Part 5 (1/2)
You took in sounds that might create a soul Under the ribs of death.
”For fear, however, that your heart of adamant should hold out against all these perilous a.s.saults, its vulnerability was tried in other quarters. The t.i.tian would naturally lead to Livinia's drawings. A beautiful sketch of the lakes would be produced, with a gentle intimation, what a sweet place Westmoreland must be to live in! When you had exhausted all proper raptures on the art and on the artist, it would be recollected, that as Westmoreland was so near Scotland, you would naturally be fond of a reel. The reel of course succeeded.” Then, putting himself into an att.i.tude and speaking theatrically, he continued,
”Then universal Pan Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance--
”Oh! no, I forgot universal Pan could not join, but he could admire. Then all the perfections of all the nymphs burst on you in full blaze. Such a concentration of attractions you never could resist! You are _but_ a man, and now, doubtless, a lost man.” Here he stopped to finish his laugh, and I was driven reluctantly to acknowledge that his picture, though a caricature, was, notwithstanding, a resemblance.
”And so,” said Sir John, ”you were brought under no power of incantation by this dangerous visit. You will not be driven, like the tempted Ithacan, to tie yourself to a mast, or to flee for safety from the enchantment of these Sirens.”
While we were at supper, with more gravity, he said, ”Among the various objects of ambition, there are few in life which bring less accession to its comfort, than an unceasing struggle to rise to an elevation in society very much above the level of our own condition, without being aided by any stronger ascending power than mere vanity. Great talents, of whatever kind, have a natural tendency to rise, and to lift their possessor. The flame in mounting does but obey its impulse. But when there is no energy more powerful than the pa.s.sion to be great, dest.i.tute of the gifts which confer greatness, the painful efforts of ambition are like water, forced above its level by mechanical powers. It requires constant exertions of art, to keep up what art first set a-going. Poor Mrs. Fentham's head is perpetually at work to maintain the elevation she has reached. And how little after all is she considered by those on whose caresses her happiness depends! She has lost the esteem of her original circle, where she might have been respected, without gaining that of her high a.s.sociates, who, though they receive her, still refuse her claims of equality. She is not considered as of their _establishment_; it is but _toleration_ at best.
”At Mrs. Fentham's, I encountered Lady Bab Lawless, a renowned modish dowager, famous for laying siege to the heart of every distinguished man, with the united artillery of her own wit and her daughters' beauty.
How many ways there are of being wrong! She was of a character diametrically opposite to that of Mrs. Fentham. She had the same end in view, but the means she used to accomplish it were of a bolder strain.
Lady Bab affected no delicacy, she laughed at reserve; she had shaken hands with decorum.
She held the _noisy_ tenor of her way
with no a.s.sumed refinement; and, so far from s.h.i.+elding her designs behind the mask of decency, she disdained the obsolete expedient. Her plans succeeded the more infallibly, because her frankness defeated all suspicion. A man could never divine that such gay and open a.s.saults could have their foundation in design, and he gave her full credit for artless simplicity, at the moment she was catching him in her toils. If she now and then had gone too far, and by a momentary oversight, or excessive levity had betrayed too much, with infinite address she would make a crane-neck turn, and fall to discussing, not without ability, some moral or theological topic. Thus she affected to establish the character of a woman, thoughtless through wit, indiscreet through simplicity, but religious on principle.
As there is no part of the appendage to a wife, which I have ever more dreaded than a Machiavelian mother, I should have been deaf to wit and blind to beauty, and dead to advances, had their united batteries been directed against me. But I had not the ambition to aspire to that honor.
I was much too low a mark for her lofty aim. She had a natural antipathy to every name that could not be found in the red book. She equally shrunk from unt.i.tled opulence and indigent n.o.bility. She knew by instinct if a younger son was in the room, and by a petrifying look checked his most distant approaches; while with her powerful spells she never failed to draw within her magic circle the splendid heir, and charm him to her purpose.
Highly born herself, she had early been married to a rich man of inferior rank, for the sake of a large settlement. Her plan was, that her daughters (who, by the way, are modest and estimable), should find in the man they married, still higher birth than her own, and more riches than her husband's.
It was a curious speculation to compare these two friends, and to observe how much less the refined maneuvers of Mrs. Fentham answered, than the open a.s.saults of the intrepid Lady Bab. All the intricacies and labyrinths which the former has been so skillful and so patient in weaving, have not yet enthralled one captive, while the composed effrontery, the affecting to take for granted the offer which was never meant to be made, and treating that as concluded, which was never so much as intended, drew the unconscious victim of the other into the trap, before he knew it was set: the depth of her plot consisting in not appearing to have any. It was a novelty in intrigue. An originality which defied all compet.i.tion, and in which no imitator had any chance of success.
CHAPTER X.
Sir John carried me one morning to call on Lady Denham, a dowager of fas.h.i.+on, who had grown old in the trammels of the world. Though she seems resolved to die in the harness, yet she piques herself on being very religious, and no one inveighs against infidelity or impiety with more pointed censure. ”She has a grand-daughter,” said Sir John, ”who lives with her, and whom she has trained to walk precisely in her own steps, and which, she thinks, _is the way she should go_. The girl,”
added he, smiling, ”is well looking, and will have a handsome fortune, and I am persuaded that, as a friend, I could procure you a good reception.”
We were shown into her dressing-room, where we found her with a book lying open before her. From a glance which I caught of the large black letter, I saw it was a _Week's Preparation_. This book, it seems, constantly lay open before her from breakfast to dinner, at this season. It was Pa.s.sion week. But as this is the room in which he sees all her morning visitors, to none of whom is she ever denied, even at this period of retreat, she could only pick up momentary s.n.a.t.c.hes of reading in the short intervals between one person bowing out and another courtesying in. Miss Denham sat by, painting flowers.
Sir John asked her ladys.h.i.+p if she would go and dine in a family way with Lady Belfield. She drew up, looked grave, and said with much solemnity, that she should never think of dining abroad at this holy season. Sir John said, ”As we have neither cards nor company, I thought you might as well have eaten your chicken in my house as in your own.”
But though she thought it a sin to dine with a sober family, she made herself amends for the sacrifice, by letting us see that her heart was brimful of the world, pressed down and running over. She indemnified herself for her abstinence from its diversions, by indulging in the only pleasures which she thought compatible with the sanct.i.ty of the season, uncharitable gossip, and unbounded calumny. She would not touch a card for the world, but she played over to Sir John the whole game of the preceding Sat.u.r.day night: told him by what a shameful inattention her partner had lost the odd trick; and that she should not have been beaten after all, had not her adversary, she verily believed, contrived to look over her hand.
Sir John seized the only minute in which we were alone, to ask her to add a guinea to a little sum he was collecting for a poor tradesman with a large family, who had been burned out a few nights ago. ”His wife,”
added he, ”was your favorite maid Dixon, and both are deserving people.”
”Ah, poor Dixon! She was always unlucky,” replied the lady. ”How could they be so careless? Surely they might have put the fire out sooner.
They should not have let it get ahead. I wonder people are not more active.” ”It is too late to inquire about that,” said Sir John; ”the question now is, not how their loss might have been prevented, but how it may be repaired.” ”I am really quite sorry,” said she, ”that I can give you nothing. I have had so many calls lately, that my charity purse is completely exhausted--and that abominable property-tax makes me quite a beggar.”
While she was speaking, I glanced at the open leaf at, ”Charge them that are rich in this world that they be ready to give;” and directing my eye further, it fell on, ”Be not deceived. G.o.d is not mocked.” These were the awful pa.s.sages which formed a part of her _Preparation_; and this was the practical use she made of them!
A dozen persons of both s.e.xes ”had their exits and their entrances”
during our stay; for the scene was so strange, and the character so new to me, that I felt unwilling to stir. Among other visitors was Signor Squallini, a favorite opera singer, whom she patronized. Her face was lighted up with joy at the sight of him. He brought her an admired new air in which he was preparing himself, and sung a few notes, that she might say she had heard it the first. She felt all the dignity of the privilege, and extolled the air with all the phrases, cant, and rapture of _dilettanteism_.