CHAPTER IX.
"Whence that low voice, a whisper from the heart,
That told of days long past?"--WORDSWORTH.
ERNEST stayed several days at Lord Doningdale's, and every day he rode
out with Valerie, but it was with a large party; and every evening he
conversed with her, but the whole world might have overheard what they
said. In fact, the sympathy that had once existed between the young
dreamer and the proud, discontented woman had in much passed away.
Awakened to vast and grand objects, Maltravers was a dreamer no more.
Inured to the life of trifles she had once loathed, Valerie had settled
down into the usages and thoughts of the common world--she had no longer
the superiority of earthly wisdom over Maltravers, and his romance was
sobered in its eloquence, and her ear dulled to its tone. Still Ernest
felt a deep interest in her, and still she seemed to feel a sensitive
pride in his career.
One evening Maltravers had joined a circle in which Madame de Ventadour,
with more than her usual animation, presided--and to which, in her
pretty, womanly, and thoroughly French way, she was lightly laying down
the law on a hundred subjects--Philosophy, Poetry, Sevres china, and the
balance of power in Europe. Ernest listened to her, delighted, but not
enchanted. Yet Valerie was not natural that night--she was speaking
from forced spirits.
"Well," said Madame de Ventadour at last, tired, perhaps of the part she
had been playing, and bringing to a sudden close an animated description
of the then French court--"well, see now if we ought not to be ashamed
of ourselves--our talk has positively interrupted the music. Did you
see Lord Doningdale stop it with a bow to me, as much as to say, with
his courtly reproof, 'It shall not disturb you, madam'? I will no
longer be accessory to your crime of bad taste!"
With this the Frenchwoman rose, and, gliding through the circle, retired
to the further end of the room. Ernest followed her with his eyes.
Suddenly she beckoned to him, and he approached and seated himself by
her side.
"Mr. Maltravers," said Valerie, then, with great sweetness in her
voice,--"I have not yet expressed to you the delight I have felt from
your genius. In absence you have suffered me to converse with you--your
books have been to me dear friends; as we shall soon part again, let me
now tell you of this, frankly and without compliment."
This paved the way to a conversation that approached more on the
precincts of the past than any they had yet known. But Ernest was
guarded; and Valerie watched his words and looks with an interest she
could not conceal--an interest that partook of disappointment.
"It is an excitement," said Valerie, "to climb a mountain, though it
fatigue; and though the clouds may even deny us a prospect from its
summit--it is an excitement that gives a very universal pleasure, and
that seems almost as if it were the result of a common human instinct
which makes us desire to rise--to get above the ordinary thoroughfares
and level of life. Some such pleasure you must have in intellectual
ambition, in which the mind is the upward traveller."
"It is not the /ambition/ that pleases," replied Maltravers, it is the
following a path congenial to our tastes, and made dear to us in a short
time by habit. The moments in which we look beyond our work, and fancy
ourselves seated beneath the Everlasting Laurel, are few. It is the
work itself, whether of action or literature, that interests and excites
us. And at length the dryness of toil takes the familiar sweetness of
custom. But in intellectual labour there is another charm--we become
more intimate with our own nature. The heart and the soul grow friends,
as it were, and the affections and the aspirations unite. Thus, we are
never without society--we are never alone; all that we have read,
learned and discovered, is company to us. This is pleasant," added
Maltravers, "to those who have no clear connections in the world
without."
"And is that your case?" asked Valerie, with a timid smile.
"Alas, yes! and since I conquered one affection,--Madame de Ventadour, I
almost think I have outlived the capacity of loving. I believe that
when we cultivate very largely the reason or the imagination, we blunt,
to a certain extent, our young susceptibilities to the fair impressions
of real life. From 'idleness,' says the old Roman poet, 'Love feeds his
torch.'"
"You are too young to talk thus."
"I speak as I feel."
Valerie said no more. Shortly afterwards Lord Doningdale approached
them, and proposed that they should make an excursion the next day to
see the ruins of an old abbey, some few miles distant.
