"Can you tell me," said the gentleman, "the names of any of the passengers in that ship?"
"No, sir," replied the sailor, "I did not hear any thing about the crew or the passengers; I only know that the captain's name was Brown, and that the vessel was bound for London. There was a gentleman on board, but I did not hear his name, who wanted to come with us because we sailed so much faster; but our captain could not take him as we had our complement of passengers, and there was one gentleman among our passengers who was very ill, and wanted all the accommodation that could be afforded. He could not be very well accommodated, poor man, but every body did what they could for him. He was such a favorite with all on board, though he was a lawyer."
In spite of the anxiety of the moment, the gentleman smiled at the language in which the sailor was pleased to compliment his sick passenger. He entered, therefore, into farther conversation with the men on the beach respecting the vessels expected, and concerning the probability of danger to those near land. The answers were satisfactory. The sailors were right in their predictions; the wind abated, the danger was over. The party on the shoredispersed to their respective abodes; and Clara, who was gifted with a very active imagination, could not banish from her mind the conceit that the sick man could be no other than Horatio Markham. She thought it very probable that the climate might not agree with him, and that he might have returned to his native land in hopes, in faint hopes of recovering his health; and she thought that these hopes might not be fulfilled, and then she let her imagination follow him to the grave. There she raised an imaginary monument to his memory, and she fancied that she could see the marble inscribed with some tender, touching, not common-place epitaph. Then she let her imagination dwell with a sickly sweet complacency on the thought of her frequent visits to his tomb; and because it had happened to her to have the misfortune to suffer herself, in the simplicity of her soul, to be imposed on by Miss Henderson, and because she had been roughly though kindly roused from that dream, and because she had parted from the first young gentleman who had taken her fancy, she thought that life must be to her a dreary blank, that friendship and love were pleasures only to be known by poetic description. Poor child! little did she think that all this deep feeling and all this gloom was the produce almost entirely of that unwholesome, artificial sentimentality which Miss Henderson had infected her with in her sloppy, mawkish, ricketty correspondence. By the mere force of imagination, Clara so weakened her spirits as to throw herself into a kind of low nervous fever; and had it not been for the united influence of her mother's healthful mind, and the honest skill of an intelligent physician, her life might have been sacrificed to the power of imagination.
It is true, that the sick passenger who was every body's favorite, though a lawyer, was indeed Horatio Markham, and that the climate had not agreed with him; but his illness was not a dangerous illness; and Clara had very little reason indeed to suppose it was he, and still less reason to apprehend a fatal termination of his indisposition. Her imagination, however, had been excited, and her sensibilities had been nourished with unwholesome food. Happy, indeed, was it for her that she did not for a certainty know that Markham was returned, and that he had suffered illness from the climate. Had she known that, it would have been more difficult to restore her to health. As it was, the task was difficult and tedious. The indisposition kept the party longer at the sea-side than their original intention, and during the whole of that time Mr. Tippetson remained there too. Signora Rivolta, the only one of the party who was tired of his company, could not with any propriety use any means to get rid of him: he therefore continued paying his attentions, and almost his addresses, to Clara. He really fancied himself in love with her, and he was not quite so great a blockhead as not to observe that Clara was far superior to Miss Henderson. Old Mr. Martindale observed nothing in the young gentleman's attentions, but was pleased with his cunning homage and dexterous flattery. Signora Rivolta never contradicted though she did not cordially coincide with her father, when he was pleased to say, as he very frequently did, "that young Tippetson is a pleasant man, and really not such a fool as he looks." The Signora knew that the old gentleman had a mode of arguing peculiar to himself, whereby he proved to a demonstration the truth of every fancy or crotchet that came into his head. It is no easy matter to confute a rich old man.
Day after day, while Clara continued to exhibit the least symptoms of indisposition, Mr. Tippetson made repeated inquiries, and it was at last suspected by the old gentleman that there was really something very particular in the attentions thus paid to his grand-daughter. As every thing in the very shape or with the name of fashion was abominable to Mr. Martindale, a little more or a little less did not affect him; and Mr. Tippetson, though outrageously finical, was not more offensive to him than any young man would have been whose coat was formed according to the prevailing mode. And as this gentleman had rendered himself less disagreeable than he appeared at first sight, the grandfather of Clara Rivolta did not see any thing very objectionable in Mr. Tippetson as suitor to the young lady. Mr. Martindale would certainly have preferred what he would call a rational young man, but that was in his idea so scarce an article, that he almost despaired of finding one. He continued to receive the young gentleman's visits, and to be pleased with the homage he paid. Occasionally, he would go so far as to make in the hearing of Clara allusions to the probable intentions of the perfumed youth. Signora Rivolta was distressed at the very thought. She gave her daughter credit for so much good sense as to decline such an offer, were it proposed to her cool deliberate judgment; but it was impossible to say what effect might gradually and unreflectingly be produced on her feelings and imagination. Clara's mother knew that judgment had little to do with love; but that perseverance, kindness, ingenious flattery, incessant homage, would produce great effects. As the time passed on the danger became greater, and the mother's anxiety was increased.
All this time Clara considered that Mr. Tippetson was engaged, if not actually at least virtually and by implicit understanding, to Miss Henderson; and as her own affections had been once much interested about Horatio Markham, and as she had suffered on his account, or on account of his image on her mind, a very serious illness, she imagined that she was irrevocably doomed to live or die for the absent youth. Being therefore totally unsuspicious of the possibility of any danger of the wandering of her affection, she behaved with much unreserve to Mr. Tippetson, and was pleased with the friendly interest which he seemed to take in her welfare. And as Clara's manners were easy and unconstrained, as in the acquaintance between the parties there was much sociability of expression and habit, the young gentleman fancied that he had actually made some progress in the young lady's affection. In fact, he had made so much progress as this, that from being absolutely disagreeable he had become tolerable, and from being tolerable he had become almost agreeable. Young ladies, though sometimes prodigiously wise, are not always very partial to a superabundance of that article in mothers and grandfathers; and a very little wisdom in a young gentleman, seems to them much more intellectual than a great deal in an old one. The monotony of wisdom is also wearying to the novelty-loving mind of youth, and the variety of folly becomes an agreeable relief. It is true that Mr. Tippetson was a fop and a fribble and a dandy and an exquisite, and all that sort of thing; but was it to be wondered at? And there are many very respectable and intelligent middle-aged men who in their early days were as great puppies as any lads now living. And again, the foppery of dress and affectation of manners are only offensive, or chiefly so, to those superannuated, formal, queer, quizzical creatures, who delight in any cut of a coat that is not fashionable. Now Clara did not judge of Mr. Tippetson according to the principle and standard of a staid middle-aged or elderly gentleman, or by the feelings of a matronly lady, who thinks the young men of the present generation much more graceless fops than their predecessors.
The ingenious Mr. Tippetson, who had but an indistinct idea of the state of Clara's mind towards the image of Horatio Markham, thought that the young lady's affections had been misplaced and grievously disappointed: therefore, his talk to her was in the indirect and pathetic line of implied sympathy; and as Miss Henderson had aroused in Clara's heart all the romance of which it was capable, some little progress was thus made in her good-will. Ordinarily speaking and straightforwardly thinking, it seems a strange kind of process to take possession of a lady's heart by sympathising with her on the loss, or descanting on the virtues of a first love; but clumsy as this may seem in theory, it has succeeded in practice. Perhaps it is very good policy, when once the sensibilities have been kindled, to keep them alive; and as that love is surest which glides gradually into the heart, it may be as well not to let the mind cease to love, but to manage it and wind it so as to bring it gradually to a change of object. So when an unreasoning, strong-willed infant is playing with a toy, from which it may be desirable to detach its attention, it is not such good policy to wrest the said toy violently from its little hands, as gradually to insinuate another, and then the first toy quietly drops. In like manner, when the female heart mourns its first love frustrated, let him who seeks to succeed in the affection not wait till that affection is cold, and not seek to reason away its acuteness, but manage rather to keep it alive and gradually change its object. That dexterous and unerring instinct which, we have before said, belongs to such men as Mr. Tippetson, directed him to the plan which we have here recommended, and perhaps nothing was wanting but a sufficient portion of time to give it success. Happy it is, however, for the purposes of poetic justice, that this sufficient quantity of time was not allowed. Circumstances interfered to prevent such an abomination as the marriage of the silly, conceited, common-place, Henry Augustus Tippetson, to the mild, gentle, simple-hearted, kind-souled Clara Rivolta. If he had married her, he would soon have been weary of her pleasant, pretty, unaffected manners, and probably would have broken her heart by neglect. What these circumstances were must be detailed hereafter.