As soon as she was gone, the lively Ph[oe]be, who, her father says, has narrowly escaped being a wit herself, cried out: "Well, papa, I must say that I think Miss Sparkes, with all her faults, is rather an agreeable woman." "I grant that she is amusing," returned he, "but I do not allow her to be quite agreeable. Between these, Ph[oe]be, there is a wide distinction. To a correct mind, no one can be agreeable who is incorrect. Propriety is so indispensable to agreeableness, that when a lady allows herself to make any, even the smallest, sacrifice of veracity, religion, modesty, candor, or the decorum of her sex, she may be shining, she may be showy, she may be amusing, but she can not, properly speaking, be agreeable. Miss Sparkes, I very reluctantly confess, does sometimes make these sacrifices, in a degree to make her friends look about them, though not in a degree to alarm her own principles. She would not tell a direct falsehood for the world; she does not indeed invent, but she embellishes, she enlarges, she exaggerates, she discolors. In her moral grammar there is no positive or comparative degree. Pink with her is scarlet. The noise of a popgun is a cannon. A shower is a tempest. A person of small fortune is a beggar. One in easy circumstances is a Cr[oe]sus. A girl, if not perfectly well made, is deformity personified; if tolerable, a Grecian Venus. Her favorites are angels. Her enemies, demons.
"She would be thought very religious, and I hope that she will one day become so; yet she sometimes treats serious things with no small levity, and though she would not originally say a very bad word, yet she makes no scruple of repeating, with great glee, profane stories told by others. Besides, she possesses the dangerous art of exciting an improper idea, without using an improper word. Gross indecency would shock her, but she often verges so far toward indelicacy as to make Mrs. Stanley uneasy. Then she is too much of a genius to be tied down by any consideration of prudence. If a good thing occurs, out it comes, without regard to time or circumstance. She would tell the same story to a bishop as to her chambermaid. If she says a right thing, which she often does, it is seldom in the right place. She makes her way in society, without attaching many friends. Her bon-mots are admired and repeated; yet I never met with a man of sense, though he may join in flattering her, who did not declare, as soon as she was out of the room, that he would not for the world that she should be his wife or daughter. It is irksome to her to converse with her own sex, while she little suspects that ours is not properly grateful for the preference with which she honors us.
"She is," continued Mr. Stanley, "charitable with her purse, but not with her tongue; she relieves her poor neighbors, and indemnifies herself by slandering her rich ones. She has, however, many good qualities, is generous, feeling, and humane, and I would on no account speak so freely of a lady whom I receive at my house were it not that, if I were, quite silent, after Ph[oe]be's expressed admiration, she might conclude that I saw nothing to condemn in Miss Sparkes, and might be copying her faults under the notion that being entertaining made amends for every thing."
CHAPTER XXXII.
One morning, Sir John coming in from his ride, gayly called out to me, as I was reading, "Oh Charles, such a piece of news! The Miss Flams are converted. They have put on tuckers. They were at church twice on Sunday. Blair's Sermons are sent for, and you are the reformer." This ludicrous address reminded Mr. Stanley that Mr. Flam had told him we were all in disgrace for not having called on the ladies, and it was proposed to repair this neglect.
"Now take notice," said Sir John, "if you do not see a new character assumed. Thinking Charles to be a fine man of the town, the modish racket, which indeed is their natural state, was played off, but it did not answer. As they probably, by this time, suspect your character to be somewhat between the Strephon and the Hermit, we shall now, in return, see something between the wood-nymph and the nun, and I shall not wonder if the extravagantly modish Miss Bell
"Is now Pastora by a fountain's side."
Though I would not attribute the change to the cause assigned by Sir John, yet I confess we found, when we made our visit, no small revolution in Miss Bell Flam. The part of the Arcadian nymph, the reading lady, the lover of retirement, the sentimental admirer of domestic life, the censurer of thoughtless dissipation, was each acted in succession, but so skillfully touched that the shades of each melted in the other without any of those violent transitions which a less experienced actress would have exhibited: Sir John slyly, yet with affected gravity, assisting her to sustain this newly adapted character, which, however, he was sure would last no longer than the visit.
When we returned home, we met the Miss Stanleys in the garden and joined them. "Don't you admire," said Sir John, "the versatility of Miss Bell's genius? You, Charles, are not the first man on whom an assumed fondness for rural delights has been practiced. A friend of mine was drawn in to marry, rather suddenly, a thorough-paced town-bred lady, by her repeated declarations of her passionate fondness for the country, and the rapture she expressed when rural scenery was the subject. All she knew of the country was, that she had now and then been on a party of pleasure at Richmond, in the fine summer months; a great dinner at the Star and Garter, gay company, a bright day, lovely scenery, a dance on the green, a partner to her taste, French horns on the water, altogether constituted a feeling of pleasure from which she had really persuaded herself that she was fond of the country. But when all these concomitants were withdrawn, when she had lost the gay partner, the dance, the horns, the flattery, and the frolic, and nothing was left but her books, her own dull mansion, her domestic employments, and the sober society of her husband, the pastoral vision vanished. She discovered, or rather he discovered, but too late, that the country had not only no charms for her, but that it was a scene of constant ennui and vapid dullness. She languished for the pleasures she had quitted, and he for the comforts he had lost. Opposite inclinations led to opposite pursuits; difference of taste however, needed not to have led to a total disunion, had there been on the part of the lady such a degree of attachment as might have induced a spirit of accommodation, or such a fund of principle as might have taught her the necessity of making those sacrifices which affection, had it existed, would have rendered pleasant, or duty would have made light, had she been early taught self-government."