{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_71789/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_71789","id":"gutenberg_71789","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71789","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Humour","Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","English fiction -- 19th century","Paranormal fiction, English"],"text":"Transcriber\u2019s Note\n  Italic text displayed as: _italic_\n\n\n\n\nBones and I\n\n[Illustration: \u201cContemplating my companion.\u201d Page 65.)\n\n  _Bones and I._]          [_Frontispiece_\n]\n\n\n\n\n  Bones and I\n\n  or\n\n  The Skeleton at Home\n\n  By\n\n  G. J. Whyte-Melville\n\n  Author of \u201cMarket Harborough,\u201d \u201cKaterfelto,\u201d \u201cCerise,\u201d\n  \u201cSatanella,\u201d etc.\n\n  Illustrated by A. Forestier\n\n\n  London\n  Ward, Lock & Co., Limited\n  New York and Melbourne\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n  CHAP.                                                             PAGE\n\n        Introduction                                                   7\n\n     I. \u201cOn Waste\u201d                                                    15\n\n    II. Through the Mill                                              32\n\n   III. Gourds                                                        48\n\n    IV. A Vampire                                                     65\n\n     V. Gold for Silver                                              102\n\n    VI. A Day that is Dead                                           122\n\n   VII. The Four-leaved Shamrock                                     140\n\n  VIII. Rus in Urbe                                                  162\n\n    IX. Haunted                                                      184\n\n     X. Weight Carriers                                              201\n\n    XI. Shadows                                                      220\n\n   XII. Guinevere                                                    237\n\n\n\n\n\u2018BONES AND I\u2019\n\n_OR, THE SKELETON AT HOME_\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nLong ago, visiting the monastery of La Trappe, I was struck with\nthe very discontented appearance of its inmates. In some of their\nfaces, indeed, I detected no expression whatever, but on none could\nI perceive the slightest gleam of satisfaction with their lot. No\nwonder: few men are of the stuff that makes a good recluse. The human\nanimal is naturally gregarious, like the solan goose, the buffalo,\nthe monkey, or the mackerel. Put him by himself, he pines for lack of\nmental aliment, just as a flower fades for want of daylight in the\ndark. A multitude of fools forms an inspiriting spectacle, a solitary\nspecimen becomes a sad and solemn warning. If the Trappists, who are\nnot entirely isolated from their kind, thus wither under the rigour\nof those repressive rules enjoined by the Order, what must have been\nthe condition of such hermits and anchorites as passed whole months,\nand even years together, in the wilderness, unvisited by anything more\nhuman than the distempered phantoms of their dreams? No shave, no\nwash, no morning greeting, and no evening wine. How many, I wonder,\npreserved their sanity in the ordeal? How many, returning dazed and\nbewildered to the haunts of men, tottered about in helpless, wandering,\nmaundering imbecility? Were there not some hard, boisterous natures who\nplunged wildly into the excesses of a world so long forsworn, with all\nthe appetite of abstinence, all the reckless self-abandonment of the\npaid-off man-of-war\u2019s man on a spree? No; few people are qualified for\nrecluses. I am proud to be amongst the number.\n\nI live in a desert, but my desert is in the very heart of London. The\nwaste is all round me though; I have taken good care of that. Once,\nindeed, it blossomed like the rose, for a thousand fertilising streams\ntrickled through its bright expanse. Do not you as I did. I turned all\nthe streams into one channel, \u201cin the sweet summer-time long ago,\u201d and\n\u201csat by the river,\u201d like those poor fools in the song, and said, \u201cGo\nto! Now I shall never thirst again!\u201d But in the night there came a\nlandslip from the upper level, and choked the river, turning its course\nthrough my neighbour\u2019s pastures, so that the meadows, once so green and\nfresh, are bare and barren now for evermore. I speak in parables, of\ncourse; and the value of \u201cthis here observation,\u201d like those of Captain\nBunsby, \u201clies in the application of it.\u201d I need not observe, the street\nin which I hide myself is a _cul de sac_. A man who sells chickweed,\nperhaps I should say, who would sell chickweed if he could, is the only\npassenger. Of the houses on each side of me, one is unfinished, the\nother untenanted. Over the way, I confront the dead wall at the back\nof an hospital. Towards dusk in the late autumn, when the weather is\nbreaking, I must admit the situation is little calculated to generate\nover-exuberance of animal spirits. Sequestered, no doubt, shady too,\nparticularly in the short days, and as remote from the noise or traffic\nof the town as John o\u2019 Groat\u2019s house, but enlivening\u2014No.\n\nOn first beginning to reside here, I confess I felt at times a little\nlonely and depressed. Therefore I brought home \u201cBones\u201d to come and live\nwith me. And who _is_ \u201cBones\u201d? Ah! that is exactly what I have never\nbeen able to find out. Contemplative, affable, easily pleased, and an\nadmirable listener, he is yet on some points reserved to a degree that\nmight almost be termed morose; while in his personal appearance there\nis a dignity of bearing, an imposing presence, which forbids the most\nintimate associate to attempt a liberty.\n\nI will describe him as I see him at this moment, reclining in an easy\nattitude on the cushions of my favourite arm-chair, benevolently\ninterested, it would seem, in my lightest movements, while I sit\nsmoking silently by the fire. Neither of us are great talkers quite so\nearly in the evening.\n\nHe is a well-formed and very complete skeleton of middle height\u2014perfect\nin every respect, and in all his articulations, with the exception of\ntwo double teeth absent from the upper jaw. The arch of his lower ribs\nis peculiarly symmetrical, and his vertebr\u00e6 are put in with a singular\ncombination of flexibility and strength. As I look at him now leaning\nback in a graceful attitude, with one thigh-bone thrown carelessly\nover the other, he reminds me of so many people I knew when I lived\nin the world, that I seem to fancy myself once more a denizen of that\nrevolving purgatory which goes by the name of general society. Poor\nA\u2014\u2014 was almost as fleshless, B\u2014\u2014 much more taciturn, and C\u2014\u2014 decidedly\nnot so good-looking. \u201cBones,\u201d however, possesses a quality that I have\nnever found in any other companion. His tact is beyond praise. Under no\ncircumstances does he become a bore\u2014that is why we get on so admirably\ntogether. Like a ghost, he speaks only when spoken to. Unlike a wife,\nrefrains from monopolising the last word. If he didn\u2019t rattle so on the\nslightest movement\u2014a fault of anatomy, indeed, rather than temper\u2014as a\ncompanion he would be\u2014perfection.\n\nIt is a dull, close evening. Were it not so near winter one might\npredict a thunderstorm. The smoke from my meerschaum winds upwards in\nthin blue wreaths, uninfluenced by a breath of outward air, though\nthe windows are open to the deserted street, black and silent as the\ngrave. My lamp is not yet lit (we both affect a congenial gloom), the\nfire is burning out, but there is a dull red glow like a fever-spot\nlowering under a volcanic arch of cinders; and looking into it\nwith unwinking eyes, I see the long-drawn, weary, beaten road that\nleads backward through a life. I see a child set down to run alone,\nhalf-frightened, laughing, trusting, almost happy, and altogether\ngay. I see a youth bold, healthful, courageous, full of an impossible\nchivalry, a romantic generosity that delights to lavish no matter\nwhat\u2014money, love, hope, happiness, coining heart and intellect into\ngold that he may squander it on the passers-by. I see a strong man\ncrushed\u2014a proud head grovelling in the dust, a high spirit broken, a\ncowering wretch imploring that his punishment may be lightened ever\nsuch a little, trembling and wincing like a slave beneath the scourge.\nAt this moment the fire falls in with a crash, while a pale yellow\nflame leaps flickering out of the midst, and starting from my seat\nto light our lamp for the rest of the evening, I demand aloud, \u201cWhat\nthen is the purpose of Creation? From a quenched rushlight to an\nextinct volcano, from the squeak of a mouse to yesterday\u2019s leading\narticle, from a mite smothered in a cheese to an Emperor murdered in\nMexico, is the march of Time but the destructive progress of a bull in\na china-shop? Are the recurring centuries but so many ciphers added\nto the sum of a thriftless, objectless expenditure? Is the so-called\neconomy of the universe but an unbridled, haphazard course of boundless\nand incalculable waste?\u201d\n\nHis backbone creaks uncomfortably while he moves in his chair. \u201cWaste?\u201d\nhe repeats in the hushed, placid tones that make him so invaluable as\na companion\u2014\u201cWaste? The subject is by no means limited. I have some\nexperience in it of my own. Would you favour me with your ideas?\u201d\u2014and I\ngo off at score with\u2014\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n\u201cON WASTE\u201d\n\n\n\u201cWhy are these things so?\u201d I exclaim, plumping down again into my\nseat. \u201cWhy have the times been out of joint ever since Hamlet\u2019s first\nappearance on the stage, with black tights and rosettes in his shoes?\nWhy is the whole world still at sixes and sevens? What is the object\nof it all? _Cui bono? cui bono? cui bono?_ Is there the slightest\nappearance of a result? Any tendency towards a goal? Shall we ever\nget _anywhere_, or are we travelling perpetually in a circle, like\nsquirrels in a cage, convicted pickpockets on the treadmill? By the\nway, who convicted the pickpockets, and sentenced them? The sitting\nmagistrate, of course; and do the awards of that worthy functionary\nproduce any definite result in the direction of good order and\nmorality, or must his daily incubation, too, be wasted upon addled\neggs? Do you remember the story of the man who cut his throat because\nhe was so tired of dressing and undressing every day? Don\u2019t shake\nyour head\u2014I beg pardon, your skull\u2014you told it me yourself. I can\nappreciate his prejudices, but how did he know there might not be\nbuttons and buttonholes where he was going? That is, supposing he went\nanywhere\u2014if he didn\u2019t, he was wasted altogether. If he did, perhaps he\nwas of no use when he got there. Wasted again\u2014only a human life after\nall. Not much when you think of it amongst the millions that cling\nabout this old globe of ours, rising, swarming, disappearing like the\nmaggots on a dead horse, but of no light importance to the bearer when\nyou remember its weight of sorrows, anxieties, disappointments, and\nresponsibilities, not to mention the Black Care sitting heavily at the\ntop to keep the whole burden in its place. Life is a bubble, they say.\nVery well\u2014-but is it blown from a soap-dish by a school-boy, rising\nheavenward, tinted with rainbow hues, to burst only when at its most\nbeautiful and its best? Or is it not rather a bubble gurgling to the\nsurface from the agonised lungs of some struggling wretch drowning far\nbelow in the dark, pitiless water,\n\n    \u2018Unknell\u2019d, uncoffin\u2019d, and unknown\u2019?\n\n\u2014Wasted, too, unless the fish eat him, and then who knows? None of us\nperhaps may ever eat the fish.\n\n\u201cListen to me. I won\u2019t make your flesh creep, for unanswerable reasons.\nI don\u2019t even think I shall freeze the marrow in your bones. I could\ntell you some strange stories, but I dare say your own experiences\nare more remarkable than mine. I will only ask you to reflect on the\namount of suffering that came under our daily notice when we lived in\nthe world, and say whether every pang of mind or body, every tear shed\nor swallowed down, every groan indulged or repressed, were anything\nbut sheer waste? Can you not recall a hundred instances of strength\nsapped by drink, of intellect warped by madness, of beauty fading under\nneglect, or withered by disappointment? Here a pair of lives are wasted\nbecause they must needs run out their course in different grooves\u2014there\ntwo more are utterly thrown away, because, encompassed in a golden\nlink, they can by no means shake themselves free. The fairest of all,\nit may be, and the most promising, never blooms into perfection for\nwant of its congenial comrade (wasted too, perhaps, at the antipodes),\nand failing thus to reach maturity, dwindles, dwarfed and unmated, to\nthe grave. Think of Beauty wasted on the Beast\u2014the Beast, too, utterly\nout of his element, that he must roll on the garden sward rather than\nlabour in the teeming furrow. Look at Hercules spell-bound in the lap\nof Omphale, broad-fronted Antony enervated by black-browed Cleopatra.\nConsider the many Messrs. Caudle who lavish as much good-humour as\nwould set up a dozen households on their legal nightmares, and do not\nforget poor Miss Prettyman pining in lonely spinsterhood over the way.\nSee the mother training up her child, impressing on him, far more\nforcibly than she feels them for herself, lessons of honour, truth,\nprobity, and the unspeakable blessing of faith\u2014praying her heart out\nfor that wilful little urchin, night and morning on her knees. A good\nChristian with humble hopes of heaven, does she know that, far more\nlavishly than those heathen termagants in hell, she is pouring water in\na sieve? Does she know she may live to see that smooth, soft, wondering\nbrow scored deep with sorrow, or lowering black with sin\u2014that round\nrosy cheek hollowed by depravity, or bloated with excess? Worst of all,\nthe merry, guileless heart embittered by falsehood, and hardened with\nill-usage till it has ceased to feel for others, even for itself! Great\nHeaven! have we not seen them\u2014these simple, honest, manly hearts,\ntaken by some soft-eyed demon with loving ways, and sweet angelic\nsmile, to be kept carefully, to be watched jealously, till their fabric\nhas been thoroughly studied, then broken deftly and delicately, yet\nwith such nice art that they can never mend again, and so, politely\n\u2018Returned, with thanks\u2019?\n\n\u201cForgive me: on such anatomical outrages I have no right to expect you\nshould feel so warmly as myself.\n\n\u201cMillions of creatures, beautiful exceedingly, scour over the desert\nplains of explored Africa; in its unknown regions, millions more may\nbe supposed to feed, and gambol, and die. What is the use of them? If\nyou come to that, what was the use of the Emperor Theodore, or the King\nof the Cannibal Islands, or any other potentate who remains utterly\nunimpressed when we threaten \u2018to break off diplomatic relations\u2019?\n\n\u201cMyriads of insects wheel about us in the sun\u2019s declining rays every\nsummer\u2019s evening. Again, what is the use of them? What is the use\nof the dragon-fly, the bumble-bee, the speckled toad, the blue-nosed\nmonkey, the unicorn, the wild elephant,\u2014or, indeed, the Ojibbeway\nIndians?\u201d\n\nHere, contrary to his custom, \u201cBones\u201d interrupted me in full career.\n\n\u201cOne moment,\u201d said he, with his courteous grin. \u201cAllow me to point\nout that yours is inadmissible, as being simply an _argumentum ad\nabsurdum_. It would hold equally good with L\u00e9otard, Mr. Beales, or any\nother public exhibitor\u2014nay, you might advance it for suppression of the\nLord Mayor or the Archbishop of Canterbury.\u201d\n\nHe bowed reverentially while he mentioned the last-named dignitary; and\nI confess I was inclined to admit the truth of his remark.\n\n\u201cThen I waive the question,\u201d I replied, \u201cas regards the brute creation,\nthough I think I could find something to say, too, about the weasel\nsucking rabbits, the heron gobbling fish, the hawk striking its quarry,\nor the hounds running into their fox. But we will suppose that the\nwhole animal world, from the angler\u2019s lob-worm to the costermonger\u2019s\ndonkey, is enjoying its paradise _here_, and return to our own kind,\ntheir sorrows, their sufferings, and, natural consequence of sorrow and\nsuffering, their sins.\u201d\n\nHe shook his skull gently, and muttered something in his spinal\nvertebr\u00e6 about \u201ca cart\u201d and \u201ca horse,\u201d but I took no notice, and\nproceeded with dignity\u2014\n\n\u201cI have learnt my Latin Grammar, and almost the only one of its\nprecepts I have not forgotten impresses on me that\u2014\n\n    \u2018Spades turn up wealth, the stimulant of crime.\u2019\n\nI suppose you will not dispute that the root of all evil is money?\u201d\n\n\u201cMost emphatically,\u201d he exclaimed, and his articulations rattled with\nstartling vehemence. \u201cMost emphatically I deny the position. A man may\nroll in wealth and be none the worse for it. On the contrary, poverty,\nbut for the unremitting labour it demands, would be far more conducive\nto crime than a sufficiency, or even a superfluity of means. No; the\nreal enemy with whom every man has to contend confronts him in the\nmorning at his glass, and sticks persistently to him throughout the\nday. The source of most unhappiness, the cause of all ill-doing, the\nuniversal origin of evil, is _not_ money, but self\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou mean selfishness,\u201d I retorted; \u201cand I am surprised to hear a\nman of the world\u2014I mean of the _other_ world, or, indeed, of _any_\nworld whatever\u2014assert so obvious a fallacy. Just as the liver, and\nnot the heart, is the seat of our real well-being, so I maintain that\nself-indulgence, and not self-sacrifice, is the origin, the mainspring,\nthe motive power of all effort, progress, improvement, moral, social,\nand physical. Researches of science, triumphs of art, masterpieces of\ngenius,\u2014what are these but results of the same instinct that directs\nthe bee to the flower-garden, the vulture to the carcase? To eat is the\nfirst necessity of man. He labours that he may live. Grant this, as\nyou cannot but concede the position to be unassailable, and you talk to\nme in vain of sentiment, philanthropy, benevolence, all the loathsome\naffectations of sympathy with which the earth-worm tries to impose upon\nits kind. A man begins by being honest. Why? Because without honesty,\ndown the particular groove in which he spins, he cannot earn his daily\nbread. When he has enough of this and to spare, he turns his attention\nto decent apparel, a commodious house, a general appearance of\nrespectability; that is, he aims at being respectable\u2014in other words,\nat imposing on those who have been less successful in the universal\nscramble than himself. Soon he buys a warming-pan, a Dutch oven, china\nornaments for his chimney-piece, and the History of the Prodigal to\nhang about his walls. By degrees, as wealth increases, he moves into a\nlarger residence, he rolls upon wheels, he replaces the china ornaments\nwith a French clock; the Prodigal Son with modern oil-paintings, and\nhides the warming-pan in the housemaid\u2019s closet up-stairs. About this\nperiod he begins to subscribe to charitable institutions, to give away\nwhat he does not want, to throw little pellets of bread at the monster\nwho is always famished and always roaring out of doors, lest it should\ncome in, and snatch the roast beef off his table. Some day a team of\nblack horses with nodding plumes, and a red-nosed driver, come to take\nhim away, \u2018very much respected,\u2019 and, forgive the personality, there\nis an end of him, as far as _we_ are concerned. Will you tell me that\nman\u2019s life has not been a continual concession to self?\u2014waste, waste,\nutter waste, from the pap-boat that preserved his infancy, to the\nbrass-nailed coffin that protects his putridity from contact with the\nearth to which he returns? Why his very virtues, as he called them,\nwere but payments, so to speak, keeping up the insurance for his own\nbenefit, which he persuaded himself he had effected on the other world.\n\n\u201cNow, supposing the pap-boat had been withheld, or the nurse had tucked\nhim into his cradle upside down, or\u2014thus saving some harmless woman\na deal of inconvenience and trouble\u2014supposing he had never been born\nat all, would he have been missed, or wanted? Would not the world\nhave gone on just as well without him? Has not his whole existence\nbeen a mistake? The food he ate, the clothes he wore, the house he\nlived in\u2014were not these simply wasted? His efforts were waste, his\nwear-and-tear of body and mind were waste, above all, his sorrows and\nhis sufferings were sheer, unpardonable waste. Yes; here I take my\nstand. I leave you every enjoyment to be found in creation, physical,\nmoral, and intellectual. I make you a present of the elephant wallowing\nin his mud-bath, and the midge wheeling in the sun; I give you Juliet\nat her window, and Archimedes in his study; but I reserve the whale\nin her death-flurry, and the worm on its hook. I appeal to Jephthah\nsorrowing for his darling, and Rachel weeping for her children. I\nrepeat, if that self-care, which indeed constitutes our very identity,\nbe the object of existence, then all those tearful eyes that blur the\nlight of every rising sun\u2014all those aching hearts that long only for\nnight to be eternal\u2014are but so many witnesses to the predominance in\ncreation of a lavish and unaccountable waste.\u201d\n\nLike many thoughtful and deliberate natures, I am persuaded that in\nearly life \u201cBones\u201d must have been a snuff-taker. He affects a trick of\nholding his fleshless finger and thumb pressed together and suspended\nin air, before he delivers himself of an opinion, that can only have\noriginated in a practice he has since been compelled, for obvious\nreasons, to forego. Pausing during several seconds in this favourite\nattitude, he sank gravely back in his chair, and replied\u2014\n\n\u201cFalse logic, my good friend. False premises, and a false conclusion.\nI deny them all; but the weather, even in _my_ light attire, feels\nsomewhat too close for wordy warfare. Besides, I hold with you, that\nan ounce of illustration is worth a pound of argument. I will ask you,\ntherefore, as I know you have been in Cheshire, High Leicestershire,\nand other cattle-feeding countries, whether you ever watched a\ndairymaid making a cheese? If so, you must have observed how strong\nand pitiless a pressure is required to wring the moisture out of its\nvery core. My friend, the human heart is like a cheese! To be good for\nanything, the black drop must be wrung out of it, however tight the\nsqueeze required, however exquisite the pain. Therefore it is, that we\nso often see the parable of the poor man\u2019s ewe lamb enacted in daily\nlife. One, having everything the world can bestow, is nevertheless\nfurther endowed with that which his needy brother would give all the\nrest of the world to possess. For the first, the pressure has not yet\nbeen put on, though his time, too, may come by-and-by. For the second,\nthat one darling hope, it may be, represents the little black drop\nleft, and so it must be wrung out, though the heart be crushed into\nagony in the process. You talk of suffering being pure waste; I tell\nyou it is all pure gain. You talk of self as the motive to exertion; I\ntell you it is the abnegation of self which has wrought out all that\nis noble, all that is good, all that is useful, nearly all that is\nornamental in the world. Shut the house-door on him, and the man must\nneeds go forth to work in the fields. It is not the dreamer wrapped in\nhis fancied bliss, from whom you are to expect heroic efforts, either\nof mind or body. You must dig your goad into the ox to make him use\nhis latent strength; you must drive your spurs into the horse to get\nout of him his utmost speed. Wake the dreamer roughly\u2014drive spurs and\ngoad into his heart. He will wince and writhe, and roll and gnash his\nteeth, but I defy him to lie still. He must up and be doing, from sheer\ntorture, flying to one remedy after another till he gets to work, and\nso finds distraction, solace, presently comfort, and, after a while,\nlooking yet higher, hope, happiness, and reward.\n\n\u201cSelf, indeed! He is fain to forget self, because that therewith\nis bound up so much, it would drive him mad to remember; and thus\nsorrow-taught, he merges his own identity in the community of which\nhe is but an atom, taking his first step, though at a humble and\nimmeasurable distance, in the sacred track of self-sacrifice, on which,\nafter more than eighteen hundred years, the footprints are still fresh,\nstill ineffaceable. Waste, forsooth! Let him weep his heart out if he\nwill! I tell you that the deeper the furrows are scored, the heavier\nshall be the harvest, the richer the garnered grain. I tell you, not\na tear falls but it fertilises some barren spot, from which hereafter\nshall come up the fresh verdure of an eternal spring in that region\n\n    \u2018Where there\u2019s fruit in the gardens of heaven, from the hope that\n       on earth was betrayed;\n\n     Where there\u2019s rest for the soul, life-wearied, that hath striven,\n       and suffered, and prayed.\u2019\n\n\u201cI\u2019m rather tired. I won\u2019t discuss the question any further. I\u2019ll go\nback into my cupboard, if you please. Good-night!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHROUGH THE MILL\n\n\nMost people are ashamed of their skeletons, hiding them up in\ntheir respective cupboards as though the very ownership were a\ndegradation\u2014alluding to them, perhaps, occasionally in the domestic\ncircle, but ignoring them utterly before the world\u2014a world that knows\nall about them the while,\u2014that has weighed their skulls, counted their\nribs, and can tell the very recesses in which they are kept. Now, in\nmy opinion, to take your skeleton out and air him on occasion, is very\ngood for both of you. It brings him to his proper dimensions, which are\napt to become gigantic if he is hidden too scrupulously in the dark,\nand it affords opportunities for comparison with other specimens of\nthe same nature entertained by rival proprietors in the line. If I kept\nmine, as some do, in close confinement, I should be in a continual\nfidget about his safety; above all, I should dread his breaking out\nat untoward seasons, when he was least expected, and least desired.\nBut \u201cBones and I\u201d have no cause to be ashamed of each other. There is\nno disgrace nor discomfort attached to either of us in our cheerful\ncompanionship. He is good enough to express satisfaction with his\npresent lodging, and even affirms that he finds it airy and commodious,\nas compared with his last; while it is a real pleasure to me, living\nas I do so much alone, to have a quiet, intelligent companion, with\nwhom I can discuss the different phases of existence, speculative and\nreal,\u2014the sower who never reaps\u2014the fools who are full of bread, roses\nfor one, thorns for another; here over-ripe fruit, there grapes sour,\nthough by no means out of reach; successful bows drawn at a venture,\nwell-aimed shafts that never attain the mark, impossible hopes,\nunavailing regrets\u2014the baseless mirage of the Future, and the barren\nreality of the Past.\n\nIt was colder last night. The wind was getting up in those fitful howls\nwhich denote the commencement of a two-days\u2019 gale; veering besides\nfrom east by north to east northeast. So we made fast the shutters,\nstirred the fire, and drew our chairs in for a comfortable chat.\nSomething in the sound of that waking blusterer out of doors recalled\nto me, I know not why, the image of a good ship, many long years ago,\nbeating on the wide Atlantic against a head-wind, that seemed to baffle\nher the more for every plunge she made. No steam had she to help her\nstruggle against the elements; tough hemp, patched canvas, and spars\nas yet unsprung, were all her reliance; and these strained, flapped,\nand creaked to some purpose while she battled foot by foot to lie her\ncourse. Again I seemed to watch the dark wave race by our quarter,\nwith its leaping crest of foam, the trickling deck, the battened hold,\nthe diving bowsprit, the dripping spars, the soaking canvas, with\nits row of reef-points like the notes on a music-score. And the grey,\nsullen curtain of mist and rain, walking on the waters, nearer, nearer,\ntill it dashed its needle-pointed drops into my face. Again I looked\nadmiringly on the men at the wheel, with their pea-jackets, glazed\nhats, sea-going mits, keen, wary glances, and minute wrinkles about\nthe eyes. Again I heard the pleasant voice of the bravest, cheeriest\nskipper that ever stood five feet two, and weighed fifteen stone,\nwhile he accosted me with his \u201cDirty weather, sir, and looks sulky to\nwindward still. Makes her drive piles, as we say, and speak Spanish\nabout the bows; but she behaves beautifully! Bless you, she likes it!\nYes, I expect we shall have it hotter and heavier too, after sundown. A\nhead-wind, no doubt. I\u2019ve just been jotting off the reckoning; you\u2019ll\nfind the chart below, in my cabin. We\u2019ve made a longer leg than common\non the starboard tack. I\u2019ve left a pencil-mark at the exact spot where\nwe went about. Steady, men\u201d (this to the glazed hats). \u201cLuff, and be\nd\u2014\u2014d to you! Can\u2019t ye see it coming?\u201d\n\nSo I went below and conned the captain\u2019s chart thoughtfully enough,\ncomparing our great expenditure of energy with the small results\nattained, and wondering how we were ever to make our port at last.\n\nThe scene thus conjured up awoke its corresponding fancies.\n\n\u201cHave you never reflected,\u201d said I, \u201con the utter fallacy of that\nFrench proverb which affirms, \u2018Ce n\u2019est que le premier pas qui co\u00fbte\u2019?\nUnless indeed it refers to immorality, the downward career of which\nbeats the rolling stone of Sisyphus in a canter. But on all other\njourneys through life, it seems to me that not only the first steps,\nbut the first leagues, are intensely laborious and unsatisfactory.\nDisappointment lies in wait at every milestone, and the traveller\nfeels tired already ere he has reached the crest of the first hill.\nAll crowns, I grant you, like those of the Isthmian Games, are mere\nparsley at best; but in these days no competitor ever wins that\nworthless head-dress till he is so bald that common decency demands\na covering. Where are the heaven-born statesmen now, to rule the\ndestinies of continents at twenty-six? the generals and admirals, who\nbecame world-wide heroes within ten years of corporal punishment at\nschool? the poets full-fledged in immortality before their whiskers\nwere grown? Where, in short, will you point me out a single instance\nof any individual attaining fame until his zest for it has passed\naway\u2014winning his pedestal till his poor legs are too tired to stand\nstraight thereon\u2014making his fortune till he is too old to enjoy it; or,\nindeed, getting anything he wants _when_ he wants it? Lazarus has no\ndinner\u2014Dives has no appetite\u2014Struggler, who thinks he has both, is sure\nto be kept waiting that extra half-hour, which sickens him, and finds\nhe can\u2019t eat his soup when it comes!\n\n\u201cWhat up-hill work it is, that beginning of the pilgrimage. And how\nconfidently we start in the glorious ignorance of youth, heads erect,\nbacks straightened, footsteps springing like a deer, with an utter\ndisregard of warning, a sovereign contempt for advice. Like myself,\nI doubt not you have scaled many a hill, even when you carried more\nflesh than you do now. Don\u2019t you remember, in the clear, pure mountain\nair, how near the top looked from the valley down below? Don\u2019t you\nremember how, about noonday, still full of strength and spirit, though\nhaving done a stalwart spell of work, you spied the ridge that you\nwere convinced must be your goal, and strained on, panting, heated,\nlabouring, yet exultant, because success was so nearly within your\ngrasp? A few more strides\u2014hurrah! your chin is level with the ridge,\nand lo! there is another precisely similar to be surmounted at about\nthe same angle and the same distance. Not yet discouraged, only a\nlittle startled and annoyed; till another and another have been\ngained, and so surprise becomes disappointment, vexation, misgiving,\ndiscomfiture, and lastly, but to the strongest natures, despair! Even\nwith these, when the real summit has been at length attained, all\ntheir long-looked-for enjoyment resolves itself into the negative\nsatisfaction of rest; and for one who thus arrives exhausted at his\ndestination, think how many a footsore, quivering, way-wearied wanderer\nmust lie out all night shelterless, on the barren, wind-swept hill.\n\n\u201cIt seems that the process, termed at Newmarket \u2018putting a race-horse\nthrough the mill,\u2019 is practised with the human subject till he has\nlearned the disheartening lesson that labour pushed to exhaustion\nborders on pain\u2014that heartbreaking efforts, while they lower the tone\nof our whole system, are apt to destroy the very efficiency they are\nintended to enhance. I have heard good judges affirm that even at\nNewmarket they are apt to overtrain their horses. Do you not think that\nwe, too, should run the race of life on better terms were we not put so\npitilessly \u2018through the mill\u2019?\u201d\n\nHere my companion allowed himself a mild gesture of dissent, clasping\nhis bony fingers over his knotted knees, as if prepared to go into the\nsubject at length. \u201cYou are one of those people,\u201d said he, \u201cwho seem\nto think the world is intended for a place of uninterrupted rest and\nenjoyment\u2014a sort of \u2018Fiddler\u2019s Green,\u2019 as sailors term their paradise,\nwhere it is to be \u2018beer and skittles\u2019 every day and all day long. You\nwould have no \u2018small end to the horn,\u2019 as my friends over the water\nsay; and what sort of music do you think you could blow out of it? You\nwould have food without hunger, rest without labour, energy without\neffort. You would be always going down-hill, instead of up. And think\nwhere your journey would end at last! You object to the mill, you say,\nand yet it is that same process of grinding which converts the grain\ninto flour fit for bread. Look at the untried man, the youth embarking\non his career, vain, ignorant, sanguine, over-confident, prejudiced.\nHow is he to learn his own powers, his capabilities of endurance, his\nenergy under difficulties, above all, his readiness of resource, save\nby repeated disappointment and reverse? You have alluded to statesmen,\ncommanders, and poets, who, in seven-leagued boots, as it were,\nreached the top of the hill at one stride. But Pitt\u2019s was an abnormal\ntemperament\u2014a grey head upon green shoulders\u2014an old man\u2019s heart beating\nits regular pulsations within the slender compass of a young man\u2019s\nwaistcoat. Nelson\u2019s chivalrous and romantic disposition preserved\nhim from the overweening vanity and self-esteem that might have been\nlooked for as the result of such brilliant achievements at so early an\nage. His mad, absorbing passion, too, may have scored many a furrow\nin the hero\u2019s heart, while his young brow remained smooth and fair as\nmarble. \u2018On vieillit bient\u00f4t sur le champ de bataille!\u2019 and the first\nNapoleon\u2019s aphorism holds good no surer on the field of honour than in\nthe lists of love. Shelley\u2019s fate was scarcely an enviable one; and did\nyou like Byron any better after you had read his letters and learned\nthe demoralising effects, even on such genius as his, of temples\ncrowned by an immortal Fame, ere yet the beard had sprouted on his chin?\n\n\u201cAlexander of Macedon, indeed, conquered the world before he was\nthirty, and\u2014drank himself to death ere he had reached his prime!\n\n\u201cThe fact that he does not care one straw about it, is the very\nantidote to preserve a man from the subtle poison of success. He who\nhas been long climbing the ladder finds that when he looks over the\nparapet all sense of elevation and consequent giddiness is gone.\nWhatever others may think, to his own perceptions he is on a level with\nthe rest of his kind\u2014can judge of them, and for them, from the same\npoint of view; and, more important still, experiences no misgivings\nthat he may topple down and break his neck. Ambition is a glorious\nlure, no doubt, tempting the climber to noble efforts, skilful,\nvigorous, and well-sustained. But when he has reached the fancied\nresting-place so ardently desired, what does he find? A keener air,\na scantier foothold, a sentry-box instead of a feather-bed, a stern\nnecessity for further exertion, where he expected indulgence and\nenjoyment and repose.\n\n\u201cDuty is a cold-eyed monitress, reserved, inflexible, severe; Ambition,\na high-born lady, haughty, capricious, unfeeling, like those dainty\ndames of old patrician Rome,\n\n    \u2018Who in Corinthian mirrors their own proud smiles behold;\n     Who breathe of Capuan odours, and shine in Spanish gold;\u2019\n\nPleasure, a laughing, lavish courtesan, gay, gaudy, thoughtless, slave\nto the impression of the hour. This last you may buy at your will for\na handful of silver, or, at most, a talent of gold; and there are few,\nalas! who have not learned how soon her false smile palls upon the\nfancy, her painted cheek grows irksome to the eye. The second you must\nwoo, with many a stealthy footstep, many a cringing bow, offering\nat her shrine truth, honour, self-respect, to find, if you are so\nfortunate as not to be discarded like a pair of worn-out gloves, that\nyou have only gathered a nut without a kernel, after all. For the\nfirst, you must serve as Jacob served, through long years of labour,\npatience, and self-denial; but when you have won your Rachel at last,\nshe discloses for you all her glorious, unfading beauty, cleaving to\nyou, true and constant, through good and evil, the warmth and comfort\nof your hearth, the light of your happy home.\n\n\u201cWhen the courtesan has been paid off and dismissed in early youth,\nthe haughty lady wooed through long years of manhood, and won, to be\ndespised, in middle life, this is the goddess you claim to be your\nbride, and once wedded, you will never leave her till you die.\n\n\u201cThe Isthmian crown was indeed woven from humble parsley, but do you\nthink it could have borne a higher value had every leaf consisted of\nbeaten gold? Which would you rather wear, the bronze Victoria Cross, or\nthe Star and Ribbon of the Garter? Depend upon it, that to the young\nchampion of the games, flushed, exulting, treading upon air, that\nvegetable coronal represented everything most desirable and precious in\nearth or heaven. No; it is the old experienced athlete, the winner of\na thousand prizes, who has learned the intrinsic value of the article,\nand who knows that its worth consists not in itself, nor even in the\nvictory it represents, but in the strength of frame, the speed of foot\nattained by training for its pursuit. From many a long summer\u2019s day of\ntoil and abstinence, from panting lungs and aching muscles, from brows\ncovered with sweat, and feet with dust, he has wrested the endurance of\nthe camel, the strength of the ox, and the footfall of the deer. Does\nhe grudge his past labour? Not he, thankful that he has been \u2018through\nthe mill.\u2019\n\n\u201cI grant you the process is not entirely pleasant; I grant you that\neffort is with many men a sensation of discomfort almost amounting to\npain; that self-denial is very difficult to most, disappointment simply\ndisgusting to all. When the body feels weary, the brain overtasked,\nwe are apt to think the meal is being bolted too fine, the grinding\nbecoming unnecessarily severe; above all, when that pitiless millstone\ncomes crushing down upon the heart, and pounds it to powder, we cry\naloud in our agony, and protest that no sorrow was ever so unbearable\nas ours. What mole working underground is so blind as humanity to its\nown good? Why, that same grinding to powder is the only means by which\nthe daintiest flour can be obtained. The finest nature, like the truest\nsteel, must be tempered in the hottest furnace; so much caloric would\nbe thrown away on an inferior metal. Capacity for suffering infers\nalso capacity for achievement; and who would grudge the pain about his\nbrows, when it reminded him he was wearing an imperial crown?\n\n\u201cSooner or later the process must be undergone by all. With some it\ngoes on through a lifetime; others get the worst of it over in a few\nyears. One man may have done with it altogether before his strength of\nmind or body has failed with declining age\u2014\n\n    \u2018Dum nova canities\u2014dum prima et recta senectus.\u2019\n\n\u201cHis neighbour may have one foot in the grave before the grain has\nbeen thoroughly purged and sifted, and refined to its purest quality,\nbut through the mill he must pass. It is just as much a necessity of\nhumanity as hunger or thirst, or sorrow or decay. There is no escape.\nHowever long protracted, it is inexorable, unavoidable, and effectual,\nfor\n\n    \u2018Though the mills of God grind slowly,\n     Yet they grind exceeding small.\u2019\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nGOURDS\n\n\nSo Jonah was exceeding glad of the Gourd. I can understand his feelings\nperfectly. Does it not happen to most of us, at least once in a\nlifetime, thus to be \u201cexceeding glad of the Gourd,\u201d and in ninety-nine\ncases out of a hundred with the same result? \u201c_Nil violentum est\nperpetuum._\u201d So surely as it comes up in a night, so surely must it\nwither in a day. You have been in a hot climate? I don\u2019t intend any\ndisagreeable allusion, I mean the tropics, I give you my honour! Do you\nnot remember the delight of getting out of your tent, or \u201cbooth\u201d as we\nstill call them at our village merry-makings, to sit under anything\nlike a tree or shrub, where, shaded from the sun, you could catch the\nwelcome breath of every breeze that blew? The French officers in the\nCrimea used to build for themselves trellised out-houses of branches\ninterlaced, swearing volubly the while, and appearing to derive from\nthese bowers no small comfort and refreshment. I can imagine the\nastonishment of \u201c_mon lieutenant_\u201d when, on waking in his tent, he\nshould have discovered, like \u201cJack and the Beanstalk,\u201d that one of\nthese had sprung up for him, unsolicited, in a night. How he would have\nstared, and shrugged, and gesticulated, and cursed his star with less\nasperity, and been \u201cexceeding glad of the Gourd!\u201d\n\nThey are of many kinds, these excrescences that grow up with such\nmarvellous celerity to afford us an intense and illusive delight; but\nthey all resemble their prototype at Nineveh, in so far that, ere the\nseed has yet germinated, the worm is already prepared which shall smite\nthe gourd, and cause it to wither away. There were hundreds of them\nshot to gigantic dimensions and exploded with the South Sea bubble of\nthe last century. Thousands owed their birth and disappearance to the\nrailway fever of five-and-twenty years ago. Not a few were called into\nexistence by a blockade of the Southern ports, during the late war of\nopinion in the United States, and destroyed by its suspension at the\npeace. It seems to be a law in the moral as in the physical world that\nthe endurance of things must be in proportion to the length of time\nrequired to bring them to maturity. The oak is said to be three hundred\nyears in arriving at its prime, and that its vigour is still unimpaired\nafter a thousand changes of foliage we have ocular demonstration in\nmany parts of England; while the mustard-and-cress, which can be raised\nin twenty minutes on a square of flannel dipped in hot water, wastes\nand withers away in an hour.\n\nThe same in the animal creation. Like Minerva from the brain of Jove,\nthe butterfly springs into its sunny existence, winged, armed, and\nclothed in gorgeous apparel, all at once; but when the night-breeze\nshakes the perfume from your garden-flowers, and the evening bank\nof clouds is coming up from the west, you look for that ephemeral\nmasterpiece in vain. Now the elephant only attains his majority, so\nto speak, when between forty and fifty years of age; therefore he\nhas hardly become an \u201cold rogue\u201d at two hundred, and the identical\nproboscis that saluted Clyde, or curled round the crushed remains\nof Tippoo Sahib\u2019s victims, is to-day lowered in honour of our own\n_jeunesse dor\u00e9e_, with whom a run through British India is considered\nlittle more of an expedition than a jaunt into Welsh Wales.\n\nCornaro, if I remember right, fixes the normal duration of life, in\nthe Mammalia, at a term of five times the number of years required\nto reach their prime. Thus a dog, he says, comes to maturity at two,\nand lives till ten; a horse at five, and lives till five-and-twenty;\nand, arguing by analogy, a man, who only attains his full strength at\ntwenty-three or four, should not, therefore, if he led a natural and\nrational life, succumb till he had arrived at a hundred and fifteen or\ntwenty years.\n\nForbid it, Atropos! for their sakes as well as ours. Think of the old\nfogies, now sufficiently numerous, who would overflow the clubs! Think,\nwhen it came to our own turn, of the numbers of Gourds we should have\nraised, outlived, buried, but, alas! not forgotten.\n\n\u201cA fine old man, sir!\u201d said one of the best judges of human nature that\never fathered a proverb. \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing. If his head or his\nheart had been worth anything, they would have worn him out years ago!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have got off the subject as usual,\u201d objected Bones, \u201cand are\ntrenching on a topic of which you are far less qualified to speak than\nmyself. What do you know about the duration of life, the ceaseless\nwear-and-tear, the gradual decay, the last flickers of the candle,\nleaping up, time after time, with delusive strength, until it goes out\nonce for all? You can tell where Noah was, but do you know where the\ncandle went to when it left the great sea-captain in the dark? Not you!\nNever mind, don\u2019t fret, you will find out some day sure enough, and\nbe as wise as \u2018Tullus, Ancus, good Eneas,\u2019 and the rest of us! In the\nmeantime stick to your text. The morbid spirit possesses you, and well\nI know it will only come out of the man with much talking. If it does\nyou any good, never mind _me_\u2014fire away! Tell us something more about\nthe Gourd, and the worm that smote it. That is what you are driving at,\nI feel sure.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Morbid!\u2019\u201d I repeated, somewhat indignantly. \u201cAnd why _morbid_,\nI should like to know? A man takes his stand, as you and I do,\noutside of, and apart from, the circling, shifting mass of his\nfellow-creatures, and makes his own observations, uninfluenced by\ntheir clamour, their customs, their ridiculous prejudices and opinions,\nconfiding those observations unreservedly to one who should, _ex\nofficio_ indeed, be entirely free from the earthly trammels that\ncumber liberal discussion in general society, and he is to be called\n_morbid_, forsooth! It was only one of your ghastly jests, was it?\nEnough! I am satisfied. There can be no bone of contention\u2014I mean\nno subject of dispute\u2014between you and me\u2014we have not the ghost of a\nreason\u2014I mean the shadow of a cause\u2014for disagreement. I confess my\nweakness: I own to a fatal tendency to digression. One thought leads\nto another, and they follow in a string, like wild geese, or heirs of\nentail, \u2018_velut unda supervenit undam_.\u2019 By the way, this very subject,\nthe association of ideas, opens up a boundless field for speculation.\nBut I refrain\u2014I return to my Gourd\u2014I am back in Nineveh with the\nprophet once more. Nineveh, in its imperial splendour, gorgeous in\nEastern colouring, sublime with Eastern magnificence, glittering with\nEastern decorations\u2014solemn, gloomy, and gigantic; grand in the massive\ndignity of size, winged bulls hewn from the solid rock guard the long\nperspective of a thousand avenues, leading to palaces that rise, tier\nupon tier, into the glowing sky. Lavish profusion\u2014marble, and bronze,\nand gold\u2014gleams and dazzles and flashes in the streets. The palm-tree\nbends her graceful head earthward; the aloe aims her angry spikes at\nheaven; the camel, with meek appealing eyes, seems to protest against\nthe bales of costly merchandise with which its back is piled; the white\nelephant in scarlet trappings, stolid and sagacious, stands patient,\nwaiting for its lord; throngs of dusky, half-naked Asiatics pass to and\nfro along the baking causeways; loud bleatings of sheep, lowings of\noxen, cries of parched, thirsty animals resound in the suburbs; while\nover all a Southern sun blazes down with scorching fury, and an east\nwind off the Desert comes blustering in, hot and stifling, like a\nblast from hell.\n\n\u201cSo the prophet is \u2018exceeding glad of his Gourd.\u2019 He will rest in its\nshade; he will look pitifully on the broiling passers-by; he will hug\nhimself in that sense of comfort which human nature, alas! is too apt\nto experience from the very fact that others are in a worse condition\nthan its own; but even while he thus rejoices, the worm has done its\nwork\u2014the Gourd is withered up, the sirocco suffocates his lungs, the\nsun beats on his head, and, like the rest of us when we lose that which\nwe choose to consider the one thing essential to our happiness, he\nshows the white feather on the spot, and says, \u2018It is better for me to\ndie than to live.\u2019\n\n\u201cDeath never seems to come for those who wish it\u2014though perhaps if the\nGreat Liberator felt bound to appear every time he was invoked, the cry\nmight not be raised quite so often. Who is there that has not bowed his\nhead in misery, and wondered whether he could be so wretched anywhere\nelse as here, in the mocking sunlight, with his Gourd withered before\nhis face? It is gone\u2014gone. See! There is the very spot on which it\nstood but yesterday, so green, so fresh, so full of life, so rich in\npromise! And to-day\u2014a blank! It seems impossible! Ay, that is perhaps\nthe worst of the suffering\u2014that numbed, stupefied state, which refuses\nfor a time to grasp the extent of its affliction\u2014that perverse and\ncowardly instinct which clings to a thread that it yet knows is wholly\nsevered\u2014which turns even Hope to a curse, because it makes her a bar to\nresignation. Few of us can boast more courage than Jonah when the Gourd\nis fairly withered away.\n\n\u201cFor one it has been riches, perhaps, comprising luxury, position,\nvariety\u2014all the advantages that spring from an abundance of worldly\ngoods. Some fine morning, Fortune, \u2018_ludem insolentem ludere\npertinax_,\u2019 gives her wings a shake, spreads them, and flits away;\nleaving in her place haggard Want, gaunt Ruin, bailiffs in the\ndrawing-room, furniture ticketed for sale up-stairs. The children\u2019s\nrocking-horse, the wife\u2019s pianoforte, all the well-known trifles of\ndaily use and ornament, must be cast into the chasm, as the Romans\nthrew their effects into that awkward rent in the Forum. And the\nmaster of the household is fortunate if he be not compelled, like\nCurtius, to leap in after his goods. His friends are astonished, and\nbless themselves. His relations had predicted the catastrophe long\nago. These, of course, turn their backs on him, incontinently, from\nmotives of self-respect, no doubt, but a few of the former, such as had\nprofessed to love him least, lend a helping hand. Nevertheless, the\nGourd is withered, and the man, faint and sick unto death, only wishes\nhis hour was come and he might lie down to be at rest.\n\n\u201cOr it has been a child\u2014God forbid it should have been an only one!\nSome golden-headed darling that used to patter down-stairs with you\nevery morning to breakfast, and stand at your elbow every night after\ndinner. Whose dancing eyes never met your own but with the merry,\nsaucy, confiding glances that seldom outlast a fifth birthday, and to\nwhom you could no more have said an unkind word than you could cut off\nyour right hand. Yesterday it was chasing butterflies across the lawn,\nand you carried it yourself with laughing triumph, rosy, happy, and\nhungry, in to tea. But the worm had begun its work, even then. This\nmorning you missed the glad little voice at breakfast, and, looking\nat the jam on the table, a sad misgiving, stifled as soon as born,\nshot through you like a knife. It was pitiful to watch all day, in the\nnursery, by the little bed,\u2014to see the golden head lying so listless,\nthe chubby hands so waxen and still, the heavy lids drooping so wearily\nover the blue eyes that yet shone with a light you never saw in them\nbefore. There rose a mist to dim your own when the patient little voice\nasked gently, \u2018Is that papa?\u2019\u2014and noticing two or three neglected\nplaythings on the counterpane, you walked to the window and wept.\n\n\u201cSo the afternoon wore on, and the doctor came, and there was cruel\nhope and torturing suspense, and a wrench that so stupefied you, it is\ndifficult to remember anything clearly afterwards, though you have a\ndim perception of a pair of scissors severing some golden curls, while\nnurse went down on her knees to pray.\n\n\u201cAnd at sundown you walk out into your garden along the very path that\nbrought you both home yesterday, but you walk like a man in a dream,\nfor ringing in your ears is the wail that was heard of old in Ramah,\nand you know your darling is with the angels, wondering feebly why that\nknowledge cannot console you more.\n\n\u201cOr perhaps your Gourd was \u2018only a woman\u2019s love!\u2019\u2014not a growth,\ncertainly, however exuberant, on which a wise man should place so much\ndependence as on lignum vit\u00e6, for instance, or heart-of-oak. But, so\nfar as I can see, either wise men do not fall in love, or they allow\nwisdom to slip out of their grasp in the very act of making that\nfatal stumble. So, in defiance of all theory, warning, and practical\nexperience, you may have congratulated yourself with insane vehemence\non the upspringing of this delicate exotic, and looked forward to\nthe passing of many happy hours under its shade. You shut your eyes\nwilfully, of course, to the obvious fact that you never _are_ happy,\neven when in full accomplishment of your wishes you stretch your lazy\nlength at the feet of your Gourd. There is sure to be an insect that\nstings, or a sunbeam that dazzles, or a cold wind in the nape of your\nneck. Nevertheless, the vegetable, so long as it exists, is not only\nthe delight of your heart, but the very sustenance of your brain. That\nis the fatal part of the disease. Your Gourd connects itself with\neverything you think, or do, or say, spreading her roots, as it were,\nover every foot of land you possess, shutting out earth\u2019s horizon with\nher slender stem, and, worse than all, poking her dainty head between\nyou and heaven.\n\n\u201cThen, when she withers up\u2014a disappointment which, to do her justice,\nshe is capable of inflicting in the loveliest weather and at the\nshortest notice\u2014you find to your dismay that, with her, all the fair\nside of creation has withered too. There is no more freshness in the\nmeadows, no more promise in the smile of spring. The scent is gone from\nthe garden-flowers, the music from the song of birds. Summer\u2019s vivid\nglow has faded, and the russet of autumn is no longer edged with gold.\nHope\u2019s rosy hues have ceased to tinge the morning, and the glory has\ndeparted from noonday.\n\n\u201cLike Jonah, you \u2018do well to be angry!\u2019 and it is well for you if you\ncan be very angry indeed. That stimulant will do more to heal your\nwound over than any other remedy I can think of, except the planting of\na fresh seedling to await another failure; but God help you if yours\nis a nature less susceptible of wrath than of sorrow! If you are brave,\ngenerous, forgiving, confiding, \u2018Je vous en fais mon compliment!\u2019 There\nis no more to be said. Where your Gourd grew, nothing green will ever\nspring up again! What say you, Bones? I think you and I are well out of\nthe whole thing!\u201d\n\nHe waved his fleshless hand gently, with the gesture of one who puts\nfrom him some dim and distant recollection.\n\n\u201cThere is a bitter flavour,\u201d said he, \u201cabout that remark which I should\nhardly have expected, and which is by no means to my taste. You and\nI can surely afford to look at these things from a comprehensive,\nphilosophical, and indulgent point of view. No more Gourds are likely\nto grow for either of us; and although your style of figure is,\nperhaps, less entitled to defy the worm than mine, yet I think you\nhave but little to fear from the kind which caused such an outbreak\nof temper in the disgusted prophet. The whole story of the Gourd, I\nneed not point out to you, is a lesson. It was intended as a lesson\nfor Jonah, it is intended as a lesson for ourselves. Forgive me for\nobserving that you seem to have entirely lost the point of it, and, as\nusual in our discussions, you have sacrificed argument to declamation.\nIt is weak, of course, to be too much delighted with the Gourd, it is\ncowardly to be too much afraid of the worm, but\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is one kind of worm I am horribly afraid of,\u201d I interrupted, for\nI admit I was a little nettled and out of temper.\n\n\u201cAnd that?\u201d he asked, with the courtesy which distinguishes his manner\nunder all circumstances.\n\n\u201cIs the borer-worm!\u201d I replied, brutally enough; and I am afraid he was\na little hurt, for he rose at once and went into his cupboard, while I\nwalked off moodily to bed.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nA VAMPIRE\n\n\nLeaning idly against the chimney-piece the other night, contemplating\nmy companion in his usual attitude, my elbow happened to brush\noff the slab a Turkish coin of small value and utterly illegible\ninscription. How strangely things come back to one! I fancied myself\nonce more on the yellow wave of the broad Danube; once more threading\nthose interminable green hills that fringe its banks; once more\nwondering whether the forest of Belgrade had been vouchsafed to\nEastern Europe as a type of Infinity, while its massive fortress,\nwith frowning rampart and lethargic Turkish sentries, was intended to\nrepresent the combination of courage and sloth, of recklessness and\nimperturbability, of apparent strength and real inefficiency, which\ndistinguishes most arrangements of the Ottoman Empire.\n\n\u201cBakaloum\u201d and \u201cBismillah!\u201d \u201cTake your chance!\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t care a d\u2014n,\u201d\nseem to be the watchwords of this improvident Government. It lets the\nship steer herself; and she makes, I believe, as bad weather of it as\nmight be expected under such seamanship.\n\nEngrossed far less, I admit, with political considerations than\nwith the picturesque appearance of a Servian population attending\ntheir market, I rather startled my friend with the abruptness of the\nfollowing question:\n\n\u201cDo you believe there is such a thing as a Vampire?\u201d\n\nHe rattled a little and almost rose to his feet, but re-seating\nhimself, only rejoined,\n\n\u201cWhy do you ask?\u201d\n\n\u201cI was thinking,\u201d I replied, \u201cof that romantic-looking peasantry I\nused to see thronging the market-place of Belgrade. Of those tall,\nhandsome men, with the scowl never off their brows, their hands never\nstraying far from the bellyful of weapons they carried in their\nshawls. Of those swarthy wild-eyed women, with their shrill, rapid\nvoices, their graceful, impatient gestures, carrying each of them the\navailable capital of herself and family strung in coins about her\nraven hair, while on every tenth face at least, of both sexes, could\nnot fail to be observed the wan traces of that wasting disease which\nseems to sap strength and vitality, gradually, and almost surely, as\nconsumption itself. Yes, I think for every score of peasants I could\nhave counted two of these \u2018fever-faces,\u2019 as the people themselves call\ntheir ague-ridden companions, though I ascertained after a while,\nwhen I came to know them better, that they attributed this decimation\nof their numbers, and faded appearance of the victims, rather to\nsupernatural visitation than epidemic disease. They believe that in\ncertain cases, where life has been unusually irregular, or the rites\nof religion reprehensibly neglected, the soul returns after death\nto its original tenement, and the corpse becomes revivified under\ncertain ghastly conditions of a periodical return to the tomb and a\ncontinual warfare against its kind. An intermittent existence is only\nto be preserved at the expense of others, for the compact, while it\npermits reanimation, withholds the blood, \u2018which is the life thereof.\u2019\nThe stream must therefore be drained from friends, neighbours, early\ncompanions, nay, is most nourishing and efficacious when abstracted\nfrom the veins of those heretofore best beloved. So the Vampire, as\nthis weird being is called, must steal from its grave in the dead\nof night, to sit by some familiar bedside till the sleeper shall be\nsteeped in the unconsciousness of complete repose, and then puncturing\na minute orifice in the throat, will suck its fill till driven back\nto its resting-place by the crimson streaks of day. Night after night\nthe visits must be repeated; and so, week by week, the victim pines\nand droops and withers gradually away. There is no apparent illness,\nno ostensible injury, but the frame dwindles, the muscles fall, the\nlimbs fail, the cheek fades, and the death-look, never to be mistaken,\ncomes into the great haggard, hollow, wistful eyes. I have repeatedly\nasked the peasants whether they had ever met any of these supernatural\nvisitants, for they spoke of them so confidently, one might have\nsupposed the famished ghouls were flitting about the villages nightly;\nbut though presumptive evidence was forthcoming in volumes, I was\nnever fortunate enough to find an actual eye-witness. The sister of\none had been frightened by them repeatedly; the cousin of another\nhe had himself carried to her tomb, drained of her last life-drops\nby a relative buried some weeks before; and the grandmother of a\nthird had not only met and talked with this inconvenient connection,\nexpostulating with it on its depraved appetites, and generally arguing\nthe point on moral as well as sanitary grounds, but had induced it by\nher persuasions, and the power of a certain amulet she wore, to abstain\nfrom persecuting a damsel in the neighbouring village for the same\nghastly purpose, or, at least, to put off its visits till the horrid\ncraving should be no longer endurable. Still I could meet nobody who\nhad actually seen one in person; and that is why I asked you just now\nif you believed there was such a thing as a Vampire?\u201d\n\nHe nodded gravely. \u201cThey are rare,\u201d said he; \u201cbut I believe in such\nbeings, because I have not only seen one, but had the advantage of its\npersonal notice, and a very pretty, pleasing acquaintance it was! You\nwould like to know something more? Well, it compromises nobody. You\nwill not quote me, of course. Indeed I don\u2019t see how you can, for I\nstill mention no real names. I don\u2019t mind telling you the story of a\nlife, such as I knew it; a life that by some fatality seemed to drag\ndown every other that came within the sphere of its attractions to\nsorrow, humiliation, and disgrace. I have no brain to swim, no pulses\nto leap, no heart to ache left, and yet the memory stirs me painfully\neven now.\n\n\u201cIn early manhood,\u201d he continued, bending down, as though to scan\nhis own fleshless proportions, with an air of consciousness that was\nalmost grotesque, \u201cI paid as much heed to my personal appearance, and\nflourished it about in public places as persistently as others of like\nage and pursuits. Whether I should do so if I had my time to come\nagain, is a different question, but we will let that pass. Being then\nyoung, tolerably good-looking, sufficiently conceited, and exceedingly\nwell-dressed, I had betaken myself one evening to your Italian Opera,\nthe best, and I may add the dearest, in Europe. I was fond of music and\nknew something about it, but I was fonder still of pretty women, though\nconcerning these I enjoyed my full share of that ignorance which causes\nmen so to exaggerate their qualities both good and bad; an ignorance it\nis worth while to preserve with as much care as in other matters we\ntake to acquire knowledge, for there is no denying, alas! that those\nwho know them best always seem to respect them least.\n\n\u201cI rose, therefore, from my stall at the first opportunity and turned\nround to survey the house. Ere I had inspected a quarter of it, my\nglasses were up, and I will tell you what they showed me\u2014the most\nperfect face I ever saw. Straight nose, thin and delicately cut,\nlarge black eyes, regular eyebrows, faultless chin, terminating a\ncomplete oval, the whole set in a frame of jet-black hair. Even my next\nneighbour, who, from an observation he let fall to a friend, belonged\napparently to the Household Troops, could not refrain from ejaculating,\n\u2018By Jove, she\u2019s a ripper!\u2019 the moment he caught sight of the object on\nwhich my gaze was fixed.\n\n\u201cI saw something else too. I saw that the lady by her side was a\nforeigner with whom I had long been acquainted; so edging my way into\nthe passages, in two minutes I was tapping at their box-door like a man\nwho felt pretty sure of being let in.\n\n\u201cThe foreigner introduced me to her friend, and as the second act of\nthe opera was already in progress, told me to sit down and hold my\ntongue. We were four in the box. Another gentleman was placed close\nbehind the lady who first attracted my attention. I had only eyes just\nthen, however, for the wild, unearthly beauty of my new acquaintance.\n\n\u201cI have seen hundreds of pretty women, and even in youth my heart, from\ntemperament, perhaps, rather than reflection, was as hard as my ribs;\nbut this face fascinated me\u2014I can use no other word. My sensations were\nso strangely compounded of admiration, horror, interest, curiosity,\nattraction, and dislike. The eyes were deep and dark, yet with the\nglitter in them of a hawk\u2019s, the cheek deadly pale, the lips bright\nred. She was different from anything I had ever seen, and yet so\nwonderfully beautiful! I longed to hear her speak. Presently she\nwhispered a few words to the man behind her, and I felt my flesh creep.\nLow as they were modulated, there was in every syllable a tone of such\nutter hopelessness, such abiding sorrow, regret, even remorse, always\npresent, always kept down, that I could have imagined her one of those\nlost spirits for whom is fixed the punishment of all most cruel, most\nintolerable, that they can never forget they are formed for better\nthings. Her gestures, too, were in accordance with the sad, suggestive\nmusic of her voice\u2014quiet, graceful, and somewhat listless in the\nrepose, as it seemed, rather of unhappiness than of indolence. I tell\nyou I was not susceptible; I don\u2019t think boys generally are. In love,\nmore than in any other extravagance, \u2018there is no fool like an old one.\u2019\n\n\u201cI was as little given to romance as a ladies\u2019 doctor; and yet, sitting\nin that box watching the turn of her beautiful head as she looked\ntowards the stage, I said to myself, \u2018I\u2019ll take good care she never\ngets the upper hand of _me_. If a man once allowed himself to like\nher at all, she is just the sort of woman who would blight his whole\nlife for him, and hunt the poor devil down to his grave!\u2019 Somebody else\nseemed to have no such misgivings, or to have arrived at a stage of\ninfatuation when all personal considerations had gone by the board. If\never I saw a calf led to the slaughter it was Count V\u2014\u2014, a calf, too,\nwhose throat few women could have cut without compunction. Handsome,\nmanly, rich, affectionate, and sincere, worshipping his deity with all\nthe reckless devotion, all the unscrupulous generosity of his brave\nHungarian heart, I saw his very lip quiver under its heavy moustache\nwhen she turned her glittering eyes on him with some allusion called up\nby the business of the stage, and the proud, manly face that had never\nquailed before an enemy grew white in the intensity of its emotion.\nWhat made me think of a stag I once found lying dead in a Styrian pass,\nand a golden eagle feasting on him with her talons buried in his heart?\n\n\u201cThe Gr\u00e4finn, to whom the box belonged, noticed my abstraction. \u2018Don\u2019t\nfall in love with her,\u2019 she whispered; \u2018I can\u2019t spare you just yet.\nIsn\u2019t she beautiful?\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018You introduced me,\u2019 was my answer, \u2018but you never told me her name.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018How stupid!\u2019 said the Gr\u00e4finn. \u2018At present she is a Madame _de_ St.\nCroix, an Englishwoman, nevertheless, and a widow, but not likely to\nremain so long.\u2019 And with a mischievous laugh she gave me her hand\nas I left the box, bowing to Madame _de_ St. Croix and also to the\nHungarian, who in his happy pre-occupation was perfectly unconscious of\nmy politeness.\n\n\u201cI saw them again in the crush-room. The Gr\u00e4finn had picked up an\n_attach\u00e9_ to some legation, who put her dutifully into her carriage.\nThe Hungarian was still completely engrossed with Madame _de_ St.\nCroix. I have not yet forgotten the look on his handsome face when she\ndrove off with her friend. \u2018He\u2019s a fool,\u2019 I said to myself; \u2018and yet a\nwoman might well be proud to make a fool of such a man as that.\u2019\n\n\u201cI left London in the middle of the season and thought no more of\nMadame _de_ St. Croix. I had seen a pretty picture, I had heard a\nstrain of sweet music, I had turned over the page of an amusing\nromance\u2014there was an end of it.\n\n\u201cThe following winter I happened to spend in Vienna. Of course I went\nto one of the masked balls of _The Redouten-Saal_. I had not been ten\nminutes in the room when my ears thrilled to the low, seductive accents\nof that well-remembered voice. There she was again, masked, of course,\nbut it was impossible to mistake the slim, pliant figure, the graceful\ngestures, the turn of the beautiful head, and the quiet energy that\nbetrayed itself, even in the small, gloved hand. She was talking to a\nwell-known Russian magnate less remarkable for purity of morals than\ndiplomatic celebrity, boundless extravagance, and devotion to the other\nsex. To be on terms of common friendship with such a man was at least\ncompromising to any lady under sixty years of age; and it is needless\nto say that his society was courted and appreciated accordingly.\n\n\u201cMadame _de_ St. Croix seemed well satisfied with her neighbour; and\nthough in her outward manner the least demonstrative of women, I could\ndetect through her mask the same cruel glitter in her dark eyes that\nhad so fascinated me, six months before, in the Gr\u00e4finn\u2019s opera-box.\nThe Russian talked volubly, and she leaned towards him, as those do\nwho are willing to hear more. _Ch\u00e2teau qui parle_ furls its banner,\n_femme qui \u00e9coute_ droops her head. Directly opposite, looking very\ntall and fierce as he reared himself against the doorway, stood Count\nV\u2014\u2014. The Hungarian was pale as death. On his face, so worn and haggard,\nso cruelly altered since I saw it last, was set the stamp of physical\npain, and he gnawed the corner of his brown moustache with that tension\nof the muscles about the mouth which denotes a paroxysm bravely kept\ndown. As friends accosted him in passing, he bowed his head kindly and\ncourteously while his whole face softened, but it was sad to see how\nsoon the gleam passed away and the cloud came back, darker and heavier\nthan before. The man\u2019s heart, you see, was generous, kindly, and full\nof trust\u2014such a heart as women like Madame _de_ St. Croix find it an\ninteresting amusement to break.\n\n\u201cI think he must have made her some kind of appeal; for later in the\nevening I observed them together, and he was talking earnestly in\nGerman, with a low pleading murmur, to which I thought few women could\nhave listened unmoved. She answered in French; and I was sorry for\nhim when she broke up the colloquy with a little scornful shrug of\nher shoulders, observing in a hard, unfeeling tone not like her usual\nvoice, \u2018Que voulez-vous? Enfin, c\u2019est plus fort que moi!\u2019\n\n\u201cThe Russian put her into her sledge, for there was a foot of snow in\nthe streets, and Count V\u2014\u2014 walked home through it, with a smile on his\nface and his head up, looking strangely elated, I thought, for a man,\nthe last strand of whose moorings had lately parted and left him adrift.\n\n\u201cI had not then learned there is no temporary stimulant so powerful as\ndespair, no tonic so reviving as a _parti pris_.\n\n\u201cNext day, lounging into the _Chancellerie_ of the Embassy for my usual\ngossip, I found little Hughes, an unpaid _attach\u00e9_ (who earned, indeed,\njust as much as he received), holding forth with considerable spirit\nand energy.\n\n\u201c\u2018Curse him!\u2019 said this indomitable young Briton. \u2018If it had been\nswords, I should like to have fought him myself. I hate him! I tell\nyou. Everybody hates him. And V\u2014\u2014 was the best chap between here\nand Orsova. He was almost like an Englishman. Wouldn\u2019t he just have\npolished him off if they\u2019d had swords. That old muff, Bergheimer of\nthe Cuirassiers, ought to be hanged. Do you think, if _I\u2019d_ been his\nsecond, I\u2019d have put him up with pistols against the best shot in\nEurope?\u2014and at the barrier too! It\u2019s not like at home, you know. I\nnever knew such a mull as they made of it amongst them. This cursed\nCalmuck gets the pull all through, and poor V\u2014\u2014, who had lost his\nfortune already, loses his lady-love and his life. What a rum world it\nis!\u2019\n\n\u201cHere the orator rolled and lit a cigarette, thus affording me a moment\nto inquire into the cause of his indignation. I then learned that, in\nconsequence of a trifling dispute after last night\u2019s ball, a duel had\nbeen fought at daybreak, in the snow, between Count V\u2014\u2014 and a Russian\nnobleman, in which the former was shot through the heart.\n\n\u201c\u2018Never got _one_ in at all!\u2019 said Hughes, again waxing eloquent on\nhis friend\u2019s wrongs. \u2018I\u2019ve seen both the seconds since. They were\nto walk up to a handkerchief, and the Russian potted him at forty\nyards the first step he made. They may say what they like about the\nrow originating in politics\u2014I know better. They quarrelled because\nMadame _de_ St. Croix had left V\u2014\u2014 and taken up with this snub-nosed\nTartar. First, she ruined my poor friend. I know all about it. He\nhadn\u2019t a rap left; for if she\u2019d asked him for the shirt off his back,\nhe\u2019d have stripped like beans! Then she broke his heart\u2014the cheeriest,\njolliest, kindest fellow in Europe\u2014to finish up by leaving him for\nanother man, who kills him before breakfast without a scruple; and if\nthe devil don\u2019t get hold of _her_ some fine day, why he\u2019s a disgrace to\nhis appointment, that\u2019s all! and they ought to make him Secretary of\nLegation here, or pension him off somewhere and put him out of the way!\nHave another cigarette!\u2019\n\n\u201cTen years afterwards I was sitting in the gardens of the Tuileries,\none fine morning towards the middle of May, wondering, as English\npeople always do wonder, on a variety of subjects\u2014why the cigars were\nso bad in Paris, and the air so exhilarating\u2014why the tender green\nleaves quivering over those deep alleys should have a sunshine of\ntheir own besides that which they reflected from above\u2014why the _bonnes_\nand nursery-maids wore clean caps every day\u2014why the railings always\nlooked as if they had been re-gilt the same morning, and why the sentry\nat the gate should think it part of his duty to leer at every woman who\npassed, like a satyr?\n\n\u201cIndeed I believe I was almost asleep, when I started in my chair,\nand rubbed my eyes to make sure it was not a dream. There, within ten\npaces of me, sat Madame _de_ St. Croix, if I was still to call her so,\napparently not an hour older than the first time we met. The face was\neven paler, the lips redder, the cruel eyes deeper and darker, but in\nthat flickering light the woman looked more beautiful than ever. She\nwas listening quietly and indolently, as of old, to a gentleman who\nsat with his back to me, telling his own story, whatever it might be,\nin a low, earnest, impressive voice. I raised my hat when I caught her\neye, and she bowed in return politely enough, but obviously without\nrecognition. The movement caused her companion to turn round, and in\ntwo strides he was by my chair, grasping me cordially by the hand.\nHe was an old and intimate friend, a colonel in the French army, by\nwhose side I had experienced more than one strange adventure, both in\nEastern Europe and Asia-Minor\u2014a man who had served with distinction,\nof middle age, a widower, fond of society, field-sports, speculation,\nand travelling; essentially _bon camarade_, but thoroughly French in\nhis reflections and opinions. The last man in the world, I should\nhave thought, to be made a fool of by a woman. Well, there he was,\nher bounden slave! Absurdly happy if she smiled, miserable when she\nfrowned, ready to fetch and carry like a poodle, perfectly childish\nabout her, and utterly contemptible. If she had really cared for\nhim, the temptation must have been irresistible, and she would have\nbullied him frightfully. But no, there was always the same repose of\nmanner, the same careless kindness, the same melancholy, the same\nconsciousness of an unquestionable superiority. One of his reasons, he\nsoon confided to me, for being so fond of her was, that they never had\nan angry word! For a week or two I saw a good deal of them. Paris was\nalready empty, and we did our plays, our Op\u00e9ra Comique, and our little\ndinners pleasantly enough. She was always the same, and I found myself,\nday by day, becoming more conscious of that nameless charm about her,\nwhich I should despair of being able to describe. Yet as often as I met\nthe glance of those deep, dark, unearthly eyes, a shudder crept over\nme, such as chills you when you come face to face with a ghost in your\ndreams. The colonel, I have said, was devoted to her. He was rarely\nabsent from her side, but if by chance alone with me, would talk of her\nby the hour.\n\n\u201cHe had found, he declared, fortunately before he was too old to\nappreciate it, the one inestimable treasure the earth contained. He had\ncherished his fancies, committed his follies, of course, _tout comme\nun autre_, but he had never experienced anything like this. It was his\nhaven, his anchorage, his resting-place, and he might glide down into\nold age, and on to death, perfectly happy, because confident, that with\n_her_ heart and _her_ force of character, she would never change. He\ncould not be jealous of her. Oh no! She was so frank, so confiding,\nso sincere. She, too, _pass\u00e9 par l\u00e0_, had told him so; unlike other\nwomen, had confessed to him not only her last, but her many former\nattachments. He knew all about poor V\u2014\u2014, who was shot in a duel, and\nthe Russian general, banished to Siberia. How fortunate she had broken\nwith him before his disgrace, because, in the loyalty of her nature,\nshe would surely have followed him into exile, although she never cared\nfor him in her heart, never! No, nor for any of the others; never had\nbeen fairly touched till now. Him, the colonel, she really _did_ love.\nHe had proved his devotion so thoroughly (I found out afterwards,\nthough not from him, that my friend had been fool enough to sacrifice\nboth fortune and profession for her sake), he was so reliable, she\nsaid, so kind, and so _good_. In short, he was perfectly happy, and\ncould see no cloud in his horizon, look which way he would.\n\n\u201cWhen I left Paris they accompanied me to the railway station; and the\nlast I saw of them was their two heads very close over a railway guide,\nprojecting a trip into a lonely part of Switzerland, where they would\nhave no society but their own.\n\n\u201cSix months afterwards \u2018Galignani\u2019 informed me that my friend the\ncolonel had been reinstated in the French army and appointed to a\nregiment of Chasseurs d\u2019Afrique then serving in Algeria, where, before\nthe Tuileries Gardens were again green, I learned from the same source\nhe had already solved the great problem in an affair of outposts with\nthe Khabyles. Long years elapsed, and there were streaks of grey in my\nhair and whiskers ere I saw Madame _de_ St. Croix again. I had heard\nof her, indeed, at intervals both in London and Paris. I am bound\nto say her name was always coupled with those who were distinguished\nby birth, talent, or success. She was very choice, I believe, in the\nselection of her victims, despising equally an easy conquest and one\nof which the ravages could be readily repaired. The women hated her,\nthe men said she was charming. For my part I kept out of her way: we\nwere destined to meet, nevertheless. I had embarked in a Peninsular and\nOriental steamer at Marseilles very much indisposed, and retiring at\nonce to my berth never quitted it till we were entering the Straits of\nBuoni-faccio. Here I came on deck, weak, exhausted, but convalescent,\ndrinking in the sunshine and the scenery with that thirst for the\nbeautiful which becomes so fierce after the confinement of recent\nillness. I literally revelled in the Mediterranean air, and basked in\nthe warmth of those bright colours so peculiar to the shores of that\nsummer sea. I was approaching middle age; I had ventured body and mind\nfreely enough in the great conflict; and yet, I thank heaven, had\nhitherto been spared the crushing sorrow that makes a mockery of the\nnoblest and purest enjoyments of earth, causing a man to turn from all\nthat is fairest in sight and sense and sound with the sickness of a\ndead hope curdling at his heart. But then I had kept clear of Madame\n_de_ St. Croix.\n\n\u201cWhen my eyes were at last sated with the gaudy hues of the coast and\nthe golden glitter of the water, I was a little surprised to see that\nlady sitting within three paces of me reading a yellow-bound French\nnovel. Great heaven! what was the woman\u2019s secret? She looked younger\nthan ever! Even in the searching glare of a southern noon not a line\ncould be detected on the pure, pale forehead, not a crease about the\nlarge, wistful, glittering eyes. That she was gifted with perennial\nyouth I could see for myself; that she was dangerous even to the\npeace of a grey-haired man, I might have found out to my cost had\nour voyage been retarded by contrary winds or any such unavoidable\ndelay, for she was good enough to recognise me on this occasion, and\nto give me a large share of her conversation and companionship. Thus\nit was I learned to own the spell under which so many had succumbed,\nto appreciate its power, not to understand, far less describe, its\nnature. Fortunately for me, ere its work could be completed, we arrived\nat Athens, and at Athens lay a trim, rakish-looking English yacht,\nwith her ensign flying and her foretopsail loosed, waiting only the\nsteamer\u2019s arrival to spread her wings and bear off this seductive\nsorceress to some garden of paradise in the Egean Sea.\n\n\u201cThe owner of the yacht I had often heard of. He was a man remarkable\nfor his enterprise and unfailing success in commerce as for his\nliberality, and indeed extravagance, in expenditure. He chose to have\nhouses, pictures, horses, plate, everything of the best, was justly\npopular in society, and enormously rich.\n\n\u201cI never asked and never knew the port to which that yacht was\nbound. When we steamed out of the harbour she was already hull-down\nin the wake of a crimson sunset that seemed to stain the waters with\na broad track of blood; but I saw her sold within eighteen months at\nSouthampton, for her late owner\u2019s name had appeared in the \u2018Gazette,\u2019\nand the man himself, I was told, might be found, looking very old and\ncareworn, setting cabbages at Hanwell, watching eagerly for the arrival\nof a lady who never came.\n\n\u201cYou may believe I thought more than once of the woman whose strange\ndestiny it had been thus to enslave generation after generation of\nfools, and to love whom seemed as fatal as to be a priest of Aricia\nor a favourite of Catharine II. Nevertheless, while time wore on,\nI gradually ceased to think of her beauty, her heartlessness, her\nmysterious youth, or her magic influence over mankind. Presently,\namongst a thousand engrossing occupations and interests, I forgot her\nas if she had never been.\n\n\u201cI have driven a good many vehicles in my time, drags, phaetons,\ndogcarts, down to a basket-carriage drawn by a piebald pony with a\nhog-mane. Nay, I once steered a hansom cab up Bond Street in the early\nmorning, freighted with more subalterns than I should like to specify\nof her Majesty\u2019s Household Troops, but I never thought I should come to\na bath chair!\n\n\u201cNevertheless I found myself at last an inside passenger of one of\nthese locomotive couches, enjoying the quiet and the air of the\ngardens at Hampton Court in complete and uninterrupted solitude. The\nman who dragged me to this pleasant spot having gone to \u2018get his\ndinner,\u2019 as he called it, and the nursery-maids, with their interesting\ncharges, having retired from their morning, and not yet emerged for\ntheir afternoon stroll, I lay back, and thought of so many things\u2014of\nthe strength and manhood that had departed from me for ever; of the\nstrange, dull calm that comes on with the evening of life, and contents\nus so well we would not have its morning back if we could; of the\n_gradual clairvoyance_ that shows us everything in its true colours\nand at its real value; of the days, and months, and years so cruelly\nwasted, but that their pleasures, their excitements, their sins, their\nsorrows, and their sufferings, were indispensable for the great lesson\nwhich teaches us _to see_. Of these things I thought, and through them\nstill, as at all times, moved the pale presence of an unforgotten face,\npassing like a spirit, dim and distant, yet dear as ever, across the\ngulf of years\u2014a presence that, for good or evil, was to haunt me to the\nend.\n\n\u201cSomething in the association of ideas reminded me of Madame _de_ St.\nCroix, and I said to myself, \u2018At last age must have overtaken that\nmarvellous beauty, and time brought the indomitable spirit to remorse,\nrepentance, perhaps even amendment. What can have made me think of her\nin a quiet, peaceful scene like this?\u2019\n\n\u201cJust then a lady and gentleman crossed the gravel walk in front of\nme, and took their places on a seat under an old tree not a dozen yards\noff. It was a lovely day in early autumn; the flowers were still ablaze\nwith the gaudiest of their summer beauty, the sky was all dappled grey\nand gold, earth had put on the richest dress she wears throughout the\nyear; but here and there a leaf fell noiseless on the sward, as if\nto testify that she too must shed all her glories in due season, and\nyield, like other beauties, her unwilling tribute to decay.\n\n\u201cBut there was nothing of autumn in the pair who now sat opposite my\ncouch, chatting, laughing, flirting, apparently either ignoring or\ndisregarding my proximity. The man was in all the bloom and beauty of\nyouth; the woman, though looking a few years older, did not yet seem\nto have attained her prime. I could scarcely believe my eyes! Yes,\nif ever I beheld Madame _de_ St. Croix, there she sat with her fatal\ngaze turned on this infatuated boy, leading him gradually, steadily,\nsurely, to the edge of that chasm into which those who plunged came\nto the surface nevermore. It was the old story over again. How well\nI remembered, even after such an interval, the tender droop of the\nhead, the veiling eyelashes, the glance so quickly averted, yet, like\na snapshot, telling with such deadly effect; the mournful smile, the\ngentle whisper, the quiet confiding gesture of the slender hand,\nall the by-play of the most accomplished and most unscrupulous of\nactresses. There was no more chance of escape for her companion than\nfor a fisherman of the North Sea, whose skiff has been sucked into the\nMa\u00eblstrohm, with mast unshipped and oars adrift half a mile astern.\nBy sight, if not personally, I then knew most of the notabilities of\nthe day. The boy, for such I might well call him in comparison with\nmyself, seemed too good for his fate, and yet I saw well enough it\nwas inevitable. He had already made himself a name as a poet of no\nmean pretensions, and held besides the character of a high-spirited,\nagreeable, and unaffected member of society. Add to this, that he was\nmanly, good-looking, and well-born; nothing more seemed wanting to\nrender him a fit victim for the altar at which he was to be offered up.\nLike his predecessors, he was fascinated. The snake held him in her\neye. The poor bird\u2019s wings were fluttering, its volition was gone, its\ndoom sealed. Could nothing save it from the destroyer? I longed to have\nback, if only for a day, the powers which I had regretted so little\nhalf-an-hour ago. Weak, helpless, weary, and worn-out, I yet determined\nto make an effort, and save him if I could.\n\n\u201cThey rose to go, but found the gate locked through which they had\nintended to pass. She had a way of affecting a pretty wilfulness in\ntrifles, and sent him to fetch the key. Prompt to obey her lightest\nwish, he bounded off in search of it, and following slowly, she passed\nwithin two paces of my chair, bending on its helpless invalid a look\nthat seemed to express far less pity for his condition than a grudging\nenvy of his lot. I stopped her with a gesture that in one more\nable-bodied would have been a bow, and, strange to say, she recognised\nme at once. There was not a moment to lose. I took courage from a\ncertain wistful look that gave softness to her eyes, and I spoke out.\n\n\u201c\u2018We shall never meet again,\u2019 I said; \u2018we have crossed each other\u2019s\npaths at such long intervals, and on such strange occasions, but I know\nthis is the last of them! Why time stands still for _you_ is a secret\nI cannot fathom, but the end must come some day, put it off however\nlong you will. Do you not think that when you become as I am, a weary\nmortal, stumbling with half-shut eyes on the edge of an open grave, it\nwould be well to have one good deed on which you could look back, to\nhave reprieved one out of the many victims on whom you have inflicted\nmortal punishment for the offence of loving you so much better than you\ndeserve? Far as it stretches behind you, every footstep in your track\nis marked with sorrow\u2014more than one with blood. Show mercy now, as you\nmay have to ask it hereafter. Life is all before this one, and it seems\ncruel thus to blast the sapling from its very roots. He is hopeful,\ntrustful, and fresh-hearted\u2014spare him and let him go.\u2019\n\n\u201cShe was fitting the glove on her faultless little hand. Her brow\nseemed so calm, so soft and pure, that for a moment I thought I had\nconquered, but looking up from her feminine employment, I recognised\nthe hungry glitter in those dark, merciless eyes, and I knew there was\nno hope.\n\n\u201c\u2018It is too late,\u2019 she answered, \u2018too late to persuade either him or\nme. It is no fault of mine. It is fate. For him\u2014for the others\u2014for all\nof us. Sometimes I wish it had not been so. Mine has been an unhappy\nlife, and there seems to be no end, no resting-place. I can no more\nhelp myself than a drowning wretch, swept down by a torrent; but I am\ntoo proud to catch at the twigs and straws that would break off in my\nhand. I would change places with you willingly. Yes\u2014you in that bath\nchair. I am so tired sometimes, and yet I dare not wish it was all\nover. Think of me as forbearingly as you can, for we shall not cross\neach other\u2019s path again.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018And this boy?\u2019 I asked, striving to detect something of compunction\nin the pitiless face that was yet so beautiful.\n\n\u201c\u2018He must take his chance with the rest,\u2019 she said. \u2018Here he\ncomes\u2014good-bye.\u2019\n\n\u201cThey walked away arm-in-arm through the golden autumn weather, and a\nchill came into my very heart, for I knew what that chance was worth.\n\n\u201cA few months, and the snow lay six inches deep over the grave of him\nwhose opening manhood had been so full of promise, so rich in all that\nmakes youth brightest, life most worth having; while a woman in deep\nmourning was praying there, under the wintry sky; but this woman was\nhis mother, and her heart was broken for the love she bore her boy.\n\n\u201cHis death had been very shocking, very sudden. People talked of a\nruptured blood-vessel, a fall on his bedroom floor, a doctor not\nto be found when sent for; a series of fatalities that precluded\nthe possibility of saving him; but those who pretended to know best\naffirmed that not all the doctors in Europe could have done any good,\nfor when his servant went to call him in the morning he found his\nmaster lying stark and stiff, having been dead some hours. There was\na pool of blood on his carpet; there were ashes of burnt letters in\nhis fireplace; more, they whispered with meaning shrugs and solemn,\nawe-struck faces\u2014\n\n    \u2018There was that across his throat\n     Which you had hardly cared to see.\u2019\n\n\u201cYou can understand now that I believe in Vampires.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat became of her?\u201d I asked, rather eagerly, for I was interested\nin this Madame _de_ St. Croix. I like a woman who goes into extremes,\neither for good or evil. Great recklessness, equally with great\nsensibility, has its charm for such a temperament as mine. I can\nunderstand, though I cannot explain, the influence possessed by very\nwicked women who never scruple to risk their own happiness as readily\nas their neighbours\u2019. I wanted to know something more about Madame\n_de_ St. Croix, but he was not listening; he paid no attention to my\nquestion. In a tone of abstraction that denoted his thoughts were many\nmiles away, he only murmured,\n\n\u201cInsatiate\u2014impenetrable\u2014pitiless. The others were bad enough in all\nconscience, but I think she might have spared the boy!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nGOLD FOR SILVER\n\n \u201cThe African Magician never minded all their scoffs and holloaings,\n or all they could say to him, but still cry\u2019d _Who\u2019ll change old\n Lamps for new ones?_ which he repeated so often about the Princess\n _Badroulbondour\u2019s_ Palace, that that Princess, who was then in the\n Hall with the four-and-twenty Windows, hearing a Man cry something,\n and not being able to distinguish his Words, by reason of the\n holloaing of the Mob about him, sent one of her Women Slaves down to\n know what he cry\u2019d.\n\n \u201cThe Slave was not long before she return\u2019d, and ran into the Hall,\n laughing so heartily, that the Princess could not forbear herself.\n \u2018Well, Gigler,\u2019 said the Princess, \u2018will you tell me what you laugh\n at?\u2019 \u2018Alas! Madam,\u2019 answered the Slave, laughing still, \u2018who can\n forbear laughing to see a Fool with a Basket on his Arm, full of fine\n new Lamps, ask to change them for old ones, which makes the Children\n and Mob make such a Noise about him?\u2019\u201d\n\n\nWhat a fool they thought him, and no wonder. Yet surely a magician need\nnot come all the way from Africa to teach the public this strange rate\nof exchange. In Europe, Asia, and America too, as far as it has yet\nbeen colonised, such one-sided bargains are made every day.\n\nOld lamps for new, kicks for halfpence\u2014\u201cHeads I win, Tails you\nlose\u201d\u2014such are the laws of equity by which man deals with his\nneighbour; and so the contest goes on, if, indeed, as Juvenal says,\nthat can be called a contest\u2014\n\n    \u201cUbi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum.\u201d[1]\n\nThe slave of the princess with the long name had passed more of her\nlife in the palace than the streets, or she would not have found the\nmagician\u2019s cry so strange: would have felt uncomfortably conscious\nthat the day might come when she, too, would barter new lamps for old,\nperhaps humbly on her knees, entreating permission to make the unequal\nexchange. In all the relations of life, but chiefly in those with\nwhich the affections are concerned, we constantly see gold for silver\noffered with both hands.\n\nThat \u201cit is better to give than to receive\u201d we have Scriptural warrant\nfor asserting. That\u2014\n\n    \u201cSure the pleasure is as great\n     In being cheated as to cheat,\u201d\n\nwe learn from Butler\u2019s quaint and philosophical couplets. I am not\ngoing to assert that the man who puts down sovereigns and takes up\nshillings has really the worst of it; I only maintain that the more\nfreely he \u201cparts\u201d with the former, the more sparing will he find the\nlatter doled out to him in return.\n\nPerhaps the strongest case in point is that of parent and child.\n\nIn the animal world I know few arrangements of Nature more beautiful\nthan the absolute devotion of maternity to its offspring, so long,\nthough _only_ so long, as its assistance is required. A bird feeding\nher young, a tigress licking her cubs, a mare wheeling round her\nfoal\u2014each of these affords an example of loving care and tenderness,\nessentially feminine in its utter forgetfulness of self. Each of\nthese squanders such gold as it possesses, the treasure of its deep\ninstinctive affection, on ingratitude and neglect. The nestlings\ngape with hungry little beaks, when they hear the flap of wings, not\nto greet the coming provider, but that they may eat and be filled.\nThe cubs huddle themselves up to their mother\u2019s side for warmth and\ncomfort, not for her cruel beauty nor her fierce protecting love. The\nfoal, when it gets on its long legs, will follow your horse or mine as\nreadily as its dam. They take all, to give back nothing in exchange.\nAnd no sooner can the bird use its wings, the beast its limbs, than it\nabandons at once and for ever the parent whose sustaining care is no\nlonger necessary to its existence.\n\nWith the human race, although I am far from affirming that, even in\nthis age of bronze, filial piety has fled with other virtues from\nthe earth, something of the same unequal barter holds good in the\nrelationship of parent and child. The former gives gold, the latter\ndoes not always return silver. Do not deceive yourself. You love\nyour children more than your children love you. I can prove it in\nthree words. They are dearer to you than your own parents. And this\ninequality of affection is but one more of the beautiful arrangements\nmade by that Providence which bestows good so liberally in proportion\nto evil. Under the common law of Nature, you are likely to die first,\nand the aggregate amount of suffering is, therefore, much less than\nit would be did the course of domestic affection flow the other way.\nSo you toil, and slave, and scheme for the child\u2019s benefit, forgiving\nits errors, repairing its follies, re-establishing its fortunes, just\nas, long ago, you used to rebuild with loving patience those houses\nof cards the urchin blew down with such delight. But, as of all human\naffections, this, if not the strongest, is certainly the deepest and\nmost abiding, so when wounded does it inflict on our moral being the\nsharpest and most enduring pain. \u201cIs there any cause in Nature that\nmakes these hard hearts?\u201d says poor King Lear, forced, against his own\ninstincts, to acknowledge the venomed bite of that \u201cserpent\u2019s tooth\u201d\nwith which elsewhere he compares a \u201cthankless child.\u201d I have known\nmen, and women too, accept with courage every sample of misfortune and\ndisgrace\u2014in the language of the prize-ring, \u201ccome up smiling\u201d after\nevery kind of knock-down blow\u2014but I cannot remember an instance in\nwhich the ingratitude of children has not produced wrinkles and grey\nhairs, in the proportion of ten to one, for every other sorrow of any\ndescription whatever.\n\nThere is no prospect of alleviation to amuse his fancy\u2014no leavening of\npique to arouse his pride. Hurt to the death, the sufferer has scarce\nmanhood enough left to conceal his wounds.\n\nIn that conflict between man and woman which is perpetually going on,\nand without which the world, if more comfortable, would undoubtedly\nbe less populous, gold is invariably given for silver with a lavish\nextravagance, akin to the absurdity of the whole thing.\n\nWhy is love like the handle of a teapot?\u2014Because it is all on one\nside. The game has yet to be invented in which both players can win;\nand perhaps were it not for the discomfort, anxiety, worry, sorrow,\nand suffering entailed by the unequal pastime, it would cease to be\nso popular. As it exists at present, there is nothing to complain\nof on the score of flagging interest. At first, indeed, before the\ncards are cut, the adversaries sit down calmly and pleasantly enough.\nAn hour hangs heavy on their hands, and they think thus to drive it\nagreeably away\u2014beginning simply for \u201cdistraction,\u201d as the French call\nit, though ending in the English acceptation of that uncomfortable\nword. Ere the first tricks are turned, however, the game grows\nexciting. \u201cI propose.\u201d \u201cHow many?\u201d \u201cHearts are trumps.\u201d \u201cI mark the\nking.\u201d The stakes increase rapidly in value, and presently gold comes\npouring lavishly out of one player\u2019s pocket, against silver dribbling\nunwillingly from the other\u2019s. The winner, too, like all gamblers,\nseldom cares to keep the fruit of his good fortune, but loses it again\nat another table to some stronger adversary, who is beggared in turn\nelsewhere.\n\nYet still in all places, and under all circumstances, wherever this\ngame is played there is the same inequality in the stakes. \u201cGold for\nsilver.\u201d Such are the terms; and the old players, to do them justice,\nthose who have lost and won many a heavy wager, are generally careful\nto begin at least by venturing the commoner metal. But even of these\nthe discretion is not to be trusted as the game goes on. Touched by the\nmagic rod, maddened by the spell against which Wisdom is often less\nproof than Folly, the sternest and the sagest will throw their gold\nabout as recklessly as if every piece were not stamped with the impress\nof their honour and their happiness, precious as the very drops of\nlife-blood at their heart.\n\nPerhaps it is wiser to stick to any other pursuit in the world\nthan the one in question; but if you must needs sit down to this\n\u201cbeggar-my-neighbour\u201d kind of amusement, is it better to lose or to\nwin? to give or accept the gold for silver passing so freely from hand\nto hand? Will you have the satisfaction hereafter of standing on the\nhigher ground? of feeling you have nothing to reproach yourself with,\nnothing to be ashamed of? or will you take comfort in reflecting that\nwhile the storm raged above your head you had been careful to shelter\ncunningly from the blast? Will you exult in your forethought, your\nphilosophy, the accurate knowledge of human nature, that has preserved\nyou scatheless through the combat? or will you take pride in your\ngenerosity, your magnanimity, and the self-devoted courage that bids\nyou accept the stab of ingratitude in addition to the pain of neglect?\nIt depends entirely on character and temperament.\n\nMen and women vary so much in this, as in every other phase of\nfeeling. The latter, when they do take the more generous view of their\nposition\u2014when they can bring themselves to choose \u201cthe better part,\u201d\naccept it, I think, with a more complete abandonment of _pique_ than\nthe former. Perhaps their pride is of a nobler order: no doubt their\nvanity is less egotistical than our own. With us, except in the highest\nnatures\u2014and these, as has been well remarked, have ever a leavening of\nthe feminine element in their organisation\u2014there is always something of\nirritation left after a wound of the affections has healed up\u2014something\nthat stints and rankles, and looks to reprisals of one kind or\nanother for relief. I have read an old tale of chivalry so thoroughly\nexemplifying this state of feeling, and affording so natural an example\nof the changes and counterchanges with which gold and silver are\nstaked against each other in the dangerous game, that I cannot forbear\nquoting it here.\n\n\u201cA certain knight had long loved a damsel at the court of the King of\nFrance; but she, albeit accepting the service of none other, treated\nhim with such coldness and _duresse_, that he at length obtained the\ntitle of the \u2018Patient Knight,\u2019 and she of the \u2018Scornful Ladye.\u2019 In vain\nhe sat at her feet in hall; in vain wore her colours in the lists; in\nvain added to his cognisance the motto \u2018_Sans esp\u00e9rance_,\u2019 above the\nrepresentation of a dungeon-grate, to signify the hopelessness of his\ncaptivity. She looked upon him coldly as the winter moon looks on a\nfrozen lake; she turned from him pitilessly as the bending poplar turns\nfrom the south wind, whispering its longing and its sorrows, wooing her\neven with its tears.\n\n\u201cSo minstrels sang in their lays of his constancy, and knights\nmarvelled at his subjection, and ladies pitied\u2014it may be despised him\nalso a little for his long-suffering: but still the \u2018Patient Knight\u2019\nstruck hard and shouted high for the renown of her he loved; and\nstill the \u2018Scornful Ladye\u2019 accepted his homage, and took credit for\nhis deeds-of-arms with scant courtesy, and cruel neglect, and high\nimperious disdain.\n\n\u201cSo the King bade his knights and nobles to a feast; and because there\nwas to be a solemn passage-of-arms held on the morrow, he entertained\nthem with a fight of wild beasts in the Carrousel, whereon lords and\nladies looked down in safety from the galleries above. But many a soft\ncheek grew pale none the less, when a lion and a tiger were let loose\nto battle for their lives.\n\n\u201cNow even while they glared on each other ere they closed, the\n\u2018Scornful Ladye\u2019 dropped her glove between the beasts of prey. Quoth\nshe, with a mocking smile, \u2018An I had a bachelor here who loved me well,\nhe would fetch me back this glove that the wind hath blown from my\nhand.\u2019\n\n\u201cThen the \u2018Patient Knight\u2019 made no more ado, but drew his good sword\nand leapt lightly down into the Carrousel, where he picked the glove\nfrom the earth, and returning scatheless to his place, laid it in\nsilence at her feet.\n\n\u201cThen the \u2018Scornful Ladye\u2019 wept sweet and happy tears; for his great\nlove had conquered at last, and she would follow him meekly now to the\nend of the world.\n\n\u201cBut she shed bitter tears on the morrow, when he rode into the lists\nwith another\u2019s sleeve in his helmet, another\u2019s colours on his housings,\nand his shield blazoned with the fresh device of a broken fetter and\nthe motto, \u2018_Tout lasse\u2014tout casse\u2014tout passe!_\u2019\u201d\n\nSo, you see, these adversaries changed places at last; and you will\nprobably be of opinion that the Knight had the best of it in the end.\n\nPerhaps it \u201cserved her right.\u201d And yet to me it seems that there may\ncome a time when to have given gold for silver in every relation of\nlife shall be the one consoling reflection that enables us to quit it\nwithout misgivings for the future, without regret for the past,\u2014a time\nperhaps of hushed voices, stealthy footsteps, and a darkened room,\ngrowing yet strangely darker with every breath we draw. Or a time of\neager comrades, trampling squadrons, short sharp words of command, a\nbugle sounding the Advance, a cocked-hat glancing through the smoke; a\nnumb sick helplessness that glues the cheek into the dust where it has\nfallen, and a roll of musketry, feebler, farther, fainter, and more\nconfused, till its warlike echoes die out in the hush of another world.\nOr a time of earth-stained garments, and bespattered friends proffering\nsilver hunting-flasks in sheer dismay, and a favourite horse brought\nback with flying stirrups, dangling rein, and its mane full of mud,\nwhile the dull grey sky wheels above, and the dank, tufted grass heaves\nbelow, nor in the intervals of a pain, becoming every moment less\nkeen, can we stifle the helpless consciousness that before our crushed\nframe shall be lifted from its wet, slippery resting-place, it will be\ntime to die.\n\nAt such moments as these, I say, to have given gold for silver while we\ncould, can surely be no matter of regret.\n\nI recollect a quaint old tombstone\u2014I beg your pardon for the\nallusion\u2014on which I once read the following inscription:\u2014\n\n\u201cWhat I spent I _had_\u2014what I saved I _lost_\u2014what I gave I _have_.\u201d\n\nSurely this sentiment will bear analysing. \u201cWhat I spent I _had_.\u201d\nI enjoyed it, wasted it, got rid of it: derive from it now as much\nenjoyment as can ever be extracted from past pleasures of which\nself-indulgence was the motive\u2014that is to say, none at all! \u201cWhat I\nsaved I _lost_.\u201d Undoubtedly. Mortgages, Consols, building-leases,\nrailway scrip\u2014it was locked up in securities that I could by no\nmeans bring with me here. It has been an error of judgment, a bad\nspeculation, a foolish venture, a dead loss. \u201cBut what I gave I\n_have_.\u201d Ah! There I did good business: took the turn of the market;\ninvested my capital in a bank that pays me cent. per cent. even\nnow; and this, not only for the dross we call money, but for the\nreal treasures of the heart\u2014affection, kindliness, charity, help to\nthe needy, sympathy with the sorrowful, protection to the weak, and\nencouragement to the forlorn. The silver I had in return has been left\nlong ago on earth: perhaps there was barely enough to make a plate for\nmy coffin; but the gold I gave is in my own possession still, and has\nbeen beaten into a crown for me in heaven.\n\nYes. \u201cIt is better to give than to receive.\u201d With few exceptions the\ngreat benefactors of mankind have been in this world defrauded of their\nwages. Columbus died perhaps the poorest man in the whole kingdom he\nhad spent his lifetime to enrich. Socrates sold the treasures of his\nintellect\u2014the deductions of the greatest mind in antiquity\u2014for a\ndraught of hemlock on a prison floor. The fable of Prometheus has been\nenacted over and over again. Those who scale the heavens that they may\nbring down fire to enlighten and comfort their fellow-men, must not\nhope to escape the vulture and the rock. I have always thought that\nwondrous story the deepest and the most suggestive in the whole heathen\nmythology. Its hero was the first discoverer, the first free-thinker,\nthe first reformer. He was even proof against the seductions of woman,\nand detected in Pandora\u2019s box the multiplicity of evils that secured\nthe presence of Hope within its compass, and prevented her flying\nback to the heaven whence she came. The only Olympian deity he would\ncondescend to worship was the Goddess of Wisdom; and she it was who\ntaught her votary to outwit Jupiter, the great principle of what may\nbe termed physical nature. By science man baffles the elements, or\nrenders them subservient to his purpose. He was a herbalist, a doctor,\na meteorologist, and universal referee for gods and men. He taught the\nlatter all the arts necessary to extort a livelihood from the earth;\nshowed them how to yoke their oxen and bridle their steeds. He was\nwise, laborious, provident, and paternal\u2014the first philosopher, the\ngreat benefactor of his time, and\u2014his reward was to lie in chains on\nMount \u00c6tna with a vulture sheathing her beak in his heart.\n\nCan we not see in this heathen parable some glimmering of the Great\nHope which was never entirely obscured to the ancient world?\u2014some faint\nforesight of, some vague longing after, the great Example which has\nsince taught its holy lesson of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice? It\nis not for me to enlarge on a topic so sacred and so sublime. Enough\nfor us and such as we are, if by lavishing gold for silver freely on\nour brother, we can cast but one humble mite into the treasury of our\nGod.\n\nThere is much talk in the world about ingratitude. People who do good\nto others at cost or inconvenience to themselves are apt to expect a\ngreat flow of thanks, a great gush of sentiment in return. They are\ngenerally disappointed. Those natures which feel benefits the most\ndeeply are often the least capable of expressing their feelings, and a\nspeechless tongue is with them the result of a full heart. Besides, you\nare sure to be repaid for a good action at some time or another. Like\nseed sown in the Nile, \u201cthe bread cast upon the waters,\u201d it may not\ncome back to you for many days, but come back at last it most certainly\n_will_. Would you like your change in silver or in gold? Will you have\nit in a few graceful, well-chosen expressions, or in the sterling coin\nof silent love with its daily thoughts and nightly prayers; or, better\nstill even than these, will you waive your claim to it down here, and\nhave it carried to your account above? I am supposing yours is not\none of those natures which have arrived at the highest, the noblest\ntype of benevolence, and give their gold neither for silver nor for\ncopper, but freely without return at all. To these I can offer no\nencouragement, no advice. Their grapes are ripened, their harvest is\nyellow, the light is already shining on them from the golden hills of\nheaven.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nA DAY THAT IS DEAD\n\n\nI have been burning old letters to-night; their ashes are fluttering\nin the chimney even now; and, alas! while they consume, fleeting and\nperishable like the moments they record, \u201ceach dying ember\u201d seems\nto have \u201cwrought its ghost\u201d upon my heart. Oh! that we could either\ncompletely remember or completely forget. Oh! that the image of\nMnemosyne would remain close enough for us to detect the flaws in her\nimperishable marble, or that she would remove herself so far as to be\naltogether out of sight. It is the golden haze of \u201cmiddle distance\u201d\nthat sheds on her this warm and tender light. She is all the more\nattractive that we see her through a double veil of retrospection and\nregret, none the less lovely because her beauty is dimmed and softened\nin a mist of tears.\n\nLetter after letter they have flared, and blackened, and shrivelled up.\nThere is an end of them\u2014they are gone. Not a line of those different\nhandwritings shall I ever see again. The bold, familiar scrawl of the\ntried friend and more than brother; why does he come back to me so\nvividly to-night? The stout heart, the strong arm, the brave, kind\nface, the frank and manly voice. We shall never tread the stubble nor\nthe heather side by side again; never more pull her up against the\nstream, nor float idly down in the hot summer noons to catch the light\nair off the water on our heated faces; to discourse, like David and\nJonathan, of all and everything nearest our hearts. Old friend! old\nfriend! wherever you are, if you have consciousness you must surely\nsometimes think of _me_; I have not forgotten _you_. I cannot believe\nyou have forgotten me even _there_.\n\nAnd the pains-taking, up-and-down-hill characters of the little\nchild\u2014the little child for whom the angels came so soon, yet found\nit ready to depart, whose fever-wasted lips formed none but words of\nconfidence and affection, whose blue eyes turned their last dim, dying\nlooks so fondly on the face it loved.\n\nAnd there were letters harder to part with than these. Never mind, they\nare burnt and done with; letters of which even the superscription once\nmade a kind heart leap with pleasure so intense it was almost pain;\nletters crossed and re-crossed in delicate, orderly lines, bearing\nthe well-known cipher, breathing the well-known perfume, telling the\nold, false tale in the old, false phrases, so trite and worn-out, yet\nseeming always so fresh and new.\n\nThe hand that formed them has other tasks to occupy it now; the\nheart from which they came is mute and cold. Hope withers, love\ndies\u2014times are altered. What would you have? It is a world of change.\nNevertheless this has been a disheartening job; it has put me in low\nspirits; I must call \u201cBones\u201d out of his cupboard to come and sit with\nme.\n\n\u201cWhat is this charm,\u201d I ask him, \u201cthat seems to belong so exclusively\nto the past?\u2014this \u2018tender grace of a day that is dead\u2019? and must\nI look after it down the gulf into which it has dropped with such\nirrepressible longing only because it will never come back to me?\nIs a man the greater or wiser that he lived a hundred years ago or\na thousand? Are reputations, like wine, the mellower and the more\nprecious for mere age, even though they have been hid away in a cellar\nall the time? Is a thing actually fairer and better because I have\nalmost forgotten how it looked when present, and shall never set eyes\non it again? I entertain the greatest aversion to Horace\u2019s _laudator\ntemporis acti_, shall always set my face against the superstition that\n\u2018there were giants in those days\u2019; and yet wherever I went in the world\nprevious to my retirement here that I might live with you, I found the\nstrange maxim predominate, that everything was very much better before\nit had been improved!\n\n\u201cIf I entered a club and expressed my intention of going to the Opera,\nfor instance, whatever small spark of enthusiasm I could kindle was\nsubmitted to a wet blanket on the spot. \u2018Good heavens!\u2019 would exclaim\nsome venerable philosopher of the Cynic and Epicurean schools, \u2018there\n_is_ no opera now, nor _ballet_ neither. My good sir, the thing is\ndone; it\u2019s over. We haven\u2019t an artist left. Ah! you should have seen\nTaglioni dance; you should have heard Grisi sing; you should have lived\nwhen Plancus was consul. In short, you should be as old as I am, and as\ndisgusted, and as gouty, and as disagreeable!\u2019\n\n\u201cOr I walked into the smoking-room of that same resort, full of some\nathletic gathering at Holland Park, some \u2019Varsity hurdle-race, some\ntrial of strength or skill amongst those lively boys, the subalterns of\nthe Household Brigade; and ere I could articulate \u2018brandy and soda\u2019 I\nhad Captain Barclay thrown body and bones in my face. \u2018Walk, sir! You\ntalk of walking?\u2019 (I didn\u2019t, for there had been barely time to get a\nword in edgeways, or my parable would have exhausted itself concerning\na running high leap.) \u2018But there is nothing like a real pedestrian\nleft; they don\u2019t breed \u2019em, sir, in these days: can\u2019t grow them, and\ndon\u2019t know how to train them if they could! Show me a fellow who would\nmake a match with Barclay to-day. Barclay, sir, if he were alive, would\nwalk all your best men down after he came in from shooting. Ask your\nyoung friends which of \u2019em would like to drive the mail from London to\nEdinburgh without a greatcoat! I don\u2019t know what\u2019s come to the present\ngeneration. It must be the smoking, or the light claret, perhaps.\nThey\u2019re done, they\u2019re used up, they\u2019re washed out. Why, they go to\ncovert by railway, and have their grouse driven to them on a hill! What\nwould old Sir Tatton or Osbaldeston say to such doings as these? I was\nat Newmarket, I tell you, when the Squire rode his famous match\u2014two\nhundred miles in less than nine hours! I saw him get off old Tranby,\nand I give you my honour the man looked fresher than the horse! Don\u2019t\ntell me. He was rubbed down by a couple of prize-fighters (there were\nreal bruisers in those days, and the best man used to win), dressed,\nand came to dinner just as _you_ would after a five-mile walk. Pocket\nHercules, you call him\u2014one in a thousand? There were hundreds of such\nmen in my day. Why, I recollect in Tom Smith\u2019s time that I myself\u2014\u2014\u2019\n\n\u201cBut at this point I used to make my escape, because there are two\nsubjects on which nobody is so brilliant as not to be prolix, so\ndull as not to be enthusiastic\u2014his doings in the saddle and his\nadventures with the fair. To honour either of these triumphs he blows a\ntrumpet-note loud and long in proportion to the antiquity of the annals\nit records. Why must you never again become possessed of such a hunter\nas Tally-Ho? Did that abnormal animal really carry you as well as you\nthink, neither failing when the ground was deep nor wavering when the\nfences were strong? Is it strictly true that no day was ever too long\nfor him? that he was always in the same field with the hounds? And\nhave not the rails he rose at, the ditches he covered so gallantly,\nincreased annually in height and depth and general impossibility ever\nsince that fatal morning when he broke his back, under the Coplow in a\ntwo-foot drain?\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t find such horses now? Perhaps you do not give them so\nliberal a chance of proving their courage, speed, and endurance.\n\n\u201cOn the other topic it is natural enough, I dare say, for you to \u2018yarn\u2019\nwith all the more freedom that there is no one left to contradict.\nPeople used enormous coloured silk handkerchiefs in that remote period,\nwhen you threw yours with such Oriental complacency, and the odalisques\nwho picked it up are probably to-day so old and stiff they could not\nbend their backs to save their lives. But were they really as fond,\nand fair, and faithful as they seem to you now? Had they no caprices\nto chill, no whims to worry, no rivals on hand, to drive you mad? Like\nthe sea, those eyes that look so deep and blue at a distance, are green\nand turbid and full of specks when you come quite close. Was it all\nsunshine with Mary, all roses with Margaret, all summer with Jane? What\nfigures the modern women make of themselves, you say. How they offend\nyour eye, those bare cheek-bones, those clinging skirts, those hateful\n_chignons_! Ah! the cheeks no longer hang out a danger-signal when you\napproach; the skirts are no more lifted, ever such a little, to make\nroom for you in the corner of the sofa next the fire; and though you\nmight have had locks of hair enough once to have woven a parti-coloured\n_chignon_ of your own, it would be hopeless now to beg as much as would\nmake a finger-ring for Queen Mab. What is it, I say, that causes us\nto look with such deluded eyes on the past? Is it sorrow or malice,\ndisappointment or regret? Are our teeth still on edge with the sour\ngrapes we have eaten or forborne? Do we glower through the jaundiced\neyes of malevolence, or is our sight failing with the shades of a\ncoming night?\u201d\n\nBones seldom delivers himself of his opinion in a hurry. \u201cI think,\u201d\nhe says very deliberately, \u201cthat this, like many other absurdities of\nhuman nature, originates in that desire for the unattainable which is,\nafter all, the mainspring of effort, improvement, and approach towards\nperfection. Man longs for the impossible, and what is so impossible as\nthe past? That which hath vanished becomes therefore valuable, that\nwhich is hidden attractive, that which is distant desirable. There is\na strange lay still existing by an old Proven\u00e7al troubadour, no small\nfavourite with iron-handed, lion-hearted King Richard, of which the\nrefrain, \u2018_so far away_,\u2019 expresses very touchingly the longing for the\nabsent, perhaps only _because_ absent, that is so painful, so human,\nand so unwise. The whole story is wild and absurd to a degree, yet\nnot without a saddened interest, owing to the mournful refrain quoted\nabove. It is thus told in the notes to Warton\u2019s _History of English\nPoetry_:\u2014\n\n\u201c\u2018Jeffrey Rudell, a famous troubadour of Provence, who is also\ncelebrated by Petrarch, had heard from the adventurers in the Crusades\nthe beauty of a Countess of Tripoli highly extolled. He became\nenamoured from imagination, embarked for Tripoli, fell sick on the\nvoyage through the fever of expectation, and was brought on shore at\nTripoli, half-expiring. The countess, having received the news of the\narrival of this gallant stranger, hastened to the shore and took him by\nthe hand. He opened his eyes, and at once overpowered by his disease\nand her kindness, had just time to say inarticulately that _having\nseen her he died satisfied_. The countess made him a most splendid\nfuneral, and erected to his memory a tomb of porphyry inscribed with\nan epitaph in Arabian verse. She commanded his sonnets to be richly\ncopied and illuminated with letters of gold, was seized with a profound\nmelancholy, and turned nun. I will endeavour to translate one of the\nsonnets he made on his voyage, \u201cYret et dolent m\u2019en partray,\u201d etc. It\nhas some pathos and sentiment. \u201cI should depart pensive but for this\nlove of mine _so far away_, for I know not what difficulties I may\nhave to encounter, my native land being _so far away_. Thou who hast\nmade all things and who formed this love of mine _so far away_, give\nme strength of body, and then I may hope to see this love of mine _so\nfar away_. Surely my love must be founded on true merit, as I love one\n_so far away_. If I am easy for a moment, yet I feel a thousand pains\nfor her who is _so far away_. No other love ever touched my heart than\nthis for her _so far away_. A fairer than she never touched any heart,\neither so near or _so far away_.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is utter nonsense, I grant you, and the doings of this love-sick\nidiot seem to have been in character with his stanzas, yet is there a\nmournful pathos about that wailing _so far away_ which, well-worded,\nwell-set, and well-performed, would make the success of a drawing-room\nsong.\n\n\u201cIf the Countess of Tripoli, who seems also to have owned a susceptible\ntemperament, had been his cousin and lived next door, he would probably\nnot have admired her the least, would certainly never have wooed her\nin such wild and pathetic verse; but he gave her credit for all the\ncharms that constituted his own ideal of perfection, and sickened even\nto death for the possession of his distant treasure, simply and solely\nbecause it was _so far away_!\n\n\u201cWhat people all really love is a dream. The stronger the imagination\nthe more vivid the phantom that fills it; but on the other hand, the\nwaking is more sudden and more complete. If I were a woman instead\nof a\u2014a\u2014specimen, I should beware how I set my heart upon a man of\nimagination, a quality which the world is apt to call genius, with\nas much good sense as there would be in confounding the sparks from a\nblacksmith\u2019s anvil with the blacksmith himself. Such a man takes the\nfirst doll that flatters him, dresses her out in the fabrications of\nhis own fancy, falls down and worships, gets bored, and gets up, pulls\nthe tinsel off as quick as he put it on; being his own he thinks he may\ndo what he likes with it, and finds any other doll looks just as well\nin the same light and decked with the same trappings. Narcissus is not\nthe only person who has fallen in love with the reflection, or what he\nbelieved to be the reflection, of himself. Some get off with a ducking,\nsome are drowned in sad earnest for their pains.\n\n\u201cNevertheless, as the French philosopher says, \u2018There is nothing so\nreal as illusion.\u2019 The day that is dead has for men a more actual,\na more tangible, a more vivid identity than the day that exists,\nnay, than the day as yet unborn. One of the most characteristic and\ninconvenient delusions of humanity is its incapacity for enjoyment\nof the present. Life is a journey in which people are either looking\nforward or looking back. Nobody has the wisdom to sit down for\nhalf-an-hour in the shade listening to the birds overhead, examining\nthe flowers underfoot. It is always \u2018How pleasant it was yesterday!\nWhat fun we shall have to-morrow!\u2019 Never \u2018How happy we are to-day!\u2019 And\nyet what _is_ the past, when we think of it, but a dream vanished into\ndarkness\u2014the future but an uncertain glimmer that may never brighten\ninto dawn?\n\n\u201cIt is strange how much stronger in old age than in youth is the\ntendency to live in the hereafter. Not the real hereafter of another\nworld, but the delusive hereafter of this. Tell a lad of eighteen that\nhe must wait a year or two for anything he desires very eagerly, and\nhe becomes utterly despondent of attaining his wish; but an old man of\nseventy is perfectly ready to make arrangements or submit to sacrifices\nfor his personal benefit to be rewarded in ten years\u2019 time or so, when\nhe persuades himself he will still be quite capable of enjoying life.\nThe people who purchase annuities, who plant trees, who breed horses\nfor their own riding are all past middle age. Perhaps they have seen\nso many things brought about by waiting, more particularly when the\ndeferred hope had caused the sick heart\u2019s desire to pass away, that\nthey have resolved for them also must be \u2018a good time coming,\u2019 if only\nthey will have patience and \u2018wait a little longer.\u2019 Perhaps they look\nforward because they cannot bear to look back. Perhaps in such vague\nanticipations they try to delude their own consciousness, and fancy\nthat by ignoring and refusing to see it they can escape the inevitable\nchange. After all, this is the healthiest and most invigorating\npractice of the two. Something of courage seems wanting in man or beast\nwhen either is continually looking back. To the philosopher \u2018a day that\nis dead\u2019 has no value but for the lesson it affords; to the rest of\nmankind it is inestimably precious for the unaccountable reason that\nit can never come again.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe it so,\u201d I answered; \u201clet me vote in the majority. I think with the\nfools, I honestly confess, but I have also a theory of my own on this\nsubject, which I am quite prepared to hear ridiculed and despised. My\nsupposition is that ideas, feelings, delusions, name them how you will,\nrecur in cycles, although events and tangible bodies, such as we term\nrealities, must pass away. I cannot remember in my life any experience\nthat could properly be called a new sensation. When in a position of\nwhich I had certainly no former knowledge I have always felt a vague,\ndreamy consciousness that something of the same kind must have happened\nto me before. Can it be that my soul has existed previously, long ere\nit came to tenant this body that it is so soon about to quit? Can it be\nthat its immortality stretches both ways, as into the future so into\nthe past? May I not hope that in the infinity so fitly represented by\na circle, the past may become the future as the future most certainly\nmust become the past, and the day that is dead, to which I now look\nback so mournfully, may rise again newer, fresher, brighter than ever\nin the land of the morning beyond that narrow paltry gutter which we\ncall the grave?\u201d I waited anxiously for his answer. There are some\nthings we would give anything to know, things on which certainty would\nso completely alter all our ideas, our arrangements, our hopes, and our\nregrets. Ignorant of the coast to which we are bound, its distance,\nits climate, and its necessities, how can we tell what to pack up and\nwhat to leave behind? To be sure, regarding things material, we are\nspared all trouble of selection; but there is yet room for much anxiety\nconcerning the outfit of the soul. For the space of a minute he seemed\nto ponder, and when he did speak, all he said was this\u2014\n\n\u201cI know, but I must not tell,\u201d preserving thereafter an inflexible\nsilence till it was time to go to bed.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK\n\n\nWe are all looking for it; shall we ever find it? Can it be cultivated\nin hothouses by Scotch head-gardeners with high wages and Doric accent?\nor shall we come upon it accidentally, peeping through green bulrushes,\nlurking in tangled woodlands, or perched high on the mountain\u2019s crest,\nfar above the region of grouse and heather, where the ptarmigan folds\nher wings amongst the silt and shingle in the clefts of the bare grey\nrock? We climb for it, we dive for it, we creep for it on our belly,\nlike the serpent, eating dust to any amount in the process; but do we\never succeed in plucking such a specimen as, according to our natures,\nwe can joyfully place in our hats for ostentation or hide under our\nwaistcoats for true love?\n\nDo you remember Sir Walter Scott\u2019s humorous poem called the \u201cSearch\nafter Happiness\u201d? Do you remember how that Eastern monarch who strove\nto appropriate the shirt of a contented man visited every nation\nin turn till he came to Ireland, the native soil indeed of all the\nshamrock tribe; how his myrmidons incontinently assaulted one of the\n\u201cbhoys\u201d whose mirthful demeanour raised their highest hopes, and how\n\n    \u201cShelelagh, their plans was well-nigh after baulking,\n     Much less provocation will set it a-walking;\n     But the odds that foiled Hercules foiled Paddywhack.\n     They floored him, they seized him, they stripped him, alack!\n     Up, bubboo! _He hadn\u2019t a shirt to his back!_\u201d\n\nMankind has been hunting the four-leaved shamrock from the very\nearliest times on record. I believe half the legends of mythology, half\nthe exploits of history, half the discoveries of science, originate in\nthe universal search. Jason was looking for it with his Argonauts when\nhe stumbled on the Golden Fleece; Columbus sailed after it in the track\nof the setting sun, scanning that bare horizon of an endless ocean,\nday after day, with sinking heart yet never-failing courage, till the\nland-weeds drifting round his prow, the land-birds perching on his\nspars, brought him their joyous welcome from the undiscovered shore;\nAlexander traversed Asia in his desire for it; C\u00e6sar dashed through the\nRubicon in its pursuit; Napoleon well-nigh grasped it after Austerlitz,\nbut the frosts and fires of Moscow shrivelled it into nothing ere his\nhand could close upon the prize. To find it, sages have ransacked their\nlibraries, adepts exhausted their alembics, misers hoarded up their\ngold. It is not twined with the poet\u2019s bay-leaves, nor is it concealed\nin the madman\u2019s hellebore. People have been for it to the Great Desert,\nthe Blue Mountains, the Chinese capital, the interior of Africa, and\nreturned empty-handed as they went. It abhors courts, camps, and\ncities; it strikes no root in palace nor in castle; and if more likely\nto turn up in a cottage-garden, who has yet discovered the humble plot\nof ground on which it grows?\n\nNevertheless, undeterred by warning, example, and the experience of\nrepeated failures, human nature relaxes nothing of its persevering\nquest. I have seen a dog persist in chasing swallows as they skimmed\nalong the lawn; but then the dog had once caught a wounded bird, and\nwas therefore acting on an assured and tried experience of its own.\nIf you or I had ever found one four-leaved shamrock, we should be\njustified in cherishing a vague hope that we might some day light upon\nanother.\n\nThe Knights of the Round Table beheld with their own eyes that vision\nof the Holy Vessel, descending in their midst, which scattered those\nsteel-clad heroes in all directions on the adventure of the Sangreal;\nbut perhaps the very vows of chivalry they had registered, the very\nexploits they performed, originated with that restless longing they\ncould not but acknowledge in common with all mankind for possession of\nthe four-leaved shamrock.\n\n    \u201cAnd better he loved, that monarch bold,\n      On venturous quest to ride\n     In mail and plate, by wood and wold,\n     Than with ermine trapped and cloth of gold\n      In princely bower to bide.\n     The bursting crash of a foeman\u2019s spear\n      As it shivered against his mail,\n     Was merrier music to his ear\n      Than courtier\u2019s whispered tale.\n     And the clash of Caliburn more dear,\n      When on hostile casque it rung,\n     Than all the lays to their monarch\u2019s praise\n      The harpers of Reged sung.\n     He loved better to bide by wood and river,\n     Than in bower of his dame Queen Guenevere;\n     For he left that lady, so lovely of cheer,\n     To follow adventures of danger and fear,\n     And little the frank-hearted monarch did wot\n     That she smiled in his absence on brave Launcelot.\u201d\n\nOh! those lilting stanzas of Sir Walter\u2019s, how merrily they ring on\none\u2019s ear, like the clash of steel, the jingling of bridles, or the\nmeasured cadence of a good steed\u2019s stride! We can fancy ourselves\nspurring through the _m\u00eal\u00e9e_ after the \u201cselfless stainless\u201d king, or\ngalloping with him down the grassy glades of Lyonesse on one of his\nadventurous quests for danger, honour, renown\u2014and\u2014the four-leaved\nshamrock.\n\nObviously it did not grow in the tilt-yards at Caerleon or the palace\ngardens of Camelot; nay, he had failed to find it in the posy lovely\nGuenevere wore on her bosom. Alas! that even Launcelot, the flower of\nchivalry, the brave, the courteous, the gentle, the sorrowing and the\nsinful, must have sought for it there in vain.\n\nEverybody begins life with a four-leaved shamrock in view, an ideal\nof his own, that he follows up with considerable wrong-headedness\nto the end. Such fiction has a great deal to answer for in the way\nof disappointment, dissatisfaction, and disgust. Many natures find\nthemselves completely soured and deteriorated before middle age, and\nwhy? Because, forsooth, they have been through the garden with no\nbetter luck than their neighbours. I started in business, we will\nsay, with good connections, sufficient capital, and an ardent desire\nto make a fortune. Must I be a saddened, morose, world-wearied man\nbecause, missing that unaccountable rise in muletwist, and taking the\nsubsequent fall in grey shirtings too late, I have only realised a\ncompetency, while Bullion, who didn\u2019t want it, made at least twenty\nthou.? Or I wooed Fortune as a soldier, fond of the profession,\ncareless of climate, prodigal of my person, ramming my head wherever\nthere was a chance of having it knocked off, \u201csticking to it like a\nleech, sir; never missing a day\u2019s duty, by Jove! while other fellows\nwere getting on the staff, shooting up the country, or going home on\nsick leave.\u201d So I remain nothing but an overworked field-officer,\ngrim and grey, with an enlarged liver, and more red in my nose than\nmy cheeks, while Dawdle is a major-general commanding in a healthy\ndistrict, followed about by two aides-de-camp, enjoying a lucrative\nappointment with a fair chance of military distinction. Shall I\ntherefore devote to the lowest pit of Acheron the Horse Guards, the\nWar Office, H.R.H. the Commander-in-Chief, and the service of Her\nMajesty the Queen? How many briefless barristers must you multiply to\nobtain a Lord Chancellor, or even a Chief Baron? How many curates go\nto a bishop? How many village practitioners to a fashionable doctor in\na London-built brougham? Success in every line, while it waits, to a\ncertain extent, on perseverance and capacity, partakes thus much in the\nnature of a lottery, that for one prize there must be an incalculable\nnumber of blanks.\n\nI will not go so far as to say that you should abstain from the liberal\nprofessions of arts or arms, that you should refrain from taking your\nticket in the lottery, or in any way rest idly in mid-stream, glad to\n\n    \u201cLoose the sail, shift the oar, let her float down,\n     Fleeting and gliding by tower and town;\u201d\n\nbut I ask you to remember that the marshal\u2019s baton can only be in one\nconscript\u2019s knapsack out of half a million; that wigs and mitres,\nand fees every five minutes, fall only to one in ten thousand; that\nalthough everybody has an equal chance in the lottery, that chance\nmay be described as but half a degree better than the cipher which\nrepresents zero.\n\nThere is an aphorism in everybody\u2019s mouth about the man who goes to\nlook for a straight stick in the wood. Hollies, elms, oaks, ashes, and\nalders he inspects, sapling after sapling, in vain. This one has a\ntwist at the handle, that bends a little towards the point; some are\ntoo thick for pliancy, some too thin for strength. Several would do\nvery well but for the abundant variety that affords a chance of finding\nsomething better. Presently he emerges at the farther fence, having\ntraversed the covert from end to end, but his hands are still empty,\nand he shakes his head, thinking he may have been over-fastidious in\nhis choice. A straight stick is no easier to find than would be a\nfour-leaved shamrock.\n\nThe man who goes to buy a town house or rent a place in the country\nexperiences the same difficulty. Up-stairs and down-stairs he travels,\ninspecting kitchen-ranges, sinks and sculleries, attics, bedrooms,\nboudoirs, and housemaids\u2019 closets, till his legs ache, his brain swims,\nand his temper entirely gives way. In London, if the situation is\nperfect, there is sure to be no servants\u2019 hall, or the accommodation\nbelow-stairs leaves nothing to be desired, but he cannot undertake to\nreside so far from his club. These difficulties overcome, he discovers\nthe butler\u2019s pantry is so dark no servant of that fastidious order\nwill consent to stay with him a week. In the country, if the place is\npretty the neighbourhood may be objectionable: the rent is perhaps\ndelightfully moderate, but he must keep up the grounds and pay the\nwages of four gardeners. Suitable in every other respect, he cannot\nget the shooting; or if no such drawbacks are to be alleged, there\nis surely a railway through the park, and no station within five\nmiles. Plenty of shamrocks grow, you see, of the trefoil order, green,\ngraceful, and perfectly symmetrical. It is that fourth leaf he looks\nfor, which creates all his difficulties.\n\nThe same with the gentleman in search of a horse, the same with\nC\u0153lebs in search of a wife. If the former cannot be persuaded to put\nup with some little drawback of action, beauty, or temper, he will\nnever know that most delightful of all partnerships, the sympathy\nexisting between a good horseman and his steed. If the latter expects\nto find a perfection really exist, which he thinks he has discovered\nwhile dazzled by the glamour surrounding a man in love, he deserves\nto be disappointed, and he generally is. Rare, rare indeed are the\nfour-leaved shamrocks in either sex; thrice happy those whom Fate\npermits to win and wear them even for a day!\n\nWhat is it we expect to find? In this matter of marriage more than\nin any other our anticipations are so exorbitant that we cannot be\nsurprised if our \u201ccome-down\u201d is disheartening in proportion.\n\n  \u201cWhere is the maiden of mortal strain\n   That may match with the Baron of Triermain?\n   She must be lovely, constant, and kind,\n   Holy and pure, and humble of mind,\u201d etc.\n\n(How Sir Walter runs in my head to-night.) Yes, she must be all\nthis, and possess a thousand other good qualities, many more than\nare enumerated by Iago, so as never to descend for a moment from the\npedestal on which her baron has set her up. Is this indulgent? is it\neven reasonable? Can he expect any human creature to be always dancing\non the tight-rope? Why is Lady Triermain not to have her whims, her\ntemper, her fits of ill-humour, like her lord? She must not indeed\nfollow his example and relieve her mind by swearing \u201ca good, round,\nmouth-filling oath,\u201d therefore she has the more excuse for feeling at\ntimes a little captious, a little irritable, what she herself calls a\nlittle _cross_. Did he expect she was an angel? Well, he often called\nher one, nay, she looks like it even now in that pretty dress, says my\nlord, and she smiles through her tears, putting her white arms round\nhis neck so fondly that he really believes he _has_ found what he\nwanted till they fall out again next time.\n\nMen are very hard in the way of exaction on those they love. All \u201ctake\u201d\nseems their motto, and as little \u201cgive\u201d as possible. If they would but\nremember the golden rule and expect no more than should be expected\nfrom themselves, it might be a better world for everybody. I have\nsometimes wondered in my own mind whether women do not rather enjoy\nbeing coerced and kept down. I have seen them so false to a kind heart,\nand so fond of a cruel one. Are they slaves by nature, do you conceive,\nor only hypocrites by education? I suppose no wise man puzzles his head\nmuch on that subject. They are all incomprehensible and all alike!\n\n\u201cHow unjust!\u201d exclaims Bones, interrupting me with more vivacity than\nusual. \u201cHow unsupported an assertion, how sweeping an accusation, how\nunfair, how unreasonable, and how like a _man_! Yes, that is the way\nwith every one of you; disappointed in a single instance, you take\nrefuge from your own want of judgment, your own mismanagement, your\nown headlong stupidity, in the condemnation of half the world! You\nopen a dozen oysters, and turn away disgusted because you have not\nfound a pearl. You fall an easy prey to the first woman who flatters\nyou, and plume yourself on having gained a victory without fighting a\nbattle. The fortress so easily won is probably but weakly garrisoned,\nand capitulates ere long to a fresh assailant. When this has happened\ntwo or three times, you veil your discomfiture under an affectation\nof philosophy and vow that women are all alike, quoting perhaps a\nconsolatory scrap from Catullus\u2014\n\n    \u2018Quid levius plum\u00e2? pulvis. Quid pulvere? ventus.\n      Quid vento? mulier. Quid muli\u00ebre? nihil?\u2019\n\nBut Roman proverbs and Roman philosophy are unworthy and delusive.\nThere _is_ a straight stick in the wood if you will be satisfied with\nit when found; there _is_ a four-leaved shamrock amongst the herbage\nif you will only seek for it honestly on your knees. Should there be\nbut one in a hundred women, nay, one in a thousand, on whom an honest\nheart is not thrown away, it is worth while to try and find her. At\nworst, better be deceived over and over again than sink into that\ndeepest slough of depravity in which those struggle who, because their\nown trust has been outraged, declare there is no faith to be kept with\nothers; because their own day has been darkened, deny the existence of\nlight.\n\n\u201cYou speak feelingly,\u201d I observe, conscious that such unusual\nearnestness denotes a conviction he will get the worst of the debate.\n\u201cYou have perhaps been more fortunate than the rest. Have _you_\nfound her, then, this hundredth woman, this prize, this pearl, this\nblack swan, glorious as the ph\u0153nix and rare as the dodo? Forgive my\n_argumentum ad hominem_, if I may use the expression, and forgive my\nurging that such good fortune only furnishes one of those exceptions\nwhich, illogical people assert, prove the rule.\u201d There is a vibration\nof his teeth wanting only lips to become a sneer, while he replies\u2014\n\n\u201cIn my own case I was _not_ so lucky, but I kept my heart up and went\non with my search to the end.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly,\u201d I retort in triumph; \u201cyou, too, spent a lifetime looking for\nthe four-leaved shamrock, and never found it after all. But I think\nwomen are far more unreasonable than ourselves in this desire for the\nunattainable, this disappointment when illusion fades into reality.\nNot only in their husbands do they expect perfection, and that, too,\nin defiance of daily experience, of obvious incompetency, but in\ntheir servants, their tradespeople, their carriages, their horses,\ntheir rooms, their houses, the dinners they eat, and the dresses they\nwear. With them an avowal of incapacity to reconcile impossibilities\nstands for wilful obstinacy, or sheer stupidity at best. They believe\nthemselves the victims of peculiar ill-fortune if their coachman gets\ndrunk, or their horses go lame; if milliners are careless or ribbons\nunbecoming; if chimneys smoke, parties fall through, or it rains when\nthey want to put on a new bonnet. They never seem to understand that\nevery \u2018if\u2019 has its \u2018but,\u2019 every _pro_ its _con_. My old friend, Mr.\nBishop, of Bond Street, the Democritus of his day (and may he live as\nlong!), observed to me many years ago, when young people went mad about\nthe polka, that the new measure was a type of everything else in life,\n\u2018What you gain in dancing you lose in turning round.\u2019 Is it not so\nwith all our efforts, all our undertakings, all our noblest endeavours\nafter triumph and success? In dynamics we must be content to resign\nthe _maximum_ of one property that we may preserve the indispensable\n_minimum_ of another, must allow for friction in velocity, must\ncalculate the windage of a shot. In ethics we must accept fanaticism\nwith sincerity, exaggeration with enthusiasm, over-caution with unusual\nforesight, and a giddy brain with a warm, impulsive heart. What we\ntake here we must give yonder; what we gain in dancing we must lose in\nturning round!\n\n\u201cBut no woman can be brought to see this obvious necessity. For the\nfeminine mind nothing is impracticable. Not a young lady eating bread\nand butter in the school-room but cherishes her own vision of the\nprince already riding through enchanted forests in her pursuit. The\nprince may turn out to be a curate, a cornet, or a count, a duke or a\ndairy-farmer, a baronet or a blacking-maker, that has nothing to do\nwith it. Relying on her limitless heritage of the possible, she feels\nshe has a prescriptive right to the title, the ten thousand a year,\nthe matrimonial prize, the four-leaved shamrock. Whatever else turns\nup, she considers herself an ill-used woman for life, unless all the\nqualities desirable in man are found united in the person and fortunes\nof her husband; nay, he must even possess virtues that can scarce\npossibly co-exist. He must be handsome and impenetrable, generous and\neconomical, gay and domestic, manly but never from her side, wise yet\ndeferring to her opinion in all things, quick-sighted, though blind\nto any drawbacks or shortcomings in herself. Above all, must he be\nsuperlatively content with his lot, and unable to discover that by any\nmeans in his matrimonial venture, \u2018what he gained in dancing he has\nlost in turning round.\u2019\n\n\u201cI declare to you I think if Ursidius[2] insists on marrying at all,\nthat he had better select a widow; at least he runs at even weights\nagainst his predecessor, who, being a man, must needs have suffered\nfrom human weakness and human infirmities. The chances are that the\ndear departed went to sleep after dinner, hated an open carriage, made\nnight hideous with his snores under the connubial counterpane, and\nall the rest of it. A successor can be no worse, may possibly appear\nbetter; but if he weds a maiden, he has to contend with the female\nideal of what a man _should_ be! and from such a contest what can\naccrue but unmitigated discomfiture and disgrace?\n\n\u201cMoreover, should he prove pre-eminent in those manly qualities women\nmost appreciate, he will find that even in those they prefer to accept\nthe shadow for the substance, consistently mistaking assertion for\nargument, volubility for eloquence, obstinacy for resolution, bluster\nfor courage, fuss for energy, and haste for speed.\n\n\u201cOn one of our greatest generals, remarkable for his gentle, winning\nmanner in the drawing-room as for his cool daring in the field, before\nhe had earned his well-merited honours, I myself heard this verdict\npronounced by a jury of maids and matrons: \u2018Dear! he\u2019s such a quiet\ncreature, I\u2019m sure he wouldn\u2019t be _much use in a battle_!\u2019 No; give\nthem Parolles going to recover his drum, and they have a champion and\na hero exactly to their minds, but they would scarcely believe in\nRichard of the Lion-Heart if he held his peace and only set his teeth\nhard when he laid lance in rest.\n\n\u201cTherefore it is they tug so unmercifully at the slender thread that\nholds a captive, imagining it is by sheer strength the quiet creature\nmust be coerced. Some day the pull is harder than usual, the thread\nbreaks, and the wild bird soars away, free as the wind down which it\nsails, heedless of lure and whistle, never to return to bondage any\nmore. Then who so aghast as the pretty, thoughtless fowler, longing and\nremorseful, with the broken string in her hand?\n\n\u201cShe fancied, no doubt, her prisoner was an abnormal creature,\nrejoicing in ill-usage; that because it was docile and generous it must\ntherefore be poor in spirit, slavish in obedience, and possessing no\nwill of its own. She thought she had found a four-leaved shamrock, and\nthis is the result!\n\n\u201cBut I may talk for ever and end where I began. Men you _may_ convince\nby force of argument, if your logic is very clear and your examples or\nillustrations brought fairly under their noses; but with the other sex,\nborn to be admired and not instructed, you might as well pour water\ninto a sieve. Can you remember a single instance in which with these,\nwhile a word of entreaty gained your point forthwith, you might not\nhave exhausted a folio of argument in vain?\u201d\n\nHe thinks for a minute, and then answers deliberately, as if he had\nmade up his mind\u2014\n\n\u201cI never knew but one woman who could understand reason, _and she\nwouldn\u2019t listen to it_!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nRUS IN URBE\n\n\n_Rom\u00e6 Tibur Amem, ventosus. Tibure Romam!_ quoth the Latin satirist,\nridiculing his own foibles, like his neighbour\u2019s, with the laughing,\nhalf-indulgent banter that makes him the pleasantest, the chattiest,\nand the most companionable of classic writers. How he loved the\ncool retirement of his Sabine home, its grassy glades, its hanging\nwoodlands, its fragrant breezes wandering and whispering through those\nsummer slopes, rich in the countless allurements of a landscape that\u2014\n\n    \u201cLike Albunea\u2019s echoing fountain,\n      All my inmost heart hath ta\u2019en;\n     Give me Anio\u2019s headlong torrent,\n      And Tiburnus\u2019 grove and hills,\n     And its orchards sparkling dewy,\n      With a thousand wimpling rills,\u201d\n\nas Theodore Martin translates his Horace, or thus, according to Lord\nRavensworth\u2014\n\n    \u201cLike fair Albunea\u2019s sybil-haunted hall,\n     By rocky Anio\u2019s echoing waterfall,\n     And Tibur\u2019s orchards and high-hanging wood,\n     Reflected graceful in the whirling flood.\u201d\n\nHis lordship, you observe, who can himself write Latin lyrics as though\nhe had drunk with Augustus, and capped verses with Ovid, makes the\nsecond syllable of Albunea long, and a very diffuse argument might be\nheld on this disputed quantity. Compare these with the original, and\nsay which you like best\u2014\n\n      \u201cQuam domus Albune\u00e6 resonantis,\n    Et pr\u00e6ceps Anio ac Tiburni lucus et uda\n      Mobilibus pomaria rivis.\u201d\n\nBy the way, nobody who has not endeavoured to render Latin poetry into\nEnglish can appreciate the vigour and terseness of the older language.\nHere are six lines in the one version and four in the other, required\nto translate three of the original, perhaps without producing after all\nso full a meaning or so complete a picture.\n\nNevertheless, and notwithstanding his poetical predilections for the\ncountry, Horace, like many other people, seems of his two homes to have\nalways preferred the one at which he was _not_. An unhappy prejudice\nlittle calculated to enhance the comfort and content of daily life.\n\nHad he settled anywhere in the neighbourhood of our hermitage here,\nhe need not have accused himself of this fickle longing, which he\ndenounces by the somewhat ludicrous epithet of \u201cventose.\u201d He might have\ncombined the advantages of town and country, alternating the solitude\nof the desert with the society of his fellow-men, blowing the smoke\nout of his lungs while inhaling the fresh breezes off the Serpentine,\nstretching his own limbs and his horses\u2019 by walks and rides round\nBattersea, Victoria, and Hyde Parks.\n\nIf you look for _rus in urbe_, where will you find it in such\nperfection as within a mile of the Wellington statue in almost any\ndirection you please to take? If you choose to saunter on a hot June\nday towards the Ranger\u2019s Lodge or the powder-magazine, I could show\nyou a spot from which I defy you to see houses, spires, gas-towers,\nor chimneys, anything, indeed, but green grass and blue sky, and\ntowering elms motionless, in black massive shade, or quivering in\ngolden gleams of light. A spot where you might lie and dream of nymph\nand faun, wood-god and satyr, Daphne pursued by Ph\u0153bus, Act\u00e6on flying\nbefore Diana, of Pan and Syrinx and Echo, and all the rustic joys of\npeaceful Arcady\u2014or of elves and brownies, fair princesses and cruel\nmonsters, Launcelot, Modred, and Carodac, Sir Gawain the courteous\nwith his \u201clothely ladye,\u201d the compromising cup, the misfitting mantle,\nall the bright pageantry, quaint device, and deep, tender romance that\ngroups itself round good King Arthur and the Knights of his Round\nTable\u2014or of Thomas the Rhymer as he lay at length under the \u201clinden\ntree,\u201d and espied, riding towards him on a milk-white palfrey, a dame\nso beautiful, that he could not but believe she was the mother of his\nlord, till undeceived by her own confession, he won from her the fatal\ngift of an unearthly love. And here, perhaps, you branch off into some\nmore recent vision, some dream of an elfin queen of your own, who also\nshowed you the path to heaven, and gave you an insight into the ways\nof purgatory, ere she beckoned you down the road to Fairyland, that\nleads\u2014ah! who knows where? From this sequestered nook you need not\nwalk a bowshot to arrive at the seaboard of the Serpentine; and here,\nshould there be a breath of air, if you have any taste for yachting,\nyou may indulge it to your heart\u2019s content. The glittering water is\ndotted with craft of every rig and, under a certain standard, of almost\nevery size. Yawls, cutters, schooners, barques, brigs, with here and\nthere a three-masted ship. On a wind and off a wind, close-hauled and\nfree, rolling, pitching, going about, occasionally missing stays, and\nonly to be extricated from the \u201cdoldrums\u201d by a blundering, over-eager\nwater-dog, the mimic fleet, on its mimic ocean, carries out its\nillusion so completely that you can almost fancy the air off the water\nfeels damp to your forehead, and tastes salt upon your lips.\n\nAn ancient mariner who frequents the beach below the boat-house feels,\nI am convinced, thoroughly persuaded that his occupation is strictly\nprofessional, that he is himself a necessity, not of amusement, but\nbusiness. He will tell you that when the wind veers round like that,\n\u201csuddenways, off Kensington Gardens, you may look out for squalls;\u201d\nthat \u201clast Toosday was an awful wild night, and some on \u2019em broke from\ntheir moorings afore he could turn out. The _Bellerophon_, bless ye,\nwas as nigh lost as could be, and that there _Water Lily_, the sweetest\nthing as ever swam\u2014she sprang her boom, damaged her bowsprit, and broke\nher nose. He was refitting all Wens\u2019day, he was, up to two o\u2019clock, and\na precious job he had!\u201d\n\nEvery one who constantly \u201ctakes his walks abroad\u201d in the Great City,\nbecomes a philosopher in spite of himself, of the Peripatetic School,\nno doubt, but still a philosopher; so you sympathise mildly with the\nmariner\u2019s troubles; for to you no human interests are either great or\nsmall, nor does one pursuit or person bore you more than another. You\nhazard an opinion, therefore, that the _Water Lily_ is somewhat too\ndelicate and fragile a craft to encounter boisterous weather, even on\nsuch an inland sea as this, and find, to your dismay, that so innocent\nan observation stamps you in his opinion as not only ignorant, but\npresumptuous. He considers her both \u201cwholesome,\u201d as he calls it, and\n\u201cweatherly,\u201d urging on you many considerations of sea-worthiness, such\nas her false keel, her bulwarks, her breadth of beam, and general\ncalibre. \u201cWhy, she\u2019s seven-and-twenty,\u201d says he, rolling a peppermint\nlozenge round his tongue, just as a real seaman turns a quid; \u201cnow look\nat the _Sea-Sarpent_ lying away to the eastward yonder, just beyond\nthe point where the gravel\u2019s been washed adrift. She\u2019s fifty-two, she\nis, but I wouldn\u2019t trust her, not in lumpy water, you know, like the\nschooner. No. If I was a-building of one now, what I call, for all work\nand all weathers, thirty would be my mark, or from that to thirty-five\nat the outside!\u201d\n\n\u201cThirty-five what? Tons?\u201d you ask, a little abashed, and feeling you\nhave committed yourself.\n\n\u201cTons!\u201d he repeats, in a tone of intense disgust\u2014\u201ctons be blowed!\nh\u2019inches! I should have thought any landsman might ha\u2019 knowed\nthat\u2014h\u2019inches!\u201d and lurching sulkily into his cabin under the\nwillow-tree, disappears to be seen no more.\n\nLater, when September has begun to tinge the topmost twigs with gold,\nand autumn, like a beautiful woman, then indeed at her loveliest, who\nis just upon the wane, dresses in her deepest colours, and her richest\ngarments, go roaming about in Kensington Gardens, and say whether you\nmight not fancy yourself a hundred miles from any such evidences of\ncivilisation as a pillar-post or a cab-stand.\n\nIt was but the other day I sauntered through the grove that stands\nnearest the Uxbridge Road, and, while an afternoon mist limited my\nrange of vision and deadened the sounds of traffic on my ears, I could\nhardly persuade myself that in less than five minutes I might if I\nliked make the thirteenth in an omnibus.\n\nAlone? you ask\u2014of course I was. Yet, stay, not quite alone, for with\nme walked the shadow that, when we have learned to prefer solitude to\nsociety, accompanies us in all our wanderings, teaching us, I humbly\nhope, the inevitable lesson, permanent and precious in proportion to\nthe pain with which the poor scholar gets his task by heart.\n\nWell, I give you my word, the endless stems, the noiseless solitude,\nthe circumscribed horizon, reminded me of those forest ranges in North\nAmerica that stretch interminable from the waters of the St. Ann\u2019s and\nthe Batsicon to the wild waves breaking dark and sullen on the desert\nseaboard of Labrador.\n\nI am not joking. I declare to you I was once more in moccasins,\nblanket-coat, and _bonnet-rouge_, with an axe in my belt, a pack on\nmy shoulders, and a rifle in my hand, following the track of the\n_treborgons_[3] on snow-shoes, in company with Thomas, the French\nCanadian, and Fran\u00e7ois, the half-breed, and the Huron chief with\na name I could never pronounce, that neither I nor any man alive\ncan spell. Ah! it was a merry life we led on those moose-hunting\nexpeditions, in spite of hard work, hard fare, and, on occasion, more\nthan a sufficiency of the discomfort our retainers called expressively\n_mis\u00e8re_. There was a strange charm in the marches through those silent\nforests, across those frozen lakes, all clothed alike in their winter\nrobe of white and diamonds. There was a bold, free, joyous comfort in\nthe hole we dug through a yard and a half of snow, wherein to build\nour fire, boil our kettle, fry our pork (it is no use talking of such\nthings to you, but I was going to say, never forget a frying-pan on\nthese expeditions; it is worth all the kitchen-ranges in Belgravia), to\nsmoke our tobacco, ay, and to take our rest.\n\nThere was something of sweet adventurous romance in waking at midnight\nto see the stars flash like brilliants through the snow-encrusted\nbranches overhead, wondering vaguely where and why and what were all\nthose countless worlds of flame. Perhaps to turn round again and dream\nof starry eyes in the settlements, then closed in sleep, or winking\ndrowsily at a night-light, while the pretty watcher pondered, not\nunmindful of ourselves, pitying us, it may be, couching here in the\nbush, and thinking in her ignorance how cold we were!\n\nThen when we reached our hunting-ground and came up with our game at\nlast, though, truth to tell, the sport as sport was poor enough, there\nwas yet a wild delightful triumph in overtaking and slaying a gigantic\nanimal that had never seen the face of man. The chase was exciting,\ninvigorating, bracing; the idea grand, heroic, Scandinavian.\n\n    \u201cAn elk came out of the pine-forest;\n     He snuffed up east, he snuffed up west,\n            Stealthy and still;\n     His mane and his horns were shaggy with snow,\n     I laid my arrow across my bow,\n            Stealthily and still;\n     The bowstring rattled\u2014the arrow flew,\n     And it pierced his blade-bone through and through,\n            Hurrah!\n     I sprang at his throat like a wolf of the wood,\n     And I dipped my hands in the smoking blood,\n            Hurrah!\u201d\n\nKingsley had not written _Hypatia_ then. Kingsley never went\nmoose-hunting in his life. How could he so vividly describe the gait\nand bearing of a forest elk stalking warily, doubtfully, yet with a\nkingly pride through his wintry haunts? Probably from the instinctive\nsense of fitness, the intuition peculiar to poets, that enabled him\nto feel alike with a fierce Goth sheltering in his snow-trench, and\na soft, seductive southern beauty, languishing, lovely and beloved,\nin spite of dangerous impulses and tarnished fame, in spite of wilful\nheart, reckless self-abandonment, woman weakness, and the fatal saffron\nshawl.\n\nI tell you that I could not have been more completely alone in\nRobinson Crusoe\u2019s island than I found myself here within a rifle-shot\nof Kensington Palace, during a twenty minutes\u2019 walk, to and fro, up\nand down, threading the stems of those tall, metropolitan trees; nor\nwhen my solitude was at last disturbed could I find it in me to grudge\nthe intruders their share of my retreat. More especially as they\nwere themselves thoroughly unconscious of everything but their own\ncompanionship, sauntering on, side by side, with murmured words, and\nloving looks, and steps that dwelt and lingered on the path, because\nimpossible roses seemed springing into bloom beneath their very feet,\nand that for them Kensington Gardens were indeed as the gardens of\nParadise.\n\nI knew right well for _me_ the mist was gathering round, ghostly and\ndamp and chill. It struck through my garments, it crept about my heart,\nbut for these, thank God! the sky was bright as a midsummer noon. They\nwere basking in the warmth and light of those gleams that come once\nor twice in a lifetime to remind us of what we might be, to reproach\nus, perhaps, gently for what we are. They did not speak much, they\nlaughed not at all. Their conversation seemed a little dull, trite, and\ncommonplace, yet I doubt if either of them has forgotten a word of it\nyet. It was pleasant to observe how happy they were, and I am sure they\nthought it was to last for ever. Indeed I wish it may!\n\nBut the reflections of a man on foot are to those of a man on horseback\nas the tortoise to the hare, the mouse to the lion, tobacco to opium,\nchalk to cheese, prose to poetry.\n\n    \u201cAs moonshine is to sunshine, and as water is to wine.\u201d\n\nGet into the saddle, leap on a thorough-bred horse, if you have got\none. Never mind his spoiling you for every other animal of meaner\nrace, and come for a \u201cspin\u201d up the Ride from Hyde Park Corner to\nKensington Gate, careful only to steady him sufficiently for the safety\nof Her Majesty\u2019s subjects, and the inquisition, not very rigorous,\nof the policemen on duty. For seven months in the year, at least,\nthis is perhaps the only mile and a half in England over which you\nmay gallop without remorse for battering legs and feet to pieces on\nthe hard ground. Away you go, the breeze lifting your whiskers from\nthe very roots (I forgot, you have no whiskers, nor indeed would such\nsuperfluities be in character with the severe style of your immortal\nbeauty). Never mind, the faster you gallop the keener and cooler comes\nthe air. Sit well down, just feel him on the curb, let him shake his\npretty head and play with his bridle, sailing away with his hind-legs\nunder your stirrup-irons, free, yet collected, so that you could let\nhim out at speed, or have him back in a canter within half-a-dozen\nstrides; pat him lovingly just where the hair turns on his glossy\nneck like a knot in polished woodwork, and while he bends to meet the\ncaress, and bounds to acknowledge it, tell me that dancing is the\npoetry of motion if you dare!\n\nShould it not be the London season\u2014and I am of opinion that the _rus\nin urbe_ is more enjoyable to both of us at the \u201cdead time of year\u201d\nthan during the three fashionable months\u2014do not, therefore, feel\nalarmed that you will have the ride to yourself, or that if you come\nto grief there will be nobody to pick you up! Here you will meet some\nLife-Guardsman \u201ctaking the nonsense\u201d out of a charger he hates; there\nsome fair girl, trim of waist, blue of habit, and golden of _chignon_,\ngiving her favourite \u201ca breather,\u201d ready and willing to acknowledge\nthat she is happier thus, speeding along in her side-saddle, than\nfloating round a ball-room to Coote and Tinney\u2019s softest strains with\nthe best waltzer in London for a partner.\n\nBut your horse has got his blood up, and you yourself feel that rising\nwithin, which reminds you of the merry youthful days, when everything\nin life was done, so to speak, at a gallop. You long to have _a\nlark_\u2014you cannot settle down without a jump or two at least. You look\nwistfully at the single iron rail that guards the footway, but refrain:\nand herein you are wise. Nevertheless, you shall not be disappointed;\nyou have but to jog quietly out of the Park, through Queen\u2019s Gate,\nturning thereafter to your right, and within a quarter of a mile you\nshall find what you require. Yes, in good truth, our _rus in urbe_, to\nbe the more complete, is not without a little hunting-ground of its\nown. Mr. Blackman has laid out a snug enclosure, walled in on all sides\nand remote from observation, where man and horse may disport themselves\nwith no more fear of being crowded and jostled than in Launde Woods\nor Rockingham Forest during the autumnal months. Here you will find\nevery description of fence in miniature, neat and new and complete,\nlike the furniture in a doll\u2019s baby-house\u2014a little hedge, a little\nditch, a little double, and a very little gate, cunningly constructed\non mechanical principles so as to let you off easily should you tamper\nwith its top bar, the whole admirably adapted to encourage a timid\nhorse or steady a bold one.\n\nAll this is child\u2019s-play, no doubt\u2014the merest child\u2019s-play, compared\nwith the real thing. Yet there is much in the association of ideas; and\na round or two over this mimic country cannot but bring back to you the\nmemory of the merriest, ay, and the _happiest_, if not the _sweetest_,\nmoments of your life. Mounted, with a good start, in a grass country,\nafter a pack of foxhounds, there is no discord in the melody, no\nbitter in the cup\u2014your keenest anxiety the soundness of the level\nwater-meadow, your worst misgiving the strength of the farther rail,\nthe width of the second ditch. The goddess of your worship bids your\npulses leap and your blood thrill, but never makes your heart ache, and\nthe thorns that hedge the roses of Diana can only pierce skin-deep.\n\nWasn\u2019t it glorious, though you rode much heavier then than you do\nnow,\u2014wasn\u2019t it glorious, I say, to view a gallant fox going straight\naway from Lilburne, Loatland Wood, Shankton Holt, John-o\u2019-Gaunt, or any\ncovert you please to name that lies in the heart of a good-scenting,\nfair-fenced, galloping country? Yourself, sheltered and unseen, what\nkeen excitement to mark his stealing, easy action, gliding across\nthe middle of the fields, nose, back, and brush carried in what\ngeometricians call a \u201cright\u201d line, to lead you over what many people\nwould call a \u201cserious\u201d one! A chorus ringing from some twenty couple of\ntongues becomes suddenly mute, and the good horse beneath you trembles\nwith delight while the hounds pour over the fence that bounds the\ncovert, scattering like a conjuror\u2019s pack of cards, ere they converge\nin the form of an arrow, heads and sterns down, racing each other for a\nlead, and lengthening out from the sheer pace at which a burning scent\nenables them to drive along!\n\nThey have settled to it now. You may set to and ride without\ncompunction or remorse. A dozen fields, as many fences, a friendly\ngate, and they have thrown their heads up in a lane. Half-a-score of\nsportsmen, one plastered with mud, and the huntsman now come up; you\nfeel conscious, though you know you are innocent, that _he_ thinks you\nhave been driving them! You remark, also, that there is more red than\ncommon in the men\u2019s faces and the horses\u2019 nostrils; both seem to be\nmuch excited and a little blown.\n\nThe check, however, is not of long duration. Fortunately, the hounds\nhave taken the matter in hand for themselves, ere the only person\nqualified to do so has had time to interfere. _Rarpsody_, as he calls\nher, puts her nose down and goes off again at score. You scramble\nout of the lane, post-haste, narrowly escaping a fall. Your horse\nhas caught his wind with that timely pull. He is going as bold as a\nlion, as easy as a bird, as steady as a rock. You seem to have grown\ntogether, and move like one creature to that long swinging stride,\nuntiring and regular as clock-work. A line of grass is before you, a\nlight east wind in your face, two years\u2019 condition and the best blood\nof Newmarket in his veins render you confident of your steed\u2019s enduring\npowers, while every field as he swoops over it, every fence as he\nthrows it lightly behind him, convinces you more and more of his speed,\nmettle, and activity. What will you have? The pleasures of imagination,\nat least, are unlimited. Shall it be two-and-twenty minutes up wind\nand to ground as hard as they can go? Shall it be thirty-five without\nanother check, crossing the best of the Vale, and indulging the good\nhorse with never a pull till you land in the field where old Rhapsody,\nwith flashing eyes and bristles all on end, runs into her quarry,\nrolling him over and herself with him, to be buried in the rush of her\neager worrying followers? Would you prefer twelve miles from point to\npoint, accomplished in an hour and a half, comprising every variety of\ncountry, every vicissitude of the chase, and ending only when the crows\nare hovering and swooping over a staunch, courageous, travel-wearied\nfox, holding on with failing strength but all-undaunted spirit for\nthe forest that another mile would reach but that he is never to see\nagain? You may take your choice. Holloa! he has disappeared!\u2014he has\ntaken refuge in his cupboard. Not even such a skeleton as mine can\nsustain the exorcism of so powerful a spell as fox-hunting! So be it.\nWho-whoop! Gone to ground? I think we will leave him there for the\npresent. It is better not to dig him out!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nHAUNTED\n\n\nA hundred years ago there was scarce a decent country house in\nEngland or Scotland that did not pride itself on two advantages\u2014the\ninexhaustible resources of its cellar and the undoubted respectability\nof its ghost. Whether the generous contents of the one had not\nsomething to do with the regular attendance of the other, I will not\ntake upon me to decide; but in those times hall, castle, manor-house,\nand even wayside inn were haunted every one. The phantoms used to be as\nvarious, too, as the figures in a pantomime. Strains of unaccountable\nmusic sometimes floated in the air. Invisible carriages rolled into\ncourtyards at midnight, and door-bells rang loudly, pulled by\nunearthly visitors, who were heard but never seen. If you woke at\ntwelve o\u2019clock you were sure to find a nobleman in court-dress, or a\nlady in farthingale and high-heeled shoes, warming a pair of ringed\nand wasted hands at the embers of your wood-fire; failing these, a\nfavourite sample of the supernatural consisted of some pale woman in\nwhite garments, with her black hair all over her shoulders and her\nthroat cut from ear to ear. In one instance I remember a posting-house\nfrequented by the spirit of an ostler with a wooden leg; but perhaps\nthe most blood-chilling tale of all is that which treats of an\nempty chamber having its floor sprinkled with flour to detect the\ntraces of its mysterious visitant, and the dismay with which certain\nhorror-stricken watchers saw footsteps printing themselves off, one by\none, on the level spotless surface\u2014footsteps plain and palpable, but of\nthe Fearful Presence nothing more!\n\nAs with houses in those, so is it with men in these days. Most of the\npeople I have known in life were haunted; so haunted, indeed, that\nfor some the infliction has led at last to madness, though in most\ninstances productive only of abstracted demeanour, wandering attention,\nidiotic cross-purposes, general imbecility of intellect, and, on\noccasion, reckless hilarity, with quaint, wild, incoherent talk. These\nhaunted head-pieces, too, get more and more dilapidated every day;\nbut how to exorcise them, that is the difficulty! What spells shall\nhave power to banish the evil spirit from its tenement, and lay it in\nthe Red Sea? if indeed that is the locality to which phantoms should\nproperly be consigned. Haunted men are, of all their kind, the most\nunhappy; and you shall not walk along a London street without meeting\nthem by the dozen.\n\nThe dwelling exclusively on one idea, if not in itself an incipient\nsymptom, tends to produce, ere long, confirmed insanity. Yet how\nmany people have we seen going about with the germs of so fearful a\ncalamity developing into maturity! This man is haunted by hope, that by\nfear,\u2014others by remorse, regret, remembrance, desire, or discontent.\nEach cherishes his ghost with exceeding care and tenderness, giving\nit up, as it were, room after room in the house, till by degrees it\npervades the whole tenement, and there is no place left for a more\nremunerative lodger, healthy, substantial, and real. I have seen people\nso completely under the dominion of expectation, that in their morbid\nanticipation of the Future, they could no more enjoy the pleasures\nafforded by the Present than the dead. I have known others for whom\nthe brightest sunshine that ever shone was veiled by a cloud of\napprehension, lest storms should be lurking below their horizon the\nwhile, who would not so much as confess themselves happy because of a\nconviction such happiness was not to last,\u2014and for whom time being\u2014as\nis reasonable\u2014only temporal could bring neither comfort nor relief. It\nis rarer to find humanity suffering from the tortures of remorse, a\nsensation seldom unaccompanied, indeed, by misgivings of detection and\nfuture punishment; still, when it does fasten on a victim, this Nemesis\nis of all others the most cruel and vindictive. Regret, however, has\ntaken possession of an attic, in most of our houses, and refuses\nobstinately to be dislodged. It is a quiet, well-behaved ghost enough,\ninterfering but little with the ordinary occupations of the family,\ncontent to sit in a dark corner, weeping feebly and wringing its hands,\nbut with an inconvenient and reprehensible tendency to emerge on\nspecial occasions of rejoicing and festivity, to obtrude its unwelcome\npresence when the other inmates are gladdened by any unusual beauty of\nsight or sound.\n\nDiscontent, perhaps, should hardly be dignified with the title of a\nghost. He resembles rather those Brownies and Lubbers of northern\nsuperstition, who, unsightly and even ludicrous in appearance, were\nnot yet without their use in performing the meaner offices of a\nhousehold. If properly treated and never dragged into undue notice,\nthe Brownie would sweep up the hearth, bring in the fuel, milk the\ncows, and take upon him the rough work generally, in an irregular,\nuncouth, but still tolerably efficient style. So perhaps a spirit\nof discontent, kept within proper bounds, may prove the unsuspected\nmainspring of much useful labour, much vigorous effort, much eventual\nsuccess. The spur is doubtless a disagreeable instrument to the horse,\nand its misapplication has lost many a race ere now; but there is no\ndisputing that it can rouse into action such dull torpid temperaments\nas, thus unstimulated, would never discover their own powers nor exert\nthemselves to do their best.\n\nBut I should draw a wide distinction between the discontent which\ninstigates us to improve our lot, and the desire, the _desiderium_, the\npoisonous mixture of longing and sorrow, defiance and despair, which\nbids us only rend our garments, scatter ashes on our heads, and sit\ndown in the dust unmanly to repine. It is the difference between the\nBrownie and the Fiend. Of all evil spirits I think this last is the\nmost fatal, the most accursed. We can none of us forget how our father\nAbraham, standing at his tent door on the plains of Mamre, entertained\nthree angels unawares. And we, too, his descendants, are always on the\nlook-out for the visitors from heaven. Do they ever tarry with any of\nus for more than a night\u2019s lodging? Alas! that the very proof of our\nguest\u2019s celestial nature is the swiftness with which he vanishes at\ndaybreak like a dream. But oftener the stranger we receive, though\ncoming from another world, is not from above. His beauty, indeed, seems\nangelic, and he is clad in garments of light. For a while we are glad\nto be deceived, cherishing and prizing our guest, the more perhaps for\nthose very qualities which should warn us of his origin. So we say to\nhim, \u201cThou art he for whom we have been looking. Abide with us here\nfor ever.\u201d And he takes us at our word.\n\nHenceforth the whole house belongs to the ghost. When we go to dinner,\nhe sits at the head of the table. Try to shame him away with laughter,\nand you will soon know the difference between mirth and joy. Try\nto drown him with wine. No. Don\u2019t try that. It is too dangerous an\nexperiment, as any doctor who keeps a private mad-house will tell you.\nOur duties we undertake hopelessly and languidly, because of his sneer,\nwhich seems to say, \u201cWhat is the use? Am I not here to see that you\nreap no harvest from your labour, earn no oblivion with your toil?\u201d\nAnd for our pleasures\u2014how can we have any pleasures in that imperious\npresence, under the lash of that cruel smile?\n\nEven if we leave our home and walk abroad, in hope to free ourselves\nfrom the tenacious incubus, it is in vain. There is beauty in the\noutside world, quiet in the calm distant skies, peace in the still\nsummer evening, but not for us\u2014nevermore for us\u2014\n\n    \u201cAlmost upon the western wave\n     Rested the broad bright sun,\n     When that strange shape drove suddenly\n     Betwixt us and the sun.\u201d\n\nAy, therein lurks our curse. We bear the presence well enough when cold\nwinds blow and snow falls, or when all the landscape about is bleak and\nbare and scathed by bitter frosts. The cruel moment is that in which\nwe feel a capability of enjoyment still left but for our affliction,\na desire to bask in his rays, a longing to turn our faces towards his\nwarmth\u2014\n\n    \u201cWhen that strange shape drives suddenly\n     Betwixt us and the sun.\u201d\n\nThere is no exorciser from without who can help us. Alas! that we can\nso seldom help ourselves. The strength of Hercules could not preserve\nthe hero from his ghastly fate. Our ghost is no more to be got rid of\nby main force than was Dejanira\u2019s fatal tunic, clinging, blistering,\nwrapping its wearer all the closer, that he tore away the smarting\nflesh by handfuls. Friends will advise us to make the best of it, and\nno doubt their counsel is excellent though gratuitous, wanting indeed\nnothing but the supplementary information, how we are to make the best\nof that which is confessedly at its worst. Enemies opine that we are\nweak fools, and deserve to be vanquished for our want of courage\u2014an\nargument that would hold equally good with every combatant overpowered\nby superior strength; and all the time the ghost that haunted us sits\naloft, laughing our helplessness to scorn, cold, pitiless, inexorable,\nand always\n\n    \u201cBetwixt us and the sun.\u201d\n\nIf we cannot get rid of him, he will sap our intellects and shorten our\nlives; but there is a spell which even this evil spirit has not power\nto withstand, and it is to be found in an inscription less imitated\nperhaps than admired by the \u201cmonks of old.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Laborare est orare_,\u201d so runs the charm. Work and worship, and a\nstern resolve to ignore his presence, will eventually cause this devil\nto \u201ccome out of the man.\u201d Not, be sure, till he has torn and rent him\ncruelly\u2014not till he has driven him abroad to wander night and day\namongst the tombs, seeking rest, poor fevered wretch, and finding none,\nbecause of his tormentor\u2014not till, in utter helplessness and sheer\ndespair, stunned, humbled, and broken-hearted, the demoniac has crept\nfeebly to the Master\u2019s feet, will he find himself delivered from his\nenemy, weary, sore, and wasted, but \u201cclothed, and in his right mind.\u201d\n\nAmongst the many ghost stories I have read there is one of which I only\nremember that it turned upon the inexplicable presence of a window too\nmuch in the front of a man\u2019s house. This individual had lately taken\na farm, and with it a weird, long-uninhabited dwelling in which he\ncame to reside. His first care, naturally enough, was to inspect the\nbuilding he occupied, and he found, we will say, two rooms on the\nsecond floor, each with two windows. The rooms were close together,\nand the walls of not more than average thickness. It was some days ere\nhe made rather a startling discovery. Returning from the land towards\nhis own door, and lifting the eyes of proprietorship on his home, he\ncounted on the second story _five_ windows in front instead of four!\nThe man winked and stared and wondered. Knowing he was not drunk, he\nthought he must be dreaming, and counted them over again\u2014still with the\nsame result. Entering his house, he ran up-stairs forthwith, and made a\nstrict investigation of the second floor. There were the two rooms, and\nthere were the four windows as usual. Day after day he went through the\nsame process, till by degrees his wonder diminished, his apprehensions\nvanished; his daily labour tired him so that he could have slept sound\nin a graveyard, and by the time his harvest was got in, the subject\nnever so much as entered his head.\n\nNow this is the way to treat the haunted chamber in our own brain.\nFasten its door; if necessary, brick up its window. Deprive it of air\nand light. Ignore it altogether. When you walk along the passage never\nturn your head in its direction, no, not even though the dearest hope\nof your heart lies dead and cold within; but if duty bids you, do not\nshrink from entering\u2014walk in boldly! Confront the ghost, and show\nit that you have ceased to tremble in its presence. Time after time\nthe false proportions, once so ghastly and gigantic, will grow less\nand less\u2014some day the spectre will vanish altogether. Mind, I do not\npromise you another inmate. While you live the tenement will probably\nremain bare and uninhabited; but at the worst an empty room is surely\nbetter than a bad lodger! It is difficult, you will say, thus to ignore\nthat of which both head and heart are full. So it is. Very difficult,\nvery wearisome, very painful, yet not impossible! Make free use of the\nspell. Work, work, till your brain is so overwrought it cannot think,\nyour body so tired it must rest or die. Pray humbly, confidingly,\nsadly, like the publican, while your eyes can hardly keep open, your\nhands droop helpless by your side, and your sleep shall be sound,\nholy, unhaunted, so that with to-morrow\u2019s light you may rise to the\nunremitting task once more.\n\nDo not hope you are to gain the victory in a day. It may take months.\nIt may take years. Inch by inch, and step by step, the battle must be\nfought. Over and over again you will be worsted and give ground, but do\nnot therefore yield. Resolve never to be driven back quite so far as\nyou have advanced. Imperceptibly, the foe becomes weaker, while you are\ngaining strength. The time will come at last, when you can look back on\nthe struggle with a half-pitying wonder that he could ever have made so\ngood a fight. Do not then forget to be grateful for the aid you prayed\nso earnestly might be granted at your need; and remember also, for your\ncomfort, that the harder won the victory, the less likely it is you\nwill ever have to wage such cruel battle again.\n\n\u201cWould it not be wiser,\u201d observed Bones quietly, \u201cnever to begin the\nconflict? Not to take possession of the haunted house at all?\u201d\n\nThere is a pseudo-philosophy about some of his remarks that provokes me\nintensely.\n\n\u201cWould it not be wiser,\u201d I repeated, in high disdain, \u201cto sit on the\nbeach than put out to sea, to walk afoot than ride on horseback, to\nloll on velvet cushions in the gallery, than go down under shield\ninto the lists, and strike for life, honour, and renown? No. It would\n_not_ be wiser. True wisdom comes by experience. He who shrinks from\ncontact with his fellow-men\u2014who fears to take his share of their\nburdens, their sorrows, their sufferings, is but a poor fool at best.\nHe may be learned in the learning of the schools, but he is a dunce\nin all that relates to \u2018the proper study of mankind\u2019; he is ignorant\nof human nature, its sorrows, its passions, its feelings, its hidden\nvein of gold, lying under a thick crust of selfishness and deceit;\nabove all, he knows nothing of his inmost heart, nothing of the fierce,\nwarlike joy in which a bold spirit crushes and tramples out its own\nrebellion\u2014nothing of that worshipper\u2019s lofty courage who\n\n    \u2018Gives the first watch of the night\n     To the red planet Mars,\u2019\n\nwho feels a stern and dogged pride in the consciousness that he\n\n    \u2018Knows how sublime a thing it is\n     To suffer and be strong.\u2019\n\nNo: in the moral as in the physical battle, though you be pinned to the\nearth, yet writhe yourself up against the spear, like the \u2018grim Lord\nof Colonsay,\u2019 who, in his very death-pang, swung his claymore, set his\nteeth, and drove his last blow home.\n\n\u201cBesides, if you are to avoid the struggle entirely, how are you ever\nto learn the skill of self-defence, by which a thrust may be parried\nor returned? the art of tying an artery or stanching a wound? How are\nyou to help others who cannot help yourself? A man is put into this\nworld to do a certain share of the world\u2019s work; to stop a gap in\nthe world\u2019s fencing; to form a cog, however minute, in the world\u2019s\nmachinery. By the defalcation even of the humblest individual, some\nof its movements must be thrown out of gear. The duty is to be got\nthrough, and none of us, haunted or unhaunted, ghost or no ghost, may\nshirk our share. Stick to your post like a Roman soldier during the\nwatches of the night. Presently morning will come, when every phantom\nmust vanish into air, every mortal confront that inevitable reality for\nwhich the dream we call a lifetime is but a novitiate and a school.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nWEIGHT CARRIERS\n\n\nFifty years ago, when the burning of a bishop at Smithfield would\nscarce have created more sensation in clerical circles than a\nRitualistic Commission or a Pan-Anglican Synod, our divines took their\nshare of secular pastime far more freely than at present. It was the\nparson who killed his thirty brace of partridges, and this, too, with a\nflint-and-steel gun, over dogs of his own breaking, on the broiling 1st\nof September. It was the parson who alone got to the end of that famous\nfive-and-forty minutes from \u201cThe Church Spinneys,\u201d when a large field\nwere beat off to a man, and the squire broke his horse\u2019s back. It was\nthe parson who knew more about rearing pheasants, circumventing wild\nducks, otter-hunting, fly-fishing, even rat-catching, than any one else\nin the parish; and it was the parson, too, who sometimes took the odds\nabout a flyer at Newmarket, and landed a good stake by backing his own\nsound ecclesiastical opinion.\n\nConcerning one of these racing divines I remember the following\nanecdote:\u2014\n\nReturning from afternoon service on a Sunday, he happened to witness a\ntrial of speed between two of his school-children. Unequally matched in\nsize, the big boy, as was natural, beat the little one, but only by a\ncouple of yards. The parson stood still, watched them approvingly, and\nmeditated.\n\n\u201cCome here,\u201d said he to the winner. \u201cGo into my study, and fetch me my\nbig Bible.\u201d\n\nThe urchin obeyed, and returned bearing a ponderous quarto volume.\n\u201cNow,\u201d continued his reverence, \u201cstart fair, and run it over again.\u201d\n\nThe competitors wished no better fun, and finished this time with a\ndead heat.\n\n\u201cGood boys! Good boys!\u201d said the parson, reflectively. \u201cAh! I thought\nthe weight would bring you together.\u201d\n\nYes; how surely the weight brings us together! How often have we not\nseen the universal handicap run out over the course of daily life? Some\nof us start so free, so light-hearted, so full of hope and confidence,\nexpecting no less than to gallop in alone. Presently the weight begins\nto tell; the weight that we have voluntarily accepted, or the weight\nimposed on us by the wisdom of superior judgment. We labour, we\nstruggle, we fail; we drop back to those whom we thought so meanly of\nas our competitors; they reach us, they pass us, and though punishment\nbe not spared, they gain the post at last, perhaps many, many lengths\nahead! And even if we escape the disgrace of having thus to succumb,\neven if our powers be equal to the tax imposed on them, we are not to\nexpect an easy victory; there is no \u201cwinning in a canter\u201d here. Every\neffort tells on mettle, nerve, and spirits; on heart, body, and brain.\nWe want them all, we summon them, we use them freely, and then, it may\nbe within one stride of victory, comes the cruel and irretrievable\nbreakdown.\n\nMen, like horses, must be content to carry weight. Like horses, too,\nthough some are far more adapted than others to the purpose, all learn\nin time to accommodate themselves, so to speak, in pace and action\nto their inevitable burden. How they fight under it at first! How\neager, and irritable, and self-willed it renders them; how violent and\nimpetuous, as if in haste to get the whole thing over and done with.\nBut in a year or two the back accustoms itself to the burden; the head\nis no longer borne so high, the proud neck bends to the curb, and\nthough the stride be shortened, the dashing, bird-like buoyancy gone\nfor ever, a gentle, docile temper has taken its place, with sufficient\ncourage and endurance for all reasonable requirements left. Neither\nanimal, indeed, is ever so brilliant again; but thus it is that both\nbecome steady, plodding, useful creatures, fit to perform honestly and\nquietly their respective duties in creation.\n\nWe think we know a great deal in England of athletics, pedestrianism,\nand the art of training in general. It may astonish us to learn how a\nChinese postman gets himself into condition for the work he has to do.\nThe Celestials, it would appear, like meaner mortals, are extremely\nparticular, not to say fidgety, about the due transmission of their\ncorrespondence. Over that vast empire extend postal arrangements,\nconducted, I believe, as in our own country, by some mandarin of high\nrank, remarkable for their regularity and efficiency. The letters\ntravel at a uniform rate of more than seven English miles an hour; and\nas they are conveyed by runners on foot, often through thinly-populated\ndistricts in which it is impossible to establish frequent relays,\nthe pedestrian capabilities of these postmen are of the greatest\nimportance. This is how a Chinaman prepares himself to accomplish his\nthirty miles in less than four hours.\n\nHe has a quantity of bags constructed which he disposes over his whole\nperson, like Queen Mab\u2019s pinches\u2014\n\n    \u201cArms, legs, back, shoulders, sides, and shins.\u201d\n\nInto these he dribbles handfuls of flour before he starts for walking\nexercise, increasing the quantity little by little every day till\nthe bags are quite full, and he carries clinging to every part of\nhis body several pounds of dead weight, nor considers himself fit\nfor his situation till he can move under it with the freedom and\nelasticity of a naked man. He will then tell you that, on throwing off\nhis self-imposed burden, he finds all his muscles so invigorated by\ntheir own separate labours, his strength so stimulated, his wind so\nclear, his condition so perfect, that he shoots away over the plains,\nmountains, and tea-gardens of the Flowery Land less like John Chinaman\nwith a letter-bag than an arrow from a bow. What would our old friend\nCaptain Barclay, of peripatetic memory, say to such a system as this?\n\nI doubt if the Chinaman\u2019s theory of training be founded on sound\nprinciples; but I am quite sure that in bearing our moral burden we\ncannot dispose it over too extended a surface, or in too many separate\nparcels. I see fathers of families carrying surprising weights, such\nas make the bachelor\u2019s hair stand on end from sheer dismay, with a\nbuoyancy of step and carelessness of demeanour only to be accounted for\nby an equal distribution of pressure over the entire victim. A man who\nhas his own business to attend to, his domestic affairs to regulate,\nhalf-a-dozen hungry children to feed, and a couple of poor relations or\nso to assist with sympathy, counsel, and occasional aid, finds no time\nto dwell upon any one difficulty, no especial inconvenience from any\none burden, because each has its fellow and its counterpoise elsewhere.\nIt is not only in pharmacy that the principle of counter-irritation\nproduces beneficial results. A man with two grievances never pities\nhimself so much as a man with one; and a man with half-a-dozen treats\nthem all with a good-humoured indifference little removed from positive\nsatisfaction.\n\nSome people even appear to glory in the multitude of their afflictions,\nas though the power to sustain so much ill-luck shed a certain\nreflected lustre on themselves. I recollect, long ago, meeting an old\ncomrade hanging about the recruiting taverns in Westminster. The man\nwas a clean, smart, active, efficient non-commissioned officer enough,\nwith the average courage and endurance of the British dragoon. A year\nbefore I had parted with him, languid, unhappy, and depressed, longing\nonly to return to England but not yet under orders for home. Now he\nlooked cheerful, contented, almost radiant. I stopped to inquire after\nhis welfare.\n\n\u201cI landed a fortnight ago, sir,\u201d said he, with something of triumph in\nhis voice, \u201cand a happy home I found waiting for me! I haven\u2019t a friend\nor a relation left in the world. My father\u2019s absconded, my mother\u2019s\ndead, my brother-in-law\u2019s ruined, and my sister gone into a mad-house!\u201d\n\nIt sounded melancholy enough, yet I felt convinced the man reaped some\nunaccountable consolation from his pre-eminence in misfortune, admired\nhis own endurance, and was proud of his power to carry so heavy a\nweight.\n\nCustom, no doubt, in these as in all other inflictions, will do much to\nlighten the load. There is a training of the mind, as of the body, to\nbear and to endure. With wear and tear the heart gets hardened like the\nmuscles, and the feelings become blunted by ill-usage, just as the skin\ngrows callous on an oarsman\u2019s hands. There is some shadow of truth in\nthe fallacious story of him who carried a calf every day till it became\na cow. None of us know what we can do till we try; and there are few\nbut would follow the example of the patient camel, and refuse to rise\nfrom the sand, if they knew how heavy a weight is to be imposed on them\nere they can reach the longed-for diamond of the desert, gushing and\nglittering amongst the palms! It is fortunate for us that the packages\nare not all piled up at once. Little by little we accustom ourselves to\nthe labour as we plod sullenly on with the tinkling caravan, ignorant,\ntill too late to turn back, of the coming hardships, the endless\njourney, or the many times that cruel _mirage_ must disappoint our\nfainting, thirsting spirits ere we reach the welcome resting-place\nwhere the cool spring bubbles through its fringe of verdure\u2014where\nwe shall drink our fill of those life-bestowing waters, and stretch\nourselves out at last for long, unbroken slumbers under the \u201cshadow of\na great rock in a weary land.\u201d\n\nBut the worst method of all in which to carry our load is to build it\nup on the pack-saddle so as to attract notice and commiseration from\nthose who travel alongside. The Turkish _hamals_, indeed, may be seen\nstaggering about Constantinople under enormous bales of merchandise,\ntwice the height and apparently three times the weight of the herculean\nbearer; but a Turkish _hamal_, notwithstanding his profession, ignores\nthe meaning of a sore back, moral or physical. Other jades may wince,\nbut, under all circumstances, you may swear _his_ withers are unwrung.\nTo be sure, the first article of his creed is resignation. Fatalism\nlulls him like opium, though, kinder than that pernicious drug, it\nleaves no torment of reaction to succeed its soothing trance. Hard\nwork, hard fare, hard bed, hard words, hard lines in general, a\ntropical sun and the atmosphere of a jungle, it is all in the day\u2019s\nwork with _him_! _Backsheesh_ he will accept with a smile if he can get\nit, or he will do without, consoling himself that it is _kismet_, for\n\u201cThere is one God, and Mahomet is His prophet.\u201d With this philosopher,\nindeed, \u201ca contented mind is a perpetual feast,\u201d otherwise how could\nhe sustain his stalwart proportions on a morsel of black bread and\na slice of watermelon? His dissipations, too, are mild as his daily\nmeals. A screw of weak tobacco, folded in a paper cigarette, wraps him\nin a foretaste of his anticipated paradise; a mouthful of thick, black,\nbitter coffee stands him in lieu of beer, porter, half-and-half, early\npurl, blue ruin, and dog\u2019s-nose. Once a week, or maybe once a month,\nhe goes to the bath for two hours of uninterrupted enjoyment, emerging\nhealthy, happy, refreshed, and clean as a new pin.\n\nPerhaps it is his frugal, temperate life, perhaps it is his calm,\nacquiescent disposition, that enables him thus to carry weight so\ncomplacently. He never fights under it, not he! Through the narrow\nlanes of Stamboul, across the vibrating wooden bridge of the Golden\nHorn, up the filthy stairs, not streets, of Pera, he swings along with\nregulated step and snorting groans, delivered in discordant cadence\nat each laborious footfall; but he carries his weight, that is the\ngreat point\u2014he carries a great deal of it, and he carries it remarkably\nwell\u2014an example of humility and patience to the Christian who employs\nhim, an object of comparison, not much in favour of the latter, between\nthe votaries of the Crescent and the Cross.\n\nWhen I protest, however, against making a display and a grievance of\nthe load you have to bear, I am far from maintaining that you are to\nkeep it a profound secret, and hide it away in unsuitable places under\nyour clothes. A man can carry a hundred-weight on his shoulders with\nless inconvenience than a few pounds about his heart. If you doubt\nthis, order cold plum-pudding for luncheon, and you will be convinced!\nA secret, too, is always a heavy substance to take abroad with you, and\nyour own seems to incommode you more than another\u2019s, probably because\nyou are less indifferent about letting it fall. As for attempting to\ndance lightly along with the jaunty air of an unweighted novice, be\nassured the effort is not only painful but ridiculous. No, never be\nashamed of your burden, not even though your own folly should have\nclapped an additional half-hundred on the top of it. Get your shoulders\nwell under the heaviest part, walk as upright as you may, but do not\ntry to swagger; and if you have a friend who likes you well enough to\ngive his assistance, let him catch hold at one end, and so between you\nmove on with it the best way you can.\n\nSome packages grow all the lighter, like a contraband trunk at the\nDouane, for being weighed and examined, or, as our neighbours call it,\n\u201cpierced and plumbed.\u201d Some again gather increased proportions when we\nenlarge upon them; but it is only those of which we dare not speak,\nthose which no friend must seem to see, for which no brother must offer\na hand, that sink our failing strength, that crush us down humbled and\nhelpless in the mire. There is but one place for such burdens as these,\nand we never lay them there till we have tried everything else in vain;\njust as we offer the remnants of a life from which we expect no more\npleasure, where we ought to have given all the promise and vigour of\nour youth, or take an aching, hopeless, worn-out heart back to our only\nfriend, as the crying child runs to its parent with a broken toy.\n\n    \u201cThe ox toils through the furrow,\n      Obedient to the goad;\n     The patient ass up flinty paths\n      Plods with its weary load,\u201d\n\nsays Macaulay in his glorious _Lays of Ancient Rome_, and something in\nthe nature of both these animals fits them especially for the endurance\nof labour and the imposition of weight. It is well for a man when he\nhas a little of the bovine repose of character, a good deal of the\nasinine thickness of skin and insensibility to hard usage. Such a\ndisposition toils on contentedly enough, obedient indeed to the goad\nso far as moderately to increase the staid solemnity of his gait,\ntaking the flinty path and the weary load as necessary conditions of\nlife, with a serene equanimity for which he has the philosophical\nexample of the ass! The ways are rough, you know, and the journey long.\nDepend upon it these animals arrive at its termination with less wear\nand tear, more safety, and even more despatch, than the sensitive,\nhigh-spirited, and courageous horse, wincing from the lash, springing\nto the voice, striving, panting, sweating, straining every muscle to\nget home.\n\nIn the parable of the _Ancient Mariner_\u2014for is it not indeed the\nwildest, dreamiest, and most poetical of parables?\u2014you remember the\nhopelessness of the weight he carried when\n\n    \u201cInstead of the cross the albatross\n     About his neck was hung.\u201d\n\nIt was not his misfortune, you see, but his crime that bore him\ndown. Its consciousness lay far heavier on his spirit than did his\nafter-punishment, when, weary and desolate, he wailed that he was\n\n    \u201cAlone, alone, all, all alone,\n     Alone on a wide, wide sea,\n     And never a saint took pity on\n     My soul in agony.\u201d\n\nThe saints, indeed, might not have heard him; how do we know about\nthat? but he _was_ heard nevertheless, and thus he got rid of his\nburden to raise his head once more in the face of heaven.\n\nHe looked upon beauty, nature, animate life, the wonders of the deep,\nthe creatures of his Maker, and \u201cblessed them unaware!\u201d\n\nEnough. The hideous dream vanishes, the unholy spell is broken, and he\ncries exulting\u2014\n\n    \u201cThat self-same moment I could pray,\n     And from my neck so free\n     The albatross fell off, and sunk\n     Like lead into the sea.\u201d\n\nI sometimes think that women bear their burdens with less apparent\nstruggle, less toil or complaint than men; and this although they\nown more of the horse\u2019s anxious temperament than the sluggish nature\nof the ox and the ass. If they have less \u201cnerve\u201d than ourselves\u2014less\nof the coolness which springs from constitutional insensibility to\ndanger\u2014they have more of that mettlesome spirit which is sometimes\ncalled \u201cpluck,\u201d that indomitable courage which acknowledges no failure\nfor defeat, which never sleeps upon its post, which can bear up bravely\neven against the sickness and depression of unremitting pain. It is\nproverbial that in all phases of mere bodily suffering they show twice\nthe patience and twice the fortitude of the stronger sex; while who\nshall say how much of silent sorrow they can cherish and conceal in\ntroubled hearts while they go about their daily business with smiles on\ntheir gentle faces, with a tranquil, staid demeanour seeming to chant\nin soft, harmonious cadence the watchword of \u201cAll\u2019s Well!\u201d\n\nDo you not think they too keep their favourite skeletons (far less\nperfect than yourself) hoarded, hidden away, locked up, but not to be\nburied or forgotten for the worth of kingdoms? Do you suppose they\nnever bring them out to be hugged, and fondled, and worshipped, and\nwept over?\n\n    \u201cIn the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.\u201d\n\nBah! It is a world of shams. If a woman is not a hypocrite she must be\na stone!\n\nWe should give them greater credit though could we learn more of\nthe weights they have to carry. But their training is known only to\nthemselves; their trials come off in secret; the saddles they wear are\njealously locked up, and they take care to keep the key! I think the\nreason they run so kindly is that they apply themselves very frequently\nto the last resource of the Ancient Mariner when he saw no escape from\nhis punishment, when he was overweighted with his curse.\n\nI know not: I only know that the quiet courage, the generous spirit,\nthe untiring endurance with which they perform the journey of life is\ntoo generally ignored, unappreciated, and thrown away. How often have\nwe not seen a thorough-bred horse ridden by a butcher? a being little\nlower than an angel submitting, gentle and patient, to a creature\nlittle higher than a brute.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nSHADOWS\n\n\n\u201cComing events cast their shadows before,\u201d says a favourite adage of\nthat proverbial philosophy which is often so quaint and truthful,\nsometimes so contradictory and far-fetched. In the present instance\nthe maxim, I think, is contradicted by our individual convictions\nand general experience. For my own part I protest I am no believer\nin presentiments. That is a beautiful fiction of poetry, completely\nunsubstantiated by the prosaic events of life, which represents the\npredestined sufferer as one who\n\n    \u201cStill treads the shadow of his foe,\u201d\n\nwhile the arm of the avenger, uplifted though unseen, intercepts the\nlight of heaven ere yet its blow descends. Poets, no doubt, lay their\nfoundations on a basis of truth, but, as befits their profession, do\nnot scruple to raise a superstructure in magnificent disproportion to\nthe limits of their ground-plan. I will appeal to nine people out of\nevery ten whose lot it has been to sustain severe affliction\u2014and I\nthink it is nearly nine-tenths of the human race\u2014whether they have not\nfound themselves staggered or prostrated by blows as sudden as they\nwere overwhelming; whether the dagger has not always been a more deadly\nweapon than the sword, the marksman behind the hedge a more fatal enemy\nthan the battery on its eminence, the hidden reef a worse disaster than\nthe adverse gale, and whether their hopes, their happiness, or their\nfortunes, have not failed them at the very moment when the false waves\nsmiled serenely at the calm skies overhead\u2014\n\n    \u201cLike ships that on a summer sea\n     Have gone down sailing tranquilly.\u201d\n\nNo; these forthcoming shadows need not disturb our repose. They owe\ntheir origin neither to heart nor brain, but proceed from liver, and I\nshould think must be quite unknown to him who \u201clives on sixpence a day\nand earns it!\u201d\n\nWhat a life we should lead if we could look an inch before our noses!\nOf all curses to humanity the bitterest would be the gift of foresight.\nI often think a man\u2019s progress towards his grave is like that of a\nsculler labouring up-stream, we will say from Richmond to Teddington\nLock. By taking the established and conventional course he avoids\ncollision with his kind and proceeds in comparative safety. By certain\nside-glances and general knowledge of the river, which we may compare\nto the warnings of experience and the reasonings of analogy, he obtains\nan inkling, far removed from certainty, of much approaching trouble\nto which his back is turned. By observing the track of his own boat\nrippling the surface many a yard astern, he learns to guide his course,\njust as he would correct his conduct by the lessons of the past. Now\nthe stream runs hard against him, and he must work his way foot by foot\nwith honest, unremitting toil. Now he shoots along through slack water,\nmuch to his own content and self-approval, but under no circumstances,\nhowever formidable, must he completely relax his efforts, for the\ncurrent would soon float him back to the place from whence he came.\nMany a scene of beauty, many a lovely nook, and sunny lawn, and\nfairy palace glides by him as he goes\u2014fading, vanishing, shut out by\nthe intervening point, to leave but a memory of their attractions,\ndispelled in turn by ever-recurring beauties of meadow, wood, and water.\n\nSo he plods steadily on, accepting the labour, enjoying the pleasures\nof his trip, and nearing with every stroke the haven he is to reach at\nlast.\n\nHowever healthy and invigorating the toil, however varied and\ndelightful the passage, I think he will not be sorry to arrive at\nTeddington Lock, there to ship his oars, moor his boat under the\nwillows, and so, lulled by the murmur of the ever-flowing waters, with\nfolded arms, upturned face, and eyes wandering drowsily heavenwards,\nfall peacefully asleep.\n\nBut the shadows which cross our path to our greatest deception and\ndetriment are those for which we so willingly abandon the substances\nwhereof they are but the fading phantoms as the dog in the fable\ndropped a piece of meat out of his jaws to snatch a like morsel from\nthe other dog he saw reflected in the water. Every day men grasp at\nclouds as did Ixion, bartering eagerly for that which they know to be\nillusive, the solid joys and advantages of life. How many people in the\npossession of sufficient incomes deprive themselves of common comfort\nin an attempt to appear richer and more liberal than they really are!\nHow many forego the society of friends in which they find honest\npleasure for that of mere acquaintances with whom they have scarce a\nthought in common, because the latter, perhaps themselves sacrificed\nto the same illusion, move in a higher and more ostentatious class of\nsociety! With one the shadow is a reputation for wealth, with another\nfor taste. Here it is a house in Belgravia, there a villa on the\nThames; sometimes a position in the county, a seat in parliament, or a\npeerage long dormant in a race of squires.\n\nWhatever it may be, the pursuer follows it at the best speed he can\ncommand, finding, usually, that the faster he goes the faster it flies\nbefore him; and when he comes up with it at last to enfold the phantom\nin his longing embrace, behold it crumbles away to disappointment in\nhis very arms.\n\nI have seen Cerito dancing her famous shadow-dance; I have watched\na child following its own retreating figure, lengthened to gigantic\nproportions in an afternoon sun, with shouts of wonder and delight;\nI once observed, perhaps the prettiest sight of the three, a\nthorough-bred foal gallop up to some park-palings, to wince and scour\naway from the distorted representation of a race-horse it met there,\nin the wild, graceful freedom of a yet unbridled youth; and I have\nthought of the many shadows that lure us all, between the cradle and\nthe grave, only to impose on us in their fullest signification the\ndifferent sentiments of disbelief, dis-illusion, and disgust. When\nPeter Schlemihl made his ill-advised bargain with the devil, that\nshrewd purchaser quietly rolled up his victim\u2019s shadow and put it in\nhis own pocket. When Michael Scott, in the completion of his education\nat Padua, had mastered certain intricacies of the black art, his\nfellow-students observed to their consternation that while they walked\nin the college gardens with the wise north-countryman,\n\n    \u201cHis form no darkening shadow cast\n     Athwart the sunny wall.\u201d\n\nThe first step in supernatural learning, the first condition for the\nattainment of superhuman power, seems to have been the dismissal of so\ninconvenient and unmeaning an appurtenance as a shadow.\n\nHow many people have I known, and these not the least endearing and\ncapable of their kind, over whose whole life the shadow of a memory,\nthough growing fainter day by day, has yet been dark enough to throw a\ngloom that the warmest rays of friendship and affection were powerless\nto dispel! Sometimes, indeed, that darkness seems dearer to them than\nthe glories of the outer world; sometimes, and this is the hardest fate\nof all, they cling to it the closer that they feel the illusion has\nbeen to them a more reliable possession than the reality. There is a\nworld of tender longing, bitter experience, and sad, suggestive pathos\nin Owen Meredith\u2019s lament\u2014\n\n    \u201cHow many a night \u2019neath her window have I walked in the wind and\n       the rain,\n     Only to look on her shadow fleet over the lighted pane!\n     Alas! \u2019twas the shadow that rested\u2014\u2019twas _herself_ that fleeted,\n       you see\u2014\n     And now I am dying\u2014I know it! Dying\u2014and where is she?\u201d\n\nThe shadow he had worshipped so fondly was not more fleeting than the\ndream on which he had anchored a man\u2019s honest hopes, and wasted a\nman\u2019s generous, unsuspecting heart.\n\nThen we see our shadows at points of view so peculiar to ourselves, in\nlights that so distort and disguise their proportions, it is no wonder\nif for us they become phantoms of formidable magnitude and overpowering\naspect. The demon of the Hartz Mountains is said to be nothing more\nthan the reflection or shadow of the traveller\u2019s own person, as seen\nunder certain abnormal conditions of refraction against a morning or\nevening sky. Such demons most of us keep of our own, and we take care\nnever to look at them but at the angle which magnifies them out of all\nreasonable proportions. When you see mine and I yours, each of us is\nsurprised at the importance attached to his spectral illusion by the\nother. Yours seems to me a diminutive and contemptible little devil\nenough; and doubtless, although you never may have entertained a high\nopinion of my mental powers or moral force of character, both are\nfallen fifty per cent. in your estimation since you have been brought\nface to face with the bugbear by which they are overridden and kept\ndown. If we could but change shadows we should both of us get back into\nthe sun. Alas! that all the magic art of Michael Scott himself would\nfail to effect such a trick of legerdemain. Alas! that we must bear as\nbest we can, each for himself, the gloomy presence that makes us so\ndull of cheer, so sad of countenance, and so cold about the heart.\n\nMen adopt a great many different methods to get rid of their respective\nshadows, approximating more or less to the conclusive plan of Peter\nSchlemihl aforesaid, who sold his outright to the devil. Some try to\nlose it amongst a crowd of fellow-creatures, all with the same familiar\nattendants of their own; others struggle with it in solitude, and find\nthemselves halting and maimed after the conflict, like him who wrestled\nof old with the angel at Penuel \u201cuntil the breaking of the day.\u201d One\nthinks to stifle his tormentor in business, another to lull him with\npleasure, a third to drown him in wine. None of these remedies seem to\nanswer the purpose desired. Blue-books, bankers\u2019 books, betting-books\nare unable to break the spell; over the pages of each he throws the\nall-pervading gloom. Neither is he to be worsted by the gleam of many\ncandles flashing only less brightly than the sparkle of Beauty\u2019s\njewels and the lustre of her soft eyes in \u201challs of dazzling light.\u201d\nOn the contrary, it is here that, maybe from the force of contrast, he\nasserts his power with the greatest determination, coming out, as is\nbut natural, under the vivid glare thrown on him in a stronger and more\nuncompromising relief. To steep him in wine is often but to increase\nhis dimensions out of all reasonable proportions, and at best only gets\nrid of him for a night that he may return in the morning refreshed and\ninvigorated to vindicate his sovereignty over the enfeebled rebel he\ncontrols. There are means of dispelling the darkness, no doubt, but I\nfear they are not to be found in the resources of study, certainly not\nin the distractions of dissipation nor the feverish delirium of vice.\nIt must be a warm, genial, and unusually generous disposition which is\nnot warped and dwarfed by a shadow cast upon it in youth, or indeed at\nany period of life; but for animate as for inanimate nature there are\nblack frosts as well as white. The latter evaporate with the morning\nsun in light wreaths of vapour and perhaps a few tears sparkling like\ndiamonds, to be succeeded by brilliant sunshine, unclouded till the\nclose of its short winter\u2019s day; the former, grim, grey, and lowering,\nparch and wither up the life of every green thing, drawing her shroud,\nas it were, over the cold dead face of earth ere she is buried in the\ndarkness of approaching night.\n\nIt is hard upon youth to see its rosy morning overcast by the shadow;\nbut it has many hours yet to look forward to before noon, and can\nafford to wait for brighter weather. Far more cruelly does age feel the\nwithdrawal of that light it had trusted in to cheer its declining day;\na light it can never hope to welcome again, because long ere the shadow\nshall be withdrawn from the chilled and weary frame, its sun will have\ngone down for ever into the ocean of eternity.\n\nPeople talk a great deal about that physical impossibility which they\nare pleased to term \u201ca broken heart\u201d; and the sufferer who claims their\nsympathy under such an abnormal affliction is invariably a young person\nof the gentler sex. I have no doubt in my own mind, nevertheless, that\na severe blow to the fortunes, the self-esteem, the health or the\naffections, is far more severely felt after forty than before thirty;\nand yet who ever heard of an elderly gentleman breaking his heart? Any\nthing else you please\u2014his word, his head, his waistcoat-strings, or\neven his neck, but his heart! Why, the assumption is ludicrous. If you\nconsult the statistics of suicide, however, you will be surprised to\nfind in how many instances this most reckless of crimes is committed\nby persons of mature age, though it is strange that those whose span\nin the course of nature is likely to be so short should think it worth\nwhile to curtail it with their own hand. There is another shadow, too,\nwhich, apart from all finer feelings of the heart or intellect, has\na pernicious effect on our interests and welfare. It is cast by our\nown opaque substances when we persist in an inconvenient attitude,\ncommonly called \u201cstanding in our own light.\u201d Parents and guardians,\nthose who have the care of young people, generally are well aware\nof its irritating persistency and disagreeable consequences. It is\nprovoking to find all your efforts thwarted by the very person on whose\nbehalf they are made. After much trouble, and the eating of more dirt\nthan you can digest in comfort, you obtain for a lad a high stool in\na counting-house, an appointment to the Indian army, or a berth in a\nChinese merchantman, fondly hoping that in one way or another he is\nprovided for, and off your hands at last. But after a while behold\nhim back again, like a consignment of damaged goods! He has been too\nfast for the clerkship, too idle for the army, not sober enough for\nthe sea. With a fine chance and everything in his favour, he \u201cstood in\nhis own light,\u201d and must abide by the gloom he has himself made. Or\nperhaps, though this is a rarer case, because women\u2019s perceptions of\ntheir own interest are usually very keen, it is your Blanche, or your\nRose, or your Violet who thus disappoints the magnificent expectations\nyou have founded on her beauty, her youth, her eyes, her figure, and\nher general fascinations. The peer with his unencumbered estate and\nhis own personal advantages would have proposed to a certainty, was\nonly waiting for an opportunity\u2014he told his sister so\u2014when that last\nten minutes at croquet with Tom, those half-dozen extra rounds in the\ncotillon with Harry, scared this shy bird from the decoy, and he went\noff to Melton in disgust. Rose, Blanche, or Violet \u201cstood in her own\nlight,\u201d and must be content for the rest of her career to burn tallow\ninstead of wax.\n\nThe shadows, however, which ladies preserve for their own private\nannoyance cast surprisingly little gloom over their pretty persons\nwhile they are before the world. A new dress, a coming ball, a\nrace-meeting, or a picnic, are sufficient to dispel them at a moment\u2019s\nnotice; and though doubtless when these palliatives are exhausted,\nwhen they put their candles out at night, the darkness gathers all the\nthicker for its lucid interval of distraction, it is always something\nto have got rid of it even for an hour.\n\nThat women feel very keenly, nobody who knows anything about them can\ndoubt. That they feel very _deeply_ is a different question altogether.\nIn some rare instances they may indeed be found, when the light they\nlove is quenched, to sit by preference in darkness for evermore; but as\na general rule the feminine organisation is thoroughly appreciative of\nthe present, somewhat forgetful of the past, and exceedingly reckless\nof the future.\n\nFor both sexes, however, there must in their course through life be\nshadows deep in proportion to the brilliancy of the sunshine in which\nthey bask. \u201cShall we receive good at the hand of God,\u201d says Job, \u201cand\nshall we not receive evil?\u201d thereby condensing into one pithy sentence\nperhaps the profoundest system of philosophy ever yet submitted to\nmankind. The evil always seems to us greater than the good, the\nshadows more universal than the sunshine; but with how little reason\nwe need only reflect for a moment to satisfy ourselves. There is a\ngleam in which we often fondly hope to dispel our shadows, delusive\nas the \u201cwill-o\u2019-the-wisp,\u201d a light \u201cthat never yet was seen on sea\nor shore,\u201d which is cruelly apt to lure us on reefs and quicksands,\nto guide us only to eventual shipwreck; but there is also a glimmer,\nfaint and feeble here, yet capable of dispelling the darkest shadows\nthat ever cross our path, which if we will only follow it truthfully\nand persistently for a very brief journey, shall cheer us heartily and\nguide us steadfastly till it widens and brightens into the glory of\neternal day.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nGUINEVERE\n\n\nAmongst all the works of our great poet, works in which criticism,\nsearching diligently for flaws, discovers every day new beauties,\nsurely this noble poem is the very crown and masterpiece.\n\nCompared even with the productions of his own genius, Guinevere always\nseems to me like a statue in the midst of oil-paintings. So lofty is it\nin conception, so grand in treatment, so fair, so noble, so elevating,\nand yet so real. As the Californian digger in his \u201cprospect\u201d washes,\nand sifts, and searches, till from a mass of rubbish and impurities he\nseparates the nugget of virgin ore, so from the lavish confusion of\nrich material to be found in that collection of early romance called\n_La Morte d\u2019Arthur_, the Laureate has wrought out a poem precious\nin its own intrinsic merit as the purest metal that was ever beaten\ninto a crown of gold. One other has been over the same ground before\nhim, the great magician who with a wave of his wand has created for\nus gleaming blade and glittering hauberk, mail and plate, and managed\nsteeds caparisoned, lances shivered to the grasp, sweet pale faces\nlooking down on the mimic war beneath, and all the pomp, panoply, and\n_prestige_ of an ideal chivalry, when\n\n    \u201cThe champions, armed in martial sort,\n      Have thronged into the list,\n     And but three knights of Arthur\u2019s court\n      Are from the tourney missed.\n     And still those lovers\u2019 fame survives\n      For faith so constant shown;\n     There were two that loved their neighbours\u2019 wives,\n      And one that loved his own.\u201d\n\nAlas! that the very first of these in arms, in courtesy, in personal\nadvantages, and, but for the one foul blot, in honourable fame, should\nhave been Lancelot de Lac, the ornament of chivalry. Alas! that the\nlady of his guilty love should have been that\n\n    \u201cFlower of all the west and all the world,\u201d\n\nwhose rightful place was on the bosom of \u201cthe stainless king.\u201d\n\nTheir fatal passion, that grew so insensibly in those fair May-days\nlong ago, when the pair\n\n    \u201cRode under groves that looked a paradise\n     Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth,\n     That seemed the heavens upbreaking thro\u2019 the earth,\u201d\n\nhas struck root now, deep, deep in the hearts of both, and spreading\nlike the deadly upas-tree, has blighted every other sentiment and\naffection beneath its shade. There is no happiness for Lancelot without\nGuinevere, no sweetness in the breath of evening nor speculation in the\nstars of night, no gladness in the summer, no glamour in the greenwood,\nno glory in the day. Her whisper lurks in the hollow of his helmet\nwhen he shouts his war-cry, her image rouses his desire for fame, and\npoints his trusty lance. But for the keen, unholy stimulant his arm\nwould be nerveless and his courage dull, while all the time\n\n    \u201cThe great and guilty love he bare the queen,\n     In battle with the love he bare his lord,\n     Hath marred his face, and marked it ere his time.\u201d\n\nYes, there is retribution even here for the sweet, seductive sin. \u201cThe\nworm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched,\u201d begin their work\nlong ere the cup has been emptied of its tempting poison; and the one\ngnaws fiercer, the other burns deeper, in proportion to the capability\nof good from which the sinner has fallen\u2014in proportion to the truth and\ntenderness of the tortured heart that seems meant for better things.\n\nAnd Guinevere. Who can fathom that woman\u2019s anguish, her shame, her\nself-reproach, her bitter, hopeless remorse, for whom the holy plighted\nlove that should have made her shield, her honour, and her happiness\nthrough life, has been pierced, and shattered, and defiled by that\nother love which drags her to perdition, and to which she yet clings\ncloser and closer with a warped instinct of womanly fidelity for the\nvery sorrow and suffering it entails? The sense of personal degradation\nis perhaps the least of her punishment, for it is her nature when she\nloves to merge her own identity in another; but what of her children,\nif she have any? How can she bear the clear, guileless faces, the\nlittle hands clasped in prayer on her knee, the loving, trustful eyes\nof those simple believers to whom she, the sinner, is in the place\nof God? Many a woman, hesitating and hovering on the very brink of\nruin, has been withheld by the tiny clasp of an infant\u2019s hand. If that\nlast chance should have failed her, such failure has been ever after\nthe heaviest and least endurable of the penalties she has brought on\nherself.\n\nBut she may be childless, she may be spared the bitter pain of\nestrangement from those who are indeed part and parcel of her being.\nWhat, then, of her husband? The man whom once she believed she\nloved, who has cherished her, trusted her, given up for her sake\nmany of the realities and all the illusions of life, whose care has\nsurrounded her so constantly every day and all day long, that, like\nthe air she breathes, she can only be made sensible of its existence\nwhen withdrawn, whose indulgence was perhaps so unvaried as to escape\nnotice, whose affection, expressed by deeds, not words, she has\nforgotten because it has not been repeated, like that other love, in\nburning whispers every hour. So she not only strikes him a deadly\nblow, such as his bitterest enemy would scarce deal in fair fight,\nbut poisons her weapon besides, and leaves it sticking in the wound\nto burn and rankle and fester, that every passing hand in careless\njest or wanton outrage may inflict on him mortal agony at will. Once,\nperhaps, she was proud of that brave, kind face, which she could not\nimagine blanched by fear nor clouded with shame. Can she bear to think\nof it now, quivering at the chance allusion of every idle tongue,\nwarped into agony, like that of a man shot through the lungs, when\nher own name is spoken, purposely or otherwise, by some impertinent\ngossip or some rancorous, ungenerous foe? His sorrow has become a jest;\nthat offence will soon pass away to make room for fresher scandal. His\nhome is broken up; he can make himself another. The woman he loved has\nleft him, yet there are plenty more as fond and fair ready to pity and\nconsole; but his trust is broken, and not even in an angel from heaven\ncan he believe again. This is the worst injury of all. The strongest,\nthe purest, the noblest of earthly motives to well-doing has failed\nhim, and from henceforth the man is but a lamp without a light, a\nwatch without a mainspring, a body without a soul. It is well for him\nnow if he have some lofty aspiration, some great and generous object,\nto lift him out of his depth of sorrow, to rouse him from his apathy\nof despair. Thus only can he wrestle with the demon that has entered\ninto his heart, thus only cast him out and, trampling on him, so rise\nto a higher sphere than that from which he has been dragged down. In\nself-sacrifice and self-devotion he shall find the talisman to set him\nfree, not at once, but, like other permanent results, gradually and\nin the lapse of time; so, mounting step by step and gaining strength\nas he ascends, he shall look down from the unassailable heights of\nforgiveness on the lesser souls that can never reach to wound him\nnow\u2014forgiveness, free, complete, and unconditional as that which he\nhimself pleads for from his God.\n\nAnd here it is that the character of Arthur, as drawn by Tennyson,\nexemplifies the noblest type of Christianity, chivalry, and manhood\nwith which we are acquainted in the whole range of fiction. Poetry has\nyet to disclose to us a more godlike, more elevating sentiment than the\nking\u2019s pardon to his guilty and repentant wife. It breathes the very\nessence of all those qualities which humanity, at best \u201ca little lower\nthan the angels,\u201d is ever striving unsuccessfully to attain. There is\ncourage, abiding by the award of its own conscience, and appealing\nto a higher tribunal than the verdict of its kind; there is contempt\nfor consequences; there is scrupulous, unswerving persistence in the\npath of duty, such as constitutes the soldier and the hero; there is\nlarge-hearted, far-seeing benevolence, that weighs its own crushed\nhappiness and blighted life but as dust in the balance against the\nwell-being of its fellows. Above all, there is that grand trust in a\nbetter world and an immortal identity, without which man, despite his\nstrength of will and pride of intellect, were little superior to the\nbeasts of the field. Such is the diapason, so to speak, of this mighty\nmarch of feeling\u2014the march of an unconquered spirit and a kingly soul;\nwhile through it all, ever present, though ever modulated and kept\ndown, runs the wild, mournful accompaniment, the wail of a kindly,\ntortured heart, of a love that can never die\u2014\n\n    \u201cAnd in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk\n     Thy shadow still would glide from room to room,\n     And I should evermore be vext with thee,\n     In hanging robe\u2014or vacant ornament,\n     Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair.\n     For think not, though thou wouldst not love thy lord,\n     Thy lord has wholly lost his love for thee.\n     I am not made of such slight elements.\n     Yet must I leave thee, woman, to thy shame.\u201d\n\nHow wonderful, how exhaustive, and how practical seems the familiarity\nof great poets with the niceties and workings of the human heart! It\nhas been said of them, prettily enough, that\n\n    \u201cThey learn in suffering what they teach in song.\u201d\n\nGod forbid! If it were so, their lot would indeed be unenviable; and\nwhat an eternity of torture would such a genius as Byron, or Shelley,\nor Tennyson himself have condensed into a single life! No, theirs must\nbe rather the intuitive knowledge that springs from sympathy with\nall things, animate and inanimate, in summer and winter, in light\nand darkness, in sorrow and in joy\u2014a sympathy receiving freely as it\ngives, and thus cozening them out of nine-tenths of their own private\nsorrows, which such finer temperaments as theirs would otherwise be too\nsensitive to endure.\n\nThe wide scope of this sympathy, the facility with which genius can\nhandle extreme contrasts of the same passion with equal skill, is, I\nthink, finely exemplified in the two poems of \u201cMaud\u201d and \u201cGuinevere.\u201d\nI have already compared the latter to an exquisite piece of sculpture.\nThe former seems to me like a wild, fanciful, highly-coloured painting,\nin which some true artist has striven to embody the unattainable\nconceptions of a dream. Was ever colouring mixed on palette more vivid\nand glowing than this description of a lover waiting for his mistress\nin her garden\u2014\n\n    \u201cThere falls a splendid tear\n      From the passion-flower at the gate;\n     She is coming\u2014my dove, my dear!\n      She is coming\u2014my life, my fate!\n     The red rose cries, She is near\u2014she is near!\n      The white rose weeps,\u2014She is late!\n     The larkspur listens,\u2014I hear\u2014I hear!\n      And the lily whispers,\u2014I wait!\u201d\n\nIs there not in these lines, besides grace, sentiment, pathos,\ntenderness, a wealth of pictorial fancy, such as Landseer himself has\nnot outdone in his magical representation of clown and elves and stars\nand flowers grouped round Titania in Fairyland?\n\nAs in \u201cclear-faced Arthur\u201d is rendered the ideal dignity of love, so\nin Maud\u2019s hapless suitor we find exemplified its mad enthusiasm and\npassion. With both, self is unhesitatingly sacrificed to the welfare\nof another. When the fatal shot has been fired, and the exile faces\na foreign shore in utter hopelessness that he shall ever look on\nthe face he loves again, the pity for himself that cannot but chill\nhis sorrowing heart merges in anxiety and tenderness for Maud. Even\nnow\u2014perhaps now more than ever\u2014in grief, danger, and privation, his\nfirst thought flies to the idol for whom he has built his life into a\nthrone, that she may reign there unrivalled and supreme. May _his_ be\nthe shame, the sorrow, and the suffering!\u2014such is his wild, pathetic\nprayer\u2014and let the treasure of his heart go free. If there be danger,\nlet it lower round _his_ unprotected head. If there be punishment, let\n_him_ bear it for both! Ay, though she may never reward him for it,\nnever even know it; for in this world these two are surely parted not\nto meet again. What of that? She is still his queen\u2014his goddess\u2014his\nlove\u2014the aim of his existence, the darling of his care.\n\n    \u201cComfort her, comfort her, all things good,\n        While I am over the sea;\n     Let me and my passionate love go by,\n     But speak to her all things holy and high,\n        Whatever happen to me.\n     Me and my harmful love go by,\n     But come to her waking, or find her asleep,\n     Powers of the height, powers of the deep,\n        And comfort her though I die.\u201d\n\nSurely this is the pure, unadulterated metal. Alas! that it should\nsometimes lack the glitter of that counterfeit which women grasp at so\neagerly in preference to the true gold. So, in extremity of danger,\nshattered in battle against the chosen friend and comrade whose\ntreachery was only less galling to his noble heart than the disloyalty\nof his queen, beset by\n\n                \u201cThe godless hosts\n    Of heathen swarming o\u2019er the Northern sea,\u201d\n\nstern old foes of himself and Christendom, erst by prowess of that\n\u201cglorious company,\u201d\n\n                    \u201cThe Table Round,\n    In twelve great battles ruining overthrown,\u201d\n\nnow panting for reprisal and revenge, menaced with open rebellion by\na sister\u2019s son, his army melting, his adherents failing, his sceptre\nsliding from his grasp, Arthur can yet provide tenderly and carefully\nfor her safety who has brought down on him all this shame, ruin, and\ndefeat.\n\n    \u201cAnd many more when Modred raised revolt,\n     Forgetful of their troth and fealty, clave\n     To Modred, and a remnant stays with me.\n     And of this remnant will I leave a part\u2014\n     True men who love me still, for whom I live\u2014\n     To guard thee in the wild hour coming on;\n     Lest but a hair of this low head be harmed.\n     Fear not: thou shalt be guarded till my death.\u201d\n\nWell might the Queen, when he had passed from her sight for ever,\nreflect bitterly on the comparative merits of lover and husband,\nhaving, like all such women, proved to extremity of torture the\ndevotion of both.\n\n    \u201cI wanted warmth and colour, which I found\n     In Lancelot. Now I see thee what thou art\u2014\n     Thou art the highest, and most human, too,\n     Not Lancelot, nor another.\u201d\n\nCould she but have seen him as he really was in the golden days long\nago, when her court formed the centre of all that was bravest and\nfairest in the world of Christendom, when her life seemed one long\nholiday of dance and revel in the lighted halls of Camelot, of tilt\nand tournament and pageantry of mimic war, held in honour of her own\npeerless beauty, in the Lists of Caerleon, of horn and hound and\nrushing chase and willing palfrey speeding over the scented moors\nof Cornwall, or through the sunny glades of Lyonesse, of sweet May\nmornings when she went forth fresh and lovely, fairer than the very\nsmile of spring, amongst her courtiers, all\n\n    \u201cGreen-suited, but with plumes that mocked the may,\u201d\n\nto walk apart, nevertheless, with flushing cheek and eyes cast down,\nwhile she listened to _his_ whispers, whose voice was softer and\nsweeter than fairy music in her ears! Could she but have known then\nwhere to seek her happiness and find it! Alas! that we see things so\ndifferently in different lights and surroundings\u2014in serge and velvet,\nin the lustre of revelry and the pale cold grey of dawn, in black\nDecember frosts and the rich glow of June. Alas for us, that so seldom,\ntill too late to take our bearings and avoid impending shipwreck, can\nwe make use of that fearful gift described by another great poet as\n\n                \u201cThe telescope of truth,\n    Which strips the distance of its fantasies,\n    And brings life near, in utter nakedness,\n    Making the cold reality too real!\u201d\n\nbut still _reality_, and, as such, preferable to all the baseless\nvisions of fancy, all the glitter and glamour and illusion of romance.\nWe mortals must have our dreams; doubtless it is for a good purpose\nthat they are so fair and sweet, that their duration is so short, the\nwaking from them so bitter and forlorn. But at last most of us find\nourselves disenchanted, weary, hopeless, memory-haunted, and seeking\nsanctuary after all, like Guinevere, when Lancelot had gone\n\n    \u201cBack to his land, but she to Almesbury\n     Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald,\n     And heard the spirits of the waste and weald\n     Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan,\u2014\n     And in herself she moaned\u2014\u2018Too late! too late!\u2019\u201d\n\nWhat a picture of desolation and despair! Mocking phantoms all about\nher, now gibing, now pitying, now goading her to the recklessness of\ndespair. Before her, darkness uncheered by a single beacon; behind\nher, the sun of life and love gone down to rise no more, and, lifting\nhelpless, hopeless eyes above,\n\n    \u201cA blot in heaven, the raven flying high.\u201d\n\nDeep must be the guilt for which such hours as these are insufficient\nto atone!\n\nBut the queen\u2019s penance hath only just begun, for the black drop is\nnot yet wrung out of her heart, and even in her cloister at Almesbury\nit is remorse rather than repentance that drives the iron into her\nsoul. As it invariably does in moments of extreme feeling, the\nmaster-passion takes possession of her once more, and \u201cmy Lancelot\u201d\ncomes back in all his manly beauty and his devoted tenderness, so\ntouching and so prized, that for him, too, it must make the sorrow\nof a lifetime. Again, she sees him in the lists, best, bravest, and\nknightliest lance of all the Round Table. Again, sitting fair and\ncourtly and gentle among dames in hall, his noble face none the less\nwinsome, be sure, to _her_, for that she could read on it the stamp of\nsorrow set there by herself as her own indelible seal.\n\nAgain she tastes the bitter torture of their parting agony, and her\nvery spirit longs only to be released that it may fly to him for ever,\nfar away in his castle beyond the sea.\n\nThis, with true dramatic skill, is the moment chosen by the poet for\nthe arrival of her injured, generous, and forgiving lord\u2014\n\n                \u201cWhile she brooded thus,\n    And grew half guilty in her thoughts again,\n    There rode an armed warrior to the doors.\u201d\n\nAnd now comes that grand scene of sorrow and penitence and pardon, for\nwhich this poem seems to me unequalled and alone.\n\nStanding on the brink of an uncertainty more ghastly than death, for\nsomething tells him that he is now to lead his hosts in his last\nbattle, and that the unearthly powers to whom he owes birth, fame, and\nkingdom, are about to reclaim him for their own, he stretches the hands\nof free forgiveness, as it were, from the other world.\n\nHow short, in the face of doom so imminent, so inevitable, appears that\nspan of life, in which so much has been accomplished! Battles have\nbeen fought, victories gained, a kingdom established, a bulwark raised\nagainst the heathen, an example set to the whole of Christendom, and\nyet it seems but yesterday\n\n    \u201cThey found a naked child upon the sands\n     Of wild Dundagil by the Cornish sea,\n     And that was Arthur.\u201d\n\nNow in the height of glory, in the fulfilment of duty, in the prime of\nmanhood, such sorrows have overtaken him, as must needs whisper their\nprophetic warning that his task is done, and it is time to go. _Where_,\nhe sees not, cares not. True to himself and his knighthood, he is ready\nnow, as always, to follow the path of honour, wherever it may lead, and\nmeet unflinching\n\n    \u201cDeath, or I know not what mysterious doom.\u201d\n\nArthur, dethroned, ruined, heart-broken, mortally wounded, and\nunhorsed, will be no less Arthur than when on Badon Hill he stood\n\n    \u201cHigh on a heap of slain, from spur to plume,\n     Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,\u201d\n\nand shouted victory with a great voice in the culminating triumph of\nhis glory.\n\n[Illustration: \u201c\u2018We two may meet before high God.\u2019\u201d\n\n  _Bones and I._]      [_Page 257_\n]\n\nFor him, too, at this supreme moment the master-passion asserts its\nsway, and even that great soul thrills to its centre with the love that\nhas been wasted for half a lifetime on her who is only now awaking to\na consciousness of its worth. He cannot leave her for ever without\nbidding farewell to his guilty queen. So riding through the misty\nnight to the convent where she has taken refuge, he looks his last in\nthis world on her from whom in his great loyalty of affection neither\nher past disgrace nor his own approaching death shall part him for\never. With that instinct of pure love which clings to a belief in\nits eternity, he charges her to cleanse her soul with repentance and\nsustain her hopes with faith, that\n\n    \u201cHereafter in that world where all are pure\n     We two may meet before high God, and thou\n     Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know\n     I am thine husband.\u201d\n\nThus, with all his soul flowing to his lips, this grand heroic nature\nblesses the guilty woman, grovelling in the dust, and moves off\nstately and unflinching to confront the doom of Fate.\n\nThen, true to the yearning nature of her sex, yearning ever with\nkeenest longings for the lost and the impossible, Guinevere leaps to\nher feet, the tide of a new love welling up in her wayward heart,\nfierce, cruel, and irresistible, because it must be henceforth utterly\nhopeless and forlorn. With her own hand she has put away her own\nhappiness; and what happiness it might have been she feels too surely,\nnow that no power on earth can ever make it hers again!\n\nOh! for one word more from the kind, forgiving voice! Oh! for one look\nin the brave, clear, guileless face! But no. It is never to be. Never,\nnever more! She rushes indeed to the casement, but Arthur is already\nmounted and bending from the saddle, to give directions for _her_\nsafety and _her_ comfort.\n\n             \u201cSo she did not see the face,\n    Which then was as an angel, but she saw\u2014\n    Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights\u2014\n    The dragon of the great Pendragon-ship\n    Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.\n    And even then he turned; and more and more\n    The moony vapours rolling round the king,\n    Who seemed the phantom of a giant in it,\n    Enwound him, fold by fold, and made him gray\n    And grayer, till himself became as mist\n    Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I like it better without your explanations and remarks,\u201d\nobserved Bones. \u201cThere is a proverb, my friend, about \u2018refined gold,\u2019\nand \u2018the lily,\u2019 that you would do well to remember. Hang it! man, do\nyou think nobody understands or appreciates poetry but yourself?\u201d\n\nPerhaps I have over-aired him lately; but it seems to me that Bones\nis a good deal \u201cabove himself.\u201d If I can only get him back into the\ncupboard, I have more than half a mind to lock him up for good and all.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n    RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,\n    LONDON & BUNGAY.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1]\n\n                              \u201cIf that\u2019s a fight indeed,\n    Where you strike hard, and I stand still and bleed.\u201d\n\n\n[2]\n\n    \u201cCogitat Ursidius, sibi dote jugare puellam,\n     Ut placeat domino, cogitat Ursidius.\u201d\n\n\n[3] A narrow board, on which provisions, etc. are packed, to be dragged\nthrough the woods on these expeditions in the snow.\n\n\n\n\n  Transcriber\u2019s Notes\n\n  pg 9 Changed: the value of \u201cthis here obserwation\n            to: the value of \u201cthis here observation","title":"Bones and I : $b or, the skeleton at home","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":42715}