Part 49 (2/2)
GEORGE MORLEY.--”With all respect for minnows and house-flies, if we found another Shakspeare, he might be better employed, like his predecessor, in selecting individualities from the cla.s.sifications of man.”
WAIFE.--”Being yourself a man, you think so: a housefly might be of a different opinion. But permit me, at least, to doubt whether such an investigator would be better employed in reference to his own happiness, though I grant that he would be so in reference to your intellectual amus.e.m.e.nt and social interests. Poor Shakspeare! How much he must have suffered!”
GEORGE MORLEY.--”You mean that he must have been racked by the pa.s.sions he describes,--bruised by collision with the hearts he dissects. That is not necessary to genius. The judge on his bench, summing up evidence and charging the jury, has no need to have shared the temptations or been privy to the acts of the prisoner at the bar. Yet how consummate may be his a.n.a.lysis!”
”No,” cried Waife, roughly. ”No! Your ill.u.s.tration destroys your argument. The judge knows nothing of the prisoner. There are the circ.u.mstances; there is the law. By these he generalizes, by these he judges,--right or wrong. But of the individual at the bar, of the world--the tremendous world--within that individual heart, I repeat, he knows nothing. Did he know, law and circ.u.mstances might vanish, human justice would be paralyzed. Ho, there! place that swart-visaged, ill-looking foreigner in the dock, and let counsel open the case; hear the witnesses depose! Oh, horrible wretch! a murderer! unmanly murderer!--a defenceless woman smothered by caitiff hands! Hang him up!
hang him up! 'Softly,' whispers the POET, and lifts the veil from the a.s.sa.s.sin's heart. 'Lo! it is Oth.e.l.lo the Moor!' What jury now dare find that criminal guilty? what judge now put on the black cap? who now says, 'Hang him up! hang him up!”
With such lifelike force did the Comedian vent this pa.s.sionate outburst that he thrilled his listener with an awe akin to that which the convicted Moor gathers round himself at the close of the sublime drama.
Even Sir Isaac was startled; and leaving his hopeless pursuit of the water-rat, uttered a low bark, came to his master, and looked into his face with solemn curiosity.
WAIFE (relapsing into colloquial accents).--”Why do we sympathize with those above us more than with those below? why with the sorrows of a king rather than those of a beggar? why does Sir Isaac sympathize with me more than (let that water-rat vex him ever so much) I can possibly sympathize with him? Whatever be the cause, see at least, Mr. Morley, one reason why a poor creature like myself finds it better employment to cultivate the intimacy of brutes than to prosecute the study of men.
Among men, all are too high to sympathize with me; but I have known two friends who never injured nor betrayed. Sir Isaac is one; Wamba was another. Wamba, sir, the native of a remote district of the globe (two friends civilized Europe is not large enough to afford any one man), Wamba, sir, was less gifted by nature, less refined by education, than Sir Isaac; but he was a safe and trustworthy companion: Wamba, sir, was--an opossum.”
GEORGE MORLEY.--”Alas, my dear Mr. Waife, I fear that men must have behaved very ill to you.”
WAIFE.--”I have no right to complain. I have behaved very ill to myself.
When a man is his own enemy, he is very unreasonable if he expect other men to be his benefactors.”
GEORGE MORLEY (with emotion).--”Listen, I have a confession to make to you. I fear I have done you an injury, where, officiously, I meant to do a kindness.” The scholar hurried on to narrate the particulars of his visit to Mrs. Crane. On concluding the recital, he added, ”When again I met you here, and learned that your Sophy was with you, I felt inexpressibly relieved. It was clear then, I thought, that your grandchild had been left to your care unmolested, either that you had proved not to be the person of whom the parties were in search, or family affairs had been so explained and reconciled that my interference had occasioned you no harm. But to-day I have a letter from my father which disquiets me much. It seems that the persons in question did visit Gatesboro', and have maligned you to Mr. Hartopp. Understand me, I ask for no confidence which you may be unwilling to give; but if you will arm me with the power to vindicate your character from aspersions which I need not your a.s.surance to hold unjust and false, I will not rest till that task be triumphantly accomplished.”
WAIFE (in a tone calm but dejected).--”I thank you with all my heart.
But there is nothing to be done. I am glad that the subject did not start up between us until such little service as I could render you, Mr.
Morley, was pretty well over. It would have been a pity if you had been compelled to drop all communication with a man of attainted character, before you had learned how to manage the powers that will enable you hereafter to exhort sinners worse than I have been. Hush, sir! you feel that, at least now, I am an inoffensive old man, labouring for a humble livelihood. You will not repeat here what you may have heard, or yet hear, to the discredit of my former life. You will not send me and my grandchild forth from our obscure refuge to confront a world with which we have no strength to cope. And, believing this, it only remains for me to say, Fare-you-well, sir.”
”I should deserve to lose spe-spe-speech altogether,” cried the Oxonian, gasping and stammering fearfully as he caught Waife firmly by the arm, ”if I suffered--suff-suff-suff--”
”One, two! take time, sir!” said the Comedian, softly. And with a sweet patience he reseated himself on the bank. The Oxonian threw himself at length by the outcast's side; and, with the n.o.ble tenderness of a nature as chivalrously Christian as Heaven ever gave to priest, he rested his folded hands upon Waife's shoulder, and looking him full and close in the face, said thus, slowly, deliberately, not a stammer, ”You do not guess what you have done for me; you have secured to me a home and a career; the wife of whom I must otherwise have despaired; the Divine Vocation on which all my earthly hopes were set, and which I was on the eve of renouncing: do not think these are obligations which can be lightly shaken off. If there are circ.u.mstances which forbid me to disabuse others of impressions which wrong you, imagine not that their false notions will affect my own grat.i.tude,--my own respect for you!”
”Nay, sir! they ought; they must. Perhaps not your exaggerated grat.i.tude for a service which you should not, however, measure by its effects on yourself, but by the slightness of the trouble it gave to me; not perhaps your grat.i.tude, but your respect, yes.”
”I tell you no! Do you fancy that I cannot judge of a man's nature without calling on him to trust me with all the secrets--all the errors, if you will--of his past life? Will not the calling to which I may now hold myself destined give me power and commandment to absolve all those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe? Oh, Mr. Waife! if in earlier days you have sinned, do you not repent? and how often, in many a lovely gentle sentence dropped unawares from your lips, have I had cause to know that you unfeignedly believe! Were I now clothed with sacred authority, could I not absolve you as a priest? Think you that, in the meanwhile, I dare judge you as a man? I,--Life's new recruit, guarded hitherto from temptation by careful parents and favouring fortune,--I presume to judge, and judge harshly, the gray-haired veteran, wearied by the march, wounded in the battle!”
”You are a n.o.ble-hearted human being,” said Waife, greatly affected.
”And, mark my words, a mantle of charity so large you will live to wear as a robe of honour. But hear me, sir! Mr. Hartopp also is a man infinitely charitable, benevolent, kindly, and, through all his simplicity, acutely shrewd; Mr. Hartopp, on hearing what was said against me, deemed me unfit to retain my grandchild, resigned the trust I had confided to him, and would have given me alms, no doubt, had I asked them, but not his hand. Take your hands, sir, from my shoulder, lest the touch sully you.”
George did take his hands from the vagrant's shoulder, but it was to grasp the hand that waived them off and struggled to escape the pressure. ”You are innocent! you are innocent! forgive me that I spoke to you of repentance as if you had been guilty. I feel you are innocent,--feel it by my own heart. You turn away. I defy you to say that you are guilty of what has been laid to your charge, of what has darkened your good name, of what Mr. Hartopp believed to your prejudice.
Look me in the face and say, 'I am not innocent; I have not been belied.”'
Waife remained voiceless, motionless.
The young man, in whose nature lay yet unproved all those grand qualities of heart, without which never was there a grand orator, a grand preacher,--qualities which grasp the results of argument, and arrive at the end of elaborate reasoning by sudden impulse,--here released Waife's hand, rose to his feet, and, facing Waife, as the old man sat with face averted, eyes downcast, breast heaving, said loftily,
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