Ethel Churchill/Chapter 80
CHAPTER IV.
ASKING FOR AN INVITATION.
This is a weary and a wretched life,
With nothing to redeem it but the heart.
Affection, earth's great purifier, stirs
Our embers into flame, and that ascends.
All finer natures walk this bitter world
But for a while, then Heaven asks its own,
And we can but remember and regret.
Lady Marchmont's name procured her instant admittance; and Lord Norbourne came down to hand her from the carriage, and take her to his own room.
"I find," said he, "that my curiosity, which was up in arms when your card was brought, is quite lost in the pleasure of seeing you. I shall not allow you to tell me your business for a long time."
"I am in no hurry," said Henrietta, smiling; while her eye, glancing round the room, caught sight of Constance's picture. "How like, how very like!" exclaimed she, approaching it, partly to conceal her emotion.
"It is," said Lord Norbourne, "such a comfort, and such a companion."
"She looks like what she was, an angel!" exclaimed the countess, earnestly. "I never knew any one who did me so much good. I grew better while she was with me. Oh, Lord Norbourne! I felt her loss and yours deeply at the time: but I have felt it more bitterly since. My poor uncle;" but she could not finish the sentence; and the tears she could not restrain, entirely overpowered her. "I wish," exclaimed she, in broken sobs, "that I had died instead of Constance!"
"My dear child," said Lord Norbourne, "you are too young, and should be too happy, for such a wish."
"I am not happy," she replied: "in losing my uncle, I lost the only human being who really cared for me. You cannot think how weary I am of the heartless, useless life that I lead. I wish I had been your daughter: I should have had some one to look up to, and to love. Ah, the lot of Constance was far happier than we deem!"
"I believe it was," replied Lord Norbourne, kindly taking his companion's hand. "I have learnt to think of my loss with a sadness that soothes me. I turn to her image when overfretted with worldly cares. I hope almost as she hoped for our re-union."
"I cannot tell you," continued Henrietta, "how often I think of her. Perhaps, from being the only objects of my affections that I ever lost, her idea and that of my uncle are singularly blended together. Ah, we never know how dearly we loved our friends until the grave has closed over them."
Lord Norbourne would then fain have said something to comfort her, but even he could think of nothing. All consolations appear commonplace in the presence of a great sorrow. For other griefs there are many pleas to urge for forgetfulness; but to urge upon us the forgetfulness of the dead, seems like profanation of their sad and sacred memory. Lord Norbourne, too, was touched by the confidence reposed in him. He knew Lord Marehmont, and felt how utterly his wife was thrown away upon him; and yet it was a sort of unhappiness to which it was impossible to allude, and still more impossible to redress.
"Yet who would believe," exclaimed he, half thinking, aloud, " to see you sometimes so brilliant, and, seemingly, so gay, that the envied and flattered Lady Marchmont knew the bitterness of regret, or the darkness of despondency?"
"Ah," replied she, "life is very inconsistent. We contradict each other; still more do we contradict ourselves. It seems to me as if there were a perpetual warfare going on between the outward and the inner world. Nothing is really what it appears to be; and this is what discourages me more than I can express—the not knowing to what I may trust, and my utter inability to discern between that which is; and that which only seems."
"Half the misery in this life," returned Lord Norbourne, "originates in its falsehood. We conceal our thoughts and our feelings, till, even to ourselves, they become confused; and half our time is spent in fretting and feverish attempts to disentangle the webs we have woven: and the strange thing is, that all this dissimulation is unnecessary; we should have done far better without it."
"What a small, worthless thing," exclaimed Henrietta, "is our existence, filled with mean envyings, paltry hopes! and, if for one instant redeemed by a true affection, or a generous emotion, what wretchedness is sure to follow the indulgence of either!"
"You must not come to me," answered her listener, "for a defence of society; I have long since loathed its bitterness as much as I despise its baseness. You cannot know the miserably mean motives that actuate the generality; but the trifles so sought give their own narrowness to the mind."
"And that brings me at once," interrupted Henrietta, "to the object of my visit; the motives, however, being supposed to lie too deep for my feminine apprehension. Guess what brings me here."
"Nay," replied her companion, "what have I done for you to presuppose such a want of gallantry, as to imagine that I would attempt to guess a lady's secret before she thought proper to communicate it?"
"It is not interesting enough," answered she, "for me to make a mystery of it: but the fact is, that Lord Marchmont has either caught cold by sitting on the opposition benches, or thinks that nothing but his own personal experience can decide whether Sir Robert's cook exceeds his own—a subject on which I have lately heard him express much anxiety. He has suddenly discovered that England owes every thing to the present administration, which he has henceforth resolved to support with both vote and voice."
"We shall be glad of the vote," replied Lord Norbourne, "though we would dispense with the voice."
"I fear me," answered the countess, "that you must take your bargain 'for better or worse.' But I have not yet arrived at my business. There is a condition annexed to the proposed alliance."
"Something very unreasonable, I suppose," cried Lord Norbourne. "Is it a marquisate, or the next vacant riband?"
"Your conjectures are not what yours generally have the reputation of being; but wide, indeed, of the mark. However, if your penetration be at fault, you will at least have the satisfaction of establishing your theory of small motives."
"Well," said he, "let me hear what bribe (I beg pardon for the word) is to win over our potent ally."
"Only," replied Lady Marchmont, "an invitation to Sir Robert's fête at Chelsea."
"An invitation!" exclaimed Lord Norbourne,—"he shall have a dozen if he please. I will take care, that the tickets are duly forwarded this afternoon."
"Many thanks for your kindness," said she, rising from her seat. "Ah, Lord Norbourne! you do not know how to grant favours: you have not made me feel awkward or embarrassed in the least. I really do not hate you for having obliged me."
Lord Norbourne laughed, and took her hand to lead her to the carriage.
"By the way," said he, as they were descending the staircase, "how is your beautiful friend, Miss Churchill? and, speaking of so great an ornament to a ball-room, you must allow me to send her a card together with your own."
"You are too kind," exclaimed Henrietta, delighted.
"Oh, no; I am only selfish," returned Lord Norbourne. "I shall expect a vote of thanks from Sir Robert for my beauties."
"I shall do nothing for the next week but study my costume and complexion," said she. "Ethel and myself will consider our conquests as proper compliments to your kindness."
"Ah! as to your charming self," replied he, "'The world is all before you where to choose;'
but, do you know, I am rather inclined to limit the sphere of Miss Churchill's fascination. It has already, unless I am greatly mistaken, produced due effect on Norbourne; and, of course, I am in his interests."
"Well, I promise you to circumscribe her conquests as much as possible by extending my own," returned Henrietta. "It will be an easy task; for Miss Churchill does not do 'the honours of her eyes.' I often tell her her beauty is quite wasted upon her."
"Not wasted," said her companion, "if it do but procure for her the true allegiance of one affectionate heart; and I know Norbourne too well not to know how safely he may be trusted even with the happiness of another."
"This is as much as to say," thought Lady Marchmont, when seated in the carriage, "Lord Norbourne is quite prepared to give his consent to his nephew's marrying again. Well, I hope that Ethel will recover her bloom and spirits: if there is such a thing as happiness in this wide and weary world, it is before her now. I wish I could anticipate things as eagerly as I used to do; but, alas! scarcely any thing seems worth anticipating; or if some fair hope arise upon the distance, it is too good to be true."