Kitabı oku: «Vivian Grey», sayfa 14
CHAPTER V
In half an hour Vivian was at Mr. Cleveland’s door.
“My master is at the Marquess of Carabas’, sir; he will not return, but is going immediately to Richmond, where Mrs. Cleveland is staying.”
Vivian immediately wrote to Mr. Cleveland. “If your master have left the Marquess’, let this be forwarded to him at Richmond immediately.”
“CLEVELAND!
“You know all. It would be mockery were I to say that at this moment I am not thinking of myself. I am a ruined man in body and in mind. But my own misery is nothing; I can die, I can go mad, and who will be harmed? But you! I had wished that we should never meet again; but my hand refuses to trace the thoughts with which my heart is full, and I am under the sad necessity of requesting you to see me once more. We have been betrayed, and by a woman; but there has been revenge. Oh, what revenge!
“VIVIAN GREY.”
When Vivian left Mr. Cleveland’s he actually did not know what to do with himself. Home, at present, he could not face, and so he continued to wander about, quite unconscious of locality. He passed in his progress many of his acquaintance, who, from his distracted air and rapid pace, imagined that he was intent on some important business. At length he found himself in one of the most sequestered parts of Kensington Gardens. It was a cold, frosty day, and as Vivian flung himself upon one of the summer seats the snow drifted from off the frozen board; but Vivian’s brow was as burning hot as if he had been an inhabitant of Sirius. Throwing his arms on a small garden table, he buried his face in his hands and wept as men can but once weep in this world.
O, thou sublime and most subtle philosopher, who, in thy lamp-lit cell, art speculating upon the passions which thou hast never felt! O, thou splendid and most admirable poet, who, with cunning words, art painting with a smile a tale of woe! tell me what is Grief, and solve me the mystery of Sorrow.
Not for himself, for after the first pang he would have whistled off his high hopes with the spirit of a Ripperda; not even for Cleveland, for at this moment, it must be confessed, his thoughts were not for his friend, did Vivian Grey’s soul struggle as if it were about to leave its fleshy chamber. We said he wept as men can weep but once in this world, and yet it would have been impossible for him to have defined what, at that fearful moment, was the cause of his heart’s sorrow. Incidents of childhood of the most trivial nature, and until this moment forgotten, flashed across his memory; he gazed on the smile of his mother, he listened to the sweet tones of his father’s voice, and his hand clenched, with still more agonised grasp, his rude resting-place, and the scalding tears dashed down his cheek in still more ardent torrents. He had no distinct remembrance of what had so lately happened; but characters flitted before him as in a theatre, in a dream, dim and shadowy, yet full of mysterious and undefinable interest; and then there came a horrible idea across his mind that his glittering youth was gone and wasted; and then there was a dark whisper of treachery, and dissimulation, and dishonour; and then he sobbed as if his very heart were cracking. All his boasted philosophy vanished; his artificial feelings fled him. Insulted Nature reasserted her long-spurned authority, and the once proud Vivian Grey felt too humble even to curse himself. Gradually his sobs became less convulsed and his brow more cool; and, calm from very exhaustion, he sat for upwards of an hour motionless.
At this moment there issued, with their attendant, from an adjoining shrubbery, two beautiful children. They were so exceedingly lovely that the passenger would have stopped to gaze upon them. The eldest, who yet was very young, was leading his sister hand in hand with slow and graceful steps, mimicking the courtesy of men. But when his eye caught Vivian’s the boy uttered a loud cry of exultation, and rushed, with the eagerness of infantile affection, to his gentle and favourite playmate. They were the young Clevelands. With what miraculous quickness will man shake off the outward semblance of grief when his sorrow is a secret! The mighty merchant, who knows that in four-and-twenty hours the world must be astounded by his insolvency, will walk in the front of his confident creditor as if he were the lord of a thousand argosies; the meditating suicide will smile on the arm of a companion as if to breathe in this sunny world were the most ravishing and rapturous bliss. We cling to our stations in our fellow-creatures’ minds and memories; we know too well the frail tenure on which we are in this world great and considered personages. Experience makes us shrink from the specious sneer of sympathy; and when we are ourselves falling, bitter Memory whispers that we have ourselves been neglectful.
And so it was that even unto these infants Vivian Grey dared not appear other than a gay and easy-hearted man; and in a moment he was dancing them on his knee, and playing with their curls, and joining in their pretty prattle, and pressing their small and fragrant lips.
It was night when he paced down—. He passed his club; that club to become a member of which had once been the object of his high ambition, and to gain which privilege had cost such hours of canvassing, such interference of noble friends, and the incurring of favours from so many people, “which never could be forgotten!”
A desperate feeling actuated him, and he entered the Club-house. He walked into the great saloon and met some fifty “most particular friends,” all of whom asked him “how the Marquess did,” or “have you seen Cleveland?” and a thousand other as comfortable queries. At length, to avoid these disagreeable rencontres, and indeed to rest himself, he went to a smaller and more private room. As he opened the door his eyes lighted upon Cleveland.
He was standing with his back to the fire. There were only two other persons in the room; one was a friend of Cleveland’s, and the other an acquaintance of Vivian’s. The latter was writing at the table.
When Vivian saw Cleveland he would have retired, but he was bid to “come in” in a voice of thunder.
As he entered he instantly perceived that Cleveland was under the influence of wine. When in this situation, unlike other men, Mr. Cleveland’s conduct was not distinguished by any of the little improprieties of behaviour by which a man is always known by his friends “to be very drunk.” He neither reeled, nor hiccuped, nor grew maudlin. The effect of drinking upon him was only to increase the intensity of the sensation by which his mind was at the moment influenced. He did not even lose the consciousness of identity of persons. At this moment it was clear to Vivian that Cleveland was under the influence of the extremest passion; his eyes rolled wildly, and seemed fixed only upon vacancy. As Vivian was no friend to scenes before strangers he bowed to the two gentlemen and saluted Cleveland with his wonted cordiality; but his proffered hand was rudely repelled.
“Away!” exclaimed Cleveland, in a furious tone; “I have no friendship for traitors.”
The two gentlemen stared, and the pen of the writer stopped.
“Cleveland!” said Vivian, in an earnest whisper, as he came up close to him; “for God’s sake contain yourself. I have written you a letter which explains all; but—”
“Out! out upon you. Out upon your honied words and your soft phrases! I have been their dupe too long;” and he struck Vivian.
“Sir John Poynings!” said Vivian, with a quivering lip, turning to the gentleman who was writing at the table, “we were school-fellows; circumstances have prevented us from meeting often in after-life; but I now ask you, with the frankness of an old acquaintance, to do me the sad service of accompanying me in this quarrel, a quarrel which I call Heaven to witness is not of my seeking.”
The Baronet, who was in the Guards, and although a great dandy, quite a man of business in these matters, immediately rose from his seat and led Vivian to a corner of the room. After some whispering he turned round to Mr. Cleveland, and bowed to him with a very significant look. It was evident that Cleveland comprehended his meaning, for, though he was silent, he immediately pointed to the other gentleman, his friend, Mr. Castleton.
“Mr. Castleton,” said Sir John, giving his card, “Mr. Grey will accompany me to my rooms in Pall Mall; it is now ten o’clock; we shall wait two hours, in which time I hope to hear from you. I leave time, and place, and terms to yourself. I only wish it to be understood that it is the particular desire of my principal that the meeting should be as speedy as possible.”
About eleven o’clock the communication from Mr. Castleton arrived. It was quite evident that Cleveland was sobered, for in one instance Vivian observed that the style was corrected by his own hand. The hour was eight the next morning, at – Common, about six miles from town.
Poynings wrote to a professional friend to be on the ground at half-past seven, and then he and Vivian retired.
Did you ever fight a duel? No? nor send a challenge either? Well! you are fresh, indeed! ‘Tis an awkward business, after all, even for the boldest. After an immense deal of negotiation, and giving your opponent every opportunity of coming to an honourable understanding, the fatal letter is at length signed, sealed, and sent. You pass your mornings at your second’s apartments, pacing his drawing-room with a quivering lip and uncertain step. At length he enters with an answer; and while he reads you endeavour to look easy, with a countenance merry with the most melancholy smile. You have no appetite for dinner, but you are too brave not to appear at table; and you are called out after the second glass by the arrival of your solicitor, who comes to alter your will. You pass a restless night, and rise in the morning as bilious as a Bengal general. Urged by impending fate, you make a desperate effort to accommodate matters; but in the contest between your pride and your terror you at the same time prove that you are a coward and fail in the negotiation. You both fire and miss, and then the seconds interfere, and then you shake hands: everything being arranged in the most honourable manner and to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. The next day you are seen pacing Bond Street with an erect front and a flashing eye, with an air at once dandyish and heroical, a mixture at the same time of Brummell and the Duke of Wellington.
It was a fine February morning. Sir John drove Vivian to the ground in his cabriolet.
“Nothing like a cab, Grey, for the business you are going on: you glide along the six miles in such style that it actually makes you quite courageous. I remember once going down, on a similar purpose, in a post and pair, and ‘pon my soul, when I came to the ground, my hand shook so that I could scarcely draw. But I was green then. Now, when I go in my cab, with Philidor with his sixteen-mile-an-hour paces, egad! I wing my man in a trice; and take all the parties home to Pall Mall, to celebrate the event with a grilled bone, Havannahs, and Regent’s punch. Ah! there! that is Cleveland that we have just passed, going to the ground in a chariot: he is a dead man, or my name is not Poynings.”
“Come, Sir John; no fear of Cleveland’s dying,” said Vivian, with a smile.
“What? You mean to fire in the air, and all that sort of thing? Sentimental, but slip-slop!”
The ground is measured, all is arranged. Cleveland, a splendid shot, fired first. He grazed Vivian’s elbow. Vivian fired in the air. The seconds interfered. Cleveland was implacable, and, “in the most irregular manner,” as Sir John declared, insisted upon another shot. To the astonishment of all, he fired quite wild. Vivian shot at random, and his bullet pierced Cleveland’s heart. Cleveland sprang nearly two yards from the ground and then fell upon his back. In a moment Vivian was at the side of his fallen antagonist, but the dying man “made no sign;” he stared wildly, and then closed his eyes for ever!
CHAPTER VI
When Vivian Grey remembered his existence he found himself in bed. The curtains of his couch were closed; but as he stared around him they were softly withdrawn, and a face that recalled everything to his recollection gazed upon him with a look of affectionate anxiety.
“My father!” exclaimed Vivian; but the finger pressed on the parental lip warned him to silence. His father knelt by his side, and then the curtains were again closed.
Six weeks, unconsciously to Vivian, had elapsed since the fatal day, and he was now recovering from the effects of a fever from which his medical attendants had supposed he never could have rallied. And what had been the past? It did indeed seem like a hot and feverish dream. Here was he once more in his own quiet room, watched over by his beloved parents; and had there then ever existed such beings as the Marquess, and Mrs. Lorraine, and Cleveland, or were they only the actors in a vision? “It must be so,” thought Vivian; and he jumped up in his bed and stared wildly around him. “And yet it was a horrid dream! Murder, horrible murder! and so real, so palpable! I muse upon their voices as upon familiar sounds, and I recall all the events, not as the shadowy incidents of sleep, that mysterious existence in which the experience of a century seems caught in the breathing of a second, but as the natural and material consequences of time and stirring life. O, no! it is too true!” shrieked the wretched sufferer, as his eye glanced upon a despatch-box which was on the table, and which had been given to him by Lord Carabas; “It is true! it is true! Murder! murder!” He foamed at the mouth, and sank exhausted on his pillow.
But the human mind can master many sorrows, and, after a desperate relapse and another miraculous rally, Vivian Grey rose from his bed.
“My father, I fear that I shall live!”
“Hope, rather, my beloved.”
“Oh! why should I hope?” and the sufferer’s head sank upon his breast.
“Do not give way, my son; all will yet be well, and we shall all yet be happy,” said the father, with streaming eyes.
“Happy! oh, not in this world, my father!”
“Vivian, my dearest, your mother visited you this morning, but you were asleep. She was quite happy to find you slumbering so calmly.”
“And yet my dreams were not the dreams of joy. O, my mother! you were wont to smile upon me; alas! you smiled upon your sorrow.”
“Vivian, my beloved! you must indeed restrain your feelings. At your age life cannot be the lost game you think it. A little repose, and I shall yet see my boy the honour to society which he deserves to be.”
“Alas! my father, you know not what I feel. The springiness of my mind has gone. O, man, what a vain fool thou art! Nature has been too bountiful to thee. She has given thee the best of friends, and thou valuest not the gift of exceeding price until the griefs are past even friendship’s cure. O, my father! why did I leave thee?” and he seized Mr. Grey’s hand with convulsive grasp.
Time flew on, even in this house of sorrow. “My boy,” said Mr. Grey to his son one day, “your mother and I have been consulting together about you; and we think, now that you have somewhat recovered your strength, it may be well for you to leave England for a short time. The novelty of travel will relieve your mind without too much exciting it; and if you can manage by the autumn to settle down anywhere within a thousand miles of England, why we will come and join you, and you know that will be very pleasant. What say you to this little plan?”
In a few weeks after this proposition had been made Vivian Grey was in Germany. He wandered for some months in that beautiful land of rivers, among which flows the Rhine, matchless in its loveliness; and at length the pilgrim shook the dust off his feet at Heidelberg, in which city Vivian proposed taking up his residence. It is, in truth, a place of surpassing loveliness, where all the romantic wildness of German scenery is blended with the soft beauty of the Italian. An immense plain, which, in its extent and luxuriance, reminds you of the fertile tracts of Lombardy, is bordered on one side by the Bergstrasse Mountains, and on the other by the range of the Vosges. Situate on the river Neckar, in a ravine of the Bergstrasse, amid mountains covered with vines, is Heidelberg; its ruined castle backing the city, and still frowning from one of the most commanding heights. In the middle of the broad plain may be distinguished the shining spires of Mannheim, Worms, and Frankenthal; and pouring its rich stream through this luxuriant land, the beautiful and abounding Rhine receives the tribute of the Neckar. The range of the Vosges forms the extreme distance.
To the little world of the little city of which he was now an habitant Vivian Grey did not appear a broken-hearted man. He lived neither as a recluse nor a misanthrope. He became extremely addicted to field sports, especially to hunting the wild boar; for he feared nothing so much as thought, and dreaded nothing so much as the solitude of his own chamber. He was an early riser to escape from hideous dreams; and at break of dawn he wandered among the wild passes of the Bergstrasse; or, climbing a lofty ridge, was a watcher for the rising sun; and in the evening he sailed upon the star-lit Neckar.
BOOK V
CHAPTER I
Thou rapid Aar! thy waves are swollen by the snows of a thousand hills; but for whom are thy leaping waters fed? Is it for the Rhine?
Calmly, O placid Neckar! does thy blue stream glide through thy vine-clad vales; but calmer seems thy course when it touches the rushing Rhine!
How fragrant are the banks which are cooled by thy dark-green waters, thou tranquil Maine! but is not the perfume sweeter of the gardens of the Rhine?
Thou impetuous Nah! I lingered by thine islands of nightingales, and I asked thy rushing waters why they disturbed the music of thy groves? They told me they were hastening to the Rhine!
Red Moselle! fierce is the swell of thy spreading course; but why do thy broad waters blush when they meet the Rhine?
Thou delicate Meuse! how clear is the current of thy limpid wave; as the wife yields to the husband do thy pure waters yield to the Rhine!
And thou, triumphant and imperial River, flushed with the tribute of these vassal streams! thou art thyself a tributary, and hastenest even in the pride of conquest to confess thine own vassalage! But no superior stream exults in the homage of thy servile waters; the Ocean, the eternal Ocean, alone comes forward to receive thy kiss! not as a conqueror, but as a parent, he welcomes with proud joy his gifted child, the offspring of his honour; thy duty, his delight; thy tribute, thine own glory!
Once more upon thy banks, most beauteous Rhine! In the spring-time of my youth I gazed on thee, and deemed thee matchless. Thy vine-enamoured mountains, thy spreading waters, thy traditionary crags, thy shining cities, the sparkling villages of thy winding shores, thy antique convents, thy grey and silent castles, the purple glories of thy radiant grape, the vivid tints of thy teeming flowers, the fragrance of thy sky, the melody of thy birds, whose carols tell the pleasures of their sunny woods; are they less lovely now, less beautiful, less sweet?
The keen emotions of our youth are often the occasion of our estimating too ardently; but the first impression of beauty, though often overcharged, is seldom supplanted: and as the first great author which he reads is reverenced by the boy as the most immortal, and the first beautiful woman that he meets is sanctified by him as the most adorable; so the impressions created upon us by those scenes of nature which first realise the romance of our reveries never escape from our minds, and are ever consecrated in our memories; and thus some great spirits, after having played their part on the theatre of the world, have retired from the blaze of courts and cities to the sweet seclusion of some spot with which they have accidentally met in the earliest years of their career.
But we are to speak of one who had retired from the world before his time.
Upwards of a year had elapsed since Vivian Grey left England. The mode of life which he pursued at Heidelberg for many months has already been mentioned. He felt himself a broken-hearted man, and looked for death, whose delay was no blessing; but the feelings of youth which had misled him in his burning hours of joy equally deceived him in his days of sorrow. He lived; and in the course of time found each day that life was less burdensome. The truth is, that if it be the lot of man to suffer, it is also his fortune to forget. Oblivion and sorrow share our being, as Darkness and Light divide the course of time. It is not in human nature to endure extremities, and sorrows soon destroy either us or themselves. Perhaps the fate of Niobe is no fable, but a type of the callousness of our nature. There is a time in human suffering when succeeding sorrows are but like snow falling on an iceberg. It is indeed horrible to think that our peace of mind should arise, not from a retrospection of the past, but from a forgetfulness of it; but, though this peace be produced at the best by a mental opiate, it is not valueless; and Oblivion, after all, is a just judge. As we retain but a faint remembrance of our felicity, it is but fair that the smartest stroke of sorrow should, if bitter, at least be brief. But in feeling that he might yet again mingle in the world, Vivian Grey also felt that he must meet mankind with different feelings, and view their pursuits with a different interest. He woke from his secret sorrow in as changed a state of being as the water nymph from her first embrace; and he woke with a new possession, not only as miraculous as Undine’s soul, but gained at as great a price, and leading to as bitter results. The nymph woke to new pleasures and to new sorrows; and, innocent as an infant, she deemed mankind a god, and the world a paradise. Vivian Grey discovered that this deity was but an idol of brass, and this garden of Eden but a savage waste; for, if the river nymph had gained a soul, he had gained Experience.
Experience, mysterious spirit! whose result is felt by all, whose nature is described by none. The father warns the son of thy approach, and sometimes looks to thee as his offspring’s cure and his own consolation. We hear of thee in the nursery, we hear of thee in the world, we hear of thee in books; but who has recognised thee until he was thy subject, and who has discovered the object of so much fame until he has kissed thy chain? To gain thee is the work of all and the curse of all; thou art at the same time necessary to our happiness and destructive of our felicity; thou art the saviour of all things and the destroyer of all things; our best friend and our bitterest enemy; for thou teachest us truth, and that truth is, despair. Ye youth of England, would that ye could read this riddle!
To wake from your bright hopes, and feel that all is vanity, to be roused from your crafty plans and know that all is worthless, is a bitter, but your sure, destiny. Escape is impossible; for despair is the price of conviction. How many centuries have fled since Solomon, in his cedar palaces, sung the vanity of man! Though his harp was golden and his throne of ivory, his feelings were not less keen, and his conviction not less complete. How many sages of all nations have, since the monarch of Jerusalem, echoed his sad philosophy! yet the vain bubble still glitters and still allures, and must for ever.
The genealogy of Experience is brief; for Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books, nor can we form, from written descriptions, a more accurate idea of the movements of the human heart than we can of the movements of nature. A man may read all his life, and form no conception of the rush of a mountain torrent, or the waving of a forest of pines in a storm; and a man may study in his closet the heart of his fellow-creatures for ever, and have no idea of the power of ambition, or the strength of revenge.
It is when we have acted ourselves, and have seen others acting; it is when we have laboured ourselves under the influence of our passions, and have seen others labouring; it is when our great hopes have been attained or have been baulked; it is when, after having had the human heart revealed to us, we have the first opportunity to think; it is then that the whole truth lights upon us; it is then that we ask of ourselves whether it be wise to endure such anxiety of mind, such agitation of spirit, such harrowing of the soul, to gain what may cease to interest to-morrow, or for which, at the best, a few years of enjoyment can alone be afforded; it is then that we waken to the hollowness of all human things; it is then that the sayings of sages and the warnings of prophets are explained and understood; it is then that we gain Experience.
Vivian Grey was now about to join, for the second time, the great and agitated crowd of beings who are all intent in the search after that undiscoverable talisman, Happiness. That he entertained any hope of being the successful inquirer is not to be imagined. He considered that the happiest moment in human life is exactly the sensation of a sailor who has escaped a shipwreck, and that the mere belief that his wishes are to be indulged is the greatest bliss enjoyed by man.
How far his belief was correct, how he prospered in this his second venture on the great ocean of life, it is our business to relate. There were moments when he wished himself neither experienced nor a philosopher; moments when he looked back to the lost paradise of his innocent boyhood, those glorious hours when the unruffled river of his Life mirrored the cloudless heaven of his Hope!
