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CHAPTER 3.

 

            AND so, attending to business, and not neglecting pleasure or reflection, Noel lived the ideal life of the civilised wanderer of modern times, not always, perhaps, heart- or fancy-free; – he was too susceptible for that; – but keenly enjoying both the friendly affection that ever followed him from home and manifested its solicitude in welcomest letters, and the warmer feelings which might occasionally be evoked by those with whom he came in contact.

 

            And so passed nearly three years. Three years, and he still clung to the scenes of his most recent experiences, as all do cling who have once inhaled, for any time, the exquisite charms of the climate of those Californian coasts. In what the charm consists, it may be hard to say. Devoted to the analysis of his sensations as Noel was, even he did not detect any one ingredient so dominant as to venture to pronounce it the key to the mystery. ‘Perhaps,’ he wrote to his uncle, by way of excusing himself for lingering so long abroad, ‘it is the combination of many specialities. The climate is truly marvellous. In the air, I feel myself inhaling the finest champagne. Its very breath exhilarates me. Never did I see stars shine out as they do here. Nowhere have I found such open-handed fellowship between man and man. It seems as if in this newest portion of the New World people have gone so fast and so far as to have left behind them the narrowness and uncharities of the Old. And this, not in Religion merely; for even the politics of the country have none of the intensity that characterises the other side of the Continent. Above all things, labour is respectable. Men of family and high culture toil at manual occupation during the day, and the evening meet on equal terms the wealthy lawyer and merchant. An idle man here would actually be considered as wasting his time! What really operates to keep people apart, is not difference of means, but difference of mental habit. It is true that no man in such a state of society is sure of his wealth, but then no one is sure of his poverty, which I take to be a very effective counterbalance to any disadvantage on the previous score.

 

            ‘In fact, the condition of things is very much one that I have been laughed at by you for imagining possible in this world. There is no monopoly of brain-work by one class and

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physical labour by another. The gentleman often works; and the labourer often thinks; and the result is, that the, to me odious arrogance and servility of the older communities is replaced by a frank and mutual civility. The feeling of the artisan to his employer is, “You’ve got the dollars, and I’ve got the skill: and I guess my skill is of more account to you than your dollars are to me.” And the feeling of the employer to the labourer is, “My fortune is in esse, and yours in posse; and goodness alone knows how soon we may change places.”

 

            ‘I like being on such equal terms with those with whom I have to deal, for I am so constituted as to almost equally dislike the notion of commanding or being commanded. I can, however, quite understand there being people who claim absolute deference on the strength of their position or wealth as their rightful due. But such persons had better stay at home. They would get nothing done for them here, where it is not the fashion to obey orders. Luckily I had no difficulty in falling into the ways of the country in this respect; but then I never gave an order in my life, (or, indeed, obeyed one,) yet I have generally got my own way. Whether my principle be a right or a wrong one, it has certainly answered out here.

 

            ‘I little dreamt of remaining away from you for three years, and am getting somewhat home-sick. Whenever you decidedly encourage me to come back, (my equivalent for “order,”) sure that I shall be only too glad to occupy my old quarters, spend the evenings in chats with my dear old uncle. I shall have plenty to tell you. I get an occasional bulletin from Sophia Bevan about you, and shall expect to find you not a bit altered.

 

            ‘I had another letter from James Maynard lately. He tells me, shortly, that the mine continues to be as successful as ever: though the difficulty of transporting the silver to the coast increases with the growing anarchy of the country. He says that if I could only take down a band of Californian Filibusters and annex Mexico quietly to the United States, I should be doing vast service to all parties. Some rumours have reached us here of a proposed intervention by European powers. You may rest assured that the United States will permit no one to touch Mexico for good or ill but themselves. They consider it bound to be theirs, and are only waiting until, ripe and rotten, it falls, into their hands.’

 

            About the same time Noel received the following letter from Sophia Bevan.

 

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                                                                                                          ‘Linnwood.

                        ‘DEAREST BOY.

            ‘I am so glad you are having such a pleasant time in those wild regions, and am so grateful for your nice long letters. Mine must seem very stupid to you among the excitements of volcanoes, and forests, and aborigines, and the more substantial delights of work. I congratulate you from my heart on having gone and proved that you can be practical when you please, and shall allow you henceforth to indulge in dreaming at pleasure without applying my goad. I only wish that I had a chance of being practical, too. But, alas! we spinsters were not foreseen and provided for at the creation. Eve was not brought into the world until a man had been provided for her; and if it is not good for a man to be alone, I am sure it is worse for a woman. You bachelors certainly have the best of it; for you have no call to be so good as we poor women are forced to be. And I am sure that being always good is a very bad thing for health – of mind, if not of body. It does not do to be living always on beef and potatoes, and I believe that mental or emotional variety is just as necessary to us as variety in diet. Besides, it’s not fair. Our sin, when we commit any, finds us out; while yours doesn’t you. Excuse the great blot I have just made. It’s mamma’s fault, and this is how. I went over to have a look at your snuggery yesterday, so that I might be able to assure you it has not been burnt down or blown away at latest advices, as you business men say; and on peeping into your studio, I saw, standing sad and solitary in the centre on its pedestal, with a cloth over its head, your latest achievement – Undine, or Psyche. Lifting her drapery, I found that spiders (ugh!) had established themselves in the eyes and ears of your pet. So I took pity on her, and brought her home; and having had her washed, placed her in the drawing-room, with a little side-table for pedestal. I had forgotten that mamma was in the room, and I was startled by hearing her exclaim, ‘Extraordinary!’ Conscience-stricken, I suppose, I fancied she applied it to what I had just written, which certainly is a little out of her line. But no; she was inspecting your Psyche, and only cried out on seeing its marvellous likeness to Margaret.

            ‘Edmund, it is her very self. Are you quite sure that you were not tricking us all, and slyly going over to Porlock Cove, when we thought you did not even know of her existence? No, I am sure you were not, and the resemblance is only accidental,

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because – no, I shall not give my reasons. But isn’t it curious? and that mamma should have made the discovery first! Do you know, I am not quite happy about the Maynards. I scarcely know why; but to me there is a shadow in the letters of them both. The very endeavour to write cheerfully betrays itself to me as an effort. Yet I am sure they ought to be happy enough, he living with her on such a Tommy Tiddler’s ground, getting rich so fast with the gold and silver he is picking up – (of course you know he is a partner in the property. Your dear good uncle has behaved so handsomely to him; and says that he owes some amends for having helped him to kill his father! It appears that Mr. Tresham was the Company, having taken James’s advice and got rid of everybody else) – and she, with him and her two darling babes, which all the natives round treat as little angels for their divine and un-Mexican fairness.

            ‘I don’t think it can be want of society, for Margaret never had any, and James never cared for it. No; it is the very fact of their not complaining of anything that makes me think there is some source of bitterness that lies too deep for utterance. Nobody’s life, even in a silver mine, can be so very, very perfectly happy as to be without one little disagreeability, and n the absence of much to write about, it is sure to pop out unless intentionally kept back. Now I should be much relieved at seeing the bitter drop, that rises in the fountain of their life, bubble up and flow away, (not as in the Latin ode you taught me to translate,) and so be got rid of. I am sure that if I didn’t encourage things to come to the surface with me, I should be full of disagreeables. What I think is, that James is a fidgety man; and perhaps he is a little morbid about the memory of his father, and his own peculiar position; and Margaret, instead of laughing at his fancies, or scolding them away as I should do, treats them as serious affairs, and by cosseting him encourages them to grow bigger.

            ‘I do so wish they would make haste and get all the money they want and come away, and leave some one else of common kind to do such work. I am quite sure that the rough New World is no place for the sensitive organisations of the Old. As well harness Pegasus to a plough, as set James Maynard to delve for silver. It is true, he is a scientific man, but he is wasted upon the mere application of science. I do so wonder whether anything will take you to have a look at them before

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you come back. I doubt its being a kindness to go; they would so miss you afterwards.

 

            ‘That reminds me. I have made another conquest and another joke, (which I don't mind telling you,) and the joke has lost me my conquest. It was a parson again – such lots of parsons as I have had in love with me! I think it must be that they give me credit for a double amount of original sin, and that makes them doubly anxious to convert me. But it's only fair to admit that I fell in love with him first; and how, do you think? Why, from hearing him preach! Such a wonderful little man, and all brains. I really thought he must have overheard some of the talks we used to have together. Instead of giving out his text in the usual formal way, he mounted on the stool which lie is obliged to stand upon to see over the pulpit cushion, and looked round him, as if taking our measure to see what we could bear ; and then said in a slow sarcastic manner, –

            ‘ “It used to be said that God made man in his own image. I hope this morning to convince you that nothing of the kind can be said now; for that men have returned the compliment and made God in theirs.”

            ‘And then he went on to show that each nation's God is its idealisation of Humanity. That the Egyptians idealised certain animal forces which were more powerful in some brutes than in man; and venerated, in particular, the crocodile because, having no tongue (?), it represents God, who does all things by his will, :and has no need to speak. That the Greeks went in for the intelligent and sensuous in their gods. The Romans for conquest and law. And he repeated some such suggestive lines, which I can only misquote, hoping you can tell me where they come from, for I forgot to ask him before we left town.

 

                                   “The Ethiop's gods have dusky cheeks,

                                               Thick lips, and woolly hair.

                                   The Grecian gods are like the Greeks,

                                               As bright-eyed, calm, and fair."

 

Then he used the rather Pantheistic words, ‘God’s pulses throb through all nature, and all humanity.’ He was rather confused When he tried to explain the self-sacrifice doctrine; but he pleased me by launching into the regular humanitarian theory that the world is sustained by the sacrifice of the good people the bad: that society is like a hull full of leakages which we good ones (?) are eternally (it seems to me hopelessly) stopping up:

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that sympathy is the lever of man’s elevation: and that only by suffering for and with men could God express this sympathy! He spoke of Christ as a worker par excellence, and said that purity of life means not a destruction of the desires and senses, but a balancing of them with our intellectual and emotional part.

            ‘Of course he couldn’t argue very closely in a pulpit, but he was as broad as he could be to keep a Christian congregation. For my own very practical self, I always feel terribly the void occasioned by the singleness of Christ’s life. It is the grand defect of the system as an engine of social regeneration. I ventured to say something of this to him some time after I had made his acquaintance, (for he often came to hear me sing,) and he said that the two moral natures of man and of woman seemed to be so united in Christ as to make such an experience unnecessary and superfluous, if not impossible. Of course I returned to this, that if so different from the, rest of humanity, he could be but an imperfect example to us as to how we should act under our own circumstances. But he would not allow this, and was a good deal scandalised by my exploding at a joke which we made between us, and for my share in which I really take some credit. He was saying that much of the popular orthodoxy rests upon a misconception.

            ‘I said – but no, I really can’t tell you what I said. But it nearly made me choke with laughter. He looked very grave for a moment, and then he saw it too, and seizing his hat he hurried away, first casting a reproachful look at me, and then cramming his handkerchief into his mouth. He never called afterwards, and I could not trust myself to go to his chapel again before we left town.’

 

            Noel’s movements were at length determined by this letter from Mr. Tresham.

 

                        ‘MY DEAR EDMUND,

            ‘I am sorry to say or suggest anything that may delay your return. I have no doubt, however, that you will fall in with my views. I want you to pay Mr. Maynard a visit on your way. His position is a very anxious one, and his recent letters lead me to fear that his mind is being affected thereby. Look into everything in Mexico, and report to me fully on the state of the country. A movement is on foot with reference to it, and

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your information, obtained, as I hope you will take care that it shall be, not only from Mr Maynard, but from independent sources in the capital, will be of the greatest service in determining me whether to promote or discourage it. Mexican affairs have reached such a pass that if the government of the United States does not interfere, ours must. See if there is any strong party for annexation to the States. That would be the real policy to favour. Any other plan would make almost as much mischief as it would cure. Find out before leaving San Francisco whether such a party would be sure of receiving substantial aid from thence, in the event of a move. The steamer will drop you at Acapulco, whence you will easily reach Mexico city. If you have much baggage, it may be well to end it across to await you at Vera Cruz, while you go in light marching order to the capital and Guanaxuato. You will have no difficulty in finding your way to the Real de Dolores. I flatter myself it is pretty well known by this time. The rascally brigands always lie in wait in swarms on the track of our convoys, so that Maynard has to keep up quite an army for their protection to the coast, at great expense and trouble. Matters moving very fast, and it is not improbable that some important step will be taken before you get there. French, English, Spanish bondholders are alike urging their governments to action; and I am positive we shall make a mess of it if we combine with the others. I should think the Bank at San Francisco must be working steadily enough in its furrow by this time to do without you.’

 

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