Charles Kingsley

“ Such a man as Colonel Bracebridge now, with the tongue of the serpent, who can charm any living soul he likes to his will, as a stoat charms a rabbit. Or you, sir, with your tongue:—you have charmed one precious creature already. I can see it: though neither of you know it, yet I know it.’
Lancelot started, and blushed crimson.
‘Oh, that I had your tongue, sir!’ And the keeper blushed crimson, too, and went on hastily,—
‘But why could you not charm all alike! Do not the poor want you as well as the rich?’
‘What can I do for the poor, my good fellow? And what do they want? ”

“ I believe, sir, that the judge of all the earth will do right—and what’s right can’t be wrong, nor cruel either, else it would not be like Him who loved us to the death, that’s all I know; and that’s enough for me. To whom little is given, of him is little required. He that didn’t know his Master’s will, will be beaten with few stripes, and he that did know it, as I do, will be beaten with many, if he neglects it—and that latter, not the former, is my concern.’
‘Well,’ thought Lancelot to himself, ‘this great heart has gone down to the root of the matter—the right and wrong of it. ”

“ Why should we depend on the will and fancy of any man for our rights? They are asking ugly questions among themselves, sir, about what those two words, rent and taxes, mean, and about what that same strange word, freedom, means. Eight or wrong, they’ve got the thought into their heads, and it’s growing there, and they will find an answer for it. Depend upon it, sir, I tell you a truth, and they expect a change. You will hear them talk of it to-night, sir, if you’ve luck.’
‘We all expect a change, for that matter,’ said Lancelot. ”

“ Is it selfishness? It is selfishness, to pamper my vanity on an affection which I do not, will not return. I will not be thus in debt to him, even for his love. I do not love him—I do not; and even if I did, to give myself up to a man of whom I know so little, who is not even a Christian, much less a Churchman! Ay! and to give up my will to any man! to become the subject, the slave, of another human being! I, who have worshipped the belief in woman’s independence, the hope of woman’s enfranchisement, who have felt how glorious it is to live like the angels, single and self-sustained! ”

“ Then, when you have learnt the wondrous harmony between man and his dwelling-place, I will lead you to a land where you shall see the highest spiritual cultivation in triumphant contact with the fiercest energies of matter; where men have learnt to tame and use alike the volcano and the human heart, where the body and the spirit, the beautiful and the useful, the human and the divine, are no longer separate, and men have embodied to themselves on earth an image of the “city not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”’
‘Where is this land?’ said Lancelot eagerly. ”

“ Argemone! speak, tell me, if you will, to go for ever; but tell me first the truth—You love me!’
A strong shudder ran through her frame—the ice of artificial years cracked, and the clear stream of her woman’s nature welled up to the light, as pure as when she first lay on her mother’s bosom: she lifted up her eyes, and with one long look of passionate tenderness she faltered out,—
‘I love you!’
He did not stir, but watched her with clasped hands, like one who in dreams finds himself in some fairy palace, and fears that a movement may break the spell. ”

“ Remember, I am as poor as you are now; you may look me in the face and call me your equal, if you will, or your inferior; I shall not deny it.’
‘Pardon me, sir,’ answered Tregarva; ‘but I never felt what a real substantial thing rank is, as I have since this sad misfortune of yours.’
‘And I have never till now found out its worthlessness.’
‘You’re wrong, sir, you are wrong; look at the difference between yourself and me. When you’ve lost all you have, and seven times more, you’re still a gentleman. No man can take that from you. ”

“ And when she fancied that she traced in those bland aquiline lineaments, and in the crisp ringlets which floated like a cloud down to the knees of the figure, some traces of her own likeness, a dream of a new destiny flitted before her,—she blushed to her very neck; and as she bent her face over the drawing and gazed, her whole soul seemed to rise into her eyes, and a single tear dropped upon the paper. She laid her hand over it, and then turned hastily away.
‘You do not like it! I have been too bold,’—said Lancelot, fearfully.
‘Oh, no! no! It is so beautiful—so full of deep wisdom! ”

“ Argemone tried to look very much shocked at this piece of bombast. Lancelot evidently meant it as such, but he eyed her all the while as if there was solemn earnest under the surface.
‘Oh, Mr. Smith!’ she said, ‘how can you dare talk so of a liturgy compiled by the wisest and holiest of all countries and ages! You revile that of whose beauty you are not qualified to judge!’
‘There must be a beauty in it all, or such as you are would not love it.’
‘Oh,’ she said hopefully, ‘that you would but try the Church system! How you would find it harmonise and methodise every day, every thought for you! ”

“ But so it is throughout the universe: every yearning proves the existence of an object meant to satisfy it; the same law creates both the giver and the receiver, the longing and its home.’
‘If one could but know sometimes what it is for which one is longing!’ said Argemone, without knowing that she was speaking from her inmost heart: but thus does the soul involuntarily lay bare its most unspoken depths in the presence of its yet unknown mate, and then shudders at its own abandon as it first tries on the wedding garment of Paradise. ”

“ But, somehow, in the light of his new love for Argemone, the whole human race seemed glorified, brought nearer, endeared to him. So it must be. He had spoken of a law wider than he thought in his fancy, that the angels might learn love for all by love for an individual. Do we not all learn love so? Is it not the first touch of the mother’s bosom which awakens in the infant’s heart that spark of affection which is hereafter to spread itself out towards every human being, and to lose none of its devotion for its first object, as it expands itself to innumerable new ones? ”

“ After that, he will not be up again on the shallows till sunset. He works the works of darkness, and comes not to the light, because his deeds are evil.’
Lancelot laughed. ‘He does but follow his kind, poor fellow.’
‘No doubt, sir, no doubt; all the Lord’s works are good: but it is a wonder why He should have made wasps, now, and blights, and vermin, and jack, and such evil-featured things, that carry spite and cruelty in their very faces—a great wonder. Do you think, sir, all those creatures were in the Garden of Eden?’
‘You are getting too deep for me,’ said Lancelot. ”

“ Not yet, Lancelot. Thou hast still one selfish hope, one dream of bliss, however impossible, yet still cherished. Thou art a changed man—but for whose sake? For Argemone’s. Is she to be thy god, then? Art thou to live for her, or for the sake of One greater than she? All thine idols are broken—swiftly the desert sands are drifting over them, and covering them in.—All but one—must that, too, be taken from thee?
One morning a letter was put into Lancelot’s hands, bearing the Whitford postmark. Tremblingly he tore it open. It contained a few passionate words from Honoria. ”

“ The hounds had checked in the woods behind; now they poured down the hill-side, so close together 'that you might have covered them with a sheet,' straight for the little chapel.
A saddened tone of feeling spread itself through Lancelot's heart. There were the everlasting hills around, even as they had grown and grown for countless ages, beneath the still depths of the primeval chalk ocean, in the milky youth of this great English land. And here was he, the insect of a day, foxhunting upon them! ”

“ Why are they to be shut out from all that is beautiful, and delicate, and winning, and stately?’
‘Now perhaps,’ said Lancelot, ‘you begin to understand what I was driving at on that night of the revel?’
‘It has come home to me lately, sir, bitterly enough. If you knew what had gone on in me this last fortnight, you would know that I had cause to curse the state of things which brings a man up a savage against his will, and cuts him off, as if he were an ape or a monster, from those for whom the same Lord died, and on whom the same Spirit rests. Is that God’s will, sir? ”

“ I am in your debt, sir, for the dear life. How shall I ever repay you?’
‘Repay, my good fellow? You would have done as much for me.’
‘May be; but you did not think of that when you jumped in; and no more must I in thanking you. God knows how a poor miner’s son will ever reward you; but the mouse repaid the lion, says the story, and, at all events, I can pray for you. By the bye, gentlemen, I hope you have brought up some trolling-tackle?’
‘We came up to see you, and not to fish,’ said Lancelot, charmed with the stately courtesy of the man. ”

“ For, indeed, Argemone’s spirituality was not in her mother’s language. And yet the good woman had prayed, and prayed, and wept bitter tears, by her daughter’s bedside, day after day; but she had never heard her pronounce the talismanic formula of words, necessary in her eyes to ensure salvation; and so she was almost without hope for her. Oh, Bigotry! Devil, who turnest God’s love into man’s curse! are not human hearts hard and blind enough of themselves, without thy cursed help?
For one moment a storm of unutterable pride and rage convulsed Lancelot—the next instant love conquered ”

“ Harry Verney’s last words, and Argemone’s accidental whisper about ‘a curse upon the Lavingtons,’ rose to his mind. He longed to ask Tregarva, but he was afraid—not of the man, for there was a delicacy in his truthfulness which encouraged the most utter confidence; but of the subject itself; but curiosity conquered.
‘What did Old Harry mean about the Nun-pool?’ he said at last. ‘Every one seemed to understand him.’
‘Ah, sir, he oughtn’t to have talked of it! But dying men, at times, see over the dark water into deep things—deeper than they think themselves. ”

“ I will owe no man anything, save to love one another.’
‘But how do you intend to live?’ asked Lancelot, as they stood together in the cloisters.
‘There’s enough of me, sir, to make a good navigator if all trades fail.’
‘Nonsense! you must not throw yourself away so.’
‘Oh, sir, there’s good to be done, believe me, among those poor fellows. They wander up and down the land like hogs and heathens, and no one tells them that they have a soul to be saved. Not one parson in a thousand gives a thought to them. ”

“ Protestantism is the cause of England and Christianity, and civilisation, and freedom, and common sense, sir! and that’s the very reason why it’s so easy to pervert men from it; and the very reason why it’s a lost cause, and popery, and Antichrist, and the gates of hell are coming in like a flood to prevail against it!’
‘Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘that is the very strangest reason for it’s being a lost cause! Perhaps if my poor uncle believed it really to be the cause of God Himself, he would not be in such extreme fear for it, or fancy it required such a hotbed and greenhouse culture. ”

“ After all, this visit came to Lancelot timely. It had roused him to hope, and turned off his feelings from the startling news he had just heard. He stepped along arm in arm with Luke, cheerful, and fate-defiant, and as he thought of Tregarva’s complaints,—
‘The beautiful?’ he said to himself, ‘they shall have it! At least they shall be awakened to feel their need of it, their right to it. What a high destiny, to be the artist of the people! ”

“ Descriptions of drawings are clumsy things at best; the reader must fill up the sketch for himself by the eye of faith.
Entranced in wonder and pleasure, Argemone let her eyes wander over the drawing. And her feelings for Lancelot amounted almost to worship, as she apprehended the harmonious unity of the manifold conception,—the rugged boldness of the groups in front, the soft grandeur of the figure which was the lodestar of all their emotions—the virginal purity of the whole. ”

“ We are a stern people, and winter suits us. Nature then retires modestly into the back-ground, and spares us the obtrusive glitter of summer, leaving us to think and work; and therefore it happens that in England, it may be taken as a general rule, that whenever all the rest of the world is in-doors, we are out and busy, and on the whole, the worse the day, the better the deed.
The weather that day, the first day Lancelot ever saw his beloved, was truly national. A silent, dim, distanceless, steaming, rotting day in March. ”

“ I believe that the ancient Creed, the Eternal Gospel, will stand, and conquer, and prove its might in this age, as it has in every other for eighteen hundred years, by claiming, and subduing, and organising those young anarchic forces, which now, unconscious of their parentage, rebel against Him to whom they owe their being.
But for the time being, the young men and women of our day are fast parting from their parents and each other; the more thoughtful are wandering either towards Rome, towards sheer materialism, or towards an unchristian and unphilosophic spiritualism. ”

“ Here and there smiled a plump rosy face enough; but the majority seemed under-sized, under-fed, utterly wanting in grace, vigour, and what the penny-a-liners call ‘rude health.’ He remarked it to Tregarva. The keeper smiled mournfully.
‘You see those little creatures dragging home babies in arms nearly as big as themselves, sir. That and bad food, want of milk especially, accounts for their growing up no bigger than they do; and as for their sad countenances, sir, most of them must carry a lighter conscience before they carry a brighter face.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lancelot. ”

“ See, I say, what a chaos of noble materials is here,—all confused, it is true,—polarised, jarring, and chaotic,—here bigotry, there self-will, superstition, sheer Atheism often, but only waiting for the one inspiring Spirit to organise, and unite, and consecrate this chaos into the noblest polity the world ever saw realised! What a destiny may be that of your land, if you have but the faith to see your own honour! ”

“ We Wesleyans know, sir,—for the matter of that, every soldier knows,—what virtue there is in getting a lot of men together; how good and evil spread like wildfire through a crowd; and one man, if you can stir him up, will become leaven to leaven the whole lump. Oh why, sir, are they so afraid of field-preaching? Was not their Master and mine the prince of all field-preachers? Think, if the Apostles had waited to collect subscriptions for a church before they spoke to the poor heathens, where should we have been now?’
Lancelot could not but agree. ”

“ Sweet self-deceiver! had you no other reason for choosing as your heroine Sappho, the victim of the idolatry of intellect—trying in vain to fill her heart with the friendship of her own sex, and then sinking into mere passion for a handsome boy, and so down into self-contempt and suicide?
She was conscious, I do believe, of no other reason than that she gave; but consciousness is a dim candle over a deep mine. ”

“ But, sir,’ he went on, with a concentrated bitterness which Lancelot had never seen in him before, ‘just because this gulf which rank makes is such a deep one, therefore it looks to me all the more devilish; not that I want to pull down any man to my level; I despise my own level too much; I want to rise; I want those like me to rise with me. Let the rich be as rich as they will.—I, and those like me, covet not money, but manners. Why should not the workman be a gentleman, and a workman still? ”

“ We must play for love, or we shall excite ourselves, and scandalise Mrs. Lavington’s piety.’ And the colonel pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket, and seeing that Lancelot was too thoughtful for play, commenced all manner of juggler’s tricks, and chuckled over them like any schoolboy.
‘Happy man!’ thought Lancelot, ‘to have the strength of will which can thrust its thoughts away once and for all.’ No, Lancelot! more happy are they whom God will not allow to thrust their thoughts from them till the bitter draught has done its work. ”

“ An old shrunken man opposite him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipe-stem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war, ‘when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than there were hands.’ ‘Poor human nature!’ thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as usual, in more swearing, and more quarrelling, and more beer to make it up—‘Poor human nature! ”

“ He knows nothing but what he has picked up ready-made from books. After all, his opinions are the one redeeming point in him.’
‘Ah, my dear, when it pleases Heaven to open your eyes, you will see as I do!’
Poor Mrs. Lavington! Unconscious spokeswoman for the ninety-nine hundredths of the human race! What are we all doing from morning to night, but setting up our own fancies as the measure of all heaven and earth, and saying, each in his own dialect, Whig, Radical, or Tory, Papist or Protestant, ‘When it pleases Heaven to open your eyes you will see as I do’? ”

“ That very intense tenderness and excitability which made her toil herself among the poor, and had called out both her admiration of Tregarva and her extravagant passion at his danger, made her also shrink with disgust from anything which thrust on her a painful reality, which she could not remedy. She was a staunch believer, too, in that peculiar creed which allows every one to feel for the poor, except themselves, and considers that to plead the cause of working-men is, in a gentleman, the perfection of virtue, but in a working-man himself, sheer high treason. ”