Ethel Churchill/Chapter 88
CHAPTER XII.
LADY MARCHMONT'S JOURNAL.
Tis strange to think, if we could fling aside
The mask and mantle many wear from pride,
How much would be, we now so little guess,
Deep in each heart's undreamed, unsought recess!
The careless smile, like a bright banner borne:
The laughlike merriment; the lip of scorn;
And for a cloak, what is there that can be
So difficult to pierce as gaiety?
Too dazzling to be scanned, the gloomy brow
Seems to hide something it would not avow;
But mocking words, light laugh, and ready jest,
These are the bars, the curtains to the breast.
Of all habits, that of writing down your thoughts and feelings, is one of the most difficult to abandon. Henrietta soon found a terrible vacuum left, by the letters in which she used to pour forth every feeling and thought to her uncle. Often of an evening, when she came home too feverishly restless for sleep, and yet too indolent for defined occupation, a letter had been a resource; now she took to keeping a journal. Sometimes it was burnt the next day, sometimes kept; but the habit formed itself, and her journal soon grew into a familiar friend. A few extracts will shew its spirit.
EXTRACTS FROM LADY MARCHMONT'S JOURNAL.
What an odd thing it is, the trouble one takes to collect and to amuse people who are rarely amused, and who do not thank us if they are! What do I recollect of the evening? Little, but that I was rather more bored than usual. I should so like to have talked more to Sir George Kingston. I cannot understand how it is that I, who have lived all my life among strangers, should ever feel shy; and yet I very often do. He had singularly encouraging manners, and talked easily. I think of a thousand answers I might have made, now that it is too late. It was positively rude to talk to another, as I did, while I danced with him; but I could not help it. "Could not help it"—is not that the reason given for nine out of ten of our actions? He talked to no one but myself: I wish he had spoken to some one else. I should like to hear what he talked about. The other men did not like him; they called him a coxcomb. Peculiarity in dress is never popular with your own sex; if possible, you will be called vulgar: if that be quite out of the question, there is the resource of calling you affected. Ethel thinks him handsome; but she is so taken up with her own thoughts that she has not much attention for any thing else.
Really, being in love appears a pleasant state of existence; it is always agreeable to know that there is another thinking of you, whether you think of them or not. I like the idea of there being one individual leaving your room who will bear away every look you have given, every word you have said,—it gives importance to them in your own eyes; and yet I have often marvelled what people see in each other. Even as a book is read through, people are talked through. One needs change of acquaintance; it is to the mind what change of air is to the body. As Hortense says of the gilded knicknackery of her saloon,—
"Est-ce utile?
C'est plus, c'est nécessaire."
I have never yet been able to steer my lovers through the Scylla of presence, or the Charybdis of absence. If I see much of them I get tired; if I do not see them, I utterly forget them. I hear a great deal of the necessity of loving: I better understand the difficulty of doing it. I wonder whether Sir George Kingston has ever been in love. Does any body ever go through life without feeling it? yet the generality of what are called love affairs appear to be the most insipid things in the world. They put me in mind of the French-woman, who, at a masquerade, was tormented by a full grown Cupid exclaiming,
"Mais regardez-moi, je suis l'Amour."
" Yes," cried the lady, "l'amour propre."
After all, a story I have heard my grandmother tell of the last but half-a-dozen Lord and Lady Pomfret's courtship, is not so far removed from the ordinary course either.
"Do you love buttered toast?" was the gentleman's question.
"Yes I do," was the lady's reply.
"Buttered on both sides?"
"Oh, dear, Yes!"
"Well, then, we will be married."
"How very nice! Yes!"
Now half what are called love affairs have no higher ground of sympathy than the poor mutual liking for buttered toast.
There are some people who ought never to dream of commonplacing the ideal with themselves. The world of the heart is essentially ideal: it collects all poetry,—innate and acquired; it is fastidious, dreaming, and delicate; and is a question of taste as well as of feeling; and it is to this world that love belongs. It should be kept as far apart from lower life as that mysterious world of stars and clouds on which I am now gazing. I do like this last hour of the four and twenty that we snatch from sleep. It is so pleasant to feel the excitement of an amusing evening fade away, by degrees, into a mood half thoughtful, half pensive, like the rich colours in the west, melting into the saddened softness of twilight.
What made me say I was bored to-night?—it is an affectation of to-day. It is worse than a sin to be pleased: it is a shame. What has poor, dear Truth done now-a-days, that every body blushes to own her? I ought to be satisfied with the last few hours, if it were only for making me enjoy the stillness; and there is nothing like the stillness of London—it is intense. The very wind has not a voice, and what a depth of purple is in the sky, broken by a few small, bright stars! It. was a beautiful belief that sought to read the future in their light. We read nothing there now. My spirit denies my words; they yet shine down upon us with influence; they give us dreams, fantasies, and associations: we feel the divinity of our better nature in their presence. If I ever loved, I would almost wish to be forgotten during the hurry of business and the cares of day; but let the beloved think of me in the soft and dark silence of a starry midnight: if he have one spiritual or tender thought in his nature, it will be all love's and mine. Mine! ah, ought I to wish it mine? But I hate the word "ought"—it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The "ought nots" of life are its pleasantest things.
Alas! for Lady Marchmont, when principle became matter of persiflage, and the heart turned away from its own truth.