CHAPTER XI.
OPINIONS.
He scorned them from the centre of his heart,
For well he knew mankind; and he who knows
Must loathe or pity. He who dwells apart,
With books, and nature, and philosophy,
May lull himself with pity; he who dwells
In crowds and cities, struggling with his race,
Must daily see their falsehood and their faults,
Their cold ingratitude, their selfishness:
How can he choose but loathe them?
At any other time, Norbourne Courtenaye would have been delighted at his uncle's visit; which, had it been but six months sooner, would have presented a very different aspect. Lord Norbourne was one of those men who made it his boast, that he had succeeded in whatever he undertook. We beg his lordship's pardon; he never boasted of any thing: he knew Fortune too well to tempt her by a defiance. No two people are more different in outward seeming, than a man sometimes grows to differ from himself. Twenty-five and fifty are epochs which bear no resemblance. In the reserved, cautious, yet bland and insinuating statesman, no one could have recognised the gay, wild, and extravagant young man that Lord Norbourne had once been. A younger brother, he had been the architect of his own fortunes; and having one's own way to make in the world is not the best possible method towards giving a good opinion of it. One by one Lord Norbourne had left behind him the generous belief, the warm affection, and the elevated sentiment. If he now thought at all about them, it was only to think how much, and how often, they had been imposed upon. The fault of his system was, that he gave the head an undue preponderance over the heart. It was the inevitable result of his experience: there are no weaknesses which we so thoroughly despise as those to which ourselves have yielded; and no faults strike us so forcibly as our own, when they are past.
The same process leads to different results. Sir Jasper Meredith hated mankind, Lord Norbourne only despised them; the one had exaggerated his feelings in solitude, the other had dispersed them in society; the one shrunk from his fellows, the other delighted in making them his tools: the sense of superiority was thus gratified in both. Sir Jasper undervalued worldly honours: Lord Norbourne even over-estimated their advantages. The difference lay in this: Sir Jasper had led a life of wild adventure in foreign lands; seeking excitement for excitement's sake: gaining riches by lucky chances; and, wearied out both in mind and body, sinking into solitude at last, while he gathered round him all the bitterest recollections of the past. Lord Norbourne, on the contrary, had led a life of business, in the same city and same court; he had taken his daily lessons in small intrigues for smaller ends.
The success and the disappointment alike belonged to the one aim—worldly success. He ended with being rich, a peer, and in the minister's confidence; while the insecurity which, in a government like ours, attends political elevation, kept away any approach to satiety. He had not gone through life without learning its many bitter lessons; but the moral he drew from them was a sneer. Moreover, the habits of business are the most enduring of any; and Lord Norbourne's most positive enjoyment was in what are called the fatigues of office. Still he lingered in the country, and every day his nephew took greater delight in his society. There was something very flattering to the self-love of any young man in the easy confidence of one so distinguished, and usually so reserved. The polished misanthropy, too, of Lord Norbourne's sarcasm was delightful to one who felt in his own heart the deep enjoyment of disbelief.
It was an unusually mild and lovely evening that they were loitering on the banks of the lake. The sun was just setting—a conqueror as he went down; for every cloud that had flitted about during the day, now gathered on the west, mantling with crimson and gold. There was something triumphal in the rich colouring that arrayed every object. The vivid green of the oaks stood out more distinct amid the scarlet of the sycamore and the yellow of the thyme, together with the rich brown that was covering the chestnuts. The grass, too, of the park was in strong contrast to the purple heath that clothed the distance, only broken by the blossoming furze, which intersected it like a golden sea: a faint perfume came on the air, more subtle even than the breath of flowers; it was like the last sigh of each falling leaf, that flitted by noiseless as a ghost.
To me there is no season so lovely as the autumn. There is a gaiety about the spring with which I have no sympathy: its perpetual revival of leaf and bloom is too great a contrast to the inner world, where so many feelings lie barren, and so many hopes withered. There is an activity about it, from which the wearied spirits shrink; and a joyousness, which but makes you turn more sadly upon yourself; but about autumn there is a tender melancholy inexpressibly soothing; decay is around, but such is in your own heart. There is a languor in the air which encourages your own, and the poetry of memory is in every drooping flower and falling leaf. The very magnificence of its Assyrian array is touched with the light of imagination: even while you watch it, it passes away as your brightest hopes have done before.
The lake, on whose bank Courtenaye and his uncle were standing, was just then an object of singular beauty. The sky was reflected in its depths in huge masses of crimson shadow, which softened away into a deep purple mirror, clear and motionless, saving when the swans swept slowly across, leaving behind a vein of violet light.
"Can you," said Norbourne, "be quite insensible to the beauty of a scene like this? It enters into my very heart: I feel a kindlier disposition to the whole human race."
"Nay, nay," exclaimed Lord Norbourne, "I cannot go quite so far as that. I have, thanks to your hospitality, laid in a stock of health enough for the ensuing winter: but as to the general benevolence of which you talk, I confess I find no symptoms: if I did, they would alarm me more than those of the gout."
"But, my dear uncle," asked his young hearer, is it not a pleasanter thing to think well of one's species?"
"Pleasanter, I grant you," replied his uncle: "but one always pays for one's pleasures. Now I am arrived at an age when one grows economical on that head. I do not agree with Waller, who says,
'Surely the pleasure is as great
In being cheated as to cheat.'
At all events, there is small enjoyment in being cheated with one's eyes open, which would be my present case. My opinion of my kind is couched in St. Simon's answer to Louis XIV—'Is there any thing,' asked the king, 'that you despise more than men?' 'Yes,' replied the duke,—'woman.'"
"I had hoped," said Norbourne, "that you had some soft relentings in favour of the fairer sex."
"Not I," answered Lord Norbourne: " women have all our faults, heightened by a falsehood and inconsistency peculiarly their own. You may make a man understand his real interests; now, a woman you never can. Of all materials with which it may be my evil fate to work, I especially abjure and abhor the fanciful."
"Really, my dear uncle, you make me very uncomfortable," exclaimed Courtenaye, laughing. "Do you not even believe in love."
"Yes," was the reply,—"as I do in the hooping-cough, or the measles; as a sort of juvenile disease to be got over as soon as possible. If young people would but consider,—a thing which young people never do,—they would find that love is its own cure. Gratified, it dies of satiety; ungratified, of forgetfulness. Let any man, in the course of a few years, look back upon the most desperate passion he ever experienced, and he will find himself not only cured, but ashamed of it."
Norbourne walked on in silence: he felt too keenly to like to speak of his feelings. He shrank from mentioning his engagement to his uncle. It was almost sacrilege to mention Ethel's name with a chance even of sarcasm or of blame.
Cato's a proper person
To intrust a love tale with!'
So he kept his thoughts "in their sweet silence;" and when Lord Norbourne returned to the house, long did he linger by that lonely lake, recalling a thousand looks and words which, lovely as they seemed at the time, grew even lovelier thus remembered. What impossible things inconstancy or indifference appeared to Norbourne! Never did young worshipper more devoutly believe in the divinity of love.
"For nothing in this wide world would I give up my sweet Ethel." It was almost like parting with herself when he left the lake-side.