Chapter VII

Though, as you have said, the vernal bloom
Of his first spirits fading, leaves him changed,
’Tis not to worse. His mind is as a meadow
Of various grasses, rich and fresh beneath,
But o’er the surface some that come to seed
Have cast a colour of sobriety.
EDWIN THE FAIR.

Let us go forth, and resolutely dare
In sweat of brow to toil our little day;
And if a tear flow on our task of care
In memory of those spring hours past away
Brush it not by!
Our hearts to God, to brother men
Aid, labour, blessing, prayer, and then
To these, a sigh.
R. M. MILNES.

Time flies. This is sometimes a truism, trite, unmeaning, and common-place; and sometimes a truth of very serious import. At the present moment, the latter character may certainly be claimed for the remark, for we have to fly rapidly over a large space of time, and a large portion of life. Ten years have come and gone,--ten years of youth and vigour,--ten years full of feeling, and full of event, had we the time to dwell upon them.

It was at the end of these ten years, and again at the close of a beautiful August evening, that Ernest De Grey stood on the brow of the hill which overlooked his former home, on the very spot which had witnessed the announcement of his lost hopes, and his altered destiny.

It is difficult exactly to define in what romance consists; but there are events in life, peculiar combinations of circumstances to which the epithet romantic is at once, and without thought, applied. These events need not be strange or startling; they may be brought about in the easiest and most natural manner; the steps which lead to the combination may be each in themselves obvious and commonplace; and yet over the whole there rests a halo--a poetic colouring, which is felt by the most unpoetic and insensible. Something, no doubt, there is in the character of the persons to whom such events occur; for there are persons whose cold hands and shallow glances turn all they touch, and all that is spread before them into dryness and insipidity. It would, however, have required a very remarkable degree of coldness and dryness to dissipate the romantic colouring which rested on the circumstance (although nothing could be simpler or more commonplace than the events which led to it), that Ernest De Grey was appointed to the living of the parish in which his former home stood. This appointment was, as it seemed, a mere chance. He was a curate in an adjoining county, but there was a distance of thirty miles between his new and his old abode. He was invited by his rector to accompany him on a visit to the bishop of the diocese. The visit lasted but a few hours. Ernest spoke little, and little was said to him. He was not aware,--his rector was not aware,--that he had excited any peculiar degree of attention; yet a few weeks afterwards the living of the Parish of Cranleigh was offered to the young curate:

“A chance it seem’d to be,
But such a chance as rules our destiny.”

And once more Ernest stood and gazed upon the beauty of his lost inheritance;--and fondly and admiringly his eye wandered round; but the bound of the heart with which he had heard of his destiny,--but the rapture with which he had contemplated a return to the scenes of his youth was stilled and faded now. He stood and gazed, but his heart was heavy, and his thoughts were joyless and sad.

We are, I think, too much disposed to look upon the clergy as an order of men separate from ourselves; not separate in that sense in which we _should_ so regard them, separated by a peculiar seal and sanctity, but separate in nature: we are not, I mean, disposed to allow for them the temptations and infirmities of a common humanity; we are too much inclined to suppose that the vows which sever them from their fellows, withdraw them also from the trials and failures common to all in fighting against “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” So at least it has always seemed to me, when the errors, negligences, and infirmities of those who, while they are clergy, still are men, are dwelt upon by a harsh-judging world.

Ernest De Grey was not one who would have fulfilled the perfect ideal of what a clergyman should be. As a child, as a boy, he had been what has been happily called “very human;” and very human he was still. The life he led was a life opposed to every feeling and natural impulse within him; and though he struggled manfully to submit himself to it, there were many hours when his spirit was bowed by the weight of unwelcome responsibility; and when his fancy revolted from the picture of the perpetual struggle and warfare before him. He was one of those separated by the seal of Heaven from their fellow men; but many unmarked by that seal were less tied and bound to earth than he, by the weight of a craving earth-loving nature.

He had never repented of the resolution so suddenly taken in the old man’s room,--he would have repeated it again and again: but that resolution had been taken not from any call he had felt to duties so serious, to an office so holy, but simply from a motive of love and duty to his mother; and that motive being but a human motive, was not at all times sufficiently powerful to animate him amidst the painful, and often thankless, tasks to which he was called to devote himself. Let it not be supposed that Ernest should be blamed for having undertaken a responsibility so solemn, from a human motive. That motive, filial duty, is in itself so pure, is from “passion’s dross so refined and clear,” so contains within itself the germ of all religious feeling, that none have ever acted upon it, in any course of duty, or condition of life, and failed to find a blessing. It is but the statement--a fact,--it was a human motive; and though sufficiently powerful to prevent his resolution from wavering, it could not at all times turn his repulsive tasks into a labour of love and delight.

There was no want of seriousness in the manner in which Ernest first prepared for, and finally entered upon his labours. Once resolved, he endeavoured as best he could to render himself not unworthy the holy office he held. His mind was so true and sincere, that there was no tampering with his conscience,--no excusing himself under the plea of natural unfitness; so far as he saw his duties, he tried to fulfil them. He was not perhaps very quick in discovering them: other eyes might see them straight before him, and he might pass them by; but once beheld, they were firmly and unshrinkingly performed. On minds of this character a blessing must ever rest; for there is nothing to be compared in value to truth and sincerity of heart. But improvement is a gradual process: day by day the strife of inclination with duty has to be renewed; and they are strong indeed who never faint and are weary. Ernest had not this strength: he was far, still very far, from perfection; his duties were to him but duties still, hard oftentimes and laborious: his life was warfare still; his future, a future still on which his eyes scarcely dared to rest.

Since last we met him he had passed from boyhood into manhood; and the deepened expression of his countenance, and the subdued and even serious quietness of his manners bore witness to the change. But the change was not very deep,--in heart he was still a boy: the thirst for happiness was still as strong, the tastes of his boyhood still springing up as fresh and vigorous within him. It was not therefore strange that as he stood and gazed upon the scenes of his free and happy youth,--as he thought of the days when the name of duty had been a light and unfelt burden, his spirits should sink and a cloud of unusual melancholy settle about his head.

Fully, however, to understand his mood of mind, more perfectly to pourtray his character, and to reveal him in all the weakness and humanity of his nature, we must go back to an earlier hour of the day, and bear him company on his first arrival at his new home.

It was about four o’clock when he dismounted from a post-chaise, and entered the parsonage house. It was a pretty low-roofed picturesque building with a green lawn before it, and a flower-garden on one side. It stood at the borders of the village, thirty or forty yards from the road, shadowed from the heat by fine spreading oaks, and guarded from intrusive eyes by a well-covered trellised paling. In former days he had often regarded it with admiration; of late he had often thought of it with pleasure, but as he entered it now he sighed. It was in all the dreary discomfort and untidiness of a new arrival; and although such a state of things is to some minds an incentive to exertion, and an agreeable excitement, it was not so to him. He was not luxurious,--he had never been so: but he liked comfort,--he liked domestic comfort, he liked to feel at home. He walked into the lonely drawing-room, and sighed again. He was now to live alone; and of late he had thought of this with much pleasure--(for although naturally of a joyous and elastic disposition, he was fastidious in his tastes; not endowed with superhuman patience when those tastes were offended; and much had suffered under the trite remarks and harmless, but unmeaning pleasantries of the good dull rector, with whom he had hitherto resided): but now as he entered the disorderly room, a sense of desolation made his heart sink. And while still looking about him with a gaze of blank despair, his temper was assailed, and well-nigh overcome, by the worry of domestic cares, and the demand upon his wandering attention for considerations of household economy. In short, the first effect of the return to scenes which, at a distance, he had pictured as “redolent with joy and youth,” was far from bringing with it the fresh and joyous feeling of “a second spring.”

“Pray have these boxes carried away, it looks so uncomfortable,” he said to the lady who had been selected from the village to preside over his household, as he wandered round the carpetless drawing-room, strewed as it was with hay and straw, paper, and lids of boxes.

“I can’t do it myself, sir,” replied Mrs. Cook, who was heated with scrubbing and unpacking, and who among her many virtues did not boast of an imperturbable temper; “and Thomas says he can’t do it, and John is looking after the horse.”

“Well, Mrs. Cook, I shall go out for a walk; and if you can get anybody to clear the room, I shall be much obliged to you.”

“If you please, sir, will you give me the keys of the linen-chest? The things must be got somehow before night; and there’s more to do than a horse could do already.”

“I haven’t got the keys.”

“Thomas bade me ask you, sir: he says you gave _him_ no keys.”

After a search, the keys were found; and Ernest took up his hat and prepared for a retreat.

“What do you please to have for dinner, sir?” Mrs. Cook began again.

“Oh, I leave that entirely to you. I suppose you have ordered something into the house?”

“I did, sir, make so bold, without orders, for I got no orders from nobody. And where will you please to dine; and what time, sir, do you please to have dinner served up? It isn’t my way, sir, to be without orders, and it’s more than a servant can abear to have no notice taken when she does her best.”

“I will take more notice another day,” Ernest said, good-naturedly. “Put dinner where you please, wherever you can find an empty table; and it had better be ready at seven o’clock.”

“There’s no end of things wanting in the kitchen, sir; there isn’t a boiler to be seen, and the jack is in a sad ricketty state, and I can’t find no pastry-roller nowhere; and to-morrow’s Sunday, too!”

“Never mind for the present,” he said, indifferently; “I suppose we shall get right in time.” And he put on his hat and opened the door.

“There’s been no orders given, sir, about the rooms; there’s been no orders given about nothing. I never heard of such a way of coming to a place. I made so bold as to choose an apartment for myself and my small matters; but Thomas has got no orders, and he doesn’t know where to lay out your honour’s things; and the house will all be topsy-turvy, if there isn’t some notice taken.”

Ernest put down his hat, and followed his conductress over the house, agreeing to every suggestion she chose to make; till coming to a room a few steps higher than the others, from the window of which a sight of Clare Abbey might be caught, he said, “No, Mrs. Cook, I change my mind: this shall be my room.”

“This, sir? Why, it’s no better than a coalhole compared to those more spacious apartments. It will do for a young gentleman from college, sir, or for a traveller for a night or so, but not for your honour.”

“It must do for me,” he said, laughing, “and the travellers shall have the more spacious rooms;” and he stood leaning against the window, unheeding the remonstrances which were poured upon his ear. He was choosing for himself a dangerous indulgence. How dangerous he could not guess.

“Is Lord Vere in the country?” he inquired at last.

“Yes, sir; his lordship is always in the country.”

“Has he many children?”

“He has but the two, sir--Mr. St. Maur and the young lady.” In the anticipation of a little gossip, Mrs. Cook drew nearer, and laying aside her state and offended dignity, and with her dignity her more select phraseology, she continued: “If you wants to know about the fam’ly, sir, I can’t tell you but very little about them; for though they lives here the whole year round, they never comes amongst the poor as your good mamma used to do. Sometimes I sees her ladyship and the young lady in the bairooche, as they drives through Cranleigh now and again; and now and again I sees them at Church: but they isn’t very regular church-goers, only when Mr. St. Maur is at home. He is a very fine young gentleman, sir, and discreet in his ways, I hears; but then he’s as haught and as proud as--, I forgets the caparison, sir. Oh! they all wants a deal of good doing to them, and a deal of preaching, sir, and that’s the truth.”

“We all do that, Mrs. Cook,” said Ernest, gravely, retreating from the window. There was no feeling stronger in his mind than charity in his judgments. His sense of his own weakness made him, perhaps, even faultily tender in dealing with the temptations and infirmities of others.

“Well, they does, sir,” she said, complacently; “but some wants it more nor others: and I often thinks as I sees my lady prancing along in her bairooche, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Ernest said no more; but leaving Mrs. Cook to arrange the house, he set off on the lonely ramble to which alone his melancholy mood of mind was suited. Few as her words of gossip had been, they had excited another train of sad and a new train of repining feeling within. He remembered his own youthful dreams of philanthropy, vague indeed, but dwelt on many an hour fondly in his breast. He remembered how he had intended to be the father of the tenantry; realizing some perhaps never perfectly fulfilled ideal of a gentleman of the olden time,--how his cares and attentions to their welfare were to bring in “a golden year,” where there was to be no more want, no more distress, no more crime. He turned his eye as he passed along upon the Church, still disfigured by unsightly additions and monstrous deformities, and he remembered the hopes he had once so enthusiastically formed of restoring it to the beauty and purity of its original proportions; and dreaming as he went, he marvelled why the opportunities had been denied to him which would have been used to the glory of God and for the good of man. And while he indulged in the easy pleasure of imaginative virtue and benevolence, he scarcely thought of the holier, if not higher, labours to which he had been called.

He reached the brow of the hill which overlooked the valley, and there, leaning his back against a gate, he stood with folded arms indulging in a luxury of meditation; while unreproved, although unbidden, these vague, regretful, distrustful thoughts chased each other through his mind.

He was roused from his reverie by the sound of a sweet voice and a musical laugh from the high-road. Turning hastily round, he observed two figures on horseback approaching at a rapid pace. He felt interested and excited, and contemplated them with much curiosity. One was a young man, extremely handsome and _aristocratic_ in his appearance, whose proud and stately bearing, visible even at a first glance, suited well with the lofty style of his beauty. The other was a young lady,--very young,--she could not be much more than sixteen. Her likeness to her companion betrayed at once the nature of their relationship; but it was a likeness of a peculiar kind, which struck you strangely at first, and was almost forgotten afterwards. Her features were the same finely-carved regular features--her head had the same peculiar stately grace--her whole appearance the same air of “patrician beauty.” But in her movements, in her countenance, in her large, long-shaped hazel eyes, half mischievous, half melancholy, there was a wildness, an airiness, a grace, which gave to the character of her beauty an expression totally dissimilar. She was dressed in a fashion which is, I hope, gradually displacing the modern ungraceful riding-dress. A prettily-shaped jacket of black velvet fell over the skirt of her habit, and the long curls of her bright gold, or pale auburn hair, floated from beneath a low Spanish hat, round which a lace veil was loosely streaming. She formed the very ideal for the lady of a hawking picture of the olden time; indeed about her and about her companion likewise there was that ideal, poetic, colouring, which one expresses, perhaps somewhat vaguely by the words “looking like a picture.”

In passing the place where Ernest stood, the horse of the young lady, either from a rut or other obstruction in the road, or from some carelessness on the part of the fair rider, stumbled, and, for a moment, there was danger of her being thrown to the ground. With one bound, Ernest swung himself over the gate, and laid his hand upon the bridle; but before he could grasp it, the young lady had recovered her seat, and laughingly patting the beautiful and penitent creature, exclaimed, “Poor Brenda, I wonder whose fault it was!”

Looking up immediately afterwards, she was about to thank Ernest, who had retreated to the side of the road; but she was forestalled by her companion. With some haughtiness the young man raised his hat, and slightly bending his head, said,

“My sister is much obliged to you for your assistance”; then, stooping down, and stroking Brenda’s flowing mane, he continued, “Come, Camilla, it is late;” and immediately put his own horse in motion.

The young lady followed without speaking, but turning with a smile to Ernest, and a flitting blush on her fair cheek, she courteously bowed her head, her long curls sweeping over the horse’s neck as she bent, and rode away.

Ernest looked after them with an eager, intense, inquiring gaze, till they were out of sight; he then bounded over the gate, and rapidly retraced his steps homewards. But he was no longer the same person who had so languidly wandered along an hour before. He glanced over the valley, and brighter than the noon-day sun fell the shadows of approaching evening across his path. Where was the gloom of despondency, where were the cheerless prospects of a life of struggle and warfare? A ray of light had fallen across his path, a spark of interest was kindling the future into beauty. His life, which of late he had contemplated as “toward evening,” shone bright again with “hues of the rich unfolding morn.” New thoughts, new hopes, new strength, new self-devotion, new animation,

“By some soft touch invisible
Around his path were taught to swell.”

How or wherefore this change of temper, he could not perhaps himself have explained; yet there was nothing strange or miraculous in it. The mere sight of these two beings, by fancy easily named,--strangers in their individual character, but no strangers to the haunts of his imagination:--the sight of them in their youth and their beauty, and gifted with that lofty high-born air, which so strongly appeals to the fancy, this was in itself enough to lure him into a future he sometimes shrank from contemplating, with thoughts of hope, and interest, and companionship. But such sudden changes of mood are by no means uncommon. Ernest’s lively and sensitive mind was peculiarly susceptible of sudden impressions; for his was

“That nature of humanity
Which both ways doth rebound--rejoicing now
With soarings of the soul, anon brought low.”

But all men--with the exception of a very few, who, as Fuller says, “seem to be made of one entire bone, without any joints”--are as easily acted upon as the chords of the Æolian harp. A fleeting cloud, whose form we have scarcely time to seize, passes over our brain, and we sink into gloom; a soft breath, coming we know not whence, and going we know not where, plays upon the cloud, and it dissolves into mist again. There are some verses by Hood, which quaintly, but prettily, describe one of these sudden, insensible changes, from darkness to light:

“Farewell life! my senses swim,
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night.
Colder, colder, colder still,
Upward starts a vapour chill;
Strong the earthy odour grows,
I smell the mould above the rose.

“Welcome life! the spirit strives,
Strength returns, and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn;
O’er the earth there comes a bloom,
Sunny light, for sullen gloom;
Warm perfume for vapours cold,
I smell the rose above the mould.”

On Ernest’s return to the parsonage, he found an invitation awaiting him, from which he would gladly have freed himself. His young curate stood in the doorway, expressing his regret that duty should have compelled him to be absent during the afternoon, and requesting, with an earnestness which would take no denial, that Ernest would leave his uncomfortable home, and pass the evening with his mother and himself. Mrs. Cook warmly seconded the propriety of the step, and Ernest gave way. He had spent four hours of an unceasingly rainy day at the house of his curate on the occasion of his induction, a month before this time, and the remembrance of those four hours were such as to make him shrink from a repetition, especially on this day, when his mind was full of thoughts on the past, the present, and the future. But he was one of those people who have an innate dislike to a fuss; and he was too happy to escape from Mr. Hervey’s persuasions and Mrs. Cook’s remonstrances by a hasty acquiescence.

Mr. Hervey, the curate, was an amiable young man, exemplary in his conduct both as a son and a clergyman; but he was dull and commonplace, and more tedious than dull people usually are, from the insatiable desire which possessed him for information. From dulness of a talkative narrating kind it is easy to escape, the unfettered mind wandering pleasantly during the flow of the discourse; but questions are a serious infliction. Mr. Hervey’s conversation was chiefly confined to the interrogative mood. He loved information,--not valuable information only, but all information. He would ask in the same breath the price of a horse and its name; he would follow up a question on an abstruse point of geology or astronomy by an inquiry as to the relative heights of two unconnected individuals; and the answers to every question were laid side by side in his mind, comprehensively classed together under the head of so much information. His mother was homely and unrefined; but she had more sense and observation than her son, and a goodness of heart with which it was impossible not to be pleased. For her habit of narration also, often tedious and pointless as it was, there was this great excuse to be made, that it had been acquired, and necessarily fixed, during the long course of years in which she had been engaged in bestowing information on her son. They were both, however, considered in the light of companions, rather serious trials to a preoccupied and wandering mind.

“Did you make a long journey to-day?” asked Mr. Hervey of Ernest, as they sat down to dinner.

“Yes; I came from London.”

“What do you suppose to be the exact distance from here to London?”

“I don’t know. I suppose between eighty and ninety miles.”

“You came by the railroad, of course?”

“Oh yes, of course,” Ernest said, smiling.

“And I dare say you came in five or six hours. Wonderful! wonderful!” sighed old Mrs. Hervey. “I don’t know how it may be, I hope there is no harm in it; but I sometimes do think it never was intended that men should fly through the air as they do now-a-days. When first I came to this part of the country,--we came on a visit to old Mr. Hargrave, at the Woods,--it’s fifty years ago--I was a girl of eighteen--we were three days in coming from London. The first night we slept at Henley-on-Thames, my father was knocked up even then; but he was an invalid, to be sure; and the second night we slept--where did we sleep, Edward?--how strange, that I should forget! I know there was a waiter with a spotty face; for my mother, who was always nervous about infection, said, ‘I wonder if he has got the small-pox.’ But, however, that is no matter now: and the third night we arrived at the Woods.”

Such is a specimen of the conversation with which Mr. and Mrs. Hervey entertained their guest during dinner and the early part of the evening. Ernest exerted himself, however, to attend, to control his thoughts during some thrice-repeated narrations from Mrs. Hervey, and to bear patiently his curate’s more tedious interrogatories; and he was at length rewarded for his endeavours by the sudden raising of a subject which possessed a strange attraction for him, and which a distaste to prying and gossip, joined to some other mysterious feelings, had alone prevented him from introducing.

“What do you suppose to be the prevailing style of architecture in which Clare Abbey is built?” inquired Mr. Hervey.

It was the first time that his former home had been mentioned, Mrs. Hervey, with more tact than her son, leaving the subject for Ernest to introduce or not at his pleasure; but the quietness with which he now entered upon the discussion convinced her that her abstinence (a very painful one) had been needless; and she joyfully seized upon a topic on which her tongue had been “itching” to expatiate.

“Are you acquainted with Lord and Lady Vere, Mr. De Grey?” she asked, when the architecture had been discussed, and her son was satisfied.

“Not at all,” he replied.

“You are not singular in that respect,” remarked Mr. Hervey.

“Edward is quite right,” rejoined his mother. “Nobody can be said to know them. I don’t know how it is; we have dined at Clare Abbey--how many times, Edward?--three times, I think, in three years, and Lady Vere has called here as many times, perhaps; but I don’t know how it is, we don’t know them; and everybody about here says the same thing. Lord Vere is never seen. Indeed, Mr. De Grey, you will have hard work: if he comes to church half a dozen times a year, it is all he does do. I hope I’m saying nothing unkind, Edward; but Mr. De Grey will have eyes as well as we have, and the truth is the truth. Lady Vere was not much better a year or two ago; but Mr. St. Maur, they say, persuades her to be more regular; and we shall see her to-morrow, as he is at home, I don’t doubt.”

“Did you ever see the young St. Maurs?” inquired Mr. Hervey.

“Not unless, as I suppose, I met them riding this afternoon.”

“If you met young people riding, Mr. De Grey, there’s no doubt that you met the young St. Maurs. When Mr. St. Maur is at home, he and his sister are always together riding and walking. Mr. St. Maur is at Oxford at present (that is, not at present; you understand, Mr. De Grey, vacation time); and he remains there a year longer, I believe. He is remarkably clever as we hear, and they say he is to come into Parliament in a year or so, and altogether he looks very high. It is a sad pity that he is so haughty, for there’s no doubt but he is a well-disposed young man; but that’s the way with genius in this world. There’s not a soul hereabouts that he thinks fit to associate with. Edward would be very happy to be a companion when he’s not too busy, but if he meets him in his walks or his rides, Mr. St. Maur bows and asks him how he does, and there’s an end of it;--and the young lady never leaves her brother when he is at home; and when he’s not at home nobody knows what becomes of her. She leads a sad dull life, poor thing, and she feels it I’m sure she does; but she’s a sweet pretty creature,--isn’t she, Mr. De Grey?”

“Very pretty,” he replied quietly; but he coloured slightly as he spoke, for a quiet “very pretty” was _not_ what he had thought her.

“What a strange thing a family likeness is!” remarked Mr. Hervey.

“Ah! Edward, you say that because you think Miss St. Maur so like her brother; but I don’t see it. For my part I had rather have one like Miss St. Maur, than twenty such as that proud young gentleman. It’s a shame for me to say so, I, Edward’s mother too, for Mr. St. Maur is far more hopeful and religious, than his sister; but then she’s young, Mr. De Grey, and she’s a sweet pretty creature, and that’s the truth; and when she smiles, I could kiss her a hundred times over. I never see her, but I think of a cousin of my own, dead and gone these thirty years; sweet Amy Mills! She was just such another sweet thoughtless thing; there was no seriousness in her! but she fell ill before she was twenty, and she bore a long painful illness with the patience of a young saint as she was; and when she died, for she died in her early youth, she looked so lovely, that there was one who said she was not a dead child of earth, but a sleeping angel of heaven. And I’ve often seen it; such is the end of those wild sweet heedless things. But you are not going, Mr. De Grey; it’s early yet.”

“What is the exact hour by your watch,” inquired Mr. Hervey.

“Nearly ten o’clock; and I have a good deal to arrange to-night.”

“Do you suppose that your time is perfectly correct by London time?”

With some difficulty, Ernest extricated himself from the offered society of Mr. Hervey, and walked thoughtfully home alone.