hints to some crafty student, who may filch ideas and repute from the dead Leslie, as Leslie had filched them from the living Burley.
While what may be called poetical justice has thus evolved itself from the schemes in which Randal Leslie had wasted rare intellect in baffling his own fortunes, no outward signs of adversity evince the punishment of Providence on the head of the more powerful offender, Baron Levy. No fall in the Funds has shaken the sumptuous fabric, built from the ruined houses of other men. Baron Levy is still Baron Levy the millionaire; but I doubt if at heart he be not more acutely miserable than Randal Leslie the usher. For Levy is a man who has admitted the fiercer passions into his philosophy of life; he has not the pale blood and torpid heart which allow the scotched adder to dose away its sense of pain. Just as old age began to creep upon the fashionable usurer, he fell in love with a young opera-dancer, whose light heels had turned the lighter heads of half the eligans of Paris and London. The craft of the dancer was proof against all lesser bribes than that of marriage; and Levy married her. From that moment his house, Louis Quinze, was more crowded than ever by the high-born dandies whose society he had long so eagerly courted. That society became his curse. The baroness was an accomplished coquette; and Levy (with whom, as we have seen, jealousy was the predominant passion) was stretched on an eternal rack. His low estimate of human nature, his disbelief in the possibility of virtue, added strength to the agony of his suspicions, and provoked the very dangers he dreaded. His self-torturing task was that of the spy upon his own hearth. His banquets were haunted by a spectre; the attributes of his wealth were as the goad and the scourge of Nemesis. His gay cynic smile changed into a sullen scowl, his hair blanched into white, his eyes were hollow with one consuming care. Suddenly he left his costly house,—left London; abjured all the society which it had been the joy of his wealth to purchase; buried himself and his wife in a remote corner of the provinces; and there he still lives. He seeks in vain to occupy his days with rural pursuits,—he to whom the excitements of a metropolis, with all its corruption and its vices, were the sole sources of the torpid stream that he called “pleasure.” There, too, the fiend of jealousy still pursues him: he prowls round his demesnes with the haggard eye and furtive step of a thief; he guards his wife as a prisoner, for she threatens every day to escape. The life of the man who had opened the prison to so many is the life of a jailer. His wife abhors him, and does not conceal it; and still slavishly he dotes on her. Accustomed to the freest liberty, demanding applause and admiration as her rights; wholly uneducated, vulgar in mind, coarse in language, violent in temper, the beautiful Fury he had brought to his home makes that home a hell. Thus, what might seem to the superficial most enviable, is to their possessor most hateful. He dares not ask a soul to see how he spends his gold; he has shrunk into a mean and niggardly expenditure, and complains of reverse and poverty, in order to excuse himself to his wife for debarring her the enjoyments which she anticipated from the Money Bags she had married. A vague consciousness of retribution has awakened remorse, to add to his other stings. And the remorse coming from superstition, not religion (sent from below, not descending from above), brings with it none of the consolations of a genuine repentance. He never seeks to atone, never dreams of some redeeming good action. His riches flow around him, spreading wider and wider—out of his own reach.
The Count di Peschiera was not deceived in the calculations which had induced him to affect repentance, and establish a claim upon his kinsman. He received from the generosity of the Duke di Serrano an annuity not disproportioned to his rank, and no order from his court forbade his return to Vienna. But, in the very summer that followed his visit to Lansmere, his career came to an abrupt close. At Baden-Baden he paid court to a wealthy and accomplished Polish widow; and his fine person and terrible repute awed away all rivals, save a young Frenchman, as daring as himself, and much more in love. A challenge was given and accepted. Peschiera appeared on the fatal ground, with his customary sang-froid, humming an opera air, and looking so diabolically gay that his opponent’s nerves were affected in spite of his courage; and the Frenchman’s trigger going off before he had even taken aim, to his own ineffable astonishment, he shot the count through the heart, dead.
Beatrice di Negra lived for some years after her brother’s death in strict seclusion, lodging within a convent, though she did not take the veil, as she at first proposed. In fact, the more she saw of the sisterhood, the more she found that human regrets and human passions (save in some rarely gifted natures) find their way through the barred gates and over the lofty walls. Finally, she took up her abode in Rome, where she is esteemed for a life not only marked by strict propriety, but active benevolence. She cannot be prevailed on to accept from the duke more than a fourth of the annuity that had been bestowed on her brother; but she has few wants, save those of charity; and when charity is really active, it can do so much with so little gold! She is not known in the gayer circles of the city; but she gathers round her a small society composed chiefly of artists and scholars, and is never so happy as when she can aid some child of genius,—more especially if his country be England.
The squire and his wife still flourish at Hazeldean, where Captain Barnabas Higginbotham has taken up his permanent abode. The captain is a confirmed hypochondriac; but he brightens up now and then when he hears of any illness in the family of Mr. Sharpe Currie, and, at such times, is heard to murmur, “If those seven sickly children should go off, I might still have very great—EXPECTATIONS,”—for the which he has been roundly scolded by the squire, and gravely preached at by the parson. Upon both, however, he takes his revenge in a fair and gentlemanlike way, three times a week, at the whist-table, the parson no longer having the captain as his constant partner, since a fifth now generally cuts in at the table,—in the person of that old enemy and neighbour, Mr. Sticktorights. The parson, thus fighting his own battles unallied to the captain, observes with melancholy surprise that there is a long run of luck against him, and that he does not win so much as he used to do. Fortunately that is the sole trouble—except Mrs. Dale’s “little tempers,” to which he is accustomed—that ever disturbs the serene tenor of the parson’s life. We must now explain how Mr. Sticktorights came to cut in at the Hazeldean whist-table. Frank has settled at the Casino with a wife who suits him exactly, and that wife was Miss Sticktorights. It was two years before Frank recovered the disappointment with which the loss of Beatrice saddened his spirits, but sobered his habits and awoke his reflection. An affection, however misplaced and ill-requited, if honestly conceived and deeply felt, rarely fails to advance the self-education of man. Frank became steady and serious; and, on a visit to Hazeldean, met at a county ball Miss Sticktorights, and the two young persons were instantly attracted towards each other, perhaps by the very feud that had so long existed between their houses. The marriage settlements were nearly abandoned, at the last moment, by a discussion between the parents as to the Right of Way; but the dispute was happily appeased by Mr. Dale’s suggestion that as both properties would be united in the children of the proposed marriage, all cause for litigation would naturally cease, since no man would go to law with himself. Mr. Sticktorights and Mr. Hazeldean, however, agreed in the precaution of inserting a clause in the settlements (though all the lawyers declared that it could not be of any legal avail), by which it was declared, that if, in default of heritable issue by the said marriage, the Sticktorights’ estate devolved on some distant scion of the Sticktorights family, the right of way from the wood across the waste land would still remain in the same state of delectable dispute in which it then stood. There seems, however, little chance of a lawsuit thus providently bequeathed to the misery of distant generations, since two sons and two daughters are already playing at hide-and-seek on the terrace where Jackeymo once watered the orange-trees, and in the belvidere where Riccabocca had studied his Machiavelli.
Jackeymo, though his master has assessed the long arrears of his wages at a sum which would enable him to have orange-groves and servants of his own, still clings to his former duties, and practises his constitutional parsimony. His only apparent deviation into profusion consists in the erection of a chapel to his sainted namesake, to whom he burns many a votive taper,—the tapers are especially tall, and their sconces are wreathed with garlands, whenever a letter with the foreign postmark brings good news of the absent Violante and her English lord.
Riccabocca was long before he reconciled himself to the pomp of his principalities and his title of Duke. Jemima accommodated herself much more readily to greatness; but she retained all her native Hazeldean simplicity at heart, and is adored by the villagers around her, especially by the young of both sexes, whom she is always ready to marry and to portion,—convinced, long ere this, of the redeemable qualities of the male sex by her reverence for the duke, who continues to satirize women and wedlock, and deem himself—thanks to his profound experience of the one, and his philosophical endurance of the other—the only happy husband in the world. Longer still was it before the sage, who had been so wisely anxious to rid himself of the charge of a daughter, could wean his thoughts from the remembrance of her tender voice and loving eyes,—not, indeed, till he seriously betook himself to the task of educating the son with whom, according to his scientific prognostics, Jemima presented him shortly after his return to his native land. The sage began betimes with his Italian proverbs, full of hardhearted worldly wisdom, and the boy was scarce out of the hornbook before he was introduced to Machiavelli. But somehow or other the simple goodness of the philosopher’s actual life, with his high-wrought patrician sentiments of integrity and honour, so counteract the theoretical lessons, that the Heir of Serrano is little likely to be made more wise by the proverbs, or more wicked by the Machiavelli, than those studies have practically made the progenitor, whose opinions his countrymen still shame with the title of “Alphonso the Good.”
The duke long cherished a strong curiosity to know what had become of Randal. He never traced the adventurer to his closing scene. But once (years before Randal had crept into his present shelter) in a visit of inspection to the hospital at Genoa, the duke, with his peculiar shrewdness of observation in all matters except those which concerned himself, was remarking to the officer in attendance, “that for one dull, honest man whom fortune drove to the hospital or the jail, he had found, on investigation of their antecedents, three sharp-witted knaves who had thereto reduced themselves”—when his eye fell upon a man asleep in one of the sick wards; and recognizing the face, not then so changed as Oliver had seen it, he walked straight up, and gazed upon Randal Leslie.
“An Englishman,” said the official. “He was brought hither insensible, from a severe wound on the head, inflicted, as we discovered, by a well-known chevalier d’industrie, who declared that the Englishman had outwitted and cheated him. That was not very likely, for a few crowns were all we could find on the Englishman’s person, and he had been obliged to leave his lodgings for debt. He is recovering, but there is fever still.”
The duke gazed silently on the sleeper, who was tossing restlessly on his pallet, and muttering to himself; then he placed his purse in the official’s hand. “Give this to the Englishman,” said he; “but conceal my name. It is true, it is true, the proverb is very true,” resumed the duke, descending the stairs, “Piu pelli di volpi the di asini vanno in Pellieciaria.” (More hides of foxes than of asses find their way to the tanner’s).
Dr. Morgan continues to prescribe globules for grief, and to administer infinitesimally to a mind diseased. Practising what he prescribes, he swallows a globule of caustic whenever the sight of a distressed fellow-creature moves him to compassion,—a constitutional tendency which, he is at last convinced, admits of no radical cure. For the rest, his range of patients has notably expanded; and under his sage care his patients unquestionably live as long—as Providence pleases. No allopathist can say more.
The death of poor John Burley found due place in the obituary of “literary men.” Admirers, unknown before, came forward and subscribed for a handsome monument to his memory in Kensall Green. They would have subscribed for the relief of his widow and children, if he had left any. Writers in magazines thrived for some months on collections of his humorous sayings, anecdotes of his eccentricities, and specimens of the eloquence that had lightened through the tobacco-reek of tavern and club-room. Leonard ultimately made a selection from his scattered writings which found place in standard libraries, though their subjects were either of too fugitive an interest, or treated in too capricious a manner, to do more than indicate the value of the ore, had it been purified from its dross and subjected to the art of the mint. These specimens could not maintain their circulation as the coined money of Thought, but they were hoarded by collectors as rare curiosities. Alas, poor Burley!
The Pompleys sustained a pecuniary loss by the crash of a railway company, in which the colonel had been induced to take several shares by one of his wife’s most boasted “connections,” whose estate the said railway proposed to traverse, on paying L400 an acre, in that golden age when railway companies respected the rights of property. The colonel was no longer able, in his own country, to make both ends meet at Christmas. He is now straining hard to achieve that feat in Boulogne, and has in the process grown so red in the face, that those who meet him in his morning walk on the pier, bargaining for fish, shake their heads and say, “Old Pompley will go off in a fit of apoplexy; a great loss to society; genteel people the Pompleys! and very highly ‘connected.’”
The vacancy created in the borough of Lansmere by Audley Egerton’s death was filled up by our old acquaintance, Haveril Dashmore, who had unsuccessfully contested that seat on Egerton’s first election. The naval officer was now an admiral, and perfectly reconciled to the Constitution, with all its alloy of aristocracy.
Dick Avenel did not retire from parliament so soon as he had anticipated. He was not able to persuade Leonard, whose brief fever of political ambition was now quenched in the calm fountain of the Muse, to supply his place in the senate, and he felt that the House of Avenel needed one representative. He contrived, however, to devote, for the first year or two, much more of his time to his interests at Screwstown than to the affairs of his country, and succeeded in baffling the over-competition to which he had been subjected by taking the competitor into partnership. Having thus secured a monopoly at Screwstown, Dick, of course, returned with great ardour to his former enlightened opinions in favour of free trade. He remained some years in parliament; and though far too shrewd to venture out of his depth as an orator, distinguished himself so much by his exposure of “humbug” on an important Committee, that he acquired a very high reputation as a man of business, and gradually became so in request amongst all the members who moved for “Select Committees,” that he rose into consequence; and Mrs. Avenel, courted for his sake, more than her own, obtained the wish of her heart, and was received as an acknowledged habituee into the circles of fashion. Amidst these circles, however, Dick found that his home entirely vanished; and when he came home from the House of Commons, tired to death, at two in the morning, disgusted at always hearing that Mrs. Avenel was not yet returned from some fine lady’s ball, he formed a sudden resolution of cutting Parliament, Fashion, and London altogether; withdrew his capital, now very large, from his business; bought the remaining estates of Squire Thornhill; and his chief object of ambition is in endeavouring to coax or bully out of their holdings all the small freeholders round, who had subdivided amongst them, into poles and furlongs, the fated inheritance of Randal Leslie. An excellent justice of the peace, though more severe than your old family proprietors generally are; a spirited landlord, as to encouraging and making, at a proper percentage, all permanent improvements on the soil, but formidable to meet if the rent be not paid to the day, or the least breach of covenant be heedlessly incurred on a farm that he could let for more money; employing a great many hands in productive labour, but exacting rigorously from all the utmost degree of work at the smallest rate of wages which competition and the poor-rate permit; the young and robust in his neighbourhood never stinted in work, and the aged and infirm, as lumber worn out, stowed away in the workhouse,—Richard Avenel holds himself an example to the old race of landlords; and, taken altogether, he is no very bad specimen of the rural civilizers whom the application of spirit and capital raise up in the new.
From the wrecks of Egerton’s fortune, Harley, with the aid of his father’s experience in business, could not succeed in saving, for the statesman’s sole child and heir, more than a few thousand pounds; and but for the bonds and bills which, when meditating revenge, he had bought from Levy, and afterwards thrown into the fire—paying dear for that detestable whistle—even this surplus would not have been forthcoming.
Harley privately paid out of his own fortune the L5,000 Egerton had bequeathed to Leslie; perhaps not sorry, now that the stern duty of exposing the false wiles of the schemer was fulfilled, to afford some compensation even to the victim who had so richly deserved his fate; and pleased, though mournfully, to comply with the solemn request of the friend whose offence was forgotten in the remorseful memory of his own projects of revenge.
Leonard’s birth and identity were easily proved, and no one appeared to dispute them. The balance due to him as his father’s heir, together with the sum Avenel ultimately paid to him for the patent of his invention, and the dowry which Harley insisted upon bestowing on Helen, amounted to that happy competence which escapes alike the anxieties of poverty, and (what to one of contemplative tastes and retired habits are often more irksome to bear) the show and responsibilities of wealth. His father’s death made a deep impression upon Leonard’s mind; but the discovery that he owed his birth to a statesman of so great a repute, and occupying a position in society so conspicuous, contributed not to confirm, but to still, the ambition which had for a short time diverted him from his more serene aspirations. He had no longer to win a rank which might equal Helen’s. He had no longer a parent, whose affections might be best won through pride. The memories of his earlier peasant life, and his love for retirement,—in which habit confirmed the constitutional tendency,—made him shrink from what a more worldly nature would have considered the enviable advantages of a name that secured the entrance into the loftiest sphere of our social world. He wanted not that name to assist his own path to a rank far more durable than that which kings can confer. And still he retained in the works he had published, and still he proposed to bestow on the works more ambitious that he had, in leisure and competence, the facilities to design with care, and complete with patience, the name he had himself invented, and linked with the memory of the low-born mother. Therefore, though there was some wonder, in drawing-rooms and clubs, at the news of Egerton’s first unacknowledged marriage, and some curiosity expressed as to what the son of that marriage might do,—and great men were prepared to welcome, and fine ladies to invite and bring out, the heir to the statesman’s grave repute,—yet wonder and curiosity soon died away; the repute soon passed out of date, and its heir was soon forgotten. Politicians who fall short of the highest renown are like actors; no applause is so vivid while they are on the stage, no oblivion so complete when the curtain falls on the last farewell.
Leonard saw a fair tomb rise above Nora’s grave, and on the tomb was engraved the word of WIFE, which vindicated her beloved memory. He felt the warm embrace of Nora’s mother, no longer ashamed to own her grandchild; and even old John was made sensible that a secret weight of sorrow was taken from his wife’s stern silent heart. Leaning on Leonard’s arm, the old man gazed wistfully on Nora’s tomb, and muttering, “Egerton! Egerton! ‘Leonora, the first wife of the Right Honourable Audley Egerton!’ Ha! I voted for him. She married the right colour. Is that the date? Is it so long since she died? Well, well! I miss her sadly. But wife says we shall both now see her soon; and wife once thought we should never see her again,—never; but I always knew better. Thank you, sir. I’m a poor creature, but these tears don’t pain me,—quite otherwise. I don’t know why, but I’m very happy. Where’s my old woman? She does not mind how much I talk about Nora now. Oh, there she is! Thank you, sir, humbly; but I’d rather lean on my old woman,—I’m more used to it; and—wife, when shall we go to Nora?”
Leonard had brought Mrs. Fairfield to see her parents, and Mrs. Avenel welcomed her with unlooked-for kindness. The name inscribed upon Nora’s tomb softened the mother’s heart to her surviving daughter. As poor John had said, “She could now talk about Nora;” and in that talk, she and the child she had so long neglected discovered how much they had in common. So when, shortly after his marriage with Helen, Leonard went abroad, Jane Fairfield remained with the old couple. After their death, which was within a day of each other, she refused, perhaps from pride, to take up her residence with Leonard; but she settled near the home which he subsequently found in England. Leonard remained abroad for some years. A quiet observer of the various manners and intellectual development of living races, a rapt and musing student of the monuments that revive the dead, his experience of mankind grew large in silence, and his perceptions of the Sublime and Beautiful brightened into tranquil art under their native skies.
On his return to England he purchased a small house amidst the most beautiful scenes of Devonshire, and there patiently commenced a work in which he designed to bequeath to his country his noblest thoughts in their fairest forms. Some men best develop their ideas by constant exercise; their thoughts spring from their brain ready-armed, and seek, like the fabled goddess, to take constant part in the wars of men. And such are, perhaps, on the whole, the most vigorous and lofty writers; but Leonard did not belong to this class. Sweetness and serenity were the main characteristics of his genius; and these were deepened by his profound sense of his domestic happiness. To wander alone with Helen by the banks of the murmurous river; to gaze with her on the deep still sea; to feel that his thoughts, even when most silent, were comprehended by the intuition of love, and reflected on that translucent sympathy so yearned for and so rarely found by poets,—these were the Sabbaths of his soul, necessary to fit him for its labours: for the Writer has this advantage over other men, that his repose is not indolence. His duties, rightly fulfilled, are discharged to earth and men in other capacities than those of action. If he is not seen among those who act, he is all the while maturing some noiseless influence, which will guide or illumine, civilize or elevate, the restless men whose noblest actions are but the obedient agencies of the thoughts of writers. Call not, then, the Poet whom we place amidst the Varieties of Life, the sybarite of literary ease, if, returning on Summer eves, Helen’s light footstep by his musing side, he greets his sequestered home, with its trellised flowers smiling out from amidst the lonely cliffs in which it is embedded; while lovers still, though wedded long, they turn to each other, with such deep joy in their speaking eyes, grateful that the world, with its various distractions and noisy conflicts, lies so far from their actual existence,—only united to them by the happy link that the writer weaves invisibly with the hearts that he moves and the souls that he inspires. No! Character and circumstance alike unfitted Leonard for the strife of the thronged literary democracy; they led towards the development of the gentler and purer portions of his nature,—to the gradual suppression of the more combative and turbulent. The influence of the happy light under which his genius so silently and calmly grew, was seen in the exquisite harmony of its colours, rather than the gorgeous diversities of their glow. His contemplation, intent upon objects of peaceful beauty, and undisturbed by rude anxieties and vehement passions, suggested only kindred reproductions to the creative faculty by which it was vivified; so that the whole man was not only a poet, but, as it were, a poem,—a living idyl, calling into pastoral music every reed that sighed and trembled along the stream of life. And Helen was so suited to a nature of this kind, she so guarded the ideal existence in which it breathes! All the little cares and troubles of the common practical life she appropriated so quietly to herself,—the stronger of the two, as should be a poet’s wife, in the necessary household virtues of prudence and forethought. Thus if the man’s genius made the home a temple, the woman’s wisdom gave to the temple the security of the fortress. They have only one child,—a girl; they call her Nora. She has the father’s soul-lit eyes, and the mother’s warm human smile. She assists Helen in the morning’s noiseless domestic duties; she sits in the evening at Leonard’s feet, while he reads or writes. In each light grief of childhood she steals to the mother’s knee; but in each young impulse of delight, or each brighter flash of progressive reason, she springs to the father’s breast. Sweet Helen, thou hast taught her this, taking to thyself the shadows even of thine infant’s life, and leaving to thy partner’s eyes only its rosy light!
But not here shall this picture of Helen close. Even the Ideal can only complete its purpose by connection with the Real; even in solitude the writer must depend upon mankind.
Leonard at last has completed the work, which has been the joy and the labour of so many years,—the work which he regards as the flower of all his spiritual being, and to which he has committed all the hopes that unite the creature of today with the generations of the future. The work has gone through the press, each line lingered over with the elaborate patience of the artist, loath to part with the thought he has sculptured into form, while an improving touch can be imparted by the chisel. He has accepted an invitation from Norreys. In the restless excitement (strange to him since his first happy maiden effort) he has gone to London. Unrecognized in the huge metropolis, he has watched to see if the world acknowledge the new tie he has woven between its busy life and his secluded toil. And the work came out in an unpropitious hour; other things were occupying the public; the world was not at leisure to heed him, and the book did not penetrate into the great circle of readers. But a savage critic has seized on it, and mangled, distorted, deformed it, confounding together defect and beauty in one mocking ridicule; and the beauties have not yet found an exponent, nor the defects a defender; and the publisher shakes his head, points to groaning shelves, and delicately hints that the work which was to be the epitome of the sacred life within life does not hit the taste of the day. Leonard thinks over the years that his still labour has cost him, and knows that he has exhausted the richest mines of his intellect, and that long years will elapse before he can recruit that capital of ideas which is necessary to sink new shafts and bring to light fresh ore; and the deep despondency of intellect, frustrated in its highest aims, has seized him, and all he has before done is involved in failure by the defeat of the crowning effort. Failure, and irrecoverable, seems his whole ambition as writer; his whole existence in the fair Ideal seems to have been a profitless dream, and the face of the Ideal itself is obscured. And even Norreys frankly, though kindly, intimates that the life of a metropolis is essential to the healthful intuition of a writer in the intellectual wants of his age, since every great writer supplies a want in his own generation, for some feeling to be announced, some truth to be revealed. And as this maxim is generally sound, as most great writers have lived in cities, Leonard dares not dwell on the exception; it is only success that justifies the attempt to be an exception to the common rule; and with the blunt manhood of his nature, which is not a poet’s, Norreys sums up with, “What then? One experiment has failed; fit your life to your genius, and try again.” Try again! Easy counsel enough to the man of ready resource and quick combative mind; but to Leonard, how hard and how harsh! “Fit his life to his genius!”—renounce contemplation and Nature for the jostle of Oxford Street! Would that life not scare away the genius forever? Perplexed and despondent, though still struggling for fortitude, he returns to his home; and there at his hearth awaits the Soother, and there is the voice that repeats the passages most beloved, and prophesies so confidently of future fame; and gradually all around smiles from the smile of Helen. And the profound conviction that Heaven places human happiness beyond the reach of the world’s contempt or praise, circulates through his system and restores its serene calm. And he feels that the duty of the intellect is to accomplish and perfect itself,—to harmonize its sounds into music that may be heard in heaven, though it wake not an echo on the earth. If this be done, as with some men, best amidst the din and the discord, be it so; if, as with him, best in silence, be it so too. And the next day he reclines with Helen by the seashore, gazing calmly as before on the measureless sunlit ocean; and Helen, looking into his face, sees that it is sunlit as the deep. His hand steals within her own, in the gratitude that endears beyond the power of passion, and he murmurs gently, “Blessed be the woman who consoles.”
The work found its way at length into fame, and the fame sent its voices loud to the poet’s home. But the applause of the world had not a sound so sweet to his ear, as, when, in doubt, humiliation, and sadness, the lips of his Helen had whispered “Hope! and believe!”
Side by side with this picture of Woman the Consoler, let me place the companion sketch. Harley L’Estrange, shortly after his marriage with Violante, had been induced, whether at his bride’s persuasions, or to dissipate the shadow with which Egerton’s death still clouded his wedded felicity, to accept a temporary mission, half military, half civil, to one of our colonies. On this mission he had evinced so much ability and achieved so signal a success, that on his return to England he was raised to the peerage, while his father yet lived to rejoice that the son who would succeed to his honours had achieved the nobler dignity of honours not inherited, but won. High expectations were formed of Harley’s parliamentary success; but he saw that such success, to be durable, must found itself on the knowledge of wearisome details, and the study of that practical business which jarred on his tastes, though it suited his talents. Harley had been indolent for so many years,—and there is so much to make indolence captivating to a man whose rank is secured, who has nothing to ask from fortune, and who finds at his home no cares from which he seeks a distraction; so he laughed at ambition in the whim of his delightful humours, and the expectations formed from his diplomatic triumph died away. But then came one of those political crises, in which men ordinarily indifferent to politics rouse themselves to the recollection that the experiment of legislation is not made upon dead matter, but on the living form of a noble country; and in both Houses of Parliament the strength of party is put forth.
It is a lovely day in spring, and Harley is seated by the window of his old room at Knightsbridge,—now glancing to the lively green of the budding trees; now idling with Nero, who, though in canine old age, enjoys the sun like his master; now repeating to himself, as he turns over the leaves of his favourite Horace, some of those lines that make the shortness of life the excuse for seizing its pleasures and eluding its fatigues, which formed the staple morality of the polished epicurean; and Violante (into what glorious beauty her maiden bloom has matured!) comes softly into the room, seats herself on a low stool beside him, leaning her face on her hands, and looking up at him through her dark, clear, spiritual eyes; and as she continues to speak, gradually a change comes over Harley’s aspect, gradually the brow grows thoughtful, and the lips lose their playful smile. There is no hateful assumption of the would-be “superior woman,” no formal remonstrance, no lecture, no homily which grates upon masculine pride; but the high theme and the eloquent words elevate unconsciously of themselves, and the Horace is laid aside,—a Parliamentary Blue Book has been, by some marvel or other, conjured there in its stead; and Violante now moves away as softly as she entered. Harley’s hand detains her.
“Not so. Share the task, or I quit it. Here is an extract I condemn you to copy. Do you think I would go through this labour if you were not to halve the success?—halve the labour as well!”
And Violante, overjoyed, kisses away the implied rebuke, and sits down to work, so demure and so proud, by his side. I do not know if Harley made much way in the Blue Book that morning; but a little time after he spoke in the Lords, and surpassed all that the most sanguine had hoped from his talents. The sweetness of fame and the consciousness of utility once fully tasted, Harley’s consummation of his proper destinies was secure. A year later, and his voice was one of the influences of England. His boyish love of glory revived,—no longer vague and dreamy, but ennobled into patriotism, and strengthened into purpose. One night, after a signal triumph, he returned home, with his father, who had witnessed it, and Violante—who all lovely, all brilliant, though she was, never went forth in her lord’s absence, to lower among fops and flatterers the dignity of the name she so aspired to raise—sprang to meet him. Harley’s eldest son—a boy yet in the nursery—had been kept up later than usual; perhaps Violante had anticipated her husband’s triumph, and wished the son to share it. The old earl beckoned the child to him, and laying his hand on the infant’s curly locks, said with unusual seriousness,
“My boy, you may see troubled times in England before these hairs are as gray as mine; and your stake in England’s honour and peace will be great. Heed this hint from an old man who had no talents to make a noise in the world, but who yet has been of some use in his generation. Neither sounding titles, nor wide lands, nor fine abilities, will give you real joy, unless you hold yourself responsible for all to your God and to your country; and when you are tempted to believe that the gifts you may inherit from both entail no duties, or that duties are at war with true pleasure, remember how I placed you in your father’s arms, and said, ‘Let him be as proud of you some day as I at this hour am of him.’”
The boy clung to his father’s breast, and said manfully, “I will try!” Harley bent his fair smooth brow over the young earnest face, and said softly, “Your mother speaks in you!”
Then the old countess, who had remained silent and listening on her elbow-chair, rose and kissed the earl’s hand reverently. Perhaps in that kiss there was the repentant consciousness how far the active goodness she had often secretly undervalued had exceeded, in its fruits, her own cold unproductive powers of will and mind. Then passing on to Harley, her brow grew elate, and the pride returned to her eye.
“At last,” she said, laying on his shoulder that light firm hand, from which he no longer shrunk,—“at last, O my noble son, you have fulfilled all the promise of your youth!”
“If so,” answered Harley, “it is because I have found what I then sought in vain.” He drew his arm around Violante, and added, with half tender, half solemn smile, “Blessed is the woman who exalts!”
So, symbolled forth in these twin and fair flowers which Eve saved for Earth out of Paradise, each with the virtue to heal or to strengthen, stored under the leaves that give sweets to the air; here, soothing the heart when the world brings the trouble; here, recruiting the soul which our sloth or our senses enervate, leave we Woman, at least in the place Heaven assigns to her amidst the multiform “Varieties of Life.”
Farewell to thee, gentle Reader; and go forth to the world, O MY NOVEL!
THE END.
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