CHAPTER XII.

A STRANGE HABIT.--WALTER’S INTERVIEW WITH MADELINE.--HER

GENEROUS AND CONFIDING DISPOSITION.--WALTER’S ANGER.--THE

PARTING MEAL.--CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE UNCLE AND NEPHEW.--

WALTER ALONE.--SLEEP THE BLESSING OF THE YOUNG.

Fall. Out, out, unworthy to speak where he breatheth....

Punt. Well now, my whole venture is forth, I will resolve

to depart.

--Ben Jonson.--Every Man out of his Humour.

It was now the eve before Walter’s departure, and on returning home from

a farewell walk among his favourite haunts, he found Aram, whose visit

had been made during Walter’s absence, now standing on the threshold of

the door, and taking leave of Madeline and her father. Aram and Walter

had only met twice before since the interview we recorded, and each time

Walter had taken care that the meeting should be but of short duration.

In these brief encounters, Aram’s manner had been even more gentle than

heretofore; that of Walter’s, more cold and distant. And now, as they

thus unexpectedly met at the door, Aram, looking at him earnestly, said:

“Farewell, Sir! You are to leave us for some time, I hear. Heaven speed

you!” Then he added in a lower tone, “Will you take my hand, now, in

parting?”

As he said, he put forth his hand,--it was the left.

“Let it be the right hand,” observed the elder Lester, smiling: “it is a

luckier omen.”

“I think not,” said Aram, drily. And Walter noted that he had never

remembered him to give his right hand to any one, even to Madeline; the

peculiarity of this habit might, however, arise from an awkward early

habit, it was certainly scarce worth observing, and Walter had already

coldly touched the hand extended to him: when Lester carelessly renewed

the subject.

“Is there any superstition,” said he gaily, “that makes you think, as

some of the ancients did, the left hand luckier than the right?”

“Yes,” replied Aram; “a superstition. Adieu.”

The Student departed; Madeline slowly walked up one of the garden

alleys, and thither Walter, after whispering to his uncle, followed her.

There is something in those bitter feelings, which are the offspring of

disappointed love; something in the intolerable anguish of well-founded

jealousy, that when the first shock is over, often hardens, and perhaps

elevates the character. The sterner powers that we arouse within us

to combat a passion that can no longer be worthily indulged, are never

afterwards wholly allayed. Like the allies which a nation summons to its

bosom to defend it from its foes, they expel the enemy only to find

a settlement for themselves. The mind of every man who conquers an

unfortunate attachment, becomes stronger than before; it may be for

evil, it may be for good, but the capacities for either are more

vigorous and collected.

The last few weeks had done more for Walter’s character than years of

ordinary, even of happy emotion, might have effected. He had passed from

youth to manhood, and with the sadness, had acquired also something of

the dignity, of experience. Not that we would say that he had subdued

his love, but he had made the first step towards it; he had resolved

that at all hazards it should be subdued.

As he now joined Madeline, and she perceived him by her side, her

embarrassment was more evident than his. She feared some avowal, and

from his temper, perhaps some violence on his part. However, she was the

first to speak: women, in such cases, always are.

“It is a beautiful evening,” said she, “and the sun set in promise of a

fine day for your journey to-morrow.”

Walter walked on silently; his heart was full. “Madeline,” he said at

length, “dear Madeline, give me your hand. Nay, do not fear me; I know

what you think, and you are right; I loved--I still love you! but I know

well that I can have no hope in making this confession; and when I ask

you for your hand, Madeline, it is only to convince you that I have no

suit to press; had I, I would not dare to touch that hand.”

Madeline, wondering and embarrassed, gave him her hand; he held it for a

moment with a trembling clasp, pressed it to his lips, and then resigned

it.

“Yes, Madeline, my cousin, my sweet cousin; I have loved you deeply, but

silently, long before my heart could unravel the mystery of the feelings

with which it glowed. But this--all this--it were now idle to repeat.

I know that I have no hope of return; that the heart whose possession

would have made my whole life a dream, a transport, is given to another.

I have not sought you now, Madeline, to repine at this, or to vex you by

the tale of any suffering I may endure: I am come only to give you the

parting wishes, the parting blessing, of one, who, wherever he goes,

or whatever befall him, will always think of you as the brightest and

loveliest of human beings. May you be happy, yes even with another!”

“Oh, Walter!” said Madeline, affected to tears, “if I ever

encouraged--if I ever led you to hope for more than the warm, the

sisterly affection I bear you, how bitterly I should reproach myself!”

“You never did, dear Madeline; I asked for no inducement to love you,--I

never dreamed of seeking a motive, or inquiring if I had cause to hope.

But as I am now about to quit you, and as you confess you feel for me a

sister’s affection, will you give me leave to speak to you as a brother

might?”

Madeline held her hand to him in frank cordiality: “Yes!” said she,

“speak!”

“Then,” said Walter, turning away his head in a spirit of delicacy

that did him honour, “is it yet all too late for me to say one word of

caution as relates to--Eugene Aram?”

“Of caution! you alarm me, Walter; speak, has aught happened to him? I

saw him as lately as yourself. Does aught threaten him? Speak, I implore

you,--quick?”

“I know of no danger to him!” replied Walter, stung to perceive the

breathless anxiety with which Madeline spoke; “but pause, my cousin, may

there be no danger to you from this man?”

“Walter!”

“I grant him wise, learned, gentle,--nay, more than all, bearing about

him a spell, a fascination, by which he softens, or awes at will, and

which even I cannot resist. But yet his abstracted mood, his gloomy

life, certain words that have broken from him unawares,--certain

tell-tale emotions, which words of mine, heedlessly said, have fiercely

aroused, all united, inspire me,--shall I say it,--with fear and

distrust. I cannot think him altogether the calm and pure being

he appears. Madeline, I have asked myself again and again, is this

suspicion the effect of jealousy? do I scan his bearing with the

jaundiced eye of disappointed rivalship? And I have satisfied my

conscience that my judgment is not thus biassed. Stay! listen yet a

little while! You have a high--a thoughtful mind. Exert it now. Consider

your whole happiness rests on one step! Pause, examine, compare!

Remember, you have not of Aram, as of those whom you have hitherto mixed

with, the eye-witness of a life! You can know but little of his real

temper, his secret qualities; still less of the tenor of his former

life. I only ask of you, for your own sake, for my sake, your sister’s

sake, and your good father’s, not to judge too rashly! Love him, if you

will; but observe him!”

“Have you done?” said Madeline, who had hitherto with difficulty

contained herself; “then hear me. Was it I? was it Madeline Lester whom

you asked to play the watch, to enact the spy upon the man whom she

exults in loving? Was it not enough that you should descend to mark down

each incautious look--to chronicle every heedless word--to draw dark

deductions from the unsuspecting confidence of my father’s friend--to

lie in wait--to hang with a foe’s malignity upon the unbendings of

familiar intercourse--to extort anger from gentleness itself, that

you might wrest the anger into crime! Shame, shame upon you, for the

meanness! And must you also suppose that I, to whose trust he has given

his noble heart, will receive it only to play the eavesdropper to its

secrets? Away!”

The generous blood crimsoned the cheek and brow of this high-spirited

girl as she uttered her galling reproof; her eyes sparkled, her lip

quivered, her whole frame seemed to have grown larger with the majesty

of indignant love.

“Cruel, unjust, ungrateful!” ejaculated Walter, pale with rage, and

trembling under the conflict of his roused and wounded feelings. “Is it

thus you answer the warning of too disinterested and self-forgetful a

love?”

“Love!” exclaimed Madeline. “Grant me patience!--Love! It was but now I

thought myself honoured by the affection you said you bore me. At this

instant, I blush to have called forth a single sentiment in one who

knows so little what love is! Love!--methought that word denoted all

that was high and noble in human nature--confidence, hope,

devotion, sacrifice of all thought of self! but you would

make it the type and concentration of all that lowers and

debases!--suspicion--cavil--fear--selfishness in all its shapes!

Out on you--love!”

“Enough, enough! Say no more, Madeline, say no more. We part not as

I had hoped; but be it so. You are changed indeed, if your conscience

smite you not hereafter for this injustice. Farewell, and may you never

regret, not only the heart you have rejected, but the friendship you

have belied.” With these words, and choked by his emotions, Walter

hastily strode away.

He hurried into the house, and into a little room adjoining the chamber

in which he slept, and which had been also appropriated solely to his

use. It was now spread with boxes and trunks, some half packed, some

corded, and inscribed with the address to which they were to be sent in

London. All these mute tokens of his approaching departure struck upon

his excited feelings with a suddenness that overpowered him.

“And it is thus--thus,” said he aloud, “that I am to leave, for the

first time, my childhood’s home.”

He threw himself on his chair, and covering his face with his hands,

burst, fairly subdued and unmanned, into a paroxysm of tears.

When this emotion was over, he felt as if his love for Madeline had

also disappeared; a sore and insulted feeling was all that her image now

recalled to him. This idea gave him some consolation. “Thank God!” he

muttered, “thank God, I am cured at last!”

The thanksgiving was scarcely over, before the door opened softly, and

Ellinor, not perceiving him where he sat, entered the room, and laid

on the table a purse which she had long promised to knit him, and which

seemed now designed as a parting gift.

She sighed heavily as she laid it down, and he observed that her eyes

seemed red as with weeping.

He did not move, and Ellinor left the room without discovering him; but

he remained there till dark, musing on her apparition, and before he

went down-stairs, he took up the little purse, kissed it, and put it

carefully into his bosom.

He sate next to Ellinor at supper that evening, and though he did not

say much, his last words were more to her than words had ever been

before. When he took leave of her for the night, he whispered, as he

kissed her cheek; “God bless you, dearest Ellinor, and till I return,

take care of yourself, for the sake of one, who loves you now, better

than any thing on earth.”

Lester had just left the room to write some letters for Walter; and

Madeline, who had hitherto sat absorbed and silent by the window, now

approached Walter, and offered him her hand.

“Forgive me, my dear cousin,” she said, in her softest voice. “I feel

that I was hasty, and to blame. Believe me, I am now at least grateful,

warmly grateful, for the kindness of your motives.”

“Not so,” said Walter, bitterly, “the advice of a friend is only

meanness.”

“Come, come, forgive me; pray, do not let us part unkindly. When did we

ever quarrel before? I was wrong, grievously wrong--I will perform any

penance you may enjoin.”

“Agreed then, follow my admonitions.”

“Ah! any thing else,” said Madeline, gravely, and colouring deeply.

Walter said no more; he pressed her hand lightly and turned away.

“Is all forgiven?” said she, in so bewitching a tone, and with so bright

a smile, that Walter, against his conscience, answered, “Yes.”

The sisters left the room. I know not which of the two received his last

glance.

Lester now returned with the letters. “There is one charge, my dear

boy,” said he, in concluding the moral injunctions and experienced

suggestions with which the young generally leave the ancestral home

(whether practically benefited or not by the legacy, may be matter

of question)--“there is one charge which I need not entrust to your

ingenuity and zeal. You know my strong conviction, that your father, my

poor brother, still lives. Is it necessary for me to tell you to exert

yourself by all ways and in all means to discover some clue to his fate?

Who knows,” added Lester, with a smile, “but that you may find him a

rich nabob. I confess that I should feel but little surprise if it

were so; but at all events you will make every possible inquiry. I have

written down in this paper the few particulars concerning him which I

have been enabled to glean since he left his home; the places where

he was last seen, the false names he assumed, I shall watch with great

anxiety for any fuller success to your researches.”

“You needed not, my dear uncle,” said Walter seriously, “to have spoken

to me on this subject. No one, not even yourself, can have felt what

I have; can have cherished the same anxiety, nursed the same hope,

indulged the same conjecture. I have not, it is true, often of late

years spoken to you on a matter so near to us both, but I have spent

whole hours in guesses at my father’s fate, and in dreams that for me

was reserved the proud task to discover it. I will not say indeed that

it makes at this moment the chief motive for my desire to travel, but in

travel it will become my chief object. Perhaps I may find him not only

rich,--that for my part is but a minor wish,--but sobered and reformed

from the errors and wildness of his earlier manhood. Oh, what should be

his gratitude to you for all the care with which you have supplied to

the forsaken child the father’s place; and not the least, that you have,

in softening the colours of his conduct, taught me still to prize and

seek for a father’s love!”

“You have a kind heart, Walter,” said the good old man, pressing his

nephew’s hand, “and that has more than repaid me for the little I have

done for you; it is better to sow a good heart with kindness, than a

field with corn, for the heart’s harvest is perpetual.”

Many, keen, and earnest were that night the meditations of Walter

Lester. He was about to quit the home in which youth had been passed, in

which first love had been formed and blighted: the world was before

him; but there was something more grave than pleasure, more steady than

enterprise, that beckoned him to its paths. The deep mystery that for so

many years had hung over the fate of his parent, it might indeed be his

lot to pierce; and with a common waywardness in our nature, the

restless son felt his interest in that parent the livelier from the very

circumstance of remembering nothing of his person. Affection had been

nursed by curiosity and imagination, and the bad father was thus more

fortunate in winning the heart of the son, than had he perhaps, by the

tenderness of years, deserved that affection.

Oppressed and feverish, Walter opened the lattice of his room, and

looked forth on the night. The broad harvest-moon was in the heavens,

and filled the air as with a softer and holier day. At a distance its

light just gave the dark outline of Aram’s house, and beneath the window

it lay bright and steady on the green, still church-yard that adjoined

the house. The air and the light allayed the fitfulness at the young

man’s heart, but served to solemnize the project and desire with which

it beat. Still leaning from the casement, with his eyes fixed upon the

tranquil scene below, he poured forth a prayer, that to his hands might

the discovery of his lost sire be granted. The prayer seemed to lift the

oppression from his breast; he felt cheerful and relieved, and flinging

himself on his bed, soon fell into the sound and healthful sleep of

youth. And oh! let Youth cherish that happiest of earthly boons while

yet it is at its command;--for there cometh the day to all, when

“neither the voice of the lute or the birds”

[Quotation from Horace]

shall bring back the sweet slumbers that fell on their young eyes, as

unbidden as the dews. It is a dark epoch in a man’s life when Sleep

forsakes him; when he tosses to and fro, and Thought will not be

silenced; when the drug and draught are the courters of stupefaction,

not sleep; when the down pillow is as a knotted log; when the eyelids

close but with an effort, and there is a drag and a weight, and a

dizziness in the eyes at morn. Desire and Grief, and Love, these are the

young man’s torments, but they are the creatures of Time; Time removes

them as it brings, and the vigils we keep, “while the evil days come

not,” if weary, are brief and few. But Memory, and Care, and Ambition,

and Avarice, these are the demon-gods that defy the Time that fathered

them. The worldlier passions are the growth of mature years, and their

grave is dug but in our own. As the dark Spirits in the Northern tale,

that watch against the coming of one of a brighter and holier race, lest

if he seize them unawares, he bind them prisoners in his chain, they

keep ward at night over the entrance of that deep cave--the human

heart--and scare away the angel Sleep!

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

THE MARRIAGE SETTLED.--LESTER’S HOPES AND SCHEMES.--GAIETY OF

TEMPER A GOOD SPECULATION.--THE TRUTH AND FERVOUR OF

ARAM’S LOVE.

Love is better than a pair of spectacles, to make

every thing seem greater which is seen through it.

--Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia.

Aram’s affection to Madeline having now been formally announced to

Lester, and Madeline’s consent having been somewhat less formally

obtained, it only remained to fix the time for their wedding. Though

Lester forbore to question Aram as to his circumstances, the Student

frankly confessed, that if not affording what the generality of persons

would consider even a competence, they enabled one of his moderate

wants and retired life to dispense, especially in the remote and cheap

district in which they lived, with all fortune in a wife, who, like

Madeline, was equally with himself enamoured of obscurity. The good

Lester, however, proposed to bestow upon his daughter such a portion

as might allow for the wants of an increased family, or the probable

contingencies of Fate. For though Fortune may often slacken her wheel,

there is no spot in which she suffers it to be wholly still.

It was now the middle of September, and by the end of the ensuing month

it was agreed that the spousals of the lovers should be held. It is

certain that Lester felt one pang for his nephew, as he subscribed to

this proposal; but he consoled himself with recurring to a hope he had

long cherished, viz. that Walter would return home not only cured of

his vain attachment to Madeline, but of the disposition to admit the

attractions of her sister. A marriage between these two cousins had

for years been his favourite project. The lively and ready temper of

Ellinor, her household turn, her merry laugh, a winning playfulness

that characterised even her defects, were all more after Lester’s secret

heart than the graver and higher nature of his elder daughter. This

might mainly be, that they were traits of disposition that more reminded

him of his lost wife, and were therefore more accordant with his ideal

standard of perfection; but I incline also to believe that the more

persons advance in years, the more, even if of staid and sober temper

themselves, they love gaiety and elasticity in youth. I have often

pleased myself by observing in some happy family circle embracing

all ages, that it is the liveliest and wildest child that charms the

grandsire the most. And after all, it is perhaps with characters as with

books, the grave and thoughtful may be more admired than the light and

cheerful, but they are less liked; it is not only that the former, being

of a more abstruse and recondite nature, find fewer persons capable of

judging of their merits, but also that the great object of the majority

of human beings is to be amused, and that they naturally incline to love

those the best who amuse them most. And to so great a practical extent

is this preference pushed, that I think were a nice observer to make a

census of all those who have received legacies, or dropped unexpectedly

into fortunes; he would find that where one grave disposition had so

benefited, there would be at least twenty gay. Perhaps, however, it may

be said that I am taking the cause for the effect!

But to return from our speculative disquisitions; Lester then, who,

though he so slowly discovered his nephew’s passion for Madeline, had

long since guessed the secret of Ellinor’s affection for him, looked

forward with a hope rather sanguine than anxious to the ultimate

realization of his cherished domestic scheme. And he pleased himself

with thinking that when all soreness would, by this double wedding, be

banished from Walter’s mind, it would be impossible to conceive a family

group more united or more happy.

And Ellinor herself, ever since the parting words of her cousin, had

seemed, so far from being inconsolable for his absence, more bright of

cheek and elastic of step than she had been for months before. What a

world of all feelings, which forbid despondence, lies hoarded in the

hearts of the young! As one fountain is filled by the channels that

exhaust another; we cherish wisdom at the expense of hope. It thus

happened from one cause or another, that Walter’s absence created a less

cheerless blank in the family circle than might have been expected, and

the approaching bridals of Madeline and her lover, naturally diverted in

a great measure the thoughts of each, and engrossed their conversation.

Whatever might be Madeline’s infatuation as to the merits of Aram, one

merit--the greatest of all in the eyes of a woman who loves, he at least

possessed. Never was mistress more burningly and deeply loved than she,

who, for the first time, awoke the long slumbering passions in the

heart of Eugene Aram. Every day the ardour of his affections seemed

to increase. With what anxiety he watched her footsteps!--with what

idolatry he hung upon her words!--with what unspeakable and yearning

emotion he gazed upon the changeful eloquence of her cheek. Now that

Walter was gone, he almost took up his abode at the manor-house. He came

thither in the early morning, and rarely returned home before the family

retired for the night; and even then, when all was hushed, and they

believed him in his solitary home, he lingered for hours around the

house, to look up to Madeline’s window, charmed to the spot which held

the intoxication of her presence. Madeline discovered this habit, and

chid it; but so tenderly, that it was not cured. And still at times, by

the autumnal moon, she marked from her window his dark figure gliding

among the shadows of the trees, or pausing by the lowly tombs in the

still churchyard--the resting-place of hearts that once, perhaps, beat

as wildly as his own.

It was impossible that a love of this order, and from one so richly

gifted as Aram; a love, which in substance was truth, and yet in

language poetry, could fail wholly to subdue and inthral a girl so

young, so romantic, so enthusiastic, as Madeline Lester. How intense and

delicious must have been her sense of happiness! In the pure heart of a

girl loving for the first time--love is far more ecstatic than in man,

inasmuch as it is unfevered by desire--love then and there makes the

only state of human existence which is at once capable of calmness and

transport!

CHAPTER II.

A FAVOURABLE SPECIMEN OF A NOBLEMAN AND A COURTIER.--A MAN OF

SOME FAULTS AND MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

Titinius Capito is to rehearse. He is a man of an excellent

disposition, and to be numbered among the chief ornaments of

his age. He cultivates literature--he loves men of learning,

etc.

--Lord Orrery: Pliny.

About this time the Earl of ______, the great nobleman of the district,

and whose residence was within four miles of Grassdale, came down to pay

his wonted yearly visit to his country domains. He was a man well known

in the history of the times; though, for various reasons, I conceal

his name. He was a courtier;--deep--wily--accomplished; but capable

of generous sentiments and enlarged views. Though, from regard to his

interests, he seized and lived as it were upon the fleeting spirit of

the day--the penetration of his intellect went far beyond its reach. He

claims the merit of having been the one of all his co-temporaries (Lord

Chesterfield alone excepted), who most clearly saw, and most distinctly

prophesied, the dark and fearful storm that at the close of the century

burst over the vices, in order to sweep away the miseries, of France--a

terrible avenger--a salutary purifier.

From the small circle of sounding trifles, in which the dwellers of a

court are condemned to live, and which he brightened by his abilities

and graced by his accomplishments, the sagacious and far-sighted mind of

Lord--comprehended the vast field without, usually invisible to those

of his habits and profession. Men who the best know the little nucleus

which is called the world, are often the most ignorant of mankind; but

it was the peculiar attribute of this nobleman, that he could not only

analyse the external customs of his species, but also penetrate their

deeper and more hidden interests.

The works, and correspondence he has left behind him, though far from

voluminous, testify a consummate knowledge of the varieties of human

nature The refinement of his taste appears less remarkable than the

vigour of his understanding. It might be that he knew the vices of men

better than their virtues; yet he was no shallow disbeliever in the

latter: he read the heart too accurately not to know that it is guided

as often by its affections as its interests. In his early life he had

incurred, not without truth, the charge of licentiousness; but even in

pursuit of pleasure, he had been neither weak on the one hand, nor gross

on the other;--neither the headlong dupe, nor the callous sensualist:

but his graces, his rank, his wealth, had made his conquests a matter

of too easy purchase; and hence, like all voluptuaries, the part of his

worldly knowledge, which was the most fallible, was that which related

to the sex. He judged of women by a standard too distinct from that by

which he judged of men, and considered those foibles peculiar to the

sex, which in reality are incident to human nature.

His natural disposition was grave and reflective; and though he was

not without wit, it was rarely used. He lived, necessarily, with the

frivolous and the ostentatious, yet ostentation and frivolity were

charges never brought against himself. As a diplomatist and a statesman,

he was of the old and erroneous school of intriguers; but his favourite

policy was the science of conciliation. He was one who would so far have

suited the present age, that no man could better have steered a nation

from the chances of war; James the First could not have been inspired

with a greater affection for peace; but the Peer’s dexterity would have

made that peace as honourable as the King’s weakness could have made it

degraded. Ambitious to a certain extent, but neither grasping nor

mean, he never obtained for his genius the full and extensive field it

probably deserved. He loved a happy life above all things; and he knew

that while activity is the spirit, fatigue is the bane, of happiness.

In his day he enjoyed a large share of that public attention which

generally bequeaths fame; yet from several causes (of which his own

moderation is not the least) his present reputation is infinitely

less great than the opinions of his most distinguished cotemporaries

foreboded.

It is a more difficult matter for men of high rank to become illustrious

to posterity, than for persons in a sterner and more wholesome walk of

life. Even the greatest among the distinguished men of the patrician

order, suffer in the eyes of the after-age for the very qualities,

mostly dazzling defects, or brilliant eccentricities, which made them

most popularly remarkable in their day. Men forgive Burns his amours and

his revellings with greater ease than they will forgive Bolingbroke and

Byron for the same offences.

Our Earl was fond of the society of literary men; he himself was well,

perhaps even deeply, read. Certainly his intellectual acquisitions were

more profound than they have been generally esteemed, though with the

common subtlety of a ready genius, he could make the quick adaptation of

a timely fact, acquired for the occasion, appear the rich overflowing of

a copious erudition. He was a man who instantly perceived, and liberally

acknowledged, the merits of others. No connoisseur had a more felicitous

knowledge of the arts, or was more just in the general objects of his

patronage. In short, what with all his advantages, he was one whom an

aristocracy may boast of, though a people may forget; and if not a great

man, was at least a most remarkable lord.

The Earl of--, in his last visit to his estates, had not forgotten to

seek out the eminent scholar who shed an honour upon his neighbourhood;

he had been greatly struck with the bearing and conversation of Aram,

and with the usual felicity with which the accomplished Earl adapted

his nature to those with whom he was thrown, he had succeeded in

ingratiating himself with Aram in return. He could not indeed persuade

the haughty and solitary Student to visit him at the castle; but

the Earl did not disdain to seek any one from whom he could obtain

instruction, and he had twice or thrice voluntarily encountered Aram,

and effectually drawn him from his reserve. The Earl now heard with some

pleasure, and more surprise, that the austere Recluse was about to be

married to the beauty of the county, and he resolved to seize the

first occasion to call at the manor-house to offer his compliments and

congratulations to its inmates.

Sensible men of rank, who, having enjoyed their dignity from their

birth, may reasonably be expected to grow occasionally tired of it;

often like mixing with those the most who are the least dazzled by

the condescension; I do not mean to say, with the vulgar parvenus who

mistake rudeness for independence;--no man forgets respect to another

who knows the value of respect to himself; but the respect should be

paid easily; it is not every Grand Seigneur, who like Louis XIVth., is

only pleased when he puts those he addresses out of countenance.

There was, therefore, much in the simplicity of Lester’s manners, and

those of his nieces, which rendered the family at the manor-house,

especial favourites with Lord--; and the wealthier but less honoured

squirearchs of the county, stiff in awkward pride, and bustling with

yet more awkward veneration, heard with astonishment and anger of the

numerous visits which his Lordship, in his brief sojourn at the castle,

always contrived to pay to the Lesters, and the constant invitations,

which they received to his most familiar festivities.

Lord--was no sportsman, and one morning, when all his guests were

engaged among the stubbles of September, he mounted his quiet palfrey,

and gladly took his way to the Manor-house.

It was towards the latter end of the month, and one of the earliest

of the autumnal fogs hung thinly over the landscape. As the Earl wound

along the sides of the hill on which his castle was built, the scene on

which he gazed below received from the grey mists capriciously hovering

over it, a dim and melancholy wildness. A broader and whiter vapour,

that streaked the lower part of the valley, betrayed the course of the

rivulet; and beyond, to the left, rose wan and spectral, the spire

of the little church adjoining Lester’s abode. As the horseman’s eye

wandered to this spot, the sun suddenly broke forth, and lit up as

by enchantment, the quiet and lovely hamlet embedded, as it were,

beneath,--the cottages, with their gay gardens and jasmined porches, the

streamlet half in mist, half in light, while here and there columns of

vapour rose above its surface like the chariots of the water genii, and

broke into a thousand hues beneath the smiles of the unexpected sun: But

far to the right, the mists around it yet unbroken, and the outline of

its form only visible, rose the lone house of the Student, as if there

the sadder spirits of the air yet rallied their broken armament of mist

and shadow.

The Earl was not a man peculiarly alive to scenery, but he now

involuntarily checked his horse, and gazed for a few moments on the

beautiful and singular aspect which the landscape had so suddenly

assumed. As he so gazed, he observed in a field at some little distance,

three or four persons gathered around a bank, and among them he thought

he recognised the comely form of Rowland Lester. A second inspection

convinced him that he was right in his conjecture, and, turning from the

road through a gap in the hedge, he made towards the group in question.

He had not proceeded far, before he saw, that the remainder of the

party was composed of Lester’s daughters, the lover of the elder, and

a fourth, whom he recognised as a celebrated French botanist who had

lately arrived in England, and who was now making an amateur excursion

throughout the more attractive districts of the island.

The Earl guessed rightly, that Monsieur de N--had not neglected to apply

to Aram for assistance in a pursuit which the latter was known to have

cultivated with such success, and that he had been conducted hither, as

a place affording some specimen or another not unworthy of research. He

now, giving his horse to his groom, joined the group.

CHAPTER III.

WHEREIN THE EARL AND THE STUDENT CONVERSE ON GRAVE BUT

DELIGHTFUL MATTERS.--THE STUDENT’S NOTION OF THE ONLY EARTHLY

HAPPINESS.

ARAM. If the witch Hope forbids us to be wise,

Yet when I turn to these--Woe’s only friends,

And with their weird and eloquent voices calm

The stir and Babel of the world within,

I can but dream that my vex’d years at last

Shall find the quiet of a hermit’s cell:--

And, neighbouring not this hacked and jaded world,

Beneath the lambent eyes of the loved stars,

And, with the hollow rocks and sparry caves,

The tides, and all the many-music’d winds

My oracles and co-mates;--watch my life

Glide down the Stream of Knowledge, and behold

Its waters with a musing stillness glass

The thousand hues of Nature and of Heaven.

--From Eugene Aram, a MS. Tragedy.

The Earl continued with the party he had joined; and when their

occupation was concluded and they turned homeward, he accepted the

Squire’s frank invitation to partake of some refreshment at the

Manor-house. It so chanced, or perhaps the Earl so contrived it, that

Aram and himself, in their way to the village lingered a little behind

the rest, and that their conversation was thus, for a few minutes, not

altogether general.

“Is it I, Mr. Aram?” said the Earl smiling, “or is it Fate that has made

you a convert? The last time we sagely and quietly conferred together,

you contended that the more the circle of existence was contracted, the

more we clung to a state of pure and all self-dependent intellect, the

greater our chance of happiness. Thus you denied that we were rendered

happier by our luxuries, by our ambition, or by our affections. Love and

its ties were banished from your solitary Utopia. And you asserted

that the true wisdom of life lay solely in the cultivation--not of our

feelings, but our faculties. You know, I held a different doctrine: and

it is with the natural triumph of a hostile partizan, that I hear

you are about to relinquish the practice of one of your dogmas;--in

consequence, may I hope, of having forsworn the theory?”

“Not so, my Lord,” answered Aram, colouring slightly; “my weakness

only proves that my theory is difficult,--not that it is wrong. I still

venture to think it true. More pain than pleasure is occasioned us

by others--banish others, and you are necessarily the gainer. Mental

activity and moral quietude are the two states which, were they

perfected and united, would constitute perfect happiness. It is such

a union which constitutes all we imagine of Heaven, or conceive of the

majestic felicity of a God.”

“Yet, while you are on earth you will be (believe me) happier in the

state you are about to choose,” said the Earl. “Who could look at that

enchanting face (the speaker directed his eyes towards Madeline) and not

feel that it gave a pledge of happiness that could not be broken?”

It was not in the nature of Aram to like any allusion to himself, and

still less to his affections: he turned aside his head, and remained

silent: the wary Earl discovered his indiscretion immediately.

“But let us put aside individual cases,” said he,--“the meum and the

tuum forbid all argument:--and confess, that there is for the majority

of human beings a greater happiness in love than in the sublime state of

passionless intellect to which you would so chillingly exalt us. Has not

Cicero said wisely, that we ought no more to subject too slavishly our

affections, than to elevate them too imperiously into our masters? Neque

se nimium erigere, nec subjacere serviliter.”

“Cicero loved philosophizing better than philosophy,” said Aram, coldly;

“but surely, my Lord, the affections give us pain as well as pleasure.

The doubt, the dread, the restlessness of love,--surely these prevent

the passion from constituting a happy state of mind; to me one knowledge

alone seems sufficient to embitter all its enjoyments,--the knowledge

that the object beloved must die. What a perpetuity of fear that

knowledge creates! The avalanche that may crush us depends upon a single

breath!”

“Is not that too refined a sentiment? Custom surely blunts us to every

chance, every danger, that may happen to us hourly. Were the avalanche

over you for a day,--I grant your state of torture,--but had an

avalanche rested over you for years, and not yet fallen, you would

forget that it could ever fall; you would eat, sleep, and make love, as

if it were not!”

“Ha! my Lord, you say well--you say well,” said Aram, with a marked

change of countenance; and, quickening his pace, he joined Lester’s

side, and the thread of the previous conversation was broken off.

The Earl afterwards, in walking through the gardens (an excursion which

he proposed himself, for he was somewhat of an horticulturist), took an

opportunity to renew the subject.

“You will pardon me,” said he, “but I cannot convince myself that man

would be happier were he without emotions; and that to enjoy life he

should be solely dependant on himself!”

“Yet it seems to me,” said Aram, “a truth easy of proof; if we love,

we place our happiness in others. The moment we place our happiness in

others, comes uncertainty, but uncertainty is the bane of happiness.

Children are the source of anxiety to their parents;--his mistress to

the lover. Change, accident, death, all menace us in each person whom we

regard. Every new tie opens new channels by which grief can invade us;

but, you will say, by which joy also can flow in;--granted! But in

human life is there not more grief than joy? What is it that renders the

balance even? What makes the staple of our happiness,--endearing to us

the life at which we should otherwise repine? It is the mere passive,

yet stirring, consciousness of life itself!--of the sun and the air of

the physical being; but this consciousness every emotion disturbs. Yet

could you add to its tranquillity an excitement that never exhausts

itself,--that becomes refreshed, not sated, with every new possession,

then you would obtain happiness. There is only one excitement of this

divine order,--that of intellectual culture. Behold now my theory!

Examine it--it contains no flaw. But if,” renewed Aram, after a pause,

“a man is subject to fate solely in himself, not in others, he soon

hardens his mind against all fear, and prepares it for all events.

A little philosophy enables him to bear bodily pain, or the common

infirmities of flesh: by a philosophy somewhat deeper, he can conquer

the ordinary reverses of fortune, the dread of shame, and the last

calamity of death. But what philosophy could ever thoroughly console him

for the ingratitude of a friend, the worthlessness of a child, the death

of a mistress? Hence, only when he stands alone, can a man’s soul say to

Fate, ‘I defy thee.’”

“You think then,” said the Earl, reluctantly diverting the conversation

into a new channel “that in the pursuit of knowledge lies our only

active road to real happiness. Yet here how eternal must be the

disappointments even of the most successful! Does not Boyle tell us of

a man who, after devoting his whole life to the study of one mineral,

confessed himself, at last, ignorant of all its properties?”

“Had the object of his study been himself, and not the mineral, he would

not have been so unsuccessful a student,” said Aram, smiling. “Yet,”

added he, in a graver tone, “we do indeed cleave the vast heaven of

Truth with a weak and crippled wing: and often we are appalled in our

way by a dread sense of the immensity around us, and of the inadequacy

of our own strength. But there is a rapture in the breath of the pure

and difficult air, and in the progress by which we compass earth,

the while we draw nearer to the stars,--that again exalts us beyond

ourselves, and reconciles the true student unto all things,--even to the

hardest of them all,--the conviction how feebly our performance can

ever imitate the grandeur of our ambition! As you see the spark

fly upward,--sometimes not falling to earth till it be dark and

quenched,--thus soars, whither it recks not, so that the direction be

above, the luminous spirit of him who aspires to Truth; nor will it back

to the vile and heavy clay from which it sprang, until the light which

bore it upward be no more!”

CHAPTER IV.

A DEEPER EXAMINATION INTO THE STUDENT’S HEART.--THE VISIT TO

THE CASTLE.--PHILOSOPHY PUT TO THE TRIAL.

I weigh not fortune’s frown or smile,

I joy not much in earthly joys,

I seek not state, I seek not stile,

I am not fond of fancy’s toys;

I rest so pleased with what I have,

I wish no more, no more I crave.

--Joshua Sylvester.

The reader must pardon me, if I somewhat clog his interest in my tale

by the brief conversations I have given, and must for a short while cast

myself on his indulgence and renew. It is not only the history of his

life, but the character and tone of Aram’s mind, that I wish to stamp

upon my page. Fortunately, however, the path my story assumes is of such

a nature, that in order to effect this object, I shall never have to

desert, and scarcely again even to linger by, the way.

Every one knows the magnificent moral of Goethe’s “Faust!” Every one

knows that sublime discontent--that chafing at the bounds of human

knowledge--that yearning for the intellectual Paradise beyond, which

“the sworded angel” forbids us to approach--that daring, yet sorrowful

state of mind--that sense of defeat, even in conquest, which Goethe has

embodied,--a picture of the loftiest grief of which the soul is capable,

and which may remind us of the profound and august melancholy which the

Great Sculptor breathed into the repose of the noblest of mythological

heroes, when he represented the God resting after his labours, as if

more convinced of their vanity than elated with their extent!

In this portrait, the grandeur of which the wild scenes that follow in

the drama we refer to, do not (strangely wonderful as they are) perhaps

altogether sustain, Goethe has bequeathed to the gaze of a calmer and

more practical posterity, the burning and restless spirit--the feverish

desire for knowledge more vague than useful, which characterised the

exact epoch in the intellectual history of Germany, in which the poem

was inspired and produced.

At these bitter waters, the Marah of the streams of Wisdom, the soul

of the man whom we have made the hero of these pages, had also, and not

lightly, quaffed. The properties of a mind, more calm and stern than

belonged to the visionaries of the Hartz and the Danube, might indeed

have preserved him from that thirst after the impossibilities of

knowledge, which gives so peculiar a romance, not only to the poetry,

but the philosophy of the German people. But if he rejected the

superstitions, he did not also reject the bewilderments of the mind. He

loved to plunge into the dark and metaphysical subtleties which human

genius has called daringly forth from the realities of things:--

“To spin

A shroud of thought, to hide him from the sun

Of this familiar life, which seems to be,

But is not--or is but quaint mockery

Of all we would believe;--or sadly blame

The jarring and inexplicable frame

Of this wrong world: and then anatomize

The purposes and thoughts of man, whose eyes

Were closed in distant years; or widely guess

The issue of the earth’s great business,

When we shall be, as we no longer are,

Like babbling gossips, safe, who hear the war

Of winds, and sigh!--but tremble not!”

Much in him was a type, or rather forerunner, of the intellectual spirit

that broke forth when we were children, among our countrymen, and is now

slowly dying away amidst the loud events and absorbing struggles of

the awakening world. But in one respect he stood aloof from all his

tribe--in his hard indifference to worldly ambition, and his contempt of

fame. As some sages have seemed to think the universe a dream, and self

the only reality, so in his austere and collected reliance upon his own

mind--the gathering in, as it were, of his resources, he appeared to

consider the pomps of the world as shadows, and the life of his own

spirit the only substance. He had built a city and a tower within the

Shinar of his own heart, whence he might look forth, unscathed and

unmoved, upon the deluge that broke over the rest of earth.

Only in one instance, and that, as we have seen, after much struggle, he

had given way to the emotions that agitate his kind, and had surrendered

himself to the dominion of another. This was against his theories--but

what theories ever resist love? In yielding, however, thus far, he

seemed more on his guard than ever against a broader encroachment. He

had admitted one ‘fair spirit’ for his ‘minister,’ but it was only with

a deeper fervour to invoke ‘the desert’ as ‘his dwelling-place.’ Thus,

when the Earl, who, like most practical judges of mankind, loved to

apply to each individual the motives that actuate the mass, and who only

unwillingly, and somewhat sceptically, assented to the exceptions,

and was driven to search for peculiar clues to the eccentric

instance,--finding, to his secret triumph, that Aram had admitted one

intruding emotion into his boasted circle of indifference, imagined that

he should easily induce him (the spell once broken) to receive another,

he was surprised and puzzled to discover himself in the wrong.

Lord--at that time had been lately called into the administration, and

he was especially anxious to secure the support of all the talent that

he could enlist in its behalf. The times were those in which party ran

high, and in which individual political writings were honoured with an

importance which the periodical press in general has now almost wholly

monopolized. On the side opposed to Government, writers of great name

and high attainments had shone with peculiar effect, and the Earl was

naturally desirous that they should be opposed by an equal array of

intellect on the side espoused by himself. The name alone of Eugene

Aram, at a day when scholarship was renown, would have been no ordinary

acquisition to the cause of the Earl’s party; but that judicious and

penetrating nobleman perceived that Aram’s abilities, his various

research, his extended views, his facility of argument, and the heat and

energy of his eloquence, might be rendered of an importance which could

not have been anticipated from the name alone, however eminent, of

a retired and sedentary scholar; he was not therefore without an

interested motive in the attentions he now lavished upon the Student,

and in his curiosity to put to the proof the disdain of all worldly

enterprise and worldly temptation, which Aram affected. He could not

but think, that to a man poor and lowly of circumstance, conscious of

superior acquirements, about to increase his wants by admitting to them

a partner, and arrived at that age when the calculations of interest

and the whispers of ambition have usually most weight;--he could not but

think that to such a man the dazzling prospects of social advancement,

the hope of the high fortunes, and the powerful and glittering influence

which political life, in England, offers to the aspirant, might be

rendered altogether irresistible.

He took several opportunities in the course of the next week, of

renewing his conversation with Aram, and of artfully turning it into

the channels which he thought most likely to produce the impression he

desired to create. He was somewhat baffled, but by no means dispirited,

in his attempts; but he resolved to defer his ultimate proposition until

it could be made to the fullest advantage. He had engaged the Lesters to

promise to pass a day at the castle; and with great difficulty, and

at the earnest intercession of Madeline, Aram was prevailed upon to

accompany them. So extreme was his distaste to general society, and,

from some motive or another more powerful than mere constitutional

reserve, so invariably had he for years refused all temptations to enter

it, that natural as this concession was rendered by his approaching

marriage to one of the party, it filled him with a sort of terror and

foreboding of evil. It was as if he were passing beyond the boundary of

some law, on which the very tenure of his existence depended. After he

had consented, a trembling came over him; he hastily left the room, and

till the day arrived, was observed by his friends of the Manor-house to

be more gloomy and abstracted than they ever had known him, even at the

earliest period of acquaintance.

On the day itself, as they proceeded to the castle, Madeline perceived

with a tearful repentance of her interference, that he sate by her side

cold and rapt; and that once or twice when his eyes dwelt upon her, it

was with an expression of reproach and distrust.

It was not till they entered the lofty hall of the castle, when a vulgar

diffidence would have been most abashed, that Aram recovered himself.

The Earl was standing--the centre of a group in the recess of a window

in the saloon, opening upon an extensive and stately terrace. He came

forward to receive them with the polished and warm kindness which he

bestowed upon al his inferiors in rank. He complimented the sisters; he

jested with Lester; but to Aram only, he manifested less the courtesy

of kindness than of respect. He took his arm, and leaning on it with a

light touch, led him to the group at the window. It was composed of the

most distinguished public men in the country, and among them (the Earl

himself was connected through an illegitimate branch with the reigning

monarch,) was a prince of the blood royal.

To these, whom he had prepared for the introduction, he severally, and

with an easy grace, presented Aram, and then falling back a few steps,

he watched with a keen but seemingly careless eye, the effect which so

sudden a contact with royalty itself would produce on the mind of

the shy and secluded Student, whom it was his object to dazzle and

overpower. It was at this moment that the native dignity of Aram, which

his studies, unworldly as they were, had certainly tended to increase,

displayed itself, in a trial which, poor as it was in abstract theory,

was far from despicable in the eyes of the sensible and practised

courtier. He received with his usual modesty, but not with his usual

shrinking and embarrassment on such occasions, the compliments he

received; a certain and far from ungraceful pride was mingled with his

simplicity of demeanour; no fluttering of manner, betrayed that he was

either dazzled or humbled by the presence in which he stood, and the

Earl could not but confess that there was never a more favourable

opportunity for comparing the aristocracy of genius with that of birth;

it was one of those homely every-day triumphs of intellect, which please

us more than they ought to do, for, after all, they are more common than

the men of courts are willing to believe.

Lord--did not however long leave Aram to the support of his own

unassisted presence of mind and calmness of nerve; he advanced, and led

the conversation, with his usual tact, into a course which might at

once please Aram, and afford him the opportunity to shine. The Earl

had imported from Italy some of the most beautiful specimens of classic

sculpture which this country now possesses. These were disposed

in niches around the magnificent apartment in which the guest were

assembled, and as the Earl pointed them out, and illustrated each from

the beautiful anecdotes and golden allusions of antiquity, he felt that

he was affording to Aram a gratification he could never have experienced

before; and in the expression of which, the grace and copiousness of his

learning would find vent. Nor was he disappointed. The cheek, which

till then had retained its steady paleness, now caught the glow of

enthusiasm; and in a few moments there was not a person in the group,

who did not feel, and cheerfully feel, the superiority of the one who,

in birth and fortune, was immeasurably the lowest of all.

The English aristocracy, whatever be the faults of their education, (and

certainly the name of the faults is legion!) have at least the merit of

being alive to the possession, and easily warmed to the possessor, of

classical attainment: perhaps even from this very merit spring many

of the faults we allude to; they are too apt to judge all talent by

a classical standard, and all theory by classical experience.

Without,--save in very rare instances,--the right to boast of any deep

learning, they are far more susceptible than the nobility of any other

nation to the spiritum Camoenae. They are easily and willingly charmed

back to the studies which, if not eagerly pursued in youth, are still

entwined with all their youth’s brightest recollections; the schoolboy’s

prize, and the master’s praise,--the first ambition, and its first

reward. A felicitous quotation, a delicate allusion, is never lost

upon their ear; and the veneration which at Eton they bore to the best

verse-maker in the school, tinctures their judgment of others throughout

life, mixing I know not what, both of liking and esteem, with their

admiration of one who uses his classical weapons with a scholar’s

dexterity, not a pedant’s inaptitude: for such a one there is a sort of

agreeable confusion in their respect; they are inclined, unconsciously,

to believe that he must necessarily be a high gentleman--ay, and

something of a good fellow into the bargain.

It happened then that Aram could not have dwelt upon a theme more

likely to arrest the spontaneous interest of those with whom he now

conversed--men themselves of more cultivated minds than usual, and more

capable than most (from that acute perception of real talent, which is

produced by habitual political warfare,) of appreciating not only his

endowments, but his facility in applying them.

“You are right, my Lord,” said Sir--, the whipper-in of the--party,

taking the Earl aside; “he would be an inestimable pamphleteer.”

“Could you get him to write us a sketch of the state of parties;

luminous, eloquent?’” whispered a lord of the bed-chamber.

The Earl answered by a bon mot, and turned to a bust of Caracalla.

The hours at that time were (in the country at least) not late, and the

Earl was one of the first introducers of the polished fashion of France,

by which we testify a preference of the society of the women to that of

our own sex; so that, in leaving the dining-room, it was not so late

but that the greater part of the guests walked out upon the terrace, and

admired the expanse of country which it overlooked, and along which the

thin veil of the twilight began now to hover.

Having safely deposited his royal guest at a whist table, and thus left

himself a free agent, the Earl, inviting Aram to join him, sauntered

among the loiterers on the terrace for a few moments, and then descended

a broad flight of steps, which brought them into a more shaded and

retired walk; on either side of which rows of orange-trees gave forth

their fragrance, while, to the right, sudden and numerous vistas were

cut among the more irregular and dense foliage, affording glimpses--now

of some rustic statue--now of some lone temple--now of some quaint

fountain, on the play of whose waters the first stars had begun to

tremble.

It was one of those magnificent gardens, modelled from the stately

glories of Versailles, which it is now the mode to decry, but which

breathe so unequivocally of the Palace. I grant that they deck Nature

with somewhat too prolix a grace; but is beauty always best seen in

deshabille? And with what associations of the brightest traditions

connected with Nature they link her more luxuriant loveliness! Must we

breathe only the malaria of Rome to be capable of feeling the interest

attached to the fountain or the statue?

“I am glad,” said the Earl, “that you admired my bust of Cicero--it

is from an original very lately discovered. What grandeur in the

brow!--what energy in the mouth, and downward bend of the head! It

is pleasant even to imagine we gaze upon the likeness of so bright

a spirit;--and confess, at least of Cicero, that in reading the

aspirations and outpourings of his mind, you have felt your apathy to

Fame melting away; you have shared the desire to live to the future

age,--‘the longing after immortality?”

“Was it not that longing,” replied Aram, “which gave to the character

of Cicero its poorest and most frivolous infirmity? Has it not made

him, glorious as he is despite of it, a byword in the mouths of every

schoolboy? Wherever you mention his genius, do you not hear an appendix

on his vanity?”

“Yet without that vanity, that desire for a name with posterity,

would he have been equally great--would he equally have cultivated his

genius?”

“Probably, my Lord, he would not have equally cultivated his genius,

but in reality he might have been equally great. A man often injures his

mind by the means that increase his genius. You think this, my Lord, a

paradox, but examine it. How many men of genius have been but ordinary

men, take them from the particular objects in which they shine. Why is

this, but that in cultivating one branch of intellect they neglect the

rest? Nay, the very torpor of the reasoning faculty has often kindled

the imaginative. Lucretius composed his sublime poem under the influence

of a delirium. The susceptibilities that we create or refine by the

pursuit of one object, weaken our general reason; and I may compare with

some justice the powers of the mind to the faculties of the body, in

which squinting is occasioned by an inequality of strength in the eyes,

and discordance of voice by the same inequality in the ears.”

“I believe you are right,” said the Earl; “yet I own I willingly forgive

Cicero for his vanity, if it contributed to the production of his

orations and his essays; and he is a greater man, even with his vanity

unconquered, than if he had conquered his foible, and in doing so taken

away the incitements to his genius.”

“A greater man in the world’s eye, my Lord, but scarcely in reality. Had

Homer written his Iliad and then burnt it, would his genius have been

less? The world would have known nothing of him, but would he have been

a less extraordinary man on that account? We are too apt, my Lord, to

confound greatness and fame.

“There is one circumstance,” added Aram, after a pause, “that should

diminish our respect for renown. Errors of life, as well as foibles

of characters, are often the real enhancers of celebrity. Without his

errors, I doubt whether Henri Quatre would have become the idol of a

people. How many Whartons has the world known, who, deprived of their

frailties, had been inglorious! The light that you so admire, reaches

you only through the distance of time, on account of the angles and

unevenness of the body whence it emanates. Were the surface of the moon

smooth, it would be invisible.”

“I admire your illustrations,” said the Earl; “but I reluctantly submit

to your reasonings. You would then neglect your powers, lest they should

lead you into errors?”

“Pardon me, my Lord; it is because I think all the powers should be

cultivated, that I quarrel with the exclusive cultivation of one. And

it is only because I would strengthen the whole mind that I dissent from

the reasonings of those who tell you to consult your genius.”

“But your genius may serve mankind more than this general cultivation of

intellect?”

“My Lord,” replied Aram, with a mournful cloud upon his countenance;

“that argument may have weight with those who think mankind can be

effectually served, though they may be often dazzled, by the labours of

an individual. But, indeed, this perpetual talk of ‘mankind’ signifies

nothing: each of us consults his proper happiness, and we consider him a

madman who ruins his own peace of mind by an everlasting fretfulness of

philanthropy.”

This was a doctrine that half pleased, half displeased the Earl--it

shadowed forth the most dangerous notions which Aram entertained.

“Well, well,” said the noble host, as, after a short contest on the

ground of his guest’s last remark, they left off where they began, “Let

us drop these general discussions: I have a particular proposition to

unfold. We have, I trust, Mr. Aram, seen enough of each other, to feel

that we can lay a sure foundation for mutual esteem. For my part, I

own frankly, that I have never met with one who has inspired me with a

sincerer admiration. I am desirous that your talents and great learning

should be known in the widest sphere. You may despise fame, but you must

permit your friends the weakness to wish you justice, and themselves

triumph. You know my post in the present administration--the place of my

secretary is one of great trust--some influence, and large emolument. I

offer it to you--accept it, and you will confer upon me an honour and

an obligation. You will have your own separate house, or apartments

in mine, solely appropriated to your use. Your privacy will never be

disturbed. Every arrangement shall be made for yourself and your bride,

that either of you can suggest. Leisure for your own pursuits you will

have, too, in abundance--there are others who will perform all that is

toilsome in your office. In London, you will see around you the most

eminent living men of all nations, and in all pursuits. If you contract,

(which believe me is possible--it is a tempting game,) any inclination

towards public life, you will have the most brilliant opportunities

afforded you, and I foretell you the most signal success. Stay yet one

moment:--for this you will owe me no thanks. Were I not sensible that I

consult my own interests in this proposal, I should be courtier enough

to suppress it.”

“My Lord,” said Aram, in a voice which, in spite of its calmness,

betrayed that he was affected, “it seldom happens to a man of my

secluded habits, and lowly pursuits, to have the philosophy he affects

put to so severe a trial. I am grateful to you--deeply grateful for

an offer so munificent--so undeserved. I am yet more grateful that it

allows me to sound the strength of my own heart, and to find that I did

not too highly rate it. Look, my Lord, from the spot where we now stand”

(the moon had risen, and they had now returned to the terrace): “in the

vale below, and far among those trees, lies my home. More than two years

ago, I came thither, to fix the resting-place of a sad and troubled

spirit. There have I centered all my wishes and my hopes; and there may

I breathe my last! My Lord, you will not think me ungrateful, that my

choice is made; and you will not blame my motive, though you may despise

my wisdom.”

“But,” said the Earl astonished, “you cannot foresee all the advantages

you would renounce. At your age--with your intellect--to choose the

living sepulchre of a hermitage--it was wise to reconcile yourself to

it, but not to prefer it! Nay, nay; consider--pause. I am in no haste

for your decision; and what advantages have you in your retreat, that

you will not possess in a greater degree with me? Quiet?--I pledge it

to you under my roof. Solitude?--you shall have it at your will.

Books?--what are those which you, which any individual possesses, to

the public institutions, the magnificent collections, of the metropolis?

What else is it you enjoy yonder, and cannot enjoy with me?”

“Liberty!” said Aram energetically.--“Liberty! the wild sense of

independence. Could I exchange the lonely stars and the free air,

for the poor lights and feverish atmosphere of worldly life? Could I

surrender my mood, with its thousand eccentricities and humours--its

cloud and shadow--to the eyes of strangers, or veil it from their gaze

by the irksomeness of an eternal hypocrisy? No, my Lord! I am too old

to turn disciple to the world! You promise me solitude and quiet.

What charm would they have for me, if I felt they were held from

the generosity of another? The attraction of solitude is only in its

independence. You offer me the circle, but not the magic which made it

holy. Books! They, years since, would have tempted me; but those whose

wisdom I have already drained, have taught me now almost enough: and

the two Books, whose interest can never be exhausted--Nature and my own

Heart--will suffice for the rest of life. My Lord, I require no time for

consideration.”

“And you positively refuse me?”

“Gratefully refuse you.”

The Earl walked peevishly away for one moment; but it was not in his

nature to lose himself for more.

“Mr. Aram,” said he frankly, and holding out his hand; “you have chosen

nobly, if not wisely; and though I cannot forgive you for depriving

me of such a companion, I thank you for teaching me such a lesson.

Henceforth, I will believe, that philosophy may exist in practice; and

that a contempt for wealth and for honours, is not the mere profession

of discontent. This is the first time, in a various and experienced

life, that I have found a man sincerely deaf to the temptations of the

world,--and that man of such endowments! If ever you see cause to alter

a theory that I still think erroneous, though lofty--remember me; and at

all times, and on all occasions,” he added, with a smile, “when a friend

becomes a necessary evil, call to mind our starlit walk on the castle

terrace.”

Aram did not mention to Lester, or even Madeline, the above

conversation. The whole of the next day he shut himself up at home;

and when he again appeared at the Manor-house, he heard with evident

satisfaction that the Earl had been suddenly summoned on state affairs

to London.

There was an unaccountable soreness in Aram’s mind, which made him feel

a resentment--a suspicion against all who sought to lure him from

his retreat. “Thank Heaven!” thought he, when he heard of the

Earl’s departure; “we shall not meet for another year!” He was

mistaken.--Another year!

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH THE STORY RETURNS TO WALTER AND THE CORPORAL.--THE

RENCONTRE WITH A STRANGER, AND HOW THE STRANGER PROVES TO BE

NOT ALTOGETHER A STRANGER.

Being got out of town in the road to Penaflor, master of my own

action, and forty good ducats; the first thing I did was to

give my mule her head, and to go at what pace she pleased.

.............

I left them in the inn, and continued my journey; I was hardly

got half-a-mile farther, when I met a cavalier very genteel,

--Gil Blas.

It was broad and sunny noon on the second day of their journey, as

Walter Lester, and the valorous attendant with whom it had pleased Fate

to endow him, rode slowly into a small town in which the Corporal in

his own heart, had resolved to bait his roman-nosed horse and refresh

himself. Two comely inns had the younger traveller of the twain already

passed with an indifferent air, as if neither bait nor refreshment

made any part of the necessary concerns of this habitable world. And in

passing each of the said hostelries, the roman-nosed horse had uttered

a snort of indignant surprise, and the worthy Corporal had responded

to the quadrupedal remonstrance by a loud hem. It seemed, however, that

Walter heard neither of the above significant admonitions; and now the

town was nearly passed, and a steep hill that seemed winding away into

eternity, already presented itself to the rueful gaze of the Corporal.

“The boy’s clean mad,” grunted Bunting to himself--“must do my duty to

him--give him a hint.”

Pursuant to this notable and conscientious determination, Bunting jogged

his horse into a trot, and coming alongside of Walter, put his hand to

his hat and said:

“Weather warm, your honour--horses knocked up--next town far as

hell!--halt a bit here--augh!”

“Ha! that is very true, Bunting; I had quite forgotten the length of our

journey. But see, there is a sign-post yonder, we will take advantage of

it.”

“Augh! and your honour’s right--fit for the forty-second;” said the

Corporal, falling back; and in a few moments he and his charger found

themselves, to their mutual delight, entering the yard of a small, but

comfortable-looking inn.

The Host, a man of a capacious stomach and a rosy cheek--in short, a

host whom your heart warms to see, stepped forth immediately, held the

stirrup for the young Squire, (for the Corporal’s movements were

too stately to be rapid,) and ushered him with a bow, a smile, and a

flourish of his napkin, into one of those little quaint rooms, with

cupboards bright with high glasses and old china, that it pleases us

still to find extant in the old-fashioned inns, in our remoter roads and

less Londonized districts.

Mine host was an honest fellow, and not above his profession; he stirred

the fire, dusted the table, brought the bill of fare, and a newspaper

seven days old, and then bustled away to order the dinner and chat with

the Corporal. That accomplished hero had already thrown the stables into

commotion, and frightening the two ostlers from their attendance on the

steeds of more peaceable men, had set them both at leading his own horse

and his master’s to and fro’ the yard, to be cooled into comfort and

appetite.

He was now busy in the kitchen, where he had seized the reins of

government, sent the scullion to see if the hens had laid any fresh

eggs, and drawn upon himself the objurgations of a very thin cook with a

squint.

“Tell you, ma’am, you are wrong--quite wrong--have seen the world--old

soldier--and know how to fry eggs better than any she in the

three kingdoms--hold jaw--mind your own business--where’s the

frying-pan?--baugh!”

So completely did the Corporal feel himself in his element, while he was

putting everybody else out of the way; and so comfortable did he find

his new quarters, that he resolved that the “bait” should be at all

events prolonged until his good cheer had been deliberately digested,

and his customary pipe duly enjoyed.

Accordingly, but not till Walter had dined, for our man of the world

knew that it is the tendency of that meal to abate our activity, while

it increases our good humour, the Corporal presented himself to his

master, with a grave countenance.

“Greatly vexed, your honour--who’d have thought it?--but those large

animals are bad on long march.”

“Why what’s the matter now, Bunting?”

“Only, Sir, that the brown horse is so done up, that I think it would be

as much as life’s worth to go any farther for several hours.”

“Very well, and if I propose staying here till the evening?--we have

ridden far, and are in no great hurry.”

“To be sure not--sure and certain not,” cried the Corporal. “Ah, Master,

you know how to command, I see. Nothing like discretion--discretion,

Sir, is a jewel. Sir, it is more than jewel--it’s a pair of stirrups!”

“A what? Bunting.”

“Pair of stirrups, your honour. Stirrups help us to get on, so does

discretion; to get off, ditto discretion. Men without stirrups look

fine, ride bold, tire soon: men without discretion cut dash, but knock

up all of a crack. Stirrups--but what sinnifies? Could say much more,

your honour, but don’t love chatter.”

“Your simile is ingenious enough, if not poetical,” said Walter; “but it

does not hold good to the last. When a man falls, his discretion should

preserve him; but he is often dragged in the mud by his stirrups.”

“Beg pardon--you’re wrong,” quoth the Corporal, nothing taken by

surprise; “spoke of the new-fangled stirrups that open, crank, when we

fall, and let us out of the scrape.” [Note: Of course the Corporal does

not speak of the patent stirrup: that would be an anachronism.]

Satisfied with this repartee, the Corporal now (like an experienced

jester) withdrew to leave its full effect on the admiration of his

master. A little before sunset the two travellers renewed their journey.

“I have loaded the pistols, Sir,” said the Corporal, pointing to the

holsters on Walter’s saddle. “It is eighteen miles off to the next

town--will be dark long before we get there.”

“You did very right, Bunting, though I suppose there is not much danger

to be apprehended from the gentlemen of the highway.”

“Why the Landlord do say the revarse, your honour,--been many robberies

lately in these here parts.”

“Well, we are fairly mounted, and you are a formidable-looking fellow,

Bunting.”

“Oh! your honour,” quoth the Corporal, turning his head stiffly away,

with a modest simper, “You makes me blush; though, indeed, bating that I

have the military air, and am more in the prime of life, your honour is

well nigh as awkward a gentleman as myself to come across.”

“Much obliged for the compliment!” said Walter, pushing his horse a

little forward--the Corporal took the hint and fell back.

It was now that beautiful hour of twilight when lovers grow especially

tender. The young traveller every instant threw his dark eyes upward,

and thought--not of Madeline, but her sister. The Corporal himself

grew pensive, and in a few moments his whole soul was absorbed in

contemplating the forlorn state of the abandoned Jacobina.

In this melancholy and silent mood, they proceeded onward till the

shades began to deepen; and by the light of the first stars Walter

beheld a small, spare gentleman riding before him on an ambling nag,

with cropped ears and mane. The rider, as he now came up to him, seemed

to have passed the grand climacteric, but looked hale and vigorous; and

there was a certain air of staid and sober aristocracy about him, which

involuntarily begat your respect.

He looked hard at Walter as the latter approached, and still more hard

at the Corporal. He seemed satisfied with the survey.

“Sir,” said he, slightly touching his hat to Walter, and with an

agreeable though rather sharp intonation of voice, “I am very glad to

see a gentleman of your appearance travelling my road. Might I request

the honour of being allowed to join you so far as you go? To say the

truth, I am a little afraid of encountering those industrious gentlemen

who have been lately somewhat notorious in these parts; and it may be

better for all of us to ride in as strong a party as possible.”

“Sir,” replied Walter, eyeing in his turn the speaker, and in his turn

also feeling satisfied with the scrutiny, “I am going to--, where I

shall pass the night on my way to town; and shall be very happy in your

company.”

The Corporal uttered a loud hem; that penetrating man of the world was

not too well pleased with the advances of a stranger.

“What fools them boys be!” thought he, very discontentedly; “howsomever,

the man does seem like a decent country gentleman, and we are two to

one: besides, he’s old, little, and--augh, baugh--I dare say, we are

safe enough, for all he can do.”

The Stranger possessed a polished and well-bred demeanour; he talked

freely and copiously, and his conversation was that of a shrewd and

cultivated man. He informed Walter that, not only the roads had been

infested by those more daring riders common at that day, and to whose

merits we ourselves have endeavoured to do justice in a former work of

blessed memory, but that several houses had been lately attempted, and

two absolutely plundered.

“For myself,” he added, “I have no money, to signify, about my

person: my watch is only valuable to me for the time it has been in my

possession; and if the rogues robbed one civilly, I should not so much

mind encountering them; but they are a desperate set, and use violence

when there is nothing to be got by it. Have you travelled far to-day,

Sir?”

“Some six or seven-and-twenty miles,” replied Walter. “I am proceeding

to London, and not willing to distress my horses by too rapid a

journey.”

“Very right, very good; and horses, Sir, are not now what they used to

be when I was a young man. Ah, what wagers I used to win then! Horses

galloped, Sir, when I was twenty; they trotted when I was thirty-five;

but they only amble now. Sir, if it does not tax your patience too

severely, let us give our nags some hay and water at the half-way house

yonder.”

Walter assented; they stopped at a little solitary inn by the side of

the road, and the host came out with great obsequiousness when he heard

the voice of Walter’s companion.

“Ah, Sir Peter!” said he, “and how be’st your honour--fine night, Sir

Peter--hope you’ll get home safe, Sir Peter.”

“Safe--ay! indeed, Jock, I hope so too. Has all been quiet here this

last night or two?”

“Whish, Sir!” whispered my host, jerking his thumb back towards the

house; “there be two ugly customers within I does not know: they have

got famous good horses, and are drinking hard. I can’t say as I knows

any thing agen ‘em, but I think your honours had better be jogging.”

“Aha! thank ye, Jock, thank ye. Never mind the hay now,” said Sir Peter,

pulling away the reluctant mouth of his nag; and turning to Walter,

“Come, Sir, let us move on. Why, zounds! where is that servant of

yours?”

Walter now perceived, with great vexation, that the Corporal had

disappeared within the alehouse; and looking through the casement, on

which the ruddy light of the fire played cheerily, he saw the man of the

world lifting a little measure of “the pure creature” to his lips; and

close by the hearth, at a small, round table, covered with glasses,

pipes, he beheld two men eyeing the tall Corporal very wistfully, and of

no prepossessing appearance themselves. One, indeed, as the fire played

full on his countenance, was a person of singularly rugged and sinister

features; and this man, he now remarked, was addressing himself with

a grim smile to the Corporal, who, setting down his little “noggin,”

regarded him with a stare, which appeared to Walter to denote

recognition. This survey was the operation of a moment; for Sir Peter

took it upon himself to despatch the landlord into the house, to order

forth the unseasonable carouser; and presently the Corporal stalked

out, and having solemnly remounted, the whole trio set onward in a brisk

trot. As soon as they were without sight of the ale-house, the Corporal

brought the aquiline profile of his gaunt steed on a level with his

master’s horse.

“Augh, Sir!” said he, with more than his usual energy of utterance, “I

see’d him!”

“Him! whom?”

“Man with ugly face what drank at Peter Dealtry’s, and knew Master

Aram,--knew him in a crack,--sure he’s a Tartar!”

“What! does your servant recognize one of those suspicious fellows whom

Jock warned us against?” cried Sir Peter, pricking up his ears.

“So it seems, Sir,” said Walter: “he saw him once before, many miles

hence; but I fancy he knows nothing really to his prejudice.”

“Augh!” cried the Corporal; “he’s d--d ugly any how!”

“That’s a tall fellow of yours,” said Sir Peter, jerking up his chin

with that peculiar motion common to the brief in stature, when they are

covetous of elongation. “He looks military:--has he been in the army?

Ay, I thought so; one of the King of Prussia’s grenadiers, I suppose?

Faith, I hear hoofs behind!”

“Hem!” cried the Corporal, again coming alongside of his master. “Beg

pardon, Sir--served in the 42nd--nothing like regular line--stragglers

always cut off--had rather not straggle just now--enemy behind!”

Walter looked back, and saw two men approaching them at a hand-gallop.

“We are a match at least for them, Sir,” said he, to his new

acquaintance.

“I am devilish glad I met you,” was Sir Peter’s rather selfish reply.

“‘Tis he! ‘tis the devil!” grunted the Corporal, as the two men now

gained their side and pulled up; and Walter recognised the faces he had

marked in the ale-house.

“Your servant, gentlemen,” quoth the uglier of the two; “you ride

fast--”

“And ready;--bother--baugh!” chimed in the Corporal, plucking a gigantic

pistol from his holster, without any farther ceremony.

“Glad to hear it, Sir!” said the hard-featured Stranger, nothing dashed.

“But I can tell you a secret!”

“What’s that--augh?” said the Corporal, cocking his pistol.

“Whoever hurts you, friend, cheats the gallows!” replied the stranger,

laughing, and spurring on his horse, to be out of reach of any practical

answer with which the Corporal might favour him. But Bunting was a

prudent man, and not apt to be choleric.

“Bother!” said he, and dropped his pistol, as the other stranger

followed his ill-favoured comrade.

“You see we are too strong for them!” cried Sir Peter, gaily; “evidently

highwaymen! How very fortunate that I should have fallen in with you!”

A shower of rain now began to fall. Sir Peter looked serious--he halted

abruptly--unbuckled his cloak, which had been strapped before his

saddle--wrapped himself up in it--buried his face in the collar--muffled

his chin with a red handkerchief, which he took out of his pocket, and

then turning to Walter, he said to him, “What! no cloak, Sir? no wrapper

even? Upon my soul I am very sorry I have not another handkerchief to

lend you!”

“Man of the world--baugh!” grunted the Corporal, and his heart quite

warmed to the stranger he had at first taken for a robber.

“And now, Sir,” said Sir Peter, patting his nag, and pulling up his

cloak-collar still higher, “let us go gently; there is no occasion for

hurry. Why distress our horses?--”

“Really, Sir,” said Walter, smiling, “though I have a great regard for

my horse, I have some for myself; and I should rather like to be out of

this rain as soon as possible.”

“Oh, ah! you have no cloak. I forgot that; to be sure--to be sure, let

us trot on, gently--though--gently. Well, Sir, as I was saying, horses

are not so swift as they were. The breed is bought up by the French! I

remember once, Johnny Courtland and I, after dining at my house, till

the champagne had played the dancing-master to our brains, mounted our

horses, and rode twenty miles for a cool thousand the winner. I lost it,

Sir, by a hair’s breadth; but I lost it on purpose; it would have half

ruined Johnny Courtland to have paid me, and he had that delicacy,

Sir,--he had that delicacy, that he would not have suffered me to refuse

taking his money,--so what could I do, but lose on purpose? You see I

had no alternative!”

“Pray, Sir,” said Walter, charmed and astonished at so rare an instance

of the generosity of human friendships--“Pray, Sir, did I not hear you

called Sir Peter, by the landlord of the little inn? can it be, since

you speak so familiarly of Mr. Courtland, that I have the honour to

address Sir Peter Hales?”

“Indeed that is my name,” replied the gentleman, with some surprise in

his voice. “But I have never had the honour of seeing you before.”

“Perhaps my name is not unfamiliar to you,” said Walter. “And among my

papers I have a letter addressed to you from my uncle Rowland Lester.

“God bless me!” cried Sir Peter, “What Rowy!--well, indeed I am

overjoyed to hear of him. So you are his nephew? Pray tell me all about

him, a wild, gay, rollicking fellow still, eh?” Always fencing, sa--sa!

or playing at billiards, or hot in a steeple chace; there was not a

jollier, better-humoured fellow in the world than Rowy Lester.

“You forget, Sir Peter,” said Walter, laughing at a description so

unlike his sober and steady uncle, “that some years have passed since

the time you speak of.”

“Ah, and so there have,” replied Sir Peter; “and what does your uncle

say of me?”

“That, when he knew you, you were generosity, frankness, hospitality

itself.”

“Humph, humph!” said Sir Peter, looking extremely disconcerted, a

confusion which Walter imputed solely to modesty. “I was hairbrained

foolish fellow then, quite a boy, quite a boy; but bless me, it rains

sharply, and you have no cloak. But we are close on the town now. An

excellent inn is the ‘Duke of Cumberland’s Head,’ you will have charming

accommodation there.”

“What, Sir Peter, you know this part of the country well!”

“Pretty well, pretty well; indeed I live near, that is to say not very

far from, the town. This turn, if you please. We separate here. I have

brought you a little out of your way--not above a mile or two--for fear

the robbers should attack me if I was left alone. I had quite forgot you

had no cloak. That’s your road--this mine. Aha! so Rowy Lester is still

alive and hearty, the same excellent, wild fellow, no doubt. Give my

kindest remembrance to him when you write. Adieu, Sir.”

This latter speech having been delivered during a halt, the Corporal had

heard it: he grinned delightedly as he touched his hat to Sir Peter, who

now trotted off, and muttered to his young master:--

“Most sensible man, that, Sir!”

CHAPTER VI.

SIR PETER DISPLAYED.--ONE MAN OF THE WORLD SUFFERS FROM

ANOTHER.--THE INCIDENT OF THE BRIDLE BEGETS THE INCIDENT OF

THE SADDLE; THE INCIDENT OF THE SADDLE BEGETS THE INCIDENT OF

THE WHIP; THE INCIDENT OF THE WHIP BEGETS WHAT THE READER MUST

READ TO SEE.

Nihil est aliud magnum quam multa minuta.

--Vetus Auctor.

[Nor is their anything that hath so great

a power as the aggregate of small things.]

“And so,” said Walter, the next morning to the head waiter, who was

busied about their preparations for breakfast; “and so, Sir Peter Hales,

you say, lives within a mile of the town?”

“Scarcely a mile, Sir,--black or green? you passed the turn to his

house last night;--Sir, the eggs are quite fresh this morning. This inn

belongs to Sir Peter.”

“Oh!--Does Sir Peter see much company?”

The waiter smiled.

“Sir Peter gives very handsome dinners, Sir; twice a year! A most clever

gentleman, Sir Peter! They say he is the best manager of property in the

whole county. Do you like Yorkshire cake?--toast? yes, Sir!”

“So so,” said Walter to himself, “a pretty true description my uncle

gave me of this gentleman. ‘Ask me too often to dinner, indeed!’--‘offer

me money if I want it!’--‘spend a month at his house!’--‘most hospitable

fellow in the world!’--My uncle must have been dreaming.”

Walter had yet to learn, that the men most prodigal when they have

nothing but expectations, are often most thrifty when they know the

charms of absolute possession. Besides, Sir Peter had married a Scotch

lady, and was blessed with eleven children! But was Sir Peter Hales much

altered? Sir Peter Hales was exactly the same man in reality that he

always had been. Once he was selfish in extravagance; he was now selfish

in thrift. He had always pleased himself, and damned other people; that

was exactly what he valued himself on doing now. But the most absurd

thing about Sir Peter was, that while he was for ever extracting use

from every one else, he was mightily afraid of being himself put to use.

He was in parliament, and noted for never giving a frank out of his own

family. Yet withal, Sir Peter Hales was still an agreeable fellow; nay,

he was more liked and much more esteemed than ever. There is something

conciliatory in a saving disposition; but people put themselves in a

great passion when a man is too liberal with his own. It is an insult

on their own prudence. “What right has he to be so extravagant? What an

example to our servants!” But your close neighbour does not humble you.

You love your close neighbour; you respect your close neighbour; you

have your harmless jest against him--but he is a most respectable man.

“A letter, Sir, and a parcel, from Sir Peter Hales,” said the waiter,

entering.

The parcel was a bulky, angular, awkward packet of brown paper, sealed

once and tied with the smallest possible quantity of string; it was

addressed to Mr. James Holwell, Saddler,--Street,--The letter was

to--Lester Esq., and ran thus, written in a very neat, stiff, Italian

character.

“Dr Sr,

“I trust you had no difficulty in findg ye Duke of Cumberland’s Head, it

is an excellent In.

“I greatly regt yt you are unavoidy oblig’d to go on to Londn; for,

otherwise I shd have had the sincerest please in seeing you here at

dinr, introducing you to Ly Hales. Anothr time I trust we may be more

fortunate.

“As you pass thro’ ye litte town of..., exactly 21 miles from hence, on

the road to Londn, will you do me the favr to allow your servt to put

the little parcel I send into his pockt, drop it as directd. It is a

bridle I am forc’d to return. Country workn are such bungrs.

“I shd most certainy have had ye honr to wait on you persony, but the

rain has given me a mo seve cold;--hope you have escap’d, tho’ by ye by,

you had no cloke, nor wrappr!

“My kindest regards to your mo excellent unce. I am quite sure he’s the

same fine merry fellw he always was,--tell him so!

“Dr Sr, Yours faithy,

“Peter Grindlescrew Hales.

“P.S. You know perhs yt poor Jno Courtd, your uncle’s mo intime friend,

lives in..., the town in which your servt will drop ye bride. He is much

alter’d,--poor Jno!”

“Altered! alteration then seems the fashion with my uncle’s friends!”

thought Walter, as he rang for the Corporal, and consigned to his charge

the unsightly parcel.

“It is to be carried twenty-one miles at the request of the gentleman we

met last night,--a most sensible man, Bunting.”

“Augh--whaugh,--your honour!” grunted the Corporal, thrusting the bridle

very discontentedly into his pocket, where it annoyed him the whole

journey, by incessantly getting between his seat of leather and his seat

of honour. It is a comfort to the inexperienced, when one man of the

world smarts from the sagacity of another; we resign ourselves more

willingly to our fate. Our travellers resumed their journey, and in a

few minutes, from the cause we have before assigned, the Corporal became

thoroughly out of humour.

“Pray, Bunting,” said Walter, calling his attendant to his side, “do you

feel sure that the man we met yesterday at the alehouse, is the same you

saw at Grassdale some months ago?”

“Damn it!” cried the Corporal quickly, and clapping his hand behind.

“How, Sir!”

“Beg pardon, your honour--slip tongue, but this confounded

parcel!--augh--bother!”

“Why don’t you carry it in your hand?”

“‘Tis so ungainsome, and be d--d to it; and how can I hold parcel and

pull in this beast, which requires two hands; his mouth’s as hard as a

brickbat,--augh!”

“You have not answered my question yet?”

“Beg pardon, your honour. Yes, certain sure the man’s the same; phiz not

to be mistaken.”

“It is strange,” said Walter, musing, “that Aram should know a man, who,

if not a highwayman as we suspected, is at least of rugged manner and

disreputable appearance; it is strange too, that Aram always avoided

recurring to the acquaintance, though he confessed it.” With this he

broke into a trot, and the Corporal into an oath.

They arrived by noon, at the little town specified by Sir Peter, and in

their way to the inn (for Walter resolved to rest there), passed by the

saddler’s house. It so chanced that Master Holwell was an adept in his

craft, and that a newly-invented hunting-saddle at the window caught

Walter’s notice. The artful saddler persuaded the young traveller to

dismount and look at “the most convenientest and handsomest saddle what

ever was seed;” and the Corporal having lost no time in getting rid of

his encumbrance, Walter dismissed him to the inn with the horses, and

after purchasing the saddle, in exchange for his own, he sauntered into

the shop to look at a new snaffle. A gentleman’s servant was in the

shop at the time, bargaining for a riding whip; and the shopboy, among

others, shewed him a large old-fashioned one, with a tarnished silver

handle. Grooms have no taste for antiquity, and in spite of the

silverhandle, the servant pushed it aside with some contempt. Some jest

he uttered at the time, chanced to attract Walter’s notice to the whip;

he took it up carelessly, and perceived with great surprise that it

bore his own crest, a bittern, on the handle. He examined it now with

attention, and underneath the crest were the letters G. L., his father’s

initials.

“How long have you had this whip?” said he to the saddler, concealing

the emotion, which this token of his lost parent naturally excited.

“Oh, a nation long time, Sir,” replied Mr. Holwell; “it is a queer old

thing, but really is not amiss, if the silver was scrubbed up a bit,

and a new lash put on; you may have it a bargain, Sir, if so be you have

taken a fancy to it.”

“Can you at all recollect how you came by it,” said Walter, earnestly;

“the fact is that I see by the crest and initials, that it belonged to a

person whom I have some interest in discovering.”

“Why let me see,” said the saddler, scratching the tip of his right ear,

“‘tis so long ago sin I had it, I quite forgets how I came by it.”

“Oh, is it that whip, John?” said the wife, who had been attracted from

the back parlour by the sight of the handsome young stranger. “Don’t you

remember, it’s a many year ago, a gentleman who passed a day with Squire

Courtland, when he first come to settle here, called and left the whip

to have a new thong put to it. But I fancies he forgot it, Sir, (turning

to Walter,) for he never called for it again; and the Squire’s people

said as how he was a gone into Yorkshire; so there the whip’s been ever

sin. I remembers it, Sir, ‘cause I kept it in the little parlour nearly

a year, to be in the way like.”

“Ah! I thinks I do remember it now,” said Master Holwell. “I should

think it’s a matter of twelve yearn ago. I suppose I may sell it without

fear of the gentleman’s claiming it again.”

“Not more than twelve years!” said Walter, anxiously, for it was some

seventeen years since his father had been last heard of by his family.

“Why it may be thirteen, Sir, or so, more or less, I can’t say exactly.”

“More likely fourteen!” said the Dame, “it can’t be much more, Sir, we

have only been a married fifteen year come next Christmas! But my old

man here, is ten years older nor I.”

“And the gentleman, you say, was at Mr. Courtland’s.”

“Yes, Sir, that I’m sure of,” replied the intelligent Mrs. Holwell;

“they said he had come lately from Ingee.”

Walter now despairing of hearing more, purchased the whip; and blessing

the worldly wisdom of Sir Peter Hales, that had thus thrown him on a

clue, which, however faint and distant, he resolved to follow up, he

inquired the way to Squire Courtland’s, and proceeded thither at once.

CHAPTER VII.

WALTER VISITS ANOTHER OF HIS UNCLE’S FRIENDS.--MR. COURTLAND’S

STRANGE COMPLAINT.--WALTER LEARNS NEWS OF HIS FATHER, WHICH

SURPRISES HIM.--THE CHANGE IN HIS DESTINATION.

God’s my life, did you ever hear the like, what a strange man is

this!

What you have possessed me withall, I’ll discharge it amply.

--Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour.

Mr. Courtland’s house was surrounded by a high wall, and stood at the

outskirts of the town. A little wooden door buried deep within the

wall, seemed the only entrance. At this Walter paused, and after twice

applying to the bell, a footman of a peculiarly grave and sanctimonious

appearance, opened the door.

In reply to Walter’s inquiries, he informed him that Mr. Courtland was

very unwell, and never saw “Company.”--Walter, however, producing from

his pocket-book the introductory letter given him by his father, slipped

it into the servant’s hand, accompanied by half a crown, and begged to

be announced as a gentleman on very particular business.

“Well, Sir, you can step in,” said the servant, giving way; “but my

master is very poorly, very poorly indeed.”

“Indeed, I am sorry to hear it: has he been long so?”

“Going on for ten--years, sir!” replied the servant, with great gravity;

and opening the door of the house which stood within a few paces of the

wall, on a singularly flat and bare grass-plot, he showed him into a

room, and left him alone.

The first thing that struck Walter in this apartment, was its remarkable

lightness. Though not large, it had no less than seven windows. Two

sides of the wall, seemed indeed all window! Nor were these admittants

of the celestial beam-shaded by any blind or curtain,--

“The gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day”

made itself thoroughly at home in this airy chamber. Nevertheless,

though so light, it seemed to Walter any thing but cheerful. The sun had

blistered and discoloured the painting of the wainscot, originally of a

pale sea-green; there was little furniture in the apartment; one table

in the centre, some half a dozen chairs, and a very small Turkey-carpet,

which did not cover one tenth part of the clean, cold, smooth, oak

boards, constituted all the goods and chattels visible in the room. But

what particularly added effect to the bareness of all within, was the

singular and laborious bareness of all without. From each of these seven

windows, nothing but a forlorn green flat of some extent was to be seen;

there was not a tree, or a shrub, or a flower in the whole expanse,

although by several stumps of trees near the house, Walter perceived

that the place had not always been so destitute of vegetable life.

While he was yet looking upon this singular baldness of scene, the

servant re-entered with his master’s compliments, and a message that he

should be happy to see any relation of Mr. Lester.

Walter accordingly followed the footman into an apartment possessing

exactly the same peculiarities as the former one; viz. a most

disproportionate plurality of windows, a commodious scantiness of

furniture, and a prospect without, that seemed as if the house had been

built on the middle of Salisbury plain.

Mr. Courtland, himself a stout man, and still preserving the rosy hues

and comely features, though certainly not the same hilarious expression,

which Lester had attributed to him, sat in a large chair, close by the

centre window, which was open. He rose and shook Walter by the hand with

great cordiality.

“Sir, I am delighted to see you! How is your worthy uncle? I only wish

he were with you--you dine with me of course. Thomas, tell the cook to

add a tongue and chicken to the roast beef--no,--young gentleman, I will

have no excuse; sit down, sit down; pray come near the window; do you

not find it dreadfully close? not a breath of air? This house is so

choked up; don’t you find it so, eh? Ah, I see, you can scarcely gasp.”

“My dear Sir, you are mistaken; I am rather cold, on the contrary: nor

did I ever in my life see a more airy house than yours.”

“I try to make it so, Sir, but I can’t succeed; if you had seen what

it was, when I first bought it! a garden here, Sir; a copse there; a

wilderness, God wot! at the back: and a row of chesnut trees in the

front! You may conceive the consequence, Sir; I had not been long here,

not two years, before my health was gone, Sir, gone--the d--d vegetable

life sucked it out of me. The trees kept away all the air--I was nearly

suffocated, without, at first, guessing the cause. But at length, though

not till I had been withering away for five years, I discovered the

origin of my malady. I went to work, Sir; I plucked up the cursed

garden, I cut down the infernal chesnuts, I made a bowling green of

the diabolical wilderness, but I fear it is too late. I am dying by

inches,--have been dying ever since. The malaria has effectually tainted

my constitution.”

Here Mr. Courtland heaved a deep sigh, and shook his head with a most

gloomy expression of countenance.

“Indeed, Sir,” said Walter, “I should not, to look at you, imagine that

you suffered under any complaint. You seem still the same picture of

health, that my uncle describes you to have been when you knew him so

many years ago.”

“Yes, Sir, yes; the confounded malaria fixed the colour to my cheeks;

the blood is stagnant, Sir. Would to God I could see myself a shade

paler!--the blood does not flow; I am like a pool in a citizen’s garden,

with a willow at each corner;--but a truce to my complaints. You see,

Sir, I am no hypochondriac, as my fool of a doctor wants to persuade me:

a hypochondriac shudders at every breath of air, trembles when a door

is open, and looks upon a window as the entrance of death. But I, Sir,

never can have enough air; thorough draught or east wind, it is all the

same to me, so that I do but breathe. Is that like hypochondria?--pshaw!

But tell me, young gentleman, about your uncle; is he quite

well,--stout,--hearty,--does he breathe easily,--no oppression?”

“Sir, he enjoys exceedingly good health: he did please himself with the

hope that I should give him good tidings of yourself, and another of his

old friends whom I accidentally saw yesterday,--Sir Peter Hales.”

“Hales, Peter Hales!--ah! a clever little fellow that: how delighted

Lester’s good heart will be to hear that little Peter is so

improved;--no longer a dissolute, harum-scarum fellow, throwing away his

money, and always in debt. No, no; a respectable steady character, an

excellent manager, an active member of Parliament, domestic in private

life,--Oh! a very worthy man, Sir, a very worthy man!”

“He seems altered indeed, Sir,” said Walter, who was young enough in the

world to be surprised at this eulogy; “but is still agreeable and fond

of anecdote. He told me of his race with you for a thousand guineas.”

“Ah, don’t talk of those days,” said Mr. Courtland, shaking his head

pensively, “it makes me melancholy. Yes, Peter ought to recollect that,

for he has never paid me to this day; affected to treat it as a jest,

and swore he could have beat me if he would. But indeed it was my fault,

Sir; Peter had not then a thousand farthings in the world, and when he

grew rich, he became a steady character, and I did not like to remind

him of our former follies. Aha! can I offer you a pinch of snuff?--You

look feverish, Sir; surely this room must affect you, though you are

too polite to say so. Pray open that door, and then this window, and put

your chair right between the two. You have no notion how refreshing the

draught is.”

Walter politely declined the proffered ague, and thinking he had

now made sufficient progress in the acquaintance of this singular

non-hypochondriac to introduce the subject he had most at heart,

hastened to speak of his father.

“I have chanced, Sir,” said he, “very unexpectedly upon something that

once belonged to my poor father;” here he showed the whip. “I find from

the saddler of whom I bought it, that the owner was at your house some

twelve or fourteen years ago. I do not know whether you are aware

that our family have heard nothing respecting my father’s fate for a

considerably longer time than that which has elapsed since you appear

to have seen him, if at least I may hope that he was your guest, and

the owner of this whip; and any news you can give me of him, any clue

by which he can possibly be traced, would be to us all--to me in

particular--an inestimable obligation.”

“Your father!” said Mr. Courtland. “Oh,--ay, your uncle’s brother. What

was his Christian name?--Henry?”

“Geoffrey.”

“Ay, exactly; Geoffrey! What, not been heard of?--his family not know

where he is? A sad thing, Sir; but he was always a wild fellow; now

here, now there, like a flash of lightning. But it is true, it is true,

he did stay a day here, several years ago, when I first bought the

place. I can tell you all about it;--but you seem agitated,--do come

nearer the window:--there, that’s right. Well, Sir, it is, as I said,

a great many years ago,--perhaps fourteen,--and I was speaking to the

landlord of the Greyhound about some hay he wished to sell, when a

gentleman rode into the yard full tear, as your father always did ride,

and in getting out of his way I recognised Geoffrey Lester. I did not

know him well--far from it; but I had seen him once or twice with your

uncle, and though he was a strange pickle, he sang a good song, and was

deuced amusing. Well, Sir, I accosted him, and, for the sake of your

uncle, I asked him to dine with me, and take a bed at my new house.

Ah! I little thought what a dear bargain it was to be. He accepted my

invitation, for I fancy--no offence, Sir,--there were few

invitations that Mr. Geoffrey Lester ever refused to accept. We dined

tete-a-tete,--I am an old bachelor, Sir,--and very entertaining he was,

though his sentiments seemed to me broader than ever. He was

capital, however, about the tricks he had played his creditors,--such

manoeuvres,--such escapes! After dinner he asked me if I ever

corresponded with his brother. I told him no; that we were very good

friends, but never heard from each other; and he then said, ‘Well,

I shall surprise him with a visit shortly; but in case you should

unexpectedly have any communication with him, don’t mention having seen

me; for, to tell you the truth, I am just returned from India, where I

should have scraped up a little money, but that I spent it as fast as

I got it. However, you know that I was always proverbially the luckiest

fellow in the world--(and so, Sir, your father was!)--and while I was

in India, I saved an old Colonel’s life at a tiger-hunt; he went home

shortly afterwards, and settled in Yorkshire; and the other day on my

return to England, to which my ill-health drove me, I learned that my

old Colonel was really dead, and had left me a handsome legacy, with

his house in Yorkshire. I am now going down to Yorkshire to convert the

chattels into gold--to receive my money, and I shall then seek out my

good brother, my household gods, and, perhaps, though it’s not likely,

settle into a sober fellow for the rest of my life.’ I don’t tell you,

young gentleman, that those were your father’s exact words,--one can’t

remember verbatim so many years ago;--but it was to that effect. He left

me the next day, and I never heard any thing more of him: to say the

truth, he was looking wonderfully yellow, and fearfully reduced. And I

fancied at the time, he could not live long; he was prematurely old, and

decrepit in body, though gay in spirit; so that I had tacitly imagined

in never hearing of him more--that he had departed life. But, good

Heavens! did you never hear of this legacy?”

“Never: not a word!” said Walter, who had listened to these particulars

in great surprise. “And to what part of Yorkshire did he say he was

going?”

“That he did not mention.”

“Nor the Colonel’s name?”

“Not as I remember; he might, but I think not. But I am certain that the

county was Yorkshire, and the gentleman, whatever was his name, was a

Colonel. Stay! I recollect one more particular, which it is lucky I

do remember. Your father in giving me, as I said before, in his own

humorous strain, the history of his adventures, his hair-breadth escapes

from his duns, the various disguises, and the numerous aliases he had

assumed, mentioned that the name he had borne in India, and by which,

he assured me, he had made quite a good character--was Clarke: he also

said, by the way, that he still kept to that name, and was very merry on

the advantages of having so common an one. ‘By which,’ he said wittily,

‘he could father all his own sins on some other Mr. Clarke, at the same

time that he could seize and appropriate all the merits of all his other

namesakes.’ Ah, no offence; but he was a sad dog, that father of yours!

So you see that, in all probability, if he ever reached Yorkshire, it

was under the name of Clarke that he claimed and received his legacy.”

“You have told me more,” said Walter joyfully, “than we have heard

since his disappearance, and I shall turn my horses’ heads northward

to-morrow, by break of day. But you say, ‘if he ever reached

Yorkshire,’--What should prevent him?”

“His health!” said the non-hypochondriac, “I should not be greatly

surprised if--if--In short you had better look at the grave-stones by

the way, for the name of Clarke.”