The Gipsy: A Tale (Vols I & II). G. P. R. James

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СКАЧАТЬ deprive you of your rightful renown, strip you of your credit and your fame, and 'filch from you your good name!' Good God! those gipsies are princes of honesty compared with the great majority of our dear friends and worldly companions."

      His fellow-traveller replied nothing for a moment or two, unless a smile, partly gay, partly bitter, could pass for answer. The next minute, however, he read his own comment upon it, saying, "I thought, De Vaux, you were to forget your misanthropy when you returned to England."

      "Oh, so I have," replied the other in a gayer tone; "it was only a single seed of the wormwood sprouting up again. But, as you must have seen throughout our journey, my heart is all expansion at coming back again to my native land, and at the prospect of seeing so many beings that I love: though God knows," he added, somewhat gloomily--"God knows whether the love be as fully returned. However, imagination serves me for Prince Ali's perspective glass; and I can see them all, even now, at their wonted occupations, while my vanity dresses up their faces in smiles when they think of my near approach."

      His companion sighed; and as he did not at all explain why he did so, we must take the liberty of asking the worthy reader to walk into the tabernacle of his bosom, and examine which of the mind's gods it was that gave forth that oracular sigh, so that the officiating priest may afford the clear interpretation thereof. But, to leave an ill-conceived figure of speech, the simple fact was, that the picture of home, and friends, and smiling welcome, and happy love, which his companion's speech had displayed, had excited somewhat like envy in the breast of Colonel Manners. Envy, indeed, properly so called, it was not; for the breast of Colonel Manners was swept out and garnished every day by a body of kindly spirits, who left not a stain of envy, hatred, or malice in any corner thereof. The proper word would have been regret; for regret it certainly was that he felt when he reflected that, though he had many of what the world calls friends, and a milky-way of acquaintances--though he was honoured and esteemed wherever he came, and felt a proud consciousness that he deserved to be so--yet that on all the wide surface of the earth there was no sweet individual spot where dearer love, and brighter smiles, and outstretched arms, glad voices, and sparkling eyes, waited to welcome the wanderer home from battle, and danger, and privation, and fatigue. He felt that there was a vacancy to him in all things; that the magic chain of life's associations wanted a link; and he sighed--not with envy, but with regret. That it was so was partly owing to events over which he had no control. Left an orphan at an early age, the father's mansion and the mother's bosom he had never known; and neither brother nor sister had accompanied his pilgrimage through life. His relations were all distant ones; and though (being the last of a long line) great care had been bestowed upon his infancy and youth, yet all the sweet ties and kindred fellowship which gather thickly round us in a large family were wanting to him.

      So far his isolated situation depended upon circumstances which he could neither alter nor avoid; but that he had not created for himself a home, and ties as dear as those which fortune had at first denied him, depended on himself; or rather what in vulgar parlance is called a crotchet, which was quite sufficiently identified with his whole nature, to be considered as part of himself, though it was mingled intimately--woven in and out--with qualities of a very different character.

      This crotchet--for that is the only term fitted for it, as it was certainly neither a whim nor a caprice--this crotchet may be considered as a matter of history--of his history, I mean; for it depended upon foregone facts, which must be here explained. It is sad to overturn all that imagination may have already done for the reader on the very first news that Colonel Manners had a foregone history at all. He had not been crossed in love, as may be supposed, nor had he seen the object of his affections swept away by a torrent, burned in a house on fire, killed by an unruly horse, or die by any of those means usually employed for such a purpose. No; he had neither to bewail the coldness nor the loss of her he loved, because, up to the moment when we have set him before the reader, he had unfortunately never been in love at all.

      The fact is, that during his youth Colonel Manners had possessed one of the finest faces in the world, and every one of his judicious friends had taken care to impress deeply upon his mind that it was the best portion of all his present possessions or future expectations. By nature he was quite the reverse of a vain man; but when he saw that the great majority of those by whom he was surrounded admired the beauties of his face far more than the beauties of his mind, and loved him for the symmetry of his external person more than for the qualities of his heart, of course the conviction that, however much esteem and respect might be gained by mental perfections, affection was only given to beauty, became an integral part of that fine texture of memories and ideas which, though I do not think it, as some have done, the mind itself, I yet look upon as the mind's innermost garment. Such was the case when, at the age of about twenty, he was attacked by the smallpox. For a length of time he was not allowed to see a looking-glass, the physicians mildly telling him that his appearance would improve; that they trusted no great traces would remain: but when he did see a looking-glass, he certainly saw the reflection of somebody he had never seen before. In the mean while his relations had too much regard for their own persons to come near him; and when, after having purified in the country, he went to visit an antique female cousin, who had been a card-playing belle in the reign of his majesty of blessed memory, King George the First, the old lady first made him a profound courtesy, taking him for a stranger; and when she discovered who he was, burst forth with, "Good God, Charles! you are perfectly frightful!"

      To the same conclusion Charles Manners had by this time come himself; and the very modesty of his original nature now leagued with one of the deceptions of vanity, and made him believe that he could never, by any circumstances, or events, obtain love. Nevertheless he made up his mind to his fate entirely, and determined neither to seek for nor to think of a good that could not be his. Indeed, at first, according to the usual extravagance of man's nature, he flew to the very far extreme, and believed that, putting woman's love out of the question, even the more intimate friendship and affection of his fellow-men might be influenced by his changed appearance, and that he would be always more or less an object of that pity which touches upon scorn. These ideas his commerce with the world soon showed him to be fallacious; but in the mean time they had a certain effect upon his conduct. Possessing a consciousness of great powers of mind and fine qualities of the heart, he determined to cultivate and employ them to the utmost, and compel esteem and respect, if love and affection were not to be obtained. In his course through the army, too, the sort of animosity which he felt against his own ugliness, which had cut him off from happiness of a sort that he was well calculated to enjoy, together with that mental and corporeal complexion which did not suffer him to know what fear is, led him to be somewhat careless of his own person; and during his earlier years of service he acquired the name of rash Charles Manners. But it was soon found that wherever the conduct of any enterprise was intrusted to his judgment, its success was almost certain, and that skill and intrepidity with him went hand-in-hand.

      Gradually he found that, with men at least, and with soldiers especially, personal beauty formed no necessary ingredient in friendship; and with a warm heart and noble feelings--guarded, however, by wisdom and discretion--he soon rendered himself universally liked and esteemed in the different corps with which he served, and had an opportunity of selecting one or two of his fellow-officers for more intimate regard. Unfortunately, however, he saw no reason to change his opinion in respect to woman's love. Indeed, he sought not to change it; for, as we have already said, the belief that female affection could only be won by personal beauty was one of those intimate convictions which were interwoven with all the fabric of his ideas. He ceased to think of it; he devoted himself entirely to his profession; he won honour and the highest renown; he found himself liked and esteemed by his military companions, courted and admired in general society, and he was content: at least, if he was not content, the regrets which would not wholly be smothered--the yearnings for nearer ties and dearer affections, which are principles, not thoughts--only found vent occasionally in such a sigh as that which we have just described.

      His companion, though he remarked it, made no comment on his sigh; for, notwithstanding the most intimate relationships of friendship which existed between himself and СКАЧАТЬ