THE WAY OF THE WORLD.
[Illustration]
A short time after the piece of good fortune which befel Colonel
Altamont at Epsom, that gentleman put into execution his projected
foreign tour, and the chronicler of the polite world who goes down to
London-bridge for the purpose of taking leave of the people of fashion
who quit this country, announced that among the company on board the
Soho to Antwerp last Saturday, were "Sir Robert, Lady, and the Misses
Hodge; Mr. Sergeant Kewsy, and Mrs. and Miss Kewsy; Colonel Altamont,
Major Coddy, &c." The colonel traveled in state, and as became a
gentleman: he appeared in a rich traveling costume: he drank
brandy-and-water freely during the passage, and was not sick, as some
of the other passengers were; and he was attended by his body servant,
the faithful Irish legionary who had been for some time in waiting
upon himself and Captain Strong in their chambers of Shepherd's Inn.
The chevalier partook of a copious dinner at Blackwall with his
departing friend the colonel, and one or two others, who drank many
healths to Altamont at that liberal gentleman's expense. "Strong, old
boy," the chevalier's worthy chum said, "if you want a little money,
now's your time. I'm your man. You're a good feller, and have been a
good feller to me, and a twenty pound note, more or less, will make no
odds to me." But Strong said, no, he didn't want any money; he was
flush, quite flush--"that is, not flush enough to pay you back your
last loan, Altamont, but quite able to carry on for some time to
come"--and so, with a not uncordial greeting between them, the two
parted. Had the possession of money really made Altamont more honest
and amiable than he had hitherto been, or only caused him to seem
more amiable in Strong's eyes? Perhaps he really was better; and money
improved him. Perhaps it was the beauty of wealth Strong saw and
respected. But he argued within himself "This poor devil, this unlucky
outcast of a returned convict, is ten times as good a fellow as my
friend Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. He has pluck and honesty, in his
way. He will stick to a friend, and face an enemy. The other never had
courage to do either. And what is it that has put the poor devil under
a cloud? He was only a little wild, and signed his father-in-law's
name. Many a man has done worse, and come to no wrong, and holds his
head up. Clavering does. No, he don't hold his head up: he never did
in his best days." And Strong, perhaps, repented him of the falsehood
which he had told to the free-handed colonel, that he was not in want
of money; but it was a falsehood on the side of honesty, and the
chevalier could not bring down his stomach to borrow a second time
from his outlawed friend. Besides, he could get on. Clavering had
promised him some: not that Clavering's promises were much to be
believed, but the chevalier was of a hopeful turn, and trusted in many
chances of catching his patron, and waylaying some of those stray
remittances and supplies, in the procuring of which for his principal
lay Mr. Strong's chief business.
He had grumbled about Altamont's companionship in the Shepherd's Inn
chambers; but he found those lodgings more glum now without his
partner than with him. The solitary life was not agreeable to his
social soul; and he had got into extravagant and luxurious habits,
too, having a servant at his command to run his errands, to arrange
his toilet, and to cook his meal. It was rather a grand and touching
sight now to see the portly and handsome gentleman painting his own
boots, and broiling his own mutton chop. It has been before stated
that the chevalier had a wife, a Spanish lady of Vittoria, who had
gone back to her friends, after a few months' union with the captain,
whose head she broke with a dish. He began to think whether he should
not go back and see his Juanita. The chevalier was growing melancholy
after the departure of his friend the colonel; or, to use his own
picturesque expression, was "down on his luck." These moments of
depression and intervals of ill-fortune occur constantly in the lives
of heroes; Marius at Minturnae, Charles Edward in the Highlands,
Napoleon before Elba. What great man has not been called upon to face
evil fortune? From Clavering no supplies were to be had for some time.
The five-and-twenty pounds, or "pony" which the exemplary baronet had
received from Mr. Altamont, had fled out of Clavering's keeping as
swiftly as many previous ponies. He had been down the river with a
choice party of sporting gents, who dodged the police and landed in
Essex, where they put up Billy Bluck to fight Dick the cabman, whom
the baronet backed, and who had it all his own way for thirteen
rounds, when, by an unluckly blow in the windpipe, Billy killed him.
"It's always my luck, Strong," Sir Francis said; "the betting was
three to one on the cabman, and I thought myself as sure of thirty
pounds, as if I had it in my pocket. And dammy, I owe my man
Lightfoot fourteen pound now which he's lent and paid for me: and he
duns me--the confounded impudent blackguard: and I wish to Heaven I
knew any way of getting a bill done, or of screwing a little out of my
lady! I'll give you half, Ned, upon my soul and honor, I'll give you
half if you can get any body to do us a little fifty."
[Illustration]
But Ned said sternly that he had given his word of honor, as a
gentleman, that he would be no party to any future bill-transactions
in which her husband might engage (who had given his word of honor
too), and the chevalier said that he, at least, would keep his word,
and Would black his own boots all his life rather than break his
promise. And what is more, he vowed he would advise Lady Clavering
that Sir Francis was about to break his faith toward her, upon the
very first hint which he could get that such was Clavering's
intention. Upon this information Sir Francis Clavering, according to
his custom, cried and cursed very volubly. He spoke of death as his
only resource. He besought and implored his dear Strong, his best
friend, his dear old Ned, not to throw him over; and when he quitted
his dearest Ned, as he went down the stairs of Shepherd's Inn, swore
and blasphemed at Ned as the most infernal villain, and traitor, and
blackguard, and coward under the sun, and wished Ned was in his grave,
and in a worse place, only he would like the confounded ruffian to
live, until Frank Clavering had had his revenge out of him.
In Strong's chambers the baronet met a gentleman whose visits were
now, as it has been shown, very frequent in Shepherd's Inn, Mr. Samuel
Huxter, of Clavering. That young fellow, who had poached the walnuts
in Clavering Park in his youth, and had seen the baronet drive through
the street at home with four horses, and prance up to church with
powdered footmen, had an immense respect for his member, and a
prodigious delight in making his acquaintance. He introduced himself,
with much blushing and trepidation, as a Clavering man--son of Mr.
Huxter, of the market-place--father attended Sir Francis's keeper,
Coxwood, when his gun burst and took off three fingers--proud to make
Sir Francis's acquaintance. All of which introduction Sir Francis
received affably. And honest Huxter talked about Sir Francis to the
chaps at Bartholomew's; and told Fanny, in the lodge, that, after all,
there was nothing like a thorough-bred un, a regular good old English
gentleman, one of the olden time! To which Fanny replied, that she
thought Sir Francis was an ojous creature--she didn't know why--but
she couldn't a-bear him--she was sure he was wicked, and low, and
mean--she knew he was; and when Sam to this replied that Sir Francis
was very affable, and had borrowed half a sov' of him quite kindly,
Fanny burst into a laugh, pulled Sam's long hair (which was not yet of
irreproachable cleanliness), patted his chin, and called him a
stoopid, stoopid, old foolish stoopid, and said that Sir Francis was
always borrering money of every body, and that Mar had actially
refused him twice, and had to wait three months to get seven shillings
which he had borrered of 'er.
"Don't say 'er but her, borrer but borrow, actially but actually,
Fanny," Mr. Huxter replied--not to a fault in her argument, but to
grammatical errors in her statement.
"Well then, her, and borrow, and hactually--there then, you stoopid,"
said the other; and the scholar made such a pretty face that the
grammar master was quickly appeased, and would have willingly given
her a hundred more lessons on the spot at the price which he took
for that one.
Of course Mrs. Bolton was by, and I suppose that Fanny and Mr. Sam
were on exceedingly familiar and confidential terms by this time, and
that time had brought to the former certain consolations, and soothed
certain regrets, which are deucedly bitter when they occur, but which
are, no more than tooth-pulling, or any other pang, eternal.
As you sit, surrounded by respect and affection; happy, honored, and
flattered in your old age; your foibles gently indulged; your least
words kindly cherished; your garrulous old stories received for the
hundredth time with dutiful forbearance, and never-failing
hypocritical smiles; the women of your house constant in their
flatteries; the young men hushed and attentive when you begin to
speak; the servants awe-stricken; the tenants cap in hand, and ready
to act in the place of your worship's horses when your honor takes a
drive--it has often struck you, O thoughtful Dives! that this respect,
and these glories, are for the main part transferred, with your
fee-simple, to your successor--that the servants will bow, and the
tenants shout, for your son as for you; that the butler will fetch him
the wine (improved by a little keeping) that's now in your cellar; and
that, when your night is come, and the light of your life is gone
down, as sure as the morning rises after you and without you, the sun
of prosperity and flattery shines on your heir. Men come and bask in
the halo of consols and acres that beams round about him: the
reverence is transferred with the estate; of which, with all its
advantages, pleasures, respect, and good-will, he in turn becomes the
life-tenant. How long do you wish or expect that your people will
regret you? How much time does a man devote to grief before he begins
to enjoy? A great man must keep his heir at his feast like a living
_memento mori_. If he holds very much by life, the presence of the
other must be a constant sting and warning. "Make ready to go," says
the successor to your honor; "I am waiting: and I could hold it as
well as you."
What has this reference to the possible reader, to do with any of the
characters of this history? Do we wish to apologize for Pen because he
has got a white hat, and because his mourning for his mother is
fainter? All the lapse of years, all the career of fortune, all the
events of life, however strongly they may move or eagerly excite him,
never can remove that sainted image from his heart, or banish that
blessed love from its sanctuary. If he yields to wrong, the dear eyes
will look sadly upon him when he dares to meet them; if he does well,
endures pain, or conquers temptation, the ever present love will greet
him, he knows, with approval and pity; if he falls, plead for him; if
he suffers, cheer him;--be with him and accompany him always until
death is past, and sorrow and sin are no more. Is this mere dreaming
or, on the part of an idle storyteller, useless moralizing? May not
the man of the world take his moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful?
Ask of your own hearts and memories, brother and sister, if we do not
live in the dead; and (to speak reverently) prove God by love?
Of these matters Pen and Warrington often spoke in many a solemn and
friendly converse in after days; and Pendennis's mother was worshiped
in his memory, and canonized there, as such a saint ought to be. Lucky
he in life who knows a few such women! A kind provision of Heaven it
was, that sent us such; and gave us to admire that touching and
wonderful spectacle of innocence, and love, and beauty.
But as it is certain that if, in the course of these sentimental
conversations, any outer stranger, Major Pendennis for instance, had
walked into Pen's chambers, Arthur and Warrington would have stopped
their talk, and chosen another subject, and discoursed about the
Opera, or the last debate in Parliament, or Miss Jones's marriage with
Captain Smith, or what not--so let us imagine that the public steps in
at this juncture, and stops the confidential talk between author and
reader, and begs us to resume our remarks about this world, with which
both are certainly better acquainted than with that other one into
which we have just been peeping.
On coming into his property, Arthur Pendennis at first comported
himself with a modesty and equanimity which obtained his friend
Warrington's praises, though Arthur's uncle was a little inclined to
quarrel with his nephew's meanness of spirit, for not assuming greater
state and pretensions now that he had entered on the enjoyment of his
kingdom. He would have had Arthur installed in handsome quarters, and
riding on showy park hacks, or in well-built cabriolets, every day. "I
am too absent," Arthur said, with a laugh, "to drive a cab in London;
the omnibuses would cut me in two, or I should send my horse's head
into the ladies' carriage windows; and you wouldn't have me driven
about by my servant like an apothecary, uncle?" No, Major Pendennis
would on no account have his nephew appear like an apothecary; the
august representative of the house of Pendennis must not so demean
himself. And when Arthur, pursuing his banter, said, "And yet, I
daresay, sir, my father was proud enough when he first set up his
gig," the old major hemmed and ha'd, and his wrinkled face reddened
with a blush as he answered, "You know what Bonaparte said, sir, '_Il
faut laver son linge sale en famille.'_ There is no need, sir, for you
to brag that your father was a--a medical man. He came of a most
ancient but fallen house, and was obliged to reconstruct the family
fortunes as many a man of good family has done before him. You are
like the fellow in Sterne, sir--the marquis who came to demand his
sword again. Your father got back yours for you. You are a man of
landed estate, by Gad, sir, and a gentleman--never forget you are a
gentleman."
Then Arthur slily turned on his uncle the argument which he had heard
the old gentleman often use regarding himself. "In the society which I
have the honor of frequenting through your introduction, who cares to
ask about my paltry means or my humble gentility, uncle?" he asked.
"It would be absurd of me to attempt to compete with the great folks;
and all that thay can ask from us is, that we should have a decent
address and good manners."
"But for all that, sir, I should belong to a better Club or two," the
uncle answered: "I should give an occasional dinner, and select my
society well; and I should come out of that horrible garret in the
Temple, sir." And so Arthur compromised by descending to the second
floor in Lamb-court: Warrington still occupying his old quarters, and
the two friends being determined not to part one from the other.
Cultivate kindly, reader, those friendships of your youth: it is only
in that generous time that they are formed. How different the
intimacies of after days are, and how much weaker the grasp of your
own hand after it has been shaken about in twenty years' commerce with
the world, and has squeezed and dropped a thousand equally careless
palms! As you can seldom fashion your tongue to speak a new language
after twenty, the heart refuses to receive friendship pretty soon: it
gets too hard to yield to the impression.
So Pen had many acquaintances, and being of a jovial and easy turn,
got more daily: but no friend like Warrington; and the two men
continued to live almost as much in common as the Knights of the
Temple, riding upon one horse (for Pen's was at Warrington's service),
and having their chambers and their servitor in common.
Mr. Warrington had made the acquaintance of Pen's friends of
Grosvenor-place during their last unlucky season in London, and had
expressed himself no better satisfied with Sir Francis and Lady
Clavering and her ladyship's daughter than was the public in general.
"The world is right," George said, "about those people. The young men
laugh and talk freely before those ladies, and about them. The girl
sees people whom she has no right to know, and talks to men with whom
no girl should have an intimacy. Did you see those two reprobates
leaning over Lady Clavering's carriage in the Park the other day, and
leering under Miss Blanche's bonnet? No good mother would let her
daughter know those men, or admit them within her doors."
"The Begum is the most innocent and good-natured soul alive,"
interposed Pen. "She never heard any harm of Captain Blackball, or
read that trial in which Charley Lovelace figures. Do you suppose that
honest ladies read and remember the Chronique Scandaleuse as well as
you, you old grumbler?"
"Would you like Laura Bell to know those fellows?" Warrington asked,
his face turning rather red. "Would you let any woman you loved be
contaminated by their company? I have no doubt that poor Begum is
ignorant of their histories. It seems to me she is ignorant of a great
number of better things. It seems to me that your honest Begum is not
a lady, Pen. It is not her fault, doubtless, that she has not had the
education, or learned the refinements of a lady."
"She is as moral as Lady Portsea, who has all the world at her balls,
and as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the king's English, and has
half-a-dozen dukes at her table," Pen answered, rather sulkily. "Why
should you and I be more squeamish than the rest of the world? Why are
we to visit the sins of her fathers on this harmless, kind creature?
She never did any thing but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far
as she knows she does her best. She does not set up to be more than
she is. She gives you the best dinners she can buy, and the best
company she can get. She pays the debts of that scamp of a husband of
hers. She spoils her boy like the most virtuous mother in England. Her
opinion about literary matters, to be sure, is not much; and I daresay
she never read a line of Wordsworth, or heard of Tennyson in
her life."
"No more has Mrs. Flanagan the laundress," growled out Pen's Mentor;
"no more has Betty the housemaid; and I have no word of blame against
them. But a high-souled man doesn't make friends of these. A
gentleman doesn't choose these for his companions, or bitterly rues it
afterward if he do. Are you, who are setting up to be a man of the
world and philosopher, to tell me that the aim of life is to guttle
three courses and dine off silver? Do you dare to own to yourself that
your ambition in life is good claret, and that you'll dine with any,
provided you get a stalled ox to feed on? You call me a Cynic--why,
what a monstrous Cynicism it is, which you and the rest of you men of
the world admit. I'd rather live upon raw turnips and sleep in a
hollow tree, or turn backwoodsman or savage, than degrade myself to
this civilization, and own that a French cook was the thing in life
best worth living for."
"Because you like a raw beef-steak and a pipe afterward," broke out
Pen, "you give yourself airs of superiority over people, whose tastes
are more dainty, and are not ashamed of the world they live in. Who
goes about professing particular admiration, or esteem, or friendship,
or gratitude, even for the people one meets every day? If A. asks me
to his house, and gives me his best, I take his good things for what
they are worth, and no more. I do not profess to pay him back in
friendship, but in the convention's money of society. When we part, we
part without any grief. When we meet, we are tolerably glad to see one
another. If I were only to live with my friends, your black muzzle,
old George, is the only face I should see."
"You are your uncle's pupil," said Warrington, rather sadly; "and you
speak like a worldling."
"And why not?" asked Pendennis; "why not acknowledge the world I stand
upon, and submit to the conditions of the society which we live in and
live by? I am older than you, George, in spite of your grizzled
whiskers, and have seen much more of the world than you have in your
garret here, shut up with your books and your reveries and your ideas
of one-and-twenty. I say, I take the world as it is, and being of it,
will not be ashamed of it. If the time is out of joint, have I any
calling or strength to set it right?"
"Indeed, I don't think you have much of either," growled Pen's
interlocutor.
"If I doubt whether I am better than my neighbor," Arthur
continued--"if I concede that I am no better--I also doubt whether he
is better than I. I see men who begin with ideas of universal reform,
and who, before their beards are grown, propound their loud plans for
the regeneration of mankind, give up their schemes after a few years
of bootless talking and vain-glorious attempts to lead their fellows;
and after they have found that men will no longer hear them, as indeed
they never were in the least worthy to be heard, sink quietly into the
rank and file--acknowledging their aims impracticable, or thankful
that they were never put into practice. The fiercest reformers grow
calm, and are fain to put up with things as they are: the loudest
Radical orators become dumb, quiescent placemen: the most fervent
Liberals, when out of power, become humdrum Conservatives, or
downright tyrants or despots in office. Look at Thiers, look at
Guizot, in opposition and in place! Look at the Whigs appealing
to the country, and the Whigs in power! Would you say that the conduct
of these men is an act of treason, as the Radicals bawl--who would
give way in their turn, were their turn ever to come? No, only that
they submit to circumstances which are stronger than they--march as
the world marches toward reform, but at the world's pace (and the
movements of the vast body of mankind must needs be slow)--forego this
scheme as impracticable, on account of opposition--that as immature,
because against the sense of the majority--are forced to calculate
drawbacks and difficulties, as well as to think of reforms and
advances--and compelled finally to submit, and to wait, and to
compromise."
"The Right Honorable Arthur Pendennis could not speak better, or be
more satisfied with himself, if he was First Lord of the Treasury and
Chancellor of the Exchequer," Warrington said.
"Self-satisfied? Why self-satisfied?" continued Pen. "It seems to me
that my skepticism is more respectful and more modest than the
revolutionary ardor of other folks. Many a patriot of eighteen, many a
spouting-club orator, would turn the bishops out of the House of Lords
to-morrow, and throw the lords out after the bishops, and throw the
throne into the Thames after the peers and the bench. Is that man more
modest than I, who take these institutions as I find them, and wait
for time and truth to develop, or fortify, or (if you like) destroy
them? A college tutor, or a nobleman's toady, who appears one fine day
as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and
assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at
Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor
under-graduates in the lecture-room. An hereditary legislator, who
passes his time with jockeys and blacklegs and ballet-girls, and who
is called to rule over me and his other betters, because his
grandfather made a lucky speculation in the funds, or found a coal or
tin-mine on his property, or because his stupid ancestor happened to
be in command of ten thousand men as brave as himself, who overcame
twelve thousand Frenchmen, or fifty thousand Indians--such a man, I
say, inspires me with no more respect than the bitterest democrat can
feel toward him. But, such as he is, he is a part of the old society
to which we belong: and I submit to his lordship with acquiescence;
and he takes his place above the best of us at all dinner parties, and
there bides his time. I don't want to chop his head off with a
guillotine, or to fling mud at him in the streets. When they call such
a man a disgrace to his order; and such another, who is good and
gentle, refined and generous, who employs his great means in promoting
every kindness and charity, and art and grace of life, in the kindest
and most gracious manner, an ornament to his rank--the question as to
the use and propriety of the order is not in the least affected one
way or other. There it is, extant among us, a part of our habits, the
creed of many of us, the growth of centuries, the symbol of a most
complicated tradition--there stand my lord the bishop and my lord the
hereditary legislator--what the French call _transactions_ both of
them--representing in their present shape mail-clad barons and
double-sworded chiefs (from whom their lordships the hereditaries,
for the most part, _don't_ descend), and priests, professing to hold
an absolute truth and a divinely inherited power, the which truth
absolute our ancestors burned at the stake, and denied there; the
which divine transmissible power still exists in print--to be
believed, or not, pretty much at choice; and of these, I say, I
acquiesce that they exist, and no more. If you say that these schemes,
devised before printing was known, or steam was born; when thought was
an infant, scared and whipped; and truth under its guardians was
gagged, and swathed, and blindfolded, and not allowed to lift its
voice, or to look out or to walk under the sun; before men were
permitted to meet, or to trade, or to speak with each other--if any
one says (as some faithful souls do) that these schemes are for ever,
and having been changed, and modified constantly are to be subject to
no farther development or decay, I laugh, and let the man speak. But I
would have toleration for these, as I would ask it for my own
opinions; and if they are to die, I would rather they had a decent and
natural than an abrupt and violent death."
"You would have sacrificed to Jove," Warrington said, "had you lived
in the time of the Christian persecutions."
"Perhaps I would," said Pen, with some sadness. "Perhaps I am a
coward--perhaps my faith is unsteady; but this is my own reserve. What
I argue here is that I will not persecute. Make a faith or a dogma
absolute, and persecution becomes a logical consequence; and Dominic
burns a Jew, or Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or
Mary a Papist or Protestant; or their father both or either, according
to his humor; and acting without any pangs of remorse--but, on the
contrary, with strict notions of duty fulfilled. Make dogma absolute,
and to inflict or to suffer death becomes easy and necessary; and
Mahomet's soldiers shouting 'Paradise! Paradise!' and dying on the
Christian spears, are not more or less praiseworthy than the same men
slaughtering a townful of Jews, or cutting off the heads of all
prisoners who would not acknowledge that there was but one prophet
of God."
"A little while since, young one," Warrington said, who had been
listening to his friend's confessions neither without sympathy nor
scorn, for his mood led him to indulge in both, "you asked me why I
remained out of the strife of the world, and looked on at the great
labor of my neighbor without taking any part in the struggle. Why,
what a mere dilettante you own yourself to be, in this confession of
general skepticism, and what a listless spectator yourself! You are
six-and-twenty years old, and as _blase_ as a rake of sixty. You
neither hope much, nor care much, nor believe much. You doubt about
other men as much as about yourself. Were it made of such
_pococuranti_ as you, the world would be intolerable; and I had rather
live in a wilderness of monkeys, and listen to their chatter, than in
a company of men who denied every thing."
"Were the world composed of Saint Bernards or Saint Dominics, it would
be equally odious," said Pen, "and at the end of a few scores of years
would cease to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his
head shaved, and every woman in a cloister--carrying out to the full
the ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from
every lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of
the forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a
skeptic because I acknowledge what _is_; and in acknowledging that, be
it linnet or lark, a priest or parson, be it, I mean, any single one
of the infinite varieties of the creatures of God (whose very name I
would be understood to pronounce with reverence, and never to approach
but with distant awe), I say that the study and acknowledgment of that
variety among men especially increases our respect and wonder for the
Creator, Commander, and Ordainer of all these minds, so different and
yet so united--meeting in a common adoration, and offering up each
according to his degree and means of approaching the Divine centre,
his acknowledgment of praise and worship, each singing (to recur to
the bird simile) his natural song."
"And so, Arthur, the hymn of a saint, or the ode of a poet, or the
chant of a Newgate thief, are all pretty much the same in your
philosophy," said George.
"Even that sneer could be answered were it to the point," Pendennis
replied; "but it is not; and it could be replied to you, that even to
the wretched outcry of the thief on the tree, the wisest and the best
of all teachers we know of, the untiring Comforter and Consoler,
promised a pitiful hearing and a certain hope. Hymns of saints! Odes
of poets! who are we to measure the chances and opportunities, the
means of doing, or even judging, right and wrong, awarded to men; and
to establish the rule for meting out their punishments and rewards? We
are as insolent and unthinking in judging of men's morals as of their
intellects. We admire this man as being a great philosopher, and set
down the other as a dullard, not knowing either, or the amount of
truth in either, or being certain of the truth any where. We sing Te
Deum for this hero who has won a battle, and De Profundis for that
other one who has broken out of prison, and has been caught afterward
by the policemen. Our measure of rewards and punishments is most
partial and incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly, and we
wish to continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful
world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent party
verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little
rods to measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in comparison to that,
Newton's mind or Pascal's or Shakspeare's was any loftier than mine;
as if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than
the man who blacks my boots. Measured by that altitude, the tallest
and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base,
that I say we should take no count of the calculation, and it is a
meanness to reckon the difference."
"Your figure fails there, Arthur," said the other, better pleased; "if
even by common arithmetic we can multiply as we can reduce almost
infinitely, the Great Reckoner must take count of all; and the small
is not small, or the great great, to his infinity."
"I don't call those calculations in question," Arthur said: "I only
say that yours are incomplete and premature; false in consequence,
and, by every operation, multiplying into wider error. I do not
condemn the man who murdered Socrates and damned Galileo. I say that
they damned Galileo and murdered Socrates."
"And yet but a moment since you admitted the propriety of acquiescence
in the present, and, I suppose, all other tyrannies?"
"No: but that if an opponent menaces me, of whom and without cost of
blood and violence I can get rid, I would rather wait him out, and
starve him out, than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal
skeptically. Who was his Roman coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch
when we were boys, who scoffed at the other's procrastination and
doubted his courage, and engaged the enemy and was beaten for
his pains?"
In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader may
perhaps see allusions to questions which, no doubt, have occupied and
discomposed himself, and which he has answered by very different
solutions to those come to by our friend. We are not pledging
ourselves for the correctness of his opinions, which readers will
please to consider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no
more answerable for them, than for the sentiments uttered by any other
character of the story: our endeavor is merely to follow out, in its
progress, the development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but
not ungenerous or unkind, or truth-avoiding man. And it will be seen
that the lamentable stage to which his logic at present has brought
him, is one of general skepticism and sneering acquiescence in the
world as it is; or if you like so to call it, a belief qualified with
scorn in all things extant. The tastes and habits of such a man
prevent him from being a boisterous demagogue, and his love of truth
and dislike of cant keep him from advancing crude propositions, such
as many loud reformers are constantly ready with; much more of
uttering downright falsehoods in arguing questions or abusing
opponents, which he would die or starve rather than use. It was not in
our friend's nature to be able to utter certain lies; nor was he
strong enough to protest against others, except with a polite sneer;
his maxim being, that he owed obedience to all Acts of Parliament, as
long as they were not repealed.
And to what does this easy and skeptical life lead a man? Friend
Arthur was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the Wilderness
shouting to the poor, who were listening with all their might and
faith to the preacher's awful accents and denunciations of wrath or
woe or salvation; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek
mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade
of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his
roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book babbling of honey and
Hybla, and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this
skepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and
selfishness, so to speak--the more shameful, because it is so
good-humored and conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is
conscience? Why accept remorse? What is public or private faith?
Mythuses alike enveloped in enormous tradition. If seeing and
acknowledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can with
only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest
farther than a laugh: if plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you
allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved: if the
fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honor are on the
ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on
your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you
had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a
sensual coward.
"The truth, friend!" Arthur said, imperturbably; "where is the truth?
Show it me. That is the question between us. I see it on both sides. I
see it in the Conservative side of the house, and among the Radicals,
and even on the ministerial benches. I see it in this man who worships
by act of Parliament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five
thousand a year; in that man, who, driven fatally by the remorseless
logic of his creed, gives up every thing, friends, fame, dearest ties,
closest vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, the recognized
position of a leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, to the enemy,
in whose ranks he will serve henceforth as a nameless private
soldier:--I see the truth in that man, as I do in his brother, whose
logic drives him to quite a different conclusion, and who, after
having passed a life in vain endeavors to reconcile an irreconcileable
book, flings it at last down in despair, and declares, with tearful
eyes, and hands up to heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth
is with all these, why should I take side with any one of them? Some
are called upon to preach: let them preach. Of these preachers there
are somewhat too many, methinks, who fancy they have the gift. But we
can not all be parsons in church, that is clear. Some must sit silent
and listen, or go to sleep mayhap. Have we not all our duties? The
head charity-boy blows the bellows; the master canes the other boys in
the organ-loft; the clerk sings out Amen from the desk; and the beadle
with the staff opens the door for his Reverence, who rustles in silk
up to the cushion. I won't cane the boys, nay, or say Amen always, or
act as the church's champion and warrior, in the shape of the beadle
with the staff; but I will take off my hat in the place, and say my
prayers there too, and shake hands with the clergyman as he steps on
the grass outside. Don't I know that his being there is a compromise,
and that he stands before me an Act of Parliament? That the church he
occupies was built for other worship? That the Methodist chapel is
next door; and that Bunyan the tinker is bawling out the tidings of
damnation on the common hard by? Yes, I am a Sadducee; and I take
things as I find them, and the world, and the Acts of Parliament of
the world, as they are; and as I intend to take a wife, if I find
one--not to be madly in love and prostrate at her feet like a
fool--not to worship her as an angel, or to expect to find her as
such--but to be good-natured to her, and courteous, expecting
good-nature and pleasant society from her in turn. And so, George, if
ever you hear of my marrying, depend on it, it won't be a romantic
attachment on my side: and if you hear of any good place under
Government, I have no particular scruples that I know of, which would
prevent me from accepting your offer."
"O Pen, you scoundrel! I know what you mean," here Warrington broke
out. "This is the meaning of your skepticism, of your quietism, of
your atheism, my poor fellow. You're going to sell yourself, and
Heaven help you! You're going to make a bargain which will degrade you
and make you miserable for life, and there's no use talking of it. If
you are once bent on it, the devil won't prevent you."
"On the contrary, he's on my side, isn't he, George?" said Pen with a
laugh. "What good cigars these are! Come down and have a little dinner
at the Club; the _chef's_ in town, and he'll cook a good one for me.
No, you won't? Don't be sulky, old boy, I'm going down to--to the
country to-morrow."