Part 28 (1/2)

Alfred Vargrave strode on (overthrown Heart and mind!) in the darkness bewilder'd, alone: ”And so,” to himself did he mutter, ”and so 'Twas to rescue my life, gentle spirit! and, oh, For this did I doubt her?... a light word--a look-- The mistake of a moment!... for this I forsook-- For this? Pardon, pardon, Lucile! O Lucile!”

Thought and memory rang, like a funeral peal, Weary changes on one dirge-like note through his brain, As he stray'd down the darkness.

x.x.xIV.

Re-entering again The Casino, the Duke smiled. He turned to roulette, And sat down, and play'd fast, and lost largely, and yet He still smiled: night deepen'd: he play'd his last number: Went home: and soon slept: and still smil'd in his slumber.

x.x.xV.

In his desolate Maxims, La Rochefoucauld wrote, ”In the grief or mischance of a friend you may note, There is something which always gives pleasure.”

Alas!

That reflection fell short of the truth as it was.

La Rochefoucauld might have as truly set down-- ”No misfortune, but what some one turns to his own Advantage its mischief: no sorrow, but of it There ever is somebody ready to profit: No affliction without its stock-jobbers, who all Gamble, speculate, play on the rise and the fall Of another man's heart, and make traffic in it.”

Burn thy book, O La Rochefoucauld!

Fool! one man's wit All men's selfishness how should it fathom?

O sage, Dost thou satirize Nature?

She laughs at thy page.

CANTO II.

I.

COUSIN JOHN TO COUSIN ALFRED.

LONDON, 18--

”My dear Alfred, Your last letters put me in pain.

This contempt of existence, this listless disdain Of your own life,--its joys and its duties,--the deuce Take my wits if they find for it half an excuse!

I wish that some Frenchman would shoot off your leg, And compel you to stump through the world on a peg.

I wish that you had, like myself (more's the pity!), To sit seven hours on this cursed committee.

I wish that you knew, sir, how salt is the bread Of another--(what is it that Dante has said?) And the trouble of other men's stairs. In a word, I wish fate had some real affliction conferr'd On your whimsical self, that, at least, you had cause For neglecting life's duties, and d.a.m.ning its laws!

This pressure against all the purpose of life, This self-ebullition, and ferment, and strife, Betoken'd, I grant that it may be in truth, The richness and strength of the new wine of youth.

But if, when the wine should have mellow'd with time, Being bottled and binn'd, to a flavor sublime, It retains the same acrid, incongruous taste, Why, the sooner to throw it away that we haste The better, I take it. And this vice of snarling, Self-love's little lapdog, the overfed darling Of a hypochondriacal fancy appears, To my thinking, at least, in a man of your years, At the midnoon of manhood with plenty to do, And every incentive for doing it too, With the duties of life just sufficiently pressing For prayer, and of joys more than most men for blessing; With a pretty young wife, and a pretty full purse, Like poltroonery, puerile truly, or worse!

I wish I could get you at least to agree To take life as it is, and consider with me, If it be not all smiles, that it is not all sneers; It admits honest laughter, and needs honest tears.

Do you think none have known but yourself all the pain Of hopes that retreat, and regrets that remain?

And all the wide distance fate fixes, no doubt, 'Twixt the life that's within, and the life that's without?

What one of us finds the world just as he likes?

Or gets what he wants when he wants it? Or strikes Without missing the thing that he strikes at the first?

Or walks without stumbling? Or quenches his thirst At one draught? Bah! I tell you! I, bachelor John, Have had griefs of my own. But what then? I push on All the faster perchance that I yet feel the pain Of my last fall, albeit I may stumble again.

G.o.d means every man to be happy, be sure.

He sends us no sorrows that have not some cure.

Our duty down here is to do, not to know.

Live as though life were earnest, and life will be so.

Let each moment, like Time's last amba.s.sador, come: It will wait to deliver its message; and some Sort of answer it merits. It is not the deed A man does, but the way that he does it, should plead For the man's compensation in doing it.

”Here, My next neighbor's a man with twelve thousand a year, Who deems that life has not a pastime more pleasant Than to follow a fox, or to slaughter a pheasant.

Yet this fellow goes through a contested election, Lives in London, and sits, like the soul of dejection, All the day through upon a committee, and late To the last, every night, through the dreary debate, As though he were getting each speaker by heart, Though amongst them he never presumes to take part.

One asks himself why, without murmur or question, He foregoes all his tastes, and destroys his digestion, For a labor of which the result seems so small.

'The man is ambitious,' you say. Not at all.

He has just sense enough to be fully aware That he never can hope to be Premier, or share The renown of a Tully;--or even to hold A subordinate office. He is not so bold As to fancy the House for ten minutes would bear With patience his modest opinions to hear.

'But he wants something!'