Tales and Novels Volume X Part 10

The general came up the steps at this moment, rolling a note between his fingers, and looking displeased. Lady Davenant inquired if he could tell her the cause of Mr. Beauclerc's delay. He could not.

Lady Cecilia exclaimed--"Very extraordinary! Provoking! Insufferable!

Intolerable!"

"It is Mr. Beauclerc's own affair," said Lady Davenant, wrapping her shawl round her; and, taking the general's arm, she walked on to her carriage. Seating herself, and gathering up the reins, she repeated--"Mr. Beauclerc's own affair, completely."

The lash of her whip was caught somewhere, and, while the groom was disentangling it, she reiterated--"That will do: let the horses go:"--and with half-suppressed impatience thanked Helen, who was endeavouring to arrange some ill-disposed cloak--"Thank you, thank you, my dear: it's all very well. Sit down, Helen."

She drove off rapidly, through the beautiful park scenery But the ancient oaks, standing alone, casting vast shadows, the distant ma.s.sive woods of magnificent extent and of soft and varied foliage; the secluded glades, all were lost upon her. Looking straight between her horses'

ears, she drove on in absolute silence.

Helen's idea of Mr. Beauclerc's importance increased wonderfully. What must he be whose coming or not coming could so move all the world, or those who were all the world to her? And, left to her own cogitations, she was picturing to herself what manner of man he might be, when suddenly Lady Davenant turned, and asked what she was thinking of?

"I beg your pardon for startling you so, my dear; I am aware that it is a dreadfully imprudent, impertinent question--one which, indeed, I seldom ask. Few interest me sufficiently to make me care of what they think: from fewer still could I expect to hear the truth. Nay--nothing upon compulsion, Helen. Only say plainly, if you would rather not tell me. That answer I should prefer to the ingenious formula of evasion, the solecism in metaphysics, which Cecilia used the other day, when unwittingly I asked her of what she was thinking--'Of a great many different things, mamma.'"

Helen, still more alarmed by Lady Davenant's speech than by her question, and aware of the conclusions which might be drawn from her answer, nevertheless bravely replied that she had been thinking of Mr.

Beauclerc, of what he might be whose coming or not coming was of such consequence. As she spoke the expression of Lady Davenant's countenance changed.

"Thank you, my dear child, you are truth itself, and truly do I love you therefore. It's well that you did not ask me of what I was thinking, for I am not sure that I could have answered so directly."

"But I could never have presumed to ask such a question of you," said Helen, "there is such a difference."

"Yes," replied Lady Davenant; "there is such a difference as age and authority require to be made, but nevertheless, such as is not quite consistent with the equal rights of friends.h.i.+p. You have told me the subject of your day-dream, my love, and if you please, I will tell you the subject of mine. I was rapt into times long past: I was living over again some early scenes--some which are connected, and which connect me, in a curious manner, with this young man, Mr. Granville Beauclerc."

She seemed to speak with some difficulty, and yet to be resolved to go on. "Helen, I have a mind," continued she, "to tell you what, in the language of affected autobiographers, I might call 'some pa.s.sages of my life.'"

Helen's eyes brightened, as she eagerly thanked her: but hearing a half-suppressed sigh, she added--"Not if it is painful to you though, my dear Lady Davenant."

"Painful it must be," she replied, "but it may be useful to you; and a weak friend is that who can do only what is pleasurable. You have often trusted me with those little inmost feelings of the heart, which, however innocent, we shrink from exposing to any but the friends we most love; it is unjust and absurd of those advancing in years to expect of the young that confidence should come all and only on their side: the human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return."

Lady Davenant paused again, and then said,--"It is a general opinion, that n.o.body is the better for advice."

"I am sure I do not think so," said Helen.

"I am glad you do not; nor do I. Much depends upon the way in which it is offered. General maxims, drawn from experience, are, to the young at least, but as remarks--moral sentences--mere dead letter, and take no hold of the mind. 'I have felt' must come before 'I think,' especially in speaking to a young friend, and, though I am accused of being so fond of generalising that I never come to particulars, I can and will: therefore, my dear, I will tell you some particulars of my life, in which, take notice, there are no adventures. Mine has been a life of pa.s.sion--of feeling, at least,--not of incidents: nothing, my dear, to excite or to gratify curiosity."

"But, independent of all curiosity about events," said Helen, "there is such an interest in knowing what has been really felt and thought in their former lives by those we know and love."

"I shall sink in your esteem," said Lady Davenant--"so be it."

"I need not begin, as most people do, with 'I was born'--" but, interrupting herself, she said, "this heat is too much for me."

They turned into a long shady drive through the woods. Lady Davenant drew up the reins, and her ponies walked slowly on the gra.s.sy road; then, turning to Helen, she said:--

"It would have been well for me if any friend had, when I was of your age, put me on my guard against my own heart: but my too indulgent, too sanguine mother, led me into the very danger against which she should have warned me--she misled me, though without being aware of it. Our minds, our very natures differed strangely.

"She was a castle-builder--yes, now you know, my dear, why I spoke so strongly, and, as you thought, so severely this morning. My mother was a castle-builder of the ordinary sort: a worldly plan of a castle was hers, and little care had she about the knight within; yet she had sufficient tact to know that it must be the idea of the _preux chevalier_ that would lure her daughter into the castle. Prudent for herself, imprudent for me, and yet she loved me--all she did was for love of me. She managed with so much address, that I had no suspicion of my being the subject of any speculation--otherwise, probably, my imagination might have revolted, my self-will have struggled, my pride have interfered, or my delicacy might have been alarmed, but nothing of all that happened; I was only too ready, too glad to believe all that I was told, all that appeared in that spring-time of hope and love. I was very romantic, not in the modern fas.h.i.+onable young-lady sense of the word, with the mixed ideas of a shepherdess's hat and the paraphernalia of a peeress--love in a cottage, and a fas.h.i.+onable house in town. No; mine was honest, pure, real romantic love--absurd if you will; it was love nursed by imagination more than by hope. I had early, in my secret soul, as perhaps you have at this instant in yours, a pattern of perfection--something chivalrous, n.o.ble, something that is no longer to be seen now-a-days--the more delightful to imagine, the moral sublime and beautiful; more than human, yet with the extreme of human tenderness. Mine was to be a demiG.o.d whom I could wors.h.i.+p, a husband to whom I could always look up, with whom I could always sympathise, and to whom I could devote myself with all a woman's self-devotion. I had then a vast idea--as I think you have now, Helen--of self-devotion; you would devote yourself to your friends, but I could not shape any of my friends into a fit object. So after my own imagination I made one, dwelt upon it, doated on it, and at last threw this bright image of my own fancy full upon the being to whom I thought I was most happily destined--destined by duty, chosen by affection. The words 'I love you'

once p.r.o.nounced, I gave my whole heart in return, gave it, sanctified, as I felt, by religion. I had high religious sentiments; a vow once pa.s.sed the lips, a look, a single look of appeal to Heaven, was as much for me as if p.r.o.nounced at the altar, and before thousands to witness.

Some time was to elapse before the celebration of our marriage.

Protracted engagements are unwise, yet I should not say so; this gave me time to open my eyes--my bewitched eyes: still, some months I pa.s.sed in a trance of beatification, with visions of duties all performed--benevolence universal, and grat.i.tude, and high success, and crowns of laurel, for my hero, for he was military; it all joined well in my fancy. All the pictured tales of vast heroic deeds were to be his.

Living, I was to live in the radiance of his honour; or dying, to die with him, and then to be most blessed.

"It is all to me now as a dream, long pa.s.sed, and never told; no, never, except to him who had a right to know it--my husband, and now to you, Helen. From my dream I was awakened by a rude shock--I saw, I thank Heaven I first, and I alone, saw that his heart was gone from me--that his heart had never been mine--that it was unworthy of me. No, I will not say that; I will not think so. Still I trust he had deceived himself, though not so much as he deceived me. I am willing to believe he did not know that what he professed for me was not love, till he was seized by that pa.s.sion for another, a younger, fairer----Oh! how much fairer. Beauty is a great gift of Heaven--not for the purposes of female vanity; but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be loved. But beauty I had not."

"Had not!" interrupted Helen, "I always heard----"

"_He_ did not think so, my dear; no matter what others thought, at least so I felt at that time. My ident.i.ty is so much changed that I can look back upon this now, and tell it all to you calmly.

"It was at a rehearsal of ancient music; I went there accidentally one morning without my mother, with a certain old d.u.c.h.ess and her daughters; the dowager full of some Indian screen which she was going to buy; the daughters, intent, one of them, on a quarrel between two of the singers; the other upon loves and hates of her own. I was the only one of the party who had any real taste for music. I was then particularly fond of it.

"Well, my dear, I must come to the point," her voice changing as she spoke.--"After such a lapse of time, during which my mind, my whole self has so changed, I could not have believed before I began to speak on this subject, that these reminiscences could have so moved me; but it is merely this sudden wakening of ideas long dormant, for years not called up, never put into words.

"I was sitting, wrapt in a silent ecstasy of pleasure, leaning back behind the whispering party, when I saw him come in, and, thinking only of his sharing my delight, I made an effort to catch his attention, but he did not see me--his eye was fixed on another; I followed that eye, and saw that most beautiful creature on which it fixed; I saw him seat himself beside her--one look was enough--it was conviction. A pang went through me; I grew cold, but made no sound nor motion; I gasped for breath, I believe, but I did not faint. None cared for me; I was unnoticed--saved from the abas.e.m.e.nt of pity. I struggled to retain my self-command, and was enabled to complete the purpose on which I then--even _then_, resolved. That resolve gave me force.

"In any great emotion we can speak better to those who do not care for us than to those who feel for us. More calmly than I now speak to you, I turned to the person who then sat beside me, to the dowager whose heart was in the Indian screen, and begged that I might not longer detain her, as I wished that she would carry me home--she readily complied: I had presence of mind enough to move when we could do so without attracting attention. It was well that woman talked as she did all the way home; she never saw, never suspected, the agony of her to whom she spoke. I ran up to my own room, bolted the door, and threw myself into a chair; that is the last thing I remember, till I found myself lying on the floor, wakening from a state of insensibility. I know not what time had elapsed; so as soon as I could I rang for my maid; she had knocked at my door, and, supposing I slept, had not disturbed me--my mother, I found, had not yet returned.

"I dressed for dinner: HE was to dine with us. It was my custom to see him for a few minutes before the rest of the company arrived. No time ever appeared to me so dreadfully long as the interval between my being dressed that day and his arrival.

"I heard him coming up stairs: my heart heat so violently that I feared I should not be able to speak with dignity and composure, but the motive was sufficient.

"What I said I know not; I am certain only that it was without one word of reproach. What I had at one glance foreboded was true--he acknowledged it. I released him from all engagement to me. I saw he was evidently relieved by the determined tone of my refusal--at what expense to my heart lie was set free, he saw not--never knew--never suspected.

But after that first involuntary expression of the pleasure of relief, I saw in his countenance surprise, a sort of mortified astonishment at my self-possession. I own my woman's pride enjoyed this; it was something better than pride--the sense of the preservation of my dignity. I felt that in this s.h.i.+pwreck of my happiness I made no cowardly exposure of my feelings, but he did not understand me. Our minds, as I now found, moved in different orbits. We could not comprehend each other. Instead of feeling, as the instinct of generosity would have taught him to feel, that I was sacrificing my happiness to his, he told me that he now believed I had never loved him. My eyes were opened--I saw him at once as he really was. The ungenerous look upon self-devotion as madness, folly, or art: he could not think me a fool, he did not think me mad, artful I believe he did suspect me to be; he concluded that I made the discovery of his inconstancy an excuse for my own; he thought me, perhaps, worse than capricious, interested--for, our engagement being unknown, a lover of higher rank had, in the interval, presented himself.

My perception of this base suspicion was useful to me at the moment, as it roused my spirit, and I went through the better, and without relapse of tenderness, with that which I had undertaken. One condition only I made; I insisted that this explanation should rest between us two; that, in fact, and in manner, the breaking off the match should be left entirely to me. And to this part of the business I now look back with satisfaction, and I have honest pride in telling you, who will feel the same for me, that I practised in the whole conduct of the affair no deceit of any kind, not one falsehood was told. The world knew nothing; there my mother had been prudent. She was the only person to whom I was bound to explain--to speak, I mean, for I did not feel myself bound to explain. Perfect confidence only can command perfect confidence in whatever relation of life. I told her all that she had a right to know.

I announced to her that the intended marriage could never be--that I objected to it; that both our minds were changed; that we were both satisfied in having released each other from our mutual engagement.

I had, as I foresaw, to endure my mother's anger, her entreaties, her endless surprise, her bitter disappointment; but she exhausted all these, and her mind turned sooner than I had expected to that hope of higher establishment which amused her during the rest of the season in London. Two months of it were still to be pa.s.sed--to me the two most painful months of my existence. The daily, nightly, effort of appearing in public, while I was thus wretched, in the full gala of life in the midst of the young, the gay, the happy--broken-hearted as I felt--it was an effort beyond my strength. That summer was, I remember, intolerably hot. Whenever my mother observed that I looked pale, and that my spirits were not so good as formerly, I exerted myself more and more; accepted every invitation because I dared not refuse; I danced at this ball, and the next, and the next; urged on, I finished to the dregs the dissipation of the season.

"My mother certainly made me do dreadfully too much. But I blame others, as we usually do when we are ourselves the most to blame--I had attempted that which could not be done. By suppressing all outward sign of suffering, allowing no vent for sorrow in words or tears--by actual force of compression--I thought at once to extinguish my feelings.

Little did I know of the human heart when I thought this! The weak are wise in yielding to the first shock. They cannot be struck to the earth who sink prostrate; sorrow has little power where there is no resistance.--'The flesh will follow where the pincers tear.' Mine was a presumptuous--it had nearly been a fatal struggle. That London season at last over, we got into the country; I expected rest, but found none. The pressing necessity for exertion over, the stimulus ceasing, I sunk--sunk into a state of apathy. Time enough had elapsed between the breaking off of my marriage and the appearance of this illness, to prevent any ideas on my mother's part of cause and effect, ideas indeed which were never much looked for, or well joined in her mind. The world knew nothing of the matter. My illness went under the convenient head 'nervous.' I heard all the opinions p.r.o.nounced on my case, and knew they were all mistaken, but I swallowed whatever they pleased. No physician, I repeated to myself, can 'minister to a mind diseased.'

"I tried to call religion to my aid; but my religious sentiments were, at that time, tinctured with the enthusiasm of my early character. Had I been a Catholic, I should have escaped from my friends and thrown myself into a cloister; as it was, I had formed a strong wish to retire from that world which was no longer anything to me: the spring of pa.s.sion, which I then thought the spring of life, being broken, I meditated my resolution secretly and perpetually as I lay on my bed. They used to read to me, and, among other things, some papers of 'The Rambler,' which I liked not at all; its tripod sentences tired my ear, but I let them go on--as well one sound as another.

"It chanced that one night, as I was going to sleep, an eastern story in 'The Rambler,' was read to me, about some man, a-weary of the world, who took to the peaceful hermitage. There was a regular moral tagged to the end of it, a thing I hate, the words were, 'No life pleasing to G.o.d that is not useful to man.' When I wakened in the middle of that night, this sentence was before my eyes, and the words seemed to repeat themselves over and over again to my ears when I was sinking to sleep. The impression remained in my mind, and though I never voluntarily recurred to it, came out long afterwards, perfectly fresh, and became a motive of action.

"Strange, mysterious connection between mind and body; in mere animal nature we see the same. The bird wakened from his sleep to be taught a tune sung to him in the dark, and left to sleep again,--the impression rests buried within him, and weeks afterward he comes out with the tune perfect. But these are only phenomena of memory--mine was more extraordinary. I am not sure that I can explain it to you. In my weak state, my understanding enfeebled as much as my body--my reason weaker than my memory, I could not help allowing myself to think that the constant repet.i.tion of that sentence was a warning sent to me from above. As I grew stronger, the superst.i.tion died away, but the sense of the thing still remained with me. It led me to examine and reflect. It did more than all my mother's entreaties could effect. I had refused to see any human creature, but I now consented to admit a few. The charm was broken. I gave up my longing for solitude, my plan of retreat from the world; suffered myself to be carried where they pleased--to Brighton it was--to my mother's satisfaction. I was ready to appear in the ranks of fas.h.i.+on at the opening of the next London campaign. Automatically I 'ran my female exercises o'er' with as good grace as ever. I had followers and proposals; but my mother was again thrown into despair by what she called the short work I made with my admirers, scarcely allowing decent time for their turning into lovers before I warned them not to think of me. I have heard that women who have suffered from man's inconstancy are disposed afterwards to revenge themselves by inflicting pain such as they have themselves endured, and delight in all the cruelty of coquetry. It was not so with me. Mine was too deep a wound--skinned over--not callous, and all danger of its opening again I dreaded. I had lovers the more, perhaps, because I cared not for them; till amongst them there came one who, as I saw, appreciated my character, and, as I perceived, was becoming seriously attached. To prevent danger to his happiness, as he would take no other warning, I revealed to him the state of my mind. However humiliating the confession, I thought it due to him. I told him that I had no heart to give--that I had received none in return for that with which I had parted, and that love was over with me.

"'As a pa.s.sion, it may be so, not as an affection,' was his reply.

"The words opened to me a view of his character. I saw, too, by his love increasing with his esteem, the solidity of his understanding, and the n.o.bleness of his nature. He went deeper and deeper into my mind, till he came to a spring of grat.i.tude, which rose and overflowed, vivifying and fertilising the seemingly barren waste. I believe it to be true that, after the first great misfortune, persons never return to be the same that they were before, but this I know--and this it is important you should be convinced of, my dear Helen--that the mind, though sorely smitten, can recover its powers. A mind, I mean, sustained by good principles, and by them made capable of persevering efforts for its own recovery. It may be sure of regaining, in time--observe, I say in time--its healthful tone.

"Time was given to me by that kind, that n.o.ble being, who devoted himself to me with a pa.s.sion which I could not return--but, with such affection as I could give, and which he a.s.sured me would make his happiness, I determined to devote to him the whole of my future existence. Happiness for me, I thought, was gone, except in so far as I could make him happy.

"I married Lord Davenant--much against my mother's wish, for he was then the younger of three brothers, and with a younger brother's very small portion. Had it been a more splendid match, I do not think I could have been prevailed on to give my consent. I could not have been sure of my own motives, or rather my pride would not have been clear as to the opinion which others might form. This was a weakness, for in acting we ought to depend upon ourselves, and not to look for the praise or blame of others; but I let you see me as I am, or as I was: I do not insist, like Queen Elizabeth, in having my portrait without shade."

CHAPTER VIII.