CHAPTER 22.

 

            NOEL awoke from a most refreshing slumber just as Maynard entered the house. Margaret saw him coming, and went to meet him. Telling him the good news, and that the invalid was in the sitting-room, she returned to her own room, and left James to go in to him alone.

 

            ‘You have found Margaret a good nurse, I hope?’ was his remark, after congratulating him on his amendment. ‘Don’t exert yourself to answer me. I know it is her strong point. Poor child, she made a great mistake in ever marrying. It was a model Sister of Charity lost. She can do anything out of compassion. Of love she has not the slightest conception. But what a fright you have given us! I ought not to have let you start off just as that storm was breaking. Why did you not wait?’

 

            ‘The fact is,’ returned Noel, ‘that my mule and I were so startled by the sudden crash of thunder that we went off without intending it. And having arranged to go, it was hardly worth while returning for a shower of rain.’

 

            ‘Well, I suspect you have gained a loss, for the chances are

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that, whenever any of us do return to England, it will be by that route.’

 

            ‘Have you any news, then?’

 

            ‘Only that the Allied Squadron will soon reach Mexico, and that a great deal will depend on the spirit in which it comes, and the spirit in which it is received. In no case, probably, will it be prudent to go South, as the forces will land at Vera Cruz, and are pretty sure to make for the capital.’

 

            Here Margaret entered the room, and seeing Noel flushed with the conversation, she reminded him that he was still weak, and advised him to return to his room, which had .now been made ready for him.

 

            Maynard proffering his aid, Edmund, with some difficulty, regained his room, and lay down exhausted by the effort he had made; and only fell asleep after much meditation on the peculiarities of his friend’s character, which presented him alternately in the light of a profound philosopher, a generous friend, and a jealous demon; and he wondered how he himself would have acted had Margaret not returned his love. But so much a necessity of their mutual natures did their love seem to him to be, that he was quite unable to imagine such a case as possible.

 

            Next day confirmed the improvement, and Noel told Margaret of the limitation which James had placed to her perfections in saying she was only fit to be a nurse.

 

            She smiled at this, and said that he had probably said it on purpose, to put Edmund on his guard against thinking too well of her; and added, –

 

            ‘He said as much to me, and I expected something of the kind. Indeed, he threatened to tell you that I am not a woman at all, but quite unworthy of your esteem.’

 

            ‘And all the time he idolises you himself!’

 

            ‘Yes, unfortunately for me. Often and often have I longed for him to find some one else to be in love with. It would be such a relief to me.’

 

            ‘It would have to be some one very different from you to manage his moods.’

 

            ‘Yes, I know that I feel for him too much to treat them in the way that would be best. What he wants is some simple, good-humoured, unsensitive woman, who could give in to all his wishes without knowing she was giving in.’

 

            ‘A fat, comfortable woman, who would laugh at his fancies

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instead of suffering by them as you do; and be a sort of moral cushion to him.’

 

            ‘Yes, he is one who requires repose in his domestic life. I only excite and irritate him.’

 

            ‘Yet I dare say he would rather be irritated by you than comforted by another.’

 

            ‘He says that when he sends me away he will never write to me or open a letter from me: for so only can he bear the separation.’

 

            ‘One can think of the dead without longing. He would then have you be to him as one dead.’

 

            ‘I often wish I were dead. I seem fated to minister to no one’s happiness in this world; and yet I cannot help thinking that I have the capacity for it.’

 

            ‘Oh, Margaret, what should I do without you? It is only your love that has made my happiness.’

 

            ‘Ah, you think so now; but sometimes a clear vision comes to me in which I see you in your inmost soul regretting the waste of life and love upon one who can be so little to you; and even blaming me for my part in it. Oh, do not do that, for it would kill me to know it. God knows it is my most earnest desire ever to do the right, judged by his own highest rule. Yet life is so perplexing. I cannot help loving you. I do not feel that it is wrong to love you. Yet, somehow, it only brings misery. Even already it has brought this illness upon you. And I, who would hail an eternity of misery broken only by the smallest intervals of intercourse with you, however few, however far apart, but yet something to the memory and anticipation of which I could cling; – I have combined with the elements to chase you out of reason and well-nigh out of life.’

 

            ‘To me it rather appears that, driven from Paradise by the demon of a fancied expediency, I wake, and find an angel sitting beside me with gentle, healing hand clasped lovingly in mine. Pray let us not anticipate regrets. The cause for them may never come. And if it should come, far happier shall we be if, like yonder couple,’ – he glanced as he spoke towards an engraving of Scheffer’s ‘Francesca and Paolo,’ which hung on the wall, –’ we are to be in torture, yet ever together, whether in body or spirit.’’

 

            ‘Ah, that was such a favourite of James’s once; but now he calls it absurd and unnatural. If you are not tired, I want your opinion on some lines I copied down once,’ said Margaret,

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rather hesitatingly, and producing a small folded packet of papers. ‘But no, I must wait. Here is James coming back.’ And she thrust the packet away into its hiding-place.

 

            ‘All going on well?’ cried Maynard, in a cheery voice, as he entered the room. ‘I think I see my way to moving down to the hacienda without more delay. We can occupy some of the rooms vacated by the officers of the escort, and before they return our cottage will be ready. And, between ourselves, the absence of so large a portion of our force makes it advisable that no time be lost. So I propose to commence packing up at once what is to go down.’

 

            Margaret and Noel exchanged a hasty look of dismay. They feared that, once lodged on the very scene of James’s labours, there would be an end to the freedom of their communion. However, Noel only said, –

 

            ‘Well, if I am deprived of the temptation to look out of the window, which exists up here, I may have some chance of getting on with my projected book.’

 

            ‘Nothing so contagious as the example of other people working,’ said Maynard. ‘I look upon my machinery as the most moral and intellectual creature possible. Perpetually receiving from all sides, there is no selfish retention of the good things put into it. But on it goes, devouring, crushing, stamping, and grinding, mixing and separating, rejecting nothing as too hard for its digestion, until it finally turns out the pure stuff ready for the world’s use. I never watch it at work without being reminded of a human intelligence, the processes are so completely identical; especially in the fact that so small a proportion of what is taken in by it has an appreciable value. It does not, like the anaconda, swallow its meal and then go to sleep over it; but sets to work at once, turning it over, and hammering at it, and squeezing it, and takes no rest until it has broken it to pieces and extracted the good out of it. Oh, I look for quite a revolution in you from the example of the mill. It will be a grand thing to have so substantial a reminiscence of Mexico as a manuscript ready for the publisher when you get home.’

 

            And so James ran volubly on, and each exhibition of his wise, kindly nature made Edmund feel more keenly for the blighting of his hope in life, and the position that he himself occupied towards him. The worst of all pangs, indeed, Noel was spared. He felt that neither himself nor Margaret were, personally, to

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blame. Circumstance, or Fate, had done it all; and, regretting that the choice of Destiny for so hard a trial should have fallen upon himself and his friends, he persistently set himself to see how, by dint of acting up to the highest standard of conduct which he, with the assistance of Margaret’s pure and true spirit, could devise, he might convert to the best end what otherwise could bring only dire misfortune.

 

            Maynard had come up early that day for the express purpose of devoting himself to Noel. The afternoon was passed in the forest, where, reclining under a noble cedar, Margaret’s especial favourite, the whole family made a pleasant group until near sunset: the two men talking animatedly, the children playing around, and Margaret watching them, working and listening the while.

 

            It is a fact worthy to be noted that Maynard’s regard for Noel was greatly increased and confirmed by Margaret’s approbation of his character. Despite all the perplexities and complications of the situation from which he was suffering, James never failed to have the firmest faith in the undeviating purity and truth of her instincts. Thus, for Margaret to place complete confidence in the character of any man was of itself enough to secure James’s also. With this trust in the infallibility of her judgment and perceptions, he felt that had he himself been despised by her, he should have yielded to despair, and perhaps have courted self-destruction; for he owned to himself that under such reprobation his principles, religious or philosophic, would be powerless to restrain him. But he knew that she esteemed and honoured him, and that while failing to love him as he sought to be loved, she bitterly deplored her failure, and gave to him the best that was in her power. Thus, hope was not yet at an end; for, knowing her to be perfect in goodness, he still clung to the possibility of her yet learning to love him whom she owned to be good. He perceived that Noel was more to Margaret than any other had been. If she really had a sisterly attachment to their visitor, surely she would feel some gratitude to himself for any service that he might render him.

 

            So Maynard set himself to work to serve Edmund by exciting his intellect to activity, and enabling him to work towards a definite purpose. In Maynard’s eyes the man was but half an artist who was endowed with the sense of beauty, without the power and active impulse to create. The whole tendency of his character and philosophy was to scoff at Platonicism even in

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art as neutral and emasculate. Contemplation without action was altogether foreign to his nature.

 

            Among the favourite subjects of his satire it was a fancy of Maynard’s to place first the world’s trading classes, and he more ingeniously than ingenuously turned Napoleon’s oft-quoted contempt for the British as shopkeepers, into contempt for the shopkeeper himself. Fairness was by no means always his aim in his social judgments; but, however paradoxical his opinions might be, he never failed to support them with plausibility and vivacity. Thus, on the present occasion, he broke forth:

 

            ‘If one wants to know which is the most contemptible of human employments, one has only to look and see which gains the most money. If the reward be solely of earth, so also is the work. Let people have a lofty ideal of life and duty, and work with single aim towards it, and life becomes a struggle for bread. The artisan, the artist, the patriot, the saint, are ever poor and lean; while the barterer grows rich and fat. I had rather be a blacksmith, carpenter, or mason; or, as David said, “a door-keeper in the house of my God,” and try to imitate my Maker by fashioning, creating, or producing something, if only thoughts, than pass life in exchange and barter. Yet even these follow without knowing it a deity after their own hearts; for the commercial mind has agreed to the tradesman view of an atonement for sin, and transferred the rule of three into the Godhead.’

 

            In answer to this tirade Noel said, –

 

            ‘If men allow their own special characters and pursuits to dictate their ideas of the abstract, it is difficult to see where we are to go for enlightenment. I want to see education so liberal as to raise men above such personal and local influences in their conception of the general.’

 

            ‘The best way of ascertaining the kind of education which will do that,’ said Maynard, ‘is to look round and see where in the world the human mind is most cultivated, and yet least trammelled by limitations. Where, should you say?’

 

            ‘In Germany, decidedly,’ answered Noel, and Margaret assented.

 

            ‘The most prominent national characteristic of the Germans,’ continued Maynard, ‘is their taste and capacity for music; and we may allow that it is this that has combined with their critical industry to make them the only people who are earnest without bigotry, and religious without dogma. With them no one opinion

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is more respectable than another. Its probable truth is their only standard.’

 

            ‘I see,’ said Noel. ‘Music, while weakening dogmatic belief, strengthens spiritual faith. It illumes the general, while veiling the particular. It quickens the spirit at the expense of the letter.’

 

            ‘Precisely so; and in the growing development of the musical faculty in England I see the best hope for the displacement of our insular sectarianism by a rational catholicity. Of course there are plenty of persons ready to encourage the revival of various superstitions under the cover of devotional music, so that our scientific education must be pushed on to keep us ahead of such folk. In such education, combined with music, I see our best hope for the future. Man is still very far from living by thinking only. He is yet in a stage in which his faith, or confidence, requires the quickening and modifying which come by hearing.’

 

            ‘It never occurred to me that the apostle meant music,’ said Noel, laughing.

 

            ‘Didn’t it?’ asked James, with an air of surprise. ‘He goes on to say as much for never is the soul so open to those interior spiritual influences which, before and since the Psalmist, have been recognised as the “word of God,” as when listening to the highest class of emotional music. Religion is a frame of mind, not a set of opinions. An aspiration and a prayer, not a sermon. Make the Scotch a musical people, and they will soon abandon their “Westminster Confession,” and their “Greater and Lesser Catechisms.” Ceasing to be theological, they will become religious.’

 

            ‘I had no idea you were such a lover of music,’ observed Noel. ‘You never ran after it in England.’

 

            ‘That was because I rarely got it to my liking. The last party I was at where there was music in the drawing-room, I remained below, and some one came and said, “You are fond of music. Why don’t you go up-stairs?” – “Because I am fond of music,” I said.’

 

            ‘It was very rude of you,’ said Margaret merrily.

 

            ‘Yes, matrimony had not come then, to soften my manners. But, seriously, I really believe that the only agency whereby the world will ever be regenerated, must consist in the harmonious combination of science and art.’

 

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            ‘Meaning thereby, I suppose, accurate thinking and well regulated feeling,’ observed Noel.

 

            ‘By Science I mean that which relates to the intellect, and by Art that which relates to the emotions. They are as male and female to each other. Divorce them, and all goes awry. My line has generally lain in the former. Yours, I take it, is the latter. Thus, – don’t take it amiss, – I would suggest that if ever such a remarkable occurrence should happen as that of a woman falling in love,’ (this with a covert glance at Margaret,) and you happen to be the subject of her hallucination, what she will be attracted by will be, not the opposite of her own nature, that is, the masculine element in you, but rather the artistic, emotional, and feminine side of your character. Don’t think, however, that by attributing to you the province of art as your speciality, rather than that of science, I am restricting you to a limited field of operations. The two cannot be so entirely separated as that. There must be a back-bone of science within every art-product. You have described to me the plan of your contemplated book. I understand it at least well enough to perceive that it is essentially an art-work, having a thoroughly scientific basis. But I should like to know for whom it is designed. You see, we scientific folk, addressing an audience of educated men, have no need to veil or decorate our facts and inferences in order to obtain a hearing. Our world has undergone an emancipation which yours is still awaiting. With those for whom you write, an idea depends for its reception very much upon the dress in which it is arrayed.’

 

            ‘I really don’t see,’ replied Noel, ‘that I have to do with such considerations. I write a book for general amusement or instruction, and the libraries circulate it. Those who like it read and recommend it. Those who don’t may leave it alone.’

 

            ‘That will apply to anything which resembles the ordinary run of books; but you aim, I imagine, at something not only original, but having a deep esoteric signification, involving a peculiar theory of human nature and human faith. What if the libraries decline to take it?’

 

            ‘I cannot imagine such impertinence as a tradesman dictating to his customers what they shall or shall not read.’

 

            ‘You may have, as I think I have already said, the greatest literary success, and yet be ignored by the public. The circulating library, as at present constituted, is a feminine and semi-clerical institution. The librarian is expected to send out only

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such books as are considered “safe.” Parents leave the selection in his hands; and through fear of making a mistake, and sending something that may stimulate thought, he prefers to exclude such a book altogether. I mention this merely to show you that by neglecting to pay some deference to our social debilities, you may fail to get an audience, and so fail to do any good to yourself or others.’

 

            ‘As my impulse to write is not a commercial one,’ said Noel, ‘my aim will be to get as near as possible to my own ideal. I don’t suppose that I am so eminently unhuman as to fail to find many who will sympathise with and appreciate my work in case I succeed in reaching pretty high. There are very many who, like myself, believe in natural facts, and like to see them artistically applied to the illustration of man’s life and history. If I can please the better class of University students, for example, I shall have a tolerably large audience in addition to them. But I was going to say that, while I like what you said about music, I am not quite sure that I agree to your distinction between science and art. It is too much of a distinction, and involves the possibility of a divorce between what is not so much wedded, as eternally and essentially one. Call them if you will the masculine and feminine elements in nature, all the theologies, as you yourself have shown me, recognise the combination of those elements in the divine unity. I prefer calling Art the attempt to interpret Nature, and Science the attempt to use Nature. I look upon Creation as Representation: the manifestation of the Divine Idea. You said just now that you esteem the calling of the artisan who makes, as far above that of the trader who exchanges. Well, to me the term artist includes all makers, or manifesters of ideas. One uses colour as his medium of representation. Another employs sculpture or architecture to exhibit those beauties of form which the universe has revealed to his view. Another finds his best mode of expression in music. Others, again, employ prose or verse to delineate in the choicest language they can find the varied emotions of the human heart, and the different courses of conduct to which those emotions impel men. While another selects the pulpit as the stage from which he can most effectually dilate upon what he has perceived of the mysteries of our moral and spiritual being. Thus, all who use language, either spoken or written, are in their degree artists. But none, probably, can vie with the actor in the facilities he possesses for moving men’s

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minds. He appeals, not to one sense only, but to many senses at once. He combines all the resources of all other artists. The colours of the painter, the forms of the sculptor, the strains of the musician, are all at his command. He wields the words of poet, historian, and preacher. And to these he superadds tone and gesture, laughter and tears. He is a living picture; a speaking image; an acted sermon: teaching by visible example, as well as by uttered precept.’

 

            ‘Most true,’ said Maynard, ‘and I only wish that painters and sculptors, authors and composers, actors and preachers, would learn to look upon themselves as artists in such a sense, and understand that their work is good only according to the height of their aim, the truthfulness of their representations, and the conscientiousness with which they give of their best. If people couldn’t get the bad, they would have to put up with the good, and I dare say would come to like it, by practice.’

 

            ‘Meaning that the bad is the natural, and the good the acquired, taste,’ observed Margaret, shaking her head.

 

            ‘Well,’ said Maynard, qualifyingly, ‘bad and good are only relative terms, like young and old. The world is so young yet that only a few people in it have learnt to appreciate the high art which is called goodness. But if such be your opinion of the drama,’ he asked of Noel, ‘why don’t you write a play instead of a novel?’

 

            ‘That must come later. The philosophical drama has yet to be invented. “Faust” and “Manfred” are rather poems. Besides, a play is a complex affair, requiring vast apparatus of stage and company for its exhibition. And so much depends upon the performers. I wish acting was one of the liberal professions, involving high education.’

 

            ‘Well, a book wants printer, publisher, advertiser, and reviewer; and, perhaps, artist and engraver.’

 

            ‘The former add nothing to the work, and with the last two I hope to dispense,’ returned Edmund. ‘However many men it may take to publish a book, its composition must be the work of but one, or all individuality is wanting. By getting another man to illustrate his book, the author confesses his inability to convey his ideas satisfactorily to others. In that case, it really takes two people to make the book, as the Manicheans pretended that it took two creators, a good and a bad one, to produce the world.’

 

            ‘But if he draw them himself?’

 

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            ‘Even then he confesses, by the addition, that he is not a sufficient master of language to do without them; unless, indeed, his book is intended for children who do not understand language. A writer ought no more to require the aid of drawings to illustrate his meaning, than a painter to require a written description beneath his picture to explain the expression of the faces. Every work must tell its own tale.’

 

            ‘It will be no argument with you,’ said James, ‘to say that the trade likes them. And if you aim at really high work, you are right to disregard trade-exigencies. Those belong to the province of the dealer. Trade has one object, art another. The artist who estimates his work by a trade-success, abandons his calling in doing so. When he says, “Will it pay?” instead of “Is it good and true?” he has no barrier between him and the abyss.’

 

            ‘I suppose,’ said Noel, ‘he makes the public the judges, and regards the pay as the proof of their approbation.’

 

            ‘That is, he has no ideal or standard of his own,’ returned Maynard, ‘and he is therefore no artist. Nature and genius may be burked at once, if everything is to be reduced to the level of a saleable commodity.’

 

            ‘I always find myself haunted by the shade of plagiarism,’ said Noel. ‘The continuous man whom I want to draw has already been indicated by Hobbes, Pascal, and Comte; and you have suggested to me many ideas concerning his progress from his first rudimentary conceptions of creative power as exhibited in the forces of nature, through Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and Rome, into the Christian phase, when he arrives at the meaning of spirituality, and discerns the supremacy of Character. In short, I want to represent the whole history of man, physical and mental, as springing out of his capacity of love and self-consciousness; taking the creative power of the affections as the basis of all art and all religion; and I really do not know how far the idea is my own.’

 

            ‘I tried,’ said James, ‘to instil something of the kind into Margaret once, but she would not comprehend it until she had committed blasphemy against nature by entering the convent from which I was seeking to keep her. But it is a mistake to suppose that it is plagiarism to elaborate ideas suggested by others. Ideas are foundlings, and have no real parentage, or, at least, none that can be ascertained. They are accretions, conglomerate rather than simple, and deriving their

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constituents from too many sources to allow them to be ascribed to any single origin. As well might flint and steel contend for the exclusive ownership of the spark, as men for the sole origination of the idea that is struck out between them.’

 

            ‘Or father and mother for the exclusive parentage of their children,’ said Noel, laughing.

 

            ‘No, there the illustration fails,’ said James decidedly, and with another covert look at Margaret. ‘Man creates, the woman only nurses.’

 

            Here Margaret rose from her place, and gathering her little ones to her, commenced to return home; and without further remark Noel and Maynard followed her.

 

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