The Young Duke

  CHAPTER III.

  _'A Little Rift.'_

  IT IS said that the conduct of refined society, in a literary point ofview, is, on the whole, productive but of slight interest; that all wecan aspire to is, to trace a brilliant picture of brilliant manners;and that when the dance and the festival have been duly inspired by therepartee and the sarcasm, and the gem, the robe, and the plume adroitlylighted up by the lamp and the lustre, our cunning is exhausted. And soyour novelist generally twists this golden thread with some substantialsilken cord, for use, and works up, with the light dance, and with theheavy dinner, some secret marriage, and some shrouded murder. And thus,by English plots and German mysteries, the page trots on, or jolts,till, in the end, Justice will have her way, and the three volumes arecompleted.

  A plan both good and antique, and also popular, but not our way. Weprefer trusting to the slender incidents which spring from out ourcommon intercourse. There is no doubt that that great pumice-stone,Society, smooths down the edges of your thoughts and manners. Bodies ofmen who pursue the same object must ever resemble each other: the lifeof the majority must ever be imitation. Thought is a labour to which feware competent; and truth requires for its development as much courage asacuteness. So conduct becomes conventional, and opinion is a legend; andthus all men act and think alike.

  But this is not peculiar to what is called fashionable life, it ispeculiar to civilisation, which gives the passions less to work upon.Mankind are not more heartless because they are clothed in ermine; it isthat their costume attracts us to their characters, and we stare becausewe find the prince or the peeress neither a conqueror nor a heroine. Thegreat majority of human beings in a country like England glides throughexistence in perfect ignorance of their natures, so complicated and socontrolling is the machinery of our social life! Few can break the bondsthat tie them down, and struggle for self-knowledge; fewer, whenthe talisman is gained, can direct their illuminated energies to thepurposes with which they sympathise.

  A mode of life which encloses in its circle all the dark and deepresults of unbounded indulgence, however it may appear to some whoglance over the sparkling surface, does not exactly seem to us oneeither insipid or uninteresting to the moral speculator; and, indeed, wehave long been induced to suspect that the seeds of true sublimity lurkin a life which, like this book, is half fashion and half passion.

  We know not how it was, but about this time an unaccountable, almostan imperceptible, coolness seemed to spring up between our hero and theLady Aphrodite. If we were to puzzle our brains for ever, we could notgive you the reason. Nothing happened, nothing had been said or done,which could indicate its origin. Perhaps this _was_ the origin; perhapsthe Duke's conduct had become, though unexceptionable, too negative.But here we only throw up a straw. Perhaps, if we must go on suggesting,anxiety ends in callousness.

  His Grace had thought so much of her feelings, that he had quiteforgotten his own, or worn them out. Her Ladyship, too, was perhapsa little disappointed at the unexpected reconciliation. When we havescrewed our courage up to the sticking point, we like not to be baulked.Both, too, perhaps--we go on _perhapsing_--both, too, we repeat,perhaps, could not help mutually viewing each other as the cause of muchmutual care and mutual anxiousness. Both, too, perhaps, were a littletired, but without knowing it. The most curious thing, and which wouldhave augured worst to a calm judge, was, that they silently seemedto agree not to understand that any alteration had really taken placebetween them, which, we think, was a bad sign: because a lover'squarrel, we all know, like a storm in summer, portends a renewal of warmweather or ardent feelings; and a lady is never so well seated in heradmirer's heart as when those betters are interchanged which express somuch, and those explanations entered upon which explain so little.

  And here we would dilate on greater things than some imagine; but,unfortunately, we are engaged. For Newmarket calls Sir Lucius and hisfriends. We will not join them, having lost enough. His Grace halfpromised to be one of the party; but when the day came, just rememberedthe Shropshires were expected, and so was very sorry, and the rest. LadyAphrodite and himself parted with warmth which remarkably contrastedwith their late intercourse, and which neither of them could decidewhether it were reviving affection or factitious effort. M. deWhiskerburg and Count Frill departed with Sir Lucius, being extremelydesirous to be initiated in the mysteries of the turf, and, above all,to see a real English jockey.