CHAPTER XXI

In which we have further glimpses of the wondrous mechanism of our younger man

The report of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham as having died in the arms of a stranger visiting the house, hit nearer the mark than usual.  He yielded his last breath as Gower Woodseer was lowering him to his pillow, shortly after a husky whisper of the letter to Lady Arpington; and that was one of Gower’s crucial trials.  It condemned him, for the pacifying of a dying man, to the murmur and shuffle, which was a lie; and the lie burnt him, contributed to the brand on his race.  He and his father upheld a solitary bare staff, where the Cambrian flag had flown, before their people had been trampled in mire, to do as the worms.  His loathing of any shadow of the lie was a protest on behalf of Welsh blood against an English charge, besides the passion for spiritual cleanliness:  without which was no comprehension, therefore no enjoyment, of Nature possible to him.  For Nature is the Truth.

He begged the countess to let him have the letter; he held to the petition, with supplications; he spoke of his pledged word, his honour; and her countenance did not deny to such an object as she beheld the right to a sense of honour.  ’We all have the sentiment, I hope, Mr. Woodseer,’ she said, stupefying the worshipper, who did not see it manifested.  There was a look of gentle intimacy, expressive of common grounds between them, accompanying the dead words.  Mistress of the letter, and the letter safe under lock, the admiral dead, she had not to bestow a touch of her hand on his coatsleeve in declining to return it.  A face languidly and benevolently querulous was bent on him, when he, so clever a man, resumed his very silly petition.

She was moon out of cloud at a change of the theme.  Gower journeyed to London without the letter, intoxicated, and conscious of poison; enamoured of it, and straining for health.  He had to reflect at the journey’s end, that he had picked up nothing on the road, neither a thing observed nor a thing imagined; he was a troubled pool instead of a flowing river.

The best help to health for him was a day in his father’s house.  We are perpetually at our comparisons of ourselves with others; and they are mostly profitless; but the man carrying his religious light, to light the darkest ways of his fellows, and keeping good cheer, as though the heart of him ran a mountain water through the grimy region, plucked at Gower with an envy to resemble him in practice.  His philosophy, too, reproached him for being outshone.  Apart from his philosophy, he stood confessed a bankrupt; and it had dwindled to near extinction.  Adoration of a woman takes the breath out of philosophy.  And if one had only to say sheer donkey, he consenting to be driven by her!  One has to say worse in this case; for the words are, liar and traitor.