Red and Black; or, Must have Both: a tale of 1876 ... Second edition

Front matter

■ ■ ■ ■ OR, MUST HAVE BOTH: A TALE OF 1876. BY THOMAS EDWARDES-TREVOR. " Here's much to do with hate, but more with love." Romeo and Juliet. " the thing thou hatest Shall have a fascination." — The Cenci. SECOND ED/T/ON. fattilflit: SAMUEL TINSLEY & CO. 31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 18 80. [All rights reserved.] COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. " Here's much to do with hate, but more with love." — Romeo and Juliet. " . . . The thing thou hatest Shall have a fascination." — The Cenci.

Chapter I. Ow

I love them ! How I love them both ! " said or sighed the Reverend Bell More to himself in the solitude of his study, as he leaned back in his chair, in which he had sat still for some time after coming down from the nursery, where he and his wife, on returning from afternoon service, had been caressing their boy, Bell junior, a most graci ous child of three years and some months, A whom they both loved passionately ; he, with all the force of his strong nature, even more than she. " Both," — but he was not, as he uttered it, thinking of his wife and child, but of his wife and another lady, her cousin, Miss Dora (in full, at her christening, Theodora) Fitz alan ; not a nice or pretty name, we admit ; but there was no thought of pleasing us when she was christened, though we were present, and happen to know why she was so christened.

We may remark that though the names in this strange, eventful history are not exactly the real names, they are not, virtually, unreal ; and that both main circumstances and details related are framed (to express ourselves as Platonists) from pre-existent (non ideal) " types " in the world of fact. " And how I hate myself! " Both ladies had been at church, and had intently listened and looked while he preached — if preaching it might be called, which was very unlike other preachers' ; and, indeed, unlike his own sermons-in-ordinary. " It was a strange text," an excellent person, one of the congregation, had remarked ; pro perly adding, " I mean, rather a strange one, if one may say so of any text." The text was, " They which shall be ac counted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage : neither can they die any more, but are as the angels."

He almost always preached extempore, but sometimes wrote a sermon to be delivered at the University, or at the Temple, or Lincoln's Inn. Upon the present occasion, he had not even thought of sermon or text until he had nearly arrived at church : his thoughts, like the so-called Gladiator's, had been " with his heart, and that was far away," at least, far from texts or sermons, unfortunately. On the Saturday evening he had begun to think about it, and had thought of a text (in Daniel), but, upon referring (his custom always) to the original, he considered the Chaldee (it was in the Chaldee or Aramaic part of Daniel, which, as every Macaulay schoolboy knows, consists of nearly six chap ters) inaccurately rendered in the Authorised Version, and so conscientiously dropped it, not caring to parade his philological criticism to his parishioners. [By the way, he had received and inwardly digested, early in his " ministry," a caution, indirect, and entirely unintentional, as to biblical criticism in a country church.

He had inadvertently, in a rapidly extemporised sermon, dropped something about commen tators disagreeing, and, after church, Mr. Hooeins of Much Grunton, one of the most oo respectable and intelligent of his parishioners, had touched his hat with, — " Please, sir, me an' my missus is main sorry as the common 'taturs here doesn't agree with you ; which we wishes as you'd try a peck or two of our'n, which they agrees like bricks with we." An other gentleman-farmer — equally respectable, but perhaps not quite so intelligent — Mr. Bloo-o-, sen., of The Turmuts, a breeder of Oo' 7 prize Berkshires, had been less polite upon the rector's slightly alluding to the degrin golade of the Gadarene swine : — " A doan't think nowt on him. Him to be preachun to we about bad luck in pigs ! "] Then he had thought of part of a verse in the New Testament, but, upon finding that it was not to be found in the oldest or best MSS.

(at least, not in the Vatican, Alexan drine, or Sinaitic), he had dropped that too ; and then a note came from Miss Fitzalan to his wife, and he forgot aU about his sermon. He had scarcely thrown his thoughts at all into shape, or meditated the argument or order of his discourse at all, when he began ; but he spoke for half an hour or so with his unfailing fluency and accustomed accuracy, never get ting entangled among antecedents and rela tives, or in parentheses ; speaking, in fact, rather as if solUoquising than discoursing, but all along keeping in view a certain course of argument, and proceeding, more or less directly, to conclusions. He could not speak Ulogically ; he had a very clear, sound mind ; and he never rhapsodized, having a correct measure of his rural audience, and an ever-present sense of duty as a pastor, and a knowledge that his duty was to enlighten, to help, and to lead.

So, even on this occasion, he spoke both to their minds and to their hearts, while he talked out his thoughts, feelings, perhaps fancies, in that solUoquising way ; and even when he seemed, perhaps, to become some what mystical, towards his peroration. While he dwelt, with something like pro phetic fervour, on the prospect, which he seemed to see clear, though far (" in a trance, but with open eyes "), that unions, ties, hal lowed by all blessing and all promise, then suddenly blighted, broken, in this world, shall surely be re-consecrated in another and a better, when he spoke of dear ones early lost, and of hope that they should yet be found, hard men were touched by his tones, if not by his words, and among them even the heavy old parvenu, Sir William Hodman, ex-chairman of a railway company, who had, twenty years back, lost a child (the bright image of himself and of the now Lady Hodman, then late a cook, without much character) ; and the feeling was quickened by the reflection that his young Marcellus might have grown up to be as successful a scoundrel as himself.

The preacher, with subtle skill, wove to gether divers texts, some trite, some recondite, which he commented upon without referring to Rabbins or Fathers, but using both in his own mind, mingling psychology, physiology, metaphysics with theology, and all along never losing sight of common sense or practical ap plication, even when he almost seemed, as we have said, to be verging on mysticism, or transcendentalism. The two ladies sat near ; both intent on him, both so lovely : his wife, with her abund ant, silky, red-gold haU, and marvellously delicate complexion, and ineffable expression of sweetness and innocence ; her cousin pale, not pallid, not dark, with equally rich tresses — we could scarcely make out whether quite black — and eyes as soft as dark, and a look and mien equally bespeaking intellect and " race," dignity and feeling, passion and tenderness.

Both watched him with fascinated eyes, and Hstened with charmed ears ; and he, perhaps, even while he preached, scarcely ceased to feel how he loved both, or that both loved him. And now he was back in his study, alone with his heart.

Chapter II He

study w*as a spacious library, in an old country house, in which Mr. More, who had resigned a benefice, a rich family living, resided, and which stood in a wild, well-wooded park, and had been the heritage of his family (the family name originally, and for ages, De la More) since long before the hugest oak there was an acorn, The book-shelves were richly stored ; there were many Bibles, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, the Complutensian and other Poly glots : there were all the Greek and all the Latin classics (many editiones principes, many Aldines, many Elzevirs), many of the " best " theologians (and neologians) — Robertson, Row land WiUiams, Maurice, Mansel, Newman, DoUinger ; many Italian books, some French, many German, some Spanish — Calderon, we know, but not, we believe, Don Quixote.

There were Bacon, Newton, Berkeley, Gibbon, Thirl wall, Arnold, Grote, Merivale, and no Alison, no Carlyle, no flabby platitude, no frantic jar gon. Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope (but not Pope's Homer), Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Henry Taylor, Swinburne were there, but no Browning. Sterne, Walter Scott, and Haw thorne, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Gaboriau, Zola, were to be found, but no Smollett, no Dickens, no Lytton, no Paul de Kock, no Sue. There were, we believe, on remote shelves, some accidental and miscellaneous twaddle and trash (perhaps presented by humane and generous authors), but no Tupper, no Kingsley ; no cockneys, nothing in the " grand old Samuel " style ; no trace of the Saturday Reviewer's " boisterous and half-educated young friends;" no specimen of the ladies now ready at all the libraries, with middling morals and bad taste, in worse English.

Nearest his accustomed chair stood or lay handy volumes of the Hebrew Psalter and Isaiah, the Greek Testament, Homer, Æs chylus, Sophocles, the Phædrus, Symposium, and Phœdon, Virgil, Sallust, Tacitus, Juvenal, Dante, Shakspere, Schiller, Tennyson. There were a few very fine cabinet pictures, by Giulio Romano, A. del Sarto, Guido, Guercino, Zurbaran, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Wilson, Greuze ; no P. Veronese, no Poussin, no Dutch boors, or housewives, no lean and loathly ladies with high cheek-bones. Before the window at which he now stood, stretched a long, broad, sloping glade of the park ; beyond it, wide moorlands, and, along the horizon, a distant range of loftier heights, the convulsed scenery of volcanic hills, with jagged, daring outlines ; a clear blue-green sky above, flushed with hectic, or pale crimson, streaks, among dark bars, or banks, of cloud.

As he looked out upon the wide, wild west, some thoughts came into his mind in words of Humbolclt, about the joy of " das Freie," and in Bismarck's (letter to wife, 1851), about "some heimweh, some yearn ing for wood, sea, desert, you and the chil dren, mingled with sunset and Beethoven ; but these thoughts did not evoke feelings 0 O then ; they rather seemed to be only me chanically reproduced words ; he, whose tones in preaching had been said to be sometimes like mountain breezes, he now felt himself in a heated, morbid atmosphere, like that of a sick-room, or the fumigated vapours of an Italian church ; not among his books, in his home, in view of woods and hills. " f to be thus ! — f, who see and know so well !" He felt what he was, or ought to be. He had true nobility of soul, and the force and fire of genius.

He knew his strength, as well as he felt his weakness. He was con scious of his high divinity of spirit, conscious that he ought to overcome the world, that he was panoplied for a Holy War, that he might wear the whole armour of light. His genius, a living force, lightly bore the weight of his learning (so AchUles the freight of heavenly arms), and, like it, his spiritual part was puissant enough. Even the "burning quotidian," the fruition of his delicious wife (which might have inspired poetry much more vivid than that of the uxorious sonnet teers whom it pleases and becomes to call Hi a discerning public) was to him but as pleasure was to Cæsar ; or, at least, as it was to Catherine IL, who was saved from perish ing in the depths of sensuaUty by an excess of a refined and intellectual voluptuousness, and had the power of incessantly gratifying and bridling her boundless passions — so Von Sybel says.

He never forgot, never thought of fore going, what he felt to be his mission : his O O' keynote the practical principle that the de velopment of individual moral good is the Divine purpose in all things, the cause, object, end of creation. He was constantly revolving, or, rather, urging upon himself, the practical moral of such texts as, " Quench not the spirit," " Neglect not the gift that is in thee," " That good thing committed unto thee," " Take heed that thou fulfil it," " That servant which knew His will," " Of him shall be much required," " The Kingdom is within you," " In whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," " I think also I have the spirit," " Forgetting those things which are behind, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calhng." " I can do all things," " More than conqueror."

Such words were spirit and were life to him, a perennial source of strength, strength to " sustain the ex altation ;" but now the exaltation was but "the exalted portion of the pain, And power of love." He had real faith, heroic faith, deliberately confirmed by the true verdict of a strong and subtle mind, truly scientific, and long pro foundly sceptical, now matured and settled. Unlike popular "faith," his grew or rose out of, and was in strict unity with, his love of truth, — one of the rarest of human virtues. He had all the physical courage, daring, and endurance of a warlike race, and equal fearlessness in accepting the conclusions of his enquiries ; untiring faith, through many changes and some disappointments, that there is a way to reconcile all the truths that in terest men, those of religion and those of nature and history, a possible theology, per haps not yet constructed, which, without breaking with the past, shall show what Christianity really is, and command the spirit, and fill the opening thought of the present.

His belief was intensely real. He was in the unseen world while he was in this. It would scarcely have startled him for a moment if a spirit had stood before him, at any hour, in the moonlight or at noon day. His eyes were opened ; he could see in spirit, almost as the one who, wiien his were opened, saw that the mountain w*as full of horses and chariots of fire. He had faith to remove mountains : let him, then, remove this — was it a mountain ? or a mill stone weighing him down ? — let him cast it from him, cast out the evil thing, the evU imagination, that haunts him day and night. Was he not strong ? was not all his nature strong ? This strong passion, this impatience, is not strength, but weakness ; passion is but weakness, as some pride is but meanness of spirit. Could he not free himself, and serve the one Master, and feel his true and willing service " perfect freedom ?

" Could he not, in faith, knowing in Whom he trusted, in faith, which is, simply, loving trust, a brave and noble confidence, leave all to Him ? " He knows that I must have her, that I cannot exist without her." Cannot ? that is, will not ; the evil will must be subdued. Our will must be reconciled to that which is right, wdiich must be best for us. Vain to strive when we cannot prevail. Well he knew "the great woe of striving against Love." Not to strive against the Divine, he must strive against this earthly. All these discords must be attuned to His harmonious rule at last. We must come at last to that which is rio-ht ■ O ' we must undergo expiation on the way. Could he not reconcUe himself to his fixed, his surely happy lot, his life, so richly blessed ? How much he had to live for — wife, so fair, so young, so sweet, so good, no fault in her, unless that of being too loving, too tender, a sensitiveness about him which might be called jealousy (well might she feel it now) — the child a world, the universe to him — the resources of, the scope, æsthetic, inteUectual, moral, for, a mind like his, a mind more richly stored with inteUectual and æsthetic beauty of every kind than his memory with images of all his years of travel and sojourn in Italy, Sicily, Greece, Asia, Egypt — most (no, not most, for nothing could be more to him than the child), most, or it should be most, of all, the delight to be gained, every hour, and for ever, in doing good, in duty done !

He knew so well that to do our duty is the purpose and end of life, is to the moral life what the physical " life " is in the ceU-seeds of organisms, the principle, the condition of coherence, and ele mentary source of growth. All in vain. He must have her. Her ! — the very word was a spell. " Her ! " — her sweet, sweet sex. GuUt, misery, ruin : but he must have her. This evU imagination was more than the crime of sense : it was a deep disease of the soul. His disease was too much life. Would death be a release ? No ; he knew that he could not really die, that death would only be a change of form and circumstance, not a death of consciousness. He knew, or felt, that if his spirit left his frame it might, the next moment, in whatever form or place (" the mind is its own place ") be thrilled with all the same misery, perhaps more ; perhaps see ing and feeling more than ever, but more powerless than even now ; perhaps dumb and blind, but more sensitive than ever.

He might lie in a dream ("for in that sleep of death what dreams may come ! ") haunted by horrible things : this life might (as even Shelley thought) be the mere dream, that the reality. He knew that we cannot have the power to baffle, in our despair, the abiding Power which governs us, and by which it is good to be governed ; he knew that " God is not mocked," that the wheel, "wheeling unshaken," comes full cHcle, and that the purpose must be ful filled. Not by dying, but by living, living it down, living it out, must he conquer or escape. The change must be in his heart, in his wiU ; the evil in them must be conquered and die. [Where had he read, " He who in this life finds his pleasure in fulfilling the duty of repressing his desires, shall in the next find it in their gratification ? "] * But, be what may, he must love ; then, love in silence, love apart, remand all to that other world where the redress of broken hearts (what if guilty ?) is in reserve, where we are "changed," and are as the angels ("neither can they die any more").

There, though they do not marry, they love. Then his imagination w*ent off, went astray, again. What " changed," new forms ! what modes ! what complex, complete fruition — ■ varied, endless, unimaginable ! " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things prepared for them that love." " For them that love — " he repeated, breaking off there. " Giveth us richly all things to enjoy." " Above all that we ask or think ! " And how much he thought ! Dreams ! all visionary. He seemed to wake, and to start up face to face with those fatal realities, love and guilt. He would flee. He would travel again ; he * In The Spectator? — "The purification of the natural desires by the renunciation of their immediate gratification. " — . Prof. Caird, Contemporary litpiew, Sept. 1879.

B would revisit scenes where he had been, perhaps, as happy as any man of great heart and great mind, of high and tender nature, can be in this world. How he had loved those scenes, and dwelt on the associations which a man Hke him finds there ! Yes, he had loved other things than women, thought of other things than her beauty and love. Could he not still ? A longing for the land of palms came over him, a longing for Greek spring, for the vernal birth of nature in isles of Greece ; for South Italy and Sicily, for Rhodes and Crete ; for morning rambles among fresh grass and early flowers at Rome, in " that divinest climate," which inspHed Shelley among the mountainous ruins of the Baths of CaracaUa. He would not go in quest of new scenes ; he seemed to have no heart for that — no desHe. He would go back, and rest, and linger, and wait for peace where he remembered having found peace and more than peace — true, pure enjoyment.

He would thread wooded passes of the Apennines again ; he would spend hours, day after day, in the cathedrals of Pisa, Siena,» Orvieto ; he would feel the wind blow sharply from the peaks, and hear the murmur of the groves of pine, on his way to VaUombrosa ; he would ramble about Volterra and on Soracte, and on the Alban Hills ; he would sit among the Roman centuries on the Palatine. He would linger along the Appian ; he would stay at Ischia, at Capri ; he would sit again on the citadel at Cumæ, on the summit of Monte Sant' Angelo, on the bank of the Mare Piccolo at Taranto, where he had picked up that exquisite gold coin of Tarentum (we have seen it, and it is of a most rare type, unknown to Mionnet, and quite fleur de coin). He would breathe the air of the straits at the Faro ; he would gaze again, first south, then north, then again, through the broken arches, on Etna and on the sea, from the theatre at Taormina ; he would spend days among the great temples of Segesta, Selinus, Agrigentum, weeks in the loveliness and sweet sadness of Syracuse.

He would explore the valley of Sparta again, and recline by Eurotas, and stray on Taygetus. He would gaze up the soaring precipice down which the " lofty streams " of Styx come as they came when Pausanias (perhaps Homer too) stood there, and marvelled at its mons trous height. He would roam again on Cyllene, on Cithæron. He would enter the Gulf of Corinth again — his heart almost bounded at the thought of that — that beauty and splendour and grandeur beyond compare. He would look again on land and sea from Gargarus, from Olympus ; on the valleys of Hermus and Cayster from Tmolus ; on Caria from Latmos ; almost beyond all, he would scale Cragus, he would ascend the valley of the Arycandus, and re-confirm the traveller w*ho said there " I have seen the perfection of loveliness, and am. satisfied ; no scenery equals Lycia in sublimity and beauty."

But the child — no, he could not go away — he could not travel again. What might not happen when he was far away ! A vision of a dying chUd would haunt him at Rome, in Greece, in Palestine, in Nubia. He must stay and endure all. " Endure ! " Endure to be with that wife, that child ! Had not the child, that child of many cares, and many hopes, been given, that he might feel how vast a capacity for love there is in the human heart, and feel the blessedness of such love — that love all pure and good, unless in its " sweet excess," which was surely " sanctified ? " He had thought that love of woman was but a feeble passion in comparison with that love ; if so, she would forgive ; it was her child. He remembered how he had felt when he heard the child first say "Our Father." To him the child seemed born noble, born heir of heaven; born, he trusted, for the good of many.

Such love seemed an ennoblement of himself. Was there not some bright light, some true electric force, in it ? Could he not at least apply the great heathen satirist's stern, yet tender, admo nition — " Peccaturo obsistat tibi filius infans ? " Another thought. His brother, whom he loves so well, and who has so loved him all his life, he too loves her, and wiU love her for ever, though she should never return, or permit, his love, or recognise his devotion ; perhaps she once might, if she could forget — did he wish that she should ? no, he could not. Well, he had surveyed his state, his mind, his heart. What must be the end, the issue, in this world, or in another ? He could not see. But was it not he who was constantly propounding and expounding the doctrine that the Divine purpose in aU things in creation, in time, in eternity, is, that indi vidual moral good be developed ; that the purpose must be worked out, that if we strive against it, we must suffer, and still must work it out, and fulfil it. Most true, most sure. But he must love her, and he must have her.

Chapter III

1511111 HILE Mr. More was musing in his i^OsBjK study, Miss Fitzalan was sitting §§§f|j^j with her friend, Miss Barbara Crabbe, in that lady's drawing-room. Her house, The Garth, overlooked the parish church and part of the village, from a slight eminence : the view bounded by a line of trees in More Park. More Magna, a large village, or small town, was usually a rather quiet place, and was now quieter than usual. The event of the past week had been that Mr. Spruggins killed a pig, but the excitement had gradually sub sided ; and More Magna was now compara tively dull. Miss Crabbe never felt dull, though she is said to have been, sometimes, the cause of dulness in others. Her present patient was Miss Dora Fitzalan, recently, and more or less — especially less — reciprocative, taken to her heart, and into all her confidence.

They were not at aU a pair in any respect ; and we never could quite understand why Dora liked, or if she did not like, why she consorted so much with, Barbara. Perhaps it was that Miss Crabbe, though often called a silly, and sometimes a crazy, old cat, was really very clever, and had read and seen and experienced a great deal, and seemed to her to be instructive, if not always edifying ; and sometimes interested or amused her by the extraordinary things which she was rather in the habit of saying. Perhaps, also, Dora could not help liking some of Barbara's flattery, for Barbara admired her with per fect enthusiasm, and freely expressed her admHation. But the chief reason probably was, that, though sometimes bored and some times shocked, she felt attracted towards her through a grateful sense of her real kindness.

Miss Crabbe had not much tenderness for people in general. She was a very literary tabby, the authoress of some thrice three volumes, which had been rapturously " wel comed " by some critics, and not altogether unfavourably noticed even by the Pall Mall RED AND BLACK. and Saturday, but much less so by the Athenæum, then (now some years ago) edited by a gentleman upon whose abilities and acquirements she looked down with huge contempt, which she well knew how to ex press. She used to give fine specimens of his English composition, .and amusing instances of his harsh criticism of passages or allusions which he dealt with in utter ignorance, for want of education, of their meaning. She had not been successful, at least com mercially, as a writer, and had the weakness of expressing herself strongly, or, at any rate, with lady-like bitterness, as to certain ladies who had.

In fact, she had failed ; for the fact was that she had Httle originality, and no power of compression, grasp, or judgment. Dora had, very recently, seen her twenty eighth year. Barbara had, not very recently, seen her f..tieth: we apprehend that she might not supply the blank with the same letters that we should, so we leave it open. Dora had only been twenty-eight once. She never shrank from alluding to the fact that she was born in Paris in the year of the Revolution, 1848. Her mother was half French, half Spanish ; and she herseU had but lately arrived in England, after several years' residence abroad, and had as yet seen but little of her cousin Cecilia's husband, or of his brother, the Colonel. She was very charming, very sensible, and very good, though the bete noire of this story (is poor little blonde Cecilia the bete fauve ?

A propos of beasts, Swinburne is the poet who could best describe both — he who wrote both "Faustine" and "Atalanta in Calydon"). She had the three virtues — truth, courage, and generosity, which are almost all that we care much about ; she had more than those. Miss Crabbe sat still, and even silent, for some moments, gazing, rather than looking, at her, and saying to her poor little sentimental self, as she looked, or gazed, out of her own little sharp eyes, along her little sharp, peevish, reddish nose, how lovely Dora was, with her rich, dark eyes, divinely sweet and tender, and her dark wealth of tresses, and the pose of her head, and the turn of her perfect neck, and all the rest of it — all being all that it could be in one of her own novels. She had more than once talked nonsense about the morbidezza, the pale cast of thought, the soft langour ; she now seemed to discern something more — a look of some kind of suffering, perhaps physi cal, perhaps that of a too delicate sensibility ; RED AND BLACK. and she was going to say something about it, but did not, and resumed the conversation.