Eugene Aram, Book 2.

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EUGENE ARAM

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

THE MARRIAGE SETTLED.--LESTER'S HOPES AND SCHEMES.--GAIETY OF
TEMPER A GOOD SPECULATION.--THE TRUTH AND FERVOUR OF
ARAM'S LOVE.

Love is better than a pair of spectacles, to make
every thing seem greater which is seen through it.
--Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia.

Aram's affection to Madeline having now been formally announced to
Lester, and Madeline's consent having been somewhat less formally
obtained, it only remained to fix the time for their wedding. Though
Lester forbore to question Aram as to his circumstances, the Student
frankly confessed, that if not affording what the generality of persons
would consider even a competence, they enabled one of his moderate wants
and retired life to dispense, especially in the remote and cheap district
in which they lived, with all fortune in a wife, who, like Madeline, was
equally with himself enamoured of obscurity. The good Lester, however,
proposed to bestow upon his daughter such a portion as might allow for
the wants of an increased family, or the probable contingencies of Fate.
For though Fortune may often slacken her wheel, there is no spot in which
she suffers it to be wholly still.

It was now the middle of September, and by the end of the ensuing month
it was agreed that the spousals of the lovers should be held. It is
certain that Lester felt one pang for his nephew, as he subscribed to
this proposal; but he consoled himself with recurring to a hope he had
long cherished, viz. that Walter would return home not only cured of his
vain attachment to Madeline, but of the disposition to admit the
attractions of her sister. A marriage between these two cousins had for
years been his favourite project. The lively and ready temper of Ellinor,
her household turn, her merry laugh, a winning playfulness that
characterised even her defects, were all more after Lester's secret heart
than the graver and higher nature of his elder daughter. This might
mainly be, that they were traits of disposition that more reminded him of
his lost wife, and were therefore more accordant with his ideal standard
of perfection; but I incline also to believe that the more persons
advance in years, the more, even if of staid and sober temper themselves,
they love gaiety and elasticity in youth. I have often pleased myself by
observing in some happy family circle embracing all ages, that it is the
liveliest and wildest child that charms the grandsire the most. And after
all, it is perhaps with characters as with books, the grave and
thoughtful may be more admired than the light and cheerful, but they are
less liked; it is not only that the former, being of a more abstruse and
recondite nature, find fewer persons capable of judging of their merits,
but also that the great object of the majority of human beings is to be
amused, and that they naturally incline to love those the best who amuse
them most. And to so great a practical extent is this preference pushed,
that I think were a nice observer to make a census of all those who have
received legacies, or dropped unexpectedly into fortunes; he would find
that where one grave disposition had so benefited, there would be at
least twenty gay. Perhaps, however, it may be said that I am taking the
cause for the effect!

But to return from our speculative disquisitions; Lester then, who,
though he so slowly discovered his nephew's passion for Madeline, had
long since guessed the secret of Ellinor's affection for him, looked
forward with a hope rather sanguine than anxious to the ultimate
realization of his cherished domestic scheme. And he pleased himself with
thinking that when all soreness would, by this double wedding, be
banished from Walter's mind, it would be impossible to conceive a family
group more united or more happy.

And Ellinor herself, ever since the parting words of her cousin, had
seemed, so far from being inconsolable for his absence, more bright of
cheek and elastic of step than she had been for months before. What a
world of all feelings, which forbid despondence, lies hoarded in the
hearts of the young! As one fountain is filled by the channels that
exhaust another; we cherish wisdom at the expense of hope. It thus
happened from one cause or another, that Walter's absence created a less
cheerless blank in the family circle than might have been expected, and
the approaching bridals of Madeline and her lover, naturally diverted in
a great measure the thoughts of each, and engrossed their conversation.

Whatever might be Madeline's infatuation as to the merits of Aram, one
merit--the greatest of all in the eyes of a woman who loves, he at least
possessed. Never was mistress more burningly and deeply loved than she,
who, for the first time, awoke the long slumbering passions in the heart
of Eugene Aram. Every day the ardour of his affections seemed to
increase. With what anxiety he watched her footsteps!--with what idolatry
he hung upon her words!--with what unspeakable and yearning emotion he
gazed upon the changeful eloquence of her cheek. Now that Walter was
gone, he almost took up his abode at the manor-house. He came thither in
the early morning, and rarely returned home before the family retired for
the night; and even then, when all was hushed, and they believed him in
his solitary home, he lingered for hours around the house, to look up to
Madeline's window, charmed to the spot which held the intoxication of her
presence. Madeline discovered this habit, and chid it; but so tenderly,
that it was not cured. And still at times, by the autumnal moon, she
marked from her window his dark figure gliding among the shadows of the
trees, or pausing by the lowly tombs in the still churchyard--the
resting-place of hearts that once, perhaps, beat as wildly as his own.

It was impossible that a love of this order, and from one so richly
gifted as Aram; a love, which in substance was truth, and yet in language
poetry, could fail wholly to subdue and inthral a girl so young, so
romantic, so enthusiastic, as Madeline Lester. How intense and delicious
must have been her sense of happiness! In the pure heart of a girl loving
for the first time--love is far more ecstatic than in man, inasmuch as it
is unfevered by desire--love then and there makes the only state of human
existence which is at once capable of calmness and transport!

CHAPTER II.

A FAVOURABLE SPECIMEN OF A NOBLEMAN AND A COURTIER.--A MAN OF
SOME FAULTS AND MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

Titinius Capito is to rehearse. He is a man of an excellent
disposition, and to be numbered among the chief ornaments of
his age. He cultivates literature--he loves men of learning,
etc.
--Lord Orrery: Pliny.

About this time the Earl of ______, the great nobleman of the district,
and whose residence was within four miles of Grassdale, came down to pay
his wonted yearly visit to his country domains. He was a man well known
in the history of the times; though, for various reasons, I conceal his
name. He was a courtier;--deep--wily--accomplished; but capable of
generous sentiments and enlarged views. Though, from regard to his
interests, he seized and lived as it were upon the fleeting spirit of the
day--the penetration of his intellect went far beyond its reach. He
claims the merit of having been the one of all his co-temporaries (Lord
Chesterfield alone excepted), who most clearly saw, and most distinctly
prophesied, the dark and fearful storm that at the close of the century
burst over the vices, in order to sweep away the miseries, of France--a
terrible avenger--a salutary purifier.

From the small circle of sounding trifles, in which the dwellers of a
court are condemned to live, and which he brightened by his abilities and
graced by his accomplishments, the sagacious and far-sighted mind of
Lord--comprehended the vast field without, usually invisible to those of
his habits and profession. Men who the best know the little nucleus which
is called the world, are often the most ignorant of mankind; but it was
the peculiar attribute of this nobleman, that he could not only analyse
the external customs of his species, but also penetrate their deeper and
more hidden interests.

The works, and correspondence he has left behind him, though far from
voluminous, testify a consummate knowledge of the varieties of human
nature The refinement of his taste appears less remarkable than the
vigour of his understanding. It might be that he knew the vices of men
better than their virtues; yet he was no shallow disbeliever in the
latter: he read the heart too accurately not to know that it is guided as
often by its affections as its interests. In his early life he had
incurred, not without truth, the charge of licentiousness; but even in
pursuit of pleasure, he had been neither weak on the one hand, nor gross
on the other;--neither the headlong dupe, nor the callous sensualist: but
his graces, his rank, his wealth, had made his conquests a matter of too
easy purchase; and hence, like all voluptuaries, the part of his worldly
knowledge, which was the most fallible, was that which related to the
sex. He judged of women by a standard too distinct from that by which he
judged of men, and considered those foibles peculiar to the sex, which in
reality are incident to human nature.

His natural disposition was grave and reflective; and though he was not
without wit, it was rarely used. He lived, necessarily, with the
frivolous and the ostentatious, yet ostentation and frivolity were
charges never brought against himself. As a diplomatist and a statesman,
he was of the old and erroneous school of intriguers; but his favourite
policy was the science of conciliation. He was one who would so far have
suited the present age, that no man could better have steered a nation
from the chances of war; James the First could not have been inspired
with a greater affection for peace; but the Peer's dexterity would have
made that peace as honourable as the King's weakness could have made it
degraded. Ambitious to a certain extent, but neither grasping nor mean,
he never obtained for his genius the full and extensive field it probably
deserved. He loved a happy life above all things; and he knew that while
activity is the spirit, fatigue is the bane, of happiness.

In his day he enjoyed a large share of that public attention which
generally bequeaths fame; yet from several causes (of which his own
moderation is not the least) his present reputation is infinitely less
great than the opinions of his most distinguished cotemporaries
foreboded.

It is a more difficult matter for men of high rank to become illustrious
to posterity, than for persons in a sterner and more wholesome walk of
life. Even the greatest among the distinguished men of the patrician
order, suffer in the eyes of the after-age for the very qualities, mostly
dazzling defects, or brilliant eccentricities, which made them most
popularly remarkable in their day. Men forgive Burns his amours and his
revellings with greater ease than they will forgive Bolingbroke and Byron
for the same offences.

Our Earl was fond of the society of literary men; he himself was well,
perhaps even deeply, read. Certainly his intellectual acquisitions were
more profound than they have been generally esteemed, though with the
common subtlety of a ready genius, he could make the quick adaptation of
a timely fact, acquired for the occasion, appear the rich overflowing of
a copious erudition. He was a man who instantly perceived, and liberally
acknowledged, the merits of others. No connoisseur had a more felicitous
knowledge of the arts, or was more just in the general objects of his
patronage. In short, what with all his advantages, he was one whom an
aristocracy may boast of, though a people may forget; and if not a great
man, was at least a most remarkable lord.

The Earl of--, in his last visit to his estates, had not forgotten to
seek out the eminent scholar who shed an honour upon his neighbourhood;
he had been greatly struck with the bearing and conversation of Aram, and
with the usual felicity with which the accomplished Earl adapted his
nature to those with whom he was thrown, he had succeeded in ingratiating
himself with Aram in return. He could not indeed persuade the haughty and
solitary Student to visit him at the castle; but the Earl did not disdain
to seek any one from whom he could obtain instruction, and he had twice
or thrice voluntarily encountered Aram, and effectually drawn him from
his reserve. The Earl now heard with some pleasure, and more surprise,
that the austere Recluse was about to be married to the beauty of the
county, and he resolved to seize the first occasion to call at the manor-
house to offer his compliments and congratulations to its inmates.

Sensible men of rank, who, having enjoyed their dignity from their birth,
may reasonably be expected to grow occasionally tired of it; often like
mixing with those the most who are the least dazzled by the
condescension; I do not mean to say, with the vulgar parvenus who mistake
rudeness for independence;--no man forgets respect to another who knows
the value of respect to himself; but the respect should be paid easily;
it is not every Grand Seigneur, who like Louis XIVth., is only pleased
when he puts those he addresses out of countenance.

There was, therefore, much in the simplicity of Lester's manners, and
those of his nieces, which rendered the family at the manor-house,
especial favourites with Lord--; and the wealthier but less honoured
squirearchs of the county, stiff in awkward pride, and bustling with yet
more awkward veneration, heard with astonishment and anger of the
numerous visits which his Lordship, in his brief sojourn at the castle,
always contrived to pay to the Lesters, and the constant invitations,
which they received to his most familiar festivities.

Lord--was no sportsman, and one morning, when all his guests were
engaged among the stubbles of September, he mounted his quiet palfrey,
and gladly took his way to the Manor-house.

It was towards the latter end of the month, and one of the earliest of
the autumnal fogs hung thinly over the landscape. As the Earl wound along
the sides of the hill on which his castle was built, the scene on which
he gazed below received from the grey mists capriciously hovering over
it, a dim and melancholy wildness. A broader and whiter vapour, that
streaked the lower part of the valley, betrayed the course of the
rivulet; and beyond, to the left, rose wan and spectral, the spire of the
little church adjoining Lester's abode. As the horseman's eye wandered to
this spot, the sun suddenly broke forth, and lit up as by enchantment,
the quiet and lovely hamlet embedded, as it were, beneath,--the cottages,
with their gay gardens and jasmined porches, the streamlet half in mist,
half in light, while here and there columns of vapour rose above its
surface like the chariots of the water genii, and broke into a thousand
hues beneath the smiles of the unexpected sun: But far to the right, the
mists around it yet unbroken, and the outline of its form only visible,
rose the lone house of the Student, as if there the sadder spirits of the
air yet rallied their broken armament of mist and shadow.

The Earl was not a man peculiarly alive to scenery, but he now
involuntarily checked his horse, and gazed for a few moments on the
beautiful and singular aspect which the landscape had so suddenly
assumed. As he so gazed, he observed in a field at some little distance,
three or four persons gathered around a bank, and among them he thought
he recognised the comely form of Rowland Lester. A second inspection
convinced him that he was right in his conjecture, and, turning from the
road through a gap in the hedge, he made towards the group in question.
He had not proceeded far, before he saw, that the remainder of the party
was composed of Lester's daughters, the lover of the elder, and a fourth,
whom he recognised as a celebrated French botanist who had lately arrived
in England, and who was now making an amateur excursion throughout the
more attractive districts of the island.

The Earl guessed rightly, that Monsieur de N--had not neglected to apply
to Aram for assistance in a pursuit which the latter was known to have
cultivated with such success, and that he had been conducted hither, as a
place affording some specimen or another not unworthy of research. He
now, giving his horse to his groom, joined the group.

CHAPTER III.

WHEREIN THE EARL AND THE STUDENT CONVERSE ON GRAVE BUT
DELIGHTFUL MATTERS.--THE STUDENT'S NOTION OF THE ONLY EARTHLY
HAPPINESS.

ARAM. If the witch Hope forbids us to be wise,
Yet when I turn to these--Woe's only friends,
And with their weird and eloquent voices calm
The stir and Babel of the world within,
I can but dream that my vex'd years at last
Shall find the quiet of a hermit's cell:--
And, neighbouring not this hacked and jaded world,
Beneath the lambent eyes of the loved stars,
And, with the hollow rocks and sparry caves,
The tides, and all the many-music'd winds

My oracles and co-mates;--watch my life
Glide down the Stream of Knowledge, and behold
Its waters with a musing stillness glass
The thousand hues of Nature and of Heaven.
--From Eugene Aram, a MS. Tragedy.

The Earl continued with the party he had joined; and when their
occupation was concluded and they turned homeward, he accepted the
Squire's frank invitation to partake of some refreshment at the Manor-
house. It so chanced, or perhaps the Earl so contrived it, that Aram and
himself, in their way to the village lingered a little behind the rest,
and that their conversation was thus, for a few minutes, not altogether
general.

"Is it I, Mr. Aram?" said the Earl smiling, "or is it Fate that has made
you a convert? The last time we sagely and quietly conferred together,
you contended that the more the circle of existence was contracted, the
more we clung to a state of pure and all self-dependent intellect, the
greater our chance of happiness. Thus you denied that we were rendered
happier by our luxuries, by our ambition, or by our affections. Love and
its ties were banished from your solitary Utopia. And you asserted that
the true wisdom of life lay solely in the cultivation--not of our
feelings, but our faculties. You know, I held a different doctrine: and
it is with the natural triumph of a hostile partizan, that I hear you are
about to relinquish the practice of one of your dogmas;--in consequence,
may I hope, of having forsworn the theory?"

"Not so, my Lord," answered Aram, colouring slightly; "my weakness only
proves that my theory is difficult,--not that it is wrong. I still
venture to think it true. More pain than pleasure is occasioned us by
others--banish others, and you are necessarily the gainer. Mental
activity and moral quietude are the two states which, were they perfected
and united, would constitute perfect happiness. It is such a union which
constitutes all we imagine of Heaven, or conceive of the majestic
felicity of a God."

"Yet, while you are on earth you will be (believe me) happier in the
state you are about to choose," said the Earl. "Who could look at that
enchanting face (the speaker directed his eyes towards Madeline) and not
feel that it gave a pledge of happiness that could not be broken?"

It was not in the nature of Aram to like any allusion to himself, and
still less to his affections: he turned aside his head, and remained
silent: the wary Earl discovered his indiscretion immediately.

"But let us put aside individual cases," said he,--"the meum and the tuum
forbid all argument:--and confess, that there is for the majority of
human beings a greater happiness in love than in the sublime state of
passionless intellect to which you would so chillingly exalt us. Has not
Cicero said wisely, that we ought no more to subject too slavishly our
affections, than to elevate them too imperiously into our masters? Neque
se nimium erigere, nec subjacere serviliter."

"Cicero loved philosophizing better than philosophy," said Aram, coldly;
"but surely, my Lord, the affections give us pain as well as pleasure.
The doubt, the dread, the restlessness of love,--surely these prevent
the passion from constituting a happy state of mind; to me one knowledge
alone seems sufficient to embitter all its enjoyments,--the knowledge
that the object beloved must die. What a perpetuity of fear that
knowledge creates! The avalanche that may crush us depends upon a single
breath!"

"Is not that too refined a sentiment? Custom surely blunts us to every
chance, every danger, that may happen to us hourly. Were the avalanche
over you for a day,--I grant your state of torture,--but had an avalanche
rested over you for years, and not yet fallen, you would forget that it
could ever fall; you would eat, sleep, and make love, as if it were not!"

"Ha! my Lord, you say well--you say well," said Aram, with a marked
change of countenance; and, quickening his pace, he joined Lester's side,
and the thread of the previous conversation was broken off.

The Earl afterwards, in walking through the gardens (an excursion which
he proposed himself, for he was somewhat of an horticulturist), took an
opportunity to renew the subject.

"You will pardon me," said he, "but I cannot convince myself that man
would be happier were he without emotions; and that to enjoy life he
should be solely dependant on himself!"

"Yet it seems to me," said Aram, "a truth easy of proof; if we love, we
place our happiness in others. The moment we place our happiness in
others, comes uncertainty, but uncertainty is the bane of happiness.
Children are the source of anxiety to their parents;--his mistress to the
lover. Change, accident, death, all menace us in each person whom we
regard. Every new tie opens new channels by which grief can invade us;
but, you will say, by which joy also can flow in;--granted! But in human
life is there not more grief than joy? What is it that renders the
balance even? What makes the staple of our happiness,--endearing to us
the life at which we should otherwise repine? It is the mere passive, yet
stirring, consciousness of life itself!--of the sun and the air of the
physical being; but this consciousness every emotion disturbs. Yet could
you add to its tranquillity an excitement that never exhausts itself,--
that becomes refreshed, not sated, with every new possession, then you
would obtain happiness. There is only one excitement of this divine
order,--that of intellectual culture. Behold now my theory! Examine it--
it contains no flaw. But if," renewed Aram, after a pause, "a man is
subject to fate solely in himself, not in others, he soon hardens his
mind against all fear, and prepares it for all events. A little
philosophy enables him to bear bodily pain, or the common infirmities of
flesh: by a philosophy somewhat deeper, he can conquer the ordinary
reverses of fortune, the dread of shame, and the last calamity of death.
But what philosophy could ever thoroughly console him for the ingratitude
of a friend, the worthlessness of a child, the death of a mistress?
Hence, only when he stands alone, can a man's soul say to Fate, 'I defy
thee.'"

"You think then," said the Earl, reluctantly diverting the conversation
into a new channel "that in the pursuit of knowledge lies our only active
road to real happiness. Yet here how eternal must be the disappointments
even of the most successful! Does not Boyle tell us of a man who, after
devoting his whole life to the study of one mineral, confessed himself,
at last, ignorant of all its properties?"

"Had the object of his study been himself, and not the mineral, he would
not have been so unsuccessful a student," said Aram, smiling. "Yet,"
added he, in a graver tone, "we do indeed cleave the vast heaven of Truth
with a weak and crippled wing: and often we are appalled in our way by a
dread sense of the immensity around us, and of the inadequacy of our own
strength. But there is a rapture in the breath of the pure and difficult
air, and in the progress by which we compass earth, the while we draw
nearer to the stars,--that again exalts us beyond ourselves, and
reconciles the true student unto all things,--even to the hardest of them
all,--the conviction how feebly our performance can ever imitate the
grandeur of our ambition! As you see the spark fly upward,--sometimes not
falling to earth till it be dark and quenched,--thus soars, whither it
recks not, so that the direction be above, the luminous spirit of him who
aspires to Truth; nor will it back to the vile and heavy clay from which
it sprang, until the light which bore it upward be no more!"

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