I thought that he never deserved the title more than when I saw him perform the duties of simple good-nature to two unknown individuals on a wild heath on the Sussex shore That stranger was the Prince of Wales!
This adventure, by all the laws of romance, should have made me fall in love with Mariamne, or Mariamne fall in love with me. But reality has laws of a different kind, and the good fortune of being just in time to save a lady's life, whether on horseback or on foot, whether in lake or river, whatever it might be in any other ages, is not necessarily a pledge of eternal constancy in our times. That she was grateful, I fully believe, for her nature was innocent and kind; but confession was out of the question, for neither during our rapid drive home, nor for some days after, was she capable of uttering one word. Alarm had reduced her to a state of exhaustion next to death. Her slight frame had been so shaken that she was as helpless as a child; and almost the only sin of consciousness which she gave, was her shrinking from the sight of the sea whenever she was led towards the window, and her hiding her head in her shawl at every sound of the surge.
It may be true, that if the choice depended on her father I should have been the possessor of her fair hand, and the heir to his half million, and equally true, that the event might have saved me a million of troubles. Even at this hour, I sometimes cannot help thinking how total a change must have been given to my anxious career—how many desperate struggles I should have escaped, if I had thus found my path covered, like an eastern potentate's, with cloth of gold! From my first step, how many privations, nay pangs, would have been utterly unknown to me in climbing up the steeps of life, if I had been lifted on the broad and easy pinions of opulence; how little I should have suffered from that reptilism which lurks in every thicket of public life, and every where with a sting; if I had gone through existence, like another Rasselas in his valley of imperishable summer, guarded from all the inclemencies of fortune, and surrounded with all the enjoyments of man!
And yet, who can tell that the very ease of such a destiny might not have wearied my heart, enervated my mind, and rendered me at once burdensome to myself and useless to the world? Is it not hunger that gives the true zest to the banquet, however exquisite, and labour that gives the true charm to the couch, however embroidered? Is not the noblest enjoyment of the noblest mind to be found it the consciousness that we have done something in our generation; that we have contributed a stone to the pyramid of the national renown, that our lips have swelled the echoes of imperial glory? What can reconcile the man of powerful intellect to the consciousness that he has passed through life a cipher, and left nothing behind him but a tomb?
I had now to undergo the temper of Mordecai. The sight of a post-chaise flying along the shore, with one of the royal grooms as outrider, had brought him and all the inmates of the villa to the door. From our furious haste it was evident to them all that some extraordinary circumstance had caused the long delay of their young mistress. From the entrance of the avenue I saw Mordecai standing, straight and silent as one of the pillars of his gate, with his arms folded, and his eye lowering under his huge brow, like one prepared for calamity. But when the carriage drove up to the door, and I raised his helpless and ashy-coloured daughter in my arms, he gazed for an instant on her, and with a howl like that of a wild animal pierced by bullet or steel, fell on his face on the ground. He evidently thought that she was dead.
Even when she opened her feeble eyelids, smiled, and took his hand, he could scarcely be persuaded that she was still alive. He raved, he tore his hair, he vowed deathless vengeance, and the vengeance of all his race, against the murderer of his child, "his beloved, the child of his soul, the last scion of his name, his angel Mariamne." Rage and tears followed each other in all the tempest of oriental fury. No explanation of mine would be listened to for a moment, and I at length gave up the attempt. The grooms had given the outline of the story; and Mordecai charged me with all kinds of rashness and folly. At one time rushing forward to the couch where she lay, faintly attempting to soothe him, he would fling himself on his knees beside her, kiss her forehead, and upbraid himself for all his fancied harshness to her in the course of his life. Then suddenly starting on his feet, with the spring of a tiger, he would bound towards me, his powerful features distended with rage, his deep eye flashing, and his bony hand clenched as if it grasped a dagger, cursing the hour "when I had first set my foot under his unhappy roof," or cast my "evil eye upon the only child of the undone Mordecai." Ever in all the scene, the thought struck me, of what would be the effect of a hundred thousand such men, sweeping with scymetar and lance over the fields of Palestine? The servants fled in terror, or lurked in different directions until the storm should be gone down. At length Mariamne, dreading an actual collision between us, rose with an effort, tottered across the room, and threw her arms around her father's neck. The old man was conquered at once; his countenance grew calm; he sat down upon the floor, and with his daughter hiding her face in his bosom, wept silently and long. When I saw him thus quieted, I left them together, and retired to my chamber, determined to leave the discovery of his error to his returning judgment; and reinforced in my intention to depart for London even at the earliest dawn.
I employed myself for a while in packing up my few equipments for the journey, but this was soon done, and the question was, how to get rid of the remainder of the evening. I was resolved to meet Mordecai no more; and the servant who announced that dinner was ready, was sent back with an answer, that a violent headach prevented my leaving my room. The headach was true; and I had a reluctance equally true to see the "human face divine" for that evening at least. There was one exception to that reluctance, for thoughts had begun to awake in me, from which I shrank with something little short of terror. There was one "human face divine" which I would have made a pilgrimage round the world to see—but it was not under the roof of Mordecai. It was in one of the little cottages on which I was then looking from my window, and yet which seemed placed by circumstances at an immeasurable distance from me. It was the countenance of a stranger—one with whom I had never exchanged a word, who was probably ignorant of my existence, whom I might never see again, and yet whom I had felt to be my fate. Such are the fantasies, the caprices of that most fantastic of things—the the unfledged mind. But I have not taken up my pen to write either the triflings or the tendernesses of the heart. I leave to others the beau idéal of life. Mine has been the practical, and it has been stern and struggling. I have often been astonished at the softness in which other minds seem to have passed their day; the ripened pasture and clustering vineyards—the mental Arcadia—in which they describe themselves as having loitered from year to year. Can I have faith in this perpetual Claude Lorraine pencil—this undying verdure of the soil—this gold and purple suffusion of the sky—those pomps of the palace and the temple, with their pageants and nymphs, giving life to the landscape, while mine was a continual encounter with difficulty—a continual summons to self-control? My march was like that of the climber up the side of Ætna, every step through ruins, the vestiges of former conflagration—the ground I trode, rocks that had once been flame—every advance a new trial of my feelings or my fortitude—every stage of the ascent leading me, like the traveller, into a higher region of sand or ashes, until, at the highest, I stood in a circle of eternal frost, and with all the rich and human landscape below fading away in distance, or covered with clouds, looked down only on a gulf of fire.
As I sat at my window, gazing vaguely on the sea, then unruffled by a breath, and realizing all the images of evening serenity, a flight of curlews shot screaming by, and awoke me from my reverie. I took my gun, and followed them along the shore. My sportsmanship was never of the most zealous order, and my success on this occasion did not add much to the mortality of the curlews. But the fresh air revived me, I felt my elasticity of foot and frame return, and I followed for some miles along the windings of the shore. At last I had reached the pool where they, probably more aware of the weather than I was, seemed intending to take up their quarters for the night. I took my ground, and was preparing to attack them with both barrels; when a gust that swept with sudden violence between the hills nearly blew me down, and scattered all my prey, screaming and startled, on the wing far into the interior. I had now leisure to look to myself. The sea was rolling in huge billows to the shore. The sun had sunk as suddenly as if it had been drowned. The hills were visible but for a moment, gleamed ghastly in the last light, and were then covered with mist. One of those storms common in Autumn, and which brings all the violence of winter into the midst of the loveliest season of the year, had come on, and I was now to find shelter where I could in the wilderness.
I was vigorous and hardy, but my situation began to be sufficiently embarrassing; for I was at least half-a-dozen miles from home; and the fog, which wrapped every thing, soon rendered the whole face of the country one cloud. To move a single step now was hazardous. I could judge even of my nearness to the ocean only by its roar. The rain soon added to my perplexities, for it began to descend less in showers than in sheets. I tried the shelter of the solitary thicket in these wilds, but was quickly driven from my position. I next tried the hollow of a sand-hill, but there again I was beaten by the enemy; and before I had screened myself from the gust a quarter of an hour, a low rumbling sound, and the fall of pieces of the hill above, awoke me to the chance of being buried alive. I now disclaimed all shelter, and painfully gained the open country, with no other guide than my ear, which told me that I was leaving the sea further and further behind, but hearing the rush of many a rivulet turned into a river before me, and in no slight peril of finishing my history in the bed of some pool, or being swept on the surface of some overcharged ditch, to find my bed in the sea after all.