“L’OISEAU FUIT COMME LE BONHEUR.”
EUSTACE refrained from opening the parcel given to him by his uncle
until he found himself in his own room, in the solemn quiet of a rural
midnight. Then, and then only, did he feel himself at liberty to enter
upon a task which had a certain sanctity. It was but a mixed record of
truth and fiction, this book which his guilty father had given to the
world; but some part of his mother’s life was interwoven with those
pages; her brief dream of happiness was shut, as it were, between the
leaves of the volumes, like flowers that have once been bright with
colour and rich with perfume, and which one finds pale and scentless in
a long-unopened book.
The book was called _The Disappointments of Dion: a Sequel to
Dion, a Confession_. By the same Author. This preservation in
the second book of the name that had figured in the first seemed
to indicate the autobiographical nature of both works. The hero of
the _Disappointments_ was the same being as the hero of the
_Confession_--the same being, hardened and degraded by ten years
of selfishness and dissipation. The Dion of the _Confession_
had the affectation of cynicism, the tone of an Alcibiades who apes
the philosophy of Diogenes. The Dion of the _Disappointments_
was really cynical, and attempted to disguise his cynicism under an
affectation of _bonhomie_.
Eustace sat till late into the night, reading--with unspeakable pain,
with sorrow, anger, sympathy, mixed in his mind as he read. Yes, this
book had been written by his father--there could be no doubt of that.
The first volume contained his mother’s story. It fitted into the
record of the letters, and to the story told by Mrs. Willows. Idealized
and poetized by the fancy of the hero, he read the history of a girl’s
day-dream, and recognized in this poetized heroine the woman whose
pensive face had been wont to brighten when it looked upon his. The
story of a young student’s passion for a tradesman’s daughter was told
with a certain grace and poetry. It is but an old story at best. It is
always more or less the legend of Faust and Gretchen, and it needs a
Göthe to elevate so simple a fable from the commonplace to the sublime.
The author of _Dion_ described his Gretchen very prettily. It was
a portrait by Greuse, with an occasional touch of Raphael.
To the study of this book Eustace Thorburn applied himself with intense
earnestness of thought and purpose. The Sibylline volumes were not
more precious to the sage who purchased them so dearly than was this
egotistical composition to the man who had found a leaf from his
mother’s life in the heart of the book.
How much written here was the plain, unvarnished truth? how much the
mere exercise of a romantic fancy? That was the question upon which
depended the whole value of the volumes.
On the one hand, it would seem scarcely likely that any man would
publish to the world the story of his own wrong-doing, or anatomize
his own heart for the pleasure of a novel-reading public. On the
other hand, there was the fact that men have, in a perverted spirit
of vanity, given to the press revelations of viler sins and more
deliberate baseness than any transgression confessed by the author
of _Dion_. Eustace remembered the Confessions of Jean Jacques
Rousseau; and he told himself that there is no crime which the egotist
does not think interesting when the criminal is himself. But the
strongest evidence in support of the idea that this _Disappointments
of Dion_ was throughout a narration of real events lay in the
fact that those pages which described the author’s courtship of a
tradesman’s daughter formed an exact transcript of his mother’s story,
as Eustace had learned it. The quiet sea-coast town, gayer in those
days than now; the bookseller’s shop; the stretch of yellow sand beyond
the rocks; the dull, commonplace companion of the author’s “divine C.”;
the time of year; the interval that elapsed between the brief courtship
and the elopement--all corresponded exactly with the data of that sad
history whose every detail was written upon Eustace Thorburn’s heart.
Throughout the book, places and persons were indicated only by
initials; and this alone imparted somewhat of an obsolete and
Minerva-Press appearance to the volumes. This circumstance also gave
further ground for the idea that there was in this book very little of
absolute invention.
Eustace read the two slender volumes from beginning to end at a
sitting. He began to read before midnight. The broad summer sunlight
shone upon him, and the birds were singing loud in the woodland, when
he closed the second volume. For him every page had an all-absorbing
interest. The reading of this book was like the autopsy of his
father’s mind and heart; and there was something of the surgeon’s
scientific scrutiny in the deliberate care with which he read.
If there were any good to be found in this book, he was prepared to set
that good as a _per-contra_ in the dread account of debtor and
creditor which he kept against his unknown father. But he wanted to
fathom the depths of evil in the mind of that nameless enemy. He wanted
to ascertain the uttermost wrong this man had done him in the person of
that dearer part of himself, his dead mother.
He read the book steadily through, pausing only to mark the passages
which seemed to tell Celia Mayfield’s story, and all passages which
bore, however indirectly, upon that story.
It was half-past six when he read the last page; and half-past seven
was M. de Bergerac’s breakfast-hour. Happily, Mr. Thorburn was at
that privileged age when a man can do without sleep, and find as much
refreshment in a few pails of cold water as ponderous middle age
can derive from a long night’s rest. So he made his toilet, and went
down-stairs to the bright, pretty breakfast-room, little the worse for
the studious occupation of his night.
Mr. Jerningham had wandered down by the water-side after leaving the
cottage, and had seen the light in the secretary’s window, and wondered
what the young man was doing.
“In the throes of poetical composition, no doubt,” thought the master
of Greenlands. “How pleased he seemed to come back to these people;
and with what a smile _she_ welcomed him! And to think that if I
were to offer every possession I have in this world, and my heart of
hearts, and my pride, and my life into the bargain, I could not buy
one such smile as that! I could have such smiles once for the asking;
they shone upon me from the fairest faces, spontaneous and liberal as
the sunlight; and I passed on, and did not cherish one of them to light
my old age. Oh, surely there is some world in which we live our lives
again, enlightened by the follies of the past; some Swedenborgian
heaven, in which the shadows of the things we love here are presented
to us, and we move amongst them regenerate and spiritualised, and
redeem the mistakes and errors of our earthly existence!”
Helen de Bergerac came in from the garden, with an apronful of flowers,
as Eustace Thorburn entered the breakfast-room. And then came the
arrangement of the flowers in old Wedgwood vases and old Worcester
bowls, the clipping of stems, the plucking of stray leaves, the
selections of dewy roses and jasmine, honeysuckle and geranium,--the
most dangerous of all occupations for two people who would fain hide
that secret which these two were trying to conceal from each other.
These two, however, behaved with supreme discretion. There was a
dull pain in the heart of Eustace which made him more silent than
usual. He could not ask the playful, frivolous questions, about
garden and poultry-yard, aviary and greenhouse, Greek verbs or Latin
verse-making, the asking of which until now had been such an unfailing
source of delight.
The long night-watching had saddened him; the brooding over his
mother’s history had brought the sense of the irremoveable stigma upon
his name home to his mind with a new bitterness.
“Would this girl’s father, with his Spanish pride of race and his
pedigree of half a dozen centuries, ever bring himself to excuse that
one shortcoming upon my part?” he asked himself. “If in all other
respects I were the very suitor he would choose for his only child,
could he forgive the bar-sinister which makes my shield unworthy to go
side by side with his?”
And then the young poet remembered his poverty, and laughed at himself
in very bitterness of heart for the folly which had permitted him to
believe, even for one delusive moment, that Theodore de Bergerac would
accept him for a son-in-law.
“Uncle Dan sees these things clearly,” he said to himself. “He has
told me my duty, and I will do it.”
Helen saw the cloud upon his face, and wondered what could have changed
him so suddenly. Only last night he had seemed so gay, so happy. This
morning he was silent and thoughtful; and something told her that his
thoughts were sad.
“I fear you heard some unpleasant news while you were in town,” she
said, anxiously; “and yet last night you seemed so light-hearted.”
“Light-headed, perhaps! There is a kind of intoxication in pleasant
talk about the things one loves and believes in; and last night the
very atmosphere was intoxicating. The faint new moon, and the flowers,
and the river,--those things mount to one’s brain. The morning is
sacred to common-sense. Hope, faith, happiness, what are they but
phantoms that vanish at cock-crow? Daylight ushers in the reign of
worldly wisdom, and her rule is apt to seem hard.”
“Does she seem such a hard mistress to you, Mr. Thorburn?”
“Yes; she shows me cruel truths in a cold, pitiless way.”
Helen looked puzzled. She felt that the conversation was in some manner
dangerous, and did not know whither any further question might drift
her. So she wisely desisted from questioning, and fell back upon such
safe subjects as the flowers and the birds. But every now and then she
gave a little furtive look at Eustace Thorburn’s grave face; and those
furtive glances convinced her that he was unhappy.
M. de Bergerac came from his library before the arrangement of the
vases was quite concluded. He was the earliest riser in his household,
and came to the breakfast-table always refreshed and invigorated by
upwards of an hour’s hard reading.
“I have been looking over your note-books, Thorburn,” he said; “you
have done wonders--those extracts from the old Venetian manuscripts
will be invaluable to me. You must have worked very closely during your
absence.”
“I did stick to my desk at the Museum pretty closely. But I am more
than repaid if my extracts are likely to be useful.”
“They are of the most precious kind. Where should I get such another
secretary? You will be able to finish my book some day.”
“Papa!” cried Helen, tenderly.
“Do not look at me so sadly, dear child! If I were to live to the age
of Old Parr, the book would scarcely be finished. Thou knowest not how
such a subject grows upon the writer--how he sees worlds on worlds
opening before his dazzled eyes--ever distant, ever new--widening
into infinity. Everywhere it is the wealth of man’s imagination which
astounds, which terrifies him; and he asks himself with shame and
humiliation, of the most profound, is it this which I have set myself
to catalogue? Is it this that I think can be numbered and summarized
in my short span? In the traditions of the Rabbins what a universe! In
the faith of Zoroaster, what worlds unexplored--unexplorable! What
fond fantastic dreams, what sublime depths of thought, what grandeur
of faith, in the pious mysteries of Brahma and Buddha! Every race
peoples invisible worlds; and in each new voyage into the realms of
untutored fancy the shadow-world stretches wider before our gaze. Gods
and demons, angels of good and of evil, assume shapes more gigantic,
attributes more awful. Hell sinks to depths unfathomable. Heaven
recedes from the weak grasp of mortal intellect. Stricken, distraught,
the weak soul flees aghast before those barbaric wonders, and takes
refuge in the haven of Christian faith. Ah, how simple, how beautiful,
after the gigantic demonology of the East, seems the pure and perfect
Redeemer of the West--beginning with the martyrdom of the magnanimous
Prometheus, the bondage of the mythic Herakles, culminating in the
Atonement of the Divine Christ!”
And here M. de Bergerac dilated upon one of his favourite theories,
the dual gospel of Western Paganism and Christianity; and fought with
Eustace Thorburn in support of his pet hypothesis, to the effect that
Grecian fable was only a distortion of Bible-history, and the stories
of Prometheus and Herakles mere rude fore-shadowings of the purer and
holier story of man’s Redeemer.
They fought out the battle of comparative mythology; Eustace was of
the two the more earnest Christian. M. de Bergerac went every Sunday
to a pretty little Roman Catholic chapel, half hidden in a rustic
garden, beyond Windsor; but his faith would scarcely have satisfied
the requirements of an orthodox director. The younger man had passed
dryshod through the boundless ocean of mythic lore to that haven of
which his patron had spoken--that harbour of rest for the wandering
soul, where passionate desire to solve the great enigma is exchanged
for the simple faith of childhood. From his mother’s lips Eustace had
learned that tender religion of the heart which Paganism tries in
vain to match with the hard logic of a Plato, or the moral axioms of
a Confucius. To this faith he had clung even more fondly since his
mother’s death. If not for his own sake, for hers he must needs have
been a believer. Where else could he find hope and comfort in the
thought of her sad pilgrimage? Here her weak feet had travelled by
hard and crooked ways--here the burden laid on her had been cruel and
heavy. As an earthly destiny, with no hope of compensation beyond the
regions of earth, Celia’s life would have seemed all bitterness--the
vengeance decreed by a pitiless Nemesis, rather than the chastisement
of a merciful God. But if beyond the sad end of that sorrowful journey
the traveller found rest and forgiveness in regions unimaginable to the
earth-burdened spirit, the pilgrimage seemed no longer hard, the burden
no longer heavy; the enigma of all earthly sorrows received its answer.
This was the hope dear to the heart of Celia Mayfield’s son; and
for this faith he fought sturdily in conversational battles with
his patron, refusing to yield one inch of that ground on which
the divinity of his Master’s mission rested. He would accept for
that pure Teacher no first-cousinship with Buddha or Confucius--no
misty resemblance to Zagreus or Dionysus, Prometheus or Herakles--no
intellectual relationship with Zoroaster or Mahomet. For the truth and
the whole truth of the gospel which he had read at his mother’s knee,
he was resolute and unflinching.
If he had been the most jesuitical of schemers, he could not have
better forwarded his cause with Helen de Bergerac than by this
championship of the true faith. She too had learned her best and
earliest lessons from a mother’s lips, and the philosophical breadth of
view presented to her always in her father’s conversation had in nowise
spoiled the simplicity of those first lessons. She heard her father’s
rationalistic talk with unchanging regret; and hoped always for the
day in which he should come to see these things in the same mysterious
light which made them so sacred and beautiful to her.
To-day Eustace was more than usually earnest. Was he not about to make
his first great sacrifice in proof of his faith? Not on the shrine of
Pagan honour was he about to lay down his happiness, but on the altar
of Christian duty.
He determined that there should be little time lost in the completion
of that bitter sacrifice. The knife should be sharpened at once for
the slaughter of Isaac. And in this case, there was, alas! no hope of
Divine interposition.