Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
the mighty organization of good and evil, what can we vain individuals
effect? They who labour most, how doubtful is their reputation! Who
shall say whether Voltaire or Napoleon, Cromwell or Caesar, Walpole or
Pitt, has done most good or most evil? It is a question casuists may
dispute on. Some of us think that poets have been the delight and the
lights of men; another school of philosophy has treated them as the
corrupters of the species,--panderers to the false glory of war, to
the effeminacies of taste, to the pampering of the passions above the
reason. Nay, even those who have effected inventions that change the
face of the earth--the printing-press, gunpowder, the steam-engine,--men
hailed as benefactors by the unthinking herd, or the would-be
sages,--have introduced ills unknown before, adulterating and often
counterbalancing the good. Each new improvement in machinery deprives
hundreds of food. Civilization is the eternal sacrifice of one
generation to the next. An awful sense of the impotence of human
agencies has crushed down the sublime aspirations for mankind which I
once indulged. For myself, I float on the great waters, without pilot or
rudder, and trust passively to the winds, that are the breath of God."
This conversation left a deep impression upon Evelyn; it inspired her
with a new interest in one in whom so many noble qualities lay dulled
and torpid, by the indulgence of a self-sophistry, which, girl as she
was, she felt wholly unworthy of his powers. And it was this error in
Maltravers that, levelling his superiority, brought him nearer to her
heart. Ah, if she could restore him to his race! It was a dangerous
desire, but it intoxicated and absorbed her.
Oh, how sweetly were those fair evenings spent,--the evenings of happy
June! And then, as Maltravers suffered the children to tease him into
talk about the wonders he had seen in the regions far away, how did the
soft and social hues of his character unfold themselves! There is in all
real genius so much latent playfulness of nature it almost seems as if
genius never could grow old. The inscriptions that youth writes upon
the tablets of an imaginative mind are, indeed, never wholly
obliterated,--they are as an invisible writing, which gradually becomes
clear in the light and warmth. Bring genius familiarly with the young,
and it is as young as they are. Evelyn did not yet, therefore, observe
the disparity of _years_ between herself and Maltravers. But the
disparity of knowledge and power served for the present to interdict
to her that sweet feeling of equality in commune, without which love is
rarely a very intense affection in women. It is not so with men. But by
degrees she grew more and more familiar with her stern friend; and in
that familiarity there was perilous fascination to Maltravers. She could
laugh him at any moment out of his most moody reveries; contradict with
a pretty wilfulness his most favourite dogmas; nay, even scold him,
with bewitching gravity, if he was not always at the command of her
wishes--or caprice. At this time it seemed certain that Maltravers would
fall in love with Evelyn; but it rested on more doubtful probabilities
whether Evelyn would fall in love with him.
CHAPTER VII.
CONTRAHE vela,
Et te littoribus cymba propinqua vehat.*--SENECA.
* "Furl your sails, and let the next boat carry you to the shore."
"HAS not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance?" said Mr. Merton to
Maltravers, as Evelyn, unconscious of the compliment, sat at a little
distance, bending down her eyes to Sophy, who was weaving daisy-chains
on a stool at her knee, and whom she was telling not to talk loud,--for
Merton had been giving Maltravers some useful information respecting the
management of his estate; and Evelyn was already interested in all that
could interest her friend. She had one excellent thing in woman,
had Evelyn Cameron: despite her sunny cheerfulness of temper she was
_quiet_; and she had insensibly acquired, under the roof of her musing
and silent mother, the habit of never disturbing others. What a blessed
secret is that in the intercourse of domestic life!
"Has not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance?"
Maltravers started at the question,--it was a literal translation of his
own thought at that moment. He checked the enthusiasm that rose to his
lip, and calmly re-echoed the word,--
"Beautiful indeed!"
"And so sweet-tempered and unaffected; she has been admirably brought
up. I believe Lady Vargrave is a most exemplary woman. Miss Cameron
will, indeed, be a treasure to her betrothed husband. He is to be
envied."
"Her betrothed husband!" said Maltravers, turning very pale.
"Yes; Lord Vargrave. Did you not know that she was engaged to him from
her childhood? It was the wish, nay, command, of the late lord, who
bequeathed her his vast fortune, if not on that condition, at least on
that understanding. Did you never hear of this before?"
While Mr. Merton spoke, a sudden recollection returned to Maltravers. He
_had_ heard Lumley himself refer to the engagement, but it had been in
the sick chamber of Florence,--little heeded at the time, and swept
from his mind by a thousand after-thoughts and scenes. Mr. Merton
continued,--
"We expect Lord Vargrave down soon. He is an ardent lover, I conclude;
but public life chains him so much to London. He made an admirable
speech in the Lords last night; at least, our party appear to think so.
They are to be married when Miss Cameron attains the age of eighteen."
Accustomed to endurance, and skilled in the proud art of concealing
emotion, Maltravers betrayed to the eye of Mr. Merton no symptom of
surprise or dismay at this intelligence. If the rector had conceived any
previous suspicion that Maltravers was touched beyond mere admiration
for beauty, the suspicion would have vanished as he heard his guest
coldly reply,--
"I trust Lord Vargrave may deserve his happiness. But, to return to Mr.
Justis; you corroborate my own opinion of that smooth-spoken gentleman."
The conversation flowed back to business. At last, Maltravers rose to
depart.
"Will you not dine with us to-day?" said the hospitable rector.
"Many thanks,--no; I have much business to attend to at home for some
days to come."
"Kiss Sophy, Mr. Ernest,--Sophy very good girl to-day. Let the pretty
butterfly go, because Evy said it was cruel to put it in a card-box;
kiss Sophy."
Maltravers took the child (whose heart he had completely won) in his
arms, and kissed her tenderly; then advancing to Evelyn, he held out his
hand, while his eyes were fixed upon her with an expression of deep and
mournful interest, which she could not understand.
"God bless you, Miss Cameron," he said, and his lip quivered.
Days passed, and they saw no more of Maltravers. He excused himself
on pretence, now of business, now of other engagements, from all the
invitations of the rector. Mr. Merton unsuspectingly accepted the
excuse; for he knew that Maltravers was necessarily much occupied.
His arrival had now spread throughout the country; and such of his
equals as were still in B-----shire hastened to offer congratulations,
and press hospitality. Perhaps it was the desire to make his excuses to
Merton valid which prompted the master of Burleigh to yield to the
other invitations that crowded on him. But this was not all,--Maltravers
acquired in the neighbourhood the reputation of a man of business. Mr.
Justis was abruptly dismissed; with the help of the bailiff Maltravers
became his own steward. His parting address to this personage was
characteristic of the mingled harshness and justice of Maltravers.
"Sir," said he, as they closed their accounts, "I discharge you
because you are a rascal,--there can be no dispute about that; you have
plundered your owner, yet you have ground his tenants, and neglected
the poor. My villages are filled with paupers, my rent-roll is reduced
a fourth; and yet, while some of my tenants appear to pay nominal rents
(why, you best know),--others are screwed up higher than any man's in
the country. You are a rogue, Mr. Justis,--your own account-books show
it; and if I send them to a lawyer, you would have to refund a sum
that I could apply very advantageously to the rectification of your
blunders."
"I hope, sir," said the steward, conscience-stricken and appalled,--"I
hope you will not ruin me; indeed, indeed, if I was called upon to
refund, I should go to jail."
"Make yourself easy, sir. It is just that I should suffer as well as
you. My neglect of my own duties tempted you to roguery. You were honest
under the vigilant eye of Mr. Cleveland. Retire with your gains: if you
are quite hardened, no punishment can touch you; if you are not, it
is punishment enough to stand there gray-headed, with one foot in the
grave, and hear yourself called a rogue, and know that you cannot defend
yourself,--go!"
Maltravers next occupied himself in all the affairs that a mismanaged
estate brought upon him. He got rid of some tenants, he made new
arrangements with others; he called labour into requisition by a variety
of improvements; he paid minute attention to the poor, not in the
weakness of careless and indiscriminate charity, by which popularity is
so cheaply purchased, and independence so easily degraded,--no, his
main care was to stimulate industry and raise hope. The ambition and
emulation that he so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful
levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose
condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate. Unconsciously
his whole practice began to refute his theories. The abuses of the old
Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and
perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the
best provisions of the law now called into operation; but he was too
wise to be the Philosopher Square of a system. He did not attempt too
much; and he recognized one principle, which, as yet, the administrators
of the new Poor-Laws have not sufficiently discovered. One main object
of the new code was, by curbing public charity, to task the activity of
individual benevolence. If the proprietor or the clergyman find under
his own eye isolated instances of severity, oppression, or hardship in
a general and salutary law, instead of railing against the law, he ought
to attend to the individual instances; and private benevolence ought
to keep the balance of the scales even, and be the makeweight wherever
there is a just deficiency of national charity.* It was this which, in
the modified and discreet regulations that he sought to establish on
his estates, Maltravers especially and pointedly attended to. Age,
infirmity, temporary distress, unmerited destitution, found him a
steady, watchful, indefatigable friend. In these labours, commenced with
extraordinary promptitude, and the energy of a single purpose and
stern mind, Maltravers was necessarily brought into contact with
the neighbouring magistrates and gentry. He was combating evils and
advancing objects in which all were interested; and his vigorous sense,
and his past parliamentary reputation, joined with the respect which in
provinces always attaches to ancient birth, won unexpected and general
favour to his views. At the rectory they heard of him constantly, not
only through occasional visitors, but through Mr. Merton, who was ever
thrown in his way; but he continued to keep himself aloof from the
house. Every one (Mr. Merton excepted) missed him,--even Caroline, whose
able though worldly mind could appreciate his conversation; the children
mourned for their playmate, who was so much more affable than their own
stiff-neckclothed brothers; and Evelyn was at least more serious and