“I am proud to tell you, that at the time I married we were so poor, that I was obliged to give up many of those luxuries to which I was entitled, and to which I had been so accustomed, that the doing without them had till then hardly come within my idea of possibility. Our whole establishment was on the most humble scale.
“I look back to this period of my life with the greatest satisfaction. I had exquisite pleasure, like all young people of sanguine temperament and generous disposition, in the consciousness of the capability of making sacrifices. This notion was my idol, the idol of the inmost sanctuary of my mind, and I worshipped it with all the energies of body and soul.
“In the course of a few years, my husband’s two elder brothers died. If you have any curiosity to know how, I will tell you, though indeed it is as little to the purpose as half the things people tell in their histories. The eldest, a homebred lordling, who, from the moment he slipped his mother’s apron-strings, had fallen into folly, and then, to show himself manly, run into vice, lost his life in a duel about some lady’s crooked thumb, or more crooked mind.
“The second brother distinguished himself in the navy; he died the death of honour; he fell gloriously, and was by his country honoured—by his country mourned.
“After the death of this young man, the inheritance came to my husband. Fortune soon after poured in upon us a tide of wealth, swelled by collateral streams.
“You will wish to know what effect this change of circumstances produced upon my mind, and you shall, as far as I know it myself. I fancied that it would have made none, because I had been before accustomed to all the trappings of wealth; yet it did make a greater change in my feelings than you could have imagined, or I could have conceived. The possibility of producing a great effect in society, of playing a distinguished part, and attaining an eminence which pleased my fancy, had never till now been within my reach. The incense of fame had been wafted near me, but not to me—near my husband I mean, yet not to him; I had heard his brother’s name from the trumpet of fame, I longed to hear his own. I knew, what to the world was then unknown, his great talents for civil business, which, if urged into action, might make him distinguished as a statesman even beyond his hero brother, but I knew that in him ambition, if it ever awoke, must be awakened by love. Conscious of my influence, I determined to use it to the utmost.
“Lord Davenant had not at that time taken any part in politics, but from his connections he could ask and obtain; and there was one in the world for whom I desired to obtain a favour of importance. It chanced that he, whom I have mentioned to you as my inconstant lover, now married to my lovely rival, was at this time in some difficulty about a command abroad. His connections, though of very high rank were not now in power. He had failed in some military exploit which had formerly been intrusted to him. He was anxious to retrieve his character; his credit, his whole fate in life, depended on his obtaining this appointment, which, at my request, was secured to him by Lord Davenant. The day it was obtained was, I think, the proudest of my life. I was proud of returning good for evil; that was a Christian pride, if pride can be Christian. I was proud of showing that in me there was none of the fury of a woman scorned—no sense of the injury of charms despised.
“But it was not yet the fulness of success; it had pained me in the midst of my internal triumph, that my husband had been obliged to use intermediate powers to obtain that which I should have desired should have been obtained by his own. Why should not he be in that first place of rule? He could hold the balance with a hand as firm, an eye as just. That he should be in the House of Peers was little satisfaction to me, unless distinguished among his peers. It was this distinction that I burned to see obtained by Lord Davenant; I urged him forward then by all the motives which make ambition virtue. He was averse from public life, partly from indolence of temper, partly from sound philosophy: power was low in the scale in his estimate of human happiness; he saw how little can be effected of real good in public by any individual; he felt it scarcely worth his while to stir from his easy chair of domestic happiness. However, love urged him on, and inspired him, if not with ambition, at least with what looked like it in public. He entered the lists, and in the political tournament tilted successfully. Many were astonished, for, till they came against him in the joust, they had no notion of his weight, or of his skill in arms; and many seriously inclined to believe that Lord Davenant was only Lady Davenant in disguise, and all he said, wrote, and did, was attributed to me. Envy gratifies herself continually by thus shifting the merit from one person to another; in hopes that the actual quantity may be diminished, she tries to make out that it is never the real person, but somebody else who does that which is good. This silly, base propensity might have cost me dear, would have cost me my husband’s affections, had he not been a man, as there are few, above all jealousy of female influence or female talent; in short, he knew his own superiority, and needed not to measure himself to prove his height. He is quite content, rather glad, that every body should set him down as a common-place character. Far from being jealous of his wife’s ruling him, he was amused by the notion: it flattered his pride, and it was convenient to his indolence; it fell in, too, with his peculiar humour. The more I retired, the more I was put forward, he, laughing behind me, prompted and forbade me to look back.
“Now, Helen, I am come to a point where ambition ceased to be virtue. But why should I tell you all this? no one is ever the better for the experience of another.”
“Oh! I cannot believe that,” cried Helen; “pray, pray go on.”