Rank and Talent; A Novel, Vol. 3 (of 3)

by William Pitt Scargill

Of a gentleman of this description while sauntering about in time of peace, it is very clear that the historian’s pen can have little or nothing to record: nor can our readers be much surprised if, when speaking of the interests of Clara Rivolta, we should say little or nothing of her father as influencing her destiny or directing her actions. It is not indeed to be supposed that such a woman as Signora Rivolta should pay very great deference to the opinions of Colonel Rivolta, even if he had any opinions, which, by the way, he had not. If any of our readers are astonished at the fact that the daughter of John Martindale should, in spite of all her good natural understanding, have condescended to marry such a man as Colonel Rivolta, we can only say that such readers must have a very limited circle of acquaintance, or be gifted with the not unusual faculty of being blind to one half of that which passes immediately before their eyes. We have hinted before at this apparent incongruity, and our reference to it again in this place to account for the omission of Colonel Rivolta’s name or observations in some part of our narrative, which is now about to be opened; and we wish also to avoid any thing which might appear disrespectful to the nobler sex: for it would be very wrong to represent the disposal of a daughter’s hand as being more at the will or under the influence of the mother than of the father, unless some special and peculiar reason were given for the fact. Man is the lord of the creation, and he has right because he has power. If any body can find a better reason let them, we will not quarrel with them or dispute the point; our business is not philosophy.

To our narrative then. Horatio Markham no sooner arrived in town than he went to pay his respects to his noble patron. He was graciously received. He made a few common-place apologies, which were received with due common-place politeness, and that business was soon over.

From the house of his noble patron he made the best of his way to the residence of his queer old friend, John Martindale. Almost all single men, who are not downright hermits, have some peculiar pet place of call; some friend’s house, where they uniformly make their first and last visit; where they pop in without fear of intruding. Sometimes, such is the fickleness of humanity, these places are changed; and even Markham, with all his steadiness, was once in great danger of substituting the house of Mr. Henderson for that of Mr. Martindale. A thousand blessings on the head of Dr. Crack for supplanting him there!

Mr. Martindale was not at home when Markham called. That, of course, Markham knew; but he would not suffer any more reproaches from the old gentleman for neglect of attention. Signora Rivolta and her daughter were sitting together; the mother was reading, the daughter was drawing. The mother laid aside her book when Markham entered the room; and she smilingly said, that her time might be better employed than in reading for amusement. The book was a volume of Italian plays. An Englishwoman would have thought herself most learnedly occupied with the same; especially if she had had by her side a dictionary, which she was frequently under the necessity of consulting. There is no waste of time in reading books of amusement when they are not amusing. What a fuss people make about amusement, and very sensible people too! But perhaps there is a pleasure in railing against pleasure, and so we will let it pass.

It was not usual with Signora Rivolta to express herself with so much freedom and cheerfulness to Markham as she did at this interview. There had generally been something of distance and restraint in her, as if fearful of giving the young man too much encouragement.

The time had been that Markham would have been mightily pleased with this manifest change in the deportment of Signora Rivolta; but under present circumstances it appeared to him that it was merely owing to the apparent discontinuance on his part of all serious attention to Clara; and he also felt that it would be morally impossible for him, in the present state of his father’s affairs, to think of making proposals.

With affected ease and cheerfulness he conversed with Signora Rivolta; and with an almost ridiculous affectation of indifference, he took comparatively little notice of Clara. The conversation between Markham and Signora Rivolta was unusually animated. Matters of taste were discussed, politics touched upon, and theology alluded to.

The last was an exceedingly delicate topic. Markham, with all his simplicity and ignorance of what is called the world, had not been inattentive to theology. He had observed and thought much of the influence of religion upon the human mind; this, indeed, had been his first and almost his only speculation. He had been very desirous, even from early youth, of acting and living most accurately and conscientiously. He was as ignorant on the subject of sectarianism as any member of an establishment need wish to be. But sectarianism does not spring from the attractions of heresy so much as from the dissatisfactions of orthodoxy. For so long as the dogmas of our own creed please us, the arguments of another, however ingenious, do not disturb us. Unfortunately, however, for Markham’s orthodoxy, his native town labored under the evil of a schism in the church, which is far more injurious to its stability than a schism from it. The evangelical party was very strong and very numerous, and very noisy; and made a great talk about religion, and paid very great attention to church duties and observances. Markham was a man generally speaking much in earnest, and he therefore gave much attention to this modification of the established theology; and had, when a very young man, contrary to the opinion and advice of his father and mother, sided with this party; and he thought the other party little better than mere indifferentists.

He thought he saw among the evangelical party symptoms of the original and primitive spirit of Christianity; and he used to say so very freely, and to think so very seriously. And his mother used to say, he would know better as he grew older: and in process of time he did grow older; and whether he thought better or not we presume not to say; but we do know, that as he grew older, he acquired a habit of analysing motives and looking into principles. And it came to pass that he found among these evangelicals divers manifestations of a worldly spirit, which did not exactly coincide with his notions of extraordinary spiritual purity. In the mercantile part of that class he saw much that bordered very closely on trickery; in the class a little higher, he found a mighty spirit of conceit and priggishness. Towards their neighbours he saw that many of them were mightily censorious. In conversing with some of them, and those the ringleaders, he found that they were prodigiously ignorant of the very principles on which their peculiarities were founded, and he found them to be unanimous only on one point; namely, that their favorite clergyman was a nice man.