Beauchamp; or, The Error.

by G. P. R. James

With this resolution he sat down, and had soon despatched a few lines, which he carried to the post himself; then strolled out of the town for an hour, and then returned to dress, ordering a post-chaise for Tarningham House.

How different are the sensations with which one goes out to dinner at different times--ay, even when it is to the house of a new acquaintance, where we have little means of judging previously whether our day will be pleasant or unpleasant, joyous or sad. As there must be more than one party to each compact, and as the age and its object act and react upon each other, so the qualities of each have their share in the effect upon either, and the mood of the visitor has at least as much to do with the impression that he receives as the mood of the host. Wonderfully trite, is it not, reader? It has been said a thousand times before, but it will not do you the least harm to have it repeated, especially as I wish you clearly to understand the mood in which Mr. Beauchamp went, for the first time, to the house of Sir John Slingsby. It was then in that of an indifferent mood of which I have shown some indications, by describing what was passing in his mind after the baronet and Ned Hayward left him. There are, however, various sorts of indifferent moods; there is the gay indifferent, which is very commonly called, devil-me-carish-ness; then there is the impertinent indifference, with a dash of persiflage in it, just to take off the chili--as men put brandy into soda-water--which very empty and conceited men assume to give them an air of that superiority to which they are entitled by no mental quality. Then there is the indifference of despair, and the indifference of satiety. But none of these was the exact sort of indifference which Mr. Beauchamp felt, or thought he felt. It was a grave indifference, springing from a sort of morbid conviction that the happiness or unhappiness of man is not at all in his own hands, or that if it be at all so, it is only at his outset in life, and that the very first step so affects the whole course of after events, as to place the control over them totally beyond his own power. It is a bad philosophy, a very unsafe, untrue, unwise philosophy, and a great author has made it the philosophy of the devil:

Thus we
In our first choice are ever free;
Choose, and the right of choice is o'er,
We who were free, are free no more.

So says Göthe, according to Auster's beautiful translation, and I think it much better to give that translation which every body can understand, than the original which one half of my readers cannot, and which would not be a bit better if they could.

Now Mr. Beauchamp was not the devil, or any thing the least like it, but yet this philosophy had been driven into him by his own previous history, and though he often resisted its influence, and strove to struggle with it, and by new acts to shape a new fate, yet he had been so often disappointed in the attempt, he had found every course, indeed, so constantly lead to the same result, that the philosophy returned as soon as the effort was over, and he looked upon almost every event with indifference, as destined to end in one manner, and that not a pleasant one.

Nevertheless, he could enjoy for the time: there was no man by nature better fitted for enjoyment. He had a fondness for every thing that was great and beautiful; for every thing that was good and noble; he loved flowers, and birds, and music, and the fair face of nature. His breast was full of harmonies, but unfortunately the tones were never prolonged; to borrow a simile from the musical instrument, there was a damper that fell almost as soon as the chord was struck, and the sound, sweet as it might be, ceased before the music was complete.

In driving along, however, the post-boy went somewhat slowly, and with a peculiarly irritating jog in the saddle, which would have sadly disturbed a person of a less indifferent mind--there was plenty of room for pleasant observation if not reflection. The road ran through wooded groves, and often turned along the bank of the stream. At times it mounted over a hill-side, and showed beyond a rich and leafy foreground, the wide extended landscape, undulating away towards the horizon, with the lines of wood and slope beautifully marked in the aerial perspective, and filling the mind with vague imaginations of things that the eye could not define. It dipped down into a valley too, and passed through a quiet, peaceful little village, with a group of tall silver poplars before the church, and a congregation of fine old beech trees around the rectory. The whole aspect of the place was home tranquillity; that of a purely English village under the most favourable circumstances. Cleanliness, neatness, rustic ornament, an air of comfort, a cheerful openness, a look of healthfulness. How different from the villages one sometimes sees, alas! in every country; but less in England than anywhere else in the wide world, the abodes of fever, dirt, penury, wretchedness.

As he passed the rectory, with its smooth, well-mown lawn, and green gates, Beauchamp put his head to the carriage-window and looked out. He expected to see, perhaps, a neat one-horse chaise at the door, and a sleek, well-fed beast to draw it; but there was nothing of the kind there, and he remarked the traces of a pair of wheels from the gates on the road before him. Half a mile further were the gates of Sir John Slingsby's park. It cannot be said that they were in very good order, the iron-work wanted painting sadly, one or two of the bars had got a sad twist, the columns of stone-work to which they were fixed needed pointing, if not more solid repairs. The lodge had all the shutters up, and the post-boy had to get down and open the gates.

Beauchamp sighed, not because he took any great interest in the place or the people it contained, but because the aspect of desolation--of the decay of man's works--especially from neglect, is well worth a sigh. The drive through the park, however, was delightful. Old trees were all around, glorious old trees, those ever-growing monuments of the past, those silent leafy chroniclers of ages gone. Who planted them, who nourished, who protected them? what times have they seen, what deeds have they witnessed, what storms have passed over them, what sunshine have they drunk, what sorrows, and what joys have visited the generations of man, since first they sprang up from the small seed till now, when they stretch out their giant arms to shelter the remote posterity of those whom they have seen flourish and pass away? Who can wander among old trees, and not ask such questions, ay, and a thousand more.

The sight was pleasant to Mr. Beauchamp, it had a serious yet pleasing effect upon his mind, and when the chaise drew up at the door of Tarningham House, he felt more disposed than before to enjoy the society within, whatever it might be.