“Certainly not!” cried Plover emphatically, bringing his jewelled hand down on the table with a crash.
“My dear sir!…” began some one; but Raymond echoed sharply:
“‘Certainly not!’ Just so. But suppose I draw my pistol and shoot the robber dead on the spot? God and the law absolve me; I have a right to kill any man who threatens my life or my property, or that of my neighbor.”
“You have! Undoubtedly you have!” said two or three, speaking together.
“And yet homicide is a greater sin than a lie!” cried Raymond. He was flushed and excited; his eye sparkled and his hand trembled as he pushed the glasses farther away, and leaned on the table, surveying the company with a glance that had something of triumph and something of defiance in it.
“Well done, Bourbonais!” cried Sir Simon. “You’ve not left Plover an inch of ground to stand on!”
“Closely reasoned,” said Mr. Langrove, with a dubious movement of the head; “but.…”
“Sophistry! a very specious bit of sophistry!” said Mr. Plover in a loud voice, drowning everybody else’s. “Comte and Rousseau and the rest of them in a nutshell.”
“Crack it, then, and let’s have the kernel!” said Lord Roxham. He was growing out of patience with the dictatorial tone of this vulgar man.
“Just so!” chimed in Mr. Charlton, airing a snowy hand and signet gem, and falling back in his chair with the air of a man wearied with hard thinking.
“It’s too preposterous to answer,” was Plover’s evasive taunt; “it’s mere casuistry.”
“A very compact bit of casuistry, at any rate,” said Sir Simon, with friendly pride in Raymond’s manifest superiority over his assembled guests; “it strikes me it would take more than our combined wits to answer it.”
“Egad! I’d eat my head before I’d answer it!” confessed Ponsonby Anwyll, who shared the baronet’s personal complacency in the count’s superior brain. But Raymond had lapsed into his previous silent mood, and sat absently toying with a plate of bonbons before him, and apparently deaf to the clashing of tongues that he had provoked. There was something very touching in his look, in the air of gentle dejection that pervaded him, and which contrasted strikingly with the transient warmth he had displayed while speaking. Sir Simon noticed it, and it smote him to the heart. For the first time this evening he bethought him how his own cheerfulness must strike Raymond, and how he must be puzzled to account for it. He promised himself the pleasure of explaining it to his satisfaction before they parted to-night; but meanwhile it gave him a pang to think of the iron that was in his friend’s soul, though it was part of his pleasant expectation that he would be able to draw it out and pour some healing balm on the wound to-morrow. He would show him why he had borne so patiently with the vulgar pedagogue who had permitted himself to fail, at least by insinuation, in respect to M. de la Bourbonais. The pedagogue meanwhile seemed bent on making himself disagreeable to the inoffensive foreigner.
“It is a pity X—— was not able to secure Count de la Bourbonais as counsel,” he began again. “In the hands of so skilful a casuist his backsliding might have come out quite in a heroic light. It would have been traced to his poverty, which engendered his gratitude, and so on until we had a verdict that would have been virtually a glorification of impecuniosity. It is a pity we have missed the treat.”
“Poverty is no doubt responsible for many backslidings,” said Raymond, bridling imperceptibly. He felt the sting of the remark as addressed to him by the rich man, or he fancied he did. “The world would no doubt be better as well as happier if riches were more equally divided; but there are worse things in the world than poverty, for all that.”
“There is the excess of riches, which is infinitely worse—a more unmitigated source of evil, taking it all in all,” said Mr. Langrove.
“Well said for a professional, my dear sir,” laughed Mr. Plover; “but you won’t find many outsiders to agree with you, I suspect.”
“If by outsiders you mean Turks, Jews, and Hottentots, I daresay you are right,” said the vicar good-temperedly.
“I mean every sensible man who is not bound by his cloth to talk cant—no offence; I use the word technically—you won’t find one such out of a thousand to deny that riches are the best gift of heaven, the one that can buy every other worth having—love and devotion into the bargain.”
“What rank heresy you are propounding, my dear sir!” exclaimed Sir Simon, taking a pinch from his enamelled snuff-box, and passing it on. “You will not find one sane man in a thousand to agree with you!”
“Won’t I though? What do you say, count?”
“I agree with you, monsieur,” said Raymond with a certain asperity; “money can purchase most things worth having, but I deny that it can always pay for them.”
“Ha! there we have the sophist again. It can buy, and yet it can’t pay. Pray explain!”
“What do you mean, Raymond?” said Sir Simon, darting a curious, puzzled look at his friend.
“It is very simple. I mean that money may sometimes enable us to confer an obligation which no money can repay. We may, for instance, do a service or avert a sorrow by means of a sum of money, and thus purchase love and gratitude—things which Mr. Plover has included in those worth having, and which money cannot pay for, though it may be the means of buying them.” The look that accompanied the answer said more to Sir Simon than the words conveyed to any one else. He averted his eyes quickly, and was all at once horrified to discover several empty glasses round the table. They were at dessert now.
“Charlton, have you tried that Madeira? Help yourself again, and pass it on here, will you? I shall have to play Ganymede, and go round pouring out the nectar to you like so many gods, if you don’t bestir yourselves.”
And then there was a clinking of glasses, as the amber and ruby liquid was poured from many a curious flagon into the glistening crystal cups.
“Talking of gods, that’s a god’s eye that you see there on Plover’s finger,” observed Mr. Charlton, whose azure gem was quite eclipsed by the flashing jewel that had suggested M. de la Bourbonais’ illustration. “It was set in the forehead of an Indian idol. Just let Sir Simon look at it; he’s a judge of precious stones,” said the young man, who felt that his feeble personality gained something from the proximity of so big a personage, and was anxious to show him off. The latter complacently drew the ring from his finger and tossed it over to his host. It was a large white diamond of the purest water, without the shadow of a flaw.
“It is a beauty!” exclaimed Sir Simon with the enthusiasm of a connoisseur; “only it’s too good to be worn by a man. It ought to have gone to a beautiful woman when it left the god. I suppose it will soon, eh, Plover?”
Mr. Plover laughed. He was not a marrying man, he said, but he would make no rash vows. Then he went on to tell about other precious stones in his possession. He had some amazingly sensational stories to relate concerning them and how he became possessed of them. We generally interest others when we get on a subject that thoroughly interests ourselves and that we thoroughly understand. Mr. Plover understood a great deal about these legendary gems, and the celebrated idols in which they had figured; he had, moreover, imbibed a certain tinge of Oriental superstition concerning the talismanic properties of precious gems, and invested them, perhaps half unconsciously, with that kind of prestige that is not very far off from worship. This flavor of superstition pierced unawares through his discourse on the qualities and adventures of various rubies and sapphires that had played stirring parts in the destinies of particular gods, and were universally believed to influence for good or evil the lives of mortals who became possessed of them.
The company began to find him less disagreeable as he went on. They did not quite believe in him; but when a story-teller amuses us, we are not apt to quarrel with him for using a traveller’s privilege and drawing the long bow.
By the time this vein was exhausted the party had quite forgiven the obnoxious guest, and admitted him within the sympathetic ring of good-fellowship and conviviality. M. de la Bourbonais had become unusually talkative, and contributed his full share to the ebb and flow of lively repartee. He was generally as abstemious as an anchorite; but to-night he broke through his ascetic habits, and filled and refilled his glass many times. It was deep drinking for him, though for any one else it would have been reckoned moderate. Before the dessert was long on the table the effect of the wine was visible in his excited manner and the shrill tone of his voice, that rose high and sharp above the others in a way that was quite foreign to his gentleness. Sir Simon saw this, and at once divined the cause. It gave him a new pang. Poor Raymond! Driven to this to keep his misery from bursting out and overwhelming him!
“Shall we finish our cigars here or in the library?” asked the baronet when his own tired limbs suggested that a change of posture might be generally agreeable.
As by tacit consent, the chairs were all pushed back and everybody rose. The clock in the hall was striking ten.
“Do you know I think I must be going?” said Mr. Langrove. “Time slips quickly by in pleasant company; I had no idea it was so late!”
“Nonsense! you are not going to leave us yet!” protested Sir Simon. “Don’t mind the clocks here; they’re on wheels.”
“Are they?” said the vicar, and innocently pulled out his watch to compare it with the loud chime that was still trembling in the air. “Humph! I see your wheels are five minutes slower than mine!” he said, with a nod and a laugh at his prevaricating host.
“Come, now, Langrove, never mind the time. ‘Hours were made for slaves,’ you know. Come in and have another cigar,” urged Sir Simon.
But the vicar was firm.
“Then I may as well go with you,” said M. de la Bourbonais; “it’s late already for me to be out.”
Sir Simon was beginning to protest, when his attention was called away by Lord Roxham.
“Have you that diamond ring, Harness?”
“What ring? Plover’s? No; I passed it to you to look at, and it didn’t come round to me again. Can it not be found?”
“Oh! it’s sure to turn up in a minute!” said Mr. Plover. “It has slipped under the edge of a plate, very likely!” And he went to the table and began to look for it.
“Come, let us be going, as we are going,” said M. de la Bourbonais to the vicar, and he went towards the door.
“Wait a bit,” replied Mr. Langrove—“wait a moment, Bourbonais; we must see the end of this.”
“What have we to see in it? It is no concern of ours,” was the slightly impatient rejoinder. Raymond was in that state of unnatural excitement when the least trifle that crosses us chafes and irritates. He had nothing for it, however, but to comply with the vicar’s fancy and wait.
“Most extraordinary!” Sir Simon exclaimed, as crystal dishes and porcelain plates were lifted and moved, and silver filigree baskets overturned and their delicate fruits sent rolling in every direction. “It must have dropped; stand aside, everybody, while I look under the table.” Every one drew off. Sir Simon flung up the ends of the snowy cloth, and, taking a chandelier with several lights, set it on the floor and began carefully to examine the carpet; but the ring was nowhere to be seen.
“If it is here, it is certain to be seen,” he said, still bent down. “Look out, all of you, as you stand; you may see it flash better in the distance.”
But no flash was anywhere visible. The wax-lights discovered nothing brighter than the subdued colors of the rich Persian carpet. Sir Simon went round to the other side of the table, and searched with the same care and the same result.
“You are not an absent man, are you?” he said, lifting the chandelier from the ground, and addressing the owner of the missing ring. “You are not capable of slipping it into your pocket unawares?”
“I never did such a thing in my life; but that is no reason why I may not have done it now. Old wine sometimes plays the deuce with one,” said Mr. Plover, and he began to rummage his pockets and turn their contents on to the table-cloth. Its whiteness threw every article into vivid relief; but there was no ring.
“This is very singular, very extraordinary indeed!” said Sir Simon in a sharp tone of annoyance. “Is any one hoaxing? Charlton, you’re not playing a trick on us, are you?”
“What should I play such a stupid trick as that for?” demanded the young man. “I’m not such an idiot; but here goes! Let us have my pockets on the table too!”
And following his friend’s example, he turned them inside out, coat, waistcoat, and trousers pockets in succession; but no ring appeared.
“It is time we all followed suit,” said Sir Simon, and he cleared a larger space by sweeping away plates and glasses. “I am given to absence of mind myself, and, as you say, I may have taken a glass more than was good for me.”
As he spoke he turned out one pocket after another, with no other result than to show the solidity and unblemished freshness of the linings; there was not a slit or the sign of one anywhere where a diamond ring, or a diamond without a ring, could have slipped through.
“Well, gentlemen, I invite you all to follow my example!” said the host, stepping back from the table, and motioning for any one that liked to advance. His voice had a ring of command in it that would have compelled obedience if that had been necessary; but it did not seem to be so. One after another the guests came up and repeated the operation, while the owner of the ring watched them with a face that grew darker with every disappointment. Mr. Langrove and M. de la Bourbonais were standing somewhat apart from the rest near the door, and were now the only two that remained. The vicar came first. He submitted his pockets to the same rigorous scrutiny, and with the same result. A strange gleam passed over Mr. Plover’s features, as he turned his sallow face in the direction of M. de la Bourbonais. Suspicion and hope had now narrowed to this last trial. Raymond did not move. “Come on, Bourbonais; I have done!” said Mr. Langrove, consigning his spectacles and his handkerchief to his last pocket.
But Raymond remained immovable, as if he were glued to the carpet.
“Come, my dear friend, come!” Sir Simon called out, in a voice that was meant only to be kind and encouraging, but in which those who knew its tones detected a nervous note.
“I will not!” said the count in a sharp, high key. “I will not submit to such an indignity; it has been got up for the purpose of insulting me. I refuse to submit to it!”
He turned to leave the room.
“Raymond, you are mad! You must do it!” cried Sir Simon imperatively.
“I am not mad! I am poor!” retorted the count, facing round and darting eyes of defiance at Sir Simon. “This person, who calls himself a gentleman, has insulted me from the moment I sat down to table with him, and you allowed him to do it. He taunted me with my poverty; he would make out now that because I am poor I am a thief! I have borne with him so far because I was at your table; but there is a limit to what I will bear. I will not submit to the outrage he wants to put upon me.”
Again he turned towards the door.
“You shall hand out my ring before you stir from here, my fine sir!” cried Mr. Plover, taking a stride after him, and stretching out an arm as if to clutch him; but Sir Simon quick as thought intercepted him by laying a hand on the outstretched arm, while Ponsonby Anwyll stepped forward and placed his tall, broad figure like a bulwark between Raymond and his assailant.
“Let me go!” said the latter, shaking himself to get free from the baronet’s clasp; but the long, firm fingers closed on him like grim death.
“You shall not touch M. de la Bourbonais in my presence,” he said; “you have insulted him, as he says, already. If I had seen that he detected what was offensive in your tone and manner, I would not have suffered it to pass. Stand back, and leave me to deal with him!”
“Confound the beggar! Let him give me my ring! I don’t want to touch him; but as I live he doesn’t stir from this room till I’ve seen his breeches pocket turned wrong-side out!”
The man had been drinking heavily, and, though he was still to all intents and purposes sober, this excitement, added to that caused by the wine, heated his blood to boiling-point. He looked as if he would have flown at Raymond; but cowed by Sir Simon’s cool self-command and determined will, he fell back a step, fastening his eyes on Raymond with a savage glare.
Raymond meantime continued obstinate and impracticable. Mr. Langrove took his hand in both his, and in the gentlest way entreated him to desist from his suicidal folly; assuring him that he was the last man present whom any one in his senses would dream of suspecting of a theft, of the faintest approach to anything dishonorable, but that it was sheer madness to refuse to clear himself in the eyes of this stranger. It was a mere form, and meant no more for him than for the rest of them. But Raymond turned a deaf ear to his pleading.
“Let me go! I will not do it! He has been insulting me from the beginning. I will not submit to this,” he repeated, and shook himself free from Mr. Langrove’s friendly grasp.
Sir Simon came close up to him. He was pale and agitated in spite of his affected coolness, and his hand shook as he laid it on Raymond’s shoulder.
“Raymond, for my sake, for God’s sake!” he muttered.
But Raymond thrust away his hand, and said with bitter scorn: “Ha! I am a beggar, and so I must be a thief! No, I will not clear myself! Let this rich man go and proclaim me a thief!” And breaking away from them all, he dashed out of the room.
“Hold! Stop him, or by —— I’ll make hot work of it for you!” shouted Mr. Plover, making for the door; but Ponsonby Anwyll set his back to it, and defied him to pass. If the other had been brave enough to try, it would have been a hopeless attempt; his attenuated body was no match for the stalwart limbs of the young squire. He involuntarily recoiled as if Ponsonby’s arms, stoutly crossed on his breast, had dealt him a blow. Lord Roxham and Mr. Charlton pressed round him, expostulating and trying to calm him. This was no easy task, and they knew it. They were terribly shaken themselves, and they felt that it was absurd to expect this stranger, fuming for his diamond, to believe that M. de la Bourbonais had not taken it.
“No one but a madman would have done such a thing, when it’s as certain as death to be found out,” said Sir Ponsonby, whose faith in Raymond was sustained by another faith. “Besides, we all know he’s no more capable of it than we are ourselves!”
“Very fine talk, but where is the ring? Who has taken it, if not this Frenchman? I tell you what, he will be making out that it was his right and his duty to steal from a rich man to help a poor one. Perhaps he’s hard up just now, and he blesses Providence for the opportunity.”
“Remember, sir, that you are speaking of a gentleman who is my friend, and whom I know to be incapable of an unworthy action,” said Sir Simon in a stern and haughty tone.
“I compliment you on your friends; it sha’n’t be my fault if you don’t see this one at the hulks before long. But curse me! now I think of it, I’m at your mercy, all of you. I have to depend on you as witnesses, and it seems the fashion in these parts for gentlemen to perjure themselves to screen a friend; you will most likely refuse to swear to facts—if you don’t swear against them, eh?”
“You must be drunk; you don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Mr. Charlton, forgetting to drawl, and speaking quickly like a sensible man. “It is as premature as it is absurd to imagine the ring is stolen; it must be in the room, and it must be found.”
“In the room or out of it, it must and it shall be found!” echoed Mr. Plover, “or if not.…”
“If not, it shall be paid for,” added Mr. Charlton; “it shall be replaced.”
“Replaced! All you’re worth could not buy a stone like that one!”
“Not its duplicate as a god’s eye invested with magical virtue,” said Mr. Charlton ironically; “but its value in the market can be paid, I suppose. What price do you put on it?”
“As a mere stone it is worth five hundred pounds to any jeweller in London.”
“Five hundred pounds!” repeated several in chorus with Mr. Charlton.
Sir Simon said nothing. A mist came before his eyes. He saw Raymond in the grip of this cruel man, and he was powerless to release him. If the dread was an act of disloyalty to Raymond, Sir Simon was scarcely to blame. He would have signed away five years of his life that moment to see M. de la Bourbonais cleared of the suspicion that he had so insanely fastened on himself; but how could he help doubting? He knew as no one else knew what the power of the temptation was which had—had it?—goaded him to the mad act. Its madness was the strongest argument against its possibility. To pocket a ring worth five hundred pounds—worth five pounds—in the very teeth of the person it belonged to, and with the clear certainty of being immediately detected—no one in his right mind would have done such a thing. But was Raymond in his right mind when he did it? Had he been in his right mind since he entered the house to-night? There is such a thing as delirium of the heart from sorrow or despair. Then he had been drinking a great deal more than usual, and wine beguiles men to acts of frenzy unawares. If Sir Simon could even say to this man, “I will pay you the five hundred pounds”; but he had not as many pence to call his own. There had been a momentary silence after the exclamation of surprise that followed the announcement of the value of the diamond. Would Mr. Charlton not ratify his offer to pay for it? And if he did not, what could save Raymond?
“Five hundred pounds! You are joking!” said the young man.
“We’ll see whether I am or not! I had the diamond valued with several others at Vienna, where it was set,” said Mr. Plover.
“Consider me your debtor for the amount,” said Sir Ponsonby Anwyll, stepping forward; “if the ring is not found to-night, I will sign you a check for five hundred pounds.”
“Let us begin and look for it in good earnest,” said Lord Roxham. “We will divide; two will go at each side of the table and hunt for it thoroughly. It must have rolled somewhere into a crevice or a corner.”
“I don’t see how a ring was likely to roll on this,” said Mr. Plover, scratching the thick pile of the carpet with the tip of his patent-leather boot.
“Some of us may have kicked it to a distance in pushing back our chairs,” suggested Mr. Langrove; “let us set the lights on the floor, and divide as Lord Roxham proposes.”
Every one seized a chandelier or a lamp and set it on the floor, and began to prosecute the search. They had hardly been two minutes thus engaged when a loud ring was heard, and after a momentary delay the door opened and M. de la Bourbonais walked in.
“Good heavens, Bourbonais! is it you?” cried Sir Simon, rising from his knees and hastening to meet him.
But Raymond, with a haughty gesture, waved him off.
They were all on their feet in a moment, full of wonder and expectation.
“I made a mistake in refusing to submit to the examination you asked of me,” said the count, addressing himself to all collectively. “I was wrong to listen only to personal indignation in the matter; I saw only a poor man insulted by a rich one. I have come back to repair my mistake. See now for yourselves, and, if you like, examine every corner of my clothes.”
He advanced to the table, intending to suit the action to the words, when a burst of derisive laughter was heard at the other end of the room. It was from Mr. Plover. The others were looking on silent and confounded.
“Do you take us all for so many born fools?” cried Mr. Plover, and he laughed again a short, contemptuous laugh that went through Raymond’s veins.
He stood there, his right hand plunged into his pocket in the act of drawing out its contents, but arrested by the sound of that mocking laugh, and by the chill silence that followed. He cast a quick, questioning glance at the surrounding faces; pity, surprise, regret, were variously depicted there, but neither confidence nor congratulation were visible anywhere. A gleam of light shot suddenly through his mind. He drew out his hand and passed it slowly over his forehead.
“My God, have pity on me!” he murmured almost inaudibly, and turned away.
“Raymond! listen to me.” Sir Simon hurried after him.
But the door was closed. Raymond was gone. Sir Simon followed into the hall, but he did not overtake him; the great door closed with a bang, and the friend he loved best on earth was beyond his hearing, rushing wildly on in the darkness and under the rain, that was falling in torrents.
The apparition had come and gone so quickly that the spectators might have doubted whether they had not dreamt it or seen a ghost. No one spoke, until Mr. Plover broke out with a hoarse laugh and an oath:
“If the fellow has not half convinced me of his innocence! He’s too great a fool to be a thief!”
“Until he has been proved a thief, you will be good enough not to apply the term to Monsieur de la Bourbonais under my roof,” said Sir Simon. “Now, gentlemen, we will resume our search.”
They did, and prosecuted it with the utmost care and patience for more than an hour; but the only effect was to fasten suspicion more closely on the absent.
Mr. Plover was so triumphant one would have fancied the justification of his vindictive suspicion was a compensation for the loss of his gem.
“Have you a pen and ink here, or shall I go into the library? I want to write the check,” said Ponsonby.
“You will find everything you want in the library,” said Sir Simon, and Ponsonby went in. Some one rang, and the carriages and horses were ordered. In a few minutes Ponsonby returned with the check, which he handed to Mr. Plover.
“If you require any one to attest my solvency, I dare say Charlton, whom you can trust, will have no objection to do it,” he remarked.
“Certainly not!” said Mr. Charlton promptly.
“Oh! it’s not necessary; I’m quite satisfied with Sir Ponsonby Anwyll’s signature,” Mr. Plover replied. And as he pocketed the check he went to the window and raised the curtain to see if Mr. Charlton’s brougham had come round. The rest of the company were saying good-by, cordial but sad. Sir Simon and the young squire of Rydal stood apart, conversing in an earnest, subdued voice.
“Have you a trap waiting, or shall I drop you at the vicarage?” inquired Lord Roxham of Mr. Langrove.
“Thank you! I shall be very glad,” said the vicar. “The night promised to be so fine I said I would walk home.”
“You will have a wet ride of it, Anwyll; is not that your horse I see?” cried Mr. Charlton from the window, where he had followed his ill-omened friend. “Had you not better leave him here for the night, and let me give you a lift home?”
“Oh! thank you, no; I don’t mind a drenching, and it would take you too far out of your way.”
Mr. Plover and Mr. Charlton were leaving the room when Sir Simon’s voice arrested them.
“One moment, Charlton! Mr. Plover, pray wait a second. I need not assure any one present how deeply distressed I am by what has occurred to-night—distressed on behalf of every one concerned. I know you all share this feeling with me, and I trust you will not refuse me the only alleviation in your power.”
He stopped for a moment, while his hearers turned eager, responsive faces towards him.
“I ask you as a proof of friendship, of personal regard and kindness to myself, to be silent concerning what has happened under my roof to-night; to let it remain buried here amongst ourselves. Will you grant me this, probably the last favor I shall ever ask of you?”
His voice trembled a little; and his friends were touched, though they did not see where the last words pointed.
There was a murmur of assent from all, with one exception.
“Plover, I hope I may include your promise with that of my older friends?” continued the baronet, his voice still betraying emotion. “I have no right, it is true, to claim such an act of self-denial at your hands; I know,” he added with a faint laugh that was not ironical, only sad—“I know that it is a comfort to us all to talk of our misfortunes and complain of them to sympathizing acquaintances; but I appeal to you as a gentleman to forego that satisfaction, in order to save me from a bitter mortification.”
As he spoke, he held out his fine, high-bred hand to his guest.
Sir Simon did not profess to be a very deep reader of human nature, but the most accomplished Macchiavellist could not have divined and touched the right chords in his listener’s spirit with a surer hand than he had just done. Mr. Plover laid his shrivelled fingers in the baronet’s extended hand, and said with awkward bluntness:
“As a proof of personal regard for you, I promise to hold my tongue in private life; but you can’t expect me not to take steps for the recovery of the stone.”
“How so?” Sir Simon started.
“It is pretty certain to get into the diamond market before long, and, unless the police are put on the watch, it will slip out of the country most likely, and for ever beyond my reach, and I would give double the money to get it back again. But I pledge myself not to mention the affair except to the officers.”
He bowed another good-night to the company, and was gone. The rest quickly followed, and soon the noise of wheels crushing the wet gravel died away, and Sir Simon Harness was left alone to meditate on the events of the evening and many other unpleasant things.
TO BE CONTINUED.
It was about eight years before his death that I had the happiness of making acquaintance with Wordsworth. During the next four years I saw a good deal of him, chiefly among his own mountains, and, besides many delightful walks with him, I had the great honor of passing some days under his roof. The strongest of my impressions respecting him was that made by the manly simplicity and lofty rectitude which characterized him. In one of his later sonnets he writes of himself thus: “As a true man who long had served the lyre”; it was because he was a true man that he was a true poet; and it was impossible to know him without being reminded of this. In any case he must have been recognized as a man of original and energetic genius; but it was his strong and truthful moral nature, his intellectual sincerity, the abiding conscientiousness of his imagination, so to speak, which enabled that genius to do its great work, and bequeath to the England of the future the most solid mass of deep-hearted and authentic poetry which has been the gift to her of any poet since the Elizabethan age. There was in his nature a veracity which, had it not been combined with an idealizing imagination not less remarkable, would to many have appeared prosaic; yet, had he not possessed that characteristic, the products of his imagination would have lacked reality. They might still have enunciated a deep and sound philosophy; but they would have been divested of that human interest which belongs to them in a yet higher degree. All the little incidents of the neighborhood were to him important.
The veracity and the ideality which are so signally combined in Wordsworth’s poetic descriptions of nature made themselves, at least, as much felt whenever nature was the theme of his discourse. In his intense reverence for nature he regarded all poetical delineations of her with an exacting severity; and if the descriptions were not true, and true in a twofold sense, the more skilfully executed they were the more was his indignation roused by what he deemed a pretence and a deceit. An untrue description of nature was to him a profaneness, a heavenly message sophisticated and falsely delivered. He expatiated much to me one day, as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which nature had been described by one of the most justly popular of England’s modern poets—one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect. “He took pains,” Wordsworth said; “he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most—a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain ash waving its red berries. He went home, and wove the whole together into a poetical description.” After a pause Wordsworth resumed with a flashing eye and impassioned voice: “But nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home; fixed his eye, as he walked, with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated. That which remained—the picture surviving in his mind—would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so, in a large part, by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental. A true eye for nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.” On the same occasion he remarked: “Scott misquoted in one of his novels my lines on Yarrow. He makes me write,
but I wrote,
“Never could I have written ‘swans’ in the plural. The scene when I saw it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness; there was one swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan—its own white image in the water. It was for that reason that I recorded the swan and the shadow. Had there been many swans and many shadows, they would have implied nothing as regards the character of the scene, and I should have said nothing about them.” He proceeded to remark that many who could descant with eloquence on nature cared little for her, and that many more who truly loved her had yet no eye to discern her—which he regarded as a sort of “spiritual discernment.” He continued: “Indeed, I have hardly ever known any one but myself who had a true eye for nature—one that thoroughly understood her meanings and her teachings—except” (here he interrupted himself) “one person. There was a young clergyman called Frederick Faber,[132] who resided at Ambleside. He had not only as good an eye for nature as I have, but even a better one, and sometimes pointed out to me on the mountains effects which, with all my great experience, I had never detected.”
Truth, he used to say—that is, truth in its largest sense, as a thing at once real and ideal, a truth including exact and accurate detail, and yet everywhere subordinating mere detail to the spirit of the whole,—this, he affirmed, was the soul and essence not only of descriptive poetry, but of all poetry. He had often, he told me, intended to write an essay on poetry, setting forth this principle, and illustrating it by references to the chief representatives of poetry in its various departments. It was this twofold truth which made Shakspere the greatest of all poets. “It was well for Shakspere,” he remarked, “that he gave himself to the drama. It was that which forced him to be sufficiently human. His poems would otherwise, from the extraordinarily metaphysical character of his genius, have been too recondite to be understood. His youthful poems, in spite of their unfortunate and unworthy subjects, and his sonnets also, reveal this tendency. Nothing can surpass the greatness of Shakspere where he is at his greatest; but it is wrong to speak of him as if even he were perfect. He had serious defects, and not those only proceeding from carelessness. For instance, in his delineations of character he does not assign as large a place to religious sentiment as enters into the constitution of human nature under normal circumstances. If his dramas had more religion in them, they would be truer representations of man, as well as more elevated and of a more searching interest.” Wordsworth used to warn young poets against writing poetry remote from human interest. Dante he admitted to be an exception; but he considered that Shelley, and almost all others who had endeavored to outsoar the humanities, had suffered deplorably from the attempt. I once heard him say: “I have often been asked for advice by young poets. All the advice I can give may be expressed in two counsels. First, let nature be your habitual and pleasurable study—human nature and material nature; secondly, study carefully those first-class poets whose fame is universal, not local, and learn from them; learn from them especially how to observe and how to interpret nature.”
Those who knew Wordsworth only from his poetry might have supposed that he dwelt ever in a region too serene to admit of human agitations. This was not the fact. There was in his being a region of tumult as well a higher region of calm, though it was almost wholly in the latter that his poetry lived. It turned aside from mere personal excitements; and for that reason, doubtless, it developed more deeply those special ardors which belong at once to the higher imagination and to the moral being. The passion which was suppressed elsewhere burned in his “Sonnets to Liberty,” and added a deeper sadness to the “Yew-trees of Borrowdale.” But his heart, as well as his imagination, was ardent. When it spoke most powerfully in his poetry, it spoke with a stern brevity unusual in that poetry, as in the poem, “There is a change, and I am poor,” and the still more remarkable one, “A slumber did my spirit seal”—a poem impassioned beyond the comprehension of those who fancy that Wordsworth lacks passion, merely because in him passion is neither declamatory nor, latently, sensual. He was a man of strong affections—strong enough on one sorrowful occasion to withdraw him for a time from poetry.[133] Referring once to two young children of his who had died about forty years previously, he described the details of their illnesses with an exactness and an impetuosity of troubled excitement such as might have been expected if the bereavement had taken place but a few weeks before. The lapse of time appeared to have left the sorrow submerged indeed, but still in all its first freshness. Yet I afterwards heard that at the time of the illness, at least in the case of one of the two children, it was impossible to rouse his attention to the danger. He chanced to be then under the immediate spell of one of those fits of poetic inspiration which descended on him like a cloud. Till the cloud had drifted he could see nothing beyond. Under the level of the calm there was, however, the precinct of the storm. It expressed itself rarely but vehemently, partaking sometimes of the character both of indignation and sorrow. All at once the trouble would pass away and his countenance bask in its habitual calm, like a cloudless summer sky. His indignation flamed out vehemently when he heard of a base action. “I could kick such a man across England with my naked foot,” I heard him exclaim on such an occasion. The more impassioned part of his nature connected itself especially with his political feelings. He regarded his own intellect as one which united some of the faculties which belong to the statesman with those which belong to the poet; and public affairs interested him not less deeply than poetry. It was as patriot, not poet, that he ventured to claim fellowship with Dante.[134] He did not accept the term “reformer,” because it implied an organic change in our institutions, and this he deemed both needless and dangerous; but he used to say that, while he was a decided conservative, he remembered that to preserve our institutions we must be ever improving them. He was, indeed, from first to last, pre-eminently a patriot—an impassioned as well as a thoughtful one. Yet his political sympathies were not with his own country only, but with the progress of humanity. Till disenchanted by the excesses and follies of the first French Revolution, his hopes and sympathies associated themselves ardently with the new order of things created by it; and I have heard him say that he did not know how any generous-minded young man, entering on life at the time of that great uprising, could have escaped the illusion. To the end his sympathies were ever with the cottage hearth far more than with the palace. If he became a strong supporter of what has been called “the hierarchy of society,” it was chiefly because he believed the principle of “equality” to be fatal to the well-being and the true dignity of the poor. Moreover, in siding politically with the crown and the coronets, he considered himself to be siding with the weaker party in our democratic days.
The absence of love-poetry in Wordsworth’s works has often been remarked upon, and indeed brought as a charge against them. He once told me that if he had avoided that form of composition, it was by no means because the theme did not interest him, but because, treated as it commonly has been, it tends rather to disturb and lower the reader’s moral and imaginative being than to elevate it. He feared to handle it amiss. He seemed to think that the subject had been so long vulgarized that few poets had a right to assume that they could treat it worthily, especially as the theme, when treated unworthily, was such an easy and cheap way of winning applause. It has been observed also that the religion of Wordsworth’s poetry, at least of his earlier poetry, is not as distinctly “revealed religion” as might have been expected from this poet’s well-known adherence to what he has called emphatically “The lord, and mighty paramount of truths.” He once remarked to me himself on this circumstance, and explained it by stating that when in youth his imagination was shaping for itself the channel in which it was to flow, his religious convictions were less definite and less strong than they had become on more mature thought; and that, when his poetic mind and manner had once been formed, he feared that he might, in attempting to modify them, have become constrained. He added that on such matters he ever wrote with great diffidence, remembering that if there were many subjects too low for song, there were some too high. Wordsworth’s general confidence in his own powers, which was strong, though far from exaggerated, rendered more striking and more touching his humility in all that concerned religion. It used to remind me of what I once heard Mr. Rogers say, viz.: “There is a special character of greatness about humility; for it implies that a man can, in an unusual degree, estimate the greatness of what is above us.” Fortunately, his diffidence did not keep Wordsworth silent on sacred themes. His later poems include an unequivocal as well as beautiful confession of Christian faith; and one of them, “The Primrose of the Rock,” is as distinctly Wordsworthian in its inspiration as it is Christian in its doctrine. Wordsworth was a “High-Churchman,” and also, in his prose mind, strongly anti-Roman Catholic, partly on political grounds; but that it was otherwise as regards his mind poetic is obvious from many passages in his Christian poetry, especially those which refer to the monastic system and the Schoolmen, and his sonnet on the Blessed Virgin, whom he addresses as