Читать книгу Morley Ernstein; or, the Tenants of the Heart - G. P. R. James - Страница 8

The next day Morley Ernstein was permitted by his doctor to go out, and strange, most strange, were the feelings with which he did so.--There is nothing positive on earth but truth; all other matters are relative. Truth, indeed pure abstract truth--is the starting point of all morals, and without it we should have no starting point at all; so that the world might well be Pyrrhonists or Epicureans, or what they would, were it not for the simple doctrine that two and two make four, and the consequences thereof; for, once having established that truth is right and falsehood wrong, every other moral tenet follows step by step, as a matter of course. That ethics are as much a certain science, when rightly pursued and understood, as mathematics, I have no more doubt than of my own existence, ethics being, in fact, the mathematics of the spirit.

But nevertheless, to return from our digression, it is wonderful how many things on this earth are relative, which we fancy to be quite positive; amongst the rest, every kind of sensation, every kind of pleasure, every kind of taste; so that it is quite easy for us, from our own occasional experience, to conceive how, in another state of being, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, and cast away the fibres of the flesh, many of those things that gave us pleasure here below, will be abhorrent to us, and much that might seem dull, heavy, incomprehensible to the animal walking in darkness on the earth, will then, brightened by higher perceptions, be all light, and glory, and enjoyment.

With Morley Ernstein, however, as with all convalescents, the sensations were not exactly changed from what they were before; some were acuminated, some were softened, since he had lain on the bed of sickness, and strange indeed were his feelings as he walked out, leaning on the arm of his old servant. It was only into the little garden at the back of the inn that he ventured, but it was all delight to him. Nature seemed never to have been so bright and beautiful; the broad bosom of each common rose that was planted by the side of the gravel walk, appeared a chamber of enjoyment, in which some small angel might well pass away the perfumed hours. The cobweb, spangled with morning dew, was a miracle; the breath of the breeze was heaven. There was withal a sensation of calm, peaceful repose within his own breast, which was very different from the eager fire of his nature in ordinary health; and during that day, and the one that followed it, he contemplated with pleasure a return to Morley Court, to a long lapse of dreamy hours amongst woods, and fields, and streams, with, perhaps, some thoughts of finding out fair Juliet Carr, and thanking her for the interest she had taken in him.

Day by day, however, health came back, and strength along with it, and eager activity with strength. The longing for objects on which to spend the energies within him; the curiosity of a young fresh heart for a knowledge of the deeper and more powerful things of life; that ambition for the vigorous occupations of mature minds, which possesses all who set out in life with strong bodily and intellectual faculties, returned upon the young Baronet with every pulse of renewed health; and four days after his first walk in the garden, he despatched Adam Gray for the chariot from Morley Court, and on the sixth was rolling away towards London.

London is certainly the most wonderful city in the world, and probably the most unlike any other on the earth. On approaching it, one is lost in surprise from its immensity of extent--an immensity that makes itself felt one hardly knows how. It seems to press upon you before you reach it; to multiply its forms and appearances around you, when you fancy yourself far from it; to surround, to grasp, to overwhelm you, ere you know that a city is near. Nevertheless, when once in it, the effect upon any one who is not an indigenous plant of the soil, is anything but impressive. In general, the smallness of the houses, the long rows of iron railings, the littleness of the windows, and their numbers, give the streets a petty and poor effect; while the colour of the bricks, which, when seen in grand masses, is imposing enough, has there a dull and dirty appearance, very unsatisfactory to the eye. Add to all this, the thick and heavy atmosphere, foul with the steam of fifteen hundred thousand human beings, and full three hundred thousand fires, so that a vast dome of smoke nightcaps the great capital, and only suffers the sun to penetrate, as the dim vision of a brighter thing.

In summer, indeed, the extinction of all the fires--except those which man, the cooking animal, maintains everlastingly, for the gratification of his palate--leaves the English metropolis somewhat clearer and brighter than at any other season of the year; and as it was a warm and brilliant day, in the beginning of June, when Morley Ernstein entered London, the streets looked gay and cheerful, and he drove up to the Hotel in Berkeley Square, with that feeling of pleasant expectation which comes upon us all when we enter a new abode, where a thousand means and opportunities of pleasure, a thousand channels and highways of gratification, are opened before us, and where sorrow, and pain, and misery, and sickness, and death, are hidden beneath those pompous and glittering veils with which it is the business of society to conceal the abhorrent features of all that is distressing and frightful in human existence.

There are some people who, on entering a great capital, feel a weight, an oppressive load fall upon their bosom, as if all those miseries of which we have spoken were infused into the burdensome atmosphere of the place, and were drawn in with every breath; but these must be men who have lived long, and known sorrows tangibly, who have felt the tooth of gnawing care, and the beak and talons of fierce anxiety, preying day by day upon the bleeding heart. Such, however, was not the case with Morley Ernstein; there seemed a well of hope in his bosom, the waters of which possessed a power ascribed to those consecrated by the Roman Church, of driving out all dark spirits from the spot over which they were sprinkled. The busy life, the eager energy within him, the warrior-spirit of strong animal existence, always ready to combat the ills of fate, guarded the door of imagination, and suffered no thought of coming evil to intrude.

Thus all things seemed to smile around him; and although the lilacs and the laurels, the laburnums and the privets, which tenanted the square before his eyes, might look somewhat dull and smoky, when compared with the green trees of the country; though the air he breathed might seem but a shade thinner than pea soup, and the noise of eternal carriages might strike his ear as something less tuneful than the birds of his own fields; yet it was not upon these things that his mind rested. He thought, on the contrary, of all the wonders of that mighty place; of the vast resources comprised within it; of the intellectual pleasures that were there collected as if in a store-house; of the magnificent monuments of art that it contained; of the wealth, the abundance, the splendour, the beauty, the fancy; the genius, the wisdom, the grace, with which every street was thronged; of the vast and strange combinations that were there produced; of the laws, the systems, the philosophies, the wars, the colonies, the enterprises, that had thence issued forth; of the piety, the charity, the benevolence, the great aspirations, the noble purposes, the fine designs, the wonderful discoveries, which had there originated; and--as if to give the finishing touch of the sublime to all--came over his mind the vague, spectre-like image of the crime which there had a permanent existence, an unchangeable and undiscoverable home. Such were the feelings with which he viewed London, on returning to it as his own master, free to taste, to examine, to inquire, to judge, and to enjoy.

It would require more time than I could bestow on any one part of my subject, to trace the life of Morley Ernstein during the first fortnight of his stay in London. With the eagerness of novelty he followed various pleasures, sought out various amusements, and dipped somewhat, but not deeply, in the stream of dissipation. What is called the season was that year protracted to a period later than usual. Gay carriages still thronged the streets in the end of June. The Parliament continued its sittings far into July, and gaiety succeeded gaiety, till those who had commenced the pleasures of a London life at the beginning Of the year, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, were pale and haggard, with the round of midnight parties and crowded rooms.

Not so Morley Ernstein: health and strength were returning to him every hour, in spite of the current in which he was now immersed, and by one of those strange physiological phenomena for which it is difficult, if not impossible, to account, the vigour of his frame, the impetuosity of his animal nature seemed to be increased rather than diminished by the consequences of the malady which had nearly crushed out existence altogether.

The reader, perhaps, may think that the young Baronet shewed somewhat like weak caprice, or still weaker vacillation of purpose, in plunging into the high tide of gaiety, when he had set out for London with the design of studying calmly and quietly his fellow-beings, and the strange complicated form of existence in which they moved in the great capital; but the difference between the execution and the design, as, indeed, is generally the case, was produced by the operation of external as well as internal causes, by the accidents of situation as well as the vehement impulse of high blood and energetic youth, contending against the calmer admonitions of a holier spirit within. On his first arrival in London, he followed the plan which he had proposed, and called upon no one but his guardian and Count Lieberg. He felt himself, indeed, bound in gratitude not to make any unnecessary delay in visiting either. The latter, with whom the reader is already acquainted, had saved his life; the former had protected his early years and had administered his fortune with anxious care and successful wisdom. He, however, not being yet known to the reader, we must bring him on the stage for a moment, and dwell briefly upon a character, which, though presenting no very salient points, is nevertheless worth studying as the type of a class. Mr. Hamilton was a banker--an English banker, which is as different an animal from that which goes by the same generic name in other countries, as the mammoth or antediluvian elephant is from the elephant of the Jardin des Plantes. He was a calm, quiet, reasoning man, of aristocratical family, (his brother was a peer of the realm,) and of aristocratical habits and manners. He had been selected from among three younger brothers, to take a share in one of the great London banking-houses, on account of his talent for calculation and his habits of business; and during the course of a long career, he had shewn that knowledge of detail and attention to minutiæ which is the essence of accuracy in every sort of transaction. He possessed, however, another set of qualities which are but too rarely combined in this world with those which we have ascribed to him. His general views were broad and extensive; his heart benevolent and kind; and he valued not in any degree, except as a means, that gold with which he was called upon to occupy his thoughts during a considerable portion of every day in his life. There is many a reader who may, perhaps, say, "This character is unnatural--this is one of those phantasms of ideal perfection only to be found in a romance; every one knows, that the habit of dealing with gold contracts the heart, and even if it does not diminish the intellect, it so concentrates it upon one favourite object, as to render it unavailable for all the grander purposes of life."

Thus, reasoning from abstract data, we may all produce very pleasant criticisms, as philosophers have often produced very pleasant theories, and yet be very wrong. The character of the banker is not an ideal one; and though I certainly do not intend to make him the hero of these pages, or to bring him often on the stage, I must proceed to paint him, and must add another touch, which will add to the incredibility of the whole. He was not ambitious any more than he was avaricious. He had a family of several children whom he loved passing well. His eldest daughter was the pride of his heart; she might have bound her brow with a Coronet, or have seen herself mistress of the most splendid mansion in her native land. With her father's full consent and approbation, she married a man of no great wealth and no very high expectations, having for every recommendation that he was a gentleman both in heart and manners, and a gallant soldier of a gallant race. This was not like ambition; and there are eyes which may sometime or another rest upon this page, who have witnessed those acts of generous liberality, which shew that wealth may be gained without begetting avarice, and that the most expansive liberality is perfectly compatible with the most clear and accurate knowledge of detail. Mr. Hamilton was a politician as well as a financier, but he carried the same spirit into all his proceedings, and displayed the clear and just views which spring from a high mind, combined with the noble and generous feelings which originate in a fine heart.

Such was the English Banker; it is certain that he might have some faults, that there might be an error here or a weakness there; but I envy not the man whose mental eye can gaze through the smoked glass of a misanthropical philosophy, to discover spots amid such light as that.

To the house of Mr. Hamilton, then, Morley Ernstein's very first visit was paid. He had always felt the deepest gratitude and regard towards his guardian, and he was now well pleased to express all such sensations at the end of that period, during which the one had the right to control, and the other was bound to obey. Ere he left Mr. Hamilton, he told him the plan which he had laid out for himself in London, but the good banker did not altogether approve of it.

"You are wise," he said, "Morley, not to plunge deeply into what may be called innocent dissipations, but still the society of persons in your own rank is a necessary which you must not deny yourself, not a luxury which can enfeeble or injure the mind. Besides, my young friend, if you would study man and society, you must study both under their various aspects; nor must you look at them apart, for if you would judge sanely, you must see, each grade acting and reacting upon the other. The man of rank and station is but a mere automaton, pretty to look at, amusing to examine; it is not till he is considered in his relations with those around him and below him, in the reference which his acts bear to his inferiors, to his equals, and to his God, that you have the great moral agent, the most wonderful subject of contemplation which this world can furnish. Such, too, is the case with the inferior grades of society. All their arts, all their thoughts, all their pleasures, all their sufferings, become tenfold more interesting, tenfold more important, as an object of meditation, when considered in reference to, and in comparison with, the pleasures and sufferings, thoughts and acts of others. Beware, my dear boy, beware, how, in your very outset of life, you gain a one-sided view of the grand scheme of society. It is this capital error which is the prevailing fault of politicians and philosophers. It is from this error that we have so many declaimers, and so few reasoners. It is this error which makes the staple commodity of those men, who are continually exciting one class of society against another. It is with this that they trade, and often win themselves most undeserved renown, of which future ages will strip them, and leave them naked and disgraced. It is this one-sided view which actuates the many good, and, in some respects, wise men, whom we see daily altering laws without mending them, and founding institutions without benefiting society. See, my dear Morley, the lower classes, but see the the higher also--see with your own eyes, judge with your own understanding; but see all, and not a part; judge, but judge not without knowing all that is in dispute."

"I will try to follow your advice, my dear sir," replied Morley; "for I perfectly understand and appreciate your reasoning. I merely felt inclined to look first into those lower grades, where so much misery and crime, I fear, exist, thinking that I could study with much more ease, the class in which I move myself, at an after-period."

"Study them together, Morley," said the Banker; "look at no one part of the scheme, without a reference to the other. When you consider me, consider, at the same time, what influence my personal character and habits may have upon the footman that opened the door to you, and upon all my other servants. Then, if you will trace them home to the family cottage in the country or the lodging in some little back street in London, you will find, that just as I am a good or bad man, just as I am a kind or unkind master, just as I deal well and wisely with my inferiors, a corresponding result is transmitted through a long chain of cause and effect, to the tenants of the cottage or the lodging, of which I have been speaking. The same will be the case, though the process will be with more difficulty perceived, if you begin with a person in inferior station, and trace the results of his acts upon those above him. I have known a casual word spoken by a vicious servant, plant the seeds of vice in a young and previously-innocent mind, which have afterwards produced a harvest of misery, desolation, and remorse, in the bosom of a happy and virtuous family. I give you this as but an instance, to shew that we are continually acted upon from below, as well as from above. Take, therefore, the best means, examine both at the same time: thus will you gain a perfect view, and will not suffer the ideas acquired by the contemplation of one side of any question, to be so fixed in your mind as to exclude those arguments and facts which would modify or remove them."

"I will certainly follow your advice, my dear sir," replied Morley, "both because I am convinced that it is good, and because you give it; but I only fear that my time in London will be too short to see anything deeply, if, by comparing continually, I double the inquiry."

"Do you know, Morley," said Mr. Hamilton, musing, "I am not sure that there is not a greater, a more miserable kind of evil brought about by studying only one side of a question deeply, than by studying both superficially. However, my dear boy, dine with us to-night, where you will see some of those in the higher ranks, who are worthy of being known. There is a little party, too, I believe, in the evening, and you can begin 'Don Quixote' to-morrow."

Morley smiled, and promising to join the Banker's dinner-table, turned his steps towards the dwelling of his new friend, Lieberg. He easily found the house, which, as the reader well knows, was in a very central situation. The step of the door was washed with the greatest care, and rubbed with the peculiar kind of stone, to that especial purpose appropriate, till it was as white as snow. The door was of mahogany, with a small lozenge-shaped brass knocker, and a copper-plate fixed immediately under the instrument of noise, recommending, with the soft persuasion of the imperative mood, that the visitor should ring as well as knock. Morley Ernstein obeyed to the letter, and without a moment's delay, a servant out of livery opened the door, and replied to his demand, that Colonel Lieberg was at home. The addition of military rank to his friend's titles did not at all surprise Morley Ernstein; for there was in his whole appearance a certain soldier-like look which is seldom acquired by a civilian.

Every thing within the doors of the house was the pink of perfection. The drawing-room was beautifully furnished, and in every part of it were to be seen objects of taste and vertu, not precisely those things which have acquired for themselves the technical terms of nic-nacs, and serve but to please the eye or amuse the fancy; but, on the contrary, things which appealed to the mind through various associations--small cabinet pictures of great value, bronzes from Herculanum, marbles from Greece and Rome, beautiful specimens of the cinque cento workmanship, a little Venus from the hands of John of Bologna, and two or three tables of exquisite Florentine mosaic.

Lying on a sofa, near the open window, which was curtained, if we may use the term, with manifold odoriferous flowers, habited in a dressing-gown of rich embroidered silk, and with his fine countenance full of eager interest in what he was reading, lay Everard Lieberg, with a book in his hand, on which his eyes were so intently fixed, that he did not seem to observe the opening of the door, till his servant pronounced the name of Morley Ernstein.

Starting up from the sofa, he laid down the book, and grasped his young friend's hand, welcoming him to London, and congratulating him on the full recovery which his looks bespoke. The conversation then turned to Morley's plans and purposes, as it had done with Mr. Hamilton. But Lieberg declared that he had already laid out half-a-dozen schemes for Ernstein, which he must insist upon being executed. There were beautiful horses to be bought, there were races to be attended, there were singers to be heard, there were pictures to be seen, there was a wonderful mechanical invention which brought into action new powers in the physical world, there was a splendid orator in a chapel in Sloane Street, there was the loveliest woman in all Europe in the third box of the first tier of the opera, there was a new pamphlet on the immortality of the soul, and there was a romance of Balzac's, which seemed written for the express purpose of proving, that--

"Nought is everything, and everything is nought."

The multitude, the diversity, the opposition of the various matters which Lieberg proposed for his pursuit, at once bewildered and amused his young friend. But there was a fascination about his eloquence that was scarcely to be resisted. He contrived to describe everything in such a manner, as to place it in the most attractive aspect to his hearer, seeing, with a skill that seemed almost intuitive, the exact nature and character of his tastes and feelings, and shaping his account accordingly. As an instance, his description of the lady, whom he had beheld on two successive nights at the opera, was such, that Morley almost fancied he must have seen Juliet Carr, although, to the best of his belief, she was nearly two hundred miles from London.

"I shall get bewildered with all that I have to see, to do, and to think of," replied Morley, "and so I fear must leave one half of your fine plans unexecuted. But at all events, we must classify them somewhat better, for you have propounded them in rather a heterogeneous form."

"Not at all, not at all!" cried Lieberg, "the very contrast gives the charm! Depend upon it, we should not think half so much of beauty if there was no ugliness in the world. Life ought to be like a Russian bath, the hot and the cold alternately; nothing will strengthen the mind so much, nothing will give us such powers of endurance, nothing will keep the zest of pleasure so fresh upon us, nothing will enable us to change with so little regret, as the changing periods of our life compel us to seek new enjoyments, and follow fresh pursuits."

"I should think," replied Morley, "that with your incessant activity in the chase of pleasure, you would soon meet with satiety, and the world's stock of enjoyment would be exhausted while you are yet young."

"Impossible--impossible!" cried Lieberg; "the world's stores are inexhaustible to a man who has the capabilities of enjoying them all. But come, Ernstein, we are losing time even now. Come with me to T--'s; this is a sale day; I know of three horses that are perfect in every point; you shall buy which of them you like, and I will take any that you do not buy. Wait one moment for me while I put off my dressing-gown and on my coat. There is 'Don Juan' for you, or a Pamphlet on the Currency, as you happen to be in the mood."

The horses were bought, and justified fully Lieberg's knowledge and taste; and the rest of the day Morley Ernstein spent with his new friend, hurried on from scene to scene, and from object to object, with that impetuosity which suited but too well with his own nature. At the same time, there was a degree of wit, sufficient to enliven, but not to dazzle, a degree of eloquence, which carried away without convincing, in the conversation of Lieberg, whatever was the subject that it touched upon, which added interest to all that Morley heard and saw, by the remarks which followed. Thus, when he returned home to dress for dinner, his mind was in that state of giddy excitement, which every one must have sometimes felt after a hard day's hunting. As he made his preparations for the party at Mr. Hamilton's he resolved that the next day should be passed in more calm and thoughtful pursuits; but he little knew how difficult it is for a man to halt in any course on which he has once entered vehemently.