REALMAH’S SUCCESS.

We left Realmah intent upon recommencing his work on the morrow. Wiser thoughts, however, took possession of his mind, and he resolved, before he commenced his own especial work, to regain, if possible, the good opinion of his countrymen. Deeply deliberating upon the folly of mankind, he came to the conclusion that he must maintain his influence with his nation by the ordinary arts of statesmen if he would successfully undertake any new invention. Wherever there are few real distinctions amongst mankind it is especially necessary to invent conventional distinctions. The chieftains therefore of the Sheviri were particularly careful by a composed gesture, by gravity of speech and solemnity of demeanour, to show that they were different from other men, and so to maintain and dignify their high position. When there are real distinctions amongst men, this is less necessary. For instance, in more civilized life, when a man is a distinguished scholar, or an eminent mathematician, or a profound lawyer, he need hardly care much about the dignity or the grace of his demeanour. He has his just influence from the special knowledge which he possesses.

Realmah, however, had to win the regard of his countrymen by the arts that were usually employed by their chiefs. Some weeks passed by before he accomplished this result; but at last he did accomplish it, and began to feel himself strong enough in the good opinion of those about him to recommence his great work. Before doing so, however, he thought it prudent to communicate, in a vague way, his hopes and aims to several of his friends. He did not tell them that he hoped to melt stones into metal; but he mentioned that he had some ideas which might be wise, or might be foolish, but which he must endeavour to prove, and which had reference to improving their defences. He met with little encouragement; but he felt that he had at any rate told enough of his plan to prevent for the future any outbreak of excessive ridicule and hostility in the way of criticisms. He took care to promise that, when he had made some more experiments, he would open his mind fully to his friends if there should be anything worth asking their advice about.

He had come to the conclusion, as we know, that his fires had been utterly insufficient. He now resolved to form them underground. For this purpose he dug a round pit, cementing it as well as he could with clay, formed an adit to it communicating with the surface of the ground, and then endeavoured to burn some of the stones which he had collected. This experiment was not successful; but he observed that he had produced a much fiercer fire. He now resolved to pay still greater attention to his fuel, of which he prepared large stacks carefully dried. He also resolved to intermix the fuel with the stones, and he determined to try the next experiment upon a much larger scale. This time the result was different. He succeeded in getting up and maintaining such a degree of heat as had never yet been accomplished in that part of the world. For five days and nights he kept up his furnace; and, finally, he banked in the fire from the top by putting on more stones and by covering it all, to two feet of depth, with tenacious clay, leaving a small aperture by way of a chimney. When the glowing mass had become cool, which did not take place for several days, the pit was uncovered and laid bare, and at the bottom of it there was found a considerable quantity of metal that had run together. Realmah felt certain that his great problem was now solved. The Ainah had been assiduous in her attentions to him during the critical days which this experiment had occupied. She was present at the uncovering of the pit, and was the first person to whom he triumphantly showed the result of his long-continued labours. Forgetting their habitual reserve, and unmindful of the various comments that might be made upon their conduct, the two lovers embraced each other fondly. They then proceeded home in triumph.

But alas! what are the triumphs of men? Realmah saw in the success of this experiment the safety of the South from the attacks of the North, the preservation of his native city, and the ascendency of his race. But that very day, as they approached the drawbridges of Abibah, the Ainah, dearer to him than all the metals in the world, dearer than city, or race, or empire, or his own great idea, fainted in his arms, and as he laid her down upon the ground beside the gate, a thin stream of blood trickled from those lips which only a short six months ago he had hardly dared to kiss, and which for him contained all the joy, the private personal joy, that life was capable of giving.

Her end was rapidly approaching: he carried her to her apartment--hours passed away, and his hand remained in hers; but, sublimely prudent to the last, Realmah, who knew how much he should lose in the estimation of his nation if he should show any excessive affection for a lowly girl, one of the tribe of the despised fishermen, concealed his agony when her end approached, and when, amidst many friends of her own, and his other wives, she breathed her last.

Just before she died, their eyes met, and in the meeting of those eyes was told the unutterable love each bore to the other.

Realmah moved from the room with a composed step, and gave orders for such a funeral as became the Ainah of a man of his rank.

It would not do to say that Realmah never smiled again; but it might be true to say that he hereafter designed his smiles, and never finished them.

Henceforward he lived but for ambition, and laboured on mainly in the hope of finishing the great work he had undertaken, and then rejoining the only being whom he had ever profoundly loved, and who had ever profoundly loved him.

Untold ages have passed since the day when that grave young chief moved away from the deathbed of that lowly girl, with anguish gnawing at his heart, and supreme composure in his countenance; and thousands of other men, like him, have trodden the same path, lost in an unutterable love for some one being who has gone, but all the more sternly resolved to fulfil a great career, and to tread down private sorrow in some absorbing idea for the public good.

Realmah had hitherto merely been a clever man, taking an interest in public affairs: he was, from this moment, a profound and ambitious statesman. And thus it is that subtle Nature, always anxious to make the most of her children, weaves out of irreparable private sorrow great and abiding advantage for the public good.

_Mauleverer._ This is as it should be. Some truth is told us here, or at least some portion of truth. Men, as Milverton well says, make their highest and best exertions simply to escape from themselves.

_Milverton._ I really do not think I said that.

_Mauleverer._ Well, you implied as much; but I go much further, and I say that when you see a man do anything very splendid you may look upon it as the result of disease, acted upon, and brought into full play, by unfortunate circumstances.

There is not a person here present, except perhaps Mrs. Milverton and myself, who is not a victim to some of the especial diseases which make men famous.

I am afraid I cannot even make an exception for Mrs. Milverton. She cares too much to please people’s tastes, and to make them comfortable. I could see how vexed you were yesterday at dinner, Mrs. Milverton, at the hare being overdone. By the way, I must impress upon you once for all, that if you will have a hare for dinner, you must take care that one person’s mind is solely devoted to the dressing of it. No person is skilful enough, or watchful enough, to dress a hare and attend to other things.

_Ellesmere._ For goodness’ sake, stop this man! Milverton upon the subject of war, Mauleverer upon cookery, Cranmer upon finance, Johnson upon the merits of the Scotch, are public nuisances. I must call you back to the subject, which is very interesting. What is the nature of my disease?

_Mauleverer._ You have two of the worst diseases known--restlessness and argumentativeness. Those two diseases brought into full action by unfortunate circumstances have made you the distinguished lawyer that you are.

_Sir Arthur._ What is the matter with me, Mauleverer?

_Mauleverer._ Oh, you labour under a horrible disease, Sir Arthur. When I think of what you might have been, I feel the tenderest pity for you. You might have been a quiet, comfortable English gentleman devoted to yachting. And then to think of what you are, a great author and a distinguished politician!

_Cranmer._ But his disease--tell us what that is. Something horrible, you say.

_Mauleverer._ Yes; Sir Arthur is a man full of imagination, before whose mind there come all manner of beautiful ideas and fancies. He can’t leave them alone, or enjoy them quietly by himself, but must put them into form. This passion for form is his disease.

[I observed that Sir Arthur looked very grave, and seemed as if he felt what Mauleverer said.]

_Milverton._ And mine?

_Mauleverer._ Yours is lamentable, deplorable; you are victimized by pity. You look around you, and see hundreds of things that might be improved, and you fondly think that it is your business to set to work and improve them. A more fatal disease cannot well be imagined. You must be an unhappy man, and yet you might have been so happy if you had attended only to metaphysics, and immersed your mind in the doctrine of “contradictory inconceivables.”

_Mr. Cranmer._ And what is my disease?

_Mauleverer._ The dot-and-carry-one disease. A painful love of accuracy, and a joy in doing long sums, possess your mind; and these disorders you carry into public life.

But when I say all these things you must understand that they are a mere playful way of putting it. I mean something much more serious.

_Ellesmere._ Mauleverer playful! A hippopotamus festive! Did I not tell you all that he would be dreadful to-day?

_Mauleverer._ No; but what I really mean is, that there is in each of you too much, or too little, of some important component of the human body, and that this excess or deficiency is the source of disease. There are too many, or too few, carbonates, or sulphates, or sulphites, or sulphides, or some of these chemical things. Now, in poor Ellesmere, for instance----

_Ellesmere._ Don’t “poor” me, sir. Nobody ever “poored” me before. It’s actionable.

_Mauleverer._ I will run the risk of damages. In poor Ellesmere, for instance, there is evidently too much phosphorus. Little as I know of chemistry, I know that. Hence the superabundance of excitability.

_Ellesmere._ I never wished so much to be a chemist as I do now. What are the component parts of adiposeness? Will anybody tell me?

_Sir Arthur._ I say, Mauleverer, this is really taking too material and physical a view.

_Mauleverer._ I cannot help it. That is what it seems to me. All greatness, I repeat, is but disease developed by unfortunate circumstances.

Consider what pre-eminence is amongst mortals. It is generally success in a particular thing, occasioned by the development of the man’s character and powers in one direction, to the great detriment of the man taken as a whole. Now, again, let us take Ellesmere for an instance.

_Ellesmere._ The malice of this man is inconceivable. Why can’t you take some one else as an example? Take Sandy--he is not married. Lady Ellesmere will never cease quoting the things you say against me.

_Mauleverer._ Now, take Ellesmere, for instance. The unfortunate circumstances of his being bred to the Bar, acting upon his phosphoric restlessness, has developed his powers of objectiveness to the uttermost. He is always ready with some point to be taken against you, whatever you may say. How far this prevents his taking a large and just view of any question it is not for me to determine. You all know the kind of little dog which lives at a suburban villa, and scutters out, as hard as its little fat legs can carry it, to bark madly at every in-comer, and even at every passer-by. It makes no distinction between the good dogs’ meat man, who brings it its own food, and the prowling area sneak. The barking powers of that dog I admit: its judgment I deny; and it does occur to me that its barking powers have been developed at the expense of its judgment. I can say no more--that’s my poor view of the case.

_Ellesmere._ For goodness’ sake, let us have some more reading. Our characters are slipping away from us under this man’s cold, calm, cruel scrutiny. I have always heard it observed that very stout gentlemen are, as a rule, much better fellows than men of an ordinary size; but that when they are ill-natured, they are far worse than the leanest of men. The reason is that they are so far advanced in wickedness that they have come to take a pleasure in malignity. It agrees with them: they grow fat upon it. The lean and hungry Cassius is a pleasant fellow compared with Mauleverer. I shall go. Call me back, Sandy, when the conversation returns to a proper state, and Mauleverer is either silent or polite.

[_Exit Ellesmere._

Mr. Mauleverer rubbed his fat hands, and uttered a low, wheezy, chuckling laugh, the nearest approach to merriment that I have ever observed in him. There was afterwards some general conversation, of which I did not catch the purport until I heard Mr. Mauleverer apologizing to Lady Ellesmere.

_Mauleverer._ Forgive me, Lady Ellesmere, but Sir John does sometimes require a little putting down, and you are all too much afraid of him to do it. The unpleasant task, therefore, remains with me.

_Lady Ellesmere_ (who did not look very much pleased). When John is talking seriously, I believe there is no one who takes a larger and a broader view of his subject.

I have heard that the late Lord Chancellor used to say----

_Mauleverer_ (taking Lady Ellesmere’s hand in his). Yes, my dear, yes; we all know what a clever fellow your Sir John is; but a little attack upon him will do him no harm. Do you think I didn’t know by intuition what fun he was making of me this morning when I was toiling up that hill, and that he ran off on purpose to do so? Never fear, Lady Ellesmere; he will come back soon, and be more brilliant than ever.

_Cranmer._ There is a great deal of truth in what Mauleverer says. Sir John is always down upon one in a moment with an objection, sometimes before one has time to explain oneself.

_Lady Ellesmere._ He keeps you all to the point. I am sure that John is really one of the most tolerant of men.

_Ellesmere_ (who had entered while she was speaking). That’s right, my dear, always stick up for your husband, especially when he is in the wrong. So you have all, except my wife and Fairy, been talking against me during my absence; but, as the heavy villain at the Surrey Theatre would say, “I will a-a-have my r-r-r-revenge.”

_Mrs. Milverton._ I wish to make a remark.

_Ellesmere._ After Cranmer’s celebrated remark, which lasted three-quarters of an hour, we all adopt this form, and say, “I wish to make a remark.”

_Mrs. Milverton._ I am very much displeased with all of you. You have been discussing nothing but characters and chemistry, and have been talking in the most cold-blooded and heartless manner about all manner of things, and not one of you has said a word about the death of the Ainah. I had read it all before, and I am not ashamed to say that I had a good cry over her death. I cannot think how Leonard could have been so cruel as to kill her so soon.

_Milverton._ My dear, I cried too--as much as men ever cry; but it could not be helped. The fact stared me in the face, for it was a fact to me; and I was obliged to tell the story as it happened.

_Sir Arthur._ I do think, Milverton, you might have let her live a little longer.

_Ellesmere._ I repent me bitterly of all the jokes I ever ventured to make about her.

_Sir Arthur._ Nobody can accuse me of being too much given to moralizing; but I must draw forth a moral now. Ellesmere is sorry now, he says--now that the Ainah is dead--that he said anything against her, even in jest:--

“And she is gone; sweet human love is gone! ’Tis only when they spring to Heaven that angels Reveal themselves to you; they sit all day Beside you, and lie down at night by you, Who care not for their presence--muse or sleep: And all at once they leave you, and you know them! We are so fooled, so cheated!”

I have no doubt that Realmah thought with remorse how little he had appreciated the poor Ainah, even when he had appreciated her the most.

_Ellesmere._ I always rather liked the girl; but, of course, when I made that remark----

_Sir Arthur._ Now don’t explain away what you said, Ellesmere. It may be absurd to feel in that way about a character in a story; but, for the moment, you really did feel what you said.

_Ellesmere._ Well, upon my word, I really think I did.

_Sir Arthur._ I need not work out my moral, but may just venture to remark that real, living people have their feelings too; and if we were sometimes to think how soon they would die--even the halest of them--that thought might restrain us from many a depreciating remark.

_Mrs. Milverton._ Ah, indeed it might, Sir Arthur.

_Lady Ellesmere._ Yes, John. Listen to Sir Arthur, and become a more kind and considerate person.

_Ellesmere._ It is all very well talking, but people in books do not tread upon our toes, whereas real flesh-and-blood people sometimes do, and that rather heavily.

_Milverton._ But you see, Ellesmere, they too might draw the moral, and not tread upon your toes quite so heavily, reflecting that, after all, even great lawyers----

_Mauleverer._ Though the toughest of human species.

_Milverton._ --do eventually take their departure from this vale of tears and trouble. By the way, why should we always make it a vale of tears? Are there no sorrows on the hill-tops?

_Sir Arthur._ Ruskin, in his eloquent way, would show you that there really is less sorrow on the hill-tops, and that mountaineers, living in closer amity with nature, are better and heartier people than the money-making inhabitants of valleys.

_Cranmer._ The way in which you have been talking about imaginary people is to me astonishing.

_Sir Arthur._ You cannot ignore facts, Cranmer; indeed you love them too much to do so. I maintain that most people’s minds are fully as much filled with thoughts and feelings respecting persons in fiction as they are about persons in real life.

_Mauleverer._ Perhaps so: especially if you add the personages in history to the personages in fiction.

_Ellesmere._ That is where Cranmer has such an advantage over us, and is able to do his sums without any foolish interruption.

Di Vernon (to me far the most loveable of all Scott’s heroines), and Mignon, and Margaret in “Faust,” and Beatrice, and Laura, and Mary Queen of Scots, and Medea, and Medora, and Rosalind, and Helen, and Cleopatra, and dozens of other fair women, never disturb the equal current of his thoughts.

Upon my word, I do not know whether it would not be a good thing to banish them all. Good heroes and heroines are an especial nuisance. They are apt to make us discontented with ordinary mortals. I dare say though, the Ainah, poor dear, was peevish sometimes, and allowed her superiority to the other two to be plainly perceived, at least by Realmah, and that sometimes she was even intolerant of him. But I am very sorry she is gone.

_Sir Arthur._ You seem to forget, Ellesmere, that the portraying of these heroes and heroines makes people strive to become like them, and so tends to improve the world.

_Ellesmere._ So it may; but I think this does not compensate for the mischief of setting up a high ideal.

_Milverton._ _I do not agree with you, and would venture to contend that no writer has been able to depict people so good as good people really are, for the truth is no writer’s canvas is large enough to do so. It is in length of patience, and endurance, and forbearance, that so much of what is good in mankind and womankind is shown; and you (the writer) have neither time nor space enough to show forth those high qualities as they are shown in life._

_Mr. Cranmer._ I wonder what is to become of Realmah now? We have seen him as a lover, and as an inventor; I suppose he is to rise into some higher sphere.

_Ellesmere._ Cranmer thinks he will become a man of business, the highest form of which human nature is capable.

_Mauleverer._ You see in this story what you see in most stories that are truly told--what a mistake it is to love anybody very much.

_Lady Ellesmere._ I do not see anything of the kind, Mr. Mauleverer. I would a thousand times rather be Realmah now, than Realmah before he made his escape from Abinamanche, and when he did not know that the Ainah loved him.

[It was now late in the evening, and the party separated for the night. Sir Arthur and Ellesmere remained in the drawing-room after the others had left.]

_Sir Arthur._ You were not really angry, Ellesmere, were you, when you left the room?

_Ellesmere._ Not I. Do you think anything which that fat man could say to me would disturb my peace of mind? But he is right in what he says about my phosphoric restlessness. We had had a long reading, and a very long conversation, and I was scheming how to get a little change, and a little fresh air under the stars; so, from the moment he began to attack me, I began to prepare to get into a huff, and to make my escape for a few minutes, which I think I accomplished rather neatly. Our serious Falstaff thinks he has crushed, smashed, and pounded me to atoms. Depend upon it, he has gone to bed to-night much happier than he has for many of the preceding nights, and that he has acknowledged that the world is not so wretched a place as he supposed it to be. There is some pleasure in crushing Ellesmere. I thought the likeness he was pleased to discover between my poor self and a yappetting suburban poodle was not bad at all. I do not think I shall ever do any great good in the world, except in opposing, and, if I may presume to say so, curbing men like you and Milverton, and so keeping you within bounds.

When I am here I always take up that objective line, because I think it amuses Milverton, and keeps him alive. There is such a vast amount of melancholy in his disposition, that he requires all the aid we can give him in the other direction.

_Sir Arthur._ Dear me, I should never have thought it. He enters into everything with spirit, from the most trivial game to the most serious conversation.

_Ellesmere._ Ah, but you do not know him as I do, or as Sandy there does. In the background of his mind, there is gloom all the time. There is no knowing what mischief Mauleverer would do to him, if they lived much together.

Moreover his is a mood of mind which you cannot answer nor satisfy. Mauleverer made a great hit when he attributed all Milverton’s misfortunes to pity. If you were to make everything on this earth comfortable, and were to arrange the world as he pleased, he would still sit down and mourn over the past, like Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, or Rachel for her children.

Was Mauleverer equally successful with you, Sir Arthur?

_Sir Arthur._ Yes, he was. That passion for form which he attributed to me is one of the things which has given me more trouble, and led me into more work, than any other motive power in my nature. I brood over an idea; I suddenly think how it may be expressed, or rather rendered, generally adopting in my mind some extraordinary form--and I am haunted by the thing until I have succeeded in putting it into that form. I believe the desire to accomplish that part of the work which depends upon form is stronger with me even than the desire to give vogue and furtherance to the idea. I always had a notion that this was an important part of my intellectual character; but I never saw it so clearly as when Mauleverer charged me with it in that forcible manner.

_Johnson._ What a remarkable thing that was that he said about the sparrow and the telegraph wires, when we were on the lake!

_Sir Arthur._ Yes. That was very good. One felt that it must have been said before. That is one of the first thoughts that occur to one when one meets with any fine passage in almost any work. By the way, it strikes me now that that is one of the reasons why, as Carlyle has pointed out, there is generally considerable disappointment on our first reading of a great work.

_Ellesmere._ To return to Mauleverer. He certainly is a very remarkable human being; but still he is terribly monotonous. I declare, without exaggeration, that I do not think I have heard him, while he has been here, make one single remark that had not the tendency to depress human effort, and lower our view of human prospects. I mean henceforward to take the other side.

In order to do so with effect, one must be particularly well, and have good long sleepful nights--without the aid of your blue “sleep,” though, Sir Arthur. So, good night.

[_Exeunt_.

The next day there was a reading of the story of Realmah, as follows:--