Separate from the rest stood one whose appearance had something of superior dignity. Her face, though pale and wasted, was less squalid than those of the others, and showed a dejection of that decent kind, which moves our pity unmixed with horror: upon her, therefore, the eyes of all were immediately turned. The keeper who accompanied them observed it: “This,” said he, “is a young lady who was born to ride in her coach and six. She was beloved, if the story I have heard is true, by a young gentleman, her equal in birth, though by no means her match in fortune: but love, they say, is blind, and so she fancied him as much as he did her. Her father, it seems, would not hear of their marriage, and threatened to turn her out of doors if ever she saw him again. Upon this the young gentleman took a voyage to the West Indies, in hopes of bettering his fortune, and obtaining his mistress; but he was scarce landed, when he was seized with one of the fevers which are common in those islands, and died in a few days, lamented by every one that knew him. This news soon reached his mistress, who was at the same time pressed by her father to marry a rich miserly fellow, who was old enough to be her grandfather. The death of her lover had no effect on her inhuman parent: he was only the more earnest for her marriage with the man he had provided for her; and what between her despair at the death of the one, and her aversion to the other, the poor young lady was reduced to the condition you see her in. But God would not prosper such cruelty; her father’s affairs soon after went to wreck, and he died almost a beggar.”
Though this story was told in very plain language, it had particularly attracted Harley’s notice; he had given it the tribute of some tears. The unfortunate young lady had till now seemed entranced in thought, with her eyes fixed on a little garnet ring she wore on her finger; she turned them now upon Harley. “My Billy is no more!” said she; “do you weep for my Billy? Blessings on your tears! I would weep too, but my brain is dry; and it burns, it burns, it burns!”—She drew nearer to Harley.—“Be comforted, young lady,” said he, “your Billy is in heaven.”—“Is he, indeed? and shall we meet again? and shall that frightful man (pointing to the keeper) not be there!—Alas! I am grown naughty of late; I have almost forgotten to think of heaven: yet I pray sometimes; when I can, I pray; and sometimes I sing; when I am saddest, I sing:—You shall hear me—hush!
“Light be the earth on Billy’s breast,
And green the sod that wraps his grave.”
There was a plaintive wildness in the air not to be withstood; and, except the keeper’s, there was not an unmoistened eye around her.
“Do you weep again?” said she. “I would not have you weep: you are like my Billy; you are, believe me; just so he looked when he gave me this ring; poor Billy! ’twas the last time ever we met!—
“’Twas when the seas were roaring—I love you for resembling my Billy; but I shall never love any man like him.”—She stretched out her hand to Harley; he pressed it between both of his, and bathed it with his tears.—“Nay, that is Billy’s ring,” said she, “you cannot have it, indeed; but here is another, look here, which I plated to-day of some gold-thread from this bit of stuff; will you keep it for my sake? I am a strange girl; but my heart is harmless: my poor heart; it will burst some day; feel how it beats!” She pressed his hand to her bosom, then holding her head in the attitude of listening—“Hark! one, two, three! be quiet, thou little trembler; my Billy is cold!—but I had forgotten the ring.”—She put it on his finger. “Farewell! I must leave you now.”—She would have withdrawn her hand; Harley held it to his lips.—“I dare not stay longer; my head throbs sadly: farewell!”—She walked with a hurried step to a little apartment at some distance. Harley stood fixed in astonishment and pity; his friend gave money to the keeper.—Harley looked on his ring.—He put a couple of guineas into the man’s hand: “Be kind to that unfortunate.”—He burst into tears, and left them.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE MISANTHROPE.
The friend who had conducted him to Moorfields called upon him again the next evening. After some talk on the adventures of the preceding day: “I carried you yesterday,” said he to Harley, “to visit the mad; let me introduce you to-night, at supper, to one of the wise: but you must not look for anything of the Socratic pleasantry about him; on the contrary, I warn you to expect the spirit of a Diogenes. That you may be a little prepared for his extraordinary manner, I will let you into some particulars of his history.
“He is the elder of the two sons of a gentleman of considerable estate in the country. Their father died when they were young: both were remarkable at school for quickness of parts and extent of genius; this had been bred to no profession, because his father’s fortune, which descended to him, was thought sufficient to set him above it; the other was put apprentice to an eminent attorney. In this the expectations of his friends were more consulted than his own inclination; for both his brother and he had feelings of that warm kind that could ill brook a study so dry as the law, especially in that department of it which was allotted to him. But the difference of their tempers made the characteristical distinction between them. The younger, from the gentleness of his nature, bore with patience a situation entirely discordant to his genius and disposition. At times, indeed, his pride would suggest of how little importance those talents were which the partiality of his friends had often extolled: they were now incumbrances in a walk of life where the dull and the ignorant passed him at every turn; his fancy and his feeling were invincible obstacles to eminence in a situation where his fancy had no room for exertion, and his feeling experienced perpetual disgust. But these murmurings he never suffered to be heard; and that he might not offend the prudence of those who had been concerned in the choice of his profession, he continued to labour in it several years, till, by the death of a relation, he succeeded to an estate of a little better than £100 a year, with which, and the small patrimony left him, he retired into the country, and made a love-match with a young lady of a similar temper to his own, with whom the sagacious world pitied him for finding happiness.
“But his elder brother, whom you are to see at supper, if you will do us the favour of your company, was naturally impetuous, decisive, and overbearing. He entered into life with those ardent expectations by which young men are commonly deluded: in his friendships, warm to excess; and equally violent in his dislikes. He was on the brink of marriage with a young lady, when one of those friends, for whose honour he would have pawned his life, made an elopement with that very goddess, and left him besides deeply engaged for sums which that good friend’s extravagance had squandered.