There was a peaceful quiet in their secluded and obscure life, which somewhat resembled the hours spent on board ship, when you long for, yet fear, the conclusion of the voyage, and shrink involuntarily from exchanging a state, whose chief blessing is an absence of every care, for the variety of pains and pleasures which chequer life. Ethel possessed her all—so near, so undivided, so entirely her own, that she could not enter into Villiers's impatience, nor quite sympathize with the disquietude he could not repress. After considerable delays, his solicitor informed him that his father had so entirely disposed of all his interest in the property, that his readiness to join in any act of sale would be useless. The next thing to be done was for Edward to sell a part of his expectations, and the lawyer promised to find a purchaser, and begged to see him three days hence, when no doubt he should have some proposal to communicate.
Whoever has known what such things are—whoever has waited on the demurs and objections, and suffered the alternations of total failure and suddenly renewed hopes, which are the Tantalus-food held to the lips of those under the circumstances of Villiers, can follow in imagination his various conferences with his solicitor, as day after day something new was discovered, still to drag on, or to impede, the tortoise pace of his negociations. It will be no matter of wonder to such, that a month instead of three days wasted away, and found him precisely in the same position, with hopes a little raised, though so frequently blasted, and nothing done.
In recording the annoyances, or rather the adversity which the young pair endured at this period, a risk is run, on the one hand, of being censured for bringing the reader into contact with degrading and sordid miseries; and on the other, of laying too much stress on circumstances which will appear to those in a lower sphere of life, as scarcely deserving the name of misfortune. It is very easy to embark on the wild ocean of romance, and to steer a danger-fraught passage, amidst giant perils,—the very words employed, excite the imagination, and give grace to the narrative. But all beautiful and fairylike as was Ethel Villiers, in tracing her fortunes, it is necessary to descend from such altitudes, to employ terms of vulgar use, and to describe scenes of common-place and debasing interest; so that, if she herself, in her youth and feminine tenderness, does not shed light and holiness around her, we shall grope darkling, and fail utterly in the scope which we proposed to ourselves in selecting her history for the entertainment of the reader.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
WORDSWORTH.
The end of December had come. New year's day found and left them still in Duke Street. On the 4th of January Villiers received a letter from his uncle, Lord Maristow, entrusting a commission to him, which obliged him to go to the neighbourhood of Egham. Not having a horse, he went by the stage. He set out so late in the day that there was no chance of his returning the same night; and he promised to be back early on the morrow. Ethel had letters to write to Italy and to her aunt; and with these she tried to beguile the time. She felt lonely; the absence of Villiers for so many hours engendered an anxiety, which she found some difficulty in repressing. Accustomed to have him perpetually at her side, and without any other companion or resource, she repined at her solitude. There was his empty chair, and no hope that he would occupy it; and she sat in her little room so near to thousands, and yet so cut off from every one, with such a sense of desolation as Mungo Park might have felt in central Africa, or a shipwrecked mariner on an uninhabited island.
Her pen was taken up, but she did not write. She could not command her thoughts to express any thing but the overflowing, devoted, all-engrossing affection of her heart, her adoration for her husband; that would not amuse Lucy,—she thought: and she had commenced another sheet with "My dearest Aunt," when the maid-servant ushered a man into her presence—a stranger, a working man. What could he want with her? He seemed confused, and stammered out, "Mr. Villiers is not in?"
"He will be at home to-morrow, if you want him; or have you any message that I can give?"
"You are Mrs. Villiers, ma'am?"