“Why will you fight against so sweet a passion,
And steel your heart to such a world of charms!”
ADDISON.
Markham was glad that Mr. Martindale’s visit had terminated without
discovering the unpleasant circumstances in which the young man’s father
had been involved: and as soon as the elder Markham was sufficiently
recovered to attend to his usual occupation, the young man took his leave
of his parents and returned to town.
Now another season was commencing in the great metropolis, and the family
of Colonel Rivolta had become tolerably well naturalised. The Colonel
himself, from his relation to so opulent a man as old John Martindale,
became a person of some consequence, and he had the honor to lounge and
yawn about the streets with divers persons who bore titles or were in
expectation of titles. Much as ignorant and superficial people may laugh
at the old story of Jack helping Dick to do nothing, we are firmly and
seriously of opinion that a man is never so much in need of assistance
as when he has nothing to do. Colonel Rivolta found many persons in
London in this predicament, and such was the natural benevolence of his
mind that he took an inexpressible delight in affording them all the
assistance in his power. The Colonel was never without a cigar in his
mouth; and therefore he was peculiarly acceptable to those young noblemen
and gentlemen who could not for the weakness of their heads smoke in
the morning, because though they could not smoke they could employ
themselves with sniffing the fumes of the Colonel’s cigars.
The Colonel was not indeed very intimate with the English language so
as to enjoy and understand its delicacies and niceties; but he was
sufficiently well acquainted with the language and air and style of
fashionable impertinence and coxcomical exclusiveness, and he could laugh
remarkably well. He was also exceedingly well-dressed, and had that
exquisitely ridiculous military air, which if it be not the glory is at
least the pride of most of those green ones who have entered the army
since 1815. The Colonel had also in very great perfection the imitative
faculty, which enabled him to catch to the very life the manners of the
people with whom he associated. He caught with great facility all the
fashionable fool’s tricks of the dinner-table; and notwithstanding his
imperfect knowledge of the English language, he had no difficulty in
understanding and in making himself understood in all matters touching
eating and drinking: on these subjects he was eloquent and animated. The
Colonel was not a very young man, as may be inferred from the age of
his daughter, but he had the air and manners of youth; and he was thus
more ridiculous, if possible, than those young men with whom he chiefly
associated. This, however, could be said for him which could not be said
for them; namely, that he had seen actual and severe service, and had
undergone many hardships: there was therefore something of philosophy in
his very flippancy of character and manner.
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_.
At this discovery he was somewhat tempted to smile; and as in some cases
tears lead to thought, so in others do smiles lead to reflection. And is
not this the order and ordinance of nature? The human infancy, which is
the vestibule of intellect, is a scene commingled of smiles and tears,
of passionate sorrows and of noisy joys; then comes reflection. So it
had been with Markham in what may be called his theological infancy. Led
by circumstances to reflect and to think, he perhaps carried reflection
and thought farther than he first intended, or was aware of. But it was
something, and indeed a very great matter, that he had penetration enough
to see through, what he had charity enough to call, the unconscious mask
of fanaticism.
Thus led to reflection, his mind did not hastily settle. He was
entertained by various speculations, and he made many inquiries, and was
forced to find answers for them as well as he could. He had, as people
say, his own opinions. What those opinions were we know not, and perhaps
Markham himself did not exactly know; and therefore, as he apprehended
these opinions indistinctly, he could not communicate them, and thus they
were likely to continue his own. Whatever were his literal opinions,
the spirit of his theological feeling was catholic; not Roman Catholic,
gentle reader, but catholic in its widest acceptation. He did at one
time reprobate sectarianism not as a nurse of dangerous heresies, but as
a violation of the spirit of nature’s catholicism, and an unauthorised
earth-born enclosure of heaven’s free blessings; but he, in time, so far
surmounted that feeling, as to discern in the constitution of the human
mind the elements of sectarianism; and he at length came to the dangerous
conclusion, that there must needs be diversity of opinion so long as
there was diversity of minds.
This state of mind will easily account for his overlooking the
theological education of Clara Rivolta, while and when he thought of
paying court to her; and it will also serve to explain the fact of
his calmly conversing with Signora Rivolta on subjects connected with
theology. For this good lady had also a free and liberal spirit towards
dissidents; and did think that in religion there was something eternal
and indivisible, which humors of the day could not limit, nor the low
walls and fences of sectarianism divide. Her faith, however, and her
devotion, however liberal might be her feelings, were modulated and
disposed according to the religion in which she had been educated. Those
forms she preferred decidedly, but not angrily.
Now that part of the conversation which had reference to theology was on
the broadest and most general principles; and the parties, so far as they
went, coincided.
Markham had been talking with Signora Rivolta a long while; and he had
been so mightily well pleased with his own speculations, freely uttered
and candidly received, that he did not notice that all this time Clara
had been perfectly silent; and that she had been attentively, to all
appearance, occupied with her drawing.
But the conversation on the part of the mother of Clara presently
flagged; and the eyes of the Signora were directed to a time-piece that
stood on a bracket in the room where they were sitting. The index pointed
to the hour of two. Markham recollected having seen that time-piece in
poor old Richard Smith’s cottage at Brigland; and when Signora Rivolta
looked at it so earnestly, there rushed into the young man’s mind
recollections of the past; and he was so lost in these recollections,
that he did not think of the proper interpretation of the Signora’s looks
at the time-piece.
There was presently an awkward silence; and Clara lifted up her face
from the table and looked at her mother, and saw that her mother’s eyes
were directed to the time-piece; and there also did she look, and then
suddenly her countenance changed, and she looked again at her mother, and
slightly at Markham, and she almost sighed.
Markham scarcely heeded these movements for a minute or two; but
presently his recollection came to him, and he bethought himself that he
had made an unusually long visit, and he rose to take his departure. Then
he saw, by the manner in which Signora Rivolta received his motion to
depart, that his stay had been quite long enough; and he was still, with
all his philosophy, so far in love with Clara, that he fancied that she
also seemed glad that he was going. She smiled, indeed, and courteously
said, “Good morning, sir.” But if she had not smiled, she must have
sighed; and perhaps have almost wept.
As Markham was retiring, he met at the drawing-room door a strange
mysterious-looking personage, dressed in black, and having a look of
gloom and darkness far beyond any darkness of attire. The stranger fixed
his eyes inquiringly on the young barrister, and by his looks seemed to
rebuke the young man as an unwelcome intruder. Markham again looked at
the stranger, not from wilful curiosity and voluntary impertinence, but
almost through a power of fascination. Never had he seen a countenance
of such singular and curious expression. It seemed not only unenglish,
but unearthly. The eyes were large, flat, and lustreless; the cheeks
long, narrow, pendulous, and sadly sallow; the nose aquiline; the
forehead low and wrinkled; the hair thick and grizzled; the mouth
wide, and the lips thin and pale; and the teeth long and irregular,
and alternately black and yellow, like the keys of an old harpsichord.
Markham sickened at the sight; he guessed what the stranger was; and so
can our readers.