Tales and Novels Volume IX Part 22

"And I, Miss Montenero!--Let me speak, pray, Mrs. Harrington," said my father.

"By and by," whispered my mother; "not yet, my love."

"Ay, put the ring on her finger--that's right, boy!" cried my father, as my mother drew him back.

Berenice accepted of the ring in the most gracious, the most graceful manner.

"I accept this with pleasure," said she; "I shall prize it more than ever Lady de Brantefield valued her ring: as a token of goodness and grat.i.tude, it will be more precious to me than any, jewel could be; and it will ever be dear to me," added she, with a softened voice, turning to her father, "very dear, as a memorial of the circ.u.mstances which have removed the only obstacle to, _our_ happiness."

"Our," repeated my father: "n.o.ble girl! Above all affectation. Boy, a truce with your transports! She is my own daughter--I must have a kiss."

"For shame, my dear," said my mother; "you make Miss Montenero blus.h.!.+"

"Blushes are very becoming--I always thought yours so, Mrs.

Harrington--that's the reason I have given you occasion to blush for me so often. Now you may take me out of the room, madam. I have some discretion, though you think you have it all to yourself," said my father.

I have some discretion, too, hereditary or acquired. I am aware that the moment two lovers cease to be miserable, they begin to be tiresome; their best friends and the generous public are satisfied to hear as little as possible concerning their prosperous loves.

It was otherwise, they say, in the days of Theagenes and Chariclea.

"How! will you never be satisfied with hearing?" says their historian, who, when he came to a prosperous epoch in their history, seems to have had a discreet suspicion that he might be too long; "Is not my discourse yet tedious?"

"No," the indefatigable auditor is made to reply; "and who is he, unless he have a heart of adamant or iron, that would not listen content to hear the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea, though the story should last a year? Therefore, continue it, I beseech you."

"Continue, I beseech you:" dear flattering words! Though perhaps no one, at this minute, says or feels this, I must add a few lines more--not about myself, but about Mr. Montenero.

In the moment of joy, when the heart opens, you can see to the very bottom of it; and whether selfish or generous, revengeful or forgiving, the real disposition is revealed. We were all full of joy and congratulations, when Mr. Montenero, at the first pause of silence, addressed himself in his most persuasive tone to me.

"Mr. Harrington--good Mr. Harrington--I have a favour to ask from you."

"A favour! from me! Oh! name it," cried I: "What pleasure I shall have in granting it!"

"Perhaps not. You will not have pleasure--immediate pleasure--in granting it: it will cost you present pain."

"Pain!--impossible! but no matter how much pain if you desire it. What can it be?"

"That wretched woman--Fowler!"

I shuddered and started back.

"Yes, Fowler--your imagination revolts at the sound of her name--she is abhorrent to your strongest, your earliest, a.s.sociations; but, Mr.

Harrington, you have given proofs that your matured reason and your humanity have been able to control and master your imagination and your antipathies. To this power over yourself you owe many of your virtues, and all the strength of character, and, I will say it, the sanity of mind, my son, without which Berenice--"

"I will see--I will hear Fowler this instant," cried I. "So far I will conquer myself; but you will allow that this is a just antipathy. Surely I have reason to hate her."

"She is guilty, but penitent; she suffers and must suffer. Her mistress refuses ever to see her more. She is abandoned by all her family, all her friends; she must quit her country--sails to-morrow in the vessel which was to have taken us to America--and carries with her, in her own feelings, her worst punishment--a punishment which it is not in our power to remit, but it is in our power to mitigate her sufferings--I can provide her with an asylum for the remainder of her miserable old age; and you, my son, before she goes from happy England, see her and forgive her. 'It is the glory of a man to pa.s.s by an offence.' Let us see and forgive this woman. How can we better celebrate our joy--how can we better fill the measure of our happiness, than by the forgiveness of our enemies?"

"By Jupiter Ammon," cried my father, "none but a good Christian could do this!"

"And why," said Berenice, laying her hand gently on my father's arm, "and why not a good Jew?"

END OF HARRINGTON.

THOUGHTS ON BORES.

A bore is a biped, but not always unplumed. There be of both kinds;--the female frequently plumed, the _male-military_ plumed, helmed, or crested, and whisker-faced, hairy, _Dandy bore_, ditto, ditto, ditto.--There are bores unplumed, capped, or hatted, curled or uncurled, bearded and beardless.

The _bore_ is not a ruminating animal,--carnivorous, not sagacious--prosing--long-winded--tenacious of life, though not vivacious. The bore is good for promoting sleep; but though he causeth sleep in others, it is uncertain whether he ever sleeps himself; as few can keep awake in his company long enough to see. It is supposed that when he sleeps it is with his mouth open.

The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that cla.s.s of irrational bipeds who hurt only themselves. To such, however, I would not advise trusting too much. The bore is harmless, no doubt, as long as you listen to him; but disregarded, or stopped in mid-career, he will turn upon you. It is a fatal, if not a vulgar error, to presume that the bore belongs to that cla.s.s of animals that have no gall; of which Pliny gives a list (much disputed by Sir Thomas Browne and others). That bores have gall, many have proved to their cost, as some now living, peradventure, can attest. The milk of human kindness is said to abound naturally in certain of the gentler bore kind; but it is apt to grow sour if the animal be crossed--not in love, but in talk. Though I cannot admit to a certainty that all bores have not gall, yet a.s.suredly they have no tact, and they are one and all deficient in sympathy.

A bore is a heavy animal, and his weight has this peculiarity, that it increases every moment he stays near you. The French describe this property in one word, which, though French, I may be permitted to quote, because untranslatable, _il s'appesant.i.t_--Touch and go, it is not in the nature of a bore to do--whatever he touches turns to lead.

Much learning might be displayed, and much time wasted, on an inquiry into the derivation, descent, and etymology of the animal under consideration. Suffice it to say, that for my own part, diligence hath not been wanting in the research. Johnson's Dictionary and old Bailey, have been ransacked; but neither the learned Johnson, nor the recondite Bailey, throw much light upon this matter. The Slang Dictionary, to which I should in the first place have directed my attention, was unfortunately not within my reach. The result of all my inquiries amounts to this--that _bore_, _boor_, and _boar_, are all three spelt indifferently, and _consequently_ are derived from one common stock,--what stock, remains to be determined. I could give a string of far-fetched derivations, each of them less to the purpose than the other; but I prefer, according to the practice of our great lexicographer, taking refuge at once in the Coptic.

Of one point there can be little doubt--that bores existed in ancient as well as in modern times, though the deluge has unluckily swept away all traces of the antediluvian bore--a creature which a.n.a.logy leads us to believe must have been of formidable power.

We find them for certain in the days of Horace. That plague, worse, as he describes, than asthma or rheumatism, that prating, praising thing which caught him in the street, stuck to him wherever he went--of which, stopping or running, civil or rude, s.h.i.+rking or cutting, he could never rid himself--what was he but a bore?

In Pope I find the first description in English poetry of the animal--whether imitated from Horace, or a drawing from life, may be questioned. But what could that creature be but a bore, from whom he says no walls could guard him, and no shades could hide; who pierced his thickets; glided into his grotto; stopped his chariot; boarded his barge; from whom no place was sacred--not the church free; and against whom John was ordered to tie up the knocker?

Through the indexes to Milton and Shakspeare I have not neglected to hunt; but unfortunately, I have found nothing to my purpose in Milton, and in all Shakspeare no trace of a bore; except it be that _thing_, that popinjay, who so pestered Hotspur, that day when he, faint with toil and dry with rage, was leaning on his sword after the battle--all that bald, disjointed talk, to which Hotspur, past his patience, answered neglectingly, he knew not what, and that sticking to him with questions even when his wounds were cold. It must have been a bore of foreign breed, not the good downright English bore.

All the cla.s.ses, orders, genera, and species of the animal, I pretend not to enumerate. Heaven forefend!--but some of those most commonly met with in England, I may mention, and a few of the most curious, describe.

In the first place, there is the _mortal great bore_, confined to the higher cla.s.ses of society. A celebrated wit, who, from his long and extensive acquaintance with the fas.h.i.+onable and political world, has had every means of forming his opinion on this subject, lays it down as an axiom, that none but a rich man, or a great man, _can_ be a great bore; others are not endured long enough in society, to come to the perfection of tiresomeness.

Of these there is the travelled and the untravelled kind. The travelled, formerly rare, is now dreadfully common in these countries. The old travelling bore was, as I find him aptly described--"A pretender to antiquities, roving, majestic-headed, and sometimes little better than crazed; and being exceedingly credulous, he would stuff his many letters with _fooleries_ and misinformations"--_vide_ a life published by Hearne--Thomas Hearne--him to whom Time said, "Whatever I forget, you learn."

The modern travelled bore is a garrulous creature. His talk, chiefly of himself, of all that he has seen that is incredible; and all that he remembers which is not worth remembering. His tongue is neither English, French, Italian, or German, but a leash, and more than a leash, of languages at once. Besides his having his _quantum_ of the ills that flesh is subject to, he has some peculiar to himself, and rather extraordinary. He is subject, for instance, to an indigestion of houses and churches, pictures and statues. Moreover, he is troubled with fits of what may be called _the cold enthusiasm_; he babbles of Mont Blanc and the picturesque; and when the fit is on, he raves of Raphael and Correggio, Rome, Athens, Paestum, and Jerusalem. He despises England, and has no home; or at least loves none.

But I have been already guilty of an error of arrangement; I should have given precedence to the _old original English bore_; which should perhaps be more properly spelt _boor_; indeed it was so, as late as the time of Mrs. Cowley, who, in the Belle's Stratagem, talks of man's being _boored_.

The _boor_ is now rare in England, though there are specimens of him still to be seen in remote parts of the country. He is untravelled always, not apt to be found straying, or stirring from home. His covering is home-spun, his drink home-brewed, his meat home-fed, and himself home-bred. In general, he is a wonderfully silent animal.

But there are talking ones; and their talk is of bullocks. Talking or silent, the indigenous English bore is somewhat sulky, surly, seemingly morose; yet really good-natured, inoffensive, if kindly used and rightly taken; convivial, yet not social. It is curious, that though addicted to home, he is not properly domestic--bibulous--said to be despotic with the female.

_The parliamentary bore_ comes next in order. Fond of high places; but not always found in them. His civil life is but short, never extending above seven years at the utmost; seldom so long. His dissolution often occurs, we are told, prematurely; but he revives another and the same.--Mode of life:--during five or six months of the year these bores inhabit London--are to be seen every where, always looking as if they were out of their element. About June or July they migrate to the country--to watering places--or to their own places; where they shoot partridges, pheasants, and wild ducks; hunt hares and foxes, cause men to be imprisoned or transported who do the same without _licence_; and frank letters--some illegibly.

The parliamentary bore is not considered a sagacious animal, except in one particular. It is said that he always knows which way the wind blows, quick as any of the four-footed swinish mult.i.tude. Report says also that he has the instinct of a rat in quitting a falling house. An incredible power was once attributed to him, by one from Ireland, of being able at pleasure to turn his back upon himself. But this may well be cla.s.sed among vulgar errors.

Of the common parliamentary bore there be two orders; the silent, and the speechifying. The silent is not absolutely deprived of utterance; he can say "Yes" or "No"--but regularly in the wrong place, unless well tutored and well paid. The talking parliamentary bore can out.w.a.tch the Bear. He reiterates eternally with the art peculiar to the rational creature of using many words and saying nothing. The following are some of the cries by which this cla.s.s is distinguished.

"Hear! Hear! Hear!--Hear him! Hear him! Hear him!--Speaker! Speaker!

Speaker! Speaker!--Order! Order! Order!--Hear the honourable member!"