I remember one morning, when a boy, loitering by an old wall to watch
the operations of a garden spider whose web seemed to be in great
request. When I first stopped, she was engaged very quietly with a fly
of the domestic species, whom she managed with ease and dignity. But
just when she was most interested in that absorbing employment came a
couple of May-flies, and then a gnat, and then a blue-bottle,--all at
different angles of the web. Never was a poor spider so distracted by
her good fortune! She evidently did not know which godsend to take
first. The aboriginal victim being released, she slid half-way towards
the May-flies; then one of her eight eyes caught sight of the blue-
bottle, and she shot off in that direction,--when the hum of the gnat
again diverted her; and in the middle of this perplexity, pounce came a
young wasp in a violent passion! Then the spider evidently lost her
presence of mind; she became clean demented; and after standing, stupid
and stock-still, in the middle of her meshes for a minute or two, she
ran off to her hole as fast as she could run, and left her guests to
shift for themselves. I confess that I am somewhat in the dilemma of
the attractive and amiable insect I have just described. I got on well
enough while I had only my domestic fly to see after. But now that
there is something fluttering at every end of my net (and especially
since the advent of that passionate young wasp, who is fuming and
buzzing in the nearest corner), I am fairly at a loss which I should
first grapple with; and alas! unlike the spider, I have no hole where I
can hide myself, and let the web do the weaver's work. But I will
imitate the spider as far as I can; and while the rest hum and struggle
away their impatient, unnoticed hour, I will retreat into the inner
labyrinth of my own life.
The illness of my uncle and my renewed acquaintance with Vivian had
naturally sufficed to draw my thoughts from the rash and unpropitious
love I had conceived for Fanny Trevanion. During the absence of the
family from London (and they stayed some time longer than had been
expected), I had leisure, however, to recall my father's touching
history, and the moral it had so obviously preached to me; and I formed
so many good resolutions that it was with an untrembling hand that I
welcomed Miss Trevanion at last to London, and with a firm heart that I
avoided, as much as possible, the fatal charm of her society. The slow
convalescence of my uncle gave me a just excuse to discontinue our
rides. What time Trevanion spared me, it was natural that I should
spend with my family. I went to no balls nor parties; I even absented
myself from Trevanion's periodical dinners. Miss Trevanion at first
rallied me on my seclusion, with her usual lively malice. But I
continued worthily to complete my martyrdom. I took care that no
reproachful look at the gayety that wrung my soul should betray my
secret. Then Fanny seemed either hurt or disdainful, and avoided
altogether entering her father's study; all at once, she changed her
tactics, and was seized with a strange desire for knowledge, which
brought her into the room to look for a book, or ask a question, ten
times a day. I was proof to all. But, to speak truth, I was profoundly
wretched. Looking back now, I am dismayed at the remembrance of my own
sufferings: my health became seriously affected; I dreaded alike the
trial of the day and the anguish of the night. My only distractions
were in my visits to Vivian and my escape to the dear circle of home.
And that home was my safeguard and preservative in that crisis of my
life; its atmosphere of unpretended honor and serene virtue strengthened
all my resolutions; it braced me for my struggles against the strongest
passion which youth admits, and counteracted the evil vapors of that air
in which Vivian's envenomed spirit breathed and moved. Without the
influence of such a home, if I had succeeded in the conduct that probity
enjoined towards those in whose house I was a trusted guest, I do not
think I could have resisted the contagion of that malign and morbid
bitterness against fate and the world which love, thwarted by fortune,
is too inclined of itself to conceive, and in the expression of which
Vivian was not without the eloquence that belongs to earnestness,
whether in truth or falsehood. But, somehow or other, I never left the
little room that contained the grand suffering in the face of the
veteran soldier, whose lip, often quivering with anguish, was never
heard to murmur, and the tranquil wisdom which had succeeded my father's
early trials (trials like my own), and the loving smile on my mother's
tender face, and the innocent childhood of Blanche (by which name the
Elf had familiarized herself to us), whom I already loved as a sister,--
without feeling that those four walls contained enough to sweeten the
world, had it been filled to its capacious brim with gall and hyssop.
Trevanion had been more than satisfied with Vivian's performance, he had
been struck with it; for though the corrections in the mere phraseology
had been very limited, they went beyond verbal amendments,--they
suggested such words as improved the thoughts; and besides that notable
correction of an arithmetical error which Trevanion's mind was formed to
over-appreciate, one or two brief annotations on the margin were boldly
hazarded, prompting some stronger link in a chain of reasoning, or
indicating the necessity for some further evidence in the assertion of a
statement. And all this from the mere natural and naked logic of an
acute mind, unaided by the smallest knowledge of the subject treated of!
Trevanion threw quite enough work into Vivian's hands, and at a
remuneration sufficiently liberal to realize my promise of an
independence. And more than once he asked me to introduce to him my
friend. But this I continued to elude,--Heaven knows, not from
jealousy, but simply because I feared that Vivian's manner and way of
talk would singularly displease one who detested presumption, and
understood no eccentricities but his own.
Still, Vivian, whose industry was of a strong wing, but only for short
flights, had not enough to employ more than a few hours of the day, and
I dreaded lest he should, from very idleness, fall back into old habits
and re-seek old friendships. His cynical candor allowed that both were
sufficiently disreputable to justify grave apprehensions of such a
result; accordingly, I contrived to find leisure in my evenings to
lessen his ennui, by accompanying him in rambles through the gas-lit
streets, or occasionally, for an hour or so, to one of the theatres.
Vivian's first care, on finding himself rich enough, had been bestowed
on his person; and those two faculties of observation and imitation
which minds so ready always eminently possess, had enabled him to
achieve that graceful neatness of costume peculiar to the English
gentleman. For the first few days of his metamorphosis traces indeed of
a constitutional love of show or vulgar companionship were noticeable;
but one by one they disappeared. First went a gaudy neckcloth, with
collars turned down; then a pair of spurs vanished; and lastly a
diabolical instrument that he called a cane--but which, by means of a
running bullet, could serve as a bludgeon at one end, and concealed a
dagger in the other--subsided into the ordinary walking-stick adapted to
our peaceable metropolis. A similar change, though in a less degree,
gradually took place in his manner and his conversation. He grew less
abrupt in the one, and more calm, perhaps more cheerful, in the other.
It was evident that he was not insensible to the elevated pleasure of
providing for himself by praiseworthy exertion, of feeling for the first
time that his intellect was of use to him creditably.
A new world, though still dim--seen through mist and fog--began to dawn
upon him.
Such is the vanity of us poor mortals that my interest in Vivian was
probably increased, and my aversion to much in him materially softened,
by observing that I had gained a sort of ascendancy over his savage
nature. When we had first suet by the roadside, and afterwards
conversed in the churchyard, the ascendancy was certainly not on my
side. But I now came from a larger sphere of society than that in which
he had yet moved. I had seen and listened to the first men in England.
What had then dazzled me only, now moved my pity. On the other hand,
his active mind could not but observe the change in me; and whether from
envy or a better feeling, he was willing to learn from me how to eclipse
me and resume his earlier superiority,--not to be superior chafed him.
Thus he listened to me with docility when I pointed out the books which
connected themselves with the various subjects incidental to the
miscellaneous matters on which he was employed. Though he had less of
the literary turn of mind than any one equally clever I had ever met,
and had read little, considering the quantity of thought he had acquired
and the show he made of the few works with which he had voluntarily made
himself familiar, he yet resolutely sat himself down to study; and
though it was clearly against the grain, I augured the more favorably
from tokens of a determination to do what was at the present irksome for
a purpose in the future. Yet whether I should have approved the purpose
had I thoroughly understood it, is another question. There were
abysses, both in his past life and in his character, which I could not
penetrate. There was in him both a reckless frankness and a vigilant
reserve: his frankness was apparent in his talk on all matters
immediately before us, in the utter absence of all effort to make
himself seem better than he was. His reserve was equally shown in the
ingenious evasion of every species of confidence that could admit me
into such secrets of his life as he chose to conceal where he had been
born, reared, and educated; how he came to be thrown on his own
resources; how he had contrived, how he had subsisted, were all matters
on which he had seemed to take an oath to Harpocrates, the god of
silence. And yet he was full of anecdotes of what he had seen, of
strange companions whom he never named, but with whom he had been
thrown. And, to do him justice, I remarked that though his precocious
experience seemed to have been gathered from the holes and corners, the
sewers and drains of life, and though he seemed wholly without dislike
to dishonesty, and to regard virtue or vice with as serene an
indifference as some grand poet who views them both merely as
ministrants to his art, yet he never betrayed any positive breach of
honesty in himself. He could laugh over the story of some ingenious
fraud that he had witnessed, and seem insensible to its turpitude; but
he spoke of it in the tone of an approving witness, not of an actual
accomplice. As we grew more intimate, he felt gradually, however, that
pudor, or instinctive shame, which the contact with minds habituated to
the distinctions between wrong and right unconsciously produces, and
such stories ceased. He never but once mentioned his family, and that
was in the following odd and abrupt manner:--
"Ah!" cried he one day, stopping suddenly before a print-shop, "how that
reminds me of my dear, dear mother."
"Which?" said I, eagerly, puzzled between an engraving of Raffaelle's
"Madonna" and another of "The Brigand's Wife."
Vivian did not satisfy my curiosity, but drew me on in spite of my
reluctance.
"You loved your mother, then?" said I, after a pause. "Yes, as a whelp
may a tigress."
"That's a strange comparison."
"Or a bull-dog may the prize-fighter, his master! Do you like that
better?"
"Not much; is it a comparison your mother would like?"
"Like? She is dead!" said he, rather falteringly.
I pressed his arm closer to mine.
"I understand you," said he, with his cynic, repellent smile. "But you
do wrong to feel for my loss. I feel for it; but no one who cares for
me should sympathize with my grief."
"Why?"
"Because my mother was not what the world would call a good woman. I
did not love her the less for that. And now let us change the subject."
"Nay; since you have said so much, Vivian, let me coax you to say on.
Is not your father living?"
"Is not the Monument standing?"
"I suppose so; what of that?"
"Why, it matters very little to either of us; and my question answers
yours."
I could not get on after this, and I never did get on a step further. I
must own that if Vivian did not impart his confidence liberally, neither
did he seek confidence inquisitively from me. He listened with interest
if I spoke of Trevanion (for I told him frankly of my connection with
that personage, though you may be sure that I said nothing of Fanny),
and of the brilliant world that my residence with one so distinguished
opened to me. But if ever, in the fulness of my heart, I began to speak
of my parents, of my home, he evinced either so impertinent an ennui or
assumed so chilling a sneer that I usually hurried away from him, as
well as the subject, in indignant disgust. Once especially, when I
asked him to let me introduce him to my father,--a point on which I was
really anxious, for I thought it impossible but that the devil within
him would be softened by that contact,--he said, with his low, scornful
laugh,--
"My dear Caxton, when I was a child I was so bored with 'Telemachus'
that, in order to endure it, I turned it into travesty."
"Well?"
"Are you not afraid that the same wicked disposition might make a
caricature of your Ulysses?"
I did not see Mr. Vivian for three days after that speech; and I should
not have seen him then, only we met, by accident, under the Colonnade of
the Opera-House. Vivian was leaning against one of the columns, and
watching the long procession which swept to the only temple in vogue
that Art has retained in the English Babel. Coaches and chariots
blazoned with arms and coronets, cabriolets (the brougham had not then
replaced them) of sober hue but exquisite appointment, with gigantic
horses and pigmy "tigers," dashed on, and rolled off before him. Fair
women and gay dresses, stars and ribbons, the rank and the beauty of the
patrician world,--passed him by. And I could not resist the compassion
with which this lonely, friendless, eager, discontented spirit inspired
me, gazing on that gorgeous existence in which it fancied itself formed
to shine, with the ardor of desire and the despair of exclusion.
By one glimpse of that dark countenance, I read what was passing
within the yetdarker heart. The emotion might not be amiable, nor
the thoughts wise, yet were they unnatural? I had experienced something
of them,--not at the sight of gay-dressed people, of wealth and idleness,
pleasure and fashion, but when, at the doors of Parliament, men who have
won noble names, and whose word had weight on the destinies of glorious
England, brushed heedlessly by to their grand arena; or when, amidst the
holiday crowd of ignoble pomp, I had heard the murmur of fame buzz and
gather round some lordly laborer in art or letters: that contrast
between glory so near and yet so far, and one's own obscurity, of course
I had felt it,--who has not? Alas! many a youth not fated to be a
Themistocles will yet feel that the trophies of a Miltiades will not
suffer him to sleep! So I went up to Vivian and laid my hand on his
shoulder.
"Ah!" said he, more gently than usual, "I am glad to see you, and to
apologize,--I offended you the other day. But you would not get very
gracious answers from souls in purgatory if you talked to them of the
happiness of heaven. Never speak to me about homes and fathers!
Enough! I see you forgive me. Why are you not going to the opera? You
can."
"And you too, if you so please. A ticket is shamefully dear, to be
sure; still, if you are fond of music, it is a luxury you can afford."
"Oh! you flatter me if you fancy the prudence of saving withholds me. I
did go the other night, but I shall not go again. Music!--when you go
to the opera, is it for the music?"
"Only partially, I own; the lights, the scene, the pageant, attract me
quite as much. But I do not think the opera a very profitable pleasure
for either of us. For rich idle people, I dare say, it may be as
innocent an amusement as any other, but I find it a sad enervator."
"And I just the reverse,--a horrible stimulant! Caxton, do you know
that, ungracious as it will sound to you, I am growing impatient of this
`honorable independence'? What does it lead to? Board, clothes, and
lodging,--can it ever bring me anything more?"
"At first, Vivian, you limited your aspirations to kid gloves and a
cabriolet: it has brought the kid gloves already; by and by it will
bring the cabriolet!"
"Our wishes grow by what they feed on. You live in the great world, you
can have excitement if you please it; I want excitement, I want the
world, I want room for my mind, man! Do you understand me?"
"Perfectly, and sympathize with you, my poor Vivian; but it will all
come. Patience! as I preached to you while dawn rose so comfortless
over the streets of London. You are not losing time. Fill your mind;
read, study, fit yourself for ambition. Why wish to fly till you have
got your wings? Live in books now; after all, they are splendid
palaces, and open to us all, rich and poor."
"Books, books! Ah! you are the son of a book-man. It is not by books
that men get on in the world, and enjoy life in the mean while."
"I don't know that; but, my good fellow, you want to do both,--get on in
the world as fast as labor can, and enjoy life as pleasantly as
indolence may. You want to live like the butterfly, and yet have all
the honey of the bee; and, what is the very deuce of the whole, even as
the butterfly, you ask every flower to grow up in a moment; and, as a
bee, the whole hive must be stored in a quarter of an hour! Patience,
patience, patience!"
Vivian sighed a fierce sigh. "I suppose," said he, after an unquiet
pause, "that the vagrant and the outlaw are strong in me, for I long to
run back to my old existence, which was all action, and therefore
allowed no thought."
While he thus said, we had wandered round the Colonnade, and were in
that narrow passage in which is situated the more private entrance to
the opera: close by the doors of that entrance, two or three young men
were lounging. As Vivian ceased, the voice of one of these loungers
came laughingly to our ears.
"Oh!" it said, apparently in answer to some question, "I have a much
quicker way to fortune than that: I mean to marry an heiress!"
Vivian started, and looked at the speaker. He was a very good-looking
fellow. Vivian continued to look at him, and deliberately, from head to
foot; he then turned away with a satisfied and thoughtful smile.
"Certainly," said I, gravely (construing the smile), "you are right
there: you are even better--looking than that heiress-hunter!"
Vivian colored; but before he could answer, one of the loungers, as the
group recovered from the gay laugh which their companion's easy
coxcombry had excited, said,--
"Then, by the way, if you want an heiress, here comes one of the
greatest in England; but instead of being a younger son, with three good
lives between you and an Irish peerage, one ought to be an earl at least
to aspire to Fanny Trevanion!"
The name thrilled through me, I felt myself tremble; and looking up, I
saw Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion, as they hurried from their carriage
towards the entrance of the opera. They both recognized me, and Fanny
cried,--
"You here! How fortunate! You must see us into the box, even if you
run away the moment after."
"But I am not dressed for the opera," said I, embarrassed.
"And why not?" asked Miss Trevanion; then, dropping her voice, she
added, "why do you desert us so wilfully?" and, leaning her hand on my
arm, I was drawn irresistibly into the lobby. The young loungers at the
door made way for us, and eyed me, no doubt, with envy.
"Nay!" said I, affecting to laugh, as I saw Miss Trevanion waited for my
reply. "You forget how little time I have for such amusements now, and
my uncle--"
"Oh, but mamma and I have been to see your uncle to-day, and he is
nearly well,--is he not, mamma? I cannot tell you how I like and admire
him. He is just what I fancy a Douglas of the old day. But mamma is
impatient. Well, you must dine with us to-morrow, promise! Not adieu,
but au revoir," and Fanny glided to her mother's arm. Lady Ellinor,
always kind and courteous to me, had good-naturedly lingered till this
dialogue, or rather monologue, was over.
On returning to the passage, I found Vivian walking to and fro; he had
lighted his cigar, and was smoking energetically. "So this great
heiress," said he, smiling, "who, as far as I could see,--under her
hood,--seems no less fair than rich, is the daughter, I presume, of the
Mr. Trevanion, whose effusions you so kindly submit to me. He is very
rich, then! You never said so, yet I ought to have known it; but you
see I know nothing of your beau monde,--not even that Miss Trevanion is
one of the greatest heiresses in England."
"Yes, Mr. Trevanion is rich," said I, repressing a sigh,--very rich."
"And you are his secretary! My dear friend, you may well offer me
patience, for a large stock of yours will, I hope, be superfluous to
you."
"I don't understand you."
"Yet you heard that young gentleman, as well as myself and you are in
the same house as the heiress."
"Vivian!"
"Well, what have I said so monstrous?"
"Pooh! since you refer to that young gentleman, you heard, too, what
his companion told him, 'one ought to be an earl, at least, to aspire to
Fanny Trevanion!'"
"Tut! as well say that one ought to be a millionnaire to aspire to a
million! Yet I believe those who make millions generally begin with
pence."
"That belief should be a comfort and encouragement to you, Vivian. And
now, good-night; I have much to do."
"Good-night, then," said Vivian, and we parted.
I made my way to Mr. Trevanion's house and to the study. There was a
formidable arrear of business waiting for me, and I sat down to it at
first resolutely; but by degrees I found my thoughts wandering from the
eternal blue-books, and the pen slipped from my hand in the midst of an
extract from a Report on Sierra Leone. My pulse beat loud and quick; I
was in that state of nervous fever which only emotion can occasion. The
sweet voice of Fanny rang in my ears; her eyes, as I had last met them,
unusually gentle, almost beseeching, gazed upon me wherever I turned;
and then, as in mockery, I heard again those words,--"One ought to be an
earl at least to aspire to-" Oh! did I aspire? Was I vain fool so
frantic, household traitor so consummate? No, no! Then what did I
under the same roof? Why stay to imbibe this sweet poison that was
corroding the very springs of my life? At that self-question, which,
had I been but a year or two older, I should have asked long before, a
mortal terror seized me; the blood rushed from my heart and left me
cold, icy cold. To leave the house, leave Fanny! Never again to see
those eyes, never to hear that voice! Better die of the sweet poison
than of the desolate exile! I rose, I opened the windows; I walked to
and fro the room; I could decide nothing, think of nothing; all my mind
was in an uproar. With a violent effort at self-mastery, I approached
the table again. I resolved to force myself to my task, if it were only
to re-collect my faculties and enable them to bear my own torture. I
turned over the books impatiently, when lo! buried amongst them, what
met my eye? Archly, yet reproachfully,--the face of Fanny herself! Her
miniature was there. It had been, I knew, taken a few days before by a
young artist whom Trevanion patronized. I suppose he had carried it
into his study to examine it, and so left it there carelessly. The
painter had seized her peculiar expression, her ineffable smile,--so
charming, so malicious; even her favorite posture,--the small head
turned over the rounded Hebe-like shoulder; the eye glancing up from
under the hair. I know not what change in my madness came over me; but
I sank on my knees, and, kissing the miniature again and again, burst
into tears. Such tears! I did not hear the door open, I did not see
the shadow steal ever the floor; a light hand rested on my shoulder,
trembling as it rested--I started. Fanny herself was bending over me!
"What is the matter?" she asked tenderly. "What has happened? Your
uncle--your family--all well? Why are you weeping?"
I could not answer; but I kept my hands clasped over the miniature, that
she might not see what they contained.
"Will you not answer? Am I not your friend,--almost your sister? Come,
shall I call mamma?"
"Yes--yes; go--go."
"No, I will not go yet. What have you there? What are you hiding?"
And innocently, and sister-like, those hands took mine; and so--and so--
the picture became visible! There was a dead silence. I looked up
through my tears. Fanny had recoiled some steps, and her cheek was very
flushed, her eyes downcast. I felt as if I had committed a crime, as if
dishonor clung to me; and yet I repressed--yes, thank Heaven! I
repressed the cry that swelled from my heart and rushed to my lips:
"Pity me, for I love you!" I repressed it, and only a groan escaped
me,--the wail of my lost happiness! Then, rising, I laid the miniature
on the table, and said, in a voice that I believe was firm,--
"Miss Trevanion, you have been as kind as a sister to me, and therefore
I was bidding a brother's farewell to your likeness; it is so like you--
this!"
"Farewell!" echoed Fanny, still not looking up.
"Farewell--sister! There, I have boldly said the word; for--for--" I
hurried to the door, and, there turning, added, with what I meant to be
a smile,--" for they say at home that I--I am not well; too much for me
this; you know, mothers will be foolish; and--and--I am to speak to your
father to-morrow; and-good-night! God bless you, Miss Trevanion!"