CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH THE HERO SHOWS DECISION ON MORE POINTS THAN ONE.--MORE OFISORA'S CHARACTER IS DEVELOPED.
To use the fine image in the "Arcadia," it was "when the sun, likea noble heart, began to show his greatest countenance in his lowestestate," that I arrived at Isora's door. I had written to her once,to announce my uncle's death and the day of my return: but I hadnot mentioned in my letter my reverse of fortunes; I reserved thatcommunication till it could be softened by our meeting. I saw by thecountenance of the servant who admitted me that all was well: so I askedno question; I flew up the stairs; I broke into Isora's chamber, andin an instant she was in my arms. Ah, Love, Love! wherefore art thou sotransitory a pilgrim on the earth,--an evening cloud which hovers on ourhorizon, drinking the hues of the sun, that grows ominously brighter asit verges to the shadow and the night, and which, the moment that sun isset, wanders on in darkness or descends in tears?
"And now, my bird of Paradise," said I, as we sat alone in the apartmentI had fitted up as the banqueting-room, and on which, though small inits proportions, I had lavished all the love of luxury and of show whichmade one of my most prevailing weaknesses, "and now how has time passedwith you since we parted?"
"Need you ask, Morton? Ah, have you ever noted a poor dog deserted byits master, or rather not deserted, for that you know is not my caseyet," added Isora, playfully, "but left at home while the master wentabroad? have you noted how restless the poor animal is; how it refusesall company and all comfort; how it goes a hundred times a day into theroom which its master is wont mostly to inhabit; how it creeps on thesofa or the chair which the same absent idler was accustomed to press;how it selects some article of his very clothing, and curls jealouslyaround it, and hides and watches over it as I have hid and watched overthis glove, Morton? Have you ever noted that humble creature whose wholehappiness is the smile of one being, when the smile was away,--then,Morton, you can tell how my time has passed during your absence."
I answered Isora by endearments and by compliments. She turned away fromthe latter.
"Never call me those fine names, I implore you," she whispered; "call meonly by those pretty pet words by which I know you will never call anyone else. Bee and bird are my names, and mine only; but beauty and angelare names you have given or may give to a hundred others! Promise me,then, to address me only in your own language."
"I promise, and lo, the seal to the promise. But tell me, Isora, do younot love these rare scents that make an Araby of this unmellowed clime?Do you not love the profusion of light which reflects so dazzling alustre on that soft cheek; and those eyes which the ancient romancer*must have dreamed of when he wrote so prettily of 'eyes that seemed atemple where love and beauty were married?' Does not yon fruit takea more tempting hue, bedded as it is in those golden leaves? Does notsleep seem to hover with a downier wing over those sofas on which thelimbs of a princess have been laid? In a word, is there not in luxuryand in pomp a spell which no gentler or wiser mind would disdain?"
* Sir Philip Sydney, who, if we may judge from the number of quotationsfrom his works scattered in this book, seems to have been an especialfavourite with Count Devereux.--ED.
"It may be so!" said Isora, sighing; "but the splendour which surroundsus chills and almost terrifies me. I think that every proof of yourwealth and rank puts me further from you: then, too, I have someremembrance of the green sod, and the silver rill, and the trees uponwhich the young winds sing and play; and I own that it is with thecountry, and not the town, that all my ideas of luxury are wed."
"But the numerous attendants, the long row of liveried hirelings,through which you may pass, as through a lane, the caparisoned steeds,the stately equipage, the jewelled tiara, the costly robe which matronsimitate and envy, the music, which lulls you to sleep, the lighted show,the gorgeous stage,--all these, the attributes or gifts of wealth, allthese that you have the right to hope you will one day or other command,you will own are what you could very reluctantly forego."
"Do you think so, Morton? Ah, I wish you were of my humble temper: themore we limit and concentre happiness, the more certain, I think, we areof securing it; they who widen the circle encroach upon the boundariesof danger; and they who freight their wealth upon a hundred vessels aremore liable, Morton, are they not? to the peril of the winds and thewaves than they who venture it only upon one."
"Admirably reasoned, my little sophist; but if the one ship sink?"
"Why, I would embark myself in it as well as my wealth, and should sinkwith it."
"Well, well, Isora, your philosophy will, perhaps, soon be put to thetest. I will talk to you to-morrow of business."
"And why not to-night?"
"To-night, when I have just returned! No, to-night I will only talk toyou of love!"
As may be supposed, Isora was readily reconciled to my change ofcircumstances; and indeed that sum which seemed poverty to meappeared positive wealth to her. But perhaps few men are by nature andinclination more luxurious and costly than myself; always accustomed toa profuse expenditure at my uncle's, I fell insensibly and _con amore_,on my _debut_ in London, into all the extravagances of the age. SirWilliam, pleased rather than discontented with my habits, especiallyas they were attended with some _eclat_, pressed upon me proofs of hisgenerosity which, since I knew his wealth and considered myself hisheir, I did not scruple to accept, and at the time of my return toLondon after his death, I had not only spent to the full the princelyallowance I had received from him, but was above half my whole fortunein debt. However, I had horses and equipages, jewels and plate, and Idid not long wrestle with my pride before I obtained the victory, andsent all my valuables to the hammer. They sold pretty well, all thingsconsidered, for I had a certain reputation in the world for taste andmunificence; and when I had received the product and paid my debts,I found that the whole balance in my favour, including, of course, myuncle's legacy, was fifteen thousand pounds.
It was no bad younger brother's portion, perhaps, but I was in nohumour to be made a younger brother without a struggle. So I went to thelawyers; they looked at the will, considered the case, and took theirfees. Then the honestest of them, with the coolest air in the world,told me to content myself with my legacy, for the cause was hopeless;the will was sufficient to exclude a wilderness of elder sons. I neednot add that I left this lawyer with a very contemptible opinion of hisunderstanding. I went to another, he told me the same thing, only ina different manner, and I thought him as great a fool as his fellowpractitioner. At last I chanced upon a little brisk gentleman, with aquick eye and a sharp voice, who wore a wig that carried convictionin every curl; had an independent, upright mien, and such a logical,emphatic way of expressing himself, that I was quite charmed with him.This gentleman scarce heard me out before he assured me that I had afamous case of it, that he liked making quick work, and proceeding withvigour, that he hated rogues, and delay, which was the sign of a rogue,but not the necessary sign of law, that I was the most fortunate manimaginable in coming to him, and, in short that I had nothing to do butcommence proceedings, and leave all the rest to him. I was very soontalked into this proposal, and very soon embarked in the luxurious oceanof litigation.
Having settled this business so satisfactorily, I went to receivethe condolence and sympathy of St. John. Notwithstanding the arduousoccupations both of pleasure and of power, in which he was constantlyengaged, he had found time to call upon me very often, and to express byletter great disappointment that I had neither received nor returned hisvisits. Touched by the phenomenon of so much kindness in a statesman, Ipaid him in return the only compliment in my power; namely, I asked hisadvice, with a view of taking it.
"Politics--politics, my dear Count," said he in answer to that request,"nothing like it; I will get you a seat in the House by next week,--youare just of age, I think,--Heavens! a man like you who has learningenough for a German professor; assurance that would almost abasha Milesian; a very pretty choice of words, and a pointed way ofconsummating a je
st,--why, with you by my side, my dear Count, I willsoon--"
"St. John," said I, interrupting him, "you forget I am a Catholic!"
"Ah, I did forget that," replied St. John, slowly. "Heaven help me,Count, but I am sorry your ancestors were not converted; it was a pitythey should bequeath you their religion without the estate to supportit, for papacy has become a terrible tax to its followers."
"I wonder," said I, "whether the earth will ever be governed byChristians, not cavillers; by followers of our Saviour, not byco-operators of the devil; by men who obey the former, and 'love oneanother,' not by men who walk about with the latter (that roaring lion),'seeking whom they may devour.' Intolerance makes us acquainted withstrange nonsense, and folly is never so ludicrous as when associatedwith something sacred; it is then like Punch and his wife in Powell'spuppet-show, _dancing in the Ark_. For example, to tell those who differfrom us that they are in a delusion, and yet to persecute them for thatdelusion, is to equal the wisdom of our forefathers, who, we aretold, in the 'Daemonologie' of the Scottish Solomon, 'burned a wholemonasterie of nunnes for being misled, not by men, but _dreames_!'"
And being somewhat moved, I ran on for a long time in a very eloquentstrain, upon the disadvantages of intolerance; which, I would have it,was a policy as familiar to Protestantism now as it had been to Poperyin the dark ages; quite forgetting that it is not the vice of a peculiarsect, but of a ruling party.
St. John, who thought or affected to think very differently from meon these subjects, shook his head gently, but, with his usual goodbreeding, deemed it rather too sore a subject for discussion.
"I will tell you a discovery I have made," said I.
"And what is it?"
"Listen: that man is wisest who is happiest,--granted. What doeshappiness consist in? Power, wealth, popularity, and, above all,content! Well, then, no man ever obtains so much power, so much money,so much popularity, and, above all, such thorough self-content as afool; a fool, therefore (this is no paradox), is the wisest of men.Fools govern the world in purple: the wise laugh at them; but they laughin rags. Fools thrive at court; fools thrive in state chambers; foolsthrive in boudoirs; fools thrive in rich men's legacies. Who is sobeloved as a fool? Every man seeks him, laughs at him, and hugs him. Whois so secure in his own opinion, so high in complacency, as a fool? _suavirtute involvit_. Hark ye, St. John, let us turn fools: they are theonly potentates, the only philosophers of earth. Oh, motley, 'motley'syour only wear!'"
"Ha! ha!" laughed St. John; and, rising, he insisted upon carrying mewith him to the rehearsal of a new play, in order, as he said, to dispelmy spleen, and prepare me for ripe decision upon the plans to be adoptedfor bettering my fortune.
But, in good truth, nothing calculated to advance so comfortableand praiseworthy an end seemed to present itself. My religion was aneffectual bar to any hope of rising in the state. Europe now began towear an aspect that promised universal peace, and the sword which I hadso poetically apostrophized was not likely to be drawn upon any moreglorious engagement than a brawl with the Mohawks, any incautious nosesappertaining to which fraternity I was fully resolved to slit wheneverthey came conveniently in my way. To add to the unpromising state of myworldly circumstances, my uncle's death had removed the only legitimatebarrier to the acknowledgment of my marriage with Isora, and it becamedue to her to proclaim and publish that event. Now, if there be any timein the world when a man's friends look upon him most coldly; when theyspeak of his capacities of rising the most despondingly; when they aremost inclined, in short, to set him down as a silly sort of fellow, whomit is no use inconveniencing one's self to assist,--it is at that momentwhen he has made what the said friends are pleased to term an imprudentmarriage! It was, therefore, no remarkable instance of good luck thatthe express time for announcing that I had contracted that species ofmarriage was the express time for my wanting the assistance of thosekind-hearted friends. Then, too, by the pleasing sympathies in worldlyopinion, the neglect of one's friends is always so damnably neighbouredby the exultation of one's foes! Never was there a man who, withoutbeing very handsome, very rude, or very much in public life, had madeunto himself more enemies than it had been my lot to make. How therascals would all sneer and coin dull jests when they saw me so down inthe world! The very old maids, who, so long as they thought me single,would have declared that the will was a fraud, would, directly theyheard I was married, ask if Gerald was handsome, and assert, with a wiselook, that my uncle knew well what he was about. Then the joy of theLady Hasselton, and the curled lip of the haughty Tarleton! It is a veryodd circumstance, but it is very true, that the people we most despisehave the most influence over our actions; a man never ruins himselfby giving dinners to his father, or turning his house into a palace inorder to feast his bosom friend: on the contrary, 'tis the poor devilof a friend who fares the worst, and starves on the family joint, whilemine host beggars himself to banquet "that disagreeable Mr. A., who issuch an insufferable ass," and mine hostess sends her husband to theFleet by vying with "that odious Mrs. B., who was always her aversion!"
Just in the same manner, no thought disturbed me, in the step I wasabout to take, half so sorely as the recollection of Lady Hasselton thecoquette and Mr. Tarleton the gambler. However, I have said somewhereor other that nothing selfish on a small scale polluted my love forIsora,--nor did there. I had resolved to render her speedy and fulljustice; and if I sometimes recurred to the disadvantages to myself, Ialways had pleasure in thinking that they were _sacrifices_ to her. Butto my great surprise, when I first announced to Isora my intention ofrevealing our marriage, I perceived in her countenance, always such atraitor to her emotions, a very different expression from that whichI had anticipated. A deadly paleness spread over her whole face, and ashudder seemed to creep through her frame. She attempted, however, tosmile away the alarm she had created in me; nor was I able to penetratethe cause of an emotion so unlooked for. But I continued to speak of thepublic announcement of our union as of a thing decided; and at lengthshe listened to me while I arranged the method of making it, andsympathized in the future projects I chalked out for us to adopt. Still,however, when I proposed a definite time for the re-celebration of ournuptials, she ever drew back and hinted the wish for a longer delay.
"Not so soon, dear Morton," she would say tearfully, "not so soon; weare happy now, and perhaps when you are with me always you will not loveme so well!"
I reasoned against this notion, and this reluctance, but in vain; andday passed on day, and even week on week, and our marriage was stillundeclared. I now lived, however, almost wholly with Isora, for busytongues could no longer carry my secret to my uncle; and, indeed,since I had lost the fortune which I was expected to inherit, it isastonishing how little people troubled their heads about my movements ormyself. I lived then almost wholly with Isora; and did familiarity abatemy love? Strange to say, it did not abate even the romance of it. Thereader may possibly remember a conversation with St. John recorded inthe Second Book of this history. "The deadliest foe to love," said he(he who had known all love,--that of the senses and that also of thesoul!), "is not change, nor misfortune, nor jealousy, not wrath, noranything that flows from passion or emanates from fortune. The deadliestfoe to love is CUSTOM!"
Was St. John right? I believe that in most instances he was; and perhapsthe custom was not continued in my case long enough for me to refute themaxim. But as yet, the very gloss upon the god's wings was fresh as onthe first day when I had acknowledged his power. Still was Isora to methe light and the music of existence! still did my heart thrill and leapwithin me when her silver and fond voice made the air a blessing! Stillwould I hang over her, when her beautiful features lay hushed in sleep,and watch the varying hues of her cheek; and fancy, while she slept,that in each low, sweet breath that my lips drew from hers, was awhisper of tenderness and endearment! Still when I was absent from her,my soul seemed to mourn a separation from its better and dearer part,and the joyous senses of existence saddened and shrank into a singlew
ant! Still was her presence to my heart as a breathing atmosphere ofpoesy which circled and tinted all human things; still was my beingfilled with that delicious and vague melancholy which the very excess ofrapture alone produces,--the knowledge we dare not breathe to ourselvesthat the treasure in which our heart is stored is not above thecasualties of fate. The sigh that mingles with the kiss; the tear thatglistens in the impassioned and yearning gaze; the deep tide in ourspirit, over which the moon and the stars have power; the chain ofharmony within the thought which has a mysterious link with all that isfair and pure and bright in Nature, knitting as it were loveliness withlove!--all this, all that I cannot express; all that to the young forwhom the real world has had few spells, and the world of visions hasbeen a home, who love at last and for the first time,--all that to themare known were still mine.
In truth, Isora was one well calculated to sustain and to rivet romance.The cast of her beauty was so dreamlike, and yet so varying: her temperwas so little mingled with the common characteristics of woman; it hadso little of caprice, so little of vanity, so utter an absence of alljealous and all angry feeling; it was so made up of tenderness anddevotion, and yet so imaginative and fairy-like in its fondness,--thatit was difficult to bear only the sentiments of earth for one who hadso little of earth's clay. She was more like the women whom one imaginesare the creations of poetry, and yet of whom no poetry, save that ofShakspeare, reminds us; and to this day, when I go into the world, Inever see aught of our own kind which recalls her, or even one of herfeatures, to my memory. But when I am alone with Nature, methinks asweet sound or a new-born flower has something of familiar power overthose stored and deep impressions which do make her image, and it bringsher more vividly before my eyes than any shape or face of her own sex,however beautiful it may be.
There was also another trait in her character which, though arising inher weakness, not her virtues, yet perpetuated the more dreamlike andimaginary qualities of our passion: this was a melancholy superstition,developing itself in forebodings and omens which interested, becausethey were steeped at once in the poetry and in the deep sincerity of hernature. She was impressed with a strong and uncontrollable feeling thather fate was predestined to a dark course and an early end; and she drewfrom all things around her something to feed the pensive character ofher thoughts. The stillness of noon; the holy and eloquent repose oftwilight, its rosy sky and its soft air, its shadows and its dews,--hadequally for her heart a whisper and a spell. The wan stars, where,from the eldest time, man has shaped out a chart of the undiscoverablefuture; the mysterious moon, to which the great ocean ministers from itsuntrodden shrines; the winds, which traverse the vast air, pilgrims froman eternal home to an unpenetrated bourne; the illimitable heavens, onwhich none ever gazed without a vague craving for something that theearth cannot give, and a vague sense of a former existence in which thatsomething was enjoyed; the holy night; that solemn and circling sleep,which seems, in its repose, to image our death, and in its living worldsto shadow forth the immortal realms which only through that death we cansurvey,--all had, for the deep heart of Isora, a language of omen and ofdoom. Often would we wander alone, and for hours together, by the quietand wild woods and streams that surrounded her retreat, and which weboth loved so well; and often, when the night closed over us, with myarm around her, and our lips so near that our atmosphere was our mutualbreath, would she utter, in that voice which "made the soul plant itselfin the ears," the predictions which had nursed themselves at her heart.
I remember one evening, in especial. The rich twilight had gatheredover us, and we sat by a slender and soft rivulet, overshadowed by somestunted yet aged trees. We had both, before she spoke, been silent forseveral minutes; and only when, at rare intervals, the birds sent fromthe copse that backed us a solitary and vesper note of music, was thestillness around us broken. Before us, on the opposite bank of thestream, lay a valley, in which shadow and wood concealed all trace ofman's dwellings, save at one far spot, where, from a single hut, rose acurling and thin vapour, like a spirit released from earth, and losinggradually its earthier particles, as it blends itself with the loftieratmosphere of heaven.
It was then that Isora, clinging closer to me, whispered her forebodingsof death. "You will remember," said she, smiling faintly, "you willremember me, in the lofty and bright career which yet awaits you; andI scarcely know whether I would not sooner have that memory--free as itwill be from all recollection of my failings and faults, and all that Ihave cost you, than incur the chance of your future coldness or decreaseof love."
And when Isora turned, and saw that the tears stood in my eyes, shekissed them away, and said, after a pause,--
"It matters not, my own guardian angel, what becomes of me: and now thatI am near you, it is wicked to let my folly cost you a single pang. Butwhy should you grieve at my forebodings? there is nothing painful orharsh in them to me, and I interpret them thus: 'If my life passes awaybefore the common date, perhaps it will be a sacrifice to yours.' And itwill, Morton--it will. The love I bear to you I can but feebly expressnow; all of us wish to prove our feelings, and I would give one proofof mine for you. It seems to me that I was made only for one purpose--tolove you; and I would fain hope that my death may be some sort ofsacrifice to you--some token of the ruling passion and the whole objectof my life."
As Isora said this, the light of the moon, which had just risen, shonefull upon her cheek, flushed as it was with a deeper tint than itusually wore; and in her eye--her features--her forehead--the loftynature of her love seemed to have stamped the divine expression ofitself.
Have I lingered too long on these passages of life? They draw near toa close, and a more adventurous and stirring period of manhood willsucceed. Ah, little could they, who in after years beheld in me butthe careless yet stern soldier--the wily and callous diplomatist--thecompanion alternately so light and so moodily reserved--little couldthey tell how soft, and weak, and doting my heart was once!