FRESH TOUCHES TO THE THREE VIGNETTES FOR THE BOOK OF BEAUTY.
Weeks passed--the London season was beginning--Darrell had decided
nothing--the prestige of his position was undiminished,--in politics,
perhaps higher. He had succeeded in reconciling some great men; he had
strengthened--it might be saved--a jarring cabinet. In all this he had
shown admirable knowledge of mankind, and proved that time and disuse
had not lessened his powers of perception. In his matrimonial designs,
Darrell seemed more bent than ever upon the hazard--irresolute as
ever on the choice of a partner. Still the choice appeared to be
circumscribed to the fair three who had been subjected to Colonel
Morley’s speculative criticism--Lady Adela, Miss Vipont, Flora Vyvyan.
Much pro and con might be said in respect to each. Lady Adela was so
handsome that it was a pleasure to look at her; and that is much when
one sees the handsome face every day,--provided the pleasure does
not wear off. She had the reputation of a very good temper; and the
expression of her countenance confirmed it. There, panegyric stopped;
but detraction did not commence. What remained was inoffensive
commonplace. She had no salient attribute, and no ruling passion.
Certainly she would never have wasted a thought on Mr. Darrell, nor have
discovered a single merit in him, if he had not been quoted as a very
rich man of high character in search of a wife, and if her father had
not said to her: “Adela, Mr. Darrell has been greatly struck with your
appearance--he told me so. He is not young, but he is still a very fine
looking man, and you are twenty-seven. ‘Tis a greater distinction to be
noticed by a person of his years and position, than by a pack of silly
young fellows, who think more of their own pretty faces than they would
ever do of yours.”
“If you did not mind a little disparity of years, he would make you a
happy wife; and, in the course of nature, a widow, not too old to enjoy
liberty, and with a jointure that might entitle you to a still better
match.”
Darrell thus put into Lady Adela’s head, he remained there, and became
an _idee fixe_. Viewed in the light of a probable husband, he was
elevated into an “interesting man.” She would have received his
addresses with gentle complacency; and, being more the creature of habit
than impulse, would no doubt, in the intimacy of connubial life, have
blest him, or any other admiring husband, with a reasonable modicum of
languid affection. Nevertheless, Lady Adela was an unconscious impostor;
for, owing to a mild softness of eye and a susceptibility to blushes,
a victim ensnared by her beauty would be apt to give her credit for a
nature far more accessible to the romance of the tender passion than,
happily perhaps for her own peace of mind, she possessed; and might
flatter himself that he had produced a sensation which gave that
softness to the eye and that damask to the blush.
Honoria Vipont would have been a choice far more creditable to the good
sense of so mature a wooer. Few better specimens of a young lady brought
up to become an accomplished woman of the world. She had sufficient
instruction to be the companion of an ambitious man-solid judgment to
fit her for his occasional adviser. She could preside with dignity over
a stately household--receive with grace distinguished guests. Fitted
to administer an ample fortune, ample fortune was necessary to the
development of her excellent qualities. If a man of Darrell’s age were
bold enough to marry a young wife, a safer wife amongst the young
ladies of London he could scarcely find; for though Honoria was only
three-and-twenty, she was as staid, as sensible, and as remote from all
girlish frivolities, as if she had been eight-and-thirty. Certainly had
Guy Darrell been of her own years, his fortunes unmade, his fame to
win, a lawyer residing at the back of Holborn, or a pretty squire in
the petty demesnes of Fawley, he would have had no charm in the eyes of
Honoria Vipont. Disparity of years was in this case no drawback but his
advantage, since to that disparity Darrell owed the established name and
the eminent station which made Honoria think she elevated her own self
in preferring him. It is but justice to her to distinguish here between
a woman’s veneration for the attributes of respect which a man gathers
round him, and the more vulgar sentiment which sinks the man altogether,
except as the necessary fixture to be taken in with general valuation.
It is not fair to ask if a girl who entertains a preference for one of
our toiling, stirring, ambitious sex, who may be double her age or
have a snub nose, but who looks dignified and imposing on a pedestal
of state, whether she would like him as much if stripped of all his
accessories, and left unredeemed to his baptismal register or unbecoming
nose. Just as well ask a girl in love with a young Lothario if she would
like him as much if he had been ugly and crooked. The high name of the
one man is as much a part of him as good looks are to the other. Thus,
though it was said of Madame de la Valliere that she loved Louis XIV:
for himself and not for his regal grandeur, is there a woman in the
world, however disinterested, who believes that Madame de la Valliere
would have liked Louis XIV. as much if Louis XIV. had been Mr. John
Jones; Honoria would not have bestowed her hand on a brainless,
worthless nobleman, whatever his rank or wealth. She was above that sort
of ambition; but neither would she have married the best-looking and
worthiest John Jones who ever bore that British appellation, if he had
not occupied the social position which brought the merits of a Jones
within range of the eyeglass of a Vipont.
Many girls in the nursery say to their juvenile confidants, “I will
marry the man I love.” Honoria had ever said, “I will only marry the man
I respect.” Thus it was her respect for Guy Darrell that made her honour
him by her preference. She appreciated his intellect--she fell in love
with the reputation which the intellect had acquired. And Darrell might
certainly choose worse. His cool reason inclined him much to Honoria.
When Alban Morley argued in her favour, he had no escape from
acquiescence, except in the turns and doubles of his ironical humour.
But his heart was a rebel to his reason; and, between you and me,
Honoria was exactly one of those young women by whom a man of grave
years ought to be attracted, and by whom, somehow or other, he never is;
I suspect, because the older we grow the more we love youthfulness of
character. When Alcides, having gone through all the fatigues of life,
took a bride in Olympus, he ought to have selected Minerva, but he chose
Hebe.
Will Darrell find his Hebe in Flora Vyvyan? Alban Morley became more and
more alarmed by the apprehension. He was shrewd enough to recognise in
her the girl of all others formed to glad the eye and plague the heart
of a grave and reverend seigneur. And it might well not only flatter the
vanity, but beguile the judgment, of a man who feared his hand would be
accepted only for the sake of his money, that Flora just at this moment
refused the greatest match in the kingdom, young Lord Vipont, son of
the new Earl of Montfort, a young man of good sense, high character,
well-looking as men go--heir to estates almost royal; a young man whom
no girl on earth is justified in refusing. But would the whimsical
creature accept Darrell? Was she not merely making sport of him, and if,
caught by her arts, he, sage and elder, solemnly offered homage and
hand to that _belle dedaigneuse_ who had just doomed to despair a comely
young magnet with five times his fortune, would she not hasten to make
hirer the ridicule of London.
Darrell had perhaps his secret reasons for thinking otherwise, but
he did not confide them even to Alban Morley. This much only will the
narrator, more candid, say to the reader: If out of the three whom his
thoughts fluttered round, Guy Darrell wished to select the one who would
love him best--love him with the whole fresh unreasoning heart of a girl
whose childish forwardness sprang from childlike innocence, let him dare
the hazard of refusal and of ridicule; let him say to Flora Vyvyan, in
the pathos of his sweet deep voice: “Come and be the spoiled darling of
my gladdened age; let my life, ere it sink into night, be rejoiced by
the bloom and fresh breeze of the morning.”
But to say it he must wish it; he himself must love--love with all
the lavish indulgence, all the knightly tenderness, all the grateful
sympathising joy in the youth of the beloved, when youth for the lover
is no more, which alone can realise what we sometimes see, though loth
to own it--congenial unions with unequal years. If Darrell feel not that
love, woe to him, woe and thrice shame if he allure to his hearth one
who might indeed be a Hebe to the spouse who gave up to her his whole
heart in return for hers; but to the spouse who had no heart to give,
or gave but the chips of it, the Hebe indignant would be worse than
Erinnys!
All things considered, then, they who wish well to Guy Darrell
must range with Alban Morley in favour of Miss Honoria Vipont. She,
proffering affectionate respect--Darrell responding by rational esteem.
So, perhaps, Darrell himself thought, for whenever Miss Vipont was
named he became more taciturn, more absorbed in reflection, and sighed
heavily, like a man who slowly makes up his mind to a decision, wise,
but not tempting.