A CHANGE OF PROSPECTS.--A NEW INSIGHT INTO THE CHARACTER OF THE HERO.--A
CONFERENCE BETWEEN TWO BROTHERS.
A DAY or two after the conversation recorded in my last chapter, St.
John, to my inexpressible regret, left us for London; however, we had
enjoyed several conferences together during his stay, and when we parted
it was with a pressing invitation on his side to visit him in London,
and a most faithful promise on mine to avail myself of the request.
No sooner was he fairly gone than I went to seek my uncle; I found him
reading one of Farquhar’s comedies. Despite my sorrow at interrupting
him in so venerable a study, I was too full of my new plot to heed
breaking off that in the comedy. In very few words I made the good
knight understand that his descriptions had infected me, and that I was
dying to ascertain their truth; in a word, that his hopeful nephew was
fully bent on going to town. My uncle first stared, then swore, then
paused, then looked at his leg, drew up his stocking, frowned, whistled,
and told me at last to talk to him about it another time. Now, for
my part, I think there are only two classes of people in the world
authorized to put one off to “another time,”--prime ministers and
creditors; accordingly, I would not take my uncle’s dismissal. I had not
read plays, studied philosophy, and laid snares for the Abbe Montreuil
without deriving some little wisdom from my experience; so I took to
teasing, and a notable plan it is too! Whoever has pursued it may guess
the result. My uncle yielded, and that day fortnight was fixed for my
departure.
Oh! with what transport did I look forward to the completion of my
wishes, the goal of my ambition! I hastened forth; I hurried into the
woods; I sang out in the gladness of my heart, like a bird released;
I drank in the air with a rapturous sympathy in its freedom; my step
scarcely touched the earth, and my whole frame seemed ethereal, elated,
exalted by the vivifying inspiration of my hopes. I paused by a
little streamlet, which, brawling over stones and through unpenetrated
thicknesses of wood, seemed, like confined ambition, not the less
restless for its obscurity.
“Wild brooklet,” I cried, as my thoughts rushed into words, “fret on,
our lot is no longer the same; your wanderings and your murmurs are
wasted in solitude and shade; your voice dies and re-awakes, but without
an echo; your waves spread around their path neither fertility nor
terror; their anger is idle, and their freshness is lavished on a
sterile soil; the sun shines in vain for you, through these unvarying
wastes of silence and gloom; Fortune freights not your channel with her
hoarded stores, and Pleasure ventures not her silken sails upon your
tide; not even the solitary idler roves beside you, to consecrate with
human fellowship your melancholy course; no shape of beauty bends
over your turbid waters, or mirrors in your breast the loveliness that
hallows earth. Lonely and sullen, through storm or sunshine, you repine
along your desolate way, and only catch, through the matted boughs that
darken over you, the beams of the wan stars, which, like human hopes,
tremble upon your breast, and are broken, even before they fade, by the
very turbulence of the surface on which they fall. Rove, repine, murmur
on! Such was my fate, but the resemblance is no more. I shall no longer
be a lonely and regretful being; my affections will no longer waste
themselves upon barrenness and stone. I go among the living and
warm world of mortal energies and desires; my existence shall glide
alternately through crested cities, and bowers in which Poetry worships
Love; and the clear depths of my heart shall reflect whatever its young
dreams have shadowed forth, the visioned form, the gentle and fairy
spirit, the Eve of my soul’s imagined and foreboded paradise.”
Venting, in this incoherent strain, the exultation which filled my
thoughts, I wandered on, throughout the whole day, till my spirits
had exhausted themselves by indulgence; and, wearied alike by mental
excitement and bodily exertion, I turned, with slow steps, towards the
house. As I ascended the gentle acclivity on which it stood, I saw a
figure approaching towards me: the increasing shades of the evening did
not allow me to recognize the shape until it was almost by my side; it
was Aubrey.
Of late I had seen very little of him. His devotional studies and habits
seemed to draw him from the idle pursuits of myself and my uncle’s
guests; and Aubrey was one peculiarly susceptible of neglect, and sore,
to morbidity, at the semblance of unkindness; so that he required to be
sought, and rarely troubled others with advances: that night, however,
his greeting was unusually warm.
“I was uneasy about you, Morton,” said he, drawing my arm in his; “you
have not been seen since morning; and, oh! Morton, my uncle told me,
with tears in his eyes, that you were going to leave us. Is it so?”
“Had he tears in his eyes? Kind old man! And you, Aubrey, shall you,
too, grieve for my departure?”
“Can you ask it, Morton? But why will you leave us? Are we not all
happy here, now? _Now_ that there is no longer any barrier or difference
between us,--_now_ that I may look upon you, and listen to you, and
love you, and _own_ that I love you? Why will you leave us now? And
[continued Aubrey, as if fearful of giving me time to answer]--and every
one praises you so here; and my uncle and all of us are so proud of you.
Why should you desert our affections merely because they are not new?
Why plunge into that hollow and cold world which all who have tried it
picture in such fearful hues? Can you find anything there to repay you
for the love you leave behind?”
“My brother,” said I, mournfully, and in a tone which startled him,--it
was so different from that which I usually assumed,--“my brother, hear
before you reproach me. Let us sit down upon this bank, and I will
suffer you to see more of my restless and secret heart than any hitherto
have beheld.”
We sat down upon a little mound: how well I remember the spot! I can
see the tree which shadows it from my window at this moment. How many
seasons have the sweet herb and the emerald grass been withered there
and renewed! Ah, what is this revival of all things fresh and youthful
in external Nature but a mockery of the wintry spot which lies perished
and _irrenewable_ within!
We drew near to each other, and as my arm wound around him, I said,
“Aubrey, your love has been to me a more precious gift than any who
have not, like me, thirsted and longed even for the love of a dog,
can conceive. Never let me lose that affection! And do not think of me
hereafter as of one whose heart echoed all that his lip uttered. Do not
believe that irony, and sarcasm, and bitterness of tongue flowed from
a malignant or evil source. That disposition which seems to you
alternately so light and gloomy had, perhaps, its origin in a mind too
intense in its affections, and too exacting in having them returned.
Till you sought my friendship, three short years ago, none but my uncle,
with whom I could have nothing in common but attachment, seemed to
care for my very existence. I blame them not; they were deceived in my
nature: but blame _me_ not too severely if my temper suffered from their
mistake. Your friendship came to me, not too late to save me from a
premature misanthropy, but too late to eradicate every morbidity of
mind. Something of sternness on the one hand, and of satire on the
other, has mingled so long with my better feelings that the taint and
the stream have become inseparable. Do not sigh, Aubrey. To be unamiable
is not to be ungrateful; and I shall not love you the less if I have
but a few objects to love. You ask me my inducement to leave you. ‘The
World’ will be sufficient answer. I cannot share your contempt of
it, nor your fear. I am, and have been of late, consumed with a
thirst,--eager, and burning, and unquenchable: it is ambition!”
“Oh, Morton!” said Aubrey, with a second sigh, longer and deeper than
the first, “that evil passion! the passion which lost an angel heaven.”
“Let us not now dispute, my brother, whether it be sinful in itself,
or whether, if its object be virtuous, it is not a virtue. In baring
my soul before you, I only speak of my motives, and seek not to excuse
them. Perhaps on this earth there is no good without a little evil. When
my mind was once turned to the acquisition of mental superiority, every
petty acquisition I made increased my desire to attain more, and partial
emulation soon widened into universal ambition. We three, Gerald and
ourselves, are the keepers of a treasure more valuable than gold,--the
treasure of a not ignoble nor sullied name. For my part, I confess
that I am impatient to increase the store of honour which our father
bequeathed to us. Nor is this all: despite our birth, we are poor in
the gifts of fortune. We are all dependants on my uncle’s favour; and,
however we may deserve it, there would be something better in earning an
independence for ourselves.”
“That,” said Aubrey, “may be an argument for mine and Gerald’s
exertions; but not for yours. You are the eldest, and my uncle’s
favourite. Nature and affection both point to you as his heir.”
“If so, Aubrey, may many years pass before that inheritance be mine! Why
should those years that might produce so much lie fallow? But though
I would not affect an unreal delicacy, and disown my chance of future
fortune, yet you must remember that it is a matter possible, not
certain. My birthright gives me no claim over my uncle, whose estates
are in his own gift; and favour, even in the good, is a wind which
varies without power on our side to calculate the season or the cause.
However this be,--and I love the person on whom fortune depends so much
that I cannot, without pain, speak of the mere chance of its passing
from his possession into mine,--you will own at least that I shall not
hereafter deserve wealth the less for the advantages of experience.”
“Alas!” said Aubrey, raising his eyes, “the worship of our Father in
Heaven finds us ample cause for occupation, even in retirement; and
the more we mix with His creatures, the more, I fear, we may forget the
Creator. But if it must be so, I will pray for you, Morton; and you will
remember that the powerless and poor Aubrey can still lift up his voice
in your behalf.”
As Aubrey thus spoke, I looked with mingled envy and admiration upon the
countenance beside me, which the beauty of a spirit seemed at once to
soften and to exalt.
Since our conference had begun, the dusk of twilight had melted away;
and the moon had called into lustre--living, indeed, but unlike the
common and unhallowing life of day--the wood and herbage, and silent
variations of hill and valley, which slept around us; and, as the still
and shadowy light fell over the upward face of my brother, it gave to
his features an additional, and not wholly earth-born, solemnity of
expression. There was indeed in his face and air that from which
the painter of a seraph might not have disdained to copy: something
resembling the vision of an angel in the dark eyes that swam with tears,
in which emotion had so little of mortal dross; in the youthful and soft
cheeks, which the earnestness of divine thought had refined by a pale
but transparent hue; in the high and unclouded forehead, over which the
hair, parted in the centre, fell in long and wavelike curls; and in the
lips, silent, yet moving with internal prayer, which seemed the more
fervent, because unheard.
I did not interrupt him in the prayer, which my soul felt, though my ear
caught it not, was for me. But when he had ceased, and turned towards
me, I clasped him to my breast. “My brother,” I said, “we shall part,
it is true, but not till our hearts have annihilated the space that was
between them; not till we have felt that the love of brotherhood can
pass the love of woman. Whatever await you, your devoted and holy mind
will be, if not your shield from affliction, at least your balm for its
wounds. Remain here. The quiet which breathes around you well becomes
your tranquillity within; and sometimes bless me in your devotions, as
you have done now. For me, I shall not regret those harder and harsher
qualities which you blame in me, if thereafter their very sternness can
afford me an opportunity of protecting your gentleness from evil, or
redressing the wrongs from which your nature may be too innocent to
preserve you. And now let us return home in the conviction that we have
in our friendship one treasure beyond the reach of fate.”
Aubrey did not answer; but he kissed my forehead, and I felt his tears
upon my cheek. We rose, and with arms still embracing each other as we
walked, bent our steps to the house.
Ah, earth! what hast thou more beautiful than the love of those whose
ties are knit by nature, and whose union seems ordained to begin from
the very moment of their birth?