CHAPTER XLIII.
"Providence," says a powerful but dangerous author of another land--"has placed Disgust at the door of all bad places."
But, alas, she keeps herself behind the door as we go in, and it is only when we come out that we meet her face to face! The road to evil is undoubtedly a flowery path, smoothed down and softened with every care, so that no obstruction, no difficulty, may retard our steps, or keep us within the bounds of right. It is only when we would turn again that we discover the thorns.
Such may seem a strange homily wherewith to begin an account of the journey of Morley Ernstein and Frederick, Count Lieberg. It is nevertheless an undoubted fact, dear reader, that of all the many persons well calculated to smooth that high road to vice, of which we have just spoken, the young Baronet could have found none more dangerous than the man who, placed side by side with him, commenced, on the day following that with which we terminated our last chapter, a tour through lands where temptation is cheap, example abundant, and punishment rare--except, indeed, that silent punishment of the heart, the sentence of God's own law, to which man has sometimes added corporeal infliction, but from which he can never take away one fiery drop.
They sat side by side in Morley's carriage, turning over that of Count Lieberg to servants and baggage; for, as we have seen, Morley had no less than three men in his train--the courier, the groom, and good Adam Gray--while Lieberg was armed with a courier and a valet, so that they were plenty certainly to occupy both vehicles. The conversation between the two travelling companions was, of course, modified by the circumstances in which they were placed. It was no longer the wide, discursive, rambling play of fancy which had characterized their communications at an earlier period of their acquaintance, but it was full of deeper thoughts and feelings. It was no longer the even flow of a bright and sparkling rivulet, dancing rapidly on, uninterrupted by any obstacle, glistening over the pebbles of its bed, and whirling in murmuring eddies from the banks; but it was the mountain-torrent, amongst rocks and precipices, now pausing in deep silent pools, now dashing through stones and crags, and now plunging, in an eager cataract, over the edge of the precipitous cliff.
It might be that Lieberg's mind had itself taken a different mood from the various scenes through which he had lately gone, from the violent passions which had actuated him, from the bitter disappointment of pride, and vanity, and love. Or was it that he purposely gave to all he said that tone which made it harmonize with the mood and temper of his companion at that moment? Who shall say which? Certain it is, however, that he, as usual, led the conversation, and led it in that exact strain which bore the mind of Morley Ernstein along with him. He suffered the pauses that took place to be long; he forced not his fellow-traveller to speak; he meditated, as well as Morley, and only roused himself from his silence to cast forth some fierce and flashing sarcasm at the world and all that it contains, or to utter some deep and stern comment upon human happiness or human efforts. It was like the stillness of the storm's approach broken by the flash of the thunder. Then, if he found his companion so disposed, he would go on in a rambling and meditative manner, with a dark gloom pervading all he said, like the shadow of the cloud, remaining even when the voice of the tempest is still.
"Do you see that mother nursing her child, Morley?" he said, after a pause, as they drove through one of those small, miserable villages, to be found so frequently upon the road from Calais to Paris--"do you see yon mother nursing her child? Is it not a pretty sight?"
"I think it is," replied Morley, somewhat surprised at the sneering turn of the lip that accompanied his words.
"Ay," continued Lieberg, "it is indeed a sweet sight to see the sowing of hopes that go on from blight to blight, till all are blasted to the very root. For what is she nursing it, Morley? For sickness, and sorrow, and disappointment; for anguish of body and of mind; to find virtue become a curse, or pleasure alone in vice; for sin, crime, misery, and death, the grave and corruption, and hell hereafter! It is a sweet sight, indeed; and yet, if there be truth, either in Holy Writ, or in worldly experience, such is what we have just seen. The child was a girl, was it not?"
"I think so," replied Morley, gloomily.
"Poor thing!" said Lieberg--"the more her misery. Men can find pleasure, or, at all events, relief from their cares, if they are wise enough to seek it. Women are altogether slaves--their minds to prejudices, their bodies to passions or to follies. They are worse than any other slaves, the slaves of two masters--of man, and of vanity."
Morley replied not, and the conversation dropped; but it is true, and therefore must be admitted, that the tone assumed by his companion was that which harmonized with the feelings in his own bosom, although he might see in many cases the falseness of his arguments, and the fallacy of all his deductions. Those feelings were of angry discontent, and he would not take the trouble to refute Lieberg, even where he perceived he was most wrong. It was like hearing a man who has deeply injured us accused of faults that he has not committed--too often do we listen, and internally dissent, but are silent, and perhaps are pleased.
After a pause of some minutes, Lieberg took up the same topic again, pointing out how superior was the situation of man to woman; but still the theme was, that man could drown every sorrow and every care by varying excitements. It was too pleasant a doctrine for Morley, in his state of mind at the time, willingly to resist, and he yielded gradually to the belief that the only course for him to pursue was, to drown the memory of Juliet Carr by anything that could occupy or interest him. He proposed to himself innocent objects, it is true; but where is the man who can gallop his horse headlong at a fence, and say that he will not leap it?
The first day's journey passed in such conversation as we have described, and the carriages paused at Beauvais, for the night. It was yet light; and to while away an hour ere dinner was ready, Morley Ernstein, without giving any notice to Lieberg, who had gone to another room, strolled out to the fine old cathedral, and entered those doors which, in Roman-catholic countries, are never shut against the worshipper.
He gazed up towards the high transept, the magnificent proportions of which must ever bow the heart to religious feelings, first calling to taste, and taste leading on imagination, and imagination bringing a thousand devout images in her train, as is always the case when appealed to by anything grand and solemn. There is something, also, in the architecture of Gothic churches, which has certainly a more devotional effect than the light and graceful buildings of the Greeks. There are near relationships between all grand sensations. Awe is the sister of Devotion; and I believe that feelings truly sublime can never be awakened in the human heart without ideas of religion rising up with them. Man often becomes sensible of his littleness in the midst of the works of his own hands; the eye runs up the tall column, till it loses the tracery of the capital in the airy gloom above; he stands at the foot of it as an insect, and thinks of the God for whose worship that structure was raised, and to whom it is less than the ant-hill on which we set our unconscious feet.
Morley Ernstein felt the influence of the place. The shady hour; the solemn arches; the sober hue of the building; the solitary lamp at a shrine on the other side; the kneeling figure of a woman, half hidden in the gloom; a receding step, that echoed along the vacant vault;--all made him feel inclined to stay and meditate; and the better spirit seemed to think her hour was come again, and lifted her voice to take the bitterness from his wounded heart. It was in vain, however, for the fiend was near him, and ere Morley had reached the end of the choir, Lieberg was by him, and his hand upon his arm.
How was it that he whiled Morley away from those contemplations, which were likely to lead him to higher and holier feelings than those which his counsels could inspire? It was by no light laugh--it was by no, bitter sneer--it was by none of those means which he might have employed at another time. He knew that there was a spirit dwelt in the air of that place which would not suffer any method of the kind to succeed. He called Morley's attention, then, to the beauties of the building, he descanted upon columns and arches with the most refined and delicate taste, he destroyed the grand effect of the whole by engaging his companion's fancy in the examination of details, and, drawing him out of the church, after having taken a turn round it, he pointed to some of the grotesque ornaments, the grinning heads, and monstrous forms which found place in the architecture of that day, and then, and not till then, he ventured upon a sneer.
"See, Morley," he said, "how these people think fit to decorate the temples of their God, with heads of devils and serpents! Thus is it with us all, I fear; and if we were to look to the temple which we raise to God in our own hearts, we should find it as full of grinning fooleries as the outside of a French cathedral. The very image that we draw of him, nine times out of ten, if we could embody it, would be no better than the great idol of Juggernaut; and, alas! like that idol, we often make it, in bloody triumph, roll over a crowd of human things, crushing all sweet affections, and joys, and happiness, beneath the wheels of one superstition or another. Is it more drivelling or more foolish to ornament a temple like that with toads, and bats, and dragons of stone, than to suppose that the God who made us and gave us powers of enjoyment, should quarrel with us for using those powers, or tasting pleasure wherever we find it?"
"It must depend upon the kind of pleasure, Lieberg," replied Morley, somewhat sharply. "God will never quarrel with us, I am sure, for that which neither injures ourselves, nor other individuals, nor society in general--which neither degrades the spirit that he has given us, nor takes away from the glory of the giver. But it is a wide subject, Lieberg, which I will not discuss with you in my present mood; one thing, however, is very certain, that man's foolish imaginations can no more alter the nature of God, than those foolish ornaments can affect the prayers that are offered in sincerity beneath those walls. He has told us what he is, and with that we must rest satisfied."
Lieberg made no farther reply, for he was well aware, that one evil thought, that one dark doubt in regard to right and wrong, once implanted in the human mind, remains for its time buried in silence and apparent forgetfulness, till the summer day of temptation causes it to germinate and produce the richest harvest which a tempter can desire. He left the subject, therefore, were it was, and the following morning the two companions proceeded on their way towards the French metropolis.
They stayed not long in that capital, nor shall I pause upon all the events that occurred there. Lieberg took care that Morley should not want temptation, and it was not by any ordinary means that he stimulated him to yield to it. He urged him not, he argued not with him in order to induce him to plunge into the ordinary dissipations of youth, but he proceeded by the sap and mine: every word, every tone, and every look being directed to show without an effort--to impress upon the mind of his companion as a self-evident truth, that a greater or a less degree of vice was an inevitable necessity, an incident in the life of every young man, without which, youth never reached manhood. He took it for granted--or, at least, he seemed to do so--that Morley's views on those subjects must be the same as his own--nay, that he must be already in some degree dipped in the stream, which is certainly neither that of immortality nor oblivion; and he more than once thought fit to suppose that his young companion went hither, or went thither with views which never entered into his head. At the same time, as his acquaintance was very extensive in Paris, he contrived that his fellow-traveller should be cast, whether he liked it or not, into such society as he thought fit.
Tools for any work are never wanting in Paris; a thousand accidents brought about a meeting between Morley and this fair lady, or that beautiful girl; and amidst the bright, the gay, and the fascinating, there were many willing and well-skilled to lead youth upon the flowery path of passion. A moment of strong temptation came, working itself up by various accidents like clouds gathering together for a storm. Lieberg watched it coming, and chose the precise moment when the whole fabric of Morley's good feelings and good principles tottered, for the purpose of making a great effort to overthrow them altogether; but he strove for it, not as other men would have striven.
It was a sombre evening, the moment of danger he knew was to be towards nine o'clock that night, and Lieberg sought not to make his companion pass the hours in any occupation which might banish thought and reflection; on the contrary, it seemed as if a deep and heavy gloom had fallen upon himself; his conversation was of the darkest and desponding character; and, as they sat alone together, he skilfully called up every idea that might pile such a load upon Morley's heart and mind, as would impel him to anything in order to cast it off.
"Such evenings as this make me sad," he said, with his dark, bright eyes resting mournfully upon the young Englishman. "Autumn, indeed, is always to me a time of darkness. It is the death-bed of the year, and still, when I think how many pleasures have slipped by us untasted--how few will ever return again,--when I think of the emptiness of many things that I have sought and cared about, I feel a cloud come over my spirit that I would give worlds to disperse! What a difference, Morley," he continued, looking out of the window--"what a difference between this evening and that on which I some time ago met you in the park, with a beautiful girl hanging on your arm, and looking as if she loved you!"
Morley shrunk as if he had been rending open his heart, and bent down his eyes upon the table, but Lieberg went on--"I, too, was happier then," he continued; "but those dreams fade, and I do believe, after all, that with women, the virtue and the high principle which we admire is but coldness of nature. They will be to all appearance as fond, as attached, as devoted, as may be, but put some small stumbling-block in their way, and we shall find that they will whirl all our happiness to the wind without a hesitation or a care."
Morley stretched out his hand to the Burgundy that stood by with a sort of convulsive grasp, filled the tumbler to the brim, and drank it off without a pause.
"Give me the woman of passion," continued Lieberg--"she who yields to the impetuous torrent of her love without fears of the consequences or thoughts of the future--a thousand to one she betrays me, it is true, but still she is mine while I possess her, and she can never inflict upon me the pang of the cold-hearted, virtuous coquette, who raises love almost to a pitch of agony, and then disappoints it with an agony more terrible, verifying the Icelandic fable of the damned, whose torture is, to be first burned in the heart of Hecla, and then plunged into its eternal snows. There have been periods in my life, Morley, when I have felt more bitterly than you know of; and it is ever in such dull times as this that the memory of all which is sad and dark in the past comes upon me. I wish the Salon was opened; I think I could go and stake my last louis, to see if, by the gambler's feverish joy, I could cast off this oppressive weight upon my breast. Give me the wine, Morley, and let us have the windows closed--I love not the world nor anything in it!"
Thus went he on for some time in a tone of dark despondency, which made the moral poison that mingled with all he said ten times more potent and dangerous than when it came diluted with gayer things. Had he presented to Morley's mind the memory of Juliet Carr in all her purity and goodness, he would have called up a warning angel rather than a fiend; but it was the memory of sorrows alone that he recalled, of that anguish of mind which--as corporeal pain will sometimes drive the wretch, in a moment of madness, to fly to deadly poison for the repose of death--will often urge on the spirit to a thousand harmful things, even for a moment's relief.
As he proceeded, the load seemed to lie more and more heavy upon Morley's heart. At first it bore him down, and seemed to overpower him, but gradually he rose to struggle against it; the wine seemed to strengthen him; he took another and another draught, but then he paused, saying, he would drink no more: Already, however, it had produced some effect, not in intoxicating, not in clouding his senses, but in sending that fire through the veins which none but the Burgundian grape can produce. He became impatient of Lieberg's gloomy tone--he was glad when the clock struck nine.
"Ha! there is the hour," cried Lieberg. "Now will you come to the Salon, Morley? We shall find some excitement, at least, in those mischievous pieces of pasteboard."
"No," answered Morley, "I have an engagement to-night; my carriage must be by this time in the court;" and hurrying away to escape further question, the sound of wheels were heard the moment after.
A dark smile came upon Lieberg's countenance. He, too, went forth, but he was not absent more than an hour; and then, speaking a word to his valet as he passed, he walked into the sitting-room, and sat down to read. It was past one o'clock when the valet entered, suddenly saying--"That is his carriage now, sir."
Lieberg went out into the corridor, and passed Morley Ernstein, as, with a slow step, the young Englishman mounted the stairs. He gave him but a word of salutation, and hurried on; but Lieberg marked the haggard eye and the flushed cheek, and, entering his own bed-room, he stood silent for a moment in the midst of the floor, with a look of fierce triumph. It was as if he had won a great victory.
But there must have been a motive for all this. There was, and his words showed it: "He has fallen!" he cried--"he has fallen! The first plunge is taken! Who shall stop him now?--Neither Heaven nor hell. He shall go on--he shall go on! and ere many a year, I will show her this god of her idolatry as low and empty a licentious debauchee as any that crawls through opera saloons, or spends his days and nights between the gaming table and the brothel!"