第41章
When midnight o'er the moonless skies Her pall of transient death has spread, When mortals sleep, when spectres rise, And none are wakeful but the dead;No bloodless shape my way pursues, No sheeted ghost my couch annoys, Visions more sad my fancy views,--Visions of long departed joys.
W.R.Spenser.
When they reached the Green Room, as it was called, Oldbuck placed the candle on the toilet table, before a huge mirror with a black japanned frame, surrounded by dressing-boxes of the same, and looked around him with something of a disturbed expression of countenance.``I am seldom in this apartment,'' he said, ``and never without yielding to a melancholy feeling--not, of course, on account of the childish nonsense that Grizel was telling you, but owing to circumstances of an early and unhappy attachment.It is at such moments as these, Mr.Lovel, that we feel the changes of time.The, same objects are before us--those inanimate things which we have gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming manhood--they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them in cold unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our pursuits, our feelings--changed in our form, our limbs, and our strength,--can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves, as being separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who appealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety, did not choose a judge so different, as if he had appealed from Philip in his youth to Philip in his old age.Icannot but be touched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I have heard repeated:
* Probably Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads had not as yet been published.
My eyes are dim with childish tears, My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what time takes away, Than what he leaves behind.
Well, time cures every wound, and though the scar may remain and occasionally ache, yet the earliest agony of its recent infliction is felt no more.''--So saying, he shook Lovel cordially by the hand, wished him good-night, and took his leave.
Step after step Lovel could trace his host's retreat along the various passages, and each door which he closed behind him fell with a sound more distant and dead.The guest, thus separated from the living world, took up the candle and surveyed the apartment.
The fire blazed cheerfully.Mrs.Grizel's attention had left some fresh wood, should he choose to continue it, and the apartment had a comfortable, though not a lively appearance.It was hung with tapestry, which the looms of Arras had produced in the sixteenth century, and which the learned typographer, so often mentioned, had brought with him as a sample of the arts of the Continent.The subject was a hunting-piece; and as the leafy boughs of the forest-trees, branching over the tapestry, formed the predominant colour, the apartment had thence acquired its name of the Green Chamber.Grim figures in the old Flemish dress, with slashed doublets covered with ribbands, short cloaks, and trunk-hose, were engaged in holding grey-hounds, or stag-hounds, in the leash, or cheering them upon the objects of their game.Others, with boar-spears, swords, and old-fashioned guns, were attacking stags or boars whom they had brought to bay.The branches of the woven forest were crowded with fowls of various kinds, each depicted with its proper plumage.It seemed as if the prolific and rich invention of old Chaucer had animated the Flemish artist with its profusion, and Oldbuck had accordingly caused the following verses, from that ancient and excellent poet, to be embroidered in Gothic letters, on a sort of border which he had added to the tapestry:-Lo! here be oakis grete, streight as a line, Under the which the grass, so fresh of line, Be'th newly sprung--at eight foot or nine.
Everich tree well from his fellow grew, With branches broad laden with leaves new, That sprongen out against the sonne sheene, Some golden red and some a glad bright green.
And in another canton was the following similar legend:--And many an hart and many an hind, Was both before me, and behind.
Of fawns, sownders, bucks and does, Was full the wood and many roes, And many squirrels that ysate High on the trees and nuts ate.
The bed was of a dark and faded green, wrought to correspond with the tapestry, but by a more modern and less skilful hand.
The large and heavy stuff-bottomed chairs, with black ebony backs, were embroidered after the same pattern, and a lofty mirror, over the antique chimney-piece, corresponded in its mounting with that on the old-fashioned toilet.
``I have heard,'' muttered Lovel, as he took a cursory view of the room and its furniture, ``that ghosts often chose the best room in the mansion to which they attached themselves; and Icannot disapprove of the taste of the disembodied printer of the Augsburg Confession.'' But he found it so difficult to fix his mind upon the stories which had been told him of an apartment with which they seemed so singularly to correspond, that he almost regretted the absence of those agitated feelings, half fear half curiosity, which sympathise with the old legends of awe and wonder, from which the anxious reality of his own hopeless passion at present detached him.For he now only felt emotions like those expressed in the lines,--Ah! cruel maid, how hast thou changed The temper of my mind!
My heart, by thee from all estranged, Becomes like thee unkind.