The Blithedale Romance - Page 125/170

Five-and-twenty years ago, at the epoch of this story, there dwelt in

one of the Middle States a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy; a man of

wealth, and magnificent tastes, and prodigal expenditure. His home

might almost be styled a palace; his habits, in the ordinary sense,

princely. His whole being seemed to have crystallized itself into an

external splendor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes of the world, and

had no other life than upon this gaudy surface. He had married a

lovely woman, whose nature was deeper than his own.

But his affection

for her, though it showed largely, was superficial, like all his other

manifestations and developments; he did not so truly keep this noble

creature in his heart, as wear her beauty for the most brilliant

ornament of his outward state. And there was born to him a child, a

beautiful daughter, whom he took from the beneficent hand of God with

no just sense of her immortal value, but as a man already rich in gems

would receive another jewel. If he loved her, it was because she shone.

After Fauntleroy had thus spent a few empty years, coruscating

continually an unnatural light, the source of it--which was merely his

gold--began to grow more shallow, and finally became exhausted. He saw

himself in imminent peril of losing all that had heretofore

distinguished him; and, conscious of no innate worth to fall back upon,

he recoiled from this calamity with the instinct of a soul shrinking

from annihilation.

To avoid it,--wretched man!--or rather to defer it,

if but for a month, a day, or only to procure himself the life of a few

breaths more amid the false glitter which was now less his own than

ever,--he made himself guilty of a crime. It was just the sort of

crime, growing out of its artificial state, which society (unless it

should change its entire constitution for this man's unworthy sake)

neither could nor ought to pardon. More safely might it pardon murder.

Fauntleroy's guilt was discovered. He fled; his wife perished, by the

necessity of her innate nobleness, in its alliance with a being so

ignoble; and betwixt her mother's death and her father's ignominy, his

daughter was left worse than orphaned.

There was no pursuit after Fauntleroy. His family connections, who had

great wealth, made such arrangements with those whom he had attempted

to wrong as secured him from the retribution that would have overtaken

an unfriended criminal. The wreck of his estate was divided among his

creditors: His name, in a very brief space, was forgotten by the

multitude who had passed it so diligently from mouth to mouth. Seldom,

indeed, was it recalled, even by his closest former intimates. Nor

could it have been otherwise. The man had laid no real touch on any

mortal's heart. Being a mere image, an optical delusion, created by

the sunshine of prosperity, it was his law to vanish into the shadow of

the first intervening cloud. He seemed to leave no vacancy; a

phenomenon which, like many others that attended his brief career, went

far to prove the illusiveness of his existence.