Free Ebooks - ERNEST MALTRAVERS

ERNEST MALTRAVERS

BY EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(Lord Lytton)

DEDICATION:

TO
THE GREAT GERMAN PEOPLE,
A race of thinkers and of critics;
A foreign but familiar audience,
Profound in judgment, candid in reproof, generous in appreciation,
This work is dedicated
By an English Author.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840.

HOWEVER numerous the works of fiction with which, my dear Reader, I have
trespassed on your attention, I leave published but three, of any
account, in which the plot has been cast amidst the events, and coloured
by the manner, of our own times. The first of these, /Pelham/, composed
when I was little more than a boy, has the faults, and perhaps the
merits, natural to a very early age,--when the novelty itself of life
quickens the observation,--when we see distinctly, and represent
vividly, what lies upon the surface of the world,--and when, half
sympathising with the follies we satirise, there is a gusto in our
paintings which atones for their exaggeration. As we grow older we
observe less, we reflect more; and, like Frankenstein, we dissect in
order to create.

The second novel of the present day,* which, after an interval of some
years, I submitted to the world, was one I now, for the first time,
acknowledge, and which (revised and corrected) will be included in this
series, viz., /Godolphin/;--a work devoted to a particular portion of
society, and the development of a peculiar class of character. The
third, which I now reprint, is /Ernest Maltravers/,** the most mature,
and, on the whole, the most comprehensive of all that I have hitherto
written.

* For /The Disowned/ is cast in the time of our grandfathers, and /The
Pilgrims of the Rhine/ had nothing to do with actual life, and is not,
therefore, to be called a novel.

** At the date of this preface /Night and Morning/ had not appeared.

For the original idea, which, with humility, I will venture to call the
philosophical design of a moral education or apprenticeship, I have left
it easy to be seen that I am indebted to Goethe's /Wilhelm Meister/.
But, in /Wilhelm Meister/, the apprenticeship is rather that of
theoretical art. In the more homely plan that I set before myself, the
apprenticeship is rather that of practical life. And, with this view,
it has been especially my study to avoid all those attractions lawful in
romance, or tales of pure humour or unbridled fancy, attractions that,
in the language of reviewers, are styled under the head of "most
striking descriptions," "scenes of extraordinary power," etc.; and are
derived from violent contrasts and exaggerations pushed into caricature.
It has been my aim to subdue and tone down the persons introduced, and
the general agencies of the narrative, into the lights and shadows of
life as it is. I do not mean by "life as it is," the vulgar and the
outward life alone, but life in its spiritual and mystic as well as its
more visible and fleshly characteristics. The idea of not only
describing, but developing character under the ripening influences of
time and circumstance, is not confined to the apprenticeship of
Maltravers alone, but pervades the progress of Cesarini, Ferrers, and
Alice Darvil.

The original conception of Alice is taken from real life--from a person
I never saw but twice, and then she was no longer young--but whose
history made on me a deep impression. Her early ignorance and home--her
first love--the strange and affecting fidelity that she maintained, in
spite of new ties--her final re-meeting, almost in middle-age, with one
lost and adored almost in childhood--all this, as shown in the novel, is
but the imperfect transcript of the true adventures of a living woman.

In regard to Maltravers himself, I must own that I have but inadequately
struggled against the great and obvious difficulty of representing an
author living in our own times, with whose supposed works or alleged
genius and those of any one actually existing, the reader can establish
no identification, and he is therefore either compelled constantly to
humour the delusion by keeping his imagination on the stretch, or lazily
driven to confound the Author /in/ the Book with the Author /of/ the
Book.* But I own, also, I fancied, while aware of this objection, and in
spite of it, that so much not hitherto said might be conveyed with
advantage through the lips or in the life of an imaginary writer of our
own time, that I was contented, on the whole, either to task the
imagination, or submit to the suspicions of the reader. All that my own
egotism appropriates in the book are some occasional remarks, the
natural result of practical experience. With the life or the character,
the adventures or the humours, the errors or the good qualities, of
Maltravers himself, I have nothing to do, except as the narrator and
inventor.

* In some foreign journal I have been much amused by a credulity of this
latter description, and seen the various adventures of Mr. Maltravers
gravely appropriated to the embellishment of my own life, including the
attachment to the original of poor Alice Darvil; who now, by the way,
must be at least seventy years of age, with a grandchild nearly as old
as myself.

E. B. L.

A WORD TO THE READER
PREFIXED TO THE FIRST EDITION OF 1837.

THOU must not, my old and partial friend, look into this work for that
species of interest which is drawn from stirring adventures and a
perpetual variety of incident. To a Novel of the present day are
necessarily forbidden the animation, the excitement, the bustle, the
pomp, and the stage effect which History affords to Romance. Whatever
merits, in thy gentle eyes, /Rienzi/, or /The Last Days of Pompeii/, may
have possessed, this Tale, if it please thee at all, must owe that happy
fortune to qualities widely different from those which won thy favour to
pictures of the Past. Thou must sober down thine imagination, and
prepare thyself for a story not dedicated to the narrative of
extraordinary events--nor the elucidation of the characters of great
men. Though there is scarcely a page in this work episodical to the
main design, there may be much that may seem to thee wearisome and
prolix, if thou wilt not lend thyself, in a kindly spirit, and with a
generous trust, to the guidance of the Author. In the hero of this tale
thou wilt find neither a majestic demigod, nor a fascinating demon. He
is a man with the weaknesses derived from humanity, with the strength
that we inherit from the soul; not often obstinate in error, more often
irresolute in virtue; sometimes too aspiring, sometimes too despondent;
influenced by the circumstances to which he yet struggles to be
superior, and changing in character with the changes of time and fate;
but never wantonly rejecting those great principles by which alone we
can work the Science of Life--a desire for the Good, a passion for the
Honest, a yearning after the True. From such principles, Experience,
that severe Mentor, teaches us at length the safe and practical
philosophy which consists of Fortitude to bear, Serenity to enjoy, and
Faith to look beyond!

It would have led, perhaps, to more striking incidents, and have
furnished an interest more intense, if I had cast Maltravers, the Man of
Genius, amidst those fierce but ennobling struggles with poverty and
want to which genius is so often condemned. But wealth and lassitude
have their temptations as well as penury and toil. And for the rest--I
have taken much of my tale and many of my characters from real life, and
would not unnecessarily seek other fountains when the Well of Truth was
in my reach.

The Author has said his say, he retreats once more into silence and into
shade; he leaves you alone with the creations he has called to life--the
representatives of his emotions and his thoughts--the intermediators
between the individual and the crowd. Children not of the clay, but of
the spirit, may they be faithful to their origin!--so should they be
monitors, not loud but deep, of the world into which they are cast,
struggling against the obstacles that will beset them, for the heritage
of their parent--the right to survive the grave!

LONDON, August 12th, 1837.

ERNEST MALTRAVERS.

BOOK I.

"Youth pastures in a valley of its own:
The glare of noon--the rains and winds of heaven
Mar not the calm yet virgin of all care.
But ever with sweet joys it buildeth up
The airy halls of life."
SOPH. /Trachim/. 144-147.

CHAPTER I.

"My meaning in't, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of the
maid * * * * yet, who would have suspected an ambush where I was
taken?"
/All's Well that Ends Well/, Act iv. Sc. 3.

SOME four miles distant from one of our northern manufacturing towns, in
the year 18--, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is
impossible to conceive--the herbage grew up in sickly patches from the
midst of a black and stony soil. Not a tree was to be seen in the whole
of the comfortless expanse. Nature herself had seemed to desert the
solitude, as if scared by the ceaseless din of the neighbouring forges;
and even Art, which presses all things into service, had disdained to
cull use or beauty from these unpromising demesnes. There was something
weird and primeval in the aspect of the place; especially when in the
long nights of winter you beheld the distant fires and lights which give
to the vicinity of certain manufactories so preternatural an appearance,
streaming red and wild over the waste. So abandoned by man appeared the
spot, that you found it difficult to imagine that it was only from human
fires that its bleak and barren desolation was illumined. For miles
along the moor you detected no vestige of any habitation; but as you
approached the verge nearest to the town, you could just perceive at a
little distance from the main road, by which the common was intersected,
a small, solitary, and miserable hovel.

Within this lonely abode, at the time in which my story opens, were
seated two persons. The one was a man of about fifty years of age, and
in a squalid and wretched garb, which was yet relieved by an affectation
of ill-assorted finery. A silk handkerchief, which boasted the ornament
of a large brooch of false stones, was twisted jauntily round a muscular
but meagre throat; his tattered breeches were also decorated by buckles,
one of pinchbeck, and one of steel. His frame was lean, but broad and
sinewy, indicative of considerable strength. His countenance was
prematurely marked by deep furrows, and his grizzled hair waved over a
low, rugged, and forbidding brow, on which there hung an everlasting
frown that no smile from the lips (and the man smiled often) could chase
away. It was a face that spoke of long-continued and hardened vice--it
was one in which the Past had written indelible characters. The brand
of the hangman could not have stamped it more plainly, nor have more
unequivocally warned the suspicion of honest or timid men.

He was employed in counting some few and paltry coins, which, though an
easy matter to ascertain their value, he told and retold, as if the act
could increase the amount. "There must be some mistake here, Alice," he
said in a low and muttered tone: "we can't be so low--you know I had two
pounds in the drawer but Monday, and now--Alice, you must have stolen
some of the money--curse you."

The person thus addressed sat at the opposite side of the smouldering
and sullen fire; she now looked quietly up, and her face singularly
contrasted that of the man.

She seemed about fifteen years of age, and her complexion was remarkably
pure and delicate, even despite the sunburnt tinge which her habits of
toil had brought it. Her auburn hair hung in loose and natural curls
over her forehead, and its luxuriance was remarkable even in one so
young. Her countenance was beautiful, nay, even faultless, in its small
and child-like features, but the expression pained you--it was so
vacant. In repose it was almost the expression of an idiot--but when
she spoke or smiled, or even moved a muscle, the eyes, colour, lips,
kindled into a life, which proved that the intellect was still there,
though but imperfectly awakened.

"I did not steal any, father," she said in a quiet voice; "but I should
like to have taken some, only I knew you would beat me if I did."

"And what do you want money for?"

"To get food when I'm hungered."

"Nothing else?"

"I don't know."

The girl paused.--"Why don't you let me," she said, after a while, "why
don't you let me go and work with the other girls at the factory? I
should make money there for you and me both."

The man smiled--such a smile--it seemed to bring into sudden play all
the revolting characteristics of his countenance. "Child," he said,
"you are just fifteen, and a sad fool you are: perhaps if you went to
the factory, you would get away from me; and what should I do without
you? No, I think, as you are so pretty, you might get more money
another way."

The girl did not seem to understand this allusion: but repeated,
vacantly, "I should like to go to the factory."

"Stuff!" said the man, angrily; "I have three minds to--"

Here he was interrupted by a loud knock at the door of the hovel.

The man grew pale. "What can that be?" he muttered. "The hour is
late--near eleven. Again--again! Ask who knocks, Alice."

The girl stood for a moment or so at the door; and as she stood, her
form, rounded yet slight, her earnest look, her varying colour, her
tender youth, and a singular grace of attitude and gesture, would have
inspired an artist with the very ideal of rustic beauty.

After a pause, she placed her lips to a chink in the door, and repeated
her father's question.

"Pray pardon me," said a clear, loud, yet courteous voice, "but seeing a
light at your window, I have ventured to ask if any one within will
conduct me to ------; I will pay the service handsomely."

"Open the door, Alley," said the owner of the hut.

The girl drew a large wooden bolt from the door; and a tall figure
crossed the threshold.

The new-comer was in the first bloom of youth, perhaps about eighteen
years of age, and his air and appearance surprised both sire and
daughter. Alone, on foot, at such an hour, it was impossible for any
one to mistake him for other than a gentleman; yet his dress was plain
and somewhat soiled by dust, and he carried a small knapsack on his
shoulder. As he entered, he lifted his hat with somewhat of foreign
urbanity, and a profusion of fair brown hair fell partially over a high
and commanding forehead. His features were handsome, without being
eminently so, and his aspect was at once bold and prepossessing.

"I am much obliged by your civility," he said, advancing carelessly and
addressing the man, who surveyed him with a scrutinising eye; "and
trust, my good fellow, that you will increase the obligation by
accompanying me to ------."

"You can't miss well your way," said the man surlily: "the lights will
direct you."

"They have rather misled me, for they seem to surround the whole common,
and there is no path across it that I can see; however, if you will put
me in the right road, I will not trouble you further."

"It is very late," replied the churlish landlord, equivocally.

"The better reason why I should be at ------. Come, my good friend, put
on your hat, and I will give you half a guinea for your trouble."

The man advanced, then halted; again surveyed his guest, and said, "Are
you quite alone, sir?"

"Quite."

"Probably you are known at ------?"

"Not I. But what matters that to you? I am a stranger in these parts."

"It is full four miles."

"So far, and I am fearfully tired already!" exclaimed the young man with
impatience. As he spoke he drew out his watch. "Past eleven too!"

The watch caught the eye of the cottager; that evil eye sparkled. He
passed his hand over his brow. "I am thinking, sir," he said in a more
civil tone than he had yet assumed, "that as you are so tired and the
hour is so late, you might almost as well--"

"What?" exclaimed the stranger, stamping somewhat petulantly.

"I don't like to mention it; but my poor roof is at your service, and I
would go with you to ------ at daybreak to-morrow."

The stranger stared at the cottager, and then at the dingy walls of the
hut. He was about, very abruptly, to reject the hospitable proposal,
when his eye rested suddenly on the form of Alice, who stood eager-eyed
and open-mouthed, gazing on the handsome intruder. As she caught his
eye, she blushed deeply and turned aside. The view seemed to change the
intentions of the stranger. He hesitated a moment, then muttered
between his teeth: and sinking his knapsack on the ground, he cast
himself into a chair beside the fire, stretched his limbs, and cried
gaily, "So be it, my host: shut up your house again. Bring me a cup of
beer, and a crust of bread, and so much for supper! As for bed, this
chair will do vastly well."

"Perhaps we can manage better for you than that chair," answered the
host. "But our best accommodation must seem bad enough to a gentleman:
we are very poor people--hard-working, but very poor."

"Never mind me," answered the stranger, busying himself in stirring the
fire; "I am tolerably well accustomed to greater hardships than sleeping
on a chair in an honest man's house; and though you are poor, I will
take it for granted you are honest."

The man grinned: and turning to Alice, bade her spread what their larder
would afford. Some crusts of bread, some cold potatoes, and some
tolerably strong beer, composed all the fare set before the traveller.

Despite his previous boasts, the young man made a wry face at these
Socratic preparations, while he drew his chair to the board. But his
look grew more gay as he caught Alice's eye; and as she lingered by the
table, and faltered out some hesitating words of apology, he seized her
hand, and pressing it tenderly--"Prettiest of lasses," said he--and
while he spoke he gazed on her with undisguised admiration--"a man who
has travelled on foot all day, through the ugliest country within the
three seas, is sufficiently refreshed at night by the sight of so fair a
face."

Alice hastily withdrew her hand, and went and seated herself in a corner
of the room, when she continued to look at the stranger with her usual
vacant gaze, but with a half-smile upon her rosy lips.

Alice's father looked hard first at one, then at the other.

"Eat, sir," said he, with a sort of chuckle, "and no fine words; poor
Alice is honest, as you said just now."

"To be sure," answered the traveller, employing with great zeal a set of
strong, even, and dazzling teeth at the tough crusts; "to be sure she
is. I did not mean to offend you; but the fact is, that I am half a
foreigner; and abroad, you know, one may say a civil thing to a pretty
girl without hurting her feelings, or her father's either."

"Half a foreigner! why, you talk English as well as I do," said the
host, whose intonation and words were, on the whole, a little above his
station.

The stranger smiled. "Thank you for the compliment," said he. "What I
meant was, that I have been a great deal abroad; in fact, I have just
returned from Germany. But I am English born."

"And going home?"

"Yes."

"Far from hence?"

"About thirty miles, I believe."

"You are young, sir, to be alone."

The traveller made no answer, but finished his uninviting repast and
drew his chair again to the fire. He then thought he had sufficiently
ministered to his host's curiosity to be entitled to the gratification
of his own.

"You work at the factories, I suppose?" said he.

"I do, sir. Bad times."

"And your pretty daughter?"

"Minds the house."

"Have you no other children?"

"No; one mouth besides my own is as much as I can feed, and that
scarcely. But you would like to rest now; you can have my bed, sir; I
can sleep here."

"By no means," said the stranger, quickly; "just put a few more coals on
the fire, and leave me to make myself comfortable."

The man rose, and did not press his offer, but left the room for a
supply of fuel. Alice remained in her corner.

"Sweetheart," said the traveller, looking round and satisfying himself
that they were alone: "I should sleep well if I could get one kiss from
those coral lips."

Alice hid her face with her hands.

"Do I vex you?"

"Oh no, sir."

At this assurance the traveller rose, and approached Alice softly. He
drew away her hands from her face, when she said gently, "Have you much
money about you?"

"Oh, the mercenary baggage!" said the traveller to himself; and then
replied aloud, "Why, pretty one? Do you sell your kisses so high then?"

Alice frowned and tossed the hair from her brow. "If you have money,"
she said, in a whisper, "don't say so to father. Don't sleep if you can
help it. I'm afraid--hush--he comes!"

The young man returned to his seat with an altered manner. And as his
host entered, he for the first time surveyed him closely. The imperfect
glimmer of the half-dying and single candle threw into strong lights and
shades the marked, rugged, and ferocious features of the cottager; and
the eye of the traveller, glancing from the face to the limbs and frame,
saw that whatever of violence the mind might design, the body might well
execute.

The traveller sank into a gloomy reverie. The wind howled--the rain
beat--through the casement shone no solitary star--all was dark and
sombre. Should he proceed alone--might he not suffer a greater danger
upon that wide and desert moor--might not the host follow--assault him
in the dark? He had no weapon save a stick. But within he had at least
a rude resource in the large kitchen poker that was beside him. At all
events it would be better to wait for the present. He might at any
time, when alone, withdraw the bolt from the door, and slip out
unobserved. Such was the fruit of his meditations while his host plied
the fire.

"You will sleep sound to-night," said his entertainer, smiling.

"Humph! Why, I am /over/-fatigued; I dare say it will be an hour or two
before I fall asleep; but when I once am asleep, I sleep like a rock!"

"Come, Alice," said her father, "let us leave the gentleman. Goodnight,
sir."

"Good night--good night," returned the traveller, yawning.

The father and daughter disappeared through a door in the corner of the
room. The guest heard them ascend the creaking stairs--all was still.

"Fool that I am," said the traveller to himself, "will nothing teach me
that I am no longer a student at Gottingen, or cure me of these
pedestrian adventures? Had it not been for that girl's big blue eyes, I
should be safe at ------ by this time, if, indeed, the grim father had
not murdered me by the road. However, we'll baulk him yet: another
half-hour, and I am on the moor: we must give him time. And in the
meanwhile here is the poker. At the worst it is but one to one; but the
churl is strongly built."

Although the traveller thus endeavoured to cheer his courage, his heart
beat more loudly than its wont. He kept his eyes stationed on the door
by which the cottagers had vanished, and his hand on the massive poker.

While the stranger was thus employed below, Alice, instead of turning to
her own narrow cell, went into her father's room.

The cottager was seated at the foot of his bed muttering to himself, and
with eyes fixed on the ground.

The girl stood before him, gazing on his face, and with her arms lightly
crossed above her bosom.

"It must be worth twenty guineas," said the host, abruptly to himself.

"What is it to you, father, what the gentleman's watch is worth?"

The man started.

"You mean," continued Alice, quietly, "you mean to do some injury to
that young man; but you shall not."

The cottager's face grew black as night. "How," he began in a loud
voice, but suddenly dropped the tone into a deep growl--" how dare you
talk to me so?--go to bed--go to bed."

"No, father."

"No?"

"I will not stir from this room until daybreak."

"We will soon see that," said the man, with an oath.

"Touch me, and I will alarm the gentleman, and tell him that--"

"What?"

The girl approached her father, placed her lips to his ear, and
whispered, "That you intend to murder him."

The cottager's frame trembled from head to foot; he shut his eyes, and
gasped painfully for breath. "Alice," said he, gently, after a
pause--"Alice, we are often nearly starving."

"/I/ am--/you/ never!"

"Wretch, yes, if I do drink too much one day, I pinch for it the next.
But go to bed, I say--I mean no harm to the young man. Think you I
would twist myself a rope?--no, no; go along, go along."

Alice's face, which had before been earnest and almost intelligent, now
relapsed into its wonted vacant stare.

"To be sure, father, they would hang you if you cut his throat. Don't
forget that;--good night;" and so saying, she walked to her own opposite
chamber.

Left alone, the host pressed his hand tightly to his forehead, and
remained motionless for nearly half an hour.

"If that cursed girl would but sleep," he muttered at last, turning
round, "it might be done at once. And there's the pond behind, as deep
as a well; and I might say at daybreak that the boy had bolted. He
seems quite a stranger here--nobody'll miss him. He must have plenty of
blunt to give half a guinea to a guide across a common! I want money,
and I won't work--if I can help it, at least."

While he thus soliloquised the air seemed to oppress him; he opened the
window, he leant out--the rain beat upon him. He closed the window with
an oath; took off his shoes, stole to the threshold, and, by the candle,
which he shaded with his hand, surveyed the opposite door. It was
closed. He then bent anxiously forward and listened.

"All's quiet," thought he, "perhaps he sleeps already. I will steal
down. If Jack Walters would but come tonight, the job would be done
charmingly."

With that he crept gently down the stairs. In a corner, at the foot of
the staircase, lay sundry matters, a few faggots, and a cleaver. He
caught up the last. "Aha," he muttered; "and there's the sledge-hammer
somewhere for Walters." Leaning himself against the door, he then
applied his eye to a chink which admitted a dim view of the room within,
lighted fitfully by the fire.

CHAPTER II.

"What have we here?
A carrion death!"
/Merchant of Venice/, Act ii. Sc. 7.

IT was about this time that the stranger deemed it advisable to commence
his retreat. The slight and suppressed sound of voices, which at first
he had heard above in the conversation of the father and child, had died
away. The stillness at once encouraged and warned him. He stole to the
front door, softly undid the bolt, and found the door locked, and the
key missing. He had not observed that during his repast, and ere his
suspicions had been aroused, his host, in replacing the bar, and
relocking the entrance, had abstracted the key. His fears were now
confirmed. His next thought was the window--the shutter only protected
it half-way, and was easily removed; but the aperture of the lattice,
which only opened in part like most cottage casements, was far too small
to admit his person. His only means of escape was in breaking the whole
window; a matter not to be effected without noise and consequent risk.

He paused in despair. He was naturally of a strong-nerved and gallant
temperament, nor unaccustomed to those perils of life and limb which
German students delight to brave; but his heart well-nigh failed him at
that moment. The silence became distinct and burdensome to him, and a
chill moisture gathered to his brow. While he stood irresolute and in
suspense, striving to collect his thoughts, his ear, preternaturally
sharpened by fear, caught the faint muffled sound of creeping
footsteps--he heard the stairs creak. The sound broke the spell. The
previous vague apprehension gave way, when the danger became actually at
hand. His presence of mind returned at once. He went back quickly to
the fireplace, seized the poker, and began stirring the fire, and
coughing loud, and indicating as vigorously as possible that he was wide
awake.

He felt that he was watched--he felt that he was in momently peril. He
felt that the appearance of slumber would be the signal for a mortal
conflict. Time passed, all remained silent; nearly half an hour had
elapsed since he had heard the steps upon the stairs. His situation
began to prey upon his nerves, it irritated them--it became intolerable.
It was not now fear that he experienced, it was the overwrought sense of
mortal enmity--the consciousness that a man may feel who knows that the
eye of a tiger is on him, and who, while in suspense he has regained his
courage, foresees that sooner or later the spring must come; the
suspense itself becomes an agony, and he desires to expedite the deadly
struggle he cannot shun.

Utterly incapable any longer to bear his own sensations, the traveller
rose at last, fixed his eyes upon the fatal door, and was about to cry
aloud to the listener to enter, when he heard a slight tap at the
window; it was twice repeated; and at the third time a low voice
pronounced the name of Darvil. It was clear, then, that accomplices had
arrived; it was no longer against one man that he would have to contend.
He drew his breath hard, and listened with throbbing ears. He heard
steps without upon the plashing soil; they retired--all was still.

He paused a few minutes, and walked deliberately and firmly to the inner
door, at which he fancied his host stationed; with a steady hand he
attempted to open the door; it was fastened on the opposite side.
"So!" said he, bitterly, and grinding his teeth, "I must die like a rat
in a cage. Well, I'll die biting."

He returned to his former post, drew himself up to his full height, and
stood grasping his homely weapon, prepared for the worst, and not
altogether unelated with a proud consciousness of his own natural
advantages of activity, stature, strength and daring. Minutes rolled
on; the silence was broken by some one at the inner door; he heard the
bolt gently withdrawn. He raised his weapon with both hands; and
started to find the intruder was only Alice. She came in with bare
feet, and pale as marble, her finger on her lips.

She approached--she touched him.

"They are in the shed behind," she whispered, "looking for the
sledge-hammer--they mean to murder you; get you gone--quick."

"How?--the door is locked."

"Stay. I have taken the key from his room."

She gained the door, applied the key--the door yielded. The traveller
threw his knapsack once more over his shoulder, and made but one stride
to the threshold. The girl stopped him. "Don't say anything about it;
he is my father, they would hang him."

"No, no. But you?--are safe, I trust?--depend on my gratitude.--I shall
be at ------ to-morrow--the best inn--seek me if you can. Which way
now?"

"Keep to the left."

The stranger was already several paces distant; through the darkness,
and in the midst of the rain, he fled on with the speed of youth. The
girl lingered an instant, sighed, then laughed aloud; closed and
re-barred the door, and was creeping back, when from the inner entrance
advanced the grim father, and another man, of broad, short, sinewy
frame, his arms bare, and wielding a large hammer.

"How?" asked the host; "Alice here, and--hell and the devil! have you
let him go?"

"I told you that you should not harm him."

With a violent oath the ruffian struck his daughter to the ground,
sprang over her body, unbarred the door, and, accompanied by his
comrade, set off in vague pursuit of his intended victim.

CHAPTER III.

"You knew--none so well, of my daughter's flight."
/Merchant of Venice/, Act iii. Sc. 1.

THE day dawned; it was a mild, damp, hazy morning; the sod sank deep
beneath the foot, the roads were heavy with mire, and the rain of the
past night lay here and there in broad shallow pools. Towards the town,
waggons, carts, pedestrian groups were already moving; and, now and
then, you caught the sharp horn of some early coach, wheeling its
be-cloaked outside and be-nightcapped inside passengers along the
northern thoroughfare.

A young man bounded over a stile into the road just opposite to the
milestone, that declared him to be one mile from ------.

"Thank Heaven!" he said, almost aloud. "After spending the night
wandering about morasses like a will-o'-the-wisp, I approach a town at
last. Thank Heaven again, and for all its mercies this night! I
breathe freely. I AM SAFE."

He walked on somewhat rapidly; he passed a slow waggon---he passed a
group of mechanics--he passed a drove of sheep, and now he saw walking
leisurely before him a single figure. It was a girl, in a worn and
humble dress, who seemed to seek her weary way with pain and languor.
He was about also to pass her, when he heard a low cry. He turned, and
beheld in the wayfarer his preserver of the previous night.

"Heavens! is it indeed you? Can I believe my eyes?"

"I was coming to seek you, sir," said the girl, faintly. "I too have
escaped; I shall never go back to father; I have no roof to cover my
head now."

"Poor child! but how is this? Did they ill use you for releasing me?"

"Father knocked me down, and beat me again when he came back; but that
is not all," she added, in a very low tone.

"What else?"

The girl grew red and white by turns. She set her teeth rigidly,
stopped short, and then walking on quicker than before, replied: "It
don't matter; I will never go back--I'm alone now. What, what shall I
do?" and she wrung her hands.

The traveller's pity was deeply moved. "My good girl," said he,
earnestly, "you have saved my life, and I am not ungrateful. Here" (and
he placed some gold in her hand), "get yourself a lodging, food and
rest; you look as if you wanted them; and see me again this evening when
it is dark and we can talk unobserved."

The girl took the money passively, and looked up in his face while he
spoke; the look was so unsuspecting, and the whole countenance was so
beautifully modest and virgin-like, that had any evil passion prompted
the traveller's last words, it must have fled scared and abashed as he
met the gaze.

"My poor girl," said he, embarrassed, and after a short pause; "you are
very young, and very, very pretty. In this town you will be exposed to
many temptations: take care where you lodge; you have, no doubt, friends
here?"

"Friends?--what are friends?" answered Alice.

"Have you no relations?--no /mother's kin/?"

"None."

"Do you know where to ask shelter?"

"No, sir; for I can't go where father goes, lest he should find me out."

"Well, then, seek some quiet inn, and meet me this evening just here,
half a mile from the town, at seven. I will try and think of something
for you in the meanwhile. But you seem tired, you walk with pain;
perhaps it will fatigue you to come--I mean, you had rather perhaps rest
another day."

"Oh no, no! it will do me good to see you again, sir."

The young man's eyes met hers, and hers were not withdrawn; their soft
blue was suffused with tears--they penetrated his soul. He turned away
hastily, and saw that they were already the subject of curious
observation to the various passengers that overtook them. "Don't
forget!" he whispered, and strode on with a pace that soon brought him
to the town.

He inquired for the principal hotel--entered it with an air that bespoke
that nameless consciousness of superiority which belongs to those
accustomed to purchase welcome wherever welcome is bought and sold--and
before a blazing fire and no unsubstantial breakfast, forgot all the
terrors of the past night, or rather felt rejoiced to think he had added
a new and strange hazard to the catalogue of adventures already
experienced by Ernest Maltravers.

CHAPTER IV.

"Con una Dama tenia
Un galan conversacion."*
MORATIN: /El Teatro Espanol/.--Num. 15.

* With a dame he held a gallant conversation.

MALTRAVERS was first at the appointed place. His character was in most
respects singularly energetic, decided, and premature in its
development; but not so in regard to women: with them he was the
creature of the moment; and, driven to and fro by whatever impulse, or
whatever passion, caught the caprice of a wild, roving, and all-poetical
imagination, Maltravers was, half unconsciously, a poet--a poet of
action, and woman was his muse.

He had formed no plan of conduct towards the poor girl he was to meet.
He meant no harm to her. If she had been less handsome, he would have
been equally grateful; and her dress, and youth, and condition, would
equally have compelled him to select the hour of dusk for an interview.

He arrived at the spot. The winter night had already descended; but a
sharp frost had set in: the air was clear, the stars were bright, and
the long shadows slept, still and calm, along the broad road, and the
whitened fields beyond.

He walked briskly to and fro, without much thought of the interview, or
its object, half chanting old verses, German and English, to himself,
and stopping to gaze every moment at the silent stars.

At length he saw Alice approach: she came up to him timidly and gently.
His heart beat more quickly; he felt that he was young and alone with
beauty. "Sweet girl," he said, with involuntary and mechanical
compliment, "how well this light becomes you. How shall I thank you for
not forgetting me?"

Alice surrendered her hand to his without a struggle.

"What is your name?" said he, bending his face down to hers.

"Alice Darvil."

"And your terrible father,--/is/ he, in truth, your father?"

"Indeed he is my father and mother too!"

"What made you suspect his intention to murder me? Has he ever
attempted the like crime?"

"No; but lately he has often talked of robbery. He is very poor, sir.
And when I saw his eye, and when afterwards, while your back was turned,
he took the key from the door, I felt that--that you were in danger."

"Good girl--go on."

"I told him so when we went up-stairs. I did not know what to believe,
when he said he would not hurt you; but I stole the key of the front
door, which he had thrown on the table, and went to my room. I listened
at my door; I heard him go down the stairs--he stopped there for some
time; and I watched him from above. The place where he was opened to
the field by the back-way. After some time, I heard a voice whisper
him; I knew the voice, and then they both went out by the back-way; so I
stole down, and went out and listened; and I knew the other man was John
Walters. I'm afraid of /him/, sir. And then Walters said, says he, 'I
will get the hammer, and, sleep or wake, we'll do it.' And father said,
'It's in the shed.' So I saw there was no time to be lost, sir,
and--and--but you know all the rest."

"But how did you escape?"

"Oh, my father, after talking to Walters, came to my room, and beat
and--and--frightened me; and when he was gone to bed, I put on my
clothes, and stole out; it was just light; and I walked on till I met
you."

"Poor child, in what a den of vice you have been brought up!"

"Anan, sir."

"She don't understand me. Have you been taught to read and write?"

"Oh no!"

"But I suppose you have been taught, at least, to say your
catechism--and you pray sometimes?"

"I have prayed to father not to beat me."

"But to God?"

"God, sir--what is that?"*

* This ignorance--indeed the whole sketch of Alice--is from the life;
nor is such ignorance, accompanied by what almost seems an instinctive
or intuitive notion of right or wrong, very uncommon, as our police
reports can testify. In the /Examiner/ for, I think, the year 1835,
will be found the case of a young girl ill-treated by her father, whose
answers to the interrogatories of the magistrate are very similar to
those of Alice to the questions of Maltravers.

Maltravers drew back, shocked and appalled. Premature philosopher as he
was, this depth of ignorance perplexed his wisdom. He had read all the
disputes of schoolmen, whether or not the notion of a Supreme Being is
innate; but he had never before been brought face to face with a living
creature who was unconscious of a God.

After a pause, he said: "My poor girl, we misunderstand each other. You
know that there is a God?"

"No, sir."

"Did no one ever tell you who made the stars you now survey--the earth
on which you tread?"

"No."

"And have you never thought about it yourself?"

"Why should I? What has that to do with being cold and hungry?"

Maltravers looked incredulous. "You see that great building, with the
spire rising in the starlight?"

"Yes, sir, sure."

"What is it called?"

"Why, a church."

"Did you never go into it?"

"No."

"What do people do there?"

"Father says one man talks nonsense, and the other folk listen to him."

"Your father is--no matter. Good heavens! what shall I do with this
unhappy child?"

"Yes, sir, I am very unhappy," said Alice, catching at the last words;
and the tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

Maltravers never was more touched in his life. Whatever thoughts of
gallantry might have entered his young head, had he found Alice such as
he might reasonably have expected, he now felt that there was a kind of
sanctity in her ignorance; and his gratitude and kindly sentiment
towards her took almost a brotherly aspect.--"You know, at least, what
school is?" he asked.

"Yes, I have talked with girls who go to school."

"Would you like to go there, too?"

"Oh, no, sir, pray not!"

"What should you like to do, then? Speak out, child. I owe you so
much, that I should be too happy to make you comfortable and contented
in your own way."

"I should like to live with you, sir." Maltravers started, and half
smiled, and coloured. But looking on her eyes, which were fixed
earnestly on his, there was so much artlessness in their soft,
unconscious gaze, that he saw she was wholly ignorant of the
interpretation that might be put upon so candid a confession.

I have said that Maltravers was a wild, enthusiastic, odd being--he was,
in fact, full of strange German romance and metaphysical speculations.
He had once shut himself up for months to study astrology--and been even
suspected of a serious hunt after the philosopher's stone; another time
he had narrowly escaped with life and liberty from a frantic conspiracy
of the young republicans of his university, in which, being bolder and
madder than most of them, he had been an active ringleader; it was,
indeed, some such folly that had compelled him to quit Germany sooner
than himself or his parents desired. He had nothing of the sober
Englishman about him. Whatever was strange and eccentric had an
irresistible charm for Ernest Maltravers. And agreeably to this
disposition, he now revolved an idea that enchanted his mobile and
fantastic philosophy. He himself would educate this charming girl--he
would write fair and heavenly characters upon this blank page--he would
act the Saint Preux to this Julie of Nature. Alas, he did not think of
the result which the parallel should have suggested. At that age,
Ernest Maltravers never damped the ardour of an experiment by the
anticipation of consequences.

"So," he said, after a short reverie, "so you would like to live with
me? But, Alice, we must not fall in love with each other."

"I don't understand, sir."

"Never mind," said Maltravers, a little disconcerted.

"I always wished to go into service."

"Ha!"

"And you would be a kind master."

Maltravers was half disenchanted.

"No very flattering preference," thought he: "so much the safer for us.
Well, Alice, it shall be as you wish. Are you comfortable where you
are, in your new lodgings?"

"No."

"Why, they do not insult you?"

"No; but they make a noise, and I like to be quiet to think of you."

The young philosopher was reconciled again to his scheme.

"Well, Alice--go back--I will take a cottage to-morrow, and you shall be
my servant, and I will teach you to read and write and say your prayers,
and know that you have a Father above who loves you better than he
below. Meet me again at the same hour to-morrow. Why do you cry,
Alice? why do you cry?"

"Because--because," sobbed the girl, "I am so happy, and I shall live
with you and see you."

"Go, child--go, child," said Maltravers, hastily; and he walked away
with a quicker pulse than became his new character of master and
preceptor.

He looked back, and saw the girl gazing at him; he waved his hand, and
she moved on and followed him slowly back to the town.

Maltravers, though not an elder son, was the heir of affluent fortunes;
he enjoyed a munificent allowance that sufficed for the whims of a youth
who had learned in Germany none of the extravagant notions common to
young Englishmen of similar birth and prospects. He was a spoiled
child, with no law but his own fancy,--his return home was not
expected,--there was nothing to prevent the indulgence of his new
caprice. The next day he hired a cottage in the neighbourhood, which
was one of those pretty thatched edifices, with verandas and monthly
roses, a conservatory and a lawn, which justify the English proverb
about a cottage and love. It had been built by a mercantile bachelor
for some Fair Rosamond, and did credit to his taste. An old woman, let
with the house, was to cook and do the work. Alice was but a nominal
servant. Neither the old woman nor the landlord comprehended the
Platonic intentions of the young stranger. But he paid his rent in
advance, and they were not particular. He, however, thought it prudent
to conceal his name. It was one sure to be known in a town not very
distant from the residence of his father, a wealthy and long-descended
country gentleman. He adopted, therefore, the common name of Butler;
which, indeed, belonged to one of his maternal connections, and by that
name alone was he known in the neighbourhood and to Alice. From her he
would not have sought concealment,--but somehow or other no occasion
ever presented itself to induce him to talk much to her of his parentage
or birth.

CHAPTER V.

"Thought would destroy their Paradise."--GRAY.

MALTRAVERS found Alice as docile a pupil as any reasonable preceptor
might have desired. But still, reading and writing--they are very
uninteresting elements! Had the groundwork been laid, it might have
been delightful to raise the fairy palace of knowledge; but the digging
the foundations and the constructing the cellars is weary labour.
Perhaps he felt it so; for in a few days Alice was handed over to the
very oldest and ugliest writing-master that the neighbouring town could
afford. The poor girl at first wept much at the exchange; but the grave
remonstrances and solemn exhortations of Maltravers reconciled her at
last, and she promised to work hard and pay every attention to her
lessons. I am not sure, however, that it was the tedium of the work
that deterred the idealist--perhaps he felt its danger--and at the
bottom of his sparkling dreams and brilliant follies lay a sound,
generous, and noble heart. He was fond of pleasure, and had been
already the darling of the sentimental German ladies. But he was too
young and too vivid, and too romantic, to be what is called a
sensualist. He could not look upon a fair face, and a guileless smile,
and all the ineffable symmetry of a woman's shape, with the eye of a man
buying cattle for base uses. He very easily fell in love, or fancied he
did, it is true,--but then he could not separate desire from fancy, or
calculate the game of passion without bringing the heart or the
imagination into the matter. And though Alice was very pretty and very
engaging, he was not yet in love with her, and he had no intention of
becoming so.

He felt the evening somewhat long, when for the first time Alice
discontinued her usual lesson; but Maltravers had abundant resources in
himself. He placed Shakespeare and Schiller on his table, and lighted
his German meerschaum--he read till he became inspired, and then he
wrote--and when he had composed a few stanzas he was not contented till
he had set them to music, and tried their melody with his voice. For he
had all the passion of a German for song, and music--that wild
Maltravers!--and his voice was sweet, his taste consummate, his science
profound. As the sun puts out a star, so the full blaze of his
imagination, fairly kindled, extinguished for the time his fairy fancy
for his beautiful pupil.

It was late that night when Maltravers went to bed--and as he passed
through the narrow corridor that led to his chamber he heard a light
step flying before him, and caught the glimpse of a female figure
escaping through a distant door. "The silly child," thought he, at once
divining the cause; "she has been listening to my singing. I shall
scold her." But he forgot that resolution.

The next day, and the next, and many days passed, and Maltravers saw but
little of the pupil for whose sake he had shut himself up in a country
cottage, in the depth of winter. Still he did not repent his purpose,
nor was he in the least tired of his seclusion--he would not inspect
Alice's progress, for he was certain he should be dissatisfied with its
slowness--and people, however handsome, cannot learn to read and write
in a day. But he amused himself, notwithstanding. He was glad of an
opportunity to be alone with his own thoughts, for he was at one of
those periodical epochs of life when we like to pause and breathe a
while, in brief respite from that methodical race in which we run to the
grave. He wished to re-collect the stores of his past experience, and
repose on his own mind, before he started afresh upon the active world.
The weather was cold and inclement; but Ernest Maltravers was a hardy
lover of nature, and neither snow nor frost could detain him from his
daily rambles. So, about noon, he regularly threw aside books and
papers, took his hat and staff, and went whistling or humming his
favourite airs through the dreary streets, or along the bleak waters, or
amidst the leafless woods, just as the humour seized him; for he was not
an Edwin or Harold, who reserved speculation only for lonely brooks and
pastoral hills. Maltravers delighted to contemplate nature in men as
well as in sheep or trees. The humblest alley in a crowded town had
something poetical for him; he was ever ready to mix in a crowd, if it
were only gathered round a barrel-organ or a dog-fight, and listen to
all that was said and notice all that was done. And this I take to be
the true poetical temperament essential to every artist who aspires to
be something more than a scene-painter. But, above all things, he was
most interested in any display of human passions or affections; he loved
to see the true colours of the heart, where they are most
transparent--in the uneducated and poor--for he was something of an
optimist, and had a hearty faith in the loveliness of our nature.
Perhaps, indeed, he owed much of the insight into and mastery over
character that he was afterwards considered to display, to his disbelief
that there is any wickedness so dark as not to be susceptible of the
light in some place or another. But Maltravers had his fits of
unsociability, and then nothing but the most solitary scenes delighted
him. Winter or summer, barren waste or prodigal verdure, all had beauty
in his eyes; for their beauty lay in his own soul, through which he
beheld them. From these walks he would return home at dusk, take his
simple meal, rhyme or read away the long evenings with such alternation
as music or the dreamy thoughts of a young man with gay life before him
could afford. Happy Maltravers!--youth and genius have luxuries all the
Rothschilds cannot purchase! And yet, Maltravers, you are
ambitious!--life moves too slowly for you!--you would push on the wheels
of the clock!--Fool--brilliant fool!--you are eighteen, and a
poet!--What more can you desire?--Bid Time stop for ever!

One morning Ernest rose earlier than his wont, and sauntered carelessly
through the conservatory which adjoined his sitting-room; observing the
plants with placid curiosity (for besides being a little of a botanist,
he had odd visionary notions about the life of plants, and he saw in
them a hundred mysteries which the herbalists do not teach us), when he
heard a low and very musical voice singing at a little distance. He
listened, and recognised, with surprise, words of his own, which he had
lately set to music, and was sufficiently pleased with to sing nightly.

When the song ended, Maltravers stole softly through the conservatory,
and as he opened the door which led into the garden, he saw at the open
window of a little room which was apportioned to Alice, and jutted out
from the building in the fanciful irregularity common to ornamental
cottages, the form of his discarded pupil. She did not observe him, and
it was not till he twice called her by name, that she started from her
thoughtful and melancholy posture.

"Alice," said he, gently, "put on your bonnet, and walk with me in the
garden: you look pale, child; the fresh air will do you good."

Alice coloured and smiled, and in a few moments was by his side.
Maltravers, meanwhile, had gone in and lighted his meerschaum, for it
was his great inspirer whenever his thoughts were perplexed, or he felt
his usual fluency likely to fail him, and such was the case now. With
this faithful ally he awaited Alice in the little walk that circled the
lawn, amidst shrubs and evergreens.

"Alice," said he after a pause; but he stopped short.

Alice looked up at him with grave respect.

"Tush!" said Maltravers; "perhaps the smoke is unpleasant to you. It is
a bad habit of mine."

"No, sir," answered Alice; and she seemed disappointed. Maltravers
paused, and picked up a snowdrop.

"It is pretty," he said; "do you love flowers?"

"Oh, dearly," answered Alice, with some enthusiasm; "I never saw many
till I came here."

"Now then I can go on," thought Maltravers; why, I cannot say, for I do
not see the /sequitur/; but on he went /in medias res/. "Alice, you
sing charmingly."

"Ah! sir, you--you--" she stopped abruptly, and trembled visibly.

"Yes, I overheard you, Alice."

"And you are angry?"

"I!--Heaven forbid! It is a /talent/--but you don't know what that is;
I mean it is an excellent thing to have an ear; and a voice, and a heart
for music; and you have all three."

He paused, for he felt his hand touched; Alice suddenly clasped and
kissed it. Maltravers thrilled through his whole frame; but there was
something in the girl's look that showed she was wholly unaware that she
had committed an unmaidenly or forward action.

"I was so afraid you would be angry," she said, wiping her eyes as she
dropped his hand; "and now I suppose you know all."

"All!"

"Yes; how I listened to you every evening, and lay awake the whole night
with the music ringing in my ears, till I tried to go over it myself;
and so at last I ventured to sing aloud. I like that much better than
learning to read."

All this was delightful to Maltravers: the girl had touched upon one of
his weak points; however, he remained silent. Alice continued:

"And now, sir, I hope you will let me come and sit outside the door
every evening and hear you; I will make no noise--I will be so quiet."

"What, in that cold corridor, these bitter nights?"

"I am used to cold, sir. Father would not let me have a fire when he
was not at home."

"No, Alice, but you shall come into the room while I play, and I will
give you a lesson or two. I am glad you have so good an ear; it may be
a means of your earning your own honest livelihood when you leave me."

"When I--but I never intend to leave you, sir!" said Alice, beginning
fearfully and ending calmly.

Maltravers had recourse to the meerschaum.

Luckily, perhaps, at this time, they were joined by Mr. Simcox, the old
writing-master. Alice went in to prepare her books; but Maltravers laid
his hand upon the preceptor's shoulder.

"You have a quick pupil, I hope, sir?" said he.

"Oh, very, very, Mr. Butler. She comes on famously. She practises a
great deal when I am away, and I do my best."

"And," asked Maltravers, in a grave tone, "have you succeeded in
instilling into the poor child's mind some of those more sacred notions
of which I spoke to you at our first meeting?"

"Why, sir, she was indeed quite a heathen--quite a Mahometan, I may say;
but she is a little better now."

"What have you taught her?"

"That God made her."

"That is a great step."

"And that He loves good girls, and will watch over them."

"Bravo! You beat Plato."

"No, sir, I never beat any one, except little Jack Turner; but he is a
dunce."

"Bah! What else do you teach her?"

"That the devil runs away with bad girls, and--"

"Stop there, Mr. Simcox. Never mind the devil yet a while. Let her
first learn to do good, that God may love her; the rest will follow. I
would rather make people religious through their best feelings than
their worst,--through their gratitude and affections, rather than their
fears and calculations of risk and punishment."

Mr. Simcox stared.

"Does she say her prayers?"

"I have taught her a short one."

"Did she learn it readily?"

"Lord love her, yes! When I told her she ought to pray to God to bless
her benefactor, she would not rest till I had repeated a prayer out of
our Sunday School book, and she got it by heart at once."

"Enough, Mr. Simcox. I will not detain you longer."

Forgetful of his untasted breakfast, Maltravers continued his meerschaum
and his reflections: he did not cease, till he had convinced himself
that he was but doing his duty to Alice, by teaching her to cultivate
the charming talent she evidently possessed, and through which she might
secure her own independence. He fancied that he should thus relieve
himself of a charge and responsibility which often perplexed him. Alice
would leave him, enabled to walk the world in an honest professional
path. It was an excellent idea. "But there is danger," whispered
Conscience. "Ay," answered Philosophy and Pride, those wise dupes that
are always so solemn and always so taken in; "but what is virtue without
trial?"

And now every evening, when the windows were closed, and the hearth
burnt clear, while the winds stormed, and the rain beat without, a lithe
and lovely shape hovered about the student's chamber; and his wild songs
were sung by a voice which Nature had made even sweeter than his own.

Alice's talent for music was indeed surprising; enthusiastic and quick
as he himself was in all he undertook, Maltravers was amazed at her
rapid progress. He soon taught her to play by ear; and Maltravers could
not but notice that her hand, always delicate in shape, had lost the
rude colour and roughness of labour. He thought of that pretty hand
more often than he ought to have done, and guided it over the keys when
it could have found its way very well without him.

On coming to the cottage he had directed the old servant to provide
suitable and proper clothes for Alice; but now that she was admitted "to
sit with the gentleman," the crone had the sense, without waiting for
new orders, to buy the "pretty young woman" garments, still indeed
simple, but of better materials and less rustic fashion; and Alice's
redundant tresses were now carefully arranged into orderly and glossy
curls, and even the texture was no longer the same; and happiness and
health bloomed on her downy cheeks, and smiled from the dewy lips, which
never quite closed over the fresh white teeth, except when she was
sad--but that seemed never, now she was not banished from Maltravers.

To say nothing of the unusual grace and delicacy of Alice's form and
features, there is nearly always something of Nature's own gentility in
very young women (except, indeed, when they get together and fall
a-giggling); it shames us men to see how much sooner they are polished
into conventional shape than our rough, masculine angles. A vulgar boy
requires Heaven knows what assiduity to make three steps--I do not say
like a gentleman, but like a body that has a soul in it; but give the
least advantage of society or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hundred
to one but she will glide into refinement before the boy can make a bow
without upsetting the table. There is sentiment in all women, and
sentiment gives delicacy to thought, and tact to manner. But sentiment
with men is generally acquired, an offspring of the intellectual
quality, not, as with the other sex, of the moral.

In the course of his musical and vocal lessons, Maltravers gently took
the occasion to correct poor Alice's frequent offences against grammar
and accent: and her memory was prodigiously quick and retentive. The
very tones of her voice seemed altered in the ear of Maltravers; and,
somehow or other, the time came when he was no longer sensible of the
difference in their rank.

The old woman-servant, when she had seen how it would be from the first,
and taken a pride in her own prophecy, as she ordered Alice's new
dresses, was a much better philosopher than Maltravers; though he was
already up to his ears in the moonlit abyss of Plato, and had filled a
dozen commonplace books with criticisms on Kant.

CHAPTER VI.

"Young man, I fear thy blood is rosy red,
Thy heart is soft."
D'AGUILAR'S /Fiesco/, Act iii. Sc. 1.

As education does not consist in reading and writing only, so Alice,
while still very backward in those elementary arts, forestalled some of
their maturest results in her intercourse with Maltravers. Before the
inoculation took effect, she caught knowledge in the natural way. For
the refinement of a graceful mind and a happy manner is very contagious.
And Maltravers was encouraged by her quickness in music to attempt such
instruction in other studies as conversation could afford. It is a
better school than parents and masters think for: there was a time when
all information was given orally; and probably the Athenians learned
more from hearing Aristotle than we do from reading him. It was a
delicious revival of Academe--in the walks, or beneath the rustic
porticoes of that little cottage--the romantic philosopher and the
beautiful disciple! And his talk was much like that of a sage of the
early world, with some wistful and earnest savage for a listener: of the
stars and their courses--of beasts, and birds, and fishes, and plants,
and flowers--the wide family of Nature--of the beneficence and power of
God;--of the mystic and spiritual history of Man.

Charmed by her attention and docility, Maltravers at length diverged
from lore into poetry; he would repeat to her the simplest and most
natural passages he could remember in his favourite poets; he would
himself compose verses elaborately adapted to her understanding; she
liked the last the best, and learned them the easiest. Never had young
poet a more gracious inspiration, and never did this inharmonious world
more complacently resolve itself into soft dreams, as if to humour the
novitiate of the victims it must speedily take into its joyless
priesthood. And Alice had now quietly and insensibly carved out her own
avocations--the tenor of her service. The plants in the conservatory
had passed under her care, and no one else was privileged to touch
Maltravers's books, or arrange the sacred litter of a student's
apartment. When he came down in the morning, or returned from his
walks, everything was in order, yet, by a kind of magic, just as he
wished it; the flowers he loved best bloomed, fresh-gathered, on his
table; the very position of the large chair, just in that corner by the
fireplace, whence, on entering the roof, its hospitable arms opened with
the most cordial air of welcome, bespoke the presiding genius of a
woman; and then, precisely as the clock struck eight, Alice entered, so
pretty and smiling, and happy-looking, that it was no wonder the single
hour at first allotted to her extended into three.

Was Alice in love with Maltravers?--she certainly did not exhibit the
symptoms in the ordinary way--she did not grow more reserved, and
agitated, and timid--there was no worm in the bud of her damask check:
nay, though from the first she had been tolerably bold; she was more
free and confidential, more at her ease every day; in fact, she never
for a moment suspected that she ought to be otherwise; she had not the
conventional and sensitive delicacy of girls who, whatever their rank of
life, have been taught that there is a mystery and a peril in love; she
had a vague idea about girls going wrong, but she did not know that love
had anything to do with it; on the contrary, according to her father, it
had connection with money, not love; all that she felt was so natural
and so very sinless. Could she help being so delighted to listen to
him, and so grieved to depart? What thus she felt she expressed, no
less simply and no less guilelessly: candour sometimes completely
blinded and misled him. No, she could not be in love, or she could not
so frankly own that she loved him--it was a sisterly and grateful
sentiment.

"The dear girl--I am rejoiced to think so," said Maltravers to himself;
"I knew there would be no danger."

Was he not in love himself?--The reader must decide.

"Alice," said Maltravers, one evening after a long pause of thought and
abstraction on his side, while she was unconsciously practising her last
lesson on the piano--"Alice,--no, don't turn round--sit where you are,
but listen to me. We cannot live always in this way."

Alice was instantly disobedient--she did turn round, and those great
blue eyes were fixed on his own with such anxiety and alarm, that he had
no resource but to get up and look round for the meerschaum. But Alice,
who divined by an instinct his lightest wish, brought it to him, while
he was yet hunting, amidst the further corners of the room, in places
where it was certain not to be. There it was, already filled with the
fragrant Salonica glittering with the gilt pastile, which, not too
healthfully, adulterates the seductive weed with odours that pacify the
repugnant censure of the fastidious--for Maltravers was an epicurean
even in his worst habits;--there it was, I say, in that pretty hand
which he had to touch as he took it; and while he lit the weed he had
again to blush and shrink beneath those great blue eyes.

"Thank you, Alice," he said; "thank you. Do sit down there--out of the
draught. I am going to open the window, the night is so lovely."

He opened the casement overgrown with creepers, and the moonlight lay
fair and breathless upon the smooth lawn. The calm and holiness of the
night soothed and elevated his thoughts; he had cut himself off from the
eyes of Alice, and he proceeded with a firm, though gentle voice:

"My dear Alice, we cannot always live together in this way; you are now
wise enough to understand me, so listen patiently. A young woman never
wants a fortune so long as she has a good character; she is always poor
and despised without one. Now a good character in this world is lost as
much by imprudence as guilt; and if you were to live with me much
longer, it would be imprudent, and your character would suffer so much
that you would not be able to make your own way in the world; far, then,
from doing you a service, I should have done you a deadly injury, which
I could not atone for: besides, Heaven knows what may happen worse than
imprudence; for, I am very sorry to say," added Maltravers, with great
gravity, "that you are much too pretty and engaging to--to--in short, it
won't do. I must go home; my friends will have a right to complain of
me if I remain thus lost to them many weeks longer. And you, my dear
Alice, are now sufficiently advanced to receive better instruction than
I or Mr. Simcox can give you. I therefore propose to place you in some
respectable family, where you will have more comfort and a higher
station than you have here. You can finish your education, and, instead
of being taught, you will be thus enabled to become a teacher to others.
With your beauty, Alice" (and Maltravers sighed), "and natural talents,
and amiable temper, you have only to act well and prudently to secure at
last a worthy husband and a happy home. Have you heard me, Alice? Such
is the plan I have formed for you."

The young man thought as he spoke, with honest kindness and upright
honour; it was a bitterer sacrifice than perhaps the reader thinks for.
But Maltravers, if he had an impassioned, had not a selfish heart; and
he felt, to use his own expression, more emphatic than eloquent, that
"it would not do" to live any longer alone with this beautiful girl,
like the two children whom the good Fairy kept safe from sin and the
world in the Pavilion of Roses.

But Alice comprehended neither the danger to herself nor the temptations
that Maltravers, if he could not resist, desired to shun. She rose,
pale and trembling--approached Maltravers and laid her hand gently on
his arm.

"I will go away, when and where you wish--the sooner the
better--to-morrow--yes, to-morrow; you are ashamed of poor Alice; and it
has been very silly in me to be so happy." (She struggled with her
emotion for a moment, and went on.) "You know Heaven can hear me, even
when I am away from you, and when I know more I can pray better; and
Heaven will bless you, sir, and make you happy, for I never can pray for
anything else."

With these words she turned away, and walked proudly towards the door.
But when she reached the threshold, she stopped and looked round, as if
to take a last farewell. All the associations and memories of that
beloved spot rushed upon her--she gasped for breath,--tottered,--and
fell to the ground insensible.

Maltravers was already by her side; he lifted her light weight in his
arms; he uttered wild and impassioned exclamations--"Alice, beloved
Alice--forgive me; we will never part!" He chafed her hands in his own,
while her head lay on his bosom, and he kissed again and again those
beautiful eyelids, till they opened slowly upon him, and the tender arms
tightened round him involuntarily.

"Alice," he whispered--"Alice, dear Alice, I love thee." Alas, it was
true: he loved--and forgot all but that love. He was eighteen.

CHAPTER VII.

"How like a younker or a prodigal,
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay!"
/Merchant of Venice/.

WE are apt to connect the voice of Conscience with the stillness of
midnight. But I think we wrong that innocent hour. It is that terrible
"NEXT MORNING," when reason is wide awake, upon which remorse fastens
its fangs. Has a man gambled away his all, or shot his friend in a
duel--has he committed a crime or incurred a laugh--it is the /next
morning/, when the irretrievable Past rises before him like a spectre;
then doth the churchyard of memory yield up its grisly dead--then is the
witching hour when the foul fiend within us can least tempt perhaps, but
most torment. At night we have one thing to hope for, one refuge to fly
to--oblivion and sleep! But at morning, sleep is over, and we are
called upon coldly to review, and re-act, and live again the waking
bitterness of self-reproach. Maltravers rose a penitent and unhappy
man--remorse was new to him, and he felt as if he had committed a
treacherous and fraudulent as well as guilty deed. This poor girl,
she was so innocent, so confiding, so unprotected, even by her own
sense of right. He went down-stairs listless and dispirited. He
longed yet dreaded to encounter Alice. He heard her step in the
conservatory--paused, irresolute, and at length joined her. For the
first time she blushed and trembled, and her eyes shunned his. But when
he kissed her hand in silence, she whispered, "And am I now to leave
you?" And Maltravers answered fervently, "Never!" and then her face
grew so radiant with joy that Maltravers was comforted despite himself.
Alice knew no remorse, though she felt agitated and ashamed; as she had
not comprehended the danger, neither was she aware of the fall. In
fact, she never thought of herself. Her whole soul was with him; she
gave him back in love the spirit she had caught from him in knowledge.

* * * * *

And they strolled together through the garden all that day, and
Maltravers grew reconciled to himself. He had done wrong, it is true;
but then perhaps Alice had already suffered as much as she could in the
world's opinion, by living with him alone, though innocent, so long.
And now she had an everlasting claim to his protection--she should never
know shame or want. And the love that had led to the wrong should, by
fidelity and devotion, take from it the character of sin.

Natural and commonplace sophistries! /L'homme se pique!/ as old
Montaigne said; Man is his own sharper! The conscience is the most
elastic material in the world. To-day you cannot stretch it over a
mole-hill, to-morrow it hides a mountain.

O how happy they were now--that young pair! How the days flew like
dreams! Time went on, winter passed away, and the early spring, with
its flowers and sunshine, was like a mirror to their own youth. Alice
never accompanied Maltravers in his walks abroad, partly because she
feared to meet her father, and partly because Maltravers himself was
fastidiously averse to all publicity. But then they had all that little
world of three acres--lawn and fountain, shrubbery and terrace, to
themselves, and Alice never asked if there was any other world without.
She was now quite a scholar, as Mr. Simcox himself averred. She could
read aloud and fluently to Maltravers, and copied out his poetry in a
small, fluctuating hand, and he had no longer to chase throughout his
vocabulary for short Saxon monosyllables to make the bridge of
intercourse between their ideas. Eros and Psyche are ever united, and
Love opens all the petals of the soul. On one subject alone, Maltravers
was less eloquent than of yore. He had not succeeded as a moralist, and
he thought it hypocritical to preach what he did not practise. But
Alice was gentler and purer, and as far as she knew, sweet fool! better
than ever--she had invented a new prayer for herself; and she prayed as
regularly and as fervently as if she were doing nothing amiss. But the
code of Heaven is gentler than that of earth, and does not declare that
ignorance excuseth not the crime.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Some clouds sweep on as vultures for their prey.

* * * * *

No azure more shall robe the firmament,
Nor spangled stars be glorious."
BYRON, /Heaven and Earth/.

IT was a lovely evening in April, the weather was unusually mild and
serene for the time of year, in the northern districts of our isle, and
the bright drops of a recent shower sparkled upon the buds of the lilac
and laburnum that clustered round the cottage of Maltravers. The little
fountain that played in the centre of a circular basin, on whose clear
surface the broad-leaved water-lily cast its fairy shadow, added to the
fresh green of the lawn;

"And softe as velvet the yonge grass,"

on which the rare and early flowers were closing their heavy lids. That
twilight shower had given a racy and vigorous sweetness to the air which
stole over many a bank of violets, and slightly stirred the golden
ringlets of Alice as she sate by the side of her entranced and silent
lover. They were seated on a rustic bench just without the cottage, and
the open window behind them admitted the view of that happy room--with
its litter of books and musical instruments--eloquent of the POETRY of
HOME.

Maltravers was silent, for his flexile and excitable fancy was conjuring
up a thousand shapes along the transparent air, or upon those shadowy
violet banks. He was not thinking, he was imagining. His genius
reposed dreamily upon the calm, but exquisite sense of his happiness.
Alice was not absolutely in his thoughts, but unconsciously she coloured
them all--if she had left his side, the whole charm would have been
broken. But Alice, who was not a poet or a genius, /was/ thinking, and
thinking only of Maltravers. . . . His image was "the broken mirror"
multiplied in a thousand faithful fragments over everything fair and
soft in that lovely microcosm before her. But they were both alike in
one thing--they were not with the Future, they were sensible of the
Present--the sense of the actual life, the enjoyment of the breathing
time was strong within them. Such is the privilege of the extremes of
our existence--Youth and Age. Middle life is never with to-day, its
home is in to-morrow . . . anxious, and scheming, and desiring, and
wishing this plot ripened, and that hope fulfilled, while every wave of
the forgotten Time brings it nearer and nearer to the end of all things.
Half our life is consumed in longing to be nearer death.

"Alice," said Maltravers, waking at last from his reverie, and drawing
that light, childlike form nearer to him, "you enjoy this hour as much
as I do."

"Oh, much more!"

"More! and why so?"

"Because I am thinking of you, and perhaps you are not thinking of
yourself."

Maltravers smiled and stroked those beautiful ringlets, and kissed that
smooth, innocent forehead, and Alice nestled herself in his breast.

"How young you look by this light, Alice!" said he, tenderly looking
down.

"Would you love me less if I were old?" asked Alice.

"I suppose I should never have loved you in the same way if you had been
old when I first saw you."

"Yet I am sure I should have felt the same for you if you had been--oh!
ever so old!"

"What, with wrinkled cheeks, and palsied head, and a brown wig, and no
teeth, like Mr. Simcox?"

"Oh, but you could never be like that! You would always look
young--your heart would be always in your face. That clear smile--ah,
you would look beautiful to the last!"

"But Simcox, though not very lovely now, has been, I dare say, handsomer
than I am, Alice; and I shall be contented to look as well when I am as
old!"

"I should never know you were old, because I can see you just as I
please. Sometimes, when you are thoughtful, your brows meet, and you
look so stern that I tremble; but then I think of you when you last
smiled, and look up again, and though you are frowning still, you seem
to smile. I am sure you are different to other eyes than to mine . . .
and time must kill /me/ before, in my sight, it could alter /you/."

"Sweet Alice, you talk eloquently, for you talk love."

"My heart talks to you. Ah! I wish it could say all I felt. I wish it
could make poetry like you, or that words were music--I would never
speak to you in anything else. I was so delighted to learn music,
because when I played I seemed to be talking to you. I am sure that
whoever invented music did it because he loved dearly and wanted to say
so. I said '/he/,' but I think it was a woman. Was it?"

"The Greeks I told you of, and whose life was music, thought it was a
god."

"Ah, but you say the Greeks made Love a god. Were they wicked for it?"

"Our own God above is Love," said Ernest, seriously, "as our own poets
have said and sung. But it is a love of another nature--divine, not
human. Come, we will go within, the air grows cold for you."

They entered, his arm round her waist. The room smiled upon them its
quiet welcome; and Alice, whose heart had not half vented its fulness,
sat down to the instrument still to "talk love" in her own way.

But it was Saturday evening. Now every Saturday, Maltravers received
from the neighbouring town the provincial newspaper--it was his only
medium of communication with the great world. But it was not for that
communication that he always seized it with avidity, and fed on it with
interest. The county in which his father resided bordered on the shire
in which Ernest sojourned, and the paper included the news of that
familiar district in its comprehensive columns. It therefore satisfied
Ernest's conscience and soothed his filial anxieties to read from time
to time that "Mr. Maltravers was entertaining a distinguished party of
friends at his noble mansion of Lisle Court;" or that "Mr. Maltravers's
foxhounds had met on such a day at something copse;" or that, "Mr.
Maltravers, with his usual munificence, had subscribed twenty guineas to
the new county gaol." . . . And as now Maltravers saw the expected paper
laid beside the hissing urn, he seized it eagerly, tore the envelope,
and hastened to the well-known corner appropriated to the paternal
district. The very first words that struck his eye were these:

ALARMING ILLNESS OF MR. MALTRAVERS.

"We regret to state that this exemplary and distinguished gentleman was
suddenly seized on Wednesday night with a severe spasmodic affection.
Dr. ------ was immediately sent for, who pronounced it to be gout in the
stomach. The first medical assistance from London has been summoned.

"Postscript.--We have just learned, in answer to our inquiries at Lisle
Court, that the respected owner is considerably worse: but slight hopes
are entertained of his recovery. Captain Maltravers, his eldest son and
heir, is at Lisle Court. An express has been despatched in search of
Mr. Ernest Maltravers, who, involved by his high English spirit in some
dispute with the authorities of a despotic government, had suddenly
disappeared from Gottingen, where his extraordinary talents had highly
distinguished him. He is supposed to be staying at Paris."

The paper dropped on the floor. Ernest threw himself back on the chair,
and covered his face with his hands.

Alice was beside him in a moment. He looked up, and caught her wistful
and terrified gaze. "Oh, Alice!" he cried, bitterly, and almost pushing
her away, "if you could but guess my remorse!" Then springing on his
feet, he hurried from the room.

Presently the whole house was in commotion. The gardener, who was
always in the house about supper-time, flew to the town for post-horses.
The old woman was in despair about the laundress, for her first and only
thought was for "master's shirts." Ernest locked himself in his room.
Alice! poor Alice!

In little more than twenty minutes, the chaise was at the door: and
Ernest, pale as death, came into the room where he had left Alice.

She was seated on the floor, and the fatal paper was on her lap. She
had been endeavouring, in vain, to learn what had so sensibly affected
Maltravers, for, as I said before, she was unacquainted with his real
name, and therefore the ominous paragraph did not even arrest her eye.

He took the paper from her, for he wanted again and again to read it:
some little word of hope or encouragement must have escaped him. And
then Alice flung herself on his breast. "Do not weep," said he; "Heaven
knows I have sorrow enough of my own! My father is dying! So kind, so
generous, so indulgent! O God, forgive me! Compose yourself, Alice.
You will hear from me in a day or two."

He kissed her, but the kiss was cold and forced. He hurried away. She
heard the wheels grate on the pebbles. She rushed to the window; but
that beloved face was not visible. Maltravers had drawn the blinds, and
thrown himself back to indulge his grief. A moment more, and even the
vehicle that bore him away was gone. And before her were the flowers,
and the starlit lawn, and the playful fountain, and the bench where they
had sat in such heartfelt and serene delight. He was gone; and often,
oh, how often, did Alice remember that his last words had been uttered
in estranged tones--that his last embrace had been without love!

CHAPTER IX.

"Thy due from me
Is tears: and heavy sorrows of the blood,
Which nature, love, and filial tenderness
Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously!"
/Second Part of Henry IV./, Act iv. Sc. 4.

IT was late at night when the chaise that bore Maltravers stopped at the
gates of a park lodge. It seemed an age before the peasant within was
aroused from the deep sleep of labour-loving health. "My father," he
cried, while the gate creaked on its hinges; "my father--is he better?
Is he alive?"

"Oh, bless your heart, Master Ernest, the squire was a little better
this evening."

"Thank Heaven!--On--on!"

The horses smoked and galloped along a road that wound through venerable
and ancient groves. The moonlight slept soft upon the sward, and the
cattle, disturbed from their sleep, rose lazily up, and gazed upon the
unseasonable intruder.

It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at
midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley, its
never-innovated and mossy grass, overrun with fern, and its immemorial
trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon the graves, of
a hundred generations. Such spots are the last proud and melancholy
trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the laughing
landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw something of shadow
and solemn gloom upon minds that feels their associations, like that
which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the cathedral
aisles of Nature with their darkened vistas, and columned trunks, and
arches of mighty foliage. But in ordinary times the gloom is pleasing,
and more delightful than all the cheerful lawns and sunny slopes of the
modern taste. /Now/ to Maltravers it was ominous and oppressive: the
darkness of death seemed brooding in every shadow, and its warning voice
moaning in every breeze.

The wheels stopped again. Lights flitted across the basement story; and
one above, more dim than the rest, shone palely from the room in which
the sick man slept. The bell rang shrilly out from amidst the dark ivy
that clung around the porch. The heavy door swung back--Maltravers was
on the threshold. His father lived--was better--was awake. The son was
in the father's arms.

CHAPTER X.

"The guardian oak
Mourn'd o'er the roof it shelter'd: the thick air
Labour'd with doleful sounds."
ELLIOTT of /Sheffield/.

MANY days had passed, and Alice was still alone; but she had heard twice
from Maltravers. The letters were short and hurried. One time his
father was better, and there were hopes; another time, and it was not
expected that he could survive the week. They were the first letters
Alice had ever received from him. Those /first/ letters are an event in
a girl's life--in Alice's life they were a very melancholy one. Ernest
did not ask her to write to him; in fact, he felt, at such an hour, a
repugnance to disclose his real name, and receive the letters of
clandestine love in the house in which a father lay in death. He might
have given the feigned address he had previously assumed, at some
distant post-town, where his person was not known. But, then, to obtain
such letters, he must quit his father's side for hours. The thing was
impossible. These difficulties Maltravers did not explain to Alice.

She thought it singular he did not wish to hear from her; but Alice was
humble. What could she say worth troubling him with, and at such an
hour? But how kind in him to write! how precious those letters! and yet
they disappointed her, and cost her floods of tears: they were so
short--so full of sorrow--there was so little love in them; and "dear,"
or even "/dearest/ Alice," that uttered by the voice was so tender,
looked cold upon the lifeless paper. If she but knew the exact spot
where he was it would be some comfort; but she only knew that he was
away, and in grief; and though he was little more than thirty miles
distant, she felt as if immeasurable space divided them. However, she
consoled herself as she could; and strove to shorten the long miserable
day by playing over all the airs he liked, and reading all the passages
he had commended. She should be so improved when he returned; and how
lovely the garden would look; for every day its trees and bouquets
caught a new smile from the deepening spring. Oh, they would be so
happy once more! Alice /now/ learned the life that lies in the future;
and her young heart had not, as yet, been taught that of that future
there is any prophet but Hope!

Maltravers, on quitting the cottage, had forgotten that Alice was
without money, and now that he found his stay would be indefinitely
prolonged, he sent a remittance. Several bills were unpaid--some
portion of the rent was due; and Alice, as she was desired, intrusted
the old servant with a bank note, with which she was to discharge these
petty debts. One evening, as she brought Alice the surplus, the good
dame seemed greatly discomposed. She was pale and agitated; or, as she
expressed it, "had a terrible fit of the shakes."

"What is the matter, Mrs. Jones? you have no news of him--of--of my--of
your master?"

"Dear heart, miss--no," answered Mrs. Jones; "how should I? But I'm
sure I don't wish to frighten you; there has been two sich robberies in
the neighbourhood!"

"Oh, thank Heaven that's all!" exclaimed Alice.

"Oh, don't go for to thank Heaven for that, miss; it's a shocking thing
for two lone females like us, and them 'ere windows all open to the
ground! You sees, as I was taking the note to be changed at Mr.
Harris's, the great grocer's shop, where all the poor folk was a-buying
agin to-morrow" (for it was Saturday night, the second Saturday after
Ernest's departure; from that Hegira Alice dated all her chronology),
"and everybody was a-talking about the robberies last night. La, miss,
they bound old Betty--you know Betty--a most respectable 'oman, who has
known sorrows, and drinks tea with me once a week. Well, miss, they
(only think!) bound Betty to the bedpost, with nothing on her but her
shift--poor old soul! And as Mr. Harris gave me the change (please to
see, miss, it's all right), and I asked for half gould, miss, it's more
convenient, sich an ill-looking fellow was by me, a-buying o' baccy, and
he did so stare at the money, that I vows I thought he'd have rin away
with it from the counter; so I grabbled it up and went away. But, would
you believe, miss, just as I got into the lane, afore you turns through
the gate, I chanced to look back, and there, sure enough, was that ugly
fellow close behind, a-running like mad. Oh, I set up such a screetch;
and young Dobbins was a-taking his cow out of the field, and he perked
up over the hedge when he heard me; and the cow, too, with her horns,
Lord bless her! So the fellow stopped, and I bustled through the gate,
and got home. But la, miss, if we are all robbed and murdered?"

Alice had not heard much of this harangue; but what she did hear very
slightly affected her strong, peasant-born nerves; not half so much
indeed, as the noise Mrs. Jones made in double-locking all the doors,
and barring, as well as a peg and a rusty inch of chain would allow, all
the windows--which operation occupied at least an hour and a half.

All at last was still. Mrs. Jones had gone to bed--in the arms of sleep
she had forgotten her terrors--and Alice had crept up-stairs, and
undressed, and said her prayers, and wept a little; and, with the tears
yet moist upon her dark eyelashes, had glided into dreams of Ernest.
Midnight was passed--the stroke of one sounded unheard from the clock at
the foot of the stars. The moon was gone--a slow, drizzling rain was
falling upon the flowers, and cloud and darkness gathered fast and thick
around the sky.

About this time, a low, regular, grating sound commenced at the thin
shutters of the sitting-room below, preceded by a very faint noise, like
the tinkling of small fragments of glass on the gravel without. At
length it ceased, and the cautious and partial gleam of a lanthorn fell
along the floor; another moment, and two men stood in the room.

"Hush, Jack!" whispered one: "hang out the glim, and let's look about
us."

The dark-lanthorn, now fairly unmuffled, presented to the gaze of the
robbers nothing that could gratify their cupidity.

Books and music, chairs, tables, carpet, and fire-irons, though valuable
enough in a house-agent's inventory, are worthless to the eyes of a
housebreaker. They muttered a mutual curse.

"Jack," said the former speaker, "we must make a dash at the spoons and
forks, and then hey for the money. The old girl had thirty shiners,
besides flimsies."

The accomplice nodded consent; the lanthorn was again partially shaded,
and with noiseless and stealthy steps the men quitted the apartment.
Several minutes elapsed, when Alice was awakened from her slumber by a
loud scream she started, all was again silent: she must have dreamt it:
her little heart beat violently at first, but gradually regained its
tenor. She rose, however, and the kindness of her nature being more
susceptible than her fear, she imagined Mrs. Jones might be ill--she
would go to her. With this idea she began partially dressing herself,
when she distinctly heard heavy footsteps and a strange voice in the
room beyond. She was now thoroughly alarmed--her first impulse was to
escape from the house--her next to bolt the door, and call aloud for
assistance. But who would hear her cries? Between the two purposes,
she halted irresolute . . . and remained, pale and trembling, seated at
the foot of the bed, when a broad light streamed through the chinks of
the door--an instant more, and a rude hand seized her.

"Come, mem, don't be fritted, we won't harm you; but where's the
gold-dust--where's the money?--the old girl says you've got it. Fork it
over."

"O mercy, mercy! John Walters, is that you?"

"Damnation!" muttered the man, staggering back; "so you knows me then;
but you sha'n't peach; you sha'n't scrag me, b---t you."

While he spoke, he again seized Alice, held her forcibly down with one
hand, while with the other he deliberately drew from a side pouch a long
case-knife. In that moment of deadly peril, the second ruffian, who had
been hitherto delayed in securing the servant, rushed forward. He had
heard the exclamation of Alice, he heard the threat of his comrade; he
darted to the bedside, cast a hurried gaze upon Alice, and hurled the
intended murderer to the other side of the room.

"What, man, art mad?" he growled between his teeth. "Don't you know
her? It is Alice;--it is my daughter."

Alice had sprung up when released from the murderer's knife, and now,
with eyes strained and starting with horror, gazed upon the dark and
evil face of her deliverer.

"O God, it is--it is my father!" she muttered, and fell senseless.

"Daughter or no daughter," said John Walters, "I shall not put my scrag
in her power; recollect how she fritted us before, when she run away."

Darvil stood thoughtful and perplexed; and his associate approached
doggedly with a look of such settled ferocity as it was impossible for
even Darvil to contemplate without a shudder.

"You say right," muttered the father, after a pause, but fixing his
strong gripe on his comrade's shoulder,--"the girl must not be left
here--the cart has a covering. We are leaving the country; I have a
right to my daughter--she shall go with us. There, man, grab the
money--it's on the table; . . . . you've got the spoons. Now then--" as
Darvil spoke he seized his daughter in his arms; threw over her a shawl
and a cloak that lay at hand, and was already on the threshold.

"I don't half like it," said Walters, grumblingly--"it been't safe."

"At least it is as safe as murder!" answered Darvil, turning round, with
a ghastly grin. "Make haste."

When Alice recovered her senses, the dawn was breaking slowly along
desolate and sullen hills. She was lying upon rough straw--the cart was
jolting over the ruts of a precipitous, lonely road,--and by her side
scowled the face of that dreadful father.

CHAPTER XI.

"Yet he beholds her with the eyes of mind--
He sees the form which he no more shall meet;
She like a passionate thought is come and gone,
While at his feet the bright rill bubbles on."
ELLIOTT /of Sheffield/.

IT was a little more than three weeks after that fearful night, when the
chaise of Maltravers stopped at the cottage door--the windows were shut
up; no one answered the repeated summons of the post-boy. Maltravers
himself, alarmed and amazed, descended from the vehicle: he was in deep
mourning. He went impatiently to the back entrance; that also was
locked; round to the French windows of the drawing-room, always hitherto
half-opened, even in the frosty days of winter,--they were now closed
like the rest. He shouted in terror, "Alice, Alice!"--no sweet voice
answered in breathless joy, no fairy step bounded forward in welcome.
At this moment, however, appeared the form of the gardener coming across
the lawn. The tale was soon told; the house had been robbed--the old
woman at morning found gagged and fastened to her bed-post--Alice flown.
A magistrate had been applied to,--suspicion fell upon the fugitive.
None knew anything of her origin or name, not even the old woman.
Maltravers had naturally and sedulously ordained Alice to preserve that
secret, and she was too much in fear of being detected and claimed by
her father not to obey the injunction with scrupulous caution. But it
was known, at least, that she had entered the house a poor peasant girl;
and what more common than for ladies of a certain description to run
away from their lover, and take some of his property by mistake? And a
poor girl like Alice, what else could be expected? The magistrate
smiled, and the constables laughed. After all, it was a good joke at
the young gentleman's expense! Perhaps, as they had no orders from
Maltravers, and they did not know where to find him, and thought he
would be little inclined to prosecute, the search was not very rigorous.
But two houses had been robbed the night before. Their owners were more
on the alert. Suspicion fell upon a man of infamous character, John
Walters; he had disappeared from the place. He had been last seen with
an idle, drunken fellow, who was said to have known better days, and who
at one time had been a skilful and well-paid mechanic, till his habits
of theft and drunkenness threw him out of employ; and he had been since
accused of connection with a gang of coiners--tried--and escaped from
want of sufficient evidence against him. That man was Luke Darvil. His
cottage was searched; but he also had fled. The trace of cart-wheels by
the gate of Maltravers gave a faint clue to pursuit; and after an active
search of some days, persons answering to the description of the
suspected burglars--with a young female in their company--were tracked
to a small inn, notorious as a resort for smugglers, by the sea-coast.
But there every vestige of their supposed whereabouts disappeared.

And all this was told to the stunned Maltravers; the garrulity of the
gardener precluded the necessity of his own inquiries, and the name of
Darvil explained to him all that was dark to others. And Alice was
suspected of the basest and the blackest guilt! Obscure, beloved,
protected as she had been, she could not escape the calumny from which
he had hoped everlastingly to shield her. But did /he/ share that
hateful thought? Maltravers was too generous and too enlightened.

"Dog!" said he, grinding his teeth, and clenching his hands, at the
startled menial, "dare to utter a syllable of suspicion against her, and
I will trample the breath out of your body!"

The old woman, who had vowed that for the 'varsal world she would not
stay in the house after such a "night of shakes," had now learned the
news of her master's return, and came hobbling up to him. She arrived
in time to hear his menace to her fellow-servant.

"Ah, that's right; give it him, your honour; bless your good
heart!--that's what I says. Miss rob the house! says I--Miss run away.
Oh no--depend on it they have murdered her and buried the body."

Maltravers gasped for breath, but without uttering another word he
re-entered the chaise and drove to the house of the magistrate. He
found that functionary a worthy and intelligent man of the world. To
him he confided the secret of Alice's birth and his own. The magistrate
concurred with him in believing that Alice had been discovered and
removed by her father. New search was made--gold was lavished.
Maltravers himself headed the search in person. But all came to the
same result as before, save that by the descriptions he heard of the
person--the dress--the tears, of the young female who had accompanied
the men supposed to be Darvil and Walters, he was satisfied that Alice
yet lived; he hoped she might yet escape and return. In that hope he
lingered for weeks--for months, in the neighbourhood; but time passed
and no tidings. . . . He was forced at length to quit a neighbourhood at
once so saddened and endeared. But he secured a friend in the
magistrate, who promised to communicate with him if Alice returned, or
her father was discovered. He enriched Mrs. Jones for life, in
gratitude for her vindication of his lost and early love; he promised
the amplest rewards for the smallest clue. And with a crushed and
desponding spirit, he obeyed at last the repeated and anxious summons of
the guardian to whose care, until his majority was attained, the young
orphan was now entrusted.

CHAPTER XII.

"Sure there are poets that did never dream
Upon Parnassus."--DENHAM.

"Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age
Come tittering on, and shove you from the stage."--POPE.

"Hence to repose your trust in me was wise."
DRYDEN'S /Absalom and Achitophel/.

MR. FREDERICK CLEVELAND, a younger son of the Earl of Byrneham, and
therefore entitled to the style and distinction of "Honourable," was the
guardian of Ernest Maltravers. He was now about the age of forty-three;
a man of letters and a man of fashion, if the last half-obsolete
expression be permitted to us, as being at least more classical and
definite than any other which modern euphuism has invented to convey the
same meaning. Highly educated, and with natural abilities considerably
above mediocrity, Mr. Cleveland early in life had glowed with the
ambition of an author. . . . He had written well and gracefully--but his
success, though respectable, did not satisfy his aspirations. The fact
is, that a new school of literature ruled the public, despite the
critics--a school very different from that in which Mr. Cleveland formed
his unimpassioned and polished periods. And as that old Earl, who in
the time of Charles the First was the reigning wit of the court, in the
time of Charles the Second was considered too dull even for a butt, so
every age has its own literary stamp and coinage, and consigns the old
circulation to its shelves and cabinets as neglected curiosities.
Cleveland could not become the fashion with the public as an author,
though the coteries cried him up and the reviewers adored him--and the
ladies of quality and the amateur dilettanti bought and bound his
volumes of careful poetry and cadenced prose. But Cleveland had high
birth and a handsome competence--his manners were delightful, his
conversation fluent--and his disposition was as amiable as his mind was
cultured. He became, therefore, a man greatly sought after in society
both respected and beloved. If he had not genius, he had great good
sense; he did not vex his urbane temper and kindly heart with walking
after a vain shadow, and disquieting himself in vain. Satisfied with an
honourable and unenvied reputation, he gave up the dream of that higher
fame which he clearly saw was denied to his aspirations--and maintained
his good-humour with the world, though in his secret soul he thought it
was very wrong in its literary caprices. Cleveland never married: he
lived partly in town, but principally at Temple Grove, a villa not far
from Richmond. Here, with an excellent library, beautiful grounds, and
a circle of attached and admiring friends, which comprised all the more
refined and intellectual members of what is termed, by emphasis, /Good
Society/--this accomplished and elegant person passed a life perhaps
much happier than he would have known had his young visions been
fulfilled, and it had become his stormy fate to lead the rebellious and
fierce Democracy of Letters.

Cleveland was indeed, if not a man of high and original genius, at least
very superior to the generality of patrician authors. In retiring,
himself, from frequent exercise in the arena, he gave up his mind with
renewed zest to the thoughts and masterpieces of others. From a
well-read man, he became a deeply instructed one. Metaphysics, and some
of the material sciences, added new treasures to information more light
and miscellaneous, and contributed to impart weight and dignity to a
mind that might otherwise have become somewhat effeminate and frivolous.
His social habits, his clear sense, and benevolence of judgment, made
him also an exquisite judge of all those indefinable nothings, or little
things, that, formed into a total, become knowledge of the Great World.
I say the Great World--for of the world without the circle of the great,
Cleveland naturally knew but little. But of all that related to that
subtle orbit in which gentlemen and ladies move in elevated and ethereal
order, Cleveland was a profound philosopher. It was the mode with many
of his admirers to style him the Horace Walpole of the day. But though
in some of the more external and superficial points of character they
were alike, Cleveland had considerably less cleverness, and infinitely
more heart.

The late Mr. Maltravers, a man not indeed of literary habits but an
admirer of those who were--an elegant, high-bred, hospitable /seigneur
de province/--had been one of the earliest of Cleveland's
friends--Cleveland had been his fag at Eton--and he found Hal
Maltravers--(Handsome Hal!) had become the darling of the clubs, when he
made his own /debut/ in society. They were inseparable for a season or
two--and when Mr. Maltravers married, and enamoured of country pursuits,
proud of his old hall, and sensibly enough conceiving that he was a
greater man in his own broad lands than in the republican aristocracy of
London, settled peaceably at Lisle Court, Cleveland corresponded with
him regularly, and visited him twice a year. Mrs. Maltravers died in
giving birth to Ernest, her second son. Her husband loved her tenderly,
and was long inconsolable for her loss. He could not bear the sight of
the child that had cost him so dear a sacrifice. Cleveland and his
sister, Lady Julia Danvers, were residing with him at the time of this
melancholy event; and with judicious and delicate kindness, Lady Julia
proposed to place the unconscious offender amongst her own children for
some months. The proposition was accepted, and it was two years before
the infant Ernest was restored to the paternal mansion. During the
greater part of that time, he had gone through all the events and
revolutions of baby life under the bachelor roof of Frederick Cleveland.

The result of this was, that the latter loved the child like a father.
Ernest's first intelligible word hailed Cleveland as "papa;" and when
the urchin was at length deposited at Lisle Court, Cleveland talked all
the nurses out of breath with admonitions, and cautions, and
injunctions, and promises, and threats, which might have put many a
careful mother to the blush. This circumstance formed a new tie between
Cleveland and his friend. Cleveland's visits were now three times a
year instead of twice. Nothing was done for Ernest without Cleveland's
advice. He was not even breeched till Cleveland gave his grave consent.
Cleveland chose his school, and took him to it,--and he spent a week of
every vacation in Cleveland's house. The boy never got into a scrape,
or won a prize, or wanted /a tip/, or coveted a book, but what Cleveland
was the first to know of it. Fortunately, too, Ernest manifested by
times tastes which the graceful author thought similar to his own. He
early developed very remarkable talents, and a love for learning--though
these were accompanied with a vigour of life and soul--an energy--a
daring--which gave Cleveland some uneasiness, and which did not appear
to him at all congenial with the moody shyness of an embryo genius, or
the regular placidity of a precocious scholar. Meanwhile the relation
between father and son was rather a singular one. Mr. Maltravers had
overcome his first, not unnatural, repugnance to the innocent cause of
his irremediable loss. He was now fond and proud of his boy--as he was
of all things that belonged to him. He spoiled and petted him even more
than Cleveland did. But he interfered very little with his education or
pursuits. His eldest son, Cuthbert, did not engross all his heart, but
occupied all his care. With Cuthbert he connected the heritage of his
ancient name, and the succession of his ancestral estates. Cuthbert was
not a genius, nor intended to be one; he was to be an accomplished
gentleman, and a great proprietor. The father understood Cuthbert, and
could see clearly both his character and career. He had no scruple in
managing his education, and forming his growing mind. But Ernest
puzzled him. Mr. Maltravers was even a little embarrassed in the boy's
society; he never quite overcame that feeling of strangeness towards him
which he had experienced when he first received him back from Cleveland,
and took Cleveland's directions about his health and so forth. It
always seemed to him as if his friend shared his right to the child; and
he thought it a sort of presumption to scold Ernest, though he very
often swore at Cuthbert. As the younger son grew up, it certainly was
evident that Cleveland did understand him better than his own father
did; and so, as I have before said, on Cleveland the father was not
displeased passively to shift the responsibility of the rearing.

Perhaps Mr. Maltravers might not have been so indifferent, had Ernest's
prospects been those of a younger son in general. If a profession had
been necessary for him, Mr. Maltravers would have been naturally anxious
to see him duly fitted for it. But from a maternal relation Ernest
inherited an estate of about four thousand pounds a year; and he was
thus made independent of his father. This loosened another tie between
them; and so by degrees Mr. Maltravers learned to consider Ernest less
as his own son, to be advised or rebuked, praised or controlled, than as
a very affectionate, promising, engaging boy, who, somehow or other,
without any trouble on his part, was very likely to do great credit to
his family, and indulge his eccentricities upon four thousand pounds a
year. The first time that Mr. Maltravers was seriously perplexed about
him was when the boy, at the age of sixteen, having taught himself
German, and intoxicated his wild fancies with /Werter/ and /The
Robbers/, announced his desire, which sounded very like a demand, of
going to Gottingen instead of to Oxford. Never were Mr. Maltravers's
notions of a proper and gentlemanlike finish to education more
completely and rudely assaulted. He stammered out a negative, and
hurried to his study to write a long letter to Cleveland, who, himself
an Oxford prize-man, would, he was persuaded, see the matter in the same
light. Cleveland answered the letter in person: listened in silence to
all the father had to say, and then strolled through the park with the
young man. The result of the latter conference was, that Cleveland
declared in favour of Ernest.

"But, my dear Frederick," said the astonished father, "I thought the boy
was to carry off all the prizes at Oxford?"

"I carried off some, Maltravers; but I don't see what good they did me."

"Oh, Cleveland!"

"I am serious."

"But it is such a very odd fancy."

"Your son is a very odd young man."

"I fear he is so--I fear he is, poor fellow! But what will he learn at
Gottingen?"

"Languages and Independence," said Cleveland.

"And the classics--the classics--you are such an excellent Grecian!"

"There are great Grecians in Germany," answered Cleveland; "and Ernest
cannot well unlearn what he knows already. My dear Maltravers, the boy
is not like most clever young men. He must either go through action,
and adventure, and excitement in his own way, or he will be an idle
dreamer, or an impracticable enthusiast all his life. Let him
alone.--So Cuthbert is gone into the Guards?"

"But he went first to Oxford."

"Humph! What a fine young man he is!"

"Not so tall as Ernest, but--"

"A handsome face," said Cleveland. "He is a son to be proud of in one
way, as I hope Ernest will be in another. Will you show me your new
hunter?"

* * * * *

It was to the house of this gentleman, so judiciously made his guardian,
that the student of Gottingen now took his melancholy way.

CHAPTER XIII.

"But if a little exercise you choose,
Some zest for ease, 'tis not forbidden here;
Amid the groves you may indulge the Muse,
Or tend the blooms and deck the vernal year."
/Castle of Indolence/.

THE house of Mr. Cleveland was an Italian villa adapted to an English
climate. Through an Ionic arch you entered a domain of some eighty or a
hundred acres in extent, but so well planted and so artfully disposed,
that you could not have supposed the unseen boundaries inclosed no
ampler a space. The road wound through the greenest sward, in which
trees of venerable growth were relieved by a profusion of shrubs, and
flowers gathered into baskets intertwined with creepers, or blooming
from classic vases, placed with a tasteful care in such spots as
required the /filling up/, and harmonised well with the object chosen.
Not an old ivy-grown pollard, not a modest and bending willow, but was
brought out, as it were, into a peculiar feature by the art of the
owner. Without being overloaded, or too minutely elaborate (the common
fault of the rich man's villa), the whole place seemed one diversified
and cultivated garden; even the air almost took a different odour from
different vegetation, with each winding of the road; and the colours of
the flowers and foliage varied with every view.

At length, when, on a lawn sloping towards a glassy lake overhung by
limes and chestnuts, and backed by a hanging wood, the house itself came
in sight, the whole prospect seemed suddenly to receive its finishing
and crowning feature. The house was long and low. A deep peristyle
that supported the roof extended the whole length, and being raised
above the basement had the appearance of a covered terrace; broad
flights of steps, with massive balustrades, supporting vases of aloes
and orange-trees, led to the lawn; and under the peristyle were ranged
statues, Roman antiquities and rare exotics. On this side the lake
another terrace, very broad, and adorned, at long intervals, with urns
and sculpture, contrasted the shadowy and sloping bank beyond; and
commanded, through unexpected openings in the trees, extensive views of
the distant landscape, with the stately Thames winding through the
midst. The interior of the house corresponded with the taste without.
All the principal rooms, even those appropriated to sleep, were on the
same floor. A small but lofty and octagonal hall conducted to a suite
of four rooms. At one extremity was a moderately-sized dining-room with
a ceiling copied from the rich and gay colours of Guido's "Hours;" and
landscapes painted by Cleveland himself, with no despicable skill, were
let into the walls. A single piece of sculpture copied from the Piping
Faun, and tinged with a flesh-like glow by purple and orange draperies
behind it, relieved without darkening the broad and arched window which
formed its niche. This communicated with a small picture-room, not
indeed rich with those immortal gems for which princes are candidates;
for Cleveland's fortune was but that of a private gentleman, though,
managed with a discreet if liberal economy, it sufficed for all his
elegant desires. But the pictures had an interest beyond that of art,
and their subjects were within the reach of a collector of ordinary
opulence. They made a series of portraits--some originals, some copies
(and the copies were often the best) of Cleveland's favourite authors.
And it was characteristic of the man, that Pope's worn and thoughtful
countenance looked down from the central place of honour. Appropriately
enough, this room led into the library, the largest room in the house,
the only one indeed that was noticeable from its size, as well as its
embellishments. It was nearly sixty feet in length. The bookcases were
crowned with bronze busts, while at intervals statues, placed in open
arches, backed with mirrors, gave the appearance of galleries, opening
from the book-lined walls, and introduced an inconceivable air of
classic lightness and repose into the apartment; with these arches the
windows harmonised so well, opening on the peristyle, and bringing into
delightful view the sculpture, the flowers, the terraces, and the lake
without, that the actual prospects half seduced you into the belief that
they were designs by some master-hand of the poetical gardens that yet
crown the hills of Rome. Even the colouring of the prospects on a sunny
day favoured the delusion, owing to the deep, rich hues of the simple
draperies, and the stained glass of which the upper panes of the windows
were composed. Cleveland was especially fond of sculpture; he was
sensible, too, of the mighty impulse which that art has received in
Europe within the last half century. He was even capable of asserting
the doctrine, not yet sufficiently acknowledged in this country, that
Flaxman surpassed Canova. He loved sculpture, too, not only for its own
beauty, but for the beautifying and intellectual effect that it produces
wherever it is admitted. It is a great mistake, he was wont to say, in
collectors of statues, to arrange them /pele mele/ in one long
monotonous gallery. The single relief, or statue, or bust, or simple
urn, introduced appropriately in the smallest apartment we inhabit,
charms us infinitely more than those gigantic museums, crowded into
rooms never entered but for show, and without a chill, uncomfortable
shiver. Besides, this practice of galleries, which the herd consider
orthodox, places sculpture out of the patronage of the public. There
are not a dozen people who can afford galleries. But very moderately
affluent gentlemen can afford a statue or a bust. The influence, too,
upon a man's mind and taste, created by the constant and habitual view
of monuments of the only imperishable art which resorts to physical
materials, is unspeakable. Looking upon the Greek marble, we become
acquainted, almost insensibly, with the character of the Greek life and
literature. That Aristides, that Genius of Death, that fragment of the
unrivalled Psyche, are worth a thousand Scaligers!

"Do you ever look at the Latin translation when you read Aeschylus?"
said a schoolboy once to Cleveland.

"That is my Latin translation," said Cleveland, pointing to the Laocoon.

The library opened at the extreme end to a small cabinet for curiosities
and medals, which, still in a straight line, conducted to a long
belvidere, terminating in a little circular summer-house, that, by a
sudden wind of the lake below, hung perpendicularly over its transparent
tide, and, seen from the distance, appeared almost suspended on air, so
light were its slender columns and arching dome. Another door from the
library opened upon a corridor which conducted to the principal
sleeping-chambers; the nearest door was that of Cleveland's private
study communicating with his bedroom and dressing-closet. The other
rooms were appropriated to, and named after, his several friends.

Mr. Cleveland had been advised by a hasty line of the movements of his
ward, and he received the young man with a smile of welcome, though his
eyes were moist and his lips trembled--for the boy was like his
father!--a new generation had commenced for Cleveland!

"Welcome, my dear Ernest," said he; "I am so glad to see you, that I
will not scold you for your mysterious absence. This is your room, you
see your name over the door; it is a larger one than you used to have,
for you are a man now; and there is your German sanctum adjoining--for
Schiller and the meerschaum!--a bad habit that, the meerschaum! but not
worse than the Schiller, perhaps. You see you are in the peristyle
immediately. The meerschaum is good for flowers, I fancy, so have no
scruple. Why, my dear boy, how pale you are! Be cheered--be cheered.
Well, I must go myself, or you will infect me."

Cleveland hurried away; he thought of his lost friend. Ernest sank upon
the first chair, and buried his face in his hands. Cleveland's valet
entered, and bustled about and unpacked the portmanteau, and arranged
the evening dress. But Ernest did not look up nor speak; the first bell
sounded; the second tolled unheard upon his ear. He was thoroughly
overcome by his emotions. The first notes of Cleveland's kind voice had
touched upon a soft chord, that months of anxiety and excitement had
strained to anguish, but had never woke to tears. His nerves were
shattered--those strong young nerves! He thought of his dead father
when he first saw Cleveland; but when he glanced round the room prepared
for him, and observed the care for his comfort, and the tender
recollection of his most trifling peculiarities everywhere visible,
Alice, the watchful, the humble, the loving, the lost Alice rose before
him. Surprised at his ward's delay, Cleveland entered the room; there
sat Ernest still, his face buried in his hands. Cleveland drew them
gently away, and Maltravers sobbed like an infant. It was an easy
matter to bring tears to the eyes of that young man: a generous or a
tender thought, an old song, the simplest air of music, sufficed for
that touch of the mother's nature. But the vehement and awful passion
which belongs to manhood when thoroughly unmanned--this was the first
time in which the relief of that stormy bitterness was known to him!

CHAPTER XIV.

"Musing full sadly in his sullen mind."--SPENSER.

"There forth issued from under the altar-smoke
A dreadful fiend."--/Ibid. on Superstition/.

NINE times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the
narrow gulf from Youth to Manhood. That interval is usually occupied by
an ill-placed or disappointed affection. We recover, and we find
ourselves a new being. The intellect has been hardened by the fire
through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every
passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have
undergone.

But Maltravers was yet on the bridge, and, for a time, both mind and
body were prostrate and enfeebled. Cleveland had the sagacity to
discover that the affections had their share in the change that he
grieved to witness, but he had also the delicacy not to force himself
into the young man's confidence. But by little and little his kindness
so completely penetrated the heart of his ward, that Ernest one evening
told his whole tale. As a man of the world, Cleveland perhaps rejoiced
that it was no worse, for he had feared some existing entanglement
perhaps with a married woman. But as a man who was better than the
world in general, he sympathised with the unfortunate girl whom Ernest
pictured to him in faithful and unflattered colours, and he long forbore
consolations which he foresaw would be unavailing. He felt, indeed,
that Ernest was not a man "to betray the noon of manhood to a
myrtle-shade:"--that with so sanguine, buoyant, and hardy a temperament,
he would at length recover from a depression which, if it could bequeath
a warning, might as well not be wholly divested of remorse. And he also
knew that few become either great authors or great men (and he fancied
Ernest was born to be one or the other) without the fierce emotions and
passionate struggles, through which the Wilhelm Meister of real life
must work out his apprenticeship, and attain the Master Rank. But at
last he had serious misgivings about the health of his ward. A constant
and spectral gloom seemed bearing the young man to the grave. It was in
vain that Cleveland, who secretly desired him to thirst for a public
career, endeavoured to arouse his ambition--the boy's spirit seemed
quite broken--and the visit of a political character, the mention of a
political work, drove him at once into his solitary chamber. At length
his mental disease took a new turn. He became, of a sudden, most
morbidly and fanatically--I was about to say religious: but that is not
the word; let me call it pseudo-religious. His strong sense and
cultivated taste did not allow him to delight in the raving tracts of
illiterate fanatics--and yet out of the benign and simple elements of
the Scripture he conjured up for himself a fanaticism quite as gloomy
and intense. He lost sight of God the Father, and night and day dreamed
only of God the Avenger. His vivid imagination was perverted to raise
out of its own abyss phantoms of colossal terror. He shuddered aghast
at his own creations, and earth and heaven alike seemed black with the
everlasting wrath. These symptoms completely baffled and perplexed
Cleveland. He knew not what remedy to administer--and to his
unspeakable grief and surprise he found that Ernest, in the true spirit
of his strange bigotry, began to regard Cleveland--the amiable, the
benevolent Cleveland--as one no less out of the pale of grace than
himself. His elegant pursuits, his cheerful studies, were considered by
the young but stern enthusiast as the miserable recreations of Mammon
and the world. There seemed every probability that Ernest Maltravers
would die in a madhouse or, at best, succeed to the delusions without
the cheerful intervals of Cowper.

CHAPTER XV.

"Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless--unfixed in principles and place."--DRYDEN.

"Whoever acquires a very great number of ideas interesting to
the society in which he lives, will be regarded in that society
as a man of abilities."--HELVETIUS.

IT was just when Ernest Maltravers was so bad that he could not be worse
that a young man visited Temple Grove. The name of this young man was
Lumley Ferrers, his age was about twenty-six, his fortune about eight
hundred a year--he followed no profession. Lumley Ferrers had not what
is usually called genius; that is, he had no enthusiasm; and if the word
talent be properly interpreted as meaning the talent of doing something
better than others, Ferrers had not much to boast of on that score. He
had no talent for writing, nor for music, nor painting, nor the ordinary
round of accomplishments; neither at present had he displayed much of
the hard and useful talent for action and business. But Ferrers had
what is often better than either genius or talent; he had a powerful and
most acute mind.

He had, moreover, great animation of manner, high physical spirits, a
witty, odd, racy vein of conversation, determined assurance, and
profound confidence in his own resources. He was fond of schemes,
stratagems, and plots--they amused and excited him--his power of
sarcasm, and of argument, too, was great, and he usually obtained an
astonishing influence over those with whom he was brought in contact.
His high spirits and a most happy frankness of bearing carried off and
disguised his leading vices of character, which were callousness to
whatever was affectionate and insensibility to whatever was moral.
Though less learned than Maltravers, he was on the whole a very
instructed man. He mastered the surfaces of many sciences, became
satisfied of their general principles, and threw the study aside never
to be forgotten (for his memory was like a vice), but never to be
prosecuted any further. To this he added a general acquaintance with
whatever is most generally acknowledged as standard in ancient or modern
literature. What is admired only by a few, Lumley never took the
trouble to read. Living amongst trifles, he made them interesting and
novel by his mode of viewing and treating them. And here indeed was /a/
talent--it was the talent of social life--the talent of enjoyment to the
utmost with the least degree of trouble to himself. Lumley Ferrers was
thus exactly one of those men whom everybody calls exceedingly clever,
and yet it would puzzle one to say in what he was so clever. It was,
indeed, that nameless power which belongs to ability, and which makes
one man superior, on the whole, to another, though in many details by no
means remarkable. I think it is Goethe who says somewhere that, in
reading the life of the greatest genius, we always find that he was
acquainted with some men superior to himself, who yet never attained to
general distinction. To the class of these mystical superior men Lumley
Ferrers might have belonged; for though an ordinary journalist would
have beaten him in the arts of composition, few men of genius, however
eminent, could have felt themselves above Ferrers in the ready grasp and
plastic vigour of natural intellect. It only remains to be said of this
singular young man, whose character as yet was but half developed, that
he had seen a great deal of the world, and could live at ease and in
content with all tempers and ranks; fox-hunters or scholars, lawyers or
poets, patricians or /parvenus/, it was all one to Lumley Ferrers.

Ernest was, as usual, in his own room, when he heard, along the corridor
without, all that indefinable bustling noise which announces an arrival.
Next came a most ringing laugh, and then a sharp, clear, vigorous voice,
that ran through his ears like a dagger. Ernest was immediately aroused
to all the majesty of indignant sullenness. He walked out on the
terrace of the portico, to avoid the repetition of the disturbance: and
once more settled back into his broken and hypochondriacal reveries.
Pacing to and fro that part of the peristyle which occupied the more
retired wing of the house, with his arms folded, his eyes downcast, his
brows knit, and all the angel darkened on that countenance which
formerly looked as if, like truth, it could shame the devil and defy the
world, Ernest followed the evil thought that mastered him, through the
Valley of the Shadow. Suddenly he was aware of something--some obstacle
which he had not previously encountered. He started, and saw before him
a young man, of plain dress, gentlemanlike appearance, and striking
countenance.

"Mr. Maltravers, I think," said the stranger, and Ernest recognised the
voice that had so disturbed him: "this is lucky; we can now introduce
ourselves, for I find Cleveland means us to be intimate. Mr. Lumley
Ferrers, Mr. Ernest Maltravers. There now, I am the elder, so I first
offer my hand, and grin properly. People always grin when they make a
new acquaintance! Well, that's settled. Which way are you walking?"

Maltravers could, when he chose it, be as stately as if he had never
been out of England. He now drew himself up in displeased astonishment;
extricated his hand from the gripe of Ferrers, and saying, very coldly,
"Excuse me, sir, I am busy," stalked back to his chamber. He threw
himself into his chair, and was presently forgetful of his late
annoyance, when, to his inexpressible amazement and wrath, he heard
again the sharp, clear voice close at his elbow.

Ferrers had followed him through the French casement into the room.
"You are busy, you say, my dear fellow. I want to write some letters:
we sha'n't interrupt each other--don't disturb yourself:" and Ferrers
seated himself at the writing-table, dipped a pen into the ink, arranged
blotting-book and paper before him in due order, and was soon employed
in covering page after page with the most rapid and hieroglyphical
scrawl that ever engrossed a mistress or perplexed a dun.

"The presuming puppy!" growled Maltravers, half audibly, but effectually
roused from himself; and examining with some curiosity so cool an
intruder, he was forced to own that the countenance of Ferrers was not
that of a puppy.

A forehead compact and solid as a block of granite, overhung small,
bright, intelligent eyes of a light hazel; the features were handsome,
yet rather too sharp and fox-like; the complexion, though not highly
coloured, was of that hardy, healthy hue which generally betokens a
robust constitution, and high animal spirits; the jaw was massive, and,
to a physiognomist, betokened firmness and strength of character; but
the lips, full and large, were those of a sensualist, and their restless
play, an habitual half smile, spoke of gaiety and humour, though when in
repose there was in them something furtive and sinister.

Maltravers looked at him in grave silence; but when Ferrers, concluding
his fourth letter before another man would have got through his first
page, threw down the pen, and looked full at Maltravers, with a
good-humoured but penetrating stare, there was something so whimsical in
the intruder's expression of face, and indeed in the whole scene, that
Maltravers bit his lip to restrain a smile, the first he had known for
weeks.

"I see you read, Maltravers," said Ferrers, carelessly turning over the
volumes on the table. "All very right: we should begin life with books;
they multiply the sources of employment; so does capital;--but capital
is of no use, unless we live on the interest,--books are waste paper,
unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought. Action,
Maltravers, action; that is the life for us. At our age we have
passion, fancy, sentiment; we can't read them away, or scribble them
away;--we must live upon them generously, but economically."

Maltravers was struck; the intruder was not the empty bore he had chosen
to fancy him. He roused himself languidly to reply. "Life, /Mr./
Ferrers--"

"Stop, /mon cher/, stop; don't call me Mister; we are to be friends; I
hate delaying that which /must be/, even by a superfluous dissyllable;
you are Maltravers, I am Ferrers. But you were going to talk about life.
Suppose we /live/ a little while, instead of talking about it? It wants
an hour to dinner; let us stroll into the grounds; I want to get an
appetite;--besides, I like nature when there are no Swiss mountains to
climb before one can arrive at a prospect. /Allons/!"

"Excuse--" again began Maltravers, half interested, half annoyed.

"I'll be shot if I do. Come."

Ferrers gave Maltravers his hat, wound his arm into that of his new
acquaintance, and they were on the broad terrace by the lake before
Ernest was aware of it.

How animated, how eccentric, how easy was Ferrers' talk (for talk it
was, rather than conversation, since he had the ball to himself); books,
and men, and things; he tossed them about and played with them like
shuttlecocks; and then his egotistical narrative of half a hundred
adventures, in which he had been the hero, told so, that you laughed at
him and laughed with him.

CHAPTER XVI.

"Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east."--MILTON.

HITHERTO Ernest had never met with any mind that had exercised a strong
influence over his own. At home, at school, at Gottingen, everywhere,
he had been the brilliant and wayward leader of others, persuading or
commanding wiser and older heads than his own: even Cleveland always
yielded to him, though not aware of it. In fact, it seldom happens that
we are very strongly influenced by those much older than ourselves. It
is the senior, of from two to ten years, that most seduces and enthrals
us. He has the same pursuits--views, objects, pleasures, but more art
and experience in them all. He goes with us in the path we are ordained
to tread, but from which the elder generation desires to warn us off.
There is very little influence where there is not great sympathy. It was
now an epoch in the intellectual life of Maltravers. He met for the
first time with a mind that controlled his own. Perhaps the physical
state of his nerves made him less able to cope with the half-bullying,
but thoroughly good-humoured imperiousness of Ferrers. Every day this
stranger became more and more potential with Maltravers. Ferrers, who
was an utter egotist, never asked his new friend to give him his
confidence; he never cared three straws about other people's secrets,
unless useful to some purpose of his own. But he talked with so much
zest about himself--about women and pleasure, and the gay, stirring life
of cities--that the young spirit of Maltravers was roused from its dark
lethargy without an effort of its own. The gloomy phantoms vanished
gradually--his sense broke from its cloud--he felt once more that God
had given the sun to light the day, and even in the midst of darkness
had called up the host of stars.

Perhaps no other person could have succeeded so speedily in curing
Maltravers of his diseased enthusiasm: a crude or sarcastic unbeliever
he would not have listened to; a moderate and enlightened divine he
would have disregarded, as a worldly and cunning adjuster of laws
celestial with customs earthly. But Lumley Ferrers, who, when he
argued, never admitted a sentiment or a simile in reply, who wielded his
plain iron logic like a hammer, which, though its metal seemed dull,
kindled the ethereal spark with every stroke--Lumley Ferrers was just
the man to resist the imagination, and convince the reason, of
Maltravers; and the moment the matter came to argument, the cure was
soon completed: for, however we may darken and puzzle ourselves with
fancies and visions, and the ingenuities of fanatical mysticism, no man
can mathematically or syllogistically contend that the world which a God
made, and a Saviour visited, was designed to be damned.

And Ernest Maltravers one night softly stole to his room and opened the
New Testament, and read its heavenly moralities with purged eyes; and
when he had done, he fell upon his knees, and prayed the Almighty to
pardon the ungrateful heart that, worse than the Atheist's, had
confessed His existence, but denied His goodness. His sleep was sweet
and his dreams were cheerful. Did he rise to find that the penitence
which had shaken his reason would henceforth suffice to save his life
from all error? Alas! remorse overstrained has too often reactions as
dangerous; and homely Luther says well, that "the mind, like the drunken
peasant on horseback, when propped on the one side, nods and falls on
the other."--All that can be said is, that there are certain crises in
life which leave us long weaker; from which the system recovers with
frequent revulsion and weary relapse,--but from which, looking back,
after years have passed on, we date the foundation of strength or the
cure of disease. It is not to mean souls that creation is darkened by a
fear of the anger of Heaven.

CHAPTER XVII.

"There are times when we are diverted out of errors, but could
not be preached out of them.--There are practitioners who can cure
us of one disorder, though, in ordinary cases, they be but poor
physicians--nay, dangerous quacks."-STEPHEN MONTAGUE.

LUMLEY FERRERS had one rule in life; and it was this: to make all things
and all persons subservient to himself. And Ferrers now intended to go
abroad for some years. He wanted a companion, for he disliked solitude:
besides, a companion shared the expenses; and a man of eight hundred a
year, who desires all the luxuries of life, does not despise a partner
in the taxes to be paid for them. Ferrers, at this period, rather liked
Ernest than not: it was convenient to choose friends from those richer
than himself, and he resolved, when he first came to Temple Grove, that
Ernest should be his travelling companion. This resolution formed, it
was very easy to execute it.

Maltravers was now warmly attached to his new friend, and eager for
change. Cleveland was sorry to part with him; but he dreaded a relapse,
if the young man were again left upon his hands. Accordingly, the
guardian's consent was obtained; a travelling carriage was bought, and
fitted up with every imaginable imperial and /malle/. A Swiss (half
valet and half courier) was engaged, one thousand a year was allowed to
Maltravers;--and one soft and lovely morning, towards the close of
October, Ferrers and Maltravers found themselves midway on the road to
Dover.

"How glad I am to get out of England," said Ferrers: "it is a famous
country for the rich; but here, eight hundred a year, without a
profession, save that of pleasure, goes upon pepper and salt; it is a
luxurious competence abroad."

"I think I have heard Cleveland say that you will be rich some day or
other."

"O yes: I have what are called expectations! You must know that I have
a kind of settlement on two stools, the Well-born and the Wealthy; but
between two stools--you recollect the proverb! The present Lord
Saxingham, once plain Frank Lascelles, and my father, Mr. Ferrers, were
first cousins. Two or three relations good-naturedly died, and Frank
Lascelles became an earl; the lands did not go with the coronet; he was
poor, and married an heiress. The lady died; her estate was settled on
her only child, the handsomest little girl you ever saw. Pretty
Florence, I often wish I could look up to you! Her fortune will be
nearly all at her own disposal, too, when she comes of age; now she is
in the nursery, 'eating bread and honey.' My father, less lucky and
less wise than his cousin, thought fit to marry a Miss Templeton--a
nobody. The Saxingham branch of the family politely dropped the
acquaintance. Now, my mother had a brother, a clever, plodding fellow,
in what is called 'business:' he became richer and richer: but my father
and mother died, and were never the better for it. And I came of age,
and /worth/ (I like that expression) not a farthing more or less than
this often-quoted eight hundred pounds a year. My rich uncle is
married, but has no children. I am, therefore, heir-presumptive,--but
he is a saint, and close, though ostentatious. The quarrel between
Uncle Templeton and the Saxinghams still continues. Templeton is angry
if I see the Saxinghams and the Saxinghams--my Lord, at least--is by no
means so sure that I shall be Templeton's heir as not to feel a doubt
lest I should some day or other sponge upon his lordship for a place.
Lord Saxingham is in the administration, you know. Somehow or other I
have an equivocal amphibious kind of place in London society, which I
don't like; on one side I am a patrician connection, whom the /parvenu/
branches always incline lovingly to--and on the other side I am a
half-dependent cadet, whom the noble relations look civilly shy at.
Some day, when I grow tired of travel and idleness, I shall come back
and wrestle with these little difficulties, conciliate my methodistical
uncle, and grapple with my noble cousin. But now I am fit for something
better than getting on in the world. Dry chips, not green wood, are the
things for making a blaze! How slow this fellow drives! Hollo, you
sir! get on! mind, twelve miles to the hour! You shall have sixpence a
mile. Give me your purse, Maltravers; I may as well be cashier, being
the elder and the wiser man; we can settle accounts at the end of the
journey. By Jove, what a pretty girl!"

BOOK II.

"He, of wide-blooming youth's fair flower possest,
Owns the vain thoughts--the heart that cannot rest!"
SIMONIDES, /in Tit. Hum/.

CHAPTER I.

"Il y eut certainement quelque chose de singulier dans mes
sentimens pour cette charmante femme."*--ROUSSEAU.

* There certainly was something singular in my sentiments for this
charming woman.

IT was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austrian embassy at
Naples: and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or old, who attach
themselves to the reigning beauty, was gathered round Madame de
Ventadour. Generally speaking, there is more caprice than taste in the
election of a beauty to the Italian throne. Nothing disappoints a
stranger more than to see for the first time the woman to whom the world
has given the golden apple. Yet he usually falls at last into the
popular idolatry, and passes with inconceivable rapidity from indignant
scepticism into superstitious veneration. In fact, a thousand things
beside mere symmetry of feature go to make up the Cytherea of the hour.
--tact in society--the charm of manner--nameless and piquant
brilliancy. Where the world find the Graces they proclaim the Venus.
Few persons attain pre-eminent celebrity for anything, without some
adventitious and extraneous circumstances which have nothing to do with
the thing celebrated. Some qualities or some circumstances throw a
mysterious or personal charm about them. "Is Mr. So-and-So really such
a genius?" "Is Mrs. Such-a-One really such a beauty?" you ask
incredulously. "Oh, yes," is the answer. "Do you know all about him or
her? Such a thing is said, or such a thing has happened." The idol is
interesting in itself, and therefore its leading and popular attribute
is worshipped.

Now Madame de Ventadour was at this time the beauty of Naples: and
though fifty women in the room were handsomer, no one would have dared
to say so. Even the women confessed her pre-eminence--for she was the
most perfect dresser that even France could exhibit. And to no
pretensions do ladies ever concede with so little demur, as those which
depend upon that feminine art which all study, and in which few excel.
Women never allow beauty in a face that has an odd-looking bonnet above
it, nor will they readily allow any one to be ugly whose caps are
unexceptionable. Madame de Ventadour had also the magic that results
from intuitive high breeding, polished by habit to the utmost. She
looked and moved the /grande dame/, as if Nature had been employed by
Rank to make her so. She was descended from one of the most illustrious
houses of France; had married at sixteen a man of equal birth, but old,
dull, and pompous--a caricature rather than a portrait of that great
French /noblesse/, now almost if not wholly extinct. But her virtue was
without a blemish--some said from pride, some said from coldness. Her
wit was keen and court-like--lively, yet subdued; for her French high
breeding was very different from the lethargic and taciturn
imperturbability of the English. All silent people can seem
conventionally elegant. A groom married a rich lady; he dreaded the
ridicule of the guests whom his new rank assembled at his table--an
Oxford clergyman gave him this piece of advice, "Wear a black coat and
hold your tongue!" The groom took the hint, and is always considered
one of the most gentlemanlike fellows in the county. Conversation is
the touchstone of the true delicacy and subtle grace which make the
ideal of the moral mannerism of a court. And there sat Madame de
Ventadour, a little apart from the dancers, with the silent English
dandy Lord Taunton, exquisitely dressed and superbly tall, bolt upright
behind her chair; and the sentimental German Baron von Schomberg,
covered with orders, whiskered and wigged to the last hair of
perfection, sighing at her left hand; and the French minister, shrewd,
bland, and eloquent, in the chair at her right; and round on all sides
pressed, and bowed, and complimented, a crowd of diplomatic secretaries
and Italian princes, whose bank is at the gaming-table, whose estates
are in their galleries, and who sell a picture, as English gentlemen cut
down a wood, whenever the cards grow gloomy. The charming De Ventadour!
she had attraction for them all! smiles for the silent, badinage for the
gay, politics for the Frenchman, poetry for the German, the eloquence of
loveliness for all! She was looking her best--the slightest possible
tinge of rouge gave a glow to her transparent complexion, and lighted up
those large dark sparkling eyes (with a latent softness beneath the
sparkle) seldom seen but in the French--and widely distinct from the
unintellectual languish of the Spaniard, or the full and majestic
fierceness of the Italian gaze. Her dress of black velvet, and graceful
hat with its princely plume, contrasted the alabaster whiteness of her
arms and neck. And what with the eyes, the skin, the rich colouring of
the complexion, the rosy lips and the small ivory teeth, no one would
have had the cold hypercriticism to observe that the chin was too
pointed, the mouth too wide, and the nose, so beautiful in the front
face, was far from perfect in the profile.

"Pray was Madame in the Strada Nuova to-day?" asked the German, with as
much sweetness in his voice as if he had been vowing eternal love.

"What else have we to do with our mornings, we women?" replied Madame de
Ventadour. "Our life is a lounge from the cradle to the grave; and our
afternoons are but the type of our career. A promenade and a
crowd,--/voila tout/! We never see the world except in an open
carriage."

"It is the pleasantest way of seeing it," said the Frenchman, drily.

"I doubt it; the worst fatigue is that which comes without exercise."

"Will you do me the honour to waltz?" said the tall English lord, who
had a vague idea that Madame de Ventadour meant she would rather dance
than sit still. The Frenchman smiled.

"Lord Taunton enforces your own philosophy," said the minister.

Lord Taunton smiled because every one else smiled; and, besides, he had
beautiful teeth: but he looked anxious for an answer.

"Not to-night,--I seldom dance. Who is that very pretty woman? What
lovely complexions the English have! And who," continued Madame de
Ventadour, without waiting for an answer to the first question, "who is
that gentleman,--the young one I mean,--leaning against the door?"

"What, with the dark moustache?" said Lord Taunton. "He is a cousin of
mine."

"Oh, no; not Colonel Bellfield; I know him--how amusing he is!--no; the
gentleman I mean wears no moustache."

"Oh, the tall Englishman with the bright eyes and high forehead," said
the French minister. "He is just arrived--from the East, I believe."

"It is a striking countenance," said Madame de Ventadour; "there is
something chivalrous in the turn of the head. Without doubt, Lord
Taunton, he is '/noble/'?"

"He is what you call '/noble/,'" replied Lord Taunton--"that is, what we
call a 'gentleman;' his name is Maltravers. He lately came of age; and
has, I believe, rather a good property."

"Monsieur Maltravers; only Monsieur?" repeated Madame de Ventadour.

"Why," said the French minister, "you understand that the English
/gentilhomme/ does not require a De or a title to distinguish him from
the /roturier/."

"I know that; but he has an air above a simple /gentilhomme/. There is
something /great/ in his look; but it is not, I must own, the
conventional greatness of rank: perhaps he would have looked the same
had he been born a peasant."

"You don't think him handsome?" said Lord Taunton, almost angrily (for
he was one of the Beauty-men, and Beauty-men are sometimes jealous).

"Handsome! I did not say that," replied Madame de Ventadour, smiling;
"it is rather a fine head than a handsome face. Is he clever, I
wonder?--but all you English, milord, are well educated."

"Yes, profound--profound: we are profound, not superficial," replied
Lord Taunton, drawing down his wrist-bands.

"Will Madame de Ventadour allow me to present to her one of my
countrymen?" said the English minister approaching--"Mr. Maltravers."

Madame de Ventadour half smiled and half blushed, as she looked up, and
saw bent admiringly upon her the proud and earnest countenance she had
remarked.

The introduction made--a few monosyllables exchanged. The French
diplomatist rose and walked away with the English one. Maltravers
succeeded to the vacant chair.

"Have you been long abroad?" asked Madame de Ventadour.

"Only four years; yet long enough to ask whether I should not be most
abroad in England."

"You have been in the East--I envy you. And Greece, and Egypt,--all the
associations! You have travelled back into the Past; you have escaped,
as Madame D'Epinay wished, out of civilisation and into romance."

"Yet Madame D'Epinay passed her own life in making pretty romances out
of a very agreeable civilisation," said Maltravers, smiling.

"You know her Memoirs, then," said Madame de Ventadour, slightly
colouring. "In the current of a more exciting literature few have had
time for the second-rate writings of a past century."

"Are not those second-rate performances often the most charming," said
Maltravers, "when the mediocrity of the intellect seems almost as if it
were the effect of a touching, though too feeble, delicacy of sentiment?
Madame D'Epinay's Memoirs are of this character. She was not a virtuous
woman--but she felt virtue and loved it; she was not a woman of
genius--but she was tremblingly alive to all the influences of genius.
Some people seem born with the temperament and the tastes of genius
without its creative power; they have its nervous system, but something
is wanting in the intellectual. They feel acutely, yet express tamely.
These persons always have in their character an unspeakable kind of
pathos--a court civilisation produces many of them--and the French
memoirs of the last century are particularly fraught with such examples.
This is interesting--the struggle of sensitive minds against the
lethargy of a society, dull, yet brilliant, that /glares/ them, as it
were, to sleep. It comes home to us; for," added Maltravers, with a
slight change of voice, "how many of us fancy we see our own image in
the mirror!"

And where was the German baron?--flirting at the other end of the room.
And the English lord?--dropping monosyllables to dandies by the doorway.
And the minor satellites?--dancing, whispering, making love, or sipping
lemonade. And Madame de Ventadour was alone with the young stranger in
a crowd of eight hundred persons; and their lips spoke of sentiment, and
their eyes involuntarily applied it!

While they were thus conversing, Maltravers was suddenly startled by
hearing close behind him, a sharp, significant voice, saying in French,
"Hein, hein! I've my suspicions--I've my suspicions."

Madame de Ventadour looked round with a smile. "It is only my husband,"
said she, quietly; "let me introduce him to you."

Maltravers rose and bowed to a little thin man, most elaborately
dressed, and with an immense pair of spectacles upon a long sharp nose.

"Charmed to make your acquaintance, sir!" said Monsieur de Ventadour.
"Have you been long in Naples? . . . Beautiful weather--won't last
long--hein, hein, I've my suspicions! No news as to your parliament--be
dissolved soon! Bad opera in London this year!--hein, hein--I've my
suspicions."

This rapid monologue was delivered with appropriate gesture. Each new
sentence Mons. de Ventadour began with a sort of bow, and when it
dropped in the almost invariable conclusion affirmative of his
shrewdness and incredulity, he made a mystical sign with his forefinger
by passing it upward in a parallel line with his nose, which at the same
time performed its own part in the ceremony by three convulsive
twitches, that seemed to shake the bridge to its base.

Maltravers looked with mute surprise upon the connubial partner of the
graceful creature by his side, and Mons. de Ventadour, who had said as
much as he thought necessary, wound up his eloquence by expressing the
rapture it would give him to see Mons. Maltravers at his hotel. Then,
turning to his wife, he began assuring her of the lateness of the hour,
and the expediency of departure. Maltravers glided away, and as he
regained the door was seized by our old friend, Lumley Ferrers. "Come,
my dear fellow," said the latter; "I have been waiting for you this half
hour. /Allons/. But, perhaps, as I am dying to go to bed, you have
made up your mind to stay supper. Some people have no regard for other
people's feelings."

"No, Ferrers, I'm at your service;" and the young man descended the
stairs and passed along the Chiaja towards their hotel. As they gained
the broad and open space on which it stood, with the lovely sea before
them, sleeping in the arms of the curving shore, Maltravers, who had
hitherto listened in silence to the volubility of his companion, paused
abruptly.

"Look at that sea, Ferrers. . . . What a scene!--what delicious air!
How soft this moonlight! Can you not fancy the old Greek adventurers,
when they first colonised this divine Parthenope--the darling of the
ocean--gazing along those waves, and pining no more for Greece?"

"I cannot fancy anything of the sort," said Ferrers. . . . "And, depend
upon it, the said gentlemen, at this hour of the night, unless they were
on some piratical excursion--for they were cursed ruffians, those old
Greek colonists--were fast asleep in their beds."

"Did you ever write poetry, Ferrers?"

"To be sure; all clever men have written poetry once in their
lives--small-pox and poetry--they are our two juvenile diseases."

"And did you ever /feel/ poetry!"

"Feel it!"

"Yes, if you put the moon into your verses, did you first feel it
shining into your heart?"

"My dear Maltravers, if I put the moon into my verses, in all
probability it was to rhyme to noon. 'The night was at her noon'--is a
capital ending for the first hexameter--and the moon is booked for the
next stage. Come in."

"No, I shall stay out."

"Don't be nonsensical."

"By moonlight there is no nonsense like common sense."

"What! we--who have climbed the Pyramids, and sailed up the Nile, and
seen magic at Cairo, and been nearly murdered, bagged, and Bosphorized
at Constantinople, is it for us, who have gone through so many
adventures, looked on so many scenes, and crowded into four years events
that would have satisfied the appetite of a cormorant in romance, if it
had lived to the age of a phoenix;--is it for us to be doing the pretty
and sighing to the moon, like a black-haired apprentice without a
neckcloth on board of the Margate hoy? Nonsense, I say--we have lived
too much not to have lived away our green sickness of sentiment."

"Perhaps you are right, Ferrers," said Maltravers, smiling. "But I can
still enjoy a beautiful night."

"Oh, if you like flies in your soup, as the man said to his guest, when
he carefully replaced those entomological blackamoors in the tureen,
after helping himself--if you like flies in your soup, well and
good--/buona notte/."

Ferrers certainly was right in his theory, that when we have known real
adventures we grow less morbidly sentimental. Life is a sleep in which
we dream most at the commencement and the close--the middle part absorbs
us too much for dreams. But still, as Maltravers said, we can enjoy a
fine night, especially on the shores of Naples.

Maltravers paced musingly to and fro for some time. His heart was
softened--old rhymes rang in his ear--old memories passed through his
brain. But the sweet dark eyes of Madame de Ventadour shone forth
through every shadow of the past. Delicious intoxication--the draught
of the rose-coloured phial--which is fancy, but seems love!

CHAPTER II.

"Then 'gan the Palmer thus--'Most wretched man
That to affections dost the bridle lend:
In their beginnings they are weak and wan,
But soon, through suffrance, growe to fearfull end;
While they are weak, betimes with them contend.'"
SPENSER.

MALTRAVERS went frequently to the house of Madame de Ventadour--it was
open twice a week to the world, and thrice a week to friends.
Maltravers was soon of the latter class. Madame de Ventadour had been
in England in her childhood, for her parents had been /emigres/. She
spoke English well and fluently, and this pleased Maltravers; for though
the French language was sufficiently familiar to him, he was like most
who are more vain of the mind than the person, and proudly averse to
hazarding his best thoughts in the domino of a foreign language. We
don't care how faulty the accent, or how incorrect the idiom, in which
we talk nothings; but if we utter any of the poetry within us, we
shudder at the risk of the most trifling solecism.

This was especially the case with Maltravers; for, besides being now
somewhat ripened from his careless boyhood into a proud and fastidious
man, he had a natural love for the Becoming. This love was
unconsciously visible in trifles: it is the natural parent of Good
Taste. And it was indeed an inborn good taste which redeemed Ernest's
natural carelessness in those personal matters in which young men
usually take a pride. An habitual and soldier-like neatness, and a love
of order and symmetry, stood with him in the stead of elaborate
attention to equipage and dress.

Maltravers had not thought twice in his life whether he was handsome or
not; and, like most men who have a knowledge of the gentler sex, he knew
that beauty had little to do with engaging the love of women. The air,
the manner, the tone, the conversation, the something that interests,
and the something to be proud of--these are the attributes of the man
made to be loved. And the Beauty-man is, nine times out of ten, little
more than the oracle of his aunts, and the "/Sich/ a love!" of the
housemaids!

To return from this digression, Maltravers was glad that he could talk
in his own language to Madame de Ventadour; and the conversation between
them generally began in French, and glided away into English. Madame de
Ventadour was eloquent, and so was Maltravers; yet a more complete
contrast in their mental views and conversational peculiarities can
scarcely be conceived. Madame de Ventadour viewed everything as a woman
of the world: she was brilliant, thoughtful, and not without delicacy
and tenderness of sentiment; still all was cast in a worldly mould. She
had been formed by the influences of society, and her mind betrayed its
education. At once witty and melancholy (no uncommon union), she was a
disciple of the sad but caustic philosophy produced by /satiety/. In
the life she led, neither her heart nor her head was engaged; the
faculties of both were irritated, not satisfied or employed. She felt
somewhat too sensitively the hollowness of the great world, and had a
low opinion of human nature. In fact, she was a woman of the French
memoirs--one of those charming and /spirituelles/ Aspasias of the
boudoir, who interest us by their subtlety, tact, and grace, their
exquisite tone of refinement, and are redeemed from the superficial and
frivolous, partly by a consummate knowledge of the social system in
which they move, and partly by a half-concealed and touching discontent
of the trifles on which their talents and affections are wasted. These
are the women who, after a youth of false pleasure, often end by an old
age of false devotion. They are a class peculiar to those ranks and
countries in which shines and saddens that gay and unhappy thing--/a
woman without a home/!

Now this was a specimen of life--this Valerie de Ventadour--that
Maltravers had never yet contemplated, and Maltravers was perhaps
equally new to the Frenchwoman. They were delighted with each other's
society, although it so happened that they never agreed.

Madame de Ventadour rode on horseback, and Maltravers was one of her
usual companions. And oh, the beautiful landscapes through which their
daily excursions lay!

Maltravers was an admirable scholar. The stores of the immortal dead
were as familiar to him as his own language. The poetry, the
philosophy, the manner of thought and habits of life--of the graceful
Greek and the luxurious Roman--were a part of knowledge that constituted
a common and household portion of his own associations and peculiarities
of thought. He had saturated his intellect with the Pactolus of
old--and the grains of gold came down from the classic Tmolus with every
tide. This knowledge of the dead, often so useless, has an
inexpressible charm when it is applied to the places where the dead
lived. We care nothing about the ancients on Highgate Hill--but at
Baiae, Pompeii, by the Virgilian Hades, the ancients are society with
which we thirst to be familiar. To the animated and curious Frenchwoman
what a cicerone was Ernest Maltravers! How eagerly she listened to
accounts of a life more elegant than that of Paris!--of a civilisation
which the world never can know again! So much the better;--for it was
rotten at the core, though most brilliant in the complexion. Those cold
names and unsubstantial shadows which Madame de Ventadour had been
accustomed to yawn over in skeleton histories, took from the eloquence
of Maltravers the breath of life--they glowed and moved--they feasted
and made love--were wise and foolish, merry and sad, like living things.
On the other hand, Maltravers learned a thousand new secrets of the
existing and actual world from the lips of the accomplished and
observant Valerie. What a new step in the philosophy of life does a
young man of genius make, when he first compares his theories and
experience with the intellect of a clever woman of the world! Perhaps
it does not elevate him, but how it enlightens and refines!--what
numberless minute yet important mysteries in human character and
practical wisdom does he drink unconsciously from the sparkling
/persiflage/ of such a companion! Our education is hardly ever complete
without it.

"And so you think these stately Romans were not, after all, so
dissimilar to ourselves?" said Valerie, one day, as they looked over the
same earth and ocean along which had roved the eyes of the voluptuous
but august Lucullus.

"In the last days of their Republic, a /coup-d'oeil of their social date
might convey to us a general notion of our own. Their system, like
ours--a vast aristocracy heaved and agitated, but kept ambitious and
intellectual, by the great democratic ocean which roared below and
around it. An immense distinction between rich and poor--a nobility
sumptuous, wealthy, cultivated, yet scarcely elegant or refined; a
people with mighty aspirations for more perfect liberty, but always
liable, in a crisis, to be influenced and subdued by a deep-rooted
veneration for the very aristocracy against which they struggled;--a
ready opening through all the walls of custom and privilege, for every
description of talent and ambition; but so strong and universal a
respect for wealth, that the finest spirit grew avaricious, griping, and
corrupt, almost unconsciously; and the man who rose from the people did
not scruple to enrich himself out of the abuses he affected to lament;
and the man who would have died for his country could not help thrusting
his hands into her pockets. Cassius, the stubborn and thoughtful
patriot, with his heart of iron, had, you remember, an itching palm.
Yet, what a blow to all the hopes and dreams of a world was the
overthrow of the free party after the death of Caesar! What generations
of freemen fell at Philippi! In England, perhaps, we may have
ultimately the same struggle; in France, too (perhaps a larger stage,
with far more inflammable actors), we already perceive the same war of
elements which shook Rome to her centre, which finally replaced the
generous Julius with the hypocritical Augustus, which destroyed the
colossal patricians to make way for the glittering dwarfs of a court,
and cheated the people out of the substance with the shadow of liberty.
How it may end in the modern world, who shall say? But while a nation
has already a fair degree of constitutional freedom, I believe no
struggle so perilous and awful as that between the aristocratic and the
democratic principle. A people against a despot--/that/ contest
requires no prophet; but the change from an aristocratic to a democratic
commonwealth is indeed the wide, unbounded prospect upon which rest
shadows, clouds, and darkness. If it fail--for centuries is the
dial-hand of Time put back; if it succeed--"

Maltravers paused.

"And if it succeed?" said Valerie.

"Why, then, man will have colonised Utopia!" replied Maltravers.

"But at least, in modern Europe," he continued, "there will be fair room
for the experiment. For we have not that curse of slavery which, more
than all else, vitiated every system of the ancients, and kept the rich
and the poor alternately at war; and we have a press, which is not only
the safety-valve of the passions of every party, but the great note-book
of the experiments of every hour--the homely, the invaluable ledger of
losses and of gains. No; the people who keep that tablet well, never
can be bankrupt. And the society of those old Romans; their daily
passions--occupations--humours!--why, the satire of Horace is the glass
of our own follies! We may fancy his easy pages written in the Chaussee
d'Antin, or Mayfair; but there was one thing that will ever keep the
ancient world dissimilar from the modern."

"And what is that?"

"The ancients knew not that delicacy in the affections which
characterises the descendants of the Goths," said Maltravers, and his
voice slightly trembled; "they gave up to the monopoly of the senses
what ought to have had an equal share in the reason and the imagination.
Their love was a beautiful and wanton butterfly; but not the butterfly
which is the emblem of the soul."

Valerie sighed. She looked timidly into the face of the young
philosopher, but his eyes were averted.

"Perhaps," she said, after a short pause, "we pass our lives more
happily without love than with it. And in our modern social system"
(she continued, thoughtfully, and with profound truth, though it is
scarcely the conclusion to which a woman often arrives) "I think we have
pampered Love to too great a preponderance over the other excitements of
life. As children, we are taught to dream of it; in youth, our books,
our conversation, our plays, are filled with it. We are trained to
consider it the essential of life; and yet, the moment we come to actual
experience, the moment we indulge this inculcated and stimulated
craving, nine times out of ten we find ourselves wretched and undone.
Ah, believe me, Mr. Maltravers, this is not a world in which we should
preach up too far the philosophy of Love!"

"And does Madame de Ventadour speak from experience?" asked Maltravers,
gazing earnestly upon the changing countenance of his companion.

"No; and I trust that I never may!" said Valerie, with great energy.

Ernest's lip curled slightly, for his pride was touched.

"I could give up many dreams of the future," said he, "to hear Madame de
Ventadour revoke that sentiment."

"We have outridden our companions, Mr. Maltravers," said Valerie,
coldly, and she reined in her horse. "Ah, Mr. Ferrers," she continued,
as Lumley and the handsome German baron now joined her, "you are too
gallant; I see you imply a delicate compliment to my horsemanship, when
you wish me to believe you cannot keep up with me: Mr. Maltravers is not
so polite."

"Nay," returned Ferrers, who rarely threw away a compliment without a
satisfactory return, "Nay, you and Maltravers appeared lost among the
old Romans; and our friend the baron took that opportunity to tell me of
all the ladies who adored him."

"Ah, Monsieur Ferrare, /que vous etes malin/!" said Schomberg, looking
very much confused.

"/Malin/! no; I spoke from no envy: /I/ never was adored, thank Heaven!
What a bore it must be!"

"I congratulate you on the sympathy between yourself and Ferrers,"
whispered Maltravers to Valerie.

Valerie laughed; but during the rest of the excursion she remained
thoughtful and absent, and for some days their rides were discontinued.
Madame de Ventadour was not well.

CHAPTER III.

"O Love, forsake me not;
Mine were a lone dark lot
Bereft of thee."
HEMANS, /Genius singing to Love/.

I FEAR that as yet Ernest Maltravers had gained little from Experience,
except a few current coins of worldly wisdom (and not very valuable
those!) while he has lost much of that nobler wealth with which youthful
enthusiasm sets out on the journey of life. Experience is an open
giver, but a stealthy thief. There is, however, this to be said in her
favour, that we retain her gifts; and if ever we demand restitution in
earnest, 'tis ten to one but what we recover her thefts. Maltravers had
lived in lands where public opinion is neither strong in its influence,
nor rigid in its canons; and that does not make a man better. Moreover,
thrown headlong amidst the temptations that make the first ordeal of
youth, with ardent passions and intellectual superiority, he had been
led by the one into many errors, from the consequences of which the
other had delivered him; the necessity of roughing it through the
world--of resisting fraud to-day, and violence to-morrow,--had hardened
over the surface of his heart, though at bottom the springs were still
fresh and living. He had lost much of his chivalrous veneration for
women, for he had seen them less often deceived than deceiving. Again,
too, the last few years had been spent without any high aims or fixed
pursuits. Maltravers had been living on the capital of his faculties
and affections in a wasteful, speculating spirit. It is a bad thing for
a clever and ardent man not to have from the onset some paramount object
of life.

All this considered, we can scarcely wonder that Maltravers should have
fallen into an involuntary system of pursuing his own amusements and
pursuits, without much forethought of the harm or the good they were to
do to others or himself. The moment we lose forethought, we lose sight
of duty; and though it seems like a paradox, we can seldom be careless
without being selfish.

In seeking the society of Madame de Ventadour, Maltravers obeyed but the
mechanical impulse that leads the idler towards the companionship which
most pleases his leisure. He was interested and excited; and Valerie's
manners, which to-day flattered, and to-morrow piqued him, enlisted his
vanity and pride on the side of his fancy. But although Monsieur de
Ventadour, a frivolous and profligate Frenchman, seemed utterly
indifferent as to what his wife chose to do--and in the society in which
Valerie lived, almost every lady had her cavalier,--yet Maltravers would
have started with incredulity or dismay had any one accused him of a
systematic design on her affections. But he was living with the world,
and the world affected him as it almost always does every one else.
Still he had, at times, in his heart, the feeling that he was not
fulfilling his proper destiny and duties; and when he stole from the
brilliant resorts of an unworthy and heartless pleasure, he was ever and
anon haunted by his old familiar aspirations for the Beautiful, the
Virtuous, and the Great. However, hell is paved with good intentions;
and so, in the meanwhile, Ernest Maltravers surrendered himself to the
delicious presence of Valerie de Ventadour.

One evening, Maltravers, Ferrers, the French minister, a pretty Italian,
and the Princess di ------, made the whole party collected at Madame de
Ventadour's. The conversation fell upon one of the tales of scandal
relative to English persons, so common on the Continent.

"Is it true, Monsieur," said the French minister, gravely, to Lumley,
"that your countrymen are much more immoral than other people? It is
very strange, but in every town I enter, there is always some story in
which /les Anglais/ are the heroes. I hear nothing of French
scandal--nothing of Italian--/toujours les Anglais/."

"Because we are shocked at these things, and make a noise about them,
while you take them quietly. Vice is our episode--your epic."

"I suppose it is so," said the Frenchman, with affected seriousness.
"If we cheat at play, or flirt with a fair lady, we do it with decorum,
and our neighbours think it no business of theirs. But you treat every
frailty you find in your countrymen as a public concern, to be discussed
and talked over, and exclaimed against, and told to all the world."

"I like the system of scandal," said Madame de Ventadour, abruptly; "say
what you will, the policy of fear keeps many of us virtuous. Sin might
not be odious, if we did not tremble at the consequence even of
appearances."

"Hein, hein," grunted Monsieur de Ventadour, shuffling into the room.
"How are you?--how are you? Charmed to see you. Dull night--I suspect
we shall have rain. Hein, hein. Aha, Monsieur Ferrers, /comment ca
va-t-il/? Will you give me my revenge at /ecarte/? I have my
suspicions that I am in luck to-night. Hein, hein."

"/Ecarte/!--well, with pleasure," said Ferrers.

Ferrers played well.

The conversation ended in a moment. The little party gathered round the
table--all, except Valerie and Maltravers. The chairs that were vacated
left a kind of breach between them; but still they were next to each
other, and they felt embarrassed, for they felt alone.

"Do you never play?" asked Madame de Ventadour, after a pause.

"I /have/ played," said Maltravers, "and I know the temptation. I dare
not play now. I love the excitement, but I have been humbled at the
debasement: it is a moral drunkenness that is worse than the physical."

"You speak warmly."

"Because I feel keenly. I once won of a man I respected, who was poor.
His agony was a dreadful lesson to me. I went home, and was terrified
to think I had felt so much pleasure in the pain of another. I have
never played since that night."

"So young and so resolute!" said Valerie, with admiration in her voice
and eyes; "you are a strange person. Others would have been cured by
losing, you were cured by winning. It is a fine thing to have principle
at your age, Mr. Maltravers."

"I fear it was rather pride than principle," said Maltravers. "Error is
sometimes sweet; but there is no anguish like an error of which we feel
ashamed. I cannot submit to blush for myself."

"Ah!" muttered Valerie; "this is the echo of my own heart!" She rose
and went to the window. Maltravers paused a moment, and followed her.
Perhaps he half thought there was an invitation in the movement.

There lay before them the still street, with its feeble and unfrequent
lights; beyond, a few stars, struggling through an atmosphere unusually
clouded, brought the murmuring ocean partially into sight. Valerie
leaned against the wall, and the draperies of the window veiled her from
all the guests, save Maltravers; and between her and himself was a large
marble vase filled with flowers; and by that uncertain light Valerie's
brilliant cheek looked pale, and soft, and thoughtful. Maltravers never
before felt so much in love with the beautiful Frenchwoman.

"Ah, madam!" said he, softly; "there is one error, if it be so, that
never can cost me shame."

"Indeed!" said Valerie with an unaffected start, for she was not aware
he was so near her. As she spoke she began plucking (it is a common
woman's trick) the flowers from the vase between her and Ernest. That
small, delicate, almost transparent hand!--Maltravers gazed upon the
hand, then on the countenance, then on the hand again. The scene swam
before him, and, involuntarily and as by an irresistible impulse, the
next moment that hand was in his own.

"Pardon me--pardon me," said he, falteringly; "but that error is in the
feelings that I know for you."

Valerie lifted on him her large and radiant eyes, and made no answer.

Maltravers went on. "Chide me, scorn me, hate me if you will. Valerie,
I love you."

Valerie drew away her hand, and still remained silent.

"Speak to me," said Ernest, leaning forward; "one word, I implore
you--speak to me!"

He paused,--still no reply; he listened breathlessly--he heard her sob.
Yes; that proud, that wise, that lofty woman of the world, in that
moment, was as weak as the simplest girl that ever listened to a lover.
But how different the feelings that made her weak!--what soft and what
stern emotions were blent together!

"Mr. Maltravers," she said, recovering her voice, though it sounded
hollow, yet almost unnaturally firm and clear"--the die is cast, and I
have lost for ever the friend for whose happiness I cannot live, but for
whose welfare I would have died; I should have foreseen this, but I was
blind. No more--no more; see me to-morrow, and leave me now!"

"But, Valerie--"

"Ernest Maltravers," said she, laying her hand lightly on his own;
"/there is no anguish, like an error of which we feel ashamed/!"

Before he could reply to this citation from his own aphorism, Valerie
had glided away; and was already seated at the card-table, by the side
of the Italian princess.

Maltravers also joined the group. He fixed his eyes on Madame de
Ventadour, but her face was calm--not a trace of emotion was
discernible. Her voice, her smile, her charming and courtly manner, all
were as when he first beheld her.

"These women--what hypocrites they are!" muttered Maltravers to himself;
and his lip writhed into a sneer, which had of late often forced away
the serene and gracious expression of his earlier years, ere he knew
what it was to despise. But Maltravers mistook the woman he dared to
scorn.

He soon withdrew from the palazzo, and sought his hotel. There, while
yet musing in his dressing-room, he was joined by Ferrers. The time had
passed when Ferrers had exercised an influence over Maltravers; the boy
had grown up to be the equal of the man, in the exercise of that
two-edged sword--the reason. And Maltravers now felt, unalloyed, the
calm consciousness of his superior genius. He could not confide to
Ferrers what had passed between him and Valerie. Lumley was too /hard/
for a confidant in matters where the heart was at all concerned. In
fact, in high spirits, and in the midst of frivolous adventures, Ferrers
was charming. But in sadness, or in the moments of deep feeling,
Ferrers was one whom you would wish out of the way.

"You are sullen to-eight, /mon cher/," said Lumley, yawning; "I suppose
you want to go to bed--some persons are so ill-bred, so selfish, they
never think of their friends. Nobody asks me what I won at /ecarte/.
Don't be late to-morrow--I hate breakfasting alone, and I am never later
than a quarter before nine--I hate egotistical, ill-mannered people.
Good night."

With this, Ferrers sought his own room; there, as he slowly undressed,
he thus soliloquised: "I think I have put this man to all the use I can
make of him. We don't pull well together any longer; perhaps I myself
am a little tired of this sort of life. That is not right. I shall
grow ambitious by and by; but I think it a bad calculation not to make
the most of youth. At four or five-and-thirty it will be time enough to
consider what one ought to be at fifty."

CHAPTER IV.

"Most dangerous
Is that temptation that does goad us on
To sin in loving virtue."--/Measure for Measure/.

"SEE her to-morrow!--that morrow is come!" thought Maltravers, as he
rose the next day from a sleepless couch. Ere yet he had obeyed the
impatient summons of Ferrers, who had thrice sent to say that "/he/
never kept people waiting," his servant entered with a packet from
England, that had just arrived by one of those rare couriers who
sometimes honour that Naples, which /might/ be so lucrative a mart to
English commerce, if Neapolitan kings cared for trade, or English
senators for "foreign politics." Letters from stewards and bankers were
soon got through; and Maltravers reserved for the last an epistle from
Cleveland. There was much in it that touched him home. After some dry
details about the property to which Maltravers had now succeeded, and
some trifling comments upon trifling remarks in Ernest's former letters,
Cleveland went on thus:

"I confess, my dear Ernest, that I long to welcome you back to England.
You have been abroad long enough to see other countries; do not stay
long enough to prefer them to your own. You are at Naples, too--I
tremble for you. I know well that delicious, dreaming, holiday-life of
Italy, so sweet to men of learning and imagination--so sweet, too, to
youth--so sweet to pleasure! But, Ernest, do you not feel already how
it enervates?--how the luxurious /far niente/ unfits us for grave
exertion? Men may become too refined and too fastidious for useful
purposes; and nowhere can they become so more rapidly than in Italy. My
dear Ernest, I know you well; you are not made to sink down into a
virtuoso, with a cabinet full of cameos and a head full of pictures;
still less are you made to be an indolent /cicisbeo/ to some fair
Italian, with one passion and two ideas: and yet I have known men as
clever as you, whom that bewitching Italy has sunk into one or other of
these insignificant beings. Don't run away with the notion that you
have plenty of time before you. You have no such thing. At your age,
and with your fortune (I wish you were not so rich), the holiday of one
year becomes the custom of the next. In England, to be a useful or a
distinguished man, you must labour. Now, labour itself is sweet, if we
take to it early. We are a hard race, but we are a manly one; and our
stage is the most exciting in Europe for an able and an honest ambition.
Perhaps you will tell me you are not ambitious now; very possibly--but
ambitious you will be; and, believe me, there is no unhappier wretch
than a man who is ambitious but disappointed,--who has the desire for
fame, but has lost the power to achieve it--who longs for the goal, but
will not, and cannot, put away his slippers to walk to it. What I most
fear for you is one of these two evils--an early marriage or a fatal
/liaison/ with some married woman. The first evil is certainly the
least, but for you it would still be a great one. With your sensitive
romance, with your morbid cravings for the ideal, domestic happiness
would soon grow trite and dull. You would demand new excitement, and
become a restless and disgusted man. It is necessary for you to get rid
of all the false fever of life, before you settle down to everlasting
ties. You do not yet know your own mind; you would choose your partner
from some visionary caprice, or momentary impulse, and not from the deep
and accurate knowledge of those qualities which would most harmonize
with your own character. People, to live happily with each other, must
/fit in/, as it were--the proud be mated with the meek, the irritable
with the gentle, and so forth. No, my dear Maltravers, do not think of
marriage yet a while; and if there is any danger of it, come over to me
immediately. But if I warn you against a lawful tie, how much more
against an illicit one? You are precisely at the age, and of the
disposition, which render the temptation so strong and so deadly. With
you it might not be the sin of an hour, but the bondage of a life. I
know your chivalric honour--your tender heart; I know how faithful you
would be to one who had sacrificed for you. But that fidelity,
Maltravers, to what a life of wasted talent and energies would it not
compel you! Putting aside for the moment (for that needs no comment)
the question of the grand immorality--what so fatal to a bold and proud
temper, as to be at war with society at the first entrance into life?
What so withering to manly aims and purposes, as the giving into the
keeping of a woman, who has interest in your love, and interest against
your career which might part you at once from her side--the control of
your future destinies? I could say more, but I trust what I have said
is superfluous; if so, pray assure me of it. Depend upon this, Ernest
Maltravers, that if you do not fulfil what nature intended for
your fate, you will be a morbid misanthrope, or an indolent
voluptuary--wrenched and listless in manhood, repining and joyless in
old age. But if you do fulfil your fate, you must enter soon into your
apprenticeship. Let me see you labour and aspire--no matter what
in--what to. Work, work--that is all I ask of you!

"I wish you would see your old country-house; it has a venerable and
picturesque look, and during your minority they have let the ivy cover
three sides of it. Montaigne might have lived there.

"Adieu, dearest Ernest,
"Your anxious and affectionate guardian,
"FREDERICK CLEVELAND.

"P. S.--I am writing a book--it shall last me ten years--it occupies me,
but does not fatigue. Write a book yourself."

* * * * *

Maltravers had just finished this letter when Ferrers entered
impatiently. "Will you ride out?" said he. "I have sent the breakfast
away; I saw that breakfast was a vain hope to-day--indeed, my appetite
is gone."

"Pshaw!" said Maltravers.

"Pshaw! Humph! for my part I like well-bred people."

"I have had a letter from Cleveland."

"And what the deuce has that got to do with the chocolate?"

"Oh, Lumley, you are insufferable; you think of nothing but yourself,
and self with you means nothing that is not animal."

"Why, yes; I believe I have some sense," replied Ferrers, complacently.
"I know the philosophy of life. All unfledged bipeds are animals, I
suppose. If Providence had made me graminivorous, I should have eaten
grass; if ruminating, I should have chewed the cud; but as it has made
me a carnivorous, culinary, and cachinnatory animal, I eat a cutlet,
scold about the sauce, and laugh at you; and this is what you call being
selfish!"

It was late at noon when Maltravers found himself at the palazzo of
Madame de Ventadour. He was surprised, but agreeably so, that he was
admitted, for the first time, into that private sanctum which bears the
hackneyed title of boudoir. But there was little enough of the fine
lady's boudoir in the simple morning-room of Madame de Ventadour. It
was a lofty apartment, stored with books, and furnished, not without
claim to grace, but with very small attention to luxury.

Valerie was not there, and Maltravers, left alone, after a hasty glance
around the chamber, leaned abstractedly against the wall, and forgot,
alas! all the admonitions of Cleveland. In a few moments the door
opened, and Valerie entered. She was unusually pale, and Maltravers
thought her eyelids betrayed the traces of tears. He was touched, and
his heart smote him.

"I have kept you waiting, I fear," said Valerie, motioning him to a seat
at a little distance from that on which she placed herself; "but you
will forgive me," she added, with a slight smile. Then, observing he
was about to speak, she went on rapidly; "Hear me, Mr. Maltravers--
before you speak, hear me! You uttered words last night that ought
never to have been addressed to me. You professed to--love me."

"Professed!"

"Answer me," said Valerie, with abrupt energy, "not as man to woman, but
as one human creature to another. From the bottom of your heart, from
the core of your conscience, I call on you to speak the honest and the
simple truth. Do you love me as your heart, your genius, must be
capable of loving?"

"I love you truly--passionately!" said Maltravers, surprised and
confused, but still with enthusiasm in his musical voice and earnest
eyes. Valerie gazed upon him as if she sought to penetrate into his
soul. Maltravers went on. "Yes, Valerie, when we first met, you
aroused a long dormant and delicious sentiment. But, since then, what
deep emotions has that sentiment called forth? Your graceful
intellect--your lovely thoughts, wise yet womanly--have completed the
conquest your face and voice began. Valerie, I love you. And you--you,
Valerie--ah! I do not deceive myself--you also--"

"Love!" interrupted Valerie, deeply blushing, but in a calm voice.
"Ernest Maltravers, I do not deny it; honestly and frankly I confess the
fault. I have examined my heart during the whole of the last sleepless
night, and I confess that I love you. Now, then, understand me--we meet
no more."

"What!" said Maltravers, falling involuntarily at her feet, and seeking
to detain her hand, which he seized. "What! now, when you have given
life a new charm, will you as suddenly blast it? No, Valerie; no, I
will not listen to you."

Madame de Ventadour rose and said, with a cold dignity: "Hear me calmly,
or I quit the room; and all I would now say rests for ever unspoken."

Maltravers rose also, folded his arms haughtily, bit his lips, and stood
erect, and confronting Valerie rather in the attitude of an accuser than
a suppliant.

"Madame," said he, gravely, "I will offend no more; I will trust to your
manner, since I may not believe your words."

"You are cruel," said Valerie, smiling mournfully; "but so are all men.
Now let me make myself understood. I was betrothed to Monsieur de
Ventadour in my childhood. I did not see him till a month before we
married. I had no choice. French girls have none. We were wed. I had
formed no other attachment. I was proud and vain: wealth, ambition, and
social rank for a time satisfied my faculties and my heart. At length I
grew restless and unhappy. I felt that something of life was wanting.
Monsieur de Ventadour's sister was the first to recommend me to the
common resource of our sex--at least, in France--a lover. I was shocked
and startled, for I belong to a family in which women are chaste and men
brave. I began, however, to look around me, and examine the truth of
the philosophy of vice. I found that no woman, who loved honestly and
deeply an illicit lover was happy. I found, too, the hideous profundity
of Rochefoucauld's maxim that a woman--I speak of French women--may live
without a lover; but, a lover once admitted, she never goes through life
with only one. She is deserted; she cannot bear the anguish and the
solitude; she fills up the void with a second idol. For her there is no
longer a fall from virtue: it is a gliding and involuntary descent from
sin to sin, till old age comes on and leaves her without love and
without respect. I reasoned calmly, for my passions did not blind my
reason. I could not love the egotists around me. I resolved upon my
career; and now, in temptation, I will adhere to it. Virtue is my
lover, my pride, my comfort, my life of life. Do you love me, and will
you rob me of this treasure? I saw you, and for the first time I felt a
vague and intoxicating interest in another; but I did not dream of
danger. As our acquaintance advanced I formed to myself a romantic and
delightful vision. I would be your firmest, your truest friend; your
confidant, your adviser--perhaps, in some epochs of life, your
inspiration and your guide. I repeat that I foresaw no danger in your
society. I felt myself a nobler and a better being. I felt more
benevolent, more tolerant, more exalted. I saw life through the medium
of purifying admiration for a gifted nature, and a profound and generous
soul. I fancied we might be ever thus--each to each;--one strengthened,
assured, supported by the other. Nay, I even contemplated with pleasure
the prospect of your future marriage with another--of loving your
wife--of contributing with her to your happiness--my imagination made me
forget that we are made of clay. Suddenly all these visions were
dispelled--the fairy palace was overthrown, and I found myself awake,
and on the brink of the abyss--you loved me, and in the moment of that
fatal confession, the mask dropped from my soul, and I felt that you had
become too dear to me. be silent still, I implore you. I do not tell
you of the emotions, of the struggles, through which I have passed the
last few hours--the crisis of a life. I tell you only of the resolution
I formed. I thought it due to you, nor unworthy to myself, to speak the
truth. Perhaps it might be more womanly to conceal it; but my heart has
something masculine in its nature. I have a great faith in your
nobleness. I believe you can sympathise with whatever is best in human
weakness. I tell you that I love you--I throw myself upon your
generosity. I beseech you to assist my own sense of right--to think
well of me, to honour me--and to leave me!"

During the last part of this strange and frank avowal, Valerie's voice
had grown inexpressibly touching: her tenderness forced itself into her
manner; and when she ceased, her lip quivered; her tears, repressed by a
violent effort, trembled in her eyes--her hands were clasped--her
attitude was that of humility, not pride.

Maltravers stood perfectly spell-bound. At length he advanced; dropped
on one knee, kissed her hand with an aspect and air of reverential
homage, and turned to quit the room in silence; for he would not dare to
trust himself to speak.

Valerie gazed at him in anxious alarm. "O no, no!" she exclaimed, "do
not leave me yet; this is our last meeting our last. Tell me, at least,
that you understand me; that you see, if I am no weak fool, I am also no
heartless coquette; tell me that you see I am not as hard as I have
seemed; that I have not knowingly trifled with your happiness; that even
now I am not selfish. Your love,--I ask it no more! But your
esteem--your good opinion. Oh, speak--speak, I implore you!"

"Valerie," said Maltravers, "if I was silent, it was because my heart
was too full for words. You have raised all womanhood in my eyes. I
did love you--I now venerate and adore. Your noble frankness, so unlike
the irresolute frailty, the miserable wiles of your sex, has touched a
chord in my heart that has been mute for years. I leave you to think
better of human nature. Oh!" he continued, "hasten to forget all of me
that can cost you a pang. Let me still, in absence and in sadness,
think that I retain in your friendship--let it be friendship only--the
inspiration, the guide of which you spoke; and if, hereafter, men shall
name me with praise and honour, feel, Valerie, feel that I have
comforted myself for the loss of your love by becoming worthy of your
confidence--your esteem. Oh, that we had met earlier, when no barrier
was between us!"

"Go, go, /now/," faltered Valerie, almost choked with her emotions; "may
Heaven bless you! Go!"

Maltravers muttered a few inaudible and incoherent words, and quitted
the apartment.

CHAPTER V.

"The men of sense, those idols of the shallow, are very inferior
to the men of Passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing
us from sloth, can alone impart to us that continuous and earnest
attention necessary to great intellectual efforts."--HELVETIUS.

WHEN Ferrers returned that day from his customary ride, he was surprised
to see the lobbies and hall of the apartment which he occupied in common
with Maltravers, littered with bags and /malles/, boxes and books, and
Ernest's Swiss valet directing porters and waiters in a mosaic of
French, English, and Italian.

"Well!" said Lumley, "and what is all this?"

"Il signore va partir, sare, ah! mon Dieu!--/tout/ of a sudden."

"O-h! and where is he now!"

"In his room, sare."

Over the chaos strode Ferrers, and opening the door of his friend's
dressing-room without ceremony, he saw Maltravers buried in a fauteuil,
with his hands drooping on his knees, his head bent over his breast, and
his whole attitude expressive of dejection and exhaustion.

"What is the matter, my dear Ernest? You have not killed a man in a
duel?"

"No."

"What then? Why are you going away, and whither?"

"No matter; leave me in peace."

"Friendly!" said Ferrers; "very friendly! And what is to become of
me--what companion am I to have in this cursed resort of antiquarians
and lazzaroni? You have no feeling, Mr. Maltravers!"

"Will you come with me, then?" said Maltravers, in vain endeavouring to
rouse himself.

"But where are you going?"

"Anywhere; to Paris--to London."

"No; I have arranged my plans for the summer. I am not so rich as some
people. I hate change: it is so expensive."

"But, my dear fellow--"

"Is this fair dealing with me?" continued Lumley, who, for once in his
life, was really angry. "If I were an old coat you had worn for five
years you could not throw me off with more nonchalance."

"Ferrers, forgive me. My honour is concerned. I must leave this place.
I trust you will remain my guest here, though in the absence of your
host. You know that I have engaged the apartment for the next three
months."

"Humph!" said Ferrers, "as that is the case I may as well stay here.
But why so secret? Have you seduced Madame de Ventadour, or has her
wise husband his suspicions? Hein, hein!"

Maltravers smothered his disgust at this coarseness; and, perhaps, there
is no greater trial of temper than in a friend's gross remarks upon the
connection of the heart.

"Ferrers," said he, "if you care for me, breathe not a word
disrespectful to Madame de Ventadour: she is an angel!"

"But why leave Naples?"

"Trouble me no more."

"Good day, sir," said Ferrers, highly offended, and he stalked out of
the chamber; nor did Ernest see him again before his departure.

It was late that evening when Maltravers found himself alone in his
carriage, pursuing by starlight the ancient and melancholy road to Mola
di Gaeta.

His solitude was a luxury to Maltravers; he felt an inexpressible sense
of relief to be freed from Ferrers. The hard sense, the unpliant,
though humorous imperiousness, the animal sensuality of his companion
would have been torture to him in his present state of mind.

The next morning, when he rose, the orange blossoms of Mola di Gaeta
were sweet beneath the window of the inn where he rested. It was now
the early spring, and the freshness of the odour, the breathing health
of earth and air, it is impossible to describe. Italy itself boasts few
spots more lovely than that same Mola di Gaeta--nor does that halcyon
sea wear, even at Naples or Sorrento, a more bland and enchanting smile.

So, after a hasty and scarcely-tasted breakfast, Maltravers strolled
through the orange groves, and gained the beach; and there, stretched at
idle length by the murmuring waves, he resigned himself to thought, and
endeavoured, for the first time since his parting with Valerie, to
collect and examine the state of his mind and feelings. Maltravers, to
his own surprise, did not find himself so unhappy as he had expected.
On the contrary, a soft and almost delicious sentiment, which he could
not well define, floated over all his memories of the beautiful
Frenchwoman. Perhaps the secret was, that while his pride was not
mortified, his conscience was not galled--perhaps, also, he had not
loved Valerie so deeply as he had imagined. The confession and the
separation had happily come before her presence had grown--/the want of
a life/. As it was, he felt as if, by some holy and mystic sacrifice,
he had been made reconciled to himself and mankind. He woke to a juster
and higher appreciation of human nature, and of woman's nature in
especial. He had found honesty and truth where he might least have
expected it--in a woman of a court--in a woman surrounded by vicious and
frivolous circles--in a woman who had nothing in the opinion of her
friends, her country, her own husband, the social system in which she
moved, to keep her from the concessions of frailty--in a woman of the
world--a woman of Paris!--yes, it was his very disappointment that drove
away the fogs and vapours that, arising from the marshes of the great
world, had gradually settled round his soul. Valerie de Ventadour had
taught him not to despise her sex, not to judge by appearances, not to
sicken of a low and a hypocritical world. He looked in his heart for
the love of Valerie, and he found there the love of virtue. Thus, as he
turned his eyes inward, did he gradually awaken to a sense of the true
impressions engraved there. And he felt the bitterest drop of the
fountains was not sorrow for himself, but for her. What pangs must that
high spirit have endured ere it could have submitted to the avowal it
had made! Yet, even in this affliction he found at last a solace. A
mind so strong could support and heal the weakness of the heart. He
felt that Valerie de Ventadour was not a woman to pine away in the
unresisted indulgence of morbid and unholy emotions. He could not
flatter himself that she would not seek to eradicate a love she
repented; and he sighed with a natural selfishness, when he owned also
that sooner or later she would succeed. "But be it so," said he, half
aloud--"I will prepare my heart to rejoice when I learn that she
remembers me only as a friend. Next to the bliss of her love is the
pride of her esteem."

Such was the sentiment with which his reveries closed--and with every
league that bore him further from the south, the sentiment grew
strengthened and confirmed.

Ernest Maltravers felt there is in the affections themselves so much to
purify and exalt, that even an erring love, conceived without a cold
design, and (when its nature is fairly understood) wrestled against with
a noble spirit, leaves the heart more tolerant and tender, and the mind
more settled and enlarged. The philosophy limited to the reason puts
into motion the automata of the closet--but to those who have the world
for a stage, and who find their hearts are the great actors, experience
and wisdom must be wrought from the Philosophy of the Passions.

BOOK III.

"Not to all men Apollo shows himself--
Who sees him--/he/ is great!"
CALLIM. /Ex Hymno in Apollinon/.

CHAPTER I.

"Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears--soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony."
SHAKESPEARE.

BOAT SONG ON THE LAKE OF COMO.

I.

The Beautiful Clime!--the Clime of Love!
Thou beautiful Italy!
Like a mother's eyes, the earnest skies
Ever have smiles for thee!
Not a flower that blows, not a beam that glows,
But what is in love with thee!

II.

The beautiful lake, the Larian lake!*
Soft lake like a silver sea,
The Huntress Queen, with her nymphs of sheen,
Never had bath like thee.
See, the Lady of night and her maids of light,
Even now are mid-deep in thee!

* The ancient name of Como.

III.

Beautiful child of the lonely hills,
Ever blest may thy slumbers be!
No mourner should tread by thy dreamy bed,
No life bring a care to thee--
Nay, soft to thy bed, let the mourner tread--
And life be a dream like thee!

Such, though uttered in the soft Italian tongue, and now imperfectly
translated--such were the notes that floated one lovely evening in
summer along the lake of Como. The boat, from which came the song,
drifted gently down the sparkling waters, towards the mossy banks of a
lawn, whence on a little eminence gleamed the white walls of a villa,
backed by vineyards. On that lawn stood a young and handsome woman,
leaning on the arm of her husband, and listening to the song. But her
delight was soon deepened into one of more personal interest, as the
boatmen, nearing the banks, changed their measure, and she felt that the
minstrelsy was in honour of herself.

SERENADE TO THE SONGSTRESS.

I.

CHORUS.

Softly--oh, soft! let us rest on the oar,
And vex not a billow that sighs to the shore:--
For sacred the spot where the starry waves meet
With the beach, where the breath of the citron is sweet.
There's a spell on the waves that now waft us along
To the last of our Muses, the Spirit of Song.

RECITATIVE.

The Eagle of old renown,
And the Lombard's iron crown
And Milan's mighty name are ours no more;
But by this glassy water,
Harmonia's youngest daughter,
Still from the lightning saves one laurel to our shore.

II.

CHORUS.

They heard thee, Teresa, the Teuton, the Gaul,
Who have raised the rude thrones of the North on our fall;
They heard thee, and bow'd to the might of thy song;
Like love went thy steps o'er the hearts of the strong;
As the moon to the air, as the soul to the clay,
To the void of this earth was the breath of thy lay.

RECITATIVE.

Honour for aye to her
The bright interpreter
Of Art's great mysteries to the enchanted throng;
While tyrants heard thy strains,
Sad Rome forgot her chains;
The world the sword had lost was conquer'd back by song!

"Thou repentest, my Teresa, that thou hast renounced thy dazzling career
for a dull home, and a husband old enough to be thy father," said the
husband to the wife, with a smile that spoke confidence in the answer.

"Ah, no! even this homage would have no music to me if thou didst not
hear it."

She was a celebrated personage in Italy--the Signora Cesarini, now
Madame de Montaigne. Her earlier youth had been spent upon the stage,
and her promise of vocal excellence had been most brilliant. But after
a brief though splendid career, she married a French gentleman of good
birth and fortune, retired from the stage, and spent her life
alternately in the gay saloons of Paris and upon the banks of the dreamy
Como, on which her husband had purchased a small but beautiful villa.
She still, however, exercised in private her fascinating art; to
which--for she was a woman of singular accomplishment and talent--she
added the gift of the improvvisatrice. She had just returned for the
summer to this lovely retreat, and a party of enthusiastic youths from
Milan had sought the lake of Como to welcome her arrival with the
suitable homage of song and music. It is a charming relic, that custom
of the brighter days of Italy; and I myself have listened, on the still
waters of the same lake, to a similar greeting to a greater genius--the
queenlike and unrivalled Pasta--the Semiramis of Song! And while my
boat paused, and I caught something of the enthusiasm of the serenaders,
the boatman touched me, and, pointing to a part of the lake on which the
setting sun shed its rosiest smile, he said, "There, Signor, was drowned
one of your countrymen 'bellissimo uomo! che fu bello!'"--yes, there, in
the pride of his promising youth, of his noble and almost godlike
beauty, before the very windows--the very eyes--of his bride--the waves
without a frown had swept over the idol of many hearts--the graceful and
gallant Locke.* And above his grave was the voluptuous sky, and over it
floated the triumphant music. It was as the moral of the Roman
poets--calling the living to a holiday over the oblivion of the dead.

* Captain William Locke of the Life Guards (the only son of the
accomplished Mr. Locke of Norbury Park), distinguished by a character
the most amiable, and by a personal beauty that certainly equalled,
perhaps surpassed, the highest masterpiece of Grecian sculpture. He was
returning in a boat from the town of Como to his villa on the banks of
the lake, when the boat was upset by one of the mysterious
under-currents to which the lake is dangerously subjected; and he was
drowned in sight of his bride, who was watching his return from the
terrace or balcony of their home.

As the boat now touched the bank, Madame de Montaigne accosted the
musicians, thanked them with a sweet and unaffected earnestness for the
compliment so delicately offered, and invited them ashore. The
Milanese, who were six in number, accepted the invitation, and moored
their boat to the jutting shore. It was then that Monsieur de Montaigne
pointed out to the notice of his wife a boat, that had lingered under
the shadow of a bank, tenanted by a young man, who had seemed to listen
with rapt attention to the music, and who had once joined in the chorus
(as it was twice repeated), with a voice so exquisitely attuned, and so
rich in its deep power, that it had awakened the admiration even of the
serenaders themselves.

"Does not that gentleman belong to your party?" De Montaigne asked of
the Milanese.

"No, Signor, we know him not," was the answer; "his boat came unawares
upon us as we were singing."

While this question and answer were going on, the young man had quitted
his station, and his oars cut the glassy surface of the lake, just
before the place where De Montaigne stood. With the courtesy of his
country, the Frenchman lifted his hat; and, by his gesture, arrested the
eye and oar of the solitary rower. "Will you honour us," he said, "by
joining our little party?"

"It is a pleasure I covet too much to refuse," replied the boatman, with
a slight foreign accent, and in another moment he was on shore. He was
one of remarkable appearance. His long hair floated with a careless
grace over a brow more calm and thoughtful than became his years; his
manner was unusually quiet and self-collected, and not without a certain
stateliness, rendered more striking by the height of his stature, a
lordly contour of feature, and a serene but settled expression of
melancholy in his eyes and smile. "You will easily believe," said he,
"that, cold as my countrymen are esteemed (for you must have discovered
already that I am an Englishman), I could not but share in the
enthusiasm of those about me, when loitering near the very ground sacred
to the inspiration. For the rest, I am residing for the present in
yonder villa, opposite to your own; my name is Maltravers, and I am
enchanted to think that I am no longer a personal stranger to one whose
fame has already reached me." Madame de Montaigne was flattered by
something in the manner and tone of the Englishman, which said a great
deal more than his words; and in a few minutes, beneath the influence of
the happy continental ease, the whole party seemed as if they had known
each other for years. Wines, and fruits, and other simple and
unpretending refreshments, were brought out and ranged on a rude table
upon the grass, round which the guests seated themselves with their host
and hostess, and the clear moon shone over them, and the lake slept
below in silver. It was a scene for a Boccaccio or a Claude.

The conversation naturally fell upon music; it is almost the only thing
which Italians in general can be said to know--and even that knowledge
comes to them, like Dogberry's reading and writing, by nature--for of
music, as an /art/, the unprofessional amateurs know but little. As
vain and arrogant of the last wreck of their national genius as the
Romans of old were of the empire of all arts and arms, they look upon
the harmonies of other lands as barbarous; nor can they appreciate or
understand appreciation of the mighty German music, which is the proper
minstrelsy of a nation of men--a music of philosophy, of heroism, of the
intellect and the imagination; beside which, the strains of modern Italy
are indeed effeminate, fantastic, and artificially feeble. Rossini is
the Canova of music, with much of the pretty, with nothing of the grand!

The little party talked, however, of music, with an animation and gusto
that charmed the melancholy Maltravers, who for weeks had known no
companion save his own thoughts, and with whom, at all times, enthusiasm
for any art found a ready sympathy. He listened attentively, but said
little; and from time to time, whenever the conversation flagged, amused
himself by examining his companions. The six Milanese had nothing
remarkable in their countenances or in their talk; they possessed the
characteristic energy and volubility of their countrymen, with something
of the masculine dignity which distinguishes the Lombard from the
Southern, and a little of the French polish, which the inhabitants of
Milan seldom fail to contract. Their rank was evidently that of the
middle class; for Milan has a middle class, and one which promises great
results hereafter. But they were noways distinguished from a thousand
other Milanese whom Maltravers had met with in the walks and cafes of
their noble city. The host was somewhat more interesting. He was a
tall, handsome man, of about eight-and-forty, with a high forehead, and
features strongly impressed with the sober character of thought. He had
but little of the French vivacity in his manner; and without looking at
his countenance, you would still have felt insensibly that he was the
eldest of the party. His wife was at least twenty years younger than
himself, mirthful and playful as a child, but with a certain feminine
and fascinating softness in her unrestrained gestures and sparkling
gaiety, which seemed to subdue her natural joyousness into the form and
method of conventional elegance. Dark hair carelessly arranged, an open
forehead, large black laughing eyes, a small straight nose, a complexion
just relieved from the olive by an evanescent, yet perpetually recurring
blush; a round dimpled cheek, an exquisitely-shaped mouth with small
pearly teeth, and a light and delicate figure a little below the
ordinary standard, completed the picture of Madame de Montaigne.

"Well," said Signor Tirabaloschi, the most loquacious and sentimental of
the guests, filling his glass, "these are hours to think of for the rest
of life. But we cannot hope the Signora will long remember what we
never can forget. Paris, says the French proverb, /est le paradis des
femmes/: and in Paradise, I take it for granted, we recollect very
little of what happened on earth."

"Oh," said Madame de Montaigne, with a pretty musical laugh, "in Paris
it is the rage to despise the frivolous life of cities, and to affect
/des sentimens romanesques/. This is precisely the scene which our fine
ladies and fine writers would die to talk of and to describe. Is it not
so, /mon ami/?" and she turned affectionately to De Montaigne.

"True," replied he; "but you are not worthy of such a scene--you laugh
at sentiment and romance."

"Only at French sentiment and the romance of the Chaussee d'Antin. You
English," she continued, shaking her head at Maltravers, "have spoiled
and corrupted us; we are not content to imitate you, we must excel you;
we out-horror horror, and rush from the extravagant into the frantic!"

"The ferment of the new school is, perhaps, better than the stagnation
of the old," said Maltravers. "Yet even you," addressing himself to the
Italians, "who first in Petrarch, in Tasso, and in Ariosto, set to
Europe the example of the Sentimental and the Romantic; who built among
the very ruins of the classic school, amidst its Corinthian columns and
sweeping arches, the spires and battlements of the Gothic--even you are
deserting your old models and guiding literature into newer and wilder
paths. 'Tis the way of the world--eternal progress is eternal change."

"Very possibly," said Signor Tirabaloschi, who understood nothing of
what was said. "Nay, it is extremely profound; on reflection, it is
beautiful--superb! you English are so--so--in short, it is admirable.
Ugo Foscolo is a great genius--so is Monti; and as for Rossini,--you
know his last opera--/cosa stupenda/!"

Madame de Montaigne glanced at Maltravers, clapped her little hands, and
laughed outright. Maltravers caught the contagion, and laughed also.
But he hastened to repair the pedantic error he had committed of talking
over the heads of the company. He took up the guitar, which, among
their musical instruments, the serenaders had brought, and after
touching its chords for a few moments, said: "After all, Madame, in your
society, and with this moonlit lake before us, we feel as if music were
our best medium of conversation. Let us prevail upon these gentlemen to
delight us once more."

"You forestall what I was going to ask," said the ex-singer; and
Maltravers offered the guitar to Tirabaloschi, who was in fact dying to
exhibit his powers again. He took the instrument with a slight grimace
of modesty, and then saying to Madame de Montaigne, "There is a song
composed by a young friend of mine, which is much admired by the ladies;
though to me it seems a little too sentimental," sang the following
stanzas (as good singers are wont to do) with as much feeling as if he
could understand them!

NIGHT AND LOVE.

When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes!
As stars look on the sea!

For thoughts, like waves that glide by night,
Are stillest where they shine;
Mine earthly love lies hushed in light
Beneath the heaven of thine.

There is an hour when angels keep
Familiar watch on men;
When coarser souls are wrapt in sleep,--
Sweet spirit, meet me then.

There is an hour when holy dreams
Through slumber fairest glide;
And in that mystic hour it seems
Thou shouldst be by my side.

The thoughts of thee too sacred are
For daylight's common beam;--
I can but know thee as my star,
My angel, and my dream!

And now, the example set, and the praises of the fair hostess exciting
general emulation, the guitar circled from hand to hand, and each of the
Italians performed his part; you might have fancied yourself at one of
the old Greek feasts, with the lyre and the myrtle-branch going the
round.

But both the Italians and the Englishman felt the entertainment would be
incomplete without hearing the celebrated vocalist and improvvisatrice
who presided over the little banquet; and Madame de Montaigne, with a
woman's tact, divined the general wish, and anticipated the request that
was sure to be made. She took the guitar from the last singer, and
turning to Maltravers, said, "You have heard, of course, some of our
more eminent improvvisatori, and therefore if I ask you for a subject it
will only be to prove to you that the talent is not general amongst the
Italians."

"Ah," said Maltravers, "I have heard, indeed, some ugly old gentlemen
with immense whiskers, and gestures of the most alarming ferocity, pour
out their vehement impromptus; but I have never yet listened to a young
and a handsome lady. I shall only believe the inspiration when I hear
it direct from the Muse."

"Well, I will do my best to deserve your compliments--you must give me
the theme."

Maltravers paused a moment, and suggested the Influence of Praise on
Genius.

The improvvisatrice nodded assent, and after a short prelude broke forth
into a wild and varied strain of verse, in a voice so exquisitely sweet,
with a taste so accurate, and a feeling so deep that the poetry sounded
to the enchanted listeners like the language that Armida might have
uttered. Yet the verses themselves, like all extemporaneous effusions,
were of a nature both to pass from the memory and to defy transcription.

When Madame de Montaigne's song ceased, no rapturous plaudits
followed--the Italians were too affected by the science, Maltravers by
the feeling, for the coarseness of ready praise;--and ere that delighted
silence which made the first impulse was broken, a new comer, descending
from the groves that clothed the ascent behind the house, was in the
midst of the party.

"Ah, my dear brother," cried Madame Montaigne, starting up, and banging
fondly on the arm of the stranger, "why have you lingered so long in the
wood? You, so delicate! And how are you? How pale you seem!"

"It is but the reflection of the moonlight, Teresa," said the intruder;
"I feel well." So saying, he scowled on the merry party, and turned as
if to slink away.

"No, no," whispered Teresa, "you must stay a moment and be presented to
my guests: there is an Englishman here whom you will like--who will
/interest/ you."

With that she almost dragged him forward, and introduced him to her
guests. Signor Cesarini returned their salutations with a mixture of
bashfulness and /hauteur/, half-awkward and half-graceful, and muttering
some inaudible greeting, sank into a seat and appeared instantly lost in
reverie. Maltravers gazed upon him, and was pleased with his
aspect--which, if not handsome, was strange and peculiar. He was
extremely slight and thin--his cheeks hollow and colourless, with a
profusion of black silken ringlets that almost descended to his
shoulders. His eyes, deeply sunk into his head, were large and
intensely brilliant; and a thin moustache, curling downwards, gave an
additional austerity to his mouth, which was closed with gloomy and
half-sarcastic firmness. He was not dressed as people dress in general,
but wore a frock of dark camlet, with a large shirt-collar turned down,
and a narrow slip of black silk twisted rather than tied round his
throat; his nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, and a pair of
half-hessians completed his costume. It was evident that the young man
(and he was very young--perhaps about nineteen or twenty) indulged that
coxcombry of the Picturesque which is the sign of a vainer mind than is
the commoner coxcombry of the /Mode/.

It is astonishing how frequently it happens, that the introduction of a
single intruder upon a social party is sufficient to destroy all the
familiar harmony that existed there before. We see it even when the
intruder is agreeable and communicative--but in the present instance, a
ghost could scarcely have been a more unwelcoming or unwelcome visitor.
The presence of this shy, speechless, supercilious-looking man threw a
damp over the whole group. The gay Tirabaloschi immediately discovered
that it was time to depart--it had not struck any one before, but it
certainly /was/ late. The Italians began to bustle about, to collect
their music, to make fine speeches and fine professions--to bow and to
smile--to scramble into their boat, and to push towards the inn at Como,
where they had engaged their quarters for the night. As the boat glided
away, and while two of them were employed at the oar, the remaining four
took up their instruments and sang a parting glee. It was quite
midnight--the hush of all things around had grown more intense and
profound--there was a wonderful might of silence in the shining air and
amidst the shadows thrown by the near banks and the distant hills over
the water. So that as the music chiming in with the oars grew fainter
and fainter, it is impossible to describe the thrilling and magical
effect it produced.

The party ashore did not speak; there was a moisture, a grateful one, in
the bright eyes of Teresa, as she leant upon the manly form of De
Montaigne, for whom her attachment was, perhaps, yet more deep and pure
for the difference of their ages. A girl who once loves a man, not
indeed old, but much older than herself, loves him with such a /looking
up/ and venerating love! Maltravers stood a little apart from the
couple, on the edge of the shelving bank, with folded arms and
thoughtful countenance. "How is it," said he, unconscious that he was
speaking half aloud, "that the commonest beings of the world should be
able to give us a pleasure so unworldly? What a contrast between those
musicians and this music. At this distance their forms are dimly seen,
one might almost fancy the creators of those sweet sounds to be of
another mould from us. Perhaps even thus the poetry of the Past rings
on our ears--the deeper and the diviner, because removed from the clay
which made the poets. O Art, Art! how dost thou beautify and exalt us;
what is nature without thee!"

"You are a poet, Signor," said a soft clear voice beside the
soliloquist; and Maltravers started to find that he had had unknowingly
a listener in the young Cesarini.

"No," said Maltravers; "I cull the flowers, I do not cultivate the
soil."

"And why not?" said Cesarini, with abrupt energy; "you are an
Englishman--/you/ have a public--you have a country--you have a living
stage, a breathing audience; we, Italians, have nothing but the dead."

As he looked on the young man, Maltravers was surprised to see the
sudden animation which glowed upon his pale features.

"You asked me a question I would fain put to you," said the Englishman,
after a pause. "/You/, methinks, are a poet?"

"I have fancied that I might be one. But poetry with us is a bird in
the wilderness--it sings from an impulse--the song dies without a
listener. Oh that I belonged to a /living/ country,--France, England,
Germany, Arnerica,--and not to the corruption of a dead giantess--for
such is now the land of the ancient lyre."

"Let us meet again, and soon," said Maltravers, holding out his hand.

Cesarini hesitated a moment, and then accepted and returned the
proffered salutation. Reserved as he was, something in Maltravers
attracted him; and, indeed, there was that in Ernest which fascinated
most of those unhappy eccentrics who do not move in the common orbit of
the world.

In a few moments more the Englishman had said farewell to the owner of
the villa, and his light boat skimmed rapidly over the tide.

"What do you think of the /Inglese/?" said Madame de Montaigne to her
husband, as they turned towards the house. (They said not a word about
the Milanese.)

"He has a noble bearing for one so young," said the Frenchman; "and
seems to have seen the world, and both to have profited and to have
suffered by it."

"He will prove an acquisition to our society here," returned Teresa; "he
interests me; and you, Castruccio?" turning to seek for her brother; but
Cesarini had already, with his usual noiseless step, disappeared within
the house.

"Alas, my poor brother!" she said, "I cannot comprehend him. What does
he desire?"

"Fame!" replied De Montaigne, calmly. "It is a vain shadow; no wonder
that he disquiets himself in vain."

CHAPTER II.

"Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To strictly meditate the thankless Muse;
Were I not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?"
MILTON'S /Lycidas/.

THERE is nothing more salutary to active men than occasional intervals
of repose,--when we look within, instead of without, and examine almost
/insensibly/ (for I hold strict and conscious self-scrutiny a thing much
rarer than we suspect)--what we have done--what we are capable of doing.
It is settling, as it were, a debtor and creditor account with the past,
before we plunge into new speculations. Such an interval of repose did
Maltravers now enjoy. In utter solitude, so far as familiar
companionship is concerned, he had for several weeks been making himself
acquainted with his own character and mind. He read and thought much,
but without any exact or defined object. I think it is Montaigne who
says somewhere: "People talk about thinking--but for my part I never
think, except when I sit down to write." I believe this is not a very
common case, for people who don't write think as well as people who do;
but connected, severe, well-developed thought, in contradistinction to
vague meditation, must be connected with some tangible plan or object;
and therefore we must be either writing men or acting men, if we desire
to test the logic, and unfold into symmetrical design the fused colours
of our reasoning faculty. Maltravers did not yet feel this, but he was
sensible of some intellectual want. His ideas, his memories, his dreams
crowded thick and confused upon him; he wished to arrange them in order,
and he could not. He was overpowered by the unorganised affluence of his
own imagination and intellect. He had often, even as a child, fancied
that he was formed to do something in the world, but he had never
steadily considered what it was to be, whether he was to become a man of
books or a man of deeds. He had written poetry when it poured
irresistibly from the fount of emotion within, but looked at his
effusions with a cold and neglectful eye when the enthusiasm had passed
away.

Maltravers was not much gnawed by the desire of fame--perhaps few men of
real genius are, until artificially worked up to it. There is in a
sound and correct intellect, with all its gifts fairly balanced, a calm
consciousness of power, a certainty that when its strength is fairly put
out, it must be to realise the usual result of strength. Men of
second-rate faculties, on the contrary, are fretful and nervous,
fidgeting after a celebrity which they do not estimate by their own
talents, but by the talents of some one else. They see a tower, but are
occupied only with measuring its shadow, and think their own height
(which they never calculate) is to cast as broad a one over the earth.
It is the short man who is always throwing up his chin, and is as erect
as a dart. The tall man stoops, and the strong man is not always using
the dumb-bells.

Maltravers had not yet, then, the keen and sharp yearning for
reputation; he had not, as yet, tasted its sweets and bitters--fatal
draught, which /once/ tasted, begets too often an insatiable thirst!
neither had he enemies and decriers whom he was desirous of abashing by
merit. And that is a very ordinary cause for exertion in proud minds.
He was, it is true, generally reputed clever, and fools were afraid of
him: but as he actively interfered with no man's pretensions, so no man
thought it necessary to call him a blockhead. At present, therefore, it
was quietly and naturally that his mind was working its legitimate way
to its destiny of exertion. He began idly and carelessly to note down
his thoughts and impressions; what was once put on the paper, begot new
matter; his ideas became more lucid to himself; and the page grew a
looking-glass, which presented the likeness of his own features. He
began by writing with rapidity, and without method. He had no object
but to please himself, and to find a vent for an overcharged spirit;
and, like most writings of the young, the matter was egotistical. We
commence with the small nucleus of passion and experience, to widen the
circle afterwards; and, perhaps, the most extensive and universal
masters of life and character have begun by being egotists. For there
is in a man that has much in him a wonderfully acute and sensitive
perception of his own existence. An imaginative and susceptible person
has, indeed, ten times as much life as a dull fellow, "an he be
Hercules." He multiplies himself in a thousand objects, associates each
with his own identity, lives in each, and almost looks upon the world
with its infinite objects as a part of his individual being.
Afterwards, as he tames down, he withdraws his forces into the citadel,
but he still has a knowledge of, and an interest in, the land they once
covered. He understands other people, for he has lived in other
people--the dead and the living;--fancied himself now Brutus and now
Caesar, and thought how /he/ should act in almost every imaginable
circumstance of life.

Thus, when he begins to paint human characters, essentially different
from his own, his knowledge comes to him almost intuitively. It is as
if he were describing the mansions in which he himself has formerly
lodged, though for a short time. Hence in great writers of History--of
Romance--of the Drama--the /gusto/ with which they paint their
personages; their creations are flesh and blood, not shadows or
machines.

Maltravers was at first, then, an egotist, in the matter of his rude and
desultory sketches--in the manner, as I said before, he was careless and
negligent, as men will be who have not yet found that expression is an
art. Still those wild and valueless essays--those rapt and secret
confessions of his own heart--were a delight to him. He began to taste
the transport, the intoxication of an author. And, oh, what a luxury is
there in that first love of the Muse! that process by which we give
palpable form to the long-intangible visions which have flitted across
us;--the beautiful ghost of the Ideal within us, which we invoke in the
Gadara of our still closets, with the wand of the simple pen!

It was early noon, the day after he had formed his acquaintance with the
De Montaignes, that Maltravers sat in his favourite room;--the one he
had selected for his study from the many chambers of his large and
solitary habitation. He sat in a recess by the open window, which
looked on the lake; and books were scattered on his table, and
Maltravers was jotting down his criticisms on what he read, mingled with
his impressions on what he saw. It is the pleasantest kind of
composition--the note-book of a man who studies in retirement, who
observes in society, who in all things can admire and feel. He was yet
engaged in this easy task, when Cesarini was announced, and the young
brother of the fair Teresa entered his apartment.

"I have availed myself soon of your invitation," said the Italian.

"I acknowledge the compliment," replied Maltravers, pressing the hand
shyly held out to him.

"I see you have been writing--I thought you were attached to literature.
I read it in your countenance, I heard it in your voice," said Cesarini,
seating himself.

"I have been idly beguiling a very idle leisure, it is true," said
Maltravers.

"But you do not write for yourself alone--you have an eye to the great
tribunals--Time and the Public."

"Not so, I assure you honestly," said Maltravers, smiling. "If you look
at the books on my table, you will see that they are the great
masterpieces of ancient and modern lore--these are studies that
discourage tyros--"

"But inspire them."

"I do not think so. Models may form our taste as critics, but do not
excite us to be authors. I fancy that our own emotions, our own sense
of our destiny, make the great lever of the inert matter we accumulate.
'Look in thy heart and write,' said an old English writer,* who did not,
however, practise what he preached. And you, Signor--"

* Sir Philip Sidney.

"Am nothing, and would be something," said the young man, shortly and
bitterly.

"And how does that wish not realise its object?"

"Merely because I am Italian," said Cesarini. "With us there is no
literary public--no vast reading class--we have dilettanti and literati,
and students, and even authors; but these make only a coterie, not a
public. I have written, I have published; but no one listened to me. I
am an author without readers."

"It is no uncommon case in England," said Maltravers.

The Italian continued: "I thought to live in the mouths of men--to stir
up thoughts long dumb--to awaken the strings of the old lyre! In vain.
Like the nightingale, I sing only to break my heart with a false and
melancholy emulation of other notes."

"There are epochs in all countries," said Maltravers, gently, "when
peculiar veins of literature are out of vogue, and when no genius can
bring them into public notice. But you wisely said there were two
tribunals--the Public and Time. You have still the last to appeal to.
Your great Italian historians wrote for the unborn--their works not even
published till their death. That indifference to living reputation has
in it, to me, something of the sublime."

"I cannot imitate them--and they were not poets," said Cesarini,
sharply. "To poets, praise is a necessary aliment; neglect is death."

"My dear Signor Cesarini," said the Englishman, feelingly, "do not give
way to these thoughts. There ought to be in a healthful ambition the
stubborn stuff of persevering longevity; it must live on, and hope for
the day which comes slow or fast, to all whose labours deserve the
goal."

"But perhaps mine do not. I sometimes fear so--it is a horrid thought."

"You are very young yet," said Maltravers; "how few at your age ever
sicken for fame! That first step is, perhaps, the half way to the
prize."

I am not sure that Ernest thought exactly as he spoke; but it was the
most delicate consolation to offer to a man whose abrupt frankness
embarrassed and distressed him. The young man shook his head
despondingly. Maltravers tried to change the subject--he rose and moved
to the balcony, which overhung the lake--he talked of the weather--he
dwelt on the exquisite scenery--he pointed to the minute and more latent
beauties around, with the eye and taste of one who had looked at Nature
in her details. The poet grew more animated and cheerful; he became
even eloquent; he quoted poetry and he talked it. Maltravers was more
and more interested in him. He felt a curiosity to know if his talents
equalled his aspirations: he hinted to Cesarini his wish to see his
compositions--it was just what the young man desired. Poor Cesarini!
It was much to him to get a new listener, and he fondly imagined every
honest listener must be a warm admirer. But with the coyness of his
caste, he affected reluctance and hesitation; he dallied with his own
impatient yearnings. And Maltravers, to smooth his way, proposed an
excursion on the lake.

"One of my men shall row," said he; "you shall recite to me, and I will
be to you what the old housekeeper was to Moliere."

Maltravers had deep good-nature where he was touched, though he had not
a superfluity of what is called good-humour, which floats on the surface
and smiles on all alike. He had much of the milk of human kindness, but
little of its oil.

The poet assented, and they were soon upon the lake. It was a sultry
day, and it was noon; so the boat crept slowly along by the shadow of
the shore, and Cesarini drew from his breast-pocket some manuscripts of
small and beautiful writing. Who does not know the pains a young poet
takes to bestow a fair dress on his darling rhymes!

Cesarini read well and feelingly. Everything was in favour of the
reader. His own poetical countenance--his voice, his enthusiasm,
half-suppressed--the pre-engaged interest of the auditor--the dreamy
loveliness of the hour and scene--(for there is a great deal as to time
in these things). Maltravers listened intently. It is very difficult
to judge of the exact merit of poetry in another language even when we
know that language well--so much is there in the untranslatable magic of
expression, the little subtleties of style. But Maltravers, fresh, as
he himself had said, from the study of great and original writers, could
not but feel that he was listening to feeble though melodious
mediocrity. It was the poetry of words, not things. He thought it
cruel, however, to be hypercritical, and he uttered all the commonplaces
of eulogium that occurred to him. The young man was enchanted: "And
yet," said he with a sigh, "I have no Public. In England they would
appreciate me." Alas! in England, at that moment, there were five
hundred poets as young, as ardent, and yet more gifted, whose hearts
beat with the same desire--whose nerves were broken by the same
disappointments.

Maltravers found that his young friend would not listen to any judgment
not purely favourable. The archbishop in /Gil Blas/ was not more touchy
upon any criticism that was not panegyric. Maltravers thought it a bad
sign, but he recollected Gil Blas, and prudently refrained from bringing
on himself the benevolent wish of "beaucoup de bonheur et un peu, plus
de bon gout." When Cesarini had finished his MS., he was anxious to
conclude the excursion--he longed to be at home, and think over the
admiration he had excited. But he left his poems with Maltravers, and
getting on shore by the remains of Pliny's villa, was soon out of sight.

Maltravers that evening read the poems with attention. His first opinion
was confirmed. The young man wrote without knowledge. He had never
felt the passions he painted, never been in the situations he described.
There was no originality in him, for there was no experience; it was
exquisite mechanism, his verse,--nothing more. It might well deceive
him, for it could not but flatter his ear--and Tasso's silver march rang
not more musically than did the chiming stanzas of Castruccio Cesarini.

The perusal of this poetry, and his conversation with the poet, threw
Maltravers into a fit of deep musing. "This poor Cesarini may warn me
against myself!" thought he. "Better hew wood and draw water than
attach ourselves devotedly to an art in which we have not the capacity
to excel. . . . It is to throw away the healthful objects of life for a
diseased dream,--worse than the Rosicrucians, it is to make a sacrifice
of all human beauty for the smile of a sylphid that never visits us but
in visions." Maltravers looked over his own compositions, and thrust
them into the fire. He slept ill that night. His pride was a little
dejected. He was like a beauty who has seen a caricature of herself.

CHAPTER III.

"Still follow SENSE, of every art the Soul."
POPE: /Moral Essays/--Essay iv.

ERNEST MALTRAVERS spent much of his time with the family of De
Montaigne. There is no period of life in which we are more accessible
to the sentiment of friendship than in the intervals of moral exhaustion
which succeed to the disappointments of the passions. There is, then,
something inviting in those gentler feelings which keep alive, but do
not fever, the circulation of the affections. Maltravers looked with
the benevolence of a brother upon the brilliant, versatile, and restless
Teresa. She was the last person in the world he could have been in love
with--for his nature, ardent, excitable, yet fastidious, required
something of repose in the manners and temperament of the woman whom he
could love, and Teresa scarcely knew what repose was. Whether playing
with her children (and she had two lovely ones--the eldest six years
old), or teasing her calm and meditative husband, or pouring out
extempore verses, or rattling over airs which she never finished, on the
guitar or piano--or making excursions on the lake--or, in short, in
whatever occupation she appeared as the Cynthia of the minute, she was
always gay and mobile--never out of humour, never acknowledging a single
care or cross in life--never susceptible of grief, save when her
brother's delicate health or morbid temper saddened her atmosphere of
sunshine. Even then, the sanguine elasticity of her mind and
constitution quickly recovered from the depression; and she persuaded
herself that Castruccio would grow stronger every year, and ripen into a
celebrated and happy man. Castruccio himself lived what romantic
poetasters call the "life of a poet." He loved to see the sun rise over
the distant Alps--or the midnight moon sleeping on the lake. He spent
half the day, and often half the night, in solitary rambles, weaving his
airy rhymes, or indulging his gloomy reveries, and he thought loneliness
made the element of a poet. Alas! Dante, Alfieri, even Petrarch might
have taught him, that a poet must have intimate knowledge of men as well
as mountains, if he desire to become the CREATOR. When Shelley, in one
of his prefaces, boasts of being familiar with Alps and glaciers, and
Heaven knows what, the critical artist cannot help wishing that he had
been rather familiar with Fleet Street or the Strand. Perhaps, then,
that remarkable genius might have been more capable of realizing
characters of flesh and blood, and have composed corporeal and
consummate wholes, not confused and glittering fragments.

Though Ernest was attached to Teresa and deeply interested in
Castruccio, it was De Montaigne for whom he experienced the higher and
graver sentiment of esteem. This Frenchman was one acquainted with a
much larger world than that of the Coteries. He had served in the army,
had been employed with distinction in civil affairs, and was of that
robust and healthful moral constitution which can bear with every
variety of social life, and estimate calmly the balance of our moral
fortunes. Trial and experience had left him that true philosopher who
is too wise to be an optimist, too just to be a misanthrope. He enjoyed
life with sober judgment, and pursued the path most suited to himself,
without declaring it to be the best for others. He was a little hard,
perhaps, upon the errors that belong to weakness and conceit--not to
those that have their source in great natures or generous thoughts.
Among his characteristics was a profound admiration for England. His
own country he half loved, yet half disdained. The impetuosity and
levity of his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions.
He could not forgive them (he was wont to say) for having made the two
grand experiments of popular revolution and military despotism in vain.
He sympathised neither with the young enthusiasts who desired a
republic, without well knowing the numerous strata of habits and customs
upon which that fabric, if designed for permanence, should be built--nor
with the uneducated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration of
the warrior empire--nor with the dull and arrogant bigots who connected
all ideas of order and government with the ill-starred and worn-out
dynasty of the Bourbons. In fact, GOOD SENSE was with him the
/principium et fons/ of all theories and all practice. And it was this
quality that attached him to the English. His philosophy on this head
was rather curious.

"Good sense," said he one day to Maltravers, as they were walking to and
fro at De Montaigne's villa, by the margin of the lake, "is not a merely
intellectual attribute. It is rather the result of a just equilibrium
of all our faculties, spiritual and moral. The dishonest, or the toys
of their own passions, may have genius; but they rarely, if ever, have
good sense in the conduct of life. They may often win large prizes, but
it is by a game of chance, not skill. But the man whom I perceive
walking an honourable and upright career--just to others, and also to
himself (for we owe justice to ourselves--to the care of our fortunes,
our character--to the management of our passions)--is a more dignified
representative of his Maker than the mere child of genius. Of such a
man we say he has GOOD SENSE; yes, but he has also integrity,
self-respect, and self-denial. A thousand trials which his sense raves
and conquers, are temptations also to his probity--his temper--in a
word, to all the many sides of his complicated nature. Now, I do not
think he will have this /good sense/ any more than a drunkard will have
strong nerves, unless he be in the constant habit of keeping his mind
clear from the intoxication of envy, vanity, and the various emotions
that dupe and mislead us. Good sense is not, therefore, an abstract
quality or a solitary talent; but it is the natural result of the habit
of thinking justly, and therefore seeing clearly, and is as different
from the sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist or attorney, as the
philosophy of Socrates differed from the rhetoric of Gorgias. As a mass
of individual excellences make up this attribute in a man, so a mass of
such men thus characterised give a character to a nation. Your England
is, therefore, renowned for its good sense, but it is renowned also for
the excellences which accompany strong sense in an individual--high
honesty and faith in its dealings, a warm love of justice and fair play,
a general freedom from the violent crimes common on the Continent, and
the energetic perseverance in enterprise once commenced, which results
from a bold and healthful disposition."

"Our wars, our debt--" began Maltravers.

"Pardon me," interrupted De Montaigne, "I am speaking of your people,
not of your government. A government is often a very unfair
representative of a nation. But even in the wars you allude to, if you
examine, you will generally find them originate in the love of justice,
which is the basis of good sense, not from any insane desire of conquest
or glory. A man, however sensible, must have a heart in his bosom, and
a great nation cannot be a piece of selfish clockwork. Suppose you and
I are sensible, prudent men, and we see in a crowd one violent fellow
unjustly knocking another on the head, we should be brutes, not men, if
we did not interfere with the savage; but if we thrust ourselves into a
crowd with a large bludgeon, and belabour our neighbours, with the hope
that the spectators would cry, 'See what a bold, strong fellow that
is!'--then we should be only playing the madman from the motive of the
coxcomb. I fear you will find in the military history of the French and
English the application of my parable."

"Yet still, I confess, there is a gallantry, and a noblemanlike and
Norman spirit in the whole French nation, which make me forgive many of
their excesses, and think they are destined for great purposes, when
experience shall have sobered their hot blood. Some nations, as some
men, are slow in arriving at maturity; others seem men in their cradle.
The English, thanks to their sturdy Saxon origin, elevated, not
depressed, by the Norman infusion, never were children. The difference
is striking, when you regard the representatives of both in their great
men--whether writers or active citizens."

"Yes," said De Montaigne, "in Milton and Cromwell there is nothing of
the brilliant child. I cannot say as much for Voltaire or Napoleon.
Even Richelieu, the manliest of our statesmen, had so much of the French
infant in him as to fancy himself a /beau garcon/, a gallant, a wit, and
a poet. As for the Racine school of writers, they were not out of the
leading-strings of imitation--cold copyists of a pseudo-classic, in
which they saw the form, and never caught the spirit. What so little
Roman, Greek, Hebrew, as their Roman, Greek, and Hebrew dramas? Your
rude Shakespeare's /Julius Caesar/--even his /Troilus and
Cressida/--have the ancient spirit, precisely as they are imitations of
nothing ancient. But our Frenchmen copied the giant images of old just
as the school-girl copies a drawing, by holding it up to the window, and
tracing the lines on silver paper."

"But your new writers--De Stael--Chateaubriand?"*

* At the time of this conversation the later school, adorned by Victor
Hugo, who, with notions of art elaborately wrong, is still a man of
extraordinary genius, had not risen into its present equivocal
reputation.

"I find no fault with the sentimentalists," answered the severe critic,
"but that of exceeding feebleness. They have no bone and muscle in
their genius--all is flaccid and rotund in its feminine symmetry. They
seem to think that vigour consists in florid phrases and little
aphorisms, and delineate all the mighty tempests of the human heart with
the polished prettiness of a miniature-painter on ivory. No!--these two
are children of another kind--affected, tricked-out, well-dressed
children--very clever, very precocious--but children still. Their
whinings, and their sentimentalities, and their egotism, and their
vanity, cannot interest masculine beings who know what life and its
stern objects are."

"Your brother-in-law," said Maltravers with a slight smile, "must find
in you a discouraging censor."

"My poor Castruccio," replied De Montaigne, with a half-sigh; "he is one
of those victims whom I believe to be more common than we dream of--men
whose aspirations are above their powers. I agree with a great German
writer, that in the first walks of Art no man has a right to enter,
unless he is convinced that he has strength and speed for the goal.
Castruccio might be an amiable member of society, nay, an able and
useful man, if he would apply the powers he possesses to the rewards
they may obtain. He has talent enough to win him reputation in any
profession but that of a poet."

"But authors who obtain immortality are not always first-rate."

"First-rate in their way, I suspect; even if that way be false or
trivial. They must be connected with the /history/ of their literature;
you must be able to say of them, 'In this school, be it bad or good,
they exerted such and such an influence;' in a word, they must form a
link in the great chain of a nation's authors, which may be afterwards
forgotten by the superficial, but without which the chain would be
incomplete. And thus, if not first-rate for all time, they have been
first-rate in their own day. But Castruccio is only the echo of
others--he can neither found a school nor ruin one. Yet this" (again
added De Montaigne after a pause)--"this melancholy malady in my
brother-in-law would cure itself, perhaps, if he were not Italian. In
your animated and bustling country, after sufficient disappointment as a
poet, he would glide into some other calling, and his vanity and craving
for effect would find a rational and manly outlet. But in Italy, what
can a clever man do, if he is not a poet or a robber? If he love his
country, that crime is enough to unfit him for civil employment, and his
mind cannot stir a step in the bold channels of speculation without
falling foul of the Austrian or the Pope. No; the best I can hope for
Castruccio is, that he will end in an antiquary, and dispute about ruins
with the Romans. Better that than mediocre poetry."

Maltravers was silent and thoughtful. Strange to say, De Montaigne's
views did not discourage his own new and secret ardour for intellectual
triumphs; not because he felt that he was now able to achieve them, but
because he felt the iron of his own nature, and knew that a man who has
iron in his nature must ultimately hit upon some way of shaping the
metal into use.

The host and guest were now joined by Castruccio himself--silent and
gloomy as indeed he usually was, especially in the presence of De
Montaigne, with whom he felt his "self-love" wounded; for though he
longed to despise his hard brother-in-law, the young poet was compelled
to acknowledge that De Montaigne was not a man to be despised.

Maltravers dined with the De Montaignes, and spent the evening with
them. He could not but observe that Castruccio, who affected in his
verses the softest sentiments--who was, indeed, by original nature,
tender and gentle--had become so completely warped by that worst of all
mental vices--the eternally pondering on his own excellences, talents,
mortifications, and ill-usage, that he never contributed to the
gratification of those around him; he had none of the little arts of
social benevolence, none of the playful youth of disposition which
usually belongs to the good-hearted, and for which men of a
master-genius, however elevated their studies, however stern or reserved
to the vulgar world, are commonly noticeable amidst the friends they
love or in the home they adorn. Occupied with one dream, centred in
self, the young Italian was sullen and morose to all who did not
sympathise with his own morbid fancies. From the children--the
sister--the friend--the whole living earth, he fled to a poem on
Solitude, or stanzas upon Fame. Maltravers said to himself, "I will
never be an author--I will never sigh for renown--if I am to purchase
shadows at such a price!"

CHAPTER IV.

"It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind, that application
is the price to be paid for mental acquisitions, and that it is
as absurd to expect them without it as to hope for a harvest
where we have not sown the seed.

"In everything we do, we may be possibly laying a train of
consequences, the operation of which may terminate only with
our existence."

BAILEY: /Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions/.

TIME passed, and autumn was far advanced towards winter; still
Maltravers lingered at Como. He saw little of any other family than
that of the De Montaignes, and the greater part of his time was
necessarily spent alone. His occupation continued to be that of making
experiments of his own powers, and these gradually became bolder and
more comprehensive. He took care, however, not to show his "Diversions
of Como" to his new friends: he wanted no audience--he dreamt of no
Public; he desired merely to practise his own mind. He became aware, of
his own accord, as he proceeded, that a man can neither study with such
depth, nor compose with much art, unless he has some definite object
before him; in the first, some one branch of knowledge to master; in the
last, some one conception to work out. Maltravers fell back upon his
boyish passion for metaphysical speculation; but with what different
results did he now wrestle with the subtle schoolmen, now that he had
practically known mankind. How insensibly new lights broke in upon him,
as he threaded the labyrinth of cause and effect, by which we seek to
arrive at that curious and biform monster--our own nature. His mind
became saturated, as it were, with these profound studies and
meditations; and when at length he paused from them, he felt as if he
had not been living in solitude, but had gone through a process of
action in the busy world: so much juster, so much clearer, had become
his knowledge of himself and others. But though these researches
coloured, they did not limit his intellectual pursuits. Poetry and the
lighter letters became to him not merely a relaxation, but a critical
and thoughtful study. He delighted to penetrate into the causes that
have made the airy webs spun by men's fancies so permanent and powerful
in their influence over the hard, work-day world. And what a lovely
scene--what a sky--what an air wherein to commence the projects of that
ambition which seeks to establish an empire in the hearts and memories
of mankind! I believe it has a great effect on the future labours of a
writer,--the place where he first dreams that it is his destiny to
write!

From these pursuits Ernest was aroused by another letter from Cleveland.
His kind friend had been disappointed and vexed that Maltravers did not
follow his advice, and return to England. He had shown his displeasure
by not answering Ernest's letter of excuses; but lately he had been
seized with a dangerous illness which reduced him to the brink of the
grave; and with a heart softened by the exhaustion of the frame, he now
wrote in the first moments of convalescence to Maltravers, informing him
of his attack and danger, and once more urging him to return. The
thought that Cleveland--the dear, kind gentle guardian of his youth--had
been near unto death, that he might never more have hung upon that
fostering hand, nor replied to that paternal voice, smote Ernest with
terror and remorse. He resolved instantly to return to England, and
made his preparations accordingly.

He went to take leave of the De Montaignes. Teresa was trying to teach
her first-born to read; and seated by the open window of the villa, in
her neat, not precise, /dishabille/--with the little boy's delicate, yet
bold and healthy countenance looking up fearlessly at hers, while she
was endeavouring to initiate him--half gravely, half laughingly--into
the mysteries of monosyllables, the pretty boy and the fair young mother
made a delightful picture. De Montaigne was reading the Essays of his
celebrated namesake, in whom he boasted, I know not with what justice,
to claim an ancestor. From time to time he looked from the page to take
a glance at the progress of his heir, and keep up with the march of
intellect. But he did not interfere with the maternal lecture; he was
wise enough to know that there is a kind of sympathy between a child and
a mother, which is worth all the grave superiority of a father in making
learning palatable to young years. He was far too clever a man not to
despise all the systems of forcing infants under knowledge-frames, which
are the present fashion. He knew that philosophers never made a greater
mistake than in insisting so much upon beginning abstract education from
the cradle. It is quite enough to attend to an infant's temper, and
correct that cursed predilection for telling fibs which falsifies all
Dr. Reid's absurd theory about innate propensities to truth, and makes
the prevailing epidemic of the nursery. Above all, what advantage ever
compensates for hurting a child's health or breaking his spirit? Never
let him learn, more than you can help it, the crushing bitterness of
fear. A bold child who looks you in the face, speaks the truth, and
shames the devil; that is the stuff of which to make good and brave--ay,
and wise men!

Maltravers entered, unannounced, into this charming family party, and
stood unobserved for a few moments, by the open door. The little pupil
was the first to perceive him, and, forgetful of monosyllables, ran to
greet him; for Maltravers, though gentle rather than gay, was a
favourite with children, and his fair, calm, gracious countenance did
more for him with them than if, like Goldsmith's Burchell, his pockets
had been filled with gingerbread and apples. "Ah, fie on you, Mr.
Maltravers!" cried Teresa, rising; "you have blown away all the
characters I have been endeavouring this last hour to imprint upon
sand."

"Not so, Signora," said Maltravers, seating himself, and placing the
child on his knee; "my young friend will set to work again with a
greater gusto after this little break in upon his labours."

"You will stay with us all day, I hope?" said De Montaigne.

"Indeed," said Maltravers, "I am come to ask permission to do so, for
to-morrow I depart for England."

"Is it possible?" cried Teresa. "How sudden! How we shall miss you!
Oh! don't go. But perhaps you have bad news from England?"

"I have news that summon me hence," replied Maltravers; "my guardian and
second father has been dangerously ill. I am uneasy about him, and
reproach myself for having forgotten him so long in your seductive
society."

"I am really sorry to lose you," said De Montaigne, with greater warmth
in his tone than in his words. "I hope heartily we shall meet again
soon: you will come, perhaps, to Paris?"

"Probably," said Maltravers; "and you, perhaps, to England?"

"Ah, how I should like it!" exclaimed Teresa.

"No, you would not," said her husband; "you would not like England at
all; you would call it /triste/ beyond measure. It is one of those
countries of which a native should be proud, but which has no amusement
for a stranger, precisely because full of such serious and stirring
occupations to the citizens. The pleasantest countries for strangers
are the worst countries for natives (witness Italy), and /vice versa/."

Teresa shook her dark curls, and would not be convinced.

"And where is Castruccio?" asked Maltravers.

"In his boat on the lake," replied Teresa. "He will be inconsolable at
your departure: you are the only person he can understand, or who
understand him; the only person in Italy--I had almost said in the whole
world."

"Well, we shall meet at dinner," said Ernest; "meanwhile let me prevail
on you to accompany me to the /Pliniana/. I wish to say farewell to
that crystal spring."

Teresa, delighted at any excursion, readily consented.

"And I too, mamma," cried the child; "and my little sister?"

"Oh, certainly," said Maltravers, speaking for the parents.

So the party was soon ready, and they pushed off in the clear genial
noontide (for November in Italy is as early as September in the North)
across the sparkling and dimpled waters. The children prattled, and the
grown-up people talked on a thousand matters. It was a pleasant day,
that last day at Como! For the farewells of friendship have indeed
something of the melancholy, but not the anguish, of those of love.
Perhaps it would be better if we could get rid of love altogether. Life
would go on smoother and happier without it. Friendship is the wine of
existence, but love is the dram-drinking.

When they returned, they found Castruccio seated on the lawn. He did
not appear so much dejected at the prospect of Ernest's departure as
Teresa had anticipated; for Castruccio Cesarini was a very jealous man,
and he had lately been chagrined and discontented with seeing the
delight that the De Montaignes took in Ernest's society.

"Why is this?" he often asked himself; "why are they more pleased with
this stranger's society than mine? My ideas are as fresh, as original;
I have as much genius, yet even my dry brother-in-law allows /his/
talents, and predicts that/he/ will be an eminent man! while
/I/--No!--one is not a prophet in one's own country!"

Unhappy man! his mind bore all the rank weeds of the morbid poetical
character, and the weeds choked up the flowers that the soil, properly
cultivated, should alone bear. Yet that crisis in life awaited
Castruccio, in which a sensitive and poetical man is made or marred; the
crisis in which a sentiment is replaced by the passions--in which love
for some real object gathers the scattered rays of the heart into a
focus: out of that ordeal he might pass a purer and manlier being--so
Maltravers often hoped. Maltravers then little thought how closely
connected with his own fate was to be that passage in the history of the
Italian. Castruccio contrived to take Maltravers aside, and as he led
the Englishman through the wood that backed the mansion, he said, with
some embarrassment, "You go, I suppose, to London?"

"I shall pass through it--can I execute any commission for you?"

"Why, yes; my poems!--I think of publishing them in England: your
aristocracy cultivate the Italian letters; and, perhaps, I may be read
by the fair and noble--/that/ is the proper audience of poets. For the
vulgar herd--I disdain it!"

"My dear Castruccio, I will undertake to see your poems published in
London, if you wish it; but do not be sanguine. In England we read
little poetry, even in our own language, and we are shamefully
indifferent to foreign literature."

"Yes, foreign literature generally, and you are right; but my poems are
of another kind. They must command attention in a polished and
intelligent circle."

"Well! let the experiment be tried; you can let me have the poems when
we part."

"I thank you," said Castruccio, in a joyous tone, pressing his friend's
hand; and for the rest of that evening, he seemed an altered being; he
even caressed the children, and did not sneer at the grave conversation
of his brother-in-law.

When Maltravers rose to depart, Castruccio gave him the packet; and
then, utterly engrossed with his own imagined futurity of fame, vanished
from the room to indulge his reveries. He cared no longer for
Maltravers--he had put him to use--he could not be sorry for his
departure, for that departure was the Avatar of His appearance to a new
world.

A small dull rain was falling, though, at intervals, the stars broke
through the unsettled clouds, and Teresa did not therefore venture from
the house; she presented her smooth cheek to the young guest to salute,
pressed him by the hand, and bade him adieu with tears in her eyes.
"Ah!" said she, "when we meet again I hope you will be married--I shall
love your wife dearly. There is no happiness like marriage and home!"
and she looked with ingenuous tenderness at De Montaigne.

Maltravers sighed;--his thoughts flew back to Alice. Where now was that
lone and friendless girl, whose innocent love had once brightened a home
for /him/? He answered by a vague and mechanical commonplace, and
quitted the room with De Montaigne, who insisted on seeing him depart.
As they neared the lake, De Montaigne broke the silence.

"My dear Maltravers," he said, with a serious and thoughtful affection
in his voice, "we may not meet again for years. I have a warm interest
in your happiness and career--yes, /career/--I repeat the word. I do
not habitually seek to inspire young men with ambition. Enough for most
of them to be good and honourable citizens. But in your case it is
different. I see in you the earnest and meditative, not rash and
overweening youth, which is usually productive of a distinguished
manhood. Your mind is not yet settled, it is true; but it is fast
becoming clear and mellow from the first ferment of boyish dreams and
passions. You have everything in your favour,--competence, birth,
connections; and, above all, you are an Englishman! You have a mighty
stage, on which, it is true, you cannot establish a footing without
merit and without labour--so much the better; in which strong and
resolute rivals will urge you on to emulation, and then competition will
task your keenest powers. Think what a glorious fate it is, to have an
influence on the vast, but ever-growing mind of such a country,--to
feel, when you retire from the busy scene, that you have played an
unforgotten part--that you have been the medium, under God's great will,
of circulating new ideas throughout the world--of upholding the glorious
priesthood of the Honest and the Beautiful. This is the true ambition;
the desire of mere personal notoriety is vanity, not ambition. Do not
then be lukewarm or supine. The trait I have observed in you," added
the Frenchman, with a smile, "most prejudicial to your chances of
distinction is, that you are /too/ philosophical, too apt to /cui bono/
all the exertions that interfere with the indolence of cultivated
leisure. And you must not suppose, Maltravers, that an active career
will be a path of roses. At present you have no enemies; but the moment
you attempt distinction, you will be abused; calumniated, reviled. You
will be shocked at the wrath you excite, and sigh for your old
obscurity, and consider, as Franklin has it, that 'you have paid too
dear for your whistle.' But in return for individual enemies, what a
noble recompense to have made the Public itself your friend; perhaps
even Posterity your familiar! Besides," added De Montaigne, with almost
a religious solemnity in his voice, "there is a conscience of the head
as well as of the heart, and in old age we feel as much remorse if we
have wasted our natural talents as if we had perverted our natural
virtues. The profound and exultant satisfaction with which a man who
knows that he has not lived in vain--that he has entailed on the world
an heirloom of instruction or delight--looks back upon departed
struggles, is one of the happiest emotions of which the conscience can
be capable. What, indeed, are the petty faults we commit as
individuals, affecting but a narrow circle, ceasing with our own lives,
to the incalculable and everlasting good we may produce as public men by
one book or by one law? Depend upon it that the Almighty, who sums up
all the good and all the evil done by His creatures in a just balance,
will not judge the august benefactors of the world with the same
severity as those drones of society, who have no great services to show
in the eternal ledger, as a set-off to the indulgence of their small
vices. These things rightly considered, Maltravers, you will have every
inducement that can tempt a lofty mind and a pure ambition to awaken
from the voluptuous indolence of the literary Sybarite, and contend
worthily in the world's wide Altis for a great prize."

Maltravers never before felt so flattered--so stirred into high
resolves. The stately eloquence, the fervid encouragement of this man,
usually so cold and fastidious, roused him like the sound of a trumpet.
He stopped short, his breath heaved thick, his cheek flushed. "De
Montaigne," said he, "your words have cleared away a thousand doubts and
scruples--they have gone right to my heart. For the first time I
understand what fame is--what the object, and what the reward of labour!
Visions, hopes, aspirations I may have had before--for months a new
spirit has been fluttering within me. I have felt the wings breaking
from the shell, but all was confused, dim, uncertain. I doubted the
wisdom of effort, with life so short, and the pleasures of youth so
sweet. I now look no longer on life but as a part of the eternity to
which I /feel/ we were born; and I recognise the solemn truth that our
objects, to be worthy life, should be worthy of creatures in whom the
living principle never is extinct. Farewell! come joy or sorrow,
failure or success, I will struggle to deserve your friendship."

Maltravers sprang into his boat, and the shades of night soon snatched
him from the lingering gaze of De Montaigne.

BOOK IV.

"Strange is the land that holds thee,--and thy couch
is widow'd of the loved one."
EURIP. /Med./ 442
Translation by R. G.

CHAPTER I.

"I, alas!
Have lived but on this earth a few sad years;
And so my lot was ordered, that a father
First turned the moments of awakening life
To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope."
"/Cenci/."

FROM accompanying Maltravers along the noiseless progress of mental
education, we are now called awhile to cast our glances back at the
ruder and harsher ordeal which Alice Darvil was ordained to pass. Along
her path poetry shed no flowers, nor were her lonely steps towards the
distant shrine at which her pilgrimage found its rest lighted by the
mystic lamp of science, or guided by the thousand stars which are never
dim in the heavens for those favoured eyes from which genius and fancy
have removed many of the films of clay. Not along the aerial and
exalted ways that wind far above the homes and business of common
men--the solitary Alps of Spiritual Philosophy--wandered the desolate
steps of the child of poverty and sorrow. On the beaten and rugged
highways of common life, with a weary heart, and with bleeding feet, she
went her melancholy course. But the goal which is the great secret of
life, the /summum arcanum/ of all philosophy, whether the Practical or
the Ideal, was, perhaps, no less attainable for that humble girl than
for the elastic step and aspiring heart of him who thirsted after the
Great, and almost believed in the Impossible.

We return to that dismal night in which Alice was torn from the roof of
her lover. It was long before she recovered her consciousness of what
had passed, and gained a full perception of the fearful revolution which
had taken place in her destinies. It was then a grey and dreary morning
twilight; and the rude but covered vehicle which bore her was rolling
along the deep ruts of an unfrequented road, winding among the
uninclosed and mountainous wastes that, in England, usually betoken the
neighbourhood of the sea. With a shudder Alice looked round: Walters,
her father's accomplice, lay extended at her feet, and his heavy
breathing showed that he was fast asleep. Darvil himself was urging on
the jaded and sorry horse, and his broad back was turned towards Alice;
the rain, from which, in his position, he was but ill protected by the
awning, dripped dismally from his slouched hat; and now, as he turned
round, and his sinister and gloomy gaze rested upon the face of Alice,
his bad countenance, rendered more haggard by the cold raw light of the
cheerless dawn, completed the hideous picture of unveiled and ruffianly
wretchedness.

"Ho, ho! Alley, so you are come to your senses," said he, with a kind of
joyless grin. "I am glad of it, for I can have no fainting fine ladies
with me. You have had a long holiday, Alley; you must now learn once
more to work for your poor father. Ah, you have been d----d sly; but
never mind the past--I forgive it. You must not run away again without
my leave; if you are fond of sweethearts, I won't balk you--but your old
father must go shares, Alley."

Alice could hear no more: she covered her face with the cloak that had
been thrown about her, and though she did not faint, her senses seemed
to be locked and paralysed. By and by Walters woke, and the two men,
heedless of her presence, conversed upon their plans. By degrees she
recovered sufficient self-possession to listen, in the instinctive hope
that some plan of escape might be suggested to her. But from what she
could gather of the incoherent and various projects they discussed, one
after another--disputing upon each with frightful oaths and scarce
intelligible slang, she could only learn that it was resolved at all
events to leave the district in which they were--but whither seemed yet
all undecided. The cart halted at last at a miserable-looking hut,
which the signpost announced to be an inn that afforded good
accommodation to travellers; to which announcement was annexed the
following epigrammatic distich:

"Old Tom, he is the best of gin;
Drink him once, and you'll drink him /agin/!"

The hovel stood so remote from all other habitations, and the waste
around was so bare of trees, and even shrubs, that Alice saw with
despair that all hope of flight in such a place would be indeed a
chimera. But to make assurance doubly sure, Darvil himself, lifting her
from the cart, conducted her up a broken and unlighted staircase, into a
sort of loft rather than a room, and, rudely pushing her in, turned the
key upon her, and descended. The weather was cold, the livid damps hung
upon the distained walls, and there was neither fire nor hearth; but
thinly clad as she was--her cloak and shawl her principal covering--she
did not feel the cold, for her heart was more chilly than the airs of
heaven. At noon an old woman brought her some food, which, consisting
of fish and poached game, was better than might have been expected in
such a place, and what would have been deemed a feast under her father's
roof. With an inviting leer, the crone pointed to a pewter measure of
raw spirits that accompanied the viands, and assured her, in a cracked
and maudlin voice, that "'Old Tom' was a kinder friend than any of the
young fellers!" This intrusion ended, Alice was again left alone till
dusk, when Darvil entered with a bundle of clothes, such as are worn by
the peasants of that primitive district of England.

"There, Alley," said he, "put on this warm toggery; finery won't do now.
We must leave no scent in the track; the hounds are after us, my little
blowen. Here's a nice stuff gown for you, and a red cloak that would
frighten a turkey-cock. As to the other cloak and shawl, don't be
afraid; they sha'n't go to the pop-shop, but we'll take care of them
against we get to some large town where there are young fellows with
blunt in their pockets; for you seem to have already found out that your
face is your fortune, Alley. Come, make haste, we must be starting. I
shall come up for you in ten minutes. Pish! don't be faint hearted;
here, take 'Old Tom'--take it, I say. What, you won't? Well, here's to
your health, and a better taste to you!"

And now, as the door once more closed upon Darvil, tears for the first
time came to the relief of Alice. It was a woman's weakness that
procured for her that woman's luxury. Those garments--they were
Ernest's gift--Ernest's taste; they were like the last relic of that
delicious life which now seemed to have fled for ever. All traces of
that life--of him, the loving, the protecting, the adored; all trace of
herself, as she had been re-created by love, was to be lost to her for
ever. It was (as she had read somewhere, in the little elementary
volumes that bounded her historic lore) like that last fatal ceremony in
which those condemned for life to the mines of Siberia are clothed with
the slave's livery, their past name and record eternally blotted out,
and thrust into the vast wastes, from which even the mercy of despotism,
should it ever re-awaken, cannot recall them; for all evidence of
them--all individuality--all mark to distinguish them from the universal
herd, is expunged from the world's calendar. She was still sobbing in
vehement and unrestrained passion, when Darvil re-entered. "What, not
dressed yet?" he exclaimed, in a voice of impatient rage; "hark ye,
this won't do. If in two minutes you are not ready, I'll send up John
Walters to help you; and he is a rough hand, I can tell you."

This threat recalled Alice, to herself. "I will do as you wish," said
she meekly.

"Well, then, be quick," said Darvil; "they are now putting the horse to.
And mark me, girl, your father is running away from the gallows, and
that thought does not make a man stand upon scruples. If you once
attempt to give me the slip, or do or say anything that can bring the
bulkies upon us--by the devil in hell!--if, indeed, there be hell or
devil--my knife shall become better acquainted with that throat--so look
to it!"

And this was the father--this the condition--of her whose ear had for
months drunk no other sound than the whispers of flattering love--the
murmurs of Passion from the lips of Poetry.

They continued their journey till midnight; they then arrived at an inn,
little different from the last; but here Alice was no longer consigned
to solitude. In a long room, reeking with smoke, sat from twenty to
thirty ruffians before a table on which mugs and vessels of strong
potations were formidably interspersed with sabres and pistols. They
received Walters and Darvil with a shout of welcome, and would have
crowded somewhat unceremoniously round Alice, if her father, whose
well-known desperate and brutal ferocity made him a man to be respected
in such an assembly, had not said, sternly, "Hands off, messmates, and
make way by the fire for my little girl--she is meat for your masters."

So saying, he pushed Alice down into a huge chair in the chimney-nook,
and, seating himself near her, at the end of the table, hastened to turn
the conversation.

"Well, Captain," said he, addressing a small thin man at the head of the
table, "I and Walters have fairly cut and run--the land has a bad air
for us, and we now want the sea-breeze to cure the rope fever. So,
knowing this was your night, we have crowded sail, and here we are. You
must give the girl there a lift, though I know you don't like such
lumber, and we'll run ashore as soon as we can."

"She seems a quiet little body," replied the captain; "and we would do
more than that to oblige an old friend like you. In half an hour
Oliver* puts on his nightcap, and we must then be off."

* The moon.

"The sooner the better."

The men now appeared to forget the presence of Alice, who sat faint with
fatigue and exhaustion, for she had been too sick at heart to touch the
food brought to her at their previous halting-place, gazing abstractedly
upon the fire. Her father, before their departure, made her swallow
some morsels of sea-biscuit, though each seemed to choke her; and then,
wrapped in a thick boat-cloak, she was placed in a small well-built
cutter; and as the sea-winds whistled round her, the present cold and
the past fatigues lulled her miserable heart into the arms of the
charitable Sleep.

CHAPTER II.

"You are once more a free woman;
Here I discharge your bonds."
/The Custom of the Country/.

AND many were thy trials, poor child; many that, were this book to
germinate into volumes more numerous than monk ever composed upon the
lives of saint or martyr (though a hundred volumes contained the record
of two years only in the life of St. Anthony), it would be impossible to
describe! We may talk of the fidelity of books, but no man ever wrote
even his own biography without being compelled to omit at least
nine-tenths of the most important materials. What are three--what six
volumes? We live six volumes in a day! Thought, emotion, joy, sorrow,
hope, fear, how prolix would they be if they might each tell their
hourly tale! But man's life itself is a brief epitome of that which is
infinite and everlasting; and his most accurate confessions are a
miserable abridgment of a hurried and confused compendium!

It was about three months, or more, from the night in which Alice wept
herself to sleep amongst those wild companions, when she contrived to
escape from her father's vigilant eye. They were then on the coast of
Ireland. Darvil had separated himself from Walters--from his seafaring
companions: he had run through the greater part of the money his crimes
had got together; he began seriously to attempt putting into execution
his horrible design of depending for support upon the sale of his
daughter. Now Alice might have been moulded into sinful purposes before
she knew Maltravers; but from that hour her very error made her
virtuous--she had comprehended, the moment she loved, what was meant by
female honour; and by a sudden revelation, she had purchased modesty,
delicacy of thought and soul, in the sacrifice of herself. Much of our
morality (prudent and right upon system) with respect to the first false
step of women, leads us, as we all know, into barbarous errors as to
individual exceptions. Where, from pure and confiding love, that first
false step has been taken, many a woman has been saved in after life
from a thousand temptations. The poor unfortunates who crowd our
streets and theatres have rarely, in the first instances, been corrupted
by love; but by poverty, and the contagion of circumstance and example.
It is a miserable cant phrase to call them the victims of seduction;
they have been the victims of hunger, of vanity, of curiosity, of evil
/female/ counsels; but the seduction of love hardly ever conducts to a
/life/ of vice. If a woman has once really loved, the beloved object
makes an impenetrable barrier between her and other men; their advances
terrify and revolt--she would rather die than be unfaithful even to a
memory. Though man love the sex, woman loves only the individual; and
the more she loves him, the more cold she is to the species. For the
passion of woman is in the sentiment--the fancy--the heart. It rarely
has much to do with the coarse images with which boys and old men--the
inexperienced and the worn-out--connect it.

But Alice, though her blood ran cold at her terrible father's language,
saw in his very design the prospect of escape. In an hour of
drunkenness he thrust her from the house, and stationed himself to watch
her--it was in the city of Cork. She formed her resolution
instantly--turned up a narrow street, and fled at full speed. Darvil
endeavoured in vain to keep pace with her--his eyes dizzy, his steps
reeling with intoxication. She heard his last curse dying from a
distance on the air, and her fear winged her steps: she paused at last,
and found herself on the outskirts of the town. She paused, overcome,
and deadly faint; and then, for the first time, she felt that a strange
and new life was stirring within her own. She had long since known that
she bore in her womb the unborn offspring of Maltravers, and that
knowledge had made her struggle and live on. But now, the embryo had
quickened into being--it moved--it appealed to her, a--thing unseen,
unknown; but still it was a living creature appealing to a mother! Oh,
the thrill, half of ineffable tenderness, half of mysterious terror, at
that moment!--What a new chapter in the life of a woman did it not
announce:--Now, then, she must be watchful over herself--must guard
against fatigue--must wrestle with despair. Solemn was the trust
committed to her--the life of another--the child of the Adored. It was
a summer night--she sat on a rude stone, the city on one side, with its
lights and lamps;--the whitened fields beyond, with the moon and the
stars above; and /above/ she raised her streaming eyes, and she thought
that God, the Protector, smiled upon her from the face of the sweet
skies. So, after a pause and a silent prayer, she rose and resumed her
way. When she was wearied she crept into a shed in a farmyard, and
slept, for the first time for weeks, the calm sleep of security and
hope.

CHAPTER III.

"How like a prodigal doth she return,
With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails."
/Merchant of Venice/.

"/Mer./ What are these?
/Uncle./ The tenants."
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.--/Wit without Money/.

IT was just two years from the night in which Alice had been torn from
the cottage: and at that time Maltravers was wandering amongst the ruins
of ancient Egypt, when, upon the very lawn where Alice and her lover had
so often loitered hand in hand, a gay party of children and young people
were assembled. The cottage had been purchased by an opulent and
retired manufacturer. He had raised the low thatched roof another story
high--and blue slate had replaced the thatch--and the pretty verandahs
overgrown with creepers had been taken down because Mrs. Hobbs thought
they gave the rooms a dull look; and the little rustic doorway had been
replaced by four Ionic pillars in stucco; and a new dining-room,
twenty-two feet by eighteen, had been built out at one wing, and a new
drawing-room had been built over the new dining-room. And the poor
little cottage looked quite grand and villa-like. The fountain had been
taken away, because it made the house damp; and there was such a broad
carriage-drive from the gate to the house! The gate was no longer the
modest green wooden gate, ever ajar with its easy latch; but a tall,
cast-iron, well-locked gate, between two pillars to match the porch.
And on one of the gates was a brass plate, on which was graven, "Hobbs'
Lodge--Ring the bell." The lesser Hobbses and the bigger Hobbses were
all on the lawn--many of them fresh from school--for it was the
half-holiday of a Saturday afternoon. There was mirth, and noise, and
shouting and whooping, and the respectable old couple looked calmly on;
Hobbs the father smoking his pipe (alas, it was not the dear
meerschaum); Hobbs the mother talking to her eldest daughter (a fine
young woman, three months married, for love, to a poor man), upon the
proper number of days that a leg of mutton (weight ten pounds) should be
made to last. "Always, my dear, have large joints, they are much the
most saving. Let me see--what a noise the boys do make! No, my love,
the ball's not here."

"Mamma, it is under your petticoats."

"La, child, how naughty you are!"

"Holla, you sir! it's my turn to go in now. Biddy, wait,--girls have no
innings--girls only fag out."

"Bob, you cheat."

"Pa, Ned says I cheat."

"Very likely, my dear, you are to be a lawyer."

"Where was I, my dear?" resumed Mrs. Hobbs, resettling herself, and
readjusting the invaded petticoats. "Oh, about the leg of mutton!--yes,
large joints are the best--the second day a nice hash, with dumplings;
the third, broil the bone--your husband is sure to like broiled
bones!--and then keep the scraps for Saturday's pie;--you know, my dear,
your father and I were worse off than you when we began. But now we
have everything that is handsome about us--nothing like management.
Saturday pies are very nice things, and then you start clear with your
joint on Sunday. A good wife like you should never neglect the
Saturday's pie!"

"Yes," said the bride, mournfully; "but Mr. Tiddy does not like pies."

"Not like pies! that very odd--Mr. Hobbs likes pies--perhaps you don't
have the crust made thick eno'. How somever, you can make it up to him
with a pudding. A wife should always study her husband's tastes--what
is a man's home without love? Still a husband ought not to be
aggravating, and dislike pie on a Saturday!"

"Holla! I say, ma, do you see that 'ere gipsy? I shall go and have my
fortune told."

"And I--and I!"

"Lor, if there ben't a tramper!" cried Mr. Hobbs, rising indignantly;
"what can the parish be about?"

The object of these latter remarks, filial and paternal, was a young
woman in a worn, threadbare cloak, with her face pressed to the openwork
of the gate, and looking wistfully--oh, how wistfully!--within. The
children eagerly ran up to her, but they involuntarily slackened their
steps when they drew near, for she was evidently not what they had taken
her for. No gipsy hues darkened the pale, thin, delicate cheek--no
gipsy leer lurked in those large blue and streaming eyes--no gipsy
effrontery bronzed that candid and childish brow. As she thus pressed
her countenance with convulsive eagerness against the cold bars, the
young people caught the contagion of inexpressible and half-fearful
sadness--they approached almost respectfully--"Do you want anything
here?" said the eldest and boldest of the boys.

"I--I--surely this is Dale Cottage?"

"It was Dale Cottage, it is Hobbs' Lodge now; can't you read?" said the
heir of the Hobbs's honours, losing, in contempt at the girl's
ignorance, his first impression of sympathy.

"And--and--Mr. Butler, is he gone too?"

Poor child! she spoke as if the cottage was gone, not improved; the
Ionic portico had no charm for her!

"Butler!--no such person lives here. Pa, do you know where Mr. Butler
lives?"

Pa was now moving up to the place of conference the slow artillery of
his fair round belly and portly calves. "Butler, no--I know nothing of
such a name--no Mr. Butler lives here. Go along with you--ain't you
ashamed to beg?"

"No Mr. Butler!" said the girl, gasping for breath, and clinging to the
gate for support. "Are you sure, sir?"

"Sure, yes!--what do you want with him?"

"Oh, papa, she looks faint!" said one of the /girls/ deprecatingly--"do
let her have something to eat; I'm sure she's hungry."

Mr. Hobbs looked angry; he had often been taken in, and no rich man
likes beggars. Generally speaking, the rich man is in the right. But
then Mr. Hobbs turned to the suspected tramper's sorrowful face and then
to his fair pretty child--and his good angel whispered something to Mr.
Hobbs's heart--and he said, after a pause, "Heaven forbid that we should
not feel for a poor fellow-creature not so well to do as ourselves.
Come in, my lass, and have a morsel to eat."

The girl did not seem to hear him, and he repeated the invitation,
approaching to unlock the gate.

"No, sir," said she, then; "no, I thank you. I could not come in now.
I could not eat here. But tell me, sir, I implore you, can you not even
guess where I may find Mr. Butler?"

"Butler!" said Mrs. Hobbs, whom curiosity had now drawn to the spot. "I
remember that was the name of the gentleman who hired the place, and was
robbed."

"Robbed!" said Mr. Hobbs, falling back and relocking the gate--"and the
new tea-pot just come home," he muttered inly. "Come, be off, child--be
off; we know nothing of your Mr. Butlers."

The young woman looked wildly in his face, cast a hurried glance over
the altered spot, and then, with a kind of shiver, as if the wind had
smitten her delicate form too rudely, she drew her cloak more closely
round her shoulders, and without saying another word, moved away. The
party looked after her as, with trembling steps, she passed down the
road, and all felt that pang of shame which is common to the human heart
at the sight of a distress it has not sought to soothe. But this
feeling vanished at once from the breast of Mrs. and Mr. Hobbs, when
they saw the girl stop where a turn of the road brought the gate before
her eyes; and for the first time, they perceived, what the worn cloak
had hitherto concealed, that the poor young thing bore an infant in her
arms. She halted, she gazed fondly back. Even at that instant the
despair of her eyes was visible; and then, as she pressed her lips to
the infant's brow, they heard a convulsive sob--they saw her turn away,
and she was gone!

"Well, I declare!" said Mrs. Hobbs.

"News for the parish," said Mr. Hobbs; "and she so young too!--what a
shame!"

"The girls about here are very bad nowadays, Jenny," said the mother to
the bride.

"I see now why she wanted Mr. Butler," quoth Hobbs, with a knowing
wink--"the slut has come to swear!"

And it was for this that Alice had supported her strength--her
courage-during the sharp pangs of childbirth; during a severe and
crushing illness, which for months after her confinement had stretched
her upon a peasant's bed (the object of the rude but kindly charity of
an Irish shealing)--for this, day after day, she had whispered to
herself, "I shall get well, and I will beg my way to the cottage, and
find him there still, and put my little one into his arms, and all will
be bright again;"--for this, as soon as she could walk without aid, had
she set out on foot from the distant land; for this, almost with a dog's
instinct (for she knew not what way to turn--what county the cottage was
placed in; she only knew the name of the neighbouring town; and that,
populous as it was, sounded strange to the ears of those she asked; and
she had often and often been directed wrong),--for this, I say, almost
with a dog's faithful instinct, had she, in cold and heat, in hunger and
in thirst, tracked to her old master's home her desolate and lonely way!
And thrice had she over-fatigued herself--and thrice again been indebted
to humble pity for a bed whereon to lay a feverish and broken frame.
And once, too, her baby--her darling, her life of life, had been
ill--had been near unto death, and she could not stir till the infant
(it was a girl) was well again, and could smile in her face and crow.
And thus many, many months had elapsed, since the day she set out on her
pilgrimage, to that on which she found its goal. But never, save when
the child was ill, had she desponded or abated heart and hope. She
should see him again, and he would kiss her child. And now--no--I
cannot paint the might of that stunning blow! She knew not, she dreamed
not, of the kind precautions Maltravers had taken; and he had not
sufficiently calculated on her thorough ignorance of the world. How
could she divine that the magistrate, not a mile distant from her, could
have told her all she sought to know? Could she but have met the
gardener--or the old woman-servant--all would have been well! These
last, indeed, she had the forethought to ask for. But the woman was
dead, and the gardener had taken a strange service in some distant
county. And so died her last gleam of hope. If one person who
remembered the search of Maltravers had but met and recognised her! But
she had been seen by so few--and now the bright, fresh girl was so sadly
altered! Her race was not yet run, and many a sharp wind upon the
mournful seas had the bark to brave before its haven was found at last.

CHAPTER IV.

"Patience and sorrow strove
Which should express her goodliest."--SHAKESPEARE.

"Je /la/ plains, je /la/ blame, et je suis son appui."*-VOLTAIRE.

* I pity her, I blame her, and am her support.

AND now Alice felt that she was on the wide world alone, with her
child--no longer to be protected, but to protect; and after the first
few days of agony, a new spirit, not indeed of hope, but of endurance,
passed within her. Her solitary wanderings, with God her only guide,
had tended greatly to elevate and confirm her character. She felt a
strong reliance on His mysterious mercy--she felt, too, the
responsibility of a mother. Thrown for so many months upon her own
resources, even for the bread of life, her intellect was unconsciously
sharpened, and a habit of patient fortitude had strengthened a nature
originally clinging and femininely soft. She resolved to pass into some
other county, for she could neither bear the thoughts that haunted the
neighbourhood around her, nor think, without a loathing horror, of the
possibility of her father's return. Accordingly, one day, she renewed
her wanderings--and after a week's travel, arrived at a small village.
Charity is so common in England, it so spontaneously springs up
everywhere, like the good seed by the roadside, that she had rarely
wanted the bare necessaries of existence. And her humble manner, and
sweet, well-tuned voice, so free from the professional whine of
mendicancy, had usually its charm for the sternest. So she generally
obtained enough to buy bread and a night's lodging, and, if sometimes
she failed, she could bear hunger, and was not afraid of creeping into
some shed, or, when by the sea-shore, even into some sheltering cavern.
Her child throve too--for God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb! But
now, so far as physical privation went, the worst was over.

It so happened that as Alice was drawing herself wearily along to the
entrance of the village which was to bound her day's journey, she was
met by a lady, past middle age, in whose countenance compassion was so
visible, that Alice would not beg, for she had a strange delicacy or
pride, or whatever it may be called, and rather begged of the stern than
of those who looked kindly at her--she did not like to lower herself in
the eyes of the last.

The lady stopped.

"My poor girl, where are you going?"

"Where God pleases, madam," said Alice.

"Humph! and is that your own child?--you are almost a child yourself."

"It is mine, madam," said Alice, gazing fondly at the infant; "it is my
all!"

The lady's voice faltered. "Are you married?" she asked.

"Married!--Oh, no, madam!" replied Alice, innocently, yet without
blushing, for she never knew that she had done wrong in loving
Maltravers.

The lady drew gently back, but not in horror--no, in still deeper
compassion; for that lady had virtue, and she knew that the faults of
her sex are sufficiently punished to permit Virtue to pity them without
a sin.

"I am sorry for it," she said, however, with greater gravity. "Are you
travelling to seek the father?"

"Ah, madam! I shall never see him again!" And Alice wept.

"What!--he has abandoned you--so young, so beautiful!" added the lady to
herself.

"Abandoned me!--no, madam; but it is a long tale. Good evening--I thank
you kindly for your pity."

The lady's eyes ran over.

"Stay," said she; "tell me frankly where you are going, and what is your
object."

"Alas! madam, I am going anywhere, for I have no home; but I wish to
live, and work for my living, in order that my child may not want for
anything. I wish I could maintain myself--he used to say I could."

"He!--your language and manner are not those of a peasant. What can you
do? What do you know?"

"Music, and work, and--and--"

"Music!--this is strange! What were your parents?"

Alice shuddered, and hid her face with her hands.

The lady's interest was now fairly warmed in her behalf.

"She has sinned," said she to herself; "but at that age, how can one be
harsh? She must not be thrown upon the world to make sin a habit.
Follow me," she said, after a little pause; "and think you have found a
friend."

The lady then turned from the high-road down a green lane which led to a
park lodge. This lodge she entered; and after a short conversation with
the inmate, beckoned to Alice to join her.

"Janet," said Alice's new protector to a comely and pleasant-eyed woman,
"this is the young person--you will show her and the infant every
attention. I shall send down proper clothing for her to-morrow, and I
shall then have thought what will be best for her future welfare."

With that the lady smiled benignly upon Alice, whose heart was too full
to speak; and the door of the cottage closed upon her, and Alice thought
the day had grown darker.

CHAPTER V.

"Believe me, she has won me much to pity her.
Alas! her gentle nature was not made
To buffet with adversity."--ROWE.

"Sober he was, and grave from early youth,
Mindful of forms, but more intent on truth;
In a light drab he uniformly dress'd,
And look serene th' unruffled mind express'd.

* * * * *

"Yet might observers in his sparkling eye
Some observation, some acuteness spy
The friendly thought it keen, the treacherous deem'd it sly;
Yet not a crime could foe or friend detect,
His actions all were like his speech correct--
Chaste, sober, solemn, and devout they named
Him who was this, and not of this ashamed."--CRABBE.

"I'll on and sound this secret."--BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

MRS. LESLIE, the lady introduced to the reader in the last chapter, was
a woman of the firmest intellect combined (no unusual combination) with
the softest heart. She learned Alice's history with admiration and
pity. The natural innocence and honesty of the young mother spoke so
eloquently in her words and looks, that Mrs. Leslie, on hearing her
tale, found much less to forgive than she had anticipated. Still she
deemed it necessary to enlighten Alice as to the criminality of the
connection she had formed. But here Alice was singularly dull--she
listened in meek patience to Mrs. Leslie's lecture; but it evidently
made but slight impression on her. She had not yet seen enough of the
social state to correct the first impressions of the natural: and all
she could say in answer to Mrs. Leslie was: "It may be all very true,
madam, but I have been so much better since I knew him!"

But though Alice took humbly any censure upon herself, she would not
hear a syllable insinuated against Maltravers. When, in a very natural
indignation, Mrs. Leslie denounced him as a destroyer of innocence--for
Mrs. Leslie could not learn all that extenuated his offence--Alice
started up with flashing eyes and heaving heart, and would have hurried
from the only shelter she had in the wide world--she would sooner have
died--she would sooner even have seen her child die, than done that idol
of her soul, who, in her eyes, stood alone on some pinnacle between
earth and heaven, the wrong of hearing him reviled. With difficulty
Mrs. Leslie could restrain, with still more difficulty could she pacify
and soothe her; and for the girl's petulance, which others might have
deemed insolent or ungrateful, the woman-heart of Mrs. Leslie loved her
all the better. The more she saw of Alice, and the more she
comprehended her story and her character, the more was she lost in
wonder at the romance of which this beautiful child had been the
heroine, and the more perplexed she was as to Alice's future prospects.

At length, however, when she became acquainted with Alice's musical
acquirements, which were, indeed, of no common order, a light broke in
upon her. Here was the source of her future independence. Maltravers,
it will be remembered, was a musician of consummate skill as well as
taste, and Alice's natural talent for the art had advanced her, in the
space of months, to a degree of perfection which it cost others--which
it had cost even the quick Maltravers--years to obtain. But we learn so
rapidly when our teachers are those we love: and it may be observed that
the less our knowledge, the less perhaps our genius in other things, the
more facile are our attainments in music, which is a very jealous
mistress of the mind. Mrs. Leslie resolved to have her perfected in
this art, and so enable her to become a teacher to others. In the town
of C------, about thirty miles from Mrs. Leslie's house, though in the
same county, there was no inconsiderable circle of wealthy and
intelligent persons; for it was a cathedral town, and the resident
clergy drew around them a kind of provincial aristocracy. Here, as in
most rural towns in England, music was much cultivated, both among the
higher and middle classes. There were amateur concerts, and glee-clubs,
and subscriptions for sacred music; and once every five years there was
the great C------ Festival. In this town Mrs. Leslie established Alice:
she placed her under the roof of a /ci-devant/ music-master, who, having
retired from his profession, was no longer jealous of rivals, but who,
by handsome terms, was induced to complete the education of Alice. It
was an eligible and comfortable abode, and the music-master and his wife
were a good-natured easy old couple.

Three months of resolute and unceasing perseverance, combined with the
singular ductility and native gifts of Alice, sufficed to render her the
most promising pupil the good musician had ever accomplished; and in
three months more, introduced by Mrs. Leslie to many of the families in
the place, Alice was established in a home of her own; and, what with
regular lessons, and occasional assistance at musical parties, she was
fairly earning what her tutor reasonably pronounced to be "a very
genteel independence."

Now, in these arrangements (for we must here go back a little), there
had been one gigantic difficulty of conscience in one party, of feeling
in another, to surmount. Mrs. Leslie saw at once that unless Alice's
misfortune was concealed, all the virtues and all the talents in the
world could not enable her to retrace the one false step. Mrs. Leslie
was a woman of habitual truth and strict rectitude, and she was sorely
perplexed between the propriety of candour and its cruelty. She felt
unequal to take the responsibility of action on herself; and, after much
meditation, she resolved to confide her scruples to one who, of all whom
she knew, possessed the highest character for moral worth and religious
sanctity. This gentleman, lately a widower, lived at the outskirts of
the town selected for Alice's future residence, and at that time
happened to be on a visit in Mrs. Leslie's neighbourhood. He was an
opulent man, a banker; he had once represented the town in parliament,
and retiring, from disinclination to the late hours and onerous fatigues
even of an unreformed House of Commons, he still possessed an influence
to return one, if not both, of the members for the city of C------. And
that influence was always exerted so as best to secure his own interest
with the powers that be, and advance certain objects of ambition (for he
was both an ostentatious and ambitious man in his own way), which he
felt he might more easily obtain by proxy than by his own votes and
voice in parliament--an atmosphere in which his light did not shine.
And it was with a wonderful address that the banker contrived at once to
support the government, and yet, by the frequent expression of liberal
opinions, to conciliate the Whigs and the Dissenters of his
neighbourhood. Parties, political and sectarian, were not then so
irreconcilable as they are now. In the whole county there was no one so
respected as this eminent person, and yet he possessed no shining
talents, though a laborious and energetic man of business. It was
solely and wholly the force of moral character which gave him his
position in society. He felt this; he was sensitively proud of it; he
was painfully anxious not to lose an atom of a distinction that required
to be vigilantly secured. He was a very /remarkable/, yet not (perhaps
could we penetrate all hearts), a very /uncommon/ character--this
banker! He had risen from, comparatively speaking, a low origin and
humble fortunes, and entirely by the scrupulous and sedate propriety of
his outward conduct. With such a propriety he, therefore, inseparably
connected every notion of worldly prosperity and honour. Thus, though
far from a bad man, he was forced into being something of a hypocrite.
Every year he had grown more starch and more saintly. He was
conscience-keeper to the whole town; and it is astonishing how many
persons hardly dared to make a will or subscribe to a charity without
his advice. As he was a shrewd man of this world, as well as an
accredited guide to the next, his advice was precisely of a nature to
reconcile the Conscience and the Interest; and he was a kind of
negotiator in the reciprocal diplomacy of earth and heaven. But our
banker was really a charitable man, and a benevolent man, and a sincere
believer. How, then, was he a hypocrite? Simply because he professed
to be far /more/ charitable, /more/ benevolent, and /more/ pious than he
really was. His reputation had now arrived to that degree of immaculate
polish that the smallest breath, which would not have tarnished the
character of another man, would have fixed an indelible stain upon his.
As he affected to be more strict than the churchman, and was a great
oracle with all who regarded churchmen as lukewarm, so his conduct was
narrowly watched by all the clergy of the orthodox cathedral, good men,
doubtless, but not affecting to be saints, who were jealous at being so
luminously outshone by a layman and an authority of the sectarians. On
the other hand, the intense homage and almost worship he received from
his followers kept his goodness upon a stretch, if not beyond all human
power, certainly beyond his own. For "admiration" (as it is well said
somewhere) "is a kind of superstition which expects miracles." From
nature this gentleman had received an inordinate share of animal
propensities: he had strong passions, he was by temperament a
sensualist. He loved good eating and good wine--he loved women. The
two former blessings of the carnal life are not incompatible with
canonisation; but St. Anthony has shown that women, however angelic, are
not precisely that order of angels that saints may safely commune with.
If, therefore, he ever yielded to temptations of a sexual nature, it was
with profound secrecy and caution; nor did his right hand know what his
left hand did.

This gentleman had married a woman much older than himself, but her
fortune had been one of the necessary stepping-stones in his career.
His exemplary conduct towards this lady, ugly as well as old, had done
much towards increasing the odour of his sanctity. She died of an ague,
and the widower did not shock probabilities by affecting too severe a
grief.

"The Lord's will be done!" said he; "she was a good woman, but we should
not set our affections too much upon His perishable creatures!"

This was all he was ever heard to say on the matter. He took an elderly
gentlewoman, distantly related to him, to manage his house, and sit at
the head of the table; and it was thought not impossible, though the
widower was past fifty, that he might marry again.

Such was the gentleman called in by Mrs. Leslie, who, of the same
religious opinions, had long known and revered him, to decide the
affairs of Alice and of Conscience.

As this man exercised no slight or fugitive influence over Alice
Darvil's destinies, his counsels on the point in discussion ought to be
fairly related.

"And now," said Mrs. Leslie, concluding the history, "you will perceive,
my dear sir, that this poor young creature has been less culpable than
she appears. From the extraordinary proficiency she has made in music,
in a time that, by her own account, seems incredibly short; I should
suspect her unprincipled betrayer must have been an artist--a
professional man. It is just possible that they may meet again, and (as
the ranks between them cannot be so very disproportionate) that he may
marry her. I am sure that he could not do a better or a wiser thing,
for she loves him too fondly, despite her wrongs. Under these
circumstances, would it be a--a--a culpable disguise of truth to
represent her as a married woman--separated from her husband--and give
her the name of her seducer? Without such a precaution you will see,
sir, that all hope of settling her reputably in life--all chance of
procuring her any creditable independence, is out of the question. Such
is my dilemma. What is your advice?--palatable or not, I shall abide by
it."

The banker's grave and saturnine countenance exhibited a slight degree
of embarrassment at the case submitted to him. He began brushing away,
with the cuff of his black coat, some atoms of dust that had settled on
his drab small-clothes; and, after a slight pause, he replied, "Why,
really, dear madam, the question is one of much delicacy--I doubt if men
could be good judges upon it; your sex's tact and instinct on these
matters are better--much better than our sagacity. There is much in the
dictates of your own heart; for to those who are in the grace of the
Lord He vouchsafes to communicate His pleasure by spiritual hints and
inward suggestions!"

"If so, my dear sir, the matter is decided; for my heart whispers me
that this slight deviation from truth would be a less culpable offence
than turning so young and, I had almost said, so innocent a creature
adrift upon the world. I may take your opinion as my sanction."

"Why, really, I can scarcely say so much as that," said the banker, with
a slight smile. "A deviation from truth cannot be incurred without some
forfeiture of strict duty."

"Not in any case? Alas, I was afraid so!" said Mrs. Leslie,
despondingly.

"In any case! Oh, there /may/ be cases! But had I not better see the
young woman, and ascertain that your benevolent heart has not deceived
you?"

"I wish you would," said Mrs. Leslie; "she is now in the house. I will
ring for her."

"Should we not be alone?"

"Certainly; I will leave you together."

Alice was sent for, and appeared.

"This pious gentleman," said Mrs. Leslie, "will confer with you for a
few moments, my child. Do not be afraid; he is the best of men." With
these words of encouragement the good lady vanished, and Alice saw
before her a tall dark man, with a head bald in front, yet larger behind
than before, with spectacles upon a pair of shrewd, penetrating eyes,
and an outline of countenance that showed he must have been handsome in
earlier manhood.

"My young friend," said the banker, seating himself, after a deliberate
survey of the fair countenance that blushed beneath his gaze, "Mrs.
Leslie and myself have been conferring upon your temporal welfare. You
have been unfortunate, my child."

"Ah--yes."

"Well, well, you are very young; we must not be too severe upon youth.
You will never do so again?"

"Do what, please you, sir?"

"What! Humph! I mean that you will be more rigid, more circumspect.
Men are deceitful; you must be on your guard against them. You are
handsome, child, very handsome--more's the pity." And the banker took
Alice's hand and pressed it with great unction. Alice looked at him
gravely and drew the hand away instinctively.

The banker lowered his spectacles, and gazed at her without their aid;
his eyes were still fine and expressive. "What is your name?" he asked.

"Alice--Alice Darvil, sir."

"Well, Alice, we have been considering what is best for you. You wish
to earn your own livelihood, and perhaps marry some honest man
hereafter."

"Marry, sir--never!" said Alice, with great earnestness, her eyes
filling with tears.

"And why?"

"Because I shall never see /him/ on earth, and they do not marry in
heaven, sir."

The banker was moved, for he was not worse than his neighbours, though
trying to make them believe he was so much better.

"Well, time enough to talk of that; but in the meanwhile you would
support yourself?"

"Yes, sir. His child ought to be a burden to none--nor I either. I
once wished to die, but then who would love my little one? Now I wish
to live."

"But what mode of livelihood would you prefer? Would you go into a
family, in some capacity?--not that of a servant--you are too delicate
for that."

"Oh, no--no!"

"But, again, why?" asked the banker, soothingly, yet surprised.

"Because," said Alice, almost solemnly, "there are some hours when I
feel I must be alone. I sometimes think I am not all right /here/," and
she touched her forehead. "They called me an idiot before I knew
/him/!--No, I could not live with others, for I can only cry when nobody
but my child is with me."

This was said with such unconscious, and therefore with such pathetic,
simplicity, that the banker was sensibly affected. He rose, stirred the
fire, resettled himself, and, after a pause, said emphatically: "Alice,
I will be your friend. Let me believe you will deserve it."

Alice bent her graceful head, and seeing that he had sunk into an
abstracted silence, she thought it time for her to withdraw.

"She is, indeed, beautiful," said the banker, almost aloud, when he
was alone; "and the old lady is right--she is as innocent as if she had
not fallen. I wonder--" Here he stopped short, and walked to the glass
over the mantelpiece, where he was still gazing on his own features,
when Mrs. Leslie returned.

"Well, sir," said she, a little surprised at this seeming vanity in so
pious a man.

The banker started. "Madam, I honour your penetration as much as your
charity; I think that there is so much to be feared in letting all the
world know this young female's past error, that, though I dare not
advise, I cannot blame, your concealment of it."

"But, sir, your words have sunk deep into my thoughts; you said every
deviation from truth was a forfeiture of duty."

"Certainly; but there are some exceptions. The world is a bad world, we
are born in sin; and the children of wrath. We do not tell infants all
the truth, when they ask us questions, the proper answers of which would
mislead, not enlighten them. In some things the whole world are
infants. The very science of government is the science of concealing
truth--so is the system of trade. We could not blame the tradesman for
not telling the public that if all his debts were called in he would be
a bankrupt."

"And he may marry her after all--this Mr. Butler."

"Heaven forbid--the villain!--Well, madam, I will see to this poor young
thing--she shall not want a guide."

"Heaven reward you! How wicked some people are to call you severe!"

"I can bear /that/ blame with a meek temper, madam. Good day."

"Good day. You will remember how strictly confidential has been our
conversation."

"Not a breath shall transpire. I will send you some tracts
to-morrow--so comforting. Heaven bless you!"

This difficulty smoothed, Mrs. Leslie, to her astonishment, found that
she had another to contend with in Alice herself. For, first, Alice
conceived that to change her name and keep her secret was to confess
that she ought to be ashamed, rather than proud, of her love to Ernest,
and she thought that so ungrateful to him!--and, secondly, to take his
name, to pass for his wife--what presumption--he would certainly have a
right to be offended! At these scruples Mrs. Leslie well-nigh lost all
patience; and the banker, to his own surprise, was again called in. We
have said that he was an experienced and skilful adviser, which implies
the faculty of persuasion. He soon saw the handle by which Alice's
obstinacy might always be moved--her little girl's welfare. He put this
so forcibly before her eyes; he represented the child's future fate as
resting so much, not only on her own good conduct, but on her outward
respectability, that he prevailed upon her at last; and, perhaps, one
argument that he incidentally used, had as much effect on her as the
rest. "This Mr. Butler, if yet in England, may pass through our
town--may visit amongst us--may hear you spoken of by a name similar to
his own, and curiosity would thus induce him to seek you. Take his
name, and you will always bear an honourable index to your mutual
discovery and recognition. Besides, when you are respectable, honoured,
and earning an independence, he may not be too proud to marry you. But
take your own name, avow your own history, and not only will your child
be an outcast, yourself a beggar, or, at best, a menial dependant, but
you lose every hope of recovering the object of your too-devoted
attachment."

Thus Alice was convinced. From that time she became close and reserved
in her communications. Mrs. Leslie had wisely selected a town
sufficiently remote from her own abode to preclude any revelations of
her domestics; and, as Mrs. Butler, Alice attracted universal sympathy
and respect from the exercise of her talents, the modest sweetness of
her manners, the unblemished propriety of her conduct. Somehow or other,
no sooner did she learn the philosophy of concealment than she made a
great leap in knowledge of the world. And, though flattered and courted
by the young loungers of C------, she steered her course with so much
address that she was never persecuted. For there are few men in the
world who make advances where there is no encouragement.

The banker observed her conduct with silent vigilance. He met her
often, he visited her often. He was intimate at houses where she
attended to teach or perform. He lent her good books--he advised
her--he preached to her. Alice began to look up to him--to like him--to
consider him as a village girl in Catholic countries may consider a
benevolent and kindly priest. And he--what was his object?--at that
time it is impossible to guess:--he became thoughtful and abstracted.

One day an old maid and an old clergyman met in the High Street of
C------.

"And how do you do, ma'am?" said the clergyman; "how is the rheumatism?"

"Better, thank you, sir. Any news?"

The clergyman smiled, and something hovered on his lips, which he
suppressed.

"Were you," the old maid resumed, "at Mrs. Macnab's last night?
Charming music?"

"Charming! How pretty that Mrs. Butler is! and how humble! Knows her
station--so unlike professional people."

"Yes, indeed!--What attention a certain banker paid her!"

"He! he! he! yes; he is very fatherly--very!"

"Perhaps he will marry again; he is always talking of the holy state of
matrimony--a holy state it may be--but Heaven knows, his wife, poor
woman, did not make it a pleasant one."

"There may be more causes for that than we guess of," said the
clergyman, mysteriously. "I would not be uncharitable, but--"

"But what?"

"Oh, when he was young, our great man was not so correct, I fancy, as he
is now."

"So I have heard it whispered; but nothing against him was ever known."

"Hem--it is very odd!"

"What's very odd?"

"Why, but it's a secret--I dare say it's all very right."

"Oh, I sha'n't say a word. Are you going to the cathedral?--don't let
me keep you standing. Now, pray proceed!"

"Well, then, yesterday I was doing duty in a village more than twenty
miles hence, and I loitered in the village to take an early dinner; and,
afterwards, while my horse was feeding, I strolled down the green."

"Well--well?"

"And I saw a gentleman muffled carefully up, with his hat slouched over
his face, at the door of a cottage, with a little child in his arms, and
he kissed it more fondly than, be we ever so good, we generally kiss
other people's children; and then he gave it to a peasant woman standing
near him, and mounted his horse, which was tied to the gate, and trotted
past me; and who do you think this was?"

"Patience me--I can't guess!"

"Why, our saintly banker. I bowed to him, and I assure you he turned as
red, ma'am, as your waistband."

"My!"

"I just turned into the cottage when he was out of sight, for I was
thirsty, and asked for a glass of water, and I saw the child. I declare
I would not be uncharitable, but I thought it monstrous like--you know
whom!"

"Gracious! you don't say--"

"I asked the woman 'if it was hers?' and she said 'No,' but was very
short."

"Dear me, I must find this out! What is the name of the village?"

"Covedale."

"Oh, I know--I know."

"Not a word of this; I dare say there is nothing in it. But I am not
much in favour of your new lights."

"Nor I neither. What better than the good old Church of England?"

"Madam, your sentiments do you honour; you'll be sure not to say
anything of our little mystery."

"Not a syllable."

Two days after this three old maids made an excursion to the village of
Covedale, and lo! the cottage in question was shut up--the woman and the
child were gone. The people in the village knew nothing about them--had
seen nothing particular in the woman or child--had always supposed them
mother and daughter; and the gentleman identified by the clerical
inquisitor with the banker had never but once been observed in the
place.

"The vile old parson," said the eldest of the old maids, "to take away
so good a man's character!--and the fly will cost one pound two, with
the baiting!"

CHAPTER VI.

"In this disposition was I, when looking out of my window one
day to take the air, I perceived a kind of peasant who looked
at me very attentively."--GIL BLAS.

A SUMMER'S evening in a retired country town has something melancholy in
it. You have the streets of a metropolis without their animated
bustle--you have the stillness of the country without its birds and
flowers. The reader will please to bring before him a quiet street in
the quiet country town of C------, in a quiet evening in quiet June; the
picture is not mirthful--two young dogs are playing in the street, one
old dog is watching by a newly-painted door. A few ladies of middle age
move noiselessly along the pavement, returning home to tea: they wear
white muslin dresses, green spencers a little faded, straw poke bonnets
with green or coffee-coloured gauze veils. By twos and threes they have
disappeared within the thresholds of small neat houses, with little
railings, inclosing little green plots. Threshold, house, railing, and
plot, each as like to the other as are those small commodities called
"nest-tables," which, "even as a broken mirror multiplies," summon to
the bewildered eye countless iterations of one four-legged individual.
Paradise Place was a set of nest houses.

A cow had passed through the streets with a milkwoman behind; two young
and gay shopmen "looking after the gals," had reconnoitred the street,
and vanished in despair. The twilight advanced--but gently; and though
a star or two were up, the air was still clear. At the open window of
one of the tenements in this street sat Alice Darvil. She had been
working (that pretty excuse to women for thinking), and as the thoughts
grew upon her, and the evening waned, the work had fallen upon her knee,
and her hands dropped mechanically on her lap. Her profile was turned
towards the street; but without moving her head or changing her
attitude, her eyes glanced from time to time to her little girl, who
nestled on the ground beside her, tired with play; and wondering,
perhaps, why she was not already in bed, seemed as tranquil as the young
mother herself. And sometimes Alice's eyes filled with tears--and then
she sighed, as if to sigh the tears away. But poor Alice, if she
grieved, hers was now a silent and a patient grief.

The street was deserted of all other passengers, when a man passed along
the pavement on the side opposite to Alice's house. His garb was rude
and homely, between that of a labourer and a farmer; but still there was
an affectation of tawdry show about the bright scarlet handkerchief,
tied, in a sailor or smuggler fashion, round the sinewy throat; the hat
was set jauntily on one side, and, dangling many an inch from the
gaily-striped waistcoat, glittered a watch-chain and seals, which
appeared suspiciously out of character with the rest of his attire. The
passenger was covered with dust; and as the street was in a suburb
communicating with the high-road, and formed one of the entrances into
the town, he had probably, after long day's journey, reached his
evening's destination. The looks of this stranger wore anxious,
restless, and perturbed. In his gait and swagger there was the
recklessness of the professional blackguard; but in his vigilant,
prying, suspicious eyes there was a hang-dog expression of apprehension
and fear. He seemed a man upon whom Crime had set its significant
mark--and who saw a purse with one eye and a gibbet with the other.
Alice did not note the stranger, until she herself had attracted and
centred all his attention. He halted abruptly as he caught a view of
her face--shaded his eyes with his hands as if to gaze more
intently--and at length burst into an exclamation of surprise and
pleasure. At that instant Alice turned, and her gaze met that of the
stranger. The fascination of the basilisk can scarcely more stun and
paralyse its victim than the look of this stranger charmed, with the
appalling glamoury of horror, the eye and soul of Alice Darvil. Her
face became suddenly locked and rigid, her lips as white as marble, her
eyes almost started from their sockets--she pressed her hands
convulsively together, and shuddered--but still she did not move. The
man nodded, and grinned, and then, deliberately crossing the street,
gained the door, and knocked loudly. Still Alice did not stir--her
senses seemed to have forsaken her. Presently the stranger's loud,
rough voice was heard below, in answer to the accents of the solitary
woman-servant whom Alice kept in her employ; and his strong, heavy tread
made the slight staircase creak and tremble. Then Alice rose as by an
instinct, caught her child in her arms, and stood erect and motionless
facing the door. It opened--and the FATHER and DAUGHTER were once more
face to face within the same walls.

"Well, Alley, how are you, my blowen?--glad to see your old dad again,
I'll be sworn. No ceremony, sit down. Ha, ha! snug here--very snug--we
shall live together charmingly. Trade on your own account--eh?
sly!--well, can't desert your poor old father. Let's have something to
eat and drink."

So saying, Darvil threw himself at length upon the neat, prim little
chintz sofa, with the air of a man resolved to make himself perfectly at
home.

Alice gazed, and trembled violently, but still said nothing--the power
of voice had indeed left her.

"Come, why don't you stir your stumps? I suppose I must wait on
myself--fine manners!--But, ho, ho--a bell, by gosh--mighty grand--never
mind--I am used to call for my own wants."

A hearty tug at the frail bell-rope sent a shrill alarum half-way
through the long lath-and-plaster row of Paradise Place, and left the
instrument of the sound in the hand of its creator.

Up came the maid-servant, a formal old woman, most respectable.

"Hark ye, old girl!" said Darvil; "bring up the best you have to
eat--not particular--let there be plenty. And I say--a bottle of
brandy. Come, don't stand there staring like a stuck pig. Budge! Hell
and furies! don't you hear me?"

The servant retreated, as if a pistol had been put to her head, and
Darvil, laughing loud, threw himself again upon the sofa. Alice looked
at him, and, still without saying a word, glided from the room--her
child in her arms. She hurried down-stairs, and in the hall met her
servant. The latter, who was much attached to her mistress, was alarmed
to see her about to leave the house.

"Why, marm, where be you going? Dear heart, you have no bonnet on!
What is the matter? Who is this?"

"Oh!" cried Alice, in agony; "what shall I do?--where shall I fly?" The
door above opened. Alice heard, started, and the next moment was in the
street. She ran on breathlessly, and like one insane. Her mind was,
indeed, for the time, gone; and had a river flowed before her way, she
would have plunged into an escape from a world that seemed too narrow to
hold a father and his child.

But just as she turned the corner of a street that led into the more
public thoroughfares, she felt her arm grasped, and a voice called out
her name in surprised and startled accents.

"Heavens, Mrs. Butler! Alice! What do I see? What is the matter?"

"Oh, sir, save me!--you are a good man--a great man--save me--he is
returned!"

"He! who? Mr. Butler?" said the banker (for that gentleman it was) in a
changed and trembling voice.

"No, no--ah, not he!--I did not say /he/--I said my father--my,
my--ah--look behind--look behind--is he coming?"

"Calm yourself, my dear young friend--no one is near. I will go and
reason with your father. No one shall harm you--I will protect you. Go
back--go back, I will follow--we must not be seen together." And the
tall banker seemed trying to shrink into a nutshell.

"No, no," said Alice, growing yet paler, "I cannot go back."

"Well, then, just follow me to the door--your servant shall get you your
bonnet, and accompany you to my house, where you can wait till I return.
Meanwhile I will see your father, and rid you, I trust, of his
presence."

The banker, who spoke in a very hurried and even impatient voice, waited
for no reply, but took his way to Alice's house. Alice herself did not
follow, but remained in the very place where she was left, till joined
by her servant, who then conducted her to the rich man's residence. . .
But Alice's mind had not recovered its shock, and her thoughts
wandered alarmingly.

CHAPTER VII.

"/Miramont./--Do they chafe roundly?
/Andrew./--As they were rubbed with soap, sir,
And now they swear aloud, now calm again
Like a ring of bells, whose sound the wind still utters,
And then they sit in council what to do,
And then they jar again what shall be done?"
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

OH! what a picture of human nature it was when the banker and the
vagabond sat together in that little drawing-room, facing each
other,--one in the armchair, one on the sofa! Darvil was still employed
on some cold meat, and was making wry faces at the very indifferent
brandy which he had frightened the formal old servant into buying at the
nearest public-house; and opposite sat the respectable--highly
respectable man of forms and ceremonies, of decencies and quackeries,
gazing gravely upon this low, daredevil ruffian:--the well-to-do
hypocrite--the penniless villain;--the man who had everything to
lose--the man who had nothing in the wide world but his own mischievous,
rascally life, a gold watch, chain and seals, which he had stolen the
day before, and thirteen shillings and threepence halfpenny in his left
breeches pocket!

The man of wealth was by no means well acquainted with the nature of the
beast before him. He had heard from Mrs. Leslie (as we remember) the
outline of Alice's history, and ascertained that their joint
/protegee's/ father was a great blackguard; but he expected to find Mr.
Darvil a mere dull, brutish villain--a peasant-ruffian--a blunt serf,
without brains, or their substitute, effrontery. But Luke Darvil was a
clever, half-educated fellow: he did not sin from ignorance, but had wit
enough to have bad principles, and he was as impudent as if he had lived
all his life in the best society. He was not frightened at the banker's
drab breeches and imposing air--not he! The Duke of Wellington would
not have frightened Luke Darvil, unless his grace had had the constables
for his /aides-de-camp/.

The banker, to use a homely phrase, was "taken aback."

"Look you here, Mr. What's-your-name!" said Darvil, swallowing a glass
of the raw alcohol as if it had been water--"look you now--you can't
humbug me. What the devil do you care about my daughter's
respectability or comfort, or anything else, grave old dog as you are!
It is my daughter herself you are licking your brown old chaps at!--and,
'faith, my Alley is a very pretty girl--very--but queer as moonshine.
You'll drive a much better bargain with me than with her."

The banker coloured scarlet--he bit his lips and measured his companion
from head to foot (while the latter lolled on the sofa), as if he were
meditating the possibility of kicking him down-stairs. But Luke Darvil
would have thrashed the banker and all his clerks into the bargain. His
frame was like a trunk of thews and muscles, packed up by that careful
dame, Nature, as tightly as possible; and a prizefighter would have
thought twice before he had entered the ring against so awkward a
customer. The banker was a man prudent to a fault, and he pushed his
chair six inches back, as he concluded his survey.

"Sir," then said he, very quietly, "do not let us misunderstand each
other. Your daughter is safe from your control--if you molest her, the
law will protect--"

"She is not of age," said Darvil. "Your health, old boy."

"Whether she is of age or not," returned the banker, unheeding the
courtesy conveyed in the last sentence, "I do not care three straws--I
know enough of the law to know that if she have rich friends in this
town, and you have none, she will be protected and you will go to the
treadmill."

"That is spoken like a sensible man," said Darvil, for the first time
with a show of respect in his manner; "you now take a practical view of
matters, as we used to say at the spouting-club."

"If I were in your situation, Mr. Darvil, I tell you what I would do. I
would leave my daughter and this town to-morrow morning, and I would
promise never to return, and never to molest her, on condition she
allowed me a certain sum from her earnings, paid quarterly."

"And if I preferred living with her?"

"In that case, I, as a magistrate of this town, would have you sent away
as a vagrant, or apprehended--"

"Ha!"

"Apprehended on suspicion of stealing that gold chain and seals which
you wear so ostentatiously."

"By goles, but you're a clever fellow," said Darvil, involuntarily; "you
know human natur."

The banker smiled: strange to say, he was pleased with the compliment.

"But," resumed Darvil, helping himself to another slice of beef, "you
are in the wrong box--planted in Queer Street, as /we/ say in London;
for if you care a d--n about my daughter's respectability, you will
never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft--and so there's tit for
tat, my old gentleman!"

"I shall deny that you are her father, Mr. Darvil; and I think you will
find it hard to prove the fact in any town where I am a magistrate."

"By goles, what a good prig you would have made! You are as sharp as a
gimlet. Surely you were brought up at the Old Bailey!"

"Mr. Darvil, be ruled. You seem a man not deaf to reason, and I ask you
whether, in any town in this country, a poor man in suspicious
circumstances can do anything against a rich man whose character is
established? Perhaps you are right in the main: I have nothing to do
with that. But I tell you that you shall quit this house in half an
hour--that you shall never enter it again but at your peril; and if you
do--within ten minutes from that time you shall be in the town gaol. It
is no longer a contest between you and your defenceless daughter; it is
a contest between--"

"A tramper in fustian, and a gemman as drives a coach," interrupted
Darvil, laughing bitterly, yet heartily. "Good--good!"

The banker rose. "I think you have made a very clever definition,"
said he. "Half an hour--you recollect--good evening."

"Stay," said Darvil; "you are the first man I have seen for many a year
that I can take a fancy to. Sit down--sit down, I say, and talk a bit,
and we shall come to terms soon, I dare say;--that's right. Lord! how I
should like to have you on the roadside instead of within these four
gimcrack walls. Ha! ha! the argufying would be all in my favour then."

The banker was not a brave man, and his colour changed slightly at the
intimation of this obliging wish. Darvil eyed him grimly and
chucklingly.

The rich man resumed: "That may or may not be, Mr. Darvil, according as
I might happen or not to have pistols about me. But to the point. Quit
this house without further debate, without noise, without mentioning to
any one else your claim upon its owner--"

"Well, and the return?"

"Ten guineas now, and the same sum quarterly, as long as the young lady
lives in this town, and you never persecute her by word or letter."

"That is forty guineas a year. I can't live upon it."

"You will cost less in the House of Correction, Mr. Darvil."

"Come, make it a hundred: Alley is cheap at that."

"Not a farthing more," said the banker, buttoning up his breeches
pockets with a determined air.

"Well, out with the shiners."

"Do you promise or not?"

"I promise."

"There are your ten guineas. If in half an hour you are not gone--why,
then--"

"Then?"

"Why, then you have robbed me of ten guineas, and must take the usual
consequences of robbery."

Darvil started to his feet--his eyes glared--he grasped the
carving-knife before him.

"You are a bold fellow," said the banker, quietly; "but it won't do. It
is not worth your while to murder me; and I am a man sure to be missed."

Darvil sank down, sullen and foiled. The respectable man was more than
a match for the villain.

"Had you been as poor as I,--Gad! what a rogue you would have been!"

"I think not," said the banker; "I believe roguery to be a very bad
policy. Perhaps once I /was/ almost as poor as you are, but I never
turned rogue."

"You never were in my circumstances," returned Darvil, gloomily. "I was
a gentleman's son. Come, you shall hear my story. My father was
well-born, but married a maid-servant when he was at college; his family
disowned him, and left him to starve. He died in the struggle against a
poverty he was not brought up to, and my dam went into service again;
became housekeeper to an old bachelor--sent me to school--but mother had
a family by the old bachelor, and I was taken from school and put to
trade. All hated me--for I was ugly; damn them! Mother cut me--I
wanted money--robbed the old bachelor--was sent to gaol, and learned
there a lesson or two how to rob better in future. Mother died,--I was
adrift on the world. The world was my foe--could not make it up with
the world, so we went to war;--you understand, old boy? Married a poor
woman and pretty;--wife made me jealous--had learned to suspect every
one. Alice born--did not believe her mine: not like me--perhaps a
gentleman's child. I hate--I loathe gentlemen. Got drunk one
night--kicked my wife in the stomach three weeks after her confinement.
Wife died--tried for my life--got off. Went to another county--having
had a sort of education, and being sharp eno', got work as a mechanic.
Hated work just as I hated gentlemen--for was I not by blood a
gentleman? There was the curse. Alice grew up; never looked on her as
my flesh and blood. Her mother was a w----! Why should not /she/ be
one? There, that's enough. Plenty of excuse, I think, for all I have
ever done. Curse the world--curse the rich--curse the handsome--curse
--curse all!"

"You have been a very foolish man," said the banker; "and seem to me to
have had very good cards, if you had known how to play them. However,
that is your lookout. It is not yet too late to repent; age is creeping
on you.--Man, there is another world."

The banker said the last words with a tone of solemn and even dignified
adjuration.

"You think so--do you?" said Darvil, staring at him.

"From my soul I do."

"Then you are not the sensible man I took you for," replied Darvil,
drily; "and I should like to talk to you on that subject."

But our Dives, however sincere a believer, was by no means one

"At whose control
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul."

He had words of comfort for the pious, but he had none for the
sceptic--he could soothe, but he could not convert. It was not in his
way; besides, he saw no credit in making a convert of Luke Darvil.
Accordingly, he again rose with some quickness, and said:

"No, sir; that is useless, I fear, and I have no time to spare; and so
once more good night to you."

"But you have not arranged where my allowance is to be sent."

"Ah! true; I will guarantee it. You will find my name sufficient
security."

"At least, it is the best I can get," returned Darvil, carelessly; "and
after all, it is not a bad chance day's work. But I'm sure I can't say
where the money shall be sent. I don't know a man who would not grab
it."

"Very well, then--the best thing (I speak as a man of business) will be
to draw on me for ten guineas quarterly. Wherever you are staying, any
banker can effect this for you. But mind, if ever you overdraw the
account stops."

"I understand," said Darvil; "and when I have finished the bottle I
shall be off."

"You had better," replied the banker, as he opened the door.

The rich man returned home hurriedly. "So Alice, after all, has some
gentle blood in her veins," thought he. "But that father--no, it will
never do. I wish he were hanged and nobody the wiser. I should very
much like to arrange the matter without marrying; but then --scandal--scandal--scandal. After all, I had better give up all
thoughts of her. She is monstrous handsome, and so--humph:--I shall
never grow an old man."

CHAPTER VIII.

"Began to bend down his admiring eyes
On all her touching looks and qualities,
Turning their shapely sweetness every way
Till 'twas his food and habit day by day."
LEIGH HUNT.

THERE must have been a secret something about Alice Darvil singularly
captivating, that (associated as she was with images of the most sordid
and the vilest crimes) left her still pure and lovely alike in the eyes
of a man as fastidious as Ernest Maltravers, and of a man as influenced
by all the thoughts and theories of the world as the shrewd banker of
C------. Amidst things foul and hateful had sprung up this beautiful
flower, as if to preserve the inherent heavenliness and grace of human
nature, and proclaim the handiwork of God in scenes where human nature
had been most debased by the abuses of social art; and where the light
of God Himself was most darkened and obscured. That such contrasts,
though rarely and as by chance, are found, every one who has carefully
examined the wastes and deserts of life must own. I have drawn Alice
Darvil scrupulously from life, and I can declare that I have not
exaggerated hue or lineament in the portrait. I do not suppose, with
our good banker, that she owed anything, unless it might be a greater
delicacy of form and feature, to whatever mixture of gentle blood was in
her veins. But, somehow or other, in her original conformation there
was the happy bias of the plantes towards the Pure and the Bright. For,
despite Helvetius, a common experience teaches us that though education
and circumstances may mould the mass, Nature herself sometimes forms the
individual, and throws into the clay, or its spirit, so much of beauty
or deformity, that nothing can utterly subdue the original elements of
character. From sweets one draws poison--from poisons another extracts
but sweets. But I, often deeply pondering over the psychological
history of Alice Darvil, think that one principal cause why she escaped
the early contaminations around her was in the slow and protracted
development of her intellectual faculties. Whether or not the brutal
violence of her father had in childhood acted through the nerves upon
the brain, certain it is that until she knew Maltravers--until she
loved--till she was cherished--her mind had seemed torpid and locked up.
True, Darvil had taught her nothing, nor permitted her to be taught
anything; but that mere ignorance would have been no preservation to a
quick, observant mind. It was the bluntness of the senses themselves
that operated tike an armour between her mind and the vile things around
her. It was the rough, dull covering of the chrysalis, framed to bear
rude contact and biting weather, that the butterfly might break forth,
winged and glorious, in due season. Had Alice been a quick child, Alice
would have probably grown up a depraved and dissolute woman; but she
comprehended, she understood little or nothing, till she found an
inspirer in that affection which inspires both beast and man; which
makes the dog (in his natural state one of the meanest of the savage
race) a companion, a guardian, a protector, and raises Instinct half-way
to the height of Reason.

The banker had a strong regard for Alice; and when he reached home, he
heard with great pain that she was in a high state of fever. She
remained beneath his roof that night, and the elderly gentlewoman, his
relation and /gouvernante/, attended her. The banker slept but little;
and the next morning his countenance was unusually pale. Towards
daybreak Alice had fallen into a sound and refreshing sleep; and when,
on waking, she found, by a note from her host, that her father had left
her house, and she might return in safety and without fear, a violent
flood of tears, followed by long and grateful prayer, contributed to the
restoration of her mind and nerves. Imperfect as this young woman's
notions of abstract right and wrong still were, she was yet sensible to
the claims of a father (no matter how criminal) upon his child: for
feelings with her were so good and true, that they supplied in a great
measure the place of principles. She knew that she could not have lived
under the same roof with her dreadful parent; but she still felt an
uneasy remorse at thinking he had been driven from that roof in
destitution and want. She hastened to dress herself and seek an
audience with her protector; and the latter found with admiration and
pleasure that he had anticipated her own instantaneous and involuntary
design in the settlement made upon Darvil. He then communicated to
Alice the compact he had already formed with her father, and she wept
and kissed his hand when she heard, and secretly resolved that she would
work hard to be enabled to increase the sum allowed. Oh, if her labours
could serve to retrieve a parent from the necessity of darker resources
for support! Alas! when crime has become a custom, it is like gaming or
drinking--the excitement is wanting; and had Luke Darvil been suddenly
made inheritor of the wealth of a Rothschild, he would either still have
been a villain in one way or the other; or /ennui/ would have awakened
conscience, and he would have died of the change of habit.

Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral feelings than even
by her physical beauty. Her love for her child, for instance, impressed
him powerfully, and he always gazed upon her with softer eyes when he
saw her caressing or nursing the little fatherless creature, whose
health was now delicate and precarious. It is difficult to say whether
he was absolutely in love with Alice; the phrase is too strong, perhaps,
to be applied to a man past fifty, who had gone through emotions and
trials enough to wear away freshness from his heart. His feelings
altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained towards her, were of a
very complicated nature; and it will be long, perhaps, before the reader
can thoroughly comprehend them. He conducted Alice home that day; but
he said little by the way, perhaps because his female relation, for
appearance' sake, accompanied them also. He, however, briefly cautioned
Alice on no account to communicate to any one that it was her father who
had been her visitor; and she still shuddered too much at the
reminiscence to appear likely to converse on it. The banker also judged
it advisable to be so far confidential with Alice's servant as to take
her aside, and tell her that the inauspicious stranger of the previous
evening had been a very distant relation of Mrs. Butler, who, from a
habit of drunkenness, had fallen into evil and disorderly courses. The
banker added with a sanctified air that he trusted, by a little serious
conversation, he had led the poor man to better notions, and that he had
gone home with an altered mind to his family. "But, my good Hannah," he
concluded, "you know you are a superior person, and above the vulgar sin
of indiscriminate gossip; therefore, mention what has occurred to no
one; it can do no good to Mrs. Butler--it may hurt the man himself, who
is well-to-do--better off than he seems; and who, I hope, with grace,
may be a sincere penitent; and it will also--but that is nothing--very
seriously displease me. By the by, Hannah, I shall be able to get your
grandson into the Free School."

The banker was shrewd enough to perceive that he had carried his point;
and he was walking home, satisfied, on the whole, with the way matters
had been arranged, when he was met by a brother magistrate.

"Ha!" said the latter, "and how are you, my good sir? Do you know that
we have had the Bow Street officers here, in search of a notorious
villain who has broken from prison? He is one of the most determined
and dexterous burglars in all England, and the runners have hunted him
into our town. His very robberies have tracked him by the way. He
robbed a gentleman the day before yesterday of his watch, and left him
for dead on the road--this was not thirty miles hence."

"Bless me!" said the banker, with emotion; "and what is the wretch's
name?"

"Why, he has as many aliases as a Spanish grandee; but I believe the
last name he has assumed is Peter Watts."

"Oh!" said our friend, relieved,--"well, have the runners found him?"

"No, but they are on his scent. A fellow answering to his description
was seen by the man at the toll-bar, at daybreak this morning, on the
way to F------; the officers are after him."

"I hope he may meet with his deserts--and crime is never unpunished even
in this world. My best compliments to your lady:--and how is little
Jack?--Well! glad to hear it--fine boy, little Jack! good day."

"Good day, my dear sir. Worthy man, that!"

CHAPTER IX.

"But who is this? thought he, a demon vile.
With wicked meaning and a vulgar style;
Hammond they call him--they can give the name
Of man to devils. Why am I so tame?
Why crush I not the viper? Fear replied,
Watch him a while, and let his strength be tried."
CRABBE.

THE next morning, after breakfast, the banker took his horse--a
crop-eared, fast-trotting hackney--and merely leaving word that he was
going upon business into the country, and should not return to dinner,
turned his back on the spires of C------.

He rode slowly, for the day was hot. The face of the country, which was
fair and smiling, might have tempted others to linger by the way; but
our hard and practical man of the world was more influenced by the
weather than the loveliness of the scenery. He did not look upon Nature
with the eye of imagination; perhaps a railroad, had it then and there
existed, would have pleased him better than the hanging woods, the
shadowy valleys, and the changeful river that from time to time
beautified the landscape on either side the road. But, after all, there
is a vast deal of hypocrisy in the affected admiration for Nature;--and
I don't think one person in a hundred cares for what lies by the side of
a road, so long as the road itself is good, hills levelled, and
turnpikes cheap.

It was midnoon, and many miles had been passed, when the banker turned
down a green lane and quickened his pace. At the end of about
three-quarters of an hour, he arrived at a little solitary inn, called
"The Angler,"--put up his horse, ordered his dinner at six
o'clock--begged to borrow a basket to hold his fish--and it was then
apparent that a longish cane he had carried with him was capable of
being extended into a fishing-rod. He fitted in the various joints with
care, as if to be sure no accident had happened to the implement by the
journey--pried anxiously into the contents of a black case of lines and
flies--slung the basket behind his back, and while his horse was putting
down his nose and whisking about his tail, in the course of those
nameless coquetries that horses carry on with hostlers--our worthy
brother of the rod strode rapidly through some green fields, gained the
riverside, and began fishing with much semblance of earnest interest in
the sport. He had caught one trout, seemingly by accident--for the
astonished fish was hooked up on the outside of its jaw--probably while
in the act, not of biting, but of gazing at, the bait, when he grew
discontented with the spot he had selected; and, after looking round as
if to convince himself that he was not liable to be disturbed or
observed (a thought hateful to the fishing fraternity), he stole quickly
along the margin, and finally quitting the riverside altogether, struck
into a path that, after a sharp walk of nearly all hour, brought him to
the door of a cottage. He knocked twice, and then entered of his own
accord--nor was it till the summer sun was near its decline that the
banker regained his inn. His simple dinner, which they had delayed in
wonder at the protracted absence of the angler, and in expectation of
the fishes he was to bring back to be fried, was soon despatched; his
horse was ordered to the door, and the red clouds in the west already
betokened the lapse of another day, as he spurred from the spot on the
fast-trotting hackney, fourteen miles an hour.

"That 'ere gemman has a nice bit of blood," said the hostler, scratching
his ear.

"Oiy,--who be he?" said a hanger-on of the stables.

"I dooan't know. He has been here twice afoar, and he never cautches
anything to sinnify--he be mighty fond of fishing, surely."

Meanwhile, away sped the banker--milestone on milestone glided by--and
still, scarce turning a hair, trotted gallantly out the good hackney.
But the evening grew darker, and it began to rain; a drizzling,
persevering rain, that wets a man through ere he is aware of it. After
his fiftieth year, a gentleman who has a tender regard for himself does
not like to get wet; and the rain inspired the banker, who was subject
to rheumatism, with the resolution to take a short cut along the fields.
There were one or two low hedges by this short way, but the banker had
been there in the spring, and knew every inch of the ground. The
hackney leaped easily--and the rider had a tolerably practised seat--and
two miles saved might just prevent the menaced rheumatism: accordingly,
our friend opened a white gate, and scoured along the fields without any
misgivings as to the prudence of his choice. He arrived at his first
leap--there was the hedge, its summit just discernible in the dim light.
On the other side, to the right was a haystack, and close by this
haystack seemed the most eligible place for clearing the obstacle. Now
since the banker had visited this place, a deep ditch, that served as a
drain, had been dug at the opposite base of the hedge, of which neither
horse nor man was aware, so that the leap was far more perilous than was
anticipated. Unconscious of this additional obstacle, the rider set off
in a canter. The banker was high in air, his loins bent back, his rein
slackened, his right hand raised knowingly--when the horse took fright
at an object crouched by the haystack--swerved, plunged midway into the
ditch, and pitched its rider two or three yards over its head. The
banker recovered himself sooner than might have been expected; and,
finding himself, though bruised and shaken, still whole and sound,
hastened to his horse. But the poor animal had not fared so well as its
master, and its off-shoulder was either put out or dreadfully sprained.
It had scrambled its way out of the ditch, and there it stood
disconsolate by the hedge, as lame as one of the trees that, at
irregular intervals, broke the symmetry of the barrier. On ascertaining
the extent of his misfortune, the banker became seriously uneasy; the
rain increased--he was several miles yet from home--he was in the midst
of houseless fields, with another leap before him--the leap he had just
passed behind--and no other egress that he knew of into the main road.
While these thoughts passed through his brain, he became suddenly aware
that he was not alone. The dark object that had frightened his horse
rose slowly from the snug corner it had occupied by the haystack, and a
gruff voice that made the banker thrill to the marrow of his bones,
cried, "Holla, who the devil are you?"

Lame as his horse was, the banker instantly put his foot into the
stirrup; but before he could mount, a heavy gripe was laid on his
shoulder--and turning round with as much fierceness as he could assume,
he saw--what the tone of the voice had already led him to forebode--the
ill-omened and cut-throat features of Luke Darvil.

"Ha! ha! my old annuitant, my clever feelosofer--jolly old boy--how are
you?--give us a fist. Who would have thought to meet you on a rainy
night, by a lone haystack, with a deep ditch on one side, and no
chimney-pot within sight? Why, old fellow, I, Luke Darvil,--I, the
vagabond--I whom you would have sent to the treadmill for being poor,
and calling on my own daughter--I am as rich as you are here--and as
great, and as strong, and as powerful."

And while he spoke, Darvil, who was really an undersized man, seemed to
swell and dilate, till he appeared half a head taller than the shrinking
banker, who was five feet eleven inches without his shoes.

"E-hem!" said the rich man, clearing his throat, which seemed to him
uncommonly husky; "I do not know whether I insulted your poverty, my
dear Mr. Darvil--I hope not; but this is hardly a time for talking--pray
let me mount, and--"

"Not a time for talking!" interrupted Darvil angrily; "it's just the
time to my mind: let me consider,--ay, I told you that whenever we met
by the roadside it would be my turn to have the best of the argufying."

"I dare say--I dare say, my good fellow."

"Fellow not me!--I won't be fellowed now. I say I have the best of it
here--man to man--I am your match."

But why quarrel with me?" said the banker, coaxingly; "I never meant you
harm, and I am sure you cannot mean me harm."

"No!--and why?" asked Darvil, coolly;--" why do you think I can mean you
no harm?"

"Because your annuity depends on me."

"Shrewdly put--we'll argufy that point. My life is a bad one, not worth
more than a year's purchase; now, suppose you have more than forty
pounds about you--it may be better worth my while to draw my knife
across your gullet than to wait for the quarter-day's ten pounds a time.
You see it's all a matter of calculation, my dear, Mr. What's-your-name!"

"But," replied the banker, and his teeth began to chatter, "I have not
forty pounds about me."

"How do I know that?--you say so. Well, in the town yonder your word
goes for more than mine; I never gainsaid you when you put that to me,
did I? But here, by the haystack, my word is better than yours; and if
I say you must and shall have forty pounds about you, let's see whether
you dare contradict me."

"Look you, Darvil," said the banker, summoning up all his energy and
intellect, for his moral power began now to back his physical cowardice,
and he spoke calmly, and even bravely, though his heart throbbed aloud
against his breast, and you might have knocked him down with a
feather--"the London runners are even now hot after you."

"Ha!--you lie!"

"Upon my honour I speak the truth; I heard the news last evening. They
tracked you to C------; they tracked you out of the town; a word from me
would have given you into their hands. I said nothing--you are
safe--you may yet escape. I will even help you to fly the country, and
live out your natural date of years, secure and in peace."

"You did not say that the other day in the snug drawing-room; you see I
have the best of it now--own that."

"I do," said the banker.

Darvil chuckled, and rubbed his hands.

The man of wealth once more felt his importance, and went on. "This is
one side of the question. On the other, suppose you rob and murder me,
do you think my death will lessen the heat of the pursuit against you?
The whole country will be in arms, and before forty-eight hours are over
you will be hunted down like a mad dog."

Darvil was silent, as if in thought; and after a pause, replied: "Well,
you are a 'cute one after all. What have you got about you? you know
you drove a hard bargain the other day--now it's my market--fustian has
riz--kersey has fell."

"All I have about me shall be yours," said the banker, eagerly.

"Give it me, then."

"There!" said the banker, placing his purse and pocketbook into Darvil's
bands.

"And the watch?"

"The watch?--well there!"

"What's that?"

The banker's senses were sharpened by fear, but they were not so sharp
as those of Darvil; he heard nothing but the rain pattering on the
leaves, and the rush of water in the ditch at hand. Darvil stooped and
listened--till, raising himself again, with a deep-drawn breath, he
said, "I think there are rats in the haystack; they will be running over
me in my sleep; but they are playful creturs, and I like 'em. And now,
my /dear/ sir, I am afraid I must put an end to you!"

"Good Heavens, what do you mean? How?"

"Man, there is another world!" quoth the ruffian, mimicking the banker's
solemn tone in their former interview. "So much the better for you! In
that world they don't tell tales."

"I swear I will never betray you."

"You do?--swear it, then."

"By all my hopes of earth and heaven!"

"What a d-----d coward you be!" said Darvil, laughing scornfully.
"Go--you are safe. I am in good humour with myself again. I crow over
you, for no man can make me tremble. And villain as you think me, while
you fear me you cannot despise--you respect me. Go, I say--go."

The banker was about to obey, when suddenly, from the haystack, a broad,
red light streamed upon the pair, and the next moment Darvil was seized
from behind, and struggling in the gripe of a man nearly as powerful as
himself. The light, which came from a dark-lanthorn, placed on the
ground, revealed the forms of a peasant in a smock-frock, and two
stout-built, stalwart men, armed with pistols--besides the one engaged
with Darvil.

The whole of this scene was brought as by the trick of the stage--
as by a flash of lightning--as by the change of a showman's
phantasmagoria--before the astonished eyes of the banker. He stood
arrested and spell-bound, his hand on his bridle, his foot on his
stirrup. A moment more and Darvil had clashed his antagonist on the
ground; he stood at a little distance, his face reddened by the glare of
the lanthorn and fronting his assailants--that fiercest of all beasts, a
desperate man at bay! He had already succeeded in drawing forth his
pistols, and he held one in each hand--his eyes flashing from beneath
his bent brows and turning quickly from foe to foe! At last those
terrible eyes rested on the late reluctant companion of his solitude.

"So /you/ then betrayed me," he said, very slowly, and directed his
pistol to the head of the dismounted horseman.

"No, no!" cried one of the officers, for such were Darvil's assailants;
"fire away in this direction, my hearty--we're paid for it. The
gentleman knew nothing at all about it."

"Nothing, by G--!" cried the banker, startled out of his sanctity.

"Then I shall keep my shot," said Darvil; "and mind, the first who
approaches me is a dead man."

It so happened that the robber and the officers were beyond the distance
which allows sure mark for a pistol-shot, and each party felt the
necessity of caution.

"Your time is up, my swell cove!" cried the head of the detachment; "you
have had your swing, and a long one it seems to have been--you must now
give in. Throw down your barkers, or we must make mutton of you, and
rob the gallows."

Darvil did not reply, and the officers, accustomed to hold life cheap,
moved on towards him--their pistols cocked and levelled.

Darvil fired--one of the men staggered and fell. With a kind of
instinct Darvil had singled out the one with whom he had before wrestled
for life. The ruffian waited not for the others--he turned and fled
along the fields.

"Zounds, he is off!" cried the other two, and they rushed after him in
pursuit. A pause--a shot--another--an oath--a groan--and all was still.

"It's all up with him now," said one of the runners, in the distance;
"he dies game."

At these words, the peasant, who had before skulked behind the haystack,
seized the lanthorn from the ground, and ran to the spot. The banker
involuntarily followed.

There lay Luke Darvil on the grass--still living, but a horrible and
ghastly spectacle. One ball had pierced his breast, another had shot
away his jaw. His eyes rolled fearfully, and he tore up the grass with
his hands.

The officers looked coldly on. "He was a clever fellow!" said one.

"And has given us much trouble," said the other; "let us see to Will."

"But he's not dead yet," said the banker, shuddering.

"Sir, he cannot live a minute."

Darvil raised himself bolt upright--shook his clenched fist at his
conquerors, and a fearful gurgling howl, which the nature of his wounds
did not allow him to syllable into a curse, came from his breast--with
that he fell flat on his back--a corpse.

"I am afraid, sir," said the elder officer, turning away, you had a
narrow escape--but how came you here?"

"Rather, how came /you/ here?"

"Honest Hodge there, with the lanthorn, had marked the fellow skulk
behind the haystack, when he himself was going out to snare rabbits. He
had seen our advertisement of Watts' person, and knew that we were then
at a public house some miles off. He came to us--conducted us to the
spot--we heard voices--showed up the glim--and saw our man. Hodge, you
are a good subject, and love justice."

"Yees, but I shall have the rewourd," said Hodge, showing his teeth.

"Talk o' that by and by," said the officer. "Will, how are you, man?"

"Bad," groaned the poor runner, and a rush of blood from the lips
followed the groan.

It was many days before the ex-member for C------ sufficiently recovered
the tone of his mind to think further of Alice; when he did, it was with
great satisfaction that he reflected that Darvil was no more, and that
the deceased ruffian was only known to the neighbourhood by the name of
Peter Watts.

BOOK V.

PARODY.

My hero, turned author, lies mute in this section,
You may pass by the place if you're bored by reflection:
But if honest enough to be fond of the Muse,
Stay, and read where you're able, and sleep where you choose.
THEOC. /Epig. in Hippon/.

CHAPTER I.

"My genius spreads her wing,
And flies where Britain courts the western spring.

* * * * *

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by,
Intent on high designs."-GOLDSMITH.

I HAVE no respect for the Englishman who re-enters London after long
residence abroad without a pulse that beats quick and a heart that
heaves high. The public buildings are few, and, for the most part,
mean; the monuments of antiquity not comparable to those which the
pettiest town in Italy can boast of; the palaces are sad rubbish; the
houses of our peers and princes are shabby and shapeless heaps of brick.
But what of all this? the spirit of London is in her thoroughfares--her
population! What wealth--what cleanliness--what order--what animation!
How majestic, and yet how vivid, is the life that runs through her
myriad veins! How, as the lamps blaze upon you at night, and street
after street glides by your wheels, each so regular in its symmetry, so
equal in its civilization--how all speak of the CITY OF FREEMEN.

Yes, Maltravers felt his heart swell within him as the post-horses
whirled on his dingy carriage--over Westminster Bridge--along
Whitehall--through Regent Street--towards one of the quiet and
private-house-like hotels that are scattered round the neighbourhood of
Grosvenor Square.

Ernest's arrival had been expected. He had written from Paris to
Cleveland to announce it; and Cleveland had, in reply, informed him that
he had engaged apartments for him at Mivart's. The smiling waiters
ushered him into a spacious and well-aired room--the armchair was
already wheeled by the fire--a score or so of letters strewed the table,
together with two of the evening papers. And how eloquently of busy
England do those evening papers speak! A stranger might have felt that
he wanted no friend to welcome him--the whole room smiled on him a
welcome.

Maltravers ordered his dinner and opened his letters: they were of no
importance; one from his steward, one from his banker, another about the
county races, a fourth from a man he had never heard of, requesting the
vote and powerful interest of Mr. Maltravers for the county of B------,
should the rumour of a dissolution be verified; the unknown candidate
referred Mr. Maltravers to his "well-known public character." From
these epistles Ernest turned impatiently, and perceived a little
three-cornered note which had hitherto escaped his attention. It was
from Cleveland, intimating that he was in town; that his health still
precluded his going out, but that he trusted to see his dear Ernest as
soon as he arrived.

Maltravers was delighted at the prospect of passing his evening so
agreeably; he soon despatched his dinner and his newspapers, and walked
in the brilliant lamplight of a clear frosty evening of early December
in London, to his friend's house in Curzon Street: a small house,
bachelor-like and unpretending; for Cleveland spent his moderate though
easy fortune almost entirely at his country villa. The familiar face of
the old valet greeted Ernest at the door, and he only paused to hear
that his guardian was nearly recovered to his usual health, ere he was
in the cheerful drawing-room, and--since Englishmen do not
embrace--returning the cordial gripe of the kindly Cleveland.

"Well, my dear Ernest," said Cleveland, after they had gone through the
preliminary round of questions and answers, "here you are at last:
Heaven be praised; and how well you are looking--how much you are
improved! It is an excellent period of the year for your /debut/ in
London. I shall have time to make you intimate with people before the
whirl of 'the season' commences."

"Why, I thought of going to Burleigh, my country-place. I have not seen
it since I was a child."

"No, no! you have had solitude enough at Como, if I may trust to your
letter; you must now mix with the great London world; and you will enjoy
Burleigh the more in the summer."

"I fancy this great London world will give me very little pleasure; it
may be pleasant enough to young men just let loose from college, but
your crowded ball-rooms and monotonous clubs will be wearisome to one
who has grown fastidious before his time. /J'ai vecu beaucoup dans peu
d'annees. I have drawn in youth too much upon the capital of existence
to be highly delighted with the ostentatious parsimony with which our
great men economise pleasure."

"Don't judge before you have gone through the trial," said Cleveland:
"there is something in the opulent splendour, the thoroughly sustained
magnificence, with which the leaders of English fashion conduct even the
most insipid amusements, that is above contempt. Besides, you need not
necessarily live with the butterflies. There are plenty of bees that
will be very happy to make your acquaintance. Add to this, my dear
Ernest, the pleasure of being made of--of being of importance in your
own country. For you are young, well-born, and sufficiently handsome to
be an object of interest to mothers and to daughters; while your name,
and property, and interest, will make you courted by men who want to
borrow your money and obtain your influence in your county. No,
Maltravers, stay in London--amuse yourself your first year, and decide
on your occupation and career the next; but reconnoitre before you give
battle."

Maltravers was not ill-pleased to follow his friend's advice, since by
so doing he obtained his friend's guidance and society. Moreover, he
deemed it wise and rational to see, face to face, the eminent men in
England, with whom, if he fulfilled his promise to De Montaigne, he was
to run the race of honourable rivalry. Accordingly, he consented to
Cleveland's propositions.

"And have you," said he, hesitating, as he loitered by the door after
the stroke of twelve had warned him to take his leave--"have you never
heard anything of my--my--the unfortunate Alice Darvil?"

"Who?--Oh, that poor young woman; I remember!--not a syllable."

Maltravers sighed deeply and departed.

CHAPTER II.

"Je trouve que c'est une folie de vouloir etudier le monde en
simple spectateur. * * * Dans l'ecole du monde, comme dans
cette de l'amour, il faut commencer par pratiquer cc qu'on veut
apprendre."*--ROUSSEAU.

* I find that it is a folly to wish to study the world like a simple
spectator. * * * In the school of the world, as in that of love, it is
necessary to begin by practising what we wish to learn.

ERNEST MALTRAVERS was now fairly launched upon the wide ocean of London.
Amongst his other property was a house in Seamore Place--that quiet, yet
central street, which enjoys the air without the dust of the park. It
had been hitherto let, and, the tenant now quitting very opportunely,
Maltravers was delighted to secure so pleasant a residence: for he was
still romantic enough to desire to look out upon trees and verdure
rather than brick houses. He indulged only in two other luxuries: his
love of music tempted him to an opera-box, and he had that English
feeling which prides itself in the possession of beautiful horses,--a
feeling that enticed him into an extravagance on this head that baffled
the competition and excited the envy of much richer men. But four
thousand a year goes a great way with a single man who does not gamble,
and is too philosophical to make superfluities wants.

The world doubled his income, magnified his old country-seat into a
superb chateau, and discovered that his elder brother, who was only
three or four years older than himself, had no children. The world was
very courteous to Ernest Maltravers.

It was, as Cleveland said, just at that time of year when people are at
leisure to make new acquaintances. A few only of the most difficult
houses in town were open; and their doors were cheerfully expanded to
the accomplished ward of the popular Cleveland. Authors and statesmen,
and orators, and philosophers--to all he was presented;--all seemed
pleased with him, and Ernest became the fashion before he was conscious
of the distinction. But he had rightly foreboded. He had commenced
life too soon; he was disappointed; he found some persons he could
admire, some whom he could like, but none with whom he could grow
intimate, or for whom he could feel an interest. Neither his heart nor
his imagination was touched; all appeared to him like artificial
machines; he was discontented with things like life, but in which
something or other was wanting. He more than ever recalled the
brilliant graces of Valerie de Ventadour, which had thrown a charm over
the most frivolous circles; he even missed the perverse and fantastic
vanity of Castruccio. The mediocre poet seemed to him at least less
mediocre than the worldlings about him. Nay, even the selfish good
spirits and dry shrewdness of Lumley Ferrers would have been an
acceptable change to the dull polish and unrevealed egotism of jealous
wits and party politicians. "If these are the flowers of the parterre,
what must be the weeds?" said Maltravers to himself, returning from a
party at which he had met half a score of the most orthodox lions.

He began to feel the aching pain of satiety.

But the winter glided away--the season commenced, and Maltravers was
whirled on with the rest into the bubbling vortex.

CHAPTER III.

"And crowds commencing mere vexation,
Retirement sent its invitation."--SHENSTONE.

THE tench, no doubt, considers the pond in which he lives as the Great
World. There is no place, however stagnant, which is not the great
world to the creatures that move about, in it. People who have lived
all their lives in a village still talk of the world as if they had ever
seen it! An old woman in a hovel does not put her nose out of her door
on a Sunday without thinking she is going amongst the pomps and vanities
of the great world. /Ergo/, the great world is to all of us the little
circle in which we live. But as fine people set the fashion, so the
circle of fine people is called the Great World /par excellence/. Now
this great world is not a bad thing when we thoroughly understand it;
and the London great world is at least as good as any other. But then
we scarcely do understand that or anything else in our /beaux
jours/,--which, if they are sometimes the most exquisite, are also often
the most melancholy and the most wasted portion of our life. Maltravers
had not yet found out either /the set/ that pleased him or the species
of amusement that really amused. Therefore he drifted on and about the
vast whirlpool, making plenty of friends--going to balls and
dinners--and bored with both as men are who have no object in society.
Now the way society is enjoyed is to have a pursuit, a /metier/ of some
kind, and then to go into the world, either to make the individual
object a social pleasure, or to obtain a reprieve from some toilsome
avocation. Thus, if you are a politician--politics at once make an
object in your closet, and a social tie between others and yourself when
you are in the world. The same may be said of literature, though in a
less degree; and though, as fewer persons care about literature than
politics, your companions must be more select. If you are very young,
you are fond of dancing; if you are very profligate, perhaps you are
fond of flirtations with your friend's wife. These last are objects in
their way: but they don't last long, and, even with the most frivolous,
are not occupations that satisfy the whole mind and heart, in which
there is generally an aspiration after something useful. It is not
vanity alone that makes a man of the /mode/ invent a new bit or give his
name to a new kind of carriage; it is the influence of that mystic
yearning after utility, which is one of the master-ties between the
individual and the species.

Maltravers was not happy--that is a lot common enough; but he was not
amused--and that is a sentence more insupportable. He lost a great part
of his sympathy with Cleveland, for, when a man is not amused, he feels
an involuntary contempt for those who are. He fancies they are pleased
with trifles which his superior wisdom is compelled to disdain.
Cleveland was of that age when we generally grow social--for by being
rubbed long and often against the great loadstone of society, we obtain,
in a thousand little minute points, an attraction in common with our
fellows. Their petty sorrows and small joys--their objects of interest
or employment, at some time or other have been ours. We gather up a
vast collection of moral and mental farthings of exchange: and we
scarcely find any intellect too poor, but what we can deal with it in
some way. But in youth, we are egotists and sentimentalists, and
Maltravers belonged to the fraternity who employ

"The heart in passion and the head in rhymes."

At length--just when London begins to grow most pleasant--when
flirtations become tender, and water-parties numerous--when birds sing
in the groves of Richmond, and whitebait refresh the statesman by the
shores of Greenwich,--Maltravers abruptly fled from the gay metropolis,
and arrived, one lovely evening in July, at his own ivy-grown porch of
Burleigh.

What a soft, fresh, delicious evening it was! He had quitted his
carriage at the lodge, and followed it across the small but picturesque
park alone and on foot. He had not seen the place since childhood--he
had quite forgotten its aspect. He now wondered how he could have lived
anywhere else. The trees did not stand in stately avenues, nor did the
antlers of the deer wave above the sombre fern; it was not the domain of
a grand seigneur, but of an old, long-descended English squire.
Antiquity spoke in the moss-grown palings in the shadowy groves, in the
sharp gable-ends and heavy mullions of the house, as it now came in
view, at the base of a hill covered with wood--and partially veiled by
the shrubs of the neglected pleasure-ground, separated from the park by
the invisible ha-ha. There, gleamed in the twilight the watery face of
the oblong fish-pool, with its old-fashioned willows at each
corner--there, grey and quaint, was the monastic dial--and there was the
long terrace walk, with discoloured and broken vases, now filled with
the orange or the aloe, which, in honour of his master's arrival, the
gardener had extracted from the dilapidated green-house. The very
evidence of neglect around, the very weeds and grass on the
half-obliterated road, touched Maltravers with a sort of pitying and
remorseful affection for his calm and sequestered residence. And it was
not with his usual proud step and erect crest that he passed from the
porch to the solitary library, through a line of his servants:--the two
or three old retainers belonging to the place were utterly unfamiliar to
him, and they had no smile for their stranger lord.

CHAPTER IV.

"/Lucian./ He that is born to be a man neither should nor can
be anything nobler, greater, and better than a man.

"/Peregrine./ But, good Lucian, for the very reason that he may
not become less than a man, he should be always striving to be
more."--WIELAND'S /Peregrinus Proteus/.

IT was two years from the date of the last chapter before Maltravers
again appeared in general society. These two years had sufficed to
produce a revolution in his fate. Ernest Maltravers had lost the happy
rights of the private individual; he had given himself to the Public; he
had surrendered his name to men's tongues, and was a thing that all had
a right to praise, to blame, to scrutinise, to spy. Ernest Maltravers
had become an author.

Let no man tempt Gods and Columns, without weighing well the
consequences of his experiment. He who publishes a book, attended with
a moderate success, passes a mighty barrier. He will often look back
with a sigh of regret at the land he has left for ever. The beautiful
and decent obscurity of hearth and home is gone. He can no longer feel
the just indignation of manly pride when he finds himself ridiculed or
reviled. He has parted with the shadow of his life. His motives may be
misrepresented, his character belied; his manners, his person, his
dress, the "very trick of his walk" are all fair food for the cavil and
the caricature. He can never go back, he cannot even pause; he has
chosen his path, and all the natural feelings that make the nerve and
muscle of the active being urge him to proceed. To stop short is to
fail. He has told the world that he will make a name; and he must be
set down as a pretender, or toil on till the boast be fulfilled. Yet
Maltravers thought nothing of all this when, intoxicated with his own
dreams and aspirations, he desired to make a world his confidant; when
from the living nature, and the lore of books, and the mingled result of
inward study and external observation, he sought to draw forth something
that might interweave his name with the pleasurable associations of his
kind. His easy fortune and lonely state gave him up to his own thoughts
and contemplations; they suffused his mind, till it ran over upon the
page which makes the channel that connects the solitary Fountain with
the vast Ocean of Human Knowledge. The temperament of Maltravers was,
as we have seen, neither irritable nor fearful. He formed himself, as a
sculptor forms, with a model before his eyes and an ideal in his heart.
He endeavoured, with labour and patience, to approach nearer and nearer
with every effort to the standard of such excellence as he thought might
ultimately be attained by a reasonable ambition; and when, at last, his
judgment was satisfied, he surrendered the product with a tranquil
confidence to a more impartial tribunal.

His first work was successful; perhaps for this reason--that it bore the
stamp of the Honest and the Real. He did not sit down to report of what
he had never seen, to dilate on what he had never felt. A quiet and
thoughtful observer of life, his descriptions were the more vivid,
because his own first impressions were not yet worn away. His
experience had sunk deep; not on the arid surface of matured age, but in
the fresh soil of youthful emotions. Another reason, perhaps, that
obtained success for his essay was, that he had more varied and more
elaborate knowledge than young authors think it necessary to possess.
He did not, like Cesarini, attempt to make a show of words upon a
slender capital of ideas. Whether his style was eloquent or homely; it
was still in him a faithful transcript of considered and digested
thought. A third reason--and I dwell on these points not more to
elucidate the career of Maltravers than as hints which may be useful to
others--a third reason why Maltravers obtained a prompt and favourable
reception from the public was, that he had not hackneyed his
peculiarities of diction and thought in that worst of all schools for
the literary novice--the columns of a magazine. Periodicals form an
excellent mode of communication between the public and an author
/already/ established, who has lost the charm of novelty, but gained the
weight of acknowledged reputation; and who, either upon politics or
criticism, seeks for frequent and continuous occasions to enforce his
peculiar theses and doctrines. But, upon the young writer, this mode of
communication, if too long continued, operates most injuriously both as
to his future prospects and his own present taste and style. With
respect to the first, it familiarises the public to his mannerism (and
all writers worth reading have mannerism) in a form to which the said
public are not inclined to attach much weight. He forestalls in a few
months what ought to be the effect of years; namely, the wearying a
world soon nauseated with the /toujours perdrix/. With respect to the
last, it induces a man to write for momentary effects; to study a false
smartness of style and reasoning; to bound his ambition of durability to
the last day of the month; to expect immediate returns for labour; to
recoil at the "hope deferred" of serious works on which judgment is
slowly formed. The man of talent who begins young at periodicals, and
goes on long, has generally something crude and stunted about both his
compositions and his celebrity. He grows the oracle of small coteries;
and we can rarely get out of the impression that he is cockneyfied and
conventional. Periodicals sadly mortgaged the claims that Hazlitt, and
many others of his contemporaries, had upon a vast reversionary estate
of Fame. But I here speak too politically; to some the /res angustoe
domi/ leave no option. And, as Aristotle and the Greek proverb have it,
we cannot carve out all things with the knife of the Delphic cutler.

The second work that Maltravers put forth, at an interval of eighteen
months from the first, was one of a graver and higher nature; it served
to confirm his reputation: and that is success enough for a second work,
which is usually an author's "/pons asinorum/." He who, after a
triumphant first book, does not dissatisfy the public with a second, has
a fair chance of gaining a fixed station in literature. But now
commenced the pains and perils of the after-birth. By a maiden effort
an author rarely makes enemies. His fellow-writers are not yet prepared
to consider him as a rival; if he be tolerably rich, they unconsciously
trust that he will not become a regular, or, as they term it, "a
professional" author: he did something just to be talked of; he may
write no more, or his second book may fail. But when that second book
comes out, and does not fail, they begin to look about them; envy
wakens, malice begins. And all the old school--gentlemen who have
retired on their pensions of renown--regard him as an intruder: then the
sneer, then the frown, the caustic irony, the biting review, the
depreciating praise. The novice begins to think that he is further from
the goal than before he set out upon the race.

Maltravers had, upon the whole, a tolerably happy temperament; but he
was a very proud man, and he had the nice soul of a courageous,
honourable, punctilious gentleman. He thought it singular that society
should call upon him, as a gentleman, to shoot his best friend, if that
friend affronted him with a rude word; and yet that, as an author, every
fool and liar might, with perfect impunity, cover reams of paper with
the most virulent personal abuse of him.

It was one evening in the early summer that, revolving anxious and
doubtful thoughts, Ernest sauntered gloomily along his terrace,

"And watched with wistful eyes the setting sun."

when he perceived a dusty travelling carriage whirled along the road by
the ha-ha, and a hand waved in recognition from the open window. His
guests had been so rare, and his friends were so few, that Maltravers
could not conjecture who was his intended visitant. His brother, he
knew, was in London. Cleveland, from whom he had that day heard, was at
his villa. Ferrers was enjoying himself in Vienna. Who could it be?
We may say of solitude what we please; but, after two years of solitude,
a visitor is a pleasurable excitement. Maltravers retraced his steps,
entered his house, and was just in time to find himself almost in the
arms of De Montaigne.

CHAPTER V.

"Quid tam dextro pede concipis ut te,
Conatus non poeniteat, votique peracti?"*--JUV.

* What, under such happy auspices do you conceive that you may not
repent of your endeavour and accomplished wish?

"YES," said De Montaigne, "in my way I also am fulfilling my destiny. I
am a member of the /Chambre des Deputes/, and on a visit to England upon
some commercial affairs. I found myself in your neighbourhood, and, of
course, could not resist the temptation: so you must receive me as your
guest for some days."

"I congratulate you cordially on your senatorial honours. I have
already heard of your rising name."

"I return the congratulations with equal warmth. You are bringing my
prophecies to pass. I have read your works with increased pride at our
friendship."

Maltravers sighed slightly, and half turned away.

"The desire of distinction," said he, after a pause, "grows upon us till
excitement becomes disease. The child who is born with the mariner's
instinct laughs with glee when his paper bark skims the wave of a pool.
By and by nothing will content him but the ship and the ocean.--Like the
child is the author."

"I am pleased with your simile," said De Montaigne, smiling. "Do not
spoil it, but go on with your argument."

Maltravers continued: "Scarcely do we win the applause of a moment, ere
we summon the past and conjecture the future. Our contemporaries no
longer suffice for competitors, our age for the Court to pronounce on
our claims: we call up the Dead as our only true rivals--we appeal to
Posterity as our sole just tribunal. Is this vain in us? Possibly.
Yet such vanity humbles. 'Tis then only we learn all the difference
between Reputation and Fame--between To-Day and Immortality!"

"Do you think," replied De Montaigne, "that the dead did not feel the
same when they first trod the path that leads to the life beyond life?
Continue to cultivate the mind, to sharpen by exercise the genius, to
attempt to delight or to instruct your race; and even supposing you fall
short of every model you set before you--supposing your name moulder
with your dust, still yon will have passed life more nobly than the
unlaborious herd. Grant that you win not that glorious accident, 'a
name below,' how can you tell but what you may have fitted yourself for
high destiny and employ in the world not of men, but of spirits? The
powers of the mind are things that cannot be less immortal than the mere
sense of identity; their acquisitions accompany us through the Eternal
Progress; and we may obtain a lower or a higher grade hereafter, in
proportion as we are more or less fitted by the exercise of our
intellect to comprehend and execute the solemn agencies of God. The
wise man is nearer to the angels than the fool is. This may be an
apocryphal dogma, but it is not an impossible theory."

"But we may waste the sound enjoyments of actual life in chasing the
hope you justly allow to be 'apocryphal;' and our knowledge may go for
nothing in the eyes of the Omniscient."

"Very well," said De Montaigne, smiling; "but answer me honestly. By
the pursuits of intellectual ambition do you waste the sound enjoyments
of life? If so, you do not pursue the system rightly. Those pursuits
ought only to quicken your sense for such pleasures as are the true
relaxations of life. And this, with you peculiarly, since you are
fortunate enough not to depend for subsistence upon literature;--did you
do so, I might rather advise you to be a trunkmaker than an author. A
man ought not to attempt any of the highest walks of Mind and Art, as
the mere provision of daily bread; not literature alone, but everything
else of the same degree. He ought not to be a statesman, or an orator,
or a philosopher, as a thing of pence and shillings: and usually all
men, save the poor poet, feel this truth insensibly."

"This may be fine preaching," said Maltravers; "but you may be quite
sure that the pursuit of literature is a pursuit apart from the ordinary
objects of life, and you cannot command the enjoyments of both."

"I think otherwise," said De Montaigne; "but it is not in a country
house eighty miles from the capital, without wife, guests, or friends,
that the experiment can be fairly made. Come, Maltravers, I see before
you a brave career, and I cannot permit you to halt at the onset."

"You do not see all the calumnies that are already put forth against me,
to say nothing of all the assurances (and many by clever men) that there
is nothing in me!"

"Dennis was a clever man, and said the same thing of your Pope. Madame
de Sevigne was a clever woman, but she thought Racine would never be
very famous. Milton saw nothing in the first efforts of Dryden that
made him consider Dryden better than a rhymester. Aristophanes was a
good judge of poetry, yet how ill he judged of Euripides! But all this
is commonplace, and yet you bring arguments that a commonplace answers
in evidence against yourself."

"But it is unpleasant not to answer attacks--not to retaliate on
enemies."

"Then answer attacks, and retaliate on enemies."

"But would that be wise?"

"If it give you pleasure--it would not please /me/."

"Come, De Montaigne, you are reasoning Socratically. I will ask you
plainly and bluntly, would you advise an author to wage war on his
literary assailants, or to despise them?"

"Both; let him attack but few, and those rarely. But it is his policy
to show that he is one whom it is better not to provoke too far. The
author always has the world on his side against the critics, if he
choose his opportunity. And he must always recollect that he is 'A
STATE' in himself, which must sometimes go to war in order to procure
peace. The time for war or for peace must be left to the State's own
diplomacy and wisdom."

"You would make us political machines."

"It would make every man's conduct more or less mechanical; for system
is the triumph of mind over matter; the just equilibrium of all the
powers and passions may seem like machinery. Be it so. Nature meant
the world--the creation--man himself, for machines."

"And one must even be in a passion mechanically, according to your
theories."

"A man is a poor creature who is not in a passion sometimes; but a very
unjust, or a very foolish one, if he be in a passion with the wrong
person, and in the wrong place and time. But enough of this, it is
growing late."

"And when will Madame visit England?"

"Oh, not yet, I fear. But you will meet Cesarini in London this year
or the next. He is persuaded that you did not see justice done to his
poems, and is coming here as soon as his indolence will let him, to
proclaim your treachery in a biting preface to some toothless satire."

"Satire!"

"Yes; more than one of your poets made their way by a satire, and
Cesarini is persuaded he shall do the same. Castruccio is not as
far-sighted as his namesake, the Prince of Lucca. Good night, my dear
Ernest."

CHAPTER VI.

"When with much pains this boasted learning's got,
'Tis an affront to those who have it not."
CHURCHILL: /The Author/.

THERE was something in De Montaigne's conversation, which, without
actual flattery, reconciled Maltravers to himself and his career. It
served less, perhaps, to excite than to sober and brace his mind. De
Montaigne could have made no man rash, but he could have made many men
energetic and persevering. The two friends had some points in common;
but Maltravers had far more prodigality of nature and passion about
him--had more of flesh and blood, with the faults and excellences of
flesh and blood. De Montaigne held so much to his favourite doctrine of
moral equilibrium, that he had really reduced himself in much to a
species of clockwork. As impulses are formed from habits, so the
regularity of De Montaigne's habits made his impulses virtuous and just,
and he yielded to them as often as a hasty character might have done;
but then those impulses never urged to anything speculative or daring.
De Montaigne could not go beyond a certain defined circle of action. He
had no sympathy for any reasonings based purely on the hypotheses of the
imagination: he could not endure Plato, and he was dumb to the eloquent
whispers of whatever was refining in poetry or mystical in wisdom.

Maltravers, on the contrary, not disdaining Reason, ever sought to
assist her by the Imaginative Faculty, and held all philosophy
incomplete and unsatisfactory that bounded its inquiries to the limits
of the Known and Certain. He loved the inductive process; but he
carried it out to Conjecture as well as Fact. He maintained that, by a
similar hardihood, all the triumphs of science, as well as art, had been
accomplished--that Newton, that Copernicus, would have done nothing if
they had not imagined as well as reasoned, guessed as well as
ascertained. Nay, it was an aphorism with him, that the very soul of
philosophy is conjecture. He had the most implicit confidence in the
operations of the mind and the heart properly formed, and deemed that
the very excesses of emotion and thought, in men well trained by
experience and study, are conducive to useful and great ends. But the
more advanced years, and the singularly practical character of De
Montaigne's views, gave him a superiority in argument over Maltravers
which the last submitted to unwillingly. While, on the other hand, De
Montaigne secretly felt that his young friend reasoned from a broader
base, and took in a much wider circumference; and that he was, at once,
more liable to failure and error, and more capable of new discovery and
of intellectual achievement. But their ways in life being different,
they did not clash; and De Montaigne, who was sincerely interested in
Ernest's fate, was contented to harden his friend's mind against the
obstacles in his way, and leave the rest to experiment and to
Providence. They went up to London together: and De Montaigne returned
to Paris. Maltravers appeared once more in the haunts of the gay and
great. He felt that his new character had greatly altered his position.
He was no longer courted and caressed for the same vulgar and
adventitious circumstances of fortune, birth, and connections, as
before--yet for circumstances that to him seemed equally unflattering.
He was not sought for his merit, his intellect, his talents; but for his
momentary celebrity. He was an author in fashion, and run after as
anything else in fashion might have been. He was invited, less to be
talked to than to be stared at. He was far too proud in his temper, and
too pure in his ambition, to feel his vanity elated by sharing the
enthusiasm of the circles with a German prince or an industrious flea.
Accordingly he soon repelled the advances made to him, was reserved and
supercilious to fine ladies, refused to be the fashion, and became very
unpopular with the literary exclusives. They even began to run down the
works, because they were dissatisfied with the author. But Maltravers
had based his experiments upon the vast masses of the general Public.
He had called the PEOPLE of his own and other countries to be his
audience and his judges; and all the coteries in the world could have
not injured him. He was like the member for an immense constituency,
who may offend individuals, so long as he keep his footing with the body
at large. But while he withdrew himself from the insipid and the idle,
he took care not to become separated from the world. He formed his own
society according to his tastes: took pleasure in the manly and exciting
topics of the day; and sharpened his observation and widened his sphere
as an author, by mixing freely and boldly with all classes as a citizen.
But literature became to him as art to the artist--as his mistress to
the lover--an engrossing and passionate delight. He made it his
glorious and divine profession--he loved it as a profession--he devoted
to its pursuits and honours his youth, cares, dreams--his mind, and his
heart, and his soul. He was a silent but intense enthusiast in the
priesthood he had entered. From LITERATURE he imagined had come all
that makes nations enlightened and men humane. And he loved Literature
the more, because her distinctions were not those of the world--because
she had neither ribbands, nor stars, nor high places at her command. A
name in the deep gratitude and hereditary delight of men--this was the
title she bestowed. Hers was the Great Primitive Church of the world,
without Popes or Muftis--sinecures, pluralities and hierarchies. Her
servants spoke to the earth as the prophets of old, anxious only to be
heard and believed. Full of this fanaticism, Ernest Maltravers pursued
his way in the great procession of the myrtle-bearers to the sacred
shrine. He carried the thyrsus, and he believed in the god. By degrees
his fanaticism worked in him the philosophy which De Montaigne would
have derived from sober calculation; it made him indifferent to the
thorns in the path, to the storms in the sky. He learned to despise the
enmity he provoked, the calumnies that assailed him. Sometimes he was
silent, but sometimes he retorted. Like a soldier who serves a cause,
he believed that when the cause was injured in his person, the weapons
confided to his hands might be wielded without fear and without
reproach. Gradually he became feared as well as known. And while many
abused him, none could contemn.

It would not suit the design of this work to follow Maltravers step by
step in his course. I am only describing the principal events, not the
minute details, of his intellectual life. Of the character of his works
it will be enough to say that, whatever their faults, they were
original--they were his own. He did not write according to copy, nor
compile from commonplace books. He was an artist, it is true,--for what
is genius itself but art? but he took laws, and harmony, and order, from
the great code of Truth and Nature: a code that demands intense and
unrelaxing study--though its first principles are few and simple: that
study Maltravers did not shrink from. It was a deep love of truth that
made him a subtle and searching analyst, even in what the dull world
considers trifles; for he knew that nothing in literature is in itself
trifling--that it is often but a hairsbreadth that divides a truism from
a discovery. He was the more original, because he sought rather after
the True than the New. No two minds are ever the same; and therefore
any man who will give us fairly and frankly the results of his own
impressions, uninfluenced by the servilities of imitation, will be
original. But it was not from originality, which really made his
predominant merit, that Maltravers derived his reputation, for his
originality was not of that species which generally dazzles the
vulgar--it was not extravagant nor /bizarre/--he affected no system and
no school. Many authors of his day seemed more novel and /unique/ to
the superficial. Profound and durable invention proceeds by subtle and
fine gradations--it has nothing to do with those jerks and starts, those
convulsions and distortions, which belong not to the vigour and health,
but to the epilepsy and disease, of Literature.

CHAPTER VII.

"Being got out of town, the first thing I did was to give my
mule her head."--/Gil Blas/.

ALTHOUGH the character of Maltravers was gradually becoming more hard
and severe,--although as his reason grew more muscular, his imagination
lost something of its early bloom, and he was already very different
from the wild boy who had set the German youths in a blaze, and had
changed into a Castle of Indolence the little cottage tenanted with
Poetry and Alice,--he still preserved many of his old habits; he loved,
at frequent intervals, to disappear from the great world--to get rid of
books and friends, and luxury and wealth, and make solitary excursions,
sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, through this fair garden of
England.

It was one soft May-day that he found himself on such an expedition,
slowly riding through one of the green lanes of ------shire. His cloak
and his saddle-bags comprised all his baggage, and the world was before
him "where to choose his place of rest." The lane wound at length into
the main road, and just as he came upon it he fell in with a gay party
of equestrians.

Foremost of its cavalcade rode a lady in a dark green habit, mounted on
a thoroughbred English horse, which she managed with so easy a grace
that Maltravers halted in involuntary admiration. He himself was a
consummate horseman, and he had the quick eye of sympathy for those who
shared the accomplishment. He thought, as he gazed, that he had never
seen but one woman whose air and mien on horseback were so full of that
nameless elegance which skill and courage in any art naturally
bestow--that woman was Valerie de Ventadour. Presently, to his great
surprise, the lady advanced from her companions, neared Maltravers, and
said, in a voice which he did not at first distinctly recognise--" Is it
possible?--do I see Mr. Maltravers?"

She paused a moment, and then threw aside her veil, and Ernest
beheld--Madame de Ventadour! By this time a tall, thin gentleman had
joined the Frenchwoman.

"Has /madame/ met with an acquaintance?" said he; "and, if so, will she
permit me to partake her pleasure?"

The interruption seemed a relief to Valerie;--she smiled and coloured.

"Let me introduce you to Mr. Maltravers. Mr. Maltravers, this is my
host, Lord Doningdale."

The two gentlemen bowed, the rest of the cavalcade surrounded the trio,
and Lord Doningdale, with a stately yet frank courtesy, invited
Maltravers to return with the party to his house, which was about four
miles distant. As may be supposed, Ernest readily accepted the
invitation. The cavalcade proceeded, and Maltravers hastened to seek an
explanation from Valerie. It was soon given. Madame de Ventadour had a
younger sister, who had lately married a son of Lord Doningdale. The
marriage had been solemnized in Paris, and Monsieur and Madame de
Ventadour had been in England a week on a visit to the English peer.

The /rencontre/ was so sudden and unexpected that neither recovered
sufficient self-possession for fluent conversation. The explanation
given, Valerie sank into a thoughtful silence, and Maltravers rode by
her side equally taciturn, pondering on the strange chance which, after
the lapse of years, had thrown them again together.

Lord Doningdale, who at first lingered with his other visitors, now
joined them, and Maltravers was struck with his high-bred manner, and a
singular and somewhat elaborate polish in his emphasis and expression.
They soon entered a noble park, which attested far more care and
attention than are usually bestowed upon those demesnes, so peculiarly
English. Young plantations everywhere contrasted the venerable
groves--new cottages of picturesque design adorned the outskirts--and
obelisks and columns, copied from the antique, and evidently of recent
workmanship, gleamed upon them as they neared the house--a large pile,
in which the fashion of Queen Anne's day had been altered into the
French roofs and windows of the architecture of the Tuileries. "You
reside much in the country, I am sure, my lord," said Maltravers.

"Yes," replied Lord Doningdale, with a pensive air, "this place is
greatly endeared to me. Here his Majesty Louis XVIII., when in England,
honoured me with an annual visit. In compliment to him, I sought to
model my poor mansion into an humble likeness of his own palace, so that
he might as little as possible miss the rights he had lost. His own
rooms were furnished exactly like those he had occupied at the
Tuileries. Yes, the place is endeared to me--I think of the old times
with pride. It is something to have sheltered a Bourbon in his
misfortunes."

"It cost /milord/ a vast sum to make these alterations," said Madame de
Ventadour, glancing archly at Maltravers.

"Ah, yes," said the old lord; and his face, lately elated, became
overcast--"nearly three hundred thousand pounds: but what then?--'Les
souvenirs, madame, sont sans prix/!'"

"Have you visited Paris since the restoration, Lord Doningdale," asked
Maltravers.

His lordship looked at him sharply, and then turned his eye to Madame de
Ventadour.

"Nay," said Valerie; laughing, "I did not dictate the question."

"Yes," said Lord Doningdale, "I have been at Paris."

"His Majesty must have been delighted to return your lordship's
hospitality."

Lord Doningdale looked a little embarrassed, and made no reply, but put
his horse into a canter.

"You have galled our host," said Valerie, smiling. "Louis XVIII. and
his friends lived here as long as they pleased, and as sumptuously as
they could; their visits half ruined the owner, who is the model of a
/gentilhomme/ and /preux chevalier/. He went to Paris to witness their
triumph; he expected, I fancy, the order of the St. Esprit. Lord
Doningdale has royal blood in his veins. His Majesty asked him once to
dinner, and, when he took leave, said to him, 'We are happy, Lord
Doningdale, to have thus requited our obligations to your lordship.'
Lord Doningdale went back in dudgeon, yet he still boasts of his
/souvenirs/, poor man."

"Princes are not grateful, neither are republics," said Maltravers.

"Ah, who is grateful," rejoined Valerie, "except a dog and a woman?"

Maltravers found himself ushered into a vast dressing-room, and was
informed, by a French valet, that in the country Lord Doningdale dined
at six--the first bell would ring in a few minutes. While the valet was
speaking, Lord Doningdale himself entered the room. His lordship had
learned, in the meanwhile, that Maltravers was of the great and ancient
commoner's house whose honours were centred in his brother; and yet
more, that he was the Mr. Maltravers whose writings every one talked of,
whether for praise or abuse. Lord Doningdale had the two
characteristics of a high-bred gentleman of the old school--respect for
birth and respect for talent; he was, therefore, more than ordinarily
courteous to Ernest, and pressed him to stay some days with so much
cordiality, that Maltravers could not but assent. His travelling toilet
was scanty, but Maltravers thought little of dress.

CHAPTER VIII.

"It is the soul that sees. The outward eyes
Present the object, but the mind descries;
And thence delight, disgust, or cool indifference rise.
"CRABBE.

WHEN Maltravers entered the enormous saloon, hung with damask, and
decorated with the ponderous enrichments and furniture of the time of
Louis XIV. (that most showy and barbarous of all tastes, which has
nothing in it of the graceful, nothing of the picturesque, and which,
nowadays, people who should know better imitate with a ludicrous
servility), he found sixteen persons assembled. His host stepped up
from a circle which surrounded him, and formally presented his new
visitor to the rest. He was struck with the likeness which the sister
of Valerie bore to Valerie herself; but it was a sobered and chastened
likeness--less handsome, less impressive. Mrs. George Herbert--such was
the name she now owned--was a pretty, shrinking, timid girl, fond of her
husband, and mightily awed by her father-in-law. Maltravers sat by her,
and drew her into conversation. He could not help pitying the poor
lady, when he found she was to live altogether at Doningdale
Park--remote from all the friends and habits of her childhood--alone, so
far as the affections were concerned, with a young husband, who was
passionately fond of field-sports, and who, from the few words Ernest
exchanged with him, seemed to have only three ideas--his dogs, his
horses, and his wife. Alas! the last would soon be the least in
importance. It is a sad position--that of a lively young Frenchwoman
entombed in an English country-house! Marriages with foreigners are
seldom fortunate experiments. But Ernest's attention was soon diverted
from the sister by the entrance of Valerie herself, leaning on her
husband's arm. Hitherto he had not very minutely observed what change
time had effected in her--perhaps he was half afraid. He now gazed at
her with curious interest. Valerie was still extremely handsome, but
her face had grown sharper, her form thinner and more angular; there was
something in her eye and lip, discontented, restless, almost
querulous:--such is the too common expression in the face of those born
to love, and condemned to be indifferent. The little sister was more to
be envied of the two--come what may, she loved her husband, such as he
was, and her heart might ache, but it was not with a void.

Monsieur de Ventadour soon shuffled up to Maltravers--his nose longer
than ever.

"Hein--hein--how d'ye do--how d'ye do?--charmed to see you--saw madame
before me--hein--hein--I suspect--I suspect--"

"Mr. Maltravers, will you give Madame de Ventadour your arm?" said Lord
Doningdale, as he stalked on to the dining-room with a duchess on his
own.

"And you have left Naples," said Maltravers: "left it for good?"

"We do not think of returning."

"It was a charming place--how I loved it!--how well I remember it!"
Ernest spoke calmly--it was but a general remark.

Valerie sighed gently.

During dinner, the conversation between Maltravers and Madame de
Ventadour was vague and embarrassed. Ernest was no longer in love with
her--he had outgrown that youthful fancy. She had exercised influence
over him--the new influences that he had created had chased away her
image. Such is life. Long absences extinguish all the false lights,
though not the true ones. The lamps are dead in the banquet-room of
yesterday; but a thousand years hence, and the stars we look on to-night
will burn as brightly. Maltravers was no longer in love with Valerie.
But Valerie--ah, perhaps /hers/ had been true love!

Maltravers was surprised when he came to examine the state of his own
feelings--he was surprised to find that his pulse did not beat quicker
at the touch of one whose very glance had once thrilled him to the
soul--he was surprised, but rejoiced. He was no longer anxious to seek,
but to shun excitement, and he was a better and a higher being than he
had been on the shores of Naples.

CHAPTER IX.

"Whence that low voice, a whisper from the heart,
That told of days long past?"--WORDSWORTH.

ERNEST stayed several days at Lord Doningdale's, and every day he rode
out with Valerie, but it was with a large party; and every evening he
conversed with her, but the whole world might have overheard what they
said. In fact, the sympathy that had once existed between the young
dreamer and the proud, discontented woman had in much passed away.
Awakened to vast and grand objects, Maltravers was a dreamer no more.
Inured to the life of trifles she had once loathed, Valerie had settled
down into the usages and thoughts of the common world--she had no longer
the superiority of earthly wisdom over Maltravers, and his romance was
sobered in its eloquence, and her ear dulled to its tone. Still Ernest
felt a deep interest in her, and still she seemed to feel a sensitive
pride in his career.

One evening Maltravers had joined a circle in which Madame de Ventadour,
with more than her usual animation, presided--and to which, in her
pretty, womanly, and thoroughly French way, she was lightly laying down
the law on a hundred subjects--Philosophy, Poetry, Sevres china, and the
balance of power in Europe. Ernest listened to her, delighted, but not
enchanted. Yet Valerie was not natural that night--she was speaking
from forced spirits.

"Well," said Madame de Ventadour at last, tired, perhaps of the part she
had been playing, and bringing to a sudden close an animated description
of the then French court--"well, see now if we ought not to be ashamed
of ourselves--our talk has positively interrupted the music. Did you
see Lord Doningdale stop it with a bow to me, as much as to say, with
his courtly reproof, 'It shall not disturb you, madam'? I will no
longer be accessory to your crime of bad taste!"

With this the Frenchwoman rose, and, gliding through the circle, retired
to the further end of the room. Ernest followed her with his eyes.
Suddenly she beckoned to him, and he approached and seated himself by
her side.

"Mr. Maltravers," said Valerie, then, with great sweetness in her
voice,--"I have not yet expressed to you the delight I have felt from
your genius. In absence you have suffered me to converse with you--your
books have been to me dear friends; as we shall soon part again, let me
now tell you of this, frankly and without compliment."

This paved the way to a conversation that approached more on the
precincts of the past than any they had yet known. But Ernest was
guarded; and Valerie watched his words and looks with an interest she
could not conceal--an interest that partook of disappointment.

"It is an excitement," said Valerie, "to climb a mountain, though it
fatigue; and though the clouds may even deny us a prospect from its
summit--it is an excitement that gives a very universal pleasure, and
that seems almost as if it were the result of a common human instinct
which makes us desire to rise--to get above the ordinary thoroughfares
and level of life. Some such pleasure you must have in intellectual
ambition, in which the mind is the upward traveller."

"It is not the /ambition/ that pleases," replied Maltravers, it is the
following a path congenial to our tastes, and made dear to us in a short
time by habit. The moments in which we look beyond our work, and fancy
ourselves seated beneath the Everlasting Laurel, are few. It is the
work itself, whether of action or literature, that interests and excites
us. And at length the dryness of toil takes the familiar sweetness of
custom. But in intellectual labour there is another charm--we become
more intimate with our own nature. The heart and the soul grow friends,
as it were, and the affections and the aspirations unite. Thus, we are
never without society--we are never alone; all that we have read,
learned and discovered, is company to us. This is pleasant," added
Maltravers, "to those who have no clear connections in the world
without."

"And is that your case?" asked Valerie, with a timid smile.

"Alas, yes! and since I conquered one affection,--Madame de Ventadour, I
almost think I have outlived the capacity of loving. I believe that
when we cultivate very largely the reason or the imagination, we blunt,
to a certain extent, our young susceptibilities to the fair impressions
of real life. From 'idleness,' says the old Roman poet, 'Love feeds his
torch.'"

"You are too young to talk thus."

"I speak as I feel."

Valerie said no more. Shortly afterwards Lord Doningdale approached
them, and proposed that they should make an excursion the next day to
see the ruins of an old abbey, some few miles distant.

CHAPTER X.

"If I should meet thee
After long years,
How shall I greet thee?"--BYRON.

IT was a smaller party than usual the next day, consisting only of Lord
Doningdale, his son George Herbert, Valerie and Ernest. They were
returning from the ruins, and the sun, now gradually approaching the
west, threw its slant rays over the gardens and houses of a small,
picturesque town, or, perhaps, rather village, on the high North Road.
It is one of the prettiest places in England, that town or village, and
boasts an excellent old-fashioned inn, with a large and quaint
pleasure-garden. It was through the long and straggling street that our
little party slowly rode, when the sky became suddenly overcast, and, a
few large hailstones falling, gave notice of an approaching storm.

"I told you we should not get safely through the day," said George
Herbert. "Now we are in for it."

"George, that is a vulgar expression," said Lord Doningdale, buttoning
up his coat. While he spoke, a vivid flash of lightning darted across
their very path, and the sky grew darker and darker.

"We may as well rest at the inn," said Maltravers: "the storm is coming
on apace, and Madame de Ventadour--"

"You are right," interrupted Lord Doningdale; and he put his horse into
a canter.

They were soon at the door of the old hotel. Bells rang dogs
barked--hostlers ran. A plain, dark, travelling post-chariot was before
the inn-door; and, roused perhaps by the noise below, a lady in the
"first-floor front, No. 2," came to the window. This lady owned the
travelling-carriage, and was at this time alone in that apartment. As
she looked carelessly at the party, her eyes rested on one form--she
turned pale, uttered a faint cry, and fell senseless on the floor.

Meanwhile, Lord Doningdale and his guests were shown into the room next
to that tenanted by the lady. Properly speaking, both the rooms made
one long apartment for balls and county meetings, and the division was
formed by a thin partition, removable at pleasure. The hail now came on
fast and heavy, the trees groaned, the thunder roared; and in the large,
dreary room there was a palpable and oppressive sense of coldness and
discomfort. Valerie shivered--a fire was lighted--and the Frenchwoman
drew near to it.

"You are wet, my dear lady," said Lord Doningdale. "You should take off
that close habit, and have it dried."

"Oh, no; what matters it?" said Valerie bitterly, and almost rudely.

"It matters everything," said Ernest; "pray be ruled."

"And do you care for me?" murmured Valerie.

"Can you ask that question?" replied Ernest, in the same tone, and with
affectionate and friendly warmth.

Meanwhile, the good old lord had summoned the chambermaid, and, with the
kindly imperiousness of a father, made Valerie quit the room. The three
gentlemen, left together, talked of the storm, wondered how long it
would last, and debated the propriety of sending to Doningdale for the
carriage. While they spoke, the hail suddenly ceased, though clouds in
the distant horizon were bearing heavily up to renew the charge. George
Herbert, who was the most impatient of mortals, especially of rainy
weather in a strange place, seized the occasion, and insisted on riding
to Doningdale, and sending back the carriage.

"Surely a groom would do as well, George," said the father.

"My dear father, no; I should envy the rogue too much. I am bored to
death here. Marie will be frightened about us. Brown Bess will take me
back in twenty minutes. I am a hardy fellow, you know. Good-bye."

Away darted the young sportsman, and in two minutes they saw him spur
gaily from the inn-door.

"It is very odd that /I/ should have such a son," said Lord Doningdale,
musingly,--"a son who cannot amuse himself indoors for two minutes
together. I took great pains with his education, too. Strange that
people should weary so much of themselves that they cannot brave the
prospect of a few minutes passed in reflection--that a shower and the
resources of their own thoughts are evils so galling--very strange
indeed. But it is a confounded climate this, certainly. I wonder when
it will clear up."

Thus muttering, Lord Doningdale walked, or rather marched, to and fro
the room, with his hands in his coat pockets, and his whip sticking
perpendicularly out of the right one. Just at this moment the waiter
came to announce that his lordship's groom was without, and desired much
to see him. Lord Doningdale had then the pleasure of learning that his
favourite grey hackney, which he had ridden, winter and summer, for
fifteen years, was taken with shivers, and, as the groom expressed it,
seemed to have "the colic in its bowels!"

Lord Doningdale turned pale, and hurried to the stables without saying a
word.

Maltravers, who, plunged in thought, had not overheard the low and brief
conference between master and groom, remained alone, seated by the fire,
his head buried in his bosom, and his arms folded.

Meanwhile, the lady, who occupied the adjoining chamber, had recovered
slowly from her swoon. She put both hands to her temples, as if trying
to recollect her thoughts. Hers was a fair, innocent, almost childish
face; and now, as a smile shot across it, there was something so sweet
and touching in the gladness it shed over that countenance, that you
could not have seen it without strong and almost painful interest. For
it was the gladness of a person who has known sorrow. Suddenly she
started up, and said: "No, then! I do not dream. He is come back--he
is here--all will be well again! Ha! it is his voice. Oh, bless him,
it is /his/ voice!" She paused, her finger on her lip, her face bent
down. A low and indistinct sound of voices reached her straining ear
through the thin door that divided her from Maltravers. She listened
intently, but she could not overhear the import. Her heart beat
violently. "He is not alone!" she murmured, mournfully. "I will wait
till the sound ceases, and then I will venture in!"

And what was the conversation carried on in that chamber? We must
return to Ernest. He was sitting in the same thoughtful posture when
Madame de Ventadour returned.

The Frenchwoman coloured when she found herself alone with Ernest, and
Ernest himself was not at his ease.

"Herbert has gone home to order the carriage, and Lord Doningdale has
disappeared, I scarce know whither. You do not, I trust, feel the worse
for the rain?"

"No," said Valerie.

"Shall you have any commands in London?" asked Maltravers; "I return to
town to-morrow."

"So soon!" and Valerie sighed. "Ah!" she added, after a pause, "we
shall not meet again for years, perhaps. Monsieur de Ventadour is to be
appointed ambassador to the Court and so--and so--. Well, it is no
matter. What has become of the friendship we once swore to each other?"

"It is here," said Maltravers, laying his hand on his heart. "Here, at
least, lies the half of that friendship which was my charge; and more
than friendship, Valerie de Ventadour--respect--admiration--gratitude.
At a time of life when passion and fancy, most strong, might have left
me an idle and worthless voluptuary, you convinced me that the world has
virtue, and that woman is too noble to be our toy--the idol of to-day,
the victim of to-morrow. Your influence, Valerie, left me a more
thoughtful man--I hope a better one."

"Oh!" said Madame de Ventadour, strongly affected; "I bless you for what
you tell me: you cannot know--you cannot guess how sweet it is to me.
Now I recognise you once more. What--what did my resolution cost me?
Now I am repaid!"

Ernest was moved by her emotion, and by his own remembrances; he took
her hand, and pressing it with frank and respectful tenderness--"I did
not think, Valerie," said he, "when I reviewed the past, I did not think
that you loved me--I was not vain enough for that; but, if so, how much
is your character raised in my eyes--how provident, how wise your
virtue! Happier and better for both, our present feelings, each to
each, than if we had indulged a brief and guilty dream of passion, at
war with all that leaves passion without remorse, and bliss without
alloy. Now--"

"Now," interrupted Valerie, quickly, and fixing on him her dark
eyes--"now you love me no longer! Yet it is better so. Well, I will go
back to my cold and cheerless state of life, and forget once more that
Heaven endowed me with a heart!"

"Ah, Valerie! esteemed, revered, still beloved, not indeed with the
fires of old, but with a deep, undying, and holy tenderness, speak not
thus to me. Let me not believe you unhappy; let me think that, wise,
sagacious, brilliant as you are, you have employed your gifts to
reconcile yourself to a common lot. Still let me look up to you when I
would despise the circles in which you live, and say: 'On that pedestal
an altar is yet placed, to which the heart may bring the offerings of
the soul.'"

"It is in vain--in vain that I struggle," said Valerie, half-choked with
emotion, and clasping her hands passionately. "Ernest, I love you
still--I am wretched to think you love me no more: I would give you
nothing--yet I exact all; my youth is going--my beauty dimmed--my very
intellect is dulled by the life I lead; and yet I ask from you that
which your young heart once felt for me. Despise me, Maltravers, I am
not what I seemed--I am a hypocrite--despise me."

"No," said Ernest, again possessing himself of her hand, and falling on
his knee by her side. "No, never-to-be-forgotten, ever-to-be-honoured
Valerie, hear me." As he spoke, he kissed the hand he held; with the
other, Valerie covered her face and wept bitterly, but in silence.
Ernest paused till the burst of her feelings had subsided, her hand
still in his--still warmed by his kisses--kisses as pure as cavalier
ever impressed on the hand of his queen.

At this time, the door communicating with the next room gently opened.
A fair form--a form fairer and younger than that of Valerie de
Ventadour--entered the apartment; the silence had deceived her--she
believed that Maltravers was alone. She had entered with her heart upon
her lips; love, sanguine, hopeful love, in every vein, in every
thought--she had entered dreaming that across that threshold life would
dawn upon her afresh--that all would be once more as it had been, when
the common air was rapture. Thus she entered; and now she stood
spell-bound, terror-stricken, pale as death--life turned to
stone--youth--hope--bliss were for ever over to her! Ernest kneeling to
another was all she saw! For this had she been faithful and true amidst
storm and desolation; for this had she hoped--dreamed--lived. They did
not note her; she was unseen--unheard. And Ernest, who would have gone
barefoot to the end of the earth to find her, was in the very room with
her, and knew it not!

"Call me again /beloved/!" said Valerie, very softly.

"Beloved Valerie, hear me."

These words were enough for the listener; she turned noiselessly away:
humble as that heart was, it was proud. The door closed on her--she had
obtained the wish of her whole being--Heaven had heard her prayer--she
had once more seen the lover of her youth; and thenceforth all was night
and darkness to her. What matter what became of her? One moment, what
an effect it produces upon years!--ONE MOMENT!--virtue, crime, glory,
shame, woe, rapture, rest upon moments! Death itself is but a moment,
yet Eternity is its successor!

"Hear me!" continued Ernest, unconscious of what had passed--" hear me;
let us be what human nature and worldly forms seldom allow those of
opposite sexes to be--friends to each other, and to virtue also--friends
through time and absence--friends through all the vicissitudes of
life--friends on whose affection shame and remorse never cast a
shade--friends who are to meet hereafter! Oh! there is no attachment so
true, no tie so holy, as that which is founded on the old chivalry of
loyalty and honour; and which is what love would be, if the heart and
the soul were unadulterated by clay."

There was in Ernest's countenance an expression so noble, in his voice a
tone so thrilling, that Valerie was brought back at once to the nature
which a momentary weakness had subdued. She looked at him with an
admiring and grateful gaze, and then said, in a calm but low voice,
"Ernest, I understand you; yes, your friendship is dearer to me than
love."

At this time they heard the voice of Lord Doningdale on the stairs.
Valerie turned away. Maltravers, as he rose, extended his hand; she
pressed it warmly, and the spell was broken, the temptation conquered,
the ordeal passed. While Lord Doningdale entered the room, the
carriage, with Herbert in it, drove to the door. In a few minutes the
little party were within the vehicle. As they drove away, the hostlers
were harnessing the horses to the dark green travelling-carriage. From
the window, a sad and straining eye gazed upon the gayer equipage of the
peer--that eye which Maltravers would have given his whole fortune to
meet again. But he did not look up; and Alice Darvil turned away, and
her fate was fixed!

CHAPTER XI.

"Strange fits of passion I have known.
And I will dare to tell."--WORDSWORTH.

"* * * * * The food of hope
Is meditated action."--WORDSWORTH.

MALTRAVERS left Doningdale the next day. He had no further conversation
with Valerie; but when he took leave of her, she placed in his hand a
letter, which he read as he rode slowly through the beech avenues of the
park. Translated, it ran thus:

"Others would despise me for the weakness I showed--but you will not!
It is the sole weakness of a life. None can know what I have passed
through--what hours of dejection and gloom. I, whom so many envy!
Better to have been a peasant girl, with love, than a queen whose life
is but a dull mechanism. You, Maltravers, I never forgot in absence;
and your image made yet more wearisome and trite the things around me.
Years passed, and your name was suddenly on men's lips. I heard of you
wherever I went--I could not shut you from me. Your fame was as if you
were conversing by my side. We met at last, suddenly and unexpectedly.
I saw that you loved me no more, and that thought conquered all my
resolves: anguish subdues the nerves of the mind as sickness those of
the body. And thus I forgot, and humbled, and might have undone myself.
Juster and better thoughts are once more awakened within me, and when we
meet again I shall be worthy of your respect. I see how dangerous are
that luxury of thought, that sin of discontent which I indulged. I go
back to life, resolved to vanquish all that can interfere with its
claims and duties. Heaven guide and preserve you, Ernest. Think of me
as one whom you will not blush to have loved--whom you will not blush
hereafter to present to your wife. With so much that is soft, as well
as great within you, you were not formed like me--to be alone.

"FAREWELL!"

Maltravers read, and re-read this letter; and when he reached his home,
he placed it carefully amongst the things he most valued. A lock of
Alice's hair lay beside it--he did not think that either was dishonoured
by the contact.

With an effort, he turned himself once more to those stern yet high
connections which literature makes with real life. Perhaps there was a
certain restlessness in his heart which induced him ever to occupy his
mind. That was one of the busiest years of his life--the one in which
he did most to sharpen jealousy and confirm fame.

CHAPTER XII.

"In effect he entered my apartment."--/Gil Blas/.

"'I am surprised,' said he, 'at the caprice of Fortune,
who sometimes delights in loading an execrable author
with favours, whilst she leaves good writers to perish
for want.'"--/Gil Blas/.

IT was just twelve months after his last interview with Valerie, and
Madame de Ventadour had long since quitted England, when one morning, as
Maltravers sat alone in his study, Castruccio Cesarini was announced.

"Ah, my dear Castruccio, how are you?" cried Maltravers, eagerly, as the
opening door presented the form of the Italian.

"Sir," said Castruccio, with great stiffness, and speaking in French,
which was his wont when he meant to be distant--"sir, I do not come to
renew our former acquaintance--you are a great man [here a bitter
sneer], I an obscure one [here Castruccio drew himself up]--I only come
to discharge a debt to you which I find I have incurred."

"What tone is this, Castruccio; and what debt do you speak of?"

"On my arrival in town yesterday," said the poet solemnly, "I went to
the man whom you deputed some years since to publish my little volume,
to demand an account of its success; and I found that it had cost one
hundred and twenty pounds, deducting the sale of forty-nine copies which
had been sold. /Your/ books sell some thousands, I am told. It is well
contrived--mine fell still-born, no pains were taken with it--no
matter--[a wave of the hand]. You discharged this debt, I repay you:
there is a ch