Alvan was dead. The shot of his adversary, accidentally well-directed,
had struck him mortally. He died on the morning of the third day after
the duel. There had been no hope that he could survive, and his agonies
made a speedy dissolution desirable by those most wishing him to live.
The baroness had her summons to hurry to him after his first swoon. She
was his nurse and late confidante a tearless woman, rigid in service.
Death relaxed his hold in her hand. He met his fate like the valiant
soul he was. Haply if he had lingered without the sweats of bodily
tortures to stay reflectiveness, he, also, in the strangeness of his
prostration, might have cast a thought on the irony of the fates felling
a man like him by a youngster’s hand and for a shallow girl! He might
have fathered some jest at life, with rueful relish of the flavour: for
such is our manner of commenting on ourselves when we come to shipwreck
through unseaworthy pretensions. There was no interval on his passage
from anguish to immobility.
Silent was that house of many chambers. That mass of humanity profusely
mixed of good and evil, of generous ire and mutinous, of the passion for
the future of mankind and vanity of person, magnanimity and sensualism,
high judgement, reckless indiscipline, chivalry, savagery, solidity,
fragmentariness, was dust.
The two men composing it, the untamed and the candidate for citizenship,
in mutual dissension pulled it down. He perished of his weakness, but it
was a strong man that fell. If his end was unheroic, the blot does not
overshadow his life. His end was a derision because the animal in him
ran him unchained and bounding to it. A stormy blood made wreck of a
splendid intelligence. Yet they that pronounce over him the ordinary
fatalistic epitaph of the foregone and done, which is the wisdom of
men measuring the dead by the last word of a lamentable history, should
pause to think whether fool or madman is the title for one who was a
zealous worker, respected by great heads of his time, acknowledged the
head of the voluminous coil of the working people, and who, as we have
seen, insensibly though these wrought within him, was getting to purer
fires through his coarser when the final intemperateness drove him to
ruin. As little was he the vanished God whom his working people hailed
deploringly on the long procession of his remains from city to city
under charge of the baroness. That last word of his history ridicules
the eulogy of partisan and devotee, and to commit the excess of
worshipping is to conjure up by contrast a vulgar giant: for truth
will have her just proportions, and vindicates herself upon a figure
over-idealized by bidding it grimace, leaving appraisers to get the
balance of the two extremes. He was neither fool nor madman, nor man to
be adored: his last temptation caught him in the season before he had
subdued his blood, and amid the multitudinously simple of this
world, stamped him a tragic comedian: that is, a grand pretender, a
self-deceiver, one of the lividly ludicrous, whom we cannot laugh at,
but must contemplate, to distinguish where their character strikes the
note of discord with life; for otherwise, in the reflection of their
history, life will seem a thing demoniacally inclined by fits to antic
and dive into gulfs. The characters of the hosts of men are of the
simple order of the comic; not many are of a stature and a complexity
calling for the junction of the two Muses to name them.
While for his devotees he lay still warm in the earth, that other, the
woman, poor Clotilde, astonished her compatriots by passing comedy and
tragic comedy with the gift of her hand to the hand which had slain
Alvan. In sooth, the explanation is not so hard when we recollect our
knowledge of her. It was a gentle youth; her parents urged her to it: a
particular letter, the letter of the challenge to her father, besliming
her, was shown;--a hideous provocation pushed to the foullest. Who can
blame Prince Marko? who had ever given sign of more noble bravery than
he? He had stood to defend her name and fame. He was very love, the
never extinguished torch of love. And he hung on her for the little of
life appearing to remain to him. Before heaven he was guiltless. He was
good. Her misery had shrunk her into nothingness, and she rose out of
nothingness cold and bloodless, bearing a thought that she might make a
good youth happy, or nurse him sinking--be of that use. Besides he was a
refuge from the roof of her parents. She shut her eyes on the past, sure
of his goodness; goodness, on her return to some sense of being, she
prized above other virtues, and perhaps she had a fancy that to be
allied to it was to be doing good. After a few months she buried him.
From that day, or it may be, on her marriage day, her heart was Alvan’s.
Years later she wrote her version of the story, not sparing herself so
much as she supposed. Providence and her parents were not forgiven. But
as we are in her debt for some instruction, she may now be suffered to
go.
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS
A tragic comedian: that is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver
Above all things I detest the writing for money
At the age of forty, men that love love rootedly
Barriers are for those who cannot fly
Be good and dull, and please everybody
Beginning to have a movement to kiss the whip
Centres of polished barbarism known as aristocratic societies
Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession
Comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered
Compromise is virtual death
Conservative, whose astounded state paralyzes his wrath
Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change
Dignitary, and he passed under the bondage of that position
Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur
Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men?
Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women
Fantastical
Finishing touches to the negligence
Giant Vanity urged Giant Energy to make use of Giant Duplicity
Gone to pieces with an injured lover’s babble
Gradations appear to be unknown to you
He had to go, he must, he has to be always going
He stormed her and consented to be beaten
Hesitating strangeness that sometimes gathers during absences
His violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence
His apparent cynicism is sheer irritability
Hosts of men are of the simple order of the comic
I give my self, I do not sell
I have learnt as much from light literature as from heavy
I would wait till he flung you off, and kneel to you
If you have this creative soul, be the slave of your creature
Imagination she has, for a source of strength in the future days
Looking on him was listening
Love the difficulty better than the woman
Men in love are children with their mistresses
Metaphysician’s treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise
Music in Italy? Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous
Night has little mercy for the self-reproachful
Not much esteem for non-professional actresses
Not in a situation that could bear of her blaming herself
O for yesterday!
Pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency
Philosophy skimmed, and realistic romances deep-sounded
Polished barbarism
Professional widows
Providence and her parents were not forgiven
Scorned him for listening to the hesitations (hers)
Self-consoled when they are not self-justified
She ran through delusion and delusion, exhausting each
She felt in him a maker of facts
Strength in love is the sole sincerity
The worst of omens is delay
The way is clear: we have only to take the step
The brainless in Art and in Statecraft
Time is due to us, and the minutes are our gold slipping away
Time and strength run to waste in retarding the inevitable
To have no sympathy with the playful mind is not to have a mind
Trick for killing time without hurting him
Two wishes make a will
Venerated by his followers, well hated by his enemies
Want of courage is want of sense
We shall not be rich--nor poor
Weak souls are much moved by having the pathos on their side
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
Win you--temperately, let us hope; by storm, if need be
Work of extravagance upon perceptibly plain matter
World voluntarily opens a path to those who step determinedly
World voluntarily opens a path to those who step determinedly
End of Project Gutenberg’s The Tragic Comedians, Complete, by George Meredith