Читать книгу Morley Ernstein; or, the Tenants of the Heart - G. P. R. James - Страница 9

The dinner-party at Mr. Hamilton's was such as might be expected, from the character as well as the situation of the man. Splendour, chastened by good taste, reigned at the table; and as he possessed none of the harsh austerity which sometimes accompanies age, although his whole demeanour displayed that calm gravity which sits so well upon the brow of years, the guests around his table were chosen from amongst the most cheerful, as well as from amongst the best of the society which London can afford. There were one or two distinguished statesmen, there were one or two mere politicians--and these classes are very distinct--there were one or two men of high rank and vast possessions; there were one or two persons distinguished for genius and for virtue; there were one or two gay young men, with very empty heads, who chattered to one or two pretty young women, who were easily satisfied in point of conversation. The rest of the party consisted of the wives of some of those we have mentioned, and the family of Mr. Hamilton himself.

All were London people; all had been accustomed to mingle much in London society: all were acquainted with everything that existed in the part of London which they themselves inhabited, and in the society with which they were accustomed to mix. I do not mean to say, that--as is so common--they knew nothing more. On the contrary, the greater part of the men and women who sat around that dinner-table, possessed extensive information upon many subjects; but still the locality in which they dwelt, and the society in which they moved, acted in some sort as a prison to their minds, from the limits of which they did certainly occasionally make excursions, but to which they were generally brought back again by the gaoler, custom, ere they had wandered far.

Such is ordinarily the great evil of London society to a stranger. Unless an effort is charitably made for the sake of the uninitiated, the conversation of the English capital is limited to subjects of particular rather than general interest; and where a Frenchman would sport over the whole universe of created things, solely for the purpose of shewing his agility, an Englishman's conversation, following the bent of his habits, sits down by his own fireside, and seldom travels beyond the circle in which he lives. The effect of this contraction is curious and unpleasant to a stranger; but that stranger himself, if he be gentlemanly in habits and powerful in mind, very often produces a miraculous and beneficial change upon the society itself. If the people composing it really possess intellect and information, and the narrowness of their conversation proceed merely from habit, there is something in the freshness of the stranger's thoughts which interests and excites them. They make an effort to keep up with him on his own ground; the animation of the race carries them away, and off they go, scampering over hill and dale, as if they were driving after a fox.

Such was the case in the present instance. Morley Ernstein, though he had been in London several times during his school and college life, knew little of it but the names of certain streets, the theatres, the opera, and the park. He could not talk of what had taken place at Almack's the night before. He was not conversant with any of the scandal that was running in the town; he did not know who was going to marry who; and was quite unaware that Lady Loraine had had two husbands before, and was going to take a third. All the tittle-tattle, in short, of that quarter of London in which fashionable people live, was as unknown to him as the gossip of the moon; and during some ten minutes, as he sat at a little distance from Mr. Hamilton himself, he remained in profound silence, eating his soup and his fish, with as much devotion as if the Almanach des Gourmands had been his book of common prayer.

After talking for some time to other people, Mr. Hamilton cast his eyes on his former ward, and knowing that he was neither shy, nor stupid, nor sullen, nor gluttonous, he wondered to see him buried in profound meditations over the plate that was before him. At that moment, however, his ear caught the sound of the conversation that was taking place on either side of Morley.

"The Duchess has such excellent taste," said the lady on his right hand; "so she insisted upon it, that it should be dark green, with a thin line of stone colour, between the black and the green, and the arms only in light and shade."

Mr. Hamilton perceived that she was talking of the Duchess of Watercourse's new carriage, but Morley Ernstein knew nothing about it.

"Oh! but I know it did!" replied the young lady, on Ernstein's other side, speaking to a young gentleman, who might quite as well have been a young lady too; "it cost five hundred francs in Paris, and that is twenty pounds--is it not? But then it was à point d'armes, and it was trimmed with the most beautiful valenciennes, three fingers broad."

Mr. Hamilton guessed that she was talking of a pocket-handkerchief; but what she said was as unintelligible to Morley, as an essay on the differential calculus would have been to her. At that moment the young Baronet raised his eyes, with a curious sort of smile, to the face of his former guardian, and Mr. Hamilton certainly read his look, and connected it with their conversation of that morning. It seemed to say--"Notwithstanding all your exhortations, my good friend, the study of the higher classes of society does not appear to me to tend much to edification." But Mr. Hamilton, who knew that there is such a thing as being stupid by convention, made an effort to give his young friend an opening, and consequently addressing the lady who had last been speaking, he said--"Pray, what do you call à point d'armes, Lady Caroline?--I confess I am very ignorant, and so, I fear, is my friend Morley, next to you."

The young lady coloured a little, and laughed, saying--"I was only talking of a pocket-handkerchief which cost five hundred francs."

"Was any one wicked enough to give it?" said Morley, to whom she had addressed the last few words.

"O dear, yes," she replied; "we good people in London are wicked enough to do anything for the sake of fashion."

"There is candour enough, at least, in the avowal," thought Morley Ernstein, and there was something in the young lady's tone as she answered, which struck him, and made him conceive that his first opinion of her mental powers, might not be altogether accurate.

Let it be remarked, that, the very general idea, that speech consists of words alone, is extremely erroneous. That the parts of speech, indeed, which are beaten into us at school, and for which, during a certain period of our lives, we curse all the grammarians that ever lived, from Priscian down to Lily, consist entirely of words, is true; but he who looks closer than any of these grammar-makers at the real philosophy of language, will find that speech consists of three distinct branches--words, looks, and tones. All these must act together to make what is properly called speech. Without either of the two last branches, the words rightly arranged form but what is called language; but that is a very different thing. How much is there in a tone?--what a variety of meanings will it give to the same word, or to the same sentence! It renders occasionally the same phrase negative or affirmative; it continually changes it from an assertion to an interrogation. The most positive form of language in the world, under the magic influence of a tone, becomes the strongest expression of doubt, and "I will not" means "I will" full as frequently as anything else.

Tones, too, besides shewing the meaning of the speaker at the moment, occasionally go on to display the character of his mind or the habitual direction of his thoughts; and it was by this interpreter that Morley Ernstein was led at once to translate the little insignificant moral that fell from his fair neighbour's lips, into a hint, that her mind did not always dwell upon the frivolous things of which she had just been speaking. He followed the direction in which she led: the conversation grew brighter, more animated; many persons took part in it; many subjects were discussed; the freshness of Morley's mind led others gaily after him. The vehemence and eagerness of his natural character, carried him off to a thousand subjects, which he at first never dreamed of touching upon; and in short, the conversation of the next half hour was like the wild gallop which we have seen him take across his own park; and, as then too, he ended by leaping the wall at a hound, and plunging into a topic, which might well be compared to the high road, being neither more nor less than politics.

A sudden silence followed, and the young gentleman, feeling that he had gone quite far enough, drew in the rein, and stopped in full course. The impetus however was given, the thoughts of those around him were led so far away from all the ordinary subjects of discussion at a London party, that they would have found it difficult to get back again, even if they had been so inclined, which, however, was the case with but few of them; and one or two of the elder and more distinguished persons present, purposely led Morley on to speak upon various subjects with which they judged him to be well acquainted. It was done with tact and discretion, however, in such a manner as to draw him out, without letting him perceive that any one looked upon him as a sort of American Indian.

On rising from table, a Peer who had figured in more than one administration, drew Mr. Hamilton aside, and made Morley the subject of conversation, while that young gentleman himself was talking for a few moments with an elderly man of amiable manners, called Lord Clavering.

"A very remarkable young man, Mr. Hamilton!" said the statesman--"somewhat fresh and inexperienced; but his ideas are very original, and generally just. Is his fortune large?"

"Very considerable!" replied Mr. Hamilton; "his father, whom you must have known, left two large estates, one called the Morley Court estate; the other still larger, but not so productive, in the wilds of Northumberland. He succeeded when very young, and as you may suppose, I have not let the property decrease during his minority."

"I know, Mr. Hamilton--I know, Mr. Hamilton!" replied the Peer, with a meaning smile. "Would it not be better to bring the young gentleman into the House of Commons? There is the old borough, you know, Hamilton, will be vacant after this session; for poor Wilkinson accepts the Hundreds, on account of bad health. My whole influence shall be given to your young friend, if he chooses to stand."

Mr. Hamilton bowed, and thanked the Peer, but somewhat drily withal, saying, "I will mention to him what your lordship says;" and then, turning away, he spoke to some of his other guests.

Not long after, the knocker of Mr. Hamilton's door became in great request, footman after footman laying his hand upon it, and endeavouring, it would seem, to see how far he could render it a nuisance to every one in the neighbourhood. Crowds of well-dressed people, of every complexion and appearance under the sun, began to fill the rooms, and certainly afforded--as every great party of a great city does--a more miscellaneous assortment of strange animals than can be found in the Regent's Park, or the Jardin des Plantes. Putting aside the differences of hue and colouring--the fair, the dark, the bronze, the sallow, the ruddy, the pale--and the differences of size--the tall, the short, the fat, the thin, the middle-sized--and of name, the variations of which were derived from every colour under heaven, black, brown, green, grey, white, and every quarter that the wind blows front, east, west, north, and south--and the difference of features--the bottle-nosed, the small-eyed, the long-chinned, the cheek boned, down to the noseless rotundity of a Gibbon's countenance, and the saucer-eyes that might have suited the owl in the Freyschutz--putting aside all these, I say there were various persons, each of whom might have passed for a lusus naturæ, were not many such to be found in every assembly of this world's children. There were some without heads, and some without hearts, some without feelings, and some without understanding. Some were simply bundles of pulleys and ropes, with a hydraulic machine for keeping them going--termed, by courtesy, flesh, bones, and blood, but none the less mere machines as ever came out of Maudslay's furnaces. Some were but bags of other people's ideas, who were propelled about the world as if on castors, receiving all that those who were near them chose to cram them with. Others were like what surveyors call a spirit-level, the fluid in which inclines this way or that, according to that which it leans upon. There were those, too, whose microscopic minds enlarge the atoms under their own eyes, till mites seem mountains, but who yet can see nothing further than an inch from their own noses; and there were those, also, who appear to be always gazing through a theodolite, so busily gauging distant objects as to overlook everything that is immediately before them. There was, in short, the man of vast general views, who can never fix his mind down to particular truths, and the man of narrow realities, who cannot stretch his comprehension to anything that he has not seen. Besides all these, there was the ordinary portion of the milk-and-water of society; a good deal of the vinegar; here and there some spirits of wine, a few flowers, and a scanty portion of fruit.

In the midst of all this, what did Morley Ernstein do? He amused himself greatly, as every young man of tolerable intellect might do; he laughed at some, and with others; was little annoyed by any; and, with a heart too young to be a good hater, he saw not much to excite anger, though a good deal to excite pity. There were some, however, who pleased him much. One or two young men, whose manners, tone, and countenance he liked; and more young women, whom, of course, he liked better still. He was a good deal courted, and made much of; and many ladies who had daughters, marriageable and unmarried, sent people to bring him up, and introduce him. Morley thought it very natural that such should be the case. "Were I a mother," he said to himself, "which, thank Heaven, I never can be, I would do just the same. People cry out upon this sort of thing--I really do not see why they should do so, more than censure a father for getting his son a commission in the Guards. It is right that we should wish to see our children well provided for; and so long as there is nothing unfair, no deception, no concealment, the purpose is rather honourable than otherwise."

Morley Ernstein knew that his large fortune and position in society must cause him to be regarded as a good match by more than half the mothers in England; he had heard so, and believed it; but he did not suffer that belief to make him either conceited, or suspicious. "It is a great advantage to me," he thought; "for it gives me the entrance into many a house where I could not otherwise penetrate, and puts me above the consideration of wealth, which I might otherwise be driven to, in the choice of my future wife. Thank. God! I can afford to wed the poorest girl in Europe if I find that she possesses those qualities which I believe will make me happy."

With these feelings, Morley Ernstein could hardly fail to make himself agreeable in the society of women; and certain it is, that many of those intriguing mothers, who go beyond that just limit which his mind had clearly fixed, thought, when they saw his careless and unsuspicious manner, his want of conceit in the gifts of fortune, and the readiness with which he met any advances, that he would be an easy as well as a golden prize, and prepared themselves to do battle with their rivals in the same good cause, for the possession of the young Baronet. They found themselves mistaken, for the simplest of all reasons, that mothers who could scheme, and contrive, and deceive, for the purpose of entangling him, were precisely those who could by no possible means bring up a daughter in such a way as to satisfy, even in manners, the young heir of Morley Court.

However, the evening passed pleasantly for Morley Ernstein. He was amused, as I have said; but, in truth, there was something more. He was interested and excited. Where is the young man of one-and-twenty to be found, who will not let his heart yield, in a great degree, to the effect of scene and circumstance?--to the moving of fair and graceful forms around him?--to the sound of sweet voices, mingled with music?--to the glittering of bright jewels, and of brighter eyes? and to soft words and gentle looks, enlivened from time to time by flights of gay wit, or even thoughtless merriment. Morley certainly passed through the rooms, criticising as he went, and found much interest in examining the characters of the persons present; but that was not all: he gradually became one of them himself in feeling, took an individual interest as well as a general one, in what was going on, shared in the excitement, and went home at length, after having enjoyed the whole probably ten times as much as any one there, except it was some young girl of eighteen, who met the man she hoped might love her, or some unknown youth who had never before obtained admission to the higher classes of English society.