Part 57 (1/2)
”And will you tell me, Upton, that the world's estimate of a man's fame is not essential to his self-esteem, or that there yet lived one, who would brave obloquy without, by the force of something within him?”
”This I will tell you,” replied Upton, ”that he who balances between the two is scarcely an honest man, and that he who accepts the show for the substance is not a wise one.”
”These are marvellous sentiments to hear from one whose craft has risen to a proverb, and whose address in life is believed to be not his meanest gift.”
”I accept the irony in all good humor; I go farther, Glencore, I stoop to explain. When any one in the great and eventful journey of life seeks to guide himself safely, he has to weigh all the considerations, and calculate all the combinations adverse to him. The straight road is rarely, or never, possible; even if events were, which they are not, easy to read, they must be taken in combination with others, and with their consequences. The path of action becomes necessarily devious and winding, and compromises are called for at every step. It is not in the moment of s.h.i.+pwreck that a man stops to inquire into petty details of the articles he throws into a long-boat; he is bent on saving himself as best he can. He seizes what is next to him, if it suit his purpose. Now, were he to act in this manner in all the quiet security of his life on sh.o.r.e, his conduct would be highly blamable. No emergency would warrant his taking what belonged to another,--no critical moment would drive him to the instinct of self-preservation. Just the same is the interval between action and reflection. Give me time and forethought, and I will employ something better and higher than craft. My subtlety, as you like to call it, is not my best weapon; I only use it in emergency.”
”I read the matter differently,” said Glencore, sulkily; ”I could, perhaps, offer another explanation of your practice.”
”Pray let me hear it; we are all in confidence here, and I promise you I will not take badly whatever you say to me.”
Glencore sat silent and motionless.
”Come, shall I say it for you, Glencore? for I think I know what is pa.s.sing in your mind.”
The other nodded, and he went on,--
”You would tell me, in plain words, that I keep my craft for myself; my high principle for my friends.”
Glencore only smiled, but Upton continued,--
”So, then, I have guessed aright; and the very worst you can allege against this course is, that what I bestow is better than what I retain!”
”One of Solomon's proverbs may be better than a s.h.i.+lling; but which would a hungry man rather have? I want no word-fencing, Upton; still less do I seek what might sow distrust between us. This much, however, has life taught me: the great trials of this world are like its great maladies. Providence has meant them to be fatal. We call in the doctor in the one case, or the counsellor in the other, out of habit rather than out of hope. Our own consciousness has already whispered that nothing can be of use; but we like to do as our neighbors, and so we take remedies and follow injunctions to the last. The wise man quickly detects by the character of the means how emergent is the case believed to be, and rightly judges that recourse to violent measures implies the presence of great peril. If he be really wise, then he desists at once from what can only torture his few remaining hours. They can be given to better things than the agonies of such agency. To this exact point has my case come, and by the counsels you have given me do I read my danger!
Your only remedy is as bad as the malady it is meant to cure! I cannot take it!”
”Accepting your own imagery, I would say,” said Upton, ”that you are one who will not submit to an operation of some pain that he might be cured.”
Glencore sat moodily for some moments without speaking; at last he said,--
”I feel as though continual change of place and scene would be a relief to me. Let us rendezvous, therefore, somewhere for the autumn, and meanwhile I 'll wander about alone.”
”What direction do you purpose to take?”
”The Schwarzwald and the Hohlenthal, first. I want to revisit a place I knew in happier days. Memory must surely have something besides sorrows to render us. I owned a little cottage there once, near Steig. I fished and read Uhland for a summer long. I wonder if I could resume the same life. I knew the whole village,--the blacksmith, the schoolmaster, the Dorfrichter,--all of them. Good, kind souls they were: how they wept when we parted! Nothing consoled them but my having purchased the cottage, and promised to come back again!”
Upton was glad to accept even this much of interest in the events of life, and drew Glencore on to talk of the days he had pa.s.sed in this solitary region.
As in the dreariest landscape a ray of sunlight will reveal some beautiful effects, making the eddies of the dark pool to glitter, lighting up the russet moss, and giving to the half-dried lichen a tinge of bright color, so will, occasionally, memory throw over a life of sorrow a gleam of happier meaning. Faces and events, forms and accents, that once found the way to our hearts, come back again, faintly and imperfectly it may be, but with a touch that revives in us what we once were. It is the one sole feature in which self-love becomes amiable, when, looking back on our past, we cherish the thought of a time before the world had made us sceptical and hard-hearted!
Glencore warmed as he told of that tranquil period when poetry gave a color to his life, and the wild conceptions of genius ran like a thread of gold through the whole web of existence. He quoted pa.s.sages that had struck him for their beauty or their truthfulness; he told how he had tried to allure his own mind to the tone that vibrated in ”the magic music of verse,” and how the very attempt had inspired him with gentler thoughts, a softer charity, and a more tender benevolence towards his fellows.
”Tieck is right, Upton, when he says there are two natures in us, distinct and apart: one, the imaginative and ideal; the other, the actual and the sensual. Many shake them together and confound them, making of the incongruous mixture that vile compound of inconsistency where the beautiful and the true are ever warring with the deformed and the false; their lives a long struggle with themselves, a perpetual contest between high hope and base enjoyment. A few keep them apart, retaining, through their worldliness, some hallowed spot in the heart, where ign.o.ble desires and mean aspirations have never dared to come. A fewer still have made the active work of life subordinate to the guiding spirit of purity, adventuring on no road unsanctioned by high and holy thoughts, caring for no ambitions but such as make us n.o.bler and better.
”I once had a thought of such a life; and even the memory of it, like the prayers we have learned in our childhood, has a hallowing influence over after years. If that poor boy, Upton,” and his lips trembled on the words,--”if that poor boy could have been brought up thus humbly! If he had been taught to know no more than an existence of such simplicity called for, what a load of care might it have spared _his_ heart and _mine!_”
”You have read over those letters I gave you about him?” asked Upton, who eagerly availed himself of the opportunity to approach an almost forbidden theme.
”I have read them over and over,” said Glencore, sadly; ”in all the mention of him I read the faults of my own nature,--a stubborn spirit of pride that hardens as much as elevates; a resentful temper, too p.r.o.ne to give way to its own impulses; an over-confidence in himself, too, always ready to revenge its defeats on the world about him. These are his defects, and they are mine. Poor fellow, that he should inherit all that I have of bad, and yet not be heir to the accidents of fortune which make others so lenient to faults!”
If Upton heard these words with much interest, no less was he struck by the fact that Glencore made no inquiry whatever as to the youth's fate.
The last letter of the packet revealed the story of an eventful duel and the boy's escape from Ma.s.sa by night, with his subsequent arrest by the police; and yet in the face of incidents like these he continued to speculate on traits of mind and character, nor even adverted to the more closely touching events of his fate. By many an artful hint and ingenious device did Sir Horace try to tempt him to some show of curiosity; but all were fruitless. Glencore would talk freely and willingly of the boy's disposition and his capacity; he would even speculate on the successes and failures such a temperament might meet with in life; but still he spoke as men might speak of a character in a fiction, ingeniously weighing casualties and discussing chances; never, even by accident, approaching the actual story of his life, or seeming to attach any interest to his destiny.