CHAPTER I.

A MERE ACCIDENT.

BY

GEORGE MOORE

AUTHOR OF "A MUMMER'S WIFE," "A MODERN LOVER,"

"A DRAMA IN MUSLIN," "SPRING DAYS," ETC.

Fifth Edition

TO

My Friends at Buckingham.

Nearly twenty years have gone since first we met, dear friends; time has

but strengthened our early affections, so for love token, for sign of

the years, I bring you this book--these views of your beautiful house

and hills where I have spent so many happy days, these last perhaps the

happiest of all.

G. M.

CHAPTER I.

Three hundred yards of smooth, broad, white road leading from Henfield,

a small town in Sussex. The grasses are lush, and the hedges are tall

and luxuriant. Restless boys scramble to and fro, quiet nursemaids

loiter, and a vagrant has sat down to rest though the bank is dripping

with autumn rain. How fair a prospect of southern England! Land of

exquisite homeliness and order; land of town that is country, of country

that is town; land of a hundred classes all deftly interwoven and all

waxing to one class--England. Land encrowned with the gifts of peaceful

days--days that live in thy face and the faces of thy children.

See it. The outlying villas with their porches and laurels, the red

tiled farm houses, and the brown barns, clustering beneath the wings of

beautiful trees--elm trees; see the flat plots of ground of the market

gardens, with figures bending over baskets of roots; see the factory

chimney; there are trees and gables everywhere; see the end of the

terrace, the gleam of glass, the flower vase, the flitting white of the

tennis players; see the long fields with the long team ploughing, see

the parish church, see the embowering woods, see the squire's house, see

everything and love it, for everything here is England.

* * * * *

Three hundred yards of smooth, broad, white road, leading from Henfield,

a small town in Sussex. It disappears in the woods which lean across the

fields towards the downs. The great bluff heights can be seen, and at

the point where the roads cross, where the tall trunks are listed with

golden light, stands a large wooden gate and a small box-like lodge. A

lonely place in a densely-populated county. The gatekeeper is blind, and

his flute sounds doleful and strange, and the leaves are falling.

The private road is short and stony. Apparently space was found for it

with difficulty, and it got wedged between an enormous holly hedge and a

stiff wooden paling. But overhead the great branches fight upwards

through a tortuous growth to the sky, and, as you advance, Thornby Place

continues to puzzle you with its medley of curious and contradictory

aspects. For as the second gate, which is in iron, is approached, your

thoughts of rural things are rudely scattered by sight of what seems a

London mews. Reason with yourself. This very urban feature is occasioned

by the high brick wall which runs parallel with the stables, and this,

as you pass round to the front of the house, is hidden in the clothing

foliage of a line of evergreen oaks; continuing along the lawn, the

trees bend about the house--a wash of Naples-yellow, a few sharp Italian

lines and angles. To complete the sketch, indicate the wings of the

blown rooks on the sullen sky.

But our purpose lies deeper than that which inspires a water-colour

sketch. We must learn when and why that house was built; we must see how

the facts reconcile its somewhat tawdry, its somewhat suburban aspect,

with the richer and more romantic aspects of the park. The park is even

now, though it be the middle of autumn, full of blowing green, and the

brown circling woods, full of England and English home life. That single

tree in the foreground is a lime; what a splendour of leafage it will be

in the summer! Those four on the right are chestnuts, and those far

away, lying between us and the imperial downs, are elms; through that

vista you can see the grand line, the abrupt hollows, and the bit of

chalk road cut zig-zag out of the steep side. Then why the anomaly of

Italian urns and pilasters; why not red Elizabethan gables and diamond

casements?

Why not? Because at the beginning of the century, when Brighton was

being built, fragments of architectural gossip were flying about Sussex,

and one of these had found its way to, and had rested in, the heart of

the grandfather of the present owner: in a simple and bucolic way he had

been seized by a desire for taste and style, and the present building

was the result. Therefore it will be well to examine in detail the house

which young John Norton of '86 was so fond of declaring he could never

see without becoming instantly conscious of a sense of dislike, a hatred

that he was fond of describing as a sort of constitutional complaint

which he was never quite free from, and which any view of the Rockery,

or the pilasters of the French bow-window, or indeed of anything

pertaining to Thornby Place, called at once into an active existence.

Thornby Place is but two stories high, and its spruce walls of Portland

stone and ashlar work rise sheer out of the green sward; in front, Doric

columns support a heavy entablature, and there are urns at the corners

of the building. The six windows on the ground floor are topped with

round arches, and coming up the drive the house seems a perfect square.

But this regularity of structure has on the east side been somewhat

interfered with by a projection of some thirty or forty feet--a billiard

room, in fine, which during John's minority Mrs Norton had thought

proper to add. But she had lived to rue her experiment, for to this

young man, with his fretful craving for beauty and exactness of

proportion, it is an ever present source of complaint; and he had once

in a half humorous, half serious way, gone so far as to avail himself of

the "eyesore," as he called it, to excuse his constant absence from

home, and as a pretence for shutting himself up in his dear college,

with his cherished Latin authors. It was partly for the sake of avenging

himself on his mother, whose decisive practicality jarred the delicate

music of a nature extravagantly ideal, that he so severely criticised

all that she held sacred; and his strictures fell heaviest on the bow

window, looking somewhat like a temple with its small pilasters

supporting the rich cornice from which the dwarf vaulting springs. The

loggia, he admitted, although painfully out of keeping with the

surrounding country, was not wholly wanting in design, and he admired

its columns of a Doric order, and likewise the cornice that like a crown

encompasses the house. The entrance is under the loggia; there are round

arched windows on either side, a square window under the roof, and the

hall door is in solid oak studded with ornamental nails.

On entering you find yourself in a common white-painted passage, and on

either side of the drawing-room and dining-room are four allegorical

female heads: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Further on is the

hall, with its short polished oak stairway sloping gently to a balcony;

and there are white painted pillars that support the low roof, and these

pillars make a kind of entrance to the passage which traverses the

house from end to end. England--England clear and spotless! Nowhere do

you find a trace of dust or disorder. The arrangement of things is

somewhat mechanical. The curtains and wall-paper in the bedrooms are

suggestive of trades people and housemaids; no hastily laid aside book

or shawl breaks the excessive orderliness. Every piece of furniture is

in its appointed place, and nothing testifies to the voluntariness of

the occupant, or the impulse prompted by the need of the moment. On the

presses at the ends of the passages, where is stored the house linen,

cards are hung bearing this inscription: "When washing the woodwork the

servants are requested to use no soda without first obtaining permission

from Mrs Norton." This detail was especially distasteful to John; he

often thought of it when away, and it was one of the many irritating

impressions which went to make up the sum of his dislike of Thornby

Place.

Mrs Norton is now crying her last orders to the servants; and although

dressed elaborately as if to receive visitors, she has not yet laid

aside her basket of keys. She is in her forty-fifth year. Her figure is

square and strong, and not devoid of matronly charm. It approves a

healthy mode of life, and her quick movements are indicative of her

sharp determined mind. Her face is somewhat small for her shoulders, the

temples are narrow and high, the nose is long and thin, the cheek bones

are prominent, the chin is small, but unsuggestive of weakness, the lips

are pinched, the complexion is flushed, and the eyes set close above the

long thin nose are an icy grey. Mrs Norton is a handsome woman. Her

fashionably-cut silk fits her perfectly; the skirt is draped with grace

and precision, and the glossy shawl with the long soft fringe is elegant

and delightfully mundane. She raises her double gold eyeglasses, and,

contracting her forehead, stares pryingly about her; and so fashionable

is she, and her modernity is so picturesque, that for a moment you think

of the entrance of a duchess in the first act of a piece by Augier

played on the stage of the Français.

Still holding her gold-rimmed glasses to her eyes, she descended the

broad stairs to the hall, and from thence she went into the library.

There are two small bookcases filled with sombre volumes, and the busts

of Molière and Shakespeare attempt to justify the appellation. But there

is in the character, I was almost going to say in the atmosphere of the

room, that same undefinable, easily recognizable something which

proclaims the presence of non-readers. The traces of three or four days,

at the most a week, which John occasionally spent at Thornby Place, were

necessarily ephemeral, and the weakness of Mrs Norton's sight rendered

continuous reading impossible. Sometimes Kitty Hare brought a novel from

the circulating library to read aloud, and sometimes John forgot one of

his books, and a volume of Browning still lay on the table. The room was

filled with shadow and mournfulness, and in a dusty grate the fire

smouldered.

Between this room and the drawing-room, in a recess formed by the bow

window, Mrs Norton kept her birds, and still peering through her

gold-rimmed glasses, she examined their seed-troughs and water-glasses,

and, having satisfied herself as to their state, she entered the

drawing-room. There is little in this room; no pictures relieve the

widths of grey colourless wall paper, and the sombre oak floor is spaced

with a few pieces of furniture--heavy furniture enshrouded in grey linen

cloths. Three French cabinets, gaudy with vile veneer and bright brass,

are nailed against the walls, and the empty room is reflected dismally

in the great gold mirror which faces the vivid green of the sward and

the duller green of the encircling elms of the park.

Mrs Norton let her eyes wander, and sighing she went into the

dining-room. The dining-room is always the most human of rooms, and the

dining-room in Thornby Place, although allied to the other rooms in an

absence of fancy in its arrangement, shows prettily in contrast to them

with its white cloth cheerful with flowers and ferns. The floor is

covered with a tightly stretched red cloth, the chairs are set in

symmetrical rows; with the exception of a black clock there is no

ornament on the chimney-piece, and a red cloth screen conceals the door

used by the servants.

Mrs Norton walked with her quiet decisive step to the window, and

holding the gold-rimmed glasses to her eyes, she looked into the

landscape as if she were expecting someone to appear. The day was grimy

with clouds; mist had risen, and it hung out of the branches of the elms

like a veil of white gauze. Withdrawing her eye from the vague prospect

before her, Mrs Norton played listlessly with the tassel of one of the

blinds. "Surely," she thought, "he cannot have been foolish enough to

have walked over the downs such a day as this;" then, raising her

glasses again she looked out at the smallest angle with the wall of the

house, so that she should get sight of a vista through which any one

coming from Shoreham would have to pass. Presently a silhouette

appeared on the sullen sky. Mrs Norton moved precipitately from the

window, and she rang the bell sharply.

"John," she said, "Mr Hare has been going in for one of his long walks.

I see him now coming across the park. I am sure he has walked over the

downs; if so he must be wet through. Have a fire lighted in Mr Norton's

room, put up a pair of slippers for him: here is the key of Mr Norton's

wardrobe; let Mr Hare have what he wants."

And having detached one from the many bunches which filled her basket,

she went herself to open the door to her visitor. He was however still

some distance away, and standing in the shelter of the loggia she waited

for him, watched the vague silhouette resolving itself into colour and

line. But it was not until he climbed the iron fence which separated

the park from the garden grounds that the figure grew into its

individuality. Then you saw a man of about forty, about the medium

height and inclined to stoutness. His face was round and florid, and it

was set with sandy whiskers. His white necktie proclaimed him a parson,

and the grey mud with which his boots were bespattered told of his long

walk. As is generally the case with those of his profession, he spoke

fluently, his voice was melodious, and his rapid answers and his bright

eyes saved him from appearing commonplace. In addressing Mrs Norton he

used her Christian name.

"You are quite right, Lizzie, you are quite right; I shouldn't have done

it: had I known what a state the roads were in, I wouldn't have

attempted it."

"What is the use of talking like that, as if you didn't know what these

roads were like! For twenty years you have been making use of them, and

if you don't know what they are like in winter by this time, all I can

say is that you never will."

"I never saw them in the state they are now; such a slush of chalk and

clay was never seen."

"What can you expect after a month of heavy rain? You are wringing wet."

"Yes, I was caught in a heavy shower as I was crossing over by

Fresh-Combe-bottom. I am certainly not in a fit state to come into your

dining-room."

"I should think not indeed! I really believe if I were to allow it,

you would sit the whole afternoon in your wet clothes. You'll find

everything ready for you in John's room. I'll give you ten minutes. I'll

tell them to bring up lunch in ten minutes. Stay, will you have a glass

of wine before going upstairs?"

"I am afraid of spoiling your carpet."

"Yes, indeed! not one step further! I'll fetch it for you."

When the parson had drunk the wine, and was following the butler

upstairs, Mrs Norton returned to the dining-room with the empty glass in

her hand. She placed it on the chimney piece; she stirred the fire, and

her thoughts flowed pleasantly as she dwelt on the kindness of her old

friend. "He only got my note this morning," she mused. "I wonder if he

will be able to persuade John to return home." Mrs Norton, in her own

hard, cold way, loved her son, but in truth she thought more of the

power of which he was the representative than of the man himself: the

power to take to himself a wife--a wife who would give an heir to

Thornby Place. This was to be the achievement of Mrs Norton's life, and

the difficulties that intervened were too absorbing for her to think

much whether her son would find happiness in marriage; nor was it

natural to her to set much store on the refining charm and the uniting

influences of mental sympathies. Had she not passed the age when the

sentimental emotions are liveliest? And the fibre was wanting in her to

take into much account the whispering or the silence of passion.

Mrs Norton saw in marriage nothing but the child, and in the child

nothing but an heir--that is to say, a male who would continue the name

and traditions of Thornby Place. This would seem to indicate a material

nature, but such a misapprehension arises from the common habit of

confusing pure thought--thought which proceeds direct from the brain

and lives uncoloured by the material wants of life--with instincts whose

complexity often causes them to appear as mental potentialities, whereas

they are but instincts, inherited promptings, and aversions more or less

modified by physical constitution and the material forces of the life in

which the constitution has grown up; and yet, though pure thought, that

is to say the power of detaching oneself from the webs of life and

viewing men and things from a height, is the rarest of gifts, many are

possessed of sufficient intellectuality to enjoy with the brain apart

from the senses. Mrs Norton was such an one. After five o'clock tea she

would ask Kitty to read to her, and drawing her shawl about her

shoulders, would readily abandon the intellectual side of her nature to

the seductive charm of the romantic story of James of Scotland; and

while to the girl the heroism and chivalry were a little clouded by the

quaint turns of Rossetti's verse, to the woman these were added

delights, which her quiet penetrating understanding followed and took

instant note of.

"Were mother and son ever so different?" was the common remark. The

artistic was the side of Mrs Norton's character that was unaffectedly

kept out of sight, just as young John Norton was careful to hide from

public knowledge his strict business habits, and to expose, perhaps a

little ostentatiously, the spiritual impulses in which he was so deeply

concerned: the subtle refinement of sacred places, from the mystery of

the great window with its mitres and croziers to the sunlit path between

the tombs where the children play, the curious and yet natural charm

that attendance in the sacristy had for him, the arrangement of the

large oak presses, wherein are stored the fine altar linen and the

chalices, the distributing of the wine and water that were not for

bodily need, and the wearing of the flowing surplices, the murmuring of

the Latin responses that helped so wonderfully to enforce the impression

of beautiful and refined life which was his, and which he lived beyond

the gross influences of the wholly temporal life which he knew was

raging almost but not quite out of hearing. But, however marked may be

the accidental variations of character, hereditary instincts are

irresistible, and in obedience to them John neglected nothing that

concerned his pecuniary instincts. He was in daily communication with

his agent, and the financial position of every farmer, and the state of

every farm on his property, were not only known to him but were

constantly borne in mind, and influenced him in that progressive

ordering of things which marked the administration of his property. He

was furnished quarterly with an account of all monies paid, to which

were joined descriptive notes of each farm, showing what alterations the

past three months had brought, and setting forth the agricultural

intentions and abilities of the occupier.

John Norton waited the arrival of these accounts with a keen interest:

they were a relish to his life; and without experiencing any revulsion

of feeling, he would lay down a portfolio filled with photographs of

drawings by Leonardo da Vinci--studies of drapery, studies of hands and

feet, realistic studies of thin-lipped women and ecstatic angels with

the light upon their high foreheads--and cheerfully, and even with a

sense of satisfaction, he would untie the bald, prosaic roll of paper,

and seating himself at his window overlooking the long terrace, he would

add up the figures submitted to him, detecting the smallest arithmetical

error, making note of the least delay in payment of any money due, and

questioning the slightest overpayment for work done. The morning hours

fled as he pursued his congenial task; and from time to time he would

let his thoughts wander from the teasing computation of the money that

would be required to make the repairs that a certain farmer had

demanded, to the unworldly quiet of the sacristy; he would think, and

his thoughts contained an evanescent sense of the paradox, of the altar

linen he would have to fold and put away, and of the altar breads he

would presently have to write to London for; and meanwhile his eyes

would follow in delight the black figures of the Jesuits, who, with

cassocks blowing and berrettas set firmly on their heads, walked up and

down the long gravel walks reading their breviaries.

And living thus, half in the persuasive charm of ceremonial, half in

the hard procession of account books, the last three years of John's

life had passed. On coming of age he had spent a few weeks at Thornby

Place, but the place, and especially the country, had appeared to

him so grossly protestant--so entirely occupied with the material

well-to-doness of life--that he declared he longed to breathe again the

breath of his beloved sacristy, that he must away from that close and

oppressive atmosphere of the flesh. Since then, with the exception of a

few visits of a few days he had lived at Stanton College, writing to his

mother not of the business which concerned his property, but of mental

problems and artistic impulses. On business matters he never consulted

her; but he thought it fortunate that she should choose to spend her

jointure on Thornby Place, and so save him a great deal of expense in

keeping up the house, which, although he disliked it with a dislike that

had grown inveterate, he was still unwilling to allow to fall to ruins.

Mrs Norton, as has been said, was capable of understanding much in the

abstract; so long as things, and ideas of things, did not come within

the circle of her practical life, they were judged from a liberal

standpoint, but so soon as they touched any personal consideration,

they were judged by a moral code that in no way corresponded to her

intellectual comprehension of the matter she so unhesitatingly

condemned. But by this it must by no means be understood that Mrs Norton

wore her conscience easily--that it was a garment that could be

shortened or lengthened to suit all weathers. Our diagnosis of Mrs

Norton's character involves no accusation of laxity of principle. Mrs

Norton was a woman with an intelligence, who had inherited in all its

primary force a code of morals that had grown up in the narrower minds

of less gifted generations. In talking to her you were conscious of two

active and opposing principles: reason and hereditary morality. I use

"opposing" as being descriptive of the state of soul that would

generally follow from such mental contradiction, but in Mrs Norton no

shocking conflict of thought was possible, her mind being always

strictly subservient to her instinctive standard of right and wrong.

And John had inherited the moral temperament of his mother's family, and

with it his mother's intelligence, nor had the equipoise been disturbed

in the transmitting; his father's delicate constitution in inflicting

germs of disease had merely determined the variation represented by the

marked artistic impulses which John presented to the normal type of

either his father's or his mother's family. It would therefore seem that

any too sudden corrective of defect will result in anomaly, and, in

the case under notice, direct mingling of perfect health with spinal

weakness had germinated into a marked yearning for the heroic ages, for

the supernatural as contrasted with the meanness of the routine of

existence. And now before closing this psychical investigation, and

picking up the thread of the story, which will of course be no more than

an experimental demonstration of the working of the brain into which we

are looking, we must take note of two curious mental traits both living

side by side, and both apparently negative of the other's existence: an

intense and ever pulsatory horror of death, a sullen contempt and often

a ferocious hatred of life. The stress of mind engendered by the

alternating of these themes of suffering would have rendered life an

unbearable burden to John, had he not found anchorage in an invincible

belief in God, a belief which set in stormily for the pomp and opulence

of Catholic ceremonial, for the solemn Gothic arch and the jewelled joy

of painted panes, for the grace and the elegance and the order of

hieratic life.

In a being whose soul is but the shadow of yours, a second soul looking

towards the same end as your soul, or in a being whose soul differs

radically, and is concerned with other satisfactions and other ideals,

you will most probably find some part of the happiness of your dreams,

but in intercourse with one who is grossly like you, but who is

absolutely different when the upper ways of character are taken into

account, there will be--no matter how inexorable are the ties that

bind--much fret and irritation and noisy clashing. It was so with John

Norton and his mother; even in the exercise of faculties that had been

directly transmitted from one to the other there had been angry

collision. For example:--their talents for business were identical; but

while she thought the admirable conduct of her affairs was a thing to be

proud of, he would affect an air of negligence, and would willingly

have it believed that he lived independent of such gross necessities.

Then his malady--for intense depression of the spirits was a malady with

him--offered an ever-recurring cause of misunderstanding. How irritating

it was when he lay shut up in his room, his soul looking down with

murderous eyes on the poor worm that writhed out its life in view of the

pitiless stars, and longing with a fierce wild longing to shake off the

burning garment of consciousness, and plunge into the black happiness of

the grave, to hear Mrs Norton on the threshold uttering from time to

time admonitory remarks.

"You should not give way to such feelings, sir; you should not allow

yourself to be unhappy. Look at me, am I unhappy? and I have more to

bear with than you, but I am not always thinking of myself.... I am in

fairly good health, and I am always cheerful! Why are you not the same?

You bring it all upon yourself; I have no pity for you.... You should

cease to think of yourself, and try to do your duty."

John groaned when he heard this last word. He knew very well what his

mother meant. He should buy three hunters, he should marry. These were

the anodynes that were offered to him in and out of season. "Bad enough

that I should exist! Why precipitate another into the gulf of being?"

"Consort with men whose ideal hovers between a stable boy and a

veterinary surgeon;" and then, amused by the paradox, John, to whom the

chase was evocative of forests, pageantry, spears, would quote some

stirring verses of an old ballad, and allude to certain pictures by

Rubens, Wouvermans, and Snyders. "Why do you talk in that way?" "Why do

you seek to make yourself ridiculous?" Mrs Norton would retort.

Smiling just a little sorrowfully, John would withdraw, and on the

following day he would leave for Stanton College. And it was thus that

Mrs Norton's temper scarred with deep wounds a nature so pale and

delicate, so exposed that it seemed as if wanting an outer skin; and as

Thornby Place appeared to him little more than a comprehensive symbol

of what he held mean, even obscene in life, his visits had grown shorter

and fewer, until now his absence extended to the verge of the second

year, and besieged by the belief that he was contemplating priesthood,

Mrs Norton had written to her old friend, saying that she wanted to

speak to him on matters of great importance. Now maturing her plans for

getting her boy back, she stood by the bare black mantel-piece, her head

leaning on her hand. She uttered an exclamation when Mr Hare entered.

"What," she said, "you haven't changed your things, and I told you you

would find a suit of John's clothes. I must insist--"

"My dear Lizzie, no amount of insistance would get me into a pair of

John's trousers. I am thirteen stone and a half, and he is not much over

ten."

"Ah! I had forgotten, but what are you to do? Something must be done,

you will catch your death of cold if you remain in your wet clothes....

You are wringing wet."

"No, I assure you I am not. My feet were a little wet, but I have

changed my stockings and shoes. And now, tell me, Lizzie, what there is

for lunch," he said, speaking rapidly to silence Mrs Norton, whom he saw

was going to protest again.

"Well, you know it is difficult to get much at this season of the year.

There are some chickens and some curried rabbit, but I am afraid you

will suffer for it if you remain the whole of the afternoon in those wet

clothes; I really cannot, I will not allow it."

"My dear Lizzie, my dear Lizzie," cried the parson, laughing all over

his rosy skinned and sandy whiskered face, "I must beg of you not

to excite yourself. I have no intention of committing any of the

imprudences you anticipate. I will trouble you for a wing of that

chicken. James, I'll take a glass of sherry,... and while I am eating it

you shall explain as succinctly as possible the matter you are minded

to consult me on, and when I have mastered the subject in all its

various details, I will advise you to the best of my power, and having

done so I will start on my walk across the hills."

"What! you mean to say you are going to walk home?... We shall have

another downpour presently."

"Even so. I cannot come to much harm so long as I am walking, whereas if

I drove home in your carriage I might catch a chill.... It is at least

ten miles to Shoreham by the road, while across the hills it is not more

than six."

"Six! it is eight if it is a yard!"

"Well, perhaps it is; but tell me, I am curious to hear what you want to

talk to me about.... Something about John, is it not?"

"Of course it is, what else have I to think about; what else concerns

middle-aged people like you and me but our children? Of course I want to

talk to you about John. Something must be done, things cannot go on as

they are. Why, it is nearly two years since he has been home. Oh, that

boy is breaking my heart, and none suspects it. If you knew how it

annoys me when the Gardiners and the Prestons congratulate me on having

a son so well behaved. They know he looks after his property sharp

enough, no drinking, no bad company, no debts. Ah! they little know....

I would much sooner he were wild and foolish: young men get over those

kind of faults, but he will never get over his."

Mr Hare felt these views to be of a doubtful orthodoxy, but he did not

press his opinion, and contented himself with murmuring gently that for

the moment he did not see that John's faults were of a particularly

aggravated character.

"You do not see that his faults should cause me any uneasiness! Perhaps

it is very lucky he is not here, or you might encourage him in them. I

suppose you think he is doing quite right in spending his life at

Stanton College, aping a priest and talking about Gothic arches. Is it a

proper thing to transact all his business through a solicitor, and

never to see his tenants? Why does he not come and live at his own

beautiful place? Why does he not take up his position in the county? He

is not a magistrate. Why does he not get married?... he is the last;

there is no one to follow him. But he never thinks of that--he is afraid

that a woman might prove a disturbing influence in his life ... he feels

that he must live in an atmosphere of higher emotions. That's the way he

talks, and he is meditating, I assure you, a book on the literature of

the Middle Ages, on the works of bishops and monks who wrote Latin in

the early centuries. His mind, he says, is full of the cadences of that

language. That's the way he writes. He never asks me about his property,

never consults me in anything. Here is a letter I received yesterday.

Listen:

"'The poverty of spiritual life amid the western pagans could not fail to

encourage the growth of new religious tendencies. An epoch of great

spiritual activity had been succeeded by one of complete stagnation. A

glance at the literary progress of Rome since Tiberius will show this

emancipation from national and political considerations, the influence

of cosmopolitanism gave to the best specimens of Latin prose of the

silver age such riches and variety of substance and such individuality

of expression, that Seneca and Tacitus and the letters of Pliny are

marked with many modern characteristics. Form and language appear in

these writers only as the instrument and the matter wherewith men of

genius would express their intimate personality. Here antique culture

rises above itself, but, mark you, at the expense of all that is proper

to the Roman nation. Cosmopolitan Hellenism forces and breaks down the

bars of classical traditions, and, weary of restrictions these writers

first sought personal satisfaction, and then addressed themselves to

scholars rather than the people.

"'But Hellenism found its medium in the Greek language, rich to

satiety, and possessing a syntax of such extraordinary flexibility, that

it could follow all evolutions without being shaken in its organism. It

was in vain that the Latin literature sought to maintain its position by

harking back to the writers anterior to Cicero, those that Hellenism had

not touched, and presenting them as models of style; and thus a new

school very fain of antiquity had sprung up, with Fronto for its

acknowledged chief--a school pre-occupied above all things by the form;

obsolete words set in a new setting, modern words introduced into old

cadences to freshen them with a bright and delightful varnish, in a

word, a language under visible sign of decay ... yet how full of dim idea

and evanescent music--a sort of Indian summer, a season of dependency

that looked back on the splendours of Augustan yesterdays--an autumn

forest.'

"Did you ever hear such rubbish, or affectation, whichever you like to

call it? I should like to know what all that's to do with mediaeval

Latin. And then he goes on to complain of the architecture of Stanton

College.... It is, he says, base Tudor of the vilest kind. 'Practical

cookery' he calls it, 'antique sauce, sold by all chemists and grocers.'

Do you know what he means? I don't. And worst news of all, he is, would

you believe it? putting a magnificent thirteen century window into the

chapel, and he wants me to go up to London to make enquiries about

organs. He is prepared to go as far as a thousand pounds. Did you ever

hear of such a thing? Those Jesuits are encouraging him. Of course it

would just suit them if he became a priest; nothing would suit them

better; the whole property would fall into their hands. Now, what I want

you to do, my dear friend, is to go to Stanton College to-morrow, or

next day, as soon as you possibly can, and to talk to John. You must

tell him how unwise it is to spend fifteen hundred pounds in one year,

building organs and putting up windows. His intentions are excellent,

but his estate won't bear such extravagances: and everybody here thinks

he is such a miser. I want you to tell him that he should marry. Just

fancy what a terrible thing it would be if the estate passed away to

distant relatives--to those terrible cousins of ours."

"Very well, Lizzie, I will do what I can. I will go to-morrow. I have

not seen him for five years. The last time he was here I was away. I

don't think it would be a bad notion to suggest that the Jesuits are

after his money, that they are endeavouring to inveigle him into the

priesthood in order that they may get hold of his property."

"No, no; you must not say such a thing. I will not have you say anything

against his religion. I was very wrong to suggest such a thing. I am

sure no such idea ever entered the Jesuits' heads. Perhaps I am wrong to

send you to them.... Now I depend on you not to speak to him on

religious subjects."