CHAPTER VII.

DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS.

THE fair river that wound like a broad ribbon of silver through the lands of Harold Jerningham was not more tranquil than the course of existence at the bailiff’s cottage. M. de Bergerac’s great book grew slowly and steadily in bulk, and developed day by day from chaos into form; while Helen’s simple life went on, eventless and purposeless perhaps, if measured by the ordinary standard by which the world measures existence, every hour filled with pleasant occupation, every morning bringing with it some new delight. Her father, her books, her dog, her piano, her birds, her dairy, her poultry-yard,--these were the delights of Helen’s life, and these left her no leisure for the ordinary aspirations of young-ladyhood. It is not to be supposed that so charming a damsel was neglected or ignored by neighbouring families. Helen had to receive an occasional morning visitor, and was obliged sometimes to withdraw the declaration that she never visited, in favour of some friendly matron hunting pretty girls for a garden-party, or presentable pianistes for a musical evening. But she went out very seldom. Her home-life was inexpressibly dear to her, and an evening’s absence from the beloved father’s side seemed like a break in her existence. What could people give her at garden-parties or musical evenings that was equal to her father’s society?

“I meet no one who can talk like you, papa,” she said on returning, blooming and radiant, from a neighbouring mansion, not elated because she had been enjoying herself especially abroad, but because she was pleased to come home. “Why should I take the trouble to put on this white dress, and crush all the little flounces that poor Nanon insists upon ironing with her own hands, in order to hear people say stupid things, when I am always so much happier with you in this dear old room? I am afraid I must be a blue-stocking, papa, for I cannot enjoy the perpetual talk about operas and morning-concerts, and new curates and croquet-parties, that I hear whenever I go out.”

It was very pleasant to Eustace Thorburn to discover that the country society had so little fascination for his employer’s daughter. It had been anguish to him to see her borne away to halls of dazzling light, or paradisaic croquet-grounds, whither he might not follow. He loved her with a young man’s love--pure, honest, and enthusiastic. The depth and intensity, the abnegation of self, which constitutes the religion of love, were as yet only latent in his breast. It was the summer-morning of life, and the barque that bore the lovers onward upon the enchanted waters was floating with the stream. The hour of the turning tide would be the hour to test the strength of Eustace Thorburn’s devotion. At present all was smooth and bright and happy, and the affection which these young people felt for one another grew imperceptibly in the hearts of each. Helen did not know why her life seemed to her so perfect in its calm happiness. Eustace believed that he was battling manfully with his own weakness, and that every day brought him nearer to the hour of victory.

“I am resigned to the thought that Helen de Bergerac may never be my wife,” he said to himself; “and yet I am almost happy.”

He might have said, quite happy; for a happiness more perfect than any man can hope to experience twice in his life made his new home a paradise for him. He was happy because, unknown to himself, he still hoped; he was happy because he was still the friend and companion of his idol.

“What is to become of me when my task here is finished?” he asked himself. But this was a line of thought which he dared not pursue; beyond that bright home all was darkness.

M. de Bergerac looked on at the little Arcadian comedy, and wondered. The scholar was too unskilled in the study of youthful hearts to read the mysterious cipher in which the secret thoughts of lovers are written. He saw that the young people were very well pleased with each other’s society, but he saw no more; nor did he disturb himself by doubts or apprehensions. Harold Jerningham contemplated the same comedy with angry feelings in his breast; he envied these young people the brightness of their morning. The feeling was mean and detestable. Mr. Jerningham knew this, and hated himself; but the bitter envy of youth and happiness was not to be banished from his heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” cries the Prophet; and if it was even so with the people of God, what must it be with such a man as Mr. Jerningham, who had never recognized any other god than himself, and the fancy or the passion of the hour, and who at his best had known for his only law that vague instinct--half pride, half shame--which bad men call honour?

It is quite impossible that a man who performs no duty and cherishes no ambition can escape that fatal decline which leads to the region of moral darkness. Harold Jerningham had cherished some faint hope of distinction at the beginning of his life. He had made his venture in the lottery, and had drawn, not exactly a blank, but a number so infinitely beneath his expectation that it seemed to him as worthless.

There had been a time when the master of Greenlands, fresh from a successful university career, and steeped to the very lips in Greek verse, had fancied himself a poet. The dream, which was so sweet to Eustace Thorburn, had shed its glamour over his pathway. Even the sweets of fame had come to him in some small measure, but not that laurel-crown which he had hoped to win; so he shrugged his shoulders, laughed at his critics, and wandered away to the sunny lands where life itself is unwritten poetry. Young Jerningham of Brazenose was a very brilliant young man, but he lacked that divine spark, that touch of the superhuman, which men call genius. He had not the fire, the pluck, the energy, the passion of that young lordling who answered his contemptuous critics, not with _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_--that was only the _tour de force_ of a pamphleteer--but with _Childe Harold_, the inspired verse of a poet supremely unconscious of public and of critics, under the sway of a possession no less potent than that which gave prophetic voice to Cassandra.

Mr. Jerningham had discovered that a handsome face, a manner eminently successful in feminine society, an intimate acquaintance with classic literature, a fine fortune, and some ambition for literary fame, do not make a Byron; and to be anything less than Byron seemed to Mr. Jerningham synonymous with failure. “I am like the tiger,” said Byron. “If I do not succeed with the first spring, I go back growling to my cave.” Mr. Jerningham was also like the tiger. He went back to his cave, and remained there. “Cæsar or nothing,” he had said to himself, when he made his venture. The result was nothing.

The fact that he had thus aspired and failed, may have had some slight influence upon his feelings on the subject of Eustace Thorburn. The young man’s ambitious hopes were never paraded. It was only by the glow upon his face, and the warmth of his words, when he praised the poets of the past, that he unconsciously revealed the bent of his mind. For the rest, Mr. Jerningham heard a great deal about the young poet’s hopes and dreams from Helen, who was his confidante and adviser.

“He helps me so kindly with all my studies, that it is the least I can do to be interested in his poems,” Helen said, as if she felt herself bound to apologize for the warmth of her interest in this subject. “He is writing a long poem, something in the style of Mrs. Browning’s _Aurora Leigh_, only with a much prettier story for the groundwork; and he has read me little bits--such noble verses! And then he writes an occasional short poem, just as the fancy strikes him. Some of the short poems have been published in the magazines. Perhaps you would like to see them?”

Helen rose as if to go in search of the magazines, but Mr. Jerningham stopped her with a hasty gesture of deprecation.

“Please spare me the short poems, my dear Helen,” he said. “I have given up reading my Horace and Catullus, since I have passed the poetic age. Don’t ask me to read magazine verses.”

Helen looked very much disappointed.

“I dare say, two thousand years hence, learned men will be disputing about a false quantity in one of Mr. Thorburn’s poems,” said her father. “Not every poet can hope to be thought great in his own century. Do you remember that preface of Webster’s to the _White Devil_, in which he names all the dramatists of the day, and last of all, ‘without wrong so to be named, the right happy and copious industry of master Shakspeare’?”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Jerningham. “I don’t think either Shakspeare or Molière had the faintest suspicion that he was to be immortal. It is only once in a thousand years that a poet drinks the cup of triumph that Byron drained to the very lees. He tasted the lees, and died with the bitterness of them on his lips. He might have tasted nothing but lees had he lived longer. For one man who dies too soon, a hundred die too late. There is a golden opportunity for effective death in every man’s career, but few are wise enough to seize it. If the first Napoleon had fallen at Austerlitz, he would have taken high rank among the demi-gods; nay, De Quincey suggests that even Commodus might have made a shred of character for himself by dying immediately after a triumphant display of his genius as a toxophilite.”

Mr. Jerningham’s distaste for his friend’s secretary did not keep him away from the cottage. He came at all times and seasons, and if his only possibility of happiness had been found in that house, he could not have seemed less inclined to leave it, or more eager to return to it. Weeks, and even months, passed, and he still remained in England, spending a few days every now and then at the bijou house in Park Lane, but making Greenlands his headquarters. Capricious in all his movements, he came when he pleased, and departed when he pleased. Theodore de Bergerac loved and trusted him, as it was his nature to love and trust those whom he thought worthy of his friendship. The welcome that awaited him was always equally cordial. He had never imagined so calm a haven.

“If I could spend the rest of my life here, I might die a good Christian,” he said to himself; until, little by little, he came to understand that those feelings which made the bailiff’s cottage so pleasant to him were not altogether Christian like.

He hated Eustace Thorburn. He envied him his youth, his hopefulness, his chances of future distinction; above all, he envied him the love of Helen de Bergerac. Yes, there was the sting. Youth, hope, chances of future glory, might all have been given to this young man, and Harold Jerningham would have let him go by with a careless sneer. But Eustace Thorburn had more than these gifts; he had the love of a pure and bright young creature, whose purity and brightness had touched the heart of this middle-aged sybarite as it had never been touched before. His fancy, his vanity, his pride of conquest, had been the motive power to sustain him in bygone victories. He had dreamed his dreams, and had awakened suddenly to see Fancy’s radiant vision vanish before the chill gray light of Reality’s cheerless dawn.

But this time the dream was fairer than any of those old, forgotten visions. This time the heart of the man, and not the poet’s fancy only, was touched and subjugated. It was many years since the master of Greenlands had bade a formal farewell to the follies and delusions of youth, and he had believed the farewell eternal. And now, in a moment, unbidden, dreams, delusions, and folly returned to hold him with fatal sway; and in his self-communings he confessed that it was no common sentiment which made Helen’s presence so delightful, and no common prejudice that rendered Eustace Thorburn so odious.

He confessed to himself as much as this; and knowing this, he lingered at Greenlands, and came day after day to sit beside his friend’s hearth, or loiter in his friend’s garden. And why should he not snatch the brief hours of happiness which yet remained for him--the Indian summer of his life?

“I am an old man,” he said to himself; “at least, in the eyes of this girl I must seem an old man. She will never know that I regard her with any warmer sentiment than a fatherly kind of friendship. She will dream her own dreams, and think her own thoughts, unconscious of her influence on mine. And by and by, after a few months of sentimental flirtation, she will marry this young secretary, or some other man, young, self-satisfied, good-looking, empty-headed, and utterly unable to understand how divine a treasure the fates have bestowed upon him.”

With such philosophy as this did Mr. Jerningham trifle with his conscience, or rather that vague sense of honour which stood him instead of conscience. But there were times when philosophy gave poor comfort to the soul of this unprincipled egotist, who until now had never known what it was to set a seal upon his lips or a curb upon his will. There were hours of envious rage, of dark remorse, of vain, passionate broodings on the things that might have been; there were hours in which the spirits of evil claimed Harold Jerningham for their own, and walked about with him, and hovered around his bed as he slept, and made his dreams hideous with shapeless horrors. He looked back upon his early dreams, and laughed at their folly. He was like that French libertine who, in writing of his youthful caprices, said, “My hour for loving truly and profoundly had not yet come.” That fateful hour, which comes to every man, had come to this one too late.

What special charm in this girl enthralled his mind and melted his heart? He did not know. It could scarcely be her beauty, for his life had been spent amongst beautiful women, and his heart had long ago become impervious to the fascination of a fair and noble face. It may have been her innocence, her youth, her gentleness, that had subdued this world-weary cynic--the poetic charm of her surroundings, the sweet repose which seemed a part of the very atmosphere she breathed.

Yes, in this youthful purity there lurked the potent charm that held Harold Jerningham. The girl, with her sweet, confiding face and pure thoughts, the rustic life, the perfume of Arcadia, composed the subtle charm that had intoxicated Mr. Jerningham’s senses. What is so delightful as novelty to an idle, _blasé_ creature of the Jerningham type? The life at Greenlands had all the charm of novelty; it was fresh, piquant, exhilarating, because of its very innocence; and as it had never been in Mr. Jerningham’s creed to deny himself any pleasure, he lingered at the neglected house in which his father and mother had died. He spent his evenings at the bailiffs cottage, and left the issue to fate.

“She will never know how tenderly her father’s old friend loves her,” he said to himself; “and at the worst I may prevent her throwing herself away upon an adventurer.”