CHAPTER VIII.
Whether the succeeding hours of the day on which Sir Sidney Delaware first visited Henry Burrel, did or did not pass with any degree of impatience, felt on the part of the latter, it is difficult to say. Burrel had an habitual dislike to the display of what he felt, and except on special occasions, where the stirred-up feelings broke through all customary restraint, there might be many far deeper things passing in his bosom than the eye of a casual observer could discover from his face.
The hours of that day seemed to fly in perfect tranquillity. He visited the widow's cottage twice, and marked with pleasure that a change for the better had taken place in her son; he called upon Mrs. Darlington at the inn, gossiped over a thousand subjects of tittle-tattle, and sketched out a plan for re-building her house--a consideration which seemed to give the good lady so much pleasant occupation, that Burrel could scarcely find it in his heart to regret that her house had been burned at all. He then strolled home to write letters, remarking, with little further comment as he did so, that his silent servant, Harding, was walking on the other side of the way, in quiet conversation with the vulgar person who had been for a short time one of his own companions in the London coach.
Nothing, in short, through the whole day, or the ensuing evening, could betray that the hours were at all weary to Henry Burrel; and the only circumstance which led his servant--who had eyes sufficiently inquisitive and acute--to believe that his master looked upon the approaching visit with more than ordinary interest, was, that the next morning, instead of sleeping soundly, as usual, till he was called, he rang his bell somewhat impatiently full five minutes before his ordinary hour of rising.
Giving the necessary orders for his dressing apparatus to be brought up to the mansion before dinner, Burrel sallied forth as soon as he was dressed, and took his way toward the park gate. He paused upon the bridge, however, and for a moment gazed up the long open space of park lawn, broken by old elms and oaks, with the stream flowing calmly on in the midst, and the swans dipping quietly into its waters, and the whole, in the soft morning sunshine, bearing an air of peace, with which even the gray building at the end of the vista harmonized full well.
With what other thoughts there might be in Burrel's bosom--and there were a good many different threads that ran across the web in various directions--we will have nothing to do here, but will follow the one continuous line which we began to trace before, and only consider the psychological phenomena that were passing in his heart as far as they related to Blanche Delaware. That Burrel had thought of her a great deal since last he saw her, there can be no doubt; and he had thought of his own situation, too, and what he was about, with a degree of human perseverity that was quite extraordinary in a hero of romance. As the beginnings of love must always be imaginative, and as Burrel had got into a bad habit of laughing at most things under the sun, by feeling that few were worth considering seriously--from the effects of which had habit, be it remarked, he himself, his own mind and peculiarities, were not at all exempt--as a consequence of all this, he had chosen, in the present case, to image the predicament in which he stood to his own fancy, under a thousand different forms, most of them, indeed, ludicrous or trivial. He had been now the moth, fluttering round the light--now the trout, rising to the hook--but more frequently still, he had painted himself to himself as the fly upon the edge of a plate of honey, tasting and retasting the tenacious sweets till his feet become glued to the place, and he is forced to remain and die amidst the plundered stores of the bee. There are several great uses in thus learning to laugh at ourselves. In the first place, we know all that the world--the good-natured world--may, can, might, could, would, should, or ought to say of us. In the next, we can flatter ourselves that we have looked at the most disagreeable--that is to say, the sneering side of things: and lastly, the story of galloping across the swamp comes over again, and we get over a great deal of ground easily, which it would not do to stay and examine seriously.
Whether it was from any or all of these motives that Burrel acted, or whether it was a mere affair of habit, does not much matter; for when he set out on that morning to breakfast at Emberton Park, and looked up the calm expanse toward the dwelling Blanche Delaware inhabited--when he entered the old gates, and strolled leisurely up among the shady trees--when he thought of how fair and how gentle she was--and when he felt conscious that he was only walking up those paths for the first time out of many that fate or love destined him to tread them--he perceived that the matter was somewhat more serious--that it was too weighty to be raised upon the wings of a light laugh, or rolled about by an idle sneer.
There was something startling in the sensation; and he felt that where the happiness of the whole of that space out of eternity, which we are destined to pass amidst the warm relationships of earth, is concerned, the matter is grave when rightly considered, if not solemn. But then, as he went on thinking, even though the morning, pouring through the dim old trees, had something serious in its very gray tranquillity, yet the object that connected itself with every idea, the sweet form, the bright, sunshiny smile of Blanche Delaware, came flitting across his dreams, and cast a light from itself over the whole future prospect. Then would Burrel look around him, and weave many a fairy project of conferring happiness; and he would twine, in fancy, many a jewel and a wreath to bind the fair brows of the fair girl he thought of, and would lead her through scenes of splendor, and of beauty, and of joy, to mansions of domestic happiness and bowers of tranquil repose.
Thus went it on, till at length he woke up at the door of the dwelling-house, and found himself as great an enthusiast at heart as ever lived and loved. Ascending the steps from the terrace, he rang the large bell, which was answered in a moment by the appearance of an honest-faced country servant, who was the only male domestic in a house which, had it been all inhabited, would have required a dozen at least. A little to the man's surprise, Burrel, who was still thinking of something else, and whose heart beat more than he thought proper, walked directly forward to the door of the library, and was raising his hand to open it, too, when, recollecting himself, he paused, and suffered the servant to announce him. His hand was cordially shaken by Captain Delaware, almost as he entered; and there was a glow of pleasure on the face of the young sailor, not only because he was really glad to see a man whom he personally liked, but that what he looked upon as a reproach to the hospitality of their house was wiped away.
Sir Sidney Delaware was at the further end of the room, which was well furnished--for books are always furniture--and they were many and choice. He, too, immediately rose, and advanced to welcome his guest most cordially; for the service that Burrel had rendered his child had completely opened his heart; and, when it was once opened, there was room enough within, though the door had been somewhat narrowed, in order to shut out the cold air of the world.
Burrel's eyes ran round the library, but Blanche Delaware was not there; and though he would have probably laughed, had any one called him a modest man, yet he found that he could not inquire after her with so easy an air as he might have done two or three days before, and therefore he did not inquire after her at all, expecting every instant to see her appear. He felt uncomfortable, however, when her father at length proposed that they should go to the breakfast-room; and he asked himself whether she could be absent from home.
Burrel's mind was put at ease the moment after; for, on passing forward to the little breakfast-room--to which he seemed to find his way instinctively, without his host having to say, "Turn here," or "Turn there"--the first object that presented itself was Blanche Delaware, on hospitable thoughts intent, making the tea, and--as probably Eve was the most beautiful creature ever created--looking as like Eve as possible.
But let us pause one moment, and expatiate upon an English breakfast-room. There is nothing like it in all the world besides. It is an emanation from the morning heart of Englishmen. It is a type of the character of the people. Good Heaven! when one comes down on a fine autumn morning, and finds the snowy table-cloth, the steaming urn, the clean polished furniture, the simple meal, and all the implements for dispensing it, shining in the morning sunshine, as if the goddess of tidiness had burnished them; together with a rich English landscape looking in at the windows, and, round the table, half a dozen smiling faces, and fair forms, all arrayed in that undeviating neatness which is also purely English, how the heart is opened to all that is good, and kindly, and social--how it is strengthened, and fortified, and guarded against the cares and labours and ills of the ensuing day!
Blanche looked up as Burrel entered, and there were one or two slight circumstances which might have made him believe that his presence was not unpleasant to her, had he been in a mood to remark any thing but the simple fact of her being there. There was the same fitful blush, the same sparkle of the eyes, that would not be repressed, the same sweet smile, as he gave her the morning's greeting, which he had seen separately before; but, what was more to the purpose, she withdrew the tea-pot before she remembered to stop the urn, spilled the water on the table-cloth, and got into some confusion both at her embarrassment and at its cause. Captain Delaware smiled; and Blanche, though she knew that her brother was not very, very learned in woman's heart, attributed more meaning to his smile than it deserved, and would have been more embarrassed still, had there not been a degree of warmth, and a subdued tenderness in Burrel's manner, that was very consoling. Now, had Blanche Delaware laid a systematic design against Burrel's heart, and had she endeavoured to make herself appear the very wife suited to him, from every thing she had seen of his character, she would have taken great care not to let the urn deluge the table-cloth, and would have believed her whole plan ruined for ever, if she had done so; for Burrel had certainly, at Mrs. Darlington's, affected a sort of fastidiousness--altogether in jest, but done seriously enough to deceive--which would have rendered such a little accident fatal. But Blanche Delaware had not the slightest idea of such a design in the world. Burrel, it is true, was the handsomest man in person, and the most elegant man in manners, that she had ever met with. His character she had heard from Dr. Wilton--one she was accustomed to reverence. His conversation had pleased, amused, and fascinated her. At the risk of his own life he had carried her close to his heart, through the midst of a tremendous fire. He had saved her life, and, in the enthusiasm of doing so, had called her "Dear girl!" and had perhaps pressed her a little closer to his bosom, when he found that they were safe. Of the last particular, however, she was not quite sure; but so much does the heart of man expand to those we protect and save, that, even if he did, it was quite natural. All this had given her different feelings towards Burrel, from those that she experienced towards any other man; and though she kept a tight rein upon imagination, and would not even suffer the sweet folly of castle-building to enter her heart in this instance, yet she felt sufficiently agitated and pleased by his presence, to become alarmed at her own sensations, and to feel unwittingly consoled by the marked difference between his manner to herself, and to others. She was therefore vexed at the little accident, it is true, but she was vexed solely because she thought it might betray more agitation than she believed that she felt; not because she feared, by a trifle, to lose a heart for which she had set no traps, and of whose possession she was determined not to dream at all.
So much for nothings! But as nothings are the small casters on which the great machine of the world goes lumbering along, one may pause to mark them for a moment, without a fault. But now to more serious matters. Burrel soon recovered that degree of ease which he had never lost in the eyes of any other person, although he felt the loss himself, and the breakfast passed over in that sort of light and variable conversation which allows all to shine in turn who are capable of shining.
It was about the time of some serious disturbances in France; and those events naturally suggested themselves, at least to the three gentlemen, as the most interesting topic of the day. "What think you, then, Mr. Burrel," demanded Sir Sidney Delaware, "of La---- coming forth in his old age to renew the scenes which, in his youth, he first excited, and then lamented?"
"The great misfortune is," replied Burrel, "that his name should be able to do so much, when he himself is unable to do any thing."
"You mean that he is in his dotage," said Captain Delaware. "Is it not so?"
"I mean merely," replied Burrel, "that he is in that state of mental decrepitude where the plaudits of a mob of any kind, either of porters or peers, would make him commit any folly for the brief moment of popularity. With poor old La---- it is only now the fag-end of the great weakness of his life, vanity--that sort of gluttonous vanity that can gorge upon the offal of base and ignorant applause."
"Ay, there lies the fault," replied Sir Sidney Delaware. "The man who seeks the applause of the good, the wise, and the generous, is next in honorable ambition to him who seeks the approbation of his God; but he whose depraved appetite finds food in the gratulating shout of an assemblage of the ignorant, the base, and the vicious--like--like--I could mention many, but I will not--he, however, who does so, is a moral swine, and only swills the filth of the public kennel in another sense."
"Papa, papa!" cried Blanche Delaware. "In pity, let me finish breakfast before you indulge in such figures of rhetoric. William, in mercy change the subject! Can not you tell us some of the pretty stories about Sicily and its beloved _Mongibeddo_, with which you charmed my ears when first you came from the Mediterranean?"
"Not I, indeed, Blanche!" replied her brother; "for, on the faith of those stories, you had nearly persuaded my father to go abroad, which would not suit my views of promotion at all."
"And did Miss Delaware really wish to visit foreign lands?" demanded Burrel. "We should not easily have forgiven you."
"It was but to see all those things one dreams so much about!" replied Blanche Delaware, "and to return to my own land after they were seen; for I can assure you, I have neither hope nor wish ever to find any country half so fair in my eyes as our own England."
"That is both just and patriotic," answered Burrel; "more than one-half of what we like in any and every land, is association, and if, without one classic memory of the great past, you were to visit Italy itself, half the marvels of that land of beauties would be lost. The Colosseum would stand a cold brown ruin, cumbering the ground; Rome, a dull heap of ill-assorted buildings; the Capitol a molehill; and the Tiber a ditch. But under the magic wand of association, every thing becomes beautiful. It is not alone the memories of one age or of one great epoch that rise up to people Italy with majestic things; but all the acts of glory and of majesty that thronged two thousand years, before the eye of fancy, walk in grand procession through the land, and hang a wreath of laurels on each cold ruin as they pass. Yet it is all association; and where can we find such associations as those connected with our native land?"
The question was tolerably general, but the tone and manner were to Blanche Delaware; and she replied, "It would be difficult, I am afraid, to raise up for any country such as those you have conjured up for Italy; but still I should never be afraid of forgetting England. It is where I was born," she added, thinking over all her reasons for loving it, and looking down at the pattern on the table-cloth, as she counted them one by one; "I have spent in it so many happy hours and happy days. Every thing in it is connected with some pleasant thought or some dear memory; and the associations, though not so grand, would be more sweet--though not so vast, would be more individual--would not perhaps waken any very romantic feelings, but would come more home to my own heart."
Burrel answered nothing; but when she raised her eyes, which had been cast down while she spoke, they found his fixed upon her; and she felt from that moment that she was beloved.
Blanche Delaware turned very pale, though the consciousness was any thing but painful. It was so oppressive, however, that the agitation made her feel faint; but her brother's voice recalled her to herself.
"Well spoken, my dear little patriot sister!" he said; "but if you had been a sailor, like your brother, you would have added, that England is not wanting in associations of glory and freedom, and noble actions and noble endeavors; and in this view the associations connected with our native land are more extended than those of any other country; for in whatever corner of the world an Englishman may be, when he catches but a glimpse of the salt sea, the idea of the glory of his native land rushes upon his mind, and he sees, waving before the eye of fancy the flag that 'for a thousand years, has stood the battle and the breeze.'"
Burrel smiled; but there was no touch of a sneer in it. "The song from which you quote," he said, "must have been written surely under such enthusiasm as that with which you now speak. I know scarcely so spirit-stirring a composition in the English language. Indeed, all Campbell's smaller poems are full of the same _vivida vis animi_."
"And yet," said Sir Sidney Delaware, "you, as well as I, must have heard fools and jolter-heads say, that Campbell is no poet, because now and then, in his longer pieces, when he gets tired of the mere mechanism, he suffers a verse or two to become tame--out of pure idleness, I have no doubt."
"Those who say he is no poet, do not know what poetry is," replied Burrel, somewhat eagerly. "Scattered through every one of his poems there are beauties of the first order; and almost all of his smaller pieces stand perfectly alone in poetry. He has contrived sometimes to compress into four or five of the very shortest lines that can be produced, more than nine poets out of ten could cram into a long Spenserian stanza, with a thundering Alexandrine at the end."
"Do you know Mr. Campbell personally?" asked Miss Delaware.
"I do," answered Burrel, laughing; "but do not suppose my praise of him is exaggerated from personal friendship. On the contrary, I am bound, by all the laws and usages of the world in general, to hate him cordially."
"Indeed! and why so?" demanded Blanche, half afraid that she had touched upon some delicate subject.
"Simply because we differ on politics," answered Burrel. "Can there be a more mortal offense given or received?"
"As we are speaking of poets, however," continued Miss Delaware, "I will ask you one more question, Mr. Burrel: Do you know Wordsworth?"
"I am not so fortunate," answered Burrel; "for, though we should as certainly differ as we met, upon nine points out of ten, yet I should much like to know him."
"Then you know and esteem his works, of course?" said Miss Delaware.
"I know them well," replied Burrel; "but I do not like them so much as you do."
"Nay, nay!" said Blanche Delaware. "I have said nothing in their favor. What makes you believe I admire them more than yourself?"
"Simply because every body of taste must esteem them highly," replied Burrel; "and women who do esteem them will always esteem more than men can do. A woman's heart and mind, Miss Delaware, by the comparative freshness which it retains more or less through life, can appreciate the gentle, the sweet, and the simple, better than a man's; and thus, while the mightier and more majestic beauties of Wordsworth's muse affect your sex equally with ours, the softer and finer shades of feeling--the touches of artless nature and simplicity, which appear almost too weak for us, have all their full effect on you."
"But if you own that, and feel that," said Blanche Delaware, "why can not you admire the same beauties!"
"For this reason," replied Burrel--"man's mental taste, like his corporeal power of tasting, gets corrupted, or rather paralyzed, in his progress through the world, by the various stimulants he applies to it. He drinks his bottle of strong and heady wine, which gradually loses its effect, and he takes more, till at length nothing will satisfy him but Cayenne pepper."
"But if he appreciates gentler pleasures," said Captain Delaware, "he must be able in some degree to enjoy them."
"Of course," replied Burrel, "there are moments when the cool and pleasant juice of a peach, or the simple refreshment of a glass of lemonade will be delightful; and in such moments it is, that he feels he has stimulated away a sense, and a delightful one. Thus with poetry, and literature in general; the mind, by reading a great many things it would be better without, loses its relish for every thing that does not excite and heat the imagination, which is neither more nor less than the mental palate; and though there are moments when the heart, softened and at ease, finds joys in all the sweet simplicity which would have charmed it forever in an unsophisticated state, yet still it returns to Cayenne pepper, and only remembers the other feelings, as of pleasures lost forever. With regard to Wordsworth's poetry, perhaps no one ever did him more injustice than I did once. With a very superficial knowledge of his works, I fancied that I despised them all; and it was only from being bored about them by his admirers, that I determined to read them every line, that I might hate them with the more accuracy."
Blanche Delaware smiled, and her father spoke, perhaps, the feelings of both. "We have found you out, Mr. Burrel," he said, "and understand your turn for satirizing yourself."
"I am not doing so now, I can assure you," replied Burrel. "What I state is exactly the fact. I sat down to read Wordsworth's works with a determination to dislike them, and I succeeded in one or two poems, which have been cried up to the skies; but, as I went on, I found so often a majestic spirit of poetical philosophy, clothing itself in the full sublime of simplicity, that I felt reproved and abashed, and I read again with a better design. In doing so, though I still felt that there was much amidst all the splendor that I could neither like nor admire, yet I perceived how and why others might and would find great beauties and infinite sweetness in that which palled upon my taste; and I perceived also, that the fault lay in me far more than in the poetry. The beauties I felt more than ever; and some of the smaller pieces, I am convinced, will live for ages, with the works of Shakspeare and Milton."
"They will, indeed," said Sir Sidney Delaware, "as long as there is a taste in man. Nevertheless, the poet--who is, perhaps, as great a philosopher, too, as ever lived--has sacrificed, like many philosophers, an immense gift of genius to a false hypothesis in regard to his art, and has, consequently, systematically poured forth more trash than perhaps any man living. His poems, collected, always put me in mind of an account I have somewhere read of the diamond mines of Golconda, where inestimable jewels are found mingled with masses of soft mud. But you have long done breakfast, Mr. Burrel. Come, Blanche, I am going to take Mr. Burrel to the terrace, and descant most dully on all the antiquities of the house. Let us have your company, my love; for we shall meet with so many old things, it may be as well to have something young to relieve them!"
It required but a short space of time to array Blanche Delaware for the walk round the terrace that her father proposed. In less than a minute she came down in the same identical cottage bonnet--the ugliest of all things--in which Burrel had first beheld her when with her brother; but, strange to say, although on that occasion he had only thought her a pretty country girl, so changed were now all his feelings--so many beauties had he marked which then lay hid, that, as she descended with a smiling and happy face to join them at the door of the hall, he thought her the loveliest creature that he had ever beheld in any climate, or at any time.
The whole party sallied forth; and as people who like each other, and whose ideas are not common-place, can make an agreeable conversation out of any thing, the walk round the old house, and the investigation of every little turn and corner of the building, passed over most pleasantly to all, although Blanche and her brother knew not only every stone in the edifice, but every word almost that could be said upon them. They were accustomed, however, to look upon their father with so much affection and reverence; and the misfortunes under which he labored had mingled so much tenderness with their love, that "an oft-told tale" from his lips lost its tediousness, being listened to by the ears of deep regard. Burrel, too, was all attention; and, while Sir Sidney Delaware descanted learnedly on the buttery, and the wet and dry larder, and the prior's parlor, and the scriptorium, and pointed out the obtuse Gothic arches described from four centers, which characterize the architecture of Henry VIII., he filled up all the pauses with some new and original observation on the same theme; and though certainly not so learned on the subject as Sir Sidney himself, yet he showed that, at all events, he possessed sufficient information to feel an interest therein, and to furnish easily the matter for more erudite rejoinder.
By the time the examination of the house itself was over, however, Sir Sidney Delaware felt fatigued. "I must leave Blanche and William, Mr. Burrel," he said, "to show you some of the traces of those antique times which we have just been talking of, that are scattered through the park, particularly on the side farthest from the town. I myself think them more interesting than the house itself, and wish I could go with you; but I am somewhat tired, and must deny myself the pleasure."
Burrel assured him that he would take nothing as a worse compliment than his putting himself to any trouble about him; and, perhaps not unwillingly, set out, accompanied only by Blanche and her brother. It would have been as dangerous a walk as ever was taken had he not been in love already. There was sunshine over all the world, and the air was soft and calm. Their way led through the deep high groves and wilder park scenery that lay at the back of the mansion, now winding in among hills and dells covered with rich, short grass, now wandering on by the bank of the stream, on whose bosom the gay-coated kingfishers and the dark water-hens were skimming and diving in unmolested security. In the open parts, the old hawthorns perched themselves on the knolls, wreathing their fantastic limbs in groups of two or three; and every now and then a decaying oak of gigantic girth, but whose head had bowed to time, shot out its long lateral branches across the water, over which it had bent for a thousand years.
The whole party were of the class of people who have eyes--as that delightful little book the Evenings at Home has it--and at present, though there were busy thoughts in the bosoms, at least of two of those present, yet perhaps they strove the more to turn their conversation to external things, from the consciousness of the feelings passing within. Those feelings, however, had their effect, as they ever must have, even when the topics spoken of are the most indifferent. They gave life, and spirit, and brightness to every thing.
Blanche Delaware, hanging on the arm of her brother, and yielding to the influence of the smiles that were upon the face of nature, gave full way to her thoughts of external things as they arose; and, together with spirits bright and playful, but never what may be called _high_--with an imagination warm and brilliant, never wild--there shone out a heart, that Burrel saw was well fitted to understand and to appreciate that fund of deeper feelings, that spring of enthusiasm, tempered a little by judgment, and ennobled by a high moral sense, which he concealed, perhaps weakly--from a world that he despised.
He felt at every step that the moments near her were almost too delightful; and, before he had got to the end of that walk, he had reached the point where love begins to grow terrified at its own intensity, lest the object should be lost on which the mighty stake of happiness is cast forever.
Having proceeded thus far--which, by the way, is no small length; for the great difficulty, as Burrel found it, was to place himself fairly on a footing of friendship with Sir Sidney Delaware's family--we must unwillingly abandon the expatiative; and, having more than enough to do, leave the party on their walk, and turn to characters as necessary, but less interesting.