ROSE, BLANCHE, AND VIOLET.

BY

G. H. LEWES, ESQ.

AUTHOR OF "RANTHORPE," "BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY," ETC. ETC.

Il n'y a point de vertu proprement dite, sans victoire sur nous-mêmes, et tout ce qui ne nous coûte rien, ne vaut rien.

DE MAISTRE.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON: SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. —— 1848.

London: Printed by STEWART and MURRAY, Old Bailey.

DÉDICACE.

——

A MONSIEUR BENJAMIN MOREL

(DE DUNKERQUE),

COMME UN AFFECTUEUX SOUVENIR DE L' AUTEUR,

G. H. LEWES.

PREFACE.

When a distinct Moral presides over the composition of a work of fiction, there is great danger of its so shaping the story to suit a purpose, that human nature is falsified by being coerced within the sharply defined limits of some small dogma.

So conscious of this did I become in the progress of my story, that I was forced to abandon my original intention, in favour of a more natural evolution of incident and character; accordingly, the Moral has been left to shift for itself. It was a choice between truth of passion and character, on the one hand, and on the other, didactic clearness. I could not hesitate in choosing the former.

And yet, as Hegel truly says, "in every work of Art there is a Moral; but it depends on him who draws it." If, therefore, the reader insists upon a Moral, he may draw one from the passions here exhibited; and the value of it will depend upon his own sagacity.

From Life itself I draw one great moral, which I may be permitted to say is illustrated in various ways by the present work; and it is this:—

Strength of Will is the quality most needing cultivation in mankind. Will is the central force which gives strength and greatness to character. We over-estimate the value of Talent, because it dazzles us; and we are apt to underrate the importance of Will, because its works are less shining. Talent gracefully adorns life; but it is Will which carries us victoriously through the struggle. Intellect is the torch which lights us on our way; Will, the strong arm which rough hews the path for us. The clever, weak man sees all the obstacles on his path; the very torch he carries, being brighter than that of most men, enables him, perhaps, to see that the path before him may be directest, the best,—yet it also enables him to see the crooked turnings by which he may, as he fancies, reach the goal without encountering difficulties. If, indeed, Intellect were a sun, instead of a torch,—if it irradiated every corner and crevice—then would man see how, in spite of every obstacle, the direct path was the only safe one, and he would cut his way through by manful labour. But constituted as we

are, it is the clever, weak men who stumble most—the strong men who are most virtuous and happy. In this world, there cannot be virtue without strong Will; the weak "know the right, and yet the wrong pursue."

No one, I suppose, will accuse me of deifying Obstinacy, or even mere brute Will; nor of depreciating Intellect. But we have had too many dithyrambs in honour of mere Intelligence; and the older I grow, the clearer I see that Intellect is not the highest faculty in man, although the most brilliant. Knowledge, after all, is not the greatest thing in life: it is not the "be-all and the end-all here." Life is not Science. The light of Intellect is truly a precious light; but its aim and end is simply to shine. The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced—that without intelligence we should be brutes—but it is the tendency of our gaping wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.

KENSINGTON, March 1848.

[Transcriber's note: In the Book II section of the Contents, there was no entry for Chapter IX, nor was there a chapter by that number in the source book. The book's actual text appears to be complete.]

CONTENTS.

PROLOGUE

BOOK I.

CHAPTER

I.—Four Years Later II.—Rose Writes to Violet III.—The Happy School-days IV.—Rose and Blanche at Home V.—Marmaduke meets Mrs. Vyner VI.—How Rose became acquainted with our Ugly Hero VII.—Rose Vyner Writes to Fanny Worsley VIII.—Mrs. Langley Turner, and her Friends IX.—Two Portraits X.—Declaration of War XI.—One of our Heroes

BOOK II.

CHAPTER

I.—Cecil Chamberlayne to Frank Forrester II.—Rose to Fanny Worsley III.—Cecil is Smitten IV.—Cecil Exhibits Himself V.—A Trait of Julius St. John VI.—Hidden Meanings VII.—Mutual Self-Examination VIII.—The Disadvantages of Ugliness X.—The Great Commentator XI.—Cecil again Writes to Frank XII.—Cecil put to the Test XIII.—How a Lover Vacillates XIV.—Jealousy XV.—The Lovers Meet XVI.—The Discovery XVII.—The Sacrifice XVIII.—Cecil in his True Colours XIX.—The Perils of One Night XX.—Captain Heath Watches over Blanche

ROSE, BLANCHE, AND VIOLET.

PROLOGUE.

1835.

It was a sultry day in July, and the sun was pouring down from a cloudless heaven intense rays upon the High-street of * * * * * The heat made the place a desert; more indeed of a desert than even High-streets of country towns usually are. There was a burnt odour in the atmosphere, arising from the scorched pavement, and rayed forth from the garish brick houses. Silence and noon-day heat reigned over the scene. The deep stillness was brought out into stronger relief by the occasional bark of a dog, or rumbling of a solitary cart.

A few human beings dotted the street, at wide intervals. There was a groom standing at the stable-yard entrance of the Royal George, indolently chewing a blade of grass. The clergyman's wife, hot, dusty, and demure, was shopping. A farmer had just dismounted from a robust white cob, which he left standing at the door of a dismal red-brick house, on the wire blinds of which was painted the word—BANK. Higher up, three ragged urchins were plotting mischief, or arranging some game. A proud young mother was dandling her infant at a shop door, as if desirous that the whole street should be aware of the important fact of her maternity—to be sure, there never was such a beautiful baby before! In the window of that shop—it was a grocer's—a large black cat was luxuriously sleeping on a bed of moist sugar, sunning herself there, too lazy even to disturb the flies which crowded to the spot.

To one who, a stranger to the place, merely cast his eyes down that street, nothing could appear more lifeless—more devoid of all human interest—more unchequered by the vicissitudes of passion. It had the calm of the desert, without the grandeur. In such a place, the current of life would seem monotonously placid; existence itself scarcely better than vegetation. It is not so, however. To those who inhabited the place, it was known that beneath the stillness a stratum of boiling lava was ever ready to burst forth. Every house was really the theatre of some sad comedy, or of some grotesque tragedy. The shop which to an unfamiliar eye was but the depository of retail goods, with John Smith as the retailer, was to an inhabitant the well-known scene of some humble heroism, or ridiculous pretension. John Smith, smirking behind his counter, is not simply an instrument of commerce; he is a husband, a father, and a citizen; he has his follies, his passions, his hopes, and his opinions; he is the object of unreckoned scandals.

To the eye of the stranger who now leisurely paced the street, the town was dull and lifeless, because it had not the incessant noise of a capital, and because he knew nothing of the dramas which were being enacted within its walls. Yet even he was soon to learn that sorrow, "not loud but deep," was weeping ineffectually over a tragedy which touched him nearly.

He was a man of about thirty years of age, with the unmistakeable look of a gentleman, and, to judge from his moustaches and erect bearing, an officer in the army. As he passed her, the proud young mother ceased for a moment to think only of her child, and followed with admiring eyes his retreating form. The echo of his sharp, decisive tread rang through the silent street; and soon he disappeared, turning up towards a large house which fronted the sea.

He knocked at the door, and with an unconscious coquetry smoothed his dark moustache while waiting. The door was opened by a grey-haired butler.

"How d' ye do, Wilson? Are they at home—eh! what's this? you in mourning?"

"Yes, sir. What! don't you know, sir?"

"Good God! what has happened? Is Mrs. Vyner——?"

"Yes, sir, yes," replied the butler, shaking his head sorrowfully. "It has been a dreadful blow, sir, to master, and to the young ladies. She was buried Monday week."

The stranger was almost stupefied by this sudden shock.

"Dead!" he exclaimed; "dead! Good God!—So young, so young.—Dead!—So beautiful and good.—Dead!"

"Ah, sir, master will never get over it. He does take on so. I never saw any one, never; and the young ladies——"

"Dead!"

"Will you please to walk up, sir? Master would like to see you."

"No, no, no."

"It will comfort him; indeed, sir, it will. He likes to talk to any one, sir, about the party that's gone."

The tears came into the old man's eyes as he thus alluded to his lost mistress, and the stranger was too much affected to notice the singular language in which the butler spoke of "the party."

After a few moments' consideration, the stranger walked up into the drawing-room, while the servant went to inform Mr. Vyner of the visit. Left to himself, and to the undisturbed indulgence of those feelings of solemn sadness by which we are always affected at the sudden death of those we know, especially of the young—shaking us as it does in the midst of our own security, and bringing terribly home the conviction of that fact which health and confidence keep in a dim obscurity, that "in the midst of life we are in death"—the stranger, whom we shall now name as Captain Heath, walked up to a miniature of the deceased, and gazed upon it in melancholy curiosity.

Captain Heath had lost a dear friend in Mrs. Vyner, with whom he had been a great favourite. To his credit be it said, that, although the handsome wife of a man much older than herself, he had never for an instant misinterpreted her kindness towards him; and this, too, although he was an officer in the Hussars. Theirs was truly and strictly a friendship between man and woman, as pure as it was firm; founded upon mutual esteem and sympathy. Some malicious whispers were, indeed, from time to time ventured on—for who can entirely escape them?—but they never gained much credence. Mrs. Vyner's whole life was an answer to calumny.

Meredith Vyner, of Wytton Hall, Devonshire, was the kindest if not the most fascinating of husbands. A book-worm and pedant, he had the follies of his tribe, and was as open to ridicule as the worst of them; but, with all his foibles, he was a kind, gentle, weak, indolent creature, who made many friends, and, what is more, retained them.

There was something remarkable though not engaging in his appearance. He looked like a dirty bishop. In his pale puffy face there was an ecclesiastical mildness, which assorted well with a large forehead and weak chin, though it brought into stronger contrast the pugnacity of a short blunt nose, the nostrils of which were somewhat elevated and garnished with long black hairs. A physiognomist would at once have pronounced him obstinate, but weak; loud in the assertion of his intentions, vacillating in their execution. His large person was curiously encased in invariable black; a tail-coat with enormous skirts, in which were pockets capacious enough to contain a stout volume; the waistcoat of black silk, liberally sprinkled with grains of snuff, reached below the waist, and almost concealed the watch-chain and its indefinite number of gold seals which dangled from the fob; of his legs he was as proud as men usually are who have an ungraceful development of calf; and hence, perhaps, the reason of his adhering to the black tights of our fathers.

Shoes, large, square, and roomy, with broad silver buckles, completed his invariable and somewhat anachronical attire.

People laughed at Meredith Vyner for his dirty nails and his love of Horace (whom he was always quoting, without regard to the probability of his hearers understanding Latin—for the practice seemed involuntary); but they respected him for his integrity and goodness, and for his great, though ill-assorted, erudition. In a word, he was laughed at, but there was no malice in the laughter.

As Captain Heath stood gazing on the miniature of his lost friend, a heavy hand was placed upon his shoulder; and on turning round he beheld Meredith Vyner, on whose large, pale face sorrow had deepened the lines: his eyes were bloodshot and swollen with crying. In silence, they pressed each other's hands for some moments, both unable to speak. At last, in a trembling voice, Vyner said, "Gone, gone! She's gone from us."

Heath responded by a fervent pressure of the hand.

"Only three weeks ill," continued the wretched widower; "and so unexpected!"

"She died without pain," he added, after a pause; "sweetly resigned. She is in heaven now. I shall follow her soon: I feel I shall. I cannot survive her loss."

"Do not forget your children."

"I do not; I will not. Is not one of them her child? I will struggle for its sake. So young to be cut off!"

There was another pause, in which each pursued the train of his sad thoughts. The hot air puffed through the blinds of the darkened room, and the muffled sounds of distant waves breaking upon the shore were faintly heard.

"Come with me," said Vyner, rising.

He led the captain into the bed-room.

"There she lay," he said, pointing to the bed: "you see the mark of the coffin on the coverlet? I would not have it disturbed. It is the last trace she left."

The tears rolled down his cheek as he gazed upon this frightful memento.

"In this room I sat up a whole night when they laid her in the coffin, and all night as I gazed upon those loved features, placid in their eternal repose, I was constantly fancying that she breathed, and that her bosom heaved again with life. Alas! it was but the mockery of my love. She remained cold to my kiss—insensible to the tenderness which watched over her. Yet I could not leave her. It was foolish, perhaps, but it was all that remained to me. To gaze upon her was painful, yet there was pleasure in that pain. The face which had smiled such sunshine on me, which had so often looked up to mine in love, that face was now cold, lifeless—but it was hers, and I could not leave it. My poor, poor girl!"

His sobs interrupted him. Captain Heath had no disposition to check a grief which would evidently wear itself away much more rapidly by thus dwelling on the subject, than by any effort to drive it from the mind. To say the truth, Heath was himself too much moved to speak. The long, sharply-defined trace of the coffin on the coverlet was to him more terrible than the sight of the corpse could have been; it was so painfully suggestive.

"The second night," continued Vyner, "they prevailed on me to go to bed; but I could not sleep. No sooner did I drop into an uneasy doze, than some horrible dream aroused me. My waking thoughts were worse. I was continually fancying the rats would—would—ugh! At last, I got up and went into the room. Who should be there, but Violet! The dear child was in her night-dress, praying by the side of the bed! She did not move when I came in. I knelt down with her. We both offered up our feeble prayers to Him who had been pleased to take her from us. We prayed together, we wept together. We kissed gently the pale rigid face, and then the dear child suffered me to lead her away without a word. It was only then that I suspected the depth of Violet's grief. She had not cried so much as Rose and Blanche. I thought she was too young to feel the loss. But from that moment I understood the strange light which plays in her eyes when she speaks of her mother."

He stooped over the bed and kissed it; and then, quite overcome, he threw himself upon a chair, and buried his face in his hands. The ceaseless wash of the distant waves was now distinctly heard, and it gave a deeper melancholy to the scene. Captain Heath's feelings were so wound up, that the room was becoming insupportable to him, and desirous of shaking off these impressions, he endeavoured to console his friend.

"I ought to be more firm," said Vyner, rising, "but I cannot help it. I am not ashamed of these tears—

Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus Tam cari capitis?

But I ought not to distress others by them."

He led the way down stairs, and, as the children were out, made Heath promise to return to dinner; "it would help to make them all more cheerful."

Captain Heath departed somewhat shocked at the pedantry which in such a moment could think of Horace; and by that very pedantry he was awakened to a sense of the ludicrous figure which sorrow had made of Vyner.

We are so constituted that, while scarcely anything disturbs our hilarity, the least incongruity which seems to lessen the earnestness of grief, chills our sympathy at once. Vyner's quotation introduced into the mind of his friend an undefined suspicion of the sincerity of that grief which could admit of such incongruity. But the suspicion was unjust. It was not pedantry which dictated that quotation. Pedantry is the pride and ostentation of learning, and at that moment Vyner was assuredly not thinking of displaying an acquaintance with the Latin poet. He was simply obeying a habit; he gave utterance to a sentence which his too faithful memory presented.

Captain Heath walked on the sands musing. He had not gone far before his eye was caught by the appearance of two girls in deep mourning; a second glance assured him they were Vyner's daughters. Walking rapidly towards them, he was received with affectionate interest.

Quickly recovering from the depression which the sight of him at first awakened, they began with the happy volatility of childhood, to ask him all sorts of questions.

"But where is my little Violet?" asked the captain.

"Oh! she's sitting on the ledge of a rock yonder, listening to the sea," said Blanche.

"Yes," added Rose, "it is very extraordinary—she says the sea has voices in it which speak to her. She cannot tell us what it says, but it makes her happy. But she cries a great deal, and that doesn't look like happiness, does it, Captain Heath?"

"No, Rosebud, not very. But let me go to her."

"Yes, do; come along."

The three moved on together, and presently came to the rock, on a ledge of which a little girl was lounging. Her hat was off, and her long dark brown hair was scattered over her shoulders by the wind. Her face was towards the horizon, and she seemed intently watching.

From the two little traits of her drawn by her father and her sisters, Captain Heath, who had not seen her since she was a merry little thing of seven, anticipated a sickly precocious child, in whom reading or conversation had engendered some of that spiritual exaltation, which is mostly three parts affectation to one part disease. He was agreeably disappointed. She had not noticed their arrival, but on being spoken to, embraced the captain with warmth, and received him in a perfectly natural manner.

To set his doubts at rest, he said:—

"Well, Violet, has the sea been eloquent to-day, or is it too calm?"

She looked up at him, then at her sisters, and coloured. "I see they have been making fun of me," she said; "but that's not fair. I love to sit by the sea because—" she hesitated, "mama loved it. It isn't foolish of me, is it Captain Heath?"

"No, my dear, not at all—not at all."

"Oh, Captain Heath!" exclaimed Rose, "you said just now it was."

He pinched her little cheek playfully, and was about to reply, when Blanche said:—