“Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east.”--MILTON.
HITHERTO Ernest had never met with any mind that had exercised a strong
influence over his own. At home, at school, at Gottingen, everywhere,
he had been the brilliant and wayward leader of others, persuading or
commanding wiser and older heads than his own: even Cleveland always
yielded to him, though not aware of it. In fact, it seldom happens that
we are very strongly influenced by those much older than ourselves. It
is the senior, of from two to ten years, that most seduces and enthrals
us. He has the same pursuits--views, objects, pleasures, but more art
and experience in them all. He goes with us in the path we are ordained
to tread, but from which the elder generation desires to warn us off.
There is very little influence where there is not great sympathy. It
was now an epoch in the intellectual life of Maltravers. He met for the
first time with a mind that controlled his own. Perhaps the physical
state of his nerves made him less able to cope with the half-bullying,
but thoroughly good-humoured imperiousness of Ferrers. Every day this
stranger became more and more potential with Maltravers. Ferrers,
who was an utter egotist, never asked his new friend to give him his
confidence; he never cared three straws about other people’s secrets,
unless useful to some purpose of his own. But he talked with so much
zest about himself--about women and pleasure, and the gay, stirring life
of cities--that the young spirit of Maltravers was roused from its dark
lethargy without an effort of its own. The gloomy phantoms vanished
gradually--his sense broke from its cloud--he felt once more that God
had given the sun to light the day, and even in the midst of darkness
had called up the host of stars.
Perhaps no other person could have succeeded so speedily in curing
Maltravers of his diseased enthusiasm: a crude or sarcastic unbeliever
he would not have listened to; a moderate and enlightened divine he
would have disregarded, as a worldly and cunning adjuster of laws
celestial with customs earthly. But Lumley Ferrers, who, when he argued,
never admitted a sentiment or a simile in reply, who wielded his plain
iron logic like a hammer, which, though its metal seemed dull, kindled
the ethereal spark with every stroke--Lumley Ferrers was just the man to
resist the imagination, and convince the reason, of Maltravers; and the
moment the matter came to argument, the cure was soon completed: for,
however we may darken and puzzle ourselves with fancies and visions,
and the ingenuities of fanatical mysticism, no man can mathematically or
syllogistically contend that the world which a God made, and a Saviour
visited, was designed to be damned.
And Ernest Maltravers one night softly stole to his room and opened the
New Testament, and read its heavenly moralities with purged eyes; and
when he had done, he fell upon his knees, and prayed the Almighty
to pardon the ungrateful heart that, worse than the Atheist’s, had
confessed His existence, but denied His goodness. His sleep was sweet
and his dreams were cheerful. Did he rise to find that the penitence
which had shaken his reason would henceforth suffice to save his life
from all error? Alas! remorse overstrained has too often reactions as
dangerous; and homely Luther says well, that “the mind, like the drunken
peasant on horseback, when propped on the one side, nods and falls on
the other.”--All that can be said is, that there are certain crises in
life which leave us long weaker; from which the system recovers with
frequent revulsion and weary relapse,--but from which, looking back,
after years have passed on, we date the foundation of strength or the
cure of disease. It is not to mean souls that creation is darkened by a
fear of the anger of Heaven.