Book: My Novel, Volume 9.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 9.




"But," said Levy, throwing himself back in his chair, "a new order of
things is commencing; we shall see. Leslie, it is lucky for you that you
did not enter parliament under the government; it would be your political
ruin for life."

"You think, then, that the ministry really cannot last?"

"Of course I do; and what is more, I think that a ministry of the same
principles cannot be restored. You are a young man of talent and spirit;
your birth is nothing compared to the rank of the reigning party; it
would tell, to a certain degree, in a democratic one. I say, you should
be more civil to Avenel; he could return you to parliament at the next
election."

"The next election! In six years! We have just had a general election."

"There will be another before this year, or half of it, or perhaps a
quarter of it, is out."

"What makes you think so?"

"Leslie, let there be confidence between us; we can help each other.
Shall we be friends?"

"With all my heart. But though you may help me, how can I help you?"

"You have helped me already to Frank Hazeldean and the Casino estate.
All clever men can help me. Come, then, we are friends; and what I say
is secret. You ask me why I think there will be a general election so
soon? I will answer you frankly. Of all the public men I ever met with,
there is no one who has so clear a vision of things immediately before
him as Audley Egerton."

"He has that character. Not far-seeing, but clear-sighted to a certain
limit."

"Exactly so. No one better, therefore, knows public opinion and its
immediate ebb and flow."

"Granted."

"Egerton, then, counts on a general election within three months, and I
have lent him the money for it."

"Lent him the money! Egerton borrow money of you, the rich Audley
Egerton!"

"Rich!" repeated Levy, in a tone impossible to describe, and accompanying
the word with that movement of the middle finger and thumb, commonly
called a "snap," which indicates profound contempt.

He said no more. Randal sat stupefied. At length the latter muttered,
"But if Egerton is really not rich; if he lose office, and without the
hope of return to it--"

"If so, he is ruined!" said Levy, coldly; "and therefore, from regard to
you, and feeling interest in your future fate, I say, Rest no hopes of
fortune or career upon Audley Egerton. Keep your place for the present,
but be prepared at the next election to stand upon popular principles.
Avenel shall return you to parliament; and the rest is with luck and
energy. And now, I'll not detain you longer," said Levy, rising and
ringing the bell. The servant entered. "Is my carriage here?"

"Yes, Baron."

"Can I set you down anywhere?"

"No, thank you, I prefer walking."

"Adieu, then. And mind you remember the /soiree dansante/ at Mrs.
Avenel's." Randal mechanically shook the hand extended to him, and went
down the stairs.

The fresh frosty air roused his intellectual faculties, which Levy's
ominous words had almost paralyzed.

And the first thing the clever schemer said to himself was this,

"But what can be the man's motive in what he said to me?"

The next was,--

"Egerton ruined! What am I, then?" And the third was,

"And that fair remnant of the old Leslie property! L20,000 down--how to
get the sum? Why should Levy have spoken to me of this?"

And lastly, the soliloquy rounded back--"The man's motives! His
motives!"

Meanwhile, the baron threw himself into his chariot--the most
comfortable, easy chariot you can possibly conceive, single man's
chariot, perfect taste,--no married man ever had such a chariot; and in a
few minutes he was at ---------'s hotel, and in the presence of Giulio
Franzini, Count di Peschiera.

"Mon cher," said the baron, in very good French, and in a tone of the
most familiar equality with the descendant of the princes and heroes of
grand medimval Italy,--"/mon cher/, give me one of your excellent cigars.
I think I have put all matters in train."

"You have found out--"

"No; not so fast yet," said the baron, lighting the cigar extended to
him. "But you said that you should be perfectly contented if it only
cost you L20,000 to marry off your sister (to whom that sum is legally
due), and to marry yourself to the heiress."

"I did, indeed."

"Then I have no doubt I shall manage both objects for that sum, if Randal
Leslie really knows where the young lady is, and can assist you. Most
promising, able man is Randal Leslie--but innocent as a babe just born."

"Ha, ha! Innocent? /Que diable!/"

"Innocent as this cigar, /mon cher/,--strong certainly, but smoked very
easily. /Soyez tranquille!/"




CHAPTER XV.

Who has not seen, who not admired, that noble picture by Daniel Maclise,
which refreshes the immortal name of my ancestor Caxton! For myself,
while with national pride I heard the admiring murmurs of the foreigners
who grouped around it (nothing, indeed, of which our nation may be more
proud had they seen in the Crystal Palace),--heard, with no less a pride
in the generous nature of fellow-artists, the warm applause of living and
deathless masters sanctioning the enthusiasm of the popular crowd, what
struck me more than the precision of drawing, for which the artist has
been always renowned, and the just, though gorgeous affluence of colour
which he has more recently acquired, was the profound depth of
conception, out of which this great work had so elaborately arisen. That
monk, with his scowl towards the printer and his back on the Bible over
which his form casts a shadow--the whole transition between the medieval
Christianity of cell and cloister, and the modern Christianity that
rejoices in the daylight, is depicted there, in the shadow that obscures
the Book, in the scowl that is fixed upon the Book-diffuser;--that
sombre, musing face of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with the beauty of
Napoleon, darkened to the expression of a Fiend, looking far and
anxiously into futurity, as if foreseeing there what antagonism was about
to be created to the schemes of secret crime and unrelenting force; the
chivalrous head of the accomplished Rivers, seen but in profile, under
his helmet, as if the age when Chivalry must defend its noble attributes
in steel was already half passed away; and, not least grand of all, the
rude thews and sinews of the artisan forced into service on the type, and
the ray of intellect, fierce, and menacing revolutions yet to be,
struggling through his rugged features, and across his low knitted brow,
--all this, which showed how deeply the idea of the discovery in its good
and its evil, its saving light and its perilous storms, had sunk into the
artist's soul, charmed me as effecting the exact union between sentiment
and execution, which is the true and rare consummation of the Ideal in
Art. But observe, while in these personages of the group are depicted
the deeper and graver agencies implicated in the bright but terrible
invention, observe how little the light epicures of the hour heed the
scowl of the monk, or the restless gesture of Richard, or the troubled
gleam in the eyes of the artisan, King Edward, handsome Poco curante,
delighted in the surprise of a child, with a new toy, and Clarence, with
his curious, yet careless, glance,--all the while Caxton himself, calm,
serene, untroubled, intent solely upon the manifestation of his
discovery, and no doubt supremely indifferent whether the first proofs of
it shall be dedicated to a Rivers or an Edward, a Richard or a Henry,
Plantagenet or Tudor--'t is all the same to that comely, gentle-looking
man. So is it ever with your Abstract Science!--not a jot cares its
passionless logic for the woe or weal of a generation or two. The
stream, once emerged from its source, passes on into the great
Intellectual Sea, smiling over the wretch that it drowns, or under
the keel of the ship which it serves as a slave.

Now, when about to commence the present chapter on the Varieties of Life,
this masterpiece of thoughtful art forced itself on my recollection, and
illustrated what I designed to convey. In the surface of every age it is
often that which but amuses for the moment the ordinary children of
pleasant existence, the Edwards and the Clarences (be they kings and
dukes, or simplest of simple subjects), which afterwards towers out as
the great serious epoch of the time. When we look back upon human
records, how the eye settles upon WRITERS as the main landmarks of the
past! We talk of the age of Augustus, of Elizabeth, of Louis XIV., of
Anne, as the notable eras of the world. Why? Because it is their
writers who have made them so. Intervals between one age of authors and
another lie unnoticed, as the flats and common lands of uncultured
history. And yet, strange to say, when these authors are living amongst
us, they occupy a very small portion of our thoughts, and fill up but
desultory interstices in the bitumen and tufo wherefrom we build up the
Babylon of our lives. So it is, and perhaps so it should be, whether it
pleases the conceit of penmen or not. Life is meant to be active; and
books, though they give the action to future generations, administer but
to the holiday of the present.

And so, with this long preface, I turn suddenly from the Randals and the
Egertons, and the Levys, Avenels, and Peschieras, from the plots and
passions of practical life, and drop the reader suddenly into one of
those obscure retreats wherein Thought weaves, from unnoticed moments,
a new link to the chain that unites the ages.

Within a small room, the single window of which opened on a fanciful and
fairy-like garden that has been before described, sat a young man alone.
He had been writing; the ink was not dry on his manuscript, but his
thoughts had been suddenly interrupted from his work, and his eyes, now
lifted from the letter which had occasioned that interruption, sparkled
with delight. "He will come," exclaimed the young man; "come here,--to
the home which I owe to him. I have not been unworthy of his friendship.
And she--" his breast heaved, but the joy faded from his face. "Oh,
strange, strange, that I feel sad at the thought to see her again! See
her--Ah, no! my own comforting Helen, my own Child-angel! Her I can
never see again! The grown woman--that is not my Helen. And yet--and
yet," he resumed after a pause, "if ever she read the pages in which
thought flowed and trembled under her distant starry light, if ever she
see how her image has rested with me, and feel that, while others believe
that I invent, I have but remembered, will she not, for a moment, be my
own Helen again? Again, in heart and in fancy, stand by my side on the
desolate bridge, hand in hand, orphans both, as we stood in the days so
sorrowful, yet, as I recall them, so sweet? Helen in England--it is a
dream!"

He rose, half-consciously, and went to the window. The fountain played
merrily before his eyes, and the birds in the aviary carolled loud to his
ear. "And in this house," he murmured, "I saw her last! And there,
where the fountain now throws its spray on high,--there her benefactor
and mine told me that I was to lose her, that I might win--fame. Alas!"

At this time a woman, whose dress was somewhat above her mien and air,
which, though not without a certain respectability, were very homely,
entered the room; and seeing the young man standing thus thoughtful by
the window, paused. She was used to his habits; and since his success in
life, had learned to respect them. So she did not disturb his revery,
but began softly to arrange the room, dusting, with the corner of her
apron, the various articles of furniture, putting a stray chair or two in
its right place, but not touching a single paper. Virtuous woman, and
rare as virtuous!

The young man turned at last, with a deep, yet not altogether painful
sigh,

"My dear mother, good day to you. Ah, you do well to make the room look
its best. Happy news! I expect a visitor!"

"Dear me, Leonard, will he want lunch--or what?"

"Nay, I think not, Mother. It is he to whom we owe all,--'Haec otia
fecit.' Pardon my Latin; it is Lord L'Estrange."

The face of Mrs. Fairfield (the reader has long since divined the name)
changed instantly, and betrayed a nervous twitch of all the muscles,
which gave her a family likeness to old Mrs. Avenel.

"Do not be alarmed, Mother. He is the kindest--"

"Don't talk so; I can't bear it!" cried Mrs. Fairfield.

"No wonder you are affected by the recollection of all his benefits. But
when once you have seen him, you will find yourself ever after at your
ease. And so, pray smile and look as good as you are; for I am proud of
your open honest look when you are pleased, Mother. And he must see your
heart in your face, as I do."

With this, Leonard put his arm round the widow's neck and kissed her.
She clung to him fondly for a moment, and he felt her tremble from head
to foot. Then she broke from his embrace, and hurried out of the room.
Leonard thought perhaps she had gone to improve her dress, or to carry
her housewife energies to the decoration of the other rooms; for "the
house" was Mrs. Fairfield's hobby and passion; and now that she worked no
more, save for her amusement, it was her main occupation. The hours she
contrived to spend daily in bustling about those little rooms, and
leaving everything therein to all appearance precisely the same, were
among the marvels in life which the genius of Leonard had never
comprehended. But she was always so delighted when Mr. Norreys, or some
rare visitor came, and said,--Mr. Norreys never failed to do so,-"How
neatly all is kept here. What could Leonard do without you, Mrs.
Fairfield?"

And, to Norreys's infinite amusement, Mrs. Fairfield always returned the
same answer. "'Deed, sir, and thank you kindly, but 't is my belief that
the drawin'-room would be awful dusty."

Once more left alone, Leonard's mind returned to the state of revery, and
his face assumed the expression that had now become to it habitual. Thus
seen, he was changed much since we last beheld him. His cheek was more
pale and thin, his lips more firmly compressed, his eye more fixed and
abstract. You could detect, if I may borrow a touching French
expression, that "Sorrow had passed by there." But the melancholy on his
countenance was ineffably sweet and serene, and on his ample forehead
there was that power, so rarely seen in early youth,--the power that has
conquered, and betrays its conquests but in calm. The period of doubt,
of struggle, of defiance, was gone, perhaps forever; genius and soul were
reconciled to human life. It was a face most lovable; so gentle and
peaceful in its character. No want of fire; on the contrary, the fire
was so clear and so steadfast, that it conveyed but the impression of
light. The candour of boyhood, the simplicity of the villager, were
still there,--refined by intelligence, but intelligence that seemed to
have traversed through knowledge, not with the 'footstep, but the wing,
unsullied by the mire, tending towards the star, seeking through the
various grades of Being but the lovelier forms of truth and goodness; at
home, as should be the Art that consummates the Beautiful,--

"In den heitern Regionen
Wo die reinen Formen wohnen."

[At home--"In the serene regions
Where dwell the pure forms."]


From this revery Leonard did not seek to rouse himself, till the bell at
the garden gate rang loud and shrill; and then starting up and hurrying
into the hall, his hand was grasped in Harley's.




CHAPTER XVI.

A full and happy hour passed away in Harley's questions and Leonard's
answers,--the dialogue that naturally ensued between the two, on the
first interview after an absence of years so eventful to the younger man.

The history of Leonard during this interval was almost solely internal,
the struggle of intellect with its own difficulties, the wanderings of
imagination through its own adventurous worlds.

The first aim of Norreys, in preparing the mind of his pupil for its
vocation, had been to establish the equilibrium of its powers, to calm
into harmony the elements rudely shaken by the trials and passions of the
old hard outer life.

The theory of Norreys was briefly this: The education of a superior human
being is but the development of ideas in one for the benefit of others.
To this end, attention should be directed,--1st, To the value of the
ideas collected; 2dly, To their discipline; 3dly, To their expression.
For the first, acquirement is necessary; for the second, discipline; for
the third, art. The first comprehends knowledge purely intellectual,
whether derived from observation, memory, reflection, books, or men,
Aristotle or Fleet Street. The second demands training, not only
intellectual, but moral; the purifying and exaltation of motives; the
formation of habits; in which method is but a part of a divine and
harmonious symmetry, a union of intellect and conscience. Ideas of
value, stored by the first process; marshalled into force, and placed
under guidance, by the second,--it is the result of the third, to place
them before the world in the most attractive or commanding form. This
may be done by actions no less than words; but the adaptation of means to
end, the passage of ideas from the brain of one man into the lives and
souls of all, no less in action than in books, requires study. Action
has its art as well as literature. Here Norreys had but to deal with the
calling of the scholar, the formation of the writer, and so to guide the
perceptions towards those varieties in the sublime and beautiful, the
just combination of which is at once CREATION. Man himself is but a
combination of elements. He who combines in nature, creates in art.
Such, very succinctly and inadequately expressed, was the system upon
which Norreys proceeded to regulate and perfect the great native powers
of his pupil; and though the reader may perhaps say that no system laid
down by another can either form genius or dictate to its results, yet
probably nine-tenths at least of those in whom we recognize the
luminaries of our race have passed, unconsciously to themselves (for
self-education is rarely conscious of its phases), through each of these
processes. And no one who pauses to reflect will deny, that according to
this theory, illustrated by a man of vast experience, profound knowledge,
and exquisite taste, the struggles of genius would be infinitely
lessened, its vision cleared and strengthened, and the distance between
effort and success notably abridged.

Norreys, however, was far too deep a reasoner to fall into the error of
modern teachers, who suppose that education can dispense with labour. No
mind becomes muscular without rude and early exercise. Labour should be
strenuous, but in right directions. All that we can do for it is to save
the waste of time in blundering into needless toils.

The master had thus first employed his neophyte in arranging and
compiling materials for a great critical work in which Norreys himself
was engaged. In this stage of scholastic preparation, Leonard was
necessarily led to the acquisition of languages, for which he had great
aptitude; the foundations of a large and comprehensive erudition were
solidly constructed. He traced by the ploughshare the walls of the
destined city. Habits of accuracy and of generalization became formed
insensibly; and that precious faculty which seizes, amidst accumulated
materials, those that serve the object for which they are explored,--that
faculty which quadruples all force, by concentrating it on one point,--
once roused into action, gave purpose to every toil and quickness to each
perception. But Norreys did not confine his pupil solely to the mute
world of a library; he introduced him to some of the first minds in arts,
science, and letters, and active life. "These," said he, "are the living
ideas of the present, out of which books for the future will be written:
study them; and here, as in the volumes of the past, diligently amass and
deliberately compile."

By degrees Norreys led on that young ardent mind from the selection of
ideas to their aesthetic analysis,--from compilation to criticism; but
criticism severe, close, and logical,--a reason for each word of praise
or of blame. Led in this stage of his career to examine into the laws of
beauty, a new light broke upon his mind; from amidst the masses of marble
he had piled around him rose the vision of the statue.

And so, suddenly, one day Norreys said to him, "I need a compiler no
longer,--maintain yourself by your own creations." And Leonard wrote,
and a work flowered up from the seed deep buried, and the soil well
cleared to the rays of the sun and the healthful influence of expanded
air.

That first work did not penetrate to a very wide circle of readers, not
from any perceptible fault of its own--there is luck in these things; the
first anonymous work of an original genius is rarely at once eminently
successful. But the more experienced recognized the promise of the book.
Publishers, who have an instinct in the discovery of available talent,
which often forestalls the appreciation of the public, volunteered
liberal offers. "Be fully successful this time," said Norreys; "think
not of models nor of style. Strike at once at the common human heart,--
throw away the corks, swim out boldly. One word more,--never write a
page till you have walked from your room to Temple Bar, and, mingling
with men, and reading the human face, learn why great poets have mostly
passed their lives in cities."

Thus Leonard wrote again, and woke one morning to find himself famous.
So far as the chances of all professions dependent on health will permit,
present independence, and, with foresight and economy, the prospects of
future competence were secured.

"And, indeed," said Leonard, concluding a longer but a simpler narrative
than is here told,--" indeed, there is some chance that I may obtain at
once a sum that will leave me free for the rest of my life to select my
own subjects, and write without care for remuneration. This is what I
call the true (and, perhaps, alas! the rare) independence of him who
devotes himself to letters. Norreys, having seen my boyish plan for the
improvement of certain machinery in the steam engine, insisted on my
giving much time to mechanics. The study that once pleased me so greatly
now seemed dull; but I went into it with good heart; and the result is,
that I have improved so far on my original idea, that my scheme has met
the approbation of one of our most scientific engineers: and I am assured
that the patent for it will be purchased of me upon terms which I am
ashamed to name to you, so disproportioned do they seem to the value of
so simple a discovery. Meanwhile, I am already rich enough to have
realized the two dreams of my heart,--to make a home in the cottage where
I had last seen you and Helen--I mean Miss Digby; and to invite to that
home her who had sheltered my infancy."

"Your mother, where is she? Let me see her."

Leonard ran out to call the widow, but to his surprise and vexation
learned that she had quitted the house before L'Estrange arrived.

He came back, perplexed how to explain what seemed ungracious and
ungrateful, and spoke with hesitating lip and flushed cheek of the
widow's natural timidity and sense of her own homely station. "And so
overpowered is she," added Leonard, "by the recollection of all that we
owe to you, that she never hears your name without agitation or tears,
and trembled like a leaf at the thought of seeing you."

"Ha!" said Harley, with visible emotion. "Is it so?" And he bent down,
shading his face with his hand. "And," he renewed, after a pause, but
not looking up--"and you ascribe this fear of seeing me, this agitation
at my name, solely to an exaggerated sense of--of the circumstances
attending my acquaintance with yourself?"

"And, perhaps, to a sort of shame that the mother of one you have made
her proud of is but a peasant."

"That is all?" said Harley, earnestly, now looking up and fixing eyes in
which stood tears upon Leonard's ingenuous brow.

"Oh, my dear Lord, what else can it be? Do not judge her harshly."

L'Estrange arose abruptly, pressed Leonard's hand, muttered something not
audible, and then drawing his young friend's arm in his, led him into the
garden, and turned the conversation back to its former topics.

Leonard's heart yearned to ask after Helen, and yet something withheld
him from doing so, till, seeing Harley did not volunteer to speak of her,
he could not resist his impulse. "And Helen--Miss Digby--is she much
changed?"

"Changed, no--yes; very much."

"Very much!" Leonard sighed.

"I shall see her again?"

"Certainly," said Harley, in a tone of surprise. "How can you doubt it?
And I reserve to you the pleasure of saying that you are renowned. You
blush; well, I will say that for you. But you shall give her your
books."

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