Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 35
CHAPTER XI.
"On n'auroit guère de plaisir, si l'on ne se flattait jamais."
Rochefoucauld.
"Behold, they speak with their mouths, and swords are in their lips."
Psalm lix.
The end of a journey is its pleasantest part. So thought Lord Mandeville, as the postilions gave their whips an extra crack, in order to drive up the avenue in style. They had the credit of their horses as much at heart as their own. To-night, however, whipmanship was somewhat wasted;—a small, heavy rain had made the road so soft, that the ringing wheel and clattering hoof were inaudible. This was a great mortification to the postboys, to whom noise, if not speed, was at least speed's best part.
"How late they are, and how stupid we are!" said Lady Mandeville, glancing reproachfully first at Mr. Morland, who, having taken what he called a most constitutional walk, was now in a large arm-chair sleeping off the effects of heath and hedge,—and then at Emily, who was sedulously employed in working a large red cross on the flag destined for Frank's favourite toy—a miniature frigate.
"Do you know," added she, "what is the great torment of the idle? To see others industrious."
"I must say," replied Emily, smiling, "considering Lord Mandeville has been absent but two days, your impatience for his return is very flattering."
There was something in this speech that made the hearer laugh outright—one of those provoking laughs which shows it has touched some train of thought you know nothing about. I cannot agree with those romantic philosophers who hold ignorance to be bliss at any time; but ignorance, when your listener laughs at what you say, without why or wherefore, is enough to enrage a saint. By the by, considering what an irascible race they were, the reputation of the saints for patience has been very easily acquired.
The truth is, another visitor was expected with her husband. Lady Mandeville had erected a little romance in her own mind, of which Emily was already the heroine, and the anticipated guest was to be the hero. She had calculated probabilities, dwelt on the chances of association, the idleness of the country, the necessity of an attachment to give interest to the ride, and novelty to the walk; besides, she had recalled not one suspicious blush only, but many. The feminine part in the drama was therefore cast.
Now for the gentleman. Many a heart is caught in the rebound. The brilliant coquette, who had led captivity captive, could have inflicted no deeper wound than a little wholesome mortification;—a little preference from another would be especially flattering. Then the pretensions of her protégée were any thing but undervalued. Emily certainly was never seen to greater advantage than just at present. The sweetness of feeling, rather than of temper, was a charm of all others to be appreciated in the domestic life they were now leading. Unrepressed by her natural timidity, her mental stores developed themselves in a small circle where they only met with encouragement. There was an extreme fascination to one palled with the brilliancy, and tired of the uniformity of society, in the freshness, the simplicity, so touched with romance, that made the poetry of Emily's character. Moreover Lady Mandeville took a personal interest in her favourite. The merit we are the first to discover, almost seems as if it were our own, and that, like a newly-found country, it was to bear the name of the first finder.
A bustle was now heard in the hall; the door was thrown open; Mr. Morland lost his nap, and Emily her needle, in the surprise of Lord Mandeville's entrance with Mr. Lorraine. Timidity does as much towards concealing, as resolution does towards repressing, emotion. Lady Mandeville was the only one of the party who observed that Emily's usual blush deepened with twofold crimson—that her hand trembled as she eagerly resumed her work, to the great danger of the symmetry necessary to be observed in the red cross of St. George.
It is worth while to leave home, if it were only to enjoy being of so much consequence on your return. Lord Mandeville arrived with all the interest of absence and news. A Russian prince, whose carriage was lined with sable, and whose vehicle and self had been seized at the custom-house, he having refused to quit his shelter, on the plea of dreading the irregularity of our atmosphere;—the breaking off of Mr. Delorme's marriage on which the gentleman had observed, that it was very impertinent in Miss Lumleigh to offer him such polite attentions, knowing that her father was going out of parliament, and that he Mr. Delorme, only married on patriotic principles, to strengthen his party;—two other marriages; one in consequence of smiles feminine, the other in consequence of frowns masculine—curious, that hope and fear should lead to such similar results;—the inferences of half-a-dozen separations; details of divers dinners, balls, and breakfasts;—a little gold Napoleon set as a brooch—Oh, conqueror of Europe! to think of thy pedestal being a pin!—a bracelet of an Indian snake fastened by a locust;—and three new novels. These passed away the evening; and it must be owned Lord Mandeville well deserved his greeting.
Lady Mandeville's face, like that of Cooper's Water-witch, wore its most "malign smile," when she next morning perceived that her predestined lovers were walking on the lawn together; and that, when Emily entered the breakfast-room, her curls were just enough relaxed by the air to droop their gracefulest. The soft sunny ringlet, just dropping into a succession of light rings, is very becoming; and, moreover, she had a colour one shade more delicate than a most luxuriant rose she had gathered for Mr. Morland; one of whose dogmas was, that the freshness of the morning should communicate itself to our feelings. "Our early tastes are our unsophisticated ones. Give me, therefore, flowers in the morning, and perfumes at night."
"Your garden is beautiful," said Lorraine, as he intentionally took his place by Emily's side.
"The flowers in it are very common; but we have been so long away."
"Your tone of apology is unnecessary; the commonest flowers are the most beautiful. Take the three I can most readily think of—the rose, the violet, the daisy—the field-daisy, remember; and, as the blacking advertisements say, 'Warren against all the world,'—where will you find their equals?"
"They possess," replied Mr. Morland, "the two greatest of charms—the association of memory and of imagination: they are the flowers that our childhood has loved, and our poets have sung. Flowers have much to be grateful for."
"Our poets all seem to have been peculiarly alive to their beauty; and human love and human sorrow
Have written every leaf with thoughtful tears."
"I am going," said Mr. Morland, "to make a bold assertion—that, with all his feeling for natural beauties, Wordsworth has none for flowers: he strings quaint conceits together about them. What does he call the daisy?"
"A little Cyclops with one eye," answered Emily.
"And the shield of a fairy, &c. Look at Burn's poem to the daisy! There are no pretty odd epithets in that; but a natural gush of feeling, hallowing for ever the object which called it forth."
Edward Lorraine.—"Who cares for the exotics, whose attractions are of the hothouse and the gardener? Their ruby leaves are writ with no gentle thoughts; they are essentially of the drawing-room, and have no more sentiment about them than the Sèvre cups and saucers to which they are companions. Now there's the rose—'spring's sweetest book'—why a whole world of blushes are on its leaves. Then, again, the lily; whether it be
'The lady lily, fairer than the moon,'
'The naïad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale.'"
Mr. Morland.—"Or
'The lily, a delicate lady,
Who sat under her green parasol.'"
Emily.—"My favourite flowers are violets—
Those early flowers, o'er which the Spring has leant,
Till they have caught their colour from her eyes,
Their sweetness from her breath."
Edward Lorraine.—"Whether it is that your gardener has not been here, with his 'cruel curtailments,' like Mr. Hume,—but how very luxuriant is the growth of this myrtle! it is
Green as hope, before it grieves
O'er the lost and broken-hearted—
All with which its youth has parted."
Lady Mandeville.—"Apropos to myrtle; is there any truth in the report that Lord Merton is about to marry Miss Dacre?"
Here Emily coloured the least in the world. A woman has always a kind of sentimental consciousness about any one who has ever made love to her. I often think she pities the man she refuses, more perhaps than his case quite requires. Well, it ought to be a comfort that a person is not so unhappy as we suppose.
Edward Lorraine.—"He told me that his mind was divided between Miss Dacre and Miss Manvers."
Lady Mandeville.—"His mind divided! Verily that is making two bites of a cherry. What are the rival claims of these rival heiresses?"
Edward Lorraine.—"They are as equally balanced as those in the ancient apologue. I will only be malicious by inference. I believe, were such acts of faith permitted, Lady Lauriston would recommend him to marry both."
Lord Mandeville now interrupted the conversation, by inviting Lorraine to walk round with him and see his improvements—a tax regularly levied on every new-comer by all country gentlemen. From the park to the pigsty, all must be duly appreciated; for, by some process or other, the proprietor amalgamates their merits with his own. The walk, however, this morning, was something more than an inventory of ditches and drains. Mandeville was theoretic in his future views—which is very good, in talk at least; and, besides, there was not too much to see. The estate which came with the title was small; and though he himself would gladly have settled at the Abbey, and extended the boundary of its domains, and devoted the rest of his days to building and planting, corn laws and the country, yet to this there was a very adverse influence.
We all know, either from experience or observation, that Janus would be a very appropriate marriage deity; inasmuch as he has two faces, which look opposite ways. Lady Mandeville was, as I have said, compounded of all the elements of society: its love of excitement—its necessity of variety—its natural gift of language—its grace inherent and its grace acquired—its vivacity and its vanity. She liked talking—she looked very pretty when she talked; she liked strangers—every stranger was a new idea; and her mind was of that order which requires collision to bring out its sparkles. She read as an amusement, rather than as a resource—and, moreover, thought the information almost thrown away which was not communicated.
Again, she was accustomed to look at things on their ridiculous in preference to their sentimental side. She loved her husband most entirely; but she thought it a great deal pleasanter to spend the morning, while he was away, in gay visits or a drive round the ring, than to sit with a work-basket in a large lonely saloon, with the pictures of their ancestors looking as if they had indeed lost all sympathy with the living. Besides, a call, in an adjacent street, on one whose milliner is not the same, and whose friends are similar to your own—thus giving ample room for praise and its reverse—such a call is quite another thing from that in the country, which involves, first, a journey through wilds that "seem to lengthen as you go;" and secondly, a luncheon, which it is your duty to eat. Alas! when, in this world, are the agreeable and the necessary united! Then your neighbour is a person whom you see twice a-year—you have not a taste or opinion in common—the news of the one is no news to the other—conversation is a frozen ocean, and
"You speak.
Only to break
The silence of that sea."
Now these were not mornings to Lady Mandeville's taste. As for the dinners, she had only one comfort, that of abusing them after;—and unspeakable consolation, by the by, in most cases! I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.
Lady Mandeville's was essentially a town nature. She was born to what she was fit for; she was originally meant to be ornamental, rather than useful. In short, she exactly resembled a plume of ostrich feathers, or a blond dress; now these are best worn in the metropolis. The inference from all this is, that though Lord Mandeville often talked of settling at his country seat, he never actually settled.
The walk was ended, for the domains were not very extensive, and the gentlemen returned home. They afterwards rode out; and Emily felt very happy in the mere consciousness that the cavalier at her bridle rein was Edward Lorraine.
That vague, self-relying, uncalculating happiness, how delicious it is—that which we never know but once, and which can have but one object! Emily quite forgot how wretched she had been. She recalled not the once agony of his presence—the despondency in his absence. She never looked at him; she scarce spoke, but she heard his voice, and she saw his shadow fall by her side.
Curious, that of the past our memory retains so little of what is peculiarly its own. The book we have read, the sight we have seen, the speech we have heard, these are the things to which it recurs, and that rise up within it. We remember but what can be put to present use. It is very extraordinary how little we recollect of hopes, fears, motives, and all the shadowy tribe of feelings; or indeed, how little we think over the past at all. Memory is that mirror wherein a man "beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." We are reproached with forgetting others: we forget ourselves a thousand times more. We remember what we hear, see, and read, often accurately: not so with what we felt—that is faint and uncertain in its record. Memory is the least egotistical of all our faculties.