few children of her own age, and mixing intimately with none, her mind
was debarred from the usual objects which distract the vivacity, the
restless and wondrous observation, of childhood. She came in and out of
Sir Miles's library of a morning, or his drawing-room of an evening, till
her hour for rest, with unquestioned and sometimes unnoticed freedom; she
listened to the conversation around her, and formed her own conclusions
unchecked. It has a great influence upon a child, whether for good or
for evil, to mix early and habitually with those grown up,--for good to
the mere intellect always; the evil depends upon the character and
discretion of those the child sees and hears. "Reverence the greatest is
due to the children," exclaims the wisest of the Romans [Cicero. The
sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.],--that is to say, that we must revere
the candour and inexperience and innocence of their minds.
Now, Sir Miles's habitual associates were persons of the world,--well-
bred and decorous, indeed, before children, as the best of the old school
were, avoiding all anecdotes; all allusions, for which the prudent matron
would send her girls out of the room; but with that reserve speaking of
the world as the world goes: if talking of young A----, calculating
carelessly what he would have when old A----, his father, died; naturally
giving to wealth and station and ability their fixed importance in life;
not over-apt to single out for eulogium some quiet goodness; rather
inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to virtue; rarely speaking
but with respect of the worldly seemings which rule mankind. All these
had their inevitable effect upon that keen, quick, yet moody and
reflective intellect.
Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton. He gave up London,--why, he
acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he had outlived his age.
Most of his old set were gone; new hours, new habits, had stolen in. He
had ceased to be of importance as a marrying man, as a personage of
fashion; his health was impaired; he shrank from the fatigues of a
contested election; he resigned his seat in parliament for his native
county; and once settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and
flattered him,--there all his former claims to distinction were still
fresh. He amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers,
his statues and pictures, and felt that, without fatigue or trouble, he
was a greater man at Laughton in his old age than he had been in London
during his youth.
Lucretia was then thirteen. Three years afterwards, Olivier Dalibard was
established in the house; and from that time a great change became
noticeable in her. The irregular vehemence of her temper gradually
subsided, and was replaced by an habitual self-command which rendered the
rare deviations from it more effective and imposing. Her pride changed
its character wholly and permanently; no word, no look of scorn to the
low-born and the poor escaped her. The masculine studies which her
erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive mind, elevated her
very errors above the petty distinctions of class. She imbibed earnestly
what Dalibard assumed or felt,--the more dangerous pride of the fallen
angel,--and set up the intellect as a deity. All belonging to the mere
study of mind charmed and enchained her; but active and practical in her
very reveries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to plot, to weave, web,
and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at her own ingenuity and
daring. The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom teaches us to command
temper; it was worldly wisdom that made the once impetuous girl calm,
tranquil, and serene. Sir Miles was pleased by a change that removed
from Lucretia's outward character its chief blot,--perhaps, as his frame
declined, he sighed sometimes to think that with so much majesty there
appeared but little tenderness; he took, however, the merits with the
faults, and was content upon the whole.
If the Provencal had taken more than common pains with his young pupil,
the pains were not solely disinterested. In plunging her mind amidst
that profound corruption which belongs only to intellect cultivated in
scorn of good and in suppression of heart, he had his own views to serve.
He watched the age when the passions ripen, and he grasped at the fruit
which his training sought to mature. In the human heart ill regulated
there is a dark desire for the forbidden. This Lucretia felt; this her
studies cherished, and her thoughts brooded over. She detected, with the
quickness of her sex, the preceptor's stealthy aim. She started not at
the danger. Proud of her mastery over herself, she rather triumphed in
luring on into weakness this master-intelligence which had lighted up her
own,--to see her slave in her teacher; to despise or to pity him whom she
had first contemplated with awe. And with this mere pride of the
understanding might be connected that of the sex; she had attained the
years when woman is curious to know and to sound her power. To inflame
Dalibard's cupidity or ambition was easy; but to touch his heart,--that
marble heart!--this had its dignity and its charm. Strange to say, she
succeeded; the passion, as well as interests, of this dangerous and able
man became enlisted in his hopes. And now the game played between them
had a terror in its suspense; for if Dalibard penetrated not into the
recesses of his pupil's complicated nature, she was far from having yet
sounded the hell that lay, black and devouring, beneath his own. Not
through her affections,--those he scarce hoped for,--but through her
inexperience, her vanity, her passions, he contemplated the path to his
victory over her soul and her fate. And so resolute, so wily, so
unscrupulous was this person, who had played upon all the subtlest keys
and chords in the scale of turbulent life, that, despite the lofty smile
with which Lucretia at length heard and repelled his suit, he had no fear
of the ultimate issue, when all his projects were traversed, all his
mines and stratagems abruptly brought to a close, by an event which he
had wholly unforeseen,--the appearance of a rival; the ardent and almost
purifying love, which, escaping a while from all the demons he had
evoked, she had, with a girl's frank heart and impulse, conceived for
Mainwaring. And here, indeed, was the great crisis in Lucretia's life
and destiny. So interwoven with her nature had become the hard
calculations of the understanding; so habitual to her now was the zest
for scheming, which revels in the play and vivacity of intrigue and plot,
and which Shakspeare has perhaps intended chiefly to depict in the
villany of Iago,--that it is probable Lucretia could never become a
character thoroughly amiable and honest. But with a happy and well-placed
love, her ambition might have had legitimate vents; her restless
energies, the woman's natural field in sympathies for another. The
heart, once opened, softens by use; gradually and unconsciously the
interchange of affection, the companionship with an upright and ingenuous
mind (for virtue is not only beautiful, it is contagious), might have had
their redeeming and hallowing influence. Happier, indeed, had it been,
if her choice had fallen upon a more commanding and lofty nature! But
perhaps it was the very meekness and susceptibility of Mainwaring's
temper, relieved from feebleness by his talents, which, once in play,
were undeniably great, that pleased her by contrast with her own hardness
of spirit and despotism of will.
That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the lovers is
less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; for the very
imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned herself to the society of
Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour.
Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well
informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a
superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country
neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had
crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by
Vernon's remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never
seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring's absence. The listlessness
and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where
unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong
nature. In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned her affection,
Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute confidence; and
her customary dissimulation closed like an unruffled sea over all the
undercurrents that met and played below. Still, Sir Miles's attention
once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was at
the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had
suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been
indistinctly conceived,--namely, the union of the divided branches of his
house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the heiress
of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at various
intervals; he had been present at his christening, though he had refused
to be his godfather, for fear of raising undue expectations; he had
visited and munificently "tipped" him at Eton; he had accompanied him to
his quarters when he joined the prince's regiment; he had come often in
contact with him when, at the death of his father, Vernon retired from
the army and blazed in the front ranks of metropolitan fashion; he had
given him counsel and had even lent him money. Vernon's spendthrift
habits and dissipated if not dissolute life had certainly confirmed the
old baronet in his intentions to trust the lands of Laughton to the
lesser risk which property incurs in the hands of a female, if tightly
settled on her, than in the more colossal and multiform luxuries of an
expensive man; and to do him justice, during the flush of Vernon's
riotous career he had shrunk from the thought of confiding the happiness
of his niece to so unstable a partner. But of late, whether from his
impaired health or his broken fortunes, Vernon's follies had been less
glaring. He had now arrived at the mature age of thirty-three, when wild
oats may reasonably be sown. The composed and steadfast character of
Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him; and Sir Miles was one of
those who hold the doctrine that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
Add to this, there was nothing in Vernon's reputation--once allowing that
his thirst for pleasure was slaked--which could excite serious
apprehensions. Through all his difficulties, he had maintained his
honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and kindness of heart
made him popular and beloved. He was nobody's enemy but his own. His
very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left unassisted by Sir
Miles's testamentary dispositions--were arguments in his favour. And,
after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation, Vernon was in truth the
direct male heir, and according to the usual prejudices of family,
therefore, the fitter representative of the ancient line. With these
feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to his house, and we have seen
already that his favourable impressions had been confirmed by the visit.
And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood
and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton. It
had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by
the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to male
the estate had gone, furnishing warriors to the army, and senators to the
State. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles's house the bright
prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the mother,
and Sir Miles's obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant the
supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the usual
portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go in their
ordinary destination. This belief, adopted passively, and as a thing of
course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon's career. What
mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate property of
the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year, went a little
too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover all. From this
dream he had only been awakened, two or three years before, by an
attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of an earl; and the
Grange being too far encumbered to allow him the proper settlements which
the lady's family required, it became a matter of importance to ascertain
Sir Miles's intentions. Too delicate himself to sound them, he had
prevailed upon the earl, who was well acquainted with Sir Miles, to take
Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsetshire, and, without
betraying the grounds of his interest in the question, learn carelessly,
as it were, the views of the wealthy man. The result had been a severe
and terrible disappointment. Sir Miles had then fully determined upon
constituting Lucretia his heiress; and with the usual openness of his
character, he had plainly said so upon the very first covert and polished
allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made. This discovery, in
breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary Stanville, had crushed
more than mercenary expectations. It affected, through his heart,
Vernon's health and spirits; it rankled deep, and was resented at first
as a fatal injury. But Vernon's native nobility of disposition gradually
softened an indignation which his reason convinced him was groundless and
unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the expectations which Vernon's
family and himself had unthinkingly formed. The baronet was master of
his own fortune, and after all, was it not more natural that he should
prefer the child he had brought up and reared, to a distant relation,
little more than an acquaintance, simply because man succeeded to man in
the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns? And, Mary fairly lost to him, his
constitutional indifference to money, a certain French levity of temper,
a persuasion that his life was nearing its wasted close, had left him
without regret, as without resentment, at his kinsman's decision. His
boyish affection for the hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and
though he abhorred the country, he had, without a single interested
thought or calculation, cordially accepted the baronet's hospitable
overtures, and deserted, for the wilds of Hampshire, "the sweet shady
side of Pall-Mall."
We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already
assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate
neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national
tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or
three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for in
that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in the
houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and
animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families
resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was
closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual
residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in talk,
between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires were less
educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming. In a word,
there was what does not exist now, except in some districts remote from
London,--a rural society for those who sought it.
The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast
a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object
to attract a stranger's notice. It was a long, and not particularly
well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern notions,--
for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one. At the
distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat narrow,
were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened into a
space nearly double the width of the previous part of the room, with a
domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess almost
formed a chamber in itself. But both these divisions of the apartment
corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the same small
panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost white by
candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the same
enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces,
ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief. They
had, too, the same old-fashioned and venerable furniture, draperies of
thick figured velvet, with immense chairs and sofas to correspond,--
interspersed, it is true, with more modern and commodious inventions of
the upholsterer's art, in grave stuffed leather or lively chintz. Two
windows, nearly as deep as that in the farther division, broke the
outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular and nooky
appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from its extent,
and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached flirtation.
With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the walls were
covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here and there
marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of the room, and
harmonized well with that half-Italian mode of decoration which belongs
to the period of James the First. The shape of the chamber, in its
divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and sociable
intermixture of amusements which reconciles the tastes of young and old.
In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir Miles, seated in his easy-
chair, and sheltered from the opening door by a seven-fold tapestry
screen, was still at chess with his librarian. At a little distance a
middle-aged gentleman and three turbaned matrons were cutting in at
whist, shilling points, with a half-crown bet optional, and not much
ventured on. On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows, were the
day's newspapers, Gilray's caricatures, the last new publications, and
such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat. And round these tables
grouped those who had not yet found elsewhere their evening's amusement,-
-two or three shy young clergymen, the parish doctor, four or five
squires who felt great interest in politics, but never dreamed of the
extravagance of taking in a daily paper, and who now, monopolizing all
the journals they could find, began fairly with the heroic resolution to
skip nothing, from the first advertisement to the printer's name. Amidst
one of these groups Mainwaring had bashfully ensconced himself. In the
farther division, the chandelier, suspended from the domed ceiling, threw
its cheerful light over a large circular table below, on which gleamed
the ponderous tea-urn of massive silver, with its usual accompaniments.
Nor were wanting there, in addition to those airy nothings, sliced
infinitesimally, from a French roll, the more substantial and now exiled
cheer of cakes,--plum and seed, Yorkshire and saffron,--attesting the
light hand of the housekeeper and the strong digestion of the guests.
Round this table were seated, in full gossip, the maids and the matrons,
with a slight sprinkling of the bolder young gentlemen who had been
taught to please the fair. The warmth of the evening allowed the upper
casement to be opened and the curtains drawn aside, and the July
moonlight feebly struggled against the blaze of the lights within. At
this table it was Miss Clavering's obvious duty to preside; but that was
a complaisance to which she rarely condescended. Nevertheless, she had
her own way of doing the honour of her uncle's house, which was not
without courtesy and grace; to glide from one to the other, exchange a
few friendly words, see that each set had its well-known amusements, and,
finally, sit quietly down to converse with some who, from gravity or age,
appeared most to neglect or be neglected by the rest, was her ordinary,
and not unpopular mode of welcoming the guests at Laughton,--not
unpopular; for she thus avoided all interference with the flirtations and
conquests of humbler damsels, whom her station and her endowments might
otherwise have crossed or humbled, while she insured the good word of the
old, to whom the young are seldom so attentive. But if a stranger of
more than provincial repute chanced to be present; if some stray member
of parliament, or barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist,
accompanied any of the neighbours,--to him Lucretia gave more earnest and
undivided attention. Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper
than the usual babble, and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him
while he spoke, seemed to fathom the intellect she set in play. But as
yet, this evening, she had not made her appearance,--a sin against
etiquette very unusual in her. Perhaps her recent conversation with
Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts to forgetfulness of the less important
demands on her attention. Her absence had not interfered with the gayety
at the tea-table, which was frank even to noisiness as it centred round
the laughing face of Ardworth, who, though unknown to most or all of the
ladies present, beyond a brief introduction to one or two of the first
comers from Sir Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them
welcome), had already contrived to make himself perfectly at home and
outrageously popular. Niched between two bouncing lasses, he had
commenced acquaintance with them in a strain of familiar drollery and
fun, which had soon broadened its circle, and now embraced the whole
group in the happy contagion of good-humour and young animal spirits.
Gabriel, allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might
have been expected, attached himself to this circle, nor indeed to any;
he might be seen moving quietly about,--now contemplating the pictures on
the wall with a curious eye; now pausing at the whist-table, and noting
the game with the interest of an embryo gamester; now throwing himself on
an ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto,--trying in
vain, for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, through all this general
movement, had any one taken the pains to observe him closely, it might
have been sufficiently apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye, from
the corner of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three persons
whom he approached the least,--his father, Mainwaring, and Mr. Vernon.
This last had ensconced himself apart from all, in the angle formed by
one of the pilasters of the arch that divided the room, so that he was in
command, as it were, of both sections. Reclined, with the careless grace
that seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of his person, in
one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand, which, to say
truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which he seemed
absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that circled round
young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other side, muttered
exclamations from the grave whist-players: "If you had but trumped that
diamond, ma'am!" "Bless me, sir, it was the best heart!" And somehow or
other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected him alike with
what then was called "the spleen,"--for the one reminded him of his own
young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now
was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the
fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his passions had
passed, when thousands had slipped away with a bland smile, provoking not
one of those natural ebullitions of emotion which there accompanied the
loss of a shilling point. And besides this, Vernon had been so
accustomed to the success of the drawing-room, to be a somebody and a
something in the company of wits and princes, that he felt, for the first
time, a sense of insignificance in this provincial circle. Those fat
squires had heard nothing of Mr. Vernon, except that he would not have
Laughton,--he had no acres, no vote in their county; he was a nobody to
them. Those ruddy maidens, though now and then, indeed, one or two might
steal an admiring glance at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him
not with the female interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They
felt instinctively that he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,
--a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.