OVER THE HERRING-POND.
LIKE the vision that had visited Cleve as he sate in the breakfast-room
of Verney House, awaiting the Rev. Isaac Dixie, the old Chateau de
Cresseron shared that night in the soft yet brilliant moonlight. That
clergyman--vulgar I am afraid; worldly, perhaps; certainly not
beautiful--had undertaken this foreign mission into the land of romance;
and among its shadows and enchanted lights, and heroic phantoms, looked,
I am afraid, incongruous, as the long-eared, shaggy head of Bottom in
the fairy-haunted wood near Athens.
In the ancient town of Caen, in the Silver Lion, the Rev. Isaac Dixie
that evening made himself partially understood, and altogether
comfortable. He had an excellent dinner, and partook, moderately of
course, of the very best vintage in the crypt of that venerable inn. Why
should he not? Was he not making harmless holiday, and guilty of no
extravagance; for had not Mr. Cleve Verney buckled a long purse to his
girdle, and told him to dip his fingers in it as often and as deep as he
pleased? And if he undertook the task--trod out Cleve Verney's corn,
surely it was no business of his to call for a muzzle, and deny himself
his heart's content.
In that exquisite moonlight, having had his cup of coffee, the Rev.
Isaac Dixie made a loitering promenade: everything was bewitching--a
little wonderful, he fancied--a little strange--from his shadow, that
looked so sharp on the white road, to the gothic fronts and gables of
old carved houses, emitting ruddy glimmerings from diamond casemates
high in air, and half-melting in the deep liquid sky, gleaming with
stars over his head.
All was perfectly French in language and costume: not a note of the
familiar English accent mingled in the foreign hum of life. He was quite
at his ease. To all censorious eyes he walked invisible; and, shall I
tell it? Why not? For in truth, if his bishop, who abhors that narcotic,
and who, I am sure, never reads novels, and therefore cannot read it
here, learns nothing of it, the telling can hurt nobody. He smoked three
great cheroots, mild and fragrant, that evening, in the ancient streets
of Caen, and returned to his inn, odorous of that perfume.
It would have been altogether a delicious excursion, had there not been
a suspense and an anxiety to trouble the divine. The Rev. Isaac Dixie
regretted now that he had not asked Cleve to define his object. He
suspected, but did not know its nature. He had no idea how obstinately
and amazingly the problem would recur to his mind, and how serious would
grow his qualms as the hour of revelation drew near.
The same moon is shining over the ancient streets of Caen, and over
smoke-canopied Verney House, and over the quaint and lonely Chateau de
Cresseron. In a tapestried room in this old French house candles were
burning, the window open, and Margaret Fanshawe sitting at it, and
looking out on the moonlit woods and waters, and breathing the still
air, that was this night soft as summer, in the raptures of a strange
dream: a dream no more; the uncertainty is over, and all her griefs. No
longer is she one of that forlorn race that hath but a short time to
live, and is full of misery. She is not born to trouble, as the sparks
fly upward, but translated. Is it so? Alas! alas! the angelic voice has
not yet proclaimed "that God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."
These words are for the glorified, who have passed the gates of death.
In this bliss, as in all that pertains to love, reason has small share.
The heart rejoices as the birds sing. A great suspense--the greatest
care that visits the young heart--has ended in a blessed certainty, and
in so far the state resembles heaven; but, as in all mortal happiness,
there mingles in this also a sadness like distant music.
Old Sir Booth Fanshawe is away on one of his mysterious journeys, and
cannot return for three or four days, at soonest. I do not know whether
things are beginning to look brighter with Sir Booth, or whether his
affairs are being "managed" into _utter_ ruin. Meanwhile, the evil
spirit has departed from the house, and the spirit of music has come,
music with yet a cadence of sadness in it.
This fair, quaint landscape, and beautiful moonlight! Who ever looks on
such a scene that does not feel a melancholy mingling in his delight?
"The moon shines bright:--in such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise; in such a night,
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls,
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Cresid lay that night. In such a night
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage."
Thus, in the visions of the Seer who lies in Stratford-on-Avon,
moonlight and love and melancholy are related; and so it is, and will
be, to the end of time, till mortal love is no more, and sadness ends,
and the moon is changed to blood, and all things are made new.
And now over the moonlit water, through the boughs of the old trees, the
still night air is thrilled with a sweet contralto--a homely song--the
echo of childish days and the nursery. Poor Milly! her maid who died so
early, whose lover was a young sailor, far away, used to sing it for her
in the summer evenings, when they sat down under the hawthorns, on
Winnockhough, looking toward the sea, though the sea was many a mile
away:--
"As Eve went forth from Paradise,
She, weeping, bore away
One flower that, reared, in tears and sighs,
Is growing to this day.
"Where'er the children of the fall
Are toiling to this hour,
It blooms for each, it blooms for all,
And Love we call this flower.
"Red roses of the bygone year
Are mingled with the mould,
And other roses will appear
Where they grew pale and old.
"But where it grew, no other grows,
No bloom restores the sere;
So this resembles not the rose,
And knows no other year.
"So, welcome, when thy bloom is red,
The glory of thy light;
And welcome when thy bloom is shed,
The long sleep of my night."
And now the song is ended, and, listening, nature seems to sigh; and
looking toward the old chateau, the front next you is in shadow, the
window is open, and within you see _two_ ladies. The elder is standing
by the girl, who sits still at the open window, looking up into the face
of her old friend--the old friend who has known, in the early days of
romance, what love is, for whom now "the bloom is shed, and mingling
with the mould," but who remembers sadly the blush and glory of its
light that died five-and-thirty years ago upon Canadian snows.
Gently the old lady takes her hand, and sits beside her girlish
kinswoman, and lays her other hand over that, and smiles with a strange
look of affection, and admiration, and immeasurable compassion, that
somehow seems to translate her, it is so sad and angelic. I cannot hear
what she is saying, but the young lady looks up, and kisses her thin
cheek, and lays her head upon her old shoulder.
Behind, high over the steep roofs and pinnacles, and those glimmering
weather-vanes, that seem sometimes to melt quite away, hangs the moon,
unclouded--meet emblem of a pure love--no longer crossed by the sorrows
of true love's course--Dian the Chaste, with her sad, pure, and
beautifully misleading light--alas! the emblem, also, of mutation.
In a few concise and somewhat dry sentences, as old prison stones bear
the records which thin hands, long since turned to dust, have carved,
the world's corridors and corners bear the tracings of others that were
busy two thousand years ago; and the inscriptions that tell the trite
story of human fears and sadness, cut sharp and deep in the rock, tell
simply and briefly how Death was the King of Terrors, and the shortness
of Life the bitter wonder, and black Care the companion of the wayfarers
who marched by the same route to the same goal, so long ago. These
gigantic griefs and horrors are all in a nutshell. A few words tell
them. Their terror is in their truth. There is no use in expanding them:
they are sublimely simple. Among the shadowy men and women that people
these pages, I see them everywhere--plots too big and complicated to be
got, by any compression, within the few pages and narrow covers of the
book of their lives: Care, in her old black weeds, and Death, with
stealthy foot and blow like thunder.
Twelve months had come and gone for ever since the Reverend Isaac Dixie
made that little trip to Caen, every month bringing his portion of
blossom, fruit, or blight to every mortal. All had gone well and
gloriously in this Verney Peerage matter.
The death of the late Honourable Arthur Verney was proved; and the
Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney, as next heir, having complied with the
proper forms, duly succeeded to the ancient peerage of the Verneys. So
the dream was accomplished more splendidly, perhaps, than if the prize
had come earlier, for the estates were in such condition as they had
never attained to since the great rebellion; and if Viscount Verney was
not among the more potent of his peers, the fault was not in the peerage
and its belongings.
I don't know that Lord Verney was on the whole a happier man than the
Honourable Kiffyn had been. He had become somewhat more exacting; his
pride pronounced itself more implacably; men felt it more, because he
was really formidable. Whatever the Viscount in the box might be, the
drag he drove was heavy, and men more alert in getting out of his way
than they would, perhaps, had he been a better whip.
He had at length his heart's desire; but still there was something
wanting. He was not quite where he ought to be. With his boroughs, and
his command of one county, and potent influence in another, he ought to
have been decidedly a greater man. He could not complain of being
slighted. The minister saw him when he chose; he was listened to, and in
all respects courteously endured. But there was something
unsatisfactory. He was not _telling_, as he had expected. Perhaps he had
no very clear conceptions to impress. He had misgivings, too, that
secretly depressed and irritated him. He saw Twyndle's eye wander
wildly, and caught him yawning stealthily into his hand, while he was
giving him his view of the affair of the "the Matilda Briggs," and the
right of search. He had seen Foljambe, of the Treasury, suddenly laugh
at something he thought was particularly wise, while unfolding to that
gentleman, in the drawing-room, after dinner, his ideas about local
loans, in aid of agriculture. Foljambe did not laugh outright. It was
only a tremulous qualm of a second, and he was solemn again, and rather
abashed. Lord Verney paused, and looked for a second, with stern
inquiry in his face, and then proceeded politely. But Lord Verney never
thought or spoke well of Foljambe again; and often reviewed what he had
said, in secret, to try and make out where the absurdity lay, and was
shy of ventilating that particular plan again, and sometimes suspected
that it was the boroughs and the county, and not Kiffyn Lord Verney,
that were listened to.
As the organ of self-esteem is the region of our chief consolations and
irritations (and its condition regulates temper), this undivulged
mortification, you may be sure, did not make Lord Verney, into whose
ruminations was ever trickling, through a secret duct, this fine stream
of distilled gall, brighter in spirits, or happier in temper.
Oh! vanity of human wishes! Not that the things we wish for are not in
themselves pleasant, but that we forget that, as in nature every
substance has its peculiar animalcule and infestings, so every blessing
has, too minute to be seen at a distance, but quite inseparable, its
parasite troubles.
Cleve Verney, too, who stood so near the throne, was he happy? The
shadow of care was cast upon him. He had grown an anxious man. "Verney's
looking awfully thin, don't you think, and seedy? and he's always
writing long letters, and rather cross," was the criticism of one of his
club friends. "Been going a little too fast, I dare say."
Honest Tom Sedley thought it was this pending peerage business, and the
suspense; and reported to his friend the confident talk of the town on
the subject. But when the question was settled, with a brilliant
facility, his good humour did not recover. There was still the same
cloud over his friend, and Tom began to fear that Cleve had got into
some very bad scrape, probably with the Hebrew community.