Part 11 (2/2)
To be invited to remain a month longer under the same roof with her; to see her; to hear her; to talk to her; all this was a happiness so great that I did not allow myself to repine because it was not all I had wished to obtain.
I met Mrs. Stanley soon after. I perceived by her illuminated countenance, that my proposal had been already communicated to her. I ventured to take her hand, and with the most respectful earnestness intreated her friends.h.i.+p; her good offices. ”I dare not trust myself with you just now,” said she with an affectionate smile; ”Mr. Stanley will think I abet rebellion, if through my encouragement you should violate your engagements with him. But,” added she, kindly pressing my hand; ”you need not be much afraid of _me_. Mr. Stanley's sentiments on this point, as on all others, are exactly my own. We have but one heart and one mind, and that heart and mind are not unfavorable to your wishes.” With a tear in her eyes and affection in her looks, she tore herself away, evidently afraid of giving way to her feelings.
I did not think myself bound by any point of honor to conceal the state of my heart from Sir John Belfield, who with his lady joined me soon after in the garden. I was astonished to find that my pa.s.sion for Miss Stanley was no secret to either of them. Their penetration had left me nothing to disclose. Sir John however looked serious, and affected an air of mystery which a little alarmed me. ”I own,” said he, ”there is some danger of your success.” I eagerly inquired what he thought I had to fear? ”You have every thing to fear,” replied he, in a tone of grave irony, ”which a man not four-and-twenty, of an honorable family, with a clear estate of four thousand a year, a person that all the ladies admire, a mind which all the men esteem, and a temper which endears you to men, women, and children, can fear from a little country girl, whose heart is as free as a bird, and who, if I may judge by her smiles and blushes whenever you are talking to her, would have no mortal objection to sing in the same cage with you.”
”It will be a sad dull novel, however,” said Lady Belfield: ”all is likely to go on so smoothly that we shall flag for want of incident. No difficulties, nor adventures to heighten the interest. No cruel step-dame, no tyrant father, no capricious mistress, no moated castle, no intriguing confidante, no treacherous spy, no formidable rival, not so much as a duel or even a challenge, I fear, to give variety to the monotonous scene.”
I mentioned Edwards's report respecting Lord Staunton, and owned how much it had disturbed me. ”That he admires her,” said Lady Belfield, ”is notorious. That his addresses have not been encouraged, I have also heard, but not from the family. As to Lucilla, she is the last girl that would ever insinuate even to me, to whom she is so unreserved, that she had rejected so great an offer. I have heard her express herself with an indignation, foreign to her general mildness, against women who are guilty of this fas.h.i.+onable, this dishonorable indelicacy.”
”Well, but Charles,” said Sir John ”you must positively a.s.sume a little dejection, to diversify the business. It will give interest to your countenance and pathos to your manner, and tenderness to your accent.
And you must forget all attentions, and neglect all civilities. And you must appear absent, and _distrait_ and _reveur_; especially while your fate hangs in some suspense. And you must read Petrarch, and repeat Tibullus, and write sonnets. And when you are spoken to, you must not listen. And you must wander in the grove by moons.h.i.+ne, and talk to the Oreads, and the Dryads, and the Naiads; oh no, unfortunately, I am afraid there are no Naiads within hearing. You must make the woods vocal with the name of Lucilla; luckily 'tis such a poetical name that Echo won't be ashamed to repeat it. I have gone through it all, Charles, and know every highway and byway in the map of love. I will, however, be serious for one moment, and tell you for your comfort, that though at your age I was full as much in for it as you are now, yet after ten years' union, Lady Belfield has enabled me to declare
”How much the wife is dearer than the bride.”
A tear glistened in her soft eyes, at this tender compliment.
Just at that moment, Lucilla happened to cross the lawn at a distance.
At sight of her, I could not, as I pointed to her, forbear exclaiming in the words of Sir John's favorite poet,
There doth beauty dwell, There most conspicuous, e'en in outward shape, Where dawns the high expression of a MIND.
”This is very fine,” said Sir John, sarcastically; ”I admire all you young enthusiastic philosophers, with your intellectual refinement. You pretend to be captivated only with _mind_. I observe, however, that previous to your raptures, you always take care to get this mind lodged in a fair and youthful form. This mental beauty is always prudently enshrined in some elegant corporeal frame, before it is wors.h.i.+ped. I should be glad to see some of these intellectual adorers in love with the mind of an old or ugly woman. I never heard any of you fall into ecstasies in descanting on the mind of your grandmother.” After some further irony, they left me to indulge my meditations, in the nature of which a single hour had made so pleasant a revolution.
CHAPTER XXI.
The conversation of two men bred at the same school or college, when they happen to meet afterward, is commonly uninteresting, not to say tiresome, to a third person, as involving local circ.u.mstances in which he has no concern. But this was not always the case since the meeting of my two friends. Something was generally to be gained by their communications even on these unpromising topics.
At breakfast Mr. Stanley said, ”Sir John, you will see here at dinner to-morrow our old college acquaintance, Ned Tyrrel. Though he does not commonly live at the family house in this neighborhood, but at a little place he has in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, he comes among us periodically to receive his rents. He always invites himself, for his society is not the most engaging.”
”I heard,” replied Sir John, ”that he became a notorious profligate after he left Cambridge, though I have lost sight of him ever since we parted there. But I was glad to learn lately that he is become quite a reformed man.”
”He is so far reformed,” replied Mr. Stanley, ”that he is no longer grossly licentious. But in laying down the vices of youth, he has taken up successively those which he thought better suited to the successive stages of his progress. As he withdrew himself from his loose habits and connections, ambition became his governing pa.s.sion; he courted public favor, thirsted for place and distinction, and labored by certain obliquities, and some little sacrifices of principle, to obtain promotion. Finding it did not answer, and all his hopes failing, he now rails at ambition, wonders men will wound their consciences and renounce their peace for vain applause and 'the bubble reputation.' His sole delight at present, I hear, is in ama.s.sing money and reading controversial divinity. Avarice has supplanted ambition, just as ambition expelled profligacy.
”In the interval in which he was pa.s.sing from one of these stages to the other, in a very uneasy state of mind he dropped in by accident where a famous irregular preacher was disseminating his Antinomian doctrines.
Caught by his vehement but coa.r.s.e eloquence, and captivated by an alluring doctrine which promised much while it required little, he adopted the soothing but fallacious tenet. It is true, I hear he is become a more respectable man in his conduct, but I doubt, though I have not lately seen him, if his present state may not be rather worse than his former ones.
”In the two previous stages, he was disturbed and dissatisfied. Here he has taken up his rest. Out of this stronghold, it is not probable that any subsequent vice will ever drive him, or true religion draw him. He sometimes attends public wors.h.i.+p, but as he thinks no part of it but the sermon of much value, it is only when he likes the preacher. He has little notion of the respect due to established inst.i.tutions, and does not heartily like any precomposed form of prayer, not even our incomparable Liturgy. He reads such religious books only as tend to establish his own opinions, and talks and disputes loudly on certain doctrinal points. But an acc.u.mulating Christian, and a Christian who, for the purpose of acc.u.mulation, is said to be uncharitable, and even somewhat oppressive, is a paradox which I can not solve, and an anomaly which I can not comprehend. Covetousness is, as I said, a more creditable vice than Ned's former ones, but for that very reason more dangerous.”
”From this sober vice,” said I, ”proceeded the blackest crime ever perpetrated by human wickedness; for it does not appear that Judas, in his direful treason, was instigated by malice. It is observable, that when our Saviour names this sin, it is with an emphatical warning, as knowing its mischief to be greater because its scandal was less. Not contented with a single caution, he doubles his exhortation. '_Take heed and beware_ of covetousness.'”
After some remarks of Sir John, which I do not recollect, Mr. Stanley said, ”I did not intend making a philippic against covetousness, a sin to which I believe no one here is addicted. Let us not, however, plume ourselves in not being guilty of a vice to which, as we have no natural bias so in not committing it, we resist no temptation. What I meant to insist on was, that exchanging a turbulent for a quiet sin, or a scandalous for an orderly one, is not reformation; or, if you will allow me the strong word, is not conversion.”
Mr. Tyrrel, according to his appointment, came to dinner, and brought with him his nephew, Mr. Edward Tyrrel, whom he had lately entered at the university, with a design to prepare him for holy orders. He was a well-disposed young man, but his previous education was said to have been very much neglected, and was rather deficient in the necessary learning. Mr. Stanley had heard that Tyrrel had two reasons for breeding him to the church. In the first place, he fancied it was the cheapest profession, and in the next he had labored to infuse into him some particular opinions of his own, which he wished to disseminate through his nephew. Sir George Aston having accidentally called, he was prevailed on to stay, and Dr. Barlow was one of the party.
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