"There is nothing so catching as example; nor is there ever great good
or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions
through emulation, and bad ones through the malignity of our nature,
which shame restrains and example emancipates."
That was my case now.
I suppose I had had it in me all along--the "black drop," as the Irish
peasants call it, of evil; and, that shame had hitherto prevented me
from plunging into the whirlpool of sinful indulgence that now drew me,
a willing victim, down into its yawning gulf of ruin and degradation.
That bar removed, however, I made rapid progress towards the beckoning
devil, who was waiting to receive me with open arms. I hastened along
that path, "where,"--as Byron has described from his own painful
experience--
"--In a moment, we may plunge our years
In fatal penitence, and in the blight
Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,
And colour things to come with hues of night!"
I declare to you, that when I look back on this period of my life--life!
death, rather I should say, for it was a moral death--I am quite unable
to comprehend the motives that led me to take such a course. My eyes
were not blinded. I must have seen that each stride placed me further
and further away from my darling, erecting a fresh obstacle between us;
still, some irresistible impulse appeared to hurry me on--although, I
could not but have known how vain it would be for me to recover my lost
footsteps: how hard a matter to change my direction, and look upwards to
light and happiness once more! Glancing back at this period--as I do
now with horror--I cannot understand myself, I say.
I went from bad to worse, plunging deeper and deeper into every
wickedness that Satan could suggest, or flesh hanker after--until I
seemed to lose all sense of shame and self-reproach.
My connection with officialdom was soon terminated.
I got later and later in my attendance; so that, old Smudge's prediction
was shortly fulfilled, for, I became no better than the rest, in respect
of early hours.
One day the chief spoke to me on the subject, and I answered him
unguardedly.
I was not thinking of him at the time, to tell the truth; and when he
said, "Mr Lorton, late again, late again! This won't do, you know,
won't do!" I quite forgot myself; and, in speaking to him, called him
by the nickname under which he was known to us, instead of by his proper
appellation.
"Very sorry, Smudge," said I, "very sorry; won't be so again, I promise
you, sir!"
He nearly got a fit, I assure you; while, all the other fellows were
splitting with laughter at my slip!
"Mr Lorton, I will report you, sir!" was all he said to me directly;
but, as he shuffled off to his desk, with the attendance book recording
my misdeeds under his arm and his face purple with passion, we all could
hear him muttering pretty loudly to himself. "Smudge! Smudge!"--he was
repeating;--"I'll Smudge him, the impudent rascal! I wonder what the
dooce he meant by it! What the dooce did he mean by it?--mean by it?"
I begged his pardon off-hand, immediately, of course, although I would
not give him the written apology he peremptorily demanded.
Do you know, I did not like to deprive him of the extreme pleasure it
would give him to submit his case against me--in clerkly, cut-and-dried
statement--to the chief commissioner, under-secretary, first lord, or
whoever else occupied the lofty pedestal of "the board," that controlled
the occasionally-peculiar proceedings of the Obstructor General's
Department.
I knew with what intense relish he would expatiate on the wrong which
"the service" had sustained in his person at my hands--the "frightful
example" I presented, of insubordination and defiance to constitutional
authority; and how, he would draw up the most elaborate document,
detailing all this, in flowing but strictly official language, on
carefully-folded, quarter-margined foolscap, of the regular, authorised
dimensions!
What a pity, I thought, it would be to interfere with such neat
arrangements by submitting to a _Nolle Prosequi_--as I would have done,
had I tendered the recantation of my error that he insisted on!
At the same time, however, I checkmated his triumph, by forwarding to
the people in high places the resignation of that position as a clerk of
the tertiary formation, which I had, been nominated to, examined in
respect of, and competed for, under the auspices of Her Majesty's Polite
Letter Writer Commissioners; and which I had been duly appointed to--all
in proper official sequence--but one short year before, plus a few
additional months, which were of no great consequence to any one.
My withdrawal left, at any rate, one place vacant for some member of
Parliament's constituent's son, who would, probably, be much more worthy
in every way for the honours and duties of the situation--which, really,
I do not think I ever estimated at their proper value!
This was some satisfaction to me, I assure you; and, combined with the
sum of one hundred and ten pounds sterling--less income-tax on one-
fourth part of the said amount, or thereabouts: I like to be correct--
was all the benefit I ever received from my connection with
"Government."
My year's probation was, I may say without any great exaggeration,
thrown away; for, the knowledge I gained was not of a character to
advance my interests in any other walk in life, professional or
mercantile. Still, I bear no malice to officialdom, if officialdom
cares to obtain my assurance to that effect. The few words--far
between, too--which I have dropped to you, anent the combination of the
ill-used servants of the country in opposition to their grievances, have
been more intended to redress the wrongs of those hard-worked, poor-paid
sufferers in question, than meant as a covert attack on the noble
authorities of the great, lumbering institution they belong to--the
spokes of whose broadly-tired wheels they may be said to form.
For my part, I adore governmental departments, looking on all of them
with a wide admiration that is tempered with wholesome awe; and,
believing them to be so many concentrations of virtue and merit, which
are none the less real because they are imperceptible.
The giving up of my appointment was the finish of my mad career.
I awoke now to a consciousness of all my foolishness and wickedness; the
revelation of the misery, present and future alike, which my conduct had
prepared for me, coming to mind, with a sudden, sharp stroke of painful
distinctness that prostrated me into an abyss of self-torture and
repentance.
Ah! There is no use in repining, unless one mends matters by deeds, not
words. Repentance is worth little if it be not followed up by
reformation. But, how many of us rush madly, headlong to destruction,
without a thought of what they are doing; never mindful of their course,
till that dreadful refrain, "Too late!" rings in their ears.
As the poetical author of the ode to the "Plump Head Waiter at The
Cock," has philosophically sung,--and, as many a weather-beaten sufferer
has cruelly proven,--
"So fares it since the years began,
Till they be gather'd up;
The truth, that flies the flowing can,
Will haunt the empty cup:
And others' follies teach us not,
Nor much their wisdom teaches;
And most, of sterling worth, is what
Our own experience preaches!"
I remembered now having come across a passage in Massillon's _Petit
Careme_, some two or three years before, during a varied course of
French reading at the library of the British Museum,--an old haunt of
mine long previously to my ever knowing Min; and this passage occurred
to me in my present condition, expressing a want I had long felt, and
which I was now all the more bitterly conscious of. It is in one of the
sermons which the seventeenth century divine probably preached in the
presence of the Grand Monarque. It is entitled "Sur la Destinee de
l'Homme;" and might, for its practical point and thorough insightedness
into human nature, be expounded to-morrow by any of our large-hearted,
Broad Church ministers. In its truth, I'm sure, it is catholic enough
to suit any creed:--
"Si tout doit finir avec nous, si l'homme ne doit rien attendre apres
cette vie, et que ce soit ici notre patrie, notre origine, et la seul
felicite que nous pouvons nous promettre, pourquoi n'y sommes-nous pas
heureux? Si nous ne naissons que pour les plaisirs des sens, pourquoi
ne peuvent-ils nous satisfaire, et laissent-ils toujours un fond
d'ennui et de tristesse dans notre coeur? Si l'homme n'a rien au-
dessus de la bete, que ne coule-t-il ses jours comme elle, sans souci,
sans inquietude, sans degout, sans tristesse, dans la felicite des
sens et de la chair?"
Because he can not!
The pleasures of life, however varied, and grateful though they may be
at the time, soon wither on the palate; and then, when we appreciate at
last the knowledge of their dust and ashes, their Dead Sea-apple
constituency, we _must_ turn to something better, something higher--the
joys of which are more lasting and whose flavour proceeds from some less
evanescent substance.
Such were my reflections now; and, in my abasement and craving for "the
one good thing," I thought of the kind vicar.
During all the time of my rioting and sin, I had never been near either
him or Miss Pimpernell. I would not have profaned the sanctuary of
their dwelling with my presence!
Both had tried to see me--in vain; for, I had separated myself entirely
from all my former friends and acquaintances, burying the early
associations of my previous life in the slough of the Bohemian-boon-
companionship, into which I had thrown myself in London.
The kind vicar had written to me a long, earnest, touching letter, which
did not reproach me in the least but invited me to confide in him all my
troubles; and, the dear old lady, also, had sent me many an appeal that
she might be allowed to cheer me. But, I had not taken notice of their
pleadings, persevering still in evil and shutting my ears to friendly
counsels--as I likewise did to the voice of reason speaking in my inner
heart.
Now, however, in my misery, I bethought me of these friends. I went
shame-faced and mentally-naked, like the prodigal son, once more to the
vicarage.
And how did they receive me?
With the pharisaical philosophy of Miss Spight's school, looking on me
as a "goat," with whom they had nothing to do:--"a lost soul," without
the pale of their pity and almost below the par of their contempt?
Not so!
Dear little Miss Pimpernell got up from her arm-chair in the corner, and
kissed me--the first time she had done such a thing since I was a little
fellow and had sat upon her knee; while, the vicar shook me as cordially
by the hand as he had ever done.
"Dear Frank!" exclaimed the former. "Here you are at last. I thought
you were never coming to us again!"
That was all the allusion _she_ made to the past.
"My boy," said the vicar, "I am glad to see you."
That was all _he_ said; but, his speech was not mere empty verbiage. He
meant it!
I shall not tell you how they both talked to me: so tenderly, so kindly.
It would not interest you. It only concerned myself.
By-and-by, after a long interview, in which I laid all my troubles
before these comforters, the vicar asked me what I thought of doing.
"I shall go away,"--I said.--"I have exhausted London.--`I have lived
and loved,' as Theckla says; and there is no hope of my getting on here!
I would think that everybody would recall my past life, whenever they
saw me, and throw it all back in my teeth."
"But, you can live all that down, my boy," said the vicar.--"The world
is not half so censorious as you think now, in your awakening; and,
remember, Frank, what Shakspeare says, `There is no time so miserable,
but a man may be true!'"
"Besides," I went on,--"I want change of scene. All these old places
would recall the past. I could never be happy here again."
"Well, well, my boy!" he answered sadly. "But, we shall be sorry to
lose you, Frank, all the same, although it may be for your good."
I had thought of America already, and told him that I intended going
there. Not from any wide-seated admiration of the Great Republic and
its citizens; but, from its being a place within easy reach--where I
might separate myself entirely from all that would recall home thoughts
and home associations:--so I then believed.
"I shall go there," I said, bitterly.--"At all events, I shall be
unknown; and, can bury myself and my misery--a fitting end to a bad
life!"
"My boy, my boy!"--said the vicar, with emotion.--"It grieves me to the
heart to hear you speak so. Know, that repentance brings us always once
more beneath the shelter of divine love! You will think of this by-and-
by, Frank:--you may carve out a new life for yourself in the new world,
and return to us successful. Be comforted, my boy! Do not forget
David's spirit-stirring words of promise,--`They that sow in tears,
shall reap in joy; and he that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth
forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his
sheaves with him!'"