Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 34
CHAPTER X.
"At Zara's gate stops Zara's mate; in him shall I discover
The dark-eyed youth pledged me his truth with tears, and was my lover?"
Lockhart.
The first great principle of our religious, moral, civil, and literary institutions, is a dinner. A church is built, a rail-road opened, the accounts of a vestry inspected, a revolution occurs, a subscription is made, a death is to be celebrated, a friend to be supported—all alike by a dinner. Our heathen brethren are to be converted—we dine for their salvation; our musical, theatrical, and literary brethren are to be relieved—we dine for their benefit; for the some-half-dozenth time the French patriots alter their government—we dine for the conservation of their charter; Mr. Pitt dies—his memory is preserved by fish and soup; laws govern the kingdom, and a young gentleman qualifies himself to become their minister by a course of meals in the Temple Hall; and what are cabinet councils to cabinet dinners? Where the Duke of Wellington once trusted his aide-de-camp, he now relies on his butler, and the decisions of his cook are as important as the movements of his army.
In social life, to owe such a one a dinner is the most imperative of obligations—gambling debts always excepted. An Englishman talks of the Magna Charta and roast-beef in a breath; his own constitution and that of his country are indissolubly united. As a great orator once observed, "The security of your laws, the sanctity of your church, the bond of society, the cement of your religious, political, and moral obligations, nay, the actual existence of your country—its vital interests depend, gentlemen, on its dinners." (I quote from memory, and may be mistaken as to the form, but I am sure I have given the spirit of the speech.)
It was to attend one of these national institutions—a dinner on the opening of a canal—that Lord Mandeville set forth, with a mouthful of patriotism and public spirit; and Lady Mandeville, and Emily, still languid with recent illness, were left tête-à-tête.
Night came; and the wind and rain, which beat against the window, only added the advantage of contrast to the curtained, carpeted, and lighted boudoir; and every gust served as an excuse for shrinking still farther into the warm crimson cushions of the arm-chairs they had drawn almost into the fire. They had no new books; Emily was still too weak for work or music; and it was just the most confidential and conversational evening in the world.
Confidence is made up of confession and remembrances; we all love to talk of the days of our youth; and, almost before she was aware, Lady Mandeville was engaged in a sort of autobiography of herself. It would do, she said, as well as reading aloud, to send her patient to sleep.
"I am going to enact the heroine of a narrative, though sadly deficient in all the necessary requisites. Save one, I have never had a misfortune happen to me—I have never been in such extremes of poverty that I have been obliged to sell even the ruby cross hung round my neck by my mysterious mother—or the locket which contained two braids of hair, one raven black, the other golden, the first love-pledge of my unfortunate parents—I have never had a fever, during which my lover watched every look of my benevolent physician—I have never been given over, and then, after a profound sleep, recovered—my hair has always come easily out of curl—I never played the harp—and have always been more inclined to laugh than to cry. My father, Lord Elmore, lived in a large old-fashioned house, and in a large old-fashioned manner. By large, I mean liberal: he was only less indulgent to his seven children than my mother, who I believe never said "no" in all her life. It was not the system of indulgence practised by Dandie Dinmont's 'gude wife,' who gave 'the bairns their ain way, because, puir things, she had naithing else to gi'e them.' But my mother, I suppose, thought, as she gave every thing else, she might as well give that too.
"I pass over the dynasty of white frocks and blue sashes. Sometimes I learnt my lessons, sometimes I did not; but really that which was no matter of necessity often became matter of inclination; and I arrived at the dignity of fourteen, and my sister's confidante. Ah, the interest I took in her anxieties! the sympathy I gave to her sorrows! it was almost equal to having a lover of my own.
"It was a provokingly happy union—both families equally anxious it should take place: only, my father insisted that Isabel should be eighteen before the marriage; and they did manage to arrange some little jealousies and quarrels, which agreeably diversified the delay. The year of probation passed, and my sister married. Even now, I remember how I missed her. I cried the first three nights I curled my hair by myself. However, September came, and with it my second brother; and his companion for the shooting season was the young, handsome, and lively Henry O'Byrne, descended from kings whose crown was old enough to have been made of the gold of Ophir. I—who considered a lover as the natural consequence of being fifteen, and indeed was rather surprised I had not one already, and who held half-a-dozen blushes proof of the state of my feelings—lost my heart with all the ease imaginable; and Henry made love to me, because, I verily believe, he considered it a proper compliment, which every lady under fifty expected. A declaration of love was to me tantamount to an offer—though, to tell you the plain truth, I very much doubt whether it was meant to be so taken by my Milesian lover. My father—I really do not know how he could venture on such a liberty—one day actually said he wished I would not walk quite so much on the terrace by moonlight with Mr. O'Byrne;—child as I was, he did not like it. 'Child as I was!' This was adding insult to injury. I threw myself at his feet in the most approved manner—implored him not to sacrifice the happiness of his child to ambition—talked of a cottage and content—of blighted hopes and an early grave. I am not quite sure whether my father laughed or swore; I rather think he did both. However, he sent for my mother to try and convince me: instead, she endeavoured to comfort me by dwelling on the imprudence of poverty, and the miseries of an injudicious attachment; till, overcome with the picture of the privations I should have to endure, and the difficulties I should have to encounter, she fairly wept over the hardships of my imaginary future.
"Dinner came; but O'Byrne's place was vacant. My large tears dropped into my soup—my chicken went away untouched—I refused even my favourite apricot jelly.
"The evening, however, brought consolation, in the shape of a real, actual love-letter, sent through that most orthodox channel—my maid. I could not help reading it aloud to her. 'The barbarity of my father,'—'eternal constancy,'—how well these phrases looked on bath-post!
"Ah, my dear Emily, to you is closed one of the sweetest sources of youthful felicity. You have no father with a proverbially flinty heart,—no guardian to lock you up! It is impossible for you to have an unfortunate attachment; and—young, rich, pretty—I think you can hardly console yourself with even an unrequited one. How ill-used I did think myself!—what consequence it gave me in my own eyes! Three weeks passed away,—I caught two sore throats by leaning out of an open window, watching the moon shine on the terrace where we used to walk. I threatened my mother with a consumption. I sat up at night reading and re-reading his letter, and gazing on a little profile which I had drawn with a black-lead pencil, and called his—Heaven knows there was no fear it would be recognised!
"Three weeks passed, when, taking up the paper, and turning—as a woman always does—to the births, deaths, and marriages, what should I see but—'Married, on Thursday last, at Gretna, Henry O'Byrne, of Killdaren Castle, in Connaught, to Eliza, only daughter and heiress of Jonathan Simpkin.' The paper dropped from my hand. I knew my red-haired rival well—she had dined at our house with old Lady Driscol, who patronised her, and had there met my faithless lover. Alas! I had been weighed in the balance with a hundred thousand pounds—and found wanting! How wretched I resolved on being! I braided the hair I no longer took delight in curling; I neglected my dress—that is to say, I only wore white muslin; and my kind mother, who had been as angry with me as her gentle nature was capable of being, could now be as angry as she pleased with him. Her surprise at the infidelity was even greater than mine, and her sympathy was great in proportion. I talked of the perfidy of men, and said I should never marry.
"Six months went by, and, to tell you the truth, I was getting very tired of my despair, when one day a young man, a cousin with whom in my white-frock days I had been a great pet, came to stay in our house. He seemed touched with my melancholy—I confided my sorrows from confidence—he proceeded to consolation.
"I do not know how it was, I thought my ringlets did not merit neglect—that a girlish fancy was but a foolish thing. Lord Mandeville agreed with me; my father laughed at me, and said I ought to be consistent, that no heroine ever fell in love with the consent of her family; but my mother said, 'Poor dear child, do not tease her.'
"Well, my sister was married at eighteen—so was I, and the spoiling system has still continued. I know there is such a word as a contradiction in the dictionary, but my knowledge is all theory. I have a husband comme il n'y en a point, to whom I have made a wife comme il y en a peu. I have two of the prettiest children in the world—(don't answer, Emily—that smile is quite flattering enough); and I sometimes think whether, like the ancient king, it would not be prudent to make an offering to destiny, and throw my set of emeralds into the lake."
Emily could not but deprecate the emeralds being destined to any such preventive service; and Lady Mandeville soon afterwards left her to meditate over her narrative, one phrase of which certainly dwelt on her mind. "Young, rich, pretty—it is quite impossible for you to have an unfortunate attachment!"
The more imaginative love is, the more superstitious it must be: the belief of omens being past—that desire of the unattainable so inherent in our nature, and which shows itself in so many shapes—now, as far as regards prophecy, it takes another form, and calls itself presentiment; and Emily lay awake much longer than was good for her complexion, building that aërial architecture called châteaux en Espagne, on the slight foundation of a single sentence.
I do not think imagination an indulgence at all to be permitted in our present state of society: very well for poets and painters—it is their business, the thing of all others not to be neglected; but in the common construction of characters and circumstances it is an illusion quite at variance with the realities on which we are to act, and among which we are to live. In a young man it unfits him for the rough career of life, as much as stepping within the castle's enchanted boundary unfitted Sir Launcelot for his encounter with the giant. The sword of action hangs idly in the unnerved hand. We will suppose he possesses talent and feeling—without them he could not possess imagination;—he starts on his forward path, where, as in about ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he has to make his own way. Conscious of his abilities, he will overrate, perhaps not themselves, but their influence. He will read the novel, till he becomes to himself the very hero of its pages. In history, he will dwell only "on marvels wrought by single hand," till he deems they say, "Go and do thou likewise." Every thing is seen through an exaggerated medium. He prepares himself for great difficulties, which he is to vanquish—gigantic obstacles, which he is to overcome. Instead of these, he is surrounded by small impediments, which seem below his ideal dignity to encounter. His most favourite acquirements are useless, because none of them have been called into action by his own peculiar circumstances; and he reproaches Fortune, where he should accuse Fiction.
Few books have been more dangerous to a young man of this temperament, in middle life, than Vivian Grey. No romance is so hazardous as that of real life: the adventures seem so possible, yet so exciting. There is something so pleasant in the mastery of mere mind: the versatility of manner, the quick eye of the hero to the weakness of others, appear so completely in the power also of the reader; his vanity adds force to his imagination, and our youth rises from the perusal convinced of the hardship of his particular situation, shut out from the diplomatic and political career, for which his now unemployed and undervalued talents so eminently qualify him; and the chances are, that the earlier half of his life is filled with disappointment and bitterness.
A woman may indulge this faculty with more impunity, because hers is generally a passive, not an active feeling, and principally confined to the affections; all the risk of beau-idealising a lover too much, is, that of never finding one, or being disappointed when found.
Edward Lorraine had more materials for a hero than many of his compeers; still, his most admiring friends would have been rather at a loss to recognise him under the traits with which he was invested by Emily Arundel. Alas! the heart worships in its idol the attributes which itself has first created. Illusions are the magic of real life, and the forfeit of future pain is paid for present pleasure.