CHAPTER 30.

 

            FAILING to hear from Lord Littmass at once, Lady Bevan began to be infected by Sophia’s anxiety and excitement about Margaret. The favourite plea, ‘urgent family affairs,’ was successfully put into operation with their remaining guests, and the day that followed the arrival of Maynard and Noel in London, brought the two ladies to their town house, whence a note was at once despatched by Sophia to Edmund.

 

            As if impelled by a presentiment of gathering ills, which

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might incapacitate him for future work, Lord Littmass had, by a successful effort of will, thrown off the sense of his outward position, and forced his mind into its favourite channel. And thus, while all the other parties concerned in his decision were in eager and anxious deliberation, Margaret, the object of them, was placidly following her innocent avocations; and Lord Littmass, the subject of them, was urging on his work of artistic creation with a rapidity and brilliancy never before known to him by a presentiment.

 

            He was conscious of a force impelling him with a strange and resistless pressure, and that half alarmed him, even while he admired, and availed himself of its effects.

 

            ‘Can it be true for me,’ he thought, as, pen in hand, he followed his habit of jotting down his thoughts as they flowed, ‘that the days of my work are numbered, and that I am already approaching the end of my appointed week of work? I never read that the Almighty was hurried towards the end of the earth’s creation, though certainly it was left far from finished as an abode for human beings. What is it that thus impels me? What is the nature of this exaltation or excitement? I can trace it to nothing within myself; and as for my circumstances, their crisis would rather crush the intellectual faculties than accelerate their action. Whatever it may be, I will reap the benefit without questioning. What a grand thing it would be could one always work at will at the highest degree of intensity; without need of rest or break, or of artificial stimulants to one’s flagging genius, until the work were done. Would that it were as pleasant to work out the actual problems of one’s own life, and to extricate oneself from its difficulties, as it is to unravel the tangled clues of these creatures of the imagination. It is very clear, if my story be true to nature, that the noblest and best of men and women are as liable to contract impracticable relations with each other, as the reckless or designing. It is in their mode of acting under such circumstances that their nobility exhibits itself.

 

            ‘My poor little Margaret, – how little she dreams of the character she has suggested to me, and the use I have made of her; or of the situation into which the unequal development of her nature has led her imaginary counterpart, the Ione of my tale. With a poor or ordinary creature, the problem would easily be solved by sin or death. But she is one of those who can neither sin nor die. There is a strength of fibre in her nature, physical as well as spiritual, that makes such solution impossible.

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If she could sin, she would fade away and die. Mere suffering she would endure to any extent; but through the portals of wrong-doing is no exit for her.

 

            ‘The situation, then, is an impossible one for Art, because the key is beyond Art to fashion. Success in accomplishing this deliverance will be my highest triumph.

 

            ‘Methinks I hear the shallow critic of the Moralities exclaim against the placing of people so excellent in such a position. Fool! how otherwise could their excellence be proved and manifested? A noble nature is wasted upon ordinary situations. Set Genius to do clerk’s work for shillings a-week! Whom the gods love they chasten.

 

            ‘ “But people so good would have avoided such complications.”

 

‘Ha! master critic, again your shallow cavillings? Suspecting no ill does clearly not rank with you among the higher moralities. The lightning does not stop to count the cost when it darts from its home in the cloud to the bosom of the earth. The loves of the pure and the true are without prudence or anticipation. If certain natures approach each other too nearly, like heaven’s own bodies, they must rush together and blend. In every living breast dwells a potentiality of ruin. Circumstances govern all without: character all within.

 

            ‘I could rescue Ione from her dilemma by summoning the Melodrame to her aid. Nature is often melodramatic, and by seasonable catastrophe cuts knots which are more than Gordian. But Art must not thus shirk difficulties. My characters must evolve their own destinies. Otherwise I own the enigma I have propounded to be insoluble.

 

            ‘Clement and Ione must have loved each other under any circumstances which brought them together. That Ione is unable to love her husband as he claims to be loved, is a misfortune only to have been avoided by his foreseeing the incompatibility of their natures in time to prevent their union. Yet it is a question whether a man of Julio’s disposition could have ignored his passion sufficiently to allow him for a moment to admit the possibility of his failure to make her love him. It is not enough for him that she loves him tenderly as any sister, and would gladly undergo any suffering to save him from pain. He knows that in the conflict between her love and her duty she suffers acutely, and is forsaking all for the latter. He knows that even Clement, while loving her so entirely, and not

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without conviction of mutuality, is yet truly and loyally attached to him, and mourns over the unhappy fatality which binds him to his friend’s wife.

 

            ‘It is the very nobility of all the characters, as I have drawn them, that constitutes the difficulty. A Frenchman would have no scruple in representing Julio, in an access of high strung feeling, sundering the ties which bind Ione to him, and yielding her up to Clement. But these, being what they are, would not accept his sacrifice. They could not be happy while he was pining in his wretched solitariness.

 

            ‘Besides, Julio is hardly a Frenchman’s hero. He believes in life as a period and method of discipline, as well as of enjoyment, a process of education, with difficulties not to be shirked. He believes that Ione’s soul, as well as her body, was entrusted to his charge at their marriage; and that it would be a derogation of his duty thus to release her from here. And, strange to say, in thus adopting the most selfish course possible, he does not consciously think of himself.

 

            ‘And so stands the puzzle, which, but for the arrest of certain developments, or harmonies, in those concerned, would have had no existence: – illustrating my proposition, that the best of human beings may, with perfect blamelessness of character, intention, and action, occupy the most awkward and uncomfortable relations to each other. Whence follows legitimately my deduction, that it is not our relation to each other, but our conduct under that relation, that is of account in the supreme estimate of character.

 

            ‘But how shall I solve the situation? Once again, shall I descend into the region of melodrama, and summon the gross arm of physical catastrophe to the relief of spiritual grievances?

 

            ‘Julio might commit suicide.

 

            ‘Bah! Any one can do that: and I have made him of sterner stuff than a sentimental Frenchman. He knows, too, that his voluntary death would never be accepted by Ione as a contribution to her happiness.

 

            ‘Again, Ione might die. Already I foresee her in the agony of the conflict, crying, –

 

                                   “Peace! peace! Orestes-like, I pray for peace!”

 

and blessing God that He hath made death.

 

            ‘A voluntary death for Julio would solve nothing, for it would not free Ione’s soul. It would rather bind her to his

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memory, and make her love hateful to her. His accidental death might prove favourable to Clement’s wishes; but accidental deaths do not always occur when they would be most convenient. Neither do they always take the right person. In such matters the perversity of Providence is very conspicuous.

 

            ‘Thus in Nature. But in Art? Shall I descend? No, a thousand times, no. In this, my latest work, I record my highest aim. I will not lower it to the general level of the vulgar. Cost me what it may, I will so lift myself up as to draw others up to me. By the way, I wonder where I have heard something like that before. I may have but a small following thereby, but it will be of the elect. Happy marriages are common enough – in books, but a happy un-marriage! That would indeed be something original.’

 

            ‘If you please, my lord, the servant waits for an answer.’

 

            It was a note from Lady Bevan, announcing the arrival of herself and Sophia in London, and asking when she would find him at home.

 

            Despatching a hasty reply welcoming her to town, and excusing his delay in acknowledging her former letter, on the score of overwhelming occupation, which would not permit him to see her till the day after the morrow, – Lord Littmass, when alone again, almost writhed under this fresh accession to the gathering storm of his troubles. How could he longer keep his cousin in ignorance? And every hour he expected James to present himself to him, asking Margaret in marriage, and requiring a reason for his refusal.

 

            ‘If you please, my lord, Mr. Tresham’s servant has brought this note, and waits for an answer.’

 

            ‘This, at least, is only business, and need not cause me any annoyance,’ thought Lord Littmass to himself. ‘ “Wishes particularly to see me in the morning.” Tone seems more serious than necessary. Pooh! I am growing nervous. I wonder if he knows where James is. Who brought this note?’

 

            ‘Mr. Tresham’s own man, my lord.’

 

            ‘Ask if he happens to know whether Mr. Maynard has called on his master lately.’

 

            The man returned with information to the effect that Mr. Maynard was at that moment staying at Mr. Tresham’s house, having arrived there with Mr. Edmund Noel the evening before.

 

            This intelligence filled up the measure of Lord Littmass’s annoyance, and, by the number of reflections it suggested,

(p. 168)

put a stop to all further progress with his work. Lady Bevan and Sophia on one side; James, young Noel, and old Tresham on the other. Interviews requested; explanations sought; arrangements to be made suiting all parties, without compromising himself; and the clearheaded money-king Tresham, in probable complexity with his own unacknowledged son, the first to open the fire.

 

            What wonder was it that it needed all his practised self-command at the dinner-party, to which he presently went, – for the time and the opportunity for taking Margaret out, as he had said, had passed unheeded, – to resist the temptation to forget his cares in deep drinking; or at the whist-table afterwards, to refrain from plunging into desperate excess of gaming? But his temper proved equal to the occasion. None noticed in his utterances any lack of the refined wit for which he was famous; and when, next morning, he received Mr. Tresham, it was with the air of a man who, so far from anticipating aught disagreeable, was in a position and a mood to confer favours.

 

 

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