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. He 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.