At last, my dear Julia, I am settled in my beautiful retreat. Mrs.
Dalton and Lady Margaret Leslie are all whom I could prevail upon to
accompany me. Mr. Mandeville is full of the corn-laws. He is chosen
chairman to a select committee in the House. He is murmuring
agricultural distresses in his sleep; and when I asked him occasionally
to come down here to see me, he started from a reverie, and exclaimed--
"--Never, Mr. Speaker, as a landed proprietor; never will I consent to my
own ruin."
My boy, my own, my beautiful companion, is with me. I wish you could see
how fast he can run, and how sensibly he can talk. "What a fine figure
he has for his age!" said I to Mr. Mandeville the other day. "Figure!
age!" said his father; "in the House of Commons he shall make a figure to
every age." I know that in writing to you, you will not be contented if
I do not say a great deal about myself. I shall therefore proceed to
tell you, that I feel already much better from the air and exercise! the
journey, from the conversation of my two guests, and, above all, from the
constant society of my dear boy. He was three last birthday. I think
that at the age of twenty-one, I am the least childish of the two. Pray
remember me to all in town who have not quite forgotten me. Beg Lady
------ to send Elizabeth a subscription ticket for Almack's, and--oh,
talking of Almack's, I think my boy's eyes are even more blue and
beautiful than Lady C-----'s.
Adieu, my dear Julia, Ever, &c. E. M.
Lady Emily Mandeville was the daughter of the Duke of Lindvale. She
married, at the age of sixteen, a man of large fortune, and some
parliamentary reputation. Neither in person nor in character was he much
beneath or above the ordinary standard of men. He was one of Nature's
Macadamised achievements. His great fault was his equality; and you
longed for a hill though it were to climb, or a stone though it were in
your way. Love attaches itself to something prominent, even if that
something be what others would hate. One can scarce feel extremes for
mediocrity. The few years Lady Emily had been married had but little
altered her character. Quick in feeling, though regulated in temper; gay
less from levity, than from that first _spring-tide_ of a heart which has
never yet known occasion to be sad; beautiful and pure, as an
enthusiast's dream of heaven, yet bearing within the latent and powerful
passion and tenderness of earth: she mixed with all a simplicity and
innocence which the extreme earliness of her marriage, and the ascetic
temper of her husband, had tendered less to diminish than increase. She
had much of what is termed genius--its warmth of emotion--its vividness
of conception--its admiration for the grand--its affection for the good,
and that dangerous contempt for whatever is mean and worthless, the very
indulgence of which is an offence against the habits of the world. Her
tastes were, however, too feminine and chaste ever to render her
eccentric: they were rather calculated to conceal than to publish the
deeper recesses of her nature; and it was beneath that polished surface
of manner common to those with whom she mixed, that she hid the treasures
of a mine which no human eye had beheld.
Her health, naturally delicate, had lately suffered much from the
dissipation of London, and it was by the advice of physicians that she
had now come to spend the summer at E------. Lady Margaret Leslie, who
was old enough to be tired with the caprices of society, and Mrs. Dalton,
who, having just lost her husband, was forbidden at present to partake of
its amusements, had agreed to accompany her to her retreat. Neither of
them was perhaps much suited to Emily's temper, but youth and spirits
make almost any one congenial to us: it is from the years which confirm
our habits, and the reflections which refine our taste, that it becomes
easy to revolt us, and difficult to please.
On the third day after Emily's arrival at E------, she was sitting after
breakfast with Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton. "Pray," said the former,
"did you ever meet my relation, Mr. Falkland? he is in your immediate
neighbourhood." "Never; though I have a great curiosity: that fine old
ruin beyond the village belongs to him, I believe." "It does. You ought
to know him: you would like him so!" "Like him!" repeated Mrs. Dalton,
who was one of those persons of ton who, though everything collectively,
are nothing individually: "like him? impossible!" "Why?" said Lady
Margaret, indignantly--"he has every requisite to please--youth, talent,
fascination of manner, and great knowledge of the world." "Well," said
Mrs. Dalton, "I cannot say I discovered his perfections. He seemed to me
conceited and satirical, and--and--in short, very disagreeable; but then,
to be sure, I have only seen him once." "I have heard many accounts of
him," said Emily, "all differing from each other: I think, however, that
the generality of people rather incline to Mrs. Dalton's opinion than to
yours, Lady Margaret." "I can easily believe it. It is very seldom that
he takes the trouble to please; but when he does, he is irresistible.
Very little, however, is generally known respecting him. Since he came
of age, he has been much abroad; and when in England, he never entered
with eagerness into society. He is supposed to possess very
extraordinary powers, which, added to his large fortune and ancient name,
have procured him a consideration and rank rarely enjoyed by one so
young. He had refused repeated offers to enter into public life; but he
is very intimate with one of the ministers, who, it is said, has had the
address to profit much by his abilities. All other particulars
concerning him are extremely uncertain. Of his person and manners you
had better judge yourself; for I am sure, Emily, that my petition for
inviting him here is already granted." "By all means," said Emily: "you
cannot be more anxious to see him than I am." And so the conversation
dropped. Lady Margaret went to the library; Mrs. Dalton seated herself
on the ottoman, dividing her attention between the last novel and her
Italian greyhound; and Emily left the room in order to revisit her former
and favourite haunts. Her young son was her companion, and she was not
sorry that he was her only one. To be the instructress of an infant, a
mother should be its playmate; and Emily was, perhaps, wiser than she
imagined, when she ran with a laughing eye and a light foot over the
grass, occupying herself almost with the same earnestness as her child in
the same infantine amusements. As they passed the wood which led to the
lake at the bottom of the grounds, the boy, who was before Emily,
suddenly stopped. She came hastily up to him; and scarcely two paces
before, though half hid by the steep bank of the lake beneath which he
reclined, she saw a man apparently asleep. A volume of; Shakespeare lay
beside him: the child had seized it. As she took it from him in order to
replace it, her eyes rested upon the passage the boy had accidentally
opened. How often in after days was that passage recalled as an omen!
It was the following:
Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history
The course of true love never did run smooth!
Midsummer Night's Dream.
As she laid the book gently down she caught a glimpse of the countenance
of the sleeper: never did she forget the expression which it wore,
--stern, proud, mournful even in repose!
She did not wait for him to wake. She hurried home through the trees.
All that day she was silent and abstracted; the face haunted her like a
dream. Strange as it may seem, she spoke neither to Lady Margaret nor to
Mrs. Dalton of her adventure. Why? Is there in our hearts any
prescience of their misfortunes?
On the next day, Falkland, who had received and accepted Lady Margaret's
invitation, was expected to dinner. Emily felt a strong yet excusable
curiosity to see one of whom she had heard so many and such contradictory
reports. She was alone in the saloon when he entered. At the first
glance she recognised the person she had met by the lake on the day
before, and she blushed deeply as she replied to his salutation. To her
great relief Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton entered in a few minutes, and
the conversation grew general.
Falkland had but little of what is called animation in manner; but his
wit, though it rarely led to mirth, was sarcastic, yet refined, and the
vividness of his imagination threw a brilliancy and originality over
remarks which in others might have been commonplace and tame.
The conversation turned chiefly upon society; and though Lady Margaret
had told her he had entered but little into its ordinary routine, Emily
was struck alike by his accurate acquaintance with men, and the justice
of his reflections upon manners. There also mingled with his satire an
occasional melancholy of feeling, which appeared to Emily the more
touching because it was always unexpected and unassumed. It was after
one of these remarks, that for the first time she ventured to examine
into the charm and peculiarity of the countenance of the speaker. There
was spread over it that expression of mingled energy and languor, which
betokens that much, whether of thought, sorrow, passion, or action, has
been undergone, but resisted: has wearied, but not subdued. In the broad
and noble brow, in the chiselled lip, and the melancholy depths of the
calm and thoughtful eye, there sat a resolution and a power, which,
though mournful, were not without their pride; which, if they had borne
the worst, had also defied it. Notwithstanding his mother's country, his
complexion was fair and pale; and his hair, of a light chestnut, fell in
large antique curls over his forehead. That forehead, indeed,
constituted the principal feature of his countenance. It was neither in
its height nor expansion alone that its remarkable beauty consisted; but
if ever thought to conceive and courage to execute high designs were
embodied and visible, they were imprinted there.
Falkland did not stay long after dinner; but to Lady Margaret he promised
all that she required of future length and frequency in his visits. When
he left the room, Lady Emily went instinctively to the window to watch
him depart; and all that night his low soft voice rung in her ear, like
the music of an indistinct and half-remembered dream.