"MY LOVE'S A NOBLE MADNESS."
Mr. Lansdell did not seem in a hurry to make any demonstration of his
return to Mordred. He did not affect any secrecy, it is true; but he
shut himself a good deal in his own rooms, and seldom went out except to
walk in the direction of Lord Thurston's oak, whither Mrs. Gilbert also
rambled in the chilly spring afternoons, and where Mr. Lansdell and the
Doctor's Wife met each other very frequently: not quite by accident now;
for, at parting, Roland would say, with supreme carelessness, "I suppose
you will be walking this way to-morrow,--it is the only walk worth
taking hereabouts,--and I'll bring you the other volume."
Lord Ruysdale and his daughter were still at Lowlands; but Mr. Lansdell
did not betake himself thither to pay his respects to his uncle and
cousin, as he should most certainly have done in common courtesy. He did
not go near the grey old mansion where the Earl and his daughter
vegetated in gloomy and economical state; but Lady Gwendoline heard from
her maid that Mr. Lansdell had come home; and bitterly resented his
neglect. She resented it still more bitterly by-and-by, when the maid,
who was a little faded like her mistress, and perhaps a little spiteful
into the bargain, let drop a scrap of news she had gleaned in the
servants' hall. Mr. Lansdell had been seen walking on the Graybridge
road with Mrs. Gilbert, the doctor's wife; "and it wasn't the first time
either; and people do say it looks odd when a gentleman like Mr.
Lansdell is seen walking and talking oftentimes with such as her."
The maid saw her mistress's face turn pale in the glass. No matter what
the rank or station or sex of poor Othello; he or she is never suffered
to be at peace, or to be happy--knowing nothing. There is always "mine
ancient," male or female, as the case may be, to bring home the freshest
information about the delinquent.
"I have no wish to hear the servants' gossip about my cousin's
movements," Lady Gwendoline said, with supreme hauteur. "He is the
master of his own actions, and free to go where he pleases and with whom
he pleases."
"I'm sure I beg pardon, my lady, and meant no offence," the maid
answered, meekly. "But she don't like it for all that," the damsel
thought, with an inward chuckle.
Roland Lansdell kept himself aloof from his kindred; but he was not
suffered to go his own way unmolested. The road to perdition is not
quite so smooth and flower-bestrewn a path as we are sometimes taught to
believe. A merciful hand often flings stumbling-blocks and hindering
brambles in our way. It is our own fault if we insist upon clambering
over the rocky barriers, and scrambling through the briery hedges, in a
mad eagerness to reach the goal. Roland had started upon the fatal
descent, and was of course going at that rapid rate at which we always
travel downhill; but the road was not all clear for him. Charles Raymond
of Conventford was amongst the people who heard accidentally of the
young man's return; and about a week after Roland's arrival, the kindly
philosopher presented himself at the Priory, and was fortunate enough to
find his kinsman at home. In spite of Mr. Lansdell's desire to be at his
ease, there was some restraint in his manner as he greeted his old
friend.
"I am very glad to see you, Raymond," he said. "I should have ridden
over to Conventford in a day or two. I've come home, you see."
"Yes, and I am very sorry to see it. This is a breach of good faith,
Roland."
"Of what faith? with whom?"
"With me," answered Mr. Raymond, gravely. "You promised me that you
would go away."
"I did; and I went away."
"And now you have come back again."
"Yes," replied Mr. Lansdell, folding his arms and looking full at his
kinsman, with an ominous smile upon his face,--"yes; the fact is a
little too evident for the basis of an argument. I have come back."
Mr. Raymond was silent for a minute or so. The younger man stood with
his back against the angle of the embayed window, and he never took his
eyes from his friend's face. There was something like defiance in the
expression of his face, and even in his attitude, as he stood with
folded arms leaning against the wainscot.
"I hope, Roland, that since you have come home, it is because the reason
which took you away from this place has ceased to exist. You come back
because you are cured. I cannot imagine it to be otherwise, Roland; I
cannot believe that you have broken faith with me."
"What if I have come home because I find my disease is past all cure!
What if I have kept faith with you, and have tried to forget, and come
back at last because I cannot!"
"Roland!"
"Ah! it is a foolish fever, is it not? very foolish, very contemptible
to the solemn-faced doctor who looks on and watches the wretched patient
tossing and writhing, and listens to his delirious ravings. Have you
ever seen a man in the agonies of _delirium tremens_, catching imaginary
flies, and shrieking about imps and demons capering on his counterpane?
What a pitiful disease it is!--only the effect of a few extra bottles of
brandy: but you can't cure it. You may despise the sufferer, but you
shrink back terror-stricken before the might of the disease. You've done
your duty, doctor: you tried honestly to cure my fever, and I submitted
honestly to your remedies: but you're only a quack, after all: and you
pretended--what all charlatans pretend--to be able to cure the
incurable."
"You have come back with the intention of remaining, then, Roland?"
"_C'est selon_! I have no present idea of remaining here very long."
"And in the meantime you allow people to see you walking the Graybridge
road and loitering about Thurston's Crag with Mrs. Gilbert. Do you know
that already that unhappy girl's name is compromised? The Graybridge
people are beginning to couple her name with yours."
Mr. Lansdell laughed aloud, but not with the pleasant laugh which was
common to him.
"Did you ever look in a British atlas for Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne?"
he asked. "There are some atlases which do not give the name of the
place at all: in others you'll find a little black dot, with the word
'Graybridge' printed in very small letters. The 'British Gazetteer' will
tell you that Graybridge is interesting on account of its church, which,
&c. &c.; that an omnibus plies to and fro between the village and
Warncliffe station; and that the nearest market-town is Wareham. In all
the literature of the world, that's about all the student can learn of
Graybridge. What an affliction it must be to a traveller in the Upper
Pyrenees, or on the banks of the Amazon, to know that people at
Graybridge mix his name sometimes with their tea-table gossip! What an
enduring torture for a loiterer in fair Grecian isles--an idle dreamer
beside the blue depths of a Southern sea--to know that Graybridge
disapproves of him!"
"I had better go away, Roland," Mr. Raymond said, looking at his kinsman
with a sad reproachful gaze, and stretching out his hand to take up the
hat and gloves he had thrown upon a chair near him; "I can do no good
here."
"You cannot separate me from the woman I love," answered Roland, boldly.
"I am a scoundrel, I suppose; but I am not a hypocrite. I might tell you
a lie, and send you away hoodwinked and happy. No, Raymond, I will not
do that. If I am foolish and wicked, I have not sinned deliberately. I
have striven against my folly and my wickedness. When you talked to me
that night at Waverly, you only echoed the reproaches of my own
conscience. I accepted your counsel, and ran away. My love for Isabel
Gilbert was only a brief infatuation, I thought, which would wear itself
out like other infatuations, with time and absence. I went away, fully
resolved never to look upon her face again; and then, and then only, I
knew how truly and how dearly I loved her. I went from place to place;
but I could no more fly from her image than from my own soul. In vain I
argued with myself--as better men have done before my time--that this
woman was in no way superior to other women. Day by day I took my lesson
deeper to heart. I cannot talk of these things to you. There is a kind
of profanation in such a discussion. I can only tell you that I came
back to England with a rooted purpose in my mind. Do not thrust yourself
upon me; you have done your duty, and may wash your hands of me with
Christian-like self-satisfaction; you have nothing further to do in this
_galère_."
"Oh, Roland, that you should ever come to talk to me like this! Have you
no sense of truth or honour? not even the common instinct of a
gentleman? Have you no feeling for that poor honest-hearted fellow who
has judged you by his own simple standard, and has trusted you
implicitly? have you no feeling for him, Roland?"'
"Yes, I am very sorry for him; I am sorry for the grand mistake of his
life. But do you think he could ever be happy with that woman? I have
seen them together, and know the meaning of that grand word 'union' as
applied to them. All the width of the universe cannot divide them more
entirely than they are divided now. They have not one single sentiment
in common. Charles Raymond, I tell you I am not entirely a villain; I do
still possess some lingering remnant of that common instinct of which
you spoke just now. If I had seen Isabel Gilbert happy with a husband
who loved her, and understood her, and was loved by her, I would have
held myself aloof from her pure presence; I would have stifled every
thought that was a wrong to that holy union. I am not base enough to
steal the lamp which lights a good man's home. But if I find a man who
has taken possession of a peerless jewel, as ignorant of its value, and
as powerless to appreciate its beauty, as a soldier who drags a
Raffaelle from the innermost shrine of some ransacked cathedral and
makes a knapsack for himself out of the painted canvas; if I find a pig
trampling pearls under his ruthless feet,--am I to leave the gems for
ever in his sty, in my punctilious dread that I may hurt the feelings of
the animal by taking his unvalued treasure away from him?"
"Other men have argued as you argue to-day, Roland," answered Mr.
Raymond. "Other men have reasoned as you reason, Roland; but they have
not the less brought anguish and remorse upon themselves and upon the
victims of their sin. Did not Rousseau declare that the first man who
enclosed a lot of ground and called it 'mine' was the enemy of the human
race? You young philosophers of our modern day twist the argument
another way, and are ready to avow that the man who marries a pretty
woman is the foe to all unmarried mankind. He should have held himself
aloof, and waited till _the_ man arrived upon the scene,--the man with
poetic sympathies and sublime appreciation of womanly grace and beauty,
and all manner of hazy attributes which are supposed to be acceptable to
sentimental womanhood. Bah, Roland! all this is very well on toned
paper, in a pretty little hot-pressed volume published by Messrs. Moxon;
but the universe was never organized for the special happiness of poets.
There must be jog-trot existences, and commonplace contentment, and
simple every-day households, in which husbands and wives love each
other, and do their duty to each other in a plain prosaic manner. Life
can't be all rapture and poetry. Ah, Roland, it has pleased you of late
years to play the cynic. Let your cynicism save you now. Is it worth
while to do a great wrong, to commit a terrible sin, for the sake of a
pretty face and a pair of black eyes--for the gratification of a passing
folly?"
"It is not a passing folly," returned Mr. Lansdell, fiercely. "I was
willing to think that it was so last autumn, when I took your advice and
went away from this place. I know better now. If there is depth and
truth anywhere in the universe, there is depth and truth in my love for
Isabel Gilbert. Do not talk to me, Raymond. The arguments which would
have weight with other men, have no power with me. It is my fault or my
misfortune that I cannot believe in the things in which other men
believe. Above all, I cannot believe in formulas. I cannot believe that
a few words shuffled over by a parson at Conventford last January
twelvemonth can be strong enough to separate me for ever from the woman
I love, and who loves me. Yes, she loves me, Raymond!" cried the young
man, his face lighting up suddenly with a smile, which imparted a warmth
to his dark complexion like the rich glow of a Murillo. "She loves me,
my beautiful unvalued blossom, that I found blooming all alone and
unnoticed in a desert--she loves me. If I had discovered coldness or
indifference, coquetry or pretence of any kind in her manner the other
day when I came home, I would have gone back even then; I would have
acknowledged my mistake, and would have gone away to suffer alone. My
dear old Raymond, it is your duty, I know, to lecture me and argue with
me; but I tell you again it is only wasted labour; I am past all that.
Try to pity me, and sympathize with me, if you can. Solitude is not such
a pleasant thing, and people do not go through the world alone without
some sufficient reason for their loneliness. There must have been some
sorrow in your life, dear old friend, some mistake, some disappointment.
Remember that, and have pity upon me."
Mr. Raymond was silent for some minutes; he sat with his face shaded
with his hand, and the hand was slightly tremulous.
"There was a sorrow in my life, Roland," he said by-and-by, "a deep and
lasting one; and it is the memory of that sorrow which makes you so dear
to me; but it was a sorrow in which shame had no part. I am proud to
think that I suffered, and suffered silently. I think you can guess,
Roland, why you have always been, and always must be, as dear to me as
my own son."
"I can," answered the young man, holding out his hand, "you loved my
mother."
"I did, Roland, and stood aloof and saw her married to the man she
loved. I held her in my arms and blessed her on her wedding-day in the
church yonder; but never from that hour to this have I ceased to love
and honour her. I have worshipped a shadow all my life; but her image
was nearer and dearer to me than the living beauty of other women. I can
sympathize with a wasted love, Roland; but I cannot sympathize with a
love that seeks to degrade its object."
"Degrade her!" cried Roland; "degrade Isabel! There can be no
degradation in such a love as mine. But, you see, we think differently,
we see things from a different point of view. You look through the
spectacles of Graybridge, and see an elopement, a scandal, a paragraph
in the county papers. I recognize only the immortal right of two free
souls, who know that they have been created for each other."
"Do you ever think of your mother, Roland? I remember how dearly she
loved you, and how proud she was of the qualities that made you worthy
to be her son. Do you ever think of her as a living presence, conscious
of your sorrows, compassionate of your sins? I think, if you considered
her thus, Roland, as I do,--she has never been dead to me; she is the
ideal in my life, and lifts my life above its common level,--if you
thought of her as I do, I don't think you could hold to the bad purpose
that has brought you back to this place."
"If I believed what you believe," cried Mr. Lansdell, with sudden
animation, "I should be a different man from what I am--a better man
than you are, perhaps. I sometimes wonder at such as you, who believe in
all the glories of unseen worlds, and yet are so eager and so worldly in
all your doings upon this shabby commonplace earth. If _I_ believed, I
think I should be blinded and intoxicated by the splendour of my
heritage; I would turn Trappist, and live in a dumb rapture from year's
end to year's end. I would go and hide myself amid the mountain-tops,
high up amongst the eagles and the stars, and ponder upon my glory. But
you see it is my misfortune not to believe in that beautiful fable. I
must take my life as it is; and if, after ten foolish, unprofitable
years, Fate brings one little chance of supreme happiness in my way, who
shall tell me to withhold my hand? who shall forbid me to grasp my
treasure?"
Mr. Raymond was not a man to be easily put off. He stayed at Mordred for
the remainder of the day and dined with his young cousin, and sat
talking with him until late at night; but he went away at last with a
sad countenance and a heavy heart. Roland's disease was past the cure of
philosophy. What chance have Friar Lawrence and philosophy ever had
against Miss Capulet's Grecian nose and dark Italian eyes, the balmy air
of a warm Southern night, the low harmonious murmur of a girlish voice,
the gleaming of a white arm on a moonlit balcony?