Vaughan

“ It is this insight that makes Vaughan a mystic. He can see one thing everywhere, and all things the same—yet each with a thousand sides that radiate crossing lights, even as the airy particles around us. For him everything is the expression of, and points back to, some fact in the Divine Thought. ”

“ But in his present mood Vaughan liked his plan the better for this. Henceforth he would be iron, he would be adamant! And only by a little thing did he betray that under the iron and under the adamant he carried an aching heart. When he came to book his place, deliberately, wilfully, he chose to travel by the Bath road and the White Lion coach, though he could have gone at least as conveniently by another coach and another route. Thus have men ever, since they first felt the pangs of love, rejoiced to press the dart more deeply in the wound. ”

“ Vaughan doubted no longer, weighed the propriety of his course no longer. For a cool-headed man of the world, who asked nothing better than to master a silly fancy, he was foolishly perturbed. He made on with a grim face; but a dray loading at a Newport coal-hulk drew across his path, and Flixton was pacing under the pleasant elms and amid the groups that loitered up and down the sunlit Square, before Vaughan came within hail, and called him by name. ”

“ What Vaughan does know is nothing to him; when he salutes the Bodleian from his heart, he is thinking how little honey he has gathered from that vast hive, and how little it contains, when measured with what there is to learn from living and dying. ”

“ LESS THAN A HERO
It was the evening of the day on which the meeting between Arthur Vaughan and Mr. Pybus had taken place, and from the thirty-six windows in the front of Stapylton lights shone on the dusky glades of the park; here, twinkling fairy-like over the long slope of sward that shimmered pale-green as with the ghostly reflection of dead daylight, there, shining boldly upon the clump of beeches that topped an eminence with blackness. Vaughan sat beside Isaac White in the carriage which Sir Robert had sent for him ”

“ He lifted his hat with a pleasant air, and addressed me with a smile,
"Ah! now, this I call a pity, a great pity, indeed, Miss Vaughan; but that I always fear the imputation of pedantry, I should call it a bathos. You can hardly be aware that since you made that dreadful noise, you have fallen in my opinion from a Porcia, or an Arria, to a common maid Marian. Fie, fie, it is too disappointing. It saps one's candid faith in the nobility of human nature. ”

“ Fletcher, I found, whom?--Conrad!
Very pale and ill he looked, so unlike himself that I was shocked, and instead of leaping to him, fell upon a chair. He mistook me, and approached very slowly, but with his dear old smile: how my heart beat, how I longed to be in his arms; but they looked too weak to hold me.
"Oh, Miss Vaughan, I know everything. Will you ever forgive me?"
"Never, my own darling, while you call me that. Forgive you indeed! Can I ever forgive myself, for the evil I have thought of you? How very ill you look! Come and let me kiss you well." ”

“ He listened eagerly and presently the noise grew louder, and became a strident and horrible hissing as if the pit beneath boiled with fervent heat, and Vaughan, unable to remain in suspense any longer, drew his cap half over his face in imitation of Dyson, and looked down to the hollow below. ”

“ The farmer's face I shall never forget; as he slowly gathered the truth, it became majestic with honest indignation. A strong man's wrath at deceit and foul play sat upon it, like a king on his throne.
"For the chillers--" he stammered at last--"ony for the poor chiller's sake--else I'd never stand it, danged if I wud, Miss Clara; it make a man feel like a rogue and a cheat himself."
Then, with all the power of his mighty voice he shouted, so that every fold of the canvass shook, and every heart thrilled fearfully:
"Men of Lunnon, if men you be, no chap can have fair play with you. ”

“ Vaughan adored his friends; he had a unique veneration for childhood; his adjective for the admirable and beautiful, whether material or immaterial, is “dear”; and his mind dwelt with habitual fondness on what Sir Thomas Browne (a man after his own heart) calls “incomprehensibles, and thoughts of things which thoughts do but tenderly touch.” ”

“ Once, indeed, I rested at the ancient tower, near my Lily's grave, which I always visited twice in every year. I have some vague idea, now in my old age, that though we Vaughans detest any display of feeling--except indeed at times when the heart is too big for the skin--we are in substance, without knowing it, a most romantic race. Whether we are that, or not, is matter of small moment; one thing is quite certain, we are strutted well and stable. We are not quick of reception, but we are most retentive. Never was there man of us who ever loved a woman and cast her off through weariness ”

“ In those days of mutes and crape-coloured staves, mourning cloaks and trailing palls, it was not the custom for women to bury their dead. And Vaughan, when he had made up his mind to come, knew that he ran no risk of seeing Mary.
That he might escape with greater case, he had left his post-chaise at a side-gate of the park. The moment the ceremony was over, he made his way to it, now traversing beds of fallen chestnut and sycamore leaves, now striding across the sodden turf. ”

“ She turned round once, as she crossed the threshold, and gave me a look which I shall never forget. Was such the look that had glared on my father before the blow? She lifted the white arm of which she was proud, and threw back her head, like the Fecial hurling his dart.
"Clara Vaughan, you shall bitterly grieve for this. It shall throw you and your mother at the feet of your father's murderer, and you shall crave meat worse than your enemy's blood." ”

“ Vaughan, therefore, was not the only one who walked into the lobby that evening, brooding darkly on his revenge. Yet, even he behaved himself as men, so bred, so trained do behave themselves. He held his peace. And no one dreamed, not even Orator Hunt, who sat not far from him under the shadow of his White Hat, that this well-conducted young gentleman was revolving thoughts of the Social Order, and of the Party System, and of most things which the Church Catechism commends, beside which that terrible Radical’s own opinions were mere Tory prejudices. ”

“ Then I kissed her sweet lips, and admired her, more than she admired herself.
"Clara, it does not matter how much trouble you take; you can't make me look a quarter so well as you do."
"Not quite so tall, my darling, nor anything like so naughty; but a thousand times more lovely."
"Well, I wish I could think so. I am always longing to change with you."
"Don't talk nonsense, my pretty; if I were a man I should die for you. Now I glory in you as a Vaughan. Come along." ”

“ Are you quite certain that Conny and I are not--not--"
"Not base-born," I said--why be mawkish in Oscan-English, when Saxon is to be had?--"No, my darling, you are as lawful as I, your cousin Clara. We Vaughans are a passionate race, but we never make wrecks of women, and scoundrels of ourselves. That we leave for Corsicans, and people brought up to lies."
The sneer was most unjust, and dreadfully unkind, but far too natural for me, so long pent in, to resist it. I saw that I had grieved my pet, so I begged her pardon, and reviled myself, till all was right again. ”

“ If once I became insensible, or even if I retained my senses but failed to extinguish the fire, nothing more would ever be known or heard of Clara Vaughan; there would be nothing even to hold an inquest upon. I must burn ignobly, in the fat of that dreadful porpoise, and with the crocodile, and all those grinning beasts, so awful in the firelight, making faces at me! ”

“ Behind Vaughan in the same room, the drawing-room of the official residence, some twenty or thirty persons argued and gesticulated; at one time approaching a window to settle a debated point, at another scattering with exclamations of anger as a stone fell or some other missile alighted among them.
“Boo! Boo!” yelled the mob below. “Throw him out! Reform! Reform!”
Vaughan looked down on the welter of moving faces. He saw that the stone-throwers were few, and the daredevils, who at times adventured to pull up the railings which guarded the forecourt, were fewer. ”

“ Vaughan has very little quaintness, as we now understand that word, and none of the cloudiness and incorrigible grotesqueness which dominated his Alexandrian day. He has great temperance; he keeps his eye upon the end, and scarcely falls at all into “the fond adulteries of art,” inversions, unscholarly compound words, or hard-driven metaphors. If he be difficult to follow, it is only because he lives, as it were, in highly oxygenated air; he is remote and peculiar, but not eccentric. ”

“ A despairing look swept over Miss Gaubert's pretty face.
"A girl does not go out of her way," she repeated, "to see a man like you for nothing. Can you not understand that I am risking much by giving you this warning?"
"As I said before," answered Vaughan, "I am obliged to you, but my mind is made up. I can make no promise. The only thing I can say is that if Mr. Gaubert should call upon me I will remember that you have paid me this visit." ”

“ Ah! sulky, I fear; young lady sulky with the poor Professor, who tries to develop her mind. Fie, fie, very small and ungrateful, and not half so grand a study as the attitude of contempt. What a pity poor Conrad was not present an hour ago! How he might have enriched his little book of schemata. Several most magnificent poses. But I fear the poor fellow has taken his last chip. A sad thing, was it not? Why, how you start, Miss Vaughan! ”

“ The men who don’t feel the House never know the House. They dazzle it, Mr. Vaughan, but they don’t guide it. And that’s what we’ve got to do.”
He passed on then, with a melancholy nod and averted eyes, but Vaughan could have blest him for that “we.” “There’s one man at least believes in me,” he told himself. ”

“ But I wish some of my fellows had only half your spirit. A little more experience, and nothing will escape you. Come, Miss Vaughan, though you are a lady, or rather because you are one, give me your left hand, in token that you forgive me. ”

“ As he had many friends who made considerable exertions in his favour, the house was crowded. His acting was so truly ludicrous, that the audience instead of letting fall the pearly drops over their cheeks, were in an unceasing roar of laughter. Between the play and the farce a drunken fellow of the name of Vaughan was to deliver the celebrated epilogue of “Bucks, have at ye all.” He had made the most solemn promise to abstain from his usual drop of grog till he had performed his tour of duty. But alas! poor human nature, like other great men, he yielded to the temptation of a flowing bowl. ”

“ The evening wind had ceased from troubling the yews, and the short-lived songs of the birds were done. The place was as sad as I could wish. The smell of new earth inspired, as it always does, some unsearchable everlasting sympathy between the material and the creature.
The sun was setting behind me: suddenly a shadow eclipsed my own upon the red loam across the open grave. Without a start, and dreamily (as I did all things now) , I turned to see whence it came. Within a yard of me stood Mr. Edgar Vaughan. In a moment the old feeling was at my heart, and my wits were all awake. ”

“ And now Vaughan, who had a leaning towards experimental agriculture, was right-hand man to a great Russian noble, deep in the interior, and was engaged to be married to the daughter of the Scotch superintendent of the prince’s cotton factory. Indeed the wedding-day had been fixed, and it was to invite me to be present at the ceremony that Vaughan had written. A long letter, such a one as no man would be justified in inflicting upon a friend, except at a time like that, when a new life, with all its novel cares, hopes, and joys, was about to begin. ”

“ Presently a nice old lady, with snow-white hair, came in.
"Miss Vaughan," she asked with a pleasant smile, "do you wish to see me?"
"Yes, if you please. Just to ask a few questions as to the inmates of this house."
Despite her kindness and good breeding, the lady stared a little.
"May I inquire your motives? Do you know me at all? I have not the pleasure of knowing you."
"My motives I must not tell you. But, as a lady, I assure you, that curiosity is not one. Neither are they improper." ”

“ Though a dark sin is your leading star, I feel too painfully my own shortcomings, and old unregenerate tendencies, to refuse you my carnal sympathy. You know my feelings, Edgar."
"Indeed, Eleanor," replied my guardian, with an impenetrable smile, "how should I? You have always been such a model of every virtue."
She gave him a glance, and again addressed me. "Now suppose, Clara Vaughan, that, after years of brooding and lonely anguish, you obtain your revenge at last, who will be any the better for it?" ”

“ His mistress now stopped her work, and made ready for a long speech, with the usual snap of her lips.
"Know London, Miss Vaughan! I was born in Red Cross Street, and I've never been further out of town than Chalk Farm fair, or Hampstead Waterworks, and, please God, I never will. Bless me, what an awful place the country is, awful! What with the trees, and the ditches, and the sting-nettles, and the black wainscot with skewers on the top--"
"Too bad of you, Mrs. Shelfer, to be frightened at palings--and your husband a gardener, too! But tell me whereabouts is Grove Street?" ”