CHAPTER VIII.
On his way to Glistonbury Castle, Vivian had full leisure to repent of having accepted of this invitation, recollecting, as he did, all the former reports about himself and Lady Sarah Lidhurst. He determined, therefore, that his visit should be as short as possible; and the chief pleasure he promised himself was the society of his friend Russell.
On his arrival at the castle, he was told that Mr. Russell was out riding; and that every body else was in the theatre at a rehearsal, except Lady Glistonbury, the Lady Sarah, and Miss Strictland. He found these three ladies sitting in form in the great deserted drawing-room, each looking like a copy of the other, and all as if they were deploring the degeneracy of the times. Vivian approached with due awe; but, to his great surprise and relief, at his approach their countenances exhibited some signs of life. Lord Glistonbury presented him on his return from abroad: Lady Glistonbury’s features relaxed to a smile, though she seemed immediately to repent of it, and to feel it incumbent upon her to maintain her rigidity of mien. Whilst she, and of course Miss Strictland and the Lady Sarah, were thus embarrassed between the necessity of reprobating the sin, and the desire of pleasing the sinner, Lord Glistonbury ran on with one of his speeches, of borrowed sense and original nonsense, and then would have carried him off to the rehearsal, but Lady Glistonbury called Vivian back, begging, in her formal manner, “that her lord would do her the favour to leave Mr. Vivian with her for a few minutes, as it was so long since she had the pleasure of seeing him at Glistonbury.” Vivian returned with as good a grace as he could; and, to find means of breaking the embarrassing silence that ensued, took up a book which lay upon the table, “Toplady’s Sermons”—no hope of assistance from that: he had recourse to another—equally unlucky, “Wesley’s Diary:” another—“The Pilgrim’s Progress.” He went no farther; but, looking up, he perceived that the Lady Sarah was motioned by her august mother to leave the room. Vivian had again recourse to “Toplady.”
“Very unfashionable books, Mr. Vivian,” said Miss Strictland, bridling and smiling as in scorn.
“Very unfashionable books!” repeated Lady Glistonbury, with the same inflection of voice, and the same bridling and smiling. “Very different,” continued her ladyship, “very different from what you have been accustomed to see on some ladies’ tables, no doubt, Mr. Vivian! Without mentioning names, or alluding to transactions that ought to be buried in eternal oblivion, and that are so very distressing to your friends here to think of, sir, give me leave to ask, Mr. Vivian, whether it be true what I have heard, that the prosecution, and every thing relative to it, is entirely given up?”
“Entirely, madam.”
“Then,” said Lady Glistonbury, glancing her eye at Miss Strictland, “we may welcome Mr. Vivian with safe consciences to Glistonbury; and since the affair will never become public, and since Lady Sarah knows none of the improper particulars; and since she may, and, from her education, naturally will, class all such things under the head of impossibilities and false reports, of which people, in our rank of life especially, are subject every hour to hear so many; there cannot, as I am persuaded you will agree with me in thinking, Miss Strictland, be any impropriety in our and Lady Sarah’s receiving Mr. Vivian again on the same footing as formerly.”
Miss Strictland bowed her formal assent: Vivian bowed, because he saw that a bow was expected from him; and then he pondered on what might be meant by the words, on the same footing as formerly; and he had just framed a clause explanatory and restrictive of the same, when he was interrupted by the sound of laughter, and of numerous, loud, and mingled voices, coming along the gallery that led to the drawing-room. As if these were signals for her departure, and as if she dreaded the intrusion and contamination of the revel rout, Lady Glistonbury arose, looked at her watch, pronounced her belief that it was full time for her to go to dress, and retired through a Venetian door, followed by Miss Strictland, repeating the same belief, and bearing her ladyship’s tapestry work: her steps quickened as the door at the opposite end of the room opened; and, curtsying (an unnecessary apology to Mr. Vivian) as she passed, she left him to himself. And now,
“He sees a train profusely gay,
Come pranckling o’er the place.”
Some were dressed for comic, some for tragic characters; but all seemed equally gay, and talked equally fast. There had been a dressed rehearsal of “The Fair Penitent,” and of “The Romp;” and all the spectators and all the actors were giving and receiving exuberant compliments. Vivian knew many of the party,—some of them bel-esprits, some fashionable amateurs; all pretenders to notoriety, either as judges or performers. In the midst of this motley group, there was one figure who stood receiving and expecting universal homage: she was dressed as “The Fair Penitent;” but her affected vivacity of gesture and countenance was in striking contrast to her tragic attire; and Vivian could hardly forbear smiling at the minauderies with which she listened and talked to the gentlemen round her; now languishing, now coquetting; rolling her eyes, and throwing herself into a succession of studied attitudes, dealing repartees to this side and to that; and, in short, making the greatest possible exhibition both of her person and her mind.
“Don’t you know her? Did you never see her before?—No! you’ve been out of England; but you’ve heard of her, certainly?—Rosamunda,”—whispered Lord Glistonbury to Vivian.
“And who is Rosamunda?” said Vivian; “an actress.”
“Actress!—Hush!—Bless you! no—but the famous poetess. Is it possible that you hav’n’t read the poems of Rosamunda?—They were in every body’s hands a few months ago; but you were abroad—better engaged, or as well, hey? But, as I was going to tell you, that’s the reason she’s called The Rosamunda—I gave her the name, for I patronized her from the first. Her real name is Bateman; and Lady Glistonbury and her set call her Miss Bateman still, but nobody else. She’s an amazing clever woman, I assure you—more genius than any of ‘em since the time of Rousseau!—Devil of a salary!—and devil of a battle I had to fight with some of my friends before I could fix her here; but I was determined I would follow my own ideas in Julia’s education. Lady Glistonbury had her way and her routine with Lady Sarah; and it’s all very well, vastly well—
‘Virtue for her too painful an endeavour,
Content to dwell in decencies for ever.’
You know the sort of thing! Yes, yes; but I was not content to have my Julia lost among the mediocres, as I call them: so I took her out of Miss Strictland’s hands; and the Rosamunda’s her governess.”
“Her governess!” repeated Vivian, with uncontrollable astonishment; “Lady Julia Lidhurst’s governess!”
“Yes, you may well be surprised,” pursued Lord Glistonbury, mistaking the cause of the surprise: “no one in England could have done it but myself; she refused innumerable applications,—immense offers; and, after all, you know, she does not appear as governess titrée—only as a friend of the family, who directs Lady Julia Lidhurst’s literary talents. Oh, you understand, a man of the world knows how to manage these things—sacrifices always to the vanity of the sex, or the pride, as the case may be, I never mind names, but things, as the metaphysicians say—distinguish betwixt essentials and accidents—sound philosophy that, hey? And, thank Heaven! a gentleman or a nobleman need not apologize in these days for talking of philosophy before ladies, even if any body overheard us, which, as it happens, I believe nobody does. So let me, now that you know your Paris, introduce you to ‘The Rosamunda.’—Mr. Vivian—the Rosamunda. Rosamunda—Mr. Vivian.”
After Vivian had for a few minutes acted audience, very little to his own satisfaction, he was relieved by Lord Glistonbury’s exclaiming, “But Julia! where’s Julia all this time?”
Rosamunda looked round, with the air of one interrupted by a frivolous question which requires no answer; but some one less exalted, and more attentive to the common forms of civility, told his lordship that Lady Julia was in the gallery with her brother. Lord Glistonbury hurried Vivian into the gallery. He was struck the moment he met Lady Julia with the great change and improvement in her appearance. Instead of the childish girl he had formerly seen flying about, full only of the frolic of the present moment, he now saw a fine graceful woman with a striking countenance that indicated both genius and sensibility. She was talking to her brother with so much eagerness, that she did not see Vivian come into the gallery; and, as he walked on towards the farther end, where she was standing, he had time to admire her.
“A fine girl, faith! though she is my daughter,” whispered Lord Glistonbury; “and would you believe that she is only sixteen?”
“Only sixteen!”
“Ay: and stay till you talk to her—stay till you hear her—you will be more surprised. Such genius! such eloquence! She’s my own girl. Well, Julia, my darling!” cried he, raising his voice, “in the clouds, as usual?”
Lady Julia started—but it was a natural, not a theatric start—colouring at the consciousness of her own absence of mind. She came forward with a manner that apologized better than words could do, and she received Mr. Vivian so courteously, and with such ingenuous pleasure in her countenance, that he began to rejoice in having accepted the invitation to Glistonbury; at the same instant, he recollected a look which his mother had given him when he first saw Lady Julia on the terrace of the castle.
“Well, what was she saying to you, Lidhurst? hey! my boy?”
“We were arguing, sir.”
“Arguing! Ay, ay, she’s the devil for that!—words at will!—‘Persuasive words, and more persuasive sighs!’ Ah, woman! woman for ever! always talking us out of our senses! and which of the best of us would not wish it to be so? ‘Oh! let me, let me be deceived!’ is the cream of philosophy, epicurean and stoic—at least, that’s my creed. But to the point: what was it about that she was holding forth so charmingly—a book or a lover? A book, I’ll wager: she’s such a romantic little fool, and so unlike other women: leaves all her admirers there in the drawing-room, and stays out here, talking over musty books with her brother. But come, what was the point? I will have it argued again before me—Let’s see the book.”
Lord Lidhurst pointed out a speech in “The Fair Penitent,” and said that they had been debating about the manner in which it should be recited. Lord Glistonbury called upon his daughter to repeat it: she showed a slight degree of unaffected timidity at first; but when her father stamped and bid her let him see no vulgar bashfulness, she obeyed—recited charmingly—and, when urged by a little opposition from her brother, grew warm in defence of her own opinion—displayed in its support such sensibility, with such a flow of eloquence, accompanied with such animated and graceful, yet natural gesture, that Vivian was transported with sudden admiration. He was astonished at this early development of feeling and intellect; and if, in the midst of his delight, he felt some latent disapprobation of this display of talent from so young a woman, yet he quickly justified her to himself, by saying that he was not a stranger; that he had formerly been received by her family on a footing of intimacy. Then he observed farther, in her vindication, that there was not the slightest affectation or coquetry in any of her words or motions; that she spoke with this eagerness not to gain admiration, but because she was carried away by her enthusiasm, and, thoughtless of herself, was eager only to persuade and to make her opinions prevail. Such was the enchantment of her eloquence and her beauty, that after a quarter of an hour spent in her company, our hero did not know whether to wish that she had more sedateness and reserve, or to rejoice that she was so animated and natural. Before he could decide this point, his friend Russell returned from riding. After the first greetings were over, Russell drew him aside, and asked, “Pray, my dear Vivian, what brings you here?”
“Lord Glistonbury—to whom I had not time to say no, he talked so fast. But, after all, why should I say no? I am a free man—a discarded lover. I am absolutely convinced that Selina Sidney’s refusal will never be retracted; my mother, I know, is of that opinion. You suggested, that if I distinguished myself in public life, and showed steadiness, I might recover her esteem and affection; but I see no chance of it. My mother showed me her last letter—no hopes from that—so I think it would be madness, or folly, to waste my time, and wear out my feelings, in pursuit of a woman, who, however amiable, is lost to me.”
“Of that you are the best judge,” said Russell, gravely. “I am far from wishing—from urging you to waste your time. Lady Mary Vivian must know more of Miss Sidney, and be better able to judge of the state of her heart than I can be. It would not be the part of a friend to excite you to persevere in a pursuit that would end in disappointment; but this much, before we quit the subject for ever, I feel it my duty to say—that I think Miss Sidney the woman of all others the best suited to your character, the most deserving of your love, the most calculated to make you exquisitely and permanently happy.”
“All that’s very true,” said Vivian, impatiently; “but, since I can’t have her, why make me miserable about her?”
“Am I to understand,” resumed Russell, after a long pause, “am I to understand that, now you have regained your freedom, you come here with the settled purpose of espousing the Lady Sarah Lidhurst?”
“Heaven forfend!” cried Vivian, starting back.
“Then I am to go over again, on this subject, with indefatigable patience and in due logical order, all the arguments, moral, prudential, and conventional, which I had the labour of laying before you about a twelvemonth ago.”
“Save yourself the trouble, my dear friend!” said Vivian; “I shall set all that upon a right footing immediately, by speaking of the report at once to some of the family. I was going to rise to explain this morning, when I was with Lady Glastonbury; but I felt a sort of delicacy—it was an awkward time—and at that moment somebody came into the room.”
“Ay,” said Russell, “you are just like the hero of a novel, stopped from saying what he ought to say by somebody’s coming into the room.—Awkward time! Take care you don’t sacrifice yourself at last to these awkwardnesses and this sort of delicacies. I have still my fears that you will get into difficulties about Lady Sarah.”
Vivian could not help laughing at what he called his friend’s absurd fears.
“If you are determined, my dear Russell, at all events to fear for me, I’ll suggest to you a more reasonable cause of dread. Suppose I should fall desperately in love with Lady Julia!—I assure you there’s some danger of that. She is really very handsome and very graceful; uncommonly clever and eloquent—as to the rest, you know her—what is she?”
“All that you have said, and more. She might be made any thing—every thing; an ornament to her sex—an honour to her country—were she under the guidance of persons fit to direct great powers and a noble character; but yet I cannot, Vivian, as your friend, recommend her to you as a wife.”
“I am not thinking of her as a wife,” said Vivian: “I have not had time to think of her at all yet. But you said, just now, that in good hands she might be made every thing that is good and great. Why not by a husband, instead of a governess? and would not you call mine good hands?”
“Good, but not steady—not at all the husband fit to guide such a woman. He must be a man not only of superior sense, but of superior strength of mind.”
Vivian was piqued by this remark, and proceeded to compare the fitness of his character to such a character as Lady Julia’s. Every moment he showed more curiosity to hear further particulars of her disposition; of the different characters of her governesses, and of all her relations; but Russell refused to say more. He had told him what he was called upon, as his friend, to reveal; he left the rest to Vivian’s own observation and judgment. Vivian set himself to work to observe and judge with all his might.
He soon perceived that all Russell had told him of the mismanagement of Lady Julia’s education was true. In this house there were two parties, each in extremes, and each with their systems and practice carried to the utmost excess. The partisans of the old and the new school were here to be seen at daggers-drawing. Lady Glastonbury, abhorrent of what she termed modern philosophy, and classing under that name almost all science and literature, especially all attempts to cultivate the understanding of women, had, with the assistance of her double, Miss Strictland, brought up Lady Sarah in all the ignorance and all the rigidity of the most obsolete of the old school; she had made Lady Sarah precisely like herself; with virtue, stiff, dogmatical, and repulsive; with religion, gloomy and puritanical; with manners, cold and automatic. In the course of eighteen years, whilst Lady Glistonbury went on, like clock-work, the same round, punctual to the letter but unfeeling of the spirit of her duties, she contrived, even by the wearisome method of her minuted diary of education, to make her house odious to her husband. Some task, or master, or hour of lesson, continually, and immitigably plagued him: he went abroad for amusement, and found dissipation. Thus, by her unaccommodating temper, and the obstinacy of her manifold virtues, she succeeded in alienating the affections of her husband. In despair he one day exclaimed,
“Ah que de vertus vous me faites haïr;”
and, repelled by virtue in this ungracious form, he flew to more attractive vice. Finding that he could not have any comfort or solace in the society of his wife, he sought consolation in the company of a mistress. Lady Glistonbury had, in the mean time, her consolation in being a pattern-wife; and in hearing that at card-tables it was universally said, that Lord Glistonbury was the worst of husbands, and that her ladyship was extremely to be pitied. In process of time, Lord Glistonbury was driven to his home again by the united torments of a virago mistress and the gout. It was at this period that he formed the notion of being at once a political leader and a Mecaenas; and it was at this period that he became acquainted with both his daughters, and determined that his Julia should never resemble the Lady Sarah. He saw his own genius in Julia; and he resolved, as he said, to give her fair play, and to make her one of the wonders of the age. After some months’ counteraction and altercation, Lord Glistonbury, with a high hand, took his daughter from under the control of Miss Strictland; and, in spite of all the representations, prophecies, and denunciations of her mother, consigned Julia to the care of a governess after his own heart—a Miss Bateman; or, as he called her, The Rosamunda. From the moment this lady was introduced into the family there was an irreconcileable breach between the husband and wife. Lady Glistonbury was perfectly in the right in her dread of such a governess as Miss Bateman for her daughter. Her ladyship was only partially and accidentally right: right in point of fact, but wrong in the general principle; for she objected to Miss Bateman, as being of the class of literary women; to her real faults, her inordinate love of admiration, and romantic imprudence, Lady Glistonbury did not object, because she did not at first know them; and when she did, she considered them but as necessary consequences of the cultivation and enlargement of Miss Bateman’s understanding. “No wonder!” her ladyship would say; “I knew it must be so; I knew it could not be otherwise. All those clever women, as they are called, are the same. This comes of literature and literary ladies.”
Thus moralizing in private with Miss Strictland and her own small party, Lady Glistonbury appeared silent and passive before her husband and his adherents. After prophesying how it all must end in the ruin of her daughter Julia, she declared that she would never speak on this subject again: she showed herself ready, with maternal resignation, and in silent obduracy, to witness the completion of the sacrifice of her devoted child.
Lord Glistonbury was quite satisfied with having silenced opposition. His new governess, established in her office, and with full and unlimited powers, went on triumphant and careless of her charge; she thought of little but displaying her own talents in company. The castle was consequently filled with crowds of amateurs; novels and plays were the order of the day; and a theatre was fitted up, all in open defiance of poor Lady Glistonbury. The daughter commenced her new course of education by being taught to laugh at her mother’s prejudices. Such was the state of affairs when Vivian commenced his observations; and all this secret history he learnt by scraps, and hints, and inuendoes, from very particular friends of both parties—friends who were not troubled with any of Mr. Russell’s scruples or discretion.
Vivian’s attention was now fixed upon Lady Julia; he observed with satisfaction, that, notwithstanding her governess’s example and excitement, Lady Julia did not show any exorbitant desire for general admiration; and that her manners were free from coquetry and affectation: she seemed rather to disdain the flattery, and to avoid both the homage and the company of men who were her inferiors in mental qualifications; she addressed her conversation principally to Vivian and his friend Russell; with them, indeed, she conversed a great deal, with much eagerness and enthusiasm, expressing all her opinions without disguise, and showing on most occasions more imagination than reason, and more feeling than judgment. Vivian perceived that it was soon suspected by many of their observers, and especially by Lady Glistonbury and the Lady Sarah, that Julia had a design upon his heart; but he plainly discerned that she had no design whatever to captivate him; and that though she gave him so large a share of her company, it was without thinking of him as a lover: he saw that she conversed with him and Mr. Russell, preferably to others, because they spoke on subjects which interested her more; and because they drew out her brother, of whom she was very fond. Her being capable, at so early an age, to appreciate Russell’s character and talents; her preferring his solid sense and his plain sincerity to the brilliancy, the fashion, and even the gallantry of all the men whom her father had now collected round her, appeared to Vivian the most unequivocal proof of the superiority of her understanding and of the goodness of her disposition. On various occasions, he marked with delight the deference she paid to his friend’s opinion, and the readiness with which she listened to reason from him—albeit unused and averse from reason in general. Impatient as she was of control, and confident, both in her own powers and in her instinctive moral sense (about which, by-the-bye, she talked a great deal of eloquent nonsense), yet a word or a look from Mr. Russell would reclaim her in her highest flights. Soon after Vivian commenced his observations upon this interesting subject, he saw an instance of what Russell had told him of the ease with which Lady Julia might be guided by a man of sense and strength of mind.
The tragedy of “The Fair Penitent,” Calista by Miss Bateman, was represented with vast applause to a brilliant audience at the Glistonbury theatre. The same play was to be reacted a week afterwards to a fresh audience—it was proposed that Vivian should play Lothario, and that Lady Julia should play Calista: Miss Bateman saw no objection to this proposal: Lord Glistonbury might, perhaps, have had the parental prudence to object to his daughter’s appearing in public at her age, in such a character, before a mixed audience: but, unfortunately, Lady Glistonbury bursting from her silence at this critical moment, said so much, and in such a prosing and puritanical manner, not only against her daughter’s acting in this play, and in these circumstances, but against all stage plays, playwrights, actors, and actresses whatsoever, denouncing and anathematizing them all indiscriminately; that immediately Lord Glistonbury laughed—Miss Bateman took fire—and it became a trial of power between the contending parties. Lady Julia, who had but lately escaped from the irksomeness of her mother’s injudicious and minute control, dreaded, above all things, to be again subjected to her and Miss Strictland; therefore, without considering the real propriety or impropriety of the point in question, without examining whether Miss Bateman was right or wrong in the licence she had granted, Lady Julia supported her opinion warmly; and, with all her eloquence, at once asserted her own liberty, and defended the cause of the theatre in general. She had heard Mr. Russell once speak of the utility of a well-regulated public stage; of the influence of good theatric representations in forming the taste and rousing the soul to virtue: he had shown her Marmontel’s celebrated letter to Rousseau on this subject; consequently, she thought she knew what his opinion must be on the present occasion: therefore she spoke with more than her usual confidence and enthusiasm. Her eloquence and her abilities transported her father and most of her auditors, Vivian among the rest, with astonishment and admiration: she enjoyed, at this moment, what the French call un grand succès; but, in the midst of the buzz of applause, Vivian observed that her eye turned anxiously upon Russell, who stood silent, and with a disapproving countenance.
“I am sure your friend, Mr. Russell, is displeased at this instant—and with me.—I must know why.—Let us ask him.—Do bring him here.”
Immediately she disengaged herself from all her admirers, and, making room for Mr. Russell beside her, waited, as she said, to hear from him ses vérités. Russell would have declined speaking, but her ladyship appealed earnestly and urgently for his opinion, saying, “Who will speak the truth to me if you will not? On whose judgment can I rely if not on yours?—You direct my brother’s mind to every thing that is wise and good; direct mine: I am as desirous to do right as he can be: and you will find me—self-willed and volatile, as I know you think me—you will find me a docile pupil. Then tell me frankly—did I, just now, speak too much or too warmly? I thought I was speaking your sentiments, and that I must be right. But perhaps it was not right for a woman, or so young a woman as I am, to support even just opinions so resolutely. And yet is it a crime to be young?—And is the honour of maintaining truth to be monopolized by age?—No, surely; for Mr. Russell himself has not that claim to stand forth, as he so often does, in its defence. If you think that I ought not to act Calista; if you think that I had better not appear on the stage at all, only say so!—All I ask is your opinion; the advantage of your judgment. And you see, Mr. Vivian, how difficult it is to obtain it!—But his friend, probably, never felt this difficulty!”
With a degree of sober composure, which almost provoked Vivian, Mr. Russell answered this animated lady. And with a sincerity which, though politely shown, Vivian thought severe and almost cruel, Russell acknowledged that her ladyship had anticipated some, but not all of his objections. He represented that she had failed in becoming respect to her mother, in thus publicly attacking and opposing her opinions, even supposing them to be ill-founded; and declared that, as to the case in discussion, he was entirely of Lady Glistonbury’s opinion, that it would be unfit and injurious to a young lady to exhibit herself, even on a private stage, in the character in which it had been proposed that Lady Julia should appear.
Whilst Russell spoke, Vivian was charmed with the manner in which Lady Julia listened: he thought her countenance enchantingly beautiful, alternately softened as it was by the expression of genuine humility, and radiant with candour and gratitude. She made no reply, but immediately went to her mother; and, in the most engaging manner acknowledged that she had been wrong, and declared that she was convinced it would be improper for her to act the character she had proposed. With that cold haughtiness of mien, the most repulsive to a warm and generous mind, the mother turned to her daughter, and said that, for her part, she had no faith in sudden conversions, and starts of good conduct made little impression upon her; that, as far as she was herself concerned, she forgave, as in charity it became her, all the undutiful insolence with which she had been treated; that, as to the rest, she was glad to find, for Lady Julia’s own sake, that she had given up her strange, and, as she must say, scandalous intentions. “However,” added Lady Glistonbury, “I am not so sanguine as to consider this as any thing but a respite from ruin; I am not so credulous as to believe in sudden reformations; nor, despicable as you and my lord do me the honour to think my understanding—am I to be made the dupe of a little deceitful fondling!”
Julia withdrew her arms, which she had thrown round her mother; and Miss Strictland, after breaking her netting silk with a jerk of indignation, observed, that, for her part, she wondered young ladies should go to consult their brother’s tutor, instead of more suitable, and, perhaps, as competent advisers. Lady Julia, now indignant, turned away, and was withdrawing from before the triumvirate, when Lady Sarah, who had sat looking, even more stiff and constrained than usual, suddenly broke from her stony state, and, springing forward, exclaimed, “Stay, Julia!—Stay, my dear sister!—Oh, Miss Strictland! do my sister justice!—When Julia is so candid, so eager to do right, intercede for her with my mother!”
“First, may I presume to ask,” said Miss Strictland, drawing herself up with starch malice; “first, may I presume to ask, whether Mr. Vivian, upon this occasion, declined to act Lothario?”
“Miss Strictland, you do not do my sister justice!” cried Lady Sarah: “Miss Strictland, you are wrong—very wrong!”
Miss Strictland, for a moment struck dumb with astonishment, opening her eyes as far as they could open, stared at Lady Sarah, and, after a pause, exclaimed, “Lady Sarah! I protest I never saw any thing that surprised me so much in my whole life!——Wrong!—very wrong!—I?——My Lady Glistonbury, I trust your ladyship——”
Lady Glistonbury, at this instant, showed, by a little involuntary shake of her head, that she was inwardly perturbed: Lady Sarah, throwing herself upon her knees before her mother, exclaimed, “Oh, madam!—mother! forgive me if I failed in respect to Miss Strictland!——But, my sister! my sister——!”
“Rise, Sarah, rise!” said Lady Glistonbury; “that is not a fit attitude!—And you are wrong, very wrong, to fail in respect to Miss Strictland, my second self, Sarah. Lady Julia Lidhurst, it is you who are the cause of this—the only failure of duty your sister ever was guilty of towards me in the whole course of her life—I beg of you to withdraw, and leave me my daughter Sarah.”
“At least, I have found a sister, and when I most wanted it,” said Lady Julia. “I always suspected you loved me, but I never knew how much till this moment,” added she, turning to embrace her sister; but Lady Sarah had now resumed her stony appearance, and, standing motionless, received her sister’s embrace without sign of life or feeling.
“Lady Julia Lidhurst,” said Miss Strictland, “you humble yourself in vain: I think your mother, my Lady Glistonbury, requested of you to leave your sister, Lady Sarah, to us, and to her duty.”
“Duty!” repeated Lady Julia, her eyes flashing indignation: “Is this what you call duty?—Never will I humble myself before you again—I will leave you—I do leave you—now and for ever—DUTY!”
She withdrew:—and thus was lost one of the fairest occasions of confirming a young and candid mind in prudent and excellent dispositions. After humbling herself in vain before a mother, this poor young lady was now to withstand a father’s reproaches; and, after the inexorable Miss Strictland, she was to encounter the exasperated Miss Bateman. Whether the Gorgon terrors of one governess, or the fury passions of the other, were most formidable, it was difficult to decide. Miss Bateman had written an epilogue for Lady Julia to recite in the character of Calista; and, with the combined irritability of authoress and governess, she was enraged at the idea of her pupil’s declining to repeat these favourite lines. Lord Glistonbury cared not for the lines; but, considering his own authority to be impeached by his daughter’s resistance, he treated his Julia as a traitor to his cause, and a rebel to his party.
But Lady Julia was resolute in declining to play Calista; and Vivian admired the spirit and steadiness of her resistance to the solicitations and the flattery with which she was assailed by the numerous hangers-on of the family, and by the amateurs assembled at Glistonbury. Russell, who knew the warmth of her temper, however, dreaded that she should pass the bounds of propriety in the contest with her father and her governess; and he almost repented having given any advice upon the subject. The contest happily terminated in Lord Glistonbury’s having a violent fit of the gout, which, as the newspapers informed the public, “ended for the season the Christmas hospitalities and theatrical festivities at Glistonbury Castle!”
Whilst his lordship suffered this fit of torture, his daughter Julia attended him with so much patience and affection, that he forgave her for not being willing to be Calista; and, upon his recovery, he announced to Miss Bateman that it was his will and pleasure that his daughter Julia should do as she liked on this point, but that he desired it to be understood that this was no concession to Lady Glistonbury’s prejudices, but an act of his own pure grace.
To celebrate his recovery, his lordship determined to give a ball; and Miss Bateman persuaded him to make it a fancy ball. In this family, unfortunately, every occurrence, even every proposal of amusement, became a subject of dispute and a source of misery. Lady Glistonbury, as soon as her lord announced his intention of giving this fancy ball, declined taking the direction of an entertainment which approached, she said, too near to the nature of a masquerade to meet her ideas of propriety. Lord Glistonbury laughed, and tried the powers of ridicule and wit:
“But on th’impassive ice the lightnings play’d.”
The lady’s cool obstinacy was fully a match for her lord’s petulance: to all he could urge, she repeated, “that such entertainments did not meet her ideas of propriety.” Her ladyship, Lady Sarah, and Miss Strictland, consequently declared it to be their resolution, “to appear in their own proper characters, and their own proper dresses, and no others.”
These three rigid seceders excepted, all the world at Glistonbury Castle, and within its sphere of attraction, were occupied with preparations for this ball. Miss Bateman was quite in her element, flattered and flattering, consulting and consulted, in the midst of novels, plays, and poetry, prints, and pictures, searching for appropriate characters and dresses. This preceptress seemed to think and to expect that others should deem her office of governess merely a subordinate part of her business: she considered her having accepted of the superintendence of the education of Lady Julia Lidhurst as a prodigious condescension on her part, and a derogation from her rank and pretensions in the literary and fashionable world; a peculiar and sentimental favour to Lord Glistonbury, of which his lordship was bound in honour to show his sense, by treating her as a member of his family, not only with distinguished politeness, but by deferring to her opinion in all things, so as to prove to her satisfaction that she was considered only as a friend, and not at all as a governess. Thus she was raised as much above that station in the family in which she could be useful, as governesses in other houses have been sometimes depressed below their proper rank. Upon this, as upon all occasions, Miss Bateman was the first person to be thought of—her character and her dress were the primary points to be determined; and they were points of no easy decision, she having proposed for herself no less than five characters—the fair Rosamond, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Sigismunda, and Circe. After minute consideration of the dresses, which, at a fancy ball, were to constitute these characters, fair Rosamond was rejected, “because the old English dress muffled up the person too much; Joan of Arc would find her armour inconvenient for dancing; Cleopatra’s diadem and royal purple would certainly be truly becoming, but then her regal length of train was as inadmissible in a dancing-dress as Joan of Arc’s armour.” Between Sigismunda and Circe, Miss Bateman’s choice long vibrated. The Spanish and the Grecian costume had each its claims on her favour: for she was assured they both became her remarkably. Vivian was admitted to the consultation: he was informed that there must be both a Circe and a Sigismunda; and that Lady Julia was to take whichever of the two characters Miss Bateman declined. Pending the deliberation, Lady Julia whispered to Vivian, “For mercy’s sake! contrive that I may not be doomed to be Circe; for Circe is no better than Calista.”
Vivian was charmed with her ladyship’s delicacy and discretion; he immediately decided her governess, by pointing out the beautiful head-dress of Flaxman’s Circe, and observing that Miss Bateman’s hair (which was a wig) might easily be arranged, so as to produce the same effect. Lady Julia rewarded Vivian for this able and successful manoeuvre by one of her sweetest smiles. Her smiles had now powerful influence over his heart. He rebelled against Russell’s advice, to take more time to consider how far his character was suited to hers: he was conscious, indeed, that it would be more prudent to wait a little longer before he should declare his passion, as Lady Julia was so very young and enthusiastic, and as her education had been so ill managed; but he argued that the worse her education, and the more imprudent the people about her, the greater was her merit in conducting herself with discretion, and in trying to restrain her natural enthusiasm. Russell acknowledged this, and gave all due praise to Lady Julia; yet still he represented that Vivian had been acquainted with her so short time that he could not be a competent judge of her temper and disposition, even if his judgment were cool; but it was evident that his passions were now engaged warmly in her favour. All that Russell urged for delay so far operated, however, upon Vivian, that he adopted a half measure, and determined to try what chance he might have of pleasing her before he should either declare his love to her ladyship, or make his proposal to her father. A favourable opportunity soon occurred. On the day appointed for the fancy ball, the young Lord Lidhurst, who was to be Tancred, was taken ill of a feverish complaint: he was of a very weakly constitution, and his friends were much alarmed by his frequent indispositions. His physicians ordered quiet; he was confined to his own apartment; and another Tancred was of course to be sought for: Vivian ventured to offer to assume the character; and his manner, when he made this proposal to his fair Sigismunda, though it was intended to be merely polite and gallant, was so much agitated, that she now, for the first time, seemed to perceive the state of his heart. Colouring high, her ladyship answered, with hesitation unusual to her, “that she believed—she fancied—that is, she understood from her brother—that he had deputed Mr. Russell to represent Tancred in his place.”
Vivian was not displeased by this answer: the change of colour and evident embarrassment appeared to him favourable omens; and he thought that whether the embarrassment arose from unwillingness to let any man but her brother’s tutor, a man domesticated in the family, appear as her Tancred, or whether she was afraid of offending Mr. Russell, by changing the arrangement her brother had made; in either case Vivian felt ready, though a man in love, to approve of her motives. As to the rest, he was certain that Russell would decline the part assigned him; and, as Vivian expected, Russell came in a few minutes to resign his pretensions, or rather to state that though Lord Lidhurst had proposed it, he had never thought of accepting the honour; and that he should, in all probability, not appear at the ball, because he was anxious to stay as much as possible with Lord Lidhurst, whose indisposition increased instead of abating. Lord Glistonbury, after this explanation, came in high spirits, and with much satisfaction in his countenance and manner, said he was happy to hear that his Sigismunda was to have Mr. Vivian for her Tancred. So far all was prosperous to our hero’s hopes.
But when he saw Lady Julia again, which was not till dinner time, he perceived an unfavourable alteration in her manner; not the timidity or embarrassment of a girl who is uncertain whether she is or is not pleased, or whether she should or should not appear to be pleased by the first approaches of a new lover; but there was in her manner a decided haughtiness, and an unusual air of displeasure and reserve. Though he sat beside her, and though in general her delightful conversation had been addressed either to him or Mr. Russell, they were now both deprived of this honour; whatever she said, and all she said, was unlike herself, was directed to persons opposite to her, even to the captain, the lawyer, and the family parasites, whose existence she commonly seemed to forget. She ate as well as spoke in a hurried manner, and as if in defiance of her feelings. Whilst the courses were changing, she turned towards Mr. Vivian, and after a rapid examining glance at his countenance, she said, in a low voice—“You must think me, Mr. Vivian, very unreasonable and whimsical, but I have given up all thoughts of being Sigismunda. Will you oblige me so far as not to appear in the dress of Tancred to-night? You will thus spare me all farther difficulty. You know my mother and sister have declared their determination not to wear any fancy dress; and though my father is anxious that I should, I believe it may be best that, in this instance, I follow my own judgment.—May I expect that you will oblige me?”
Vivian declared his entire submission to her ladyship’s judgment: and he now was delighted to be able to forgive her for all seeming caprice; because he thought he saw an amiable motive for her conduct—the wish not to displease her mother, and not to excite the jealousy of her sister.
The hour when the ball was to commence arrived; the room filled with company; and Vivian, who flattered himself with the pleasure of dancing all night with Lady Julia, as the price of his prompt obedience, looked round the room in search of his expected partner, but he searched in vain. He looked to the door at every new entrance—no Lady Julia appeared. Circe, indeed, was every where to be seen and heard, and an uglier Circe never touched this earth; but she looked happily confident in the power of her charms. Whilst she was intent upon fascinating Vivian, he was impatiently waiting for a moment’s intermission of her volubility, that he might ask what had become of Lady Julia.
“Lady Julia?—She’s somewhere in the room, I suppose.—Oh! no: I remember, she told me she would go and sit a quarter of an hour with her brother. She will soon make her appearance, I suppose; but I am so angry with her for disappointing us all, and you in particular, by changing her mind about Sigismunda!—Such a capital Tancred as you would have made! and now you are no character at all! But then, you are only on a par with certain ladies. Comfort yourself with the great Pope’s (I fear too true) reflection, that
‘Most women have no characters at all.’”
Miss Bateman’s eye glanced insolently, as she spoke, upon Lady Glistonbury’s trio, who passed by at this instant, all without fancy dresses. Vivian shocked by this ill-breeding towards the mistress of the house, offered his arm immediately to Lady Glistonbury, and conducted her with Lady Sarah and Miss Strictland to their proper places, where, having seated themselves, each in the same attitude precisely, they looked more like martyrs prepared for endurance, than like persons in a ball-room. Vivian stayed to speak a few words to Lady Glistonbury, and was just going away, when her ladyship, addressing him with more than her usual formality, said, “Mr. Vivian, I see, has not adopted the fashion of the day; and as he is the only gentleman present, whose fancy dress does not proclaim him engaged to some partner equally fanciful, I cannot but wish that my daughter, Lady Sarah, should, if she dance at all to-night, dance with a gentleman in his own proper character.”
Vivian, thus called upon, felt compelled to ask the honour of Lady Sarah’s hand; but he flattered himself, that after the first dance he should have done his duty, and that he should be at liberty by the time Julia should make her appearance. But, to his great disappointment, Mr. Russell, who came in just as he had finished the first two dances, informed him that Lady Julia was determined not to appear at the ball, but to stay with her brother, who wished for her company. So poor Vivian found himself doomed to be Lady Sarah’s partner for the remainder of the night. It happened that, as he was handing her ladyship to supper, in passing through an antechamber where some of the neighbours of inferior rank had been permitted to assemble to see the show, he heard one farmer’s wife say to another, “Who beas that there, that’s handing of Lady Sarah?”—They were detained a little by the crowd, so that he had time to hear the whole answer.—“Don’t you know?” was the answer. “That there gentleman is Mr. Vivian of the new castle, that is to be married to her directly, and that’s what he’s come here for; for they’ve been engaged to one another ever since the time o’ the election.”
This speech disturbed our hero’s mind considerably; for it awakened a train of reflections which he had wilfully left dormant. Will it, can it be believed, that after all his friend Russell’s exhortations, after his own wise resolutions, he had never yet made any of those explanatory speeches he had intended?
“Positively,” said he to himself, “this report shall not prevail four-and-twenty hours longer. I will propose for Lady Julia Lidhurst before I sleep. Russell, to be sure, advises me not to be precipitate—to take more time to study her disposition; but I am acquainted with her sufficiently;” (he should have said, I am in love with her sufficiently;) “and really now, I am bound in honour immediately to declare myself—it is the best possible way of putting a stop to a report which will be ultimately injurious to Lady Sarah.”
Thus Vivian made his past irresolution an excuse for his present precipitation, flattering himself, as men often do when they are yielding to the impulse of their passions, that they are submitting to the dictates of reason. At six o’clock in the morning the company dispersed. Lord Glistonbury and Vivian were the last in the ball-room. His lordship began some raillery upon our hero’s having declined appearing as Tancred, and upon his having devoted himself all night to Lady Sarah. Vivian seized the moment to explain his real feelings, and he made his proposal for Lady Julia. It was received with warm approbation by the father, who seemed to rejoice the more in this proposal, because he knew that it would disappoint and mortify Lady Glistonbury. The interests of his hatred seemed, indeed, to occupy his lordship more than the interests of Vivian’s love; but politeness threw a decent veil over these feelings; and, after saying all that could be expected of the satisfaction it must be to a father to see his daughter united to a man of Mr. Vivian’s family, fortune, talents, and great respectability; and after having given, incidentally and parenthetically, his opinions, not only concerning matrimony, but concerning all other affairs of human life, he wished his future son-in-law a very good night, and left him to repose. But no rest could Vivian take—he waited with impatience, that made every hour appear at least two, for the time when he was again to meet Lady Julia. He saw her at breakfast; but he perceived by her countenance that she as yet knew nothing of his proposal. After breakfast Lord Glistonbury said, “Come with me, my little Julia! it is a long time since I’ve had a walk and a talk with you.” His lordship paced up and down the terrace, conversing earnestly with her for some time: he then went on to some labourers, who were cutting down a tree at the farther end of the avenue. Vivian hastened out to meet Lady Julia, who, after standing deep in thought for some moments, seemed returning towards the castle.