REMARK ON THE TENURE OF LIFE.--THE COFFINS OF GREAT MEN SELDOM
NEGLECTED.--CONSTANCE TAKES REFUGE WITH LADY ERPINGHAM.--THE HEROINE’S
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND CHARACTER.--THE MANOEUVRING TEMPERAMENT.
What a strange life this is! what puppets we are! How terrible an enigma
is Fate! I never set my foot without my door, but what the fearful
darkness that broods over the next moment rushes upon me. How awful an
event may hang over our hearts! The sword is always above us, seen or
invisible!
And with this life--this scene of darkness and dreadsome men would have
us so contented as to desire, to ask for no other!
Constance was now without a near relation in the world. But her father
predicted rightly: vanity supplied the place of affection. Vernon, who
for eighteen months preceding his death had struggled with the sharpest
afflictions of want--Vernon, deserted in life by all, was interred with
the insulting ceremonials of pomp and state. Six nobles bore his pall:
long trains of carriages attended his funeral: the journals were filled
with outlines of his biography and lamentations at his decease. They
buried him in Westminster Abbey, and they made subscriptions for a
monument in the very best sort of marble. Lady Erpingham, a distant
connection of the deceased, invited Constance to live with her; and
Constance of course consented, for she had no alternative.
On the day that she arrived at Lady Erpingham’s house, in Hill Street,
there were several persons present in the drawing-room.
“I fear, poor girl,” said Lady Erpingham,--for they were talking of
Constance’s expected arrival,--“I fear that she will be quite abashed by
seeing so many of us, and under such unhappy circumstances.”
“How old is she?” asked a beauty.
“About thirteen, I believe.”
“Handsome?”
“I have not seen her since she was seven years old. She promised then to
be very beautiful: but she was a remarkably shy, silent child.”
“Miss Vernon,” said the groom of the chambers, throwing open the door.
With the slow step and self-possessed air of womanhood, but with a far
haughtier and far colder mien than women commonly assume, Constance
Vernon walked through the long apartment, and greeted her future
guardian. Though every eye was on her, she did not blush; though the
Queens of the London World were round her, her gait and air were more
royal than all. Every one present experienced a revulsion of feeling.
They were prepared for pity; this was no case in which pity could be
given. Even the words of protection died on Lady Erpingham’s lip, and
she it was who felt bashful and disconcerted.
I intend to pass rapidly over the years that elapsed till Constance
became a woman. Let us glance at her education. Vernon had not only had
her instructed in the French and Italian; but, a deep and impassioned
scholar himself, he had taught her the elements of the two great
languages of the ancient world. The treasures of those languages she
afterwards conquered of her own accord.
Lady Erpingham had one daughter, who married when Constance had reached
the age of sixteen. The advantages Lady Eleanor Erpingham possessed in
her masters and her governess Constance shared. Miss Vernon drew well,
and sang divinely; but she made no very great proficiency in the science
of music. To say truth, her mind was somewhat too stern, and somewhat
too intent on other subjects, to surrender to that most jealous of
accomplishments the exclusive devotion it requires.
But of all her attractions, and of all the evidences of her cultivated
mind, none equalled the extraordinary grace of her conversation. Wholly
disregarding the conventional leading-strings in which the minds of
young ladies are accustomed to be held--leading-strings, disguised
by the name of “proper diffidence” and “becoming modesty,”--she never
scrupled to share, nay, to lead, discussions even of a grave and solid
nature. Still less did she scruple to adorn the common trifles that make
the sum of conversation with the fascinations of a wit, which, playful,
yet deep, rivalled even the paternal source from which it was inherited.
It seems sometimes odd enough to me, that while young ladies are so
sedulously taught the accomplishments that a husband disregards, they
are never taught the great one he would prize. They are taught to be
_exhibitors_; he wants a _companion_. He wants neither a singing animal,
nor a drawing animal, nor a dancing animal: he wants a talking animal.
But to talk they are never taught; all they know of conversation is
slander, and that “comes by nature.”
But Constance _did_ talk _beautifully_; not like a pedant, or a blue,
or a Frenchwoman. A child would have been as much charmed with her as a
scholar; but _both_ would have been charmed. Her father’s eloquence had
descended to her; but in him eloquence commanded, in her it won. There
was another trait she possessed in common with her father: Vernon (as
most disappointed men are wont) had done the world injustice by his
accusations. It was not his poverty and his distresses alone which had
induced his party to look coolly on his declining day. They were
not without some apparent excuse for desertion--they doubted his
_sincerity_. It is true that it was without actual cause. No modern
politician had ever been more consistent. He had refused bribes, though
poor; and place, though ambitious. But he was essentially--here is the
secret--essentially an _intriguant_. Bred in the old school of policy, he
thought that manoeuvring was wisdom, and duplicity the art of governing.
Like Lysander,(1) he loved plotting, yet neglected self-interest. There
was not a man less open, or more honest. This character, so rare in
all countries, is especially so in England. Your blunt squires, your
politicians at Bellamy’s, do not comprehend it. They saw in Vernon the
arts which deceive enemies, and they dreaded lest, though his friends,
they themselves should be deceived. This disposition, so fatal to
Vernon, his daughter inherited. With a dark, bold, and passionate
genius, which in a man would have led to the highest enterprises, she
linked the feminine love of secrecy and scheming. To borrow again from
Plutarch and Lysander, “When the skin of the lion fell short, she was
quite of opinion that it should be eked out with the fox’s.”
(1) Plutarch’s Life of Lysander.