“You have fortunately been quite misinformed, Mr Charles,” said the constrained voice of the physician. “Your cousin has as perfect possession of his faculties as either you or I. I am glad to be able to inform you of his perfect health. He is not either very robust or very happy, I dare say, and has the good sense and courage not to veil the latter, with false pride or levity, as I have seen many young men do, but his constitution is sound, and his mind elastic. I have not the slightest fear of him.”
There was a dead pause; for a moment or two after, Charlie said not a word. Then he exclaimed, somewhat loudly,—
“Well, of course I am very happy to hear it. The more fool he, to give these gossips the chance of speaking of him so; but Adam was always a sentimental fellow. Of course it is a great satisfaction to me to find it all groundless.”
They passed on. I heard no more of their conversation, nor wished to hear; and I was too thoroughly worn out to be moved by my former passions, either of sorrow or anger. So I took rest—not very quiet nor peaceful, but still more natural and refreshing than I had known for many nights and days.
CHAPTER IX.
There is no light in earth or heaven
But the cold light of stars,
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars—
Is it the gentle star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
Ah, no! from that blue tent above
A hero’s armour gleams.—Longfellow.
I was roused. I began to understand the necessity of that ruling one’s own spirit which is greater than taking a city. I began to see that my self-martyrdom, with all the indulgence of its pain, was but, in its kind, a selfish pleasure after all, and that the duty before me was not any shutting out of the common mercies of the world, or lingering act of self-torment, but a firm and manly subduing of my sorrow. It is a trial even to make this discovery. It is a hard test of patience, when the soul quivering with its own suffering yearns to plunge into some great matter—to endure, to do, to sacrifice—and feels within its aching veins the spirit of a Xavier, eagerly flying to the painfullest labour, and refusing the solace of usual comfort—to have the blank of a steady endurance offered to it instead; to be compelled to yoke its turbulent might of grief again to the common toils of every day; to put on the usual smile, to draw the usual outer garment of ease and seeming peacefulness over the wild pulses of a wounded heart. I say you shall find more scope for desperate bravery in this than on any louder field of battle; for true it is, and of saddest verity, that there be many men to whom taking a city is a small and light matter, in comparison with the firm ruling of this precious stronghold and violent garrison within; many men who, like the proud Syrian of old, would willingly dare the fiery process of some sudden miracle, but with hearts full of bitter disappointment and pride, would turn from the placid Hebrew waters in which the blessing lay.
I was bound to the stake. I was compelled to rule myself with the iron hand of a despot; to return to all my ordinary occupations; to come and go as I had been wont; to listen and to speak of things and persons whose names sent my blood flooding back upon my heart, in the shivering heats and chills of agony, with an assumption of calm ease and indifference the while terrible to bear. And I did all this, that my only relative might be prevented from dooming me to the prison-house of madness—might be preserved from the sin of unrighteously making himself master of the lands of one by whom he had been regarded as a dearly cherished brother. My lands! I would have given them gladly for the joy of believing that Charlie had not meditated a cruelty like this; but for the sake of my good name, and for his own miserable sake, that his sin should at least go no further than intention, I constrained myself to bear this hard and painful discipline of ordinary life. I could not go away as I longed to do, and in strange lands and among new faces endeavour to forget myself, and the loneliness which was my fate. I was bound first to vindicate myself to our little world, and remove all occasion of evil speaking; for my liberty and my means were both concerned. Had Charlie established his case, I must have lost all.
Edward Maxwell had not gone to India. After her fate was united to his, her father made some exertions to establish them at home. They were shortly going to Glasgow I heard, but as far as I could I shut my ears to their name; and though many mentioned them before me with cruel smiles, there were some who knew more truly the nature of my feelings, and tried to hush the rest. But it is hard to do what I laboured to accomplish. To convince one’s self that the being held highest and most loveworthy through all one’s lifetime has altogether vanished from this earth, though there still remains the external form in which the imagination shrouded so fair and beautiful a spirit. I knew indeed that the Lilias of my fancy had never been, but I could not mourn for her as for one dead.
No, the dead are sure. Our most jealous fears cannot think of change—our utmost misery of grief cannot suppose end of existence to them. I fancy the very death makes them more peculiarly our own; but far other and far bitterer is such a calamity as mine.