"We have had an instance among our own friends," replied Sir John, "of this evil being produced, not by any of the faults to which you have adverted, but by an excess of misapplied sensibility, in two persons of near equality as to merit, and in both of whom the utmost purity of mind, and exactness of conduct rendered all concealment superfluous. Our worthy friends Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton married from motives of affection, and with a high opinion of each other's merit, which their long and intimate connection has rather contributed to exalt than to lower; and yet, now at the end of seven years, they are only beginning to be happy. They contrived to make each other and themselves as uncomfortable by an excess of tenderness, as some married pairs are rendered by the want of it. A mistaken sensibility has intrenched, not only on their comfort, but on their sincerity. Their resolution never to give each other pain has led them to live in a constant state of petty concealment. They are neither of them remarkably healthy, and to hide from each other every little indisposition, have kept up a continual vigilance to conceal illness on the one part, and to detect it on the other, till it became a trial of skill which could make the other most unhappy; each suffering much more by suspicion when there was no occasion for it, than they could have done by the acknowledgment of slight complaints when they actually existed.
"This valuable pair, after seven years' apprenticeship to a petty martyrdom, have at last found out that it is better to submit to the inevitable ills of life cheerfully and in concert, and to comfort each other under them cordially, than alternately to suffer and inflict the pain of perpetual disingenuousness. They have at last discovered that uninterrupted prosperity is not the lot of man. Each is happier now with knowing that the other is sometimes sick, than they used to be with suspecting they were always so. The physician is now no longer secretly sent for to one, when the other is known to be from home. The apothecary is at last allowed to walk boldly up the public staircase fearless of detection.
"These amiable persons have at length attained all that was wanting to their felicity, that of each believing the other to be well when they say they are so. They have found out that unreserved communication is the lawful commerce of conjugal affection, and that all concealment is contraband."
"Surely," said I, when Sir John had done speaking, "it is a false compliment to the objects of our affection, if, for the sake of sparing them a transient uneasiness, we rob them of the comfort to which they are entitled, of mitigating our sufferings by partaking it. All dissimulation is disloyal to love. Besides, it appears to me to be an introduction to wider evils, and I should fear, both for the woman I loved and for myself, that if once we allowed ourselves concealment in one point, where we thought the motive excused us, we might learn to adopt it in others, where the principle was more evidently wrong."
"Besides," replied Mr. Stanley, "it argues a lamentable ignorance of human life, to set out with an expectation of health without interruption, and of happiness without alloy. When young persons marry with the fairest prospects, they should never forget that infirmity is inseparably bound up with their very nature, and that in bearing one another's burdens, they fulfill one of the highest duties of the union."
CHAPTER XVIII.
After supper, when only the family party were present, the conversation turned on the unhappy effects of misguided passion. Mrs. Stanley lamented that novels, with a very few admirable exceptions, had done infinite mischief, by so completely establishing the omnipotence of love, that the young reader was almost systematically taught an unresisting submission to a feeling, because the feeling was commonly represented as irresistible.
"Young ladies," said Sir John, smiling, "in their blind submission to this imaginary omnipotence, are apt to be necessarians. When they fall in love, as it is so justly called, they then obey their fate; but in their stout opposition to prudence and duty, they most manfully exert their free will; so that they want nothing but knowledge absolute of the miseries attendant on an indiscreet attachment, completely to exemplify the occupation assigned by Milton to a class of beings to whom it would not be gallant to resemble young ladies."
Mrs. Stanley continued to assert, that ill-placed affection only became invincible, because its supposed invincibility had been first erected into a principle. She then adverted to the power of religion in subduing the passions, that of love among the rest.