Читать книгу Beauchamp; or, The Error - G. P. R. James - Страница 14

Mr. Beauchamp was sitting alone in the little room of the inn about five hours after Ned Hayward had left him. The day had been very warm for the season of the year, and though he had taken his walk as usual in the most shady and pensive places he could discover, he had found it oppressive, and had returned sooner than he ordinarily did. Mr. Groomber, worthy Mr. Groomber, the landlord of the White Hart, had perceived his return through the glass-doors of the bar, and had rolled in to tell him, as a piece of news, that the post-boy who had driven Mrs. and Miss Clifford had been, as he termed it, "had up" before Mr. Wittingham and examined, but had been speedily dismissed, he having sworn most valorously that he could not identify any of the persons concerned in stopping the chaise on the preceding night.

Mr. Beauchamp merely replied, "I thought so," and taking up a book, gave quiet intimation that he wished to be alone. As soon as the host had retired, however, he suffered the open volume to drop upon his knee, and gave himself up to thought, apparently of not the most cheerful kind, for the broad open brow became somewhat contracted, the fine dark eyes fixed upon one particular spot on the floor, the lip assumed a melancholy, even a cynical expression, and without moving limb or feature, he remained for at least a quarter of an hour in meditation most profound.

For my own part I do not see what business men have to think at all. If it be of the past, can they recall it? If it be of the future, can they govern it? No, no, and the present is for action, not for meditation. It was very foolish of Mr. Beauchamp to think, but yet he did so, and profoundly. But of what were his thoughts? I cannot tell. Some I know, some I do not know; or rather like an intercepted letter, the actual course of his meditation was plain enough, written in clear and forcible lines, but the wide world of circumstances to which it referred, its relations with his fate, with his past history, with his present condition, with his future prospects, were all in darkness.

"It is in vain," he said to himself, "all in vain! Peace, happiness, tranquillity--where do they dwell? Are they the mere phantasms of man's ever-building imaginations? creations of fancy to satisfy the craving need of the soul? And yet some men can obtain them. This very Captain Hayward, he seems at least as well contented, as well satisfied with himself, the world, and all the world gives, as it is possible to conceive. But it is not so--it cannot be so. There is a black spot somewhere, I am sure--some bitter memory, some disappointed hope, some aspiration ever desired. He owned he dared not venture to love--is not that to be in a continued chain, to bear a fetter about one? and yet he seemed contented with such a fate. It is the regulation of our desires that makes us happy, the bounding them to our means--ay, with those who have no already existing cause for sorrow, but the cup of our fate is ever open for each passing hand to drop a poison into it, and once there, it pervades the whole--the whole? by every drop down to the very dregs, turning the sweetness and the spirit of the wine of life to bitterness and death. What is it that I want that can make existence pleasant? Wealth, health, a mind carefully trained and furnished with the keys to every door of mental enjoyment--with love for my fellow-creatures, good will to all men, I have all--surely all; but, alas! I have memory too, and like the pillar of the cloud, it sometimes follows me, darkening the past, sometimes goes before me, obscuring the future. Yet this is very weak. An effort of the mind--the mind I have vainly thought so strong--should surely suffice to cast off the load. I have tried occupation, calm enjoyments, fair scenes, tranquil pleasures, peaceful amusements. Perhaps in a more fiery and eager course, in active, energetic pursuits in passions that absorb all the feelings, and wrap the soul in their own mantle, I may find forgetfulness. In all that I have hitherto done--there have been long intervals--open gates for bitter memory to enter, and the very nature of my chosen objects has invited her. Oh, yes, there must be such a thing as happiness: that girl's fair joyous face, her smile teeming with radiance, told me so. But I will not think of her. She is too bright, and fair, and happy to be made a partner in so hazardous a speculation as mine. I will go away from this place: it has given my mind some little repose, and I could have made a friend of that light, good-humoured Hayward if he would have let me--but he has left me too--all things leave me, I think. Well, he is gone, and I will go too--'tis not worth while lingering longer."

At this point of his meditations some horses passed the window, and shadows darkened the room; but Beauchamp took no notice, till he heard a voice which had become somewhat familiar to him during the last eighteen hours, exclaiming, "Ostler, ostler!" and in a moment after Ned Hayward was in the room again, but not alone. He was followed by the portly figure of Sir John Slingsby, dressed in riding costume, and though somewhat dusty, and certainly very round and heavy, yet bearing that undefinable and almost ineffaceable look of a gentleman which not even oddities and excesses had been able to wipe out.

Ned Hayward's words were few and soon spoken: "Mr. Beauchamp, Sir John Slingsby; Sir John, Mr. Beauchamp," were all he said, but the old baronet soon took up the conversation, shaking his new acquaintance warmly by the hand.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Beauchamp, very glad to see you. I find my family are under a great obligation to you--that is to say, my sister Harriet, Mrs. Clifford. Devilish impudent thing, by Jove, for those fellows to attack a carriage at that time of the evening, and very lucky you happened to be there, for my friend Ned Hayward here--though he has a notion of tactics, haven't you, Ned?--and is a stout fellow--could hardly have managed three of them."

"I look upon myself as very fortunate, Sir John," replied Mr. Beauchamp, "in having taken my evening walk in that direction; but at the same time, it is but fair to acknowledge that my share in the rescue of your sister and her daughter was but small. I only kept one man in play, while Captain Hayward had to contend with two."

"All the same! all the same, my dear Sir," said the baronet; "the reserve shares all the glory of a battle even if it does not pull a trigger. The ladies, however, are exceedingly obliged to you--very good girls both of them--not that they have commissioned me to express their thanks, far from it, for they are particularly anxious to do so themselves if you will give them the opportunity; and therefore they have begged me to ask if you would favour us by your company at dinner to-day, and to say that they will be devilish sorry if any previous engagement should prevent you, though they calculate upon to-morrow, if not to-day."

"I am quite an anchorite here, Sir John," answered Mr. Beauchamp, with a grave smile; but before he could finish his sentence, the old baronet, thinking it was the commencement of an excuse, hastened to stop it, saying,

"Quite a quiet dinner, I assure you--all as grave and proper as possible; no drinking, no laughing, no fun--all upon our good behaviour. There will be nobody but you, Ned Hayward, I, and the doctor there; Harriet, Mary, and my girl--who, by the way, says she knows you--has seen you twice at the good doctor's--Doctor Miles's."

"I have had the pleasure of meeting Miss Slingsby," said Beauchamp. "I was only about to answer you just now, Sir John, that I am quite an anchorite here, and therefore not likely to have many invitations to dinner. As I have not much cultivated the people of the place, they have not much cultivated me; and I believe they look upon me as a somewhat suspicious character, especially our friend Mr. Wittingham, who I find has been very curious in his inquiries as to whether I pay my bills, and where I go to when I walk out."

"Wittingham's an old fool!" exclaimed Sir John Slingsby, "and like all other old fools, he thinks himself the wisest man in the world. I wonder what the lord-lieutenant could be dreaming of when he put him in the commission of the peace--a man no more fit for it than my horsewhip. I'll pay him for it all--I'll pay him--ask him to dinner--make him beastly drunk, and lodge him for the night in a horse-trough."

"I hope not this evening, Sir John," said Beauchamp, with a smile.

"Oh dear no," replied the baronet, with a look of rueful fear, "all very prim to-night--all as grave as judges--quite proper and discreet while my sister Harriet is with us--an archdeacon's widow, you know--a dean's, after all--though he was only dean for a couple of months--a very good man indeed, but exceedingly proper, terribly proper: the very sound of a cork frightened him out of his wits. I do believe he fancied that port and Madeira are sent over in decanters, and claret in jugs with handles. However, you'll come, that's settled: half-past five, old-fashioned hours, gives plenty of time after dinner. But now that's no use," added the baronet, with a sigh, "we might as well dine at seven now--no use of a long evening. However, the girls will give us a song, or music of some kind, and perhaps we can make up a rubber at long whist, which will make us sleep as sound as dormice. No sin in that--no, Ned."

"None in the world, Sir John," answered Ned Hayward, "but a great deal of dulness. I never could make out in my life how men, with their wits about them, could spend hours throwing bits of painted pasteboard in a particular order for shillings and sixpences."

"Just as reasonable as standing up for hours to be showed for shillings and sixpences," answered Sir John Slingsby, "and both you and I have played at that, you dog. Every thing is folly if you take it in the abstract--love, war, wine, ambition; and depend upon it, Ned, the lightest follies are the best--isn't it so, Mr. Beauchamp?"

"There is indeed some truth in what you say, Sir John," replied Beauchamp, with a thoughtful smile; "and I believe amusing follies are better than serious ones--at least I begin to think so now."

"To be sure, to be sure," answered Sir John Slingsby; "man was made for fun and not for sadness. It's a very nice world if people would let it be so. Oh, we'll show you some sport, Mr. Beauchamp, before we have done with you; but to-day you know we'll all be very proper--very good boys indeed--and then when the cat's away the mice will play. Ha! ha! ha! At half-past five, you know, and in the meantime, Ned and I will ride off and abuse old Wittingham. I'll give him a pretty lecture."

Good Sir John was disappointed however; his horses, his groom, and his bulky person had all been seen from the windows of Mr. Wittingham's house as he rode into the town with Ned Hayward, and as a matter of course, Mr. Wittingham was over the hills and far away before the visit to Mr. Beauchamp was concluded.

When Sir John and Ned Hayward left him, Beauchamp remained for some minutes with a smile upon his countenance--a meditative--nay, a melancholy smile.

"So fleet our resolutions," he said to himself, "so fade away our schemes and purposes. Who can say in this life what he will do and what he will not do the next day--nay, the next minute? Which is the happiest after all, the man who struggles with fate and circumstance, and strives to perform the impracticable task of ruling them, or he who, like a light thing upon the waters, suffers himself to be carried easily down the current, whirling round with every eddy, resting quietly in the still pool, or dashing gaily down the rapids? Heaven knows, but at all events, fate has shown herself so resolute to take my affairs into her own hands, that I will not try to resist her. I will indulge every whim, and leave fortune to settle the result. I may as well purchase that property: it is as good an investment as any other, I dare say, and if not, it does not much signify. I will write to my agent to transmit the money to-day."

With this resolution he sat down, and had soon despatched a few lines, which he carried to the post himself; then strolled out of the town for an hour, and then returned to dress, ordering a post-chaise for Tarningham House.

How different are the sensations with which one goes out to dinner at different times--ay, even when it is to the house of a new acquaintance, where we have little means of judging previously whether our day will be pleasant or unpleasant, joyous or sad. As there must be more than one party to each compact, and as the age and its object act and react upon each other, so the qualities of each have their share in the effect upon either, and the mood of the visitor has at least as much to do with the impression that he receives as the mood of the host. Wonderfully trite, is it not, reader? It has been said a thousand times before, but it will not do you the least harm to have it repeated, especially as I wish you clearly to understand the mood in which Mr. Beauchamp went, for the first time, to the house of Sir John Slingsby. It was then in that of an indifferent mood of which I have shown some indications, by describing what was passing in his mind after the baronet and Ned Hayward left him. There are, however, various sorts of indifferent moods; there is the gay indifferent, which is very commonly called, devil-me-carish-ness; then there is the impertinent indifference, with a dash of persiflage in it, just to take off the chili--as men put brandy into soda-water--which very empty and conceited men assume to give them an air of that superiority to which they are entitled by no mental quality. Then there is the indifference of despair, and the indifference of satiety. But none of these was the exact sort of indifference which Mr. Beauchamp felt, or thought he felt. It was a grave indifference, springing from a sort of morbid conviction that the happiness or unhappiness of man is not at all in his own hands, or that if it be at all so, it is only at his outset in life, and that the very first step so affects the whole course of after events, as to place the control over them totally beyond his own power. It is a bad philosophy, a very unsafe, untrue, unwise philosophy, and a great author has made it the philosophy of the devil: