NEW VIEWS.
When I found myself the next morning at home, I could not help ruminating
over the strange adventures of the preceding day, and felt a kind of
self-reproach at the frigid manner in which I had hitherto treated all the
Blake advances, contrasting so ill for me with the unaffected warmth and
kind good-nature of their reception. Never alluding, even by accident, to
my late estrangement; never, by a chance speech, indicating that they
felt any soreness for the past,--they talked away about the gossip of
the country: its feuds, its dinners, its assizes, its balls, its
garrisons,--all the varied subjects of country life were gayly and
laughingly discussed; and when, as I entered my own silent and deserted
home, and contrasted its look of melancholy and gloom with the gay and
merry scene I so lately parted from, when my echoing steps reverberated
along the flagged hall,--I thought of the happy family picture I left
behind me, and could not help avowing to myself that the goods of fortune
I possessed were but ill dispensed, when, in the midst of every means and
appliance for comfort and happiness, I lived a solitary man, companionless
and alone.
I arose from breakfast a hundred times,--now walking impatiently towards
the window, now strolling into the drawing-room. Around, on every side, lay
scattered the prints and drawings, as Baby had thrown them carelessly
upon the floor; her handkerchief was also there. I took it up; I know not
why,--some lurking leaven of old romance perhaps suggested it,--but I hoped
it might prove of delicate texture, and bespeaking that lady-like coquetry
which so pleasantly associates with the sex in our minds. Alas, no! Nothing
could be more palpably the opposite: torn, and with a knot--some hint to
memory--upon one corner, it was no aid to my careering fancy. And yet--and
yet, what a handsome girl she is; how finely, how delicately formed that
Greek outline of forehead and brow; how transparently soft that downy pink
upon her cheek! With what varied expression those eyes can beam!--ay, that
they can: but, confound it, there’s this fault, their very archness, their
sly malice, will be interpreted by the ill-judging world to any but the
real motive. “How like a flirt!” will one say. “How impertinent! How
ill-bred!” The conventional stare of cold, patched, and painted beauty,
upon whose unblushing cheek no stray tinge of modesty has wandered, will be
tolerated, even admired; while the artless beamings of the soul upon the
face of rural loveliness will be condemned without appeal.
Such a girl may a man marry who destines his days to the wild west; but woe
unto him!--woe unto him, should he migrate among the more civilized and
less charitable _coteries_ of our neighbors!
“Ah, here are the papers, and I was forgetting. Let me see--‘Bayonne’--ay,
‘march of the troops--Sixth Corps.’ What can that be without? I say, Mike,
who is cantering along the avenue?”
“It’s me, sir. I’m training the brown filly for Miss Mary, as your honor
bid me last night.”
“Ah, very true. Does she go quietly?”
“Like a lamb, sir; barrin’ she does give a kick now and then at the sheet,
when it bangs against her legs.”
“Am I to go over with the books now, sir?” said a wild-looking shockhead
appearing within the door.
“Yes, take them over, with my compliments; and say I hope Miss Mary Blake
has caught no cold.”
“You were speaking about a habit and hat, sir?” said Mrs. Magra, curtsying
as she entered.
“Yes, Mrs. Magra; I want your advice. Oh, tell Barnes I really cannot be
bored about those eternal turnips every day of my life. And, Mike, I wish
you’d make them look over the four-horse harness. I want to try those
grays; they tell me they’ll run well together. Well, Freney, more
complaints, I hope? Nothing but trespasses! I don’t care, so you’d not
worry me, if they eat up every blade of clover in the grounds; I’m sick
of being bored this way. Did you say that we’d eight couple of good
dogs?--quite enough to begin with. Tell Jones to ride into Banagher and
look after that box; Buckmaster sent it from London two months ago, and it
has been lying there ever since. And, Mrs. Magra, pray let the windows be
opened, and the house well aired; that drawing-room would be all the better
for new papering.”
These few and broken directions may serve to show my readers--what
certainly they failed to convince myself of--that a new chapter of my life
had opened before me; and that, in proportion to the length of time
my feelings had found neither vent nor outlet, they now rushed madly,
tempestuously into their new channels, suffering no impediment to arrest,
no obstacle to oppose their current.
Nothing can be conceived more opposite to my late, than my present habits
now became. The house, the grounds, the gardens, all seemed to participate
in the new influence which beamed upon myself; the stir and bustle of
active life was everywhere perceptible; and amidst numerous preparations
for the moors and the hunting-field, for pleasure parties upon the river,
and fishing excursions up the mountains, my days were spent. The Blakes,
without even for a moment pressing their attentions upon me, permitted me
to go and come among them unquestioned and unasked. When, nearly every
morning, I appeared in the breakfast-room, I felt exactly like a member of
the family; the hundred little discrepancies of thought and habit which
struck me forcibly at first, looked daily less apparent; the careless
inattentions of my fair cousins as to dress, their free-and-easy boisterous
manner, their very accents, which fell so harshly on my ear, gradually made
less and less impression, until at last, when a raw English Ensign, just
arrived in the neighborhood, remarked to me in confidence, “What devilish
fine girls they were, if they were not so confoundedly Irish!” I could not
help wondering what the fellow meant, and attributed the observation more
to his ignorance than to its truth.
Papa and Mamma Blake, like prudent generals, so long as they saw the forces
of the enemy daily wasting before them; so long as they could with impunity
carry on the war at his expense,--resolved to risk nothing by a pitched
battle. Unlike the Dalrymples, they could leave all to time.
Oh, tell me not of dark eyes swimming in their own ethereal essence;
tell me not of pouting lips, of glossy ringlets, of taper fingers, and
well-rounded insteps; speak not to me of soft voices, whose seductive
sounds ring sweetly in our hearts; preach not of those thousand womanly
graces so dear to every man, and doubly to him who lives apart from all
their influences and their fascinations; neither dwell upon congenial
temperament, similarity of taste, of disposition, and of thought; these are
not the great risks a man runs in life. Of all the temptations, strong as
these may be, there is one greater than them all, and that is, propinquity!
Show me the man who has ever stood this test; show me the man, deserving
the name of such, who has become daily and hourly exposed to the breaching
artillery of flashing eyes, of soft voices, of winning smiles, and kind
speeches, and who hasn’t felt, and that too soon too, a breach within
the rampart of his heart. He may, it is true,--nay, he will, in many
cases,--make a bold and vigorous defence; sometimes will he re-intrench
himself within the stockades of his prudence; but, alas! it is only to
defer the moment when he must lay down his arms. He may, like a wise man
who sees his fate inevitable, make a virtue of necessity, and surrender at
discretion; or, like a crafty foe, seeing his doom before him, under the
cover of the night he may make a sortie from the garrison, and run for his
life. Ignominious as such a course must be, it is often the only one left.
But to come back. Love, like the small-pox, is most dangerous when you take
it in the natural way. Those made matches, which Heaven is supposed to
have a hand in, when placing an unmarried gentleman’s property in the
neighborhood of an unmarried lady’s, which destine two people for each
other in life, because their well-judging friends have agreed, “They’ll do
very well; they were made for each other,”--these are the mild cases of the
malady. This process of friendly vaccination takes out the poison of the
disease, substituting a more harmless and less exciting affection; but the
really dangerous instances are those from contact, that same propinquity,
that confounded tendency every man yields to, to fall into a railroad of
habit; that is the risk, that is the danger. What a bore it is to find that
the absence of one person, with whom you’re in no wise in love, will spoil
your morning’s canter, or your rowing party upon the river! How much put
out are you, when she, to whom you always gave your arm in to dinner,
does not make her appearance in the drawing-room; and your tea, too, some
careless one, indifferent to your taste, puts a lump of sugar too little,
or cream too much, while she--But no matter; habit has done for you what
no direct influence of beauty could do, and a slave to your own selfish
indulgences, and the cultivation of that ease you prize so highly, you fall
over head and ears in love.
Now, you are not, my good reader, by any means to suppose that this was my
case. No, no; I was too much what the world terms the “old soldier” for
that. To continue my illustration: like the fortress that has been often
besieged, the sentry upon the walls keeps more vigilant watch; his ear
detects the far-off clank of the dread artillery; he marks each parallel;
he notes down every breaching battery; and if he be captured, at least it
is in fair fight.
Such were some of my reflections as I rode slowly home one evening from
Gurt-na-Morra. Many a time, latterly, had I contrasted my own lonely and
deserted hearth with the smiling looks, the happy faces, and the merry
voices I had left behind me; and many a time did I ask myself, “Am I never
to partake of a happiness like this?” How many a man is seduced into
matrimony from this very feeling! How many a man whose hours have passed
fleetingly at the pleasant tea-table, or by the warm hearth of some old
country-house, going forth into the cold and cheerless night, reaches his
far-off home only to find it dark and gloomy, joyless and companionless?
How often has the hard-visaged look of his old butler, as, with sleepy eyes
and yawning face, he hands a bed-room candle, suggested thoughts of married
happiness? Of the perils of propinquity I have already spoken; the risks of
contrast are also great. Have you never, in strolling through some fragrant
and rich conservatory, fixed your eye upon a fair and lovely flower, whose
blossoming beauty seems to give all the lustre and all the incense of
the scene around? And how have you thought it would adorn and grace the
precincts of your home, diffusing fragrance on every side. Alas, the
experiment is not always successful. Much of the charm and many of the
fascinations which delight you are the result of association of time and of
place. The lovely voice, whose tones have spoken to your heart, may, like
some instrument, be delightful in the harmony of the orchestra, but, after
all, prove a very middling performer in a duet.
I say not this to deter men from matrimony, but to warn them from a
miscalculation which may mar their happiness. Flirtation is a very fine
thing, but it’s only a state of transition after all. The tadpole existence
of the lover would be great fun, if one was never to become a frog under
the hands of the parson. I say all this dispassionately and advisedly. Like
the poet of my country, for many years of my life,--
“My only books were woman’s looks,”
and certainly I subscribe to a circulating library.
All this long digression may perhaps bring the reader to where it brought
me,--the very palpable conviction, that, though not in love with my cousin
Baby, I could not tell when I might eventually become so.