Dead-sea fruit, Vol. 1 (of 3)

QUITE ALONE.

THE marble image of Hubert Van Eyck stood out against the warm blue sky, and cast a slanting shadow across the sunlit flags. The July afternoon was drawing to a close. Low sunlight shone golden on the canals of Villebrumeuse, and changed every westward-looking window into a casement of gold. Those are no common windows which look out upon the quiet streets and lonely squares of that sleepy Belgian city. No handiwork of modern speculative builder is visible amid that grand old architecture--no flimsy nineteenth-century villa perks its tawdry head among those mediæval splendours--no upstart semi-detached abominations of spurious Gothic, picked out with rainbow-coloured brick, affright the eye by their hideous aspect. To live in Villebrumeuse is to live in the sixteenth century. A quiet calm, as of the past, pervades the shady streets. Green trees reflect themselves in the still waters of the slow canal which creeps athwart the city; and by the side of the tranquil waters there are pleasant walks o’er-shadowed by the umbrage of limes, and wooden benches whereon the peaceful citizens may repose themselves in the evening dusk. In despite of its solemn tranquillity, this Villebrumeuse is not a dreary dwelling-place. If it has drifted from amidst the busy places of this earth--if the blustrous ocean of modern progress has receded from its shores, leaving it far away across a level waste of reef and sand--this quiet city has, at the worst, been left stationary, while the noisy tide sweeps on with all its tumult of success and failure--its prosperous ventures and forgotten wrecks. The peace which pervades Villebrumeuse is the tranquillity of slumber, and not the awful stillness of death. There is a jog-trot prosperity in the place, a comfortable air, which is soothing to the world-worn spirit; but the wrestling, and scuffling, and striving, and struggling of modern commerce is unknown among the quiet merchants, who content themselves with supplying the simple wants of their fellow-citizens in the simplest fashion. And yet this city was once a mart to which the Orient brought her richest merchandise; and in the days gone by, these quaint old squares have been clamorous with the voices of many traders, and bright with the holiday raiment of busy multitudes.

A young Englishman walked slowly up and down the broad flagged square, across which the painter’s statue cast its sombre shadow. He was teacher of English and mathematics in a great public academy near at hand, and his name was Eustace Thorburn. For three years he had held his post in the Villebrumeuse academy; for three years he had done his duty, quietly and earnestly, to the satisfaction of every one concerned in the performance. And yet he was something of an enthusiast, and something of a poet, and possessed many of those attributes which are commonly supposed to constitute a letter of license for the neglect of vulgar every-day duties.

That was an ardent and an ambitious spirit which shone out of Eustace Thorburn’s gray eyes; but if the fiery sword had chafed the scabbard a little during three years of academical routine and Villebrumeuse monotony, the young man had been patient and contented withal. There was a public library in Villebrumeuse to which the tutor had free entrance, and in the mediæval chambers of this institution his leisure had been spent. That dreamy idleness amongst good books had been very pleasant to him; his work in the academy was endurable, despite its tedious and laborious nature; and he had a lurking tenderness for the quaint old city, the slow canals overshadowed by green trees, the simple people, and the old-world customs. Thus, if there were times when the eager spirit would fain have soared to loftier and fairer regions, the young student and teacher had not been altogether unhappy since his destiny had brought him to this place to earn his bread amongst strangers.

Amongst strangers? Were the inhabitants of this Belgian city any more strange to him than all the other inhabitants of this populous earth--except the one man and woman who made the sum-total of his kindred and friends? Amongst strangers? Why, if the statue of Van Eyck could have descended from yonder pedestal, to walk in the streets of the city, the animated effigy could scarcely have been a lonelier creature than the young man who passed to and fro athwart the sloping shadow on the flags this July afternoon.

Looking backward, through the shadows of the past, how many of those images, familiar to most men, were wanting in the mystic pictures that memory presented to Eustace Thorburn! Memory, let him question her never so closely, could not show him any faint tracing of a father’s face flickering dimly athwart the half-consciousness of infancy. Nor could he, in surveying the events of his childhood, recall so much as one visit to a father’s grave, one accidental utterance of a father’s name, one object, however trivial, associated with a father’s existence--a picture, a sword, a book, a watch, a tress of hair. The time had been when he had been wont to question his mother about this missing father; but that was long ago. The time had come, and too quickly in this young man’s life, when a precocious wisdom had checked his questioning, and he had learned to refrain from all reference to a father’s name, as the one subject, of all others, most scrupulously to be avoided by his lips. He was twenty-three years of age, and he had never been told his father’s name or position in the world. For the last ten years of his life it had been a common thing for him to lie awake in the solemn quiet of the night, thinking of that unknown father, and wondering whether he were alive or dead. He knew that he had no claim to the name which he bore, and that he had as good a right to call himself a Guelph or a Plantagenet as he had to call himself Thorburn.

How many childless men upon this earth would have been glad to call Eustace Thorburn son! How many of this world’s magnates, with mighty names to transmit, would have rejoiced with unspeakable rapture, could they have set the joy-bells ringing for the coming of age of such an heir! As there are rare and peerless flowers that adorn inaccessible regions where no hand can gather them, where no eye may delight in their loveliness, so there are friendless creatures in the world who might make the joy of empty hearts, and be the pride of desolate households. The “something in this world amiss,” which the poet has sung of, pervades every social relation. The plaintive wailing of the minor mingles itself with every earthly melody; and it is only by and by that the veil shall be lifted; it is only by and by that the mystic enigma shall be unriddled, and the full chords of perfect harmony peal on our ears, unmarred by that undertone of pain.

Not often has a nobler face looked upward to the countenance of the statue than that which looked at it with a dreamy gaze to-day. The face of the young man was, like the face of the statue, more beautiful by reason of, its nobility of expression than because of its perfect regularity of feature. In Eustace Thorburn’s countenance the intellectual radiance so far surpassed the physical beauty, that those who looked at him for the first time were impressed chiefly by the brightness of his expression, and were likely to take their leave of him in complete ignorance as to the shape of his nose or the modelling of his mouth.

It is but a thankless task to catalogue such a face; the dark gray eyes which pass for black; the mobile mouth which, in one moment, seems formed to express an unbending pride and an indomitable will, and in the next will wreathe itself into such a smile that it must needs appear incapable of any expression but manly tenderness or playful humour; the loosely arranged auburn hair, which gives something of a leonine aspect to the lofty head; the complexion of almost womanly fairness, with a rich glow that comes and goes with every changing impulse or emotion--all these go such a little way towards the individuality of the young Englishman, walking up and down the lonely square during his half-hour’s respite from the monotonous duties of the afternoon.

This half-hour’s holiday was not Mr. Thorburn’s only privilege. He had two hours in every day for his own studies--two hours which he generally spent in the public library, for his ambition had shaped itself into a palpable form, and had mapped the outline of a career. He was to be a man of letters. If he had been a rich man, he would have shut himself in his library and made himself a poet. But as he was nothing but a nameless and penniless stripling, with his bread to earn, he had no right to indulge in the luxury of verse-making. The wide arena of literary labour lay before him, and he had no choice but to force his way into the lists, and fight for any place that might happen to be vacant. Fate might make of him what she would--journalist, novelist, dramatist, magazine hack, penny-a-liner: but she must use him very cruelly before she could quench the fire of his young ambition, or bend the crest with which he was prepared to confront the world.

He had selected for himself this profession of literature chiefly because it was the only calling which demanded no capital from the beginner, and a little because the only kinsman he had in the world was a man who lived by his pen, and who might have prospered and won distinction by means of that fluent pen, had he not chosen to do otherwise.

The half-hour’s respite expired presently, and a great clanging bell in the academy near at hand summoned the pupils to their evening lesson. It was a summons for the master also, and Mr. Thorburn ran across the square and turned into the street on which one side of the academy looked. He pushed open a little wooden door in the big gateway, and passed under the arched entrance; but before going to his class-room, he stopped to examine a rack in which letters addressed to the masters were wont to be kept. He rarely omitted to look at this rack, though he had very few correspondents, and only received about one letter in a fortnight. To-day there was a letter. His heart turned cold as he looked at it, for the envelope was bordered with black, and addressed in the hand of his mother’s brother, who very seldom wrote to him. His mother had been an invalid for a long time, and such a letter as that could have but one fatal meaning. For months he had looked forward to his August holiday, which would enable him to go to England and spend a few happy weeks with that dear mother--and now the holiday would come too late.

He went out into one of the dismal playgrounds, a gravelled yard surrounded by high whitewashed walls, and read his letter.

His tears fell thick and fast upon the flimsy paper as he read. Ten minutes ago, walking to and fro in the sunshine, he had lamented his loneliness, remembering that he had only two friends in the world. He knew now that the dearer of these two was lost to him. The letter told him of his mother’s death.