A TRUE LOVER.
IF Mr. Erin imagined that ‘what Malone would say _now_’—i.e. after
the discovery of the ‘Lear’ manuscript—must needs be in the way of
apology and penitence, he was doomed to disappointment. So far from
the circumstance carrying conviction to the soul of that commentator,
and making him remorseful for his past transgressions, it seemed to
incite him to the greater insolence, just as (so Mr. Erin expressed
it) the discovery of a new Scripture might have incited the Devil not
only against it, but against the old ones. He reiterated all his old
objections and fortified them with new ones; he refused to accept the
testimony of the Hemynge note of hand, which had satisfied his friend
and ally Mr. Wallis; he repeated his horrid suggestions that the
Shakespeare lock was a girl’s ringlet, and, in a word, ‘raged’ like
the heathen. Having declined to look at the ‘Lear’ upon the ground of
‘life being too short for the examination of such trash,’ he pronounced
it to be ‘plain and palpable forgery.’ ‘Three words,’ he said, ‘would
suffice for the matter,’ and published ‘An Inquiry into Certain Papers
Attributed to Shakespeare,’ extending to four hundred pages quarto.
Whereto Mr. Erin responded at equal length, with ‘a studious avoidance
of the personality which Mr. Malone had imported into the controversy,’
but at the same time taking the liberty to observe that in acting his
various parts on the stage of life, Fortune had denied that gentleman
every quality essential to each, inasmuch as he was a critic without
taste, a poet without imagination, a scholar without learning, a wit
without humour, an antiquary without the least knowledge of antiquity,
and a man of gallantry, in his dotage. This was a very pretty quarrel
as it stood; but, far from being confined to two antagonists, it was
taken up by scores on each side: it was no longer ‘a gentle passage of
arms,’ as the combat _à outrance_ used to be euphoniously called, but a
mêlée. Only the ancient rules of a fair fight were utterly disregarded;
both parties went at it hammer and tongs, and hit one another anywhere
and with anything. One would have almost imagined that instead of a
disagreement among scholars it had been a theological controversy.
To the statement that no one who was not a fool or a knave believed
in the Shakespearean manuscripts, Mr. Samuel Erin, scorning to make
any particular rejoinder, replied by simply publishing a list of those
who had appended their names to his certificate. To this he added a
footnote stating the opinion which Dr. Parr had expressed concerning
the Profession—namely, that there were many beautiful things in
the liturgy of the Church of England, but all inferior to it, which
produced a vehement disavowal from that hot-tempered cleric; he
mentioned that he had never stated anything so foolish, and that the
words in question had been used by Dr. Warton, an observation which
caused some coolness between the two learned divines.
To say that William Henry, the football between these two opposing
parties, enjoyed it, would be an exaggeration; he liked being in the
air—and indeed he was lauded by many persons to the very skies—but
did not so much relish the being knocked and trodden under foot below.
As a popular poet once remarked of the reviewers, ‘I like their
eulogies well enough, but d—n their criticisms,’ so the young man
would have preferred his notoriety to have been without this alloy; but
on the whole it pleased him vastly.
Margaret was almost angry with him for taking men’s hard words so
coolly, but comforted herself by reflecting that her Willie must have a
heavenly temper.
‘As for me,’ she would say, ‘I could scratch their eyes out. It drives
me wild to listen to what uncle sometimes reads aloud out of their
horrid pamphlets.’
To which the young fellow would gallantly reply, ‘To have such a
partisan, who would not compound for fifty such detractors? And, after
all, these good people have a right to their own opinions, though it
must be confessed they express them with some intemperance. I have
given them the “Lear“ manuscript, but I cannot give them the taste and
poetic feeling necessary to appreciate it.’
What of course had wounded Margaret was not their antagonistic
criticism, nor even their supercilious contempt, but the accusations
they had not scrupled to make against William Henry’s good faith. One
does not talk of the ‘poetic feeling’ of a hostile jury. But love
has as many causes of admiration as Burton in his ‘Anatomy’ finds
for melancholy; and the young fellow’s very carelessness about these
charges was, in Margaret’s eyes, a feather in his cap, and proved,
for one thing, their absolute want of foundation. If she did not
understand all the niceties of the points of difference between the
‘Lear’ manuscript and the ‘Lear’ as it was printed in her uncle’s
quarto edition of the play, it was not for want of instruction. There
was little else talked of in Norfolk Street, which was perhaps one of
the reasons which made the visits of Frank Dennis still more rare.
It was clear that the whole subject of the Shakespearean discoveries
was distasteful to him; and it must be confessed that he did not even
affect that interest in them which good breeding, and indeed good
nature, would have seemed to suggest. As to the comparative merits of
the old and new readings, or rather, as Mr. Erin maintained, of the
accepted and the original text, he had no opinion to offer one way or
the other. ‘I am no critic,’ he would say; ‘so that while my differing
from you might give you some annoyance, my agreement with you could
afford you no satisfaction’—a remark that did not by any means content
the antiquary.
When one’s friends have no opinions of their own it cannot surely hurt
them to adopt _our_ opinions, and it is only reasonable that they
should do so. It was quite a comfort (because not wholly looked for)
to find that when pushed home on a subject within his own judgment
Mr. Dennis’s heart in these matters was at least in the right place.
Thus, when referring one day to the onslaughts of his opponents, Mr.
Erin instanced as an example of their microscopic depravity a certain
objection that had been made to the Hemynge’s note of hand. ‘You know,
of course, my good fellow, how it has been proved beyond all dispute
that there were two John Hemynges.’
‘I was here when Mr. Albany Wallis came and the other deed was found,’
was the young man’s reply.
‘Tut! tut! why, that of course; but, dear me, how behindhand you are.
One would really have thought as an old friend, however little interest
you take in these matters for their own sake, that you would have
kept abreast with us so far. Why, this receipt here has been found
since then, with a memorandum in the bard’s own hand, “_Receipt forre
moneyes givenne me bye the talle Hemynge onne accounte o’ the Curtain
Theatre_.”’
‘I did not happen to have heard of it,’ said Dennis, regarding the
new-found treasure, if not with indifference, certainly with some lack
of rapture.
‘Well, now you see it,’ continued Mr. Erin with irritation. ‘Of course
it disposes of all doubt in that direction. But now, forsooth, the note
of hand is objected to upon the ground of its seals.’
‘Good heavens!’ ejaculated Dennis, and this time it was evident that he
was really moved.
‘No wonder you are indignant. I now remember that I drew your
particular attention to the document in question. Well, it is almost
incredible that their accusation has shrunk to the puny charge that
a note of hand, even in Shakespeare’s time, would not have had seals
appended to it. Is it not amazing that human nature can stoop to such
detraction? If it had been Malone—a mere reptile—who makes a point
of the Globe being a theatre instead of a playhouse—but this is some
lawyer it seems, a child of the Devil, I’ll warrant, like the rest of
his craft.’
Considering that William Henry, now Mr. Erin’s ‘dear Samuel,’ had been
articled to a conveyancer with the idea of becoming a lawyer himself
when full grown, this was a somewhat sweeping as well as severe remark;
but, carried away by the torrent of his wrath, the speaker was wholly
unconscious of this little inconsistency.
‘As if every one did not know,’ he continued—’not to mention the fact
that in Malone’s own prolegomena the Curtain Theatre is so called in
Stackwood’s sermon, A.D. 1578—that in the Elizabethan times every one
not only spelt as he liked, and differently at different times, but
appended seals to their documents or did without them, as opportunity
served. Is it not even probable that Hemynge, being a player and
knowing little of business, may have been particularly solicitous of
every form of law being observed, however superfluous, and in even so
small a matter? Is it not in accordance, I ask, with what we know of
human nature that it should be so?’
It was clear that this was no extempore speech, nor even a discourse
the claims of which could be satisfied by pen and ink, but one
very evidently intended to be printed. Its deliverance gave Frank
Dennis time to recover from a certain dismay into which Mr. Erin’s
communication had thrown him.
‘Just so,’ he said; ‘you are right, no doubt. The objection as to its
being contrary to custom to append seals seems frivolous enough.’
‘And the ground has been cut away from the first, you see, in all other
directions,’ exclaimed the antiquary triumphantly. ‘Margaret,’ he
continued in high good humour as his niece entered the room, ‘permit
me to introduce to you a convert. Mr. Frank Dennis has been hitherto
little better than a sceptic, but the light of truth is beginning to
dawn upon him through crannies. He has been moved to confess that the
note of hand at least is genuine. I have a letter to write before the
post goes out, so will leave him in your hands to continue the work of
conversion.’
The door closed behind him before Frank Dennis, always slow of speech,
could form his reply; but he gave Margaret the benefit of it.
‘I never told your uncle,’ he said in a grave pained voice, ‘that I
believed the note of hand to be genuine.’
[Illustration]
‘What _does_ it matter?’ exclaimed Margaret reproachfully. ‘I cannot
tell you how these miserable disagreements distress me; of themselves,
indeed, they are of no consequence, but they irritate my uncle, and
have a still worse effect, Frank, upon you. I can ascribe it to no
other cause, indeed, that you have almost entirely ceased to visit us.’
This was not quite true; moreover, it was a dangerous assertion to
make, likely to draw upon her the very reproach she had always feared,
and which she felt was not undeserved. She trembled lest he should
reply, ‘No, that was not the reason; it is because you have preferred
William Henry’s love to mine.’
It was to her relief, therefore, though also to her great surprise,
that he answered in his habitual quiet tone, ‘Perhaps it is, Margaret.’
[Illustration]
She did not believe it was, and was convinced that in saving so he had
laid a burthen upon his conscience for her sake. His nature, she well
knew, was so honest and simple that it shrank from even an evasion of
the truth, and the very fact of his having thus evaded it to spare her
showed her the depth of his affection. If he, then, still loved her,
was it not cruel, she reflected, to ask him to her home to witness her
happiness with another? She would miss his company, for that was always
pleasant to her as that of a tender and faithful friend; but was it not
selfish of her to invite it? It was obvious that he came unwillingly,
and only in obedience to her behest. If she ceased to importune him he
would certainly cease to come, but she would not lose his friendship.
When—that is, if—Willie and she were married, it would be different
with him; he would then come and see them as the friend of both.
‘Of course it’s very unfortunate,’ she stammered, with her eyes fixed
on the ground, ‘but since my uncle is so thin-skinned about these
manuscripts, and you, as he says, are so dreadfully sceptical, it would
perhaps be better—until the whole affair has subsided——’
She looked up for a moment in her embarrassment of speech and met
Frank’s face; it was gazing at her with an expression of pain and pity
and patience which she did not understand and which increased her
perplexity.
‘Yes, Margaret, you are right,’ he said: ‘I am better away from here
for the present. My coming can do no good, and, as you have surmised,
it gives me pain.’
At this the blood rushed to her cheeks, but he went on in the same
quiet, resolute tone, as though he had made no reference to his love
for her at all.
‘When one cannot say what one will, even when nature dictates it, it
is clear that one is in a false position. I shall not come to Norfolk
Street any more.’
‘But you are not going away—I mean from your home?’ exclaimed the
girl, alarmed by an expression in his face which seemed to forebode
some worse thing than his words implied.
‘No, Margaret; I shall be at home, where a word from you will find me
at your service always—_always_.’
He spoke with such a tender stress upon the word that she felt a
great remorse for what she had done to him, though indeed it had been
no fault of hers. It is impossible, under the present conditions of
society at least, that a young woman should make two young men happy
at once; one of them must go to the wall. Perhaps if this one had put
himself forward instead of the other matters might have been otherwise;
the peach falls to the hand that is readiest. There are men that never
win the woman they love till she becomes a widow; for my part, in
the meantime—but I am writing of Frank Dennis. He was of a patient
disposition, and had a very moderate opinion of himself. And yet his
love for Margaret was great, and so genuine that he could have been
content to see her happy with another man. Why he was not now content
was because he did not think she would be happy; but he did not tell
her so, for, though honesty might suggest his doing so, honour forbade
him. There is an honour quite different from that of the fanfaronnading
sort, one which has nothing to do with running a fellow-creature
through for a hasty word, or with ruining some one else to pay our card
debts—a delicate, scrupulous sense of what is becoming even in our
relations with our enemies, a flower of a modest colour which grows in
the shade. This was the sort of honour that Frank Dennis possessed,
and which prompted him now to keep silence, when he might have said
something which would have been much to his own advantage.
‘Good-bye, Margaret,’ was all he said, as he took her hand in his. He
would, if he could, have even eliminated a certain tenderness from his
tone, because he knew it gave her pain; but he could not so utterly
conquer nature.
‘Good-bye, Frank,’ was all she said in reply, or dared to say.
She was thinking of him and not of herself at all. It was pity for him
which made her voice falter and her soul quail within her, lest at that
supreme moment he should have demanded from her, once for all, another
sort of dismissal.
As to love, her heart was loyal to her Willie; and yet, though she
would not have confessed it even to herself, she had a secret sense as
the door closed upon this other one that she had burned her boats.