Roland Lansdell

“ Very few people ever quite understood Mr. Lansdell, and perhaps this was his highest charm. To be puzzled is the next thing to being interested; to be interested is to be charmed. Yes, capricious Nature had showered her gifts upon Roland Lansdell. ”

“ It was only when Roland Lansdell had been dead more than two years, that she began to understand that no grief, however bitter, can entirely obscure the beauty of the universe. She began to feel that there is something left in life even when a first romantic love is nothing but a memory; a peace which is so nearly akin to happiness, that we scarcely regret the flight of the brighter spirit; a calm which lies beyond the regions of despair, and which is unruffled by those vague fears, those shadowy forebodings, that are apt to trouble the joyful heart. ”

“ Ten years is a very long time when you have fifteen thousand a year and nothing particular to do with yourself or your money. Roland Lansdell had used up all the delights of civilized Europe; and the pleasures that seemed so freshly effervescent to other men were to him as champagne that has grown flat and vapid in the unemptied glasses on a deserted banquet-table.
He sat to-day in the great window of the library—a deeply-embayed Tudor window, jutting out upon a broad stone terrace, along whose balustrade a peacock stalked slowly in the sunshine. ”

“ And then the Tempter's hand swept aside a dark curtain, and revealed a lovely picture of the life that might be, if George Gilbert would only be so obliging as to sink under that tiresome low fever which had done so much mischief in the lanes about Graybridge. Roland Lansdell was not a hero; he was only a very imperfect, vacillating young man, with noble impulses for ever warring against the baser attributes of his mind ”

“ But it was not always that Roland Lansdell was thus bitter against the woman he loved. Sometimes in the midst of his rage and anger a sudden current of tenderness swept across the dark waters of his soul, and for a little while the image of Isabel Gilbert appeared to him in its true colours. He saw her as she really was: foolish, but not base; weak, but not hypocritical ”

“ That half-hour, during which the bells swung to and fro in the old steeple with a weary monotonous clang, seemed intolerably long to Roland Lansdell; but at last, at last, all was quiet, and the only bell to be heard in the summer stillness was the distant tinkle of a sheep-bell far away in the sunlit meadows. Mr. Lansdell got up as the clock struck three, and walked at a leisurely pace to the church.
Mr. Colborne was reading that solemn invitation to the wicked man to repent of his wickedness as the squire of Mordred went into the low porch. ”

“ It was not the goddess, but the god, who came down to earth. But that he should love her desperately and passionately, and be grief-stricken because he could not win her for his own,—this was a stupendous fact, almost beyond Isabel Gilbert's comprehension. Sometimes she thought he was only the wicked squire who pretends to be very much in earnest in the first act, and flings aside his victim with scorn and contumely in the second. Sometimes the whole truth burst upon her, sudden as a thunder-clap, and she felt that she had indeed done Roland Lansdell a great and cruel wrong. ”

“ A man passed along the road as Mr. Lansdell stood there, and looked at him as he went by, and then turned and looked after Isabel.
"Raymond is right, then," thought Roland; "they have begun to stare and chatter already. Let them talk about me at their tea-tables, and paragraph me in their newspapers, to their hearts' content! My soul is as much above them as the eagle soaring sunward is above the sheep that stare up at him from the valleys. I have set my foot upon the fiery ploughshare, but my darling shall be carried across it scatheless, in the strong arms of her lover." ”

“ Might not a walk across Mount Cenis cure him of his foolish love for Isabel Gilbert? Did not D'Alembert retire from the world and all its troubles into the peaceful pleasures of geometry? Did not Goethe seek relief from some great sorrow in the study of a new language? Roland Lansdell made a faint effort to acquire the Arabic alphabet during those wretched idle days and nights at Mordred. He would study the Semitic languages; all of them. He would go in for the Book of Job. Many people have got plenty of hard work out of the Book of Job. ”

“ A woman of the world, hardened by worldly experience, might have sat in that dusky chamber watching the sick man, and brooding, half remorsefully, half impatiently, upon the thought of what might happen if his malady should have a fatal ending. But this poor sentimental girl, nourished upon the airiest fancies of poets and romancers, had no such loathsome thoughts. Roland Lansdell's wealth and position had never tempted her ”

“ Thus it was that Roland Lansdell had been a kind of failure and disappointment. He had begun so brilliantly, he had promised so much. "If this young man is so brilliant at one-and-twenty," people had said to one another, "what will he be by the time he is forty-five?" But at thirty Roland was nothing. He had dropped out of public life altogether, and was only a drawing-room favourite; a lounger in gay Continental cities; a drowsy idler in fair Grecian islands ”

“ And all about a trumpery minx at Graybridge! Mr. Lansdell's body-servant would wind up, with unmitigated contempt: all about a young person who was not fit to hold a candle to Sarah Jane the housemaid, or Eliza in the laundry! Alas for Roland Lansdell, the servants who waited upon him knew quite as well as he knew himself the nature of the fever which had made him so restless! They knew that he was in love with a woman who could never be his wife ”

“ The curate might misunderstand her, as Roland Lansdell had done. He might see in her only an ordinarily wicked woman, who wanted to run away from her husband. Vague yearnings towards Christian holiness filled her foolish breast; but as yet she knew not how to put them into any shape. When the congregation rose to leave the church, she lingered to the last, and then crept slowly away, resolved to come again to hear this wonderful preacher. She went to the little station whence the Graybridge omnibus was to start at half-past eight ”

“ She hoped that if Roland Lansdell ever returned to Midlandshire it would be to find her dead. He could not despise her if she was dead. The only pleasant thought she had that afternoon was the fancy that Mr. Lansdell might come back to Mordred, and engage himself to his cousin, and the marriage would take place at Graybridge church; and as he was leading his bride along the quiet avenue, he would start back, anguish-stricken, at the sight of a newly-erected headstone—"To the memory of Isabel Gilbert, aged 20." 20! ”

“ An enchanter's wand had been waved above that dreary square-built house in the dusty lane, and a fairy palace had arisen for her habitation; a fairy-land of beauty and splendour had spread itself around her, a paradise in which she wandered hand in hand with a demigod. The image of Roland Lansdell had filled her life, to the exclusion of every other shape, animate or inanimate. ”

“ It would be November soon, and Roland Lansdell would go away. He would go before November, perhaps: he would go suddenly, whenever the fancy seized him. Who can calculate the arrangements of the Giaour or Sir Reginald Glanville? At any moment, in the dead darkness of the moonless night, the hero may call for his fiery steed, and only the thunder of hurrying hoofs upon the hard high-road may bear witness of his departure.
Mr. Lansdell might leave Mordred at any hour in the long summer day, Isabel thought, as she stood at the parlour window looking out at the dusty lane, where Mrs. ”

“ Lansdell?"
"Yes. My mother was a Lansdell. There's a sort of cousin-ship between Roland and me. He's a good fellow—a very noble-hearted, high-minded young fellow; but—"
But what? Mr. Raymond broke off with so deep a sigh, that Isabel imagined an entire romance upon the strength of the inspiration. Had he done anything wicked? that dark beautiful creature, who only wanted the soul-harrowing memory of a crime to render him perfect. Had he fled his country, like Byron? or buried a fellow-creature in a cave, like Mr. Aram? ”

“ Lansdell's valet, very busily occupied with a hat-brush, smiled softly to himself as his employer made this speech. The master of Mordred Priory need scarcely have stained his erring soul by any hypocritical phrases respecting the Graybridge surgeon.
"I shouldn't mind laying a twelvemonth's wages that if her husband dies, he marries her within six months," Roland's man-servant remarked, as he sipped his second cup of coffee; "I never did see such an infatuated young man in all my life." ”

“ So to-night, deeply absorbed though he was by the consciousness of his own wrongs, there was a kind of double action in Roland Lansdells mind, by means of which he was conscious of every flickering shadow of the honeysuckle blossoms dark upon the silver smoothness of the moonlit grass.
"I wonder how it is that people cannot be happy," he thought; "why can't they take a sensuous pleasure out of this beautiful universe, and enjoy the moonlight, and the shadows, and the perfume of new-mown hay upon the summer air ”

“ Lansdell, with sudden animation, "I should be a different man from what I am—a better man than you are, perhaps. I sometimes wonder at such as you, who believe in all the glories of unseen worlds, and yet are so eager and so worldly in all your doings upon this shabby commonplace earth. If I believed, I think I should be blinded and intoxicated by the splendour of my heritage; I would turn Trappist, and live in a dumb rapture from year's end to year's end. ”

“ Lansdell must have had business to transact in the immediate neighbourhood of Graybridge, for he walked all the way through those delicious meadows, and only parted with Isabel at a gate that opened into the high-road near the entrance of the town.
"I suppose you often stroll as far as Thurston's Crag?" Mr. Lansdell said.
"Oh yes, very often. It isn't too long a walk, and it is so pretty."
"It is pretty. Mordred is quite as near to you, though, and I think that you would like the garden at Mordred; there are ruins, you know, and it's altogether very romantic. ”

“ But we make our own election. When we are wise enough to abjure all the glittering battle-grounds of man's ambition, we must needs fall in love, and go mad because a shallow-hearted woman has black eyes and a straight nose. With red hair and freckles Mrs. Gilbert might go to perdition, unwept and unhindered; but because the false creature has a pretty face we want to tear her all to pieces for her treachery."
In that moonlight walk from Lowlands to Nessborough Hollow there was time enough for Mr. Lansdell to fall into many moods. ”

“ It is only I,—I who have lived apart from all the world to think and dream about her,—it is only I who am the last to be told of her shame. But I will try to see this fellow notwithstanding. I should like to see the man who has been preferred to me."
Nessborough Hollow was some distance from Lowlands; and Mr. Lansdell, who was familiar with almost every inch of his native county, made his way thither by shadowy lanes and rarely trodden by-ways, where the summer wild-flowers smelt sweetly in the dewy night. Never surely had brighter heavens shone upon a fairer earth. ”

“ Lansdell's disposal of his wealth; she heard the name, the dear romantic name, that was to be nothing henceforward but an empty sound, bandied from lip to lip; and all this pain was only some portion of the hideous dream which bound her night and day.
People were very kind to her. Even Graybridge took pity upon her youth and desolation; though every pang of her foolish heart was the subject of tea-table speculation. But the accomplished slanderer is not always a malevolently disposed person. He is only like the wit, who loves his jest better than his friend ”

“ Lansdell's ideas, which seemed especially irrelevant this afternoon, broke off abruptly. "I hope I may never do any harm," he thought. "I am not a good man or a useful man; but I don't think I have ever done much harm."
He lit another cigar, and strolled out upon the terrace, and from the terrace to the great quadrangular stable-yard. Upon one side of the quadrangle there was a cool arched way that had once been a cloister; and I regret to say that the stone cells in which the monks of Mordred had once spent their slow quiet days and meditative nights now did duty as loose-boxes for Mr. ”

“ It was infinitely better that he should be forgotten, and speedily; and yet it is hard to have no place in the universe—not even one hidden shrine in a foolish woman's heart. Mr. Lansdell was before the Priory gates by this time. The old woman stifled a yawn as she admitted the master of the domain. He went in past the little blinking light in the narrow Gothic window, and along the winding roadway between cool shrubberies that shed an aromatic perfume on the still night air. ”

“ Lansdell was very apt to call at Graybridge. He wanted Mr. Gilbert to go and see one of the men on the home-farm, who seemed in a very bad way, poor fellow, and ought not to be allowed to go on any longer without medical advice. Mr. Lansdell was very fond of looking up cases for the Graybridge surgeon. How good he was! Isabel thought; he in whom goodness was in a manner a supererogatory attribute; since heroes who were dark, and pensive, and handsome, were not called upon to be otherwise virtuous. ”

“ There was a passion of entreaty in his voice, and Lady Lanswell looked kindly at him.
"Certainly your marriage is of more importance than anything else on earth; but you cannot expect me to look with favor on that tempestuous young person who ranted at me like a third-rate actress from a traveling theater; you must excuse me, Lance, but there are limits to human endurance, and she is beyond mine." ”

“ Lansdell's brain as if they had been so many lively young serpents; and he only made so much headway in the attainment of the Semitic languages as enabled him to scrawl an Arabic rendering of Isabel Gilbert's name over the leaves of a blotting-book. He was in love. No schoolboy, bewitched by a pretty blue-eyed, blue-ribanded, white-robed partner at a dancing-school, was ever more foolishly in love than the young squire of Mordred, who had filled a whole volume with various metrical versions of his profound contempt for his species in general, and the feminine portion of them in particular. ”