Читать книгу Morley Ernstein; or, the Tenants of the Heart - G. P. R. James - Страница 5

Scarcely had Morley's visits in the country been paid, when first came four invitations to dinner, and then a grand ball was determined on by a lady, who lived near the county town, and had four sons and six daughters. Who can tell whether Morley Ernstein's appearance in the neighbourhood had aught to do with all these gay affairs? Old Miss Cumbertown, who had seen sixty and more drying summers and freezing winters pass over her, till all the sweeter essences of her nature were parched up to a dry haricot, muttered and grinned at all she heard, and prognosticated that the young gentleman would not be caught yet awhile. She knew well what it was to be disappointed in the attempt to catch a lover; and when she heard, some days after this, that the young master of Morley Court had declined all invitations, announcing that he was about to go to town on the very day the first dinner-party was to take place, she grinned a thousand times more. It is so pleasant to see other people visited by the same misfortunes that have fallen upon ourselves!

In the meantime the young gentleman was totally unconscious that there was anything like a design upon him in any of the five invitations, or that he was creating the least disappointment in the inviters; although they did not fail to believe--for cunning always fancies itself opposed by cunning--that he partly saw through their devices.

"Oh, he gives himself great airs!" said one.

"I suppose we must beg his company in very humble terms," cried another.

But, as we have before declared, Morley was quite unconscious of. offence, and never once recollected the fact either of his having the command of a number of votes for the county, or of his being an eligible match for any lady in the land. Indeed, he thought not at all of any man's daughter in Europe, except, indeed, of her whose birth, parentage, and education, he had not been able to discover.

After he had settled the period of his journey, the next thing was to settle the mode of travelling. It was very natural that, with great wealth in possession, which he had never been allowed fully to enjoy, he should dream of tasting the sweets of it in every possible manner, and that the chariot-and-four should first present itself to his imagination, as the only fitting way for him to seek the capital. He had very nearly given orders for the horses, and had visions of going at least thirteen miles an hour. Rapidity of motion is one of the inherent joys of youth and vigour--it may be called, almost, a necessity, and Morley was one of those who enjoy to the highest extent that peculiar sensation which is produced by the rapid passing of the fair objects of nature before the eye; tower and town, and church-steeple, and green fields, and bright rivers, and tall trees, and rich woods, resting just long enough upon the organs of vision to call up sweet, but undefined imaginations, and then passing away--like distant music which swells and falls upon the ear, bringing back vaguely airs that we have heard elsewhere, and leaving fancy to play them to an end.

He forgot, however, to give the order for the horses at the hour of dinner, and afterwards he strolled out into the country round, and visited the cottages of some of the peasantry who were reported to be in a state of great poverty. He now saw real misery, for the first time, and it had a powerful effect upon him. We have not space, dear reader, to enter into the details; to paint the pale face of squalid misery, and the eager anxious eyes of hopeless destitution. Suffice it, that Morley Ernstein was young; his heart had not been hardened in the furnace of the world, and it was not originally formed of that adamantine stuff, called selfishness. He was not, as some, lavish in his bounty, from mere want of any principle of action whatsoever; but he relieved the unhappy people fully, and on his return home, gave such directions, as to prevent their falling back into misery again during his absence, except by their own fault.

After this was done, he sat and thought, and ended, by ordering a servant to go to the neighbouring town, and secure him a place in the stage-coach to London. His scheme of travelling had been changed by his visit to the poor; but not in the manner, or from the motives that many persons may imagine. It was not that he proposed to save small sums out of a princely fortune, for the purpose of devoting the whole of that fortune to the poor, for Morley knew right well that the industrious mechanic, the artisan, the farmer, the builder--all, in short, who contribute by the labour of their hands and minds to the convenience, comfort, and welfare of their fellow-creatures, have a first claim upon those to whom God has entrusted the distribution of great wealth. He believed that though the poor, the honest and worthy poor, must be supplied, must be cared for--that though it is a duty to make up, by active charity, for the inequalities and accidents that the fundamental constitution of society, and the very nature of man must always produce--still the industrious of all classes have their great primary right, which ought to be attended to. It was not that the actual sight of misery made him purpose to deny himself anything that was rational and just in the station in which he was placed, or resolve to refrain from any expense which might encourage the industrious in all classes, but that sight had called up the spirit of the soul to speak within him, and to check the animal spirit which had fired his imagination. After he returned from those poor cottages, he found no pleasure in the idea of the gay postilions and foaming horses; his mind took a sadder, a more thoughtful tone. He felt almost ashamed of the bright eagerness of pampered life in the presence of the dim eyes and tear-stained cheeks of misery. His whole scheme changed. "I will go to the capital," he said, "quietly and modestly. I will not present myself in that gay place as the rich man, coming to enjoy, but as the thoughtful man, going to examine and to consider. I will not, indeed, conceal myself; but I will retire rather than advance, till I have good cause to do so. I will seek to find friends rather than to make acquaintances, and rather than simply endeavour to spend my income, I will endeavour to spend it well."

Nothing occurred to check the spirit of the soul, and he continued in the same mood till the stage-coach passed by the gates of his park, the next day. A number of passengers covered the outside of the vehicle, so that there was no room for him in that part which Englishmen always choose in preference to the interior, as if they loved the dust of summer, the rain of autumn and spring, and the cold winds of winter, better than any other of the enjoyments of those seasons. To foreigners this seems an extraordinary taste; but the origin of it probably is that the Englishman, who pushes almost all his affections to extravagance, loves, with a vehemence that few other people can feel, the free air of heaven. Morley would willingly have changed places with the poorest traveller on the outside of the coach; but as that could not be done, he took his seat in solitude in the interior, where he found plenty of room for thought, there being nobody within it but himself.

The coach rolled on with a celerity which no one who has not travelled in one of those small, inconvenient, but wonderfully rapid, vehicles, can imagine to be produced by any animal under the sun. The nearer objects flew past like lightning, the further ones kept gradually changing their place with a quickness proportioned to their respective distances from the coach, which, for its part, like the mind of a vain man, seemed the centre of a circle round which all other objects were running; and Morley's impetuosity was well nigh satisfied with the rate of progression at which they were going.

After all, movement is the grand principle of animal life; it runs in our veins, it beats in our hearts, it advances with our ideas, it enters into every change, is more rapid in youth, slower in infancy and age, fails as desires are extinguished or objects wanting, grows dull in sickness, pauses in sleep, and ends alone in death.

After driving on at the same pace for three-quarters of an hour, during which, Morley gave himself up to the sort of dreamy pleasure which I have mentioned, of feeling himself whirled on through a thousand beautiful objects, the coach stopped to change horses, and one of the travellers from the outside came in, and took his seat by the previously solitary tenant of the interior.

"It is as hot as if it were summer on the outside," he said, addressing nobody, "and the seat I had got was so unpleasant, that I am not sorry to quit it."

Morley did not answer; but--with the sort of habitual coldness which affects almost all Englishmen, in part pride, in part timidity, in part contempt for all other beings than themselves, in part fear that others should entertain the same contempt for them--he sat silent, gazing out of the window, following his own meditations, and quite willing that his travelling companion should follow his likewise.

The personage who had entered was not one, however, that had anything repulsive in his manners or appearance. He was tall, gracefully formed, with an air of distinction, and a countenance often full of fire and animation, although the habitual expression was that of quick but easy-flowing thought. His brow was high and fine, his eyes peculiarly large and bright, and his hair strongly curled; the only feature in his face which could be termed even not good, was the mouth, the lips being somewhat thick and heavy. His complexion was dark, and the skin very brown, apparently with exposure to the air and sun, but the whole exterior was extremely pleasing; and had Morley looked at him at all, he would in all probability have spoken in return; but the young gentleman did not look at him, and the stranger, after pausing for a moment, spoke again--resolved, it would seem, to make some impression upon his temporary companion.

"Pray, whose house is that?" he demanded, pointing to a handsome mansion on the right.

"I do not know," replied Morley, turning round, and gazing at him, for the first time.

"Indeed!" said the stranger; "I thought you were well acquainted with this country. The coachman told me that you were Sir Something Ernstein, and that the park, at the gates of which we took you up, belongs to you."

Morley smiled. "It is all very true," he answered; "but, nevertheless, I do not know. I have not been in this part of England for six or seven years."

The stranger mused; but between two men not absolutely repulsive in themselves, nor particularly disposed by any circumstances mutually to repel each other--the poles of whose minds, in short, are not reversed--conversation soon establishes itself after a few words have been spoken. A single syllable will often do the whole with people whose characters are well balanced, and a word act like the hair trigger of a pistol, upon which hangs the fate of a life.

Oh, how strange and complicated is the web of God's will! How the smallest, the most pitiful, the most empty of things, by his great and wise volition, act their part in mighty changes! How a look, a tone, a sound, a pebble in our path, a grain of dust in our eyes, a headache, a fit of gloom, a caprice, a desire, may not only change the whole current of one man's existence, but affect the being of states and empires, and alter human destinies to the end of time! The present state of France, the whole mass of facts, circumstances, incidents, accidents, and events, which are there going on, may all be owing to a lady, whom I knew well, having splashed her stocking fifty years ago.

"As how, in the name of Heaven?" demands the reader.

Thus! She was going out of her house with a relation in the town of Douai, when, carelessly putting her foot on a stone, she splashed her stocking. She went back to change it; the delay occupied a quarter of an hour. When she went on again, she met, at the corner of the Place, a man, since too famous in history, then scarcely known as anything but a clever fop. His name was Francis Maximilian Robespierre. Instead of going on, he turned with her and her relation, and walked up and down the Place with them for half an hour. In one of the houses hard by, a debating society was in the act of canvassing some political question. As they passed to and fro, Robespierre listened at the door from time to time, and at length, pronouncing the debaters to be all fools together, he rushed in to set them right. From that moment, he entered vehemently into all the fiery discussions which preceded the revolution, in which he had never taken part before, and grasped at power, which opened the doors of the cage, and let out the tiger in his heart. Thus, had the lady not splashed her stocking, she would not have met the future tyrant; he would have pursued his way, and would not have turned back to the Place; he would never have heard the debate that first called him into action, for he was going to quit Douai the next day, and who can say how that one fact, in the infinite number of its combinations with other things, might have affected the whole social world at present?

The stranger mused, as we have said, but after a moment's thought, he replied, in a meditative tone--

"How strange is the sensation when, after a long absence from any place, we return to it suddenly! How different everything appears!--how shrunk, and changed, and withered, seem many objects that we thought beautiful and bright!--how many a light gone out!--how many a sweet sound silent! I believe that it is very happy for us that in point of time we cannot go back again, as we can in space."

"Nay, I do not think so," answered Morley, growing interested in his companion's conversation; "I cannot, indeed, judge from experience, but I should imagine that many an old man would willingly return to the days of his youth; that every man, indeed, when he finds life beginning to lose its energies, health failing, the muscle relaxing, the eye growing dim, the limbs feeble, would willingly go back to the time when all were in their perfection."

"They would do so willingly, beyond all doubt," replied his companion; "but whether they would do so wisely is another thing. We all wish to see again the scenes of our boyhood, when we have been separated from them long; but when we are gratified, we are always disappointed."

Morley smiled, to find the stranger speaking to all his late sensations, as if he would have divined them; but he only enquired--

"Always?"

"Always, I think," said the other; "because it is in the nature of things that it should be so. Enjoyment is a harmony--the person that is pleased with anything and the object of his pleasure must be adapted to each other. Thus the boy loves a particular scene of his youth, returns to it as a man, and does not find the same delight; not because it is changed, but because it has remained the same, and he is altered; he has lost his fitness for it. It suited the boy; but it no more suits the man than would the wooden sword and the rocking horse."

"I do not know," replied Morley, "but I should think that the memory of enjoyment would make up for the change in his own nature. Memory is the hope of the past, and both brighten the objects that they rest upon."

"True!" answered his companion; "but then that which he enjoys is not the same, but the memory of his own pleasure therein. Oh no! the life of man is still, forward--forward! Each period of existence, doubtless, has its powers and its joys, as well as its hopes and its desires."

"But I have heard many that I have loved and respected, declare," said Morley, "that in their own case the pure joys of youth were those on which memory had rested through life with the greatest satisfaction."

"Simply because they were the furthest off," replied the other; "but why call them the pure joys of youth? I do not see why they should be purer than those of any other period. Surely all joys are pure--I mean those that are not criminal. Anything that gives me pleasure, or by which I can give others pleasure, and which injures no one, is just as pure as the gathering of a flower, or the pruning of a tree--certainly more pure than crucifying a worm upon a hook, or shooting an inoffensive bird, or many another of those sports and pastimes of which youth is fond."

Morley was silent for some little time; he felt that there was something dangerous in his companion's doctrines, if pushed to the extreme; but still, as far as he had expressed them, there was nothing Of which he could take hold. The other seemed to perceive, with fine tact, that the young man who sat beside him, had taken alarm at the indefinite nature of his argument, and he added in haste--

"You will understand that I mean strictly to limit enjoyment to that which is not criminal--which is not wrong--in short, all I mean to say is, that the wisest plan for man to pursue is, to go on without ever turning back his eyes to the past; to enjoy all that is natural for his period of life, without regretting others that are gone. Each pleasure is as a precious stone, picked up upon the sea-shore, a thing to be treasured by memory; but because we find an emerald at one moment, that is no reason why we should neglect the diamond that we find the next, or the ruby that comes a little further on. Our capabilities of enjoyment were intended to be used, and he who does not do so, fails to fulfil one of the great obligations of his nature."

Morley was better satisfied, but still not completely so; and had he been older and more experienced, he might have thought that his conversation with his travelling companion, is like that which Conscience and Desire sometimes hold together, when temptation is very strong. Desire still finds an argument to lead us up to the very verge of wrong, assuring Conscience all the time that we are upon the safe ground of right, and trusting to some momentary impulse to make us leap the barrier when we have reached it.

Morley, however, was too young, too inexperienced, and be it added, too innocent even in heart, to have had many such debates with conscience, and to be experimentally acquainted with the tactics of temptation. There was certainly something in his companion's arguments which did not satisfy, but at the same time there was a peculiar charm in his manner, in his conversation, in his very look, which made words that might otherwise have failed to produce any effect, now sink into the mind, and remain, like seeds, to produce fruit at a future period.

The manner and the look that we have just spoken of, were certainly very fascinating apart, but still more so together; not so much because they harmonized as because they differed. The manner was gentle, soft, and though full of rapid thought, yet easy, and glowing with a sort of conviction that made assent easy; and yet there was nothing in the least presumptuous in it. On the contrary--indeed, every word appeared to be spoken, more as a suggestion than a decision; while the soft richness of the speaker's voice seemed calculated to persuade and lead. The look on the other hand was full of quick vivacity and fire--the eye brightened up at a word, the lip changed its expression twenty times in a minute, and withal there was an air of reckless joyousness, of rapid careless quickness, which contrasted wonderfully with the metaphysical themes he touched upon, and by contrast, gave the stronger effect to his deeper thoughts.

That he was a man of station and high breeding one would scarcely doubt; and in his dress there was that scrupulous neatness which is one of the distinguishing marks of a gentleman in youth. In older life, a man may well lose a part of that attention to his apparel which no young man should be without; but before the grand passage of forty-five, no one should deem himself old enough to go out in a bad hat if he can get a good one, or wear ill-blacked boots. The neatness of his dress did not at all approach to puppyism, but every article of his clothing was so well adapted to the other, that the whole harmonized perfectly, and gave that peculiar and undefinable tone to his appearance which has a vague sort of connexion with the mind within, a reflection perhaps we might call it, of the habitual thoughts and feelings influencing the dress without the wearer knowing it. Man is but a species of chameleon, in general taking all his tints from the things that surround him; but when these fail--like the stalk of the balsam plant--his external colouring is affected by that which passes within; and a man's fondness for particular hues, or sounds, or scents, is often no bad indication of the character of his mind.

Morley Ernstein felt not a little impressed in favour of the stranger. He was, indeed, not without strong good sense himself, but still there was a charm that he could not resist; and never dreaming that he was doing aught but passing agreeably an hour which might otherwise have proved tedious, he soon renewed the conversation, but on a different subject.

Let no one, however, venture to think that even a brief half-hour's conversation with another man of strong mind can be a matter of mere indifference--indeed, I know not that it ever is so, with any one, wise or foolish, ugly or pretty, good or bad. We are all nothing but traders in this world, mere hucksters, travelling packmen, with a stock continually changing, increasing, diminishing. We go forth into the world carrying a little wallet of ideas and feelings; and with every one to whom we speak for a moment, we are trafficking in those commodities. If we meet with a man of wisdom and of virtue, sometimes he is liberal, and supplies us largely with high and noble thoughts, receiving only in return sweet feelings of inward satisfaction; sometimes, on the other hand, he will only trade upon equal terms, and if we cannot give him wisdom for wisdom, shuts up his churlish shop and will deal with us no more. If we go to a bad man we are almost always sure to be cheated in our traffic, to get evil or useless wares, and often those corrupted things which, once admitted to our stock, spread the mould and mildew to all around. Often, often, too, in our commerce with others do we pay for the poisons which we buy as antidotes, all that we possess of good, both in feeling and idea. But when we sit down by beauty, and gentleness, and virtue, what a world of sweet images do we gain for the little that we can give in exchange! Ay, and even in passing a few light moments with a dear, innocent child, how much of bright and pure do we carry away in sensation!--how much of deep and high may we gain in thought! Oh no!--it is no indifferent thing, with whom we converse, if ideas be the riches of the spirit.

Thoughtful men, and men of rapid combinations, are almost always abrupt in conversation. A topic is started, two of them pursue it like hunters for some time together, mutually hallooing on one another; but the time comes when they separate, ride rapidly on alone, till they have run down the game, and then they come back to rouse a new quarry. Thus Morley Ernstein had soon got far away from the subject of their former discourse; and had followed the thoughts suggested by it to an end, with many a collateral idea likewise, before he spoke again. When he did so, it was merely of an object that attracted the corporeal eye.

"What a beautiful sunset!" he said, gazing out of the window of the coach towards a spot where, through a break in the large wood by which they were passing, the last rays of day were streaming in floods of gold and crimson, seeming to make the forest air thick and misty with light--"What a beautiful sunset! Might not one imagine the glades of that wood filled at this moment with every sort of fairy and fanciful being, to which the curious superstitions of old times gave birth?"

"One might, indeed!" replied the stranger. "It is a haunt formed expressly for the 'good people,' as you call them, in this country. Here the belief in such beings is very nearly extinct, even in the lowest classes. In my country, such is by no means the case; and there is scarcely one of us, whatever be his grade, in whose bosom, if you were able to search into all its hidden corners, you would not find some belief--ay, and a strong belief, too--not only in the existence of spirits, but in their assuming tangible forms and opening a communication with man."

"Are you not an Englishman, then?" demanded Morley, with so much astonishment in his countenance at the discovery that one who spoke his own difficult tongue so well was from another country, as to call up a smile upon the lip of his companion--"Are you not an Englishman, then?"

"No!" replied the stranger; "I am not; but some foreigners can speak your language tolerably, especially when they have lived long in the land. But, as I was saying, there are very few persons in Germany who are totally free from such a belief; and, indeed, it is scarcely reasonable to suppose, if we admit there is another order of created beings above ourselves, that there should be no means whatever of communication between the two next links in the same great chain. I confess, that I cannot conceive such a thing possible. If there be such things as spirits--if all be not merely material in this moving clay, there must be some means by which the superhuman being can make his presence felt and known to his fellow spirit in the earthly tabernacle. All our great men have certainly believed such to be the case. Who can read either Goëthe or Schiller, without perceiving that creed peeping through philosophy, and wit, and history, and poetry?"

"Oh, Goëthe certainly entertained such feelings!" replied Morley. "It was impossible for any one so to extract intense sublimity from human superstitions, without being tinctured with them strongly himself. Had Goëthe written whole volumes to prove that everything is material, a few lines of the choruses in Faust would have shewn him to be insincere."

"The picture of Mephistophiles himself," said his companion, "were surely quite enough."

"Yes," replied Morley; "and yet there are parts of the character of Mephistophiles which I do not clearly understand. He is all-powerful over Faust, and yet seems subservient to him. He appears at his command, obeys his behests, and yet leads, directs, and overpowers him."

"In short," replied his companion, "he serves but to command; and, depend upon it, whether it be an allegory or a portrait, the picture is a true one. It may be, that the great poet meant to represent the power of the passions. But I imagine that he drew, almost by inspiration, the likeness of that mighty being, whose fate and character have been summed up by Milton, in the words--

'Evil, be thou my good!'

You must remember, that the infinite variety of that being is as wonderful as his power. Milton might draw one portrait; Goëthe another: both different, but both alike. If Goëthe really meant a picture rather than an allegory, he shewed that Mephistophiles had bound himself simply to serve, for a certain time, the views of a vast mind which otherwise might have escaped him. He ruled Faust by his wisdom, governed, directed him--ay, even enlightened him; but the spirit adapted himself to the mortal with whom he had to deal. Even by the very tone of sadness that pervades the character of Mephistophiles, the gravity that is in his mirth, the depth that is below his lightness, he was fitted to deal with Faust. Had the character of the man been different, so would have been the character of the spirit. The Magician had power over the finer essence for the time, and the prince of one class of spirits willingly devoted himself to the service and instruction of a mortal--nay, more, it is evident, as far as he could feel affection or pity for a being so placed as Faust, he felt it for him."

"But," exclaimed Morley, "do you imagine Satan to be capable of affection and pity?"

"Why not?" demanded his companion--"more, in all probability, than beings that have never known sorrow or pain."

"You seem inclined to defend the Prince of Darkness!" rejoined Morley, with a smile.

"Certainly!" answered his companion, laughing--"if I did not defend him, no one else would; and I am always inclined to take part with the weaker side."

Almost as the stranger spoke, the coach which had been going down a long hill with terrible rapidity, swayed from side to side for a moment, like a ship in a stormy sea. A violent concussion then took place as the vehicle, in turning the corner of a bridge, struck a large stone, and the next instant Morley felt that the carriage was going over towards the side on which he sat. He had but time by one hasty glance to see that the low parapet of the bridge was close to the wheels, when the stage went over; the stones gave way beneath it, and the whole mass rolled headlong into the river below. It fell upon the top, and struck the stones in the bed of the stream. The concussion was terrible--the carriage was nearly dashed to pieces, and Morley Ernstein only felt one violent blow, only saw a thousand bright sparks flash from his own eyes, and then lost all consciousness, even that of pain.