Book: Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI
At length, dinner being fairly over, and the servants withdrawn, Lord
Vargrave, knowing that sooner or later Douce would have his say, drew his
chair to the fire, put his feet on the fender, and cried, as he tossed
off his claret, "NOW, DOUCE, WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?"
Mr. Douce opened his eyes to their full extent, and then as rapidly
closed them; and this operation he continued till, having snuffed them so
much that they could by no possibility burn any brighter, he was
convinced that he had not misunderstood his lordship.
"Indeed, then," he began, in his most frightened manner,
"indeed--I--really, your lordship is very good--I--I wanted to speak to
you on business."
"Well, what can I do for you,--some little favour, eh? Snug sinecure for
a favourite clerk, or a place in the Stamp-Office for your fat
footman--John, I think you call him? You know, my dear Douce, you may
command me."
"Oh, indeed, you are all good-good-goodness--but--but--"
Vargrave threw himself back, and shutting his eyes and pursing up his
mouth, resolutely suffered Mr. Douce to unbosom himself without
interruption. He was considerably relieved to find that the business
referred to related only to Miss Cameron.
Mr. Douce having reminded Lord Vargrave, as he had often done before, of
the wishes of his uncle, that the greater portion of the money bequeathed
to Evelyn should be invested in land, proceeded to say that a most
excellent opportunity presented itself for just such a purchase as would
have rejoiced the heart of the late lord,--a superb place, in the style
of Blickling,--deer-park six miles round, ten thousand acres of land,
bringing in a clear eight thousand pounds a year, purchase money only two
hundred and forty thousand pounds. The whole estate was, indeed, much
larger,--eighteen thousand acres; but then the more distant farms could
be sold in different lots, in order to meet the exact sum Miss Cameron's
trustees were enabled to invest.
"Well," said Vargrave, "and where is it? My poor uncle was after De
Clifford's estate, but the title was not good."
"Oh! this--is much--much--much fi-fi-finer; famous investment--but rather
far off--in--in the north, Li-Li-Lisle Court."
"Lisle Court! Why, does not that belong to Colonel Maltravers?"
"Yes. It is, indeed, quite, I may say, a secret-yes--really--a
se-se-secret--not in the market yet--not at all--soon snapped up."
"Humph! Has Colonel Maltravers been extravagant?"
"No; but he does not--I hear--or rather Lady--Julia--so I'm told, yes,
indeed--does not li-like--going so far, and so they spend the winter in
Italy instead. Yes--very odd--very fine place."
Lumley was slightly acquainted with the elder brother of his old
friend,--a man who possessed some of Ernest's faults,--very proud, and
very exacting, and very fastidious; but all these faults were developed
in the ordinary commonplace world, and were not the refined abstractions
of his younger brother.
Colonel Maltravers had continued, since he entered the Guards, to be
thoroughly the man of fashion, and nothing more. But rich and well-born,
and highly connected, and thoroughly _a la mode_ as he was, his pride
made him uncomfortable in London, while his fastidiousness made him
uncomfortable in the country. He was _rather_ a great person, but he
wanted to be a _very_ great person. This he was at Lisle Court; but that
did not satisfy him. He wanted not only to be a very great person, but a
very great person among very great persons--and squires and parsons bored
him. Lady Julia, his wife, was a fine lady, inane and pretty, who saw
everything through her husband's eyes. He was quite master _chez lui_,
was Colonel Maltravers! He lived a great deal abroad; for on the
Continent his large income seemed princely, while his high character,
thorough breeding, and personal advantages, which were remarkable,
secured him a greater position in foreign courts than at his own. Two
things had greatly disgusted him with Lisle Court,--trifles they might be
with others, but they were not trifles to Cuthbert Maltravers; in the
first place, a man who had been his father's attorney, and who was the
very incarnation of coarse unrepellable familiarity, had bought an estate
close by the said Lisle Court, and had, _horresco referens_, been made a
baronet! Sir Gregory Gubbins took precedence of Colonel Maltravers! He
could not ride out but he met Sir Gregory; he could not dine out but he
had the pleasure of walking behind Sir Gregory's bright blue coat with
its bright brass buttons. In his last visit to Lisle Court, which he had
then crowded with all manner of fine people, he had seen--the very first
morning after his arrival--seen from the large window of his state
saloon, a great staring white, red, blue, and gilt thing, at the end of
the stately avenue planted by Sir Guy Maltravers in honour of the victory
over the Spanish armada. He looked in mute surprise, and everybody else
looked; and a polite German count, gazing through his eye-glass, said,
"Ah! dat is vat you call a vim in your _pays_,--the vim of Colonel
Maltravers!"
This "vim" was the pagoda summer-house of Sir Gregory Gubbins, erected in
imitation of the Pavilion at Brighton. Colonel Maltravers was miserable:
the _vim_ haunted him; it seemed ubiquitous; he could not escape it,--it
was built on the highest spot in the county. Ride, walk, sit where he
would, the _vim_ stared at him; and he thought he saw little mandarins
shake their round little heads at him. This was one of the great curses
of Lisle Court; the other was yet more galling. The owners of Lisle
Court had for several generations possessed the dominant interest in the
county town. The colonel himself meddled little in politics, and was too
fine a gentleman for the drudgery of parliament. He had offered the seat
to Ernest, when the latter had commenced his public career; but the
result of a communication proved that their political views were
dissimilar, and the negotiation dropped without ill-feeling on either
side. Subsequently a vacancy occurred; and Lady Julia's brother (just
made a Lord of the Treasury) wished to come into parliament, so the
county town was offered to him. Now, the proud commoner had married into
the family of a peer as proud as himself, and Colonel Maltravers was
always glad whenever he could impress his consequence on his connections
by doing them a favour. He wrote to his steward to see that the thing
was properly settled, and came down on the nomination-day "to share the
triumph and partake the gale." Guess his indignation, when he found the
nephew of Sir Gregory Gubbins was already in the field! The result of
the election was that Mr. Augustus Gubbins came in, and that Colonel
Maltravers was pelted with cabbage-stalks, and accused of attempting to
sell the worthy and independent electors to a government nominee! In
shame and disgust, Colonel Maltravers broke up his establishment at Lisle
Court, and once more retired to the Continent.
About a week from the date now touched upon, Lady Julia and himself had
arrived in London from Vienna; and a new mortification awaited the
unfortunate owner of Lisle Court. A railroad company had been
established, of which Sir Gregory Gubbins was a principal shareholder;
and the speculator, Mr. Augustus Gubbins, one of the "most useful men in
the House," had undertaken to carry the bill through parliament. Colonel
Maltravers received a letter of portentous size, inclosing the map of the
places which this blessed railway was to bisect; and lo! just at the
bottom of his park ran a portentous line, which informed him of the
sacrifice he was expected to make for the public good,--especially for
the good of that very county town, the inhabitants of which had pelted
him with cabbage-stalks!
Colonel Maltravers lost all patience. Unacquainted with our wise
legislative proceedings, he was not aware that a railway planned is a
very different thing from a railway made; and that parliamentary
committees are not by any means favourable to schemes for carrying the
public through a gentleman's park.
"This country is not to be lived in," said he to Lady Julia; "it gets
worse and worse every year. I am sure I never had any comfort in Lisle
Court. I've a great mind to sell it."
"Why, indeed, as we have no sons, only daughters, and Ernest is so well
provided for," said Lady Julia, "and the place is so far from London, and
the neighbourhood is so disagreeable, I think we could do very well
without it."
Colonel Maltravers made no answer, but he revolved the pros and cons; and
then he began to think how much it cost him in gamekeepers and carpenters
and bailiffs and gardeners and Heaven knows whom besides; and then the
pagoda flashed across him; and then the cabbage-stalks, and at last he
went to his solicitor.
"You may sell Lisle Court," said he, quietly.
The solicitor dipped his pen in the ink. "The particulars, Colonel?"
"Particulars of Lisle Court! everybody, that is, every gentleman, knows
Lisle Court!"
"Price, sir?"
"You know the rents; calculate accordingly. It will be too large a
purchase for one individual; sell the outlying woods and farms separately
from the rest."
"We must draw up an advertisement, Colonel."
"Advertise Lisle Court! out of the question, sir. I can have no
publicity given to my intention: mention it quietly to any capitalist;
but keep it out of the papers till it is all settled. In a week or two
you will find a purchaser,--the sooner the better."
Besides his horror of newspaper comments and newspaper puffs, Colonel
Maltravers dreaded that his brother--then in Paris--should learn his
intention, and attempt to thwart it; and, somehow or other, the colonel
was a little in awe of Ernest, and a little ashamed of his resolution.
He did not know that, by a singular coincidence, Ernest himself had
thought of selling Burleigh.
The solicitor was by no means pleased with this way of settling the
matter. However, he whispered it about that Lisle Court was in the
market; and as it really was one of the most celebrated places of its
kind in England, the whisper spread among bankers and brewers and
soap-boilers and other rich people--the Medici of the New Noblesse rising
up amongst us--till at last it reached the ears of Mr. Douce.
Lord Vargrave, however bad a man he might be, had not many of those vices
of character which belong to what I may call the _personal class of
vices_,--that is, he had no ill-will to individuals. He was not,
ordinarily, a jealous man, nor a spiteful, nor a malignant, nor a
vindictive man: his vices arose from utter indifference to all men, and
all things--except as conducive to his own ends. He would not have
injured a worm if it did him no good; but he would have set any house on
fire if he had no other means of roasting his own eggs. Yet still, if
any feeling of personal rancour could harbour in his breast, it was,
first, towards Evelyn Cameron, and, secondly, towards Ernest Maltravers.
For the first time in his life, he did long for revenge,--revenge against
the one for stealing his patrimony, and refusing his hand; and that
revenge he hoped to gratify.
As to the other, it was not so much dislike he felt, as an uneasy
sentiment of inferiority. However well he himself had got on in the
world, he yet grudged the reputation of a man whom he had remembered a
wayward, inexperienced boy: he did not love to hear any one praise
Maltravers. He fancied, too, that this feeling was reciprocal, and that
Maltravers was pained at hearing of any new step in his own career. In
fact, it was that sort of jealousy which men often feel for the
companions of their youth, whose characters are higher than their own,
and whose talents are of an order they do not quite comprehend. Now, it
certainly did seem at that moment to Lord Vargrave that it would be a
most splendid triumph over Mr. Maltravers of Burleigh to be lord of Lisle
Court, the hereditary seat of the elder branch of the family to be, as it
were, in the very shoes of Mr. Ernest Maltravers's elder brother. He
knew, too, that it was a property of great consequence. Lord Vargrave of
Lisle Court would hold a very different post in the peerage from Lord
Vargrave of -----, Fulham! Nobody would call the owner of Lisle Court an
adventurer; nobody would suspect such a man of caring three straws about
place and salary. And if he married Evelyn, and if Evelyn bought Lisle
Court, would not Lisle Court be his? He vaulted over the _ifs_, stiff
monosyllables though they were, with a single jump. Besides, even should
the thing come to nothing, there was the very excuse he sought for
joining Evelyn at Paris, for conversing with her, consulting her. It was
true that the will of the late lord left it solely at the discretion of
the trustees to select such landed investment as seemed best to them; but
still it was, if not legally necessary, at least but a proper courtesy to
consult Evelyn. And plans, and drawings, and explanations, and
rent-rolls, would justify him in spending morning after morning alone
with her.
Thus cogitating, Lord Vargrave suffered Mr. Douce to stammer out sentence
upon sentence, till at length, as he rang for coffee, his lordship
stretched himself with the air of a man stretching himself into
self-complacency or a good thing, and said,--
"Mr. Douce, I will go down to Lisle Court as soon as I can; I will see
it; I will ascertain all about it; I will consider favourably of it. I
agree with you, I think it will do famously."
"But," said Mr. Douce, who seemed singularly anxious about the matter,
"we must make haste, my lord; for really--yes, indeed--if--if--if Baron
Roths--Rothschild should--that is to say--"
"Oh, yes, I understand; keep the thing close, my dear Douce; make friends
with the colonel's lawyer; play with him a little, till I can run down."
"Besides, you see, you are such a good man of business, my lord--that you
see, that--yes, really--there must be time to draw out the
purchase-money--sell out at a prop--prop--"
"To be sure, to be sure! Bless me, how late it is! I am afraid my
carriage is ready. I must go to Madame de L-----'s."
Mr. Douce, who seemed to have much more to say, was forced to keep it for
another time, and to take his leave. Lord Vargrave went to Madame de
L-----'s. His position in what is called Exclusive Society was rather
peculiar. By those who affected to be the best judges, the frankness of
his manner and the easy oddity of his conversation were pronounced at
variance with the tranquil serenity of thorough breeding. But still he
was a great favourite both with fine ladies and dandies. His handsome
keen countenance, his talents, his politics, his intrigues, and an
animated boldness in his bearing, compensated for his constant violation
of all the minutiae of orthodox conventionalism.
At this house he met Colonel Maltravers, and took an opportunity to renew
his acquaintance with that gentleman. He then referred, in a
confidential whisper, to the communication he had received touching Lisle
Court.
"Yes," said the colonel, "I suppose I must sell the place, if I can do so
quietly. To be sure, when I first spoke to my lawyer it was in a moment
of vexation, on hearing that the ----- railroad was to go through the
park, but I find that I overrated that danger. Still, if you will do me
the honour to go and look over the place, you will find very good
shooting; and when you come back, you can see if it will suit you. Don't
say anything about it when you are there; it is better not to publish my
intention all over the county. I shall have Sir Gregory Gubbins offering
to buy it if you do!"
"You may depend on my discretion. Have you heard anything of your
brother lately?"
"Yes; I fancy he is going to Switzerland. He would soon be in England,
if he heard I was going to part with Lisle Court!"
"What, it would vex him so?"
"I fear it would; but he has a nice old place of his own, not half so
large, and therefore not half so troublesome as Lisle Court."
"Ay! and he _did_ talk of selling that nice old place."
"Selling Burleigh! you surprise me. But really country places in England
_are_ a bore. I suppose he has his Gubbins as well as myself!"
Here the chief minister of the government adorned by Lord Vargrave's
virtues passed by, and Lumley turned to greet him.
The two ministers talked together most affectionately in a close
whisper,--so affectionately, that one might have seen, with half an eye,
that they hated each other like poison!
CHAPTER V.
INSPICERE tanquam in speculum, in vitas omnium
Jubeo.*--TERENCE.
* "I bid you look into the lives of all men, as
it were into a mirror."
ERNEST MALTRAVERS still lingered at Paris: he gave up all notion of
proceeding farther. He was, in fact, tired of travel. But there was
another reason that chained him to that "Navel of the Earth,"--there is
not anywhere a better sounding-board to London rumours than the English
_quartier_ between the Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here,
at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he
took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and fear
came over him. No! till the seal was set upon the bond, till the Rubicon
was passed, till Miss Cameron was the wife of Lord Vargrave, he could
neither return to the home that was so eloquent with the recollections of
Evelyn, nor, by removing farther from England, delay the receipt of an
intelligence which he vainly told himself he was prepared to meet.
He continued to seek such distractions from thought as were within his
reach; and as his heart was too occupied for pleasures which had, indeed,
long since palled, those distractions were of the grave and noble
character which it is a prerogative of the intellect to afford to the
passions.
De Montaigne was neither a Doctrinaire nor a Republican,--and yet,
perhaps, he was a little of both. He was one who thought that the
tendency of all European States is towards Democracy; but he by no means
looked upon Democracy as a panacea for all legislative evils. He thought
that, while a writer should be in advance of his time, a statesman should
content himself with marching by its side; that a nation could not be
ripened, like an exotic, by artificial means; that it must be developed
only by natural influences. He believed that forms of government are
never universal in their effects. Thus, De Montaigne conceived that we
were wrong in attaching more importance to legislative than to social
reforms. He considered, for instance, that the surest sign of our
progressive civilization is in our growing distaste to capital
punishments. He believed, not in the ultimate _perfection_ of mankind,
but in their progressive _perfectibility_. He thought that improvement
was indefinite; but he did not place its advance more under Republican
than under Monarchical forms. "Provided," he was wont to say, "all our
checks to power are of the right kind, it matters little to what hands
the power itself is confided."
"AEgina and Athens," said he, "were republics--commercial and
maritime--placed under the same sky, surrounded by the same neighbours,
and rent by the same struggles between Oligarchy and Democracy. Yet,
while one left the world an immortal heirloom of genius, where are the
poets, the philosophers, the statesmen of the other? Arrian tells us of
republics in India, still supposed to exist by modern investigators; but
they are not more productive of liberty of thought, or ferment of
intellect, than the principalities. In Italy there were commonwealths as
liberal as the Republic of Florence; but they did not produce a
Machiavelli or a Dante. What daring thought, what gigantic speculation,
what democracy of wisdom and genius, have sprung up amongst the
despotisms of Germany! You cannot educate two individuals so as to
produce the same results from both; you cannot, by similar constitutions
(which are the education of nations) produce the same results from
different communities. The proper object of statesmen should be to give
every facility to the people to develop themselves, and every facility to
philosophy to dispute and discuss as to the ultimate objects to be
obtained. But you cannot, as a practical legislator, place your country
under a melon-frame: it must grow of its own accord."
I do not say whether or not De Montaigne was wrong! but Maltravers saw at
least that he was faithful to his theories; that all his motives were
sincere, all his practice pure. He could not but allow, too, that in his
occupations and labours, De Montaigne appeared to feel a sublime
enjoyment; that, in linking all the powers of his mind to active and
useful objects, De Montaigne was infinitely happier than the Philosophy
of Indifference, the scorn of ambition, had made Maltravers. The
influence exercised by the large-souled and practical Frenchman over the
fate and the history of Maltravers was very peculiar.
De Montaigne had not, apparently and directly, operated upon his friend's
outward destinies; but he had done so indirectly, by operating on his
mind. Perhaps it was he who had consolidated the first wavering and
uncertain impulses of Maltravers towards literary exertion; it was he who
had consoled him for the mortifications at the earlier part of his
career; and now, perhaps he might serve, in the full vigour of his
intellect, permanently to reconcile the Englishman to the claims of life.
There were, indeed, certain conversations which Maltravers held with De
Montaigne, the germ and pith of which it is necessary that I should place
before the reader,--for I write the inner as well as the outer history of
a man; and the great incidents of life are not brought about only by the
dramatic agencies of others, but also by our own reasonings and habits of
thought. What I am now about to set down may be wearisome, but it is not
episodical; and I promise that it shall be the last didactic conversation
in the work.
One day Maltravers was relating to De Montaigne all that he had been
planning at Burleigh for the improvement of his peasantry, and all his
theories respecting Labour-Schools and Poor-rates, when De Montaigne
abruptly turned round, and said,--
"You have, then, really found that in your own little village your
exertions--exertions not very arduous, not demanding a tenth part of your
time--have done practical good?"
"Certainly I think so," replied Maltravers, in some surprise.
"And yet it was but yesterday that you declared that all the labours of
Philosophy and Legislation were labours vain; their benefits equivocal
and uncertain; that as the sea, where it loses in one place, gains in
another, so civilization only partially profits us, stealing away one
virtue while it yields another, and leaving the large proportions of good
and evil eternally the same."
"True; but I never said that man might not relieve individuals by
individual exertion: though he cannot by abstract theories--nay, even by
practical action in the wide circle--benefit the mass."
"Do you not employ on behalf of individuals the same moral agencies that
wise legislation or sound philosophy would adopt towards the multitude?
For example, you find that the children of your village are happier, more
orderly, more obedient, promise to be wiser and better men in their own
station of life, from the new, and, I grant, excellent system of school
discipline and teaching that you have established. What you have done in
one village, why should not legislation do throughout a kingdom? Again,
you find that, by simply holding out hope and emulation to industry, by
making stern distinctions between the energetic and the idle, the
independent exertion and the pauper-mendicancy, you have found a lever by
which you have literally moved and shifted the little world around you.
But what is the difference here between the rules of a village lord and
the laws of a wise legislature? The moral feelings you have appealed to
exist universally, the moral remedies you have practised are as open to
legislation as to the individual proprietor."
"Yes; but when you apply to a nation the same principles which regenerate
a village, new counterbalancing principles arise. If I give education to
my peasants, I send them into the world with advantages _superior_ to
their fellows,--advantages which, not being common to their class, enable
them to _outstrip_ their fellows. But if this education were universal
to the whole tribe, no man would have an advantage superior to the
others; the knowledge they would have acquired being shared by all, would
leave all as they now are, hewers of wood and drawers of water: the
principle of individual hope, which springs from knowledge, would soon be
baffled by the vast competition that _universal_ knowledge would produce.
Thus by the universal improvement would be engendered a universal
discontent.
"Take a broader view of the subject. Advantages given to the _few_
around me--superior wages, lighter toils, a greater sense of the dignity
of man--are not productive of any change in society. Give these
advantages to the _whole mass_ of the labouring classes, and what in the
small orbit is the desire of the _individual_ to rise becomes in the
large circumference the desire of the _class_ to rise; hence social
restlessness, social change, revolution, and its hazards. For
revolutions are produced but by the aspirations of one order, and the
resistance of the other. Consequently, legislative improvement differs
widely from individual amelioration; the same principle, the same agency,
that purifies the small body, becomes destructive when applied to the
large one. Apply the flame to the log on the hearth, or apply it to the
forest, is there no distinction in the result? The breeze that freshens
the fountain passes to the ocean, current impels current, wave urges
wave, and the breeze becomes the storm."