Briareus reddening angrily over the sea--what is that vaporous Titan?
And Hesper set in his rosy garland--why looks he so implacably sweet? It
is that one has left that bright home to go forth and do cloudy work, and
he has got a stain with which he dare not return. Far in the West fair
Lucy beckons him to come. Ah, heaven! if he might! How strong and
fierce the temptation is! how subtle the sleepless desire! it drugs his
reason, his honour. For he loves her; she is still the first and only
woman to him. Otherwise would this black spot be hell to him? otherwise
would his limbs be chained while her arms are spread open to him. And if
he loves her, why then what is one fall in the pit, or a thousand? Is
not love the password to that beckoning bliss? So may we say; but here
is one whose body has been made a temple to him, and it is desecrated.
A temple, and desecrated! For what is it fit for but for a dance of
devils? His education has thus wrought him to think.
He can blame nothing but his own baseness. But to feel base and accept
the bliss that beckons--he has not fallen so low as that.
Ah, happy English home! sweet wife! what mad miserable Wisp of the Fancy
led him away from you, high in his conceit? Poor wretch! that thought to
be he of the hundred hands, and war against the absolute Gods. Jove
whispered a light commission to the Laughing Dame; she met him; and how
did he shake Olympus? with laughter?
Sure it were better to be Orestes, the Furies howling in his ears, than
one called to by a heavenly soul from whom he is for ever outcast. He
has not the oblivion of madness. Clothed in the lights of his first
passion, robed in the splendour of old skies, she meets him everywhere;
morning, evening, night, she shines above him; waylays him suddenly in
forest depths; drops palpably on his heart. At moments he forgets; he
rushes to embrace her; calls her his beloved, and lo, her innocent kiss
brings agony of shame to his face.
Daily the struggle endured. His father wrote to him, begging him by the
love he had for him to return. From that hour Richard burnt unread all
the letters he received. He knew too well how easily he could persuade
himself: words from without might tempt him and quite extinguish the
spark of honourable feeling that tortured him, and that he clung to in
desperate self-vindication.
To arrest young gentlemen on the downward slope is both a dangerous and
thankless office. It is, nevertheless, one that fair women greatly
prize, and certain of them professionally follow. Lady Judith, as far as
her sex would permit, was also of the Titans in their battle against the
absolute Gods; for which purpose, mark you, she had married a lord
incapable in all save his acres. Her achievements she kept to her own
mind: she did not look happy over them. She met Richard accidentally in
Paris; she saw his state; she let him learn that she alone on earth
understood him. The consequence was that he was forthwith enrolled in
her train. It soothed him to be near a woman. Did she venture her guess
as to the cause of his conduct, she blotted it out with a facility women
have, and cast on it a melancholy hue he was taught to participate in.
She spoke of sorrows, personal sorrows, much as he might speak of his--
vaguely, and with self-blame. And she understood him. How the dark
unfathomed wealth within us gleams to a woman's eye! We are at compound
interest immediately: so much richer than we knew!--almost as rich as we
dreamed! But then the instant we are away from her we find ourselves
bankrupt, beggared. How is that? We do not ask. We hurry to her and
bask hungrily in her orbs. The eye must be feminine to be thus creative:
I cannot say why. Lady Judith understood Richard, and he feeling
infinitely vile, somehow held to her more feverishly, as one who dreaded
the worst in missing her. The spirit must rest; he was weak with what he
suffered.
Austin found them among the hills of Nassau in Rhineland: Titans, male
and female, who had not displaced Jove, and were now adrift, prone on
floods of sentiment. The blue-flocked peasant swinging behind his oxen
of a morning, the gaily-kerchiefed fruit-woman, the jackass-driver, even
the doctor of those regions, have done more for their fellows. Horrible
reflection! Lady Judith is serene above it, but it frets at Richard when
he is out of her shadow. Often wretchedly he watches the young men of
his own age trooping to their work. Not cloud-work theirs! Work solid,
unambitious, fruitful!
Lady Judith had a nobler in prospect for the hero. He gaped blindfolded
for anything, and she gave him the map of Europe in tatters. He
swallowed it comfortably. It was an intoxicating cordial. Himself on
horseback overriding wrecks of Empires! Well might common sense cower
with the meaner animals at the picture. Tacitly they agreed to recast
the civilized globe. The quality of vapour is to melt and shape itself
anew; but it is never the quality of vapour to reassume the same shapes.
Briareus of the hundred unoccupied hands may turn to a monstrous donkey
with his hind legs aloft, or twenty thousand jabbering apes. The
phantasmic groupings of the young brain are very like those we see in the
skies, and equally the sport of the wind. Lady Judith blew. There was
plenty of vapour in him, and it always resolved into some shape or other.
You that mark those clouds of eventide, and know youth, will see the
similitude: it will not be strange, it will barely seem foolish to you,
that a young man of Richard's age, Richard's education and position,
should be in this wild state. Had he not been nursed to believe he was
born for great things? Did she not say she was sure of it? And to feel
base, yet born for better, is enough to make one grasp at anything
cloudy. Suppose the hero with a game leg. How intense is his faith to
quacks! with what a passion of longing is he not seized to break
somebody's head! They spoke of Italy in low voices. "The time will
come," said she. "And I shall be ready," said he. What rank was he to
take in the liberating army? Captain, colonel, general in chief, or
simple private? Here, as became him, he was much more positive and
specific than she was: Simple private, he said. Yet he save himself
caracoling on horseback. Private in the cavalry, then, of course.
Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires. She looked forth
under her brows with mournful indistinctness at that object in the
distance. They read Petrarch to get up the necessary fires. Italia mia!
Vain indeed was this speaking to those thick and mortal wounds in her
fair body, but their sighs went with the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po, and
their hands joined. Who has not wept for Italy? I see the aspirations
of a world arise for her, thick and frequent as the puffs of smoke from
cigars of Pannonian sentries!
So when Austin came Richard said he could not leave Lady Judith, Lady
Judith said she could not part with him. For his sake, mind! This
Richard verified. Perhaps he had reason to be grateful. The high road
of Folly may have led him from one that terminates worse. Ho is foolish,
God knows; but for my part I will not laugh at the hero because he has
not got his occasion. Meet him when he is, as it were, anointed by his
occasion, and he is no laughing matter.
Richard felt his safety in this which, to please the world, we must term
folly. Exhalation of vapours was a wholesome process to him, and
somebody who gave them shape and hue a beneficent Iris. He told Austin
plainly he could not leave her, and did not anticipate the day when he
could.
"Why can't you go to your wife, Richard?"
"For a reason you would be the first to approve, Austin."
He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness, and sadness at
heart. Austin he had always associated with his Lucy in that Hesperian
palace of the West. Austin waited patiently. Lady Judith's old lord
played on all the baths in Nassau without evoking the tune of health.
Whithersoever he listed she changed her abode. So admirable a wife was
to be pardoned for espousing an old man. She was an enthusiast even in
her connubial duties. She had the brows of an enthusiast. With occasion
she might have been a Charlotte Corday. So let her also be shielded from
the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from
nonsense of ninnies. She was truly a high-minded person, of that order
who always do what they see to be right, and always have confidence in
their optics. She was not unworthy of a young man's admiration, if she
was unfit to be his guide. She resumed her ancient intimacy with Austin
easily, while she preserved her new footing with Richard. She and Austin
were not unlike, only Austin never dreamed, and had not married an old
lord.
The three were walking on the bridge at Limburg on the Lahn, where the
shadow of a stone bishop is thrown by the moonlight on the water brawling
over slabs of slate. A woman passed them bearing in her arms a baby,
whose mighty size drew their attention.
"What a wopper!" Richard laughed.
"Well, that is a fine fellow," said Austin, "but I don't think he's much
bigger than your boy."
"He'll do for a nineteenth-century Arminius," Richard was saying. Then
he looked at Austin.
"What was that you said?" Lady Judith asked of Austin.
"What have I said that deserves to be repeated?" Austin counterqueried
quite innocently.
"Richard has a son?"
"You didn't know it?"
"His modesty goes very far," said Lady Judith, sweeping the shadow of a
curtsey to Richard's paternity.
Richard's heart throbbed with violence. He looked again in Austin's
face. Austin took it so much as a matter of course that he said nothing
more on the subject.
"Well!" murmured Lady Judith.
When the two men were alone, Richard said in a quick voice: "Austin! you
were in earnest?"
"You didn't know it, Richard?"
"No."
"Why, they all wrote to you. Lucy wrote to you: your father, your aunt.
I believe Adrian wrote too."
"I tore up their letters," said Richard.
"He's a noble fellow, I can tell you. You've nothing to be ashamed of.
He'll soon be coming to ask about you. I made sure you knew."
"No, I never knew." Richard walked away, and then said: "What is he
like?"
"Well, he really is like you, but he has his mother's eyes."
"And she's--"
"Yes. I think the child has kept her well."
"They're both at Raynham?"
"Both."
Hence fantastic vapours! What are ye to this! Where are the dreams of
the hero when he learns he has a child? Nature is taking him to her
bosom. She will speak presently. Every domesticated boor in these hills
can boast the same, yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most common
performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he were trying to
make out the lineaments of his child.
Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied into the
air, and walked on and on. "A father!" he kept repeating to himself: "a
child!" And though he knew it not, he was striking the keynotes of
Nature. But he did know of a singular harmony that suddenly burst over
his whole being.
The moon was surpassingly bright: the summer air heavy and still. He
left the high road and pierced into the forest. His walk was rapid: the
leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks; the dead leaves heaped in the
dells noised to his feet. Something of a religious joy--a strange sacred
pleasure--was in him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself: and now
he was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A father! he dared never
see his child. And he had no longer his phantasies to fall upon. He was
utterly bare to his sin. In his troubled mind it seemed to him that
Clare looked down on him--Clare who saw him as he was; and that to her
eyes it would be infamy for him to go and print his kiss upon his child.
Then came stern efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his
face iron.
By the log of an ancient tree half buried in dead leaves of past summers,
beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached his journey's end.
There he discovered he had a companion in Lady Judith's little dog. He
gave the friendly animal a pat of recognition, and both were silent in
the forest-silence.
It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was surcharged. He
must advance, and on he footed, the little dog following.
An oppressive slumber hung about the forest-branches. In the dells and
on the heights was the same dead heat. Here where the brook tinkled it
was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and without the spirit of water.
Yonder in a space of moonlight on lush grass, the beams were as white
fire to sight and feeling. No haze spread around. The valleys were
clear, defined to the shadows of their verges, the distances sharply
distinct, and with the colours of day but slightly softened. Richard
beheld a roe moving across a slope of sward far out of rifle-mark. The
breathless silence was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue
heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him; crouched
panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly when he started
afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth flitted through the dusk
of the forest.
On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood grey
topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades. Richard mechanically
sat down on the crumbling flints to rest, and listened to the panting of
the dog. Sprinkled at his feet were emerald lights: hundreds of glow-
worms studded the dark dry ground.
He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies were expended in
action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and the moon turned his shadow
Westward from the South. Overhead, as she declined, long ripples of
silver cloud were imperceptibly stealing toward her. They were the van
of a tempest. He did not observe them or the leaves beginning to
chatter. When he again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a
huge mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his mind
to scale it. He got no nearer to the base of it for all his vigorous
outstepping. The ground began to dip; he lost sight of the sky. Then
heavy, thunder-drops streak his cheek, the leaves were singing, the earth
breathed, it was black before him, and behind. All at once the thunder
spoke. The mountain he had marked was bursting over him.
Up startled the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the country at the
foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, quiver, extinguished.
Then there were pauses; and the lightning seemed as the eye of heaven,
and the thunder as the tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing him;
filling him with awful rapture. Alone there--sole human creature among
the grandeurs and mysteries of storm--he felt the representative of his
kind, and his spirit rose, and marched, and exulted, let it be glory, let
it be ruin! Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled the wrathful
crash; then white thrusts of light were darted from the sky, and great
curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second, were supernaturally
agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song roused in the leaves and the
herbage. Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper and heavier the
deluge pressed. A mighty force of water satisfied the desire of the
earth. Even in this, drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard
had a savage pleasure. Keeping in motion, he was scarcely conscious of
the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was refreshing. Suddenly
he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril. He fancied he smelt meadow-
sweet. He had never seen the flower in Rhineland--never thought of it;
and it would hardly be met with in a forest. He was sure he smelt it
fresh in dews. His little companion wagged a miserable wet tail some way
in advance. He went an slowly, thinking indistinctly. After two or
three steps he stooped and stretched out his hand to feel for the flower,
having, he knew not why, a strong wish to verify its growth there.
Groping about, his hand encountered something warm that started at his
touch, and he, with the instinct we have, seized it, and lifted it to
look at it. The creature was very small, evidently quite young.
Richard's eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, were able to discern it
for what it was, a tiny leveret, and ha supposed that the dog had
probably frightened its dam just before he found it. He put the little
thing on one hand in his breast, and stepped out rapidly as before.
The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured. So cool and
easy had his mind become that he was speculating on what kind of shelter
the birds could find, and how the butterflies and moths saved their
coloured wings from washing. Folded close they might hang under a leaf,
he thought. Lovingly he looked into the dripping darkness of the coverts
on each side, as one of their children. He was next musing on a strange
sensation he experienced. It ran up one arm with an indescribable
thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart. It was purely physical,
ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all through his blood,
wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that the little thing he carried in
his breast was licking his hand there. The small rough tongue going over
and over the palm of his hand produced the strange sensation he felt.
Now that he knew the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he knew the
cause, his heart was touched and made more of it. The gentle scraping
continued without intermission as on he walked. What did it say to him?
Human tongue could not have said so much just then.
A pale grey light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed the dawn.
Richard was walking hurriedly. The green drenched weeds lay all about in
his path, bent thick, and the forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a
man who feels a revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was
passing one of those little forest-chapels, hung with votive wreaths,
where the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight
it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked within, and saw the
Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But not many steps had he gone
ere his strength went out of him, and he shuddered. What was it? He
asked not. He was in other hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life
illumined him. He felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's
touch. With shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths;
they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him he had a
sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and again.
When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world, the small
birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was over all the hills. He
was on the edge of the forest, entering a plain clothed with ripe corn
under a spacious morning sky.