“You will not, I hope, think that I seek to prolong my regency, or to assume undue power or influence in affairs,” continued Mrs. Beaumont, “if I hint to you in general terms what I think may contribute to your happiness. You must afterwards decide for yourself; and are now, as you have ever been, master, to do as you please.”
“Too much—too much. I have had too much liberty, and have too little acquired the habit of commanding my will and my passions by my reason. Of this I am sensible. My excellent friend, Captain Walsingham, told me, some years ago, that this was the fault of my character, and he charged me to watch over myself; and so I have; but not so strictly, I fear, as if he had watched along with me.——Well, ma’am, you were going to give me some advice; I am all attention.”
“My dear son, Captain Walsingham showed his judgment more, perhaps, in pointing out causes than effects. The weakness of a fond mother, I am sensible, did indulge you in childhood, and, perhaps, more imprudently in youth, with an unlimited liberty to judge and act for yourself. Your mother’s system of education came, alas! more from her heart than her head. Captain Walsingham himself cannot be more sensible of my errors than I am.”
“Captain Walsingham, believe me, mother, never mentioned this in reproach to you. He is not a man to teach a son to see his mother’s errors—if she had any. He always spoke of you with the greatest respect. And since I must, at my own expense, do him justice, it was, I well remember, upon some occasion where I spoke too hastily, and insisted upon my will in opposition to yours, madam, that Captain Walsingham took me aside, and represented to me the fault into which my want of command over myself had betrayed me. This he did so forcibly, that I have never from that hour to this (I flatter myself) on any material occasion, forgotten the impression he made on my mind. But, madam, I interrupt you: you were going to give me your advice about—”
“No, no—no advice—no advice; you are, in my opinion, fully adequate to the direction of your own conduct. I was merely going to suggest, that, since you have not been accustomed to control from a mother, and since you have, thank Heaven! a high spirit, that would sooner break than bend, it must be essential to your happiness to have a wife of a compliant, gentle temper; not fond of disputing the right, or attached to her own opinions; not one who would be tenacious of rule, and unseasonably inflexible.”
“Unseasonably inflexible! Undoubtedly, ma’am. Yet I should despise a mean-spirited wife.”
“I am sure you would. But compliance that proceeds from affection, you know, can never deserve to be called mean-spirited—nor would it so appear to you. I am persuaded that there is a degree of fondness, of affection, enthusiastic affection, which disposes the temper always to a certain softness and yieldingness, which, I conceive, would be peculiarly attractive to you, and essential to your happiness: in short, I know your temper could not bear contradiction.”
“Oh, indeed, ma’am, you are quite mistaken.”
“Quite mistaken! and at the very moment he reddens with anger, because I contradict, even in the softest, gentlest manner in my power, his opinion of himself!”
“You don’t understand me, indeed, you don’t understand me,” said Mr. Beaumont, beating with his whip the leaves of a bush which was near him. “Either you don’t understand me, or I don’t understand you. I am much more able to bear contradiction than you think I am, provided it be direct. But I do not love—what I am doing at this instant,” added he, smiling—“I don’t love beating about the bush.”