Volume Ii Part 25 (1/2)

I cannot conjecture what might have been Morris's conduct under other circ.u.mstances, but in his present relations to myself, he saw probably but one course open to him. He condescended to overlook the terms of this insulting note, and calmly asked for an explanation of it. By great good luck, James had placed the affair in young Belton's hands,--our former doctor at Bruff,--who chanced to be on his way through here; and thus, by the good sense of one, and the calm temper of the other, this rash boy has been rescued from one of the most causeless quarrels ever heard of. James had started for Modena, I believe, with a carpet-bag full of cigars, a French novel, and a bullet-mould; but before he had arrived at his destination, Morris, Belton, and myself were laughing heartily over the whole adventure.. Morris's conduct throughout the entire business raised him still higher in my esteem; and the consummate good tact with which he avoided the slightest reflection that might pain me on my son's score, showed me that he was a thorough gentleman. I must say, too, that Belton behaved admirably. Brief as has been his residence abroad, he has acquired the habits of a perfect man of the world, but without sacrificing a jot of his truly frank and generous temperament.

Ah, Tom! it was not without some sharp self-reproaches that I saw this young fellow, poor and friendless as he started in life, struggling with that hard fate that insists upon a man's feeling independent in spirit, and humble in manner, fighting that bitter battle contained in a dispensary doctor's life, emerge at once into an accomplished, well-informed gentleman, well versed in all the popular topics of the day, and evidently stored with a deeper and more valuable kind of knowledge,--I say, I saw all this, and thought of my own boy, bred up with what were unquestionably greater advantages and better opportunities of learning, not obliged to adventure on a career in his mere student years, but with ample time and leisure for cultivation; and yet there he was,--there he is, this minute,--and there is not a station nor condition in life wherein he could earn half a crown a day. He was educated, as it is facetiously called, at Dr. Stingem's school. He read his Homer and Virgil, wrote his false quant.i.ties, and blundered through his Greek themes, like the rest. He went through--it's a good phrase--some books of Euclid, and covered reams of foolscap with equations; and yet, to this hour, he can't translate a cla.s.sic, nor do a sum in common arithmetic, while his handwriting is a cuneiform character that defies a key: and with all that, the boy is not a fool, nor deficient in teachable qualities. I hope and trust this system is coming to an end. I wish sincerely, Tom, that we may have seen the last of a teaching that for one whom it made accomplished and well-informed, converted fifty into pedants, and left a hundred dunces! Intelligible spelling, and readable writing, a little history, and the ”rule of three,” some geography, a short course of chemistry and practical mathematics,--that's not too much, I think,--and yet I 'd be easy in my mind if James had gone that far, even though he were ignorant of ”spondees,” and had never read a line of that cla.s.sic morality they call the Heathen Mythology. I'd not have touched upon this ungrateful theme, but that my thoughts have been running on the advantages we were to have derived from our foreign tour, and some misgivings stinking me as to their being realized.

Perhaps we are not very docile subjects, perhaps we set about the thing in a wrong way, perhaps we had not stored our minds with the preliminary knowledge necessary, perhaps--anything you like, in short; but here we are, in all essentials, as ignorant of everything a residence abroad might be supposed to teach, as though we had never quitted Dodsborough.

Stop--I'm going too fast--we _have_ learned some things not usually acquired at home; we have attained to an extravagant pa.s.sion for dress, and an inordinate love of grand acquaintances. Mary Anne is an advanced student in modern French romance literature; James no mean proficient at cart; Mrs. D. has added largely to the stock of what she calls her ”knowledge of life,” by familiar intimacy with a score of people who ought to be at the galleys; and I, with every endeavor to oppose the tendency, have grown as suspicious as a government spy, and as meanly inquisitive about other people's affairs as though I were prime minister to an Italian prince.

We have lost that wholesome reserve with respect to mere acquaintances, and by which our manner to our friends attained to its distinctive signs of cordiality, for now we are on the same terms with all the world. The code is, to be charmed with everything and everybody,--with their looks, with their manners, with their house and their liveries, with their table and their ”toilette,”--ay, even with their vices! There is the great lesson, Tom; you grow lenient to everything save the reprobation of wrong, and _that_ you set down for rank hypocrisy, and cry out against as the blackest of all the blemishes of humanity.

Nor is it a small evil that our attachment to home is weakened, and even a sense of shame engendered with respect to a hundred little habits and customs that to foreign eyes appear absurd--and perhaps vulgar.

And lastly comes the great question, How are we ever to live in our own country again, with all these exotic notions and opinions? I don't mean how are _we_ to bear _Ireland_, but how is _Ireland_ to endure us! An American shrewdly remarked to me t' other day, ”that one of the greatest difficulties of the slave question was, how to emanc.i.p.ate the slave _owners_; how to liberate the shackles of their rusty old prejudices, and fit them to stand side by side with real freemen.” And in a vast variety of questions you 'll often discover that the puzzle is on the side opposite to that we had been looking at. In this way do I feel that all my old friends will have much to overlook,--much to forgive in my present moods of thinking. I 'll no more be able to take interest in home politics again than I could live on potatoes! My sympathies are now more catholic. I can feel acutely for Schleswig-Holstein, or the Druses at Lebanon. I am deeply interested about the Danubian Provinces, and strong on Sebastopol; but I regard as contemptible the cares of a quarter sessions, or the business of the ”Union.” If you want me to listen, you must talk of the Cossacks, or the war in the Caucasus; and I am far less anxious about who may be the new member for Bruff, than who will be the next ”Vladica” of ”Montenegro.”

These ruminations of mine might never come to a conclusion, Tom, if it were not that I have just received a short note from Belton, with a pressing entreaty that he may see me at once on a matter of importance to myself, and I have ordered a coach to take me over to his hotel. If I can get back in time for post hour, I 'll be able to explain the reason of this sudden call, till when I say adieu.

LETTER x.x.xI. MISS CAROLINE DODD TO MISS c.o.x, AT MISS MINCINGS ACADEMY, BLACK ROCK, IRELAND.

Florence.

My dearest Miss c.o.x,--It would be worse than ingrat.i.tude in me were I to defer telling you how happy I am, and with what a perfect shower of favors Fortune has just overwhelmed me! Little thought I, a few weeks back, that Florence was to become to me the spot nearest and dearest to my heart, a.s.sociated as it is, and ever must be, with the most blissful event of my life! Sir Penrhyn Morris, who, from some unexplained misconception, had all but ceased to know us, was accidentally thrown in our way by the circ.u.mstance of mamma's imprisonment. By his kind and zealous aid her liberation was at length accomplished, and, as a matter of course, he called to make his inquiries after her, and receive our grateful acknowledgments.

I scarcely can tell--my head is too confused to remember--the steps by which he retraced his former place in our intimacy. It is possible there may have been explanations on both sides. I only know that he took his leave one morning with the very coldest of salutations, and appeared on the next day with a manner of the deepest devotion, so evidently directed towards myself that it would have been downright affectation to appear indifferent to it.

He asked me in a low and faltering voice if I would accord him a few moments' interview. He spoke the words with a degree of effort at calmness that gave them a most significant meaning, and I suddenly remembered a certain pa.s.sage in one of your letters to me, wherein you speak of the inconsiderate conduct which girls occasionally pursue in accepting the attentions of men whose difference in age would seem to exclude them from the category of suitors. So far from having incurred this error, I had actually retreated from any advances on his part, not from the disparity of our ages, but from the far wider gulfs that separated _his_ highly cultivated and informed mind from _my_ ungifted and unstored intellect. Partly in shame at my inferiority, partly with a conscious sense of what his impression of me must be, I avoided, so far as I could, his intimacy; and even when domesticated with him, I sought for occupations in which he could not join, and estranged myself from the pursuits which he loved to practise.

Oh, my dear, kind governess, how thoroughly I recognize the truthfulness of all your views of life; how sincerely I own that I have never followed them without advantage, never neglected them without loss! How often have you told me that ”dissimulation is never good;” that, however speciously we may persuade ourselves that in feigning a part we are screening our self-esteem from insult, or saving the feelings of others, the policy is ever a bad one; and that, ”if our sincerity be only allied with an honest humility, it never errs.” The pains I took to escape from the dangerous proximity of his presence suggested to him that I disliked his attentions, and desired to avoid them; and acting on this conviction it was that he made a journey to England during the time I was a visitor at his mother's. It would appear, however, that his esteem for me had taken a deeper root than he perhaps suspected, for on his return his attentions were redoubled, and I could detect that in a variety of ways his feelings towards me were not those of mere friends.h.i.+p. Of mine towards him I will conceal nothing from you. They were deep and intense admiration for qualities of the highest order, and as much of love as consisted with a kind of fear,--a sense of almost terror lest he should resent the presumption of such affection as mine.

You already know something of our habits of life abroad,--wasteful and extravagant beyond all the pretensions of our fortune. It was a difficult thing for me to carry on the semblance of our a.s.sumed position so as not to throw discredit upon my family, and at the same time avoid the dis-ingenuousness of such a part. The struggle, from which I saw no escape, was too much for me, and I determined to leave the Morrises and return home,--to leave a house wherein I already had acquired the first steps of the right road in life, and go back to dissipations in which I felt no pleasure, and gayeties that never enlivened! I did not tell you all this at the time, my dear friend, partly because I had not the courage for it, and partly that the avowal might seem to throw a reproach on those whom my affection should s.h.i.+eld from even a criticism.

If I speak of it now, it is because, happily, the theme is one hourly discussed amongst us in all the candor of true frankness. We have no longer concealments, and we are happy.

It may have been that the abruptness of my departure offended Captain Morris, or, possibly, some other cause produced the estrangement; but, a.s.suredly, he no longer cultivated the intimacy he had once seemed so ardently to desire, and, until the event of mamma's misfortune here, he ceased to visit us.

And now came the interview I have alluded to! Oh, my dearest friend, if there be a moment in life which combines within it the most exquisite delight with the most torturing agony, it is that in which an affection is sought for by one who, immeasurably above us in all the gifts of fortune, still seems to feel that there is a presumption in his demand, and that his appeal may be rejected. I know not how to speak of that conflict between pride and shame, between the ecstasy of conquest and the innate sense of the unworthiness that had won the victory!

Sir Penrhyn thought, or fancied he thought, me fond of display and splendor,--that in conforming to the quiet habits of his mother's house, I was only submitting with a good grace to privations. I undeceived him at once. I confessed, not without some shame, that I was in a manner unsuited to the details of an exalted station,--that wealth and its accompaniments would, in reality, be rather burdens than pleasure to one whose tastes were humble as my own,--that, in fact, I was so little of a ”Grande Dame” that I should inevitably break down in the part, and that no appliances of mere riches could repay for the onerous duties of dispensing them.

”In so much,” interrupted he, with a half-smile, ”that you would prefer a poor man to a rich one?”

”If you mean,” said I, ”a poor man who felt no shame in his poverty, in comparison with a rich man who felt his pride in his wealth, I say, Yes.”

”Then what say you to one who has pa.s.sed through both ordeals,” said he, ”and only asks that you should share either with him to make him happy?”

I have no need to tell you my answer. It satisfied _him_, and made mine the happiest heart in the world. And now we are to be married, dearest, in a fortnight or three weeks,--as soon, in fact, as maybe; and then we are to take a short tour to Rome and Naples, where Sir Penrhyn's yacht is to meet us; after which we visit Malta, coast along Spain, and home.

Home sounds delightfully when it means all that one's fondest fancies can weave of country, of domestic happiness, of duties heartily entered on, and of affections well repaid.

Penrhyn is very splendid; the castle is of feudal antiquity, and the grounds are princely in extent and beauty. Sir Morris is justly proud of his ancestral possessions, and longs to show me its stately magnificence; but still more do I long for the moment when my dear Miss c.o.x will be my guest, and take up her quarters in a certain little room that opens on a terraced garden overlooking the sea. I fixed on the spot the very instant I saw a drawing of the castle, and I am certain you will not find it in your heart to refuse me what will thus make up the perfect measure of my happiness.

In all the selfishness of my joy, I have forgotten to tell you of Florence; but, in truth, it would require a calmer head than mine to talk of galleries and works of art while my thoughts are running on the bright realities of my condition. It is true we go everywhere and see everything, but I am in such a humor to be pleased that I am delighted with all, and can be critical to nothing. I half suspect that art, as art, is a source of pleasure to a very few. I mean that the number is a limited one which can enter into all the minute excellences of a great work, appreciate justly the difficulties overcome, and value deservingly the real triumph accomplished. For myself, I know and feel that painting has its greatest charm for me in its power of suggestiveness, and, consequently, the subject is often of more consequence than the treatment of it; not that I am cold to the chaste loveliness of a Raphael, or indifferent to the gorgeous beauty of a Giordano. They appeal to me, however, in somewhat the same way, and my mind at once sets to work upon an ideal character of the creation before me. That this same admiration of mine is a very humble effort at appreciating artistic excellence, I want no better proof than the fact that it is exactly what Betty Cobb herself felt on being shown the pictures in ”the Pitti.” Her honest wors.h.i.+p of a Madonna at once invested her with every attribute of goodness, and the painter, could he only have heard the praises she uttered, might have revelled in the triumph of an art that can rise above the mere delineation of external beauty. That the appeal to her own heart was direct, was evidenced by her constant reference to some living resemblance to the picture before her. Now it was a saintly hermit by Caracci,--that was the image of Peter Delany at the cross-roads; now it was a Judas,--that was like Tom Noon of the turnpike; and now it was a lovely head by t.i.tian,--the ”very moral of Miss Kitty Doolan, when her hair was down about her.” I am certain, my dearest Miss c.o.x, that the delight conveyed by painting and music is a much more natural pleasure than that derived from the enjoyment of imaginary composition by writing. The appeal is not alone direct, but it is in a manner the same to all,--to the highest king upon the throne, and to the lowly peasant, as in meek wonder he stands entranced and enraptured.