The Last Man
fools —for the rest, ‘Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there
shall be no more cakes and ale?’”
I turned angrily away: “Verney,” said Adrian, “you are very cynical:
sit down; or if you will not, perhaps, as you are not a frequent
visitor, Lord Raymond will humour you, and accompany us, as we had
previously agreed upon, to parliament.”
Raymond looked keenly at him; he could read benignity only in his
gentle lineaments; he turned to me, observing with scorn my moody and
stern demeanour. “Come,” said Adrian, “I have promised for you, enable
me to keep my engagement. Come with us.”—Raymond made an uneasy
movement, and laconically replied—“I won’t!”
The party in the mean time had broken up. They looked at the pictures,
strolled into the other apartments, talked of billiards, and one by one
vanished. Raymond strode angrily up and down the room. I stood ready to
receive and reply to his reproaches. Adrian leaned against the wall.
“This is infinitely ridiculous,” he cried, “if you were school-boys,
you could not conduct yourselves more unreasonably.”
“You do not understand,” said Raymond. “This is only part of a
system:—a scheme of tyranny to which I will never submit. Because I am
Protector of England, am I to be the only slave in its empire? My
privacy invaded, my actions censured, my friends insulted? But I will
get rid of the whole together.—Be you witnesses,” and he took the star,
insignia of office, from his breast, and threw it on the table. “I
renounce my office, I abdicate my power—assume it who will!”—-
“Let him assume it,” exclaimed Adrian, “who can pronounce himself, or
whom the world will pronounce to be your superior. There does not exist
the man in England with adequate presumption. Know yourself, Raymond,
and your indignation will cease; your complacency return. A few months
ago, whenever we prayed for the prosperity of our country, or our own,
we at the same time prayed for the life and welfare of the Protector,
as indissolubly linked to it. Your hours were devoted to our benefit,
your ambition was to obtain our commendation. You decorated our towns
with edifices, you bestowed on us useful establishments, you gifted the
soil with abundant fertility. The powerful and unjust cowered at the
steps of your judgment-seat, and the poor and oppressed arose like
morn-awakened flowers under the sunshine of your protection.
“Can you wonder that we are all aghast and mourn, when this appears
changed? But, come, this splenetic fit is already passed; resume your
functions; your partizans will hail you; your enemies be silenced; our
love, honour, and duty will again be manifested towards you. Master
yourself, Raymond, and the world is subject to you.”
“All this would be very good sense, if addressed to another,” replied
Raymond, moodily, “con the lesson yourself, and you, the first peer of
the land, may become its sovereign. You the good, the wise, the just,
may rule all hearts. But I perceive, too soon for my own happiness, too
late for England’s good, that I undertook a task to which I am unequal.
I cannot rule myself. My passions are my masters; my smallest impulse
my tyrant. Do you think that I renounced the Protectorate (and I have
renounced it) in a fit of spleen? By the God that lives, I swear never
to take up that bauble again; never again to burthen myself with the
weight of care and misery, of which that is the visible sign.
“Once I desired to be a king. It was in the hey-day of youth, in the
pride of boyish folly. I knew myself when I renounced it. I renounced
it to gain —no matter what—for that also I have lost. For many months I
have submitted to this mock majesty—this solemn jest. I am its dupe no
longer. I will be free.
“I have lost that which adorned and dignified my life; that which
linked me to other men. Again I am a solitary man; and I will become
again, as in my early years, a wanderer, a soldier of fortune. My
friends, for Verney, I feel that you are my friend, do not endeavour to
shake my resolve. Perdita, wedded to an imagination, careless of what
is behind the veil, whose charactery is in truth faulty and vile,
Perdita has renounced me. With her it was pretty enough to play a
sovereign’s part; and, as in the recesses of your beloved forest we
acted masques, and imagined ourselves Arcadian shepherds, to please the
fancy of the moment—so was I content, more for Perdita’s sake than my
own, to take on me the character of one of the great ones of the earth;
to lead her behind the scenes of grandeur, to vary her life with a
short act of magnificence and power. This was to be the colour; love
and confidence the substance of our existence. But we must live, and
not act our lives; pursuing the shadow, I lost the reality—now I
renounce both.
“Adrian, I am about to return to Greece, to become again a soldier,
perhaps a conqueror. Will you accompany me? You will behold new scenes;
see a new people; witness the mighty struggle there going forward
between civilization and barbarism; behold, and perhaps direct the
efforts of a young and vigorous population, for liberty and order. Come
with me. I have expected you. I waited for this moment; all is
prepared;—will you accompany me?”
“I will,” replied Adrian. “Immediately?”
“To-morrow if you will.”
“Reflect!” I cried.
“Wherefore?” asked Raymond—“My dear fellow, I have done nothing else
than reflect on this step the live-long summer; and be assured that
Adrian has condensed an age of reflection into this little moment. Do
not talk of reflection; from this moment I abjure it; this is my only
happy moment during a long interval of time. I must go, Lionel—the Gods
will it; and I must. Do not endeavour to deprive me of my companion,
the out-cast’s friend.
“One word more concerning unkind, unjust Perdita. For a time, I thought
that, by watching a complying moment, fostering the still warm ashes, I
might relume in her the flame of love. It is more cold within her, than
a fire left by gypsies in winter-time, the spent embers crowned by a
pyramid of snow. Then, in endeavouring to do violence to my own
disposition, I made all worse than before. Still I think, that time,
and even absence, may restore her to me. Remember, that I love her
still, that my dearest hope is that she will again be mine. I know,
though she does not, how false the veil is which she has spread over
the reality—do not endeavour to rend this deceptive covering, but by
degrees withdraw it. Present her with a mirror, in which she may know
herself; and, when she is an adept in that necessary but difficult
science, she will wonder at her present mistake, and hasten to restore
to me, what is by right mine, her forgiveness, her kind thoughts, her
love.”
CHAPTER X.
After these events, it was long before we were able to attain any
degree of composure. A moral tempest had wrecked our richly freighted
vessel, and we, remnants of the diminished crew, were aghast at the
losses and changes which we had undergone. Idris passionately loved her
brother, and could ill brook an absence whose duration was uncertain;
his society was dear and necessary to me—I had followed up my chosen
literary occupations with delight under his tutorship and assistance;
his mild philosophy, unerring reason, and enthusiastic friendship were
the best ingredient, the exalted spirit of our circle; even the
children bitterly regretted the loss of their kind playfellow. Deeper
grief oppressed Perdita. In spite of resentment, by day and night she
figured to herself the toils and dangers of the wanderers. Raymond
absent, struggling with difficulties, lost to the power and rank of the
Protectorate, exposed to the perils of war, became an object of anxious
interest; not that she felt any inclination to recall him, if recall
must imply a return to their former union. Such return she felt to be
impossible; and while she believed it to be thus, and with anguish
regretted that so it should be, she continued angry and impatient with
him, who occasioned her misery. These perplexities and regrets caused
her to bathe her pillow with nightly tears, and to reduce her in person
and in mind to the shadow of what she had been. She sought solitude,
and avoided us when in gaiety and unrestrained affection we met in a
family circle. Lonely musings, interminable wanderings, and solemn
music were her only pastimes. She neglected even her child; shutting
her heart against all tenderness, she grew reserved towards me, her
first and fast friend.
I could not see her thus lost, without exerting myself to remedy the
evil —remediless I knew, if I could not in the end bring her to
reconcile herself to Raymond. Before he went I used every argument,
every persuasion to induce her to stop his journey. She answered the
one with a gush of tears—telling me that to be persuaded—life and the
goods of life were a cheap exchange. It was not will that she wanted,
but the capacity; again and again she declared, it were as easy to
enchain the sea, to put reins on the wind’s viewless courses, as for
her to take truth for falsehood, deceit for honesty, heartless
communion for sincere, confiding love. She answered my reasonings more
briefly, declaring with disdain, that the reason was hers; and, until I
could persuade her that the past could be unacted, that maturity could
go back to the cradle, and that all that was could become as though it
had never been, it was useless to assure her that no real change had
taken place in her fate. And thus with stern pride she suffered him to
go, though her very heart-strings cracked at the fulfilling of the act,
which rent from her all that made life valuable.
To change the scene for her, and even for ourselves, all unhinged by
the cloud that had come over us, I persuaded my two remaining
companions that it were better that we should absent ourselves for a
time from Windsor. We visited the north of England, my native Ulswater,
and lingered in scenes dear from a thousand associations. We lengthened
our tour into Scotland, that we might see Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond;
thence we crossed to Ireland, and passed several weeks in the
neighbourhood of Killarney. The change of scene operated to a great
degree as I expected; after a year’s absence, Perdita returned in
gentler and more docile mood to Windsor. The first sight of this place
for a time unhinged her. Here every spot was distinct with associations
now grown bitter. The forest glades, the ferny dells, and lawny
uplands, the cultivated and cheerful country spread around the silver
pathway of ancient Thames, all earth, air, and wave, took up one choral
voice, inspired by memory, instinct with plaintive regret.
But my essay towards bringing her to a saner view of her own situation,
did not end here. Perdita was still to a great degree uneducated. When
first she left her peasant life, and resided with the elegant and
cultivated Evadne, the only accomplishment she brought to any
perfection was that of painting, for which she had a taste almost
amounting to genius. This had occupied her in her lonely cottage, when
she quitted her Greek friend’s protection. Her pallet and easel were
now thrown aside; did she try to paint, thronging recollections made
her hand tremble, her eyes fill with tears. With this occupation she
gave up almost every other; and her mind preyed upon itself almost to
madness.
For my own part, since Adrian had first withdrawn me from my selvatic
wilderness to his own paradise of order and beauty, I had been wedded
to literature. I felt convinced that however it might have been in
former times, in the present stage of the world, no man’s faculties
could be developed, no man’s moral principle be enlarged and liberal,
without an extensive acquaintance with books. To me they stood in the