MR. FAIRLY MORALIZES.
Our journey back to Cheltenham was much more quiet than it had been to Worcester, for the royal party too; another route to see Malvern hills, and we went straight forward.
Miss Planta having now caught the influenza, suffered very much all the way, and I persuaded her immediately to lie down when we got to Fauconberg Hall. She could not come down to dinner, which I had alone. The Princess Elizabeth came to me after it, with her majesty’s permission that I might go to the play with my usual party; but I declined it, that I might make some tea for poor Miss Planta, as she had no maid, nor any creature to help her. The princess told me they were all going first upon the walks, to promener till the play time.
I sat down to make my solitary tea, and had just sent up a basin to Miss Planta, when, to my equal surprise and pleasure, Mr. Fairly entered the room. “I come now,” he said, “to take my leave.”
They were all, he added, gone to the walks, whither he must in a few minutes follow them, and thence attend to the play, and the next morning, by five o’clock, be ready for his post-chaise. Seeing me, however, already making tea, with his Usual and invariable sociability he said he would venture to stay and partake, though he was only come, he gravely repeated, to take his leave.
“And I must not say,” cried I, “that I am sorry you are going, because I know so well you wish to be gone that it makes me wish it for you myself.”
“No,” answered he, “you must not be sorry; when our friends are going to any joy. We must think of them, and be glad to part with them.”
Readily entering the same tone, with similar plainness of truth I answered, “No, I will not be sorry you go, though miss you at Cheltenham I certainly must.”
“Yes,” was his unreserved assent, “you will miss me here, because I have spent my evenings with you; but you will not long remain at Cheltenham.”
“Oime!” thought I, you little think how much worse will be the quitting it. He owned that the bustle and fatigue of this life was too much both for his health and his spirits.
I told him I Wished it might be a gratification to him, in his toils, to hear how the queen always spoke of him; With what evident and constant complacency and distinction. “And you may credit her sincerity,” I added, “Since it is to so little a person as me she does this, and when no one else is present.”
He was not insensible to this, though he passed it over without much answer. He showed me a letter from his second son, very affectionate and natural. I congratulated him, most sincerely, on his approaching happiness in collecting them all together. “Yes,” he answered, “my group will increase, like a snow-ball, as I roll along, and they will soon all four be as happy as four little things know how to be.”
This drew him on into some reflections upon affection and upon happiness. “There is no happiness,” he said, “without participation; no participation without affection. There is, indeed, in affection a charm that leaves all things behind it, and renders even every calamity that does not interfere with it inconsequential and there is no difficulty, no toil, no labour, no exertion, that will not be endured where there is a view of reaping it.”
He ruminated some time, and then told me of a sermon he had heard preached some months ago, sensibly demonstrating the total vanity and insufficiency, even for this world, of all our best affections, and proving their fallibility from our most infirm humanity.
My concurrence did not here continue: I cannot hold this doctrine to be right, and I am most sure it is not desirable. Our best affections, I must and do believe, were given us for the best purposes, for every stimulation to good, and every solace in evil.
But this was not a time for argument. I said nothing, while he, melancholy and moralizing, continued in this style as long as he could venture to stay. He then rose and took his hat, saying, “Well, so much for the day; what may come to-morrow I know not; but, be it what it may, I stand prepared.”
I hoped, I told him, that his little snowball would be all he could wish it, and I was heartily glad he would so soon collect it.
“We will say,” cried he, “nothing of any regrets,” and bowed, and was hastening off.
The “we,” however, had an openness and simplicity that drew from me an equally open and simple reply. “No,” I cried, “but I will say-for that you will have pleasure in hearing that you have lightened my time here in a manner that no one else could have done, of this party.”
To be sure this was rather a circumscribed compliment, those he left considered—but it was strict and exact truth, and therefore like his own dealing. He said not a word of answer, but bowed, and went away, leaving me firmly impressed with a belief that I shall find in him a true, an honourable, and even an affectionate friend, for life.