“Vot should I do vith it? I’ve had enuff of the ‘sponsibility. Put it up in a ‘ankerchiff, and p’r’aps ven master gets married, and ‘as a babby vots teethin’, he vil say, ‘Thank ye, Beck, for your curril.’ Vould not that make us proud, mammy?”
Chuckling heartily at that vision, Beck kissed his nurse, and trying hard to keep himself upright, and do credit to the dignity of his cloth, returned to his new room over the stables.
CHAPTER XVII. THE WAKING OF THE SERPENT.
And how, O Poet of the sad belief, and eloquence “like ebony, at once dark and splendid [It was said of Tertullian that ‘his style was like ebony, dark and splendid’],” how couldst thou, august Lucretius, deem it but sweet to behold from the steep the strife of the great sea, or, safe from the peril, gaze on the wrath of the battle, or, serene in the temples of the wise, look afar on the wanderings of human error? Is it so sweet to survey the ills from which thou art delivered? Shall not the strong law of SYMPATHY find thee out, and thy heart rebuke thy philosophy? Not sweet, indeed, can be man’s shelter in self when he says to the storm, “I have no bark on the sea;” or to the gods of the battle, “I have no son in the slaughter;” when he smiles unmoved upon Woe, and murmurs, “Weep on, for these eyes know no tears;” when, unappalled, he beholdeth the black deeds of crime, and cries to his conscience, “Thou art calm.” Yet solemn is the sight to him who lives in all life,—seeks for Nature in the storm, and Providence in the battle; loses self in the woe; probes his heart in the crime; and owns no philosophy that sets him free from the fetters of man. Not in vain do we scan all the contrasts in the large framework of civilized earth if we note “when the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together.” Range, O Art, through all space, clasp together in extremes, shake idle wealth from its lethargy, and bid States look in hovels where the teacher is dumb, and Reason unweeded runs to rot! Bid haughty Intellect pause in its triumph, and doubt if intellect alone can deliver the soul from its tempters! Only that lives uncorrupt which preserves in all seasons the human affections in which the breath of God breathes and is. Go forth to the world, O Art, go forth to the innocent, the guilty, the wise, and the dull; go forth as the still voice of Fate! Speak of the insecurity even of goodness below; carry on the rapt vision of suffering Virtue through “the doors of the shadows of death;” show the dim revelation symbolled forth in the Tragedy of old,—how incomplete is man’s destiny, how undeveloped is the justice divine, if Antigone sleep eternally in the ribs of the rock, and Oedipus vanish forever in the Grove of the Furies. Here below, “the waters are hid with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen;” but above liveth He “who can bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades, and loose the bands of Orion.” Go with Fate over the bridge, and she vanishes in the land beyond the gulf! Behold where the Eternal demands Eternity for the progress of His creatures and the vindication of His justice!
It was past midnight, and Lucretia sat alone in her dreary room; her head buried on her bosom, her eyes fixed on the ground, her hands resting on her knees,—it was an image of inanimate prostration and decrepitude that might have moved compassion to its depth. The door opened, and Martha entered, to assist Madame Dalibard, as usual, to retire to rest. Her mistress slowly raised her eyes at the noise of the opening door, and those eyes took their searching, penetrating acuteness as they fixed upon the florid nor uncomely countenance of the waiting-woman.
In her starched cap, her sober-coloured stuff gown, in her prim, quiet manner and a certain sanctified demureness of aspect, there was something in the first appearance of this woman that impressed you with the notion of respectability, and inspired confidence in those steady good qualities which we seek in a trusty servant. But more closely examined, an habitual observer might have found much to qualify, perhaps to disturb, his first prepossessions. The exceeding lowness of the forehead, over which that stiff, harsh hair was so puritanically parted; the severe hardness of those thin, small lips, so pursed up and constrained; even a certain dull cruelty in those light, cold blue eyes,—might have caused an uneasy sentiment, almost approaching to fear. The fat grocer’s spoilt child instinctively recoiled from her when she entered the shop to make her household purchases; the old, gray-whiskered terrier dog at the public-house slunk into the tap when she crossed the threshold.
Madame Dalibard silently suffered herself to be wheeled into the adjoining bedroom, and the process of disrobing was nearly completed before she said abruptly,—
“So you attended Mr. Varney’s uncle in his last illness. Did he suffer much?”
“He was a poor creature at best,” answered Martha; “but he gave me a deal of trouble afore he went. He was a scranny corpse when I strecked him out.”