'Cibo non prende già che de suoi mali
Solo si pasce, e sol di pianto ha sete?'
But I think I have made amends for one evening, at least."
CHAPTER V.
Now Mr. Wilkinson, though a very pleasant gentlemanly man--slightly inclined to be facetious, but never yielding to that vein farther than a subdued--one might almost say, internal--smile, at the odd things, and the absurd things, and the wicked things of this world--was quite in the wrong in taking it into his head that Maria Beauchamp was in love with Captain William Delaware. In truth, she was not; though certainly never were there circumstances more likely to make her become so. She had only got as far at present as being interested in the young sailor's fate in the highest degree; perfectly convinced, that he was innocent and injured--thinking him certainly a very handsome youth--and granting that he was, with all his simplicity, one of the most agreeable men she had ever seen. The reader may ask if all this, then, was not love? No, no, no! It was not! There were bricks, and mortar, and trowels, and hods; but it was not the tower of Babel--What I mean is, that there were all the materials for love, but they wanted putting together.
In Lord Ashborough's house, however, with all these prepossessions in William Delaware's favour, she heard nothing coupled with his name but pompous censure, or flat and pointless sneers; and she dared not say a word in his favour. Now this, as it furnished her with a motive for not only thinking of him from morning till night, but furnished her also with a legitimate cause for connecting in the sweet, unanswering privacy of her own bosom, all those manifold arguments in his favour, which she could have put forth in society, had she not been afraid of their being controverted, caused imagination, and zeal, and generous enthusiasm, to labour hard to build up the said bricks and mortar into the firm and regular structure which Mr. Wilkinson, in his over-hasty conclusions, imagined to be already built.
However all that may be, it is certain that few people had been more completely wretched--and she was not a person to be so, without seeming so too--than Maria Beauchamp, since the business at Ryebury had taken place, and she yielded to a degree of gloom and despondency, which Lord Ashborough had never before seen her display under any circumstances. As she never mingled in the conversation regarding William Delaware, the earl imagined that anxiety and suspense, in regard to the fate of her brother, were the causes of her gloom; and--with the very natural consideration which people generally display, who, however much grieved they may feel for a time, love to get over the memory of their dead relations as fast as may be--the noble earl took every means of removing her state of doubt as fast as possible, by assuring her, on all occasions, that unquestionably her brother was dead.
Suddenly a change came over Miss Beauchamp's whole demeanour. Though she admitted that it was very possible her brother might be dead, yet she resumed her usual tone of spirits; and instead of being silent in regard to Captain Delaware, she repelled with contempt the idea of his guilt whenever it was mentioned, declaring that she felt as much confidence in his innocence of the murder, as she did in her own. All this surprised Lord Ashborough. The first, indeed, he accounted for pleasantly enough to himself, declaring that Maria's mind had now recovered its elasticity, having been relieved from suspense, by the firm conviction which he had taken care to impress upon it, that her brother was dead. He lauded at the same time, be it remarked, his own wisdom in the course he had pursued, blaming severely those ill-judging friends, who, in such cases, suffer hope to linger on till it wears itself out. He even ventured on a simile, saying, that it was like torturing a drowning man, by holding out straws to him.
In regard to Miss Beauchamp's extraordinary perversity in defending the murderer, he declared that he was more puzzled; and one day, after having remonstrated severely, he related the fact to the worthy Mr. Peter Tims. That excellent person, however, only decided that it was a lady's caprice; and with this solution of the enigma, his lordship was forced to rest satisfied.
In the meanwhile, Henry Beauchamp did the most uninteresting thing in the whole world, namely, he travelled from Calais to Paris; for, with the exception of Sterne, who carried his own world about with him in his post-chaise--and a strange mixed world of beauty and deformity it was--I know no one who has been able to make anything of the journey between those two towns, either one way or the other--except, indeed, the Duke of Guise, in 1558, who made Calais a French town of it.
Henry Beauchamp's journey was somewhat Quixotic certainly; but the whole details of his sally serve lamentably to show how the science of knight-errantry has declined since the occultation of the star of La Mancha. For a squire he had a Bow Street officer, backed by letters missive from the Foreign Secretary, and seated upon the rumble of a dark-green armless chariot, beside a fierce-looking mastiff of a courier, whom Beauchamp had engaged upon somewhat surer grounds than those on which Master Harding had been received into his service. Dapple and Rozinante were converted into four French stallions, of all sorts and sizes; and instead of mistaking inns for castles, one might have concluded that the young Englishman mistook them for prisons, so strenuously did he avoid them by travelling night and day.