Morley Ernstein; or, the Tenants of the Heart

by G. P. R. James

"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.