Читать книгу A Whim, and Its Consequences - G. P. R. James - Страница 8

We have histories of almost everything that the earth contains, or ever has contained--of kings, and bloody battles; (almost inseparable from kings;) of republics, and domestic anarchy; (inseparable from republics;) of laws, rents, prices; (Tooke has despatched prices;) of churches, sects, religions; of society--that grand, strange, unaccountable compound of evil and good; where men's vices and virtues, ever at war, are made mutually to counteract each other, and bring about an equilibrium balanced on a hair; always vibrating, sometimes terribly deranged, but ever returning to its poise. But, thank Heaven! we have not absolutely histories of everything; and, amongst others, we have not a history of opinion. The world, however, is a strange place; the men and women in it, strange creatures; and the man who would sit down to write a true history of opinions, showing how baseless are those most fondly clung to, how absurd are those most reverently followed, how wicked are some of those esteemed most holy, would, in any country, and in any age, be pursued and persecuted till he were as dead as the carrion on which feeds the crow; nay, long after his miserable bones were as white as an egg-shell. I am even afraid of the very assertion; for the world is too vain, and too cowardly, to hear that any of its opinions are wrong; and we must swim with the stream, if we would swim at all. There is one thing, indeed, to be said, which justifies the world, although it is not the ground on which the world acts--that he who would upset the opinions established, were he ten times wiser than Solon, or Solomon either, would produce a thousand evils where he removed one. It is an old coat that will not bear mending; and the wearer is, perhaps, right to fly at every one who would peck it. Moreover, there is primâ facie, very little cause to suppose that he who would overthrow the notions which have been entertained, with slight modifications, by thousands of human beings through thousands of years, is a bit more wise, enlightened, true, or virtuous, than the rest; and I will fairly confess, that I have never yet seen one of these moral knights-errant who did not replace error by error, folly by folly, contradiction by contradiction, the absurdities of others by absurdities of his own. Nay, more; amongst all who have started up to work a radical change in the opinions of mankind, I have never heard but of one, the universal adoption of whose views, in their entirety, would have made the whole race wiser, better, and happier. He was God as well as man. Men crucified him; and, lest the imperishable truth should condemn them, set to work to corrupt his words, and pervert his doctrines, within a century after he had passed from earth. Gnostics, monks, priests, saints, fathers, all added or took away; and then they closed the book, and sealed it with a brazen clasp.

Still there are some good men withal, but not wise, who, bold, and somewhat vain, set at nought the danger of combatting the world's opinion, judge for themselves, often not quite sanely, and have a pride in differing from others. Such is the case, in a great degree, with that old gentleman sitting at the breakfast-table, on the right-hand side, with the light streaming through the still green leaves of plants in a fine conservatory, pouring on his broad bald head and gray hair. I do not mean the man so like him, but somewhat younger, who is reading a newspaper at the end of the table, while he takes his coffee, colder than it might have been, if he had contented himself with doing one thing at one time. They are brothers; but very different in habits, thoughts, and views. The organ of reverence, if there be such an organ, is very large in the one, nearly wanting in the other; and yet there are some things that the elder brother does reverence, too--virtue, honour, gentleness, purity. Now, he would not, for the world, shock the ears of those two beautiful girls, his brother's daughters, with many of the notions which he himself entertains. He reverences conscientious conviction, even where he differs; and would not take away a hope, or undermine a principle, for the world.

The elder girl asked him if he would take any more coffee. "No, my Lily," he answered, (for he was poetical in speech and mind,) "not even from your hands, love;" and rising for a moment from the table, with his hands behind his broad burly back, he moved to the window, and looked into the conservatory.

"What makes you so grave, dear uncle?" asked the other girl, following; "I will know; for I am in all your secrets."

"All, my Rose?" he said, smiling at her, and taking one of the rich curls of her hair in his hand. "What heart ever lays bare all its secrets? One you do not know."

"Indeed!" she cried, sportively. "Then confess it this instant. You have no right to have any from me."

"Listen, then," he answered, pulling her to him with a look of fatherly affection, and whispering: "I am in love with Rose Tracy. Don't tell Lily, for I am in love with her too; and unfortunately, we are not in Turkey, where polygamy gives vast scope to the tender passions."

"What is he saying about me?" asked Emily Tracy, the elder of the nieces, who caught the sound of her own abbreviated name. "Do not believe a word he says, Rose; he is the most perfidious of men."

"I know he is," replied her sister; "he is just now sighing over the prohibition of polygamy, and wishing himself in Turkey."

"Not if you were not with me, Rose," cried her uncle, with a hearty laugh that shook the room. "Why should I not have a whole garden of roses--with some lilies--with some lilies too? Ha, ha, ha!"

"It is always the way with men who never marry at all," said Emily; "they all long for polygamy. Why do you not try what a single marriage is like, my dear uncle, before you think of multiplying it?"

"Because two panniers are more easily borne than one, my Lily," answered her uncle, laughing again.

The two girls united to scold him; and he replied with compliments, sometimes hyperbolical, sometimes bitter, and with much laughter, till his brother was roused from his deep studies, laid down the newspaper, drunk his coffee, and joined them at the window.

"Well, Walter," he said, "I see those amusing Frenchmen have given a verdict of guilty, with extenuating circumstances, against another woman who has poisoned her husband with arsenic. He was kind, tender, affectionate, the evidence shows; forgave her a great many offences; and treated her with anything but harshness, though she certainly was not the best of wives. She poisoned him slowly, quietly, deliberately, that she might marry a paramour, who had already corrupted her. Yet they find 'extenuating circumstances.'"

"To be sure," answered General Tracy. "Do you not see them, Arthur? You say, he forgave her a great number of offences, and consequently, did not do his duty to himself, or to her. But the truth is, these Frenchmen think murder better than execution; and, after massacring thousands of honest men, some forty or fifty years ago, will not now put one guilty man to death, though his crime is proved by irresistible evidence."

"It is all slop," replied Mr. Arthur Tracy. "The word is, perhaps, a little vulgar, but yet I repeat it, 'It is all slop.' I will write an essay upon slop, someday; for we have just as much of it in England, as they have in France; only we shelter murder under a monomania, and the French under extenuating circumstances. It is wonderful how slop is beginning to pervade all classes of society. It already affects even romance-writers and novelists. The people used to rejoice in blood and murder, so that an old circulating library was like a bear's den; nothing but gore and bones. But now one is sickened in every page, with maudling sentimentality, only fit for the second piece of a minor theatre. Love-sick dustmen, wronged and sentimental greengrocers; poetic and inspired costermongers; with a whole host of blind, lame, and deformed peasantry and paupers, transformed into angels and cherubs, by the assistance of a few clap-trap phrases, which have been already hackneyed for half a century on the stage. Slop, slop, Walter; it is all slop; and at the bottom of every kind of slop, is charlatanism."

"Humbug, you mean," said his elder brother. "Why do you use a French word, when you can get an English one, Arthur?"

"If the men really wished to defend the cause of the poor," continued Mr. Tracy, taking no notice of his brother's reproach, "why don't they paint them and their griefs as they really are? Did you ever see, Walter, in all your experience, such lackadaisical, poetical, white-aproned damsels amongst the lower classes, as we find in books now-a-days?"

"Oh yes," said General Tracy; "I'll find you as many as you like, on the condition that they be educated at a ladies' charity-school, where they stitch romance into their samplers, write verses in their copy-books, and learn to scrub the floors to etherial music.--But come, my Flowers," he added, turning to his nieces, "will you take a walk? and we will go and see some real cottages, and see some real peasants."

His proposal was willingly agreed to; and Mr. Tracy--who was of a speculative disposition--was speculating whether he should go with them, or not, when the butler entered and put his negative upon it, by saying: "Please, Sir, here is a young man come to ask about the head gardener's place."

"I will see him in a minute," said Mr. Tracy. "Show him into the library."

While the father of the family, after looking at one or two more paragraphs in the newspaper, walked into his library, to see the person who waited for him, his two daughters had gone to put on bonnets and shawls; and the old General sauntered out, through the conservatory, to the lawn before the house. Nothing could be more beautiful, or more tasteful, than the arrangements of the whole grounds. Large masses of hardy exotics were planted round, now, alas! no longer in flower; but a multitude of the finest and the rarest evergreens hid the ravages which the vanguard of winter had already made, and afforded shelter from the cutting winds to some few autumnal flowers, which yet lingered, as if unwilling to obey the summons to the grave. The old man gazed upon the gardens, and vacant parterres; upon the shrubberies of evergreen, and upon the leafless plants beside them; and a sad and solemn spirit came upon him as he looked. Poetry, the magic mirror in the mind, which reflects all external things with hues more intense than the realities, received and returned every sad image, that the decay of nature's children presents, in colours more profound and dark. He thought of the tomb, and of corruption, and of the vanity of all man's efforts upon earth, and upon the sleep that knows no waking, and the perishing of our very memory from among our kindred and our race. The warm life that still throbbed high in his old heart, revolted at the idea of cold extinction, he felt that it is a terrible doom that rests upon all the children of the dust; but threefold terrible, to the only being conscious of its inevitable coming, filled with the first of the waters of life, instinct with appreciation of all its excellence. He had been in battle, that old man, he had faced the cannon and the bayonet, had heard the eager balls whistle round his temples, screaming like vultures for his blood; he had seen thousands dying about him; but he had never felt what a dreary thing death is, as in the presence of those fading flowers.

At length the two girls joined him, and he put on a less thoughtful air; but Rose, the youngest and the gayest, had a shadow on her brow; he knew not from what. It was not altogether sad; but it was as if a cloud had passed for a moment between her eyes and the sun, rendering the deep blue more deep.

The day was fine and bright, but cold; and a shrewd wind moved the dry leaves about under the trees, making them whisper like ghosts as they rustled past. The old man breasted the breeze, however; and his clear rosy cheek seemed to glow only the more warmly in the spirit of resistance. So, too, his mind opposed itself to the blast of chill thoughts which had assailed him, and he laughed and jested with his nieces, as they went, on the very subjects which had oppressed him when alone.

"Look, Lily," he said, "how all the children of the spring are gathered into the grave of winter, already massed up to crumble down, and be succeeded by others doomed to pass away after a brief space like themselves! And thus we shall all tumble from our boughs and wither. There, that faded thing is me, full of holes and scars as a politician's conscience; and that Michaelmas-daisy is you, Lily, blossoming upon the arm of winter."

"You are lively, dear uncle," said Emily, laughing; "and Rose does not seem gay, though she was so merry just now. You must have said something very serious to her at the window, for she has been in a reverie ever since we left the breakfast-room."

"Faith, I was very serious," answered her uncle: "I offered her marriage; but she said it was against the laws of the realm and the common prayer-book, to marry your grandfather or your uncle. What is it, Summer-flower, that makes you hang your head?"

"Winter, I suppose, uncle," replied his younger niece. "But, if truth must be told, I am not warm. Lest us walk more quickly, till we get behind the grove, where there is shelter from this biting wind."

They did walk on more quickly; and Rose, either by an effort, or naturally, grew gayer. They passed through the grove, and out upon the fields, then through lanes again, deep, between banks, with withered shrubs above, when suddenly there came upon them a smell, pleasant in winter, of burning wood, mingled with turf.

"There are some of the yellow people near," said General Tracy. "Now, Rose, is the time, if you would have your fortune told."

"I should like it, of all things," cried the girl, gladly. "Dear uncle, let us find them out, and hear what a trifle of husbands and wives they will give us. You will come in for your share, depend upon it; and a sweet delusive vision of polygamy and 'famed Turkie' will be afforded you yet."

"Oh! I am quite ready," said her uncle. "But, what say you, Lily?"

"That I think it is always very foolish," answered Emily, "to have anything to do with such people. If you believe them, they make you uneasy, and play upon your credulity. If you do not believe them, why give half-a-crown for imposition?"

"Reasoned like Aristotle, dear Lily," exclaimed her uncle; "but there is one point in philosophy which you have not taken into consideration. Everybody has a certain portion of folly to expend, which, like a boy's new guinea, burns his pocket till it is all gone. Now I wish every one had as innocent a way of spending his foolishness: so Rose and I will have our fortunes told. You shall do as you like."

"I am as glad of having half-a-crown in my pocket," cried Rose, "as a housemaid when she first hears the cuckoo."

While they had been speaking they had walked on through the lane to a wider spot, where, under a yellow bank, with blackberries still hanging above, like dark eyes amongst the withered leaves, rose up the smoke of the forbidden pot. Two or three of the tents of Kedar were seen under shelter of the high ground, dingy and begrimed with manifold seasons of exposure, and apparently not large enough to hold one of the bipeds which usually nestle in them in multitudes. The reason given for an ostrich not sitting on its eggs (which is very doubtful, by-the-by) might well be given for a gipsey not living in his tent, i. e. because his legs are too long; but, not to discuss the matter too philosophically, there were the tents, but no gipseys in them. Nor were there many out of them in their immediate neighbourhood; for only one was to be seen, and that a woman. Not the slightest touch of Meg Merrilies, not the slightest touch of Lena, was apparent in the worthy dame. She was a woman perhaps of six or seven and twenty years of age, as yellow as a crow's foot, but with a good warm glow shining through the golden russet. Her eyes were black as sloes, and shining like polished jet. The features were all good, though not as new as they once had been; very like the features of figures found painted in Egyptian tombs, if ever you saw them, reader--straight, yet not Grecian, and more resembling those of the bust of the sybil than any others of classical lands and times. She was still plump, and in good case, without having reached the full amplitude (is that a pleonasm?) which it is probable she would attain, and still farther removed from that state of desiccation at which she would certainly arrive if she lived long enough. Her head was covered with the peculiar straw bonnet, in the peculiar shape which has given a name to a part of ladies' head gear; from her shoulders hung the red cloak, and crossed upon her abundant bosom was a handkerchief of crimson and yellow. She was not at all poetical or romantical, but a very handsome woman notwithstanding. She was evidently a priestess of Vesta, without vows, left to keep the sacred fire in, while the rest of the sisterhood and brotherhood were absent upon different errands; and as soon as she perceived a well-dressed party approaching, she abandoned the flame, and came forward with her head bent coaxingly, and her black eyes gleaming forth from beneath the raven hair. The rapid look she gave to each, seemed enough to afford her every clue to character she might want; and with vast volubility she cried, in a musical but whining tone, "Cross my hand, dear ladies and gentleman; cross my hand, pretty ladies--cross it with silver, or cross it with gold, 'tis all the same; you have nice fortunes, I can see by the corner of the eye. I shall have to tell you wonderful things, when I look in your palms, I know, pretty ladies. And that old gentleman will have half a dozen wives yet, for all his hair is so white, and children like a covey of partridges."

Rose laughed gaily, drew out her purse, and tendered her fair hand. The gipsey woman, after having got her fee, took the rosy tip of the long, taper middle finger, and gazed as seriously into the palm as if she believed there was truth in her art. Perhaps she did, for imposture is often like a charge of gun-powder, and acts as strongly towards the breech as towards the muzzle. But when she had examined the few soft lines for a minute, she shook her head gravely, saying, "You will live long and happily, pretty lady, though there's a sad cross about the beginning of the line of life; but the line goes through, and then it's all clear; and, let me see--yes--you shall marry a gardener."

With a start, Rose drew away her hand, and her face became crimson; while her sister and her uncle laughed aloud, with a little spice of good-humoured malice.

"Come," cried the old General, "there's a fine fate for you, Flower! Now are you satisfied? It is true, depend upon it; it is true. These Egyptians were always masters of mighty secrets; witness their rods turned into serpents, though it was but to feast Aaron's rod. But this brown lady of Egypt shall tell my fortune, too; for she looks

'A palace

For crowned truth to dwell in--.'

Here, my sorceress, look at my palm, and see what you can make of that! It has been crossed by many a piece of gold and silver in its day, as well as your own."

The woman resumed her examination; and studied the broad furrowed hand attentively. At length she said, looking up in the old man's face, "You shall live as you have lived, but not die as you have lived. You shall not fall by fire or steel."

"Nor lead?" asked the soldier.

"No," she answered, "nor by accident of any kind; but by slow decay, like a sick bird in a cage, or a sick horse in a stall; and you shall see death coming for long days before he comes."

"That's not pleasant," said General Tracy. "But what will become of my half dozen of wives?"

"They will all die with you," answered the woman with a grin, which showed her white teeth to the back; "for no other wife will you have than you now have."

"Hard fate!" cried Walter Tracy, lifting up his hands and eyes, and laughing--"six wives all in one day, and their husband, to boot! But I understand how it is. They must be all Hindoos, and will burn themselves at my funeral, poor things! Now, Emily, it is your turn."

"Not I," replied the young lady, gravely; "I have not the slightest inclination."

"Ah, pretty lady," cried the gipsey, "do cross my hand, and I will tell your beautiful fortune in a minute."

"No, indeed, my good woman," replied Emily Tracy. "I am quite contented to wait till God shows it to me. If I believed you could tell, I should think it wrong to ask you; and as I do not believe you can, it would be only foolish."

The gipsey woman looked at her fiercely, and exclaimed, with an angry and menacing voice, "You do not believe? I will make you believe. I don't need to look in your hand. Your proud heart will be humbled--you will marry a felon."

"Come, come, this is somewhat too much," said General Tracy; "no insolence, my good woman, or I may have occasion to punish it. Those who are foolish enough to ask you questions, you may answer as you will; but you have no right to say such things to those who make no inquiries of you."

"It is true, and so you will find," answered the woman, returning sullenly to her pot; and without taking any further notice of her, the party walked on.