Chapter Six.“My Life, I Love Thee!”—Then, in that time and place I spoke to her,Requiring, tho’ I knew it was mine own,Yet for the pleasure that I took to hear,Requiring, at her hand, the greatest gift,A woman’s heart, the heart of her I loved.When “hope deferred,” and baffled love combined, had well-nigh made me as miserable and woebegone as I could possibly be, I heard a piece of news one day which almost nerved up my halting resolution to bring affairs to a final issue by speaking out again to Mrs Clyde—no matter what might be the result.The joyful intelligence was circulated by the pleased Lady Dasher, that, Mr Mawley had at length proposed for her daughter, Bessie. It was time for it, as he had angled around and nibbled warily at the tempting bait offered him—like the knowing fish that he was—for months before he would permit himself to be caught!The curate had, doubtless, noticed at length that the damsel was comely withal; and, his heart yearned towards her. The reverend gentleman, however, had not been unobservant of the charms of other maidens with whom he had been brought in contact, so, it may be presumed that his heart had “yearned” in vain for them; or, peradventure, these had not played with him so dexterously, when once hooked, as did the fair Bessie—who had not been the granddaughter of an Irish peer for nothing!Still, there is no object to be gained now in raking up all of Mr Mawley’s old conquests or defeats, ere his present “wooing and a’:”—he had been accepted, in this his most recent venture, and was engaged explicitly—Lady Dasher taking very good care to inform everybody of her acquaintance of the fact, in order that there might arise no such little mistake as that of the curate’s backing out of the alliance.Her ladyship only wished for one thing more to make her “happy,” so she said; and that was, that her “poor dear papa” were but alive, so that she might tell him, too, about the coming event. This was impossible though, as she added, with her customary melancholy shake of the head, and a return to her normal expression of poignant grief; for, as she said very truly, “one can never expect to be thoroughly happy in this weary pilgrimage of ours!”Her complete gratification would, certainly, have been little less than a miracle.The engagement was of very short duration, Bessie’s mamma acting up to the Hibernian policy of “cooking her fish,” as soon as she had captured him. There’s “many a slip,” you know, “’twixt cup and lip.”Mawley would probably have gladly lingered yet awhile longer amid the festive scenes of clerical bachelorhood, flirting—in a devout way, of course—under the shade of the church, with Chloe and Daphne, those unappropriated spinsters of the parish who took pleasure in ministering to the social wants of the curate and others of his cloth.But, it was not to be. Lady Dasher was, for a wonder, wise in her generation; and, the twain—not my lady and Mawley, but her daughter and ditto—were married within a month after the public announcement of their attachment, much to the surprise of Saint Canon’s, the mortification of sundry single ladies thereof, and the well-disguised delight of Lady Dasher, who, even on such a festive occasion, looked more melancholic than ever.It was this, that nerved me up to desperation. Why, thought I, the day after the wedding, as I paced along the Prebend’s Walk—over which the long-branched elms and waving oaks and thickly-growing lime-trees formed a perfect arch, in all the panoply of their new summer leaves, sheltering one from rain and sun alike—why, thought I, should that fellow, Mawley, be made happy, and I not?Really, I could not answer the question at all satisfactorily.You see, I was not able to come to a decision with myself as to whether I should repeat the darling request which I had made to Min very nearly twelve months before, or wait on still in suspense. The risk of the former course was great, for, Mrs Clyde might, and most likely would, put an end immediately to all communication whatever between us, should she continue hostile to my suit—an eventuality horrible to contemplate; and yet, would it not be better for me to be relieved from the existing state of uncertainty in which my mind was plunged?What must I do?I had to determine that point, at all events.I could not settle it in a moment: it was far too weighty a consideration—it required serious deliberation. So, I paced on, still moodily to the end of the Prebend’s Walk; and, although it was raining heavily, sat down on the stone balustrade of the little rustic bridge over the fosse, facing the river.—“Ah me!” I reflected, calling to my memory Thackeray’s sad lament, in that seemingly-comic “Ballad of the Bouillabaisse,” which is all the more pathetic from its affected humour.“Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!I mind me of a time that’s goneWhen I’d sit, as now I’m sitting,In this same place—but not alone.“A fair young form was nestled near me,A dear, dear face looked fondly up,And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me—There’s no one now to share my cup.”As I was musing thus sadly, I was unexpectedly tapped on the shoulder by Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, who had come up quietly behind me, without my noticing his approach. He was on his way to pay a visit to his “good vicaire” at the vicarage, after giving his usual Wednesday lecture at the neighbouring “college for young ladies;” where, blooming misses—in addition to their curriculum of “accomplishments” and “all the ’ologies”—were taught the noble art of family multiplication, domestic division, male detraction, feminine sedition, and, the glorious rule of—one!Me grieving, he joyously addressed.“Ohe! my youngish friends”—his general term in speaking to me—“how goes it?—Hi—lo!” he went on, seeing from my face, as I turned my head to speak to him, that, “it” did not “go” particularly well—“Hi—lo! vat ees ze mattaire?—you look pallide; you have got ze migraine?”“No,” I answered; “there’s nothing the matter with me, I assure you, Monsieur Parole. I’m all right, thank you.”“Ah! but yes,” he retorted—“you cannote deceives me. You are pallide; you take walks on feet this detestable day.—Mon Dieu! votre climat c’est affreux!—I knows ver wells, Meestaire Lorton, dat somesings ees ze mattaire!”“But, I’m quite well, I tell you,” said I.“Quaite well en physique, bon:—quaite well, here?” tapping his chest expressively the while—“non! I knows vat ees ze mattaire. C’est une affaire de coeur, ees it not, mon ami? You cannote deceives me, I tells to you! But, nevaire mind dat, my youngish friends: cheer oop and be gays—toujours gai! I have had, myselfs, it ees one, two, tree,—seex lofes! Seex times ees mon coeur brisé, and I was désolé; and now, you sees, I’m of a light heart still!”—and he laughed so cheerily, that, even Lady Dasher, I think, could not have well helped chiming in with his merriment.I did not laugh, however. “Pardon me, monsieur,” I said,—“I’m not in a joking mood.”“Come, come, mon brave,” he continued, seeing that my dejection was beyond the point where it could be laughed away; and accommodating himself to my humour, with the native delicacy of his race—“I have myself, suffered:—ainsi, I can condoles! You know, my dear, youngish friends, when I was déporté de mon pays, hé?”I nodded my head in acquiescence, hardly feeling inclined for the recital of some revolutionary anecdote, which I thought was going to be related to me. Monsieur Parole, however, astonished me with quite a different narration.“Leesten,” said he.—“When I did leeves my Paris beloved, hélas! I was tored from my lofe—my fiancée dat I adore! I leaves her in hopes and au désespoir. I dreams of her images in my exiles! When I learns at my acadamies ze young ladees, ze beautifool Eenglish mees, I tinks of ma belle Marie, her figure, and her face angélique, wheech I sail nevaire forgets—no, nevaire! And I says to myselfs, ‘Ah! she ees more beautifools dan dese!’ Mais, mon ami, I was deceives by her all dat time. Not sooner go I from France, dan she ees marie to un grand, gros, fat épicier of La Villette—Marie dat was fiancée au moi, gentilhomme! Mais, mon Dieu; when I was heard ze news, I was enragé—I goes back to Paris. I fears notings—no mouchard—no gend’armerie—no notings—although, I was suspect and deporté de France! I sends un cartel—you comprends—to ze gros bon ami de ma Marie, ce cochon d’un épicier! We meets in ze Bois: I gives him one leetel tierce en carte dat spoils his lovemakings for awhile; and, I leeves France again for evers—dat is, unless ma patrie and ze sacred cause of ze République Française calls upon me—but, not till den! So, you sees, my youngish friends, dat oders suffer like yourselfs. I have told to you my story; cheer oop! If ze ladees have deceives you, she is not wort one snaps of ze fingers!”“But, she has not deceived me,” I said.“Den why are you mélancolique?”“Because, because—” I hesitated:—I was ashamed to say what made me despondent.“For ze reasons dat you don’t knows weder she lofes you or not?” he asked. “Ah, ha! Den, why not ask her, my friends? You are young; you have a deesposeetion good; you are handsome—”“O–oh, Monsieur Parole,” I exclaimed at his nattering category of my attributes, almost blushing.“Ah, but yes,” he went on—“I am quaite raite. You are handsome; with un air distingué; reech.”I shook my head, to show that I could not lay claim to being a millionaire, in addition to my other virtues.“No, not reech, but clevaire; and you will be reech bye-bye! I see not why ze ladees should not leesten to you, mon ami, he?—But, if she does note; why, courage! Dere are many odere ladees beautifool also in England; and, yet, if you feels your loss mooch, like myselfs with ma perfide Marie, why you can go aways and be console, as I!”His words encouraged me:—and, my face imperceptibly brightened.“Ah, ha! dat is bettaire,” he said—“I likes you, Meestaire Lorton; and it does me pain to sees you at deespair like dese! Cheer oop; and all will be raite, as our good friend, ze vicaire, all-ways tells to us. We will go and sees him now!”He took my unresisting arm, and carried me off to the vicarage; changing the conversation as we went along, and gradually instilling fresh hope into my heart.I dare say you think it was very idiotical on my part, thus to bewail my grief to another person; and allow a few empty words to change the current of my feelings?But then, you must recollect, that I would not have comported myself in this way with a brother Englishman.If Horner had told me ofhiswoes, for example, similarly as I told mine, or let them be drawn out of me by Monsieur Parole, I confess I would have been much more likely to have laughed at, than sympathised with him.A Frenchman, however, is naturally more sentimental than any of ourselves. He looks seriously and considerately on things which we make light of.Besides, in my then cut-throat mood, I was longing for sympathy; and would have made a confidante of any one offering for the post—barring Lady Dasher or Miss Spight—neither of whom would I have chosen as a depository were I anxious to give my last dying speech and confession to the world; although, they would probably cause the same to be circulated fast enough—judging by their habit in regard to that sort of private information respecting the delicate concerns of other people which is passed on from hand to hand “in strict confidence, mind!” and which is not to be told to any one else “for the world!”Monsieur Parole’s story was a good lesson to me.I saw that he who had had grief as great, and greater than mine, for I knew that Min loved me and was constant—had concealed it so that none who looked on his round merry face, would have supposed him capable of a deep emotion; while, I, on the contrary, had paraded my little anxieties, like a fool!He also taught me determination; for, I resolved now, that, on the first opportunity I had, I would speak to my darling again, and have my fate settled, without more delay—for good or ill, as the case might be.I would not remain in suspense any longer.Within a week, this wished-for opportunity came.Some mutual friends, to whom, indeed, Min had been the original means of my introduction—they living without the orbit of the Saint Canon circle—asked me to a large evening party that they gave late in the season.There, I met my darling, as I hoped—unaccompanied by her mother, which I hadnotimagined would happen; consequently, my chances for speaking to Min would be all the more favourable.There was so general a crush of people; that, although the rooms were large and there were many nice little retreats for tête-à-tête conversation, in balconies that were covered in like marquees and snug conservatories, besides the stair landings—those last “refuges for the destitute” who might desire retirement—I had to put off my purpose until evening wore on to such a late hour, that I thought I would not be able to speak to my darling at all!After midnight, however, my opportunity came.First getting rid of a horrible person, who would persist in following Min about under the false pretence that his name was on her card for several of the after-supper dances—an assertionIknew to be ridiculously unfounded; for, I had taken care to place my own name down for as many as Min would give me, and, all the latter ones I had appropriated also without asking her permission, thinking that when that happy time arrived, she would not be very hard on me for my presumption; nor was she.Extinguishing the interloper—some people have such blindness of mental vision, that they never can see when they are not wanted!—I managed at length to open proceedings.It was while in a quadrille that I began referring to the agonised state of my mind, and explained the mental suffering I then was experiencing.Min listened attentively, as far as she heard, a warm flush on her dear face and a light sparkling in the deep grey eyes; but, I would defy any lover to plead his cause with due effect in that mazy old cotillon dance, which a love of French nomenclature in the early part of the century, taught us to style “quadrille.”How can you inform the object of your passion that you adore her, with any becoming effusion of sentiment, when you are chassez-ing and balancez-ing like a human teetotum? How, breathe the words of love; when, ere you have completed your avowal, you have to make a fool of yourself in the “Cavalier seul,” the cynosure of six different pairs of eyes besides those of the girl of your heart? How, tone your voice, sweetly attuned though it may be to Venusian accents, when, one moment, it may be inaudible to her whom you address, through the rampagious gallopading and ladies-chaining of excited quadrillers; and, the next, be so raised in pitch, from the sudden hush that falls on band and dancers alike, between the figures, that your opposite vis-à-vis, and the neighbouring side couples, can hear every syllable of your frantic declaration—much to their amusement and your discomfiture?You cannot do it, I say.No, not if you were a Talleyrand in love matters; and, so completely versed in the pathology of the “fitful fever,” as to be able to diagnose it at a glance; besides nursing the patient through all the several stages of the disease—watching every symptom, anticipating each change, bringing the “case,” finally, to a favourable issue!No, sir, or madam, or mademoiselle, as the case may be; you cannot do it—not in a quadrille, at all events, or I will;—but, no, I won’t bet:—it is wrong to do so, Min told me!Presently, on the music stopping, I led her to a seat in a quiet corner. “Here”—thought I—“I shall be able to have you to myself without fear of interruption!”I commenced my tale again; but, Min, evidently, did not wish to come to any decision now. She wanted to let matters remain as they were.I could see this readily, by the way in which she tried to put me off, changing the conversation whenever I got on to the forbidden ground, and suggesting various irrelevant queries on my endeavouring again to chain her wilfully-erratic attention down to the one topic that I only thought worthy of interest.The feminine mind, I believe, delights in uncertainty.Girls are not half so anxious to have their lovers “declare themselves,” as some ill-natured people would have us think. They much prefer holding on in delightful doubt—that pleasant “he-would-and-she-wouldn’t” pastime that precedes a regular engagement or undoubted dismissal—just as a playful mouser sports with its victim, long after the trembling little beast has lost its small portion of life; pretending that it is yet alive and essaying to escape, when pussy knows right well that poor mousey’s fate is sealed, as far as any further struggles on its part are concerned.A man, on the contrary, abhors suspense.It is not business-like, you know.He much desiderates a plain answer to a plain exposition of fact or fancy—even when it takes the form of that excruciating little monosyllable “no.”Those diminutive arts and petty trickeries of feigned resistance, with which our “angels without wings” strive to delay the surrender of the maiden-citadels of their hearts, are but vexatious obstacles to his legitimate triumph. These, the veteran wooer attempts to carry by storm at once, seeing through their utter transparency:—to the unpractised Damon, however, they assume the proportions of an organised defence.Look at my case, for instance:—I had hardly managed to manoeuvre Min into my selected corner, and to say two words on the subject that occupied all my thoughts; when, she, who had previously condoled with me on the “horrid crowd” that prevented our having “a nice chat” together, as “we used to have last year,” and joined in abusing “that wretched quadrille,” which had interfered so sadly with our talking, now tried to baulk my purpose of an explanation by every means in her power.Ladies having generally ample resources to suit such ends, it was almost useless for me to combat her obvious resolve.The moment I sat down beside her, what does she do, but, ask me to get her an ice—it was “sohot!”Of course, I started off to procure it, our conversation being stopped meanwhile; but then, when I had scrambled through the crowd in the doorway, making ninepins of all the male wallflowers; had rudely jostled the peripatetics on the staircase; and, literally, fought my way into the supper-room and back to her again with the desired dainty—what do you think was my reward?I assure you, there was the identical, horrible person, with sandy hair and sallow, elongated features—whom I had before routed in the matter of Min’s dancing with him,—seated in my chair, chattering away at a fine rate to my darling; and, she?—Was listening to his sallies with apparent contentment.It was, enough to have caused a Puritan to swear!She saw that I was annoyed; but, she thanked me so prettily for her ice, that my anger towards her was instantly appeased:—not so, however, toward the interloper! I gnawed, in impotent fury, the attenuated ends of the small fragment of a moustache which nature had allotted to me, and talked at him and over him, so pointedly, that he had to beat a retreat and claim some other partner for the ensuing waltz.We were again left alone; but, Min, still, wouldn’t listen to me a moment!“Oh, Frank!” she said. “This isourdance, I think, is it not? We have sat outsucha time! Do let us begin.”I liked dancing, but wanted to speak more; so, I got angry again.“You are cruel to me, Min,”—I said.—“Youknowthat I wish to speak to you seriously, and you won’t let me have a chance. You can joke and laugh, while I’m breaking, my heart! I will leave you”—and, I walked away from her out of the room and down the staircase—very proudly, very defiantly, very miserably.On my way I met, or rather encountered, our sandy friend who had spoilt my interview. There was a heavy crush on the stairs; and so, somebody else having shoved against me, I revenged myself on this gentleman, giving him such a malicious dig in the ribs from my elbow as elicited a deep sighing groan. This was some slight satisfaction to me. It sounded exactly like the affected “Hough!” which paviours give vent to, when wielding their mallets and ramming down the stones of the roadway!In the hall, as I was hunting for my overcoat and hat, which had been buried beneath an avalanche of other upper garments, Min, who had followed me down, laid her hand timidly on my arm. She looked up in my face entreatingly.“You are not going yet, Frank, are you?” she asked.“Yes,” said I, curtly. “What should I stay for? Do you think I find it so amusing to be laughed at? It is very poor fun,Ithink!”“But you, surely, won’t go before saying good-bye to the lady of the house, Frank?” she then said.She evidently thought, you see, that I was going to commit an unpardonable breach of good manners; and, that made her call me back—nothing else!I returned with her to the drawing-room. Min’s face was quite pale now; and, the little rosebud lips were pressed closely together, as if in set determination. She perceived that she could not any longer put off what she knew was coming—no matter what might have been her kindly intent in so wishing to do.On our entrance the band was playing theMabelwaltz. How well I remember it!We joined in for a few turns; and, as I clasped my arm round her darling waist, feeling her warm heart beating against mine, I longed to clasp her so always, and waltz on for ever!In a little while we rested; and, getting her to walk out on to the canopied balcony through the French windows of the drawing-room, I there said my say to her, amidst the waving ferns and showy azaleas that surrounded us.We had the place all to ourselves; for, as it was now early in the morning, most of the guests had already gone:—the indefatigables who remained were too busily engaged to mind us. They were making the most of the last waltz, which was protracted to an indefinite length.“Min, my darling,”—said I, after a brief pause, looking straight down into her honest, upturned face,—“will you promise to be my wife, or no?”“O–oh, Frank!” she murmured, bending her head down without another word.“Darling!”—I continued.—“You know full well that I love you; and I’ve thought, dearest, that you loved me a little?”“Hush! Do not speak so, dear Frank; you grieve me so,” she said.“Have you forgotten all the past then, Min? Don’t you remember last year, and all that happened then?”—I asked.“I remember, Frank,” she whispered, rather than spoke.“And do you not love me still, darling?” I pleaded:—“Look up into my face, and let me see your eyes:—theywon’t deceive me, I know!”But, the dear, grey eyes would not meet mine.“Oh, Min, my darling!” I asked again, pressing her closely to my heart, “will you not promise to be my wife? Sweet, I love you so!”“They are looking at us, Frank,”—was her rejoinder—“let us waltz on.”We had some more turns, “Mabel” still dominant in the orchestra. O that air! I can hear it now, as I heard it then, ringing yet in my ears—as it will continue always to haunt me!When we stopped again, I repeated my question once more. I was determined to have an answer, good or bad.“Frank,” she said, hurriedly, “I cannot say anything; I have promised:—I have promised. Pray, do not ask me!”She spoke with great agitation. There was a tremor in her voice; and, I could seenowthat the soft grey eyes, which were piteously turned to mine, were tearful and sad. I was mad, however, with love and grief, or I could not have resisted the mute entreaty I there read—to be silent.“Min,” I went on to say, passionately, “you must now decide whether we are to meet again, or part for ever! You know how I love you now, have loved you ever since I first saw your darling face,—will love you until my heart ceases to beat! But, I cannot, oh! I cannot go on like this. The suspense is killing me:—anxiety and uncertainty are driving me mad! Tell me, Min—dear as you are to me, I ask it for the last time—whether you will promise to be my wife? Only give me a grain of hope, that I may have something to look forward to; something to work for; some object in life? At present, I have nothing; and, my existence is a burden to me!”“Can we not be friends still, Frank?” she asked, sadly.“No, Min,” I answered; “Icannot promise any longer what I feel unable to perform. You must be everything to me or nothing! I would lay down my life for you, darling! Won’t you give me some hope?”“Oh, Frank! do not torture me,”—she exclaimed, in a choking voice—“I have pledged my word, and I cannot break it.”“Better to break my heart than your mother’s selfish command!” I said, bitterly, knowing, now, how she had probably been bound down to refuse me, should I again offer my love.O wise, far-reaching, far-seeing Mrs Clyde!“Do not be so unkind to me, Frank,” said Min, half sobbingly, after a little time, during which I tried to keep down my own emotion; and, I felt a warm little tear drop on the hand in which I still clasped hers in a lingering clasp—“I have been a friend, though, to you; have I not, Frank?” she asked me.“Tell me, Min,” I said, making a last appeal; “do you love me—have you ever loved me? Let me have some consolation, to comfort me!”“I must not say anything, must not promise anything. I have given my word to mamma. But, oh, Frank! do not be angry with me. Let us be friends still, won’t you?”“No,” said I, sternly—I wondered afterwards at my cruelty; but, I was goaded on to desperation, and hardly knew what I was saying.—“We part for ever now, Min! Your mother may certainly procure you a wealthier suitor, but none who can love you as truly as I do, as I have done! Good-bye. I dare say you will soon be happy with some one else; but, perhaps, you will think sometimes of him whom you have discarded, whose heart you have broken, whose life you have wrecked?—No, I do not want you to think of me at all!” I added, passionately, at the last—and then, I left her.What a walk home I had, in the early dawn!I would not take a cab, although several passed me. I wanted to be alone in my misery; and so, I walked the whole way to Saint Canon’s—three miles if it were an inch, over a rough, newly-stoned road, too, and in patent-leather boots with paper soles! I never thought of that, however, nor felt the stones, notwithstanding that my boots were entirely worn out when I reached home. I might have been walking along on a Brussels carpet, for all that I knew to the contrary!My thoughts were agony:—my mind, a perfect hell; and, that dreadfulMabelwaltz seemed to be continually running through my brain, tinkling the death knell of all my hopes!The tune always recurs to me, whenever my memory goes back to the night of that miserable evening party, with all its attendant scenes and circumstances; and, I hate it!Two bars of it whistled now, no matter where I heard them, or in what company I might chance to be, would bring me mentally face to face with my misery again!O Min, Min!She never knew how I loved her, or she would never have rejected me like this!This was my consolation—ample, wasn’t it?
—Then, in that time and place I spoke to her,Requiring, tho’ I knew it was mine own,Yet for the pleasure that I took to hear,Requiring, at her hand, the greatest gift,A woman’s heart, the heart of her I loved.
—Then, in that time and place I spoke to her,Requiring, tho’ I knew it was mine own,Yet for the pleasure that I took to hear,Requiring, at her hand, the greatest gift,A woman’s heart, the heart of her I loved.
When “hope deferred,” and baffled love combined, had well-nigh made me as miserable and woebegone as I could possibly be, I heard a piece of news one day which almost nerved up my halting resolution to bring affairs to a final issue by speaking out again to Mrs Clyde—no matter what might be the result.
The joyful intelligence was circulated by the pleased Lady Dasher, that, Mr Mawley had at length proposed for her daughter, Bessie. It was time for it, as he had angled around and nibbled warily at the tempting bait offered him—like the knowing fish that he was—for months before he would permit himself to be caught!
The curate had, doubtless, noticed at length that the damsel was comely withal; and, his heart yearned towards her. The reverend gentleman, however, had not been unobservant of the charms of other maidens with whom he had been brought in contact, so, it may be presumed that his heart had “yearned” in vain for them; or, peradventure, these had not played with him so dexterously, when once hooked, as did the fair Bessie—who had not been the granddaughter of an Irish peer for nothing!
Still, there is no object to be gained now in raking up all of Mr Mawley’s old conquests or defeats, ere his present “wooing and a’:”—he had been accepted, in this his most recent venture, and was engaged explicitly—Lady Dasher taking very good care to inform everybody of her acquaintance of the fact, in order that there might arise no such little mistake as that of the curate’s backing out of the alliance.
Her ladyship only wished for one thing more to make her “happy,” so she said; and that was, that her “poor dear papa” were but alive, so that she might tell him, too, about the coming event. This was impossible though, as she added, with her customary melancholy shake of the head, and a return to her normal expression of poignant grief; for, as she said very truly, “one can never expect to be thoroughly happy in this weary pilgrimage of ours!”
Her complete gratification would, certainly, have been little less than a miracle.
The engagement was of very short duration, Bessie’s mamma acting up to the Hibernian policy of “cooking her fish,” as soon as she had captured him. There’s “many a slip,” you know, “’twixt cup and lip.”
Mawley would probably have gladly lingered yet awhile longer amid the festive scenes of clerical bachelorhood, flirting—in a devout way, of course—under the shade of the church, with Chloe and Daphne, those unappropriated spinsters of the parish who took pleasure in ministering to the social wants of the curate and others of his cloth.
But, it was not to be. Lady Dasher was, for a wonder, wise in her generation; and, the twain—not my lady and Mawley, but her daughter and ditto—were married within a month after the public announcement of their attachment, much to the surprise of Saint Canon’s, the mortification of sundry single ladies thereof, and the well-disguised delight of Lady Dasher, who, even on such a festive occasion, looked more melancholic than ever.
It was this, that nerved me up to desperation. Why, thought I, the day after the wedding, as I paced along the Prebend’s Walk—over which the long-branched elms and waving oaks and thickly-growing lime-trees formed a perfect arch, in all the panoply of their new summer leaves, sheltering one from rain and sun alike—why, thought I, should that fellow, Mawley, be made happy, and I not?
Really, I could not answer the question at all satisfactorily.
You see, I was not able to come to a decision with myself as to whether I should repeat the darling request which I had made to Min very nearly twelve months before, or wait on still in suspense. The risk of the former course was great, for, Mrs Clyde might, and most likely would, put an end immediately to all communication whatever between us, should she continue hostile to my suit—an eventuality horrible to contemplate; and yet, would it not be better for me to be relieved from the existing state of uncertainty in which my mind was plunged?
What must I do?
I had to determine that point, at all events.
I could not settle it in a moment: it was far too weighty a consideration—it required serious deliberation. So, I paced on, still moodily to the end of the Prebend’s Walk; and, although it was raining heavily, sat down on the stone balustrade of the little rustic bridge over the fosse, facing the river.—“Ah me!” I reflected, calling to my memory Thackeray’s sad lament, in that seemingly-comic “Ballad of the Bouillabaisse,” which is all the more pathetic from its affected humour.
“Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!I mind me of a time that’s goneWhen I’d sit, as now I’m sitting,In this same place—but not alone.“A fair young form was nestled near me,A dear, dear face looked fondly up,And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me—There’s no one now to share my cup.”
“Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!I mind me of a time that’s goneWhen I’d sit, as now I’m sitting,In this same place—but not alone.“A fair young form was nestled near me,A dear, dear face looked fondly up,And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me—There’s no one now to share my cup.”
As I was musing thus sadly, I was unexpectedly tapped on the shoulder by Monsieur Parole d’Honneur, who had come up quietly behind me, without my noticing his approach. He was on his way to pay a visit to his “good vicaire” at the vicarage, after giving his usual Wednesday lecture at the neighbouring “college for young ladies;” where, blooming misses—in addition to their curriculum of “accomplishments” and “all the ’ologies”—were taught the noble art of family multiplication, domestic division, male detraction, feminine sedition, and, the glorious rule of—one!
Me grieving, he joyously addressed.
“Ohe! my youngish friends”—his general term in speaking to me—“how goes it?—Hi—lo!” he went on, seeing from my face, as I turned my head to speak to him, that, “it” did not “go” particularly well—“Hi—lo! vat ees ze mattaire?—you look pallide; you have got ze migraine?”
“No,” I answered; “there’s nothing the matter with me, I assure you, Monsieur Parole. I’m all right, thank you.”
“Ah! but yes,” he retorted—“you cannote deceives me. You are pallide; you take walks on feet this detestable day.—Mon Dieu! votre climat c’est affreux!—I knows ver wells, Meestaire Lorton, dat somesings ees ze mattaire!”
“But, I’m quite well, I tell you,” said I.
“Quaite well en physique, bon:—quaite well, here?” tapping his chest expressively the while—“non! I knows vat ees ze mattaire. C’est une affaire de coeur, ees it not, mon ami? You cannote deceives me, I tells to you! But, nevaire mind dat, my youngish friends: cheer oop and be gays—toujours gai! I have had, myselfs, it ees one, two, tree,—seex lofes! Seex times ees mon coeur brisé, and I was désolé; and now, you sees, I’m of a light heart still!”—and he laughed so cheerily, that, even Lady Dasher, I think, could not have well helped chiming in with his merriment.
I did not laugh, however. “Pardon me, monsieur,” I said,—“I’m not in a joking mood.”
“Come, come, mon brave,” he continued, seeing that my dejection was beyond the point where it could be laughed away; and accommodating himself to my humour, with the native delicacy of his race—“I have myself, suffered:—ainsi, I can condoles! You know, my dear, youngish friends, when I was déporté de mon pays, hé?”
I nodded my head in acquiescence, hardly feeling inclined for the recital of some revolutionary anecdote, which I thought was going to be related to me. Monsieur Parole, however, astonished me with quite a different narration.
“Leesten,” said he.—“When I did leeves my Paris beloved, hélas! I was tored from my lofe—my fiancée dat I adore! I leaves her in hopes and au désespoir. I dreams of her images in my exiles! When I learns at my acadamies ze young ladees, ze beautifool Eenglish mees, I tinks of ma belle Marie, her figure, and her face angélique, wheech I sail nevaire forgets—no, nevaire! And I says to myselfs, ‘Ah! she ees more beautifools dan dese!’ Mais, mon ami, I was deceives by her all dat time. Not sooner go I from France, dan she ees marie to un grand, gros, fat épicier of La Villette—Marie dat was fiancée au moi, gentilhomme! Mais, mon Dieu; when I was heard ze news, I was enragé—I goes back to Paris. I fears notings—no mouchard—no gend’armerie—no notings—although, I was suspect and deporté de France! I sends un cartel—you comprends—to ze gros bon ami de ma Marie, ce cochon d’un épicier! We meets in ze Bois: I gives him one leetel tierce en carte dat spoils his lovemakings for awhile; and, I leeves France again for evers—dat is, unless ma patrie and ze sacred cause of ze République Française calls upon me—but, not till den! So, you sees, my youngish friends, dat oders suffer like yourselfs. I have told to you my story; cheer oop! If ze ladees have deceives you, she is not wort one snaps of ze fingers!”
“But, she has not deceived me,” I said.
“Den why are you mélancolique?”
“Because, because—” I hesitated:—I was ashamed to say what made me despondent.
“For ze reasons dat you don’t knows weder she lofes you or not?” he asked. “Ah, ha! Den, why not ask her, my friends? You are young; you have a deesposeetion good; you are handsome—”
“O–oh, Monsieur Parole,” I exclaimed at his nattering category of my attributes, almost blushing.
“Ah, but yes,” he went on—“I am quaite raite. You are handsome; with un air distingué; reech.”
I shook my head, to show that I could not lay claim to being a millionaire, in addition to my other virtues.
“No, not reech, but clevaire; and you will be reech bye-bye! I see not why ze ladees should not leesten to you, mon ami, he?—But, if she does note; why, courage! Dere are many odere ladees beautifool also in England; and, yet, if you feels your loss mooch, like myselfs with ma perfide Marie, why you can go aways and be console, as I!”
His words encouraged me:—and, my face imperceptibly brightened.
“Ah, ha! dat is bettaire,” he said—“I likes you, Meestaire Lorton; and it does me pain to sees you at deespair like dese! Cheer oop; and all will be raite, as our good friend, ze vicaire, all-ways tells to us. We will go and sees him now!”
He took my unresisting arm, and carried me off to the vicarage; changing the conversation as we went along, and gradually instilling fresh hope into my heart.
I dare say you think it was very idiotical on my part, thus to bewail my grief to another person; and allow a few empty words to change the current of my feelings?
But then, you must recollect, that I would not have comported myself in this way with a brother Englishman.
If Horner had told me ofhiswoes, for example, similarly as I told mine, or let them be drawn out of me by Monsieur Parole, I confess I would have been much more likely to have laughed at, than sympathised with him.
A Frenchman, however, is naturally more sentimental than any of ourselves. He looks seriously and considerately on things which we make light of.
Besides, in my then cut-throat mood, I was longing for sympathy; and would have made a confidante of any one offering for the post—barring Lady Dasher or Miss Spight—neither of whom would I have chosen as a depository were I anxious to give my last dying speech and confession to the world; although, they would probably cause the same to be circulated fast enough—judging by their habit in regard to that sort of private information respecting the delicate concerns of other people which is passed on from hand to hand “in strict confidence, mind!” and which is not to be told to any one else “for the world!”
Monsieur Parole’s story was a good lesson to me.
I saw that he who had had grief as great, and greater than mine, for I knew that Min loved me and was constant—had concealed it so that none who looked on his round merry face, would have supposed him capable of a deep emotion; while, I, on the contrary, had paraded my little anxieties, like a fool!
He also taught me determination; for, I resolved now, that, on the first opportunity I had, I would speak to my darling again, and have my fate settled, without more delay—for good or ill, as the case might be.
I would not remain in suspense any longer.
Within a week, this wished-for opportunity came.
Some mutual friends, to whom, indeed, Min had been the original means of my introduction—they living without the orbit of the Saint Canon circle—asked me to a large evening party that they gave late in the season.
There, I met my darling, as I hoped—unaccompanied by her mother, which I hadnotimagined would happen; consequently, my chances for speaking to Min would be all the more favourable.
There was so general a crush of people; that, although the rooms were large and there were many nice little retreats for tête-à-tête conversation, in balconies that were covered in like marquees and snug conservatories, besides the stair landings—those last “refuges for the destitute” who might desire retirement—I had to put off my purpose until evening wore on to such a late hour, that I thought I would not be able to speak to my darling at all!
After midnight, however, my opportunity came.
First getting rid of a horrible person, who would persist in following Min about under the false pretence that his name was on her card for several of the after-supper dances—an assertionIknew to be ridiculously unfounded; for, I had taken care to place my own name down for as many as Min would give me, and, all the latter ones I had appropriated also without asking her permission, thinking that when that happy time arrived, she would not be very hard on me for my presumption; nor was she.
Extinguishing the interloper—some people have such blindness of mental vision, that they never can see when they are not wanted!—I managed at length to open proceedings.
It was while in a quadrille that I began referring to the agonised state of my mind, and explained the mental suffering I then was experiencing.
Min listened attentively, as far as she heard, a warm flush on her dear face and a light sparkling in the deep grey eyes; but, I would defy any lover to plead his cause with due effect in that mazy old cotillon dance, which a love of French nomenclature in the early part of the century, taught us to style “quadrille.”
How can you inform the object of your passion that you adore her, with any becoming effusion of sentiment, when you are chassez-ing and balancez-ing like a human teetotum? How, breathe the words of love; when, ere you have completed your avowal, you have to make a fool of yourself in the “Cavalier seul,” the cynosure of six different pairs of eyes besides those of the girl of your heart? How, tone your voice, sweetly attuned though it may be to Venusian accents, when, one moment, it may be inaudible to her whom you address, through the rampagious gallopading and ladies-chaining of excited quadrillers; and, the next, be so raised in pitch, from the sudden hush that falls on band and dancers alike, between the figures, that your opposite vis-à-vis, and the neighbouring side couples, can hear every syllable of your frantic declaration—much to their amusement and your discomfiture?
You cannot do it, I say.
No, not if you were a Talleyrand in love matters; and, so completely versed in the pathology of the “fitful fever,” as to be able to diagnose it at a glance; besides nursing the patient through all the several stages of the disease—watching every symptom, anticipating each change, bringing the “case,” finally, to a favourable issue!
No, sir, or madam, or mademoiselle, as the case may be; you cannot do it—not in a quadrille, at all events, or I will;—but, no, I won’t bet:—it is wrong to do so, Min told me!
Presently, on the music stopping, I led her to a seat in a quiet corner. “Here”—thought I—“I shall be able to have you to myself without fear of interruption!”
I commenced my tale again; but, Min, evidently, did not wish to come to any decision now. She wanted to let matters remain as they were.
I could see this readily, by the way in which she tried to put me off, changing the conversation whenever I got on to the forbidden ground, and suggesting various irrelevant queries on my endeavouring again to chain her wilfully-erratic attention down to the one topic that I only thought worthy of interest.
The feminine mind, I believe, delights in uncertainty.
Girls are not half so anxious to have their lovers “declare themselves,” as some ill-natured people would have us think. They much prefer holding on in delightful doubt—that pleasant “he-would-and-she-wouldn’t” pastime that precedes a regular engagement or undoubted dismissal—just as a playful mouser sports with its victim, long after the trembling little beast has lost its small portion of life; pretending that it is yet alive and essaying to escape, when pussy knows right well that poor mousey’s fate is sealed, as far as any further struggles on its part are concerned.
A man, on the contrary, abhors suspense.
It is not business-like, you know.
He much desiderates a plain answer to a plain exposition of fact or fancy—even when it takes the form of that excruciating little monosyllable “no.”
Those diminutive arts and petty trickeries of feigned resistance, with which our “angels without wings” strive to delay the surrender of the maiden-citadels of their hearts, are but vexatious obstacles to his legitimate triumph. These, the veteran wooer attempts to carry by storm at once, seeing through their utter transparency:—to the unpractised Damon, however, they assume the proportions of an organised defence.
Look at my case, for instance:—I had hardly managed to manoeuvre Min into my selected corner, and to say two words on the subject that occupied all my thoughts; when, she, who had previously condoled with me on the “horrid crowd” that prevented our having “a nice chat” together, as “we used to have last year,” and joined in abusing “that wretched quadrille,” which had interfered so sadly with our talking, now tried to baulk my purpose of an explanation by every means in her power.
Ladies having generally ample resources to suit such ends, it was almost useless for me to combat her obvious resolve.
The moment I sat down beside her, what does she do, but, ask me to get her an ice—it was “sohot!”
Of course, I started off to procure it, our conversation being stopped meanwhile; but then, when I had scrambled through the crowd in the doorway, making ninepins of all the male wallflowers; had rudely jostled the peripatetics on the staircase; and, literally, fought my way into the supper-room and back to her again with the desired dainty—what do you think was my reward?
I assure you, there was the identical, horrible person, with sandy hair and sallow, elongated features—whom I had before routed in the matter of Min’s dancing with him,—seated in my chair, chattering away at a fine rate to my darling; and, she?—
Was listening to his sallies with apparent contentment.
It was, enough to have caused a Puritan to swear!
She saw that I was annoyed; but, she thanked me so prettily for her ice, that my anger towards her was instantly appeased:—not so, however, toward the interloper! I gnawed, in impotent fury, the attenuated ends of the small fragment of a moustache which nature had allotted to me, and talked at him and over him, so pointedly, that he had to beat a retreat and claim some other partner for the ensuing waltz.
We were again left alone; but, Min, still, wouldn’t listen to me a moment!
“Oh, Frank!” she said. “This isourdance, I think, is it not? We have sat outsucha time! Do let us begin.”
I liked dancing, but wanted to speak more; so, I got angry again.
“You are cruel to me, Min,”—I said.—“Youknowthat I wish to speak to you seriously, and you won’t let me have a chance. You can joke and laugh, while I’m breaking, my heart! I will leave you”—and, I walked away from her out of the room and down the staircase—very proudly, very defiantly, very miserably.
On my way I met, or rather encountered, our sandy friend who had spoilt my interview. There was a heavy crush on the stairs; and so, somebody else having shoved against me, I revenged myself on this gentleman, giving him such a malicious dig in the ribs from my elbow as elicited a deep sighing groan. This was some slight satisfaction to me. It sounded exactly like the affected “Hough!” which paviours give vent to, when wielding their mallets and ramming down the stones of the roadway!
In the hall, as I was hunting for my overcoat and hat, which had been buried beneath an avalanche of other upper garments, Min, who had followed me down, laid her hand timidly on my arm. She looked up in my face entreatingly.
“You are not going yet, Frank, are you?” she asked.
“Yes,” said I, curtly. “What should I stay for? Do you think I find it so amusing to be laughed at? It is very poor fun,Ithink!”
“But you, surely, won’t go before saying good-bye to the lady of the house, Frank?” she then said.
She evidently thought, you see, that I was going to commit an unpardonable breach of good manners; and, that made her call me back—nothing else!
I returned with her to the drawing-room. Min’s face was quite pale now; and, the little rosebud lips were pressed closely together, as if in set determination. She perceived that she could not any longer put off what she knew was coming—no matter what might have been her kindly intent in so wishing to do.
On our entrance the band was playing theMabelwaltz. How well I remember it!
We joined in for a few turns; and, as I clasped my arm round her darling waist, feeling her warm heart beating against mine, I longed to clasp her so always, and waltz on for ever!
In a little while we rested; and, getting her to walk out on to the canopied balcony through the French windows of the drawing-room, I there said my say to her, amidst the waving ferns and showy azaleas that surrounded us.
We had the place all to ourselves; for, as it was now early in the morning, most of the guests had already gone:—the indefatigables who remained were too busily engaged to mind us. They were making the most of the last waltz, which was protracted to an indefinite length.
“Min, my darling,”—said I, after a brief pause, looking straight down into her honest, upturned face,—“will you promise to be my wife, or no?”
“O–oh, Frank!” she murmured, bending her head down without another word.
“Darling!”—I continued.—“You know full well that I love you; and I’ve thought, dearest, that you loved me a little?”
“Hush! Do not speak so, dear Frank; you grieve me so,” she said.
“Have you forgotten all the past then, Min? Don’t you remember last year, and all that happened then?”—I asked.
“I remember, Frank,” she whispered, rather than spoke.
“And do you not love me still, darling?” I pleaded:—“Look up into my face, and let me see your eyes:—theywon’t deceive me, I know!”
But, the dear, grey eyes would not meet mine.
“Oh, Min, my darling!” I asked again, pressing her closely to my heart, “will you not promise to be my wife? Sweet, I love you so!”
“They are looking at us, Frank,”—was her rejoinder—“let us waltz on.”
We had some more turns, “Mabel” still dominant in the orchestra. O that air! I can hear it now, as I heard it then, ringing yet in my ears—as it will continue always to haunt me!
When we stopped again, I repeated my question once more. I was determined to have an answer, good or bad.
“Frank,” she said, hurriedly, “I cannot say anything; I have promised:—I have promised. Pray, do not ask me!”
She spoke with great agitation. There was a tremor in her voice; and, I could seenowthat the soft grey eyes, which were piteously turned to mine, were tearful and sad. I was mad, however, with love and grief, or I could not have resisted the mute entreaty I there read—to be silent.
“Min,” I went on to say, passionately, “you must now decide whether we are to meet again, or part for ever! You know how I love you now, have loved you ever since I first saw your darling face,—will love you until my heart ceases to beat! But, I cannot, oh! I cannot go on like this. The suspense is killing me:—anxiety and uncertainty are driving me mad! Tell me, Min—dear as you are to me, I ask it for the last time—whether you will promise to be my wife? Only give me a grain of hope, that I may have something to look forward to; something to work for; some object in life? At present, I have nothing; and, my existence is a burden to me!”
“Can we not be friends still, Frank?” she asked, sadly.
“No, Min,” I answered; “Icannot promise any longer what I feel unable to perform. You must be everything to me or nothing! I would lay down my life for you, darling! Won’t you give me some hope?”
“Oh, Frank! do not torture me,”—she exclaimed, in a choking voice—“I have pledged my word, and I cannot break it.”
“Better to break my heart than your mother’s selfish command!” I said, bitterly, knowing, now, how she had probably been bound down to refuse me, should I again offer my love.
O wise, far-reaching, far-seeing Mrs Clyde!
“Do not be so unkind to me, Frank,” said Min, half sobbingly, after a little time, during which I tried to keep down my own emotion; and, I felt a warm little tear drop on the hand in which I still clasped hers in a lingering clasp—“I have been a friend, though, to you; have I not, Frank?” she asked me.
“Tell me, Min,” I said, making a last appeal; “do you love me—have you ever loved me? Let me have some consolation, to comfort me!”
“I must not say anything, must not promise anything. I have given my word to mamma. But, oh, Frank! do not be angry with me. Let us be friends still, won’t you?”
“No,” said I, sternly—I wondered afterwards at my cruelty; but, I was goaded on to desperation, and hardly knew what I was saying.—“We part for ever now, Min! Your mother may certainly procure you a wealthier suitor, but none who can love you as truly as I do, as I have done! Good-bye. I dare say you will soon be happy with some one else; but, perhaps, you will think sometimes of him whom you have discarded, whose heart you have broken, whose life you have wrecked?—No, I do not want you to think of me at all!” I added, passionately, at the last—and then, I left her.
What a walk home I had, in the early dawn!
I would not take a cab, although several passed me. I wanted to be alone in my misery; and so, I walked the whole way to Saint Canon’s—three miles if it were an inch, over a rough, newly-stoned road, too, and in patent-leather boots with paper soles! I never thought of that, however, nor felt the stones, notwithstanding that my boots were entirely worn out when I reached home. I might have been walking along on a Brussels carpet, for all that I knew to the contrary!
My thoughts were agony:—my mind, a perfect hell; and, that dreadfulMabelwaltz seemed to be continually running through my brain, tinkling the death knell of all my hopes!
The tune always recurs to me, whenever my memory goes back to the night of that miserable evening party, with all its attendant scenes and circumstances; and, I hate it!
Two bars of it whistled now, no matter where I heard them, or in what company I might chance to be, would bring me mentally face to face with my misery again!
O Min, Min!
She never knew how I loved her, or she would never have rejected me like this!
This was my consolation—ample, wasn’t it?
Chapter Seven.Her Letter.Ay de mi! Un anno felice,Parece un soplo ligero:Perô sin dicha un instante,Es un siglo de tormente.”—And with mine eyesI’ll drink the words you send, though ink be made of gall!”It was broad daylight when I got home.I did not go to bed; but, passed the weary morning hours in walking up and down my room, chewing the bitter cud of hopeless fancy, and in a state of excitement almost approaching to madness.At last, the time arrived for me to start to town to my office.“Hey, humph! what is the matter, Mr Lorton?”—growled old Smudge to me, as I proceeded to sign the attendance book before the fatal black line was drawn against the late comers—“Look ill, look ill! hey? Late hours, late hours, young man, young man; dissipation, and all the rest of it, hey?Iknow how it will end—same as the rest, same as the rest!”—and he chuckled to himself over some blue book in his corner, as if he had, in the most merry and unbending mood, “passed the time of day” with singular bonhomie!I only gave him a gruff good-morning, however. I walked listlessly to my desk, where he presently also came, to take me to task about some account I had checked—so as to tone down any presumptuous feelings I might have in consequence of his graciousness:—the “balance” was, thus, “pretty square” between us.I never found the office-work so tedious, my fellow-clerks so wearisome, nor the whole round of civil service life so dreadfully “flat, stale, and unprofitable,” as on that miserable day after the party!The day seemed as if it would never come to an end.The wretched hours lengthened themselves out, with such indiarubber-like elasticity, that, the interval between ten and four appeared a cycle of centuries!I was longing to be free, in order to carry out a determination to which I had come.I had resolved to see Mrs Clyde and plead my cause again with her; for, I had observed from Min’s manner, that it was notherobjection to me personally, but, her promise to her mother which had prevented her from lending a favourable ear to my suit.Four o’clock came at last—thank heaven!I rushed out of the office; procured a hansom, with the fastest horse I was able to pick out in my hurry; and, set out homewards.I arrived within the bounds of Saint Canon’s parish within the half-hour, thanks to the “pour boire” that I held out, in anticipation of hurry, to my Jehu.A few minutes afterwards, I called at The Terrace.The ladies were both out, the servant said.I called again, later on.Still “not at home,” I was told; although, I knew they were in. I had watched both Min and Mrs Clyde enter the house, shortly before my second visit. I was evidently intentionally denied!I went back to my own home. I spent another hour or two, walking up and down my room in the same cheerful way in which I had passed the morning; and then—then, I thought I would write to Mrs Clyde.Yes, that would be the best course.I sat down and penned the most vivid sketch of my present grief, asking her to reconsider the former decision she had given against me. I was certain, I said, that it was only throughherinfluence that Min had rejected me; and I earnestly besought her good will. I was now in a better position, I urged, than I had been the previous year, my income being nearly doubled—thanks to Government and what I was able to reap from my literary lucubrations:—what more could she require? Besides, my assets would increase, at the least, by the ten pound bonus which a grateful country annually aggregates to the salary of its victims each year—not to speak of the fortune I might make by my “connection with the press!” In fact, I said everything that I could, to colour my case and get judgment recorded in my favour.But, my toil was all in vain!I sent over my letter by a servant, with instructions to leave it at the door; while, I, waited in all the evening expecting an answer, in breathless suspense.None came; but, next morning I received back my own despatch enclosed in another envelope, unopened, unread.I went down to the office that day in quite a cheerful mood again, I can tell you!How I did enjoy Brown’s balderdash; the witty sallies of Smith; Robinson’s repartees; Jones’ jocosities!When, after my official labours, I returned again to Saint Canon’s that evening, I made another attempt to see Mrs Clyde.No. The servant who answered the door, when I timidly called for the third time at the house, told me that instructions had been given to say “not at home” alwaysto me.Pleasant!War had been declared:—a “guerre à outrance,” as I had anticipated; but, it was a struggle in which I was stretched on the ground at my adversary’s mercy, with her vengeful blade at my heart!I then wrote to Min.It was a long letter. I bewailed my hasty severance of the old relations between us, and asked her to have pity on my sad fate. I poured out all the flood of feeling which had deluged my breast since we had parted at the party. I begged, I implored her not to desert me at her mother’s bidding.My letter I posted, so that it should not be stopped en route, and returned to me unread by my darling, whom I asked to write to me, if only one line, to tell me that she had really received my appeal safely—requesting her, also, to reply to me at my office that I might get her answer in the soonest possible time.I dreamt of her subsequently, the whole night through:—it was a horrible dream!A third day of torture in my governmental mill. Six mortal hours more of dreary misery; and, helpless boredom at the hands of Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson!And, then, I got my reply.It was “only a line.” Very short, very sweet, very bitter, very pointed; and yet, I value that little letter so highly that I would not exchange it for the world! The words are stained with tear-drops that, I know, fell from loving, grey eyes; while, its sense, though painful, is sweet to me from its outspoken truthfulness:—I value it so highly, that I could not deem it more precious, if it were written on a golden tablet in characters set with diamonds—were it the longest letter maiden ever wrote, the sweetest billet lover ever received!“Frank! I cannot, I must not grant your request. Do not wring my heart by writing to me again, or speaking to me; for, I have promised, and we are not to see each other any more. I am breaking my word in writing to you now, but, oh! do not think badly of me. Indeed, indeed, I am not heartless, Frank. It has not been my fault, believe me. I shall pray for you always, always! I must not say any more.“Minnie Clyde.”That was all the little note contained; but, it was quite enough.Was it not?When I had read it and read it, over and over again, I was almost beside myself,—with a grief that was mixed up with feelings of intense anger and rage against her whom I looked upon as the author of my sufferings—Mrs Clyde.Min had been again sent down to the country, the very day on which I received her heart-breaking letter. This I heard from my old friend, dear little Miss Pimpernell, who tried vainly to console me. She endeavoured to make me believe that “all would come right in the end,” as she had prophesied before; but, I refused to be comforted. I could not share her faith. I would not be sanguine any more; no, never any more!I saw Mrs Clyde at church the very next Sunday. I went there in the hope that my darling might have returned, and that I would see her—not from any religious feeling.There was only her mother there, however.I waited to accost her at the church door after the service was over.“Oh, Mrs Clyde,” I said, “do not be my enemy!”But, she took no notice of me:—she cut me dead.I was convinced that all was lost now.It was of no use my longer attempting to fight against fate:—I gave up hope completely;—and then—and then—I went to the devil!Rochefoucauld says in his pointed “Maxims” that—“There is nothing so catching as example; nor is there ever great good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones through the malignity of our nature, which shame restrains and example emancipates.”That was my case now.I suppose I had had it in me all along—the “black drop,” as the Irish peasants call it, of evil; and, that shame had hitherto prevented me from plunging into the whirlpool of sinful indulgence that now drew me, a willing victim, down into its yawning gulf of ruin and degradation. That bar removed, however, I made rapid progress towards the beckoning devil, who was waiting to receive me with open arms. I hastened along that path, “where,”—as Byron has described from his own painful experience—”—In a moment, we may plunge our yearsIn fatal penitence, and in the blightOf our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,And colour things to come with hues of night!”I declare to you, that when I look back on this period of my life—life! death, rather I should say, for it was a moral death—I am quite unable to comprehend the motives that led me to take such a course. My eyes were not blinded. I must have seen that each stride placed me further and further away from my darling, erecting a fresh obstacle between us; still, some irresistible impulse appeared to hurry me on—although, I could not but have known how vain it would be for me to recover my lost footsteps: how hard a matter to change my direction, and look upwards to light and happiness once more! Glancing back at this period—as I do now with horror—I cannot understand myself, I say.I went from bad to worse, plunging deeper and deeper into every wickedness that Satan could suggest, or flesh hanker after—until I seemed to lose all sense of shame and self-reproach.My connection with officialdom was soon terminated.I got later and later in my attendance; so that, old Smudge’s prediction was shortly fulfilled, for, I became no better than the rest, in respect of early hours.One day the chief spoke to me on the subject, and I answered him unguardedly.I was not thinking of him at the time, to tell the truth; and when he said, “Mr Lorton, late again, late again! This won’t do, you know, won’t do!” I quite forgot myself; and, in speaking to him, called him by the nickname under which he was known to us, instead of by his proper appellation.“Very sorry, Smudge,” said I, “very sorry; won’t be so again, I promise you, sir!”He nearly got a fit, I assure you; while, all the other fellows were splitting with laughter at my slip!“Mr Lorton, I will report you, sir!” was all he said to me directly; but, as he shuffled off to his desk, with the attendance book recording my misdeeds under his arm and his face purple with passion, we all could hear him muttering pretty loudly to himself. “Smudge! Smudge!”—he was repeating;—“I’ll Smudge him, the impudent rascal! I wonder what the dooce he meant by it! What the dooce did he mean by it?—mean by it?”I begged his pardon off-hand, immediately, of course, although I would not give him the written apology he peremptorily demanded.Do you know, I did not like to deprive him of the extreme pleasure it would give him to submit his case against me—in clerkly, cut-and-dried statement—to the chief commissioner, under-secretary, first lord, or whoever else occupied the lofty pedestal of “the board,” that controlled the occasionally-peculiar proceedings of the Obstructor General’s Department.I knew with what intense relish he would expatiate on the wrong which “the service” had sustained in his person at my hands—the “frightful example” I presented, of insubordination and defiance to constitutional authority; and how, he would draw up the most elaborate document, detailing all this, in flowing but strictly official language, on carefully-folded, quarter-margined foolscap, of the regular, authorised dimensions!What a pity, I thought, it would be to interfere with such neat arrangements by submitting to aNolle Prosequi—as I would have done, had I tendered the recantation of my error that he insisted on!At the same time, however, I checkmated his triumph, by forwarding to the people in high places the resignation of that position as a clerk of the tertiary formation, which I had, been nominated to, examined in respect of, and competed for, under the auspices of Her Majesty’s Polite Letter Writer Commissioners; and which I had been duly appointed to—all in proper official sequence—but one short year before, plus a few additional months, which were of no great consequence to any one.My withdrawal left, at any rate, one place vacant for some member of Parliament’s constituent’s son, who would, probably, be much more worthy in every way for the honours and duties of the situation—which, really, I do not think I ever estimated at their proper value!This was some satisfaction to me, I assure you; and, combined with the sum of one hundred and ten pounds sterling—less income-tax on one-fourth part of the said amount, or thereabouts: I like to be correct—was all the benefit I ever received from my connection with “Government.”My year’s probation was, I may say without any great exaggeration, thrown away; for, the knowledge I gained was not of a character to advance my interests in any other walk in life, professional or mercantile. Still, I bear no malice to officialdom, if officialdom cares to obtain my assurance to that effect. The few words—far between, too—which I have dropped to you, anent the combination of the ill-used servants of the country in opposition to their grievances, have been more intended to redress the wrongs of those hard-worked, poor-paid sufferers in question, than meant as a covert attack on the noble authorities of the great, lumbering institution they belong to—the spokes of whose broadly-tired wheels they may be said to form.For my part, I adore governmental departments, looking on all of them with a wide admiration that is tempered with wholesome awe; and, believing them to be so many concentrations of virtue and merit, which are none the less real because they are imperceptible.The giving up of my appointment was the finish of my mad career.I awoke now to a consciousness of all my foolishness and wickedness; the revelation of the misery, present and future alike, which my conduct had prepared for me, coming to mind, with a sudden, sharp stroke of painful distinctness that prostrated me into an abyss of self-torture and repentance.Ah! There is no use in repining, unless one mends matters by deeds, not words. Repentance is worth little if it be not followed up by reformation. But, how many of us rush madly, headlong to destruction, without a thought of what they are doing; never mindful of their course, till that dreadful refrain, “Too late!” rings in their ears.As the poetical author of the ode to the “Plump Head Waiter at The Cock,” has philosophically sung,—and, as many a weather-beaten sufferer has cruelly proven,—“So fares it since the years began,Till they be gather’d up;The truth, that flies the flowing can,Will haunt the empty cup:And others’ follies teach us not,Nor much their wisdom teaches;And most, of sterling worth, is whatOur own experience preaches!”I remembered now having come across a passage in Massillon’sPetit Carême, some two or three years before, during a varied course of French reading at the library of the British Museum,—an old haunt of mine long previously to my ever knowing Min; and this passage occurred to me in my present condition, expressing a want I had long felt, and which I was now all the more bitterly conscious of. It is in one of the sermons which the seventeenth century divine probably preached in the presence of the Grand Monarque. It is entitled “Sur la Destinée de l’Homme;” and might, for its practical point and thorough insightedness into human nature, be expounded to-morrow by any of our large-hearted, Broad Church ministers. In its truth, I’m sure, it is catholic enough to suit any creed:—“Si tout doit finir avec nous, si l’homme ne doit rien attendre après cette vie, et que ce soit ici notre patrie, notre origine, et la seul félicité que nous pouvons nous promettre, pourquoi n’y sommes-nous pas heureux? Si nous ne naissons que pour les plaisirs des sens, pourquoi ne peuvent-ils nous satisfaire, et laissent-ils toujours un fond d’ennui et de tristesse dans notre coeur? Si l’homme n’a rien au-dessus de la bête, que ne coule-t-il ses jours comme elle, sans souci, sans inquiétude, sans dégout, sans tristesse, dans la félicité des sens et de la chair?”Because he can not!The pleasures of life, however varied, and grateful though they may be at the time, soon wither on the palate; and then, when we appreciate at last the knowledge of their dust and ashes, their Dead Sea-apple constituency, wemustturn to something better, something higher—the joys of which are more lasting and whose flavour proceeds from some less evanescent substance.Such were my reflections now; and, in my abasement and craving for “the one good thing,” I thought of the kind vicar.During all the time of my rioting and sin, I had never been near either him or Miss Pimpernell. I would not have profaned the sanctuary of their dwelling with my presence!Both had tried to see me—in vain; for, I had separated myself entirely from all my former friends and acquaintances, burying the early associations of my previous life in the slough of the Bohemian-boon-companionship, into which I had thrown myself in London.The kind vicar had written to me a long, earnest, touching letter, which did not reproach me in the least but invited me to confide in him all my troubles; and, the dear old lady, also, had sent me many an appeal that she might be allowed to cheer me. But, I had not taken notice of their pleadings, persevering still in evil and shutting my ears to friendly counsels—as I likewise did to the voice of reason speaking in my inner heart.Now, however, in my misery, I bethought me of these friends. I went shame-faced and mentally-naked, like the prodigal son, once more to the vicarage.And how did they receive me?With the pharisaical philosophy of Miss Spight’s school, looking on me as a “goat,” with whom they had nothing to do:—“a lost soul,” without the pale of their pity and almost below the par of their contempt?Not so!Dear little Miss Pimpernell got up from her arm-chair in the corner, and kissed me—the first time she had done such a thing since I was a little fellow and had sat upon her knee; while, the vicar shook me as cordially by the hand as he had ever done.“Dear Frank!” exclaimed the former. “Here you are at last. I thought you were never coming to us again!”That was all the allusionshemade to the past.“My boy,” said the vicar, “I am glad to see you.”That was allhesaid; but, his speech was not mere empty verbiage. He meant it!I shall not tell you how they both talked to me: so tenderly, so kindly. It would not interest you. It only concerned myself.By-and-by, after a long interview, in which I laid all my troubles before these comforters, the vicar asked me what I thought of doing.“I shall go away,”—I said.—“I have exhausted London.—‘I have lived and loved,’ as Theckla says; and there is no hope of my getting on here! I would think that everybody would recall my past life, whenever they saw me, and throw it all back in my teeth.”“But, you can live all that down, my boy,” said the vicar.—“The world is not half so censorious as you think now, in your awakening; and, remember, Frank, what Shakspeare says, ‘There is no time so miserable, but a man may be true!’”“Besides,” I went on,—“I want change of scene. All these old places would recall the past. I could never be happy here again.”“Well, well, my boy!” he answered sadly. “But, we shall be sorry to lose you, Frank, all the same, although it may be for your good.”I had thought of America already, and told him that I intended going there. Not from any wide-seated admiration of the Great Republic and its citizens; but, from its being a place within easy reach—where I might separate myself entirely from all that would recall home thoughts and home associations:—so I then believed.“I shall go there,” I said, bitterly.—“At all events, I shall be unknown; and, can bury myself and my misery—a fitting end to a bad life!”“My boy, my boy!”—said the vicar, with emotion.—“It grieves me to the heart to hear you speak so. Know, that repentance brings us always once more beneath the shelter of divine love! You will think of this by-and-by, Frank:—you may carve out a new life for yourself in the new world, and return to us successful. Be comforted, my boy! Do not forget David’s spirit-stirring words of promise,—‘They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy; and he that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him!’”
Ay de mi! Un anno felice,Parece un soplo ligero:Perô sin dicha un instante,Es un siglo de tormente.”—And with mine eyesI’ll drink the words you send, though ink be made of gall!”
Ay de mi! Un anno felice,Parece un soplo ligero:Perô sin dicha un instante,Es un siglo de tormente.”—And with mine eyesI’ll drink the words you send, though ink be made of gall!”
It was broad daylight when I got home.
I did not go to bed; but, passed the weary morning hours in walking up and down my room, chewing the bitter cud of hopeless fancy, and in a state of excitement almost approaching to madness.
At last, the time arrived for me to start to town to my office.
“Hey, humph! what is the matter, Mr Lorton?”—growled old Smudge to me, as I proceeded to sign the attendance book before the fatal black line was drawn against the late comers—“Look ill, look ill! hey? Late hours, late hours, young man, young man; dissipation, and all the rest of it, hey?Iknow how it will end—same as the rest, same as the rest!”—and he chuckled to himself over some blue book in his corner, as if he had, in the most merry and unbending mood, “passed the time of day” with singular bonhomie!
I only gave him a gruff good-morning, however. I walked listlessly to my desk, where he presently also came, to take me to task about some account I had checked—so as to tone down any presumptuous feelings I might have in consequence of his graciousness:—the “balance” was, thus, “pretty square” between us.
I never found the office-work so tedious, my fellow-clerks so wearisome, nor the whole round of civil service life so dreadfully “flat, stale, and unprofitable,” as on that miserable day after the party!
The day seemed as if it would never come to an end.
The wretched hours lengthened themselves out, with such indiarubber-like elasticity, that, the interval between ten and four appeared a cycle of centuries!
I was longing to be free, in order to carry out a determination to which I had come.
I had resolved to see Mrs Clyde and plead my cause again with her; for, I had observed from Min’s manner, that it was notherobjection to me personally, but, her promise to her mother which had prevented her from lending a favourable ear to my suit.
Four o’clock came at last—thank heaven!
I rushed out of the office; procured a hansom, with the fastest horse I was able to pick out in my hurry; and, set out homewards.
I arrived within the bounds of Saint Canon’s parish within the half-hour, thanks to the “pour boire” that I held out, in anticipation of hurry, to my Jehu.
A few minutes afterwards, I called at The Terrace.
The ladies were both out, the servant said.
I called again, later on.
Still “not at home,” I was told; although, I knew they were in. I had watched both Min and Mrs Clyde enter the house, shortly before my second visit. I was evidently intentionally denied!
I went back to my own home. I spent another hour or two, walking up and down my room in the same cheerful way in which I had passed the morning; and then—then, I thought I would write to Mrs Clyde.
Yes, that would be the best course.
I sat down and penned the most vivid sketch of my present grief, asking her to reconsider the former decision she had given against me. I was certain, I said, that it was only throughherinfluence that Min had rejected me; and I earnestly besought her good will. I was now in a better position, I urged, than I had been the previous year, my income being nearly doubled—thanks to Government and what I was able to reap from my literary lucubrations:—what more could she require? Besides, my assets would increase, at the least, by the ten pound bonus which a grateful country annually aggregates to the salary of its victims each year—not to speak of the fortune I might make by my “connection with the press!” In fact, I said everything that I could, to colour my case and get judgment recorded in my favour.
But, my toil was all in vain!
I sent over my letter by a servant, with instructions to leave it at the door; while, I, waited in all the evening expecting an answer, in breathless suspense.
None came; but, next morning I received back my own despatch enclosed in another envelope, unopened, unread.
I went down to the office that day in quite a cheerful mood again, I can tell you!
How I did enjoy Brown’s balderdash; the witty sallies of Smith; Robinson’s repartees; Jones’ jocosities!
When, after my official labours, I returned again to Saint Canon’s that evening, I made another attempt to see Mrs Clyde.
No. The servant who answered the door, when I timidly called for the third time at the house, told me that instructions had been given to say “not at home” alwaysto me.
Pleasant!
War had been declared:—a “guerre à outrance,” as I had anticipated; but, it was a struggle in which I was stretched on the ground at my adversary’s mercy, with her vengeful blade at my heart!
I then wrote to Min.
It was a long letter. I bewailed my hasty severance of the old relations between us, and asked her to have pity on my sad fate. I poured out all the flood of feeling which had deluged my breast since we had parted at the party. I begged, I implored her not to desert me at her mother’s bidding.
My letter I posted, so that it should not be stopped en route, and returned to me unread by my darling, whom I asked to write to me, if only one line, to tell me that she had really received my appeal safely—requesting her, also, to reply to me at my office that I might get her answer in the soonest possible time.
I dreamt of her subsequently, the whole night through:—it was a horrible dream!
A third day of torture in my governmental mill. Six mortal hours more of dreary misery; and, helpless boredom at the hands of Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson!
And, then, I got my reply.
It was “only a line.” Very short, very sweet, very bitter, very pointed; and yet, I value that little letter so highly that I would not exchange it for the world! The words are stained with tear-drops that, I know, fell from loving, grey eyes; while, its sense, though painful, is sweet to me from its outspoken truthfulness:—I value it so highly, that I could not deem it more precious, if it were written on a golden tablet in characters set with diamonds—were it the longest letter maiden ever wrote, the sweetest billet lover ever received!
“Frank! I cannot, I must not grant your request. Do not wring my heart by writing to me again, or speaking to me; for, I have promised, and we are not to see each other any more. I am breaking my word in writing to you now, but, oh! do not think badly of me. Indeed, indeed, I am not heartless, Frank. It has not been my fault, believe me. I shall pray for you always, always! I must not say any more.“Minnie Clyde.”
“Frank! I cannot, I must not grant your request. Do not wring my heart by writing to me again, or speaking to me; for, I have promised, and we are not to see each other any more. I am breaking my word in writing to you now, but, oh! do not think badly of me. Indeed, indeed, I am not heartless, Frank. It has not been my fault, believe me. I shall pray for you always, always! I must not say any more.
“Minnie Clyde.”
That was all the little note contained; but, it was quite enough.
Was it not?
When I had read it and read it, over and over again, I was almost beside myself,—with a grief that was mixed up with feelings of intense anger and rage against her whom I looked upon as the author of my sufferings—Mrs Clyde.
Min had been again sent down to the country, the very day on which I received her heart-breaking letter. This I heard from my old friend, dear little Miss Pimpernell, who tried vainly to console me. She endeavoured to make me believe that “all would come right in the end,” as she had prophesied before; but, I refused to be comforted. I could not share her faith. I would not be sanguine any more; no, never any more!
I saw Mrs Clyde at church the very next Sunday. I went there in the hope that my darling might have returned, and that I would see her—not from any religious feeling.
There was only her mother there, however.
I waited to accost her at the church door after the service was over.
“Oh, Mrs Clyde,” I said, “do not be my enemy!”
But, she took no notice of me:—she cut me dead.
I was convinced that all was lost now.
It was of no use my longer attempting to fight against fate:—I gave up hope completely;—and then—and then—
I went to the devil!
Rochefoucauld says in his pointed “Maxims” that—
“There is nothing so catching as example; nor is there ever great good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones through the malignity of our nature, which shame restrains and example emancipates.”
“There is nothing so catching as example; nor is there ever great good or ill done that does not produce its like. We imitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones through the malignity of our nature, which shame restrains and example emancipates.”
That was my case now.
I suppose I had had it in me all along—the “black drop,” as the Irish peasants call it, of evil; and, that shame had hitherto prevented me from plunging into the whirlpool of sinful indulgence that now drew me, a willing victim, down into its yawning gulf of ruin and degradation. That bar removed, however, I made rapid progress towards the beckoning devil, who was waiting to receive me with open arms. I hastened along that path, “where,”—as Byron has described from his own painful experience—
”—In a moment, we may plunge our yearsIn fatal penitence, and in the blightOf our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,And colour things to come with hues of night!”
”—In a moment, we may plunge our yearsIn fatal penitence, and in the blightOf our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,And colour things to come with hues of night!”
I declare to you, that when I look back on this period of my life—life! death, rather I should say, for it was a moral death—I am quite unable to comprehend the motives that led me to take such a course. My eyes were not blinded. I must have seen that each stride placed me further and further away from my darling, erecting a fresh obstacle between us; still, some irresistible impulse appeared to hurry me on—although, I could not but have known how vain it would be for me to recover my lost footsteps: how hard a matter to change my direction, and look upwards to light and happiness once more! Glancing back at this period—as I do now with horror—I cannot understand myself, I say.
I went from bad to worse, plunging deeper and deeper into every wickedness that Satan could suggest, or flesh hanker after—until I seemed to lose all sense of shame and self-reproach.
My connection with officialdom was soon terminated.
I got later and later in my attendance; so that, old Smudge’s prediction was shortly fulfilled, for, I became no better than the rest, in respect of early hours.
One day the chief spoke to me on the subject, and I answered him unguardedly.
I was not thinking of him at the time, to tell the truth; and when he said, “Mr Lorton, late again, late again! This won’t do, you know, won’t do!” I quite forgot myself; and, in speaking to him, called him by the nickname under which he was known to us, instead of by his proper appellation.
“Very sorry, Smudge,” said I, “very sorry; won’t be so again, I promise you, sir!”
He nearly got a fit, I assure you; while, all the other fellows were splitting with laughter at my slip!
“Mr Lorton, I will report you, sir!” was all he said to me directly; but, as he shuffled off to his desk, with the attendance book recording my misdeeds under his arm and his face purple with passion, we all could hear him muttering pretty loudly to himself. “Smudge! Smudge!”—he was repeating;—“I’ll Smudge him, the impudent rascal! I wonder what the dooce he meant by it! What the dooce did he mean by it?—mean by it?”
I begged his pardon off-hand, immediately, of course, although I would not give him the written apology he peremptorily demanded.
Do you know, I did not like to deprive him of the extreme pleasure it would give him to submit his case against me—in clerkly, cut-and-dried statement—to the chief commissioner, under-secretary, first lord, or whoever else occupied the lofty pedestal of “the board,” that controlled the occasionally-peculiar proceedings of the Obstructor General’s Department.
I knew with what intense relish he would expatiate on the wrong which “the service” had sustained in his person at my hands—the “frightful example” I presented, of insubordination and defiance to constitutional authority; and how, he would draw up the most elaborate document, detailing all this, in flowing but strictly official language, on carefully-folded, quarter-margined foolscap, of the regular, authorised dimensions!
What a pity, I thought, it would be to interfere with such neat arrangements by submitting to aNolle Prosequi—as I would have done, had I tendered the recantation of my error that he insisted on!
At the same time, however, I checkmated his triumph, by forwarding to the people in high places the resignation of that position as a clerk of the tertiary formation, which I had, been nominated to, examined in respect of, and competed for, under the auspices of Her Majesty’s Polite Letter Writer Commissioners; and which I had been duly appointed to—all in proper official sequence—but one short year before, plus a few additional months, which were of no great consequence to any one.
My withdrawal left, at any rate, one place vacant for some member of Parliament’s constituent’s son, who would, probably, be much more worthy in every way for the honours and duties of the situation—which, really, I do not think I ever estimated at their proper value!
This was some satisfaction to me, I assure you; and, combined with the sum of one hundred and ten pounds sterling—less income-tax on one-fourth part of the said amount, or thereabouts: I like to be correct—was all the benefit I ever received from my connection with “Government.”
My year’s probation was, I may say without any great exaggeration, thrown away; for, the knowledge I gained was not of a character to advance my interests in any other walk in life, professional or mercantile. Still, I bear no malice to officialdom, if officialdom cares to obtain my assurance to that effect. The few words—far between, too—which I have dropped to you, anent the combination of the ill-used servants of the country in opposition to their grievances, have been more intended to redress the wrongs of those hard-worked, poor-paid sufferers in question, than meant as a covert attack on the noble authorities of the great, lumbering institution they belong to—the spokes of whose broadly-tired wheels they may be said to form.
For my part, I adore governmental departments, looking on all of them with a wide admiration that is tempered with wholesome awe; and, believing them to be so many concentrations of virtue and merit, which are none the less real because they are imperceptible.
The giving up of my appointment was the finish of my mad career.
I awoke now to a consciousness of all my foolishness and wickedness; the revelation of the misery, present and future alike, which my conduct had prepared for me, coming to mind, with a sudden, sharp stroke of painful distinctness that prostrated me into an abyss of self-torture and repentance.
Ah! There is no use in repining, unless one mends matters by deeds, not words. Repentance is worth little if it be not followed up by reformation. But, how many of us rush madly, headlong to destruction, without a thought of what they are doing; never mindful of their course, till that dreadful refrain, “Too late!” rings in their ears.
As the poetical author of the ode to the “Plump Head Waiter at The Cock,” has philosophically sung,—and, as many a weather-beaten sufferer has cruelly proven,—
“So fares it since the years began,Till they be gather’d up;The truth, that flies the flowing can,Will haunt the empty cup:And others’ follies teach us not,Nor much their wisdom teaches;And most, of sterling worth, is whatOur own experience preaches!”
“So fares it since the years began,Till they be gather’d up;The truth, that flies the flowing can,Will haunt the empty cup:And others’ follies teach us not,Nor much their wisdom teaches;And most, of sterling worth, is whatOur own experience preaches!”
I remembered now having come across a passage in Massillon’sPetit Carême, some two or three years before, during a varied course of French reading at the library of the British Museum,—an old haunt of mine long previously to my ever knowing Min; and this passage occurred to me in my present condition, expressing a want I had long felt, and which I was now all the more bitterly conscious of. It is in one of the sermons which the seventeenth century divine probably preached in the presence of the Grand Monarque. It is entitled “Sur la Destinée de l’Homme;” and might, for its practical point and thorough insightedness into human nature, be expounded to-morrow by any of our large-hearted, Broad Church ministers. In its truth, I’m sure, it is catholic enough to suit any creed:—
“Si tout doit finir avec nous, si l’homme ne doit rien attendre après cette vie, et que ce soit ici notre patrie, notre origine, et la seul félicité que nous pouvons nous promettre, pourquoi n’y sommes-nous pas heureux? Si nous ne naissons que pour les plaisirs des sens, pourquoi ne peuvent-ils nous satisfaire, et laissent-ils toujours un fond d’ennui et de tristesse dans notre coeur? Si l’homme n’a rien au-dessus de la bête, que ne coule-t-il ses jours comme elle, sans souci, sans inquiétude, sans dégout, sans tristesse, dans la félicité des sens et de la chair?”
“Si tout doit finir avec nous, si l’homme ne doit rien attendre après cette vie, et que ce soit ici notre patrie, notre origine, et la seul félicité que nous pouvons nous promettre, pourquoi n’y sommes-nous pas heureux? Si nous ne naissons que pour les plaisirs des sens, pourquoi ne peuvent-ils nous satisfaire, et laissent-ils toujours un fond d’ennui et de tristesse dans notre coeur? Si l’homme n’a rien au-dessus de la bête, que ne coule-t-il ses jours comme elle, sans souci, sans inquiétude, sans dégout, sans tristesse, dans la félicité des sens et de la chair?”
Because he can not!
The pleasures of life, however varied, and grateful though they may be at the time, soon wither on the palate; and then, when we appreciate at last the knowledge of their dust and ashes, their Dead Sea-apple constituency, wemustturn to something better, something higher—the joys of which are more lasting and whose flavour proceeds from some less evanescent substance.
Such were my reflections now; and, in my abasement and craving for “the one good thing,” I thought of the kind vicar.
During all the time of my rioting and sin, I had never been near either him or Miss Pimpernell. I would not have profaned the sanctuary of their dwelling with my presence!
Both had tried to see me—in vain; for, I had separated myself entirely from all my former friends and acquaintances, burying the early associations of my previous life in the slough of the Bohemian-boon-companionship, into which I had thrown myself in London.
The kind vicar had written to me a long, earnest, touching letter, which did not reproach me in the least but invited me to confide in him all my troubles; and, the dear old lady, also, had sent me many an appeal that she might be allowed to cheer me. But, I had not taken notice of their pleadings, persevering still in evil and shutting my ears to friendly counsels—as I likewise did to the voice of reason speaking in my inner heart.
Now, however, in my misery, I bethought me of these friends. I went shame-faced and mentally-naked, like the prodigal son, once more to the vicarage.
And how did they receive me?
With the pharisaical philosophy of Miss Spight’s school, looking on me as a “goat,” with whom they had nothing to do:—“a lost soul,” without the pale of their pity and almost below the par of their contempt?
Not so!
Dear little Miss Pimpernell got up from her arm-chair in the corner, and kissed me—the first time she had done such a thing since I was a little fellow and had sat upon her knee; while, the vicar shook me as cordially by the hand as he had ever done.
“Dear Frank!” exclaimed the former. “Here you are at last. I thought you were never coming to us again!”
That was all the allusionshemade to the past.
“My boy,” said the vicar, “I am glad to see you.”
That was allhesaid; but, his speech was not mere empty verbiage. He meant it!
I shall not tell you how they both talked to me: so tenderly, so kindly. It would not interest you. It only concerned myself.
By-and-by, after a long interview, in which I laid all my troubles before these comforters, the vicar asked me what I thought of doing.
“I shall go away,”—I said.—“I have exhausted London.—‘I have lived and loved,’ as Theckla says; and there is no hope of my getting on here! I would think that everybody would recall my past life, whenever they saw me, and throw it all back in my teeth.”
“But, you can live all that down, my boy,” said the vicar.—“The world is not half so censorious as you think now, in your awakening; and, remember, Frank, what Shakspeare says, ‘There is no time so miserable, but a man may be true!’”
“Besides,” I went on,—“I want change of scene. All these old places would recall the past. I could never be happy here again.”
“Well, well, my boy!” he answered sadly. “But, we shall be sorry to lose you, Frank, all the same, although it may be for your good.”
I had thought of America already, and told him that I intended going there. Not from any wide-seated admiration of the Great Republic and its citizens; but, from its being a place within easy reach—where I might separate myself entirely from all that would recall home thoughts and home associations:—so I then believed.
“I shall go there,” I said, bitterly.—“At all events, I shall be unknown; and, can bury myself and my misery—a fitting end to a bad life!”
“My boy, my boy!”—said the vicar, with emotion.—“It grieves me to the heart to hear you speak so. Know, that repentance brings us always once more beneath the shelter of divine love! You will think of this by-and-by, Frank:—you may carve out a new life for yourself in the new world, and return to us successful. Be comforted, my boy! Do not forget David’s spirit-stirring words of promise,—‘They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy; and he that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him!’”