Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
"Two springs I saw."—Moore.
"Good night—how can such night be good?"—Shelley.
"Night, oh, not night: where are its comrades twain—silence and sleep?"—L. E. L.
Snow-dropped, crocused, and violeted Spring, in the country, was beginning to consider about making her will, and leaving her legacies of full-blown flowers and green fruit to Summer, when a letter from town arrived, franked by Montague Delawarr, M.P., saying, that as the spring was now commencing in town, perhaps Miss Arundel would remember a hope she once gave, and comply with the request contained in the note which the said Mr. Delawarr had the honour of enclosing.
The note expressed the usual number of fears, honours, and pleasures, which usually accompany invitations; was written in a hand of even more than usually elegant unintelligible expansiveness; was on pale sea-green paper, sealed with lilac wax; and came from Lady Alicia. Now this was a most disinterested act; for the member had recovered, and taken that step of all others which insures existence, purchased a life annuity; and it is a well-known fact in physiology, that annuitants and old women never die. But Mr. Delawarr had taken an interest in his young relative; he knew his house was one of the most elegant, his wife one of the best-dressed women in London, and that she never spent an evening at home,—could he do more for Emily than open such a vista of fêtes and fashions to her futurity?
If any of the party at Arundel House hesitated about the invitation's affirmative, it was herself. Her aunt had a great notion of giving young people as much pleasure as possible, for they would have no time for it after they were married; and her uncle, kind and affectionate, only thought of his favourite's enjoyment, perhaps her advantage. Like many men of quiet manners, and still quieter habits, his imagination was active in the extreme, and had been but little put out of its way by either worldly exertions or disappointments. Thus, before his first egg was finished, Emily had refused three baronets, looked coldly on a viscount, had two earls at her feet; and, if the object of this reverie had not destroyed her own good fortune by speaking, she was in a fair way of becoming a duchess.
But, though to Emily London was as much an El Dorado as novels and novelty could make it; yet if her first exclamation was delight, her second was, "But, my dear uncle, you will miss me so;" and a long array of solitary walks and lonely rides rose almost reproachfully to her mind. This, however, the uncle would not admit; and youth, if not selfish, is at least thoughtless; so a few minutes saw Emily bounding up stairs, with spirits even lighter than her steps, to answer the important billet, which she had already conned over till she could have repeated it from the "Dear Miss Arundel" at the beginning to the "Alicia C. F. G. Delawarr" of the signature. Many a sheet of paper was thrown aside in various stages, from two to ten lines—twice was the ink changed, and twenty times the pen, before a note worthy of either writer or reader could be effected: but time and the post wait for no man, and necessity was in this case, as in most others, the mother of invention.
The next week passed, as such weeks always do, in doing nothing, because so much is to be done—in packing and unpacking, till the Labyrinth of Crete was nothing to that of trunks; in farewell calls, in lingering walks, in careful commendations to the gardener of divers pet roses, carnations, &c.; and more than three parts of the time at her uncle's side, who every now and then began giving good advice, which always ended in affectionate wishes.
The morning of her departure arrived—cold, rainy, miserable, but very much in unison with Emily's feelings. A great change in life is like a cold bath in winter—we all hesitate at the first plunge. Affection is more matter of habit than sentiment, more so than we like to admit; and she was leaving both habits and affections behind. There were the servants gathered in the hall, with proper farewell faces; her aunt, hitherto busy in seeing the carriage duly crammed with sandwiches and sweetmeats, having nothing more to do, began to weep. A white handkerchief is a signal of distress always answered: and when Mr. Arundel took his place beside his niece, he had nothing but the vague and usual consolation of "Love, pray don't cry so," to offer for the first stage.
But the day and Emily's face cleared up at last; her uncle was still with her, the post-boys drove with exhilarating rapidity, and night found them seated by a cheerful fire, with a good supper and better appetite. The morning came again, and Mr. Arundel was now to leave his niece.
"O pleasure! you're indeed a pleasant thing;"
and our heroine was setting off in pursuit of it, as miserable as any young lady need be. The last sight of the panels of the old yellow coach was the signal for another burst of tears, which extended to three stages to-day, and perhaps would have reached to a fourth, had she not been roused to anger by her maid's laughter, whose gravity, though most exemplary in the outset, now gave way to the mirth excited by the rapidity with which a ponderous-looking person, outside a stage-coach, had lost hat, umbrella, and bundle, while the vehicle rolled rapidly over them. There is something very amusing in the misfortunes of others. However,—to borrow an established phrase from those worthy little volumes, entitled the Clergyman's, Officer's and Merchant's Widows, when the disconsolate relict is recalled from weeping over the dear departed, by the paramount necessity of getting one of her fourteen children into the Blue-coat School,—"the exertion did her good;" and she was soon sufficiently amused to regret when the darkness shut out all view save the post-boy.
Adventures never happen now-a-days; there are neither knights nor highwaymen; no lonely heaths, with gibbets for finger-posts; no hope of even a dangerous rut, or a steep hill; romance and roads are alike macadamised; no young ladies are either run away with, or run over;—and Emily arrived in inglorious safety among the argand lamps and rosewood tables in Mr. Delawarr's drawing-room—was properly welcomed—introduced—took a hasty dinner, for her host was hurrying to the House, and her hostess to the Opera—was supposed to be very much fatigued—installed into a very pretty little boudoir—and found herself in a seat by the fire, tired enough for an arm-chair, but much too excited for her pillow; and she leaned back in that most soothing state of indolence, fireside's fantasies—while her uncle's wig, Lady Alicia's black velvet hat, Mr. Delawarr's kindness, &c. &c. floated down the "river of her thoughts." But the three hours before, of, and after midnight in a fashionable square, are not very favourable to a reverie, when the ear has only been accustomed to the quiet midnights of the country—where the quiet is rather echoed than broken by the wind wandering among boughs of the oak and beech, and whose every leaf is a note of viewless and mysterious music. But in London, where from door to door "leaps the live thunder;" the distant roll of wheels, the nearer dash of carriages, the human voices mingling, as if Babel were still building—these soon awakened Emily's attention—even the fire had less attraction than the window; and below was a scene, whose only fault is, we are so used to it.
In the middle of the square was the garden, whose sweep of turf was silvered with moonlight; around were the dark shining laurels, and all the pale varieties of colour that flower and shrub wear at such a time, and girdled in by the line of large clear lamps, the spirits of the place. At least every second house was lighted up, and that most visible, the corner one, was illuminated like a palace with the rich stream of radiance that flowed through the crimson blinds; ever and anon a burst of music rose upon the air, and was lost again in a fresh arrival of carriages; then the carriages themselves, with their small bright lights flitting over the shadowy foot passengers,—the whole square was left to the care of the gas and the watchman, before Emily remembered that she had next day to do justice to her country roses.