Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service Part 7

I was sound asleep, though the noise of the storm was actually deafening, when Lizzy again tapped at my door, and at last, opening it slightly, pushed a lighted candle inside, and disappeared. If there be a dreary thing in life, it is to get up before day of a dark, raw morning, in a room dest.i.tute of all comfort and convenience, and proceed to wash and dress in cold, gloom, and misery, with the consciousness that what you are about to do not only might be safer and better undone, but may, and not at all improbably will, turn out the rashest act of your life.

Over and over I said to myself, "If I were to tell her that I have a foreboding,--a distinct foreboding of calamity; that I dreamed a dream, and saw myself on a raft, while waves, mountain high, rose above me, and depths yawned beneath,--dark, fathomless, and terrible,--would she mind it?" I declare, on my sacred word of honor,--I declare I think she'd laugh at me!

"Are you ready?" whispered a soft voice at the door; and I saw at once my doom was p.r.o.nounced.

Noiselessly, stealthily, we crept down the stairs, and, crossing the little flagged kitchen, undid the heavy bars of the door. Shall I own that a thought of treason shot through me as I stood with the great bolt in my hands, and the idea flashed across me, "What if I were to let it fall with a crash, and awake the household?" Did she divine what was pa.s.sing in my head, as she silently took the bar from me, and put it away?

We were now in the open air, breasting a swooping nor'-wester that chilled the very marrow of my bones. She led the way through the dark night as though it were noonday, and I followed, tumbling over stones and rocks and tufts of heather, and falling into holes, and scrambling out again like one drunk. I could hear her laughing at me too,--she who so seldom laughed; and it was with difficulty she could muster gravity enough to say she hoped I had not hurt myself.

We gained the pier at last, and, guided by a lantern held by one of the boatmen, we saw the boat bobbing and tossing some five feet down below.

Lizzy sprang in at once, amidst the applauding cheers of the crew; and then several voices cried out, "Now, sir! Now, your honor!" while two stout fellows pushed me vigorously, as though to throw me into the sea.

I struggled and fought manfully, but in vain. I was jerked off my legs, and hurled headlong down, and found myself caught below by some strong arms, though not until I had half sprained my wrist, and barked one of my s.h.i.+ns from knee to instep. These sufferings soon gave way to others, as I became sea-sick, and lay at the bottom of the boat, praying we might all go down, and end a misery I could no longer endure. That spars struck me, and ballast rolled over me; that heavy-footed sailors trampled me, and seemed to dance on me,--were things I minded not. Great waves broke over the bows, and came in sheets of foam and water over me. What cared I? I had that death-like sickness that makes all life hideous, and I felt I had reached a depth of degradation and misery in which there was only one desire,--that for death. That we succeeded in clearing the point which formed one side of the bay was little short of a miracle, and I remember the cheer the boatmen gave as the danger was pa.s.sed, and my last hope of our all going down left me. After this, I know no more.

A wild confusion of voices, a sort of scuffling uproar, a grating sound, and more feet dancing over me, aroused me. I looked up. It was dawn; a gray murky streak lay towards the horizon, and sheets of rain were carried swiftly on the winds. We were being dragged up on a low s.h.i.+ngly sh.o.r.e, and the men--up to their waists in water--were carrying the boat along.

As I looked over the gunwale, I saw a huge strong fellow rush down the slope, and breasting the waves as they beat, approach the boat.

Lizzy sprang into his arms at once, and he carried her back to land triumphantly. I suppose at any other moment a pang of jealousy might have shot through me. Much sea-sickness, like perfect love, overcometh all things. I felt no more, as I gazed, than if it had been a bundle he had been clasping to his bosom.

They lifted me up, and laid me on the s.h.i.+ngle.

"Oh, do, Tom; he is such a good creature!" said a voice which, low as it was, I heard distinctly.

"By all that's droll! this is the c.o.c.kney I met at Mor-risson's!" cried a loud voice. I looked up; and there, bending over me, was Counsellor MacNamara, the bland stranger I had fallen in with at Dublin.

"Are you able to get on your legs," asked he, "or shall we have you carried?"

"No," said I, faintly; "I 'd rather lie here."

"Oh, we can't leave him here, Tom; it's too cruel."

"I tell you, Lizzy," said he, impatiently, "there's not a minute to lose."

"Let them carry him, then," said she, pleadingly.

I mildly protested my wish to live and die where I lay; but they carried me up somewhere, and they put me to bed, and they gave me hot drinks, and I fell into, not a sleep, but a trance, that lasted twenty-odd hours.

"Faix! they had a narrow escape of it," were the first intelligible words I heard on awaking. "They were only just married and druv off when old Dan Dudgeon came up, driving like mad. He was foaming with pa.s.sion, and said if he went to the gallows for it, he 'd shoot the rascal that abused his hospitality and stole his daughter. The lady left this note for your honor."

It went thus:--

"Dear Mr. Gosslett,--You will, I well know, bear me no ill-will for the little fraud I have practised on you. It was an old engagement, broken off by a momentary imprudence on Tom's part; but as I knew he loved me, it was forgiven. My father would not have ever consented to the match, and we were driven to this strait. I entreat you to forgive and believe me

"Most truly yours,

"Lizzy MacNamara."

I stole quietly out of Ireland after this, and got over to the Isle of Man, where I learned that my patron had thrown up his Ionian appointment, and I was once again on the world.

CONFESSION THE LAST.

AS TO LAW.

I do not exactly know why I sit down to make this my last confession. I can scarcely be a guide to any one. I even doubt if I can be a warning, for when a man is as miserably unlucky as I have proved myself, the natural inference is to regard him as the exception to the ordinary lot of mortals,--a craft fated to founder ere it was launched. It's all very well to deny the existence of such a thing as luck. It sounds splendidly wise in the Latin moralist to say, "_Non numen habes fortuna si sit prudentia_," which is the old story of putting the salt on the bird's tail over again, since, I say, we can always a.s.sume the "prudentia"

where there is the "fortuna," and in the same way declare that the unlucky man failed because he was deficient in that same gift of foresight.

Few men knew life so thoroughly in every condition, and under every aspect, as the first Napoleon, and he invariably asked, when inquiring into the fitness of a man for a great command, "Is he lucky?" To my own thinking, it would be as truthful to declare that there was no element of luck in whist, as to say there was no such thing as luck in life.

Now, all the "prudentia" in the world will not give a man four by honors; and though a good player may make a better fight with a bad hand than an indifferent performer, there is that amount of badness occasionally dealt out that no skill can compensate; and do what he may, he must lose the game.

Now, I am by no means about to set up as a model of prudence, industry, or perseverance; as little can I lay claim to anything like natural ability or cleverness. I am essentially common-place,--one of those men taken "ex medio acervo" of humanity, whose best boast is that they form the staple of the race, and are the majority in all nations.

There is a very pleasant pa.s.sage in Lockhart's Life of Scott. I cannot lay my hand on it, and may spoil it in the attempt to quote, but the purport is, that one day when Lockhart had used the word "vulgar" in criticising the manners of some people they had been discussing, Sir Walter rebuked him for the mistaken sense he had ascribed to the expression. Vulgar, said he, is only common, and common means general; and what is the general habit and usage of mankind has its base and foundation in a feeling and sentiment that we must not lightly censure.

It is, at all events, human.

I wish I could give the text of the pa.s.sage, for I see how lamentably I have rendered it, but this was the meaning it conveyed to me, and I own I have very often thought over it with comfort and with grat.i.tude.

If the great thinkers--the men of lofty intellects and high-soaring faculties--were but to know how, in vindicating the claims of every-day people to respect and regard, in s.h.i.+elding them from the sneers of smart men and the quips of witty men, they were doing a great and n.o.ble work, for which millions of people like myself would bless them, I am certain we should find many more such kindly utterances as that of the great Sir Walter.

I ask pardon for my digression, so selfish as it is, and return to my narrative.

After that famous "fiasco" I made in Ireland, I--as the cant phrase has it--got dark for some time. My temper, which at first sustained me under any amount of banter and ridicule, had begun to give way, and I avoided my relations, who certainly never took any peculiar pains to treat me with delicacy, or had the slightest hesitation in making me a b.u.t.t for very coa.r.s.e jokes and very contemptible drollery.

I tried a number of things,--that is, I begun them. I begun to read for the law; I begun a novel; I begun to attend divinity lectures; I got a clerks.h.i.+p in a public office, as supernumerary; I was employed as traveller to a house in the wooden-clock trade; I was secretary to an a.s.sociation for the Protection of Domestic Cats, and wrote the prospectus for the "Cats' Home:" but it's no use entering into details.

I failed in all; and to such an extent of notoriety had my ill-fortune now attained, that the very mention of my name in connection with a new project would have sentenced it at once to ruin.

Over and over again have I heard my "friends," when whispering together over some new scheme, mutter, "Of course Paul is to have nothing to do with it," "Take care that Paul Gosslett is n't in it," and such-like intimations, that gave me the sensation of being a sort of moral leper, whose mere presence was a calamity. The sense of being deemed universally an unlucky fellow is one of the most depressing things imaginable,--to feel that your presence is accounted an evil agency,--and that your co-operation foreshadows failure,--goes a considerable way towards accomplis.h.i.+ng the prediction announced.

Though my uncle's stereotyped recommendation to become a coal-heaver was not exactly to my taste, I had serious thoughts of buying a sack, and by a little private practice discovering whether the profession might not in the end become endurable. I was fairly at my wits'-end for a livelihood; and the depression and misery my presence occasioned wherever I went reacted on myself, and almost drove me to desperation.

I was actually so afraid of an evil temptation that I gave up my little lodging that I was so fond of, near Putney, and went to live at Hampstead, where there was no water deep enough to drown a rat. I also forewent shaving, that I might banish my razors, and in all respects set myself steadily to meet the accidents of life with as near an approach to jollity as I could muster.

The simple pleasures of nature--the enjoyment of the fields and the wild flowers; the calm contemplation of the rising or setting sun; the varied forms of insect life; the many-tinted lichens; the ferns; the mosses that clothe the banks of shady alleys; the limpid pools, starred and broken by the dragon-fly, so full of their own especial charm for the weary voluptuary sick of pampered pleasures and exotic luxuries--do not appeal to the senses of the poor man with that wonderful force of contrast which gives them all their excellence. I have seen an alderman express himself in ecstasies over a roast potato, which certainly would not have called forth the same show of appreciation from an Irish peasant. We like what awakens a new sensation in us, what withdraws us even in imagination from the routine of our daily lives. There is a great self-esteem gratified when we say how simple we can be, how happy in humility, how easily satisfied, and how little dependent on mere luxury or wealth.

The postman who pa.s.sed my window every morning had long ceased to be an object of interest or anxiety to me; for others he brought tidings, good or ill as it might be, but to me, forgotten and ignored of the world, no news ever came; when one day, to my intense surprise, at first to my perfect incredulity, I saw him draw forth a letter, and make a sign to me to come down and take it. Yes, there it was, "Paul Gosslett, Esq., The Flaggers, Putney," with "Try Sandpit Cottages, Hampstead," in another hand, in the corner. It was from my aunt, and ran thus:--

"The Briars, Rochester.

"Dear Paul,--I am rejoiced to say there is a good chance of a situation for you with handsome pay and most agreeable duty. You are to come down here at once, and see your uncle, but on no account let it be known that I have mentioned to you the prospect of employment.

"Your affectionate aunt,

"Jane Morse."

I took the morning train, and arrived at Rochester by nine o'clock, remembering, not without pain, my last experiences of my uncle's hospitality. I breakfasted at the inn, and only arrived at the house when he had finished his morning meal, and was smoking his pipe in the garden.