Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 2

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

CHAPTER II.

"And haunted to our very age
    With the vain shadow of the past."—Mazeppa.

"Who knocks so late.
And knocks so loud at our convent gate?"—Scott.

But one rosebud and half a leaf of the flounce were finished, when it was hastily restored to the work-box, the ringlets involuntarily smoothed back, both uncle and aunt awakened, for a carriage had driven rapidly into the court; a loud ring at the gates, and a loud barking of the dogs, had announced an arrival. In less than two minutes Mr. Delawarr had entered the room, and been installed in a seat near the fire; Mrs. Arundel had vanished; and her husband had called up his best manner, his kindest, to welcome one who, though an old friend, had been mostly recalled to his memory by the newspaper. The visitor was as gracefully as briefly rather accounting than apologising for his sudden intrusion, by saying that an accident to his carriage had made him late, and turned him from the direct road; and that, though a sportsman no longer, he could not be so near without coming to see if his old instructor in the game laws had quite forgotten the feats of other days. Now this was both vrai and vraisemblable enough; for, to do Mr. Delawarr justice, if there had been mention made of the declining health of the member for Avonsford, and of his friend's influence in that town, at whose entrance stood the ancient family house, it only gave inclination a motive, or rather an excuse for indulgence.

Very different was the impression produced on all the party. Mr. Arundel could not conceal his surprise, or rather emotion, to see in the pale, mind-worn brow—the elegant but indolent movements of the man of forty, so little trace remaining of the bright-eyed and bright-haired, the lively and impetuous favourite of nineteen; still less in the worldly, half-studied, half-sarcastic tone of his conversation, did any thing recall the romance, the early enthusiasm, which once rendered the interest he inspired one of anxiety. But Mr. Arundel forgot that the most sparkling wines soonest lose that sparkle. The impetuosity of youth becomes energy in manhood, and Mr Delawarr's stormy political career was one to call forth every talent; circumstances form the character, but, like petrifying waters, they harden while they form.

To Mrs. Arundel he was the same as any other guest—one who was to eat, drink, and sleep in her house; all her hopes, fears, "an undistinguishable throng," rested with her cook and housemaid.

Emily had at first shrunk back, in that intuitive awe which all little people at least must have experienced—the feeling which fixes the eye and chains the lip, on finding ourselves for the first time in the presence of some great man, hitherto to us an historical portrait, one whose thoughts are of the destinies of nations, whose part seems in the annals of England, and not in its society. If such there be, who can come in contact with a being like this without drawing the breath more quickly and quietly, they have only less excitability than we have; and for them tant pis or tant mieux according to that golden rule of judgment, as it turns out. This, however, wore off; the attention of a superior is too flattering to our vanity not to call it forth, and Emily soon found herself talking, smiling, and singing her very best: not that Mr. Delawarr was, generally speaking, at all like the knights of old, voués aux dames. Married metaphorically to his place in the ministry, and actually to the daughter of Lord Etheringhame; too worldly to be interested, too busy to be amused; young ladies were very much to him what inhabitants in a borough without votes are—non-entities in creation. But sentiment, like salt, is so universal an ingredient in our composition, that even Mr. Delawarr, years and years ago, had looked at a rainbow to dream of a cheek, had gathered violets with the dew on them, and thought them less bright than the eyes to which they were offerings, had rhymed to one beloved name, and had felt one fair cousin to be the fairest of created things. That cousin was Emily's mother, and her great likeness to her called up a host of early fancies and feelings, over which he scarcely knew whether to sigh or smile. He might smile to think how the lover had wasted his time, and yet sigh to think how pleasantly it had been wasted. But Mr. Delawarr knew well

"'Tis folly to dream of a bower of green,
When there is not a leaf on the tree;"

and, turning from the past to the present, a little judicious appreciation of his host's claret and conversation obtained, before they parted for the night, more than a hint that Mr. Arundel's influence in the borough was at the disposal of the man who so well understood his country's true interests. Still Emily was not forgotten; and the next morning she looked so like her mother while pouring the cream into his coffee, that the invitation he gave her to visit Lady Alicia in London was as sincere as it was cordially expressed. And when they gathered, with old-fashioned courtesy, on the stone steps of the ancient hall, to give their parting greeting, as the carriage drove off with true English haste, never did man leave his character more safely behind him. Mr. Arundel went to read a pamphlet on the corn laws with double-distilled admiration, after his own conviction had been strengthened by that of one of his majesty's ministers; Emily went to her favourite lime-walk, to wonder what Lady Alicia was like, to dream of the delights of a "London season," to admire Mr. Delawarr's manner,—in short, he need only not have been a politician (the very name was a stumbling-block to a young lady's romance), and he would have been erected into a hero fit for a modern novel, a destiny not exactly what he anticipated. Mrs. Arundel was as thoroughly satisfied as either, perhaps more so, for she was satisfied with herself—a supper, sleeping, and breakfast, got through without a blunder; so to her housekeeper she went "in her glory."