NEW AND OLD COMPANIONS.
The Sabbath came, God’s holy day, and the family attended a church which
was at some little distance. Mr. and Mrs. Hope and their daughter, the
ladies arrayed in all the splendour of fashion, went in state in the
carriage, with two footmen in attendance, while the boys preferred
walking over the fields with their tutor.
Ernest, as he entered the church, drew the eyes of the whole congregation
upon himself, which made him more uncomfortable than ever. “Am I not to
escape even here from Vanity Fair?” thought he; “cannot even these walls
shut out the world!”
Straight in front of the seat which he occupied was a marble monument of
singular beauty, which naturally attracted his attention. It represented
the figure of a very lovely babe, sleeping amongst water-lilies, the
attitude and countenance depicting the peaceful slumber of innocence.
Below was an inscription, which the boy read with strange emotion:—
IN MEMORY OF ERNEST, ELDEST SON OF THE FIRST LORD FONTONORE,
WHO WAS ACCIDENTALLY DROWNED BEFORE HE HAD COMPLETED THE FIRST
YEAR OF HIS AGE.
“’Tis thus the snow-flake from the skies,
Touching the sod, dissolves and dies;
Ere mists of earth can its whiteness stain,
Raised by the sunbeams to heaven again.
“Though parted now on life’s thorny way,
’Twere weak, ’twere cruel, to wish his stay;
We must toil on through trials, griefs, alarms—
He was borne to the goal in his Saviour’s arms.”
After service was over, Clementina took a fancy—for she was always
governed by fancies—to walk home with her cousins instead of driving
with her parents. She therefore pursued the path across the fields with
Ernest, whilst Charles and his tutor walked a little way behind.
“I was so much diverted at church,” said the young lady, in the flippant
manner which she mistook for wit, “I was so much diverted to see you
looking so seriously at the inscription upon your own monument. It was so
funny, I could hardly help bursting out laughing, only that would have
been very improper, you know.”
“The inscription made me feel anything but inclined to laugh,” observed
Ernest.
“Well, I would give the world,”—had the world belonged to Clementina, she
would have given it away ten times a-day,—“I would give the world to know
what you were thinking when you read those fine verses upon yourself.”
“I was thinking whether it would indeed have been happier for me to have
died when I was a little one, before I had known anything of the world
and sin.”
“Oh, dear me! those are the dreadful, gloomy notions which you get from
your horrid, methodistical tutor.”
“Clementina, I will not hear him spoken of in that manner,” said Ernest,
with a decision of tone which the young lady had never heard him make use
of before. She was either offended, or thought it pretty to look so, for
stopping as they reached a very low stile, she called to Charles to help
her over it. She wished to vex Ernest, and raise a feeling of jealousy
toward his brother; but she was successful in neither of her designs, as
Ernest very contentedly turned back to Mr. Ewart, and left the fair lady
to pursue her walk with the companion whom she had chosen.
“I am so sorry for you, dear Charles!” said Clementina, in a voice rather
more affected than usual; “it is so dreadful to be turned out of your
right by a low, vulgar creature like that.”
“But you see I don’t think him either low or vulgar,” replied Charles,
good humouredly. “He has high feelings, and high principles; and as for
being vulgar, a boy who thinks so much, and upon such subjects as he
does, can never, as Mr. Ewart said to me once, have a vulgar mind.”
[Illustration: RETURNING FROM CHURCH.]
“I find him intolerably dull,” said Clementina.
“I am sorry for it,” was her cousin’s dry reply.
Clementina was now offended with Charles in his turn, and had there been
a third party less unmanageable than Mr. Ewart, she would doubtless have
chosen him to accompany her, in the delightful hope of annoying both
her cousins. The silly girl was almost unconsciously forming a plan to
separate the brothers, and make them jealous of each other, by sometimes
favouring the elder, sometimes the younger, so as to draw their whole
attention towards herself. You may think that it was some unkind and
bitter feeling that made her wish thus to destroy their happiness and
union, and act the part of a tempter towards her companions; but it was
nothing but selfish vanity and folly—so that she was amused, she cared
not who suffered; the power to give pain she considered as a triumph—it
is reckoned so in Vanity Fair.
She turned round to see if Ernest were watching her movements, but was
extremely provoked to find him so deeply engaged in serious conversation
with the clergyman, that her presence seemed altogether forgotten.
Clementina had therefore no resource but to walk on with Charles, doing
her best to put all the sermon out of his head, by rattling on about her
delight at the prospect of soon going to London, her distress at its not
being the gay season, her conviction that young ladies ought to come out
at fourteen, how she was charmed at the prospect held out of a child’s
ball in Grosvenor Square, but in despair at the dear countess not being
in town! Such is the conversation of Vanity Fair.
In the afternoon Mrs. Hope informed Ernest of the intended move, which
circumstances had led her to make earlier than she had intended. “I
propose remaining in London till after Christmas,” she said; “of course
you and your brother will accompany us.”
“And Mr. Ewart?”
“There is no room in our town house for him,” replied the lady, who,
like her husband, had little love for one, the unworldliness of whose
character seemed a silent reproach upon her own.
“It would surely be a great pity that I should leave my studies,” said
Ernest; “pray remember how much time I have lost already.”
“Oh, I’ve quite decided on your coming. To acquire a fashionable air, and
the good breeding of the _haut-ton_, is quite as indispensable as any
book-learning.”
The truth was that the lady had no idea of losing an opportunity of
displaying to her acquaintance her nephew, the young peer.
On the following evening Charles came to his brother, who was engaged in
the dry study of a Latin grammar, to announce to him the arrival of Jack
and Ben, who had just been landed at the gardener’s cottage.
“I must go and see them at once,” said Ernest, rising.
“’Tis late and cold; I think that you might wait till to-morrow.”
“Oh no; they are strangers here, poor boys, they have none but me to bid
them welcome.”
“Then I’ll go with you to see the meeting,” said Charles, taking down his
cap from its peg.
There was something of awkwardness, a little mixed with fear, in the
manner of Ben, as the young nobleman kindly held out his hand to him; but
Jack had lost none of his own reckless, impudent air, and strangely did
his voice remind Ernest of former days as he called out, as if still in
his cottage on the common, “I say, Mark, here’s a fine change for you!”
“I don’t believe that the boy knows how to blush,” whispered Charles.
“But I hope that you don’t mean to keep us long here,” continued Jack,
looking round rather contemptuously on the clean little dwelling.
“What do you mean?” replied Ernest; “surely you prefer it to the
poor-house!”
“Why, you don’t think that I’ll stand living in a cottage, while my
brother is in a castle! That would be rather a good joke I should say.”
“He’s no brother of yours,” cried Charles, angrily.
“I’m as good as he any day,” muttered the boy, glancing at Ernest with
mingled envy and dislike. The young peer mastered his temper, though it
cost him an effort. “I have placed you,” said he, “where one much wiser
than either of us thinks that you will be best; I hope that you will be
comfortable, and learn your work, and never have real cause to regret
coming here.” With these words Ernest and Charles quitted the cottage,
overhearing as they passed out Ben’s disappointed exclamation, “I thought
he’d have made us gentlefolk too!”
“How hard it is to do good!” said Ernest, with a sigh of mortification,
when they had walked a few steps from the place. “I see the wisdom of
Mr. Ewart’s doubts, when he said that he believed that there might be
objections to this plan.”
“Well, you’ve acted kindly, and you’ll have your reward,” observed
Charles.
“Not in the gratitude of these boys.”
“Did you do it to purchase their gratitude?” asked his brother. “Mr.
Ewart says that some do good actions to buy praise, and some to buy
gratitude, but both look for an earthly reward, and, therefore, for one
which can never be sure. It is the cup of cold water given for the Lord’s
sake which is remembered and rewarded above.”
“True,” replied Ernest, “and if we do good only in order to be loved,
the many, many disappointments which we meet with, will soon make us
weary in well-doing. That benevolence only will be steady and sure which
comes from a wish to please that Master in heaven who never can change or
forget.”