CHAPTER XXXV.
AN EVENING ALONE.
The steps of Fate are dark and terrible;
And not here may we trace them to the goal.
If I could doubt the heaven in which I hope,
The doubt would vanish, gazing upon life,
And seeing what it needs of peace and rest.
Life is but like a journey during night.
We toil through gloomy paths of the unknown;
Heavy the footsteps are with pitfalls round;
And few and faint the stars that guide our way:
But, at the last, comes morning; glorious
Shines forth the light of day, and so will shine
The heaven which is our future and our home.
Sir Jasper watched from his window the light form of Ethel, as she ran hastily along the little winding path, soon lost in the coppice beside. "Poor child!" muttered he, resuming his seat, and gazing on the wood embers, whose flames were gathering into all sorts of fantastic shapes, which only ask the imagination to give them what form it will. I marvel at none of the wild beliefs in the Hartz mountains: fire is the element of the spiritual, and who can tell what strange visitings there may be during the midnight hours that the charcoal-burner sits watching the fitful and subtle mystery of flame?
Sir Jasper gazed on these grotesque combinations till their shadows seemed almost palpable upon his wearied spirits. He felt himself growing fanciful and superstitious; a pale, sad face, wearing first the likeness of Ethel, and then changing to that of Henrietta, but fixed and distorted, appeared distinct in the obscurity. The large eyes sought his own, as if asking for help, and yet unable to do more than look their mute asking. Funeral pageants floated on the air, dark, vague, but terrible, with that white face predominant in all.
Sir Jasper started from his chair, ashamed of the sick fancies that had, for the moment, overmastered him. He approached the window to dissipate them in the fair face of heaven: the evening had closed in during his reverie, and the sweet and silver night had stolen, with her noiseless steps, upon the air. The scene was usually bare and desolate, but it was now softened by the united influence of summer and of moonlight. There was not a cloud on the sky, save a few light vapours that congregated near the moon; but even they were lustrous with her presence. The herbage shone with silver dews, like a sheet of water tremulous with the passing wind, and not a leaf on the surrounding trees but seemed the mirror of a ray; all around was silent as sleep, and as soft. It seemed a world on which shadow had never rested, and tumult had never disturbed; crime, rage, and grief had no part in elements so lovingly blended; the earth was at rest, and the still bright air slept on her bosom.
But there was something in the tranquillity that mocked Sir Jasper's unrest: the contrast was too forcible between the outward and inward world: the one so serene, so spiritual; the other so troubled, and so actual. He turned from the window; and, ringing the bell hastily, ordered the servants to close the curtains.
"If," muttered he to himself, "every place bore record of the wretchedness that they had witnessed, they could not thus mock us with their bright and serene aspect. Folly, of that dreaming creed of old, to believe that the calm, far stars, governed the base destinies of earth! But the world was young then—warm with the celestial fire that called it into being. Imagination walked its fresh paths even as a god, and shed around glorious beliefs and divine aspirings: its presence made beautiful the planet that it redeemed with its heavenly essence: but the imagination has exhausted its poetry; we are given over, worn out, and yet struggling to the cold and the real. We know more than we did, but we love less; and what knowledge is to be acquired on our weary soil but the knowledge of evil? I look around, and see nothing but suffering: mankind is divided into two classes, in which all alternately take their place—the tyrant and the victim. How we torture each other! Not content with our inevitable portion, with sickness, toil, and death, we must create and inflict sorrow!"
At this moment his eye fell upon some roses that Miss Churchill had brought him: in the confusion they had been thrown upon the floor, and trampled upon.
"Just emblems of herself, poor girl," said the kind old man: "a passing wind from the south, a transitory gleam of sunshine, and, lo! those flowers opened to their short and sweet existence! Now, there they lie, carelessly crushed; the little period allotted to their loveliness and fragrance recklessly shortened: and such is the history of that poor child. Her young heart has been awakened to its short summer of hope and love: and how dreary a winter remains behind! She has lost much more than her lover; she has lost confidence in affection, and belief in excellence. Alas for the heart which has surrendered itself to an idol unworthy of its faith!—it has no future.
"And yet," continued he, after a pause, "it matters little in what shape our sorrow overtakes us. In all this wide world there is nothing but suffering: the child cries in its cradle; it but begins as it will continue. In all ranks there is the same overpowering misery: the poor man has all the higher faculties of his being absorbed in a perpetual struggle with cold and hunger: a step higher, and pretence comes to aggravate poverty; dig we cannot, and to beg we are ashamed. Go on into what are called the higher classes, and there we find ambition the fever of the soul, and jealousy its canker. There are pleasures; but there is no relish for them: and luxuries which have become wearisome as wants. The feelings are either dull in selfish apathy, that excludes enjoyment; or unduly keen, till a look or word is torture. Then your philosophers, your poets, your men of science—what do they do but spend breathing and healthful life on wasting pursuits, in which the very success only shows how worthless it is to succeed? The mind feeds upon the body: pale sickness, and early decrepitude, overmaster even its spiritual essence. Too late it discovers that this earth is its prison, and not its home: the heart beats, and its pulses are the clockwork of wretchedness: the head examines only to find that all is void and worthless. We feel, and all we feel is misery; we know, and the whole of our knowledge is evil. In one thing has Fate been merciful,—it has placed at the end of our pilgrimage a grave."
Sir Jasper was right; in a few short years we learn that the "valley of the shadow of death" does but lead to a place of peace, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." Rest!—how strongly, day by day, does the desire for rest grow upon the human heart! We begin life—how buoyant, how hopeful! difficulties but bring out a healthful exertion, and obstacles stimulate by the resources they call into action. This cannot, and does not last: it is not lassitude so much as discouragement that gains upon us: we feel how little we have done of all we once thought that we could do; and still more, how little that we have done has answered its intention. This I believe to be experienced in every career; but more especially in a literary one. Necessarily dependent on imagination, feeling, and opinion, of how exhausting a nature is both the work and the appeal of literature! Let the successful writer look back a few years, and what an utter sense of desolation there will be in the retrospect! Not a volume but has been the burial-place of many hopes, and the graven record of feelings never to be known again.
How constantly has mortification accompanied triumph! With what secret sorrow has that praise been received from strangers, denied to us by our friends! Nothing astonishes me more than the envy which attends literary fame, and the unkindly depreciation which waits upon the writer: of every species of fame, it is the most ideal and apart; it would seem to interfere with no one. It is bought by a life of labour; generally, also, of seclusion and privation. It asks its honour only from all that is most touching, and most elevated in humanity. What is the reward that it craves?—to lighten many a solitary hour, and to spiritualise a world, that were else too material. What is the requital that the Athenians of the earth give to those who have struggled through the stormy water, and the dark night, for their applause?—both reproach and scorn. If the author have—and why should he be exempt from?—the faults of his kind, with what greedy readiness are they seized upon and exaggerated! How ready is the sneer against his weakness or his error! What hours of feverish misery have been past! What bitter tears have been shed over the unjust censure, and the personal sarcasm!
The imaginative feel such wrong far beyond what those of less sensitive temperament can dream. The very essence of a poetical mind is irritable, passionate, and yet tender, susceptible, and keenly alive to that opinion which is the element of its existence. These may be faults; but they are faults by which themselves suffer most, and without which they could not produce their creations. Can you bid the leopard leave his spots, and yet be beautiful?
Perhaps,—for the Divine purpose runs through every aim of our being,—the disappointment and the endurance are but sent to raise those hopes above, which else might cling too fondly to their fruition below. Sooner or later dawns upon us the conviction, that the gifts we hold most glorious were given for a higher object than personal enjoyment, or the praise which is of man. We learn to look at the future result, to acknowledge our moral responsibility, and to hope that our thoughts, destined to become part of the human mind, will worthily fulfil the lofty duty assigned to their exercise.
I agree with Sir Jasper in looking forward with a desire that would fain "take the wings of the morning, and flee away, and be at rest." Worn, weary, and discouraged, the image of death seems like a pleasant sleep—solemn, but soothing; when all that now makes the fevered heart beat with unquiet pain will be no more. But I, also, gaze beyond, in all the earnest humility of hope. I believe that the mind is imperishable; and is also the worthiest offering to the Creator. Whatever of thought, of feeling, or of faculties, I may ever have possessed, look to the grave as to an altar, from whence they will arise purified and exalted unto heaven.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY JAMES MOYES, CASTLE STREET,
LEICESTER SQUARE.