Morley, however, would not give up his post till the last minute, and he himself conducted Juliet to the side of the carriage. He waited with a heavy heart and frowning brow, till the old nobleman, taking his seat by Juliet in the vehicle, ordered the coachman to drive to "The Towers." Then, after pausing moodily for a moment or two before the door of the building, he looked up into the sky, and, with a deep and long-drawn sigh, turned into the paths that wound away, through the woods, up towards the summit of the hills.
CHAPTER XLV.
Night and meditation were friendly to Morley's spirit; he wandered on, rising higher and higher as he advanced, over the busy world of emptiness, of folly and vice that he had just left in the great hall. The fresh breeze of the mountain played around his head, and quieted the feverish throbbing of his temples. He looked up to the Heavens, and saw star beyond star, till the deep blue sky seemed, to his intense gaze, to grow white with the multitude of brilliant orbs that shone forth from the very bottom of the depth. Was it possible that he could see that infinite immensity of worlds without thinking of God, without wondering at the mightiness of his power, without asking himself if his goodness or his strength could ever fail, and without deriving thence powers of endurance--ay, and powers of resistance, too--which no other philosophy could have afforded?
The very sight of Juliet Carr, too--the very words that she had uttered, though their import was sad, and though not a ray of hope could be elicited from anything that she had said, woke the better spirit in the bosom of her lover, and led his thoughts on to higher and to holier things than those to which the earthly spirit would have prompted him.
He wandered on, thinking of endurance: for the first time since the bitter disappointment that he had met with, the heavenly spirit in his bosom seemed to have free sway, to clear away, as in days of yore, the mists and shadows of earth from his eyes, to unveil the skeleton face of earth's ordinary pleasures, and to show him the rankling corruption of even the fairest forms of vice.
"I will endure," he thought, "firmly, strongly, resolutely. I will endure with resignation, with submission, with the courage of a man, with the humility of a Christian. Juliet shall not grieve to see me plunge into those things which my own heart condemns. I will learn, once for all, whether there be any real and substantial obstacle between us; and if my life must be passed in sorrow and regret, I will not add remorse also to the burden."
He had now climbed high up the side of the hill, with nothing but the stars above him, and turning his eyes from them down upon the town below, he beheld the place where he had so lately sat, with the lights glittering from the manifold windows, and the music sighing faintly up to his distant ear. The sight and the sounds only filled him with disgust; and it was with regret that, after remaining for some time longer upon the hill, he took his way back again to the busy haunts of men.
On arriving at the inn, and entering the rooms which had been assigned to himself and Lieberg, he found considerable confusion and disarray. The cause was soon explained to him, for the moment after he appeared, his companion issued forth from the left-hand room, saying, with an eager look--"What say you, Morley, to a journey by night? I have just received intelligence which obliges me to set off for Munich immediately--every hour is of consequence. Will you come?"
Morley thought of Juliet Carr, and replied, that he was sorry that he could not go--that it was impossible. Lieberg pressed him much, and seemed mortified that he would not consent; but his friend explained to him that he had made an engagement for the following morning which he could not break; and it was at length arranged that they should meet at Augsburg or Munich, Morley adding, with a faint light from hope still shining in his bosom--"If nothing should occur on either part to prevent it."
In less than half-an-hour the wheels of Lieberg's carriage rolled away, and Morley, finding that it was hopeless to attempt to sleep, sat up and read for some hours. How few books are there, amongst all the many that come from the hand of man, on which the mind can rest when the heart is sad! How often is even the very best of human productions taken up and laid down, looked at and cast away, as the sad thoughts wander round the one painful subject to which they are fixed, like an animal tethered in a field to one particular point, which he may turn round and round in every direction, but from which he can never break away. Many a book will amuse the couch of pain, will draw away the mind from corporeal uneasiness, but the anguish of the heart has a property in our thoughts that cannot be dissolved; and if any work can call us from that anguish, even for a moment, its chief characteristic must be goodness. Wit, and fancy, and imagination jar sadly with the tones of sorrow, but high and pure philosophies come as a balm to the wounds of the spirit.