A MISADVENTURE.
“Where pride and passion frame the nuptial chain,
Time must the gilding from the fetter wear;
Love’s golden links alone unchanged remain,
Hallowed by faith, to be renewed in heaven again.”
“She has not a particle of pride!” Such may be the judgment of the world,
which looks not below the surface, but the recording angel may give a
very different account. Let us examine a little more closely into the
character of the countess, and see if she may fairly be ranked amongst
the _poor in spirit_, of whom is the _kingdom of heaven_.
Annabella had been an orphan almost from her birth, and had been
brought up by a tender grandmother, since deceased, who had made an
idol of her little darling, the heiress to all her wealth. As soon as
the child had power to frame a sentence, that sentence was law to the
household. Annabella, the fairy queen, acquired a habit of ruling, which
gave a permanent cast to her mind. Gifted with joyous spirits, a sweet
temper, and a strong desire to please, her pride was seldom offensive.
Annabella’s subjects were willing, for the sovereign was beloved.
As the child grew into the woman, her views began to expand; she desired
a wider sway. Annabella was not contented to rule merely in a household,
to influence only a small circle of friends. Like those who cut their
names on a pyramid, she was ambitious of leaving her mark on the world.
The only instrument by which it seemed possible to accomplish this object
of ambition was the pen. If “the press” is the fourth power in the state,
Annabella resolved to have a share in that power. She had a lively fancy,
a ready wit, and, to her transporting delight, her first essay was
successful. The young lady’s contributions to a monthly periodical were
indeed sent under a _nom de guerre_, but Annabella’s darling hope was to
make that adopted title of “Egeria” famous throughout the land.
It was at this point of her history that the Earl of Dashleigh, smarting
under the sting of mortified pride, and casually thrown much into the
charming society of Annabella, made her the offer of his hand. The eye of
the young heiress had not, like that of her cousin Ida, been fixed upon
objects so high that the glare of earthly grandeur died away before it
like the sparkles of fireworks below. Annabella was completely dazzled
by the idea of such a brilliant alliance. Her imagination immediately
invested the young earl with every great and glorious quality. Love threw
a halo around him, and the maiden fancied that she saw realized in her
noble suitor every poetical dream of her girlhood. Nor was love the only
chord that vibrated to rapture in the heart of Dashleigh’s young bride.
Did not this elevation to rank and dignity offer at once a wider sphere
to her eager ambition? From the rapidity of her conquest, Annabella
deemed that her power over the earl would be unbounded, little imagining
how much that conquest was owing to the effect of his pride and pique.
Marriage soon undeceived Annabella. She found herself united to a man
at least as proud as herself, though his pride took a different form.
As long as the bride was contented simply to please, there was domestic
harmony; Annabella was happy in her husband, and he thought that no
companion could be so agreeable as his witty and lively wife. But the
moment that the countess attempted to rule, the elements of discord
began to work. The earl, who never lost consciousness of high birth and
distinguished rank, was aware that he had married one who, though of good
family, was yet considerably below himself in social position. This,
however, would have mattered little, had Annabella readily accommodated
herself to the new circumstances in which she was placed. The nobleman,
in the famous old tale, had deigned to wed even the humble Griselda; he
had had no reason to regret his choice, but then there was a difference,
wide as north from south, between Griselda and Annabella! As soon as the
young countess became aware that her husband felt that he had stooped a
little when he raised her to share his rank, all her pride at once rose
in arms. She was more determined than ever to assert the independence
which she regarded as the right of her sex.
The bond which pride had first helped to form was ill fitted to bear
the daily strain which was now put upon it. Annabella, all the romance
of courtship over, saw her idol without its gilding, the halo of fancy
faded away, and he over whom its lustre had been thrown, appeared but
as an ordinary mortal. In a thousand little ways, scarcely apparent to
any but the parties immediately concerned, the habits and wishes of the
ill-assorted couple jarred painfully on each other. Pride revelled in his
work of mischief as he glided from the one to the other.
“Your wife,” he would whisper to the earl, “with all her talents, and
all her charms, is ill fitted for the station which she holds. She has
not the dignity, the stateliness of mien which would beseem the lady of
Dashleigh Hall. She has vulgar tastes, vulgar friends, vulgar amusements.
Her very dress is not such as becomes the wife of a peer of the realm.
She is giddy, fantastic, and vain, and altogether devoid of a due sense
of your condescension in placing her at the head of your splendid
establishment. Your choice has been a mistake.”
Then the spirit of mischief would breathe out his treason to Annabella:
“Your husband, if superior to you in descent, you have now discovered to
be so in no single other point. He has neither your wit nor your spirit.
He is rather a weak, though an obstinate man, and thinks much more than
common-sense warrants of what has been called ‘the accident of birth.’
Have you not much more reason to exult in belonging to the aristocracy
of talent, than that of mere rank like him? Do you glory in the name of
Countess as you do in that of ‘Egeria,’ by which alone you are known to
reading thousands?”
Having thus given my readers a glimpse of “the skeleton in the house”
where all appears outwardly so full of enjoyment, I will take up my
thread where I laid it down, and return to the drawing-room of Dashleigh
Hall.
Dr. Bardon, as we have seen, had been restored to good humour by the
tact and attentions of the countess, and Cecilia exhausted all her
superlatives in admiration of everything that she saw. The conversation
flowed pleasantly between Annabella and the doctor, for Bardon was
a well read and intelligent man, and literature was the countess’s
passion. Cecilia, however, found the discourse assuming too much of the
character of a _tête-a-tête_, and not being content to remain exclusively
a listener, watched eagerly for an opportunity to drop in her little
contribution to “the feast of reason and the flow of soul.”
“Yes, the world is much like a library,” said Annabella, in reply to an
observation from the doctor, “but most persons enter it rather to give a
superficial glance at the binding of the books, than to make themselves
masters of the contents.”
“They are satisfied if the gilding lie thick enough on the backs of the
tomes,” said the doctor.
“But what a deep, what a curious study would every character be, if
we could read it through from beginning to end (skipping the preface,
of course, for school-boys and school-girls are objects of natural
aversion). What romances would some lives disclose—while others would
offer the most forcible sermons that ever were written. What exquisite
beauty, what touching poetry we might find in the daily course of some
whom now we regard with little attention!”
“Your lovely Cousin Ida, for instance,” chimed in Cecilia, trying to
catch the tone of the conversation, “I always think of her as a living
poem!”
“If Ida be a poem,” said Annabella rather coldly, “she is certainly one
in blank verse,—a new version of ‘Young’s Night Thoughts,’ exceedingly
admirable and sublime!”
The countess had always professed herself attached to her cousin, with
whom she had from childhood interchanged a thousand little tokens
of affection. She would have done much to promote the happiness
of Ida, or to avert from her any real sorrow, and yet—strange
contradiction—Annabella never liked to hear warm praise of her friend.
It almost appeared as though the countess considered the admiration
accorded to her beautiful cousin as so much subtracted from herself. When
just commendation of another excites an uneasy sensation in our minds,
we need no supernatural power to recognise in it the fretting jar of the
jealous chain which pride has fixed on our souls.
Annabella was also at this time a little displeased with her cousin.
Ida Aumerle, from motives of delicacy which the reader will understand
though the countess could not, had declined repeated invitations to pay
a long visit to Dashleigh Hall. Annabella, who was eager to show her new
possessions to the friend of her youth, was hurt at what appeared to her
to be coldness, if not unkindness. To be _easily offended_ is one of the
most indubitable marks of pride, and from this Annabella was certainly
not free.
While the preceding conversation was proceeding in the drawing-room,
a horseman, attended by a groom, rode up to the entrance of Dashleigh
Hall. He was a man who had scarcely yet reached the meridian of life.
His figure was graceful, though affording small promise of physical
strength; his features well-formed, and of almost feminine delicacy,
though the prevailing expression which sat upon them was one of conscious
superiority,—now softening into condescension, now, at any real or
imagined affront, rising into that of offended dignity.
Reginald, Earl of Dashleigh—for this was he—seemed, figuratively
speaking, never to be out of the cumbersome robes in which, on state
occasions, he appeared as a peer of the realm. Whether he mingled in
society, or conversed alone with his wife, proffered hospitality,
or received it, he appeared to feel the weight of a coronet always
encircling his brow. The question which he asked himself before entering
upon any line of action, was less whether it were right or wrong, prudent
or foolish, as whether it were worthy of Reginald, twelfth Earl of
Dashleigh. Pride had kept the young nobleman from many of the vices and
follies of his age; pride had prevented him from doing anything that
might injure his character in the eyes of the world, and had led him to
do many things which gained for him popular applause; but pride, at the
best, is but a miserable substitute for a higher principle of action; its
fruits may appear fair to the eye, but are dust and corruption within.
The earl was not a remarkably skilful rider. Nature had not gifted him
with either muscular strength or iron nerve. At the moment that he
reached his own door his horsemanship was put to unpleasant proof. An
incident, ludicrous as that which Cowper has celebrated in his humorous
poem, proved that the same mishaps may overtake a peer of the realm,
and “a citizen of credit and renown.” The sudden, prolonged bray of a
donkey—most unwonted sound in that lordly place—startled the steed which
was ridden by the earl. Its sudden plunge unseated its rider, and the
illustrious aristocrat measured his length upon the road! The accident
was of no serious nature; the nobleman was in an instant again on his
feet, shaking the dust from his garments; nothing had suffered from the
fall but Reginald’s dignity, and, consequently, his temper. The accident
appeared absurd from its cause, and Dashleigh was more provoked at the
occurrence than he might have been had some grave evil befallen him.
“How came that brute there?” he exclaimed to the servants, who
officiously crowded around him with proffers of assistance, which were
impatiently rejected by their master. “How came that brute there?” he
angrily repeated, looking indignantly at the animal which had drawn Dr.
Bardon’s humble conveyance, and which was now quietly feeding in the
luxuriant pasture of the park.
“Please you, my lord, visitors to see her ladyship came in that chaise,”
replied a footman, scarcely able to suppress a smile.
“Visitors!” said the earl sharply; “the milliner or the dressmaker,
I suppose. Tell Mills at the lodge never again to suffer such a
thing to enter the gate;” and without troubling himself with further
investigation, the nobleman entered into his house. As he did so, he
turned to his butler—“Let covers be laid for three,” he said, in a tone
of command; “and give the housekeeper notice that the Duke of Montleroy
is likely to be here at luncheon.”
“Covers are laid already for four, by her ladyship’s order,” said the
butler.
“Indeed! what guests are expected?” asked the earl.
“The lady and gentleman, my lord, who came in the chaise, and who are now
in the drawing-room,” was the reply.
The earl stalked into the library in a state, not only of high irritation
and annoyance, but also of considerable perplexity. Annabella had never
before appeared to him so utterly regardless of his wishes and feelings,
so completely destitute of a sense of what was due to her position. To
invite low people—for such, he thought, that her guests assuredly must
be—to share her meal, to be introduced to her husband, it was an offence
scarcely to be forgiven! And what was to be done on the present occasion?
Dashleigh had, on that morning, casually met and invited a duke! It would
be impossible to insult a man of his quality by making him sit at the
same table with such _canaille_! The idea of such a breach of etiquette
was abhorrent to the feelings of the aristocrat, and yet, how was the
reality to be avoided? Annabella had invited her own friends, and the
earl was too much of a gentleman to be willing to commit any decided
breach of courtesy towards his wife’s guests, even though they might
have come in a donkey conveyance.
We talk of the _petty_ miseries of pride; to Dashleigh the misery was not
petty. It was with feelings of serious annoyance that he rang his library
bell, and bade the servant who answered it request his lady to speak with
the earl directly.
The message was carried to Annabella while she was pursuing with the
doctor a playful argument on some literary question.
“Is the earl aware that I am engaged with guests?” asked the incautious
countess.
“His lordship knows who is here,” replied the servant.
Annabella instantly perceived her mistake, for she saw the blood mount
to the cheek of the sensitive old Doctor. His pride was evidently on the
_qui vive_; and it served to awaken hers. The countess felt somewhat
disposed to return to her liege lord such an answer as Horatio received
from his widow. She had no inclination to play Griselda in the presence
of her early friends. She contented herself, however, with showing that
she was in no haste to obey the summons of her titled husband, and
finished her discussion before (after apologizing to the Bardons for a
brief absence) she proceeded to the library, where her indignant lord was
impatiently awaiting her.
Dr. Bardon walked up to the window with his hands behind him, and waited
for a space in silence. Cecilia saw by the motion of his feet that a
storm was brewing in the air. Presently he turned suddenly round with the
question: “Do you suppose that this earl means to make his appearance?”
“Ye-e-es,” replied Cecilia timidly.
“No!” exclaimed the doctor fiercely. The two words, and the manner of
pronouncing them, were characteristic of father and daughter, and might
almost have been adopted as mottoes by the twain. “Yes” was very often
on Cecilia’s lips, but she appeared to feel the affirmation too short to
answer the full purpose of politeness, and always managed to drawl out
the monosyllable to the length of three. Bardon’s “No,” on the contrary,
came out short and sharp, like a bark. He seemed to concentrate into it
his haughty spirit of perpetual dissent from the opinions of the rest of
the world.
“I should not wonder if the poor girl has got into a scrape for inviting
us,” was the doctor’s next observation.
“Oh! dear papa!” exclaimed Cecilia, in an expostulatory tone, though the
same thought had just been passing through her own mind.
“I’m not going to wait here like a lackey in a lobby!” said the doctor,
moving towards the door. Cecilia was in a tremour of apprehension.
“Papa, papa! we can’t slip away without bidding the countess
good-bye,—without seeing the earl,—it would look so odd, so rude.”
“What’s odd and rude is their leaving us here, without paying us common
civility! I’ll stand it no longer!” cried the irascible man; and opening
the door, he proceeded along the corridor which led to the hall, followed
by his expostulating daughter.
Unfortunately, their course lay past the library; and more unfortunately
still, the library door happened to be very slightly ajar.
“Can’t you manage some way of getting rid of these miserable Bardons?”
were the words, pronounced in an irritated tone, which struck like a
pistol-shot on the ears of the countess’s guests.
It was as though that pistol-shot had exploded a mine of gunpowder! To
the earl’s amazement the library door was suddenly flung wide open, and,
quivering with irrepressible rage, the fiery old doctor stood before him.
“Manage!” exclaimed Bardon, in a voice of thunder; “there is little
_management_ required in dismissing those who, had they known the
despicable pride which inhabits here, would never have stooped,—_never
have stooped_,” he repeated, “to degrade themselves by crossing your
threshold! You have dared to apply to us the epithet of _miserable_,”
continued Bardon, bringing out the word as with a convulsive effort, and
fixing his fierce eye upon the disconcerted peer; “I retort back the
opprobrious term! Who is miserable but the miserable slave of pride,—the
worshipper of rank, the gilded puppet of society, who claims from his
ancestors’ name the importance which attaches to nothing of his own? This
is the first time, sir, that I have visited you, and it shall be the
last,—the last time that you shall have the opportunity of insulting,
under your own roof, a gentleman whose pretensions to respect are,
at least, as well grounded as yours, and who would not exchange his
independence of spirit for all the pomp and pageantry which can never
give dignity to their possessor, nor avert from him merited contempt!”
With the last words on his lips, Bardon turned and departed; his loud,
tramping step echoing along the hall, before the earl had time to recover
his breath.
Annabella, agitated and excited, appeared about to hurry after her
guests, but with an imperious gesture Dashleigh prevented his wife from
doing so. Bitterly mortified at what had occurred, irritated, wounded,
and offended, the countess burst into a flood of passionate tears.
Pride reigned triumphant that day in the Hall. He had worked out his evil
will. He had steeped hearts in bitter gall; he had loosened the bond
between husband and wife; he had brought envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness, to rush in at the breach which he had insidiously made.
The countess spent the rest of the day in her own apartment. She would
not appear at her husband’s table, nor entertain her husband’s guest. She
had not learned to bear or to forbear; least of all was she prepared
to submit her will to that of her imperious lord. Even when the breach
between them appeared to be healed, it left its visible scar behind; the
wound was ready to break out afresh, for the soft balm of meekness and
love had not been poured upon it, and what else can effectually cure the
hurt caused by the envenomed shaft of pride?