The next morning, as soon as I thought Mr. Stanley had retreated to his
library, I followed him thither. He was busy writing letters. I
apologized for my intrusion. He laid his papers aside, and invited me to
sit by him.
"You are too good, sir," said I, "to receive with so much kindness a
culprit who appears before you ingenuously to acknowledge the infraction
of a treaty into which he had the honor of entering with you. I fear
that a few days are wanting of my prescribed month. I had resolved to
obey you with the most religious scrupulousness; but a circumstance,
trifling in itself, has led almost irresistibly to a declaration, which
in obedience to your command I had resolved to postpone. But though it
is somewhat premature, I hope, however, you will not condemn my
precipitancy. I have ventured to tell your charming daughter how
necessary she is to my happiness. She does not reject me. She refers me
to her father."
"You have your peace to make with my daughter, I can tell you, sir,"
said Mr. Stanley, looking gravely; "I fear you have mortally offended
her."
I was dreadfully alarmed. "You know not how you afflict me, sir," said
I: "how have I offended Miss Stanley?"
"Not Miss Stanley," said he, smiling, "but Miss Celia Stanley, who
extremely resents having been banished from the drawing-room yesterday
evening."
"If Celia's displeasure is all I have to fear, sir, I am most fortunate.
Oh, sir, my happiness, the peace of my future life, is in your hands.
But first tell me you forgive the violation of my promise."
"I am willing to believe, Charles," replied he, "that you kept the
spirit of your engagement, though you broke it in the letter; and for an
unpremeditated breach of an obligation of this nature, we must not, I
believe, be too rigorous. Your conduct since your declaration to me has
confirmed the affection which your character had before excited. You
were probably surprised and hurt at my cold reception of your proposal,
a proposal which gave me a deeper satisfaction than I can express. Yet I
was no dissembler in suppressing the pleasure I felt at an address so
every way desirable. My dear Charles, I know a little of human nature. I
know how susceptible the youthful heart is of impressions. I know how
apt these impressions are to be obliterated--a new face, a more
advantageous connection--"
"Hold, sir," said I, indignantly interrupting him, "you can not think so
meanly of me--you can not rate the son of your friend so low!"
"I am very far indeed," replied he, "from rating you low. I know you
abhor mercenary considerations; but I know also that you are a young
man, lively, ardent, impressible. I know the rapid effect that leisure,
retirement, rural scenes, daily opportunities of seeing a young woman
not ugly, of conversing with a young woman not disagreeable, may produce
on the heart, or rather on the imagination. I was aware that seeing no
other, conversing with no other, none at least that, to speak honestly,
I could consider as a fair competitor, hardly left you an unprejudiced
judge of the state of your own heart. I was not sure but that this sort
of easy commerce might produce a feeling of complacency which might be
mistaken for love. I could not consent that mere accident, mere leisure,
the mere circumstance of being thrown together, should irrevocably
entangle either of you. I was desirous of affording you time to see, to
know, and to judge. I would not take advantage of your first emotions. I
would not take advantage of your friendship for me. I would not take
advantage of your feeling ardently, till I had given you time to judge
temperately and fairly."
I assured him I was equally at a loss to express my gratitude for his
kindness, and my veneration of his wisdom; and thanked him in terms of
affectionate energy.
"My regard for you," said he, "is not of yesterday: I have taken a warm
interest in your character and happiness almost ever since you have been
in being; and in a way more intimate and personal than you can suspect."
So saying he arose, unlocked the drawer of a cabinet which stood behind
him, and took out a large packet of letters. He then resumed his seat,
and holding out the direction on the covers asked me if I was acquainted
with the hand-writing. A tear involuntarily started into my eye as I
exclaimed; "It is the well-known hand of my beloved father."
"Listen to me attentively," resumed he. "You are not ignorant that never
were two men more firmly attached by all the ties which ever cemented a
Christian friendship than your lamented father and myself. Our early
youth was spent in the same studies, the same pleasures, the same
society. 'We took sweet counsel together and went to the house of God as
friends.' He condescendingly overlooked my being five or six years
younger than himself. After his marriage with your excellent mother, the
current of life carried us different ways, but without causing any
abatement in the warmth of our attachment.
"I continued to spend one month every year with him at the Priory, till
I myself married. You were then not more than three or four years old;
and your engaging manners, and sweet temper, laid the foundation of an
affection which has not been diminished by time, and the reports of your
progress. Sedentary habits on the part of your father, and a rapidly
increasing family on mine, kept us stationary at the two extremities of
the kingdom. I settled at the Grove, and both as husband and father have
been happiest of the happy.
"As soon as Lucilla was born, your father and I, simultaneously, formed
a wish that it might be possible to perpetuate our friendship by the
future union of our children."
When Mr. Stanley uttered these words, my heart beat so fast, and the
agitation of my whole frame was so visible that he paused for a moment,
but perceiving that I was all ear, and that I made a silent motion for
him to proceed, he went on.
"This was a favorite project with us. We pursued it however with the
moderation of men who had a settled sense of the uncertainty of all
human things, of human life itself; and with a strong conviction of the
probability that our project might never be realized.
"Without too much indulging the illusions of hope, we agreed that there
could be no harm in educating our children for each other: in inspiring
them with corresponding tastes, similar inclinations, and especially
with an exact conformity in their religious views. We never indulged the
presumptuous thought of counteracting providential dispensations, of
conquering difficulties which time might prove to be inseparable, and,
above all, we determined never to be so weak, or so unjust, as to think
of compelling their affections. We had both studied the human heart long
enough to know that it is a perverse and wayward thing. We were
convinced that it would not be dictated to in a matter which involved
its dearest interests, we knew that it liked to pick out its own
happiness in its own way."
As Mr. Stanley proceeded, my heart melted with grateful love for a
father who, in making such a provision for my happiness, had generously
left my choice so free. But while my conscience seemed to reproach me as
if I had not deserved such tenderness, I rejoiced that my memory had no
specific charge to bring against it.
"For all these reasons," continued Mr. Stanley, "we mutually agreed to
bury our wishes in our own bosoms; to commit the event to Him by whom
all events are governed; never to name you to each other but in a
general way; to excite no fictitious liking, to elicit no artificial
passion, and to kindle neither impatience, curiosity, nor interest.
Nothing more than a friendly family regard was ever manifested, and the
names of Charles and Lucilla were never mentioned together.
"In this you have found your advantage. Had my daughter been accustomed
to hear you spoken of with any particularity; had she been conscious
that any important consequences might have attached to your visit, you
would have lost the pleasure of seeing her in her native simplicity of
character. Undesigning and artless I trust she would have been under any
circumstances, but to have been unreserved and open would have been
scarcely possible; nor might you, my dear Charles, with your strong
sense of filial piety, have been able exactly to discriminate how much
of your attachment was choice, how much was duty. The awkwardness of
restraint would have diminished the pleasure of intercourse to both.
"Knowing that the childish brother and sister sort of intimacy was not
the most promising mode for the development of your mutual sentiments,
we agreed that you should not meet till within a year or two of the
period when it would be proper that the union, if ever, might take
place.
"We were neither of us of an age or character to indulge very romantic
ideas of the doctrine of sympathies. Still we saw no reason for
excluding such a possibility. If we succeeded, we knew that we were
training two beings in a conformity of Christian principles, which, if
they did not at once attract affection, would not fail to insure it,
should inferior motives first influence your mutual liking. And if it
failed, we should each have educated a Christian, who would be likely to
carry piety and virtue into two other families. Much good would attend
our success, and no possible evil could attend our failure.
"I could show you, I believe, near a hundred letters on each side, of
which you were the unconscious subject. Your father, in his last
illness, returned all mine, to prevent a premature discovery, knowing
how soon his papers would fall into your hands. If it will give you
pleasure, you may peruse a correspondence of which, for almost twenty
years, you were the little hero. In reading my letters you will make
yourself master of the character of Lucilla. You will read the history
of her mind; you will mark the unfolding of her faculties, and the
progress of her education. In those of your father, you will not be
sorry to trace back your own steps."
Here Mr. Stanley making a pause, I bowed my grateful acceptance of his
obliging offer. I was afraid to speak, I was almost afraid to breathe,
lest I should lose a word of a communication so interesting.
"You now see," resumed Mr. Stanley, "why you were sent to Edinburg.
Cambridge and Oxford were too near London, and of course too near
Hampshire, to have maintained the necessary separation. As soon as you
left the University, your father proposed accompanying you on a visit to
the Grove. Like fond parents, we had prepared each other to expect to
see a being just such a one as each would have wished for the companion
of his child.
"This was to be merely a visit of experiment. You were both too young to
marry. But we were impatient to place you both in a post of observation;
to see the result of a meeting; to mark what sympathy there would be
between two minds formed with a view to each other.
"But vain are all the projects of man. 'Oh! blindness to the future!'
You doubtless remember, that just as every thing was prepared for your
journey southward your dear father was seized with the lingering illness
of which he died. Till almost the last, he was able to write me, in his
intervals of ease, short letters on the favorite topic. I remember with
what joy his heart dilated, when he told me of your positive refusal to
leave him, on his pressing you to pursue the plan already settled, and
to make your visit to London and the Grove without him. I will read you
a passage from his letter." He read as follows:
"In vain have I endeavored to drive this dear son for a short time from
me. He asked with the indignant feeling of affronted filial piety, if I
could propose to him any compensation for my absence from his sick
couch? 'I make no sacrifice to duty,' said he, 'in preferring you. If I
make any sacrifice, it is to pleasure.'"
Seeing my eyes overflow with grateful tenderness, Mr. Stanley said, "If
I can find his last letter I will show it you." Then looking over the
packet--"here it is," said he, putting it into my hands with visible
emotion. Neither of us had strength of voice to be able to read it
aloud. It was written at several times.
"PRIORY, Wednesday, _March 18, 1807_.
"Stanley--I feel that I am dying. Death is awful, my dear friend,
but it is neither surprising nor terrible. I have been too long
accustomed steadily to contemplate it at a distance, to start from
it now it is near.
"As a man, I have feared death. As a Christian, I trust I have
overcome this fear. Why should I dread that, which mere reason
taught me is not an extinction of my being, and which revelation
has convinced me will be an improvement of it? An improvement, oh
how inconceivable!
"For several years I have habituated myself every day to reflect
for some moments on the vanity of life, the certainty of death, the
awfulness of judgment, and the duration of eternity.
"The separation from my excellent wife, is a trial from which I
should utterly shrink, were I not sustained by the Christian hope.
When we married, we knew that we were not immortal. I have
endeavored to familiarize to her and to myself the inevitable
separation, by constantly keeping up in the minds of both the idea
that one of us _must_ be the survivor. I have endeavored to make
that idea supportable by the conviction that the survivorship will
be short--the re-union certain--speedy--eternal. O _praeclarum
diem_![5] etc., etc. How gloriously does Christianity exalt the
rapture, by ennobling the objects of this sublime apostrophe!"
[Footnote 5: See this whole beautiful passage in Cicero de
Senectute]
* * * * *
"Friday the 20th.
"As to the union of my son with Lucilla, you and I, my friend, have
long learned from an authority higher than that classical one, of
which we have frequently admired the expression, and lamented the
application, that long views and remote hopes, and distant
expectations become not so short-sighted, so short-lived a creature
as man.[6] I trust, however; that our plans have been carried on
with a complete conviction of this brevity; with an entire
acquiescence in the will of the great arbiter of life and death. I
have told Charles it is my wish that he should visit you soon after
my death. I durst not command it--for this incomparable youth, who
has sacrificed so much to his father, will find he has a mother
worthy of still greater sacrifices. As soon as he can prevail on
himself to leave her, you will see him. May he and your Lucilla
behold each other with the eyes with which each of us views his own
child! If they see each other with indifference, never let them
know our wishes. It would perplex and hamper those to whom we wish
perfect freedom of thought and action. If they conceive a mutual
attachment, reveal our project. In such minds, it will strengthen
that attachment. The approbation of a living and the desire of a
deceased parent will sanctify their union. I must break off
through weakness."
[Footnote 6: Horace, in speaking of the brevity and uncertainty of life,
seldom fails to produce it as an incentive to sensual indulgence. See
particularly the fourth and eleventh Odes of the first book.]
* * * * *
"Monday, 23d.
"I resume my pen, which I thought I had held for the last time. May
God bless and direct our children! Infinite wisdom permits me not
to see their union. Indeed my interest in all earthly things
weakens. Even my solicitude for this event is somewhat diminished.
The most important circumstance, if it have not God for its object,
now seems comparatively little. The longest life with all its
concerns, shrinks to a point in the sight of a dying man whose eye
is filled by eternity. Eternity! Oh my friend, Eternity is a depth
which no geometry can measure, no arithmetic calculate, no
imagination conceive, no rhetoric describe. The eye of a dying
Christian seems gifted to penetrate depths hid from the wisdom of
philosophy. It looks athwart the dark valley without dismay,
cheered by the bright scene beyond it. It looks with a kind of
chastised impatience to that land where happiness will be only
holiness perfected. There all the promises of the gospel will be
accomplished. There afflicted virtue will rejoice at its past
trials, and acknowledge their subservience to its present bliss.
The secret self-denials of the righteous shall be recognized and
rewarded. And all the hopes of the Christian shall have their
complete consummation."
* * * * *
"Saturday, 28th.
"My weakness increases--I have written this at many intervals. My
body faints, but in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. Oh
Stanley! if pain is trying, if death is awful to him who knows in
whom he has trusted; how is pain endured, how is death encountered
by those who have no such support?"
* * * * *
"Tuesday the 31st.
"I am better to-day. If I experience little of that rapture which
some require, as the sign of their acceptance, I yet have a good
hope through grace. Nay, there are moments when I rejoice with joy
unspeakable. I would not produce this joy as any certain criterion
of my safety, because from the nature of my disease, there are also
moments when my spirits sink, and this might equally furnish
arguments against my state, to those who decide by frames and
feelings. I think my faith as sound, my pardon as sure, when these
privileges are withdrawn, as when I enjoy them."
* * * * *
"Friday, 3d April.
"Stanley: my departure is at hand. My eternal redemption draweth
nigh. My hope is full of immortality. This is my comfort--not that
my sins are few or small, but that they are, I humbly trust,
pardoned, through him who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Faithful is HE that has promised, and HIS promises are not too
great to be made good--for Omniscience is my promiser, and I have
Omnipotence itself for my security. Adieu!"
* * * * *
On the cover was written, in Mr. Stanley's hand, "He died three days
after!"
* * * * *
It is impossible to describe the mingled and conflicting emotions of my
soul, while I perused this letter. Gratitude that I had possessed such a
father; sorrow, that I had lost him; transport, in anticipating an event
which had been his earnest wish for almost twenty years; regret, that he
was not permitted to witness it; devout joy, that he was in a state so
superior to even _my_ sense of happiness; a strong feeling of the
uncertainty and brevity of _all_ happiness; a solemn resolution that I
would never act unworthy of such a father; a fervent prayer that I might
be enabled to keep that resolution: all these emotions so agitated and
divided my whole mind, as to render me unfit for any society, even for
that of Lucilla. I withdrew, gratefully pressing Mr. Stanley's hand; he
kindly returned the pressure, but neither of us attempted to speak.
He silently put my father's packet into my hands. I shut myself into my
apartment, and read, for three hours, letters for which I hope to be the
better in time and in eternity. I found in them a treasure of religious
wisdom, excellent maxims of human prudence, a thorough acquaintance with
life and manners, a keen insight into human nature in the abstract, and
a nice discrimination of individual characters; admirable documents of
general education, the application of those documents to my particular
turn of character, and diversified methods for improving it. The pure
delight to which I looked forward in reading these letters with Lucilla,
soon became my predominant feeling.
I returned to the company with a sense of felicity, which the above
feelings and reflections had composed into a soothing tranquillity. My
joy was sobered without being abated. I received the cordial
congratulations of my friends. Mrs. Stanley behaved to me with increased
affection: she presented me to her daughter, with whom I afterward
passed two hours. This interview left me nothing to desire but that my
gratitude to the Almighty Dispenser of happiness might bear some little
proportion to his blessings.
As I was passing through the hall after dinner, I spied little Celia
peeping out of the door of the children's apartment, in hope of seeing
me pass. She flew to me, and begged I would take her in to the company.
As I knew the interdict was taken off, I carried her into the saloon
where they were sitting. She ran into Lucilla's arms, and said, in a
voice which she meant for a whisper, but loud enough to be heard by the
whole company, "Do, dear Lucilla, forgive me, I will never say another
word about the curricle, and you sha'n't go to the Priory since you
don't like it." Lucilla found means to silence her, by showing her the
pictures in the "Peacock at Home;" and without looking up to observe
the general smile, contrived to attract the sweet child's attention to
this beautiful little poem, in spite of Sir John, who did his utmost to
widen the mischief.