MISANTHROPOS.
On the morning after the most disastrous of all his bad nights at
hazard, Charles Fox was found by a friend who called, in fear and
trembling, to offer assistance or condolence, lying on his sofa in lazy
luxury, deep in an eclogue of Virgil. The magnificent indifference was
probably not assumed, for there was little tinsel about that large
honest nature, and he was not the man to indulge in private theatricals.
Since I read that anecdote, I have always wondered that the successes
achieved by the great Opposition leader were not more lasting and
complete. Among the triumphs of mind over matter, that power of
thoroughly abstracting the thoughts from recent grief or trouble, seems
to stand first and foremost. Such sublime stoicism implies a strength of
character and of will, that separates its possessor at once from his
fellows: sooner or later, He must rule, and they must obey.
Alan Wyverne was not so rarely gifted. The bustle of the heavy journey
from Dene to the railroad, and the uncertainty about catching the train,
helped him at first; but when all that was over, and he was fairly on
his way to town, he was forced to _think_, whether he would or no.
Anything was better than brooding over the past; he tried desperately to
force his thoughts into the immediate future--to imagine what he should
say to his uncle, and how the Squire would take the heavy tidings. The
effort was worse than vain. The strong stream laughed at the puny
attempts to stem it, sweeping all such obstacles away, as it rushed down
its appointed channel. All the plans he had talked over with Helen, even
to the smallest details of their proposed domestic economy, came back
one by one; he remembered every word of their last playful argument,
when he tried to persuade her that certain luxuries for her boudoir at
Wyverne Abbey were necessities not to be dispensed with; he remembered
how they had speculated as to the disposal of the money, if his solitary
bet on the next Derby, 1000 to 10 about a rising favourite--should by
any chance come off right; how they had weighed gravely the advantages
of three months of winter in Italy against the pleasures of an
adventurous expedition whose turning-point should be the Lebanon. What
did it matter now who won or lost? Was it only yesterday that he had an
interest in all these things? Yesterday--between him and that word there
seemed already a gulf of years. Yesterday, he had felt so proud in
anticipating the triumphs of his beautiful bride; now, he could only
think of her certain success with a heavy sinking of the heart, or a hot
fierce jealousy; for she was all his own treasure then; one night had
made her the world's again. That miserable journey scarcely lasted four
hours; but when it ended, Wyverne was as much morally changed as he
might have been, physically, by a long wasting sickness.
Does it seem strange that a man, who up to this time had met all
reverses with a careless gaiety that was almost provoking, should go
down so helplessly now before a blow that would scarcely stagger many of
our acquaintance? A great deal, in such cases, depends on the
antecedents. Human nature, however elastic and enduring, will only stand
a certain amount of "beating." When Captain Lyndon is in good luck and
good funds, he accepts the loss of a hundred or two with dignified
equanimity, if not with chirping cheerfulness; but supposing the bad
night comes at the end of a long evil "vein"--when financial prospects
are gloomier than the yellow fog outside--when the face of his banker is
set against him, as it were a millstone--when that reckless soldier
Would liever mell with the fiends of hell,
Than with Craig's Court and its band.
O, my friend! I marvel not that a muttered imprecation shot out from
under your moustache, last night, when the Queen of Hearts showed her
comely face--your adversaries having the deal, at three.
Now Alan Wyverne had been playing for his last stake, so far as he knew:
he had put it down with some diffidence and hesitation, and it had
followed the rest into the gulf, leaving him without a chance of winning
back his losses. Under the circumstances some depression, surely, was
not wholly despicable. Remember, he was not so young as he had been:
though still on the better side of middle age, he had in many ways
anticipated his prime, and had not much left to look forward to.
Qu'on est bien dans un grenier
Quand on a vingt ans!
So sings Beranger, well, if not wisely. But--add another score of years
or so--what will the lodger say of his quarters? Those seven flights of
stairs are dark and steep; the bread is hard and tasteless; the wine
painfully sour and thin; the fuel runs short, and it is bitter cold, for
Lisette is no longer there to hang her cloak over the crazy casement,
laughing at the whistle of the baffled wind.
Wyverne saw his uncle that night. The Squire was equally provoked and
grieved; the intelligence took him completely by surprise, for he had
never guessed that anything was going wrong; he would not allow at first
that the engagement was irrevocably broken off, and wished to try what
he could do to re-cement it; but Alan was so hopelessly firm on the
point that Hubert was forced to yield. He believed in his nephew
implicitly, and acquitted him of blame from first to last; but he was
completely puzzled by Mrs. Lenox's strange conduct; he only dropped the
subject when he saw how evidently it pained Alan to pursue it.
"I shall not write, even to reproach her," the latter said. "I am too
heart-sick of her and her caprices. I suppose she will explain herself
if we ever meet, and I have patience to listen."
When they parted, the Squire clasped Wyverne's hand hard, looking
wistfully into his face.
"I--I did my best, boy," he said, huskily.
The old genial light came back for an instant, only an instant, into the
other's weary eyes, and he returned the gripe right cordially.
"Do you think I don't know that?" he answered; "or that I shall ever
forget it? We all did our best; but Aunt Mildred has her way, after all.
Take care of Helen; she will need it. And if you would write soon to
tell me the truth about her, it would be so very kind."
The next morning Alan started for the North, alone. If the
Christmas-tide was dreary at Wyverne Abbey, it was not a "merry" one at
Dene. The Squire did not seek to disguise his discontent, though he said
little on the subject of the broken engagement, either to his wife or
Helen. There was a gloomy reserve in his manner towards the former, that
showed that he more than suspected her of unfair play; to the latter he
was unusually gentle and considerate. Miss Vavasour bore up bravely. No
one looking at the girl's pale proud face would have dreamt of the dull,
heavy pain coiled round her heart, like the serpent round Don Roderic in
the tomb. She accepted her father's caresses gratefully, and her
mother's with placid indifference. No words of recrimination had passed
between these two; but there is an instinct of distrust as well as of
love or fear; the last few days had slain sympathy outright, and even
the tough sensibility of the cool diplomatist was not always unmoved as
she realized the utter estrangement. So even "my lady," though the game
was won, did not feel in vein for the festivities of the season. Her
conscience had long ceased to trouble her, when it was a question of
expediency; she compassionated the sorrows of her misguided daughter
about as much as a great surgeon does the sufferings of a patient who
has just passed under his knife; but she was not quite philosopher
enough, wholly to disbelieve in Retribution. Her dreams of a brilliant
future for Helen were sometimes disturbed by a vision of sad earnest
eyes, pleading only that truth might be met by truth--she had answered
their appeal so well!
It was an odd sort of life that Wyverne led at the Abbey. He took to
shooting over his broad manors, with a dogged determination that
rejoiced the hearts of his keepers and tenants and every one interested
in the preservation of his game. He went out always early in the
morning, and never returned till darkness set in; then he slept for a
couple of hours, dined late, and sat smoking and musing far into the
night. But it did him good in every way: the strong exercise and the
keen north-country air stirred up the iron in his blood, and braced his
nerves as well as his sinews. I believe that permanent melancholy
implies a morbid condition, not only of the mind but the body. I
believe--be it understood this is only a theory, so far--that a man will
not _mope_ in the Queen's Bench, though he may hate himself
occasionally, and find the position irksome, if he sticks to cold water
and rackets. The genial hopefulness which had resisted so many rude
shocks, was dead in Alan for ever and aye; but it was not in his nature
to become sullen and saturnine; he rejoiced simply and sincerely when
his uncle's letter brought good news of Helen; he was not selfish enough
to quarrel with his lost love because her wreath was not always
ostentatiously twined of the willow. Some men are never satisfied unless
they leave more than half the misery behind them.
Wyverne had been at the Abbey about a month, when he got a letter which
surprised him not a little. Mr. Haldane wrote, to beg his nephew to
visit him, for a single night, and pressed it on the ground that his
health was failing.
Castle Dacre was situated far up in the hills, thirty miles or so from
the Abbey. They had nicknamed it "Castle Dangerous" through the
country-side, for the roads all round it were so infamous as to be
sometimes impassable. Very few, of late years, had found it worth their
while to encounter such perils. It was a huge dreary pile--a tall grey
keep in the centre, dating back to the time of the Danes: round this
long low ranges of more modern buildings were grouped, all in the same
pale gaunt granite. The trees clustering about the castle in clumps, and
thickly studded over the bleak park, hardly took away from the bare
desolate effect; some of them were vast in the trunk and broad in the
top, but it seemed as if the bitter north wind had checked their growth,
though it could not waste their strength. You shivered involuntarily
when you looked at the house from the outside; the contrast was the more
striking when you entered. The whole of the interior was almost
oppressively light and warm; great fires blazed in huge grates in the
most unexpected corners, and bright lamps burned in the remotest nooks
of passage, and hall, and corridor. A Belgravian establishment might
have been maintained for a whole season at the cost of the coals and oil
consumed in Dacre Castle; but such was the whim of its eccentric and
autocratic master.
Alan Wyverne arrived very late, and did not see his uncle till they met
at dinner. Mr. Haldane must always have been small and slight of frame;
he was thin, now, to emaciation; there was not a particle of colour in
the face or the delicate hands; the articulations in the last were so
strongly marked as almost to spoil the perfection of their shape. His
features might have been handsome once, and not disagreeable in their
expression, but evil tempers and physical suffering had left ruinous
traces there; the thin lips had forgotten how to smile, though they were
meaning enough when they curled sardonically; he had a curious way of
perpetually drawing himself together, as if struck with a sudden chill.
He was just the sort of man you would have set down as a great judge of
pictures and collector of curiosities. So it was. The whole house was
overflowing with the choicest productions of nature and art, gathered
from every quarter of the known world. A long gallery was completely
filled with the rarest specimens of china that the last three centuries
could display. Some of our connoisseurs would have sold their souls for
the plundering of that one chamber.
The dinner was simply perfection. You might have feasted for a whole
season at half the best houses in London, and have missed the artistic
effects which awaited you in that lonely castle of the far North. The
wines of every sort were things to dream of. Mr. Haldane drank nothing
but Burgundy. Even Alan Wyverne, accustomed as he was to witness deep
wassail, felt wonder approaching to fear, as he saw his host drain glass
after glass of the strong rich liquor without betraying a sign of its
influence, either by the faintest flush on his thin parchment cheek, or
a change of inflection in his low monotonous voice. It seemed as if he
were trying to infuse some warmth into his veins, in defiance of a curse
laid upon him--to remain frozen and statuelike forever.
While dinner lasted, the conversation went languishing on, never coming
to a full stop, but never in the least animated. It was evident that the
thoughts of both often wandered far away from the subject they were
talking of. At last they drew their great arm-chairs up to the fire, one
on each side of the horse-shoe table, with a perfect barricade of glass
between them in the shape of decanters and claret-jugs. For the first
ten minutes after they were left alone the host kept silence, leaning
forward and spreading his hands over the fierce fire; they were so thin
and white that the light seemed to pass through them as it does through
transparent china. He raised his head suddenly and glanced aside at his
companion, who was evidently musing, with an expression half
inquisitive, half satirical, in his keen grey eyes.
"So everything is at an end between you and Helen Vavasour. I am very
glad of it, and not the least surprised."
It is never pleasant to have one's reveries abruptly broken; the nerves
are _agaces_, if nothing worse. Besides this, both words and manner
grated on Alan's sensibilities disagreeably. He did not fancy those thin
cynical lips pronouncing that name with such scant ceremony; so his tone
was anything but conciliatory.
"Thank you. I don't seem to care much about being congratulated, or
condoled with, either; and I cannot conceive what interest the subject
can have for you. You ignored it pretty decisively some months ago.
Perhaps you will be good enough to do so now."
The look on his face, that had been simply listless before, grew hard
and defiant while he was speaking. If Bernard Haldane was inclined to
take offence, he certainly controlled his temper wonderfully. He filled
a great glass to the brim with Chambertin, held it for a minute against
the blaze, letting the light filter through the gorgeous purple, and
drained it slowly before he replied--
"I am not surprised at your engagement being broken off, because I know
right well with whom you had to deal. I am glad, because I have always
taken an interest in you, Alan. You don't believe it; but it is true
nevertheless; and I do so still. I would sooner see a man I cared for
dead, than married to Mildred Vavasour's daughter."
Wyverne's anger ceased, as soon as he saw that the old man had some
reason, real or fancied, for his strange conduct; but he spoke coldly
still.
"Strong words, sir. I suppose you have strong provocation to justify
them?"
Bernard Haldane drew a folded letter from his breast-pocket, and put it
into the other's hand, silently. The paper was yellow with age, the ink
faint and faded; but Alan knew the handwriting instantly. His
astonishment deepened as he read on. Was it possible that his cool,
calculating, diplomatic aunt could have penned such words as
these--words in which passion seemed to live and vibrate still, untamed
by passage through thirty years?
Mr. Haldane drained two glasses in rapid succession while the letter was
reading. There was no thickness or hesitation in his voice when he spoke
again, but it was hard and hoarse, as if his throat were dust-dry in
spite of all the Burgundy.
"That is her last letter--the last of forty or more. I have them all
still, and I think I know them all by heart. You may laugh out if you
like; I shall not be angry. She wrote once more--not a letter, only a
note--to break all off, without a word of remorse for herself or pity
for me. A fresh fancy or a better match came across her, so she turned
me adrift like a dog she was tired of. She would have given me a dog's
death, too, if she could, I dare say; for, till she was married, she
never felt safe. Do you wonder now, or blame me, for what I have said
and done or _not_ done?"
Six weeks ago such a story as this would have won hearty sympathy from
Alan Wyverne; but he had suffered too lately himself, to be moved by a
tale of wrong thirty years old. He could not forget Bernard Haldane's
answer to his own letter, and the idea would haunt him that in some way
or other it had materially affected his matrimonial prospects.
"I neither wonder nor blame," he said, wearily. "If any one is right in
visiting the sins of the mothers on the children, I suppose you were.
Certainly, 'my lady' has a good deal to answer for. I understand her
look now, when I mentioned your name. Yes, I _do_ wonder at one thing. I
don't understand why you married my father's sister."
The old man glanced darkly at the speaker from under his strong grey
eyebrows.
"I hope my poor wife never knew the lie I uttered at the altar; or, if
she did, that she forgave me before she died. But God knew it, and
punished it. Alan--you are my nearest heir."
After those significant words there was silence for some minutes, only
broken by a faint tinkle and gurgle, as the host filled his glass
repeatedly, and his guest followed the example in more moderate fashion.
At last Mr. Haldane spoke again.
"Alan, I wonder what would be your line, if you came into this
inheritance? Do you know, it is larger than the one you threw away?"
A few weeks ago, when Wyverne's fortunes were bound up with Helen
Vavasour's, such a speech as that would have sent a hot thrill of hope
through all his being: he heard it now with an indifference which was
not in the least assumed.
"It would be a hazardous experiment," he answered, carelessly. "They say
there is a great pleasure in hoarding, when you have more money than you
know what to do with. I never tried it; perhaps I should take to avarice
for a change. But I might take to playing again: it's just as likely as
not; and then everything would go, if my present luck lasted--the
pictures and the gems, and the china, and the mosaics. It would be a
thousand pities, too; I don't believe there's such another collection in
England."
Bernard Haldane seemed determined, that night, not to be provoked by
anything that his nephew could do or say. He was so accustomed to be
surrounded by helpless dependents, bowing themselves without
remonstrance or resistance before his tyrannical temper, that he had got
weary of obsequiousness. Alan's haughty _nonchalance_, though it
evidently proceeded from dislike or displeasure, rather refreshed the
old cynic than otherwise.
"You are honest at all events," he muttered; "it's no use trying to
bribe you into forgetting injuries; if you _will_ bear malice,--there's
an end of it. We won't speak of inheritances: they put unpleasant
thoughts into a man's head, whose health is breaking faster every day."
Once more a shiver ran through the speaker's emaciated frame, as it
cowered and shrunk together; and once more the thin white hands spread
themselves eagerly to the blaze. After a pause he rose, evidently to go,
and there was something actually approaching to cordiality in his
manner.
"It is hardly fair to ask you to stay on in this dreary place; but it
would please me very much if you would spare me a few days. They tell me
the covers are full of game, and you can have a hundred beaters at half
an hour's notice. You will be nearly as much alone here as at the Abbey,
for I never appear till dinner-time, and I go to bed very early, as you
see. The Burgundy is a good sleeping-draught, but it must be humoured.
You will stay over to-morrow, at least? I am glad of that. Perhaps you
would like to see the keeper? Give any orders you please, not only
about this, but about anything you may fancy: I _can_ answer for their
being promptly obeyed. Good-night."
His step, as he left the room, was slow and feeble; but not the
slightest uncertainty or unsteadiness of gait gave token of the deep
incessant draughts of fiery liquor that would long ago have dizzied any
ordinary brain. Every family of ancient name, besides its statesmen and
soldiers, preserves the moist memory of some bacchanalian Titan, whose
exploits are inscribed on bowl, or tankard, or beaker. We may not doubt
that there were giants in those days; but the prowess of the mightiest
of all those stalwart squires would have been hardly tried, if he had
"drunk fair" that night with the little, wan, withered hypochondriac.