SUCH THINGS WERE.
When the count appeared the succeeding day in Harley Street, Miss
Beaufort introduced him to Miss Dorothy Somerset as the gentleman who
had so gallantly preserved the lives of the children at the hazard of
his own.
Notwithstanding the lofty tossings of Miss Dundas's head, the good
old maid paid him several encomiums on his intrepidity; and telling
him that the sufferers were the wife and family of a poor tradesman,
who was then absent in the country, she added, "But we saw them
comfortably lodged before we left them; and all the time we stayed, I
could not help congratulating myself on the easy compliance of Mary
with my whims. I dislike sleeping at an inn; and to prevent it then,
I had prevailed on Miss Beaufort to pursue our road to town even
through the night. It was lucky it happened so, for I am certain Mary
will not allow these poor creatures a long lament over the wreck of
their little property."
"How charmingly charitable, my lovely friend!" cried Euphemia; "let
us make a collection for this unfortunate woman and her babes. Pray,
as a small tribute, take that from me!" She put five guineas into the
hand of the glowing Mary.
The ineffable grace with which the confused Miss Beaufort laid the
money on her aunt's knee did not escape the observance of Thaddeus;
neither did the unintended approbation of his eye pass unnoticed by
its amiable object.
When Lady Tinemouth was informed that evening by the count of the
addition to the Harley Street party, she was delighted at the news,
saying she had been well acquainted with Miss Dorothy and her niece
during the lifetime of Lady Somerset, and would take an early day to
call upon them. During this part of her ladyship's discourse, an
additional word or two had unfolded to her auditor the family
connection that had subsisted between the lady she regretted and his
estranged friend. And when the countess paused, Thaddeus, struck with
a forgiving pity at this intelligence, was on the point of expressing
his concern that Pembroke Somerset had lost so highly-prized a
mother; but recollecting that Lady Tinemouth was ignorant of their
ever having known each other, he allowed her to proceed without a
remark.
"I never have been in company with Sir Robert's son," continued the
countess; "it was during his absence on the Continent that I was
introduced to Lady Somerset. She was a woman who possessed the rare
talent of conforming herself to all descriptions of people; and
whilst the complacency of her attentions surpassed the most refined
flattery, she commanded the highest veneration for herself. Hence you
may imagine my satisfaction in an acquaintance which it is probable
would never have been mine had I been the happy Countess of
Tinemouth, instead of a deserted wife. Though the Somersets are
related to my lord, they had long treated him as a stranger; and
doubly disgusted at his late behavior, they commenced a friendship
with me, I believe, to demonstrate more fully their detestation of
him. Indeed, my husband is a creature of inconsistency. No man
possessed more power to attract friends than Lord Tinemouth, and no
man had less power to retain them; as fast as he made one he offended
the other, and has at last deprived himself of every individual out
of his own house who would not regard his death as a fortunate
circumstance."
"But, Lady Somerset," cried Thaddeus, impatient to change a subject
every word of which was a dagger to his heart, "I mean Miss Dorothy
Somerset, Miss Beaufort--"
"Yes," returned her ladyship; "I see, kind Mr. Constantine, your
friendly solicitude to disengage me from retrospections so painful!
Well, then, I knew and very much esteemed the two ladies you mention;
but after the death of Lady Somerset, their almost constant residence
in the country has greatly prevented a renewal of this pleasure.
However, as they are now in town, I will thank you to acquaint them
with my intention to call upon them in Harley Street. I remember
always thinking Miss Beaufort a very charming girl."
Thaddeus thought her more. He saw that she was beautiful; he had
witnessed instances of her goodness, and the recollection filled his
mind with a complacency the more tender since it had so long been a
stranger to his bosom; and again he felt the strange emotion which
had passed over his heart at their first meeting. But further
observations were prevented by the entrance of Miss Egerton and Lady
Sara Ross.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Constantine," cried the lively Sophia,
shaking hands with him; "you are the very person I have been plotting
against."
Lady Tinemouth was uneasy at the care with which Lady Sara averted
her face, well knowing that it was to conceal the powerful agitation
of her features, which always took place at the sight of Thaddeus.
"What is your plot, Miss Egerton?" inquired he; "I shall consider
myself honored by your commands, and do not require a conspiracy to
entrap my obedience."
"That's a good soul! Then I have only to apply to you, Lady
Tinemouth. Your ladyship must know," cried she, "that as Lady Sara
and I were a moment ago driving up the Haymarket, I nodded to Mr.
Coleman, who was coming out of the playhouse. He stopped, I pulled
the check-string, and we had a great deal of confab out of the
window. He tells me a new farce is to come out this day week, and he
hoped I would be there! 'No,' said I, 'I cannot, for I am on a visit
with that precise body, the Countess of Tinemouth, who would not, to
save you and all your generation, come into such a mob,' 'Her
ladyship shall have my box,' cried he; 'for I would not for the world
lose the honor of your opinion on the merits of my farce.' 'To be
sure not!' cries I; so I accepted his box, and drove off, devising
with Lady Sara how to get your ladyship as our chaperon and Mr.
Constantine to be our beau. He has just promised; so dear Lady
Tinemouth, don't be inflexible!"
Thaddeus was confounded at the dilemma into which his ready
acquiescence had involved his prudence. The countess shook her head.
"Now I declare, Lady Tinemouth," exclaimed Miss Egerton, "this is an
absolute stingy fit! You are afraid of your purse! You know this
private box precludes all awkward meetings, and you can have no
excuse."
"But it cannot preclude all awkward sights," answered her ladyship.
"You know, Sophia, I never go into public, for fear of being met by
the angry looks of my lord or my son."
"Disagreeable people!" cried Miss Egerton, pettishly; "I wish some
friendly whirlwind would take your lord and son out of the world
together."
"Sophia!" retorted her ladyship, with a grave air.
"Rebuke me, Lady Tinemouth, if you like; I confess I am no Serena,
and these trials of temper don't agree with my constitution. There,"
cried she, throwing a silver medal on the table, and laughing in
spite of herself: "there is our passport; but I will send it back,
and so break poor Coleman's heart."
"Fie! Sophia," answered her ladyship, patting her half-angry cheeks;
"would you owe to your petulance what was denied to your good humor?"
"Then your ladyship will go!" exclaimed she, exultingly. "You have
yielded; these sullens were a part of my stratagem, and I won't let
you secede."
Lady Tinemouth thought this would be a fair opportunity to show one
of the theatres to her young friend, without involving him in expense
or obligation, and accordingly she gave her consent.
"Do you intend to favor us with your company, Lady Sara?" asked the
countess, with a hope that she might refuse.
Lady Sara, who had been standing silently at the window, rather
proudly answered--
"Yes, madam, if you will honor me with your protection."
Lady Tinemouth was the only one present who understood the resentment
which these words conveyed; and, almost believing that she had gone
too far, by implying suspicion, she approached her with a pleading
anxiety of countenance. "Then, Lady Sara, perhaps you will dine with
me? I mean to call on Miss Dorothy Somerset, and would invite her to
be of the party."
Lady Sara curtseyed her acceptance of the invitation, and, smiling,
appeared to think no more of the matter. But she neither forgot it
nor found herself able to forgive Lady Tinemouth for having betrayed
her into a confidence which her own turbulent passions had made but
too easy. She had listened unwillingly to the reasonable declaration
of the countess, that her only way to retreat from an error which
threatened criminality was to avoid the object.
"When a married woman," observed her ladyship, in that confidential
conference, "is so unhappy as to love any man besides her husband,
her only safety rests in the resolution to quit his society, and to
banish his image whenever it obtrudes."
Lady Sara believed herself incapable of this exertion, and hated the
woman who thought it necessary. By letter and conversation Lady
Tinemouth tried to display in every possible light the enormity of
giving encouragement to such an attachment, and ended with the
unanswerable climax--the consideration of her duty to Heaven.
Of this argument Lady Sara knew little. She never reflected on the
true nature of religion, though she sometimes went to church,
repeated the prayers, without being conscious of their spirit; and
when the coughing, sneezing, and blowing of noses which commonly
accompany the text subsided, she generally called up the remembrance
of the last ball, or an anticipation of the next assembly, to amuse
herself until the prosing business was over. From church she drove to
the Park, where, bowling round the ring, or sauntering in the
gardens, she soon forgot that there existed in the universe a Power
of higher consequence to please than her own vanity--and the
admiration of the spectators.
Lady Sara would have shuddered at hearing any one declare himself a
deist, much more an atheist; but for any influence which her nominal
belief held over her desires, she might as well have been either. She
never committed an action deserving the name of premeditated injury,
nor went far out of her way to do her best friend a service,--not
because she wanted inclination, but she ceased to remember both the
petitioner and his petition before he had been five minutes from her
sight. She had read as much as most fine ladies have read: a few
histories, a few volumes of essays, a few novels, and now and then a
little poetry comprised the whole range of her studies; these, with
morning calls and evening assemblies, occupied her whole day. Such
had been the routine of her life until she met the once "young star"
of Poland, Thaddeus Sobieski, in an unknown exile, an almost nameless
guest, at Lady Tinemouth's, which event caused a total revolution in
her mind and conduct.
The strength of Lady Sara's understanding might have credited a
better education; but her passions bearing an equal power with this
mental vigor, and having taken a wrong direction, she neither
acknowledged the will nor the capability to give the empire to her
reason. When love really entered her heart, its first conquest was
over her universal vanity; she surrendered all her admirers, in the
hope of securing the admiration of Thaddeus; its second victory
mastered her discretion; she revealed her unhappy affection to Lady
Tinemouth, and more than hinted it to himself. What had she else to
lose? She believed her honor to be safer than her life. Her
_honor_ was the term. She had no conception, or, at best, a
faint one, that a breach of the marriage vow could be an outrage on
the laws of Heaven. The word sin had been gradually ignored by the
oligarchy of fashion, from the hour in which Charles the Second and
his profligate court trod down piety with hypocrisy; and in this day
the new philosophy has accomplished its total outlawry, denouncing it
as a rebel to decency and the freedom of man.
Thus, the Christian religion being driven from the haunts of the
great, pagan morality is raised from that prostration where, Dagon-
like, it fell at the feet of the Scriptures, and is again erected as
the idol of adoration. Guilt against Heaven fades before the decrees
of man; his law of ethics reprobates crime. But crime is only a
temporal transgression, in opposition to the general good; it draws
no consequent punishment heavier than the judgment of a broken human
law, or the resentment of the offended private parties. Morality
neither promises rewards after death nor denounces future
chastisement for error. The disciples of this independent doctrine
hold forth instances of the perfectibility of human actions, produced
by the unassisted decisions of human intellect on the limits of right
and wrong. They admire virtue, because it is beautiful. They practice
it, because it is heroic. They do not abstain from the gratification
of an intemperate wish under the belief that it is sinful, but in
obedience to their reason, which rejects the commission of a vicious
act because it is uncomely. In the first case, God is their judge; in
the latter, themselves. The comparison need only be proposed, to
humble the pride that made it necessary. How do these systematizers
refine and subtilize? How do they dwell on the principle of virtue,
and turn it in every metaphysical light, until their philosophy
rarifies it to nothing! Some degrade, and others abandon, the only
basis on which an upright character can stand with firmness. The
bulwark which Revelation erected between the passions and the soul is
levelled first; and then that instinctive rule of right which the
modern casuist denominates the citadel of virtue falls of course.
By such gradations the progress of depravity is accomplished; and the
general leaven having worked to Lady Sara's mind on such premises,
(though she might not arrange them so distinctly,) she deduced that
what is called conjugal right is a mere establishment of man, and
might be extended or limited by him to any length he pleased. For
instance, the Turks were not content with one wife, but appropriated
hundreds to one man; and because such indulgence was permitted by
Mohammed, no other nation presumed to call them culpable.
Hence she thought that if she could once reconcile herself to believe
that her own happiness was dearer to her than the notice of half a
thousand people to whom she was indifferent; that only in their
opinion and the world's her flying to the protection of Thaddeus
would be crime;--could she confidently think this, what should deter
her from instantly throwing herself into the arms of the man she
loved? [Footnote: Such were the moral tactics for human conduct at
the commencement of this century. But, thanks to the patience of God,
he has given a better spirit to the present age,--to his philosophy
an admirable development of the wisdom and beneficence of his works,
instead of the former metaphysical vanities and contradictory
bewilderments of opinions concerning the divine nature and the
elements of man, which, as far as a demon-spirit could go, had
plunged the created world, both physically and morally, into the
darkness of chaos again. The Holy Scriptures are now the foundation
studies of our country, and her ark is safe.--1845.]
"Ah!" cried the thus self-deluded Lady Sara, one night, as she
traversed her chamber in a paroxysm of tears; "what are the vows I
have sworn? How can I keep them? I have sworn to love, to honor
Captain Ross; but in spite of myself, without any action of my own, I
have broken both these oaths. I cannot love him; I hate him; and I
cannot honor the man I hate. What have I else to break? Nothing. Ny
nuptial vow is as completely annihilated as if I had left him never
to return. How?" cried she, after a pause of some minutes, "how shall
I know what passes in the mind of Constantine? Did he love me, would
he protect me, I would brave the whole universe. Oh, I should be the
happiest of the happy!"
Fatal conclusion of reflection! It infected her dreaming and her
waking fancy. She regarded everything as an enemy that opposed her
passion; and as the first of these enemies, she detested Lady
Tinemouth. The countess's last admonishing letter enraged her by its
arguments; and, throwing it into the fire with execrations and tears,
she determined to pursue her own will, but to affect being influenced
by her ladyship's counsels.
The Count Sobieski, who surmised not the hundredth part of the
infatuation of Lady Sara, began to hope that her ardent manner had
misled him, or that she had seen the danger of such imprudence.
Under these impressions, the party for the theatre was settled; and
Thaddeus, after sitting an hour in Grosvenor Place, returned to his
humble home, and attendance on his venerated friend.