"If large possessions, pompous titles, honourable charges, and
profitable commissions, could have made this proud man happy,
there would have been nothing wanting."
L'ESTRANGE.
Several days had passed. Fleda's cheeks had gained no colour,
but she had grown a little stronger, and it was thought the
party might proceed on their way without any more tarrying;
trusting that change and the motion of travelling would do
better things for Fleda than could be hoped from any further
stay at Montepoole. The matter was talked over in an evening
consultation in the dressing-room, and it was decided that
they would set off on the second day thereafter.
Fleda was lying quietly on her sofa, with her eyes closed,
having had nothing to say during the discussion. They thought
she had perhaps not heard it. Mr. Carleton's sharper eyes,
however, saw that one or two tears were glimmering just under
the eyelash. He bent down over her and whispered,
"I know what you are thinking of Fleda, do I not?"
"I was thinking of aunt Miriam," Fleda said in an answering
whisper, without opening her eyes.
"I will take care of that."
Fleda looked up and smiled most expressively her thanks, and
in five minutes was asleep. Mr. Carleton stood watching her,
querying how long those clear eyes would have nothing to hide,
how long that bright purity could resist the corrosion of
the world's breath; and half thinking that it would be better
for the spirit to pass away, with its lustre upon it, than
stay till self-interest should sharpen the eye, and the lines
of diplomacy write themselves on that fair brow. "Better so,
better so."
"What are you thinking of so gloomily, Guy?" said his mother.
"That is a tender little creature to struggle with a rough
world."
"She wont have to struggle with it," said Mrs. Carleton.
"She will do very well," said Mrs. Evelyn.
"I don't think she'd find it a rough world, where you were,
Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Thorn.
"Thank you, Ma'am," he said, smiling. "But unhappily, my power
reaches very little way."
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Evelyn, with a sly smile, "that might be
arranged differently; Mrs. Rossitur, I have no doubt, would
desire nothing better than a smooth world for her little
niece, and Mr. Carleton's power might be unlimited in its
extent."
There was no answer, and the absolute repose of all the lines
of the young gentleman's face bordered too nearly on contempt
to encourage the lady to pursue her jest any further.
The next day Fleda was well enough to bear moving. Mr.
Carleton had her carefully bundled up, and then carried her
down stairs and placed her in the little light wagon which had
once before brought her to the Pool. Luckily it was a mild
day, for no close carriage was to be had for love or money.
The stage-coach in which Fleda had been fetched from her
grandfather's was in use, away somewhere. Mr. Carleton drove
her down to aunt Miriam's, and leaving her there he went off
again; and whatever he did with himself it was a good two
hours before he came back. All too little yet they were for
the tears and the sympathy which went to so many things both
in the past and in the future. Aunt Miriam had not said half
she wished to say, when the wagon was at the gate again, and
Mr. Carleton came to take his little charge away.
He found her sitting happily in aunt Miriam's lap. Fleda was
very grateful to him for leaving her such a nice long time,
and welcomed him with even a brighter smile than usual. But
her head rested wistfully on her aunt's bosom after that; and
when he asked her if she was almost ready to go, she hid her
face there and put her arms about her neck. The old lady held
her close for a few minutes, in silence.
"Elfleda," said aunt Miriam gravely, and tenderly, "do you
know what was your mother's prayer for you?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"What was it?"
"That I might be kept "
"Unspotted from the world!" repeated aunt Miriam, in a tone of
tender and deep feeling. "My sweet blossom! how wilt thou
keep so? Will you remember always your mother's prayer?"
"I will try."
"How will you try, Fleda?"
"I will pray."
Aunt Miriam kissed her again and again, fondly repeating, "The
Lord hear thee! the Lord bless thee! the Lord keep thee!
as a lily among thorns, my precious little babe; though in
the world, not of it."
"Do you think that is possible?" said Mr. Carleton,
significantly when a few moments after they had risen and were
about to separate. Aunt Miriam looked at him in surprise, and
asked,
"What, Sir? "
"To live in the world and not be like the world?"
She cast her eyes upon Fleda, fondly smoothing down her soft
hair with both hands for a minute or two before she answered,
"By the help of one thing, Sir, yes!"
"And what is that?" said he, quickly.
"The blessing of God, with whom all things are possible."
His eyes fell, and there was a kind of incredulous sadness in
his half smile which aunt Miriam understood better than he
did. She sighed as she folded Fleda again to her breast, and
whisperingly bade her "Remember!" But Fleda knew nothing of
it; and when she had finally parted from aunt Miriam, and was
seated in the little wagon on her way home, to her fancy the
best friend she had in the world was sitting beside her.
Neither was her judgment wrong, so far as it went. She saw
true where she saw at all. But there was a great deal she
could not see.
Mr. Carleton was an unbeliever. Not maliciously, not
wilfully, not stupidly; rather the fool of circumstance.
His scepticism might be traced to the joint workings of a very
fine nature and a very bad education that is, education in
the broad sense of the term; of course none of the means and
appliances of mental culture had been wanting to him.
He was an uncommonly fine example of what nature alone can do
for a man. A character of nature's building is at best a very
ragged affair, without religion's finishing hand; at the
utmost a fine ruin no more. And if that be the _utmost_ of
nature's handiwork, what is at the other end of the scale?
alas! the rubble stones of the ruin; what of good and fair
nature had reared there was not strong enough to stand alone.
But religion cannot work alike on every foundation; and the
varieties are as many as the individuals. Sometimes she must
build the whole, from the very ground; and there are cases
where nature's work stands so strong and fair that religion's
strength may be expended in perfecting and enriching and
carrying it to an uncommon height of grace and beauty, and
dedicating the fair temple to a new use.
Of religion, Mr. Carleton had nothing at all; and a true
Christian character had never crossed his path near enough for
him to become acquainted with it. His mother was a woman of
the world; his father had been a man of the world; and what is
more, so deepdyed a politician, that to all intents and
purposes, except as to bare natural affection, he was nothing
to his son, and his son was nothing to him. Both mother and
father thought the son a piece of perfection, and mothers and
fathers have very often indeed thought so on less grounds. Mr.
Carleton saw, whenever he took time to look at him, that Guy
had no lack either of quick wit or manly bearing; that he had
pride enough to keep him from low company and make him abhor
low pursuits; if anything more than pride and better than
pride mingled with it, the father's discernment could not
reach so far. He had a love for knowledge too, that from a
child made him eager in seeking it, in ways both regular and
desultory; and tastes which his mother laughingly said would
give him all the elegance of a woman, joined to the strong
manly character which no one ever doubted he possessed. _She_
looked mostly at the outside, willing, if that pleased her, to
take everything else upon trust; and the grace of manner which
a warm heart and fine sensibilities, and a mind entirely frank
and above-board, had given him, from his earliest years, had
more than met all her wishes. No one suspected the
stubbornness and energy of will which was in fact the back-
bone of his character. Nothing tried it. His father's death
early left little Guy to his mother's guardianship.
Contradicting him was the last thing she thought of, and of
course it was attempted by no one else.
If she would ever have allowed that he had a fault, which she
never would, it was one that grew out of his greatest virtue,
an unmanageable truth of character; and if she ever
unwillingly recognised its companion virtue, firmness of will,
it was when she endeavoured to combat certain troublesome
demonstrations of the other. In spite of all the grace and
charm of manner in which he was allowed to be a model, and
which was as natural to him as it was universal, if ever the
interests of truth came in conflict with the dictates of
society, he flung minor considerations behind his back, and
came out with some startling piece of bluntness at which his
mother was utterly confounded. These occasions were very rare;
he never sought them. Always where it was possible he chose
either to speak or be silent in an unexceptionable manner. But
sometimes the barrier of conventionalities, or his mother's
unwise policy, pressed too hard upon his integrity or his
indignation; and he would then free the barrier and present
the shut-out truth in its full size and proportions before his
mother's shocked eyes. It was in vain to try to coax or blind
him; a marble statue is not more unruffled by the soft airs of
summer; and Mrs. Carleton was fain to console herself with the
reflection that Guy's very next act after one of these breaks
would be one of such happy fascination that the former would
be forgotten; and that in this world of discordances it was
impossible, on the whole, for any one to come nearer
perfection. And if there was inconvenience, there were also
great comforts about this character of truthfulness.
So nearly up to the time of his leaving the University, the
young heir lived a life of as free and uncontrolled enjoyment
as the deer on his grounds, happily led by his own fine
instincts to seek that enjoyment in pure and natural sources.
His tutor was proud of his success; his dependants loved his
frank and high bearing; his mother rejoiced in his personal
accomplishments, and was secretly well pleased that his tastes
led him another way from the more common and less safe
indulgences of other young men. He had not escaped the
temptations of opportunity and example. But gambling was not
intellectual enough, jockeying was too undignified, and
drinking too coarse a pleasure for him. Even hunting and
coursing charmed him but for a few times; when he found he
could out-ride and out-leap all his companions, he hunted no
more; telling his mother, when she attacked him on the
subject, that he thought the hare the worthier animal of the
two upon a chase; and that the fox deserved an easier death.
His friends twitted him with his want of spirit and want of
manliness; but such light shafts bounded back from the buff
suit of cool indifference in which their object was cased; and
his companions very soon gave over the attempt either to
persuade or annoy him, with the conclusion that "nothing could
be done with Carleton."
The same wants that had displeased him in the sports soon led
him to decline the company of those who indulged in them. From
the low-minded, from the uncultivated, from the unrefined in
mind and manner, and such there are in the highest class of
society, as well as in the less favoured, he shrank away in
secret disgust or weariness. There was no affinity. To his
books, to his grounds, which he took endless delight in
overseeing, to the fine arts in general, for which he had a
great love, and for one or two of them a great talent, he
went with restless energy and no want of companionship; and at
one or the other, always pushing eagerly forward after some
point of excellence, or some new attainment not yet reached,
and which sprang up after one another as fast as ever "Alps
on Alps," he was happily and constantly busy. Too solitary,
his mother thought, caring less for society than she wished
to see him.; but that, she trusted, would mend itself. He
would be through the University, and come of age, and go into
the world, as a matter of necessity.
But years brought a change not the change his mother looked
for. That restless active energy which had made the years of
his youth so happy, became, in connection with one or two
other qualities, a troublesome companion, when he had reached
the age of manhood, and, obeying manhood's law, had "put away
childish things." On what should it spend itself? It had lost
none of its strength; while his fastidious notions of
excellence, and a far-reaching clear-sightedness, which
belonged to his truth of nature, greatly narrowed the sphere
of its possible action. He could not delude himself into the
belief that the oversight of his plantations, and the
perfecting his park scenery, could be a worthy end of
existence; or that painting and music were meant to be the
stamina of life; or even that books were their own final
cause. These things had refined and enriched him; they might
go on doing so to the end of his days; but _for what?_ For
what?
It is said that everybody has his niche, failing to find which
nobody fills his place or acts his part in society. Mr.
Carleton could not find his niche, and he consequently grew
dissatisfied everywhere. His mother's hopes from the
University and the World were sadly disappointed.
At the University he had not lost his time. The pride of
character, which, joined with less estimable pride of birth,
was a marked feature in his composition, made him look with
scorn upon the ephemeral pursuits of one set of young men;
while his strong intellectual tastes drew him in the other
direction; and the energetic activity which drove him to do
everything well that he once took in hand, carried him to high
distinction. Being there he would have disdained to be
anywhere but at the top of the tree. But out of the
University, and in possession of his estates, what should he
do with himself and them?
A question easy to settle by most young men! very easy to
settle by Guy, if he had had the clue of Christian truth to
guide him through the labyrinth. But the clue was wanting, and
the world seemed to him a world of confusion.
A certain clearness of judgment is apt to be the blessed hand-
maid of uncommon truth of character; the mind that knows not
what it is to play tricks upon its neighbours is rewarded by a
comparative freedom from self-deception. Guy could not sit
down upon his estates and lead an insect-life like that
recommended by Rossitur. His energies wanted room to expend
themselves. But the world offered no sphere that would satisfy
him; even had his circumstances and position laid all equally
open. It was a busy world; but to him people seemed to be busy
upon trifles, or working in a circle, or working mischief; and
his nice notions of what _ought to be_ were shocked by what he
saw was, in every direction around him. He was disgusted with
what he called the drivelling of some unhappy specimens of the
Church which had come in his way; he disbelieved the truth of
what such men professed. If there had been truth in it, he
thought they would deserve to be drummed out of the
profession. He detested the crooked involvements and double-
dealing of the law. He despised the butterfly life of a
soldier; and as to the other side of a soldier's life, again
he thought, what is it for? to humour the arrogance of the
proud, to pamper the appetite of the full, to tighten the
grip of the iron hand of power; and though it be sometimes for
better ends, yet the soldier cannot choose what letters of the
alphabet of obedience he will learn. Politics was the very
shaking of the government sieve, where, if there were any
solid result, it was accompanied with a very great flying
about of chaff indeed. Society was nothing but whip syllabub,
a mere conglomeration of bubbles, as hollow and as
unsatisfying. And in lower departments of human life, as far
as he knew, he saw evils yet more deplorable. The Church
played at shuttlecock with men's credulousness; the law, with
their purses; the medical profession, with their lives; the
military, with their liberties and hopes. He acknowledged that
in all these lines of action there was much talent, much good
intention, much admirable diligence and acuteness brought out
but to what great general end? He saw, in short, that the
machinery of the human mind, both at large and in particular,
was out of order. He did not know what was the broken wheel,
the want of which set all the rest to running wrong.
This was a strange train of thought for a very young man; but
Guy had lived much alone, and in solitude one is like a person
who has climbed a high mountain; the air is purer about him,
his vision is freer; the eye goes straight and clear to the
distant view which below on the plain a thousand things would
come between to intercept. But there was some morbidness about
it too. Disappointment, in two or three instances, where he
had given his full confidence and been obliged to take it
back, had quickened him to generalize unfavourably upon human
character, both in the mass and in individuals. And a restless
dissatisfaction with himself and the world did not tend to a
healthy view of things. Yet, truth was at the bottom; truth
rarely arrived at without the help of revelation. He discerned
a want he did not know how to supply. His fine perceptions
felt the jar of the machinery which other men are too busy or
too deaf to hear. It seemed to him hopelessly disordered.
This habit of thinking wrought a change very unlike what his
mother had looked for. He mingled more in society, but Mrs.
Carleton saw that the eye with which he looked upon it was yet
colder than it wont to be. A cloud came over the light, gay
spirited manner he had used to wear. The charm of his address
was as great as ever where he pleased to show it, but much
more generally now he contented himself with a cool reserve,
as impossible to disturb as to find fault with. His temper
suffered the same eclipse. It was naturally excellent. His
passions were not hastily moved. He had never been easy to
offend; his careless good-humour, and an unbounded proud self-
respect, made him look rather with contempt than anger upon
the things that fire most men; though when once moved to
displeasure, it was stern and abiding in proportion to the
depth of his character. The same good-humour and cool self-
respect forbade him even then to be eager in showing
resentment; the offender fell off from his esteem, and
apparently from the sphere of his notice, as easily as a drop
of water from a duck's wing, and could with as much ease
regain his lost lodgment; but unless there were wrong to be
righted, or truth to be vindicated, he was in general safe
from any further tokens of displeasure. In those cases, Mr.
Carleton was an adversary to be dreaded. As cool, as
unwavering, as persevering there as in other things, he there,
as in other things, no more failed of his end. And at bottom
these characteristics remained the same; it was rather his
humour than his temper that suffered a change. That grew more
gloomy and less gentle. He was more easily irritated, and
would show it more freely than in the old happy times had ever
been.
Mrs. Carleton would have been glad to have those times back
again. It could not be. Guy could not be content any longer in
the Happy Valley of Amhara. Life had something for him to do
beyond his park palings. He had carried manly exercises and
personal accomplishments to an uncommon point of perfection;
he knew his library well, and his grounds thoroughly, and had
made excellent improvement of both; it was in vain to try to
persuade him that seed-time and harvest were the same thing,
and that he had nothing to do but to rest in what he had done;
show his bright colours and flutter like a moth in the
sunshine, or sit down like a degenerate bee in the summer time
and eat his own honey. The power of action which he knew in
himself could not rest without something to act upon. It
longed to be doing.
But what?
Conscience is often morbidly far-sighted. Mr. Carleton had a
very large tenantry around him and depending upon him, in
bettering whose condition, if he had but known it, all those
energies might have found full play. It never entered into his
head. He abhorred _business_, the detail of business; and. his
fastidious tastes especially shrank from having anything to do
among those whose business was literally their life. The eye,
sensitively fond of elegance, the extreme of elegance, in
everything, and permitting no other around or about him, could
not bear the tokens of mental and bodily wretchedness among
the ignorant poor; he escaped from them as soon as possible;
thought that poverty was one of the irregularities of this
wrong-working machine of a world, and something utterly beyond
his power to do away or alleviate; and left to his steward all
the responsibility that of right rested on his own shoulders.
And at last, unable to content himself in the old routine of
things, he quitted home and England, even before he was of
age, and roved from place to place, trying, and trying in
vain, to soothe the vague restlessness that called for a very
different remedy.
"On change de ciel, l'on ne change point de sol."