“Oh, count upon me by all means,” said I, with a sneering bitterness, that my uncle could not have escaped remarking, had his attention not been drawn off by Lady Callonby.
What have I done—what sin did I meditate before I was born, that I should come into the world branded with failure in all I attempt? Is it not enough that my cousin, my elder by some months, should be rich while I am poor—honoured and titled, while I am unknown and unnoticed?—but is he also to be preferred to me in every station in life? Is there no feeling of the heart so sacred that it must not succumb to primogeniture?
“What a dear old man Sir Guy is,” said Catherine, interrupting my sad reflections, “and how gallant; he is absolutely flirting with Lady Jane.”
And quite true it was. The old gentleman was paying his devoirs with a studied anxiety to please, that went to my very heart as I witnessed it. The remainder of that day to me was a painful and suffering one. My intention of suddenly leaving Munich had been abandoned, why, I knew not. I felt that I was hoping against hope, and that my stay was only to confirm, by the most “damning proof,” how surely I was fated to disappointment. My reasonings all ended in one point. If she really love Guy, then my present attentions can only be a source of unhappiness to her; if she do not, is there any prospect that from the bare fact of my attachment, so proud a family as the Callonbys will suffer their daughter to make a mere “marriage d’inclination?”
There was but one answer to this question, and I had at last the courage to make it: and yet the Callonbys had marked me out for their attentions, and had gone unusually out of their way to inflict injury upon me, if all were meant to end in nothing. If I only could bring myself to think that this was a systematic game adopted by them, to lead to the subsequent arrangement with my cousin!—if I could but satisfy my doubts on this head——What threats of vengeance I muttered, I cannot remember, for I was summoned at that critical moment to attend the party to the palace.
The state of excitement I was in, was an ill preparative for the rigid etiquette of a court dinner. All passed off, however, happily, and the king, by a most good-natured allusion to the blunder of the night before, set me perfectly at ease on that head.
I was placed next to Lady Jane at dinner; and half from wounded pride, half from the momentarily increasing conviction that all was lost, chatted away gaily, without any evidence of a stronger feeling than the mere vicinity of a pretty person is sure to inspire. What success this game was attended with I know not; but the suffering it cost me, I shall never cease to remember. One satisfaction I certainly did experience—she was manifestly piqued, and several times turned towards the person on the other side of her, to avoid the tone of indifference in which I discussed matters that were actually wringing my own heart at the moment. Yet such was the bitterness of my spirit, that I set down this conduct on her part as coquetry; and quite convinced myself that any slight encouragement she might ever have given my attentions, was only meant to indulge a spirit of vanity, by adding another to the list of her conquests.
As the feeling grew upon me, I suppose my manner to her became more palpably cutting, for it ended at last in our discontinuing to speak, and when we retired from the palace, I accompanied her to the carriage in silence, and wished her a cold and distant good night, without any advance to touch her hand at parting—and yet that parting, I had destined for our last.
The greater part of that night I spent in writing letters. One was to Jane herself owning my affection, confessing that even the “rudesse” of my late conduct was the fruit of it, and finally assuring her that failing to win from her any return of my passion, I had resolved never to meet her more—I also wrote a short note to my uncle, thanking him for all he had formerly done in my behalf, but coldly declining for the future, any assistance upon his part, resolving that upon my own efforts alone should I now rest my fortunes. To Lord Callonby I wrote at greater length, recapitulating the history of our early intimacy, and accusing him of encouraging me in expectations, which, as he never intended to confirm them, were fated to prove my ruin. More—much more I said, which to avow, I should gladly shrink from, were it not that I have pledged myself to honesty in these “Confessions,” and as they depict the bitterness and misery of my spirit, I must plead guilty to them here. In a word, I felt myself injured. I saw no outlet for redress, and the only consolation open to my wounded pride and crushed affection, was to show, that if I felt myself a victim, at least I was not a dupe. I set about packing up for the journey, whither, I knew not. My leave was nearly expired, yet I could not bear the thought of rejoining the regiment. My only desire was to leave Munich, and that speedily. When all my arrangements were completed I went down noiselessly to the inn yard to order post-horses by day-break, there to my surprise I found all activity and bustle. Though so late at night, a courier had arrived from England for Lord Callonby, with some important dispatches from the Government; this would, at any other time, have interested me deeply; now I heard the news without a particle of feeling, and I made all the necessary dispositions for my journey, without paying the slightest attention to what was going on about me. I had just finished, when Lord Callonby’s valet came to say, that his lordship wished to see me immediately in his dressing room. Though I would gladly have declined any further interview, I saw no means of escape, and followed the servant to his lordship’s room.
There I found Lord Callonby in his dressing gown and night cap, surrounded by papers, letters, despatch boxes, and red tape-tied parcels, that all bespoke business.