Audely Egerton was alone in his apartment. A heavy sleep had come over
him, shortly after Harley and Randal had left the house in the early
morning; and that sleep continued till late in the day. All the while
the town of Lansmere had been distracted in his cause, all the while so
many tumultuous passions had run riot in the contest that was to close or
re-open for the statesman's ambition the Janus gates of political war,
the object of so many fears and hopes, schemes and counter-schemes, had
slumbered quietly as an infant in the cradle. He woke but in time to
receive Harley's despatch, announcing the success of his election; and
adding, "Before the night you shall embrace your son. Do not join us
below when I return. Keep calm,--we will come to you."
In fact, though not aware of the dread nature of Audley's complaint, with
its warning symptoms, Lord L'Estrange wished to spare to his friend the
scene of Randal's exposure.
On the receipt of that letter Egerton rose. At the prospect of seeing
his son--Nora's son--the very memory of his disease vanished. The poor,
weary, over-laboured heart indeed beat loud, and with many a jerk and
spasm. He heeded it not. The victory, that restored him to the sole
life for which he had hitherto cared to live, was clean forgotten.
Nature claimed her own,--claimed it in scorn of death, and in oblivion of
renown.
There sat the man, dressed with his habitual precision,--the black coat,
buttoned across the broad breast; his countenance, so mechanically
habituated to self-control, still revealing little of emotion, though the
sickly flush came and went on the bronzed cheek, and the eye watched the
hand of the clock, and the ear hungered for a foot-tread along the
corridor. At length the sound was heard,--steps, many steps. He sprung
to his feet, he stood on the hearth. Was the hearth to be solitary no
more? Harley entered first. Egerton's eyes rested on him eagerly for a
moment, and strained onward across the threshold. Leonard came next,--
Leonard Fairfield, whom he had seen as his opponent! He began to
suspect, to conjecture, to see the mother's tender eyes in the son's
manly face. Involuntarily he opened his arms; but, Leonard remaining
still, let them fall with a deep sigh, and fancied himself deceived.
"Friend," said Harley, "I give to you a son proved in adversity, and who
has fought his own way to fame. Leonard, in the man to whom I prayed you
to sacrifice your own ambition, of whom you have spoken with such worthy
praise, whose career of honour you have promoted, and whose life,
unsatisfied by those honours, you will soothe with your filial love,
behold the husband of Nora Avenel! Kneel to your father! O Audley,
embrace your son!"
"Here, here!" exclaimed Egerton, as Leonard bent his knee,--"here to my
heart! Look at me with those eyes!--kindly, forgivingly: they are your
mother's!" His proud head sunk on his son's shoulder.
"But this is not enough," said Harley, leading Helen, and placing her by
Leonard's side. "You must open your heart for more. Take into its folds
my sweet ward and daughter. What is a home without the smile of woman?
They have loved each other from children. Audley, yours be the hand to
join,--yours be the lips to bless."
Leonard started anxiously. "Oh, sir!--oh, my father!--this generous
sacrifice may not be; for he--he who has saved me for this surpassing
joy--he too loves her!"
"Nay, Leonard," said Harley, smiling, "I am not so neglectful of myself.
Another home woos you, Audley. He whom you long so vainly sought to
reconcile to life, exchanging mournful dreams for happy duties,--he, too,
presents you to his bride. Love her for my sake,--for your own. She it
is, not I, who presides over this hallowed reunion. But for her, I
should have been a blinded, vindictive, guilty, repentant man; and--"
Violante's soft hand was on his lips. "Thus," said the parson, with mild
solemnity, "man finds that the Saviour's precepts, 'Let not the sun go
down upon thy wrath,' and 'Love one another,' are clews that conduct us
through the labyrinth of human life, when the schemes of fraud and hate
snap asunder, and leave us lost amidst the maze."
Egerton reared his head, as if to answer; and all present were struck and
appalled by the sudden change that had come over his countenance. There
was a film upon the eye, a shadow on the aspect; the words failed his
lips; he sunk on the seat beside him. The left hand rested droopingly
upon the piles of public papers and official documents, and the fingers
played with them, as the bedridden dying sufferer plays with the coverlid
he will soon exchange for the winding-sheet. But his right hand seemed
to feel, as through the dark, for the recovered son; and having touched
what it sought, feebly drew Leonard near and nearer. Alas! that
blissful PRIVATE LIFE--that close centre round the core of being in the
individual man--so long missed and pined for, slipped from him, as it
were, the moment it reappeared; hurried away, as the circle on the ocean,
which is scarce seen ere it vanishes amidst infinity. Suddenly both
hands were still; the head fell back. Joy had burst asunder the last
ligaments, so fretted away in unrevealing sorrow. Afar, their sound
borne into that room, the joy-bells were pealing triumph; mobs roaring
out huzzas; the weak cry of John Avenel might be blent in those shouts,
as the drunken zealots reeled by his cottage door, and startled the
screaming ravens that wheeled round the hollow oak. The boom which is
sent from the waves on the surface of life, while the deeps are so
noiseless in their march, was wafted on the wintry air into the chamber
of the statesman it honoured, and over the grass sighing low upon Nora's
grave. But there was one in the chamber, as in the grave, for whom the
boom on the wave had no sound, and the march of the deep had no tide.
Amidst promises of home, and union, and peace, and fame, Death strode
into the household ring, and, seating itself, calm and still, looked
life-like,--warm hearts throbbing round it; lofty hopes fluttering
upward; Love kneeling at its feet; Religion, with lifted finger, standing
by its side.
FINAL CHAPTER.
SCENE--The Hall in the Old Tower of CAPTAIN ROLAND DE CAXTON.
"But you have not done?" said Augustine Caxton.
PISISTRATUS.--"What remains to do?"
MR. CAXTON.--"What! why, the Final Chapter!--the last news you can give
us of those whom you have introduced to our liking or dislike."
PISISTRATUS.--"Surely it is more dramatic to close the work with a scene
that completes the main design of the plot, and leave it to the prophetic
imagination of all whose flattering curiosity is still not wholly
satisfied, to trace the streams of each several existence, when they
branch off again from the lake in which their waters converge, and by
which the sibyl has confirmed and made clear the decree that 'Conduct is
Fate.'"
MR. CAXTON.--"More dramatic, I grant; but you have not written a drama.
A novelist should be a comfortable, garrulous, communicative, gossiping
fortune-teller; not a grim, laconical, oracular sibyl. I like a novel
that adopts all the old-fashioned customs prescribed to its art by the
rules of the Masters,--more especially a novel which you style 'My Novel'
/par/ emphasis."
CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"A most vague and impracticable title 'My Novel'! It
must really be changed before the work goes in due form to the public."
MR. SQUILLS.--"Certainly the present title cannot be even pronounced by
many without inflicting a shock upon their nervous system. Do you think,
for instance, that my friend, Lady Priscilla Graves--who is a great
novel-reader indeed, but holds all female writers unfeminine deserters to
the standard of Man--could ever come out with, 'Pray, sir, have you had
time to look at--MY Novel?'--She would rather die first. And yet to be
silent altogether on the latest acquisition to the circulating libraries
would bring on a functional derangement of her ladyship's organs of
speech. Or how could pretty Miss Dulcet--all sentiment, it is true, but
all bashful timidity--appall Captain Smirke from proposing with, 'Did not
you think the parson's sermon a little too dry in--MY Novel'? It will
require a face of brass, or at least a long course of citrate of iron,
before a respectable lady or unassuming young gentleman, with a proper
dread of being taken for scribblers, could electrify a social circle with
'The reviewers don't do justice to the excellent things in--My Novel.'"
CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"Awful consequences, indeed, may arise from the mistakes
such a title gives rise to. Counsellor Digwell, for instance, a lawyer
of literary tastes, but whose career at the Bar was long delayed by an
unjust suspicion amongst the attorneys that he had written a
'Philosophical Essay'--imagine such a man excusing himself for being late
at a dinner of bigwigs, with 'I could not get away from--My Novel!' It
would be his professional ruin! I am not fond of lawyers in general, but
still I would not be a party to taking the bread out of the mouth of
those with a family; and Digwell has children,--the tenth an innocent
baby in arms."
MR. CAXTON.--"As to Digwell in particular, and lawyers in general, they
are too accustomed to circumlocution to expose themselves to the danger
your kind heart apprehends; but I allow that a shy scholar like myself,
or a grave college tutor, might be a little put to the blush, if he were
to blurt forth inadvertently with, 'Don't waste your time over trash
like--MY Novel.' And that thought presents to us another and more
pleasing view of this critical question. The title you condemn places
the work under universal protection. Lives there a man or a woman so
dead to self-love as to say, 'What contemptible stuff is--MY Novel'?
Would he or she not rather be impelled by that strong impulse of an
honourable and virtuous heart, which moves us to stand as well as we can
with our friends, to say, 'Allow that there is really a good thing now
and then in--My Novel.' Moreover, as a novel aspires to embrace most of
the interests or the passions that agitate mankind,--to generalize, as it
were, the details of life that come home to us all,--so, in reality, the
title denotes that if it be such as the author may not unworthily call
his Novel, it must also be such as the reader, whoever he be, may
appropriate in part to himself, representing his own ideas, expressing
his own experience, reflecting, if not in full, at least in profile, his
own personal identity. Thus, when we glance at the looking-glass in
another man's room, our likeness for the moment appropriates the mirror;
and according to the humour in which we are, or the state of our spirits
and health, we say to ourselves, 'Bilious and yellow!--I might as well
take care of my diet!' Or, 'Well, I 've half a mind to propose to dear
Jane; I'm not such an ill-looking dog as I thought for!' Still, whatever
result from that glance at the mirror, we never doubt that 't is our
likeness we see; and each says to the phantom reflection, 'Thou art
myself,' though the mere article of furniture that gives the reflection
belongs to another. It is my likeness if it be his glass. And a
narrative that is true to the Varieties of Life is every Man's Novel, no
matter from what shores, by what rivers, by what bays, in what pits, were
extracted the sands and the silex, the pearlash, the nitre, and
quicksilver which form its materials; no matter who the craftsman who
fashioned its form; no matter who the vendor that sold, or the customer
who bought: still, if I but recognize some trait of myself, 't is my
likeness that makes it 'My Novel.'"
MR. SQUILLS (puzzled, and therefore admiring).---"Subtle, sir,--very
subtle. Fine organ of Comparison in Mr. Caxton's head, and much called
into play this evening!"
MR. CAXTON (benignly).--"Finally, the author by this most admirable and
much signifying title dispenses with all necessity of preface. He need
insinuate no merits, he need extenuate no faults; for, by calling his
work thus curtly 'MY Novel,' he doth delicately imply that it is no use
wasting talk about faults or merits."
PISISTRATUS (amazed).--"How is that, sir?"
MR. CAXTON.--"What so clear? You imply that, though a better novel may
be written by others, you do not expect to write a novel to which, taken
as a novel, you would more decisively and unblushingly prefix that
voucher of personal authorship and identity conveyed in the monosyllable
'My.' And if you have written your best, let it be ever so bad, what can
any man of candour and integrity require more from you? Perhaps you will
say that, if you had lived two thousand years ago, you might have called
it 'The Novel,' or the 'Golden Novel,' as Lucius called his story 'The
Ass;' and Apuleius, to distinguish his own more elaborate Ass from all
Asses preceding it, called his tale 'The Golden Ass.' But living in the
present day, such a designation--implying a merit in general, not the
partial and limited merit corresponding only with your individual
abilities--would be presumptuous and offensive. True, I here anticipate
the observation I see Squills is about to make--"
SQUILLS.--"I, Sir?"
MR. CAXTON.--"You would say that, as Scarron called his work of fiction
'The Comic Novel,' so Pisistratus might have called his 'The Serious
Novel,' or 'The Tragic Novel.' But, Squills, that title would not have
been inviting nor appropriate, and would have been exposed to comparison
with Scarron, who being dead is inimitable. Wherefore--to put the
question on the irrefragable basis of mathematics--wherefore as A B 'My
Novel' is not equal to B C 'The Golden Novel,' nor to D E 'The Serious or
Tragic Novel,' it follows that A B 'My Novel' is equal to P C
'Pisistratus Caxton,' and P C 'Pisistratus Caxton' must therefore be just
equal, neither more nor less, to A B 'My Novel,'--which was to be
demonstrated." My father looked round triumphantly, and observing that
Squills was dumfounded, and the rest of his audience posed, he added
mildly,
"And so now, 'non quieta movere,' proceed with the Final Chapter, and
tell us first what became of that youthful Giles Overreach, who was
himself his own Marrall?"
"Ay," said the captain, "what became of Randal Leslie? Did he repent and
reform?"
"Nay," quoth my father, with a mournful shake of the head, "you can
regulate the warm tide of wild passion, you can light into virtue the
dark errors of ignorance; but where the force of the brain does but clog
the free action of the heart, where you have to deal, not with ignorance
misled, but intelligence corrupted, small hope of reform; for reform here
will need re-organization. I have somewhere read (perhaps in Hebrew
tradition) that of the two orders of fallen spirits,--the Angels of Love
and the Angels of Knowledge,--the first missed the stars they had lost,
and wandered back through the darkness, one by one, into heaven; but the
last, lighted on by their own lurid splendours, said, 'Wherever we go,
there is heaven!' And deeper and lower descending, lost their shape and
their nature, till, deformed and obscene, the bottomless pit closed
around them."
MR. SQUILLS.--"I should not have thought, Mr. Caxton, that a book-man
like you would be thus severe upon Knowledge."
MR. CAXTON (in wrath).--"Severe upon knowledge! Oh, Squills, Squills,
Squills! Knowledge perverted is knowledge no longer. Vinegar, which,
exposed to the sun, breeds small serpents, or at best slimy eels, not
comestible, once was wine. If I say to my grandchildren, 'Don't drink
that sour stuff, which the sun itself fills with reptiles,' does that
prove me a foe to sound sherry? Squills, if you had but received a
scholastic education, you would know the wise maxim that saith, 'All
things the worst are corruptions from things originally designed as the
best.' Has not freedom bred anarchy, and religion fanaticism? And if I
blame Marat calling for blood, or Dominic racking a heretic, am I severe
on the religion that canonized Francis de Sales, or the freedom that
immortalized Thrasybulus?"
Mr. Squills, dreading a catalogue of all the saints in the calendar, and
an epitome of Ancient History, exclaimed eagerly, "Enough, sir; I am
convinced!"
MR. CAXTON.--"Moreover, I have thought it a natural stroke of art in
Pisistratus to keep Randal Leslie, in his progress towards the rot of the
intellect unwholesomely refined, free from all the salutary influences
that deter ambition from settling into egotism. Neither in his slovenly
home, nor from his classic tutor at his preparatory school, does he seem
to have learned any truths, religious or moral, that might give sap to
fresh shoots, when the first rank growth was cut down by the knife; and I
especially noted, as illustrative of Egerton, no less than of Randal,
that though the statesman's occasional hints of advice to his protege are
worldly wise in their way, and suggestive of honour as befitting the
creed of a gentleman, they are not such as much influence a shrewd
reasoner like Randal, whom the example of the playground at Eton had not
served to correct of the arid self-seeking, which looked to knowledge for
no object but power. A man tempted by passions like Audley, or seduced
into fraud by a cold, subtle spirit like Leslie, will find poor defence
in the elegant precept, 'Remember to act as a gentleman.' Such moral
embroidery adds a beautiful scarf to one's armour; but it is not the
armour itself! Ten o'clock, as I live! Push on, Pisistratus! and
finish the chapter."
MRS. CAXTON (benevolently).--"Don't hurry. Begin with that odious Randal
Leslie, to oblige your father; but there are others whom Blanche and I
care much more to hear about."
Pisistratus, since there is no help for it, produces a supplementary
manuscript, which proves that, whatever his doubt as to the artistic
effect of a Final Chapter, he had foreseen that his audience would not be
contented without one.
Randal Leslie, late at noon the day after he quitted Lansmere Park,
arrived on foot at his father's house. He had walked all the way, and
through the solitudes of the winter night; but he was not sensible of
fatigue till the dismal home closed round him, with its air of hopeless
ignoble poverty; and then he sunk upon the floor feeling himself a ruin
amidst the ruins. He made no disclosure of what had passed to his
relations. Miserable man, there was not one to whom he could confide,
or from whom he might hear the truths that connect repentance with
consolation! After some weeks passed in sullen and almost unbroken
silence, be left as abruptly as he had appeared, and returned to London.
The sudden death of a man like Egerton had even in those excited times
created intense, though brief sensation. The particulars of the
election, that had been given in detail in the provincial papers, were
copied into the London journals, among those details, Randal Leslie's
conduct in the Committee-room, with many an indignant comment on
selfishness and ingratitude. The political world of all parties formed
one of those judgments on the great man's poor dependant, which fix a
stain upon the character and place a barrier in the career of ambitious
youth. The important personages who had once noticed Randal for Audley's
sake, and who, on their subsequent and not long-deferred restoration to
power, could have made his fortune, passed him in the streets without a
nod. He did not venture to remind Avenel of the promise to aid him in
another election for Lansmere, nor dream of filling up the vacancy which
Egerton's death had created. He was too shrewd not to see that all hope
of that borough was over,--he would have been hooted in the streets and
pelted from the hustings. Forlorn in the vast metropolis as Leonard had
once been, in his turn he loitered on the bridge, and gazed on the
remorseless river. He had neither money nor connections,--nothing save
talents and knowledge to force his way back into the lofty world in which
all had smiled on him before; and talents and knowledge, that had been
exerted to injure a benefactor, made him but the more despised. But even
now, Fortune, that had bestowed on the pauper heir of Rood advantages so
numerous and so dazzling, out of which he had cheated himself, gave him
a chance, at least, of present independence, by which, with patient toil,
he might have won, if not to the highest places, at least to a position
in which he could have forced the world to listen to his explanations;
and perhaps receive his excuses. The L5,000 that Audley designed for
him, and which, in a private memorandum, the statesman had entreated
Harley to see safely rescued from the fangs of the law, were made over
to Randal by Lord L'Estrange's solicitor; but this sum seemed to him so
small after the loss of such gorgeous hopes, and the up-hill path seemed
so slow after such short cuts to power, that Randal looked upon the
unexpected bequest simply as an apology for adopting no profession.
Stung to the quick by the contrast between his past and his present place
in the English world, he hastened abroad. There, whether in distraction
from thought, or from the curiosity of a restless intellect to explore
the worth of things yet untried, Randal Leslie, who had hitherto been so
dead to the ordinary amusements of youth, plunged into the society of
damaged gamesters and third-rate roues. In this companionship his very
talents gradually degenerated, and their exercise upon low intrigues and
miserable projects but abased his social character, till, sinking step
after step as his funds decayed, he finally vanished out of the sphere in
which even profligates still retain the habits, and cling to the caste of
gentlemen. His father died; the neglected property of Rood devolved on
Randal, but out of its scanty proceeds he had to pay the portions of his
brother and sister, and his mother's jointure; the surplus left was
scarcely visible in the executor's account. The hope of restoring the
home and fortunes of his forefathers had long ceased. What were the
ruined hall and its bleak wastes, without that hope which had once
dignified the wreck and the desert? He wrote from St. Petersburg,
ordering the sale of the property. No one great proprietor was a
candidate for the unpromising investment; it was sold in lots among small
freeholders and retired traders. A builder bought the hall for its
material. Hall, lands, and name were blotted out of the map and the
history of the county.
The widow, Oliver, and Juliet removed to a provincial town in another
shire. Juliet married an ensign in a marching regiment; and died of
neglect after childbirth. Mrs. Leslie did not long survive her. Oliver
added to his little fortune by marriage with the daughter of a retail
tradesman, who had amassed a few thousand pounds. He set up a brewery,
and contrived to live without debt, though a large family and his own
constitutional inertness extracted from his business small profits and no
savings. Nothing of Randal had been heard of for years after the sale of
Rood, except that he had taken up his residence either in Australia or
the United States; it was not known which, but presumed to be the latter.
Still, Oliver had been brought up with so high a veneration of his
brother's talents, that he cherished the sanguine belief that Randal
would some day appear, wealthy and potent, like the uncle in a comedy;
lift rip the sunken family, and rear into graceful ladies and
accomplished gentlemen the clumsy little boys and the vulgar little girls
who now crowded round Oliver's dinner-table, with appetites altogether
disproportioned to the size of the joints.
One winter day, when from the said dinner-table wife and children had
retired, and Oliver sat sipping his half-pint of bad port, and looking
over unsatisfactory accounts, a thin terrier, lying on the threadbare rug
by the niggard fire, sprang up and barked fiercely. Oliver lifted his
dull blue eyes, and saw opposite to him, at the window, a human face.
The face was pressed close to the panes, and was obscured by the haze
which the breath of its lips drew forth from the frosty rime that had
gathered on the glass.
Oliver, alarmed and indignant, supposing this intrusive spectator of his
privacy to be some bold and lawless tramper, stepped out of the room,
opened the front door, and bade the stranger go about his business; while
the terrier still more inhospitably yelped and snapped at the stranger's
heels. Then a hoarse voice said, "Don't you know me, Oliver? I am your
brother Randal! Call away your dog and let me in." Oliver stared
aghast; he could not believe his slow senses, he could not recognize his
brother in the gaunt grim apparition before him; but at length he came
forward, gazed into Randal's face, and, grasping his hand in amazed
silence, led him into the little parlour. Not a trace of the well-bred
refinement which had once characterized Randal's air and person was
visible. His dress bespoke the last stage of that terrible decay which
is significantly called the "shabby genteel." His mien was that of the
skulking, timorous, famished vagabond. As he took off his greasy
tattered hat, he exhibited, though still young in years, the signs of
premature old age. His hair, once so fine and silken, was of a harsh
iron-gray, bald in ragged patches; his forehead and visage were ploughed
into furrows; intelligence was still in the aspect, but an intelligence
that instinctively set you on your guard,--sinister, gloomy, menacing.
Randal stopped short all questioning. He seized the small modicum of
wine on the table, and drained it at a draught. "Poole," said he, "have
you nothing that warms a man better than this?" Oliver, who felt as if
under the influence of a frightful dream, went to a cupboard and took out
a bottle of brandy three-parts full. Randal snatched at it eagerly, and
put his lips to the mouth of the bottle. "Ah," said he, after a short
pause, "this comforts; now give me food." Oliver hastened himself to
serve his brother; in fact, he felt ashamed that even the slipshod maid-
servant should see his visitor. When he returned with such provisions as
he could extract from the larder, Randal was seated by the fire,
spreading over the embers emaciated bony hands, like the talons of a
vulture.
He devoured the cold meat set before him with terrible voracity, and
nearly finished the spirits left in the bottle; but the last had no
effect in dispersing his gloom. Oliver stared at him in fear; the
terrier continued to utter a low suspicious growl.
"You would know my history?" at length said Randal, bluntly. "It is
short. I have tried for fortune and failed, I am without a penny and
without a hope. You seem poor,--
"I suppose you cannot much help me. Let me at least stay with you for a
time,--I know not where else to look for bread and for shelter."
Oliver burst into tears, and cordially bade his brother welcome. Randal
remained some weeks at Oliver's house, never stirring out of the doors,
and not seeming to notice, though he did not scruple to use, the new
habiliments, which Oliver procured ready-made, and placed, without
remark, in his room. But his presence soon became intolerable to the
mistress of the house, and oppressive even to its master. Randal, who
had once been so abstemious that he had even regarded the most moderate
use of wine as incompatible with clear judgment and vigilant observation,
had contracted the habit of drinking spirits at all hours of the day; but
though they sometimes intoxicated him into stupor, they never unlocked
his heart nor enlivened his sullen mood. If he observed less acutely
than of old, he could still conceal just as closely. Mrs. Oliver Leslie,
at first rather awed and taciturn, grew cold and repelling, then pert and
sarcastic, at last undisguisedly and vulgarly rude. Randal made no
retort; but his sneer was so galling that the wife flew at once to her
husband, and declared that either she or his brother must leave the
house. Oliver tried to pacify and compromise, with partial success; and
a few days afterwards, he came to Randal and said timidly, "You see, my
wife brought me nearly all I possess, and you don't condescend to make
friends with her. Your residence here must be as painful to you as to
me. But I wish to see you provided for; and I could offer you something,
only it seems, at first glance, so beneath--"
"Beneath what?" interrupted Randal, witheringly. "What I was--or what I
am? Speak out!"
"To be sure you are a scholar; and I have heard you say fine things about
knowledge and so forth; and you'll have plenty of books at your disposal,
no doubt; and you are still young, and may rise--and--"
"Hell and torments! Be quick,--say the worst or the best!" cried Randal,
fiercely.
"Well, then," said poor Oliver, still trying to soften the intended
proposal, "you must know that our poor sister's husband was nephew to Dr.
Felpem, who keeps a very respectable school. He is not learned himself,
and attends chiefly to arithmetic and book-keeping, and such matters; but
he wants an usher to teach the classics, for some of the boys go to
college. And I have written to him, just to sound--I did not mention
your name till I knew if you would like it; but he will take my
recommendation. Board, lodging, L50 a year; in short, the place is yours
if you like it." Randal shivered from head to foot, and was long before
he answered. "Well, be it so; I have come to that. Ha, ha! yes,
knowledge is power!" He paused a few moments. "So, the old Hall is
razed to the ground, and you are a tradesman in a small country town, and
my sister is dead, and I henceforth am--John Smith! You say that you did
not mention my name to the schoolmaster,--still keep it concealed; forget
that I once was a Leslie. Our tie of brotherhood ceases when I go from
your hearth. Write, then, to your head-master, who attends to
arithmetic, and secure the rank of his usher in Latin and Greek for--John
Smith!"
Not many days afterwards, the /protege/ of Audley Egerton entered on his
duties as usher in one of those large, cheap schools, which comprise a
sprinkling of the sons of gentry and clergymen designed for the learned
professions, with a far larger proportion of the sons of traders,
intended, some for the counting-house, some for the shop and the till.
There, to this day, under the name of John Smith, lives Randal Leslie.
It is probably not pride alone that induces him to persist in that change
of name, and makes him regard as perpetual the abandonment of the one
that he took from his forefathers, and with which he had once identified
his vaulting ambition; for shortly after he had quitted his brother's
house, Oliver read in the weekly newspaper, to which he bounded his lore
of the times in which he lived, an extract from an American journal,
wherein certain mention was made of an English adventurer who, amongst
other aliases, had assumed the name of Leslie,--that extract caused
Oliver to start, turn pale, look round, and thrust the paper into the
fire. From that time he never attempted to violate the condition Randal
had imposed on him, never sought to renew their intercourse, nor to claim
a brother. Doubtless, if the adventurer thus signalized was the man
Oliver suspected, whatever might be imputed to Randal's charge that could
have paled a brother's cheek, it was none of the more violent crimes to
which law is inexorable, but rather (in that progress made by ingratitude
and duplicity, with Need and Necessity urging them on) some act of
dishonesty which may just escape from the law, to sink, without
redemption, the name. However this be, there is nothing in Randal's
present course of life which forbodes any deeper fall. He has known what
it is to want bread, and his former restlessness subsides into cynic
apathy.
He lodges in the town near the school, and thus the debasing habit of
unsocial besotment is not brought under the eyes of his superior. The
drain is his sole luxury; if it be suspected, it is thought to be his
sole vice. He goes through the ordinary routine of tuition with average
credit; his spirit of intrigue occasionally shows itself in attempts to
conciliate the favour of the boys whose fathers are wealthy, who are born
to higher rank than the rest; and he lays complicated schemes to be asked
home for the holidays. But when the schemes succeed, and the invitation
comes, be recoils and shrinks back,--he does not dare to show himself on
the borders of the brighter world he once hoped to sway; he fears that he
may be discovered to be--a Leslie! On such days, when his taskwork is
over, he shuts himself up in his room, locks the door, and drugs himself
into insensibility.
Once be found a well-worn volume running the round of delighted
schoolboys, took it up, and recognized Leonard's earliest popular work,
which had, many years before, seduced himself into pleasant thoughts and
gentle emotions. He carried the book to his own lodgings, read it again;
and when he returned it to its young owner, some of the leaves were
stained with tears. Alas! perhaps but the maudlin tears of broken
nerves, not of the awakened soul,--for the leaves smelt strongly of
whiskey. Yet, after that re-perusal, Randal Leslie turned suddenly to
deeper studies than his habitual drudgeries required. He revived and
increased his early scholarship; he chalked the outline of a work of
great erudition, in which the subtlety of his intellect found field in
learned and acute criticism. But he has never proceeded far in this
work. After each irregular and spasmodic effort, the pen drops from his
hand, and he mutters, "But to what end?
"I can never now raise a name. Why give reputation to--John Smith?"
Thus he drags on his life; and perhaps, when he dies, the fragments of
his learned work may be discovered in the desk of the usher, and serve as
hints to some crafty student, who may filch ideas and repute from the
dead Leslie, as Leslie had filched them from the living Burley.
While what may be called poetical justice has thus evolved itself from
the schemes in which Randal Leslie had wasted rare intellect in baffling
his own fortunes, no outward signs of adversity evince the punishment of
Providence on the head of the more powerful offender, Baron Levy. No
fall in the Funds has shaken the sumptuous fabric, built from the ruined
houses of other men. Baron Levy is still Baron Levy the millionaire; but
I doubt if at heart he be not more acutely miserable than Randal Leslie
the usher. For Levy is a man who has admitted the fiercer passions into
his philosophy of life; he has not the pale blood and torpid heart which
allow the scotched adder to dose away its sense of pain. Just as old age
began to creep upon the fashionable usurer, he fell in love with a young
opera-dancer, whose light heels had turned the lighter heads of half the
eligans of Paris and London. The craft of the dancer was proof against
all lesser bribes than that of marriage; and Levy married her. From that
moment his house, Louis Quinze, was more crowded than ever by the high-
born dandies whose society lie had long so eagerly courted. That society
became his curse. The baroness was an accomplished coquette; and Levy
(with whom, as we have seen, jealousy was the predominant passion) was
stretched on an eternal rack. His low estimate of human nature, his
disbelief in the possibility of virtue, added strength to the agony of
his suspicions, and provoked the very dangers he dreaded. His self-
torturing task was that of the spy upon his own hearth. His banquets
were haunted by a spectre; the attributes of his wealth were as the goad
and the scourge of Nemesis. His gay cynic smile changed into a sullen
scowl, his hair blanched into white, his eyes were hollow with one
consuming care. Suddenly he left his costly house,--left London; abjured
all the society which it had been the joy of his wealth to purchase;
buried himself and his wife in a remote corner of the provinces; and
there he still lives. He seeks in vain to occupy his days with rural
pursuits,--he to whom the excitements of a metropolis, with all its
corruption and its vices, were the sole sources of the turpid stream that
he called "pleasure." There, too, the fiend of jealousy still pursues
him: he prowls round his demesnes with the haggard eye and furtive step
of a thief; he guards his wife as a prisoner, for she threatens every day
to escape. The life of the man who had opened the prison to so many is
the life of a jailer. His wife abhors him, and does not conceal it; and
still slavishly he dotes on her. Accustomed to the freest liberty,
demanding applause and admiration as her rights; wholly uneducated,
vulgar in mind, coarse in language, violent in temper, the beautiful Fury
he had brought to his home makes that home a hell. Thus, what might seem
to the superficial most enviable, is to their possessor most hateful. He
dares not ask a soul to see how he spends his gold; he has shrunk into a
mean and niggardly expenditure, and complains of reverse and poverty, in
order to excuse himself to his wife for debarring her the enjoyments
which she anticipated from the Money Bags she had married. A vague
consciousness of retribution has awakened remorse, to add to his other
stings. And the remorse coming from superstition, not religion (sent
from below, not descending from above), brings with it none of the
consolations of a genuine repentance. He never seeks to atone, never
dreams of some redeeming good action. His riches flow around him,
spreading wider and wider--out of his own reach.
The Count di Peschiera was not deceived in the calculations which had
induced him to affect repentance, and establish a claim upon his kinsman.
He received from the generosity of the Duke di Serrano an annuity not
disproportioned to his rank, and no order from his court forbade his
return to Vienna. But, in the very summer that followed his visit to
Lansmere, his career came to an abrupt close. At Baden-Baden he paid
court to a wealthy and accomplished Polish widow; and his fine person and
terrible repute awed away all rivals, save a young Frenchman, as daring
as himself, and much more in love. A challenge was given and accepted.
Peschiera appeared on the fatal ground, with his customary sang-froid,
humming an opera air, and looking so diabolically gay that his opponent's
nerves were affected in spite of his courage; and the Frenchman's trigger
going off before he had even taken aim, to his own ineffable
astonishment, he shot the count through the heart, dead.
Beatrice di Negra lived for some years after her brother's death in
strict seclusion, lodging within a convent, though she did not take the
veil, as she at first proposed. In fact, the more she saw of the
sisterhood, the more she found that human regrets and human passions
(save in some rarely gifted natures) find their way through the barred
gates and over the lofty walls. Finally, she took up her abode in Rome,
where she is esteemed for a life not only marked by strict propriety, but
active benevolence. She cannot be prevailed on to accept from the duke
more than a fourth of the annuity that had been bestowed on her brother;
but she has few wants, save those of charity; and when charity is really
active, it can do so much with so little gold! She is not known in the
gayer circles of the city; but she gathers round her a small society
composed chiefly of artists and scholars, and is never so happy as when
she can aid some child of genius,--more especially if his country be
England.
The squire and his wife still flourish at Hazeldean, where Captain
Barnabas Higginbotham has taken up his permanent abode. The captain is a
confirmed hypochondriac; but he brightens up now and then when he hears
of any illness in the family of Mr. Sharpe Currie, and, at such times, is
heard to murmur, "If those seven sickly children should go off, I might
still have very great--EXPECTATIONS,"--for the which he has been roundly
scolded by the squire, and gravely preached at by the parson. Upon both,
however, he takes his revenge in a fair and gentlemanlike way, three
times a week, at the whist-table, the parson no longer having the captain
as his constant partner, since a fifth now generally cuts in at the
table,--in the person of that old enemy and neighbour, Mr. Sticktorights.
The parson, thus fighting his own battles unallied to the captain,
observes with melancholy surprise that there is a long run of luck
against him, and that he does not win so much as he used to do.
Fortunately that is the sole trouble--except Mrs. Dale's "little
tempers," to which he is accustomed--that ever disturbs the serene tenor
of the parson's life. We must now explain how Mr. Sticktorights came to
cut in at the Hazeldean whist-table. Frank has settled at the Casino
with a wife who suits him exactly, and that wife was Miss Sticktorights.
It was two years before Frank recovered the disappointment with which the
loss of Beatrice saddened his spirits, but sobered his habits and awoke
his reflection. An affection, however misplaced and ill-requited, if
honestly conceived and deeply felt, rarely fails to advance the self-
education of man. Frank became steady and serious; and, on a visit to
Hazeldean, met at a county ball Miss Sticktorights, and the two young
persons were instantly attracted towards each other, perhaps by the very
feud that had so long existed between their houses. The marriage
settlements were nearly abandoned, at the last moment, by a discussion
between the parents as to the Right of Way; but the dispute was happily
appeased by Mr. Dale's suggestion that as both properties would be united
in the children of the proposed marriage, all cause for litigation would
naturally cease, since no man would go to law with himself. Mr.
Sticktorights and Mr. Hazeldean, however, agreed in the precaution of
inserting a clause in the settlements (though all the lawyers declared
that it could not be of any legal avail), by which it was declared, that
if, in default of heritable issue by the said marriage, the
Sticktorights' estate devolved on some distant scion of the Sticktorights
family, the right of way from the wood across the waste land would still
remain in the same state of delectable dispute in which it then stood.
There seems, however, little chance of a lawsuit thus providently
bequeathed to the misery of distant generations, since two sons and two
daughters are already playing at hide-and-seek on the terrace where
Jackeymo once watered the orange-trees, and in the belvidere where
Riccabocca had studied his Machiavelli.
Jackeymo, though his master has assessed the long arrears of his wages at
a sum which would enable him to have orange-groves and servants of his
own, still clings to his former duties, and practises his constitutional
parsimony. His only apparent deviation into profusion consists in the
erection of a chapel to his sainted namesake, to whom he burns many a
votive taper,--the tapers are especially tall, and their sconces are
wreathed with garlands, whenever a letter with the foreign postmark
brings good news of the absent Violante and her English lord.
Riccabocca was long before he reconciled himself to the pomp of his
principalities and his title of Duke. Jemima accommodated herself much
more readily to greatness; but she retained all her native Hazeldean
simplicity at heart, and is adored by the villagers around her,
especially by the young of both sexes, whom she is always ready to marry
and to portion,--convinced, long ere this, of the redeemable qualities of
the male sex by her reverence for the duke, who continues to satirize
women and wedlock, and deem himself--thanks to his profound experience of
the one, and his philosophical endurance of the other--the only happy
husband in the world. Longer still was it before the sage, who had been
so wisely anxious to rid himself of the charge of a daughter, could wean
his thoughts from the remembrance of her tender voice and loving eyes,--
not, indeed, till he seriously betook himself to the task of educating
the son with whom, according to his scientific prognostics, Jemima
presented him shortly after his return to his native land. The sage
began betimes with his Italian proverbs, full of hardhearted worldly
wisdom, and the boy was scarce out of the hornbook before he was
introduced to Machiavelli. But somehow or other the simple goodness of
the philosopher's actual life, with his high-wrought patrician sentiments
of integrity and honour, so counteract the theoretical lessons, that the
Heir of Serrano is little likely to be made more wise by the proverbs, or
more wicked by the Machiavelli, than those studies have practically made
the progenitor, whose opinions his countrymen still shame with the title
of "Alphonso the Good."
The duke long cherished a strong curiosity to know what had become of
Randal. He never traced the adventurer to his closing scene. But once
(years before Randal had crept into his present shelter) in a visit of
inspection to the hospital at Genoa, the duke, with his peculiar
shrewdness of observation in all matters except those which concerned
himself, was remarking to the officer in attendance, "that for one dull,
honest man whom fortune drove to the hospital or the jail, he had found,
on investigation of their antecedents, three sharp-witted knaves who had
thereto reduced themselves"--when his eye fell upon a man asleep in one
of the sick wards; and recognizing the face, not then so changed as
Oliver had seen it, he walked straight up, and gazed upon Randal Leslie.
"An Englishman," said the official. "He was brought hither insensible,
from a severe wound on the head, inflicted, as we discovered, by a well-
known chevalier d'industrie, who declared that the Englishman had
outwitted and cheated him. That was not very likely, for a few crowns
were all we could find on the Englishman's person, and he had been
obliged to leave his lodgings for debt. He is recovering, but there is
fever still."
The duke gazed silently on the sleeper, who was tossing restlessly on his
pallet, and muttering to himself; then he placed his purse in the
official's hand. "Give this to the Englishman," said he; "but conceal my
name. It is true, it is true, the proverb is very true," resumed the
duke, descending the stairs, "Piu pelli di volpi the di asini vanno in
Pellieciaria." (More hides of foxes than of asses find their way to the
tanner's).
Dr. Morgan continues to prescribe globules for grief, and to administer
infinitesimally to a mind diseased. Practising what he prescribes, he
swallows a globule of caustic whenever the sight of a distressed fellow-
creature moves him to compassion,--a constitutional tendency which, he is
at last convinced, admits of no radical cure. For the rest, his range of
patients has notably expanded; and under his sage care his patients
unquestionably live as long--as Providence pleases. No allopathist can
say more.
The death of poor John Burley found due place in the obituary of
"literary men." Admirers, unknown before, came forward and subscribed
for a handsome monument to his memory in Kensall Green. They would have
subscribed for the relief of his widow and children, if he had left any.
Writers in magazines thrived for some months on collections of his
humorous sayings, anecdotes of his eccentricities, and specimens of the
eloquence that had lightened through the tobacco-reek of tavern and club-
room. Leonard ultimately made a selection from his scattered writings
which found place in standard libraries, though their subjects were
either of too fugitive an interest, or treated in too capricious a
manner, to do more than indicate the value of the ore, had it been
purified from its dross and subjected to the art of the mint. These
specimens could not maintain their circulation as the coined money of
Thought, but they were hoarded by collectors as rare curiosities. Alas,
poor Burley!
The Pompleys sustained a pecuniary loss by the crash of a railway
company, in which the colonel had been induced to take several shares by
one of his wife's most boasted "connections," whose estate the said
railway proposed to traverse, on paying L400 an acre, in that golden age
when railway companies respected the rights of property. The colonel was
no longer able, in his own country, to make both ends meet at Christmas.
He is now straining hard to achieve that feat in Boulogne, and has in the
process grown so red in the face, that those who meet him in his morning
walk on the pier, bargaining for fish, shake their heads and say, "Old
Pompley will go off in a fit of apoplexy; a great loss to society;
genteel people the Pompleys! and very highly 'connected.'"
The vacancy created in the borough of Lansmere by Audley Egerton's death
was filled up by our old acquaintance, Haveril Dashmore, who had
unsuccessfully contested that seat on Egerton's first election. The
naval officer was now an admiral, and perfectly reconciled to the
Constitution, with all its alloy of aristocracy.
Dick Avenel did not retire from parliament so soon as he had anticipated.
He was not able to persuade Leonard, whose brief fever of political
ambition was now quenched in the calm fountain of the Muse, to supply his
place in the senate, and he felt that the House of Avenel needed one
representative. He contrived, however, to devote, for the first year or
two, much more of his time to his interests at Screwstown than to the
affairs of his country, and succeeded in baffling the over-competition to
which he had been subjected by taking the competitor into partnership.
Having thus secured a monopoly at Screwstown, Dick, of course, returned
with great ardour to his former enlightened opinions in favour of free
trade. He remained some years in parliament; and though far too shrewd
to venture out of his depth as an orator, distinguished himself so much
by his exposure of "humbug" on an important Committee, that he acquired a
very high reputation as a man of business, and gradually became so in
request amongst all the members who moved for "Select Committees," that
he rose into consequence; and Mrs. Avenel, courted for his sake, more
than her own, obtained the wish of her heart, and was received as an
acknowledged /habituee/ into the circles of fashion. Amidst these
circles, however, Dick found that his home entirely vanished; and when
he came home from the House of Commons, tired to death, at two in the
morning, disgusted at always hearing that Mrs. Avenel was not yet
returned from some fine lady's ball, he formed a sudden resolution of
cutting Parliament, Fashion, and London altogether; withdrew his capital,
now very large, from his business; bought the remaining estates of Squire
Thornhill; and his chief object of ambition is in endeavouring to coax or
bully out of their holdings all the small freeholders round, who had
subdivided amongst them, into poles and furlongs, the fated inheritance
of Randal Leslie. An excellent justice of the peace, though more severe
than your old family proprietors generally are; a spirited landlord,
as to encouraging and making, at a proper percentage, all permanent
improvements on the soil, but formidable to meet if the rent be not paid
to the day, or the least breach of covenant be heedlessly incurred on a
farm that he could let for more money; employing a great many hands in
productive labour, but exacting rigorously from all the utmost degree of
work at the smallest rate of wages which competition and the poor-rate
permit; the young and robust in his neighbourhood never stinted in work,
and the aged and infirm, as lumber worn out, stowed away in the
workhouse,--Richard Avenel holds himself an example to the old race of
landlords; and, taken altogether, he is no very bad specimen of the rural
civilizers whom the application of spirit and capital raise up in the
new.
From the wrecks of Egerton's fortune, Harley, with the aid of his
father's experience in business, could not succeed in saving, for the
statesman's sole child and heir, more than a few thousand pounds; and but
for the bonds and bills which, when meditating revenge, he had bought
from Levy, and afterwards thrown into the fire--paying dear for that
detestable whistle--even this surplus would not have been forthcoming.
Harley privately paid out of his own fortune the L5,000 Egerton had
bequeathed to Leslie; perhaps not sorry, now that the stern duty of
exposing the false wiles of the schemer was fulfilled, to afford some
compensation even to the victim who had so richly deserved his fate; and
pleased, though mournfully, to comply with the solemn request of the
friend whose offence was forgotten in the remorseful memory of his own
projects of revenge.
Leonard's birth and identity were easily proved, and no one appeared to
dispute them. The balance due to him as his father's heir, together with
the sum Avenel ultimately paid to him for the patent of his invention,
and the dowry which Harley insisted upon bestowing on Helen, amounted to
that happy competence which escapes alike the anxieties of poverty, and
(what to one of contemplative tastes and retired habits are often more
irksome to bear) the show and responsibilities of wealth. His father's
death made a deep impression upon Leonard's mind; but the discovery that
he owed his birth to a statesman of so great a repute, and occupying a
position in society so conspicuous, contributed not to confirm, but to
still, the ambition which had for a short time diverted him from his more
serene aspirations. He had no longer to win a rank which might equal
Helen's. He had no longer a parent, whose affections might be best won
through pride. The memories of his earlier peasant life, and his love
for retirement,--in which habit confirmed the constitutional tendency,-
made him shrink from what a more worldly nature would have considered the
enviable advantages of a name that secured the entrance into the loftiest
sphere of our social world. He wanted not that name to assist his own
path to a rank far more durable than that which kings can confer. And
still he retained in the works he had published, and still he proposed to
bestow on the works more ambitious that he had, in leisure and
competence, the facilities to design with care, and complete with
patience, the name he had himself invented, and linked with the memory of
the low-born mother. Therefore, though there was some wonder, in
drawing-rooms and clubs, at the news of Egerton's first unacknowledged
marriage, and some curiosity expressed as to what the son of that
marriage might do,--and great men were prepared to welcome, and fine
ladies to invite and bring out, the heir to the statesman's grave
repute,--yet wonder and curiosity soon died away; the repute soon passed
out of date, and its heir was soon forgotten. Politicians who fall short
of the highest renown are like actors; no applause is so vivid while they
are on the stage, no oblivion so complete when the curtain falls on the
last farewell.
Leonard saw a fair tomb rise above Nora's grave, and on the tomb was
engraved the word of WIFE, which vindicated her beloved memory. He
felt the warm embrace of Nora's mother, no longer ashamed to own her
grandchild; and even old John was made sensible that a secret weight
of sorrow was taken from his wife's stern silent heart. Leaning on
Leonard's arm, the old man gazed wistfully on Nora's tomb, and muttering,
"Egerton! Egerton! 'Leonora, the first wife of the Right Honourable
Audley Egerton!' Ha! I voted for him. She married the right colour.
Is that the date? Is it so long since she died? Well, well! I miss her
sadly. But wife says we shall both now see her soon; and wife once
thought we should never see her again,--never; but I always knew better.
Thank you, sir. I'm a poor creature, but these tears don't pain me,--
quite otherwise. I don't know why, but I'm very happy. Where's my old
woman? She does not mind how much I talk about Nora now. Oh, there she
is! Thank you, sir, humbly; but I'd rather lean on my old woman,--I'm
more used to it; and--wife, when shall we go to Nora?"
Leonard had brought Mrs. Fairfield to see her parents, and Mrs. Avenel
welcomed her with unlooked-for kindness. The name inscribed upon Nora's
tomb softened the mother's heart to her surviving daughter. As poor John
had said, "She could now talk about Nora;" and in that talk, she and the
child she had so long neglected discovered how much they had in common.
So when, shortly after his marriage with Helen, Leonard went abroad, Jane
Fairfield remained with the old couple. After their death, which was
within a day of each other, she refused, perhaps from pride, to take up
her residence with Leonard; but she settled near the home which he
subsequently found in England. Leonard remained abroad for some years.
A quiet observer of the various manners and intellectual development of
living races, a rapt and musing student of the monuments that revive the
dead, his experience of mankind grew large in silence, and his
perceptions of the Sublime and Beautiful brightened into tranquil art
under their native skies.
On his return to England he purchased a small house amidst the most
beautiful scenes of Devonshire, and there patiently commenced a work in
which he designed to bequeath to his country his noblest thoughts in
their fairest forms. Some men best develop their ideas by constant
exercise; their thoughts spring from their brain ready-armed, and seek,
like the fabled goddess, to take constant part in the wars of men. And
such are, perhaps, on the whole, the most vigorous and lofty writers; but
Leonard did not belong to this class. Sweetness and serenity were the
main characteristics of his genius; and these were deepened by his
profound sense of his domestic happiness. To wander alone with Helen by
the banks of the murmurous river; to gaze with her on the deep still sea;
to feel that his thoughts, even when most silent, were comprehended by
the intuition of love, and reflected on that translucent sympathy so
yearned for and so rarely found by poets,--these were the Sabbaths of his
soul, necessary to fit him for its labours: for the Writer has this
advantage over other men, that his repose is not indolence. His duties,
rightly fulfilled, are discharged to earth and men in other capacities
than those of action. If he is not seen among those who act, he is all
the while maturing some noiseless influence, which will guide or
illumine, civilize or elevate, the restless men whose noblest actions are
but the obedient agencies of the thoughts of writers. Call not, then,
the Poet whom we place amidst the Varieties of Life, the sybarite of
literary ease, if, returning on Summer eves, Helen's light footstep by
his musing side, he greets his sequestered home, with its trellised
flowers smiling out from amidst the lonely cliffs in which it is
embedded; while lovers still, though wedded long, they turn to each
other, with such deep joy in their speaking eyes, grateful that the
world, with its various distractions and noisy conflicts, lies so far
from their actual existence,--only united to them by the happy link that
the writer weaves invisibly with the hearts that he moves and the souls
that he inspires. No! Character and circumstance alike unfitted Leonard
for the strife of the thronged literary democracy; they led towards the
development of the gentler and purer portions of his nature,--to the
gradual suppression of the more combative and turbulent. The influence
of the happy light under which his genius so silently and calmly grew,
was seen in the exquisite harmony of its colours, rather than the
gorgeous diversities of their glow. His contemplation, intent upon
objects of peaceful beauty, and undisturbed by rude anxieties and
vehement passions, suggested only kindred reproductions to the creative
faculty by which it was vivified; so that the whole man was not only a
poet, but, as it were, a poem,--a living idyl, calling into pastoral
music every reed that sighed and trembled along the stream of life. And
Helen was so suited to a nature of this kind, she so guarded the ideal
existence in which it breathes! All the little cares and troubles of the
common practical life she appropriated so quietly to herself,--the
stronger of the two, as should be a poet's wife, in the necessary
household virtues of prudence and forethought. Thus if the man's genius
made the home a temple, the woman's wisdom gave to the temple the
security of the fortress. They have only one child,--a girl; they call
her Nora. She has the father's soul-lit eyes, and the mother's warm
human smile. She assists Helen in the morning's noiseless domestic
duties; she sits in the evening at Leonard's feet, while he reads or
writes. In each light grief of childhood she steals to the mother's
knee; but in each young impulse of delight, or each brighter flash of
progressive reason, she springs to the father's breast. Sweet Helen,
thou hast taught her this, taking to thyself the shadows even of thine
infant's life, and leaving to thy partner's eyes only its rosy light!
But not here shall this picture of Helen close. Even the Ideal can only
complete its purpose by connection with the Real; even in solitude the
writer must depend upon mankind.
Leonard at last has completed the work, which has been the joy and the
labour of so many years,--the work which he regards as the flower of all
his spiritual being, and to which he has committed all the hopes that
unite the creature of today with the generations of the future. The work
has gone through the press, each line lingered over with the elaborate
patience of the artist, loath to part with the thought he has sculptured
into form, while an improving touch can be imparted by the chisel. He
has accepted an invitation from Norreys. In the restless excitement
(strange to him since his first happy maiden effort) he has gone to
London. Unrecognized in the huge metropolis, he has watched to see if
the world acknowledge the new tie he has woven between its busy life and
his secluded toil. And the work came out in an unpropitious hour; other
things were occupying the public; the world was not at leisure to heed
him, and the book did not penetrate into the great circle of readers.
But a savage critic has seized on it, and mangled, distorted, deformed
it, confounding together defect and beauty in one mocking ridicule; and
the beauties have not yet found an exponent, nor the defects a defender;
and the publisher shakes his head, points to groaning shelves, and
delicately hints that the work which was to be the epitome of the sacred
life within life does not hit the taste of the day. Leonard thinks over
the years that his still labour has cost him, and knows that he has
exhausted the richest mines of his intellect, and that long years will
elapse before he can recruit that capital of ideas which is necessary to
sink new shafts and bring to light fresh ore; and the deep despondency of
intellect, frustrated in its highest aims, has seized him, and all he has
before done is involved in failure by the defeat of the crowning effort.
Failure, and irrecoverable, seems his whole ambition as writer; his whole
existence in the fair Ideal seems to have been a profitless dream, and
the face of the Ideal itself is obscured. And even Norreys frankly,
though kindly, intimates that the life of a metropolis is essential to
the healthful intuition of a writer in the intellectual wants of his age,
since every great writer supplies a want in his own generation, for some
feeling to be announced, some truth to be revealed. And as this maxim is
generally sound, as most great writers have lived in cities, Leonard
dares not dwell on the exception; it is only success that justifies the
attempt to be an exception to the common rule; and with the blunt manhood
of his nature, which is not a poet's, Norreys sums up with, "What then?
One experiment has failed; fit your life to your genius, and try again."
Try again! Easy counsel enough to the man of ready resource and quick
combative mind; but to Leonard, how hard and how harsh! "Fit his life to
his genius!"--renounce contemplation and Nature for the jostle of Oxford
Street! Would that life not scare away the genius forever? Perplexed
and despondent, though still struggling for fortitude, he returns to his
home; and there at his hearth awaits the Soother, and there is the voice
that repeats the passages most beloved, and prophesies so confidently of
future fame; and gradually all around smiles from the smile of Helen.
And the profound conviction that Heaven places human happiness beyond the
reach of the world's contempt or praise, circulates through his system
and restores its serene calm. And he feels that the duty of the
intellect is to accomplish and perfect itself,--to harmonize its sounds
into music that may be heard in heaven, though it wake not an echo on the
earth. If this be done, as with some men, best amidst the din and the
discord, be it so; if, as with him, best in silence, be it so too. And
the next day he reclines with Helen by the seashore, gazing calmly as
before on the measureless sunlit ocean; and Helen, looking into his face,
sees that it is sunlit as the deep. His hand steals within her own, in
the gratitude that endears beyond the power of passion, and he murmurs
gently, "Blessed be the woman who consoles."
The work found its way at length into fame, and the fame sent its voices
loud to the poet's home. But the applause of the world had not a sound
so sweet to his ear, as, when, in doubt, humiliation, and sadness, the
lips of his Helen had whispered "Hope! and believe!"
Side by side with this picture of Woman the Consoler, let me place the
companion sketch. Harley L'Estrange, shortly after his marriage with
Violante, had been induced, whether at his bride's persuasions, or to
dissipate the shadow with which Egerton's death still clouded his wedded
felicity, to accept a temporary mission, half military, half civil, to
one of our colonies. On this mission he had evinced so much ability and
achieved so signal a success, that on his return to England he was raised
to the peerage, while his father yet lived to rejoice that the son who
would succeed to his honours had achieved the nobler dignity of honours
not inherited, but won. High expectations were formed of Harley's
parliamentary success; but he saw that such success, to be durable, must
found itself on the knowledge of wearisome details, and the study of that
practical business which jarred on his tastes, though it suited his
talents. Harley had been indolent for so many years,--and there is so
much to make indolence captivating to a man whose rank is secured, who
has nothing to ask from fortune, and who finds at his home no cares from
which he seeks a distraction; so he laughed at ambition in the whim of
his delightful humours, and the expectations formed from his diplomatic
triumph died away. But then came one of those political crises, in which
men ordinarily indifferent to politics rouse themselves to the
recollection that the experiment of legislation is not made upon dead
matter, but on the living form of a noble country; and in both Houses of
Parliament the strength of party is put forth.
It is a lovely day in spring, and Harley is seated by the window of his
old room at Knightsbridge,--now glancing to the lively green of the
budding trees; now idling with Nero, who, though in canine old age,
enjoys the sun like his master; now repeating to himself, as he turns
over the leaves of his favourite Horace, some of those lines that make
the shortness of life the excuse for seizing its pleasures and eluding
its fatigues, which formed the staple morality of the polished epicurean;
and Violante (into what glorious beauty her maiden bloom has matured!)
comes softly into the room, seats herself on a low stool beside him,
leaning her face on her hands, and looking up at him through her dark,
clear, spiritual eyes; and as she continues to speak, gradually a change
comes over Harley's aspect, gradually the brow grows thoughtful, and the
lips lose their playful smile. There is no hateful assumption of the
would-be "superior woman," no formal remonstrance, no lecture, no homily
which grates upon masculine pride; but the high theme and the eloquent
words elevate unconsciously of themselves, and the Horace is laid aside,
--a Parliamentary Blue Book has been, by some marvel or other, conjured
there in its stead; and Violante now moves away as softly as she entered.
Harley's hand detains her.
"Not so. Share the task, or I quit it. Here is an extract I condemn you
to copy. Do you think I would go through this labour if you were not to
halve the success?--halve the labour as well!"
And Violante, overjoyed, kisses away the implied rebuke, and sits down to
work, so demure and so proud, by his side. I do not know if Harley made
much way in the Blue Book that morning; but a little time after he spoke
in the Lords, and surpassed all that the most sanguine had hoped from his
talents. The sweetness of fame and the consciousness of utility once
fully tasted, Harley's consummation of his proper destinies was secure.
A year later, and his voice was one of the influences of England. His
boyish love of glory revived,--no longer vague and dreamy, but ennobled
into patriotism, and strengthened into purpose. One night, after a
signal triumph, he returned home, with his father, who had witnessed it,
and Violante--who all lovely, all brilliant, though she was, never went
forth in her lord's absence, to lower among fops and flatterers the
dignity of the name she so aspired to raise--sprang to meet him.
Harley's eldest son--a boy yet in the nursery--had been kept up later
than usual; perhaps Violante had anticipated her husband's triumph, and
wished the son to share it. The old earl beckoned the child to him, and
laying his hand on the infant's curly locks, said with unusual
seriousness,
"My boy, you may see troubled times in England before these hairs are as
gray as mine; and your stake in England's honour and peace will be great.
Heed this hint from an old man who had no talents to make a noise in the
world, but who yet has been of some use in his generation. Neither
sounding titles, nor wide lands, nor fine abilities, will give you real
joy, unless you hold yourself responsible for all to your God and to your
country; and when you are tempted to believe that the gifts you may
inherit from both entail no duties, or that duties are at war with true
pleasure, remember how I placed you in your father's arms, and said,
'Let him be as proud of you some day as I at this hour am of him.'"
The boy clung to his father's breast, and said manfully, "I will try!"
Harley bent his fair smooth brow over the young earnest face, and said
softly, "Your mother speaks in you!"
Then the old countess, who had remained silent and listening on her
elbow-chair, rose and kissed the earl's hand reverently. Perhaps in that
kiss there was the repentant consciousness how far the active goodness
she had often secretly undervalued had exceeded, in its fruits, her own
cold unproductive powers of will and mind. Then passing on to Harley,
her brow grew elate, and the pride returned to her eye.
"At last," she said, laying on his shoulder that light firm hand, from
which he no longer shrunk,--"at last, O my noble son, you have fulfilled
all the promise of your youth!"
"If so," answered Harley, "it is because I have found what I then sought
in vain." He drew his arm around Violante, and added, with half tender,
half solemn smile, "Blessed is the woman who exalts!"
So, symbolled forth in these twin and fair flowers which Eve saved for
Earth out of Paradise, each with the virtue to heal or to strengthen,
stored under the leaves that give sweets to the air; here, soothing the
heart when the world brings the trouble; here, recruiting the soul which
our sloth or our senses enervate, leave we Woman, at least in the place
Heaven assigns to her amidst the multiform "Varieties of Life."
Farewell to thee, gentle Reader; and go forth to the world, O MY NOVEL!
THE END.