It was an obvious escape from examining the past, to anticipate the future. I had some experience of the difficulties which awaited me; and knew how little my merits, such as they were, would avail towards the advancement of an unfriended stranger. Yet the fearless buoyancy of my temper supported me. I had now spent in Mrs Boswell's family three months of weariness and drudgery, for which I had received no remuneration; I concluded, of course, that she was my debtor for some return, however small. Upon this sum I expected to subsist till some favourable change should take place in my situation. How or whence this change should come, I fancy I should have been puzzled to divine; so I was content with assuring myself that come it certainly would.
At the beginning of my connection with Mrs Boswell, I had, with more politeness than prudence, submitted the recompense of my services to her decision. From that time she seemed to have forgotten the subject; and delicacy, or perhaps pride, forbade me to bring it to her recollection. It was now absolutely necessary to surmount this feeling; but it was surmounted in vain. Mrs Boswell reminded me, that I had stipulated for protection only; and declared, that she understood me as engaged to serve her without any other reward. Confounded as I was at her meanness and effrontery, I yet retained sufficient command of temper to address a civil appeal to a faculty which, in Mrs Boswell's mind, was an absolute blank; but argument was vain, and my only resource was an application to Mr Boswell.
Well knowing that his lady's presence would give a fatal bias to the scales of justice, I requested to speak with him in private. Unwilling to shock him by a detail of his wife's baseness, I assigned no reason for the resolution which I announced of quitting his family. I merely submitted to his arbitration the misunderstanding which had arisen in regard to the terms of my servitude. I had reason to be flattered by the regret, perhaps I might rather say dismay, with which the good man heard of my intended removal. With every expression of affectionate and fatherly regard he entreated me to reconsider my purpose. He assured me, that it was the first wish of his heart that his child should resemble me; he said, that he could neither hope nor even desire to see another obtain such influence as I had already gained over her; and that all his prospects of comfort depended on the use of this influence. 'I need not affect to disguise from you, my dear Miss Percy,' said he, 'that Mrs Boswell, however willing, is not likely to assist much in forming Jessie's temper and manners. The variableness of her spirits——'
'Spirits!' repeated I involuntarily.
'Well,' resumed Mr Boswell with a heavy sigh, 'perhaps I should rather have said temper. But whatever it be, the more useless it makes her to Jessie, and the more vexatious to me, the more have we both need of that delightful gaiety, that blessed sweetness which breathes peace and cheerfulness wherever you come. Dear Miss Percy, say that you will remain with my girl, that you will teach her to be as delightful as yourself, and you will repay me for ten of the most comfortless years that ever a poor creature spent.'
Somewhat embarrassed by this strange sort of confidence, I answered, that were I to accept the trust he offered I should only disappoint his expectations, since all my influence with my pupil was as nothing compared with that which was thrown into the opposite scale. I therefore renewed my request, that he would enable me immediately to relinquish my charge.
Mr Boswell employed all his rhetoric to change my resolution, but I was inflexible. 'Well, well!' said he at last, with a sigh and a shrug, 'I see how it is. The same confounded nonsense that has driven every comfort from my doors for these ten years past is driving you away too. Well, well! Hang me if I can help it. A man must submit to any thing for the sake of peace.'
'Undoubtedly,' said I, suppressing a smile; 'while he finds that he actually reaps that fruit from his submission.'
'Why as to that I can't say much. But bad as matters are, they might be worse if I were as determined to have my own way as my wife is. I have tried it once or twice, indeed; but—really her perseverance is most wonderful!' Mr Boswell pursued the subject at great length; labouring to convince me, or rather to convince himself, that where submission was unattainable on the one side, the defect ought to be supplied by the other; always inferring, from the necessary unhappiness of this situation, that I ought not, by my departure, to deprive him of his only remaining comfort. All he could obtain, however, was my consent to continue in his family for a few days longer. In return, he promised the full discharge of my claim upon Mrs Boswell, as soon as he should find means to dispose of such a sum peaceably; that is, as soon as he could by stealth abstract so much of his own property.