As in the dreariest landscape a ray of sunlight will reveal some beautiful effects, making the eddies of the dark pool to glitter, lighting up the russet moss, and giving to the half-dried lichen a tinge of bright color, so will, occasionally, memory throw over a life of sorrow a gleam of happier meaning. Faces and events, forms and accents, that once found the way to our hearts, come back again, faintly and imperfectly it may be, but with a touch that revives in us what we once were. It is the one sole feature in which self-love becomes amiable, when, looking back on our past, we cherish the thought of a time before the world had made us sceptical and hard-hearted!
Glencore warmed as he told of that tranquil period when poetry gave a color to his life, and the wild conceptions of genius ran like a thread of gold through the whole web of existence. He quoted passages that had struck him for their beauty or their truthfulness; he told how he had tried to allure his own mind to the tone that vibrated in “the magic music of verse,” and how the very attempt had inspired him with gentler thoughts, a softer charity, and a more tender benevolence towards his fellows.
“Tieck is right, Upton, when he says there are two natures in us, distinct and apart: one, the imaginative and ideal; the other, the actual and the sensual. Many shake them together and confound them, making of the incongruous mixture that vile compound of inconsistency where the beautiful and the true are ever warring with the deformed and the false; their lives a long struggle with themselves, a perpetual contest between high hope and base enjoyment. A few keep them apart, retaining, through their worldliness, some hallowed spot in the heart, where ignoble desires and mean aspirations have never dared to come. A fewer still have made the active work of life subordinate to the guiding spirit of purity, adventuring on no road unsanctioned by high and holy thoughts, caring for no ambitions but such as make us nobler and better.
“I once had a thought of such a life; and even the memory of it, like the prayers we have learned in our childhood, has a hallowing influence over after years. If that poor boy, Upton,” and his lips trembled on the words,—“if that poor boy could have been brought up thus humbly! If he had been taught to know no more than an existence of such simplicity called for, what a load of care might it have spared his heart and mine!”
“You have read over those letters I gave you about him?” asked Upton, who eagerly availed himself of the opportunity to approach an almost forbidden theme.
“I have read them over and over,” said Glencore, sadly; “in all the mention of him I read the faults of my own nature,—a stubborn spirit of pride that hardens as much as elevates; a resentful temper, too prone to give way to its own impulses; an over-confidence in himself, too, always ready to revenge its defeats on the world about him. These are his defects, and they are mine. Poor fellow, that he should inherit all that I have of bad, and yet not be heir to the accidents of fortune which make others so lenient to faults!”
If Upton heard these words with much interest, no less was he struck by the fact that Glencore made no inquiry whatever as to the youth's fate. The last letter of the packet revealed the story of an eventful duel and the boy's escape from Massa by night, with his subsequent arrest by the police; and yet in the face of incidents like these he continued to speculate on traits of mind and character, nor even adverted to the more closely touching events of his fate. By many an artful hint and ingenious device did Sir Horace try to tempt him to some show of curiosity; but all were fruitless. Glencore would talk freely and willingly of the boy's disposition and his capacity; he would even speculate on the successes and failures such a temperament might meet with in life; but still he spoke as men might speak of a character in a fiction, ingeniously weighing casualties and discussing chances; never, even by accident, approaching the actual story of his life, or seeming to attach any interest to his destiny.
Upton's shrewd intelligence quickly told him that this reserve was not accidental; and he deliberated within himself how far it was safe to invade it.
At length he resumed the attempt by adroitly alluding to the spirited resistance the boy had made to his capture, and the consequences one might naturally enough ascribe to a proud and high-hearted youth thus tyrannically punished.
“I have heard something,” said Upton, “of the severities practised at Kuffstein, and they recall the horrible tales of the Inquisition; the terrible contrivances to extort confessions,—expedients that often break down the intellect whose secrets they would discover; so that one actually shudders at the name of a spot so associated with evil.”