CHAPTER XIV.
OVER THE HERRING-POND.
LIKE the vision that had visited Cleve as he sate in the breakfast-roomof Verney House, awaiting the Rev. Isaac Dixie, the old Chateau deCresseron shared that night in the soft yet brilliant moonlight. Thatclergyman--vulgar I am afraid; worldly, perhaps; certainly notbeautiful--had undertaken this foreign mission into the land of romance;and among its shadows and enchanted lights, and heroic phantoms, looked,I am afraid, incongruous, as the long-eared, shaggy head of Bottom inthe fairy-haunted wood near Athens.
In the ancient town of Caen, in the Silver Lion, the Rev. Isaac Dixiethat evening made himself partially understood, and altogethercomfortable. He had an excellent dinner, and partook, moderately ofcourse, of the very best vintage in the crypt of that venerable inn. Whyshould he not? Was he not making harmless holiday, and guilty of noextravagance; for had not Mr. Cleve Verney buckled a long purse to hisgirdle, and told him to dip his fingers in it as often and as deep as hepleased? And if he undertook the task--trod out Cleve Verney's corn,surely it was no business of his to call for a muzzle, and deny himselfhis heart's content.
In that exquisite moonlight, having had his cup of coffee, the Rev.Isaac Dixie made a loitering promenade: everything was bewitching--alittle wonderful, he fancied--a little strange--from his shadow, thatlooked so sharp on the white road, to the gothic fronts and gables ofold carved houses, emitting ruddy glimmerings from diamond casemateshigh in air, and half-melting in the deep liquid sky, gleaming withstars over his head.
All was perfectly French in language and costume: not a note of thefamiliar English accent mingled in the foreign hum of life. He was quiteat his ease. To all censorious eyes he walked invisible; and, shall Itell it? Why not? For in truth, if his bishop, who abhors that narcotic,and who, I am sure, never reads novels, and therefore cannot read ithere, learns nothing of it, the telling can hurt nobody. He smoked threegreat cheroots, mild and fragrant, that evening, in the ancient streetsof Caen, and returned to his inn, odorous of that perfume.
It would have been altogether a delicious excursion, had there not beena suspense and an anxiety to trouble the divine. The Rev. Isaac Dixieregretted now that he had not asked Cleve to define his object. Hesuspected, but did not know its nature. He had no idea how obstinatelyand amazingly the problem would recur to his mind, and how serious wouldgrow his qualms as the hour of revelation drew near.
The same moon is shining over the ancient streets of Caen, and oversmoke-canopied Verney House, and over the quaint and lonely Chateau deCresseron. In a tapestried room in this old French house candles wereburning, the window open, and Margaret Fanshawe sitting at it, andlooking out on the moonlit woods and waters, and breathing the stillair, that was this night soft as summer, in the raptures of a strangedream: a dream no more; the uncertainty is over, and all her griefs. Nolonger is she one of that forlorn race that hath but a short time tolive, and is full of misery. She is not born to trouble, as the sparksfly upward, but translated. Is it so? Alas! alas! the angelic voice hasnot yet proclaimed "that God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neithershall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."These words are for the glorified, who have passed the gates of death.
In this bliss, as in all that pertains to love, reason has small share.The heart rejoices as the birds sing. A great suspense--the greatestcare that visits the young heart--has ended in a blessed certainty, andin so far the state resembles heaven; but, as in all mortal happiness,there mingles in this also a sadness like distant music.
Old Sir Booth Fanshawe is away on one of his mysterious journeys, andcannot return for three or four days, at soonest. I do not know whetherthings are beginning to look brighter with Sir Booth, or whether hisaffairs are being "managed" into _utter_ ruin. Meanwhile, the evilspirit has departed from the house, and the spirit of music has come,music with yet a cadence of sadness in it.
This fair, quaint landscape, and beautiful moonlight! Who ever looks onsuch a scene that does not feel a melancholy mingling in his delight?
"The moon shines bright:--in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise; in such a night, Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cresid lay that night. In such a night Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love To come again to Carthage."
Thus, in the visions of the Seer who lies in Stratford-on-Avon,moonlight and love and melancholy are related; and so it is, and willbe, to the end of time, till mortal love is no more, and sadness ends,and the moon is changed to blood, and all things are made new.
And now over the moonlit water, through the boughs of the old trees, thestill night air is thrilled with a sweet contralto--a homely song--theecho of childish days and the nursery. Poor Milly! her maid who died soearly, whose lover was a young sailor, far away, used to sing it for herin the summer evenings, when they sat down under the hawthorns, onWinnockhough, looking toward the sea, though the sea was many a mileaway:--
"As Eve went forth from Paradise, She, weeping, bore away One flower that, reared, in tears and sighs, Is growing to this day.
"Where'er the children of the fall Are toiling to this hour, It blooms for each, it blooms for all, And Love we call this flower.
"Red roses of the bygone year Are mingled with the mould, And other roses will appear Where they grew pale and old.
"But where it grew, no other grows, No bloom restores the sere; So this resembles not the rose, And knows no other year.
"So, welcome, when thy bloom is red, The glory of thy light; And welcome when thy bloom is shed, The long sleep of my night."
And now the song is ended, and, listening, nature seems to sigh; andlooking toward the old chateau, the front next you is in shadow, thewindow is open, and within you see _two_ ladies. The elder is standingby the girl, who sits still at the open window, looking up into the faceof her old friend--the old friend who has known, in the early days ofromance, what love is, for whom now "the bloom is shed, and minglingwith the mould," but who remembers sadly the blush and glory of itslight that died five-and-thirty years ago upon Canadian snows.
Gently the old lady takes her hand, and sits beside her girlishkinswoman, and lays her other hand over that, and smiles with a strangelook of affection, and admiration, and immeasurable compassion, thatsomehow seems to translate her, it is so sad and angelic. I cannot hearwhat she is saying, but the young lady looks up, and kisses her thincheek, and lays her head upon her old shoulder.
Behind, high over the steep roofs and pinnacles, and those glimmeringweather-vanes, that seem sometimes to melt quite away, hangs the moon,unclouded--meet emblem of a pure love--no longer crossed by the sorrowsof true love's course--Dian the Chaste, with her sad, pure, andbeautifully misleading light--alas! the emblem, also, of mutation.
In a few concise and somewhat dry sentences, as old prison stones bearthe records which thin hands, long since turned to dust, have carved,the world's corridors and corners bear the tracings of others that werebusy two thousand years ago; and the inscriptions that tell the tritestory of human fears and sadness, cut sharp and deep in the rock, tellsimply and briefly how Death was the King of Terrors, and the shortnessof Life the bitter wonder, and black Care the companion of the wayfarerswho marched by the same route to the same goal, so long ago. Thesegigantic griefs and horrors are all in a nutshell. A few words tellthem. Their terror is in their truth. There is no use in expanding them:they are sublimely simple. Among the shadowy men and women that peoplethese pages, I see them everywhere--plots too big and complicated to begot, by any compression, within the few pages and narrow covers of thebook of their lives: Care, in her old black weeds, and Death, withstealthy foot and blow like thunder.
Twelve months had come and gone for ever since the Reveren
d Isaac Dixiemade that little trip to Caen, every month bringing his portion ofblossom, fruit, or blight to every mortal. All had gone well andgloriously in this Verney Peerage matter.
The death of the late Honourable Arthur Verney was proved; and theHonourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney, as next heir, having complied with theproper forms, duly succeeded to the ancient peerage of the Verneys. Sothe dream was accomplished more splendidly, perhaps, than if the prizehad come earlier, for the estates were in such condition as they hadnever attained to since the great rebellion; and if Viscount Verney wasnot among the more potent of his peers, the fault was not in the peerageand its belongings.
I don't know that Lord Verney was on the whole a happier man than theHonourable Kiffyn had been. He had become somewhat more exacting; hispride pronounced itself more implacably; men felt it more, because hewas really formidable. Whatever the Viscount in the box might be, thedrag he drove was heavy, and men more alert in getting out of his waythan they would, perhaps, had he been a better whip.
He had at length his heart's desire; but still there was somethingwanting. He was not quite where he ought to be. With his boroughs, andhis command of one county, and potent influence in another, he ought tohave been decidedly a greater man. He could not complain of beingslighted. The minister saw him when he chose; he was listened to, and inall respects courteously endured. But there was somethingunsatisfactory. He was not _telling_, as he had expected. Perhaps he hadno very clear conceptions to impress. He had misgivings, too, thatsecretly depressed and irritated him. He saw Twyndle's eye wanderwildly, and caught him yawning stealthily into his hand, while he wasgiving him his view of the affair of the "the Matilda Briggs," and theright of search. He had seen Foljambe, of the Treasury, suddenly laughat something he thought was particularly wise, while unfolding to thatgentleman, in the drawing-room, after dinner, his ideas about localloans, in aid of agriculture. Foljambe did not laugh outright. It wasonly a tremulous qualm of a second, and he was solemn again, and ratherabashed. Lord Verney paused, and looked for a second, with sterninquiry in his face, and then proceeded politely. But Lord Verney neverthought or spoke well of Foljambe again; and often reviewed what he hadsaid, in secret, to try and make out where the absurdity lay, and wasshy of ventilating that particular plan again, and sometimes suspectedthat it was the boroughs and the county, and not Kiffyn Lord Verney,that were listened to.
As the organ of self-esteem is the region of our chief consolations andirritations (and its condition regulates temper), this undivulgedmortification, you may be sure, did not make Lord Verney, into whoseruminations was ever trickling, through a secret duct, this fine streamof distilled gall, brighter in spirits, or happier in temper.
Oh! vanity of human wishes! Not that the things we wish for are not inthemselves pleasant, but that we forget that, as in nature everysubstance has its peculiar animalcule and infestings, so every blessinghas, too minute to be seen at a distance, but quite inseparable, itsparasite troubles.
Cleve Verney, too, who stood so near the throne, was he happy? Theshadow of care was cast upon him. He had grown an anxious man. "Verney'slooking awfully thin, don't you think, and seedy? and he's alwayswriting long letters, and rather cross," was the criticism of one of hisclub friends. "Been going a little too fast, I dare say."
Honest Tom Sedley thought it was this pending peerage business, and thesuspense; and reported to his friend the confident talk of the town onthe subject. But when the question was settled, with a brilliantfacility, his good humour did not recover. There was still the samecloud over his friend, and Tom began to fear that Cleve had got intosome very bad scrape, probably with the Hebrew community.