But even supposing Miss B. were generous and candid enough (and great indeed must be her candour and generosity) to justify this guilty man, What would it avail? Did not my mother tell me she conceived a sort of horror at the bare idea of an union between Mr Faulkland and me? This arises from the strong impression made on her by the unlucky event which blasted her own early love. Strong and early prejudices are almost insurmountable.
My mother’s piety, genuine and rational as it is, is notwithstanding a little tinctured with superstition; it was the error of her education, and her good sense has not been able to surmount it; so that I now the universe would not induce her to change her resolution in regard to Mr Faulkland. She thinks he ought to marry miss B. and she will ever think so. I wish he would; for I am sure he never can be mine. The bell rings for breakfast; I must run down. My mother came up to dress just now, and stepped into my room. I returned her the letter, and she asked me, What I thought of Mr Faulkland’s request? madam, you are a better judge of the propriety of it than I am. I shall have no objection to seeing the unhappy lady, said she, since it seems he has apprised her of my knowlege of her affairs. I am glad he has the grace to shew even so much compassion for her: perhaps it may be the beginning of repentance, and time may work a thorough reformation in him, if God spares him his life and his senses. You see which way my good mother’s thoughts tended. I did not, she added, intend to return to London again; but this occasion, I think, calls upon me; and I believe I shall go for a while, in order to see and comfort this poor young creature. She cannot yet be near lying in; and I suppose she will not come to the house Mr Faulkland speaks of, till she can no longer remain undiscovered at home; so that a month or two hence will be full soon enough for me to think of going to town.
I saw my mother rested her compliance with Mr Faulkland’s request, merely on one point; that of compassion to the girl. As for the other motive, said she, the hearing him justified from the Lady’s own mouth, I am not such a novice in those matters, but that I know when a deluding man has once got an ascendency over a young creature, he can coax her into any thing. Too much truth I doubt there is in this observation of my mother’s.
But it is time to say something of lady Grimston. My Cecilia has never seen her, though I believe she has often heard my mother speak of her. They are nearly of an age, and much of the same cast of thinking; though with this difference, that lady Grimston is extravagantly rigid in her notions, and precise in her manner. She has been a widow for many years, and lives upon a large jointure at Grimston-hall, with as much regularity and solemnity, as you would see in a monastery. Her servants are all antediluvians; I believe her coach horses are fifty years of age, and the very house-dog is as grey as a badger. She herself, who in her youth never could have been handsome, renders herself still a more unpleasing figure, by the oddity of her dress; you would take her for a lady of Charles the first’s court at least. She is always dressed out: I believe she sleeps in her cloaths, for she comes down ruffled, and towered, and flounced, and fardingal’d, even to breakfast. My mother has a very high opinion of her, and says, she knows more of the world than any one of her acquaintance. It may be so; but it must be of the old world; for lady Grimston has not been ten miles from her seat these thirty years. ’Tis nine years since my mother and she met before, and there was a world of compliments passed between them; though I am sure they were sincerely glad to see each other, for they seem to be very fond. They were companions in youth, that season wherein the most durable friendships are contracted. I believe her really a very good woman; she is pious and charitable, and does abundance of good things in her neighbourhood; though I cannot say I think her amiable. There is an austerity about her that keeps me in awe, notwithstanding that she is extremely obliging to me, and told my mother, I promised to make a fine woman. Think of such a compliment to one of almost nineteen. My mother and she call one another by their christian names; and you would smile to hear the two old ladies (begging their pardons,) Lettying and Dollying one another. This accounts to me for lady Grimston’s thinking me still a child; for I suppose she considers herself not much past girl-hood, though, to do her justice, she has not a scrap of it in her behaviour.
August 10
All our motions here are as regular as the clock. The family rise at six; we are summoned to breakfast at eight; at ten a venerable congregation are assembled to prayers, which an ancient clergyman, who is curate of the parish, and her ladyship’s chaplain, gives us daily. Then the old horses are put to the old coach; and my lady, with her guests, if they chuse it, take an airing; always going and returning by the same road, and driving precisely to the same land-mark, and no farther. At half an hour after twelve, in a hall large enough to entertain a corporation, we sit down to dinner; my lady has a grace of a quarter of an hour long, and we are waited on by four truly venerable footmen, for she likes state. The afternoon we may dispose of as we please; at least it is a liberty I am indulged in, and I generally spend my time in the garden, or my own chamber, till I have notice given me of supper’s being on the table, where we are treated with the same ceremonials as at dinner. At ten exactly, the instant the clock strikes the first stroke, my lady rises with great solemnity, and wishes us a good night.
August 14
You cannot expect, in such a house as this is, my dear, that I can be furnished with materials to give you much variety. Indeed these four last days have been so exactly the same in every particular, excepting that the dishes at dinner and supper were changed, that I had resolved to hang up my pen till I quitted Grimston-hall, or at least resign it to Patty, and let her plod on and tell you how the wind blew such a day; what sort of a mantua lady Grimston had on such a day (though by the way it is always the same, always ash-coloured tissue); what the great dog barked at, at such an hour, and what the old parrot said at such a time; the house and the garden I have exhausted my descriptive faculties on already, though, they are neither of them worth describing; and I was beginning to despair of matter to furnish out a quarter of an hour’s entertainment, when the scene began to brighten a little this auspicious day, by the arrival of a coach full of visitors. These were no other than a venerable dean, who is the minister of our parish, his lady and daughter, and a Mr Arnold, a gentleman who is a distant relation of lady Grimston’s. He has a house in this neighbourhood, and is just come to an estate by the death of his elder brother.
This visit has given me hopes that I may now and then have a chance for seeing a human face, besides the antiques of the family, and those which are depicted on the arras. Though not to disparage the people, they were all agreeable enough in their different ways. The old dean is good humoured and polite; I mean the true politeness, that of the heart, which dictates the most obliging things in so frank a manner, that they have not the least appearance of flattery. Being very near sighted, he put on a pair of spectacles to look at me, and turning to Mr Arnold, with a vivacity that would have become five-and-twenty, he repeated
‘With an air and a face,