The Disowned, Volume 4.

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CHAPTER XXXVII.

What a charming character is a kind old man.--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.

"Cheer up, my dear boy," said Talbot, kindly, "we must never despair.
What though Lady Westborough has forbidden you the boudoir, a boudoir
is a very different thing from a daughter, and you have no right to
suppose that the veto extends to both. But now that we are on this
subject, do let me reason with you seriously. Have you not already
tasted all the pleasures, and been sufficiently annoyed by some of the
pains, of acting the 'Incognito'? Be ruled by me: resume your proper
name; it is at least one which the proudest might acknowledge; and its
discovery will remove the greatest obstacle to the success which you
so ardently desire."

Clarence, who was labouring under strong excitement, paused for some
moments, as if to collect himself, before he replied: "I have been
thrust from my father's home; I have been made the victim of another's
crime; I have been denied the rights and name of son; perhaps (and I
say this bitterly) justly denied them, despite of my own innocence.
What would you have me do? Resume a name never conceded to me,--
perhaps not righteously mine,--thrust myself upon the unwilling and
shrinking hands which disowned and rejected me; blazon my virtues by
pretensions which I myself have promised to forego, and foist myself
on the notice of strangers by the very claims which my nearest
relations dispute? Never! never! never! With the simple name I have
assumed; the friend I myself have won,--you, my generous benefactor,
my real father, who never forsook nor insulted me for my misfortunes,--
with these I have gained some steps in the ladder; with these, and
those gifts of nature, a stout heart and a willing hand, of which none
can rob me, I will either ascend the rest, even to the summit, or fall
to the dust, unknown, but not contemned; unlamented, but not
despised."

"Well, well," said Talbot, brushing away a tear which he could not
deny to the feeling, even while he disputed the judgment, of the young
adventurer,--"well, this is all very fine and very foolish; but you
shall never want friend or father while I live, or when I have ceased
to live; but come,--sit down, share my dinner, which is not very good,
and my dessert, which is: help me to entertain two or three guests who
are coming to me in the evening, to talk on literature, sup, and
sleep; and to-morrow you shall return home, and see Lady Flora in the
drawing-room if you cannot in the boudoir."

And Clarence was easily persuaded to accept the invitation. Talbot
was not one of those men who are forced to exert themselves to be
entertaining. He had the pleasant and easy way of imparting his great
general and curious information, that a man, partly humourist, partly
philosopher, who values himself on being a man of letters, and is in
spite of himself a man of the world, always ought to possess.
Clarence was soon beguiled from the remembrance of his mortifications,
and, by little and little, entirely yielded to the airy and happy flow
of Talbot's conversation.

In the evening, three or four men of literary eminence (as many as
Talbot's small Tusculum would accommodate with beds) arrived, and in a
conversation, free alike from the jargon of pedants and the
insipidities of fashion, the night fled away swiftly and happily, even
to the lover.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

We are here (in the country) among the vast and noble scenes of
Nature; we are there (in the town) among the pitiful shifts of policy.
We walk here in the light and open ways of the divine bounty,--we
grope therein the dark and confused labyrinths of human malice; our
senses are here feasted with all the clear and genuine taste of their
objects, which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part
overwhelmed with their contraries: here pleasure, methinks, looks like
a beautiful, constant, and modest wife; it is there an impudent,
fickle, and painted harlot.--COWLEY.

Draw up the curtain! The scene is the Opera.

The pit is crowded; the connoisseurs in the front row are in a very
ill humour. It must be confessed that extreme heat is a little trying
to the temper of a critic.

The Opera then was not what it is now, nor even what it had been in a
former time. It is somewhat amusing to find Goldsmith questioning, in
one of his essays, whether the Opera could ever become popular in
England. But on the night--on which the reader is summoned to that
"theatre of sweet sounds" a celebrated singer from the Continent made
his first appearance in London, and all the world thronged to "that
odious Opera-house" to hear, or to say they had heard, the famous
Sopraniello.

With a nervous step, Clarence proceeded to Lady Westborough's box; and
it was many minutes that he lingered by the door before he summoned
courage to obtain admission.

He entered; the box was crowded; but Lady Flora was not there. Lord
Borodaile was sitting next to Lady Westborough. As Clarence entered,
Lord Borodaile raised his eyebrows, and Lady Westborough her glass.
However disposed a great person may be to drop a lesser one, no one of
real birth or breeding ever cuts another. Lady Westborough,
therefore, though much colder, was no less civil than usual; and Lord
Borodaile bowed lower than ever to Mr. Linden, as he punctiliously
called him. But Clarence's quick eye discovered instantly that he was
no welcome intruder, and that his day with the beautiful marchioness
was over. His visit, consequently, was short and embarrassed. When
he left the box, he heard Lord Borodaile's short, slow, sneering
laugh, followed by Lady Westborough's "hush" of reproof.

His blood boiled. He hurried along the passage, with his eyes fixed
upon the ground and his hand clenched.

"What ho! Linden, my good fellow; why, you look as if all the ferocity
of the great Figg were in your veins," cried a good-humoured voice.
Clarence started, and saw the young and high-spirited Duke of
Haverfield.

"Are you going behind the scenes?" said his grace. "I have just come
thence; and you had much better drop into La Meronville's box with me.
You sup with her to-night, do you not?

"No, indeed!" replied Clarence; "I scarcely know her, except by
sight."

"Well, and what think you of her?"

"That she is the prettiest Frenchwoman I ever saw."

"Commend me to secret sympathies!" cried the duke. "She has asked me
three times who you were, and told me three times you were the
handsomest man in London and had quite a foreign air; the latter
recommendation being of course far greater than the former. So, after
this, you cannot refuse to accompany me to her box and make her
acquaintance."

"Nay," answered Clarence, "I shall be too happy to profit by the taste
of so discerning a person; but it is cruel in you, Duke, not to feign
a little jealousy,--a little reluctance to introduce so formidable a
rival."

"Oh, as to me," said the duke, "I only like her for her mental, not
her personal, attractions. She is very agreeable, and a little witty;
sufficient attractions for one in her situation."

"But do tell me a little of her history," said Clarence, "for, in
spite of her renown, I only know her as La belle Meronville. Is she
not living en ami with some one of our acquaintance?"

"To be sure," replied the duke, "with Lord Borodaile. She is
prodigiously extravagant; and Borodaile affects to be prodigiously
fond: but as there is only a certain fund of affection in the human
heart, and all Lord Borodaile's is centred in Lord Borodaile, that
cannot really be the case."

"Is he jealous of her?" said Clarence.

"Not in the least! nor indeed, does she give him any cause. She is
very gay, very talkative, gives excellent suppers, and always has her
box at the Opera crowded with admirers; but that is all. She
encourages many, and favours but one. Happy Borodaile! My lot is
less fortunate! You know, I suppose, that Julia has deserted me?"

"You astonish me,--and for what?"

"Oh, she told me, with a vehement burst of tears, that she was
convinced I did not love her, and that a hundred pounds a month was
not sufficient to maintain a milliner's apprentice. I answered the
first assertion by an assurance that I adored her: but I preserved a
total silence with regard to the latter; and so I found Trevanion
tete-a-tete with her the next day."

"What did you?" said Clarence.

"Sent my valet to Trevanion with an old coat of mine, my compliments,
and my hopes that, as Mr. Trevanion was so fond of my cast-off
conveniences, he would honour me by accepting the accompanying
trifle."

"He challenged you, without doubt?"

"Challenged me! No: he tells all his friends that I am the wittiest
man in Europe."

"A fool can speak the truth, you see," said Clarence, laughing.

"Thank you, Linden; you shall have my good word with La Meronville for
that: mais allons."

Mademoiselle de la Meronville, as she pointedly entitled herself, was
one of those charming adventuresses, who, making the most of a good
education and a prepossessing person, a delicate turn for letter-
writing, and a lively vein of conversation, came to England for a year
or two, as Spaniards were wont to go to Mexico, and who return to
their native country with a profound contempt for the barbarians whom
they have so egregiously despoiled. Mademoiselle de la Meronville was
small, beautifully formed, had the prettiest hands and feet in the
world, and laughed musically. By the by, how difficult it is to
laugh, or even to smile, at once naturally and gracefully! It is one
of Steele's finest touches of character, where he says of Will
Honeycombe, "He can smile when one speaks to him, and laughs easily."

In a word, the pretty Frenchwoman was precisely formed to turn the
head of a man like Lord Borodaile, who loved to be courted and who
required to be amused. Mademoiselle de la Meronville received
Clarence with a great deal of grace, and a little reserve, the first
chiefly natural, the last wholly artificial.

"Well," said the duke (in French), "you have not told me who are to be
of your party this evening,--Borodaile, I suppose, of course?"

"No, he cannot come to-night."

"Ah, quel malheur! then the hock will not be iced enough: Borodaile's
looks are the best wine-coolers in the world."

"Fie!" cried La Meronville, glancing towards Clarence, "I cannot
endure your malevolence; wit makes you very bitter."

"And that is exactly the reason why La belle Meronville loves me so:
nothing is so sweet to one person as bitterness upon another; it is
human nature and French nature (which is a very different thing) into
the bargain."

"Bah! my Lord Duke, you judge of others by yourself."

"To be sure I do," cried the duke; "and that is the best way of
forming a right judgment. Ah! what a foot, that little figurante has;
you don't admire her, Linden?"

"No, Duke; my admiration is like the bird in the cage,--chained here,
and cannot fly away!" answered Clarence, with a smile at the frippery
of his compliment.

"Ah, Monsieur," cried the pretty Frenchwoman, leaning back, "you have
been at Paris, I see: one does not learn those graces of language in
England. I have been five months in your country; brought over the
prettiest dresses imaginable, and have only received three
compliments, and (pity me!) two out of the three were upon my
pronunciation of 'How do you do?'"

"Well," said Clarence, "I should have imagined that in England, above
all other countries, your vanity would have been gratified, for you
know we pique ourselves on our sincerity, and say all we think."

"Yes? then you always think very unpleasantly. What an alternative!
which is the best, to speak ill or to think ill of one?"

"Pour l'amour de Dieu," cried the duke, "don't ask such puzzling
questions; "you are always getting into those moral subtleties, which
I suppose you learn from Borodaile. He is a wonderful metaphysician,
I hear; I can answer for his chemical powers: the moment he enters a
room the very walls grow damp; as for me, I dissolve; I should flow
into a fountain, like Arethusa, if happily his lordship did not freeze
one again into substance as fast as he dampens one into thaw."

"Fi donc!" cried La Meronville. "I should be very angry had you not
taught me to be very indifferent-"

"To him!" said the duke, dryly. "I'm glad to hear it. He is not
worth une grande passion, believe me; but tell me, ma belle, who else
sups with you?"

"D'abord, Monsieur Linden, I trust," answered La Meronville, with a
look of invitation, to which Clarence bowed and smiled his assent,
"Milord D----, and Monsieur Trevanion, Mademoiselle Caumartin, and Le
Prince Pietro del Ordino."

"Nothing can be better arranged," said the duke. "But see, they are
just going to drop the curtain. Let me call your carriage."

"You are too good, milord," replied La Meronville, with a bow which
said, "of course;" and the duke, who would not have stirred three
paces for the first princess of the blood, hurried out of the box
(despite of Clarence's offer to undertake the commission) to inquire
after the carriage of the most notorious adventuress of the day.

Clarence was alone in the box with the beautiful Frenchwoman. To say
truth, Linden was far too much in love with Lady Flora, and too
occupied, as to his other thoughts, with the projects of ambition, to
be easily led into any disreputable or criminal liaison; he therefore
conversed with his usual ease, though with rather more than his usual
gallantry, without feeling the least touched by the charms of La
Meronville or the least desirous of supplanting Lord Borodaile in her
favour.

The duke reappeared, and announced the carriage. As, with La
Meronville leaning on his arm, Clarence hurried out, he accidentally
looked up, and saw on the head of the stairs Lady Westborough with her
party (Lord Borodaile among the rest) in waiting for her carriage.
For almost the first time in his life, Clarence felt ashamed of
himself; his cheek burned like fire, and he involuntarily let go the
fair hand which was leaning upon his arm. However, the weaker our
course the better face we should put upon it, and Clarence, recovering
his presence of mind, and vainly hoping he had not been perceived,
buried his face as well as he was able in the fur collar of his cloak,
and hurried on.

"You saw Lord Borodaile?" said the duke to La Meronville, as he handed
her into her carriage.

"Yes, I accidentally looked back after we had passed him, and then I
saw him."

"Looked back!" said the duke; "I wonder he did not turn you into a
pillar of salt."

"Fi donc!" cried La belle Meronville, tapping his grace playfully on
the arm, in order to do which she was forced to lean a little harder
upon Clarence's, which she had not yet relinquished--" Fi donc!
Francois, chez moi!"

"My carriage is just behind," said the duke. "You will go with me to
La Meronville's, of course?"

"Really, my dear duke," said Clarence, "I wish I could excuse myself
from this party. I have another engagement."

"Excuse yourself? and leave me to the mercy of Mademoiselle Caumartin,
who has the face of an ostrich, and talks me out of breath! Never, my
dear Linden, never! Besides, I want you to see how well I shall
behave to Trevanion. Here is the carriage. Entrez, mon cher."

And Clarence, weakly and foolishly (but he was very young and very
unhappy, and so, longing for an escape from his own thoughts) entered
the carriage, and drove to the supper party, in order to prevent the
Duke of Haverfield being talked out of breath by Mademoiselle
Caumartin, who had the face of an ostrich.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Yet truth is keenly sought for, and the wind
Charged with rich words, poured out in thought's defence;
Whether the Church inspire that eloquence,
Or a Platonic piety, confined
To the sole temple of the inward mind;
And one there is who builds immortal lays,
Though doomed to tread in solitary ways;
Darkness before, and danger's voice behind!
Yet not alone-- WORDSWORTH.

London, thou Niobe, who sittest in stone, amidst thy stricken and
fated children; nurse of the desolate, that hidest in thy bosom the
shame, the sorrows, the sins of many sons; in whose arms the fallen
and the outcast shroud their distresses, and shelter from the proud
man's contumely; Epitome and Focus of the disparities and maddening
contrasts of this wrong world, that assemblest together in one great
heap the woes, the joys, the elevations, the debasements of the
various tribes of man; mightiest of levellers, confounding in thy
whirlpool all ranks, all minds, the graven labours of knowledge, the
straws of the maniac, purple and rags, the regalities and the
loathsomeness of earth,--palace and lazar-house combined! Grave of
the living, where, mingled and massed together, we couch, but rest
not,--"for in that sleep of life what dreams do come,"--each vexed
with a separate vision,--"shadows" which "grieve the heart," unreal in
their substance, but faithful in their warnings, flitting from the
eye, but graving unfleeting memories on the mind, which reproduce new
dreams over and over, until the phantasm ceases, and the pall of a
heavier torpor falls upon the brain, and all is still and dark and
hushed! "From the stir of thy great Babel," and the fixed tinsel
glare in which sits pleasure like a star, "which shines, but warms not
with its powerless rays," we turn to thy deeper and more secret
haunts. Thy wilderness is all before us--where to choose our place of
rest; and, to our eyes, thy hidden recesses are revealed.

The clock of St. Paul's had tolled the second hour of morning. Within
a small and humble apartment in the very heart of the city, there sat
a writer, whose lucubrations, then obscure and unknown, were destined,
years afterwards, to excite the vague admiration of the crowd and the
deeper homage of the wise. They were of that nature which is slow in
winning its way to popular esteem; the result of the hived and hoarded
knowledge of years; the produce of deep thought and sublime
aspirations, influencing, in its bearings, the interests of the many,
yet only capable of analysis by the judgment of the few. But the
stream broke forth at last from the cavern to the daylight, although
the source was never traced; or, to change the image,--albeit none
know the hand which executed and the head which designed, the monument
of a mighty intellect has been at length dug up, as it were, from the
envious earth, the brighter for its past obscurity, and the more
certain of immortality from the temporary neglect it has sustained.

The room was, as we before said, very small, and meanly furnished; yet
were there a few articles of costliness and luxury scattered about,
which told that the tastes of its owner had not been quite humbled to
the level of his fortunes. One side of the narrow chamber was covered
with shelves, which supported books in various languages, and though
chiefly on scientific subjects, not utterly confined to them. Among
the doctrines of the philosopher, and the golden rules of the
moralist, were also seen the pleasant dreams of poets, the legends of
Spenser, the refining moralities of Pope, the lofty errors of
Lucretius, and the sublime relics of our "dead kings of melody."
[Shakspeare and Milton] And over the hearth was a picture, taken in
more prosperous days, of one who had been and was yet to the tenant of
that abode, better than fretted roofs and glittering banquets, the
objects of ambition, or even the immortality of fame. It was the face
of one very young and beautiful, and the deep, tender eyes looked
down, as with a watchful fondness, upon the lucubrator and his
labours. While beneath the window, which was left unclosed, for it
was scarcely June, were simple yet not inelegant vases, filled with
flowers,--

"Those lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave." [Herrick]

The writer was alone, and had just paused from his employment; he was
leaning his face upon one hand, in a thoughtful and earnest mood, and
the air which came chill, but gentle, from the window, slightly
stirred the locks from the broad and marked brow, over which they fell
in thin but graceful waves. Partly owing perhaps to the waning light
of the single lamp and the lateness of the hour, his cheek seemed very
pale, and the complete though contemplative rest of the features
partook greatly of the quiet of habitual sadness, and a little of the
languor of shaken health; yet the expression, despite the proud cast
of the brow and profile, was rather benevolent than stern or dark in
its pensiveness, and the lines spoke more of the wear and harrow of
deep thought than the inroads of ill-regulated passion.

There was a slight tap at the door; the latch was raised, and the
original of the picture I have described entered the apartment.

Time had not been idle with her since that portrait had been taken:
the round elastic figure had lost much of its youth and freshness; the
step, though light, was languid, and in the centre of the fair, smooth
cheek, which was a little sunken, burned one deep bright spot,--fatal
sign to those who have watched the progress of the most deadly and
deceitful of our national maladies; yet still the form and countenance
were eminently interesting and lovely; and though the bloom was gone
forever, the beauty, which not even death could wholly have despoiled,
remained to triumph over debility, misfortune, and disease.

She approached the student, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

"Dearest!" said he, tenderly yet reproachfully, "yet up, and the hour
so late and yourself so weak? Fie, I must learn to scold you."

"And how," answered the intruder, "how could I sleep or rest while you
are consuming your very life in those thankless labours?"

"By which," interrupted the writer, with a faint smile, "we glean our
scanty subsistence."

"Yes," said the wife (for she held that relation to the student), and
the tears stood in her eyes, "I know well that every morsel of bread,
every drop of water, is wrung from your very heart's blood, and I--I
am the cause of all; but surely you exert yourself too much, more than
can be requisite? These night damps, this sickly and chilling air,
heavy with the rank vapours of the coming morning, are not suited to
thoughts and toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and
exhaust your strength. Come, my own love, to bed; and yet first come
and look upon our child, how sound she sleeps! I have leaned over her
for the last hour, and tried to fancy it was you whom I watched, for
she has learned already your smile and has it even when she sleeps."

"She has cause to smile," said the husband, bitterly.

"She has, for she is yours! and even in poetry and humble hopes, that
is an inheritance which may well teach her pride and joy. Come, love,
the air is keen, and the damp rises to your forehead,--yet stay, till
I have kissed it away."

"Mine own love," said the student, as he rose and wound his arm round
the slender waist of his wife, "wrap your shawl closer over your
bosom, and let us look for one instant upon the night. I cannot sleep
till I have slaked the fever of my blood: the air has nothing of
coldness in its breath for me."

And they walked to the window and looked forth. All was hushed and
still in the narrow street; the cold gray clouds were hurrying fast
along the sky; and the stars, weak and waning in their light, gleamed
forth at rare intervals upon the mute city, like expiring watch-lamps
of the dead.

They leaned out and spoke not; but when they looked above upon the
melancholy heavens, they drew nearer to each other, as if it were
their natural instinct to do so whenever the world without seemed
discouraging and sad.

At length the student broke the silence; but his thoughts, which were
wandering and disjointed, were breathed less to her than vaguely and
unconsciously to himself. "Morn breaks,--another and another!--day
upon day!--while we drag on our load like the blind beast which knows
not when the burden shall be cast off and the hour of rest be come."

The woman pressed her hand to her bosom, but made no rejoinder--she
knew his mood--and the student continued,--"And so life frets itself
away! Four years have passed over our seclusion--four years! a great
segment in the little circle of our mortality; and of those years what
day has pleasure won from labour, or what night has sleep snatched
wholly from the lamp? Weaker than the miser, the insatiable and
restless mind traverses from east to west; and from the nooks, and
corners, and crevices of earth collects, fragment by fragment, grain
by grain, atom by atom, the riches which it gathers to its coffers--
for what?--to starve amidst the plenty! The fantasies of the
imagination bring a ready and substantial return: not so the treasures
of thought. Better that I had renounced the soul's labour for that of
its hardier frame--better that I had 'sweated in the eye of Phoebus,'
than 'eat my heart with crosses and with cares,'--seeking truth and
wanting bread--adding to the indigence of poverty its humiliation;
wroth with the arrogance of men, who weigh in the shallow scales of
their meagre knowledge the product of lavish thought, and of the hard
hours for which health, and sleep, and spirit have been exchanged;--
sharing the lot of those who would enchant the old serpent of evil,
which refuses the voice of the charmer!--struggling against the
prejudice and bigoted delusion of the bandaged and fettered herd to
whom, in our fond hopes and aspirations, we trusted to give light and
freedom; seeing the slavish judgments we would have redeemed from
error clashing their chains at us in ire;--made criminal by our very
benevolence;--the martyrs whose zeal is rewarded with persecution,
whose prophecies are crowned with contempt!--Better, oh, better that I
had not listened to the vanity of a heated brain--better that I had
made my home with the lark and the wild bee, among the fields and the
quiet hills, where life, if obscurer, is less debased, and hope, if
less eagerly indulged, is less bitterly disappointed. The frame, it
is true, might have been bowed to a harsher labour, but the heart
would at least have had its rest from anxiety, and the mind its
relaxation from thought."

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