Morley Ernstein; or, the Tenants of the Heart

by G. P. R. James

Still, all excitements come to an end; and in time he learned to feel angry at himself for what he began to call boyish enthusiasm. He felt somewhat disgusted with the life of the country, however; and as the London season was then at its height, and everybody was carrying up their stock of faults and follies to that great mart of wickedness and vanity, from the less profitable markets of the country, he determined to see what was passing in the metropolis, and to take his part in all its energetic idleness. Be it said to his honour that he knew London well, and loved it not; but he had seen it only as a boy, under the somewhat rigid tutelage of others, and he was now to see it as a man, master of himself and of a princely fortune.

CHAPTER III.

Scarcely had Morley's visits in the country been paid, when first came four invitations to dinner, and then a grand ball was determined on by a lady, who lived near the county town, and had four sons and six daughters. Who can tell whether Morley Ernstein's appearance in the neighbourhood had aught to do with all these gay affairs? Old Miss Cumbertown, who had seen sixty and more drying summers and freezing winters pass over her, till all the sweeter essences of her nature were parched up to a dry haricot, muttered and grinned at all she heard, and prognosticated that the young gentleman would not be caught yet awhile. She knew well what it was to be disappointed in the attempt to catch a lover; and when she heard, some days after this, that the young master of Morley Court had declined all invitations, announcing that he was about to go to town on the very day the first dinner-party was to take place, she grinned a thousand times more. It is so pleasant to see other people visited by the same misfortunes that have fallen upon ourselves!

In the meantime the young gentleman was totally unconscious that there was anything like a design upon him in any of the five invitations, or that he was creating the least disappointment in the inviters; although they did not fail to believe--for cunning always fancies itself opposed by cunning--that he partly saw through their devices.

"Oh, he gives himself great airs!" said one.

"I suppose we must beg his company in very humble terms," cried another.

But, as we have before declared, Morley was quite unconscious of. offence, and never once recollected the fact either of his having the command of a number of votes for the county, or of his being an eligible match for any lady in the land. Indeed, he thought not at all of any man's daughter in Europe, except, indeed, of her whose birth, parentage, and education, he had not been able to discover.

After he had settled the period of his journey, the next thing was to settle the mode of travelling. It was very natural that, with great wealth in possession, which he had never been allowed fully to enjoy, he should dream of tasting the sweets of it in every possible manner, and that the chariot-and-four should first present itself to his imagination, as the only fitting way for him to seek the capital. He had very nearly given orders for the horses, and had visions of going at least thirteen miles an hour. Rapidity of motion is one of the inherent joys of youth and vigour--it may be called, almost, a necessity, and Morley was one of those who enjoy to the highest extent that peculiar sensation which is produced by the rapid passing of the fair objects of nature before the eye; tower and town, and church-steeple, and green fields, and bright rivers, and tall trees, and rich woods, resting just long enough upon the organs of vision to call up sweet, but undefined imaginations, and then passing away--like distant music which swells and falls upon the ear, bringing back vaguely airs that we have heard elsewhere, and leaving fancy to play them to an end.

He forgot, however, to give the order for the horses at the hour of dinner, and afterwards he strolled out into the country round, and visited the cottages of some of the peasantry who were reported to be in a state of great poverty. He now saw real misery, for the first time, and it had a powerful effect upon him. We have not space, dear reader, to enter into the details; to paint the pale face of squalid misery, and the eager anxious eyes of hopeless destitution. Suffice it, that Morley Ernstein was young; his heart had not been hardened in the furnace of the world, and it was not originally formed of that adamantine stuff, called selfishness. He was not, as some, lavish in his bounty, from mere want of any principle of action whatsoever; but he relieved the unhappy people fully, and on his return home, gave such directions, as to prevent their falling back into misery again during his absence, except by their own fault.

After this was done, he sat and thought, and ended, by ordering a servant to go to the neighbouring town, and secure him a place in the stage-coach to London. His scheme of travelling had been changed by his visit to the poor; but not in the manner, or from the motives that many persons may imagine. It was not that he proposed to save small sums out of a princely fortune, for the purpose of devoting the whole of that fortune to the poor, for Morley knew right well that the industrious mechanic, the artisan, the farmer, the builder--all, in short, who contribute by the labour of their hands and minds to the convenience, comfort, and welfare of their fellow-creatures, have a first claim upon those to whom God has entrusted the distribution of great wealth. He believed that though the poor, the honest and worthy poor, must be supplied, must be cared for--that though it is a duty to make up, by active charity, for the inequalities and accidents that the fundamental constitution of society, and the very nature of man must always produce--still the industrious of all classes have their great primary right, which ought to be attended to. It was not that the actual sight of misery made him purpose to deny himself anything that was rational and just in the station in which he was placed, or resolve to refrain from any expense which might encourage the industrious in all classes, but that sight had called up the spirit of the soul to speak within him, and to check the animal spirit which had fired his imagination. After he returned from those poor cottages, he found no pleasure in the idea of the gay postilions and foaming horses; his mind took a sadder, a more thoughtful tone. He felt almost ashamed of the bright eagerness of pampered life in the presence of the dim eyes and tear-stained cheeks of misery. His whole scheme changed. "I will go to the capital," he said, "quietly and modestly. I will not present myself in that gay place as the rich man, coming to enjoy, but as the thoughtful man, going to examine and to consider. I will not, indeed, conceal myself; but I will retire rather than advance, till I have good cause to do so. I will seek to find friends rather than to make acquaintances, and rather than simply endeavour to spend my income, I will endeavour to spend it well."