Kitabı oku: «David Elginbrod», sayfa 24

CHAPTER XXXI. EXPLANATIONS

I have done nothing good to win belief, My life hath been so faithless; all the creatures Made for heaven’s honours, have their ends, and good ones; All but… false women… When they die, like tales Ill-told, and unbelieved, they pass away.

I will redeem one minute of my age, Or, like another Niobe, I’ll weep Till I am water.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.—The Maid’s Tragedy.

The days passed quickly by; and the last evening that Hugh was to spend at Arnstead arrived. He wandered out alone. He had been with Harry all day, and now he wished for a few moments of solitude. It was a lovely autumn evening. He went into the woods behind the house. The leaves were still thick upon the trees, but most of them had changed to gold, and brown, and red; and the sweet faint odours of those that had fallen, and lay thick underfoot, ascended like a voice from the grave, saying: “Here dwelleth some sadness, but no despair.” As he strolled about among them, the whole history of his past life arose before him. This often happens before any change in our history, and is surest to take place at the approach of the greatest change of all, when we are about to pass into the unknown, whence we came.

In this mood, it was natural that his sins should rise before him. They came as the shadows of his best pleasures. For now, in looking back, he could fix on no period of his history, around which the aureole, which glorifies the sacred things of the past, had gathered in so golden a hue, as around the memory of the holy cottage, the temple in which abode David, and Janet, and Margaret. All the story glided past, as the necromantic Will called up the sleeping dead in the mausoleum of the brain. And that solemn, kingly, gracious old man, who had been to him a father, he had forgotten; the homely tenderness which, from fear of its own force, concealed itself behind a humorous roughness of manner, he had—no, not despised—but forgotten, too; and if the dim pearly loveliness of the trustful, grateful maiden had not been quite forgotten, yet she too had been neglected, had died, as it were, and been buried in the churchyard of the past, where the grass grows long over the graves, and the moss soon begins to fill up the chiselled records. He was ungrateful. He dared not allow to himself that he was unloving; but he must confess himself ungrateful.

Musing sorrowfully and self-reproachfully, he came to the Ghost’s Avenue. Up and down its aisle he walked, a fit place for remembering the past, and the sins of the present. Yielding himself to what thoughts might arise, the strange sight he had seen here on that moonlit night, of two silent wandering figures—or could it be that they were one and the same, suddenly changed in hue?—returned upon him. This vision had been so speedily followed by the second and more alarming apparition of Lady Euphrasia, that he had hardly had time to speculate on what the former could have been. He was meditating upon all these strange events, and remarking to himself that, since his midnight encounter with Lady Euphrasia, the house had been as quiet as a church-yard at noon, when all suddenly, he saw before him, at some little distance, a dark figure approaching him. His heart seemed to bound into his throat and choke him, as he said to himself: “It is the nun again!” But the next moment he saw that it was Euphra. I do not know which he would have preferred not meeting alone, and in the deepening twilight: Euphra, too, had become like a ghost to him. His first impulse was to turn aside into the wood, but she had seen him, and was evidently going to address him. He therefore advanced to meet her. She spoke first, approaching him with painful steps.

“I have been looking for you, Mr. Sutherland. I wanted very much to have a little conversation with you before you go. Will you allow me?”

Hugh felt like a culprit directly. Euphra’s manner was quite collected and kind; yet through it all a consciousness showed itself, that the relation which had once existed between them had passed away for ever. In her voice there was something like the tone of wind blowing through a ruin.

“I shall be most happy,” said he.

She smiled sadly. A great change had passed upon her.

“I am going to be quite open with you,” she said. “I am perfectly aware, as well as you are, that the boyish fancy you had for me is gone. Do not be offended. You are manly enough, but your love for me was boyish. Most first loves are childish, quite irrespective of age. I do not blame you in the least.”

This seemed to Hugh rather a strange style to assume, if all was true that his own eyes had reported. She went on:

“Nor must you think it has cost me much to lose it.”

Hugh felt hurt, at which no one who understands will be surprised.

“But I cannot afford to lose you, the only friend I have,” she added.

Hugh turned towards her with a face full of manhood and truth.

“You shall not lose me, Euphra, if you will be honest to yourself and to me.”

“Thank you. I can trust you. I will be honest.”

At that moment, without the revival of a trace of his former feelings, Hugh felt nearer to her than he had ever felt before. Now there seemed to be truth between them, the only medium through which beings can unite.

“I fear I have wronged you much,” she went on. “I do not mean some time ago.” Here she hesitated.—“I fear I am the cause of your leaving Arnstead.”

“You, Euphra? No. You must be mistaken.”

“I think not. But I am compelled to make an unwilling disclosure of a secret—a sad secret about myself. Do not hate me quite—I am a somnambulist.”

She hid her face in her hands, as if the night which had now closed around them did not hide her enough. Hugh did not reply. Absorbed in the interest which both herself and her confession aroused in him, he could only listen eagerly. She went on, after a moment’s pause:

“I did not think at first that I had taken the ring. I thought another had. But last night, and not till then, I discovered that I was the culprit.”

“How?”

“That requires explanation. I have no recollection of the events of the previous night when I have been walking in my sleep. Indeed, the utter absence of a sense of dreaming always makes me suspect that I have been wandering. But sometimes I have a vivid dream, which I know, though I can give no proof of it, to be a reproduction of some previous somnambulic experience. Do not ask me to recall the horrors I dreamed last night. I am sure I took the ring.”

“Then you dreamed what you did with it?”

“Yes, I gave it to—”

Here her voice sank and ceased. Hugh would not urge her.

“Have you mentioned this to Mr. Arnold?”

“No. I do not think it would do any good. But I will, if you wish it,” she added submissively.

“Not at all. Just as you think best.”

“I could not tell him everything. I cannot tell you everything. If I did, Mr. Arnold would turn me out of the house. I am a very unhappy girl, Mr. Sutherland.”

From the tone of these words, Hugh could not for a moment suppose that Euphra had any remaining design of fascination in them.

“Perhaps he might want to keep you, if I told him all; but I do not think, after the way he has behaved to you, that you could stay with him, for he would never apologize. It is very selfish of me; but indeed I have not the courage to confess to him.”

“I assure you nothing could make me remain now. But what can I do for you?”

“Only let me depend upon you, in case I should need your help; or—”

Here Euphra stopped suddenly, and caught hold of Hugh’s left hand, which he had lifted to brush an insect from his face.

“Where is your ring?” she said, in a tone of suppressed anxiety.

“Gone, Euphra. My father’s ring! It was lying beside Lady Euphrasia’s.”

Euphra’s face was again hidden in her hands. She sobbed and moaned like one in despair. When she grew a little calmer, she said:

“I am sure I did not take your ring, dear Hugh—I am not a thief. I had a kind of right to the other, and he said it ought to have been his, for his real name was Count von Halkar—the same name as Lady Euphrasia’s before she was married. He took it, I am sure.”

“It was he that knocked me down in the dark that night then, Euphra.”

“Did he? Oh! I shall have to tell you all.—That wretch has a terrible power over me. I loved him once. But I refused to take the ring from your desk, because I knew it would get you into trouble. He threw me into a somnambulic sleep, and sent me for the ring. But I should have remembered if I had taken yours. Even in my sleep, I don’t think he could have made me do that. You may know I speak the truth, when I am telling my own disgrace. He promised to set me free if I would get the ring; but he has not done it; and he will not.”

Sobs again interrupted her.

“I was afraid your ring was gone. I don’t know why I thought so, except that you hadn’t it on, when you came to see me. Or perhaps it was because I am sometimes forced to think what that wretch is thinking. He made me go to him that night you saw me, Hugh. But I was so ill, I don’t think I should have been able, but that I could not rest till I had asked him about your ring. He said he knew nothing about it.”

“I am sure He has it,” said Hugh. And he related to Euphra the struggle he had had with Funkelstein and its result. She shuddered.

“I have been a devil to you, Hugh; I have betrayed you to him. You will never see your ring again. Here, take mine. It is not so good as yours, but for the sake of the old way you thought of me, take it.”

“No, no, Euphra; Mr. Arnold would miss it. Besides, you know it would not be my father’s ring, and it was not for the value of the diamond I cared most about it. And I am not sure that I shall not find it again. I am going up to London, where I shall fall in with him, I hope.”

“But do take care of yourself. He has no conscience. God knows, I have had little, but he has none.”

“I know he has none; but a conscience is not a bad auxiliary, and there I shall have some advantage of him. But what could he want that ring of Lady Euphrasia’s for?”

“I don’t know. He never told me.”

“It was not worth much.”

“Next to nothing.”

“I shall be surer to find that than my own. And I will find it, if I can, that Mr. Arnold may believe I was not to blame.”

“Do. But be careful.”

“Don’t fear. I will be careful.”

She held out her hand, as if to take leave of him, but withdrew it again with the sudden cry:

“What shall I do? I thought he had left me to myself, till that night in the library.”

She held down her head in silence. Then she said, slowly, in a tone of agony:

“I am a slave, body and soul.—Hugh!” she added, passionately, and looking up in his face, “do you think there is a God?”

Her eyes glimmered with the faint reflex from gathered tears, that silently overflowed.

And now Hugh’s own poverty struck him with grief and humiliation. Here was a soul seeking God, and he had no right to say that there was a God, for he knew nothing about him. He had been told so; but what could that far-off witness do for the need of a desolate heart? She had been told so a million of times. He could not say that he knew it. That was what she wanted and needed.

He was honest, and so replied:

“I do not know. I hope so.”

He felt that she was already beyond him; for she had begun to cry into the vague, seemingly heartless void, and say:

“Is there a God somewhere to hear me when I cry?”

And with all the teaching he had had, he had no word of comfort to give. Yes, he had: he had known David Elginbrod.

Before he had shaped his thought, she said:

“I think, if there were a God, he would help me; for I am nothing but a poor slave now. I have hardly a will of my own.”

The sigh she heaved told of a hopeless oppression.

“The best man, and the wisest, and the noblest I ever knew,” said Hugh, “believed in God with his whole heart and soul and strength and mind. In fact, he cared for nothing but God; or rather, he cared for everything because it belonged to God. He was never afraid of anything, never vexed at anything, never troubled about anything. He was a good man.”

Hugh was surprised at the light which broke upon the character of David, as he held it before his mind’s eye, in order to describe it to Euphra. He seemed never to have understood him before.

“Ah! I wish I knew him. I would go to that man, and ask him to save me. Where does he live?”

“Alas! I do not know whether he is alive or dead—the more to my shame. But he lives, if he lives, far away in the north of Scotland.”

She paused.

“No. I could not go there. I will write to him.”

Hugh could not discourage her, though he doubted whether a real communication could be established between them.

“I will write down his address for you, when I go in,” said he. “But what can he save you from?”

“From no God,” she answered, solemnly. “If there is no God, then I am sure that there is a devil, and that he has got me in his power.”

Hugh felt her shudder, for she was leaning on his arm, she was still so lame. She continued:

“Oh! if I had a God, he would right me, I know.”

Hugh could not reply. A pause followed.

“Good-bye. I feel pretty sure we shall meet again. My presentiments are generally true,” said Euphra, at length.

Hugh kissed her hand with far more real devotion than he had ever kissed it with before.

She left him, and hastened to the house ‘with feeble speed.’ He was sorry she was gone. He walked up and down for some time, meditating on the strange girl and her strange words; till, hearing the dinner bell, he too must hasten in to dress.

Euphra met him at the dinner-table without any change of her late manner. Mr. Arnold wished him good night more kindly than usual. When he went up to his room, he found that Harry had already cried himself to sleep.

CHAPTER XXXII. DEPARTURE

 
I fancy deemed fit guide to lead my way,
And as I deemed I did pursue her track;
Wit lost his aim, and will was fancy’s prey;
The rebel won, the ruler went to wrack.
But now sith fancy did with folly end,
Wit, bought with loss—will, taught by wit, will mend.
 

SOUTHWELL.—David’s Peccavi.

After dinner, Hugh wandered over the well-known places, to bid them good-bye. Then he went up to his room, and, with the vanity of a young author, took his poems out of the fatal old desk; wrote: “Take them, please, such as they are. Let me be your friend;” inclosed them with the writing, and addressed them to Euphra. By the time he saw them again, they were so much waste paper in his eyes.

But what were his plans for the future?

First of all, he would go to London. There he would do many things. He would try to find Funkelstein. He would write. He would make acquaintance with London life; for had he not plenty of money in his pocket? And who could live more thriftily than he?—During his last session at Aberdeen, he had given some private lessons, and so contrived to eke out his small means. These were wretchedly paid for, namely, not quite at the rate of sevenpence-halfpenny a lesson! but still that was something, where more could not be had.—Now he would try to do the same in London, where he would be much better paid. Or perhaps he might get a situation in a school for a short time, if he were driven to ultimate necessity. At all events, he would see London, and look about him for a little while, before he settled to anything definite.

With this hopeful prospect before him, he next morning bade adieu to Arnstead. I will not describe the parting with poor Harry. The boy seemed ready to break his heart, and Hugh himself had enough to do to refrain from tears. One of the grooms drove him to the railway in the dog-cart. As they came near the station, Hugh gave him half-a-crown. Enlivened by the gift, the man began to talk.

“He’s a rum customer, that ere gemman with the foring name. The colour of his puss I couldn’t swear to now. Never saw sixpence o’ his’n. My opinion is, master had better look arter his spoons. And for missus—well, it’s a pity! He’s a rum un, as I say, anyhow.”

The man here nodded several times, half compassionately, half importantly.

Hugh did not choose to inquire what he meant. They reached the station, and in a few minutes he was shooting along towards London, that social vortex, which draws everything towards its central tumult.

But there is a central repose beyond the motions of the world; and through the turmoil of London, Hugh was journeying towards that wide stillness—that silence of the soul, which is not desolate, but rich with unutterable harmonies.

END OF THE SECOND BOOK

BOOK III. LONDON

 
Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
Oh, sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?
Oh, punishment!
Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed
To add to golden numbers, golden numbers?
Oh, sweet content!
Work apace, apace, apace, apace; Honest labour bears a lovely face.
 

Probably THOMAS DEKKER.—Comedy of Patient Grissell.

CHAPTER I. LODGINGS

 
Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly.
 

Song in As You Like It.

Hugh felt rather dreary as, through Bermondsey, he drew nigh to the London Bridge Station. Fog, and drizzle, and smoke, and stench composed the atmosphere. He got out in a drift of human atoms. Leaving his luggage at the office, he set out on foot to explore—in fact, to go and look for his future, which, even when he met it, he would not be able to recognise with any certainty. The first form in which he was interested to find it embodied, was that of lodgings; but where even to look, he did not know. He had been in London for a few days in the spring on his way to Arnstead, so he was not utterly ignorant of the anatomy of the monster city; but his little knowledge could not be of much service to him now. And how different it was from the London of spring, which had lingered in his memory and imagination; when, transformed by the “heavenly alchemy” of the piercing sunbeams that slanted across the streets from chimney-tops to opposite basements, the dust and smoke showed great inclined planes of light, up whose steep slopes one longed to climb to the fountain glory whence they flowed! Now the streets, from garret to cellar, seemed like huge kennels of muddy, moist, filthy air, down through which settled the heavier particles of smoke and rain upon the miserable human beings who crawled below in the deposit, like shrimps in the tide, or whitebait at the bottom of the muddy Thames. He had to wade through deep thin mud even on the pavements. Everybody looked depressed, and hurried by with a cowed look; as if conscious that the rain and general misery were a plague drawn down on the city by his own individual crime. Nobody seemed to care for anybody or anything. “Good heavens!” thought Hugh; “what a place this must be for one without money!” It looked like a chaos of human monads. And yet, in reality, the whole mass was so bound together, interwoven, and matted, by the crossing and inter-twisting threads of interest, mutual help, and relationship of every kind, that Hugh soon found how hard it was to get within the mass at all, so as to be in any degree partaker of the benefits it shared within itself.

He did not wish to get lodgings in the outskirts, for he thought that would remove him from every centre of action or employment. But he saw no lodgings anywhere. Growing tired and hungry, he went at length into an eating-house, which he thought looked cheap; and proceeded to dine upon a cinder, which had been a steak. He tried to delude himself into the idea that it was a steak still, by withdrawing his attention from it, and fixing it upon a newspaper two days old. Finding nothing of interest, he dallied with the advertisements. He soon came upon a column from which single gentlemen appeared to be in request as lodgers. Looking over these advertisements, which had more interest for him at the moment than all home and foreign news, battles and murders included, he drew a map from his pocket, and began to try to find out some of the localities indicated. Most of them were in or towards the suburbs. At last he spied one in a certain square, which, after long and diligent search, and with the assistance of the girl who waited on him, he found on his map. It was in the neighbourhood of Holborn, and, from the place it occupied in the map, seemed central enough for his vague purposes. Above all, the terms were said to be moderate. But no description of the character of the lodgings was given, else Hugh would not have ventured to look at them. What he wanted was something of the same sort as he had had in Aberdeen—a single room, or a room and bed-room, for which he should have to pay only a few shillings a week.

Refreshed by his dinner, wretched as it was, he set out again. To his great joy, the rain was over, and an afternoon sun was trying, with some slight measure of success, to pierce the clouds of the London atmosphere: it had already succeeded with the clouds of the terrene. He soon found his way into Holborn, and thence into the square in question. It looked to him very attractive; for it was quietness itself, and had no thoroughfare, except across one of its corners. True, it was invaded by the universal roar—for what place in London is not?—but it contributed little or nothing of its own manufacture to the general production of sound in the metropolis. The centre was occupied by grass and trees, inclosed within an iron railing. All the leaves were withered, and many had dropped already on the pavement below. In the middle stood the statue of a queen, of days gone by. The tide of fashion had rolled away far to the west, and yielded a free passage to the inroads of commerce, and of the general struggle for ignoble existence, upon this once favoured island in its fluctuating waters. Old windows, flush with the external walls, whence had glanced fair eyes to which fashion was even dearer than beauty, now displayed Lodgings to Let between knitted curtains, from which all idea of drapery had been expelled by severe starching Amongst these he soon found the house he sought, and shrunk from its important size and bright equipments; but, summoning courage, thought it better to ring the bell. A withered old lady, in just the same stage of decay as the square, and adorned after the same fashion as the house, came to the door, cast a doubtful look at Hugh, and when he had stated his object, asked him, in a hard, keen, unmodulated voice, to walk in. He followed her, and found himself in a dining-room, which to him, judging by his purse, and not by what he had been used to of late, seemed sumptuous. He said at once:

“It is needless for me to trouble you further. I see your rooms will not suit me.”

The old lady looked annoyed.

“Will you see the drawing-room apartments, then?” she said, crustily.

“No, thank you. It would be giving you quite unnecessary trouble.”

“My apartments have always given satisfaction, I assure you, sir.”

“Indeed, I have no reason to doubt it. I wish I could afford to take them,” said Hugh, thinking it better to be open than to hurt her feelings. “I am sure I should be very comfortable. But a poor—”

He did not know what to call himself.

“O-oh!” said the landlady. Then, after a pause—“Well?” interrogatively.

“Well, I was a tutor last, but I don’t know what I may be next.”

She kept looking at him. Once or twice she looked at him from head to foot.

“You are respectable?”

“I hope so,” said Hugh, laughing.

“Well!”—this time not interrogatively.

“How many rooms would you like?”

“The fewer the better. Half a one, if there were nobody in the other half.”

“Well!—and you wouldn’t give much trouble, I daresay.”

“Only for coals and water to wash and drink.”

“And you wouldn’t dine at home?”

“No—nor anywhere else,” said Hugh; but the second and larger clause was sotto voce.

“And you wouldn’t smoke in-doors?”

“No.”

“And you would wipe your boots clean before you went up-stairs?”

“Yes, certainly.” Hugh was beginning to be exceedingly amused, but he kept his gravity wonderfully.

“Have you any money?”

“Yes; plenty for the meantime. But when I shall get more, I don’t know, you see.”

“Well, I’ve a room at the top of the house, which I’ll make comfortable for you; and you may stay as long as you like to behave yourself.”

“But what is the rent?”

“Four shillings a week—to you. Would you like to see it?”

“Yes, if you please.”

She conducted him up to the third floor, and showed him a good-sized room, rather bare, but clean.

“This will do delightfully,” said Hugh.

“I will make it a little more comfortable for you, you know.”

“Thank you very much. Shall I pay you a month in advance?”

“No, no,” she answered, with a grim smile. “I might want to get rid of you, you know. It must be a week’s warning, no more.”

“Very well. I have no objection. I will go and fetch my luggage. I suppose I may come in at once?”

“The sooner the better, young man, in a place like London. The sooner you come home the better pleased I shall be. There now!”

So saying, she walked solemnly down-stairs before him, and let him out. Hugh hurried away to fetch his luggage, delighted that he had so soon succeeded in finding just what he wanted. As he went, he speculated on the nature of his landlady, trying to account for her odd rough manner, and the real kindness of her rude words. He came to the conclusion that she was naturally kind to profusion, and that this kindness had, some time or other, perhaps repeatedly, been taken shameful advantage of; that at last she had come to the resolution to defend herself by means of a general misanthropy, and supposed that she had succeeded, when she had got no further than to have so often imitated the tone of her own behaviour when at its crossest, as to have made it habitual by repetition.

In all probability some unknown sympathy had drawn her to Hugh. She might have had a son about his age, who had run away thirty years ago. Or rather, for she seemed an old maid, she had been jilted some time by a youth about the same size as Hugh; and therefore she loved him the moment she saw him. Or, in short, a thousand things. Certainly seldom have lodgings been let so oddly or so cheaply. But some impulse or other of the whimsical old human heart, which will have its way, was satisfied therein.

When he returned in a couple of hours, with his boxes on the top of a cab, the door was opened, before he knocked, by a tidy maid, who, without being the least like her mistress, yet resembled her excessively. She helped him to carry his boxes up-stairs; and when he reached his room, he found a fire burning cheerily, a muffin down before it, a tea-kettle singing on the hob, and the tea-tray set upon a nice white cloth on a table right in front of the fire, with an old-fashioned high-backed easy-chair by its side—the very chair to go to sleep in over a novel. The old lady soon made her appearance, with the teapot in one hand, and a plate of butter in the other.

“Oh! thank you,” said Hugh. “This is comfortable!”

She answered only by compressing her lips till her mouth vanished altogether, and nodding her head as much as to say: “I know it is. I intended it should be.” She then poured water into the teapot, set it down by the fire, and vanished.

Hugh sat down in the easy-chair, and resolved to be comfortable, at least till he had had his tea; after which he would think what he was to do next. A knock at the door—and his landlady entered, laid a penny newspaper on the table, and went away. This was just what he wanted to complete his comfort. He took it up, and read while he consumed his bread and butter. When he had had enough of tea and newspaper, he said to himself:

“Now, what am I to do next?”

It is a happy thing for us that this is really all we have to concern ourselves about—what to do next. No man can do the second thing. He can do the first. If he omits it, the wheels of the social Juggernaut roll over him, and leave him more or less crushed behind. If he does it, he keeps in front, and finds room to do the next again; and so he is sure to arrive at something, for the onward march will carry him with it. There is no saying to what perfection of success a man may come, who begins with what he can do, and uses the means at his hand. He makes a vortex of action, however slight, towards which all the means instantly begin to gravitate. Let a man but lay hold of something—anything, and he is in the high road to success—though it may be very long before he can walk comfortably in it.—It is true the success may be measured out according to a standard very different from his.

But in Hugh’s case, the difficulty was to grasp anything—to make a beginning anywhere. He knew nobody; and the globe of society seemed like a mass of adamant, on which he could not gain the slightest hold, or make the slightest impression. Who would introduce him to pupils? Nobody. He had the testimonials of his professors; but who would ask to see them?—His eye fell on the paper. He would advertise.