"Hopes and fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down--on what?--a fathomless abyss."--YOUNG.
"Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!"
/Much Ado about Nothing/.
THE wound which Maltravers had received was peculiarly severe and
rankling. It is true that he had never been what is called violently in
love with Florence Lascelles; but from the moment in which he had been
charmed and surprised into the character of a declared suitor, it was
consonant with his scrupulous and loyal nature to view only the bright
side of Florence's gifts and qualities, and to seek to enamour his
grateful fancy with her beauty, her genius, and her tenderness for
himself. He had thus forced and formed his thoughts and hopes to centre
all in one object; and Florence and the Future had grown words which
conveyed the same meaning to his mind. Perhaps he felt more bitterly
her sudden and stunning accusations, couched as they were in language so
unqualified, because they fell upon his pride rather than his affection,
and were not softened away by the thousand excuses and remembrances
which a passionate love would have invented and recalled. It was a
deep, concentrated sense of injury and insult, that hardened and soured
his whole nature--wounded vanity, wounded pride, and wounded honour.
And the blow, too, came upon him at a time when he was most dissatisfied
with all other prospects. He was disgusted with the littleness of the
agents and springs of political life--he had formed a weary contempt for
the barrenness of literary reputation. At thirty years of age he had
necessarily outlived the sanguine elasticity of early youth, and he had
already broken up many of those later toys in business and ambition
which afford the rattle and the hobby-borse to our maturer manhood.
Always asking for something too refined and too exalted for human life,
every new proof of unworthiness in men and things saddened or revolted a
mind still too fastidious for that quiet contentment with the world as
it is, which we must all learn before we can make our philosophy
practical and our genius as fertile of the harvest as it may be prodigal
of the blossom. Haughty, solitary, and unsocial, the ordinary resources
of mortified and disappointed men were not for Ernest Maltravers.
Rigidly secluded in his country retirement, he consumed the days in
moody wanderings; and in the evenings he turned to books with a spirit
disdainful and fatigued. So much had he already learned, that books
taught him little that he did not already know. And the biographies of
authors, those ghost-like beings who seem to have had no life but in the
shadow of their own haunting and imperishable thoughts, dimmed the
inspiration he might have caught from their pages. Those slaves of the
Lamp, those Silkworms of the Closet, how little had they enjoyed, how
little had they lived! Condemned to a mysterious fate by the wholesale
destinies of the world, they seemed born but to toil and to spin
thoughts for the common crowd--and, their task performed in drudgery and
in darkness, to die when no further service could be wrung from their
exhaustion. Names had they been in life, and as names they lived for
ever, in life as in death, airy and unsubstantial phantoms. It pleased
Maltravers at this time to turn a curious eye towards the obscure and
half-extinct philosophies of the ancient world. He compared the Stoics
with the Epicureans--those Epicureans who had given their own version to
the simple and abstemious utilitarianism of their master. He asked
which was the wiser, to sharpen pain or to deaden pleasure--to bear all
or to enjoy all; and, by a natural reaction which often happens to us in
life, this man, hitherto so earnest, active-spirited, and resolved on
great things, began to yearn for the drowsy pleasures of indolence. The
garden grew more tempting than the porch. He seriously revolved the old
alternative of the Grecian demi-god--might it not be wiser to abandon
the grave pursuits to which he had been addicted, to dethrone the august
but severe ideal in his heart, to cultivate the light loves and
voluptuous trifles of the herd, and to plant the brief space of youth
yet left to him with the myrtle and the rose? As water flows over
water, so new schemes rolled upon new--sweeping away every momentary
impression, and leaving the surface facile equally to receive and to
forget. Such is the common state with men of imagination in those
crises of life, when some great revolution of designs and hopes
unsettles elements too susceptible of every changing wind. And thus the
weak are destroyed, while the strong relapse, after terrible but unknown
convulsions, into that solemn harmony and order from which destiny and
God draw their uses to mankind.
It was from this irresolute contest between antagonist principles that
Maltravers was aroused by the following letter from Florence Lascelles:
"For three days and three sleepless nights I have debated with myself
whether or not I ought to address you. Oh, Ernest, were I what I was,
in health, in pride, I might fear that, generous as you are, you would
misconstrue my appeal; but that is now impossible. Our union never can
take place, and my hopes bound themselves to one sweet and melancholy
hope, that you will remove from my last hours the cold and dark shadow
of your resentment. We have both been cruelly deceived and betrayed.
Three days ago I discovered the perfidy that has been practised against
us. And then, ah! then, with all the weak human anguish of discovering
it too late (/your curse is fulfilled/, Ernest!), I had at least one
moment of proud, of exquisite rapture. Ernest Maltravers, the hero of
my dreams, stood pure and lofty as of old--a thing it was not unworthy
to love, to mourn, to die for. A letter in your handwriting had been
shown to me, garbled and altered, as it seems--but I detected not the
imposture--it was yourself, yourself alone, brought in false and
horrible witness against yourself! And could you think that any other
evidence, the words, the oaths of others, would have convicted you in my
eyes? There you wronged me. But I deserved it--I had bound myself to
secrecy--the seal is taken from my lips in order to be set upon my tomb.
Ernest, beloved Ernest--beloved till the last breath is extinct--till
the last throb of this heart is stilled--write me one word of comfort
and of pardon. You will believe what I have imperfectly written, for
you ever trusted my faith, if you have blamed my faults. I am now
comparatively happy--a word from you will, make me blest. And Fate has,
perhaps, been more merciful to both, than in our shortsighted and
querulous human vision, we might, perhaps, believe; for now that the
frame is brought low--and in the solitude of my chamber I can duly and
humbly commune with mine own heart, I see the aspect of those faults
which I once mistook for virtues--and feel that, had we been united, I,
loving you ever, might not have constituted your happiness, and so have
known the misery of losing your affection. May He who formed you for
glorious and yet all unaccomplished purposes strengthen you, when these
eyes can no longer sparkle at your triumphs, or weep at your lightest
sorrow. You will go on in your broad and luminous career:--a few years,
and my remembrance will have left but the vestige of a dream behind.
But, but--I can write no more. God bless you!"